Chapter 6: The Architect of Order
The basement of the Higuruma estate was not a room; it was a cathedral of discipline. Three stories underground, shielded by six feet of lead-reinforced concrete and soundproofing foam, Hiromi Higuruma spent his childhood dismantling the limits of the human form.
At seven years old, Hiromi stood in the center of the gym, his chest heaving. Sweat matted his dark hair to his forehead, dripping rhythmically onto the padded floor. His small frame was already beginning to show the unnatural density that had plagued—and blessed—the vessels of his past life's memories.
"Again," he rasped.
Before him stood a "S-Rank" Combat Automaton, a sleek, obsidian-colored machine designed by the Yaoyorozu Group for high-level Pro Hero sparring. Its optical sensors flared red.
Hiromi didn't move like a child. He moved like a predator that had lived a thousand years. As the robot lunged with a hydraulic-assisted jab, Hiromi didn't retreat. He stepped into the strike. This was the core of the Koryu Bujutsu he had spent the last two years perfecting: the negation of distance.
He caught the robot's wrist with a "sticky" palm, redirecting the force in a circular motion. The metal groaned. Using the machine's own momentum, Hiromi pivoted, his heel digging into the mat. He drove his elbow into the robot's chassis.
CRACK.
The reinforced plating shattered. But Hiromi wasn't done. He felt the surge of Cursed Energy—that thick, cold, black ink—pooling in his gut. He channeled it down his arm, timing the release perfectly.
"Divergent Strike."
The physical impact of his elbow landed first. A microsecond later, the pocket of Cursed Energy exploded like a shaped charge. The robot was sent hurtling across the room, slamming into the reinforced wall with enough force to leave a crater.
Hiromi stood in the silence, his breath coming in jagged bursts. He looked at his hands. They were shaking, the skin split and bleeding from the sheer friction of his own power.
My body... it's hungry, he thought. He remembered Yuji Itadori from the manga—a boy who could throw a car before he ever learned to use energy. Hiromi realized he was inheriting that same "Heavenly" physical ceiling. His muscles weren't just growing; they were evolving into something closer to steel cables.
The Grandmaster's Lesson
By age ten, the robots were no longer enough. Hiromi's father, Daichi, had noticed the "unnatural" progression of his son. Fearing the boy was becoming a blunt instrument, he hired Master Sato, a world-renowned grandmaster of 'Silent Killing' arts and a former underground pit fighter.
Sato was a man who didn't care about Quirks. He believed in the "True Body."
"You rely too much on your energy, boy," Sato said, standing in the center of the ring. He was sixty, but his skin was like tanned leather, and his eyes were as sharp as a hawk's. "If I take away your 'black ink,' you are just a child with a heavy hand. Show me your soul without the light show."
The sparring session lasted six hours.
Hiromi was beaten. Sato moved like smoke, his strikes landing on Hiromi's pressure points with surgical precision. Hiromi's vision blurred as he tasted copper in his mouth. Sweat soaked through his training gi, making the fabric heavy and abrasive against his skin. Every time he tried to manifest his Cursed Energy, Sato would strike his solar plexus, disrupting his "flow."
"Your mind is a lawyer's mind," Sato barked, catching Hiromi's roundhouse kick and sweeping his standing leg. "You try to negotiate with the air! You try to find a loophole in the physics of a punch! There is no loophole! There is only the strike!"
Hiromi hit the mat hard. He lay there for a moment, staring at the fluorescent lights. His body screamed in agony. His ribs were bruised, his shins were swollen, and his lungs felt like they were filled with hot coals.
Then, something snapped.
He didn't reach for his Cursed Energy. He reached for the raw physical instinct of the vessel. He remembered the feeling of being hunted on that bridge in his past life. He remembered the cold water of the Sumida River.
He rolled, popping up to his feet with an explosive speed that caught Sato off guard. He didn't think about the "form" of the punch. He simply moved.
He closed the distance in a blur, his feet barely touching the floor. He feinted a high jab, and as Sato raised his guard, Hiromi dropped low. He delivered a devastating liver blow, followed by a rising knee.
Sato blocked the knee, but the sheer mass behind Hiromi's strike—the density of a body that was growing more like a cursed spirit's—forced the master back three steps.
Sato touched his ribs, a slow smile spreading across his face. "There. The beast wakes up."
Refining the Vessel
For the next four years, Hiromi lived in a state of perpetual "Break and Repair."
He adopted a training regime that would have been illegal under any child welfare act. He would spend four hours a day in a gravity-amplification chamber (a prototype gift from the Yaoyorozu Group), performing thousands of repetitions of basic katas.
He noticed that his appetite had become monstrous. He would consume ten thousand calories a day—mostly lean proteins and complex fats—to fuel the rapid densification of his bones and tendons. He was no longer a "slender" boy. While he remained lean and looked graceful in a suit, his body was packed with "dense" muscle that felt like stone to the touch.
Cursed Energy Manipulation:
During his midnight sessions, he practiced "The Veil." He would sit in a pitch-black room and try to sense the Cursed Energy of the insects in the walls. He learned to "harden" his energy, not just use it for strikes.
He would manifest a thin, razor-sharp layer of CE around his fingertips and practice "carving" kanji into sheets of diamond-coated glass. If the energy fluctuated by even a fraction of a percent, the glass would shatter. This taught him the precision of a surgeon. He wasn't just a brawler; he was becoming a man who could apply the death penalty with the flick of a finger.
By age fourteen, Hiromi stood 6'0". He was a silhouette of absolute composure. When he stood still, he had no "presence"—a technique he learned from Master Sato to mask his intent. But when he moved, he was a storm.
One final test remained before U.A. He stood before Master Sato for their final spar.
"Use it all," Sato commanded, drawing a wooden katana. "The ink, the body, the judge. Show me the man you have become."
Hiromi didn't say a word. He simply adjusted his stance. The air in the room grew heavy, the temperature dropping as his Cursed Energy began to leak out, darkening the corners of the room.
He moved.
It wasn't a fight; it was a liquidation. Hiromi bypassed Sato's guard, his hands moving so fast they created sonic pops in the air. He reinforced his forearms with CE, parrying the wooden sword and shattering it into splinters. He ended the bout with his palm hovering an inch from Sato's forehead.
The wind from the "phantom strike" blew the master's hair back.
Sato lowered his hands, breathing hard. "You are ready, Hiromi. The 'Heroes' won't know what to do with you. You aren't playing their game."
Hiromi bowed deeply. "I'm not going there to play, Master. I'm going there to deliver a verdict."