This Time

Chapter 5

I leaned heavy against the wall, feeling the rough brick scrape against my back and focusing on letting the cool breeze and the sound of late summer leaves rustling relax my body. It felt surreal to finally be on Yūei's grounds, and as I leaned my head back to look up at the tall building I couldn't help but feel incredibly small.

Helps me get into character, I guess, I thought to myself.

The entrance exam had been pretty much what I'd expected - a test of quirk strength and strategy - and I hadn't found it too difficult. It was meant for children, after all. Despite that, I was shocked by the two potential students who had finished first and second. These kids had some serious power. Honestly, none of the kids in the recommendation exam were to be taken lightly - there was some real potential here, and that made my job all the more difficult.

No one had questioned me, and I deliberately had tried to fly under the radar. I made sure I did well enough to get in, but not so much that I drew attention to myself - not yet, anyway. The few people I did speak to seemed none the wiser to the fact I wasn't just a regular teenage applicant.

I hadn't seen All Might anywhere, but I wasn't too surprised by that considering he told me the news hadn't been released yet. The voice hero, Present Mic has been the only Yūei teacher to address the congregation, and man did that guy enjoy his job. From my understanding of it, the teachers were all professional heroes here, and it made me wonder how they got any actual hero work done if they were in a classroom all day.

Leaning around the corner of the building, I looked across the school entrance and observed the second wave of students coming up the walkway. This next group would be the students coming in for the regular entrance exams, and I observed for a bit to see if any of them stood out in particular. It was too bad I wouldn't be able to see any of them in action like I did with my fellow test-takers earlier, but there were a lot more of these kids - it would have been impossible to survey them all anyway. Besides, only a fraction of the teenagers making there way inside would get accepted anyway. They all looked so small and clumsy to me, and it was hard to picture some of them as the next generation of heroes. I chuckled as a small green-haired boy tripped over his own feet and was saved from eating dirt by a brunette girl's quirk. It was the awkwardness of the teens that amused me the most - I remembered what it had felt like, and having to force myself to regress back to acting like that was going to be interesting for sure. Maybe I might even manage to have some fun with the situation I'd put myself in.

I glanced down at my phone and frowned when I still didn't see any text notifications. He's probably busy, I though while trying not to be sour. To be fair, I hadn't texted him either, but I had kind of thought All Might would check in to see how things went. I hadn't seen him for over a week, and I was interested to find that I missed him. He was a nice guy, sure, but I hadn't realized we'd become close enough over the past ten months for me to miss his presence like I did now. At some point between meetings, "bumping into each other" on nighttime patrols, coffee runs, and walking down the street together as we enjoyed our drinks we'd become friends - or at least I considered him one. He was the number one hero after all; I might be a little presumptuous to think he thought of me the same.

On my way home I couldn't help but stop in and grab a coffee from Mr. Tanaka's shop. All Might wasn't there, of course, but again I found myself wishing he was. The realization that I was just feeling lonely was a bit sad, and I felt all the more pitiful for the fact that I didn't really want to see anyone else either. Was I really still just start struck after all these months?

Arriving back at my shabby apartment I pulled out my laptop and set to finishing up with my latest gig. The nerves in my stomach lately had been a mix over stress about my mission at Yūei, and nerves over how I was going to keep paying my bills once I was "in school" and unable to work. I wasn't getting paid for this, after all. All Might had asked me once, earlier on only a couple of months after we'd met and made our agreement.