The weekend had arrived, bringing with it not the usual numbness or attempts to hide from the world, but something new — a purposeful, nervous anticipation. For the first time in years, Arashi had a goal that didn't spark panic but instead made his heart race with excitement, not fear.
He woke up earlier than usual. The rays of morning sunlight filtering through the gaps in the curtains didn't feel like an irritating intrusion but rather a good omen. He lay there, listening to the silence of the apartment, and in that silence, there was no longer a whisper.
He got up and, for once, didn't retreat to his room. He walked to the kitchen, where his mother was already preparing breakfast. "Good morning, hero," she said with a smile, and there was no longer that strained, fearful brightness in it. It was soft, genuine. Arashi smiled back shyly. This new feeling — pride, not shame — was unfamiliar and slightly dizzying.
After breakfast, he shut himself in his room, but not to hide this time. He sat at his old, not particularly powerful computer. The first step lay ahead. Choosing a goal. Search: "Best hero academies in Japan."
The results were predictable. Dozens of schools advertising their programs, employment rates, and famous alumni. He scrolled through them, quickly assessing. Many emphasized physical training and flashy, spectacular quirks. Others focused on teamwork. Some highlighted technological support. And everywhere, in every ranking, on every forum, one name consistently topped the list. U.A. High School for Heroism.
Its logo, a stylized "U," felt both familiar and intimidatingly unattainable. The citadel of heroism. The forge of the best of the best. The school of the Symbol of Peace. The institute every other kid in the country dreamed of attending, and the place his own quirk seemed to have forever barred him from.
He clicked the link. The official website was a model of order and information. Sections for applicants, detailed descriptions of entrance exams, requirements… His eyes froze on one line: "Passing scores for the last three years." The numbers were dauntingly high. This applied to both academic tests and practical assessments.
His heart sank. He leaned back in his chair. U.A.? It was laughable. He was from a school for outcasts. His grades… he glanced at his old report cards. In theory, yes, he was among the best. Reading about heroes, their tactics, and quirk analysis had been his escape from reality. But physics? General subjects? Those were average at best. And as for the practical part, he was too scared to even think about it.
"They'll never accept you," a familiar voice whispered, sensing his weakness. "They'll see you as a threat. They'll set up their trials, and you'll fail. Or… you'll show them your true power, and they'll flee in terror. Either way, it's predetermined. Why subject yourself to humiliation?"
"No," Arashi said firmly aloud, clenching his fists. "The Rabbit Hero said it's possible. So I have to try."
He stared at the screen again. Why U.A.? Because it was the best school? Yes. But not only that. He began reading the section on the school's philosophy.
"…We don't just train strong fighters, but heroes capable of strategic thinking, acting in unconventional situations, and taking responsibility for their unique power…" "…An individualized approach to each student, quirk development under the guidance of experienced professional mentors…" "…State-of-the-art training facilities, allowing practice with quirks of any complexity and danger in controlled conditions…"
There it was. The key words. "Unconventional situations." "Unique power." "Controlled conditions." Other schools sought polished, ready-made heroes. U.A. was the only one that claimed readiness to work with raw material. It took pride in shaping heroes from what was given.
That's where he might have a chance. A chance to find that "professional mentor" who would understand what Nazgûls were and help him tame them, not just fear them and cast him aside.
The decision was made. The goal was set. U.A. Now he had to face the terrifying path to that goal.
He printed out the exam requirements. Two parts: a written test and a practical exam. The written part included general subjects and a specialized test on hero law, history, and quirk theory. He could handle that. He'd need to brush up on math and physics, but theory was his strong suit.
The practical part… there was almost no information about it. Vague phrases and minor details. But after nearly an hour of scouring the internet, he found an old interview on a small regional channel. In it, a 15-year-old boy described the practical exam: a large number of robots and a giant mech that had caused him to fail.
Robots. Machines. They had no will. No fear. His main weapon — draining will—would be useless. He couldn't "scare" or "hollow out" a machine.
A wave of icy dread washed over him. He had always subconsciously hoped he could simply… summon one of them, terrify the examiners, and pass that way. But no. The system was smarter. It had to be outwitted. He'd have to fight soulless metal, not living beings.
What could he do to harm them? He was a skinny, not particularly strong teenager. His quirk was useless. He was once again that four-year-old boy, helpless under the counter.
"Look. Reality always trumps foolish hopes. You're nothing without us. Never were, never will be."
Despair began to tighten his throat. But then he remembered how the Witch-king had stopped a concrete beam. Not by instilling fear, but by stopping it. Physically. His shadows could interact with the material world. They weren't just phantoms. They had power. But he had never tried to control it. He had always only held them back, keeping them from breaking free.
What if… what if he didn't hold back but directed them?
The thought was so new, so revolutionary, that it took his breath away. He had always seen his quirk as a threat. A curse. But what if Rumi was right? What if it was a tool? A terrifying, dangerous tool, but a tool nonetheless. And he needed to learn how to wield it. Not just open the cage, but hold it in his hands and aim.
A plan began to form in his mind, swift and clear.
Academic preparation. Improve math, physics, languages. Dive deeper into hero law. He had an advantage — he loved learning; it had been his way to escape life's problems. Now it would be a weapon. Physical training. He was scrawny. That had to change. Running, push-ups, pull-ups. Anything he could do at home or in the nearby park without drawing attention. He needed stamina to withstand the backlash of summoning even one Nazgûl. Understanding and controlling his quirk. The hardest and most dangerous part. He needed to experiment. Not on people, never. But where? All he had was his room and… his own will.
He stood and approached the wall. He placed his palm on it. This was his wall. The one he'd built in his mind for years. "Alright," he whispered. "Let's make a deal."
He closed his eyes. He wasn't trying to break the wall or reinforce it. He was looking for… a loophole. A keyhole. The tiniest, thinnest crack.
"What are you scheming, tangible one?" a voice hissed, full of suspicion and intrigue. "I want to see," Arashi replied mentally. "Just for a second. Just one. The weakest."
He didn't know if there were "weaker" ones among them. But he had to start small. He focused on an image. Not on terror, not on power, but on control. Precision. He imagined not a gaping door to hell but a needle's eye. And through that eye, he wanted to thread just one, the thinnest strand of darkness.
His head began to split with pain. It was a thousand times harder than simply unleashing them all in a burst of rage or fear. It demanded incredible focus. He felt Them thrashing inside, outraged by such audacity, such a pinpoint approach.
But he held on. He gripped a nail in his pocket, and the pain in his palm helped him stay focused.
And then he felt it. Not a wave of cold, but a thin, icy trickle. It seeped through the imaginary wall, enveloping his hand.
He opened his eyes. Frost flowed from his fingers down the wall. Not just cold condensation, but a beautiful, intricate pattern, like frosty flowers. The air around his hand froze, tiny ice crystals sparkling in the morning sun.
He hadn't summoned a Nazgûl. He had summoned a fragment of their power. A sliver of their chilling essence. And he had done it himself. Consciously. Deliberately.
He unclenched his fingers. The icy pattern slowly melted, leaving a damp spot on the wallpaper.
Arashi stood, breathing heavily, sweat dripping down his temples. He was exhausted, as if he'd run for an hour. But his chest burned with elation.
He had done it. He hadn't unleashed a monster. He had used its effect as a tool.
The path was insanely long and dangerous. One drop was not a wave capable of stopping a robot. But it was a start.
He spent the rest of the day making a schedule. He found demo versions of past U.A. tests online and was horrified to see how difficult they were. He sketched out a training plan: morning runs while everyone slept, strength exercises in his room.
At dinner, he told his parents, "I need to improve my studies. And… something else." His father looked at him closely. "Whatever you need, son. Tutors, books…" "Books, yes, but no tutors," Arashi said quickly. Tutors were out of the question. No one could know about his quirk experiments, and no one would likely agree to teach him for reasonable money. "I'll manage on my own."
That evening, he fell asleep with his laptop on his lap, reading articles on tactics for fighting mechanical opponents. His head was filled with formulas, diagrams, and plans.
He glanced again at the damp spot on the wall. At his first, tiny step.
Fear hadn't gone away. But now he had an answer to it. Not a hope that everything would work out, but a concrete, detailed, step-by-step plan.
He was just a speck of sand daring to storm an impregnable rock. But now that speck had a map and the most dangerous weapon in the world — knowledge that even the monster inside could teach him something.
The decision was final. The goal — U.A. — shone ahead like a distant, almost unattainable star. But between him and that star lay an abyss of formulas, physical trials, and his own demons. Arashi understood that the only way to cross it was to turn every day into a bridge paved with discipline and sweat.
His life split into three clear, rigid streams: academic studies, physical training, and the most dangerous — experiments with his quirk.
Studying transformed from an escape from the world into an offensive. His room, once a sanctuary, now resembled a command center. The walls were plastered with formulas, notes on hero law, and diagrams of tactical formations. His old computer hummed, overloaded with dozens of tabs containing online courses, test simulators, and archives of past U.A. entrance exams.
He created a strict schedule:
Morning (5:30–7:00): Mathematics. The hated, treacherous mathematics. He tackled problems on speed, logic, and spatial reasoning. Numbers and symbols blurred into a single, menacing pattern before his eyes, but he didn't give up. He drilled until the laws of physics and algebra became intuitive.
After school (3:00–6:00 PM): Hero-related subjects and languages. This was his respite. Diving into hero history, analyzing famous battles, and studying the legal nuances of quirk usage came to him with surprising ease. He didn't just memorize; he analyzed, sought patterns, and built his own theories. English became a key to international articles and quirk typology studies unavailable in Japanese sources.
Evening (8:00–10:00 PM): Physics and Chemistry. The toughest block. Physics and Chemistry were enemies he had to understand to conquer. He broke down each topic into the finest details until kinematics, dynamics, thermodynamics, valency, ionic exchange, and chemical reactions stopped being incomprehensible.
School life at No. 3 took on a new, strange hue. The teachers, likely warned by Mr. Godayam, left him alone. He sat at the back, immersed in his notes or solving problems on his tablet. He was ignored, and that was perfect.
His classmates still looked at him with fear, but now it was tinged with confusion. The "ghost" wasn't just sitting quietly—he worked with such focused intensity that waves of tension seemed to radiate from him. He was no longer just a frightening enigma; he was a frightening enigma with an unclear purpose.
Kenji and his crew steered clear of him. Rumors that he "burned out the souls" of an entire gang of villains made him untouchable. Arashi used this fear as a shield, allowing him to focus.
Once a week, he took a full U.A. practice test. The first results were disheartening. His overall score barely reached average, and in math and physics, he was at the bottom. Despair drove him harder, pushing him to study until exhaustion, until letters danced before his eyes.
But gradually, week by week, his progress graph crept upward. Slowly, arduously, but steadily. He learned not to panic over mistakes but to jot them down in a separate notebook, analyzing each one meticulously. That notebook, filled with annotations, became his personal textbook on his own weaknesses.
If studying was storming a fortress, physical training was a slow, grueling process of chiseling himself out of unyielding stone.
His days now began not with battling whispers but with the quiet creak of the door as he slipped out of the apartment at 5 a.m. The city was still asleep, the streets empty and clean, bathed in the bluish glow of streetlights. The perfect time for no one to witness his weakness.
His first run was torture. A hundred meters, and his throat seized, his lungs burned, his legs buckled. He stopped, leaning against a cold wall, nausea rising from his helplessness. They laughed in his head, reveling in his humiliation.
"Why bother? You're weak. You'll always be weak. Your strength isn't in those pathetic muscles. It's in us. Accept it."
"Shut up," he rasped, wiping sweat from his forehead and starting to run again. He set tiny goals. Reach the next streetlight. The end of the street. The park.
He ran, and with each labored breath, a new, obsessive rhythm pounded: U.A…. U.A…. U.A… It was a spell. A mantra. A shield against fatigue and pain.
After a month, he could run two kilometers without stopping. After two months, five. He wasn't an athlete, but the shortness of breath was gone, replaced by stamina. His body, once so alien and disobedient, began to respond.
At home, locked in his room, he did push-ups. At first, from his knees, barely managing three or four feeble reps. Then, more and more. He did pull-ups on a bar installed in the doorway, feeling his back and arms burn. He worked his core, the nausea fading and his mind clearing after long study sessions.
He was changing. The sharp angles of his shoulders and collarbones began to soften under the hint of muscle. The sickly thinness disappeared. In the mirror, the same pale, serious face looked back, but now there was a stubborn spark in his eyes and a firmness in his posture that hadn't been there before.
One morning, returning from a run, he ran into a neighbor—an elderly man who always eyed him suspiciously.
"Oh, Tanaka-kun," the man muttered, looking him over in surprise. "You've… filled out a bit."
Arashi just nodded and moved on, but inside, something stirred—a strange, almost forgotten feeling. Not fear, but simple human attention.
Pushing aside unnecessary thoughts, he returned to training his quirk. This was the most dangerous part of his preparation. Playing with fire, where a single mistake could cost him his sanity or life.
He started small. With that same "needle's eye." Every evening, after studying, he sat on the floor in the middle of his room, clutching a nail, and focused.
His goal wasn't a full summon. It was sensation. Understanding the nature of their power.
He learned to distinguish them. Nine hungry consciousnesses behind the wall. They were different. One was cold and methodical, like death itself (the Witch-king). Another was fiery and frenzied. A third was cunning and venomous, its whisper sweeter than nectar. Others echoed these traits in varying ways, but all demanded his submission.
He began with the "weakest"— the one whose presence felt like a light, piercing chill rather than all-consuming emptiness. He imagined it not as a terrifying specter but as… a tool. A scalpel. And he tried to bring only its blade into reality.
At first, nothing worked. His head split with pain, blood trickled from his nose, and all he got in return was the mocking fury of the Nazgûls, crashing against his mind like storm waves against a cliff.
But he didn't give up. He analyzed his failures like he analyzed math problems, searching for the right "angle" of mental effort.
And after three weeks of agonizing attempts, something happened.
He focused on a point a meter in front of him. He didn't want just frost on the wall. He wanted… an ice spike. A dagger. Tiny, just a couple of centimeters.
The pain was hellish. It felt like his skull would crack. But he held the image. A sharp, cold, deadly spike.
The air before him shimmered. It smelled of ozone and eternal winter. And for a split second, with a faint crunch, a tiny, perfectly pointed icicle hung in the air. It was darker than normal ice, almost black, with frost mist curling around it.
It lasted a moment before crumbling into icy dust.
Arashi collapsed to the floor, drained, blood streaking from his nose. But a triumphant smile played on his lips.
He had done it. He hadn't just released power—he had shaped it. Even if only for a moment. Even at the cost of immense effort.
From that moment, his quirk training reached a new level. He was no longer just reinforcing the wall. He was learning to install small, controlled windows in it.
He experimented:
Precision: He tried to leave not just patterns but numbers in frost on the wall. First simple ones—"1," "2." Then more complex.
Duration: He tried to sustain the ice spike for not just a moment but two seconds. Then three.
Power: He tried to pierce a sheet of paper hung on a string with the spike. At first, it was too ethereal. But one day, the paper tore at the edge with a soft rustle.
Progress was microscopic. Each step came at the cost of immense fatigue and headaches. But it was progress. He was waging his quiet war, reclaiming ground centimeter by centimeter.
One evening, after collapsing from another string of failed attempts, a voice came from beyond the wall—not venomous but different. Quiet, cold, almost respectful. The Witch-king's voice.
"Stubborn mortal. You're learning to hold the reins. That's… unexpected."
It wasn't praise. It was a statement of fact. But it was enough.
Months flew by in a monotonous, exhausting haze. Study, run, push-ups, meditation, sleep. Repeat.
He grew leaner, not from thinness but from discipline. His gaze, once dull and frightened, became sharp and focused. He moved with a new, economical grace, as if every motion was calculated.
The atmosphere at home changed too. His parents saw his determination. They saw him return from runs drenched in sweat, studying late into the night. Their fear lessened, gradually replaced by awe and hope. They didn't ask questions, but their support showed in small ways: a favorite dinner left in the fridge, a new pair of sneakers quietly placed by his door.
Three months before the exams, he took another practice test. His fingers flew across the keyboard, formulas surfacing effortlessly. He solved math and physics problems that once stumped him. Hero law was second nature.
When he clicked "submit," his heart pounded. The result flashed on the screen.
Overall score: 92%
He couldn't believe his eyes. He checked again. Yes. Ninety-two. Not just a passing score—it was a score for the best.
He leaned back in his chair, tears streaming down his face. Not tears of pain or despair, but of pure, unimaginable victory. He had done it. Through his own effort. His own stubbornness.
That evening, he went to his "training ground"—an abandoned construction site on the edge of the district. He looked around—no one in sight. He approached a pile of old, broken bricks.
He raised his hand. No need to close his eyes or fall to his knees anymore. He simply focused. Breathed evenly. The image. A blade. Cold.
The air before his palm froze. With a soft, ominous hiss, a blade of black ice materialized from nothing. It was the length of his forearm, perfectly smooth and sharp. It hung in the air, frost spreading in a ring, coating the dust on the bricks.
Arashi mentally pushed it.
The ice blade struck a brick with a dry crunch, splitting it in half before shattering into a million sparkling fragments.
He stood, breathing heavily but still on his feet. His head buzzed, but it didn't split. He was the master of his exhaustion.
He looked at the broken brick, then at his hand. He hadn't become a hero. He hadn't even been accepted to U.A.
But he was no longer a victim. He was a student. A warrior. And his weapon, though dark and dangerous, was finally starting to obey his hand.
The road was still endlessly long. But now he knew he could walk it. Not run. Not crawl. But walk. With a steady, confident stride. Toward his destiny.