That strange funny sickness seemed to enjoy coming and going. Over the next couple of days, the class seemed to learn to ignore it for the most part, even if they remained somewhat restless. It was much like the hiccups – annoying and nearly painful at first but eventually she got to the point where she found herself used to it and pushed it out of her mind in class. It was there, of course, often present. There were times when it seemed as if it was gone completely and she was her normal self. She focused, and her class did. Bakugo gave her dirty looks more often but avoided her. Walking in the halls with her friends, doing her homework, sitting at lunch; these were all moments she didn't seem to be bothered by whatever was going on. Once she forced herself to become deeply invested in a subject, she could focus in class and felt normal. The next couple of days, she wasn't bothered by it.
It was when she gave Shoto her goodbye before she had to leave him to detention when it was the strongest. It was when he would message her, talking about the horrors of that day's work, when she felt wobbly and aglow again. It was when he would sigh and rise from the table to fetch more napkins because Kairi truly enjoyed her food and didn't notice the crumbs that spilled all over her skirt. Part of her thought maybe she should seek out a doctor, but then she would feel fine and forget about it again.
"Ehhh, so much math homework..." Uraraka moaned, following Momo, Tsu, and Kairi out the door. "Anyone feeling like studying with me?"
"I have to see the counselor today," Kairi reminded, scrolling over her phone. "It feels like I'm plateauing a bit. I feel like I got a little better and now I haven't changed and honestly my quirk hasn't gained much control."
"I don't know, I haven't felt like any of your emotions have seemed to be so intense none of us could handle them," Tsu said kindly.
"Except for..." Momo began, and then flushed red. "Never mind. But even that seems to come and go."
"Maybe you're just getting used to it," Kairi sighed, her eyes still transfixed to her screen.
"Wasn't that a part of the expectations All Might and Aizawa had for us?" Uraraka asked. "He wanted us to learn how to strengthen our minds and emotions to fight against any quirk that may try to take us down in the field!"
"Yes, but does it really count if you simply just get used to?" Kairi sighed, scanning over the text on her screen. She frowned for a moment and then let out a small breath before continuing.
"It's that a part of it? Isn't getting used to it just a part of building defenses against it?" Tsu posed. Kairi shrugged.
"Maybe, I don't know... maybe it just shows all you lot are great heroes and tough and you can do anything! Meanwhile I'm weak and have no strength and I... maybe I just am not cut out for this."
"That simply isn't true," Momo quickly stepped in. "You wouldn't have been admitted if you didn't have potential. You wouldn't have been allowed to come back, and join class 2-A if you weren't." Kairi pouted and stared sadly at her screen, a bit wracked.
"What do you keep looking at?" Uraraka said.
"News. Reports. Police records that the public is given access to which, admittedly isn't anything. Also I guess wondering if my phone is going to ring or get a text," Kairi answered somberly. "My dad was following a lead in his case he's working on. He's hoping it will be promising or lead to a main suspect. I get nervous whenever he follows one of these because I don't know what's going to happen at the end of it. I mean, if anything did happen someone would have called me so checking news sources is kind of pointless..."
"It sounds like your father is a good detective," Tsu said, resting an arm against her shoulder as they turned towards the dorm building. "He also has others with him, right? I'm certain he'll be all right."
"I know but, he's... gotten hurt once, when I was young." Shakiness pulsed through her heart. "It's hard to not remember that whenever he goes out." Iida ran on ahead of them and held open the door. Kairi smiled warmly at him as he stood, allowing the girls to head on into the dorm first. She looked over her phone's screen again before giving in and tucking it away.
Momo and Tsu followed her, heading up the steps to the top floor of the dorm where she entered her bedroom. She dropped her bag on the floor and tossed herself across the top of her bed, groaning pleasantly.
"Sometimes school is more draining when we're doing bookwork versus hero training," she mumbled into the pillow. Tsu picked up the stuffed elephant from the end of her bed and squished it to her chest, patting one of its large ears.
"How have you been feeling, Kairi?" Momo asked, eyes scanning over the pictures clipped to the wall. The collection of photos had grown bigger. The ones with her parents when she was young, and later ones with her father were still present. At the end of the trail of photos were the new additions; pictures from over the summer of her with her friends. Kairi sat around a table at a diner, eyes wide as she was caught off guard by Momo trying to get a selfie with Uraraka and Tsu with them. Kairi sitting on a rock while Izuku photobombed her in the background. In another photo, she was screaming in the front of a roller coaster and clinging to the person sitting beside her – Iida, who looked somewhere between terrified and excited. Behind them, Tsu was allowing her tongue to loll out and catch the high speed wind and Aoyama purposely posed in a way that he believed would capture him best. Kairi and Shoto completely drenched after getting off a water ride, the both of them hugging themselves from the chill. Kairi and Shoto's selfie from the beach concert. A snapshot that Aoyama had posted online, where he had captured both Kairi and Shoto on the subway. The caption had been cryptic, nothing but a winking face, but Kairi appreciated it. She had been tense that day as always when she was being shoved into the subway among the crowds of people. Shoto had reached over and rested a hand on her shoulder, holding her close to him to avoid having to be pressed in against everyone else. Odd as it was, she liked the photo, and it joined the family of pictures. The last one was from a free play day during a physical education class. It was a class photo, most of them scuffed and dusty from their baseball game. Momo had leaned her head into Kairi and Tsu lovingly rested her chin on top of Kairi's head. Shoto stood on the other side of Kairi, resting his arm against her shoulder.
It was becoming a wall of warmth and smiles, one of the biggest things that stirred her well of joy when she entered her room.
"Better," she sighed proudly. "I'm still on edge, but whatever is going on I'm managing it. Hopefully it will go away soon." Her phone pinged in her hand and she rushed to slide open the message.
Home. Today went fine without incident. No need to worry, which I know you are. – Dad.
The heaviness flew away the instant she read his text. Feeling warm and light, she tapped out a message to him and then floated to where she sat on the bed. Tsu turned away from her position near the bookshelf to smile at her.
"Seems like everything is okay then?" she guessed. Kairi nodded.
"Yes..." Kairi exhaled proudly. "He's home and nothing happened."
"Is this a common occurrence with him?" Uraraka asked.
"I mean, he's a detective. He always has to be on his guard whenever he's out working on a case because he never knows how it could happen," Kairi explained, enjoying the brief moment of warm contentedness. They didn't come along often; surrounded by her friends in her room specifically designed for comfort, and knowing her father was safe. She settled against the relaxation stirring in her soul. "Thankfully for me, most detective work isn't constantly barreling into criminal's houses or tracking down a suspicious person on the street like the shows enjoy. A lot of it is paperwork, deskwork, computer work. So many days I'm not worried. There are days though when he does have to head out, like today. That's when I'm nervous."
"What about that mind reading quirk?" Tsu asked. "That's got to help alert him to danger. Though I bet that could have some privacy violation issues, ribbit."
"It does," Kairi nodded, in agreement. "He's incredibly careful with and it's something that is used very sparingly. Mostly only dangerous situations or to see if someone is lying or not during a confession."
"I can't imagine having a quirk like that," Uraraka said. "I feel like there are many times I would be tempted to use it for awful reasons too." She sheepishly turned her eyes away, fearful of what sort of judgment they would impose. Kairi shrugged and looked back at the ceiling.
"It wasn't easy, he said. It used to be distressing. He said it's like whispers that were constantly tickling at his head. It became a matter of growing and tuning stuff out til eventually he just grew to let them fade into the background. It took some determination but with time, self-control, and making some hard choices, he learned to push them into silence. I think he said he was about twenty when he finally began to get the hang of it."
"That seems like you," Tsu said from the chair, placing a thoughtful finger to her lip. "He struggled with his quirk, and you're still struggling. You still are several years away from his age when he got control of it. You will be able to control it soon, I'm sure."
Kairi smiled at her confidence, and rolled back into a sitting position. "Maybe... it's possible but. I would graduate from UA before I'm twenty. If I don't have control of my quirk by then, then I haven't proven myself to be a hero and I can't be one!" Doubt was beginning to seep back in, and she picked at her own fingers. "I'll be left behind, and I won't be able to help others. Besides that my father's quirk didn't affect others the way mine does."
"You were accepted into UA for a reason. We keep saying that!" Tsu told her firmly. "Your path is not the same as your father's. What I mean is, his story is at least an example of someone being able to control his quirk, which you will be able to!" Tsu's authoritative but confident affirmation of her held her doubt at bay, stilling it before it exploded. Kairi breathed.
"You've never seen me explode, Tsu. I appreciate your words but... Shoto and Bakugo was just the beginning. You've never seen me a huge mess because you lot have never given me a reason to. You've helped to tame my emotions when they start to rise."
"Isn't that a part of your growth?" Uraraka said, sitting beside her on the bed and touching her shoulder. "We help you, you help us, remember? We're a team. We all work as a team. That's why Aizawa wanted you in this class, right?"
"But even my father said there were times when he used his quirk for his own selfish reasons. He messed up with his quirk. Over the years he has gotten better in using it and becomes more moral and sparing in his usage of it, but he still makes mistakes and abuses it on occasion."
"Quirks may make us superhuman," Tsu continued. "But underneath it all, we are still human."
"Yeah, we're flawed. We make mistakes, we learn, we grow," Momo said with gentle eyes. "Not even heroes are perfect. Not even All Might. And when you do make a mistake, we'll be there to help you through it." Her chest thumped with prideful joy, a warmth billowing through her system. The jump through her startled the girls around her when her phone chimed. Kairi picked it up and then tucked it away quickly, standing up.
"The alarm for the meeting with my counselor," she sighed with defeated reluctance. Kairi stood, the other girls following close behind as they all left the room. "Have fun studying!" she said as she told them goodbye. Exiting the building, her steps were lighter as she made her ways back to the school for her session. It was strange, to feel so light before she went to see her counselor. It was nice, for once, to have little emotional weight to shed.
"You can't tell me you didn't once try to shove his head into the ground," Kairi asked, refusing to pull her eyes away from her laptop as she repeatedly tapped against one of the numbered buttons on her keyboard. She lazily moved her legs back and forth as she lay her stomach against Shoto's floor. Shoto dropped his uniform jacket over the edge of his desk chair before swiveling it towards him to sit.
"There were opportunities to do so. The temptation was there. He didn't stop being infuriating," he answered honestly, moving aside a couple of textbooks on his desk. "But I didn't. It seemed like he was really trying to, though."
"Wow. No wonder you're one of the strongest at the school. I would have whipped him in the head."
"You mean, you would have tried to whip him in the head after you threw a torrent of cutting words first," Shoto snarked. Kairi looked over the top of her laptop to glare judgingly.
"Yes, yes, I'm super weak, I get it."
"I never said that. You're probably stronger than the average person the street, but you can't take Bakugo in a fight. Not just because of his quirk-"
"Because I got noodle arms and noodle legs, I get it," Kairi mumbled, returning her eyes to her computer and mashing at the keys again. She hissed through her teeth and clenched her fists. The disturbance in the atmosphere made him whip around to stare at her with confused concern.
"Your emotions are all over the place there, Noodle," he said plainly. "Are you angry? Are you sad? Are you... what?"
"I just spent the last twenty minutes battling this damn boss and then he had to go and swing his hammer and crush me to pieces!" She screeched, before flopping over and moaning her frustration. Her hands slapped against her face while Shoto stared at her blankly.
"Perfect, you can use the time to do your math assignment."
"No, it means I try the boss again." Kairi flopped back over to face the screen again, moving around her mouse with her right hand and tapping against the keyboard. Shoto looked up to the ceiling as if he were searching for some direction.
"I thought you came in here to do homework since you missed the study session Momo had and didn't want to feel lonely."
"I came in here to destress after meeting with my counselor because she grills me with some hard questions, and maybe do homework. I'm destressing." Shoto raised an eyebrow in her direction.
"The emotions you're projecting don't feel destressed."
"They will be once I beat him," Kairi sang quietly and began to rapidly tap against a few of the keys. Shoto turned his head from her and reached for the headphones dangling from his desk. Popping one in each other, his attention blocked Kairi. Right hand scrolled through a website on his laptop, with a waiting notebook and pencil off to the side. He hummed quietly to himself, following the beat of whatever he was listening to. The young girl peered up from her screen for a moment, watching Shoto focus on the work before him. Grey and blue eyes scanned the material before him with deep intent. Her heart thunked dully as her own eyes studied the smoothness of his skin and the glow that was cast from his eyes as he leaned over the computer. Her neck grew hot and tingly. She watched his Adam's apple ripple with a swallow and a faint brush of pink highlighted his cheeks. Kairi ducked her eyes back down beyond the computer, her movements in her game sloppier than they had previously been. Hot breath quickening, her game character stumbled in timing and she nervously bit her own lip. Slowly, she gave in and exited through the game screen.
"Should I open the window?" Shoto asked slowly.
"Hmm? Yes! Ah, yeah it's... hot in here," she chuckled, clearing her throat from the sudden squeak she seemed to develop. Shoto quickly pulled from his desk and propped open his window. The air was mildly chilly, but Kairi let the fresh air tame her mind. The odd emotion hadn't been too terrible, but in that moment... it felt stronger than it possibly ever had been. She shivered, feeling both terrified and elated by its mystery.