Goal number one: become a Hero.
Goal number two: get into U.A., the Hero training facility.
“There’s no other way to meet again!”
Those were the words he had heard right before his kiss with Koyuki at the very end.
Then what he had to do from here on out was clear.
“Huu...”
Hakuji secretly gathered up dolls and towels from his father and mother and bundled them together into a makeshift sandbag.
It was crude beyond belief, made by the tiny hands of a three-year-old, but for now, this was the best he could do.
“Huu...”
He spread his legs wide.
He opened his right hand and set it in front of him as a wall for defense.
He placed his left hand between his waist and his solar plexus, ready to attack.
The preparatory stance for [Destructive Kill]—a movement he had repeated tens of thousands, no, hundreds of millions of times.
“...I want to use only the techniques of [Soryu], but this is necessary.”
He didn’t want to draw on the techniques from his demon days, but if All Might’s monstrous strength was the condition for becoming a Hero, then he had no choice.
With that thought, Hakuji narrowed his eyes and clenched his fist tight.
Of course, this disaster came from the fact that he didn’t know All Might was the world’s strongest, number one Hero, and only thought of him as one strong Hero among many.
“At the very least, I need to be able to unleash a one-hit kill punch.”
From what he had heard, to enter U.A., one had to be physically fifteen years old.
He didn’t know how far his body would have to grow, but the only thing filling Hakuji’s mind was the need to train as hard as possible.
“Hup!”
With a short breath, he threw the most basic straight punch.
The attack of the demon Akaza, who had once crushed the heads of Demon Slayers and shattered thousands of floorboards, was...
Pfoof~
“I love you~”
...nothing more than a trigger for the stuffed bear wrapped in cloth to recognize its voice sensor.
“..................”
Realizing that the road ahead was very, very, very long, a vein bulged again on Hakuji’s forehead.
At the same time.
As Hakuji kept hammering away with punch after punch and the stuffed bear kept blasting out merciless “I love you”s...
“...Haa...”
A baby girl let out a sigh while looking at sky-blue petals that resembled the color of someone’s eyes.
Her pupils were unusually shaped like snowflakes, and her irises were a vivid pink.
A snowflake-shaped ornament, one she had stubbornly insisted on wearing, sparkled in her short hair.
“...I wonder if Hakuji-san is okay...”
Her name was Koyuki. Her full name was Soryu Koyuki.
She was the woman who had been reincarnated into this world alongside Hakuji through the meddling of that crocodile god.
She herself didn’t understand why such a chance had been given to them, but if it meant being with Hakuji, she could endure anything.
Of course, after meeting again after 140 years, exchanging a kiss and a few one-sided words before parting, her heart was in a miserable state.
“Hakuji-san... I wonder if he’s okay... No way he’s still a demon... no, he can’t be.”
The image of Hakuji in the afterlife, turned into a monster named Akaza and repeating the same tragedy over and over, would not leave her mind.
That horrifying figure, swinging his fists and feet with nothing left but his name and his past forgotten.
Whoosh whoosh!
“No! Hakuji-san got his memories back! There’s no way!”
To shake off the terrible image that had surfaced in her head, Koyuki shook her head so hard her hair whipped around.
Tick!
“Ah!”
Then, by chance, one lock of hair struck the stem of a flower and left a tiny wound.
It was only a flower that would not last more than a few days, but it was one Koyuki cherished dearly.
“...Sorry.”
If she had been an ordinary three-year-old, she would have burst into tears and made a scene, but Koyuki merely looked around and brought a small finger to the wound.
And then.
Pyon~
A tiny snowflake, like Koyuki’s own name, appeared above her little finger and flowed straight into the flower stem’s injury.
Swish...
As the snowflake touched the wound, it healed as if time itself were running backward.
Koyuki’s power seemed to embody her will.
It was a Quirk filled with the desire to never again see him fighting while drenched in blood and covered in wounds.
“Right now I can only barely heal a flower’s wound, but when I meet Hakuji-san again...”
Koyuki, too, gathered her resolve and turned her attention back to her own mission.
[Simple Workbook for Pre-Elementary Students]
That mission was studying.
U.A. was one of Japan’s leading Hero training facilities.
Its entrance exam score cutoff was a staggering 79, a monstrous figure that only the top 0.18 percent of all students in Japan could achieve.
“I’ll do my best too, Hakuji-san!”
Seeing all the words and formulas she had never encountered in her life, Koyuki clenched her tiny fist.
Of course, at the same time.
I love you~I love you~I love you~I love you~I love you~I love you~I love you~I love you~
Pafpafpafpafpafpafpaf!!!
“...Next time, I’m taking that bear out. I feel like I’m the one about to go crazy first.”
Hakuji, who was busily beating up the doll, had no idea at all.
And so time passed.
When Hakuji turned four, it was surprisingly easy for his parents to discover the nature of his power.
“An injury?”
“Yes. Have you perhaps ever seen your son get hurt or bleed anywhere?”
“Uh... ...No?”
“It looked like he’d cut himself on paper, but then it seemed like he hadn’t. So then, could it be?”
“Yes, he recovered in an instant.”
They only realized it thanks to a nurse who happened to witness a needle prick from a vaccination disappear in less than 0.5 seconds.
“Your two Quirks are... self-healing and strength enhancement.”
“Ah, yes. They’re not that strong, though... I can heal small wounds too.”
“Me too. I can lift about three tons.”
Just from the words alone, they sounded powerful, but among people with those Quirks, both of them were only around the middle to lower-middle range.
“It’s rare, but sometimes one person receives not just one side’s Quirk, but both sides’ Quirks at once, and they merge into something much stronger. And considering the rate at which the cells we collected divide...
This is at a level that could almost be called super regeneration.”
Hakuji’s parents were so excited by the doctor’s long explanation that they practically bounced in place, but it didn’t matter much to Hakuji.
What dwelled in his body were the powers of a demon.
Super regeneration, monstrous strength, and even Blood Demon Art.
He still couldn’t use them properly because his body was that of a small child, but once he entered the stage where his bones and muscles were being built up, the power of Akaza would begin to rise again.
Whether the demon powers would manifest once more under the name of a Quirk, and whether he would still burn under the sun, or die even if his neck was cut by a Nichirin blade...
Even Hakuji himself did not know.
But no matter what problem arose, Hakuji would not give up.
If the sun burned him, he would keep moving even if he had to wrap his whole body in cloth.
As for having his neck cut off...
He had already nearly overcome that once, so he thought he’d be fine.
So.
He could do it.
He could do the contradictory thing of saving people with demon power.
But first, this damn candy’s...
“Grr...”
shell...
“Grrr...!”
First!
Crack!!!
The grape-flavored candy the doctor had given Hakuji shattered into pieces in his tiny grip.
“...W-well, uh, it does seem like he has monstrous strength too...?”
The doctor’s flustered expression was plain to see as the rock-hard candy was crushed to pieces by a three-year-old’s grip strength.
After that, following several discussions with his parents, Hakuji’s Quirk name was decided.
And surprisingly...
“Wasn’t there some old ghost story like that before?”
“Ah, the oni ghost story?”
Following the legend of an oni said to possess limitless regeneration and monstrous strength, Hakuji’s Quirk was also named Oni.
“...Hah. So I’m called an oni, a demon, now and back then too.”
Of course, for Hakuji, it was a self-mocking name.
But all he did was smile as he put a small fragment of grape candy into his mouth.
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