Muse

Chapter 26

Izuku dropped the dumbbell with a sigh and wiped the sweat off of him with a rag. While he had been bringing his arms back up to snuff, Kobayashi had been strengthening her orbs of light by using them as targets for Momozono while the latter threw cheap hairpins at them like darts. He should have realized by the nearly destroyed dart-board near her desk that she had shockingly good aim when it came to throwing- if she could only control it enough to keep them from exploding. The explosions in a way helped Kobayashi in keeping her orbs strong, becoming something much more than just a convenient light source. If she kept applying herself the way she was now, the light heroine might be able to turn them into something more offensive. Now it was just him and Kaminari- Aoyama had opted to run the agency while they were gone. They all had their gear with them if they needed to leave at a moment's notice, but their comms had remained silent. It wouldn't be long before Alyssa was done with her class. Izuku hadn't gone back since his first lesson, not having the funds to subscribe to a fifty-eight hundred yen TLLA punch-card but since they worked out in the same building, he at least made it a point to walk home with her any opportunity he got. There was just one little problem.

She didn't know.

Somehow, through some sort of error or miscommunication, Alyssa didn't know who he was: the can-do hero, Deku, who ranked eighteenth in Japan on the hero board and was in the top one hundred internationally, was the mystery hero that had plagued her thoughts for weeks- and he didn't correct her. Oh sure, he tried. He had ample opportunity to do so, but the racket with the patrons left her so frazzled and him so embarrassed with the amount of fan-girl praise that she kept unknowingly giving him, he just couldn't find it in himself to do it.

It got even worse when she kept sending him pictures or old videos of him performing some sort of heroic feat, some of which were embarrassing for entirely different reasons such as him acting like an amateur or having no idea someone had been recording him doing something unflattering, and that she was still referring to him her as a 'mint green bunny superhero.' Did he really look so much like a rabbit in all of that getup? He vaguely remembered Ochako mentioning something like that when he had started out with costume alpha, but his look had changed so much over the years and it had never been brought up again since then. At least, not to his knowledge. It's not like he was vain enough to look himself up on the web, unless it was to study his moves to see what he could improve on.

"Midoriya... Hey, Midoriya!" Kaminari's hand waved in front of Izuku's face, finally getting the freckled hero's attention. "You alright, man?"

"Hmm...? Yeah, why?"

"You've been lifting that washrag like its a weight for the last ten seconds."

"Oh!" Izuku stopped the motion and dropped the towel with a slight chuckle, "Guess I was just lost in thought. Was there something you wanted?"

"I was just going to let you know that I'm gonna take off and head to Kyoka's- oh, and that I talked with Kirishima earlier. We decided to go with karaoke instead of dinner for Bakugou's birthday party this Friday."

"That sounds like a great idea." Since his parents were fashion designers, Kacchan wasn't really fond of frivolities like getting dressed up to go out to some fancy dinner, plus they wouldn't have to worry about going over-budget by dealing with the extra cost of renting out a party room in some fancy restaurant that paided on average five thousand yen a plate.

"See you later," Kaminari waved goodbye and Izuku was left to his thoughts once more. Normally, he had no problem with that. Today though, his head felt especially full and he couldn't figure out why. Sure he had been embarrassed that he had cried in front of Alyssa, but he had done that before in front of tons of his classmates and that had never bothered him, and it has been almost two weeks since the incident. Surely it wasn't because of something like that. It's not like he hadn't been comforted before or hugged by one of his friends. There was just something... different about it. Perhaps it was because she unknowingly idolized him and it made him ashamed to keep something like that from her, like he was being manipulative or underhanded by playing with her feelings. That had to be it.