Hakuji and Midoriya’s time together seemed to pass several times faster than everyone else’s.
“Factor the quadratic x squared plus 5x plus 6 into (x plus 2)(x plus 3)! You have to memorize it! And in classical Japanese, the key theme in The Pillow Book is nature and seasonal description, so it’s a test favorite!”
During school breaks and after class, Midoriya stuffed as many U.A. past exam questions as he could into Hakuji’s head.
“How are you supposed to do anything if you can’t even lift that much weight!! Use your legs! Your legs and your back!!”
“GROOOAAAGH!!”
After school, Hakuji made Midoriya lift all kinds of rocks and logs, hammering the foundations of muscle into his body.
At first, it was truly a miserable time for both of them.
Midoriya suffered the same full-body soreness every single day, while Hakuji had to keep agonizing over why he had never studied.
But as if effort truly never betrayed them, the two of them slowly began to change.
“...Why are his grades going up!?”
Hakuji’s homeroom teacher was stunned when he saw the mock exam results, which had started climbing rapidly from his second year.
It wasn’t just a slight improvement. His report card graph was bending upward so sharply it was almost dramatic.
“Midoriya! Long throw, 54 meters!”
“That went insanely far!?”
“Midoriya! 50-meter dash, 5.8 seconds!!!”
“Why is he that fast!”
The class weakling, Midoriya, had suddenly started posting outstanding numbers in the class fitness tests.
At first, the people around him thought it was just a temporary growth spurt, the kind that sometimes shows up in students during puberty. But if the increase never stopped, that was a different story.
“Huff! Huff!!”
“...I’ve seen this Edo-period poem before. It feels like I personally witnessed it in a past life.”
Midoriya was doing squats with a huge load on both shoulders, while Hakuji was reading a classical literature textbook as he did one-handed push-ups in a handstand balanced on his thumbs.
And that was...
“What are they doing?”
“A strongman act...?”
What they were doing in the corner of the playground during lunch.
In fact, because that scene had already repeated itself for months, the entire school had grown used to it.
Of course, there were still eyes watching them like a thorn in the side.
“141...! Ngh! 142...!!”
“Your waist wobbled, Izuku. Start over.”
“Okay!!!”
“........”
Watching the two of them study while exercising in the corner of the playground, Bakugo’s irritation surged.
“Did you hear? Soyama and Midoriya might actually be able to get into U.A.!”
“Whoa, then with Bakugo, that makes three?”
As they entered their second year, more and more people began grouping him together with those two.
Those two trash stains had started clinging to the sides of the throne he had always believed was absolutely his alone.
The idiot whose head couldn’t keep up with his Quirk, and Deku, who didn’t even have a Quirk.
Somehow, they were being treated as his equals.
Crack...
Bakugo clenched his fist so hard he didn’t even realize his nails were digging into his palm.
He hated it.
Everything about it.
Days later...
“All right, that’s it for today. And especially this part is a common high school entrance exam question, so don’t you dare forget it, okay?”
“Yeees~”
Hakuji stuck a Post-it on the common question the teacher had mentioned, then took out his lunch box.
The contents were simple.
Only vegetables.
Boiled vegetables, grilled vegetables, stir-fried vegetables, and rice.
It looked like the meal plan of an extreme vegetarian.
Hakuji’s refusal to eat meat was his own choice.
Every time he chewed meat, he remembered the monster he had once been, the one who devoured human flesh, and nausea would rise in his throat. Before he knew it, he had become a vegetarian.
So Hakuji opened a lunch box packed with nothing but vegetables and started eating from the broccoli little by little—
“Hey, you there?”
Bang!!!!
Someone suddenly kicked Hakuji’s desk, sending the broccoli caught between his chopsticks flying into the air.
Snap!
Munch, munch...
But Hakuji, unfazed by the provocation, simply caught the broccoli in midair with his chopsticks before it even hit the floor and put it into his mouth.
“You’re the one, right? The idiot who thinks he can go to U.A. just like me, you mob character.”
“How am I supposed to know who you mean if you keep saying ‘that guy, that guy’?”
Hakuji had no intention of dealing with some little pest buzzing around him, so he answered without even looking at him.
“Ha! Like I’d care about the name of some pink-eyebrow freak.”
Twitch.
At that strange nickname, a vein briefly bulged on Hakuji’s forehead before disappearing.
These pale pink eyebrows were inherited from his mother. Nobody had the right to call them something like that so carelessly.
He was a little angry, but Hakuji wasn’t about to be baited by the provocation of some fourteen-year-old brat.
“I don’t have a name worth telling you either.”
This time, Hakuji picked up a bean and ate it, waiting for the nuisance pestering him to disappear.
It was complete, utter disregard. He didn’t even spare him a glance.
“...Y-you bastard!!”
He didn’t know how short the fuse in that boy’s head had to be for him to get that worked up over a few words, but Hakuji didn’t care.
It was a fighting spirit he felt like he’d seen somewhere before, but Hakuji didn’t bother remembering every random thug.
If the other side struck first, Hakuji would simply respond in self-defense.
“Hey, Bakugo! The teacher’s coming!!”
“Tch!”
Fortunately, just before disaster struck the boy called Bakugo, another student keeping watch noticed the commotion and called him off before the teacher arrived, letting him flee.
“So he came all the way here to pick a fight, and then runs because the teacher showed up.”
In Hakuji’s mind, that made Bakugo seem even more pathetic.
Once a fight starts, whether it ends in defeat, victory, or mutual destruction, it has to end somehow. That was Hakuji’s way.
There was no place in his world for running away so disgracefully.
That was the way of the weak—more precisely, the worst kind of weakling, the kind that tries to act strong.
Honestly, Midoriya, who was a complete weakling but still struggled to become strong, was better.
If he were still Akaza, he would have blown the man’s head off from the disgust boiling up inside him.
But now he was Hakuji.
Even though he was incredibly irritated, he simply endured it and spent the day at this school.
But this was something he hadn’t expected.
“Hey, Izuku, green tea should be fine—wait, where did he go?”
Midoriya, who had been studying with him just moments ago, had disappeared while Hakuji had gone to buy something to drink.
His stationery and bag were still in place, but Midoriya himself was gone.
There was, however, one thing that had changed.
[Hero Analysis Notebook for the Future, VOL. 1!!]
Midoriya’s precious notebook, the diary where he recorded his days of training, was now blackened like charcoal and rolling across the classroom floor, as if someone had [blown it up].
“......”
Hakuji picked up the scorched notebook and stared at it silently for a moment.
Then...
Whoosh!
He vanished in an instant, leaving only a small puff of dust behind on the floor.
“Hey, Deku!!!”
“Hiiik!!!”
Bakugo had dragged Midoriya out of the classroom, grabbed him by the collar, and slammed him against a wall behind the school.
“You want to die!? How dare you ignore me!!”
The reason was simple.
He was venting his anger.
And also.
Putting him down.
“N-no, I wasn’t ignoring you...”
Bwoom!Bwoom!
Bakugo used the same explosion from earlier to blow up Midoriya’s notebook, and now he used it from his palm to crush Midoriya’s voice down.
“What did I tell you, you idiot. Don’t go buzzing around in front of me.
“And yet.
You guys! You little roadside pebbles! Why the hell are you acting so big!!”
What Bakugo was aiming for was simple: start at the top of the public school, enter U.A. with the highest exam score, and graduate first as well.
In other words, he was walking the textbook super-elite path.
But these bastards kept crawling up.
With dirt-covered hands and feet, they kept reaching for his throne and buzzing around him.
“How many times do I have to tell you to get lost in front of me!?”
Bang!!!
Bakugo’s fist slammed into the wall right beside Midoriya’s ear.
Normally, that alone would have crushed Deku’s spirit and sent him back to staring at the ground.
Bakugo also knew that if he went any further, he might really get reported for school violence, so he had planned to stop right there.
But...
“...You...!”
Midoriya was still glaring at Bakugo with both eyes wide open.
That damn look in his eyes wouldn’t die.
“...I-I... don’t want to!”
And Midoriya immediately started speaking back without shrinking away.
“I-I’m trying too! Hakuji-kun is too! We’re both working hard! Don’t just decide our future for us...”
“Don’t get in our way!!”
Grab!
At the same time, Midoriya’s right hand clamped down hard on the wrist of Bakugo’s hand, which was still gripping his collar.
“Ha! What the hell do you think a guy like you can— ...!!”
At first, Bakugo thought it was just some scrawny little bastard flailing around, but...
Creaaak...! Crk! Crk!!
“Ghk...!”
Veins and tendons stood out on the back of Midoriya’s hand, and little by little Bakugo began to feel pain so intense it was as if his wrist were being crushed in a vise.
“Y-you bastard...! What kind of strength is this!!”
As Bakugo had said, Midoriya had once been nothing more than a worthless roadside pebble.
And yet.
“I’m not a roadside pebble! Hakuji-kun isn’t either!”
Sometimes, with enough effort, a stone could become a sculpture greater than anything else.
Before he knew it...
“Y-you...!”
“We have no reason to be called roadside pebbles by you, Kacchan!!”
Bakugo realized that his wrist was no longer gripping Midoriya’s collar at all, but was only trembling in the air.
And at that same moment.
“Yes, that was a good shout, Izuku.”
From behind Bakugo came a voice he had heard once before.
“-Move aside-”
When that voice, again carrying a savage chill, sounded behind his back, Bakugo instantly let go of Midoriya’s wrist and tried to turn around.
But before he could, a hand landed on Bakugo’s shoulder.
“And then my master said this.”
“What the hell are you—!”
Right after that.
Whoooosh---!!!
What Bakugo Katsuki remembered last was...
“Be reborn, boy.”
Bwoooom-bwoom-bwoom-bwoom-bwoom!!!
A huge, solid fist slamming into his face at terrifying speed.
“...”
tmi.
1. Bakugo, dies. Honestly, at that point, isn’t that self-defense?
2. For reference, that scene is the one where Keizo beat Hakuji up. I squeezed ChatGPT dry for this one.
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