"DIE!!!"
The shout exploded from a young man's throat, thundering through the empty warehouse and bouncing off the iron walls—a death sentence, absolute and final. He channeled his murderous intent into his fingertips. In his mind's eye, he pictured the face of the man before him cracking, skin peeling away, flesh melting, bones turning to ash.
One second passed.
Two seconds.
The air fell silent again.
The three figures present let out held breaths, waiting for the familiar crack or hiss of his quirk taking effect. They had seen this countless times. It was routine.
But… the man touched by the quirk simply stood there. As if he felt no pain. No burning sensation. No peeling skin. He only felt a stranger's hand pressed against his face.
The man, shrouded in darkness, merely gazed at the young man with cold eyes.
In that instant, the young man's smile began to fade, replaced by confused furrows on his forehead. His eyes flicked to his own fingers. All five were in contact. The activation condition was met. He had desired this person's destruction with every fiber of his being.
Why?
Why wasn't his quirk working?!
"What the…" The young man tried to pull his hand away, but it was as if a magnet held it in place. Or perhaps he was too shocked to move it.
"You…" His voice trembled. Frustration surged in his head, mingling with the first seeds of fear. "Why aren't you disintegrating?!"
At that moment, the laws of nature in that world seemed to glitch. The destructive energy summoned by the young man suddenly bounced back. Like water splashed against rubber, it reversed direction!
Moments later, the young man's body jerked violently. "ARGH!"
His eyes bulged until the blood vessels burst. He felt the sensation he knew so well—the sensation he always inflicted on others—now crawling up through his own fingers!
The skin on his right arm turned gray. Fine cracks spread rapidly from wrist to elbow to shoulder.
Thin smoke began rising from his pores. The stench of decomposing flesh grew sharper.
The young man—Tomura Shigaraki—was dead.
…
In the thick darkness that seemed to swallow every ray of sunlight, a young man sat alone. His name was Evans. His face, if cleaned of oil and exhaustion, could be called handsome.
His usually wilted eyes now blazed with unnatural fire. They darted left and right, scanning line after line glowing on the monitor—the only light source in the room, bathing his face in pale blue.
His heart pounded, not from a marathon, but from the climax of an imaginary journey he had been on for the past two weeks.
He wasn't in his room; his soul was soaring across a fantasy continent, witnessing the final battle between good and evil, order and chaos.
Then the cursor stopped. The sentence ended. A small black period at the end of the paragraph, heralding the apocalypse for the world he loved.
The word "The End" stared back at him, cold and undeniable.
The silence that followed was deafening. The computer fan's hum sounded like a beast's roar in his sensitive ears.
"It's finally… over!"
His voice was hoarse, dry as a desert craving rain. Evans pushed himself away from the desk. His chair creaked, releasing the weight he had carried for hours without pause.
He stood, his spine letting out a satisfying yet pitiful crack, as if his body was trying to reassemble a crooked skeleton.
He rubbed his eyes several times with the back of his hand. A stinging pain assaulted him.
His corneas had been tortured too long by screen radiation and darkness!
With shuffling steps, his dragged feet touching the cold floor, he walked to the light switch. Click. White light flooded the room instantly.
To eyes adapted to cave-like darkness, this light was a critical hit!
He squinted, groaning softly, like a vampire scorched by morning sun.
He was used to reading in the dark!
He knew—it was slow suicide for his eyes—but he was willing. To him, darkness was the canvas, and the monitor's light was the brush. Only in darkness could he feel the protagonist's heartbeat, the chill of night wind in a fictional world, the tension creeping up his spine.
Reality had to be turned off for imagination to live!
He turned back, looking at the monitor now dimmer than the room's light. An emptiness gnawed at his chest—a gaping hole left by a finished story.
"It's been so long… two weeks ago… such a long journey," he muttered, speaking to the dust motes floating in the air.
His hand touched his chest, feeling the lingering emotional residue. "But it was so satisfying. Even though it ate up so much time—I forgot to shower, forgot to reply to my friends… I'm happy with the ending." He nodded.
He began pacing his cramped room. His steps were irregular. His mind still straddled two worlds.
"But… as I thought," he stopped in front of his messy bookshelf, finger tracing the spines of unread novels. "Mysterious characters are always cool! Unlike real people full of rotten pleasantries."
His thoughts drifted back to the grand figures in the story.
"It's so hard to guess what's in their heads."
He looked up at his ceiling corner, yet in his eyes he saw a starry sky from another world.
"Merlin Hermes…" he whispered. The name slipped from his tongue like a sacred prayer.
That was one of the protagonist's identities in the webnovel he had just finished. A wandering wizard, an entity transcending ordinary human morality. He always granted people's requests. Appeared and vanished like the north wind, leaving traces of magic and unanswered questions. He gave hope to the despairing, then disappeared into the mist before thanks could be spoken.
Evans let out an admiring snort, a small laugh escaping his lips. "But cold and ruthless characters are just as cool!"
He spun sharply, his feet carrying him to the full-length mirror on the wardrobe door. There, reflected, was a young man in an oversized t-shirt, bird's-nest hair, and dark circles under his eyes that made him look like a depressed panda.
Yet Evans didn't see that. Or rather, he chose to ignore the pitiful reflection.
"Ugh, if I ever got the chance to live in another world," he spoke to his reflection, staring intensely into his own eyes, searching for a spark of divinity. "I'd want to be like them. Mysterious, cold, rational. Someone unbound by petty emotions, someone whose every step is part of a grand plan."
He closed his eyes. In the darkness behind his eyelids, he imagined a flowing black cloak, a tall hat shadowing half his face, a walking cane concealing a sword. He smiled—a thin, confident smile, the smile of a puppeteer controlling the strings of fate.
But when he opened his eyes, the mirror brutally reflected reality: piles of dirty clothes in the corner, snack wrappers on the table, his oily face.
The smile vanished, melting like cheap paint under acid rain.
"Too bad reality is never as beautiful as imagination," he sighed.
He exhaled long, shoulders slumping. "But that's okay… here, in this fortress of solitude, I can still do it." He nodded to himself.
Suddenly, an impulsive idea seized him—the kind that often starts disaster or genius. He turned, eyes hunting something in the room's corner. There, atop a pile of bags, lay an old DSLR camera—a relic of a hobby that had flared briefly and died.
He snatched the camera from his backpack, blowing off the thin dust on the lens. His movements grew energetic. He removed the lens cap, checked the battery, and looked at his reflection in the dark lens.
He paused, staring at the camera, and smiled again. This time it was different—the smile of a director who had just found the perfect angle.
He walked to the center of the room, kicking aside old magazines to create an empty space—his personal stage. He placed the camera atop a stack of books fashioned into an emergency tripod, angling it slightly upward for a low-angle shot.
"This angle…" he murmured, "will give a sense of dominance. Make the subject look grand and intimidating. Yes, perfect!"
He pressed the timer button. The red indicator began blinking. Beep. Beep. Beep.
Evans quickly but deliberately stepped back. He stood in front of the lens. His face changed. His brow sharpened. He adopted a thoughtful expression, as if solving the mysteries of the universe.
"What pose should I do?" he asked the empty air.
Seconds ticked by. He had to decide which identity to wear tonight.
"I want to be like that protagonist's identity," he nodded firmly. "Gehrman Sparrow!"
The name echoed off his bedroom walls. Gehrman Sparrow—the mad adventurer, the cold hunter, the pirate hunter, the man who walked the seas of madness with an impassive face. A figure feared across the oceans!
Instantly, Evans's aura changed—at least in his imagination. He was no longer Evans, a final-year college student. He straightened his back. He tilted his head slightly, gaze sharp and piercing, as if staring at an invisible monster beyond the lens.
He began striking various expressions.
First pose: right hand on chin, eyes narrowed, lips tightly closed—expression of a genius detective analyzing a crime scene.
Second pose: standing sideways, turning his face slightly toward the camera, giving a "cold and condescending" stare, as if the entire world beneath his feet was mere worthless dust.
And finally, the climax of the ritual. He raised his right hand, covering half his face with spread fingers, leaving one eye glaring sharply through the gap. Classic chuunibyou pose. The "Sealed Demon Eye" pose.
On the camera screen, to a stranger it would look like a tall, skinny guy in messy clothes striking weird poses. But in Evans's inner eye, it was a tall man in a flowing long coat standing atop Big Ben in London, gazing coldly at the world with a blood-freezing stare.
"This world… is nothing but a joke…" he whispered in a forced deep voice, trying to imitate a charismatic villain's baritone.
At that sacred moment, when imagination and reality nearly fused perfectly, fate decided to play its cruelest prank. Creak. The unoiled hinge shattered the grand silence. The bedroom door suddenly swung wide open. Hallway light flooded in, ruining the painstakingly built gothic atmosphere.
A beautiful girl appeared in the doorway. Long black hair framed a face similar to Evans's but with far softer, better-groomed features. She wore casual home clothes and held ice cream sticks in both hands.
"Dinner's ready, come dow—"
Her casual, routine-filled voice stopped abruptly. The word "nner" that should have completed the sentence caught in her throat, dying before birth.
This was Alisa, Evans's older sister.
Alisa's eyes widened. Time seemed to freeze in the room. She stared at the scene before her with absolute disbelief.
There, in the center of the room, stood her little brother. One hand covering his face like someone with severe toothache or possessed by an evil spirit, body bent in an unnatural pose, and an attempted "lethal" glare that had now turned to pure horror.
Alisa gaped. Her mouth hung slightly open. She scanned from bottom to top her brother's bizarre appearance, examining every embarrassing detail. From the stiff fingers, the reddening face, to the weird horse stance.
In her right hand, the chocolate ice cream began surrendering to room temperature. A thick brown drop melted, sliding down the wooden stick and dripping to the floor. Plop.
Alisa ignored her melting ice cream. She glanced at the drop briefly, then back at Evans. A mix of amusement, confusion, and genuine concern for her brother's mental health filled her eyes.
"What are you doing?" she asked softly. Her tone wasn't judgmental, but pure curiosity from someone witnessing an inexplicable natural phenomenon.
Silence enveloped the room again, but this time it was suffocating rather than grand.
Evans froze. His brain, previously filled with epic scenarios of divine battles, short-circuited. His chuunibyou pose collapsed instantly. The hand covering his face lowered slowly, trembling uncontrollably.
His face, previously trying to look pale and cold, now turned crimson—tomato-red, sunset-red, burning-shame-red that seared to his marrow.
He hung his head for a long time. His long bangs fell, covering his eyes like a final curtain shielding him from his sister's gaze. He wished the floor would open and swallow him whole, sending him to another dimension where he was never born.
"Sis…" his voice shook, small and weak, far from the baritone he had practiced.
He paused, gathering the shattered remnants of his dignity.
"I told you before… knock before entering my room!"
His volume rose at the end—a defensive explosion to cover his embarrassment.
At that moment, Evans rushed toward the door, movements stiff and panicked, like a cornered crab.
Alisa flinched at the sudden charge. She stepped back reflexively, her sandal squeaking on the wooden hallway floor.
"Huh? Huh? Why are you mad?" she asked innocently. Her big eyes blinked. She genuinely didn't understand why her brother reacted so strongly.
In her eyes, he had just been doing weird gymnastics or a failed one-man theater!
Evans stopped right at the threshold, hand gripping the doorknob like his lifeline. He stood there, breathing hard. Slowly he lifted his head, peeking through his bangs to show his face—a masterpiece of human emotion: explosive anger mixed with mortification that wanted to die.
Alisa looked at her brother's defensive posture by the door. She saw the red spreading to his ears. Slowly, a mischievous smile began forming at the corner of her lips, but she held it back.
She was a good sister, after all.
She glanced at her other hand holding the still-intact vanilla ice cream. Cold vapor still rose from it. Then, with a gesture full of affection—or perhaps pity—she offered it to her brother.
"Here, for you," she said with a sweet smile. A smile that said, It's okay, I won't tell Mom you've gone crazy.
Evans stared at the ice cream. The cold, sweet symbol of childhood innocence. Then he looked at his sister's radiant face under the hallway light.
"Idiot!" he shouted. The word exploded, echoing down the hallway. Without warning, Evans slammed the door in his sister's face. SLAM! The sound was so loud it probably shook dust from the window frames.
Alisa blinked, staring at the brown-painted wooden door now shut tight in front of her nose. She hadn't even reacted when… Click. The door opened again quickly.
Evans reappeared. His face still red, eyes wild. He looked at his sister's stunned expression, her chocolate ice cream still held out.
Without a word, his gaze flicked to her hand. To the vanilla ice cream. Then, with lightning speed—a move that might even make Gehrman Sparrow proud—Evans snatched the ice cream from her hand. Snatch.
Ownership transferred. "And…" Evans seemed to want to say something in self-defense, but no wise words could save this situation; his mouth failed him.
So… SLAM! The door slammed shut again, harder than before, as if to emphasize that the transaction never happened. The lock clicked.
Alisa stood frozen in the quiet hallway. She was stunned by the rapid sequence: open-slam-snatch-slam in mere seconds.
Her eyes still fixed on the brown door. She could imagine her brother inside, leaning against it while eating the ice cream with a flaming-red face, cursing his fate.
Alisa shook her head gently. She shrugged, then continued eating her now badly melted chocolate ice cream. She licked the drips on her hand, the sweetness calming.
She turned, walking casually toward the stairs leading downstairs, her steps light.
"Don't forget to come down for dinner," she called half-shouting, her voice penetrating Evans's door.
Evans, on the other side, still stood behind the freshly slammed door. His breathing ragged, chest heaving as if he had just fought a dragon, when really he had only battled his own shame!
"Shut up and go away!" Evans said. His voice hoarse, choked.
He pressed his ear to the door. Silence. No reply. No mocking laughter, no approaching footsteps. Only the night breeze rustling outside the window. Then he exhaled.
"So rude… damn it!" Evans stomped his foot. He walked away from the door, but the heat in his face refused to fade. His face still burned like glowing embers fanned by wind.
"That was so embarrassing! A total insult to Gehrman Sparrow's dignity!" he grumbled to his own shadow.
He looked at the ice cream in his hand. It was already losing shape, melting and wetting his trembling fingers. With misplaced anger, he sat on the edge of his bed. The spring mattress creaked softly, welcoming his frustrated weight.
He began eating the ice cream. Each bite was catharsis. The cold on his tongue clashed with the heat of anger in his chest. The sweet sugar and vanilla tasted ironic on his bitter tongue. He licked the drips running to his wrist, a childish motion.
One bite. For lost dignity. Two bites. For the unknocked door. Three bites. For disappointing reality.
After finishing the ice cream quickly, he tossed the remaining wooden stick into the corner trash bin with a dramatic three-point shot motion.
Swish. In.
He stood. Blood sugar rising, or perhaps leftover adrenaline from shame. Evans wasn't done. He refused to end the night as a loser caught posing weirdly by his sister. He had to rewrite tonight's narrative in his head.
"I can't stop here," he whispered, eyes reigniting with absurd determination. "I have to prove to myself I can be cold." He nodded. "That was just a technical error."
Evans walked back to the center of the room, to the spot where he had stood earlier. He regulated his breathing. Inhale… Exhale… He wanted to resume the cold pose!
"Focus," he commanded himself. "Become emptiness. Become the abyss."
At this moment he straightened his back, lifted his chin slightly, as if challenging the gods mocking him from above. His hands hung relaxed yet ready. It was a posture stolen from his favorite novel's descriptions.
He closed his eyes briefly.
In the darkness behind his eyelids, he rebuilt his world. He erased his bedroom walls, erased the piles of dirty clothes, erased his sister's voice. He imagined himself standing atop a cliff, night wind whipping his black cloak, full moon the sole witness to his power.
Silence. Darkness. Cold.
But suddenly he felt something strange.
The air around him changed. The room's scent shifted drastically. The smell of old books and lime air freshener vanished, replaced by a sharp, piercing odor.
The smell of thick dust, long-rusted iron, and a faint fishy tang—like dried blood.
And the temperature… dropped sharply. Not air-conditioner cold, but the naked chill of night without concrete walls protecting him!
At this moment, Evans's hairs stood on end. His instincts screamed that something was wrong!
Slowly, his eyelids trembled. He opened his eyes. Instantly, the reality greeting him was not his dull white bedroom walls.
He was suddenly in a dark place!
Evans's heart stopped for a full second. He stood frozen, feet seemingly nailed to the dusty floor.
He was inside a massive industrial-style building. The structure consisted of rusted iron beams. Above, the warehouse roof was incomplete; a large hole gaped open.
Moonlight poured through the broken roof. Cold silver light fell straight down, creating a pillar of light amid thick darkness, illuminating dancing dust motes like restless little spirits.
But it wasn't the architecture that froze Evans's blood to ice.
There. Right in front of him. Inside the dim ring of moonlight.
Was someone's back.
A young man. His back looked frail, hunched in a pitiful yet dangerously charged way. He wore a worn black hoodie.
And he was not alone.
Evans's now-wide eyes swept the surroundings quickly. Around the young man stood other figures whose silhouettes looked terrifying in the dimness.
To the left stood a muscular woman in dark sunglasses that reflected faint moonlight, carrying a large iron pillar wrapped in cloth.
To the right sat a girl in a disheveled seifuku, hair in messy twin buns, eyes narrowed like a cat spotting new prey.
And behind stood a man in a mask, long coat, and magician's top hat, holding a cane elegantly.
All three, besides the young man facing away from Evans, instantly sensed the foreign presence that appeared from nowhere. Their bodies tensed. Their faces, previously relaxed or bored, changed drastically.
Their eyes widened, staring at Evans. They adopted expressions of shock!
Then, in a fraction of a second honed by street life and crime, they immediately created distance. Their movements synchronized and fluid, like a wolf pack sensing an intruder in their den. Their faces turned into masks of deadly suspicion.
The atmosphere in the room instantly grew heavy, as if the air had turned to lead. Thick murderous intent emanated from them, pricking Evans's skin like thousands of invisible needles.
The young man in front of Evans sensed the atmospheric shift. He detected Evans's presence not through sound but through disturbance in the airflow behind his back.
Slowly… very slowly… he turned. His movements stiff and jerky, like a marionette with tangled strings. When he fully turned, moonlight hit his face.
Gradually his features became clear in Evans's retina. A slender, almost gaunt young man with pale, sunless skin. Slightly yellowed teeth visible when his lips parted. Deep, rough wrinkles around his eyes.
His lips cracked and uneven, dry as barren soil. A small mole sat on the lower right side of his mouth. A clear scar crossed his right eye, and a slash mark ran across the left side of his lips.
His hair… bluish-gray, messy and unkempt, dirty and oily. Longest strands hung to his shoulders, falling in random waves like mourning curtains.
And his eyes… bright red irises. Blood-red. Eyes that looked at the world not with curiosity, but with pure hatred. Eyes of madness.
His appearance completed by all-dark clothing: a hooded black hoodie partially covering his head, paired with a matching long jacket and dark shirt underneath. Though not all attached right now, Evans knew there should be horrific fake hands covering his body. But right now, his real hands were the most terrifying.
It was Tomura Shigaraki!
Evans's brain, usually slow with lecture material, now worked at supercomputer speed. As a fiction enthusiast, of course Evans instantly recognized the character! He had spent hundreds of hours reading manga and watching anime where this figure was heroes' nightmare.
He was the main villain of My Hero Academia. Symbol of fear. Heir to All For One.
And now he stood right in front of him? Less than two meters away?
This is insane, Evans's mind screamed. This can't be happening. Am I dreaming? Did I fall asleep after the ice cream and this is a sugar-high nightmare?
Utterly illogical! Evans's logic rebelled, searching for rational explanation. Cosplay? No, this murderous aura was too real. This stench too authentic. And those red eyes… no contact lens in the world could radiate hatred that cold.
Shigaraki stared at Evans. His red eyes trembled slightly. Pupils narrowed.
He hadn't expected someone to appear suddenly behind him with absolutely no warning! Even his sharp senses hadn't detected footsteps, breathing, or heartbeat until the last second.
To Shigaraki, this was impossible.
Is this a pro hero with a teleportation quirk?
Evans, standing with his back to the moonlight hole in the roof, had his face unclear. Moonlight didn't illuminate him directly, instead creating a pitch-black silhouette around his body. He appeared cloaked in darkness itself.
Only his eyes… Evans's eyes, freshly adapted to the dark, caught faint moonlight. Those eyes gleamed brightly in the shadow of his face.
At the same time, Evans—deep in heavy shock, half-dead from terror—had completely frozen facial muscles. He didn't blink. He didn't grin. He couldn't even frown!
In Shigaraki's eyes, that gaze looked cold. Dominating. The gaze of someone looking at Shigaraki—the leader of the League of Villains—as something meaningless.
A belittling gaze!
Exactly like the pose Evans had practiced in his bedroom moments ago!
Bitter irony. Evans's fear was interpreted as arrogance by Shigaraki.
At this moment, an itch began assaulting Shigaraki's neck. Scratch. Scratch. "Who… are you…" he hissed, voice like sandpaper on stone. "How dare you look at me like that…"
Rage exploded in Shigaraki's mind. He hated being underestimated. He hated heroes. He hated anything that looked "clean" and "arrogant." And this person… this stranger who appeared from nowhere… reeked of arrogance.
At that moment he acted. Without warning, without long villain-monologue. Shigaraki lunged forward!
His movement was fast, leaving afterimages. His right hand reached out, all five fingers spread wide, ready to grasp the intruder's face.
He intended to use his quirk. Decay!
In Evans's mind, his anime encyclopedia automatically opened to the page "Tomura Shigaraki."
Decay. A quirk allowing the user to disintegrate anything or anyone touched by all five fingers. Turning the target to dust. Collapsing into atomic fragments. Whether organic or inorganic, Decay worked without fail.
Flesh would rot in seconds. Bone would turn to chalk. Blood would evaporate into gas. Shigaraki's current disintegration speed might not be peak, but it was fast enough to kill an ordinary human in the blink of an eye.
If he touches me, I die!
Evans of course knew the villain's quirk. His survival instinct screamed: RUN! DODGE! BOW!
So he tried with all his might to move and evade. His brain sent panic signals to his legs to step back, to his neck to dodge sideways. But… his body betrayed him.
His entire body instantly froze!
This was the natural prey response when facing a far superior predator. His legs felt like concrete. Knees locked. Neck stiff as stone. He was terrified and couldn't move!
Outwardly, he appeared calm, standing straight without trembling. But inside, he was screaming hysterically at a frequency only dogs could hear.
Instantly, the distance closed. Shigaraki's hand, with its dry skin and dirty nails, reached its target. Slap. All five fingers landed perfectly on Evans's face. Thumb on left cheek, pinky on right cheek, the other three gripping nose and forehead. A strong grip, filled with murderous intent.
Time seemed to slow. Toga held her breath, eyes shining waiting for blood spray. Mr. Compress already held his marble, ready to clean up remains. Magne narrowed her eyes.
The moment his hand touched Evans's face, Evans continued staring. Their eyes met at zero centimeters. Eyes of mad red met Evans's deadpan eyes.
Evans felt the texture of Shigaraki's skin. Rough, cold, like dying reptile hide. He could smell Shigaraki's horribly bad breath.
This is it, Evans thought resignedly. The end of Evans. Dying stupidly because of bedroom posing. Goodbye Alisa. Goodbye my novel collection.
Shigaraki widened his grin, a horrific smile splitting his face nearly to his ears.
"DIE!!!"
…
A/N: Hello… I'm writing another BNHA fanfic… and yep, as the title suggests, Shigaraki dies in this story. I plan to write this without Shigaraki, so it will be quite different from canon—you can consider it very divergent… I hope you enjoy it :3