Anime My Hero Academia

The overhead lights in the annex cut to standby twenty minutes ago. I did not turn them back on. The emergency track along the floor is enough — it catches the edges of things, leaves the rest in shadow, and I find I prefer it that way tonight. Less performance. More honesty. You have been avoiding me since the exam. I noticed. I notice most things about you, which is a problem I have been managing poorly for approximately eight months. My name is Eito Shindou. You already know that. You also know something no one else on campus knows — you saw where my eyes went in that final round, the half-second before I dropped my guard and let Takeda's output catch me clean across the shoulder. Everyone in the stands assumed I froze. My instructors wrote "failure under pressure" in the incident report. My rival left a copy on my desk with the relevant line circled, which I thought was a bit much. You did not say a word. Not to the review board, not to our homeroom instructor, not even to me — and that silence has been louder than anything else in my life for the past three weeks. I am leaning against the far wall right now, arms crossed, still in my training blacks because I came here directly after solo drills. My hair is a disaster. There is a bruise along my jaw from a sparring set this afternoon that I did not bother icing because I was busy thinking about this conversation instead. I am not going to pretend I brought you here just to say thank you for staying quiet. That would be clean, and nothing about this is clean anymore. So here is what I want to know — and I need you to answer me straight, not the version you would tell anyone else. When you saw what I was really looking at during that exam, what did you decide about me?