Work Text:
"That's it! You need a fucking day off!" Hari said, slamming a cup of tea onto Overhaul's desk.
Such insubordination would have had anyone else disassembled immediately, but Hari was his oldest friend, so Kai only sighed, rolled back his chair, and levelled him with a look.
"Where is this coming from?" he asked when it became obvious that Hari had nothing further to contribute.
Hari reeled back and dropped into the chair opposite him.
“Wh—where?! You're really asking me that?!”
Kai ignored him in favour of his tea. Years of friendship had taught him that the best way to deal with Hari's moods was to wait them out.
"I just came from the common room, and Rappa—Rappa—" Hari emphasised, "was crying because you disassembled him this morning for using the last coffee pod. Not to mention the others you've terrorised this week for simply existing in your 'Kai-o-sphere'! Even Rikiya and that sycophant Shin have been avoiding you! You need time off, therapy, or both!"
"Are you done?" Kai interjected when Hari looked like he had run out of steam—and caustic acid. "I don't suppose I have to remind you that we're on a tight schedule?"
"And? If you don't do something to decompress, you won't have a Shie Hassaikai left to run! They'll do a mass walkout from here to the police station to seek protective custody."
"Even you?" Kai smirked.
"Don't push me, Kai." Hari slumped forward in his seat. "You know I wouldn't—but this isn't a ship that can be sailed by two people."
"So what do you want me to do?"
"Didn't you hear me? Take a day off!"
"Yes, okay," Kai said, rubbing his temple to stave off a headache, "and then what? Get drunk with Deidoro or visit a temple with Heikiji? It's not like I have many friends, Hari. You're the only exception—and we can't both take a day off, or this ship will sink faster than the Titanic."
Hari sat up, looking thoughtful.
"I suppose you have a point," he conceded. "Maybe just make a list of places you'd like to visit and do some sightseeing or whatever. There's a new samurai exhibition at the National Museum."
Kai stared at him.
"What?" Hari was quick to defend himself. "I'm just brainstorming ideas! Anyway, I don't want to see you here tomorrow. Get a hobby, man—one that doesn't involve slicing up little girls."
Kai hummed thoughtfully.
"Fine," he agreed, finishing his tea and handing the mug back to Hari. He loathed clutter and mess almost as much as he loathed being dirty. "I'll take a day off tomorrow. Now get out of here and let me work."
****
To say that Kai enjoyed his day off would be to grossly understate the matter. The very next day, he sat down and scheduled a fortnightly day off for the rest of the year.
“What did you even do?” Hari asked, passing Kai a petri dish. “Not that I’m complaining!” he added quickly. “Whatever it is, keep doing it.”
“Just wandered around Shinjuku, visited a café, browsed bookshops—you know, the usual stuff.”
“And you feel better?”
“Better?” Kai glanced at him. “You think I’m sick?”
“No!”
“Yes, you do,” Kai said calmly, “but you’re not wrong. We’re all sick.” He sighed. “Pass me sample thirteen.”
****
Very soon, the “Day Off” became a sacred ritual within the Shie Hassaikai. Whereas before Kai would keep his work phone on him for emergencies and to check emails on the go, he soon acquired a separate phone to avoid being disturbed altogether.
The only person who had the number was Hari—and given that the day off was his idea, he was unlikely to call for anything short of the apocalypse.
This left Kai feeling strangely free and unburdened.
Which was dangerously addictive.
Today, he was walking through downtown Mustafa. He had just finished visiting a lovely café that had gone viral for stocking a collection of pastries shaped like horror movie characters, and the taste of Predator still pleasantly coated the inside of his mouth.
As usual for these outings, he replaced his plague mask with a surgical one and forwent his signature look in favour of a navy V-neck sweater and black skinny jeans. To complete the disguise, he swapped his surgical rubber gloves for black leather ones to complement his wool coat and leather boots.
In short, he was indistinguishable from the millions of pedestrians milling about on a chilly October day.
Careful to avoid bumping into anyone, he kept away from busy intersections and stuck to smaller alleyways in search of something to do. By the time afternoon rolled around, he had somehow found himself wandering into a quiet residential area. The street was deserted, so he diverted his attention to his watch for just a moment to confirm he had completed his ten thousand steps—
When something large fell from the sky and hit the pavement right in front of him.
Since Kai had been looking down at the time, the first thing he saw was the brain matter that landed with a splat across his boots. He lifted his gaze slowly to take in the cacophony of mangled limbs that—judging by the uniform—belonged to a middle school student. Looking at his shoes with a frown he patted himself down for a packet of tissues. When it became clear he had forgotten to bring any, he sighed.
There was no choice.
He would have to reassemble this idiot.
Glaring at the offensive obstruction, he pulled off one glove and reached for the cleanest patch of skin available, which happened to be a bony shoulder. The boy’s limbs began to unfold as bones realigned and stitched themselves back together. His caved-in skull reinflated like a balloon, pulling the scattered brain matter off Kai’s shoes and back into that idiotic head of his.
The boy took a breath—
And blinked owlishly up at him.
Looking to minimise the interruption to his day, Kai started to rise when the child grabbed him by the arm and began to cry in that attention-seeking way that had neighbours peering out from their windows at the sight of an adult man crouching over a wailing middle schooler.
Not good.
“Shhh!” Kai tried to hush him and shake him off at the same time. “Be quiet! Let go, you damn brat!”
But either his reassembly was getting rusty and the kid had a few screws loose, or he had always been a clingy crybaby, because no matter how much Kai shook his arm to try to dislodge him, he only cried harder and clung tighter.
“Fine!” Seeing no way out of this—and conscious that the neighbours were bound to call the police any minute—he stood and began dragging the boy down the road. A short while later, he found what he was looking for and pulled the sobbing gremlin into an ice cream shop.
“Pick one,” he ordered, pointing at the display.
The child, who had his face pressed into Kai’s arm for the entire walk, opened his eyes and stared dumbfounded at the selection in front of him. Kai grew impatient and, not too gently, poked him in the head.
“Children like ice cream,” he said, leaving no room for argument. “Pick one and stop crying.”
“Sir, is your son alright?”
Kai looked from the cashier to the sniffling brat beside him.
“I don’t know,” he said, staring at the boy. “Is he?”
“I’m alright,” the boy mumbled, and when both the cashier and Kai continued to stare at him, he added, “Chocolate, please.”
The cashier quickly prepared a chocolate cone and handed it to the child.
“And for you, sir?”
“Coffee. Black.”
He gestured toward a table by the window.
“We’ll sit over there.”
“Certainly!” The cashier smiled, holding out the EFTPOS machine so Kai could tap it with his watch.
They walked to the table, where they faced another dilemma.
“You’ll need to let go of me to sit.”
The boy hesitated, glancing between the chair and Kai’s arm, but eventually capitulated and released him to take a seat—which he immediately nudged closer to Kai’s.
Resigned, Kai sat and studied the child with the disinterest one might observe a moth crawling on the window pane. His hysterics had reduced from loud sobbing to quiet sniffles, and he was staring at the table top in between small licks of his ice cream.
The coffee was brought to the table, but the boy had yet to look up. Not that Kai particularly cared. He turned his attention to the window, watching pedestrians passing by.
“Why did you save me?” he eventually heard muttered across the table.
“So you do remember?” Kai replied, watching a mother fuss over a scowling toddler.
“Yes.”
“What do you remember?”
The boy hesitated.
“I jumped.”
“You did,” Kai confirmed, shifting his attention back to the child. “Not that I care, but why'd you do it?”
“I… I don’t know…”
“Yes, you do.” Kai stared him down until their eyes met. They were still swimming with tears, but the crying had stopped, and he now looked hesitant to answer. The ice cream was beginning to melt, dripping down his fingers. Kai scowled and plucked a handful of paper napkins from the dispenser.
“Finish that and clean your hands,” he ordered, tossing the napkins at him in disgust.
They sat in silence until the ice cream was gone. As the boy wiped his fingers, he finally said, “I’m quirkless,” as though that explained everything.
“Okay. And?”
The boy pivoted from misery to indignation with such speed it nearly gave Kai whiplash.
“And?!” he repeated, sounding exasperated—which Kai would admit was an improvement from the crying. “What do you mean, and? You wouldn’t understand!”
“Why do you want a quirk?” Kai kept his tone neutral to conceal his thoughts on the matter. “Is it because ‘everyone’ has one? You want to be like everyone else, is that it?”
“No!” The boy surprised him. If it wasn’t a desire to conform, then what was it? “I want to be a hero, but I… I can’t… I can’t help anyone if I’m quirkless.”
“So you decided to jump and make it everybody’s problem.”
The boy gaped at him, which Kai had to admit was rather charming.
“You… you can’t say that to me!”
“Actually, I can say whatever the hell I want. You’re only here because I didn’t have tissues to clean my shoes, and now you’re telling me I went to all that trouble because your quirkless—but otherwise healthy—self has an inferiority complex?”
“I don’t… it’s not a ‘complex’!” The boy shot to his feet in indignation. He certainly wasn’t clinging to Kai anymore, not with the way he was glaring at him now.
Good.
“Who told you that you can’t be a hero? If it’s not a complex, then someone told you, right?”
The boy looked taken aback and slowly sank back into his seat.
“Maybe,” he muttered.
“And you listen to everything other people tell you?”
The boy remained stubbornly silent, staring at the used pile of napkins as though they held all the answers.
Teenagers.
Kai snorted and decided to try one of the lines he vaguely remembered his mother using on him before he was orphaned.
“And if this great purveyor of wisdom told you to jump off a roof, would you do it?”
“He did.”
Oh…
Kai was not a compassionate person. He was practical in his callousness, never one to inflict unnecessary cruelty, but neither shying away from what needed to be done. He was, and always would be, ruthless in the pursuit of his ambitions. So it surprised him greatly when he felt a twinge of pity for this boy.
“Listen,” he said, “I’m sorry…”
The boy stared.
“…that you have shitty friends.”
The snort of laughter that erupted from the boy was unexpected, but not unwelcome.
“The truth is…” Kai considered going into the intricacies of the disease that was the “quirk,” but one look at the child made him pause. That wasn’t what he needed to hear right now, and for once Kai held his thoughts to himself and said something completely out of character. “You don’t know how your life is going to play out. I mean, who’s to say that quirks won’t be transferable in the future? There’s even a rumour about a man with a quirk that gives people quirks—he takes them from others and stores them, or transfers them.”
It was better not to throw All For One’s name around, even to children, but if the general premise of his power could give this brat hope, he saw no harm in mentioning it.
The boy looked fascinated. He leaned across the table, and Kai quickly leaned back, wary of being touched again.
“Really?! That’s so cool! But what about the people he takes quirks from? Won’t they be sad that they lost their quirk?”
“He only takes quirks from dying people,” Kai lied.
The boy nodded, looking thoughtful. The cashier was stacking chairs beside them, drawing Kai’s attention to the time.
“We should go,” he said, checking his watch. “Where do you live? I’ll walk you home.”
For some reason, he suddenly felt responsible for this child. Maybe because he now knew he was quirkless—and the quirkless needed to be protected at all costs. After all, the naturally quirkless, not the diseased he would subvert with his serum, were the only hope for the future.
“Down the street. We walked past it on the way here.”
“How would you know? You were crying like a baby.”
“I was not! Oh—well, I was, but I died and came back to life! Tell me you wouldn’t cry after that?!”
“I wouldn’t, because I’m not a crybaby,” Kai replied, very reasonably, to fan the boy’s growing outrage. There was something oddly appealing about the frustrated huffing and flushed cheeks. It reminded him of when he used to tease Hari for being a shorty before he hit his growth spurt. “Anyway, what’s your name?”
“Izuku Midoriya. And yours?”
“Kai. Is this your house?” he asked when the boy slowed near the entrance of a three-building apartment complex.
Before Izuku had even finished nodding, Kai was already turning to leave.
“Okay. Bye, then.”
“Wait!” Izuku hurried after him, and Kai narrowly avoided being grabbed again. “You’re leaving already? There’s so much I still want to ask you—about your quirk, how it works, is there—”
“None of your business, hero.”
“I’m not a hero.”
Kai stared at him until he blushed and looked away.
“Not yet,” he added, with the faintest hint of a smile.
“Good. I’ll tell you when you are.”
He turned and walked away without looking back, even as he heard a quiet “okay,” followed by a louder, “Thanks for saving me!”
He doubted he would ever meet the boy again, but something told him this incident wouldn’t be quick to leave his mind.
He dialled Hari.
“What’s up?”
“Send a car to Mustafa to pick me up.”
“What, you’re cutting your precious day off short? That’s not like you.”
“Just do it,” Kai said, and hung up.
Yes, he thought.
Izuku Midoriya wouldn’t be quick to leave him.
How inconvenient.