Age: 15 (7 months before the U.A. exam - POV Toshinori Yagi)
Peace is a heavy lie.
I was sitting on a bench in Takoba Municipal Park, collar turned up to protect myself from the cold morning wind. It was 5:30 AM. The city still slept, ignorant of how fragile its safety really was.
I coughed, bringing a handkerchief to my mouth. When I pulled it away, there was a dark red stain.
Damn it.
Superhero society is built on a single pillar: The Symbol of Peace. I am that pillar. I am the dam holding back the flood. As long as I smile, villains hide in the sewers and people walk the streets in peace.
But the pillar has cracks.
I touched my left side, where my stomach used to be. Every breath was a battle. My time limit had been reduced to less than three hours a day. The rest of the time, I was this: a blonde skeleton, a ghost chasing his own shadow.
People think the Quirk is everything. They think One For All is a divine blessing. They don't understand that power without a proper vessel is just destruction. And my vessel was breaking.
I needed a successor.
I had looked at U.A. Mirai (Nighteye) wanted me to choose that boy, Togata. A perfect student, with a strong Quirk and a brilliant personality. He was the logical choice. The safe choice.
But something in my gut stopped me. I wasn't looking for perfection. I was looking for... something else. I was looking for that specific kind of madness that makes you run toward the fire when everyone else is running the other way.
A rhythmic sound interrupted my melancholy.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Footsteps. Someone was running.
I looked up. In the distance, coming down the park path, was a boy.
He was short, with messy green hair. He wore a gray tracksuit soaked in sweat, despite the cold. But what caught my attention wasn't his speed, but the way he ran.
He didn't run with the fluidity of a natural athlete. He ran with desperation. As if something invisible were chasing him. Or as if he were trying to catch something that was moving away too fast.
The boy passed my bench. He didn't see me. His eyes were fixed on the horizon, muttering numbers between gasps.
"...two hundred... forty... three..."
He stopped at the park's pull-up bar. He didn't rest. He jumped, grabbed the bar, and started pulling himself up.
One. Two. Three.
His arms shook. His hands were wrapped in bandages, dirty and worn.
I watched him. There was something about him. An intensity that felt painfully familiar. He reminded me of myself, forty years ago, when I was a Quirkless boy screaming at the sky that I wanted to be a pillar.
On the tenth rep, his hands slipped.
The boy fell badly. He landed on his back in the sand with a dull thud. He lay there, staring at the gray sky, breathing like a broken locomotive.
I stood up. My legs creaked, but I walked over to him.
"Young man," I said, trying to make my voice sound not like a dying man, but like a kind old one. "You're going to kill yourself if you keep this up."
The boy startled. He sat up abruptly, looking at me with big green eyes.
"I-I'm sorry!" he exclaimed. "Did I bother you? I thought no one was here at this hour."
"You're not bothering me. But I saw you running. And I saw you fall." I pulled a bottle of isotonic water from my pocket (I always carried one in case I passed out) and offered it to him. "Take it. You look dehydrated."
The boy hesitated, but took it.
"Thank you... sir."
He drank greedily. I sat on the swing next to him, observing.
"Training for school exams?" I asked.
The boy lowered the bottle. His gaze darkened. He squeezed the plastic hard.
"For U.A."
"Oh. U.A." I smiled. "Aiming high. What's your Quirk? Super speed? Strength?"
It was the wrong question. Or maybe, the right one to break the dam.
The boy lowered his head. His shoulders slumped.
"I don't have a Quirk," he whispered.
Silence settled between us, broken only by the wind in the trees.
Quirkless. Mukosei. In this society, that was a sentence of invisibility.
"I see," I said softly. "And yet, you're destroying your hands on that bar. Why?"
The boy looked up. And what I saw in his eyes froze me. There was no resignation. There was an open wound.
"Because they told me I had a ceiling," he said, his voice trembling with emotion. "My master... my best friend... everyone tells me there is a biological limit. That without a Quirk, I can't save anyone when things get really ugly."
He looked at his bandaged hands.
"My friend... he wants to protect me. He's building me armor and gadgets because he thinks I'm fragile. But if I accept that... if I accept that I need a machine to be a hero... then I'll never be the Symbol people need. I'll just be a guy with expensive toys."
He looked directly into my sunken eyes.
"I want to prove them wrong. I want to prove that the human spirit can break that ceiling. Even if I have to break my bones trying."
I felt a shiver down my spine. A shiver that had nothing to do with the wind.
The human spirit.
There it was. The madness. The refusal to accept the imposed reality.
This boy wasn't training to win a medal. He was training to defy destiny.
"Your friend..." I said, thinking of Gran Torino and Nighteye, of everyone who told me to stop when my body began to fail. "Your friend loves you. Fear is a form of love."
"I know," the boy said, wiping away a furious tear. "That's why it hurts so much. Because he's cool. He's amazing. And I just want to be able to walk beside him without him having to look back to see if I'm still alive."
He stood up, swaying a little, but regaining his balance.
"Thanks for the water, sir. I have to keep going. I have three kilometers left."
"Young man," I called out.
He turned.
I stood up. My skeletal form didn't command respect, but I put a little of All Might's weight into my voice.
"They say all men are created equal. That is the biggest lie in our society." I pointed at his chest. "But you... you are trying to rewrite that truth with sweat and blood. That is something many professional 'heroes' with incredible Quirks have forgotten how to do."
The boy's eyes widened, surprised.
"Don't break before you reach the finish line," I advised him. "The world needs people who know what it's like to be weak and still decide to be strong."
The boy looked at me for a moment, stunned. Then, a shaky but bright smile appeared on his dirty face.
"Yes! Thank you!" He bowed deeply. "I am Midoriya Izuku! I will do my best!"
He turned and started running again. His step was heavy, but he no longer looked desperate. He looked determined.
I sat back down on the bench, watching his green figure disappear into the morning mist.
Midoriya Izuku.
Quirkless. Unafraid of pain. With a desire to protect and to live up to someone he admires.
I touched my scar again.
Maybe Mirai was wrong. Maybe I didn't need someone perfect. Maybe I needed someone who knew what it was like to start from zero.
I pulled out my phone and dialed a number.
"All Might?" Detective Tsukauchi's voice answered. "It's early. Is something wrong?"
"Naomasa..." I coughed, smiling slightly. "I think I'm going to stay in Musutafu a while longer. There's something in the air in this city. Something interesting."
Peace is a heavy lie. But watching that boy run against his own limits, I felt that, maybe, the weight was a little lighter.