The second encounter had been of her own doing.

Hagakure had survived a night of creeping, simmering lust with the singular thought of getting her clothes back from whatever horrible depravities Mineta might be subjecting them to.

With a start she sat up in bed, the cool air hitting her as the sheets fell away not only a stark reminder of her nakedness but also a metaphorical prod that goaded her up out of bed and into the bathroom.

Absently, she mulled over a few scenarios in her head as she drug herself through her morning routine, emerging minutes later with a loosely defined plan in the back of her mind as she stepped out of her bedroom.

Coming out into the hallway again was akin to crossing into a different plane of existence. Though everything was ostensibly the same: same walls, same rug, same everything, there was a bewildering quality to things; as though everything were more stark, writ large, unreal in some strange way.

A sudden voice from beside her was like a slap to the face and when Hagakure turned she squeaked at the fuzzy, pink nose just inches from her own.

The pink, fuzzy human gurgled something about "being ready for that yoga thing," but, in truth, Hagakure's mind was working so hard to process the changes to minutiae that she mechanically followed the horned girl out of the hallway and into the common area.

From there, Hagakure managed to eke out a question about the supposed "yoga thing" Mina had mentioned and was thusly informed about Mr. Aizawa's plan to start the class on a robust yoga regimen before and after quirk training. It was in that moment that the exact snippet of memory came back to her wherein Aizawa had explained the logic behind the new regime.

His first stated reason had been to not only keep the class limber, but encourage working as a group under a leader that changed every session. The second reason had been far less convincing — simply a jumbled list of benefits that were lost to the void of memory. What hadn't been lost on her however, had been the pointed way he had punctuated the end of his talk by explaining how "being prepared could mean the difference between life and death."

The reception had been mixed at best. The more studios among the class reveled in the sense of structure whilst a smaller portion of the students had protested the additional burden just loudly enough for Aizawa's keen sense of hearing to detect.

It was then — in the threshold of the heights alliance's building — that Aizawa turned and icily informed them that finding their first group leader would be their responsibility come the following morning.

And that had all happened yesterday.

Hagakure's eyes followed the geometry of the large kitchen counter she and Mina were propped up against and, there at the end, was the thin, white booklet Aizawa handed Momo before he'd begun his explanation.

"What does he want us to do?" Hagakure asked, more to herself than anything, the contents of the booklet entirely captivating her attention.

"He just said to find a leader by today," Mina explained from beside her as she leaned over the counter with her head nestled in one palm whilst sipping from the mug in her other hand.

Jiro then came over to where the pair sat and sidled delicately around the counter to scoop up the booklet to fan it open.

"Did you guys even look at these yet?" she said as she meanuvered the book in her outstretched arms. "How does he expect us to even do any of this stuff?" By now, Jiro had the book hoisted above her head with the pages hanging down in her face as she squinted at them. "Half of these hurt just to look at."

Clearly exasperated by the terribleness she saw there, The headphone hero deposited the book at the end of the kitchen counter again only for it to be corralled by a pensive Kirishima as he leaned over the thing to stare intensely at the open page.

"It doesn't look that bad," was his eventual takeaway as he righted himself before the book with a strange look of reverence as though he were assimilating some sort of holy text. "Watch-"

From there, Kirishima went into what could only be described as an odd sort of handstand where the boy's body was effectively upside down with both hands halfway planted on the floor near his head with his feet similarly off-kilter.

"You okay, dude?" Jirou sniggered as she watched her hard-headed classmate struggle to support his inverted position.

"No," Kirishima replied after a grunt of effort. "I got it."

Somehow, Kirishima was able to hoist his midsection completely off the floor so that his hands were planted solidly out in front of him and his feet were planted similarly behind him, bowing his torso upward in a curve.

"-see?" He said, his breathing labored from sheer effort. "You could totally do this. You just gotta make sure you stay balanced."

It was Mina who'd broken the moratorium of silence they'd all silently accepted as they looked upon their classmate propped up bizarrely before them. Rolling fills of barely constrained giggling poured from the pink, fuzzy girl and soon a majority of the students present in the common area were laughing in most equal measure save one uproarious voice who burst into the common room and took the rest of the noise with him.

Hagakure — along with the rest of the students present — turned to see their most impish classmate in the mouth of the boys' dormitory hallway, jiggling with laughter.

"What are you doing?" Mineta said, giggling.

Hagakure herself was rendered a thunderous shock as the small but also supremely large, purple personality swaggered up to the knot of students all clumped together like a bale of gibbering hay.

"You look like you're giving birth," Kaminari added from behind the smaller boy with similar enthusiasm as the two boys made their way through the mass to gaze upon the scene proper.

"In what word does that look like giving birth?" Mina asked.

"It's for the yoga thing," Kirishima huffed as he struggled to keep his limbs in alignment.

Immediately, both Kaminari's and Mineta's faces became grim.

"Crap," Mineta said, sagging. "I completely forgot about that."

"I know," Kirishima began, a similar dread pricking his voice. "Aizawa sounded serious when he was talking about it, too."

"Which is why I propose we give it our all," the ever stalwart Tenya Ida's voice sounded richly as he emerged from the crowd, resting a hand solidly on each boy's shoulder.

Both boys' faces twisted in abject horror.

Radiating reassuring energy, Ida turned and strode back toward the perimeter of the crowd; but as the moment passed and time marched onward, Hagakure remained still, eyes locked squarely onto the diminutive boy who now stood crudely mocking his taller and more precocious classmate until Ida spoke again.

"Alright,"Ida's voice boomed, commanding everyone's attention with his wild gesticulations. "I'm sure you all remember Mr. Aizawa's announcement from yesterday."

"About finding a leader for the yoga exercise, right?" Izuku asked with one hand raised like a child.

"Precisely," Ida said. "Yaoyorozu and I were talking and we believe that the best way to decide who gets to lead would be to take a vote. Does anyone have any objections?"

"Sounds fine to me," Kirishima said, the glint of challenge lighting his eyes. "That first one's already got me fired up."

"If only we could all share your enthusiasm," Tokoyami added, bleakly.

"I dunno guys," Ochaco began." I think it could be fun."

"Sounds like a huge waste of time if you ask me." The acerbity of Bakugo's words cleft the atmosphere of the room in two.

"Nobody did," Jiro sniped amidst the silence.

"What'd you say?" The blonde boy shot back but was cut off by the distinctive whine of a squeaky wheel as he as the rest of the class turned to see Momo wheeling a chalkboard bearing each of their names into view.

"We figured it would be easiest just to re-create the method we used to determine our class representative," Momo explained, glancing nervously up at her handiwork. "I hope that's okay with everyone."

"Can we just get this over with already?" Bakugo groaned, earning him outright ire from Mina and a gentle admonishment from Kirishima — that was really more encouragement than anything if you boiled it down — an encouragement Hagakure herself could have very badly used, the possibility of retrieving her clothes effectively quashed as she stared sickly at each character that spelled out her name.

This was it

The inevitable monkey wrench

The reality of this being an activity expected of the whole class coupled with the fact that she could possibly be crowned the group's leader for that particular morning meant that the auspicious blessings of her quirk were rendered no more than a moot point. Of course, that was to say nothing of the chalkboard that she remained hyper fixated on until the very moment that her view was blocked by a fresh faced Izuku who made up the head of a line that snaked its way all the way to where Hagakure still stood, dumbly.

"You okay?"

The voice came first and the hand immediately followed, pink and fuzzy and waving slow and measured in her face.

Hagakure didn't answer

"Toru-chan…"

The utterance of her name brought her back to herself.

"Sorry, what?"

"What are you looking at?" Mina asked as she meanuvered herself so that their heads were mere inches apart and fixed her gaze in the direction Hagakure was poised.

"Nothing," Hagakure said, jerking her head away so sharply that it put her off balance for a moment.

"Yeah right." Mina's eyes narrowed slyly. "I know what this is."

"You know what what is?"

"Don't lie," Mina countered, coyly, slithering around the other girl so that one of her arms was wrapped firmly around Hagakure's shoulder. "I bet you were checking out Todoroki."

Again, Hagakure forcibly broke away from the acid hero's hold. "Shut uppp."

"That's a yes," Mina shot back.

"Whatever," Hagakure said, turning and crossing her arms in a huff.

"Don't worry about stressing over those boys," Mina said. "A little exercise will get your head on straight."

From there, the next hurdle for the invisible girl came when the line began to move; not in so much that the line was moving slowly (which it was) or her position in said line, but more so due to the fact that she was in such close proximity to both Mineta and Kaminari that she could very clearly make out the painfully topical nature of their conversation.

"I'm telling you dude," Mineta started. "The door just slammed by itself."

"Someone's probly' just messin' with you. Think of how many quirks you can use to just slam a door."

"But who goes around just slamming doors? It's not even a good prank."

Kaminari shrugged. "Who knows? I'm more worried about this yoga bullcrap."

"Seriously, why can't we just do team building exercises like a normal class?"

"I think Aizawa thinks this is exercise…"

"Plus it's like a billion degrees out."

"Right? I don't know what's gonna get me first, the heat or this crap."

The exchange continued until the two reached the table Momo had set up beneath the chalkboard. From there Kaminari scribbled his candidate onto the provided slip of paper and deposited it into the black box there on the table. Mineta and Mina both did the same and before long, Hagakure herself was up at that very same podium with a pencil in one hand, a blank slip of paper in the other and a brain full of frantically firing synapses.

Okay, she thought in one shining moment of clarity. I just have to put any name except my name

With nary a second thought, Hagakure ostentatiously wrote out the name Minorou Mineta onto the paper and slipped it into the opening at the top of the box. It was only after she had integrated back into the milling crowd of students waiting for the results that it hit her.

Wait, why did I write his name?

It was Mina once again who had ripped Hagakure out of a potentially dangerous spiral with a gentle nudge to her shoulder.

"I bet I know who you voted for," she sang, her tone implicitly sweet.

The accusatory way the pink girl had punctuated her statement was in reality the impetus for Hagakure's next plan of action.

Deception.

"You got me," Hagakure capitulated awkwardly. "He's-"

"Like, the hottest boy in Class?" Mina continued. "Maybe even the entire school?"

"Yeah…" A fouly grinning Mineta flashed in Hagakure's mind but was quickly and fiercely shut out amidst the drone of Ida's voice.

"Alright, everyone," He began, gesturing toward the chalkboard where Momo stood. "We have the results of the vote."

From there everyone's eyes were drawn to Momo as she flipped the blank canvas over to reveal the side that bore everyone's name, however now there were assorted tallies chalked beside most of said names.

"And don't worry," Momo said. "We double checked the totals."

With breath heavy in her lungs, Hagakure's eyes shot to the spot where her name had been, the rising spike of dread quickly quashed as not a single tally had been placed there.

Like a balloon, Hagakure deflated, sinking to the floor in a heap. Very near the instant she hit the floor, there was a squawk and, before she could even blink, a set of fuzzy arms wrapped protectively around her midsection.

"Toru-chan," Mina almost yelled.

In that one vindicating instance, Hagakure embraced truth.

"I'm just glad it wasn't me!"

"Don't scare me like that," Mina said as she stood and extended a hand to Hagakure who similarly righted herself.

"Hey, what is this?"

A voice drew the two girls' attention toward an animated Kaminari framed by an equally impassioned Jirou.

"Did you just vote for yourself?" Jirou barked, gesturing pointedly at Ida's name which sported a hearty eight strokes beside it.

"If you must know," Ida said, removing his spectacles to clean them with a convenient cloth before sliding them back on his face. "My vote was for Yaoyorozu."

Hagakure saw the way Mina's head craned toward the two shouting students before she was off, moving from person to person like an insect hungry for blood.

"Come on, Kaminari," she smiled as she slung an arm around the disgruntled boy's shoulder. "Let's see that manly spirit."

"Hey, I'm not the 'manly' one," the yellow haired boy defended, trying to wedge an arm between himself and the girl clung to him. "I'm just trying to get out of this alive."

"Not to worry," Ida assured, producing a notebook from somewhere on his person. "I prepared for such an eventuality."

The students in the immediate vicinity were dumbstruck as Ida unfurled the notebook to reveal a litany of diagrams with attached instructions mirroring those in the pamflet Aizawa had given them the day prior.

"Seriously?" Jirou said, pointing incredulously at the illustrations.

"When did you even have time to do that?" Ochako said, equally shocked.

"A good class rep is always prepared.," Ida said, a dubious glint in his glasses as he snapped the notebook closed.

"Alright, everyone," he continued, turning sharply on his heels. "Let's go!"

Ida had marched through the crowd toward the door before some of the students ambled out after him through the entry-way and onto the front lawn of the Heights Alliance building. Among those who hadn't filtered outside were a surly Bakugo hanging scornfully in the doorway, Jirou — who had explained she had needed to use the bathroom beforehand — and Mina, who had a protesting Kaminari's head locked securely in one arm.

Which left a shell shocked Hagakure standing blankly in the middle of the common area with her conscience pulling in two seperate directions.

One possibility saw her breaking off from the group and making her way to Mineta's room to effortlessly retrieve her clothes; the other saw her sweating it out in the hot sun with the rest of the class whilst her clothes lie neatly tucked away in the corner of the small boy's closet.

"Toru-chan," Mina's spritely voice rang out throughout the innards of the building and Hagakure's head snapped toward the doorway where the acid hero was still corralling Kaminari who was flailing his arms at her. "Hurry up!"

It was that interaction with Mina that swayed her mind and pulled her through the hall and out the door only to be clipped by a righteous peal of wind from a passing Ida who deftly flung the last of a row of blue mats onto the lawn, rounding out the backmost column.

"Nice job," Kirishima said, offering his classmate a thumbs up.

"It's too early to be this energetic," a lumbering Tokoyami said as he drug himself past a stretching Midoriya and out onto the lawn, a hand shielding his eyes. "And bright…"

"This is stupid," Bakugo said, practically hissing and causing Hagakure to jump as he pressed past her and continued stiffly down the building's front steps.

"I feel pretty good about it so far," Midoriya said as he came to right himself with a healthy groan.

"You would, you damn nerd," came Bakugo's reply as he stalked past his childhood friend and out onto the lawn just as Ida took up position on a mat at the head of the class.

Ida continued to speak, but it was mush to Hagakure as she absently maneuvered to an open spot next to a frantically waving Mina.

"I can already tell I'm gonna die," Mina said as she arched herself backward before bending forward to lazily mimie one of Ida's beginning warm up stretches.

"It's hot," Hagakure said as the heat bore down on her and she sank to the mat, pulling at the front of her shirt which was already beginning to cling to her sweaty skin.

"Tell me about it," Mina said, even her words seeming to slow and sag under the oppressive heat.

"I will," Hagakure said, still pulling at her shirt. "It's hooooot"

"Stooooop," Mina whined, slumping to the mat underneath her after a particularly grueling stretch. "You're making it hotter just by saying that."

"Okay," came Ida's voice again, fastidious as ever. "Now comes the most important part. I'd like everyone to sit cross-legged on the end of their mat."

Ida sank down to one side of his mat with his legs crossed and wordlessly the class followed suit.

"I'd been reading the pamphlet Mr. Aizawa had given us and it states that the most important thing is to be aware of and control your breathing. We should hold this for sixty seconds."

And so there they sat, the sudden quiet giving Hagakure's thoughts just enough time to wander as she fought to ignore her purple-haired classmate, absently turning her eyes in the opposite direction only to be punched in the gut by temptation.

Flanking her other side was Kirishima — the fact that the boy had on no shirt to speak of being the only reason she even noticed the distinctive ridges of his abs and the sheen of sweat on his body that gave him the appearance of a grecian statue, made of perfectly cut and curated marble.

The bloom of arousal from between her legs concerted almost perfectly with that same shirtless, sweaty Kirishima in her mind — only this shirtless, sweaty human was ensconced in his "den of manliness," one hand fervently working the shaft of his erect penis whilst the other gripped the sheets beside him desperately.

A grunt from the distinctness of reality drew her attention and like lightning her eyes were drawn to the student immediately to Kirishima's left — a whimpering Kaminari who was struggling to even situate himself in a cross-legged position.

Like nature's most voracious predators, the boy's pathetic whimpering became the fuel driving an ancient instinct — the key to some primal switch which, for Hagakure, there was no "off."

It only took that one electrifying moment for Kirishima to go from innocent, struggling hero course student to sexual deviant, prostrating himself openly for a domineering Kirishima who took the other boy readily and caused him to whimper in exactly the same manner.

For a moment the girl's hungry mind freely imbibed the fats of her psyche until, for the second time in two days, she was struck over the head by implication.

The fact that Mina had decided on the backmost row gave Hagakure a relatively clear view of the menagere. Excluding the triumvirate of Bakugo, Kaminari and Krishima which comprised her leftmost flank, the only other male bodied student in her row was Koda.

From her own row her machinations spread like a plague, subsuming the unsuspecting duo of Shoji and Sero and sweeping them up into a whirlwind of sex and depravity and unbridled lust. Hagakure buzzed as her thoughts swam with visions of tape and bindings and appendages, the possibilities as endless as the amount of hands and mouths and fingers.

From there she cast her influence to the foremost row where Izuku was poised faithfully before Ida and — at Hagakure's behest — that once innocuous devotion was thusly twisted into a rabid, cult-like fanaticism aimed solely at his sagacious peer's supreme physique.

Even shy, soft spoken Koda was not safe from the mire of lust — and with a metaphorical swipe of the hand he was swept up into the debauchery to play his god-given role as the shy, furtive green-horn; the unwitting participant in a sort of ancient ritual of yore done in service to some unknowable higher power.

And there, under the blistering sun, Hagakure stood

A God

Unfortunately, she was only given a brief moment to revel before a sharp cry shook her back to a scene wherein everyone else in the class had transitioned from the prior sitting position to a sort of forward-folded pose as if prostrated in prayer.

The outburst had come from the center of the mass where none other than Minoru Mineta lie howling and clutching his back in pain.

"I knew it, I'm dying!" he wailed, clutching the afflicted area with both hands. "Call an ambulance!"

"You're not dying," Ida replied coolly as he went over to kneel near the boy to inspect the purported injury "You probably just pulled something."

In a surprising show of tenacity, Mineta grabbed firmly onto the taller boy's shirt collar. "I'm telling you I'm dying, dammit."

The bespectacled boy effortlessly shirked the smaller child's grip.

"I'm not a doctor but personally I think you'll be fine," Ida moved to stand, his glasses glinting in the light as he adjusted them. "I don't think you should move though. If it's sprained, you could exacerbate the injury."

Then, he turned to address the class. "At the very least I think someone should take him inside."

Nobody moved; the whole of Class 1A simply stood and stared at the tiny boy crooning helpless on his yoga mat. Hagakure herself watched privately as a bead of sweat rolled down the boy's face, through the separation of his pecs and over his belly to disappear into the waistband of his shorts-

"I'll take him!"

The moment the words left her mouth, Hagakure's perception of time seemed to slow and distort to the point where and the remnants of the words that she herself had spoken of her own volition rang solidly in her own eardrums for what must have been ages. Over and over the three words repeated and built and swelled until it became an innumerable mass — a towering wave threatening to rip her away.

How could she have been so myopic? How had she been so hyper-fixed on him that she was completely unaware she'd been standing there stupidly under the hot sun with one unseeable hand raised as if to say "yes, I want to be the one to carry this howling, lust ridden, vertically challenged disgrace of a human being inside and upstairs to his room…alone…."

A shock of something indescribable overtook her so completely in that moment that it made the crushing heat of the sun mild in comparison; this strange, unkowable force being the thing that spurred her into movement — an unexplainable lure that drew her inexorably toward the boy curled and moaning on the mat as if the two were opposing magnetic poles.

The dozens of eyes boring into her as she walked multiplied the weight on her shoulders, but Hagakure bore the silent scrutiny with both grace and strength as she came to stand over both Ida and the still squawking Mineta.

"Thank you, Hagakure," there was a note of surprise in Ida's voice as he rose to his feet.

"Don't mention it," Hagakure said, entirely unctuous up until the moment Ida stepped aside and the rawness of reality set her straight.

Up to that point, Mineta had been thoughtlessly yowling and writhing like a wounded animal, but the moment Ida moved and he turned, their eyes met.

Now, Mineta's cheeks were flushed apropos of both arousal or exertion. Hagakure too was met with a similar rush of blood and the imagery of their mutual physiological reaction evolving into some form of celebrated confluence briefly crossed her mind before her rational mind grabbed the wheel again.

Or tried to as the preceding moments became a bleeding nothingness devoid of everything but the most minute susastions of natural life.

Which made Ida's awkward, drawn out "uh…" akin to the dropping of a bomb; and it was in that sobering breaking of tension that Hagakure came to a startling conclusion.

She was not as she had once been; she had been tainted, irrevocably damaged, impinged upon so thoroughly that she was no longer Toru Hagakure, but a being entirely new — a machine systematically executing it's programing; some lumbering, organic monstrosity running on nerves and hot blood.

That same roiling blood that forced her to squat down to Mineta's level and commanded her to turn with her hands clasped firmly behind her in a sort of makeshift seat for his adorably small posterior.

"Alright," the words came, gutlessly, nearly a whisper as she awkwardly shimmied backward toward him, never once daring to turn her head.

"Hop on."

It was only by proximity that she'd heard the boy's own incredulous whisper of "no way…" and there was no way for Hagakure to fight the shiver that seemed to vibrate every cell in her body the instant Mineta touched her.

She was steaming

Burning

Immolated

A pot set to boil

An unfenced fire

A bubbling magma

A roaring eruption of pure, unbridled heat, multiplied tenfold the moment Mineta pressed his sweaty, bare chest up against her back; both of his tiny arms wrapping securely around her neck whilst the brunt of his back end sunk surely onto her interlocked hands and his crotch slid flush with her backside.

The full bore of Mineta's weight was surprising given his size, but Hagakure managed somehow to hike her ungainly passenger up such that he was secure enough to handle without slipping.

Moving with the added weight, however, was another matter entirely.

This was not to say that Hagakure was weak in any sense; in fact, by virtue of both her active upbringing and the high physical demands of her classes, Hagakure had attained a physique that was not only very finely crafted, but also highly sought after even by women well into their adult years.

However, even being the supremely fit organic machine that she was held little sway amidst the punitive nature of the sun braising her with heat, her faltering step and the subsequent shifting of Mineta's weight leeching the strength from the sponges that now made up her limbs .

Muscles seared, heat pulsed and sweat poured as the sinewy stalks holding Hagakure upright shook under the strain, the invisible hero barely managing to haul one foot up and bring it down before her stance once again began to falter.

Summoning energy from somewhere deep inside herself, Hagakure grunted as she drug another heavy foot forward.

More sweat

More heat

Another step

Sweat

Heat

Step

Sweat

Heat

Step

Until it became a constant in her mind — an immutable maxim that not only blocked out the sting in her legs, but also distracted her reeling mind from the quietly shrinking expanse separating her from the Heights Alliance building and the promise of air conditioning.

What it could not mask, however, was the prevailing theory that her current predicament was somehow deserved; that the lecherous child clung to her like some sort of parasite was a cross for her alone to bear —a sweaty, pink albatross hung heavily around her neck.

As though the very notion had weakened her, Hagakure's next step was shaky and unsure of foot and she couldn't fight the squeak that escaped her as she was thrown askew, saved barely by one strained leg, having to use the molding flanking the staircase to keep herself upright.

Sweating

Heaving

Melting

Hagakure picked up one anchor-like foot and brought it down on the very first stair. Mineta's weight pulled insistently on her and the contrast nearly pitched her backwards before she managed to get her other foot up onto the next stair and re-establish her center of gravity.

From there it became a battle of attrition between Hagakure's screaming muscles and the sharp counterpoint of Mineta's weight endlessly tugging on her; each stair climbed seeming to multiply the effects of the added weight, the heat, and the the burn in her legs until there was nothing else.

Up and up

Slowly until muscles cried out and skin became slick.

Up and up still

One agonizing stair at a time until finally there were only two stairs left, the phenomena of being at the foot of an impossible climb never once leaving her even as she struggled up the last two steps, using the last vestiges of her strength to carry them through the doors and onto the bench just inside the foyer where she collapsed, letting the boy slide off her back and onto the bench beside her as though she were shrugging off a heavy backpack.

Inevitably, recovery became priority and Hagakure flopped onto her back and eventually the only sounds in the room were the labored heaves and wheezes as she greedily sucked in the refreshingly cool air.

Amazingly, however —amidst her recovery ,there was a persistent twinge at the base of her spine that set her notably off kilter. It was something that grew as the fact that her and her tormentor were sharing the same bench became more prevalent.

It was a rushing undertow

Crackling energy

Rarified inertia that forced Hagakure to sit up sharply, locking eyes with Mineta at a shining pith she found herself unfit to meet.

"...w-what?"

Mineta's eyes flashed with fire.

"Did you-" he started but then stopped himself. His gaze drifted downwards for just a moment and then — in an instant — his eyes snapped back up to meet hers with the light of challenge gleaming there.

"Those clothes in my room," he started, suddenly exasperated as the gap between them rapidly shrank. "Those were yours, right?"

Hagakure froze, blood gelled as she pulled herself backward away from her tormentor until her fingers clasped the bare edge of the bench.

In truth, "bench" was a generous description. The thing they were so awkwardly teething on was more of a glorified ottoman than anything else; (born from Yaoyorozu's blithe misunderstanding of middle class living) and it had seemed like too much of a waste to simply throw it away.

Unfortunately for Hagakure, what little space she did have was further intruded upon by Mineta's own hand as he stretched himself out toward her like a cat, simultaneously aggrieving whatever muscle had been ailing him prior and reducing him to his previously, crumpled, obnoxiously loud state of pain.

"I-I don't know what you mean, sorry!"

The words just came out.

She had a million scenarios and a million words and a million questions running through her head, but, in that moment, those were the only words that actually came out when she did speak — and they were not words she dwelled on in the slightest because just as soon as they'd left her mouth she was up and off the bench and backing away as quickly as her legs would allow.

"I gotta go," she said, hurriedly as if being rushed. "Sorry."

From there she turned and did not look back, even at the frenzied caterwauling pleading with her to wait as she turned sharply into the girl's wing and hurried to her room, slamming the door behind her.