The co-op meeting at four o’clock didn’t feel like a meeting.

  It felt like a courtroom made of folding chairs, damp jackets, and collective exhaustion.

  People arrived in small clusters, still smelling like wet earth and adrenaline. Some had mud up to their calves. Some carried notebooks. One grandmother brought snacks with the grim energy of a woman preparing for war. The Labor Exchange board stood at the front, still wrapped in plastic, its “Done” column now full enough to look like proof of life. Beside it, Clark had taped up copies—handwritten by him, duplicated by Koji’s cheap printer at home—of the most dangerous pages from Kobayashi’s packet, with the most dangerous clauses highlighted in thick marker.

  NO PRIVATE SIGNING.

  NO “COMMUNITY ACTIONS” CLAUSE.

  FAIR VALUATION OR NO DEAL.

  WITNESSES. NOTES. RECORDINGS.

  Koji paced near the doorway like a guard dog with insomnia. “If anyone says ‘it’s business,’ I’m going to bite them,” Koji muttered.

  Clark stood by the board, shoulder aching, brain steady. He had spent the last three hours doing what he knew how to do when truth was being shaped by someone else: organizing it. Turning it into something a room could hold.

  Hoshino arrived last, like a judge who wanted everyone to sit in discomfort a little longer. He didn’t greet anyone. He simply walked to the front, stared at the packet pages, and grunted. “Good,” he said.

  Clark waited until the room was mostly settled, then bowed—small, respectful, not dramatic. “Thank you for coming,” Clark said. “This isn’t about one family.” He paused, letting the words land. “It’s about whether we negotiate as individuals or as a community.”

  A murmur rippled through the room.

  A man in the second row—older, tired eyes—shifted uncomfortably. “We can’t stop it,” he muttered. “They have lawyers.”

  Koji opened his mouth. Clark lifted a hand gently.

  “We don’t have to stop everything,” Clark said calmly. “We have to stop the worst version of it.” He tapped the highlighted clause. “This,” he said, “is designed to isolate people and punish cooperation.” He looked at the room. “If one person signs this, it becomes a precedent. If ten people refuse it together, it becomes a negotiation.”

  A woman near the back swallowed. “What if they retaliate?” she asked quietly.

  Clark didn’t pretend. “They might,” he said. “That’s why we document. That’s why we keep records. That’s why we don’t meet alone.”

  Koji held up his phone like an offering. “I’m recording everything,” Koji announced. “If they sneeze wrong, it’s on camera.”

  A few people actually laughed—tired, nervous laughter that released pressure without dissolving it.

  Hoshino cleared his throat. The room quieted instantly. “This man,” Hoshino said, gesturing toward Clark with a jerky thumb, “is annoying.” Koji whispered, “True,” under his breath. Hoshino glared at him. Koji stopped existing.

  Hoshino continued, voice blunt. “But he’s right. They want us quiet. They want us ashamed. They want each of us to think we’re the only one drowning.” His eyes moved across the room like a slow blade. “We’re not.”

  A murmur of agreement.

  Someone spoke up. “I got approached last month,” a man admitted, voice low. Heads turned. He looked embarrassed, jaw tight. “I didn’t sign,” he added quickly, as if refusing was an honor badge. “But they came again. And again.”

  Another voice, softer: “They came to my cousin.”

  Then another: “They came to my brother.”

  The dam cracked. Not with tears. With stories.

  Clark listened, letting them speak without interruption. Koji’s job, he’d learned, was to look intimidating enough that no one tried to shut the stories down. Koji did his job enthusiastically.

  By the end of the hour, the room had something it hadn’t had before: a shared map of pressure points. Who had been contacted. What language was used. What deadlines were given. Where the “help” turned into a trap.

  Clark wrote it all down on a second board—names voluntary, details concrete. He asked permission before writing anything identifying. He wasn’t a journalist here, not officially—but he was still someone who believed truth mattered more when it could be repeated accurately.

  When the meeting ended, they didn’t applaud. They didn’t celebrate. They simply left with different expressions than they’d arrived with—still tired, still worried, but less alone.

  As the last people drifted out, Hoshino approached Clark and Koji. “Good,” Hoshino said again, as if it was the only praise he knew.

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  Koji blinked, almost offended by the warmth. “Did you just compliment us?” Koji asked.

  Hoshino glared. “Don’t get arrogant,” Hoshino snapped. “We’re still drowning.”

  Clark nodded. “Yes,” Clark said. “But now we’re drowning together.”

  Hoshino’s expression tightened in something like approval and annoyance at the same time. “Annoying,” he repeated, then walked out.

  Koji watched him go, then looked at Clark. “Okay,” Koji said slowly. “You might actually be changing this place.”

  Clark’s stomach tightened at the thought. Change invited reaction. Reaction invited danger.

  And Kobayashi had already slipped the mask once.

  You’re not Takumi, are you?

  Clark’s chest felt heavy.

  He needed something—anything—to anchor him back to normal life.

  Normal life, apparently, was a child sprinting into the shed like an emergency siren.

  Yui appeared at the doorway, cheeks red, hair messy, eyes bright. “Takumi-nii!” she shouted, loud enough to startle three elders outside. “Come! Come!”

  Koji threw his hands up. “This is why we have storms,” Koji muttered. “The universe is punishing us.”

  Clark blinked. “What’s wrong?” he asked, already moving.

  Yui grabbed his sleeve and tugged hard. “Nothing’s wrong!” she said. “Something is amazing!”

  Clark followed, shoulder protesting quietly. Koji followed too because Koji had accepted, somewhere in the last week, that his life was now “follow Takumi into danger.”

  Yui dragged them down the street toward a small pop-up stall that hadn’t been there yesterday—a used-books truck that sometimes came through villages, selling old schoolbooks, magazines, and cheap manga. The owner sat under a tarp, sipping tea, looking like a man who believed absolutely nothing was urgent.

  Yui pointed wildly. “Look!” she said.

  Clark’s eyes landed on a cardboard display of comics and manga.

  And his blood went cold.

  Because there, sitting casually between an old cooking magazine and a children’s puzzle book, was a glossy cover with a symbol that punched him straight through the chest.

  A red-and-yellow shield.

  An S.

  Superman.

  For a moment, Clark couldn’t hear the rain dripping from the tarp. Couldn’t hear Koji’s muttering. Couldn’t hear the village. All he could hear was the sound of his own identity snapping into two.

  Koji noticed his freeze. “What?” Koji asked, suspicious. “Takumi, why do you look like you saw a ghost?”

  Yui beamed. “It’s Superman!” she declared proudly, as if she had discovered treasure. She grabbed the comic and shoved it up at Clark. “You know Superman, right? You act like him!”

  Koji blinked. “Superman?” Koji repeated. “Like… the American hero? The cape guy?” He glanced at Clark. “You do act like him,” Koji added, tone accusatory, as if Clark had been hiding a cape under his futon.

  Clark stared at the cover. The art style was familiar enough to hurt. Not exactly the same as his world’s comics—slightly different line work, slightly different coloring—but the pose was the same. The smile. The cape. The confidence of a man who could carry the sky.

  Clark’s mouth went dry.

  He reached out slowly and took the comic with hands that felt чужие—foreign, borrowed.

  Yui leaned in, excited. “Read it!” she said. “He saves everyone! He’s so strong! He’s so kind!” She looked at Clark with absolute certainty. “Like you!”

  Clark’s throat tightened so hard it hurt.

  Koji watched Clark’s face shift, his joking energy fading. “Takumi,” Koji said quietly, “what is it?”

  Clark couldn’t answer. Not honestly. Not without breaking everything.

  He opened the comic anyway, because the truth was already inside his hands.

  The first page showed Metropolis.

  The Daily Planet.

  A reporter with dark hair—Lois Lane—standing beside a clumsy man with glasses.

  Clark Kent.

  Clark’s vision blurred for a heartbeat. He blinked hard.

  Yui bounced on her toes. “It’s old!” she said. “But it’s good! The shop man said it’s ‘classic’!”

  Koji leaned over Clark’s shoulder. “This is… you,” Koji whispered, confused. “That guy. Glasses.” He glanced at Clark. “You look like you’re about to faint again.”

  Clark forced air into his lungs. In. Out. In. Out.

  He wasn’t hallucinating.

  He wasn’t dreaming.

  In this world, Superman existed.

  As a story.

  As ink on cheap paper.

  As entertainment.

  And Clark’s memories—the things he had lived, the faces he had loved, the battles he had fought—were here as fiction.

  The existential weight hit like a delayed landslide.

  If he was a character here… what did that make him?

  A visitor? A mistake? A myth wearing a farmer’s skin?

  Yui tugged his sleeve again. “Takumi-nii,” she said, softer now, noticing his expression, “are you okay?”

  Clark swallowed hard and managed a small smile that probably looked more like pain. “I’m okay,” he said.

  Koji stared at the comic, then at Clark, then back again. “Why is this here?” Koji asked, voice low. “How does this exist?”

  Clark’s hands trembled slightly. He closed the comic carefully, as if it might shatter if handled roughly.

  He looked at the cover—the confident man in the cape—and felt something crack and settle inside his chest at the same time.

  A part of him wanted to laugh. Of course. Of course the universe would do this. Take his powers, take his name, then hand him his own legend like a joke.

  A part of him wanted to collapse.

  And a part of him—quiet, stubborn, still Superman in the only way that mattered—felt a different emotion bloom beneath the shock.

  Relief.

  If Superman was a story here, then the idea of Superman existed here too.

  Hope existed here as a concept people recognized.

  Even without powers.

  Even without Krypton.

  Even as ink.

  Clark looked down at Yui, at Koji, at the muddy village that had stood together in a storm.

  He slipped the comic under his arm and said, voice steady despite the hurricane inside him, “Let’s buy it.”

  Koji blinked. “Buy it?” Koji demanded. “Why would you—”

  Clark met his eyes. His smile was small, but real. “Research,” Clark said.

  Koji stared at him, then at the comic, then at Yui’s eager face. Koji exhaled hard. “Fine,” Koji muttered. “But if I catch you crying over a cape, I’m never letting you live it down.”

  Yui cheered like they’d just won a game.

  Clark paid the truck owner with Takumi’s worn bills, hands steady now through sheer will. He held the comic like it weighed more than paper.

  Because it did.

  As they walked back toward the Shibata house, the village looked the same as it had that morning: wet, damaged, alive.

  But Clark’s world had shifted.

  He was no longer just a displaced man in a borrowed life.

  He was a story walking inside reality.

  And somewhere ahead—past typhoons, brokers, debt, and pride—was a future where he would have to decide what it meant to be Superman…

  …when Superman was just a boy in a cape on a page.