U.A. put the morning on rails and let students think they were steering.
Renya matched the pace—cup on the left in his memory, blade case parallel back home, breath on a count that didn't advertise itself. The square tucked behind his heel like a well-behaved thought. He crossed campus through currents of uniforms and ambition, listening for the faint note he'd learned to recognize yesterday: the echo of something that was his and slowly deciding to be itself.
Aizawa intercepted him by not moving.
Capture scarf draped like a patient threat, hair committing to gravity's worst habits, eyes that refused to perform. He tilted his head toward a quieter corridor and started walking without asking whether Renya would follow.
He did.
They stopped under an overhang where the wind turned conversations into small, manageable objects. Aizawa didn't waste them.
"Yesterday," he said, "you didn't lose control. You ceded it. On purpose."
Renya met the gaze. "I made room for a decision that wasn't mine and would have been worse if I'd owned it."
Aizawa's mouth considered being a smile and changed its mind. "You believe that."
"I observed it," Renya said.
Aizawa leaned his shoulder against concrete like a man who could nap on a blade. "Control and obedience aren't the same. You heard me say it. But there's a third thing you're courting—trust. The kind that isn't sentimental. The kind that risks getting you killed because you misread a room."
He let that sit.
"What do you want me to say?" Renya asked.
"I want you to answer the question I'm not allowed to put on a form," Aizawa said. "Do you trust what you call yours?"
The square brightened under Renya's heel—just once, a polite I-can-hear-you.
"I trust what it is when I'm watching," Renya said. "Yesterday was… watching without insisting."
"And if it chooses wrong?"
"Then my job is to make the next choice unavoidable."
Aizawa snorted softly. "You and Yaoyorozu should start a club called 'How to Make Reality Behave.'"
"We'd argue about fonts," Renya said.
"Good," Aizawa said. "Argue. Don't evangelize." He pushed off the wall. "One more thing. The Commission is going to try something they call a 'mentoring prompt' this week." The air put quotes around the words on its own. "I can't stop it. I can make it smaller."
"Kurobane," Renya said, neither question nor accusation.
Aizawa's eyes thinned. "You two will keep each other human, or you'll teach each other new forms of caution. Try to choose the first."
He was already walking away when Renya asked, "Do you trust what you call yours?"
Aizawa paused long enough to admit the question had earned the right to exist. "Every morning," he said. "And then I check."
He didn't turn back.
Class offered information and the illusion of safety that comes with tidy desks. Renya let the illusion do its job. Yaoyorozu worked through a materials problem as if she'd been hired to fix the floor and was delighted about it; Iida fought the urge to raise his hand for questions no one else had yet memorized; Kaminari drifted like friendly electricity. Bakugou turned pages as if paper offended him by being flammable and refusing to prove it.
Midoriya stared at his notebook like a believer negotiating with scripture. When break came, he slid over with the awkward grace of someone determined to be polite at all frequencies. "Um—about the tunnel yesterday—" He stopped, looked at his bandaged hand as if it were a treaty, and tried again. "How did you know to wait?"
"I didn't," Renya said. "I knew not to rush."
"That's… different," Midoriya said, and the admiration wasn't flattery; it was hunger—for methods, for survival. "Can you—could you maybe explain the square thing? You say it sometimes."
"It's a rule I draw," Renya said. "Inside it, everything earns permission. Especially me."
Midoriya wrote that down as if his wrist had volunteered. "Earn permission," he read, underlining. "That's… I like that."
"Make sure you like the cost," Renya said.
Midoriya nodded, solemn, then blurted, too fast to stop himself, "I think Aizawa-sensei likes you in the way he likes rules that don't waste time." He flushed at his own honesty and fled to save someone else from a vending machine.
Renya let the observation exist and didn't spend it.
The exercise after lunch was quiet by design. Support course students had constructed a maze of waist-high partitions in a gym—white walls, narrow turns, a few doors that lied. It smelled faintly of sawdust and genius.
"Trust run," the proctor announced. "Pairs. Eyes closed for one; open for the other. Swap at the halfway chime. No quirks that move the other person."
Iida brightened at rules. Kaminari deflated at no shortcuts. Bakugou made a noise that meant try me.
Renya's partner: Uraraka Ochaco—gravity with a smile. She bounced in place once, not to show off, to get nerves out of her shoes. "You guide first?" she asked.
He nodded. "Close your eyes."
She did, trusting too easily in a way he'd learned not to correct. He placed his palm two inches from her shoulder—close enough to suggest direction, not close enough to steer.
"Left," he said quietly. "Half step. Stop."
She obeyed without asking why. At the first door, he said, "Three steps, then float the latch." She tapped the handle, whispered the word that took weight away, then released it. The door permitted them.
At the chime, they traded. She opened her eyes; he closed his.
Uraraka laughed under her breath. "Okay, Kurotsuki, let's see how boring you can be with your eyes off."
He could hear her grin. He let her guide—tone light, directions precise, encouragement disguised as jokes. At a false turn, he felt the urge to nudge a shadow-thread under his sole. He did not. Obedience on purpose. Trust as homework.
They exited in good time. Present Mic, somewhere above, gave them a thumbs-up on a screen and a "WOO! TEAMWORK!"
Bakugou blew past his partner like manners were an obstacle course. Aizawa's scarf lifted, and the exercise ended with Bakugou having learned something difficult about being led, which is another word for being alive.
Renya filed the sensation of being guided under skills to be audited later.
The Commission's prompt arrived at the convenience store, because of course it did.
The evening shift had a rhythm he liked—scans, nods, receipts as proof that the day could be balanced. Natsume worked the back shelves with the persistence of a saint who had given up on miracles and invested in mops. Aki texted: dinner: curry; come home hungry. He typed training: human; arrive edible and tried not to smile at his own joke.
The door chimed. Kurobane entered dressed down—jacket, no tie, eyes that had chosen to be civilian for an hour. He held a paper bag like a prop and placed it on the counter as if it mattered. "Cooking failure," he said. "Need actual food."
"You can do better than instant," Renya said.
"I can," Kurobane agreed, "and yet."
He didn't move away. He waited while Renya rang up miso, rice, a box of plain crackers. The pause had edges.
"Walk?" Kurobane asked, motioning with his head toward the small park nearby. He said it too casually for it to be entirely casual.
Renya glanced at Natsume. She tipped her chin—go; I've got this. He nodded, slipped the apron off, left a bell on the counter that would summon him back if the store remembered it needed him.
They walked the long rectangle of the park path—lamps putting commas in the dark. Kurobane gave the prologue the Commission required.
"Mentoring," he said, tasting the word and finding it too sweet. "Unofficial. Talk to me about yesterday. About trust."
"Do I get to put questions on the test?" Renya asked.
"Yes."
"Who wrote it?"
Kurobane's mouth twitched. "People who think 'trust' belongs on a scale from one to ten."
"It doesn't," Renya said.
"I know," Kurobane said. "But I have to bring them a number anyway."
They walked another lap. Children used the swings like punctuation; a couple argued in low voices about a bill and made up before they reached the bench. Kurobane let the city be evidence.
"Trust," he said finally, "is when you choose to be vulnerable to something you can't control."
"And when you do it knowing you can't control it," Renya said.
"Yes," Kurobane said. "Yesterday, your power was the thing you couldn't control. You chose it anyway."
"I chose the outcome I could live with," Renya said.
"Which is not the same," Kurobane said gently.
They stopped at the bridge railing even though the park had no river, only a polite drainage canal that pretended to be reflective. The shadow pressed the square once, curious. Kurobane felt it like a polite glance, not a reach.
He set the bag on the railing and said what wasn't in the script: "I'm going to ask you for something you won't like."
"Honesty?" Renya asked.
"Later," Kurobane said. "Today: a blind step. You set the square. Then you take one action without asking it to follow. It can choose to help or not. And you let that answer stand."
"On what?" Renya asked.
"A small problem," Kurobane said. He nodded toward the far bench. A teenage boy had fallen asleep with his backpack unzipped and his wallet accidentally making a decision about gravity. Two middle-schoolers hovered near the bench with the angelic look kids wear when they're debating being unwise.
Renya could have fixed it in three civilized ways without any shadow. He could have spoken, offered, intervened politely. Kurobane was asking something specific: an experiment in permission.
Renya set the square under his feet. It spread like ink remembering edges. He took one step away from the bench—counterintuitive on purpose—and kept walking. The shadow hesitated. Then, without drama, it extended a ribbon just under the wallet until the sleeping boy rolled, tugged the strap with his own movement, and pulled it back into the bag. The middle-schoolers complained of boredom and went looking for worse ideas elsewhere.
Kurobane didn't clap. "Thank you," he said instead, to both of them.
Renya broke the square. He didn't relish the feeling but he didn't reject it either. "Satisfied?"
"Curious," Kurobane said. "And mildly reassured."
"Which is not the same as satisfied," Renya said.
"No," Kurobane agreed. "But better than afraid."
They walked back. At the store door, he paused. "Aizawa asked me to keep this small."
"I prefer small," Renya said.
"I know," Kurobane said. "So do I."
He lifted the paper bag slightly—proof of purchase and of purpose—and left before the city could decide they were friends.
The apartment knew celebration had to be practical.
Aki had transformed curry into a thesis on comfort. She ladled it like someone who understood that heat could be a kindness. The second bowl appeared before the first was empty.
"You look," she said between bites, "like someone who was honest and didn't enjoy it."
"Mentoring," he said.
"Kurobane?" she asked, then softened the way paper towels do when useful. "Did he try to be clever?"
"He tried to be careful," Renya said. "Which is rarer."
She ate that sentence and the next spoonful. "And how are you?" she asked, the question freighted with its own history.
"Absent," he said. "But here."
She set her spoon down. "Different absent," she said. "Not the kind where you disappear into solving everything. The kind where you sit very still and the room moves to greet you."
"What does the room do?" he asked.
"It comes to heel," she said. "And I don't know yet if I like that."
He acknowledged the honesty with a small nod. "The shadow is learning to anticipate. Today I let it."
Her eyes warmed and worried at once. "Because Aizawa told you to?"
"Because Kurobane asked," he said. "Aizawa told me to tell him no next time if I needed to."
Aki considered both men and their verbs. "Do you trust them?" she asked.
"I trust their intentions," he said.
"Too cheap," she said, not unkindly. "Do you trust them to keep me safe while they try to keep you ethical?"
He didn't answer immediately. The pause was the honest part.
"Mostly," he said.
She accepted the adverb only because there was dignity in letting the world be complicated. "Then here's my test," she said, turning the bowl a quarter turn like a compass. "If the square hums when I'm alone, I will listen—and I will ignore it in equal measure. Fifty-fifty. That way, it learns that I'm not a button you press."
"It already knows," he said.
"Then it can learn I'm stubborn," she said.
He smiled into his water. "It learned that first."
She flicked a grain of rice at him, missed on purpose, and said, "Say it."
"What?"
"The line you keep building in your head to make this feel like a plan."
He considered pretending he had none and chose the smaller lie. "Trust is not a light switch," he said. "It's a dimmer—and I'm tired of rooms that are either dark or burning."
She clinked her spoon to his glass. "Then here's to the dimmer."
They ate; the apartment filed the evening under paid.
Night stretched across Musutafu like a competent blanket. He stood at the window and let the city's lights practice not meaning anything. The square lay on the floor like a boundary that had learned furniture. He sat cross-legged and put his ankles against its edge. The shadow brightened, dimmed, waited.
"We're going to be asked to do more than we can verify," he said. "We'll be told to be honest in rooms that call honesty 'inconvenience.' We'll be offered praise for the wrong reasons."
The shadow pulsed once—acknowledgment, not agreement.
"Guard first," he said. "Then trust. In that order."
It did the crescent—joy's shape, small and private—and settled.
He closed his eyes.
In the space where breath counts time, he felt it: the faintest pressure from the hall. Listening. Not hostile. Near. He opened his eyes without moving his head.
A rap on the door. Three precise knocks—the Commission's favorite rhythm. He stood and opened it because not opening is also a choice.
Not Kurobane. A junior—fresh suit, polite face, clipboard. "Delivery," they said, hand extended. "From U.A. via Commission liaison."
An envelope—schedule adjustments, placement notes. He thanked them. They left with relief that their job hadn't turned into a discussion.
He set the envelope on the table and stared at it until it turned back into paper. His phone buzzed. Unknown number:"Trust is a dimmer is good. — K."
He typed back: "Don't make me test it in the dark."Three dots. Then: "Trying not to."
He put the phone down. Aki's door was closed. The apartment breathed. The square held.
He found Aizawa the next morning before homeroom, leaning into a sunbeam as if conserving electricity. The teacher didn't look up.
"You asked me yesterday," Renya said. "If I trust what I call mine."
Aizawa blinked once. "And?"
"Sometimes," Renya said. "And when I don't, I act like I do long enough to teach it how."
"That's either wisdom," Aizawa said, "or a preface to an apology."
"Probably both," Renya said.
Aizawa turned to face him fully, capture scarf shifting like a threatened cat that had chosen not to scratch. "Then here's the next test," he said. "You don't get a scenario. You get a question."
He let the air make space for it.
"Do you even trust what you call yours?"
Silence decided to be useful.
Renya could have reached for a quote to make the moment look competent. He didn't. He let the answer be the size of the room.
"That's the test, isn't it," he said. "Not once. Every time."
Aizawa nodded—an approval that wouldn't perform for anyone else. "Good. Now go to class. Be boring. It's the hardest thing you'll do here."
Renya went. The square followed with impeccable manners.
Somewhere across campus, Kurobane sent a line into his private ledger that no report would quote: Trust observed as behavior, not claim. Continue small tests. Keep the light between 'on' and 'off.'
Somewhere else entirely, the Commission drafted the kind of email that turned dimmers into switches.
And in an apartment that had learned to be a home, a sister woke to the soft hum of a boundary that had chosen to be a good guest and smiled into her pillow like someone who knew a code word and planned to use it sparingly.
Between control and obedience, a third thing held.
Trust—not as a banner. As a practice.