[The Fox and the Hare] Chapter 33 - One year and a half later (Patreon)

Chapter 33 - One year and a half later

It was noon, and the sun was shining brightly in the clear sky. It was an unusually hot day of March. It was hot and humid, and the wind wasn’t blowing at all either, but, fortunately, the classrooms at UA High were all equipped with air conditioning.

"Maaan, we have Ethics now," Kaminari said and groaned.

"I think this is one of the most important classes. You should pay more attention to it," Tsuyu said.

"I agree," Izuku also said. "We’re Heroes. It’s vital that we follow an unshakable code of morals."

"But that’s exactly why I don’t like this class at all!" Kaminari complained loudly in annoyance. "It makes me question all my beliefs. It makes me question myself to the point where I’m not even sure what is right or wrong!"

Before their discussion could turn into an argument, the Ethics professor arrived in the classroom. It was a tall, middle-aged man with short black hair, a square jawline, and a serious face. He was not a pro Hero but he was more than capable of keeping the class in line.

"Hello, class. I hope you are ready to participate in today’s discussion."

Ignoring the handful of students who let out audible groans at his words, he said:

"The trolley dilemma. That was your homework. You’ve had one entire week to ponder it. Have you decided on your answer?"

As the professor pressed a button on a remote control, a white screen rolled down from the ceiling, and an image was projected on it.

There is a trolley coming down the tracks and ahead, there are five people tied to the tracks and are unable to move.

The trolley will continue coming and will kill the five people. There is nothing you can do to rescue the five people, EXCEPT that there is a lever. If you pull the lever, the train will be directed to another track, which has ONE person tied to it.

You have two choices:

(a) Do nothing, and the five people will die.

Or

(b) Pull the lever and save the five people, but that one person will die.

"Well then, who wants to go first?"

Normally, when a professor asked the class a question, Midoriya Izuku, Yayorozu Momo, Haruno Sakura, and Hitoshi Shinso would always be among the first to raise their hands. But that was never the case during the Ethics class.

Just as the professor let out a sigh and was about to start asking everyone, one by one, in the order of their seats, Sabaku Gaara raised his hand.

"Yes, Sabaku-san, please."

"I’d pull the lever and save the five people," Gaara stood up and answered calmly.

"Could you explain to me and the rest of the class your thought process?"

"It’s simple. It’s five lives versus one. It’s obvious what the correct choice is."

At his words, the rest of his classmates broke into murmurs.

"Does it not bother you in the least that you’d have someone’s blood on your hands? What the hell, man?!" Kamirari suddenly burst out in indignation. "Are you treating people’s lives like they’re cattle or what?"

"Then what would you do?" Gara shot back evenly.

Kaminari didn’t reply.

"So ready to throw shade at others while you’re too afraid to state your own opinion on the matter. Typical clown behaviour," Gaara said with a scoff and sat back down in his seat.

"That was uncalled for, Sabaku-san," the professor admonished him lightly.

Now that Gaara had broken the ice, the others started gaining the courage to speak up too.

"Yes, Sero-san, go ahead."

"I don’t think I’d be able to pull the lever," the boy said.

"Then, are you saying you’re okay with letting those five people die?" Yayorozu asked.

"Don’t put words in my mouth!" Sero shot back. "I said I don’t think I would be able to pull the lever… I just… I can’t imagine ever killing someone, much less an innocent person. If you ask me, it’s strange that anyone would be okay with becoming a murderer!"

"Murder is the wrong term for this situation, Sero-kun," Kyoka also joined the conversation. "It’s not like we’d be killing that person out of anger or to gain something. It’s for the sake of saving more people."

"That’s a dangerous line of thought, Jiro-san," Tokoyami interjected. "Someone could take it further and claim it’s okay to massacre an entire minority group for the sake of saving the majority. That’s no different than what Adolf Hitler did in the Second World War a few centuries ago."

"Hey, you’re taking it too far, Tokoyami!" Mina shouted.

"Yeah, Jiro never said anything like that!" Ochaco also piped in to defend her.

After two years of being in the same class, the three girls were still just as close to each other as before.

"Let’s all sit down and think calmly about it. I don’t think this is the kind of problem that has a ‘correct’ answer," Izuku said, trying to pacify both sides when it looked like they were all about to get into a shouting contest.

"I disagree," Shinso unexpectedly spoke up. "The correct choice is to save those five people. Not choosing to do anything sounds good in the ears of someone who doesn’t want to stain their conscience with the death of an innocent… …but isn’t that a form of selfishness as well? You treasure having a good night’s sleep more than the lives of five innocent people. That’s not what real Heroes do. Heroes protect the people and, if needed, sacrifice themselves for the sake of others."

"I don’t think it’s a matter of being selfish," Izuku retorted. Now that Shinso called him selfish, he was starting to get heated too. "I don't believe it’s right to decide who gets to live and who gets to die. We can’t play God with the lives of other people. In the first place, Heroes aren’t supposed to kill!"

Even as the 1-A class students started arguing with each other, the professor didn’t step in to stop them. A shadow of a smile was on his face as he watched them bring up all sorts of examples to support their arguments.

However, after 15 minutes, seeing as the majority of the class had chosen a specific side - to pull the lever and kill a person for the sake of saving the other five - he clapped his hands and stopped them.

"Alright, class, that’s enough! From what I see, the majority of you have chosen the second option: to kill one for the sake of saving five. Ah, seriously, you’re such children sometimes!" he exclaimed and chuckled for a moment when he saw some of them celebrating, thinking that they had gotten the right answer. "I didn’t say that that was the correct choice. Nor did I say it’s the wrong one. That is your own personal choice. My opinion in this matter is not relevant."

As he pressed a button on his remote control again, he said:

"Now then, I have another scenario for you. It’s rather similar to the trolley problem."
A surgeon has five patients who are waiting for organ transplants. The patients will die if they do not receive the organs, but the organs are not available at the time. The whole prospect changes, however, when a young traveller comes to town and goes in for a routine checkup.

The doctor is performing the checkup when he realizes that the traveller’s organs are healthy and incidentally compatible with his dying patients. The young man is the perfect donor, and no one would associate him with the surgeon if he were to disappear.

(a) Should the doctor remove the organs from the healthy man in order to distribute them to the dying patients?

Or

(b) Should the doctor let the traveller go on his way and leave the five patients to their fate?

Faced with this new moral dilemma, quite a few of those who had chosen to kill one person for the sake of saving five in the first situation now changed their choice. This time around, the opinions were split evenly.

"I choose to let those five patients die. It’s not the traveller’s fault that they are dying."

"But wasn’t the person tied down to the tracks innocent too? It wasn’t his fault either that the other five were going to die!"

"This time it’s different!"

"How is it any different?! It’s exactly the same! No, it’s even worse!"

Eventually, the bell signaling the end of the class rang. Even after the Ethics professor left, the rest of the class continued their debate during the break.

"Naruto-kun, are you going to the cafeteria?" a girl’s voice came from behind. Before he could reply, she asked another question: "May I come with you?"

"...Okay. I don’t mind."

The girl ran quickly to catch up to him.

⁂

After putting his tray of food down on the table, Naruto sat down and said a small prayer of thanks:

"Itadakimasu!"

The girl mirrored his behaviour, and then they both started eating their lunch.

"They’re all so passionate about this subject. They’re arguing about it even now. Oh, right, you were rather quiet during class. What choices did you make?" she asked.

As Naruto stared at her for a few moments without speaking, the girl looked down at her plate, flustered, and tucked a stray of her long pink hair behind her ear before looking up at him again.

‘Can’t believe how the roles have reversed in this life,’ Naruto thought in mild amusement.

The girl sitting at the same table with him was none other than Haruno Sakura. In his past life, he had been crushing on her for years, but she had never given him a chance. In his current life, however, she was crushing on him, but this time around, he was the one who had no interest in her.

‘She’s pretty… …but Rumi is so much more beautiful.’

His eyes gained a blank look as his mind got filled with thoughts of his girlfriend. Rumi happened to be the complete opposite of Sakura. If Sakura was an average, girly, and delicate 17-year-old teenager, Mirko was a strong, athletic, and feisty woman in her late twenties.

'She also got them big thunder thighs, and her big fat mommy milkers are to die for.'

He almost giggled perversely at the thought of that.

"Naruto-kun? Are you okay?"

"Ah, sorry, Sakura, I was thinking about Okada-sensei’s questions," Naruto lied and coughed into his fist, trying to recollect himself. Thinking about his girlfriend often made him zone out and forget that he was in public.

After clearing his throat, he said: "It was really hard for me to choose. I still don’t know what’s the correct choice and what’s the wrong one. But I think that I would save those five people in the first scenario."

"What about the second?" Sakura asked curiously.

Naruto took a moment to finish swallowing his food before saying:

"I wouldn’t kill the traveller for the sake of the five ill people." Anticipating her question, he explained: "Those five people in the first scenario got tied down to the tracks by someone. It wasn’t something natural. But those five that need an organ transplant—well, this is life sometimes. Sometimes people get sick and die. It’s not correct for others to die for them to prolong their lifespan… …at least that’s what I think."

"Wow, that’s something I didn’t think about," Sakura said in surprise. "One situation was created by people, while the other was something that happened naturally... That's a great point!"

"What about you? What did you choose?"

"Same as you." she replied with a shrug of her shoulders. "I wanted to save five people instead of one…but I chose to let the traveller go unharmed in the second scenario."

"Why?"

"Well, it was actually a very easy choice for me since I’m soon going to be a Medic Hero. From a medical standpoint, it’s ethically wrong to kill someone for the sake of saving other ill people. Such malpractice is in no way acceptable for a medic."

As their subject of conversation was exhausted, their chatter died down, and they ate the rest of their lunch in relative silence. When Naruto was close to finishing his meal, Sakura broke the silence with a question:

"Say, Naruto-kun, would you like to go out with me after class?"

He sighed inwardly.

"I’m sorry, Sakura, I’m busy with training."

"It doesn’t have to be today," she said quickly. "Whenever you have a window of free time, we can-"

"I thought you knew this, but I have someone else already," Naruto said, trying his best not to sound too annoyed.

He was starting to understand why Sakura had been so quick to punch him in their previous life whenever he asked her for a date. Granted, he had never slapped her, but, after more than a year of her continuously dropping hints and asking him out, he was starting to lose his patience too.

"Ah, you and the Rabbit Hero… …but I thought that the two of you weren’t together… I mean… you went to Hawks’ Hero Agency last year. I thought that maybe-"

Naruto just took his smartphone out and turned it on to show her his lockscreen photo. It was a photo of him embracing the rabbit girl from behind and playfully kissing her cheek while she was grinning widely at the camera. One would have to be blind not to see how in love they were with each other.

"She’s older than me, and I’m still not of age, so we haven’t made it official yet. But I’ve liked her for almost two years now."

"I-, I see."

Realizing that she was on the verge of crying, Naruto didn’t dally any further.

"See you later in class, Sakura," he said as he took his tray and left.
⁂

One year and a half had passed, and now he was 17 years old.

Unlike the very turbulent start of his first year of school, the following year and a half had been relatively quiet for Naruto. There had been no other Villain attacks on the UA High, and none of his classmates had been killed in action, like Teniya Iida and Mineta Minoru.

Now, he was a second-year student. Though, seeing as it was March, there were only two weeks left in his second school year. After the spring holiday, he would start his 3rd and last year as a student at UA High.

‘I can’t wait for my birthday.’

Sakura wasn’t entirely wrong to assume that he was not in a relationship with Mirko because, ever since his family was forced to go into hiding, Naruto became rather introverted and not forthcoming about his personal life. His classmates didn’t know much about his personal life beyond the photos they had seen in his room when they started living on the campus in their first year.

Furthermore, there were hardly any tabloid articles about the two of them ever since Mirko decided to limit the amount of time that she spent with Naruto. The paparazzi rarely spotted them together during the past year, and they had never been caught in a compromising posture.

Lastly, the fact that he had gone to Hawks’ Hero Agency for his internship instead of Mirko’s during his second year also contributed to Sakura’s belief that maybe she still had a chance.

⁂

Despite what he told Sakura to get rid of her (that he was busy with his training) Naruto was actually not training that evening for once. Currently, he was packing two changes of clothes and his gym attire in a hand-held sports bag. Now, he was ready to leave the campus for the weekend.
'I can't wait to see Eri-chan,'

His little sister was now 8 years old, but she was still as adorable as ever. Naruto loved her like the light of his eyes.

'Mom and dad too. It's been six weeks since I last saw them face-to-face.'

Despite the fact that he had recovered his memories of his past life nearly 3 years ago, Naruto was still as attached to his family as in the beginning. Now that he was going to spend the weekend together with them he was filled with excitement and joy.

His excitement and joy dimmed, however, when he arrived at the train station. Seeing as it was evening, the train station was packed with people who were commuting from work to home. Although almost two years had passed since the USJ incident and his rise to stardom, the public at large was still very interested in him and awed whenever they saw him. Every time he travelled by train or bus, he would be mobbed by fans. That was the case at the moment as well.

"It’s Kurama!"

"Whoa, Uzumaki Naruto, in person!"

"My friends won’t believe this!"

"Hey, could you take a pic with me, please?"

"Kurama, can you sign your name on my shirt, please?"

The moment he stepped onto the train, a gaggle of loud young women and high school girls somehow gathered around him, crowding the carriage he was in to the brim.

‘I wasn’t ugly in my past life either, but this fox quirk is something else, alright…’

If his golden fox ears, cute face, and four tails weren’t enough to make him a hit with the girls, the growth spurt he went through over the past year certainly sealed the deal. Now that he was 17, soon to be 18, not only had he grown a few centimetres taller, but his body had filled out too. His efforts in the gym were finally starting to pay dividends when it came to his appearance as well.

Saying he disliked how many girls were attracted to him would be a lie, but the downsides of having such an eye-catching appearance made him wish he looked more normal instead.

‘I can’t go anywhere without being recognized. I can’t even visit my family’s new home.’

His parents’ new identities would be exposed if he was spotted going to their new place. In the present, all he could was meet with them in a public place such as a hotel or a resort.

⁂

"Rumi always tells me to be cordial with the fans, but there should be a limit to this…" Naruto said in a voice filled with chagrin when he finally got off the train and escaped from the crowd. His clothes were rumpled and the fur on his tails was standing in all directions from how the girls touched him all over.

"How did I get scratched like this?" he asked himself out loud when he saw the thin and bleeding scratch mark on the back of his hand. "One of the girls on the train must’ve had those nasty ass long nails."

But, merely a few moments after noticing the wound on his hand, a feeling of dizziness came over him.
‘What the…’

It was too sudden. He couldn’t understand what came over him because he had not been that dizzy or ill in years.

"I can’t believe you’re still standing. The dosage I gave you was big enough to knock out even a horse in less than a minute."

It was the voice of a young woman. But his vision was starting to get blurry. Even as she walked in front of him, he couldn’t quite make out her facial features.

Suddenly, the disturbing sound of flesh being pierced was heard, and the girl let out a cry of shock and… agony.

Thinking that Naruto was on his last legs, about to fall unconscious, the girl let her guard down. She had no time to react before four golden chains burst out from his back and skewered her brutally.

"How…?" was the last word that came from her lips before she breathed her last.

Naruto couldn’t be bothered to answer her. His mind was running at full capacity, trying to understand how he got himself into that predicament.

‘She said something about poisoning me…. The bleeding scratch on my hand!! It must’ve been when that group of girls crowded around me on the train!’

It wasn’t strange that he had not felt how he got scratched, considering how everyone had been trying to touch him and get his attention at the same time.

Shouts and yells of panic and fear started coming from the people passing by when they finally took notice of the dead woman on the street and the blood that started pooling around her.

‘What was her goal by poisoning me?’

Grabbing his gym back from the ground, Naruto wobbled as he walked at the fastest speed he was capable of in his current condition, trying to get away from the scene as quickly as possible.

"I think he’s heading towards the main boulevard. He must be trying to get somewhere in the open!"

"We have to stop him before that!"

"Wait! Don’t engage him carelessly, or you’ll end up dying just like Anko! His chains are still extremely dangerous!"

"So what do you suggest? He’ll get away at this rate!"

Although his pursuers were communicating through their coms in a whisper, Naruto heard every single one of their words clearly due to his sensitive hearing.

‘Anko? I haven’t heard that name since-’

But even in his foggy state of mind, it made sense. If it was the same Anko from his past life, it made sense that she would be proficient with poisons. She wouldn’t be the first person that had reincarnated in this new world, like him.

Nevertheless, he didn’t have any leisure to pity the fact that she was an enemy and that he had killed her because, at that moment, another whisper reached his ears.

"Bakugo, you go first. Blast him with your full power. Don’t hold back."

Hearing that name instantly set Naruto on edge. His Adamantine Sealing Chains quickly took the form of a golden dome with him as the centre. And it was not a second too late because, only a moment later, an enormous explosion was blasted at him from the rooftop of a nearby building.

‘What’s this asshole doing here?!’

The name he heard and the explosion that followed were a dead giveaway about his attacker’s identity. It was Bakugo Katsuki. He had not heard anything about him since he got expelled from UA.

‘What’s going on? First, someone poisoned me. And now Bakugo and several others are trying to kill me.'

He knew that due to his fame, he had many enemies at large. Some villains would probably be willing to trade an arm and a leg for the chance of killing him (for bragging rights, if nothing else) but this attack seemed to be too well organized for them to be just a ragtag group of villains.

"DIE! DIEEE!" Bakugo screamed as he blasted one explosion after another at the golden chaindome, but his attacks were virtually useless. He was doing far more damage to the surroundings than to the intended target.

Several cars parked nearby had exploded, and all the buildings in a 20-meter radius were set on fire.

"Kinoto, stop that useless retard before he ends up killing some innocent bystanders!"

Although Bakugo’s explosions couldn’t break the protective dome made by his Adamantine Sealing Chains, they were so loud that Naruto was forced to cover his ears to stop the pain.

With his vision and reflexes impaired by the poison and Bakugo’s explosions’ rendering his sense of hearing useless, all he could do was pour his entire strength into his Adamantine Sealing Chains and hold on until help arrived.

Suddenly, the explosions ceased. Had Naruto been able to see, he would have witnessed the scene of a man wearing a white animal mask punching Bakugo in the liver with such strength that he fell on the floor of the rooftop, paralyzed from pain.

"We don’t have much time before the patrolling Heroes come!"

A grating sound, similar to that of electricity suddenly rang as a lightning attack smashed into his dome of chains but it was like an egg hitting against a wall. It did no damage whatsoever.

"Damn it, wasn’t Anko’s poison supposed to knock him out? We’ll never break his chains at this rate!"

However, just as the group of attackers started having thoughts of calling it a failure and retreating, the dome of light created by the Adamantine Sealing Chains started flickering.

"It looks like the poison is finally getting to him!" someone said, their voice filled with relief. "Now is our chance! Attack with all you’ve got!"

Once their leader said those words, a myriad of different attacks smashed into the chain-dome from all directions: lightning, massive wooden spears, fire explosions, bullets shot from real guns, and even physical attacks that came in the form of bodyslams and claw slashes.

With the poison finally having spread through most of his body and his numerous assailants attacking with their entire might, Naruto eventually reached the end of his limits.

The golden dome shattered like glass, and his Adamantine Sealing Chains dispersed into particles of light. He fell unconscious.