Work Text:
The strings were pulled and in a moment, the arrow was shot to the target. Kasturi was practicing his archery skills in his leisure time. Not long ago, his parents brought him along here for a business purpose. By then, he was transferred to study here for a year or two until his parents decide to move to another district or another country like the usual.
His whole life has been about travelling to different places because of his parents' work. Kasturi doesn’t really know what his parents do for their work, but as long as everything works well for him, he just accepts everything his parents offer. Even studying abroad, he manages to gain the schoolmates' trust to even be the president of the school archery club.
People know him for his quick thinking and athleticism. He is always on time for everything. One day, a video of him went viral after he saved a kid from a nearby explosion caused by a villain who was fighting a famous hero. With his high trust value, he managed to save the kid in a blink of an eye, like time had stopped for him. In a second, he grabbed the kid and moved to a safer place.
Kasturi looked at the bow in his hand, the wood warm from the sun. Sometimes he wondered if this constant drifting ever bothered him. But as the wind rustled the leaves around the archery range, he let those thoughts drift away with the breeze.
Xuan @yaoxuan
Have y'all seen the mysterious guy that saved the kid during
's fight? He's so handsome!! I wish I could see him irl
#mysterioushero #handsomeherosaveakid
> MaoMao @ma0ma0
I have seen the footage! What is his hero name? I need to know!
> Kyun @kyun0mewmew
Apparently he’s just a normal high school guy. I saw him walking to school yesterday
Unbeknownst to Kasturi, someone else had been watching the video carefully. A shadowed figure replayed the footage frame by frame, eyes narrowing at the boy’s reflexes.
“This might be an opportunity.” the voice muttered. “We might’ve just found our next candidate.”
The next day, whispers followed Kasturi as soon as he arrived at school. Everyone already knew it was him in the video—the “mysterious hero.” Students smiled, nudged each other, and called his name with teasing excitement.
“Hey Kasturi! So you’re the guy from that explosion video!”
“We all saw you save that kid. You look so cool!”
“You’re famous now. Don’t forget us when you’re big!”
Kasturi just shrugged it off and headed toward the back of the school building, where his two best friends, Liang and Zhihao, were waiting.
"Hey," Kasturi said, arms crossed. "Why is everyone acting weird around me today?"
Zhihao glanced up from his phone, eyes wide. "Dude, you haven't seen it?!"
Kasturi raised an eyebrow. "Seen what?"
Liang laughed and shoved his phone into Kasturi’s hands. "This. You're literally all over the internet right now. You're famous, man."
Kasturi stared at the screen. The video showed him dashing into frame, grabbing the kid, and vanishing from the blast radius in one smooth motion. It didn’t even look real.
"Wait— this went viral?"
Zhihao grinned. “Yeah. Everyone’s calling you the ‘Mysterious Hero.’ You even have a fan account now.”
"Let me see— I can't understand much of the words, what is 'fine shyt'?" He scrolled all the way through the comments section.
"It's an internet slang. Don't mind it. The important thing is people now know you as a hero!" Liang said, barely holding in a laugh.
"Have you checked your trust value?" Zhihao asked.
"Ah, not yet. I— what the?" He took a look at his wrist. The number was shown as he looked at it.
The number was higher than ever before.
He didn’t even think about becoming a hero. But honestly, it didn’t sound like a bad idea.
"Haha, maybe I should come up with a hero name instead of just being 'the mysterious guy'."
"What is it then?" Liang asked, curious.
"Laksamana," Kasturi said, the word rolling off his tongue casually. "A title for a leader, mainly in the military during the Malay sultanates era."
Zhihao blinked. “Sounds cool.”
Liang grinned. “Okay, Laksamana, now you definitely need a cape.”
Kasturi chuckled and shook his head. "No cape. I’m not going full costume just because of one video. It looks ridiculous."
To him, it was just something that happened— he reacted, and it turned out well. Nothing more, nothing less.