Kenji Tanaka was not the kind of boy who drew attention to himself.
At fifteen, he stood at an unremarkable five-foot-six, with a lean build that suggested neither athletic prowess nor physical weakness. His black hair fell in soft, unkempt waves across his forehead, constantly threatening to obscure his most distinctive feature: his eyes. They were a deep, dark brown—so dark they appeared black in most lighting—and they held a quality that made people uncomfortable without knowing why. It wasn't intensity, exactly. It was as if he was always looking past you, through you, at something you couldn't see.
His face was gentle, almost delicate, with high cheekbones and a small mouth that rarely smiled but never frowned either. He wore the expression of someone listening to a distant melody. When he walked through the halls of Aldera Junior High, students parted around him like water around a stone, not out of respect or fear, but simply because he seemed to exist on a slightly different frequency than everyone else.
Kenji had been born with the most terrifying Quirk in existence. He called it, in the privacy of his own mind, The Absolute Edit.
---
It first manifested when he was four years old.
He had been sitting in his family's small apartment in Musutafu, watching his mother struggle with a broken ceiling fan. The chain had snapped, and the blades spun uselessly, filling the room with a sad, clicking noise. His mother, Yuki, stood on a chair, poking at it with a broom, muttering about calling the landlord.
Kenji had looked at the fan. In his mind, something had clicked into place. He didn't see a broken appliance. He saw layers. He saw its physical form: the bent metal, the frayed chain. He saw its history: installed three years ago, worked perfectly for two, slowly degraded. And beneath it all, he saw its concept: Ceiling Fan. Cooling. Broken.
He hadn't meant to change it. He had simply thought, I wish it worked.
The chain re-knotted itself. The blades straightened. The motor hummed back to life with a smooth whir, pushing cool air across the room. His mother screamed, dropped the broom, and fell off the chair.
His father, Taro, a salaryman with a minor Quirk that let him sense electrical currents, had tried to apply logic. "A Quirk," he'd explained to his wife that night, after Kenji was asleep. "A powerful one. Telekinesis, maybe? Or some kind of repair-based Quirk. We'll have to be careful, but it's not—"
He stopped. Kenji had appeared in the doorway, clutching a stuffed rabbit.
"Daddy, your thoughts are too loud," the boy had said softly. "They're keeping me awake."
Taro opened his mouth to respond. Then his eyes glazed over. He blinked. He looked at his wife. "Yuki? Why are we sitting in the dark? Did I forget to pay the electric bill?"
The conversation about Kenji's Quirk was simply gone. Edited from his memory.
That was when the Tanakas understood. Their son didn't move things. He didn't repair them. He rewrote them. And if he could rewrite a ceiling fan, if he could rewrite his own father's memories, what couldn't he do?
They never told anyone. They homeschooled him. They taught him the only rule that mattered: Never Edit People.
"A person is a story they've been writing their whole life," Taro had explained, kneeling before his seven-year-old son. "If you change that story, even a little, it's like tearing out a page. The whole thing falls apart. And you can never, ever put it back exactly the way it was."
Kenji had nodded, his dark eyes serious. "I understand, Father. I won't."
He kept his promise. He practiced on plants, on insects, on the cracks in the sidewalk. He learned to perceive the "tabs" of existence—Physical, Historical, Conceptual, and the deepest one, the Narrative Tab, which defined a thing's role in the world. It was like being able to see the source code of reality. Beautiful. Terrifying. Utterly lonely.
---
By the time he was fifteen, Kenji Tanaka had become a ghost in plain sight.
At Aldera, the same school Izuku Midoriya attended, he was known only as "that quiet kid." Teachers forgot to call on him. Students forgot he was in their group projects. He moved through the world like a whisper, unnoticed and unremarkable. It was, he had long ago decided, the safest way to exist.
He watched the other students with a mixture of curiosity and quiet sorrow. He saw Bakugo Katsuki, whose Quirk file blazed with Explosion. Dominance. Victory. He could see the history of every challenge Bakugo had crushed, every peer he had intimidated. The boy's Narrative Tab screamed The King Who Will Crush All Pretenders. It was loud. Obnoxious. Fragile.
He saw Izuku Midoriya, whose file was heartbreaking. The Physical Tab showed a quirkless boy, weak but determined. The Historical Tab was a catalog of pain: years of bullying, of being told he was worthless, of watching his dreams rot. But the Conceptual Tab... that was different. It shimmered with something Kenji rarely saw. Quirkless. Dreamer. Unbreakable.
And the Narrative Tab? It was blank. An unwritten story. A book waiting for its first sentence. Kenji found himself checking Izuku's file often, watching for changes. It was the only thing that surprised him anymore.
He never edited anyone. He was a good son. But he looked. He always looked.
---
The sludge villain incident changed nothing for Kenji. He heard about it later, saw the footage online—Bakugo thrashing in black ooze, All Might arriving just in time, Izuku Midoriya standing frozen on the sidewalk. He watched Izuku's file flicker that day. Something had shifted in its depths. Kenji didn't know what, but the blank pages were no longer quite so empty.
Then came the U.A. Entrance Exam.
Kenji's parents had agonized over the decision. Letting him take the exam meant exposing him to the world's most scrutinizing eyes. But keeping him hidden forever meant condemning him to a life of isolation. U.A. had Nezu, the principal with a Quirk that granted hyper-intelligence. If anyone could understand Kenji, could help him, it was Nezu.
Kenji agreed to go. Not because he wanted to be a hero—the concept seemed laughable, a children's story for people who hadn't seen the source code. He went because he was tired of being alone.
The exam was a city of faux buildings and faux villains—giant robots designed to simulate real threats. Students were graded on how many they defeated or avoided. Kenji stood in the middle of a street as the countdown began. Around him, students with flashy Quirks launched into action. Explosions rocked the city. Ice crystallized across building facades. Someone turned into a giant ball and rolled through a robot.
Kenji just stood there.
A two-pointer robot rounded a corner, its sensors locking onto him. It raised an arm cannon, charging an energy blast. Kenji tilted his head. He opened its file.
· Physical: Functional. Armed. Moving.
· Historical: Mass-produced. Designed for destruction.
· Conceptual: Obstacle. Threat. Training tool.
· Narrative Role: A minor challenge to test the examinees' combat capabilities.
He was not supposed to edit people. No one had said anything about robots. He made one small change.
Narrative Role: A minor challenge to test the examinees' appreciation for modern art.
The robot froze mid-stride. Its cannon arm slowly lowered, then reoriented itself skyward. Its legs locked into place, and from its chassis, hidden panels slid open to reveal colorful LED strips that began cycling through a soothing rainbow pattern. A pleasant, ambient hum emanated from its speaker, replacing the earlier combat drone. It stood there, a seventeen-foot-tall sculpture, bathing the street in gentle light.
Kenji walked past it without a second glance.
A three-pointer lunged at him from an alley. He opened its file. Physical: Aggressive. Damaged. Malfunctioning. He edited the "malfunctioning" tag to include a sudden, overwhelming desire to organize its fellow robots by height. The three-pointer screeched to a halt, turned, and began herding other robots into a neat line.
A zero-pointer, the massive behemoth reserved for the final moments of the exam, thundered toward a group of panicked students. Kenji sighed. He was getting bored. He opened its file.
He didn't change its role this time. He simply accessed its Historical Tab, found the factory where it was built, and edited the memory of one specific bolt on its left ankle. He changed the bolt's material from reinforced titanium to soft, melt-in-your-mouth caramel.
The zero-pointer took one more step. Its left ankle snapped with a wet, sticky sound. The giant robot pitched forward, crashing into a building with a deafening screech of metal. It lay there, sparking, one leg twisted at an impossible angle, completely neutralized.
The exam ended. Kenji had not thrown a single punch. He had not run a single step. He had simply walked through the city, touching nothing, and left a trail of confused, reassigned, or structurally compromised robots in his wake.
---
He passed.
Of course he passed. How do you fail someone who can turn a weapon of mass destruction into a paperweight with a thought? The judges were baffled. The other examinees whispered about the quiet boy who didn't seem to do anything. But Nezu, watching from his office, simply smiled and added a new file to his growing collection.
Name: Tanaka, Kenji
Quirk: The Absolute Edit (Classification Pending)
Threat Level: Immeasurable
Notes: Requires careful handling. Do not provoke. Do not underestimate. Do not, under any circumstances, allow to feel threatened. Potential to be either the greatest asset or the most complete liability in the history of heroism. Recommend placement in Class 1-A for observation. Recommend All Might be informed. Recommend everyone be informed, actually, but also recommend no one ever makes him angry.
Kenji received his acceptance letter via hologram, like all the others. All Might's face beamed at him from the projector. "You too can become a hero!"
Kenji watched the hologram, his dark, unreadable eyes fixed on the Symbol of Peace. He opened All Might's file, just for a moment. Just to look.
Physical: Weakened. Injured. Diminished.
Historical: The greatest hero. Countless battles. A secret passed on.
Conceptual: Symbol of Peace. Hope. Invincibility.
Narrative Role: The Bridge. The Torchbearer. The one who passes the flame to the next generation.
It was a beautiful file. Complex. Layered. Real.
Kenji closed the file without changing a single character. He was a good son. He would keep his promise. For now.
But as he stared at his acceptance letter, at the words "U.A. High School" emblazoned across the top, something shifted in his own file. A page turned. A new chapter began.
For the first time in his life, Kenji Tanaka smiled. It was a small thing, barely a twitch at the corner of his mouth. But it was real.
He wondered what stories he would find at U.A. He wondered what stories he would help write.
He wondered, with a flicker of curiosity he couldn't quite suppress, what would happen if he ever decided to write one himself.
The world would never know to be afraid. But perhaps, for the first time, it had reason to be grateful. Because the quiet boy with the power to end all stories had decided, at least for now, to let them continue.
And that, in the end, was the most heroic thing anyone could do.