A Precise Note Chapter 26 - Reframe

Momo ran the index finger of her right hand underneath her nostrils, and a handkerchief appeared in her palm, dull pink and black.

Momo ran the index finger of her right hand underneath her nostrils, and a handkerchief appeared in her palm, dull pink and black. The green-haired one, Midoriya, noticed her manifest a handkerchief from seemingly thin air, and she couldn’t help but smile at him. Not the polite smile that her parents trained her to have in the midst of guests and government officials, the one that was meant to disqualify her as a potential threat and reduce her QETA rating. No, it wasn’t that practiced, pathetic, polished smile she’d transfixed into memory and could recreate in drawings and sculptures, in music and tone.

The smile she wore these days was different. Coy. Mysterious. Alluring. Dare she even say it, seductive. Not that her intent was to seduce, although he was admittedly the most handsome-looking boy she had seen in quite a while, she had no intention of entrusting herself to anyone. Certainly not a boy she just met, a classmate who, like the rest of them, was sizing her up, evaluating, and analyzing her threat level. His facial features gave away very little, which made it harder to read his thought processes, but his eyes never lied.

Midoriya was the most dangerous person in this room. Unlike the rest of them, he was the only one whose eyes had not strayed. Kaminari-san was obvious, as she’d caught his gaze trail to her skirt, chest, and legs over eleven times in the past ten minutes. Hitoshi-san, sitting in the corner, had also snuck a few glances. As had Yoarashi-san whilst he had been present, still prone to hormones as the rest of them. Even Endeavor’s son, Todoroki, had glanced once or twice.

The girl with thorns for hair was openly glaring at her, and the invisible one… Momo could not tell. That one, she would have to watch out for. There was no face, so no emotions to read, so no way to know if the girl was scowling, uninterested, or if she was watching her every movement like a hawk and planning her murder.

She was aware that her appearance, attitude, beauty, and choice of revealing skin would draw ire. Exposure therapy, she’d termed it; a bold-faced lie given to her mother. She argued her quirk required her to create objects from skin, being bashful about showing skin when it could spell the difference between life and death was unwise. Better to become more comfortable with displaying as much skin as possible and rid herself of any sense of demureness from her body. As with everything else, her mother believed the bold-faced lie because she had no choice but to.

“Is there something on my face, Midoriya-san?”

Midoriya Izuku unnerved her. Polished looks aside, there was the disturbing lack of noticeable micro-expressions, or the excessive prudence of perfect micro-expressions. Watching him was like watching a computer algorithm mathematically perform all the gestures and movements one would expect of a typical human being. Most wouldn’t notice it, but when one was trained to, it became clear. It was too… clean.

She pushed it to the back of her mind as an oddity of his Quirk and nature. The world was already filled with enough petty reasons for prejudice and discrimination, and there was no reason to add to it.

“I was just wondering where you attended before you came to UA.”

He was going straight for the hard-hitting questions. She considered her options. Divulge information about herself? Divert the question? No, neither would work. Midoriya seemed sharp enough to figure things out.

“After an incident with my quirk, it was deemed best if I pursued my education in private.”

Kaminari’s attention was drawn in by those words. “Wait, what?”

“You were homeschooled?”

“Correct, Midoriya-san.”

She could not help the mirth in her voice. He was trying to disentangle her, as though she were a complicated ball of yarn stuck within his palms. His attempts would prove to be entertaining at the very least, and they would shed some more light on his own values.

“Maaan, that’s got to have sucked,” Kaminari bemoaned. “School is school and home is home. To put them together? What sort of sick bastard—”

“It was the decision of my parents.”

“Uh… right,” Kaminari cleared his throat. “I mean, what about friends and stuff?”

“The Complete Collection of Encyclopedia Britannica was the best friend a girl could ask for.”

“Er… sure, but… I mean…”

She knew what he meant. She had never quite been able to shake the underlying negative connotations that came with telling people she was homeschooled. Many believed it hindered her ability for social expression, made her incapable of making friends, or something else utterly ridiculous.

Others saw it as a sign of privilege. You’re too good to stay around the rest of us? As if it were her choice to be homeschooled. Did they think she chose such a lifestyle? That she would not have preferred to be around her peers and have fun with the rest of them? That if she had a choice, she wouldn’t have thrown aside the expensive legion of private tutors sent her way for a tired, overworked teacher in a stuffy classroom?

It started back in kindergarten, when she saw the worn, old clothes and shoes Jundo-sensei wore and felt her favorite teacher deserved better. The diamond she’d given as a birthday present was from her heart. Jundo-sensei broke down crying, confessing her financial woes and how she was struggling to pay off her father’s gambling debt. No one in her life had ever shown her that much appreciation, that much worth.

That was Momo’s original sin.

Jundo-sensei went missing the next day.

The police and the Public Hero Safety Commission arrived at her family’s gate a week later. Momo had known that the tiny diamond she made was expensive, but she had vastly underestimated just how expensive it was. Jundo-sensei did not know either.

It was a flawless hundred-carat diamond valued at three billion yen.

A school teacher had entered an establishment to evaluate a three-billion yen diamond in the morning. That afternoon, she was found in her home with a bullet in the back of her head. The diamond went missing.

The death count the diamond raised before it landed in the hands of authorities was twenty-seven people, amongst which were two police officers, two Pro-Heroes and Jundo-sensei's own father, all five of whom had tried to keep it for themselves.

Her parents were called. The school authorities got involved. She remembered the agonizing minutes she spent outside the Head Master’s office while her father roared his lungs out. Her mother insisted again and again that she had been ‘coerced,’ and it ended with her favorite teacher being posthumously declared a vindictive, manipulative woman who took advantage of an unwitting girl for profit.

Had her parents not been who they were, she would likely have been charged as well, once it was discovered that the diamond was her creation through Jundo-sensei’s diary. Fortunately, with the team of lawyers her mother had on speed dial, and with the judge and her father being alumni of the same institution, there was little to worry about. Jundo-sensei took all the blame. Why wouldn’t she? A dead woman could not defend herself.

The psychiatrist her parents consulted to deal with the aftermath said children fall prey to peer pressure, and that it was impossible for a child to not want to fit in using their quirk, but with a quirk like hers, there was a high risk of more incidents caused by ‘coercion.’

If it would not be her teachers, then it would be her peers.

Momo’s punishment, therefore, was homeschooling. She was to be kept away from such incidents until she was mature enough to understand why she could not use her power for the sake of others. 

It was never okay to use her powers like that, for others. It was illegal, even.

Yet, it was okay to make a few crates filled with gold, and okay to launder them through the mines her father owned in Africa. It was okay to make a few priceless earrings for her mother to adorn as she attended galas and events and strutted on red carpets. It was okay to aid some of the government’s top scientists by providing them access to rare, expensive materials, chemicals, and elements, in exchange for favors and pushing of political agendas and scientific studies that benefited her family’s companies. Those uses, her parents told her, were fine. They did not harm anybody nor cause chaos in society. They aided her family, their generational wealth, and assured she would never want for anything, nor would her children, nor her grandchildren, nor her great-grandchildren.

It was the way of the world: To those who have everything, more will be given, and to those who have nothing, everything will be taken.

“I’m pulling your leg, Kaminari-san,” she gave another one of her ‘smiles.’ “I have friends overseas. Justina is a friend of mine who lives in America. Prunella lives in France. They visit, on occasion.”

Whenever their fathers come to Japan on business.

“Foreigners?” Kaminari’s grin gave his thought process faster than his words. “Cool! Cool! What are they like?”

Exasperating. “Entertaining,” she said. “And taken.”

“One can never have too much of a good thing, am I right?”

She couldn’t help the small, genuine smile that wormed its way onto her lips. She liked Kaminari. He was easy to read and easy to understand. There was no hidden depth, no ulterior motives to watch out for, no cunning, calculative double-speak intended in his words or actions.

He was a boy who wanted to be a hero and who wanted to get girls. That was it. His desires were on his sleeve, and there was no need to be on guard around him. Momo found his simplicity entertaining.

Momo liked entertainment. She liked being entertained.

When one could create anything, when nearly all material desires and wants could be solved at the moment one desired and wanted them, it deprived any sense of achievement.

Attaining perfect scores on national exams? The primary reason for academic success being praised was that it signaled one’s potential for future resource accumulation. Good scores meant going to a good school, which meant getting a good job, which meant wealth and success and societal accolades.

But wealth and success were hers regardless by the sheer nature of her Quirk. There was no place in the world she could go that would not offer her billions for her power and its uses. Thus, academic success became the icing on a cake whose absence or presence did not change the cake’s taste.

Learning to play multiple instruments proficiently? A wonderful skill that would never outshine the utility of her Quirk, and thus, going on to become a musician or composer was pointless.

Learning several martial arts, earning a black belt, and a red belt? She could, at any time, pull out a fully loaded pistol and shoot. Mastering unarmed combat was little more than a conversation starter when one was a walking armory.

Learning complex mechanical and electrical engineering processes? If she had a workable blueprint of a complex device and understanding of its functions, she could make any device faster and cheaper just by using her Quirk than she could normally.

Friendships? One could make friends rather quickly when they could give others anything and everything they ever wanted without any effort. Likewise, one could make enemies rather quickly when others learned they could give them everything they ever wanted without any effort, yet refused to.

Amongst her high-society ‘friends,’ sons and daughters of billionaires, she held a grander status, because her existence itself was wealth. Creation was wealth. Nigh-infinite wealth. That itself undermined the prestige of wealth; it was a threat to the scarcity that maintained the status of the wealthy. Thus, even as they smiled in front of her, they secretly loathed her.

How dare she create out of thin air the wealth we exploit others to accrue?

There were no achievements to celebrate, and little meaning to her existence. Creation was a Quirk that broke the game of life and destroyed what it meant to live as a human.

Thus, Yaoyorozu Momo was always, at every moment, and every day, craving meaning.

Craving purpose.

She had yet to find it.

She instead distracted herself in pursuit of entertainment. Bread and Circuses, as it were. Watching the antics of heroes, she found herself entertained, and that entertainment staved off meaninglessness. Getting a recommendation for the UA Entrance Exams was easy enough, and becoming a ‘Pro-Hero’ would, if nothing else, be entertaining. She would entertain others, leave them astounded with tricks and heroics, and in enjoying their wonder, their awe, she would entertain herself. Her parents allowed her. They allowed her, because they were aware that her love for entertainment was the only thing stopping her from creating a handful of benzodiazepines and swallowing them.

She had already done so once.

Had the incident with Jundo-sensei not happened, she would have likely been homeschooled all the same. Because if put in a class of her peers, even in the most expensive private institutions, she would have earned the animosity, envy, and vitriol of others by the sheer virtue of existence, and either cave to peer pressure to be accepted and liked or accept a fate as an outcast.

She was aware that had it not been for her last name, she would have been kidnapped, abducted, or forcefully conscripted by the government. A person who could create uranium-235 at will was a person no government would ever leave unsupervised once discovered, unless the person in question was the sole daughter of the Yaoyorozu Family, a family that had significant connections alongside Old Money wealth and prestige.

A family to which backdoor deals could be made that would line everyone’s pockets. 

If she were born lower-class, middle-class, or even just ordinary upper-class, she would long have been chained up somewhere and made into a slave, barked at to create and create and create.

Or she would have been like poor Jundo-sensei. 

Shot in the head for daring to rise above her station.

“Midoriya, you’ve been staring a little too hard at Yaoyorozu, you know,” Kaminari moved in between them, clearing his throat. “Just saying—”

“He’s trying to figure me out.”

Kaminari blinked. “Huh?”

“Your quirk,” Midoriya said. “Allows you to create anything?”

Here it is. Momo saw this coming. She saw it. She had tried to be as unpleasant as possible, yet no matter how unpleasant or distasteful one was, so long as they were useful, they could be welcomed with open arms.

“As long as I have the required knowledge.”

Momo looked straight into the boy’s eyes, and the boy looked straight into hers. If he had been unnerving before, now, he was outright intimidating. There was a bit of fervor in his eyes, the kind of mad fervor that one could only find in individuals who were obsessed with a particular thing, completely and utterly enthralled with something to the point of abandoning food, drink, and personal well-being.

“Is that so…?”

There it was. It was a brief moment, a tiny window. For what could not have been a fraction of a second, the polished exterior of Midoriya Izuku possessed a brief crack. The expression happened so briefly that she would have missed it if she were not looking for it.

Midoriya smiled.

“That’s… amazing.”

She knew immediately that the boy in front of her was not right in the head. He could not be. There was an immediate chill that ran down her spine. A burning sensation rose from the pit of her stomach.

Midoriya Izuku did not see her as a person.

“Really amazing, Yaoyorozu-san.”

Like everyone else—

He saw her as a resource.

XXXXX - A Precise Note - XXXXX

Fuck. FUCK.

Katsuki wanted to explode. His face was burning so much that it felt like it was on fire. He didn’t particularly pay any attention to where he was going, if he was going anywhere. He wanted to dig a hole and bury himself in it. No, screw that, he wanted to dig a hole and bury the bitch in it, six-feet-deep, and then toss a dummy grenade to keep her company for good measure.

Above me? I’ll show you fucking above me—

He made his way to the bathroom, and, pissed as he was, he kicked the door of its hinges. He started kicking in all the doors of all the stalls until he found the nearest wall, roaring as he slammed his fist into it. “FUCK!” He slammed it a second time. “FUCK!” A third, fourth, fifth. “FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!”

He’d been turned into a fucking punchline. A joke. He should have known she didn’t have the balls to actually use a live grenade; he should have known. Why did he fall for it? Why the fuck did he fall for it?

FUCK!

He ground his teeth hard.

Keep your cool, Katsuki. Keep your fucking cool. You said you were gonna change, so you need to keep your fucking cool.

He stared at the damage that had been done to the bathroom wall. He grimaced as he looked over it. Property damage on the first day? Fuck me… 

He needed to get his shit together. 

Deep breaths. He inhaled. Deep breaths. He exhaled. Deep breaths. He inhaled again.

“You have a remarkable level of emotional regulation for someone with so much anger, young man.”

Katsuki snapped his gaze to the right. To the toilet stall. A scrawny blonde man sat in place, a newspaper in hand, his pants around his fucking ankles, clearly taking a shit.

“What the fuck?!”

“Hold on, young man,” the man said. “As a staff member, I’m not allowed to swear around students. It would be unbecoming of me to do so. So please, do you mind not swearing around me, so things can be even?”

Staff member? Shit. “Why is your door—” Oh fuck. “I kicked it open, didn’t I… fu-dge.”

Shit. Shit. Shit.

“I—I didn’t mean— I mean —”

The man waved him off. “It’s fine, young man. If anything, I should be the one apologizing. There’s a staff restroom, but it was such a distance from my office that I felt using this one would be easier. This restroom also happens to bring back fond memories.”

“Ah…” Katsuki said, for lack of other words. “Um… so you’re…”

“A teacher,” he replied. “I’m also a guide of young hearts and minds, if you’ll allow me that belief. Something seems to be troubling you, young man.”

“It’s… nothing.”

“Slamming your fists enough times into the wall to break it is anything but nothing,” the man hummed. “It’s your first day, is it not? What set you off?”

Katsuki pressed his lips hard together. “…shouldn’t you like… cover your junk or something?”

“You’re not seeing it, are you?”

“No… not from this angle, but…”

“Young man, I’ve lived long enough to the point that being caught with my pants down on a toilet seat by a student is something that’s hardly going to faze me. Are you uncomfortable seeing me on a toilet seat?”

The blond dude was weird, Katsuki felt. “I mean, don’t you feel uncomfortable?”

“I wonder,” the man chuckled. “What sort of discomfort? Embarrassment?”

“Well… yeah?”

“Do you know the mechanism behind embarrassment, young man?” The man said. “Embarrassment is a self-conscious emotion. When someone is embarrassed, they become conscious of a real or imagined failure to comply with social norms. They fear that others won't view them as highly as a result of that failure. So do you know how to beat it?”

Katsuki squinted, slowly shaking his head.

The man rolled his newspaper. “Reframe your failure.”

“Reframe… my failure?”

“I could be the teacher who got mortified being caught on the toilet by a student,” the blonde man said, “Or I can be the teacher who teaches a student while on the toilet seat, and does not mind at all if my student thinks less of me for it.”

Katsuki felt his lips twitch. “That’s ballsy.”

“It is,” the blonde man grinned. “Remember, sometimes the root cause of embarrassment is an imagined failure, not an actual one. I have not failed being a teacher or an authority figure by being caught on the toilet, nor have you failed some sort of checklist to be a perfect student by catching me on the toilet. Embarrassment only occurs when a party feels they’ve failed to uphold an unspoken agreement, failed to live up to some unsaid ideal, and worry that it’ll make others think less of them.”

The man gestured at him, “Do you think less of me for catching me on the toilet?”

“…No.”

“Nor do I think less of you for taking out your frustrations on school architecture,” the man responded. “At the end of the day, we are human. None of us are perfect, none of us can be. We can, however, keep striving to be better. To be our best selves, and go beyond.”

It was extremely rare for Katsuki to be able to say he respected someone. Yet, the man before him somehow managed to find a way to earn his respect while sitting on a toilet seat. There was something about him that Katsuki couldn’t put into words. Whether it was his relaxed smile, his apparent lack of concern, or the gentle tone of his voice, Katsuki felt, somehow, that he could trust this man.

“So… you’re not gonna—” Katsuki pointed to the damaged bathroom wall.

“Oh, that? It seems the building’s structural integrity had a critical flaw. My, how embarrassing, for us to not notice it. I’ll be sure to inform the Principal to send a repairman here to fix that mistake. Surely, I believe we can keep this between the two of us, don’t you?”

Katsuki couldn’t help the grin that came on his face. “I can do that.”

“Wonderful,” the man slapped the newspaper onto his right hand. “Now, young man. I happen to hear that there’s a large gym in the Second Building, which may or may not be open at all times. A wonderful place to blow off steam, whenever or however you feel it is necessary.”

“…Thanks… er…” Katsuki searched.

“Yagi. Toshinori Yagi.”

“Bakugo Katsuki,” Katsuki bowed, for what may have been the first time in his life. “Thanks, Yagi-sensei.”

“Think nothing of it, Bakugo-kun,” Yagi-sensei cleared his throat. “Now then, if you don’t mind, I have to finish my business, as it were.”

“Oh, right, yeah…. I’ll leave you to that.”

Katsuki Bakugo left the restroom, feeling somehow lighter than he had when he went in. He felt as though he’d taken a massive dump and released all the shit that had been building up within him. Yagi’s words had a soothing effect, the more he thought it over.

Reframe your failure.

He wasn’t the dude who embarrassed himself by jumping over a dummy grenade and falling for a prank; he was the dude who couldn’t risk that the grenade might have been real, and decided it was better to be safe than fucking sorry. What if it had been real, and that bitch had intended to blow them all to kingdom come? Would he have felt better if he stood his ground and called her bluff, won a game of fucking chicken, only to be proven wrong?

Fuck no.

Reframe your failure.

Katsuki inhaled deeply and exhaled.

Reframe your failure… huh?

So, was it, he was not the person who failed constantly to beat Midoriya, but the person striving his hardest to overcome a bullshit quirk? A person trying to be the best hero he could be?

He was trying, damn it.

He kept trying.

No matter what, Katsuki kept trying.

He wanted to be the No. 1 Hero. He wanted to be the best of the best. 

He wanted… to be someone he could be proud of.

“All right. All right. No more mess-ups. You’ve got this.”

Bakugo patted his cheeks, pumping himself up.

“First things first…” Katsuki sparked an explosion in his hand. “…reframing a bitch’s face.”