(SAVING EARTH BET, ONE PUNCH AT A TIME) TEMPORARY HOME

It turned out that punching the giant sea monster had made Saitama kind of famous, and the news had traveled fast in this city. He realized that during his walk through the ruined streets after he was finally let go from the meeting, when he noticed how people kept staring at him wherever he went.

It was not just heroes this time. Regular people did it too. Wet, haggard-looking survivors paused in the middle of conversations as he passed, their eyes lingering on him with a mixture of awe and uncertainty. A couple of bloodied kids whispered to each other and pointed in his direction, and one exhausted man even asked for a picture, only to look confused and apologetic when he remembered he did not actually have a phone to take one with.

Saitama did not really get it.

He was far more interested in finding a way home.

Every time he ran into a hero, he asked about it, sometimes politely, sometimes right after they finished thanking him, and sometimes while they were still in the midst of doing so.

“Do you know how to get back to City Z?”

“Is there, like, a portal or something?”

“Anyone here good with dimensions?”

Most of them only stared at him in return. A few promised that they would look into it, though they did not sound very confident. One hero even tried to explain things in detail, using long words like interdimensional theory and precognitive limitations, but Saitama stopped listening after about five seconds and simply nodded along until the explanation ended.

In the end, no one had an answer for him.

Apparently, he was stuck here.

“…Huh,” Saitama said when that finally sank in. “That’s inconvenient.”

He scratched at the side of his head as he thought it over. Genos would probably freak out if he found out about this, though then again, Genos tended to freak out about most things. Still, he would manage. He always did. Apart from Genos, his video games, and the cheap supermarket down the street, there was not much tying Saitama to his old place anymore.

Which meant he needed somewhere to stay.

Brockton Bay, at least, did not seem short on options.

The city was full of empty buildings, abandoned storefronts, half-collapsed apartment blocks, and warehouses with broken windows that rattled in the wind. It reminded him a lot of City Z, actually, the more he walked through it, and maybe that was why it did not feel all that strange to be here despite everything that had happened.

Under normal circumstances, he figured someone would have stopped him if he had just wandered into a random building and decided to live there, but after the Leviathan thing, people mostly just let him be. One man even started to say something, then caught sight of Saitama’s face and immediately thought better of it.

“Uh… never mind, sir,” he muttered before hurrying off.

So Saitama picked a place.

It was a small, half-intact apartment building a few blocks from a water-logged street near the shoreline. The top floor still had a roof that did not leak too badly, and one of the units had a door that almost closed properly if you gave it a good push. Inside, there was a dusty living room, a tiny kitchen with a sink that dripped every few seconds, and a bedroom with a mattress that looked only slightly worse than the one he had owned back home.

He stood in the middle of the room for a moment, hands on his hips, looking around.

“Yeah, this works,” he said at last.

He dropped his bag on the floor near the wall. There was not much inside it, mostly his battered groceries and a change of clothes that someone nice had given him earlier, but it felt enough for now.

People kept bothering him, though.

Heroes showed up one after another, thanking him again, asking questions, and giving long speeches about responsibility, looming threats, and future plans for the city. One of them, a serious-looking man in blue-and-gray armor, spent a long time talking about two more monsters in particular.

“Behemoth,” he said, and then, after a pause, “and the Simurgh.”

Saitama nodded slowly as if he was following along. “Uh-huh.”

“They’re Endbringers like Leviathan,” the man continued. “If you could help with them, it would—”

Saitama raised a hand to stop him. “Tomorrow.”

The armored hero frowned at him. “Tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” Saitama replied. “I’m tired, I’m hungry, and I haven’t slept yet.”

“But this is critical,” the man insisted.

“Tomorrow,” Saitama repeated, a little more firmly this time.

For some reason, that was enough to end the discussion, and before long, everyone finally left him alone.

Once the apartment was quiet again, Saitama went back inside and shut the door as best he could. He dug through his bag, found the least ruined thing he had left, which turned out to be a piece of bread that was only a little wet, and ate it while standing in the tiny kitchen.

“…Man, I miss that supermarket,” he muttered to himself.

After that, he went into the bedroom and lay down on the mattress without even bothering to change out of his clothes, staring up at the cracked ceiling above him. Through the broken window, the sounds of the city drifted in, with distant sirens, dogs barking, and people talking somewhere far away in the night.

Another world, huh.

He yawned and rolled onto his side.

“Well, whatever,” he said quietly. “I’ll deal with it tomorrow.”

And with that, Saitama fell asleep.