Hagakure Toru wanted to be someone who wasn't subconsciously ignored.
Maybe that was why she wanted to be a Hero.
Attention and Fame.
Toru glanced at Isshun, who was finishing off his ice cream.
The first—and only—person who could see her.
Isshun glanced back, raising an eyebrow.
"Why are you looking at me like that? Want to do more laps?"
Toru immediately shook her head.
It felt weird.
She wasn't used to people calling her out for staring, especially when most people couldn't even tell whether she was looking at them. Even knowing Isshun could see her didn't make it any less unfamiliar.
Because… well.
She was invisible.
Isshun studied her for a moment. Toru looked like she was debating something internally.
"Want some more motivation?" he asked.
Toru looked up.
"...What kind of motivation?"
Isshun hummed in thought. "Can you keep a secret?"
'Is this something juicy?' Toru nodded rapidly. "Yeah!"
"...That doesn't inspire confidence," Isshun said flatly, finishing the rest of his cone.
"Trust me!"
"...Hm." He eyed her excited expression with suspicion. "Well. If it motivates you enough."
"If you keep exercising until… let's say… when we graduate elementary school—"
"WHAAAT?!" Toru whined. That was, like, an entire year and a half!
"I'll tell you how my Quirk works."
"..."
That made Toru freeze.
'...This might be a once in a lifetime opportunity.'
After a few seconds of silence—
"Deal! No backing out!"
"Okay." Isshun nodded. "Now get up. We've got more sprint sets. We've rested long enough."
"...We?" Toru muttered. "You mean me."
"Coaches don't play."
"...Darn it."
--<>--
Time passed, yet the view in the nearly park was consistent as always.
"You know," Isshun said, "I'm pleasantly surprised you've kept this up for so long."
"Why are you the one who's surprised, Shishou…?" Toru asked between gulps of water.
"For someone who calls me that, you certainly have remarkably little respect for me," Isshun replied, popping a piece of mochi into his mouth.
"Well... 'Shishou' rolls off the tongue better than 'Shunkan-kun,'" Toru said, looking away.
"...Can't argue with that." Isshun shrugged. "Still, I'm a little proud of myself."
"Why are you proud of yourself instead of your student?!" Toru protested. "I've put in so much effort over the past year!"
"Really? In the past year of training you, I've had to physically drag you out fifty-nine times—"
"We don't need to go into detail, do we?!" Toru interrupted, face heating up.
"But still," she added quickly, "it's just one more year until you tell me how your Quirk works, right, Shishou?"
"That was the deal." Isshun nodded.
"Have you made any progress on… making me visible?" Toru asked quietly.
Hagakure Toru wanted to be seen.
Whether that meant standing out through popularity, or simply existing where others could notice her.
"Hm? Oh. I figured that out a while ago," Isshun said casually.
"...Eh?" Toru paused, registering what Isshun had just said. "WHA—"
Isshun clamped a hand over her mouth.
"It's still morning," he said calmly. "Don't disturb the neighbors."
"Oh—! Hehe, sorry, Shishou." Toru laughed sheepishly, then immediately grabbed his shoulders.
"Why didn't you tell me?!" Toru whisper-yelled angrily, shaking him.
"You didn't ask," Isshun replied, unfazed, popping another mochi into his mouth.
"...So can you make me visible?"
"No."
"What?! Why not?!" Toru shook him even harder.
"It's related to my Quirk," Isshun said evenly. "And I only said I'd tell you after we graduate elementary school. That was the deal."
Isshun thought back to when he first started investigating Toru's Quirk.
He discovered how to temporarily deactivate Toru's Quirk entirely by accident.
After weeks of analyzing her cellular structure, he'd decided he needed a sample, one so small Toru wouldn't even notice.
He teleported a single skin cell.
And the moment he did—
He could see it.
'...What the?'
As stated before, Toru's Mutant Quirk gave all of her cells a unique membrane that refracted light but had a limit if the light was too strong. If that limit was passed, then she would be visible.
Isshun theorized that Toru might be able to store excess light and release it all at once, like a flashbang. He just didn't know how she'd do that.
Quirks were bullshit like that.
Maybe it was similar to how he activated his teleportation.
Isshun looked at the teleported cell, now fully saturated and visible.
...Is this an effect of the eleventh dimension?
Isshun's teleportation was instantaneous within the third dimension, but it still traversed higher-dimensional space.
Perhaps moving through eleventh dimensional space possessed properties that forcibly saturated Toru's cells.
So technically, if Isshun teleported Toru right now, she could be seen.
However, Isshun himself didn't know the properties behind traversing the eleventh dimension. He himself may be able to move through it, but he didn't know the inner workings of it.
If Isshun teleported Toru and she was basically permanently visible, he basically just made her Quirkless.
And Isshun was actually quite partial to this invisible girl.
After all, even after a year, it seemed that she was his only friend in school.
So, until he made the proper precautions, he wouldn't teleport her.
Interestingly enough, Toru had actually been affected by Isshun's AIM Diffusion Field multiple times over the year of Isshun coaching her.
However, Isshun believed that since she didn't cross any distance within the higher dimensional space and only popped in and back, she didn't turn visible.
Which meant movement was the key.
"Just consider it a graduation gift," Isshun said aloud.
"...Is that so?" Toru tilted her head, suspicious, but unable to argue.
"So," Isshun continued, "any progress on your end?"
While Isshun said that he could help make her visible, he also assigned Toru a task on if she could use her Quirk.
After all, Isshun needed to know if Toru could control or even disperse the built up saturation within her cells in order to determine if it was fine to make her visible.
"Uh… it's not… that impressive," Toru said, tugging back her sleeves.
She wanted to show it to Isshun after she got a little used to it and making it a little more flashier, but she wasn't very good at lying.
Now suddenly on the spot without preparation, she had to make sure Isshun didn't have any high hope, just in case.
Raising her arm toward the sunlight, Toru focused. A thin beam of light condensed and struck the ground.
It was only slightly brighter than the sunlight hitting the ground.
But Isshun froze.
'...She can do that?'
He stepped closer, shrinking his Domain to zoom in.
"Do that again."
Toru blinked at his reaction—then smiled. 'Have I finally impressed Shishou with my skills?'
"Okay!"
Toru's cells naturally absorbed light, and gained saturation.
But for her to be visible, this saturation had to be egregiously high.
Her cells also naturally dispersed the light after holding it in at the same time.
In the sun, Toru was taking in light at a rate faster than she was losing, but only by a small amount, which wasn't even close to being enough to be visible, only gaining around 0.005% saturation every minute.
And by the time night came, since she wasn't getting any sunlight, naturally by the time she woke up all of that built up saturation was gone.
However, what Isshun was seeing now was that Toru was somehow expelling the saved up light that her body held.
Since Toru was immediately using up the barely saved energy, the beam was only a little bit brighter than the sunlight.
But for Isshun, just knowing that Toru could expel the saved energy was a good thing.
"Can you control where it goes?" Isshun asked.
"Of course!" Toru said confidently, pointing it toward a different area on the ground.
"Wait a few seconds before releasing everything," Isshun said.
Toru was a little confused, but still nodded. After a few seconds, a light brighter than her original beam was expelled, causing Isshun to squint.
'...This might be game changing.'
After all, if Toru could expel the saved up light, then Isshun didn't have to worry whether he would accidentally make Toru Quirkless.
Additionally, just based on the small sample Isshun had of her cells, even moving a little within 11th dimensional space charged up the saturation to its maximum, or at least to the point where she was visible.
If Toru could expel all of that light, even he might get blinded.
Well, even with this discovery, Isshun wasn't going to do anything until graduation.
Mainly because it felt awkward to just take back his statement.
"I'm impressed, Hagakure," Isshun said.
"Heh. You finally see my talent?" Toru puffed out her chest proudly.
"Yeah." He nodded.
"Ehe… if you're that blunt about it, even I might get embarrassed…" Toru scratched the back of her head.
"...You're not a shonen protagonist so don't scratch your hair like that." Isshun said flatly. "It isn't sanitary."
"And do ten more laps, we still have school to go to."
"I can't even bask in my talent?!"
--<>--
A/N: Random bullshit go!
Random pesudo science go!
--<>--
3500PS - Complete
7000PS - Not Complete