T/N: This is the ghost stories chapter! Aitaikimochi was going to do this chapter but it’s really long, so she decided to do Chapter 5 instead (Iida’s birthday!) So here’s my Ch>Eng translation of Chapter 4, Part One. First/last names and honorifics match the Chinese version.

Feel free to link to or screenshot my translations elsewhere, but please provide a direct link (not a reblogged link). I don’t have a social media following for fandom-related stuff, so thanks if you’ve reblogged or linked the translations on Twitter/Ao3/Discord/etc to help other people find it.



Other BNHA Light Novel Vol.3 Chapters

See /translations for the full list. This masterlist is updated regularly. Chapter 4&5 are the only incomplete chapters at this point.

Chapter 1: “Cheers!” // Chapter 2: “Dramatic Makeover” // Chapter 3: “Crisis” (Part One, Part Two, Part Three) // Chapter 4: “ UA Hyakumonogatari” (***Part One) // Chapter 5 (Part One by peachingboy) // Chapter 6 by royaljellybeans// Fantasy AU by aitaikimochi

Fan works relevant to the light novel

Manga References

Class 1-A students

Chapter 4: “UA Hyakumonogatari” (Part One)

In a dark, dark room, dimly flickering candlelight reveals the pale white skulls of deer and men. A few figures can be seen in the circle of candles, as if performing some mystic ritual.

“… At last, the boy begins to fear for his life. But it’s impossible to turn back now. With trembling feet, he takes step after step in the pitch-black tunnel… now he’s reached the center.

“A slight, warm breeze tickles the boy’s hair. But how strange! There should be no wind from that direction…”

At Sero’s forboding tone, Kaminari swallows hard. “W… Why is that?”

“… Because that end of the tunnel had been closed off the year before, by a landslide. There should be no airflow…”

Next to Sero, Ashido shifts nervously. “It’s a lie, right…?”

To the terrified group around him, Sero continues quietly, “The boy stops in his tracks. Something cold and wet drips down onto him. Drip… drip… with no sign of stopping. He fumbles for his flashlight, which he’d turned off earlier to conserve the remaining power. And above him…”

“… is a mangled, bloodied corpse!”

“Uwaaaaa!” Mineta shrieks and latches onto Shoji’s arm. He looks a bit like a koala clinging onto a tree. Ashido and Asui hush him impatiently. He’s ruining the atmosphere of the story.

Still holding onto Shoji for dear life, Mineta protests, “Hey, aren’t you scared? You guys are girls, after all!”

Sero snorts. “Screaming and hugging people, aren’t you the girl here?”

“It’s your creepy stories,” Mineta whines. “They’re way too scary! I don’t know why I joined at all!”

“Probably so you can sneakily hug people,” Asui scolds. “Really, Mineta-chan.” Fortunately though, Mineta is seated between Kaminari and Shoji, not next to any of the girls.

“Che, it’s all because that busty girl from the Department of Support went and did unnecessary things…!”

Certain that Mineta would eventually try to sneak into the girl’s baths to peep on them, the Class 1-A girls had taken precautionary measures. They’d asked 1-H’s Hatsume Mei to design something, so Hatsume had created a system to keep Mineta out of the area altogether.

…

“Seriously though… can’t you guys do this in someone else’s room?” Sitting apart from the group is Tokoyami. He shifts restlessly on his dark throne.

“Well, it’s the only room that’s always completely dark in the middle of the day. Also the skulls really add to the spooky atmosphere.” Ashido grins impishly. The skulls are fake, of course, but in the candlelight they look eerily real.

“I didn’t decorate my room so you guys could enjoy your story times,” Tokoyami mutters darkly.

“And there are even candles!”

“For fuck’s sake.”

“Okay then!” Completely ignoring Tokoyami’s protests, Ashido flashes a winning smile. “I’ll just tell you guys something that will terrify even Tokoyami!”

Meanwhile in Jirou’s room on the 3rd floor, Yaoyorozu, Uraraka, and Hagakure are practicing some music. Because the other three are beginners, they want Jirou to demonstrate first.

“Eh? Just a little, then,” Jirou concedes. She hesitantly starts to strum her guitar. The other three girls enthusiastically cheer her on. “Eh? Wait, don’t be like this!” Jirou blushes furiously at their applauding and calls for encore. The atmosphere in her room is reminiscent of a live concert!

On the dorm’s front lawn, Izuku is getting tips and advice from Iida about using his lower body in combat.

“If you only use your feet, there won’t be enough power and speed to back up the hit. You have to put your whole body behind the kick. Let me show you again.”

“Yes! Sorry!” Izuku watches Iida’s demonstration with wide eyes, notebook in hand.

Todoroki catches sight of them as he’s leaving from the dorm’s main entrance. “Hey, you’re practicing?”

“Ah, Todoroki-kun. Going out?”

Todoroki visits his mother every weekend, schedule permitting.

“Have a good trip. Stay safe!” Izuku waves.

“Tell your mother I said hello,” Iida adds.

“Sure. I’m off then.” Izuku and Iida watch as Todoroki heads off in the direction of his mother’s hospital room.

After a moment, the two boys turn their focus back to their special training.

On the 4th floor, Ojiro is training in Kirishima’s room by hitting the punching bag with his tail. Kirishima suggests that he try using his legs as well, but Ojiro ends up knocking down the entire sandbag.

A few moments later, Kirishima’s door slams open with a bang. “You guys are so loud! Quiet the fuck down!” Bakugou fumes. He lives next door and doesn’t deal with noise well. There’s bound to be some noise since it’s the weekend, though…

Back in Tokoyami’s room on the 2nd floor, Ashido finishes up her ghost story.

“… The psychic looks around the room. He suddenly jumps back with a shriek. The drawer is full of ghosts! … Terrifying, isn’t it?”

Mineta again clutches onto Shoji, but everyone else just blinks. The story would have been pretty scary, but Ashido had told it in a bland manner.

“To make a scary story even scarier, you need to have your listeners on edge. Use an appropriate tone of voice and make meaningful pauses to build suspense – like I did earlier. The delivery is just as important as the actual story, you know,” Sero advises Ashido (casually sprinkling in some personal endorsement).

Kaminari agrees. He’d really been terrified earlier by Sero’s story.

Ashido pouts at the criticism, but suddenly perks up. “Oh right, let’s have Tokoyami tell one too! He definitely has the kind of voice for ghost stories!”

“True, true,” Kaminari muses. “His usual tone of voice is already spooky and dark.”

“Just what do you mean by that?” Tokoyami mutters back, disgruntled.

“I want to hear it too – a story by Tokoyami!”

“Go, Kaidan Prince!”

** 怪谭/怪谈 literally means “strange talk” but refers to ghost stories / supernatural stories in Japanese (“Kaidan”) and Chinese (“Guai Tan”).

“Tokoyami, you don’t have to tell something super scary. Just a little scary is fine too…”

Everyone turns to Tokoyami, eyes gleaming with anticipation. Tokoyami shifts uncomfortably but eventually clears his throat and begins to speak.

“I don’t know if this will be terrifying enough for you guys, but here’s a story my grandfather told me when I was a child…”

“A long, long time ago, the young people of a village began a game of hyakumonogatari.”

**百物語 (“Hyakumonogatari”), a game from the Edo period in Japan

(This is a game to play while telling kaidan, or ghost stories. Participants light a hundred candles and settle in for a night of storytelling. After every story, one candle is snuffed out. As legend goes, when the last candle is extinguished, real spirits will be summoned. The game is a great way to amp up the suspenseful atmosphere as everyone tells ghost stories.)

“In this village, hyakumonogatari was one of few amusements for its younger residents. To make sure they didn’t actually invoke any spirits, they always stopped the game at the 99th story.”

“One day, a visitor arrived from the city, a woman with long, flowing blond hair. She was travelling the world, and the village was one of her stops along the way.”

“When she heard of the game, she was eager to try it too. Everyone welcomed her warmly to the group. She listened to the blood-curdling stories without a word. But at some point,”

“… she began smiling.”

“The villagers became gradually more and more nervous about the woman. Finally, they finished the 99th story and prepared to stop the game as usual.”

“Breaking her silence, the blond woman suddenly began the 100th story. The teenagers frantically tried to stop her, to no avail. As the woman finished the story, the final candle went out – untouched. The room was plunged into darkness.”

“Well, it was just the light going out. Everything was fine. One of the young men quickly lit a new candle…”

“The woman had vanished.”

“She wasn’t anywhere nearby. In the morning, the police and villagers searched the area. There wasn’t a single trace of her. The villagers decided she’d probably just gone back home, or perhaps had been taken by a wild beast.”

“Time passed. The rumors about the woman faded away. Yet one day, a young villager claimed that he’d seen the golden-haired woman.”

“The villagers wrote him off. He’d clearly been mistaken, even if he’d been there the night of the game. But the next day the man was found dead. Eyes wide, face frozen in an expression of terror, a long blond hair tied around his neck…”

“On the third day, another person who’d attended the game was found dead. And the next… Finally, all the villagers who’d been at that fateful game of hyakumonogatari had died. A rumor began among the remaining villagers – the blond-haired woman must have been a demon that fed on human souls.”

** They think she is an鬼怪 (“onikai”), a demon/ghost/spirit

“Eh? Why is it suddenly a demon?” Sero cuts in.

“You see, there was this legend in the village. Many years ago, there was a happy couple in the village. The wife was pregnant, and everyone was thrilled. But the newborn infant was golden-haired! Suspecting his wife of infidelity, the husband dragged the woman and child out into the mountains to die.”

“The abandoned wife vowed to get revenge, and left her newborn child in the care of the demons of the mountain.”

“T-then the blond-haired woman became a demon and returned to the village…?” With growing fear, Ashido clutches Tsuyu’s arm.

“That’s indeed what the villagers thought,” Tokoyami nods. “But the story isn’t finished.”

“You see, my grandfather heard about this story from his friend, whose family moved away from that very village. When this friend grew up, he went back to visit his hometown. But it’d become a ghost town. According to the neighboring villages, an epidemic had spread throughout the village, killing all the inhabitants.”

“Whether or not it was really a disease is unclear. But apparently, all the bodies had one thing in common – they were always found with a single strand of long blond hair.”

Tokoyami fixes his terrified audience with a piercing stare, expression unreadable. With a slight incline of his head, he continues.

“I heard later that after coming back from the abandoned village, my grandfather’s friend became more and more strange. Why was he like this? Apparently, a blond-haired woman had appeared while he was visiting, and smiled at him.”

“Because he’d shared the story with my grandfather, he must have been cursed as well. My grandfather told him it’d probably been a trick of the light, but the friend seemed unconvinced.”

“A few days later that friend suddenly died. He had a long blond hair around his neck…”

Everyone is petrified with fear. Sero finally manages a shaky smile. He crosses his arms, shivering a little. “Oh boy, if you suddenly remember this in the middle of the night…”

“… You made up that story, right? Tell me it didn’t really happen!” Kaminari pleads.

Tokoyami seems unexpectedly distressed. “I really didn’t think you guys would be so freaked out. My apologies. I truly heard this story from my grandfather, but I have no idea if he fabricated the entire thing.”

After Tokoyami’s story, Mineta is far too terrified to go to the bathroom alone and makes Shoji accompany him.

That last story had probably been too much. The remaining members decide to end the storytelling and go back to their rooms.

.

–– End of Chapter 4, Part One ––

(Chapter 4, Part Two)

Additional Notes: