U.A. traded its quiet for polish.
Banners went up with fonts that had tested well in public trust surveys. Drones rehearsed approach vectors over the practice fields until their propellers sounded like polite bees. A temporary arch framed the entrance: U.A. EVALUATION – COMMUNITY VIEWING. The words promised transparency. The cameras promised a record.
Renya arrived when the crowd was still deciding how loud to be. Volunteers in yellow vests gave directions with the brisk kindness of people who had learned that kindness is faster. The pulse came early—thin and everywhere, the way condensation is. He kept the square behind his heel, a coin-sized boundary no lens could notice.
Aizawa stood at the staging gate, scarf slung as if gravity had filed a request. Present Mic tested a microphone and then apologized to it.
"Teams will rotate," Aizawa said, tone meant to instruct the day. "Live tasks. Non-destructive. You are here to be measured, not mythologized." His eyes held the line on Renya for the briefest possible unit. "Kurotsuki: Strategic Support, Team 3."
It suited him. Support didn't have to perform; it had to make performing safe.
Kaminari bounced in place, strapped into a vest with exactly the legal amount of swagger. "We're a trio, right? Me, Uraraka, and—"
"Yaoyorozu," Renya finished, reading the board without turning. "Optimal allocation."
"Is that your nice way of saying no chaos?" Uraraka asked, stepping in with fingerless gloves and a grin that wanted everyone to share the same weather.
"It's my way of saying we're going to pass," Renya said.
She laughed. "Let's pass beautifully, then."
The audience thickened—faculty from other departments, a clutch of parents, some support course students taking notes on clipboards as if clipboards were a lifestyle. Reporters with accredited badges set up near the perimeter. Sponsors occupied a small platform with branded umbrellas that shaded nothing.
In the Commission's pop-up control tent, a wall of monitors glowed. A narrow feed labeled R-17 lay dormant, a flat line with opinions about everything. Dr. Imai adjusted her glasses. "Bring the public bio metrics online," she said, and the crowd's heartbeats joined the models: peaks and stutters, laughter like static, caffeine mapped in waves.
Kurobane stood behind her, hands in pockets, posture like a refusal that had learned to be employed. "If you make the audience a subject," he said, "remember they didn't consent to be interesting."
"We're only logging aggregate," Imai replied, which was true in the way rain is only aggregate.
He didn't argue with weather.
The first exercise ran smooth. Sero, Ojiro, and Mina executed a Debris Corridor with cheerful competence. Tape turned air into courtesy; tail negotiated weight; acid chewed a hinge like a delicate decision. The audience clapped in pulses. The pulse clapped back, almost.
Team 2 hit a snag—Midoriya overanalyzed a Hazard Gate and apologized to physics for ten seconds that felt like policy. Bakugou solved the apology by kicking strategy in the shins; the gate, insulted, opened. The bleachers roared. Midoriya wrote a note on his palm and tried not to look like a man who kept borrowing pens from fate.
"Team 3," Present Mic called. "Strategic Support: Kurotsuki Renya. Operatives: Yaoyorozu Momo, Uraraka Ochaco, Kaminari Denki. Scenario: Multi-Room Rescue with Live Evac Route."
They formed at the starting line. Yaoyorozu flexed her hands like a craftsman prepared to make the world from scratch; Uraraka rolled her shoulders and looked up as if checking whether the ceiling wanted to cooperate; Kaminari did a quick bounce and mouthed polite zapping to himself like a superstition.
"Parameters," Yaoyorozu asked softly.
"Three rooms," Renya said. "One decoy victim, two real. Crowd watching makes the floor bet on spectacle. We will underpay."
"Underpay?" Kaminari grinned.
"We give the problem exactly what it requires," Renya said. "No tips."
The buzzer opened the door to a hallway that had learned how to be unhelpful. Lights flickered in a pattern that would trick a person who made decisions with their retinas. Renya set his pace to boring. The pulse around the bleachers pushed forward—the lean-in of hundreds of people wanting to see success earn itself.
Room 1: a dummy under a fallen frame. To the camera, rescue begged for a lift and a grin. Renya adjusted the frame by two fingers and let friction consider retirement. "Now," he said. Uraraka touched the weight; gravity took a short break for lunch. Kaminari gave a single, polite spark to restart a stubborn door sensor. Yaoyorozu handed Uraraka a cuff made of soft weave that apologized to skin while keeping bones honest. Thirty seconds; they exited. The crowd clapped as if they had seen more than they had. They had.
In the control tent, Dr. Imai pointed at a graph. "Notice the micro-synchrony. When Kurotsuki speaks, the team's vitals tighten together. It's not command; it's coherence."
"That's what teachers call a good day," Kurobane said.
Room 2: siren, smoke machine, a dummy with a faint speaker emitting recorded panic in a voice designed to twist conscientious hearts. Uraraka's face flinched—not fear, empathy. Renya felt the pulse shift—audience nerves rising, certain kinds of parents in the bleachers unconsciously miming the breath of a cry.
The square pulled against his heel: help.
He anchored it. We do not feed the siren. He signaled by palm: Yaoyorozu built a hood shaped like a lesson in air quality; Kaminari killed the siren with a touch that convinced electricity the proudest thing it could do was end. Uraraka lifted the dummy like a promise, and they left the room quieter than they found it.
Clapping again. Not roaring; approving. The pulse wove down the stairs and pooled near the rail in a way that made skin notice skin. Renya felt it look for purchase. He gave it none.
Room 3: split-task design—two doors, two identical "victims." One would be a decoy. The audience leaned. This was the arithmetic of performance: choose wrong, drama; choose right, relief; choose elegantly, respect.
He stopped the team with a gesture that asked permission to be simple. "Door B," he said.
"Reason?" Yaoyorozu asked, because reason is part of being a person.
"The red paint is newer," he said, pointing to Door A. "They patched the frame after rehearsal. Decoys are rehearsed more often."
She smiled like a person who enjoyed being convinced. Uraraka nodded, already moving. Kaminari breathed out, grateful that hunch had a sibling called analysis.
They opened Door B to a room with a single hazard—the floor sloped barely, enough to introduce gravity to an agenda. Renya placed his hand flat and said, "Square." It formed under his palm only for him, not for the world. He pressed the urge to extend into patience. The floor remembered itself. Uraraka moved first because that was the solve; the dummy passed across a line Renya had decided would be gentle. They exited under time.
The audience's sound surprised him. The claps didn't crest; they equalized. It was the noise people make when they feel smarter after watching you answer.
He avoided the bow entirely. That earned him a small hush that did the work of applause better than applause anyway.
Aizawa's eyes said good. His mouth said nothing.
They rotated off. Kaminari bumped his shoulder. "You weaponized boring. I'm stealing that."
"You can borrow it," Renya said. "It returns itself."
He took the shade of the staging tent and listened to the field. The pulse continued—but it had changed its target. It was not rushing at him; it was rolling over the bleachers, reflecting off reactions like light in a gallery of mirrors. The more the crowd felt, the more the rhythm patterned itself on them.
In the tent, Dr. Imai's screen populated with impossible neatness: audience vitals forming micro-choirs around specific events. A child on the third row learned bravery from Uraraka and passed it to the row behind by giggling in the right place; a support student in the aisle had a jaw you could use to teach stubbornness; his steadiness calmed the ten seats nearest without him intending to. Imai highlighted segments. "Look at this. The room is self-synchronizing."
"Because he asked it to?" an aide said.
"Because he refused to ask it to," Kurobane said, more to himself than to them.
He watched the boy on the field—Renya standing near the water station, choosing stillness as if it were something you earned. The line on R-17 moved like a thought taking notes.
Between exercises, a reporter cornered Present Mic for a quote flavoured like sugar-free sugar. The sponsor umbrellas made shade for a camera that didn't need help. The drone overhead shot pretty insistence.
"Public confidence is high," the reporter said on her feed, voice pitched to optimism. "U.A. students are demonstrating not just power but responsibility."
In the chat window of the streaming interface, hearts floated, punctuated by arguments. Aki watched from the apartment with the volume down; Chat noise made rooms invent opinions they didn't need. She followed Renya by rhythm instead: breath between edits, the way he set a cup down, the speed of his blinks when he was building a sentence he wouldn't say out loud. She put her hand on the square under the table. It brightened, then dimmed, matching the live delay as if it had learned time zones.
"He's fine," she told the apartment. The apartment agreed.
The second half invited noise. Bakugou's team drew Hostile Interference and treated the space like an enemy who had made the mistake of existing. The crowd loved it, because honesty in motion is convincing. The pulse surged, spiked, threatened to ride the blast wave. Renya felt it press, wanting to turn into a tide.
He stepped to the boundary of the lane and held his breath on counts of four—inhale four, hold four, exhale six, hold two—pattern he had taught himself back when patterns were a currency he could trust. The pulse touched the cadence, recognized a frame, and slid from pressure into tempo. The spikes softened. The audience didn't know why they were suddenly a little steadier. A child stopped crying without a new stimulus. A proctor's hand lowered by an inch. The air let go of some drama.
Aizawa's head turned exactly the amount a cat does when it hears its name. He said nothing to anyone, and the scarf did the same.
On the monitors, a heat map bloomed and then cooled. Dr. Imai circled a shape with the tip of a pen. "There. That's not quirk output. That's behavioral entrainment."
"Human," Kurobane said.
"Directed?"
"No," he said. "Allowed."
She hummed like a scientist trying not to sound like a poet. "If he can stabilize a crowd without touching them—"
"Then you will please not ask him to," Kurobane said.
Imai looked as if the word please had surprised her by showing up. "We'll see."
He sipped coffee committed to being bitter and thought: They will call it utility. He will call it consent.
The last rotation belonged to Midoriya, Iida, and Yaoyorozu: Misinformation Cascade. Signs that lied, alarms that rewarded the wrong choices, a map that corrected you only if you apologized. It was built for the boy who took notes on notes. He floundered on the first misdirect and then recalculated out loud, trusting his team with the math and his team trusting him with the nerves. When they found the correct exit, the bleachers did the earnest clap again—the sound of a room proud of itself for liking the right thing.
Renya stood at the edge of the field and let the noise track past. The pulse, now almost playful, did a loop around the perimeter and arrived at his heel like a dog that had just learned recall.
"No," he told it, and then, gentler: "Guard."
It turned, paced the lower rail, and held.
Present Mic ended the stream with warmth torque-limited to professionalism. The banners decided they could be signs again. The drones went home to charging docks that would tell them stories about duty. Students exhaled into laughter because that's what teenagers do when adrenaline has to live somewhere.
Kaminari flopped onto the nearest bench, every cell a sigh. "Dude. Did we just… do a good job?"
"Yes," Renya said.
"That's illegal," Mina declared, falling across the same bench with tape stuck in her hair. "Good job in public? Where's the fee?"
"Public paid in attention," Sero said. "We tipped with not being stupid."
"Best tip," Mina said.
Uraraka stood and stretched. "You did that thing," she told Renya.
"What thing," he said.
"Where everyone thinks they calmed down by themselves," she said.
"That's their win," he said.
"It is," she agreed, genuine. "Thank you."
He nodded, because arguing with gratitude is rude.
Crowd dispersal is the test no schedule budgets for. U.A. passed. Bikes unlocked. Parents located children and then pretended they hadn't been worried. A sponsor's umbrella got left behind like evidence of a conversation that had gone fine. The pulse thinned, but it didn't vanish; it left traces like chalk dust, residue that would make a student kinder to a stranger for no reason later.
In the control tent, monitors wound down. The R-17 line flattened into something that didn't expect anyone to clap. Dr. Imai copied files into drives with encryption that believed in itself. "Preliminary observations," she dictated: "Subject K demonstrates ambient stabilization effects independent of explicit quirk deployment. Crowd resonance increases when he refuses to escalate. Recommend—"
Kurobane unplugged the last sentence in his head and walked out. He told himself he needed air. He told himself he wasn't walking towards the gate where students would pass. Lies can be useful when they're small.
He found Renya near the vendor table pretending to be interested in bottled water. They did not greet. That was their form of intimacy.
"You moved the room," Kurobane said finally.
"The room moved itself," Renya said.
"You let it," Kurobane countered.
"I didn't forbid it," Renya conceded.
Kurobane glanced up at the sky, at a drone that still hung back like a late guest. "They'll ask you to do it on purpose."
"I'll say no," Renya said.
"You'll say 'not without consent'," Kurobane corrected.
"It's the same sentence," Renya said.
"In different rooms," Kurobane said.
They let the grammar put its hands down.
"Small tomorrow?" Renya asked.
"Smaller if I can," Kurobane said.
"Smaller is big," Renya said.
Kurobane almost smiled. "You really do weaponize boring."
"I domesticate it," Renya said.
They parted without footprints.
Aki closed the stream and the laptop together. The apartment felt like a held breath that had been let go responsibly. The square under the table brightened, then fell asleep the way electricity does—pretending.
She texted Proud with a period he would understand as a hug.
He answered Home soon.
She put milk in the fridge with the solemnity of ritual. Somewhere in her chest, she could still feel the echo of bleachers, the small unity of people deciding to like competence that didn't ask them to worship it.
"Next time," she told the room, "remain polite."
The room said will try in its own language.
Night returned what day had borrowed. The field emptied. The bright arch took a nap leaning against itself. The last drone confessed to a technician that it had been useless in a helpful tone.
Numbers traveled to servers and from there to arguments. In a folder that had been invented this morning, a graph repeated itself like proof: when Renya moved, others moved with less chaos; when he didn't, others thought they had calmed themselves. Emails would name it passive modulation. Aizawa would name it good classroom management. Renya would refuse to name it without asking the people who had been calmed.
He walked home by a route that gave trees a chance to hold up part of the sky. The pulse followed only as far as the gate and then turned back to count benches, having learned a new hobby.
On the sidewalk outside the apartment, he stopped. Wind pooled in the lee of the building; a car door clunked two streets over; a TV laughed a laugh track with admirable stamina. He looked up at the window that was his and then didn't. The square sat under his heel, quiet.
He said, because the day needed a sentence with mercy in it, "We are not an instrument for crowds."
The shadow agreed, and then, because it had learned manners, added: Unless they ask.
He went upstairs. The lock recognized his key. Aki looked up and made a face that meant I was fine and then said, "I was not fine." He put the milk on the counter and that counted as I know.
They sat. They ate what was ready. The world refused to knock. He stood at the window at the end, and the city didn't glitter so much as keep score without malice.
In the Commission's office, people debated adjectives. On a roof, Aizawa let the scarf unwind one loop, the same way you loosen a tie when you decide to keep going. In a file that shouldn't exist, a line labeled R-17 hummed in the emptiness of the gym.
For once, he didn't feel watched.
He felt used as a mirror—and he had positioned it so it reflected the audience back at themselves, not at him.
He exhaled, finally understanding the shape of what the day had done.
For the first time, the world wasn't watching him — it was watching itself through him.