The Score Before the Score

Training log updated.

Take a breath. The next test is already starting.

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The medic asked me to rate the pain in my shoulder. I told her the shoulder had competition.

She waited with a cold pack in one hand and a pen in the other. I gave her the number she had asked for. She wrote it down without smiling at the joke. That was fair. My calf had locked once when I'd tried to stand after the buzzer, and the tape around my right index finger had survived the exam better than the rest of me. She was collecting injuries, not material for my memoir.

We were in a first-aid area outside Battle Center B. The exam was over. Applicants moved past the barrier in uneven groups, some too loud, some staring at nothing. The zero-pointer was out of sight, but I could hear machinery being dragged away. Every scrape made my shoulder tighten.

"I can walk," I said.

"You said that while sitting down," the medic replied. "Wait until I ask you to stand."

She held the cold pack against my shoulder and checked the support tape on my finger. She didn't pull it off. A second medic looked at my calf, asked me to flex my foot and told me to stop when the muscle seized. None of them had a score sheet. None asked me how many robots I'd hit.

On the other side of the partition, someone was telling a story about me.

"The green-haired applicant knew where the bridge would fall," a boy said. "He pulled those two out, then went straight for the girl. It looked calculated. Like he'd seen the route before."

I knew the voice only from the start line, where he'd asked whether the gates opened on a countdown. I hadn't learned his name. I could hear the little upward lift at the end of calculated, as if he was waiting for someone to reward the observation.

My first impulse was to list the parts he'd missed. The bridge had failed in a way I hadn't predicted. The two people under the slab had not moved when I shouted. Uraraka had decided when to release it. Any plan I might have had was revised every few seconds by the people actually there.

My second impulse was worse: to say I'd known. Not everything. Just enough to sound less like a boy who had nearly torn his shoulder off and more like an applicant the school might want.

The medic shifted the cold pack. "You're clenching."

"I heard something annoying."

"You can be annoyed without helping your shoulder."

"That sounds like a challenge."

"It isn't."

A girl spoke beyond the partition. "She was holding the slab over us. I heard him shout for us to move."

Her voice was rough, full of dust. I leaned to see around the screen, and the medic made a disapproving sound. The girl was sitting on the bench with a paper cup between both hands. She had been under the slab. I'd grabbed the back of her jacket and pulled while the other applicant scrambled for the barrier. Now a thin scrape crossed her chin. I didn't know whether it had come from the fall or from getting clear.

"He yelled at us to move," she said. "We didn't. He had to come back and pull me. If he planned that, he chose a terrible plan."

The boy gave a short laugh. "I meant he saw the whole field."

"I can't tell you what he saw. I was under concrete." She took a drink and winced at her own throat. "I can tell you she held it up. The girl on the bridge. We didn't move when he shouted; then he came back and pulled me clear."

There was a pause. Not an apology. The kind of pause where a better version of the story has to find room among people who've already repeated the easy one.

"I didn't say she did nothing," the boy said.

"Then say what she did."

I wanted to thank the girl. I also wanted her to keep talking until the entire first-aid area agreed on a version I could carry home. Neither was a fair thing to ask of someone with dust in her lungs.

The medic followed my glance. "Know her?"

"She was one of the people we got clear."

"Then you'll have a chance to speak after I've finished."

"I wasn't going to interrupt."

"Good. Hold still."

She adjusted the pack. My shoulder hurt with each small movement. For the first time since the buzzer, I noticed my breathing had settled into shallow pieces. The medic counted while I took one full breath. It didn't fix anything, but it told her more than my joke had.

When she let me stand, my calf threatened to fold and then held. She asked me to cross the small marked space and return. I did it slowly. The boy beyond the partition had stopped talking about calculations. He had found another applicant and another argument about robot points. The correction hadn't made the room silent. It had only left the first story less comfortable to repeat.

I went to the bench. The girl with the cup looked up before I reached her.

"Are you all right?" I asked.

"That's a large question." She looked at the cold pack in my hand. "I can sit here and drink this. So, partly."

"I'm glad you got out."

"Your shoulder isn't."

"It has opinions about almost everything."

She looked past me toward the closed exam zone. "The other applicant went to have his ankle checked. He said he'd be fine. I didn't check his ankle, so I can't confirm that."

There it was again. A boundary drawn by someone who had no reason to know I needed one.

"You told him about Uraraka," I said.

"I saw her holding the slab. I could see her hand and the concrete. That's all. I couldn't see what happened on the bridge afterward."

"That's enough."

"For what?"

"To stop the story from making it sound like I planned the whole thing."

She held the cup against her knees. "He wasn't lying, exactly. He saw you run toward us. He decided he knew why."

I had done the same with strangers more times than I wanted to count. A posture, a Quirk, a little knowledge from a story that had once felt settled. That habit was useful until it put motives inside people who hadn't given me any.

"I can correct him," I said.

"You can. He might tell it again differently tomorrow."

"I could write down what happened and show him."

"You should write what you remember for yourself." She set down the cup. "I won't sign your version of the whole field."

"I wasn't asking you to."

The answer came too fast. Her expression changed just enough to tell me she'd heard the request inside it.

"Good," she said. "I know who held the slab over me. I know you pulled me away. I don't know what either of you knew about the robot until you tell me, and then I'd only know what you said."

I took the correction. It was less generous than a testimonial and more useful. She didn't have to become my witness to my own intentions because she'd witnessed one piece of the street.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I wanted you to settle something bigger than what you saw."

"You can thank me for the smaller thing."

"Thank you for saying who held it up."

"She worked hard." The girl rubbed at the scrape on her chin, thought better of it, and lowered her hand. "Tell her that if you see her."

I said I would. I knew Uraraka's number, but I didn't send a message from the bench to report somebody else's assessment of her. She could be talking to medics, going home or deciding what she wanted to say about the exam. Our exchange of public sample questions before today didn't make me the manager of her account afterward.

At the discharge desk I received a sheet listing the symptoms I had reported, the ice and support I'd been given, and the number to call if pain, weakness or dizziness worsened. It didn't say I was fit for training. It didn't predict when I would stop hurting. The staff member pointed to the contact section and asked me to confirm it. The two digits Mom had caught were in the right order on the corrected intake form. I checked them again before signing. I couldn't prove that every copy in the school's system had changed; I could confirm the paper in front of me.

"Someone can come get you?" she asked.

"My mother is outside. I messaged her when staff brought us here."

"Tell her what the sheet says."

I folded it without hiding the symptoms line. I had told Mom I'd contact her before leaving if things worsened. I had sent an update even though I couldn't yet tell whether the calf would worsen on the train. That was a choice, not proof I could keep every promise I'd made the night before.

Mom was waiting near the exit, coat over one arm despite the warm evening. She looked at the cold pack, then at the way I carried it, then at my face. The application envelope was still in her bag. She had brought it as though an extra piece of paper could make the day less strange.

"How bad?" she asked.

"Shoulder, calf, finger. Staff gave me ice and a wrap and a warning sheet. No final assessment yet."

"Did you tell them you were dizzy?"

"I wasn't dizzy at the desk. I told them about the calf and the pain."

She waited.

"I got lightheaded when I tried to sit up after the exam," I added. "Briefly. It passed while the medics were there. I should have put that on the sheet."

She held out her hand for it. I gave it to her. She read the symptom list under the corridor light. There was no dizziness. Her thumb stopped on the blank space.

"We can go back and add it," she said.

The desk was only a short walk behind us. My calf disliked the idea. That made the idea more important, not less. I went with her and told the staff member. She added the reported episode to the record and read it back: lightheaded after the buzzer, resolved while under observation. Nothing more. The correction didn't earn praise or erase the fact that I had omitted it the first time.

Outside again, Mom said, "Did you find out how you did?"

"No score yet."

"That wasn't what I asked." She looked at the sheet. "Did anyone who can examine you say whether the shoulder is safe to sleep on? Whether the calf needs more than a cold pack?"

"The medics checked me. They gave instructions."

"They recorded symptoms. You said no final assessment."

I wanted to explain the exam, the bridge, the girl's correction, the way one rumor had already started becoming a version of me. Mom wasn't asking which version would win. She wanted to know whether I could get home without making an injury worse and who would be responsible if I couldn't.

"I'll ask for a follow-up," I said.

"I can ask with you."

"I know. Let me make the call."

She handed me my phone. The number was on the sheet. I called the exam medical desk from the exit steps, gave my applicant ID and described the shoulder pain, calf spasm and brief lightheadedness. I didn't give them a theory about my Quirk. The staff member said a clinician would review the report and contact us with instructions; if symptoms returned or worsened before then, we should seek urgent care rather than wait for a message. I repeated that to Mom while the line was still open so she could correct anything I'd shortened.

The staff member hadn't told me I was fine. She also hadn't told me what my result would be. I put the phone away without trying to turn either silence into an answer.

On the ride home, Mom held the sheet. I held the cold pack against my shoulder until it stopped being cold. The seat shook every time the train crossed a joint, and my calf complained at each one. I thought about the girl under the slab, how carefully she'd kept her claim inside the space she could see. The boy might tell his story again. She might correct him again or go home and never think about me. Neither belonged to me to arrange.

At home, Mom set out water and another pack from the freezer. I wrote a short account of my own symptoms on the back of the discharge sheet so I wouldn't have to invent a better sequence in the morning. I left the exam itself out of my training notebook. The school had its footage. I had my damaged shoulder and a witness who would not lend me a view she didn't have.

I lay down before the stiffness had finished spreading. My phone was close enough to reach with my left hand if the medical desk called. There was no letter from U.A., no points to dispute and no way to know whether the rumor would survive breakfast. Mom checked the water glass and told me to sleep.

I wanted to stay awake until someone decided what the day meant. My body made a different decision. I let it, with the cold pack wrapped in a towel and the request for care still open.

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