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Chapter 13: NO. 13 - A Bitter Pill

However, there were several key locations ripe with potential points waiting to be made within Musutafu.

Locations like Midoriya\'s Apartment, Takoba Municipal Beach Park, Tatooin Station, the Todoroki household, Aldera Junior High, and finally, U.A. High School.

But I wasn\'t here for any of those locations today.

No, I was here to visit my old fellow orphan and friend. Hase Keiko.

"This must be it." I looked up from the GPS on my phone at the impressive-looking two-story home. A bag of fancy cookies in my right hand. "Hm, not bad."

Zaiko grunted from his spot on my shoulder as it also looked over the house.

My amusing meeting with my editor, thankfully, only lasted two hours.

Asuka was a rather fun person to mess with. Unsurprisingly, my young age had thrown her for a loop. While watching her stutter and apologize for being rude was funny, she recovered quickly, and we both got to business.

She had tried to sneakily impose some story beats and suggestions for my story, as all manga editors try to do, but I quickly shut that shit down and told her what my plans for my story were. Asuka was surprised that I only had so many Chapters in mind for the duration of my story and that I didn\'t want it to run for years on end.

Asuka immediately tried to dissuade me from this due to the sheer popularity of my story. However, when I mentioned that I had another story planned once TMNT was done, she quickly changed her tune and peppered me with questions.

This version of Japan wasn\'t ready for Dragon Ball Z to drop. This one\'s for you, Toriyama. Your legend will live on in this uncultured world.

"What do we got here."

I stepped forward and read the nameplate by the house gate. Yoshiyuki, it read. I reached out and pressed the doorbell on the house\'s stone gate pillar and waited. As I waited, I looked over to the house next door, where a black crow was perched on its roof. I nodded at Crow Megumi, causing him to nod back.

From my calls over the years with Keiko, she had told me that her new family was apparently super wonderful and friendly. They had been very supportive and loving of her. I was happy for her. I truly was. She was a sweet girl who had gone through hell very early on. She deserves some happiness.

It wasn\'t until recently that she insisted I come and meet her family. Something I had been pushing off for as long as I could.

Not because I didn\'t want to.

Of course not.

No, it was due to how busy I\'ve been lately and my nightly escapades. But Keiko had finally had enough and all but ordered me to come today.

Stubborn woman, er, child.

"Sou-chan!"

Keiko ran out of her front door and swung open the front gate of her house to jump into my arms. She had a large smile on her face as she tried to squeeze the life out of my body.

"You\'re here! You\'re finally here! You\'ve gotten taller!"

[+5 SP]

"Calm down, Keiko," I said with a small smile, causing her to laugh. "You\'ll crush my gift."

The excitable blue-haired girl jumped back and looked down at the blue bag in my hand. She then grabbed my other hand and dragged me towards her home.

"I can\'t wait for you to meet my mother and father! I\'m sure you\'ll love them! They\'re so nice, and they even let me decorate my own room however I like. Oh! Oh! I want to show you my room!"

"Easy there, girl," I said as I patted the top of her head in an attempt to calm down her high levels of energy, just as I did during our time at the orphanage. "Let me meet your new folks first."

"Ah, heh-heh. Sorry! I\'m just... so happy to see you again." Keiko softly said as we stopped by the front door. Her yellow eyes gazed at me with fondness. "I missed you."

[+5 SP]

"..." I kept still and stared at her in stumped silence. A soft, warm feeling grew around my chest. What I felt wasn\'t romantic. No, this feeling was something else. It was hard to describe... it was nice. "I, uh, I miss-"

"Keiko-chan! Is this the young man you\'ve been talking about nonstop?"

My eyebrow twitched in annoyance, and I turned to look at a middle-aged couple standing by the door.

The man had well-combed brown hair with a light build; he was dressed in casual clothing well suited to being at home. The woman beside him had black hair pulled into a low ponytail. She wore a pink blouse and a long yellow skirt hung down her legs.

The couple looked away from their daughter and flinched when their eyes met my own. It seemed that they were able to quickly pick up the negative energy I was producing. Usually, it took most people a few minutes of being around me to notice.

"You must be, Souta. It\'s a pleasure to finally meet you, young man. Keiko here has had nothing but wonderful things to say about you." Keiko\'s new mother said with a smile, seemingly getting over any of the feelings she felt about me. "My name is Yoshiyuki Hana. And this here is my husband, Yoshiyuki Kenta."

"It\'s a pleasure to meet you both," I said with a slight bow of my head. It wouldn\'t do me any good to be disrespectful to my friend\'s parents.

[+5 SP]

[+5 SP]

"Wow, I\'ve never seen you bow to anyone, Sou-chan. How rare."

"I can be respectful. I just choose not to."

"You\'ve grown up so much, Sou-chan. I\'m so proud."

"You do know I\'m older than you, right?"

The Yoshiyuki couple chuckled at our conversations. I, on the other hand, was taken aback. It seems that Keiko has grown rather bold ever since she left. I missed the little girl who hid behind me whenever we had people over. Her newfound confidence was both surprising and amusing.

"Now then, why don\'t you two kids come on in? We wouldn\'t want the snacks Keiko worked so hard to prepare to go to waste, now do we?"

"M-mother! Don\'t tell Sou-chan that!"

[+10 SP]

x x x

Keiko\'s room was a cheerful and cozy space. It perfectly reflected her vibrant and bubbly personality.

After talking and getting to know Keiko\'s parents for around forty minutes, I came to the conclusion that the Yoshiyuki couple were good people. Unlike most people I come across, they barely had any traces of negative emotions. Something I was able to pick up pretty easily, thanks to my abilities as a sorcerer. The two of them truly loved and cared for my friend.

A fact that put me at ease, still, I would continue having Crow Megumi watch over her. Just to be safe.

Once the Yoshiyuki couple were satisfied after asking me a multitude of questions about myself, they let Keiko and I go up to her room per her request.

The walls were painted in a soft shade of sky blue and adorned with colorful posters of her favorite anime characters and bands. A large bookshelf stood against one wall, filled with several children\'s books and trinkets. A comfortable bed with a bright floral bedspread sat in one corner, accompanied by a plush All Might toy.

The room was illuminated by fairy lights strung across the ceiling, casting a warm and inviting glow. A small desk, littered with art supplies and sketches, occupied another corner. Sitting on a chair was the All Might-themed sweater she had received all those years ago. Overall, the room exuded a sense of joy and individuality, perfectly capturing who Keiko was.

"You sure went wild with decorating your room," I said as I walked over to her desk, where several sketches sat.

They were rough drawings of female hero costumes. Each one of them had detailed notes of what each article of the costume did or what it was made of. Seeing them caused my amused smile to melt away. With my back turned to her, Keiko nodded happily and threw herself on her bed.

[+5 SP]

"Yeah! Isn\'t it wonderful! I have it all to myself, and I don\'t have to share it." Keiko froze in her excited chattering and turned to me with a sad, regrettable expression. "I\'m sorry, Sou-chan. I didn\'t-"

[+5 SP]

"It\'s fine." I interrupted her as I sat down on her bed to lay beside her. "I don\'t need any parents anyway. I\'m incredibly self-sufficient, didn\'t you know."

"I know. But still... I feel like I\'m bragging when I show off my room and my parents. Ow! Why did you hit me with my own pillow!?"

"Because you\'re being stupid," I said as I turned to her with a grin. "I\'m happy you\'re happy. So don\'t worry about little old me. I\'m doing just fine."

[+10 SP]

Keiko remained silent and brushed her fingers on the bandage on my neck. "Then what\'s this? Are you still getting into fights?"

"...no?"

I sat up and looked over at her desk, where all her hero costume sketches sat. "I see you still want to be a hero." I said in order to change the subject, Keiko quickly sat up and covered my eyes with her hands. "I thought I told you that was a bad idea."

"No, don\'t look! I-I\'m still working on them!" Keiko said with an embarrassed blush as I chuckled. "And, of course, I still want to be a hero! After all, I want to be just like All Might. I want to save people from danger with a smile like he did when he saved me!"

I grabbed her hands and removed them from my face with a sigh. Standing up, I walked over to her desk and placed a hand on her hoodie.

Being a hero was something she always talked about when she still lived with me at the orphanage. Then again, that\'s pretty much what every kid talks about when they\'re young and full of dreams.

However, unlike most kids with weak and lame abilities, Keiko\'s quirk actually had some potential. Her quirk was called Loving Sheild.

Loving Shield allowed her to summon barriers or walls of blue energy capable of stopping/blocking anything as strong as her. What powers her quirk is her abnormally high levels of positive emotions. However, if her happy emotional state gets disrupted or shaken, her energy barriers will grow weaker or break.

At the moment, her quirk is rather weak due to her young age and inexperience, but with enough time, I knew that her ability had the potential to grow to be rather powerful.

"Do you think... I can\'t do it?" Keiko asked shyly, her hands on her knees as she looked down at her pink carpet. Her usually bright and happy yellow eyes were now dimmer. I once again found myself sighing and brushed back my hair.

"It\'s not that. You know how I feel about heroes. It\'s a dangerous profession, Keiko."

[+5 SP]

"I know that! But I know I can do it!" Keiko said with a grin, her previous shyness gone as if it was never there. She then clapped her hands like a certain blonde alchemist and held her palms to me. I watched as a barrier of blue energy half her size burst to life in front of her. "See?! I\'ve been working really hard on my quirk! Try and get through it like before."

It\'s true. This is a lot bigger and solid than before.

I reached out and placed a hand on the barrier. Touching it didn\'t hurt or burn me; the only thing I felt from touching it was a nice, cool feeling. Slowly, I began to push the barrier with my natural strength. The barrier didn\'t budge. I then tried again with my CE and saw the barrier begin to shake. Seeing that, I stopped pushing.

"Not bad; the last time I did this, my hand was able to push through it as if it were made of jello."

[+5 SP]

"Heh-heh!" Keiko smiled and released her barrier in favor of placing her hands on her hips. "See! I\'ve gotten a lot stronger. I\'ll definitely be a great hero someday!"

Images of destruction and mutant humanoid creatures popped into my mind. A light blue-haired man with the power to crumble anything he touched creped up behind Keiko and slowly began to reach out to her face, ready to decay her to dust.

In a few years from now, Keiko will probably be in the same year as Midoriya when he joins UA. If she does make it in, will she be placed in 1-A? No, I doubt it. At most, she\'ll probably make it to a general education course like Shinso. As long as she stays away from class 1-A, then she won\'t be at the heart of everything. She\'ll be fine.

I wanted to tell her to quit. To give up her dream of being a hero. It would only get her killed. She wasn\'t part of the main cast, and that meant she didn\'t have any plot armor like the rest of class 1-A. Keiko could very well die as one of the background characters.

But if I told her to give up now, would that be fair to her?

Was I really going to risk our relationship based on my paranoid what-ifs?

"...Yeah. You\'re right." I forced my face to smile at her as I wrapped the All Might-themed sweater around her shoulders. "You\'ll definitely become a great hero someday... I\'m sure of it."

[+20 SP]

Keiko looked at me with wide, happy eyes before wrapping her arms around my shoulders as she laughed and jumped. I was glad that her face was pressed into my shoulder; it meant she didn\'t have to see the frown on my face.

-

Thank you for the 600 PS!

I hope you enjoyed todays bonus Chapter.

Until next time!