Kudo, a thirty-two-year-old veteran, often thought the word that best defined his post-war existence was consistent.

He worked as a mechanic in a shop owned by his fellow veteran, Bruce. It was steady, honest labor—perfect for a man like Kudo, who had never been particularly good at standing still for too long.

He lived in a modest house right next door to his younger sister, Mitsuki Bakugo. She claimed the arrangement was so she could "keep an eye on him," which Kudo found ironic, considering he was the one who had spent their teenage years catching her sneaking out to see the boy who was now her husband.

Dinner at Mitsuki’s was a frequent occurrence. He even took the time to teach his brat of a nephew a thing or two while they tinkered with Katsuki’s motorcycle. While Kudo had been away fighting a war, his nephew had transformed from a child who thought he was "cooler than All Might" into a university student who seemed to wreck his bike more often than he attended class.

Every day was a carbon copy of the one before it.

Kudo would wake before the sun for a morning jog, head to the shop and stay much later than necessary, and usually find time to grab lunch with his childhood friend, Yoichi, who owned a bookstore nearby. Yoichi had been too frail to enlist, and Kudo was secretly grateful he hadn't been forced to mourn his oldest friend alongside the brothers he’d lost overseas.

He drank beer with his surviving war buddies, fussed over his own bike, and endured Yoichi’s constant nagging about finding a partner—despite Kudo’s insistence that he was far too old and weathered for the dating scene.

And every night, he would fall asleep in an empty bed, doing his best to stifle the memories of the horrors he had endured.

Consistent.

That was until one night, while Kudo worked late, buried deep in the guts of his own bike. A car that looked nearly as tired as he felt crawled to a halt before his service bay. Kudo watched the vehicle give an almost cartoonish sputter before dying on the pavement, as if the poor thing had collapsed inches from the finish line.

The driver’s side door creaked open, and out stepped a boy—likely around Katsuki’s age—who looked to be on the verge of panicking the moment his eyes met Kudo’s.