After that day, Tsutsumi finally returned to classes after his months-long absence, and the moment he stepped into the classroom, Aizawa visibly paused as if he had seen something he did not expect to exist anymore, let alone walk back through the door of his own accord.
"…You're back," Aizawa muttered, dry and tired as always, but even he sounded slightly wary, as though he was unsure whether this return was permanent or just another anomaly waiting to disappear.
Tsutsumi gave a simple nod and took his seat without saying much, and for a short while the class pretended, at least on the surface, that everything had returned to normal.
But as the lesson began, that illusion quickly fell apart for him.
The words Aizawa wrote on the board, the explanations he gave, even the drills he assigned felt distant and almost redundant, like someone reciting instructions for a game Tsutsumi had already long since mastered, and with each passing minute he found himself sinking deeper into a dull, quiet boredom that no amount of focus could fix.
It was not that the lesson was bad, but rather that everything being taught could be achieved by him with nothing more than a thought, a flick of a card, or a simple command.
There was nothing his teacher could teach him.
By the time class ended, Tsutsumi was left sitting in his seat for a moment longer than everyone else, not because he was tired, but because he genuinely did not know what he was supposed to do next.
He never saw himself as a hero. Nor did he ever call himself one.
And when he thought back on it carefully, stripped away from all excuses and all circumstances, he also realized something else that sat even heavier in his mind than expected.
He had never truly become a hero for heroic reasons in the first place.
Unlike the others in this school who chased ideals, admiration, or the simple desire to help people, his reason for entering U.A. had always been far more selfish, far more personal, and now that everything had reached this point, there was no convenient way to deny it anymore.
"YOU MONSTER!"
The voice cut sharply through the hallway behind him, loud enough that several students immediately turned their heads, but Tsutsumi did not react.
Behind him, a third-year student stood trembling, his face red and twisted with grief and anger, tears streaming down as his friends struggled to hold him back from rushing forward. His voice cracked as he shouted again, louder this time.
"You could have saved them! You could have stopped that monster! You were there, and you still let it happen! You let that monster kill my father! You killed him! DECADE! YOU MURDERER!"
The words echoed through the hallway, sharp enough to make the atmosphere tighten immediately, and this time even Tsutsumi stopped walking.
Slowly, he turned around. So did the rest of Class 1-A. And the moment they saw who the target of that accusation was, the mood shifted completely.
"Oi," Bakugo said immediately, stepping forward without hesitation and planting himself between Tsutsumi and the grieving student, his expression already sharp. "What's this extra rambling about?"
Todoroki followed beside him a moment later, calm but firm, his voice carrying a quiet edge. "I suggest you take those words back and apologize. Just because we are your juniors does not mean we will tolerate baseless accusations."
Neither of them raised their voices unnecessarily, but the intent behind their words was clear enough. Whether they were protecting Tsutsumi or simply preventing him from beating the boy up, no one watching could tell.
And for those who knew Tsutsumi well enough, the answer felt obvious. It was the latter.
Tsutsumi, however, said nothing. His purple eyes settled on the crying student for a moment before he slowly reached into his pocket and pulled out a camera.
Without a word, he raised it and snapped a picture.
The sound of the shutter clicked softly in the hallway.
A distorted image came out from the camera itself, warped and unclear in the way his photographs had always been. If one did not look closely, it was difficult to even tell what the image was supposed to be.
Tsutsumi glanced at it for a moment, then tilted his head slightly.
"Even your face is so bad my camera can't properly capture it."
He said it flatly, almost absentmindedly, before tossing the printed photo onto the ground as if it held no further meaning.
Then, without waiting for a reaction, he turned away again.
"If blaming me helps you sleep at night," he continued, voice calm and detached, "then go ahead. Blame it all on me. Everything is Decade's fault."
And just like that, he walked off.
The hallway remained silent for a moment longer than anyone expected, the weight of what had just been said hanging heavily in the air, before his classmates quietly began to follow him, leaving the grieving student behind in the middle of the corridor.
But the incident did not end there.
As days went by, the students of Class 1-A slowly began hearing more and more rumors spreading through the school and beyond, each one louder and more distorted than the last, all revolving around the same incident involving Overhaul.
Overhaul was a villain, yes, but still human. Not a Nomu, not a mindless creature, but a person, and that distinction alone was enough for the public to argue endlessly.
Hero society, after all, was built on the principle of saving people rather than executing them, and heroes were trained under strict expectations that even criminals were to be neutralized without crossing the line into killing.
And because Tsutsumi had crossed that line, whether intentionally or not, the backlash had begun to spiral.
By the time an entire week came around, criticism had already escalated beyond simple disagreement. Civilians, professional heroes, students, and even media outlets all weighed in, each voice adding more pressure, more condemnation, and more scrutiny. Some said he had gone too far. Others insisted Overhaul could have been incapacitated instead. A few even went as far as questioning whether someone like him should be allowed to remain in U.A. at all.
And in the background of all of it, the situation was only made worse by the fact that All For One had begun to quietly exploit the incident, allowing villains and underground groups to spread rumors and manipulate public opinion, turning a single controversial death into a symbol of heroes abusing their power. The result was a growing fracture in society's trust.
It was precisely because of that instability that U.A. continued to shield Tsutsumi as best as it could, even while knowing full well how fragile the situation had become, because deep down, the faculty understood something that few others did.
If Tsutsumi ever stopped being a hero entirely, then the possibility of the end of the world would begin.
Later that evening, inside the dormitory living room, Midoriya finally approached him.
"I… think you should apologize," he said carefully.
Tsutsumi blinked once, clearly caught off guard by the directness, and slowly turned his head toward the green-haired boy standing across from him.
"What?"
Midoriya hesitated for only a second before continuing, forcing the words out despite the tension in his expression.
"I've been thinking about what people said… and I think they have a point. You shouldn't have killed Overhaul. Even if he was a terrible person."
He straightened his posture slightly, as if bracing himself.
"I know it is not really my place to say this, but apologizing might help. All Might and the others have been doing everything they can to calm things down, but the public reaction is still getting worse."
It was not an accusation, not really, but it was not fully support either. It was Midoriya doing what he always did.
Unlike Tsutsumi, who is a realist, understanding the cruelty of the world and knowing that you can't save everyone.
Midoriya is an idealist, someone who believes in the idea of saving everyone.
A few of the other students nearby quietly nodded in agreement, clearly sharing similar thoughts, not out of malice toward Tsutsumi, but because the situation was affecting them too, affecting U.A., and making everything feel more unstable than before.
Tsutsumi looked at Midoriya for a long moment without speaking.
Then he leaned back slightly.
"Sure," he said at last, voice flat. "I'll apologize when I feel like it."
Midoriya's expression faltered slightly, but Tsutsumi had already turned his attention away, as if the conversation had already ended for him the moment it began.
Because from his perspective, there was nothing to apologize for.
Asking him to apologize for killing a deranged madman who spent his days touching and experimenting on a little child?
Sure, why not have him bring Overhaul back to life and give Eri back to him as an apology gift while he is at it?
As the days went by, the incident gradually settled down, though it had not fully disappeared from people's minds. The outrage was no longer as loud as it had been at first, but it was still there, lingering in the background and refusing to go away completely. Rumors still spread, public opinion was still unstable, and more than a few people still kept bringing up Decade whenever the subject of hero society was mentioned.
That was why Nezu had stepped in so directly when speaking with the Government of Japan and the Hero Public Safety Commission.
He did not waste time dancing around the issue.
He immediately brought up Tsutsumi's value as a hero and pointed out just how much of a loss it would be for society if someone like him were pushed away because of public anger alone. He also reminded them of the Nomu incidents, along with Tsutsumi's work under Miyabi and Mirko, using those examples to show that Tsutsumi was not just powerful, but also efficient enough to handle situations most heroes would struggle with. If the discussion had ended there, the others might have still been able to drag the conversation away from him, but Nezu did not give them the chance to do that.
Instead, he pressed the advantage while the subject was still fresh and while their own concerns were still unresolved.
He then revealed that Tsutsumi Ryoko's twisted personality was, at least in part, the result of growing up alone without proper guidance from a parental figure.
That alone was enough to make the room go quiet.
Then Nezu went even further and brought up the real reason Tsutsumi had joined U.A. in the first place.
He had not entered the school purely because he wanted to be a hero.
He had done it because he wanted to search for his missing mother, Tsutsumi Kaina, and being a hero would have given him the legal path to do that.
The moment Kaina's name was mentioned, the expressions of the people from the Hero Public Safety Commission changed immediately. They already knew what had happened, of course. Her case had never been something the public was allowed to see clearly, but for the higher-ups, the full record still existed, and none of them were pleased to hear that name spoken aloud in this context.
The faces of the people from the Government of Japan darkened as well once they read the full report.
Tsutsumi Kaina had been taken in at a young age because of her Quirk, Rifle. On the surface, it had looked like the Hero Public Safety Commission had been raising her to become a hero, a talented young girl being shaped into the next face of public safety. But that was only the public-facing version of the truth. In reality, the Commission had trained her to become an assassin, someone who would eliminate high-profile targets that could threaten the stability of Japan's hero society if they were allowed to remain alive.
In the end, after one failed assassination and after growing tired of the life she had been forced into, Kaina could no longer bear the lie she was living.
She had spent years being called a hero while her hands were covered in blood, and eventually she turned on the very people who had made her that way.
But even then, she did not pull the trigger on them. Instead, she begged them to spare her child from suffering the same fate.
The higher-ups agreed to her request.
They held a quick but hidden trial, buried the truth where most people would never find it, and sentenced her to Tartarus, Japan's highest-level prison for dangerous criminals.
Once the story of Tsutsumi Kaina had been laid bare in that room, Nezu brought the discussion back to Tsutsumi Ryoko himself. He emphasized that no matter how messy his personality might be, no matter how strange or difficult he could be to deal with, it was still better for him to be a hero than to let him walk down the path of villainy. Someone like him could cause a great deal of damage if pushed in the wrong direction, but if guided properly, he could also become one of the strongest assets hero society had ever produced.
The Hero Public Safety Commission still tried to push back at first, insisting that they still had All Might, the Symbol of Peace, and that hero society was not so fragile that it needed to depend on someone like Tsutsumi.
Nezu quickly put that argument out of the air.
He revealed that Tsutsumi Ryoko had All Might's Quirk, and that it was not even the strongest power he possessed. That fact alone would have been enough to unsettle them, but then he added something else: All Might himself had confirmed, and he had also stated that his Quirk was not even Tsutsumi's strongest power, pointing out the existence of Decade Complete.
At that point, the room finally understood why U.A. had been so protective of him all this time.
The situation was not just about one student killing a villain.
It was about keeping someone who could potentially become far more dangerous than most people realized from being driven into the wrong place by anger or pressure.
Once that sank in, both the Government of Japan and the Hero Public Safety Commission quickly backed away from their earlier stance and shifted into damage-control mode, working together to calm the public's perception of Decade before things could spiral any further.
Their efforts gradually paid off, and the public outrage began to die down little by little, though it still left scars behind.
In the end, Tsutsumi Ryoko was advised to avoid appearing in public for a while.
Tsutsumi noticed the shift in attitude almost immediately, but he did not care enough to react strongly to it. With not much left for him to do in this world for the moment, he simply left again through the Aurora Curtain, moving on to wherever he felt like going next.