Hakuji’s daily routine was simple.
He would come back from the prison for children known as kindergarten after suffering humiliating treatment there, then fight against the doll sandbag he had made in secret from his parents.
And then.
He would replay the final battle of his previous life.
“Tanjiro.”
The swordsman who had cut off his head.
The final strike that swordsman unleashed, and Akaza’s decapitation.
“That was definitely the highest realm, the state of selflessness, the transparent world.”
If he could reach that power himself.
Then he might be able to fight All Might on equal footing.
In that case, starting from this young body was very simple.
Poke! Basic.
He would rebuild everything from the basics.
But he would not use the power of an Oni.
Everything from the beginning.
With the purest, sharpest senses possible.
Poke!!
What Hakuji had chosen was an extremely difficult and grueling path.
If you compared it to a marathon, it was like throwing off your shoes right before the finish line and starting over from the beginning with weights strapped all over your body.
With his physical strength completely spent.
He was starting again with nothing but willpower.
Poke!!!
A tiny fist sank into the doll.
Poke! Thud!
Smack!
Crack!!!
It did not take long for the doll, no, the sandbag, to be smashed to pieces.
Only
10 years had passed.
Orudera Middle School in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan.
There, a single local legend had been born.
The first-year student who had enrolled this time was the star of it all.
“Hey, that’s him, right?”
“Yeah, that’s him.”
His hair was cut short so it wouldn’t interfere with training, and he had unusual pink eyebrows and bright blue eyes.
In a Quirk society where all kinds of people existed, those features alone were nothing special, though of course it was a different story if he was that handsome.
But the reason Hakuji had become famous was a little different.
It happened about two days after the semester started.
“Is this the mixed martial arts club?”
“Huh? What’s this. A new kid?”
A first-year who had only just left elementary school boldly knocked on the door of the mixed martial arts club, where people aspiring to become Heroes gathered.
The club was famous for having members with combat-specialized Quirks, but that meant nothing to Hakuji.
He had simply come because it was a place where strong fighters gathered.
“...I’m not here to join. I came to ask for a simple sparring match.”
“A sparring match? Hey, maybe you just got out of elementary school and don’t know this, but we’re all black belts. At the very least, we’ve all been going to dojos or whatever since third grade.”
“We welcome new members, so it’s fine, okay? First you should learn how to fall properly.”
At first, the seniors thought some little brat had wandered in and were trying to send Hakuji away nicely, wondering what kind of confidence he had to act like that.
“It’s fine if all of you come at once.”
“...Hey, isn’t that a little rude?”
Of course, Hakuji’s attitude was so confident it was almost irritating, and wrinkles began to form on the seniors’ foreheads.
“This won’t do, man. I’ll teach him a lesson.”
“Go easy on him! Huh?”
“I know, I know. I’ll just teach him a lesson.”
Rattle.
One quick-thinking student quietly closed the clubroom door, in case a teacher came by and tried to stop them.
Thud! Crack! Bang!!!
After the martial arts club door closed, the only thing heard was the terrifying sound of bodies flying around.
After that, the tightly shut clubroom door opened again only fifteen minutes later.
“Thank you for the sparring match.”
“N-not at all...”
“We’re sorry for acting up...”
The seniors, sweating buckets as they saw Hakuji off while he lay flat on the floor and bowed politely, were drenched in cold sweat.
Without a single injury to any of the students, Hakuji had put every one of the martial arts club members down with nothing but simple restraint techniques.
The incident of a first-year knocking out twenty seniors in less than ten minutes spread through the entire school in an instant.
It wasn’t a one-sided beating or a real fight where both sides were trying to knock each other out, just a simple sparring match, but a first-year had subdued the school’s top Hero-course hopefuls in less than a minute per person.
“Soyama-kun! You are the hope of our Orudera martial arts club! Please!! Join us!!!”
“I’m sorry.”
“Please! I’m begging you! With you, we can do it!! Become the strongest club member!!”
“I refuse.”
After that, when it was also seen every day that the club president would come running up and cling to the first-year’s pant leg, begging him, the story spread through the school more and more until it became common knowledge rather than mere rumor.
“Join the club, Soyama!!!”
“Become an Oni, Kyojuro!!”
Hakuji, the subject of the rumor, could only get goosebumps from a strange sense of disgust whenever he saw the president running at him with his eyes gleaming.
“Then I’ll be going in.”
“You go to your own classroom too.”
“Graaah!! Soyama!!!!”
Watching the third-year senior being dragged away by the homeroom teacher in front of the first-year classroom, Hakuji merely sat down at his desk, thinking the man looked like a bloodthirsty Oni.
And so, as he dozed off again today while staring at formulas he didn’t understand, all kinds of great figures, and literary meanings, Hakuji spent nearly the entire day sleeping through class and only used his mind to plan the training he would do today.
“Ten thousand straight punches, ten thousand kicks, six hours of lower-body training.”
Since some years ago, Hakuji’s physical limits had disappeared like those of an Oni, and he spent every day solely on training, without even needing sleep.
School was nothing more than a place to come, rest for a bit, meditate, or do invisible-chair exercises throughout class to train his lower body.
Hakuji believed that before the age of fifteen, he needed to at least be able to drive one punch into All Might’s abs, so he could not waste even this time, with only three years left.
“All right, that’s it for homeroom today! Oh, and by tomorrow, hand in your preliminary high school career preference form, okay? Last year, some idiot wrote down Harvard Hero Course and I pulled his hair out by the handful~ I’m not joking, so fill it out properly and hand it in, got it?”
After the homeroom teacher made a light joke at the end and handed out the printouts, Hakuji immediately wrote this on his career preference form with great confidence:
[U.A. - Hero Course]
“I’m coming, Koyuki. In three years...”
“Soyama... with these grades, you can’t get into U.A.”
“Huh?”
Soyama Hakuji
Age: 153 years, across his entire life
The greatest obstacle, and one of the burdens of karma he had accumulated in this life.
He faced his grades.
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