In the middle of the noisy dinner, some people laughed and chatted happily, while others watched from a little distance away.
In the darkness, Kota stared at the place filled with light and smiles.
A storm raged inside his small chest.
He stood there frozen for a moment, then could not hold back the churning feelings any longer and quietly slipped away to a place of his own.
Someone saw him go.
"Kota... where is he going? He should be eating dinner."
Midoriya listened to Mandalay calling for Kota and thought to himself.
The sight of the child disappearing into the dark looked so small and fleeting that it made him want to reach out and hold him.
But he knew that even well-intentioned actions could hurt someone if they were done carelessly.
He went inside, explained the situation to Mandalay, and said he would bring the food to Kota himself.
He followed Kota’s footprints through the darkness, carrying a plate, and walked for how long, he did not know.
Far ahead, he finally saw the child’s back as he stood in silence, looking up at the sky.
Midoriya spoke as naturally as he could.
"You... you’re hungry, right? Eat this, at least. I brought curry..."
"You jerk! How did you find me?"
Kota sprang to his feet in shock and shouted like a hedgehog bristling with spikes.
Midoriya, overwhelmed by the force of it, apologized.
"Ah, sorry... I followed your footprints. I just thought you might not want to eat..."
"Forget it. I don’t need it. I told you already, I’m not going to hang around with you people. Get out of my secret base!"
"So this was a secret base..."
Midoriya looked around again, and Kota snapped at him irritably.
"Training your Quirk or whatever, what a waste of time. It makes me sick! What, are you that proud of it? Power..."
Midoriya carefully spoke to Kota, whose reaction was almost like a seizure.
"Your parents... were they, maybe... Water Hose, the one with a water Quirk?"
The boy’s eyes went wide, then he shouted fiercely.
"Mandalay told you, didn’t she!"
"No! I mean... sorry! Yeah. I heard bits and pieces while the conversation happened to drift that way, and when I pieced the information together, I thought maybe that was it... It was a terrible incident. I remember it."
"Shut up. Everyone’s gone crazy, that’s all. Acting like idiots, talking about heroes and villains and trying to kill each other! Going on and on about Quirks! Bragging about them! That’s why this happens... idiots!"
‘It’s not just heroes... Kota-kun hates Quirks, hates the whole superhuman society itself...’
Watching Kota spit out venom like an injured beast growling, Midoriya felt a bitter ache.
When Midoriya lowered his head, Kota barked at him.
"What now? If you’re done here, get lost!"
"No, it’s just that... my friend, you see... he didn’t inherit a Quirk from his parents."
"Huh?"
"It’s rare, since it’s something innate, but apparently that kind of thing does happen. But he ended up admiring heroes. Still, in this day and age, you can’t become a hero without a Quirk. For a while, he couldn’t accept reality and kept training anyway."
At the unexpected story, Kota fell silent and listened.
Midoriya spoke about his own experience in a calm voice.
Something he could now look back on and say, ‘That happened back then,’ but at the time had been a painfully bitter experience.
"Trying to pull things toward himself, or trying to breathe fire. But it didn’t work. Everyone has their own thoughts about Quirks, so I can’t force my opinion on anyone and say I’m right. But if you deny it that completely, you’re only going to hurt yourself. That is, so..."
"Shut up! Quit running that mouth of yours! Get out!"
"Sorry. I’m not very good at saying things clearly. I’ll leave the curry here."
Midoriya said that much and set the plate down on the ground before turning away.
Kota lowered his head and muttered, "So noisy. All of you."
Under the falling starlight, his turbulent heart drifted aimlessly.
The complicated night passed.
The next morning, Aizawa’s rebuke came down on the remedial group, who were dozing like sick chickens.
"Remedial group, your movement has stopped!"
"Ah, yes!"
"S-sorry. I’m kind of sleepy..."
"I can’t believe yesterday’s make-up work went until 2 a.m. And we still had to get up at 7!"
Aizawa snorted at the children’s excuses and complaints and answered.
"That’s why I told you it would be rough. This isn’t just about strengthening your Quirks. More than anything else, it’s about the weakness in your conduct that showed up during the final exams! Keep in mind exactly why you’re more exhausted than the other classmates, and move!"
"Y-yes..."
At their feeble response, Aizawa turned and spoke to Uraraka, who was walking while floating a huge boulder, and Aoyama, who had come out of the bathroom clutching his stomach.
"Uraraka, Aoyama! You’re the same. You barely scraped by. If 30 points is the line, you were around 35. Don’t let your guard down. And the rest of you, don’t dawdle either. Whatever you do, always keep your starting point in mind. That’s what improvement is."
After three straight days of training, the children were already grinding their teeth and moving mechanically, but at Aizawa’s words their eyes sharpened.
"Always keep in mind what you’re sweating for, and what you’re enduring all this hardship for!"
Midoriya kept Aizawa’s words in mind as he moved his body, when a thought suddenly occurred to him.
"Come to think of it, Aizawa-sensei. It’s already been three days..."
"Don’t latch onto me the moment I speak."
Though he scolded Midoriya, Aizawa leapt down and stood in front of him.
"Is All Might, or rather, are the other teachers not coming this time?"
"As I said before we came to the camp, we’re keeping the numbers to the absolute minimum so the Villains don’t catch wind of our movements..."
"That’s why the camp ended up being held where the four of us are!"
From the cliff above, Ragdoll shouted with her catlike hands spread wide.
Aizawa ignored her as naturally as breathing and continued.
"And especially All Might, since he’s suspected to be one of the Villains’ targets, we can’t exactly ask him to come. He stands out. That man does."
Midoriya was briefly thrown off by the hint of malice in Aizawa’s words, but he quickly calmed himself.
He clenched his fist and looked down at it.
"All Might... isn’t coming."
"Meow-meow-meow-meow! More importantly, everyone! Tonight, we’re holding a joint-class courage test! After proper training comes proper fun! The carrot and the stick, baby!"
At Pixie-Bob’s lively shout, which would have sounded youthful if not for her age, Jiro said with a drooping face, "I really hate scary stuff..."
"A dark spectacle."
"So they even do events like this."
"I like that it’s class-versus-class."
As the children reacted in their own ways, Pixie-Bob raised a hand and encouraged them.
"So! For now, put everything you’ve got into it!"
"Yes, ma’am!"
And so the third day of training flowed on with the children’s sweat.
Against a sky stained red, the training finally ended, and the children prepared dinner more skillfully than they had the day before.
As Midoriya was putting chopped firewood into the hearth, Todoroki’s question came from beside him.
"Did you have some business with All Might? You asked Aizawa-sensei about him."
"Yeah... it was about Kota-kun, sort of..."
Midoriya was a little flustered by the question from Todoroki, who could not exactly be called talkative, but he quickly pulled himself together and answered.
"Kota? Who’s that?"
"That kid over there, you know... Mandalay’s cousin? Huh? He’s gone again."
‘Maybe he’s at the secret base. He really must hate being with us...’
Midoriya, feeling down again because Kota was nowhere to be seen, explained the situation while hoping for even a little help.
"That kid hates heroes, no, the superhuman society itself, the Quirk-obsessed society. I couldn’t say anything that would help him at all. I was wondering how All Might would answer him. Todoroki-kun, what would you say?"
"It depends on the situation."
At Todoroki’s calm, textbook answer, Midoriya’s voice rose before he realized it.
"Well, yes, it does depend on the situation!"
"If some random guy who doesn’t even understand his own circumstances starts forcing the right answer on you, it’ll only make your head more tangled. What matters is what he did, and whether the person saying it has the right to say something like that. If words alone were enough to move someone, then that’s all the weight they ever had to begin with. Words always come with actions... I think."
In Todoroki’s calm voice, old memories and more recent ones surfaced.
A guy who said that if he wanted to be a hero, he should train, roaring like a lion as he cut and stabbed through Villains over and over until they fell.
To Midoriya, who had had nothing and been nothing, that sight was a shock.
And the hand that person had held out, inviting him to train together, had lifted up a heart that had already given up.
The same was true of an evening one day, when the sunset hung down like a red curtain.
The person he had admired, the hero of an age, had looked thin and unimpressive, yet he had said in a voice full of certainty that Midoriya could become a hero.
The reason he had no choice but to kneel there and sob was probably because he had waited too long.
When his anxiety and doubt about himself had spread like a plague and filled his chest, that one sentence erased every negative thing.
Maybe if it had not been All Might, it would not have been the same.
More than anyone, Midoriya knew how important it was who said the words.
Then how was he, someone who was only a student, supposed to speak at all?
"I guess so. It would feel like some passerby was butting in where he didn’t belong."
Todoroki, who did not look comfortable at all, gave his thoughts to the Midoriya who was forcing a smile.
"I don’t know what you want to do with him, but barging into a sensitive issue like that so shamelessly is a problem too. You’re the kind of person who just smashes through that sort of thing without caring, aren’t you? Surprisingly..."
"I’m sorry..."
"You two! Your hands are idle! Make the best meat-and-potato stew you can!"
At Iida’s thunderous shout, the two of them ended their brief conversation and got back to work.
And so, after the exhausting training came a delicious dinner, and darkness settled over the foot of the mountain.
The children gathered in the clearing on the mountain, following Pixie-Bob.
"All right! Now that you’re full! Now that the dishes are done! Next up, it’s courage test time!"
"It’s courage test time!"
"We’ll test you!"
As the children echoed her with excitement and raised their arms, Aizawa’s icy voice cut through them.
What he said was deeply unfortunate.
"Before that, I have some very painful news. The remedial group will be having class with me from now on."
"Y-you’re kidding meeeee!"
With a face straight out of a horror manga, Ashido screamed in a white panic as Aizawa’s capture weapon wrapped around her.
The other three students in the remedial group were taken along with her.
"You were floundering more than expected during the daytime training, so I figured I’d cut into this time instead."
"Uwaaaah, please have mercy!"
"Let us do the testttt!"
The remaining children watched the ones being dragged away with sad faces.
But only for a moment; the event continued without stopping.
Pixie-Bob explained the rules.
"So then, the first team to scare someone is Team B! Team A will depart in pairs at three-minute intervals! There are signposts along the route with names written on them, so bring one back with you!"
"The team that makes the most people wet themselves wins!"
"Please stop, that’s gross."
After Jiro’s complaint, they drew lots one by one.
Kirishima ended up paired with Yaoyorozu.
Before setting out, he looked down at her and said, "There probably won’t be any problems, but take care of me."
"Ah, yes. Please take care of me too."
After exchanging greetings, the two of them stepped into the darkness.
They had already run into Team B’s students a few times when a sharp, acrid smell suddenly pierced their noses.
Yaoyorozu looked back at Kirishima and said, "Kirishima-san, is that smoke I smell somewhere...? Kirishima-san?"
"Get ready to fight."
When she turned to look beside her, she saw that Kirishima’s skin had begun to turn red.
He said in a low voice, "I think I said this at I-Island too, but if something feels off, get ready to fight first, whatever it is. The smell of something burning in a mountain like this is clearly not normal. That means you need to be ready to move accordingly."
At his light rebuke, Yaoyorozu’s expression also hardened.
He frowned at the pink smoke drifting in from somewhere.
Whatever that was, it felt like they should avoid getting close to it.
Trusting his sixth sense not to ignore the warning, he scooped Yaoyorozu up and immediately launched himself into the air.
Startled by suddenly flying through the night sky, Yaoyorozu cried out in a hurry.
"Kirishima-san! Why are you doing this all of a sudden?"
"That smoke seems strange. My [Demon Form] can block almost all physical force, but it can’t properly defend against chemical attacks. Keeping our distance is the best move. In that sense, could you make a gas mask or something?"
"Understood. I’ll make one right away."
She immediately created a gas mask from her body as Kirishima requested.
Since his hands were occupied holding her, he could not put it on himself, so that task fell to Yaoyorozu.
While the two of them put on their gas masks, Kirishima thought for a moment.
Should he head toward the source of the fire that had entered his wide field of vision, or should he put Yaoyorozu down somewhere safe first?
The answer did not take long.
Dragging someone he needed to protect into a region where anything could happen was foolish.
He informed Yaoyorozu of his next move.
"For now, let’s go to where the teachers are. After that, we’ll follow the teachers’ instructions, and on the way, if we see any of the other kids, give them gas masks first."
"Yes! I think that’s the right call too."
Thanks to having spent two days flying around with focused effort, Kirishima was now able to kick through the air with relative ease, and that was when he spotted Tetsutetsu and Shiozaki.
Seeing Tetsutetsu helping up the already-collapsed Shiozaki as he walked, he shouted urgently, "You see those two kids down there? We should get gas masks on them first."
"You don’t need to explain everything in detail. From now on, just move first."
"Right."
At Yaoyorozu’s subtle complaint, Kirishima gave a faint smile and headed downward.
He was just carefully changing direction so the two below would not be startled when, at that moment, he sensed an object approaching him within the range of his senses, which he had widened to the maximum because of the dangerous situation.
Detecting the incredible speed of the thing coming straight at him, he threw Yaoyorozu toward a tree with thick branches.
As she fell wordlessly toward the ground, he caught the strange emotion flickering in her eyes and shouted, "Run straight back to the lodge with the others! I’ll be right behind you!"
The moment his voice rang out to the still-confused Yaoyorozu, it happened.
If he had been on the ground, this would have been the moment to dodge and counterattack so completely that not even a trace remained, but unfortunately, he was still in the air.
He barely corrected his posture and crossed his arms in front of him, bracing himself as he watched what was flying toward him.
A face with friendly features and a smile full of malice filled his vision.
Having quickly grasped the situation, Kirishima bared his teeth and laughed.
The madness of battle rose in direct proportion to the distance that rapidly vanished between them.
At the moment of collision, the roar of the blast and the storm it unleashed tore through the silence of the night.
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