“So this guy’s name is Baku-”
What is that sound?
“Is this okay? His face is completely grape-colored—”
What are they talking about?
I feel like I’ve heard that voice before.
“Even so... we’re still, still childhood frien—”
Hey, Deku, shut up...
Why are you making a racket while I’m sleeping...?
......
But why does my face hurt so much?
What is this.
A cavity?
No, there’s no way my perfect teeth would lose to something as trivial as a cavity.
It doesn’t feel like my teeth hurt because of a cavity...
It feels more like...
Like my entire face got beaten into a bloody pulp...
“Be reborn, boy.”
Huh.
Ah.
That bastard—!!
“KRAAAAH!!!!!”
As if a volcano had erupted, Bakugo’s body sprang up like a coiled spring.
Hiss... hiss...!!
Steam poured from his mouth, and the corners of his eyes had sharpened into something almost inhuman.
His face was covered in several clear fist-shaped bruises, and the surrounding flesh had swollen up grotesquely.
He looked like someone had painted his face purple.
“W-what the hell is this!!”
Then, noticing how hard it was to breathe, he found cotton stuffed into both nostrils to stop the nosebleed.
“Hmph!!”
He blew his nose, and the cotton shot out like bullets. Only then did Bakugo finally calm down just a little, spreading both hands wide as he looked around.
“........”
His expression clearly said: Where the hell am I now?
It was a house with wooden floors and wooden walls, the kind that made it feel like he’d been dropped into a wooden Edo-period drama set.
No, the house didn’t matter right now.
“Hey!! Pink-eyebrows!!!!”
How dare he ambush him like that.
Unforgivable!
Boom boom boom!
Bakugo’s palms secreted nitroglycerin-like sweat, and he unleashed a series of small explosions carrying all the humiliation, pain, and rage he was feeling right now.
“Ah, you’re awake, Kacchan.”
And the one who greeted the raging Bakugo the moment he woke up was his childhood nemesis, Midoriya Izuku, who had just opened the sliding door and come in.
“Deku!!! Why the hell are you here again!!”
“Eek!!”
Seeing Bakugo, whose anger had shot straight to the top of his head, Midoriya flinched in fear for a moment, but he was still the kind of guy who would say what he had to say to the end.
“W-well... I’m the one who carried Kacchan here after you passed out...”
“What!? Y-you’re telling me I was carried here by a Quirkless loser like you!!!!”
Bakugo’s pride was being scratched so badly it felt like someone was literally clawing at it in real time, and the few scraps of reason he had left were starting to blur.
“Answer me, Deku!! Where is this place!! And where the hell did that pink-eyebrow bastard go!!”
“T-that is!!!”
Bakugo grabbed Midoriya by the collar and shook him violently while shouting at the top of his lungs.
“Th-this is the place Hakuji-kun and I use as a training spot!”
Even with his head being shaken so hard he was dizzy, Midoriya still answered everything.
“He said Kacchan would probably wake up soon... and to bring you out when you did...”
“......That bastard’s outside right now.”
“Y-yeah.”
“Move!!”
“Ghk!”
Now that Midoriya had become nothing but an obstacle, Bakugo tossed him aside and bolted outside.
“............”
Midoriya, who had sweat through the effort of carrying the unconscious Bakugo all the way here, then being used as a messenger pigeon, then getting grabbed by the collar again, forced to spill everything, and finally thrown aside...
could only endure his misery alone in Hakuji’s hut.
“...Both of them......... are... too much...”
If he had known how to swear, he would have only muttered a quiet “fuck” under his breath.
Bang!
The moment Bakugo kicked the door open, what met his eyes was...
Chirp chirp!
small birds flying through the sky, a vividly green lawn, and a quiet, cozy-looking forest surrounding the area.
“...A hut?”
Bakugo realized that the place where he’d been unconscious all this time wasn’t actually a room in a wooden house, but a hut. He thought that was strange, but now wasn’t the time to worry about that.
The first thing he needed to do right now was...
That bastard pink-eyebrows, sitting on a rock and looking down at him.
Beat the hell out of him like a dog catching a rat!
“Yo. You awake, Bakugo.”
“Die!!!!”
Bakugo immediately leaped up and swung his right arm wide, hurling an explosion at Hakuji.
He had long since forgotten things like being banned from using his Quirk or getting a stain on his school record from a violent incident.
He was in a state of pure rage, like a child who would charge in without caring about anything else.
Whoosh! Boom!!
But the spot where Hakuji had been sitting a second ago was empty, and Bakugo’s right hand and explosion only sliced through the air.
“Huh?”
“That makes two.”
“What...!?”
The voice came from directly behind Bakugo.
Smack!!
“Gahk!!”
With a fierce impact against the back of his head, Bakugo’s consciousness cut out again.
“U-um, is this really okay?”
“Probably.”
“If you have to say probably, then it’s not okay, Hakuji-kun.”
Midoriya scratched his cheek as he looked at Bakugo, who had been knocked out cold by Hakuji’s knife-hand strike and was now lying flat on the ground like a character in a diagram.
“But is this guy always like this?”
Setting aside the raccoon with rabies personality...
He’d been knocked out in an instant, yet he still couldn’t even recognize the other person’s skill before charging in again.
Hakuji had truly never met anyone this wildly hostile toward him outside of the Demon Slayers.
No, the Demon Slayers at least had the mission of killing him because he was an Oni. This guy was the first one who’d gone berserk for no reason at all.
“Uh. Well... he definitely wasn’t this bad when he was little. But people kept praising him, and at some point he started going seriously off the rails...”
“Hmm.”
Hakuji also spent a moment thinking while looking at the raccoon-with-rabies, a.k.a. Bakugo, but in the end he only shrugged and stuffed him back into the hut.
“Master, what would you have done if I hadn’t changed my ways that day?”
“Hm? Ahaha! I never thought about that. I was just planning to beat you down until it worked!”
He was simply doing what his master had once taught him.
“Well, I guess I’ll just keep hitting him until he’s fixed.”
“..................”
For a moment, Midoriya had the thought that if he didn’t stop this, Bakugo might actually get beaten to death.
“Hey, Deku!!!” “You idiot bastard!!” “You pebble-brained freak!!”
But then the days of persecution and humiliation flashed through his mind.
“Uh, um... I guess that might work.”
Midoriya, who honestly felt like Bakugo might need a few hits to come to his senses, could only nod.
TMI.
1. The author’s breathing! Second Form! Two-Section Slash!!
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