The city woke to a dare.
Posters appeared on overpasses and station pillars before dawn, printed on cheap paper and uglier fonts: TODAY AT NOON — LET'S SEE IF HESITATION BLEEDS. A grainy icon stamped the corner: the crooked crown Overturn used when he wanted to sound like a movement instead of a man.
News tickers found it by 7:00 a.m., anchors by 7:15, parents by 7:30. By 8:00, the Commission inbox had the same question a thousand times: Is this real?
Kurobane read the poster in the briefing room, thumb on the date like he could smudge it backward. "It's real enough," he said.
"What does he want?" a deputy asked.
"An audience," Imai said. "Preferably angry."
The director looked at the map of possible choke points—plazas, transit hubs, pedestrian bridges. "We can't be everywhere."
"Good," Kurobane said. "Then we'll choose well."
He sent one message to U.A.: Noon—low presence, high judgment.Aizawa read it and didn't sigh. Renya read it and did.
Class 1-A gathered in the seminar room at nine. Renya stood in front of a whiteboard with nothing on it. They hated when he did that; it meant the test had already started.
"Plan?" Yaoyorozu asked.
"Not to be bait," he said.
Bakugo scowled. "He's begging for attention."
"Then don't give it," Aizawa said. "Give protection."
"Assignments," Renya said, and the room shifted into columns without being told. "Pairs. Light. Quiet. If you act, narrate. If you shout, apologize to the street afterward."
They split: Uraraka with Kirishima, Mina with Sero, Kaminari with Jiro, Tokoyami with Shoji. Hoshi asked for a post near the station. Kai volunteered for the shopping arcades—too many corners, too many places for nervous hands.
"What about me?" Bakugo said.
"You'll hate this," Renya said. "You're with me."
Bakugo bared his teeth. "Leash?"
"Meter," Renya said. "I need your speed if he tries to make a crowd choose wrong."
Bakugo's jaw worked, then relaxed. "Fine," he said. "Just don't ask me to meditate on a bench."
"Today we'll meditate at 60 kilometers an hour," Renya said.
They left the room not like soldiers but like neighbors who'd practiced. Aizawa watched them go and texted one sentence to Nezu: We're taking the long way around.
Aki opened the shop early and never flipped the sign. Some days she understood commerce; today she understood chairs. She dragged four to the sidewalk, set a kettle to boil, and taped a hand-lettered note to the door: WATER / TEA / PHONE CHARGES / SIT.
Natsume counted more cups than customers. "We're a café now," she said.
"We're a threshold," Aki said. "Keep the door open."
Quiet Rooms pulsed. She pinned a post titled What to Do at Noon:
If you can, stay home.If you can't, be boring: take the slow route, avoid crowds, keep your verbs in your pocket—pull them out only when needed.If someone tries to turn your fear into content, turn your back and help the nearest person with something small.If you have a chair, bring it to the corner.
By ten, people were sending photos of folding stools and benches dragged into light. By eleven, a teacher messaged: Our class won't walk into a spectacle. We'll hold the door for the whole building instead. A grandmother posted: I put a pot of rice on. If the day gets long, come by.
Aki sat on the threshold and breathed. You can't coordinate a city. You can set a table and hope.
Overturn's channel went live at 11:55. No location. Only a countdown and background noise—wind, footsteps, a train too far away to be helpful. Comments scrolled: admiration, disgust, the usual half-ironic applause that makes bad ideas feel like communities.
The Commission split its gaze. Imai traced signal routes; Kurobane watched street feeds with the politeness of a man who lets a room hang itself before offering scissors.
At 11:59, the stream showed shoes on a pedestrian bridge—scuffed boots, gutter grit. The camera tilted and framed a simple scene: two rows of people, two directions, a midday river below. Overturn's voice arrived without theatrics.
"They told you to wait," he said. "Let's see who pays."
The camera panned to a small box set at the bridge's center, a wire coiled like a dare. Someone had stenciled PULL FOR PROOF on the lid.
Renya winced. "He's borrowed every stunt from street magicians and terror cells," he muttered to Bakugo as they watched from three blocks away, eyes on their own bridge. "Except the lesson."
Bakugo's palms sparked. "Let me—"
"Not yet," Renya said. "We're not there."
On-screen, a passerby slowed, read the stencil, glanced at the lens, kept walking. Another stopped. A third pulled out a phone and filmed. The camera caught a reflection—billboard glass, faint and sufficient. Overturn stood behind the lens, maskless for once, face forgettable on purpose.
The tug didn't come. The stream waited. Waiting is content when you make audiences itch.
A boy—eighteen, maybe—stepped toward the box.
"No," Aizawa said to the air, wherever he watched. "No," Imai said, wherever she sat. "No," Aki whispered, watering can paused midair.
A hand reached. The boy pulled the wire.
A burst of colored powder geysered—harmless, theatrical, thunder without thunder. People jumped, then laughed, then frowned. Overturn's voice returned, smug and empty.
"See? You waited—nothing happened. Or you didn't—and nothing happened. Waiting is losing. Moving is reality."
But the camera shook now, not with drama—because someone had taken hold of it.
The stream lurched, blurred, cut to sky—then to a new angle: a woman's hands pinning Overturn's wrist to the rail with a pressure that meant competence. A low, steady voice: "Walk," she said. "Or be carried."
The stream cut.
For five seconds the city felt itself exhale.
Then a second stream appeared—different account, same boots, different bridge. The box here wasn't powder. He lifted the lid—showed wiring, a battery, a clock with a second hand scribbled over. He held a switch. He didn't need explosives. He needed the idea of them.
"New test," he said, calm as weather. "Do you check? Do you own? Do you wait? Or do you act and break a thing that might be a bomb and might not?"
Renya changed direction mid-stride. Bakugo didn't ask. They ran. The long way around meant fewer cameras and more people to pass chairs to.
Hoshi arrived first, breath short, hands steady. She didn't touch the device; she touched the people—three quick adjustments to the flow of bodies so no one tripped over a child's leash or a grandmother's cane. Kai took the opposite flank, palms up, repeating, "Keep moving, keep space."
Overturn stood with that new breed of villain calm—as if he were hosting a civics class only he enjoyed. "Come on," he said. "Show me your verbs."
Uraraka skidded up, gaze on faces before wires. "Sir," she said to a man recording, "you're in the spill zone. Please—" She didn't finish. He met her eyes and moved.
Kaminari traced the wiring with his eyes, not his electricity. "Junk," he mouthed to Hoshi. She shook her head—not the point.
Renya and Bakugo slid into the wake, the way water finds the boat it was waiting for. Renya didn't look at Overturn. He looked at the edges: where panic starts, where it spreads, where a wrong sentence becomes a push.
Overturn breathed into the mic. "Decision time, teacher."
Renya glanced once at the device. Cheap. Ugly. Pretending. He didn't touch it. He called to the crowd, "Walk. No hurry."
Bakugo's eyes flashed. "Let me detonate your nothing," he said, and bared teeth that weren't a smile.
"Make your point," Overturn said to Renya, ignoring Bakugo. "You tell them to wait. I tell them to act. Today we grade."
"You built a trick that harms either way," Renya said. "So here's my grade: we refuse your class."
He turned his back—not on the device, but on Overturn—and started the slowest, most infuriating strategy in a city full of speed: he shepherded people along the long way around the bridge—down the stairs, under the span, up the far side. He invented a detour and made it a ritual. Hoshi understood first; she posted up at the base of the stairs, making path. Kai took the top.
Overturn laughed. "So you'll let the box sit? Coward."
"If it is what you want people to think it is," Renya said without looking at him, "then you've just confessed your method on a live feed. That's not bravery. That's hunger."
"Say that again to the camera," Overturn taunted.
"No," Renya said, voice steady. "I'm busy."
Bakugo stepped in front of the lens, blocking Overturn's frame with a forearm that carried a small galaxy of scars. "Pick a different day," he said. "Or a different city."
Overturn flicked the switch. Nothing happened. He shrugged, like a stage magician whose dove refused to appear. "Ah well," he said. "We learned anyway." He left the device, started to move—
—and ran into Hoshi, who stood in his way with nothing but posture and a rule. "No," she said.
He smirked. "Little nudge girl. Move me with your fingers."
She didn't twitch. "Leave the long way," she said, and pointed to the stairs. The crowd, already committed to detours, made her sentence enforceable.
Overturn calculated and got bored. He vaulted the rail, dropped onto the embankment, disappeared.
Bakugo swore softly and didn't chase. Renya didn't, either. The city had chosen not to play; that was victory enough.
They took the device to a disposal unit. It contained exactly what Kaminari had seen: cheap parts, vanity, a switch wired to nothing but insecurity. The Commission would release a short statement: Fake devices, real harm—thanks to bystanders and heroes for choosing path over theater.
But the feed had one more trick to play. A third stream went live—recorded earlier—from a plaza where a street vendor's cart rolled toward a curb. Overturn's voice narrated: "Here's where hesitation loses. Watch the hero stand and think."
The camera showed Hoshi—for one frame, one wrong frame—pausing. The cart bumped a bench and stopped. A hand—someone else's—caught it. Hoshi exhaled, moved to the vendor, and together they fixed the wheel.
Overturn paused the video, rewound the exhale, played it again. "See?" he said. "They wait to be good."
By the time the city processed the lie, the clip had spread. Three edits removed the hand that saved the cart. One added text: HERO WATCHES. STRANGER SAVES.
Hoshi saw it on a passerby's phone before anyone could warn her. She didn't post a defense. She kept helping people down the stairs. You don't win arguments with edits. You win them with the rest of the day.
At the shop, Aki filled four chairs, then six, then the sidewalk. She turned her tablet so people could see the unedited clip—vendor's angle, full frame, the other hand that caught the cart. "This," she said to a dozen strangers, "is the internet learning manners."
Someone asked, "Aren't you angry?"
"I am," she said simply. "But I refuse to outsource my blood pressure to a man who can't hold a camera straight."
Natsume set down a tray of tea. "We also have shortbread for anyone who didn't share the fake."
People laughed. They stayed. They helped each other figure out which friends to correct gently and which to mute for the day. In the corner, a pair of teenagers printed small stickers: CHECK BEFORE SHARE. Not clever. Perfect.
By late afternoon, the dare had dissolved. No bombs. No bodies. Only videos and a city that had chosen to walk the long way around bad questions.
In the Commission office, the director asked, "Do we claim victory?"
"No," Kurobane said. "We claim boredom. It's higher ground."
Imai added, "And we publish nothing about Hoshi beyond the full clip."
"Do we issue takedowns?" a deputy asked.
"Where we can," Imai said. "Where we can't, we drown them with context."
Kurobane sent a single text to Renya: He wanted a fight. You gave him stairs. Nicely done.
Renya replied: The city did. We just pointed.
U.A. reconvened in the evening, exhausted and intact. They didn't cheer. They didn't debrief with speeches. They drank water, peeled off gloves, compared blisters, and told the stupid jokes that hurt less than victory laps.
Hoshi sat, back to a wall, eyes on her own knees. Kai dropped beside her without asking.
"He edited you," he said.
"He tried," she said. "The vendor is fine. The cart is fine. I am fine. The clip is… bored of itself already."
He nodded. "I wanted to punch a phone today."
"Same," she said. "But I remembered we were told to be furniture."
He snorted. "We were told to be chairs."
She managed a laugh. "Right."
Renya found them there. He didn't offer comfort. He offered work. "Ten minutes tomorrow," he said to Hoshi. "No tweaks. Then ten minutes of tweaks. Then ten of choosing."
She saluted with two fingers. "Yes, sir," she said, mocking just enough to heal pride.
"To you," he said to Kai, "apples and doors."
"Always," Kai said.
Aizawa crossed the room and dropped a stack of folded papers on the table. "Digest went live," he said. "Three new entries. Read and sleep."
Renya glanced at the top sheet:
OWN: Added to a crowd. Made it worse. Learned to be long-way-around instead.
CHECK: Video lied. Told five people. That's five fewer lies tomorrow.
REPAIR: Bought the vendor a new wheel. Asked if she wanted it. She did. She picked the color.
He put the paper down. Sometimes a city writes the curriculum so you don't have to.
Night laid its hand on the roofs. The river carried away what it could. The parts it couldn't carry, the city would wake to again—and practice again—because that is what living costs when you have neighbors.
Renya sat on the edge of the dorm roof, legs over the side, hands planted back on concrete that had learned his weight. Aizawa joined him, silent, always the long way around a conversation until it found the right door.
"Today," Aizawa said finally, "you didn't win."
"I know," Renya said.
"You didn't lose either."
"I know," he said again.
"You taught the city to prefer detours," Aizawa said. "That's almost a religion."
"I prefer roads," Renya said. "But I'll take stairs."
They watched a bus crawl along a route designed before either of them cared about routes. A passenger pulled the cord, stood too soon, stumbled, laughed, found a pole. The bus driver glanced in the mirror and did nothing, which was the correct decision.
"Overturn will escalate," Aizawa said.
"Then we will de-escalate louder," Renya said.
"And if he hurts someone?"
"Then we do the verbs until they stop being verbs and start being who we are."
Aizawa allowed himself one satisfied breath. "Good lesson plan."
A message from Aki arrived: We made a sign for the long way. People liked it.Attached: a photo of a cardboard arrow taped to a post: THIS WAY (YOU'LL ARRIVE KINDER)
He sent back: Keep it up.She replied: Bring chairs next time.He: Always.
He slid off the ledge and stood. Tomorrow would be another dare from someone who didn't know what cities are for. Tomorrow would be more edits, more stairs. Tomorrow he would choose the long way again and again until the long way felt like the only route worth teaching.
He went downstairs, tired, hungry, ready to reheat leftover rice and call Airi to check if she'd eaten hers, to check if her school was sharing the clip with context, to check if she needed a wheel for anything in her life that was wobbling.
The door to the stairwell stuck; he didn't blast it open. He knocked. The door remembered its job and swung.
The city didn't applaud. It didn't need to. It had learned something difficult the slow way.
So had he.