"Wake up." Shinsou poked Midoriya in the shoulder, "Come on, Zuku, we're going to be late."

The greenette let out a whine, shoving his face into the pillow as he pulled his hood over his head, before kicking the blanket away. Reiko let out a small purr, before she shuffled closer to Midoriya, huddling down by his neck. Ryuto just blinked, slightly confused, before he hopped over to the feline's side, resting his beak on top of Reiko's head sleepily, chirping out a good morning.

Midoriya groaned. His head was throbbing like someone had just smacked him several times with a sledgehammer, with nausea bubbling from the back of his throat every time a bit of light entered his pupils. He felt absolutely terrible, and along with a dry, sore throat from continuously puking the previous day, Midoriya really wished he could just sleep and ignore the world around him.

Shinsou frowned slightly at Midoriya's off behavior, before he reached out, gently slipping his hand between the pillow and Midoriya's forehead, "Are you sick? You're... really warm..."

"I'm not sick." Midoriya murmured, turning around to flop onto his back, using his arm to cover his eyes, "Just want to sleep..."

"Maybe you still don't feel well from yesterday... You did throw up quite a bit... even if you were insistent on eating dinner at the end of the day." Shinsou muttered, "Do you want to skip lessons today? I'm sure Dad would be willing to give you an extra day to rest and relax."

"I'm fine..." Midoriya vehemently whined, doing his best to push his nausea down, before he pushed himself up, rubbing his eyes. His stomach was churning, his head was pounding, and Midoriya just sighed, before he forced himself up, and headed to the bathroom so that he could brush his teeth and change.

Today was going to be a terrible day.


Midoriya just stared at the big fat zero messily scrawled onto his test paper in prominent red ink, anxiety bubbling up inside him, his stomach churning like the waves on a stormy day. He's never failed a test before, let alone get a zero before. He was positive that he knew all his stuff... how on earth could he have failed?

The green haired boy frantically flipped through his paper, trying to figure out just what he had done to fail. It wasn't multiple choice or short answer questions, where he might have filled in answers to the wrong question while transferring it, and Midoriya was very, very sure that he knew how to do all the questions.

He's gone through text books about these topics in the library, watched videos, and even did online courses about these math topics; he was confident that he knew exactly what he was doing. Maybe he could have made careless mistakes here and there, since the test was short, but he probably could have gotten a few marks for every question for using the correct method.

He flipped through the pages, not seeing a single red mark being made on his paper, before he reached the last page of his test paper.

There, scrawled in messy, red handwriting, read "Cheater".

Midoriya's heart sank. He couldn't afford to fail any subject. Even if the teachers disliked him for being quirkless, they were still rather fair while grading him for his academics. Sure, when he was younger, he might have been penalized here and there for supposedly "cheating" during tests and exams, but the teachers had never given him a complete zero before, only penalizing him enough so that he barely passed the course.

Midoriya immediately stood up, picking up his paper, and walked towards the teacher's table. This had to be a mistake. There was no way he could have cheated... this had to be some sort of misunderstanding.

Before Midoriya could even say a single word, Mrs Kanri narrowed her eyes at him, "I'll talk to you after classes are over."

Midoriya nodded, before he went back to his seat. The lesson was almost over, and it was going to be lunchtime soon. Perhaps she had seen the paper and wanted to acknowledge her mistake without the other students finding out.

"What happened?" Shinsou looked over at Midoriya's desk, noticing his reaction, before he leaned over, staring at the paper, "Wait... the fuck?"

Midoriya just glanced up at the taller boy, signing, "It'll be settled later."

Almost right on cue, the bell for lunch rang, and Shinsou asked, "You want me to hang around with my quirk."

Midoriya paused for a couple of seconds, before he nodded, and Shinsou used that opportunity to activate his quirk on the green haired boy.

"You sure you'll be alright?"

"It... should be fine..."

Shinsou looked up, noticing the students leaving the classroom, and Mrs Kanri glaring daggers at Midoriya.

"I'll be outside the classroom. Do you want Monoma and Kendo for support too?"

"They can go for lunch."

Shinsou nodded, and he exited the classroom, leaning against the wall as he took out his phone.

Midoriya walked up to the teacher's table, and Mrs Kanri took the paper from him.

"Look at this." Mrs Kanri growled, flipping through the pages of his paper, "Do you want to explain something?"

Midoriya just looked at her in utter confusion.

"Don't give me that look. I'm not going to pity you just because you're quirkless. You know exactly what you have done." Mrs Kanri scowled, pointing at his written answers, "You printed this out. It was supposed to be a handwritten test, and no electronics allowed. Why did you feel the need to cheat on this test?"

Midoriya couldn't help it, as tears formed at the corner of his eyes. He had always been marked down due to his handwriting, from his letters not being written neatly, or for his numbers to be written so closely together so that it was hard to make each character apart. He had spent years perfecting his handwriting, making it so neat, so that no one could ever penalize him for messy writing ever again, and only graded him based on his academic performance.

And now, he was getting accused of printing his test answers out? Because his handwriting was... too neat? How did that even make sense?

How could he have even printed out his work? It was an in-class test, and he didn't even leave the classroom; even if he did manage to leave the classroom to do anything out of the ordinary, the teacher would have known, since she had been supervising them the entire time.

He had forgotten how much it hurt whenever he had marks taken off from his tests, simply because everyone complained about him being supposedly stupid, simply because he had no quirk. Why was he always getting penalized for doing nothing wrong?

"And you're not supposed to get all the questions on this test correct!" Mrs Kanri continued, "This wasn't taught in class! These are topics that third years taking higher-level Mathematics would be covering! There is no way that you should be familiar with these topics as a first-year unless you cheated!"

"Calm down, Zuku. I'll get Dad over here, just hold on, okay?"

Midoriya did his best to control his breathing, feeling Shinsou's comforting presence lingering at the back of his mind.


Shinsou closed his eyes.

He could feel everything, Midoriya's anxiety, his panic, his fear, and he tried to do his best to calm the smaller boy down.

I didn't do anything wrong, I didn't do anything wrong, I -

The taller boy growled under his breath. He couldn't hear anything through the closed classroom door, but he wasn't getting any good vibes from Midoriya.

He immediately texted Aizawa.

12:45 - Purple InsomniCat:

Dad, where are you?

12:45 - Cockatoo on Steroids:

Hitoshi, why are you on your phone?

Why are you looking for Shouta?

What happened?

12:46 - tired:

staff room, discussing the students' behavior with the principal and joke

what do you need

12:46 - Purple InsomniCat:

Can you come to our classroom right now?

The maths teacher is scolding Izuku rn and I'm getting a bad feeling from him

12:47 - tired:

i hate my life

stupid teachers with their stupid discrimination always picking on problem child

give me a minute ill be there asap

Shinsou just sighed, and shoved his phone back into his pocket.

Sure enough, a minute later, Aizawa appeared at the end of the hallway, running towards Shinsou, "Are they still inside?"

The lavender haired boy nodded, and the Erasure Hero immediately shoved the door open, only to see Mrs Kanris still scolding Midoriya, as the poor boy just stood by the table, his head lowered, his hair casting shadows over his eyes, his entire body shaking like a flickering flame of a burning candle in the breeze.

"I think that's more than enough." Aizawa scowled, stomping into the room. He had no idea what Midoriya was being scolded for, since Midoriya wasn't the kind of person who got into trouble, but the green haired boy could face down S-rank villains with a broken body without flinching; any scolding definitely went too far if it was enough to make Midoriya tremble like that.

Aizawa tilted his body slightly, letting Shinsou into the classroom. The lavender haired boy immediately rushed into the room, gently placing his hands on Midoriya's shoulders, "You alright?"

He could feel Midoriya shaking as the boy raised his head slightly, tears pooling at the corners of his eyes, muttering, "I didn't do anything wrong..."

The Erasure hero glared at the mathematics teacher, before he glanced at the two students, "Hitoshi, bring Midoriya back to the room first. Give him some time to calm down and eat some lunch, and skip the next lesson; I'll get Tenya or Vlad King or Joke to get you guys food. If he feels better by the time training starts, he can join, but if he doesn't want to, just text me beforehand."

Shinsou silently nodded, before he maneuvered both himself and Midoriya out of the classroom.

Aizawa turned his attention back towards Mrs Kanri, "Staff room, now. We're going to talk about this in a place where students can't stumble in by accident."


"Where's Izuku?" Todoroki asked, glancing around the table where all the UA and Shiketsu students were sitting at.

"He's talking to the maths teacher." Monoma let out a sigh, leaning back into his chair, "Shinsou's waiting for him. Apparently, he did badly for some test... or something. I'm not too sure. Mido sure was upset over it, though I can't say I'm surprised; he's always done well on Mathematics tests."

"Shinsou was really weird too... on the day of the test, he asked if the test was about... I don't know... improper integrals?" Kendo scratched her head, "I don't even know what that's supposed to be."

"Huh." Makabe muttered, as he placed his tray down on the table, settling down between Shindo and Toteki, "Isn't Mrs Kanri the first year mathematics teacher?"

"Yeah." Shindo nodded, shoveling some mashed potatoes into his mouth, "She's always like that, mixing in hard tests with the regular ones, don't worry too much about it."

"What?" Kendo turned to the Ketsubutsu student, "What do you mean by that?"

"Mrs Kanri... she has an odd way of conducting tests." Nakagame sweatdropped, "During every test, there's usually five different sets of test papers she can give out. Four of them have standard questions, with specific values used in calculations for each individual question being different, and the general order of the questions shuffled around to prevent cheating. The last set usually has the more advanced questions, usually around third year and university level questions."

"Isn't that... really hard? That doesn't seem very fair if you can't solve them." Kaminari commented, chewing on his spaghetti.

"Well... yeah. That's.. kind of the point." Makabe replied, "You're not supposed to get them correct. In her perspective, if you do, then you're most likely cheating in some way or form. As long as you try to use the methods taught in class to try and solve the question, it doesn't matter if you get it right or wrong; you'll still get marks for applying the taught concepts correctly. She'll rotate the really hard questions around between students, so no one's marks get hit too badly. It's a weird way of conducting tests, but she's been doing it for years, and no one's complained so far."

"Midoriya is really good at maths, though..." Ashido sighed, "I hope he didn't get into too much trouble."

"I doubt it." Toteki muttered, "She's has a really short temper, so it's really easy to piss her off, but she cools down quickly. She's a good teacher, and she's pretty reasonable most of the time."


Shinsou just lay down on the bed, leaning against the wall, letting the smaller boy lie down on top of him. Midoriya was gripping onto his uniform tightly, shaking as he breathed heavily, as Shinsou gently wrapped his arms around the greenette, resting his arms firmly against Midoriya's back.

"I didn't do anything wrong..." Midoriya let out a hoarse whisper, burying his head into Shinsou's chest, "I didn't cheat..."

"I know, Zuku." Shinsou ran his fingers through Midoriya's soft hair, "Aizawa-sensei and Vlad King-sensei will sort it all out... It'll be alright."

There was a knock on the door, and Shinsou just turned his head, "Come in?"

The door opened, and Mr Yuaku peeked in slightly, holding up a small plastic bag with some plain noodles and a bottle of lemonade, "Here. I... uh... overheard your friends saying that you liked the lemonade from yesterday... that's actually Yameru's specialty, and she was nice and made you another bottle..."

"Thank you." Shinsou nodded, "I'm sorry for the trouble."

"Ah, no worries!" The homeroom teacher smiled, placing the plastic bag on the floor, "Kanri can be really scary at times... I'm always scared of her whenever she loses her temper... I'll... uh... leave you alone for now."

The door closed, and Shinsou let out a small sigh, feeling Midoriya's hand balling up, "It's not my fault. Why is it always me... getting into trouble? Am I... am I not allowed to get good grades?"

"Happened before in middle school?" Shinsou asked, and he felt Midoriya nodding, "Elementary, too."

"Bastards." Shinsou scowled, and he looked down, noticing Midoriya's eyes glinting with an emotion that Shinsou's usually doesn't see on a daily basis

His hands were balled up, not with sadness, as he trembled, gritting his teeth in frustration, "I hate this."

"Yeah. Me too. Life's unfair... but some things are just over the top." Shinsou muttered, rubbing circles into Midoriya's back in an attempt to calm him down.

"Just because I don't have a quirk... so what? Do I just... automatically lack a couple brain cells because I have a toe joint?" Midoriya muttered silently, before Shinsou leaned over, picking up the bag of food, "You're overthinking things again. Come on, Zuku. Lunch."

Midoriya shook his head vehemently, tightening his grip on Shinsou.

"You've got to eat something. You skipped breakfast." Shinsou muttered, "At least, drink the lemonade? Same one as yesterday, the one you like."

On the bed, his phone vibrated, and Shinsou curiously picked his phone up, finding a message from his dad, "Zuku, you up for training later? Work some of that negative energy off?"

Midoriya lifted his head, looking the lavender haired boy in the eye, and nodded firmly, "Yeah."


"So... want to explain what's going on?" Aizawa crossed his arms, as Kan closed the door of the meeting room behind them.

"Midoriya cheated on his maths test." Mrs Kanri stated, matter-of-factly.

Fukukado raised an eyebrow, "Honestly... I don't think that kid is even capable of cheating. And he supposedly did that... how? You would have noticed if he took out his phone or anything like that."

The teacher growled, and held up a page of Midoriya's test paper, "Look at it. It's literally typed with some special kind of font."

"... That's your reason?" Aizawa deadpanned.

"How on earth could he have even attempted to... I don't know... type his answers out? He didn't even bring his laptop to Ketsubutsu, let alone figure out how to connect to the school network and use the printer!" Kan argued.

Aizawa was pretty sure that Midoriya could probably figure out how to hack into the school network if he wanted to, but that wasn't going to help their argument at the moment, so he kept his mouth shut.

Fukukado picked the test paper up, flipping through it, "I have to agree... it does look like a font. But I've had him as an intern before, and I can guarantee that's his handwriting. Plus... you can feel the indents on the paper when he presses the pen against the paper."

Somehow, the mathematics teacher took that as Fukukado agreeing with her, "See what I mean? Printed out!"

Aizawa growled, "That's his regular handwriting. Yes, his handwriting looks like a font, but that's just because it's clean and neat. He always writes like that, whether it be on essays or his own notes. Stop discriminating against him simply because he doesn't have a quirk, and trying to find any kind of excuse to mark him down and penalize him! That's going way too far!"

"No! I'm penalizing him because he's a cheater!" Mrs Kanri threw her hands up in frustration, but before she could continue talking, Aizawa interjected, "So, what other problems do you have with his paper, besides his handwriting?"

"Nothing. All the questions were done correctly." The teacher sighed, having seemingly calmed down from her previous raging fit.

"So basically... you're just penalizing him for having good handwriting?" Aizawa deadpanned.

Fukukado squinted at the question, and blinked, "... first years are learning this already? I only learnt this after I graduated from high school... kids these days are smart. Or are these the hard ones?"

"Yes." Mrs Kanri stated tiredly, "Those are university and third year level questions. He's not supposed to get them correct. He must have somehow cheated to get all the questions done correctly."

"Why are you giving out university level questions on a quiz meant for first years?!" Kan asked, "That's just... unfair... it's not like they would know how to answer them... unless you're Midoriya... then you'd probably know how to answer them..."

"She does that for all her tests to prevent cheating. Like UA, we're allowed free reign over how we conduct lessons if we feel that conventional methods aren't good enough. Plus, it tests conceptual knowledge." Fukukado replied, "The kids aren't penalized for not being able to answer the question anyways. I think we already made it clear that Midoriya didn't print his answers out."

There was silence, as the four teachers stood in the meeting room, pondering about the problem at hand.

"He's never been in the Ketsubutsu staff room before, and we always know where he is, since he's either in his room, or with his friends so it's not like he could sneak into your office to replace the test paper, and if you're not convinced, we can always check the security footage." Fukukado hummed, "It was an in-class test, and it literally took place on the first day of lessons. There is no other way he could have cheated unless he did it during the test itself."

Mrs Kanri groaned, and settled down into a chair.

"What's really going on? You usually don't jump to conclusions so quickly. You're a good teacher, all the other students say so... I really don't want you to get in trouble due to some sort of misunderstanding." Fukukado sighed, and the mathematics teacher turned away, leaning against her arm, "My daughter was in the same class as him in elementary school."

Kan and Aizawa paused, and Fukukado tilted her head in confusion, "So? Doesn't she attend Shiketsu now? What does she have to do with Midoriya?"

"Well, I told them that we were having the UA and Shiketsu students over for some activities, and she started complaining about how she had this old classmate in elementary school who was quirkless and used to cheat all the time in tests and quizzes. All the other students would complain, but since the teachers had no proof that he was actually cheating, they only penalized his marks instead of taking proper disciplinary action." Mrs Kanri sighed wearily, "She said that they most likely took pity on him due to lacking a quirk, and having a mark on his record for academic malpractice would definitely screw his future up. Obviously, that wasn't fair to my baby... she's always working so hard to get good grades, and while overall, she did say that her classmate did rather average... it's still a shock whenever he gets the highest marks in class when the papers are initially given back."

"And that was... Midoriya?" Kan raised an eyebrow, already seeing how that story could fit into the rest of the information that they knew about the quirkless child's past.

The mathematics teacher nodded, "Yes, she confirmed that it was Midoriya."

Aizawa pulled a chair over from the table, and sat down, leaning forward against the backrest, "Did it ever occur to you... that your daughter might be lying?"

Mrs Kanri stared at Aizawa indignantly, "My baby would never do something like that!"

"Think about this logically." Aizawa stated blankly, "It's a written test, in a decently sized classroom. The teachers are walking up and down between the columns of seated students completing their test, making sure no one is using electronic devices. A student gets full marks... and who are they supposed to copy off of?"

The teacher just stared at Aizawa like he was an idiot, "Well... obviously, if they got full marks, and no one else did as well as them, they wouldn't be able to copy off anyone."

Aizawa nodded, "And Midoriya was sitting in the classroom... where?"

"Right in the back corner of the classroom. The blonde... I think his name was Monoma? He was sitting in front of him, the orange haired girl was sitting diagonal from him, and the purple haired boy was sitting to his right." Mrs Kanri replied, thinking hard, "And I didn't give any of them the difficult test... and my quirk allows me to sense electronic waves, so I would have known if any electronics were being used..."

"I think she's got it." Kan muttered, and Mrs Kanri's eyes widened, as she realized what was going on, "So he did know how to do those questions? But how? Those are way above what is being taught right now?"

"Midoriya's way ahead in Mathematics. He's gotten credits for online courses and other higher level mathematics stuff." Aizawa stated, "And based on past records from middle school and elementary school... he should have gotten full marks for all his tests and quizzes if he hadn't been marked down. If you want, I can call up Ectoplasm; he's the mathematics teacher. He can confirm all this."

"Shit... what did I just do..." The mathematics teacher leaned forward, resting her head between her hands, "The poor kid must have been so upset that I accused him of cheating for no reason... and if it's been happening since elementary school... what have I done..."

Aizawa sighed. He was still angry, granted, but he was relieved that everything was just a huge misunderstanding, and that the teacher wasn't just being discriminatory towards Midoriya due to his lack of a quirk, but also due to another troublesome past classmate.

But that still left one question; how to heal Midoriya's shattered heart. It had taken them months to try and build up trust with the green haired boy, and Aizawa had no idea how Midoriya was faring right now, being thrown back into a terrible situation from his past.

"Will he still be attending the joint training session?" Mrs Kanri asked.

Aizawa pulled out his phone, and texted Shinsou.

13:25 - tired:

hitoshi

is midoriya alright

13:26 - Purple InsomniCat:

Yeah, he's feeling better.

He wants to attend training.

"Yeah, he's going attend later." Aizawa stated, and the teacher sighed, "I'll fix his grade... and then I'll go apologize to him in person."