Mio
They made it to Setagaya in twenty minutes. The incursion was a FamilyMart that had folded into a pocket dimension.
The barrier felt like stepping through cold water. Mio's skin prickled. The lights inside stuttered in patterns that felt deliberate. The air tasted like static.
The aisles stretched into long, dark corridors. Somewhere deeper, something dripped.
[Entering Incursion]
[Grade: E]
Rin went first, shield humming with faint blue light. Weight low, steps measured, eyes never resting. She hadn't flinched at a monster in months.
The slimes in the first two rooms were easy. Aoi's daggers flashed silver, popping membranes like overripe fruit. Her hair clip caught the stuttering light—a small silver thing she'd had since middle school, back when she'd sworn she'd never cut her hair.
She'd cut it three months after Integration. Kept the clip.
Mio watched from the back. Mapped the exits without thinking about it. Counted Rin's cooldowns by the rhythm of her shield's glow.
Eight seconds between pulses. Defensive buff wore off after three hits.
The second floor opened into what had been the stockroom. Shelves stacked with boxes that were no longer cardboard, no longer holding chip bags and bottled water. The contents pulsed with faint light.
"Contact," Rin called. "Hobgoblins. Four of them."
They came through the shelving unit on the left, scattering racks of corrupted stock. Hunched. Grey-skinned. Carrying rusted cleavers longer than their arms.
The lead hobgoblin charged.
Rin caught its swing on her shield, the impact ringing through the corridor. Her boots scraped backward across the tile, leaving white streaks.
Aoi flickered. One moment she was beside Mio, the next she was behind the second hobgoblin, daggers buried in the gap between shoulder and neck.
Shiori's hands moved in quick patterns—defense, resistance, then haste. Her lips moved with each cast. Counting something. Always counting.
Wrong order.
Mio saw it before anyone else. The third hobgoblin wasn't charging. It was circling. Moving left while its packmates kept Rin's attention forward.
Shiori had buffed Rin's armor. But armor didn't help against a hit you never saw coming. Haste first—Rin needed speed to turn, not toughness to tank a blind-side cleaver.
And her shield cooldown was about to—
"Rin! Left flank! Three seconds!"
Rin pivoted.
The flanking hobgoblin's cleaver came down in a brutal overhead arc—and met shield instead of spine. The impact drove Rin to one knee. Her bracer strap snapped.
"Mio! Heal!"
She raised her hands. The warmth drained out of her so fast she staggered.
Rin's gauge ticked back to full. The excess bled off.
[Overheal: 25 HP wasted]
[MP: 45/77]
Twelve percent. Mio had burned a full heal on twelve percent.
But Rin was full. And she'd kept her feet. And the hobgoblin was stumbling back, off-balance from the blocked strike.
Aoi slid past and opened its throat.
The fourth hobgoblin caught Rin across the shoulder before it died. She grunted. Kept swinging.
Mio's hands twitched. She could fix that. Should fix that.
She didn't move.
One more cast and you're done. Thirteen MP.
The fight ended ten seconds later. Four lesser goblins went down. Rin stretching her limbs. She checked the shoulder wound that had closed with two fingers. Catalogued. Dismissed. Already retightening her bracer strap.
After the hobgoblin, the regular ones were easy. Nothing to a D-grade.
Mio leaned against the wall. Her hands were shaking.
Shiori's attention snapped back. "Potions would help with that."
Mio didn't answer.
"Math doesn't work," Shiori said. "Never does with F-Grades."
"Good call on the flanker."
Rin had finished checking her shoulder. Already moving toward the back room.
"Hm? Oh. Thanks."
That was it.
Aoi caught her eye from across the room. Her silver clip had slipped—she pushed it back into place, and for a moment their eyes met. Recognition. The ghost of sleepovers and shared homework and a world that used to make sense.
She mouthed something. Nice.
Then turned away before anyone else noticed.
The core was in the back room. Aoi shattered it with a single dagger strike.
[Incursion Core Destroyed]
The incursion began to dissolve. In thirty seconds, this would be a convenience store again.
Shiori was already checking her log. "Quota's done. We're clear for the month."
Aoi wiped her daggers clean. Didn't look at Mio.
None of them mentioned the callout again.
Outside, late afternoon bled purple and orange over Setagaya.
Mio's knees almost buckled. She could go home. Sleep for twelve hours. Pretend the System didn't exist.
Maybe make Nana a real dinner. Something with vegetables. She tried to remember if there was rice left in the cooker.
Then four phones buzzed in unison.
"Emergency assignment." Shiori's grip tightened on her phone. "F-Grade in Meguro. Double rewards for immediate response."
Aoi's mouth started watering. "A hundred fifty thousand each. I can finally afford a new set of daggers." She turned to Mio. "That's half the rent, for you."
"That's just the bounty," Shiori said, already walking toward the station. "Cores and fragments are where the real money is. Even an F-Grade drops materials worth twice the clear bonus."
Half the rent. Two months behind, and the letters from the ward office[1] were getting less polite. Unsuitable living conditions. Minor in the household. Review of guardianship status.
Mio thought about the two-thousand-yen note she'd left on the counter for Nana. Enough for a bento. Not enough for a future.
"I can sit this one out." Her voice trembled. "You three don't need me for an F-Grade."
"No." Aoi grabbed her hand. Her palm was warm. Callus-hardened. "We go together. It's an F-Grade—you won't need to cast at all."
"I'm almost empty. One heal and I'm done."
"Then don't get hit." Rin's arm hooked around Mio's shoulders, already steering her toward the station. "F-Grade. In and out. Thirty minutes."
Thirty minutes. You can survive thirty minutes.
Mio looked at them. Three girls who had actually found their footing in this new world. Who needed a healer for party composition.
But Aoi's hand was still holding hers.
And Nana was at home. Alone. Eating whatever she could find because her sister couldn't keep the lights on.
She looked at the sky.
A hundred fifty thousand yen. Half the rent. One more month before they took Nana away.
One more incursion.
"Fine," she whispered. "One more."
Meguro was three stops on the Yamanote Line.
Aoi chattered the whole way—about the shoes she'd buy with her cut, about a guy in her building who kept leaving notes on her door, about the ramen place near the station that had survived Integration somehow.
The same breathless energy she'd had in middle school, filling silences before they could get heavy.
Mio let the words wash over her. Nodded in the right places.
Shiori sat across from them, phone out, running numbers on something. Her nails tapped the screen in precise rhythms. Every few seconds, her lips moved. Counting.
Rin stood by the doors, watching the stations pass. She hadn't sat down once.
Fifteen minutes. The train slowed.
The Meguro branch entrance pulsed as they approached.
The barrier shimmered green instead of the standard blue-white. Just for a second.
The air tasted like static. The same taste from Setagaya—but sharper. Deeper.
Mio's mana stirred. The faintest twitch—like a muscle she didn't know she had, responding to a sound too low to hear.
She stopped walking.
"Hey." She reached for Aoi's sleeve. "Did you see—"
"See what?"
The barrier was blue again. Normal. Stable.
Aoi was already stepping through, laughing at something Rin said. Shiori followed, phone finally pocketed, fingers still tapping against her thigh.
Their faces unchanged. Still joking about easy money.
Mio stared at the barrier.
Aoi's hand appeared through the shimmer, palm up. Waiting.
"Come on, slowpoke. Thirty minutes, remember?"
Her mana was still stirring.
She followed them in anyway.
[1] Local government office handling child welfare and housing. These letters are threatening to remove Nana from Mio's custody.