The Musutafu morning was a humid, leaden weight.
At 08:00 AM, the sun was already baking the asphalt of the Tatoin Station overpass, turning the salt on Kaito Arisaka's skin into a gritty itch.
Kaito stood behind a Leica TM50 Total Station. He was nineteen, wearing a faded vest over a sweat-stained gray t-shirt.
His steel-toed boots were caked in the gray mud characteristic of Shizuoka construction sites.
Kaito wasn't thinking about the "Global Fever" or the fact that his private bank account now held more than the lifetime earnings of the municipal engineers currently yelling at each other fifty feet away.
He was focused on a 0.05% deviation in the overpass's expansion joint.
"Arisaka! Did you pull the ultrasonic readings for Pillar 4-B yet?" a foreman named Tamo yelled, wiping a streak of black grease onto an even filthier rag.
"Calibration is finished, Tamo-san," Kaito replied.
He didn't look up from the eyepiece. "The density is within legal tolerance, but the vibration damping on the western span is inefficient. The soil liquefaction from the last typhoon has compromised the footer. If we don't adjust the bearing plates today, you'll be back here in six months on an emergency repair call."
"Six months? The manual says these plates last five years," Tamo grunted, walking over to peer through the lens of Kaito's equipment.
"The manual doesn't account for the increased tonnage of the new HPSC transport trucks," Kaito said, pulling a digital tablet from his belt. "I've logged the discrepancy. If you sign off now, I can finish the manual adjustment before the noon heat spike. I'd rather not be on this scaffolding when the humidity hits ninety percent."
Kaito didn't mention that he had already identified the molecular fatigue in the steel without the sensors.
He spent the next three hours performing grueling manual labor. He climbed the rusted scaffolding, his muscles moving with the efficiency of a machine. He didn't use a quirk to lift the heavy plates. He used a hydraulic jack, used a torque wrench, used a wire brush to scrape away the oxidized crust of neglect.
Kaito worked with a terrifying precision, his every movement calculated to minimize caloric waste. He was a professional; if the city paid him for manual excellence, that is what he delivered.
He only "use his quirk" when the inefficiency became a direct threat to his 5:00 PM clock-out time.
As Kaito tightened a primary structural bolt on the western girder, he felt the threads shear—a factory defect that would usually require calling in a crane team, closing the road, and adding twelve hours of incident reporting to his shift.
Kaito didn't look around for witnesses. He didn't pose. He simply held the bolt.
'Correction: Structural Continuity.'
The sheared bolt didn't magically reappear or glow with light. Instead, the molecular structure of the steel simply rewrote itself, bonding into the girder with a density that exceeded industrial standards.
To any future inspector, it would look like a high-end, custom weld job performed by a master technician.
'Efficiency preserved. Paperwork avoided.'
-----
12:15 PM
Lunch break was a necessity.
Kaito sat on a concrete barrier beneath the shade of the overpass, his back against the cool, vibrating stone.
He opened a plastic convenience store bag and pulled out a lukewarm salmon onigiri and a bottle of chilled green tea.
The noise of Musutafu drifted toward him. This was the heart of the city, a place of constant, inefficient motion.
"I'm telling you, it was him! The news in Tokyo said Hero X turned the whole Osu Ward into a garden!"
Kaito paused, a bite of rice halfway to his mouth.
A group of three children, no older than eight, were running along the sidewalk toward the station.
They were loud—the kind of high-pitched, energetic noise that Kaito found specifically draining during his thirty-minute break.
In the lead was a boy with explosive ash-blonde hair and an aggressive, predatory stride even at that age. Katsuki Bakugo.
Behind him, struggling to keep up with a yellow backpack bouncing against his spine, was a smaller boy with messy green curls and eyes that were too large for his face. Izuku Midoriya.
"Who cares about flowers, Deku!" Bakugo yelled, punching the air and kicking a loose pebble. "He stopped a whole skyscraper from falling! That's real power! All Might is cool, but Hero X is like... he's the world's boss! He doesn't even need a sidekick!"
"But Kacchan, the way he works is so strange," Midoriya squeaked, clutching a worn notebook to his chest. "He doesn't have a costume, and he never talks to the press. It's like he's just... there."
Kaito chewed his salmon slowly. He watched them.
These were the "Main Characters" of a future story he had no intention of joining.
To him, they weren't icons; they were local children interfering with a professional's mandated rest period.
'Look at him. In ten years, that kid will be handed the most powerful Quirk in history and expected to master it in eight months because the 'Symbol of Peace' didn't have a succession plan. On Earth, you don't even let an apprentice operate a forklift without three years of supervised hours and a certified license. Here, they throw teenagers into a tactical meat grinder and call it 'Plus Ultra.' It's not heroism; it's a gross violation of labor safety standards. The fact that the entire fate of a G7 nation rests on a few semesters of high school is a systemic failure of the highest order. If a corporation was run with the same short-sightedness as the UA Hero Course, the board of directors would be in prison for criminal negligence before the first bell rang.' Kaito thought as he watched them.
Then.
Bakugo stopped right in front of Kaito's surveying tripod. He looked at the heavy, orange-painted equipment with a mix of curiosity and disdain.
"Hey!," Bakugo barked, looking at Kaito. "What's this? Some kind of hero-cam? Are you filming for some hero movies?"
Kaito adjusted his polarized safety glasses. He looked at the eight-year-old.
"It's a Total Station," Kaito said. "It's a theodolite that measures structural angles and distances. It isn't a camera. And if you stand that close, your body heat creates a thermal shimmer that messes with the laser refraction. Move ten meters to the east."
Bakugo blinked, stunned by the total lack of awe or interest in the man's voice. "Pfft. So boring. You're just a construction guy."
"Exactly," Kaito said, taking a sip of his tea. "A worker who is currently eating. Move away from the tripod. If you knock it over, the calibration repair cost is roughly three years of your little allowance."
"Hmppf"
Bakugo scoffed, but something in Kaito's deadpan, clinical delivery made him hesitate. "Pfft. Come on, Deku. The mall has the new Hero X and Almight trading cards! We're wasting time on this loser!"
'A loser,' Kaito thought, adjusting the tripod's legs.
'Coming from a kid whose career path is literally "Hit things until they stop moving." He doesn't realize that the "Symbol of Peace" he worships is just a senior employee who refuses to retire and is blocking the promotion ladder for everyone else. By the time these two hit the workforce, the "Hero Industry" will be so saturated with property damage lawsuits and insurance premiums that they'll be lucky to get a desk job at a satellite office. Tough luck.
"Wait, Kacchan!" Midoriya lingered for a second, staring at the tripod with wide, analytical eyes. "A Total Station... that's for infrastructure surveying, right? To make sure the bridge doesn't fall down? Is the bridge safe, Mister?"
"It's within tolerance," Kaito replied, closing his lunch bag. "Go play somewhere else. This is a work zone."
Midoriya gave a small, respectful bow. "Thank you for your hard work, Mister!"
Kaito watched them disappear into the crowd. He sighed and stood up, packing his trash.
"What a drag," he muttered. "Now I have to recalibrate the laser because that kid's shouting vibrated the air density."
-----
3:00 PM
The second half of the shift was spent at the mail sorting facility near the municipal border. It was a secondary Haken contract—short-term labor to fill a gap in the logistics chain.
The sorting room was a cathedral of inefficiency.
BZZZZ. BZZZZ. BZZZZ
Rows of conveyor belts groaned under the weight of thousands of envelopes and packages.
The air smelled of old paper, adhesive, and overworked motors.
"Arisaka, you're on Bin 7," the floor manager said, not looking up from his clipboard. "We're three hours behind. The automated sorter has a sensor glitch. Just do what you can."
WOOSH. WOOSH. WOOSH.
Kaito stood before the bin. He watched the letters fly past.
To a normal human, it was a blur of addresses. To Kaito, whose brain was being "Updated" by the world's belief in Hero X's omniscience, it was a slow-motion stream of data.
He began to sort.
Left hand, Musutafu Central.
Right hand, Shizuoka East.
He didn't use a quirk. He used his eyes. He used his hands. His movements were a blur of high-spec professional muscle memory.
Slap. Slap. Slap.
After twenty minutes, the worker next to him, an older man named Koma, stopped to wipe his brow. "Slow down, kid. You'll burn out. Management doesn't pay us enough to break the sound barrier."
"I'm not breaking any barriers, Koma-san," Kaito said, his hands never stopping. "I'm just maintaining a consistent throughput. If we finish the backlog by 16:30, the floor manager won't ask for mandatory overtime."
"The sorter is broken, kid. We're never finishing by 16:30."
-----
Kaito looked at the primary sensor of the sorting machine—a flickering red light that was failing to read the bar codes.
Render: Precision.
Kaito didn't touch the machine. He didn't even look at it directly. He simply willed the light to be the correct frequency.
The "reality" settled into the hardware. The flickering stopped. The machine hummed, its speed increasing by 20%.
"Huh," Tanaka said, blinking at the belt. "Guess the old girl just needed to warm up."
Kaito continued to sort. He worked through the pile with a grim, focused determination.
He wasn't thinking about the fact that All Might and All For One were currently playing a high-stakes game of shadows.
Kaito was thinking about the grocery list Saki had given him. Eggs. Milk. The specific brand of green tea she liked.
Every letter Kaito sorted was a step closer to his 5:00 PM exit.
He passed a letter addressed to "Mitsuki Bakugo." He passed a postcard from "Inko Midoriya." He didn't pause. He didn't care. They were just zip codes.
'A postcard for the Midoriya household. A tax audit for the Bakugos. Even the parents of "Main Characters" have to deal with the mundane reality of a failing postal system. The government spends billions on the HPSC's "Hero Rankings" but can't even afford to fix a sensor on a Bin 7 sorter. They've offloaded national security to celebrities while the literal foundation of the city—the mail, the bridges, the sewers—is held together by workers and luck.'
They were just variables in a system he was paid to manage.
-----
5:00 PM
The punch-clock chimed with a satisfying, industrial clack.
Kaito stepped out of the sorting facility. The humidity had broken into a light, gray drizzle. He opened a transparent umbrella and began the walk toward the train station.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. A news alert.
[GLOBAL SENSATION: HERO X SIGHTED IN ICELAND? GEOTHERMAL ANOMALY STABILIZED IN SECONDS.]
Kaito ignored the notification. He didn't need to read it to know what had happened.
As he boarded the train, he saw another OG cast, Tenya Iida and his mother several rows ahead. The boy was pointing at a news headline on a screen.
"Mom! Did you see? He can save the whole world at once! Yes, this is speed. He is faster than big brother."
"Tenya, faster or not. As long as you can save someone. That's good enough. Every life is precious. Your big brother already started his agency and is doing hero work now."
Kaito didn't look up. He pulled out a crumpled book on "Advanced Forensic Accounting" and began to read. He was already planning for the Tokyo contracts.
The train pulled out of the station. Outside the window, the Musutafu skyline was a silhouette of steel and glass, held together by the secret, invisible labor of a man who just wanted to go home.
"Tomorrow," Kaito whispered to himself, "I need to audit the sewage filtration sensors. That's going to be a mess."
~~~~~
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