SQUEAK.
THUD.
The vibration traveled up the cheap wooden frame of the building, vibrating through the paper-thin drywall like a physical pulse.
It drilled directly into the base of Kaito's skull.
It wasn't rhythmic. It was erratic. The sound of rubber soles gripping and slipping on cheap linoleum.
Kaito opened his eyes.
SQUEAK.
'06:03 AM,' Kaito thought. The numbers burned in his mind like a grievance.
'He's been doing this for four hours. Does he not have joints? Does he not have shame? Even hamsters stop running on the wheel eventually.'
Kaito sat up.
His spine popped. A dry, jagged crack that echoed in the empty room.
He was sitting on the bare tatami mat. No bed. No pillow. He had rolled up his Armani suit jacket—a ¥300,000 garment—into a ball to support his neck.
Now it was wrinkled, smelling faintly of straw and stale, humid air of the apartment.
THUD.
"Ouch! Okay... center of gravity... keep it low..."
The voice next door was muffled but painfully audible.
It sounded young. Energetic.
Kaito rubbed his face. The humidity in Naruhata was different from Shizuoka.
He stood up.
His socks slid on the tatami.
He walked to the kitchenette. The sink was a piece of stamped steel.
He turned the tap.
GURGLE.
Brown water spat out. It smelled like rusted iron and chlorine.
'Delicious,' Kaito thought, watching the brown sludge swirl down the drain. 'Vintage 1980s pipe rust. If I drink this, I'll need a tetanus shot.'
He waited ten seconds for it to run clear, then splashed his face.
SPLISH. SPLASH
The water was freezing. It didn't wake him up. It just made him irritable.
Kaito needed coffee. He needed food.
He needed to get out of this cardboard box before he decided to delete the concept of "neighbors" from the universe.
The hallway of Naruhata Estates smelled of boiled cabbage and old cigarettes.
Kaito stepped out of Unit 203. He locked the door. The key stuck halfway. He had to jiggle it, fight it, then force it.
CLICK.
"Oh! Good morning!"
Kaito froze. His hand was still on the doorknob.
The door to Unit 202 opened. A young man stepped out.
He was wearing a grey hoodie that looked two sizes too big, the fabric pilling around the elbows.
His track pants had a stain on the left knee—probably soy sauce or ramen broth. His hair was a bird's nest of black spikes that defied gravity and hygiene.
The Squeaker.
Kaito turned his head slowly. He looked at the neighbor and just judged him.
'Look at this mess,' Kaito thought, his eyes narrowing slightly. 'He looks like he slept in a dryer. Twenty years old. No job. Probably a student who skips lectures to play pachinko and eat convenience store bentos.'
"Morning," Kaito said. It wasn't a greeting. It was a noise of acknowledgment, stripped of all warmth.
"I'm Koichi," the neighbor said, scratching the back of his head. He had a nervous, bouncy energy that was immediately exhausting. "I heard you moving in yesterday. Sorry if I was loud earlier. I do my morning stretches... gotta stay limber, you know?"
Kaito looked at Koichi's shoes. Cheap sneakers. The soles were worn down to the foam on the heels.
"The walls," Kaito said, his voice flat. "They are thin."
"Yeah, tell me about it!" Koichi laughed. It was a nervous chuckle, scratching his cheek. "The landlord says he's gonna fix the insulation, but... well, he's been saying that since I moved in. Anyway, welcome to the block! It's a bit rough, but the people are nice."
Koichi extended a hand.
Kaito looked at the hand. Then he looked at his watch.
"I need to buy eggs," Kaito said.
He briefly shake his hand. He turned and walked toward the stairs.
"Oh. Okay! See you around, neighbor!" Koichi called out behind him.
Kaito walked down the metal stairs. They rang under his shoes like a broken bell.
CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.
-----
The streets of Naruhata were waking up.
It wasn't the polite, bustling awakening of Tokyo or the scenic morning of Izu.
Naruhata woke up like a drunk with a massive hangover.
Store owners were aggressively rolling up their metal shutters, slamming them against the stops.
CRASH. RATTLE.
A stray cat was fighting a crow over a piece of fried chicken in the gutter. The cat was winning.
'What happened to Boss now? He should be still fighting right. It's been years. I didn't see him.'
(A/n: Boss was the neighborhood cat with a battle scar)
WEE-WOOO. WE-WOOO.
A siren wailed in the distance. Always a siren. It was the background music of the district.
Kaito walked down the sidewalk. He was wearing a white dress shirt and black slacks.
No tie. He looked like a salaryman who had gotten lost on his way to the train station.
He passed a group of high school students smoking near a vending machine. They eyed him. Kaito didn't look away, but he didn't engage.
"Hmm, let's see."
'The Tamago Mart is three blocks east,' Kaito mapped out in his head. 'Opens at 7:00 AM. Discount eggs are limited to the first fifty customers. If I miss the window, I pay an extra 80 yen. That is acceptable for a millionaire, but unacceptable for a man living on a budget.'
He turned the corner.
He stopped.
The road ahead was blocked.
"GET BACK! GET THE HELL BACK!"
A car was flipped on its side. Smoke was pouring from the engine block, black and oily.
It smelled of burning rubber and melted plastic.
A group of four men stood in the middle of the street.
They weren't organized villains. They were street trash. Thugs with mutation quirks that made them look jagged and dangerous.
One of them had skin like concrete. Another had spikes protruding from his shoulders.
They were smashing the window of an electronics store.
SMASH. TINKLE.
"I said open the register, old man!" the Concrete Skin yelled, kicking the metal shutter of the shop.
A crowd had gathered at the intersection. Ordinary people. Housewives with grocery bags. An old man with a cane.
They were frozen, terrified, watching the violence.
"Where are the heroes?" someone whispered.
"Traffic is backed up," another muttered, clutching her bag. "They won't be here for ten minutes."
Kaito stood at the back of the crowd. He looked at the flipped car. Then he looked at the supermarket sign, visible just past the riot.
The "Tamago Mart." The neon sign was flickering.
He checked his watch. 06:54 AM.
If he waited for the heroes, the line would form. The discount eggs would be gone.
'Idiots,' Kaito thought, staring at the thugs. 'They aren't even stealing anything valuable. That electronics store only sells off-brand rice cookers. Why obstruct traffic for a rice cooker? It's not even a Zojirushi.'
He adjusted his cuffs. He stepped off the curb.
"Hey!" a woman whispered, grabbing his sleeve. Her nails dug into the fabric. "Don't! They're villains! You'll get injured!"
Kaito looked at her hand on his shirt. It was shaking.
He gently removed it.
"I have shopping to do," Kaito said.
He walked into the street.
The pavement was cracked. Glass crunched under his leather shoes.
CRUNCH. CRUNCH.
The sound was small, but in the hush of the terrified crowd, it was loud.
The villains stopped smashing the shutter. They turned.
"Hah?" The Concrete Skin thug turned around. He was big. Seven feet tall. He held a metal pipe in one hand. "The hell is this? A salaryman?"
The Spike Guy laughed. It was a wet, ugly sound. "Maybe he wants to donate his wallet. Come here, corporate slave!"
Kaito didn't stop. He didn't speed up. He didn't glow. He didn't frown.
He just walked.
Kaito walked with the blank, glassy-eyed stare of a man who hasn't had his coffee yet. The kind of stare that looks through people, not at them.
He stopped three meters away from Concrete Skin.
Concrete Skin raised the pipe. "I said come here, you—"
Kaito checked his watch.
He looked at the dial. 06:56 AM.
Sigh
He let out a sigh.
"Tsk."
It was a small sound. A sound of pure, unadulterated annoyance.
To Kaito, it meant: 'I am going to be late for eggs. And I'm hungry'
To the villains, it meant something entirely different.
Concrete Skin froze.
His eyes widened.
'He... he just clicked his tongue at me?'
The thug's brain, wired on adrenaline and cheap drugs, started to spin.
In Naruhata, nobody clicked their tongue at a villain unless they were Knuckle Duster or something worse.
'Why isn't he running? Why is he checking the time? Is he... timing us?'
"H-Hey, boss," Spike Guy whispered, taking a step back. "Why isn't he scared?"
"Shut up," Concrete Skin hissed. He gripped the pipe tighter. "He's bluffing. He's just a suit."
Kaito looked up from his watch. He looked directly at the gap between the thug and the flipped car.
"Excuse me," Kaito said.
His voice was polite. Monotone.
"You are blocking the crosswalk. May I pass?"
The silence stretched.
Concrete Skin sweated. A single drop rolled down his rocky forehead.
'May I pass?' the thug thought. 'He's asking permission? No. That's not a question. That's a warning. He's giving us a chance to live.'
The thug looked at Kaito's dead eyes. He saw no fear. He saw no anger. He saw... nothing.
And nothing was terrifying.
"Is he... is he with the Yakuza?" Spike Guy squeaked. "Is he a Cleaner?"
"Don't look him in the eye!" Concrete Skin yelled suddenly, dropping the pipe.
CLANG.
"Just let him go! Don't engage! It's a trap!"
The thugs scrambled back. They literally jumped out of the way, pressing themselves against the brick wall of the electronics store.
Concrete Skin held his hands up, sweating profusely.
Kaito blinked.
'Weird,' he thought. 'Usually, they argue more. Must be rookie jitters.'
He walked past them.
Kaito walked right through the gap they had cleared. He stepped over a piece of broken glass. He didn't look back.
The crowd on the sidewalk watched with their mouths open.
"Did... did he just stare them down?" someone whispered.
"He didn't even raise his voice," the woman muttered. "Who is he?"
"Maybe he's a pro hero in civilian clothes?"
"No," an old man said, shaking his head. "Pro heroes give speeches. That guy... that guy just walked. That's bery weird."
Kaito reached the automatic doors of the Tamago Mart.
SCREEEEECH.
The door mechanism was broken. It opened with a sound like a dying violin.
Kaito walked in.
"Aisle 4," he muttered. "Hopefully there are some cartons left."
-----
The apartment was quiet when he returned.
Kaito sat on the floor. He had boiled two eggs in the kitchenette.
He peeled one, the shell sticking to the white in stubborn little shards.
'Hmm, probably should buy groceries later,' Kaito thought.
He took a bite. It was dry.
He chewed slowly, staring at the water stain on the ceiling.
"I need some lean meat, could probably also buy some back ribs. Yes, seasonings and also a portable smoker and a barbecue grill"
This was his life now. Just a 1DK apartment, a crazy neighbor, and dry, unsalted eggs.
Kaito reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. He opened the news app.
[LOCAL NEWS: Naruhata Disturbance]
[A minor villain incident was reported near the station. Police arrived to find the villains fleeing the scene. Witnesses describe a "Salaryman" who walked through the riot. Local rumors suggest a high-ranking Yakuza enforcer, but police found no evidence.]
Kaito didn't care.
'Yakuza enforcer,' he thought. 'Better than "Hero." At least people leave the Yakuza alone.'
He put the phone down.
He finished the egg. It sat heavy in his stomach like a stone.
SQUEAK.
Kaito stopped chewing.
SQUEAK. THUD.
"Alright! Round two! Let's work on the landing! Hup!"
Kaito closed his eyes. His left eye twitched.
He stood up.
He walked to the wall.
He raised his fist to pound on it, to yell at the idiot to shut up.
But
He stopped his hand an inch from the drywall.
Kaito lowered his hand.
He walked to his suitcase. He pulled out a pair of noise-canceling headphones.
They were top-tier, Phony WH-1000XM5s. He had bought them with his third paycheck two years ago.
Kaito put them on. The leather cups were cool against his ears.
He pressed the button.
Active Noise Canceling: ON.
The squeak vanished. The world became a dull, muted hum.
Kaito sat back down on the tatami. He leaned his head against the wall—the wall that was vibrating physically from Koichi's jumps—and closed his eyes.
'Money,' Kaito thought, the word tasting like copper and frustration. 'I need clean, traceable paper. I spent 14 mil for thennew house and the land.'
He stared at the yellowed ceiling of Unit 203.
The offshore accounts were bloated with AFO's severance—billions of yen sitting in a digital void—but in Naruhata, they were useless.
If he bought a single luxury sofa, the Tax Agency would be at his door by Tuesday. He needed a high-tier salary to act as a shroud.
And besides the general haken contract phase was a dead end; doing contracts with regular company didn't justify a millionaire's bank balance.
Kaito needed the expensive Specialist rate. He needed a Hero Agency to sign his paychecks
He recalled the agency listings he had browsed on the train.
There were hundreds of Hero Agencies in Tokyo. Most were garbage. Underpaid sidekicks, overworked managers, chaotic supply lines.
But the chaos was where the money was.
'I need a disaster,' Kaito thought, sleep claiming him. 'I need an agency that is bleeding money so badly they will pay a fortune for a tourniquet.'
-----
Two Days Later.
The temp agency "Work-Force" was located in a glass building in Shinjuku. It was clean, but it was the kind of clean that smelled of antiseptic and despair.
Kaito sat in the waiting room. He was wearing his suit again. It was pressed. He looked sharp, but his eyes were bored.
"Arisaka Kaito?"
The recruiter was a woman in her forties with tired eyes and a stack of files on her desk. She didn't look up when he walked in. She was typing.
"Sit," she said.
Kaito sat. The chair was cheap plastic. It dug into his lower back.
"We have your resume and file from your work experiences," the recruiter said, flipping a page. "Inventory. Sanitation. Data Entry. You've done the rounds."
She stopped. She looked closer at the paper. She squinted.
"But these performance metrics..." She looked up. "Are these real? 200% efficiency increase at the warehouse? Zero safety incidents in sanitation?"
"They are verified," Kaito said. His voice was professional. Smooth. "I optimize systems. I don't just work in them."
The recruiter blinked. She put the file down.
"And you're done with the General Contract phase?" she asked. "Usually, people stick to the warehouse circuit. It's safer."
"I am ready for the Agency Sector," Kaito said.
The recruiter let out a breath that was half-laugh, half-sigh. "Agency Sector. You know that's a different beast, right? Heroes are... special. They don't understand logistics. They think ammo magically appears in their guns and PR scandals fix themselves."
"I know," Kaito said. "That is why they pay more."
"Fair enough." She spun her monitor around. "Well, if you want a disaster, I have a disaster. Came in this morning. High priority. The client specifically asked for a 'Logistics Fixer' who can handle... difficult personalities."
Kaito looked at the screen.
[Client: The Captain Celebrity Agency (CC Corp)]
[Role: Operations Manager (Temporary / Contract)]
[Location: Roppongi Hills / Naruhata Patrol Route]
[Pay: ¥8,000 / Hour + Hazard Pay]
Kaito stared at the name.
Captain Celebrity.
The number one hero from America after Almight left. The man who was currently creating a media circus in Japan.
The man who was famously known for being a narcissistic, loud, chaotic disaster.
Kaito felt a headache forming behind his eyes just reading the name.
'Loud,' Kaito thought. 'What a drag. Working for him will be like babysitting a nuclear reactor with an ego. We have a Homelander MHA version.'
But then he looked at the pay.
¥8,000 an hour.
He did the math. If he worked a standard 40-hour week, plus the hazard pay...
He could buy the entire apartment building in six months.
"I'll take it," Kaito said.
The recruiter looked relieved. Actually, she looked like she was suppressing a laugh.
"Good luck. The last three guys quit in a week. Apparently, he throws things when his coffee isn't right."
Kaito stood up. He buttoned his jacket.
"He won't throw things at me," Kaito said.
He walked out of the office.
The street outside was bright. Tokyo was alive. Giant screens played ads for hero merch.
[Captain Celebrity! Now in Japan! Follow his debut tour!]
Kaito watched the screen. The hero on the display was flashing a blinding white smile, holding a soda can.
'A annoying boss,' Kaito thought, walking toward the subway. 'And a loud neighbor. My life is a comedy written by a sadist.'
He checked his phone. He had a notification from a new app he had installed. A real estate app.
He looked at the listing for Naruhata Estates.
[Owner: Private Investor. Open to offers.]
Kaito smirked. It was a small, dry movement of his lips.
'Buy the building. Silence the world.'
Kaito descended into the subway station, blending into the sea of grey suits. Just another cog in the machine.
_-_-_-_-_-_
[A/N:
Hey everyone. I'm writing this while my head is literally splitting. I got soaked in heavy rain yesterday and stayed up way too late working, so now I'm down with a high fever. I really wanted to get this chapter out to you guys, but I'm going to need to take a rest for a day or two to recover.
I'm very sorry about the break in consistent updates. I'll be back as soon as I can see the screen without squinting. Thank you so much for the support and for reading!]