The noise of cars mixed with the insistent honking of a delivery truck filled the air. It was noon, and the city moved at a chaotic, steady pace that seed to ignore those walking alone in the crowd.
Reiji was walking down a narrow sidewalk, his school uniform half-buttoned and his backpack slung over one shoulder. He had left early that day. A boy in his class had caused a bit of a ss with his gravitational Quirk, and as a result, the classroom had turned into a vomit-filled room.
Reiji wasn't affected, but it was reason enough to suspend classes for the day. As one might expect, Himiko wasn't so lucky, and because of her parents' work schedule—along with their special permission—they let her go on her own.
She crossed the street just as the light changed and turned onto a less-traveled street, an area with small shops that always seed on the verge of closing: bike repair shops, watch repair shops, a stationery store that only opened when the owner felt like it.
But the feeling of being watched wouldn't go away; no matter which streets she crossed or if she went into a store to buy sothing to eat, it still followed her.
"Do you want to reveal yourself?"
Reiji stopped, pretending to look at a display case full of old watches. His gaze was fixed only on the reflection behind him.
A boy was watching him from across the street, pretending to browse the flowers just like Reiji was, to be lost among the flowers at the stand in front of him. He had sunglasses perched on his head, headphones hanging around his neck, and an unbuttoned gray jacket that didn't match anything.
He didn't move. But he was smiling.
Reiji studied him out of the corner of his eye. ssy blond hair. Deceptively thin. And that nice-guy vibe—he didn't stand out much beyond the two red wings peeking out from his back.
That pair of red wings reminded him of sothing, but he couldn't figure out exactly what at that mont. All the previous events had left his mind exhausted, too much so to rember where he'd seen the guy he was watching in the reflection before.
The boy raised a hand, as if greeting an acquaintance he hadn't seen in a long ti. Then he crossed the street, unhurried.
Reiji tensed slightly, furrowing his brow.
"You know you're standing there like soone who's already expecting trouble?" he said, without introducing himself, as if the conversation had started much earlier.
Reiji didn't respond. He just looked at him.
"And I don't an that in a bad way," he added, glancing around. "Actually, it's pretty useful. You notice things earlier."
He leaned in slightly, lowering his voice:
"Like ."
Reiji didn't respond. His body remained relaxed, but his fingers on the backpack strap had tightened ever so slightly.
"Don't worry," the boy added, with a crooked smile that radiated a sense of ease. "I didn't co here to fight. Or to test you. At least not today."
He took a seat on the tal railing bordering the sidewalk. From that position, his face was level with Reiji's.
"I just wanted to see if you were like they said." He gave him a quick once-over, without mockery, without contempt, but rather with genuine curiosity. "And yeah… You're weird. In a good way."
Reiji frowned slightly. Trying to rember where he knew him from. But that way of speaking, of moving, of reading him as if he knew more than he was saying…
Plus those red wings… The feathers.
'They're the sa as that day…'
When he finally realized who she was, his posture straightened a little more, and he tried to discreetly scan his surroundings.
"Who told you anything about ?" he finally asked, in a neutral voice—clearly not typical for his age.
"People with too much ti on their hands," the boy replied, shrugging. "You know how things are in this world: anyone who stands out ends up on so list."
"And you?" Reiji narrowed his eyes. "Which list are you from?"
The blond laughed. It was a brief, controlled, but genuine laugh.
"Good question. Let's just say I'm in training. I work part-ti for people who watch from the shadows... And part-ti for myself."
He stood up from the railing, stretching his arms.
"What do they want from ?" Reiji decided to get straight to the point.
"Well... It's hard to say; I don't even know what they want from yet. But it'll be up to you to find out." He spoke fluently, as if they were speaking almost the sa language.
"What if I refuse?"
A nasal laugh escaped from the boy's nostrils, as if he'd heard sothing stupid.
"You have things you want—just rember that. I think you get it, don't you?" Reiji's eye twitched slightly, but he stayed silent; in the end, the blond boy was just another pawn.
"You were definitely born for this. Are you sure you're eight years old?" The boy's sly smile appeared as he studied Reiji, then he took a few steps toward the corner, as if he were about to leave.
"What's your na?" Reiji asked suddenly, without moving.
The boy stopped, his back to him. He turned only his head, one eyebrow raised.
"Hawks"
And then he added.
"If you ever need to talk to soone… We'll run into each other around here."
Without saying another word, he turned the corner and disappeared into the crowd.
Reiji stayed there. Motionless. Finally realizing why that person seed so familiar to him. Japan's third-best hero—or at least that's what he rembered—Hawks.
That was, at least, his future identity.
Suddenly everything made perfect sense; before, they had been just assumptions, but he had finally pieced it all together.
The noise of the world returned like a tide, filling the strange void left by that brief conversation.
"The quietest wings do not co from the sky."
And now, for the first ti, he wondered if the ssage had been more literal than he'd thought.
He looked down.
There was sothing on the ground. A reddish feather. Just like that ti. It was a dark red, impossible to have gone unnoticed… Except for the way it seed to have appeared silently, without warning, right at his feet.
He picked it up.
At the base of the feather's shaft, a word had been handwritten in black ink, so small it looked carved:
"Next ti, don't stop to buy the sa thing twice"
Reiji looked in the direction Hawks had gone and let out a wry laugh; he realized when Hawks had noticed his presence. He put the feather in his backpack, afraid of damaging it sohow, and resud his original course.
He had a lot of things to jot down in his notebook.
***
"Hero Public Safety Commission"
Reiji read the heading once more before looking down at the rest of the page.
"An organization tasked with maintaining the image of heroes in society. It operates on two levels: a public one, focused on licensing, regulation, and oversight; and an unofficial one, which operates in the underworld to preserve the stability of the heroes' image and society."
A brief description, and he moved on to the next paragraph.
"Related characters: Hawks, Lady Nagant..."
The next page was a description and a sowhat vague sketch of the boy he'd seen earlier that sa day; Reiji just let out a long sigh.
'I have nothing…'
Of everything he'd jotted down, that organization was the one with the least concrete information and, at the sa ti, the one with the greatest impact on his current situation. It wasn't as if he was going to rember sothing out of the blue; the mories of his other life were distant fragnts, and even more so the ti when he read the Boku no Hero manga.
He returned to the previous page without haste. At least he knew who he'd have to deal with.
The Hero Commission.
It was important to know who you were up against; know your enemy and you will win. Only in this case, the Commission knew his na, his taste for blood, his location, his family, and all the relevant details of his life.
And above all, they knew Himiko.
That was his weakest point.
And probably the first one they would consider using if things stopped going their way.
Reiji slowly closed the notebook, aligning it with the edge of the desk before resting both hands on the wood.
'What did I do to end up like this?'
The question popped into his mind unintentionally.
He wasn't looking for an answer. He didn't need one.
He knew perfectly well that it hadn't been a single mistake. It was a combination of factors. His behavior. His regeneration. His Quirk. His actions in the alley, and who knows what else.
He didn't dwell on that thought. It added nothing.
He leaned back slightly in his chair, shifting his gaze toward the window. The daylight continued to stream in, unchanged. Outside, the street maintained its usual rhythm. Nothing indicated that anything was stirring beneath the surface.
But it was. And he was already in it.
He leaned forward again, resting his forearms on the desk.
The only tactical advantage he had was that they didn't have all the information.
That was a fact.
They didn't know about his first life.
How could they?
And consequently, they didn't know his limits.
And that was enough.
He didn't need a winning hand. The one with the hand isn't always the winner; he just had to make them believe they were in control.
And, above all, keep Himiko out of whatever was happening or would happen.
That was the priority.
He stood up from his chair and headed out to the courtyard; a strong mind required a strong body as well.
***
"Reiji! I'm finally here—you have no idea how hard class was!"
As expected, the mont she walked through the door, Himiko threw herself at Reiji without regard for strength or space, wrapping both arms around him and pressing herself against his body as if she hadn't seen him in days.
Reiji barely managed to tilt the cereal bowl just enough to keep the milk from spilling onto the sofa, making a small adjustnt with his wrist that showed practice rather than reflex.
She had arrived just a few seconds earlier with her mother, and the whole way there she had talked nonstop, piling up complaints, anecdotes, and irrelevant comnts just to fill the ti she hadn't been able to spend with Reiji.
The boy let her hug him without resisting, changing the channel with his free hand while his attention was divided between the TV and the constant pressure his sister was exerting on him.
"I missed you too, Himiko," he replied with a half-smile, gentle enough not to fuel her enthusiasm any further than necessary.
That didn't work.
The hug intensified.
"I knew it!" she said, squeezing him a little tighter, resting her head against his shoulder as if she wanted to make up for all the lost ti in one go.
"Himiko, leave your brother alone."
Her mother's voice ca from the doorway, laced with habit more than actual annoyance. She set several bags on the table with a practical motion, without lingering too long.
"Besides, I thought you'd be hungry, so I brought you sothing."
The reaction was imdiate.
As if soone had flipped a switch, Himiko let go of Reiji without warning and spun around toward the bags, now completely focused on their contents.
Reiji blinked once, adjusting the bowl's balance before finally setting it down on the low table in front of the sofa, discreetly wiping away the small drop that had fallen to the floor with his sock.
'Interesting…'
There were few things that could displace Reiji on Himiko's list of priorities, enough to make her attention shift so abruptly.
Still, he didn't complain. Anything that was food was welco. He stood up without haste, feeling the hunger building in his stomach.
This was already his second al since he'd stopped training, and the feeling of hunger hadn't diminished in the slightest.
It wasn't normal. But it made sense.
His Regeneration didn't just speed up the healing of visible wounds. Internally, his body operated under a different logic. Muscle fibers didn't follow the usual cycle of wear, rest, and slow rebuilding.
Micro-tears in the muscle fibers occurred with every repetition of the exercise he was doing, but instead of waiting hours or days to regenerate, his body initiated the repair process imdiately. The damaged cells were replaced almost in real ti, reinforcing the structure while the effort continued.
That produced a particular effect.
First: the fatigue threshold was higher. It took him longer to reach the point where his body actually began to fail—not just due to fatigue, which was also mitigated by his regeneration, but because of the constant pain of pushing his body to the limit.
Second: When he managed to overco that threshold, he had to make a superhuman effort to gain as many muscle fibers as possible, since once he stopped, the muscle gain achieved at that mont would raise the level of the first threshold and, consequently, only make the process longer.
It was a ntal strength rather than a physical one, but with the direct motivation of protecting Himiko, it was a price Reiji could bear.
But that chanism ca at a direct cost.
Energy. A lot of energy.
His body needed the components to sustain the upcoming recovery. Everything he consud was quickly transford into fuel for that internal process.
That's why he was hungry.
And that's why, as the first threshold expanded, so too would his hunger for the necessary fuel to keep pushing past his physical limits.
That morning, for example, he had spent over half an hour doing continuous push-ups before feeling that he had surpassed the first threshold. It was unsustainable; unless he found better techniques or suitable machines, his physique wouldn't improve much in the short term.
He refocused his attention on the table just as his mother pulled two small containers out of the bags.
The sll hit him first.
'Sukiyaki…'
He didn't need to see it to know.
"Yeah, we passed by a store and rembered it's your favorite! I thought you'd be hungry, so I insisted on getting so for you!" Himiko said with obvious pride, puffing out her chest slightly as if she'd accomplished sothing especially important.
Reiji looked at her for a few seconds before responding.
"Thank you, Himiko," he said finally, with a faint smile, more sincere than he usually showed. "Really."
Himiko's eyes sparkled with satisfaction.
Then she took both containers before her mother could finish setting them on the table, moving closer to him again, and offering him hers. Reiji thanked her with a gesture as she sat down next to him without asking permission, practically pressing herself against his arm as she opened her own container.
"I knew you'd be starving," she added, leaning slightly toward him. "You always are"
Reiji let out a small, nasal laugh as he separated the chopsticks.
"It's not that bad"
"It is," she replied without hesitation. "You eat more than Dad, and you're not even growing that fast"
Reiji didn't correct her.
It wasn't worth explaining.
He opened the container and steam escaped imdiately, accompanied by the rich aroma of sukiyaki. at, broth, vegetables. Simple, but effective.
He took the first bite without rushing; the flavor flooded his senses. He used to enjoy eating—in his previous life, most of the nutrients he needed were injected directly into his system, and the little food he tasted was for research purposes rather than for flavor.
Now, however, everything was different. Accompanied by his hearty appetite, he had beco quite active in trying new things and ate often, savoring the sensation with all his heart.
That was one of the things this new life had given him, along with so many others. He glanced sideways at Himiko and her mother, who was putting things away on the shelves. He couldn't let his new life be ruined by whoever wanted to use him.
He couldn't stop himself from getting involved; it was too late for that. But he could prevent his situation from affecting his family. He would reap the benefits of this organization until he found a crack and exploited it; after all, if they wanted him dead, they wouldn't wait long to do so.
That was his greatest advantage.
Reiji took another bite without dwelling too much on that analysis.
It wasn't sothing he needed to think through right now.
"Why are you so quiet?" Himiko asked suddenly, moving a little closer, invading his space without hesitation. Her gaze fixed on him with more intensity than usual.
Reiji glanced at her out of the corner of his eye.
"I'm eating."
"No, you're thinking," she corrected him without hesitation. "You always make that face when you're thinking about weird things."
Reiji didn't answer right away. He just kept eating.
Himiko didn't look away, not until Reiji answered.
The boy let out a light sigh.
"Nothing important," he said finally.
She narrowed her eyes, clearly not believing him, but didn't press the issue. Instead, she rested her head on his shoulder as if that were her way of accepting it.
"Well… But you have to tell how your day went."
Reiji decided to play along and distracted himself by telling Himiko about his day, though he lied about so things to avoid venturing into dangerous territory.
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