"Sasaki, walk with me," Aizawa held her back.
Sasaki was starting to feel like a pattern was emerging. This was the second time he'd wanted to talk to her privately after a lesson.

Her classmates were whispering again. They thought she would be expelled. From what she had been told about high school by Koyo people normally didn't get expelled unless they did something bad. But in the first 5 days at UA Aizawa had already expelled seven people for a "lack of potential" or a "lack of dicipline". He'd even threatened her with expulsion if she didn't disclose all her injuries to him.

It made her nervous that she didn't know other things either.

When the rest of the class was gone Mr. Aizawa started walking. She followed making sure to add a stumble for good measure.

Koyo had told her that she had too much coordination for a high school student. Privately Sasaki had thought that was stupid but seeing all her classmates blunder about she had to admit that Koyo was right.
She didn't know how they were ever supposed to be heroes when they couldn't even walk over cracked pavement without tripping.

Koyo told Sasaki to appear more clumsy and to stumble or walk into things sometimes.

After three minutes of silence the atmosphere was starting to get awkward. Sasaki knew it was three minutes because she had made sure to stumble at least once every two minutes.

She did it again.

"There," Mr. Aizawa said.

Sasaki frowned up at him.
"Sorry?"

"Every two minutes on the dot you stumble. Every time you walk you do it but as soon as an exercise starts you are the most coordinated student in class. You didn't slip once in the flood zone. Yet walking on normal conceret you seem to trip over air."

Sasaki begrudgingly raised her opinion of him. Not many people would notice that she was timing her stumbles. Then again she supposed that it was his job to notice these things.

"What are you hiding Sasaki?"

"Hiding?" she asked keeping the rising panic out of her voice.
"What would I be hiding?"

She was trying to buy time to come up with an excuse. Anything but the truth but under his gaze she was having a hard time thinking.

It reminded her a bit of the way Mori would look at you when he knew you where hiding something.
Only that Mori was ten time worse then this hero high school teacher. If she failed this mission she would become a semi-permanent guest of the basement again. Sasaki didn't fear death but there were things worse than death.

She could hear the blood dripping, the jangling of the chains and feel the prescise and surgical strokes of a scalpel. The lights were white and glaring. They gave made everything too real. It felt like the room should be dingy and dirty. There should be cracked concrete and flickering lights, instead there was only white tile reflecting the light and-

"Sasaki!"

There weren't any voices. It was always quiet. He didn't talk and she stopped screaming after two hours. Now she-

"Sasaki! Snap out of it."

There weren't any voices.

"Hey, look at me," she felt a hand squeezing her shoulder comfortingly.

There was no room for comfort in the basement. And there weren't any voices.

"Follow my breathing. Here."
Her hand was grabbed and placed on something soft and warm.

Slowly she started coming back. The basement was cold, not soft and warm. So she couldn't be in the basement. There weren't any voices in the basement. So she couldn't be there.

Finally Mr. Aizawa got through to her.

"Sasaki, here drink something."

She removed her hand and took the water bottle. It shook slightly. Sasaki took big gulps so she would have more time to think.

Something like this had never happened before. She couldn't allow herself such weakness. If she had been on a mission she would have fucked it up already.
She wouldn't have died but her colleagues surely would have. Mabye he did have a point when talking about hidden injuries. At least debilitating ones.

"I'm sorry, sir. This won't happen again. I promise."

"No that's not- You don't have to apologize for dissociating, kid."

Sasaki slowly lifted her head. Instead of the expected anger she found... concern in his eyes.
It seemed genuine. Sasaki was confused. She could follow the logic of not hiding her injuries. His anger was somewhat reasonable she recognized now. But concern? Genuine, personal concern? That had no place in a student-teacher relationship like theirs.

This time Sasaki didn't hide her confusion. She wanted to know what he was getting at with his concern.

"I don't know what made you dissociate but you don't have to apologize for it. It's a trauma response. You can't control that. Again, I would have appreciated if you had told me or a counselor about it but you don't have to apologize."

"Yes, sir," she said.

"Do you think you can continue this talk or do you want a break?"

"I can continue, sir."

He regared her with a look Sasaki couldn't decipher.

"Okay. My question was why you fake your clumsiness. You don't have to be afraid. I'm not going to expell you. You showed your potential today at the USJ. In terms of fighting capabilities you're by far the best student of your class. I just want to know."

Sasaki gathered her thoughts and focused. As much as she wanted to deny it his comforting words had helped dispell her worries.

"My quirk, it enhances my strenght and my coordination. I can have it activated, essentially as long as I want. The only drawback is that after a certain time my quirk has to... Well my quirk needs a balance, so to speak. It's equivilent exchange. For me to gain strenght and coordination it has to take away strenght and coordination at other time. In training exercises I have my quirk activated the whole time. So the rest of the day it has to balance and take away some of that."

He stared at her like her words had aged him 20 years. Then after a few seconds he sighed and dragged a hand down his face.

"Thank you for the explanation, Sasaki. I would have liked to now that before the year started but it seem like that will be a running theme with you."

"I-"

"No. Just, please tell me about things like this in the future. And now go. I need to sleep, Problem child."

"Yes, sir," she mumbled and turned on her heel.

"And go see the Recovery Girl so she can update your file before the end of the week," he called after her in an exhausted voice.

"Of course, sir."

Again she felt his heavy gaze fixed on her as she walked away.