….
["See you guys soon."]
Jin-Ho's voice crackled through the phone, bright and annoyingly cheerful.
The line is cut with a soft click.
"It seems like you will be busy for a while." the white-haired boy commented eying Giran .
"As if I have been taking it easy. I have been swamped since the day I met him." Came the exhausted reply.
"If he heard you, he would complain about you talking behind his back." Toya said dryly.
"He absolutely would." Giran admitted with a small grin.
Keigo nodded wordlessly.
Toya turned toward the door. "Then we will get back to training."
"You better, Toya. You need to take the U.A. entrance exam next week."
"What about Keigo?"
"I am positive he is gonna do well."
"Tsk, talk about being trustworthy." Toya continued along with Keigo.
—shut!
The sound of the door closing echoed through the room.
"Sigh. Now where am I supposed to find a building that matches all his ridiculous requirements?" Giran said, his voice tinged with annoyance.
He stared at the ceiling for a moment, already dreading the workload.
Jin-Ho had always been like this, one unreasonable request after another, completely unbothered by the logistics. Stubborn like an eighty-year-old man trapped in the body of a young hero.
"I swear, where does this stubbornness even come from…?" he muttered. Then, despite himself, he continued thinking aloud. "It will probably be easier to build the whole thing from scratch. Better for security too."
He already felt himself being pulled into the blueprint in his mind.
….
On the other side of the door, Toya exhaled–
"Giran's having a hard time…"
The nearly empty hallway stretched before him, sterile, dim, and humming faintly from old ventilation systems. As Toya walked, his thoughts drifted inevitably back to Jin-Ho.
"But the Boss… what is he plotting now?"
It was impossible not to wonder. Jin-Ho had dragged him out of a future that was nothing short of hell and reshaped the boy he once was.
Today's Toya was unrecognizable compared to the broken thing he should have become - no burn scars, black hair dye, or grotesque patches of purple skin held together with surgical staples.
Just a fifteen-year-old boy, still messed up, learning, but alive in a way he never got to be in the original timeline.
And Jin-Ho had done that.
Of course, Toya would never know the exact horrors that alternate versions endured… which was for the best.
.…
Toya's first memory after the coma came rushing back: waking up in a rundown clinic after a full year.
A doctor and a nurse greeted him first. The doctor, for reasons unknown, shouted every word like Toya was deaf rather than unconscious.
Or… given how the nurse kept wincing with every barked syllable…
It might have been the other way around.
Maybe the doctor was the deaf one.
Other embarrassing moments followed - none Toya ever wanted to revisit.
Next thing he was greeted by Jin-Ho's awkward attempts at explanation.
The dude looked like a nervous used-car salesman, complete with a nervous smile that practically shouted, 'Trust me, I am not a scammer!'
Toya remembered, listening to Jin-Ho's babble and thinking, 'Is this guy for real?'
The last memory Toya had before the coma was Sekoto Peak, the blue inferno swallowing him whole, a suffocating, blistering agony he couldn't even scream through.
And suddenly, he was awake in a hospital bed with this awkward man telling him he was safe.
When he returned home afterward and discovered nothing had changed–
His hope collapsed into disappointment.
Disappointment into tears.
Tears into simmering anger.
And anger into the certainty that he was spiraling toward destruction.
Not exactly memories worth cherishing.
So Toya pushed them aside.
Because something else demanded his focus.
His quirk still hurt, burning him from the inside out when he pushed too far, but training had given him resistance.
Countless support items, exercises, and who-knows-how-many 'healing papers' from Jin-Ho kept him functioning.
Fast forward to now, and things were different.
He was preparing for the U.A. entrance exam.
A massive improvement from the twelve-year-old who lost control of his flames, incinerated himself, and fell into a coma for a year.
He had been the fourth person Jin-Ho pulled into his Team - right after Jin, another manic, but before Keigo.
As Toya walked through the building's dim corridors, passing one reinforced door after another, he finally reached the main training chamber.
The structure towered above him, a half-oval roof, reinforced plating, soundproof vents, and quirk-resistant walls. One palm against the scanner, and the massive door slid open with a soft hiss.
He stepped inside.
The door slammed shut behind him with a heavy metallic thud.
Before he could even fully adjust to the room, a thunderous voice erupted:
"You are late!"
Toya turned just in time to spot five shurikens cutting through the air straight toward his face.
"—Shit!"
He ducked instinctively, the blades slicing past so close he felt the air whip against his hair.
And only then did he notice, sprawled on the floor to his left, drenched in sweat and gasping for breath—
Keigo, wings trembling and barely holding form.
"Stain, you maniac!" He shouted, straightening up, but Stain wasn't done. The shurikens reversed direction, zeroing in on Toya again. He rolled to the left, narrowly dodging the lethal metal.
Toya barely had time to react, rolling to his left.
"Can I get a break?" He grumbled.
Seeing no other choice, Toya pushed himself up from the ground with a defeated look and lazy movements, releasing a sigh. His hand ignited into blue burning flames as he caught the returning shurikens with a really fast phased moments.
Before Toya could celebrate, a stern voice cut through the air.
"Hold it right there." Stain's voice was commanding. "You have had enough leisure time. You lost by default."
"..." Toya glared at him.
"It was a non-quirk combat, did you forget?" Stain continued.
'For heaven's sake, stop competing with a kid, you old geezer!' Toya thought, biting back the words.
But for Toya, the surprises didn't end there. Something unexpected happened.
And Stain wasn't finished. "Even without that rule, you would still…" He snapped his fingers. "Lose."
Before Toya could retort, he noticed something alarming. A small sparkle on one of the shurikens.
"Oh, crap…!"
–Bang!
The shurikens exploded, blasting Toya off his feet and sending him sprawling across the floor. He groaned, trying to push himself up, but his limbs felt like lead.
"Seriously, are you trying to kill a kid?" He panted, falling back to his knees.
Stain's lips curled into a smirk. "Kid… Do you really think any of us here treats you like one? Now, get up. We are starting again. And remember, no quirks this time."
If there is one thing that any kid hates the most, it's being treated as one. But the situation with Toya was entirely reversed here.
No one actually treated him like the actual kid he was.
Of course Toya doesn't dislike it but at times he feels like it is getting out of hand.
Great. At that moment, Toya understood that not being treated like a kid was both a compliment and a curse. They expected him to keep up, to stand tall with them, no holding back.
"But those moves were pretty slick." He admitted.
"Flattery gets you nowhere." Stain shot back, seeing right through the compliment.
"Can I at least get a moment to–" Toya started, but Stain wasn't listening. Another swarm of shurikens flew at him.
"...!!" Eyes wide, Toya braced for another relentless round, knowing this was just the beginning.
….
.
[To be continued….]
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