The moment Nana started rambling through the entire sentimental backstory of how she and Matthew had "met and grown close," President Maya felt a visible vein of irritation form on her forehead.
She cut in before Nana could finish. "We're from the student council. You've been absent for a week with no notice — the school is concerned. We're here for an official welfare check."
The familiar, clear sound of Maya's voice seemed to cut through Matthew's confusion. Color rushed into his pale, deathly white face and he stammered, "I — I didn't expect — didn't expect President Hansen to come personally. Please — please come in, sit down, come in."
Maya stepped inside and immediately took stock. Matthew's apartment was even smaller than her own. The living room and kitchen shared one open space, and there was only one bedroom — visible through a half-open door, the double bed rumpled and unmade. Matthew had clearly just been lying there.
Matthew, navigating by feel with his eyes bandaged, tried to straighten up the sagging old couch — and kept knocking into the coffee table, sending empty bottles clanging. Nana moved in immediately to help, sorting through a pile of clothes and socks and tossing them briskly into the drum washing machine by the wall. She threaded a plastic hose onto the tap to route water in, added detergent, plugged it in, and hit start. The ancient machine groaned and wheezed into motion.
While Nana bustled, Matthew fidgeted helplessly — sitting down, then standing at a sound, then sitting again. The small pimples on his freckled cheeks had turned red. Maya said nothing to ease the awkwardness. She simply sat to one side and quietly continued cultivating her chakra.
Finally, Nana dried her hands and perched — pointedly — on a stool next to Matthew rather than beside him on the couch. Maya's almond-shaped eyes executed a perfect, elegant eye-roll.
Maya settled into a seat — reluctantly. She had no desire to sit on a sofa that had clearly seen better days and unknown contents, but basic courtesy was basic courtesy.
"Alright, Matthew Murdock. Tell us what happened. Is it your eyes?"
Matthew's hands knotted together in his lap. He exhaled slowly, several times.
"Hansen — President Hansen, thank you so much for coming. My eyes... I was helping a blind pedestrian cross the road, and — and the truck carrying radioactive material — the material splashed into my eyes. That's what happened."
From the scattered, halting account, Maya pieced together the core fact: Matthew had gone blind saving someone.
"Matthew — that's horrible! Oh, God — why?! You saved someone, you saved a life — how could You do this to him?!" Nana had already broken down, not even waiting for Maya to speak.
"What did the doctors say? Is there any treatment?"
Matthew's voice dropped. "No. The radioactive material damaged the entire optic nerve. Even a corneal transplant wouldn't help. I'm sorry, President — I was unconscious when it happened. I only came around a couple of days ago and my head's still foggy. I thought my father had already called in my absence. I'm sorry for the trouble."
"When does your father get home?"
From Matthew's student file, Maya already knew he had a single father, with no mother in the picture. The pile of laundry she'd just seen Nana deal with told her the rest — Matthew was almost certainly the one who kept this apartment running. His father calling in an absence? That would barely register on the man's priority list. Getting Matthew fed and alive probably counted as a good day for old Murdock.
The bandages on Matthew's eyes were visibly dirty — no one had taken him back to the hospital to change them. After an accident this severe, he hadn't even stayed in the hospital. The state of the apartment filled in the rest of the picture: not just rough, but genuinely poor.
Savings barely existed in America even for the middle class — most people spent every dollar as it came in. You couldn't expect a working-class roughneck from Hell's Kitchen to have a rainy-day fund. Maya's own household had run month-to-month for years. If it hadn't been for Jack Thompson and Maya's own forward planning, Jennifer might well have been like the other women in this block — working a McDonald's shift three days before giving birth, then going back on her feet the moment the baby arrived. Because otherwise they'd both starve.
Old Murdock was a boxer. And judging by the collection of bottles on the coffee table, he was the drink-today, forget-tomorrow type. Counting on him for financial prudence was a lost cause. Better to hope he knocked someone out in the ring and got a decent payout.
Matthew sat quietly for a moment, then said in a small voice, "My father... his schedule isn't regular. I'm not sure exactly when."
"That's terrible!" Nana cried. "Matthew, you haven't been eating properly, have you?! You're sick — you can't just skip meals!"
"Then we'll wait," Maya said. "It's a home visit — there are things I need to discuss with your father. If he's not back by five o'clock, we'll reschedule." She settled back and resumed her cultivation.
The conversation, such as it was, promptly died. Maya had a gift for killing conversations — a master of the cold shoulder, an expert at letting awkwardness bloom. She had absolutely no intention of making small talk to fill the silence. Fortunately, Nana was there — still fussing over Matthew, asking question after question, keeping the air from going completely still.
Matthew, sensing Maya wasn't going to speak again, did his best to respond to Nana's steady stream of questions.
Maya's real reason for staying was the bandages.
She hadn't even made it through the front door before her heightened senses had already told her: the dressings over Matthew's eyes were seeping with yellow pus. When she refined her perception further, she could see it — a dark violet energy moving through the cells of Matthew's eye tissue, eating at them, spreading.
The radioactive material hadn't been fully removed. The capillaries around Matthew's eyes had shriveled and died, and those dark violet energy traces were coming from tiny black particles lodged inside the collapsed vessels.
The hospital had only cleaned the surface. What had absorbed into the bloodstream was beyond their reach.
If I'd already learned Tsunade's chakra Scalpel technique, I could fix this easily, Maya thought. Then again — even if she could, she probably wouldn't do it herself. That would mean showing her hand.