Midoriya Izuku was not stupid, by any stretch.
There was just… Lots of things he had absolutely no life experience about whatsoever.
Romance… Was at the top of that list.
That said, even with Izuku's completely non-existent experience regarding anything to do with the topic, Izuku would still probably have been able to figure out the fact that Mina had been honestly, genuinely flirting with him.
And if he didn't figure it out during the first time, he most certainly did during the second time.
It wasn't quite as blatant as it had been during the first time(Undoubtedly the presence of her mom was the reason for the more subdued flirting), but now that he knew that she was doing it, it was impossible for him not to realize it. During the subsequent breaks of the day, she did it again. And again during the next round.
Mina didn't seem to mind that Izuku was no closer to giving her a more thought-out reply during the final break than he had been during that first one. On the contrary, she seemed to be having a lot of fun making him blush, and tongue-tied.
As the day neared it's end, Izuku's arms hurt just as badly as the day before, but though a constant, seething ache, today, he had something very, very different on his mind.
If he'd been alone, he probably would have been able to make sense of it, but he was not. The presence of both Mina and Black Cat made it pretty much impossible for him to just relax and think about this logically, as he desperately wanted.
Black Cat wasn't particularly better for his nerves either, because she was also teasing. The only difference was that in this case, she was teasing Mina, instead of him. But she was teasing her because she was flirting with him, which just made him feel even more embarrassed.
There were two bright sides to all of this though. The first was that his worry about the revelations of the previous day was blown away like leaves in the wind. His brain had far more pressing matters to worry about at the moment, than whatever it was the two leagues were plotting.
The second was his training.
Maybe it was just the repetition of thousands of cannonballs one after another. Or maybe it was that this training was the only thing at the moment that offered any sense of distraction from the situation at hand, and so, Izuku embraced it like a man at sea embraced a lifeline from a passing ship.
Either way, sometime later in the day, he stopped creating duds altogether. Which was what Black Cat approached him about near the end of the day.
"Good job." The older woman commented with a nod towards the many, many broken cars in front of him.
Izuku just nodded.
"You're doing way better than I expected to be honest. Frankly speaking, I was expecting you'd need the entire week to work at this before you managed to do it by instinct. Instead, you did it in two. Bravo."
Normally Izuku would have felt great pride at this praise. At the moment, he desperately wanted to just get some time alone to think.
"In any case, I was actually planning on us doing it for a couple of days before the week ended, but since you two are way further along than I thought you'd be, I guess it's time to move on to the next stage. Namely that tomorrow, we're gonna fly."
This did manage to break through Izuku's shell, and when he spoke, his throat felt dry and parched, though he'd drank plenty of water during the training. Black Cat was pretty lenient with that, having prepped half a dozen bottles to drink from during their break.
"Fly? You men… Swing through the air? Like… you do?"
"Yes. I'm sad to say there's not gonna be any time for you and Mina to have a date tonight. I'm gonna be spending most of the time before midnight calibrating a set of wrist launchers with her, and that's gonna eat up any free night, unfortunately."
That… sounded just fine for Izuku. At the moment he just wanted to be alone and think .
"In any case, we're not gonna be having a banquet today, so you're gonna have to go out and get yourself some food on your own."
A rather large sum of Yen bills was suddenly in front of his face.
"Anyway, here. Go buy yourself whatever you want with these."
A black tentacle shot out, and pocketed the money, as izuku just meekly thanked her.
After that, it was just getting back to the hotel rooms.
There was some talk, and some more flirty comments along with a wink and a farewell wave that made his heart hammer like a steam engine, and his stomach soar, but finally, the door did close behind him.
Practically the moment it closed, Izuku went over to a chair and sat down, making sure neither of his arms touched anything.
For a while, he just sat there, before it dawned on him that he was finally, blessedly, alone.
"Well, look at the bright side. You've come a really long way. Back when you first met Uraraka, you didn't even have the guts to look her in the eyes when talking to her, and today, you couldn't tear your eyes away from Mina as she talked."
The tone wasn't quite mocking, nor was it actually congratulatory. Mostly it was the voice of someone who was having lots, and lots of fun.
"You… You knew didn't you?"
This time, his tone was plenty mocking.
"Of course we did. Mina has been about as bloody subtle as the damn sun. Hell, Black Cat figured it out the moment she heard that Mina wanted to bring a boy along on this training trip."
That… made sense. It also made Izuku feel like a completely oblivious moron. Of COURSE, she had. It was as Venom said. When you broke it down logically, it was as obvious as the sun.
Now that he didn't actually have Mina herself there, he was able to actually consider all of it somewhat logically.
A girl invited a boy she was friends with on a training trip with her mom.
If his cheeks had gone down in redness at all today, he would have flushed up as he considered it. As it happened, he was still red as could be.
It was so blatantly obvious. And it didn't just end there.
This… Had not just been about getting an opportunity to… to Flirt… It had also been about actually introducing him to Black Cat.
That's why Mina had been so nervous on the train. That was why Black Cat had an attitude towards him where she pushed him as far as she possibly could, while not really being completely, utterly hostile.
He had read that as pure hostility. Now that he had finally figured it out, he suddenly understood her perspective.
He almost buried his face in his sore, sore hands as he thought back how he'd utterly missed Mina's intentions totally and completely, as well as… What he'd said to Mina earlier in the day.
He'd said he had talked with Venom and he finally understood Black Cat's perspective.
He hadn't at all, but Mina had thought he did and had read that as an admission that Izuku had figured it all out. God, he'd practically invited her to… to begin flirting with him.
"Why… Why didn't you tell me?"
"For the same reason, we didn't warn you about Black Cat sneaking up on you. Because it was bloody hilarious to watch your reaction to all of it."
A big part of him wanted to be angry or annoyed at that admission, but frankly, at the moment, his thoughts just went to Mina.
"What… What do we… I… do now?"
"Well, depends entirely on how you wanna approach this. Frankly, if you really wanna go about it in the most direct way, just send her a message on the phone. Tell her to come meet you on the roof when she's done with the preparations for tomorrow. That should be well after sunset and the perfect time to declare your intention to woo her off her feet or some such shit like that."
Izuku just kept his silence as Venom talked.
"Or if you prefer to just let her take the lead, just keep giving her the opportunity to flirt with you. She enjoys seeing you squirm well enough, but from everything we've seen about Mina, patience is not one of her virtues. Doubtlessly, she'll take it to the inevitable next step soon enough."
This did manage to make Izuku go redder than he already was, as he thought about the implications of what that "next step" entailed.
But as it was, that wasn't the thing that was first on Izuku's mind.
No, that was the way Venom described the logical next step. He seemed to take it for granted that Izuku would reciprocate Mina's… feelings... For him.
...
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