The stars shimmered above the quiet residential street, casting long shadows over rooftops and narrow alleys. From his perch on the second-floor ledge, Arata Kurosawa watched silently as Fujikawa Hana stepped through the gate of a modest house. Her movements were slow—careful—and she hesitated before ringing the bell.
The front door opened almost instantly.
"Hana?!" a woman cried out. "Where have you been? Look at you—your clothes are torn!"
"I'm okay, Mom," Hana answered quickly. "I… I got lost. I twisted my ankle near the forest trail. I'm sorry I worried you."
From the outside, it was a perfect story—harmless, mundane, and believable. But from where Arata crouched in the shadows, he saw more. He studied her posture, her voice, the subtle delay before she responded. She was lying—but with remarkable control.
If he didn't already know what she'd been through, he might have believed her too.
He waited.
Perched above her bedroom window, limbs tense from hours of stillness, Arata remained hidden in the ceiling shadows like a bat. The soft light from inside flickered through the blinds. For all the time he had spent analyzing combatants, this kind of waiting—silent, psychological, uncertain—took a different kind of endurance.
Finally, the room darkened. The hallway fell silent.
She was alone.
Arata dropped soundlessly to the bedroom floor. He moved with practiced precision, landing near the edge of the bed without a sound. His hand reached out, not violently—but firmly—to cover Hana's mouth before she could cry out.
Her body stiffened, breath catching.
He leaned close and whispered, "Did you tell anyone?"
Hana's eyes filled with fear. But slowly, almost imperceptibly, she shook her head.
Arata's hand relaxed. "Good."
He pulled back and stood, dusting himself off. Hana sat up slowly, still trembling, knees drawn to her chest beneath the blanket.
"You're not stupid," he said, voice low and unreadable. "You know how dangerous the truth would be."
She didn't respond—just stared at him. Her face was pale, her eyes hollow.
"I won't come here again," Arata added. "Unless you give me a reason to."
There was no threat in his tone. It was colder than that—mechanical, calculated.
He turned to the window and slid it open. The wind tugged at his sleeves as he stepped onto the ledge.
But before he could jump, her voice—barely above a whisper—stopped him.
"…Why me?"
He paused.
"That's the question, isn't it?" he said. "Maybe you were just… compatible."
Then he was gone.
From the rooftops, Arata moved like a shadow through the night. Quiet, efficient. And while his body ached from the effort of staying hidden for hours, his mind was more focused than ever.
The experiment had worked.
The quirk analysis and synthesis functions of his Smart Chip had completed successfully. He now possessed Super Healing—a durable, versatile A-class ability. But something was off.
A tiny detail he hadn't expected.
During the post-analysis scan, Arata noticed a strange drop in output. The healing effect he had extracted from Hana's quirk had diminished—slightly, but measurably. A two-second regeneration delay on a small cut—compared to her earlier data.
It meant one thing.
She's weaker now.
Not by much—but enough for someone with the right data to notice. Enough to raise questions.
Arata didn't like loose ends. If someone traced the change back to Hana… if a doctor or a hero asked the right questions…
He clenched his fist.
"Too risky," he muttered.
He had three quirk slots. Only three. And one was already taken by a synthesized copy.
He wouldn't make another move until he understood the cost.
Until then, Fujikawa Hana was a potential liability.
And liabilities needed to be managed—one way or another.