Chapter 23: Training For The Sports Festival, Part 4

It had been three days since the students of UA had been given a week to train for the sports festival. It was now day 4 of said week.

For the past three days, Chikyu had solely spent it on improving the new moves he came up with as well as continuously increasing the number of exercises he did for his physical strength. He also updated Kota's exercises by adding 5 more sets to all of them.

Thanks to his massively increased exercises, his physical strength began to improve massively. He still kept his same build, but now his physical strength alone was so good that it could almost be considered a minor strength quirk. Even without using his quirk or boosting himself in any way, he could now punch a small hole into solid stone.

On the side of his new moves, they were also largely improved. For his puppeteering skill, since he didn't have someone to train it on, he decided that he would instead train his control the same way he did to be able to use it in the first place. His maximum control went from 1300 small objects to 2000 small objects.

For the last move that he learned on day 1, which he had aptly named "Calamity Zone", he had largely improved the synergy of the moves, the authenticity of the fake ground areas that would liquefy, the intensity of the rumbling as well as the speed, amount and area of the sharp stones that would fly around the zone. By now, he could make the stones fly three times faster than bullets.

For day 4, he decided that he would now focus on different things and that he could do some final improvements on the final day.

Before he had even gotten outside to train again, he already noticed something abnormal that stopped his train of thought.

The white areas of his hair had gone far past the wraps that he used to cover it up before. It was almost a fourth of all his hair.

He was at a loss on how he would explain this to people. He wouldn't be able to say that it's hair dye, since his family knew that he didn't like or care about hair dye of any kind. Not only that, his mom and her team knew what Marie Antoinette Syndrome was. They often had to identify if something was abnormal with people when they rescued them, and there were several cases where people they saved had suffered from the syndrome due to stress from their situation before being saved.

His other concern was what he would tell them if they asked what stressed him out so much. They knew that it would take a lot for him to get stressed, especially to that degree.

After several minutes of contemplation, he decided that he would tell them the partial truth. In other words, he would tell them about the inevitable death of Earth Mom, but he wouldn't tell them about Mienai, the Kurnas, or his future role as Prime Kurna.

As he finished brushing his teeth and showering, he went into the living room of the lodge, where his mother, her team, and Kota were, eating breakfast.

It didn't take long at all for them to notice the previous brown hair was now partly white. And it took even less time for them to figure out it was Marie Antoinette Syndrome, as they knew that Chikyu heavily disliked hair dye and would never apply it to his own hair.

His mother was the first to rush to him and gently embrace him. It pained her so much to think that her child was so stressed that this would happen, and even though she knew that he would never truthfully answer, a part of her felt guilty that she never asked him if UA was stressing him out, not aware that UA was far from the cause of the problem.

The rest of her team did the same immediately after. They had basically raised him alongside Pixiebob, so he was almost as much their son as he was Pixiebob's, so they felt the same sense of guilt.

Kota was the next to hug him. He didn't know what Marie Antoinette Syndrome was, but he could tell when something was wrong with his brother.

After the embraces, Chikyu told them to sit at the table and he would tell them the reason for his stress.

As they did so, he broke the news to them.

"Earth Mom is going to die."

Everyone in the family, Kota included, knew Earth Mom, and liked her. She normally only communicated with Chikyu, but she did sometimes talk to them as well, and they all enjoyed their talks with her. The news that she would die soon hurt them. But not as much as it did Chikyu. After all, to them, she was more like a cool voice that they sometimes talked to. But to Chikyu, she was another mother, so it hit him a lot harder.

"I'm sorry for not checking in on you, honey. It couldn't have been easy keeping it to yourself.", his mother said.

"It's alright, Mom. You couldn't have known.", he responded.

The family spent several minutes together, giving their remorse for "Earth Mom".

The entire time, Chikyu thought to himself.

"Words cannot describe how much it hurts to keep so many things secret from all of you, but it has to happen. Just know that I'm sorry for every half-truth and every lie that I say"