Morning found his name in places he hadn't put it.
Aki shoved her phone across the table, eyes bright, scarf hanging lopsided from a hurried knot. On-screen, a local blog ran a neat headline above a still frame from the night drill: Rising Trainee Keeps Cool Under Pressure. The image, unfortunately (or perfectly), had caught the moment after the collapse—Renya lowering a volunteer to safety, the shadow polished into a simple ribbon that looked more like a stain of light than a threat.
"'Clean technique,'" Aki read, performing the tone of a journalist who wanted hope to earn its keep. "'Non-escalatory quirk use under interference. Candidate Kurotsuki demonstrated composure consistent with future hero work.'"
"Good adjectives," Renya said, pouring tea.
"Some comments are stupid," she muttered, scrolling faster to outrun the ones that tried to rearrange him into whatever they needed. "But most are nice. And—look—there's a video. Not much to see when the fog hits, but the sound is weirdly pretty?"
He listened. The phone speaker offered something like a bell played from underwater, the same note Kurobane had certainly replayed in a quieter room. Balanced. Unplaceable.
Aki watched his face. "You did that."
"The building did not fall," he said. "That's the only part we should keep."
"You never take credit."
"I prefer invoices," he said, and she laughed because the line was nonsense and true.
Bills still occupied their corner of the table. A light changed on the street outside. The apartment returned to its normal size.
"School," he reminded.
"Bossy," she said, shouldering her bag.
"Accurate."
She stuck out her tongue and ran, and the day remembered it was supposed to be ordinary.
The school day adjusted itself around the rumor of fame like a body around a splinter it didn't intend to reject. Some stares were clinical—is he really different. Some were envious—how do you get attention without asking for it. Two teachers used the word proud with enough caution to satisfy bureaucracy; one asked, very carefully, if the Commission had contacted him with next steps.
"Night drill feedback," Renya said, placing the right amount of modesty on the table. "Nothing formal."
The Literature Club made him read two paragraphs out loud and then argued about punctuation with a fervor normally reserved for sports. Minori shoved a magazine toward him—a small publication printed on good paper, featuring "youth candidates to watch."
"They DMed me for permission to use my photo," she explained, pushing up her glasses. "I said I owned no rights and had no opinions, which is my opinion."
The photo looked like a myth trying to be careful: Renya mid-movement in the park, Veil glimmering. The caption avoided adjectives that would invite litigation.
"Good framing," he said.
"Please don't wring praise out like it owes interest," Minori sighed. "Just say 'nice' like a mammal."
"Nice," he said, and the club applauded, because sometimes the victory was in hearing the correct word in an unexpected mouth.
Across town, an office filled with the sound of quiet arguments. The Commission's conference room owned a curve of glass and a table that reflected power without exaggeration. Three senior administrators sat as if born to chairs; Kurobane stood, hands even at his sides, a folder balanced in the corner of his palm.
"Candidate Kurotsuki," the eldest said, reading the name like a diagnosis. "We've seen the drill footage. The resonance data… is unusual."
"Consistent," another corrected. "He held output under interference and suppressed escalation."
"A neat trick," the eldest allowed, eyes sliding toward Kurobane. "Explain the fog blackout."
"Interference within expected ranges," Kurobane said. "Our resonance device experienced saturation for 0.8 seconds and returned to baseline. Subject remained coherent."
"You recorded a tone," the third administrator said, scrolling a tablet. "What are we hearing?"
"Stability," Kurobane replied.
"Or concealment," the eldest countered.
"Those are cousins," Kurobane said mildly. "Which one pays the rent depends on who you ask."
A pause. The oldest man steepled fingers. "Recommendation?"
"Observation with access," Kurobane said. "Offer him pre-admission mentoring. Ethics, scenario analysis, controlled exposure. Keep him where he can ask questions we can hear."
"And if he refuses?"
"Then he'll ask them elsewhere," Kurobane said. "I'd like the elsewhere to be here."
Silence sifted across the table; decisions rehearsed themselves in quiet. Finally, a signature made the small sound power makes when it pretends to be paperwork.
"Offer extended," the eldest said. "You're his point of contact."
Kurobane inclined his head the exact degree required by protocol and left before his agreement could be mistaken for relief.
Renya's phone buzzed precisely at dusk, as if the message had been timed to catch the hour when most people agree to things they would decline in daylight.
Civil Oversight – Youth Guidance ProgramWe invite you to a six-week pre-admission mentoring series. Weekly seminars (ethics, incident control), field observation, and mock evaluations. Participation improves dossier review.— Agent Kurobane S.
He stared a breath longer than he allowed screens. The shadow slid a fraction across the floorboards, tasting the offer, not because it was hungry, but because appetite studies corridors.
Aki looked up from homework, pencil mid-scratch. "Good news?"
"An invitation," he said.
"Take it," she said automatically, then considered. "Unless it's a trap. Is it a trap?"
"Everything that claims to improve one's future is a trap," he said. "The question is whether the bait is edible."
She made a face. "Your metaphors are exhausting."
"They're accurate," he said, and wrote back: Accepted.
First seminar: a classroom the Commission used when it wanted candidates to feel involved. Twelve students, mixed ages, mixed nerves. A pro hero spoke for twenty minutes about brand integrity and the word role model until the syllables collapsed under their own weight. An ethics officer followed with a slide that asked What does the public deserve? without answering.
Kurobane watched from the back, not in charge, not pretending otherwise. When the hero finished, the officer invited questions like someone offering appetizers at a funeral.
Renya lifted his hand only when three others had failed to form sentences.
"What's the approved difference," he asked, "between preventing harm and punishing a threat?"
The room adjusted around the words. The officer smiled the way one smiles at slope disguised as level ground. "We prevent," she said. "We leave punishment to courts."
"On paper," he said.
"In practice," she amended, "we document our choices."
"And the camera's?"
"We prefer when they align," she admitted.
Kurobane's mouth twitched, a motion too small to classify as amusement.
After the seminar, the students milled awkwardly. A boy with a geometric haircut tried to network with his business card; a girl with quirk-generated sparks carefully didn't touch anything; two friends compared notes on how to be humble in ways a camera could see.
Kurobane approached without angle. "Walk?" he asked.
They stepped into a corridor that made footsteps sound like they had good intentions.
"That question," he said, after the silence had ripened. "Was it theoretical."
"All good questions are," Renya said.
"And the answer?"
"Documenting is not the same as absolving," he replied. "But it's a start."
Kurobane's eyes warmed one degree. "The Commission would like you to shadow a precinct training tomorrow," he said. "Low risk. High paperwork. You'll learn how to be seen."
"I'm practicing," Renya said.
"I noticed," Kurobane replied, and left him with a hallway and the faint smell of copy paper.
The precinct training began with coffee that tasted like policy. Officers led them through a mock response to a minor quirk disturbance—a staged argument over a broken scooter that escalated to a bystander trying to be a hero and ending up a hazard. The lesson was mostly choreography: who stands where, who speaks, who logs, who learns to nod at cameras without performing.
Renya watched the dance and mapped its steps. The shadow at his feet learned too, obligingly shaping itself into non-threatening geometry when an officer's eyes dropped. Shinsou appeared at one point, lurking at the edge of the trainee group; they exchanged a nod that meant useful more than friendly.
"Remember," the trainer said, "most incidents end when people believe they have been sufficiently observed."
Someone laughed. The room didn't.
A small tremor threaded the day. Not danger. Attention. Kurobane tracked patterns from a distance, measuring where Renya placed himself in space, what he chose to notice, what he let pass. Each choice wrote a note in a mental file labelled with neither condemnation nor permission—only trajectory.
Days braided themselves into a rope he could climb. Morning training, school, dojo, job; seminars folding into the nights like additional weights hung with deliberate care. The Veil behaved. The shadow learned patience. Aki refused to let the word famous enter the apartment; she said visible instead, as if the difference could pay a bill.
Somewhere in the middle of the week, a small test arrived unannounced.
A market sign two blocks from the apartment rattled itself loose in a gust the weather had not predicted. The angle was wrong; the bolts were old; calculations failed often in cities. A crowd below negotiated a stall of cut fruit and a dog on a leash that wanted to be a lion.
Renya turned the corner in time to see the sign give up pretending it had another day.
The shadow moved before he did.
It rose—not as a net, not as a dramatic shield—simply as a thicker part of the air above the stall, slowing the sign's fall the way water edits a stone's trajectory. The wood kissed pavement instead of breaking skull. Fruit continued being fruit. The dog discovered humility. No one screamed.
Renya stood very still. The action had been clean. It had also been his power moving because it wanted to, not because he had told it to. Not instinct. Preference.
An old woman said thank you to the world, not to him, which was correct. A child pointed and called it magic. A shopkeeper looked up in exasperation at the bolts and promised to fix them this time, really.
He exhaled. The shadow rejoined him without apology.
"Not again," he said quietly. "Not without me."
It thinned, listening.
The market resumed being a place where onions lived in public. He walked away with the faintest bend in his spine, as if carrying a weight he hadn't signed for and had no intention of dropping.
Kurobane read the report the city files generated from everything: the incident had merits and no useful footage. One witness thought a gust had changed its mind. Another blamed dumb luck. A third described "nice darkness." The words improved nothing and complicated belief.
He closed the file and stared at nothing for a minute that felt like breath held underwater.
Resonance doesn't act alone, he thought. Unless it does.
A notification hinted at a meeting rescheduled to an hour that would please no one. He ignored it long enough to schedule another: Candidate Kurotsuki – Interview Preparation & Media Hygiene. The Commission had ones like that waiting in drawers for potential assets. The form arrived in Renya's inbox dressed in friendly fonts, talking about "narrative clarity."
He didn't expect Renya to accept all of it. He expected him to learn something from refusing.
The interview prep took place in a room with chairs that looked more comfortable than honesty. A publicist with immaculate hair and an expression like polished plastic guided him through questions no one asked in good faith.
"What inspired you to pursue hero work?" she asked, the smile resting on her mouth like a trained animal.
He considered. "Rent," he said.
She blinked. "I'd choose a different word."
"Stability?" he offered.
"Better," she said, relieved. "But add something aspirational."
"Protection," he said. "Of one person. Which becomes two, if arithmetic is involved."
The publicist hesitated, then wrote family on a card and underlined it twice. "What's your quirk's biggest limitation?"
"Light," he said. "And the assumption that darkness is always hiding something."
"That's good," she said, surprised to find something she could use. "Say it again on camera."
He did. The camera translated it into a version the city could digest without indigestion. The clip would air in a week, brief enough to prove he was among the acceptable, vague enough to mean anything if the wind shifted.
Kurobane watched from a window reflection. His own mouth did not smile, but some quieter part of him acknowledged a fact he refused to label satisfaction: the boy could stand under light and remain himself.
Afterward, they met in a hallway too white to remember fingerprints.
"That market sign," Kurobane said, in the tone of someone testing the emptiness of a room.
"Old bolts," Renya answered.
"Lucky gust."
"Luck favors engineers," he said. "And cowards."
"Which are you?"
"Alive," he said.
The corner of Kurobane's mouth flickered. "There's a precinct ride-along next week," he said. "Night. Nothing dramatic unless drama arrives without invitation."
"I'm free," Renya said.
"That remains to be seen," Kurobane murmured.
The apartment smelled like garlic and rice. Aki had decided to cook as if the world owed them celebration. She loaded his bowl without asking and watched closely as he ate, measuring satisfaction like a doctor measures pulse.
"Don't get famous," she said abruptly.
"I'm not."
"You're becoming… easier to talk about," she said. "People say things and I can't correct them because they're not wrong and also not right."
"That's almost accuracy."
"It's almost lonely," she said softly.
He put the chopsticks down. "Do you want me to stop?"
"I want you to come home," she said. "Whatever that means."
"Then I will," he said, the kind of promise that doesn't make sense if you look at it too long but holds if you put it in your pocket and ignore it.
She nodded, not satisfied, but steadied. "Tomorrow I'll fix your scarf," she declared. "If you're going to be on camera, it shouldn't look like a fight lost to fabric."
"Fabric is a patient opponent," he said gravely.
She rolled her eyes and smiled despite herself.
Night colored the city in honest shades. The porcelain bowl reflected a face that cameras liked better than he did. The charm on the table hummed—a small, content note that meant no trackers hunted within its narrow band.
He sat cross-legged and threaded breath through two currents that still did not fully trust one another. Quirk and cultivation touched hands, drew back, tried again. He braided them the way he'd braided the shadow under fog: offset by a hair's breadth, then interlaced until coherence took the place of argument.
The shadow bled up the wall and settled at the ceiling line, obedient. Satisfied. Almost self-directed. He shaped it just enough to remind it of ownership.
"Listen," he said. "Act when I say act. Think when I say quiet. Save without showing off. Learn without reaching."
It quieted. More accurately, it chose to quiet, which was its own problem. Power that obeys is fine. Power that agrees is dangerous in a subtler register.
The phone chimed: Interview slot confirmed. Another chime: Ride-along details attached. A third: a message from Minori that was only a picture of a cat that had failed to fit into a box and a single caption—humanity. He typed adequate and received three eye-roll emojis and a heart, which he ignored and accepted in the same thought.
Sleep arrived without argument. The city practiced sirens at a softer volume. Somewhere, Kurobane wrote a short memo that said nothing and meant everything: Candidate demonstrates narrative control. Recommend continued proximity.
Between mask and mirror, the line thinned until it became a place to walk.
He didn't intend to fall. He intended to cross.