Chapter Text
It started with Midoriya. Or, to be more exact, it started with Midoriya running away, after trying and failing to stammer out a response to Mina’s greeting.
Mina was left alone in the corridor, the smile frozen on her face and arm still raised in a wave, watching Midoriya’s quirk sparkling across his skin in that brief second it took him to clear the corridor.
She blinked, confused, and dropped her arm. Now, Midoriya was quite awkward at times, but this was unusually extreme behavior even for him. Then again, Midoriya’s oddities weren’t Mina’s problem.
Shrugging, Mina continued towards the classroom, figuring that whatever was wrong with Midoriya would solve itself in time.
It would have been fine if it was just him acting oddly, but… When Mina entered the room, half of the class was still missing, despite—she turned to look at the clock—there being less than five minutes till the bell.
And the worst thing? Iida wasn’t there.
The same Iida who always came in half an hour early, and profusely apologized the one time he came twenty-nine minutes early. That Iida.
Something odd was happening, and Mina was dying to know what it was.
Sitting down at her desk, Mina leaned towards Kaminari who, as the person across the aisle from her, was the closest classmate available at the time.
“Hey, Kaminari!” She grinned. “Any idea what’s happening?”
But Kaminari didn’t respond; He just sat there, back ramrod straight and eyes focused on the empty blackboard. Mina would have chalked it up to him wearing earphones, probably listening to one of his focus playlists, but… He did that every day. And it’s never stopped him from answering…
She leaned a bit further, tapping him lightly on the arm.
Kaminari startled, and stiffened even more.
“What’s going on?” Mina repeated.
“Um. I. Haha, I don’t know?” Kaminari laughed nervously, refusing to meet her eyes. “It’s not like- OUCH!”
Despite nearly two years of attending classes at UA, this must have been the first time Mina’s ever seen Oijiro’s tail slap Kaminari’s face… At least while they were both seated at their desks.
“Whoop!” Oijiro said, shifting slightly to look at them. “That was an accident! How weird!”
…Yeah, if the heroing thing fell through, acting would not be Oijiro’s backup, that much Mina was certain.
Frowning, she glanced between the two of them. “If you didn’t want to tell me, you could have just said so,” she pouted, turning back to her desk to grab her books and double-check her assignments.
It felt… Weird. To have people deliberately brush her off like that. Usually, Mina was the one people would go to when there was some news, as the self-proclaimed queen of gossip. To have her classmates try to keep something away from her in such an obvious way…
Iida’s arrival interrupted her musing, his hair tousled as if he ran the entire way to the classroom, his glasses slightly skewed.
“Wow, Class Prez, only two minutes early?” she teased as he passed by her desk. “That’s super tardy, even by our standards!”
Iida paused, turning towards Mina with one hand raised in his signature chopping position before freezing. “I-” He choked out. “No comment,” he ended up saying, dropping his arm and swiftly leaving.
…Maybe she was affected by a quirk? A quirk that made everyone around suddenly hate her? It was the only explanation that made any sense… Because surely everyone didn’t actually hate her, right?
Leaning down to sprawl over the desk, Mina watched Bakugou and Kirishima talk to Aizawa-sensei, while at the same time trying to ignore the glances they all sent her way.
The doors opened, pulling her attention, Tsuyu and Uraraka entering together. But while Uraraka rushed towards Bakugou, Tsuyu seemed to be heading straight for her desk.
“Will you talk to me?” Mina asked, turning around in her chair to follow Tsuyu’s movements.
“Sure,” Tsuyu answered easily, sliding into her seat. “As long as you don’t ask where we were or what we were doing, ribbit.”
Mina blinked.
“Can I ask why shouldn’t I ask about it?”
Tsuyu pressed a finger against her mouth, thinking it through. “That would defeat the whole point of keeping it from you in the first place, ribbit.”
The bell rang. Wordlessly, Mina turned back towards the blackboard, pretending she wasn’t hurt.
There were still a bunch of people missing. And, in an even more peculiar turn of events, the three students talking to Aizawa-sensei ran out of the class instead of towards their desks.
Aizawa-sensei didn’t seem to care about that, starting the lesson as if nothing was amiss.
“Um, sensei-” Mina raised her hand. “What about-”
“They’re excused,” Aizawa-sensei interrupted curtly, seamlessly returning to his lecture.
Slowly dropping her hand, Mina clenched her fist on top of her thigh. So it wasn’t just the classmates, it was Aizawa-sensei, too? Would the rest of the teachers act like this, too?
She couldn’t remember anyone having a chance to use a quirk on her recently, but that was still more likely than everyone else somehow being affected.
But it had to be a quirk, and if it was a quirk, surely it would expire soon! Mina tried her best to focus on the lecture and taking notes, figuring that, whatever this was, it would be over by lunchtime.
Mina was really looking forward to catching up with everyone, once they no longer acted so weird. Surely they would explain what was going on, and it would be something really silly, and they would laugh about it over their lunch.
By the time Mina had made it to the cafeteria, after a brief detour to the bathroom, it seemed like the entire school was there.
That is, the entire school except for her class.
She’d just… eat outside. It was a nice summer afternoon, it would be a good way to clear her mind.
She passed by the windows--Mina had no idea UA was renovating, but that had to be the reason why there were mesh panels covering every inch of the glass--and finally found one of her classmates.
Todoroki wasn’t sitting at a table, though. He was leaning against the wall on the side of the doors, slurping a cup of cold soba.
“Hey, Todoroki,” Mina greeted casually, not really willing to suffer through yet another rejection. She intended to just pass him by to go outside, but Todoroki shifted before she could reach the doors, moving to block her way.
“Um,” Mina paused, her hand inches from Todoroki’s sternum. “Can you… Let me through?”
“No.”
“Oh…”
Well, that was… Something. These doors weren’t the only way to get outside, though. And since Todoroki seemed pretty insistent on guarding them (which, ???), Mina figured she could just take a different route.
There was another exit in the next corridor over, if she remembered correctly. Mina headed that way, surprised to see Aoyama stand right in front of them, staring into a small mirror while fixing his hair.
Not wishing for a repeat of the Todoroki situation, Mina tried to sneak behind him, vastly overestimating how absorbed Aoyama was in his task.
“Oh, mon amie!” He said after noticing Mina’s reflection, snapping his mirror closed. “How good you’re here! I require your assistance, oui, oui!”
Mina straightened out, surprised. Was Aoyama immune to whatever quirk made everyone act weird-?
She waited for a solid minute, but Aoyama didn’t say anything else.
“Alright…?” She prompted him.
“Um, I feel bad!” Aoyama pressed the back of his wrist to his forehead, swooning dramatically. “You must take me to l’hospital!”
“Oh no!” Mina pressed her own hand to his forehead, but it didn’t feel warm. “What’s wrong?”
Aoyama blinked. Then, he stepped around her decisively, opening the doors just enough to blast his naval laser towards the sky before closing them again.
He turned around, beaming at her, proudly announcing “I have a stomachache!”
Mina closed her eyes, taking a deep breath as she counted to ten.
“Fine,” she said. “Let’s take you to the infirmary, then.”
The rest of the day passed much the same way. People kept trying to either avoid Mina, prevent her from going certain ways, or act normal while failing spectacularly.
When the last bell of the day rang, Mina breathed a sigh of relief, swiftly packing everything up. She just wanted to go back to her room, have a nice, long cry, and maybe eat some of that ice cream Bakugou taught them to make last month…
She was just a few steps away from the exit when Aizawa-sensei sighed, calling her over. He was putting his phone away when Mina turned towards him, approaching her with his usual stoic expression.
“Come with me,” he grunted, leaving Mina with no choice but to follow.
As they walked through the corridors, Mina fidgeted with the straps of her backpack, trying to figure out what this could possibly be about. She didn’t remember doing anything wrong, unless she was going to be expelled just because everyone seemed to hate her now… but Aizawa-sensei wouldn’t have done that, right?
The teachers’ lounge loomed in sight before Mina could reach a conclusion.
Aizawa-sensei opened the doors, gesturing at Mina to enter first. With one hand resting on her shoulder, he guided her towards the sofa where Mic-sensei was already sitting, grading some papers.
“Ah, Sho!” Mic-sensei called as he glanced up, sounding vaguely confused. “And… Little Listener? What’s up?”
“I don’t actually know,” Mina admitted with a shrug sitting down upon Aizawa’s prompting.
“Ashido needs to be distracted for another half an hour, Problem Children said,” Aizawa-sensei mumbled, already zipped up in his sleeping bag and halfway to the floor. “But you know I’m no good at that, so just talk to her about fashion or hairstyles or something. Just keep Ashido away from the windows.”
“Alright then?” Mic-sensei said, sounding baffled as he stared down at the yellow lump that Aizawa-sensei had become. “So, uh. Ryukyu’s new shampoo line, huh?”
The thing is, this could have very easily worked to distract Mina… If Aizawa-sensei hadn’t explicitly said that was the goal.
Determined to get to the bottom of this whole mess, Mina rushed towards the nearest window, hand over her eyes as she tried to figure out what the class was trying to hide from her.
It seemed to be-
A party?
A very badly misorganized party, if the half-set up decorations and her classmates running around like headless chickens were any indication.
“I’m going outside,” she announced, stomping towards the doors.
For once, nobody tried to stop her.
There was no one guarding the nearest exit; seemed like it was an “all hands on deck” kind of a situation, with her classmates believing Aizawa-sensei would be enough to keep her occupied.
The moment she stepped outside, right into the center of the makeshift party, everyone froze, staring at her like deer in highlights.
A party popper exploded, startling everyone and showering the nearest people in confetti and glitter. The banner chose that moment to drop on one side, leaving the text reading “BIRTHDAY, MINA!”
“...Surprise?” Midoriya offered weakly. “You always do so much for the class’ social life, so we wanted to return the favor…”
“Sorry it’s not ready yet,” Uraraka added, scratching at her cheek. “Turns out organizing parties is much more difficult than you made it look…”
At least now Mina knew why they were acting so weird the entire day; Out of all the possible explanations, a “secret birthday party” was definitely the best option.
Grinning, she rolled up her sleeves. “It’s not that difficult when you have experience,” she said. “Lemme help you get this party going!”