It's been several days since Hakkei let the spider stay in his room, figuring out that the tiny guest didn't know how to hunt because of its lack of trying to be a normal member of its kind. The boy only managed to feed two more flies to his new friend the entire time and wondered if he should start buying hand-raised bugs instead. He was also worried about his mother. Hakkei was aware of how afraid of spiders she was and if she saw it…

He noticed movement on his desk and turned to see the spider next to his stack of textbooks. Upon being sighted, the spider froze for a moment before realizing that it wasn't being attacked. It had been watching its new stomper every time they were together in the nest, getting more interested about the creatures that seem to rule this big world. It was actually more exciting than spending hours watching the stompers wearing white from within the confinement of a clear box. This one talks to it in the stomper sounds and lets it roam the room however it pleases.

Today, it had grown bold and curious, wondering if it was allowed to get closer to the stomper, 'Hakkei', as it heard this one be called. Hakkei was unsure about what was going on. "Do you…need more food?I haven't caught anything new yet." The spider didn't understand any of the words yet. But it glanced around at the items across the desk.

"It's my homework." Why am I explaining this to a spider? The more odd it acts, the more I'm treating it like a pet…

Footsteps were being heard before the door opened. Hakkei got frantic upon his mother entering the room. "Here, Hakkei. A package with your name on it came in."

"Mom! I wished you had knocked first."

"Oh? A secret chat with a girl on the phone?"

"It's not like that! You can stop teasing me!"

"Then why are you in a tizzy?"

"Well…that's…" Hakkei glanced over at his desk, only to not see the spider anywhere. "It's nothing. I was getting frustrated with a history assignment I needed to finish. I really want to raise my grades above average this year, but it's not going well."

"Sorry to bother you with something like that." Although apologetic, she was intrigued by the package. "What did you order, by the way?"

"A new figurine. It is a limited edition of Hawks." He opened the small package to show his mother. "I don't know if I should take it out of the box or not, though."

"I think you'll be better off keeping it in the box," Mrs. Daijou offered her opinion. "It doesn't look as balanced as the other figurines on your shelf."

With wings unfurled and looking like the man was about to take a running leap to the sky, the leaning pose did look unstable. "You might be right, Mom."

"I'll be going to the kitchen to get you a snack. It might help you with your homework."

"That might help. Thanks." Once the door shut and it was just Hakkei, he started to look around his desk for the spider. After a minute of searching around his books, he soon saw the spider climb out of the cup of writing utensils. He felt relieved upon seeing it. "That was close. Let's get you back to the shelf before Mom returns."

Without thinking, Hakkei reached out a hand onto the table. The spider paused at the gesture before it remembered that the stompers in white had no problem picking it up while they had their hands covered. No cover? Seeing a chance to finally see how touching a stomper feels like, it took the offer to climb onto Hakkei's hand and let him transport it to the shelf its web was hidden on. As it got off of the hand, Hakkei placed the new tiny stomper trophy still in the thing that it was trapped in on the shelf as well, using it to better hide the web from view. The ride was awesome to the spider and it was looking forward to the next one.

Hakkei then realized what he just did. That was stupid of me to hold an unknown spider without protection…but it didn't bite me either. What is going on? He went back to his desk and resumed his homework so his mother wouldn't be suspicious anymore than she already was.

In the morning, Hakkei was woken up by something tickling his face. As he moved his hand to brush off the object, he opened his eyes, confused as to how he did not find whatever it was. Then he saw a small black blur crawling on his pillow and bounced onto the nearby nightstand. It was the spider and it dodged him! "What the? I was expecting Masaru with another jump scare…"

The spider did not expect that groggy reaction when it wanted to touch the stomper again. Guess it will have to time it when the stomper is awake from now on. It watched Hakkei put on his glasses, get dressed, and walk out of the room with his brown thing he carries when he wears that specific set of things he puts over his body. Maybe that place with a bunch of stompers Hakkei's size? It thought about following, but upon remembering the odd noises beyond the walls, it even wondered if it was a wise thing to do.

Hakkei went to the table to have breakfast with his family. Masaru and their mother looked at him in surprise. "You're actually up on time, Hakkei," Mrs. Daijou blurted out.

"Yeah. I was weirded out by Masaru not coming in every school morning for a jump scare to wake me up."

Masaru looked the other way while eating. Hakkei looked at his brother in confusion before he realized that the television was on. It seems to be a talk show, featuring a spunky woman and a large, bald man whom he had never seen before, shaking hands and then seating themselves on a stage. They both appear to be friendly folk just by their demeanor.

"Thank you all for helping me give a warm welcome to Taison Seino," the woman said with a beaming smile. She turned her attention towards Taison. "Would you mind telling the audience what your profession is?"

With a nod, Taison answered. "I study radiology and its effects and applications to cancer research."

"Resources are telling me that you might be on the verge of a breakthrough in your field. Are you able to tell us anything?"

Taison looked to be in thought before he explained. "Radiation treatment for cancer is like a flashlight being pointed at the whole body. What we are trying to do is to shrink that radius down to a pin light in order to target more delicate areas of the body, specifically those that can't be targeted by current methods."

The woman expressed interest now. "Was there any success?"

"Our results so far are promising. We are planning to conduct clinical trials on volunteers who have exhausted all options. There are no guarantees, but the risk might be worth the potential reward."

Hakkei finished his breakfast and picked up his bag as the television continued. "I'm off to school now. See you later." As his older brother left the house, Masaru left his empty plate at the table and headed further into the house. "I am going to be in my room." Mr. Daijou took a sip of his coffee as Mrs. Daijou addressed him. "Can you check under the bathroom sink today? The pipes are looking worn down and I would rather prevent a future problem."

"Sure thing, sweetie. I'll check it out and get whatever I need."

Masaru walked inside his room and shut the door. It was a bit disorganized and messy with various books sprawled about, notably books on making game applications. There was a desk supporting a computer that was decked out for gaming with a laptop right by it. As he booted up his computers, he seemed to be in thought.

Elsewhere, Taison was wearing a scowl as he walked around in a clean and unknown place. It was fit for many people to be about here, taking care of various tasks. Some wore hazmat suits, some appeared to be more suited for research or office related work, and others looked like they would put whoever crossed their path into a nightmare.

A man with a thin and fragile frame, and feathers sticking out of his forearms followed after Taison. His white shirt buttoned at the sides instead of the front, edges tucked into his black trousers. He had custom sable shoes made for him, with holes in the back of the heel and the tip so the talons protruding where toenails ought to be won't harm him or the footwear. His long neck was forever crooked, bending forward and upward. He was worried for Taison, knowing what was on his mind.

The two men walked into a personal and large office. Glancing over the papers on his desk, he finally spoke up. "Has the spider been found yet, Haruto?"

"Not yet, I'm afraid," he meekly answered. "No signs of its body or even any creature displaying oddities involving radiation. You don't think a hero has found it yet, do you?"

Taison shook his head. "The heroes would have investigated the accident more thoroughly then seeing if anything else needed to be done. How far has the search expanded?"

"Over thirty kilometers," Haruto replied. "People might start to get suspicious if we keep going."

Taison's scowl was worse than before. "Then call off a majority of the search parties. If they are not finding the spider, then it has either evaded everyone or was found by some civilian. Prioritize scouring the internet for any sign. Sharing a picture in order to identify a creature among countless species is getting more common these days."

"I'll get it done immediately." As Haruto left the office, Taison looked back at the papers on his desk. Among them was a report of some kind with three specimens being successfully altered. An orbweaver species was on top of the list while the rest of the listing was buried by another piece of paper.

Hours passed and Hakkei's day at school was uneventful. Whenever he was not doing work, he was thinking about the spider. He kept an eye out for anything he could catch to feed it or wondered if he could do more for it. He even went to the school library to check out a book on spiders for any answers that could be worthwhile. The biggest hurdle was to keep it a secret from the entire family.

As he took off his shoes and walked through the house to reach his room, he noticed that Masaru's room was void of noises from the gaming computer. That's odd. Did he go out of the house for a change? Hakkei opened the door to his own room and stared in shock - Masaru was sitting on his bed with a laptop on hand, letting the spider perched on his tail. They were both looking on the screen before Masaru noticed that Hakkei was home. "Hey, bro! You didn't tell me that there was such a cool spider in the house!"

Hakkei didn't know what to make of the excitement of his brother. "Of course I didn't! What are you doing in my room anyway?"

"Trying to identify the spid-"

"That is not what I meant!"

"Oh." Realizing what was being asked, Masaru started to look embarrassed. "Lately…I was hearing things in your room."

Crossing his arms, Hakkei raised an eyebrow. "Like what?"

"Thuds mostly. Everytime that happened when You were away at school, I was taking a look to see if you were home early. But every time, something moved. Manga books fallen out of your shelf, your pencil cup on the floor… I even saw a blank piece of paper scribbled on with almost all of your markers on your desk. Today, there was an empty box on the floor with a figurine on its side in your shelf. I was convinced that it was a ghost before I saw this little guy."

Immediately, Hakkei turned to the shelf to see the new Hawks figurine out of its box and sitting on the shelf, being held up by webbing. He shifted his bewildered vision back to the spider, who hopped up and down on the monkey tail. It was proud to help its stomper friend display the new trophy. Masaru wasn't aware of the severity of the situation. "It's definitely smarter than jumping spiders. I want to figure out what species it is!"

"Did you take a picture yet?" Hakkei asked.

"I thought about doing that if I fail to find anything."

"Then don't take a picture to upload."

"Huh?" Masaru now sensed that there was dread.

"This is not a normal spider. I should have realized!"

"Hakkei?"

"Masaru…We might be holding an illegal experiment or something like that." Hakkei was nervous, but he needed to make things clear with Masaru. "We must keep the spider a secret from everyone, including Mom and Dad."

"Really? Like American comics?"

"Something like that."

Masaru's excitement was building up as things were put into place. "So we're keeping the spider? Like a super secret pet?"

"Umm…Don't forget Mom's phobia about them." Looking back at the webbed figurine, Hakkei sighed. "I also need to think about how to keep my Hawks figure standing up now that the packaging was ruined. Webbing is not going to cut it."

The boys pondered over it, not paying attention to the spider. It was staring at a picture of an orbweaver spider. It looked like what it once saw when it stared at the shiny, clear walls of prior homes in the large, white stomper nest. It almost lost footing when Masaru hopped off the bed. "I got an idea. Wait here."

Confused, the spider hopped onto Hakkei's school jacket as Masaru ran by and out of the room. "Careful about our friend, Masaru!" Not receiving a reply, Hakkei moved his hand for the spider to hop onto, to which was quickly accepted. "Sorry, buddy. My brother can get too excited sometimes."

In a few minutes, Masaru came back with two worn out pipes; a straight one and a J-shaped one. "Dad exchanged the pipes in the bathroom today. Maybe one of these will work?"

"I think the curved pipe will work. Sorry about the webbing." Hakkei took the selected pipe over to the shelf and proceeded to remove all webbing and use the pipe to prop up the Hawks figure. It was held up by the curve, effectively standing as it should. "There. That should do it. Now to relocate the spider's ho-" Hakkei had turned and saw Masaru looking into the other pipe, with no spider in sight. Instinctively, Hakkei peered into the other end of the straight pipe and saw what seemed to be a gleeful spider making new webbing inside the metallic tube.

Masaru looked at his older brother with a smile. "I guess we keep both pipes?"

"If Dad asks, we tell him that we are repurposing the pipes."

Having Hakkei's approval, Masaru kept grinning. "Isn't that what we're doing right now?"

The smile was contagious as Hakkei felt more mellow after the panic. "Exactly. "

"What should we name the spider?" Hakkei paused as Masaru continued. "If it is going to live with us, we should name it."

Feeling that Masaru was right, Hakkei pondered over it. "I have little to go off of. Did you figure anything out while you were trying to identify it?"

"It's not sharing the build of wolf spiders, jumping spiders, or aquatic spiders. I deduced that it's male as well."

"A male, huh? Then we can start with crossing out female names."

Masaru took the cue. "He has a red head over a mostly black body. How about Red Hood?"

Hakkei shook his head. "I bet somebody out there in the world has that for a hero name."

"There are blue lines giving his legs some color. Why not Blue Streak?"

"He does not have the speed to uphold that name. Pass."

"Mr. Popo?"

"Are you messing with me now? That's practically the spider's color palette minus his brown eyes."

"Then you try," Masaru pouted. Seeing his brother acting like the kid he is, Hakkei sighed.

Hakkei wanted the name to be unique enough to be the spider's name and his name alone. He thought about it for over a minute before one came to him. "Why don't we make a name based on the word arachnid? Like Arachno?"

The spider poked out of the pipe, confused as to what was going on. To the boys, it was like it was a sign. They looked at each other, Masaru breaking the silence. "Do you think he likes it?"

Hakkei turned to the spider. "Arachno?"

The new sound from the stompers was intriguing and pleasant to the spider. He fully emerged from the pipe, wanting to hear the new sound again.

That was the deciding factor. Hakkei voiced the verdict to Masaru, "Arachno it is."

"Hey, Hakkei?"

"What is it, Masaru?"

"If I'm not allowed to upload pics of Arachno…Can we have one picture for memories sake?"

"Just for memories. Spiders don't have a long lifespan. But if this little guy had been altered, then who knows how long we have to be with him."

Months were going by faster than the boys could have predicted. Masaru did research to try to find further information about Arachno's origin with little luck. The only clue he had found was that Arachno's body matched the build of an orbweaver spider. The videos that he finds to show Arachno how different spiders hunt has been of great help as the tiny predator was now catching its own meals. It was taking many tries at first due to inexperience before the mistakes when catching prey dwindled for the spider. The boys were happy to bring Arachno food to practice with.

Arachno was having the time of his life as much as the boys when they spent time together. It chased away the dullness he was used to in the white place. They used the straight pipe to carry the spider around in their bags outdoors without drawing suspicions. Arachno didn't understand what each boy were doing at first, but he watched a video with the smaller stomper, Masaru. He bore witness to a few of the stompers that were displayed in Hakkei's trophy collection, alive and well, stopping other stompers that seem to be hunting odd things or their own kin.

Masaru noticed how fixated Arachno was to the videos and smiled. "Cool, ain't it, Arachno? Those humans that are protecting others are heroes. Hakkei is going to become a hero to protect us as well." Arachno hardly understood the sounds he was hearing, but he thought about himself stopping one of those stompers that didn't seem to care about others. He was filled with excitement about sticking it to a bad stomper if he was as powerful as one of these strong stompers…Protect. Arachno realized that he wanted to protect his two favorite stompers in the massive world he never really remembered before. But he was just a little spider.

Seeing that Arachno might be interested, Masaru pulled up something else on his laptop. "I also found this…" Arachno's was filled with wonder as he shortly saw colorful pictures of a new stomper and abilities similar to his own.

Hakkei had the biggest changes during the time he has to prepare for the exam. Not only did he take the coach's suggestion and followed the new diet and training plans, but got help from his parents to apply for temp work through a student work pass. Construction, stocking goods of moderate or heavy weight, newspaper deliveries on foot instead of bicycle and a few other jobs have benefited Hakkei as a form of training. Masaru joined in on the gym training occasionally at beginner level, feeling inspired himself and to support his brother.

Other students have also begun to notice the effects of Hakkei's newfound efforts. They witnessed him making the run to school multiple times instead of taking the bus now. Someone caught an extra bag being carried by Hakkei that was slowly growing bigger by the week. Upon a mischievous student checking, they found that it was some heavy books of various categories. Hakkei was merely using the weight of those books to train further if they didn't double as good reading material.

Reisei grew infuriated at Hakkei's boldness as his opponent's training got more blatant. He started to race to school on foot as well, but got late a few times since he didn't have a planned route. Hakkei, seeing that Reisei was getting serious about training, offered to help him plan a route to run to school or be a travel buddy, only to get ignored by Reisei. Not wanting to be bested by a quirkless like Hakkei, Reisei tried to sabotage him a few times to hinder progress, much to Hakkei's annoyance. Lunches stolen, his shoes moved about, being locked inside the school gym equipment room were more inconvenience than something for Hakkei to be mad about.

Wasabi in his water bottle was crossing the line, though. Hydration schedules are no joke to trained athletes. For that, Hakkei took it upon himself to swipe Raisei's phone and edited the call list to where Raisei's mother was labeled as a girlfriend and the phone ring tone to be Baby Shark. No one was able to pin Hakkei as the culprit, though Reisei still remembered the shaken soda and gave him a dirty glare.

Before they even knew it, the ten months were gone. Hakkei was woken up before the dawn light, something hopping on the top of his forehead. He has gotten used to Arachno being his new alarm clock when the actual one fails to wake him up. He could see and hear the blurry image of his clock as he felt for his glasses. "I'm up, Arachno. I don't know if I should thank Masaru or gripe at him for teaching you this trick." Arachno jumped onto the night stand, feeling great to help. He still fails to understand most of the stomper sounds, but he has grasped a few meanings to the noises such as his name.

Groggy, Hakkei walked into the bathroom with Arachno. His parents were not going to be awake until sunrise, so he did not bother to hide the spider riding on his shoulder from view. After a morning rinse, he dried himself and glanced at the mirror, taking a bit to admire his efforts. What was once a swimmer build was now a pure athlete build. But maybe he overshot the goal a little as he put on his clothes and then his red tracksuit. Hakkei felt that one wrong move and his new muscles would tear the tracksuit at the seams. He smirked at Arachno, who was thrilled with his own reflection. When he came into Hakkei's life, the spider was twice the size of a male orbweaver. Now he was the size of a hundred yen coin, but still had the same unusual patterns. Hakkei had only grown more convinced than ever that Arachno was experimented on over the time spent together.

Afterwards, they quietly opened the door to Masaru's room. It did not take Hakkei long to wake him up and get ready; all he had to do was get his brother to open his eyes and see the JR pass for the bullet train. They retrieved Arachno's transport pipe home, Hakkei's gym bag with pre-made bentos and a spare set of clothes each, and left a note to remind their parents where they were.

Considering Masaru's anxieties out in public, Hakkei made sure to get seat tickets and have Masaru sit at the window. As Arachno and Masaru were easily entertained by the speeds of which bullet trains go, Hakkei munched on an onigiri snack the train provides. As the sun finally rises from its slumber, Hakkei wonders what the U.A. exams will be like and if he has prepared enough.