A perfectly ordinary walk home from school.
Hakuji and Midoriya were walking along, each busy with their own thing.
Midoriya had a dumbbell in his left hand and a notebook in his right, while Hakuji was holding a very thick English dictionary with both hands and wearing earbuds that played an English lecture.
"Damn it, I ended up with two subjects where my scores dropped on this mock exam."
"...My muscle growth is slowing down too, so the weight isn’t going up as easily..."
They were now third-year middle school students, with high school entrance exams right in front of them. They really didn’t have time to waste.
"Hm?"
"Ah, there’s a Villain over there."
Even while trying to save time on the commute to school, they happened to spot Heroes fighting a shark-headed Villain.
"Graaah!! Get lost already!!"
A huge Villain with a shark-like head was on the tracks, swinging his muscular arms wildly as he kept attacking a man over and over.
"Illegal use of a Quirk and robbery causing injury during rush hour. Truly, an incarnation of evil."
The one facing the shark-headed Villain was Shinrin Kamui, whose tree-like Hero costume stood out sharply.
"Shinrin Kamui! A rising young talent!! Hakuji-kun, look! He’s about to use his signature move, the preemptive fi---"
"I’m going on ahead. I’m not interested in watching."
But Hakuji had no interest in watching minor fights, so he immediately cut off Midoriya’s Hero fangirling at the ear and went on ahead by himself.
"Mount Lady!!!? It’s a rookie Herooo!!"
Still a total Hero nerd, Midoriya only let his eyes sparkle, completely unaware that his friend had gotten sick of him and left him behind.
Creak, creak, creak!
Even then, Midoriya never once stopped squeezing the dumbbells in both hands.
It was morning homeroom.
"You’re all third-years now!! This is the time to seriously start thinking about your futures! I’m handing out the career guidance printouts now, everyone! In the first place, almost all of you are aiming for the Hero Course anyway~"
As their playful homeroom teacher casually scattered the printouts, the kids, infected by his energy, started showing off all kinds of Quirks from their seats and making a racket.
Only three people did not join in.
"By the way, do you know what surprised me most when I took over this class this year!? There are three kids in my class aiming for U.A.~~"
At the teacher’s words, all the students who had been making noise around them stopped talking and looked over.
"Huh? What are you looking at!!"
Bakugo, who had his feet on his desk and was quietly reading an English vocabulary book.
"What are you staring at?"
Hakuji, who was studying when everyone suddenly focused on him, said it as if they were being a nuisance.
"The point the author is making is, so..."
Midoriya, who was studying Japanese while squeezing a grip trainer in his right hand, paid no mind to the stares around him.
All three of them were doing their work without so much as flinching at the noise around them.
"M-Midoriya, but isn’t he Quirkless?"
"Didn’t you see him in gym class last year? That bastard’s a monster pretending to be Quirkless."
"........."
Even the classmates who had tried to put Midoriya down shut their mouths at the other student’s words.
"Now, even with all that noise just now, those three kept studying! You should all take after them!! All three of them are in the high 70s for their mock exam percentiles!!"
Silencing the commotion with a scolding, the homeroom teacher looked at the three of them with the proud eyes of a father looking at his sons, very pleased with his own results.
Just before class started, Hakuji, who had forgotten something, spoke quietly to Midoriya beside him.
"I’ve got something else to do today, so you handle your training by yourself."
"Huh? I don’t mind, but what’s up?"
"One of the shrine statues got broken last night, so I have to carve a new one."
"...You’re doing that barehanded carving thing again?"
"Yeah."
Midoriya, remembering the insane sight of Hakuji’s newly developed hobby, where he carved statues in an instant using only his fists and feet, stared at him in horror.
After school, Hakuji took a deep breath as he looked at the huge lump of granite his father had brought home.
Then he closed his eyes and focused for a moment.
"Hup!!"
Crack!
As Hakuji let out a short breath and struck with the edge of his hand, he chipped off the corner of the rock-hard granite.
Bang! Crack! Swish!!
After that, the hands and feet Hakuji unleashed began splitting the granite lump apart piece by piece.
"Our boy really grew up well~"
"Mm-hm. I was worried when he said he’d be living outside, but if he’s like that, then he’s fine."
Watching him, Hakuji’s father, the shrine priest, nodded while drinking the matcha his wife had prepared.
As he watched the granite his son was striking gradually take the shape of a fox, Hanjiro smiled with deep satisfaction at how well his son had grown.
Though the shrine was in a rough, remote place and not especially wealthy, Hanjiro never lost his smile.
"Ssshh... hup!"
Tick!
Before long, the sun had begun to set, and the fists Hakuji was throwing became more and more precise.
The texture, hardness, and flaws of the granite felt through his fingertips...
"Not enough. More precise. Even without a chisel, I need to go beyond that..."
Hakuji had reached a realm beyond mere concentration.
Nothing could be heard.
Only a world where granite and himself existed.
A world he had visited many times before, and yet still found awkward and clumsy.
"Not yet. Not yet. I can still get stronger."
Hakuji muttered that to himself and gradually increased the speed of his hands and feet.
But quietly.
He did not need destructive force.
He poured everything into precision alone.
Little by little, Hakuji’s hands changed from a brutal path into something soft and flexible.
"The essence of Soryu is, above all, self-defense.
A style meant to protect one’s own body and protect others.
Destructive Kill is a style that abandons self-defense and pours everything into destruction and murder alone."
This was the answer Hakuji had reached at the end of his training.
He would not abandon either Destructive Kill or Soryu.
"Tanjiro, you surely handled both Water Breathing and Sun Breathing together."
He was being taught by the human who had driven him into a corner, the first person ever to defeat him.
"Haa..."
Thud!!!!
At the end, Hakuji slowly planted his foot on the floor.
Then came the fastest straight punch.
Paang!!!
Carrying the speed of air slamming into a wall, Hakuji’s arm shot out so fast that a small sonic boom burst around his elbow.
Keeeeeng!!
"Whoa!!"
Hanjiro, watching from the side, had to cover his ears at the sound of the air exploding, and his wife inside the shrine calmly put on her noise-canceling headset as if she were used to it.
Whoooosh...
Hakuji’s fist, thrown into empty air, had stopped just before touching the granite, and smoke rose from it as if he were holding dry ice.
Crack... crack...!
Then the rough edges still left on the granite fox statue began to collapse.
Tudududuk!
The useless stone fragments clinging to the sides fell to the floor, and at last the fox statue appeared in its complete form.
"Oh!"
Hanjiro, watching, clapped in praise, but Hakuji, who had received the applause, wore a sulky expression.
To his eyes, the rough scratches on the surface of the fox statue were painfully obvious.
"Tch. Still too much waste."
He had succeeded in putting maximum force into the straight punch, but he had failed to contain it all, and it had scattered everywhere.
Honestly, a third-year middle schooler unleashing a sonic-boom straight punch was absurd enough already, but Hakuji paid it no mind and took up his stance again to keep refining the statue.
But then...
"Hakuji~ Come in for a moment~! And you too, dear!"
When his mother’s voice came from the building behind the shrine, where Hakuji’s parents lived, he immediately relaxed his stance.
"Mother, what is it?"
"Dear, what’s wrong?"
Once they went inside, Hakuji’s mother was watching the news with a rather serious expression.
"Hakuji."
"Yes."
"That green-haired boy, isn’t he the friend who comes here often?"
Hakuji followed the direction of his mother’s finger and looked at the television.
And on the screen...
"What is he doing over there...?"
Midoriya was charging at a mud-like Villain.
"What the hell is that guy doing over there..."
On closer look, a familiar blond head could be seen at the center of the mud-like Villain.
And then...
"[Texas---!!! Smash!!!]"
All Might suddenly appeared from nowhere and saved them, and the news footage ended.
"No, what the hell is that guy doing all the time?"
Watching Midoriya get caught up in a sudden Villain attack and then get rescued by All Might just as suddenly, Hakuji could only let out a dry laugh at the ridiculous situation.
TMI.
1. At last, the original story is starting! To celebrate, here’s an extra chapter.
2. A perfectly ordinary middle schooler: can make sonic booms with his fists. Possesses an invincible rock in rock-paper-scissors.
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