After the projector shut off, Ryota felt a sense of relief.
And it definitely wasn’t because Japan’s loudest hero had finally stopped his flow of eloquence.
Maybe just a little.
But seriously, the main reason for his relief was that he could finally begin his assault on the dormitory administration to get an exit permit.
He had learned about this document quite a while ago, when he first became interested in the prospect of getting his own apartment as soon as possible.
Essentially, the local bureaucrats could have gathered all the necessary papers and documents themselves without even getting out of their chairs.
Even in the twenty-first century, such departments couldn’t function without electronic document management.
Now, even more so.
However, the burden of collecting the paperwork always fell on the requester.
Was this an attempt to show adolescents leaving for adult life all the horrors of bureaucracy?
Or was it the last quest closing out the main story?
Or was it some perverted mixture of the above with the inevitable notes of sadism that simply must appear in anything involving the dreaded word “bureaucracy”?
It couldn’t be otherwise.
Fortunately, Ryota had already been through this hell.
What did you expect?
Getting an apartment from the state due to the loss of a breadwinner.
In America.
What was some measly quest to get a couple of papers compared to six months of constant battles with the demons of the housing and communal services department of the city administration?
However, it was too early to go “take the quest.” It was only seven in the morning.
So Ryota, remembering the words of today’s duty officer, went to one of the few people he could identify as anything other than “I think I know this person exists.” Though he certainly wasn’t a friend.
Going down one floor, Ryota walked to the farthest door in the hallway and pulled out his phone to dial a number.
Knocking was useless.
This guy never took his headphones out, always blasting music.
He wasn’t afraid of waking the guy up either.
Since he had already sent his desire to meet through Yoshino this morning, it meant he had already stopped by and woken him up.
Otherwise, he would have just called.
And he wouldn’t have hesitated to start ringing even in the middle of the night.
Before the second ring even finished, the phone was answered.
But not a word came from the other end.
“It’s me. Open up,” Ryota said into the phone, not at all surprised by the silence.
…
A few seconds passed.
Then a metallic scraping sound came from behind the wooden door.
The door handle turned, and the door swung open.
Without a second thought, Ryota walked inside.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a strange mechanism attached to the doorknob on the inside.
This contraption was designed and built by Shimizu Satoshi’s immeasurable laziness.
Moreover, he had clearly confused cause and effect again.
He had spent far more effort and time assembling this wonder than if he had simply walked to the door himself every day for the next couple of years.
The main problem, by the way, wasn’t the complexity of the design itself.
It was the administration’s outrage.
They were fiercely opposed to this techno-maniac disfiguring his room any more than he ALREADY had.
After long and heated negotiations, the guy finally managed to get permission to upgrade his living space, with the condition that any mechanism could be removed without damaging the room itself.
Stepping over the haphazardly piled mountains of various stuff, Ryota calmly walked from the hallway into the main room.
Contrary to all the stereotypes about hermit tech-maniacs, this particular specimen’s room didn’t have an atmosphere of a “dark lair illuminated only by a monitor screen.” Quite the opposite.
All sorts of lighting fixtures were abundantly stuck all over the room, creating an extremely bright illumination.
The curtains were tightly drawn.
The window itself was half-covered by a pushed-in, doorless cabinet, its shelves piled high with various electronics.
The room’s owner himself was sitting at his computer desk with his back to the entrance and didn’t acknowledge the guest’s presence in any way.
“You wanted something?” Ryota asked, not bothering with a greeting or anything resembling one.
“Heard you got into U.A.,” the guy finally spoke as Ryota approached.
“…Interesting how fast the whole dorm will know about this news thanks to Yoshino,” Ryota asked rhetorically, picking up the small device.
“What’s this?”
“My new nesting doll.”
Hearing the answer, Ryota barely managed to keep his expression from twisting.
The very same nesting doll because of which he had met Shimizu Satoshi two years ago.
“And…?”
“Plug it into one of the academy’s computers. I want to find something out.”
“…You want to hack one of the best hero academies? Seriously?” Ryota raised an eyebrow.
The story of this “pair’s” acquaintance was quite unusual.
The seventeen-year-old at the time, Satoshi, with the nickname “UberHacker,” had been working on the same freelance platform as Ryota himself.
He had been interested in the person rising so quickly in the site’s rankings.
So he hacked him.
The then completely unprepared guy.
He probably hadn’t expected that when he pulled the “victim’s” IP address, he would find that they were practically from the same address.
After that, he reached out to Ryota directly, and that’s how their “acquaintance” happened.
“I want to find something out,” Satoshi repeated.
“And when did you have time to prepare this?” Ryota shook the flash drive clamped between his fingers in the air.
“Yoshino was here barely an hour ago.”
“I’ve been preparing it for quite a while.”
“Why?”
“…I already uploaded it to your email and hacked its domain, setting it to autoload,” the guy shrugged impassively.
…
This wasn’t a surprise to Ryota.
When he found out that day that some guy was snooping around his PC like it was his own, he showed the full depth of his paranoia.
He cranked up the security so tightly that he doubted he could break it remotely.
And Shimizu just caught the unexpected competitive spirit and decided to break through the tricked-out ice at any cost.
“I see,” Ryota said, scratching his smooth chin.
“And what good will the information you can pull from the academy’s school server do you? There’s so much funding pouring in there that setting up several physical servers for different needs is a piece of cake.”
“The nesting doll contains a replicator with a simplified AI.”
“…Not the one I wrote on commission a couple of weeks ago, by any chance?”
Silence.
Yes, despite Satoshi’s astounding talents in everything related to hardware and system hacking, his abilities in actually writing complex software were pretty average.
Good enough to make most of his creations work.
But compared to Ryota’s skills in this area, it was nothing.
“Okay, the idea is good.
I’m trembling in horror and all that.
But,” Ryota crossed his arms over his chest, “I updated my systems and changed all the security layers a week ago.”
Shimizu Satoshi’s hands, which had been fluttering over the keyboard, froze.
He turned to face his interlocutor for the first time during the conversation.
His dull gray eyes, with deep bags under them, bored into the standing guy as if trying to discern the secrets of the universe.
Or maybe get a hint.
“I installed a separate system unit,” Ryota began to speak with slight notes of pleasure in his voice, deciding to spare his acquaintance.
“The OS and all the software are written by me personally. Any files coming from outside pass through it and are filtered. Among other things, it communicates with the main PC through a complex dialog code that goes through several checks at each stage of transmission. Any file deemed malicious is instantly quarantined.” Ryota spread his hands.
“So right now, your little nesting doll is trying with all its might to bypass an almost dead isolated block.”
“…Tch,” Satoshi clicked his tongue in annoyance, sharply turning back to the monitor.
“Give me a couple of days, and I’ll open this like a can of beans.”
“You’re not going to tweak the contents?” Ryota waved the flash drive in the air with a victorious expression.
“Not necessary. I’m willing to bet that U.A.’s security isn’t even half as paranoid as yours.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment. And you still haven’t given me a single reason to agree to your venture.”
“You’re almost already agreeing, since you only need a ‘reason’.”
…
Satoshi turned away from the monitor again and fixed an irritated gaze on Ryota.
“Wait a second.” He turned back, quickly closed all open windows.
Another minute, and the virtual OS with the fake IP collapsed, its distribution went to the trash, and the files stored inside went to the cloud.
After another couple dozen actions, a very ordinary Excel spreadsheet with a drawn graph appeared before Ryota’s eyes.
“And what’s this?”
“…This is All Might.” Ryota quickly glanced at the graph, paying special attention to the row markers.
The vertical axis wasn’t labeled at all.
Just the number zero at the start and seventeen point five at the peak.
The horizontal axis, obviously, had dates written out, with a two-month step starting ten years ago and ending today.
“The graph shows the average number of hours per day that All Might spends on his hero work.
As you can see,” Satoshi’s finger pointed to a sharp drop in the curve, “he’s slowed down a lot in the last few years.”
“…I didn’t think you were a hero fan.”
“I’m not a fan,” the guy hurried to answer.
The reputation of a reserved, cool hacker-technician was valued by this guy immensely.
Every detail of his image was carefully polished, so he couldn’t allow any suspicion of “fandom.” “But I sometimes hang out on off-topic forums. I came across some discussions among fans. I spent an hour on research, and here’s the result.” He waved his hand toward the monitor.
“…and?”
“Don’t you see the connection? A few years ago, All Might suddenly declined and started spending less time on heroism. At the same time, the percentage of charitable donations in his name also increased significantly. And now he’s going to work as a teacher.” A meaningful pause.
“…All Might found a girlfriend?” Ryota wasn’t moved at all.
“Kha… Damn. You’re the last person I expected that from. Don’t ruin my logic with all this snotty feelings stuff!”
“Rejecting obvious options is the basis of your logic?” Ryota raised an eyebrow.
“Do you not consider Occam’s razor users to be people at all?”
“What does that have to do with it?”
“Everything. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck, not a disguised rooster. How old do you think All Might is? Since his appearance, his appearance hasn’t changed at all. Besides that, there are almost no posts on the internet of ordinary people noticing the hero doing everyday things, except for obviously staged ones. It’s reasonable to conclude that All Might’s Quirk allows him to change his appearance. How old is he really? Does he have a wife, kids?”
With every word from Ryota, Satoshi’s mouth opened wider and wider.
“And even if he really decided to step down and find a successor, so what? The reduction in heroing time could be a neat way to get others used to doing without All Might.”
“…Those are just assumptions,” the guy muttered, ruffled.
“But you’re right. Building theories based solely on a graph is useless. That’s why I’m asking you to help me.”
“Okay,” Ryota agreed without hesitation, quite satisfied with the reason given.
“In exchange… I’d like to read all the information U.A. has on me.”
“Something interesting?” Shimizu Satoshi was particularly susceptible to anything “interesting.” A wild mixture of curiosity, a desire to cause a scandal, and the skills to crack computer security systems of the first tier…
It was a lot.
And scary, honestly.
“…Quite,” Ryota chuckled.
“It’ll be an extra incentive for you. How will the information from the ‘nesting doll’ get directly to you?”
“The built-in AI will look for ways to connect externally. If it doesn’t find any, just plug the flash drive in again.”
“Got it.”
***
After talking to the techno-maniac, the real hellish routine began.
Go there, pick up this, get that signature.
Boring.
Though there were positive moments.
He even had to go to that same orphanage where Ryota had been sent after the underground incident to get some papers.
His memories of living in that complex were bright enough that the guy, who hadn’t been there in a long time, felt a pang of nostalgia.
He even stayed for a cup of tea with Miyamoto Yasuko, about whom he hadn’t had the best impressions during his stay there.
A certificate from a psychotherapist, from his homeroom teacher in elementary school, from the director and psychologist there, a transcript from the middle school secretary and, again, certificates from the director and psychologist, a recommendation from the dormitory manager, and a written consent to lease an already pre-selected apartment missing only Ryota’s signature, plus a bank statement.
All the above red tape took almost the whole week, plus a day for moving and transporting his belongings.
But, at the cost of inhuman effort (and suffering), Ryota managed to move into his apartment before the first day of school at the academy.