The classroom exhales.
Bags zip. Phones appear from pockets immediately, checked as if the world might have changed in the last fifty minutes. Chairs scrape.
"Does anyone want to go to —" Ashido starts.
"No," say approximately four people simultaneously.
She looks around at them. "I haven't said where yet."
"Doesn't matter," Kaminari says, slumping forward onto his desk. "I need to be horizontal. Specifically, and immediately."
"Same," Sero says.
"I could eat," Kirishima says.
"You can always eat," Ashido tells him.
"That's not a no."
Uraraka laughs and slings her bag over her shoulder. "I'm going home. I want a bath, food and approximately ten hours of sleep in that order."
"That's fair," Tsuyu says. "Ribbit."
A hand lands on Ashido's shoulder.
She startles, then twists around and finds Ayaka there, as if she's always been.
"I'll join you. Izumi has his meeting, and I'm not tired."
Ashido's eyes light up instantly. "Oh, perfect. Let's go, then."
Ayaka turns her head back toward Momo. "Momo, come with us."
She pauses and glances back at Ashido. "Where are we going?"
"There's a café outside the main gate," Ashido says, already moving. "They've got insane desserts. Like, actually dangerous levels of sugar."
Ayaka nods once, satisfied. She looks back at Momo. "We're going there."
She doesn't wait for confirmation. Instead, she turns slightly, gaze shifting past Momo to Izumi, standing with his bag over one shoulder.
"Come by when you're done," she says. "If you're not too late."
"I will," Izumi says.
Ayaka hums in approval and turns back toward the others.
The class begins filtering out soon after, conversations breaking apart into smaller groups as chairs scrape back and bags are lifted from hooks and desks.
Some discussions continue straight into the hallway.
Others dissolve halfway to the door.
Bakugo is already moving before most people have even stood properly.
As he heads toward the exit—
Iida steps forward slightly.
"Bakugo—"
No response.
"Regarding your conduct earlier, I strongly believe—"
Bakugo walks straight past him without even slowing down.
Iida turns sharply, following him with rigid disbelief.
"At the very least, you should acknowledge when someone is addressing—"
Too late.
Bakugo disappears into the hallway without looking back once.
Iida slowly lowers the hand he had half-raised.
"…Uncooperative as ever…"
Nearby, Kirishima rubs the back of his neck awkwardly.
"He's kinda got a lot going on right now, man."
"That does not excuse improper behaviour," Iida replies immediately, though with noticeably less force than usual.
Izumi says his goodbyes to a few classmates near the back of the room, waits until Ayaka and Yaoyorozu leave with Ashido and Uraraka still talking animatedly about something, then finally heads toward the door himself.
Just before he steps into the corridor—
"Izumi."
He pauses and glances back.
Iida approaches him near the doorway, posture straight as always.
"…While I cannot condone your actions earlier," he says carefully.
A brief pause follows.
"…You are still my classmate."
Izumi watches him quietly as Iida adjusts his glasses.
"And as class representative candidate—" he stops himself for a second, frowning faintly. "—or rather, as someone attempting to maintain proper order within the class, it is my responsibility to help guide my peers toward appropriate conduct."
Another small pause.
"The faculty offices are down that corridor," he says, gesturing sharply. "Then to the right."
Izumi glances in the direction indicated before looking back at him.
"…Thanks."
Iida nods once.
"Do attempt to conduct yourself more appropriately moving forward."
A beat passes before he adds:
"You represent our class."
That earns a small smile from Izumi.
"I'll keep that in mind."
Then he steps past him into the corridor.
Iida watches him leave for a moment longer than necessary.
"…He is very difficult to categorise…"
"Who?" Kaminari asks while passing by with Sero.
Iida remains silent for a second.
"…Adachi."
Kaminari immediately grimaces.
"Yeah, no kidding."
***
The corridor is still busy.
The end-of-day crowd moves through the halls in loose currents of conversation and footsteps, students lingering near classroom doors or drifting toward stairwells without much urgency now that the final bell has already rung.
Voices overlap across the floor.
Laughter echoes somewhere farther down the hall.
Izumi moves through it calmly, one hand in his pocket, bag resting against his shoulder as he makes his way to the faculty wing.
Around him, without him looking for it, attention finds him the way it tends to.
"—wait, who is tha—"
"From the entrance exam, wasn't he? I saw him outside the gates —"
"No way, I would remember —"
A pair of students glance at him as he passes, their conversation dipping for just a second too long. Another group shifts slightly, making space without realising why.
A girl from another course starts toward him from the side, determination written clearly across her face, but a group of upperclassmen move through the corridor in a loose formation that takes up more space than they probably intend to, and by the time the gap closes, she is several people behind him.
Izumi turns a corner.
The corridor thins. Fewer students. Longer stretches of empty floor. The kind of space of a building that people are heading away from rather than toward.
Up ahead, three figures stand near a classroom door, bags on their shoulders, mid-conversation.
He recognises them in passing.
The tallest one has broad shoulders and a smile that sits on his face like it belongs there permanently.
Beside him, a girl with long blue hair who orbits everything around her with the restless energy of someone who finds most things genuinely interesting, currently directing most of that energy at the third member of the group.
The third stands slightly behind them.
Hands tucked in his pockets and a slight forward curve to his shoulders, quieter than the other two in the way that makes you look twice after you've already looked away.
The blue-haired girl buzzes around him, saying something rapidly. He gets visibly quieter with each sentence, which appears to be having no effect on her frequency as the bright tall one laughs at their gimmick.
Izumi passes them without slowing.
At the end of the corridor, a sign mounted above the entrance reads:
[Faculty and Administrative Wing]
He walks through, pushing the door open.
***
The teachers' wing is a different kind of quiet.
The noise drops away the moment the door closes behind him. The air is slightly stiller in here, the lighting warmer, the ceiling a degree lower.
A row of noticeboards lines the left wall, covered in schedules, faculty memos, and a printed map of the building with several rooms circled in red pen.
A water dispenser hums faintly near the far end. Somewhere down the corridor, a printer produces one slow page at a time in deliberate intervals.
On a small table near the entrance, a vase with two slightly wilting flowers that someone placed there recently enough that they haven't fully given up yet.
And coming toward him is Midnight, from the far end of the corridor.
She's not in her costume.
A dark jacket over a deep burgundy top, hair loose around her shoulders. Without the costume, the effect is different.
The theatrical energy she carries so naturally in a room is quieter here, more contained and less deliberate.
She looks like someone else entirely. Someone who simply happened to work in a school.
Then she sees him, and the familiar energy shifts back in place.
"Well, well," she says lightly.
A slow smile curves onto her lips. "If it isn't the first-year responsible for half the property damage reports we've received today."
"…I think Todoroki contributed to that too," Izumi replies.
She laughs briefly. "That is not the defence you think it is."
There's clear amusement in her voice, though.
"You and your sister are living up to Aoi's bragging."
Izumi smiles faintly.
She steps up beside him, one hand landing on his shoulder, the other pointing down the corridor.
"Down here, second left, long corridor, third door on the right. There'll be a nameplate on the door." She glances sideways at him. "He's expecting you."
"Thank you."
She pats his shoulder twice. "We'll be watching your career with great interest, Adachi."
She turns toward the exit, then pauses at the doorframe, one hand resting against the frame.
"Oh," she adds, without looking back. "Your scowling friend is already there."
Izumi turns slightly toward her. "Thank you for that as well."
She waves a hand lazily without turning around.
"Tell Aoi I said hi."
The door opens. The door closes.
Izumi continues down the corridor.
Further along, two teachers stand in a doorway finishing a conversation, one of them mid-sentence: "— if the second-year results hold through the next assessment, then we revisit the allocation, but until then the numbers don't justify —"
One of them glances toward Izumi as he passes, but continues his conversation.
Another corridor. The flooring changes subtly. The windows sit lower in the walls, letting in more direct light.
Third door on the right. Bakugo, already there.
He stands leaning against the wall opposite the door, arms folded, bandaged hands tucked at his sides. He notices Izumi approaching without appearing to look up, and then looks up anyway, because there is no point pretending.
"Took you long enough," he says.
Izumi stops in front of the door and checks his watch briefly.
"You're early," he says.
Bakugo's jaw tightens, irritation rising fast—
"Bast—"
Izumi knocks, cutting him off.
Bakugo goes still. The irritation instinctively settles as if his body remembered something. He straightens slightly and faces forward, arms still folded, jaw set back to its default.
A pause.
Then the door opens.
All Might fills the doorway.
Not just physically, though there is that too, the sheer breadth of him, the height of him, but his quality of presence that seems to adjust the space around him without effort.
He is in a fitted dark navy suit without a tie.
He looks at both of them in turn, and something in his expression settles into warmth.
"Come in," he says, stepping back.
They walk through the door.
It closes behind them.