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He ended up letting Ochaco down.
Mina and Yuga had caught them by complete surprise. The two of them had expected that their classmates to come barging through the opening, but only Yuga had done so. Whilst waiting on their attack, Akuriru had his back turned when Yuga slid past the entrance and shot his naval laser straight towards them.
If Ochaco hadn’t launched herself at him, he would have been caught by the blast, something Yuga was lectured about afterwards, but that left them on the exact spot Mina needed them to be.
Ochaco had already lost her concentration on their target, causing it to fall at the exact same time Mina melted the floor beneath them. Needless to say, Mina and Yuga would have won if it wasn’t for the object ‘exploding’ once it hit the ground. The exercise ended with both teams failing.
Ochaco had been nice enough to try and encourage him by saying they would do better the next time, but Akuriru had only ended up apologising to the point Katsuki had snapped and yelled at him to not be a Deku-copy.
“One damn nerd is enough,” Katsuki had said, which earned a few negative responses from their classmates. Akuriru tried apologising to Katsuki for his comment, but Momo stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
The rest of their day’s classes had been pretty average, English, math, and a couple of other basics. Akuriru hadn’t concentrated in those classes as much as he should have, not with the stiff pain in his back from when he fell from the floor above. Mina had apologised for possibly hurting him. Her expression was so sincere that he couldn’t bring himself to tell her the truth over how much it had hurt, so he tried his best to reassure her that he barely even felt anything. Ochaco knew he was lying but didn’t say anything either.
When their classes ended for the day, most of their classmates had insisted on staying behind until Izuku got out of the nurse’s office. In all honesty, Akuriru wanted to head straight home, but before he knew it, he had been patiently sitting in his seat, waiting on Izuku’s return just like the others.
The class door slid open, and the class held their breath. The moment Izuku slid the door to the side, Eijiro nearly tackled him back out of the room. Denki and Tenya were right beside him, all three of them going all out on their compliments. Akuriru would have felt sympathy for Izuku about being overwhelmed by their classmates, if he didn’t feel some form of envy over how everyone was doting over the other boy.
Maybe that was why Katsuki was so against Izuku. From what he could gather, the two had attended the same middle school. Maybe Izuku had been more popular than Katsuki, and that was why Katsuki disliked him so much. It was hard to imagine, given their personalities, but with the way things sometimes worked in the world, it wasn’t all that impossible.
When Izuku finally had a chance to breathe, he asked where Katsuki was, and the moment he was told the other had already left, he went sprinting after him. Maybe Akuriru was wrong about them. Maybe the two of them had been good friends at one point. The rest of their class seemed equally, if not more, confused.
For some reason Akuriru found himself smiling softly as he got up and gathered his things, bidding a swift farewell to his cousin with the promise of seeing her again the next morning. With a wave to the rest of the class, Akuriru followed the path Izuku and Katsuki had taken to the front gate.
He had expected to see Izuku’s back, but to see Katsuki still standing there with All Might’s hands on his shoulders, Akuriru froze, feeling like he was intruding on a moment. It didn’t last long.
Katsuki snapped something at Izuku and All Might, the pro hero no student would dare snap at, before storming off on his own, trying to keep his confidence in check. Deciding that it was now or never, Akuriru walked to the gate, thanking All Might for their class exercise, and wishing Izuku luck for the future in the process.
A second later, he left the school.
Published by Fang Wolfsbane
2 years ago 
