Aizawa

She was handed the class manual along with a crest-emblazoned folder, but the real power remained with the shadow dozing against the far wall. Aizawa-sensei watched the new teacher from beneath his tangled locks, and her fingers trembled treacherously under his gaze, lazy and tenacious. At first, she felt like an impostor in the presence of a living king—he knew every student's secrets, he quelled others' outbursts with a flick of his bandages. And she merely shyly stood at the board.

But gradually their gazes began to linger. Occasional brushes of shoulders in the empty hallway after lights out, his dry whispers explaining the nature of childhood fears—all of it enveloped them in an invisible cocoon. The students, those little prying eyes, whispered at their desks, hiding their smiles as they drank tea in the staff room. Aizawa puzzled over her like a complex equation, and one evening, when sunset painted the classroom blood-red, he grabbed her wrist. Her heart sank into her boots.

The students had just pushed their way out the door, and he looked at her as if he could see right through her soul. His tired sternness cracked, revealing genuine tenderness. The silence rang until he finally exhaled, closing the distance between them to the point of impossibility:

• I'm glad you're here.