Kouda couldn't tell you when he had first started to admire Midoriya. There were many people in his class that easily garnered respect, but Midoriya was one of those people that deserved it but never seemed to share that sentiment.

As one of the students that tended to stay on the side-lines and avoid most of the social interaction, he had noticed the polarization of the class. It was easy to see the slight divisions in friend-groups and who was most likely to start their own agencies and become great heroes.

Midoriya and Bakugou were the most charismatic, but that wasn't to say that Yaoyorozu wasn't another leader in their class. Iida, although he was their Class Representative, was another potential leader that had been drawn towards Midoriya's charm.

Of course, there were odd-looking friendships between all of the members of the class, outside of friend-groups and outside of compatible personalities.

They all were one big friend-group, if Kouda was being honest, because of the villain attacks they had to endure. Although some dealt with the brunt of it more than others, they all came together because of it. So despite the fear and anxiety and trauma, he couldn't really say that he would change a thing if they had to go through it all again.

Except maybe helping to reduce the injuries.

But regardless, many of the odd groupings were because of the USJ and Training Camp incidents. Not to mention the group that had formed to save Bakugou at Kamino.

Midoriya had gone out of his way to drag Todoroki into friendships within the class. Heck, even Bakugou had built up a grudging respect for every member of Class 1-A despite his aggressive refusal to accept them as friends.

But Kouda? He hadn't gotten much of a chance to interact with Midoriya outside of group training exercises.

So when they were grouped together and the bubbly hero-in-training had passed out right before his eyes, he couldn't help but feel kind of guilty and useless. A group that consisted mostly of his close friends went to check on him, but Kouda felt like he didn't deserve to since he hadn't done anything to be called his friend.

And that had been a purposeful decision, a choice that he had made earlier in the year.

On the first day of school, Kouda had seen the way that Midoriya shook with anxiety in front of the class, in front of Iida's attention and Bakugou's anger. But then they had the fitness test and the ball throw, and Kouda had gotten a bit anxious and scared.

And then during their first heroics lesson, the way that Midoriya had fought only deepened that fear.

And so he didn't talk to Midoriya at all. Although, he didn't talk to much of anybody for most of the year anyway, but that was because the one person he had identified as a fellow anxious person had turned out to be the complete opposite.

And yet, here he found himself regretting that decision sincerely. Midoriya was one of those people that you just wanted to be around, wanted to see happy and excited.

So when he was in the common room later that evening, he overheard Tsu and Yaoyorozu chewing out Kaminari, Mina, and Mineta for pushing their cleaning duties onto Midoriya. Kouda hadn't even noticed that Midoriya had been slowly wearing himself down, stressed about making sure that everything was clean and to Tsuyu's standards so that she wouldn't get upset again.

He hadn't realized a single thing and he had purposefully avoided Midoriya for so long with such a horrible, selfish reason.

So the next day, he decided to approach Midoriya with Yuwai-chan as an apology. That way, he could help his classmate destress without Kouda making it weird through a verbal apology. And that way, Midoriya wouldn't feel bad about scaring the quiet boy at the beginning of the year and giving himself so much blame and guilt for things that weren't even his fault in the first place.

Kouda really wasn't sure how most of the class hadn't noticed Midoriya's horrible tendencies. His self-esteem was so low that he constantly blamed himself for small things and took on too much by himself in a misguided attempt to make up for it all.

Midoriya couldn't see how important he was, how much he had inadvertently changed each of them for the better. He had no idea the inspiration he brought and the way he motivated all of them and even prevented burnout by lending them a hand or simply encouraging them at the right time in the right way.

It was almost comedic how Midoriya, despite being one of the most socially anxious people at the beginning of the year, had become the center of the class without even realizing it.

Actually, it was kind of sad how he still stuttered and got flustered at the slightest hint of positive attention. Anything neutral was acceptable, anything negative was met with sad smiles and determination, but positivity? It was painfully obvious how anxious and uncomfortable it made him.

Hence, his subtle plan to de-stress Midoriya was a-go.

Since they still had a day of classes, Kouda decided that the afternoon to evening would be best. He had overheard some of the loudest members of their class rambling on about having a study session in one of their dorm rooms, which probably meant that Midoriya would actually come out of his room to do homework for once.

Kouda could hardly contain his anticipation and anxiety during class. What if Midoriya still didn't leave his room?

Well, he could do it right after dinner, but chances were that Tsu-chan would force him away from the kitchen to prevent him from doing any cleaning, so that back-up plan was a bust.

Maybe he could bring Yuwai-chan to Midoriya's room? But then his classmate would know that he was being targeted on purpose and the whole point of this was to make sure he remained unaware!

At some point, Aizawa-sensei made eye contact with Kouda, shooting him a subtly concerned glance. He just nodded a bit toward Midoriya and made a few slight gestures that he hoped equated to 'plans' and 'later', and apparently that was all the teacher needed to let his strange behavior slide.

Aizawa-sensei was nice like that, even if he was scary and rude.

Maybe intimidating and blunt were better ways to put it. He was caring in his own way, and the entire class had come to know it, much like with Bakugou and Todoroki.

It couldn't have come soon enough, but before he knew it, it was time for his plan to be put into action.

Sure enough, about an hour after class, Kaminari, Ashido, and Kirishima followed Bakugou to his dorm room, with the angry blonde grumbling and complaining about it the entire way. Kouda surprisingly made eye contact with Bakugou as they left the common room. The soft-spoken hero-in-training didn't know what to make of the silently approving look that was sent his way, especially since he was pretty sure that Bakugou still hated Midoriya's guts.

Regardless, Midoriya came downstairs to the common room couches almost immediately after the obnoxiously loud group left, with two notebooks, only one pencil, and a textbook grasped in his arms.

Kouda shook his head a bit from where he was in the kitchen, resolutely making his way to his dorm room and grabbing Yuwai-chan from her cage.

By the time he made it back to the common room, Ashido was standing in his way, apparently having forgotten something super-mega-important, or so she had claimed, yelling it up to the guys while they stood in the hallways groaning at her.

He hoped that she would move so he could enter the common room to complete his self-imposed mission, but instead she dropped everything the moment she saw Yuwai-chan perched in his arms.

"Ahh! Kawaii-chan is so cute!" she squealed, shaking her arms in an excited manner "Can I pet her?!"

It took almost all of his willpower to avoid caving into her request, not only because she finally learned to ask before just touching Yuwai-chan, but also because Yuwai-chan really loved the way that Ashido held her. But one glance over at Midoriya had Kouda thinking of how overworked and stressed he was, especially because of Kaminari and Ashido and probably a few others, and he steeled himself and mustered all of his resolve.

He shook his head quickly, praying that Midoriya was still suitably distracted by his homework so that he wouldn't notice this exchange or Kouda's explanation.

After glancing at Midoriya's head—seemingly stuck as it was pointed downward toward what was probably the textbook in his lap—he gave Ashido one last firm denial before shifting his grip on Yuwai-chan. With his free hand he mimed 'cleaning,' 'fainting,' and pointed towards Midoriya before nodding to the rabbit in his arms.

It took her a second, but Ashido quickly realized what he meant and she at least had the humility to look embarrassed before quickly dashing off back towards the guys with her apparently important snacks.

Kouda quickly bee-lined it towards Midoriya once the coast was finally clear, glad that nobody else decided to get in the way of his plan.

Once he reached the couch that Midoriya was on, he awkwardly sat on the other end of it, trying his best not to disturb the freckled boy that was softly muttering to himself. They sat there, not interacting at all for what was probably five minutes before Kouda was debating on giving up on his master plan.

Sure, the animal-lover had intended to help his classmate out, but he also didn't want to stress Midoriya out more by interrupting his studies. Why hadn't he realized that that's what he would be doing when fulfilling his plan? He felt so bad now.

But just as he was about to get up, Yuwai-chan decided that she had enough of his cowardice. Normally that would have just been him projecting, but Yuwai-chan actually squealed something to that effect at him before leaping out of his arms and onto the couch.

Just as Kouda was reaching to keep her from disturbing the green-haired boy, Midoriya finally broke off from his mutter storm and looked up, only to be greeted with a face-full of rabbit.

He squeaked in surprise—sounding almost exactly like Yuwai-chan, much to Kouda's amusement—and flinched back a bit. Midoriya scrambled to get a hold of the rabbit, the textbook sliding off of his lap in the process and landing on the floor in such a way that the pages were most likely bent, scrunched up, or folded awkwardly.

Kouda cringed before signing his apologies in rapid succession, probably so fast that they couldn't be understood. He froze in the middle of his apologies for a second, realizing that he had used the traditional sign language version of "sorry" instead of something more easily recognizable and quickly switching to a more easily understood one.

But Midoriya just shot him that winning, embarrassed smile and tried to get a better grip on Yuwai-chan.

Instead of getting a good hold on her, however, she decided to jump down onto his lap and settle on the warm spot that the textbook had previously resided in. Midoriya just looked a bit frazzled, his hands in the air and away from Yuwai-chan as he stared at the rabbit that had just interrupted his study session.

He quickly returned his gaze towards Kouda, however, and let out a little laugh. The silent hero in training smiled softly in return, letting the warmth of Midoriya's sincere fous comfort him.

Much to his surprise, Midoriya quickly began waving his (now free) hands around in weird motions. It took him a second, but Kouda's eyes widened in surprise once he realized that they were basic sign language motions.

It was nothing complex, but it still made his jaw drop all the same.

Kouda had long since resorted to using pseudo-sign language to communicate, since most people never bothered to learn, especially because he wasn't actually deaf or mute. But here was a classmate showing that he at least understood the basics.

He couldn't help but grin excitedly at the revelation, wondering when and why Midoriya had learned it in the first place. Clearly it wasn't anybody close to him, as he was clearly bad at it and obviously didn't practice regularly. But did that even matter? Someone had put in the effort to learn and—knowing Midoriya—would probably continue to put in more effort to learn if Kouda so much as offhandedly mentioned it.

Which, now that he thought about it, made him kind of guilty and he really hoped that he didn't mention it at any point because the entire point of this plan was to remedy and possibly prevent Midoriya's stress.

"A-are… you okay?"

Kouda blinked out of his thoughts, embarrassed that the guy he was supposed to be helping was now helping him instead. He nodded in confirmation, just slow enough to try to avoid Midoriya from picking up on his anxiety but not quite so slow as to seem distant or hesitant.

Interacting with people was so difficult, why did he decide to do this again?

Right. It's because Midoriya never is really all that difficult to interact with.

Except for now, but that was Kouda's own fault for making their whole interaction as unnatural as possible with a plan. Why did he try to follow a plan again?

Midoriya just offered him another soft smile before holding Yuwai-chan delicately and leaning over to pick up his abandoned textbook. The green-haired boy grimaced at the pages, but resigned himself to it and set it aside.

Yuwai-chan started purring as Midoriya shifted his full attention onto her, petting and scratching softly, yet with a firmness and certainty.

It seemed that Yuwai-chan had a new favorite person, as she squealed her delight in between purring breaths.

Midoriya just blinked, before inquiring, "Rabbits can purr?"

Kouda just smiled at him until he turned his attention back to the soft animal in his lap. While his classmate was distracted, the quiet boy reached for the textbook and carefully attempted to smooth out the scrunched pages.

"Y-you don't have to-to do that!" Midoriya exclaimed once he finally noticed what Kouda had been doing. He reached for the textbook, clearly intending to take it away so that he wouldn't try to fix it, but Kouda made the split second decision to hold it far out of his classmate's reach.

For a split second, Midoriya's face flickered with shock and fear before it was quickly smoothed over with disbelief and fake offense.

"H-hey!" the green-haired hero in training dramatically exclaimed, though his voice was shaky and left Kouda unconvinced.

Something about keeping the textbook away made his heart clench, and Kouda started worrying about what he had done wrong. But he made his in-the-moment choice and he stuck to it, letting out small huffs of laughter as Midoriya became more and more dramatic with his complaints despite slowly devolving into a fit of laughter himself.

After a few minutes, Asui bounded over to them and quickly snatched the textbook from Kouda's hands, shooting Midoriya a playful smirk and taking it back with her to the kitchen. She sent the quiet boy a—much more genuine—grateful smile, clearly letting him know that she understood what he was doing and appreciated it.

A few other stragglers in the room also took a moment to give him thumbs up or happy smiles, obviously aware of his intentions to help the sunshine boi of Class 1-A.

How did everybody seem to understand his intentions with just a glance? This was supposed to be his secret plan!

If it had been this obvious to everyone else in his class that was in the room, then how easily would Midoriya see through him?

But then again, Midoriya was well known to be completely oblivious and hopeless when it came to genuine kindness and good intentions. Which was kind of upsetting, when Kouda thought about it. So maybe it would be better for him to realize.

But either way, Kouda wasn't going to be the one to tell him.

Kouda risked a glance back at Midoriya, who was pouting and petting Yuwai-chan dejectedly.

He wanted to comfort his classmate after failing miserably at making him feel better, but he wasn't exactly sure how to do so. But maybe… maybe Midoriya would be at least somewhat happy if Kouda communicated to him with words, considering how happy Kouda had been to see Midoriya try to use sign language.

"M-Midoriya," he squeaked out.

Said person's head whipped up to face him, an expression of surprise blatantly plastered on, "K-Kouda! I'm not upset! I promise! You don't have to try to apologize, you don't have to speak! Sorry!"

Kouda just blinked at that, he hadn't been about to apologize directly, but he supposed that he was trying to make up for this entire disaster of an interaction, so Midoriya was spot on. But somehow he doubted that his classmate wasn't upset by all of this.

"That's not-" he tried again.

"Ah! Sorry I just assumed, I shouldn't have assumed really, my bad please continue please ignore me, but seriously you don't have to say it out loud if you don't want to, I mean I can't really stop you either way but I just-"

Kouda decided that he didn't want to just sit there and let his friend spiral when the whole point of this was to help him do the complete opposite, "No."

Midoriya flinched back, "No?"

"No."

"Um… a-alright? S-sorry?"

"No."

Midoriya just stared at him, dumbfounded, "Sh-should I just stop talking?"

"N-no, I mean. Stop ap-apologizing for things that aren't your f-fault," Kouda finally got out.

"O-oh, s-" he paused, "uh. Yeah…"

From the kitchen, Tsuyu-chan croaked out a few laughs before walking over to them, "You two are very awkward. It's cute, kero."

Midoriya's face went bright red at that, and he rushed to cover as much of it as possible with his arms in that adorable way he always did. At least, until she reached over the back of the couch and set the textbook down next to the freckled boy.

"H-huh?" he squeaked before releasing his arms to look at the returned book. The look of pure confusion was both adorable and disheartening.

Did he not expect to get it back or something?

"Here," Tsuyu-chan blinked at him, "I straightened out all the pages for you and fixed up the sticky-notes you used as bookmarks. I just have one question though, kero."

Midoriya tilted his head as though to tell her to ask away.

"Why are you reading a textbook that is for the third-year analysis class? Kero."

Kouda took another look at the title of the textbook, and—sure enough—it wasn't even for their grade level, much less any of the classes they were assigned.

"W-w-w-well I-I um, erm," Midoriya dissolved into a mess of stutters and half-spoken explanations before Tsuyu-chan stopped him by resting her hand on his shoulder. Kouda noticed the half-flinch Midoriya gave, and he figured that she had noticed as well, but neither of them decided to bring it up.

"It's not a problem, I was just curious, kero. It's not like you're not allowed to read it," she soothed.

And sure enough, Midoriya relaxed significantly. Kouda shot Tsuyu-chan a smile, and she returned it before walking around to the front of the couch.

"I'm making dinner, kero, do either of you want me to make enough for you?" she tilted her head.

"Y-you don't have to-" he tried.

"I'll make some for you, got it, kero. You, Kouda-chan?" she glanced towards him, completely ignoring the strangled yelp from Midoriya.

He nodded and watched her walk back to the kitchen in awe. It was amazing how easily she just powered through her conversations with Midoriya, passing over his anxiety and getting directly to the point.

It seemed that Kouda would never be able to help in the way that his classmate needed, and he could help but feel even more like a failure. Why had he even bothered with this whole idea?

"Are you okay, Kouda?" Midoriya asked softly, standing up and shuffling towards him, only to plop Yuwai-chan back into his lap.

Kouda was about to protest, but then the green-haired boy used the precious sunshine smile and that was that. He nodded slowly and lowered his gaze to look at Yuwai-chan instead of his classmate. Could he even call Midoriya a friend if he couldn't even have a conversation with him?

"S-sorry that I'm so awkward, you brought me Yuwai-chan because of yesterday… right?"

Koua startled, quickly grabbing onto Yuwai-chan before she fell off his lap, his head snapping up to see Midoriya's anxious yet understanding expression.

"I-I appreciate it, b-but you didn't have to," he deflated a bit before continuing, "I promise that I'm alright. Ts-Tsu-Tsuyu was just o-overreacting."

Kouda just shook his head, "You don't deserve that."

He had to ignore the way Midoriya's expression pinched in order to continue, "A-and I wanted to make up for not talking to you at all this year. I-I'm sorry."

He got a frown and a small sigh in response, "N-no, that's on me. I just, never reached out. And I should have!"

There was a loud pause that dragged on, and the pair could hear the clinking of dishes in the kitchen, clearly Tsuyu-chan cooking—and probably listening in on them too, if their interaction before was any indication.

"If you feel bad about yesterday, don't," Midoriya started softly—kindly—hitting the nail right on the head, "It's my own fault that I collapsed like that and worried you. Sorry."

Kouda really didn't know how to respond to that, it was like Midoriya couldn't accept that the blame may have fallen on someone else for once. The way he kept insisting that it should all be his fault was so astonishing and incredibly hard to get around.

"B-but I know that words don't um, d-don't always make you feel b-better, so uh… i-if you w-w-wanted to m-make it up to-to me, um…" he stuttered heavily before rushing the rest of it, "youcouldalwaysletmeanalyzeyourquirk!"

Kouda understood the words, but didn't really comprehend why Midoriya would ask after his quirk of all the strong quirks their classmates had. He nodded, a bit of confusion still lingering, but he had brought up the idea to make him feel better, so who was he to decline?

And just like that, the sunshine smile was back and Midoriya was beaming at him like Kouda had just told him that All Might had miraculously gotten his strength and power back and had just come back out of retirement.

They chattered away, mostly Midoriya talking and Kouda enjoying the full brunt of his classmate's—no, his friend's—passion without complaint.

Tsuyu-chan shot him an approving smile at one point, so he assumed that he had finally done right by Midoriya.

Next Chapter: Mineta Minoru