The Gate Has a Name

Training log updated.

Take a breath. The next test is already starting.

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The first reporter I saw was standing outside the front fence with a camera pointed at the wrong window.

The second knew which floor belonged to Heroics. He lifted his lens when our classroom lights came on. I stepped back from the glass before he could decide the movement was an answer.

Lunch had begun. We should have been thinking about food and the vote Aizawa had promised after it. Instead, a bright strip of press badges moved along the sidewalk beyond the gate, and half the class was trying to decide whether to wave or hide. No one had crossed the fence. The school hadn't told us there was an emergency. That didn't make the cameras feel welcome.

"Are they allowed to be that close?" Sero asked.

"It's a public sidewalk," Yaoyorozu said. "The gate is school property. Those are different."

"Then somebody ought to tell the sidewalk to move," Kaminari said.

Iida had already taken out a pen. He wrote something on the back of a blank class handout, drew a line under it, and headed for the door with the posture of a man about to negotiate with architecture.

Uraraka caught my look. "Don't follow him just because you're curious."

"I'm going to lunch."

"So am I." She glanced at the stairs. "I'm taking the short way."

My calf objected before I could announce that I could do the same. I had completed the morning's log; the crossed-out pain score was still too fresh in my mind to pretend the leg had changed its answer since then.

"I'll take the ramp corridor," I said.

"That's farther."

"It has fewer stairs."

She accepted that without offering to accompany me. After yesterday's conversation about deciding for teammates, that was more useful than sympathy. She went with Mina toward the stairwell, already discussing whether Lunch Rush had made the good sauce again.

Iida stopped outside the classroom. A woman in a charcoal staff jacket stood at the intersection, speaking into a radio while a group from General Studies waited behind a yellow floor line. Her badge said HAYASHI, STUDENT SERVICES. She listened to the radio, looked toward the front windows, and waved the other group down the east corridor.

"Excuse me," Iida said. "Our class requires a supervised exit route after lessons. The gathering at the gate may obstruct normal departure. I have prepared a proposal."

Hayashi held up one finger until the radio went quiet. She did not take his paper immediately.

"Class?"

"Hero Course, 1-A. Twenty students."

"You're not leaving campus now."

"I understand. I am asking for a route to be authorized before dismissal, so students are not forced to improvise."

That was Iida at his best and most exhausting: not wrong, just several decisions ahead of the person who owned the door.

Hayashi took the sheet. At the top he'd written WEST GATE AVOIDANCE, and beneath it a numbered sequence with arrows. He'd even left a space for a staff signature. I could see why. A signed plan would feel like a wall between us and the cameras.

"This is for the west gate," she said. "Which has no press at it right now. The front gate does."

"Then the alternate route remains viable."

"Maybe at dismissal. Maybe not. Press can walk on that sidewalk too."

Iida adjusted his glasses. "We could post the approved route in the classroom."

"A posted route isn't a security officer," Hayashi said. She returned the paper. "Let facilities and security decide which gate is usable when the time comes. I need to get three classes to lunch without creating a crowd in front of the windows. That's the decision I'm making now."

Behind her, the General Studies group began to move. A student at the back waved toward a camera outside and nearly hit his friend in the face with his bag. Hayashi didn't raise her voice. She pointed him into the corridor and he went, embarrassed enough to keep his hands down.

Iida looked at his paper. I recognized the moment he wanted to argue that a plan was better than no plan. His shoulders tightened, then settled.

"What can I do now?" he asked.

Hayashi's expression changed. Not warmer exactly, but more interested.

"Count your class at this line. Tell me how many have gone through the east hall toward lunch. Don't direct anyone through a door. Don't tell anyone how to leave school. I will handle the flow."

"Yes, ma'am."

"And put the pen away while you count. Eyes first."

He put it away.

The task was smaller than the title he'd been trying to invent for it. It was also real. If he got it wrong, someone could be left waiting at the classroom door or counted twice in a moving hall. Iida stood beside the yellow line, not over it, and began counting people as they passed.

I stayed near the wall until the first group cleared. The direct stairs would have put me in the cafeteria before the lunch rush peaked. The ramp loop went behind two science rooms and down a long gradual turn, then doubled back toward the same entrance. It took more steps, fewer abrupt ones. My calf preferred it. My stomach did not vote.

Kirishima came through with Sero and waved. "You taking the scenic route?"

"My leg is, apparently. I'm just obeying."

"Want company?"

"You can get lunch."

"That's not what I asked."

He was right. Yesterday he'd learned to ask directly, and now I was trying to answer a different question. I took a breath.

"No, thanks. I want to set my own pace."

"Got it." He didn't look offended. "See you there."

He crossed the line. Iida counted him. Sero followed, then Kaminari, who made an exaggerated effort to keep both hands at his sides when he saw Hayashi watching the windows.

From outside came a burst of voices. We couldn't make out the words through the glass. A reporter had changed position, setting up near the front pedestrian gate rather than the main drive. A security officer on the inside walked to match him, separated by bars and several meters of school ground.

Iida noticed too. His hand went toward the paper, stopped, and came back down.

"The route I wrote assumes the west gate remains clear," he said to Hayashi.

"Then don't assume it."

"I can revise it."

"You can finish counting."

It wasn't a put-down. Her radio had two people talking at once. She was watching the moving class, the intersection, and a side door someone had propped with a shoe. Her job had a time scale of seconds. Iida's draft belonged to an hour the school hadn't reached.

He turned back to the line. "Seventeen," he said as Jiro passed. "Eighteen, Tokoyami. Nineteen, Asui."

Hayashi glanced at the classroom, now apparently empty. "Nineteen through. One still inside?"

"Twenty," Iida said. "Midoriya is here with us, waiting for the ramp corridor. He hasn't crossed the line. Nineteen have gone through. I should have reported the total and the passed count separately."

"Right. Nineteen passed, one waiting. That's the useful version."

He repeated it into the small space beside her radio, as if accuracy needed room to stand. I was grateful he'd noticed me; I was less happy that my slower route had become the remainder in an arithmetic problem.

"I can go now," I said.

Hayashi checked the east hall, then the ramp entrance. "You can. The cafeteria is receiving students from the west wing. Take the ramp and wait at the lower junction if their group is still passing. Don't cut through the service door."

"Understood."

Iida stepped aside. "I'll walk with him after I give the count."

"I didn't ask you to escort him," Hayashi said. "I asked you to count. You did. Stay here one more minute while I confirm the room is empty, then go to lunch."

"Yes, ma'am."

I gave him a look. He gave me one back that said his instincts disliked leaving a classmate to take a longer route alone. But the path was open, marked, and staffed. It did not require him to turn a small assigned task into personal jurisdiction over my legs.

"I'll see you at lunch," I said.

"Please do not hurry to prove that."

"I wasn't planning to."

He looked unconvinced. He had evidence for that, unfortunately.

The ramp corridor was quiet enough for my footsteps to sound like they belonged to one person again. Halfway down, I paused beside a drinking fountain. My calf tightened as I shifted weight, then eased when I rested my hand on the rail. Not a crisis. Also not permission to race the rest of the slope.

At the window I could see a strip of the public sidewalk. A woman with a press badge moved past the camera line to speak with a security officer through the gate. He pointed to a notice on the fence. She read it, said something I couldn't hear, and stayed where she was. Iida's arrows wouldn't have changed any of that. Nor would my knowing she was there.

I checked the time. The detour had already cost five minutes, and the pause added another. The good sauce might be gone. The class vote would happen after lunch whether I reached the table first or last. Those were small losses. My leg was small until it wasn't, too. I kept going at the pace it allowed.

At the lower junction, a Support Course group rolled two equipment cases across the hall. Hayashi had warned me to wait if the lane was occupied. I did. A girl pushing the second case caught a wheel on the threshold and muttered something rude at the floor. Her friend lifted the corner, freed it, and gave me an apologetic wave. I waved back with the hand that didn't pull at my shoulder.

No one was controlling the sidewalk from here. Staff could control who met whom in the school's own corridors. The distinction seemed obvious until someone put a camera on the other side of a fence and called it a question.

When I reached the cafeteria approach, Iida came through the opposite hall, a little out of breath. He hadn't taken the ramp. He'd finished the room check, then come by the direct stairs.

"Twenty accounted for," he said. "Nineteen crossed before you, one used the ramp. Hayashi corrected the release sheet."

"Congratulations on being the least glamorous part of crowd management."

"It was not crowd management. It was a count."

"You sound disappointed."

"I am considering the difference." He folded his route proposal once and put it in his bag instead of pinning it anywhere. "A plan for later does not tell me where reporters will be later. I can ask security when dismissal comes."

"That sounds less satisfying."

"It is more accurate."

We reached the cafeteria doors. I could hear trays and voices beyond them, ordinary lunch noise with an edge I couldn't quite place. Iida started to hold the door, saw me adjust my grip on my bag, and waited for me to decide whether I wanted help. I pushed it open with my good hand.

"The shorter route got you here first," I said.

"By three minutes."

"I spent longer than that waiting for equipment cases."

"Then the longer route cost time."

"Yes." My calf still hurt, but less than it would have after the stairs. "It was worth it."

He nodded, as if that was a result he could write down without claiming credit for it. We went in to find lunch. Outside, cameras stayed beyond the gate for now. Inside, nobody had voted for anyone yet.

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