Chapter 122: A Season for Encounters

Before the student body disperses, Hound Dog, the school's lifestyle counselor, barks at them, and Sekijiro Kan translates: there was a fight last night, and everyone is expected to behave as U.A. students should. Nezu releases them by year, third-years first, and as they file out one of them wonders aloud who was brawling.

In Class 1-A, Shota Aizawa announces the return to normal lessons and warns that training will bite harder than last term. Tsuyu Asui asks about the hero internships, which pricks up the ears of Fumikage Tokoyami, Momo Yaoyorozu, and Hanta Sero. Shota explains: hero activity conducted off campus, a more structured take on the field training they previously did alongside professionals. Ochaco Uraraka questions what the scouting at the Sports Festival was worth if real experience was coming anyway, and Shota answers that the internships are where those connections get spent. Students now arrange them at their own discretion, because agencies once ran their own recruitment drives and ended up fighting over U.A. students. With most of the class holding provisional licenses, they can join formal, longer commitments. Written reports will be expected, though he defers the details. He hands off to Hizashi Yamada.

At the Heights Alliance dorm, Izuku lifts weights and notices the ache in his arms has nearly gone, recalling what the doctor told him. He decides to keep his emotions in check during fights so his arms stay out of it, and to lean on Shoot Style. That evening, Minoru Mineta needles Katsuki over the still-filthy dorm. Carrying out the trash, Izuku overhears classmates trading chatter about the grammar lessons Hizashi has introduced, along with the internships Shota outlined, and the three days of confinement suddenly feel like a hole in his education. He asks Tenya about the internships and is refused on the grounds that his misconduct disqualifies him from being briefed.

Walking to the garbage dump, stressed at the widening gap between himself and the class, Izuku sees a face in the wall. It points him toward the dump, then vanishes, leaving him bewildered, and reappears in the ground to remark that he is one of the livelier first-years. It bobs around him and, asked what it is, says he will find out soon enough and tells him to keep his chin up. On its way out it mentions a rumor circulating and advises him to stay alert.

Three restless days later the confinement lifts. Izuku apologizes to the class and to Tenya specifically for the disappointment, which Tenya accepts, and vows to close the gap the punishment opened. Shota arrives to cover the internships properly and tells someone to come in, which throws the class. They will hear it, he says, directly from people who have lived it, and he tells them to pay attention since these guests carved time out of packed schedules. He introduces the third-years who sit at the very top of the school, known as the Big Three. Three students walk in: one with shaggy black hair, one with long flowing hair, and one wearing the face Izuku met on the way to the trash.

Shota Aizawa announces that hero work studies are about to begin and explains how they differ from the earlier field training.

Izuku encounters a mysterious face in the wall near the garbage dump, which warns him of a rumor going around and tells him to stay sharp.

Izuku's house arrest ends and he returns to class, where Class 1-A is introduced to U.A.'s Big Three, one of whom Izuku recognizes from the night before.

Kohei Horikoshi's seventeen-page chapter appeared on January 16, 2017 in the seventh issue of that year and was collected in volume fourteen. It opens the Shie Hassaikai arc.

Tsuyu Asui appears on the cover. Tamaki Amajiki and Nejire Hado both debut, and the material became the sixty-second anime episode.

Settings include Class 1-A and Heights Alliance, with Invisibility and the first appearance of Permeation among the Quirks shown. Horikoshi's comment celebrates his assistant Fushimi's one-shot appearing in the same Japanese issue.