Morning trained his posture.
It had learned to find him upright before the kettle finished complaining, a blade across his palms, shadow shaped into something even the skeptical would call elegant. The Veil settled with no fray at the edges; it answered like a uniform that had decided to fit.
Aki watched from the doorway as he shifted weight through a sequence so precise it made the air hold still. "You've been practicing 'pretty' again," she said, not unkind.
"Consistency," he corrected, letting the ribbon of darkness trace the arc of the blade and stop exactly at the point any camera would expect. "Pretty is a word you give results when you can't measure them."
She crossed to the table, where a flier lay beneath his notes: U.A. PREP FAIR – Youth Clinics, Safety Demos, Entrance Guidance. The fonts were cheerful enough to forgive debt. "They're doing a clinic downtown," she said. "Free."
He glanced at the schedule. Quirk safety demonstrations. Volunteer drills. A talk by a local pro hero whose smile was the definition of municipal. "Attendance gathers data," he said. "Data attracts observation."
"That's the point," she said, poking his shoulder. "You're building an image, remember? Let them see it."
He looked at her. The scarf framed a face that had decided to believe today. "Come with me," he said.
"Obviously," she replied, as if there had been other options.
The prep fair owned three blocks of closed street and the hope that comes with banners. Booths promised free water, free advice, free coupons, and the kind of future that had bar codes attached. Students in excited clumps pretended to be bored in case cameras were watching.
Renya and Aki moved through the aisles like they belonged—a brother reading schedules, a sister whose eyes kept darting to posters that made heroes look like weather patterns with PR.
"Register here for demo slots," a volunteer chirped, wristbands already in hand. "No actual combat! Just basic control—safety first!"
"Safety," Renya repeated, and accepted the band. It sat against his pulse like a reminder that even arteries could be cataloged.
They watched a foam-suit rescue demonstration where a small boy learned to drag a larger bag and discovered the physics of humility. They listened to a lecture on "Public Quirk Etiquette" that boiled down to don't frighten donors. They stood at the edge of a cordoned square while a pro hero posed with a toddler whose balloon understood fame better than most adults.
The air shifted.
Attention is a temperature; his skin had learned the gradient. Somewhere to his left, a mind that counted for a living began to count him. He did not turn. He let interest accumulate like dust. When he did look, casually, he found Kurobane near the registration tent, bent over a tablet as if even his curiosity required paperwork.
Aki tugged his sleeve. "There's a youth drill in ten minutes," she said. "Obstacle sprint with 'rescue elements.' You should—"
He saw what she needed him to be seen doing. "I will," he said.
The volunteer drill was a rectangle fenced by good intentions and plastic poles. Cones marked lanes. Foam "rubble" made picture-perfect obstacles. At the far end, under a canopy labeled ASSESSMENT, three officials took notes with the reverence of monks transcribing a saint's grocery list.
Kurobane stood behind them, not hiding, not playing official, simply present. A coin spun once between his fingers and vanished. It had no meaning except the meaning of control.
"Name?" a registrar asked.
"Kurotsuki," Renya said. "Renya."
"Quirk?"
"Shadow manipulation," he said, bland as oatmeal. "Fine control. No offensive discharge."
"Good," the registrar said. "Keep it gentle."
He stepped into lane three. Two other teens took lanes one and four: a girl with telescoping limbs that made physics a petition and a boy who produced small gusts with each exhale. The whistle blew. Motion became negotiation.
He chose the pace of competence—not too fast, not performative. A ribbon of shadow spooled under his shoes, smoothing footing across the first scatter of foam stones. At the balance beam, the shadow climbed with him like a handrail no one else could see. A foam "beam" fell in the next obstacle; his darkness caught it, held it a breath, and set it aside neatly. The assessors' pens moved in the rhythm of approval. A small cheer rose from kids who liked the way the shadow glimmered without threatening their parents.
Halfway through, a volunteer stepped into the course—off to the side, not blocking any lane. On his belt: a box the size of a deck of cards with too tidy seams. It hummed the frequency his new charm had taught him to recognize.
Resonance.
Kurobane's face did not move. Neither did the coin, which had reappeared.
The box synchronized with a small vibration in the ground—the kind you get when a generator backstage pretends to have nothing to do with the lights in the front. A projector's mirror flicked under a canopy; tiny motes of fog hissed from a hidden vent near the last obstacle.
A test.
Not the drill's. Kurobane's.
The motes thickened near the finish, innocuous as water vapor to everyone else. The resonance device registered them differently: as noise meant to disturb quirks that relied on fine-tuned senses or… layered fuel.
He reached the last obstacle—a set of foam "slabs" arranged to imitate a collapsed doorway. Beneath the slabs: a dummy with a painted face and a smile so hopeful it was cruel.
Fog drifted. The motes were nothing. The device insisted on making them something.
"Keep it gentle," the registrar had said.
He ignored the registrar and listened to the part of him that had survived worlds by refusing to let other people name the terms of a test.
Veil of Light. He smoothed the shadow so thin it looked like reflection. He split it into three strips, offset by a hair's breadth, then braided them into a thread that could ignore static. Not brute force—coherence. The thread slid under the foam slab and lifted with the honesty of a good lever. He did not "summon" strength; he aligned geometry and let the problem solve itself.
The dummy came free without drama. He carried it two steps as if it weighed enough to deserve respect, then set it gently across the line. The whistle blew. The world remembered to breathe.
Someone clapped from the fence. Children said "Cool Shadow Guy!" without irony. A mother took a photo and didn't worry about whether her friends would think she was endorsing vigilantes.
At the assessment table, two officials compared notes. One circled a line—calm under interference. Another wrote does not escalate. Kurobane's coin never bothered to reappear. He lifted his gaze to meet Renya's across the rectangle.
For one second, neither blinked.
Then the crowd slid between them; the coin returned; the temperature of the air changed by a degree that meant the test had concluded and the examiner had learned what he wanted, which was that Renya could dance under interference without looking like a dance.
Aki collided with him from the side hard enough to shift his footing. "You were—" She stopped. She didn't have a word she liked. "—you."
"Acceptable?" he offered.
She made a face that was half happiness, half scolding. "Don't be boring when I'm trying to be proud of you."
"Noted," he said, and let the corner of his mouth be less disciplined than usual.
He stayed for the safety lecture because walking away would waste the goodwill of people who had already decided to spend it. The hero on stage told a story about a cat and a fire escape; a video showed slow-motion drones hovering over dramatized heroics; a girl ribboned her limbs around a pole and learned an equation about torque and patience.
Kurobane drifted along the periphery, never near enough to be called an attendee, never far enough to be called absent. When the crowd thinned, he stepped close enough for their shadows to shake hands on the pavement.
"For the record," he said mildly, "that fog was part of the rental package. The resonance device, however, was ours."
"Scientific curiosity," Renya said.
"Safety," Kurobane corrected. "There are quirks that look good until they are asked to share space with the rest of the world."
"Mine shares," Renya said. He kept his voice easy. He kept his eyes not easy at all.
Kurobane nodded once, as if a meter in his head had clicked up exactly one tick. "There's a voluntary youth drill next week," he said. "Nighttime conditions. Multi-agency oversight. Real emergency professionals, no PR. Observers will be present."
"Observers have been present," Renya said.
"Then it'll be familiar." A faint smile. "Register if you like. It helps paperwork later."
"Paperwork is a kind of mercy," Renya said.
"For those who can read it," Kurobane replied, and let the crowd take him again.
Aki returned with two paper cups of something that smelled like diligence pretending to be coffee. "He talked to you?"
"He offered an invitation," Renya said.
"You'll go," she said, not asking.
"Yes."
She nodded, relieved and anxious in the same heartbeat. "Good."
The dojo learned the story from his movement before he told it with words. The master watched a sequence that avoided resistance in favor of cooperation and made a sound that might have been approval if it hadn't been so quiet.
"Fog and noise," Renya said, laying the practice blade across his palms. "I braided the shadow. Geometry ignores static."
"Or forgives it," the old man murmured. "Your solution sounds like water disguised as rope."
"Rope that refuses to fray."
They sparred. He let the Veil do the least, not the most. He wanted to know how honest he could be without being unwise. At a pivot, the master stepped through his guard and tapped his shoulder with two fingers, light as a thought.
"You're thinking about two audiences," he said. "The one that wants to see you pass, and the one that wants to see you fail."
"They are, at times, the same people," Renya said.
"That is why I prefer mats to committees," the old man said dryly. "But committees own doors. So." He lifted his chin toward the blade. "Make the rope stronger. Make the water clearer. And don't forget to eat. You fight like someone who's forgotten salt."
"I'll fix it," Renya said.
"See that you do," the master replied, which was his way of saying I'm glad you're not dead yet.
Night shift again. The store had the flavor of applause after the audience had left: echoes deciding whether to go home or start a second career as ghosts. The charm in his pocket hummed once—someone with a similar device had walked within a hundred meters and then given up, as if reminded their budget had priorities.
He stocked shelves, greeted regulars, learned the lives of strangers by the way their hands held small purchases. A boy in a school uniform bought a single energy drink and a lottery ticket he couldn't legally play. A nurse put exact change on the counter and apologized for being tired. A man in a suit stared at the wall as if walls owed him something and then left without buying anything but the right to be seen leaving.
At two, a van jumped the curb two blocks down. He didn't see it; the store camera did. The camera was bored enough to pay attention. Tires screamed, someone shouted, a second voice said a word usually accompanied by prayer. He felt the air lean.
A choice.
He was off shift if he wanted to be. He was nobody if he needed to be. The mask practiced on the prep fair stage raised a hand and volunteered.
He stepped outside. The van had clipped a construction barrier and stopped at a bad angle. No smoke. No flame. One wheel spun like a small argument. A woman stood on the curb with a child half-hidden in her coat. The driver's door opened; a man climbed out looking at his hands like they had defected.
Renya pulled the barrier back, not with force but with alignment. The shadow slipped under the metal feet and whispered them into a better position. He didn't make a show of it. He didn't hide it. The child stopped crying to watch. The woman said "thank you" like someone who hadn't decided whether to trust the world again.
"You okay?" Renya asked the driver.
The man nodded too fast. "Phone," he said, as if answering a question the universe wasn't asking. "Just looked down—just a second—"
"Keep it for later," Renya said, and helped him roll the bad wheel off the curb. Two more passersby pretended to be distant and then discovered they weren't. In ninety seconds, the scene turned into a story people would tell themselves as proof they lived in a city that liked them.
The charm hummed again. He did not look for the watcher. He let the watcher be fed.
Back inside, he washed his hands like someone with standards and returned to the register. The camera light returned to its usual indifference.
He didn't need the appreciation that bloomed in comments online fifteen minutes later. He needed the fact of it: Clean shadows. Calm kid. Helped without making it weird. A line threading through the rumor tapestry with the patience of someone who intended to be woven in permanently.
By the time the sun interrogated the blinds, he'd slept just enough to avoid physics taking offense. The invitation to the night drill sat on the table where Aki had placed it after retrieving the mail.
"You're going," she said when he entered the room, as if anticipating resistance she intended to practice defeating.
"Yes," he said.
She blinked, surprised into silence. "…Really?"
"Paperwork is a mercy," he said, repeating his earlier joke, and this time letting it be kinder.
Her smile was fast and untrained. "I'll pack you snacks," she said, because care writes itself into the margins where strategy tries to be the only text.
He nodded. "Pack two," he said. "For after."
"For after?" she echoed.
"For the person who watches me and pretends not to," he said.
"Kurobane," she guessed.
"Or someone who believes in him," he allowed.
She considered that. "You… like him?" It was not accusation, though it tried to be.
"I respect problems that don't lie about being problems," he said.
She pursed her lips, then smoothed them. "Okay. Then I respect snacks."
"An appropriate response," he said gravely, and she laughed because he had meant it but also not.
The night drill's registration portal appeared online like a door that considered itself exclusive. He entered his name, his quirk in the least entertaining phrasing he could manage, and his availability. A final screen asked for a headshot. Aki chose one she had taken without telling him. He let her; the image looked like someone the world could be comfortable paying attention to. The shadow in the background was a tidy line, not a threat.
He hit submit. The screen confirmed with the confidence of bureaucracy that had decided to be gracious.
Back at the window, the city practiced being honest—trash trucks making morning music, a neighbor dropping a pan the way gods drop lessons, a streetlight refusing to turn off because some part of it enjoyed being needed.
In the reflection, the boy who would stand under U.A.'s lights and pass their tests stood beside the other thing he carried, and neither apologized for the other. He had not blinked when Kurobane didn't. He would not blink when the exam tried to show him mirrors and call them windows.
"Soon," he told the quiet. "A test that doesn't blink."
The shadow agreed, not because it loved tests, but because it loved what they forced a person to become.