The Shizuoka Middle School gymnasium smelled of high-gloss floor wax, cheap laundry detergent, and the cloying, and the scent of lilies (the unofficial flower of Japanese farewells).
For most of the graduating class, this was the threshold of a grand origin story.
They sat in rigid rows, their uniforms pressed with a desperation that bordered on the religious, their eyes shining with the deluded hope of teenagers who believed the world was waiting for them with open arms.
Kaito Arisaka sat in seat 42-C. He wasn't meditating, nor was he battling a "system." He was simply, profoundly bored. To anyone looking, he was the personification of a background asset.
Kaito's hair was a standard black, styled with the intentional lack of flair that defined a normal.
He was the invisible middle of the pack—the guy people would struggle to remember when looking at the class photo ten years from now.
In the weeks following the Musutafu fire disaster, Kaito had experienced a several updates and physical restlessness.
He didn't know why, but his body had started to feel... efficient. Too efficient. His skin felt smoother, his vision sharper, and his reflexes almost pre-cognitive. He didn't have a name for it. He only calls it 'Updates'.
Kaito had noticed that whenever the news played footage of the "Hero X" silhouette, or whenever he walked past a group of people gossiping about the "miracle".
Kaito's heart would race and his skin would begin to take on a faint, pearlescent sheen. He didn't understand the connection; he just assumed it was stress-induced hypertension or a weird late-onset Quirk development that he absolutely did not want. But he is slowly getting there.
So, Kaito had spent the last fortnight practicing the art of internal suppression. He didn't know he was "administering" power; he just thought he was calming his nerves.
Kaito learned to "dim" himself. He focused on the most mundane details of his life—the price of copper tubing, the weight of a sledgehammer, the exact smell of damp sawdust.
By drowning his mind in the boring and the practical, he found he could force his body to stay "normal." He was a powerhouse who had successfully convinced his own DNA that it was a hardware clerk simply by being too stubborn to be anything else.
-----
The ceremony was a marathon of banality. The principal, a man whose Quirk seemed to be producing an unnatural volume of forehead sweat, was droning on about the "Spirits of Tomorrow" and the "Brilliance of Youth."
Kaito tuned him out completely. He wasn't worried about his "condition" leaking; he had decided that he simply wouldn't allow it.
"Arisaka Kaito," the Vice-Principal called out.
Kaito stood up. He didn't stumble—that would be trying too hard. Instead, he simply walked with the heavy, uninspired gait of a boy who had already accepted a life
For Kaito was the invisible middle. He didn't have the fire of Bakugo or the frantic energy of Midoriya. He was just Kaito.
As he walked toward the stage, he passed Shota Aizawa. The Pro-Hero was standing near the emergency exit, looking like a man who had slept in a dumpster. His narrowed eyes were fixed on Kaito, tracking the rhythm of his footsteps.
Aizawa was looking for a "tell"—the small, involuntary movements that revealed a person's true nature.
Kaito gave him nothing. No surge of energy, no shimmer of light, no recognition. He passed the hero with the same level of interest one might give a fire extinguisher or a particularly dull piece of crown molding.
'Look all you want, Eraserhead,' Kaito thought. 'You're looking for a star. I'm just a black hole of boredom.'
Kaito reached the stairs and approached the Principal. The man reached out with a hand that was literally glistening with sweat, holding the diploma—the physical proof that Kaito had successfully completed three years of being an unremarkable "C-minus" student.
As their skin touched, Kaito felt a strange, instinctive urge to pull away, to "fix" the grime on the man's hand.
Kaito didn't understand that the world's collective imagination of Hero X was trying to force him to be a "Cleanser." He just thought he was being a germaphobe.
Kaito shut the feeling down. It wasn't a struggle; it was an act of pure will. He accepted the dampness. He embraced the "grossness" of human contact.
Kaito took the paper with a hand that felt perfectly lukewarm and ordinary. He gave a polite, forgettable nod and retreated. He didn't look at Aizawa.
He walked straight off the stage, his mind already calculating the inventory list he had to sort at the store later that afternoon.
-----
Two hours later, the gates of Shizuoka Middle School closed behind him for the last time.
Most of his classmates were huddled in groups, crying over their yearbooks or making grand promises to meet at U.A. or Shiketsu.
Kaito didn't linger.
He didn't sign a single page.
He walked toward the Arisaka Hardware Store, the diploma rolled up and stuffed into his bag like a receipt for a purchase he'd already forgotten.
The street was busy, filled with the hum of a world that was moving on. People walked past him, complaining about the price of eggs or the reliability of the morning train.
This was his sanctuary—the absolute, crushing invisibility of the common man. No fan clubs, no amateur reporters, no narrative arcs.
Kaito arrived at the hardware store. The "Hero X" talk had died down into a low buzz of local urban legend, exactly how Kaito wanted it.
The city had moved on to the next disaster, leaving the mysterious figure in the video to become a ghost in the machine. He entered through the side door, pulling off his school jacket and tossing it onto a stack of plywood.
"You're back," Kimiko-san grunted from the counter. She was mid-way through a battle with a jammed staple gun and didn't even look up. "The shipment of PVC pipes is in the back. Get it sorted before you start your homework. Or whatever graduates do with their free time."
"I'm on it, Kimiko-san," Kaito said, pulling on his worn work vest.
Kaito didn't need to study for elite entrance exams or worry about the prestige of his next institution. He had already signed the papers for Shizuoka Technical & Vocational High School.
While his classmates were dreaming of the Hero Course, Kaito was heading for a school that specialized in industrial maintenance, welding, and basic bookkeeping.
He found Grandma Saki in the small kitchen upstairs, a bowl of miso soup waiting for him.
"Did you get the paper?" she asked, her voice thin but warm.
Kaito laid the diploma on the wooden table. "I'm officially a middle school graduate, Grandma. In two weeks, I start the vocational track. No more Hero X talk.
No more Aizawa-san lurking in the hallways. Just three years of learning how to manage a supply chain and repair industrial air conditioners."
Saki looked at the diploma, then at her grandson. She saw a boy who looked tired, but resolute. "You're choosing a very quiet path, Kaito. You're choosing to spend your youth learning how to fix pipes."
"Gifts are just burdens with better marketing, Grandma," Kaito replied, picking up his chopsticks. "The world doesn't need another 'Star.' It needs people who know how to fix the plumbing when the Star accidentally blows up a city block.
"I want a quiet life. I want a pension. I want to be the guy who doesn't get a too much attention. The delusional kid already died years ago. I already faced reality Baa-chan."
He took a sip of the soup. It was salty, slightly burnt, and perfectly 3D.
It was the taste of the mundane life he was fighting to protect.
He didn't know he was a "God" or that he was making a "Sacrifice."
He just knew what he wanted: peace, stability, and a future 9-5 job.
The public would keep imagining Hero X as a perfect deity.
They would keep tagging their walls and whispering their theories.
But they were looking for a hero in the clouds, while the real power was currently sorting 12mm hex nuts in a dusty warehouse in Shizuoka.
The countdown had begun. Year Zero was over. The plan was in motion. 9-5 dream is just slowly getting there.
~~~~~
[Author's Note]
Middle School: COMPLETED.