So much is happening in this chapter oh my lord. Anyone recognize Suzume's case?
The next day dawns bright.
Suzume is up with the sun, struggling to smother a yawn as she makes a mug cake for breakfast.
She'd been up for half the night, homesick and missing her mother more than ever thought was possible.
Kaname had left before, to stay with friends or for his own work study with Gang Orca, but this is the first time that she's been completely away from her family with no quick way back.
She feels silly and childish.
She's also starting to think that she might love Chiasa more than she loved her last mother.
The thought tastes like betrayal.
She stares down at the puffy cake in the cardboard coffee cup. It doesn't even smell the same as it does at home.
There's a scuff of socks on carpet behind her before Togata appears at her side, yawning behind his hand.
"Mornin'."
"Morning," Suzume steps out of the way so he can get to the cupboards and start pulling out peanut butter and bread. His hair isn't styled yet, leaving it limp across his forehead and for the first time since they've met he isn't bouncing with energy.
He's apparently not much of a morning person.
Suzume sits at the table with her cake and stares out the window at a city both foreign and familiar.
She knows the darker parts of it. Alleys and boarded up windows and restaurants where only yakuza frequent. She knows the schools and the salons with coupons and city pools where the family pass covers eight people. The hospital downtown is the one she was born in and the one where she went for her very first x rays.
This part of the city isn't familiar.
This part of the city relies on protection from heroes in bright costumes, not stern men with tattoos and loyalty to Osachi and Kai. Strange as it is, the hard control of organized crime brings her more comfort and security than the flightiness of glory hunting heroes.
Not that there are many in this particular agency, but there are others who would abandon a lost child if they saw a chance to get on camera a block away.
It barely mattered. The parts that she does know? She's barely frequented in the last two years. She hasn't forgotten them exactly, but territory lines shift, loyalties change. Villain groups rise and fall like leaves in autumn.
If she gets any down time, she wants to check in on some old friends.
Probably not, Sir Nighteye doesn't seem like the type to give her any, but a girl can hope.
Suzume lays her forehead on the table and closes her eyes. She wants to go back to bed damn it.
I bet Yakuza get to sleep in.
It's not true and she knows it. Her dad had worked early hours, and over night, and Kai and Rio were both early risers as well.
Togata moves around the kitchen slowly, pouring himself a cup of juice and heating up rice for breakfast. Eventually he plops into the seat across from her, jostling her just enough to keep her from falling back asleep.
She tilts her head enough to scowl at him from under a curtain of black hair.
Togata shoots her a smile. He's perking up and he doesn't even have coffee.
"Sir will get here soon enough. He'll be off the day after tomorrow, while Centipeder and Bubble Girl man the fort. You'll have the day off as well, or you can hang out with the two of them and see what Side Kicks do."
"Eraserhead didn't tell me I'd get a day off at all," she says, surprised.
"Sometimes as a hero you won't. Or during your work studies, once you get your provisional license. If there's an emergency, or a series of emergencies, you'll be going day after day. So take advantage of it while you can. Maybe you can visit some old friends!"
Suzume doesn't tell him that she has few old friends at all. She got in way too many fights in this town. She's more likely to hunt down old bullies and beat the tar out of them. Again.
Maybe she can visit Eri, if Kai isn't busy. He's been doing more and more of the day to day tasks while Osachi gets him ready to take over.
…Most of my friends are adult Yakuza.
That's kind of sad.
"Maybe… I play a game online with a couple of friends. I don't know if they have anything going on then."
"Oh that's cool! What game is it?"
She spends the rest of the morning describing Portrait of Hell, the literary allusions to Akutagawa and his other works, and the part where she apparently sucks at shooting fake guns.
"Real ones, no problem. Fake ones? I'm screwed," she shrugs. "Who knows why."
There's a brief knock on the door before Nighteye comes in, dressed for the day already. Togata smiles cheerfully and waves at him, while Suzume nods.
"Let's get started you two. There's work to be done."
They follow him down to the office area.
He puts them to work going over old case files for misspellings, mix ups in dates, or inconsistencies. Small stuff that students can do. Then, once they do that without burning anything down, he shows her how they sort through requests from other agencies, the police, and HPSC, of which he's clearly not fond. They mark those based on urgency, timeline, whether its information or man power requests, or requests for Nighteye's quirk used on a particular day, and send those to Bubble Girl for double checking before she passes them to the hero for final say.
Around noon they break for lunch and Suzume shows Togata the best restaurant she knows.
The owners greet her by name, calling her 'Kono' or 'Little Suzume!' and piling a bag full of goma dango for her to take with her back to the agency. They congratulate her on the festival, and praise her for her victory.
"You're very like your father, you know," the owners wife tells her with a smile. "You look just like him."
"Thank you," Suzume bows to them, and she and Mirio, ladened with food, make their way back outside.
They've only gone a few steps, and passed a park, when someone shouts.
Suzume looks over in time to see a flurry of white and pink come slamming into her leg.
Small arms wrapped around her leg, holding on tight and bright red eyes peaked up at her from under wavy white hair.
Suzume barely holds onto her bag of lunch.
"Eri," she purses her lips and kneels down so she's eye level with her niece, who stands in front of her in a pink floral dress, black leggings and black boots. There's a pink bow in her hair, tying it partially back and giving her the look of a tiny, albino Nezuko Kamado.
"What are you doing here?" she asks, cocking her head.
Eri grips her little purse in both hands and looks over Suzume's shoulder, where Lemillion is towering over the both of them, before she turns her attention to Suzume.
"We saw you walk by the park, and I wanted to see you then, but they said no, so when I saw you come back I came to see you without asking. So they couldn't say no."
Better to ask forgiveness than wait for permission, huh?
"Who said no? And why?"
Eri opened her mouth to explain, but it was then that two familiar faces came tearing around the corner that Eri had come from.
"Eri!" Toya shouted, red faced and out of breath. "You can't run off like that!"
He skidded a stop in front of them when he realized that she wasn't alone. His gaze locked on Suzume.
"Oh. You are here. No wonder she went running off and causing trouble."
Suzume puffs her cheeks out. Eri does the exact same at her side.
"Hey!" She objects. There's a click of a phone camera going off and her head snaps up to Togata, who's grinning shamelessly at them. Traitor.
Hojo, a step behind Toya, eyes the blonde student.
"We didn't see you when she said you'd walked by. We assumed she just saw someone who looked similar."
"It's not hard," Suzume admitted. She's very bland looking. Black eyes, black hair, and all that. With her free arm she scoops Eri up and stands. Eri leans against her shoulder.
Toya looks the two of them over while Suzume does the same with he and Hojo. They're both wearing thin black medical masks, and he's changed the side of his part. Hojo's crystal eyes are covered with sunglasses. They both had little tubes of hand sanitizer handing from their belts, and they look more like businessmen than baby sitters.
"We watched you on TV," Toya says suddenly. He runs his fingers through his hair, knocking his long bangs out of place, "I didn't realize how strong you'd become, Suze."
Suzume shrugs, even as she blushes with pleasure. She knows that they always thought she would give up eventually, or be turned away at the door of hero schools and join the Hessaikai. To be proving not just the faceless masses, but the people who raised her wrong, makes her chest warm.
"People rely too much on quirks. They made it easy for me. Next year I'm sure that it'll be harder."
"Still. You've come a long way," he insisted. He tilted his head towards Togata, "Who's your friend? And when did you get back in town?"
"I got to town yesterday. This is Togata Mirio, he's working at the same agency as me. This internship week."
"Ah," Toya looked at Togata with new eyes. Suspicious eyes. This is a young hero who wasn't raised within their walls, who they haven't known for half a decade.
Suzume props her chin in Eri's head.
"We should probably get going. We've got everone's lunch, and it would suck if it got cold."
"Will you visit before you go home?" Eri asks, hugging her tightly.
"If I get the chance, I will," she promises. "And even if I don't, I'll see you for your birthday. So behave for Toya and Hojo okay?"
Eri sighs like she's just been given a terrible quest to complete.
"Fiiiine."
"And apologize for scaring them?"
Eri turned her face to peek at the two men.
" 'm sorry I scared you."
"Just don't do it again," Toya reaches, and Eri turns in Suzume's arm to reach back for him. He picks her up and props her on his hip. "We should be getting back anyways. Boss wants you cleaned up before dinner."
"Shocker," Suzume drawls.
Toya shoots her a look, that she ignores entirely.
"We'll be seeing you," Toya says at last.
"Stay safe," Hojo adds. "You know how reckless you can be."
"Hey!"
She objects, but they ignore her and bow out.
Togata watches them go.
"They seemed nice," he says.
"They are," she agrees. "At least if they like you. They were my babysitters growing up, they work for my brother in law. The littler girl, Eri? She's my niece."
"She's cute."
"The cutest."
Togata shows her the snapped photo on his phone, of her and Eri with identical puff cheeked pouts on their faces. "You were pretty cute too!"
"Delete that!" Suzume demands, lunging for him. Togata side steps her with a laugh and shoves his phone away.
"Nope. Better hurry! Sir will be upset if we're late."
By the time they come back Bubble Girl is strapped to a tickle machine, and Suzume tries to ignore the inappropriate thoughts it gives her about what Nighteye looks up on his computer at night.
Then in the afternoon they get changed again into their hero costumes.
Suzume ties her hair back in a pony tail instead of a spiky bun, and pulls her hood up. She lets the goggles hang around her neck. She's still not used to the different settings on them.
Then, she and Togata, Lemillion, walk out to join Sir Nighteye on a walk around the city.
They take a different route, this one leading to the river that skirts the industrial warehouses that border the city. Suzume had been here once or twice with Kai, on outings where they made her stay in the car, but she's not as familiar with it as other parts of the city.
(She doesn't want to admit it, but she isn't fond of warehouses. They remind her too much of her sisters blotchy, crying face, and the cold feeling of blood draining out of her body)
Nighteye is explaining how some companies hire retired or low-tiered heroes to act as body guards for their stock when a flash of police lights goes tearing past them, and turns into the parking lots of a warehouse ahead of them.
Nighteye glances at Suzume, then Lemillion, before he nods forwards.
"We might as well check it out. Come on."
They follow after him. Suzume listens for the sounds of fighting. Shouts, gunshots, various quirks, but there's nothing. For an emergency response, its remarkably quiet. There's not even raised voices or someone calling for a hostage negotiator.
When they arrive, there's two police cars and a very pale looking man sitting on the sidewalk with his head between his knees. Not far off is a mess in the grass where he'd emptied his stomach.
Someone else at the door sees them, and the relief is instant.
"Sir Nighteye! Sergeant Morita didn't say you would be joining us."
The trio pick their way towards the officer.
"We were passing by when we saw the lights. Where is Morita?"
"He's upstairs, looking at the security camera footage. Inspector Nakana is out back. By the river."
Nighteye nods. Suzume's brows rise. An Inspector and a Sergeant? Both?
Lemillion raises his hand. "We can go see Inspector Nakana while you talk to the Sergeant, Sir."
"Go ahead."
It makes sense. The Sergeant would want to meet with the pro hero, not his working students. And it would get them out of the way without directly saying that they were doing that, in case there was something confidential.
There's still something about the whole situation that makes her feel uneasy.
The man out front. He'd thrown up. Why? Was he just sick?
No, that wasn't it.
She knows very well what it was.
She follows Lemillion out the back of the warehouse, one packed with shipping crates and tires, and gets her answer when they reach the bottom of the path that leads to the river docks. The river smells sharply of fish and traffic. She can still hear cars rolling across it, and see the bridge in the distance south. Up river there's a bend around a larger warehouse. On the other side of the river she can see a car parked, and two faint silhouettes of people sitting inside of it, watching them. Shie Hessaikai.
In a clear patch of grass at the river's edge, lies a woman.
They arrive just as three officers roll her onto her back. The Inspector, in a long coat, stands further away. One of the men pulls a wallet out of her front pocket and hands it to him.
Her rust colored hair is tangled, and it halos around her where it's dried. Her face, smeared with dirt, is frozen with pale eyes staring up at the sky. She was beautiful when she was alive, and even now she looks sad more than anything else. There are three bullet holes. One in her head, two in her chest. On her right wrist is a watch filled with water and set with pink diamonds.
Besides the watch, she isn't dressed up, if anything she looks like she left the house in a hurry. Her smart white blazer doesn't match the loose t shirt beneath it. She's wearing short, black, lace up boots.
"So that's why there's an Inspector and a Sergeant," Suzume says aloud. "She was a police officer."
Lemillion, looking pale and missing his normal smile, looks at her.
"How do you know that?"
"Her shoes. And the wallet the inspector has? Did you see the metal flash when he was looking at it? There's a badge inside."
"We should get Sir," Lemillion says, trying and failing to smile.
Suzume cocks her head, running the mental math. It's still early may. The river won't be very warm, and no fish or insects have been at her body. It's not bloated, but she's stiff. The river washed some of the blood away, everything off of her skin, but where it stained her clothes it's still vibrant. A look at her nails revealed them to be short, well maintained, and without any blood of skin beneath them. She hadn't been able to fight back.
"You two!" The Inspector calls, keeping Lemillion from fetching Nighteye. "Where did you come from? We didn't call for hero help!"
The officers walk closer so they don't have to shout, and by the time they get close enough Lemillion has managed to fix a better smile on his face.
"We're here with Sir Nighteye. We saw the lights on our patrol and came to see if we could help."
The other three officers mill around. One of them looks like he might throw up too. Another can't look at the body for very long at all. The third won't stop staring at her.
Suzume drinks in every detail of all of them. Haircuts, stubble, teeth, eyes, the set of their shoulders, the neatness of their uniforms. Who has a watch, which one is wearing a necklace under his coat. She looks at their holsters, their boots, and the footprints they left.
"We don't need your help," the inspector scowls at Lemillion. "She was one of my detectives, and we already know who did it."
"Really?" Lemillion asks, impressed.
Suzume nearly rolls her eyes. They clearly don't know who did it.
"It was a villain group that emulates old organized crime practices. They call themselves 'Homage'."
The same one that Nighteye had had her categorize the day before.
"Detective Miura was investigating them. They found out and killed her. This is their disgusting calling card."
One of the officers, the one with the watch, spits on the ground.
Suzume nearly smacks him for potentially contaminating the area.
"That's all well and good, but they didn't do it. Whoever did it was trying to emulate Homage."
"What?" the officer who spat startles and looks-
Scared.
Yeah. Of course he does.
"Suzumebachi," Lemillion plants his hand on her shoulder. "Maybe we should wait for Sir and the Sergeant to get here, before we start coming up with theories. We're just UA students."
"It's not a theory. It's the facts."
"What do you mean?" The Inspector (what had the officer at the door called him, Nakana?) squints suspiciously at her. She gets the feeling he's trying to gauge her age, in a hero costume with her hood up and over her forehead. "If it wasn't Homage, who was it?"
Suzume gestures to the officer who had spat. "Him."
"What?" he squawks, looking horrified.
Lemillions grip on her shoulder tightens.
"You can't be serious!" Nakana argues.
"I mean it's obvious, isn't it? You said yourself that there's a villain group who tries to emulate old school Yakuza groups, by sending a message through dead bodies. I read a report on them, and they do so by stomping the face in, then shooting them three times from above, twice in the chest and once in the head, so it can't be mistaken for anything else. But she was just shot three times. Besides the bullet hole in her forehead, her face is fine. So whoever did it had an emotional connection to her, and knew about Homage's MO's. Plus, two of the bullet's went in at a different angle from the initial one, did you see when they were turning her over to get her wallet? They didn't all go in from the back, they went in from the front. The entry wounds are bigger than the exit wounds, and most of the blood stains are on her back too."
"That doesn't mean-" starts the spitting officer.
Suzume ignores him.
"And then look at her wrist. That's a fancy watch, way too fancy to have been bought on an officer's salary. Then look at his wrist. He's wearing the men's version of it. One watch is too expensive for their salary, two is way past what either of them could afford. And officers like them wouldn't have enough time for a secondary job."
"That's all coincidence-"
"And there's blood on his shoelace. It's hard to see because they're black, but it's there. There's residue on the hilt of his gun and the edge of the holster saying it's been fired recently. You have pretty strict regulations about that, right? So you'd already know if he had to fire three bullet's and replace them. But he hasn't filed any report, has he?"
The Inspector looks reluctant to admit it, but he does, looking between Suzume and the officer, who is growing paler and paler with each passing word.
"Not that he would have had time. If you look at the condition of her body, and take into account the temperature of the water and the amount of fish that would live in a river that gets as much traffic as this, she's only been dead maybe six hours."
"But anyways. All of this means that he was bought off, and she figured it out. He had no choice, of course, but to kill his girlfriend."
Suzume thinks of her sister. She thinks of warehouse and spider webs and beautiful golden light.
" Once he realized that she knew, he called her to the warehouse upstream of us, probably that one at the turn in the river given the bodies location and the speed of the current. It's far enough from the city proper, and in a rough area already, so no one would think to much of the sounds of a fight. He said it was an emergency. That's why she's dressed like she grabbed whatever she could and ran out. The first bullet hole, the one killed her, is point blank and done from standing position. He tried to talk her out of reporting that he was a sell out, and when she refused he shot her."
"Shut up!"
Suzume looks him in the eye and tilts her head.
"You panicked. You called Homage and begged them to tell you what to do. How to fix it. They told you that you had to make it look like them, so they could keep their man on the inside. So you shot her two more times. You were standing at her side by then. But when it came time to make her bite cement and break her jaw, you couldn't make yourself do it. Could you?"
"You can't- you can't know that. There's no way you knew all that!" the officer rips his gun from its holster and points it at her with hands that shake.
Suzume just stares at him.
"What do you mean? It was all super obvious."
"Tanaka! Drop your weapon!" Nakana draws on him, horrified. Lemillion grows stiff, ready to move. She can see Sir and his Sergeant friend starting towards them from the top of the hill, but they wouldn't make it in time.
"I just have one question for you, officer Tanaka."
"What?" he snaps, "Your quirk can't actually tell you everything! None of that is admissible in court."
He says, pointing a gun at me.
"Did you leave the safety off after you shot her?"
The startled pinch of his brow, the barest tilt of the barrel to double check, is all she needs.
Suzume steps up and in one smooth motion grabs his wrist and shoves his arm high, stepping into his space and cracking him in the jaw so hard he drops like a stone. Suzume keeps him from sprawling on the ground only by holding his wrist still. The gun falls into her waiting other hand.
She looks at Lemillion, and Sir, and she can't tell which one is more surprised.
"What?"
"How did you do that?" Lemillion asks, looking dizzy. "You knew all of that so fast?"
Suzume drops Tanaka and offers the gun, handle first, barrel pointed down, to Nakana.
"What do you mean?" with her hands free, she gestured to the crime scene. "It was obvious."
"That's some kind of observation quirk you have," the Inspector muses. He carefully checks that the safety was, indeed, on and puts the gun in a plastic baggie.
"Huh? I don't have any quirk."
He nearly drops the gun.
"What? But I thought you were a UA student!"
"I am." Suzume can feel her irritation building. She sees a spark in his eye and knows exactly what he's about to say.
"You'll never be a hero without a quirk, even if Sir Nighteye was nice enough to humor you," he says quickly. "But you'd make a great detective. The police academy-"
"No thanks," she cuts him off swiftly, her temper flaring.
"Huh?"
"If I wanted to be a detective, I would already be there," she says, crossing her arms over her chest. "I'm going to be a hero."
He laughs, and gives her what should be a kind smile. She's getting sick of kindness.
"That's a great dream to have, but you have to know it's not going to happen. There's never been a quirkless hero."
"Then I'll be the first." Suzume can't help the developing twitch of her jaw.
Lemillion's hand comes back down on her shoulder.
"It was nice to talk to you, Inspector, thanks for the learning experience. But we better get back to Sir Nighteye now."
They don't have to go far. They reach him with just a few steps.
Suzume keeps her arms crossed on her chest, her shoulders tight and her jaw as well.
Nighteye looks her over. It takes him a long minute to speak.
"Next time you're going to expose an armed murderer, tell someone ahead of time."
"Yes, Sir."
Still coiled like a spring, she follows him back out to the spring. She wishes she'd decked Nakana.
Lemillion shakes his head. "I can't believe you figured that out so fast. I've never seen someone catch a killer in two minutes."
Suzume looks down, embarrassed. She's not used to so much praise anymore. She tugs at her vambrace.
"Everything was right there. The watches, the bullet trajectories, his shoes and his gun."
"I didn't notice any of it," Lemillion admits. "And neither did the Inspector. Where'd you learn all that stuff anyways?"
She shrugs. "I was just born with it, I guess."
Besides, she doesn't say, dead bodies are easier to understand than live ones.
Nighteye looks like he doesn't believe that she was just born with it, but he doesn't do much more than shuffle them away, back onto the patrol route. She's fine, but she has to wonder if Lemillion has ever seen a dead body before. He'd certainly acted shaken up about it.
They get back to the agency, and once more Nighteye has her fight someone. This time its Centipeder, who uses his centipede like limbs to try to catch and restrain her. Suzume reverts back to dodging and striking hard at any openings she finds.
Just like with Bubble Girl, the difference real experience makes is incredible.
They get cleaned up, and Togata heads home for the night with the promise to come by after school tomorrow.
Suzume is left alone in the little dorms on top of the Nighteye Agency.
She calls her mom, and texts her brothers, and Dusty even sets it up so she can watch him start playing Horizon Zero Dawn on her phone for a while.
"You're acting weird," he complains, while trying to work out how to set traps for a very large machine.
"I've never been away from my family like this okay," she huffs at him. "I'm the youngest, so my brothers have been leaving one by one for a while, but at least one of them has always been around. This is weird. I'm… lonely, I guess."
It's weird to think about.
As isolated as she's been from classmates, teachers, and society, has she ever really been this lonely before? She's always had her brothers, her parents, Kai and his little following.
Now…
"It's too damn quiet."
"Last week you were complaining that your house is too loud. Oh mother fucker!"
"Did you just die for the third time? You literally just started this game."
"Fuck you."
"Nah I'm good. But anyways. I guess the grass is always greener right?"
"You should go outside and touch some grass."
"You go touch some grass. I saw plenty today. It just uh. Happened to be under a dead body."
"Did you finally snap and kill someone?" He asks, sounding way too excited by the prospect, and way to casual about the fact that someone died.
"No, I just happened to be nearby when someone found it. Man killed his girlfriend for money."
"That's fucked."
"E-yup. There are some things that I just don't feel sympathy for. That's definitely one of them. And I say that as someone who grew up without a lot of money in general. Like, that's your girlfriend dude. How can you place money over someone you love?"
"People do plenty of things for money."
"I know. Like I said, I grew up without a lot of it. Shit, for a while twice a week my parents would take the four youngest of us, toss us all in the tub and hose us down like dogs because it was too expensive for four of us to take individual showers. So I know why he did it, I just don't feel any sympathy for him. Or maybe empathy?"
"You know most women are more likely to be killed by a man that they know than they are a total stranger?"
"Unfortunately, I know that very well. That's why I have a simple, but effective go-to defensive measure."
"Oh yeah?"
"Kick 'em in the dick."
Dusty snorts, and almost dies again.
"What if the man doesn't have a dick to kick?"
"I promise you getting kicked in the crotch will put someone with a vagina down just as fast. Maybe not as long, but long enough to break a nose or something. My brother-in-law keeps teasing me because I taught our niece to do that."
"How old is your niece?"
"Oh crap, I have no idea. Like six I think?"
"So you've taught a six year old girl how to cripple grown men?"
"I have!" She says cheerfully. "My second youngest older brother, Satomi? He went through this phase when he was about… eight? Where he would bring his fist back and randomly punch whatever was in front of him."
"Oh god."
"It didn't matter what it was. A wall, a cabinet, a chair, his twin. I was… three? I think? And we all went to the park, and this dad was watching his own kids on a merry-go-round when my brother goes up to him. And pulls his fist back. The man must have thought Satomi wanted a fist bump because he like got his own fist down to kid level. And then Satomi punched this man in his apple bag so hard I saw his soul leave his body."
"So your whole family is like this is what I'm getting."
"... yeah, basically!"
"That's terrifying."
"One of my classmates wants to introduce me to a friend of his specifically because he wants to watch me scare the guy."
"I believe that."
"Hey, Dusty, has anyone ever tell you you're kind of rude?"
"No, never."
Suzume watches him almost die for a while longer, marveling at the fact that this avid gamer is having trouble with one of the only games that she would call herself good at, and chats some more. She manages to weasel out a few details about his life too. His guardian is very picky about cleanliness, but generally lets Dusty do whatever he wants. He hates the taste of alcohol, he really hates the spring time because of his horrible allergies and eczema, and he, like Spinner, was homeschooled.
The last one doesn't surprise her in the least.
At the start of their playing games together it had felt like she was playing games with a twelve year old instead of someone a few years older than her. He was more than a little abrasive, and combined with Spinner's awkwardness, she was left as the most sociable one of the bunch.
Which was just plain weird.
Now he's at least a little more socialized, if only because Suzume doesn't have the patience to deal with someone so temperamental without saying anything.
She's basically been bullying him into being a more decent person.
Eventually, he gives up before he breaks his remote, and she ends the voice call so she hopefully gets a little more sleep tonight than she did yesterday.
No sooner has she hung up on him than does she find herself added to a group chat titled '1-A Plusses'.
She doesn't know how Ashido got her phone number. She certainly didn't give it to her. But she goes ahead and saves her classmates' phone numbers into her contacts list anyways.
Kaminari adds her to another group chat he decides to call 'Lunch Bunch' and she spends a few minutes watching Bakugou yell at him for giving it such a lame name.