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The next time Kenny saw Helmet Guy, he was at the door to their apartment. He was in a big brown hoodie, less mean-looking shoes, and he held a toolbox instead of groceries.
“Hood-sama!” Kenny’s mom greeted.
Helmet guy sighed, and his voice sounded like Pete's cat clawing at a carpet - stuttered and crackly. “Mrs. Suzumiya,” he started, but he was ushered inside
“Come! Come sit. I'm making bao.”
Helmet man seemed to perk up, but didn't sit down. “Homemade?”
“Of course.”
“I'll have some after I check everything out, okay? I still need to check for mold and broken faucets and things.”
“You don’t have to do-”
He interrupted her. “If I'm renting out a space to someone, I want the space to be livable. Basic appliances, a bed for every resident, and nothing dangerous living in or on the walls.”
Kenny stared like this guy was stupid. “We can't pay for that,” he said.
Mom covered her face in embarrassment, but Helmet Man laughed. The sound was haunting, like the wind rattling windows, but it also somehow wasn’t a mocking noise.
He crouched down to look Kenny in the eye (or, he would have. Kenny was by no means a short seven-year-old, but even in a squat the Helmet guy had to look down).
“Kenny,” he said softly. “I'm covering that. I'm paying for everything that needs paying for, and it won't add to your mom’s rent costs. I promised you, didn't I?” The voice had gotten less scary, now, like a song on the radio station you can't quite hear. He was still sorta terrifying, but the spooky voice thing didn’t hide his tone at all.
Weird. Kenny thought that this man would be busy doing other stuff if he had as many buildings to check on as he said. He didn't expect the gigantic stranger to remember him, let alone by name.
“Yeah. Okay.”
Helmet pushed himself back to his feet and cracked his neck. “I gotta get started if I want to eat before the bao gets cold, so I'll be fast.”
Mom looked devastated, and Kenny resisted the urge to laugh. She was faking, but her sad face worked on everybody.
“Ma'am, I promise. I'll even eat them here.”
“Alright.”
About twenty minutes of Helmet Guy poking around their apartment, he came into the kitchen where Mom was wrapping up and Kenny was drawing with his crayons. He was going to need to replace his green crayon somehow.
Eventually, Scary-Voice-Guy came back and dropped into a chair - in the one closest to the door. In a Shimoza spot.
Did he not know? Or was he trying to make Kenny feel safer?
Mom came back, stared at Helmet man, and set his plate in front of the Kamiza spot with a pointed stare.
Kenny watched, awestruck, as the man (probably) held eye contact with his mom, reached out to the plate, and pulled it to himself, where he was still seated at a Shimoza spot.
Mom was about to freak out, Kenny had been certain, but she just sighed and sat down beside Helmet Man, equally as informal, and passed a smaller plate of bao to Kenny. “Hood-san, why must you be so hard on an old woman?”
Hood snorted and leaned back in his chair. “I live to disappoint. Also, you're barely thirty-six.”
Just as Kenny was about to start wondering how he was going to eat with a helmet on, Hood reached up behind his head and fiddled with something at the base of his neck. A hissing noise happened, and then he pulled the helmet off at the same time as he pulled the hood of the sweater over his head. It was a huge hood, too, much deeper than the hoodie itself seemed to imply. It practically swamped the man's face, leaving basically just his chin and mouth visible through the shadows.
“Why d’ya hide your face?” Kenny asked.
Hood grinned with a flash of slightly crooked teeth and picked up a dumpling to toss it in the air a couple of times. “Because a lot of people in Gotham would be angry if they saw my face, and even more people are already angry at me for doing nice things like helping out your mom.”
His voice wasn't scary anymore. It wasn't even that deep. He sounded like a person- somebody around the age of that eleventh grader who had helped Keiko with her math homework last week.
“Why?”
Mom placed a hesitant hand on Hood's shoulder and he turned to her. “Eat your dinner, Kenny,” she said, still looking at the shadows where Hood's face would be.
Red Hood sighed and took a bite out of his bao. Kenny frowned, but did the same.
-
Eventually, it started to get dark out, and Kenny watched curiously as his mom put a small cardboard box of leftover bao and rice into Hood's toolbox, while at the same time, Red Hood snuck an envelope into her coat pocket. He caught Kenny staring and raised his finger to make a shush motion in front of his smile.
“I've got more work to do, Mrs. Suzumiya,” Hood told Kenny’s mom when he was done. “More buildings to check, more people to bother… the usual.”
“You're never a bother, Hood-san,” Mom told him with a hand on his arm.
Here, at home, after a peaceful dinner, it struck Kenny again how huge the man was. His mom was barely tall enough to reach the cabinet on top of the fridge with a stool, and Mr. Hood was almost as tall as the curtain rods. This time, though, it wasn't exactly scary. Weird, sure, but… Well, with the way Mom was looking at him, and the big brown hoodie, it seemed more like she was comforting a sad bear.
The bear in question pulled her in for a one-armed hug. “Thanks, Mrs. Suzumiya.”
Mom poked him playfully. “Where's your mother, young man?”
Hood snorted and picked up his helmet. “Where is anyone's mom these days?”
Kenny, helpfully, piped up, “Mine's right here!”
Hood snorted again, a little more genuinely this time, and Kenny got the sense that he was rolling his eyes. “Yeah. Yeah, she is, Kenny. Let's keep it that way, hm?”
Kenny didn't know what that meant, exactly, but he nodded anyway. He liked his mom.
Mr. Hood put on his helmet and off his hood at the same time again, before pulling the hood up over the metal again. Then, he picked up his toolbox and paused at the door. “Be good to your Okaa-san, okay?”
Huh. He spoke Japanese, or at least enough to know what to call your mom. So he did know about the table thing. Why did he break the rule, then?
“Okay,” was all he said. He almost asked about the envelope, but he remembered the ‘shush’ motion and didn't say a word.
Kenny didn't say a word when Hood left with his toolbox containing at least two meals worth of food, and he didn't say a word, even when he saw his mom crying happily (he was learning the difference now) with a letter in her hands and a singular hundred dollar bill on the table next to an empty envelope.