The week after the Togashi job was quiet.
Two deliveries, both clean. A package to a dry cleaning shop in Sumida that smelled faintly of something chemical underneath the cleaning fluid.
A set of keys left in a locker at a bus terminal in Koto, collected by a woman in her fifties who didn't look at Kai once.
He did what he was asked, went where he was sent, and came back with the right answer each time, and Sho sent him a number at the end of the week that was slightly higher than the previous one without either of them mentioning why.
His shoulder healed. His points climbed. He pulled one more common draw on Thursday out of mild curiosity and got a rain poncho in olive green, which he looked at for a long moment before deciding it was at least more useful than the compass.
The uncommon gacha sat at five hundred. He left it alone.
* * *
He ran into Tetsutetsu on Wednesday.
Not near the school this time. He was coming out of a convenience store two blocks from the station with a coffee and a rice ball when Tetsutetsu appeared from the opposite direction with a sports bag over one shoulder and the expression of someone who had just finished something physical.
He spotted Kai from half a block away and his face did the thing it had done the first time, open and uncomplicated, like running into someone you knew was just straightforwardly good news.
"Kai," he said, loud enough that two salarymen nearby glanced over. "I knew I'd see you around."
"You said maybe," Kai said.
"Same thing," Tetsutetsu said, falling into step beside him without being invited, which was apparently just how he operated. "You live around here?"
"Close enough," Kai said.
"Me too. Well, twenty minutes on the train, but that's basically the same thing." He shifted the bag on his shoulder. "Just came from the gym. Extra session. My friend Kendo, the one I told you about, says I rely on my quirk too much in sparring so I've been doing more without it."
"Does it help?"
"Probably," Tetsutetsu said. "She hasn't said anything else about it, which with her basically means yes."
Kai ate his rice ball and walked and let Tetsutetsu fill the space the way Tetsutetsu always filled it, steadily and without apparent effort, and found that it required less energy to manage than he'd expected.
The kid didn't demand anything back. He just talked, and the talking was easy enough to half-listen to while Kai did the other things his head was doing, running the week's numbers, mapping the route home, noting the man outside the pachinko place who was watching the street with the particular stillness of someone on a job.
Not his problem.
"You eat like that every day?" Tetsutetsu said, looking at the rice ball.
"When I remember to," Kai said.
Tetsutetsu looked at him for a moment with the frank assessment he applied to most things.
"That's not enough," he said. "You can't train properly on that."
"I don't train properly," Kai said. "I told you, not formally."
"Yeah but you clearly do something." Tetsutetsu shook his head like this was a personal failing he was going to have to deal with. "You should eat more."
"Thanks," Kai said flatly, "for the nutritional advice."
Tetsutetsu grinned. He had the kind of grin that made it hard to be annoyed at him for very long, which Kai suspected was either a natural gift or something he'd refined through years of being exactly this much.
They reached the point where the road split, one direction toward the station, one toward Kai's building.
"This is me," Kai said.
"Right." Tetsutetsu stopped. "Hey, you doing anything Saturday?"
Kai looked at him.
"Probably," he said, which was vague enough to be a no without being one.
"I'm meeting some people from school at the arcade near Chofu station. You should come."
"I don't know your friends," Kai said.
"You don't know me either and you're talking to me," Tetsutetsu said, with the air of someone who considered this a perfectly reasonable counter-argument.
Kai opened his mouth.
"Two o'clock," Tetsutetsu said. "Chofu station east exit. If you're busy it's fine, but if you're not you should come." He shifted his bag again. "It'll be good. Kendo's gonna come as well, she's less scary in person you know."
"I didn't say she was scary," Kai said.
"You will," Tetsutetsu said confidently, and headed toward the station.
Kai stood at the road split for a moment, coffee in hand, and watched him go.
He had not agreed to anything. He had said probably and that was not a yes and he had no particular reason to show up at an arcade on Saturday with people he didn't know because a boy he'd met twice had decided they were friends.
He went home and put it out of his head.
* * *
On Saturday he had no jobs.
Sho hadn't sent anything since Thursday and the weekend stretched out ahead of him the way weekends did when he had nothing to fill them, grey and slightly too long.
He made coffee. He wrapped his shoulder out of habit even though it didn't need it anymore. He sat on the futon and looked at the interface for a while without doing anything with it.
At one-thirty he put on his jacket and left.
It wasn't a decision exactly. More like the absence of a reason not to, which wasn't the same thing but was close enough that he didn't examine it too carefully.
* * *
Tetsutetsu was already at the east exit when Kai got there, sports bag gone, wearing a jacket that was slightly too light for the weather in the way that people wore jackets when they refused to acknowledge that it was cold.
He was talking to two other people, a girl with short orange hair who was listening with a focused expression, and a boy Kai didn't recognise who was eating a convenience store meat bun and contributing nothing to the conversation.
Tetsutetsu spotted Kai and his face did the thing.
"You came," he said.
"I was in the area," Kai said.
"The arcade is inside," Tetsutetsu said, gesturing at the building behind him, which was very clearly not somewhere you would find yourself by accident.
"I was in the area," Kai said again, sounding more as if he was convincing himself.
Tetsutetsu grinned and turned to the other two.
"This is Kai. He's the one I told you about."
The girl with the orange hair looked at Kai with the kind of attention that took in more than it appeared to.
Her eyes were calm and direct and she had the posture of someone who'd been told to stand up straight so many times it had just become how they stood.
"Kendo Itsuka," she said. "His childhood friend."
"He knows," Tetsutetsu said. "I told him."
"Of course you did," Kendo said, in the tone of someone who was not surprised.
"Kai," Kai said.
The boy with the meat bun waved without looking up. His name turned out to be Kosei, he went to a different school, and he had the quality of someone who existed comfortably at the edge of social situations without particularly needing to be at the centre of them.
Kai decided immediately that he was the most tolerable person present, which wasn't saying much but was something.
They went inside.
* * *
The arcade was loud in the specific way arcades were loud, layered and relentless, lights and sound competing for the same space without either of them winning.
Kai stayed near the edges while Tetsutetsu led them deeper in with the confidence of someone who had a destination already in mind.
Tetsutetsu was, it turned out, very good at fighting games and extremely loud about it.
He played with both hands and most of his upper body, leaning into every hit like personal investment could affect the outcome, and when he won he celebrated in a way that suggested he found this genuinely surprising every time despite it happening consistently.
Kendo beat him twice without changing her expression.
"You telegraph the same combo every time," she said, after the second one.
"I know," Tetsutetsu said. "I keep thinking you won't notice."
"It's easy to."
Kai stood near the wall with a can of vending machine coffee and watched them.
Kosei had found a crane game in the corner and was applying focused energy of someone who had identified a system and intended to exploit it.
Kendo glanced over at Kai between rounds.
"You play?"
"Not really," he said.
"That's probably smart," she said. "Tetsutetsu will make it competitive."
"I'm right here," Tetsutetsu said.
"I know," Kendo said.
He watched Kendo humble Tetsutetsu and he noted her skill away, maybe in the future he should try learning some kind of martial arts.
Kai finished his coffee and went to find Kosei and the crane game, because that at least was a problem with a clear solution.
* * *
They left when it got dark. The four of them stood outside the station for a moment in that particular way of groups that have run out of reason to stay together but haven't found a reason to leave.
"Same time next week?" Tetsutetsu said, to no one in particular and all of them at once.
"Sure," Kosei said, already heading for the gate.
"If I don't have anything," Kendo said, which Kai was beginning to understand was her version of yes.
Tetsutetsu looked at Kai.
"Probably," Kai said.
Tetsutetsu grinned like that was the answer he'd expected and went through the gate. Kendo followed, and then Kosei was gone too, and Kai was standing outside Chofu station in the dark with an empty coffee can and no particular explanation for how he'd ended up there.
He dropped the can in the bin and turned toward home.
It hadn't been bad. He wasn't going to examine that too closely, but it hadn't been bad, and that was enough of an answer for now.
He was fairly good at not examining things too closely.
He was getting slightly worse at it.