"—lways cold. I just have poor circulation." She hears a voice whisper through the darkness, hushed and quiet, as though they were taking special care not to disturb someone. "It's nothing to worry about."
There's another voice—another person. This one is frail and rough, yet rasped and kind in a way only an old woman's can be. "I decide what is to be worried about here, young lady, not you."
The owner of the first voice is quiet for a moment, but her silence paves the way for a sudden and heavy sigh. "Yes, ma'am."
Nejire attempts to stir as the older voice rebukes the younger on its attitude, but her body hardly seems in the mood to cooperate. Her eyelids are leaden and her body sinfully warm. It does not wish to move and she struggles to motivate it any different.
"Remind me of your quirk again," the older one asks.
There are some sparse shuffling sounds. "The attraction of small objects, ma'am."
"That's it's name? Attraction of small objects?"
"My mom wasn't terribly creative," the first says, somewhat bitterly, "and it's the same exact quirk as hers, so the doc saw no need for the extra paperwork just to rename it."
A pen clicks. "Do you want to rename it?"
"No," they eventually decide, though it takes them a little too long for it to be completely truthful, "I wouldn't even know where to start."
A groan leaves her throat, unbidden and unwanted, and she pivots slightly to tuck her face into her pillow. The voices are speaking still when sleep comes to reclaim her mind, and little has changed by the time she wakes again—just a few short minutes later.
The first is much closer now, though, nearly above her head when they suddenly ask, "Are you sure she's alright?" Nejire groans at the volume, wishing only to slumber more. Not even her own curiosity at their identity would change that.
"It's just exhaustion. Miss Hado overtaxed her stamina using her quirk; this isn't the first time. She will wake when she wakes."
They're hardly appeased. "But she's been sleeping so long. What if she hit her head? We should always be conscious of potential concussions," they lecture, "We risk doing more harm by ignoring it."
The older voice lets out a breath too heavy to be classified as only a sigh. It's like the embodiment of exhaustion. The sin o' sloth given form and function. "And she may still sleep a while longer," the voice says, ignoring anything it deemed senseless. Nejire only notices the sound of a pen scribbling on paper because it stops, and the voice's owner wanders closer to the accompaniment of the clunking of their cane. "Here. Take this note to Aizawa, it will explain what's happening on my end." When the note is—inexplicably—not taken, they shuffle closer. "You can worry about your girlfriend on your own time, in your own space. Which is not now, and certainly not here."
"I am not worried about her," the voice claims to a disbelieving audience, and a moment passes before they realize. "And she is definitely not my girlfriend!"
The silence that follows is worse than anything else; if the voice's volume and pitch weren't enough to rouse her, the weight of its embarrassment would have surely risen to the occasion.
Nejire groans first, rubs the sleep from her eyes second. It's a practiced ritual and one she practices at the end of every nap. Humming somewhat contentedly, she stretches her lower back without moving and blinks the world into being. "Midoriyaa," she calls once she sees her, "Why are you wearing a sexy nurses costume? It's not even October yet."
"Okay," Izumi slurs, then swallows, "Okay. There's … a lot wrong with what you just said. It is October, for one, and I'm also not wearing literally anything close to nurse clothes." Green eyes flick over to their thus-far unseen third party. "Are you sure she doesn't have a concussion?"
A hand steals Nejire's chin and forcibly drags her eyes away from indulgence. A bright light shines down upon her left eye, then her right. She winces and flees it, the hand lets her. "Pupils are equal and reactive," the voice murmurs. "What's your name, dear?"
"Nejire," she yawns. What a silly question.
"And how old are you, Nejire?"
That's not hard either. "I just turned nineteen."
A hum. "Do you know where you are?"
The room is small; made smaller by the curtains that are drawn throughout. There is a refrigerator against the far wall with a skeleton beside it. She sees beds and chairs and a closed door. The lighting is sterile and the room lifeless. It's not a difficult ask. "I'm in the nurse's office." Her ankle twinges and she glances back at the elderly woman beside her, grinning dozily in embarrassment. "Hi, Chiyo."
A smile stretches her age-carved face. "Hello, dearie." Recovery Girl—Chiyo Shuzenji for the brave and the stupid—is a former hero and current school nurse with one of the world's forefront healing quirks. It's miraculous in its own right, but it's not as nice as her personality by half, or so Nejire always reminds her. "Glad you could join us; you've given your friend quite the fright."
Us? Nejire wonders, still somewhat eepy. Then, friend? Her skin crawls and her spine slithers, and like a serpent she twists. The dread she's feeling isn't a hundredth what it should be for what awaits her on the other side of her bed. "Midoriya," she greets, eyes flicking between her and Chiyo. "What, uh—what are you doing here?"
Her wife frowns. "I carried you here."
Right. She can remember that happening. Her eyes find the nurse again. "Could you prescribe me some cyanide?"
"No." Chiyo, she nearly cries, you're breaking this maiden's lonely heart. "Here, you may have a gummy instead."
She takes it, sullen and disappointed but far from rude. "Thank you." It tastes like berries and iron; the same as always. They're special mixes of Recovery Girl's own creation, instilled with the might of ten-thousand suns—or 500 mg of caffeine, depending on who you ask. With the gummy in her system, it takes only a moment for the last tendrils of sleep to slip from her shoulders and wrists, finally allowing her to return fully to the realm of the living.
Izumi leaves her bedside and walks toward the door, note in hand. When Nejire catches sight of her face, it's stony and cold. "Feel better," her wife says, though the tone seems like it'd feel more at home accompanying a 'drop dead' than any kind sentiment.
"Er—" Before she can get a word out, Izumi is gone. And the door that shuts behind her is louder than strictly necessary.
To the side, Chiyo makes a disgruntled noise and swats Nejire lightly with her cane. "That was rude."
"I know," she groans. And believe her, she does. "I mean, how could she slam your door like that? That's, like, way over the top!" Even for somebody as awful as that she-witch.
The cane doesn't strike her again, but it's a near thing. "That's not what I was talking about." Though, she hardly seems pleased about that, either. "That girl," Chiyo sighs, "I know you don't like her, but she carried you all the way across campus without complaint. She wouldn't even leave until you woke up and she could be certain you were fine, even though that meant missing more of her first day of class. At the very least, you could have thanked her." Instead, she'd asked for poison. A completely reasonable request considering her situation, if a little ill-timed.
Nejire makes her thoughts on the matter perfectly clear by remaining silent. Izumi Midoriya was simply one matter in which she would not be cowed. They would see one another at the ends of the earth—after her mail-order bride's eventual and inevitable fall to villainy—and Nejire will claim her spot at the apex of heroes by defeating her, once and for all. That is how their story will go, it's already written.
"When you didn't stop by to eat lunch, I'd hoped you'd finally made a friend." Chiyo's hum is careful, but direct. Cutting, too, like the scalpel which opens her chest and bears her heart to the world. "It would seem I set my expectations too high. Here I was thinking they were already low enough."
"Midoriya is the last person in this world I would try to befriend. She's—she's—" Arrogant and haughty. With a greater love for video games than kindness, and not a single fashionable bone in her body. "She called my sweater tacky."
"How dare she," Chiyo mutters flatly as she prods Nejire's ankle with a pen. It causes her to hiss and jerk her knee, it only manages to make things worse. "Do try not to move."
Nejire slams her eyes shut and grits her teeth, bearing with it until the examination ends.
"How did you manage this?"
"I lost control of my quirk and output too much vitality. I tried containing the force by putting it down into the dirt and flying away, but I twisted my ankle as I left the ground."
Next to bear the pain of Chiyo's pen is the split of her lip. "And this?"
She slaps the pen away. "I ran into a tree," she lies.
"Mm." The nurse scribbles a few notes down on a notepad and sets it aside. She replaces it with Nejire's hand, holding it gently between her own as she raises it up to her lips, placing a quick kiss on the back of it. From an outside perspective it probably seems pretty weird, downright unlawful, but it's how she activates her quirk.
As soon as the kiss connects, the scraps on her shoulders knit themselves back together and the pain in her ankle ebbs as the torn ligaments self-repair. At the same time, a lovely green glow fills the room, emanating from her wounds, as her eyes grow dry and her body heavy. Nejire blinks several times in rapid succession, but it only makes her sleepier. Heal is a quirk that works by amplifying and enhancing the already present and natural repair systems within the human body, at the cost of a large amount of life energy.
"Your quirk is so cool," she admits through a yawn. Nejire's asked her half a hundred questions since she first saw it, and she still had countless more. More than there were days in a year. "Has it gotten any weaker with age?"
"No, it hasn't." She checks over Nejire once again before giving her the all-clear. "Generally speaking, it's control that suffers more with age rather than power. A quirk is like a muscle, as long as you continue to use it, it will not atrophy. Now, rest for a few minutes. If you're up for it, I'll write you a note to return to class."
Nejire murmurs an agreement and decides to rest her weary eyes for a moment.
Said moment is worryingly and frustratingly long. She doesn't even need to check a clock to know she's missed class in its entirety.
Chiyo is still there, scribbling away, but there's a new presence Nejire had not accounted for. She surges into an upright position and does her best to captain her hair into something acceptable, pulling more than a few strands from between her healed lips. It was unlikely he'd threaten expulsion for mussy hair, considering his own, but it was better to be safe. "G-Good morning, sir," she says, only to wince when Chiyo coughs, "Afternoon. Good afternoon, sir."
"Are you feeling better?"
For a single second, she allows herself the foolish illusion that Aizawa had only come to check up on her. It's a short second, but blessedly wholesome. "Yes, sir. I am. Much better."
"Good," he nods around the straw of his juice box. "Then you can explain to me why Akira Doyle is accusing you, a top student of your cohort, with quirk discrimination and bullying."
Oh. "Ah."
Luckily, he doesn't seem to particularly care for answers, only results. "You will apologize to her and you will make sure it is earnest. When will you do it by?"
She knows better than to argue. "Tomorrow, sir."
He shakes his head. "Tonight."
"Tonight," she agrees. She knows better than to argue, but man does she want to. "I'll apologize to her before dinner is ready in the dining hall."
"Earnestly," he reminds her as he stands to leave. "And I will not be hearing of anything of the sort again. These issues are better left unresolved until you receive your licenses and have human resources personnel to manage and reprimand you." Chiyo coughs again; it just feels good to not be the one on the receiving end of it.
Aizawa opens the door to leave just as Nejire is sliding over to the edge of her bed. She hears him grunt something unintelligible, and when she looks over he's letting someone in beneath his arm. "You have a visitor," he calls over his shoulder, as if she's the unruly inmate in his prison.
"Tamaki?"
"A-Ah!" He shakes and he trembles. It's hard to tell what's a nod and what's just simple terror. "That's my n-name."
She frowns at him. "Why are you here? Did you get hurt in class?"
"N-No. I—um. This," he holds out a familiar backpack, "Here, for you." The sentence is maybe half as long as it should be, but he got the important bits out. "Oh, oh. Oh, man." He quickly moves to the space behind the ajar door, hiding just past the dent in the wall from the knob.
After taking a moment to test her rejuvenated ankle, she approaches the flightly young hero. "You brought my backpack for me."
"Yes." His eyes are clenched and his face turned. "I d-did."
Nejire looks from it to him, and then to the hallway without. "Where's Midoriya?" This had her influence written all over it. Tamaki was sweet, one of the few people she didn't have a problem with in their class, but he's not nearly brave enough for this.
He swallows and meets her eye through his lashes. They're so long she's jealous, but that's beside the point. "L-Left."
"She left? Where did she go?"
A hapless little shrug. "Stormed off," he manages, "She hides when she's upset."
Something swirls in her gut; it's either guilt or indigestion. "She never hides when we fight." The girl didn't know the meaning of silent retaliation. "Pretty sure she fights when she's upset, dude."
"She f-fights when she's mad. She hides when she's upset."
Nejire didn't really get the difference, but she could learn at another time. "I'll talk to her when she's home, okay? I'll even apologize!" Definitely indigestion, maji ka, she felt like she was one cessation away from hurling. "But first, do you happen to know where Doyle lives?" He nods into the door and she steps closer in her greed or excitement.. "Do you think you could lead me there?" Another nod. Nejire breathes a sigh of relief and silently fist pumps the air.
They arrive at an apartment community not far from her own. The buildings are all styled very similarly, without only minor differences to be noted if one cares to search for them. There's a few students outside standing around a tiny grill on the ground. It's only a foot tall and large enough for three skewers, but you wouldn't be able to tell from the pride they stand with. She wants to crack a light-hearted joke at their expense, but she has nobody around who will appreciate it.
Tamaki leads her to the second door on the third building; a thin apartment with black-out curtains thrown wide in its windows. She expects him to dart as soon as they arrive, had honestly expected it to happen long before they made it out of the main campus building, but he impresses her by approaching the door himself. The respect lasts only until he slots his key in the door and walks inside.
"Tamaki?" Nejire calls after him. "I thought you were taking me to see Doyle." He doesn't answer but the door is still open so she chases after him, by the time she's taken off her shoes—only falling into one wall in her hurry—he's already locked himself away in his room. "What an ostrich," she groans just as she realizes she's not alone.
Two pairs of eyes look at her from the couch—one green, the other blue. Neither seem particularly pleased by the company. A feeling she knows quite intimately. But it's a shame that Izumi looks away first, her attention fleeing to a nearby wall.
"What are you doing in my house, Hado?" Akira wonders as she sets her phone down.
She pivots, forgetting Tamaki in an instant, and squares her shoulder. "I've come to apologize."
"Sure you have, Motoko Kusanagi." Over her shoulder, Nejire sees Izumi stifle a laugh and she immediately hates them both. It was like renewing her wedding vows—all of her stale feelings are suddenly rejuvenated. How fortuitous that it involves her fake wife, too.
She scowls at them both. "Who?"
Akira blinks. "Motoko Kusanagi? Ghost in the Shell?" They share a look she's not invited to before turning back to face her. "It's a popular anime from a long time ago, but it just got a remake. He's, like, a cyborg mayor," she explains.
When it's clear she still doesn't understand, Izumi cuts in and softly admits, "She was saying you sounded robotic."
"Whatever," she grunts. Them and their stupid nerd talk. It didn't matter, she just needed to apologize and be done with. "I'm sorry for calling your quirk weak and lame, or whatever. It's not either of those things, I just wanted to make you mad by saying it."
A silence waxes on after she finishes and it's clear Akira is enjoying. "Aren't you supposed to look somebody in the eye when apologizing to them?"
Nejire grits her teeth but complies. "I am sorry."
"For?"
She knows good and damn well what for, but Nejire repeats it anyway. "For calling your quirk weak and lame."
"I believe you words were weak and dull."
Patience, she reminds herself. "I am sorry for calling your quirk weak and dull."
Akira sits back with a hum, seemingly satisfied. "I honestly didn't expect you to say anything."
Yeah, well, Nejire thinks, if somebody hadn't snitched to the professor she wouldn't have had to.
A moment too late she realizes the words she'd meant for herself had bypassed her teeth and escaped her lips; both guards derelict in their duties and soon to be relieved of their positions. She slaps a hand over her lips in an attempt to stop them—soften them, at least—but it is too late. The damage is done. She winces around her palm, but her voice is only slightly muffled when she asks, "Does this still count as earnest?"
She has to hope it will, because Akira kicks her out the door not long after. Her shoes come flying out over her head, landing somewhere out amidst the grasses and rolling even further until she can no longer see them. She sacrifices her socks with a heavy heart and trudges through the green in search of them.
The first is upside down beside a sidewalk, but her second shoe, it seems, is lost to the depths of space and the sands of time. She cannot find it anywhere. Her face is on the ground and her hips in the air as she struggles to look beneath a bush when the most atrociously red sneakers walk themselves up beside her.
"Don't look up," Nejire tells herself. Repeats it like a mantra. But she knows from the start that it's a losing battle.
Izumi is staring down at her impassively when she inevitably does. "Here," she says and holds out her missing shoe.
Nejire slashes it from her hand and stuffs her foot inside. "Why are you leaving your new bestie behind? You two dweebs were made for eachother." She ignores Izumi's outstretched hand in favor of standing on her own.
Izumi brushes the rejection off. "She admitted to telling Aizawa what happened," she explains, "Even after I asked her to not say anything."
There needs to be an instruction manual on human interaction, because Nejire has no idea how she's meant to proceed. Even less of an idea why Izumi would do that.
"I'm sorry, by the way." This, too, slips from her lips, but she's less regretful for its escape. "I shouldn't have suggested I'd rather take cyanide than accept your help."
Her wife is quiet. "Then why did you?"
"I don't know." Because it's the truth is her first instinct, but she's less and less sure of it with every passing moment. Her second reason—the real reason—is too long to easily explain, not that she would if she could. "Because I hate you," she says, because it's easy.
They arrive at their front door quietly, and they enter just as silently.
"Izumi?" Nejire pauses behind the couch, one hand on her door. Her wife tilts her head up, but does not drive her eyes from the dishes in the sink she'd started on. "Thank you."
Only then does her wife look at her. It feels like it's the first time since the infirmary. "For what?"
"For earlier today." For caring enough about a girl you hate who hates you in return to search high and low for her. For caring enough to stay by her side until she drove you away. "And for yesterday. You got hurt trying to help me even though I was chasing you down to hurt you."
Seemingly unconsciously, Izumi raises a damp hand to touch her formerly bruised cheek. "I'm a hero," she says, at long last, "It's what we do."
On the wall, their score gets a little closer to positive. Not by much, but enough to help.