"Genga... he's gone."

The rugged-looking man walked slowly over to Uraraka Shige's hospital bed. He seemed completely unconcerned by the gazes of Shige's parents and the young Ochaco, instead staring solemnly at Shige.

Shige's eyes had remained fixed on the man ever since he entered the private care room. Something about him felt both strange and familiar, though Shige had clearly never met him before.

"You..."

Shige frowned slightly and looked the man in the eye, opening his mouth to ask him directly who he was.

Though he was in the small body of an eight-year-old, Shige showed no fear at all in the presence of the fierce-looking man, who was even wearing a stern expression. To Shige, this was perfectly normal, but the man saw it and suddenly thought that the friend Terumi Genga had made was decent enough.

"I am the fourth head of the Terumi Family, and Genga's father."

The man chose to cut Shige off and introduce himself first, intending to observe Shige's behavior and reaction more closely.

"Genga's... father?"

Shige had no idea what the man claiming to be Genga's father wanted, much less what he was thinking. His attention was fixed entirely on the words "Genga's father," because...

"If you're Genga's father, then you must know how he's doing! How is he now?"

Anxiety rose unbidden in Shige's eyes. All he remembered was that Terumi Genga had used his Quirk to disguise himself as Shige. They had been too far apart for Shige to see clearly, but there was no doubt that Terumi Genga had been lying on the ground, gravely injured. Shige was genuinely worried about him, and the man claiming to be Genga's father saw that clearly.

Realizing this, the man immediately let go of most of his prejudice against Shige, which had stemmed from Shige having caused Terumi Genga's serious injuries. Only some resentment remained. So he quietly gave Shige a barely passing grade for character, pending further observation, and prepared to put him through one final test.

The man, Bi'an, suddenly put on an expression of utter grief and hatred, as if to say, My son is dead, and I'm so sad, so miserable, so tormented, so agitated, so full of hate! Then he deliberately said through gritted teeth:

"Genga... he's gone."

Shige's eyes flew wide open. Ignoring his physical discomfort, he shot upright in bed. The sudden movement tore open the heat-burned skin beneath the gauze wrapped around his body. His skin had only just begun to show signs of healing, and blood immediately welled out, steadily staining the medical gauze red from within. Fortunately, because he was so young, a doctor whose Quirk could suppress pain had taken special care of him, leaving Shige able to feel only about one percent of the original pain.

Even that one percent or so made Shige's little face twitch instinctively.

"Genga, he..."

Shige murmured in disbelief, his face expressionless. His eyes had grown somewhat vacant. Unlike the dead fish eyes he usually put on deliberately, they now looked like pools of stagnant water. Even the man who had been watching him felt a chill run down his spine and shuddered awkwardly.

"Shige..."

The sight of Shige filled his mother with pain. On the verge of sobbing again, she could not help softly calling him by the nickname his family used. His father glared furiously at the man who had reduced Shige to this state. Little Ochaco unconsciously clutched and fidgeted with the edge of her skirt, looking worriedly at Shige one moment, cautiously glancing at the man who seemed fierce and frightening to her the next, and casting uneasy looks at her parents in between. She looked terribly nervous and conflicted.

Well, her cuteness was off the charts.

Perhaps the man claiming to be Genga's father was a lolicon at heart, or perhaps he simply felt a little guilty that his attempt to test Shige had left him looking so utterly despondent.

In any case, the stern expression the man had maintained suddenly relaxed. He glanced awkwardly at Shige and his family, then coughed lightly, but failed to get Shige's attention. With no other choice, he said what he had to say outright.

"Actually, Genga is fine. It's just that, for certain special reasons, he went to a hospital in another city the day before yesterday."

But Shige was still absorbed in the man's earlier words, "he's gone," and did not react right away. By the time he did, the gauze around him had been completely soaked red with blood, and he had begun to feel faint and fall back onto the bed.

"Ehhhh??? This is bad, Father!"

Seeing the gauze all over Shige's body soaked red with blood, and Shige himself pass out, the man claiming to be Genga's father immediately cast aside the mature air he had given off and began to panic. Even his voice abruptly grew younger and clearer, changing from a deep male voice into a cute one that immediately brought to mind a delicate, clinging little bird.

Then, amid the frantic shouting of the person who still looked like a man but whose voice had suddenly become a girl's, the middle-aged man who had opened the door for her earlier pushed it open and came in again. Despite wearing casual clothes, he had a tie around his neck.

"What happened? Why are you panicking?!"

A deep, authoritative, mature male voice came from the middle-aged man. The mother, father, and Ochaco, Terumi Genga's family members standing around the bed, all froze in place, unable to understand what was happening. A moment later, Ochaco was the first to recover and cried out in surprise.

"Ah! Please save Shige! He's bleeding so much!"

Only then did the father, the mother, and the person who had been pretending to be Genga's father come to their senses. The middle-aged man, who was Genga's real father, glared fiercely at the person who had been impersonating him. Then he beckoned toward the door, summoning an ugly man wearing oversized toad-eye sunglasses and baggy, drab gray clothes that had been fashionable in the last century.

"Ikyu! Come save this child!"