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“C’mon,” Hawks says, more than loud enough to be heard by the passersby who just gasped audibly when he rocketed down out of a clear sky in the first place. Showy, overall, but the way that he pulled out of the dive—with exactly the right velocity to transfer his momentum into strolling idly at Enji’s elbow—demonstrated remarkable control. “Lunch! Even you have to eat sometimes. How else are you going to sustain all those big, bulging muscles, huh?” His eyes are on Enji’s bicep, or possibly chest. It’s hard to tell. “Jeez, you must plow through calories like a herd of horses. Do you just clean out an ice cream shop on cheat day, or what?”
Deeply unfortunately, Hawks isn’t too far off the mark: Enji’s breakfast consisted of painkillers and a protein shake at his desk, shotgunned while he scrolled through insipid emails before heading out the door to get on the streets. That isn’t going to take him much further after the morning he’s had.
“I’m not paying for yours,” Enji says.
Hawks laughs. “My lunch, or my ice cream shop? Shit, we should do that—open an ice cream parlor. I could fly the milk in fresh from the countryside, and you could churn it all better than a machine in five minutes flat.” He bats a wingtip at Enji’s arm in a way that shouldn’t invoke an elbow bump as clearly as it does. The part of Enji that wants to strangle him is smaller than it ought to be. Hawks has a way of spinning expectations a hundred and eighty degrees and pushing them back off the way they came. “Sounds way more fun than this whole…” He gestures in an ambient way, presumably intending to reference hero work rather than the onlookers specifically, but both are true. “…thing. What do you say?”
Enji hates that he spends more than a second thinking seriously about how much easier it would be to manage a small business with two employees and high refrigeration-related utilities costs than the sprawling corporation his agency has become.
“I’m not offering you benefits,” he says.
Hawks laughs again. He must have taken a hit of nitrous oxide before he set out. Sounds like a better breakfast than Enji’s.
The way he’s beaming up at Enji will look good in the cell phone photos, though—endorsement by a more popular personality never hurts. Enji despises the unshakeable knowledge that he needs all the damn help that he can get.
“Let’s pick a name for it over lunch,” Hawks says, shoving his hands into his pockets, exaggerating his saunter, and stretching his wings out to their fullest possible extent. Someone gasps loudly at that, too. “I don’t want to waste too much of your precious, precious time.”
He’s the first person who has said that in weeks that Enji almost believes.
Hawks doesn’t seem to lie very often—partly, Enji imagines, because he doesn’t have any reason to, because he doesn’t give a single shit what anybody thinks; and partly because equivocating takes longer than he wants to wait.
He just grins a little wider in response to Enji’s glare.
“There’s a nice place right up around the corner here,” he says. “You’ll like it, as much as you like anything.”
“I like a lot of things,” Enji says.
The grin twists into an unmistakable smirk, too knowing by half. As if that wasn’t enough, Hawks slaps him on the back—which is both so utterly unexpected that Enji doesn’t even think to dodge, and so colossally offensive that the part of him fantasizing about strangling Hawks starts gaining traction.
Before it gets a solid foothold, Hawks gestures grandly and veers to their right.
At least none of the gawking citizens follow them around the turn down the smaller avenue. At least the tiny, narrow little restaurant is quiet, without a single other patron, and dimly-lit. Enji has to remember to count his blessings, slowly and meticulously, over and over until the numbing repetition cools his head.
Hawks swaggers right in and natters animatedly with the employee who seats them. He chooses his place at the table first, leaving Enji with his back to the door—which makes his skin crawl—and his right side exposed to the cramped little aisle.
Enji catches a flicker of movement and the slightest flash of red as the waiter walks away. A tiny feather floats merrily on an imaginary updraft, trailing close behind him and following him off into the kitchen. Hawks’s head tilts to one side, and his eyes unfocus, gaze fixing somewhere in the middle distance.
Maybe Enji should count it as another blessing that he has a free front-row seat to the real-time strategizing of his closest competition, but it’s too deliberate to qualify as good fortune. This is a choice they both made out of self-interest. It benefits them—and the entirety of Japan—to put up with one another. It’s pragmatic to know each other’s strengths.
After several minutes of silence, the feather zips back, skimming low and close to the floor this time, and then slips itself seamlessly back into Hawks’s left wing. He shuffles both appendages, and all the feathers shiver softly, whispering.
He blinks, immediately lucid again, and the billboard grin is back.
“Place is clear,” he says.
Hawks is a fine example of the kind of quirk that will overwhelm the population soon. Even the superfans who pore over every grainy frame of his greatest hits caught on camera won’t understand the full range of his capability, because he’s always expanding the permutations of his own power. Signature moves with memorable names can’t hold a candle to what he’s cultivated—the perfect combination of superficial brand recognition and complete, constantly evolving unpredictability when it actually counts. His greatest power is his intellect and its adaptability.
Enji considers saying something to that effect, but Hawks already knows what he has and what he does with it. He knows that the future is his, whether any of them like it or not, and his ego doesn’t need stroking. His ego is the same as Enji’s—earned, bought, and bargained for, one day of unrelenting discipline at a time.
Enji does want to ask him about other obscure applications of the feathers, almost as much because it’s interesting as because it might prove useful.
Enji’s phone rings.
His gut knows that it’s the lead accountant again before he’s even laid eyes on the screen. Most other people have figured out by now that they shouldn’t call him while he might be actively averting mass-murder.
He casts around, but the only upshot is that he doesn’t have to say I need to take this to someone like Hawks, who understands that the very fact that he’s accepting the call demonstrates its necessity.
“Hello,” Enji says, looking out the window at the sleepy little street so that he won’t have to contend yet with the way that Hawks will be watching him.
“I looked into what you asked me to do,” Taniguchi says, and Enji just manages to bite back You mean your job? “I think—”
“Don’t give me ‘I think’,” Enji says. “I asked you for an answer. I need a statement of fact. Numbers don’t invent themselves.” His blood simmers, and he concentrates on drawing in a breath. Tiny restaurant. Monumental oversight. Keep his voice down. Keep his head level. “Six million yen doesn’t disappear. You’re going to find it. Was I unclear?”
“No, no, it’s just—”
“Just what?” Enji says.
“It’s barely even enough for a salary for a cleaner or something, after fringe,” Taniguchi says, and Enji’s vision whites out for a second. “Given the scale of the overall budget, it could just be a matter of rounding.”
The therapist tells Enji to narrow his focus to the crime—to the most specific possible cause of the surge of fury in his chest. The therapist tells him to haul back on the reins and carefully examine each individual instance. The therapist tells him to ask Where did this come from? before asking How do I make it stop? Is the problem based in someone disrespecting his intelligence? Is it a devaluation of his time? Is it a lack of seriousness and commitment despite the obvious gravity of everything that they’re setting out to do? Is it a violation of the trust that he put in another human being to complete an ordinary task, which has in turn made him feel foolish for misplacing his faith?
Then again—the therapist tells him a lot of things. The therapist tells him that everything they talk about is confidential, as if Enji doesn’t know that every person has a price.
What he doesn’t know yet is if Taniguchi’s is six million yen.
Or if it’s higher, supplied by someone readying a scathing exposé about how perilously fragile the great Endeavor Agency’s finances really are.
Or if this is just one more moment, in a world defined by self-serving negligence, where someone simply doesn’t care.
Enji breathes and breathes again. He hears his tone sharpening as each word he speaks grinds against the edges of the others. “Taniguchi, I do not need an MBA to know that it is mathematically impossible for six million yen to be a matter of rounding.”
“Well, I don’t know,” Taniguchi says. Enji forces his fingers to relax before he damages the phone. “What’s the tax rate on those government subsidies, again?”
Enji curls his free hand into a fist on the table. He looks at the neat wooden fence on the other side of the street. The steam gathering in him feels unsustainable—too much, too hot, too fast. Holding his breath will condense it. Inhaling refuels it.
It is agonizingly self-evident that the better the agency runs in its component parts—the tighter its books, the swifter its response times, the cleaner the HVAC in the goddamn building—the more lives it will have the chance to save. Every misstep is lost time—squandered opportunities. Failure means death.
It should be enough to understand that anything you put your name on should represent the full extent of your effort and ability—that anything you sign yourself to should be the best that you can give. Certainly a job is an obligation, but it is also a purpose. It should matter. And the person responsible for executing any given task should give a shit about the quality of the endeavor.
It’s not even about some righteous crusade in the name of capitalism: if the work doesn’t get done correctly by the person it belongs to, the corrections fall to someone else—someone who cares more. The accountability cascades. The time leaches outward and consumes the hours of others who never should have had to invest their energy in something bearing someone else’s name.
Enji has had to come to terms with the fact that people who are lazy enough to impose their indifference on others have no fucking dignity. They have no shame. They will smile at you in the hallway and recite I tried into your ear a thousand times, and then they will dump a steaming pile of useless shit into your lap and walk away.
The buck stops with the person who cares the most.
Sometimes anger is the shape that caring takes when it’s been exploited one too many times.
Sometimes anger is pure, seething jealousy of the fact that the people who put themselves first—ahead of the work, ahead of the goals, ahead of the future—are by nature and by definition happier than you are. They always will be. Perfection is invariably exhausted and occasionally satisfied. It is never content.
Taniguchi clears his throat. The hard-won silence may have had the intended effect.
“I’ll look it up,” he says.
Enji can’t shout in here. He can’t risk it.
“Do that,” he bites out.
“I’ll call you back,” Taniguchi says.
Enji closes his eyes. If he demands an email, he’ll get gibberish or poorly-pasted spreadsheet tables that make no sense or more excuses or Sorry, I forgot.
“I want this resolved by the end of the day,” he says.
“No problem,” Taniguchi says.
“Good,” Enji says, much as it tastes like poison.
“Goodbye, Mr. Todoro—”
Enji hangs up.
He breathes.
He looks at the fence—at the grain of the wood, at the even points at the tops of the posts, at the dappling of rust on the silver padlock on the gate.
When he turns to the table again, Hawks has propped one elbow up on the tabletop, chin rested on the heel of his hand, smile half bitter and half beatific.
“They don’t have any idea,” Hawks says. “Any of them.”
Enji eyes him.
“How hard it is,” Hawks says, almost sweetly. “How hard you have to work to keep it together as much as you are. How deep the iceberg goes. They think they’re the only thing that’s pissed you off today—the only thing that’s gone wrong. They have no idea what they’d be in for if this shithole hadn’t forced you to be a celebrity on top of all the rest of it. What you’d be like if your reputation could afford to take the hit.”
Enji clenches his teeth—just the molars. Just the back. It barely changes the angle of his jaw.
Hawks will notice, though. Little bastard notices everything. And he’s fully aware of how much power there is in that, and how he can use it to scrape his way to more.
“Most of us can’t be All Might,” Enji says.
Hawks’s smile widens and brightens, and his voice is silkier still. “Most of us would embarrass ourselves if we tried.”
Failure is death, and death is failure.
“You shouldn’t, though,” Hawks says, leaning back suddenly and stretching both arms high over his head until his elbows crack, and then his shoulders do. The weight of the wings must make him a chiropractor’s worst nightmare. “Shouldn’t try to be him. People need to be a little bit afraid of you. They need to know that the villains are even more afraid than they are. The smile-and-a-catchphrase routine isn’t going to cut it anymore.”
He’s right, or at least not quite wrong. Things have changed. Things are colder. The stakes are higher, and the game is worse.
Maybe it would have been different, if Enji had had more time. Maybe it would have been different if he hadn’t known from the start how much he had to lose.
Hawks’s eyes drift towards the window. He folds his arms, resettles in his chair, flutters the feathers, and shrugs.
“There’s a lot to be afraid of,” he says.
Sometimes anger is just another face of the terror of losing control.
Sometimes it’s frustration stoked to fury—powerlessness condensed in a crucible until it can’t be contained, until it generates its own force, until your own weakness is a weapon. Sometimes it’s the crystallization of despair into a cutting edge.
Sometimes it’s grief sublimated far too fast, because the rest of the world won’t wait. Sometimes it’s resentment of the way your heart is spindly scaffolding that’s only ever one more weight away from caving in. Sometimes it’s pressurized pain.
Sometimes it’s indignation boiling over into outrage at the careless incompetence of so many of the human beings around you when you’ve smothered everything you ever could have wanted just to try to keep the world from catching fire.
Sometimes it’s the only outlet for the resonating loneliness of realizing that most people really just don’t give a shit.
And sometimes it’s nothing. Sometimes it’s just plasma and wood. Sometimes it’s forests whittled down to the blackened skeletons of ancient trees, charred bones jutting from a field of ash. Sometimes it’s empty. Sometimes it’s meaningless.
Sometimes it’s the only thing that isn’t. Sometimes the scalding heat climbing the inside of your sternum is the only thing that makes you sure that you’re alive.
“It takes a lot of concentrated effort to make shit look easy,” Hawks says, drumming his fingertips slowly on the edge of the table. “And a hell of a lot more to hold yourself back. So you’re drained all the time, just for starters, just from holding it all together. And then you gotta pretend to have a handle on every single thing, at every single minute of the day, and be constantly making up explanations and improvising solutions when things inevitably spiral out of control. And then you’re expected to muster up the will to act all charitable and forgiving when people kick down the stuff you’re killing yourself to build.”
Sometimes anger is just the same heat sustaining itself indefinitely—the flame lighting its own effluence, over and over again. Sometimes it’s a habit, and a security blanket, and a crutch.
Sometimes it’s the only kind of self-immolation you feel entitled to.
Enji rearranges the paper napkin folded on the table in front of him. The tabletop is sticky. The food had better be damn good. “Do you ever stop talking?”
Hawks laughs. He closes his eyes when he does it, for all that talk of fear.
“Depends,” he says. “Are you planning to stop listening?”
Enji would like to imagine that Hawks will shut up when his mouth is full, but he has a hazy recollection of disappointment on that front from the last time. Utterly mannerless.
Maybe that’s a kind of anger. Maybe tromping on traditions is Hawks’s favorite form of outburst, because they’re the only thing that he might actually be able to change.
“You’re marginally less irritating than another phone call,” Enji says. “Don’t let it go to your head.”
Hawks laughs again, brighter still. It wasn’t very funny. “Don’t worry, my skull’ll blow up if I try to cram anything else in there next to all that hot air. Don’t even look at the menu. Just order one of everything and eat as much as you want.”
That isn’t what you’re supposed to do. That isn’t how restaurants work.
Nothing that Enji has ever tried has worked very well, either.
Hawks is not afraid of him, for all the chatter—or of the rules, real and imagined; or of the road ahead. Hawks is not afraid of the consequences. Hawks is too jaded. Hawks keeps his head high by never getting his hopes up in the first place.
That’s probably why, in spite of being spectacularly annoying, he doesn’t make Enji angry.
Enji isn’t jaded, or not quite. He’s just tired. He’s tired of squeezing himself into the shape of an All Might cutout to try to make himself more palatable to a public that doesn’t even understand how good they’ve had it until now. He’s tired of pandering to the blithering citizens criticizing his every move, his every word, from the safety of their couches. He’s tired of acting less angry than he is, and deserves to be.
Sometimes anger is the combustion of all of the piled-up fakeness, the masks, the spin, the politics, the backstabbing, the bullshit, the outright lies.
Sometimes anger is the culmination of forty years of making yourself smaller for the benefit of others, only for all of them to hate you anyway.
Sometimes anger is a hard-earned solar flare to take you to the top, and they had all better get the fuck out of your way.
“Fine,” Enji says, and lifts his hand to flag the waiter down.