If her quirk was divining answers from bowls of fried rice, she doubted she could ever be wrong again.
"Are you, like, dead?" Hado pokes her forehead—which would be completely without tact if she was dying, for her information—and frowns. "Do let me know if you are. There might still be time for me to get a reassignment for the practical."
It wasn't much, but it was something. And so, after a galaxy's length of years, Izumi turns away from her food. "Is there somebody you want to be partnered with?" She can't quite muster the courage to meet her eyes, and settles somewhere further south. It might be a chin, but she's unfocused her gaze so who's to say, really.
"Nah, nobody in particular."
Izumi sighs. So, she really was just that bad of an option then. At this rate, she'd never eat her breakfast. Her stomach felt plenty full of lead and hurt already.
"Look," she drags a hand harshly across the skin of her nape, and prepares to get really real, but one look at the other girl and she loses her nerve. She sighs again. "I'll be out of your hair soon. We can just … well, I don't know. We can pretend the other doesn't exist. This practical can't count for that much of our grades."
With that said, she pushes herself into a standing position, grabbing her food and taking it into the kitchen. When she catches sight of it, Hado's face is perfectly inscrutable.
She puts the leftover rice back in the container she got it from and shoves it back in the fridge. It's mostly empty within, they'd both only moved in the day before. "I'm going to hit the market before I make it back, do you need anything?" No answer comes. She closes the fridge door and looks out into the common area, but it's completely empty.
Izumi shakes her head and looks up at the ceiling as she takes several deep breaths and thinks to herself, go figure.
She stuffs a set of clothes in her gym bag before quickly leaving, locking the front door behind her. It's a sunny day out, but there's a chill in the air. She tugs the sleeves of her sweatshirt down to cover her fingers, and clenches the fabric tight in her palms as she trudges across campus.
As one of the nation's foremost hero academies, Yuei boasts an expansive campus with the amenities to match. That includes a great deal of private gyms. The one she finds herself at is her typical one, and both her friends are already there and waiting by the time she arrives.
It's habit to quickly slip into the locker room and stow her bag, and she's at their sides and slipping on her lifting gloves in no time at all. Mirio—no doubt having started before their agreed upon time—is already sweating and only grunts as she steps up to his bench. Tamaki gives her a little wave from where he stands behind Mirio's head, but that's all their greetings amount to.
And truthfully, as they all fall into the familiar rhythm of their daily workouts, a conversation is never taken up. They're all there for a reason and talking would only prolong their mornings.
That, however, doesn't stop Mirio from waiting until the very end—when Izumi is seemingly attempting to drown herself in the water fountain—to lean in, wiggle his eyebrows, and again ask: "So?"
"I," she says, after several shallow, heaving breaths, "am actually going to kill you."
He rocks on his heels and shrugs. "Can you fault a guy for being curious?"
Yes, she thinks, she could. "Nothing has changed, Mirio. We're not going to become friends in a day." At the rate things were going, they weren't going to become friends ever. And, honestly? Izumi didn't have much of a problem with that.
"Not with that attitude, you're not! I mean come on, Izumi, it feels like you're not even trying to see the diamond in the rough here."
The snort she lets out is unintentional, but she's forced to follow it up. "There's more rough than diamond in that girl."
He frowns at her, actually disappointed for once. "Don't tell me you're buying into those rumors."
"They're not rumors, Mirio, they're stories," she sighs. Stories that say Nejire Hado is a cold and distant person, and she looks down on others for their less powerful quirks. "Which is more likely? That every member of her class collectively decided to hate an innocent girl, or that she's not as innocent as you think?"
But, he ignores the sense in her words. "She could have a tragic backstory."
"This—this isn't some manga, Mirio." Izumi groans and presses her hands into her eyes in aggravation. "And even if all of this was the result of some sad, tragic backstory, it doesn't give her the right to be a bitch to everyone around her!"
When she lets her arms drop listlessly to her sides and opens her eyes, Mirio's frown is just that much more disappointed. "You're being uncharacteristically nasty today," he tells her.
"I'm hot," she growls, "and sweaty, and tired. I barely slept last night, the sun is barely up, and I feel like death. For the next six months, I will be sharing an apartment with a woman who hates me, and our interactions are going to constantly be watched and judged and critiqued and, to make matters worse, my semester grade is riding on our good performance together."
If that wasn't justification for a shitty mood, she didn't know what would be.
"So, I am terribly sorry if I'm not in the mood this morning. Or any morning between now and March, for that matter. But, please, continue to bring Nejire Hado up every time we meet. It will certainly help us grow closer."
Nejire Hado hated her, that much she knew, but Izumi is slowly realizing that the feeling might be mutual.
"Okay." Mirio nods his head and spins on his heel, patting the last of their trio on his shoulder as he flees, leaving him with a single, stiff, "You've got this one, boss."
And Tamaki (sweet, sweet Tamaki) silently passes her a bottle of Pocari Sweat and moves to a nearby bench. She follows after him, taking the seat at his side and crossing her arms. He lets out a little sigh, cracking open the second bottle and pressing it to her lips before stealing back the first from her lap.
She drinks it, but not without a roll of her eyes. When she's done, she sets the bottle down beside her and hunches forward, twisting the cap around between her fingertips in silence.
"He doesn't get that not everything can be solved by a smile and a stupid joke."
Tamaki hums. "You're right."
"Not everybody can be like him. Or like All Might." Even when they wish for nothing else. Izumi knows the feeling well. "If he wanted to be friends with her so badly, why make me do it?"
"M–Maybe he didn't want to be friends with her, maybe he just wanted you to be friends with her."
"Yeah, well, we don't always get what we want."
Tamaki has nothing to say to that, he'd never been one for performative words, but the silence still stretches on long enough for her to glance over at him. As soon as he catches her eye, he mimes drinking more water—though the lid of his bottle remains tight—and she relents with another fond eye roll, draining the rest of it.
He pats her shoulder with a small, trembling smile and stands, wordlessly following after Mirio to the locker room. Izumi watches him go for a moment before following suit, wandering off to shower and change.
The boiling hot shower performs wonders in cooling her head off. And by the time she's clean and dry, she's ready to apologize. But Mirio just meets her outside with a smile and a side hug, beating her to the punch.
They wander off in the direction of Mirio's apartment, who lives closest to the school's gates, to drop off their bags. And as they walk, he bumps her shoulder with his own. "You know you don't have to actually befriend her, right? I don't want it to seem like I'm forcing you to do something that's painful to you."
"I know." She runs her fingers through her damp ponytail. "I wouldn't be trying if it wasn't something I wanted to do, too." After all, they were both fans of nerdy manga. A tragic backstory was like opium, and they were the nineteenth-century Chinese government officials tasked with sniffing it out. "But I'm also not promising anything, so don't go getting your hopes up."
He raises his hand in that same stupid salute he always does and says, "Scouts honor."
Izumi huffs to cover a laugh. "Idiot."
They wander the city of Musutafu—her hometown—stopping only to grab a post-workout smoothie for themselves. With protein for Izumi and Mirio, and a nauseating combination of everything on the menu for Tamaki. All three try it, but Izumi thinks something curdles in her stomach as it settles on her tongue and has to return it to him immediately. If it's still in her hands by the time they pass a trash can, she fears she would just bin it and buy him something better.
At one point, they're chilling on the swings of a local park and Tamaki calls their attention over. "Do you think this would be helpful for hero work?" His finger shifts into a long tendril with green leaves and small, purple flowers.
"For tickling people, maybe?" She really doubted it could have any real usefulness, but she didn't want to seem unsupportive. "What kind of plant is that?"
"I think it's from the chia seeds in the smoothie."
She hums. "How's the tensile strength?" He stretches the new appendage over to her and she grasps it in one hand, tugging lightly. It immediately severs some distance down the stem. "Not great," she deduces.
In terms of quirks, Izumi had always found her friends' the most fascinating. Mirio's ability to turn impermeable is insanely impressive enough already, but adding the secondary implications of such a power just only made it that much better. And Tamaki's power to manifest and call upon any food he's recently eaten, transforming his own body; it was simply on another level.
"Calamari seems like it's still your best option for grapples, for sure," Mirio agrees, "But maybe if you had a nonviolent villain to detain? They might appreciate a pretty vine like that."
"But what if they're only pretending to be peaceful? And then once I tie them up with the chia plant, they break out of it and eat my face?" And, ah, there their nervous friend goes. Rushing off and hiding inside the jungle gym. "So scary," she hears him say even from this distance.
"Wait, no, Tamaki!" Mirio calls after him, still swinging and obviously unperturbed by his friend's disappearance. He's not even looking in the same direction, instead ogling some passersby. "I didn't mean it, buddy! Come back!"
Izumi kicks some mulch at him and gnaws on her straw. "Now you've gone and done it."
Mirio jumps from the seat at the height of his swing, landing in a jog before making his way over to where Tamaki trembled. Izumi follows after at a more sedate pace. Once they'd coaxed him out, the three continued on their way to the nearest market.
It's just before noon when they arrive at one close to their school. Each of the three grab a basket by the door before heading in. This is another familiar routine of theirs, a way of helping Tamaki through the scarier and more trivial parts of his day. They do their shopping together, acting as a bit of a buffer between him and the nosy old folk who shop at this time of day.
Izumi is deflecting a kindly old woman's shogi club invitations (and her attempts to set Izumi up with her grandson) when she realizes Mirio has been MIA for a while. When she drags Tamaki off to find him, he's in front of a shelf of boxed dessert mixes. She immediately clocks it as strange. Mirio doesn't really do sweets.
"You going to a party or something?"
He freezes for a moment, as if caught, but a second later he's smoothly shaking his head. "Nope."
Izumi almost convinces herself she'd been seeing things, but when she looks over even Tamaki is frowning. Her eyes narrow and she crosses her arms. "What's going on?"
"Nothing! I was just … They sure do look tasty!"
"You hate sugar," she accuses. He always says so; tells anyone who will listen. He's been on a diet for so long that even a good cookie can make him nauseous. "I'm not buying it."
It takes her only a moment of consideration to realize what he had been thinking of and, when she does, she can only groan. "You're such a meddler. Can't you accept that things will happen when they happen?" Seriously. Did he really think a tray of sweets would somehow make Nejire Hado tolerable and friendly? He acts as if there's a bubbly, exuberant girl somewhere within her, just waiting to be brought to the surface.
"It could work!"
Izumi rubs her brow. "It won't."
"And how could you know that?"
"Because I've already tried the food angle with her. She didn't bite." And she means that quite literally. Her fridge was half-full and her wallet half-empty because of her failure of an olive branch. "I bought Chinese food for the both of us last night. She didn't even respond to my text."
"So that's why you were being so testy." Careful, her face warns, but Mirio has always been quite good at smiling in the face of danger. He decides to push his luck, "Well—"
She glares; there would be no caving to his suggestion today. "No." When he doesn't budge, she pushes him toward Tamaki. "Go help him finish up, I'm ready to check out, so I'll see you at the front."
"But—"
"Go, Mirio Togata or so help me, I will—"
He hustles away, dragging an amused Tamaki behind him by the sleeve. "I'm going, I'm going!"
Izumi continues to glare at his back until he disappears around the corner, ducking into the next aisle over. Once he's gone, she heaves yet another sigh. It seemed to be the flavor of the day. She starts to tromp her way to the front end of the store—already planning on giving shogi granny a wide berth—only to double back suddenly and without explanation.
If she swipes a stupid box from the shelf and shoves it to the bottom of her stupider shopping basket, well, Mirio doesn't ever need to know about that.