Chapter 11: The Ultimate Distraction
The cafeteria smelled like wet cardboard and overcooked green beans. A fluorescent light overhead buzzed like an angry insect, flickering every few seconds and casting the sprawl of teenagers below into a stuttering, jarring relief. Izuku had commandeered their usual table in the far corner, a fortress against the chaos. He’d even brought his own quilt—a garish, silken thing covered in peacocks that Shouta had won in Macau—and draped it over the scarred linoleum surface. It was a tiny island of absurd luxury in a sea of institutional beige.
Tyler was already there, his large frame squeezed into the tiny attached seat. He was methodically dismantling a chicken patty sandwich, separating the bread from the meat from the sad, pale lettuce. “It’s structurally unsound,” he was saying, his brow furrowed in genuine concern. “The condiment-to-bun ratio is all wrong. It’s a flood risk.”
“Just eat it, you freak,” Maya said from across the table, not looking up from her phone. She was painting her thumbnail with a tiny brush from a bottle of black polish. “Or don’t. Starve. See if I care.”
Mateo and Penelope were sharing earbuds, watching a video on a phone, their shoulders shaking with silent laughter. Chris was meticulously arranging his carrot sticks into a pentagram.
Izuku poked at his own lunch—a bento box prepared by the live-in chef, containing intricately rolled salmon sashimi, rice shaped into pandas, and blanched asparagus. He speared a panda head with his fork. “It’s depressing in here. The noise is all… gray.”
“That’s the sound of collective academic disillusionment,” Tyler said, finally taking a bite of his deconstructed sandwich. He chewed, thoughtful. “And stale flour.”
“Where’s Elijah?” Penelope asked, pulling one earbud out. “He said he had a surprise.”
“Probably found a new species of mold in the boys’ locker room and is trying to befriend it,” Maya muttered, blowing on her nail.
As if on cue, Elijah appeared, weaving through the crowded aisles with his nervous, birdlike energy. He wasn’t alone. Trailing behind him was a girl. She was blonde, the kind of yellow that came from a bottle, and her eyes were a wide, chemically blue. She wore ripped jeans and a cropped sweatshirt that said “VIRGO VIBES” in glittering script. She was smiling broadly, taking in the cafeteria like it was a grand spectacle.
“Guys. Hey, guys,” Elijah said, arriving at the table, slightly out of breath. “This is Sarah. She just transferred. From, uh, Ohio?”
“Cincinnati!” Sarah chirped, her voice cutting through the cafeteria din like a laser. She had a slight, midwestern twang. “Which is, like, basically the Paris of the Midwest? Not really, but it has a zoo. A good one.”
The table offered a collective, muted greeting. Nods. A half-wave from Chris.
“Cool,” Maya said, her tone implying the exact opposite.
“So, these are my friends,” Elijah said, gesturing around the table. “That’s Maya, Penelope, Mateo, Chris, Tyler, and that’s Izuku.”
Sarah’s gaze swept the table, landing on Izuku. Her smile didn’t waver; if anything, it intensified. Her eyes flickered over his face, his long black hair, the delicate features that were so clearly, unmistakably Japanese. Izuku looked up from his murdered panda rice, giving her a slow, casual blink.
Something seemed to click in Sarah’s head. An association. A file folder marked “Things I Know About Asian People” being hastily opened. Her posture shifted. She placed her hands together in front of her, fingers interlaced. Then, with a theatrical fluidity, she bent sharply at the waist, dipping into a deep, awkward bow.
“Ni hao!” she announced, her voice bright and expectant, as if she’d just performed a flawless magic trick.
The sound at their table didn’t just die; it was vacuum-sealed out of existence. Mateo’s choke-laugh cut off into a strangled cough. Penelope’s eyes went saucer-wide. Maya slowly put down her nail polish bottle. Chris’s carrot pentagram was forgotten. Tyler stopped chewing. Elijah looked like he wanted the floor to swallow him whole.
Izuku stared at her, his fork hovering in mid-air. His brain, which often moved at the speed of a tranquilized sloth, processed the scene with unusual, crystalline clarity. The bow. The words. The blinding, confident ignorance of it. A strange, cold feeling settled in his stomach, followed immediately by a hot surge of something else—not quite anger, but a profound, exasperated offense. He let the silence stretch, watching her straighten up, her smile still plastered on, awaiting his delighted response.
He let his fork clatter onto his bento box. The sound was sharp, final.
“Oh, wow,” Izuku said. His voice was flat, dripping with a sarcasm so thick it could have coated the walls. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t frown. He just looked at her, his dark eyes utterly empty of warmth. “That’s… really something.”
Sarah’s smile faltered for a nanosecond. She misinterpreted the tone as genuine awe. “I know, right? I took, like, a world cultures seminar last semester. It’s all about respecting, you know, the customs.” She slid into the empty seat next to Elijah, across from Izuku. “So, are you, like, from China? Japan? It’s so hard to tell the difference sometimes, you all have such similar, you know, faces.”
Tyler put his sandwich down. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered, almost to himself.
“Japan,” Izuku said, his voice still that eerie, calm monotone. He picked up his fork again and slowly twirled it between his fingers. “We’re from Japan. Which is where they speak Japanese. Not Chinese. That’s a different country. With different people. And a different language.”
“Right, right!” Sarah said, nodding enthusiastically. She was completely missing the ice in his words. “Japanese! That’s the one with the anime and the tentacle stuff! Crazy.”
Mateo buried his face in his hands. Penelope kicked him under the table.
Izuku felt a familiar presence at his back, a solid, reassuring weight in his mind. His daddy’s voice, from that very morning: You’re the prize. Not the other way around. This girl wasn’t playing a game. She was too stupid for games. She was just a bull in a china shop, smiling as she smashed things. And she’d mistaken him for part of the décor.
He decided to stop being porcelain.
“Tentacle stuff,” Izuku repeated, nodding slowly. He tilted his head. “Yeah. That’s the national pastime. Right after bowing to strangers and saying ‘ni hao.’ We’re basically a whole country of polite hentai enthusiasts.” He popped the speared panda rice head into his mouth and chewed, never breaking eye contact with her.
Finally, a flicker of confusion crossed Sarah’s face. The room’s temperature seemed to drop several degrees. Elijah was staring rigidly at his untouched tray of Salisbury steak.
“I was just trying to be friendly,” Sarah said, a defensive edge creeping into her chirpy voice.
“Were you?” Izuku asked, his tone shifting to something softer, more innocently curious. He leaned forward slightly. “Because where I’m from, which is Japan, walking up to someone and shouting the wrong language at them is usually considered really, really rude. Or a sign of a stroke. You feeling okay? Should we call the nurse?”
Tyler let out a sharp, guffawing laugh he couldn’t contain. He quickly covered it with a cough.
Sarah’s cheeks flushed a blotchy red. “God, I was just making a joke. Sorry for trying to, like, connect with your culture or whatever. Not everyone is so sensitive.”
“My culture,” Izuku said, mimicking her tone perfectly, “isn’t a punchline you learned in ‘world cultures’ seminar. It’s my dad. It’s my grandparents. It’s the food I’m eating right now that your stupid bow almost made me lose my appetite for.” He said it with a blunt, brutal simplicity. There was no academic rage, no political scaffolding. It was personal, and petty, and visceral. “You didn’t connect with shit. You just made yourself look like a dumbass.”
The table was silent. No one moved. Maya was staring at Izuku with a mixture of shock and dawning respect.
Sarah’s mouth opened and closed. The sheer, unfiltered crudeness of the attack had shattered her quirky, try-hard persona. She’d expected either appreciation or maybe a little awkwardness. Not this. Not a pretty boy with a lunchbox of fancy food calling her a dumbass to her face. She looked at Elijah for backup, but he was studying a stain on the quilt as if it held the secrets of the universe.
“Whatever,” she finally spat, grabbing her backpack. “This friend group is toxic. And your hair is stupid long for a guy.” She stood up, chair screeching. “Come on, Elijah.”
Elijah didn’t move. He looked at Sarah, then at the table of his friends—friends he’d had since freshman year, friends who knew his weird obsession with fungal spores, friends who’d covered for him when he’d accidentally set the chem lab sink on fire. He looked at Izuku, who was now calmly eating his asparagus, the storm having passed as quickly as it arrived.
“I’m… gonna stay here, Sarah,” Elijah said quietly. “See you around, maybe.”
The humiliation on Sarah’s face was complete. She turned on her heel and marched away, quickly swallowed by the crowd.
For a long moment, no one spoke. Then Chris carefully placed a final carrot stick on his pentagram.
“Well,” Penelope said, exhaling loudly. “That was a fuckin’ trip.”
Tyler was looking at Izuku, a new, appraising glint in his eyes. “Izu… ‘Your hair is stupid long for a guy’?”
Izuku shrugged, the coldness gone, replaced by his usual airy nonchalance. He flipped his hair over one shoulder with a practiced toss. “She’s just mad because her blonde highlights look like they were done by a blind person with garden shears. And her sweatshirt is giving discount bin spirit Halloween.”
The tension broke. Mateo started laughing for real, a wheezing, helpless sound. Maya grinned, picking up her nail polish again. “You eviscerated her, Izu. I didn’t know you had it in you.”
“I don’t,” Izuku said, picking up his phone to check for texts from his daddy. “I just really hate stupid people. They’re exhausting. And she interrupted my lunch.” He looked at Elijah, who still looked pale. “Don’t bring strays to the table, Eli. They might have fleas. Or worse, be from Ohio.”
Elijah managed a weak smile. “Noted. Sorry, guys.”
The conversation slowly stuttered back to life, a low hum about a math test, a ridiculous TikTok, plans for the weekend. But the atmosphere had shifted. Tyler kept glancing at Izuku. When Izuku got up to toss his empty bento box, Tyler followed him to the trash cans