Chapter 5:

Ten Months Is Not Enough

My Hero Academia: Izuku's Ninth Ledger

Training log updated.

Take a breath. The next test is already starting.

✦

The paramedic released me with painkillers, a concussion warning, and the expression of a man who wanted to argue with a teenager but had already lost to paperwork.

"If you vomit, black out, or the rib pain gets worse, hospital," he said.

"Yes, sir."

"That means tonight. Not after school tomorrow. Not after you sleep it off."

I nodded because saying I understood would have been risky. Understanding was exactly the problem.

We need to talk had not been a threat when All Might said it.

It still sat in my stomach like one.

Across the street, Bakugo shoved a blanket off his shoulders for the third time. His mother held him by the back of the collar with one hand and argued with a police officer with the other. His father stood close enough to catch him if his knees gave out and far enough away to pretend he was not doing it.

Bakugo caught me looking.

His face twisted before words could form. Anger, humiliation, smoke-stung eyes, and something smaller underneath that he would rather burn the street down than name.

He did not thank me.

Better that way.

If Katsuki Bakugo had thanked me in front of cameras, I would have worried the sludge villain had done lasting damage.

He looked away first. Not gently. Never gently. More like he was tearing his attention loose before anyone saw where it had stuck.

Then his mother hauled him toward the waiting officers, and the crowd swallowed the gap between us.

All Might stood at the center of that crowd and looked impossible.

Cameras found him. Children cried his name. Adults laughed too loudly because terror needed somewhere to go once it was over. He raised one hand, grinned, and gave them the symbol they had paid for with their fear.

Only the tremor in his fingers betrayed him.

Only if you knew to look.

I knew.

He finished with the police, bowed his head to a rescue worker, gave three sentences to a camera crew without saying anything useful, and still managed to make everyone feel safer for hearing them.

Then he turned those bright public eyes toward me.

"Young Midoriya," he said, large enough for the nearest people to hear. "A word, if your medical team permits it."

The paramedic looked from him to me and aged ten years in one breath.

"Five minutes," he said. "No heroics."

All Might put a hand over his heart. "On my honor."

The paramedic did not look reassured.

I followed All Might because the alternative was pretending my legs had any vote in the matter.

He led me away from the broken street, past a line of police tape, and into a service alley that smelled like wet cardboard and old frying oil. The noise from the crowd dulled behind the buildings. His shadow stretched over cracked concrete.

For the public, he was still All Might.

For me, the costume looked too large around the ribs.

He stopped where the alley bent out of sight.

The grin faded.

"Why did you run in?"

The question hit harder than praise would have.

I had expected anger. Maybe concern. Maybe a lecture about civilian interference delivered by the most famous civilian-interference success story in Japan.

Why was worse.

"Bakugo was dying," I said.

"That is what everyone saw."

His voice had lost the stage. Rougher. Lower. Tired in places television never reached.

"I am asking what you saw."

My hands wanted to move. Count angles. Reach for the missing notebook. Hide the shake in my fingers by making it look like analysis.

I made them stay at my sides.

"Heroes stuck behind their own good choices," I said. "Death Arms could not grab him without crushing him. Kamui Woods had branches, but the fire risk kept changing every time Kacchan blasted. Mt. Lady could not fit. The crowd was too close. The canisters were not a solution. Just a reaction he would hate."

I heard the report forming and hated it.

"And you knew all of that while injured?"

"Some of it. Some I guessed."

His eyes narrowed.

I forced the next words out before they became polished.

"Mostly I saw him disappear. Then I moved. The rest happened badly."

The alley held quiet for a moment.

All Might let out a breath that almost became a laugh and failed on the way.

"Badly is a generous description."

"I missed the throw."

"You were struck by a villain."

"Also true."

"You ignored police instruction."

"I know."

"You nearly became a second hostage."

My mouth opened.

Nothing useful came out.

That seemed to satisfy him more than any answer would have.

"Young Midoriya, I owe you an apology."

My head snapped up. The movement made my ribs complain.

"No, you do not."

"I do."

He looked toward the slice of street visible past the alley mouth. For one second, the noise outside painted his face blue and red with police lights.

"On the rooftop, I told you the truth too narrowly. I gave you the answer a frightened professional gives when he sees a young person standing near a cliff."

"I was standing near a cliff."

"You were."

He did not soften it. That helped.

"You said courage alone becomes a corpse," I said.

"It can."

"You were not wrong."

"No. But a hero cannot stop at identifying what kills people."

The words sounded as if they had been waiting in him longer than this conversation.

"If all we do is name danger, we become spectators with better vocabulary."

That landed in my chest and stayed there.

He stepped closer, then stopped when I shifted without meaning to. Not away from fear. Away from pain. He noticed. Of course he did.

"You moved twice today," he said. "Once when you were the target. Once when someone else was."

"I did not win either time."

"That is part of why I am still here."

I stared at him.

All Might's smile tried to return. It did not make it all the way.

"If you believed you had saved the day, this conversation would be finished."

"I created an opening."

"You created part of one."

"Kacchan made it bigger."

He gave one short nod.

"The city worker gave me the right canister."

Another nod.

"The other heroes kept people from getting hurt."

"They did."

"You ended it."

"I did."

The admission did not sound proud.

The Ledger flickered once at the edge of my vision.

[Candidate Pattern Detected]

The words vanished before I could focus on them.

All Might saw my breath catch.

"Pain?"

"Some."

"Dizziness?"

"Less than before."

"That is not an answer I enjoy."

"It is the accurate one."

"Accuracy is useful. It is not permission."

There. The mentor voice. Not clean. Not kind in the easy way. Better.

He folded his arms, and the costume pulled wrong across his side.

"I am considering training you."

The alley tilted.

My fingers curled hard enough for my nails to bite skin.

Do not lunge. Do not cry. Do not say One For All. Do not turn the most important sentence of Izuku Midoriya's life into proof that you came with cheat notes.

"Considering," I repeated.

"Not offering."

The correction steadied me.

"Okay."

His eyebrows rose.

"Most people would argue with that distinction."

"Most people did not almost get used as villain paste twice in one day."

The smallest corner of his mouth moved.

Then it disappeared.

"If this continues, there will be conditions. The first is medical honesty. You report injuries. You stop when told. You do not turn pain into evidence that you are serious."

I thought of the paramedic's warning. Of Inko's face at breakfast. Of the way my body kept sending bills my ambition wanted to ignore.

"My mother needs to know enough," I said.

All Might blinked.

The words had surprised me too.

"Not everything," I added quickly. "I know there are secrets. Yours. Mine, maybe. But she cannot just watch bruises happen and be told to trust me."

His expression changed. Guilt moved through it, fast and ugly.

"No," he said. "She cannot."

Outside, someone cheered again. The sound did not belong in the alley.

"Second condition," he continued. "You remain a student. School, applications, paperwork, sleep, meals. Hero work without structure becomes a young person's funeral dressed as ambition."

My throat went tight.

"That sounds like experience."

"It is."

He did not explain. I did not ask.

"Third: no unsupervised heroics. If danger appears, you call professionals first unless seconds make that impossible."

I almost laughed.

He noticed that too.

"You disagree."

"I think the impossible-seconds part is going to become a problem."

"Then we will define it until it stops being an excuse."

That felt unfair.

It also felt like training.

"What is the test?" I asked.

"You assume there is one."

"You said considering. Conditions need a gate."

His gaze sharpened, and I knew I had gone too clean again.

I looked down at my shoes. One lace was gone. The left toe was dark with something that might have been street water and might have been blood.

"Sorry," I said. "I mean... I need to know what not failing looks like."

The sharpness eased.

"Ten months," he said.

My pulse jumped even though I had known the number.

"Until the U.A. entrance exam."

"Yes."

"Ten months is not enough."

He nodded once.

"No, it is not."

The honesty should have hurt. It did. It also kept the ground under my feet.

"Ten months will not make you a professional combatant," he said. "It will not erase eighteen years of disadvantage. It will not make your bones forgiving. It may not be enough at all."

He let that sit.

He made me stand inside it without rescue.

"But it may be enough to prepare a vessel."

The word went through me like electricity.

Izuku inside me leaned toward it with both hands. The rest of me locked every door in my face.

"A vessel for what?" I asked.

All Might looked up toward the thin strip of sky between the buildings.

"A secret that cannot be placed in frightened hands, guilty hands, or hands that only want a miracle."

I swallowed.

"Are mine any of those?"

"Yes."

The answer landed clean.

My face must have shown something, because his expression softened without becoming gentle.

"At least today. You are frightened. I am guilty. And any young man told there may be a path where there was none will reach for the miracle first. That is not a moral failure. It is why I cannot give it to you tonight."

I breathed in.

Out.

The ribs hated both.

"Then test me."

"Tomorrow morning. Five o'clock. Dagobah Municipal Beach Park."

The name still hit the center of my chest.

Trash mountains. Rusted appliances. Sand. Ten months of work that had looked inspiring from outside and brutal from anywhere close to honest.

"Come dressed to work," he said. "Old clothes. Gloves if you have them. Water. No costume. No notebook performance."

"No notebook?"

"Bring one. Do not hide in it."

Probably fair. Annoyingly precise, but fair.

"What happens tomorrow?"

"We see how you listen when your body wants to prove your heart is louder."

The line almost sounded like a slogan. Then he coughed into his fist, turned away from the street, and for a moment had to brace one hand against the brick wall.

The symbol went thin at the edges.

"All Might."

"Stay there."

Not a boom. A request wearing command's clothes.

I stayed.

He breathed until the grin could be rebuilt. It came back smaller. Private. Too human to belong on a billboard.

"Young Midoriya," he said, "you can become a hero."

The sentence broke something open anyway.

I had known it. I had feared it. I had built entire futures around it in my head and still was not ready for what it did to Izuku's chest.

For a second, I was not an adult with stolen context or a boy with borrowed courage. I was just someone who had waited too long to hear yes and had received a maybe with teeth.

"Thank you," I said, and my voice was wrecked enough to embarrass both halves of me.

"Do not thank me yet."

His grin sharpened.

"Tomorrow you begin proving I am not making the worst decision of my life."

"That is a lot for five in the morning."

"Hero training is full of inconvenient timing."

He stepped toward the alley mouth, then stopped.

"One more condition."

I straightened too fast and regretted it.

"If you run into danger because you believe the outcome is guaranteed, I stop training you."

Cold moved under my skin.

He did not know.