You ever feel like you're a step behind in a race you didn't even know you were running? That was me, pacing Aizawa's room while Todoroki sat silently and Koda curled into himself on the couch.

I couldn't shake the feeling that things were slipping through my fingers.

"They're in the school," Koda had said. The words played on a loop in my head, gnawing at me. Someone we knew—someone we'd walked past in the halls—was pulling the strings.

"We're missing something," I muttered, scribbling furiously in my notebook. "There's a piece we haven't found yet."

Todoroki's eyes flicked toward me. "You think the League planted someone here? A spy?"

"Or worse," I said grimly, tapping the pen against the page. "What if it's not just a spy? What if it's someone we already trust?"

Koda whimpered from the couch, and I bit back the rest of my thought. No need to scare the kid more than he already was.

But the truth was, the idea wouldn't leave me alone.

Aizawa didn't come back that night.

The next morning, the announcement hit like a sledgehammer: another student from Class 1-B had been found. Dead.

I didn't even hear the name. All I heard was the blood rushing in my ears, the pounding of my heart as the pieces started clicking into place.

Whoever this was, they weren't just sending a message anymore. They were accelerating.

The halls were chaos. Teachers trying to calm panicked students. Whispers and rumors flying like wildfire.

And me? I slipped away from it all, Todoroki close behind.

"Where are we going?" he asked as I led him toward the training grounds.

"Back to where it started," I said. "Think about it. All the notes, the blood, the disappearances—it's all been one big setup. Whoever this is, they're not just killing—they're hunting."

"Hunting who?" Todoroki asked, his voice steady despite the tension crackling in the air.

I stopped, turning to face him. "Us. The students. But they're playing games, leaving clues, like they want to be caught—but only on their terms."

Todoroki nodded slowly. "So what's the next move?"

I glanced around, my mind racing. "We need to retrace the steps of the victims. Figure out the pattern. If we can find it, we might be able to predict their next move."

Todoroki didn't argue, and we split up, combing through the training grounds and the dorms for anything we might have missed.

It wasn't until I found myself back in the common room that something clicked.

A notebook, left open on one of the tables. Not mine.

The handwriting was careful, deliberate—and familiar.

I felt my stomach drop as I flipped through the pages.

It wasn't a notebook. It was a diary.

And it belonged to Koda.

The entries were short, fragmented, but each one painted a horrifying picture. Notes about being followed. About voices in the shadows. About being told to "lead them away" and "watch what happens."

And then the most recent entry:

They're making me hurt people. I can't stop them. But I can't tell anyone. They're watching. They'll know.

My hands shook as I closed the notebook.

"Koda," I whispered, my voice barely audible.

He wasn't a pawn in this game.

He was the one who'd been setting the traps all along.