Aizawa did not allow himself to react as Yaoyorozu Momo offered him her test, her lavender-painted fingernails right in front of his face.
He did not look up or acknowledge her, keeping his attention on the essays on his desk. She lingered there a prolonged moment, maybe expecting him to take it from her, but when he didn't she simply laid it facedown off to one side and returned to her seat.
Iida brought his up next, and Bakugo after that, followed closely by Midoriya and Todoroki.
He didn't give a damn about their tests. Only Momo's. But Aizawa prided himself on his discipline…His ability to control himself, to keep his actions in check…and he did not touch the stack of tears until after the bell rang — well after everyone had finished the exam. He waited until the door closed behind the last student, then a few seconds longer to ensure no one was coming back.
Only then did he let himself look.
Yaoyorozu was fucking smart, he knew that. He saw the breakdown of her quirk on her paperwork before she even began the school year. She was smart. It wasn't just book smarts either — if any of the girls had truly realized the immense danger they could've been in when his men had kidnapped them, it had been Yaoyorozu Momo. He'd seen it on her face with his own eyes that she realized what their intended fate had been.
But how fucking smart are you, Yaoyorozu…
Not enough to outsmart him. He saw that as a certainty when he flipped past the first several pages of the test, cutting straight to the heart of his interest.
The test was a trap. A diversion, even, from his true intentions. He went straight for the section of questions he'd given on stealth missions — a convenient review of what they had covered recently in class. He included several diagrams of the high tech tracking device he'd introduced, and asked the students to label the parts and their functions. Aizawa's eyes went across the images on Momo's test paper; all correct. Then he turned his attention lower, to the more detailed questions about the device — and his trap. The question about its housing composition that he knew he hadn't covered in class, but Momo would know if she'd done any further research on it for…extracurricular use. And there was her answer, in her neat, feminine penmanship.
Correct.
Smart fucking girl.
He didn't want to be impressed, but he was. She was going to be hell of a fucking Pro Hero. Formidable. Even now, although she was still a mere student, he could see her residing among the Top 10 Heroes, easily. And that was fucking concerning.
Aizawa pushed himself back from his desk, lacing his fingers together and resting them behind his head as he closed his eyes.
He didn't know where her suspicions were rooted. It couldn't have been from the night of the incident — the girl wouldn't have dared come to school the next morning and have the gall to ask to leave to file the police report if she'd known it was him.
So it had been something else. Something afterward that had drawn her attention. But what? He went through the memories of the past few weeks one by one, checking each page front and back before moving on to the next. He finished, empty-handed.
She couldn't be positive, however, that much was clear. If she had been certain, it wouldn't have been Yaoyorozu Momo he'd discovered following him — it would've been Majestic, or another Pro Hero or detective. She must still be trying to collect proof then. He knew she wasn't at all stupid; she wouldn't dare levy an accusation like this if she didn't have irrefutable proof.
His memory peeked at pages again, but this time even more deliberately. He went back to the conversation they'd shared the day she'd been so inattentive in class — her insistence that it was because of the incident at USJ, while he'd assumed it was because of her encounter with his men. She was the bow maiden of a sunken ship. A lying cemetery mink. It wasn't because of either of the reasons he'd wondered about at the time.
It was because she knew. Even if she wasn't entirely certain yet, even if she harbored private doubts…there was a part of her that, beyond reasonable doubt, knew. Knew who she'd been across a desk from as a man was killed before her eyes. Knew who had gouged their desk a few lines more to keep her and the other girls safe.
How long? How long had she been suspicious, and how many moves on the chess board had he been unaware of her making before the tracking device had been found? And it hadn't even been found by him either. He'd been utterly oblivious — completely unaware.
How long?
He had no way to know.
Smart fucking girl.
He wasn't entirely sure what to do about her though, now that he knew. He could kill her — that would be simple enough, and the simple answer was more tempting than he would admit aloud. Aizawa ran his hand over his jaw, feeling the coarse stubble that had grown after days of not shaving. Simple sounded really good. She was still enough of a child for him to want to protect her virtue from his men, but grown enough where killing her wasn't too difficult to stomach.
Aizawa stared at his desk, not quite seeing the tests and essays strewn across it. It'd be a shame — a waste, even — to kill a girl that smart, and with a quirk of that caliber.
She came from Yakuza roots, he remembered. He wondered, absently, how much she knew about her father's past dealings. Wondered if maybe it had been something her father had said that triggered her into action.
Then, to no god in particular, he wondered what her end game was.
Prison? Blackmail? He would be doubly impressed if it was for blackmail. Yaoyorozu Momo did not, however, strike him as the blackmail type. It had to be simple: acquire evidence, then turn him in.
His thought process went back to the simple answer, but with reluctance. He was a stealth Hero, and she had gotten this far without him realizing it. He…admired her for that, he realized. It would be a shame to kill her. And, if it came back that Danchou was responsible for her death, it was possible Yaoyorozu Asao would go to his associates to initiate retaliation.
He leaned his chin into his hand, his next stream of thoughts peppered with uncertainty. The situation unfolded itself in front of him — the chess board. His mind mentally checked his potential moves against her.
Easier said than done, he could wait her out. She was likely following him because she lacked hard evidence — he could keep an eye on her in return. Keep his nose clean. Give her no evidence to collect. Bore the girl to death until she gave up, her private little investigation unable to bear fruit.
It would be an annoyance, for certain, but it would be the cleanest way to wash his hands of the situation if he could manage it.
Yes. He would wait her out.