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At the dining table.
“Ren, hurry up and eat.
If you keep dragging your feet, you’re going to be late for school.”
Mika Mikage stood by the stove, busy with breakfast, and glanced back now and then to urge on the boy sitting at the table.
Ren was frowning down at the fried egg on his plate as if it had personally offended him.
“Mom, seriously.” Ren stared at the egg with open misery.
“If you wanted me out the door early, you shouldn’t have made fried eggs for breakfast.
You know I hate them.”
The egg smelled crisp and buttery.
Ren’s frown only deepened.
His face pinched, and the chopsticks in his hand traced idle circles around the plate.
Mika turned back just in time to catch him doing it.
She burst out laughing.
Then she put on the most serious expression she could manage and said, “Maybe you should have thought of that before you came home filthy from another fight yesterday.
Do you have any idea how much work it is to wash your clothes?
This is your punishment.”
“Since when does a washing machine make you suffer?” Ren muttered, shrinking his neck.
Punishment was punishment, though.
He was not going to dodge it.
With the grim dignity of a man walking to his execution, Ren grabbed the whole fried egg with his chopsticks, shoved it into his mouth, and chewed as fast as he could.
“Punishment complete.
I’m going to school.”
His words came out muffled around the egg.
He snatched his bag off the table and bolted for the door before Mika could react.
He had seen the fresh cup of soy milk in her hand, and he wanted no part of whatever came next.
“That boy…”
Mika watched him run off, exasperation softening into a smile.
Then her gaze drifted to the black-and-white photograph set a short distance behind her.
The smile remained for a second longer before her expression dimmed.
“He really is just like you,” she murmured.
“He hates fried eggs too.”
The house went quiet around her sigh.
On the way to school, Ren finally managed to swallow the rest of the egg.
The taste still clung to his mouth.
“Hope Mom doesn’t start thinking about Dad again,” he muttered.
“I promised I’d keep her smiling.”
Not long after, his face darkened.
Yesterday evening came back to him, clear and ugly: another defeat with no suspense at all.
He lowered his eyes to his hands.
The palms were covered in old calluses, built by years of training, and the sight only made his chest ache.
He was already sixteen.
The age when most children manifested a Quirk had passed twelve years ago.
“Give up, kid.
You’re one of the rare Quirkless ones.
Just like that Midoriya boy.”
The doctor’s words had become a nightmare that never stopped echoing.
Day after day.
Night after night.
Then he thought of that crybaby who kept shouting that he would become a hero even without a Quirk.
Something twisted across Ren’s face.
His pale fist slammed into a roadside tree hard enough to shake leaves loose from the branches.
Bright red blood slid slowly down his knuckles.
“The same?” His voice came out low and ragged.
“How are we the same?”
Midoriya Izuku was destined to inherit All Might’s power.
Ren was not the same as him.
He had never been the same as him.
Never.
After standing there for a long while, Ren forced himself to breathe, buried the anger, and kept walking toward school.
Ren Mikage lived in Shizuoka.
He was sixteen years old, and his family ran a small dojo.
According to his mother, his father had inherited an old martial art through the Mikage family line, so Ren had trained from childhood.
He had never been a prodigy, at least not in the way people imagined.
He had been born frail and sickly, and his body had always been a problem.
Even after years of practicing in secret behind his mother’s back, even after pushing himself far harder than he should have, his condition had kept declining, slowly but stubbornly, day after day.
Ren carried one more secret.
He was not entirely from this world.
Or rather, his body belonged here, but his soul remembered another life.
If he used the terms from that old life, he had transmigrated, and not in the convenient way where he inherited a stranger’s body, money, or status.
His soul had simply awakened in this life with memories that should not exist.
And for years, Ren had suspected he might have a hidden advantage of his own.
Because of his eyes.
In the world of My Hero Academia, people with Quirks often showed some outward difference.
Some looked almost animalistic.
Others carried small mutations that marked the shape of their power.
Ren’s eyes had never been normal.
His pupils had been pale from birth, while the whites were flooded with deep purple.
That detail matched something he remembered from his previous life: an ability he thought of as Insight.
An ultimate eye that understood what it observed.
Unfortunately, more than ten years had passed.
He had tried everything he could think of, and those eyes had never shown the slightest sign of awakening.
While he was lost in thought, Ren reached the school of his current life.
Aldera Junior High.
Students were filing through the gate in neat lines.
Groups of girls chatted about how handsome their favorite heroes were.
Boys argued with open worship in their voices over which Pro Hero was strongest.
Then the lively atmosphere froze, as if someone had pressed pause on the whole school.
Ren walked through the gate with a dark expression and fresh injuries on his hands.
Only after he had passed did the students collectively let out the breath they had been holding.
“Why is he hurt again?
Did that guy go pick a fight with Bakugo first thing in the morning?”
“No way.
Bakugo’s been at school for ages.”
“Tch.
He’s just a Quirkless loser who never manifested anything.
I don’t know why you people are scared of him.” A student with dyed blond hair and earrings watched Ren’s retreating back with obvious disdain.
“Do you know what other schools call him and Midoriya?
Aldera’s Two Losers.
You have no idea how embarrassing yesterday was.”
“Shut up!”
The boy beside him, dressed like a delinquent himself, slapped a hand over his mouth and glanced fearfully after Ren.
Only when he was sure Ren had not heard did he let go and start cursing under his breath.
His friend had no sense of self-preservation.
Sure, that lunatic had no Quirk, but everyone knew he practiced martial arts.
No matter how useless people called him, he was not someone they could afford to provoke.
“Ren is still so cool,” one of the girls sighed, her eyes going dreamy.
“That build, that cold stare…
I swear, he’s going to ruin me.”
“What good is being handsome?” someone else muttered.
“He’s still a lunatic who never awakened a Quirk.
So what if he knows martial arts?
Forget real Pro Heroes with powerful Quirks.
He can’t even beat that brutal explosion-head, and Bakugo doesn’t know martial arts at all.”
The group fell silent.
No one wanted to admit it.
But it was true.
A Quirkless boy challenging people with Quirks over and over again was not courage.
It was madness.
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I hope this chapter pulled you deeper into the story.
Stick around, because there’s still a lot waiting just ahead.