Back in the U.A. 1-A dorms, inside Tsutsumi's room.
Tsutsumi was lying on his large bean bag bed, shirtless, sunk halfway into it. His right arm up to the shoulder was wrapped in white bandages, together with his chest, torso, and stomach. A few smaller bandages were stuck on his cheek and forehead. He didn't look bothered by it; more like it was just another thing that happened today.
"Master, you were too careless," Azu said while packing away the medical supplies one by one.
"I was testing my abilities," Tsutsumi replied in a calm tone. His eyes weren't on her, but on the card he was holding between his fingers.
Kamen Ride: Kuuga.
"You already have more than enough options to deal with Ultimate Kuuga," Azu continued. Her voice was steady, but the worry was still obvious. "There was no need to trade punches like that."
Tsutsumi didn't answer right away. He closed his palm, causing the card to disappear, before staring at the ceiling.
"I wanted to see how far I could push it," he finally said. "That was all."
Azu let out a small breath, not quite a sigh, and closed the first-aid box. She glanced back at him. "And now you're covered in bandages again."
"That happens," Tsutsumi said simply. He shifted a bit deeper into the bean bag, not reacting much to the pain that came with the movement. "If there is a next time, I'll do it differently."
"You always say that," she replied, but her tone softened. She adjusted the last bandage on his shoulder, making sure it was tight. "Please try meaning it."
He didn't argue.
Then footsteps came down the hallway, and his door suddenly opened.
"Wow! This is like a detective studio!!" Hagakure's cheerful voice filled the room.
From the doorway, the first thing anyone would notice would be the massive whiteboards, completely packed with leads, arrows, and colorful notes. It looked organized if you understood his thought process; otherwise, it just looked like a headache.
Near them sat a high-end computer setup, screens still dim but clearly overkill. Shelves and tables were lined with neatly placed tools, small gadgets, labeled containers, and stacks of books. A tall mirror stood beside the large magenta bean bag bed, its color very obvious even in the dim lighting.
Then everyone's eyes finally landed on Azu and Tsutsumi.
Azu, who looked almost exactly like Jiro but with longer hair, made several people immediately look back and forth between them just to double-check their eyes. Tsutsumi, meanwhile, was covered in bandages like he'd picked a fight with the concept of common sense and lost.
"How the hell did you manage to get yourself injured this badly!?" Jiro shouted at him. "It's only been half a day. What were you doing, huh!?"
Despite that, Jiro sounded more worried than angry at Tsutsumi, since he is one of the strongest people she knew, so there aren't many who can harm him.
And even so, it has only been over half a day since they moved into the dorm, so Jiro is also confused about how Tsutsumi could get himself injured that badly in that short span of time.
To everyone else, it really had only been half a day since moving into the dorms. For Tsutsumi, though, it had almost been a week since he last set foot in this room. That part stayed unspoken.
"Uh, Jiro…" Ashido said, pointing not at Tsutsumi, but at Azu. "I think you should be more worried about your evil twin sister right now."
"I didn't know you had a twin," Asui added, staring openly at Azu.
Bakugo ignored all of that and flopped onto a bean bag chair like he owned it. "This seat is nice."
"Indeed. They're comfortable," Todoroki said, testing another bean bag like he was evaluating furniture in a store. "But why are they all pink?"
"They're magenta," Tsutsumi corrected immediately. He finally sat up a bit. "And that is Azu. My personal assistant."
That only made everyone stare more, except Bakugo, Todoroki, and Jiro. Those three already had a high tolerance for whatever Tsutsumi did at this point.
"She's a highly advanced artificial intelligence," he continued, like he was explaining the weather, "who decided to base her human form on Jiro."
Azu smiled politely, then shifted into her Bangboo form without fanfare. A few people jumped.
While everyone was still catching up mentally, Tsutsumi turned back to Jiro, who had moved beside him.
"And I got injured testing my abilities," he added.
Well, technically, he was testing his abilities by throwing fists with Ultimate Kuuga, but hey, details weren't necessary here.
"By the way," he said, looking around the room full of uninvited guests, "how did you guys even get a key to my room? I locked it."
"Aizawa gave it to me in case you reverted back into a shut-in," Jiro said, spinning the key casually.
Tsutsumi clicked his tongue, not expecting such a low blow from his own teacher. But he must admit, Aizawa did make a pretty smart move here.
If Jiro bursts into his room to drag him out, then he won't put up much resistance toward her. But if anyone else tries, they might get a beating before being tossed out.
"So why are you in my room?" he asked, looking at the whole group.
"Oh, we're having a room presentation contest," Ashido said, now poking Azu's Bangboo ear like it was a toy.
"I don't remember agreeing," Tsutsumi replied flatly, watching Kaminari and Kirishima hover near his computer setup like moths near a light.
"Originally, we were going to skip your room," Sero said, "but then Jiro said she had your key, so we figured we'd look anyway."
"For someone like you, your room is pretty normal," Asui commented, scanning the shelves.
"What is that supposed to mean?" Tsutsumi asked. Asui just stared back quietly, realizing how that sounded.
"Wow! These pictures are really good!" Hagakure said suddenly, lifting a large photo album she'd found.
"Oh? So you can actually take decent pictures sometimes," Ashido said, glancing over at a picture of Aki.
"I agree. This one is very nice," Yaoyorozu added calmly.
"Hey, Tsutsumi," Ashido grinned, turning to tease him, "aren't you scared Jiro will get mad that you're keeping pictures of other girls?"
But the joke stopped when she saw his face.
He wasn't smiling or having any reaction at all. He only has this blank stare, followed by a slow breath.
"Close it," he said, voice flat. "And leave. Before I have Azu throw everyone out."
The mood shifted instantly. Even Jiro looked worried.
"Ryo… are you okay?" she asked quietly.
"No," he answered, still calm, "and don't make me repeat myself."
Azu shifted back to her human form, Ark Driver at her waist now. Her polite tone remained, but the temperature in it noticeably dropped.
"As Master has already said, please close the book and leave. He's not feeling well."
Many understand this was a warning and not a request. They started filing out without arguing.
Jiro lingered at the doorway, looking back at him.
"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked.
"No," he said, but softer than before. "Thanks, Kyo."
"Alright," she nodded. "But come to me if you do. It's better than just keeping it all in."
She closed the door behind her, leaving the room quiet again.
Tsutsumi walked over to the table and looked down at the picture book that had been left open.
The page showed a two-frame photo of Tohsaka Aki. In the first frame, she was smiling straight at the camera, relaxed and casual, like she hadn't even thought about how she looked. In the second overlapping frame, she was still smiling, but it was different, including her emotion.
If you looked closely, you could see faint tears at the edges of her eyes. It wasn't obvious at first glance. It was just there if you bothered to look.
He remembered the day clearly, how could he ever forget about it?
She had come over to eat dinner with him. Right before telling him about the start of the Holy Grail War. At some point, she noticed his camera lying on the shelf and made an offhand comment about it.
Then she asked him to take a picture of her.
He'd just lifted the camera and clicked without thinking much about it. No posing, no retakes. He hadn't even checked the result right away. He'd honestly assumed it would glitch like usual and look strange anyway, so it didn't feel important in the moment.
He just didn't expect that picture to end up being the only one he had of her.
And worse, it ended up catching her final moment.
So every time he saw it, it felt strange. Part of him wanted to close the book and never open it again. Another part didn't want to forget any of it, even if it made him uncomfortable. He just let those two impulses exist side by side because he didn't really know what to do with either of them.
Tohsaka Aki had been the first person to actually confess to him that she loved him. Not just say something vague, she meant it and backed it up with actions. She had risked her life just to protect him.
And the annoying part was that he knew he could have fought back. He simply hadn't. He'd been too mentally exhausted to react properly at the time, and that fact stuck in the back of his head like a splinter. If he had pushed himself a bit more, maybe things would have gone differently.
Her final gift to him, the Class Card, Avenger, Angra Mainyu, had changed after coming into contact with him. It became the Form Ride: Decade card. Letting him use part of his true power without triggering the birth of Decade.
He closed the picture book.
Without hesitating, he opened an Aura Curtain leading back to his house and tossed the book through, letting it vanish beyond the shimmering boundary. The curtain closed right after.
His gaze drifted around his dorm room, then he let himself fall backward onto the bean bag bed. The ceiling stared back at him in silence. He stared right back until his thoughts slowed down enough to feel like background noise instead of a storm.
He let out a small sigh.
"Gotta replace the chair Katsuki took," he muttered, already aware that one of his bean bag chairs was missing and not even surprised about who the culprit was.
...
Outside in the dorm hallway, the group lingered awkwardly.
"Hey, what's with him? I only teased him a little. He doesn't need to get that mad over it," Ashido complained, folding her arms.
"Uh… I think we were a bit rude just barging into his room like that," Asui said, lightly scratching her cheek. "He didn't exactly invite us."
"I agree." Yaoyorozu added, also feeling somewhat bad.
Tokoyami nodded. "I believe it had something to do with that picture book," he added, making a few heads turn. "When we first went in, he only looked mildly annoyed. Not enough to seriously throw us out. His mood only shifted after you all started flipping through the photo album."
"Tch! Then it's got to be dirty pictures he didn't want us to see," Mineta said.
Everyone ignored him on instinct.
"Now that you mention it… he did get especially tense when we started looking at that book," Midoriya said. He put his hand under his chin and instantly slipped into muttering mode, analyzing everything at high speed.
After his continuous failures and even All Might telling him to listen to Tsutsumi more, Midoriya had been trying to understand him better. Which is easier said than done for him.
So Midoriya just mumbled to himself while his brain spun in circles, going absolutely nowhere. Everyone else quietly tuned him out.
"Don't blame him," Jiro finally said. Everyone turned her way. "He acts laid-back and reckless most of the time, yeah. But he's carrying a lot of... issues, you could say. It just doesn't look obvious on the surface."
"I can tell," Shoji nodded slightly. "He can understand and help other people with their problems," he said. "But it feels like nobody really understands him enough to return the favor."
"It's not that nobody wants to help," Todoroki added, calm as usual. "It's that no one really knows how to. Even when we try, it doesn't mean we're capable of fixing anything."
He thought back to the time he asked his father for help finding Tsutsumi's mother. Even with the Number Two Hero's connections, the whole thing went nowhere. No leads, no progress. Just a dead end.
For Todoroki, it was the first time he'd asked his father for something personal, and the result had still been disappointing. Just like his parenting skills.
"Just let him cool off for a while," Bakugo said, cutting in. He hoisted the magenta bean bag chair up like it weighed nothing and started walking away with it. "If you try to help when you don't know what you're doing, you'll just make it worse."
Everyone stared a little. The calm tone coming from Bakugo didn't quite match the usual explosive personality they expected.
He noticed the looks and clicked his tongue. "What? You're all acting like I said something weird."
Todoroki sighed quietly as Bakugo disappeared down the hall with the stolen bean bag. "Hmm. I forgot to grab mine on the way out too."