The Haken Specialist's private terminal was a localized sanctuary of efficiency.
Kaito sat in the ergonomic chair—a mid-range model with decent lumbar support, a significant upgrade from the plastic shell of Station 9.
The air in the corner office was filtered and maintained at a constant 22 degrees Celsius. Here, the noise of the Higashi Distribution Center was reduced to a distant, industrial hum.
Kaito didn't miss the 180,000-yen life. The 350,000-yen contract had already changed the texture of his existence. He had purchased a set of high-thread-count cotton undershirts to wear beneath his work clothes.
They didn't trap heat. They didn't feel like plastic. It was a 5,000-yen investment in biological comfort.
Kaito opened the morning's audit queue.
Item: Kinetic-Absorption Harness (Reinforced).
Recipient: Pro-Hero Fat Gum (Agency: Kansai District).
Quantity: 01.
Status: Urgent. Priority Alpha.
Kaito leaned back.
He tapped the desk with a rhythmic, mechanical click of his fingernail. He knew the statistics.
Fat Gum, Taishiro Toyomitsu was a heavyweight in the Kansai region.
His quirk was the definition of high-entropy management: absorbing kinetic energy into his body fat and redistributing it.
At those impact levels, the harness holding his gear together wasn't just an accessory; it was a structural fail-point.
Kaito pulled up the technical schematics. The harness was designed by a Tier-1 support company.
On the screen, the blueprint was a complex web of high-strength polymers and reinforced steel buckles.
To a normal auditor, it was a masterpiece of hero-support engineering. To Kaito, it was a collection of oversights.
He identified a stress-point in the primary buckle. The vibration frequency of a sustained combat engagement with a heavy-hitter would create a resonant oscillation in the alloy.
After approximately forty-eight hours of cumulative use, the metal would experience molecular fatigue.
The harness would shear. The hero's defensive items would fall off.
"It's bad," Kaito whispered.
If the harness failed, there would be an investigation. The HPSC would audit the Higashi Distribution Center. Mato would panic.
The quiet atmosphere of his private terminal would be shattered by government agents in cheap suits asking questions.
Kaito didn't want the paperwork. He didn't want the noise.
He placed his hand on the high-speed data cable connected to his terminal. He didn't use the mouse.
'Update: Molecular Lattice. Integrity: Absolute.'
In the cold storage room two floors down, the atoms within the alloy of the buckle shifted. The microscopic gaps between the molecules closed.
The metal fused at a sub-atomic level. The harness was no longer just a support item; it was now a piece of indestructible reality.
Kaito closed the file and marked it:
Verified.
100% Quality Assurance.
-----
Tanaka, Senior Engineer of Takachiho Support Industries, stared at the stress-test results for the Fat Gum batch.
He rubbed his eyes, which were bloodshot from sixteen hours of drafting. The fluorescent lights of the Takachiho lab buzzed with a frequency that made his head ache.
"This isn't possible," he muttered, tapping the glass of his tablet.
The harness they had sent to the Higashi Distribution Center for final audit was a prototype.
It had a known theoretical failure rate of 4% under extreme oscillation. Tanaka had been losing sleep over that 4%. He knew that if Fat Gum hit a villain hard enough, that buckle would eventually snap.
But the data packet that just came back from the field report was... wrong.
"Sir?" his junior assistant, Mika, asked. "The HPSC just sent a commendation. They said the gear outperformed the theoretical specs by three hundred percent. Fat Gum used the prototype to stop a runaway freighter in the Osaka bay this morning. He says the harness felt like it was 'part of his own skeleton.'"
Tanaka looked at the spectral analysis of the returned unit. The alloy was flawless. The imperfections, the "noise" in the metal seemed to have resolved themselves.
"It must have been the flash-tempering process," Tanaka whispered, trying to find a logical anchor. "The high-heat environment of the Osaka incident... maybe it triggered a secondary crystallization in the polymer. An accident. A statistical miracle in the forge."
He looked at the shipping label.
Audit Station: Higashi Center, Musutafu.
"Higashi probably didn't even check it properly," Tanaka grumbled, scribbling a note. "The kids at those distribution centers just rubber-stamp everything. We got lucky. If that freak accident hadn't happened in the lab's cooling cycle before shipping, the hero would have died. We need to find out how we accidentally made the perfect alloy."
He completely ignored the name of the auditor.
To a Senior Engineer like Tanaka, a clerk at a warehouse was less than a footnote.
-----
While Tanaka looked for excuses in his lab, the rest of the world was looking for a ghost.
On HeroWatch, the thread for the Osaka Freighter Incident was moving at a thousand posts per minute.
[User99: "Did you see the close-up on Fat Gum's harness? That thing should have snapped when he hit the hull. I saw the sparks. The metal didn't even bend."]
[QuirkFact_Checker: "Takachiho Industries is good, but they aren't THAT good. Look at the frame-by-frame. The harness looks... different. Darker. More solid.]
[X-Believer: "It must be him. Hero X is fixing the gear now. He's the one making sure the pros don't fail."]
[LogicLover: "Stop with the conspiracy theories. It's just a high-spec batch of steel. Hero X doesn't do this boring things.]
-----
Mato stared at the reports on his screen. He was getting "Commendations" from agencies he used to fear.
"Arisaka," Mato said leaning over the partition with a happy and gleeful face.
Kaito didn't look up. His fingers were moving across the keyboard with a speed that Mato's eyes couldn't track.
"Manifest 4492 is complete, Sato-san," Kaito said. "The routing for the flame-retardant polymers has been optimized. We'll save 14% on shipping fuel by using the northern rail line."
Mato blinked. "I... I didn't ask for that. But thanks. Listen, the HPSC sent over a specialized request. It's a rush order for a rising pro, Kamui Woods. He's gaining traction in the urban sectors. They need his suit's tactical compression fibers verified."
Kaito stopped.
He finally looked at Mato. His eyes were dull, but there was a sharp, clinical focus behind them. "The wood expansion will shred standard textiles. If the friction-heat isn't accounted for in the weave, he'll have a catastrophic failure."
"Exactly," Mato said. "The guy's branches grow at five meters per second. If the suit fails, it's a public indecency disaster."
Kaito looked at the request. He saw the bad logic of the suit.
"I will handle it," Kaito said.
'Edit: Tensile Strength. Set Value: Absolute.'
Kaito dismissed the resulting prickle of the "Update" as if it were a minor muscle twitch.
He didn't have time for the physical feedback. He had 500 more manifests to clear before his shift ended.
-----
Naruhata District
Koichi was sliding along the side of a building, his hands and feet barely touching the surface. It was 5:25 PM. He was trying to get to the grocery store before the sale on leeks ended.
Suddenly, the air felt... heavy.
Down the street, near the Musutafu rail line, he saw a villain pulling the steel rail tracks out of the concrete like they were pieces of ribbon.
A rookie pro-hero was standing there, shouting. The villain swung a ten-meter section of rail like a whip.
"Oh man, I should help," Koichi whispered.
Then, it happened.
SNAP.
It wasn't a loud sound, but Koichi felt it in his teeth. The magnetic field surrounding the villain didn't just weaken; it ceased to exist.
One moment the rails were floating; the next, they slammed into the ground with a thud that shook the windows.
The villain looked at his hands, trying to pull the metal again.
Nothing.
Koichi stopped on the wall, his eyes wide. He looked at the 5:15 PM train stopped on the tracks just fifty meters away.
"Did you see that, Knuckleduster?" Koichi asked into his comms.
"I saw the result," the gravelly voice of the old man replied. "The physics in that block just rebooted. Someone on that train just told the universe to behave."
"You think it's a hero?"
"No, that must be the famous vigilante" Knuckleduster growled.
"Heroes are loud. Thats must be X... you hear the iconic snap right? Stay away from that line, Koichi. Someone is playing God on a budget."
-----
Inside the train, the atmosphere was a mix of boredom and sudden, sharp relief.
"Finally," a businessman muttered, not even looking up from his paper as the lights flickered back on. "I have a meeting at six. If that villain had kept the tracks up for another ten minutes, I would have lost the contract."
"Did you see the villain?" a young girl asked, pressing her face to the glass. "He just... stopped. Like he forgot how to use his quirk. And I heard some sound like a snap"
"Probably just a heart attack," her mother said, pulling her back. "Or the rookie hero actually did something for once. Just be glad we're moving."
Kaito sat in the corner, his manual on "Advanced Logistic Algorithms" open. He heard the girl's comment. He heard the businessman's complaint.
He didn't care about their lives. He only cared that his 6:00 PM arrival time was back on schedule.
-----
The walk to his new 1K apartment was exactly 850 steps. He entered the apartment, the door locking with a satisfying, heavy click. He removed his suit jacket and brewed a cup of tea.
He checked his phone.
Hideki's News Channel: [THE COLD X - 12,000,000 VIEWS]
The comment section was a dumpster fire of adoration and fear.
[GhostHunter_88: "I felt the snap. My phone's clock even synced up by three seconds when it happened. X is a living system clock."]
[Hero_Fanatic: "Why won't he show his face? If he's that powerful, he could end all crime in a day."]
'End all crime? That would involve far too much paperwork. I just want to drink my tea in a room that isn't shaking.'
Kaito drank the tea. He went to sleep.
-----
"Did you see that?" Hideki shouted, replaying the footage of the train tracks. "He's not just fixing objects. He's editing the environment."
Hideki started typing.
Hideki used his personal money to install countless surveillance camera all over the city with permission of the government.
[NEW UPLOAD: HERO X CLEARS THE TRACKS. THE GHOST IN THE CITY.]
"You're the strongest, X," Hideki said, a manic grin on his face. "And I'm going to make sure the whole world knows your name again."
"Kuwahahahaha!"
Across the country, millions of phones chimed. And in a quiet apartment, Kaito Arisaka who was sleeping didn't know and didn't care. There's nothing better than a bachelor's good night sleep.
~~~~~
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(9 Advanced Chapters)