"Oh, thank goodness."
King caught himself about half a second too late. His broad shoulders had already dropped, the immense relief escaping his mouth before his social instincts could intercept it. His hand had even moved, forming a small, involuntary fist pump of released tension.
Why did she suddenly give up? King thought to himself. It doesn't matter. An organization full of people to manage, people who would want to talk to me regularly, probably about their feelings and group dynamics. Gone. Beautiful.
Fubuki was looking right at him.
The expression on her face was that very specific one that develops when someone has just watched you celebrate their disappointment without bothering to hide it. It wasn't exactly angry. It was the quiet, expressive suffering of someone who had just been dealt a small but deeply felt wound, and was choosing to absorb it with absolute dignity.
King turned red by slow, painful degrees.
"Cough." He cleared his throat twice. "What I meant was, what a shame. Truly. The Fubuki Group sounds like an exceptional organization and it is a real—"
"It's fine," Fubuki interrupted gently, waving a hand. The gesture was genuine rather than performative. "Really. You don't need to do that."
She had recalibrated before the color had even finished draining from King's scarred face. The adjustment wasn't forced. She had done this before, back when Jordan had declined her invitation and she eventually had to accept that some valuable resources simply were not going to fold into her organizational structure. You update your strategy and you move forward. Sitting around in your feelings accomplished nothing.
She turned her empty bowl toward King and offered a small smile. "I want more hot pot."
King blinked at the sudden shift in topic. Then, something visibly loosened in his severe expression. The awkward guilt was replaced by something much simpler and easier. He looked back toward the bubbling pot with the decisive, laser focus of a man with a clear purpose.
"No problem," King said smoothly. "Leave it to me."
The evening deepened by degrees.
Outside, the crickets started up in the mountain grass, while inside, the hot pot had long since passed the point of being about actual hunger. It had become something else entirely. It was the sustained, comfortable chaos of people who were no longer performing for each other. Drink glasses were refilled without any ceremony. Conversations overlapped and intersected across the wide table. The initial, cutthroat competitive intensity of the chopstick warfare had settled into something far more collaborative, punctuated only by sudden, brief escalations whenever a particularly high-quality piece of marbled beef appeared floating in the red broth.
At the far end of the table, a small territorial conflict was rapidly developing.
Genos's metal chopsticks cleanly intercepted Garou's mid-reach. The sharp click of wood striking metal was precise and deliberate.
"Stop," Genos said. His voice carried the mechanical flatness of someone who had made a firm decision and considered the matter absolutely final. "Sensei identified that piece of meat first."
Garou tilted his head, his white hair shifting. The disdain on his bruised face had the quality of something he had stopped even consciously generating. It was just there, structural, a permanent part of his default expression. "One lucky win doesn't mean anything, machine. Don't get comfortable."
Genos's optical sensors flickered with a faint yellow light. The internal switch from standby to full combat engagement was visible to anyone paying close attention. "If you are going to interfere with Sensei's food," Genos said, speaking with the measured calm of someone who had already calculated the exact trajectory of a plasma blast inside a dining room, "then I will not hold back."
"Good." Garou flashed a wide, feral grin. It was the exact kind of grin that suggested he had been hoping for exactly this response all night. "Neither will I."
The two pairs of chopsticks remained deadlocked over the disputed piece of beef, neither yielding a single millimeter, while the rest of the table simply continued eating around them.
Tatsumaki had, over the course of the long evening, finally made her peace with the hot pot.
The difficult process had involved two separate near-evacuations from the table, one physical intervention by Jordan, and a tall glass of chilled grape juice that she was now treating as a critical tactical resource rather than a personal defeat. But she had found the rhythm of the meal eventually. She learned the pattern of the numbing spice, figuring out when to eat fast and when to wait for her tongue to recover. She learned how to use the cold soda preemptively rather than just reacting to the fire. Her chopstick technique, guided by a level of telekinetic precision that most normal people couldn't even touch, had proven genuinely effective once she stopped trying to win the dinner and just started trying to eat her food.
She was managing.
Across the table, Saitama and Bang had entered a completely different phase of the evening.
They were currently drinking the expensive shochu that Jordan had brought. It was a proper, high-proof liquor, the kind with enough heavy character to make itself instantly known the moment the bottle opened. They drank with the unified, silent methodology of two people who had arrived at the exact same understanding of what a good evening should be. They would raise their ceramic glasses, clink them together gently, close their eyes when the liquid went down, wait for the harsh burn to settle into a deep stomach warmth, exhale a long breath, and comment that it was very good.
"This is amazing," Saitama said, speaking with the solid conviction of someone reporting a scientific fact.
"Exceptional," Bang agreed smoothly, his wrinkled eyes still closed in appreciation.
They said it at almost exactly the same moment. Neither of them seemed to notice the synchronization.
Tatsumaki noticed.
She looked down at the glass currently resting in her own hand. The grape juice was cold, sweet, and entirely adequate for fighting the spice. But the clear liquor across the table had a very different quality to it. She watched the heavy way it moved in the glass, and she studied the relaxed, satisfied expressions it produced on the faces of the people drinking it.
It looks good, she thought.
She turned her head. "Jordan."
Something lightly tugged at the bottom hem of Jordan's jacket. He finished his current exchange with King, set his water glass down on the table, and looked sideways.
Then he looked downward. Sometime in the last few minutes, Tatsumaki had settled quietly onto her knees right beside him. Her usual floating altitude had been entirely abandoned in favor of sitting level with the table surface. She was looking up at him with an expression that was trying very hard to be neutral, but wasn't quite succeeding.
"What is it?" Jordan asked, raising an eyebrow. "You've been managing the hot pot on your own just fine."
"I'm full," she said, waving off the food. "And the juice is just..." Her green gaze moved pointedly across the table to the half-empty bottles sitting in front of Saitama and Bang. "I want to try the proper drink."
Jordan's first thought arrived with the sudden, crystal clarity of institutional memory. It was a very specific, terrible image. He pictured Zombieman, a long kitchen knife still deeply embedded in his chest, lying horizontal on the floor. Technically fine by his own regenerative biological standards, but visually serving as a very strong argument for maintaining responsible alcohol access around psychics.
A drunk Tatsumaki was not a hypothetical scenario he ever wanted to generate real data on. Especially not inside a building that currently had people living in it.
He shook his head with immediate, quiet urgency. "No. Trust me on this one. If you drink, the radius of the aftermath is way too large, and that stops being fun for anyone."
"Children shouldn't drink alcohol."
The new voice came directly from Jordan's other side. It was cheerful, noticeably tipsy, and entirely lacking in any sort of basic strategic awareness.
Saitama settled heavily into the adjacent seat, his shochu bottle balanced casually on his shoulder. The mild, pink flush of someone who had been touring the entire table for toasts gave his normally blank face a comfortable, relaxed warmth. He looked down at Tatsumaki with the benevolent condescension of a friendly adult who has identified a situation and is just trying to help.
"This is an adult drink," Saitama explained kindly, gesturing with his free hand. "Kids should stick to their juice."
Silence fell over their corner of the table.
Tatsumaki's fingers, which had been resting lightly against her knee, twitched once. The faint green light surrounding her body did not immediately surge. Instead, it did something much slower and far more deliberate. It brightened by steady degrees, feeling like a massive physical pressure building in the room rather than just a quick detonation.
Jordan looked at the pulsing, crosshatch vein pattern suddenly developing on her pale forehead. He looked back at Saitama's dopey, smiling face. Jordan felt the very particular, deep-in-the-bones exhaustion of a man who had just finished carefully defusing a live bomb, only to watch someone else cheerfully walk into the room carrying a lit flare.
I had her calmed down, Jordan thought miserably. She was fine. She was fine.