Chapter 16: General Studies, Gentle Giants, and Genuine Confusion.
In his relentless quest for small, fleeting moments of satisfaction, Saitama had discovered that one of the vending machines on the third floor of the West Wing sold a particularly delicious, if obscure, brand of canned coffee called "Dr. Salt." It was his new favorite. However, on this particular afternoon, his journey was interrupted by a maintenance sign detouring him through a part of the school he rarely visited: the General Studies department.
The atmosphere here was profoundly different. The hallways were not filled with boisterous, athletically-built hero-hopefuls, but with students who looked… normal. They chatted about exams, clubs, and weekend plans. It was quiet. It was, for a moment, refreshingly mundane.
As he looked for a building directory, he passed an open classroom door. Inside, a small group of students had cornered a single, tired-looking boy with a wild shock of indigo hair.
"Seriously, Shinso," one of the bullies taunted, "why do you even bother? You think they'd let someone with a villain's Quirk like Brainwashing into the Hero Course?"
"It's creepy, man," another one added. "Just talking to someone and then, wham, they're your puppet."
Hitoshi Shinso just stood there, his hands shoved in his pockets, his eyes shadowed with a familiar mix of resentment and resignation. He was used to it.
Saitama, standing just outside the door, had overheard them. He wasn't moved by a sense of justice. He didn't feel outrage on Shinso's behalf. He was just annoyed because their small crowd was blocking his view of the school map on the wall. He poked his head into the classroom.
"Excuse me," he said, his voice cutting through their taunts. They all turned to look at the bald man in the staff jumpsuit.
"What makes a Quirk villainous?" Saitama asked. It was a genuine question. He didn't understand the distinction.
The lead bully stammered, taken aback. "W-well, it… it controls people! That's evil! A hero has a flashy, powerful Quirk for fighting!"
Saitama considered this for a moment. He thought of all the destructive, "heroic" Quirks he had seen. He thought of the mess Bakugo made.
"Seems subjective," he concluded with a shrug. "Being a hero isn't about what power you have. It's about… deciding to be one and then doing it. Seems like a lot of work, though." He finally saw the map over their shoulders. "Anyway, I'm looking for the Dr. Salt vending machine. Is it on this floor?"
He walked away, leaving a stunned silence in his wake. The bullies, deflated by his complete lack of drama, shuffled off. Hitoshi Shinso, however, remained frozen. He had spent his entire life being told that the nature of his power defined his destiny. And this strange janitor, in the span of fifteen seconds, had casually dismissed that entire worldview as irrelevant. "It's about deciding to be one and then doing it." It was the simplest, most powerful thing anyone had ever said to him. A small, dangerous spark of determination was lit within him.
Saitama eventually found his vending machine. As the can of cold coffee rumbled its way down, he felt a looming presence behind him. He turned to see two imposing figures. One was a tall, muscular Pro Hero with wild, white hair and a pronounced underbite—Vlad King, the homeroom teacher for Class 1-B. The other was a student with sharp, steel-like hair and an equally intense expression, Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu.
"So," Vlad King said, his voice a low growl, clearly speaking for Saitama's benefit. "I hear Class 1-A got quite a thrashing at the USJ. They think they're hot stuff, but they couldn't even handle a few low-level thugs without a staff member stepping in."
He was trying to get a rise out of him, to size up the man from the rumors, to assert Class 1-B's dominance by proxy.
Saitama, however, was focused on a far more important battle. The machine had short-changed him by ten yen. He pressed the coin return button. Nothing. He pressed it again, harder.
Vlad King and Tetsutetsu watched, their intimidating posturing completely wasted. The "consultant" was utterly ignoring them, his entire being focused on a faulty vending machine. He gave the machine a light whack on the side. Not a punch, just a frustrated tap.
With a deafening clang, the machine's internal coin box broke loose, and a torrent of yen coins—hundreds of them—poured out of the coin return slot like a jackpot.
Saitama's eyes widened slightly. He carefully picked out his missing ten yen, then looked at the massive pile of silver coins. He looked back at the two intense figures staring at him, then back at the money.
He scooped up the entire pile of coins, his arms now full. "I should probably return this to the office," he said to them, before walking away, leaving them standing there in stunned, anticlimactic silence. Their attempt at psychological warfare had been utterly defeated by a faulty coin mechanism and a man with a one-track mind.