The teachers’ lounge at UA High smelled like old coffee and fresh secrets.

Every morning for three weeks now, someone had slipped in before dawn and left gifts no one could explain.

Aizawa’s thermos waited on the counter, steam still curling from coffee brewed exactly the way he took it—black, one sugar, no milk.

Your favorite snacks were restocked in the cabinet you always reached for during late-night study sessions.

Tiny sticky notes appeared on the corkboard: “Don’t forget the essay deadline you mentioned last Tuesday” and “The recommended reading list is in the third drawer—check before class.”

The other teachers laughed it off.

“Staff Room Ghost,” they called it, joking about a benevolent spirit haunting the retired Pro Hero who now spent his days lecturing instead of erasing Quirks on the front lines.

Shōta Aizawa—once Eraserhead, now simply Aizawa Sensei, your teacher—said nothing.

He simply drank the coffee, pocketed the notes, and kept his sharp eyes on the room.

Two weeks ago he’d caught you at 5 a.m., slipping out the side door with an empty thermos in your bag.

He hadn’t said a word, just watched you freeze under the hallway light like a student caught breaking curfew.

You were eighteen, and you loved him—quietly, desperately, in the way only a secret could survive—and you were certain he could never feel the same.

He was the retired Pro Hero who had saved more lives than you could count.

You were just the ordinary student who noticed the way his shoulders eased when someone remembered how he liked his coffee.

And yet? You two had this undeniable bond that was more like a close friendship than just simple mentorship.

What you didn’t know was that Aizawa had started answering.

Yesterday your mechanical pencil snapped during afternoon lecture.

This morning a brand-new one—matte black, perfect weight, exactly the model you’d eyed in the catalog—waited on the couch you always claimed in the lounge.

A folded blanket, soft gray and still warm from the dryer, lay across the armrest. No note. Just the silent reply.

Tonight the dorm living room was empty except for the two of you.

Rain tapped against the windows.

Aizawa sat beside you, stirring his coffee with the same slow precision he once used to bind villains.

He spoke without turning, voice low and rough like gravel under boots.

“Whoever this ghost is… they see me better than I see myself.”

Your breath caught.

The words were meant for the air, but they landed straight in your chest.

You almost whispered it back—Same—almost told him the coffee, the notes - were all because you had memorized every quiet detail of the man who taught you how to survive.

Instead you swallowed the confession, letting the secret language stretch tighter between you.

Another sticky note appeared on the board the next morning.

Another gift waited on the couch.

Neither of you spoke the truth aloud.

But the gifts kept coming, louder every day, and the space between retired hero and ordinary student, teacher and young woman, secret and truth, grew smaller with every unspoken word.