Chapter 6: The Sacred End-of-Date Protocol! (or: How to Break a Vain Heroine’s Brain with a Single Question)

The walk back to Yu's apartment was nothing like the way there. Before, there'd been the adrenaline of the debut, the nerves in the alley, and the certainty that everything was crumbling down on top of her. Now all that was left was the warmth from the restaurant still tucked into her body and a strange calm she was having trouble placing.

Her brain, on the other hand, was completely fried. She'd spent her entire adolescence preparing to be a hero. Combat tactics, procedural manuals, laws on Quirk use, rescue drills until she lost her voice. Nobody, in any class, had prepared her for a dinner like that one. The run-in with Nemuri had been a full-on ambush, and she could still feel the aftershocks. The worst part was the boy walking beside her, the direct cause of all the chaos, strolling along all calm with his hands in his pockets and not a single worry line on his face.

She couldn't stand the silence any longer. She had to break it or she was gonna explode.

"Professional assistant to professional heroes?" she said, dripping sarcasm. "Seriously, Midoriya? Did you come up with that on the fly or is it a line you rehearsed in front of the mirror for a special occasion?"

Izuku turned his head toward her. There wasn't a trace of embarrassment on his face.

"I have to start building my personal brand," he answered with total seriousness. "First impressions are everything. If Nemuri-san ever needs consulting services or assistance someday, now she knows I'm a qualified professional and not just some amateur. It's about generating credibility from the first contact."

Yu stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk and looked at him with her hands on her hips.

"Personal brand? Your only documented work experience to this day is losing a poodle with anxiety issues and making my boobs bigger. You don't have a brand, Midoriya, you've got a track record of incidents that would make anyone in their right mind think twice before hiring you."

"Exactly," he nodded enthusiastically, clearly pleased with himself. "And every incident is a valuable learning experience. Now I know, for example, that cheap leashes hold up way less than you'd expect against the stress of a four-kilo dog mid panic attack. That's not a failure, it's a field lesson."

Yu opened her mouth to argue back, ready to walk him through the absurdity of his logic point by point, then snapped it shut. It was completely useless. Arguing against his way of seeing the world was about as productive as trying to punch the wind. She let out a sigh and started walking again.

Her phone buzzed in her jacket pocket. She pulled it out on reflex, stomach tight, expecting disaster.

"If this is a headline about my fall, I swear I'm chucking this thing into a storm drain," she muttered, opening the message.

It was from her manager. Three lines in all caps and an avalanche of exclamation marks.

"Bad news?" Izuku asked, peeking over with a nosiness she was already starting to find familiar.

"The debut clip is going viral all over the net," she said slowly, not quite believing it. "The kick. They added epic music and everything. There's like ten thousand comments asking me to be the new face of some energy drink."

"And the fall?"

"Hardly anyone's talking about it." Yu lowered the phone and looked at it with a look of relief. "A couple of jokers made memes, but my manager says even that helps because it keeps me on people's lips. They're finding the funny side and still talking about me."

"Told you," Izuku said with a shrug. "People remember the hit that cracks the asphalt, not the slip on the rubble. Your instincts skipped a beat for a couple of seconds, but the rest of your work as a hero was flawless."

Yu put her phone away and walked a while without saying anything, biting back the urge to admit that the comment had landed a lot better than she was willing to let on.

"You know," she finally said, changing the subject before her smile started showing too much, "setting aside your unhinged business plan, for a total social disaster, you handled yourself pretty well tonight."

"Who are you talking about?"

"Nemuri." She spelled it out for him, even though it was insultingly obvious. "You didn't flinch for a second. Most people shrink when she smiles. She's a shark that smells blood in the water. She knows exactly where to press to make you fall apart."

"And why would I feel intimidated?" Izuku asked, genuinely curious. "The woman is impressive, and her command of her surroundings is fascinating. The way she controls an entire room with just her presence is a talent on its own, way beyond her Quirk. It's charisma applied tactically. And her analysis of my theory about appetite as a performance factor was really sharp. She asked me questions that forced me to reconsider a couple of variables. She's a really smart girl."

Yu shot him a sideways glance and decided to keep the comment stuck in her throat to herself.

"I didn't know you were such good friends with Midnight," Izuku said as they kept walking. "You two were talking like you'd known each other forever."

Yu huffed.

"We are not friends. Not even close. I know her because in this little world it's impossible not to bump into her. She shows up at every event and weighs in on every interview about absolutely everything. And on top of that, she seems to have a special radar for finding me and dropping some passive aggressive comment when I least expect it."

"Well, she seems like an interesting person," Izuku said sincerely. "She's got a lot of presence."

"She's got presence and a real gift for making me feel like a little kid who's been allowed to stay up past her bedtime." Yu shrugged. "I guess that's what happens when you've been in this game for years and you see a rookie show up trying to carve out a spot with the same weapons you use. It turns her stomach, and she doesn't even bother hiding it."

"But she stayed for dinner with us," Izuku pointed out.

"Because she's an opportunist, Midoriya. She saw a smart kid with initiative and a face that looked like it was hiding something, and she couldn't resist digging in." Yu glanced at him again. "You're like a new toy to her. She loves collecting interesting people and squeezing every last bit of gossip out of them."

Izuku stayed quiet for a moment, turning it over.

"So if her goal was to rub her superiority in your face and meet your assistant on the side, I don't think she totally got what she wanted," he concluded. "You went home with a great dinner and with me. She went home with a phone number and the feeling that she'd met someone with talent. To me it sounds like a tie with a slight edge in your favor."

Yu looked at him for a full second. Then she let out a laugh and shook her head.

"You're an idiot," she said. "But you're right. She's not forgetting tonight either."

"Thank you," Izuku answered, with the same seriousness he brought to everything in life.

"That wasn't entirely a compliment." Yu held back what was left of her laugh. "Though I'll admit you've got a weird talent for finding the bright side of things. Most people I know would use that brain of theirs to make life harder for themselves."

"Making life complicated is exhausting," he said. "I already used up my whole existential drama quota between fourteen and seventeen. Now I prefer to manage my energy."

"Makes sense, coming from someone who considers losing three dogs a learning experience."

"Two of those dogs actively hated me, for the record. Fifi had been plotting my downfall for weeks. Them escaping was practically an act of her own will, I just set the stage."

Yu laughed again, and this time she didn't even try to hide it. The conversation had hit a comfortable rhythm. By the time she actually paid attention to where they were, the front of her building was already rising up in front of them, the big polished wooden door reflecting the lights from the street.

It was the end of the night. The bubble was about to pop, and Yu felt it before it did.

"Well," she said, turning to him with a clumsiness that didn't fit the hero who'd cracked the asphalt a few hours earlier. "Thanks for dinner, Midoriya. It was... unexpected."

"You're welcome, Takeyama-san. It was a pleasure, and very educational."

They stood there, on the threshold, suspended in a silence that suddenly weighed more than it should have. Social protocol said he should turn around and walk away, that she should go in and close the door. But Izuku didn't move a centimeter. He just stayed planted, looking at her, with a strange intensity, like he was trying to solve the final riddle of the universe, and that riddle happened to be her. Or maybe her curves. His green eyes, serious and focused, traveled over her face, her hair, her shoulders, memorizing every detail like there'd be a test later.

Yu started to feel incredibly nervous. Her heart was beating a little faster than normal.

What is he doing? Why isn't he leaving? Is he gonna judge my face? Or is he gonna say something about my butt? Oh God, he's gonna say something about my butt, I can feel it. That's it, it's over, I'm firing him first thing tomorrow morning. No, I can't, I just hired him. Just go! Please, leave before you say something!

Finally, he broke the silence. And what he said was so unexpected and so very Izuku that Yu's brain simply crashed.

"Aren't you gonna kiss me?"

She stood there, mouth hanging open, eyes wide. The words bounced around in her head with nowhere to land.

"WHAT?!" she shouted, in a high, strangled voice that probably woke up a neighbor. "WHY THE HELL WOULD I DO THAT?!"

Izuku blinked a couple of times, like he was the one caught off guard. His face wore a confused innocence that was almost offensive.

"Well, from what I understand, this is the kiss moment," he explained. "I walked you to your door. We had a good conversation where we shared our emotional vulnerabilities. According to the movies and shows I've seen, this is the exact point where the girl kisses the guy to wrap up the date..."

Yu stared at him.

The tension in her shoulders evaporated instantly, replaced by pure disbelief.

She didn't know whether to burst out laughing or scream and call security. She went with the only response her brain, in full shock mode, managed to put together.

"Get out of here, Midoriya!" she shouted. "Get out of here before I fire you for insubordination!"

She spun around sharply, almost tripping over her own heels, yanked the front door open, and slipped into the building, letting it slam shut behind her with a bang that echoed through the whole lobby. She leaned against the cold surface of the door, heart pounding. She held her breath and listened to his footsteps fade down the sidewalk until the sound got swallowed by the hum of the city.

When she didn't hear anything else, she let out a really long sigh. A tremor ran through her legs. She slid slowly down against the door until she was sitting on the marble floor of the empty, silent lobby.

That kid... that kid is gonna be the end of me.

She replayed the whole day in her head, scene by scene. The debut, the humiliating fall, the alley, the breast enlargement, the dinner, Nemuri's ambush, the walk home, and now... the dating protocol. It had been, without a doubt, the most stressful and chaotic day of her entire professional life. And probably of her personal life too.

An eighteen year old kid without a yen to his name, an action figure collector, socially inept to an alarming degree, with a dangerous obsession with butts, who had made her feel more things in a single day than in the entire previous year. He had humiliated her, made her laugh until she cried, pushed her buttons to the point where she wanted to rip her hair out, listened to her, understood her in a way nobody ever had before, and left her completely speechless at her own front door.

A small smile crept onto her face in the dimness of the lobby.

"Hiring this pervert..." she whispered to herself, voice barely audible. "Was it the best or worst idea of my life?"

She got to her feet with a sigh, smoothing down her clothes. As she walked slowly toward the elevator, she realized something with a clarity that took her by surprise.

Despite all the chaos and embarrassment of that night, dinner with Izuku Midoriya had been the best date she'd ever had in her life.

And, she also realized, with a touch of embarrassment, it had been the first. Her first date.

"I want you in the office at nine on the dot, Midoriya," she murmured into the air, toward the closed door. "And you'd better be on time."

For the first time in a long while, the thought of going to work the next day didn't feel like a weight on her shoulders. It felt... like an adventure.

She reached the elevator with the smile still glued to her face and pressed the button. The metal doors gave her back her reflection, a little distorted but good enough, and Yu fixed her bangs out of habit. Then her eyes dropped. They dropped to the neckline of the leather jacket, still as tight as it had been at the restaurant, outlining a silhouette that, until that very morning, hadn't been quite so... generous.

She brought both hands up to her chest, feeling them slowly, checking the weight and the firmness with growing horror.

"No," she said quietly. "No, no, no, no."

They're still... still the same size. And this? He just forgot? He left them like this! He just strolled off all carefree and left them like this!

She spun on her heels and rushed back to the front door, yanked it open, and leaned out into the street with half her body sticking out.

"MIDORIYA! DAMN IT, I FORGOT TO TELL YOU TO PUT THEM BACK TO NORMAL!"

Her voice bounced between the buildings and died with no answer. The kid was already long gone, lost in the murmur of the city, probably walking along happy as a clam with his notebook and his goofy smile.

A couple passing on the other sidewalk stopped to stare at her.

Yu ducked back into the lobby and shut the door with a sharp slam, her back against the marble again, her face fully flushed. She glanced down one last time, completely resigned.

"Well..." she muttered, tilting her head with a quick and completely involuntary once over. "They don't actually look that bad."

She went quiet for a second, horrified at her own thought.

"Tomorrow I kill him," she decided, heading toward the elevator for the second time. "At nine oh one, I kill him."

The doors closed on a vain heroine, with a chest two sizes bigger, a first date tucked away in her heart, and a mental list of revenges that, even so, couldn't quite wipe the smile off her face.