"I suppose I'd pick Midoriya."

That was my first and only response to their most recent conversation, and that was all it took for the four of them to attack me. Not violently, really - except for Mina, who roughly messed my hair with excitement. They pushed me quickly across the food court, past the -thankfully- empty tables and plainly-sorted plant decorations, nearly tripping ourselves into a sudden halt just a few feet from the subject of their girlish cheering.

Midoriya Izuku, my classmate, friend, and better known by his pet/hero-name 'Deku'... a pretty average boy - from what I knew of him. Average in height, average in looks, averagely shy in personality, and average in tastes for someone his age. Average in almost every way - outside of his Quirk and constant murmuring, that is. Excepting those - he's a surprisingly plain person. Gets himself into a lot of trouble, sure, but that has more to do with the situations he's unlucky enough to end up in rather than his behavior.
Maybe that's why they dragged me here. Compared to the other guys they've been gossiping: Midoriya is pretty tame, and would be the easiest to approach out of all of them. But that's still no reason to force me into approaching him now. Didn't they hear the 'I suppose' part of my sentence? It wasn't a 'definitely' - and it definitely wasn't discussed over. Throwing me in here isn't them jumping to a conclusion: it's skipping an entire conversation.
This is the last time I'll ever join those 'Who would you rather?' talks, that's for sure.

"Ask him! Ask him!" they're whispering hard behind me - as if he can't clearly hear them at their volume. I wonder what he thinks of us crowding around him.

He looks at us with confusion. Sweating. Darting his eyes left and right. One of the conveniences of Midoriya's plain nature is how obvious he is to read. Even if you can't tell exactly what he's thinking, you can make a good guess as to what he's feeling just by looking at his expressions. And right now, he's clearly anxious.

"Ask him what?" I ask the trio of giggling girls on my back. I know what they want me to say, but it's a ridiculous enough request that it warrants me playing dumb.

"You know - ask him out!" Toru hisses at me.

"He's gonna' say 'yes'. So just do it!" Mina pushed me.

"Come on." Jiro is saying with a grin, "What's the worst that could happen?"

"I could lose all my dignity and he would get a very wrong idea about us." I answered them.

"G-Guys, come on... This is silly." Momo - the voice of reason - finally speaks up on my behalf. "She'll ask him out when she's good and ready."

Momo, you were so close.

"Midoriya... Midoriya..." Mineta, the little grape head, is stuttering while he's shaking. "C-Could this be? No way… Are you getting asked out?!" His face is planted onto the table now; slamming his fists and kicking his feet like a child. "You betrayed me!"

"N-No way!" Midoriya's eyes are wide, and his face is beet red. I would've been embarrassed at his reaction if I hadn't already gotten used to it. From what I've seen, Midoriya is easily flustered, especially around girls. His age or older. Reading his behavior in any other way would lead into a shallow misunderstanding.
"R-Right, Asui?" he asks as he looks at me with a pathetic-attempt of a grin. It's so pathetic, I almost end up giggling.

"Call me Tsuyu." I give him my usual response.
The excitable trio behind me begin squealing.
"I ask everyone to call me that." I snap at them.

"Y-Yeah. It's nothing like that!" Midoriya exclaims while waving his hands in defense.

"You never ask me to call you that." Mineta looks at me blankly, expecting a response.

"Anyways, this was all a misunderstanding." I say to Midoriya, knowingly ignoring the stupidly-stunned look on Mineta's face. "Sorry for bothering you during your lunch."

"It's fine. It's fine." He says to me with a slight blush. That expression was always a little endearing for me, I'll admit. It's innocent and honest. "I'm surprised so many of us 1-A students are in this mall at the same time. Are you four just hanging out here, or...?"

"Clothes shopping!" Toru shouts loudly behind us. Is it ironic or fitting that she's always the most excited about buying clothes? What with her invisibility.

"Well it is getting hotter nowadays. I'll need to get a change of clothes too... Mineta and I came out here to get some fresh air while we studied. Iida was supposed to meet with us, but he's running a little late."

"That's definitely ironic." I giggle. "You're awfully diligent to be studying this far from our next test. Not that I think you're not diligent, Midoriya. I just thought you'd unwind a little more on our day off."

"What about me? Did you think I was a slacker?" Mineta asks as if I insulted him. It's best that I keep ignoring him, since he always twists any conversation I have with him.

"I'll let you get back to your studying then." I say with a little bow of apology. The group of girls behind me are groaning and boo'ing their disappointment with me. Except for Momo, who does a small bow beside me.

"Enjoy your shopping! Oh! Um... did you want to ask me something?"

And I was so close to getting away.

"She wants to ask you out!" Toru opens her big, invisible mouth. "You don't have a girlfriend, right?"

I stiffen... I really don't want to look. But, at the same time, I really do. Maybe I'm curious about what exaggerated face he'll give in response. Maybe I'm a little curious over what he thinks of the unexpected question. I'm not really sure. All I know is that I find myself turning around anyways - probably wide-eyed and red-faced.
My reaction slackens lightly, seeing how much more wide-eyed and red-faced Midoriya is. He looks like a balloon-headed cartoon character. Should I be laughing at his expression? I should feel bad for him - but isn't that face just a bit too much?
No, I should take this very seriously. This conversation has gotten way out of line.
"Toru, be quiet." I say bluntly, "She's joking, Midoriya."

"I am not!"

"You should be. I never agreed to asking him out."

"Well - maybe you didn't, but... Midoriya, we were having a talk about which guys we would want to ask out in our class, and Tsuyu here said she'd choose you."

"I said 'I suppose' I'd choose him." I plant my face into my hand and squeeze at my cheeks hard. I know I'm blushing pretty hard. This is embarrassing. For him. For me. For everyone here. Why and how did my day lead into this? It's better that I make this as clear as I can, right here and now. "Look, Todoroki looks like he wants to be left alone, Bakugo has issues he needs to work out, Iida is too strict with everything and everyone, and everyone except for Mineta seems nice, but I don't know any of them well enough. I don't really hang out with them - and I'd never ask someone out before I do at least that."
I pull my head out of my hands and look at Midoriya. He's still frazzled, and almost like he's about to faint, but he's still here - and he's still aware enough to lock eyes with me. Hopefully he's still listening. "I said there was a chance I'd choose you, Midoriya, because you're a nice enough guy. I don't know too much about you, and you don't know too much about me, but at least we can at least say we're friends, right? And that's fine. I don't have a thing for you, just to be clear. No crush, or attraction, or even consideration. At most, I admire and respect you greatly as a friend. I suppose I only chose you as an answer to that rhetorical question because you're the safest choice of Class 1-A - for me. That's all, really. You're not the worst choice I could make at the moment. And I gave them my answer with that realistic outlook."

Mineta puts his hand on Midoriya's shoulder, and starts shaking his head. "Ooh... I think you were just rejected, buddy. But what can you do? You're just really good 'friend' material for people."

"Oh..." Midoriya voiced, shortly before sighing. His face is no longer red, and his eyes aren't comically wide anymore. He seems relieved now, though a little sad. Who wouldn't be after hearing that come from someone of the opposite sex? Even if you don't have attraction towards them - you still hold their opinion of you higher than the average peer.
Midoriya closes his eyes and gives another sigh, calming himself further. He looks at me and grins. "I'm really glad you see me as a great friend. And that you regard me well enough to consider me 'safe for dating'. I'm sure you meant that as a compliment. And I'm really honored by it. You're a really great friend to me too, Asu- er, Tsuyu. And, um, don't take this the wrong way - but, I wouldn't mind it if you asked me out either."

"Don't you like Uraraka?" I ask.

His face is a deep red now - pretty much confirming the obvious. "Wh-What? No! I-!" The girls behind me are ooo'ing and gasping in excitement, happy that another treat was tangled in front of them. Midoriya is shaking his head so quickly that it looks like it would unscrew itself. "Sh-She's a good friend!"

"If you keep calling girls 'good friends', that's all they'll end up being." Mineta attempts to lecture him with his 'words of wisdom'. "See, no girl is 'just a friend' to me, so I -"

"No girl would ever consider you a 'friend', Mineta." I respond, causing Mineta to look as if I stabbed him in the heart. "I'm just teasing you, Midoriya. Don't worry about it. And... I'm glad that you wouldn't mind if I asked you out. That's a strong compliment for me." I mean that.

"Eheh." He gives me an honest smile. I find myself smiling back without thinking. His smile's contagious... when he's not trying too hard, that is.

We find ourselves just standing and staring - continuing our satisfactory smile-backs for a few seconds longer than comfortable. How do you politely end an interaction like this? Do you just wave and leave? Excuse yourself out? It's difficult to know when there's a group of girls crushing your back under the weight of their stares. Well, what are they expecting to happen?

Midoriya is the one to break our eye contact. "Oh, Iida! You're here!" He exclaims as he looks over my shoulder. I follow his eyes and find the unmistakably stiff figure of Iida Tenya heading towards us. Seeing him always makes me kind of nervous. Not because of his behavior, but because he's very tall, robotic, and loud. A lot of things about him just make me feel uncomfortable when he's near. Like I can never relax.

Iida looks at me, then at the party behind me. "Asui. Yaoyorozu. Ashido. Jiro. Hagakure. Pleasant afternoon." he says as he does slight nods to each of us. "Were you invited to share notes as well?"

"No, no, we're not here for that." Mina backs away with a slight laugh. She's never been the type to enjoy study sessions.

"That is a nice idea though." Jiro says with her finger to her chin. She looks at Midoriya. "You think I can set up a note-sharing session between all of us sometime?"

Midoriya blinks. "Huh? Oh, yeah. I'd be up for it. Mineta?"

"Will you invite us into your room?" Grape-head asks Jiro directly.

"Ha, no. I'm thinking of holding it at a restaurant. One of the girls at Class B has a family that runs a pretty chill one."

"You're already building connections with the other classes. That's very proactive of you, Jiro." Iida responds with a half-clap. "I'll need to expand my own network in the coming year. Would you mind if you passed along the invitation to the students of Class 1-B as well?"

"Yeah, that's a cool idea. I'm sure some of them will be up for it."

"I can help with that." Momo chimes in, "I have a few of their phone numbers."

"Yaoyorozu as well! I'm falling further behind than I thought." Iida gives a strange, worried look.

"That's because you're too stiff with socializing. You gotta' be more flexible." Mina tells him.

"Look who's talking. You talk to the same three guys every day." Toru teases.

From the looks of it, the conversation just completely veered off its previous one and is heading towards more socially-neutral territory. I'm really glad for that.

It would be a few minutes still with our chatting and joking around before we ended up splitting up - and we would return to our shopping - and the boys to their studying. We decided that we were indeed going to have a large note-sharing session between the students of Class 1-A and 1-B. Even if our primary studies were completely different from one another - our general ones more or less lined up. The date of the session was still up in the air, since it's rarely ever the case that we're not exhausted on days off. But we decided it would at least be soon.

I'm kind of looking forward to it. I've been having trouble in math.