The direct deposit notification hit Kaito's phone at 08:02 AM.
Amount: 1,250,000 JPY.
Origin: Shizuoka Municipal/Haken Logistics Joint Settlement.
It was a clean number.
Base salary for the surveying and sorting contracts, plus the hazardous duty premiums and a 15% efficiency kicker for clearing the Musutafu mail backlog three hours ahead of schedule.
"Nice"
Kaito swiped the notification away.
He sat on the floor of his new apartment in Minato Ward.
It was a twenty-second-floor unit, fifteen square meters of sterile functionality.
The air was dry, filtered through a high-end HVAC system that removed the city's smog but left the throat feeling like parchment.
There was no mud here. No grit under the fingernails. No smell of oxidized steel or wet concrete.
Kaito opened his banking app.
He transferred 900,000 JPY to Grandma Saki's medical trust.
The Detnerat-sponsored geriatric plan was expensive, but it ensured she stayed in a private wing with twenty-four-hour monitoring.
Kaito then budgeted for his own expenses. Rent, utilities, and a strictly controlled food allowance. He had enough liquid capital to remain unemployed for three years, but that would create a gap in his professional history.
A gap was bad in a resume.
Kaito stood up, the joints in his knees clicking in the silent room. He put on a crisp white shirt and a generic black suit. He tied his tie with a precise half-windsor, ensuring the knot was perfectly symmetrical.
Kaito looked at his reflection. At nineteen, he had the eyes of a man who had already retired twice.
"Tokyo," he muttered.
-----
The city didn't vibrate like Kyoto or smell like the sea like Osaka. Tokyo hummed.
It was a high-frequency buzz of ten million people trying to be important at the same time.
To Kaito, it was just a larger, more expensive population set.
The commute to Otemachi took twenty-four minutes.
The Chiyoda Line was a study in compressed humanity.
Kaito stood in the center of the carriage, his hand gripped around a cold stainless-steel pole.
He didn't use his power to push the crowd away. He accepted the physical friction.
The smell of expensive suits, stale coffee, and the faint ozone of the train's electric motors.
"Did you see the morning feed?" a college student leaned into his friend's space, thrusting a glowing smartphone between them. "They're saying Hero X stabilized the geothermal vents in Iceland. Look at the satellite heat map—it's a perfect grid. No one moves energy like that."
"It's fake," his friend muttered, eyes glued to a handheld gaming device. "Probably just an HPSC PR stunt to distract us from the tax hikes. No one is that efficient."
BAP. BAP. BAP
Kaito stared at a smudge on the window, his expression impassive.
"I just hope the HPSC clears the property damage claims this month," an older man in a worn blazer said to his companion.
"My agency's office in Shizuoka is still a wreck from the typhoon. They say the auditors are 'backed up.' It's ridiculous. We pay for protection, not paperwork."
"The system is bloated," the companion replied, checking his watch with a sigh of irritation. "Too many heroes, not enough accountants."
Kaito was surrounded by HPSC mid-level managers and corporate lawyers. None of them looked at him.
To them, he was just another junior salaryman, a cog in the machine that kept the capital running. That was the goal.
He arrived at the headquarters of Nomura-Arasaka Financial Consulting. It was a sixty-story glass needle that pierced the morning clouds.
Kaito scanned his new Grade 1 Haken ID.
BEEP.
The gate opened.
Outside, the street was a cacophony of life.
A news drone hovered low over the sidewalk, its robotic voice announcing the daily hero-activity forecast. "Moderate collateral damage expected in the Minato sector. Please plan your routes accordingly."
"Oh, great," a woman in front of Kaito snapped, pulling out her umbrella as if to shield herself from the news. "That's my route to the dentist. Can't they just fight in the designated zones for once?"
-----
The office on the 44th floor was a morgue of productivity. Three hundred desks, all identical.
The only sound was the rhythmic, mechanical clicking of keyboards and the low drone of server-grade air conditioning.
"Arisaka-kun, you're late by forty seconds," a voice chirped from the next cubicle.
A woman with a sharp bob cut leaned over the partition. Her eyes were glowing a faint, neon pink—a minor quirk called Data-Link that allowed her to read digital screens 20% faster than a normal human. Her name tag read Miki Sato.
"The train had a door-seal malfunction at Shinjuku," Kaito lied smoothly, not looking up as he booted his workstation. "It cost the schedule precisely forty seconds."
"Typical," grumbled Kenji Tanaka, the man in the cubicle to Kaito's left. Tanaka was a veteran auditor in his fifties whose quirk, Calculated Breath, let him hold his breath for ten minutes to increase his focus. He was currently exhaling a long, weary cloud of carbon dioxide.
"Sato, stop bothering the new guy. The HPSC sent over the 1990-2010 Property Damage Fund. It's a digital graveyard. Half the files are corrupted."
"I'm just saying!" Sato laughed, her pink eyes flickering as she scanned her own monitors. "If we finish the first batch by Friday, management promised us a voucher for that high-end Yakiniku place in Ginza. Arisaka-kun, do you like Wagyu, or are you one of those 'protein shake' types?"
"I prefer efficiency over atmosphere, Sato-san," Kaito said, his voice a flat, tired monotone. "But I won't decline a corporate-sponsored meal."
"So direct!" Sato teased. "He's like a robot, Tanaka-san. Maybe his quirk is Internal Spreadsheet."
Kaito ignored the banter. He adjusted his chair to the optimal ergonomic height and put on a pair of blue-light-blocking glasses. He opened the first ledger.
Because the world currently believed Hero X was an entity of absolute order, Kaito's brain processed the digital data at a speed that bypassed human cognition.
The numbers on the screen stopped being symbols; they became a physical topography of greed and incompetence.
He saw the "leak" in forty-five seconds.
It was a recurring 0.5% "Administrative Consultation Fee" paid out on every single property damage claim processed since 30 years ago. The recipient was Gunga Heavy Industries.
"Tanaka-san," Kaito said, leaning back slightly. "Do you find the Gunga entries consistent with the HPSC charter?"
Tanaka didn't look up, his face purple as he held his breath for focus. He finally exhaled with a loud whoosh. "Gunga? Yeah, they've been a legacy vendor for decades. Small stuff. Paperwork fees. Don't waste your time auditing them, kid. You'll go down a rabbit hole of 20th-century tax codes that'll make your brain melt. Just flag the big property claims—Endeavor's collateral damage usually—and move on."
"Understood," Kaito said.
He didn't move on. He ran a background check on Gunga.
It was a ghost company—no employees, no physical office, and a board of directors that existed only on paper.
It was a permanent straw sucking billions of yen out of the HPSC's heart.
'Hmm... AFO?Then this was the money... that funded the Nomu labs or part of it... the money that built the League of Villains.'
'The HPSC was really garbage, paying for its own destruction because no one had checked the math.... No wonder they were played to death'
"Well, don't mind if I do" Kaito whispered.
He didn't report it.
Reporting it meant interviews, police statements, and the end of his quiet life.
Instead, Kaito performed another reality Update. He looked at the lines of legacy code governing the database.
Kaito saw the logic flaw a century-old hacker had installed for All For One.
Render: Logic Correction.
He didn't delete the money—that would trigger an alarm in the villain's vault. Instead, he rewrote the digital history of the transactions.
Kaito modified the metadata to make it look like Gunga was a defunct subsidiary of the National Pension Fund.
He re-routed the flow. The 0.5% didn't stop moving; it just changed destination. It began flowing back into the public infrastructure and pension accounts.
To any future auditor, it would look like a software glitch had finally been patched.
As a final act, he carved out a microscopic splinter—0.00001% of the total volume. It was a sum so small it wouldn't be missed even by a supercomputer.
Kaito funneled it through twelve shell accounts and into his own private trust. It was his fee for thirty years of unpaid government optimization.
-----
Lunch, Arisaka-kun?" Sato asked, rubbing her temples. "The cafeteria has a special on ramen today. Tanaka-san is already heading down."
"I have a personal errand, next time" Kaito said.
Kaito stood in the elevator, heading down for a lunch break.
The doors slid open on the 50th floor—the HPSC Secure Training Level.
Keigo Takami stepped in.
He was fifteen, wearing the grey tactical jumpsuit of an HPSC asset. He looked exhausted, but his eyes were as sharp as the feathers tucked tight against his back. He was flanked by two stern handlers.
Keigo's eyes locked onto Kaito instantly. He didn't just "sense" a familiarity—he recognized the man who had optimized his flight path in Aichi only a month ago.
"Arisaka-san?" Keigo blurted out, his wings giving a small, surprised twitch. "What are you doing in Tokyo? I thought you were headed for a 'quiet life' in the suburbs."
The two handlers immediately shifted their gaze to Kaito, their eyes narrowing.
They didn't know who Kaito was, but any civilian Keigo recognized was a person of interest.
Kaito didn't look up from his phone. He didn't change his heart rate. To the handlers, he looked like a bored salaryman. To Keigo, he looked like a brick wall.
"I am a contractor for Nomura-Arasaka, Takami-kun," Kaito said, his voice a dry, bureaucratic drone. "I am currently auditing HPSC accounts. It is a strictly professional engagement."
"You took an accounting job?" Keigo asked, a look of disbelief crossing his face. "After what you did with the satellite arrays and the support gear? You're wasting your—"
"Takami," one of the handlers barked, putting a hand on the boy's shoulder. "Professional conduct. Do not engage with civilian contractors."
The elevator hit the lobby. Kaito stepped out before the doors were even fully open.
"Takami-kun," Kaito said over his shoulder. "Your left primary feather is misaligned by three millimeters. It's creating unnecessary drag on your banking turns. Try to fix it."
He didn't wait for a response. He walked toward the exit, merging into the sea of black suits in Otemachi.
Keigo stood in the elevator, his hand reflexively reaching back to touch the wing Kaito had mentioned.
He watched the nineteen-year-old "accountant" disappear into the crowd.
"Wait—" Keigo started, but the handlers pushed him toward the secure transport.
Kaito sat on a park bench and ate a cold egg-salad sandwich. He watched the tourists debating whether Hero X was a man or a machine.
He took a sip of lukewarm tea.
The Aichi connection was a variable he couldn't delete, but he could manage it.
He had a 1:00 PM meeting with Satake. He had a 9-to-5 life to maintain.
And most importantly, he had a pension fund that was finally beginning to look respectable.
-----
Kyudai Garaki stared at the monitor in the darkness.
TAP. TAP. TAP
His glasses reflected a series of red numbers that were slowly turning green. He tapped a key, then another.
"Master," the Doctor croaked.
"Speak," the voice came from the shadows, deep and resonant.
"The Gunga account. The 0.5% feed from the HPSC. It... it just stabilized."
"Stabilized?" All For One asked.
"It didn't stop, but the routing has been... cleaned. The HPSC's central mainframe underwent a batch-update ten minutes ago. It identified our 'leak' as a legacy software error. It re-coded the transactions as internal government transfers."
There was a long silence in the vault.
"Haha.. A software error?" All For One's voice was amused. "After three decades of silence, the machine decided to fix itself?"
"It appears so. I tried to trace the command, but there was no manual input. It was a triggered script. A 'ghost' in the server. The data simply... corrected itself."
All For One tilted his head. "The world is becoming very orderly lately, Doctor. First the factories in Aichi, then the infrastructure in Shizuoka, and now the HPSC's own digital heart. It's as if the universe is tired of the chaos."
"Should I send a team to the Otemachi hub?"
"No," All For One said. "If it was a hero, they would have made a scene. If it was a hacker, they would have left a signature. This... this is something else. Let it be. X or not, we have enough stored capital for the next phase. Besides... I want to see how 'perfect' this world thinks it can become."
-----
Kaito sat at a small park bench two blocks away from the office.
He ate a cold egg-salad sandwich. It was bland, the bread slightly dry from the refrigerator.
He watched a group of tourists taking pictures of the HPSC skyscraper.
They were talking about Hero X. They were debating whether he was a man or a machine.
Kaito took a sip of his lukewarm tea.
The "Update" was still humming in the back of his mind, making his vision sharp enough to see the microscopic cracks in the pavement.
He had a 1:00 PM meeting with Satake to review the "progress" of the audit.
Kaito would pretend to be halfway through the first ledger. He would complain about the software.
Then.
KRIING. KRIING. KRIING.
His phone vibrated in his pocket. It wasn't a work notification.
[Incoming Call: Grandma]
Kaito adjusted his glasses and answered.
"Yes, Grandma?"
"Kaito-kun!" Saki's voice was vibrant, sounding younger than it had in years thanks to the high-tier medical care he'd secured. "Are you still at that big glass building? You aren't working through your lunch again, are you?"
"I'm on a bench, Grandma. I'm eating."
"Good. Because you need to be home by six. No overtime tonight. Kimiko is here!"
Kaito paused, his thumb hovering over the tea bottle. He remembered Kimiko—the sharp-witted manager of Arisaka Hardware back in the day.
"Kimiko-san is in Tokyo?"
"She drove all the way from Kyoto just to see us! And Kaito... she has news. She's glowing! She's four months pregnant and wanted to tell us in person before the bump got too big to fit behind the counter."
A new life. Another one entering the world—one that didn't care about forensic accounting or Hero X.
"She brought that miso-ginger pork you like," Saki continued, her voice softening. "We're making a real family dinner of it. You've been working so hard in these strange cities, Kaito. Come home and be a grandson for a few hours. Please?"
Kaito looked up at the glass needle of the Nomura-Arasaka building.
Inside those walls, he was a someone who had just quietly crippled All For One's small financial network.
But on this phone call, he was just a grandson who was coming home for dinner.
"I'll be there, Grandma," Kaito said, his voice losing a fraction of its clinical edge. "Tell Kimiko-san congratulations for me. I'll pick up some high-grade fruit on the way back."
"Don't you dare spend too much! Just bring yourself. I'll see you at six."
The line went dead.
"Six more hours," Kaito whispered, looking at his watch.
Kaito stood up, brushed the crumbs off his suit, and walked back toward the glass needle.
He had an audit to finish. He had a 9-5 life to maintain and a dinner to attend.
And most importantly, he had a pension fund that was finally, after two lives, beginning to look respectable.
"Amen to you, Zen Shigaraki"
~~~~~
Support the journey here:
patreon.com/Dr_Chad
(9 Advanced Chapters)