Trist walked out of the tower that housed Moss Comics, no, correction, the tower that would soon belong to Marvel Comics, stopped on the sidewalk, lifted his face directly into the sun, and declared, with all the sweep of a conquering general: “The future belongs to Marvel.” Hm.
Bit of a tongue-twister, actually.
Also, ow.
His eyes were burning.
That was really, really bright.
Trist dropped his head fast and stood there rubbing his eyes on the sidewalk, and the cool-guy moment died right where it stood, a complete and unwitnessed failure.
It was getting on toward noon, and the streets had thickened with foot traffic, everyone hurrying somewhere with lunch on their minds while the summer heat wrung sweat out of every pedestrian on the block.
Trist made for a restaurant he liked, a Chinese place a few streets over, where the waitress at the door bent at the waist in her qipao and sang out a welcome with a practiced smile.
He took the seat right up against the glass wall.
From there he could watch the whole current of the street go by, old men and young men and kids being towed along by their mothers, and the thought drifted through him, idle and pleasant, that someday this exact stretch of sidewalk was going to be a landmark.
People would point at this building.
Whether that was going to delight them or ruin their day, well.
No way to know yet.
“Sir, your menu.” The waitress set it down, all smiles, and Trist ordered a few dishes more or less at random, and before long he was eating with real contentment.
Slurrrp.
Gurgle.
Trist paused with his chopsticks halfway up.
That second sound had not come from him.
He looked up, following it, and found a little girl standing on the other side of the glass wall, in a purple dress, with a pair of enormous, shining eyes locked dead onto the food on his table.
Her mouth was opening and closing all on its own.
A small pink tongue swept across her lips.
GURGLE.
The sound came again, straight out of her little belly, and Trist genuinely marveled at it, because that growl had just carried clean through a pane of restaurant glass.
Hungry enough to broadcast through architecture.
That was almost a superpower in itself.
The girl went on staring at the dishes behind the glass with a longing so total it should have left scorch marks.
“Come in.” Trist waved a hand at her, and smiled.
Maybe she was simply too hungry to be scared, because she didn’t startle and she didn’t run.
She came straight in through the door and stopped in front of his table, eyes never once leaving the food.
“Eat,” Trist said.
Then, over his shoulder: “Miss?
Another serving of everything, please.” It was only now, with her standing this close, that he got a proper look at her.
The bearing on this kid was straight out of some great house, a little heiress from her posture down to her spotless face, and yet there was something shy and half-wild threaded through it, like a well-bred cat that had been outdoors too long.
Some rich family’s runaway daughter, he decided.
It was the only theory that fit.
Slurrrp.
The little girl fell on the food like a starving wolf, and from the look of it, she had been hungry for a very long time.
“So what’s your name?” Trist asked, watching her work.
“Where’s home?
You should head back after you eat.” “Gali.” She said it around an enormous mouthful, because the food in front of her had her fully hypnotized.
She had never in her life eaten anything this delicious.
If only it had some real energy in it, then it would be perfect.
She wasn’t a picky eater like her father.
Not at all.
It didn’t take long before Trist drew a slow breath through his teeth, because three full servings had now gone down into that tiny body, nearly all of it meat, and she was still going.
He was watching a bottomless pit operate in a purple dress.
Gali seemed to feel the look.
Her chopsticks stopped mid-air, and she set the bowl down, and her head dipped, and she said, in the smallest, most embarrassed voice imaginable: “I’m full.” No, you are not.
Your eyes are literally glowing.
You are the least full person in this restaurant.
“Finish eating,” Trist said.
“Thank you!” The joy came up through her whole body at once, and the rest of the table vanished in about six bites, and then she just sat there gazing at him, blank and expectant, until Trist had absolutely no idea what to do with her.
He wasn’t running a charity here.
A man couldn’t just feed strangers forever.
“Okay.
All done.
Now go on home.” He stood, gave the top of her little head a ruffle on the way past, and walked out with his hands in his pockets, entirely at peace with a good deed completed.
Behind him, Gali rose slowly from her seat, and her eyes flickered, and she followed.
Out on the street, Trist set his course for home.
The plan for the afternoon was simple: finish drawing the first volume of One-Punch Man.
Except that half a block in, he became aware of a small tail trailing along behind him, matching his pace, making no attempt whatsoever to hide.
He held out for another half block.
Then he gave up, turned around, and bent down a little to her height.
“Gali.
Where are your parents?” “I don’t have a mom.
Just dad.
But he’s not here.” The sudden turn had caught her off guard, and she hurried the explanation out, a little flustered.
Trist heard it and put the picture together on his own.
Mother long gone, then.
Probably got separated from her father somewhere in this enormous city.
Wonderful.
It’s officially stuck to me.
He was still rubbing his forehead over it when Gali lifted her chin, and her voice came out with a firmness that hadn’t been there before.
“I have no family on Earth.
Can I follow you?” The words dropped, and the world went quiet around them.
The foot traffic kept flowing past, loud as ever, and somehow the little circle of sidewalk where the two of them stood had become a different place entirely.
No family on Earth?
…Dead, then?
Trist’s expression shifted through several stations, and by the end of it he was looking down at her with open pity.
No wonder the kid was starved half to death.
Her father must have passed recently, and left her nothing at all.
No inheritance, no relatives, no…
That was when he noticed her eyes slide sideways, fixing on something behind him.
He turned, and his eyes went huge.
A heavy truck came tearing out of the intersection, way too fast, its trailer fishtailing wide and slamming through a parked car, wheels shrieking against the asphalt in a spray of sparks, and the whole street broke into screaming, scattering pedestrians at once.
The truck barreled on, eating the road in seconds, plowing anything in its path aside, and it was pointed directly at the two of them.
Shit.
Trist swore from the bottom of his soul.
The Marvel universe.
Day one out of the gate, and it was already like this.
He didn’t waste a syllable, just seized Gali’s small white hand and ran for it.
And in the exact instant his hand closed around hers, something no ordinary person could ever have sensed erupted out of the little girl’s body.
The world dropped into black and white.
Color drained out of everything at once.
Everything stopped, all of it, the truck, the sparks hanging mid-air, the screaming crowd, Trist himself frozen mid-stride, and in the whole gray, silent street, exactly one person could still move: the small girl in the purple dress.
A ribbon of purple light flashed across her eyes.
Time snapped back.
Reality returned with a screech that crawled straight up every scalp on the block.
Because what happened next happened in front of everyone, in full daylight: the truck that had been charging down the street went into a drift, on the spot, spinning a full 360 degrees around its own center like a toy on a wet table, in complete violation of everything the last three seconds had promised.
Did the driver somehow pull it back under control?
Nobody stayed to find out.
The pedestrians bolted in every direction, because nobody hands their life to somebody else’s steering wheel, and Trist was in complete agreement.
He took Gali the opposite way at speed, and inside a minute he’d flagged down a taxi, bundled them both in, and given his home address.
In the back seat, his heart was still going like a drum.
Those few seconds kept replaying behind his eyes.
That was the first time in either of his lives that he had looked at death from close range.
In his old world he had been a model citizen his entire life, a man whose closest brush with danger was jaywalking, and just now a runaway truck had missed ending him by a margin of seconds.
Of course his heart was pounding.
Anyone’s would be.
And then the second thought arrived, and it was worse: this was the Marvel universe.
Not one villain had shown his face yet, and he’d already been scared like this by a traffic accident.
What a disgrace to transmigrators everywhere.
Because that was the honest truth of it.
Right now, today, he was only an ordinary man.
Only the lottery could put real confidence under his feet, and until it did, this was no way for a person to live.
Trist was still wearing the bitter smile when he noticed that he was, in fact, still holding Gali’s little hand.
He let go of it immediately.
“Well?
How about it??” Gali tugged on his sleeve, and turned her whole face up at him, and it was full to the brim with hope.
“…Uh.
Fine, okay.” His head was still a mess, and the agreement came out of him half-dazed, and he honestly could not have said why he gave it.
Maybe it was just that after a disaster like that, having some company beat being alone.