….
And in that unattended void, the predators Aizawa found him.
I did this, Aizawa thought, his fingers digging into the fabric of his scarf…
"Shut up."
Dabi said, making Mineta's jaw clamp shut with an audible click as his trembling frame locked beneath the weight of Dabi's cobalt glare.
"Stop whining like you're some tragic martyr of society." Hsaid, his voice entirely devoid of pity. "Aizawa made a mess of the paperwork, sure. The system got hit by a dozen disasters before anyone could check on you. But Aizawa didn't shove that glass bottle down your throat."
Dabi took half a step forward, leaning down over the metal guardrail until his scarred face loomed inches above the boy.
"You swallowed that poison because you were an ignorant, entitled parasite who couldn't stomach being ordinary, and instead of training or reflecting, the moment you felt small you ran straight into the gutter, accepted handouts from literal butchers, and turned your hand against this school just to force people to look at you, so don't pretend you're a casualty of U.A.'s mistakes, Mineta, because you're a coward who wrecked his own body throwing a tantrum."
Every word struck Mineta like an iron hammer.
The boy's hollow delusion that he had made a stand against an unfair world fractured into dust.
Beside the bed, Aizawa's shoulders loosened.
Mineta wasn't an innocent boy driven to villainy by neglect but a reckless kid who had chosen to swallow fire the moment things didn't go his way.
"I don't understand any of that..." Mineta choked out, his tears running hot and fast over his grey, rotting cheeks as he pressed his face into the stained pillow. "It hurts so bad... I ruined everything... I am sorry...."
Dabi let the bitter realization hang in the room.
Then, he turned slightly, resting his hand against Eri's small shoulder.
"Eri." Dabi murmured softly.
The little girl stepped forward, ignoring the restraints and the blackened veins spidering across Mineta's arms as she looked only at his tear-streaked face, recognizing the same hollow, hopeless expression she used to see in the mirror back when her world was made of needles and dark rooms.
"Don't cry." Eri whispered. "Papa said I can help you."
Mineta blinked through his tears, staring in stunned bewilderment at the small, white-haired girl who had approached his bedside.
Eri closed her eyes, as she drew a slow breath inward, expanding her diaphragm exactly as Dabi had drilled into her muscle memory every morning at dawn.
A golden spark flared at the tip of her small horn, pooling quietly around her brow in a gentle halo. She reached up, her fingertips lightly grazing the back of Mineta's bruised, scarred hand.
A ripple of golden light washed across the boy's body.
Mineta gasped as an overwhelming sensation of absolute warmth flooded his veins.
The black, necrotic rot eating his nerves dissolved in reverse; the deep chemical burns along his forearms smoothed over, the scar tissue peeling back like melting wax until fresh, unblemished skin formed beneath.
The withered, cracked spheres of his hair swelled back to their vibrant, healthy purple, and the rattling fluid in his lungs completely evaporated.
Forty-eight hours. One week. One month. Three months.
The golden glow pulsed rhythmically, rolling the physical clock backward cell by cell until his body returned to the exact state it had held on the bright April morning he first walked onto the grounds of U.A. High, untainted, uncorrupted, and completely whole.
Eri exhaled, a soft puff of air parting her lips as she opened her eyes.
The golden light gently dissolved into the air, vanishing without a single stray ember.
Her breathing remained perfectly steady, her posture tall, her horn cooling down to its natural.
Mineta lay frozen on the bed, staring at his hands.
The pain was gone, the suffocation in his chest had vanished, and he could feel his fingers, his toes, and the cool air touching his skin, whole and restored as though he had been given his life back.
The sheer, miraculous impossibility of it washed over him, and for a second, a spark of desperate, frantic hope ignited in his wide eyes–
"I am... I am healed? I can... I can try again? The hero course–"
CLACK.
Dabi leaned down, planting his hand on the side rail of the bed, bringing his face inches from Mineta's. The pressure rolling off his frame knocked every single breath right back out of the boy's lungs.
"Listen to me very carefully, Mineta." Dabi warned, his voice carrying the finality of an executioner's blade. "You are not a hero and you are never going to be one, because your file at this school record is still expelled, and the moment you walk out of this facility, you're just a regular civilian with an ordinary, boring life."
Dabi's turquoise eyes bore straight through the boy's skull.
"A whole lot of powerful, corrupt people in this country wanted the power that was used on you, but my daughter used it on you instead, not because you deserved it, but because I asked her too, and she willingly agreed.
Dabi straightened up, shoving his hands into his coat pockets, looking down on the trembling boy with cool, absolute authority.
"If I ever hear your name in connection with a syndicate again... I will personally find you, wherever you're hiding, and I will give you worse suffering than you have experienced. Do you understand me?"
Mineta violently nodded his head, tears of raw, overwhelming gratitude and terror pouring down his cheeks as he pressed his forehead against the bed, weeping like a newborn child.
"Y-Yes, sir! Yes, teacher! I swear! I swear on my life! I will go home! And I will never do anything bad again! I swear!"
"Good." Dabi grunted, turning his back on the bed without looking back. "Aizawa. Call his home, and have him off the campus."
"Already dialed." Aizawa said from the doorway, his dark eyes lingering on Eri with a look of thankfulness before he stepped aside.
As Dabi walked back out into the corridor, Eri immediately took his hand again, looking up at him with a smile.
"Did I do good, Papa?" she asked in a proud whisper.
"You did perfect, bean." Dabi praised.
"And Himi did the scary face!" Himiko cheered from Rumi's arms, puffing out her chest. "The grape boy was shaking like a little leaf! He's never gonna eat anyone's toes ever!"
"You were terrifying, brat." Rumi laughed, shifting the girl higher and resting a warm hand against the back of Dabi's neck as they walked toward the elevator.
Outside the cell, Aizawa had already tapped his tablet, terminating the data loop and locking in a finalized, completely falsified medical discharge file.
Perched on his shoulder, Nezu clapped his small paws together in quiet, polite admiration.
"Remarkable." Nezu smiled. "I thank your whole family for this Dabi. We will handle the proceedings from here on, you can rest assured."
The Recovery Girl looked down at Eri, who was happily holding Dabi's thumb again; her stern expression melted into something deeply warm.
"You controlled it beautifully, little one." she complimented.
Eri beamed. "Papa taught me gentle breathing."
"That he did." Nezu chuckled softly, clasping his small paws together. "Well then, Dabi-kun. It seems your teaching record is entirely unblemished once more."
"Should I resign now?"
Dabi muttered, though the tension had entirely drained from his shoulders as he gestured lazily toward the elevator.
"That would be quite a loss to U.A.." Nezu replied, tilting his snout with an enigmatic glint in his black eyes. "Though I do believe the time when you must leave isn't that far off."
Dabi cast a dry sidelong glance at the stoat, one scarred eyebrow arched. "You aren't batting an eye kicking off your best teacher?"
"I am quite certain you will show me something far more interesting when you do leave." Nezu murmured smoothly. "The stage of an instructor is small, after all. But regarding the boy in B-4..."
Aizawa tapped his stylus against the edge of his tablet, shifting from the sealed chamber back to Dabi.
"His home situation is thin." Aizawa said. "He was raised by a single mother, with no father in the picture, and she filed an official missing persons report with the Kanagawa prefectural police nearly a month ago, right after he vanished into the underground circuit.
"Aside from the Commission brass, Nezu, and the kids in Class 1-A who saw him during the raid, nobody actually knows he ended up tangled with the League."
Aizawa slipped the tablet under his arm.
"Rather than a messy administrative tribunal, it's cleaner to turn him over to the local precinct as a recovered runaway. We hand him back to his mother with a simple story: found wandering near the district borders, disoriented from minor trauma.
"Give the kid one final warning that if he ever breathes a word about what happened, the report turns into an arrest warrant. He goes home, his mother gets her son back, and the Commission loses another file to pry into."
"Fine by me." Dabi nodded as he took a step toward the lift.
"Hold it." Aizawa called out, his tone deadpan. "Aren't you forgetting something important again?"
Dabi stopped dead in his tracks.
He stood in the hallway, blinking once, twice, staring silent seconds while his brain dragged through the events of the past seventy-two hours.
Forest camp, Kamino raid, hospital ward, and bakery run.
Then, his eyes flashed with realization.
"Damn it..." Dabi groaned, dragging a scarred palm down his face. "The sparkly French kid."
Yuga Aoyama.
The glittering Class 1-A student All For One had been using it as a covert conduit for years; the inside mole the staff had spent months attempting to pinpoint.
Dabi had personally caught the boy red-handed during the summer camp raid before the League could exploit him any further, swiftly stashing him away in a secure holding room under campus custody.
With everything else exploding, the boy had slipped entirely off his radar.
"I swear to god." Dabi muttered, rubbing the bridge of his nose in sheer irritation–
"This school collects problem children like bad habits."
.
….
[To be continued…]
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