Chapter 7: The Mastermind
Once upon a time, there was a rabbit who spied on a hardworking farmer every day. Whenever she made eye contact with the farmer, she would shyly hide. But one day, not only did the farmer look back at her, but he also started to chase her.
In a panic, she ran headfirst into a large tree and was knocked unconscious. The farmer then grabbed her by the ears and lifted her up. But she had a friend, and when this friend didn't see the white rabbit return, she went out to look for her, only to see her captured by the farmer.
She was furious. She hopped forward and slapped the farmer across the face with her own long, donkey-like rabbit ears. And then—Double Kill!
GG. The game was over. Yoshikage Kira looked at the two pieces of prey in his hands and felt a headache coming on. If anyone saw him like this, wouldn't they mistake him for a pervert with a Lolita complex, if not a child trafficker?
How else would people see it? A creepy old man taking two little rabbits home to feed them carrots? Of course not! They'd assume he was going to toss them in a stew pot and eat them all up!
However, Kira glanced at their delicate little fingers and instantly erased the thought of becoming their driver. He wasn't a lolicon; he had no interest in them. That's right, absolutely no interest whatsoever.
Yoshikage Kira's throat bobbed once.
"Have you calmed down now?" Kira lowered his hands so their toes could touch the ground, but he kept a firm grip. If either of them suddenly struggled and tried to run, he would swiftly snatch them back up, as mercilessly as the claw in a crane game.
Seeing that neither of them was reacting much, Kira let go. They weighed even less than the buckets of water from this morning, he thought to himself. This was almost too easy.
"This is unscientific... I was just lifted up by a man..." Ueno was the first to recover, glaring at Kira with fury. "Hey, you're a first-year, right? Don't you know how to respect your senpai!?"
"Then you should start acting like one," Yoshikage Kira said, straightening his clothes with a deliberate slowness. "Don't forget, you were the one who charged at me first."
"That's because I saw you with Komachi hanging all over you!" Ueno retorted angrily.
"Ueno, I'm fine..." Tsukimi Komachi, having recovered from her shock, said with a blush. "I was the one holding onto him."
Ueno froze for a second, then said stubbornly, "That doesn't matter! If it has to do with you, then it's his fault!"
"So you're just going to pin the blame on me, huh?" Kira looked at her with the expression of an adult watching a child throw a tantrum. "By the way, you knew about Komachi spying on me, right?"
"Sp-Spying...!? What nonsense are you talking about!?" Ueno glanced at the eyeball, which was hovering motionlessly in the air as if it had seen everything. She instinctively took two steps back and gave a dry laugh. "I'm not some kind of weirdo! Why would I do something like spying!?" As she spoke in a panic, her twin-tails whipped about wildly in the air.
Yoshikage Kira took a step back and glanced at the floor. Good, he thought, no ink is splashing from the ends of her hair.
"Actually, even if spying is your hobby, I can understand. I really don't mind..."
"No, you have to mind!" Ueno shouted, surprisingly. "This was a job someone commissioned us to do! I'm not taking the fall for that person!"
"Ueno, we made a promise with her—" Komachi looked troubled and tugged on her sleeve. "We can't just break our promise like this..."
"I don't care! It's not like that person cares about us anyway! She just treats us like cheap labor!"
"But Eri-chan is very nice to us..."
Over Komachi's weak protests, Ueno forcefully began to explain the whole story to Yoshikage Kira...
"...So you're saying the school's Student Council wanted my personal, firsthand information?"
"Ugh, it's a pain to explain to a newbie who just enrolled. Although the request came through a Student Council document, it was actually a private task assigned by the Secretary."
"The Secretary... you mean Erina Nakiri?" Kira was puzzled. "Why would that person be after me?"
Erina Nakiri was a second-year student in U.A. High's General Studies Department. While there was no opening ceremony for the whole school, her name was often heard over the school's daily broadcasts. He'd heard she was a girl far younger and more beautiful than even the R-Rated Hero, Midnight. Not only had she joined the Student Council in her first year and served as its Secretary, but she also consistently ranked first in every exam, big or small.
"You probably don't know this, but Nakiri comes from a family of heroes, and they also own a large corporation. However..." Ueno shook her head smugly. "She didn't inherit her family's combat Quirk. The only one she has is 'God's Tongue,' which isn't very useful in daily life. That's why she's a bit hostile towards people in the Hero Course."
"Is it because I placed first in the Hero Course entrance exam?" Kira asked, a headache forming. "But I have no intention of getting on her bad side..."
"It's not something you can avoid just by thinking that." Ueno was now projecting the full demeanor of an upperclassman, rattling on about past events that Kira knew nothing about.
"In previous years at U.A. High, the Student Council only had jurisdiction over the classes outside of the Hero Course. But after Nakiri arrived, she made some kind of secret deal with the two Hero Course class presidents and brought the Hero Course under the council's purview. Now, besides your regular training, you also have to participate in various school events and use your Quirks as manual labor."
"You probably don't know this either," Ueno said, puffing out her flat chest proudly, "but the previous Hero Course presidents? Komachi and I were the ones who took care of them!"
"You really shouldn't be boasting about that..." Komachi lowered her head in shame.
"So, you're just working for the Secretary? Doing something like paparazzi work?"
As Ueno nodded furiously, Kira thought for a moment and asked, "When did you start tailing me?"
"Right after you were attacked at the USJ two days ago." At this, Ueno looked regretful and slammed her hand on a desk. "Damn it! If only we had gotten this eyeball calibrated sooner—!"
Kira understood her unspoken meaning. If they had calibrated the eyeball sooner, they might have been able to alert the school's upper management about the USJ attack earlier, and the teachers might not have been injured.
Kira's expression softened slightly. His senses were sharp, so he had noticed the eyeball's presence right away and prevented it from capturing too much of his private information. In just one or two days, they couldn't have filmed anything significant.
Two days ago, when he was in the washroom secretly studying his bomb-tank, he had specifically checked his surroundings to make sure there were no surveillance devices. After all, his predecessor, Yoshikage Kira, had been taken down by a clever elementary school student. He was extremely cautious in that regard.
"If we had calibrated this eyeball two days earlier," Ueno continued, "we would have gotten the scoop! Then all those reporters would have been lining up to give us their money!"
Kira's face froze. Seeing that Ueno had absolutely no concern about the villains appearing again, he instantly understood that these two knew nothing about the true nature of the attack. They didn't know that two teachers had been seriously injured, and that the hero Thirteen was still in the hospital...
His curiosity had led him to discover that someone was targeting him, and Kira had been in a surprisingly good mood. But now, he felt a deep weariness wash over him. The responsibilities of an adult in society were once again pressing down on his shoulders.
He didn't say much more. As he was leaving the classroom, he just gave them one last piece of advice. "In any case, don't use this thing to film me again. Next time, I'll blow it up."