Chapter 10:

Deku Does Not Lower His Head

My Hero Academia: Izuku's Ninth Ledger

Training log updated.

Take a breath. The next test is already starting.

✦

Bakugo did not wait until morning.

That would have been almost polite, which meant it was never going to happen.

The message sat on my phone while I stared at the ceiling, five words bright enough to keep the room awake.

You training before school tomorrow?

There was no name. No greeting. Just a question with teeth.

I considered ignoring it for three seconds.

Then I remembered that Kacchan treated silence like a locked door and explosions like a universal key.

I typed one word.

Yes.

The reply came fast enough to prove he had been watching the screen.

Where?

My thumb hovered over the keyboard.

Dagobah was All Might, ten months of conditional training, and a secret power I had not earned wrapped in rusted appliances. Letting Bakugo see that would be like handing a match to a gas leak and calling it honesty.

Anywhere except the beach.

Three dots appeared. Vanished. Appeared again.

Coward.

Izuku's old instinct wanted to apologize. My older pride wanted to type something sharp enough to start a war. Both options sounded like losing.

I deleted two answers before sending the third.

Public park near the station. Thirty minutes before school.

This time, he made me wait.

Fine.

I slept badly.

Bad sleep was ordinary.

Waking before the alarm with dread that belonged to two lives at once was new.

The kitchen log waited beside the sink when I left. Sleep: 5.8 hours. Ribs: dull. Palm: closed, tender. Training: mobility only unless pain stays dull.

Mom had underlined mobility once. She did not need a Quirk to be terrifying.

I wrote the time and place in the margin before leaving. It felt humiliating. It also kept me from sneaking out like a future corpse with a notebook.

By the time I reached the small park, dawn had only started turning the buildings gray. Commuters moved along the sidewalks with coffee and quiet misery. A maintenance worker swept leaves near the entrance.

Open space. Witnesses. Away from the beach. Away from secrets.

I started with mobility drills because All Might's tired voice had taken up residence somewhere between my spine and my shame.

Ankles. Hips. Shoulders. Breathe.

Necessary, not heroic.

I was halfway through slow squats when heat popped behind me.

"That looks stupid."

I did not turn too fast. Small victories mattered.

"Morning, Kacchan."

"Don't."

Bakugo stood near the path in his school uniform, bag over one shoulder, one hand shoved into his pocket. He looked casual in the way a lit burner looked casual from across a room.

His eyes moved over me. Shoes. Knees. Wrist tape. Breathing.

He was not reading my soul. He was checking evidence.

"You actually came."

"You asked."

"I told you where to be."

"You asked where I would be."

The correction left my mouth before fear caught it.

His palm crackled.

A couple with coffee glanced over, slowed, then kept walking when he did not fire. He noticed them. I noticed him noticing.

"You get mouthy once and think you changed species?"

My stomach tightened. The old fear knew every hallway inside this body. Shoulders inward. Eyes down. Make yourself smaller. Survive the weather.

I let the fear arrive.

Then I tried, badly, to use it.

[Hero Analysis Log]

Subject: Katsuki Bakugo

Observed risk: intimidation test in public space

Known limits: Quirkless, injured, witnesses nearby

The log did not give me courage. It only named the ground under my feet.

"I'm still Quirkless," I said.

"No crap."

"So if this is a fight, I lose."

His expression sharpened with disgust.

"Then why the hell are you standing there?"

The answer I wanted sounded brave in my head and stupid in my mouth.

"Because running every time you move is getting old."

Too neat. Too much like a line I had practiced in a mirror I did not own.

Bakugo heard that too.

"You practicing speeches now?"

"No."

"Someone coaching you?"

Too close.

"I read."

"You always read."

"Maybe I finally started listening."

He stepped closer. Three meters. The heat from his palm licked the damp morning air.

"Bull."

I wanted to step back so badly my heel twitched.

He saw that.

"There he is."

The words hit harder than the sparks.

"You think a few bruises and some taped fingers make you different? You were shaking in the sludge."

"So were you."

Silence cut the park in half.

For one stupid second, I thought the truth would help.

His face emptied.

Behind us, the maintenance worker stopped sweeping.

"Say that again."

My ribs remembered pavement. My lungs remembered sludge. My mouth remembered too late that honesty could also be a weapon.

"I mean..."

Bakugo smiled without warmth.

"No. Finish it, Deku."

I swallowed.

"You fought. I know you fought. But you were scared too."

Both his hands came out of his pockets.

Sparks crawled over his palms.

"You think saving me gives you permission?"

"No."

"You think I owe you?"

"No."

"Then what?"

The honest answer was impossible.

Yesterday, I had watched the strongest kid I knew choke in sludge and keep fighting anyway. That pride could become a weapon or a disease, and the future needed the first while his life kept choosing the second.

I could not say that.

What came out was worse.

"Pretending you weren't scared makes you stupid."

His shoulder dipped.

The movement was not a full attack. That almost made it worse.

Right hand forward, sparks loud enough to make civilians flinch, angle high enough to call it warning if anyone asked. Old Izuku would have frozen. I almost did.

I stepped left too early.

His hand cut through the space where my shoulder had been. Heat kissed my sleeve. My foot slid on damp grit, and I stumbled hard enough that both arms flew out.

There was no balance. No dramatic footwork. No training montage paying off on schedule.

Still standing.

Barely.

He saw all of it: the early read, the weak recovery, the fear I had not beaten, and the obedience I had interrupted before it finished moving me.

"What was that?" he asked.

"A bad dodge."

"Don't get humble at me."

"I'm not."

My voice shook. I let it.

"It was bad."

A laugh burst from somewhere near the path. One commuter had stopped with his phone halfway up before common sense dragged it down again.

Bakugo's head turned a fraction. The commuter discovered an urgent need to be elsewhere.

Rumor had entered the park.

That bought space. It also made everything more dangerous.

Bakugo lowered his hand. The sparks stayed alive.

"You watching me now?"

"I always watched heroes."

"I'm not a hero."

"You want to be."

That landed wrong. For a heartbeat, his anger had nowhere to stand.

Then it found a new place.

"Do not talk like you're ahead of me."

"I'm not."

"Then don't."

I nearly said the perfect thing. Something about power and fear and making people smaller.

My mouth opened.

His eyes narrowed.

I shut it again.

For once, silence was smarter than whatever I had been about to say.

"I need to get to school," I said instead.

I picked up my bag.

He stepped into my path.

"We're not done."

"I know."

"Then move me."

The maintenance worker's radio crackled. A cyclist slowed at the curb. A woman across the street looked directly at us, one hand already near her phone.

Bakugo knew the line. So did I.

Which meant this was still a test.

Could I pass without pretending I had power?

I met his eyes.

"No."

His smile showed teeth. "No?"

"If I try, you win. If you blast me in a public park before school, you lose. I'm going around."

It sounded steadier than it felt.

I stepped off the path into the wet grass.

For one second, he looked like he might follow.

Then a spark popped hard enough to make the maintenance worker swear.

He stayed where he was.

I walked around him with my pulse trying to break my throat. Every inch of my back expected heat.

Heat never came.

Again, not victory. Interest.

School was worse.

Rumors move faster than professional heroes when they smell blood.

By first period, half the class knew Bakugo had confronted me in a park. By lunch, the story had split into versions where I dodged an explosion, challenged him, got challenged by him, trained in secret, or developed a Quirk overnight.

That last one nearly made me choke on rice.

It should have been ridiculous. It was ridiculous. It was also dangerous enough to make my fingers go cold.

Two students I barely knew asked if I had registered late with the hero track office. One girl from the support applicant group wanted to know if my new Quirk needed equipment compatibility testing. Someone else whispered that maybe All Might had noticed me after the sludge attack.

That whisper hit like ice water.

"No Quirk," I said for what felt like the tenth time. "No secret registration. No special recommendation."

"Then why are you training?" one of them asked.

My taped fingers flexed under the desk.

The honest answer had All Might, Dagobah, a kitchen log, a secret inheritance I had not been promised, and a future full of bodies in it. None of that belonged in a classroom full of gossip.

"Because I'm applying to U.A.," I said.

They laughed less than they would have a month ago.

That mattered.

It also made the room feel smaller.

Attention was not respect. Attention was weather. If it shifted wrong, you froze. If it shifted right, people started asking questions you could not answer.

Bakugo heard it too.

His desk smoked.

The teacher ignored it with the survival instinct of a man close to retirement.

During practical theory, the instructor put combat scenario clips on the front screen and asked for flaw analysis. Normally, that meant Bakugo answered first, loudest, and mostly right while everyone else tried not to become a target.

Today, he did not speak immediately.

He looked at me.

So did three other people.

My stomach sank.

"Midoriya," the instructor said, surprised by his own decision. "You keep notebooks. What did the rescue team miss in this clip?"

The room became a trap with desks.

Bakugo leaned back, expression unreadable.

Answer badly, and everyone remembered Deku as noise.

Answer too well, and Bakugo got another piece of the puzzle.

I watched the paused clip. Narrow street. Fire Quirk. Two civilians pinned behind a delivery truck. Hero entering from the wrong angle because the camera loved dramatic lines more than survival.

"Smoke," I said.

The instructor blinked.

"What about it?"

Too short. I had tried to sound ordinary and landed on useless.

Heat crawled up my neck.

"The hero attacks from upwind," I said, slower. "It clears his own view for half a second, but pushes smoke toward the civilians. He should circle behind the truck first. Break the rear window if he can. Vent low before engagement."

Silence.

Then someone muttered, "That actually makes sense."

Bakugo's fingers curled against his desk.

He was not angry.

Thinking.

Worse.

I kept my head down for the rest of class. Not because I was folding.

Because attention was a currency, and I had spent too much by accident.

After school, I found my notebook shoved inside my desk.

For one wild second, I thought he had returned something from some forgotten childhood theft.

Then I saw the scorch mark on the cover.

Hero Analysis for the Future, Volume Fourteen.

The current one.

My stomach dropped.

It had not been stolen.

It had been read.

Only one page was marked. His name.

There was no writing.

A tiny black burn sat beside the margin where I had charted his blast habits, shoulder tells, and the way insult sometimes arrived half a second before fear did.

The mark said enough by itself.

He had read the page. He had found himself turned into angles and triggers. He had left proof that he could touch my notes whenever he wanted.

My phone buzzed.

This time, the message had punctuation.

Stop studying me like I'm prey.

I looked across the room.

Bakugo stood by the door, bag over his shoulder, eyes already on me.

He had seen enough to know I was preparing.

He did not know enough to know why.

That might have been worse.

The Ledger flickered once, faint and unhelpful.

[Rival Awareness: active]