The mood inside Classroom 1-A lasted exactly until Aizawa opened his mouth the next morning.
Megumi had caught the signs before anyone else did. Aizawa spent the final ten minutes of homeroom clicking through standard school notices with even less energy than usual, which almost always meant something miserable was waiting at the end.
Aizawa snapped his yellow folder shut.
"That's it for administrative notices. One more thing."
The low chatter across the room died instantly.
"There's one week left until your final exams."
The classroom turned ice cold.
Kaminari's shoulders locked up. Mina's grin vanished on the spot.
Aizawa's bloodshot eyes drifted over the desks without a shred of sympathy. "I'm assuming you've all been keeping up with your studies. As you already know, finals aren't just written tests. There's a practical portion as well. Train your minds and bodies at the same time. If you fail either half, you'll be spending your summer training camp in remedial hell."
He tucked the folder under his arm and turned toward the door.
"That's all."
The door slid shut with a soft click.
The silence lasted for about two seconds.
"I'M DEAD!"
Kaminari slammed his forehead straight down onto his desk, hard enough to rattle his pencil case.
"I HAVEN'T TOUCHED A BOOK SINCE MAY!" Mina grabbed the sides of her head, spinning around in her seat with a look of pure panic. "Why didn't anyone warn us?! We had the Sports Festival, internships, villains, rescue drills, and now they just drop finals on our heads?!"
"The exam dates were on the syllabus distributed in April," Yaoyorozu said calmly from the front row.
Mina turned toward her with hollow eyes. "That sounds like something only people who actually study would know."
Kaminari lifted his chin off the wood just enough to groan at the ceiling. "I spent an entire week handing out promotional flyers in the rain for an agency that didn't even want me. I thought that was rock bottom. I didn't know what real suffering felt like."
Jiro leaned back in her chair, twirling one of her jacks around a finger. "You could've cracked open a textbook between shifts."
"My brain was emotionally fried."
"You handed out pieces of paper."
"Wet paper, Jiro."
"Heartbreaking."
Megumi ignored the noise and looked back down at the practice workbook on his desk.
The written portion wasn't what worried him. He had stayed on top of the curriculum before the festival, and even during the nights in Kyoto he had gone over standard formulas after Jin'ichi finished bruising his ribs. There were a couple of classical Japanese passages he needed to reread and some chemical reaction formulas he hadn't memorized, but none of it was unmanageable.
The practical exam was the real question mark.
Aizawa hadn't dropped a single detail about the format, the terrain, or the scoring criteria.
'Which means they're expecting us to guess wrong,' Megumi thought.
"Fushiguro."
Megumi looked up.
Mina was leaning halfway over the aisle, squinting suspiciously at the open page in front of him. "Are you doing practice problems right now?"
"Yeah."
Her eyes narrowed. "Were you doing them before he said anything?"
"Yeah."
"You knew?"
"That finals were in July?" Megumi blinked. "It's on the calendar by the door."
Mina slapped both hands onto her desk. "You're one of them!"
"One of what?"
"The responsible freaks!"
Kaminari snapped upright, pointing an accusing finger across the aisle. "Wait. What did you get on the midterms?"
Megumi hesitated, trying to pull up the exact number.
That hesitation only made Kaminari look more panicked.
"Why'd you pause? Why'd you have to think about it?!"
"I didn't memorize the rank," Megumi said. He reached into the side pocket of his school bag, pulled out a folded slip of paper, and checked the printout. "Fifth."
The immediate area around his desk went completely quiet.
Mina's jaw dropped. Kaminari stared at him like he had just grown a second head. Sero stopped packing his binder, and Jiro turned in her seat to look back at him.
"Fifth?" Kaminari whispered.
"Yeah."
"Fifth out of twenty?"
"That's how numbers work."
Mina covered her mouth in genuine betrayal. "Why are the quiet ones always secretly geniuses?"
"It's easier to study when you aren't yelling every ten seconds," Jiro said.
Kaminari grabbed his hair. "You fight like some kind of feral shadow monster, you fell asleep during literature yesterday, and you're fifth in the class?!"
"I didn't sleep through literature," Megumi muttered.
Jiro raised an eyebrow at him.
Megumi looked right back at her.
"Your eyes were shut for twenty minutes," she said.
"I was listening."
"You didn't write down a single note."
"Mic was reading directly off the handout."
A faint smirk tugged at the corner of Jiro's mouth, but she didn't argue.
Kaminari slumped back over his desk with a muffled groan. "The world is fundamentally unfair."
Two desks down, Mineta puffed his chest out with smug satisfaction. "You shouldn't judge people by appearances, Kaminari. Some of us possess natural academic superiority."
Mina glared at him. "What did you place?"
"Ninth."
Mina froze.
Kaminari slowly dragged his face off the desk again. "Ninth?"
"Top ten," Mineta boasted, resting his chin on folded hands. "Brains and beauty."
"Don't ever say that sentence again," Jiro muttered, looking disgusted.
Kaminari clutched his chest. "People like you are only supposed to be comic relief! What market are you even appealing to?!"
"The world," Mineta replied smoothly.
From the other side of the room, Todoroki slid his notebook into his bag. "As long as you review the core material each night, failing the written exam should be difficult."
Kaminari whipped around. "Read the room before you open your mouth!"
Todoroki blinked once, looking genuinely confused by the hostility.
'He really didn't mean that as an insult,' Megumi thought, shaking his head. 'That makes it ten times worse.'
Before Kaminari could start another dramatic rant about the tragedy of average students, Yaoyorozu stood up from her desk.
"If anyone is having trouble with the written curriculum, I would be more than happy to help host a study group," she offered, clasping her hands together.
Mina and Kaminari turned toward her so fast their uniform jackets snapped.
"YAO-MOMO!"
Yaoyorozu took half a step back, visibly startled by the sheer volume. "I can't offer much insight into the practical exam since the staff hasn't revealed the structure, but we can certainly organize the academic subjects by weakness and review them systematically."
Jiro tilted her head, tapping one of her jacks against her collarbone. "I'm not on the verge of failing like those two, but can I join? Quadratic functions and applied physics have been giving me a headache lately."
Yaoyorozu's eyes lit up. "Of course!"
Sero raised a hand. "Can you save me from classical Japanese?"
"Certainly!"
Ojiro scratched the back of his neck, smiling sheepishly. "I'm a little shaky on modern history if you have room for one more."
"There is plenty of room!" Yaoyorozu looked like she had just been handed the greatest responsibility of her life. Her eyes swept the room and settled directly on Megumi. "Fushiguro."
Megumi saw the question coming before she even spoke.
"You scored fifth overall, correct?"
"Yeah."
"Would you be willing to assist me? With this many subjects, dividing the group would ensure everyone receives proper attention."
Megumi looked at the desperate expressions staring back at him. Kaminari looked like a drowning man grasping for a branch, and Mina had her hands pressed together in a silent prayer.
"No," Megumi said flatly.
Mina's face instantly crumpled.
Megumi looked at Yaoyorozu. "I mean no, I don't mind helping."
Mina gasped, pointing at him furiously. "You did that on purpose!"
"Maybe a little."
A quiet snort came from Jiro's desk. Megumi didn't look over, but he caught the quick shake of her shoulders.
Yaoyorozu clapped her hands together, radiating excitement. "Excellent! With two of us handling explanations, we can rotate subjects far more efficiently. We will hold the session this Saturday at my family's residence. I'll ask Mother to prepare the main study hall."
Kaminari blinked. "The... study hall?"
"Yes."
"Your house has an entire hall just for studying?"
Yaoyorozu tilted her head, looking puzzled. "Doesn't yours?"
Sero slowly leaned toward Ojiro. "I've never felt poorer in my entire life."
"You were broke before she said that," Jiro noted dryly.
"Let me suffer in peace, Jiro."
Yaoyorozu was already tapping away at her phone. "What kind of tea does everyone prefer? We usually keep Wedgwood or Harrods in stock, but I can easily request something else if anyone has dietary restrictions."
Ojiro stared at his desk. "Tea has brands?"
"Don't expose us," Mina whispered loudly.
Megumi rested his cheek against his palm. After spending a week walking through the Zen'in clan's massive wooden compounds and endless courtyards, the concept of a private study hall didn't sound completely foreign, but watching the rest of the class short-circuit over it was entertaining enough.
Kaminari caught Megumi's calm expression and squinted at him. "Why aren't you freaking out? She has a tea budget bigger than my life savings."
"The clan's place had an archive building," Megumi said without thinking.
The area went dead quiet again.
Megumi instantly regretted opening his mouth.
Sero pointed at him with a grin. "Right. I forgot you're basically clan nobility now."
"I'm not nobility."
"Your family owns half of Kyoto."
"That's their money, not mine."
Mina leaned across the aisle again, her eyes narrowing. "Didn't a private town car pick you up at the gate yesterday?"
"Naobito sent it without telling me."
"Still not helping your case, rich boy."
Jiro rested her chin on her knuckles, looking back and forth between Megumi and Yaoyorozu with a faint, amused smirk. "So our tutors are the heiress with a mansion and the guy pretending he's an average commoner while dodging private chauffeurs."
"I take the regular train every single day," Megumi said.
"Very grounded of you."
Megumi looked at her. Her expression didn't give anything away, but her earphone jack was twitching with quiet amusement.
Yaoyorozu, completely oblivious to the banter, looked up from her notes. "Fushiguro, which subjects would you feel most comfortable taking?"
"Math and physics," Megumi replied. "Science is fine too."
Jiro glanced back at him. "You're solid on quadratic equations?"
"Yeah."
"Great!." She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, her cheeks slightly flushed. "I m-mean—good... You know..."
"Yeah, I know..." Megumi said completely confused.
Megumi frowned slightly, watching her retreat. 'What was that about?' he thought, genuinely puzzled by the sudden shift in her demeanor.
...
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