The sensation of stepping over the atmospheric boundary high above Tokyo was always smooth.
A shortened step that reduced the coefficient of friction between my soles and empty air to zero, while warping local space at each landing point in increments of 0.05 seconds. The matte [3x3 Cube] silently orbiting fifteen centimeters behind my left shoulder kept snapping its axis of rotation with a tick, tick, correcting phase discrepancies down to the nanosecond.
The black inverted-cross piercing in my earlobe remained icy cold, heat buildup in my brainstem was zero, and my processing state was at its peak.
I skimmed over the high-voltage lines above Shibuya, leapt down to the ground, and lightly dusted off my uniform.
Wandering around alone to shop is a waste of processing power.
I pulled out my smartphone and tapped away at it.
Picking out a blazer for self-admiration while staring at mirrors by myself would be unbearably boring. What I needed at a time like this was a human mannequin with boundless energy and impeccable aesthetic sense. Nejire—the blue-haired upperclassman who had jumped for joy even after placing second in U.A.’s Culture Festival beauty pageant.
[Upperclassman. You are specially invited to serve as the appraisal panel for an oversized blazer worthy of Tokyo’s visual elite. One crepe will be provided for every piece of fashion advice.]
The very instant I was about to send the message—
Bzzzt—!!
At the heart of a downtown intersection, the huge LED display mounted on the exterior of a towering commercial building turned a lurid red amid bizarre static.
The idol music video that had been playing abruptly cut off, and an urgent-news caption in bold red Gothic lettering appeared at the top of the screen.
[Breaking News: Villain attack in the downtown area of Tokyo C-04 District, under the jurisdiction of the Ryukyu Hero Agency.]
[Multiple unregistered giant Villains have burst to the surface after destroying underground waterways and are currently rampaging. The jurisdiction’s No. 9 Hero, Dragon Hero Ryukyu, and her affiliated Sidekicks have engaged them in an emergency battle. A civilian evacuation alert has been issued—]
An ear-splitting siren blared from the display’s speakers throughout Tokyo. The location shown by the broadcast camera was the all-too-familiar eight-lane boulevard in front of Ryukyu’s agency.
The asphalt had been ripped apart like a rag, kicking up immense clouds of cement dust. Beyond the silhouettes of Villains spewing fierce flames, I caught sight of my aunt transformed into a dragon, holding the front line, and Nejire diving from the sky toward the ground while unleashing blue waves.
Pedestrians nearby screamed and scattered toward shelters like the ebbing tide.
"...Ha."
I shut off my phone and shoved it into my pocket, twisting my lips into a cold grin. With both hands buried deep in my slacks pockets, I flicked the black inverted-cross piercing in my left earlobe with my fingertip.
The [3x3 Cube] floating above my shoulder began furiously meshing its internal gears, crackling with a pale blue-white glow.
• External Phase Synchronization Interface [3x3 Cube]: Tokyo communications network proxy link fully deployed.
• Target coordinate system: Eight-lane boulevard in front of the Ryukyu Hero Agency.
• Straight-line distance: 4.8 km.
• Time required: 0.8 seconds.
"Looks like the fashion check will have to wait."
A cold blue-white calculating light swallowed my pupils whole.
At the same time the ground’s coefficient of friction evaporated to zero, space in central Tokyo warped like a sheet of paper and swallowed my silhouette in an instant.
==
KWA-BOOOOM—!!
The eight-lane boulevard before Ryukyu’s agency was hell itself. Fragments of shattered asphalt and overturned vehicles filled the road, while enormous roars rang out beyond the billowing dust.
Ryukyu, transformed into a dragon, was holding back the largest and most threatening Villain head-on. The No. 10 Hero was gradually gaining the upper hand through sheer strength, but it would clearly take time to completely overpower the hulking Villain and slam it into the ground.
The other battlefields were the problem.
Every Villain they faced had an abnormal, troublesome Quirk. The Sidekicks had already been driven to their limits, their line spread thin as they held off numerous enemies. With at least two minutes before reinforcements from the police and nearby Heroes could arrive, this was a desperate gap with no room for error.
"Haa... haa...!"
Nejire, hovering in midair, was breathing hard.
Blocking her path was a vicious female heteromorph Villain whose entire body was grotesquely twisted with mouths and tentacles. She was a wanted criminal with a pathological obsession with and jealousy toward anything “beautiful and pretty,” and a cruel cannibalistic urge to tear such things apart and devour them.
The Villain wriggled her bloodied tentacles and drooled yellow saliva at Nejire’s dazzling blue hair and doll-like face.
"...Pretty, you’re so pretty...! I’ll rip you apart and stuff you into my bellyyyyy—!!"
With a roar mixed with jealousy and madness, dozens of steel-hard mutant tentacles hurtled furiously toward Nejire’s blind spots.
Nejire hurriedly unleashed her waves and twisted her body, but her output had dropped after the prolonged melee, and she could not deflect every trajectory. The blow grazing her ankle threw her off balance, and as she plummeted toward the ground, the Villain opened her enormous maw wide and dove for Nejire’s neck.
"Nejire—!!"
Ryukyu, pinning down the giant Villain, screamed, but she was far too distant to reach her.
An absolute gap in space and time, impossible to evade. In that 0.1-second instant, just as Nejire was about to squeeze out every last drop of her wave power and shut her eyes tight—
Crackle—
Without any sound of rupture, the air itself warped like a sheet of paper.
"...Why are you drooling all over someone else’s precious upperclassman’s face, you filthy thing?"
A languid voice, cold as thin ice.
Swish.
Right before Nejire’s eyes, in the empty air directly beneath the Villain’s grotesque maw, a black-haired boy with his hair slicked back abruptly appeared as though he had been standing there all along.
The matte-black [3x3 Cube] silently orbiting fifteen centimeters above his left shoulder crackled with pale blue-white light, while the black inverted-cross piercing in his left earlobe absorbed the surrounding heat in an instant and exhaled an icy chill.
"...Huh?"
The instant Nejire’s blue eyes went wide—
With both hands buried deep in his slacks pockets, the boy looked down askance at the charging Villain’s jaw through sharp, icy eyes, his glasses tossed aside.
• Target mass acceleration: forcibly converged to zero.
• Ground repulsive force and vector reversal: forty-five degrees upward, kinetic energy amplified thirtyfold.
"Get lost."
He pulled his thumb out of his pocket and gave the empty air a single casual flick.
KWA-BOOOOM—!!
As though an enormous invisible press had detonated in midair, the heteromorph Villain’s hulking body, which had been about to swallow Nejire whole, was launched at supersonic speed toward the wall of a building across the street with a thunderous crash.
The Villain slammed into the exterior of the opposing building at supersonic speed, sending up a thick cloud of dust.
==
Nejire, sitting stunned on the asphalt and blinking blankly, was hit all at once by relief and exhaustion. All strength drained from her legs, and she began to collapse sideways.
Swish.
Just before she struck the ground, an outstretched arm caught her shoulders and back. Thanks to my frame having shot up to 178 centimeters, Nejire’s body fit into my arms—and it was far lighter and slimmer than I had expected.
"...Are you all right, upperclassman? Nothing broken, right?"
I asked in a languid voice with a trace of teasing, but Nejire’s reaction in my arms was completely unlike usual. The energy that normally had her chattering endlessly and messing up my hair like an inexhaustible engine was nowhere to be found.
"Yu-Yujin...?"
Her unfocused blue eyes looked up into mine, now that I had thrown away my glasses.
A moment of silence.
Perhaps it was the enormous maw of the Villain that had nearly swallowed her, or the vivid terror of death that had made every hair on her body stand on end for the first time in her life. The taut thread of her nerves snapped the instant she saw a familiar face.
"Waaah...!!"
With tears suddenly pouring forth, Nejire wrapped both arms tightly around my neck and buried her face in my chest.
She cast aside her title as a second-year Hero Course student and a member of the Big Three, and wept bitterly as a teenage girl who had just been walking the line between life and death. Her shoulders trembled violently, and hot tears soaked into my uniform shirt.
"...Huh?"
My flustered fingers froze in midair.
Every mental algorithm that had been preparing to needle her with shameless sophistry as usual, or crack a self-admiring joke to lighten the mood, came to a complete halt. This was the first time I had ever seen the upperclassman who always smiled so brightly and came at me with such confidence cry this bitterly like a child.
I slowed the rotation of the [3x3 Cube] floating above my left shoulder, and gently settled the cooling loop pouring from the black inverted-cross piercing in my earlobe.
...Ha.
In the end, swallowing a hollow laugh, I slowly lowered my stiff hand and lightly patted Nejire’s trembling blue wavy hair and back. Rather than making one of my sly jokes, I simply let her remain in my arms in silence until all the tension left her body.
Beyond the boulevard came the heavy footsteps of my aunt approaching after fully subduing the giant Villain, while police sirens drew closer from afar. Yet the only sound softly echoing in my arms was Nejire’s sorrowful sobbing.
Thud, thud.
After completely defeating the giant Villain and knocking it unconscious, my aunt returned to human form and strode toward us.
A menacing air still clung to her hands, and her golden eyes, sweeping over the wrecked asphalt and the downed Villains, held a chilling bloodlust.
...Uh-oh.
Holding Nejire as she sobbed bitterly into my chest, I reflexively activated my spinal-defense calculation switch in an instant.
Unauthorized Quirk use—and I had sent a Villain flying at supersonic speed in the middle of downtown. It was obvious that this time, I was in for a dragon-class beating that would snap my seventh vertebra clean in half.
Aunt, this was clearly an emergency evacuation and an act of self-defense—
Just as I was running a simulation of eloquent sophistry in my head and bracing myself—
Swish.
The heavy palm I had expected to smash my back instead came down gently atop my head.
"...Huh?"
As I blinked in surprise, her hand, slightly scorched from rolling through the brutal battlefield, slowly and carefully stroked my slicked-back black hair. There was not even a milligram of her usual punishing force in it—only gentle, warm affection.
My aunt looked alternately at my face without glasses and at Nejire crying in my arms. Then she released a long, restrained breath and spoke quietly.
"...You did well, Yujin."
Her voice was so low and gentle that it was hard to believe it belonged to the aunt who was always raising her voice and yelling.
"If you had been even a step later... it could have been truly terrible. Nejire is safe because of you."
There was not a single word of reprimand, nor any standard imposed through school rules or laws.
It was simply the one-hundred-percent sincere recognition and praise of a Pro Hero and family member, offered to her blood relative for protecting someone precious to her—her intern and student.
"..."
The [3x3 Cube] floating above my left shoulder spun once more with a tick, releasing a faint magnetic field.
The neural circuits that normally drove my shameless self-admiration and slick banter to make my aunt blow her top somehow fell silent and froze blankly before the first earnest praise I had ever received from her.
Fiddling with the black inverted-cross piercing in my earlobe, I finally cleared my throat, unable to hide my embarrassment.
"...Well, I couldn’t just stand by and watch a face that’s humanity’s treasure get so much as a scratch."
As I answered quietly, I held Nejire, who was gradually calming down in my arms, a little more securely.
As police cars and ambulances wailed through Tokyo’s thick gunpowder smoke, a warmth stranger and gentler than ever hung over the cold asphalt.
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