Chapter 41: Heights Alliance!

The building said 1-B ALLIANCE above the entrance in letters large enough to read from across campus.

Class 1-B stood in front of it with suitcases and boxes and duffel bags and, in Monoma's case, two rolling garment bags that he refused to let anyone else touch. Which made everyone want to touch them even more. The morning sun hit the white first-floor exterior and the brown upper levels, and for a moment nobody moved. They just looked at it.

"This is where we live now, huh…" Kendo said.

"It's huge!" Tetsutetsu grabbed her shoulder. "Look at that courtyard! And a pathway! And benches!"

"It's a dorm, Tetsutetsu. They come with benches."

"LET ME BE EXCITED, KENDO! This is gonna be awesome!"

Vlad King stood at the entrance with his arms crossed and the faintest ghost of a smile. He let them take it in for a moment. Then he clapped his hands once.

"Listen up. Before I show you around, I need to address something." The class went quiet. "The training camp was supposed to end with you earning your Provisional Hero Licenses. The villain attack interrupted that. The licenses are still the goal, and you'll be preparing for the exam starting this semester. Keep that in mind as you settle in."

He paused. Let it land.

"Now. Your new home away from home."

He walked them through the first floor. Common area with couches, tables, and a television. Kitchen. Dining area. Baths. Laundry rooms. Everything they'd need to live.

"One building per class. First floor is shared space. Boys' wing on the left, girls' wing on the right. Rooms start on the second floor, four boys' rooms and four girls' rooms per floor, all the way up to the fifth floor. Each room comes with air conditioning, a toilet, a refrigerator, a closet, and a balcony."

"A balcony?" Komori's eyes went wide.

"Each of you gets your own room. The rest of your things have already been sent up. Here are your floor assignments."

He held up the chart. Twenty names distributed across four floors.

The class surged forward to look.

Manga found his name on the third floor, left wing. Awase was next to him. Kaibara across the hall. Honenuki on the end.

"Where's Setsuna?" He looked at the girls' side. Third floor, right wing. Kendo, Setsuna, Kodai, Yanagi.

Same floor.

Komori said it out loud first.

"Oh?" Her voice carried the theatrical delight of a young girl already fantasizing spicy stories. "The lovebirds are on the same floor? How romantic. How convenient. How absolutely scandalous for a pair of first-years living under the supervision of..."

"Komori…" Pony giggled.

"I'm just saying, Pony-chan. How close their rooms are, across a single hallway divided only by a common area stairwell is..."

"Komori! Shut it!" Setsuna glared at her.

Kendo turned to face the class. She was already in class representative mode, hands on her hips, the expression that meant a rule was about to be created.

"Since we're all going to be living together," she said, her eyes moving between Manga and Setsuna in a way that was not subtle, "let's establish something right now. No private room visits between the boys' and girls' wings without a third party present. No exceptions."

"A chaperone system!" Komori squealed. "How old-fashioned."

"It's common sense." Kendo huffed.

Setsuna raised her hand. "Define 'third party.' Does a floating eyeball count? Because I can detach one and leave it in the corner."

"A whole other person, Tokage. And you know that."

"What about two eyeballs?"

"A. Whole. Person."

"You're no fun, class rep." Setsuna's sharp-toothed grin turned toward Manga. "Hear that? We need a chaperone so they don't think we're doing something naughty."

A blushing emoji detonated across Manga's bubble. "I wasn't planning on visiting your room!"

"Who said anything about my room?" She leaned in. "I was talking about yours."

The blushing emoji intensified to a bunch of large red exclamation points.

"TODAY IS FOR UNPACKING!" Vlad King announced, loudly, before the conversation could deteriorate further. "Get your rooms set up. Tomorrow we prepare for the new semester."

"YES, SENSEI!"

The class scattered.

…

By evening, the rooms were done.

The first floor common area filled up as students trickled down from unpacking. Boys on the couches. Girls arriving a few minutes later. The energy was different from school. Looser. There were no uniforms, just casual clothes and the exhaustion that came from spending six hours arranging furniture and hanging things on walls.

Tetsutetsu was sprawled across an entire couch. Kamakiri leaned against the kitchen counter with a water bottle. Shishida sat in an armchair with a book he'd already started reading. Awase was on the floor for no clear reason.

"Alright!" Komori dropped onto the arm of the couch opposite Tetsutetsu. "I have a proposal."

"Oh no." Kaibara didn't look up from his phone.

"Room showcase. Everyone opens their doors. We all walk through. We vote on the best room. No voting for yourself."

"Why?" Awase asked from the floor.

"Because I want to see how you all live! It says a lot about a person. Plus, I'm bored."

"I think it sounds fun." Pony said. She was sitting on the carpet with her legs crossed.

"My room isn't fit to be judged by the masses. I have taste, class, and a little bit of elegance." Monoma said from the kitchen. "The average person wouldn't understand."

"Too bad. You're participating." Komori pointed at him. "Everyone is. Even you, Kodai."

"Mm."

"Glowing endorsement. Let's go!"

They started with the boys on the second floor.

Tetsutetsu's room.

The door opened and the first thing anyone saw was iron. Dumbbells. Barbells. A pull-up bar jammed into the doorframe. A rack of weight plates against one wall. A poster of a bodybuilder striking a pose that was either inspirational or intimidating depending on your disposition. The bed was made, barely, and the pillow had a dent in it shaped exactly like Tetsutetsu's head.

"This isn't a bedroom…" Yanagi said. "This is a gym with a mattress in it."

"SLEEPING IS RECOVERY!" Tetsutetsu flexed. "AND RECOVERY IS TRAINING!"

"The man has a philosophy," Awase said. "A simple one, but one I can respect."

Rin's room.

Clean. Organized. A Chinese calligraphy set on the desk, brushes arranged by size. A scroll on the wall with characters that Rin translated as "ten thousand scales, one dragon." A box of herbal tea on the shelf. The bed had hospital corners.

"This is disturbingly tidy." Shoda said.

"I like order." Rin said simply.

Bondo's room.

Normal. Almost aggressively normal. Bed, desk, a few books. The only personal touch was a small framed photo on the nightstand that nobody could see clearly because Bondo stood in front of it looking embarrassed.

"Wh-what's the photo?" Komori asked.

"My family." Bondo's voice was quiet. "My parents and my little sister."

Nobody pressed further. Komori patted his arm.

Tsuburaba's room.

"Welcome," Tsuburaba said, opening the door with entirely too much confidence for what was behind it.

It was a mess. Clothes on the floor. Snack wrappers on the desk. A video game console with three controllers tangled together. A poster of a hero nobody recognized. The bed was not made.

"This is the worst room so far, dude." Kamakiri said.

"It's lived-in!"

"You've been here for six hours, man."

"Home away from home is what sensei said, remember."

Third floor boys.

Manga's room.

The shelves told the story. Manga volumes lined two walls from floor to almost-ceiling, organized by series, sorted by author within genre. Shonen on the left wall. Seinen on the right. A few special editions displayed face-out. The desk had a reading lamp angled perfectly and a stack of volumes he was currently working through.

But the corner told a different story. A section of floor with tape marks. A gravity zone for working out in a space the size of a closet.

"You brought a gym and a comic book store!?" Pony exclaimed in glee.

"Every well-read man should." Manga said. A cool emoji appeared in his bubble.

Setsuna wandered to his bookshelf. Ran her finger along the spines. Pulled one out.

"You have romance manga?"

The cool emoji shattered into panic. "That's... those are for research! Character writing research!"

"Uh-huh." She held up the volume. A boy and girl on the cover in a clearly romantic pose. "Research."

"SETSUNA, PUT THAT BACK!"

She did not put it back. She opened it to a dog-eared page and her grin widened.

"You dog-eared the confession scene."

"LISTEN! ONE OF MY CHARACTERS IN MY MANGA I'M DRAWING IS GOING TO CONFESS AND I NEEDED INSPIRATION!" Multiple skull emojis cycled through his bubble.

The class was howling.

Pony, who had been quietly looking at the manga shelves, gasped suddenly.

"Manga-kun! You have Fullmetal Wizard! ALL of it! And Mob Sicko! And... oh my God, is that Chainsaw Dude?!"

Multiple heart-eye emojis appeared in Manga's bubble. "You read manga?!"

"I LOVE manga! And anime! It's my favorite thing in the whole world!" Her Japanese got shaky with excitement. "Back in America I watched everything with subtitles! I came to Japan partly because of anime!"

"Pony, I think you and I were destined to be best friends." His bubble formed a sparkling handshake emoji.

From behind them, a quiet voice: "I also... like manga."

They both turned.

Shoda was standing in the doorway with his hands in his pockets, looking at the shelves with an expression that was trying very hard to be casual and failing completely.

"I have the complete Agent x Family at home," he said. "And most of One Treasure. And I've been watching the new season of..."

He didn't finish the sentence because Pony had already grabbed both his hands and Manga's bubble was displaying an exploding fireworks emoji and the three of them were suddenly talking over each other about seasonal rankings and which shounen had the best power system and whether the Cursed Sorcerers ending was rushed.

"Anime nights," Pony declared, still holding Shoda's hands. "Every Friday. My room. I have a laptop and good speakers. We're doing this."

"I'm in." Manga nodded vigorously.

"...yeah." Shoda couldn't hide his smile. "I'm in."

"Alright, the otaku convention can continue later!" Setsuna called from the hallway. "We still have more rooms to judge!"

Awase's room.

It was similar to Bondo's room. Completely ordinary and not unique at all. A regular boy's room!

Kaibara's room.

Clean, minimal, and unexpectedly stylish. A dark color scheme. One shelf with a row of cologne bottles that the girls noticed immediately. A full-length mirror on the closet door. The bed was made with a solid-colored duvet that matched the curtains.

"The ikemen energy is strong here." Komori nodded approvingly.

Kaibara said nothing but adjusted his collar slightly.

Honenuki's room.

Comfortable. Warm tones. A collection of geology samples on one shelf, labeled with neat handwriting. A few strategy board games stacked on the desk. The bed had extra pillows. It looked like a room that wanted you to sit down and stay.

"This is the most welcoming room so far," Kendo mentioned. "I feel like I should be having tea."

Honenuki smiled.

Fourth floor boys.

Monoma's room.

He opened the door with a flourish and stepped aside like a magician revealing a trick.

A full vanity mirror with professional lighting dominated one wall. Scripts and notebooks were stacked on the desk, some with sticky notes in different colors marking specific pages. A Class 1-B pennant hung above the bed. And on the nightstand, framed, was the Sports Festival bracket with Class B's results circled in red marker.

"This is a shrine to yourself." Kamakiri said.

"It's a shrine to Class B!" Monoma corrected. "I simply happen to be a valued member."

But the scripts caught Kendo's eye. She picked one up. Stage directions. Dialogue markings. Notes in the margins about character motivation and timing.

"You do theater?" she asked.

"I appreciate the dramatic arts. Is that a crime?"

"It explains so much, dude." Awase muttered.

Kamakiri's room.

Dark walls. He'd pinned up fabric to change the color from the standard white. A guitar leaned against the corner, not new, well-used. Band posters on one wall, mostly punk and metal acts.

And on the desk, side by side, sat two glass terrariums with mesh lids. Both of them were full of live beetles.

"BUGS!" Komori shrieked.

"They're beetles," Kamakiri corrected. "Not bugs. Bugs are a different order. Rhinoceros beetles, specifically. That one's Tetsuo."

"You named them?!" Setsuna peered into the terrariums with fascination rather than horror.

"Of course I named them. What am I, an animal?"

The class stared at the six-foot-two blade-armed boy gently adjusting the moss in one of his terrariums with a single finger. Tetsutetsu opened his mouth, closed it, and looked at Kaibara. Kaibara only shrugged.

"Tetsuo is the big one," Kamakiri said, pointing at the left tank. "And that one hiding under the log is Kei. She's his girlfriend." He tapped the right tank. "The small one over here is Kaneda."

"Why's he all alone?" Bondo asked.

"Because he and Tetsuo fight."

"Like, to the death?" Tsuburaba asked.

"Like brothers."

Inside the left tank, Tetsuo shoved a chunk of bark aside with his horn and planted himself in front of the log Kei was hiding under. Kamakiri nodded at the glass, approving.

"See? He gets it."

"This is so kawaii…" Pony whispered.

Shishida's room.

A gentleman's study. Two bookshelves, loaded, organized by subject. A reading chair with a side table and a proper lamp. A tea set, ceramic, with four cups despite him living alone because a gentleman always prepares for guests. Multiple pairs of glasses displayed on a small stand on the desk.

"How many pairs of glasses do you own?" Monoma asked.

"Seven. Each for a different occasion."

"A different... occasion. For glasses."

"Reading, training, formal events, casual wear, outdoor, sleeping..."

"You wear glasses to sleep?"

"They're lighter frames. More comfortable than you'd think."

Kuroiro's room.

The door opened and darkness stared back.

"I can't see anything…" Tetsutetsu said.

"That's the point…" Kuroiro's voice came from somewhere inside.

Someone found the light switch. Kuroiro hissed.

The room was exactly what everyone expected. Black sheets. Black curtains, drawn. Black tapestries on the walls. A single purple candle on the desk that he'd clearly been burning before they interrupted. The only color in the entire room was a small potted plant on the windowsill that was, against all odds, thriving in what was essentially a cave.

Kendo lifted the corner of a tapestry. Black underneath too.

"You painted the walls?" she asked.

"I did not paint the walls. The walls chose to reflect my essence."

"He painted the walls." Kaibara confirmed.

Fifth floor boys.

Shoda's room.

The only occupied room on the entire floor. Every other door down the hallway stood open on a bare mattress and an empty desk.

"You got a whole floor to yourself?!" Tetsutetsu said. "That's so lucky!"

"Somebody had to take it." Shoda scratched the back of his head. "It's quiet up here."

Inside, boxing was everywhere. A poster of two fighters trading hooks under stadium lights. A framed ticket stub from a title fight. A pair of red gloves, cracked and faded at the knuckles, hanging by their laces from a hook beside the door. Under the TV, a row of fight DVDs labeled by year.

The shelf above the desk belonged to a different obsession. Figures from Dragon Sphere Z, lined up by power level, from a bald monk at one end to a golden-haired warrior mid-scream at the other.

And on the desk, lined up with the corner, sat a thick binder with colored tabs. Kendo flipped it open. Class roster. Emergency contacts. Everyone's quirk and blood type, written out in clean, careful handwriting.

"Shoda… is this the whole class?"

"Vice rep." He shrugged, sheepish. "If something happens and you're busy, somebody should know where everything is."

Kendo closed the binder and looked at him like she wanted to hug him.

Kamakiri flicked one of the gloves. It swung on its laces.

"Careful," Shoda said. "Those are my lucky ones."

"You box?"

"I watch boxing." He smiled. "I just hit like I box."

Girls' side.

Kendo's room.

Martial arts trophies on one shelf. A training dummy in the corner. A wall scroll with calligraphy. But also: a surprising amount of color. Orange curtains. A fluffy rug. Photos of the class pinned to a corkboard.

"Class rep's room is exactly what I expected." Yanagi said.

"Is that good or bad?"

"Mm!" Kodai nodded.

Setsuna's room.

Green. So much green. A green throw blanket on the bed. Green curtains. A shelf of dinosaur figures, twelve of them, ranging from a tiny plastic T-rex to a detailed museum-quality raptor model. Photos pinned to a corkboard: her decking Manga at the festival, the class group shot, her middle school friends, a selfie with her mom making the same sharp-toothed grin.

"I was expecting more dinosaurs." Manga honestly admitted.

"I love dinosaurs."

"I never knew that!" Komori exclaimed.

"Ever since I was four and my dad took me to a museum and I saw a Deinonychus skeleton and decided I wanted to be one when I grew up. Then I got my quirk and realized I could basically be one. Split apart, adapt, survive anything." She picked up the raptor model and held it next to her grinning face. "See the resemblance?"

"The teeth for sure." Komori nodded.

"The cutest room so far for sure." Manga muttered.

"Get a room, bro." Kamakiri said.

"We have rooms," Setsuna replied. "On the same floor. Kendo won't let us use them."

"I can hear you, Tokage." Kendo pointed out.

Kodai's room.

Minimal. Clean. The bed was perfectly made. The desk had nothing on it except a single lamp.

But on the shelf above the bed, arranged in a perfect row, was a collection of matryoshka dolls. Russian nesting dolls, painted in bright colors, ranging from the size of a fist to the size of a thumb. There were at least twenty of them.

The class stared.

"Mm." Kodai's expression didn't change, but something in the "Mm" sounded proud.

"These are beautiful." Shiozaki said, touching one gently.

"These are terrifying…" Tsuburaba whispered to Awase. "She has twenty identical smiling dolls watching her sleep."

"Mm." Kodai's eyes watched him.

Yanagi's room.

Horror movie posters. A bookshelf of supernatural fiction. A ouija board on the desk that may or may not have been decorative. The curtains were sheer and ghostly. A collection of antique-looking objects on the windowsill: an old mirror, a music box, a porcelain doll with cracked paint.

"Is this room haunted?" Tetsutetsu asked seriously.

"Not yet." Yanagi's voice was flat. Her wrists hung limp.

Komori's room.

Two worlds coexisting in perfect harmony.

The left half: mushroom terrariums on every flat surface. Glass containers with substrate and moisture and tiny, perfectly cultivated fungi in stages of growth. Labels in Komori's handwriting noting species names, growth rates, and spore counts. A small microscope on the desk.

The right half: idol posters. Bright. Colorful. Sparkly. A ranking list of her top ten hero idols pinned to the wall with glitter tape. A karaoke microphone on the nightstand. A stuffed mushroom plushie on the bed wearing a tiny costume she'd sewn for it.

"This room has two completely different personalities." Rin mentioned.

"Two parts make up a whole!" Komori beamed.

Pony's room.

The door opened and color hit them all at once.

Anime posters covered every wall edge to edge, some in Japanese, some in English, a few in both. Figures crowded the shelves, the desk, and the windowsill, frozen mid-battle in painted plastic. A beanbag chair sat in front of a laptop on a low table, a speaker on either side of it. A bowl of apples on the nightstand. Above the bed, a small American flag pennant hung beside a photo of a farmhouse under a huge blue sky, two parents waving from the porch.

And on almost every object in the room, a sticky note. ドア on the door. まど on the window. つくえ on the desk. Even the apple bowl had one: りんご.

"What are all the notes?" Kaibara asked.

"Japanese practice!" Pony beamed. "If I see the word every day, my brain keeps it!"

"If you ever need help with vocabulary," Monoma said, stepping forward with a hand pressed to his chest, "I would be delighted to..."

"No." Kendo said.

"I haven't even..."

"No."

Manga had already drifted to the figure shelf. At its center stood a limited-edition Fullmetal Wizard figure, the hero caught mid-transmutation with both palms slammed together, and stars burst across his bubble.

"Pony. Where did you get this?"

"A convention in Los Angeles! I waited in line four hours!"

"I would have waited five."

From the doorway, Setsuna watched him with her arms crossed and said nothing.

Shiozaki's room.

A garden.

Her vines had already started climbing the walls, green tendrils reaching toward the window where the light was strongest. Potted plants filled the windowsill, the desk edges, the top of the closet. A small prayer altar sat in one corner with candles, a meditation cushion, and a book of scripture. The room smelled like fresh earth and growing things.

"It's like stepping into another world…" Pony said softly.

Shiozaki smiled with her hands pressed together. "The Lord provides all the decoration one needs."

"Your hair is literally growing on the walls." Kamakiri pointed out.

"The Lord provides."

Back in the common area, the votes were tallied.

"No voting for yourself!" Komori reminded everyone as slips of paper were collected in Kendo's hands.

Kendo counted. Recounted. Looked up with an expression that was equal parts surprised and amused.

"The Room King of Class 1-B is..."

Drum roll from Tetsutetsu banging on the coffee table.

"...Kamakiri."

Kamakiri blinked. "What."

"You got eight votes."

"For WHAT?!"

"The beetles!" Pony raised her hand. "Tetsuo is so cute!"

"The guitar and the punk aesthetic are objectively cool," Kaibara said.

"I voted for you because a six-foot mantis boy who names his pet beetles and plays guitar is the most unexpectedly charming thing I've seen all week." Setsuna said.

"What?! You didn't vote for me?!" Manga slumped over, falling to his knees.

"I'm not into nerdy stuff! I'm sorry, babe." Setsuna crouched next to him and patted his back.

"Then is it okay that I voted for Pony's room because it was similar to mine?" Manga asked.

"Of course not! Why would you vote for another girl over your girlfriend?!" Setsuna pushed him before storming off.

"What? But you voted for another boy over your boyfriend!" Manga retorted as he followed her from behind.

"You're the man! You're supposed to do better, not me!" Setsuna responded.

"How does that make any sense?!" A bunch of question marks and exclamation marks filled his head.

The two left as everyone watched them with interest.

"Their first love spat of the semester…" Komori and Pony muttered together.

The common area thinned out as the night wore on. Students drifted back to their rooms in twos and threes. Kuroiro was the first to leave, melting into the stairwell shadows. Shishida excused himself with a polite wave. Tetsutetsu fell asleep on the couch and Kendo threw a blanket over him.

…

They walked up the stairs together. Third floor. The hallway split at the landing, boys left, girls right. They stopped at the intersection.

"So," Setsuna said. She leaned against the wall. "Same floor."

"Same floor."

"Kendo's rule is cute, but you know I'm going to break it as soon as I get the chance."

"Please don't get us in trouble on the first night."

"I said as soon as I get the chance, not tonight." She tilted her head. "Unless you're inviting me?"

Multiple red exclamation marks exploded across his bubble.

She laughed before turning toward the stairs and seeing a certain nosy class rep on the landing below who didn't believe her fake outrage. Setsuna clicked her tongue. How did she see through it so easily?

"Goodnight, bubble-head." She grabbed Manga by the shirt and pulled him in.

"Goodnight Set-" His lips were taken briefly and completely before a shout stopped them.

"I KNEW IT! YOU WEREN'T REALLY UPSET WITH HIM! TOKAGE!!! ABSOLUTELY NO SECRET MAKE OUT SESSIONS ALLOWED WHATSOEVER!" Kendo took the last three steps in one leap.

"YA SNOOZE YA LOSE SUCKER!" Setsuna ran toward her room.

Manga stood in the hallway with a heart emoji throbbing in his bubble so brightly it probably lit up the whole floor.

He went to his room after seeing Kendo knocking on Setsuna's door repeatedly. Sat on his bed. Looked at the manga shelves and the gravity training marks on the floor and the view of U.A.'s campus from his balcony.

His phone buzzed.

Setsuna: she's still lecturing me from outside my door...

Manga: i'm not surprised.

Setsuna: like actually reading from the handbook they gave us!!! She's nuts!

He put his phone face-down on the desk.

It buzzed again.

Setsuna sent a kissy emoji. Manga sent one back. He enjoyed the kiss very much despite how brief it was.