The next day, just as I sat down at my desk—not even Yui had arrived yet—a whole... delegation (I can't think of a better word) of classmates approached me.
Among them were those to whom I had painted a heroic future yesterday, and those who didn't get such luck. There was also a sort of ambassador.
That role was taken by the most cheerful, bright, and straightforward girl in the class—a local ray of sunshine and an earthquake in one person named Akari.
Before my reincarnation in this world, I thought that twin tails, or rather, the two long pigtails typical of anime, were just a cliché with no relation to reality.
Well, she had those very pigtails, yes. With ribbons and all that.
This Akari, to put it bluntly, provocatively sat right on the edge of my desk and immediately started her speech:
"Shoda-kun!"—Oh, I've been promoted. "We, after discussing it with the whole class, decided... to very, very much ask you to help us!"
She quickly stood up again, bowed in something vaguely resembling a bow, and clasped her hands together as if in prayer. She did all this so energetically that she almost smacked me in the face with one of her pigtails.
Despite my usual indifference, I couldn't help but smile.
"And how exactly can I help you, dear classmates?"
Yui approached. In her manner, she silently sat down on the windowsill behind me, pulled out a book but didn't open it—she was listening.
"We, everyone who came... well, excluding those who came yesterday... I mean, didn't come, but... oh, in short, we're asking you to con-sult us! Regarding our quirks and hero careers!"
"Like yesterday?"
"Yes!" Akari enthusiastically nodded, her pigtails acting as fans. I noticed how the guys behind her moved—some backed away, while others... moved closer.
"No problem, guys," I replied, trying not to burst out laughing, "who's first?"
"Well..."
"We..."
"Me!" Akari raised her hand, stepping forward and without any hint of shyness, pushing everyone else to the back of the classroom. No one seemed to mind—without her, probably not many would have dared to approach the big and scary... well, small, but still scary Niren Shoda.
"Alright. So what's your quirk, Akari-san?"
"Oh, you can drop the suffix, or use '-chan' if you like, you're so coo... oh... Anyway, I can talk to cats! Find out what they've seen, where they've been, and where they are now, ask them to do something, well, not too complicated. I-it's not a combat quirk, but... as you said, I'm willing to try and... well..."
At that moment, seeing her eyes up close, I suddenly realized that all this cheerful "chatter" was nothing more than a mask, a defense, like a samurai's cold calm.
Moreover, the girl—no, Akari—didn't really hope for anything. She had already resigned herself and accepted my obviously negative response. Her eyes—by the way, beautiful, large eyes with that very iconic cat-like slit pupil—were almost on the verge of tears, though she hid her sadness skillfully.
Well. I do have a negative response.
But I won't give it to you.
After all, even if the people I'm giving advice to don't become heroes, at the very least, they can work on themselves, grow as individuals, and learn something useful.
Akari interpreted my silence in her own way:
"A... I see, I've stunned you with my otherworldly beauty, Sh-Shoda, so much that you forgot about quirks, adm..."
"I didn't say no, Akari."
Interrupting people isn't usually my style, but I heard her voice start to tremble at the end of the sentence.
"Y-you didn't say no?"—she was so surprised she forgot to keep her cheerful mask.
"Yes, you're right, your quirk doesn't have combat potential, you understand that well," I continued, looking intently at the girl. Perhaps a future heroine is standing before me—I certainly believe in her strength of spirit. "In any form."
"But?"
"But... first of all, half of the heroes' quirks aren't combat-oriented to some degree. But they achieve their goals through long roads of physical training. I can assure you that a trained fighter without a quirk, who has reached the peak of their physical abilities, will likely defeat most quirk users who neglect working on themselves."
"Only if they're lucky," Akari smirked, discreetly wiping her tears with her sleeve, pretending to fix her hair. All I could do was shake my head: and with students like these, I thought there wasn't a single hero here? Am I getting old or what...
"Secondly, no villain would remain unscathed if you asked a dozen cats to jump on them from a shelf and scratch their face to ribbons," I grinned slightly and added. "And it would never be a problem for you to get a cat down from a tree either."
Akari and a couple of students burst out laughing at this simple joke.
"And also... no one could compete with the cat-girl on the merchandise battlefield!"—the students gawked, all at once. "What did you think? Heroes need to make a living too, and most don't donate all the money earned from their name to charity, like All Might."
Akari's gaze dimmed again:
"Thanks, Niren, but that's not quite..."
I just smiled and delivered the finishing blow:
"Do you know one of the most successful Japanese hero teams, the Wild Pussycats?"
"Yes, of course!"—came the energetic nod.
"And their quirks?"
"Um... No," she said, shaking her pigtails so energetically that one of them lightly tapped me on the top of my head.
"In case you didn't know, one of them has the ability to transmit her thoughts over a distance."
I waited a moment.
"W-wait... that's it? Without any combat tricks?"
"Without any combat tricks."
"Then why is she even... well..."
"Not all heroes work alone. Actually, most of them are in teams. And this heroine I'm talking about—her power allows her to coordinate the team's actions, find victims of villains, and people in need of rescue... maybe even villains themselves."
I could see that familiar fire igniting in the depths of her cat-like eyes.
A dream. Her dream. My dream. Ours...
"Thank you, Niren-chan! When I become a hero, I'll definitely become a sidekick at your agency!"—I was hit by a hurricane, hugged, almost kissed—and she ran off in an unknown direction before I could even react.
So much for hero training, Niren, damn it, so much for reaction speed, Niren-kun, reflexes you've been training since childhood, yeah, yeah...
Yui quietly snorted. Either disapprovingly or holding back laughter.
With some wistfulness, I looked at the remaining kids and suddenly felt like... I don't know, a cashier at an overcrowded store?... Late on Christmas Eve when everyone in line needs to get their champagne scanned in a couple of minutes?...
"Well then, who's next?"
A girl with something like two long antennae on her forehead, like an insect, hesitantly raised her hand.
"Suzuki-san..." I began, suddenly realizing I only remembered her last name.
"Yoko," the girl said, slightly embarrassed and a bit indignant, adorably puffing out her antennae: after all, we've been classmates for two months, Shoda-san, you should know your classmate's name!
But that's not so simple.
Classmates in Japan mostly call each other by their last names without any name suffixes... wait, or is it postfixes? For my Japanese part, these "-sans" are definitely suffixes, but I still remember from Russian that if a part of the word comes after the end of the word and with a hyphen—it's a postfix... ah, who cares?
In short, among friends, it's just first names, without postfixes, among classmates—just last names. Usually.
Whatever the norm, what worked against me was that I was still the antisocial and reclusive oddball, and everyone around me, seeing me all grown-up and serious, naturally became gloomy, dull, and formal. Hence, there's the "-san" after names because nobody feels familiar enough for "-kun," just using the name would be too casual, using just the last name with no postfix feels too formal and out of character for school kids, and calling me by my last name alone—without a postfix, they just don't have the guts for that.
And probably there should be a separate rule in Japanese etiquette titled "Communicating with Akari." But what's not there is not there; I survived, and that's enough...
In any case, I can't wait for U.A., where, as an international school for future heroes who regularly risk their lives and save each other's, there are none of these status-driven hang-ups.
***
The next few breaks—since they aren't endless—I spent getting to know my classmates, learning about their quirks, and sharing my... logical approach, I suppose?
Yoko's antenna-like appendages picked up vibrations. Sort of like the wires in the ears of my (hopefully) future classmate, only more advanced. And without amplifying sound waves, she seemed to have some ability... I explained to Yoko that having a sense of seismic activity—this is Japan, after all!—is a real "must-have." She could also, like Akari, track down enemies and victims of earthquakes, landslides, gas explosions, accidents, and All Might's clashes...
Even the quiet Yamato approached me—yes, the one with an eyeball for a head, brr. Surprisingly, his quirk actually enhanced his vision. To such an extent that he was his own microscope, telescope, and maybe even a thermal imager.
Is it any wonder that I suggested he become the kind of hero who works in a team, coordinating the actions of allies and spotting enemies before they even know there's a raid?
"And if you want to be a threat on your own, Yamato..."—I shrugged. "Become a sniper."
It's amazing how ideas that seem completely obvious to me shock, delight, or deeply intrigue these kids.
A guy with a name that grated on Japanese ears, Colin, could manipulate colors. Literally: he could temporarily turn black objects or living things red, white, or any other color. And if he tried hard, he could even use several colors, creating a primitive pattern or design. Colin-kun was hopeless as a hero candidate... or so he believed. I found it amusing and explained to him that his quirk was practically ideal for camouflage. Not just for himself, but for his team as well—on a concrete wall, they could become gray, on a brick wall—red, and at night, they could become almost invisible black silhouettes. Moreover, he could signal allies from a great distance, confuse enemies by making them, surrounding objects, and allies all the same color, and if we really wanted to get fantastical...
"Colin-kun, do you know that certain movies with too bright, frequent, and sharp transitions are dangerous for people with epilepsy?" I asked, waited for a nod, and continued: "I'm not a doctor, but I suspect that a similar effect, though much weaker, could be applied to a healthy person—if you switch colors at a high speed, the human brain might short-circuit, and the criminal could simply throw up, or at least get dizzy. Imagine that! Real combat potential..."
A restless but insecure blond boy, Minato Shibari, also controlled flowers. And quite literally, too. But this time, they were living flowers—he could grow all kinds on any inorganic surface. However, only those plants that could be part of a bouquet (yet another strange fact about quirks to add to my collection). Unfortunately, the flowers grew very slowly and reluctantly, so he could never simply turn an enemy into a massive rose bush... and that's why Shibari-kun was self-conscious, considering himself a "lost cause" and thinking it would be better if he were quirkless.
It's also worth noting that "shibari" in Japanese means "binding." The art of bondage, so to speak. And… we can use it!
I explained to him—our future pro-hero "Florist"—that while Minato might not be able to take down powerful opponents on his own, that didn't mean he couldn't become an extremely valuable member of any team.
"Learn about medicinal plants! Study botany! You could make an enemy slip by growing a slippery flower under their feet! If the villain wears glasses, you could take away their vision! If they wear a watch, you could bind their hands with a thorny rose! If the enemy is fleeing, you could grow some rare fragrant flower on them, and they'd be tracked down by scent dogs or someone with a quirk for smell! And also—train and learn new things! That way, if a gun is ever pointed at you, you'll be ready to jam it with a tulip or a daisy."
... finally, when the classmates-turned-supplicants were done, one of the guys who didn't approach—he was the one with a quite combat-ready quirk of extending claws, sharp and hard as stone—couldn't resist and scoffed:
"Amazing useful advice from someone with an enhancing quirk. With that, they'll rip you to pieces at any academy!"
"Yeah. But I'm getting into the best one," I replied in the same tone.
I think the potentially conflict-ridden situation could have gone on for quite a while, but Yui suddenly put an end to the dialogue:
"Niren, it turns out you really love to talk..."
The curtain falls.
***
And the week after my "lectures," I finally had a breakthrough during training...
Quite literally. If you could call it that.
I was sitting on a bench while Mashirao was jumping and running around. What a... good person.
Meanwhile, I was clapping my hands like a madman, staring at that poor hand, already red as who knows what, glaring at the other, seething with anger...
And the only result was a weak breeze ruffling my hair.
Nothing more.
I understood that I was on the right track, that something was happening. But what exactly I was missing remained a mystery for almost three months.
The other dojo visitors tactfully stayed quiet and didn't bother me, but I could guess what their looks might be like. Frustration and anger overwhelmed me to the point where I was barely holding on.
Suddenly, I remembered Sato's eyes... those dead fish eyes that perhaps only Yui could bring back to life.
Then I remembered the eyes of that water-skimmer kid who could run on water—and wasn't happy about that cheat code. Tearful, miserable eyes of a kid who couldn't see any place for himself among all these monsters living around him in this absurd, illogical world of a TV show...
Out of nowhere came a detached and stupid thought that I was just like him.
Too fixated on the show's concept of my power. Suppose I land a punch... suppose the power doesn't work on me... but the point of impact isn't just one, and not only my palm... after all, before the palms collide, I'm landing a hit, so to speak, on the air... yes, the air molecules near the palm aren't the same ones I'm "hitting," but... what if?
Much calmer now, more relaxed, I clapped my hands again and looked at my right palm.
But with a slightly different perspective.
As if... focusing my eyes a little stronger than necessary in front of the skin's surface, so that there was a tiny gap between this focus point and the palm...
Bang.
With tremendous force and speed, my forearm nearly tore the humerus out of its joint, arcing down and sideways... and crashed into the corner of the bench with a thud.
I broke my arm.