Turns out I might've somewhat lied about how I'd handle Saitama reading the OPM manga. I didn't go word for word or include every scene. I wrote a summary of certain events and what he thinks about them.
Having gotten this out of the way, I'm glad to be done with Chapter 4. Writer's block is a jerk.
Enjoy!
Moonstruck Moonstruck_Lizzy • November 21
Just woke for my evening shift. Who are these people and why are they everywhere?
They added an image grabbed from a green-tinted night vision camera to their post. This showed a sidewalk and two people sitting on a bench beneath an awning to the side. The first individual, a short young woman with glasses, pulled her legs into a criss-cross. Her eyes were wide and her chin lifted to stare at a gloved hand holding a portion of her floating curls. The second, a bald man wearing bright clothing and a long white cape which he sat on, returned her alarm with a grin. The hairs he stole didn't drift with the rest of them.
NoLollygaggin NoLollygaggin • November 21
Replying to Moonstruck_Lizzy
Do you live under a rock? The guy's Saitama from One-Punch Man. Before you ask, he's not a cosplayer. It's truly him.
AuntiePandora AuntiePandoraHour • November 21
Replying to Moonstruck_Lizzy
Adding to the above post. Here's a video of him in action.
They linked to the video as a reply to their post.
After clicking on it and letting it buffer, a full-colored image of a small crowd appeared onscreen. The camera panned to a hairless man in a yellow jumpsuit kneeling over a body down the street. He reached into the grass where the body laid and lifted them into a sitting position. His face didn't strain despite him lifting what appeared to be the same girl from the previous image.
When her head settled on his shoulder, he brushed her uneven and messy brown hairs behind her. This was probably to prevent them from getting caught in his jumpsuit's front-facing zipper.
Undyne Deltatale_Undyne • November 21
Replying to Moonstruck_Lizzy
ANIME'S REAL?!
AuntiePandora AuntiePandoraHour • November 21
Replying to Deltatale_Undyne
Must you scream in all-caps? How rude!
Rusty RustyNails • November 21
Replying to AuntiePandoraHour
okay, ugly blue blob ghost lady
One roll of the eyes and some scrolling through a semi-roleplayed argument later:
Jughead EggheadJughead • November 21
have u seen saitama run? i wonder if he could qualify for any world records. anyone know who the girl he's with is?
Jughead posted two gifs side-by-side below. Both gifs showed Saitama taking hold of the woman before turning into a blur that disappeared even before the viewer could blink.
Joan_Browne JoanEBrowne • November 21
Replying to EggheadJughead
I've no idea who she is. My granddaughter would love to be in her place!
Sprout Wilted_Sprout • November 21
Replying to JoanEBrowne
Lol, who wouldn't, Joan? Look at this man.
They included a gif of Saitama from his anime where he wiggled his thin eyebrows. He clutched a purple cup imprinted with half-lidded eyeballs in his right hand.
JackedApple AppleJacked • November 21
Saw pics of him from the manga. He's quite hot when he's not drawn all flat-like.
Erica GoldenErica • November 21
Replying to AppleJacked
Please. I know a dozen bald guys hotter than this man.
Risk RiskyFriskies • November 21
Saitama exists. Goku doesn't. Checkmate, DB fans.
JackedApple AppleJacked • November 21
Replying to GoldenErica
Most of those bald guys you're probably thinking of don't exist in real life.
FreddyYeti FreddyTheYeti • November 21
Replying to RiskyFriskies
U trying to start something?
AuntiePandora AuntiePandoraHour • November 21
Replying to RiskyFriskies
Ugh. As if the idiot roleplayer wasn't enough. Now the power scalers are getting involved. We don't need or want you here!
Risk RiskyFriskies • November 21
Replying to AuntiePandoraHour
Wow, this person needs a hobby.
They attached a picture of an unimpressed Saitama in front of a computer screen uttering almost this exact phrase. Meanwhile, the banter and stupid arguing continued. Thanks to posts and replies such as these, #OPMSaitama became the number one topic on sites such as Twitter and Instagram overnight. Unlike most topics, his ranking did not eventually yield to such things as "#StopPoliticalTheater" and "#SundayFunday". Everywhere everyone looked, this man was there.
Tumblr and various forums and chatrooms exploded with gifs from his anime series as well as screenshots and videos from his two public appearances. Discussions everywhere around the internet ranged from utter shock at this man's abilities to disbelief at his appearing from seemingly nowhere. They talked and talked and she scrolled and scrolled, glued to her phone screen.
When Nicki heard of him, she didn't expect him to truly be Saitama. Her sister's jaw would have hit the floor if she told her the news. However, Nicki didn't anticipate Saitama already having a companion. She would have texted her sister right away were the woman who featured in posts alongside him not her older sister.
"Damn, Sam," Nicki mumbled, tapping her phone screen with her manicured nails. "You're lucky."
"So it is her," spoke a male voice from the computer monitor in front of her.
"Yeah," she said into the pink microphone hanging from her headset. "I can't believe this. She used to love One-Punch Man."
"Did she like Saitama?"
She chuckled. "Sam loved him more than she loved the series. When we watched the anime with subtitles, she kept mentioning how she preferred his English voice actor."
"If she were here," another male voice chimed in, "I'd kill her for thinking the English dub is superior."
"People heard him speak in either English or Japanese, right?" Nicki's first friend said. "It doesn't matter what she prefers. She gets what she wants to hear and we get what we want to hear."
"Doesn't mean I can't criticize her for her wrong-think, Jeremy."
"Doesn't mean you can scare away newbs for not sharing your views, Ricardo."
"Huh?"
Nicki covered her mouth. Whoops. Uncovering it, she said, "I'm going to be calling Sam later. Is there anything you guys want me to say if Saitama's there?"
"Maybe you could ask why he's around your sister of all people?" a female voice asked.
"Hey, Alex," Jeremy said. "How's it going?"
"Hi, Jeremy," Alex said. "I'm okay. How about you, Luna?"
"I'm doing okay too," Nicki said, smiling at the use of her screen name. "Just finished tonight's homework." Now was as good a time as any to reflect Alex's question. "You want me to ask him about her?"
Alex sighed. "I've heard certain… Things about your sister. Not to say they're all bad things…"
Nicki frowned. "What sorts of things?"
"Has your sister always been kinda…" Alex dragged her "kinda" until… "Troubled? From what I heard, she got into constant conflicts with other kids at her school over the pettiest things. It was easy for others to make fun of her."
Ricardo snorted. "If that's true, I wonder what her deal was. Was she ever like that around you, Nicki?"
"Well…" Nicki said, shrinking from her screen.
"She sounds awful," Jeremy said. "Based on what everybody's saying, at least. Saitama could be hanging with the wrong girl."
"She has Generalized Anxiety Disorder," Nicki said. "She's getting help for it now."
"Yeah, yeah," Jeremy said. "Still, who argues for a stupid window seat?"
"Who cries for ten dollar pencils in the middle of a busy store?" Alex added. "Or threaten to harm some idiot she used to know? Or throw pencils at people when they upset her?"
"Who prefers dubs over subs?" Ricardo said.
"Since we're all here, we should start our game session," Jeremy said.
"I call playing offense," Ricardo announced. "Been wanting to try the new weapons added in yesterday's update. I can't wait to set the opposing team ablaze."
"I'm playing on defense," Alex said, "as usual. I hope what I heard about shield buffs is true."
"Leaves me and Nicki as the sneaksters," Jeremy said. "Ready to capture some flags, Nicki?"
Nicki didn't reply.
"Or should I say Luna?" Jeremy said. "Man, I wish you'd stick with a username for longer than a month. I keep mistaking you for new members."
The group was met with the dulled ping of somebody logging out for the night.
"What's with this art style?" Saitama muttered. He rested on the couch with his feet hanging over the side as if he were in a hammock. Volume one of the One-Punch Man manga barely grazed his nose while he studied the panels. Sometimes I look badass, sometimes I'm flat, and sometimes… He frowned at the page. This must be what Sam meant by me making odd faces.
Regardless, he continued reading. The prospect of seeing his adventures drawn was way too good to pass up. He flipped the page, not even pausing to read the title of the next chapter. But in hindsight, he should have waited there. The title alone could have mentally prepared him for what came next.
His gaze found the page, where he stared right into the shaded eyes of a man with dark bushy hair atop his head who sat in the middle of a street. The man wore no expression on his face. Meanwhile, regular old citizens just like him screamed in fright, complained about somebody's appearance, and fled the scene.
Breath fled Saitama's lungs. It continued evacuating as he moved to the next panel. The perspective changed to behind the man, who donned a suit and carried a flat briefcase. To the man's left was a tall creature, who was half a muscular crab and half a guy with hairy legs and wore no clothing other than a pair of undies.
"The crab guy," Saitama whispered, his eyes widening in recognition. He read on and studied each panel without blinking. His eyes soon burned. He paid no mind. What he saw with them was much more important. These panels carried the strength of a Serious Series: Serious Punch.
The human man stood before the crab monster as the latter questioned the former. Despite the crab's initial threats and wicked grin, their conversation was civil enough for the crab to leave the man alone and go elsewhere.
That was until moments later when the man's path crossed with a peculiar child's. As the crab left, he mentioned how he was on the hunt for a certain "cleft-chinned brat". This kid, playing with a ball nearby, had such a feature. He had to be who the crab looked for!
"Kid's uglier than I remember," Saitama grumbled. All the while, he kept lingering on each panel with the man. Three entire years passed since he last saw this person. So who was he?
Me. Upon having that thought, Saitama shut his eyes. His chin fell on his chest. A lot's happened in three years. All because he discovered a new pastime that somehow kept him going despite its numerous mixed impacts on his life. I miss him.
He flipped through a majority of the book in utter silence. It chronicled some of his adventures before meeting Genos, then switched to a battle between a human woman-shaped mosquito monster and the lone boy who opposed her.
There he is. Saitama figured the reason the cyborg didn't have his left arm when they first met was because of the prior clash. These panels confirmed this. Right after seeing the damage she inflicted on his future "student", Saitama couldn't help gripping the book tighter. Genos always somehow made a fight dramatic. This time, this first time they met, Genos was dead set on eliminating the monster. He would have died not because the mosquito woman annihilated him, but because his self-destructing blast took her with him.
I wonder if he's noticed I'm gone yet. He'd get along fine without me. Sure did before we met. Though what if… Saitama stopped there and allowed his thoughts to vanish. Genos would be fine. Dr. Kuseno had always got his back. When did the good old dude not?
A little later in the book, two weeks later when applied to how events transpired in real life, Genos appeared at Saitama's door. Annoyingly, Genos' entire story up until his so-called "master" yelled at him got printed on the pages. Saitama skipped this noise by turning to the next set of panels. Genos' backstory never related to him, so why hoist it upon him again in written form? He sure didn't feel guilty skipping the entire speech, just like how he usually avoided Sam's rambles whenever they didn't impact the plot of her tale.
Physically being around her was a whole different matter. Whenever Sam's thoughts extended outside her head, he restrained himself from exhibiting anger. He didn't want to risk scaring her by treating her rambles the same as how he handled Genos'. She did explain how she spoke a lot out of habit. A habit she could break if he were subtle in pushing her there, maybe.
Again, Saitama read in silence. Toward the end of the book, he paused once more. A bit of a smile crept over his face. His smile grew a bit larger when he turned some more pages and made a discovery. Another blue post-it covered half of the illustration of an irritated man with visible lips and short unkempt hair.
This latest note, perhaps the last Saitama would find unless Sam went on to comment on the rest of the series, read, 'Teachers calling kids losers for not performing as expected and ignoring their problems with other students? I hope this isn't how schools operate in modern Japan. This guy sucks more ass than the road-killed skunk the Angry Video Game Nerd must have forgotten to down with his beer'.
Whoa. Also, what? But mostly whoa. Saitama would have never known Sam held such rage if he didn't take her on his run today. To think this was in his defense? She really meant I'm "best boy". Yet he was but a guy. He wasn't certain what spurred her and tons of other folks to like him in the first place. Up until he met Genos, Saitama was a societal outcast. How did he start collecting acquaintances like new volumes for his manga collection? People in real life make no sense.
A peculiar assortment of bleeps and bloops, like noises from one of King's older video games, reached Saitama's ears. He turned his head to a large bag sitting in the far left corner of the living room next to two windows and above a freshly-painted radiator. Interest instantly struck. He got to his feet.
The bag opened not a moment later. He withdrew a small rectangular device. Sam's phone, with the camera facing him covered by tape. He didn't have the time to reflect on this with the phone's black screen glowing with a single name:
NICKI
The bleeps and bloops dropped into a full-blown music track. The sequence reminded him of some sort of futuristic landscape. Saitama pushed the thought away so he could click the green checkmark on the left-hand side of the screen. He pressed the shushed phone to his ear.
"Hello?" he said.
"Samantha?" asked a young woman's voice on the other side.
"No," he said, "this is Saitama."
A moment came and passed.
"Saitama?" she repeated.
"You're Sam's sister, right? Nicki?"
"Sh-she's told you about me?"
Now wouldn't be a good time to explain the whole 'I've read about you guys' thing. "She's mentioned you once or twice."
"Where's Sam? Can I talk to her?"
He looked in the direction of the bedroom. "She's snoozing. I can't wake her up."
"Is she hurt?"
"Nothing other than some scratches."
Nicki sighed in relief. "I know she fell in some grass..."
"She's moved when I poked her," Saitama said. "My best guess is she's sleeping off whatever made her eyes glowy." This happened to the true protagonist of Seeing Red, Feeling Blue. Her body needed time to adjust to her new immense pool of magic. He just didn't know how long it would take.
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure. I could check on her again if you want."
"I would appreciate it, um, Saitama. Please."
He already started on the path to Sam's bedroom. Turning into the hallway containing it and a shut bathroom door at the very back, he responded with, "Yep."
Just when he curled his hand around the doorknob, Nicki spoke again. "Could you turn on the camera? All you have to do is bring back the screen and double-tap the camera button in the upper right corner."
Saitama's eyes drifted to the phone. "Why?"
"I want to see Sam."
Rumble… Boom. CRASH!
Saitama's shoulders jumped. The rest of him didn't.
"What was that?" Nicki gasped.
"Thunder," he simply said. "Weathermen said we'd get a storm." He took the phone off his ear and clicked it on. A list of names flashed onscreen. Looked like the phone app opened itself whenever a call was answered. He searched the screen briefly before spotting the little camera icon hiding in the corner. The screen went black upon tapping it.
"There's something else I want to ask," Nicki said. "If you don't mind?"
"Yeah?" Saitama said. "What?"
"Have you realized how famous you've become?"
He exhaled. "The news won't shut up about me."
"Worse. You're all over social media. So is my sister."
Saitama's hand slipped from the doorknob. He tapped the camera button once, ripped off the tape covering the screen side of the phone, and as the screen transitioned from a white list to bright yellow light, he uttered a flat, "What."
Nicki's face appeared on the screen. Her skin held a fair bit more color than Sam's. Her face was much thinner than her older sister's. Long dark eyelashes, most likely phony, fluttered. Aquamarine stripes broke through the straight curtain of brown behind her shoulders.
"You're famous," Nicki said, blinking again. "You only tapped your screen once. Double-tapping is for… No, never mind. Why would I miss getting a glimpse of… Okay, no. Why are you with her? Why Sam?"
He bit the inside of his cheek. Talk about whiplash. "We're not a thing."
Nicki shook her head. "Okay, well, um… Maybe you've noticed Sam has a crush on you?"
He scowled ahead at the door. He applied a bit more force to what he next said. "I'm not into her."
Her shoulders fell. "Well, uh, Sam's into you. Or she used to be. I'm not sure. I can't follow her fixations when I'm halfway across the country."
He rolled his eyes. "Whatever."
"I meant to ask why you're living with her."
"Oh." Now that made more sense. "You see…" His mind went into overdrive. He would have to phrase the events of last night in a way to not make him the bearer of bad news. Sam and Nicki were better off working through any family issues without him getting involved. "I woke in an alley last night and found Sam in trouble. I helped her, she recognized me, and I got asked to prove my identity."
"Did you have to wake an entire neighborhood?"
He shrugged.
Rumble… Boom. CRASH!
The commotion startled me awake. An unusual sensation engulfed the back of my head and neck as I swung into a sitting position. I grunted and massaged my aching neck. Damn thunder. Its surprise factor never failed to get at me.
I glanced around. Two bookshelves stood in the corner. To their left were a pair of windows with closed black curtains. Feeling underneath me, I discovered a soft mattress and the cotton bottom of a flipped Dungeons & Dragons -themed blanket.
"I'm home?" The last thing I remembered was abandoning those two idiots who wanted to pick a fight. What in the world happened afterward? Had I blacked out?
Saitama somehow found his way back to the apartment. Perhaps I worried too much about him getting lost. He might be fine on his lonesome after today.
Leaving bed, a sense of deja vu struck me. Across the room, sitting on my desk, a big mustached man in a red cap and blue overalls added to this feeling. His wide blue eyes stared me down.
I scooped my glasses from the nearby nightstand and shoved them on my face. "Of course you're here, Mar."
Mar, otherwise known as the famous Super Mario, once inspired another fanfiction of mine. Good thing Saitama somehow didn't die beforehand and possess my body. Everything would have been made ten times more awkward by me being haunted by a bored guy who often wore sweaters with the Japanese word for boobs written on them instead of a squeaky short plumber who came fresh out of an adventure where he borrowed the bodies of all sorts of creatures.
Shame how I usually cracked under pressure when writing. Mario was the subject of several stories wherein I kept doubting the quality of my work. I finally abandoned the project several years ago. Seeing him in my room after collapsing reminded me of how my admittedly self-insert protagonist did the same several times over.
I groaned. Enough, Sam. Time to shelve those thoughts. Wasn't I done with those dumb stories? Focus on the here and now.
I turned for the door. "Let'sa go."
Eyes widened at the phrase. Fists clenched. Damn me and my unconscious internal associations. Sometimes it seemed I lived to breathe them. Real pathetic, huh?
"You're awake?" called an ever-familiar voice. "About time." A man in yellow pushed the door aside and entered the bedroom. He brandished a glowing black rectangle at me.
"What the hell are you doing with my phone?" I said.
"Sam!" a female voice called. The phone's white glare subsided. A girl on the cusp of her early twenties waved at me.
"Nicki?" I said. I ran to Saitama's side. "I'm sorry I missed you last week. I was figuring out dinner and you know how unimaginative I can be when it comes to food, so a grocery store trip was in order..."
"You don't have to explain," Nicki said. "Things happen. Are you feeling alright?"
"I'm fine," I said before spotting a wave of brown jutting from my left. I ran my fingers through it and pushed it aside. The rippling of hair against my palm refused to stop when I pinched at it.
I hurried into the hallway without another word. From here, I made a right and entered the bathroom. Three cupboards with doors made of reflective glass greeted me with a woman who balked when we met eye-to-eye. However, she copied me with no hesitation as I took a finger and twirled it around the singular coil at the end of my hair. The rest of my hair bunched in surging rows which seemed more concerned with helping to form this new hairstyle than splitting into all sorts of curly madness.
"Okay," I said, "maybe I'm not."
A knock sounded at the door.
I spun right around and reopened it. I stared at Saitama, then at my reflection, and then at him again.
"I'm having deja vu," he said.
"Tell me about it," I replied. "How's your deja vu feeling? Good or bad? Mine's a mixed bag."
He didn't answer.
"Figures," I said. I held the conjoined end of my hair. "Are you seeing this, Nicki?"
Saitama lifted my phone to reveal Nicki leaning into her screen. "Nice hair," she said. "The way it's all bunched and waving reminds me of—"
"Celestia and Luna!" she and I shouted together.
"Who now?" Saitama said, sounding as dull as a rusty spork.
"They're alicorn pony princesses," Nicki answered. "I liked the name Luna so much, I adopted it."
"What's an alicorn?" he now asked.
"They're mares with the features of a pegasus, a unicorn, and an earth pony," she responded before I could myself.
"Earth pony?"
"They're ponies who can—"
"Focus, sis," I cut in. "We're not here to get my new roommate into My Little Pony. Yeah, most people seem to have accepted older folks being fans of the franchise. Think of the shit he could still get for saying Applejack or Fluttershy or whoever's Best Pony."
Saitama leaned on the door frame. His head did a tilt.
Nicki shifted in her seat. "Is this a bad time to mention you're both all over social media?"
A jolt flew through me. My pupils dilated, rendering my reflection blurry against a white-tiled background. "Excuse me?!" I shouted. I almost couldn't believe my ears despite knowing the world would eventually learn of Saitama. I would have preferred easing into the spotlight. "What are they saying about us?"
"Why do you have to know?" Saitama said.
"Uh, hello?" I said. "The strongest man and some random-ass girl are living together? There's bound to be rumors about what happens within these walls, people asking why you're here of all fictional characters to exist, how did you get here, why me…"
"None of it matters."
"No," I said. "You're wrong."
"Saitama?" Nicki said. "Could you step out of here for a sec?"
"Go ahead," I said, turning to face the bathtub along the back wall. My toenails dug into the thin shower mat beneath them. "Please do, I suppose."
Saitama shut the bathroom door. Were I to trust my ears, he entered the bedroom without closing its door too. He murmured. In an eerie twist of fate, the one word of his I could understand was, "...Crazy."
Oh, joy.
My sister spoke. She did a much better job at whispering her thoughts.
I settled on the floor. Whatever they wanted to say in private was much more important than Saitama, me, and possibly anyone related to me being forced into the spotlight. Curling into a ball, all I could utter was, "Shit."
I expressed worry about this exact scenario when taking Saitama in. We could have settled into the public eye instead of exploding on the scene. Did I think of this when asking him to prove himself or planning the ten-kilometer route? No, because the brightest ideas almost always came after all was proclaimed and realized.
Breathe, Sam, whispered a tiny part of my mind.
My diaphragm filled.
Out.
My diaphragm relaxed.
In.
Air flooded my lungs. Eyes shut.
Out.
Carbon dioxide escaped. I squeezed my eyelids tighter to block the bright light coming from the ceiling.
In…
To travel through the throat.
Out...
To escape through the mouth.
In…
"Hey."
My eyelids flew open. With a squeal, my arm acted before my brain. I tossed the nearest object ahead of me. The large white rectangle met its mark, a barren wasteland of a face.
Saitama's perplexment showed when the object I threw plopped at his feet. He salvaged it from the floor. "Just me, Sam," he announced, shaking the thing around. "Since when did you keep a pillow in here?"
"I don't keep pillows in the bathroom," I said.
"Where'd it come from?"
"I don't know. You scared me."
He dropped his arm. "Sorry. You wanna get outta here?"
"Why? Do you need the bathroom?"
Saitama shook his head. "I was thinking you could be sitting anywhere other than in here. It's just us again. Your sis ran off. She'll talk to you again next week." He jabbed a thumb behind him. "Oh, yeah. I left your phone in the bedroom."
"...Thanks." Why Nicki asked to speak to Saitama alone mystified me. I wasn't about to pepper him with questions. "I guess I'll go play a game or two on my Switch." Since I got scared out of finishing the breathing exercise, video games would be the next best way of taking my mind off current events.
"Cool," he said, clearing a path for me to enter the hallway. "What do you usually play?"
"Um, pretty much anything which isn't a puzzler, first-person shooter, fighting game, or dating sim. I don't want to give my brain a workout, find first-person POV disorienting unless I'm temporarily using it to shoot something, get bored of fighting games, and dating sims aren't my cup of tea unless it's a parody of them."
CRASH.
I jumped. Real nice of the thunderstorm to remind me it was still hanging above our heads. I would at least snap the thunder out of existence if I could. "I typically play my games in handheld mode," I said. "May-maybe I could set up TV mode if you'd like to watch?"
"Nothing interesting's airing," Saitama said. "Go ahead."
We arrived in the living room.
I took the TV remote and clicked the "On" button. On a normal day, I would be watching the news around this time. Curiously, the number "13" appeared in the upper right-hand corner when the screen lit. Saitama must have decided to watch children's programming.
A man with combed-back hair and a dark blue suit appeared. "This evening on Newshour..." he said. "The arrival of a man once thought to be fictional has garnered reactions from around the world. An official statement has been released by the creator of One-Punch Man, the Japanese series from which he originates—"
"What the hell is this?" I exclaimed, fumbling with the cold piece of metal in my hand. I felt it slip.
Saitama caught the sleek black remote and pointed it at the screen. "All of the news stations have been talking about me," he said.
I gulped. "Oh no."
"Everyone knows we're involved with the collapsed apartment last night too. Investigators found your granny's monster corpse in the rubble."
My dropped hands balled into fists. "No…"
Onscreen footage showed a mountain of debris blocking the opened doorway of the apartment's balcony. Certain design choices shared by most of the other apartments' balconies, such as two rows of metal to barricade its residents, were stripped from around the balcony's perimeter. Some of it got tossed three stories down into the parking lot and formed a small crater. This came to be confined behind bright yellow caution tape.
"Thing is," Saitama said, "they think I killed her before rescuing you. I'd usually let somebody else take the credit for what I do..." He clicked a button to switch it to a blank screen with the term "HDMI" in the top right corner. "You've been pretty stressed. I'll take the brunt of this if you want."
"You mean…?"
He cracked a small smile. "Worry about yourself. Let 'em all focus on me instead." This made sense. For once, an entire world held him in a positive light. They didn't give him any reasons to give it up. Things would be way better for us if he took the brunt of their scrutiny.
I could feel the tension leave my shoulders with my next exhale. "O-okay, Tama. Sounds like a plan."
He nodded before making his way to the couch. "What're you thinking of doing here?"
I took a wireless controller from the TV rack and strode to the couch. "I-I could either go single-player in most of the Pokémon games, toss you off a cliff in…" No, not a Mario game. Anything but Mario right now. "Just pick a game. I'll let you know if I'm feeling it."