The midday sun in Osaka did not feel like a blessing; it felt like a spotlight.
Makoto Tsukauchi moved through the dense, humid crowds of the Shin-Sekai district with her shoulders hunched and her hood pulled low. It had been forty-eight hours since the plane crash, forty-eight hours of watching Koichi Haimawari's life leak out of him in a series of shallow, rattling breaths.
The weight of it was becoming a physical pressure on her chest. Yoshi had "stitched" him spatially, but space didn't heal blood loss or prevent the onset of septic shock.
She looked around the bustling market street, feeling the acute, prickly sensation of being an outsider. This part of Osaka was a vibrant, chaotic tapestry of heteromorphic life. She saw a man with the head of a massive beetle haggling over citrus, a woman with six spindly, iridescent arms weaving silk in a shop window; a group of teenagers with bioluminescent skin laughing near a noodle stand.
In this sea of "variance," Makoto felt like a blank page. She was the only human-looking person for blocks, slim, slightly above average height, with features that were "standard" to the point of being a target.
Every time a mutant glanced her way, she felt the unspoken tension of the current climate. She looked like the enemy.
Focus, Makoto, she told herself, her fingers twisting the fabric of her coat. Yoshi is up there. Somewhere. He said he'd be the shadow.
She had spent the morning asking around the "lower" markets, using the coded language of the underground. She needed someone who worked without a license. But the locals were tight-lipped. The "Aftermath" headlines had made everyone paranoid.
"This is impossible," she muttered, her frustration bubbling up. "I'm a researcher, not a spy. I'm walking around like a headless chicken while Koichi dies in a damp room."
She turned into a narrow alleyway to catch her breath, the smell of frying oil filling the cramped space. Before she could even lean against the brick, a massive, calloused hand clamped over her mouth.
Makoto's heart attempted to leap out of her throat. She was slammed back against the wall, the air driven from her lungs. Panic, cold and jagged, flooded her mind.
Where is Yoshi? Did he lose me in the crowd? Am I going to die here?
The thought of her brother, Naomasa, flashed through her mind. She saw his tired, honest face. She thought of how much she idolized him, how he was the gold standard of the Tsukauchi name. And now, she was going to end up as a Jane Doe in an Osaka gutter, a foolish, disgraced footnote in the history of a family of truth-seekers.
"Quiet, human," a voice rumbled. It wasn't unkind, but it was devoid of any warmth.
She was turned around. Standing before her were two mutants who looked like they had stepped out of a medical textbook on musculature. They were "faceless", their heads were smooth masses of braided muscle fibre and sensory pits, with no visible eyes or noses. They wore heavy work jumpsuits stained with grease. It was impossible to tell their ages or their intentions.
"You're the one," the one holding her said, his voice vibrating through the sensory pits in his throat. "The one asking for a 'Doctor.'"
Makoto swallowed hard, her pulse hammering in her ears. She nodded slowly.
"You've got a bad way of asking," the second one said, a wet sound that passed for a laugh. "Walking around this district with that 'standard' face, asking for underground medics?"
"I... I need help," Makoto managed, her voice trembling. "For a friend. He's... it's bad."
"Friend, huh?" the first one mocked. "Is it because you think we're mutants? That we don't have real doctors down here?"
"No!" Makoto said, shaking her head aggressively. "No, I just... I need someone who won't report us. Someone who knows the old ways."
The two mutants exchanged a "look" through their sensory pits. Then, they laughed, a hollow, rhythmic sound. "Stop being so uptight, girl. You're lucky the Doctor is in a charitable mood today."
The one who had grabbed her reached out and touched the brick wall of the alley. To Makoto's absolute shock, the solid masonry didn't feel solid anymore. It rippled. He grabbed a handful of the "bricks" and pulled them back like a heavy velvet curtain, revealing a shimmering, translucent void.
"Let's go," he said, nudging her forward.
Makoto hesitated for a heartbeat, then stepped through.
The sensation was sickening. She felt gravity vanish, her stomach dropping into her feet. She was falling through a white, blinding haze, but there was no wind, no sound. Then, just as the panic reached its peak, she touched ground. There was no impact, just a sudden, odd return to weight.
She blinked, her vision clearing. She wasn't in a sterile clinic or a grimy basement. She was standing in the hallway of a traditional Japanese house, a minka. The floor was polished cedar, the air smelled of tatami mats, aged paper, and the sharp, medicinal sting of iodine.
It was jarring. Traditional homes were rare in this age of high-density architecture. To see one kept so meticulously meant the owner fit a very specific profile: someone who overvalued the past, someone conservative, wealthy, and likely very old.
"Apologies for the transport," the faceless mutant said, his tone more respectful now. "The Doctor values his privacy."
They walked her down a long, dimly lit corridor. At the end, a shoji screen slid open, revealing a room filled with the soft glow of a low-hanging lantern.
Sitting on a zabuton cushion behind a low wooden table was a man who looked like he was made of history itself.
Asei Morioka they called him, known to the world below as Patchwork, was sixty-seven, but he looked like an ancient map. His skin was a pale, parchment-like texture, crisscrossed with faint, seam-lined scars that ran along his jaw, his neck, and down his arms. His physiology was fibrous, as if his muscles had been woven together rather than grown. He wore a traditional dark yukata, and his eyes, sharp, clear, and clinical, studied Makoto with the detached intensity of a surgeon.
"I feel I have seen your face before..." the old man said, his voice a dry rasp that sounded like autumn leaves. He seemed to think on it for a while before he just stopped, he looked tired and then he just stopped speculating.
He raised a hand. Makoto watched as thin, biological fibres, pale and translucent, began to sprout from his fingertips like surgical thread.
The other two boys by her side kneeled down and bowed their heads showing the senior a great modicum of respect, Makoto followed and after some time the man nodded his head in what looked like appreciation.
In return, he began to explain his quirk, getting to the point to show if he could be useful or not.
"My quirk is Stitchabody," he said, his tone utilitarian. "I do not perform miracles. I do not regenerate limbs. I bind. I stabilize. I prevent the rot from taking hold until the body remembers how to heal itself."
Makoto felt a wave of profound relief, followed by a sharp, defensive spike of anxiety. "I feel you will be incredibly valuable to me."
"I do not care for your politics, Miss," Morioka said, sipping from a small cup of bitter tea. "I care for the integrity of the flesh. In this city, we are all 'impurities' in the eyes of the many people that look like you, yet if they seen you here with me in a different fashion you would be looked at the same way. So it just seems that some of us just have more decency than those that love to think they do."
He leaned forward, the seams on his face tightening.
"My services are not comfortable. And they are not free. You will owe a debt to the district. Are you prepared to pay the price of a life, Miss?"
Makoto looked at the old man's hands
"I'll pay whatever I have to,"
___
The shoji screen clicked shut behind Makoto, sealing her into a room that felt like a pocket of history forgotten by the neon pulse of Osaka. The air was thick with the scent of roasted green tea and the sharp, clinical tang of rubbing alcohol.
Makoto sat on the tatami, her knees pressed together, her hands folded in her lap. She felt the weight of her own "humanity" in this room, the smooth skin of her face, the simple geometry of her features. Across from her, Asei Morioka, Patchwork, watched her.
"I am Makoto Tsukauchi," she began, her voice small in the quiet room. "I'm a researcher. My friend… he's dying. We were told you were the only one who could help without… without making a report."
Morioka didn't move. He poured a stream of tea into a small ceramic cup, his fibrous fingers moving with a stiff, rhythmic grace. "A researcher," he repeated, the word dry as parchment. "A woman who studies the world from behind a desk. Tell me, Tsukauchi-san, why would a woman like you come to a place like this? Why seek a man who works in the dark when the city is full of bright, clean and credible hospitals?"
Makoto hesitated, her gaze dropping to the tea. "Because the hospitals follow protocol. And because… well..." she looked upon his wall in the small space, "I noticed you have the credentials. You're a trained surgeon. Why aren't you there? You could be saving so many more people."
Morioka's expression didn't change, but the air in the room grew heavy. He looked at her with a clinical, piercing intensity. "Save them? For what? To return them to a society that views them as biological debris? I do not work in their hospitals because I refuse to be a 'refined asset' for a state that acts as if we must suffer a great, bloody loss before they grant us the privilege of being seen as equal."
He leaned back, the seams along his jaw tightening. "I am sixty-seven years old. I grew up in the end times of the White Standard. I remember when the 'Purity' committees weren't just political movements, they were the people next door. Before the Hero System turned vigilantes into celebrities, it was a time of quiet, systematic erasure."
He paused, his eyes glazing over as he looked into a past Makoto could only read about in censored textbooks.
"I watched my uncle get dragged out of our home when I was seven," Morioka said, his voice devoid of emotion, which made the story more horrific. "He had a mutation that gave him excess limbs. The neighbours, standard, 'pure' people like you, didn't like the way he looked in the garden. They dragged him into the street and stomped him to death. Not because he committed a crime, but because his existence was a 'clutter' in their view of a perfect world."
Makoto's breath hitched. "Did the police… did they do nothing?"
"The police came," Morioka said with a hollow snort. "They took a report. They spoke to the men who did it. And then they left. Nothing came of it. No arrests, no trials. Just a bloodstain on the asphalt that we had to scrub away ourselves. Our home was broken into a second time. Then a third. And a fourth. They didn't come to steal our television or our money. They came to let us know they could. They knew the law would look the other way because our safety wasn't a priority for a 'standard' society. They drove us out of our own lives, one broken window at a time."
Makoto reached out instinctively, as if to touch his arm in sympathy, but Morioka shifted, his fibrous skin creaking. She pulled her hand back, feeling a flush of shame. "I… I can't imagine. But things have changed. The Commission has cleaned up that act. We have heroes now who represent everyone."
"Do we?" Morioka asked, his gaze snapping back to her.
"Yes," Makoto said, trying to find her footing. "Look at Mirko. Or Ryukyu. They're top-tier heroes. They're mutants, and they're loved by the whole country. Don't you think that we've moved forward?"
Morioka let out a sharp, jagged laugh. It was a sound of pure, concentrated bitterness. "Mirko. Ryukyu. They fit a very specific 'class' of monster, Tsukauchi-san. They are the 'acceptable' variants. They jester in front of the cameras, they wear the suits, and they fit the fetishes of the very people who hate us. You see a hero, the 'standard' public sees a commodity."
He leaned forward, his face inches from hers. "The majority buyers of their merchandise, the ones who buy the bunny ears and the dragon wings, are people who look exactly like you. They don't buy those things out of respect, they buy them to own a piece of a sanitized 'other.' It is part of the problem. There is a total lack of acknowledgement of the blood that was spilled to make those women 'marketable.' There is no accountability for the past, and so there is no learning. We are still toys to them. And when the toy breaks, they throw it back into the district."
He began to cough, a violent, rattling sound that shook his entire seam-lined frame. Makoto stood up, panicked, reaching to help him, but he held up a hand, his palm flat and firm.
"I am fine," he gasped, wiping a bead of moisture from his lip. "It is the price of the quirk. My body is held together by stitches, and sometimes the thread pulls."
He settled back onto his cushion, the silence of the room returning, but it was a heavier silence now, bleak and suffocating.
"In my heart," Morioka said softly, "I understand the hate that a man like the Amur Tiger has for himself. I feel it every morning when I look in the mirror and see a man made of seams. It is a poison, thinking that maybe, just maybe, in the next life, you'll be born 'correct.' I don't know if the Tiger truly sought peace, or if he just wanted to burn the world that made him a monster."
He looked at Makoto, his eyes reflecting the dim lantern light.
"But it's like... if I had the chance," he whispered, "to press a button and peacefully end the lives of every single mutant in this world, to simply erase our presence so we no longer have to endure the prejudice, the hatred, and the hollow gaze of the 'standard', I would struggle not to press it. To give my people a world unbothered by their existence. To give them the peace of non-existence."
Makoto stared at him, her heart sinking. The depth of his nihilism was a chasm she couldn't cross. "But… why wouldn't you? If you think it would be peace?"
Morioka smiled, a sad, crooked thing that made the scars on his face dance. "Because hate and divisiveness do not live in the shape of a man's head or the number of his limbs, Tsukauchi-san. They exist in the heart of all of man. If I erased the mutants today, you 'standard' humans would find a new reason to tear each other apart by tomorrow. You would find a new 'impurity' to refine, same with if all my people were secluded to their own space. The rot is in the soul, not the skin."