Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Kirisame didn't know what happened to Midoriya that day, but judging by how shyly and happily he later invited her to have pastries, it must have been something good.

However, right now she had no time for pastries, too busy even to remember her tutoring sessions.

About three days ago, Kirisame received a paper airplane from Libra. The orange airplane meant it was likely official business.

As soon as she opened it, Zapp's big face appeared.

The silver-haired, gray-eyed, brown-skinned young man gave the kid he hadn't seen in a while a disgustingly smug smile:

"Yo yo yo, if it isn't our little Kirisame! I heard you've been busy studying..." Zapp propped his chin up thoughtfully, then suddenly leaned in close to the screen so Kirisame could see his expression: "Going bald, huh?! Hahaha! I told you, kids should just go to school! Without you tagging along, I've been hella conve—mmph... What the hell, Dog Girl?!"

The screen was lifted by Leo, and the boy even thoughtfully showed Kirisame Zapp having his head stomped into the floor by Zhen.

...Needless to say, it was very satisfying.

The screen panned to Libra's activity room, which looked like a noble's parlor. The boss's red hair came into view, and the tall man tried to show a gentle expression to the little girl, asking her rambling questions in his usual ornate yet restrained voice:

"How's the house? Getting along well with Mr. Aizawa? How's school going? Made any friends..."

The little girl felt soothed by her guardian's concern, completely forgetting the earlier unpleasantness of being kicked over, and answered each of his questions softly.

In the activity room, Zapp, feeling refreshed after being pummeled by the werewolf lady Zhen, watched the boss's burly back that blocked the entire screen, made a sour face, and quietly whispered to the person next to him:

"Heheh — the boss is obviously thrilled. He hasn't even had any real interaction with the girl, yet he's already imagining himself as a father..."

The next second, he was kicked out and ended up hanging on a cabinet.

And the person he was whispering to, the fish apprentice Jet, kept smiling, completely unfazed, and even politely moved out of the way when Zapp was kicked and flew past.

...That's Mr. Scumbag's popularity for today.

Struggling to climb down from the cabinet and roll over to the screen, the brown-skinned young man finally showed a serious expression.

"Normally I wouldn't bother you, but this time things are a bit inconvenient on my end."

"—There's a 'thing' that's ended up over there."

According to Zapp's description, it was an object with some kind of high-level spell attached, which somehow passed through the "security" of the Eternal Void and fell into this world.

Ordinary items from another world can cause a catastrophe just by shifting worlds—that's the personal experience of those who have struggled on death's doorstep at HL for years. Therefore, the center of the city connecting different worlds, the "Eternal Void," has a passive protection mechanism. Except for places like HL, which serve as transfer stations, ordinary people, items, and techniques cannot pass through the Eternal Void to another unrelated world. It might be somewhat possible for people to get through, but for items, it's basically impossible, let alone if they have spells attached.

This was undoubtedly abnormal and very dangerous, as evidenced by Miss Angelica from the Sorcerers' Association's piercing shriek. Normally, this wouldn't be Libra's business, but it was said that the police chief had begged the Sorcerers' Association to send people over, and none returned—and the last transmissions were all uniformly creepy. So Miss Angelica decisively visited Zapp...

Zapp has never had principles in front of beautiful women.

So the matter was passed on to Libra. Having something like this fall into a peaceful world could lead to who knows what, and since the right person happened to be over on that side, the boss took the job.

Kirisame wandered the streets, thinking about her lost study materials. Counting on her fingers how many days were left until the high school entrance exam, she felt like crying. She deeply regretted using up this week's luck on Midoriya...

This was the evening of the third day. Kirisame, wandering around the city, still hadn't found the legendary "smuggled goods." According to Libra's intelligence, it was an "item that could cause spatial distortion in a specific area." The dispatched team members had inadvertently triggered the spell and been drawn inside while searching and subsequently disappeared. Leo's God's Eye could be used cross-dimensionally under Kirisame's special intervention, but he had never seen the item before, so he couldn't trace it.

With cross-dimensional intervention, the intelligence was limited to a vague range. The spell couldn't be observed directly. Firefly scouts didn't have actual "triggering" properties. In short, with unclear intelligence, finding this thing depended entirely on luck.

"What the hell?!" The little girl slammed her hand on the stone bench in the park fountain square. "This is a disgrace to lucky people!"

After contacting her temporary guardian, Shota Aizawa, and confirming that there had been no large-scale disappearances recently, Kirisame narrowed her search to the alleys in the city. Using satellite maps, she scoured them one by one from nearest to farthest. She spent two days, already through two-thirds of the progress, and found nothing.

"Don't tell me I actually have to search the last one..." Kirisame held her forehead, enduring the pitying looks from passersby that seemed to say, "Is she slow?" "I've been too unlucky lately. Getting lost, getting robbed, and I even got lost four times in the same place..."

"Got lost... four times..."

Huh? Getting lost... four times... Causing spatial distortion in a specific area...

The girl's eyes widened, and she jumped up and ran.

Katsuki Bakugo, forced by his mom to go buy groceries and in a foul mood, was caught completely off guard when he met his savior again.

—He was knocked over by the savior who rushed out from somewhere, scattering the groceries in his hands.

"Hey, you— huh?"

The boy's already sharply angled eyes narrowed instantly, and he reached out to grab the girl's wrist.

"Wait—"

Immersed in the thought "So I've already been there before? That makes sense; my luck can't be that bad," Kirisame didn't see who she had hit. Startled by the unfriendly aura of the youth, she instinctively used the momentum to jump and deliver a solid elbow strike to his back.

Bakugo hit the ground.

The next second, accompanied by a flash of fire and a loud bang, the boy jumped up ready to fight, didn't even have time to curse "bastard."

—All that was left was the girl's running figure and a phrase drifting in the wind.

"Sorry, sorry, I shouldn't have bumped into you, but I'm in a hurry right now. Please bear with me. I'll apologize properly later!!!"

...And a small pile of money at his feet, probably in case he needed to see a doctor.

"..."

Katsuki Bakugo stood there, dazed and isolated, so angry he couldn't speak. He stomped heavily on the pile of money, grinding it into the ground. The hand hanging by his side twitched nervously, opening and closing.

The frustration and anger provoked by Deku and Kirisame since the sludge incident finally exploded fully. Suppressing the urge to blow up the whole street, Bakugo lowered his head, veins bulging on his forehead. His usually bright crimson eyes seemed about to burn. His twisted expression scared away a group of little girls who had come to help him pick up his stuff.

"Fine, ignoring me, huh!" The sound of cracking knuckles rang out.

The light-blond-haired boy bared his teeth in a vicious grin.

"You impolite bastard..."

"I'll be waiting right here for you to come back and apologize!"

Of course, even though those angry red eyes seemed familiar, Kirisame didn't give it another thought.

Putting away the Aikoku Kunitoshi she used for speed boosts, the little girl, who had forgotten she could take the subway, breathed heavily and stopped in front of the alley where she first met Mr. Toshinori Yagi.

But this time, she got out easily.

"No way, it's not here?" Kirisame shook her head violently, banishing the terrifying thought. "No, no, I'm not the kind of person who would get lost four times for no reason. Trust yourself!"

So where was the problem...

The girl's gaze stopped on the giant All Might poster on the wall.

If there was anything different about that day, it was that out of curiosity, she had stared at this huge poster for a while.

Kirisame closed her eyes and carefully recalled what she had done that day.

Then she opened her eyes and fixed her gaze on the poster.

It wasn't long before a change appeared. In the hollow eye sockets of the golden-haired man on the wall, the blue eyes had, at some point, turned red.

This time, Kirisame found that she couldn't get out of this alley.

Having returned to the starting point for the third time, Kirisame narrowed her eyes, raised her hand and pressed a small button on her collar, and a pattern of black flames spread across her vision.

An otherworldly Hellsalem's Lot.

Leo, on standby in the activity room, lunged toward the screen: "Mr. K-K-K-Klaus!!!"

The thin electronic screen flickered, showing the large face of a muscular man in an American comic book style.

The girl's lazy voice came through: "I think I found it."

"The trigger for the first step should be 'gaze'—staring at this advertisement for a certain period of time, after which the spatial structure here underwent some change," Kirisame said, her head aching. "I fell for this trick when I first arrived, but I didn't notice that detail at all, just thought I was simply lost..."

Leo's mouth fell open, speechless, completely not listening to what she was saying.

What! This physique that could knock him to HL with one punch, these rabbit bangs that are somehow a bit cute, this thumb full of meme potential, that mouthful of shiny white teeth... Could this world really have this kind of art style?!!

He could totally understand why the sorcerer who was sent earlier had stared too long and fallen victim... In fact, he was starting to get worried!!

Kirisame, instinctively sensing what Leo was about to say, spoke up in time: "No, no, no, only this person is different; everyone else is normal."

"Okay, I'm going to try," the girl said, placing her hand on the wall: "I think the condition for the next step is probably 'physical contact'."

As soon as she finished speaking, her hand passed straight through the wall, and she felt a strange, twisting force, and the scene before her eyes changed abruptly.

"This is way too dark..." Kirisame reached inside her coat, pulled out a handful of small buttons, fumbled to find the right one, and twisted it open.

The compressed bioluminescent light source quickly transformed at her fingertips, and a spider-like creature crawled up her sleeve and onto her chest, hanging there obediently, emitting a soft blue light that illuminated the entire space.

Kirisame finally saw clearly what kind of place she was in:

a giant, inverted spiral staircase.