Lunch With Future Ghosts

Training log updated.

Take a breath. The next test is already starting.

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Lunch should have been easy.

By noon, my shoulder had settled into a dull ache, my calf had stopped threatening legal action, and the recovery folder in my bag had become heavy enough to qualify as a second backpack. Every step reminded me that below 1% was the worst kind of reasonable.

I hated medically reasonable things. The cafeteria did not help.

It was huge, bright, loud, and alive in a way no middle school cafeteria had ever been. Support Course students argued over component weight beside business majors comparing internships. Third-years in gym jackets moved with the easy confidence of people who had survived enough training to become casual about it.

Then Lunch Rush served katsudon like cuisine was a public safety mission, and for one dangerous second I forgot villains, inherited power, future disasters, and the fact that my leg disliked me.

"Midoriya, over here before someone steals the good seat," Uraraka called, waving from a table near the windows.

I had two choices. Sit alone and pretend isolation was strategy, or sit with people I knew were going to matter, which would make every future risk harder. The katsudon was getting cold. I went to the table.

Uraraka eyed my careful descent into the chair. "You are sitting down like the chair has to be negotiated with first."

"Good afternoon to you too."

"It is a very concerned good afternoon. It just has better aim."

Iida sat across from us with a tray organized by nutritional category. He had somehow made lunch look scheduled.

"Your gait does suggest residual pain," he said, already halfway to turning lunch into a committee meeting.

"I am surrounded by people with eyes," I said, and Uraraka hid a smile in her tea.

The noise around us helped. Trays scraped. Someone cheered because Lunch Rush had produced a second batch of pork cutlets. It was ordinary enough to make my chest loosen by half an inch.

I picked up my chopsticks with my left hand, remembered my shoulder, and switched to my right. Tiny mistake. Tiny pain. Tiny reminder that being observed did not stop at training rooms.

Iida noticed, because of course he did.

"Aizawa-sensei provided additional instruction after class?"

"A recovery folder with pages, warnings, and the emotional weight of a legal document."

Uraraka leaned forward. "Is that what you were carrying like it might bite you?"

"It has phrases such as No airborne recovery and No taking hits. Biting would be less personal."

Iida's glasses flashed. "Those are sensible restrictions after a dangerous exertion event."

"You said that with no sadness at all."

"Safety is not sad simply because it interrupts your lunch."

"It is when it interrupts katsudon."

Uraraka pointed her chopsticks at my bowl. "Then eat before your medical paperwork wins."

For several minutes, lunch managed to be lunch. Iida said his brother had once warned him not to choose meals solely by morale, then admitted he had ignored that advice for dessert twice in middle school. Uraraka confessed that the cafeteria prices were better than she had feared, and I told her wanting lunch not to bankrupt you was one of the saner opinions at U.A.

She relaxed a little at that. Iida nodded as if fiscal responsibility had passed inspection.

Then he said, "If you require assistance following the recovery schedule, I would be willing to help maintain accountability."

The offer was painfully sincere. It also nearly made me choke on rice.

Not because of Iida sitting across from me in a spotless uniform, hands ready to chop the air into responsibility. Because for one hard second he was not the first Iida in my head.

Ingenium in an alley. Stain's blade. Tenya's grief curdling into revenge so fast nobody caught it until he was bleeding. A future that had nothing to do with lunch and everything to do with the brother he had just mentioned like a warm lamp in a room.

My chopsticks stopped halfway to my mouth.

Iida noticed. Uraraka noticed him noticing. Of course they did.

"Did I say something painful?" Iida asked, sitting straighter.

Uraraka's eyes went immediately to my shoulder. "Is it the arm? You switched hands too fast, didn't you?"

The misunderstanding should have been useful. It gave me a place to hide. It was also kind, and that made using it feel worse.

"The arm is being dramatic, but no," I said. "You did not hurt me."

Iida looked unconvinced. "Then perhaps I became overly familiar. I apologize if I implied incompetence."

"You didn't hurt me. You mentioned your brother, and my brain took a bad hallway without asking permission." I set the chopsticks down before I could betray myself again.

That was not the whole truth, but it was the first answer that did not shove them away.

Uraraka's expression changed from injury-checking to something quieter. "A bad hallway sounds different from shoulder pain."

"It is a different kind of problem, yeah."

Iida's formal posture softened by a fraction. "Tensei is a pro hero. References to his work may be stressful after today's test."

Close enough to be wrong in a useful direction. I could work with wrong. Wrong did not get anyone stabbed in an alley.

"Hero work in general has been sitting too close to the table today."

A group of students at the next table started arguing about whether Present Mic's hair counted as support equipment. Mina Ashido drifted past them, paused, and looked at us with bright curiosity.

"Is this the table discussing intense hero feelings, or the table with the good sauce?"

Uraraka lifted the little dish beside her bowl. "Apparently we are offering both services."

Mina sat down without asking, because some people had the social confidence of weather. Kirishima followed with noodles and the open friendliness of someone who believed awkwardness could be defeated by charging into it.

"Mind if we join? Kaminari is trying to rank lunch items by combat potential."

"That is not a valid ranking system," Iida said at once.

"He put pudding above soup because it has psychological impact," Kirishima said.

For a blessed minute, the table became ridiculous. Mina argued that sauce mattered more than texture, Uraraka defended mochi with surprising seriousness, and Iida lost control while trying to define a balanced meal. My shoulders came down without permission.

Kirishima nodded toward me between bites. "Your throw earlier was wild, Midoriya. Controlled, but wild."

"Thanks. I am trying to make controlled less theoretical."

"And the way Aizawa-sensei cut your Quirk looked rough. I thought you were going to fold for a second."

Iida frowned. "Kirishima, perhaps we should avoid interrogating a classmate about an injury during lunch."

"Right, sorry. I meant it as respect, not a medical interview."

"It is fine. Lunch can survive one awkward question."

This time it almost was. Normal curiosity. Normal classmates. Normal first-day talk about Quirks, tests, scores, teachers, and whether U.A. designed every class to make students resent their bones.

Mina tilted her head. "So your Quirk is a stockpile thing, right? People were guessing everything from strength boost to emergency meteor."

"Please do not make emergency meteor an option," Uraraka said.

"Power stockpile, still stabilizing and extremely foldered," I said carefully.

"Recent manifestation, if I am interpreting your answer correctly?" Iida asked.

"Yes, which is why everyone keeps using the word supervised like punctuation."

Mina made a sympathetic face. "That sounds inconvenient in a very U.A. way."

"You have no idea, and I am trying not to demonstrate."

Uraraka looked at my hand. "Is that why you count before you move? Your fingers do it sometimes, like you are measuring how much you are allowed to be in your own body."

The table quieted in pieces.

There it was, almost. Too clean. Too close. The version of this scene I was afraid of would have everyone landing on the right answer together, neat as a training manual.

Kirishima saved me by being wrong first. "I figured he was psyching himself up, like a pre-move ritual."

"Or checking whether pain is altering his timing," Iida said.

"Or both, and I made it sound creepier than I meant," Uraraka admitted, wincing a little.

"It is not creepy. It is just new, and the limits move if I stop paying attention."

Uraraka accepted that, but she did not file it away as solved. Good. Dangerous, but good.

Across the cafeteria, Bakugo sat alone at the end of a table, eating like food had personally challenged him. He was not looking at me when I glanced over.

He was looking at my table.

At Kirishima laughing with Mina. At Iida's recovery seriousness. At Uraraka's careful attention. At the folder half visible in my bag. Connections, not truth. A circle forming around someone he remembered as alone.

He would hate the shape of that before he understood any of it.

The original Izuku's memories wanted to shrink from that attention. The older part of me wanted to map it. Neither reaction was healthy.

[Canon Association Stress: rising]

I pressed my tongue to the back of my teeth and ignored the interface. Not now.

Mina followed my glance and lowered her voice by maybe ten percent, which for her counted as discretion. "Bakugo keeps glaring over here like the table insulted his ancestors."

"Bakugo glares at weather changes," I said.

Uraraka looked down at her tray. "He also threw explosions at you this morning."

Her voice was mild. Her eyes were not.

Iida set his chopsticks down. "His results were exceptional, but his conduct during the test was aggressive."

"Both can be true," Uraraka said.

I looked at her. She met it for half a second, then went back to eating. No worship. No easy forgiveness because talent made a person important. She saw the bruise-colored part of the pattern and refused to decorate it.

That made her feel even more dangerous to care about.

Tsuyu Asui joined near the end of lunch, setting her tray down with a calm "Ribbit" that made Kaminari drop a spoon at the next table.

She looked at my shoulder. "You're holding one side higher, which usually means pain or a bad backpack."

"In my defense, the backpack has legal documents in it."

"Then it is probably both."

The table laughed, and because the laugh was ordinary, I could stay in it. We talked about costumes, though nobody had theirs yet: Mina wanted flexible and flashy, Kirishima wanted to look unbreakable and got embarrassed by how much he meant it, and Iida spoke about family tradition with pride so clean it hurt to hear. Uraraka admitted she had chosen heroics partly for money, then stared at her food like she expected judgment.

"Supporting your family is a better reason than wanting applause," I said.

Her face went quiet. The table did too, but not sharply. Just enough to hear the tray cart squeak behind us.

"Yeah, that is what I think too," she said after a moment.

Mina looked between us and smiled in a way that made me immediately suspicious. Before she could say anything, my phone buzzed.

Unknown number. The preview showed only one line.

Training room after school. Do not bring classmates. - A.M.

Subtle. Very subtle.

Iida glanced at the phone before politeness dragged his eyes away. Uraraka did not look away fast enough.

"Is this another teacher follow-up?" she asked.

"Different teacher, same general atmosphere of concern."

Kirishima pointed at me with his chopsticks. "It is day one, and you already have multiple faculty side quests."

"Please never describe my education that way again."

Mina grinned. "I stand by my interesting-table assessment."

I put the phone face down. Across the cafeteria, Bakugo stood. He dumped his tray with more force than necessary and walked out without shouting, which somehow felt less comforting.

Lunch ended with the bell and a flood of students heading back into the hall. I moved slower than the others, partly because of my leg, partly because All Might's message had turned my thoughts into a crowded hallway.

Uraraka matched my pace.

"You don't have to tell me what made your face do that at lunch," she said.

"My face is becoming a public issue."

"A little, but I guessed wrong first. I thought it was pain, then I thought Iida had embarrassed you, then I thought maybe you were trying to calculate a way out of being cared about."

The hallway noise moved around us. That last one landed too close, but not in the place she thought.

"That is an unfairly specific list," I said.

"Only the last part is probably rude." She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "So make it easier on people. If you are hurt, say hurt. If you are somewhere else in your head, say pause. We can stop asking for one minute."

For one second, the school felt very loud and very far away.

"Pause," I repeated, trying the word before it could turn into a promise.

"It is not dramatic, and you can say it without explaining your whole life in the hallway."

I wanted to joke. The joke did not arrive.

"I can try that, if trying counts before I am good at it."

Uraraka nodded once, satisfied enough for now. "Also, do not make yourself the whole hallway. If something goes wrong tomorrow or whenever, other people still get to stand there."

The Battle Trial had not been announced yet. She had no idea what she had just aimed at.

"That one sounded like a rule," I said.

"Good. You apparently collect them."

She went into the classroom before I could answer. I stood in the hall half a beat too long, with the recovery folder in my bag and the word pause sitting where panic usually waited.

For once, the interface kept its opinion to itself.

After classes, I went to the training room alone.

All Might was waiting in his thin form, one hand pressed lightly against his side. He tried to smile. It did not land.

"Young Midoriya," he said, "Aizawa spoke with me after your examination."

"That sounds ominous in at least three different ways."

"It was direct enough that I believe ominous may be fair."

"That sounds like him with paperwork involved."

All Might coughed into a handkerchief, checked it, and folded it away before I could stare too long. The room felt colder.

"Tomorrow, I teach Foundational Heroics," he said.

I already knew.

"Combat training, costumes, and the part where everyone forgets this is still school," I said.

His eyes softened with worry. "Yes, with more emphasis on the first part than I would like."

The Ledger stirred.

[Known Event Approaching]

Battle Trial

Canon Team Pattern: high probability

Risk: personal history with Bakugo Katsuki

All Might looked at my face. "You know something about this class."

"Sir, that is a broad accusation."

"And accurate, I suspect, which is why we are having this conversation now."

Probably the worst kind. He placed a folder on the bench between us. The top sheet had Recovery Girl's handwriting copied in brisk black ink.

Maximum authorized practical output: below 1%

No airborne recovery

No taking hits to preserve position, timing, or pride

"We should discuss what you are not going to do tomorrow," All Might said.

"That list keeps growing faster than my approved output."

"Good, because if the teams fall the way I think they might, young Bakugo is not your only opponent." For once, the word carried no brightness.

My mouth went dry. Iida's name came first, because duty could be dangerous when it wore armor. Uraraka's came next, because kindness could become a shield if I let myself hide behind it.

All Might nodded. "Likely your partner, if the draw holds close to expectation."

He studied me carefully, mentor and hero and too-fragile man in the same exhausted body.

"Tomorrow is not a chance to prove how much pain you can endure. It is a chance to prove you can win while letting someone stand beside you."

The word from the hallway pressed against the back of my teeth.

Pause.

I looked at the folder. Then at the door, where the hallway had gone quiet.

For a moment, I had the ugly feeling someone had been standing outside. When I opened the door, nobody was there.

Only a faint scorch mark marked the floor. Small.

Fresh.

Bakugo had not gone far.

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