The fluorescent lights of Building B's server room didn't hum. Kaito had seen to that hours ago, adjusting the oscillation frequency to a perfect 60Hz.
It was a minor edit to reality, but it meant he could work without the jagged, high-frequency "noise" that vibrated in the back of his skull.
In the silence, his fingers moved across the keys with a deliberate, mechanical cadence.
[FILE: HPSC-EXP-9920]
[CONTENTS: HIGH-DENSITY BIOLOGICAL STIMULANTS]
[DESTINATION: CENTRAL GENERAL HOSPITAL]
The manifest was a mess.
The dosage column was filled with corrupted hexadecimal values, the digital equivalent of a stutter.
To a normal clerk, this was a three-hour nightmare of phone calls to IT and the HPSC.
To Kaito, it was simply so slow. He placed a finger on the terminal's chassis, his mind cutting through the digital static and forcing the data to align with the physical truth of the stimulant boxes sitting in the temperature-controlled vault two floors down.
He didn't think about "commands" or "programs." He just looked at the wrongness and made it right.
[STATUS: VERIFIED. 100% QUALITY ASSURANCE.]
Kaito leaned back. The chair he'd requested, a mid-range model with decent mesh, supported his butt perfectly.
It was 4:45 PM.
His daily quota was finished. In the last eight hours, he had optimized the shipping routes for the entire Kanto region, saving the company millions in fuel logic, and corrected three fatal manufacturing flaws in hero support gear that would have shattered under pressure by next week.
A heavy knock sounded. Mato entered, his face flushed with a mix of awe and greed. He looked like a man who had stumbled upon a gold mine and was terrified of losing it.
"Arisaka," Mato said, his voice unusually low. "The Hospital Director just called. He said the data precision on the stimulant batch was 'beyond surgical.' They've never had a manifest that didn't require a manual re-count."
Mato stepped further into the small, cool office. "Regional is already drafting your Grade 3 promotion. You've been here a week, and you're outperforming the entire Musutafu branch combined."
"I have an eye for detail, Mato-san," Kaito said, standing up and reaching for his jacket. The fabric was a better blend than his first day, he'd upgraded to a breathable cotton-poly mix that didn't itch.
"You want anything? A private server? Better coffee?"
"I want to catch the 5:15 PM train," Kaito replied.
-----
The station was a sensory grind of smoke, damp umbrellas, and the chatter of people who lived their lives in a state of constant, unoptimized hurry.
Kaito stood in his usual spot on the platform, his briefcase, a high-quality leather unit now, not the chemical-smelling vinyl, held at his side.
At 5:15 PM, he boarded Carriage 3. He secured a corner seat, opened his manual on Applied Quantum Logistics, and let the world fade into a blur of silver and wind.
He didn't need to look up to know the bridge was 400 meters ahead. He could feel the jagged tension in the air, the high-frequency vibration of high-yield explosives wired to the primary pillars.
It was like a scratch on a perfect record. Four men stood on the maintenance walkway.
One, a villain named Gatling, was raising an assault rifle that was fused into the muscle of his own forearm, the metal glowing with the heat of his quirk.
"Haha, Die!"
Kaito didn't panic. He didn't even stop reading the paragraph on his book. He just looked at the situation and saw a four-hour delay waiting to happen.
If those tracks broke, he wouldn't be home until long after dark. His evening would be ruined.
He didn't treat it like a fight; he treated it like a spill on a clean floor.
Kaito focused on the explosives, the detonator, and that ugly piece of scrap metal fused to the man's arm. With a single, sharp thought, he simply erased their function.
SNAP.
The sound was sharp and clean, audible only to him.
Outside, the explosives didn't blow; they simply turned into heavy, useless lumps of gray, featureless clay that fell into the Naruhata canal with a quiet splash.
"WHAT???!!!.... whats going on?"
The rifle fused to Gatling's arm didn't jam, it simply ceased to be a weapon, the metal losing its edges and dissolving back into a normal, shaking human hand.
The threat was gone before the villains could even realize their "power" had been deleted.
The train crossed the bridge with a smooth, rhythmic hum.
"Look!"
A teenager nearby pointed out the window, shouting about "magic blocks" falling into the water.
Kaito simply turned the page of his manual. He wasn't a hero saving lives; he was a man making sure his life stayed on schedule.
-----
By 6:30 PM, the Naruhata canal was swarming with blue lights. Naomasa stood on the bridge, the wind whipping his trench coat.
He was staring at a tray containing one of the gray, cubic blocks recovered by the divers.
"They aren't clay, Detective," the forensics technician said, his voice trembling as he held a scanner over the object. "The molecular density is uniform, but it has no chemical signature. It's as if the matter itself has been stripped of its properties, de-rendered into a default state. And the leader..."
Naomasa looked over at the police van where Gatling was being held. The villain was staring at his own hand, weeping.
"His 'Weapon Integration' quirk is gone," the tech continued. "Not suppressed. Gone. The biological markers for the quirk-factor in his DNA have been... flattened. He's effectively quirkless."
Naomasa looked at the 5:15 PM express schedule on his phone.
Every time "Hero X" appeared, a "villain" wasn't fought; they were simply removed from the equation.
Naomasa whispered, looking at the featureless gray cubes. "He's just cleaning. He is very dangerous individual, he can make someone quirkless. Contact the HPSC and tell them the situation."
-----
Instead of heading to his 1K apartment, Kaito transferred to the local Shizuoka line.
The air here was different—less CO2, more sea salt. Kaito walked ten minutes from the station to a small, quiet clinic on the outskirts.
The paint on the walls was peeling in some corners, a small imperfection that usually grated on his nerves, but here, it just felt real.
Kaito entered Room 202.
The smell of antiseptic was there. He didn't block the scent out; he let it ground him in the moment.
"Kaito?"
His grandmother sat by the window. She looked fragile, her skin like parchment paper under the fading sunlight. She was just a woman nearing the end of her long journey, her heart beating with the slow, natural rhythm of age.
"I brought the tea you like," Kaito said. His voice lost its sharp, professional edge, softening into the tone of a grandson who had traveled a long way just to sit in silence.
"You're working too hard," she said, taking his hand. Her grip was weak, her pulse thin and uneven. "I saw the news. All those explosions and fires in the city. Are you staying safe, Kaito? Musutafu sounds so loud these days."
Kaito looked at her. He could see exactly where her body was failing—the slight blockage in a valve, the way her lungs struggled to pull in enough oxygen.
"Grandma"
Kaito simply held her hand, and through the touch, he silently nudged her reality. He smoothed out the rhythm of her heart, cleared the narrow pathways of her blood, and eased the inflammation in her joints.
Kaito didn't make her immortal; he just made her comfortable. He took away the pain of the disease so she could just be his grandmother again. And the effects will be slowly released.
"I'm a specialist now," he said softly, watching the color return to her cheeks as the phantom aches vanished. "I sit in a quiet office. I'm as safe as anyone can be."
"Good. You always were a quiet boy. You deserve a quiet life."
-----
Kaito stayed for an hour. He didn't talk about files or the chaos on the bridge. He talked about the price of radishes and the new chair at his office.
He let her hold his hand, grounding himself in the warmth of her steady, peaceful heartbeat.
For the first time all day, he wasn't a specialist or a vigilante. He was just a grandson.
When he left, he stopped by the nurse's station.
"The bill for the next six months," Kaito said, pulling out his new Grade 4 card. "I'd like to settle it in full."
The nurse blinked at the balance on the reader. "This... this is a lot of money, Arisaka-san. This covers the premium care wing and private staff."
"She deserves to be comfortable," Kaito said, his eyes turning focused and sharp again.
"Make sure the room is kept at 22 degrees. Keep the noise in the hallway down. If her heart rate deviates even slightly from the steady rhythm she has now, you call me immediately."
-----
Kaito walked back to the station in the dark. The moon was a sharp, high-res sliver in the sky, unaffected by the smog of the city.
He didn't go home to drink tea or sleep.
Kaito sat on the train, watching the dark landscape of Japan blur past. He thought about the 350,000 yen and the Grade 3 promotion.
Kaito wasn't doing this for a "Hero X" dream or the adoration of the 15 million people watching Hideki's videos.
He was doing it so that when his grandmother's bodily system eventually reached its final, natural shutdown, it would be in a room that was quiet, warm, and perfect.
But.
'No, I would just keep making her healthier day after day. And makes sure she doesn't finds out. I don't know if this quirk of mine can make some immortal yet'. Kaito countered while looking at his hands.
He checked his phone one last time.
A new notification from the "HeroWatch" app:
HPSC issues Level 4 Alert for 'Hero X'.
Kaito closed the app. He didn't care about their alerts. He just wanted his 9-to-5 peace to stay funded.
~~~~~
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