Chapter 22: Cleaning the Slate...?

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Okay, this wasn't good.

That's what Kaoroku Awata thought as she looked over the paperwork in front of her. She'd worked at the Nighteye Private Investigation Office for three years now, and in that time, she'd encountered many a terrible discovery. Cheating spouses, illicit yakuza fronts, missing persons — the lot!

But this... No matter how minor it appeared in comparison, this was hitting her harder than any of those other cases ever had.

And she was pretty sure it was because of the familiar name at the top of that file.

The door suddenly flew open and she just about tore out of her skin in panic.

"Awata-san!" Midoriya shouted.

She managed to (just barely) crawl back into her body when she saw who it was, but she was still completely on edge.

"Jeez Midoriya! What are you doing here?"

He tilted his head, "You told me that you had a break in the case and to come over."

"I told you to come over when you could, not right this second," she breathed, "Don't you have finals this week?"

"That's why I thought now would be a good time! No interruptions from Mirio-senpai," Midoriya explained as he crossed the room and pulled up a seat next to her, "So what'd you find?"

Awata decided not to argue with him any further. It was sound enough logic. So she just sighed and opened up the folder to present.

"Now it might be nothing. It's probably nothing!" she prefaced as she saw saw the young intern's eyes dart across the page hungrily, "I really don't want to jump to conclusions—"

"—Woah."

Their eyes met, Midoriya's wide, Awata's knowing. But both filled to the brim with concern.

"This is... Wow." Midoriya breathed, sinking back in his chair.

"I know."

"You don't think—?"

"—I hope not," her brows furrowed, confidence far from steel, "...do you?"

Midoriya frowned and looked back over the folder, flipping through pages as quick yet thorough as he could to try and get a full picture. Or at least a fuller picture. He wasn't sure that any amount of pages would make this all make sense to him. But the further he read and the deeper the rap sheets dove, he knew one thing.

"No. There's no way. Senpai might be hiding some things, but I think she's still a good person at heart," he answered, tossing the folder back onto the table, "Whatever we went into this looking to find, whatever we think she could be doing behind Mirio-senpai's back, it's not this."

"But she is friends with the guy, right? That—uh," she glanced back down at the file for the name she was trying to remember, "Tomura Shigaraki?"

"Yeah. That's how he was introduced to all of us at least."

"So then that means..."

Midoriya nodded.

"She doesn't know."

The office went dead silent as the weight of that realization settled over them. They'd gone into this expecting to find nothing more then nothing, ideally. A stupid misunderstanding by two overly-concerned, trigger happy coworkers. At worst they'd expected to find out that Mirio's girlfriend was being unfaithful or was involved in some JK business — which still wouldn't have been good of course, but at least it would've been... manageable?

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