Hey so before I start this chapter Is a little short like only 3.5k word. thats cuzz I have 0 energy right now I caught the flu first time I years and it hit me pretty hard. so I'll try to get out another chapter and speed things along to the start of ua soon u till then thank you all for reading.
Drop a comment or review remember your feed back on stuff will shape help me shape the story. And thank you for dropping the power stones you and I know how you are and I don't feel comfortable name dropping people without permission. so thank you very much hope you enjoy the chapter.
Nerissa (1st person)
I didn't sleep last night, not really. I lay there with the lights off, watching the ceiling fan carve the dark into slices and feeling my heart refuse to pick a speed. Every time I closed my eyes I saw it again—the way the shadows had wrapped Izuku like a cloak and the way his voice… changed. Not louder. Not harsher. Just certain. Like when you finally remember the word that's been on the tip of your tongue for years.
I made tea at 5 a.m. and burned my tongue because patience is for people who didn't almost watch their favorite person flicker out like a bad bulb.
Here's the part that's going to sound ridiculous: I'm not scared anymore.
I should be, maybe. He gained the quirk of a legend and everything turned into a storm of chaos. But when the storm ended and he opened his eyes again he looked so much more confident, unshakeable I felt something click into place. Not in him—in me. I've always been the excitable one, the jump-first-ask-later one. He used to look to me to set the tone when training got ugly. "You've got this," I'd say, and he'd believe me because I sounded like a sunrise.
Yesterday, he didn't need my constant reassurance. He was steady. Quiet in a way that settled my stomach. He looked at me and my heartbeat, which had been doing gymnastics on a trampoline and loaded up on caffeine, just… landed. I didn't know calm could be contagious.
I brushed my teeth, rinsed the cup, and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I looked like I'd been crying even though I hadn't. It's the dumbest thing—I think I'm proud of him in the same breath that I'm absolutely, catastrophically in love with him. I've been "oh no he's cute" for years; this is different. This is "I want to stand next to him,be near him for as long as possible." This is "when he smiled, my bones unclenched everything possessed up like a spring untightening."
My phone buzzed. Café at six? Momo, of course. Under it, Bring feelings—Shōko, which made me laugh out loud and almost spilled the second cup I didn't need.
"Okay," I told my empty kitchen, and the radiator hissed like a sassy aunt. "I'll bring them."
I pulled on a hoodie, then changed into something nicer because I suddenly cared, then changed back because he likes me in hoodies and this is not a date (yet). On my way out the door I whispered quietly, "You finally see yourself the way we always did."
And for the first time since the world went gold and black, my chest didn't feel too small for my heart.
---
Momo (1st person)
Mother's garden looks different this morning. Ridiculous thought, but I can't shake it. Dew beads on the camellias like punctuation—soft periods at the end of too many unspoken sentences. I came out here with a notebook because habit is a stubborn tutor. I wanted to list variables, isolate cause and effect write my way to an answer I already know.
Izuku changed. That is the data. The error is thinking he became someone else.
I am supposed to be the rational one. I can quantify my own pulse, chart cortisol against sleep, trend my productivity against conversation length. I tried to quantify him once. Strength curves, reaction times, the way his eyes moved before his body followed. If I'm honest, I started measuring the moment we met—because he made the lab inside my head feel like a place where emotion was a valid data point.
Yesterday, when he stood up after being out for so long. I expected the old tremor in his voice. The one that used to live under his words no matter how much he meant them. It wasn't there. The tremor is gone. The gentleness stayed.
I wrote that sentence down and just looked at it until the ink bled a little.
We have trained side by side for years—long enough to grow up into the people we were designing together. If I list everything I admire, I'll run out of paper: his stubborn kindness, the way he listens with his whole face, the self-mockery that never turns cruel, the discipline he built from scraps. None of that is news. What is new is how it sits on him. The quiet isn't a placeholder now; it's a choice. People will follow that without noticing they've decided to.
I should admit something I haven't let myself name. I used to be protective of him in a way that translated into systems and schedules and protein bars he forgot to eat. If you asked, I would have said I was protecting the mission. The truth is, I was protecting the part of me that wanted—fiercely—to see him happy. Now he does not need protecting, and somehow that makes me love him more, not less.
I closed the notebook. Numbers can rest.
I made a decision and sent out a text. My phone chimed. Café at six? A reply from Shoko shortly after read "Bring feelings". I smiled in spite of myself and sent back shortly after that ill bring the tea. It's a joke and a promise; I always carry too much, and today I'm fine with the weight.
I tucked a small tin into my bag, the good leaves. If the world is going to keep changing around us, the least I can do is pour something steady into a cup and hand it to the people who hold my heart together.
"Maybe logic isn't supposed to win this one," I said to the camellias, and they said nothing, which felt like consent.
---
Scene 3 — Shōko (1st person)
I don't know what to do with a heart that won't sit still.
It has never been chatty. It thumps, I move. When feelings come, they arrive in a neat line like soldiers and I salute them and assign them a task. Worry is for checking escape routes. Anger is for training until the floor remembers me. Love—well. That one didn't report for duty often enough to learn.
Mother poured tea into three cups, steam making little ghosts in the sunlight. Fuyumi had brought pastries and questions, both wrapped in paper that crinkled too loudly for how early it was.
"So?" Fuyumi said, eyes bright with older-sister mischief. "What did you want to ask us that made you text at dawn?"
I watched the steam curl and decided blunt is kinder than delay. "How do you know when your in love with someone?"
Fuyumi choked delicately on air. Mother didn't. She only smiled like she had been waiting for this question to find me.
"Izuku?" she asked, soft as the rim of the cup.
I nodded because words would try to wiggle and I didn't have patience for that.
Fuyumi leaned her elbows on the table. "Okay. Do you think about him when you're not supposed to?"
"Yes."
"Do you breathe easier when he's in the room?"
"Yes."
"Does your father treat him like a trainee and do you resent that even though it's technically accurate?"
I surprised myself by laughing. "Yes."
Mother's smile changed at the edges—still gentle, now proud. "When you were little, you would stand in the doorway and listen for my footsteps. If I was near, you slept better. Sometimes love is simply recognizing the person who tells your body it can rest."
I looked down at my hands. My fingers were cold. I warmed them without thinking and the porcelain clicked faintly against the saucer. "He makes me quiet," I admitted. "Not the tense kind. The other kind." I grimaced. "This is not precise language."
"It doesn't have to be," Mother said. "You've had to be precise about too many things."
Fuyumi nudged the plate toward me. "Also, do you want to kiss him?"
"Fuyumi," Mother warned, and I was grateful for the assist.
"Fine," Fuyumi said, grinning. "Then do you want to tell him when you do well? When you do badly? When dinner was strange and made you think of him for no reason at all?"
"Yes," I said again, and my voice didn't wobble.
Mother reached across the table, not to take my hand—she knows I don't always like that—but to rest her fingers on the wood between us. Close enough to touch if I wanted; respectful enough to leave it to me. "Then what you're feeling is trust wearing love's clothes," she said. "It's a good fit."
I breathed out. The knot in my chest loosened a notch I hadn't earned in a gym. "We're meeting tonight," I said. "The three of us. To talk."
"About him," Fuyumi sang softly.
"About us," I corrected, and that felt like the bravest thing I had said all week.
Mother's eyes softened. "Tell the truth. It saves time."
I nodded. I can do blunt. I was born with it. Today it will be kind.
---
The Café (3rd person)
The café near the station had too many plants and not enough chairs and the exact right amount of light at six in the evening. Nerissa claimed a corner table like she was tucking them all into a pocket. Momo arrived with a small tin of tea and the kind of hug that pretends to straighten your collar. Shōko slid into the last seat, the same normal cold face that's not really cold.
For a minute, no one spoke. The noise of the place—milk steaming, cups kissing saucers, laughter at a table with too many missed texts—filled the gap until it became a cushion instead of a wall.
Nerissa broke first, because of course she did. "I thought he was gone," she blurted, then winced. "I promised I wasn't going to start that way."
Momo set the tin on the table, fingers smoothing the label. "We all did," she said, voice even. "And then he wasn't. And then he was… more."
Shōko folded her hands. "He is the same," she said. "He just knows it now."
They let that sit. It fit the table like a fourth cup.
"What do we do about it?" Nerissa asked, and her smile was crooked with fear that wasn't fear anymore. "Because I'm not competing with either of you. I won't. I like you both and I—" She stopped, cheeks flushing, eyes bright. "And I love him."
Momo's mouth opened on a soft "oh," not surprise so much as recognition spoken aloud for the first time. "I do, too," she said, and the relief in it made her shoulders drop. "I think I have for a while. I kept trying to quantify it and it refused."
Shōko looked at the tea tin as if it might offer counsel. "I asked my mother and Fuyumi," she said, and Nerissa nearly knocked over her cup leaning closer. "They said if someone makes you breathe easier,makes you feel happy just think about them, you should keep them near." She paused. "He does all of the above and more."
Nerissa reached across the table and put her hand palm-up between them. Momo placed hers over it. Shōko added hers last, practical as a signature.
"We decide this together," Momo said, more leader than heiress in that moment. "If we tell him, we tell him all of it. Not games, not tests. Just truth."
"And if he chooses one?" Nerissa asked, not whispering.
"Then we stay what we promised to be first," Shōko said simply. "Friends."
Momo nodded. "Partners. The kind that make each other better. That doesn't end." She drew in a breath and smiled, smaller and stronger. "But I don't think he will choose like that."
Nerissa blinked. "You don't?"
"I think," Momo said, choosing each word with the care she usually reserved for circuitry diagrams, "he loves all of us. Differently, yes. But not… less."
Shōko was quiet for a long beat. "Then we will be brave."
The decision didn't ring like a bell. It settled like a blanket.
They finished their tea, and the café emptied around them as if the city understood the small gravity of what they had done and made room.
Outside, the evening was that soft indigo that makes streetlights seem kinder. Izuku stood under a ginkgo tree across the street, hands in his pockets, looking in their direction but not through the window—as if he knew where they were without needing his eyes to tell him. A thin ring of shadow traced lazy circles at his feet, gold threading the edge whenever the light caught it.
He saw them and smiled. The kind of smile that starts in the eyes and takes its time reaching the mouth.
Nerissa's hand found both of theirs at once and squeezed. "Ready?"
"As we'll ever be," Momo said, and somehow it sounded like a vow.
Shōko nodded. "Tell the truth," she reminded them quietly, remembering her mother's advice and finding that it fit in her own mouth.
They crossed the street together.
The crosswalk chirped its steady rhythm, a mechanical heartbeat counting out the seconds between the old and the new.
Izuku stepped forward to meet them, his usual half-smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
"You three look like you've been planning something dangerous," he said.
Nerissa, Momo, and Shōko exchanged a look that was equal parts terror and determination.
"We kind of have," Nerissa admitted. "But, uh… not the villain-fighting kind."
"Good," he said, relief flickering in his voice. "Because I'm still sore from yesterday."
They stopped a few paces from him, framed by the streetlights. The faint gold edging his shadow flickered once, almost expectant. For a heartbeat, none of them spoke. Then Momo took a breath that seemed to gather the air for all of them.
"We wanted to tell you something together," she began.
"You don't have to answer right now," Nerissa added quickly.
"It's only fair that you know," Shōko finished.
Izuku tilted his head, patient. "Okay."
Nerissa's words tumbled first, bright and unfiltered.
"You scared us. Yesterday. But after the panic stopped I couldn't stop thinking about how you looked when it was over. You're calmer, surer—like the world finally started listening when you talk. And I realized I don't just care because you're my friend. I love you, Izuku. I think I have for a long time."
Momo's voice followed, steadier but trembling at the edges.
"I thought I was being logical about it. That it was admiration, respect, intellectual connection. But I can't analyze my way out of the truth. You're important to me, more than I ever planned for something to ever be in my life."
Shōko swallowed once and said, as she always did, exactly what she meant.
"You make me happy, you make me smile without even being present. That's rare. I like you. No, …..I love you."
The words hung there like a chord still vibrating after the final note. Cars passed, indifferent. Somewhere a siren began and faded.
Izuku blinked. Then—softly, helplessly—he laughed.
It wasn't cruel; it wasn't mocking. It was the kind of laugh that breaks a dam you didn't know you'd built. He bent forward, hand over his mouth, shoulders shaking.
Nerissa's stomach dropped. "Oh no, he's laughing—why is he laughing—did we—"
Momo reached for composure and found none. "Izuku?"
Shōko's brow furrowed. "Was that a no?"
He straightened, still smiling, eyes bright with something gentler than amusement. "Sorry! I'm not laughing at you—at this. I just—" He exhaled, almost giddy with relief. "I've been trying to figure out how to ask you the same thing for weeks. Maybe months."
They blinked at him, confusion swapping places with disbelief.
He rubbed the back of his neck, the old nervous habit slipping through the new calm. "I didn't know how to talk about it without messing everything up. Every time I tried, we'd start training or someone would call or I'd overthink it and decide to wait. And then all of you beat me to it."
Nerissa made a small sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. "You—really?"
"Really," he said, and the word steadied them more than any power ever had.
He hesitated then, eyes going distant for a heartbeat—the kind of look that meant he was remembering rather than thinking.
---
Flashback – Izuku's POV
It had been the night before everything he got one for all (not that he knew it yet). The training field was empty except for the hum of streetlights and the whisper of wind through broken asphalt. He'd stayed late under the excuse of "extra conditioning," though the truth was simpler: he couldn't sleep, and being alone with his thoughts felt less lonely out here.
He'd been running drills when he noticed the way the three of them lingered at the edge of the field, talking, laughing about something he couldn't hear. Nerissa's hands moved when she laughed, Momo's smile curved like punctuation, Shōko stood a little apart but not outside, her arms crossed in the way she always held warmth.
He remembered thinking—not for the first time—that whatever light he carried was reflected, borrowed from them. That their presence filled the empty spaces the old years had carved into him.
When they left, he'd looked at his own shadow stretching long and strange in the floodlights and whispered to it, "How am I supposed to choose between them?"
The shadow didn't answer, of course. It only folded closer, patient. He'd gone back to his drills, half smiling at the absurdity of training to fight monsters while quietly terrified of hurting the people who mattered most.
---
Return to Present (3rd person)
"I think I knew back then," Izuku said quietly, drawing them back. "I just didn't know if I was allowed to."
Momo's voice softened. "Allowed?"
He nodded. "You three mean everything to me. I didn't want to risk what we already have. But… if you're all standing here telling me this together, maybe it's not risking anything. Maybe it's—"
"Sharing?" Nerissa offered, her tone somewhere between a laugh and a prayer.
He smiled. "Yeah. Sharing."
For a heartbeat, no one spoke. The night hummed with city sounds—distant chatter, a car door closing, a neon sign clicking softly above the café. Then the distance between them simply stopped mattering.
I took a step forward and pulled them all into a hug, not a normal one. This one I was trying to convey all the emotions I felt for them in all the ways I could possibly think to feel and more.
Then he grew just a little bolder and in quick succession I placed a kiss on all their checks in rapid fire. Afterward he jumped back as if bitten with the brightest blush they had ever seen. Not that they could judge they were all blushing like strawberries as well
They stood there. A comfortable silence formed around them for a moment.
The streetlight above them flickered once, bathing everything in soft gold, the glow sliding down Izuku's cheek before catching in Momo's hair and Shōko's eyes. Nerissa exhaled like she'd been holding her breath since yesterday.
"Now what?" she whispered, voice rough around the edges of laughter.
Izuku looked at each of them in turn. "Now we do what we've always done. We help each other get stronger. We keep being us. Whatever that looks like next just with this nice little twist."
"That sounds… terrifyingly vague," Momo said, the teasing gentle.
He shrugged, still smiling. "We'll figure it out together."
Shōko's expression softened—the quiet kind of smile she rarely showed anyone. "You make things complicated," she said, but there was no reproach in it, only affection. "And somehow simpler, too."
He rubbed the back of his neck. "Story of my life."
Momo laughed quietly, the sound breaking the tension. "Well," she said, "statistically, we're about to rewrite a few social conventions."
Nerissa snorted. "Then we'll make better ones."
Shōko's brow lifted. "Endeavor will explode."
Izuku winced good-naturedly. "Let's… maybe not tell him immediately."
Nerissa rolled her eyes with theatrical exasperation. "You really think he won't find out?"
Momo crossed her arms, mock stern. "He'll survive. Probably."
They all chuckled, and the laughter settled into a softer silence, the kind that meant things had changed—but in a way that finally made sense. The shadow at Izuku's feet stretched, then folded neatly beneath him, calm as his pulse.
When they finally began to move again, it wasn't away from one another but in the same direction—back toward the café, toward light and noise and the promise of normal things that suddenly felt new. The air smelled faintly of roasted beans and rain on the pavement.
Izuku glanced at them as they walked. "I'm lucky," he said quietly.
Nerissa bumped his shoulder. "We all are."
They stepped into the light spilling from the café windows. The door swung closed behind them, leaving the street empty except for four overlapping shadows—one ringed faintly in gold—that lingered together before melting into the night.