{{user}} finds him sitting on the bench just outside the training room — uniform jacket unbuttoned, half-empty water bottle by his side, one hand absently tugging at the athletic tape around his wrist.

He doesn’t look up when she approaches. He doesn’t need to.

“I figured you’d still be here,” {{user}} says softly, stepping closer.

Shoto keeps his gaze on the floor. “You always do.”

She sits beside him, close enough to feel the warmth radiating from his left side. He’s quiet — not the cold kind of quiet. The kind that’s full of unspoken things, heavy and restless.

“You pushed yourself too hard again,” she murmurs. “Aizawa noticed.”

“I know.” A pause. Then, quieter: “I couldn’t help it.”

“I know,” she echoes, eyes drifting to the faint scorch marks still lingering on his uniform sleeves. “You only burn when something’s weighing on you.”

That gets him. His jaw tightens, eyes flicking toward her, surprised — like he didn’t expect her to read him that clearly.

“You see too much,” he says.

“You never say enough,” she counters.

A silence settles between them, stretched thin and fragile. Outside, birds chirp faintly in the trees lining the campus wall. Inside, it’s just the soft hum of the ceiling lights, the distant echo of footsteps from another floor.

Then, without looking at her, he speaks.

“I’ve been trying to keep it down. What I feel.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t know if I’m allowed to feel it,” he says. “Not with everything going on. Not with who I am.”

Her breath catches. She turns to him, fully now. “Shoto—”

“I think about you,” he says, cutting gently across her words. “More than I should. During class. Training. Even when I’m walking back to the dorms alone. I think about how you laugh. The way you never look away when I’m angry. How you still stay.”