"What do you want, Broccoli?"
Jiro's face filled his phone screen, her expression carefully arranged into something that was supposed to look annoyed. The keyword being "supposed to." Izuku had spent ten years learning to read people, and the slight upturn at the corner of her mouth told him everything he needed to know.
She was happy to see him.
Not that she'd ever admit it. Not even under threat of death.
Izuku leaned back in his desk chair, propping his feet up on the edge of his bed.
"Just wanted to see your pretty face," he said, grinning at the camera. "Is that a crime?"
"It should be."
The view behind Jiro told a very different story than his own room. Her space looked like a punk rock explosion had collided with a teenager's bedroom and decided to stay.
Band posters covered every inch of wall space, overlapping each other in a chaotic collage of screaming faces and electric guitars. A bass guitar leaned against her bed.
Clothes were draped over chairs, hanging from doorknobs, piled in corners. Somewhere in the background, he could see a Kuromi plushie peeking out from under a discarded hoodie.
Cute.
"So," Jiro said, crossing her arms. Her earphone jacks dangled on either side of her face, twitching slightly. "You actually made it. First place. Don't let it go to your head."
"Too late."
"It was probably a fluke."
Izuku raised an eyebrow. "A fluke that scored one hundred and seven points? That's one hell of a fluke, Compass. By the way, congratulations on passing. Knew you had it in you."
"Whatever." Her cheeks went pink. "I would have passed without your help."
"Never said you wouldn't have."
The pink deepened. Her jacks started doing that thing where they rose up like agitated snakes. Izuku found it absolutely adorable.
"Why are you calling me?" she demanded. "Don't you have other people to bother? Other girls to harass with your stupid smile and your stupid face and your stupid..."
She trailed off, apparently running out of things to call stupid.
"Stupid what?" Izuku prompted helpfully. "I'm curious where this list was going."
"Shut up."
"Make me."
Jiro's eye twitched.
God, this is fun.
Izuku shifted in his chair, letting his expression slide from teasing into something more genuine. He'd been thinking about this moment since the exam ended. Running scenarios in his head. Calculating approaches.
No, that wasn't quite right. He wasn't calculating anything. He was just... following his instincts. The same instincts that had carried him through ten years of training and one entrance exam.
The instincts that told him Kyoka Jiro was worth pursuing.
"So," he said, leaning forward slightly. The movement brought him closer to the camera, filling more of her screen. "We should celebrate."
"Celebrate?"
"Both of us. Passing, I mean. It's kind of a big deal."
Jiro's eyes narrowed. "What are you getting at, Midoriya?"
"I heard there's a band playing at a club downtown this Friday. Static Shock. They're supposed to be pretty good. Thought you might be interested."
"How do you know about Static Shock?"
Because I spent twenty minutes researching local underground bands in your area after you told me you liked punk rock.
"Lucky guess," he said instead.
"You're full of shit."
"That's not a no."
Jiro opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"Wait." Her voice went flat. "Is this... are you asking me on a date?"
"Would you say yes if I was?"
"No!"
"Then it's not a date."
"That doesn't make any sense!"
Izuku shrugged. "It makes perfect sense. You come to a concert. I come to a concert. We happen to be at the same concert. What's complicated about that?"
"Everything." Jiro leaned toward her phone's camera, her expression hardening into something that actually worried him a little. "Let me get this straight. You were flirting with Uraraka. Right in front of me. You literally had her draped over your shoulder like some kind of prize."
"She was unconscious."
"Not the point!" Her jacks whipped through the air behind her.
"And now," Jiro continued, her voice rising, "now you're asking me out? To a concert you somehow magically knew I'd be interested in? What's your game, Midoriya? What the hell are you playing at?"
"What," he said, letting his smirk soften into something more real, "a guy can't celebrate a major achievement with a cute girl who has great taste in music and incredible legs?"
"Deflecting." Jiro's voice could have frozen fire. "You're deflecting. I'm not one of your groupies, Midoriya. I'm not going to giggle and blush just because you throw a compliment my way."
"You're already blushing."
"That's anger!"
"Sure it is."
Her jacks shot forward like striking vipers, and Izuku actually flinched even though they couldn't reach him through the phone.
"Cut the crap," she said, her tone dropping to something dangerous. "That 'greedy hero' line you pulled after the exam. 'I want it all. I take what I want.' You were serious about that, weren't you?"
Izuku said nothing.
"That includes us." Her voice was flat now. Clinical. "Uraraka. Me. We're just... what? Items on your to-do list? Boxes to check? Trophies to collect alongside your first-place finish?"
There it was.
The moment he'd been waiting for.
Izuku could feel the crossroads beneath his feet. Two paths stretched before him. The easy path, where he backpedaled and made excuses and preserved whatever plausible deniability remained. Or the other path.
The honest one.
"A hero's job is to save everyone. So why can't a hero love everyone he wants to protect?"
The words he'd said to Jiro and Uraraka after the exam echoed through his mind. He'd meant them then. He still meant them now. The question was whether he had the guts to actually follow through.
Izuku looked at the girl on his screen. The purple hair falling in choppy layers around her face. The sharp eyes that saw too much. The defensive posture that told him she'd been hurt before and had built walls to prevent it from happening again.
He could lie to her.
But he didn't want to.
"It's not a to-do list. It's... a hypothesis."
Jiro blinked. "A hypothesis?"
"Yeah." He leaned back, staring at the ceiling of his room for a moment before returning his gaze to the screen. "Look. I spent ten years of my life being told I could have nothing. That I was worthless. That the world didn't have a place for someone like me."
The old bitterness crept into his voice despite his best efforts. He pushed it down.
"So I worked. I trained. I bled. I broke bones and tore muscles and rebuilt myself from the ground up until I was strong enough to take anything I wanted." He met her eyes through the camera. "The number one spot. The respect. The life I deserve."
"And the girls?"
"And the girls."
Her face went through several shades of red.
"I like you, Jiro." The words came easier than he expected. "A lot, actually. You're smart. You're strong. You don't take shit from anyone. You've got this whole tough exterior thing going on but I can see right through it."
"You can't see anything through anything, you arrogant piece of—"
"And you're cute as hell when you're angry."
Her mouth snapped shut. Her jacks went rigid.
"I also like Toru." He kept going, watching her expression shift with each sentence. "She's fun. She's genuine. Her Quirk is fascinating from a tactical standpoint and she's got this energy that makes everything feel lighter."
"So you're just going to list off all the girls you like to my face?"
"Would you prefer I lied about it?"
That stopped her cold.
"Uraraka seems sweet," Izuku continued. "Haven't spent as much time with her, but she's got this determination under all that cheerfulness. And she literally threw up on my shoes after Recovery Girl healed her, which was weirdly endearing."
"That's disgusting."
"Little bit. But here's the thing, Compass." He leaned forward again, filling the frame. "I don't want to have to choose."
"That's not how it works!"
"Why not?"
Jiro sputtered. "Because... because it just isn't! You can't just decide you're going to have multiple girlfriends. That's insane!"
"A Quirkless kid becoming the number one applicant at U.A. is insane. Didn't stop me."
She had no response to that.
Izuku pressed his advantage. "A hero's job is to save everyone, right? Not pick and choose who deserves to be rescued. So why should love work any differently? Why should I have to reject someone I care about just because society says you're only allowed to care about one person at a time?"
"That's the dumbest philosophical justification for being a player I've ever heard."
"But you're still listening."
Jiro's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
No sound came out.
Got her.
"You are…" Jiro started, "the most arrogant, conceited, absolutely insufferable asshole I have ever met in my entire life."
Izuku waited.
"Your ego is bigger than that stupid Zero Pointer robot. Your hair looks like someone glued broccoli to your head. And your whole 'cool guy' act makes me want to shove my jacks through your eardrums."
He kept waiting.
Jiro took a deep breath. Let it out slowly. Her jacks had gone still, hanging limply beside her face.
"Fine."
One word. Barely audible.
Izuku's heart did something complicated in his chest. "Fine?"
"I'll go to the stupid concert with you."
Holy shit.
"It is NOT a date," she added quickly, her voice gaining strength. "I want to be absolutely clear about that. This is not a date. This is an observation. A field study. I'm going to watch you try to pull off this ridiculous 'harem protagonist' garbage, and I'm going to watch you crash and burn spectacularly."
"Uh huh."
"And when you fail, because you will fail, because this is the real world and not some romance anime, I am going to laugh. I am going to laugh so hard that I'll probably pull a muscle. And then I'm going to remind you of this conversation every single day for the rest of your miserable life."
"Sounds like fun."
"It's not supposed to be fun!" Her voice cracked on the last word. "It's supposed to be vindication!"
Izuku smiled. Not his usual smirk. Not the teasing grin he wore like armor. An actual, genuine smile that probably looked incredibly dumb on his face.
"Friday at seven, then?"
"What?"
"The concert. I'll pick you up at seven."
Jiro's face went through approximately fifteen different colors in rapid succession. "You... I didn't... that's not..."
"See you then, Compass."
He hung up before she could scream at him.
The phone screen went dark, leaving Izuku alone in his room with only the silence and the U.A. acceptance letter for company.
He stared at the blank screen for a long moment.
Then he pumped his fist in the air like a complete idiot.
First place at U.A. AND a date with a beautiful girl? On the same day?
He flopped backward onto his bed, a laugh bubbling up from somewhere deep in his chest.
Okay, technically she said it wasn't a date. But she's coming despite everything I told her.
His phone buzzed.
Compass: I hate you
Compass: I hate you so much
Compass: if you tell ANYONE about this conversation I will find you and I will hurt you
Compass: and for the record your philosophy is stupid and will never work
Compass: see you friday
Compass: I still hate you
Izuku grinned at the ceiling.
Best day ever.
Somewhere across the city, in a bedroom covered with band posters and scattered clothes, Kyoka Jiro sat on her bed with her phone clutched in both hands.
Her face was red.
Her heart was doing something weird.
And despite every logical instinct screaming that she'd just made a terrible mistake, she couldn't stop the smile that kept trying to break through.
"Stupid broccoli-headed bastard," she muttered to no one.
Her Kuromi plushie offered no sympathy.
Neither did the bass guitar.
She flopped backward onto her mattress, staring at the ceiling covered in glow-in-the-dark stars that she kept meaning to take down but never actually did.
What the hell did I just agree to?
The worst part wasn't that she'd said yes. The worst part was that some tiny, traitorous part of her was actually looking forward to Friday.
She grabbed a pillow and screamed into it.
It didn't help.