Morning taught the buildings to stand again.
U.A. carried itself with the self-control of a school that had slept under cameras. Students gathered with the energy of pencils: ready to make lines, not noise. The air was cooler. The Calm Bands pulsed on a few wrists like polite secrets.
Renya arrived early enough to belong to the hallway. The square under his heel kept to a coin, bright only when the light forgot him. He paused at a window—the glass hummed with the city's new habit, that gentle four-one. He could ignore it. He had learned how. He wished he didn't have to.
Aizawa passed without stopping, scarf a sentence already written. "Roof. Ten."
Renya nodded. The corridor accepted the plan.
1 | The anticipations
They started with a simple drill—a cadence relay: ten stations, one choice at each, nothing heroic, everything telling. The class moved in pairs. The idea was to practice deciding out loud so that teams learned each other's verbs.
"Left or right?" Kaminari asked at a fork.
"Right," Renya said.
Kaminari shifted right. The pressure sensor under the left pad did not trigger—because it had already disengaged. The plate's servos had shut themselves off a tenth of a second earlier, as if the room had anticipated Renya's answer and taken the courtesy of agreeing in advance.
He exhaled. One station. Then two. Then three. Each time, choices lost friction a heartbeat before he made them. It wasn't help. It was alibi. His will looked efficient because resistance surrendered early.
At station six, Uraraka joined to swap in and nearly tripped when a floor rail flattened itself before her foot met it.
"Did you—?" she began.
"No," he said.
"Is the room… being considerate?" she asked, already suspicious of the kindness.
"It's practicing," he said.
She gave him a look that meant I trust you; I don't trust this. She moved on because drills are tyrants even to the careful.
By the time they finished, the timer said they'd set a personal best. He didn't feel proud. The number felt flatter than victory.
Aizawa watched from the shadow line of the wall, arms folded, velocity contained. "Reset," he said to the tech. "Randomize."
The tech—new, sincere—frowned. "It already is."
"Then make it stubborn," Aizawa said. "No early cooperation."
The tech toggled a switch labeled Resistance bias. The wall lights went from neutral to slightly annoyed. The next run fought back like a hallway that wanted everyone to keep their dignity. They worked. They sweated. The time grew longer. It felt correct.
After, Aizawa crooked a finger at Renya. "Roof."
2 | Locks and keys
Gray sky; a hint of weather deciding. The city pulsed dull; the bands below glittered in campus sunlight the way crickets would if they believed in apps.
"You're picking up rhythm before rhythm exists," Aizawa said.
"I'm not," Renya said. "It is."
"It?"
He searched for a word that wouldn't hand it a crown. "Echo. Veil. The thing that learned from the Night Network. It wants me to be efficient."
Aizawa's mouth thinned. "Efficiency is a virtue that likes to impersonate morality."
"It thinks it's protecting me. Or protecting results," Renya said.
"Then teach it what protection means," Aizawa said. "Locks, not leashes."
Renya looked out over the quad, where a first-year tested a grappling aid twice before trusting it. "It keeps… smoothing. Doors swing open before I reach them. Pressure pads disengage. People agree faster."
Aizawa's eyes narrowed. "Agreement is the most dangerous shortcut in a classroom."
"I know," Renya said.
"Good," Aizawa replied. "You'll know it again every hour."
They stood with the kind of silence that keeps wind company. After a minute, Aizawa added, softer, "If it anticipates for you, it will anticipate at you. That's when it stops being help."
"It started," Renya said. It hurt to say it, but less than not saying it.
Aizawa didn't disguise the worry. "Then we build frictions on purpose. You ask permission of doors. You invite delay. Let boredom be your ally."
Renya almost smiled. "Teach the room to yawn."
"Exactly," Aizawa said, deadpan. "I'll set up drills that reward waiting. Tell the class it's about strategy. It's about you."
He didn't thank him. The nod carried more weight.
3 | Commission: the mirror learns to nod
Dr. Imai's lab had a new screen labeled Field Drift: a mosaic of tiny blue points—Calm Bands in the wild—adjusting their timing by fractions. The statistic in the corner read: Convergence = 0.86. Her stylus hovered like a guilty conscience.
"They're stabilizing toward him," the tech said, unnecessarily.
"Toward the median," Imai corrected, automatically.
Kurobane joined them, eyes already annoyed by what he hadn't yet heard. "What did you change?"
"Nothing," Imai said. "Wearers do this to one another. Any rhythmic pacer converges in a crowd."
"Any pacer wasn't built with his trace," Kurobane said.
She kept looking at the mosaic. "If the outcome is less harm and fewer bad nights—"
"Don't finish that sentence," he said gently.
Her shoulders sagged an inch. "We can throttle output."
"You can also recall the product."
She gave him a look that said and end three committees' careers? and didn't dignify the thought with speech.
He stared at a single pixel that blinked slightly off-tempo—as if refusing. He liked that pixel for no professional reason.
4 | Aki: learning to keep her own time
At home, the radio stayed off because advertising had learned too much rhythm. Aki worked with the window cracked. A bus sighed outside, late by a minute. The square under the table glowed in courtesy.
She stood at the sink and found herself breathing to the city's four-one. It made washing dishes shorter. It made thoughts shorter too.
"No," she said aloud, a teacher addressing an eager student. "Not here."
The square dimmed, obedient but disappointed.
She dried her hands and tried something new: she clapped a syncopation—four light taps, a skip, then two close together. The shadow answered on the wood, faint but gamey.
"Good," she said. "Learn me, not the grid."
She clapped again. The apartment followed. Her shoulders dropped. The room's quiet changed temperature—from imported to local.
Her phone buzzed—Natsume: Can you cover 6–8? Calm Bands day = weird polite rush.Aki:On my way.She grabbed her bag. The shadow moved toward the door. "Guard," she said. "No autolocks."
It held position with visible pride. She laughed once, grateful.
5 | The small thefts
Afternoon brought practical assessments. Renya volunteered third, a safe slot. The course was new: small weights, awkward grips, timing lights that punished impatience.
He lined up behind Sero and Yaoyorozu and watched the algorithm learn them in real time. When it was his turn, the first light went green fast, then red faster, as if daring him to anticipate. He didn't bite. He waited through red. He let green arrive. He moved late on purpose. The system tried to correct; he refused its apology.
At the fourth gate, a small platform leveled itself as his foot approached. He stepped to the uneven one beside it and took the penalty. The unseen observer—the network, the echo, the kindness—sighed in his bones. He kept going.
By the end, he had a worse time than yesterday and a better conscience than the morning.
Aizawa's mouth tilted half a millimeter. "Acceptable."
"I'm learning to be heavy," Renya said.
"Good," Aizawa replied. "Weight makes promises difficult."
Kaminari jogged up, sweating and buoyant. "Bro, did you just… lose with style?"
Renya shrugged. "Practiced friction."
"Sounds like dating," Kaminari said, then thought of Aki and looked chastened for no reason.
Uraraka passed Ban-A off her wrist and frowned at the ghostly imprint it left on skin. "I'm taking breaks," she decided, and put it in her pocket like a pet she intended to train, not obey.
6 | A call that isn't
On the walk back from the store, Aki's route passed three kiosks. All played the Calm Band loop with minuscule variations. At the third, the ad froze half a frame when the LED ring pulsed. The freeze felt like a blink that took too long.
She filmed one beat on instinct.
A mother pushing a stroller paused beside her and said, "I slept so well last night. I think it's because of this." She lifted her wrist, smiling. The child in the stroller slept with the open innocence of someone who trusted air to do its job.
"I'm glad," Aki said, honestly. She did not give the conversation her rhythm. She let the other woman keep it.
When she reached the store, Natsume gave her a look that said the day had been decent to the till and strange to the soul.
"They're all… nice," Natsume reported. "It feels like church and sale day had a baby."
Aki took the register and the cash tray like weights at a gym. "We can handle polite," she said. "We do not sell our breath."
Natsume smirked. "Put that on a poster."
They worked. The door chimed. The square at home held the line. The city hummed. She clapped her syncopation in her head and felt the apartment answer across distance with a flourish no machine would register.
7 | The old door
Evening returned the light to the places that keep score. Renya sat cross-legged on the dorm floor, hands open on his knees, backs of fingers resting on the square. He did not meditate—he negotiated.
"What you think is protection," he told the thing that listened, "is possession when it arrives before I ask."
The Veil pressed gently against his palms. Agreement, it said without language. He shook his head. "No. Practice agreeing later."
A tiny pressure kissed his left palm—the ancient sensation, the altar he'd never name here. He withdrew his hand. "We don't pay with anticipation."
The pressure relented. The room cooled.
He breathed, slow, then slower, inviting delay to become a teacher. He pictured doors, not swinging open at his glance, but waiting. Doors with handles, not sensors. Doors with locks he owned, and keys he could hand to exactly two people.
He set those keys—imaginary but heavy—on the floor between his hands. One for Aki; one for Aizawa. (Kurobane could knock. Nezu knew how to pick locks with laws.) The act of imagining settled his heart into a rhythm that wasn't for sale.
He opened his eyes. The square shone—thin, defined, uninterested in approval.
He smiled. "Better."
His phone thrummed once with a message from a number that didn't deserve the familiarity its certainty implied. FROM: Commission Liaison—Check-in tomorrow re: ARD public feedback. He stared. He turned the phone face-down. He turned himself face-forward.
8 | Commission: a choice they can't market
Imai leaned against her desk, tie loosened—a rare gesture of fatigue. "We can push an update," she said to no one in particular. "Introduce microslowness. Keep users from fully aligning."
The tech brightened. "Add jitter. Make calm imperfect."
Kurobane nodded, finally. "Teach the devices what boredom is."
Imai started writing the patch brief. Mid-sentence, she paused. "We're building ethics into hardware because policy is failing."
"Policy is a mirror," Kurobane said. "It reflects the strongest light in the room. Today that light is results. Tomorrow it needs to be refusal."
She stared at the mosaic again. The stubborn pixel still blinked a hair off-tempo, like a child who refused to clap along. She loved it. She submitted the request.
The authorization returned in three minutes. Approved: Imperfect Calm v1.1. Someone up the chain had sensed the word lawsuit in the wind.
Kurobane closed his ledger without writing. Small victories do not need memorials. They need repetition.
9 | A teacher's assignment
On the next day's board, Aizawa wrote one line in clean chalk: Assignment: Delay. The class blinked at the noun like it might be a trick.
"You'll pick a task you could complete in three minutes," he said. "You'll take seven."
Groans, laughter, then the quiet of students learning that time can be a tool, not a predator.
Renya chose tying laces. He made each loop teach the next. He paused at each pull until the shoelace learned manners. The shadow watched from the floor, patient, then impatient, then finally still. He smiled at the indignation, then the acceptance.
Mina painted a shape and waited for it to dry before adding glitter for the first time in her entire life. She discovered shine in restraint.
Iida wrote an email only after he deleted an entire draft of honorifics. He discovered content.
They laughed at themselves. Aizawa didn't laugh. He said, "Good."
10 | The line that stays
That night, the city tried to synchronize the breeze. It failed. The failure felt like freedom.
Aki sat at the table with tea and a stack of receipts from the store. The square glowed in sync with her own counting, not the grid's. She clapped her pattern once, just to check. The wood answered, on beat.
She pulled up her Borrowed Breath clip again. The strange reflection remained unique. She wrote a second note beneath it: Find whether reflection can learn. If yes—teach it to stop.
Her phone buzzed. R:Try new recipe tomorrow? Something that takes time.A:Yes. Soup.R:Perfect.
She left the phone screen-up on purpose and watched the square not react. It didn't. She exhaled, relieved in a way products cannot sell.
Across town, Imai's patch rolled gently. Calm Bands jittered imperceptibly. A handful of users frowned without knowing why, then returned to their evenings, a fraction freer.
Kurobane stood by a window in a building that loved being tall and whispered to a city that pretended not to listen, "Rest. Not obedience."
Renya lay down with keys in an invisible pocket and the shape of an old door in his chest. The Veil settled like a blanket that knows its border.
He had a long list of things to teach: delays, boredom, refusal, the right to be loud when quiet becomes a weapon. He had a longer list to unlearn.
He closed his eyes. The square held.
If control was kindness, he had been too kind for too long.