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(9 Advanced Chapters)
~~~~~
The Musutafu 1K apartment smelled of stale tatami and industrial adhesive. It was a four-story walk-up with a balcony that overlooked a trash collection point.
The rent was 45,000 yen. Kaito sat on the floor, surrounded by three cardboard boxes. This was the "normal salaryman" lifestyle, minimalist not by choice, but by fiscal limitation.
He checked his watch: 6:45 AM.
Kaito stood up and walked to the kitchenette. He consumed two hundred milliliters of water and a protein bar. The bar was past its expiration date. His internal systems identified the slight degradation in the soy protein and the presence of oxidized fats.
To a normal human, it would cause mild indigestion. Kaito's body processed it with 100% efficiency.
He dressed. White shirt. Dark slacks. The vinyl briefcase.
Kaito didn't suppress his exhaustion today. He let the natural weight of his limbs carry him. He was no longer the "Inefficient Clerk" hiding in the back. He was a professional moving toward a target.
-----
The Higashi Distribution Center loomed at 8:15 AM. The diesel exhaust from the trucks was a constant 85 decibels. Kaito scanned the gate. The security guard was the same. The clipboard was the same. The yellow line on the floor was still flickering.
He entered Room 204.
The other nine clerks looked worse than yesterday. The "Endeavor Heatwave" had broken their morale. They moved with the lethargy of people who knew their labor was worth less than the sweat they produced.
Mato walked in at 8:30 AM. He had a fresh coffee stain on his shirt, higher up than the last one.
"Listen up," Mato barked. "Yesterday was a mess. The database sync failed for half of you because of the thermal shutdown. That means we're 4,000 manifests behind. I want them done by lunch. If you can't keep up, don't bother coming back tomorrow."
Kaito sat at Station 9.
He booted the beige tower. 122 seconds.
Kaito opened the software. The UI was a 32-bit relic. To enter a single shipment of specialized flame-retardant fibers, he had to navigate four sub-menus, verify a checksum, and manually click "Save."
Kaito looked at the stack of folders. 400 manifests were assigned to him.
Estimated completion time at human speed: 7.5 hours.
Estimated completion time at High-Spec speed: 42 minutes.
Kaito placed his hands on the keyboard. He didn't use his power to rewrite the code. He used his power to rewrite his own nervous system.
'Update Synaptic Response Time. Set Value: 0.001ms.'
The world slowed.
The flickering fluorescent light above him, which usually buzzed at a frantic pace, now appeared as a slow, rhythmic pulse of dimming and brightening.
The sound of Mato's heavy breathing at the front of the room became a deep, tectonic groan.
Kaito began to type.
His fingers didn't move like a human's. They moved like the hammers of a high-speed percussion printer. There was no "clack-clack-clack." There was only a continuous, high-frequency drone of plastic hitting plastic.
Manifest 001: Verified.
Manifest 002: Verified.
Manifest 003: Error found in SKU—Correction applied—Verified.
Kaito didn't look at the screen. He didn't need the low-refresh monitor to tell him what he was doing. He felt the data flowing through the keyboard's copper traces. He was inputting data faster than the software's buffer could handle.
He reached the first sub-menu. Instead of clicking with the mouse, he used a sequence of keyboard shortcuts, Alt+F, Down, Enter, Tab, executing them in a single millisecond.
The computer began to scream. The internal fan, clogged with five years of dust, spun up to 4,000 RPM. The CPU temperature spiked.
Kaito didn't stop. He placed his left palm on the beige casing.
'Edit Thermal Conductivity. Set Value: 1000.'
Kaito pulled the heat out of the silicon and redirected it into the metal frame of the desk. The computer stayed cold. The logic gates remained stable.
-----
At 9:15 AM, Kaito stopped.
He had completed 400 manifests. He had audited the errors from the previous day. He had cleared the backlog.
Kaito stood up. The sound of his chair scraping against the concrete floor made the girl at Station 8 jump.
"Arisaka? What are you doing?" she whispered. Her face was shiny with sweat. "Mato is looking."
Kaito ignored her. He walked to the front of the room. Mato was staring at a spreadsheet on a tablet, his brow furrowed.
Kaito placed the empty stack of folders on Mato's desk.
"I'm finished," Kaito said.
Mato didn't look up. "Finished with the first ten? Good. Get back to your seat and keep going."
"I'm finished with the Class-C pile," Kaito corrected. "And I've corrected the sync errors from yesterday's thermal crash."
Mato stopped. He looked at the folders. He looked at Kaito. "That's 400 manifests, Arisaka. It's been forty-five minutes."
"The software is inefficient," Kaito said. His voice was flat, clinical. "I optimized my workflow. You can check the registry. The data is live."
Mato grabbed his tablet and navigated to the Higashi Master Registry. He scrolled.
A sea of green "Verified" icons met him. The timestamps were perfect. The checksums were flawless.
"How?" Mato asked. He looked at Kaito's hands. "You can't use your quirk properly right? And it's not intelligence based one."
"I have a high aptitude for logistics," Kaito said. "And I value my time. This position is currently paying me 1,125 yen per hour to perform tasks that I can complete in a fraction of that time. From a management perspective, you are under-utilizing your most efficient asset."
Mato blinked. He wasn't used to being lectured by a temp. But he was also a man who was terrified of the HPSC audit scheduled for next week.
"Sit down," Mato said, his voice lowering. "In my office. Now."
-----
Mato watched the kid walk into the small, glass-walled office. Arisaka didn't look nervous. He didn't look like an eighteen-year-old kid who just landed his first job. He looked like an auditor from the central government.
Mato checked the logs one more time. It was impossible. No human could type that fast without a Speed Quirk, and the registry showed Arisaka's Factor was a "Total Rejection."
'Maybe he's just a freak', Mato thought. 'A biological anomaly. Or maybe he's so desperate for a paycheck he's pushing himself to the breaking point.'
"Arisaka," Mato said, leaning back. The springs in his chair groaned. "The HPSC handles the shipping for every Pro-Hero agency in the Musutafu district. If one serial number is off, it can mean a hero's support item fails in the field. If a hero dies because of a typo, it's my head on the block."
"The error rate on my entries is zero," Kaito said.
"I see that. I also see that you're too fast for this room. If the other clerks see you finishing in an hour, they'll stop working. It'll tank my productivity."
"Then change my contract," Kaito said.
Mato narrowed his eyes. "What?"
"I am currently a Junior Clerk," Kaito said. "My responsibilities are limited to manual entry. If you move me to a Haken Specialist contract, I can handle the auditing and system maintenance for the entire Building B. I will work from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. I will clear the daily backlog by 11:00 AM. The rest of the time, I will ensure the database remains stable. In exchange, my salary increases to 350,000 yen, and I am given a private terminal."
Mato laughed. "350k? You kid! I don't even make that!"
"You aren't processing 400 manifests in forty minutes," Kaito replied. "And you are currently facing a 15% error margin from your other clerks. If I leave, you will fail the HPSC audit next week. If I stay as a Specialist, you will pass with a 100% efficiency rating. You will get your bonus. I will get my peace."
Mato stopped laughing. He looked at the boy's eyes. They were dark, cold, and utterly certain.
This wasn't a request. It was a deal.
"I have to talk to Regional," Mato muttered.
"Please do it now," Kaito said. "I have more files to process."
-----
Hideki hadn't slept in for hours.
The footage from the Endeavor fight was playing on his main monitor. It was only ten seconds, but it was the highest-quality capture of Hero X in three years.
He had zoomed in on the "Cold Zone."
The thermal sensors on his drone had registered a drop of 45 degrees Celsius in 0.8 seconds. That wasn't a "Cryo-Quirk." It wasn't ice. There was no frost on the ground.
"He didn't freeze the air," Hideki whispered to the empty room. "He snapped the heat out of it's existence."
He looked at the silhouette. It was matte white. It didn't reflect the orange glow of Endeavor's fire. It was as if the entity was a hole in the world.
"Hahahaha, come on X, I'm betting my whole life with you"
Hideki quit his job as a reporter in the company just recently. He wanted to go big. Wanted to create his own news empire.
He opened his video editing software. He titled the file: THE RETURN: X VS THE NUMBER TWO.
He hit Upload.
Within three minutes, the view count hit 50,000. Within ten, it was at 500,000.
The comments were a war zone.
[User442: "It's him. The 'Snap' sound. You can hear it in the high-gain audio at 0:04."]
[HeroFan_99: "Fake. Look at Endeavor's face. He looks confused. Probably a prank by a tech villain."]
[The_Truth: "Endeavor almost died today because his flames turned off. The HPSC is suppressing the news. X is back to save us from the 'Pros'."]
Hideki watched the numbers climb. He felt a surge of adrenaline. Hero X was the only thing that made sense in a world of loud, flashy, destructive heroes.
X was silent. X was efficient. X didn't leave a mess.
"Where are you, X?" Hideki asked the screen. "What are you doing right now?"
-----
By 2:00 PM, the contract was signed.
Mato had been desperate.
Regional had been even more desperate. The Higashi Distribution Center was a bottleneck for the entire prefecture.
If Kaito could fix it, they didn't care if he has rejection quirk or something.
Kaito moved his few belongings to his new terminal. It was in a corner of the building, near the server room. It was quiet. It was air-conditioned.
He sat down. He didn't look at the internet. He didn't check the viral video.
Kaito looked at his new digital ID.
Rank: Haken Specialist (Grade 4).
Salary: 350,000 Yen / Month.
He allowed himself a single, shallow breath of relief.
This was the first step toward the "Sanctuary." With this income, Kaito could afford a 1K apartment in a high-density area where the sound of the neighbors was blocked by reinforced concrete. He could buy high-spec tea. He could buy a bed with actual lumbar support. He could support his grandma better.
Kaito opened the database. He began to audit the "Class-A" gear—items destined for the Heroes.
Item: Kinetic Impact Bracers.
Destination: Strong Arms.
Status: Pending.
Kaito scanned the technical specifications. His "Update" allowed him to see the flaws in the engineering.
The stress points in the titanium alloy were misaligned by 0.02mm. Under maximum pressure, the bracer would shatter, likely breaking the hero's forearm.
Inefficient, Kaito thought.
He didn't report it. He didn't want the paperwork.
Kaito placed his hand on the terminal's power supply. He sent a micro-pulse of energy through the network, reaching the manufacturing bot at the assembly line three floors down.
'Edit: Molecular Lattice. Alignment: Optimized.'
The bot didn't change its movements, but the metal it was forging became perfect. The flaw vanished. The hero would be safe, and Kaito would have a quiet afternoon.
-----
At 5:00 PM, he stood up.
He walked out of the office. Mato was standing by the water cooler, looking at his phone.
"Arisaka," Mato said. He looked pale.
"Yes?"
"Have you seen the news? That... that vigilante that showed up at the Endeavor fight yesterday. 'Hero X'."
"I don't follow hero news," Kaito said. "It's a distraction from the work."
"Right. Right. Anyway, good job today. See you tomorrow."
Kaito walked to the station.
The humidity was still there, but he didn't care. He had a Specialist's contract in his briefcase.
He boarded the train. He found a seat.
Across from him, a man was watching Hideki's video on a tablet. The image of the white silhouette filled the screen.
Kaito looked at his own reflection in the window.
The dark circles under his eyes were still there. The polyester shirt was still damp.
But inside, the "Update" was stable. The world was loud, but he had carved out a pocket of silence.
He reached his stop. He walked to his new 1K apartment.
Kaito sat on the floor and brewed a cup of tea. It was a mid-range green tea, better than the discount stuff he had in Shizuoka. It tasted of nothing but salt and earth. It was perfect.
Kaito Arisaka was no longer a Junior Clerk. He was a Specialist.
And the world was starting to realize that "X" was no longer a memory.
~~~~~
[Author's Note]
In this chapter, Kaito transitions from "Victim of Inefficiency" to "Dominant Specialist." The key here is Competence Porn.
Readers were frustrated by him holding back, so here we show him taking control. He isn't being a hero; he's being an elite professional. The government's eyes were no longer on Kaito.
He uses his power not to save the world, but to fix a database and secure a better paycheck.