Chapter 185: Please.
"Dad. I am dad."
Kamiru raised a hand and pressed it against his own face, as if confirming that he was still awake. His breathing remained uneven, but his eyes sharpened slowly, trying to force logic into a space that refused to accept it.
He lowered his hand and looked up again.
The entity exhaled softly, then spoke with visible disappointment.
"Is this the heroic kid that was sent to me?"
A faint irritation entered its voice, subtle but real, like someone reviewing a mistake in a report.
"I want a refund on my galaxies."
Kamiru's head snapped slightly at the word galaxies, but his attention immediately shifted back to the entity. His expression tightened further, not in confusion alone, but in cautious awareness, like someone realizing the rules of reality had changed without warning.
"Heroes?"
His voice was low.
"Where?"
The entity turned its gaze directly onto him.
There was no hesitation.
No doubt.
"You."
The word landed heavily in the space between them.
Kamiru froze.
For a moment, something unfamiliar stirred inside his chest. Not hope exactly, but something close enough that it made his breathing slow down and his posture shift unconsciously, as if his body had heard something his mind had not yet accepted.
The entity continued.
"You are the hero."
Kamiru did not respond immediately.
His eyes softened slightly, and for a brief moment, his expression carried something almost childlike, as if the word itself had reached a part of him that had been buried for years.
Then he spoke.
Quietly.
"Well… what do you want me for?"
The entity studied him carefully, as though checking whether his composure was stable enough to continue.
"Good. You are being reasonable again."
A short pause followed, then it spoke more directly.
"Sorry about your sudden death. But we can change that."
Kamiru's eyes narrowed slightly.
His voice sharpened.
"Death?"
The entity raised a hand.
The space around Kamiru shifted without warning.
Images formed in the darkness, not projections but direct experiences forced into his perception. The world returned in fragments, broken and distorted, showing the moment just before everything ended.
The shark-headed villain.
The chaos.
The crowd.
The shot.
A hidden figure, trembling behind the destruction.
A man too afraid to move until fear turned into impulse.
And then the gunfire.
Kamiru felt it again.
Not as memory.
As sensation.
His body stiffened in the cosmic space, his breathing stuttering for a moment as the force of it replayed through him with unnatural clarity. The realization settled slowly, heavy and cold, as the sequence ended and the world around him went still again.
The entity's voice returned, steady and detached.
"But with my help, nothing will stop you."
A pause.
"A normal boy from a different timeline and reality."
Another pause, slightly softer.
"From becoming a hero."
Kamiru's fingers curled slightly.
The words pressed into him in a way that felt heavier than the gunshot itself, as if they were asking him to accept something far beyond survival. His expression remained tense, but there was something forming behind it now, not acceptance, but inquiry.
He lifted his gaze.
"Will you change my quirk too?"
The entity's expression shifted immediately.
A clear refusal.
"No."
Silence followed.
Kamiru blinked once.
Then again.
His brows tightened slightly, not in anger, but in confusion that could not find an outlet. The idea he had not yet spoken aloud remained suspended in his expression, unsettled and unresolved, as he stared at the entity without moving.
For the first time since entering the space, Kamiru looked completely uncertain.
"You know my quirk is folding clothes, right?"
Chapter Five —
Chapter Six —
The first thing Kamiru learned upon entering the practical exam arena was that someone at Hero Academy had a very strange sense of humor.
The second thing he learned was that giant robotic bunnies were terrifying.
"Why bunnies?" he whispered as one bounded across the concrete field and crashed through a steel barrier. "Who looked at a rabbit and thought, 'Yes, let's make that nightmare-sized?'"
A siren rang.
"Practical Examination begins now!"
The students around him exploded into action.
Fire erupted from one candidate's palms. Another launched himself through the air. Someone summoned stone spikes from the ground.
Kamiru watched them go and sighed.
"Meanwhile, I fold laundry."
A mechanical bunny spotted him.
Its crimson eyes flashed.
"Oh no."
The bunny charged.
Kamiru immediately turned and ran.
"OH NO!"
The machine bounded after him.
Its metal feet slammed into the pavement with enough force to crack it.
Kamiru nearly tripped over himself.
"I'm just a civilian with paperwork!"
The bunny lunged.
Kamiru dove behind a concrete block.
The machine crashed through it.
Dust exploded everywhere.
Several students nearby glanced toward him.
One of them laughed.
"That guy's dead."
"I'm not dead!" Kamiru shouted from the dust cloud. "I'm strategically surviving!"
The bunny charged again.
Kamiru raised his hands instinctively.
His quirk activated.
The cloth tied around his wrist folded itself neatly.
The bunny remained completely unaffected.
"Fantastic."
He ran again.
Around him, students were defeating bunnies left and right.
Explosions.
Ice.
Super strength.
Meanwhile, Kamiru was participating in the ancient martial art known as Running Away Very Fast.
The bunny refused to give up.
It leapt.
Kamiru rolled.
The machine crashed face-first into the ground.
For a moment, he noticed something strange.
A tear had opened along the bunny's side.
Beneath the metal plating wasn't circuitry.
It was fiber.
Thousands of synthetic threads woven together into dense bundles.
The damaged area twitched.
Then the threads began repairing themselves.
Kamiru blinked.
"...Huh?"
The bunny stood back up.
The fibers continued weaving together.
Repairing.
Reconnecting.
Almost like someone sewing torn clothes.
The bunny charged again.
Kamiru dodged.
But this time, he kept staring.
The fibers.
The threads.
The weave.
They looked familiar.
Not because he had seen them before.
Because they looked like fabric.
A ridiculous thought entered his head.
The regeneration wasn't coming from the metal.
It was coming from the woven material underneath.
The bunny lunged.
Kamiru sidestepped.
His fingers moved instinctively.
The same motion he had used thousands of times while folding laundry.
The torn fibers suddenly twisted.
Folded.