Chapter 116

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*

He picked up the remote and turned up the TV with one hand, eyes squinting.

His cigarette, frozen at the edge of his lips, burned slowly.

The glowing ash fell onto his dry skin before rolling into the bath.

He didn't notice, absorbed as he was in the loop of the newscasts.

'... a shock as well as a miracle that my son is back with us'.

His reddened eyes surveyed the figure of Endeavor, dressed as a hero, reading his press release.

Standing behind him, to his right, was the boy - the man - whose face was etched in his mind.

He had white hair, speckled with red at the time.

The man pushed back his damp hair with his right hand and leaned forward to get a better look.

The water in his bath stirred and a few ripples overflowed, splashing onto the tiled floor.

His face was streaked with burn marks, so perhaps...

A triumphant smile curled his lips.

There, just at the corner of his left cheekbone, was a pale scar, like a furrow cut into one of the last pieces of skin that was actually skin.

Yes, it was the same man from eleven years ago, without a shadow of doubt.

He would never forget the shape of that particular scar, almost like a straightened comma, resulting from his hesitation in stabbing Touya Todoroki in the eye.

He'd spent the next two summers wishing he'd smashed his skull, and the next eight years consoling himself with his death.

But now...

He sank back into his bath until his back was against the wall, his two arms outstretched on either side of the tub.

Another shower of ash fell on his left shoulder.

He didn't even bother to sweep it away and took a long drag.

Not that he could feel anything, anyway.

'... under extreme surveillance and house arrest. A judicial inquiry will be opened and he will be punished for his crimes, have no doubt about it'.

The man chuckled.

Any savvy hero could see that 'the case of Endeavor's son, a former criminal and member of a terrorist organisation' would never amount to anything.

Corruption ran deep, even more so when you were the second Peace Symbol.

The conference ended and it was time for the journalists' questions.

All were surprisingly docile and their questions harmless.

The man thought about the second child of Endeavor, the one who was at Yuei and who hadn't been at the 'warm family reunion'.

No one asked about him.

He rolled his eyes and switched off the television.

He stubbed out the cigarette in the bath and went out, wrapping a towel around his waist.

He stopped in front of the mirror, his eyes glued to his chest as if he were ten years old again, getting used to the idea that his body would never be the same - that he would never be the same.

His hand slid down his torso.

Scars ran down his left side, from his lower thigh to his neck, almost to his earlobe.

He ran his hand over the burns and sutures and the stiff, dry skin that had been grafted onto him, remembering the two years of suffering he'd spent in the hospital, believing he'd never get out.

His wings quivered furiously.

*

The air was cold, even for an autumn morning.

The man's eyes narrowed as he watched the men and women in suits on their way to work, their eyes riveted to their computer screens.

He remained huddled in the cold, wrapped in a torn blanket, sitting next to a laundromat where people entering pretended not to see him.

The traces of their passage disappeared in a few seconds, covered in snow again

The homeless man sighed and counted the coins in his battered cardboard jar. Not even enough to buy a cup of coffee...

And then, in a perfect throw, a large, reddened copper coin fell into it.

He looked up at the man who threw it and who had already disappeared around the corner.

The homeless man stood up, made sure his blanket served as a makeshift baklava, picked up his paper cup and walked away, shoulders hunched.

People shied away from him as if he had the plague, and it's true that he once had the disease, but had given it back to his doctor in exchange for a more promising power.

He didn't regret it: terrorising people in the depths of Africa into worshipping you as a god was less fun now that medicine had made such advances.

He laughed, then suddenly coughed.

He stopped in the middle of the road, his shoulders shaking from a violent coughing fit.

A few people gave him a sideways glance as they passed, but no one said anything to him when they saw the way he was dressed.

He wiped off his lips, tucked his head into his blankets and walked slowly.

He moved away from the city centre, up the river until he reached one of the most run-down areas of Vladivostok.

His perfect memory superimposed the map of the city from fifty years ago onto what it had become today, and he found his way around with ease.

He spotted someone watching him from a broken window, hidden in the dim light.

He heard them moving over the rooftops, felt the echolocation waves hitting his body to identify him and then receding.

The man he was forty years ago would never have accepted such disrespect, especially in a city he had built with his own hands.

Time had made him soft. Weak.

Perhaps it was time for him to revive the man he once had been...

He stopped.

Around the corner came half a dozen men in fatigues.

Machine guns slung over their shoulders, they trotted off in two columns of three before standing at attention in front of the homeless man.

A cold wind blew.

Those hiding behind the windows had stopped watching.

A man in grey military ceremonial uniform, a long black fur coat and a chapka came out and crossed the hedge of honour.

He stopped opposite the homeless man, his arms crossed behind his back.

- Здраствуйте друг

- Михаил. Кажется, ты прожил дольше, чем я предполагал.

The man smiled, then took off his jacket and coat and gave them to the homeless man.

In slightly broken Japanese he said:

- That's quite a way to leave Japan, sir.

The homeless man smiled, and the skin where his lips should have been curled up.

- It was only a temporary departure.

The man's smile widened, and suddenly the homeless man saw again the boy he had given some soup to in exchange for carrying parcels from one end of the front to the other in the middle of the civil war.

- I suppose you're intending to go back?

The homeless man dropped his blanket and pot.

- You've come to the right conclusion, Mikhail. You know me: I've always had a flair for showmanship. I'll have to prepare a comeback worthy of my name.

Mikhail's smile betrayed his excitement and he returned to the Russian without realising it.

- Of course, Tsar

It was time to remind everyone why he was called the Symbol of Evil.