The morning arrived with the subtlety of a jackhammer.
Katsuki stood in the middle of a half-assembled festival ground, wondering how many small-town aunties it would take to collectively break his spine.
Apparently, the answer was three.
He had been handed—no, commandeered into—carrying crates of pickled vegetables, setting up bamboo frames, and hauling an ice chest the size of a coffin across gravel, all under the watchful eyes of a crowd who'd decided he was both shockingly useful and apparently incapable of saying no to elderly women with clipboards.
"Ara, such a handsome man," one said, patting his arm like he was a prized ox. "Strong, too. You married, young man?"
Before he could reply—preferably with something scathing—another auntie shoved a folded tarp into his arms and pointed toward the far side of the square.
Kids ran past him at high velocity, one of them careening into his shin and then yelling, "Sorry, mister!" without stopping.
An old man—no one he recognized—clapped him on the back with the kind of familiarity usually reserved for childhood friends or retired sumo coaches.
He said something about the weather. Katsuki didn't catch it. He was too busy wondering if the knot forming in his left shoulder qualified as a medical emergency.
He grew up in Higashiyama, in a gated compound where the closest thing to neighborly affection was a tight-lipped nod at the end of the driveway. People didn't touch each other. They didn't chat. They certainly didn't enlist you in a community-wide construction project with the same energy as drafting soldiers for war.
And yet—when another white-haired grandmother motioned for him to follow her toward a folding table with a helplessly tangled string of lanterns, Katsuki exhaled through his nose, adjusted his grip on the crate, and followed.
Because apparently, he'd been conscripted into local labor by sheer force of collective elder will.
He was going to sue someone.
-----
Hana had never known joy like this.
There was iced coffee in her hand, a light breeze under the tented shade, and Hasegawa —former boss, current emotional hazard, and general menace to her well-being—was sweating under the sun while untangling someone's power cables like it was a corporate hostage situation.
And she had it on video.
"Tell me this isn't the most satisfying thing you've ever seen," she muttered to herself as she hit send.
[To: Kai]
if ever you need to blackmail hasegawa
She leaned back on the plastic chair, sipped through her straw, and squinted at him. His suit jacket was gone—thank god—but the rolled-up sleeves and visible forearms weren't helping. Neither was the subtle flush on his face, or the way his hair was slightly damp at the temples.
Great. Now her thirst was fighting with her spite. Classic.
He caught her watching.
His glare was immediate.
"Why aren't you helping?" he barked, half-crouched beside a stack of crates like a man considering arson.
She raised her iced coffee and offered him a slow, innocent smile. "You're here."
The vein in his neck did something interesting.
Ren jogged past, arms full of paper lanterns, and called over his shoulder, "I'll tell Maman you just sat there and watched us like an overlord."
Hana didn't miss a beat. "I'll paint your white sneakers a hideous orange."
Ren let out a scandalized yelp and disappeared behind the mikoshi tent.
She went back to sipping her coffee, the straw making a small slurp as it hit the ice. She didn't look at Katsuki again, but she could feel him staring at her. Like he was cataloguing every second she spent seated, every drop of cold caffeine, every smirk she didn't suppress.
Good.
Let him suffer.
She'd spent six months running on three hours of sleep and workplace anxiety. The least she deserved was one morning of supervised manual labor where she supervised.
Besides.
She looked great in the shade. And he looked even better unraveling in the sun.
-----
She had never believed in karma. Or justice. Or the universe being fair in any meaningful way. Mostly because she'd taken the bar exam twice and had once gotten dumped after seven years and a shared furniture set. So yeah. Cosmic balance? Cute theory.
But this?
This was something.
Maybe not justice, but definitely a form of spiritual compensation.
Another auntie clapped him on the back and handed him a stack of crates like she was blessing him with purpose.
Hana lost it.
She actually cackled. Full-body, head-thrown-back evil villain laugh. And when he looked over—glared really, with all the simmering, silent rage of a man who'd never been so thoroughly domesticated in his life—she very sweetly scratched her cheek.
With her middle finger.
Deliberately.
He narrowed his eyes at her. But he still didn't speak. Didn't bark orders. Didn't whip out his command voice or start managing things with that terrifying surgical precision of his.
Because no one knew him here. No one cared.
Eat that, boss-man.
Then, without warning. Without build-up. Without even dramatic music or camera direction—
He pulled his t-shirt off.
Hana's brain short-circuited so hard she forgot how lungs worked.
One second he was fully clothed. The next, it was just skin and muscle and the soft snap of fabric being tossed aside. Her brain tried to recover—tried to be annoyed, or superior, or something—but no.
Nope.
It was buffering.
Because he was walking toward her now. Bare-chested. Serious-faced. Built like the reason HR departments exist.
He didn't say a word.
Just reached the table, picked up a bottle of water, cracked it open, and poured it—poured it—over his head and down his chest like this was a goddamn sports drink commercial and not a community festival involving elderly women and mochi stalls.
The water slid over his collarbone. Down his abs. Disrespectful. Illegal. Gloriously rude.
Then he turned around and walked away, back to the crates, like he hadn't just short-circuited her frontal lobe and rewritten her core memory storage.
Hana sipped her iced coffee.
The straw made a loud, hollow sucking sound. She didn't stop.
She kept drinking even when it was clear there was nothing left but ice and despair.
Because Katsuki's back was flexing under the sun, muscles pulling tight and fluid as he lifted three crates at once like it was nothing. Like physics bent around his ridiculous body just to be polite.
-----
She was still watching when Ren arrived.
He followed her line of sight. Then made a face like he'd just walked in on a crime scene.
"Are you seriously thirsting over your boss?"
"No," she said automatically. Then, after a beat: "Do you think he can carry me home?"
Ren let out a sound that could only be described as spiritual gagging. "I'm your brother! We're not supposed to be having this discussion!" And stormed off in the direction of the food booths, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like "need bleach for my brain."
Hana didn't acknowledge him.
She just adjusted her sunglasses, reclined deeper into her chair, and kept watching.
Research, really.
For HR purposes.
-----
She was still watching him.
Technically, she was supposed to be sipping her iced coffee and minding her own business like a normal adult who wasn't low-key stalking her former boss while he sweated under the sun like some unholy combination of a laborer and a Calvin Klein model.
But no. Hana had the audacity to have eyes and functioning hormones. And right now, they were locked in on his shoulders, which were glistening like some sadistic god had personally said, "let's put extra definition on his back just to spite her."
Then, she saw them.
A small group of women her age, hair blown out, cheeks flushed with excitement, walking toward Katsuki with the energy of a pack of influencers sniffing out a brand deal.
She lowered her sunglasses.
Oh fuck.
The girls who used to call her Medusa in fifth grade because of her curls. The same ones who whispered weirdo in gym class and rolled their eyes when she answered too fast in math.
They had the audacity to approach him—her personal cryptid of a boss turned farmhand thirst trap—offering water like they'd suddenly decided to hydrate justice itself.
They had ignored her, mocked her, labeled her. And now they were cooing at the only man who had ever treated her like a weapon. Fuck no.
She stood up so fast her chair squeaked.
She marched across the grass, stopped right beside Katsuki, and with the air of someone reporting a crime, said, "He eats babies for breakfast."
------
Katsuki did not react immediately. He had, at some point during the day, blacked out a portion of his social awareness to survive the heat, the labor, and the consistent assault on his personal space.
So when a vaguely familiar girl approached—high ponytail, lip gloss, trying too hard—he didn't immediately process her as a threat. Or a problem. Or a situation.
Until Hana showed up.
And announced to a crowd that he consumed infants for breakfast.
The girl turned and smiled. "Sukehiro. I didn't know you were here."
Hana's smile was all teeth. "Right. You're just hallucinating."
He heard the edge in her voice. The tone that usually preceded her deleting someone's meeting from the calendar as an act of psychological warfare.
The girl ignored her. "The fireworks will be next Friday," she said, turning her full attention to him with a sugary-sweetness that made his skin crawl. "I was wondering if you'd come with me?"
Katsuki didn't answer right away.
He looked at Hana.
She was glaring at him. Not shocked. Not pleading. No, this was daring him. She wanted him to say yes so she could verbally immolate him afterward.
He smirked.
Then turned to the girl and said, "Of course."
She squealed and walked off, shooting a finger-wiggling wave at Hana like they were friends and not mortal enemies.
The sound of her teeth grinding was probably audible from space.
She didn't say anything at first. Just pivoted on her heel, marched straight back to her shaded chair, and sat like it was a throne. Like she was seconds away from executing someone for treason.
It wasn't like she cared. Not really. He could go dance with whatever foundation-wearing nightmare from her academic trauma archives he wanted. He could say yes to her. Kiss her. Marry her. Have mediocre emotional sex in a rural love hotel, for all Hana cared.
Except she did care.
A lot.
Which was deeply inconvenient.
Because she could still feel the weight of his stare. Like he hadn't just detonated a jealousy bomb on purpose.
She was still sulking, face locked in what Yuna called her "just got betrayed by the weather" expression, when his shadow loomed beside her again.
"You're acting like a jealous girlfriend," Katsuki said, voice low and maddeningly amused.
She didn't look at him. Just sipped from her now-completely-empty coffee, straw scraping the bottom like a desperate violin.
"No," she said sweetly. "I'm acting like someone wondering if I should've let that girl choke on her own lip gloss."
He didn't reply. Just watched her. For a second. Two.
Then—
"Should I wear a suit on Friday?" he asked.
She rolled her eyes. "Wear your thickest jacket."
"Why?"
"So you suffer."