The memo arrived dressed like praise.
SUBJECT: Curriculum Integration & Outcome FrameworkFROM: Commission—Public Safety Pedagogy UnitTO: U.A. Faculty (Elective 4B)
The body thanked them for "pioneering moral literacy" and then asked for the one thing Renya would not give: numbers.
Request: "Please supply an equation or decision grid that quantifies harm versus help in real time. We need a clarity model—simple enough to teach, robust enough to standardize."
Aizawa read it once, rubbed his eyes, and pushed the tablet to Renya. "They want you to invent a conscience with buttons."
"Buttons sell," Renya said.
"Clarity sells," Aizawa replied. "But it breaks in the rain."
They brought it to Nezu. The principal poured tea like a judge who prefers settlements. "They're not asking for a map," he said. "They're asking for insurance."
"Against blame," Aizawa said.
Nezu nodded. "Write them something that refuses to be misused."
Renya exhaled. "So a model that collapses when it's abused."
"The best kind," Nezu said cheerfully.
He wrote the first draft alone at night, window open to a city that didn't care about drafts. The Veil stayed quiet, letting paper do what shadow shouldn't. He sketched triangles of duty, circles of consent, lines that bent rather than intersected. Every path ended in a note: Ask the person in front of you.
He brought it to class the next day.
"Be harsh," he told 4B. "Find where this hurts people."
Yaoyorozu pointed to a box labeled Delay. "If I apply this at a fire, I become smoke."
Uraraka circled Consent. "If I wait for yes, a runaway car never stops."
Bakugo stabbed a finger at Harm/Help ratio. "This is math cosplay."
Renya smiled. "Good. Keep stabbing."
Kai raised a hand. "It's beautiful until it meets time."
Hoshi added, quieter now, "And time never likes beauty."
He erased half the board. "Version two."
By the end, nothing looked like an equation. It looked like instructions for a conversation you have at speed: ask / look / act / check / own / repair. Underneath, he wrote a line that Aizawa insisted belonged there: If your choice needs a slogan, you're too late.
A photo of the board leaked anyway. The net captioned it: Kurotsuki's Six Steps to Hero Ethics. Someone put it on a mug before lunch.
The Commission scheduled a joint session. Kurobane headed it, Imai flanked it, the director wore patience like a borrowed suit.
"Here's your clarity," Renya said, handing over a single sheet. Six verbs. No arrows. No boxes.
The director scanned it. "This isn't a model."
"It's a practice," Renya said.
"We can't roll out a practice," a deputy protested. "We need compliance."
"You'll get compliance with the verbs," Aizawa said. "The nouns make tyrants."
Kurobane slid a different page across. "We'll trial it as The Field Dialogue. Short form. Public-facing. No metrics."
The director exhaled through a dozen political contingencies. "Fine. Pilot only."
Imai smiled without gloating. "We'll add a Repair Log—short debrief heroes file when they caused harm, however small."
The deputy winced. "You want us to collect confessions?"
"I want us to collect humility," Imai said.
They left with two wins and a future problem. Outside, Kurobane said to Renya, "You realize clarity has a price."
"Everything does," Renya said.
"They'll send bills to you."
"I'll pay," he said. "In lessons."
The bills came fast.
Talk shows loved the six verbs. They ran segments called Ask/Look/Act with staged rescues and influencers who cried on cue. A popular app launched a "Field Dialogue" widget with cutesy sound effects. The first time it pinged REPAIR mid-rescue, the public lost its mind.
Quiet Rooms flared with debates. A paramedic posted: If I file a repair log for every bruise I cause lifting someone, I'll drown in paperwork. A teacher replied: If my apology takes longer than my harm did, I failed twice. Aki pinned both and added: Clarity that shames is propaganda. Clarity that invites is culture.
Hoshi messaged Renya at 2 a.m.: If I confess on paper, will the paper keep me from trying again?He replied: If it does, burn the paper. Keep the practice.
That week, U.A. hosted the first open Field Dialogue workshop—students, pros, paramedics, shopkeepers. The room filled with tired people practicing sentences they'd avoided for years.
A middle-aged hero stood and said, "I broke a wrist last month pulling a kid out of a jammed door. He's fine. I wrote REPAIR on a napkin and brought him ice cream. It felt… better than pretending."
A student admitted, "I yelled at a bystander. He yelled back. I apologized. He filmed it. The clip is still up. I'm okay."
A baker said, "I make coffee too hot when I'm angry. I started putting CHECK on the machine."
Aizawa watched faces unclench. Renya felt the city add a new muscle.
At the end, a boy asked, "What if the verbs slow me down?"
"Then you carry them until they become reflex," Renya said. "This class isn't about your first day. It's about your tenth year."
The boy nodded, unconvinced and grateful.
Overturn released another video. This time he stood in a looted convenience store aisle, shelves knocked askew.
"Ask/Look/Act?" he sneered. "I asked. No one answered. I looked. I saw profit. I acted."
He lifted a camera to show a hole in a wall he'd made. CHECK: no one hurt. OWN: none. REPAIR:Try and stop me.
The feed's comments split into three predictable rivers: applause, outrage, irony. The algorithm took all three to the bank.
Renya watched it twice. "He's doing sermon karaoke," he said to Aizawa.
"Then stop writing hymns," Aizawa said.
Renya shook his head. "We write better audiences."
Two days later, a real fire tested the verbs.
Warehouse district. Night. Wind wrong. Two trapped workers, one blocked exit, pallets of solvents that did not respect curricula.
U.A. interns arrived with pros. Renya stayed back—this wasn't his rescue—but the verbs didn't care. He found himself whispering them anyway.
"Ask," Yaoyorozu called to firefighters. "Which exit is viable?"
"Look," Uraraka said, scanning ceiling braces ready to give.
"Act," Bakugo snapped, blowing a safe channel through stacked crates.
"Check," Kirishima shouted, hand on a dazed worker's shoulder. "You with me?"
"Own," Kaminari muttered, realizing his surge had tripped a pump. He fixed it without drama.
"Repair," Uraraka said later to the warehouse foreman, handing over a card with a number to call for claim filing. "We caused minor damage to your rig. We'll help."
No slogans. No app pings. Just people doing the verbs when verbs were useful.
After, on the curb, soot on faces like charcoal maps, a reporter opened a mic. "Is this the Kurotsuki Method?" she asked.
"No," Renya said from the back. "It's grown-ups."
The next morning, the Commission's inbox overflowed with requests to license "Field Dialogue." The director smiled in a way that made Imai want to proofread the sky.
"We'll release it Creative Commons," she said. "Noncommercial."
"That'll slow them," Kurobane said.
"Slowing is the only speed we trust," she replied.
They published Version 1.0 with an annotation at the top: This is not law. This is how we stay neighbors.
Renya read the line and let himself—briefly—feel pride. Then he went to class and erased a board full of quotes that students had written to please him.
"No saints," he said. "Only sentences you'd say with your hands full."
The room exhaled. The lesson moved on.