“……”
Midoriya was currently locked in a staring contest with the fish served for lunch.
Their eyes were exactly the same.
Dead fish eyes.
“You can’t do it. Your body is far too pathetic to keep up with my training.”
That one line from Hakuji was enough to shatter Midoriya’s mental state to pieces.
It wasn’t even a simple “don’t do it.” He was being told, in the purest possible terms, that he was too weak to manage it.
Hakuji had cruelly smashed his head in with nothing but the naked facts.
“Should I join a gym or get a PT? How much do those even cost these days?”
Of course, that alone wasn’t enough to stop Midoriya’s Hero obsession.
He immediately looked up simple dojos and basic fitness training on his phone, but...
“A month for --- yen!?”
Midoriya’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.
A proper training gym was nowhere near a price a first-year middle schooler could afford with pocket money.
Especially since Midoriya’s mother was subtly opposed to him becoming a Hero, getting money from her was practically impossible.
“...R-running! Right, I’ll start with running!”
In the end, Midoriya decided to just run first.
He had done running a few times before, so he thought it would be the perfect starting point for rebuilding his body.
So he hurriedly shoved lunch into his mouth and planned to run around the schoolyard during the lunch break.
Thud.
“Hey, Izuku.”
“Geh! Khk! K-khrrk!”
That was, if not for the sturdy hand that landed on his shoulder while he was swallowing.
“Khk! Khuup! Gah... H-Hakuji-kun!?”
After barely forcing down the rice stuck in his throat, Midoriya could see those blue eyes looking at him.
“Just call me Hakuji.”
“Eh? W-wait, I’m sorry, but I still haven’t finished my summary notes...”
“I didn’t come for that. After class today, follow me.”
“Huh?”
What was this? Was he about to get shaken down by the very person he trusted?
With that horrifying thought in mind, Midoriya couldn’t focus very well on his after-school study session with Hakuji either.
“Ah, no, it’s not like that. Soryu, no, Hakuji-kun wouldn’t do something like that~”
Even while slashing mercilessly through Hakuji’s answer sheet and marking every mistake, Midoriya desperately tried to erase the bad thoughts.
...Though, to be fair, he had secretly hidden the precious 5,000 yen in his wallet inside his sock earlier.
“Then we’ll stop here for today.”
“...Huuuu...”
Fortunately, while knowledge was being force-fed into him until steam practically rose from Hakuji’s head, there was no shakedown and no beating.
“.........”
And so Hakuji and Midoriya left through the front gate together, watching the sky as the sunset just began to tint it.
“Now then, Izuku.”
“Y-yes!!”
When Hakuji suddenly spoke again, Midoriya, who had just barely started to relax, jumped so hard he bounced about fifty centimeters off the ground.
“Like I said, just follow me. That’s the start.”
“Huh, y-yeah?”
“Didn’t you say you wanted to keep up with my training? Then the first step is actually following along.”
“Ah...!!”
Midoriya had never imagined Hakuji would really let him join in on training like this, so he looked at him with a shocked, moved expression.
“It’s just a simple run, so keep up.”
“Yes!!”
Midoriya tightened the laces on his beloved basketball shoes and followed Hakuji, who had started off at a light jog.
“I-it’s a little fast, but this is fine!”
At first, he managed to keep up well enough.
“Hah. Hah. Hah...! W-wait, h-how long are we going...?”
But at some point, he realized something was wrong.
The sun had already gone down completely, and Midoriya was running so unsteadily he could barely keep his form.
“Hek, heeek...!”
Eventually, he reached the point where he had to stop every so often with his hands on his knees.
And in the end...
“Uuup!”
He got the joy of reuniting with the fish he had eaten at lunch.
Shudder, shudder, shudder.
Midoriya’s legs were trembling like those of a newborn deer, and his whole body was drenched in sweat, a complete mess.
“Cough! Ugh!!”
“Here, water.”
“Th-thank... g-gwaaaah!”
As Hakuji patted his back, he suddenly thought to himself, “Just how little stamina does this guy have? We only ran for two hours.”
Hakuji didn’t experience physical fatigue, but even back when he had a human body, he had never vomited and collapsed after just a few hours of running.
Of course, that was Hakuji’s standard, and he was basically the poster child for absurd physical toughness, so Midoriya had every right to feel wronged.
It wasn’t even jogging. He had kept up nearly full running speed for two hours!
“That’s enough for today. Go home.”
“Ah, I can still... I can still do more... ugh!”
“Stop. Any more than this and your body will break down.”
Seeing how his face had gone from red to nearly pale, Hakuji couldn’t help but smile a little at the fact that Midoriya had really used up every last bit of his stamina.
He hadn’t expected him to keep up until he was completely drained.
“Go home for today. We have to do the same thing tomorrow.”
“Eh.”
“Hm? Don’t tell me you thought this was just for one day?”
“N-no, that’s not it...”
“Then eat a bigger lunch tomorrow. So you can throw up and still be fine.”
The words “Isn’t not throwing up the more important part?” rose all the way to Midoriya’s throat, but when he saw Hakuji’s faint smile, he couldn’t bring himself to say it.
“Y-yes...”
In the end, all he could manage was a dying little yes from his mouth.
For the record, that day...
After running for two hours, Midoriya had ended up so far from home and so completely drained that he had no choice but to take a taxi back, which meant he had to spend all 5,000 yen he had been saving in case Hakuji tried to shake him down.
“...Bye-bye. My limited-edition All Might figure...”
As he paid the taxi fare, Midoriya could only burst into tears all over again.
He cried even harder at the thought that he would have to do this again tomorrow.
At the same time...
“If you’d healed that slowly, you’d already be dead from blood loss!”
“I’m sorry!”
“If your cell recovery is that slow, you’d already be lying in a coffin waiting!”
“I’m sorry!!”
Koyuki was a person with a rare healing-type Quirk.
Because of that, the government had assigned her a special private tutor early on and was giving her special lessons.
“Patient number one has a fracture! Patient number two has a muscle tear! Patient number three has a skin laceration! Who do you heal first!?”
There was just one small problem: the content was absurdly intense.
“Uh. Uh!? T-the first one...?”
“Are your two hands just decorations!? One hand at a time! You can heal numbers one and three at the same time! And you didn’t even ask where the injuries were!”
“I’m sorry!!”
With tears in her eyes, Koyuki was reading an enormous stack of medical books.
“Recovery Girl! I don’t understand this problem!”
“That’s the cell regeneration explanation for tumors I taught you yesterday. Review it again!”
“I’m sorry!”
Koyuki was studying like mad, trembling before the old woman who was only half her height.
“I’m so sorryyyy...!”
“A healing Hero has to save one more patient instead of wasting time crying. You can’t give up this easily! Instead of apologizing, read one more line!”
“Y-yes...!”
Watching Koyuki sniffle until the tip of her nose turned red, Recovery Girl thought she would happily whack the head of the government official who had saddled her with this burdensome, unpleasant job.
“Such a lovely child... sigh! Sigh!!”
There was a reason why Recovery Girl, famous for loving children and being kind, was teaching her first direct disciple in such a harsh, urgent way after decades.
“W-what happened to you, Toshinori...!?”
“...I’m... fine...! I, I am the Symbol of Peace! I can’t stay lying in a hospital bed like this...!”
“You’ll die! You’ll die, Toshinori!!! Stay in bed! Don’t get up!”
Thinking of that one idiot who should be lying in a hospital bed right now and yet was still out there working, Recovery Girl tightened her wrinkled hand around her syringe-shaped cane again.
Recovery Girl’s healing power only accelerated the body’s natural recovery ability.
It could not properly affect missing internal organs or fatal injuries beyond what the human body’s natural recovery could keep up with.
“But... this child is different.”
Pong~ pong~~
Small snowflakes drifted from Koyuki’s hands and sank into a bent flower stem.
“It’s not just about restoring cells, or anything on that level.”
And in an instant, tiny green leaves and roots began to glow and bloom again from the broken stem.
“As long as something is alive, this Quirk returns it to the form [that life was originally meant to have].”
Pyoong~
In the end, it produced a fresh, blooming flower once more.
“With this child, I might be able to restore that foolish man to how he was before!”
Even Recovery Girl, who had already seen Koyuki revive a flower whose stem had been completely broken, could not hide her astonishment.
What Recovery Girl did not know was that this was the power Koyuki had longed for, and longed for, and longed for again.
It was the manifestation of Koyuki’s wish to see the person she loved return to their original self.
“All right, next is animals. I happened to find a hamster at a nearby animal hospital that had twisted its leg, so I brought it here.”
Of course, because of that power, she had ended up on the government’s radar and was now being forced through this brutal crash course.
“I-I’m really trying, Hakuji-san! Because I want to see Hakuji-san!!”
Using her Quirk on the hamster until she reached her physical limit, Koyuki steeled her resolve once more.
At the same time...
“Ta, tanjento... co-cosine... si-sine...”
Hakuji’s eyes spun as he stared at the mess of math formulas and English scattered everywhere, heat boiling up in his head. Then he suddenly snapped his eyes open and shouted, “The answer is number three!”
Confidently, he checked the answer sheet at once.
[2]
“Kraaaah!!!”
Boom!!!
Once again, an innocent rock was blown to pieces.
TMI.
1. When Hakuji blows off steam, imagine him smashing Tanjiro’s Nichirin sword to pieces.
2. Hakuji’s grades are roughly equivalent to a Korean 4th to 5th level, and in the worst subjects about a 6th level. And he has to drag those up to a 1st level within three years.
3. After class, Recovery Girl always gives Koyuki lots of snacks and comforts her while apologizing.
4. All Might was injured only two years ago, so right now he’s basically working around with a giant hole punched through his stomach like a donut.
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