….
The room Jin-Ho currently shared with Jin Bubaigawara was cramped but again what does a bachelor, a teenager (now turned adult), and a kid need?
Two futons laid out on the floor, a small table in the corner, a window that looked out onto the city's industrial district.
Even this luxury is more than many people in this world have.
Toya had been oddly quiet since Jin-Ho had brought him back from the abandoned factory.
The kid had eaten the food he had been given without complaint - rice balls and instant ramen, nothing fancy, and when told to sleep on the futon, he had simply nodded and laid down.
It was a stark contrast to the panicked, flame-wreathed teenager Jin-Ho had found earlier.
That Toya had been all refusal and resistance, fighting against every instruction, his quirk flaring uncontrollably with each spike of emotion.
Jin-Ho should have recognized it as a warning sign.
Midnight came quietly to the industrial district.
Jin Bubaigawara was snoring softly in his corner, his distinctive split personality temporarily silenced by sleep.
Jin-Ho lay on his own futon.
A sound, barely audible, just the whisper of fabric against wood, brought him to full alertness.
Toya suddenly woke up.
Jin-Ho kept his breathing steady, his body relaxed, watching through half-closed eyes as the boy carefully stood up from his futon and moved toward the door.
Toya's moved trying to sneak out of places.
The door opened silently.
He slipped through, and closed it without barely a click.
Jin-Ho waited thirty seconds before sitting up. Blacky materialized from the shadows in the corner.
"Follow him." Jin-Ho ordered.
The Shadow Khan flowed away into the darkness, and Jin-Ho lay back down, closing his eyes but not sleeping.
He decided to give Toya some time.
The kid needed space to process, to think, running was a natural response to trauma.
But Jin-Ho would be damned if he let the kid disappear into the night without knowing where he went.
Twenty minutes passed.
Jin-Ho sighed and stood up, pulling on his jacket.
"Let's go get him."
….
Toya, sitting alone on a wooden bench under a streetlight, his head bowed, his shoulders hunched.
Not running or going anywhere.
Then suddenly a person emerged from the shadows near the bench.
The emergence was quiet, but not silent.
?!!Toya's head snapped up, his body tensing, but he didn't scream. Just stared as Jin-Ho materialized from the darkness, looking decidedly disheveled and half-asleep.
"Man." Jin-Ho grumbled, rubbing his eyes. "Can't even get a proper night's sleep?"
He had been looking forward to actual rest for once.
Toya's expression shifted from surprise to irritation. "You can just go back. I will return. I just need some air."
Jin-Ho ignored the dismissal completely and sat down on the bench beside him, his head hanging down, exhaustion evident in every line of his body.
Then he spoke, his voice quiet but carrying in the empty street. "You aren't going to run away?"
"Run where?" Toya asked, and there was something hollow in the question.
Not defiant, but... empty.
"To your family." Jin-Ho said.
"No. I don't ha—"
"Or you already did go to your house." Jin-Ho interrupted, striking exactly where it hurt most.
"...." the silence that followed was heavy with truth.
Jin-Ho had pieced it together during the walk back from the factory.
The location where he had found Toya - it was close to a particular neighborhood in Shizuoka Prefecture.
A wealthy neighborhood, the kind of place where a certain Number Two Hero lived with his family.
Toya had woken up from a year-long coma - and the first thing he would have done, the first instinct any child would have, was to go home.
To find his family, and tell them he was alive.
But instead of staying there, instead of telling his mother and his three siblings that he was safe, Toya had run.
…Again.
Which meant something had happened. Something that made going home impossible.
"One year..." Jin-Ho started, his voice thoughtful–
"It's long enough for people to move on... kid."
"Even family….?" Toya muttered, and there was bitter acceptance in his voice.
"Yea—" Jin-Ho started to agree, but he stopped himself.
Because he thought of the Yoo family - the one he had left behind twice now.
Yeah. If it was them, they wouldn't move on either.
"No, it isn't." Jin-Ho corrected himself. "A family will never move on."
"Then how can my family just behave like nothin-" Toya began, his voice rising.
But Jin-Ho cut him off. "No. Your family still hasn't moved on, they never will. Everything you see is not the truth, and everything you don't or can't see is not a lie."
He paused, choosing his next words carefully. "Do not hate them, kid. Maybe your father failed you - but your mother and siblings… they just failed while trying. That's different from someone who stopped trying altogether."
Every word Jin-Ho spoke seemed to hit him tenfold - or more.
Because in this story, wasn't he the bad family member too?
The same type as this world's Number Two Hero. Someone who had stopped trying, who had chosen power and ambition over the responsibility and people who cared about him.
Someone who kept running, kept disappearing, kept prioritizing everything except the family that wanted him home.
He realized how much like Toya's father he really was.
"You speak as if you know everything!" Toya stood up from the bench, his eyes blazing with anger. He screamed at Jin-Ho, his voice cracking with emotion. "You don't know anything about my family!"
"Not everything." Jin-Ho admitted calmly. "But I know a few things."
"If you know about my family—" Toya's voice rose higher, breaking. "If you know there are people looking for me - then why didn't you contact them? If only you did! If only you did that, maybe they wouldn't have already forgotten about me!"
He was crying now, tears streaming down his scarred face. His words were hard to understand, choked by sobs, but Jin-Ho heard them all.
"I don't have a reason for that." Jin-Ho said, his face flat and emotionless. "I just did what I felt was right."
Then his expression hardened. "But know this one thing. If you even think of doing anything funny, I repeat, anything funny, I will stop you. Like I already did once. But this time I won't be as gentle as before."
Toya froze.
He remembered that voice.
It was the same voice that had reached out to him when he was trapped in his own flames at Sekoto Peak. The voice that had cut through the pain and the fire and pulled him back from the edge of destruction.
That's why he had been complying with Jin-Ho, despite his resistance.
He hadn't shown any real hostility because somewhere deep down, he recognized the person who had saved his life.
But now, all that recognition did was make him angrier, more frustrated and lost.
Toya finally snapped.
"Then what am I supposed to do?!" He raged at Jin-Ho, his voice raw with desperation. "Tell me! What am I supposed to do?!"
His fists clenched. The blue flames were starting to dance across his knuckles again.
"Mom is sick because of me! I tried to KILL my own sibling! My father hates me - won't even acknowledge my presence! I don't have any friends, and I can't make any with this burned face!"
Toya was screaming now, crying loudly, everything he had been holding back for the past year pouring out in a torrent of pain and self-hatred.
Jin-Ho just looked at him.
Didn't interrupt or try to stop him.
"It suddenly..." Toya's voice broke completely. "It suddenly feels like I am all alone in this world."
The word 'alone' hit Jin-Ho differently than anything else.
He remembered his other life.
A university student with more people to fight than friends.
Forget about family - he had always longed for one.
And what had he done when he finally got one? He had run away, and he was still running.
Jin-Ho sighed, the sound heavy with his own unspoken regrets.
"What kind of nonsense is that?"
"Eh?" Toya looked up, surprised by the response.
"You can always make friends." Jin-Ho continued. "Maybe you already did. Your mom, your siblings... even the ones you think you have hurt are still there. And maybe your father too. Who knows?"
Yeah, that's right, Jin-Ho thought to himself. Even though he had hurt his family twice now by disappearing, would they still be there for him when he returned?
Was that too selfish to hope for? He wished not.
Because from this point on, he was willing to take a step toward his family too. His real and only family.
"...and you have me too." Jin-Ho said finally, showing a hint of emotion on his usually careless. He looked almost embarrassed, actually.
Jin-Ho coughed awkwardly. "Anyway, you are asking what you are supposed to do, right? Why don't you just cut yourself some slack and give yourself more time? I mean, you did just wake up from a year-long deep sleep. You can think about it when you are a bit more adjusted. No pressure, I mean."
Toya, who had stopped crying about a minute ago, looked at Jin-Ho with an expression of complete bewilderment.
The person who had just threatened him if he tried anything funny was nowhere to be seen. Instead, there was this awkward, slightly embarrassed teenager who was clearly uncomfortable with emotional conversations.
He could see that Jin-Ho was even feeling a bit shy.
"I will think..." Toya said slowly, processing. "I will think about it."
"Yeah, sure, no pressure. No pressure at all." Jin-Ho said quickly, as if eager to move past the emotional moment.
"But, until you have figured out what to do, you do as I say. It won't be anything bad, I assure you."
They talked for a bit more - small things.
Just one teenager and a kid sitting on a bench under a streetlight, trying to figure out how to navigate impossible situations.
Finally, they started walking back, leaving the bench behind. Their shrinking figures moved through the empty streets, side by side.
From behind them, Toya asked his last question.
"Why did you save me?"
Jin-Ho's answer was characteristically half-hearted. "Because I did."
Just the simple, inadequate truth: he had saved Toya because that was what he had felt was right in the moment.
…not just because the system told him to.
Remember? System only asked him to stop Tony going the villain path.
….
As they walked back toward the cramped room they shared with Jin Bubaigawara, both of them carried something they hadn't had before.
Toya carried the fragile hope that maybe he wasn't completely alone.
And Jin-Ho carried the resolution that when he returned to his world, he would stop running from the people who cared about him.
They were both broken in their own ways.
Both running from families that loved them.
Both trying to figure out how to exist in worlds that didn't quite make sense.
But for tonight, at least, they had each other.
And sometimes, that was enough.
….
.
[To be continued…]
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