Kai's first alarm rang at 4:30 a.m.
His second rang at 4:35.
The third was Asha kicking his bedroom door open at 4:42.
"If you're dead, I'm selling your trainers."
One hand rose from beneath the duvet.
"Bury me in them."
"Too expensive."
"You're heartless."
"And you're late."
That got him moving.
Six months had passed since Kai promised Asha she was going to university.
He had kept his word.
Unfortunately, keeping it had turned his life into a timetable designed by someone who hated him.
His mornings belonged to a bakery near the station, where he unloaded flour and learned that forty-kilogram sacks held personal grudges.
His afternoons belonged to a warehouse whose fluorescent lights made every employee look recently deceased.
Four nights a week, he delivered takeaway to people who considered lukewarm noodles a personal betrayal.
Weekends depended on whoever needed cheap labour.
Restaurants.
Moving companies.
Office cleaners.
Once, a man paid him fifty pounds to carry a sofa up four flights of stairs, only to discover it wouldn't fit through the door.
Kai charged him another twenty to carry it back down.
He considered that his finest financial decision of the year.
Sleep became something he collected in pieces.
Seven minutes on a bus.
Twelve minutes in a break room.
Once, memorably, standing inside a warehouse lift while holding a box labelled FRAGILE.
The box survived.
His dignity did not.
Every month, money disappeared faster than it arrived.
Mortgage.
Electricity.
Gas.
Groceries.
Asha's tuition plan.
The occasional repair to a house that seemed personally offended by the concept of functioning properly.
Asha noticed everything.
Food began appearing beside the microwave wrapped in foil.
So did notes.
EAT THIS.
THIS MEANS YOU, IDIOT.
One evening:
THERE ARE EIGHT DUMPLINGS. I COUNTED.
Kai ate four.
He rearranged the remaining four to create the illusion of greater dumpling density.
The following morning another note appeared.
I HAVE EYES.
Neither of them mentioned it.
That was their arrangement.
Kai pretended he wasn't exhausted.
Asha pretended she believed him.
One Thursday afternoon, Kai's warehouse supervisor approached him with suspicion permanently carved into his square face.
"Mercer."
Kai looked up from a pallet of kitchen appliances.
"If this is about the microwave, it was like that when I found it."
The supervisor stopped.
"What microwave?"
Kai considered his options.
"Nothing. How can I help?"
The man's eyes narrowed.
"Shipment's delayed."
Kai waited for the bad part.
"We're closing early."
He continued waiting.
"You can go."
"Go where?"
"Home, preferably."
"Is this a test?"
"Mercer."
"Yes?"
"Get out before I find something for you to do."
Kai didn't need telling twice.
For the first time in nineteen days, he had an afternoon with no shift attached to it.
He stood outside the warehouse and checked his phone.
2:17 p.m.
It looked wrong.
There were hours left in the day.
Hours that didn't belong to an employer.
Kai almost didn't know what to do with them.
He should have gone home.
The bathroom tap had developed a leak.
Laundry had reached the point where the chair in his bedroom could no longer technically be classified as furniture.
Three unopened envelopes sat inside his backpack, each capable of ruining his mood in a different way.
Instead, Kai started walking.
No destination.
No reason.
Just because he could.
Spring had softened the city.
Cherry blossoms lined several streets, pale petals catching on windscreens and gathering along the gutters. A breeze carried the smell of rain, traffic and fried sugar from a stall somewhere ahead.
Kai slowed beneath the trees.
Mum had loved spring.
Every year, she dragged the family to the park for photographs.
Dad complained about pollen the entire way there, then somehow ended up smiling widest in every picture.
Asha used to pluck fallen petals from the ground and put them in Kai's hair.
At sixteen, Kai had considered this an unforgivable humiliation.
At twenty-one, he would have given almost anything to be embarrassed by them again.
His phone buzzed.
Asha: Finished your shift?
Kai typed while walking.
Kai: No. I have been promoted to regional emperor.
Three dots appeared almost immediately.
Asha: Congratulations. Emperors still need dinner.
Kai: Is that a threat?
Asha: Pasta at seven. Be there or I tell Auntie Lena you're too thin.
Kai stopped walking.
That was terrorism.
Auntie Lena's response to weight loss was to feed people with the grim concentration of a battlefield medic.
Kai: You fight dirty.
Asha: 7.
Kai: Yes ma'am.
Asha: Don't call me that.
Kai: Yes ma'am.
Her response was a single middle-finger emoji.
Kai put the phone away smiling.
Then he saw the manga café.
The sign above the door featured a cartoon cat wearing a samurai helmet.
Kai looked at it.
Then at the time.
Then back at the cat.
"Well," he murmured. "You've made a compelling argument."
The café smelled like coffee, paper and carpet that had probably survived several governments.
Kai loved it immediately.
Shelves covered nearly every wall.
One Piece.
Bleach.
Dragon Ball.
Jujutsu Kaisen.
Black Clover.
Titles he knew well sat beside series he'd promised himself he'd eventually start and almost certainly never would.
Two teenagers near the back were having a whispered argument about whether some character could destroy a planet.
Kai walked past them.
"Obviously he can," one insisted.
"Based on what?"
"Scaling."
"That's not evidence."
Kai smiled.
Some arguments survived every generation.
He ordered the cheapest coffee available and wandered between the shelves.
His hand stopped at Naruto.
For a moment, he simply looked at the orange spine.
He hadn't read it in years.
He remembered watching the anime when he was younger, back when Saturday afternoons could disappear without consequences.
Dad used to walk through the living room, see ninjas throwing fireballs at each other, and ask the same question every time.
Is this the yellow-haired one?
"He's literally on the screen, Dad."
So yes?
Mum never understood why fights lasted several episodes.
Asha pretended anime was stupid until Kai caught her watching without him.
She had denied everything.
Naturally.
Kai pulled out a volume and carried it to a seat beside the window.
He opened somewhere around Naruto's early training.
The kid on the page was loud, stubborn and desperately determined to become Hokage despite almost everyone around him thinking he was useless.
Kai took a sip of terrible coffee.
"Still shouting, then."
He turned the page.
There was something comforting about returning to a story when you already knew where it went.
Naruto would struggle.
He'd lose people.
He'd make terrible decisions.
He'd keep moving anyway.
Eventually, the lonely idiot everyone dismissed would become someone capable of protecting almost everybody.
Kai stared at the page a little longer than necessary.
Must be nice.
He flipped ahead.
A fight.
Shadow clones.
Someone explaining chakra in enough detail that Kai remembered spending embarrassing amounts of time as a teenager wondering what his chakra nature would be.
Lightning, obviously.
Everyone wanted lightning.
Asha had told him he'd get "the disappointing one."
He'd thrown a cushion at her.
Kai smiled to himself.
He'd forgotten that memory.
That was why he'd loved manga in the first place.
Not because he believed any of it.
Because for a little while, impossible things made sense.
A kid could be hated by an entire village and still find somewhere to belong.
Someone could train hard enough to change what everyone thought they were capable of.
Deadly enemies could become friends after a sufficiently emotional conversation.
People died, sometimes.
But there was usually a reason.
A lesson.
A final speech.
Real life had been less considerate.
A lorry had crossed the wrong stretch of road at the wrong time.
His parents were gone.
No prophecy.
No villain.
No secret technique waiting to bring them back.
Just two empty chairs at a kitchen table.
Kai shut the volume for a moment.
"Bit depressing for a day off."
He drank his coffee.
Opened it again.
For forty-three minutes, Kai Mercer belonged to nobody.
Nobody needed rent from him.
Nobody needed a delivery.
Nobody needed him to lift anything.
Nobody needed him to pretend he was okay.
He was just some tired guy reading Naruto beside a window.
Forty-three minutes.
Then someone screamed outside.
Kai's head snapped up.
The café went quiet.
A spoon struck a saucer.
People turned toward the window.
Across the street, a woman stumbled past the mouth of an alley.
A hand caught her.
Dragged her backward.
Gone.
For half a second, nobody moved.
Then another scream came from between the buildings.
"Please—"
Cut short.
Kai was already standing.
His chair scraped backward.
He dropped the manga on the table and ran.
"Sir!" the cashier shouted. "Your bag!"
Kai stopped at the door.
His bag.
Phone charger.
Work clothes.
Bills.
Everything he needed tomorrow.
Then a muffled cry came from outside.
He left it.
Several people had gathered on the pavement.
One man already had his phone out.
"Police are coming," somebody said.
Another person took two steps toward the alley, hesitated, then stopped.
Kai understood.
He really did.
Nobody knew what waited down there.
Nobody wanted to turn themselves into the second victim.
Kai didn't either.
His hands were already shaking when he dialled emergency services.
"Police."
"What is your emergency?"
"Assault behind Harlow Street. Alley beside the manga café."
"Are you in a safe location?"
Kai crossed the road.
"Currently?"
"Yes."
"Probably not."
"Sir, do not approach the—"
He lowered the phone.
The alley was narrow.
Wet brick.
Overflowing bins.
A broken crate near the wall.
At the far end, a man had a young woman pinned by the throat.
Her shoes scraped against the ground.
Kai stopped.
This wasn't manga.
No soundtrack started.
No hidden power woke inside him.
He was exhausted.
He had slept four hours.
His shoulder still hurt from flour sacks that morning.
And the man at the end of the alley was bigger than him.
Much bigger.
Kai's mouth went dry.
The man looked over.
Grey hoodie.
Broad shoulders.
Blood across one knuckle.
"Leave."
Kai considered it.
Actually considered it.
Police were coming.
He wasn't trained.
He wasn't a hero.
Then the woman tried to pull the man's hand away from her throat.
Failed.
For one ugly second, Kai imagined Asha there instead.
Not because they looked alike.
They didn't.
Because somebody, somewhere, would have to decide whether helping her was worth the risk.
Kai bent and picked up a rusted metal bar beside the broken crate.
His hand trembled around it.
"Let her go."
The man looked at the bar.
Then at Kai.
"Walk away."
Every intelligent part of Kai's brain agreed.
He tightened his grip.
"Yeah."
His voice shook.
He cleared his throat.
"I've been making bad decisions all year."
The man released the woman.
She collapsed, coughing.
Kai almost smiled.
Maybe that was it.
Maybe he'd bought enough time.
"Run," he told her.
Then the man's hand disappeared inside his coat.
Kai's relief died.
Something clicked.
A folding knife opened in the man's hand.
For years, Kai had read stories about ordinary people being handed impossible power.
Standing in that alley, he finally understood the part those stories usually skipped.
The moment before the power arrived.
When you were still ordinary.
Still afraid.
And the knife was real.