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Somewhere in the winding streets of Musutafu, an explosion shakes all of the buildings within its vicinity. At least one collapses from the force of the blast, knocking into its neighbour and making that one tilt toward the ground too.
Chunks of concrete hit the ground with earth-shaking bangs. Windows shatter, sending shards raining down atop evacuating civilians. News helicopters circle the area, kicking up debris as they approach.
The sound of wailing is overpowered by a repetitive thudBOOMcrashBOOM—the ongoing battle sends Pro Heroes and Villains alike whistling through the air and into skyscrapers, heedless of the destruction.
Even so, sweat-sodden reporters dodge away from falling buildings and make predictions about the outcome of the fight through gritted teeth. A coincidental strategic mistake from one of the Villains allows the Heroes to gain the upper hand. It takes only a few more minutes before they’re cornering the suspect in the courtyard of one of the city’s central malls and apprehending them with media-ready grins.
Despite being covered in blood and dust—and paying no mind to the dozens of casualties they’ve caused with their carelessness—they accept praise from the civilians suddenly congregating around them; a rehearsed and reused victory speech is all that’s needed to overlook their lack of strategy, and an onslaught of applause finally sends them fleeing back to their triple-A agencies.
Beneath the chaos, the other two villains disappear without so much as a backwards glance from the authorities.
Similarly, with so many eyes on assessing the aftermath of this grand battle, no one is around to pay much attention to the man hanging out of a window.
You see, Kim Soleum has never been a particularly religious person.
When reminiscing about his youth, he can recall countless visits to the local church with his parents. If he really thinks about it, he may even be able to recite a scripture or three, having heard them from his mother on a regular basis.
However, he'd grown up in an agnostic world; he hadn’t touched a Bible since before junior high, and his friends certainly hadn't been taught much of anything by their own parents. That church of theirs had become a far-removed, watercoloured memory.
Now, as he finds himself dangling from his apartment’s 5th storey window, a familiar chant begins to cross through his mind.
‘*Lord, I ask You to protest me today—*Oh, fuck!’
His fingers, hooked around the windowsill, begin to cramp up.
‘No, nono—’
Traitrous sweat, leaking from his palms, creates a slickness against the wood that loosens his grip further.
Spending the last few months as an office worker has done a number on his endurance, despite all of the workouts he’s inflicted upon himself in an attempt to stay in shape. He’s also apparently grown to underestimate the full weight of an adult man, because when he throws all of his strength into one last ditch effort to haul himself up, his arms seize up. It doesn’t help that his sweaty fingers have also given up the ghost too.
With hardly a squeak, Soleum begins to plummet to the ground.
The knowledge that falling from this height will be enough to kill him outright makes him feel less horrible.
When he'd first woken up in this world, he had tried everything he could think to do to send himself back home—except for one idea.
At the time, he'd considered it too much of a risk. That old saying, ‘If you die in the game, you die in real life.’ had haunted him for years.
At this moment, it felt like a bit of much-needed hope.
‘If I fall head-first, I’ll… go quicker.’
The speed and force of his descent doesn’t allow him to adjust his body much, but he still attempts to manoeuvre himself downward.
As the nasty floor of the alleyway approaches, he closes his eyes and tries to imagine his sibling’s smiling face.
“—Gotcha!”
He feels his head snap to the side. Once the sting of the wind and the cold fades, a different sting emanating from his cheek becomes apparent.
With overwhelming reluctance, he pries his eyes open.
A woman with a brown bob and eyebags so deep they must carry the darkness of night within them stares back at him. She’s green in the face and sweating as hard as he’d been only a minute or so ago; the collar of her nondescript t-shirt is soaked with it.
When she begins to sway, he reaches out to steady her and finds his body behaving… oddly. It’s as though there’s little resistance to his movements. It feels like nothing at all, a helpless absence of something that sends his stomach aflutter.
Then, he looks down.
…
The ground is very far away.
He can see his shadow, created by the overhead sun, and notices how small it is.
A glance to his right shows him his third-storey neighbours glued to their window, gaping out at him as he apparently floats in mid-air.
The woman, now holding onto him as he is to her, tugs at his arm until he looks back at her.
She visibly swallows a few times before saying, “I’m going to release my quirk slightly. Don’t be alarmed. Continue holding onto me.”
Though her words are clipped and strained, the soft furrow of her brow turns her tone into concern rather than the irritation he thought it was shaping up to be.
Soleum nods and she presses her fingertips together. He tries not to freak out when they start to descend immediately afterward.
His neighbours disappear from view just as his feet hit the ground. Abruptly, gravity returns to him, making him stagger under his own weight.
The woman next to him looks unaffected… until she walks off to the gutter and hunches over to throw up.
She returns before long, roughly wiping her mouth and giving Soleum a critical look.
“Are you okay?” She guides him to the back of the ambulance he’d just noticed idling by the curb. “What happened?”
Her voice grows firm by the end of her question. He notices her watching him from the corner of her eye and she sits him down and bustles about for a blanket—it takes her a while to find it.
He pulls it around himself, turning away from her and peering down at the road blankly.
“I tried… calling the police,” he begins hesitantly. Normally he’d handle things himself, but the rules had changed a year ago. There was no telling what could happen to him if he tried to defend himself here. “But no one answered.”
He hears the woman freeze where she’s been rooting through one of the cabinets, then a resounding bang and a few bitten-off curses. Appearing next to him, she stares at him with startling intensity, even as she rubs the back of her head.
“...If you’re experiencing feelings of depression or suicidal ideation—” she starts.
“Oh! Oh, no.” He shakes his head, knowing his eyes must be wide with horror. He waves his hands in denial too, when the shaking doesn’t seem to be enough to convince her. “No! I mean—”
The ambulance shakes as one of its doors slams shut. Soleum hears stomping footsteps before someone rounds the side of the vehicle; a hideous scowl mars facial features Soleum thinks he would normally find cute.
The man alternates a scathing glare between the two of them.
“What’s taking so long? We have to go.”
Clicking her tongue, the woman grasps the man’s arm in what seems to be a painful grip, if the wince on his face is to be believed.
She glances at Soleum over her shoulder, then leans into her companion to hiss something. He rears back, sending Soleum a cautious look. If he’s not mistaken, he thinks he can read a bit of disgust in the other man’s eyes too.
‘Oh, no…’
“I’m not suicidal!” Soleum hops up from the rear step. “There’s someone in my apartment!”
He winces right after the words leave him.
‘That was… maybe a little too vague.’
Although the woman’s eyes go round with understanding, the other man just squints at him, expression becoming disbelieving.
“Huh?” His glare returns. “Good for you? Do you always brag about your conquests after jumping out of windows, or—”
The woman smacks his shoulder. He doesn’t so much as flinch.
“There’s an intruder in his apartment,” she ventures, pausing until Soleum nods in confirmation, then continues, “This is perfect for your quirk! Go get ‘em!”
She begins pushing the man toward the apartment building. Soleum hears him say, “Fuck off. You just want me dead.”
He can make out the sound of them exchanging more words, but none of them reach him from across the distance between them.
As they reach the fire escape, she calls out, “Just wait here! We’ll handle this.”
‘...Aren’t you paramedics?! Did they really train you for this??’ Is what he wants to ask, but they begin climbing up the ladder without looking back, so he misses his chance.
Feeling the absence of his phone distinctly, Soleum paces around the ambulance until the adrenaline rush from his fall leaves him, then sits down when his legs threaten to give out.
He grows worried by the time sirens start to approach his location, with no sign of the woman who saved him or her companion—when he finally pulls himself to his feet again, two police cars have swerved into the alley.
Police officers pour out of the vehicles, pointing their guns at Soleum with unnerving synchronisation.
“Hands up where we can see them!”
‘Ah, what the hell?’
He raises them lamely, feeling his blanket slide off his shoulders. He grimaces against the cool wind, then again as the officers approach him slowly, each of them sporting hardened, suspicious looks.
However, unlike his expectations of being forced onto his knees and cuffed, they begin searching the ambulance. One of them holsters their gun and approaches him, his impressive eyebrows pulled together as he asks, “Is there anyone in the vehicle?”
‘...?’
“I don’t think so?” He winces when the officer’s expression flattens. He isn't particularly interested in entertaining a cop, but he feels that his response was admittedly a little unhelpful, despite being true.
“...You don’t think so.” The man’s eyes stare into his soul.
“I just fell out of my window,” Soleum gestures upward in its general direction, “and the paramedic using it saved me before—running off.”
He feels himself sweat.
‘Should I have even pointed at my apartment…? What if they implicate me, too?’
“I see.” The officer looks away into the distance, his dark blue eyes focused on something, before they snap back to him.
“Ah, you fell?!” He takes a few strides forward, his voice loud. “Are you injured?”
Soleum backs away, holding his hands up to placate him before he can be smothered. The officer takes the hint and stops in his tracks, crossing his arms over his… impressive chest. Really, everything about this man is impressive.
“Yes! I'm fine, they—they caught me before I could hurt myself. I'm really uninjured!”
The officer cocks an eyebrow at him.
“They?”
‘...Do I need to explain the concept of pronouns to this cop…??’
“Ah!” The officer exclaims, snapping his fingers. Soleum jolts to attention, then shrinks under the officer’s scrutiny.
“I just realised I never introduced myself. I’m Officer Bronze with the Musutafu Police Department. If you’re truly feeling well, I’ll bring you over to Detective Choi,” he points towards the congregation of cars, “and he'll ask you a few questions.”
‘...Ugh, I should've lied… But is it really a lie if I'm not feeling well now…? ‘
Still, he stands up and follows Officer Bronze to a man leaning against one of the police cruisers with an unprofessional blasé, a lit cigarette sticking out from between two fingers; when he seems to spot them, a sleazy grin spreads across his lips. He stubs the cigarette out on the sole of his sturdy-looking boot, tosses it off to the side, and wipes his palms on the front of his pants.
Soleum shivers, suddenly wishing he was dangling from his windowsill again instead of being here.
Detective Choi glances him up and down before speaking without bothering to ask him for his name.
“We’re currently searching for two fugitives on the run,” Detective Choi says, then waves off Officer Bronze’s sputtering protests.
“They stole that,” he nods toward the ambulance, “before driving all the way here, saving you, rushing into your apartment and… suddenly disappearing.”
‘...But the police haven’t even gone inside it yet? How do they know those two disappeared…??’
Perhaps seeing Soleum’s confusion, the man taps his temple and says, “I saw it. Anyway.”
He straightens up, pinning Soleum with a predatory look.
“I’m more interested in you.”
‘…??’
Despite generally keeping his head down ever since transmigrating to this world (...and covering his tracks whenever he did venture toward less-than-legal activities), it appears that something’s finally been connected to him.
Detective Choi slings a deceptively strong arm over Soleum’s shoulder and pulls him in.
“Roe Deer, was it? I have a few questions for you.”
Feeling his heart drop, Soleum regrets stuffing his shitty vigilante costume in the first nook he found when he moved into his apartment.