'…I have to say, I'm grateful that I'm still male in this life.'
'Not because I'm sexist or anything, I'd simply rather remain the way I was before I died.'
Blanc, now known as Shunkan Isshun, monologued silently as he watched his parents leave for work, waving them bye with a smile.
'While I appreciate the trust you have in me, Mom and Dad, why are you leaving a five-year-old to his own devices just because he's 'a little smart'…?'
Now alone in the house, Isshun wandered into his father's study.
Both of his parents worked relatively normal office jobs and were financially stable. There was little Isshun could reasonably ask for.
In fact, being born into the Shunkan family was close to optimal for both his personal circumstances and his Quirk.
Isshun had awakened his Quirk at the unusually young age of two. On the surface, it wasn't particularly impressive.
Without the Shirai Kuroko Template, it would have been borderline useless—or at least not worth developing in his lazy ass opinion.
His mother, Shunkan Kako, possessed the Quirk Retrocognition.
This Quirk allowed her to perceive up to five seconds into the past.
Rather than replaying events like a recording, it reconstructed recent occurrences by analyzing present conditions such as object positions, residual forces, sound decay, and other environmental traces.
The accuracy of this reconstruction depended entirely on Kako's ability to process and quantify environmental data, placing an extreme computational burden on her brain.
Over time, the Quirk forcibly enhanced her neurological capacity for calculation and probabilistic reasoning, which naturally led her to pursue a career as an actuary.
His father, Shunkan Genzai, possessed the Quirk Hypercognition.
Hypercognition dramatically increased Genzai's ability to process real-time sensory input through all five senses, allowing him to recognize patterns and causal relationships almost instantly and respond with exceptional efficiency.
However, rather than increasing raw intelligence, the Quirk accelerated perception, thought, and decision-making.
Genzai experienced the world with virtually no perceptual latency, similar to a supercomputer evaluating every viable outcome based solely on incoming sensory data.
Because the Quirk functioned almost passively, prolonged exposure to unfamiliar or stimulus-dense environments caused severe information overload.
When overload occurred, Genzai's nervous system would forcibly shut down via induced sleep as a protective mechanism.
As a result, whenever he left familiar environments, Genzai relied on a combination of ear mufflers, blindfolds, and masks to limit sensory intake.
While this made him ineligible for a driver's license, his profession as an appraiser required minimal physical travel.
Shunkan Isshun, inheriting traits from both parents, was born with a Quirk officially classified as Precognition.
At least, that was the doctor's conclusion.
In actuality, Isshun's ability did not truly allow him to "see" the future.
Instead, it functioned by aggregating sensory input, performing high-speed probabilistic calculations, and projecting the most plausible near-future outcomes.
However, Quirk was classified as an Emitter-type rather than a cognitive derivative of his parents' abilities.
The reasoning was simple: labeling it as a Mutant-type cognitive Quirk implied permanent neurological alterations that would place an unacceptable processing burden on a child, which was unrealistic just looking at Isshun's rather painless, bored expression.
Emitter classification allowed the 'Precognition' to be treated as externally generated phenomena, theoretically reducing the risk of neural overload, which would explain why Isshun didn't experience any visible burden.
The doctor suggested reassessing the Quirk once more data became available, but both Genzai and Kako declined further testing.
As long as their son was healthy and safe, they agreed to revisit the matter when Isshun was older.
What neither the doctor nor his parents realized was that Isshun's Quirk had been a Mutant type from the very beginning.
The difference was that the Level 4 Calculation Ability granted by the Teleportation Template allowed Isshun to absorb and process information without immediate neurological strain.
More importantly, continuous forced Quirk-assisted analysis caused Isshun's computational capacity to grow gradually to accommodate the information, reinforcing itself through use rather than overwhelming him all at once.
So while the Precognition was technically passive, due to Isshun's Level 4 computational ability, it allowed him to see much further into the future, or not see it at all.
With Isshun's computational ability surpassing multiple high spec computers, this 'technically' allowed for further advancement for Teleportation.
The 'technically' was in quotation marks for a reason.
Isshun understood that within the Toaru universe, teleportation operated through interaction with the 11th dimension, requiring precise mathematical formulas to interface with it.
Fortunately, ROB had provided the same 11th-dimensional interaction formulas used by Shirai Kuroko as part of the Template.
Unfortunately, that was all he had been given.
Without knowing what each parameter represented or how to supply correct values, Isshun was forced to deconstruct the equations piece by piece until he fully understood their function.
Complicating matters further, Isshun remembered almost nothing about mathematics beyond a high-school level.
Which meant that he had to effectively start from the beginning.
--<>--
Isshun looked with a dead expression in front of the computer, rubbing his platinum blonde hair in frustration.
Linear algebra.
The actual bane of his existence.
While he could brute force calculations, if he didn't understand what each calculation did, then it was effectively pointless.
It may have been relatively simple to just relearn things he had previously learned, when venturing into new territory, it was rather annoying.
He'd tried to brute-force it earlier, but the pencil he attempted to teleport had ended up partially spliced into a coloring book, fused cleanly through several pages.
After multiple desperate and increasingly futile attempts to free the pencil, Isshun had eventually sighed and given up.
It wasn't like Permeation where it would get pushed out.
His working theory was that, due to his Personal Reality, anything occupying the same space as his teleportation target would be displaced somewhere else. Possibly the so-called "11th Dimension."
Or, in simpler terms, violently erased.
So yeah. No more experimenting until he actually understood the mechanics behind the formula.
While relying on the Organic Chemistry Tutor was good, it couldn't really compare to actual professors. So this inevitably led to the rabbithole of searching for recorded college lectures.
Staring at a screen this long is definitely going to mess up my eyesight…
After an hour of dense explanations, Isshun stretched his short arms, let out a tired sigh, and hopped off the chair.
Juice sounded good right about now.
Halfway to the kitchen, an unexpected sound echoed through the house.
Beep-Beep!
'A guest?'
With an eyebrow raised, Isshun deigned to ignore the ringing door, making his way to the door viewer his parents installed on their home.
…A child?
Well, he supposed he couldn't judge. He was a kid too.
'Are they the new neighbors who are moving in this week?'
He remembered the family next door had moved out after having their fourth child, opting for a bigger house.
'Damn were those kids loud as hell…'
Snapping out of the memory of endless hero-and-villain games, Isshun focused back on the girl outside. She was inspecting the door with unrestrained curiosity, knocking lightly on the wood and peering at the frame.
'This looks like the type of person I'd not want to hang out with.'
Not that he had much room to be picky. The number of friends he'd had in his previous life could be counted on one hand.
Still…
'She looks really familiar though…'
Sifting through his memories of My Hero Academia, Isshun could somewhat remember who the person in front of him was.
Nej—something. Nejima? Nejimi? Nejire? Man, he really sucked with names.
Even with that nagging familiarity, Isshun didn't open the door. He was home alone, and while his parents trusted him, he wasn't about to do anything that might get them labeled negligent.
It wasn't like his parents were actually negligent, they cared for him, and played with him quite a lot even if it was onesided. It was more of mutual trust.
And damn it if Isshun wouldn't uphold his end of trust!
Besides, being home alone was easily a top-five life experience.
Even if he couldn't remember Nej-something's exact personality, her hyperactive demeanor was pretty obvious—
Wait.
Where did she go?
Isshun leaned closer to the screen. The periwinkle-haired girl was gone.
'Is she a fucking anamatronic, moving away while I'm not looking?'
After a moment, he shrugged and turned back toward the kitchen.
'Guess that solves the problem. At least I can delay meeting her until my parents get home and do that whole Japanese new-neighbor greeting thing—'
THUMP!
…Huh?
Isshun looked around the house.
'A ghost?'
A chill went down his back. Even though Isshun knew that ghosts couldn't exist, it didn't stop him from being scared of horror games.
But the question was quickly answered with another thumping noise, coming from the kitchen window.
There she was.
The periwinkle-haired girl hovered unsteadily in midair, supported by glowing yellow spiral waves of energy twisting around her legs and back. The energy pulsed unevenly, pushing her up in short bursts rather than smooth flight.
She was clearly inexperienced. Every few seconds, she'd tilt too far and overcorrect, wobbling like a fish flopping out of water.
But despite the clumsiness, she looked thrilled.
With a wide, beaming smile, she waved enthusiastically whenever she managed to stabilize herself for more than a second.
Isshun just stared.
"…What the hell?"
--<>--
A/N: Here's the second chapter. I very much like Nejire. The end. idk about harem, but who knows. Also kind of like a very big info dump, so sorry about that.