8 Chapter 8: Resolving incident

"Sayaka-san! What happened here?!" Satoru immediately asked the moment he arrived at the orphanage, where a terrifying inferno blaze raged.

"No, don't answer that just yet! Is everybody safe? Is there anyone still trapped within the flame?"

"Y-Yes! There are a few more younger children who couldn't make it out of the building!"

"I'll go in and save them then!"

Satoru didn't even care about the flame. In his 14 years of living in this orphanage, this became his home, his family.

What's the point of having a home without all your family? What's the point of having a family if you wouldn't even do anything to help them?

"Don't go, Satoru! Even if you're strong, there's no way that you would be able to survive even getting close to it! See how hot it is currently burning!" Sayaka didn't care about her motherly image in front of the children anymore. She just yelled her lungs out with tears in her eyes, "I've already lost them to the flame! And I don't want to lose you as well!"

"So, please..." Sayaka grabbed Satoru's shirt and wept in his arms, "Don't go and die as well..."

Satoru was stunned. Under the threat of death of his beloved younger sisters and brothers, he had honestly never considered what others would think if he had died as well.

"I"m sorry for not considering your feelings." Satoru apologized, "But I'm definitely not giving my younger sisters and brothers up!"

"Besides," Satoru continued before Sayaka could argue, "What if everyone trapped within that flame is actually immune to fire? Then wouldn't they still be surviving in the house comfortably?"

"Impossible!" Sayaka hurriedly shook her head and disbelief, "Even if one of them might have the power to resist fire to a certain extent, all of them can't be the same as well! Please don't joke about their lives ever again! This fire has been burning for 15 minutes straight at this intensity - no one can survive in the house!"

"Thank you for caring about me, but it never hurts to try." And as soon as Satoru spoke, he disappeared and entered the burning house, ignoring the weeping Sayaka.

"Sorry, Sayaka-san, but this power of mine must be kept secret from even you. You might be placed in trouble, and even though you won't die as long as I don't allow you to, you might get injured or tortured if they are really desperate for me."

Was Satoru stupid? Of course not.

He knew that what Sayaka said was true. With this intensity of flames, even with the layer of infinity protecting him, he could feel some warmth. So what could a few children that had just awakened their quirks that might have anything to do with resisting heat do?

But...

What if this was all just a lie?

"A lie about a lie...will turn itself..."

"...inside out."

[This is the original Japanese version: "uso no uso...sore wa kururi to...uragaeru." Since there is no accurate translation for that, I'm just going to use the anime translation on gogoanime.io]

As Satoru murmured, he snapped his fingers as well, causing a bright light to envelop the entire house.

Strangely enough, not even one person amongst the huge crowd realized a single thing. It was as though the house had continued burning without any change.

"Hello, little boys and girls. I see you guys have been doing well." Satoru smiled as he went down on his knees to rub the heads of five little children in front of him.

"Satoru nii-chan?" The two little girls raised their faces that were stained with tears and soot.

"A-Aniki?" The other three boys did the same, and all of their eyes were now on the verge of tears.

"Satoru nii-chan/Aniki!!" All five children went to give their older brother a hug while wailing out loud.

"Yoshi, yoshi! You guys have been through a lot!"

Satoru was just a teenager in his past life. And since this was the first time an incident of this scale happened to him, he didn't know how to react.

In the end, he just opted to sit down on the blazing floor and hugged back the five children.

"Now, we don't want to worry Sayaka-san and the others, right?" Satoru wanted to ask them how the fire came about, but he figured that this wasn't the time or person to ask.

He didn't receive any verbal reply, though he could feel five bobbing heads in his chest.

"Alright then! Let's go!" Satoru didn't have any trouble carrying five children.

With one child on each arm, two on his back, and one on his front, Satoru stood up and started walking out of the burning home. With the help of the No energy system, he couldn't sense any other living presence in the building, so he figured that these five children were the only ones who were left trapped in the fire.

The moment Satoru walked out of the burning house with five kids clinging onto him like Koalas, Sayaka immediately stopped crying and went on to crush all six of them with a tight hug.

"I'm so glad...you're all okay! I thought...I thought that all of you were dead already!"

"Now, now. Don't go cursing me to die so early, please. I still have a girlfriend to find, you know? You won't get your precious grandkids if I die." Satoru said with a small smile before frowning a little, "As much as we are enjoying this, I think your breasts are suffocating the younger kids."

"Tsk...if you're trying to tease an old woman like me, it won't work. Save it for your future girlfriend." Sayaka replied with a smile on her own without a single tinge of red while rubbing her eyes of tears.

After all, she was not some ditzy-teenage girl who was in the middle of puberty. Though, she did note Satoru's words and decided to let them go.

"And thank you, Satoru. If it wasn't for you-"

"You don't have to thank me, Sayaka-san. They are my younger siblings, and I would go and save them any time of the day."

"But how did they live? As much as I'm happy that my children are safe, it doesn't change the fact that this is all suspicious..." Sayaka spoke with a serious tone as she stared at Satoru with a suspicious look.

"Haha, maybe my words were actually true, and they were all immune to fire?"

"Sigh, if you don't want to talk about it, then so be it. You're mature enough to do whatever you want. Just know that no matter what happens, this orphanage and building, wait, not the building. Just know that no matter what happens, this orphanage would always be a home for you to return to."

"Thank you, but on a more important note," Satoru's expression turned serious as he looked at Sayaka in the eyes, "Sayaka-san, do you know who did this?"

"And what are you going to do when you learn of this information?"

"So it really isn't just an accident, huh?"

"Sigh, you really are the perfect child I could ask for, except for the fact that you're too protective of your family. At least nobody was hurt this time around."

"Sayaka-san, please tell me."

"No. Who knows what you will do once you hear about it."

"You do realize that you can't possibly keep this from me, right? There's a ton of people here who had witnessed the incident."

"I'm sorry to burst your bubble then, but the villain has already been apprehended. So you won't get the chance and honor to put him in jail."

"You're lying."

"I'm not. So don't bother about revenge anymore, okay? Just go to UA and learn how to be a good hero. And that reminds me! How did you do for your test?"

Seeing Sayaka change the topic as smoothly as water, Satoru didn't know what to say.

If he was any stupider, he might have thought that this matter was already resolved. But Sayaka's behavior and attitude didn't really show that.

"If you want to change the topic, please do it more discretely, Sayaka-san. Otherwise, it would be pretty obvious to know that you're hiding something."

"Well, even if I'm hiding something, there's nothing an adult can't hide from a kid." Sayaka said, emphasizing the word 'kid'.

"I'm already much taller than you."

"Still younger than me. Even if you were to grow to 80 years old and have four generations of family, you'd always be a kid in front of me. So stop changing back to the topic and answer my question. How was the entrance exam?"

*****************

"Oh? So you met a girl? How was she? Does she know anything about you?"

"Would you relax a bit, Sayaka-san?" Satoru was already regretting that he had told her everything, including the things that happened after the test.

"Nope. It's been a while since you actually told me about a girl."

"Onii-chan has a girlfriend? Nooo!" A five-year-old girl wailed as she clung onto his pants, "Don't go, onii-chan! I'm going to be the one who marries you in the future!"

"Fufufu, how popular."

"I'm not interested in little girls, Sayaka-san. And you, I'm not going anywhere, though I won't marry you."

"Eh? Why?"

"Because you are my cute imouto!"

Hearing Satoru praised her, the girl had already forgotten everything prior and just started grinning.

"Smooth."

"Well, I'm trained to reject little girls."

"Lolicon."

"Nope. I'd rather have someone like Hado-san."

"Oh? So you admit it?"

Satoru sweated a bit as he had spoken a little too quickly without thinking.

"I'm not admitting to anything. Besides, I might not even see Hado-san in UA in the first place. So there will be no telling whether we would see each other again."

"What a pity." Sayaka shook her head, "It seems that her personality would fir yours quite well."

"What do you mean?! I don't keep talking forever."

"No, you don't. But you do like sweets, play a lot of pranks, show a lot of curiosity, and have the attitude of a kid sometimes despite being a fourteen-year-old that stands at 175cm tall."

"Is my height really something that you need to mention?"

"Nope. It's just there to spite you. And you didn't bother denying the rest?"

"You do realize that that is just a compliment that I'll gladly accept, right?"

Sayaka just smiled at Satoru's usual cheerful attitude.

"Shameless."

After the incident, the government, or more specifically, the hero association, volunteered to pay for the damages. They had a reputation to keep, and even if they wanted to cover the incident up, it didn't change the fact that it was because of a fight between a villain and a hero that almost caused the lives of five young children, and the various degree of burns from the nearby civilians.

The orphanage had gotten a new house for compensation, which was too little for an incident as significant as this, in Satoru's opinion.

"It's fine, Satoru. It's the people that make the house what it is, not the house itself." On the other hand, Sayaka didn't mind. She had already gotten used to the low funds for the orphanage. Thus, this didn't really bother her much.

"Fine, but after I get more money, I promise that we will get a bigger home."

"Fufu...spend more money on your future girlfriend first. And if you still do leftovers, just let the kids here have a good life. What type of house we live in really doesn't matter much."

And it was people like Sayaka that made this world a better place for everyone.

Satoru was glad that he was born and delivered to this particular orphanage.

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A/N: Btw, this will not be the end of the incident. It will later be brought up again.

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