She once crushed on and wrote fanfiction involving him. He saved her because she was the only likable character in a manga he read. They hadn't anticipated knowing each other or becoming celebrities overnight. Fighting monsters for humanity's sake sure didn't help.
Wildcard | A One-Punch Man Reverse Isekai
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Chapter One: You're a Manga, Saitama
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Grandma's shadow must have tinged the entirety of the living room when she rose to her full height. The large gulp of air she took escaped in the form of a toothy growl. Two oval eyes, hooded by a giant snout, found mine. Now that she had my full undivided attention, her grayed lips pulled back. "I've had it," she spat, "with you and the rest of our lazy, good for nothing family." Ruddy-hued fluid trickled from her maw with each word she spoke. The droplets splattered upon a dusty and claw-torn carpet.
Shudders flashed like lightning strikes through my spine. An image flashed of sharp canine teeth biting into dough-like flesh. I cringed and tossed the foul idea into the void where it belonged. "What," I said, "have you done, Grandma?"
"It isn't obvious?" she said. Her eyes rolled sideways. I didn't need to remove my gaze from her to know she referred to a nearby unmade bed bathed in weeks-old laundry and wet scarlet. "She's dead, sweetheart. I couldn't take her shit anymore and ambushed her in her sleep." She turned back around to me. "I couldn't stop there, so I…"
"You… You…." The words I dreaded wouldn't form. I couldn't find the strength to recite them before the hideous beast. This reality couldn't be happening. Not now. Not ever.
Grandma spoke for me. "I," she said, "killed her." She opened a clawed hand and examined it. "And I couldn't leave the corpse to rot in the apartment. It'd attract attention after about a week. So I gave in to my beast and ate her." Her blackened lips curled. "I liked it."
"Yo-you what?!" I squeaked, clinging to the cord of my messenger bag. Pulling it tight didn't do the same for my shivering limbs.
"What else would you want me to say?" she said, admiring her claws. "That I killed your mommy? That I'm making a meal out of you next?"
My grip tightening on the woven zigzagged stitches of my bag's cord would leave an imprint on my palm. Never mind I wouldn't have fleshy palms if Grandma got her way. I discovered the hard way how she hated biting into bones.
Mom. Grandma butchered Mom. I found skeletal remains in her bed alongside the pool of blood before the beast turned against me. She didn't care at all to preserve the dead or honor the late victim's wishes. Mom would have wanted to be cremated and have her ashes spread on her father's grave. Never… That.
"Sit still," Grandma said, dropping on all fours. The moonlight through the window behind us shone on her ebony mane. "Your death will be nice and painless if you don't struggle."
"No!" I cried, thrusting my arm at her. Oh, please. The "stop" signal I flashed with my trembling left hand wouldn't get through to this man-eating creature!
"There's nowhere to run, sweetheart," she said. "You're trapped." She stomped towards me. Each step shook the dusty rug below. The neighbors downstairs might not think anything of what happened here until it was too late. Hell, I didn't even know if anybody did live in the apartment below. But it was certain now my fate would be to die being torn to shreds.
"I never loved you," I spat, "so I hope I give you indigestion or someone puts you out of your misery or—"
She launched into the air. "Goodbye, bitch!"
I froze. My arm remained outstretched. Mom was gone. I would die now. Life would move on without us. The end.
The beast reached the peak of her leap. Her jaws loosened in anticipation.
I clamped my eyes shut. An odd, tingly feeling tumbled through my outstretched arm. My heart thumped. The blood in my veins flowed. I could have mistaken the feeling for being set alight.
In my last moments, I imagined having the ability to stand on equal ground to the beast. Somewhere in the multiverse must have been a reality where I could unleash a great power or summon a weapon to defend myself. Being on top of the food chain for once in my life would be amazing. If only I could squash her how she would with me.
Grandma howled.
The tingle in my arm reached my palm. My fingers shuddered. Even with my fear of there being nothing after death, I would have to accept this terrible fate of mine—
"Augh!"
My eyes flew open. That hadn't been the sound of a massive lump hitting the floor. Nor did it align with the victory cry of a beast making a pancake from its victim's remains. A big black furball had pounded into the defined line between the beige wall and the white ceiling on the opposite side of the living room. She made an indent in the structure. Cracks of various sizes scattered from her limp body.
"How did…" I muttered before my vision swayed. The next thing I knew, everything from my forehead and below screamed in both disbelief and pain. Thoughts scattered in all directions with a single thing being the sole clear connector between them.
I shouldn't have survived.
I grunted as pain forced my aching body to its knees. I knew Grandma couldn't have been launched like a pinball. While it would be cool to imagine, I'm not some superhero with awesome strength. It was just as impossible to happen as almost anything you read or see in fiction! But suddenly werewolves were a thing, weren't they?
I blinked. Wait a second. The ground's moving?
"What the hell?" I wheezed.
This world wouldn't slow for a moment. The floor shifted left and right and up and down and sideways and I found my grip on the filthy carpet Grandma didn't have a vacuum for and arched my back and both my arms shook. My thoughts refused to remain in one place. Why did you get out of bed this morning?
Quake?!
Get up and run, you idiot!
Is Grandma still alive?
Run!
Was it me, or was I lighter than usual? Numb too, I think. Maybe that was why I still stayed where I lay. Flesh didn't seem connected to bones, nor did my bones seem attached at the joints. The familiar weights of curly hair draping around my ears weren't slapping into my ears and neck. Everything around me shook, yet I felt the numb sensation of weightlessness.
An external force wrapped around my shoulders. It radiated warmth. I gasped and threw my head to my left. Hovering over me was a pair of dark pupils. Framing them were narrowed eyes and thin brows. "Whoa," the stranger said, sounding awfully calm for another soul caught in a natural disaster. I somehow could hear him through the thumping of furniture and presumably bodies all around us. "You did kill her. Good job."
I shrank. Hell knows how this person got into the apartment when… When… Oh. I spotted a blurry doorway lacking its most essential part: the actual door. Only then did I find I lost my glasses somewhere in the whole mess. "What," I squeaked at the stranger, "are you— How did the door— Who are—" I hung my head. Hell knows why I couldn't formulate a simple sentence.
"We gotta get you outta here," the stranger said. His calm tone betrayed the seriousness of the statement. "The ceiling's gonna collapse."
"Huh?" I didn't have the energy to shout. Harsh shivers zipped through my spine. I fought the urge to yawn. Tired? Now? I could see a massive lump in the ceiling through the blurriness. It expanded by the second thanks to the massive crack running along the center.
The stranger frowned. His sleeved arms wrapped around my waist. Next thing I knew, he had hoisted me from the ground.
My muscles clenched at this sudden weightlessness. The world still refused to give me the time to think. The shaking around us intensified. Up. Down. Left. Right. It rattled me enough to cause the blurs in my vision to worsen.
Meanwhile, Grandma's HDTV slammed to the floor from her dresser. Bikes that Mom and my sister once rode had been abandoned in a corner by the window. Now they toppled over one another. A half a decade old house phone came loose from its charging port before hitting the hardwood table it shared with a vibrating fake plant.
Somehow, my savior remained standing with his either brown or red boots grinding into the rug. I couldn't tell their real color with my blurred vision darkening. I could still see right above his boots were pants and a shirt of the same shade of yellow. What I felt of his hand was smooth fabric, not skin. He wore gloves.
He lunged for the dresser and gripped the edge.
CRASH.
"Wh-what was that?!" I gasped. The darkness behind my eyelids faded in and out. I forced them to stay open and tossed my head back. No good. His shoulder prevented me from viewing the living room.
"We'll have to leave through the balcony," the man said.
"What?" I cried. A volcano must have erupted within me when I dared to move. I winced. He couldn't be suggesting he would jump from here. "A-are you crazy?"
He went for the balcony door.
"Y-you'd get us both killed!"
"Hey," he replied, latching to the brass doorknob, "haven't you said you're tired of the word "crazy"?"
I savored the next breath I took. I wouldn't deny I disliked the word "crazy". Mom used it all the time to describe anyone and everyone who wasn't "normal". Anyone, I should say, such as Grandma. Mom's use of such language could have been why she died. Or maybe it was why they were both dead. They had both been "crazy".
My world froze. "Wh-what are you talking about?"
Those eyes of his found mine again as I squinted at him. Right there, an overdue lightbulb lit. This man's yellow and, I think, red outfit. Those eyes. Come to think about it, his voice sounded quite familiar. He kept speaking as if we just run into each other at a grocery store.
He pushed the balcony door open, followed by the screen. "This is gonna sound weird," he said, "but I know you."
That couldn't be right. Werewolves didn't exist. He didn't exist. I must have gotten caught in one of those super-rare earthquakes in the northeastern United States. It must have gotten my unconscious mind making a big deal over nothing. I sometimes escaped into fantasies whenever I felt anxious or threatened. This all happening within a dream was a first.
"You alright?" he asked.
"Y-you're," I said, "not..."
"What?"
How could I word what I wanted to say? 'You look like the hero from an anime I've watched?' That was almost quoting what the person I thought of said once.
B-O-O-M. I returned to reality. I would have thought my heart stopped if it weren't for the tiniest breaths infiltrating my lungs.
He looked back at the apartment. "There goes the ceiling. Nobody's upstairs. You would've been the only casualty."
"How do you even…?"
"Know?" he said. "I've seen this before. You visit your granny. She threatens to kill you. You kill her." He readjusted his arms around me. "You still die."
Oh, he got to be kidding me.
"Let's, uh, say I'm not from your world—"
"I-I know that!" I said.
He tilted his head ever slightly. "Huh?"
Shoot. I forced a drying swallow down my throat. "I-I mean…"
"Really, you feeling alright?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. "I'm Sai—"
"Tama?"
He recoiled.
I cringed. Crap.
The apartment building's shaking slowed, almost as if it felt my sentiment. Grandma's screen door to the balcony shut with a click. Our combined silence continued through the incomprehensible shouting of her panicked neighbors.
My rescuer stared at me once again. He was the one who finally broke the silence between us. I heard him say, "O… 'Kay. Guess I didn't have to introduce myself, Samantha…"
Darkness faded into light. I squinted at the ball of gold hanging in the air. Sunlight? No. The space around the source appeared murky. A dying streetlight, maybe?
"You're awake. About time."
The scrambled egg I called my brain jolted like it received an electric shock. And thump. Thump. Thump. Maybe I would go into cardiac arrest here and now. Or maybe this guy with an overly familiar voice and name would notice my alarm and think, 'She's got her own version of the King Engine?' I wouldn't be surprised if both happened. I would be dead.
Pressure wrenched my waist. The world went blurry. Chicken skin fueled by the touch of smooth material flashed along my arms. Empty air filled with a yelp of, "Put me down—"
"Okay, okay! Gotcha."
The burden on my abdomen slipped. I spun around when both of my feet hit the ground again. "What," I said, "the hell was any of that?! An-and… How?"
The guy in front of me raised his eyebrow.
"How do you know me? How did my granny turn into a beast? How… Anything?"
He stared at me. After a moment, he closed his eyes and exhaled. "How's about," he said, "we start with how we already know each other?" He opened his eyes again before leaning against a blurred wall. There was a light bulb positioned above us brightening his head, which appeared more barren than a wasteland. "You wanna go first?"
"How, uh, short would you like my answer?"
"Why's it matter?"
"I-if you are who you look, i-it's you who gets annoyed whenever somebody feeds you a long backstory," I said. "You prefer explanations to be short. Maybe around twenty words or less?" I stopped him before he could answer. "Bu-but Saitama and his world are fictional things created by a guy from Japan—"
He cleared his throat. "That's," he said, pointing at himself, "me."
"Well, um, a while back, I was reading about character archetypes and penned fanfic after discovering your, um, source material. It didn't take long for me to realize I don't fit in with—"
He held out his hand. Stop. More importantly, he flashed a pair of glasses at me. My glasses. "Take this," he said, "and try again."
Ugh. I knew the lack of an innate filter would haunt me. I swiped my glasses from his gloved palm and pushed them into my eyes.
When I finished adjusting them, I looked back at my rescuer. Never in my life had my throat gotten as dry as fast as it did from what my corrected eyesight revealed here. Yes, this was a man. Yes, again, he wore yellow and white with dashes of red. Though he hated the word, I had to say it: he was bald.
"Yo-you're, uh, cool," I said, "bu-but your fandom kinda scared me off. Since then, I haven't bothered to get your whole story."
My words sank past my eardrums. I tightened my knuckles and sockless toes to keep from recoiling. Even if this was a dream, I shouldn't have been brazen to confess an old interest in a boring hairless squatter whose artists and animators often drew like an ugly barnacle? Who wouldn't want to hang with the often lauded esper sisters or this dude's badass cyborg student instead?
"I can't be called a fan of yours," I said. "I hardly paid attention to anything happening outside of you and Genos' antics. I have moments where I get attached to certain concepts and people for the stupidest of reasons—"
"I know you do."
I frowned. "Excuse me?"
"Wanna guess why I'm here?" he said.
"Is it because some idiot wrote a bad story lasting three chapters about somebody she barely understood?" In reality, I composed four before I deleted the last one, replaced it with a lackluster statement about ending the story, and abandoned the project. "You're here seeking justice for whatever crimes against fiction I've commi—" Wait, no. This was stupid of me to say. "Nevermind. I don't know."
The straight line on his lips lurched into a frown. Of course that had been stupid to say! "Your writing's got nothing to do with this," he said. 'You're a manga, Sam."
"I'm a what?"
His head tilted. "You don't know what those are?"
"I do! It's a book format which originated in Japan, which is a country…" I paused. "...In, uh, this world, and I've kinda mentioned Japan already." So, when could I unnecessarily mention Saitama got his name from a prefecture in Japan, or how his home continent might be shaped like the same prefecture in Japan? How long would it take for him to get mad and yell at me for writing essays with my mouth?
His frown remained from my earlier idiotic remarks on writing. Crap. That was already a bad sign. Time to reverse this conversation into our previous topic.
"I'm a manga character?" I said. "Funny. You're a manga character." Well, technically, he first came from a webcomic which then got adapted into physical books, and, finally, an anime. "I don't think I've done anything interesting enough to warrant a story about me. You sure as hell have. Assuming you are Saitama, of course. How'd you get here?"
"Maybe," he said, shrugging, "I read a book."
"Feels like it's gonna rain," my new companion said. He easily kept pace with my smaller strides as we walked along the sidewalk. Every once in a while, he would turn his head and stare at a row of one to two-story houses. He probably hadn't seen so many of these tiny buildings in one place before, assuming he was who he said he was.
I pinned my tongue to the base of my mouth. Now wasn't the time to ask him how he felt about this change of setting, grill him on my lack of privacy, or admire the way his white cape wafted like ocean waves behind him. Before I moved out, my family rarely gave me alone time. Today's technology could record a person's every move. This man told me I had not been truly alone for who knows how long. Nobody cared about privacy anymore.
I stopped at the end of the sidewalk.
He halted behind me.
"You know," I said, "you have nowhere to go if you are Saitama. I'm not about to let one of my favorite characters live on the streets. So, um, why don't we do a test? Prove your identity." I pointed to the sky. "See this?"
Vapors high above the hills of my town blanketed a waxing gibbous moon. I didn't see any signs of rain until yesterday evening. He had been right about the possibility of rain. Current forecasts projected a thunderstorm would roll into the area by tomorrow afternoon.
He followed my finger. "What about it?"
"Use a punch to create a chasm in this cloud cover," I said. "Please? I know you did it in your fight with Boros." I knew I could leave him here if he hesitated. I didn't have much further to go. Double signposts for bus stops and a two-seater bench under an awning denoted the final leg of my journey.
His mouth twitched. Faint hints of a curve appeared at the tip. "That's all?" he asked.
I nodded.
Watching me watching him, the smirk on him grew a smidge larger. He brought his closing fist to his chest. "Sure," he said. "Here I go." He flung his arm in the air.
And suddenly, PWOOOO— BOOM!
While I could tell an air current got thrown upward, I couldn't bring myself to care. My palms hurtled for my ears. Curly hairs blew upwards from the nape of my neck. The screech from me couldn't overtake the explosion of noise.
—OOOOSH! Air pushed by his punch breached the clouds. Billions of water atoms scattered. The world opened as if it awoke and brushed the morning crust from its sleepy moon for an eye.
An indicator I hadn't gone deaf from this man's assault on my ears was the cars shrieking to life in the parking lot under the hill. I would have preferred to have lost my hearing, especially when two dozen lights in two dozen sets of windows sprang to life inside a nearby apartment building. Bystanders shouted in incomprehensible languages. Someone's dog across the street and behind a picket fence screamed.
My hair collapsed in a bird's nest fashion over my forehead. I swatted at the myriad of strands prodding my eyeballs.
He dropped his fist. He turned his back to me and surveyed the unrest he created starting from the hole in the sky. "Whoops!" he called. He spread his fingers and shook them, then glanced at the parking lot. "I got too rough there!"
"Holy shit!" I said, shrinking.
This man hadn't lied. He was Saitama, the "guy who was a hero for fun". He could land one-hit kills on his foes. He would dash into the path of incoming trains if it meant he could arrive at a sale on time. Sweet Mother-of-Goodness. Dear God. Saitama. Sai. Freaking. Tama.
"There's no stars," Saitama said, now almost not making the effort to distinguish his voice from the discordant chorus around us. "Weird. They're always showing 'em in your story."
"Light pollution," I squeaked, knowing I ran my dried mouth for no good reason.
"Weren't you writing a fantasy novel with stars as a theme? Your main guy was, uh, "Arse Hell"?"
'Arzel,' I almost corrected him. "We-well, yeah, I was writing something like that. It, um, proved to be a really stupid idea. I got lambasted to hell and back because my writing wasn't "publishing quality". I'm bad at everything having to do with writing except for thinking of great ideas and stringing together okay-ish plots. It's why I quit on my childhood dream to be published. Heck, you would've yelled at me for going on tangents because I've always had a hard time writing relevant and decent descrip—"
"Honey!" screeched a man amongst the shadows flashing across the windows and balconies. "Where'd you leave my jimjams?"
Saitama pivoted from the confusion. He straightened his back. This time, the sharpness of his features made me jump. Did the series' running gag of him being poorly drawn until he wasn't apply to him in real life? I hadn't worked up the courage to stare at his shaded form for more than ten seconds to answer that question.
"I-I never should've defined me by my writing," I said. "I sought acceptance through a talent I couldn't bother to refine. If some "big shot" fanfiction author ditched my works without saying a word or readers squealed at me for committing some unspoken sin, I often had doubts about continuing—" I found my legs bent under me. Further investigation revealed my butt seated on the nearby bus shed's metal bench.
Saitama collapsed into the seat next to me. He lifted a finger. "That's why you've got a lotta dialogue in the manga," he answered when he rendered me speechless for long enough. "You talk faster than you think."
"I guess I should shut up?" I said, discovering an abrupt interest in the cracks in the concrete sidewalk beneath us. "I-I hate these words spilling from my mouth as much as you probably do. I'm surprised you haven't yelled at me yet."
A shadow not belonging to me appeared from the corner of my eye. It lingered there for a time before moving closer. This was his shadow. Saitama's shadow.
The shock of the reveal remained in my system. I couldn't budge a muscle. I wasn't sure when I would be ready to climb that hill.
"Sam," he said. "Look at me for a sec."
"Why?" I said.
"I wanna ask you something."
I gritted my teeth. Forget not being ready. Freaking Saitama wanted me to directly confront him with little to no preparation. That could be a one-way ticket to a panic attack. So, "No. Just ask it."
He stooped upon hearing my answer. He folded one yellow pant leg over the other.
I pulled my legs into a squished criss-cross between the bench's armrest and him. This bus stop didn't get many passengers, so nobody bothered with the seating here. I nonetheless silently cursed the lack of space on the bench. My voice lowered as the car alarms in the parking lot quit squealing, though the atmosphere hadn't quieted with the sounds of other folks. Still, having one of these unruly factors disappear helped slow my pounding heartbeat.
Hold on a second. Another component in this situation seemed wrong. I took notice of an odd heaviness settling above my forehead and beginning an ascent. along the way, it flew into my loose messy curls.
I breathed.
The weight ceased gliding at the peak of my skull. It held the strands it collected hostage.
"Wh-what are you d-doing?" I sputtered. I threw my hand into the fray and swatted his fingers.
His arm didn't move when I struck him. He continued resting at the top of my head. "You've gotta stop plucking your hair," he said. "It's uneven."
"Excuse me?" I exclaimed, raising my head.
Saitama smiled when our eyes met properly for the first time. "There we go," he said.
I gulped. "I-I…"
This was real life, right? Here I sat staring at a man not much older than me. Possibly due to his training, he lost all the hair on his head aside from two thin and sharp eyebrows. I noticed he had a sharp chin when I wandered from his pitch-black eyes. Perhaps the constant warping of his true face in fiction would stay in fiction?
"Sam," he said, "has your hobby felt like one since you started sharing it?"
Fresh air entered my nostrils. Jiggling feet scraped the sidewalk before retreating to fold into a pretzel underneath me. An index finger twitched. I could discern the golden shapes on the brown leather bag the finger scraped across. I forgot what the letters spelled, nor did I care to relearn the word. Ironic given my hobby? Commitment? Duty? Obligation? Assignment? Chore? Unpaid job?
"Look!"
Saitama flickered between me and the sky before relocating the apartment building. He appeared confused until, "Oh." Upon following my lead, he spotted a small crowd cloaked in shadows either huddling together on their balconies or peeking from their windows.
"Anyone knows what the explosion could've been?" somebody shouted above the rest.
"We should go," I murmured.
"Hey," a woman said, "you two there! Did you see what happened?"
Saitama removed his glove from my head and placed it on my shoulder. "You mind not screaming this time?"
"Depends," I said, "on how hard you pull—"
He got lucky. I hadn't uttered a peep by the time we zoomed down the hill. Maybe double lucky he didn't break or demolish the bones in my arm.
I didn't even realize we moved until I glanced about my surroundings. A sapphire blue-hued sign revealed by ground lights read, "CLEARPEAK COMPLEX" by a tall tree and an arrangement of flowers. The sidewalk merged with a parking lot leading to a ten-story apartment building.
"This is where you live?" Saitama asked.
I nodded. I still couldn't believe how lucky I was to find affordable housing in a basin of nature. Surrounding the complex was a forest in the process of losing its autumn leaves. On some nights, wildlife could be spotted going about their lives. I would never forget the raccoon family who raided the building's dumpsters on the evening I moved in.
I reached into my left pockets and the felt cold metal of my house keys. "I-I think I'm done for today," I said. "Let me know if there's anything you need in the morning. Alright?"
My guest didn't say anything and glanced into the lobby through a thick window pane. I supposed his silence meant we were in the clear, so I unlocked the lobby door.
Maybe this would be a dream after all. Mom and Grandma would be alive when I came to. We would continue our lives and I would somehow forget to record this ridiculous fantasy in my dream binder. Besides, I got over Saitama like how I did any other silly obsession: by embarrassing myself. All it took was not clamming my mouth shut after having a stupid idea. After seeing everyone's baffled reactions, I would always disappear without another word.
It would be best to keep this dream to myself. There was no need to kill what little of a social life I had because a badass bald dude saved my life when it didn't even matter. So, "Alright," I said. I guess. I needed to go to sleep and think about this later. That was all.
Please.
Saitama rolled on his side. He pulled a thin sheet, his unattached cape, over himself. He should have searched for a blanket before going to sleep. Now he found it difficult to leave his spot after twenty-something minutes of drifting in and out of consciousness.
Tonight's been full of surprises, he thought. It wasn't every day he stumbled into a story he read. He bought some new books after a grocery run and left it in a backlog up until a few hours ago. How could he have known that this of all of his books would summon a magic portal to abduct him?
Now what? I can't be stuck here… His fist tightened and eyebrows furrowed. Can I?! Damn! Maybe he should have started with the other new one he had, which featured a muscular barbarian woman on the cover. But hey, maybe being stuck here wouldn't be awful? He read a few chapters of the story Sam came from before being thrown into the thick of things. She was a timid homebody who lived in an alternate reality. This alternate reality was much more diverse than his world. The country of Japan most resembled his own. Sam was from America, a "melting pot" country that celebrated the freedom to say almost whatever they pleased.
Blah, blah, blah, worldbuilding. He only came to like the main character, and she died at the end. He intended to save Sam from being crushed to death and figure the rest from there. Then he went and found, I'm "One-Punch Man"? Okay, he couldn't help smiling a tiny bit. He liked the name. Perhaps he could use it instead of Caped Baldy while he was stuck here. Nobody would mind if they liked the story Sam recognized him from. Guess I'm living here for now. I've never had a female roommate before.
More questions pestered Saitama when he flopped on the couch cushions he threw on the floor. Who else knows about me? Maybe he would have been identified if he hadn't been wandering this new world in the middle of the night. Should I do anything if I'm recognized? More importantly, his life had been drawn as a manga. I've gotta read that.
Instead of wasting any more brainpower on pointless thoughts, he yawned and adjusted his position on the floor. Sam didn't want to be bothered after what she went through. He didn't blame her. Her family put her through a lot of crap. Even so, one of them deteriorating into a monster came from too far out of left field. What's more, she lost two family members in one night. Can't hurt to check on her in the morning.
Sleep arrived to whisk him away after a few more minutes. He welcomed the plunge into darkness.
Shudders flashed like lightning strikes through my spine. An image flashed of sharp canine teeth biting into dough-like flesh. I cringed and tossed the foul idea into the void where it belonged. "What," I said, "have you done, Grandma?"
"It isn't obvious?" she said. Her eyes rolled sideways. I didn't need to remove my gaze from her to know she referred to a nearby unmade bed bathed in weeks-old laundry and wet scarlet. "She's dead, sweetheart. I couldn't take her shit anymore and ambushed her in her sleep." She turned back around to me. "I couldn't stop there, so I…"
"You… You…." The words I dreaded wouldn't form. I couldn't find the strength to recite them before the hideous beast. This reality couldn't be happening. Not now. Not ever.
Grandma spoke for me. "I," she said, "killed her." She opened a clawed hand and examined it. "And I couldn't leave the corpse to rot in the apartment. It'd attract attention after about a week. So I gave in to my beast and ate her." Her blackened lips curled. "I liked it."
"Yo-you what?!" I squeaked, clinging to the cord of my messenger bag. Pulling it tight didn't do the same for my shivering limbs.
"What else would you want me to say?" she said, admiring her claws. "That I killed your mommy? That I'm making a meal out of you next?"
My grip tightening on the woven zigzagged stitches of my bag's cord would leave an imprint on my palm. Never mind I wouldn't have fleshy palms if Grandma got her way. I discovered the hard way how she hated biting into bones.
Mom. Grandma butchered Mom. I found skeletal remains in her bed alongside the pool of blood before the beast turned against me. She didn't care at all to preserve the dead or honor the late victim's wishes. Mom would have wanted to be cremated and have her ashes spread on her father's grave. Never… That.
"Sit still," Grandma said, dropping on all fours. The moonlight through the window behind us shone on her ebony mane. "Your death will be nice and painless if you don't struggle."
"No!" I cried, thrusting my arm at her. Oh, please. The "stop" signal I flashed with my trembling left hand wouldn't get through to this man-eating creature!
"There's nowhere to run, sweetheart," she said. "You're trapped." She stomped towards me. Each step shook the dusty rug below. The neighbors downstairs might not think anything of what happened here until it was too late. Hell, I didn't even know if anybody did live in the apartment below. But it was certain now my fate would be to die being torn to shreds.
"I never loved you," I spat, "so I hope I give you indigestion or someone puts you out of your misery or—"
She launched into the air. "Goodbye, bitch!"
I froze. My arm remained outstretched. Mom was gone. I would die now. Life would move on without us. The end.
The beast reached the peak of her leap. Her jaws loosened in anticipation.
I clamped my eyes shut. An odd, tingly feeling tumbled through my outstretched arm. My heart thumped. The blood in my veins flowed. I could have mistaken the feeling for being set alight.
In my last moments, I imagined having the ability to stand on equal ground to the beast. Somewhere in the multiverse must have been a reality where I could unleash a great power or summon a weapon to defend myself. Being on top of the food chain for once in my life would be amazing. If only I could squash her how she would with me.
Grandma howled.
The tingle in my arm reached my palm. My fingers shuddered. Even with my fear of there being nothing after death, I would have to accept this terrible fate of mine—
"Augh!"
My eyes flew open. That hadn't been the sound of a massive lump hitting the floor. Nor did it align with the victory cry of a beast making a pancake from its victim's remains. A big black furball had pounded into the defined line between the beige wall and the white ceiling on the opposite side of the living room. She made an indent in the structure. Cracks of various sizes scattered from her limp body.
"How did…" I muttered before my vision swayed. The next thing I knew, everything from my forehead and below screamed in both disbelief and pain. Thoughts scattered in all directions with a single thing being the sole clear connector between them.
I shouldn't have survived.
I grunted as pain forced my aching body to its knees. I knew Grandma couldn't have been launched like a pinball. While it would be cool to imagine, I'm not some superhero with awesome strength. It was just as impossible to happen as almost anything you read or see in fiction! But suddenly werewolves were a thing, weren't they?
I blinked. Wait a second. The ground's moving?
"What the hell?" I wheezed.
This world wouldn't slow for a moment. The floor shifted left and right and up and down and sideways and I found my grip on the filthy carpet Grandma didn't have a vacuum for and arched my back and both my arms shook. My thoughts refused to remain in one place. Why did you get out of bed this morning?
Quake?!
Get up and run, you idiot!
Is Grandma still alive?
Run!
Was it me, or was I lighter than usual? Numb too, I think. Maybe that was why I still stayed where I lay. Flesh didn't seem connected to bones, nor did my bones seem attached at the joints. The familiar weights of curly hair draping around my ears weren't slapping into my ears and neck. Everything around me shook, yet I felt the numb sensation of weightlessness.
An external force wrapped around my shoulders. It radiated warmth. I gasped and threw my head to my left. Hovering over me was a pair of dark pupils. Framing them were narrowed eyes and thin brows. "Whoa," the stranger said, sounding awfully calm for another soul caught in a natural disaster. I somehow could hear him through the thumping of furniture and presumably bodies all around us. "You did kill her. Good job."
I shrank. Hell knows how this person got into the apartment when… When… Oh. I spotted a blurry doorway lacking its most essential part: the actual door. Only then did I find I lost my glasses somewhere in the whole mess. "What," I squeaked at the stranger, "are you— How did the door— Who are—" I hung my head. Hell knows why I couldn't formulate a simple sentence.
"We gotta get you outta here," the stranger said. His calm tone betrayed the seriousness of the statement. "The ceiling's gonna collapse."
"Huh?" I didn't have the energy to shout. Harsh shivers zipped through my spine. I fought the urge to yawn. Tired? Now? I could see a massive lump in the ceiling through the blurriness. It expanded by the second thanks to the massive crack running along the center.
The stranger frowned. His sleeved arms wrapped around my waist. Next thing I knew, he had hoisted me from the ground.
My muscles clenched at this sudden weightlessness. The world still refused to give me the time to think. The shaking around us intensified. Up. Down. Left. Right. It rattled me enough to cause the blurs in my vision to worsen.
Meanwhile, Grandma's HDTV slammed to the floor from her dresser. Bikes that Mom and my sister once rode had been abandoned in a corner by the window. Now they toppled over one another. A half a decade old house phone came loose from its charging port before hitting the hardwood table it shared with a vibrating fake plant.
Somehow, my savior remained standing with his either brown or red boots grinding into the rug. I couldn't tell their real color with my blurred vision darkening. I could still see right above his boots were pants and a shirt of the same shade of yellow. What I felt of his hand was smooth fabric, not skin. He wore gloves.
He lunged for the dresser and gripped the edge.
CRASH.
"Wh-what was that?!" I gasped. The darkness behind my eyelids faded in and out. I forced them to stay open and tossed my head back. No good. His shoulder prevented me from viewing the living room.
"We'll have to leave through the balcony," the man said.
"What?" I cried. A volcano must have erupted within me when I dared to move. I winced. He couldn't be suggesting he would jump from here. "A-are you crazy?"
He went for the balcony door.
"Y-you'd get us both killed!"
"Hey," he replied, latching to the brass doorknob, "haven't you said you're tired of the word "crazy"?"
I savored the next breath I took. I wouldn't deny I disliked the word "crazy". Mom used it all the time to describe anyone and everyone who wasn't "normal". Anyone, I should say, such as Grandma. Mom's use of such language could have been why she died. Or maybe it was why they were both dead. They had both been "crazy".
My world froze. "Wh-what are you talking about?"
Those eyes of his found mine again as I squinted at him. Right there, an overdue lightbulb lit. This man's yellow and, I think, red outfit. Those eyes. Come to think about it, his voice sounded quite familiar. He kept speaking as if we just run into each other at a grocery store.
He pushed the balcony door open, followed by the screen. "This is gonna sound weird," he said, "but I know you."
That couldn't be right. Werewolves didn't exist. He didn't exist. I must have gotten caught in one of those super-rare earthquakes in the northeastern United States. It must have gotten my unconscious mind making a big deal over nothing. I sometimes escaped into fantasies whenever I felt anxious or threatened. This all happening within a dream was a first.
"You alright?" he asked.
"Y-you're," I said, "not..."
"What?"
How could I word what I wanted to say? 'You look like the hero from an anime I've watched?' That was almost quoting what the person I thought of said once.
B-O-O-M. I returned to reality. I would have thought my heart stopped if it weren't for the tiniest breaths infiltrating my lungs.
He looked back at the apartment. "There goes the ceiling. Nobody's upstairs. You would've been the only casualty."
"How do you even…?"
"Know?" he said. "I've seen this before. You visit your granny. She threatens to kill you. You kill her." He readjusted his arms around me. "You still die."
Oh, he got to be kidding me.
"Let's, uh, say I'm not from your world—"
"I-I know that!" I said.
He tilted his head ever slightly. "Huh?"
Shoot. I forced a drying swallow down my throat. "I-I mean…"
"Really, you feeling alright?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. "I'm Sai—"
"Tama?"
He recoiled.
I cringed. Crap.
The apartment building's shaking slowed, almost as if it felt my sentiment. Grandma's screen door to the balcony shut with a click. Our combined silence continued through the incomprehensible shouting of her panicked neighbors.
My rescuer stared at me once again. He was the one who finally broke the silence between us. I heard him say, "O… 'Kay. Guess I didn't have to introduce myself, Samantha…"
Darkness faded into light. I squinted at the ball of gold hanging in the air. Sunlight? No. The space around the source appeared murky. A dying streetlight, maybe?
"You're awake. About time."
The scrambled egg I called my brain jolted like it received an electric shock. And thump. Thump. Thump. Maybe I would go into cardiac arrest here and now. Or maybe this guy with an overly familiar voice and name would notice my alarm and think, 'She's got her own version of the King Engine?' I wouldn't be surprised if both happened. I would be dead.
Pressure wrenched my waist. The world went blurry. Chicken skin fueled by the touch of smooth material flashed along my arms. Empty air filled with a yelp of, "Put me down—"
"Okay, okay! Gotcha."
The burden on my abdomen slipped. I spun around when both of my feet hit the ground again. "What," I said, "the hell was any of that?! An-and… How?"
The guy in front of me raised his eyebrow.
"How do you know me? How did my granny turn into a beast? How… Anything?"
He stared at me. After a moment, he closed his eyes and exhaled. "How's about," he said, "we start with how we already know each other?" He opened his eyes again before leaning against a blurred wall. There was a light bulb positioned above us brightening his head, which appeared more barren than a wasteland. "You wanna go first?"
"How, uh, short would you like my answer?"
"Why's it matter?"
"I-if you are who you look, i-it's you who gets annoyed whenever somebody feeds you a long backstory," I said. "You prefer explanations to be short. Maybe around twenty words or less?" I stopped him before he could answer. "Bu-but Saitama and his world are fictional things created by a guy from Japan—"
He cleared his throat. "That's," he said, pointing at himself, "me."
"Well, um, a while back, I was reading about character archetypes and penned fanfic after discovering your, um, source material. It didn't take long for me to realize I don't fit in with—"
He held out his hand. Stop. More importantly, he flashed a pair of glasses at me. My glasses. "Take this," he said, "and try again."
Ugh. I knew the lack of an innate filter would haunt me. I swiped my glasses from his gloved palm and pushed them into my eyes.
When I finished adjusting them, I looked back at my rescuer. Never in my life had my throat gotten as dry as fast as it did from what my corrected eyesight revealed here. Yes, this was a man. Yes, again, he wore yellow and white with dashes of red. Though he hated the word, I had to say it: he was bald.
"Yo-you're, uh, cool," I said, "bu-but your fandom kinda scared me off. Since then, I haven't bothered to get your whole story."
My words sank past my eardrums. I tightened my knuckles and sockless toes to keep from recoiling. Even if this was a dream, I shouldn't have been brazen to confess an old interest in a boring hairless squatter whose artists and animators often drew like an ugly barnacle? Who wouldn't want to hang with the often lauded esper sisters or this dude's badass cyborg student instead?
"I can't be called a fan of yours," I said. "I hardly paid attention to anything happening outside of you and Genos' antics. I have moments where I get attached to certain concepts and people for the stupidest of reasons—"
"I know you do."
I frowned. "Excuse me?"
"Wanna guess why I'm here?" he said.
"Is it because some idiot wrote a bad story lasting three chapters about somebody she barely understood?" In reality, I composed four before I deleted the last one, replaced it with a lackluster statement about ending the story, and abandoned the project. "You're here seeking justice for whatever crimes against fiction I've commi—" Wait, no. This was stupid of me to say. "Nevermind. I don't know."
The straight line on his lips lurched into a frown. Of course that had been stupid to say! "Your writing's got nothing to do with this," he said. 'You're a manga, Sam."
"I'm a what?"
His head tilted. "You don't know what those are?"
"I do! It's a book format which originated in Japan, which is a country…" I paused. "...In, uh, this world, and I've kinda mentioned Japan already." So, when could I unnecessarily mention Saitama got his name from a prefecture in Japan, or how his home continent might be shaped like the same prefecture in Japan? How long would it take for him to get mad and yell at me for writing essays with my mouth?
His frown remained from my earlier idiotic remarks on writing. Crap. That was already a bad sign. Time to reverse this conversation into our previous topic.
"I'm a manga character?" I said. "Funny. You're a manga character." Well, technically, he first came from a webcomic which then got adapted into physical books, and, finally, an anime. "I don't think I've done anything interesting enough to warrant a story about me. You sure as hell have. Assuming you are Saitama, of course. How'd you get here?"
"Maybe," he said, shrugging, "I read a book."
"Feels like it's gonna rain," my new companion said. He easily kept pace with my smaller strides as we walked along the sidewalk. Every once in a while, he would turn his head and stare at a row of one to two-story houses. He probably hadn't seen so many of these tiny buildings in one place before, assuming he was who he said he was.
I pinned my tongue to the base of my mouth. Now wasn't the time to ask him how he felt about this change of setting, grill him on my lack of privacy, or admire the way his white cape wafted like ocean waves behind him. Before I moved out, my family rarely gave me alone time. Today's technology could record a person's every move. This man told me I had not been truly alone for who knows how long. Nobody cared about privacy anymore.
I stopped at the end of the sidewalk.
He halted behind me.
"You know," I said, "you have nowhere to go if you are Saitama. I'm not about to let one of my favorite characters live on the streets. So, um, why don't we do a test? Prove your identity." I pointed to the sky. "See this?"
Vapors high above the hills of my town blanketed a waxing gibbous moon. I didn't see any signs of rain until yesterday evening. He had been right about the possibility of rain. Current forecasts projected a thunderstorm would roll into the area by tomorrow afternoon.
He followed my finger. "What about it?"
"Use a punch to create a chasm in this cloud cover," I said. "Please? I know you did it in your fight with Boros." I knew I could leave him here if he hesitated. I didn't have much further to go. Double signposts for bus stops and a two-seater bench under an awning denoted the final leg of my journey.
His mouth twitched. Faint hints of a curve appeared at the tip. "That's all?" he asked.
I nodded.
Watching me watching him, the smirk on him grew a smidge larger. He brought his closing fist to his chest. "Sure," he said. "Here I go." He flung his arm in the air.
And suddenly, PWOOOO— BOOM!
While I could tell an air current got thrown upward, I couldn't bring myself to care. My palms hurtled for my ears. Curly hairs blew upwards from the nape of my neck. The screech from me couldn't overtake the explosion of noise.
—OOOOSH! Air pushed by his punch breached the clouds. Billions of water atoms scattered. The world opened as if it awoke and brushed the morning crust from its sleepy moon for an eye.
An indicator I hadn't gone deaf from this man's assault on my ears was the cars shrieking to life in the parking lot under the hill. I would have preferred to have lost my hearing, especially when two dozen lights in two dozen sets of windows sprang to life inside a nearby apartment building. Bystanders shouted in incomprehensible languages. Someone's dog across the street and behind a picket fence screamed.
My hair collapsed in a bird's nest fashion over my forehead. I swatted at the myriad of strands prodding my eyeballs.
He dropped his fist. He turned his back to me and surveyed the unrest he created starting from the hole in the sky. "Whoops!" he called. He spread his fingers and shook them, then glanced at the parking lot. "I got too rough there!"
"Holy shit!" I said, shrinking.
This man hadn't lied. He was Saitama, the "guy who was a hero for fun". He could land one-hit kills on his foes. He would dash into the path of incoming trains if it meant he could arrive at a sale on time. Sweet Mother-of-Goodness. Dear God. Saitama. Sai. Freaking. Tama.
"There's no stars," Saitama said, now almost not making the effort to distinguish his voice from the discordant chorus around us. "Weird. They're always showing 'em in your story."
"Light pollution," I squeaked, knowing I ran my dried mouth for no good reason.
"Weren't you writing a fantasy novel with stars as a theme? Your main guy was, uh, "Arse Hell"?"
'Arzel,' I almost corrected him. "We-well, yeah, I was writing something like that. It, um, proved to be a really stupid idea. I got lambasted to hell and back because my writing wasn't "publishing quality". I'm bad at everything having to do with writing except for thinking of great ideas and stringing together okay-ish plots. It's why I quit on my childhood dream to be published. Heck, you would've yelled at me for going on tangents because I've always had a hard time writing relevant and decent descrip—"
"Honey!" screeched a man amongst the shadows flashing across the windows and balconies. "Where'd you leave my jimjams?"
Saitama pivoted from the confusion. He straightened his back. This time, the sharpness of his features made me jump. Did the series' running gag of him being poorly drawn until he wasn't apply to him in real life? I hadn't worked up the courage to stare at his shaded form for more than ten seconds to answer that question.
"I-I never should've defined me by my writing," I said. "I sought acceptance through a talent I couldn't bother to refine. If some "big shot" fanfiction author ditched my works without saying a word or readers squealed at me for committing some unspoken sin, I often had doubts about continuing—" I found my legs bent under me. Further investigation revealed my butt seated on the nearby bus shed's metal bench.
Saitama collapsed into the seat next to me. He lifted a finger. "That's why you've got a lotta dialogue in the manga," he answered when he rendered me speechless for long enough. "You talk faster than you think."
"I guess I should shut up?" I said, discovering an abrupt interest in the cracks in the concrete sidewalk beneath us. "I-I hate these words spilling from my mouth as much as you probably do. I'm surprised you haven't yelled at me yet."
A shadow not belonging to me appeared from the corner of my eye. It lingered there for a time before moving closer. This was his shadow. Saitama's shadow.
The shock of the reveal remained in my system. I couldn't budge a muscle. I wasn't sure when I would be ready to climb that hill.
"Sam," he said. "Look at me for a sec."
"Why?" I said.
"I wanna ask you something."
I gritted my teeth. Forget not being ready. Freaking Saitama wanted me to directly confront him with little to no preparation. That could be a one-way ticket to a panic attack. So, "No. Just ask it."
He stooped upon hearing my answer. He folded one yellow pant leg over the other.
I pulled my legs into a squished criss-cross between the bench's armrest and him. This bus stop didn't get many passengers, so nobody bothered with the seating here. I nonetheless silently cursed the lack of space on the bench. My voice lowered as the car alarms in the parking lot quit squealing, though the atmosphere hadn't quieted with the sounds of other folks. Still, having one of these unruly factors disappear helped slow my pounding heartbeat.
Hold on a second. Another component in this situation seemed wrong. I took notice of an odd heaviness settling above my forehead and beginning an ascent. along the way, it flew into my loose messy curls.
I breathed.
The weight ceased gliding at the peak of my skull. It held the strands it collected hostage.
"Wh-what are you d-doing?" I sputtered. I threw my hand into the fray and swatted his fingers.
His arm didn't move when I struck him. He continued resting at the top of my head. "You've gotta stop plucking your hair," he said. "It's uneven."
"Excuse me?" I exclaimed, raising my head.
Saitama smiled when our eyes met properly for the first time. "There we go," he said.
I gulped. "I-I…"
This was real life, right? Here I sat staring at a man not much older than me. Possibly due to his training, he lost all the hair on his head aside from two thin and sharp eyebrows. I noticed he had a sharp chin when I wandered from his pitch-black eyes. Perhaps the constant warping of his true face in fiction would stay in fiction?
"Sam," he said, "has your hobby felt like one since you started sharing it?"
Fresh air entered my nostrils. Jiggling feet scraped the sidewalk before retreating to fold into a pretzel underneath me. An index finger twitched. I could discern the golden shapes on the brown leather bag the finger scraped across. I forgot what the letters spelled, nor did I care to relearn the word. Ironic given my hobby? Commitment? Duty? Obligation? Assignment? Chore? Unpaid job?
"Look!"
Saitama flickered between me and the sky before relocating the apartment building. He appeared confused until, "Oh." Upon following my lead, he spotted a small crowd cloaked in shadows either huddling together on their balconies or peeking from their windows.
"Anyone knows what the explosion could've been?" somebody shouted above the rest.
"We should go," I murmured.
"Hey," a woman said, "you two there! Did you see what happened?"
Saitama removed his glove from my head and placed it on my shoulder. "You mind not screaming this time?"
"Depends," I said, "on how hard you pull—"
He got lucky. I hadn't uttered a peep by the time we zoomed down the hill. Maybe double lucky he didn't break or demolish the bones in my arm.
I didn't even realize we moved until I glanced about my surroundings. A sapphire blue-hued sign revealed by ground lights read, "CLEARPEAK COMPLEX" by a tall tree and an arrangement of flowers. The sidewalk merged with a parking lot leading to a ten-story apartment building.
"This is where you live?" Saitama asked.
I nodded. I still couldn't believe how lucky I was to find affordable housing in a basin of nature. Surrounding the complex was a forest in the process of losing its autumn leaves. On some nights, wildlife could be spotted going about their lives. I would never forget the raccoon family who raided the building's dumpsters on the evening I moved in.
I reached into my left pockets and the felt cold metal of my house keys. "I-I think I'm done for today," I said. "Let me know if there's anything you need in the morning. Alright?"
My guest didn't say anything and glanced into the lobby through a thick window pane. I supposed his silence meant we were in the clear, so I unlocked the lobby door.
Maybe this would be a dream after all. Mom and Grandma would be alive when I came to. We would continue our lives and I would somehow forget to record this ridiculous fantasy in my dream binder. Besides, I got over Saitama like how I did any other silly obsession: by embarrassing myself. All it took was not clamming my mouth shut after having a stupid idea. After seeing everyone's baffled reactions, I would always disappear without another word.
It would be best to keep this dream to myself. There was no need to kill what little of a social life I had because a badass bald dude saved my life when it didn't even matter. So, "Alright," I said. I guess. I needed to go to sleep and think about this later. That was all.
Please.
Saitama rolled on his side. He pulled a thin sheet, his unattached cape, over himself. He should have searched for a blanket before going to sleep. Now he found it difficult to leave his spot after twenty-something minutes of drifting in and out of consciousness.
Tonight's been full of surprises, he thought. It wasn't every day he stumbled into a story he read. He bought some new books after a grocery run and left it in a backlog up until a few hours ago. How could he have known that this of all of his books would summon a magic portal to abduct him?
Now what? I can't be stuck here… His fist tightened and eyebrows furrowed. Can I?! Damn! Maybe he should have started with the other new one he had, which featured a muscular barbarian woman on the cover. But hey, maybe being stuck here wouldn't be awful? He read a few chapters of the story Sam came from before being thrown into the thick of things. She was a timid homebody who lived in an alternate reality. This alternate reality was much more diverse than his world. The country of Japan most resembled his own. Sam was from America, a "melting pot" country that celebrated the freedom to say almost whatever they pleased.
Blah, blah, blah, worldbuilding. He only came to like the main character, and she died at the end. He intended to save Sam from being crushed to death and figure the rest from there. Then he went and found, I'm "One-Punch Man"? Okay, he couldn't help smiling a tiny bit. He liked the name. Perhaps he could use it instead of Caped Baldy while he was stuck here. Nobody would mind if they liked the story Sam recognized him from. Guess I'm living here for now. I've never had a female roommate before.
More questions pestered Saitama when he flopped on the couch cushions he threw on the floor. Who else knows about me? Maybe he would have been identified if he hadn't been wandering this new world in the middle of the night. Should I do anything if I'm recognized? More importantly, his life had been drawn as a manga. I've gotta read that.
Instead of wasting any more brainpower on pointless thoughts, he yawned and adjusted his position on the floor. Sam didn't want to be bothered after what she went through. He didn't blame her. Her family put her through a lot of crap. Even so, one of them deteriorating into a monster came from too far out of left field. What's more, she lost two family members in one night. Can't hurt to check on her in the morning.
Sleep arrived to whisk him away after a few more minutes. He welcomed the plunge into darkness.
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Chapter Two: The Morning After
- Pronouns
- She/Her
One thing I hated about life was how often it bewildered me. Surprises, especially those presented by my family, liked to hurl everything and the kitchen sink off-course. Depending on a situation's factors, shock, instead of frustration, would follow. Today's surprise jolted me from my sleep with the high-pitched, fast-paced scream of a violin. The sheets on my bed went flying for the opposite headboard before I could think. A small black device buzzed on the bedside table. Text appeared to have been smeared across its screen. Red and green buttons I knew to signify a blurry "X" and a smudged checkmark danced along the bottom.
Steadying my breath and rubbing the crust from an eye, I reread the screen:
I snatched my phone from the otherwise clean nightstand.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I hesitated short of pressing the checkmark. Somebody was in my house knocking at my bedroom door. I must have been careless enough to have left the front door open. I had no time to mount some sort of self-defense!
"Who's there?!" I yelped.
"Hey," the person on the opposite side called. "Get your alarm to shut up!" Their inflections reminded me of a guy who approached me late last night. He caused a stir with his simple act of pumping a fist in the air.
With his appearance came the memories, all of which zoomed by as if the onset of death throes triggered them. I stumbled into bed right after I got home. My glasses dangled half on, half off of the bedside table. I never bothered to lock my bedroom door last night. This easy accessibility allowed my visitor to push it open and peek into my room.
"It's been going off," he said, "for fifteen minutes—"
"Hello?!" I yelled, hurling my legs beneath the bedsheets.
Saitama. Holy crap, that's right! Saitama. He froze at the sight of me squirming. His pupils dilated. On a scale of cursed 'Tama faces, I would have rated this a two out of five. Had he gone higher than a four, I no doubt would have eagle-screeched and tossed a mug of lukewarm sink water across the room. That horrid face he gave the mole monster during the House of Evolution arc still haunted me from time to time.
"Sorry!" he cried, shutting the door. I assumed he hurried in the direction of the living room by the sound of his heavy footsteps. Assuming too, of course, he was real. The fact that I was alive and not buried under a pile of rubble was real. Grandma transforming into a supernatural creature and devouring my mother was real.
Oh hell no. I checked my racing heart. I kept a count of the beats. One. Two. Three. Four...
My grasp on my phone tightened. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen…
Twenty. Twenty-one. Twenty-two. Twenty-three… Through it all, my heart had not slowed. Seemed like the counting method wouldn't work here. It could be time for me to try something else.
I sucked air into my lungs. "Alrighty," I said. Now to breathe in again. "And breathe out." Breathe in a third time, and once more, "Breathe out."
Again. "In." Feel the air expand my diaphragm. "Out." Watch it sink with my disappearing breath. And again. In through the mouth. Out through the mouth. Never bother with the nose, which always finds a way to be clogged.
Breathe again. And again. And again. I kept to the pattern. I must have sat there a while before I couldn't feel my heart pumping unless I placed my hand to my chest.
"You're doing okay," I said. "Keep it up."
'No!' yelled an immediate reply. "Stop! This is weird!' A part of me always protested when I went through these anxiety-reducing exercises. She had never been a fan of allowing factors other than her monkey brain to control how she reacted to her environment.
I gritted my teeth and inhaled once more. "Shut it," I replied.
'This isn't you!'
Then again, who was I? I was twenty-two. I freaked nearly every time I had been dragged to job training sessions or pressured to find employment. Now here I was living off the few thousand dollars I had been entitled to since I turned eighteen thanks to my late grandfather. I couldn't force myself to think of the future. My present was the future.
I just bit my lip and breathed. My inner demon would have to learn to shut up and get used to this. Up until her latter years in high school, her way of dealing with stress involved shattering like glass and sobbing in plain sight of strangers. I had had enough of being sequestered because I allowed those extreme emotions to run rampant.
Breathe in again. My lungs filled.
Breathe out. They deflated. Good.
The protestor still retained control over how I viewed the various ways I could calm myself. I never admitted to my therapist that I did them. There was a peculiar embarrassment attached that I couldn't find myself associating with. This same sentiment extended to my family and all of my acquaintances. Even my sister, the person I had always been closest to, didn't know everything about me despite my old habit of jabbering nonsense whenever we were in the same room together.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Breathe in…
Thumping. The bedroom door opened once more. Saitama stood there in his superhero suit, which seemed more like sleepwear with its lack of gloves and boots. Fasteners stuck to his shoulders where his cape should have been.
I left my bed with the loose, frayed ends of my pajama pants tumbling my feet. "Go-good morning," I said. "Did you need anything?"
"Mornin'," he answered. "You alright?"
How could I answer this question? There were so many paths I could take here like one of those dumb dating sim games Saitama's acquaintance King liked to play. Should I apologize if Saitama saw my earlier lack of pants? Poke him to see if he were truly real? Build a pillow fort to hide from his anger at some game? Write another shitty fanfic about him and, this time, submit myself to horny jail? Even though I despised romance's prominence in anything and everything all of the time and didn't want to add to its oversaturation?
"Hello?"
I flinched. "What in the...?" I guess I could forgo any action and stand around like a dumbass gaping at Saitama's plain face. I shook the fog out of my mind and said to him, "Well, um, since you seem to be not a figment of my imagination, everything I saw last night happened, which means—"
"Slow down," he said.
"Or you'll scream at me to shut up?"
He crossed his arms. His face hardened.
I tensed.
Saitama leaned forward. He loomed over me like a skyscraper. That head of his blocked the light coming from the thin lamp hiding in the corner.
I gulped.
All of a sudden, his eyes widened. I blinked, and I found his expression had relaxed. He straightened his back. "You're not afraid of me," he asked, "are you?"
"It's complicated," I squeaked.
"How?" he said.
"I don't think I could explain without annoying you."
"You think I'm irritable?"
"Considering how I've seen you react when you feel people are wasting your time..."
"Why would I yell at you?"
"Because you hate infodumping. You also make nutty faces and, like me, freak if you're missing something import—"
"Yeah, and? Yelling isn't gonna solve…" He paused. "Huh?"
I facepalmed. There I went on an tangent again. What sometimes scared me about him wasn't the darn question.
"So," Saitama said, his teeth clicking from him shoving his fist beneath his chin, "you called me your favorite character—"
"One of!"
"Except you fear me?"
"There's usually a difference," I told him, "between admiring somebody from afar and meeting them in person."
We both went silent as he stood there. His eyes rolled to the ceiling. He made a "Hm," sort of sound.
Meanwhile, I nudged my glasses to the bridge of my nose.
"Say," he said, "what's with that One-Punch Man manga?"
I blinked again. "I-I never mentioned the name of your series."
"You mentioned it before you asked me to clear the sky."
"I don't remember."
"Last night sure was crazy, huh?"
"Not "crazy"," I said. "Try "chaotic"."
There was a soft noise, like an inflating balloon, which drew me to his face again. A snort? From him? At my snark? But he didn't connect his line of sight with mine. He glanced over me.
I tracked Saitama's gaze to the northern side of the room. Nothing occupied the space other than an ocean blue desk, a beat-up seat on wheels, and two shelves lined with books. Smack dab in the middle of the shelves was a collection of books with right-handed spines.
"What's with this one?" he asked. I would have questioned how I didn't see him zip past if he hadn't flashed a volume with a suspicious amount of blue papers sticking from its sides.
"Check the front cover," I said upon spotting the bored-looking dude on its side.
Saitama flipped the manga around. His shoulders jumped. He brought the book to his eye level. "Whoa, that's me?"
Uh, duh? "Yep," I said, joining him by the shelf. "There's you punching through a monster with groceries in hand. Sure sets the tone for your life, don't you think? Can I see this?"
He passed the book to me. I saw how his shadow overlapped mine when I pivoted to give us both a proper view of its contents.
"Sorry about all the sticky notes," I said. "I got overzealous when studying you and your world." I opened to a marked page. "Look at this."
He leaned forward. "'One-Punch Man Number Ten—"
"Wait, no!" I said, flipping the manga to face him. "Do you remember having this dream about the Subterraneans?"
He tilted his head. "'Reality is often disappointing,'" he read from a drooping blue sheet. "'Saitama can only get the thrill he seeks in a fight from his dreams or imagination.'" He paused to add his own, "...Yep." Then, he continued. "'I feel bad for him. Perhaps King is right when he says Saitama should look into a new—'"
I shut the book. "Yo-you're not supposed to see these. They were for the fanfic I've told you about. I wanted to have your character line up with the manga and the anime, but mostly the manga because finding the anime's dub outside of random Youtube clips costs money I'm not willing to spend…" Never mind that I felt I butchered his characterization anyway.
"'One-Punch Man Number Twelve: Saitama is immune to fire. R-I-P his clothes.'"
"Now listen here, yo-you—"
"'He doesn't seem to care he's naked... L-O-L'?"
I cowered under the blank stare tossed my way. This must be the part where he smacked me across the room for chuckling at involuntary indecency. Naked people can be amusing. Not when you knew the man who inspired others to draw him!
Saitama skimmed the space between the covers I held captive. "I've gotta see this," he mumbled, locating a page by shoving his pointer finger inside.
"I-I'll let you borrow the book," I said. "Could I remove my post-its first?"
"'One-Punch Man Number Two: best backstory ten-outta-ten. Nothing else is needed.'"
Believe me, this probing tempted me to do a reenactment of the scene where Genos saw the outcome of Saitama's hero exam. 'Stop analyzing it, jerk!'
I bit my tongue and sandwiched the covers and pages around Saitama's finger like an oversized hotdog bun. "Could you not read those, please?" I said.
Curiosity weaved into his expression through an upturned eyebrow. "Didn't you quit writing your story about me?" he said.
I flipped to the closest page with a post-it sticking from it. "Yes," I said when I removed the note. "But some things are meant to be private. I thought you didn't care what others thought about you."
His hand went slack.
I reclaimed the book and went to work removing the rest of the notes. When I finished skimming the pages, I tossed the manga at him. It left me unsurprised to see him catch it before it fell a hairsbreadth from his chest.
"I'm making myself breakfast," I said. "You can do whatever you want."
"'Saitama says he has no emotions. He gets irritated by a bug, which provides him with a challenge. Albeit, not one related to strength. His frustration progresses to the message ironically written on his shirt: rage.'"
I paused.
"'I liked this scene more in the anime,'" Saitama read. "'He called the mosquito everybody and their mother has joked about a bastard and swallowed bug spray.'"
I turned around.
"'I don't have a crush on Genos. His befuddlement when staring at a naked man is still cute. Way better than his expression in the anime. Nobody can top Saitama as best boy, though.'"
I clapped my palm full of papers against the door. I knew I took everything he hadn't seen from the book. He must have used his super-speed to steal one from me!
"I-in case you haven't realized," I said, "I'm in a position where I can tell the world that I'm harboring the strongest, formerly fictional man alive. You would be under way more scrutiny here than you are back home. News crews would cover your every move. Governments worldwide would want to learn more about a real-life superhero. I'm not going to get started on how your fanbase might react to you being here."
The corner of Saitama's mouth slanted.
I let loose another breath. "Do you understand?"
"...I'm "best boy"?"
I didn't know whether to be baffled or to punt a pillow across the room. A question on an unrelated topic was the first thing that came to his mind. Ugh.
The hush we shared deafened the apartment. We held an impromptu staring contest.
His expression never changed. What else could I weaponize after threatening to toss him to the figurative dogs? Force him to help me budget my next trip to the town commons?
Unfortunately, "Saitama" was a rearrangement and single letter swap from the word "stamina". Enough tension huddled about my eyes to nudge them into a narrow frame before long.
Saitama's posture only loosened. He made more of an effort to connect his line of sight with mine the longer we kept staring at each other. And then, "Samantha," he said. "I've just realized something."
He paralyzed me with a simple word. Samantha. He used my full name again. People never used my first full name. Like, they all met one night and agreed I should be called Sam or Sammy. I didn't mind the change. "Samantha" attained an icky feeling I could never scrub clean after my school years.
"Wh-what?" I replied. "What is it?"
"You never lost yourself," Saitama said. "You've been trying to get recognition for a thing you should be doing for yourself if you love it so much. Your writing isn't a hobby, otherwise. It's a job without the part where you get paid."
Crap. He arrived at the same conclusion I made last night. Talk about packing a punch. "What am I supposed to do?"
"What do you want to do?"
"I don't know where to begin." Even as I spoke, bubbles of emotion fizzled through my steaming psyche until they ate their way to the forefront. They whined like excited puppies wanting to run wild through a backyard. I reckoned there was no reason to keep them inside, which is why I threw open the door and set them free. I expected another long-winded speech— "Why?"
"'Why' what?"
Stupid me. I didn't give him context. "Why do you care?"
"You don't want me to?" he said.
I winced at the sharp tone he carved into me. Good going, Sam. I brought a guy home and lost him in less than twelve hours. 'I'm nothing!' I wanted to reply. 'How did you find me interesting?!' Except, no. I bowed my head. "I-I mean…"
"Remember what you said last night?" Saitama said. Weirdly enough, his sharp tone disappeared. "If I saw you by my place, I wouldn't leave you on the street either."
My neck shot up so fast, the pain that came after might have meant I sprained it. First of all, wait, what? And second, 'Let's clear the air. I liked you superficially, not because you had personality traits I clicked with!' However, we went through all of that trouble last night and now, which paid off because...
"All this talk is making me hungry," Saitama said after glancing again at the manga which shared his likeness. "You've got anything good for breakfast?"
Because…
"You're still upset about the notes? I didn't mean to read them 'til I noticed your handwrit— Eh?"
I couldn't help myself. I tackled the poor guy. "You would what?!"
His pointed glare returned. "Oi," he said. "I'm not into you like that. I'm just saying 'cause, you know…"
"I-I know," I squeaked, shrinking. "I guess. Hearing those words coming from you makes this whole situation even more..." I wanted to smack myself when I felt my fingers brush his smooth superhero suit. What was I thinking by invading his space after complaining about him disturbing mine? Wasn't that hypocritical of me? More importantly, why couldn't I let him go?
An outcome out of everything I expected from him should have been him simply removing my hands from his person. The emotions welling inside me and my knowledge of him wouldn't agree until he took a step back. Even if I annoyed him to the point he would rush at me with fists blazing, he wouldn't kill me. He always held back against other people.
"I guess we understand each other," he said. "I'll ask the next time I wanna see your stuff."
I couldn't meet him in the eye. "I went overboard with my reaction to you reading old statements. You're not going to try something stupid with whatever information you have, are you?"
"'One-Punch Man Number Three: a monster is killed in a single blow. He has time to scream before dying.
"'Saitama's fist is steaming.'"
I noticed one less piece of paper in my hand. "At this rate, you could toss everything I own in the trash," I grumbled. "I wouldn't notice until you told me to look out the window."
His stolen post-its disappeared beneath his tightening fist. He sighed. "You're acting like I'm gonna hurt you," he said. "Here's the thing. I don't wanna. You've been through enough crap."
I held my breath.
"Aren't these just observations about me?" Saitama continued. "I see Genos writing them all the time. You ask me, what he's doing's pointless. You doing it? Guess it's justified if you're writing silly stories about me. That's all they are, right?"
Right. Of course. These were my old opinions on and observations of Saitama, not journal entries repeating themselves like Groundhog Day on family issues or extreme essays spouting ill-researched opinions on the United States' political climate. They were solely notes on some guy.
I crushed my post-its in a ball too. "I don't need them anymore. I'm not planning to return to—"
"Do what you want with 'em," he said before opening his hand. Tiny pieces of blue paper stuck to the creases in his palm. "Except these. Whoops."
"I'm going to throw these old notes in the garbage," I announced, shuffling past him. "Then I'm making myself some breakfast. Anything in particular you'd want, Tama?"
"Tama?" he called after me.
"Does it bother you?" I said.
"...It's okay."
"Where're the eggs?" Sam mumbled. She squatted to reach into the lowest shelf in her fridge.
The three shelves were organized by food type. Saitama spotted leftovers, most of the pasta variety, kept in plastic containers on the top. These were followed by milk and other drinks on the middle shelf and assorted vegetables on the bottom. Racks hanging from the door held sticks of butter and a few condiments.
She seems fine now, he thought.
Sam cared a ton for her privacy. He should have let her do her thing before taking the book. He went further than he would have liked by admitting he liked her the most out of the cast in Seeing Red, Feeling Blue.
Everybody else in her series either tested his patience within five seconds of meeting them, got wrapped in too many problems for their mental health, or simply were boring to read about. It disappointed him when the manga revealed Sam wouldn't be the final protagonist. It fell on some other girl he forgot the name of.
He never expected Sam to be interested enough in his life to the point of writing fanfiction. He wouldn't want to read it even if it were kind of good. Like, what if…? Gah, no, he couldn't think about being the subject of those sorts of things. He would faint from embarrassment!
"Hey, Tama? How many eggs do you want?" There she went, calling him that nickname again. It didn't matter what she called him, he supposed, as long as she didn't stoop to insulting him. He doubted she had it in her to be rude unless she felt threatened or hurt, though.
"I'll take two," he said.
"Two each it is," Sam said, scooping the eggs from the carton and placing them on the counter.
Saitama snuck a peek at the manga hanging by his loose fingers. The cover illustration of himself glared at him with a gloved fist. White and black splotches in the pages on the side would have perfectly blurred together in a non-pattern were it not for a slit of blue near the bottom of the stack. He opened to the last page marked by a rogue post-it.
"'One Punch Man Number Nineteen,'" he read. "'Saitama has a move he calls Consecutive Normal Punches, which are fists thrown so fast it appears he's become one of those one-hundred armed monsters from Greek mythology'...?
"'He has a set of "Serious Series" moves that are called for when he puts real effort into his actions.'"
Sam exhaled.
Saitama shut the book. He placed it as far from the mess on the stove as he could. "You could teach Genos a thing or two about note-taking."
"I just recorded what I saw on the page and compared them to other things I've seen or heard about you," she said.
"Better than the nonsense I've read from him."
"Like the diagram he drew of your reading form in book three?" she replied. "You know, the "420" in there might've been a reference to smoking weed by the illustrators."
"Eh?"
She sighed and cracked an egg over the frying pan on the stove. "Never mind. My mind likes to connect pop culture references to conversations. Four-twenty's one of these old internet jokes I don't care much for." She swung her head to him. "Something tells me you would be their next big obsession if they knew you were here."
He stopped short of getting the ketchup from the fridge. "Am I that important to you guys?"
"You've technically been here since 2009, I think?" she said. "It's 2023 now, which is ample time for a fanbase to form around you and your series." Sam dropped the spatula she used to nudge the first batch of eggs. "It could see a massive boom with you around. And I'll be honest, I'm scared of what's to come. I-I've never meshed well with your fandom. What was important to me rarely was the same for them.
"I don't want to get caught in a media circus. I've seen the mental toll they can take on anyone who gets more than fifteen minutes of fame. Yet I can't bring myself to—"
"Stop," Saitama said.
She froze. Her shoulders sank when she probably realized what he meant. "Oh."
"I quit paying attention ages ago."
"Sorry, Tama," she said, sighing. "Bad habits die hard, I guess."
He tossed the ketchup bottle between his palms. "I don't care about what they think of— Oops."
The wall and tiled kitchen floor by the stove dripped in scarlet. Saitama's thrown bottle laid at Sam's feet. Its cap soaked the ends of her long pajama pants and got worse the further he followed the trail to her head. Ketchup dribbled from her brown curls to form ponds and rivers on her shoulders, neck, and back. Spots on her left cheek imitated oversized freckles.
Sam raked her nails across her face. "Note to self," she said, sighing. "Saitama can calculate a jump between two space rocks. He can't do the same for small objects he shouldn't be playing with."
Saitama's pant leg felt soaked all of a sudden. The sensation, when he glanced down, came from a bright yellow sponge flopping to the floor at his feet.
"So, um, maybe you could drop and give me one-hundred push-ups, sit-ups, and squats each," Sam said, "I guess? Or, you know, clean up your mess? You've, um, sort of turned my kitchen into a crime scene."
"You forgot the ten-kilometer run," he said.
She gestured at the space between them. The fridge he stood by sat a mere five steps from the stove. "What's that in American measurements?" she said, rolling her eyes. "Six miles, I, um, think? Like, you'd do that inside my apartment?" She gestured at him. "You can't be serious."
He squeezed behind her and brushed the sponge across the wall. "Not as serious as—" He cleared his throat and dove for the mess. "Serious Series: Serious Cleaning!"
"That's a move of yours?!"
He chuckled to himself. This was the first time he ever met a fan of his aside from Genos. Did Genos count as a fan? Eh, whatever. He might as well humor her since she opened her place to him. As a bonus, it would distract her from the latest development in this alternate universe he helped create.
...Why couldn't he have woken up one day with flowing hair like hers?
Steadying my breath and rubbing the crust from an eye, I reread the screen:
ALARM - 7:45
Take your medication!
Take your medication!
I snatched my phone from the otherwise clean nightstand.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I hesitated short of pressing the checkmark. Somebody was in my house knocking at my bedroom door. I must have been careless enough to have left the front door open. I had no time to mount some sort of self-defense!
"Who's there?!" I yelped.
"Hey," the person on the opposite side called. "Get your alarm to shut up!" Their inflections reminded me of a guy who approached me late last night. He caused a stir with his simple act of pumping a fist in the air.
With his appearance came the memories, all of which zoomed by as if the onset of death throes triggered them. I stumbled into bed right after I got home. My glasses dangled half on, half off of the bedside table. I never bothered to lock my bedroom door last night. This easy accessibility allowed my visitor to push it open and peek into my room.
"It's been going off," he said, "for fifteen minutes—"
"Hello?!" I yelled, hurling my legs beneath the bedsheets.
Saitama. Holy crap, that's right! Saitama. He froze at the sight of me squirming. His pupils dilated. On a scale of cursed 'Tama faces, I would have rated this a two out of five. Had he gone higher than a four, I no doubt would have eagle-screeched and tossed a mug of lukewarm sink water across the room. That horrid face he gave the mole monster during the House of Evolution arc still haunted me from time to time.
"Sorry!" he cried, shutting the door. I assumed he hurried in the direction of the living room by the sound of his heavy footsteps. Assuming too, of course, he was real. The fact that I was alive and not buried under a pile of rubble was real. Grandma transforming into a supernatural creature and devouring my mother was real.
Oh hell no. I checked my racing heart. I kept a count of the beats. One. Two. Three. Four...
My grasp on my phone tightened. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen…
Twenty. Twenty-one. Twenty-two. Twenty-three… Through it all, my heart had not slowed. Seemed like the counting method wouldn't work here. It could be time for me to try something else.
I sucked air into my lungs. "Alrighty," I said. Now to breathe in again. "And breathe out." Breathe in a third time, and once more, "Breathe out."
Again. "In." Feel the air expand my diaphragm. "Out." Watch it sink with my disappearing breath. And again. In through the mouth. Out through the mouth. Never bother with the nose, which always finds a way to be clogged.
Breathe again. And again. And again. I kept to the pattern. I must have sat there a while before I couldn't feel my heart pumping unless I placed my hand to my chest.
"You're doing okay," I said. "Keep it up."
'No!' yelled an immediate reply. "Stop! This is weird!' A part of me always protested when I went through these anxiety-reducing exercises. She had never been a fan of allowing factors other than her monkey brain to control how she reacted to her environment.
I gritted my teeth and inhaled once more. "Shut it," I replied.
'This isn't you!'
Then again, who was I? I was twenty-two. I freaked nearly every time I had been dragged to job training sessions or pressured to find employment. Now here I was living off the few thousand dollars I had been entitled to since I turned eighteen thanks to my late grandfather. I couldn't force myself to think of the future. My present was the future.
I just bit my lip and breathed. My inner demon would have to learn to shut up and get used to this. Up until her latter years in high school, her way of dealing with stress involved shattering like glass and sobbing in plain sight of strangers. I had had enough of being sequestered because I allowed those extreme emotions to run rampant.
Breathe in again. My lungs filled.
Breathe out. They deflated. Good.
The protestor still retained control over how I viewed the various ways I could calm myself. I never admitted to my therapist that I did them. There was a peculiar embarrassment attached that I couldn't find myself associating with. This same sentiment extended to my family and all of my acquaintances. Even my sister, the person I had always been closest to, didn't know everything about me despite my old habit of jabbering nonsense whenever we were in the same room together.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Breathe in…
Thumping. The bedroom door opened once more. Saitama stood there in his superhero suit, which seemed more like sleepwear with its lack of gloves and boots. Fasteners stuck to his shoulders where his cape should have been.
I left my bed with the loose, frayed ends of my pajama pants tumbling my feet. "Go-good morning," I said. "Did you need anything?"
"Mornin'," he answered. "You alright?"
How could I answer this question? There were so many paths I could take here like one of those dumb dating sim games Saitama's acquaintance King liked to play. Should I apologize if Saitama saw my earlier lack of pants? Poke him to see if he were truly real? Build a pillow fort to hide from his anger at some game? Write another shitty fanfic about him and, this time, submit myself to horny jail? Even though I despised romance's prominence in anything and everything all of the time and didn't want to add to its oversaturation?
"Hello?"
I flinched. "What in the...?" I guess I could forgo any action and stand around like a dumbass gaping at Saitama's plain face. I shook the fog out of my mind and said to him, "Well, um, since you seem to be not a figment of my imagination, everything I saw last night happened, which means—"
"Slow down," he said.
"Or you'll scream at me to shut up?"
He crossed his arms. His face hardened.
I tensed.
Saitama leaned forward. He loomed over me like a skyscraper. That head of his blocked the light coming from the thin lamp hiding in the corner.
I gulped.
All of a sudden, his eyes widened. I blinked, and I found his expression had relaxed. He straightened his back. "You're not afraid of me," he asked, "are you?"
"It's complicated," I squeaked.
"How?" he said.
"I don't think I could explain without annoying you."
"You think I'm irritable?"
"Considering how I've seen you react when you feel people are wasting your time..."
"Why would I yell at you?"
"Because you hate infodumping. You also make nutty faces and, like me, freak if you're missing something import—"
"Yeah, and? Yelling isn't gonna solve…" He paused. "Huh?"
I facepalmed. There I went on an tangent again. What sometimes scared me about him wasn't the darn question.
"So," Saitama said, his teeth clicking from him shoving his fist beneath his chin, "you called me your favorite character—"
"One of!"
"Except you fear me?"
"There's usually a difference," I told him, "between admiring somebody from afar and meeting them in person."
We both went silent as he stood there. His eyes rolled to the ceiling. He made a "Hm," sort of sound.
Meanwhile, I nudged my glasses to the bridge of my nose.
"Say," he said, "what's with that One-Punch Man manga?"
I blinked again. "I-I never mentioned the name of your series."
"You mentioned it before you asked me to clear the sky."
"I don't remember."
"Last night sure was crazy, huh?"
"Not "crazy"," I said. "Try "chaotic"."
There was a soft noise, like an inflating balloon, which drew me to his face again. A snort? From him? At my snark? But he didn't connect his line of sight with mine. He glanced over me.
I tracked Saitama's gaze to the northern side of the room. Nothing occupied the space other than an ocean blue desk, a beat-up seat on wheels, and two shelves lined with books. Smack dab in the middle of the shelves was a collection of books with right-handed spines.
"What's with this one?" he asked. I would have questioned how I didn't see him zip past if he hadn't flashed a volume with a suspicious amount of blue papers sticking from its sides.
"Check the front cover," I said upon spotting the bored-looking dude on its side.
Saitama flipped the manga around. His shoulders jumped. He brought the book to his eye level. "Whoa, that's me?"
Uh, duh? "Yep," I said, joining him by the shelf. "There's you punching through a monster with groceries in hand. Sure sets the tone for your life, don't you think? Can I see this?"
He passed the book to me. I saw how his shadow overlapped mine when I pivoted to give us both a proper view of its contents.
"Sorry about all the sticky notes," I said. "I got overzealous when studying you and your world." I opened to a marked page. "Look at this."
He leaned forward. "'One-Punch Man Number Ten—"
"Wait, no!" I said, flipping the manga to face him. "Do you remember having this dream about the Subterraneans?"
He tilted his head. "'Reality is often disappointing,'" he read from a drooping blue sheet. "'Saitama can only get the thrill he seeks in a fight from his dreams or imagination.'" He paused to add his own, "...Yep." Then, he continued. "'I feel bad for him. Perhaps King is right when he says Saitama should look into a new—'"
I shut the book. "Yo-you're not supposed to see these. They were for the fanfic I've told you about. I wanted to have your character line up with the manga and the anime, but mostly the manga because finding the anime's dub outside of random Youtube clips costs money I'm not willing to spend…" Never mind that I felt I butchered his characterization anyway.
"'One-Punch Man Number Twelve: Saitama is immune to fire. R-I-P his clothes.'"
"Now listen here, yo-you—"
"'He doesn't seem to care he's naked... L-O-L'?"
I cowered under the blank stare tossed my way. This must be the part where he smacked me across the room for chuckling at involuntary indecency. Naked people can be amusing. Not when you knew the man who inspired others to draw him!
Saitama skimmed the space between the covers I held captive. "I've gotta see this," he mumbled, locating a page by shoving his pointer finger inside.
"I-I'll let you borrow the book," I said. "Could I remove my post-its first?"
"'One-Punch Man Number Two: best backstory ten-outta-ten. Nothing else is needed.'"
Believe me, this probing tempted me to do a reenactment of the scene where Genos saw the outcome of Saitama's hero exam. 'Stop analyzing it, jerk!'
I bit my tongue and sandwiched the covers and pages around Saitama's finger like an oversized hotdog bun. "Could you not read those, please?" I said.
Curiosity weaved into his expression through an upturned eyebrow. "Didn't you quit writing your story about me?" he said.
I flipped to the closest page with a post-it sticking from it. "Yes," I said when I removed the note. "But some things are meant to be private. I thought you didn't care what others thought about you."
His hand went slack.
I reclaimed the book and went to work removing the rest of the notes. When I finished skimming the pages, I tossed the manga at him. It left me unsurprised to see him catch it before it fell a hairsbreadth from his chest.
"I'm making myself breakfast," I said. "You can do whatever you want."
"'Saitama says he has no emotions. He gets irritated by a bug, which provides him with a challenge. Albeit, not one related to strength. His frustration progresses to the message ironically written on his shirt: rage.'"
I paused.
"'I liked this scene more in the anime,'" Saitama read. "'He called the mosquito everybody and their mother has joked about a bastard and swallowed bug spray.'"
I turned around.
"'I don't have a crush on Genos. His befuddlement when staring at a naked man is still cute. Way better than his expression in the anime. Nobody can top Saitama as best boy, though.'"
I clapped my palm full of papers against the door. I knew I took everything he hadn't seen from the book. He must have used his super-speed to steal one from me!
"I-in case you haven't realized," I said, "I'm in a position where I can tell the world that I'm harboring the strongest, formerly fictional man alive. You would be under way more scrutiny here than you are back home. News crews would cover your every move. Governments worldwide would want to learn more about a real-life superhero. I'm not going to get started on how your fanbase might react to you being here."
The corner of Saitama's mouth slanted.
I let loose another breath. "Do you understand?"
"...I'm "best boy"?"
I didn't know whether to be baffled or to punt a pillow across the room. A question on an unrelated topic was the first thing that came to his mind. Ugh.
The hush we shared deafened the apartment. We held an impromptu staring contest.
His expression never changed. What else could I weaponize after threatening to toss him to the figurative dogs? Force him to help me budget my next trip to the town commons?
Unfortunately, "Saitama" was a rearrangement and single letter swap from the word "stamina". Enough tension huddled about my eyes to nudge them into a narrow frame before long.
Saitama's posture only loosened. He made more of an effort to connect his line of sight with mine the longer we kept staring at each other. And then, "Samantha," he said. "I've just realized something."
He paralyzed me with a simple word. Samantha. He used my full name again. People never used my first full name. Like, they all met one night and agreed I should be called Sam or Sammy. I didn't mind the change. "Samantha" attained an icky feeling I could never scrub clean after my school years.
"Wh-what?" I replied. "What is it?"
"You never lost yourself," Saitama said. "You've been trying to get recognition for a thing you should be doing for yourself if you love it so much. Your writing isn't a hobby, otherwise. It's a job without the part where you get paid."
Crap. He arrived at the same conclusion I made last night. Talk about packing a punch. "What am I supposed to do?"
"What do you want to do?"
"I don't know where to begin." Even as I spoke, bubbles of emotion fizzled through my steaming psyche until they ate their way to the forefront. They whined like excited puppies wanting to run wild through a backyard. I reckoned there was no reason to keep them inside, which is why I threw open the door and set them free. I expected another long-winded speech— "Why?"
"'Why' what?"
Stupid me. I didn't give him context. "Why do you care?"
"You don't want me to?" he said.
I winced at the sharp tone he carved into me. Good going, Sam. I brought a guy home and lost him in less than twelve hours. 'I'm nothing!' I wanted to reply. 'How did you find me interesting?!' Except, no. I bowed my head. "I-I mean…"
"Remember what you said last night?" Saitama said. Weirdly enough, his sharp tone disappeared. "If I saw you by my place, I wouldn't leave you on the street either."
My neck shot up so fast, the pain that came after might have meant I sprained it. First of all, wait, what? And second, 'Let's clear the air. I liked you superficially, not because you had personality traits I clicked with!' However, we went through all of that trouble last night and now, which paid off because...
"All this talk is making me hungry," Saitama said after glancing again at the manga which shared his likeness. "You've got anything good for breakfast?"
Because…
"You're still upset about the notes? I didn't mean to read them 'til I noticed your handwrit— Eh?"
I couldn't help myself. I tackled the poor guy. "You would what?!"
His pointed glare returned. "Oi," he said. "I'm not into you like that. I'm just saying 'cause, you know…"
"I-I know," I squeaked, shrinking. "I guess. Hearing those words coming from you makes this whole situation even more..." I wanted to smack myself when I felt my fingers brush his smooth superhero suit. What was I thinking by invading his space after complaining about him disturbing mine? Wasn't that hypocritical of me? More importantly, why couldn't I let him go?
An outcome out of everything I expected from him should have been him simply removing my hands from his person. The emotions welling inside me and my knowledge of him wouldn't agree until he took a step back. Even if I annoyed him to the point he would rush at me with fists blazing, he wouldn't kill me. He always held back against other people.
"I guess we understand each other," he said. "I'll ask the next time I wanna see your stuff."
I couldn't meet him in the eye. "I went overboard with my reaction to you reading old statements. You're not going to try something stupid with whatever information you have, are you?"
"'One-Punch Man Number Three: a monster is killed in a single blow. He has time to scream before dying.
"'Saitama's fist is steaming.'"
I noticed one less piece of paper in my hand. "At this rate, you could toss everything I own in the trash," I grumbled. "I wouldn't notice until you told me to look out the window."
His stolen post-its disappeared beneath his tightening fist. He sighed. "You're acting like I'm gonna hurt you," he said. "Here's the thing. I don't wanna. You've been through enough crap."
I held my breath.
"Aren't these just observations about me?" Saitama continued. "I see Genos writing them all the time. You ask me, what he's doing's pointless. You doing it? Guess it's justified if you're writing silly stories about me. That's all they are, right?"
Right. Of course. These were my old opinions on and observations of Saitama, not journal entries repeating themselves like Groundhog Day on family issues or extreme essays spouting ill-researched opinions on the United States' political climate. They were solely notes on some guy.
I crushed my post-its in a ball too. "I don't need them anymore. I'm not planning to return to—"
"Do what you want with 'em," he said before opening his hand. Tiny pieces of blue paper stuck to the creases in his palm. "Except these. Whoops."
"I'm going to throw these old notes in the garbage," I announced, shuffling past him. "Then I'm making myself some breakfast. Anything in particular you'd want, Tama?"
"Tama?" he called after me.
"Does it bother you?" I said.
"...It's okay."
"Where're the eggs?" Sam mumbled. She squatted to reach into the lowest shelf in her fridge.
The three shelves were organized by food type. Saitama spotted leftovers, most of the pasta variety, kept in plastic containers on the top. These were followed by milk and other drinks on the middle shelf and assorted vegetables on the bottom. Racks hanging from the door held sticks of butter and a few condiments.
She seems fine now, he thought.
Sam cared a ton for her privacy. He should have let her do her thing before taking the book. He went further than he would have liked by admitting he liked her the most out of the cast in Seeing Red, Feeling Blue.
Everybody else in her series either tested his patience within five seconds of meeting them, got wrapped in too many problems for their mental health, or simply were boring to read about. It disappointed him when the manga revealed Sam wouldn't be the final protagonist. It fell on some other girl he forgot the name of.
He never expected Sam to be interested enough in his life to the point of writing fanfiction. He wouldn't want to read it even if it were kind of good. Like, what if…? Gah, no, he couldn't think about being the subject of those sorts of things. He would faint from embarrassment!
"Hey, Tama? How many eggs do you want?" There she went, calling him that nickname again. It didn't matter what she called him, he supposed, as long as she didn't stoop to insulting him. He doubted she had it in her to be rude unless she felt threatened or hurt, though.
"I'll take two," he said.
"Two each it is," Sam said, scooping the eggs from the carton and placing them on the counter.
Saitama snuck a peek at the manga hanging by his loose fingers. The cover illustration of himself glared at him with a gloved fist. White and black splotches in the pages on the side would have perfectly blurred together in a non-pattern were it not for a slit of blue near the bottom of the stack. He opened to the last page marked by a rogue post-it.
"'One Punch Man Number Nineteen,'" he read. "'Saitama has a move he calls Consecutive Normal Punches, which are fists thrown so fast it appears he's become one of those one-hundred armed monsters from Greek mythology'...?
"'He has a set of "Serious Series" moves that are called for when he puts real effort into his actions.'"
Sam exhaled.
Saitama shut the book. He placed it as far from the mess on the stove as he could. "You could teach Genos a thing or two about note-taking."
"I just recorded what I saw on the page and compared them to other things I've seen or heard about you," she said.
"Better than the nonsense I've read from him."
"Like the diagram he drew of your reading form in book three?" she replied. "You know, the "420" in there might've been a reference to smoking weed by the illustrators."
"Eh?"
She sighed and cracked an egg over the frying pan on the stove. "Never mind. My mind likes to connect pop culture references to conversations. Four-twenty's one of these old internet jokes I don't care much for." She swung her head to him. "Something tells me you would be their next big obsession if they knew you were here."
He stopped short of getting the ketchup from the fridge. "Am I that important to you guys?"
"You've technically been here since 2009, I think?" she said. "It's 2023 now, which is ample time for a fanbase to form around you and your series." Sam dropped the spatula she used to nudge the first batch of eggs. "It could see a massive boom with you around. And I'll be honest, I'm scared of what's to come. I-I've never meshed well with your fandom. What was important to me rarely was the same for them.
"I don't want to get caught in a media circus. I've seen the mental toll they can take on anyone who gets more than fifteen minutes of fame. Yet I can't bring myself to—"
"Stop," Saitama said.
She froze. Her shoulders sank when she probably realized what he meant. "Oh."
"I quit paying attention ages ago."
"Sorry, Tama," she said, sighing. "Bad habits die hard, I guess."
He tossed the ketchup bottle between his palms. "I don't care about what they think of— Oops."
The wall and tiled kitchen floor by the stove dripped in scarlet. Saitama's thrown bottle laid at Sam's feet. Its cap soaked the ends of her long pajama pants and got worse the further he followed the trail to her head. Ketchup dribbled from her brown curls to form ponds and rivers on her shoulders, neck, and back. Spots on her left cheek imitated oversized freckles.
Sam raked her nails across her face. "Note to self," she said, sighing. "Saitama can calculate a jump between two space rocks. He can't do the same for small objects he shouldn't be playing with."
Saitama's pant leg felt soaked all of a sudden. The sensation, when he glanced down, came from a bright yellow sponge flopping to the floor at his feet.
"So, um, maybe you could drop and give me one-hundred push-ups, sit-ups, and squats each," Sam said, "I guess? Or, you know, clean up your mess? You've, um, sort of turned my kitchen into a crime scene."
"You forgot the ten-kilometer run," he said.
She gestured at the space between them. The fridge he stood by sat a mere five steps from the stove. "What's that in American measurements?" she said, rolling her eyes. "Six miles, I, um, think? Like, you'd do that inside my apartment?" She gestured at him. "You can't be serious."
He squeezed behind her and brushed the sponge across the wall. "Not as serious as—" He cleared his throat and dove for the mess. "Serious Series: Serious Cleaning!"
"That's a move of yours?!"
He chuckled to himself. This was the first time he ever met a fan of his aside from Genos. Did Genos count as a fan? Eh, whatever. He might as well humor her since she opened her place to him. As a bonus, it would distract her from the latest development in this alternate universe he helped create.
...Why couldn't he have woken up one day with flowing hair like hers?
Heya, folks! I'm giving you Chapter Two right at midnight. Means I can go to sleep and not have to worry about posting in the morning. Let me know if you enjoyed this! Chapter Three will be out next week on Thursday/Friday at a more reasonable time if Real Life allows me to have a better sleep schedule.
Please R&R! See you next week!
Please R&R! See you next week!
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Responding to Comments #1
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Things unrelated to Saitama outside of book one might be mentioned depending on how much they'll relate to the fic's plot. Going plot point to plot point beyond book one would be lame
Which is to say he'll at least be reacting to stuff in book one.
...Sorry if I don't make sense, I just woke up, lmao.
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Chapter Three: Power Surge
- Pronouns
- She/Her
"Thank you for saving my life last night."
Saitama lowered his fork. He didn't finish his eggs in the time it took me to shower. Perhaps he got distracted by the TV. He decreased its volume with the remote when he saw me approaching. "You're welcome?" he said.
I brushed wet hair from my eyes. There would be a matter of time before it regained its usual curliness. Well, not that I minded. I lived with curly hair long enough to not care if I got a severe case of bedhead every morning. A quick shower, followed by a toss over my shoulder, fixed everything without having to find the hairbrush if I wasn't leaving the apartment. Though, doing this did sometimes lead to me obsessing over split ends. Saitama was right to tell me to stop pulling them.
"You left this here," he said, reaching to his side. He produced a small paper bag. "Had no idea you were on medication."
I blinked. It took everything within me not to facepalm. I honestly should have returned it to my room before showering. "I've been on them for over a year now," I said. "They're to help with anxiety and depression."
He gave me a slight nod. "Huh." He handed over the bag.
"I need to remember not to leave these out as long as somebody else is around," I said. "The last time I did, Mom tossed them because she couldn't read small print… I went dumpster diving."
He sat straight. "I read that. Never said what you were after. You almost cut yourself on broken glass."
"To make things worse—"
"Your mom laughed at you?"
I merely stood there.
"They're gone," he said. "I can't imagine how it feels."
Both my hands jiggled. I folded them behind my back. Mom and Grandma were my family by blood. While people say friends are temporary and family was forever, I never felt connected to any of my family besides my sister.
Take Grandma, for example. She hated everybody for one reason or another. Nicki and I were "lazy-ass grandchildren". Mom was a "teenage lush". The neighbors and their toddler were "too quiet". Somebody, either the building management's men or Mom, fiddled with the living room's radiator "on purpose". Yep, everybody but her got blamed for something. She deflected fault whenever it fell upon her. Until last night, that is.
Again with the rambling. I shook my head. Stop. It. Sam. Why?
"Let me guess," Saitama said. "You're thinking?"
"Too much," I groaned. "One half of me is a supposed hobbyist writer. The other's a habitual introvert. I have to talk to somebody, so," I shrugged, "there's just me if my sister isn't around.
"Anyway, letting you stay here is the least I can do after last night. Abigail shouldn't mind as long as I keep on top of the rent."
He grunted and sank into the couch cushions. "Never liked her. She never let anybody get a word in."
"Sounds like Abigail, alright," I said. "I can't be rude to her. She's the landlady."
"She's rude. If I were you, I'd tell her to shut up."
"Were I Abigail, I'd evict you on the spot. I wouldn't want to scare the other tenants away. Come to think of it, Grandma as a person must be why her neighbors moved after the arrival of their second k—" Nope. Stop. Enough. Move on. "Did you read the first volume of the OPM manga?"
His head did a left tilt. "I gotta finish my workout."
The ten-kilometer run. How could I forget? "Of course," I said, lifting my phone. I opened my internet browser and brought up the keyboard. "Would you mind if I helped you there? I wouldn't want you to get lost and end up beyond the state border or something."
He shrugged. "Sure."
For starters, I typed, 'How many miles from my current location to the edge of Clearpeak?' I hit the send button and waited.
Rustling. Glancing up, I found Saitama standing across from me.
I averted my eyes. The inquiry I sent loaded a map with a yellow highlight on one of the many streets in town, carving a path from my street to— I zoomed in on the end of the path— the northern edge of town.
"Three miles," Saitama read from the screen. "How many kilometers is that?"
Another tab was opened and typed into. 'Three miles into kilometers.' What appeared after hitting send was, '4.946 kilometers.' Times that by two and we would get…
"There from here and back is 9.892 kilometers assuming I'm doing the math right," I said. "Would you want to go for the full ten? Or is this good enough for you?"
"Full ten."
My next input lined with a nearby landmark on the map. This was a tall street sign leading into a parking lot which read, "Golden Bagel Bakery".
"Good enough," Saitama said, turning around. He plucked a red boot from the carpet floor. "I'll get going."
"No," I said.
He already shoved a socked foot into his boot. "Huh?"
"You've got a track record of getting lost. Who's to say you find your way to the bagel store, make a wrong turn, and find yourself halfway across the country? I should go with you."
He lobbed at me a blank stare for the second time today. What could be happening in that brain of his? Confusion? Disgust? Anger at me for assuming he couldn't handle himself?
Gah, I couldn't stand being stared at by Saitama, of all people. I whirled to the couch and seized the TV remote he left on its right arm. I clicked the off button, making a mental note to restore the volume if he didn't by the time evening rolled around.
"You… Much."
I jolted. "What did you say?"
"Worry 'bout yourself, Sam. I can manage on my own."
The remote bounced once on the couch before settling. "Bu-but…" I said.
"But hey, you don't get out much," Saitama said. "Fresh air will do you good." He made a "come on" sort of hand gesture. "Let's go."
I battled the lump shaping in my throat. He sure chucked this situation right back at me. "I'm not exactly ready to go anywhere yet—"
"Get some shoes on," he said. "We're leaving now. I'm not waiting for you to brush your hair or find better clothes or whatever. You don't need 'em."
"Can't you wait for me to at least put on a—"
"That was quick."
Eggs weren't a good enough breakfast for Saitama. He bit into the toasted bagel I offered to pay for after we reached the bakery.
To be fair, toasted bagels are amazing. I bought one of my own to eat when we returned to the apartment. "8:30 when we left," I continued, reading from my phone. "8:40 now. Five minutes to find the path, two and a half to run it, the rest to backtrack because you overshot the goal. Good thing I ducked once I realized how fast you could go. The turbulence you generate is insane."
"Uh-huh," he said with a bite in his mouth.
I scowled. "Swallow before you talk, please. Are we running or walking back?"
"Walking."
I nearly stopped in my tracks. Could he decide to do this every day instead of rushing back to the apartment? Totally my fault for not picking a route that would be three miles of him getting somewhere and three miles returning to the start. Were he to make me walk, traveling three miles wouldn't kill me as much.
Perhaps if Saitama liked this route enough, he would be fine on his own after today? He could do his routine while I got an overdue start on a New Year's resolution. By which I mean I would play a fitness game, toss the controller by accident, strike my guest right between the eyes as he came into the house, scream a late 'Fore!' before hiding in the bedroom, and maybe or maybe not construct a pillow fort to await a declaration of war. Sounded like a plan to me. Maybe if I could call getting him pissed a good plan.
Aw, screw it. Bagel time. I unwrapped my food, removed a top slice, and bit into it. The rest went in my bag. Each piece deserved to be savored on its own rather than be slaughtered like Saitama's bacon-laden atrocity.
"You alright?" Saitama asked between bites. "You're looking at me funny."
I did something I instantly wished could be undone. Flinching. Of all the ways to react, I chose to flinch. To top it off, I cringed.
He stared.
How the hell could I not make this worse? Maybe I could outright mention he caught me at another of those odd moments where my mind meandered. Or, upon removing the food between my teeth, I could say, "The cashier got my order wrong. She got me cream cheese instead of butter. I hate cream cheese."
Unfortunately, I didn't account for how he could simply glance over my shoulder. He shook his head. "You've got butter. We both did."
"Oh," I said. "I, uh, can't believe it is butter." Just like that, I didn't feel hungry anymore. I tossed the bagel piece into my bag with the rest of them.
"Speaking of people looking funny," Saitama said. "Did ya notice the cashier?"
I sighed. "What about her, Tama? As far as I could tell, she's a regular old high schooler with a shitty part-time job—"
"You remember her face?"
Smooth blocks of concrete passed beneath my feet. Nothing distinguished them from the others.
"No," I said. "I hate staring at people's faces. You suck at remembering them." Or was it people's names he struggled with? Maybe both?
"No, I remember her," Saitama said. "Long dark hair. Glared at us from behind a face mask… You think she knows me?"
"I doubt you're as well known to the general public as characters like Pikachu, Mickey Mouse, and Goku. Let me add how you sort of went M.I.A. from your series because the artists wanted to show the other characters' strengths in a drawn-out battle sequence. Boring."
Saitama chewed and swallowed another bagel piece during my monolog. "You're done?"
Oh, boy. There I went again. "We-well…"
"I'm not too popular here and long fights bore you. Got it."
"Generally, I get bored when there are endless scenes which have nothing to do with characters I like," I said. "I still find long fights to be boring fights. Call me boring or way too logical, but that's not how battles work in real life. Just hit 'em with your strongest attacks and be done with it. Return to the wacky hijinks already."
"...I see."
We continued walking. Dozens of one-story stores and street openings into deserted parking lots came and went. Today's early morning rush must have ended. There was only me, him, the sound of our footsteps, and an unending curvy road. Clouds filled the sky from the incoming thunderstorm I heard of yesterday.
Why had I not thought of bringing an umbrella in case we got stuck in the rain? Perhaps not planning, unless it were for a story I wanted to write, was a trait I inherited from my mother. So why did I choose a route equaling six miles in length instead of three? Because I'm a big dumbass. If things happened and I liked them, I let them happen.
"I do take after my mother," I grumbled, crossing my arms. I would have asked Saitama to wait so I could grab an umbrella and a pair of earbuds. Loud booms coming from out of nowhere and I didn't mix all too well.
Up ahead, Saitama perked and glanced over his shoulder. "You say something, Sam?"
"Nothi—"
"Holy shit!"
I whirled on my heel.
Behind us was a lanky boy maybe in his teenage years going by his acne and voice crack. He shouldered a black bookbag and stared at both of us with wide blue eyes. He held a phone as thin as himself in his left hand.
"Eh?" said Saitama, joining me in looking him over. "Where'd you come from?"
"Uh, kid?" I said. "Shouldn't you be at school?"
The boy's jaw fell. "It's you!" he exclaimed, pointing at us. Or maybe he could be pointing at Saitama? "You're the anime guy who's been all over the news!" Oh, good. Maybe I would be left out of the discussion and fanboying. There was no time to dwell on that, however, as…
"'The anime guy'?" Saitama echoed, glancing at me.
"'All over the news'?" I said, returning his uncertain look.
"Don't you watch the news?!" the kid shrieked, twirling toward me.
I jumped. Guess I should have bailed while I had the chance.
"Anime's real!" he said. He closed in on me still screaming to his heart's content. "He's standing next to you. You can't ignore anime!"
I wasn't about to. For one minute, I managed to stand in the open somehow withstanding the howls of an unbridled juvenile. Within the next, I cowered under a layer of white.
"Whoa, kid," Saitama said. "Chill. You're scaring her."
"Everybody's talking about you," the kid said. "You're number one trending on Twitter. You… And that girl you're with. Who is she?"
"Nobody important," I squeaked.
Twitter? Oh dear God. Twitter? I'm on... This kid must have been, well, kidding me. Yes, I blew up an apartment. Yes, Saitama caused a disturbance. Nobody probably saw who was behind the apartment's destruction. When we were out in the open, somebody did yell at us. Somebody saw us.
Saitama's gloved hand came swiping at me. His fingers wrapped around my elbow. "Get out from under there," he said.
"No," I said, "get rid of him first."
"Get rid of… Them?"
I glanced from under his cape.
More people had appeared. The kid was still here. Some older ladies approached us. The one in the back pushed a child in a stroller. Employees in aprons peeked from a store. Our small audience even included a bearded dude in a suit and a fancy hat I recognized from when a train to college was part of my daily routine.
I ducked. After seeing them all... No thanks.
"Look," a woman said. "It really is him."
Saitama shifted. "Give us some room, will ya?"
"What did he say?" another woman asked.
"Don't look at me," a man said. "The only other language I know is Spanish."
"He's Japanese," the first woman said. "I assume he's speaking his language."
Saitama said, "What're you talking about? I under—"
"I hear him in English!" shouted the teenage boy. "He wants us to give him room."
"Yeah, could you step back? You guys are staring like I'm a—"
"But it's you!" the boy said. "You're fucking Saita—"
"Watch your mouth!" one of the women said. "There's a child here."
I could see a pair of shoes under Saitama's cape. Somebody didn't heed his warning to back off. Before I could say anything, they crept a little closer and, suddenly, I saw light. Petrified, I gazed into the eyes of the pale-skinned boy who deprived me of my shield.
"Ryan," the new boy said, "she isn't "nobody important". This is the same girl from last night."
"I was right," gasped the other boy. "Cool."
"I-I—" I choked on my spit.
Saitama's heavy hand found my shoulder. "You alright?" he asked.
When I finished coughing, I stammered, "I'm fi-fine…"
"What kinda shampoo do you use?" the newer boy said. "I've never seen floating hair before."
"What?" I said, reaching behind me. Come to think of it, my neck seemed cold. So where did my hair go? I followed the bendable curve I snatched to the bottom left, where I scraped a rubber glove. Saitama didn't hold my hair down. When I released the strand, it fell into a messy clump which moved in uniform. I watched wave after wave work their way to the curly bottoms. "How?"
"Sam," Saitama said when our eyes met, "I…"
"Did you know?" I said.
Ryan got in the way of Saitama answering. "Your name's Sam?" He looked at his friend. "Haven't you mentioned a girl with her name?"
"Yeah," his friend said. "I was 'bout to say we were part of the same class. She always complained about never getting a window seat on the b—"
"What?" I cried. "If you're going to jump straight into—"
"Yeesh," the same guy from before said. "She hasn't changed. She went straight to yelling."
"Like your friend hasn't been screaming his head off since he popped out of nowhere," I retorted. "And you, who's already starting—"
"One time," the guy said to Ryan, "when she fought people on the bus for a window seat, a couple of girls cornered her and she started crying. She always cried when she didn't get her way. Sometimes she even cried during classes. I couldn't figure out why."
And people told me I talked too much? "Enough!" I roared. An overwhelming amount of heat collected in my face. I could feel it concentrating in my eyes.
He ignored me. "Who knows why Saitama's hanging around her. She's a nobody with an attitude. Never saw her writing even though she always talked about wanting to be—"
"Quiet!"
Gasps rang through the small crowd. Saitama clutched the end of his cape as he backed from me. Everyone followed his example of giving me a wide berth. Their faces varied from shock to… There weren't any other expressions.
There I stood in the middle with sideways floating hair somehow feeling just as weightless as it. I knew I experienced this sensation once before. A full day hadn't even passed since the first time I did.
"I don't remember who you are," I snapped, "or why you're bringing this up now of all times. I've been trying to move on from how I acted for years now. Everybody still holds things against me?" I took a step toward him.
The boy winced. I swore I could see sweat beading from his forehead.
"Stine?" Ryan said. "I think you went too far."
"Yes, he did," I said. "How about you leave me alone? You've never seen me publicly badmouth you and your buddies, have you?"
Ryan's friend blinked. He took another step back and raised his hands. "W-we can talk about this, can't we?"
"...Sam?" spoke a subdued voice.
I turned away. "Fuck these guys. I don't care how far we are from home or if it's going to rain on us, Tama. We're hiking the rest of the way there."
Sam turned, and she walked off.
Saitama stood with the gathered crowd. He watched her figure move further and further away. Soon enough, she was a speck on the horizon. He could easily catch up to her. However…
"I've never seen her explode before," he murmured. At least, not emotionally. His hand, previously clinging to his cape, fell to his side.
"Dude," said Ryan— Brian— Whatever his name was. "You saw how her eyes started glowing when you went off on her? You must've done the second worst thing after calling Saitama bald."
The mentioned hairless man glared at him.
He scratched the back of his neck. "So-sorry!"
The other boy receded into himself. "I-I…"
"I'm outta here," Saitama said, already going after Sam. "See ya, I guess."
He looked ahead. Further along the path, he saw a body sprawled on the concrete. They weren't moving.
"She collapsed!" a woman gasped.
By the time everybody blinked, just dust remained of the man in a yellow jumpsuit.
"I, for one, cannot believe this turn of events despite the footage I've seen," a newsman said. "We have the evidence from last night as well as how he reacts when his female companion collapses. Quite disappointing how we didn't get any audio from either of these encounters. Witnesses say some of them heard him speak Japanese. Others heard him in English.
"Witness also reported the young woman's eyes glowed when she became involved in an argument. When questioned on why he fought with her, Augustine Thorne ignored reporters. What do you make of this, Ivan?"
Saitama switched to the next channel. His shoulders relaxed when what appeared was a simple children's program starring a red-furred puppy and a few other dogs romping through a grassy field. He couldn't take watching the news anymore. Every other minute consisted of the people around the desk analyzing last night's footage or reacting with bewilderment at the scene between Sam and… What's his name? August? Did the guy have a grudge against her?
Sam retaliating surprised Saitama more. He figured her to have always been a quiet person. In the manga, she never lashed at anybody unless they threatened her solitary way of life. She wasn't always so innocent if he believed August.
After she passed out, he made sure she hadn't hit her head on the concrete sidewalk. She didn't, thank goodness. She fell sideways into a grass patch. He failed to rouse her, so he figured she would reawaken in a matter of minutes like last night.
It never happened. He brought her home, left her in her room, and returned once in a while to check on her. If his voice didn't rouse her, he would poke her. He knew she was alive from her steady breathing, how she twitched every time she felt a finger on her back, and her hair wafting even in her sleep.
She's not Genos, he would tell himself. She might need more rest. Give her time. His impatience regardless kept getting ahead of him. He would find himself at the bedroom door about to peek inside from time to time. There wasn't much else to do around here other than watch TV, linger in the kitchen, or gawk at the bookshelf in Sam's room.
Bookshelf? He jumped to attention. Whoa, hey, of course! Books! Manga! He could be sitting around bored out of his mind or start reading them.
Now the question was where Saitama left the first volume before he went out. He remembered taking it to the kitchen, then out here. He turned to check a small rectangular table to the right of the couch. A book with a man who looked just like him greeted him beside a stained coffee mug.
Aha! After taking it into his hands, he flipped it over. A blue square partially covered the illustration in the back. Another one of Sam's notes?
"'This monster,'" he read, "'that Saitama is punching makes me think of a wacky-looking anthro shiny Salamence.'"
What the hell was a Salamence? He studied the illustration of the monster before shrugging and ripping the note off the back cover. It didn't matter. He would finally read this book. If Sam wasn't awake by the time he finished, he would continue to volume two.
"Sounds good to me," he said, flipping the book to its front again. He opened the cover. "Here we go."
Saitama lowered his fork. He didn't finish his eggs in the time it took me to shower. Perhaps he got distracted by the TV. He decreased its volume with the remote when he saw me approaching. "You're welcome?" he said.
I brushed wet hair from my eyes. There would be a matter of time before it regained its usual curliness. Well, not that I minded. I lived with curly hair long enough to not care if I got a severe case of bedhead every morning. A quick shower, followed by a toss over my shoulder, fixed everything without having to find the hairbrush if I wasn't leaving the apartment. Though, doing this did sometimes lead to me obsessing over split ends. Saitama was right to tell me to stop pulling them.
"You left this here," he said, reaching to his side. He produced a small paper bag. "Had no idea you were on medication."
I blinked. It took everything within me not to facepalm. I honestly should have returned it to my room before showering. "I've been on them for over a year now," I said. "They're to help with anxiety and depression."
He gave me a slight nod. "Huh." He handed over the bag.
"I need to remember not to leave these out as long as somebody else is around," I said. "The last time I did, Mom tossed them because she couldn't read small print… I went dumpster diving."
He sat straight. "I read that. Never said what you were after. You almost cut yourself on broken glass."
"To make things worse—"
"Your mom laughed at you?"
I merely stood there.
"They're gone," he said. "I can't imagine how it feels."
Both my hands jiggled. I folded them behind my back. Mom and Grandma were my family by blood. While people say friends are temporary and family was forever, I never felt connected to any of my family besides my sister.
Take Grandma, for example. She hated everybody for one reason or another. Nicki and I were "lazy-ass grandchildren". Mom was a "teenage lush". The neighbors and their toddler were "too quiet". Somebody, either the building management's men or Mom, fiddled with the living room's radiator "on purpose". Yep, everybody but her got blamed for something. She deflected fault whenever it fell upon her. Until last night, that is.
Again with the rambling. I shook my head. Stop. It. Sam. Why?
"Let me guess," Saitama said. "You're thinking?"
"Too much," I groaned. "One half of me is a supposed hobbyist writer. The other's a habitual introvert. I have to talk to somebody, so," I shrugged, "there's just me if my sister isn't around.
"Anyway, letting you stay here is the least I can do after last night. Abigail shouldn't mind as long as I keep on top of the rent."
He grunted and sank into the couch cushions. "Never liked her. She never let anybody get a word in."
"Sounds like Abigail, alright," I said. "I can't be rude to her. She's the landlady."
"She's rude. If I were you, I'd tell her to shut up."
"Were I Abigail, I'd evict you on the spot. I wouldn't want to scare the other tenants away. Come to think of it, Grandma as a person must be why her neighbors moved after the arrival of their second k—" Nope. Stop. Enough. Move on. "Did you read the first volume of the OPM manga?"
His head did a left tilt. "I gotta finish my workout."
The ten-kilometer run. How could I forget? "Of course," I said, lifting my phone. I opened my internet browser and brought up the keyboard. "Would you mind if I helped you there? I wouldn't want you to get lost and end up beyond the state border or something."
He shrugged. "Sure."
For starters, I typed, 'How many miles from my current location to the edge of Clearpeak?' I hit the send button and waited.
Rustling. Glancing up, I found Saitama standing across from me.
I averted my eyes. The inquiry I sent loaded a map with a yellow highlight on one of the many streets in town, carving a path from my street to— I zoomed in on the end of the path— the northern edge of town.
"Three miles," Saitama read from the screen. "How many kilometers is that?"
Another tab was opened and typed into. 'Three miles into kilometers.' What appeared after hitting send was, '4.946 kilometers.' Times that by two and we would get…
"There from here and back is 9.892 kilometers assuming I'm doing the math right," I said. "Would you want to go for the full ten? Or is this good enough for you?"
"Full ten."
My next input lined with a nearby landmark on the map. This was a tall street sign leading into a parking lot which read, "Golden Bagel Bakery".
"Good enough," Saitama said, turning around. He plucked a red boot from the carpet floor. "I'll get going."
"No," I said.
He already shoved a socked foot into his boot. "Huh?"
"You've got a track record of getting lost. Who's to say you find your way to the bagel store, make a wrong turn, and find yourself halfway across the country? I should go with you."
He lobbed at me a blank stare for the second time today. What could be happening in that brain of his? Confusion? Disgust? Anger at me for assuming he couldn't handle himself?
Gah, I couldn't stand being stared at by Saitama, of all people. I whirled to the couch and seized the TV remote he left on its right arm. I clicked the off button, making a mental note to restore the volume if he didn't by the time evening rolled around.
"You… Much."
I jolted. "What did you say?"
"Worry 'bout yourself, Sam. I can manage on my own."
The remote bounced once on the couch before settling. "Bu-but…" I said.
"But hey, you don't get out much," Saitama said. "Fresh air will do you good." He made a "come on" sort of hand gesture. "Let's go."
I battled the lump shaping in my throat. He sure chucked this situation right back at me. "I'm not exactly ready to go anywhere yet—"
"Get some shoes on," he said. "We're leaving now. I'm not waiting for you to brush your hair or find better clothes or whatever. You don't need 'em."
"Can't you wait for me to at least put on a—"
"That was quick."
Eggs weren't a good enough breakfast for Saitama. He bit into the toasted bagel I offered to pay for after we reached the bakery.
To be fair, toasted bagels are amazing. I bought one of my own to eat when we returned to the apartment. "8:30 when we left," I continued, reading from my phone. "8:40 now. Five minutes to find the path, two and a half to run it, the rest to backtrack because you overshot the goal. Good thing I ducked once I realized how fast you could go. The turbulence you generate is insane."
"Uh-huh," he said with a bite in his mouth.
I scowled. "Swallow before you talk, please. Are we running or walking back?"
"Walking."
I nearly stopped in my tracks. Could he decide to do this every day instead of rushing back to the apartment? Totally my fault for not picking a route that would be three miles of him getting somewhere and three miles returning to the start. Were he to make me walk, traveling three miles wouldn't kill me as much.
Perhaps if Saitama liked this route enough, he would be fine on his own after today? He could do his routine while I got an overdue start on a New Year's resolution. By which I mean I would play a fitness game, toss the controller by accident, strike my guest right between the eyes as he came into the house, scream a late 'Fore!' before hiding in the bedroom, and maybe or maybe not construct a pillow fort to await a declaration of war. Sounded like a plan to me. Maybe if I could call getting him pissed a good plan.
Aw, screw it. Bagel time. I unwrapped my food, removed a top slice, and bit into it. The rest went in my bag. Each piece deserved to be savored on its own rather than be slaughtered like Saitama's bacon-laden atrocity.
"You alright?" Saitama asked between bites. "You're looking at me funny."
I did something I instantly wished could be undone. Flinching. Of all the ways to react, I chose to flinch. To top it off, I cringed.
He stared.
How the hell could I not make this worse? Maybe I could outright mention he caught me at another of those odd moments where my mind meandered. Or, upon removing the food between my teeth, I could say, "The cashier got my order wrong. She got me cream cheese instead of butter. I hate cream cheese."
Unfortunately, I didn't account for how he could simply glance over my shoulder. He shook his head. "You've got butter. We both did."
"Oh," I said. "I, uh, can't believe it is butter." Just like that, I didn't feel hungry anymore. I tossed the bagel piece into my bag with the rest of them.
"Speaking of people looking funny," Saitama said. "Did ya notice the cashier?"
I sighed. "What about her, Tama? As far as I could tell, she's a regular old high schooler with a shitty part-time job—"
"You remember her face?"
Smooth blocks of concrete passed beneath my feet. Nothing distinguished them from the others.
"No," I said. "I hate staring at people's faces. You suck at remembering them." Or was it people's names he struggled with? Maybe both?
"No, I remember her," Saitama said. "Long dark hair. Glared at us from behind a face mask… You think she knows me?"
"I doubt you're as well known to the general public as characters like Pikachu, Mickey Mouse, and Goku. Let me add how you sort of went M.I.A. from your series because the artists wanted to show the other characters' strengths in a drawn-out battle sequence. Boring."
Saitama chewed and swallowed another bagel piece during my monolog. "You're done?"
Oh, boy. There I went again. "We-well…"
"I'm not too popular here and long fights bore you. Got it."
"Generally, I get bored when there are endless scenes which have nothing to do with characters I like," I said. "I still find long fights to be boring fights. Call me boring or way too logical, but that's not how battles work in real life. Just hit 'em with your strongest attacks and be done with it. Return to the wacky hijinks already."
"...I see."
We continued walking. Dozens of one-story stores and street openings into deserted parking lots came and went. Today's early morning rush must have ended. There was only me, him, the sound of our footsteps, and an unending curvy road. Clouds filled the sky from the incoming thunderstorm I heard of yesterday.
Why had I not thought of bringing an umbrella in case we got stuck in the rain? Perhaps not planning, unless it were for a story I wanted to write, was a trait I inherited from my mother. So why did I choose a route equaling six miles in length instead of three? Because I'm a big dumbass. If things happened and I liked them, I let them happen.
"I do take after my mother," I grumbled, crossing my arms. I would have asked Saitama to wait so I could grab an umbrella and a pair of earbuds. Loud booms coming from out of nowhere and I didn't mix all too well.
Up ahead, Saitama perked and glanced over his shoulder. "You say something, Sam?"
"Nothi—"
"Holy shit!"
I whirled on my heel.
Behind us was a lanky boy maybe in his teenage years going by his acne and voice crack. He shouldered a black bookbag and stared at both of us with wide blue eyes. He held a phone as thin as himself in his left hand.
"Eh?" said Saitama, joining me in looking him over. "Where'd you come from?"
"Uh, kid?" I said. "Shouldn't you be at school?"
The boy's jaw fell. "It's you!" he exclaimed, pointing at us. Or maybe he could be pointing at Saitama? "You're the anime guy who's been all over the news!" Oh, good. Maybe I would be left out of the discussion and fanboying. There was no time to dwell on that, however, as…
"'The anime guy'?" Saitama echoed, glancing at me.
"'All over the news'?" I said, returning his uncertain look.
"Don't you watch the news?!" the kid shrieked, twirling toward me.
I jumped. Guess I should have bailed while I had the chance.
"Anime's real!" he said. He closed in on me still screaming to his heart's content. "He's standing next to you. You can't ignore anime!"
I wasn't about to. For one minute, I managed to stand in the open somehow withstanding the howls of an unbridled juvenile. Within the next, I cowered under a layer of white.
"Whoa, kid," Saitama said. "Chill. You're scaring her."
"Everybody's talking about you," the kid said. "You're number one trending on Twitter. You… And that girl you're with. Who is she?"
"Nobody important," I squeaked.
Twitter? Oh dear God. Twitter? I'm on... This kid must have been, well, kidding me. Yes, I blew up an apartment. Yes, Saitama caused a disturbance. Nobody probably saw who was behind the apartment's destruction. When we were out in the open, somebody did yell at us. Somebody saw us.
Saitama's gloved hand came swiping at me. His fingers wrapped around my elbow. "Get out from under there," he said.
"No," I said, "get rid of him first."
"Get rid of… Them?"
I glanced from under his cape.
More people had appeared. The kid was still here. Some older ladies approached us. The one in the back pushed a child in a stroller. Employees in aprons peeked from a store. Our small audience even included a bearded dude in a suit and a fancy hat I recognized from when a train to college was part of my daily routine.
I ducked. After seeing them all... No thanks.
"Look," a woman said. "It really is him."
Saitama shifted. "Give us some room, will ya?"
"What did he say?" another woman asked.
"Don't look at me," a man said. "The only other language I know is Spanish."
"He's Japanese," the first woman said. "I assume he's speaking his language."
Saitama said, "What're you talking about? I under—"
"I hear him in English!" shouted the teenage boy. "He wants us to give him room."
"Yeah, could you step back? You guys are staring like I'm a—"
"But it's you!" the boy said. "You're fucking Saita—"
"Watch your mouth!" one of the women said. "There's a child here."
I could see a pair of shoes under Saitama's cape. Somebody didn't heed his warning to back off. Before I could say anything, they crept a little closer and, suddenly, I saw light. Petrified, I gazed into the eyes of the pale-skinned boy who deprived me of my shield.
"Ryan," the new boy said, "she isn't "nobody important". This is the same girl from last night."
"I was right," gasped the other boy. "Cool."
"I-I—" I choked on my spit.
Saitama's heavy hand found my shoulder. "You alright?" he asked.
When I finished coughing, I stammered, "I'm fi-fine…"
"What kinda shampoo do you use?" the newer boy said. "I've never seen floating hair before."
"What?" I said, reaching behind me. Come to think of it, my neck seemed cold. So where did my hair go? I followed the bendable curve I snatched to the bottom left, where I scraped a rubber glove. Saitama didn't hold my hair down. When I released the strand, it fell into a messy clump which moved in uniform. I watched wave after wave work their way to the curly bottoms. "How?"
"Sam," Saitama said when our eyes met, "I…"
"Did you know?" I said.
Ryan got in the way of Saitama answering. "Your name's Sam?" He looked at his friend. "Haven't you mentioned a girl with her name?"
"Yeah," his friend said. "I was 'bout to say we were part of the same class. She always complained about never getting a window seat on the b—"
"What?" I cried. "If you're going to jump straight into—"
"Yeesh," the same guy from before said. "She hasn't changed. She went straight to yelling."
"Like your friend hasn't been screaming his head off since he popped out of nowhere," I retorted. "And you, who's already starting—"
"One time," the guy said to Ryan, "when she fought people on the bus for a window seat, a couple of girls cornered her and she started crying. She always cried when she didn't get her way. Sometimes she even cried during classes. I couldn't figure out why."
And people told me I talked too much? "Enough!" I roared. An overwhelming amount of heat collected in my face. I could feel it concentrating in my eyes.
He ignored me. "Who knows why Saitama's hanging around her. She's a nobody with an attitude. Never saw her writing even though she always talked about wanting to be—"
"Quiet!"
Gasps rang through the small crowd. Saitama clutched the end of his cape as he backed from me. Everyone followed his example of giving me a wide berth. Their faces varied from shock to… There weren't any other expressions.
There I stood in the middle with sideways floating hair somehow feeling just as weightless as it. I knew I experienced this sensation once before. A full day hadn't even passed since the first time I did.
"I don't remember who you are," I snapped, "or why you're bringing this up now of all times. I've been trying to move on from how I acted for years now. Everybody still holds things against me?" I took a step toward him.
The boy winced. I swore I could see sweat beading from his forehead.
"Stine?" Ryan said. "I think you went too far."
"Yes, he did," I said. "How about you leave me alone? You've never seen me publicly badmouth you and your buddies, have you?"
Ryan's friend blinked. He took another step back and raised his hands. "W-we can talk about this, can't we?"
"...Sam?" spoke a subdued voice.
I turned away. "Fuck these guys. I don't care how far we are from home or if it's going to rain on us, Tama. We're hiking the rest of the way there."
Sam turned, and she walked off.
Saitama stood with the gathered crowd. He watched her figure move further and further away. Soon enough, she was a speck on the horizon. He could easily catch up to her. However…
"I've never seen her explode before," he murmured. At least, not emotionally. His hand, previously clinging to his cape, fell to his side.
"Dude," said Ryan— Brian— Whatever his name was. "You saw how her eyes started glowing when you went off on her? You must've done the second worst thing after calling Saitama bald."
The mentioned hairless man glared at him.
He scratched the back of his neck. "So-sorry!"
The other boy receded into himself. "I-I…"
"I'm outta here," Saitama said, already going after Sam. "See ya, I guess."
He looked ahead. Further along the path, he saw a body sprawled on the concrete. They weren't moving.
"She collapsed!" a woman gasped.
By the time everybody blinked, just dust remained of the man in a yellow jumpsuit.
"I, for one, cannot believe this turn of events despite the footage I've seen," a newsman said. "We have the evidence from last night as well as how he reacts when his female companion collapses. Quite disappointing how we didn't get any audio from either of these encounters. Witnesses say some of them heard him speak Japanese. Others heard him in English.
"Witness also reported the young woman's eyes glowed when she became involved in an argument. When questioned on why he fought with her, Augustine Thorne ignored reporters. What do you make of this, Ivan?"
Saitama switched to the next channel. His shoulders relaxed when what appeared was a simple children's program starring a red-furred puppy and a few other dogs romping through a grassy field. He couldn't take watching the news anymore. Every other minute consisted of the people around the desk analyzing last night's footage or reacting with bewilderment at the scene between Sam and… What's his name? August? Did the guy have a grudge against her?
Sam retaliating surprised Saitama more. He figured her to have always been a quiet person. In the manga, she never lashed at anybody unless they threatened her solitary way of life. She wasn't always so innocent if he believed August.
After she passed out, he made sure she hadn't hit her head on the concrete sidewalk. She didn't, thank goodness. She fell sideways into a grass patch. He failed to rouse her, so he figured she would reawaken in a matter of minutes like last night.
It never happened. He brought her home, left her in her room, and returned once in a while to check on her. If his voice didn't rouse her, he would poke her. He knew she was alive from her steady breathing, how she twitched every time she felt a finger on her back, and her hair wafting even in her sleep.
She's not Genos, he would tell himself. She might need more rest. Give her time. His impatience regardless kept getting ahead of him. He would find himself at the bedroom door about to peek inside from time to time. There wasn't much else to do around here other than watch TV, linger in the kitchen, or gawk at the bookshelf in Sam's room.
Bookshelf? He jumped to attention. Whoa, hey, of course! Books! Manga! He could be sitting around bored out of his mind or start reading them.
Now the question was where Saitama left the first volume before he went out. He remembered taking it to the kitchen, then out here. He turned to check a small rectangular table to the right of the couch. A book with a man who looked just like him greeted him beside a stained coffee mug.
Aha! After taking it into his hands, he flipped it over. A blue square partially covered the illustration in the back. Another one of Sam's notes?
"'This monster,'" he read, "'that Saitama is punching makes me think of a wacky-looking anthro shiny Salamence.'"
What the hell was a Salamence? He studied the illustration of the monster before shrugging and ripping the note off the back cover. It didn't matter. He would finally read this book. If Sam wasn't awake by the time he finished, he would continue to volume two.
"Sounds good to me," he said, flipping the book to its front again. He opened the cover. "Here we go."
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Chapter Four: Rumor Has It
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Moonstruck Moonstruck_Lizzy • November 21
Just woke for my evening shift. Who are these people and why are they everywhere?
They added an image grabbed from a green-tinted night vision camera to their post. This showed a sidewalk and two people sitting on a bench beneath an awning to the side. The first individual, a short young woman with glasses, pulled her legs into a criss-cross. Her eyes were wide and her chin lifted to stare at a gloved hand holding a portion of her floating curls. The second, a bald man wearing bright clothing and a long white cape which he sat on, returned her alarm with a grin. The hairs he stole didn't drift with the rest of them.
NoLollygaggin NoLollygaggin • November 21
Replying to Moonstruck_Lizzy
Do you live under a rock? The guy's Saitama from One-Punch Man. Before you ask, he's not a cosplayer. It's truly him.
AuntiePandora AuntiePandoraHour • November 21
Replying to Moonstruck_Lizzy
Adding to the above post. Here's a video of him in action.
They linked to the video as a reply to their post.
After clicking on it and letting it buffer, a full-colored image of a small crowd appeared onscreen. The camera panned to a hairless man in a yellow jumpsuit kneeling over a body down the street. He reached into the grass where the body laid and lifted them into a sitting position. His face didn't strain despite him lifting what appeared to be the same girl from the previous image.
When her head settled on his shoulder, he brushed her uneven and messy brown hairs behind her. This was probably to prevent them from getting caught in his jumpsuit's front-facing zipper.
Undyne Deltatale_Undyne • November 21
Replying to Moonstruck_Lizzy
ANIME'S REAL?!
AuntiePandora AuntiePandoraHour • November 21
Replying to Deltatale_Undyne
Must you scream in all-caps? How rude!
Rusty RustyNails • November 21
Replying to AuntiePandoraHour
okay, ugly blue blob ghost lady
One roll of the eyes and some scrolling through a semi-roleplayed argument later:
Jughead EggheadJughead • November 21
have u seen saitama run? i wonder if he could qualify for any world records. anyone know who the girl he's with is?
Jughead posted two gifs side-by-side below. Both gifs showed Saitama taking hold of the woman before turning into a blur that disappeared even before the viewer could blink.
Joan_Browne JoanEBrowne • November 21
Replying to EggheadJughead
I've no idea who she is. My granddaughter would love to be in her place!
Sprout Wilted_Sprout • November 21
Replying to JoanEBrowne
Lol, who wouldn't, Joan? Look at this man.
They included a gif of Saitama from his anime where he wiggled his thin eyebrows. He clutched a purple cup imprinted with half-lidded eyeballs in his right hand.
JackedApple AppleJacked • November 21
Saw pics of him from the manga. He's quite hot when he's not drawn all flat-like.
Erica GoldenErica • November 21
Replying to AppleJacked
Please. I know a dozen bald guys hotter than this man.
Risk RiskyFriskies • November 21
Saitama exists. Goku doesn't. Checkmate, DB fans.
JackedApple AppleJacked • November 21
Replying to GoldenErica
Most of those bald guys you're probably thinking of don't exist in real life.
FreddyYeti FreddyTheYeti • November 21
Replying to RiskyFriskies
U trying to start something?
AuntiePandora AuntiePandoraHour • November 21
Replying to RiskyFriskies
Ugh. As if the idiot roleplayer wasn't enough. Now the power scalers are getting involved. We don't need or want you here!
Risk RiskyFriskies • November 21
Replying to AuntiePandoraHour
Wow, this person needs a hobby.
They attached a picture of an unimpressed Saitama in front of a computer screen uttering almost this exact phrase. Meanwhile, the banter and stupid arguing continued. Thanks to posts and replies such as these, #OPMSaitama became the number one topic on sites such as Twitter and Instagram overnight. Unlike most topics, his ranking did not eventually yield to such things as "#StopPoliticalTheater" and "#SundayFunday". Everywhere everyone looked, this man was there.
Tumblr and various forums and chatrooms exploded with gifs from his anime series as well as screenshots and videos from his two public appearances. Discussions everywhere around the internet ranged from utter shock at this man's abilities to disbelief at his appearing from seemingly nowhere. They talked and talked and she scrolled and scrolled, glued to her phone screen.
When Nicki heard of him, she didn't expect him to truly be Saitama. Her sister's jaw would have hit the floor if she told her the news. However, Nicki didn't anticipate Saitama already having a companion. She would have texted her sister right away were the woman who featured in posts alongside him not her older sister.
"Damn, Sam," Nicki mumbled, tapping her phone screen with her manicured nails. "You're lucky."
"So it is her," spoke a male voice from the computer monitor in front of her.
"Yeah," she said into the pink microphone hanging from her headset. "I can't believe this. She used to love One-Punch Man."
"Did she like Saitama?"
She chuckled. "Sam loved him more than she loved the series. When we watched the anime with subtitles, she kept mentioning how she preferred his English voice actor."
"If she were here," another male voice chimed in, "I'd kill her for thinking the English dub is superior."
"People heard him speak in either English or Japanese, right?" Nicki's first friend said. "It doesn't matter what she prefers. She gets what she wants to hear and we get what we want to hear."
"Doesn't mean I can't criticize her for her wrong-think, Jeremy."
"Doesn't mean you can scare away newbs for not sharing your views, Ricardo."
"Huh?"
Nicki covered her mouth. Whoops. Uncovering it, she said, "I'm going to be calling Sam later. Is there anything you guys want me to say if Saitama's there?"
"Maybe you could ask why he's around your sister of all people?" a female voice asked.
"Hey, Alex," Jeremy said. "How's it going?"
"Hi, Jeremy," Alex said. "I'm okay. How about you, Luna?"
"I'm doing okay too," Nicki said, smiling at the use of her screen name. "Just finished tonight's homework." Now was as good a time as any to reflect Alex's question. "You want me to ask him about her?"
Alex sighed. "I've heard certain… Things about your sister. Not to say they're all bad things…"
Nicki frowned. "What sorts of things?"
"Has your sister always been kinda…" Alex dragged her "kinda" until… "Troubled? From what I heard, she got into constant conflicts with other kids at her school over the pettiest things. It was easy for others to make fun of her."
Ricardo snorted. "If that's true, I wonder what her deal was. Was she ever like that around you, Nicki?"
"Well…" Nicki said, shrinking from her screen.
"She sounds awful," Jeremy said. "Based on what everybody's saying, at least. Saitama could be hanging with the wrong girl."
"She has Generalized Anxiety Disorder," Nicki said. "She's getting help for it now."
"Yeah, yeah," Jeremy said. "Still, who argues for a stupid window seat?"
"Who cries for ten dollar pencils in the middle of a busy store?" Alex added. "Or threaten to harm some idiot she used to know? Or throw pencils at people when they upset her?"
"Who prefers dubs over subs?" Ricardo said.
"Since we're all here, we should start our game session," Jeremy said.
"I call playing offense," Ricardo announced. "Been wanting to try the new weapons added in yesterday's update. I can't wait to set the opposing team ablaze."
"I'm playing on defense," Alex said, "as usual. I hope what I heard about shield buffs is true."
"Leaves me and Nicki as the sneaksters," Jeremy said. "Ready to capture some flags, Nicki?"
Nicki didn't reply.
"Or should I say Luna?" Jeremy said. "Man, I wish you'd stick with a username for longer than a month. I keep mistaking you for new members."
The group was met with the dulled ping of somebody logging out for the night.
"What's with this art style?" Saitama muttered. He rested on the couch with his feet hanging over the side as if he were in a hammock. Volume one of the One-Punch Man manga barely grazed his nose while he studied the panels. Sometimes I look badass, sometimes I'm flat, and sometimes… He frowned at the page. This must be what Sam meant by me making odd faces.
Regardless, he continued reading. The prospect of seeing his adventures drawn was way too good to pass up. He flipped the page, not even pausing to read the title of the next chapter. But in hindsight, he should have waited there. The title alone could have mentally prepared him for what came next.
His gaze found the page, where he stared right into the shaded eyes of a man with dark bushy hair atop his head who sat in the middle of a street. The man wore no expression on his face. Meanwhile, regular old citizens just like him screamed in fright, complained about somebody's appearance, and fled the scene.
Breath fled Saitama's lungs. It continued evacuating as he moved to the next panel. The perspective changed to behind the man, who donned a suit and carried a flat briefcase. To the man's left was a tall creature, who was half a muscular crab and half a guy with hairy legs and wore no clothing other than a pair of undies.
"The crab guy," Saitama whispered, his eyes widening in recognition. He read on and studied each panel without blinking. His eyes soon burned. He paid no mind. What he saw with them was much more important. These panels carried the strength of a Serious Series: Serious Punch.
The human man stood before the crab monster as the latter questioned the former. Despite the crab's initial threats and wicked grin, their conversation was civil enough for the crab to leave the man alone and go elsewhere.
That was until moments later when the man's path crossed with a peculiar child's. As the crab left, he mentioned how he was on the hunt for a certain "cleft-chinned brat". This kid, playing with a ball nearby, had such a feature. He had to be who the crab looked for!
"Kid's uglier than I remember," Saitama grumbled. All the while, he kept lingering on each panel with the man. Three entire years passed since he last saw this person. So who was he?
Me. Upon having that thought, Saitama shut his eyes. His chin fell on his chest. A lot's happened in three years. All because he discovered a new pastime that somehow kept him going despite its numerous mixed impacts on his life. I miss him.
He flipped through a majority of the book in utter silence. It chronicled some of his adventures before meeting Genos, then switched to a battle between a human woman-shaped mosquito monster and the lone boy who opposed her.
There he is. Saitama figured the reason the cyborg didn't have his left arm when they first met was because of the prior clash. These panels confirmed this. Right after seeing the damage she inflicted on his future "student", Saitama couldn't help gripping the book tighter. Genos always somehow made a fight dramatic. This time, this first time they met, Genos was dead set on eliminating the monster. He would have died not because the mosquito woman annihilated him, but because his self-destructing blast took her with him.
I wonder if he's noticed I'm gone yet. He'd get along fine without me. Sure did before we met. Though what if… Saitama stopped there and allowed his thoughts to vanish. Genos would be fine. Dr. Kuseno had always got his back. When did that old dude not?
A little later in the book, two weeks later when applied to how events transpired in real life, Genos appeared at Saitama's door. Annoyingly, Genos' entire story up until his so-called "master" yelled at him got printed on the pages. Saitama skipped this noise by turning to the next set of panels. Genos' backstory never related to him, so why hoist it upon him again in written form? He sure didn't feel guilty skipping the entire speech, just like how he usually avoided Sam's rambles whenever they didn't impact the plot of her tale.
Physically being around her was a whole different matter. Whenever Sam's thoughts extended outside her head, he restrained himself from exhibiting anger. He didn't want to risk scaring her by treating her rambles the same as how he handled Genos'. She did explain how she spoke a lot out of habit. A habit she could break if he were subtle in pushing her there, maybe.
Again, Saitama read in silence. Toward the end of the book, he paused once more. A bit of a smile crept over his face. His smile grew a bit larger when he turned some more pages and made a discovery. Another blue post-it covered half of the illustration of an irritated man with visible lips and short unkempt hair.
This latest note, perhaps the last Saitama would find unless Sam went on to comment on the rest of the series, read, 'Teachers calling kids losers for not performing as expected and ignoring their problems with other students? I hope this isn't how schools operate in modern Japan. This guy sucks more ass than the road-killed skunk the Angry Video Game Nerd must have forgotten to down with his beer'.
Whoa. Also, what? But mostly whoa. Saitama would have never known Sam held such rage if he didn't take her on his run today. To think this was in his defense? She really meant I'm "best boy". Yet he was but a guy. He wasn't certain what spurred her and tons of other folks to like him in the first place. Up until he met Genos, Saitama was a societal outcast. How did he start collecting acquaintances like new volumes for his manga collection? People in real life make no sense.
A peculiar assortment of bleeps and bloops, like noises from King's older video games, reached Saitama's ears. He turned his head to a large bag sitting in the far left corner of the living room next to two windows and above a freshly-painted radiator. Interest instantly struck. He got to his feet.
The bag opened not a moment later. He withdrew a small rectangular device. Sam's phone, with the camera facing him covered by tape. He didn't have the time to reflect on this with the phone's black screen glowing with a single name:
NICKI
The bleeps and bloops dropped into a full-blown music track. The sequence reminded him of some sort of futuristic landscape. Saitama pushed the thought away so he could click the green checkmark on the left-hand side of the screen. He pressed the shushed phone to his ear.
"Hello?" he said.
"Samantha?" asked a young woman's voice on the other side.
"No," he said, "this is Saitama."
A moment came and passed.
"Saitama?" she repeated.
"You're Sam's sister, right? Nicki?"
"Sh-she's told you about me?"
Now wouldn't be a good time to explain the whole 'I've read about you guys' thing. "She's mentioned you once or twice."
"Where's Sam? Can I talk to her?"
He looked in the direction of the bedroom. "She's snoozing. I can't wake her up."
"Is she hurt?"
"Nothing other than some scratches."
Nicki sighed in relief. "I know she fell in some grass..."
"She's moved when I poked her," Saitama said. "My best guess is she's sleeping off whatever made her eyes glowy." This happened to the true protagonist of Seeing Red, Feeling Blue. Her body needed time to adjust to her new immense pool of magic. He didn't know how long it would take.
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure. I could check on her again if you want."
"I would appreciate it, um, Saitama. Please."
He already started on the path to Sam's bedroom. Turning into the hallway containing it and a shut bathroom door at the very back, he responded with, "Yep."
Just when he curled his hand around the doorknob, Nicki spoke again. "Could you turn on the camera? All you have to do is bring back the screen and double-tap the camera button in the upper right corner."
Saitama's eyes drifted to the phone. "Why?"
"I want to see Sam."
Rumble… Boom. CRASH!
Saitama's shoulders jumped. The rest of him didn't.
"What was that?" Nicki gasped.
"Thunder," he simply said. "Weathermen said we'd get a storm." He took the phone off his ear and clicked it on. A list of names flashed onscreen. Looked like the phone app opened itself whenever a call was answered. He searched the screen briefly before spotting the little camera icon hiding in the corner. The screen went black upon tapping it.
"There's something else I want to ask," Nicki said. "If you don't mind?"
"Yeah?" Saitama said. "What?"
"Have you realized how famous you've become?"
He exhaled. "The news won't shut up about me."
"Worse. You're all over social media. So is my sister."
Saitama's hand slipped from the doorknob. He tapped the camera button once, ripped off the tape covering the screen side of the phone, and as the screen transitioned from a white list to bright yellow light, he uttered a flat, "What."
Nicki's face appeared on the screen. Her skin held a fair bit more color than Sam's. Her face was much thinner than her older sister's. Long dark eyelashes, most likely phony, fluttered. Aquamarine stripes broke through the straight curtain of brown behind her shoulders.
"You're famous," Nicki said, blinking again. "You only tapped your screen once. Double-tapping is for… No, never mind. Why would I miss getting a glimpse of… Okay, no. Why are you with her? Why Sam?"
He bit the inside of his cheek. Talk about whiplash. "We're not a thing."
Nicki shook her head. "Okay, well, um… Maybe you've noticed Sam has a crush on you?"
He scowled ahead at the door. He applied a bit more force to what he next said. "I'm not into her."
Her shoulders fell. "Well, uh, Sam's into you. Or she used to be. I'm not sure. I can't follow her fixations when I'm halfway across the country."
He rolled his eyes. "Whatever."
"I meant to ask why you're living with her."
"Oh." Now that made more sense. "You see…" His mind went into overdrive. He would have to phrase the events of last night in a way to not make him the bearer of bad news. Sam and Nicki were better off working through any family issues without him getting involved. "I woke in an alley last night and found Sam in trouble. I helped her, she recognized me, and I got asked to prove my identity."
"Did you have to wake an entire neighborhood?"
He shrugged.
Rumble… Boom. CRASH!
The commotion startled me awake. An unusual sensation engulfed the back of my head and neck as I swung into a sitting position. I grunted and massaged my aching neck. Damn thunder. Its surprise factor never failed to get at me.
I glanced around. Two bookshelves stood in the corner. To their left were a pair of windows with closed black curtains. Feeling underneath me, I discovered a soft mattress and the cotton bottom of a flipped Dungeons & Dragons -themed blanket.
"I'm home?" The last thing I remembered was abandoning those two idiots who wanted to pick a fight. What in the world happened afterward? Had I blacked out?
Saitama somehow found his way back to the apartment. Perhaps I worried too much about him getting lost. He might be fine on his lonesome after today.
Leaving bed, a sense of deja vu struck me. Across the room, sitting on my desk, a big mustached man in a red cap and blue overalls added to this feeling. His wide blue eyes stared me down.
I scooped my glasses from the nearby nightstand and shoved them on my face. "Of course you're here, Mar."
Mar, otherwise known as the famous Super Mario, once inspired another fanfiction of mine. Good thing Saitama somehow didn't die beforehand and possess my body. Everything would have been made ten times more awkward by me being haunted by a bored guy who often wore sweaters with the Japanese word for boobs written on them instead of a squeaky short plumber who came fresh out of an adventure where he borrowed the bodies of all sorts of creatures.
Shame how I usually cracked under pressure when writing. Mario was the subject of several stories wherein I kept doubting the quality of my work. I finally abandoned the project several years ago. Seeing him in my room after collapsing reminded me of how my admittedly self-insert protagonist did the same several times over.
I groaned. Enough, Sam. Time to shelve those thoughts. Wasn't I done with those dumb stories? Focus on the here and now.
I turned for the door. "Let'sa go."
Eyes widened at the phrase. Fists clenched. Damn me and my unconscious internal associations. Sometimes it seemed I lived to breathe them. Real pathetic, huh?
"You're awake?" called an ever-familiar voice. "About time." A man in yellow pushed the door aside and entered the bedroom. He brandished a glowing black rectangle at me.
"What the hell are you doing with my phone?" I said.
"Sam!" a female voice called. The phone's white glare subsided. A girl on the cusp of her early twenties waved at me.
"Nicki?" I said. I ran to Saitama's side. "I'm sorry I missed you last week. I was figuring out dinner and you know how unimaginative I can be when it comes to food, so a grocery store trip was in order..."
"You don't have to explain," Nicki said. "Things happen. Are you feeling alright?"
"I'm fine," I said before spotting a wave of brown jutting from my left. I ran my fingers through it and pushed it aside. The rippling of hair against my palm refused to stop when I pinched at it.
I hurried into the hallway without another word. From here, I made a right and entered the bathroom. Three cupboards with doors made of reflective glass greeted me with a woman who balked when we met eye-to-eye. However, she copied me with no hesitation as I took a finger and twirled it around the singular coil at the end of my hair. The rest of my hair bunched in surging rows which seemed more concerned with helping to form this new hairstyle than splitting into all sorts of curly madness.
"Okay," I said, "maybe I'm not."
A knock sounded at the door.
I spun right around and reopened it. I stared at Saitama, then at my reflection, and then at him again.
"I'm having deja vu," he said.
"Tell me about it," I replied. "How's your deja vu feeling? Good or bad? Mine's a mixed bag."
He didn't answer.
"Figures," I said. I held the conjoined end of my hair. "Are you seeing this, Nicki?"
Saitama lifted my phone to reveal Nicki leaning into her screen. "Nice hair," she said. "The way it's all bunched and waving reminds me of—"
"Celestia and Luna!" she and I shouted together.
"Who now?" Saitama said, sounding as dull as a rusty spork.
"They're alicorn pony princesses," Nicki answered. "I liked the name Luna so much, I adopted it."
"What's an alicorn?" he now asked.
"They're mares with the features of a pegasus, a unicorn, and an earth pony," she responded before I could myself.
"Earth pony?"
"They're ponies who can—"
"Focus, sis," I cut in. "We're not here to get my new roommate into My Little Pony. Yeah, most people seem to have accepted older folks being fans of the franchise. Think of the shit he could still get for saying Applejack or Fluttershy or whoever's Best Pony."
Saitama leaned on the door frame. His head did a tilt.
Nicki shifted in her seat. "Is this a bad time to mention you're both all over social media?"
A jolt flew through me. My pupils dilated, rendering my reflection blurry against a white-tiled background. "Excuse me?!" I shouted. I almost couldn't believe my ears despite knowing the world would eventually learn of Saitama. I would have preferred easing into the spotlight. "What are they saying about us?"
"Why do you have to know?" Saitama said.
"Uh, hello?" I said. "The strongest man and some random-ass girl are living together? There's bound to be rumors about what happens within these walls, people asking why you're here of all fictional characters to exist, how did you get here, why me…"
"None of it matters."
"No," I said. "You're wrong."
"Saitama?" Nicki said. "Could you step out of here for a sec?"
"Go ahead," I said, turning to face the bathtub along the back wall. My toenails dug into the thin shower mat beneath them. "Please do, I suppose."
Saitama shut the bathroom door. Were I to trust my ears, he entered the bedroom without closing its door too. He murmured. In an eerie twist of fate, the one word of his I could understand was, "...Crazy."
Oh, joy.
My sister spoke. She did a much better job at whispering her thoughts.
I settled on the floor. Whatever they wanted to say in private was much more important than Saitama, me, and possibly anyone related to me being forced into the spotlight. Curling into a ball, all I could utter was, "Shit."
I expressed worry about this exact scenario when taking Saitama in. We could have settled into the public eye instead of exploding on the scene. Did I think of this when asking him to prove himself or planning the ten-kilometer route? No, because the brightest ideas almost always came after all was proclaimed and realized.
Breathe, Sam, whispered a tiny part of my mind.
My diaphragm filled.
Out.
My diaphragm relaxed.
In.
Air flooded my lungs. Eyes shut.
Out.
Carbon dioxide escaped. I squeezed my eyelids tighter to block the bright light coming from the ceiling.
In…
To travel through the throat.
Out...
To escape through the mouth.
In…
"Hey."
My eyelids flew open. With a squeal, my arm acted before my brain. I tossed the nearest object ahead of me. The large white rectangle met its mark, a barren wasteland of a face.
Saitama's perplexment showed when the object I threw plopped at his feet. He salvaged it from the floor. "Just me, Sam," he announced, shaking the thing around. "Since when did you keep a pillow in here?"
"I don't keep pillows in the bathroom," I said.
"Where'd it come from?"
"I don't know. You scared me."
He dropped his arm. "Sorry. You wanna get outta here?"
"Why? Do you need the bathroom?"
Saitama shook his head. "I was thinking you could be sitting anywhere other than in here. It's just us again. Your sis ran off. She'll talk to you again next week." He jabbed a thumb behind him. "Oh, yeah. I left your phone in the bedroom."
"...Thanks." Why Nicki asked to speak to Saitama alone mystified me. I wasn't about to pepper him with questions. "I guess I'll go play a game or two on my Switch." Since I got scared out of finishing the breathing exercise, video games would be the next best way of taking my mind off current events.
"Cool," he said, clearing a path for me to enter the hallway. "What do you usually play?"
"Um, pretty much anything which isn't a puzzler, first-person shooter, fighting game, or dating sim. I don't want to give my brain a workout, find first-person POV disorienting unless I'm temporarily using it to shoot something, get bored of fighting games, and dating sims aren't my cup of tea unless it's a parody of them."
CRASH.
I jumped. Real nice of the thunderstorm to remind me it was still hanging above our heads. I would at least snap the thunder out of existence if I could. "I typically play my games in handheld mode," I said. "May-maybe I could set up TV mode if you'd like to watch?"
"Nothing interesting's airing," Saitama said. "Go ahead."
We arrived in the living room.
I took the TV remote and clicked the "On" button. On a normal day, I would be watching the news around this time. Curiously, the number "13" appeared in the upper right-hand corner when the screen lit. Saitama must have decided to watch children's programming.
A man with combed-back hair and a dark blue suit appeared. "This evening on Newshour..." he said. "The arrival of a man once thought to be fictional has garnered reactions from around the world. An official statement has been released by the creator of One-Punch Man, the Japanese series from which he originates—"
"What the hell is this?" I exclaimed, fumbling with the cold piece of metal in my hand. I felt it slip.
Saitama caught the sleek black remote and pointed it at the screen. "All of the news stations have been talking about me," he said.
I gulped. "Oh no."
"Everyone knows we're involved with the collapsed apartment last night. Investigators found your granny's monster corpse in the rubble."
My dropped hands balled into fists. "No…"
Onscreen footage showed a mountain of debris blocking the opened doorway of the apartment's balcony. Certain design choices shared by most of the other apartments' balconies, such as two rows of metal to barricade its residents, were stripped from around the balcony's perimeter. Some of it got tossed three stories down into the parking lot and formed a small crater. This came to be confined behind bright yellow caution tape.
"Thing is," Saitama said, "they think I killed her before rescuing you. I'd usually let somebody else take the credit for what I do..." He clicked a button to switch it to a blank screen with the term "HDMI" in the top right corner. "You've been pretty stressed. I'll take the brunt of this if you want."
"You mean…?"
He cracked a small smile. "Worry about yourself. Let 'em all focus on me instead." This made sense. For once, an entire world held him in a positive light. They didn't give him any reasons to give it up. Things would be way better for us if he took the brunt of their scrutiny.
I could feel the tension leave my shoulders with my next exhale. "O-okay, Tama. Sounds like a plan."
He nodded before making his way to the couch. "What're you thinking of doing here?"
I took a wireless controller from the TV rack and strode to the couch. "I-I could either go single-player in most of the Pokémon games, toss you off a cliff in…" No, not a Mario game. Anything but Mario right now. "Just pick a game. I'll let you know if I'm feeling it."
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Chapter Five: Making Conversation
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Sam positioned her character beside the hearth within her small home. "Let me see if I have this straight. The boxed area by the entrance is called a genkan. Behind those sliding doors is what's called a futon. Here in the United States, we keep our shoes on in other people's homes unless we're invited or instructed to remove them. And most of us sleep in beds, I'm pretty sure. Regarding food…"
Saitama shut his eyes. A while ago, Sam began playing some game called Pokémon Legends: Arceus. He settled on the opposite side of the couch to watch her, only for her to get carried away when he asked a simple question: why was there a funny-looking mime hiding in an alleyway? Nevermind the familiar aesthetics and the giant four-legged blue monster watching as she ran about the area doing the occasional forward roll. He needed to know about the mime.
Her eyes lit when he asked. She launched into a long-forgotten explanation regarding humans and the Pokémon creatures scattered about the map. Before long, she left the mime behind and wandered into what he presumed to be her character's home until she confirmed it without him even asking. She poked at various items within the house, including a set of orange appliances that didn't fit in with his assumed historic era of the game. He would have asked about them. However…
"You have no idea how much pasta I ate while living with my granny. She always assumed I was a picky eater and despised how my mom and my sister never wanted to have "traditional family dinners". She cooked spaghetti or ziti hours before dinnertime and always expected us to come at her call to eat it before waddling off to her couch. If we didn't get to the food fast enough, she'd scream like a banshee. I usually caved and ate her pasta to shut her up..."
Here we go again. He ground the rightmost edge of his teeth. "Stop," he said. It took an exhaustive amount of mental strength to not yell at her this time.
Sam glanced away from the screen. "Huh?"
He leaned into the couch cushions. "Are you playing the game?" he asked. "Or are you trying to bore me to death?"
Her eyes widened. She whipped back to the TV. Slivers of her tossed brown hair flapped like little pennants in soft wind before reforming into a singular mass rolling off the side of her shoulder. "I-I got carried away!" she exclaimed. "I'm so sorry."
Saitama massaged his temples. "How about we try the twenty words or less thing if you wanna talk? It's easier for me to understand."
"O-okay! Um, where was I before we got here?"
"You were going to find the mime."
"Right! Of course!" Sam went to remove her character, who dressed in green, orange, and brown colors to match the feathers of one of her monsters, from the house.
Watching the screen go black, he wondered if he should have suggested for her to play the game emblazoned with a dragon-like logo against a dark background. Maybe she would have focused more on the gameplay than the unnecessary amount of detail she loved to jabber about.
Upon saving and turning off the game maybe an hour or so later, Sam said, "Um, so I was thinking…"
Saitama lifted an eyebrow. "What's up?"
She set her wireless controller aside. "I want to return to my grandma's apartment."
"Why?"
"Maybe we could see if anything is recoverable? The explosion only affected the living room from the footage I've seen."
Sure, they could go back, but, "A lot's been happening over there. Clean-up and news crews and all."
She winced. "Shit," she muttered, curling into a ball.
Saitama leaned forward and placed his hands on his kneecaps. "I'd be fine going. Are you sure you'd wanna be there right now?"
Sam's shoulders sagged. "I don't know now that you've reminded me we're being watched by the entire world!" she cried. "There is no way we're going back. Probably better for me to stay here and hide. I don't know for how long. Maybe forever?" She clutched her forehead. "Now I really don't know if I've messed up the rest of my life by..." Her voice faded into murmurs. So much for speaking in twenty words or less.
A hand dropped over her shoulder. It had to adjust before its long digits could lurch and gently squeeze at the shirt and the skin underneath.
"You didn't screw up," Saitama said. "It's them who's making a stupidly big deal outta me."
He wasn't sure if she heard him. She went as still as a rock and took a breath which shook her chest. When it left, she lifted her chin. Her brown eyes grew to the size of saucers.
He similarly came to a stop. He couldn't help studying her puzzled face. Crap, he thought. I shouldn't have done that.
Her shoulder shuddered under his touch. She adjusted herself to better meet his gaze. Smaller fingers reached and spread. They wrapped around the wrist resting on her shoulder.
Cold. This is what he felt when she touched him. He could have assumed she was sweating behind her reddened face and the heavy sweater she wore were she not close by.
He whipped to the window. It wasn't open. He felt nowhere near shivering. The air in the apartment felt comfortable enough for a late November evening. Perhaps he could say it seemed too comfortable for him. Whatever happened to there being cold weather?
The weak pressure around his wrist receded. "Saitama?" he heard Sam say. "I-I'm so sorry. Given what happened last night, you, um, know I'm not accustomed to skin contact. You're not used to it either, yet I keep poking you and now I'm thinking about it, it's super weird—" She slapped what sounded to be skin. A palm over her face? "Good Lord, Sam! Shut the fuck up!"
He jumped. He did his best to disguise it with a cross of one leg over the other.
"I-I'm so sorry if I offended you or anything," Sam said. "I'm horrible with people."
"Don't you have what's called, uh, Generalized Anxiety Disorder or something?" Saitama asked.
"Wh-what?"
The pressure on his wrist disappeared. He found Sam having crammed herself in the tiny space between the opposite couch arm and the backrest. She hugged her knees.
"Your sister told me you were diagnosed when you started therapy," he said. "What you have makes being social seem impossible."
"That's more SAD than GAD," she replied. "Social Anxiety Disorder, which I have too. With GAD, I usually worry about how to approach a problem if it's not something I'm familiar with. If I can't fix it somehow, I assume the worst will happen." She hung her head. "This is a pattern I recognize. It's hard to stop. I can't believe our situation is still haunting me after what you said earlier."
"I could. Words are useless unless you back 'em up with actions. Why do you think I get annoyed when people don't shut up? Nothing's happening."
"Everyone has a degree in theatrics until they get punched in the face."
"Huh?"
Sam sank further into her corner. "It's, um, my take on a quote from a famous boxer. Just kinda came from the top of my head. Sorry.
"Again, I'm sorry if I upset you earlier."
Saitama tossed his arms over his crossed leg. Finding her face, he gave her a signal. No.
She dipped her head in the direction of her flowing hair. Offhand, he wondered if it put any extra weight on her neck. He would have to guess it didn't since she wasn't good at hiding her emotions. She would show discomfort if she felt it.
"You haven't "offended" me," he said. "Are you trying to?"
"N-no!"
"All I see here is somebody with poor social skills."
Sam curled into a tighter ball and clung to her kneecaps. "Oh."
"I'm kinda the same as you," Saitama said. He rubbed the back of his neck. "I'm not socially awkward. I'm more... Socially lacking?" Yeah, that sounded about right. "You moved away from a bad situation. What you've got now is great. But what you need to do from here is push yourself. Living alone isn't just about living alone."
She sighed. "Better said than done. Though, it was you who once said," she cleared her throat, "um… 'Could the you of tomorrow beat the you of today? Instead of giving in, move forward.'
"I guess I have to follow that sort of advice. Which, frankly, is impossible when nothing seems to progress aside from the days of the week and months of the year. I don't think I ever could "move forward" as everyone else seems to do—"
Saitama pumped his fist. "Attagirl!"
Sam squeezed further into the couch cushions. She gaped at him with widened eyes. "Excuse me?!"
"Which book did that come from?"
"V-volume three in the bonus chapter "A New Wind Blows", where you rescue this guy named Glasses from a monster, and Fubuki and Tatsumaki are introduced. I don't care much for those girls, by the way."
"Hm… Why?"
"Well, um, please don't ever tell them I've said this. Tatsumaki is your standard tsundere who has or will… I don't know what point in canon you came from…"
"Whatever."
"Let's say she has done or will do something I dislike her for. I-if that makes any sense.
"Fubuki is a mob boss lady who forces others under her thumb. Even forgetting what she does for a second, she isn't the type of character I can relate to. Like, I don't overanalyze menus for foods with the least calories or not wear a dress without a…"
"Moving on, most of the female characters in your series, or what few named ones there are, don't catch my attention. If I could choose between hanging with the esper sisters or Puri Puri Prisoner, who I'm not keen on either, I'd pick Puri Puri in a heartbeat. If I even wanted a green-haired woman with awesome powers, I'd go to Palutena from Kid Icarus. She's way better than them."
Saitama watched Sam brighten as she launched into a ramble about this Pale Tuna lady and Kid Icarus thing. She was clearly knowledgeable about them and ran her mouth a million miles an hour as if her life depended on it. He caught the words "Greek" and "pit" multiple times, though he couldn't do the same for any context behind them.
Mission accomplished, he thought, loosening his posture. Sam was capable of moving forward. All she needed was a little push and constant reminder to keep those explanations short. He decided a more serious reprimanding for her rambling could wait. She might not need to be admonished if she realized he was ignoring her.
"Palutena is a goddess, okay? She can one-shot monsters in dire situations, fight an evil moth trying to consume her soul for three years, have fun bantering with her friends and enemies in the middle of a warzone…"
Nevermind. It could take a while for her to stop at the pace she was going.
"Enough."
Sam's voice died. She bit her mouth closed.
Saitama breathed through his nose. Good. "Do you hear what I hear?"
She blinked. "Hear what, exactly?"
He looked her over.
"What do you hear?" she asked.
He didn't say anything.
She scowled. "Saitama, what are you talking about?"
"You'd hear it if you zipped it."
Sam looked around. Nothing around her made a sound. Not him, not her, nor their neighbors in the apartments all around them. Even the storm outside shut up. They were all alone in the living room with themselves and—
"Silence?" Sam whispered.
He nodded.
She stared.
They stayed where they were even when the thunder came back with an unusually loud clap. Well, maybe Sam winced. She otherwise kept her big hazel eyes on Saitama. Her glasses dangled right over her nostrils.
"Sounds nice," he said. "Right?"
Sam shivered. Did she just now feel the chill in here? "I'm not comfortable being quiet when there's another human being around," she said. "I feel like I have to engage in a conversation or…"
"Or what?"
She twisted away from him. This motion sent her hair flying.
He ducked in time to avoid getting a mouthful of curls. "What's wrong?" he said, cocking an eyebrow.
Sam's hair settled into its now-familiar floaty place to her left. The combined strands continued moving in small ripples as if they were never disturbed.
"Hey," Saitama said. "Are you alright?"
"If you really want to know," she replied, "the answer is no." She slid off the couch and stood. "I think I'll be going to bed."
"It's 6:35."
"I-I don't care." Having spoken, she trudged to the main hallway of the apartment.
Saitama leaped from his seat. "Wait! I just remembered something!"
"What?" Sam grunted, turning around and folding her arms.
He hoisted the white pillow he had been laying against since they came into the living room. "Remember this?"
She raised two wary eyebrows. "We've been over this. I don't keep pillows in the bathroom."
"Check the bathroom."
"Why?"
"Do it."
Sam spun away. She raised a hand to wave him off. "No thanks."
Saitama saw his chance. Leaping from the couch, he sped over and grabbed the young woman, who already noticed his empty seat and stood there stunned, by the arm. He zoomed to the open bathroom door at the end of the hallway before setting her back down and stepping away to give her space. Gesturing at the tiled white bathroom floor, he said—
"Look."
She glared at him, but complied and eyed the ground. "Where's the shower mat?" she asked almost immediately.
He tossed the pillow on the floor.
"This isn't the shower mat, Saitama."
"What happened to it?" he asked.
"I don't know."
"What if I told you that you did something to the mat?"
Sam blinked.
He waited.
She blinked a second time.
He gently elbowed her side. "Like, I don't know…" he said when she glared at him. "You turned the mat into a pillow?"
She looked to the floor again. Her lips parted. "You're not serious, right?"
"Oh, I'm serious, alright," he said.
"You're not lying to me."
"Why would I lie?"
She stared at her palms. "I-I don't know. Didn't you read a book about my world? Wouldn't you know what's happening to me?" Then she grabbed the giant curl at the end of her hair and extended it away from her for him to see.
"Somebody else would've taken your powers if you'd died."
Another blink. "Huh?"
"I didn't see her do much with 'em before I stopped reading."
Sam stood right in front of him and looked up. Their drastic height difference only now hit him. She must have been around Tatsumaki's size.
"What did the original protagonist do, exactly?" Sam asked.
Not missing a beat, he said, "Rewrote reality to revolve around her."
"In a literal or a narrative sense?"
"...Literal?"
Blood drained from her face.
His eyes narrowed. She was getting too close to him for comfort. "Since you're still alive, you're probably the most powerful person around. How's it feel?"
Sam balked. "Honestly, Tama. I could never hope to be as powerful as—"
"Don't end up like me," he said before jabbing a thumb at his head.
Her eyes widened with lightning-quick realization. She released her massive curl with a squeak. "Dear God!" she cried. "I'd never want to be ba—" She covered her mouth.
"Stop pulling at your split ends. Go to a barber if you wanna get rid of them."
Sam spoke, muffled, through her fingers. "I-I can cut my own hair, thank you very much."
Whatever got her to stop messing with them, he supposed. "Don't be afraid to say the b-word around me."
She dropped her hand. The next word to come out of her was a voice-cracking, "Bitch?"
He couldn't help himself. A stupid grin spread across his face. "Alrighty, then!" he let out with a snort.
Sam pinched her glasses against her face and squeezed her eyes shut. Her cheeks became a noticeable red hue. "Darn it," she groaned, extending her palm to cover her skin again.
"The other b-word, Sam," Saitama said. "Ya know…" He made a reluctant hand gesture at his scalp.
She swallowed. "Bald?"
He had to stop himself from scowling at the use of this tiny, and otherwise insignificant, word. "Don't call me bald and we're good."
"Yes, sir."
"Don't call me sir. 'Saitama' is fine."
"Okay, Tama."
"...Tama's fine too."
Sam put a hand on the bath mat turned white couch pillow. She filled her lungs with air and held it as she shut her eyes. There was a half-eaten plain bagel on the table next to her which smelled of warm butter. She swallowed the piece she bit off a moment ago.
"Do you feel anything?" Saitama inquired, leafing through the pages of One-Punch Man volume two. He stopped on one of them before pressing the book against his chest.
Sam broke her focus. "I feel the same as I always have. Other than having this feeling of "ghost hair" by my right ear, I guess." She massaged the mentioned ear. "This new hairstyle has its downsides." After this had been said, she twisted back to the pillow. "When I shot Granny, I felt a tingling in my arm. Right after the tingling, it seemed as if I could feel my blood flowing. There was this sensation of being on fire, yet the fire wasn't hurting me. When we were outside, I didn't feel it again. All I remember after confronting those guys was putting some distance between me and the crowd…"
Pointer finger met thumb and curled inward. The digit slid up and down the thumb before settling at the tip. They aligned with a sleeved upper arm. Above them, an eye closed to give the shooter a better alignment. Ready, aim, and… The pointer finger shot from its platform. Fire!
Upon being hit, Sam yipped like a frightened puppy. Her placed hand clenched the pillow. Some sort of white light emerged underneath and enveloped the entire object. Its square appearance molded like clay within the light, slimming and shrinking in size.
A stick?
No sooner after Saitama had this thought, Sam grabbed the bottom part of the item and thrust it in his direction. She fixed her glasses with her free hand and said to him, or rather shouted at him, "What do you think you're doing?!"
Saitama took the tip of his pointer finger and pressed on the sharp end of the dagger focused on the zipper over his chest. "Whoa there," he tittered. "You were about to tear a hole in my suit."
Sam retracted the blade. "I… I wasn't going to…"
"You were gonna hit me with a pillow again?"
"Yeah!" she retorted. "Or at least I would have! You flicked me. You thought I wasn't going to retaliate?"
"Now do you see what you did?" he said, running his finger across the weapon's smooth metal. "The book called you and the other girl who took your powers reality-warpers. You can change items, places, maybe even people to your liking." He leveled his gaze with hers.
She stared at him with big eyes as if she were, again, an inexperienced puppy that he this time told to fetch a ball.
"Don't go around abusing this, now. I don't wanna have to kick your ass, Sam."
She gulped. "I-I won't!" she said, gingerly putting the dagger aside and retrieving her bagel. "I think I need more than a good night's rest after today."
"Can I mess around with one of your games?"
"Which one?"
"It's got this dragon symbol over a black—"
"No!"
Crackle… BOOM!
Sam squeaked an, "Eep!" Her bagel slipped into her lap and landed butter side down over her dark pants. Shudders ran through her as Saitama looked on.
"You're scared of thunder?" he said, angling an ear to hear the beginning rainstorm outside.
She slumped forward and didn't blink. On closer inspection, the whites of her eyes seemed to have darkened. They flickered like flames around her brown pupils. As he watched, the white pigment extended over them and the flickering ceased.
"Sam?" Saitama said, scooting closer. "You're doing the glowy eyes thing again."
Was he paying attention to anything but her face, he would have seen the beam of light coming to strike him in his lower stomach. His upper half, or the back of his head at the very least, connected with the hard table behind him. Of course, he didn't feel anything from smacking his head like such. He got upright again in a matter of seconds.
"What was that for?" he groused.
Other than her eyes, Sam gazed straight ahead with an empty expression. Next to her was a growing ball of light.
He did the first thing he could think of: a leap forward. He caught the light and closed his hand around it. Right then, the glow dispersed, and he was left with nothing.
Sam folded at her waist and fell forward. Where she landed happened to be the side of a chest. Her eyes went shut.
Saitama went motionless when he found the trembling girl laying against him. She blacked out again, he thought with furrowed eyebrows. The other girl never had this problem. What do I do?
He decided what he could try was covering her up. If her attack just now was of any indication, she could wreck her apartment. And if she wasn't responding to stimuli like before, who was to say she was currently in control of her actions?
He put his arm around her. "Don't worry," he said. "I gotcha."
Right after this came a weak whisper of, "Tama?"
"Sam," he said, shaking her shoulder. "Can you hear me? ...Sam?"
Pieces of a plain bagel fell to the floor having been neglected and, ultimately, forgotten.
After steadying its wings, a small golden bird broke through the storm clouds and swerved toward the ground. Its body crackled with thin stripes of golden energy. Tiny talons stretched as they came for a landing on a power line.
Nighttime fell hours ago. Nobody would spot the bird darting about, at least at first. As a bonus, the streets emptied quickly today. They wouldn't see the bird reach for the line with its beak and, with a motion akin to the slice of scissor blades, cut it apart. It broke easier than a tear through a page.
The bird made a low cackle as freed electricity poured from both snipped ends and enveloped its body. Golden feathers in random spots made a rapid shift to blue and white. "One down," chirped a squeaky, unfitting voice for such a creature, "many, many more to go." I can almost taste how much power will be flowing through me by the end of this!
Cackling, it sped across the street to destroy another of the power lines, ignoring the confused denizens gasping and gawking at the electrical cord flailing in the path of a car squealing to a stop.
Several moments went by consisting of Saitama sitting in silence with Sam against him. She regained enough consciousness to follow his movements and even out her breathing.
According to the clock by the TV, another minute passed. Saitama nudged Sam and was the first to speak. "How are we feeling now?"
Sam pushed off of him with her hand. "I'm fine," she said. "I think." Right in the middle of speaking, she wriggled to face the front door. "Um, th-thanks for making sure I was alright. I don't know how I stayed awake during all of that."
"Maybe it's a sign you're growing into your powers?" No sooner than he suggested this, he never wanted to have spoken in the first place. How was he supposed to know how her powers worked when she was different from the protagonist he kept forgetting the name of?
Sam ran her thumb over her fingers. "Maybe you're right," she said, opening her palm. "I once wrote a story where the female lead took a bit to adjust to her new abilities. It'll take me some time too, and then…" She pointed at the lamp. "If I'm truly a reality warper, I'm going to find ways of cutting down on my bills. Paying for electricity every month sucks."
"Hear, hear," he said.
As Sam was retracting her finger, the light flickered. She watched it struggle to stay lit before the bulb straight-up died and left them in darkness.
"Th-this isn't what I meant," she said. "I'm pretty sure I didn't kill the lamp."
Saitama glared at the TV, whose inactive red light had also gone out. Looked like their building lost power. So much for playing video games on that flatscreen. "...Okay."
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Chapter Six: Meltdown
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Once again, a chapter is going up early. only this time, it's less than two hours before midnight. But I'm keeping my promise of updating once a week!
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
The last twenty-four or so hours were maybe the longest twenty-four or so hours I ever lived through. Deaths in the family, one of which I caused, and then Saitama. Social media, and then Saitama. Powers, and then Saitama. Me being stuck on all of this… Would it bother anybody if I yet again mentioned Saitama? Situations of this caliber wouldn't be complete without garnish, which must have been why the blackout kicked in at the last second.
Night fell and left in a flash. My phone alarm succeeded in waking me when it first went off the next morning. Saitama came to my room to groggily grumble about the rooster noises it picked from a randomized list of sounds and music. He listened to me in the middle of rambling an apology when it went off again.
My alarm, playing an actual music track this time, flowed through a somewhat fast beat before drums kicked in along with a female singer. I knew the song well, which featured girls from small towns and guys from cities and all its associated jazz. Bonus, the girl sang the part referencing the girl and vice versa. I hated when people did it the other way around. Never made sense to me.
I moved to shut off the music before we got too deep into the song.
"Why'd you turn it off?" Saitama said.
"Now you're okay with the alarm?" I said, already heading for the bedroom windows. "We don't have power. Who knows when we'll get it back. It'd be smarter for me to conserve my phone's battery now than pay for it later." I pulled the curtains apart to let the sunlight in. Or I thought it would be sunlight.
Shadowy gray clouds swarmed the atmosphere. Rain smashed into the blacktop parking lot five apartments below. The wind blew, shaking trees and rippling the sheet tied to the pool.
"I don't remember hearing we'd get more rain," I said, watching a woman covering her face with a dark hood as she braved the weather on the way to her car. "Geez, people are still going out in this?"
Saitama's reflection appeared to my right. He remained blank-faced as he gazed straight into the parking lot.
I frowned. "Don't tell me you'll be out there too."
"I'm going."
"Nuts."
"You're coming along?"
I sighed. "Do the first part of your exercises and let me take my meds. Then we're off to do your run and visit the town commons."
"Town commons?" Saitama repeated.
Then came a bright white light followed by a CRASH. I yelped and leaped from the window. Not only did we still have rain, we still had thunder. "Ye-yeah," I squeaked, shutting the curtains. "So long as I don't die from getting struck by lightning or being scared into having a heart attack. We're headed there for two things. Nonperishable foods, given how most of what I keep in the fridge is probably going to go bad, and clothing."
"Why clothing?"
I tugged on the white sheet hanging from the back of his hero costume. "Does this answer your question? We don't know when or if you'll be able to return to your world. I might as well help you get you settled in here."
Saitama's eyes grew. "Hold on a sec."
"What?"
He picked at his sleeve. "I wasn't wearing this before I conked out. I was in my PJs."
This odd tidbit got me twirling to the bookshelf. My nightgown, large enough to nearly touch my ankles and decorated with sunflowers, spun with me. Some distant corner of my mind already got an idea of the events he referred to. I would need more details first. "Anything else you can tell me?" I said. "For, um, curiosity's sake."
"I was relaxing after kicking everybody outta my house."
"Uh-huh. Did this have to do with them being there while you were making hotpot?" I tugged a book free from the end of the first shelf. "If so, I'm pretty sure you can find that early into volume nineteen. It's after the scene with Child Emperor and the Hero Association executives." I flipped through until I reached the segment. "I distinctly remember you all watching the food cook like witches brewing a potion."
Saitama's shadow fell over me. "I didn't feel comfortable with them mooching off me," he said.
I flipped some pages. "You mentioned, ahem, 'But it's hard to relax with so many people here. After dinner, you guys should leave.' You proceeded to become the worst EMT ever and declared King dead on the scene."
"...Right."
I skimmed the next bunch of pages. "Everyone leaves, King wakes up, you toss him outside with a bag of plastic bottles, Garou tells a kid to come with him if he wants to live and, gross, the dog's drooling… Aha!" I angled the book to better show Saitama the sole illustration on the right-hand page. "Seems a certain somebody passed out while reading manga.
"...This illustration could have been done without the ugly-ass snot bubble."
I let him study the picture of himself laying on his futon while a skinny blanket failed to cover any of his limbs. According to the picture, he changed into his PJs shortly after he got his alone time.
"Nice sleep position," I said. The book beside his drawn counterpart captured my attention. Come to think of it, I rarely zoomed in on the smaller details of the series. I brought the page closer to my face out of pure curiosity. I was forced to squint at the tiny drawing after having left my glasses by the bed. "Hold on. Are those… On the cover?"
I blinked as the manga in my hands vanished. I was left to grapple at the air while Saitama flipped the book back and forth to observe its cover art before shoving his nose into the pages.
"Hey!" I shouted.
He lowered the book covers for me to see. Shown on the right flap was a woman with a smile on her slightly slanted head. Her striking green pupils would draw most viewers in. Dark green hair reaching her shoulders got pushed behind earring strings. She dressed in a blue bikini with snowflake designs which barely managed to cup her—
I coughed and averted my eyes.
"You're judging me when Fubuki's here in this get-up?" he said.
"I'm not at fault for what's illustrated in these books!" I shouted.
"How about ya don't judge me for what I read?" Returning the book to me, he added with a grumble, "If they've ever drawn me like her…"
"There, uh, might be pearl clutchers out there right now whining about "the children" seeing your infamous oppai shirt." Damn it, Sam! My "internal associations" were kicking in again. Stop talking! "Th-they'd want you deported to Japan or something." Stop!
"They should mind their own business."
"I-I wish." Dear God, kill me now.
There was an abrupt light weight on my head. "As for you?" Saitama said. He loomed above me as if he were a mountain. "I think I'm wrong. You're taller than the sassy lost child."
"I'm exactly five feet tall," I said, flicking at his arm. My pointer finger hit a hard metallic object around his wrist, causing me to wince. I forgot he hid a watch under his clothes. "Though I don't see what my height has to do with this conversation."
"Oh, nothing," he said.
"Can we please return to the topic at hand?"
"You're worrying too much. These "whirl blotchers" of yours don't have anything better to do?"
"You'd be surprised what years of a pandemic, misinformation campaigns, and "team sports" politics can do to a country."
"They need a hobby."
"What if casual racism, the spread of propaganda, and flooding social media with negativity is their hobby?"
"Get fresh air and sit in some grass?" Ah, yes. The "classic" touch grass response. "Or maybe it's you who's gotta get away from the internet."
I became aware of the gentle rustling above me. No, I chose the wrong word. Ruffling. "Ruffling" was what I was looking for. This ruffling concentrated on the very top of my skull. Hairs splayed beneath the force previously placed on me and were run over again moments later. I went stiff as a tree trunk at its touch.
"Don't give 'em headspace," Saitama said, perching his hand at the very top of my head. "Better to live your life how you want and let 'em do whatever they do than let 'em drag you down with verbal attacks. It's their fault if they get in trouble."
My cheeks warmed. I wriggled to get him off of me. "What the hell are you doing?" I snapped when I succeeded in slipping away.
He must have allowed me to escape after realizing what he was doing. He retracted his hand and stuttered a "S-sorry!"
I already moved on. "'Better to live your life…'" What if I've never felt I lived much of a life? What was life? Could I ask Saitama? He always seemed to have good life advice for others. "'...How you want'?" Crap! There went my mouth again. "How can you live a life when you don't know what life is?"
"Perhaps…" he said, his face frozen in similar thought. He bent down to access the bookcase's second shelf. "You haven't noticed you're on your way to building one yet?"
I guess he was right. I learned much about myself ever since I tried college way back in 2017. Like, for one, I can't survive several academic terms in a row or be employed without outside help. For two, I'm a bit of an impulsive spender. Three, I should have been seen by a professional therapist eons ago. And four, I would never be fit for the chaotic world of writing and publishing, therefore killing a potential career path. It was a miracle I found a place to live when taking this all into consideration.
I somehow survived everything thrown at me for all these years. Why did my life still feel empty? Had I not done enough to help myself? Some might say to go out more or make some friends, but what if that doesn't cut it? What if I'm unmotivated no matter what? What is my purpose, if not to die in a fight against family?
Never mind my blathering. I won't be getting anywhere screaming at a void who can't scream back.
"I'm gonna get started on my workout." After saying this, Saitama slid the book into the shelf and stood back up. "Uh, one more thing?"
"What?"
He donned a sheepish smile of sorts. "The manga I was reading in the illustration was, uh…"
"What?" I asked, adding more force to this single word. I shoved my crossed arms against my lower chest.
"...You're in that book."
I think I might have reared like a frightened horse. "Excuse me?!" I screeched. "Whose brea—"
"Not yours!" Saitama exclaimed. He twirled fast enough for his cape to fly into my face. I didn't have time to inspect how white it was before the bedroom door slammed shut. As the room quieted, I discovered volume nineteen in its rightful place on the second shelf. Above it were empty holes where volumes one and two should have been.
"Why am I not surprised he might have a…?"
"I'm glad the bakery had a power generator," I said, swallowing the last of what would be my second breakfast. I shoved the little sheet my bagel was wrapped in into my bag. "I might get addicted to these toasted bagels."
Saitama, holding both a sandwich and an umbrella, kept his eyes forward and, unlike me, ignored the stares and calls of passersby. Sometimes, a car horn or passerby shouting greetings would get him to prick an ear before he shrugged his shoulders and nibbled at the ham dangling from the sides of his bread.
Recognizing the tall green and white sign of a gas station, I sprinted to keep pace with him to avoid getting drenched in rainwater. "The commons are across the street from here."
"I know already," he said through teeth dragging ham into his mouth. "Sign over there says, "'Clearpeak Commons'"."
The restaurant next to where he pointed to was a one-story brick building with a white roof. I was never a fan of their selection of Mexican foods. How they replaced a more well-known restaurant chain that served a wider variety of stuff from different cultures always got me. I missed the old place. I loved eating there. Mom used to take my sis and me there with one of her numerous boyfriends every few months.
Clearpeak's economic woes caused it to close. So now the restaurant and half of my closest relatives were gone. Life moved on without the restaurant. Soon enough, people would do the same when it came to my mom and granny. I doubted they would be missed much outside of the family and Mom's closest female friends. Granny hated everybody, so I always assumed her neighbors reciprocated her behavior.
I picked up the pace to keep up with Saitama. We followed a sidewalk down a hill and into the commons proper. Immediately, we came across a larger brick building with a clock tower watching over the somewhat empty parking lot. The clock's hands froze at five-thirty. A power outage never paused the clock; it stopped working years ago. Nobody cared enough to see it get fixed.
"Would you know if there are any limits to this reality-warping ability of mine, Tama?" I said.
We reached a crosswalk with two lines of cars coming and going from the commons. He used this time to think, evident by the rolling of his eyes. "None I can think of," he admitted when we crossed to the other side. "The girl who got your powers in the manga produced bags of money outta thin air and compelled her crush to love her. Nobody held her accountable 'cause she could change reality to make herself look good."
Wow. Were I me from several years back, I would not have hesitated to call her a classic Mary Sue. And, um, do note some people also used Gary Stu for similarly perfect male characters. I grew out of the whole Mary and Gary thing when I realized most people were using it to describe characters they disliked.
Finding Saitama and his seemingly unlimited strength threw what remained of my views on what makes a "perfect character" out the window, along with seeing writers and readers misuse the term for any characters they disliked. Were someone to want a character who was the "best" at something, this "best" needed to be balanced by other things in the character's life. Like, say, Saitama's ridiculous strength versus how he mostly applied it to a hobby and him almost always having more pressing concerns than the latest monster his path crossed.
I digress. I never should have spent so much time pondering the whole Mary Sue thing as a teen. I could have been doing anything else, like realizing I would never like to be a full-time author. Few people hit it big in the industry. High standards from editors and readers alike were plenty. I would hate to fight myself to reach frequent deadlines. Thus there went several years of work on a fantasy world, and multiple drafts of plans for stories with them.
Saitama's warning from the other night returned to me. 'Don't go around abusing your new powers, now. I don't wanna have to kick your ass, Sam.' I would regret getting on his bad side although my logic knew he wouldn't seriously harm me if I went mad with power. However, my instinctual angle knew better than to cross him when it came to strength and combat. He could apply more force than necessary if negative thoughts or emotions relating to himself were brought into the mix.
"Maybe I should write a list of things I can fix," I said. "I'll already assume reviving the dead is out of the question, so Mom and Granny are…" The unusual feeling of swelling in my chest told me the rest of what we needed to know. They're gone forever. I'll be living in solitude since my sister attended a faraway college with dormitories.
Saitama pushed his fingers out and cracked his knuckles. Catching my attention, he asked, "We're doing clothes first?"
"I don't usually go shopping with other people," I said. "Please don't place me in an impossible situation."
He gently snorted. "Like make you call a taxi on a shitty phone? Or run off to do anything except what you went someplace for?"
Crud. He knew about those incidents too. Forget accidentally killing me with a punch. He might make me die from feeling humiliated.
"Should I ever meet the person who wrote my story into your world, I'm going to give them a piece of my mind," I said.
"Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"
I looked up. I looked down. I rubbed my face against a drier part of my jacket's sleeve. I looked up again. Was it me, or had the clouds darkened a smidge?
"Saitama?" I said. "Did you hear something?"
The umbrella fell away and left me exposed to the elements. I would have been completely soaked if I wasn't wearing a hood. Leaving me there, the umbrella traveled with its handler toward what Clearpeak residents dubbed the "minimall". Faded red bricks could be barely distinguished from the gloomy atmosphere thanks to a series of colorful Christmas lights hanging from the roof.
Some sort of creature flying high above it possessed bright rainbow patterns in its feathers. Electricity likewise consisting of colors of the rainbow sparked around its wings. A beak maybe a foot long swung like a stiff wire.
"Uh, Tama?" I said. "Get back here. You have to see this."
He reached the automatic doors.
"Saitama?" I said. "Hello?"
Behind us, the gigantic bird unleashed another screech and left me covering my poor ears. It swerved toward some train tracks which ran parallel to the commons. It lowered its long beak right as it soared past the power lines which divided the two areas.
I withdrew into myself. Perhaps I found what killed the power last night. Thing is, seeing this, I wasn't sure if the universe is referencing the Pokémon Zapdos or my old, shitty writing which ripped off Saitama's first real meeting with King from volume eight. How ironic it was I wrote about a similar creature in that stupid fanfic—
I couldn't ramble now. I yelled the first thing in my head I knew would get Saitama's undivided attention. "Hey, Baldy!"
He paused midstep.
I held my breath.
Saitama twisted his head as far as it would go over his shoulder. "Was that you, Sam?" he said, eyes narrowing.
"Yes," I said, forcing myself to stand straighter. "I called you bald." I pointed at the massive bird. "We've got a problem here. I think it's what cut off our electricity last night."
Saitama broke our eye contact.
The monstrous, and hideously colored, bird flapped its wings. This generated enough wind to send nearby screaming bystanders in the parking lot tumbling to the ground.
"Oh my God!" I shouted.
Those who managed to cling to cars or walls or shopping carts scrambled for the safety of the minimall when the gusts died enough. They reached the front doors screaming obscenities and variations of the word monster. Hell knows if anyone inside would believe them unless they came to check for themselves.
The bird ignored the chaos it caused and lunged at power lines marking a boundary between the commons and the train tracks. It perched, with a heavy rumble, on the wooden pole at the left end of the black cables. "I am a Scion of Mother Nature!" screeched the thing. Its deep voice boomed through the commons. "I will put an end to how you foolish humans live, starting with your wasteful technology! I will send you back to the Middle Ages where you belong and rule over you with…"
"We've got a problem, alright," Saitama said to me. "You called me bald." He vanished by the time I blinked. A second later, I squealed as my feet left the ground and my weight balanced on a steadied hand. I could feel him pushing on my stomach through my thin layers of clothing.
"Hey!" I cried, limbs dangling uselessly around his backward descending arm. "What are you doing?!"
"Since you saw the bird first, you're gonna deal with it," he said. "Good luck!" He needed no other words to launch me into the air.
To put it simply, I screamed. My life flashed and flickered and all the other junk anyone would have described their brain going into overdrive when they were about to die. I couldn't process each memory fast enough to keep with my momentum. All I could remember was myself as a teenager in a mirror avoiding its reflection. I couldn't stand who I was, knowing none of the other kids would willingly reach out to me. I would never extend a casual hand to them either. How could I accept them when they and I couldn't accept myself?
Purple flashed. I closed my eyes, knowing I could die because of Saitama's sudden burst of idiocy. Thanks, I guess. I got an extra day and some hours of life because of him.
I could hear the quick flapping of something nearby. The bird's wings, I assumed. My left foot, extended further than my right, made contact with a soft surface. I screamed either gibberish or the worst war cry the world would hear.
The bird wailed. I would have been covering my ears again were I not under the influences of momentum and air pressure. Electricity crackled through the air. I braced for it to find, hit, and kill me. There was no way in hell I would survive being blasted with lightning or slaying this creature on my own.
Just when things couldn't get worse, the world thundered. No, I don't mean the storm in the clouds. The earth shifted. People screamed louder than ever. Car alarms threw tantrums. Weirdest of all, nothing met my feet. I didn't feel the wind. Rain still poured. Somehow, it failed to drench me.
I opened my eyes again to the sight of Clearpeak's favorite minimall having fallen dark in the chaos. Massive lumps of rainbow overtook a vast chunk of the western parking lot. The electrical cables the monster went for danced along the ground sparking at random beside its body.
"Is it…?" I said, waiting for the bird to twitch and tell me the fight wasn't quite over. "How?" I, a young adult with no idea how these new powers worked, couldn't have possibly defeated it in one hit. I'm not Saitama. I could not hope to match him in combat. The past few years of my life were spent withering under pandemic restrictions.
"What'd ya know?" a now all too familiar man said. "You didn't need me to kill a monster. Again." Saitama perched on a nearby lamppost. He balanced on the end with arms crossed and a smug smile.
Impulse took hold. I flew, by God, I flew at his face and shouted, "You threw me, asshole!"
"I hate—"
"Being called bald," I snapped. "I know."
"You actually went there to get my attention," he said.
"There was a threat," I said. "People's lives were in danger. I wish you were more aware of the world around you."
"You made me aware."
"Your solution was to launch me at the enemy! Do I look like a javelin to you? Or the Pit to your Palutena? Or…" I shook my head. "Somebody is not gonna like I'm thinking in references again. But what, you thought I could make a difference when I barely understand how these new powers of mine work? When I know nothing about combat other than anything I could do in video games?"
Shoving a fist under his chin, he said, "You lash out if you're threatened, hurt, or frustrated…"
"I wasn't being listened to," I said. "I don't even know if you're listening to me now."
"Makes sense," he said. Much like me in my rambling moments, he became lost in his own little world. "I'm right about—"
"This is what I mean!" I yelled, pulling closer to him and his dumb smile. I waited for his pupils to face forward before I spoke again. "I know I go off on tangents. You're the first person besides my family, therapist, and landlady who I've spoken to regularly in literal years. I'm sorry I do what I do. I'm sorry you've resorted to ignoring me because I can't keep quiet. You have no idea how it feels to be around people you want to interact with."
Saitama's now straight-lined expression couldn't be any less unreadable.
My heart thumped at what felt like the speed of light the closer I moved to him. "For crying out loud, you made friends back home and you refuse to call them what they are! Genos is your "student"." I added "air quotes" here. "King is a guy you regularly play games with. Bang is an old guy in awe of your strength. Fubuki is always her annoying self, but you tolerate her even with her need for there to be a "Fubuki Group".
"You've been lucky enough to meet all sorts of people who have come to admire you. You still close yourself off to them. Plenty of folks here would love to hang not just with your "acquaintances", but with you too."
Somehow I made a speech from my uneven breath and distracting heartbeat. I could have been proud of myself. I wasn't. His thick skull would never absorb this much information at once.
Light, I saw. Clouds parted to blue skies. The Sun hung smack dab in the middle, shining its light upon the world once again. Rainwater dripped from me and to the ground far below. I would have asked how I could fly if I didn't have bigger issues.
"Are you okay, Sam?" Saitama said, his voice growing quieter with each word.
"I'd take it you'd shrug off a simple, 'Fuck you'," I said. "What you did to me wasn't cool."
"You're mad at me."
"No. Shit. Sherlock. I could have been dead from either being electrified or hitting the ground."
"I would've caught you."
"Wouldn't change the fact I could have still died!" I yelled, voice cracking on "died". "Hadn't I somehow killed the monster and you saved me and I didn't die, we'd still be in the same place regarding what you did.
"I was trying to get your help. I called you bald because you could give less of a shit about the world around you when you're focused on living a boring old day-to-day life. Should I mention how it took you three years to learn you didn't have a massive fan club because of the Hero Association? How could you have missed any news about the H-A when monsters have become a part of your world's daily life?
"You have the power to change others' lives for the better. Why else did you have so many people sharing hotpot with you and Genos before you left your homeworld? They think you're amazing. I think you're amazing. So endangering my life due to a small comment I made to get you to help me and ignoring my words because I can't express myself in any other way hurts!"
His wide-eyed expression and dropped jaw told me everything.
I reached for my messenger bag's strap and slipped it off. I pushed the thick slab at him. "Take this and go shopping without me. Since I'm a "reality-warper", I guess I can snap my fingers and be in my bedroom in an instant. We don't need more food if I can restore the town's power and save everything in our fridge from going bad. See you later."
I went into a glide. Whatever I did to put me in this flying state, I would utilize it to get home. Maybe soaring through the air would clear my mind and put this perhaps nonsensical verbal lashing behind me. I should never have unleashed my rage as I did in front of him and the crowd returning outdoors in anxious, cautious waves. There was no doubt someone caught us on camera and would use this incident against me.
When the crowd turned into dots, including Saitama, far below, I imagined being home. I could be in bed sleeping away my anger and frustration. I gave him whatever other junk I shoved inside my bag. He would be fine finishing what we initially planned to do on his own.
It's okay, Sam, spoke my mind. Deep breaths. You'll feel better if you calm down, then go back to apologize for your outburst.
Go home, said my body. Be alone. Relax in more familiar ways. Let him worry about himself.
No points for whoever guessed what I picked between these options. Probably seemed too obvious.
Saitama stepped into Sam's apartment. His left hand grasped the flimsy handles of several paper bags. A big leather bag slapped against his outer thigh. He freed the key he used to get in from its bottom slot, made sure the door didn't shut on his cape, then went to the kitchen to place his paper bags on the counter.
He didn't bother getting any cold items during his shopping trip. She said she could save the stuff they already kept in the fridge. He believed her words when he saw all the indoor lights in those rows of one and two-story homes he found when he made a wrong turn coming back here. If she knew she succeeded in helping her community was another story.
He shoved half the bags aside, took the rest, and left the kitchen. He could unpack the groceries and his new clothes later. He made sure not to buy any cold stuff after her comments to him earlier. He wanted to confront a serious problem h first encountered over an hour ago. This serious problem required a serious solution. He concluded on his return trip this solution would not come easily.
They hurt each other. She wanted to be listened to. He ignored her due to her rambling nature. She insulted him so he would notice her. He threw her at a giant enemy bird to shut her up. End result? She… Didn't shut up. Far from it.
He kicked off his boots right before he got to the rug which encompassed most of the apartment, removed his gloves, and dropped the rest of his stuff on the couch. He swiveled, reached for the buttons clipping his cape to the rest of his superhero costume, and heard it fall and produce crinkles from the bags. He wasted no time leaving the living room for the bedroom.
Once there, he didn't bother with turning the doorknob. He knocked. Three short thumps, after which he waited. Chances were she locked the door. Better to let her choose to open up to him than alarm her by trying to get inside.
"Sam?" Saitama called. "You there?"
No response. Just as he expected.
"I'm leaving your stuff at the door," he said. He hung her bag on the knob and backed away. He loitered in the hallway in the hopes of hearing activity from inside the room.
Sam wasn't always the first to move toward reconciliation. She preferred running away and letting any budding relationships wilt. He concluded while shopping he couldn't afford for her to do the same to him. By doing what he did while upset, he lost some of her trust. Were she angry enough, he could have no place to stay. Certain snippets of their conversation replayed in his head long after she left him to be scrutinized by a terrified and befuddled audience.
'You're the first person besides my family, therapist, and landlady who I've spoken to regularly in literal years… You have no idea how it feels to be around people you want to interact with.'
"Let me know if you wanna talk," Saitama said. "I'll, uh, be around." Turning on his heel, he figured he could change into those new PJs he found on sale. Anything he got would also be fine since it allowed him to shed his hero costume.
Sounds of metal brushing against itself came from his right. He flipped to the doorway faster than a lightning bolt could strike the earth.
Sam opened the door. Right away, he saw she wore the same lengthy flowery nightgown from this morning. Hair trailed from her lefthand shoulder and brushed her sleeve. Folded pale arms pushed at her chest.
"We're still all over social media," she said. "I checked. Your little stunt involving me has pushed your Twitter ranking to number one trending again. As we speak, a coalition of theater kids, Korean pop stans, and anime fanboys are attempting to take the throne from your fanbase."
Despite how slow she spoke, he still needed to ask, "What?"
"In short, people are mad," she said. "I guess you wouldn't care. It's not like you have a history of causing senseless property damage or leaving others to a problem you're more qualified for and risking them being hurt." Her expression dulled. "Oh no, you're perfect. You're no danger to society at all."
"If you're trying to be dramatic, it's not working," he said.
Sam brushed her hair behind her ear and scratched the lobe. "Oh, good," she said. "I'm not trying to be dramatic. My sense of humor sucks ass. I figured you'd only want the cold, hard facts." She leaned into him. "Why are you here?"
"I live here now?" he answered.
"You've got nothing else to do?" she said, drawing closer. He backed with every step she made forward. "No purpose in life now you've achieved your dream of being the strongest hero? Unwilling to move on from your dream because it'll never be possible for you to find a worthy opponent? Hurting others as a result? Now stuck with an entire world who knows who you are and what you're capable of and still no ways of fulfilling your dream? They're basically a free fanbase and you still ignore them when we're under threat…" Anger drained from her face and got replaced by disappointment. "You know, maybe I am being too dramatic."
"Maybe," Saitama said.
"Simply put, I'm not okay. You shook me up real good."
"I know."
"I-I'm sorry for going off on you."
"...It's alright."
Finally, she noticed he wasn't standing by her anymore. She flipped around.
He sat on her bed holding a white laptop and paused what he was typing to meet her gaze.
She didn't move, nor did she speak.
Freeing a hand from the keyboard, he patted the bed next to him. "I wanna apologize for earlier too," he said, bowing his head. "You're a lot more sensitive than I thought. Me throwing you at a problem was, I guess, a lot like you being abandoned by your friends when they formed new relationships."
She pushed her side into the door.
Saitama patted the bed again. "Whoever wrote your manga should've just published a novel. And they shouldn't have killed you off."
Sam's chest sank. She averted her eyes.
"You make for a better character than you realize," he said. "Once you get a grip on your reality-warping powers, throw all you got at me. I wanna see what you're capable of."
"I-I think I already understand them."
"Oh?"
One moment, she was on the opposite side of the room. The next, he stiffened at a soft pressure beside him. Two arms squeezed at his ribcage.
"That was teleportation," Sam explained when noticing his raised eyebrow. She moved a hand to the laptop. Flashes of light flared from her fingers and over the darkened screen. The pointer on-screen darted for the search bar. It turned from a black arrow to a gloved hand and back when a blinking line prompting for the keyboard to be used appeared.
He yanked his hand from the touchpad. "Telekinesis?"
Sam nodded as she retrieved the single pillow she slept in bed with. Before his eyes, it shifted into a polished point with a navy blue wrap, previously the pillowcase, around its metallic handle.
"Transfiguration of objects," she said while the dagger returned to its original squarish nonlethal shape. "And…" She snapped the fingers on her right hand. Two enormous ebony masses appeared behind her. She extended them. "Shapeshifting."
Saitama slipped his hand over the upper feathers of the wing in front of him. He pinched at the furthest feather and pulled it free.
Sam's wings snapped shut. "Hey!" she cried.
"Wow," he said, twirling the quill between his finger and thumb. "What about the magic you used against your grandma?"
She snapped her fingers and her wings disappeared without a trace. Other than the feather he still held, anyway. "You mean this?" she said, flicking her fingers. One purple ball of light popped into existence. "Cool, right? I guess…"
"...You could do anything," Saitama said.
"Except beat you in a fight." She stopped him before he could refute her. "Or conjure things other than magic from thin air. Don't even think I can fight you. Your opponent's elsewhere, assuming they exist at all."
We'll see. What little of a smile he got from these thoughts vanished with his midsection being squeezed.
She instantly broke their skin contact when he noticed and huddled into a ball nearby. "Now what?" she said.
"How about… Nothing?"
"Nothing?"
"Exactly."
Nothing was all they did until the sun went down and left the room in darkness. Unless anyone considered mindlessly browsing the internet "nothing". Or picking random videos to watch as "nothing". Or having Sam die of obvious nervous laughter for unknown reasons when a certain song about never giving someone up appeared on autoplay as nothing.
Hey, at least it took their minds off of recent events. This was all they could have asked for.
Hey, guys.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I figured I should let you all know this before tomorrow comes and I maybe get comments complaining about where the next chapter was. Or maybe if you saw me floating around the other day, I have to explain myself. There won't be an update this week because I haven't been in the right place mentally. People kept telling me what I was doing with another project was wrong. They got mad at me for not understanding them when I triggered my own panic attack/mental breakdown, or I got mad at them for not understanding me when my words weren't so clear or, on another site, moderators made me lobotomize a post simply because I "overquoted" somebody from offsite and I nearly lashed out at them.
I couldn't pull myself away from the damn computer screen all day. At least one person was telling me my efforts were pointless, but they're a known jerk reviewer where they seem to frequent, so...?
I realize none of that was healthy. I just couldn't stop. I got defensive because I wanted to have "fun"... Whatever the hell "fun" means anymore. When other people jumped in, leaving me anonymous multi-paragraph comments in complicated language ranting about tropes or tearing things apart because of their high standards, I felt threatened. I wanted to be left alone, took my problems elsewhere, caused more problems by not being in my right mind, and real life decided to ice the shit cake with more drama at 12 a.m. because why not?
So, yes. No update this week. I need to pull away from posting for a bit and figure out how to deal with my needs, which shouldn't come from posting subpar chapters and expecting everybody to be nice. Sorry.
I couldn't pull myself away from the damn computer screen all day. At least one person was telling me my efforts were pointless, but they're a known jerk reviewer where they seem to frequent, so...?
I realize none of that was healthy. I just couldn't stop. I got defensive because I wanted to have "fun"... Whatever the hell "fun" means anymore. When other people jumped in, leaving me anonymous multi-paragraph comments in complicated language ranting about tropes or tearing things apart because of their high standards, I felt threatened. I wanted to be left alone, took my problems elsewhere, caused more problems by not being in my right mind, and real life decided to ice the shit cake with more drama at 12 a.m. because why not?
So, yes. No update this week. I need to pull away from posting for a bit and figure out how to deal with my needs, which shouldn't come from posting subpar chapters and expecting everybody to be nice. Sorry.
Last edited:
Chapter Seven: Thanksgiving - Part One
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Twitter Servers Crash Following Monster-Slaying Stunt Involving Saitama of One-Punch Man Fame submitted 12 hours ago by N0ClothesWantShIp
7,647 comments share save hide report
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Top 200 Comments show 500
[—] RedStonedBone 8.0k points 12 hours ago
Social Media Before Yesterday: Saitama is amazing and can do no wrong!
Social Media Today: yo wtf why did he throw a girl
OPM Fans Who Know: She called him bald and showed she could take care of the threat by herself.
Non-Fans Who Don't Know: [Insert incoherent rage here]
_____
[—] Zero_X_Infinity 10.3k points 12 hours ago
Seems we're split on whether we hear Saitama speaking English or Japanese. Depends on what version of the anime you've most watched or if you're aware of his Japanese origins before you hear him speak.
_____
[—] marriedinahurricane 7.8k points 11 hours ago
This is the first time we've heard Saitama speak! I've always watched his anime in Japanese, so that's how I heard him. Just makes sense to me, you know? His creator is Japanese and OPM's culture is largely based on Japan's.
I wonder what language Sam (The girl) hears him in?
[ — ] fry_the_rye 4.4k points 11 hours ago
English, I'm guessing.
I've gotta agree with Sam's yelling at him. This "awesome" superhero ignored a threat to the lives of citizens until she hit a nerve. She outright tells him she wants him to be more attentive and he dismisses her.
Why's he been worshipped like he's the second coming of Jesus again?
[ — ] FellowshipOfTheBling47 8.0k points 11 hours ago
It's Saitama. You're wrong for assuming he's an awful person. A sore spot of his is being called bald. He doesn't normally care for long-winded speeches. His expression by the end of their talk seems to say he understands where she's coming from.
[ — ] YieldOrSuffer23 4.5k points 11 hours ago
Is it me, or did she look like she was on the edge of tears when she flew away? She must have felt betrayed…
Much, much further down the webpage:
[ — ] 1hrew1he3ook4way 3 points 11 hours ago
Has anyone else been feeling funny since yesterday? I felt all dizzy, my sis felt chilly(?) in ninety-degree weather, my cousin almost torched our kitchen when my mom started arguing with him while he was cooking…
If you don't believe me, go explore the rest of Reddit. There's been tons of users claiming they…
Even further down:
[ — ] on_a_friday_night -100 points 13 hours ago
Why do you guys love this idiot? Dude threw a girl and most of you are talking about him being bilingual instead of denouncing him for his domestic abuse.
EDIT: You guys are okay with domestic abuse?
EDIT 2: Eat shit, u/Tapu_Ukelele786
EDIT 3: i can't wait for saitama to get shot at by a red-blooded american for being an illegal immigrant
EDIT 4: lolololololololololololololololololololol
. . .
This forum thread descended into paragraphs of bickering after the last user's messages. The commenters started making comparisons between Saitama's personality and those of America's corrupt politicians and the ultra-rich. Or it seemed they did at a glance. He did not care to read every word. He would just be wasting his time.
He soon couldn't follow all the paragraphs they typed and quoted and whatnot. After having to move the scrollbar sideways to skim commentary which brought in a celebrity who had nothing to do with either of the above categories into the discussion, and his head hurt finding more anger-fueled paragraphs, he closed the tab on the laptop Sam lent him. Fingers played with the stem of a dark feather in his other hand. He directed his attention to the hallway leading to her bedroom.
"Y'all are stupid," Saitama sighed, massaging his forehead. Why'd I look myself up? The first few things he got from his curiosity and "Googling" his name, as Sam phrased when he asked to borrow the laptop, was a selection of unflattering illustrations of himself from the anime she mentioned quite a few times already, a random fansite, an online currency he rolled his eyes at, stuff from social media, and an information page regarding the Saitama Prefecture in Japan. Afterwards, along came social media again, which he couldn't resist spending the next ten minutes pouring over.
Cool? Sure. Irrelevant? Absolutely. On a whim, he scrolled to the top of the first tab he had opened and hovered around a link to show more images. He would either find awesome pieces of art or forever scar himself were he to click. Would it be best for him not to check? Last thing I'd wanna see is my fans… What's the word? Nevermind. I'm not into anybody. I don't wanna see me and Fubuki or me and Genos… Bile built in his throat.
Nobody would listen to him were he to say he leaned one way or the other or would rather date his fist. For all he knew, his fans were already putting him together with Sam and getting mad at each other for rejecting other potential couples. Typical fannish things, right? Not like he would understand every little thing which went into a fandom, however. Ships, yes, there was the word, were more internet arguments those guys needed to step away from.
I've gotta follow my own advice. Saitama shut the laptop. After pushing it aside, his ear twitched. He rolled his eyes without turning his head to the hallway.
Sam's bedroom door closed. Footsteps creaked the wood hidden beneath the apartment's abundance of carpet. Sam appeared at the corner leaning on the wall.
Unprompted, she moaned, "My legs hurt worse than the time I did a hiking unit for my high school gym class. There's a blister I just treated on the back of my right foot. I swear it always happens when I walk too much."
"Morning?" Saitama said. "Maybe you need new sneakers?"
Sam staggered toward the kitchen. "Not all of us can dedicate every day of our lives to exercise. I don't have your kind of willpower."
"You warp reality."
"Yeah, and?" she said, squinting at the light she turned on in the kitchen. "Do I look like I could rip a hole in space-time and send us sixty-five million years into the past right now?"
"You haven't tried," he said.
"You didn't become who you are today in twenty-four… Forty-eight…" She slapped a palm over her face. Her fingers moved to adjust her glasses, which were dislodged from the bridge of her nose. "However long it's been since the beginning of all of this. Limits are meant to be discovered, built on, and eventually broken. Emphasis on the word eventually. Serious athletes take what I've heard called "rest days"—"
"You haven't tried."
She frowned. "Didn't you hear me?"
"I did."
"Why are you repeating yourself?"
"'Cause you haven't tried."
"Tried what? Nearly dying? I have, and I hated it."
Saitama got to his feet. "Sam, you're magic," he said. "Use it."
She blinked at him behind her worn, scratched-up glasses. She still wore her flowery nightgown from the night before. Since then, she added pajama pants adorned with snowflake designs and a bracelet with a strange symbol against a green background trapped inside a glass dome.
He rushed to the hallway. His roommate yelped when he swiped her from where she stood. Right there, his plans to ditch his super suit and get it washed after doing his daily run were dashed. His new clothes would have to wait a bit longer to be worn.
"Wait!" Sam shouted when she saw him making for the front door. "I'm not dressed to leave!"
"You won't need a change of clothes where we're going," he said, slipping on her bag. "I finished The Secret to Strength last night." Her questioning stare from atop his shoulders forced him to clarify. "Volume two of the Punch manga? I'm about done with volume three, The Rumor."
"They have names?" Sam asked, wide-eyed.
"You didn't know?"
"Um, no!"
Shutting the door, he said, "You remember what happens in volume three?"
"You and Genos take the hero exam?"
"Yep. What else?"
"You either call Sonic Jack-o'-Lantern Panic in the anime or Joints-o'-Pain Panic in the manga."
"Called him Jack. What else?"
"Fubuki and Tatsumaki show up."
"You've told me."
"There's another bonus chapter starring you from three years ago."
"And?"
"Four-twenty?"
Saitama arrived at the stairwell to the right of the apartment. "Quit avoiding the question. You know what I mean."
She swung her head away. "Nope!"
"Sam…"
She bristled at his tone. "If you're taking this where I think you are…"
"Yeah?"
She couldn't speak further in the middle of a rapid onset of thick, unsteady breaths.
Saitama quickened his stride. Not two seconds later and he reached the bottom of the stairwell. Upon exiting it, he found himself off to the side of the building's lobby. He trotted outdoors and, when he spotted it, over to a grass field to the west of the parking lot with a wooden bench right before the slope of a hill. Good. He hoped it would be dry enough for them both to take a seat.
Fortune smiled upon him. This bench was not at all wet. He reached for the hyperventilating girl clinging to his head. After freeing her from his shoulders, he lowered her onto the bench.
Sam hugged her legs and buried her face between her knees. Her erratic breathing continued.
Saitama sighed at the miserable state she fell into. "Don't say you're afraid of me again," he said. "All I was gonna suggest is we see what you're capable of."
"Wh-which means you want to…" Sam hesitated before she could finish and trembled. "God, Saitama. Do you think making me fight you now rather than when I'm more comfortable with all these recent changes to my life is a good idea? When you sparred with Genos, he came in with several years of combat experience—"
"I didn't kill or maim him."
She nodded. "True. Bu-but…"
"Worst I did was smack him in the face. He flew around trying to incinerate me. You should be more worried about what he'd do to you."
"Your super strength—"
"Is under my control," he asserted, stifling another sigh.
"In the anime, at least, you made a massive hole in the rock wall behind Genos!"
Did I now? No, stick to the current topic. "Hey, now. Genos wasn't harmed. I'd go easy on you no matter what. Seems what this is about…"
Sam concealed her face in her legs. Taking another unstable breath, she said, "I'm afraid I'm nowhere near ready to fight anybody, especially you. Me defeating the bird is a fluke because you threw me at the problem. I got lucky with Granny, but you bailed me out of being crushed to death. These powers of mine are limited compared to the other girl's based on your description of what she seemed to be able to do right away and I don't want to be a disappointment, especially to you—"
"Stop."
Oh, she did. Her breath grew uneven again.
"Slow down," Saitama said.
"Tw-twenty words or less?" she guessed, looking up at him.
Shaking his head, he countered, "Focus on your breathing."
She broke eye contact and shoved her head back between her kneecaps. "Doing those exercises can make me, um, uncomfortable."
He tilted his head. "You usually did breathing exercises when placed in these situations in—"
Wrong choice of words. Fixing a scowl on him, she hissed, "Is there anything your stupid book didn't say about me? Anything?"
Saitama blinked at her closing the distance between them. "I'm suggesting a way to calm yourself," he said. "Always seemed to work."
Deflating, and choosing a softer tone, Sam said, "I, um… I-I feel weird doing them around other people. They would probably see it as weird too, especially coming from a girl who used to cry about things not going her way."
"Who are these "other people" you're worried about now? Your old classmates? Your sis? You moved away from them."
After some silence, she mumbled, "New people, like my neighbors and the landlady, though she's on holiday at the moment."
"Are you worried I'm judging you?" Saitama said.
She gripped herself all the tighter.
"I've got no reason to hate you," he said. "You're as weird as everybody else I've met. The person judging you the most is yourself."
They didn't speak again for another moment.
"What's with you always being the guy giving people advice?" Sam said.
He looked out over the parking lot. A small family of three and a pet carrier were loading into a car left by the far edge of the barren trees, which separated the complex from the small town's streets.
"Not sure," he said. "Nobody argues with me when I tell 'em what I think. Or they get violent and I gotta beat sense into them."
"Or they're Genos and take you way too seriously," she said, actually laughing somewhat.
Saitama chuckled a bit. "Yeah."
They let the silence drown them.
She played with the fabric of her sleeve, wrapping and unwrapping it around her pointer finger. Other than this, she spent her time gazing into the flower designs in her nightgown.
Watching the far-off dead scenery, some strange feeling, like a tug of a tight knot, arose from Saitama's chest. He brought a hand to his heart. Eyebrows raised in confusion. What's this feeling? Couldn't be a heart attack, given his young age and healthy physique. He sure as hell didn't have feelings for the girl next to him like in any of those trashy romance mangas.
"I guess… A try."
Thoughts faded to those quiet words. "Huh?" Saitama said.
Sam pulled her glasses from her face. Light surrounded the item, twisted them inwards with no resistance, and faded. What replaced it was a tied string with a similar appearance to the bracelet she already wore. "Testing my powers in combat?" she clarified. "Like you advised we should? Right?"
This suggestion gave him more pause. "You sure?" he eventually managed to say.
Her tepid expression opened to bared, crooked teeth. "Yes," she answered, clambering to her knees. "Let's do this."
"You know anywhere we could—"
Sam lunged at him. "Never should have come here!"
Wait, what? His vision swarmed with light before he could fully process her words. By the time he did, he noticed he was no longer sitting. Faded green grass crinkled beneath his boots. The atmosphere gleamed clear blue with nothing around to block a blinding Sun.
Opposite of him stood a short figure in sleepwear and two identical bracelets on her left arm. Her hair, which normally wafted on its own, flapped all around her due to the strong wind at her back.
Squinting in the sunlight, Saitama asked, "Where's this?"
"We're in a park at the edge of town," Sam said. "This poor excuse for a soccer field would be a good place for us to spar." With a fold of her arms, she continued. "I haven't stood outside without sneakers in a while."
"You'll be okay without 'em?"
"I guess. My only pair gives me blisters when I walk a lot in them." The breeze died and her hair returned to its floaty self at her side.
He returned his attention to the clear sky. Examining it, then the field again helped the change of scenery sink passed his barren scalp. "You say your powers are 'limited'?" he said. "You've teleported us ten kilometers from your apartment." He started toward her. "Cool."
"Wait," she said. "I imagined being someplace away from infrastructure…"
Saitama broke into a run. Even with her recent boost in powers, Sam couldn't have seen or heard him moving. Seconds later, her opponent blocked the Sun's glare. His shadow overlapped hers.
Sam spun to confront him. His obstruction of the sunlight did nothing to hide her reddened cheeks. Wide eyes, an open mouth, and a flinch otherwise greeted him.
He tilted his head. Light warmed his backside despite the dip in temperature since yesterday.
They watched each other. Neither moved. Things stayed this way for some time, with her frozen in shock and him simply waiting.
Funny how the removal of a familiar item from someone's wardrobe made them appear to be a different person. Sam no longer seemed like a shut-in dork who wore ancient glasses with loose, scratched lenses. Her nightgown and curled, fluttering brown hair gave her the appearance of a plain old girl rudely dragged from bed. Which she was, in retrospect. The face these features belonged to was admittedly unremarkable without her glasses.
"We're doing this or what?" Saitama said. No sooner did he say this did he feel a foot slam into his back. He became the perfect launching pad for the girl carried through the air on dark wings. He grunted and straightened himself in time to watch her fly several feet overhead.
Sam stole a glance at her feathery wings, which glowed purple at the edges. "Figures my first thought is to reference—"
Saitama pumped a fist. He put enough force behind it to generate a strong breeze.
The current caught Sam and sent her spinning, with a shrill scream, sideways. Her wings thrashed ineffectively before the purple gleam about them increased in intensity and saved her from losing much altitude.
"Hey!" she cried before putting a hand to her head and moaning. "Ugh. I feel as if I've done a dozen flips in a pool."
"Less talking, more action," he called, shifting into a defensive stance. He would not allow her to chatter her way outta this. Stronger gusts of wind could be in order if she still allowed her thoughts to wander.
Here we were six miles from where we started. I hovered high above the world. Purple sparkles flickered around me on occasion, mostly concentrated on my back and wings. I would be terrified of being this high up without my new magic powers. If I lost control here, I would have to rely on Saitama to catch me or aim for the occasional tree dotting the park's landscape, if at all possible.
"Got it?" I heard him say. "Don't get distracted."
When I felt the dizziness wear off, I peeled my hand from my forehead and nodded at my sparring partner. "Got it!" I flapped my wings and rose further into the air. Part of this was to give me a vantage point assuming he didn't try knocking me off balance again. Another was to put distance between his line of sight and my ruddy face.
My thoughts raced. He praised me. Saitama was impressed by my teleportation. I didn't even intend to send us here! Perhaps I'm not as weak as I believed? Maybe I had not yet reached my physical and magical limits. Only one way to find—
"What did I say about getting distracted?"
I flipped in time to locate the man who then snatched me from the air. My front slammed into his side. We plunged toward the ground, eyes locked… Until I closed my eyes and imagined returning to the sky and flying high above the field again. The sensation of falling stopped, leaving me with a clenched butt and a racing heartbeat. Good. I'm safe.
I opened my eyes in time to see Saitama land in the grass feet first almost with the grace of a cat. The fling of his left leg when he hit the ground brought to mind how he steadied himself after a clash with Boros in the anime.
Breathing became secondary to me marveling at how fluid his movement remained after falling from a considerable height. Here did it truly hit me how I was the individual who brought him here to fight. I did want something, if anything, from this experience. But the fact was I would never be his equal. At worst, I could damage his super suit, which would be easy to repair with threads and needles or magic. For all we know, his true opponent was—
"Seriously, quit dozing off!"
Nevermind. Warm sensations zipped through my veins and to my fingertips. "Says the man known for ignoring danger even when it threatens other lives!" I yelled before firing a purple laser beam where he stood.
He dodged well before my attack etched a blackened, steaming circle in the grass. I heard a whoosh from behind me and let my magic rip. Predictably, he evaded this way before my other attack, carrying a nearby rock I telekinetically threw, reached the ground. His trail of afterimages flickered for a second each before disappearing one by one.
"I'm over here!"
I made a one-eighty in time to see Saitama hurdling past again. Either he sought to force me to the ground or just wanted to show I wouldn't be even somewhat safe in the air. Get this— I didn't feel fear when he reached the height of his jump. Sure, my heart pounded. My brain didn't feel the same. I straight away visualized being beside the dark brown bark of an evergreen tree by a curving sidewalk up ahead. Light shimmered around me. Before I knew it, my arm brushed against needle leaves and I yanked it away.
He touched down facing me. I couldn't read his mood without my glasses. Most of the finer details concerning him lost meaning to me without them, in fact, other than his straightening posture and his cape trailing his movements.
I could maybe exploit his combat style. Thinking back on his adventures, he could not hit a small, fast-moving opponent. How about a small, fast-moving, and teleporting opponent?
"Hey."
Crap. He got behind me while I monologued again, didn't he? Yep, he did, when I checked. He clung to the tree's trunk, appearing uncomfortable with the tree's thin needles brushing his sides. His smile reminded me of a fictional boy I crushed on in my early teen years more than the nutcase who burrowed after a mole to kill it. Good for him, because he paralyzed me long enough to leap from the tree, grab me, and return us both to the ground.
"Gotcha!" he proclaimed, dropping me in the grass.
After landing on my butt, I blinked. "Howdy?" I said as he dropped to his knees next to me.
"You done?" Saitama said back.
Okay, the teleporting plan went out the window. He would always catch me as long as I allowed my thoughts to get ahead of me. I pulled at the grass, fixated on him.
Teleportation. Unsuccessful.
Telekinesis. Useless.
Shapeshifting. Did nothing since I was fixated on using those damn wings. Nothing, or would the word be anything, I could turn into could do anything other than provide a distraction.
Transfiguration? I yanked a blade of grass from the ground. I doubt transfiguration would be useful…
Saitama shouted when the ground exploded beneath him. I watched my purple magic, almost as if I weren't controlling it, grab at the grass around him and yank hard enough to expose a compact mound of dirt.
…Either? I scurried to my feet, following the silhouette of a fast-growing plateau. Along the way, it exposed more and more of the earth beneath. Large rocks dislodged along the fault line. This structure, which kidnapped a wide-eyed Saitama in its rise, did not stop growing until the jagged tips along the island's perimeters seemed to brush the Sun.
I gasped. In my attempt to stand, my muscles shook. Weakness from this unintended expenditure of my energy set in. My wings disappeared. I fought with a yawn bouncing between my jaws and dug my toes into the grass.
"That. Was. Amazing!"
To my right, a couple of kids equipped with bike helmets and knee pads leaned on a tree. Their tallest member pointed her phone camera at the plateau.
I did as a deer would do in a car's headlights: freeze. "He-hello?"
"He's as fast as Sonic the Hedgehog!" one of the kids, a girl howled, smiling wide.
"There's a guy named Sonic where Saitama came from," the girl with the camera, who must have been a teenager, said.
"The hedgehog?" exclaimed the other kid, a boy.
"No," the teen girl said. "He's a ninja."
A ninja who got punched in the nuts and became traumatized, mind her. I figured it would be best not to elaborate given how young the other two kids seemed.
"A ninja!" the little boy cried. "Awesome!"
Oh, only if he knew.
"Shouldn't you guys be in school?" I said.
The younger girl pointed at me. "Shouldn't you be in bed?"
I folded my arms.
"Shouldn't you be in school too?" the boy said.
"Not anymore," I said. "I'm twenty-four."
The girl's pointer finger moved from me to the air. "How old's the bald guy?"
We were met with a man slamming into the grass after jumping from a great height. Grass and soil exploded out of the ground from the impact. I hardly had time to prepare a magical shield around the rest of us before his mess came for a landing.
"Whoa…" the little kids muttered together.
When the dust settled, I dissipated my shield. I gasped for air and clung to the grass as best I could with my feet.
"You alright, Sam?" Saitama said.
"Will you ever stop asking me if I am?" I answered. "You've asked me six times now."
He pondered the question. "You've kept count?"
"No! I mean, yes! I mean… Don't pretend you can't predict what my answer would be!"
"You want me to stop?"
I swallowed. "I guess it's nice when you—"
"Excuse me," the teen girl said, raising her hand. "Does this have to do with why you were fighting?"
"No," I said, seeing again the phone she brandished at us. "Could you please put away your camera? Why are you kids not in school?"
She considered my words, then slipped her device into a jeans pocket. Her tiny mouth straightened from a frown. "We're on break," she said. "Today's Thanksgiving."
I gaped. "You're kidding me."
She shook her head.
"It's not April Fool's Day?"
"It's November."
"You sure?"
"Have you read a calendar recently?" she asked. "Why aren't you home with your family?"
The answer, straightaway, was, "They're dead."
The teen hesitated.
I considered turning one of my bracelets into a piece of tape to shut myself up.
"Hey," Saitama said before I could write off this as another awkward social encounter. "What's Thanksgiving?"
"An American holiday started by pilgrims years ago," I said, not peeling my eyes from the teen. "We meet with our friends and families to eat food, give "thanks"' to whatever, and watch a parade.
"My sis is at college. My other relatives fled west. What reason do I have to celebrate Thanksgiving other than the fact I'm still alive? Maybe the parade… If I were still a little kid?"
"Good enough reasons to me," Saitama said, tugging my shoulder. "Let's go."
"You're just saying we should because you like free food," I said.
"What about the parade?" the little boy asked. "I wanna see Pikachu. Mommy didn't want us in the…"
I snapped into reality following those words. "Wait!" I cried. Purple light glittered along my arms. "I could miss the Pikachu balloon!"
"I thought you didn't care about—" Saitama's speech got cut short by the beating of webbed wings.
"I do now!" I bellowed out of my new reptilian muzzle. "You coming?"
"I never did my run," he said, studying me. "You turned yourself into a…"
"Dra-dragon?!" the little boy squealed, racing behind the teen, who whipped her phone from her pocket.
"She's tiny!" the little girl crowed. "Aw…"
"Um, thanks?" I said, extending my little scaly claws in front of me. I turned my attention to the teen. "You! Next time, forget about the camera."
I held my gaze to hers until she gave in again and nodded. "'Next time?'" she said.
"You can post whatever you have now," I said. "Just let the public know not to start filming if they see us and to stay away if we're ever doing anything dangerous. You could have been launched sky-high like Tama over here." I gestured at him.
I got no responses from anyone.
I flew off. "Thanks for listening, I guess."
"Why did you turn into a dragon?"
I fluttered to Saitama's side. "To scare those kids away." I landed on the ground on my hind legs and shapeshifted to my normal appearance, including the glasses I turned into a bracelet earlier.
"You were being weird, not scary," he said.
I huffed. "Hey, I tried. I got us away from them, didn't I?"
"They were curious about us," he said.
"We're lucky they didn't get caught in the middle of our spar."
Saitama paused. "That was what was on my mind!" he proclaimed, lifting a finger. "You did good, Sam. I never expected you to teleport or launch me into the air." He drew closer when I opened my mouth to argue. "Our way back's a straight path once we get outta here?"
"Yes," I said. "I think so."
He peered over his shoulder. "You're shaping the world already. Seems they come sooner to the person who's supposed to wield them. Took the other chick a week."
"How did she even receive my powers after I died?" I said, stepping carefully to avoid a puddle. Now did I regret not wearing shoes.
"Some mysterious voice gave them to her. They wanted her to avert some sorta catastrophe."
"She was selfish," I said, remembering his tidbits on her from the other day.
"Everybody died at the end of your story because she sat in her new mansion until the disaster came for her. By then, it was too late for her to fix anything. Just die." His casualness did not live up to the seriousness of his statement.
"You don't know what killed her?"
He shrugged a half-hearted shoulder. "Some wave of literal darkness appeared after you died. Thing slurped the world like me eating udon." He bit his lower lip. "What's today?"
"Thanksgiving?'
"The date?"
"Twenty-third of November?"
His smile couldn't be more obvious. "If you weren't around, everybody would've died today. Another reason to keep you alive, eh?"
"Hold on," I said, racing to keep pace with him. I couldn't have chosen anything worse to do after expending my energy. I huffed and puffed and slowed while he kept going. "Tama, wait!"
He noticed me struggling to keep up and flipped around, sending his cape flying. Mesmerized by its rippling, I didn't notice he dropped me on his shoulders until he started walking again.
"What do you mean by if I weren't around?" I panted. "The universe can't just die because a hermit kicks the bucket and somebody decides to be irresponsible. It's not logical. Like seriously, look at me. Do I seem like I'd be all-important?"
Took a while for him to respond. He kept walking, eventually reaching the park's exit. He glanced both ways, then met my eyes.
I pointed to our right.
He followed my lead. Soon enough, I got a, "I read the book. You died. She didn't care. The universe exploded." I was going to retort, except he said, "I woke up. You lived. She doesn't have your powers. Universe still exists." His eyebrows wiggled.
I was not impressed, going so far as to slap my palm over his brows. "Ever heard of the butterfly effect?" I said. "Or something similar? You changed this universe's timeline. I've made no difference other than living, which means…" I paused when a new idea entered my head. "Which means…"
His eyebrow scraped my hand. "You're the butterfly? You live, everybody lives. You die, everybody dies."
"Which is how time travel works," I said. "You caught on quick."
"Read about it before."
"In manga, I'm guessing?"
"Yep."
"Figures. So I'm the butterfly. You're the guy who didn't step on me when sent back in time to shoot a dinosaur. What's this make the girl we don't know the name of?"
Right outside of town, a super flat white phone sold by a company named after a fruit hit the ground. Its screen made a sickening crack against the stone path leading to a two-story house with a picket fence. A nearby female voice shrieked profanities best not replicated on the page.
Nicki sat in her dorm after returning from a Thanksgiving-themed brunch hosted by her college. She debated again as she had for the past ten minutes if she should call her older sister again. They both forgot about meeting today to wish the other a happy holiday. Sam's tumble and those private conversations Nicki got to have with Saitama took priority.
While wishing them a happy holiday would be nice, Nicki made the mistake of browsing Instagram during brunch. Her head filled with questions, and perhaps a little anger at Sam and her roommate, and she left after telling her friends she would be "busy" with "projects". Just like in school, though, she procrastinated on doing anything and gave in to her thoughts.
"Why didn't they tell me about Mom and Granny?" Nicki whispered, staring at the blank walls of her room. "Why'd social media have to tell me? Why couldn't we have celebrated being free of them together?"
There was one way of finding out. Time to get off her ass and make a phone call. Maybe.
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Chapter Eight: Interlude
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Understanding what went wrong took Them several days. None of the energy from the blast had dispersed before another burst came from a nearby area. They could tell when They felt this burst reverberate through Themself that the strength from this second occurrence did not belong to his future champion. Her energy emerged in waves since it manifested in a time of great need. She could not hope to understand them before falling unconscious.
Whoever unleashed the second blast knew what they were doing. It was concentrated, used to show off, and made lots of noise. The blaring of alarms rang in the entity's ears long after they caught glimpses of the event.
They knew what should have happened. The girl should have been dead. Earth's magical barriers would have fallen and enabled waves of darkness to swallow it whole. Trillions of mortal souls would have been at their command, and she would not have been dead for long. The entity would have resurrected her following the Void's swallowing of Earth. She would have been ecstatic to meet Them and would have been the same girl from before, just under Their employment. They would have given her a purpose besides wasting her life chasing dreams she could not fully commit to.
Alas, none of these predictions came to pass. She lived, therefore the barriers around the world would remain in place. Life continued as it always had on Earth. Meanwhile, They sat in shadow skimming the minds of random mortals whenever They found momentary faults in the barriers.
During these investigations, They learned of an unusual human. Many mortal minds spoke his name and connected him to the events most watched on their tiny screens. This person received titles such as Caped Baldy and One-Punch Man from the masses. He was mentioned or seen in some form by the entity whenever They could touch the Earth. They soon caught his name.
Saitama. His energy signature felt unique. He was involved in Samantha's rescue. Baffling enough, nobody paid this event any mind. The public spoke instead of his slaying of countless monsters and his feats of superhuman strength, all of which happened in another world. Virtual crowds sang praises of him on their little screens and watched his interactions with his companion with fanatical interest. Outlandish claims were being made of him being a physical god if not the reincarnation of the religion of Christianity's Jesus Christ.
Ridiculous. Completely and utterly ridiculous. The entity's metaphorical feathers were ruffled when They heard such hogwash. They could not understand how a man could become a god through strength training alone. Worse, the man did not act the part of a god. He walked around in his ridiculous outfit paying more mind to himself and his female companion than other mortals. The entity would have been verbally lashed at by Their fellow gods were They to do the same thousands of years ago.
Ultimately, They chose to overlook Saitama's behavior in favor of his actions. He knew of Samantha's plight and saved her. He did not hold himself in the ways a god with full knowledge of Their powers would, allowing humans knowledge of his existence and integrating into their society. Most importantly of all, he was to blame for the barriers still separating Them from the world.
If They wanted complete access to the world, Saitama would need to die. Then Samantha, caught mourning her loss, would greet Them with open arms. Only she could remedy her world's timeline. The multiverse would continue to leak into her world if the hole she created in her futile attempt to save herself was not patched. This would lead to more becoming insusceptible to the being's influence. They needed to act before Their hopes of absorbing this world were forever lost.
…? They stopped breathing when a twinge rumbled through Their shoulders. A bell-like chime echoed through the infinite reaches of outer space. From this alone did They know the barriers were wavering. There were the smallest cracks in a thin purple shield above Their head. What convenient timing. Perhaps the universe agreed with Them and opened a temporary corridor so They could again assert Themself upon the world below.
They placed Their left hand over the barrier. Its surface softened as They pushed. Donning a small smile, They watched Their arm pass through up to Their elbow.
Best not to let this opportunity go to waste.
Silver beams of light shot from Their palm toward the Earth, concentrated upon the northeastern part of the United States of America.
Down on Earth, a girl balanced by the tips of her toes. Her feet ached. She swore she saw tiny creases in the rubber soles of her brand-new sneakers. Underneath her laid a phone with multiple cracks on its screen. She bought it yesterday only to be distracted by those constant notifications her friends sent her regarding an ugly bald guy.
"Who cares!" she spat, fetching the phone from the concrete floor. "I'm sick of seeing him everywhere."
"Funny. So am I."
She gasped.
Then… Laughter. Soft laughter.
Chills, like those produced by winter winds whipping by, climbed her spine. Peering at the pathway and green grass of her front yard, she could not say where the laughter came from.
Before she could do anything, darkness came. Black as a light-polluted sky and swarming her on all sides, it growled, "I can help you be rid of them if you so desire, my dear."
She yelped and spun about in a haste. "Wh-what is this?!" she yelled, watching the darkness closing on the Sun. "Who's there?!"
"Hold still, girl," it said. "This should not take long."
She squealed while her joints stiffened under the influence of… Something. The Sun vanished behind the black veil. Her heart pounded with the ferocity of a thousand drums. 'Help!' she tried to cry. No use. Her voice sounded much more like a windshield wiper than a scream for aid.
No… No… Do not scream. She was not in pain. What was this… Energy zipping through her being? Why did it sink through her, touching an area deep within she never knew had been there?
Fingers and toes curled. She listened to the energy's din. Strangely, hearing it pulse with her heartbeat calmed her. Whoever or whatever this being was might not mean her harm if they could bestow this odd peace.
"I give you a gift you never knew had been promised and thus never received," spoke the weird voice. "You are now strong enough to bring Earth to its knees if doing it harm were what you wish. I do not care what you do to the planet as long as it remains intact while I am here. I merely ask favors in return for this gift."
She was right! That weird voice blessed! Her eyes flickered in the hopes of either catching a glimpse of the speaker or the glimmer of sunlight. No such luck. Despite the good feelings washing over her, doubts lingered. All of this seemed too good to be true.
"You are well aware of the man who has become famous by simply existing, yes?"
Gasping, she twirled to where she heard the voice, somehow now she could locate the direction from which it came, and said, "I-I'm sick of seeing him everywhere!"
"Are you now? Why?"
"He's invaded all my social feeds! I can't block him from showing up no matter what I do. It's annoying—"
"Understandable. Overexposure is never a good thing. I foresee many will feel as you do should he continue dominating the news cycle."
"Wh-who are you?"
"I am a god, my dear. I assume you would have never heard my name if I spoke it, nor I will not burden you with the dozen or so titles I have earned within my lifetime. My chosen one never got around to spreading my influence. She chose the wrong medium to express my will. I intend to…
"Oh, never mind me. Let us return to the topic at hand. I have granted you influence over reality for several reasons. First of all, I would like you to find a way to either kill or incapacitate Saitama. Unconventional forms of incapacitation may be the easiest route you have when dealing with him considering what I have heard and seen of his prowess and physique.
"Second, I am unable to deal with him myself. I am barred from entering your world because of my chosen one. She has forgotten me. That is unacceptable. I have tried to make you as powerful in reality-warping magic as she is. Do not use your new talents carelessly.
"Third—"
"Please, slow down!" she shouted over them. "This is a lot to take in!"
They chuckled. "I apologize. I was once a mindless extension of my creator and have inherited some of her quirks. …Ah, speaking of which. You should know my creator is in fact my chosen one. You may recognize her from the reports you have been getting of Saitama."
She gasped, recalling those clips of the short girl with black wings in futile combat with the world's strongest man. "What's her name again?" she said.
"Samantha. Both your targets' names start with "S" and have three syllables. Coincidence is a funny thing, don't you think?"
"Um, sure?"
"Once Saitama is out of the picture, convince Samantha to remove the barrier which surrounds the Earth. Do not harm her. Should you comply, your world will be spared from being consumed by the Void."
She could not explain the shiver zipping through her when this otherwise regular word was mentioned. More unexplainable, her stomach lurched. Her lips peeled into a cringe as she fought with bile. "Which is?"
"A being as ancient as I. This is not the time or place to speak of it. The barrier is shifting and I will be unable to interact with the planet again. I expect you to get to your task when our connection is cut."
"Who even are you?"
"I am what I have told you. A god."
"The God?"
"A god. You will be this world's goddess if you succeed in correcting this little fault in the time stream. You might even have the ability to dispel the Void by the time I am ready to leave. Time may allow you to decide Earth's future."
She, a goddess? For no reason at all, she would be strong enough to move the sun, moon, and stars? This could not be happening. Maybe the absurd number of cooks in the kitchen led to those cookies being spiked and she was on the ground foaming at the mouth.
Why me? How could I be deserving of this?
No, those questions were not what she was asking. She should not be wondering if this were real or not. After these past few days, this must be real. The questions which needed to be asked included how, for example, would her life benefit from magic? Many reported feeling ill after strange things happened to them. Perhaps this mysterious god was the universe's way of saying she would be blessed with power as Samantha had following the collapse of the apartment building.
"I accept your terms," the girl said, straightening her back and face. This was the best she could do when unpleasant sensations threatened to bring her to her knees. Soon, she may never need to know this feeling again. "Saitama will be dealt with."
Saitama wondered why he got the sudden urge to puke in a toilet. Unable to recall when last he felt nausea this bad, he leaned on the shower panel and avoided staring at the overhead lights again. They seemed to be spinning and he wanted no part in their bizarre circus act.
I don't think this is from anything I ate this morning, he thought. Am I sick? Mayhaps he should have taken more precautions in light of this world's pandemic. "Ugh…" He hoped he did not catch the damn virus. Even with how ineffective it evolved to be several years after it ravaged the planet, it would get in the way of dinner and give his host a scare.
I collapsed on the couch. The Thanksgiving parade would not start for another hour, which gave me much-needed time to unwind. I spent that time resting after my earlier fight and drinking water while Saitama occupied the bathroom.
Crap. Now my mind wanted to play the word association game. Bathroom. Toothbrush. Flood. Pipe. Plumber. Toilet. Puke. And I scowled. Gross. Those separate thoughts, when put together, were all parts of that silly story I wrote involving Super Mario and a self-inserted original character of mine.
I buried my head in a pillow when Saitama came to stand at the apartment's intersection. He stared at me funny before sighing. "What now?" he said. Turned out what he bought the other day included an ordinary gray sweatshirt and black sweatpants. His hero costume, besides his boots, lay folded in his arms.
"Living with a guy is different from writing about living with a guy," I said. "You're chill, can't read my mind, and aren't an Italian plumber who offered me mushrooms after I vomited in a toilet."
"...Huh?"
"True story, in a way. I wrote it. Just not about you. Things would've been a hundred percent weirder if you were the guy who died and woke up in possession of my body."
"You've lost me."
"I didn't discover you until I completely gave up on rebooting the same stories over and over. Now it seems my patented writing cliches are following me. This is the millionth time I've seen characters either from my writings or real-life crossing into other worlds to—"
"We're done here."
I shrank at his impatient tone. "Yep," I said, getting the TV remote. "Let's have some background noise that isn't me. Anything you'd like to watch?"
"Give me the remote."
"You didn't say "please"."
"Please."
I passed it to him when he got to the couch. "There you go."
The first thing we saw when he set his stuff aside and sat was the screen flashing to silence and a camera capturing blurs of green, brown, yellow, and white. I ripped my eyes from the mess and barely caught the black words in the red info card along the bottom. I read them from memory as the channel changed. "'Samantha Browne Creates Plateau During Sparring Match.'"
Wait.
No.
"Fuck!"
Saitama stopped changing the channels. "What now?" he asked before pausing like he was Genos rebooting after being backhanded. "Your last name's Browne?"
"Doesn't matter," I said. "Give me the remote."
He gave this thought. His final answer? "No."
I leaned into him. "Please?"
Now he gave me a look. "No."
I was not deterred by this. "There's a news story about me!"
"No."
"I need to watch!" I shouted, scooting closer to him. "What if they're badmouthing us—"
"Think about what you're saying," he said, his gray-eyed glare boring into my soul. He placed the remote on the table behind him. "You can't control what they think about you. Just doesn't work." He caught a thought, which broke our eye contact, and fingered his chin. "Eh, maybe you could. Don't do it."
I withdrew. Looked like this was another fight with him I would not win.
"Leave 'em be, they'll leave you be," he said, following this with a palm to his face and a frown. "Damn, you're high maintenance."
The momentum I got from seeing the news left. There we go. He got annoyed with me. This should not come as a big surprise. I could not relinquish the desire to shield myself from the world.
"Yes, sir," I said, getting up to leave. "I'll either be in my room or the bathroom." I summoned my magic. Purple sparks romped along my palm. "Maybe I could spawn another bathroom. You could have the original."
"Do whatever you want," affirmed the voice now behind me. "Make more rooms, create a swimming pool…" His face softened in the depths of his thoughts. He turned to the window. Not a second later, he startled. "Sam!"
I went wide-eyed. "Ye-yeah?"
"How're you feeling?"
Resisting a yawn, I said, "Tired. Most of my energy went into our spar."
"I've got an idea," he said, busy glancing around the room when I faced him again. "How'd you feel about remodeling this place?"
I did not mind the apartment as it appeared now. I preferred this open area compared to the mess a four-person family would inevitably make in a tiny home. However, since Saitama already slept in his culture's equivalent to the living room, I supposed I could entertain the idea. I could always shift the area to the way it was before he came along later.
"How so?" I said.
He thought. "What about this?" he said, revealing the book hiding behind him. Speed-O'-Sound Sonic's toothless creepy smile welcomed me to a blur of pages, which settled upon the image of the same guy's legs and, uh, midsection.
I cringed.
"What's with your face?" Saitama asked.
"What's with yours?" I retorted, slamming my finger into the page. "Sonic's crotch isn't a floor plan."
My roommate cleared his throat.
"What?" I said, taking the time to review my hand's position. My cheeks warmed despite myself.
Sonic was another One-Punch character I would hate to be around. I mean, the guy wanted my favorite guy dead even before his unfortunate fisting accident, then threatened civilian lives to goad him into a fight. I could not relate to him other than his unsettling smile whenever he got into combat.
Weird, huh? I sometimes found chaos fun to both instigate and watch unfold. Certain video games could turn me into a predator howling, even laughing, for blood. Just see me after a couple of hours of illusion magic training in Skyrim. I could "inspire" my enemies to see their friends as threats, then laugh at the bandit leader getting an ax in their brain, witness racist elves insult their associates, and make idiot NPCs I don't want to deal with run screaming while the guards I befriended shoot arrows at their knees.
"To your left," Saitama said, dragging me from yet another pointless ramble.
Opposite the crotch drawing was the blueprint for an apartment. Its layout did no favors for my next round of intruding thoughts. I traced an invisible line through the hallway starting from the apartment's genkan to the balcony located in the living room, skipping by a bathroom where the tub took little under half the space inside and a kitchen with a walkway as thin as a flagpole.
I plopped my finger over this image of, "Your old apartment?"
He nodded.
"You want to turn my apartment into your apartment?"
Again, he nodded.
I exhaled. "You can't be serious."
A third nod.
"I guess… Mi casa es su casa?"
No nodding this time. He spoke. "'My house is your house'?"
I needed maybe a minute to absorb such a simple sentence. "You know Spanish?" I finally gasped, incredulous.
He seemed confused. "Spanish?"
"You know, Español?"
"Spanish?"
His repeated sentence might have been confirmation. I reckoned we could test this. "How about I play stuff in a different language and you tell me if you understand in English."
"English? I don't hav'ta. I hear you in Japanese."
"You what now?"
"Não falamos de Bruno," spoke the robotic voice on my laptop.
The reply I heard in English? "We don't talk about Bruno."
«Краща скоринка хліба, з'їдена в мирі, ніж бенкет, який готують у тривозі.»
"'Better is a crust of bread that is eaten in peace than a feast made in alarm,'" Saitama said.
"Πες το με αίσθηση. Αυτό δεν είναι δημόσιο ραδιόφωνο, ξέρεις!"
He rolled his eyes. "'Say it with feeling,'" he translated in a dull tone. "'This is not public radio, you know.' Are we done yet?"
I switched tabs to read a sentence to him myself. "Nunon mey bo strun voqostiid naal sov."
"'Only a fool flies in a storm and is surprised by the shock.'"
I read the foreign words onscreen. Then I examined the translation on its side. The proof I needed was both on the page and in his previous words. I could not help from shouting, "Amazing! You understand every modern language, Tama."
He leaned back clutching his forehead. "Are we done? I've got a headache."
"Yes!" I squeaked. "Just hear this: the last language came from fiction. Yo-you understand…"
Saitama's little interest in the conversation, which ran for a solid ten minutes beforehand, straight-up evaporated. He took to reading the text on the computer, blinking all the while. "Weird." He looked me over. "We got off-track." Retrieving OPM volume three, he pointed at the image to the left and said, "Think you could do it?"
I almost sighed. Again I came to realize nobody would care for the little things as I did. "You absolutely want me to?" I said.
"Why'd I be asking if I didn't?"
I got up and, for the first time since I moved in, surveyed my living space with a more critical eye. The shape of my apartment excluding the bedroom and bathroom areas seemed identical to his old place minus the thin walls which divided his area into rooms. I would have to find a way to split my kitchen in two so one half could become the extra bathroom.
His balcony? A no-go. Most of the apartments facing the backyard did not have balconies. They were found down the hall and were generally kept by folks who could afford the outdoor space but were not wealthy enough to buy a better view of the parking lot. All they could see from over there was a plaza with two dozen hexagonal picnic tables and hundreds of naked trees. In short, creating another balcony here would draw attention to us. More attention was the last thing I wanted.
"I'll remodel on one condition," I said, gesturing to the TV. Its screen lit and I poked around with my magic until I could locate the buttons which would change the channel. Doing this almost felt like touching the box with my hands. "There's a three-day-old chicken I've got to turn into a turkey in the fridge." I sucked in a breath and shrugged my shoulders to relieve them of their tension. "Easy enough. I'm not at all sure what else to have for Thanksgiving. I'll need suggestions on what we could make. You help me and I'll do my part once we're done cooking. We can eat in "your" apartment if you want.
"Do we have a deal?"
He nodded. "Deal."
I started for the kitchen. "Let's get this over with."