The first day Kenji Tanaka arrived at school with an electric-blue streak planted in his black hair, Yuki Watanabe jumped out of her chair and knocked over her pencil case.
"YOU DYED YOUR HAIR?!"
Half the class turned around. Kenji felt his ears heat up.
"No, it's my—"
"IT'S SO PRETTY!" Yuki was already in front of him, her twin pigtails sticking up like satellite antennas, leaning just a few inches from his temple. "It looks like a shard of lightning! Does it glow in the dark? Does it change color depending on your mood? Can I touch it?"
"Uh—"
She was already touching it. Her fingers brushed the streak with almost religious reverence.
"It's soft," she breathed. "It's exactly like your normal hair, but blue. That's your Quirk, right?"
Kenji nodded, a little dazed.
"I can absorb electricity. And it leaves a mark."
Yuki's eyes widened. "You absorbed electricity? Like, from an outlet? You didn't die?"
"I wasn't aware I wasn't going to die at the time."
She stared at him for a long second, then burst out laughing. A clear, open laugh that made a few more heads turn.
"You're really weird, Tanaka." She gave him a friendly slap on the shoulder. "That's why I like you."
"What? What's weird? I can't see anything!"
Toru Hagakure had appeared beside them.
Not "popped out of nowhere" — she had run across the classroom, and at some point she had deactivated her invisibility. Her features materialized gradually, like a developing Polaroid: first the eyes, then the outline of her face, then her short hair tied into a ponytail, and finally her slightly wrinkled uniform.
She stopped in front of Kenji, hands on her hips.
"Your hair is BLUE," she said, and even without the invisibility filter, you could hear the wonder in her voice. "Is that your Quirk?"
"Yes."
"Can I touch it?"
"Why does everyone want to touch it?"
"Because it's cool." She was already reaching out. "Does it glow in the dark?"
"Why does everyone ask me that?"
"Because it would be cool if it glowed in the dark."
Her fingers brushed the streak.
"It's soft," she observed. "And it has a texture… electric. It's like you caught lightning and kept a piece of it."
"That's kind of what happened," Kenji admitted.
Toru pulled her hand back.
"You better train," she said. "Because with a Quirk like that, you'll have to beat me at tag."
"I already beat you."
"Once. You won once."
"Twice."
"The second time doesn't count, I had a cold."
Yuki giggled into her sleeve. Toru shot her an offended look — her eyes narrowed, and she activated her invisibility for a split second, just to disappear and instantly reappear.
"You're not supposed to take sides!"
"I'm not taking sides," Yuki replied, looking falsely innocent. "I'm just watching."
"You're watching while laughing."
"I'm not laughing. I'm smiling. That's different."
Kenji was smiling too. A very small smile, barely a movement of his lips. But Toru saw it.
"Hey! You smiled!" She pointed an accusing finger. "Yuki, did you see? He smiled!"
"I don't see anything," Yuki lied.
"You don't need to see, you FEEL it. He smiled, I know it."
"Maybe it's just a facial spasm."
"IT IS NOT A FACIAL SPASM."
Kenji lowered his head over his notebook to hide the corner of his lips that refused to go back down.
Two years earlier.
The first time Kenji saw Yuki Watanabe, she was crying in the corner of the playground.
It was their first day of kindergarten. Kenji, who had just turned five, had wandered away from the group to watch an ant carry a cookie crumb. That's when he saw her: a girl with tight pigtails, curled up against the wall, her face buried in her knees.
He had approached her. Not because he was especially brave. Just because the ant had left and he didn't really know what else to do.
"Why are you crying?"
She had lifted her head, cheeks streaked, nose running. She was holding something in her hand — a small brown seed, crushed between her fingers.
"I-it's dead," she sobbed. "The flower lady told me if I planted it, it would grow big. But I squeezed too hard and it broke."
Kenji had looked at the seed. Then at the girl. Then he had taken the strawberry cookie from his bento — the one with the smile drawn on it — and held it out to her.
"You can try again," he had said. "With another one."
Yuki had sniffed. She had taken the cookie. She had said "thank you" in a very small voice.
The next day, she had given him a flower. Not a real one — an origami flower, folded from candy wrapper paper, a little crooked, with uneven petals.
"My mom taught me," she had explained. "I can't do the real ones yet, but I'm practicing."
Kenji had kept the flower. It was still in a box, under his bed.
Five months later.
Toru Hagakure had arrived mid-year, on a gray and rainy Tuesday.
Mrs. Fujimura had introduced her as a new student, and Kenji had looked up from his drawing. He saw a girl with short hair, a shy face, clothes slightly too big. Nothing extraordinary — until, as she sat down, she suddenly became transparent, then reappeared a second later.
Some children had whispered. Others had stared. Toru had lowered her head, her red cheeks visible even through the brief invisibility.
Kenji had simply noted the way the air folded around her when she concentrated — almost invisible waves, like heat above asphalt.
At recess, she sat alone on a bench, invisible. Kenji had scanned the yard, spotted the faint distortion of light where she must have been.
He had walked over.
"Do you want to play?"
The distortion had twitched. Then Toru reappeared, eyes wide.
"With me?"
"Yes."
She had looked around, as if to check he wasn't talking to someone else.
"Okay," she had whispered.
They had played tag. Toru ran fast, and when Kenji got too close, she stretched out her arms and a translucent barrier appeared, gently pushing him back. She had laughed — a nervous, uncertain laugh — and Kenji had thought it was a nice sound.
The next day, Yuki joined them.
"Can I play too?"
Toru nodded — a sharp movement, almost too enthusiastic. Yuki smiled, took a seed from her pocket, and made a small tilted daisy bloom.
"For you," she told Toru.
Toru took the flower in her visible hands. For a long moment, no one spoke.
"Thank you," Toru murmured.
And Kenji, watching the scene in silence, had thought: This is good.
Now, two years later, they were inseparable.
Not exclusive — they had other classmates, other lunch tables, other project groups. But at recess, it was always the three of them. When Mrs. Fujimura asked for pairs, Toru and Yuki raised their hands at the same time, and Kenji was automatically included.
"You're like the three musketeers," a second grader had said one day.
"There are four in the three musketeers," Toru corrected.
"… What?"
"There's d'Artagnan too. That makes four."
"But you're three."
"Exactly, we're like the three musketeers version three. Actually we're the real three musketeers."
The boy had walked away shaking his head. Yuki laughed. Kenji smiled.
Toru crossed her arms, satisfied.
Two weeks after Kenji's awakening, Yuki brought a special pencil case to the cafeteria.
"Look," she said, unzipping it.
Inside, nestled between erasers and colored pencils, a small green stem emerged from damp cotton.
"It took three days to sprout," Yuki explained. "I call it Kenji Junior."
Kenji examined the shoot.
"It's straighter than the last one."
"Yes! I can control the direction better now." Yuki stroked the stem with her fingertip. "My mom says I'm an organized green disaster."
"Did she say 'organized'?"
"No, I added that. But she agreed."
Toru, chewing her bread with focus, swallowed too quickly and had to take a sip of water. She had chosen to stay visible today — her tied hair revealing rebellious strands that refused to stay put.
"My dad says I'm just a disaster," she said. "Because I leave my shields lying around."
"You can't leave them lying around, they're invisible," Kenji pointed out.
"Exactly! He walks into them and then says I should've warned him. But I always warn him!"
"You don't always warn," Yuki said.
"I do!"
"No."
"… Sometimes I warn."
Kenji watched his two friends arguing, and something warm settled in his chest. Not his Quirk's energy — another warmth, older, simpler.
"You're smiling again," Toru said.
"No."
"Yes, I can see your eyes."
"My eyes don't smile."
"Your eyes smile ALL THE TIME."
Yuki giggled. Kenji lowered his head over his bento.
He couldn't see his eyes, but he could feel his lips refusing to stay straight.
Akari Tanaka watched her two sons through the kitchen window.
Outside, in the yard, Daichi ran in circles clapping his palms together, trying to produce stronger and stronger shockwaves. Kenji sat on the terrace steps, a notebook open on his knees, pen raised — not writing. Listening.
She saw his face concentrate, his fingers move imperceptibly. He was catching something no one else could feel.
One month. Exactly thirty-one days since the awakening.
Akari had always known her children were different. Daichi with his overflowing energy and sensitivity he hid under layers of bravado. Kenji with that too-old gaze, that way of observing the world as if seeing it for the second time.
But this month had revealed something new.
She opened her laptop — a standard model Daichi had decorated with a hero sticker three years ago — and launched her brokerage app. The numbers scrolled, familiar.
The support equipment sector was buzzing. A startup in Osaka had patented a new type of carbon fiber. Detnerat's shares were slowly rising. A small tactical glove manufacturer in Fukuoka had signed a contract with two local agencies.
Akari had invested in all three.
Her father, the Arashi family patriarch, had taught her to read those signals when she was sixteen. "The economy, my daughter, is like medicine. Anyone can take its pulse, but only those who know how to interpret it can diagnose."
The Arashi family had been in medicine for four generations. Clinics, hospitals, cutting-edge equipment, pharmaceutical research. The Arashi Group was one of Japan's leaders in the sector, quietly influential, solidly established. Her father would have preferred she take over. She chose Hiroshi and the library.
He never reproached her. He only taught her how to dance in the rain.
Akari checked her positions, placed a modest buy order, then closed the app. What she earned in trading — and she earned a lot — had nothing to do with what she already possessed through inheritance. But that wasn't the point. It was the game. The strategy. The quiet certainty of being able to offer her children everything they would need.
Hiroshi, on his side, had built his own success. The Tanaka Groups had climbed to seventeenth place in the national construction and real estate ranking and kept rising. He never spoke about numbers at home, but Akari saw the projects piling up on his desk, the calls that lasted late into the night.
They hid nothing from each other. In the evening, when the children slept, they exchanged about their days — Hiroshi's contracts, Akari's investments, their worries and their pride. She knew he was as anxious as she was, maybe more. He just hid it better.
In the yard, Daichi had abandoned his training and sat beside Kenji. He looked at the notebook over his shoulder, frowning.
"What does 'conversion yield' mean?"
"It's how much energy I get back compared to what I absorb," Kenji explained. "If I absorb a hundred and can use eighty, my yield is eighty percent."
"And what's yours?"
"I don't know yet."
"Well, find out."
"It's not that simple."
"Why?"
Kenji thought.
"Because I can't measure the energy I absorb. I can only feel it. It's like…" He searched for words. "It's like trying to weigh water with your hands."
Daichi stayed silent for a moment.
"Your Quirk is too complicated," he said finally.
"I know."
"But it's still cool."
Kenji turned toward his brother. A small smile at the corner of his lips.
"Thanks."
Akari watched them from the window and felt something loosen in her chest.
She opened her computer once more.
Not for charts this time. For the file she had been building for three weeks.
"Mrs. Tanaka."
The voice on the phone was calm, slightly tinged with a foreign accent. Aged, but not weakened. Lucas Bishop was somewhere in Kyoto, according to what she had found. Fifty-three years old, retired two years ago, a former American pro hero who had settled in Japan for "the quiet and the hot springs." His Quirk, Energy Absorption, allowed him to absorb almost all forms of energy and release them as concentrated blasts.
He had nothing left to prove. He had no need to work.
"Your son," Bishop said. His voice had the texture of gravel — rough, but steady. "Seven years old. Universal absorption."
"Yes."
"Do you know how rare that is?"
Akari tightened her grip on the phone.
"I'm beginning to."
A pause. Then Bishop spoke again.
"I saw the video. The one in the garage." Another pause. "He absorbed an accidental electrical discharge and released it as a beam in less than three seconds. No training. No idea what he was doing."
Akari had never shown that video to anyone. Hiroshi hadn't either. They had talked about it that night and decided to keep it to themselves — just in case. In case they needed to convince someone one day.
"He's seven," she said.
"I know." Bishop's voice was strangely gentle. "That's why I'm interested."
She closed her eyes.
"He needs someone who understands. Not just how to use his Quirk — how not to be afraid of it."
"And you think I can teach him that?"
"I think you're the only one who can try."
Silence.
"I want to meet him," Bishop said. "Him and you. No commitment. Just… see."
Akari opened her eyes again.
"When?"
"Tomorrow."
That evening, during dinner, Hiroshi spoke up.
"I found someone for Daichi."
Daichi, who was drinking his soup, nearly choked.
"WHAT?"
"A former hero specialized in sound-based Quirks." Hiroshi set down his napkin. "His name is Yamada Kenjiro. He worked with Present Mic's agency for fifteen years."
Daichi's eyes widened so much they looked ready to pop out.
"Present Mic?! The Present Mic?! The UA voice hero?!"
"He worked with his agency, not for him." Hiroshi paused. "But yes."
Daichi turned toward Kenji, mouth open, unable to form a word.
Kenji looked at his mother.
"And for me?" he asked.
Akari set down her chopsticks.
"I also found someone." Her voice was calm. "His name is Lucas Bishop. He's a former American hero. His Quirk is very similar to yours."
Kenji blinked.
"American?"
"He lives in Japan now. He agreed to meet you." She paused. "Tomorrow."
Hiroshi gave her a look — not surprised. Complicit.
"Bishop," he said. "The one who did the demonstrations at the embassy ten years ago?"
"The very same."
"Impressive." He turned to Kenji. "You're lucky."
Kenji said nothing. He looked at his parents — his father, who had spent weeks searching for a tutor for Daichi. His mother, who had spent those same weeks searching for him.
They did this together, he thought. Separately, but together.
Daichi was still processing.
"So," he said slowly, "Dad found a teacher for me, Mom found a teacher for Kenji, and you both knew from the start?"
"Yes," Hiroshi said.
"Yes," Akari said at the same time.
Daichi opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"… Oh."
He thought for a second.
"That actually makes sense. You're always like that."
Kenji looked at him.
"Like what?"
"Organized," Daichi said with a grimace. "You talk without talking. It's creepy."
Akari smiled. Hiroshi picked up his chopsticks again.
"Eat your soup, Daichi."
"I'm eating, I'm eating."
Kenji lowered his eyes to his bowl.
"Mom," he said.
"Yes?"
"Tomorrow, with Mr. Bishop…" He hesitated. "What am I supposed to do?"
Akari looked at him for a long moment.
"Be yourself," she said. "That's all we ask of you."
That night, Kenji had trouble sleeping.
He thought about Lucas Bishop. An American hero with a Quirk like his. Fifty-three years old. Decades of experience.
He can teach me things, he thought. Things I can't learn from books.
He also thought about Daichi. His brother who would meet a former collaborator of Present Mic, who would finally get the training he deserved.
We're going to learn at the same time, he thought. Him his Quirk, me mine. Just like he wanted.
He opened his notebook and added a line under the long list of failures and questions.
Tomorrow, I'm meeting a hero. I don't know if I'll be ready.
He paused.
But Mom and Dad did all this for us. So I'll try anyway.
He closed the notebook.
Outside, the city hummed with energy. Thousands of luminous filaments, invisible to the naked eye, danced in the darkness.
Kenji closed his eyes.
And he began to listen.