Monday morning.
The bright early sunlight streaming through the window hit my face, forcing me to squint as I woke up.
I took a deep breath and stretched.
A light, pleasant sensation spread through every muscle.
My joints no longer cracked, my hips no longer ached, and most importantly, there were no fresh bleeding bite marks on my neck.
Yesterday, Himiko had let me off the hook.
Or perhaps even she had realized that if she continued “draining” me three times a day every weekend, I would actually die of exhaustion before graduating from U.A.
It was almost miraculous how just one night of eight uninterrupted hours of sleep without sex or being tied to the bedframe could make the world look so much brighter in my eyes.
I tossed the sweat-soaked pajamas into the laundry basket and stepped into the bathroom.
Under the icy shower, I let the water wash away the remnants of fatigue.
Standing in front of the mirror, I lightly touched the black leather choker.
Even though the rope marks and hickeys had faded considerably, I still decided to wear it.
Safety first, I didn’t want curious eyes at school questioning me.
And perhaps I’m starting to understand why my eyes have turned so murky.
The Quirk.
This must be the most obvious side effect; otherwise, there’s no way my eye color could have shifted from brown to a solid, pitch black like this.
It makes absolutely no sense.
After putting on my U.A.
uniform, I picked up my phone from the desk and scrolled through a series of news sites.
The faint smile on my lips immediately stiffened.
“SHOCKING: Looking Back at the True Character of the U.A.
Sports Festival Champion!”
“Wave of School Violence: Who Bears Responsibility When Future Heroes Are Bullies?”
“Petition to Expel Bakugo Katsuki Reaches 2 Million Signatures in Just 48 Hours!”
“Police Seal Off Bakugo Residence Area to Prevent Riots.”
As I scrolled further, thousands upon thousands of vicious comments followed one after another like a river of lava ready to burn everything to the ground.
“Expel that bastard!”
“Someone who tells a classmate to kill themselves wants to be a symbol of peace?
Garbage!”
“U.A.
is covering for criminals!”
I turned off the screen and threw the phone into my bag.
A heavy sigh escaped my lips.
I went a bit too far, didn’t I?
I wanted Bakugo to pay the price.
I wanted that arrogant bastard to taste humiliation, to be stripped of his glory and forced to bow his head in apology.
A small spark so public opinion would force him to reshape that rotten personality.
But Gentle Criminal hadn’t thrown a spark.
That old man had dropped a fucking nuclear bomb, escalating the game and pushing everything far beyond the intended limits.
A sixteen-year-old student being suspended and stripped of his championship title was an appropriate punishment.
But being cursed by an entire nation, isolated, having his family subjected to psychological terrorism, and having the door to his future slammed shut permanently… that was no longer “discipline.”
That was destruction.
I was the one who provided the information.
I was the one who handed Gentle the knife.
Even if I didn’t deliver the stab myself, the blood of Bakugo Katsuki’s career and future was dripping from my hands.
Once I had started, I could no longer stop or turn back to fix it.
…
The door to Class 1-A opened.
I had prepared myself for a gloomy atmosphere, but what greeted me was even worse.
The classroom that was normally as noisy as a broken marketplace was now terrifyingly silent.
There was no laughter from Ashido, no shouting from Kirishima, and Kaminari was slumped face-down on his desk with a gloomy expression.
Every pair of eyes in the class unconsciously avoided a single point: the empty desk that belonged to Bakugo.
“Good morning,” I said flatly, breaking the silence.
“Ah… Good morning, Onodera,” Ojiro replied, forcing a smile.
I walked toward my seat in the corner of the classroom.
As I passed Midoriya Izuku’s desk, I unconsciously slowed my steps for a moment.
Izuku was looking down at his book, but his ears were bright red.
One row away, Uraraka Ochako was pretending to play with her pen, yet her eyes kept stealing glances toward Izuku.
And every time their gazes accidentally met, both of them flinched and looked away, faces flushed as red as boiled shrimp, so flustered they even dropped their erasers.
What the fuck is this?
The atmosphere between those two… was so ridiculously pink it felt completely out of place amid the class’s gloom.
The secret glances.
The flushed cheeks.
The awkwardness that reeked of youth.
Holy shit, this is unexpectedly good…
This was exactly what I wanted to see – second only to Izuku not losing One For All.
In the middle of this cursed mess, at least seeing them experience the normal fluttering of fifteen-year-old hearts made me feel like this world hadn’t completely rotted away.
It was still better than those toxic fujoshi who loved shipping oily, borderline incestuous pairings between Izuku and Katsuki, or even Shoto, or All Might, despite how sick and completely unrelated those were…
I pulled out my chair, rested my head on the desk, and closed my eyes, ignoring the pair of lovebirds continuing to generate “dog food” in silence.
A short while later, the classroom door swung open.
Aizawa-sensei entered.
The bandages around his neck had been reduced, but his face looked noticeably more haggard.
The dark circles under his eyes were black enough to compete for a display slot at the zoo with a panda.
It wasn’t hard to guess that he had stayed up several nights dealing with the press and the board meetings regarding Bakugo’s case.
“Take your seats,” Aizawa said in a flat, dry voice.
The class immediately obeyed.
“After the unexpected events of last week, I know all of you are confused,” Aizawa’s tired eyes swept across the class, pausing for a second on Bakugo’s empty desk.
“But you are still students of U.A.
Your curriculum and your dreams cannot stop because of this.
Today, we will do something very important.”
The atmosphere in the class immediately tensed.
What kind of test was coming next?
“You will choose your Hero Names.”
Sighs of relief echoed throughout the room.
Tension dissolved, replaced by the excitement that began creeping back onto the faces of the fifteen-year-olds.
No matter how chaotic the world outside was, choosing a name to step onto the professional path remained their greatest dream.
“Of course, I’m not good at evaluating names,” Aizawa stepped back, yielding the floor.
“So I’ve invited someone with expertise to help.”
The door opened again, and Midnight, the R-Rated Heroine in her signature tight outfit walked in with her usual allure.
“Hello, future buds!
Leave the evaluation of elegance to me!”
I rested my chin on my hand and watched indifferently as whiteboards and markers were distributed.
Unlike the enthusiasm of those around me, I felt a strange sense of relief rising in my chest.
This was a Canon event.
The naming process began.
One by one, they stepped up to the podium and held up their boards.
Aoyama Yuga with the long-winded “Shining Hero: I Cannot Stop Twinkling.”
Ashido Mina had “Alien Queen” rejected and changed it to “Pinky.”
Asui Tsuyu stepped up and declared firmly: “Gero.
Since I was little, I’ve wanted to use this name.
Rainy Season Hero: Froppy.”
Kirishima with “Red Riot.”
Uraraka with “Uravity.”
Ida and Todoroki with their own names.
I sat below, watching each name appear on the podium.
Everything… was unfolding exactly as I remembered from the manga.
Except for Bakugo not being here to scream “Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight” and getting sent back to his seat by Midnight, everyone else chose the exact names they were supposed to choose.
The disruption I had caused seemed to have no effect on these small yet important details.
The trajectory of the future was still there.
These seeds of heroes were still growing according to their true nature.
Then it was Midoriya Izuku’s turn.
He stepped up, hands slightly trembling.
The board flipped over.
On it was written a single word.
“Deku”
The class murmured.
Kaminari and Jirou showed clear surprise.
Uraraka, however, smiled softly.
“Are you sure, Midoriya?” Midnight raised an eyebrow.
“That name means ‘useless.’ Is it really okay to use it as a hero name?”
“Yes,” Izuku nodded, his eyes shining with unprecedented determination.
He looked straight toward Ochako.
“In the past, I always hated this name.
It was proof of my weakness.
But now, someone told me that ‘Deku’ sounds like ‘Do your best.’ I want to turn the name that was once my pain into the strength to move forward.
This will be my Hero Alias.”
Hearing those words, I couldn’t help but smile.
A genuine smile, free of sarcasm or calculation.
That’s right.
Even if Bakugo had collapsed, even if the world outside was screaming, Deku was still Deku, still the brightest, most resilient light in this world.
“Alright, only one left,” Midnight tapped her finger lightly on the desk.
“Onodera.
Come up.”
I wiped the smile from my face and returned to my usual dead-fish expression.
I stood up, took the whiteboard, and walked to the podium.
There was no murmuring from below.
After the U.S.J.
incident, my absence from the Sports Festival, and the strange choker I was wearing, the distance between me and the rest of the class had become clear.
They looked at me with curiosity mixed with a slight wariness.
I turned the board around.
On the whiteboard was only a single character drawn in black ink.
But it was not an ordinary Latin letter.
It looked like an “M,” yet sharper and more angular.
Anyone familiar with ancient characters would recognize it as a combination of two ancient Runic letters: the rune “Raido” (ᚱ) written joined with an inverted version of itself, forming the shape of a strange M.
“M?” Midnight frowned, staring at the board.
“Just one letter?
Moreover, the way you’ve stylized it looks… quite unusual.
Does it have any special meaning?”
Aizawa in the corner of the room also looked up.
I maintained my nonchalant expression and shrugged lightly.
“No deep meaning,” I answered in the most casual tone possible.
“I just thought it looked cool.
That’s all.”
“Really just because it looks cool?” Midnight blinked, seemingly unsatisfied with such a lackluster answer.
“But it’s the letter ‘M.’ What does it stand for?
Master?
Magic?
Or Mystery?”
“You can interpret it however you like,” I nodded and requested permission to return to my seat.
I wasn’t lying about it being the letter M, but I was definitely lying about its true meaning.
As I sat down, my finger lightly traced the ink on the board.
Two Raido runes ᚱ.
In Norse mythology, “ᚱ” symbolized the Journey, forward movement, and the development of the self (Riding).
But when a upright Raido and an inverted Raido were joined together, the meaning was broken.
A chariot racing forward, yet its wheels turning in reverse.
It symbolized a wrong journey.
Stagnation.
Getting lost within one’s own darkness.
That was exactly me right now.
Someone walking a path of sin with no way to turn back.
And the letter “M”?
It wasn’t Master, Magic, or Mystery either.
It was Motherfucker.
Simply because I was precisely that kind of bastard.
But no one needed to know that.
For them, a superficial answer of “because it looks cool” was more than enough for an eccentric student like me.
…
The dismissal bell rang.
I declined Ojiro and Kaminari’s invitation to eat together with a vague excuse, picked up my bag, and left U.A.
The sky was gradually shifting toward evening.
The sunset dyed the fluffy clouds over Musutafu a deep red, creating a brilliant yet melancholic scene.
I didn’t take the subway home right away.
Today, I didn’t want to face Toga Himiko’s intensity so soon.
I needed a place to hide, somewhere the tattered “human” part of me could be allowed to surface, even if only for a brief moment.
My feet automatically led me away from the bustling main street and deeper into an old residential area on the outskirts.
After twenty minutes of walking, a modest Gothic stone structure appeared behind a row of fan-shaped trees.
A Catholic church, with humble Gothic design and a bell tower rising against the crimson sky.
In Japan, the number of Christians had always been small, so churches like this in this world were even quieter and forgotten between the modern pace of life and a society that literally worshipped superheroes as living gods.
I pushed open the heavy oak door.
The creak of the hinges echoed through the empty space.
The faint scent of incense mixed with old wood and candle wax touched my nose.
Sunset light filtered through the stained-glass windows, casting blue and red streaks across the empty wooden pews.
On the altar, the statue of Jesus Christ or whoever the equivalent was in this world hung on the cross, head bowed, silent and eternal.
I stood frozen in the center aisle as memories of my previous life surged back like a wave.
In my previous life, though I hadn’t been particularly devout, I had still been a believer.
A child who was baptized, who attended Mass every Sunday morning, who prayed, who firmly believed that as long as I lived virtuously, God would protect me.
But then the cruel reality arrived.
Isolation, school bullying, the betrayal of those I called friends.
Life crushed me into a failure, a NEET locked away in a corner of a room.
When I knelt and begged for salvation, no one answered.
The sky remained silent.
Despair had killed my faith long before that fateful truck crushed my chest.
So why was I here now?
Because I had realized just how sick I was becoming.
I urgently needed some form of “psychological counseling” to temporarily unload the burden on my conscience.
But I couldn’t go to a normal psychologist.
If I told them what I had done, they would either send me to a mental hospital or call the police immediately.
Only here.
Only the Sacrament of Reconciliation, where priests were bound by the “Seal of Confession”, forbidden from revealing anything they heard in the confessional, even under the threat of death or the law, I could speak the truth.
Religion was the opium of the people.
So “getting high,” even only ideologically, was never a real solution to the root of the problem.
It was simply the most reluctant choice I had left right now…
I walked toward the dark corner of the church where a simply carved wooden confessional stood.
I opened the narrow door, stepped inside, and knelt on the worn cushion.
The space was dark, cramped, and stifling.
After a short wait, through the wooden lattice screen, I could hear footsteps entering, the rustle of a robe, and the soft breathing of the priest sitting on the other side.
I closed my eyes.
My dry lips repeated the ritual words that had been etched into my subconscious from the previous life.
“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.”
“May the Lord be in your heart so that you may confess your sins with true repentance,” the priest’s murmured voice came from the other side of the screen.
So it was exactly the same as confession in my previous life.
Not a single difference.
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.” My voice dropped, hollow.
“It has been… a very long time since my last confession.”
“May the Lord enlighten you.
Please confess your sins,” the priest’s gentle voice replied.
My hands clenched into fists, pressing against the wooden ledge.
“I… I have taken the lives of many people.”
The space on the other side of the screen suddenly froze.
The priest’s breath caught for a split second.
But he did not interrupt.
“It was during a chaotic riot,” I continued, completely omitting names or any identifying details.
“They were evil people.
They intended to harm others.
I used my Quirk to end them.
I told myself it was legitimate self-defense, but… in that moment, I didn’t hesitate at all.
I felt no guilt when I took those lives.
That scares me about myself.”
The sound of fabric shifting.
The priest seemed to adjust his posture, trying to maintain composure before this blood-soaked confession.
“That’s not all,” I squeezed my eyes shut as images of my apartment, the rope marks, and the metallic scent of blood flooded back.
“I am kidnapping and confining a young girl.
I use the most despicable psychological tactics, her physical desires, and her loneliness to manipulate her.
I turn her into someone completely dependent on me, stripping away her free will so she won’t kill anyone else.
I am… drowning in that sick, rotten lust every day, and the worst part is… I’ve started to feel satisfied with it.”
“Merciful Lord…” The priest’s weak whisper slipped through the lattice.
His voice trembled.
He was surely thinking he was dealing with a delusional serial killer or an escaped mental patient.
“And the third sin…” My nose stung.
A bitter lump blocked my throat.
“I completely destroyed the life of someone I know.
He was an arrogant person, someone who once bullied his friends mercilessly.
I wanted him to learn a proper lesson.
I provided his darkest evidence to someone else to expose him to the public.
But… things went too far.
That person spread it to many people.
His future was permanently burned away.
His family has probably been torn apart.
I only wanted to teach him a lesson, but in the end, I became the executioner who cut off his path in life.”
I pressed my forehead against the wooden lattice.
My eyes stared wide open in the darkness, yet no tears fell.
I had already run out of tears in my previous life.
“Father… I’m afraid.
I’m performing the acts of a true villain under the name of protecting the people I care about.
I’ve crossed the line.
Once I’ve done these things, I can no longer stop.
I feel my soul rotting day by day.”
The silence stretched on as if it would never end.
The air inside the confessional grew thick.
I knew the priest on the other side was experiencing a tremendous shock.
What I had just confessed far exceeded ordinary sins like theft, lying, or fornication.
These were the confessions of a dangerous criminal, not those of a sixteen-year-old boy.
“Well…” After nearly two minutes of silence, the priest’s voice rose.
It trembled with shock, yet he still tried to maintain the solemnity of someone representing God.
“What you have just confessed… is truly terrifying.
Your sins are extremely heavy.
Taking lives, confining others, and destroying someone’s life… these are actions that completely go against the love of God.”
I remained silent and listened.
Judgment.
That was what I was waiting for.
“But…” The priest took a difficult breath.
“The fact that you are kneeling here, recognizing the rot within yourself and feeling fear of yourself… that proves your conscience has not completely died.
You are walking a path full of darkness, yet you still recognize the presence of light.
I cannot change what you have done, and the law may judge you, but in this confessional, God is always ready to forgive souls that truly repent.”
He paused, his voice gradually growing more resolute.
“Your penance will not simply be a few Our Fathers or Hail Marys.
You must find a way to make amends for what you have destroyed.
Free the person you are confining and guide her back onto the path of light.
Do not use evil to punish evil.
Now… make an act of contrition.”
I lowered my head and mechanically recited the Act of Contrition like a programmed machine.
The words flowed smoothly from my tongue, but deep inside, I knew I would never follow the priest’s advice.
I would never let Himiko go.
Absolutely never, and I couldn’t.
I also couldn’t save Bakugo’s life.
I could help, but whether that bastard chose to continue or give up completely was up to him.
What I needed was not advice, but the non-judgmental listening of the confessional so I could unload the psychological burden crushing me.
On the other side, the priest raised his hand and began the Absolution in a solemn, deeply ritualistic voice:
“God, the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of His Son has reconciled the world to Himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins; through the ministry of the Church may God give you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
“Amen,” I answered softly.
“God has forgiven your sins.
Go in peace.”
“Thanks be to God and to you, Father.”
I stood up, pushed the door open, and stepped out of the confessional.
The sunset light through the stained-glass windows had long faded, replaced by the twilight darkness of evening.
The church sank into sacred stillness.
I walked toward the main door, my hand lightly brushing the black leather choker around my neck.
God has forgiven my sins.
Bullshit.
My sins had already surpassed the limit that any supreme being could forgive from the moment I stepped into the night.