At 5:20 p.m., the sun over the mountains was already disappearing fast.
As the others left the building, Kirishima followed after them.
After spending the whole day talking with the Pussycats and even getting lunch from them, he had come to one conclusion: they were good people.
They did have a slightly immature side to them, but he had already met plenty of people like that since coming to this world. All Might was in his fifties and still said embarrassing things without a shred of hesitation.
Compared to that, these women were practically refined. And since they were all beautiful, it didn’t even feel like they were being indecent.
Pixie-Bob, though, was a little hard to handle with how aggressively she kept trying to show her goodwill.
At the front of the group that had come out from the red-tinted building, Pixie-Bob planted both hands on her hips and looked out beyond the forest.
"Ah, you finally made it, meow!"
"You’re pretty late."
At Mandalay’s voice, the children emerged from the shadows of the forest, with Todoroki leading the way.
They all looked absolutely miserable, as if they had been through hell.
Todoroki had frost clinging all over his right side, while Bakugo’s hands were trembling violently.
Iida dragged himself along with his legs still smoking black, and Midoriya was forcing his half-lidded eyes to stay open.
The rest of the kids looked just as ragged and dazed.
"What do you mean, three hours?"
At the children’s resentful cries, Mandalay answered cheerfully.
"I meant that it would take us three hours. Sorry!"
"You just wanted to show off the gap in skill... That’s mean."
"I’m hungry! Ugh!"
Of course, words like that weren’t enough to calm down kids who had gone through all that misery.
Pixie-Bob covered her face with both hands and spoke to the exhausted students.
"Meow, meow, meow, meow, meow. Still, honestly, I thought it would take longer! My earth-mound beast was easier to handle than I expected! Nice, you guys! Especially those four over there! Was that decisive action thanks to your experience?"
She pointed at Midoriya, Iida, Todoroki, and Bakugo.
Then she licked her lips with her tongue out and circled around the four promising students.
"I’m looking forward to seeing what you’re like in three years!"
"Mandalay, is she always like that?"
Aizawa asked, dumbfounded by the way she was already eyeing the kids again.
Mandalay sighed.
"She’s anxious too. She’s about that age now."
"About that age, you say—huh?"
"What do you mean, ‘you say’?"
Midoriya’s clueless remark was cut off when Pixie-Bob lunged at him and grabbed his head.
Feeling the murderous aura around her, Midoriya broke into a cold sweat.
"I-I’ve been wondering about this! That child! Whose son is he?"
"Ah. No! This kid is my nephew. Kota! Come on, say hello. You’ll be spending a week with them."
The answer came from Mandalay.
At her words, Midoriya approached the little boy, who was glaring at them with obvious hostility, and greeted him.
"So, I’m Midoriya from U.A. High’s Hero Course. Nice to meet you."
Midoriya offered his hand with a friendly smile, but the goodwill was returned in a far more forceful form.
With a punch straight to the groin.
"Guhh."
"Midoriya-kun! You brat! Nephew boy! Why did you hit Midoriya-kun’s balls!"
Iida’s anguished shout rang out as Kota trudged away.
He flashed a sharp look and answered, "I have no intention of spending time with people who want to be Heroes! Spend time together?"
"How old are you, anyway?"
"What a rude little brat."
"Doesn’t he look a little like you?"
"Hah! Don’t yap at me, you uncontrollable bastard!"
"Sorry."
Bakugo, oddly warm-eyed after seeing Midoriya get hit, spoke up while Todoroki added a comment without any malice at all.
As always, the result was Bakugo getting angry.
Aizawa stepped in to sort out the mess.
"Enough fooling around. Get your bags off the bus. After you move them to your rooms, dinner will be served in the dining hall. After that, you’ll bathe and go to sleep. The real training starts tomorrow. Move it."
The students, so exhausted they looked ready to melt into the ground, forced their heavy bodies to move at Aizawa’s command.
Kirishima, who had already carried his own luggage, watched them and thought, Should’ve just come by bus...
Thinking about it, it was obvious they weren’t going to leave the kids’ luggage behind.
He had run after the cars for nothing when he could have just taken the bus, so he felt irritated for no reason.
Once the luggage had been moved, the students began eating dinner at outdoor tables lined with all kinds of food.
Though the schedule had been exhausting from the start, the kids had finally let their guard down and were now eating and chatting noisily.
"Huh? So the girls’ room is normal-sized?"
"Do the boys all sleep together?"
"I want to see it! Hey, can we come look later?"
"Of course it’s fine!"
The atmosphere was so relaxed it felt like they were all on a group outing.
In the middle of it, Kirishima looked at Kaminari, who was stuffing his face with obvious delight, and asked, "Tastes good?"
"Huuuu! It’s delicious! Rice grains that can stand up to Lunch Rush’s skills! I want to chew them for the rest of my life! Huh? A stone pot? Is this a stone pot?!"
"Yeah. If it tastes good, that’s enough..."
Kirishima, who had arrived early and had to help the Pussycats prepare twenty-five servings of food, silently nodded as he watched the kids eat like starving animals.
Just then, Pixie-Bob came over carrying a plate and said awkwardly, "Well, yeah, but... maybe because they’re so hungry, their energy is kind of all over the place. Still, this is the only day we’ll be taking care of everything for you, so eat as much as you can!"
"Thank you!"
"No matter how I think about it, I don’t think anyone’s ever taken care of me before. I’d be more likely to be the one taking care of others..."
No one paid any attention to Kirishima’s quiet mutter.
Meanwhile, Mandalay, who had been busy moving around, called out to Kota.
"Oh, Kota, can you move those vegetables over there?"
At her words, the little boy, who had been glaring resentfully at the students eating, quietly picked up the crate of vegetables and moved it.
Midoriya and Kirishima, both in the middle of eating, watched him go.
It was for slightly different reasons, but both of them were concerned about the kid.
Still, there was no chance to talk to Kota.
After finishing dinner, the two of them headed to the bathhouse with the other boys.
After a day of intense movement, everyone sank into the hot water with expressions of utter relief.
Then Sho, his face red, spoke up.
"Kirishima-kun."
"What is it? And if your face is red because of the heat, get out of the bath right now. If not, then move that face away from me. Seeing a guy standing there naked and blushing while staring at me makes me want to snap his neck."
"Ahem. That’s a frightening way to put it. More importantly, aren’t you bothered by what’s on the other side of that thin wooden wall?"
"Hm? Ah, the women’s bath?"
"Don’t say it so bluntly! I’ll look like a pervert!"
Kirishima gave Sho a pitying look.
Still, for a kid that age, it made sense that the mere fact of naked women bathing on the other side of the wall might be enough to excite him.
Then again, if he wasn’t seeing them directly or bathing with them, it could only be because he was still young.
Comparing him to Kirishima and the others, who had spent hundreds of nights sleeping beside women, was obviously unfair.
"Stop saying useless things and get some rest. Starting tomorrow, the gates of hell open."
"Hm? Gates of hell?"
At Sho’s question, Kirishima looked at him with genuine pity this time.
"What, you thought things were going to stay soft and easy like today?"
"Soft and easy like today? It was incredibly hard!"
"Exactly! You didn’t even come through the forest, so you don’t know how hard it was for us!"
"Then don’t get swept away by the earth mound in the first place. Besides, if it were me, I could’ve just run here in ten minutes."
"Tch! You’re practically breaking the law by only telling the truth!"
Kirishima glanced at Kaminari, who was pointing and shouting, then said, "Anyway, what we did today wasn’t training or anything. It was just a test to see how much you’ve got. If you’ve ever gone to cram school or had tutoring, you know how they hand out a test on the first day to check your level."
"Huuuu. So how much harder is it going to get...?"
"I don’t know exactly, but hard enough to make some dramatic progress, I’d guess."
Kirishima left the discouraged Kaminari and Sho behind and looked up toward the upper edge of the outer wall.
Then he shouted toward the shadow wavering beyond the mist from the hot water.
"Kid! There’s nobody here planning to peek into the women’s bath, and if there were, we’d set them straight ourselves, so you can relax!"
At that, laughter burst out from the women’s bath.
"Ahahaha! Etsu-chan! In times like this, you’re supposed to just pretend you don’t know!"
"Ashido is pretty bold too, huh..."
"I am pretty bold! Hahaha! Thanks, Kota-kun! Still, I do at least greet the kid who’s suffering because of us!"
At her words, Kota, who had unconsciously turned toward the women’s bath, caught sight of the girls’ naked bodies.
Maybe it was too much for him, because he panicked completely and stumbled backward, falling down below.
The wooden wall around the open-air bath had been built absurdly high, and he was now falling headfirst from a height of nearly ten meters. If left alone, he could be badly hurt.
"Watch out!"
"I told you to just go down already. Tch."
Kirishima caught Kota in midair and held him in his arms, letting out a sigh.
He grinned at Midoriya, whose hand had overlapped with his own in the rescue.
"Nice reflexes."
"Ah... yeah. If I’d left him alone, he would’ve been badly hurt."
"Oh. You really do have a big heart. Not many people would react like that after getting hit in the balls."
"Kirishima, don’t tease me..."
The two of them took the unconscious boy to the staff office.
Mandalay, who had been waiting there, laid Kota down and greeted them.
"He just fainted from the fear of falling. I asked you to keep watch because teenage boys’ lust can’t be ignored. Girls these days are developing so well, after all."
"Anyway, I’m just glad nothing happened."
"You must have come running over in quite a hurry."
"It wasn’t me. Midoriya was the one who panicked."
Kirishima said that while glancing sideways at Midoriya, who was visibly relieved.
After all, the boy had been snatched up in time, so there was no way he’d been badly hurt.
But Midoriya had been so worried that the kid might have been injured that he’d rushed over in a panic.
Looking down at Kota with a complicated expression, Midoriya said carefully, "Kota-kun seems to look at Heroes pretty negatively."
Mandalay looked at Midoriya quietly.
Midoriya quickly continued, "Everyone around me has always wanted to become a Hero... Ah, I do too. So seeing a kid this age act like that felt unusual."
"Right. Of course there are plenty of people in the world who don’t like Heroes, but if he’d grown up normally, maybe he would’ve admired them too."
"Normally?"
As Midoriya muttered at the implication that Kota hadn’t grown up normally, the door opened and Pixie-Bob came in.
She spoke of the burdened truth.
"Kota’s parents were Heroes... but they died in the line of duty."
Midoriya drew in a sharp breath, and Kirishima’s eyes narrowed.
With a sigh, Mandalay explained the details.
"Two years ago, they protected civilians from a Villain. It was the perfect end for a Hero, a truly honorable death. But... a child who had only just started to understand the world couldn’t possibly accept that. To him, his parents were everything."
Her face was stiff as she spoke of the tragedy.
As the heavy atmosphere settled over the small staff office, her voice continued.
"His parents were taken from him. And the world kept praising them, saying it was a good thing, a noble thing for Heroes to do. Since we’re Heroes too, maybe he doesn’t think much of us either. But he has nowhere else to turn, so he just follows along. To Kota, Heroes are an unpleasant species he can’t understand."
Midoriya suddenly remembered Shigaraki, whom he had met before.
The fear that comes from an incomprehensible unknown.
Even though they were human, with two eyes, two ears, one nose, and one mouth, he couldn’t feel that they were the same species at all.
They were the kind of opponent who inspired nothing but intense disgust, fear, and the obsessive urge to erase them from the world.
Midoriya thought that maybe Heroes looked that way to this child, too, and once again felt the difference in values so strongly that he couldn’t say anything.
Kirishima, standing beside him, was different.
"I do think adults should protect kids, but at the very least, they should know who’s protecting them. That said, I’m not about to badger a kid into thinking well of Heroes."
At his rather cynical words, the three of them turned their eyes to Kirishima.
He brushed off their different reactions without concern and continued.
"Maybe I sound like an old man, but that’s because you’ve lived too peacefully. Honestly, Kota is in a position where he can feel that way as much as he wants, and I don’t think it’s wrong for him to have a negative view of Heroes. Who am I to say otherwise? And with those media idiots making a huge fuss because they finally had something to talk about after so long, that probably made it worse. But even so, he should at least know what a Hero is before he hates them. Japan has the problem that people don’t even get the chance to understand that in the first place. Kota has good Heroes around him, so maybe his mind will change as he grows up, but what about all the others? Tch. People need to understand that Heroes aren’t rock stars. They’re people who bleed while they fight."
Soldiers in his previous life had been a respected profession.
Most people knew about their sacrifices.
Of course, there was a dark side to it too: people who came back from brutal battlefields and couldn’t readjust to society, or who fell into crime.
Some even said that more than 50 percent of the homeless in America were veterans.
And yet, soldiers were still an honorable profession.
So what about Heroes?
Everyone treated Heroes like celebrities.
Even the people who understood the special nature of Hero work still didn’t deny that Heroes were a profession that earned huge incomes based on popularity.
To Kirishima, a fighting profession should never be treated that way.
Sure, PMC employees were good fighters too.
But if there wasn’t enough profit on the line, they wouldn’t fight.
Yet how could the world only ever have favorable battlefields, useful battlefields?
A battlefield was a battlefield precisely because it was miserable and hellish.
A fighting force that didn’t know what it was fighting for, and wasn’t understood by anyone, could never last.
He looked down at the face of the sleeping boy.
Even the kid who had been scowling all day looked fairly gentle when he was asleep.
Hoping that some Hero would appear to open this boy’s closed heart, Kirishima fell silent.
With that belated silence, the first night of the training camp came to an end.
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