Worthless Necessity [HitoZuku]

Chapter 166 - Digging shallow holes

"Wake up." Shinsou poked Midoriya in the shoulder, "Come on, Zuku, we're going to be late."

The greenette let out a whine, shoving his face into the pillow as he pulled his hood over his head, before kicking the blanket away. Reiko let out a small purr, before she shuffled closer to Midoriya, huddling down by his neck. Ryuto just blinked, slightly confused, before he hopped over to the feline's side, resting his beak on top of Reiko's head sleepily, chirping out a good morning.

Midoriya groaned. His head was throbbing like someone had just smacked him several times with a sledgehammer, with nausea bubbling from the back of his throat every time a bit of light entered his pupils. He felt absolutely terrible, and along with a dry, sore throat from continuously puking the previous day, Midoriya really wished he could just sleep and ignore the world around him.

Shinsou frowned slightly at Midoriya's off behavior, before he reached out, gently slipping his hand between the pillow and Midoriya's forehead, "Are you sick? You're... really warm..."

"I'm not sick." Midoriya murmured, turning around to flop onto his back, using his arm to cover his eyes, "Just want to sleep..."

"Maybe you still don't feel well from yesterday... You did throw up quite a bit... even if you were insistent on eating dinner at the end of the day." Shinsou muttered, "Do you want to skip lessons today? I'm sure Dad would be willing to give you an extra day to rest and relax."

"I'm fine..." Midoriya vehemently whined, doing his best to push his nausea down, before he pushed himself up, rubbing his eyes. His stomach was churning, his head was pounding, and Midoriya just sighed, before he forced himself up, and headed to the bathroom so that he could brush his teeth and change.

Today was going to be a terrible day.

-----------------------

Midoriya just stared at the big fat zero messily scrawled onto his test paper in prominent red ink, anxiety bubbling up inside him, his stomach churning like the waves on a stormy day. He's never failed a test before, let alone get a zero before. He was positive that he knew all his stuff... how on earth could he have failed?

The green haired boy frantically flipped through his paper, trying to figure out just what he had done to fail. It wasn't multiple choice or short answer questions, where he might have filled in answers to the wrong question while transferring it, and Midoriya was very, very sure that he knew how to do all the questions.

He's gone through text books about these topics in the library, watched videos, and even did online courses about these math topics; he was confident that he knew exactly what he was doing. Maybe he could have made careless mistakes here and there, since the test was short, but he probably could have gotten a few marks for every question for using the correct method.

He flipped through the pages, not seeing a single red mark being made on his paper, before he reached the last page of his test paper.

There, scrawled in messy, red handwriting, read "Cheater".

Midoriya's heart sank. He couldn't afford to fail any subject. Even if the teachers disliked him for being quirkless, they were still rather fair while grading him for his academics. Sure, when he was younger, he might have been penalized here and there for supposedly "cheating" during tests and exams, but the teachers had never given him a complete zero before, only penalizing him enough so that he barely passed the course.

Midoriya immediately stood up, picking up his paper, and walked towards the teacher's table. This had to be a mistake. There was no way he could have cheated... this had to be some sort of misunderstanding.