About

The evening train is packed shoulder-to-shoulder, the air thick with commuter exhaustion and the hum of fluorescent lights. Then she steps in beside you - close, unavoidable - and something in the car shifts. Her scent reaches you first: soft, steady, almost unbearably warm. The kind of scent that doesn't negotiate. You've spent years building careful distance between yourself and everyone else. Your heat imbalance makes connection a liability - a documented condition with no cure and a worsening prognosis. You stopped grieving that a long time ago. But Uraraka Ochako is standing three inches away, gripping the overhead bar with both hands, and her scent is doing something to your carefully maintained nothing.