Chapter 201: Here! [FIXED!]

Liam set the two bags down on the bench outside Paper Lantern and pulled out his phone.

His thighs had started to stiffen while he was standing at the counter, a slow, creeping tightness that promised tomorrow was going to be ugly. He lowered himself onto the bench with more care than a twenty-five-year-old should need and opened his messages.

[Liam: got everything]

The reply came almost instantly.

[Mateo: everything???]

[Liam: everything]

[Mateo: no way]

[Mateo: ur lying]

[Mateo: there is no way that store had all of that]

[Liam: you doubting me?]

[Mateo: yes]

[Mateo: respectfully]

[Mateo: pics or it didnt happen]

Liam snorted. Sixteen years old and already running investigations like a detective.

He pulled the books out of the bags one by one and laid them across the bench in two neat rows. Jujutsu Kaisen, all three volumes, stacked in order. Chainsaw Man beside them. Spy x Family. One Piece, faded spine and all. Then the comics on the second row: Miles Morales: Spider-Man and Batman: The Court of Owls.

A woman walking past slowed down to look at the display, clearly wondering why a grown man was arranging manga on a public bench like a museum exhibit. Liam ignored her, framed the shot, and hit send.

The three dots appeared immediately.

Then disappeared.

Then appeared again.

[Mateo: BRO]

[Mateo: BRO WHAT]

[Mateo: U ACTUALLY GOT ALL OF THEM]

[Mateo: court of owls too???]

[Mateo: im literally screaming rn my sister just asked me whats wrong]

Liam grinned at the screen.

[Liam: not all of them. couldn’t get the invincible compendium]

He waited, half expecting disappointment. Mateo had listed it, after all, even if he’d called it a long shot.

[Mateo: oh thats fine]

[Mateo: that thing is like impossible to find anyway]

[Mateo: i didnt even think ud get the others lol]

Liam: someone beat me to it. grabbed it right in front of me]

[Mateo: NOOO]

Mateo: thats so tragic 💀]

[Mateo: but fr who cares]

[Mateo: u got jjk AND chainsaw man AND miles morales]

[Mateo: thats insane]

[Liam: told you I’d handle it]

[Mateo: thank u]

[Mateo: fr thank u so much]

[Mateo: like actually]

[Liam: you’re welcome]

[Mateo: no but like]

[Mateo: thank u]

[Mateo: this is the best thing thats happened all week]

Liam’s grin softened.

Best thing all week. Considering Mateo’s week had included a security team parked outside his house and his sister barely sleeping, that wasn’t saying much. But it still meant something. Somewhere in that house, a kid who’d been walking on eggshells for days was smiling at his phone.

[Mateo: how much was it?? i can pay u back]

[Liam: don’t worry about it]

[Mateo: liam]

[Mateo: that was like a lot of books]

[Liam: my treat. end of discussion]

[Mateo: ur actually the goat]

[Mateo: thank u thank u thank u]

Liam laughed and started sliding the books back into their bags. Then a thought struck him.

[Liam: want to come over and pick them up? We can hang out for a bit]

The answer arrived before he’d finished putting away the second volume of Chainsaw Man.

[Mateo: YES]

[Mateo: yes yes yes]

[Mateo: when]

[Mateo: can it be today]

Liam smiled.

He already knew how this would go. Sophia trusted him. She’d say yes to Mateo visiting without hesitation. But she would never, not in a million years, let her little brother cross the city alone right now. Not with everything that had happened.

Which left two options.

Either Liam picked Mateo up himself, or one of the security team brought him over.

He thought about it for a second and realized he didn’t mind either one. If he went to pick him up, he’d get to see Sophia, check in on her face to face, and maybe make her laugh again. If security brought him, it meant Sophia felt safe enough to let Mateo out of the house, and that was its own kind of progress.

[Liam: ask your sister first]

[Mateo: omw to ask her rn]

Liam leaned back against the bench and waited, two bags full of books at his feet, his legs aching, and feeling better than he had all day.

–

The bus dropped Hitomi off three blocks from home, on the side of the city the tourism brochures never bothered to photograph.

Here the sidewalks were cracked and patched in mismatched shades of grey. A laundromat with a flickering OPEN sign sat beside a pawn shop with bars across its windows. Someone had spray-painted a cartoon frog on the side of the corner store, and nobody had bothered to clean it off. Hitomi liked the frog.

She walked the rest of the way with the Compendium hugged to her chest, hood up, sandals slapping softly against the pavement.

Her building was a four-story walk-up with a front door that never fully latched and a mailbox panel where half the name tags had peeled away. The stairwell smelled faintly of someone else’s dinner and old carpet. The light on the second-floor landing had been out for three weeks. She’d stopped expecting the landlord to fix it.

Her apartment was on the third floor, at the end of the hall.

Inside, it was small. One room that tried its best to be three. A kitchenette along one wall with a two-burner stove and a fridge that hummed louder than it should. A faded green couch she’d found on the curb and dragged up the stairs herself. A water stain on the ceiling shaped vaguely like Florida. The radiator clanked whenever it felt like it, regardless of the weather.

But the walls were hers.

Every inch of them was covered. Shelves she’d built herself out of plywood and cinder blocks held manga and comics stacked two rows deep, organized by series, then by volume, then by a system only she fully understood. Sketches were pinned between them: tattoo designs, half-finished characters, a koi fish she’d been reworking for months. A string of fairy lights ran along the ceiling, cheap and warm.

Hitomi kicked off her sandals by the door and set the Compendium down on the couch cushion with the kind of care most people reserved for newborns.

Then she thought about the man from the store.

The pretty boy.

He was attractive, sure. Funny, too, in a slightly clumsy way. He’d tried to bribe her with triple her money and then folded the second she showed him the seal. That had been genuinely entertaining.

But attractive and funny weren’t rare. She’d tattooed a hundred men who were attractive and funny. They sat in her chair, made jokes, flirted through the pain, and she forgot their faces before the ink had healed. People came and went. Her books stayed.

Still.

He’d paid for the Compendium. All of it.

Hitomi glanced at the book and pursed her lips. That did buy him a little extra space in her memory. Who didn’t like free things?

If he ever actually reached out, she’d probably tattoo him for free. It seemed fair. A five-hundred-dollar book for a small, beginner-friendly design. She’d even let him fall asleep in the chair again.

That was where her thoughts about him ended.

Her stomach growled loudly.

She padded into the kitchenette and pulled open the cupboard. Behind a box of cereal and three cans of soup sat her emergency stash: a stack of Shin Ramyun packets, red and black and glorious.

She filled a dented pot with water and set it on the burner. While it heated, she raided the fridge.

Two eggs. Half a block of Spam. A tub of kimchi her neighbor downstairs had given her last week. A single slice of American cheese. Two stalks of green onion that had seen better days but would survive.

She sliced the Spam into thick rectangles and dropped them into a small pan until the edges turned crisp and caramelized, the kitchen filling with that salty, smoky smell. She chopped the green onions, separating the white parts from the green.

When the water boiled, she dropped in the noodles, the seasoning packet, and the dried vegetable flakes, then added a heaping spoonful of kimchi and a splash of its juice for extra sourness. The broth turned a deep, angry red.

At the two-minute mark, she cracked one egg directly into the pot and let it poach in the bubbling broth. The second egg she stirred straight into the soup, ribbons of yellow swirling through the red.

She poured everything into her biggest bowl. Spam fanned across the top. The poached egg nestled in the middle. The cheese slice draped over the noodles, slowly melting into the broth. Green onions scattered over everything, followed by a drizzle of chili oil and a pinch of sesame seeds.

It looked absolutely incredible.

Hitomi carried the bowl to the couch, settled cross-legged, and pulled the Compendium into her lap.

She took her first bite, opened to page one, and the rest of the world disappeared.