"Hosu City?" He repeated.

Sucking in a breath, Izuku's iris moved to the left corner of his eye and his head tilted along with his eyes. He hummed, but soon shook his head. "Can't say I remember meeting you there or not."

Again, almost no visible reaction without counting the subtle twitch from his fingers.

Izuku tapped his forehead. "My memory's a bit hazy, you see — oh, it's suddenly nice and warm around here." He reached for the doorknob, while mumbling, "It was super cold outside, Hosu City's nights are cold too. But I bet you couldn't feel that, because of 'heroing'."

"Are you playing with me, right now?" Todoroki said.

His annoyance was much clearer in his voice and eyes. Izuku recalled he had an interesting quirk — fire and ice. Simple yet powerful and complicated in theory and hereditary. Quite the potential in a quirk like that, he thought.

"What do you mean?" His smile grew and he blinked.

Todoroki's glare hadn't faltered and Izuku showed no signs of backing down from his innocent act. The boy was pleasantly — and he meant that — surprised that Shouto lost his cool rather fast. He wanted to beat around the bush longer, but the one thing Izuku was right about, was that Todoroki had no filter.

"Tell me clearly, were you the one?"

"The one?" Izuku raised an eyebrow, still holding a smile. He begrudgingly stopped himself from making a joke relating to 'the one'. "I can't say I understand what you're referring to, Shouto?"

"The one who saved us." Todoroki glanced around, "Iida and I, you helped us that day. No-one was there besides that injured hero and no-one knew we were in that alleyway."

"Yet you were there."

Izuku's raised eyebrow reflected real emotions; his hand's grip on the doorknob loosened. "What's your point?"

"Why and how--" Todoroki breathed out through his nose. He had so many questions, but the one he asked: "Why did you save us?"

Izuku paused and his mouth refused to open — not knowing how to respond to a question he knew would be asked. Yet, why was he hesitating? They stood there for seconds after seconds. He looked into his mismatched eyes then turned away.

"What are you talking about?" Izuku chuckled. "What? Save? Me? Why would I? I'm not a hero."

"Then why were you there? Before I passed out--"

"Exactly, you mistook someone else for me." Izuku shrugged and patted Todoroki's with a practiced sympathetic look. "It happens. You lost a lot of blood and you were barely conscious."

He opened the door as Todoroki reached out to stop him. "Well, bye."

"Hey--"

The door shut closed, leaving the ice-fire user to himself. He slipped up. His hand returned to his side. I never said anything about bleeding, or Stain.

Inside the room, Izuku was greeted by a blank staring — crossed armed — and very tired Shinso inches away from his face. His eyebags were more prominent than Izuku remembered. 

Izuku flinched away, putting a hand on his chest. "What the--" He swore he heard horror movie background music playing before his death. "How long have you been standing there?! Did you do that on purpose? I'm the prankster here!"

As he exclaimed, he lifted his hands in the air. "Why do people keep trying to take that from me?"

One of Shinso's eyebrows twitched, but his nonchalance remained. The guy really liked his theatrics.

"I'm pretty sure Kaminari Denki was the prankster, so isn't it you who technically took his place?"

Izuku gasped and placed a hand on his chest, looking absolutely betrayed. "Whose side are you on, Shinso!?"

The aforementioned teen groaned. "No-one," he said and mumbled, "Seriously, why do I bother humoring him?"

"Don't lie to me!" Izuku pointed an accusing finger at Shinso, who had walked away saying something along the lines of 'here he goes again'. "I've seen the way you tolerate that Denki-guy when he talks to you! I thought I was the only annoyingly cheerful friend in your life. You--"

Shinso sat on his bed. "Don't say it."

"You've been cheating on me!"

"He said it," he sighed out the words. Shinso ran his hands through his hair — that was now flat, because he had washed his hair — and had a difficult time fighting off the voices in his head. "Just, just sit down for a second. We need to talk."

"Oh, we have plenty to talk about, mister!" Izuku replied in the same 'high school girl' voice he used to tease Uraraka. Nonetheless, he sat down, but on Shinso's bed instead of his own.

"Will you ever stop making things weird?"

"Never." Midoriya smiled as he shook his head. "So what do you want to talk about? You rarely want to speak to me at all."

Shinso released his grip in his hair and looked at Izuku with newly found seriousness. He shifted his position to look at him. "I was curious about something, so I did some research."

Shinso took out his phone from his pocket; he scrolled through it. It didn't take long for him to find what he was looking for.

"Here," Shinso said, lifting his phone up for Izuku to see the screen. It was a newspaper article, dated back more than five years ago. The header, in bold black, said: 'Arsonist Burns His Own Home'.

Shinso watched Izuku's reaction, keeping his own face in check. Unlike Shinso, however, his roommate did not bother concealing his emotions — or rather, he was unable to. His eyes said everything, they were wide and his pupils dilated to the point that Shinso thought his eyes had dulled. His lips parted as if he wanted to say something, but the words were stuck in his throat.

Under the header, the sub-title had added: 'A Child Burns His Own Home With His Mother Inside'.

"This is your old house, right?" Shinso broke the silence and turned his phone off. "That was you, who set your house on fire. That's what Bakugou and you were arguing about before."

Izuku looked down, his mouth closed and curled into a frown.

"Why did you do it?"

Izuku turned around; his back faced Shinso. It was quiet and Shinso didn't have the courage to say anything this time. Maybe he shouldn't have brought it up in the first place, the answer didn't matter to him. After all, being a dangerous villain was pretty much everyone's impression of him.

By convenience, they were brought together by intersecting circumstances and there was always the possibility that Izuku would choose being a villain and going to prison at the end of this month.

"I..."

Shinso lifted his head, but Izuku wasn't facing him. He heard a sigh.

"I wasn't lying."