"Wake up, you sleepy head!"

Izuku startled awake. Recovery Girl was somehow looming over him, and based off of the newspaper in her raised hand, had been trying to wake him for a while.

Raising his hand, he rubbed at his eyes as he struggled to sit up. His skin stretched uncomfortably and looking at his skin, he could see it peeling in some places. That's what he gets for using his quirk too much.

Pain shot through his chest, but it wasn't nearly as bad as it had been the day before. Recovery Girl helped him from her position on a nearby chair, which made her look a lot taller, and soon enough he was sitting up and looking at Recovery Girl. She seemed tired, but she was somehow just as energetic as she's ever been.

A glance out the window told him it was either the middle of the night, or very early morning. He figured it was early morning. It didn't make much sense for her to wake him up in the dead of night. Plus he felt a lot more well rested than he has had in a long time.

He saw Recovery Girl shift in her spot on the chair once he was settled and said, "Now that you're awake, I can heal the rest of you, and then you can go take a shower. I haven't had a patient stink up the infirmary this badly in a long time."

Heat crawled up face as he nodded. Did he really stink that badly?

She laughed, "Relax! I was joking with you. You sure do take everything seriously, don't you."

The last part didn't sound like a question, so he figured he wasn't supposed to answer. Unfortunately, that just left the conversation hanging awkwardly in the air. Recovery Girl ended up healing him in complete silence, but he was relieved once the remaining pain finally left. He really hadn't felt this good in years, not counting the slight exhaustion that settled in bones.

Recovery Girl gave him some kind of gummy and directed him to the locker room where he could take a shower, and then left. Apparently, she had something important to do, and it couldn't wait. Not that he needed her more or anything, he just didn't want to be left alone.

That in itself was a strange feeling. He had never wanted to be around people before. The League wasn't exactly friendly, and he was too shy to go up and talk to others on his own, so it wasn't like he liked or even had any experience in being in the presence of others. Yet for some reason, he found himself for the first time, not wanting to be left alone.

He didn't mention this to Recovery Girl, as he didn't want to burden her any more than he already had. She had enough to worry about, and she even said as much.

Left to his own devices, he decided to check his phone, but found that it was dead. Sighing, he put it back down. He didn't have a charger for it, so he would just have to deal with the consequences.

After finding his back pack sitting next to the bed and his uniform folded neatly atop the bedside table, he finally got out of bed. The showers weren't too far away, so he grabbed his uniform and a towel and headed out of the infirmary.

His footsteps echoed loudly in the hallway and made him cringe. The lights were on, but he still felt like the shadows were going to jump out at him at any moment. Not to mention how he only saw his reflection when he looked at a window. There were a lot of windows.

All of this did nothing to help calm his nerves, and he felt like he was going to get caught even though he was doing nothing wrong. The building just felt wrong when he wasn't surrounded by students and the silence where he kept expecting to hear chatter unnerved him to no end.

Once he reached the showers, he quickly stepped inside and closed the door behind with a soft click. There were showers lining one wall and a few toilet stalls and sinks on the opposite wall. For the most part, there wasn't anything special about it. Just a normal PE bathroom.

He stepped into one of the showers and set his uniform and the towel on the separate bench part. Closing the curtain behind him, he got undressed. He just dumped his ruined costume onto the floor. It wasn't like the floor would damage it any more than it already was.

The floor underneath his bare feet sent cold chills up his legs and the faint breeze from the air conditioning made him shiver slightly.

Stepping into the actual shower part of the shower, he turned the hot water on full bast. Cold water hit his skin, but hot water eventually burned at his skin. The water running off his body was almost black from the dirt and soot.

Picking up some of the soap, his mind wandered as he cleaned himself. He was curious as to why Bakugou had gone after him with such fervor. Not to mention how he had acted on the first day. As far as he knew, he still hadn't done anything to provoke his classmate. And yet Bakugou still acted like he had somehow personally offended him by just existing. It was confusing, and if Izuku were to be honest, it was starting to piss him off. If Bakugou didn't like him, he would just have to deal. If Izuku had been able to leave whenever people around him didn't like him, he wouldn't be in this situation at all.

His thoughts eventually wandered to Todoroki as well, and he caught himself wondering what he was doing at that moment. He felt his face burn with the rest of his body as he scolded himself. Todoroki probably wanted nothing to do with him after seeing how weak he was and how easily he got beat up. He hadn't even been able to defend himself when it really counted.

Turning off the hot water, Izuku shook his hair out like a dog before he went back into the section where his towel and clothes were. Trying not to think, he dried himself off with the towel and put on his uniform. It was nice feeling and he noticed the wrinkles were gone. They must have cleaned it while he was out. The thought made his face burn, but he was thankful anyways. Now he didn't have to worry about people noticing his dirty uniform. It would still become a problem again later on, but he would worry about that when it came up.

His hair was still slightly damp, but other than that, he felt completely refreshed. It was like he was a totally different person. He had of course taken showers before, but it had been a while. The base didn't exactly have working showers.

Picking up his damp towel and costume, he opened the curtain and exited the shower stall. He felt better as he made his way to the door and left the room.

The sun was now peeking over the horizon as he walked through the hallways once more. He could tell that some of the staff had now arrived as he could hear the occasional slam of a door or the squeak a shoe.

Arriving at the infirmary, he opened the door and saw Recovery Girl working at her desk. She looked up at his entrance and smiled at him, "It's about time you came back! I was starting to worry you slipped and knocked yourself out!"

Izuku rubbed the back of his head nervously, he hadn't realized so much time had passed, "I-I'm s-sorry. I-I didn't realize it had b-been that l-long."

She waved it off, "It's fine. You sure do like to apologize a lot don't you?"

He hung his head and started to mutter a sorry, but he caught himself before he could. Recovery Girl gave him a knowing smile.

She told him that school started in an hour and that he would be given an extra day to do the homework he missed. He nodded and she told him that he could head to class in about half an hour. That gave him some time to grab a snack from the vending machines and anything else he wanted to do.

He ended up using the yen he had used to defend himself when he got jumped on the first day to get himself a snack and drink from the vending machines near the infirmary. It surprised him how many vending machines the school provided. It seemed like there was one in every hallway.

After that, he caught up on some of his homework. He managed to knock out a bit of it before he decided to head to class. Leaving with about twenty minutes before the start of class, he navigated the now busy hallways. Unlike that morning, students filled the hallways, either by walking or standing around talking to friends. It was infinitely louder as well, but he didn't mind it. The noise was much better than the eerie quiet.

Looking out one of the windows, he could see that the sun had risen quite a bit now.

Something caught his attention, and he looked at the gate of the school. There seemed to be a crowd of people gathered around the entrance. They looked to be trying to talk to the students walking through, but they seemed to ignore them for the most part.

He looked away. They must be reporters who found out about All Might working at Yueei. That's the only reason they would even try showing up at the most prestigious hero school in the country.

The rest of the walk was uneventful. He almost ran into a few people, but that was it. Opening the door, he saw a few of his classmates already inside. There was mostly the same people from the first day of school, except Hagakure was missing. If she had been here, he might have talked to her, but she wasn't, so he went and sat down in his seat. He didn't feel comfortable enough with Iida or Yaoyorozu to just go up to them and start a conversation, and they didn't seem to notice his entrance, so he figured it would be best for him to sit down.

Once he sat down, he decided to write in his journal. He had gathered some information the day before about Bakugou and he wanted to update it.

He started writing and he felt himself relax as his pencil slowly filled the page with stats and words. Writing in his journals always helped him calm down and sooth his nerves. It was almost like his stress ball.

That soon ended though when an angry voice interrupted his peace.

"What the fuck are you doing?!" His journal was snatched away from underneath his nose and he quickly tried to grab it back. He froze though when he saw who was standing in front of him.

Bakugou was holding up his journal with a curiously angry look on his face as he read his page. He scoffed and held the book away from him as he flipped through the pages filled with information on his classmates and pro heroes. "What is this? Your stalker journal?"

He flipped to the cover and snorted, "Hero analysis for the future? Number 13? Wow! You're a nerd AND a Deku! Who would've thought!" The journal landed in a heap back onto the desk and Izuku quickly scooped it up into his arms and held it close to his chest. If anything happened to this journal, his life was as good as over. It was the only reason Sensei and Shigaraki hadn't offed him yet.

"Tsk. Whatever, nerd. You can keep your fucking stalker journal. Just don't let me fucking catch you writing about me again, got it?"

Izuku blinked at that. For some reason, Bakugou was seeming to take it easy on him. He had fully expected to be ridiculed in front of his classmates. But Bakugou didn't do that. He just flopped down into his seat where Izuku couldn't see his face. He could just see how his shoulders were tense and he was clearly making it a point to ignore Izuku.

Maybe...

Maybe Bakugou didn't hate Izuku as much as he thought he did.

The door opened and it was only when the noise from outside filtered in that he realized how silent the classroom had fallen. Everyone was staring at the two, and Izuku could practically feel their gazes burning into his soul as they judged him. He quickly shoved his journal back into his backpack and hid face face with his hair. This was not how he wanted his day to start. It was not the way he imagined everyone finding out about his notes. They would never talk to him again. They were disgusted by him and he knew they would avoid him like the plague. After all, who wants to be around the weird kid who took notes on people?

"Woah, do you like, know everyone's quirk and stuff?! That's so cool!" He was startled out of his thoughts by the bubblegum pink girl from his class. She was standing next to his desk and a few other of his classmates were gathered behind her with matching looks of excitement. "Do you have a page on me?" She asked.

He shuffled his feet and thought back into what he had seen during the quirk test, "W-well, I don't know e-everyone's quirk, but fr-om what I-I've seen, you have some sort of slime quirk?" He pulled out his journal and nervously flipped to her page. It showed a quick sketch of her in her gym uniform. He wasn't sure how she'd react to seeing her page, but it definitely wasn't this.

"That's awesome! Though you got it wrong. My quirk is called acid, and I'm able to control its solubility and viscosity. It's really helpful when I need to climb a wall or get somewhere fast. If I lower the solubility it becomes less acidic, and if I raise the viscosity, it becomes almost like glue!" She said.

Izuku, in the middle of her talking, had grabbed a pencil and started to hurriedly scribble down everything thing she said. This was way more detailed than anything he had ever gotten before. Most people weren't willing to talk about their quirks to him, so most of his observations were just that, observations.

The other students, in seeing Mina's acceptance, started asking for their pages as well. In just a few minutes, his information on his classmates had nearly tripled in size and detail. It eventually ended when Bakugou had enough of all the talking around him and scared everyone away. But Izuku didn't care, he had gotten more information than he had ever thought was possible, and people had excepted him!

This was possibly the greatest day of his life.