Satoru's bedroom wall was slowly turning into a battlefield.
On it, he pinned copies of city maps—grainy printouts from the public works office and tourism brochures. They overlapped and curled at the corners, but he marked them with color-coded stickers and fine black ink.
Every alley he'd walked. Every slow intersection. Every place someone could get hurt while waiting for help.
> "Weak points," he wrote across the top in bold letters.
It wasn't beautiful. But it was precise.
---
He took notes constantly. On the bus, at the shop, during school breaks. Anything unusual—a broken streetlight, a missing stop sign, a place where phone signals dropped—went into the log.
He built patterns out of invisibility.
There was something oddly comforting about it. Like turning helplessness into homework.
He couldn't fight villains. He couldn't lift rubble or fly through burning buildings. But maybe—just maybe—he could know what others didn't.
---
After school one day, he watched a hero break up a street argument between two teens.
The pro was loud, fast, confident. The kind of man Satoru used to admire.
But when he walked away, the teens stayed.
One of them was still bleeding. The other was still crying.
Satoru approached, offering a handkerchief. "You okay?"
They blinked at him, surprised.
"I'm nobody," he said. "Just… wanted to help."
They didn't respond. But they took the cloth.
He didn't stay. Just turned, notebook in hand, and walked away.
> New entry: "Some pros leave too early."
---
At dinner, Keiko stared at his forearms—ink-stained and red from stress rubbing.
"You're doing those maps again, aren't you?" she asked.
"Yeah."
"You think that'll make a difference?"
"Maybe not now," he said. "But maybe one day."
She didn't argue. Just passed him the miso soup.
---
That night, he sketched a new design in his notebook—a harness for tools, using cheap belts and shoelaces. It would hold a flashlight, a whistle, a first-aid kit. It wasn't sleek. It wasn't stylish.
But it was his.
Underneath the sketch:
> "Preparedness is my power."
He underlined it.
Then turned back to the wall and added a new sticker near the 6th district bridge.
Another weak point. Another place to be ready.
---
Later that week, a local blackout plunged half his neighborhood into darkness.
Satoru responded before most adults. He lit candles at the flower shop's windows, directed elderly neighbors with a flashlight, and handed out spare batteries to anyone passing by.
A young woman asked who he was.
He didn't say his name. Just smiled.
> "Someone who lives here."
---
The power came back after thirty minutes.
But by then, he'd already logged four new problem zones and identified a traffic light glitch that could've caused an accident.
---
His notebook was full of quiet emergencies.
And for the first time, he didn't feel useless.