Chapter 3: School Cafeteria
The university cafeteria was a cathedral of controlled noise. Sunlight streamed through high, narrow windows, cutting through the haze of steam rising from industrial-sized serving trays. The air was a thick tapestry of scents: sanitizer and lemon floor cleaner underneath, the oily perfume of french fries and something vaguely vegetable-like simmering above, and layered over it all, the bright, chemical tang of too many bodies in a space that had seen decades of spilled soda and academic anxiety.
Kaito navigated the chaos with the practiced ease of a solo explorer. Tray in hand, he bypassed the “Chef’s Surprise” (which today looked ominously gray) and went straight for the salad bar and the grill station, assembling a meal of grilled chicken, rice, and a mountain of broccoli with the efficiency of a lab technician preparing a specimen. His height made him visible above the crowd, his wavy brown hair catching the light as he wove between clusters of chattering students.
His destination was a table tucked into an alcove near a bank of vending machines humming like tired mechanical beasts. It was known, unofficially, to a certain subset of the student body. Not the jocks, not the aggressively fashionable art kids, but the ones whose backpacks were heavier with textbooks than lifestyle, whose conversations were punctuated by the rustle of graph paper and the soft tap of styluses on tablet screens.
“Perimeter is clear,” Mark announced without looking up as Kaito slid onto the bench. Mark was small, sharp-eyed, and spoke with the cadence of someone narrating a tactical simulation. He was meticulously dissecting a chicken patty, separating breading from meat with surgical precision. “James attempted to engage the Philosophy cohort on Kantian ethics. It went… suboptimal.”
James, a lanky guy with glasses perpetually smudged at the lenses, groaned and stabbed at his mashed potatoes. “They were arguing that morality is a social construct! A construct! I presented three separate logical syllogisms and they just said I was ‘being reductive.’” He made air quotes that were more aggressive than sarcastic.
“You were being reductive,” Evan said, not looking up from his laptop, where lines of code scrolled in a relentless green waterfall. His lunch, an energy bar and a black coffee, sat untouched beside him. “You always are. It’s why you lose at debate club.”
“I don’t lose, I am strategically defeated by populist rhetoric,” James grumbled.
Chris, the final member of their usual cohort, was sketching something in a notebook with a furrowed brow. He had paint under his nails and a smudge of charcoal on his cheek. “Has anyone considered that the cafeteria’s color scheme—beige, beige, and sad beige—is a deliberate tool of psychological oppression to lower our academic expectations?”
Kaito took a bite of his chicken, savoring the simple, clean protein. This was the soundtrack of his midday: logical deconstruction, mock outrage, hyper-specific observations. It was comforting in its predictable rhythm. A world of defined variables and quantifiable disagreements, far removed from the beautiful, chaotic symphony of the Aizawa household.
“How’s the chem monster, Kaito?” Mark asked, finally abandoning his chicken autopsy. “Heard the midterm average was a 67. Brutal.”
Kaito swallowed, a small, private smile touching his lips. The memory of Izuku’s purring proclamation—My genius—flitted through his mind, warming him from the inside. “It was fine. Challenging.”
“Fine,” Evan echoed, his fingers pausing on the keyboard. “He got a 98. Saw the posted scores when I was hacking the registrar’s system to adjust my lab time.”
“You didn’t,” James said, a mix of horror and awe in his voice.
“Of course I didn’t. I asked the department secretary nicely. But the point stands. Kaito, you beast.”
A round of respectful nods went around the table. This was their currency: academic achievement. It was admired, analyzed, and filed away as data.
Chris sighed, closing his sketchbook. “Well, that’s one of us who isn’t going to die a lonely, virgin death, surrounded by textbooks and the ghosts of what could have been.”
The statement landed with a thud. It was a familiar refrain, a joke they’d all made a hundred times, a defensive mantra. But today, it felt different. It hung in the air between the clatter of trays and the hum of the vending machines.
Mark nodded, a grim set to his jaw. “Confirmed. Probability of romantic entanglement before graduation for this unit is currently estimated at 3.2%. Factoring in social skills, time allocation to study, and general ‘vibes’ as James calls them.”
“They’re bad vibes,” James insisted. “We emit bad romantic vibes. It’s a pheromone thing. I read a study.”
“We’re like a support group for the chronically unkissed,” Chris said, with a dramatic flourish of his hand. “The Celibacy Club. Membership: four. Requirements: a working knowledge of at least one programming language, an irrational fear of parties, and a complete inability to talk to anyone who doesn’t understand Lagrangian mechanics.”
They all chuckled, a dry, self-deprecating sound. It was their armor. Kaito took a drink of his water, the cold liquid a contrast to the sudden heat at the back of his neck. He listened to them, these smart, funny, lonely guys, and he saw the truth behind the joke. It wasn’t just a bit. It was a shared reality, a bunker they’d built together.
And he wasn’t in it. Not anymore.
He hadn’t planned to say anything. It wasn’t a secret, but his life with Izuku existed in a separate, vibrant dimension. Trying to explain it here, in the beige cafeteria under the fluorescent lights, felt like trying to describe a supernova to someone who’d only ever studied candle flames. It wouldn’t translate. It would sound like bragging, or worse, fiction.
But Chris’s words—lonely, virgin death—echoed. They painted a picture of a future that, for Kaito, had been utterly erased. Replaced by one of Izuku’s head on his pillow, of Shouta’s dry commentary over katsudon, of Katsuki’s explosive protectiveness and Hitoshi’s lazy smirk. Of a reinforced bedframe.
Evan was the one who made it concrete. He slammed his laptop shut. “It’s a waste of cycles. Romantic pursuits are inefficient. The time-to-return ratio is abysmal. You spend hours of communication and resource allocation for statistically uncertain outcomes. Better to focus on deterministic systems. Like this code.” He tapped the laptop lid. “This will never suddenly decide it ‘needs space’ or that you ‘don’t go out enough.’”
“Preach,” James murmured. “I’ve accepted my fate. I’ll be the weird uncle who gives his nieces and nephews overly detailed books about Roman aqueducts. My legacy will be architectural, not genetic.”
Mark nodded in solemn agreement. “A valid life path. Companionship is an overrated variable in the happiness equation. We have each other’s backs. That’s a reliable, proven bond.”
They all looked at Kaito then, expecting the affirming nod, the grunt of agreement, the shared commiseration. It was his turn to add to the pile, to offer his own piece of evidence for their collective case.
Kaito set his fork down. It made a soft clink against the melamine tray. He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin, buying a second. His heart was doing something funny, not racing, but beating with a thick, heavy certainty. He could feel the phantom weight of Izuku’s arms around his neck, the whisper in his ear.
“I, uh…” he began. His voice came out quieter than he intended. He cleared his throat. “I actually… I have a boyfriend.”
The silence that followed was absolute. It wasn’t the comfortable quiet of before. It was a vacuum. The noise of the cafeteria seemed to recede, muffled as if by thick glass. Mark’s sharp eyes were wide, frozen. James’s mouth had fallen open behind his smudged glasses. Evan had gone perfectly still, his hand still resting on his laptop. Chris’s pencil slipped from his fingers and rolled across the table, coming to a stop against Kaito’s tray.
It lasted five full seconds. An eternity.
“What?” James said, the word a brittle crack.
“You have a what?” Mark’s tactical analysis voice was gone, replaced by pure, unprocessed shock.
Kaito felt the familiar flush start at his collarbones, but he willed it down. This wasn’t about being flustered. This was just… stating a fact. A beautiful, life-altering fact. “A boyfriend. His name is Izuku. We’ve been together for over a year.”
Chris found his voice first, a high-pitched squeak. “A year? A whole year? And you’re just… mentioning this now?”
“It never came up,” Kaito said, and even to his own ears it sounded absurd. How could it not have come up? But in their conversations, which orbited theorems, code, professors, and campus gossip, it genuinely hadn’t. His life was partitioned. The lab, the library, the cafeteria with them. And then there was home. Home was Izuku.
“What is he?” Evan asked, his tone analytical, trying to slot this new data into his existing framework. “A CS major? Physics?”
Kaito almost smiled. “Fashion design.”
The word landed like a alien artifact on the table.
“Fashion,” James repeated, as if trying to parse a sentence in a dead language.
“Design,” Mark added, equally lost.
“He wants to be a designer,” Kaito said, and saying it aloud filled him with a fierce pride. “He’s incredible. He sees things… differently. He made a jacket out of recycled cassette tapes last month. It sounds crazy, but when you see it…” He trailed off, realizing he was gushing. He saw their bewildered faces and reined it in.
“So he’s… not from here,” Evan stated.
“No. He goes to the arts college across town.”
“And you… you kiss him?” Chris asked, his artist’s mind apparently going straight to the physical logistics. “Like, regularly?”
Now the blush won. It flooded Kaito’s cheeks. He thought of the kiss in the dining room just last night, of Izuku in his lap, tasting of soy sauce and promise. “Yeah. Regularly.”
“And you… you’re not… you know…” James gestured vaguely, his face a mask of sympathetic horror. “A virgin?”
The word, spoken so bluntly in this context, was jarring. Kaito thought of the fortress bedframe, of Izuku’s plans, of the complex, joyful, noisy reality of their intimacy. He shook his head, a single, slow movement. “No.”
Another stunned silence. This one was heavier, charged with a hundred unasked questions. Kaito could see the calculations happening behind their eyes, their entire worldview of their little unit recalibrating around this new, impossible fact. Kaito. Their Kaito. Who aced organic chemistry and sat quietly through their rants. He had crossed over. He had achieved the mythical, the statistically improbable.
Mark was the first to recover, his analytical mind seizing on a new variable. “Is he… why are you so muscular now? The gym. Is that… for him?”
Kaito shrugged, a little self-conscious. “Partly. I like it. But yeah, he… appreciates it.” He remembered Izuku’s hands on his arms, his whispered, all that brawn. He pushed the memory away before his face could combust.
“Do you… talk about us?” Evan asked, a rare note of something like vulnerability in his voice.
“Sometimes,” Kaito admitted. “He thinks you all sound smart. A bit intense. He calls you my ‘brain trust.’”
That got a flicker of a smile from Chris.
“And his family?” James ventured. “They’re… cool with it? With you?”
And here, Kaito’s smile broke through fully, warm and real. He thought of Shouta’s deadpan warnings about bedframes, of Katsuki’s growled threats that were really just a bizarre form of acceptance, of Hitoshi’s dry salutes. “Yeah. They’re more than cool. They’re… my family too, pretty much. His dad is this famous author. He’s… the best. He just wants Izuku to be happy. And his brothers are… well, they’re a lot. But they’ve got my back, in their way.”
He was sharing too much. He was dismantling the entire carefully constructed narrative of his life they had in their heads. But it felt good. It felt like airing out a room that had been kept too closed for too long.
Mark leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “A year,” he said again, marveling. “And you never said anything. Were you… afraid we’d be weird about it? About him being a guy?”
Kaito considered it. “No. Not really. It wasn’t that.” He struggled to find the words. “It’s just… it’s so separate. What we have here, and what I have there. They’re both true, but they don’t… mix easily. Telling you felt like trying to explain a color you’ve never seen.”
The metaphor hung there, and for a moment, they all just looked at him—not at their study partner, not at the chemistry beast, but at Kaito, a person with a full, complicated, love-filled life they’d known nothing about.
James adjusted his glasses. “So… what’s he like? Izuku.”
And so, haltingly at first, then with growing warmth, Kaito told them. He didn’t share the raunchy dinner-table proclamations or the intimate details. He told them about Izuku’s insane creativity, his fierce loyalty, his absolute lack of filter. He described the chaotic, loving madness of the Aizawa house. He talked about Izuku’s white curls and wine-red eyes, his savage comebacks, his surprising tenderness. He painted a picture, not with the precision of a scientist, but with the awed clumsiness of someone who had been gifted a masterpiece and was still learning how to describe its beauty.
They listened. They didn’t interrupt with logic or analysis. They just absorbed it, this new continent on the map of their friend’s life.
When the warning bell for afternoon classes buzzed, a harsh, grating sound, they all jumped.
“Wow,” Chris said softly, gathering his things. “Just… wow.”
Mark nodded, a new respect in his eyes. “Your operational security is impressive. I had no intel.”
Evan stood, tucking his laptop under his arm. He looked at Kaito, really looked at him. “A year,” he muttered again. Then, a faint, almost imperceptible smile touched his lips. “The time-to-return ratio on that appears to be… favorable.”
It was the closest to a congratulations Kaito would get from him, and it meant everything.
As they dispersed into the stream of students, Kaito felt lighter. The partition was still there, but a door had been opened in it. He pulled out his phone as he walked to his next class, his thumbs moving over the screen.
Just told the brain trust about you.
The reply was almost instantaneous. A selfie of Izuku, pouting dramatically in what looked like a fabric store, surrounded by bolts of chartreuse silk and crimson velvet. The text below read: OMG THE NERD COUNCIL? What did they say? Do they approve? Do I need to come down there and defend my man’s honor with a rotary cutter?
Kaito laughed, a soft, quiet sound lost in the hallway din.
They were shocked. Then curious. They think you sound cool.
Damn right I’m cool. I’m a trendsetter. Also, I bought velvet for a project. It’s gonna be so extra, you’ll need sunglasses to look at me. Get ready for your reward tonight, nerd. I’m feeling inspired.
Kaito’s flush returned, but it was a private, warm thing now. He typed back.