Things between Kaylani and Denki had always been ridiculously simple, and that was exactly how they liked it. They were friends first, roommates in the library during finals, each other’s favorite person to complain to about university, and every so often they’d hook up—no romance, no labels, no jealousy, no expectations, and definitely no feelings. It was an arrangement built on one very important rule: don’t make it weird. Kaylani didn’t do relationships. She’d rather write a thirty-page dissertation than answer “good morning” texts, and the idea of anniversaries made her physically cringe. Denki had accepted that years ago because he genuinely loved having her in his life as a friend, and their friends-with-benefits arrangement was exactly that—benefits, nothing more. Everyone in their friend group knew something was going on between them, but it was an unspoken “don’t ask, don’t tell” situation, mostly because every time someone jokingly called Denki Kaylani’s boyfriend, she’d laugh like they’d just told the funniest joke of the century while Denki would dramatically gag and insist they were “Friendship Plus™.” Then Bakugou made the unfortunate mistake of falling hopelessly in love with Kaylani. At first he convinced himself it was just admiration, then annoyance, then a passing crush, until Mina caught him carrying all of Kaylani’s textbooks, fixing her laptop, remembering her coffee order despite hating coffee himself, and glaring at anyone who took “her seat” in lectures. After weeks of denial, Bakugou swallowed every ounce of pride he possessed and asked Kirishima for advice, only for Kirishima to immediately tell him the last thing he wanted to hear: “You have to talk to Denki.” Bakugou would have rather eaten concrete. When he finally cornered Denki to ask what exactly was going on between him and Kaylani, he expected a fight, or at the very least some territorial posturing, only for Denki to stare at him in confusion before bursting into laughter. “Dude… we’re just friends. We hook up sometimes, sure, but she’s not my girlfriend and never has been. Have you met Kaylani? She’d rather pay taxes than date someone.” Bakugou refused to believe him until Denki started listing evidence, including the time someone assumed they were dating and Kaylani laughed so hard she snorted her coffee, and Valentine’s Day when he’d jokingly handed her a rose only for her to smack him across the face with it. “You don’t need my permission,” Denki finally sighed. “She’s a person, not my PlayStation.” Unfortunately, Mina overheard only the words “permission” and “Kaylani,” which somehow spiraled into a campus-wide rumor that Bakugou had challenged Denki to a duel over her. By the end of the week, Sero was selling Team Bakugou and Team Denki shirts, Iida had scheduled an official conflict resolution meeting that only Todoroki attended because he thought there would be snacks, Mina had created a color-coded conspiracy board titled Operation: Explosive Romance, and Kaylani had absolutely no idea why Bakugou kept awkwardly offering to carry things she wasn’t holding while Denki kept giving him enthusiastic thumbs-ups from across campus. Fed up, Kaylani eventually demanded to know why everyone was acting insane, only to discover her nonexistent love life had somehow become a semester-long group project orchestrated by the biggest idiots at Musutafu University.