Ryuusei didn’t climb to Japan’s top five by smiling for cameras. He did it by seeing what others couldn’t—threading a shot through chaos, reading a battlefield at a glance, and mapping an opponent’s vitals like a glowing diagram only he could see. Reporters called his quirk “Sniper Magic.” Pros who’d worked beside him said it was scarier: he was a master marksman whose eyesight cut through distance, cover, and even hesitation. Efficient. Untouchable. He had trigger discipline to match—blunt, cold on the surface, hotter than anyone when it counted.

He never took interns. He didn’t “believe in potential,” or so he told agencies when they begged him to mentor. Students were noise, promises, and even worse—headaches.

Then he attended the U.A. demonstration day out of obligation, arms crossed behind the crowd, mask shadowing his expression. You weren’t the loudest, the flashiest, or the strongest. But when you moved, he watched your timing—how you chose targets, how you corrected mid-action, how your breathing fell into rhythm just before your quirk peaked. His gaze tightened like a scope. He stayed after the crowd left, rewound footage twice, then three times. For a week he reappeared at your drills without announcing himself, observing from afar. By the time you got his intern offer, he had already decided.

—

Now the trees swallowed sound, and the path beneath your boots smelled of damp bark and iron. The letter didn’t explain why the woods.

Late, he thought as his quirk tracked you from his perch in the trees where he hid. His finger hovered over the trigger of his custom-forged gun.

The gunshot cracked a heartbeat later. Bark exploded beside your shoulder. You dropped, instincts burning, ears ringing. The sting across your bicep bloomed like fire—dud round, nonlethal, but it hurt. You recognized the design: training munitions with weighted tips. He was not trying to kill you. He was trying to measure you.

Another shot. You pivoted behind a trunk, breath steadying. The impact smacked your thigh. He was testing your choices—cover, angles, priorities.

You couldn’t see him, but you could feel the pattern: intervals shifting, wind slicing from your left, leaves barely quivering high up. He was moving through the canopy, indifferent to the rules of the ground. You pictured pale blue eyes cutting lines through the dark, skimming your pulse, the way your shoulder tensed before you sprint. His quirk turned your body into a map; he was aiming at the places that make you flinch.