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“Oh man, I’m so hungry right now,” Kaminari groans during a quiet moment in class, earning a few knowing chuckles from a few of the more chronically online students of Class 1-A.
“Oh man, not this one..” Kirishima half-heartedly groans from second-hand embarrassment of knowing what the class clown is about to do. He has seen this trend all over his feed and has honestly been waiting for one of his classmates to do it.
Mina has her camera out and is sneakily pointing it at their unsuspecting teacher. Everyone knows that U.A. is a well-known and pretty popular academy, an academy that the general public doesn’t get to see the day-to-day inner workings of. Kaminari knows this video has the opportunity to go viral because of it.
“Kaminari, if you're so hungry then—”
“I’m so hungry I could eat Shirakumo Oboro.” Kaminari blurts out, laughing in his delivery. A few other laughs echo around the classroom, but they are quick to fade out.
Aizawa stops mid-sentence. His hand, still holding the pen he was using to grade papers, drops to his side, and for a moment, he doesn’t move. Kirishima’s smile falters first, realizing that something is off with their teacher.
Mina’s phone, still pointed at the front of the room, is slowly lowered. Her hands are shaking as she ends the recording. Kaminari looks over at her, confused as to why she stopped, but doesn’t dare say anything.
“What did you say?” Aizawa demands, voice hoarse and laced with palpable pain.
Kaminari, understanding that this is not how this was supposed to go, but without a clue why everyone, including his teacher, looks so shocked, looks around at the twenty or so wide-eyed faces of his classmates. “I-I was just joking, Sensei… It’s a meme!”
“You think this is funny?” Aizawa shouts, his voice cracking, fading at the end. His eyes are glassy, unfocused, as if he is suddenly somewhere else entirely.
Kaminari’s mouth opens to try and explain further, but a shake of the head from Bakugo makes him close it. He isn’t the smartest in class, but he is smart enough to realize he has made a mistake.
Aizawa sets his pen down on top of the half-graded pile of tests with shaking fingers and presses a hand over his mouth for a moment, breathing hard, before said arm falls limply back to his side.
“Shirokumo Oboro—,” he says quietly, almost too quiet to hear. “Did not die to be reduced to the punchline for one of your jokes, Kaminari.” Aizawa turns on his heel without another word. The sound of the door slamming shut behind him, leaving his class unattended, rings through the halls of U.A
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Down the hallway, Shouta sprints forward blindly towards the teachers' lounge. His vision is blurred at the edges, from the rage, the grief…pain.
Shirakumo’s smile flashes behind his eyes every time he blinks. His laugh echoes in his ears in the very hallway where said laugh was once a reality. He thought he was past getting so worked up like this.
“Eraser? What's that matter? I thought you had fourth-period heroics right now?” Shouta doesn’t have the energy to acknowledge Vlad, nor any of the other teachers currently occupying the lounge. He stalks straight past them, to Hizashi, and just shakes his head and grieves.
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Back in the classroom, nobody knows what to say.
Mina has the sleeve of her uniform jacket pressed to her face, trying to wipe away the tears silently streaming down her cheeks while Kaminari has his entire face hidden my his arms, face down on his desk. His throat burns with the threat of tears.
“What the hell was that, Dunceface?” Bakugo is the first one to break the silence, but his voice lacks its usual fire, telling everyone he is just as shocked as they are.
“Kacchan look—” Midoriya holds out his phone, prompting everyone seated nearby to look at the device being pointed in the blondes direction.
U.A. Student in Training Fatally killed in Attack: Oboro Shirakumo Identified
Kaminari is out of his seat, grabbing onto Midoriya's phone and pulling it close, swiping through the article and back to the search results until he finds it. The same picture he found after scrolling through the tagged photos on his teacher's Herogram last night.
“What the hell, Kaminari…why would you—” Hakagure accuses, her own phone hovering above her desk with one of the many articles pulled up.
“I didn’t…I just picked someone at random! I didn’t know he—” Kaminari hands Midoriya back his phone and takes a seat back at his desk. “I just thought it was one of his old classmates, I swear…I thought his account was forgotten about because he went underground like Sensei, not that he—” The word dies on Kaminari’s tongue.
“I’m not hungry anymore.”