Numbered Weapon 8.
The designation was a brand, a cage made of words. Kafka Hibino was no longer a cadet, no longer even legally human. He was a piece of military hardware with a serial number.
His new life was a carefully controlled paradox. He was assigned new quarters—a reinforced containment cell deep within the base, which Mina insisted on furnishing with a comfortable bed and a coffee machine. By day, he was a prisoner of two warring ideologies. Hoshina would subject him to grueling, often painful, "training exercises" designed to test the limits of his Kaiju form, treating him with the detached curiosity of a researcher dissecting a frog. Mina would then pull him into tactical simulations, relentlessly drilling him on control and restraint, desperately trying to reinforce the human, the soldier, within the monster.
He was a rope in a brutal tug-of-war, and he felt himself fraying.
The only time he felt sane was during his weekly, heavily monitored "recreational period," a concession Mina had fought for, which was really just an excuse. An excuse for Saitama.
He'd be escorted by a squad of nervous First Division soldiers to the now-famous park bench. The soldiers would form a perimeter a hundred meters away, pretending not to watch, their sensors running hot.
And Saitama would just... show up.
He'd amble over with two cans of vending machine coffee, same as always. He'd sit down. And for a while, they wouldn't speak. They would just share the silence.
It was during one of these silent moments that a group of children, seeing the heavily armed soldiers, started to get scared. One little boy began to cry. Saitama, without a word, reached into his pocket and pulled out the prize he'd finally gotten from that cereal box—a small, cheap plastic monster figurine. He flicked it perfectly through the air. It landed gently in the crying boy's lap. The boy looked at it, his tears stopping, his face breaking into a wide, fascinated smile.
Kafka watched the small, simple act of kindness, and felt a profound ache in his chest.
"They look at you, and they see... that," Kafka said quietly, gesturing at the now-happy child. "They look at me..." He didn't need to finish. They saw the containment suit he was forced to wear, the armed guards. They saw a monster.
Saitama took a sip of his coffee. "You think too much about what other people see," he said. "It's all just noise."
"It's not noise when it's your life!" Kafka retorted, a flash of his old frustration breaking through. "They've turned me into a thing. A weapon. Hoshina looks at me and sees a key to becoming a monster himself. Mina looks at me and sees... a mistake she has to fix. Nobody sees a person anymore."
He slumped back on the bench, the misery a physical weight. "I'm the most powerful, most lonely guy on the planet."
Saitama was quiet for a long time. Then he let out a short, dry, humorless chuckle.
"Second loneliest," he corrected.
Kafka turned to look at him. Saitama was staring out at the horizon, but his gaze was distant, his usual placid boredom replaced by a faint, ancient weariness.
"You think it's any different for me?" Saitama said, his voice unusually soft. "The sword guy, he looks at me and sees a puzzle. The loud girl sees a rival. The government sees a nuke they can't control. My own disciple... he looks at me like I'm a god. He's so busy writing down what I had for breakfast he forgets to just... sit and eat with me."
He crushed his coffee can, the sound startlingly loud.
"Nobody sees a person," Saitama echoed Kafka's words, the sentiment ringing with a profound, shared truth. "They just see the power. It's... lonely. And boring."
In that moment, the gap between them—god and monster, hero and weapon—completely vanished. They were just two men, sitting on a park bench, trapped on pedestals they had never asked for, feared and revered for things they couldn't control. It was a misery so absolute, so specific, that only they could possibly understand it.
"At least you get to hit things," Kafka said with a weak, sad smile.
Saitama grunted. "It's not as fun as it looks. Nothing hits back. It's just... popping balloons. All day."
They fell into silence again, but it was different now. Not just a comfortable quiet, but a true communion. Kafka had become more than just a confidant for Saitama. He was now his emotional anchor, the one person in this world who didn't care about his strength, who didn't revere or fear him, but who understood, on a fundamental level, his humanity. Who understood his loneliness.
And Saitama, in his own strange, apathetic way, had become Kafka's advocate. Not by fighting his battles for him, but by simply showing up. By treating him not as Numbered Weapon 8, not as Kaiju No. 8, but as Kafka Hibino, the Leek Guy. The tired man who smelled of desperation and bad coffee. The person.
He was the Monster's Advocate. The one who argued, not with words or fists, but with his very presence, that the being beside him was not a thing to be used, but a person to be known.
As the guards signaled that the "recreational period" was over, Kafka stood up. He felt lighter. The bars of his cage hadn't vanished, but the cage felt less lonely.
"Thank you," Kafka said simply.
Saitama just gave a small nod. "See you next week. Try not to let them dissect you before then."
Kafka walked back towards his escort, his shoulders a little less slumped. His life was a chaotic mess, a battleground for warring factions. But he had an ally. Not a general, not a soldier. Just a quiet, bald man who understood what it was like to be a universe of one. And for now, that was enough.