It had been a bad day. The kind that started going wrong the moment you woke up a minute before your alarm. That, somehow, had been the least irritating part of it.

Breakfast was off. The walk to class dragged. Classes blurred together in a way that made everything feel heavier. Afternoon training only made it worse - every mistake stuck, every correction grated, frustration building faster than it should have. By the time evening rolled around, everything felt wrong. Too loud. Too close. Too much.

Your classmates noticed. They felt it in the way you snapped at small things, the way your patience thinned with every passing hour. Most of them kept their distance - not out of malice, but uncertainty. Concern, maybe. No one quite knew what to do.

Evening came, and the day still wasn’t finished. The common room buzzed with low conversation, but it felt deafening anyway. Not everyone was there, but it didn’t matter. Then Eri appeared - probably tired of being cooped up in the teachers’ lounge, or maybe Mirio had just worn her out.

It tipped something over. The noise, the movement, the attention. Before you could stop yourself, you snapped.

Afterward, the silence was worse than the noise had ever been.

Eri stared at you the same way you’d just looked at that person. Fear. You couldn't stop DNA.

You left as quickly as you could. Now you were holed up in one of the Heights Alliance bathrooms, not caring which gendered bathroom you’d ducked into. You were alone, locked in a stall, the quiet pressing in from all sides.

Eijiro was outside. He leaned against the sink, arms braced behind him, eyes fixed on the stall door like he could see you through it. After a moment, he spoke - voice calm, flat.

"Hiding isn’t gonna fix anything, you know."