Akira stared at Nezu.
The principal sat in his chair, with a teacup balanced on the armrest. His black eyes were patient and entirely unbothered by the fact that he was sitting across from a boy who just... for the second time came back to life.
The hospital room was quiet. The fluorescent light hummed overhead. The heart monitor beside the bed beeped steadily.
As this was happening.... Akira waited.
He had heard Nezu say "We have got a LOT to talk about," and he had braced himself for the interrogation. The questions. The wave of "what happened," "how did you do that," "what was the purple flame," "why did your hair change colour," "did you actually die," "how did you come back," "what are you."
He waited for the first question the way a student waits for an exam to start.
However.... the question didn't come.
Nezu took a sip of tea.
The clock on the wall ticked... as time passed.
Akira waited.
Nezu set his teacup down. Adjusted his tie. Picked the newspaper back up, glanced at a headline, then folded it again.
The clock ticked.
Akira waited.
And still... nothing.
The silence stretched past awkward, past uncomfortable, past the point where any reasonable person would have said something just to break the tension. Nezu sat in his chair total calmness,
Akira's brow twitched. His eyes shifted from expectant to confused.
He looked at Nezu.
Nezu looked back at him. Just waiting.
"...What happened?" Akira asked.
Nezu tilted his head. "Hmm? What do you mean?"
"You said we had a lot to talk about."
"I did say that."
"So... talk?"
"I'm waiting for you."
"Waiting for me to what?"
Nezu smiled and said softly.
"To be ready."
Akira stared at him in total confusion.
"You... don't have any questions?" Akira said, his voice awkward.
"Should I have some questions?" Nezu asked.
"Yeah??"
The word came out almost offended. As if the lack of interrogation was somehow more unsettling than the interrogation would have been. He had died. He had come back with purple wings and a halo. He had dismembered a villain and burned him alive in the sky while the entire nation watched. And the principal of his school, the man who ran the most prestigious hero academy in Japan, was sitting in a chair drinking tea and not asking a single question about any of it.
That felt wrong.
Nezu's smile widened.
"Perhaps I do," he said.
"Then why not ask?"
The question hung between them for a while.
Nezu set his teacup down. His small paws folded in his lap. The playful lightness in his expression faded.
"Because it's not my place to ask."
Akira blinked.
"What happened to you," Nezu continued, his voice measured, choosing each word with the precision of someone who understood that the wrong phrase could do more damage than the wrong action, "I am fairly certain is much bigger than anything I can fathom right now."
He paused... letting that settle.
"I watched you die on a screen, Akira. I watched your heart stop. I watched your flames go out. And then I watched you come back wearing the shape of something that I have no name for. Something that made the most powerful quirks I have ever studied look like party tricks."
His black eyes held Akira's crimson ones.
"And yes. I want to know what happened. I want to understand it. I want to study it, catalogue it, analyse it until I can fit it into a framework that makes sense to me. That is my nature. I am a creature of intellect, and the unknown is an itch I cannot stop scratching."
He smiled again... this time... much gentler.
"But I don't want you to force that. Whatever you experienced in those minutes between death and resurrection — whatever you saw, whatever you learned, whatever changed inside you — that belongs to you. It is not mine to demand. It is not mine to extract. It is not mine to analyse without your permission."
Akira remained quiet.
"That right," Nezu said, "belongs only to your family. Your mother. Your grandmother. The people who love you, who have earned the privilege of being trusted with the most vulnerable parts of who you are."
He looked at Akira with eyes that held no expectation, no demand, no hidden agenda.
"This is no place for an outsider like me to intervene. So I will wait. Until the time comes when you think it's safe to share what exactly is happening with you. That's all."
He leaned back in his chair.
"And for the record," Nezu added, his voice lighter now, almost casual, "you are not obligated to share it with me at all. Not ever. If you decide that whatever happened between death and resurrection is something that stays between you and the people closest to you — your mother, your grandmother, Momo, whoever you choose — then that is your decision. And I will respect it."
He picked up his teacup and took a sip.
"I have spent my life studying things, Akira. Understanding them. Breaking them down into components that I can analyse and categorise and file away. It is what I do. It is what I am good at. But some things..."
He looked at the boy in the hospital bed. "Some things are not meant to be studied. Some things are meant to be experienced. And whatever you experienced belongs to you."
The room was silent.
Akira tried to get up. His body moved before his mind could stop it, and his body failed.
The strength that had been holding him upright for the last few minutes of conversation finally ran out.
Nezu stood up from his chair. He walked to the bedside and looked down at the boy.
"Well," Nezu said, the gentleness returning to his voice, "looks like you haven't fully recovered."
"Nezu, I-"
"Relax, kid."
Nezu reached out and placed his small paw on Akira's shoulder. The gesture was simple. But it carried something heavier than that — the weight of a promise, the same promise he had made in the observation room when he told All Might to stay away, the same promise he had carried since the day he realised that the troublemaker with the fire quirk had become someone he would protect at any cost.
"I will not let anything happen to you," Nezu said.
The words settled over Akira like a blanket. Not dramatic. Not loud. Not accompanied by flames or divine light or cosmic revelations. Just a small creature with black eyes and a steady voice, promising a tired boy that he was safe.
Akira's body relaxed. Not gradually — all at once. The tension that had been holding his muscles rigid since the moment he woke up released, and his body sank into the hospital mattress as if it had been waiting for permission to rest.
His eyes grew heavy. The eyes closed.. and he went back to the land of dreams.
Within seconds, he was asleep.
Nezu stood beside the bed. His paw remained on Akira's shoulder for a long moment.
"Rest, my boy," he whispered.
He removed his paw. Adjusted his tie and smoothed the front of his vest.
Then he turned and walked to the door.
The hospital corridor was quiet. Distant footsteps, the murmur of nurses at a station down the hall, the occasional beep of equipment from other rooms.
Nezu stepped through the doorway and closed it softly behind him.
A figure was waiting.
Recovery Girl stood in the corridor.
She had been standing there for a while. How long, exactly, was unclear, but the stillness of her posture suggested it had been most of the conversation.
"That kid has grown on you,"
It wasn't a question.... but an observation. The observation of a woman who had watched Nezu operate for decades — who had seen him navigate politics, outmanoeuvre villains, and manipulate entire systems with the cold precision of a supercomputer — and who recognised, with the clarity that only grandmothers possess, the moment when the machine started caring about something more than the system.
Nezu looked at her. His expression was soft — the same expression he had worn inside the room. The expression he let himself have when the audience was limited to people he trusted absolutely.
"Perhaps he has."
Recovery Girl studied him for a while.
"What now?" she asked.
The softness left Nezu's face.
What replaced it was something that Recovery Girl had seen before, but rarely. Something that reminded her that the small, tea-drinking, tie-adjusting creature in front of her was not just a principal. He was the most intelligent being on the planet. And when he decided that something needed to be destroyed, it was to be destroyed.
A smile appeared on his face. Not the warm smile. Not the patient smile. Not the gentle smile he had given Akira.
This smile was different.
It was the smile of a predator that had finished identifying its prey.
"Now," Nezu said, his voice carrying a cheerfulness that was somehow more terrifying than any threat, "I have an old hag to bury."
Recovery Girl looked at him for a long moment and then sighed.
"Just be careful, Nezu," she said.
"Hoho," he chuckled, already walking down the corridor, his small footsteps echoing in the empty hallway. "When am I not?"
Recovery Girl watched him go. The shadows swallowed his small frame as he rounded the corner, heading toward whatever war room he had set up, whatever strategy he had been building since the moment the first Nomu hit the stadium floor.
She sighed... yet again.
"That's exactly what worries me," she muttered.
Then she turned and entered Akira's room. She had a grandson to watch over.
And Nezu had a Commission president to destroy.
+++++++++++++++++++++
Things are about to go down.....🔥🔥
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