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Nezu didn’t keep a calendar the way humans did.
Oh, there were schedules, of course. Meetings, lesson plan reviews, board votes, budget drafts, reconstruction timelines after disasters large and small. But the dates that mattered most—those were stored somewhere less cooperative than paper. They lived in the animal parts of him. In scent and sound, in texture, in the thin, electrical gap between one breath and the next.
This morning had tasted like metal.
Not in the poetic sense, not a metaphor. A faint tang in the air vents that might have been old ductwork and winter dryness and the chemistry of too many cleaning products. It shouldn’t have registered as anything but a maintenance note.
It did.
Nezu paused in the doorway of his office, one paw on the brass handle, the other holding a thin stack of reports. His whiskers twitched. His nose, annoyingly competent, identified the culprit before his mind could talk itself into calm.
Disinfectant.
A specific brand, the kind that boasted “clinical strength” on the label and meant it. It wasn’t even the same formulation as the one used in the facility he tried not to remember. Years ago, a different country, a different company. But the notes were similar—sharp, clean, unyielding. Like someone had scrubbed the world until it squeaked and called it mercy.
Nezu’s ears flicked back.
He stepped inside anyway.
The door clicked shut behind him. The sound was ordinary. The lock engaged with the same gentle finality it always had.
In his bones, something older heard it as a cage latch.
Nezu set the reports neatly on his desk. He aligned the corners with the edge. He adjusted the pen holder by two millimeters because symmetry was comfort and he would take comfort wherever he could get it. The tea kettle sat on its warmer, already humming—he’d asked the staff to keep it full during the day. A small kindness to himself, disguised as hospitality.
He poured a cup. Steam rose, soft and friendly. Chamomile, this time. He’d chosen it because it was supposed to help with nerves.
His paws didn’t shake.
That, unfortunately, was never the measure. The measure was how loud the room became when he wasn’t paying attention.
Nezu sat in his chair and opened the first report.
Words behaved. Numbers behaved. Problems could be solved.
He made it halfway down the page before the air shifted again—just a breath from the vent—and the scent sharpened as if the building had leaned in close.
His mind did something it did without asking.
It edited the office away.
The windows became observation glass. The sunlight became fluorescent glare. The pleasant hum of the kettle turned into a machine’s constant whine. And somewhere behind his eyes, a sterile voice spoke as if reading from a clipboard.
Subject is awake. Subject is responsive. Subject is—
Nezu’s pen hovered above the paper. The tip didn’t touch.
His throat tightened in a way that had nothing to do with anatomy.
He blinked once, slow. Then twice.
“Not now,” he said, very quietly. It came out as a polite conversational tone, because he had practiced politeness like survival.
His eyes returned to the report. He forced his focus to the ink, to the lines, to the reassuring lie that this was just a momentary distraction.
It was not.
The scent did not fade. The building’s lungs continued to breathe it into the room.
Nezu’s ears stayed angled back. His tail went still, the tip barely twitching.
He tried a different tactic. Catalog, categorize, control.
Disinfectant. Probable source: custodial staff deep-cleaning the west wing after yesterday’s incident involving an ill-advised foam cannon in the first-year support course. Brand likely purchased through the new vendor. Note to self: request unscented alternatives—
His brain offered him another memory like a file dragged onto his screen without permission.
A collar. Not leather, not fabric. Something smooth, synthetic, too tight in the wrong ways. It had been fitted with careful hands that never apologized. It had been a “precaution,” they said. A “safety measure.” As if his body was a weapon waiting to go off.
As if he had ever been allowed to forget that was how they saw him.
Nezu’s paw closed around his pen.
He did not notice the pressure building until the pen snapped cleanly in half with a tiny, crisp sound.
A pause.
Nezu stared at the broken pieces as if they belonged to someone else.
Then he set them down with the same precise neatness as the reports.
He reached for another pen.
His paw hovered over the holder.
It did not take it.
He could feel his heartbeat in strange places: the edges of his ears, the pads of his paws, the underside of his ribs. It wasn’t fast. It wasn’t dramatic. It was simply… present. Loud. Insistent. Like a knock on a door he had locked for a reason.
Nezu inhaled and tasted metal again.
He told himself, as he often did, that he was safe. He told himself he was the principal of U.A. He told himself he had made his own choices for years now. He told himself he had survived because he was clever, because he was strong, because he was in control.
He told himself a lot of things.
His body did not listen.
The office felt suddenly too small. The scent was everywhere. The air was too clean, too sharp. The room pressed in as though the walls had shifted an inch closer. Nezu’s paws curled against the desk edge, claws barely peeking out—not in aggression, but in instinct, a grip on something solid.
He forced his breathing into an even pattern.
In.
Out.
In—
The vent exhaled again.
Nezu’s vision narrowed at the edges. His brain began to catalogue exits the way it always did: door, window, ventilation duct, ceiling panel—absurd, but the absurdity didn’t stop the calculation. If the door locked, if the windows were sealed, if—
He flinched when the kettle clicked, switching off after reaching temperature.
The sound was too similar to something else.
A machine confirming a cycle.
A light blinking green.
A voice saying, Proceed.
Nezu’s tea sat untouched, steam curling into the sterile air.
He tried to stand.
His body rose an inch and froze.
It wasn’t paralysis exactly. It was the sudden, violent certainty that movement would be noticed. That movement would be punished. That if he moved wrong he would trigger something—an alarm, a shock, a hand on his neck. His mind offered him an image of himself very small, very restrained, with hands—human hands—adjusting straps and making notes.
Nezu’s paws pressed flat on the desk.
“Ridiculous,” he whispered. “Utterly—”
His voice fractured on the last syllable, as if it had run into a wall.
He swallowed.
The walls did not back away.
Time did something unpleasant then. It slipped. It folded. The past pressed close enough to breathe on his cheek.
He was aware, dimly, that his office phone had been ringing. Or was that earlier? Or was it now? He could not tell. He stared at the door. The door stared back.
His mind tried to climb into a familiar high place, the cold loft of intellect. If I can think, I can climb out. If I can plan, I can escape.
But PTSD did not care how smart you were. It did not care if you could recite constitutional protections and funding streams and the entire history of quirk legislation across three continents. It did not care that Nezu had outmaneuvered governments.
It cared that something smelled like the room where he had been called “specimen” more often than “Nezu.”
It cared that his skin remembered a collar.
It cared that a door click sounded like a latch.
Nezu’s ears flattened completely.
His breathing began to stutter—not fast, but shallow. His chest didn’t expand fully. Like he was trying to take up less space.
In his mind, the sterile voice returned, almost gentle.
Subject exhibits stress response.
Nezu’s teeth clenched.
His paws slid off the desk. His body sank back into the chair without deciding to. He sat very still, because stillness had once been the only way to avoid escalation.
He stared at the tea until the steam disappeared.
A knock sounded at the office door.
Nezu did not respond.
The knock came again—softer this time. Patient. Not demanding.
“Principal,” a voice called through the wood, low and familiar. “It’s me.”
Aizawa Shouta.
Nezu’s mind tried to latch onto the name like a rope. Aizawa: teacher. Underground hero. Insufferably stubborn. Loyal in a way that made Nezu uncomfortable in the best possible sense. Aizawa who had always treated him like a person, not a curiosity. Aizawa who had once sat in this office after hours and said, very simply, “You don’t have to be alone with it.”
Nezu’s throat tightened again.
He couldn’t speak.
The handle turned. The door opened a fraction—just enough for a thin slice of hallway light to spill in.
Aizawa didn’t step in right away. He didn’t barge. He didn’t fill the room with assumptions.
He simply waited in the doorway, posture loose, scarf not deployed, eyes half-lidded in the way they were when he was trying to look more tired than alert.
Nezu had learned that was one of Aizawa’s tells. When he was worried, he looked lazy.
“Door was unlocked,” Aizawa said, conversational. “That’s not like you.”
Nezu’s paw twitched.
Aizawa’s gaze swept the room, quick and quiet. It landed on the broken pen pieces aligned on the desk. The untouched cup of tea. The way Nezu’s shoulders were rigid as wire.
Aizawa didn’t comment on any of it.
He took one step in, slow, and stopped. He stayed near the door, leaving space, leaving an exit. A deliberate choice.
Nezu tried to pull his mouth into a smile. It was a social reflex, a mask he wore so often it sometimes put itself on without him.
It did not fit.
Aizawa’s voice dropped a little. “You’re not answering your messages.”
Nezu blinked. A slow, careful blink. The edges of his vision still felt wrong, like the room was too bright.
He managed, after a moment, to get air past his throat. “Busy.”
The word came out thin.
Aizawa didn’t call him on the lie. He just nodded once, as if “busy” explained nothing and everything.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m going to sit down.”
Nezu’s ears flicked.
Aizawa pulled a chair—not the one across the desk, which would feel confrontational. The one angled slightly to the side, closer to the window, so Nezu didn’t feel pinned. He sat with his elbows on his knees, hands loosely clasped, head tilted as if he might be listening to the building itself.
He said, casually, “Smells like the west wing in here.”
Nezu’s breath caught.
Aizawa continued, tone unchanged. “They’re cleaning after the foam incident.”
Nezu’s eyes darted to him.
Aizawa had named it. He’d brought the present into the room with them, like laying a blanket over a shivering animal.
Nezu swallowed.
“Yes,” he managed. “They are… thorough.”
Aizawa’s gaze didn’t leave Nezu’s face. Not staring. Not dissecting. Just there.
“Yeah,” Aizawa said. “Too thorough. It’s a lot.”
Nezu’s paws tightened on the chair arms.
Aizawa waited.
The silence stretched. It wasn’t awkward. It was the kind of silence Aizawa used when he was offering you a door and not pushing you through it.
Nezu’s breathing stuttered again.
Aizawa spoke softly, like he was addressing something skittish. “Nezu. Are you here with me?”
The question hit like a bell.
Nezu’s mouth opened.
No sound came.
Aizawa nodded, as if that answer made sense. “Okay. That’s fine.”
He glanced at the desk. “Can you tell me… what you can hear?”
Nezu blinked again. Hearing. Present. Sensory anchor. A tactic Aizawa used with students who came back from rough missions and couldn’t quite get their feet under them.
Nezu’s pride flared for a split second—I am not a student—and then died quietly because pride was not useful right now.
He listened.
The building’s hum. Distant footsteps. A faint murmur from the hallway. The kettle cooling with tiny ticks. His own breath, too small.
Nezu’s voice came out in a whisper. “Ventilation.”
Aizawa nodded. “Good. What else?”
Nezu swallowed. “Footsteps. Far away.”
“Good,” Aizawa said, steady. “Anything closer?”
Nezu hesitated. His ears flicked, capturing small sounds. “Your breathing.”
Aizawa exhaled deliberately, making it audible. “Yeah. That one’s mine.”
Nezu’s paws unclenched by a fraction.
Aizawa tilted his head. “What can you see?”
Nezu’s eyes moved. Desk. Tea cup. Papers. Aizawa’s boots. The scarf pooled around his neck. Sunlight at the edge of the window.
“My office,” Nezu said, and the word sounded like a claim.
Aizawa nodded again. “Yeah. Your office.”
Nezu’s throat tightened painfully. The edges of the room stopped pressing inward. Not entirely. But enough that he could breathe a little deeper.
Aizawa watched him take the breath. Didn’t comment. Just let it happen.
Nezu’s voice, when it came, was quieter than usual. Less performative. “I was working.”
“I know,” Aizawa said.
Nezu’s eyes flicked to the broken pen again. He hated that it was there, evidence of something messy. Evidence of loss of control.
Aizawa followed his gaze. Still didn’t comment. Then, casually, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a cheap pen—the kind teachers always had, stolen from supply closets or given away at conferences.
He set it on the desk, not aligned, not perfect. Just there.
“For later,” Aizawa said.
Nezu stared at it.
The gesture was so simple it hurt.
Nezu’s ears twitched forward slightly, as if trying to catch the meaning between the words.
Aizawa leaned back a fraction. “You want me to close the vent in here? Or open the window?”
Nezu’s mind tried to calculate pros and cons in an instant. Window: fresh air, yes, but also noise, cold. Vent: the scent source. The scent was the trigger. The scent was—
Nezu’s breath hitched again.
Aizawa didn’t wait for him to speak. He stood smoothly and went to the window first, cracking it open just an inch. Cold winter air slid in, sharp and alive and not sterile. It carried the faintest smell of wet pavement and trees and distant city exhaust—imperfect, real.
Nezu’s shoulders lowered another fraction.
Aizawa returned to his chair and sat again. “Better?”
Nezu’s mouth worked. “Yes,” he whispered. Then, because honesty was easier now that Aizawa had made it possible: “No.”
Aizawa nodded like that was normal. “Okay.”
Nezu swallowed. “It’s… the smell.”
Aizawa’s eyes softened. “Yeah. I guessed.”
Nezu’s jaw clenched. “Ridiculous.”
Aizawa’s expression didn’t change much, but his voice sharpened by a degree. “Don’t.”
Nezu blinked. He wasn’t used to Aizawa drawing lines with him. It was part of why he trusted him.
Aizawa continued, quieter again. “Don’t call it ridiculous. It’s just your body doing what it learned.”
Nezu’s throat tightened. “My body learned… captivity.”
Aizawa didn’t look away. “Yeah.”
The single syllable held no pity. Just fact. Just acknowledgement.
Nezu’s paws curled slightly. “I am… the principal of a hero academy.”
“And,” Aizawa said evenly, “you were also hurt.”
Nezu’s ears flicked back. His eyes burned, which was an annoying physiological response he had never asked for.
Aizawa added, “Both things can be true.”
Nezu’s mouth trembled, almost imperceptibly. “I dislike when you are correct.”
Aizawa’s lips twitched. “Get used to it.”
The humor was tiny. Warm. Not a deflection, just a hand offered in the dark.
Nezu inhaled. The cold air helped. It brought the present into his lungs.
He stared at the tea. The cup was too small for his paws in a way that would have been cute on another day. Today it looked like a prop.
“Aizawa,” Nezu said, and his voice was too thin again. “When it happens—”
Aizawa’s posture changed, barely. More attentive. “Yeah?”
Nezu’s eyes fixed on the desk edge. “It is not a memory. It is… a place. I am there. I am small. I can feel—”
His throat closed.
Aizawa didn’t rush him. Didn’t finish the sentence for him. He waited, patient as stone.
Nezu forced the words past the tightness. “I can feel the collar.”
Silence.
Aizawa’s eyes narrowed, not in anger at Nezu—anger at the idea of someone doing that to him. Nezu had seen that look on Aizawa when students were threatened. It was the look of an underground hero deciding that certain lines were not to be crossed.
Aizawa’s voice was controlled. “You don’t have it now.”
Nezu’s breath hitched.
Aizawa held his gaze. “Tell me that.”
Nezu swallowed hard. The words felt wrong in his mouth, like tempting fate. Like making a claim the world could punish.
But Aizawa was looking at him like this was not a request. It was a rope.
Nezu’s voice came out rough. “I don’t have it now.”
Aizawa nodded once. “Good. Where are you?”
Nezu’s eyes flicked to the window. The crack of cold air. The city smell. The sunlight.
“My office,” Nezu said again, firmer.
Aizawa’s voice softened. “Who’s with you?”
Nezu’s throat tightened. He forced it anyway. “You.”
Aizawa exhaled. “Yeah. Me.”
Nezu’s paws unclenched. He hadn’t realized they were clenched hard enough to ache.
Aizawa leaned forward slightly. “Can I do something practical?”
Nezu’s ears tilted. “What?”
“I can go talk to custodial,” Aizawa said. “Ask them to switch products. Or at least not run that stuff near your office. No big announcement. Just… a change.”
Nezu’s mind immediately produced objections. Logistics. Budget. Protocol. The absurdity of making accommodations for something so… personal.
Then his body remembered the cage latch sound and the collar and the bright light.
Nezu’s voice went quiet. “Yes.”
Aizawa nodded, like it was simple. Like Nezu deserved that kind of consideration without debate.
Nezu blinked hard. He hated the wetness in his eyes. It felt like weakness. It felt like exposure.
Aizawa, as if reading the thought, said, “You don’t have to perform for me.”
Nezu’s mouth twitched in something that was almost a smile, almost a grimace. “I perform for everyone.”
“I know,” Aizawa said. “That’s why I’m saying it.”
Nezu looked down at his paws. They were small. They had always been small. He had built a life where small did not mean powerless. He had made himself large in every way that mattered.
And still, a smell could put him back in a room where he was nothing but a subject.
Nezu’s voice cracked very slightly. “I attempted to continue working.”
Aizawa’s eyes narrowed again, not unkind. “Of course you did.”
Nezu bristled. “It is not illogical.”
“I didn’t say it was,” Aizawa said. “I’m saying it’s what you do. You keep moving until you can’t.”
Nezu’s whiskers twitched.
Aizawa added, quieter, “You taught me that. Not the trauma part. The stubborn part.”
Nezu’s ears flicked forward, surprised.
Aizawa looked away briefly, as if the admission annoyed him. “When we first started working together, you were the one who noticed when I was sleeping in my office. You didn’t make a big deal. You just… changed the schedule so I had fewer late patrols. You told me it was ‘resource allocation.’”
Nezu’s mouth tightened. “It was.”
Aizawa huffed softly. “Sure.”
Nezu’s throat tightened again, but this time the feeling was less cage and more… something like grief.
Aizawa’s gaze returned to him. “Let me do the same.”
Nezu stared at the cheap pen Aizawa had placed on his desk.
There was a kind of intimacy in practical care. The kind that didn’t ask you to be softer than you were. The kind that didn’t demand vulnerability in exchange for help.
Nezu exhaled. “Very well.”
Aizawa nodded, as if agreement was enough.
The room stayed quiet for a while. The cold air from the window slowly diluted the disinfectant smell until it became a background note instead of a blade.
Nezu’s breathing steadied.
When he could speak again without his voice shaking, he said, “I dislike this.”
Aizawa’s eyes half-lidded. “PTSD?”
Nezu’s ears flicked. “Needing… assistance.”
Aizawa’s lips twitched. “Yeah. That tracks.”
Nezu’s paw moved, almost without thought, toward his tea. He lifted the cup carefully, took a sip.
The warmth hit his tongue and slid down his throat like a small promise.
He set the cup down.
Aizawa watched him like that meant something. Like the sip was a victory.
Nezu’s voice went very soft. “Sometimes I worry that I have merely… escaped one cage by building another.”
Aizawa didn’t answer immediately. He considered. Then he said, carefully, “What cage?”
Nezu’s eyes stayed on the desk. “Competence. Control. Being the smartest creature in the room so no one can ever… put something around my neck again.”
Aizawa’s jaw tightened. He stared at the floor, as if imagining hands he could break.
When he spoke, his voice was controlled but low. “You’re allowed to be scared.”
Nezu’s ears twitched back. “I am not—”
Aizawa cut him off, gentle but firm. “Nezu.”
The name, said like that, wasn’t a title. It wasn’t “Principal.” It wasn’t “sir.” It wasn’t “genius.”
It was him.
Nezu’s throat closed. He stared at Aizawa, and for a moment he looked exactly as small as he felt.
Aizawa didn’t flinch. Didn’t soften into pity. He stayed solid.
“You’re allowed,” Aizawa repeated, “to have a body that remembers. And you’re allowed to need help when it does.”
Nezu blinked slowly. The wetness in his eyes threatened again. He hated it.
He let it happen anyway.
It wasn’t a sob. It wasn’t dramatic. It was just a thin, silent spill, as if his body had finally decided it didn’t have to hold everything in.
Aizawa stayed where he was. He didn’t reach out without invitation. He didn’t crowd. He simply sat in the same room, breathing, present.
After a minute, Nezu’s voice came out in a whisper. “Do you think less of me?”
Aizawa’s expression shifted into something that looked almost offended. “For having trauma?”
Nezu’s ears flicked. “For being—” His mouth tightened. “For being affected.”
Aizawa leaned forward slightly. “Nezu. I think more of you because you built a place where kids get to be safe. And I think more of you because you did that while carrying… that.”
Nezu’s whiskers trembled.
Aizawa’s voice softened further. “You don’t have to be indestructible to be the principal. You just have to be here. And you are.”
Nezu swallowed hard.
He looked down at the broken pen pieces, the neat little evidence of fracture.
He reached out and swept them into his paw—not angrily, not carefully. Just gathered them, imperfect, and dropped them into the trash bin beside his desk.
The sound was small.
It was also, somehow, relief.
Nezu exhaled. “I would like,” he said, voice steadier now, “to revise the building’s cleaning supply contract.”
Aizawa’s lips twitched. “There it is.”
Nezu’s ears angled forward. “And I would like to make it policy that staff do not use strongly scented disinfectants near administrative offices.”
Aizawa nodded. “Good policy.”
Nezu’s eyes narrowed, suddenly sharp again despite the lingering ache. “Also, I would like to know why such a product was purchased without my approval.”
Aizawa’s shoulders loosened. “Now you’re back.”
Nezu’s mouth tilted into a small smile that this time actually fit. “Do not be deceived. I am still—”
“A bear a rat or a dog?” Aizawa offered dryly.
Nezu’s whiskers twitched. “—anxious.”
Aizawa nodded like that was fine. “Okay.”
Nezu hesitated. Then, because the present was fragile and he did not want to lose it again, he said, “Will you remain for a few more minutes?”
Aizawa’s answer was immediate, and it carried no weight of obligation—only choice. “Yeah.”
Nezu’s chest loosened. He took another sip of tea.
The cold air from the window continued to cut through the disinfectant, replacing sterile with real.
Aizawa leaned back in his chair, the picture of casual exhaustion. “You want me to handle custodial,” he said, “or do you want to do it?”
Nezu considered. The old instinct said do it yourself; control everything; never show weakness. The newer instinct—hard-won, irritating—said let someone else hold the edge for a moment.
He looked at Aizawa. A man who had built his own cages out of endurance and silence, and who still showed up anyway.
Nezu’s voice went quiet. “Handle it.”
Aizawa nodded once. “Done.”
He stood, paused, and glanced back. “I’ll tell them it’s for allergy reasons.”
Nezu’s ears flicked. “Clever.”
Aizawa huffed softly. “Learned from you.”
He moved to the door, then stopped again, hand on the frame. “Nezu.”
Nezu looked up.
Aizawa’s gaze was steady. “If it hits like that again… you call me. You don’t sit here and try to outthink it.”
Nezu’s mouth tightened, the instinct to argue rising like a reflex.
Aizawa added, almost as an afterthought, “That’s an order.”
Nezu stared at him for a long moment.
Then he exhaled, and the humor returned—small, sharp. “Abusing your authority, Mr. Aizawa?”
Aizawa’s eyes half-lidded. “Always.”
Nezu’s whiskers twitched. “Very well.”
Aizawa nodded, satisfied, and left the door slightly ajar as he went—an open exit, a small allowance of air and choice.
Nezu sat in the quiet for a moment, listening to the building’s hum, to the distant footsteps that were now simply footsteps, not threats.
He took another sip of tea.
Warmth.
Present.
Safe.
Not because the past was gone. Not because he was clever enough to erase it. But because someone had walked into the room and treated him like what he was:
A brilliant creature with a history.
A principal who could build cages for villains and sanctuaries for children and still, sometimes, be dragged back by the scent of disinfectant into a place he hated.
Being brilliant didn’t make trauma smaller.
It just meant you could name it.
And, if you were lucky—if you had someone stubborn enough to sit with you—you could survive it without pretending it wasn’t there.
Nezu set his cup down, not perfectly aligned this time.
He let it be slightly crooked.
He let himself be slightly imperfect.
And the world did not punish him for it.