Returning to his own world, Tsutsumi let out a long, tired sigh as soon as he was back. His hands felt strangely numb, and even his thoughts were heavy.
How was he supposed to describe it, exactly?
He had gained the power of a god, but the power he ended up with was not one that simply let him create and rule. It was the power of the God of Genesis, the kind of authority that demanded destruction before creation could be rewritten, and if he wanted to bend reality to his will, he first had to tear it apart and rebuild it from the remains.
This felt like a twist of fate; as the Destroyer of Worlds, he obtained the power of a God of Genesis.
Tsutsumi gave a dry chuckle and looked down at his own hands.
They were clean. At least, they looked clean.
But even so, he could still see it in his mind, as clearly as if it had never faded at all. The blood of countless, scattered across the world he had destroyed, weighed on him like something invisible and impossible to wash away.
It had happened because he had fallen into a violent rage, because he had attacked everything around him without discrimination, and because the world itself had become nothing more than something to be erased in order to get what he wanted.
That still did not change the fact that he had destroyed an entire world with his own hands.
"Some hero I am..." he murmured quietly to himself before looking up toward the U.A. student dorm and walking inside.
The moment he stepped through the door, a familiar voice immediately rang out.
"Tsutsumi-bro is back!"
Kirishima's cheerful call echoed through the dorm, loud enough that it pulled the attention of everyone else in the room toward him at once. After the raid on Overhaul's base, Tsutsumi had basically disappeared without saying a word, leaving the others to deal with the aftermath and clean up what was left behind.
Midoriya, Kirishima, Uraraka, and Asui had all been waiting for him to come back together with the rest of the group once everything was over, but he had vanished so quietly that by the time they realized he was already gone, they had no idea where to even begin looking for him. In the end, they had simply returned to U.A. and waited.
By nightfall, he had finally come back.
"Where were you?" Jiro asked, sounding a little annoyed, though the irritation in her voice was mixed with something else. To her, he looked less like a heroic troublemaker now and more like the kind of shut-in childhood friend who disappeared whenever he felt like it and returned at random like some stubborn house cat that refused to be held accountable for anything.
Tsutsumi gave her a flat look. "Destroying a world."
Everyone in the room froze.
After a few seconds of silence, the others simply decided to take it as some kind of weird joke, because the alternative was too absurd to seriously entertain. Tsutsumi did not bother clarifying that he had actually destroyed a world and recreated it afterward, because aside from showing them directly, he had no real way to prove something that ridiculous in a way they would believe anyway.
"Yeah, real funny, Ryo," Jiro said with an eye roll before grabbing his hand and dragging him toward the kitchen. "I'm hungry. Make me something to eat."
Tsutsumi did not complain. He simply let her pull him along and walked into the kitchen, where he began cooking the way he usually did back when they had lived together for a time before moving into the dorm.
The smell of food not only filled the kitchen but also drew the attention of the others almost immediately. Once they saw their Class President cooking again, the rest of Class 1-A started gathering around as well, because they all remembered eating his food before and knew perfectly well that he was genuinely good at it. His cooking had already left an impression on them before, and now that he was back, nobody wanted to miss the chance to eat it again.
Tsutsumi looked slightly annoyed by the growing crowd, but he still agreed to cook for everyone.
"Say, Jiro-chan," Ashido asked as she dropped down beside her with interest clear in her voice, "how did you manage to have him agree to cook for you so easily?"
Even though everyone knew the two of them were childhood friends, very few people had ever asked about the details of their relationship. It was one thing to know they were close, and another to understand what that closeness actually looked like in practice.
Jiro rested her chin in one hand for a moment before answering.
"Agreeing to cook for me? It wasn't anything special. We lived together for some time during summer vacation. Most of the time, we just spent the day lazing around. Whenever we got hungry, he would cook, and I handled the cleaning. We usually just watched TV together on the sofa."
As she said it, her expression softened a little, because now that she was thinking back on it, she realized she kind of missed those peaceful days. Back then, Tsutsumi was still someone whose strength had not yet reached the point where even All Might could properly threaten him, and the two of them had just been living together in a way that felt strangely ordinary.
Hearing that, the others in the room could not help but imagine it for themselves, and the picture that came to mind was so calm and domestic that it almost sounded like some kind of retired married couple's routine.
Todoroki was the first one to say what everyone was thinking. "What kind of retired old couple lifestyle is that?"
Bakugo clicked his tongue and leaned back a little. "Yeah, at this point, why not just get married or something?"
"Shut it, you two!" Jiro barked immediately, her face turning red from the comment, though she did not actually deny anything. The embarrassment was obvious, but so was the fact that she was not going to flat-out reject the idea either.
In fairness, the two of them were not exactly wrong. Tsutsumi and Jiro really had lived like an old couple during that time, just quietly sharing a roof, meals, chores, and the kind of easy routine.
"Although," Jiro said after a short pause, her voice turning more thoughtful, "I kinda missed the old him."
That made several people turn toward her with confused looks, because unless someone was close enough to Tsutsumi to notice the difference firsthand, it was hard to understand what she meant. To most of the class, he had always been strong, always been strange, and always been several steps ahead of everyone else. They did not have much room to compare versions of him, because the gap had already been too large for them to notice the finer changes.
But for people like Jiro, Todoroki, and Bakugo, it was different.
They could tell.
They had seen how much he had grown, how far he had gone, and how little the rest of them could keep up. The others did not notice because the distance between them had already been massive to begin with, but those three had spent long enough around him to realize that Tsutsumi had become something entirely beyond what they could catch up to through ordinary training.
That fact frustrated Todoroki and Bakugo more than they cared to admit, but at the same time, they both understood that Tsutsumi was a walking cheat in the most literal sense. They could spend years training to master a skill while he could simply place a card into his belt. There was no honest comparison to be made between that and the way normal people improved.
And yet, because of Tsutsumi's guidance, both of them had also come to understand more about what it meant to be a hero than just overwhelming power. That was something they did not say out loud very often, but it remained true all the same.
Not long after, Tsutsumi called everyone over to eat.
No one hesitated.
Kirishima, Ida, Ojiro, Shoji, and Sero immediately helped set up the large dining table, while Yaoyorozu, Hagakure, Uraraka, Asui, and Ashido brought out the dishes. Tsutsumi had cooked far more than the students in his class could reasonably finish on their own, probably because he was used to making enough food for his gray-haired older sister, and old habits had a way of carrying over whether he intended them to or not.
With so much food on the table, Yaoyorozu suggested inviting Class 1-B over as well, since it would be a waste to let the extra food go to waste. Tsutsumi did not particularly care either way, so the suggestion was accepted, and before long, the dinner had grown into something much larger than anyone originally expected.
By the time everyone had settled in, the dining room was filled with thirty-nine students from both classes, and the atmosphere had become lively and warm in a way that made the whole place feel fuller than usual.
To everyone else, it felt comfortable. Normal, even.
But to Tsutsumi, it felt empty.
Not because the room lacked people, or because the laughter around him was meaningless. It was empty because he already knew that moments like this would not remain forever. Sooner or later, nights like this would become nothing more than memories, and he would be the only one carrying them forward after everyone else had disappeared.
Memory that only he carried.
Memory that, once the moment passed, no one else would ever be able to hold in exactly the same way again.
After dinner, the lively atmosphere inside the dorm did not simply vanish along with the empty plates.
While the girls from Class 1-A stood up to carry the dishes into the kitchen, several students from Class 1-B followed after them, and before long Kendo clapped her hands together and volunteered for her class to help with the cleanup.
"We will handle half of it," she said with a bright smile. "We cannot just come here, eat all your food, and leave the dirty dishes behind."
The rest of Class 1-B agreed right away. They had already been invited over for a free dinner, and if they simply left without helping afterward, that would leave a terrible impression no matter how one looked at it. Besides, if they wanted to be invited again in the future, the least they could do was make themselves useful and help clean up.
Before long, the kitchen became surprisingly crowded as both classes worked together, and laughter occasionally drifted out from behind the doorway whenever someone accidentally splashed water, dropped a plate, or bumped into another person while reaching for the same thing. The whole scene had a strangely domestic feeling to it, as if the dorm had become a little more like a home for just one evening.
Meanwhile, everyone else naturally split into smaller groups throughout the common room. Some gathered around the television, some sat on the couches and chatted idly, and a few even started playing cards while waiting for the dishes to be finished.
The mood was loose and easy, and Tsutsumi quietly took a seat with several of the boys, more interested in enjoying the peaceful atmosphere than in starting any conversation himself.
Unfortunately for him, that did not mean he would be allowed to stay quiet for long.
"Alright!" Kaminari suddenly clapped his hands together with a grin. "Let's talk about something important."
A few people instinctively turned to look at him.
Kaminari grinned wider and leaned forward a little. "What kind of woman do you like?"
For a second, there was only silence.
Kaibara looked at him with the same expression one might use when hearing the dumbest sentence imaginable.
"Dude..." he said flatly. "Who starts a conversation like that out of nowhere?"
Kaminari only shrugged as if this was perfectly normal.
"I do."
"You have way too much confidence."
"I call it charisma."
"No, I am pretty sure that is stupidity."
That earned a few laughs from the group, and somehow the conversation continued anyway, as though nobody had the energy to stop it now that it had already begun.
Awase leaned back against the sofa and answered first without the slightest bit of hesitation.
"Big personality."
As he said that, he casually raised both hands and made an exaggerated round shape in front of his chest.
Kaminari and Sero immediately shot him matching thumbs-ups.
"My man!"
"A fellow intellectual!"
Awase grinned proudly, looking like he had just delivered the most insightful answer in the world.
"I knew you guys would understand."
Before the three idiots could continue celebrating their shared brain cell, Kirishima spoke up.
"I like girls who are strong."
"Same here," Tetsutetsu immediately agreed. "Muscles are awesome."
The two stared at each other for a moment before simultaneously grabbing each other's forearms in an overly dramatic handshake.
"MANLY!"
"DAMN RIGHT!"
The sheer amount of masculine energy radiating from the pair was so intense that several people instinctively leaned away from them.
"...Those two really did find their soulmate," Sero muttered.
"Not like that," Kaminari said at once.
"...Probably."
Seto laughed before turning toward the quieter side of the group.
"What about you guys?"
His gaze landed on the three people who had remained suspiciously silent throughout the entire conversation.
"Todoroki, Bakugo, and Tsutsumi."
Since they were arguably the three strongest boys in Class 1-A, everyone's curiosity naturally shifted toward them at once. Even the people who had not been part of the conversation turned slightly as though they wanted to hear what they had to say.
Todoroki did not even need time to think.
"Someone gentle."
His answer came so quickly that it sounded like he had already decided that long ago, which only made the room go quiet for a brief moment.
"...That's it?" Kaminari blinked.
"...Boringgggg."
A few people groaned dramatically.
Todoroki tilted his head slightly. "I do not think that is boring."
"It absolutely is."
"It is normal."
"Exactly! Too normal!"
While everyone was still complaining about Todoroki's painfully ordinary answer, Bakugo folded his arms and looked away.
"This conversation's stupid."
He had barely even finished speaking before Todoroki calmly pulled out his phone. Without saying a word, he opened his gallery and turned the screen toward everyone.
"He already has a girlfriend." Todoroki said.
Displayed on it was a photograph of Bakugo standing beside Melissa.
The room instantly exploded.
"WAIT!"
"NO WAY!"
"Bakugo has a girlfriend!?"
Several boys immediately leaned over one another, practically piling onto the couch just to get a better look at the picture.
"Damn..."
"You've got good taste."
"She's gorgeous."
"So that is why you have never shown interest in anyone at school!"
Bakugo's face twitched violently.
"SHUT THE HELL UP!!"
He lunged forward, snatched the phone straight out of Todoroki's hands, and immediately deleted the picture.
"What the hell, Shoto!?" He glared murderously at the half-and-half boy. "Why do you still even have this picture!?"
Todoroki thought about it for a moment before answering honestly. "I forgot to delete it."
Bakugo somehow became even angrier. "You FORGOT!?"
Watching the exchange, Tsutsumi rested his chin on one hand.
"This is an interesting turn of events."
Everyone turned toward him.
"I did not know you had a thing for Quirkless who are incredibly smart..." He paused for a moment, then frowned slightly as if something about that combination was tugging at a memory he could not quite reach. "Wait a minute. Why does that combination feel strangely familiar...?"
"Tch."
Bakugo immediately sensed that Tsutsumi was about to drift off into one of his strange trains of thought, and rather than let him keep going, he jabbed him sharply in the side with his elbow.
"What about you, Ryoko?"
Just like that, the topic shifted onto him.
Everyone's attention moved toward Tsutsumi all at once.
Unlike Todoroki, he actually took a moment to think about it. He leaned back slightly, crossed his arms, and let his eyes drift up toward the ceiling while the room slowly quieted down again.
After several long seconds, Tsutsumi finally spoke.
"If I had to choose..." His voice was calm, almost casual. "Then I would probably like someone who could understand me."
The answer hung in the air for a moment.
Even some of the students from Class 1-B looked slightly disappointed, while those from Class 1-A instinctively exchanged glances with one another. Without needing to say a word, most of them had already thought of the same person.
After everything they had seen over the past several months, Tsutsumi's answer fit her almost perfectly.
Just when everyone thought he had finished speaking, Tsutsumi casually added one more sentence.
"And strong legs."