Morning arrived with forms that thought they were caring.
The Commission called them wellness check-ins. A room with a window that didn't open, a small carafe of water that performed hospitality, and two chairs set at an angle designed to prevent arguments.
Renya sat where people were meant to sit. The square kept to his heel like good posture.
The liaison—no name offered, no badge volunteered—smiled with the sincerity of fonts. "Just routine," they said. "Your perspective helps us make training environments safer."
Questions organized themselves into something that wasn't quite a conversation.
"How did you sleep?"
"Enough."
"Any changes in appetite?"
"Predictable ones."
"During evaluation day, did you feel an urge to—how should I phrase it—shape the room?"
"I felt an urge to do my job."
"And your job is?"
"Not making a mess."
The liaison wrote nothing; the tablet recorded anyway. "You're unusually consistent, Kurotsuki-san."
"Consistency saves cleaners time," Renya said.
A small pause to let that land. The liaison rearranged concern into a new sentence. "Some students report post-event 'echoes'—a sense that the crowd is still in their head. Do you experience anything like that?"
"I experience rooms," he said. "They often persist longer than people."
"Do you talk to them?" The tone made it a joke and not a joke.
"I say 'please' and 'thank you' when I move through."
"That's charming," the liaison said.
"It's maintenance," he said.
The water in the carafe considered being poured. He left it undecided. When the session ended, the liaison offered a card with a number and a line—Call if you feel unsteady—as if a number could be a handrail.
"I'll tell my teacher," Renya said, and the liaison accepted the downgrade with a nod that knew budgets.
Outside, the corridor hummed like fluorescent lights remembering a storm. He counted steps back to daylight and let the building have its secrets without applying for one.
U.A. let afternoons practice being quiet again. Training loops, checklists, breath. Aizawa watched from the margin the way weather watches gardeners—root for them, but never lie about the sky.
He saw it very clearly today, because the Commission's questions had sharpened his eyes: Renya's stillness wasn't rest. It was a studied surface. His answers to everything—physical tasks, classmates' jokes, administrative forms—arrived pared down, sanded, polite.
"Move," Aizawa said, setting a simple timing drill that had no moral aspirations.
Renya moved exactly as asked. Not a fraction more. Not a fraction less.
Uraraka smiled at him in passing. "You okay?"
"Yes," he said. The syllable waited at the door of his mouth and chose not to walk further into the room.
Kaminari jogged up after a water break, hair still arguing with gravity. "Interview fun?"
"Efficient," Renya said.
"Gross," Kaminari translated, sympathetic. "Wanna spar? Quiet style?"
"Later," Renya said. "When today stops taking notes."
Aizawa let them be teenagers for another lap and then stopped Renya with a glance. "Walk."
They took the longer corridor, the one that smelled faintly of chalk and old decision-making. Aizawa didn't ask how do you feel. He asked, "What did they really ask?"
"If I am a lever," Renya said. "If pressure makes me generous."
"And?"
"I told them I'm furniture," Renya said. "Useful when asked. Heavy when moved without permission."
Aizawa stopped, turned, studied the boy's face—not the eyes, the muscles around them. "You're not a wall," he said. "You're a door."
"Then they'll want to know who has a key," Renya said.
Aizawa's scarf moved as if remembering its own past. "Make more than one lock," he said. "And change them when rooms change owners."
Renya nodded. "I am."
"Good," Aizawa said. He looked down the corridor, into a slice of sunlight. "Don't get so good at being okay that you can't tell when you're not."
"I'll ask," Renya said.
"Ask before you need to," Aizawa said, and walked back the way work lives.
The apartment spent its morning learning nervous grace.
Aki noticed it first in the way the lamp dimmed when she put down a headache and brightened when she finished an email she had postponed for two weeks. Not dramatic. Not obedient. Attentive.
She held her cup—tea that was trying to be helpful—and set it down on the table. The square warmed a centimeter under porcelain and then cooled, practicing humility.
"Thank you," she said without sarcasm.
The light above the stove remembered it had two settings. She used the lower one, because the day had already taken a lot of higher.
She did the laundry, and the door remembered to close itself when a draft tried to make an argument. She laughed once—small, forgiving—and said, "We don't start closing doors for people, okay? That's how panic makes itself useful."
The square acknowledged. It had learned that word: okay.
Around noon, the building's stairwell produced echoes—footsteps that belonged to a person who had never been late on purpose. They passed. The apartment listened and stayed.
Aki sat with a notebook—and then felt silly for making it paper, and then felt correct. She wrote a header first: Boundaries We Keep. Then scratched it out and wrote: Human Boundaries because stubbornness keeps dignity alive.
She didn't write the letter yet. She watched the room and took notes on its new manners.
The curtain tried to be a door. She corrected gently. The shadow tried to be a hand. She corrected lovingly. The clock tried to be a heartbeat. She turned on the radio, and music reminded everyone what rhythm is for.
By late afternoon, the apartment had learned not to translate every feeling into action. Which put it ahead of most adults.
The Commission called their second session calibration, a word that pretended to love tools more than users. The same room, the same carafe, a different angle of the sun.
"Describe the moment before you decide," the liaison said, skipping small talk.
"There isn't a moment," Renya said.
"Then describe what happens without one."
"I measure cost," he said. "I don't buy on impulse."
"And in crowds?"
"I don't shop," he said.
The liaison looked pleased. "You joke."
"I budget," he said.
They wanted anecdotes. He offered architecture. They wanted feelings. He offered weather. They wanted confessions. He offered manners.
"Do you ever feel compelled?" they tried, gentle.
"I feel asked," he said. "I say yes or no."
"And if the asking comes from inside?"
"I check if it brought identification," he said.
The liaison wrote that sentence down. It would end up in a slide deck and return to him later, labeled self-insight. He would not recognize it. That's how systems work when they're tired.
When it ended, he left the room lighter, as if there are burdens that reduce weight by turning into resolve.
In the hallway, Kurobane matched his stride by accident that wasn't. "Status?"
"Accredited serenity," Renya said.
"Congratulations," Kurobane said. "You've been certified as uninteresting."
"That was always the goal," Renya said.
Kurobane's mouth tilted. "You'll never quite manage it."
"That was always the problem," Renya said.
They didn't slow, didn't stop, didn't get seen. Two men crossing a corridor, neither of them pretending to be a solution.
Evening wanted to be simple. Aki let it.
She cooked noodles because noodles understood schedules. She cut scallions because green makes ordinary look intentional. The radio downgraded itself to background. The window learned to stay.
She wrote the letter at last, because paper is where you say things you want to be heavier than a screen.
R.—You are getting too good at being fine. That's when people fall.I know why you do it. It kept you alive before, and now it keeps you admirable.But I'm not the crowd. I don't want the polished answer. I want the one that makes washing the dishes take longer.
If the shadow helps me, I'm grateful. If it starts guessing, I'll say no. That's not a test. That's a gift: you get to trust me to refuse kindness that turns into control.
When the Commission asks for calm, ask who benefits. When the school asks for calm, ask who rests. When I ask for calm, ask whether I'm scared or tired and answer with tea.
We keep boundaries because love is not a shortcut, it's a lane. Stay in it with me.—A
She signed with a flourish she had earned. She folded the paper, breathed on the seam to make it remember. Then she stood to slide it under his door and—paused.
The square brightened. Just a shade. As if reading the idea of ink.
"No," she told it softly. "You don't read before he does."
It dimmed, chastened, and then—like a child who has learned a trick and wants praise—traced a faint warmth along the edge of the fold, sealing it with attention instead of glue.
She smiled despite herself. "You can be sweet," she said. "Be careful. Sweetness is persuasive."
She slipped the letter under the door and felt the smallest tug—as if the room on the other side had caught it with two fingers and said thank you without speaking.
She returned to the table and let the kettle rehearse competence.
Renya came home with the kind of tired that wears clean shoes. He took them off because clean is not the same as inside. The apartment greeted him with an ordinary that had learned posture.
The letter waited on the floor like a formal invitation that remembered they were family. He picked it up as if the paper were a person. The square, under his heel, brightened once and then lay still—the good version of helpful.
He read at the table because tables are where you say yes to work. He read twice because letters always include the part the writer didn't write. He set it down, then set his palm on it and felt—faintly—a warmth at the fold that wasn't his doing.
"You waited," he told the room. It felt like a compliment. It felt like a rule.
He made tea because the letter had asked for tea without asking. He knocked on Aki's door with two fingers, two taps.
"Enter," she said in the voice of a general pretending to be a sibling.
He handed her a cup. "Warning received," he said.
"Not a warning," she said. "A boundary."
"Boundaries warn," he said. "That's how they work."
"Then call it a promise," she said.
He considered. "Promises warn too."
"Fine," she said, but she smiled. "We'll be precise later. For now, drink."
They did. The apartment approved of the steam.
Later, when she slept and the city rehearsed tomorrow under its breath, he sat with ankles against the line and practiced telling the day no.
He thought of Aizawa's locks, of Nezu's fences, of Kurobane's ledger, of Dr. Imai's graphs. He thought of the liaison's smile and the carafe that never quite poured. He thought of the crowd's breath and the way it had learned not to push when he didn't pull.
"Guard," he said to the square. "Not predict."
It brightened and dimmed in obedience. For a soft, unguarded second, it brightened again—reflex. The instinct to ease his step, turn off a light, close a door he hadn't looked at yet.
He felt it and shook his head. "That's love," he said. "Not warning."
The line settled, chastened.
He lay down. The room made itself correctly shaped around his outline.
Sleep didn't come quickly. It came responsibly. Through the thin wall, Aki turned once and found the middle of the bed because fair is the true opposite of lonely. Somewhere beyond that, a neighbor laughed at a joke that didn't deserve it, and still—laughing helped.
He closed his eyes.
In the dark between body and floor, the shadow listened to the last sentence on the letter, the one written in pressure, not ink. It wanted to help and learned again that waiting is a kind of help.
Down the hall, a fridge clicked. The world continued, merciless and merciful in the same proportions as always.
The shadow learned what love sounded like—and mistook it for warning.