The Kyoto sewer system was a masterpiece of hidden neglect. It was a labyrinth of pre-war stone tunnels and modern reinforced concrete pipes that smelled of copper, stagnant sludge, and the damp, scent of bedrock.
Kaito Arisaka stood in a sub-level junction beneath the Shimogyo Ward.
The weight of his rubber waders pulled at his hips, and the humidity was so thick it felt like breathing a soup.
CLACK. CLACK. CLACK.
Kaito's industrial flashlight, flickered. He hit the side of the casing with a sharp, strike of his palm.
The beam stabilized, cutting through the dark to reveal the gray walls of the junction.
"Arisaka, status on the Line 4 fatberg," Goro's voice crackled through the analog radio. Goro was a man who sounded like he ate gravel for breakfast, his voice is very raspy.
"I'm at the junction," Kaito said.
He was eighteen years old, but in this light, with the grime on his face and the clinical set of his shoulders, he looked like a veteran of a different kind of war. Not a WW2 veteran.
"The blockage is five meters long. It's backed up into the industrial runoff pipes. It's a mix of kitchen grease and fiber-optic cable scrap from the construction site upstairs. If I use the manual auger, I'll be here until the morning commute."
"Well, start cranking," Goro grunted. "The city doesn't pay for standing around, and I'm not signing off on your overtime if you're just staring at the wall."
Kaito didn't argue.
He reached into his tool belt and pulled out a telescopic metal rod.
For the next forty minutes, he didn't use his quirk. He worked hard.
Kaito pushed the rod into the congealed mass, feeling the resistance of the grease.
He liked the physical strain. He liked the way the sweat pooled under his heavy rubber suit.
It was honest. It was a 9-to-5 reality that grounded him. After all if you just do things easily, it will get pretty boring after all.
But as he looked at his watch—02:30 AM—the math began to turn against him.
If Kaito stayed here manually cranking, he'd miss the data entry window for his second contract in Osaka.
He'd be late for his train. The efficiency of his entire day would collapse.
"Hey, it's still unacceptable" Kaito muttered.
He placed a hand on the damp stone wall. He didn't snap his fingers; that was for the "Hero X" persona. He can after all just use his mind to manipulate reality albeit small scale.
Here, Kaito just visualized the molecular bond of the grease as a faulty line of code.
'Molecular Polarity. Set: Non-Binding.'
The fatberg didn't explode.
SLICK. SLICK. SLICK
It simply ceased to be solid. It dissolved into a liquid slurry and was swept away by the current in a sudden, violent rush.
Kaito stepped back, keeping his boots clear of the surge. The tunnel breathed a sigh of relief as the pressure equalized.
"Line 4 is clear, Goro-san," Kaito said into the radio. "The blockage was less dense than anticipated. I'm heading to the surface."
-----
Anothet month has passed by constant 9-5 grind. Kaito sat in a small, cramped laundromat in a back alley of Osaka.
The air was filled with the scent of cheap detergent and the rhythmic, industrial
thump-thump
thump-thump
of a dryer.
Kaito was wearing a plain gray hoodie, his damp hair sticking to his forehead.
In his hand was a lukewarm coffee from a nearby vending machine.
It tasted like burnt beans and tin, but it was 100 yen, and it did the job.
"I missed Starbucks"
RING-RING
RING-RING
RING-RING
His phone buzzed. Ba-chan.
"Kaito? Is that you? Why is it so loud? Are you in a factory again?" Saki's voice was thin, but there was a new strength in it. The private wing in Shizuoka was paying off.
"I'm at the laundromat, Grandma," Kaito said, leaning his head against the vibrating glass of the dryer. "I just finished a night shift. The Kyoto contract ended, so I'm picking up some extra hours with a marine logistics firm in Osaka."
"You work too much," she sighed, and he could hear the sound of a television in the background—likely another news report about the "Hero X" shrines popping up in Tokyo.
"You're only nearly nineteen. You should be out with friends, or finding one of those nice girls who works at the bakeries. I saw on the news again... It's about Hero X again. Why can't you find a job with a co-worker like that? Someone who makes things easy? Having a co-worker with that quirk should make things in life simpler"
Kaito looked at his reflection in the dryer door.
His eyes were sharp, reflecting a clarity that shouldn't belong to a tired teenager after all counting his pastlife he already a middle-aged right.
"It's ok Grandma. And guys like that... they usually leave a mess for people like me to clean up. Hero X doesn't have a pension plan or a Haken contract. He's just a guy with a gimmick."
"Always so cynical," Saki chuckled. "But listen, Kaito... the doctors here. They're so kind. They gave me these new CGA (Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment) plan. They're from that big company, Detnerat. They told me this were very expensive, but that the bill was already settled. Are you sure you're okay? You aren't doing anything dangerous, are you?"
Kaito's grip the coffee can. "I'm an auditor, Ba-chan. The most dangerous thing I do is get a paper cut from a shipping manifest. I just work more efficiently than the other guys, so I get the bonuses. Use the plan. Walk in the garden and enjoy your life Grandma. I'll come see you when this contract is up."
"I love you, Kaito."
"I love you too, Grandma."
Kaito hung up and stared at the coffee.
He could feel the "Update" humming in the caffeine. Because the world was currently obsessed with Hero X's "Grace,"
Kaito's body was processing the drink with 100% efficiency. He wouldn't crash. He wouldn't feel the jitter. He would just be... awake. He can't be drunk, he can't feel tired. It's like he was less and less human. Atleast he could manipulate his own body to be normal.
"Nuisance," he muttered, taking a long, bitter swig.
-----
Another 2 months has passed since the Singularity-Batch event.
The Osaka harbor was a graveyard of rusted iron and salt-stained concrete.
Kaito was technically working a Marine Logistics Data Entry contract, but the reality was that he was doing the work of five men because the harbor's legacy software was garbage.
He sat in a corrugated metal shack that vibrated every time a heavy crane moved nearby.
The salty air was eating at the hinges of the door, and the floor was covered in a fine layer of dust.
"Arisaka! The manifest for the A-7 sector is corrupt! We've got three tankers waiting to dock and the system won't recognize their IDs! If they sit out there any longer, we're going to hit a demurrage penalty!" a foreman yelled from the docks, his face red with frustration.
Kaito didn't look up from his screen. His fingers were a blur on the keyboard. He wasn't using a reality edit yet.
He was using a custom Python script he'd written during his lunch break to bridge the gap between the port's ancient database and the modern shipping logs.
"I'm syncing them now," Kaito said, his voice a calm anchor in the chaos.
A surge of warm feeling hit his chest. Another massive "Update."
In Tokyo, Hideki had just released a video titled: THE SILENT PORTS: WHY KANSAI IS SUDDENLY PERFECT.
He had linked the lack of shipping delays to the "Hero X's Passive Aura," claiming that the very air in Osaka had become "ordered."
Kaito stared at the computer screen, his hands hovering over the keyboard after typing.
The binary code shifted and organized into a perfect, optimized ledger.
The tankers didn't just dock; the automated cranes moved with a fluid precision that ignored the wind resistance.
BZZT
He felt the power swelling in his muscles—a density that made his work shirt feel like it was made of tissue paper.
Kaito was getting stronger every second because people were believing in Hero X efficiency.
But to him, it felt like someone was constantly trying to give him a "cheat code" for a game he was trying to play legitimately.
"What a drag. If this goes on my quirk will probably cover the entire Asia Continent".
-----
X-News Headquarters
Hideki didn't sleep anymore.
Sleep was a luxury for people who weren't watching the world rewrite its own rules.
He sat in a room that smelled of stale coffee,l, and the scent of overheating server racks.
The curtains were drawn tight against the morning sun, but the glow from twenty-four monitors bathed his face in a blue light.
On his desk, seven different smartphones were lined up, their screens constantly bleeding notifications.
"Sora, zoom in on the Kansai industrial corridor," Hideki rasped. His voice was a dry sandpaper scrape.
His assistant, Sora, tapped a key. A massive map bloomed across the center wall. It wasn't a map of roads; it was a map of statistical anomalies.
"Look at the green markers," Hideki whispered, leaning forward until his forehead almost touched the glass.
"Kyoto Sanitation. For thirty years, the fatberg reports in the Shimogyo district have followed a mathematical constant of urban decay. Clogs happen. Pipes break. It's the nature of a city. And then, months ago... the reports just stop."
"Boss, it's just sewage," Sora muttered, rubbing her eyes. "Maybe they finally fixed the infrastructure."
"Fixed it?" Hideki roared, spinning his chair around. His eyes were bloodshot, pupils blown wide with caffeine. "You don't just 'fix' entropy, Sora! And it's not just the sewers. Look at the Osaka Port logs. Three months ago, the average docking delay was forty-eight minutes. Today? It's zero. Not one minute. Not one second. Every ship, every crane, every logistics drone is moving with the precision of a Swiss watch."
He stood up, pacing the small room. He was wearing a wrinkled shirt that had seen better days, the same one he'd worn during the Higashi disaster.
To the world, Hideki was the "Prophet of X," the man who had captured the most iconic footage of the century.
To himself, he was a man staring at a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces were made of smoke.
"The HPSC is looking for a man in a white suit," Hideki chuckled, a jagged, hollow sound.
"They're scouring the satellite feeds for a 'X' who flies. They think he's a variable. They think he's a vigilante."
He stopped in front of a monitor showing a grainy, long-distance shot of a standard industrial warehouse.
"But he isn't. Hero X isn't just a hero. He's an Axiom. A symbol of inevitable."
Hideki grabbed a red marker and slashed a circle around the Kansai region on a physical map pinned to the wall.
"The efficiency isn't random. Ever since he emerged years ago. This country was changing. He's correcting the typos of our society. If a pipe is clogged, it clears. If a data entry is wrong, it fixes itself. It's a 'Clean Zone.' A vacuum of perfect logic that follows him like a shadow."
"I can feel it in my guts. Hero X is everywhere. His hidden identity should be causing this"
He turned back to his laptop, his fingers flying across the keys with a violent, rhythmic clicking.
"We aren't just reporting news, Sora. We're documenting a miracle of order. Every time I post a 'Quiet Miracle' report, the site traffic hits the ceiling. People are reporting things from all over—clocks that never lose a second, engines that stop rattling. They think Hero X is a blessing from the universe."
Hideki hit 'Enter,' publishing his latest piece: THE GHOST IN THE PIPES: WHY KANSAI IS SUDDENLY PERFECT
"He's there," Hideki muttered, staring at the map of Osaka as the sun began to rise outside.
Hideki grabbed a cold energy drink and cracked the tab.
"Find me the next anomaly, Sora. Follow the lack of errors. Wherever the world is too perfect to be human... that's where our X is hiding."
------
In the hidden command center of the Detnerat Tower, the walls were not made of stone, but of data.
Skeptic sat at the center of a circular console, his long, spindly fingers dancing across a keyboard that looked like it belonged on a starship.
"The data doesn't lie, Rikiya," Skeptic hissed, his voice thin and sharp. "I've run the simulations twelve times. Every time a major Haken contract is fulfilled in the Kansai region, the local entropy of the district drops to zero. It's not a hero patrol. It's an optimization."
"You've tracked the personnel?" Rikiya asked, his voice low.
"I've tracked ten thousand personnel," Skeptic snapped. "But X is a ghost. He doesn't trigger the Quirk-sensors. He doesn't show up on thermal. But wherever he goes, the Singularity doesn't look like a disaster—it looks like a masterpiece. The Quirk Singularity Theory we created predicts total chaos, but Hero X is the opposite. He is Perfect Control."
Chitose Kizuki leaned against the doorframe, a digital recorder in her hand. "The public is already primed, Rikiya. My media wings are echoing Hideki's reports. We're framing the 'Order' as something the government can't provide. If we can find where this 'Ghost' is moving next, we can stage the liberation of that entire prefecture. We make the world believe that Hero X is the revolution."
"He is moving," Tomoyasu (Skeptic) said, a grainy image of a train schedule appearing on the main screen. "The efficiency spikes in Osaka have flattened. The 'Clean Zone' is migrating East. Toward Aichi."
Re-Destro smiled, the dark stress-lines on his face smoothing out. "The Budding Generation is there. The rookie heroes. The 'Pros' of the future. Prepare the Aichi cells. We don't interfere with him. We just watch the system break in his presence."
-----
Another month has passed and Kaito stood in the empty Osaka apartment, his single suitcase packed and sitting by the door.
Kaito is nearly nineteen now. He looked at the deposit check on the counter—a full refund.
The landlord had been confused; the apartment was cleaner than when Kaito had moved in. Even the faulty wiring in the kitchen that had hummed for years was now silent and perfect.
He checked his phone. His contract for Aichi was confirmed. Industrial Quality Assurance Auditor.
"Aichi," Kaito muttered, putting on his high-visibility jacket.
It was a step up. More money. More responsibility.
Kaito walked to the station, his gait heavy and human. He took the stairs. He waited in line behind a woman who was struggling with a stroller.
Kaito reached out and helped her carry it up the steps, nodding silently when she thanked him.
As the train pulled out of the station, Kaito looked out at the sunrise over the industrial skyline.
He just hoped the Aichi dormitory had a decent pillow and that his coworkers wouldn't talk too much during his lunch break.
Kaito had a 10-yen-off coupon for a convenience store rice ball that expired in twenty minutes, and as the train picked up speed, that was the only "Update" he cared about.
The train sped toward Aichi, carrying the world's most powerful entity to his next 9-to-5.
~~~~~
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