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“I don’t understand Teacher.” He smiles, all innocence and naïve confusion with wide earnest eyes. “I don’t understand what I did wrong.”
He smiles, arms open. “I did it for you, Teacher.”
He smiles, as he stands upon a mountain of death as his red, red arms smolder with heat.
Saitama doesn’t know what the interviewer sees in him but it’s definitely something to get him hired on the spot. It’s only at the risk of looking so unprofessional that they might un-hire him, that Saitama doesn’t start yelling in joy right then and there. Instead, he jogs the way home, lighter than he’s felt in months.
He’ll finally be able to kiss those crappy hours at the convenience store goodbye and say hello to normal working hours with benefits.
He smiles, without a care in the world.
His hands—hands that have made countless meals for Saitama, that have cleaned floors until they were spotless and hands that have ripped apart warm, fleshy bodies as they screamed for mercy—curl into fists of delight and the red red of blood drips down from his fingers.
“Look Teacher,” he says with a grin: wide, red and oh so happy. “I’ve become a God now.”
Sometimes, Saitama sees thing.
He doesn’t tell his colleagues or his boss about it because he’s sure they’ll call him crazy. He tries not to think too hard about it because he’s probably just imagining it.
He’s just imagining the red eyes and the black hair in the corner of his eyes. The smile as he’s followed, is all part of his imagination as well.
They all die before him.
As a God, he judges them for what they are: utterly worthless and blind to the greatness that had been before them.
He smites them without a second thought, a merciless god of madness.
Saitama thinks Tahashi hates him.
Some of his other colleagues tell him that’s just how Tahashi is, and you just have to get used to working with him. Saitama believes them, because he’s experienced far worse.
And even if that means his work is just a little more difficult to complete, a little harder to deal with and going to work becomes a little more of a chore than it was before—well, that’s fine with Saitama.
A boring, ordinary man like him is fine with a lot of things.
If he becomes the greatest villain in the world, then the world has no choice but to bring forth the greatest hero to defeat him. And if he just happens to be strong enough to kill all the heroes except Saitama, then that just means Saitama is the greatest hero the world has ever known.
Genos just needs to kill the whole world first.
And if he just happened to start with the one mob that had screamed obscenities and cursed Teacher for destroying the meteor, well, that was fine too.
After all, they deserved it.
He’s taking a day-off after coming down with the stomach flu, when his boss calls him.
Initially, Saitama panics and thinks back about every small thing he could have possibly done to incur his boss’ ire when he sees the name being displayed on his screen. Then, he decides to just suck it up and answer the call, and if his boss fires him then so be it and he’ll just have to go job-hunting again.
“Saitama-kun,” his boss’ voice is sharp, a little fearful and it makes Saitama’s stomach churn for unknown reasons. “You were the last person to see Tahashi-kun yesterday, correct?”
“Yes,” Saitama confirms.
“Were you in contact with him after you saw him?” his boss asks.
“No.” Saitama’s voice sounds hollow in his own ears and he doesn’t know why. “Has something happened?”
His boss pauses. Then, the bomb drops.
“Tahashi-kun is dead. I need you to come to the police station now.”
He’s happy like this: he, the God-level villain and Saitama, the only Hero capable of defeating him, facing off. It’s fine if Teacher can’t kill him, because that just means they can continue his cycle forever.
Genos can continue killing those undeserving of Saitama’s protection and Saitama can continue to try and stop him even though he can never find it in himself to defeat Genos.
Until Saitama gets sick.
The body isn’t even recognizable, even with the pictures; it’s been burned beyond anything human-looking with nothing but crispy, charred remains looking up at Saitama from the photographs. The only reason they were able to get identification of Tahashi at all was because of his employee ID card still, somehow, miraculously, attached to his burnt suit, looking as though it had melted onto the body.
But even after being charred, the autopsy was able to determine that Tahashi had been attacked before burnt.
The word ‘torture’ enters Saitama’s mind before he can stop it.
Saitama falls, not to a God but to a small virus that even he couldn’t defeat with one punch.
The police question him for hours, but Saitama’s alibi checks out and his record is clean except for some infarctions in middle school. The police declare him innocent and uninvolved with Tahashi’s death, but encourage him to call in if he hears anything.
Despite this, Saitama’s stomach rolls and he feels sick for reasons that aren’t related to his stomach bug.
And Genos, now a villain with no hero, howls and curses the world for taking away the last person his human heart has ever loved.
“I think I might have killed him,” Saitama mumbles, when he’s out with his coworkers one night and deliriously drunk.
His cheek is pressed flat against the table and his eyes glazed as he stares off at the wall. Above him, his coworkers exchange uneasy looks.
They had been trying to avoid talking about Tahashi all night, aiming on only trying to cheer Saitama up—one of the reasons they had invited Saitama out for drinks in the first place. As much as Tahashi and Saitama didn’t get along, they couldn’t ignore the bags that had appeared underneath Saitama’s eyes after Tahashi’s death.
“I’m sure that’s not true, Saitama-kun,” one of his coworkers try to reassure him. He has dark brown hair, round glasses and always rides his bike to work—so insistent on it that everyone has come to call him Mumen Rider. “There’s no reason for you to feel guilty.”
“But the eyes,” Saitama mutters so quietly, on the verge of falling asleep. “What about the eyes?”
He wanders around a hollow, quiet world and waits for his core to die.
Saitama’s dreams become filled with Tahashi’s burnt body happily smiling up at him, his eyes red upon black.
“Murderer,” comes from the crumbled, charred throat. “Murderer.”
But then, an epiphany comes to Genos.
If this world is no more, then he just has to find another world where Teacher does exist.
On the first of December, Saitama goes missing.
His boss lets it slide for the first couple of days he doesn’t come to work, his decision stemming from the pity he feels at the ever darkening circles around Saitama’s eyes.
By Wednesday, people start to worry and Mumen volunteers to visit Saitama to see how he’s doing.
His coworkers and boss arm him with a dozen get-well cards, several boxes of chocolate, a bouquet of flowers and two gift boxes that barely fit into his bicycle’s front-cart. He bikes his way to Saitama’s little apartment, careful not to jostle the gifts.
“Saitama-kun?” Mumen calls out, knocking on the door.
No response.
Mumen frowns, worry growing. Going against well-ingrained manners, he turns the knob and finds it twisting open underneath his hand.
“Saitama-kun?” he tries again. Still, no answer.
He swallows (why is he so nervous?). “Saitama-kun? I’m coming in!”
He opens the door.
He finds Teacher easily enough but in this world, Teacher is not a hero. He’s just an ordinary, average salaryman in a world full of average people.
Genos is delighted; it’ll be much easier holding onto Teacher now.
The missing poster is up by the end of the day.
Saitama’s face pastes itself all over town and his coworkers are on high-alert for weeks, looking out for any sign of their wayward colleague. But as the weeks go on and turn into a month, and then into several months and then half a year, vigilance slackens and rumors begin to spread.
What if, they whisper to one another, Saitama had wanted to disappear?
Maybe the guilt over Tahashi finally caused him to break. Maybe he was just sick and tired of his job and Tahashi had been the last straw. Maybe he fell in love with a girl and eloped with her.
The people gossip and speculate and gossip some more as Saitama’s missing poster sits forgotten on telephone poles and community bulletin boards.
Teacher can’t get sick if there is no one else in the world to get sick from. Teacher can’t leave him, if there is no one else.
So all he has to do, is to destroy the world again.
“Teacher, I made breakfast.”
“Oh, thank you Genos.” A slow smile, blank eyes that don’t quite register the bowl in front of him. His head moves downward, tilt towards the bowl.
One blink, two blinks. His hand moves up towards the table, flops dumbly on the surface like it’s lost and doesn’t know where to go.
Genos patiently and gently takes Saitama’s hands in his, helping him curl his fingers around his spoon to bring towards his bowl. His mouth obediently opens when Genos helps him bring the spoon to his mouth and he dutifully swallows down the miso soup when Genos prompts him to.
“Is it good?” he asks.
Saitama nods, slowly but surely.
Genos coos, red eyes bright in the morning sun with black hair that shines like a knife’s edge.
This time, they’ll be happy together.
“I’ve seen your eyes before,” Saitama sleepily tells Genos one night, when they’re curled up in one futon together, and the world is a shade of darkness so deep Saitama doesn’t even recognize it (has night time always looked like this?). “I’ve seen you before, somewhere. Before, when there was…there was…”
Genos smiles into Saitama’s hair and pulls his Teacher ever closer to him, shushing him. “There’s nothing to worry about Teacher. Not anymore.”
He won’t ever let go.