Under what was called "persuasion" but felt more like pressure from his classmates, Izuku stood his ground and refused to wear the embarrassing outfit.
"Please stop trying to make me wear that. I'm only wearing this," he said, pulling up the zipper of his jacket.
Aside from his face, which remained unchanged, the rest of his outfit was mostly black and white.
"Last piece."
He strapped a holster onto his right leg and placed a toy gun inside it.
"This should be fine, right?" Izuku asked, scratching his head.
"Yeah, that actually looks pretty cool," Ochaco Uraraka said with a smile.
"Not bad," someone else added.
"It's decent, I guess," another voice said.
Nearby, Katsuki Bakugo scoffed. "Trash… still trash."
Izuku ignored him.
"Midoriya, your sister seems to understand you well," Tenya Iida said, hands clasped together. "Could you tell us how you met her?"
"It's nothing special," Izuku replied. "But if you're curious… it started when I was twelve."
The class immediately focused on him.
"I met her at sunset," Izuku said, recalling the memory. "That day, I'd been beaten pretty badly. My head was bleeding."
Everyone turned to look at Bakugo.
"What are you looking at me for?!" Bakugo snapped, clearly confused.
"I didn't go straight home," Izuku continued. "I couldn't face my mom like that, so I stopped at a small park near the school to wash my face."
"That's where I met her."
"She was sitting on a swing. Quiet. Her expression looked… empty."
"What happened next?" someone asked.
"I asked her for some tissues to clean the blood off my face."
Izuku paused briefly before continuing.
"She asked me why I was hurt so badly. I told her it was because I didn't have a Quirk. People saw me as useless, so they treated me like a punching bag."
"She asked me why I was still smiling."
"I told her… because All Might smiles. He's the number one hero. I wanted to be like him, so I kept smiling too."
Izuku's voice softened slightly.
"Then I asked her why she was there."
"She said she didn't have a Quirk either… and that her family didn't really accept her."
"So we just… sat there and talked. For hours."
"By the time it got dark, we had exchanged contact information."
"She gave me a nickname too—Jonah."
"After that, we stayed in touch. And during summer vacation two years ago, I went to visit her. I spent the whole break there."
"Wait," Bakugo cut in suddenly. "That time you got beaten—did you even see who did it?"
Izuku shook his head.
"Not clearly. Or maybe I did, but I was too out of it to remember properly. I only recall that there were two people, and both of them were holding wooden bats."
The class exchanged glances.
"So it wasn't Bakugo…" someone muttered.
Izuku continued.
"During that summer, she told me she was going abroad. She wanted to travel and write. She ended up settling in China, and now she's a bestselling author."
A small smile appeared on his face.
"I've never been overseas, so I asked her to edit some photos for me. That's why those pictures look like that."
"That's basically it."
"Oh, right!" Uraraka said. "The letter mentioned she sent a new book too. Can we see it?"
"Sure."
Izuku reached into the package, took out the book, and handed it over.
The girls quickly gathered around to take a look.