maybe | hitoshi shinsou x reader

~chapter 16~

First there was a preliminary test of sorts, just so everyone could get an idea of how much they'd need to cram. Though the results were made public, for some reason that's beyond your comprehension entirely. They'd actually put up a ranking system and everything, so people could compare themselves to everyone else and feel miserable. Not that you were about to question your teacher's judgment with a test looming so near.

Thankfully your score was perfectly average and not-embarrassing: ninth out of twenty. Not that you'd thought you'd fail terribly—though some small, anxiety ridden part of you would beg to differ—but overall it was a better score than you'd thought you would get. Nothing like Iida's second or Midoriya's fourth, no, but respectable enough. If the practice test was anything to go by, you'd be able to pass the final without too much difficulty. Getting what most would consider a "good grade" would be another matter entirely, but you were pretty secure in the fact that, at the very least, you could pass.

Though, that doesn't take into account the physical portion of the test.

You're not, like, the lest at physically fit person you know (probably), but you're unbearably inept compared to everyone else at U.A. They all have abs. Abs! Which are notoriously difficult to obtain, if what you've been led to believe is correct. And sure, you've shored up a bit since you first got here—but you don't have abs—but it's definitely not enough. It doesn't help matters that you don't even know what the physical portion of the test will be.

It's during lunch when you're saying as much to Midoriya and Iida and Uraraka and Tsuyu and, surprisingly enough, Shinsou, who'd plopped his tray down beside yours, but has yet to utter a single word to you or anyone else—it's the thought that counts, anyways—plus whoever else happens to be sitting at your table that day, and they're agreeing, sprinkling in their own comments of self-doubt and personal fears. It's all very woeful and self-pitying, but comforting at the same time. Therapeutic, really, Cathartic, maybe. Sometimes you've just got to let it all air out.

Though your woebegone peace is shattered when an uncomfortably familiar blonde dude—the kind of familiar that tickles the back of your brain, but you just can't place it—knocks elbow, and nearly his lunch tray, into the back of Midoriya's skull.

Midoriya sucked a breath between his teeth in pain, and rubbed at the spot that, if the sound of the impact was anything to go by, just might bruise.

"Oh oops! Your head's so big I ended up whacking you upside it," Blondie says, voice drenched in fake concern and saccharinely sweet.

Jeez. Who is he, again?

"Monoma!"

Ah.

He tossed you around during the cavalry battle back during the sports festival. Ended up hurting Tsuyu pretty bad and looking vaguely maniacal about it. Good to see he's still his antagonistic self, you guess.

Then Monoma sets in for this rambling monologue that doesn't seem to have much of a point. You think he's trying to intimidate you? Maybe? It falls a bit flat, the intimidation thing, but the manic look in his sleep-deprived eyes tells you at least one thing, loud and clear: he means it.

If this whole hero thing doesn't work out, Blondie should look into the whole villain thing. And that's not meant to be an insult, it's just that it'd be something he'd excel in. He's already got the pointless rants and overall unwell vibe down pat, which is like 50% of the whole gig, really.