Chapter 15: Pincer Maneuver!

Izuku's smile was so radiant that, for a single blink, the proposal actually seemed to make sense. That Yu Takeyama, rookie hero, star of a national scandal, and the most stressed woman in all of Japan at that moment, could become a teacher at UA sounded, for one very brief instant, like something a responsible adult might seriously consider.

That instant didn't last long.

"Okay..." she said, letting out a long sigh and bringing a hand to her forehead so she wouldn't lose her patience. "Let's do this calmly, step by step. Izuku, look at me, because I need to understand at what point any of this started making sense to you."

He looked at her, attentive, eyes full of expectation.

"I'm a rookie hero," she explained, hitting each syllable so it would sink in. "My professional career has been alive for less than two weeks. What exactly am I supposed to teach? Am I gonna run a class called 'How to Survive a Humiliating Debut, Beginner Level'?"

"Exactly!" Izuku clapped his hands, thrilled. "Real practical experience is worth way more than textbook theory. The students would learn from your mistakes and your wins, they'd see your real combat analyses, and it'd be a whole class about how important it is to evaluate yourself and keep improving."

"It would be a class on how my unlicensed assistant had to fix my costume for me in the middle of the street because my debut was a disaster, and if that wasn't a disaster, I don't know what is," she shot back, raising her voice without meaning to.

"And that's exactly why you'd be perfect, Yu," Nemuri said with a smile, resting her chin on one hand. "You aren't one of those untouchable heroines who seem to have been born knowing everything. You're a professional who fell flat on her face at her debut and kept going anyway. Do you have any idea how valuable that is for a student? You'd be showing them that messing up isn't the end of the road."

"That isn't inspiring, it's humiliating!" Yu protested, bringing a hand to her forehead. "People are still laughing about that disaster!"

"Oh, honey... the difference between an embarrassing anecdote and a memorable lesson is usually just time."

Yu let out a snort and held up a finger before Izuku could open his mouth.

"No, I'm not done yet. Next point: the scandal. Does that ring a bell, Izuku? Because it's been chasing me since I walked out of my house. The tabloids won't shut up about the supposed 'secret date' between a heroine and her assistant. And guess who the assistant is?" She pointed a finger straight at his chest. "You. How am I supposed to stand in front of a room full of teenagers with the whole press making up stories that I'm dating you?"

Izuku blinked, completely serene.

"But we aren't a couple yet. It was just a work dinner. Once we clear up the misunderstanding, everything will go back to normal."

Yu froze.

The yet hit her harder than any sensationalist headline. She felt the heat rush up to her cheeks, and for a moment, she chose to focus on being outraged... rather than ask herself why that single word had rattled her so much.

"The problem isn't the truth, Izuku! It's what people believe!" Yu felt the last of her sanity slipping away. "And what people believe is that I'm some predator hooking up with her assistant!"

"I wouldn't use the word predator," Nemuri said, tapping her lips with one finger, looking very thoughtful. "The press went more with 'heartbreaker.' It sounds more playful."

"Not to mention the Commission," Yu went on, grabbing at another straw. "Those people live looking for excuses to hang a rookie out to dry, and my sponsors... God, my sponsors. I'm the face of a shampoo line, not a classroom."

"On the contrary," Izuku said, eyes lighting up. "A heroine who's also teaching at UA sounds like someone serious, someone with a future ahead of her, and brands love that. You'd go from being 'the rookie in the scandal' to 'the professional shaping the next generation.' It's the best rebrand you could ever ask for, and you wouldn't even have to pay for it."

Yu's mouth hung open in the middle of her argument. She hated, she really hated, that any of that made sense.

"Besides, the scandal will die down on its own the moment people have something new to talk about," Nemuri added, stirring her coffee, "and there's nothing newer than seeing the heroine from the headline turned into a teacher. You'd be changing their story before they change it on you. That, sweetie, is damage control, and you'd be doing it without even trying."

"Stop doing that," Yu protested, pointing at both of them. "Stop turning every bad thing in my life into a reason to drag me deeper into this insanity."

"But it isn't dragging you into insanity," Izuku said, smiling. "It's climbing one step up, just in a direction you hadn't looked."

Yu shot him a hateful look and decided she'd had enough of taking hits without landing any of her own.

"Look who's talking about youth," she said, propping her elbow on the table with a sharp smile. "Tell me, Kayama, how many debuts have you watched come and go while you keep posing on the same red carpet?"

Nemuri's smile froze for half a second. A muscle in her cheek tightened, and her voice dropped, dangerously low.

"Watch your words, sweetheart. I was already a famous heroine when you were still practicing smiles for the camera in front of your mirror, and the years in this line of work aren't a flaw, they're experience. But don't worry... you'll understand once you survive long enough in this profession."

"Sounds like I hit a nerve," Yu answered, enjoying herself for the first time all lunch.

"All right, I'll admit you're bruising my pride a little," Nemuri replied, forcing her smile back into place, "but either way, you still aren't getting out of the seminar."

Izuku, completely oblivious to the blood flowing under the table, raised a finger, thinking he was helping.

"You both actually have a point. Nemuri-san has years of experience, and Yu has the freshest and juiciest scandal in the country. Between the two of you, you cover the whole syllabus."

"Nobody asked you, brainiac!" they both said at the same time, and immediately glared at each other, annoyed at having agreed on anything.

*

"Besides," Nemuri went on, ignoring the murderous look with exasperating calm, "this gives you another subject to teach, and an important one. At UA we focus on combat and rescue, with some Quirk use law on top, but we barely scratch the surface of the most dangerous topic of all: handling the media."

Yu opened her mouth to keep fighting, and in that moment her eyes dropped for a second to Nemuri's blouse, which looked tighter than that woman's clothes usually did. She went still.

"Hold on a second," she said, narrowing her eyes. "Kayama, your blouse."

Nemuri smiled, delighted she'd finally noticed.

"See? A little souvenir from this morning's training session. Your assistant got distracted for a second while working with my Quirk... and left me with this cute little thing." She brought a hand to her chest with a calm smile. "I told him he could put everything back to normal, but he was the one who insisted it flattered my figure. So considerate... a real gentleman."

The color drained from Yu's face and came right back as a furious red. She whipped around to Izuku.

"You did... to her... the same thing you did to me?"

"It was an accident, I swear," Izuku defended himself, raising his hands.

"My assistant, groping his way through half the heroine roster!" Yu blew up, forgetting all about her volume.

"Supervised groping sounds a lot more professional," Izuku added, oblivious to Yu's mood.

"It doesn't sound more professional, it doesn't sound any better at all, Izuku."

First the "we aren't a couple yet," and now it turns out he pulled the same trick on Kayama. That was our thing, mine... a business thing, I mean. It's a business thing.

Nemuri, who was reading her face without any effort at all, hid her smile behind her cup and saved the comment for later.

*

Yu slumped back against the chair, defeated by the absurd logic surrounding her. She was arguing with two people who didn't live on the same planet as her, immune to reason and to shame in equal measure.

"I don't have teaching experience," she tried one last time, her voice already worn out. "I don't know how to put together a syllabus or grade, and I don't have the faintest idea how to control a classroom full of teenagers with Quirks that go off at the slightest provocation."

"I'll help you with the syllabus," Izuku offered instantly. "I've read a ton of hero biographies and training routines, my head's stuffed with that stuff. Between the two of us we can throw together something good in a couple of afternoons."

"And I'll give you a few tricks for handling the classroom," Nemuri added, with a mischievous smile. "My favorite method combines the strategic use of fear with carefully measured public humiliation, and it works wonders for keeping discipline. I'll vouch for it."

Yu rested her forehead against the cold tabletop and let out a groan of defeat. The war was lost. The two of them had taken over the conversation and were now redesigning her life with one ridiculous suggestion after another.

She realized she wasn't going to win. Every objection she threw at them, they threw back as an argument in her favor, and arguing with them was like trying to catch smoke with her bare hands.

She stayed quiet. She stopped fighting, straightened up slowly, and picked up her cold black coffee for a long sip. It was bitter, and for once it seemed to match the moment.

The shift in her was abrupt. The combative energy that had filled her corner of the restaurant dimmed, replaced by a tense stillness.

And it wasn't the seminar wearing her out. She could survive a seminar with her eyes closed. What was weighing on her was sitting right across the table, talking about UA with an excitement she'd never seen him bring to a single conversation about her agency, looking at Kayama with the curiosity of a new student, and that weird kid was slipping away from her into Midnight's world, happy, without even noticing he was leaving her behind.

I found him first, and now Nezu and Kayama get to split him up like I don't count? The nerve... he doesn't even seem to realize he's leaving me behind.

Izuku was the first to catch the shift. Anger had been serving her as a shield the whole lunch, and now that she was letting it go, she just looked tired.

"Yu," he said. "Are you okay?"

She lifted her eyes from the coffee.

"Fantastic, Izuku, just how I dreamed it. My future has been decided for me by my assistant and a pervert... in a family restaurant, between a latte and a slice of cheesecake. Truly, what a privilege."

"Come on, it isn't the end of the world." Nemuri made a dismissive gesture with her hand and smiled sideways. "I just threw an idea out for you to chew on for a while. Nezu isn't gonna show up tomorrow with a contract under his arm. UA's bureaucracy is a monster on its own, and months would go by before they moved a single piece of paper. So relax, and let the idea sit for a bit."

It was a truce, a small tactical retreat. The damage was already done, and they both knew it.

*

The rest of the meal went by in an odd silence. Izuku and Nemuri tried to talk about UA's safety protocols, and the words just faded out on their own in the face of Yu's mood. The plates arrived and they ate. Izuku, who would normally have devoured his burger, barely tasted it, and Yu picked at the edge of a piece of toast the waiter had brought by mistake and drank her coffee like it was prescribed medicine.

When it came time to pay, another fight broke out, this one clumsy. Yu pulled out her card in one motion, Nemuri pulled out hers, and Izuku, seeing it was a lost battle from the start, just put his wallet away.

"I'm paying," Yu said, in a tone that left no room for argument.

"Don't even think about it, I ate too," Nemuri answered.

"Consider it a professional consultation," Yu insisted. "I just got a huge pile of advice I didn't ask for. Let me at least treat this time. It's the least I can do after that kind of 'expert consultation'."

In the end they split the bill three ways, an uncomfortable truce that left nobody happy.

*

They stepped out onto the sidewalk. The afternoon sun was already dropping and the air was starting to cool, and the three of them stood there for a moment, not really sure what to say or where to look.

Nemuri was the first to break the moment. She stretched lazily and smiled, her mask of amusement back in place.

"Well, that was extremely productive," she declared, with an irony only Yu picked up on entirely. "I have to go prep my classes for the week. Teacher stuff, you know."

She winked at Yu and moved close enough that Izuku wouldn't catch her words.

"Relax, honey," she murmured with a mischievous smile. "I'll return him exactly the way you lent him to me. Though, if I'm being honest... that jealous little face you just made was what made this whole lunch worth it."

"I am not jealous," Yu hissed.

"Of course you aren't, sweetie." Nemuri straightened up, thoroughly pleased with herself. "We'll talk later."

She turned and disappeared into the crowd with light steps, leaving Yu with the words stuck in her throat.

*

Izuku and Yu were left alone on the sidewalk, and the noise of the city rushed in to fill the space Nemuri had left behind. Izuku shoved his hands into his pockets and looked at Yu, who avoided his eyes and started watching the cars go by.

"So..." he began, his voice a little hesitant. "Are you gonna think about it? The UA thing, I mean."

Yu turned to face him. Her expression didn't give much away. There wasn't any anger or sadness, just an enormous exhaustion that reached all the way to her bones.

"I'm going home, Izuku," she said, in a flat voice. "I need to think."

Without another word, she turned around and started walking toward her apartment, leaving him planted there on the sidewalk.

He watched her until her figure was lost in the crowd. He stayed there a while longer, turning the disaster of a meeting over in his head. It hadn't gone the way he'd expected, but his twisted logic let him hold on to a thin thread of hope.

She didn't say no.

An optimistic smile crept back onto his face as he took off in the direction Yu had disappeared.

That's progress.

*******

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