Dawn arrived like a quiet test.
Footwork traced arcs across the apartment floor, the practice blade a metronome in his hand. Shadow followed each motion with obedient precision, no flare, no hiss, just the clean line of command met by will. A breath later, Renya let the darkness tighten into a ribbon around the blade's silhouette, smoothing edges, softening the alien sheen of his power until it looked like a tasteful quirk demonstration.
"Veil of Light," he said, naming the trick aloud so the body would memorize it. The shadow thinned to a translucent gloss, almost decorative. Pretty enough for cameras. Harmless enough for interviews. A lie with good manners.
On the table, a stack of notes fanned out—exam formats, speculation on U.A.'s first-stage trials, grainy footage from past years. Combat against training bots. Rescue drills under time pressure. Written assessments no one prepared for until too late. He'd seen enough worlds to recognize a pattern: institutions test obedience as carefully as talent.
Aki shuffled in, hair a rebellion the morning hadn't crushed yet. "You're practicing already?"
"Exams reward punctuality," he answered.
She eyed the blade, then the way his shadow behaved around it. "You look… more like those videos." A pause. "Less scary."
"Intent shapes perception." He nudged the shadow again. It thinned until the blade's outline seemed to glow rather than darken. "People trust light."
"And you don't?" she asked, half teasing.
"I trust outcomes," he said.
Breakfast was quick—toast, a piece of fruit cut cleanly in eighths, tea that forgave the cheap leaves. Aki tucked her scarf, hesitated, then blurted, "Can I… walk with you to the station? Just today."
"Of course."
They stepped into a morning still negotiating with the night. Shop shutters rattled awake; a street cleaner drew wet lines along the curb. At the corner, a boy on a bike hesitated, recognized Aki, and waved like someone walking a tightrope without looking down. She waved back, cheeks pink in spite of the cold. Renya stored the face without comment—joy deserved witnesses too.
At the station turnstile, she squeezed his hand. "You'll do great on the exam."
"I'll do what's required," he said. "Greatness is for headlines."
"Then I'll write the headline," she countered, grinning, and vanished into the crowd.
He watched until the crowd forgot she was interesting, then took the opposite exit.
Afternoon brought schoolwork, then the dojo. The master watched him through the surface of a tea cup. "Your cuts are honest," the old man said. "But your aura has… manners it didn't have last week."
Renya wrapped the practice blade. "Polish," he said.
"Masks," the master corrected gently. "Just don't let them grow into skin."
They sparred once—light, crisp, neither trying to win, both trying to confirm the other existed. On the way out, the old man added, "If someone asks how your quirk works, tell them in the most boring possible way."
"Why?"
"People forget what doesn't entertain."
Sound advice. He filed it under civic survival.
He cut through the courtyard behind the school on his way to his shift. A man waited there, posture tidy as a folded shirt. Mid-thirties. Black suit dyed in professional anonymity. A badge case lay open on his palm, but the emblem was generic enough to belong to any department that wanted to be feared without being known.
"Kurotsuki Renya-kun?" the man asked, voice warm enough to avoid startling prey. "Agent Kurobane. Civil Oversight, Youth Quirk Registrations."
Civil Oversight sounded harmless. Youth Quirk anything sounded eager. Combined, it smelled like curiosity with a budget.
"Good afternoon," Renya replied.
"Mind if we walk?" Kurobane gestured toward the perimeter path. They fell into step in a silence tuned for observation.
"Your file reads as… sparse," the agent said eventually. "Unusual for a student as punctual as you."
"I prioritize present tasks."
"A virtue," Kurobane agreed, and then: "You've never experienced uncontrolled manifestations? Nightmares that made the lights flicker? Whispers when you activate?"
Whispers. The word landed too accurately to be random. Renya blinked slowly. "My quirk manipulates shadow saturation within range and line of sight. Output scales with ambient light and stress. Side effects remain within acceptable tolerance."
Textbook. Boring. The master would approve.
Kurobane's smile lifted by a millimeter. "Well recited."
"Truth reduces confusion."
"Ah. Then one more truth." The agent stopped beneath a camphor tree. "I sense resonance. When quirks… burn the wrong fuel, they sing off-key. Sometimes I hear it."
A breeze stirred leaves into a small applause. Renya let his own breathing set the tempo. "Do I sing, Agent?"
"Barely." Kurobane's eyes warmed, which was worse than anger. "Keep it that way, and we'll never have another conversation."
"Understood."
They shook hands. The agent's skin was cool; his grip measured. A whisper traced across Renya's palm—the sense of being weighed, then shelved. Kurobane turned, merged with faculty traffic, and vanished.
Renya lingered beneath the camphor, exhaled once, then continued to work.
The convenience store performed its nightly hymn under fluorescent light. A student bought instant coffee and lied about studying. An old woman purchased milk and smiled at him with the relief of someone not invisible today. The register blinked approval. Cameras blinked indifference.
At one, the bell chimed. Two men stepped in, neither bothering to hide their appraisal of corners and exits. New faces. Government haircuts, private shoes.
"We're with Civil Oversight," the taller said, flashing an ID too quickly. "Routine follow-up. Heard you had an incident last week."
"No incident," Renya answered, placing a receipt in the tray with a precision that asked for notice and denied meaning. "Only restocking."
"Then you won't mind if we take a look." The shorter drifted down aisle three like an untrained dog off leash.
He minded. He smiled anyway. "Please don't disturb displays."
They did. Questions followed, shaped like statements. Shifts? Alone? Any trouble? Any power fluctuations? He offered answers a camera would approve of and a lawyer wouldn't need to revise.
Eventually they left, trailing the smell of polite threat. The taller man's sleeve brushed the counter as he turned. Something clicked against the underside, subtle as a swallowed syllable.
After the door said goodbye, Renya crouched, reached beneath the counter, and found the gift: a coin-sized disc adhered with putty. Lightless. Weight too honest for decoration. He turned it in his fingers until its seams confessed.
An energy resonance tracker. Narrow band. Sensitive to abnormal quirk harmonics. The kind of device an agency would use to see if rumors deserved budget.
He wrapped it in a receipt and tucked it into the drawer with the porcelain bowl. Later, the shadow would learn its language.
Two hours and a handful of tired customers later, the bell chimed again.
Aki stood on the threshold, backpack slung forward, cheeks flushed from fast walking. "I waited," she said, breathless. "Then decided to bring dinner. The rice was lonely."
He glanced at the clock. "You should be sleeping."
"I will, right after I bully you into eating," she said, producing a bento with triumph far louder than the food.
The tracker pulsed once, faint and greedy, as her quirkless warmth stepped into its radius. Not aimed at her—indifferent to her—yet hungry for anything that made him move. He hated it on principle.
"Thank you," he said, accepting the box. "I'll escort you home."
"I'm fine," she lied, pushing chopsticks into his hand. "Five minutes."
"Three," he countered.
She rolled her eyes and settled by the window, watching rain pencil lines down the glass. They ate in quiet that tasted like victory over small things. Then she bounced up, saluted the soda cooler for no reason, and waved. "Don't forget to lock up."
"Never," he said.
The bell chimed her out. The tracker did not care about the conversation. It cared about patterns. He placed the bento's elastic wrap beside it and smiled without humor.
At shift end, the device slid into his pocket. The street outside had the clean, empty quality of a stage after performance. He took the long way home, listening. Nothing followed but the usual hunger of stray cats and vending machines.
The apartment was dark. The clock muttered at him. A glass sat on the table beside Aki's phone, screen lit by a notification neither of them had read.
He turned it over.
Unknown sender: "Found your brother's ID near the south park benches. Please come claim. Before it gets thrown away."
Aki's last outgoing message, ten minutes old: "Coming now."
The room cooled. Not air. Intention.
Renya's shadow sharpened.
South Park pretended to be safer at night by adding more benches. Lamps ringed the lawn like forgetful sentries; their cones of light didn't touch. He stepped through them as if walking between small, well-behaved planets.
A figure waited near the swings. A second stood under the lamp by the map board. Aki stood between them, a little too stiff, a little too brave.
"We found your brother's card," the one by the lamp said, smile calibrated for neighborhood committees. "He should be more careful."
"Strange," Renya replied, stepping into the nearest cone of light. "I'm usually careful."
Aki inhaled sharply. Relief and fear tangled in the sound.
"Good timing," the other man said, shifting his weight the way wolves pretend not to. "We'd hoped to ask you something. In private."
Shadows gathered, not at his feet but behind theirs. Their confidence was a shape—he could see it now, could almost taste the resin tang of men who had never needed to earn consent.
"No," he said, and the word landed like a line drawn across a map.
The lamp above him flickered once and steadied. Aki's gaze bounced between faces, searching for rules. He'd taught her too much honesty to know how to lie convincingly on command.
"We just want to talk," the closer insisted. His hand started down toward his pocket. "About your little job. About the company you keep."
Aki took a step backward. Asphalt whispered under her shoe. The man nearest her reached out as if to steer.
Shadow moved first.
Not a storm. Not a spectacle. A quiet thickening, a tide rolling over the curb and across the flats of the men's shoes, up their ankles, binding without bruising. They tried to jerk free; their feet discovered loyalty. The darkness shaped itself along Renya's will, smooth, clean, and—heroic. No mouths. No claws. Only restraint.
"Let her walk to me," he said. The words were unraised, unarguable.
She obeyed. Halfway across, she glanced down at the darkness curling under the lamps, then up at him. Fear thinned her breath. Trust found it again.
"Stop recording," Renya added.
"No camera—" the man protested.
"Your pocket says otherwise."
The phone winked out as if embarrassed. Kurobane's men? Or the men who pretended to be Kurobane's? The difference mattered later. Right now, only outcomes did.
"What do you want?" the lamp-leaner asked, strain entering his voice as the restraint tightened. Sweat beaded at his hairline. "We're oversight—"
"You're sloppy," Renya said.
The shadow held them without pain, then constricted a fraction more until knees buckled and pride learned gravity. He didn't enjoy it. He didn't look away either. Aki needed to see the end of this scene look like a beginning for her.
"Go home," he told her softly. "Lock the door. Call if anyone knocks."
Her mouth tried to form what about you and failed. She nodded once, stepped around the nearest pool of darkness as if walking a line drawn by a teacher, and ran.
Only when her footsteps faded did he glance back at the men. "Tell Agent Kurobane you lost the thread tonight," he said. "If he actually sent you, he'll understand that sentence. If he didn't, you should learn his name before you use it again."
"What are you?" the lamp-leaner blurted.
"Homeowner," he said, and released the shadow.
They collapsed to hands and knees, gasping like divers who'd misjudged the surface. By the time they remembered offense, he was gone.
The apartment smelled faintly of detergent and fear. Aki sat on the sofa with a blanket around her shoulders, eyes focused on a point that wasn't there. When he entered, she flinched, then forced herself still.
"It's over," he said, closing the door. "I'm sorry they used you."
"You looked…" She swallowed. "Different."
"A rescue looks different from the inside," he said, taking the chair opposite to keep the room honest. "That's true of hero work and everything else."
"I know you saved me," she said quickly, as if the words might be stolen. "I'm not scared of you. I'm just—"
"New to this angle," he finished.
She nodded, grateful he'd said it for her.
"Sleep," he added, gentler. "We can argue about philosophy after breakfast."
"Promise?" A small attempt at lightness.
"On the condition you actually sleep."
She lifted the blanket like a flag of truce and drifted to her room. The door closed with the careful click of someone trying not to end a conversation.
Renya set the energy tracker on the table. The porcelain bowl waited beside it, patient as a priest. He pried the tracker open, learned its parts, memorized the harmonics it sought. A moment later, the shadow slid over the components and rearranged them into a harmless charm that would tell him if anyone came hunting at night with similar tools.
Television light painted the wall. He let the news pour over the room: a pro hero smiled through an interview about youth outreach; a panel discussed the U.A. exam with the same breathless tone used for storms; a B-roll cut across a hallway in a government building, where a familiar profile crossed the frame. Kurobane. The camera didn't love him. The microphone didn't find him. He passed through the picture like someone accustomed to not needing it.
"If you're looking," Renya murmured to the screen, "look properly."
His reflection overlapped the broadcast—boy, blade, shadow that now glimmered instead of growled. The Veil of Light settled over his power with a satin finish. Acceptable for society. Palatable in daylight.
He stood, rolled his shoulders, and watched the darkness conform around him like a uniform being tailored.
"If they want a hero," he told the glass, "I'll give them one."
The apartment listened. The shadow nodded. The lie agreed to be true long enough to pass inspection.
He extinguished the television, cleaned the table, and poured tea into the porcelain bowl, a ritual gentler than victory and harder than regret. A breath later, the liquid stilled, reflecting a face that could sell virtue to people who required receipts.
"Tomorrow," he said to the quiet, "the mask begins training."
Outside, sirens reconsidered their volume. Somewhere in the building, laughter discovered it was allowed. Aki turned once in her sleep and settled.
Renya lay down, letting wakefulness fade in layers, one mask at a time. The last to remain was the only one that mattered: intention.
He would pass U.A.'s exam. He would teach Kurobane to underestimate him. He would build a public self beautiful enough to hide a private hunger.
For now, he slept without dreams. The shadows kept watch, their edges trimmed neat, their hunger leashed, their eyes—if shadows had eyes—open.