Monday, May 11th
Once on the third floor of the building, she walked towards the end of the hallways.
There she found it.
'Quirk Research Club', said on the door, a cartoony All Might above the letters. She tried not to snort about how dorky it looked and knocked on the door.
Izuku Midoriya; he was the person she was looking for.
She didn't know much about him besides the stuff the blonde electric guy -who she would refer to as Pikachu from now onwards- told her; apparently, he was a first-year in the General Department just like her, but in a different class.
"Anybody there?" She asked when nobody opened the door. "Huh." She twisted the knob, and to her surprise, the door opened with ease. "Okay. Sorry for entering." She pulled it slowly, and then her eyes saw the inside of the room.
Based on what Pikachu said, she expected the place to look like a hero fan club or something, but it surely exceeded her expectations...
It looked exactly as if a hero fanboy just moved all their belongings to the room and decided to live in there.
The left-part of the room was occupied by two shelves full of hero figures and toys, most of them about All Might and a bookcase with what seemed to be a collection of hero-related books and magazines, besides some weird notebooks.
The front part of the room included a little kitchen and next to it a door which seemed to lead to a bathroom.
Just in the middle of the room, there was a little tea table and around it a pair of sofas and chairs.
The wall with the entrance was full of framed pro-heroes' autographs.
And finally, the right part of the club room had a desk with a lot of papers full of small packed writing and kind of cool drawings lying around; and an old PC with a lot of sticky notes on it. Next to it was a blackboard with some schemes and diagrams with info about Pikachu's Quirk.
So yeah, this guy seemed to be the real deal. If someone could direct her, if even a little, about what to do to get stronger it would be this guy.
The only problem was the fact that he wasn't here.
"Where are you?" She looked around, without hiding her curiosity.
In the end, the autograph covered wall won her full attention.
Not surprisingly, All Might's was at the center. What was surprising was the fact this Midoriya guy collected most of the top thirty pro-heroes' autographs. It was completely absurd to think how resourceful someone needed to be to actually pull something like that... Like, did he stalk pro-heroes all the time and everywhere they went until annoying them enough to get their signings? How the hell did he even get Endeavor's? A satanic ritual or something? She had the slight impression that one was rare enough to be worth some millions of yen...
She turned around when she heard some steps getting closer.
Then her eyes went wide open as she caught a bulky blond man with blue eyes and dressed in a USA-colored spandex uniform going into the room, his smile and peculiar haircut hard not to recognize.
She almost yelled at actually meeting All Might for the first time since starting going to UA, when she noticed how stiff he seemed.
It was just a real-sized cardboard All Might being pushed into the club room by a smaller figure hidden behind it.
She just observed while the new person got the damned thing inside without noticing her presence.
He was kind of small for a boy. Not too much, but still about 10 centimeters smaller than her. Greenish black (or was it blackish-green?) disheveled hair and huge red shoes on his feet that contrasted heavily with his baggy, but in-norm school uniform.
He put the fake All Might at the center of the room and back-pedaled a bit to watch it better.
"...Where should I put you?" He murmured, still not noticing Hitomi even when she was about a meter to his left.
"Wherever you put it, it's going to be disturbing, anyway." She answered the question fully knowing the guy would freak out. Maybe she was a bit pissed off about not being noticed.
He didn't disappoint. The moment her voice registered to him, he jumped sideways and crashed against the bookshelves, most of the books falling on him.
Again, she tried not to snort and just stared while the poor guy tried in a panic to take off the notebooks on him.
"Hey, calm down. Don't go and die on me." She walked calmly towards the guy and took a book from his head finally being able to see his face.
Her dark eyes meeting his green ones. His face was kind of childish with his cheeks full of freckles... The word 'cute' came to her mind and she crushed the thought as fast as she could.
She moved her hand towards him, intending to help him stand up when the boy finally seemed to process the situation and went stiff, and panic appeared in his eyes again... Or was it fear...?
The boy didn't take her hand. Instead, he stared at her worriedly, as if he feared she would do something awful to him. That was enough for her to lose her good mood and feel her gut clench.
She really couldn't even remember how many times other people had looked at her with that same kind of expression... And as indifferent as she normally acted, deep inside she still wasn't completely used to it.
Even now it hurt.
"Hey, I don't bite," she said with a smirk devoid of humor, avoiding his gaze and trying to sound unaffected. Even though she just wanted to walk away of that damn awkward situation.
Then just a moment before she finally gave up, the shy boy finally took her hand.
At that moment, their eyes crossed again, and she almost dropped him in the middle of pulling him up.
Those stupid big green eyes, they looked ridiculously expressive and full of kindness up close. The worry was still in them, but its focus seemed to have shifted somehow. Like he wasn't worried for himself anymore... But for her.
The pink that covered the boy's cheeks wasn't helping her to keep on with the neutral mask.
"Thought you were going to leave me standing here with my hand extended like an idiot." She commented while openly staring at the guy, following each of his movements, knowing fully well she was getting him nervous. She was just slightly curious about the boy's whole behavior.
"S-Sorry!" Midoriya bowed, red-faced and panicked. Exactly the reaction she expected.
The guy was a complete sack of nerves, that was obvious. But there was something else;
something off about him...
"It was my fault, so no need to apologize," she said, only receiving another 'sorry', to her amusement.
"I s-should pick these up," he said in a low voice while trying to avoid her eyes.
It wasn't the first time someone did that around her either. She remembered some idiots that believed she could control them just by looking at their eyes. It would be awesome for her Quirk to be that OP, sadly it wasn't the case.
However, something she found curious and unusual, was that instead of avoiding her eyes like the plague, Midoriya was trying to watch her furtively while picking up the books from the floor, stopping himself and looking somewhere else every time he noticed her staring back.
She snorted with amusement and moved towards him, then crouched, trying to ignore the fact she was using a skirt and picked up a book from the floor.
'Hero Analysis for the Future N°6', it said on the cover. She lifted an eyebrow, that was a curious title. And there were a lot of other similar notebooks sprawled on the floor...
Midoriya stiffened, noticing her at his side, and after a second, he slowly lifted his head to look at her.
"Where?" She asked calmly.
He blinked and after another moment extended his arm and pointed towards the upper part of the bookcase.
"T-There." She nodded, stood up and put the book in its place. Then crouched again and continued helping the trembling and nervous green-haired boy.
It was amusing... Truly amusing.
Because now she was finally starting to get it.
The guy wasn't scared of her... Well, he was, but not really.
He was nervous. But it wasn't the usual 'this weird, scary girl is going to snap at me and hurt me' kind of nervous.
He was nervous about her closeness because she was a girl.
This was probably the first time she caused such a reaction to a boy... And she was kind of enjoying it.
Hitomi: You are absurdly good at doing Quirk's analysis.
Izuku: I-I'm just a good observer.
Hitomi: Enough to guess my body measurements?
Next chapter: Quirk Assessment - Part 1 - Izuku will make an analysis.
Izuku: Wha-...?! I'm not g-going to answer that q-question.
Hitomi: He, you already did.
