The anxiety from the encounter with the stranger didn’t let go of Samuel.
The first thing he did after catching his breath was get on the internet.
Almost an hour of browsing city community pages on social media turned up nothing.
Not a single post about an arrogant, obnoxious girl in any of the groups.
Giving up on it, Samuel decided not to worry about it and headed for the bath, just as he had planned.
What other options did he have?
Go to the police?
That didn’t even sound serious.
If he described the situation online and asked for advice, people would just laugh at him, or praise his writing talent and suggest he write a book.
So, the guy decided to forget about it.
The rest of the day was business as usual.
A little internet, a few rounds of his favorite game, reading the newly released chapters of some books he liked, then bed.
Tomorrow he still had to look for a new job, and this time, he planned to at least try to find something in his field.
But the strange feeling that nothing was over yet was still messing with his nerves.
He tossed and turned in bed for a whole hour trying to fall asleep.
Eventually, exhaustion won out, and Samuel soon drifted off into the world of dreams.
***
In a courtyard lit by only a single streetlamp, a figure stood.
The rare passersby at this hour only glanced at her, then, a few moments later, completely forgot they had seen anything.
It was the same girl who had frightened our protagonist a few hours earlier.
Her gaze was fixed directly on Samuel’s apartment window, and her lips were curled into a mysterious smile.
“Up to your old tricks again, you little devil?” a voice came from behind her.
That voice was so alien that if an ordinary person had heard it, they might have lost their mind.
It contained everything: the rustle of leaves in the wind, the screech of crumpling metal, the rumble of a rockslide, and the howl of a hurricane.
The very flow of time itself paused, unwilling to interfere as the invisible figure spoke.
“Tch… Don’t spy on me, you old geezer. It’s creepy.”
The girl didn’t even bother to turn around, knowing she wouldn’t see anything behind her anyway.
“Your actions themselves are disturbing my peace.”
“Oh, come on,” she waved her hand dismissively.
“It’s not like I drop by to entertain myself that often.”
“But every time, it ends in disaster.” The words crashed down on the girl with the fury of a raging storm, but she just winced at their excessive volume.
“Your sugary speeches create discord, and your reckless actions and gifts start wars.”
“Like you even care?” Kalli snorted.
“I get that you’re bored here, but don’t have your fun at my expense, okay?”
“You are upsetting the balance.”
“Oh, please. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? I break, you fix. If it weren’t that way, there wouldn’t be any point in our existence at all.”
The otherworldly voice fell silent.
What a dilemma.
Even omnipotent beings worry about the meaning of life.
“Besides, I didn’t do anything serious this time,” the girl pressed.
“The world won’t lose anything with the disappearance of this little mouse. No friends, no loved ones, no family.”
Though the identity of his father looks amusing, she thought.
“I didn’t even sever his connection to the world. He’ll go to a subsidiary, spin around there for a couple of centuries, then come back and re-enter the system,” the beauty shrugged.
“Don’t get carried away,” a voice rustled, and then time began to move again.
The unknown entity had satisfied its need for communication for another few decades and went about its business.
Kalli’s cheek twitched in annoyance.
She hated it when someone else got the last word, but this guy always disappeared before she could answer him.
Oh well, it didn’t matter.
The girl turned her gaze back to the window, but she was clearly looking much deeper.
Her purple eyes seemed capable of seeing through anything.
‘Necklace, huh?’ she thought with an internal smirk.
If Samuel had known that his selfless advice would result in all of this, he would have cursed his tongue and his kindness forever.
But no.
The guy had no idea that he had somehow interested an unknown, all-powerful entity.
He shouldn’t have said anything about an amulet that ordinary mortals can’t even see.
***
Samuel couldn’t be surprised by strange, sometimes downright mystical dreams.
He had them almost every night for his entire life.
Rarely was he able to interpret them correctly.
Most often, the meaning of what seemed like nonsense only became clear after the predicted event had already happened.
For example, the day before the warehouse incident, he dreamed that everyone around him was too fast, while he himself could barely move.
It felt like he was in a movie that had been put on fast forward, while he moved at the original speed, struggling as if stuck in molasses.
Only after his leg was put in a cast did he realize the dream was hinting that he would soon have mobility problems.
And a few days before his mother died, he dreamed that the city he lived in had suddenly emptied out.
There wasn’t a single person on the streets, no silhouettes of workers bustling in the wide-open store doors.
That dream was trying to hint at his impending loneliness.
Even though the guy didn’t believe in the supernatural, it was hard to be skeptical when you could sometimes correctly interpret a prophetic dream and avoid trouble or even score a small win.
But this time, Samuel dreamed of a very unusual plot.
In the dream, he was a little boy.
Birth and the first few years of life flashed by in an instant.
The faces of his parents were just dark smudges in the child’s perception, but Samuel’s detached mind could understand that they weren’t good people.
Constant shouting and lectures, treatment bordering on the legal limit.
And his parents clearly didn’t get along with each other either.
Another scene change, and the boy was sitting in the waiting room of some hospital.
The child’s somewhat distracted ears caught the words:
“Your son does not have and will never have a Quirk.”
A strange, alien reaction from his usually strict parents.
Indifference and disgust.
Scene change.
Lots of unfamiliar adults around, a small room he shared with three other sullen-looking children, and the thought: “I’ve been abandoned.” Stunningly clear and aware for a five-year-old child.
And the consequence: “If I have a Quirk, my parents will come back.”
The strangeness of it all was only vaguely noticed by Samuel’s consciousness.
The recent encounter with the strange girl had clearly stuck in his mind, and the topic of isekai into MHA had obviously triggered such a strange dream.
But there was still a sense of something wrong.
People only dream for fifteen to twenty minutes at a time, which is why dreams are usually choppy, disjointed, and illogical.
That was true even in Samuel’s not-so-ordinary case.
But this time, something was off.
Too detailed.
Too vivid and logical.
Too many “toos.”
But the main character of the dream had no time for the hero’s doubts.
He tried to “find” his Quirk.
A pointless, stupid endeavor, and everyone who saw the boy’s struggles understood that.
Children and caretakers alike looked at his attempts with condescension.
Especially the children who had Quirks and felt special in comparison to him.
For over a year, the boy floundered in the darkness of ignorance, trying everything his child’s mind could think of.
Flash.
The child was squatting in the yard.
His eyes were full of delight and disbelief.
He had already given up hope that his attempts were useless.
But then a small twig tore from his palm as if someone had yanked an invisible thread, and tears streamed from the pain in his head.
But the boy was ecstatic.
He wasn’t useless!
He had a Quirk!
Scene change.
He was demonstrating his ability to the caretakers of the orphanage where he lived.
Their faces showed boundless surprise and shock.
The growing hope of going home.
Scene change.
Hospital again.
Countless tests and analyses.
Declarations that the boy could not possibly have a Quirk.
The orphanage director’s hand reached out, slipping a few bills to the doctor.
The strange case vanished from the corrupt clinic’s records forever.
Scene change.
Scary, dangerous-looking people snatched him right from the yard and carried him somewhere.
His cries for help met only a wall of indifferent looks from the caretakers and wary glances from the children.
Darkness.
Scene change.
More tests and analyses, but now it hurt.
His head spun from the constant blood draws.
The rare, tasteless meals weren’t nearly enough to feel full.
A hard bed that made his back and neck stiff, and the oppressive feeling of hopelessness and loneliness.
The slowly dawning realization that his parents weren’t coming.
Flash.
Darkness.
Flash again.
***
This time, Samuel woke up completely wrecked.
It felt like he hadn’t slept at all.
His head ached mercilessly, as if stuffed with cotton wool under his skull.
Every muscle in his body throbbed painfully.
He had grown somewhat accustomed to the latter over the time he’d worn the cast.
Sleeping in almost complete immobility is a real torture.
Taking a deep breath to chase away the migraine, Samuel frowned.
The smell was strange.
Musty, dusty, but with an undertone of bleach.
Like an old hospital storage closet or something.
‘Did I forget to close the window?’ he thought lazily, not in a hurry to open his eyes.
The bed creaked loudly as Samuel sat up.
Rubbing his eyes, he yawned.
His first foot landed on the cold, hard floor, then the second.
‘Wait.’ The feeling of wrongness hit the still-sleepy consciousness like a sledgehammer.
With an irrational sense of fear, he opened his eyes.
The dark room he found himself in looked nothing like Samuel’s room.
Gray walls with no windows, a sink, a toilet, a small table with a couple of wooden blocks on it.
‘They’re for me to try to develop my abilities,’ a thought flashed through his head, and the guy froze in shock.
His gaze dropped to his tiny, child-sized hands and equally tiny legs, which, by some misunderstanding, were attached to an equally child-sized body.
A head grew out of that body, a head that was throbbing and panicking.
“What the hell?” he said.
His voice was just as childlike.