Before Iida can resume speaking, another chair slides backward.
Ayaka rises to her feet.
"Same here."
Several heads turn.
She smiles sheepishly. "Please remove my name from consideration as well."
Aizawa doesn't even bother turning around.
"Same reason?"
"Pretty much." She nods. "My schedule's just as packed as brother's. I wouldn't be able to give the position what it needs."
"Noted."
He appears to go back to sleep.
The class stares.
Ashido raises a hand slowly, looking between the two of them.
"Hold on." Her eyes move from Ayaka to Izumi and back. "Weren't you two with us yesterday?"
"Hm?"
"The dessert place." Mina points at Ayaka her eyes narrow dramatically. "You came with us after school."
"Oh." Ayaka laughs. "Yeah."
"Then how busy can you actually be?"
"Busy enough that we were late afterward."
Several people's attention sharpens.
"Late for what?" Kaminari asks.
"Swordsmanship."
The classroom goes quiet.
Mina blinks. "…Swordsmanship?"
"That was one of them."
"One of them?"
"We have a variety of classes."
The silence somehow grows heavier.
Kirishima leans forward. "You take multiple classes after school?"
"Most days."
"That's insane."
Ayala points a thumb toward Izumi.
"Tell that to brother. He's the one who introduced it."
Several heads immediately swivel toward him.
"What kind of —"
Before Mina can begin her interrogation, Iida clears his throat loudly.
The sound carries across the room.
The class turns back toward him.
"If everyone is finished discussing extracurricular scheduling." He adjusts his glasses. "We may begin the election."
He steps away from the front of the room.
"Each student will write one name on a slip of paper. Place it in the box when called. We begin now."
The ballots are distributed.
The collection box begins making its way through the classroom.
For a few moments, an unusual silence settles over Class 1-A.
Everyone suddenly becomes very interested in their desk.
Pens begin moving. Slowly. Suspiciously.
Kaminari leans sideways immediately.
"Hey, who're you voting for?"
Jiro kicks the side of his chair without looking up.
"Mind your own business."
"Ow!"
At the front, Aoyama hunches dramatically over his desk, one arm curved around his paper in a full shield, protecting it from all conceivable angles.
"No peeking!" he announces.
"Nobody's trying to peek," Mina says.
"You don't know that."
"I literally can't even see your paper."
Aoyama turns around and narrows his eyes at her.
"That is exactly what someone trying to peek would say."
Near the window, Bakugo doesn't spend more than three seconds on the process. Pen down. Name written. Done. He folds the slip and drops it into the box as it passes.
Sero watches him. "…You voted for yourself, didn't you."
"It's supposed to be anonymous, idiot," Bakugo says, in the specific tone of someone who did not answer the question.
Midoriya stares at his blank slip, pen hovering, clearly deliberating something he has no business deliberating this hard. He is still staring when the ballot box arrives at his desk from behind.
"Midoriya."
He jumps. "Ah! Right! Sorry!"
His pen finally moves.
At the teacher's desk, Iida observes the process with quiet satisfaction. Everything orderly. Everything fair. Everything is proceeding exactly as intended.
Eventually the final ballot is collected.
Iida places the box on Aizawa's desk.
Nothing happens.
Ten seconds pass. Then twenty.
The class slowly turns toward the yellow sleeping bag on the floor.
Then it rolls over. One eye opens.
A long sigh escapes him.
Aizawa emerges from the sleeping bag.
Without a word he takes the box and begins counting.
The room watches.
When he finishes, he glances down at the results.
"Yaoyorozu. Three votes."
Heads turn toward Momo, who sits perfectly composed.
Several students nod, as if arriving at a conclusion they should have reached earlier.
Mina grins and stretches out a low, delighted sound.
"Oooooh."
"Midoriya. Two."
Midoriya nearly falls out of his chair. "M-Me?"
"Iida. Three votes."
This time the room looks toward Iida.
Who makes a visible and not entirely successful effort to maintain a dignified posture.
The murmurs start immediately.
"Three votes?"
"That's actually pretty good."
"People really voted for him?"
"Well, he does look like a class rep."
"Because of the glasses."
"That is not how that works."
Aizawa rubs his forehead.
"Quiet."
The room settles.
"Everyone else received one vote or zero."
He glances at the paper.
"By the rules Iida established, the two with the most votes move forward." He looks at Midoriya. "Midoriya, You're out."
Midoriya stands so quickly his chair tips backward. Izumi's hand catches it before it can go anywhere, setting it back in place without looking.
"I— "
Midoriya bows awkwardly.
"Thank you to everyone who voted for me. That was —"
His face turns red.
"I'll keep working hard." He sits back down immediately, the smile still there, slightly flustered but genuine.
"Yaoyorozu. Iida. Front."
They stand and walk forward, stopping side by side in front of the class.
Aizawa barely has time to speak before Yaoyorozu raises her hand.
He gestures for her to speak.
"I'd like to cede the representative position," she says, "and take the deputy role instead."
Iida turns to her immediately. "Yaoyorozu, you received the same number of votes. There's no requirement —"
"I know," she says, calm and unhurried. "I'm choosing to."
She glances briefly toward Izumi and Ayaka, then back. "My schedule is already arranged around other commitments. The deputy position gives me the authority to be useful without disrupting everything I've already planned. It's the right fit."
Iida processes this.
Something moves across his expression, the brief and visible conflict of someone who wants a thing and simultaneously believes someone else might deserve it, which is a very specific kind of discomfort.
"Even so, Yaoyorozu. I believe you would perform admirably as class representative."
Aizawa closes his eyes.
"Iida is the class representative," he says. "Yaoyorozu is the deputy. Sit down."
The matter is settled instantly.
The moment they return to their seats, the reactions come immediately.
"Honestly, that works," Kaminari nods.
"Yeah. Ribbit," Tsuyu agrees.
"Yaoyorozu as deputy is a solid call," Kirishima says. "She's calm and she actually understands things."
"And she's super smart," Kaminari adds.
"Iida takes everything way too seriously," Ashido says, "but he actually cares. That matters."
"He does care," Uraraka agrees. "Aggressively, but he does."
Mina leans forward toward Ayaka.
"He definitely practices speeches in the mirror."
"I would be shocked if he didn't."
From the back of the room, somehow, Iida hears this.
"I do not!"
Nobody believes him.
Not a single person.
***
The rest of the morning passes quickly.
Mathematics. Japanese. History.
The kind of periods that settle into their own rhythm and carry the class forward without asking much of anyone.
By the time the lunch bell rings, nearly the entire class looks relieved.
Conversations immediately restart as chairs scrape back and bags are opened.
Students gather their things and begin moving toward the cafeteria in the familiar clusters that had been quietly forming over the last three days, not yet fixed, still adjustable, but already carrying the shape of something that might become habit.
By the time food was collected and seats chosen, groups had already naturally formed. The cafeteria at midday was its own kind of noise.
Class 1-A spreads into the space and sort themselves into the seats.
Midoriya, Iida, and Uraraka found a table near the aisle.
Iida set his tray down. He folds his hands and looks at his food with an expression suggesting he had several things he wanted to say.
"The weight of this responsibility," he begins.
Uraraka looks at Midoriya.
Midoriya looks at Uraraka.
"The class representative position is not merely a title," Iida continues. "It is a covenant. A commitment to the collective wellbeing of each individual student and to the institutional standards of UA as a whole. I am aware that some of our classmates may view it as a formality. I do not."
"That's good," Uraraka says. "I think."
"Iida," Midoriya says, leaning forward slightly. "Were you the one who voted for me?"
Iida pauses mid-reach for his chopsticks.
"I observed that you demonstrate natural qualities of situational awareness and composure under pressure," he says. "Whether that constitutes a vote for or against a candidacy is —"
"You voted for him," Uraraka says.
"I made an informed assessment."
"You voted for him."
Iida adjusts his glasses. "…You do look the part."
"It's the notes, right," Midoriya says. "Everyone thinks it's the notes."
"Wanting a job and being suited to it are different things," Iida says, with the conviction, quoting something he heard once and has since made foundational. "Observing the Iida family agency has made that very clear to me."
Uraraka pauses. "Hold on. The Iida family agency?"
Iida sets his chopsticks down. A small hesitation.
"It's nothing. Just — you know."
"Iida," Midoriya says slowly. "Are you —"
"Are you rich?" Uraraka asks. "Like filthy rich?"
"I was concerned people would treat me differently if —"
"You are," she says. "You're absolutely rich."
Iida sighs with the weight of someone accepting the inevitable. "The Iida family has been involved in hero work for several generations. My elder brother currently operates an agency in Tokyo."
Midoriya went very still.
"Your elder brother," he says.
"The Turbo Hero," Iida says. "Ingenium."
Midoriya makes a sound.
"With sixty-five sidekicks," Midoriya continues, in the voice of someone reciting from memory without deciding to. "Tokyo-based. Ranked consistently in the top twenty active heroes. Recognised for operational coordination during the —"
Uraraka turns to stare at him.
"I know a lot about him," Midoriya says, without inflection.
"I can see that," she says.
Iida looks at him with an expression that contained several things, some surprise, some warmth, something that was possibly gratitude.
"Ingenium is an unmatched commander," he says. "He honours the hero code in ways that most people don't even consider anymore." A pause. "As the second son, I have spent most of my life trying to understand what it means to follow someone like that."
"That's not a small thing," Midoriya says quietly.
"No," Iida agrees. "It isn't."
They ate in silence for a moment, the comfortable kind.
"I still think it's a bit soon for a real leadership role," Iida says. "But I intend to prove otherwise."
Uraraka smiled. "I believe you."
Across the cafeteria, at a table that had accumulated several people organically and without anyone particularly organising it, Kirishima was explaining something with both hands.
"— okay but the thing about Bakugo's fighting style is that it's basically just 'be the problem until the other person stops being the problem', right, and it works, which is the part that kills me —"
"That's not a fighting style," Sero says. "That's a personality trait."
"Can't it be both?"
"I mean technically yes but —"
At the far end of the same table, one seat away from the group, Bakugo eats with his elbows on the table and his eyes on the middle distance.
He could hear everything. But he didn't comment on any of it.
His thoughts were still occupied by yesterday's meeting, and occasionally his gaze drifted toward Midoriya across the cafeteria, who remained unaware of it.
At the table against the far wall, Momo, Ayaka, and Izumi settle in with their lunches, and Ashido and Tsuyu had gravitate over without much deliberation.
"Okay so I have to ask," Ashido says, leaning forward with her elbows on the table. "Swordsmanship is one class. What are the others?"
Ayaka considers this as she opens her lunch box.
"It varies by the day. Swordsmanship is three times a week. Then there is hand-to-hand combat, historical forms, some academic ones for the business side of things —"
"Business side?"
"We are heirs to a conglomerate," Ayaka says, as if this is obvious. "At some point we are expected to know what that means."
Ashido stares at her.
"So you train to be a hero, and you train to run a company."
"And swordsmanship among other things."
"At the same time."
"Most days."
Ayaka picks up her chopsticks. "It is a full schedule."
"That's genuinely insane," Ashido says.