Controlee

58. An All-Important Headcount

Rule 36: Never give up.

Otsuka was awake when the door into the girls' room slowly slid open. She'd started off trying to sleep without her cuff on and promptly given up— time between anxiety waves was definitely shorter at night than during the day— but even with the cuff in place, she couldn't sleep.

So when the door opened, she frowned and sat up. Jirou shifted, her sleep disturbed by the light streaming in. Since Otsuka was already awake, she stood to her feet, waiting for the momentary dizziness that came with standing up after lying in bed for so long to pass before heading over to the door. The doorway seemed empty, but-

"Trouble sleeping?"

Aizawa was lucky she didn't A) scream, waking up all the girls or B) hit him, hard. "Are you trying to scare the life out of me?" she whisper-yelled, stepping through the door and carefully sliding it closed behind her. If she hadn't been cuffing her quirk, she might've known he was there, he wouldn't have scared her.

"Feel like playing poker again?" he asked, completely ignoring her words.

It didn't sound like a bad idea honestly, and she definitely had fun last night. And she slept better after the game last night too. She wondered if this was going to become a regular thing until the training camp was over. She'd have to start getting sneaky with her techniques if she was going to be doing this for the rest of the week. "Anyone in particular I'm targeting tonight?"

So it seemed like poker each night was going to become a habit. Unfortunately, once Otsuka (though with help from some smart tactics, nobody would necessarily think she'd done it on purpose) had drained Tiger (and nobody else) dry and everyone else was ready to get to bed, it seemed like Aizawa walking her back was also becoming habit. And with that, came the question of why her eyes had been so red earlier, again.

"I swear, I don't normally cry this much."

"There's nothing wrong with tears, Otsuka," Aizawa responded so quickly he had to be used to hearing kids say tears were bad, a sign of weakness.

"No, I know. But they don't really-" She shook her head. "I told a joke," she explained so she didn't have to finish whatever she'd been trying to say before, hoping Aizawa wouldn't ask her what the joke was. That could be awkward, "one Matsui really loved, and then all the other girls started saying it too-" Just thinking back on it simultaneously pulled a smile across her cheeks and made her throat tight- "and there's fourteen of us in there and I just felt like, suddenly, they were really with me. Does that make any sense?"

Aizawa shrugged. "Vaguely."

He had to think she was so weird, smiling about something that had made her cry. Since the attack on the school, she wasn't sure she'd been able to think of Matsui and feel anything but hurt. But earlier, that stupid joke, suddenly it hadn't just been hurt, it had been the happiness at the memory. She couldn't hear him saying the words in her head without also seeing the cheeky grin across his face. Then, when the others joined in-

Matsui was gone and yet he'd managed to bring together a group of girls— some of whom he'd never even met. He'd given them a bond, a connection, something to tie them all together. He managed to make them all laugh.

It was still a bitter kind of sweet to think of him, but she hopes someday the sweet would win out. Matsui would've liked that.

"Once you've figured out how to do that thing with your quirk, your aim is to make it so you can sense what's around you, right?"