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The room was not considered a prison.
TNO had been told that three times: calmly and matter-of-factly by Tsukauchi, irritably by the detective on duty, and by the nurse as though she were trying to convince herself.
The door did, admittedly, open only from the outside. A policeman's silhouette lingered behind the frosted glass around the clock. The window would not open wider than a handspan, and every visitor was searched and made to leave their phone in a metal box.
But formally, it was still a protected hospital room.
Not a cell.
TNO lay on the bed with his unusual arm tucked behind his head, watching the tip of his striped tail knock a plastic spoon off the windowsill.
The spoon clattered against the floor.
The tail froze.
— Traitor.
One tiger ear turned toward the door before the knock came. His new senses continued to live a fraction of a second ahead of his conscious mind, and it was infuriating. His brain had yet to learn how to separate important sounds from the rustle of a coat in the corridor, wheels moving on the floor below, or someone coughing through two walls.
A doctor and two Quirk specialists entered. Behind them came the state-appointed representative—a severe woman carrying a folder, whose sole purpose was to ensure that nobody violated a minor's rights too blatantly.
— Today is only a standard examination, — TNO reminded them.
— We need at least a basic test of the copying ability you declared, — one specialist replied. — Without it, we cannot amend your registration.
— Then don't.
— Nomura-kun, this is about your safety.
— Of course. Everything people want to do against my will has an astonishing habit of being for my own safety.
The representative raised a hand.
— The patient consented to a medical examination. A functional Quirk test and exposure to Erasure are not included in the agreed scope.
The specialist closed his tablet with visible displeasure.
Aizawa had already tried twice to obtain permission to attend the tests. Both times the doctors cited the unstable mutation, while the representative cited the absence of a permanent guardian. While the adults argued over procedure, TNO gained the one thing he needed most.
Time.
Officially, he remained Nomura Okutami: the underage heir of a deceased father, a victim, a key witness, and a student in UA's Management Course. There were no grounds for arrest. His Quirk had been used under an immediate threat to life—in self-defense and in defense of civilians. Dozens of witnesses confirmed that he had organized the trap and drawn the villain, enhanced by Trigger, out of the warehouse.
The public had already decided that the handsome boy with tiger ears had saved everyone.
The police had yet to decide what to do about it.
His temporary record had been worded carefully: *Copy—type unspecified*. The ears, tail, stripes, and violet-black arm were classified as a residual mutation caused by copying Tiger. Monica had confirmed Snip Clip and said nothing about the blood on the pier.
TNO did not know why.
Was she afraid no one would believe her? Did she want to question him herself first? Or had she already realized that a partial truth could sometimes be more reliable than the law?
Whatever the reason, he remembered it.
— The scar tissue is still fresh, — the doctor murmured, examining the small scar on his temple.
TNO said nothing.
He had noticed the oddity himself. Mite had regrown a severed arm, rejoined the tendons in his fingers, and closed wounds that should have killed a man within seconds. Yet the claw mark on his temple remained.
TNO ran a fingertip over the uneven strip of skin.
Why there?
Perhaps the Quirk considered its work finished the moment the injury stopped threatening the body's function. Perhaps there had not been enough foreign blood for a perfect result. Or perhaps Mite could not return a body to its original state at all and merely built a serviceable replacement, leaving signs of the repair behind.
A property of the ability.
A limitation.
Or a flaw.
He did not know yet. But the scar was worth remembering: the only visible imperfection in regeneration that had seemed nearly flawless until now.
A wound that had once reached the skull now resembled the remnant of a bad childhood fall. The rest of his injuries had almost completely vanished: a few scratches, bruises, and lingering weakness. Neither the doctor nor the police could imagine that Monica had seen him without an arm, lying in a shared pool of blood.
Let it stay that way.
The doctor was about to close the chart when the second specialist stopped him and opened the laboratory report.
— There is one more matter. We received an urgent analysis of the samples from the pier and a biopsy of the altered arm. Foreign cellular material was found in your bloodstream. It matches the samples taken from the deceased mutant.
TNO slowly turned his head.
The specialist apparently mistook his attention for alarm and hurried on.
— This is not surface contamination. Individual proteins, DNA fragments, and cells were found inside the new tissue. Some of the material is already behaving as though your body recognizes it as its own. For now, we are treating it as a consequence of copying a mutation-type Quirk.
— Fascinating.
— That doesn't concern you?
— Will concern change the results?
No answer followed.
The doctors had found traces of the Nomu inside Nomura and mistaken them for another peculiarity of an unknown Quirk.
In truth, the analysis was correct.
TNO remembered Kyudai's laboratories not as one continuous memory, but in separate images: centrifuges, dark serum in unmarked bags, compatibility tables, and ampoules of Trigger whose dosages exceeded street concentrations dozens of times over. Kyudai had used the drug in his Nomufication research. TNO remembered the process, the early failures, and the bodies that had not survived the transformation, but the final stage of creating the creature had been torn from his memory.
Now the missing piece began to take shape.
Perhaps Kyudai had used Taiko's enhanced blood as a foundation for the future Nomu as well—a carrier capable of accepting foreign factors without immediately falling apart. Then he introduced Trigger, forcing an already prepared body to change under extreme strain.
Or perhaps it had not been a single injection, but a sequence of monstrous doses.
First the blood.
Then the Quirk.
Then the drug that convinced the body its limits no longer existed.
That was how Kyudai could have turned a human into a construct capable of surviving Tiger and the other modifications. Not a finished creation, but a process sustained by force.
So that is how you did it.
TNO's new arm was the proof. Mite had drawn in the Nomu's blood, Oneself had held Tiger, and the body had reproduced part of the creature's architecture for more than mere contact with a mutation. Enhanced blood already flowed through Nomura's body—the very prepared medium upon which Kyudai could build Nomufication. That was why the foreign cells had not been rejected. They had taken root almost at once, as though they had not entered a foreign body but returned to a compatible culture medium.
TNO had received a smaller demonstration of the same principle in his own flesh: the prepared blood accepted the Nomu's material, and Tiger told the body what shape to give it.
Meanwhile, the doctor listed the repeat tests they would need and spoke about monitoring for possible rejection. TNO listened with half an ear.
The results were dangerous.
And extraordinarily useful.
Before leaving, the nurse gave him one more piece of news. Kaito was in the same hospital, two floors below. After another operation, he had been moved out of intensive care and into a private room.
TNO demanded permission to visit him.
This time, no one argued.
2
Kaito looked worse than he actually felt.
The bed was raised, one shoulder was hidden beneath bandages, and a brace remained on one leg, but there was far less machinery around him than TNO had expected. Kaito was breathing on his own, moving both arms with confidence, and—judging by the walker beside the bed—had already persuaded the doctors to let him stand.
If the repeat tests showed no complications, he would be discharged in a week. Dressings, observation, and rehabilitation would follow, but the immediate danger had passed.
TNO stopped in the doorway.
— You look awful.
Kaito opened his eyes.
— Mr. Nomura is not exactly up to his usual standards either.
— At least I got a tail out of it.
— That is precisely what I meant. You appear to have a great deal to explain.
TNO sat beside him. The policeman remained outside the door, the state representative at the far end of the corridor. For several seconds, they listened to the equipment without trying to turn the silence into anything meaningful.
— They told me you'll be discharged in a week, — TNO said.
— Don't avoid the question. Doctors are prone to pessimism.
— You're walking with a frame.
— A temporary inconvenience.
— Which means you cannot become my guardian.
Kaito frowned as though that conclusion were the gravest consequence of the surgery.
— I can manage.
— I need a guardian now, not in a week with orders not to lift anything heavier than a kettle.
— Hire a nurse.
— For you or for me?
Kaito had no answer.
Relief was easier to hide beneath rudeness. He was alive. Battered, temporarily restricted, and just as stubborn as ever—but alive.
And in a week, he would walk out of here.
Kaito could no longer become his guardian; the machinery of the state would not wait for a candidate to complete rehabilitation. But there would still be a place for him beside TNO. Okutami Senior was gone, the old contract had died with him, and a man capable of that kind of loyalty could not be allowed to drift away without purpose after his discharge.
— Do you know about Okutami Senior? About... Father?
— Yes.
— And?
— I'm sorry it happened. To me, he was simply an employer—one of dozens. But in all my years, you are the first person to put me in a hospital.
— I'll tell you everything once you get out. Calm down. At least let me cover your medical expenses.
TNO heard what Kaito's voice refused to reveal: the loss meant more than the end of a contract. Loyalty rarely survived an employer if it rested on salary alone. Yet Kaito had rushed after him, helped him, tried to save him. In the end, that decision had radically changed the course of events and led to the port, to Monica, to the warehouse, and to victory over the Nomu.
— I won't refuse the offer, Mr. Okutami.
— Hah. Listen to you now. Sitting up all proud, too. The vanity of a turkey, honestly.
The knock came before Kaito could ask about the port.
Taiko entered without his school uniform, his hair disheveled and his eyes belonging to someone who had not slept since the first reports. He stopped when he saw the tiger ears, tail, and violet-black arm.
— Brother...
TNO expected hesitation. A question about which of them Taiko was addressing. Instead, Taiko crossed the room and almost grabbed him by the shoulders, stopping only when the tail moved in warning.
— Are you all right? What happened to your arm? They said they brought you in from the place where that mutant died. Why wouldn't anyone answer me? And Kaito? Kaito, how do you feel?
The questions tumbled out without order.
TNO watched in silence.
It seemed Taiko truly had been worried about his older brother. Not about the body that had once belonged to TNO, nor about a problem capable of destroying his new life.
About him.
The realization felt unexpectedly warm and therefore irritating.
— As you can see, — TNO said when Taiko finally needed air. — The same goes for Kaito. That will do for a start.
— I'm sorry.
— Not here. Not in front of Kaito.
Taiko opened his mouth, then closed it again. The list was too long: their father, the market, the gas station, the stolen life, his failure to understand what was happening in time. He did not say any of it aloud.
— I should have helped you, but Kaito drove us away.
— I ordered him to. So shut up and accept what I've already given you, — TNO muttered, sitting back with his legs crossed.
The door opened again.
Quinn entered.
The corner of TNO's mouth twitched almost imperceptibly, then went still. He looked through her—at the doorframe, the light in the corridor, the reflection of the window in the metal cabinet. Anywhere but at her face or into her eyes.
He did not need this.
He had let her go long ago.
Quinn loved Taiko. Not TNO.
If she had followed him here, then the choice had already been made. Repeating the obvious merely to feel the loss again would be a form of voluntary humiliation.
— I'm glad you're alive, — she said quietly.
— Likewise.
The answer made no sense, but it allowed him not to look.
Taiko glanced from one of them to the other and, for the first time, fell silent on his own.
The awkwardness was broken by a Quirk specialist appearing in the doorway.
— Nomura-kun, the laboratory is ready to conduct the functional test. Only if your consent still stands.
Taiko tensed.
— What test?
— The one that will make it harder for certain people to keep asking inconvenient questions, — TNO replied.
He had agreed to the demonstration less than an hour earlier. The police intended to question Taiko separately and then TNO himself; Aizawa had already prepared a list of inconsistencies. He could argue with every question.
It was far wiser to destroy the reason for the questions.
3
The functional test was conducted in a sealed diagnostic chamber inside the hospital.
Four cameras watched from the walls. Sensors measured temperature, heart rate, brain activity, and changes in the Quirk factor. Behind protective glass stood two doctors, the state-appointed representative, Tsukauchi, and several other specialists. None of them intended to take a teenager at his word.
TNO and Aizawa stood in the center of the room.
— I still object to using a Pro Hero's Quirk for the initial test, — the senior specialist said.
— My ability causes no direct harm and produces an unambiguous result, — Aizawa replied. — I volunteered.
Naturally.
He wanted to watch the mechanism from arm's length. To feel whether Erasure vanished from him. To see what happened to Nomura's tiger traits the moment he acquired another ability.
TNO did not object. The closer Aizawa watched, the more convincing the performance would be.
Tiger truly occupied one of Oneself's permanent slots. After the theft, the connection had closed completely, and the Quirk now belonged to him as irrevocably as the fingers of his new hand. The ears, tail, stripes, reinforced muscles, and predatory senses did not manifest on their own. They existed because TNO allowed Tiger to remain deployed within Nomura's body.
To everyone else, it appeared to be an uncontrollable consequence of copying.
To him, it was merely an open door he could close at any moment.
— Do you require physical contact to copy? — the specialist asked over the speaker.
— Yes.
— Skin contact is enough?
— It should be.
Aizawa rolled up his sleeve and offered his arm.
— Begin.
TNO closed his hand around Aizawa's wrist.
On the surface, he merely waited for an unknown Quirk to activate. Inside Oneself, the work was far more delicate.
He touched the structure of Erasure and took only a surface imprint, neither disturbing the original nor securing the copy in a permanent slot. Oneself could reproduce such a reflection without theft, but it would not last long and began decaying as soon as contact ended. At the same time, TNO constricted the permanent bond with Tiger, folding its active manifestation away layer by layer.
The two processes had to coincide to the second: one ability disappeared from his body at the exact moment a temporary copy of another took its place.
The itching came first.
Then his skin ignited with pain.
The tiger ears flattened so sharply that they seemed to be trying to hide inside his skull. The cartilage at their bases softened, the nerves disconnected, and both ears separated almost at once, striking the white mat with two wet smacks.
Someone behind the glass swore.
The tail jerked one last time. A narrow line of blood appeared at the base of his spine, the muscles clenched into a painful knot, and then the heavy striped limb came free and hit the floor. The wound above his tailbone closed almost at once, leaving an inflamed patch of new skin.
The process was not lethal. It was hardly even dangerous.
That did not make it pleasant.
TNO clenched his teeth. Nausea rolled through him; his balance collapsed with the loss of its counterweight, and within seconds his hearing became dull and flat. The stripes faded, his pupils returned to a human shape, and his muscles felt as though they were being forced back into a shell too small for them.
Only the violet-black arm remained unchanged. It was no longer an active manifestation of Tiger, but tissue Mite had once built from the Nomu material that had taken root inside him.
The sensors erupted into a stream of signals.
— Mutation-factor activity has ceased, — one doctor reported quickly. — A second emitter pattern is forming simultaneously. Its structure matches Eraser Head's control sample.
TNO released Aizawa's wrist.
— Copying is complete, — the specialist announced. — Proceeding to effect verification.
The volunteer for the second stage was a laboratory technician with the registered Quirk Orbit. At his command, three metal spheres rose from the table and began circling his forearm. A thread attached to one sphere demonstrated that no hidden magnets were involved.
Aizawa performed the control suppression first. His eyes reddened, his hair rose, and all three spheres dropped onto the table at once. He blinked, and Orbit immediately resumed.
Erasure remained with its owner and functioned unchanged.
That was what everyone needed to see.
— Hold the ability, — the doctor ordered. — Nomura-kun, apply the copied effect only on my command.
TNO looked at the technician.
Erasure unfolded with unfamiliar ease. It felt neither like a weapon nor like a limb, but like the right to forbid another person's Quirk from existing for as long as eye contact held.
— Begin.
His violet eyes turned red. TNO's black hair slowly rose as though gravity had vanished.
All three spheres crashed onto the table.
The technician frowned and tried to lift them again. Nothing happened. He shifted his hand, tensed his fingers, repeated the command—the metal remained still.
— My Quirk will not activate, — he confirmed.
TNO blinked.
The redness faded. His hair settled, and the spheres leaped off the table the moment the technician tried again.
Everyone behind the glass began speaking at once.
The doctors recorded a complete match with the observed effect of Erasure. The specialists compared timestamps: Tiger ceasing, the new pattern emerging, Orbit being successfully suppressed. The cameras had preserved every second, including the detached ears and tail, which were already being sealed in containers for analysis.
On paper, it formed a simple and internally consistent picture. Nomura's Quirk temporarily reproduced another factor after contact and could hold only one copy at a time. Acquiring a new ability destroyed the previous one; the final copy then disappeared on its own.
The instruments could not see that Tiger was not a temporary copy, but a permanently stolen Quirk resting quietly inside Oneself's permanent layer. Apparently, the equipment had been designed to display only one, perhaps two, +alpha energies at once.
Against that limitation, his Byzantine Eyes had the advantage over technology.
Aizawa continued watching TNO for several seconds.
He had not received every answer. The dead mutant's loss of its tiger traits remained strange. The contradictions in Taiko's biography had not vanished. But Aizawa's central hypothesis had just lost its support: Nomura had copied Erasure without taking it from its owner, and Tiger had disappeared from his body precisely when he acquired a new ability.
The Quirk resembled Copy, used by Neito Monoma of Class 1-B, but there was an important difference. Monoma could reproduce the principle of another ability, yet mutation-type Quirks were almost useless to him. Nomura's body was not limited in that way. It rebuilt itself to follow the copy, growing organs, muscles, and senses that had not existed before.
Nomura could copy mutations.
That made his ability more unusual than Monoma's.
Unusual did not mean criminal.
This truly could be copying.
It was not proof of innocence.
But it was enough reason to stop treating the teenager like a liar who had already been exposed.
What a paranoid bastard Aizawa is. Why has he latched onto me so hard? The worst part is, the bastard really does sense something.
When TNO was returned to his room, Tsukauchi followed and placed a closed folder on the bedside cabinet.
— The scheduled interviews have been canceled. Yours and Taiko's. At least until the specialists finish their report.
— What a pity. I was beginning to miss your questions.
— You'll survive.
Aizawa lingered in the doorway.
— You passed the test.
From him, it sounded almost like an apology.
— Glad to meet school standards.
The hero ignored his tone.
— Can Tiger return?
— No. I cannot switch between copied Quirks. A new one erases the previous copy, then disappears in time. At least, that is what our observations show so far. To be honest, I had almost never used this Quirk before. I simply had no reason to. A personal guard and a noncombat course only reinforced the fact that I wasn't a fighter. But after that night... I may have changed my mind.
The answer was cautious enough for someone whose Quirk had manifested recently and remained poorly understood. No specialist could demand perfect knowledge of his own factor from a sixteen-year-old patient.
— I won't insist on an interrogation, — Aizawa said. — But if Tiger manifests again, the doctors need to record it.
— Naturally, Aizawa-sensei.
This time the form of address prompted no new question. Aizawa merely nodded and left with Tsukauchi.
For the next four hours, the doctors watched the Erasure pattern gradually decay. First, the amount of time TNO could maintain eye contact shortened. Then his hair stopped reacting, the redness in his eyes weakened, and his final attempt to suppress Orbit produced no result at all.
Tiger did not return.
That was precisely what TNO wanted them to see.
He could deploy the permanent Quirk at any second, as easily as mobilizing his troops. Tiger ears would grow beneath his skin, his spine would extend into a tail, the stripes, muscles, and predatory senses would return, and his features would sharpen while amusing little dimples formed at the corners of his mouth. But then his carefully constructed story would collapse. The doctors would know he could switch between abilities. Aizawa would return to the dead villain's vanished mutation. Tsukauchi would reopen his folder of questions.
So Tiger remained dormant.
To the police and UA, Nomura now possessed a useful but not overwhelming Quirk with understandable limitations: mandatory contact, one copy at a time, a limited duration, and a painful bodily reconstruction. Interesting, perhaps. But not an ability that justified putting the entire country on alert.
TNO could not help admiring his own ingenuity.
Even if he used Tiger again one day, the official record would still say *Copy*. A search for the mutation factor would lead to the dead villain, the laboratory samples, and outdated photographs from the pier—not to a permanent Quirk belonging to Nomura. Anyone attempting to choose a fighter, drug, or method of suppression specifically for him would begin with the wrong information.
Convenient.
The thought made him inwardly grimace. He was thinking exactly like Grimm: a criminal imagining in advance what trail investigators would follow and how to avoid capture.
But TNO was hardly afraid of the police.
Even if the deception came to light, permanent Tiger could be explained as an error in the initial examination, a delayed Quirk change, or an unknown consequence of foreign blood. At worst, he faced re-registration, endless commissions, and administrative penalties. Unpleasant.
Not fatal.
The real reason stood far above police procedure.
TNO did not want All For One and his grotesque lackeys to learn how Oneself worked. How many abilities it could hold. How copying differed from capture. How he deactivated and restored permanent Quirks. What conditions he required and where his limits lay. Every such detail became a ready-made instruction: how to strip him of his advantage, what he must not be allowed to touch, and what kind of trap to prepare.
He was not concealing a crime.
He was concealing the blueprint of his own weapon from the enemy. Nor was his effort to keep his data out of police systems misplaced. AFO almost certainly had access to classified databases.
Even so, TNO doubted the performance would completely fool All For One.
After the port, escaping his attention was almost impossible. Too many witnesses. The death of Kyudai's creation was too conspicuous. Tiger's disappearance was too strange. AFO had probably already heard the name Nomura Okutami and was deciding whether to regard him as an accident, an instrument, or a threat.
For now, let him see an inexperienced boy with a temperamental, temporary Copy.
TNO made himself another promise. As soon as his body fully recovered, he would obtain a few more suitable Quirks. Then he would pay a visit to Kyudai's laboratory.
The doctor knew too much, created things that were far too dangerous, and had already turned their lives into an experiment once. It was time to settle that problem for good. Kyudai had crossed the line again. TNO could not let it pass; next time, luck might not save him.
Kyudai would most likely never leave that laboratory.
By the time the doctors finished the follow-up examination and left him alone, a man with two tablets, an expensive briefcase, and a face upon which grief looked like part of the business suit was already waiting in his room.
The police were not the only system to reach him before his discharge.
4
When the examination ended, the state-appointed representative placed another folder on the bedside cabinet.
— We need to discuss permanent guardianship. Until the court reaches a decision, you cannot independently determine your place of residence, consent to certain medical procedures, or fully manage the inheritance.
— That last one sounds like a tremendous headache, and the day has only just begun...
Apparently, the poor injured boy whom the cameras had shown to the entire country no longer fit the word poor at all.
— Please accept my condolences, Nomura-sama.
Okutami Senior's asset manager bowed to a flawlessly calculated depth while TNO loudly drank juice through a straw and calmly studied the man who had introduced himself.
This time, TNO did not dismiss the condolences.
He truly did feel sorry for Okutami Senior. Not a flawless father, nor an especially kind man—simply someone who had once seen some kind of potential in a broken Nomura. He had given him his name, a home, an education, and a future he would never otherwise have possessed.
And Nomura had failed him.
He had failed to become the son the man had tried to see in him. He had left behind secrets, debts, and a body now inhabited by someone else. None of it could be repaired. Okutami Senior would never know what his final investment had become.
A very sad story.
All TNO could do now was not waste what he had been given.
If he used these resources to build something worthwhile, protect himself, and protect the few people he acknowledged as his own, then perhaps the dead man's faith would not prove a complete mistake in retrospect.
— Thank you, — he finally said. — I will try not to waste what he left behind.
The words came out unusually quiet, as though they were meant more for the universe than for the manager.
Then TNO pointed to the chair.
— Now tell me about the inheritance.
The manager sat, placed his briefcase by his feet, and laid one tablet face down on the table. Apparently, he had no intention of beginning with the numbers.
— I should introduce myself more properly. Kazuo Moriyama. I managed your father's affairs for twelve years. I did more than carry out instructions; we developed some of his investment decisions together.
— Such as?
— The acquisition of the Hosu port shares. We entered the capital in stages, at a time when few could boast access to the investors' forum where we learned of the forthcoming tender to modernize the port equipment, as well as another auction for controlling stakes in the logistics companies authorized to operate there. The strategy became one of the most successful in your father's portfolio.
Moriyama spoke calmly and without false modesty. If he was not exaggerating his role, he truly knew the origin of the inheritance better than most of the people now trying to get close to it.
Having finished his introduction, he leaned toward the briefcase and produced not a list, but an entire binder. Thick, packed tight with documents and colored tabs. It landed on the hospital table with a dull thud, as though it contained a metal plate rather than paper. The sight alone made TNO's throat tighten.
— What is that?
— The preliminary inheritance package. For your review only. Registry extracts, a list of the principal assets, the ownership structure, preliminary valuations, and liabilities. The full set is considerably larger.
TNO hooked his fingers under the edge and lifted it.
Heavy.
Not metaphorically. It genuinely weighed as much as a decent brick. The tables, seals, and unfamiliar abbreviations were already beginning to press unpleasantly against his temples. The headache had not truly arrived yet, but it was clearly waiting nearby with great patience for him to open the first page.
Wait. That was exactly what Kazuo wanted.
Moriyama rubbed his palms together with poorly concealed pleasure. Perhaps he was merely preparing to return to familiar work. From the outside, however, it looked as though the manager had personally brought him the headache and now looked forward to watching him unwrap it.
TNO looked from the binder to the tablet Moriyama had so thoughtfully placed face down.
— Why didn't you give me this electronically?
The manager stopped rubbing his hands.
— The paper copies are certified and allow you to appreciate the full scope at once—
— I appreciate it. The binder is heavy. Now show me the normal version instead of the deliberately inflated one.
Moriyama hesitated as though TNO had violated the carefully prepared order of the presentation. Then, with obvious reluctance, he turned the tablet around, unlocked it, and opened a directory.
Asshole, Kazuo thought.
The same documents fit on a single screen: several folders, a contents table, a search bar, and tidy marks beside the files requiring his immediate attention.
It looked much more compact.
And far less frightening.
— For review only, you said? — TNO asked, scrolling through the list.
— Do not try to understand everything in one evening, Nomura-sama. Even your father needed years to construct this system.
— How reassuring.
— Which is why I would like to raise another organizational matter. If you do not yet have a permanent guardian, the court could consider me as the family's trusted representative. I will be nearby in any event because of the inheritance and the restoration of the business. You would not have to become acquainted with a stranger and explain every decision all over again.
He allowed himself a kindly smile.
— You are nearly a grown man, Nomura-sama. You do not need someone watching your every step. I respect your privacy.
The arguments sounded reasonable.
But the arguments were not what troubled TNO.
What troubled him was that Moriyama had put himself forward before anyone else.
Okutami Senior was barely cold in his grave. A man who claimed to have been his assistant for twelve years had come to the son with condolences, performed the proper grief, and then casually proposed that he be handed even more power. For the heir's convenience, naturally. Out of duty alone. Merely one more burdensome responsibility the loyal manager was magnanimously willing to shoulder.
Perhaps Moriyama truly was competent and loyal to Okutami Senior. Perhaps the condolences were sincere. TNO did not yet know enough to accuse him of corruption or even simple greed.
But he had already seen the ambition.
Such people served faithfully only while service benefited them. Searching through Nomura's own memories, TNO concluded that Kazuo had been his father's right hand, yet had regarded the young heir as a pathetic worm and barely concealed his contempt. Now the contempt was hidden perfectly, but the opinion itself had not changed.
It was plain to see.
Moriyama had not waited to be asked for help. He had seen the empty place first and tried to occupy it first.
That alone did not make him an enemy. But TNO had no intention of surrendering control over his life to an ambitious stranger merely because the man had introduced himself elegantly.
Moriyama would not become his guardian.
— No.
— Nomura-sama, I understand your reservations, but a state representative is unfamiliar with the family business and will delay every important decision.
— Which is precisely why their mistakes will remain separate from yours. I do not need one man both proposing transactions and authorizing me to sign them. I believe that is called an abuse of position.
TNO offered a completely different reason for appearances' sake.
The manager paused, then closed the document.
Temporary state supervision meant police, reports, and the need to obtain approval for every extra step. But it remained temporary. TNO did not need the perfect guardian yet. He needed several weeks in which none of the adults interested in the inheritance could gain permanent authority over him.
After that, he would decide.
— Now, back to the money, — he repeated, pulling the tablet toward him.
After his adoptive father's death, Nomura had inherited far more than a house and bank accounts. The tablet divided the estate into categories, and available cash was not the first.
The largest part of the portfolio was Hosu Port's internal railway network: tracks running between terminals and warehouses, switching yards, locomotive depots, maintenance sites, and the trains that carried containers from the berths to the national rail system. The port possessed a transportation network of its own, and Okutami Senior controlled nearly all of it through the family holding.
That network was what gave the Okutami Foundation twenty-seven percent of the votes in the port management corporation. He had not owned all of Hosu, as someone unfamiliar with business might imagine. He had owned its arteries—the infrastructure without which cargo would remain piled beside the water.
Next came income-producing real estate: an apartment block in Tokyo, several commercial properties, warehouse buildings, and land leased on long-term contracts. Money arrived from them every month whether the new owner understood the process or not.
A separate category covered real estate that produced nothing while demanding constant expense: the family home, a country residence, several apartments for personal use, and vacant properties whose purpose TNO could not understand at first glance.
Why did Okutami Senior need all this? Prestige?
Then came "miscellaneous": stakes in investment funds, securities, bank accounts, insurance products, cars, motorcycles, and several small holdings in companies whose names meant nothing to him. Every section ended with liabilities—taxes, maintenance, salaries, contracts, and payments that could not simply stop after the owner's death.
He had not inherited a chest full of money.
He had inherited an enormous machine already in motion, one that demanded somebody immediately take the vacant seat at the controls.
Okutami Senior had arranged the ownership in advance so that his son would possess voting rights even before reaching adulthood. The old man had probably expected to guide every signature personally. After his death, that safeguard had transformed a sixteen-year-old Nomura into someone whose consent could stop or initiate transactions worth billions.
TNO was afraid to imagine what would have happened if Nomura had never changed and TNO had not taken his body.
All of Okutami Senior's work would have come to an end.
The conclusion was unavoidable.
The manager named companies, percentages, and preliminary valuations while TNO maintained an expression of courteous boredom.
Inside, he was stunned.
He had expected a large figure in a bank account. Instead, Okutami Senior's wealth was distributed among dozens of things that continued to exist and move on their own. Buildings produced rent, shares changed value, funds owned portions of other funds, companies owed one another money, and wealth appeared in one place because a ship had been unloaded somewhere else.
The fortune had no single number.
It resembled a living organism.
TNO had never possessed money like this. Within the Domain, he commanded powers and territory, but that was the authority of a conqueror, not personal wealth in the physical world. Here, one signature could move a sum an ordinary person would not earn in several lifetimes.
Even the available cash looked absurd, and it was only the smallest and easiest part of the inheritance to understand.
He did not allow his amazement to reach his face. He merely turned the page as though the list of properties, securities, and corporate holdings matched his expectations exactly.
The manager did not need to know that the new owner had only now understood the scale of his own wealth.
Over the previous two days, shareholders, banks, insurers, and government officials had all discovered that an orphan in a hospital bed presented an excellent opportunity to solve their own problems.
Moriyama's phone vibrated almost constantly.
— The board has prepared a restoration program, — he said. — Beginning work promptly will demonstrate continuity of management and your personal sense of responsibility to the market.
— Good.
Moriyama waited for more, but TNO had already set the tablet aside.
— Is that all?
— What else would you like to hear?
— The board expected preliminary approval. The sooner work begins, the lower the losses will be.
— I only learned what I own today.
The manager opened his mouth, but TNO raised a hand.
— No. I understand the basic idea. A ruined port makes no money; a working port does. So it will probably have to be rebuilt. But I will not decide today how much I should invest, on what terms, or why that exact amount is required.
TNO drummed one finger against the edge of the tablet for several seconds.
— First, I want to know the government's position. This is one of the key ports in the Tokyo metropolitan area. They intend to contribute to the reconstruction too, don't they? Or do they plan to watch private owners pay for everything?
— Negotiations with the ministry and municipal authorities are still ongoing, — Moriyama replied cautiously.
— Then we can compare proposals once theirs exists.
He was no shark of business. Taiko understood medicine, cybersecurity, the criminal market, and ways to make people talk. Nomura's memories supplied company names and faces from family receptions, but they did not turn him into Okutami Senior.
He could conceal that behind a confident expression.
He could not afford to sign documents because of it.
— Send the program electronically, — TNO continued. — Include every calculation. List separately what the government, the city, the other shareholders, the insurers, and the banks intend to contribute. And explain what happens if reconstruction costs more than promised. I'll review it later.
— Nomura-sama, delay may adversely affect the value of your assets.
— A hasty signature may adversely affect me.
This time, Moriyama had no immediate reply.
TNO sank back against the pillow and tiredly rubbed the bridge of his nose. The port, the board, the insurers, and other people's positions could wait a few more hours. He was still sitting in a hospital room that smelled of medicine, dressed in clothes brought to replace his cut-apart uniform, listening to proposals about rebuilding half of Hosu.
First, he needed to get out of this damn hospital.
— Have the doctors signed my discharge papers?
Moriyama plainly had not expected the abrupt change of subject.
— As far as I know, the final examination is scheduled for today.
— Then deal with it. Tell the board I will consider their proposal after I am discharged.
— That does not quite fall within my authority.
— You just explained that you intend to remain close at all times. Start making yourself useful.
The manager held his gaze, then slowly put the tablet away.
— Of course, Nomura-sama.
Now they finally understood one another.
Moriyama stepped into the corridor, already composing a message to someone, and TNO allowed his head to sink back against the pillow.
The pain struck without warning.
It did not merely tighten around his temples after hours of reading. It drove a white-hot needle behind his left eye and twisted it inside his skull. The room lurched. The lines on the abandoned tablet blurred, the ceiling light stretched into a white streak, and nausea rose into his throat.
TNO's fingers locked around the edge of the bed.
For several seconds, he could no longer hear the corridor. There was only the muffled pounding of his own heart and the pain pulsing in time with it. Oneself answered with a distant tremor, as though the attack had passed through more than Nomura's brain and disturbed something deeper.
Then, just as abruptly, it began to recede.
Air returned to his lungs. The walls stopped moving. TNO carefully loosened his bloodless fingers and dragged a hand over his face.
— Wonderful...
He blamed it on lack of sleep, the reconstruction of his body, the lingering effects of Erasure, and several consecutive hours of corporate nonsense. Any one of them would have been enough to cause a headache.
But an ordinary headache did not make the world disappear for several seconds.
For the time being, TNO chose to set that thought aside with the port restoration program.
5
The conversation with Moriyama had proven two things at once.
First, TNO did need a permanent guardian after all.
For the moment, a state-appointed representative filled that role. As temporary protection from Moriyama and everyone else trying to get close to the inheritance, it was even convenient. The official did not belong to the board, laid no claim to the family money, and was answerable to the state for every signature.
That was precisely why the arrangement would soon become an obstacle.
Every major transaction, journey, change of residence, or controversial decision would require approval. The representative would request documents, consult superiors, and choose not what benefited TNO, but what would keep the representative from being punished later. The official was not his enemy.
The official simply served the state, not Nomura.
He needed a permanent guardian, but not an adult who would decide when he got up, where he went, and what documents he signed.
He needed someone loyal. Someone who would protect his interests first, refrain from taking control of his life, and not report every peculiarity of his Quirk to every government office. Independent enough to perform a guardian's duties, yet close enough to understand that the final decision would still belong to TNO.
Kazuo Moriyama did not fit that description.
Second, intelligence and confidence alone were not enough.
TNO lacked the expertise required to manage money on this scale. Corporate structures turned simple ownership into a web of votes, obligations, boards, subsidiaries, and contracts in which words he had never heard yesterday could decide everything. Conquering a building was easier than understanding who owned the ground beneath it, who collected the rent, and why the owner still owed the bank.
And he was being asked to entrust that part of his life to a stranger.
No matter what Moriyama said about twelve years beside Okutami Senior, no matter how much credit he claimed for the port acquisition, his true motives remained unknown. He might be a faithful manager. He might be working for the board. He might regard a sixteen-year-old heir as a convenient attachment to the assets.
An ordinary conversation would not provide the answer.
TNO needed to look deeper.
To read Moriyama's memories. His emotions. Those tiny reactions a person had no time to reshape into useful words. To do so, he would have to make contact and, in the instant of an apparently accidental touch, descend through the Domain of Oneself to the matrix of the man's identity.
He had done something similar before with Quirk patterns. He had separated them from the larger structure layer by layer, cleaning the matrix as though peeling an onion.
Only now, what lay beneath those layers would not be an ability.
It would be a person.
A mistake could cost Moriyama his memories, his identity, or his life. Worse, Oneself might follow habit, catch hold of his Quirk factor, and tear it out along with the layer TNO had opened.
The manager's Quirk was called *Index*. By touching a sheet of paper, he could determine which set of documents it belonged to and where it should be placed within that set. Useful for a man who had spent decades among contracts.
Utterly worthless as a permanent slot in Oneself.
TNO had no intention of taking it.
So he needed practice first. Someone whose accidentally damaged memory would not trigger an investigation: a homeless man, a street criminal, or some other piece of refuse willing to accept a touch in exchange for food or money. TNO needed to learn how to enter another person's matrix, read it, and leave without taking anything.
Only then would he touch Moriyama.
Until that day, the manager was to remain close. TNO would squeeze out everything the man knew about Okutami Senior, the port, the shareholders, the properties, the accounts, and the people already reaching for the inheritance.
And once he had exhausted Moriyama's usefulness, he would fire him.
Not before.
6
The doctors signed the discharge papers by evening.
The functional test of Copy was complete, the new arm showed no signs of rejection, and there were no longer legal grounds to keep Nomura in the protected room. He consented to a temporary state representative, daily examinations, and police supervision for the first twenty-four hours.
His freedom was spoiled before he even left the building.
Reporters had gathered outside the hospital's main entrance. Vans occupied half the parking lot, cameras stared at the glass doors, and people with microphones ambushed every doctor who might accidentally know more than the official statement revealed.
TNO stopped by the window at the end of the corridor.
— Another dilemma, — he said, pointing down for Moriyama.
Several journalists noticed their silhouettes on the upper floor. Lenses turned toward the window almost simultaneously. The first barrage of flashes erupted beyond the glass.
TNO drew the curtain and stepped away.
— I recommend hiring temporary security, — Moriyama said. — Not two bodyguards for appearances, but a full detail. Especially after the tragedy at the port. The police have also assigned one vehicle to escort and observe you for the next twenty-four hours.
— Observe.
— Their wording, not mine.
Moriyama gathered the documents and allowed himself a faint smile.
— Are you afraid of cameras, Nomura-sama?
For an instant, Grimm's mask appeared before TNO's eyes. Footage of robberies, police reports, images from crime scenes, and the lenses toward which he had turned by exactly the degree required to create the desired impression.
— No, — he replied. — Cameras love me.
Moriyama took it for a teenager's joke.
TNO did not correct him.
They left the hospital through the service parking garage. A police car drove ahead; behind them followed a security vehicle hired by Moriyama. The state-appointed representative took the front passenger seat and immediately began listing the conditions of temporary supervision.
TNO listened with half an ear.
Moriyama began introducing the heir to his new life before they had even reached their first destination.
Their first stop was the family-owned apartment block in Tokyo. Most of the units were rented out. The top two floors formed the connected Okutami apartments, while the underground levels concealed a security station, storage, and a private garage. A separate elevator led directly to the residence.
Then the manager opened a map of the other properties on his tablet. Apartments in Osaka and Yokohama. A country house. Several commercial premises. Warehouses whose land TNO initially mistook for a useless addition to the buildings—until Moriyama named its value.
A full tour would take several days.
Moriyama had already prepared the route: first every Tokyo apartment and commercial property, then the country house and the real estate in neighboring prefectures. Anything they could not reach quickly would be shown through live calls with local managers and security archives. Not one property was to remain merely a line in a report.
The collection of cars and motorcycles occupied the garage beneath the Tokyo apartments. Executive sedans stood beside sports cars Okutami Senior had barely used. Motorcycles lined the far wall, from a heavy touring machine to a model that looked too fast even while perfectly still.
— All of this belongs to me? — TNO asked before he could make the question sound more indifferent.
— It does, — Moriyama confirmed.
For the first time, the manager saw not an heir in a hospital bed, but a sixteen-year-old boy who had just been shown a garage worth as much as a small company.
TNO quickly restored his composure.
— Continue.
Moriyama continued. Access systems. Insurance. Maintenance staff. Drivers. Tenants. Payment schedules. The names of the people without whom a wealthy life would immediately become a collection of expensive objects in constant need of repair.
TNO asked simple questions and memorized every answer.
For now, Kazuo Moriyama remained at his side.
Not as a guardian.
As a guide through a fortune TNO did not yet know how to command—and as a closed book that, one day, he intended to read in full.