One thing I hated about life was how often it bewildered me. Surprises, especially those presented by my family, liked to hurl everything and the kitchen sink off-course. Depending on a situation's factors, shock, instead of frustration, would follow. Today's surprise jolted me from my sleep with the high-pitched, fast-paced scream of a violin. The sheets on my bed went flying for the opposite headboard before I could think.

A small black device pulsed on the bedside table. Text appeared to have been smeared across its screen. Red and green buttons I knew to signify a blurry "X" and a smudged checkmark danced along the bottom. I rubbed the crust from my eyes before rereading the screen:

ALARM - 7:45

Take your medication!

I snatched my phone from the otherwise clean nightstand and hovered above the checkmark.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

I hesitated short of pressing the answer button. Somebody was in my house knocking at my bedroom door. I must have been careless enough to have left the front open. I had no time to mount some sort of self-defense!

"Who's there?!" I yelped.

"Hey," the person on the opposite side called, "turn off your alarm!" Their inflections reminded me of a guy who approached me late last night. He caused a stir with his simple act of pumping a fist in the air.

With his appearance came the memories, all of which zoomed by as if the onset of death throes triggered them. I stumbled into bed right after I got home. My glasses dangled half on, half off of the bedside table. I never bothered to lock my bedroom door last night. This easy accessibility allowed my visitor to push it open and peek into my room.

"It's been going off," he said, "for fifteen minutes—"

"Hello?!" I sputtered, hurling my legs beneath the bedsheets.

Saitama. Holy shit, that's right. Saitama. He froze at the sight of me squirming. His pupils dilated. On a scale of cursed 'Tama faces, I would have rated this a two out of five. Had he gone higher than a four, I no doubt would have eagle-screeched and tossed a mug of lukewarm sink water across the room. That horrid face he gave the mole monster during the House of Evolution arc still haunted me from time to time.

"Sorry!" he cried, shutting the door. I assumed he hurried in the direction of the living room by the sound of his heavy footsteps. Assuming too, of course, he was real. The fact that I was alive and not buried under a pile of rubble was real. Grandma transforming into a supernatural creature and devouring my mother was real.

Oh hell no. I checked my racing heart. I kept a count of the beats. One. Two. Three. Four...

My grasp on my phone tightened. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen…

Twenty. Twenty-one. Twenty-two. Twenty-three… Through it all, my heart had not slowed. Seemed like the counting method wouldn't work here. It could be time for me to try something else.

I sucked air into my lungs. "Alrighty," I said. Now to breathe in again. "And breathe out." Breathe in a third time, and once more, "Breathe out."

Again. "In." Feel the air expand my diaphragm. "Out." Watch it sink with my disappearing breath. And again. In through the mouth. Out through the mouth. Never bother with the nose, which always finds a way to be clogged.

Breathe again. And again. And again. I kept to the pattern. I must have sat there a while before I couldn't feel my heart pumping unless I placed my hand to my chest.

"You're doing okay," I said. "Keep it up."

'No!' yelled an immediate reply. "Stop! This is weird!' A part of me always protested when I went through these anxiety-reducing exercises. She had never been a fan of allowing factors other than her monkey brain to control how she reacted to her environment.

I gritted my teeth and inhaled once more. "Shut it," I replied.

'This isn't you!'

Then again, who was I? I was twenty-two. I freaked nearly every time I had been dragged to job training sessions or pressured to find employment. Now here I was living off the few thousand dollars I had been entitled to since I turned eighteen thanks to my late grandfather. I couldn't force myself to think of the future. My present was the future.

I just bit my lip and breathed. My inner demon would have to learn to shut up and get used to this. Up until her latter years in high school, her way of dealing with stress involved shattering like glass and sobbing in plain sight of strangers. I had had enough of being sequestered because I allowed those extreme emotions to run rampant.

Breathe in again. My lungs filled.

Breathe out. They deflated. Good.

The protestor still retained control over how I viewed the various ways I could calm myself. I never admitted to my therapist that I did them. There was a peculiar embarrassment attached that I couldn't find myself associating with. This same sentiment extended to my family and all of my acquaintances. Even my sister, the person I had always been closest to, didn't know everything about me despite my old habit of jabbering nonsense whenever we were in the same room together.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Breathe in…

Thumping. The bedroom door opened once more. Saitama stood there in his superhero suit, which seemed more like sleepwear with its lack of gloves and boots. Fasteners stuck to his shoulders where his cape should have been.

I left my bed with the loose, frayed ends of my pajama pants tumbling my feet. "Go-good morning," I said. "Did you need anything?"

"Mornin'," he answered. "You alright?"

How could I answer this question? There were so many paths I could take here like one of those dumb dating sim games Saitama's acquaintance King liked to play. Should I apologize if Saitama saw my earlier lack of pants? Poke him to see if he were truly real? Build a pillow fort to hide from his anger at some game? Write another shitty fanfic about him and, this time, submit myself to horny jail? Even though I despised romance's prominence in anything and everything all of the time and didn't want to add to its oversaturation?

"Hello?"

I flinched. "What in the...?" I guess I could forgo any action and stand around like a dumbass gaping at Saitama's plain face. I shook the fog out of my mind and said to him, "Well, um, since you seem to be not a figment of my imagination, everything I saw last night happened, which means—"

"Slow down," he said.

"Or you'll scream at me to shut up?"

He crossed his arms. His face hardened.

I tensed.

Saitama leaned forward. He loomed over me like a skyscraper. That head of his blocked the light coming from the thin lamp hiding in the corner.

I gulped.

All of a sudden, his eyes widened. I blinked, and I found his expression had relaxed. He straightened his back. "You're not afraid of me," he asked, "are you?"

"It's complicated," I squeaked.

"How?" he said.

"I don't think I could explain without annoying you."

"You think I'm irritable?"

"Considering how I've seen you react when you feel people are wasting your time..."

"Why would I yell at you?"

"Because you hate infodumping. You also make nutty faces and, like me, freak if you're missing something import—"

"Yeah, and? Yelling isn't gonna solve…" He paused. "Huh?"

I facepalmed. There I went on an tangent again. What sometimes scared me about him wasn't the darn question.

"So," Saitama said, his teeth clicking from him shoving his fist beneath his chin, "you called me your favorite character—"

"One of!"

"Except you fear me?"

"There's usually a difference," I told him, "between admiring somebody from afar and meeting them in person."

We both went silent as he stood there. His eyes rolled to the ceiling. He made a "Hm," sort of sound.

Meanwhile, I nudged my glasses to the bridge of my nose.

"Say," he said, "what's with that One-Punch Man manga?"

I blinked again. "I-I never mentioned the name of your series."

"You mentioned it before you asked me to clear the sky."

"I don't remember."

"Last night sure was crazy, huh?"

"Not "crazy"," I said. "Try "chaotic"."

There was a soft noise, like an inflating balloon, which drew me to his face again. A snort? From him? At my snark? But he didn't connect his line of sight with mine. He glanced over me.

I tracked Saitama's gaze to the northern side of the room. Nothing occupied the space other than an ocean blue desk, a beat-up seat on wheels, and two shelves lined with books. Smack dab in the middle of the shelves was a collection of books with right-handed spines.

"What's with this one?" he asked. I would have questioned how I didn't see him zip past if he hadn't flashed a volume with a suspicious amount of blue papers sticking from its sides.

"Check the front cover," I said upon spotting the bored-looking dude on its side.

Saitama flipped the manga around. His shoulders jumped. He brought the book to his eye level. "Whoa, that's me?"

Uh, duh? "Yep," I said, joining him by the shelf. "There's you punching through a monster with groceries in hand. Sure sets the tone for your life, don't you think? Can I see this?"

He passed the book to me. I saw how his shadow overlapped mine when I pivoted to give us both a proper view of its contents.

"Sorry about all the sticky notes," I said. "I got overzealous when studying you and your world." I opened to a marked page. "Look at this."

He leaned forward. "'One-Punch Man Number Ten—"

"Wait, no!" I said, flipping the manga to face him. "Do you remember having this dream about the Subterraneans?"

He tilted his head. "'Reality is often disappointing,'" he read from a drooping blue sheet. "'Saitama can only get the thrill he seeks in a fight from his dreams or imagination.'" He paused to add his own, "...Yep." Then, he continued. "'I feel bad for him. Perhaps King is right when he says Saitama should look into a new—'"

I shut the book. "Yo-you're not supposed to see these. They were for the fanfic I've told you about. I wanted to have your character line up with the manga and the anime, but mostly the manga because finding the anime's dub outside of random Youtube clips costs money I'm not willing to spend…" Never mind that I felt I butchered his characterization anyway.

"'One-Punch Man Number Twelve: Saitama is immune to fire. R-I-P his clothes.'"

"Now listen here, yo-you—"

"'He doesn't seem to care he's naked... L-O-L'?"

I cowered under the blank stare tossed my way. This must be the part where he smacked me across the room for chuckling at involuntary indecency. Naked people can be amusing. Not when you knew the man who inspired others to draw him!

Saitama skimmed the space between the covers I held captive. "I've gotta see this," he mumbled, locating a page by shoving his pointer finger inside.

"I-I'll let you borrow the book," I said. "Could I remove my post-its first?"

"'One-Punch Man Number Two: best backstory ten-outta-ten. Nothing else is needed.'"

Believe me, this probing tempted me to do a reenactment of the scene where Genos saw the outcome of Saitama's hero exam. 'Stop analyzing it, jerk!'

I bit my tongue and sandwiched the covers and pages around Saitama's finger like an oversized hotdog bun. "Could you not read those, please?" I said.

Curiosity weaved into his expression through an upturned eyebrow. "Didn't you quit writing your story about me?" he said.

I flipped to the closest page with a post-it sticking from it. "Yes," I said when I removed the note. "But some things are meant to be private. I thought you didn't care what others thought about you."

His hand went slack.

I reclaimed the book and went to work removing the rest of the notes. When I finished skimming the pages, I tossed the manga at him. It left me unsurprised to see him catch it before it fell a hairsbreadth from his chest.

"I'm making myself breakfast," I said. "You can do whatever you want."

"'Saitama says he has no emotions. He gets irritated by a bug, which provides him with a challenge. Albeit, not one related to strength. His frustration progresses to the message ironically written on his shirt: rage.'"

I paused.

"'I liked this scene more in the anime,'" Saitama read. "'He called the mosquito everybody and their mother has joked about a bastard and swallowed bug spray.'"

I turned around.

"'I don't have a crush on Genos. His befuddlement when staring at a naked man is still cute. Way better than his expression in the anime. Nobody can top Saitama as best boy, though.'"

I clapped my palm full of papers against the door. I knew I took everything he hadn't seen from the book. He must have used his super-speed to steal one from me!

"I-in case you haven't realized," I said, "I'm in a position where I can tell the world that I'm harboring the strongest, formerly fictional man alive. You would be under way more scrutiny here than you are back home. News crews would cover your every move. Governments worldwide would want to learn more about a real-life superhero. I'm not going to get started on how your fanbase might react to you being here."

The corner of Saitama's mouth slanted.

I let loose another breath. "Do you understand?"

"...I'm "best boy"?"

I didn't know whether to be baffled or to punt a pillow across the room. A question on an unrelated topic was the first thing that came to his mind. Ugh.

The hush we shared deafened the apartment. We held an impromptu staring contest.

His expression never changed. What else could I weaponize after threatening to toss him to the figurative dogs? Force him to help me budget my next trip to the town commons?

Unfortunately, "Saitama" was a rearrangement and single letter swap from the word "stamina". Enough tension huddled about my eyes to nudge them into a narrow frame before long.

Saitama's posture only loosened. He made more of an effort to connect his line of sight with mine the longer we kept staring at each other. And then, "Samantha," he said. "I've just realized something."

He paralyzed me with a simple word. Samantha. He used my full name again. People never used my first full name. Like, they all met one night and agreed I should be called Sam or Sammy. I didn't mind the change. "Samantha" attained an icky feeling I could never scrub clean after my school years.

"Wh-what?" I replied. "What is it?"

"You never lost yourself," Saitama said. "You've been trying to get recognition for a thing you should be doing for yourself if you love it so much. Your writing isn't a hobby, otherwise. It's a job without the part where you get paid."

Crap. He arrived at the same conclusion I made last night. Talk about packing a punch. "What am I supposed to do?"

"What do you want to do?"

"I don't know where to begin." Even as I spoke, bubbles of emotion fizzled through my steaming psyche until they ate their way to the forefront. They whined like excited puppies wanting to run wild through a backyard. I reckoned there was no reason to keep them inside, which is why I threw open the door and set them free. I expected another long-winded speech— "Why?"

"'Why' what?"

Stupid me. I didn't give him context. "Why do you care?"

"You don't want me to?" he said.

I winced at the sharp tone he carved into me. Good going, Sam. I brought a guy home and lost him in less than twelve hours. 'I'm nothing!' I wanted to reply. 'How did you find me interesting?!' Except, no. I bowed my head. "I-I mean…"

"Remember what you said last night?" Saitama said. Weirdly enough, his sharp tone disappeared. "If I saw you by my place, I wouldn't leave you on the street either."

My neck shot up so fast, the pain that came after might have meant I sprained it. First of all, wait, what? And second, 'Let's clear the air. I liked you superficially, not because you had personality traits I clicked with!' However, we went through all of that trouble last night and now, which paid off because...

"All this talk is making me hungry," Saitama said after glancing again at the manga which shared his likeness. "You've got anything good for breakfast?"

Because…

"You're still upset about the notes? I didn't mean to read them 'til I noticed your handwrit— Eh?"

I couldn't help myself. I tackled the poor guy. "You would what?!"

His pointed glare returned. "Oi," he said. "I'm not into you like that. I'm just saying 'cause, you know…"

"I-I know," I squeaked, shrinking. "I guess. Hearing those words coming from you makes this whole situation even more..." I wanted to smack myself when I felt my fingers brush his smooth superhero suit. What was I thinking by invading his space after complaining about him disturbing mine? Wasn't that hypocritical of me? More importantly, why couldn't I let him go?

An outcome out of everything I expected from him should have been him simply removing my hands from his person. The emotions welling inside me and my knowledge of him wouldn't agree until he took a step back. Even if I annoyed him to the point he would rush at me with fists blazing, he wouldn't kill me. He always held back against other people.

"I guess we understand each other," he said. "I'll ask the next time I wanna see your stuff."

I couldn't meet him in the eye. "I went overboard with my reaction to you reading old statements. You're not going to try something stupid with whatever information you have, are you?"

"'One-Punch Man Number Three: a monster is killed in a single blow. He has time to scream before dying.

"'Saitama's fist is steaming.'"

I noticed one less piece of paper in my hand. "At this rate, you could toss everything I own in the trash," I grumbled. "I wouldn't notice until you told me to look out the window."

His stolen post-its disappeared beneath his tightening fist. He sighed. "You're acting like I'm gonna hurt you," he said. "Here's the thing. I don't wanna. You've been through enough crap."

I held my breath.

"Aren't these just observations about me?" Saitama continued. "I see Genos writing them all the time. You ask me, what he's doing's pointless. You doing it? Guess it's justified if you're writing silly stories about me. That's all they are, right?"

Right. Of course. These were my old opinions on and observations of Saitama, not journal entries repeating themselves like Groundhog Day on family issues or extreme essays spouting ill-researched opinions on the United States' political climate. They were solely notes on some guy.

I crushed my post-its in a ball too. "I don't need them anymore. I'm not planning to return to—"

"Do what you want with 'em," he said before opening his hand. Tiny pieces of blue paper stuck to the creases in his palm. "Except these. Whoops."

"I'm going to throw these old notes in the garbage," I announced, shuffling past him. "Then I'm making myself some breakfast. Anything in particular you'd want, Tama?"

"Tama?" he called after me.

"Does it bother you?" I said.

"...It's okay."

"Where're the eggs?" Sam mumbled. She squatted to reach into the lowest shelf in her fridge.

The three shelves were organized by food type. Saitama spotted leftovers, most of the pasta variety, kept in plastic containers on the top. These were followed by milk and other drinks on the middle shelf and assorted vegetables on the bottom. Racks hanging from the door held sticks of butter and a few condiments.

She seems fine now, he thought.

Sam cared a ton for her privacy. He should have let her do her thing before taking the book. He went further than he would have liked by admitting he liked her the most out of the cast in Seeing Red, Feeling Blue.

Everybody else in her series either tested his patience within five seconds of meeting them, got wrapped in too many problems for their mental health, or simply were boring to read about. It disappointed him when the manga revealed Sam wouldn't be the final protagonist. It fell on some other girl he forgot the name of.

He never expected Sam to be interested enough in his life to the point of writing fanfiction. He wouldn't want to read it even if it were kind of good. Like, what if…? Gah, no, he couldn't think about being the subject of those sorts of things. He would faint from embarrassment!

"Hey, Tama? How many eggs do you want?" There she went, calling him that nickname again. It didn't matter what she called him, he supposed, as long as she didn't stoop to insulting him. He doubted she had it in her to be rude unless she felt threatened or hurt, though.

"I'll take two," he said.

"Two each it is," Sam said, scooping the eggs from the carton and placing them on the counter.

Saitama snuck a peek at the manga hanging by his loose fingers. The cover illustration of himself glared at him with a gloved fist. White and black splotches in the pages on the side would have perfectly blurred together in a non-pattern were it not for a slit of blue near the bottom of the stack. He opened to the last page marked by a rogue post-it.

"'One Punch Man Number Nineteen,'" he read. "'Saitama has a move he calls Consecutive Normal Punches, which are fists thrown so fast it appears he's become one of those one-hundred armed monsters from Greek mythology'...?

"'He has a set of "Serious Series" moves that are called for when he puts real effort into his actions.'"

Sam exhaled.

Saitama shut the book. He placed it as far from the mess on the stove as he could. "You could teach Genos a thing or two about note-taking."

"I just recorded what I saw on the page and compared them to other things I've seen or heard about you," she said.

"Better than the nonsense I've read from him."

"Like the diagram he drew of your reading form in book three?" she replied. "You know, the "420" in there might've been a reference to smoking weed by the illustrators."

"Eh?"

She sighed and cracked an egg over the frying pan on the stove. "Never mind. My mind likes to connect pop culture references to conversations. Four-twenty's one of these old internet jokes I don't care much for." She swung her head to him. "Something tells me you would be their next big obsession if they knew you were here."

He stopped short of getting the ketchup from the fridge. "Am I that important to you guys?"

"You've technically been here since 2009, I think?" she said. "It's 2023 now, which is ample time for a fanbase to form around you and your series." Sam dropped the spatula she used to nudge the first batch of eggs. "It could see a massive boom with you around. And I'll be honest, I'm scared of what's to come. I-I've never meshed well with your fandom. What was important to me rarely was the same for them.

"I don't want to get caught in a media circus. I've seen the mental toll they can take on anyone who gets more than fifteen minutes of fame. Yet I can't bring myself to—"

"Stop," Saitama said.

She froze. Her shoulders sank when she probably realized what he meant. "Oh."

"I quit paying attention ages ago."

"Sorry, Tama," she said, sighing. "Bad habits die hard, I guess."

He tossed the ketchup bottle between his palms. "I don't care about what they think of— Oops."

The wall and tiled kitchen floor by the stove dripped in scarlet. Saitama's thrown bottle lay at Sam's feet. Its cap soaked the ends of her long pajama pants and got worse the further he followed the trail to her head. Ketchup dribbled from her brown curls to form ponds and rivers on her shoulders, neck, and back. Spots on her left cheek imitated oversized freckles.

Sam raked her nails across her face. "Note to self," she said, sighing. "Saitama can calculate a jump between two space rocks. He can't do the same for small objects he shouldn't be playing with."

Saitama's pant leg felt soaked all of a sudden. The sensation, when he glanced down, came from a bright yellow sponge flopping to the floor at his feet.

"So, um, maybe you could drop and give me one-hundred push-ups, sit-ups, and squats each," Sam said, "I guess? Or, you know, clean up your mess? You've, um, sort of turned my kitchen into a crime scene."

"You forgot the ten-kilometer run," he said.

She gestured at the space between them. The fridge he stood by sat a mere five steps from the stove. "What's that in American measurements?" she said, rolling her eyes. "Six miles, I, um, think? Like, you'd do that inside my apartment?" She gestured at him. "You can't be serious."

He squeezed behind her and brushed the sponge across the wall. "Not as serious as—" He cleared his throat and dove for the mess. "Serious Series: Serious Cleaning!"

"That's a move of yours?!"

He chuckled to himself. This was the first time he ever met a real fan of his. He might as well humor her since she opened her place to him. As a bonus, it would distract her from the latest development in this alternate universe he helped create.

...Why couldn't he have woken up one day with flowing hair like hers?

Woo-hoo! Managed to release this a little over a week after the first chapter. But please don't always expect an update around this time every single week. I've never bothered with a posting schedule since I'm not one of the folks who can sit and write whenever they feel like it. I need to be in an environment where it's quiet enough to think, which isn't something I usually get in RL.

Happy (Early) New Year! Here's to hoping we all make progress toward whatever goals we have in 2022 despite our circumstances. Perhaps I'll get some alone time on New Year's Eve so I can work on Chapter 3? Guess we'll have to see.

Author, out!