I sit by the window on the bus.

Outside, the morning hasn’t committed. Store shutters stay down. The convenience sign blinks on a lag, brightening, dimming, brightening again. The glass vibrates with the engine and the city’s restlessness. An umbrella tip scrapes the curb when we pass the stop; the sound makes my teeth itch.

The pocket watch is strapped at my hip under my jacket, tied off with cloth so it won’t clink. Chains draw eyes. Eyes draw the buds. The case stays still against my side. No vibration. No warmth. The minute hand refuses to move.

The bus brakes at a red light and everyone leans forward in the same slow sway. A man in a suit blinks hard, then fixes his tie. A middle school girl presses her forehead to the window and fogs a small oval; she wipes it clear with her sleeve and does it again. One shoelace trails loose against the floor. I see it. I keep my hands in my lap.

The watch stays quiet. Mercy, or calculation. Either one will do.

At the next stop, a bag knocks my knee. Someone says sorry without looking up. I nod back like I belong here, like my body isn’t built around a mechanism that counts. The doors fold open and shut. The bus pushes forward again.

School arrives in a rush of shapes and smells: the gate, the white paint, floor cleaner that tries for lemon and settles into disinfectant. A banner at the entrance snaps once and droops. Wind carries chalk dust, cafeteria broth, and a metallic note that shows up early in my mouth on the wrong days.

I cross the courtyard with my hands in my pockets. If my fingers shake, no one gets to see. I find the edge of the watch through fabric, and the minute hand stays inert. Good. I almost hate it for behaving.

Inside, the hallway narrows the world. Posters, lockers, fluorescent light that flattens everyone into the same tired colour. The clock at the end of the corridor drags its seconds with visible effort. It always has. Today I notice every pull.

:55.

:56.

The watch taps once at my hip—small, private, unmistakably pleased with itself. I don’t touch it. Touch turns it into dialogue, and I’m trying to get through the day without bargaining with anything that counts.

The trophy case catches the glare and throws it back in a hard sheet. In the reflection, students pass in a smooth line, backpacks bumping, mouths moving. For a fraction of a second the glass slips.

A ferry rail stands where trophies should be.

Salt hits the back of my tongue. Engine oil threads the air, faint but wrong. The landing light above the case flickers once—an ugly stutter I recognise too well.

I keep walking.

The corridor offers me chances to turn around. I let them pass. Some surfaces change when they realise I’m watching.

The watch taps again at :57. I press my thumb to the fabric over the case—not to wind it, not to spend it. Just pressure, steadying. Like you’d calm an animal you can’t afford to startle. Like you’d hold a lid down and pretend you aren’t listening for the boil.

Later, I think at it, which is a boundary.

Hiroyuki is already there—placed, expected, part of the corridor the way the exit signs are. He stands slightly turned, not blocking the path, leaving just enough room that no one has to ask permission to pass. Hands folded at his waist. Tidy. Patient. The posture of someone who can seem harmless and still run a room without raising his voice.

He doesn’t wave. He doesn’t call my name. No check-in, no question with teeth tucked behind it.

The morning steadies around him anyway. Light behaves. The air feels pinned down.

Isleen is somewhere behind him. I don’t spot her at first, but the corridor changes in a way my body recognises. My shoulders loosen a fraction, then lock again; the noise of footsteps evens out. A draft that was pushing at paper edges dies in the middle of the hall.

By the stairwell, a dark window panel gives her to me in a reflection. Silver-black hair, clean and blunt as a ribbon cut. She isn’t following. She’s present, and the building treats that presence as a line you don’t cross.

I make my feet keep going.

My classroom is two turns and a flight of stairs away. Every step bumps the watch at my hip. The minute hand stays motionless, listening. Down the hall, the clocks drag toward :58. The buzz in my pocket hones to a point, a small pressure that makes my skin aware of itself.

Juniper’s desk is where it’s always been—two over from the window. That certainty hurts more than it should. The chair is tucked in at the careful angle custodians use when they’re trying to prove the room is under control. The desktop shines. A faint ring in the wood—where a bottle used to sweat through its base—still marks the spot.

No one sits there.

Yesterday’s notes wait on my desk. My pen lifts on habit alone. Without looking, I write Juniper in the margin. Reflex. Muscle memory. A small attempt to pretend the day can be repaired by doing it the usual way.

The ink refuses.

The ball turns. The tip scratches paper. Nothing transfers—no line, no blur, no accidental smear. The page stays clean as if it has never learned her name.

My throat tightens. I cap the pen with a click too intense for a classroom, then slide the page under my notebook.

The watch stays quiet. It always stays quiet for the things I can’t fix.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

Kaede reads from a thin book with softened corners, the kind that has been carried too many mornings and set down too many times with care that borders on fatigue. Her voice holds the room with the same calm she uses to take attendance. The poem runs on weather and counting—days measured out in clean units, the sky reduced to something you can point at and name, as if naming keeps it from changing its mind.

A boy in the front row bounces his knee fast enough to shake his desk. Someone in the back whispers a joke and laughs too loudly, then clamps down on it as if noise might summon consequences. Kaede’s gaze moves through the room in a slow sweep—front row, windows, back corner—checking faces, checking posture, checking that everyone stays ordinary. When she looks at me, she pauses for a fraction. Not long enough to make it a thing. Long enough that my lungs remember how to work.

She shifts the book as if she’s turning the page. She doesn’t. Her tone changes anyway, a small tilt that still reaches every desk.

“Before we start,” Kaede says, “it’s May ninth.”

A few kids blink. Someone pulls a face.

“If you’re the kind of person who keeps track of dates,” she adds, “today is important.”

Then, like she’s handing me a pencil instead of a name:

“Happy birthday, Kohana. Sixteen.”

She doesn’t look at me when she says it. She doesn’t make it a performance. She lets the words sit in the room and stay small.

My fingers jump on the pencil. The tip skids and leaves a nasty little scratch across the page. I swallow. Heat climbs my neck and gets caught under my jaw. I keep my face neutral; faces are public, and this place keeps what it can.

A couple of heads turn. A couple turn away. The moment passes on their faces the way everything passes here, already replaced by whatever comes next.

Kaede doesn’t wait for me to speak. She doesn’t ask me to carry it. She returns to the poem and keeps reading, line after line, as if structure itself can hold a room together.

At a line about a day that “keeps going even when the sky refuses,” the watch at my hip gives one low whirr. The minute hand ticks the glass once, making my teeth vibrate. I keep that reaction behind my molars and give the class nothing.

Kaede reaches the part about leaving. The poem treats it politely, like departure is a clean decision, like you pack and go and nothing in you stays behind. My body reacts anyway. I don’t move, but my skin does that tight little shift it does when it recognises a threat too late to stop it.

Around me, the room keeps behaving. Pens scratch. Pages turn. A phone buzzes and gets crushed under an embarrassed cough. The timetable keeps its pace. It doesn’t care what anyone in the room is carrying.

The wall clock crawls toward :57. The watch at my hip brightens to attention. It likes seams. I press my palm to my thigh—not the watch, just flesh—anchoring myself to the one thing in this room that is mine. The minute hand taps twice, then it settles into a low simmer.

Kaede finishes the poem. The room eases, shoulders dropping, breaths released quietly, desks creaking as people shift. She closes the book and smiles.

“All right,” she says. “We’ll discuss—”

The bell rings a fraction late.

I feel the watch register it. The minute hand draws a small circle against the glass, annoyed. The wall clock jumps ahead to :03, quick and shameless, as if it never hesitated at all. Kaede doesn’t comment. She keeps talking. The class follows because the class has been trained to follow.

I keep my hands flat on the desk so they don’t tell on me. My breathing steadies by degrees.

May ninth sits on my tongue, hard to swallow.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

Between periods, the covered walkway turns the wind into a single direction. It slides through in cold sheets and makes the posters tremble on their staples. The pop machine sits against the wall and does its steady electrical drone; its lights flash in bright, cheerful squares that mean nothing. A couple of first-years huddle by the vending machines, laughing at a phone, shoulders jammed together as if they can merge into one body and keep warm that way.

I keep my route angled. If anyone watches, it reads as habit, not retreat.

My watch rides my hip, quiet for now. The minute hand lies flat against the dial, folded down like a tongue held behind teeth.

Masae catches up as if she’s been beside me the whole time.

She has food in hand—a kiosk bread roll in a paper sleeve already going translucent with grease, a carton of milk sweating cold against her palm. She didn’t have to bring any of it.

“You’re…” She stalls, then takes a different door. “…here.”

“That’s how attendance works,” I say. The words land wrong in my own mouth, too bureaucratic to be a joke. “They take roll and call it proof.”

Masae makes a sound that’s half snort, half rescue. She drags my line back from the edge where it wants to become a cliff. Her head shakes once, quick, disbelieving, and her mouth twitches like it’s fighting a smile.

“Please,” she says. “You’re—” She stops herself again, like she can feel the wrong word waiting to blow. “You’re actually here. Like. In your body.”

“I’m always in my body.” I swallow. “It follows me around like a bad rumour.”

That one hits. Her laugh comes out strong, then softens at the end, like she’s embarrassed she made noise in public. Her eyes skim my face, my hands, the way I’m standing a little too careful, as if the floor might change its mind.

“Did you eat?” she asks, light in the way people get when they’re trying to smuggle worry past a guard.

“I had—” I start, then stop. Lying takes effort. “Not yet.”

She pushes the bread roll at me. “Then now,” she says, and it’s an order dressed as common sense. “Before you do your thing.”

“My thing.”

“You know.” Her mouth tries for a grin and almost gets there. “Where you pretend you’re fine, then disappear into a corner and practise being unmissed.”

“I would never,” I say. “Ghosts have schedules.”

She barks a laugh, too loud for a second, and glances around like the hallway might record it. Wind threads through again, cold enough to raise gooseflesh. The pop machine’s metal panel beads with condensation; water tracks down in slow lines.

Masae steps closer. Her shoulder brushes mine.

Static bites at the seam where her sleeve touches my blazer. The fine hairs at my temple lift. The skin along my arm prickles as if it’s been tapped awake.

Masae freezes.

I match her.

Her eyes drop to the contact point, then snap back up, searching. “Did you—” she starts.

“I didn’t,” I say fast, because speed is safer than naming. “That was you.”

“I—” She swallows. Her fingers tighten around the milk carton until it creaks. “It’s been doing that,” she admits. Smaller voice. “Sometimes.”

“When?” I ask. “When you’re mad, or—”

“Or when I’m trying not to be,” she says, and the honesty lands like a thin crack underfoot. Nothing collapses. The feeling is worse: knowing it could.

At my hip, the watch gives a single interested tap against its case. The minute hand likes thresholds. It always has.

Masae catches my glance. She catches the tell and the fact that I try to pretend I didn’t look. Her mouth twists—warning first, humour second. “Don’t start auditing my weirdness,” she says, but there’s no real bite in it.

“Fine,” I say. “I’ll let it grow up untamed. I’m sure nothing ever goes wrong when Power gets left alone.”

“Quit it.” She smiles, then lets it fade before the hallway can see it.

She leans a shoulder into the pillar, casual posture strapped over fatigue. She looks at the pop machine instead of at me.

“My drills feel different,” she says. “Since—” She doesn’t say Juniper. Her mouth refuses that door. “Since the ferry.”

My stomach tightens at the word ferry, the way it slides into conversation like it belongs. The watch goes quiet again—either respectful or calculating. I can’t decide which makes me angrier.

“Different how?” I manage.

Masae’s thumb runs the carton’s edge, over the crease where the straw punched through too cleanly. “Steadier,” she says. “Like my hands finally know where to go. Like my stance stops wobbling. Like the energy—” She gropes for language that won’t turn this into a miracle. “Like it listens.”

“And you hate that.”

Her laugh comes out flat. “Yeah. Because what does that mean? That it took her dying for me to get better?”

“It doesn’t mean that,” I snap, then sand my voice down before it can cut deeper. “It means you’re alive. You’re adapting. Bodies do it. Whatever we’ve got instead of bodies does it too.”

“Don’t make it noble,” Masae mutters. “I don’t want noble. I want useful.”

“Useful is fine,” I say, and take the bread roll from her hand. It’s still warm through the sleeve. My fingers graze hers on the handoff.

Static again, smaller this time.

Masae looks up. “See?” she says, almost accusing, almost relieved. “It’s real.”

“I believe you.” I keep the words plain on purpose. “Eat something too. You look like you’ve been grinding your teeth at night.”

“I don’t sleep,” she says instantly, then grimaces at herself. “I mean—I sleep less than normal.”

“Same,” I say, too flat. “We’re all doing our best impression of quiet suffering.”

Masae watches me unwrap the bread roll. “You’re going to keep being here,” she says. Still not naming last night. Still not asking anything that would demand a confession. “Right?”

“Attendance,” I say around a bite. “They take roll.”

Her eyes narrow. “Kohana.”

At my hip, the watch taps once at :57. The pop machine’s thin keen doesn’t change. My skin does.

I swallow. “Yeah,” I say, scraped down to the simplest version of truth. “I’m here.”

Masae nods once, then her mouth finds her usual grin again. “Then drink,” she says, shoving the milk toward me. “Hydration matters. Science.”

I glare over the carton. The corner of my mouth betrays me anyway. “Stop stealing my lines.”

“Make me,” she says. The air around her tightens; a faint charge prickles along my skin.

Down the corridor, I catch a glimpse of Hiroyuki again. Hands folded, posture mild, the look of someone about to ask a room full of kids what a metaphor tastes like. He isn’t close. He isn’t hovering. He’s simply placed—exactly where he needs to be so a hallway stays a hallway.

And somewhere else, Isleen holds the building’s edges in silence, the way a locked door holds a boundary even when you’re not testing it.

The bell rings for the next period. The timetable moves on, confident in its cruelty.

I take another bite and follow it.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

Lunch happens anywhere but the cafeteria.

That’s the first mercy.

Masae steers me past the double doors with the confidence of someone running an errand. Wren follows with her stride carefully adjusted to “normal.” Hiroyuki is ahead by half a corridor, never hurrying us, never looking back. He makes the hallway behave by standing in it.

Isleen isn’t in front of me.

She’s behind, and the air remembers how to act.

We take the side corridor with the trophy case. The fluorescent glare catches in the glass and comes back knife-bright. Reflections inside keep trying to do a different job—railings, waterline, a deck-angle I don’t invite and still receive. I keep my gaze low. I don’t feed it. Attention turns into a handle in this building.

My pocket watch rides my hip. The minute hand stays still, but its impatience lives against my skin.

Hiroyuki stops at a door I’ve never had a reason to notice. A/V is scrawled in faded marker; the letters have sunk into the paint. He produces a key with no theatre, no pause that would turn this into a favour. It looks like another small fact the day already agreed to.

Wren checks the hallway once. “If anyone asks,” she says, “we’re checking equipment.”

Masae snorts. “We’re eating lunch.”

Wren’s eyes cut to her. “Don’t hand them the softer story.”

The hinge gives a tired little protest when Hiroyuki turns the key. Inside, folding chairs rise in a neat stack along the wall. A projector cart sits draped under a sheet, its shape half-swallowed. In a plastic bin, cables lie looped on themselves, dark and orderly.

The light in here is weaker; it keeps to itself. The corridor’s noise doesn’t follow us in, and nothing in the air reaches for a second interpretation. The space stays manageable by virtue of its limits—fewer surfaces, fewer chances for the world to rehearse the ferry again.

Masae nudges the door shut with her heel; the rubber of her sole squeaks on the linoleum. The latch catches with a neat click, and the quiet afterwards makes the air feel arranged.

“Congratulations,” I say, flatly. “You’ve all kidnapped me.”

Wren’s mouth twitches—nearly a smile, then not. “Containment,” she says. “With snacks.”

Masae drops her bag and sits cross-legged, like she means to anchor the building through stubbornness alone. “Eat,” she says.

“That’s not an argument.”

“It’s not meant to be.”

Hiroyuki sets down a thermos and a small tin—green, minimal—squared neatly to the cart’s edge. Even clutter learns manners around him. He unpacks the way you set a table when you want the day to keep existing: quietly, carefully, nothing that demands a performance.

No questions. No gentle inquiry that would make my mouth choose a lie.

Isleen takes her place near the door—no lean, no looming—simply present in the exact way she does it, like a frame that learned to breathe. The red eyes braided through her hair blink once, a neat ripple, then still.

Wren crouches by the projector cart and rummages with deliberate slowness, staging the search more than doing it. When she straightens, she has a bakery bag.

The paper is warm. The scent hits the room—yeast, sugar, toasted crust—and my body reacts before my pride can log a complaint. My stomach pulls tight, remembering what it means to want.

Wren pulls out melonpans, lines them up on the cart, then slaps down a receipt-strip of thermal paper beside them.

EAT FIRST.

Her handwriting looks cheerful from a distance. Up close, it reads like an order given by someone who refuses to lose you to a hallway.

Masae points at it with her chopsticks. “See? Official.”

I stare at the words until they blur.

A stupid rule. A stupid little rope thrown across a gap.

My throat aches anyway.

“You’re all ridiculous,” I say, because mean is safer than grateful.

Wren doesn’t look away. “Correct,” she says. “Stay in the room.”

Masae slides her bento towards me. Curry—steam trapped under the lid. Her fingers graze mine on the push, accidental on paper, deliberate in practice, and a faint static bite snaps where her skin catches my knuckle.

Nothing you can see. Everything you can feel.

My teeth register it the way they register weather changing.

Masae notices my flinch and pretends she doesn’t. Her jaw sets for a moment, then she smooths her face back into its usual shape.

Hiroyuki’s gaze shifts to Masae—not to our hands, not to the contact, but to her face. The look says I saw. No alarm. No judgement. Recognition, filed away neatly.

Masae hates being seen like that. I can tell.

I hate that I can tell.

“Your drills,” I say, voice dropping without my consent.

Masae’s chopsticks stop halfway to her mouth. She swallows once, eyes fixed on her curry like it can hand her a safer script. “Yeah,” she says, and the casualness is badly acted. “They’re… louder now.”

Wren’s stare softens by a fraction. Hiroyuki stays still. Isleen’s gaze doesn’t move, but the room shifts.

Masae keeps her eyes down. “It’s stupid,” she says. “It feels—” She cuts the word off, tries again. “It feels steadier. Like my body found the floor.”

My mouth goes dry.

Juniper’s absence as footing.

The thought makes my skin want to leave.

Masae keeps talking because stopping would mean admitting she needs something. “I wasn’t there,” she says, aimed at the wall so no one can accuse her of asking. “And I still—” A quick shake of the head. “I still wake up and my hands want the drills, like they’re the only honest thing.”

Wren taps the receipt once, a quiet knock. “Eat first,” she says again, steady.

Masae obeys. I obey because it gives my mouth a job that won’t turn ugly.

I take a bite of the melonpan.

Warmth first. Sugar next. Then the crust gives under my teeth—clean, crackling—before the soft inside collapses into sweetness that feels unfair. Steam brushes my upper lip. Something in me loosens and betrays me through my nose, a small sound I meant to keep private.

I swallow fast, like I can bury it.

“Don’t look at me,” I mutter, mouth still full.

Wren looks anyway. Hard on purpose. The kind of stare that pins you to the present through sheer audacity.

“Kohana is chewing,” Wren says. “Existing. Participating in society. Keep going.”

At my hip, the pocket watch gives a faint, sulky tap against my belt knot, offended by the idea that bread could matter.

Shut up, I think at it, automatic.

The minute hand waits.

A bell rings somewhere distant—late by a fraction, like it tripped and decided to move on. The sound threads into my ribs. My shoulders jump, then lock.

Masae catches it immediately—eyes flicking to my face. Wren catches the whole chain: me, then Masae, then me again. Hiroyuki lifts his gaze, not towards the door, but towards the ceiling, listening past the noise and into the building’s structure, checking for a miscount in the day.

The watch taps again, firmer.

The minute hand presses its presence against the glass, eager. It loves seams. It loves the moments where the day forgets itself.

I take another bite and chew like I can grind the hour down into something harmless.

The A/V room stays an A/V room.

The projector stays asleep.

The cables stay cables.

No salt in the air. No engine oil. No flicker pattern that tries to teach the light a different job.

Isleen’s calm holds the edges.

Hiroyuki’s quiet holds the centre.

Wren’s receipt holds my hands.

Masae’s curry holds my stomach.

I hate all of it.

I need all of it.

Masae sets an energy gel beside my knee. Coffee-flavoured. She doesn’t meet my eye. “Just in case,” she says, like she means blood sugar and nothing else.

My laugh comes out thin. “You’re treating me like I’m five.”

“I’m treating you like you’re you,” Masae shoots back too fast, then hears herself and winces, jaw shifting like she wants to take the bite back without making a scene.

Wren won’t let her tidy it.

“Kohana goes feral when she skips meals,” Wren announces, bright and cutting. “She gets righteous about it, too. I’m fine, I’m busy, I don’t need anything—meanwhile her stomach is chewing through the walls.”

“Do I go feral?” I ask, flat, because if I make it a joke first it can’t become a wound.

“Yes,” Wren says immediately. “You make it everybody’s problem.” She leans in, voice dropping into the conspiratorial register she uses like a spell. “You’ve got an appetite built for cautionary tales. Put you near a buffet and the building starts losing structural integrity.”

Masae’s mouth twitches despite herself. “She’s not—”

“She is,” Wren cuts in, delighted. “I’ve seen it. One second she’s all manners. The next, two hands, no shame, eating like she’s collecting a debt.”

Heat crawls up my neck. “That’s not true.”

Wren points at my hands. “Look at your grip right now. You’re holding that bread roll like it tried to escape.”

Masae mutters, half laughing, half mortified, “Wren.”

Wren only looks more pleased, as if insults are currency. “And then she wipes her mouth and sits there looking innocent. Like she didn’t commit pastry crimes.”

Hiroyuki’s mouth tilts—one small concession granted under protest. His eyes flick to me with quiet warmth, which makes everything worse, because he has seen it too and filed it under endearing rather than alarming.

I glare at them and take another bite out of spite.

Isleen says nothing, but one of the red eyes in her hair blinks slow, as if the room itself has heard the joke and filed it under allowed.

The normalness is brittle.

It exists anyway.

I keep eating.

I keep air in my lungs.

The pocket watch stays quiet, minute hand contained behind glass, tapping its impatience in mild resentment, waiting for the day to slip.

For the length of lunch, it doesn’t get its way.

For the length of lunch, neither do I.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

I tell them I’m going to the bathroom like it’s a normal sentence.

It’s even mostly true. My body has needs. My brain has plans. The plans put on my body’s needs like a borrowed badge, because badges get waved through doors.

Masae’s chopsticks pause halfway to her mouth. She doesn’t look at the A/V door. She looks at me the way she looks at a gauge that’s been lying to her all week.

Wren’s attention drops to my hands. To my pockets. To the belt knot where the pocket watch lives, heavy as borrowed time.

Hiroyuki stays exactly where he is, composed in a way that feels deliberate. The quiet he holds has shape to it, and the room seems to lean into that shape, edges softening, clutter falling back into place, the whole space taking its cue from him.

“Bathroom,” Wren says, voice light enough to pass for casual if you don’t listen closely. “Two-minute rule. Come back with the same face.”

Masae huffs a small laugh, barbed at the edges. “You’re so weird,” she mutters, and she makes it sound fond on purpose, like she’s insisting the day remember how friendship works.

I stand. The chair legs scrape once, too loud in the small room. The pocket watch bumps my hip as I step away; the minute hand inside makes a small, offended tap against its glass, as if it can already smell I’m about to give it a job.

I open the A/V door, and the hallway light hits my eyes like a verdict.

Fluorescents. Lockers. The long throat of the corridor funneling students toward their next period. The building playing innocent.

My feet angle left without asking me.

Left is the side stairwell. Left is stale air and mirrors that get brave. Left is where you can sit down and let your thoughts lace up their shoes.

I make it three steps before the hallway decides it doesn’t like my momentum.

Isleen occupies the seam where left becomes possible.

Her posture holds the corridor the way a frame holds a threshold: quiet, built to stop impact. The red eyes braided through her hair are closed, then open, then closed again in a slow ripple, like a tide counting what it’s allowed to count. Her expression doesn’t take on an edge.

I stop because my body recognises a boundary even when my mind is drafting loopholes.

“You’re blocking the hall,” I say automatically, because complaining about architecture is easier than naming what I was about to do with it.

“I’m standing,” Isleen replies.

The difference is rude. The difference is the point.

Behind me, shoes scuff. Masae has followed far enough to make the corner feel less empty. Wren is a few steps back, hands in their pockets like they’re casual, like they didn’t just choose a spot. Hiroyuki remains at the A/V door—neither crowding me nor letting the route become mine. Present the way a rule is present: felt even when you stop looking at it.

The pocket watch taps again at my hip. Quicker. The minute hand inside has started waking up, restless.

I keep my voice clipped. “I said bathroom.”

Isleen tips her chin once, the smallest motion. “Then go to the bathroom.”

My molars meet. “I am going to the bathroom.”

“You were going to the stairs,” she says, without heat, without softness.

The corridor quiets around that sentence. Even the fluorescent drone seems to pull itself down a notch, listening. My skin prickles.

A few students pass at the far end of the hall, voices bright and careless—quiz questions, weekend plans, the kind of talk that has never had to bargain for its own reality. They don’t look our way. They don’t see the outline of the trap my brain keeps drawing and stepping into.

I let out a laugh with no humour in it. “Are you tracking my footsteps now? Is that the new extracurricular?”

Masae’s voice cuts in, quick and low. “Kohana.”

My name is a touch at my wrist that stops the drift before it becomes distance.

I roll my shoulders like I can shrug the whole corridor off. “I’m fine.”

Isleen’s gaze stays level. “You tried to leave.”

There are a few meanings to that. They all land.

Something mean loads behind my teeth. Before it can fire, the landing light overhead flickers.

Once.

Twice.

Then it drops into a rhythm my ribs recognise.

Not because I see it, but because I’ve heard this story enough times it learned the shape of my bones. The debriefs. The clipped retellings. The still images that look polite. The gap where everyone’s voices go gentle and careful, like softness can keep the memory from cutting. The corridor here at school that got “fixed” and renamed and scrubbed, like new paint and a different route could turn a ferry into an ordinary hallway again. Like removing the evidence of a thing could be a kind of prayer.

My brain supplies the rest anyway.

A rail. Sea-air. Engine oil. Metal wet-cold that does not belong inside a school.

For half a blink, the corridor smells like the bay.

The pocket watch goes rigid against my hip. The minute hand taps hard enough to feel like a knock from inside my skin. Not the vibration yet. A warning. A foot stamping inside its case.

Wren inhales like they’re about to toss out a line—something bright and barbed—and then holds it back. That restraint tells me everything.

Masae shifts closer. The air around her carries that faint static bite, subtle as a thought. It lifts the hair on my arms.

Isleen glances up at the flickering light, then back to me. Her silence reads like fury kept in its proper jar.

The ferry overlay tries to settle onto the hallway like a film laid wrong. The metal rail wants to replace the locker edge. The seam between floors wants to widen into a drop.

My stomach turns. My hands want to do something. My hands want the minute hand. My hands want to spend time like currency and call it virtue.

I don’t move.

My body keeps trying to complete the old sentence—left, stairs, quiet corner, minute hand, relief—and I can feel the tug of it in my ankles, in the way my knees want to angle toward the familiar dark. My pulse bangs once, hard, like a fist on a locked door.

I make myself turn right anyway.

It isn’t graceful. It’s work. It’s like dragging a magnet away from metal. My shoes squeak faintly on the waxed tile as they pivot. The hallway feels narrower the moment I choose the correct direction, as if it resents being denied its preferred route.

Right is the actual bathroom. Right is fluorescent glare and the sting of disinfectant that lives in the back of your throat. Right is tile and soap and a mirror that, in theory, knows it’s only glass and not a mouth.

My voice comes out flat, scraped down to function. “I’m going.”

Isleen answers without lifting her volume, as if she refuses to give the building anything dramatic to chew on. “Not alone.”

The words hit my pride first, then my fear, then the raw seam underneath both. I snap before I can stop myself, heat flaring up my throat like a match struck too close. “I’m not a child.”

Isleen’s eyes don’t widen. Her posture doesn’t change. She delivers her sentence like a fact written on a form: “Children get excuses.”

For a second, I only hear the insult in it. My jaw tightens. My hands won’t settle.

Then it clicks what she’s offering me: the dignity of being treated like my choices are real enough to be stopped. Like I am dangerous to myself in a way that deserves intervention. Like I matter.

It makes my stomach turn.

I hate her for it.

I need it.

Masae walks with me, close enough to keep my peripheral vision honest, far enough to avoid the look of an escort. Wren drifts along the other side, hands still in pockets, shoulders loose like they’re just wandering and happen to be moving in formation. Hiroyuki stays back, letting distance exist without handing the route to my worst instincts.

The hallway light steadies again. The bay smell fades. Lockers return to being lockers.

The pocket watch settles into a low, sulky thrum, offended that I didn’t let it perform.

The bathroom door swings open, and a wave of disinfectant hits me.

Tile. Fluorescent glare. Sink faucets lined up as if they’re waiting for instructions, and a mirror spanning the wall that’s too wide, too confident.

My throat tightens.

The mirror stays the mirror. It doesn’t change, not yet, but I feel my mind lean toward it the way a tongue worries a sore tooth—testing, pressing, asking it for a different job.

I go to the far stall instead; habit is a small handrail when the big one is missing. I shut the door. The latch clicks. The sound is too loud in my ears.

I sit on the closed lid, uniform skirt tugged tight over my thighs, knees drawn in. My palms press to my knees to keep them from finding the watch.

Outside the stall, someone turns on a tap. Water runs.

Masae’s shoes shift on the tile. Wren’s breath catches, then steadies.

The pocket watch rests against my hip, heavy and contained. The minute hand taps once, then goes quiet, like it’s listening too.

I stare at the stall door until my eyes blur.

In my head, the stairwell waits, patient as hunger.

In the mirror beyond the stalls, the ferry waits, patient as guilt.

I don’t hand either one my body today.

When I stand, my legs complain like they’ve been holding me up for weeks instead of minutes. I flush out of spite. I wash my hands even though they aren’t dirty. The water is warm. The warmth feels like an accusation.

I leave with my chin up and a joke loaded in my mouth that I don’t deliver.

Masae’s gaze flicks to my face, quick and searching. Wren’s shoulders loosen by a fraction. Isleen’s posture doesn’t change, but the air loses some of its edge.

The pocket watch bumps my hip as we walk back into the corridor. Inside it, the minute hand traces a small, sullen loop against the glass.

It wanted the stairs.

It doesn’t get them.

Neither do I.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

After school, the gates swallow the last bell like they’re embarrassed to admit the day is over.

Outside, the street is a shuffling tide of uniforms, work shirts, and people who pretend their exhaustion is the ordinary kind, all elbows and umbrellas without rain. Neon hasn’t committed yet. It hangs in signs and windows like a thought that hasn’t decided whether it wants to be pretty or honest. The air tastes like exhaust and bread crust and that early-evening pause where the city checks itself in a mirror and practices a face.

Wren finds me before I can turn my walk into an exit.

She steps into my path with a paper bag in one hand and a pen in the other, chin tipped up, eyes bright with the kind of glee that means she’s already decided what I’m doing. The pen marks me, a quick, proprietary jab to the centre of my chest like she’s stamping a label on a package.

“You,” she says, and the word is a hook. “With us.”

“I have things to do,” I say, because reflex loves a familiar sentence. I say it the way people say ‘bless you,’ automatically, empty, and meant to move the moment along.

Wren’s eyes cut to my hip, landing on the belt knot that keeps the pocket watch tucked close. Inside its case, the minute hand gives a small, irritated tap against the glass.

Wren’s mouth curls. “Mmh. Listen to you. Things.” She smacks her lips like she’s tasting the word and finding it bland. “We’ll all do your precious little things later. Right now, you eat.”

“No,” I tell her. “I’m not—”

“You’re not what?” Wren cuts in, bright and merciless, leaning just close enough that I catch the faint sugar scent on her breath. Her pen makes a slow circle in the air, as if sketching a trap. “Allowed to accept a bun? That’s a strange hill to donate your blood on, koshka.”

Masae slips up on my other side, curry-scent still caught in her sleeves. Hiroyuki is a few steps back, hands folded around a tea tin. Isleen moves last, arriving in a way that makes the sidewalk feel like it has edges again.

The urge to refuse rises anyway, hot and automatic. Refusal still feels like control. My throat tightens around it like a fist.

Hiroyuki’s gaze meets mine, brief, steady: stay here. It is an offer, quiet as breath.

Isleen doesn’t speak. Her silence settles against the back of my neck like a hand that never shoves and still keeps me from slipping backwards.

Wren clicks her pen once—tick—and tucks it behind her ear with exaggerated satisfaction. “That’s settled,” she says, smug as a cat on a warm counter. “March.”

“Wren—” I start.

She turns on her heel and starts walking as if the street belongs to her and my feet have already signed the paperwork. The rest of them move with her. My body follows, because my body remembers how to move with a group even when my mind is busy making knives out of ordinary words.

The bakery is half a block down, a small rectangle of warmth pretending it’s just retail. The door chime sings when Wren pushes it, and for a second, the sound feels like something that could have belonged to childhood.

Bread smell hits me like a soft fist.

I stop just inside, blinking at the warm light, at the racks of pastries lined up like little gilded bribes. My pocket watch settles against my hip; the minute hand goes quiet, whining into a low hiss because it can’t figure out how to start a fight with cinnamon.

Wren drifts to the counter, paper bag in one hand, pen in the other, mouth already full of some secret sweet they’ve been dissolving for the last three blocks. They slap a receipt onto the glass with the gravity of a court summons.

The baker, young, with flour dust on her forearms, glances down, then up, smiling. “Honey, we don’t accept—”

Wren lifts a finger, gentle as a warning. “Shh. It’s a rule, not payment.”

They uncap the pen with their teeth and write in fast strokes:

EAT FIRST.

Two hard underlines. Then they slide it across the counter like they’re serving a warrant and daring the world to argue with it.

The baker’s mouth quirks. She snorts despite herself. “Ah. That kind of rule.”

“That kind,” Wren agrees, pleased to be understood. “We’re doing emergency maintenance on a girl who keeps trying to run herself like a machine.”

“Wren,” Masae mutters, but she’s smiling. The sound of it lands in my chest and makes something ache on contact.

The baker’s gaze flicks to me, careful in that way strangers get when they sense a bruise under your skin. “Sweet bun?” she offers.

My mouth opens with refusal already loaded. My tongue wants to say I don’t deserve it. My tongue wants to say I don’t have time. My body wants to say please.

Hiroyuki steps closer and sets his tea tin down neatly, aligned with the edge as if straight lines can persuade a day to behave. “Something warm,” he says, voice low. “Something that stays soft.”

I stare at him, at the tin, at his fingers resting beside it like he’s anchoring a small planet.

Behind me, Isleen shifts. The smallest change. No shove forward, no hand on my back.

Wren doesn’t look up when they write the next line.

NO SOLO ERRANDS.

They circle solo so hard the paper wrinkles, like the word itself tried to bite them and got put in its place.

I bark a laugh, and it comes out harsher than I meant. “Oh, come on.”

Wren’s grin flashes. “Mm. No.”

Masae bumps my shoulder with hers, casual as breathing. “Eat,” she says under her breath. “Then you can go back to pretending you hate us.”

“I do,” I tell her, because it’s easier than saying anything that might crack me open.

“Sure,” Wren says, like she’s humouring a toddler with a weapon. “Keep practising. You’re still bad at it.”

The baker slides a tray of buns onto the counter: custard, red bean, one plain and glossy with a sugar crust like a thin armour. She adds a small paper cup of hot milk tea without being asked, sets it near me like it’s already mine.

Wren taps the receipt once—tap, tap—and adds the last line with a flourish that’s almost mocking.

IF THE CLOCK MISCOUNTS, WE COUNT LOUDER.

A tiny star beside it. Then, unable to leave it pure, they draw a little knife next to the star.

I swallow. My pocket watch gives one throaty, bitter tremor, offended on principle at being mentioned.

“Are we starting a club?” I ask, voice too dry.

Wren leans on the counter, eyes glittering like trouble dressed up as care. “We already did. It’s called Stay Annoyingly Alive.” Then, softer: “Membership is compulsory. Sorry.”

Masae snorts milk tea through her nose and coughs, laughing. Hiroyuki’s mouth lifts at one corner, small, controlled, a crack in his composure that feels like a gift. Isleen’s eyes narrow by a fraction, which is as close as she gets to agreement in public.

I pick the plain bun because it’s the least dramatic choice, because picking the sweetest one would feel like wanting it.

The bread is warm. It yields under my fingers. When I bite into it, the softness hits my teeth and my throat before my brain can file it under obligation. Steam rises. Sugar melts. For the span of an exhale, my body stops arguing with existence long enough to chew.

Wren watches the second bite like they’re watching a pulse return. Satisfied, they fold the receipt twice and tuck it into my blazer pocket like they’re pinning a spell to my ribs.

“There,” they murmur, close enough that only I get it. “Now you’re implicated.”

“I didn’t sign anything,” I mutter, but my voice comes out softer.

Wren’s smile tilts. “You ate. That’s a signature. Teeth don’t lie.”

Outside, neon finally decides. It spills onto the pavement in pink and blue and gold, turning the street into something like water. People pass with their bags and their lives, unaware of the small war that just got rerouted inside a bakery.

My pocket watch sits heavy at my hip; inside it, the minute hand goes silent, attentive as a held breath.

Wren scoops up their bag. Masae wipes a spot of tea off her thumb. Hiroyuki retrieves his tin, and Isleen shifts toward the door like a forecast moving on.

“Next stop,” Wren announces, stepping out into the neon. “Convenience store. We buy something stupid, and we keep the world shaped like a world. If anyone objects, I’ll bite them.”

I follow Wren into the evening like I’m annoyed about it.

My body follows, relieved.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

Early evening turns the street into an aquarium of signs.

Neon slides across wet pavement in long ribbons—pink, then green, then that tired pharmacy blue—so the world keeps changing its mind about what colour it wants to be. The air smells like yeast and sugar from the bakery, fryer oil from the convenience store, and somebody’s winter coat still holding the ghost of detergent. My breath fogs and clears in front of my face, a small private weather system I can’t negotiate with.

Wren keeps us moving in a loose herd, shoulder to shoulder, in a way that pretends to be casual yet functions like a ward. A plastic bag swings from their wrist like a flag. Something inside clinks—soda cans, probably. Or those tiny probiotic yoghurts Wren buys because the bottles look like they were designed by someone who hates dignity. They talk without looking back, trusting the sidewalk to keep us together.

“Alright,” Wren chirps, all sugar and threat. “We cross. Bus stop next. Nobody tries to become folklore.”

Isleen makes a small sound that could maybe count as amusement if you’re generous. Masae’s hands stay buried in her sleeves like she’s trying to forget she owns fingers. Hiroyuki walks a half-step behind me, unhurried, as if the street has agreed to behave for him out of sheer politeness. When he looks at something, it seems to register the fact of being looked at.

Then we reach the intersection, and the city offers me a script I can recite with my bones.

The crosswalk sign coughs.

The orange countdown blinks on 9, then stutters into 3, then 8, then 2, like it’s chewing on a sequence and finding it too hard to swallow. The white walking figure flashes on and off in a shy panic. The traffic light across from us holds yellow a beat too long, as if it forgot what decision it made.

A car inches forward and stops like it hit an invisible thought. Another driver leans on the horn, furious at nobody in particular. The sound stretches, warps, and snaps back into itself like elastic.

It could pass for an ordinary inconvenience. That’s how the Ananke buds dress: in something you can explain away if you want to keep your sanity tidy. Plausible deniability is the city’s favourite perfume.

My wrist aches from habit.

My hand goes for my watch because my body has learned this: when the world starts speaking in glitches, I pay with minutes. I pay, I fix, I bleed quietly, and everyone pretends the transaction was mutual.

My fingers find the edge of the strap.

I feel the familiar hinge in my ribs start to swing—the door that opens into duty-shaped self-destruction—

And I catch myself.

Not cleanly. Not heroically. Fingers paused on leather. Breath snagged. Heat rising behind my eyes like an insult. Stopping feels like stealing.

Wren’s rules come back to me in receipt handwriting.

EAT FIRST.
NO SOLO ERRANDS.
IF THE CLOCK MISCOUNTS, WE COUNT LOUDER.

That last line sits in my skull and vibrates.

Isleen notices my hand. She reads shifts in posture the way other people read weather. She steps closer without touching me, a careful distance from my wrist, as if it might bite.

“Stay with us,” she says. “Stay.”

Hiroyuki lifts his gaze to the crosswalk sign like it’s a stubborn committee member. 

“It wants attention,” he murmurs. “Not payment.”

The countdown flips: 6. 1. 4. 9.

Masae makes a small sound beside me, half breath, half protest. Her eyes go wide in that way they do when she’s trying to be brave and her body keeps handing her fear like an unwanted gift.

“That’s… not right—” she gets out, then stops, because sense has nowhere to stand right now.

Wren claps once, loud enough to make two pedestrians turn their heads and then look away like they’ve decided, mid-glance, that minding their own business is a survival skill.

“Hah!” Wren laughs. “Street wants to get cute? Street can get ignored. We move as a unit.”

They lift the plastic bag like a pennant, then jab a finger toward the crosswalk pole, conducting the moment the way Wren conducts everything: like the world is a choir that keeps forgetting its lines.

“Masae, button.” A snap of fingers. “Hiroyuki, use your nice voice.” Another snap, then Wren’s gaze slides to Isleen, bright and wicked. “And you—if Kohana starts offering herself up like she’s paying a toll, you take her wrist.”

Isleen doesn’t bother looking impressed. She shifts half a step, just enough to put her shoulder closer to mine, just enough to make the sidewalk feel narrower and safer at the same time. Her eyes stay on the stuttering numbers.

“I will,” she says, calm as a locked door.

“Hey,” I mutter, because complaining is easier than admitting my throat is tight.

Wren’s smile knifes sideways at me, pleased to be right. “Welcome to the horrors of relying on people, koshka. Try not to stage a martyrdom. It’s inconvenient.”

The crosswalk coughs out another wrong blink. The little white figure jitters, half-formed, like it can’t decide whether it’s allowed to be a person.

Masae steps forward.

Moving your own feet into the space where the wrongness lives is a different kind of bravery than being told you’re brave. She hesitates. Shoulders up, shoulders down. A swallow. Her hand comes out of her sleeve.

Her fingers hover over the button. The metal looks normal, which makes it worse: a grey circle in a grey pole, one tiny point of contact with the world.

She presses.

Nothing happens for a second.

Then the numbers whip through a sequence so fast it turns into a smear of orange light. The air near the pole prickles. The streetlight above us buzzes like it tasted electricity and decided it liked it.

Masae yelps, jerks her hand back, and her eyes narrow.

Something wakes behind them: small, startled, bright. A crackle in the back of her gaze. Her breath goes very still.

She reaches again, slower.

Her fingertips settle on the metal rim around the button with the kind of care you use to hold down the corner of a page that keeps trying to flip itself. Like pinning a thrashing paragraph in place so you can read it.

The pole shivers under her fingers.

Masae’s face does something strange; shock, then a laugh that wants to become tears and can’t decide where to go. “Oh my god,” she whispers. “Oh my god, it—”

The numbers stumble: 7. 2. 9. 2.

Her hand stays there. Steady.

The stutter slows. The orange digits begin to behave like they remember what counting is supposed to be.

Hiroyuki speaks softly, as if addressing an animal that got stuck somewhere it didn’t intend to go.

“Thank you,” he says to the sign. The sincerity makes my skin itch. “Enough. You may settle.”

The streetlight’s buzz eases, like a jaw unclenching. The traffic light across the way stops hanging in indecision and commits to red with a relieved click.

Isleen exhales. Something in her shoulders loosens by a fraction, like she’d been braced for impact.

Wren, incapable of letting solemnity sit too long, digs into the plastic bag and produces a tiny pack of gummy worms, colours so hostile they look radioactive on purpose. They rip it open with their teeth and start chewing like they’re making a point.

“Look,” Wren says, mouth full, pointing the crinkled packet at the intersection as if it’s misbehaving on principle. “Street. Crosswalk. Numbers. Cars. Very thrilling. We cross when it says walk, we stop when it says stop, and nobody pays in blood just because the city wants to audition for a haunting.”

Masae’s fingers tremble against the pole. Whatever was crackling behind her eyes eases, step by step, until her face looks like it belongs to her again. She pulls her hand back with care, like the metal might lunge, or like it might follow.

The countdown displays a clean, sober 9.

Then 8.

Then 7.

My chest does something painful and new.

Relief, yes. And grief for all the times I stood alone at intersections like this and paid in silence because I didn’t know any other way to keep people alive.

The city tries again, smaller: the number flickers—6—then wants to hop sideways into 4.

My wrist aches; habit presents itself like a familiar grip.

I start to lift my hand—

—and Isleen catches my sleeve, steadying me before I can follow the reflex anywhere.

Her eyes meet mine. She won’t let me drop into the old rut and call it duty.

“Count louder,” she says.

So we do.

Wren starts, loud and obnoxious, like they’re heckling a magician. “SIX!”

Masae joins, thin but present. “Five.”

Hiroyuki adds, gentle as a prayer. “Four.”

Isleen, steady as a metronome. “Three.”

My voice comes out rough, like it hasn’t been used for this kind of living. “Two.”

The sign displays a perfect, obedient 1. Wren throws their free hand up like a referee and shouts, “ONE!”

The walking figure turns solid white, finally confident in its own shape. Cars stay put. The world holds still long enough to be crossed.

We step off the curb together.

Halfway across, the air changes. Not in any way a stranger would name, just enough to raise the hairs at the back of my neck. Something in the street registers us and leans in, hungry with expectation. The Ananke bud had been waiting for one quiet offering; it meets four sets of footsteps moving as one, and the math in it has to scramble. It was built for a single loss. It gets a chorus instead.

The countdown hits 0. The minute hand I can feel even without looking stirs, satisfied because I didn’t pay. Because time stays something I live inside instead of something I tear off myself and throw like meat.

At the far curb, we stop as a cluster, shoes scuffing damp concrete.

Masae stares back at the crosswalk sign like it might start talking again. “I…” Her voice catches on itself, suddenly too large for the space behind her teeth. “I did that.”

Wren bumps her shoulder, gently. “You did,” they say, bright and satisfied. “Weird little wizard.”

Masae huffs a laugh that breaks into something close to a sob; she clamps her mouth shut, embarrassed.

Hiroyuki watches her with quiet warmth. “Surprise is appropriate,” he says. “It means you’ve met a part of yourself you hadn’t fully seen.”

Isleen doesn’t give the crosswalk another glance. The pole can count or choke; traffic can inch or blare. Her attention stays on me like she’s taking my measurements by sight—pupil, breath, the set of my shoulders, the way my hand keeps wanting to remember its old route back to my wrist. She isn’t here for the errand; she’s here for what the errand tries to do to me.

“How many minutes did it ask for?” Isleen asks.

I flex my fingers. My wrist feels like mine. Not a marketplace. Not a wound.

“One,” I say.

Wren makes a satisfied sound. “Courtesy,” they declare. “Not tribute.”

I nod, and the nod surprises me with its honesty.

Something inside me closes without slamming. A latch clicks. The old script—fix it, spend, bleed—gets folded and set aside. 

We start walking again. Streetlights paint us in alternating colours like we’re moving through a slow scan. Wren talks about the gummy worms as if it were the most serious topic on earth. Masae keeps opening and closing her hand. Hiroyuki asks one careful question about what the touch felt like, and listens as if the answer matters. Isleen walks close enough that my sleeve brushes her coat now and then, accidental reassurance.

And me—

I keep my hand off my watch.

I let the weight stay shared.

Nothing catastrophic happens.

That might be the strangest miracle of all.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

We make it another block before the adrenaline lets go of my throat.

The crosswalk is behind us, behaving now, counting as if it were born knowing how. The street has that damp shine of something freshly forgiven. Wren keeps talking about the gummy worms—how the red ones taste “like cough syrup with ambition,” how the blue ones are “an insult to water”—and it works in the way Wren’s noise always works. It puts a hand on the world’s jaw and says: Stay shaped like a world, quit trying to become a mouth.

My shoulders, which have been living somewhere near my ears for weeks, begin to loosen.

That’s when it hits.

Not the fear. The other thing.

Heat behind my eye. A wobble in my ribs. The delayed awareness of how close I came to doing what I always do—reaching for my watch, offering up another sliver of myself, letting the city lick it clean and calling it a civic duty.

I swallow. My throat hurts like I’ve been holding back a sound all day.

Isleen’s sleeve brushes mine again like a guardrail.

My mouth opens before I decide what I’m saying.

“I’m fine.”

The sentence is automatic. Older than me.

Wren makes a sound that’s half amusement, half warning. “Kohana—”

“I said I’m fine,” I snap. The sound of it startles me, cornered-animal keen. Humiliating. I hate being cornered. I hate cornering myself.

Masae flinches, not because she’s scared of me, but because she’s scared she did something wrong.

Regret is immediate and physical, a cold drop behind my sternum.

“I didn’t—” Masae starts.

“No.” I cut in too fast. “No, you did good. You did—” Great, I want to say, but that word has too much light in it. “You did what you were supposed to.” It lands wrong anyway. I hear it as I say it. Supposed to. Like I’m turning her into a tool so I don’t have to admit what it meant to me.

I stop. My tongue tastes like metal.

Hiroyuki glances at me, and there’s no pity in his gold eyes, only recognition.

“You are permitted to be fine,” he says gently. “And permitted to be unwell. The permission stands either way.”

It makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time, which is obviously unacceptable, so my brain chooses irritation.

“I don’t need permission,” I mutter.

Wren pops another gummy worm into their mouth, slow and deliberate. The candy shines wet between their teeth for a second before it disappears; they chew with a kind of theatrical patience, jaw working like they’re tasting something they fully intend to use as leverage. 

“Nobody’s stamping you ‘approved,’ koshka,” they say, sweet enough to cut. “We’re just here. Breathing. Taking up space like it’s legal.” A beat, their eyes narrowing slightly, the grin not quite a grin. “Don’t turn it into a ceremony.”

My fingers curl inside my sleeves until the fabric bunches in my palms. I stare at the sidewalk’s wet shine, the smear of neon in puddles that look like bruised glass. The bakery vents breathe sugar into the cold like a confession—warm yeast, caramelised crust—trying to convince my body it’s safe to want. My throat tightens anyway. I can feel the old reflex lining itself up: make it smaller, make it quieter, make it nobody’s problem.

“You all keep… hovering,” I say, and the word comes out rougher than I meant, like it scraped its way past my teeth. “Like I’m going to do something stupid.”

Isleen’s gaze moves with minimal motion—wrist, then face—so controlled it makes my skin prickle. Even her attention feels like a boundary being drawn. Her voice stays even when it lands.

“You have been doing something stupid,” she says, with the dispassion of a debrief. “For a long time.”

Heat crawls up my neck. “Wow.”

“It kept people alive,” she adds, and the sentence hits differently, like she’s lowering something dangerous onto a table with both hands. “But it’s still stupid.”

Masae’s hands twist in her sleeves again, fabric winding around her knuckles like she’s trying to keep herself from spilling. Her voice drops into the thin place between whisper and confession.

“I don’t think it’s stupid,” she says—and then she hears how earnest it sounds and panics, rushing forward like she can outrun her own sincerity. “I mean—I think it’s… brave. But—” Her throat works. Her shoulders lift and fall once, a flinch she tries to disguise as breath. “But I don’t want you to have to do it alone. Ever.”

My chest tightens at the awful accuracy of it.

Wren makes a show of scanning the street, head swivelling with theatrical suspicion. “Okay,” they announce, too loud on purpose, “we are shelving the Group Therapy Arc for twelve seconds.” They point with the plastic bag, the cans inside clinking. “Bus shelter up ahead. I want a hot drink before my soul turns into lint.”

They start walking immediately, because if Wren stops moving for too long, the world might start asking questions. Momentum is their favourite form of control.

We follow because their movement is a rope.

The bus shelter is one of those glass boxes that pretends it counts as safety. It’s plastered with old ads and scratched with names and hearts and a little drawing of a cat that looks like it’s judging everyone. The bench is damp. The streetlight above flickers once, then steadies, like it remembers the crosswalk and decides not to try anything clever.

Wren drops onto the bench first anyway, because daring the universe is one of their hobbies. They kick their feet out, shoes hovering inches from the dirty glass like they’re about to put a footprint on reality itself, and announce, “Behold. Public transportation. Civilization. We’re thriving.”

Masae sits beside them, perched on the edge like she’s afraid the bench will accuse her of taking up space. Hiroyuki remains standing, close enough that his coat brushes the shelter’s frame when the wind shifts. Isleen stays near the opening—half in, half out—eyes moving over the street in slow, quiet sweeps.

I linger just outside the shelter.

The glass feels like a barrier I don’t deserve. Warmth is inside. Wet cold is outside. I keep choosing outside like it’s penance, like it proves something.

Wren tilts their head up at me. Their tone softens—barely—which is how I know they mean it. “Come in,” they say. 

“I’m fine,” I repeat, weaker, because the sentence has already been used up.

Hiroyuki turns his head slightly. “The air is kinder inside,” he says. 

Isleen still doesn’t look at me when she speaks. “You will get sick.”

“Maybe I deserve to get sick,” I say before I can stop myself.

Silence drops hard. The street seems to dim by a fraction.

Masae makes a small sound—hurt, helpless, immediate. Wren’s jaw tightens, the humour sliding into a thinner line. Isleen’s eyes finally cut to mine, and the look is keen enough to make my skin prickle.

Hiroyuki says, very quietly, “No.”

One word. Heavy.

I bristle on reflex. “You don’t get to—”

“I do not decide what you deserve,” he says, voice still calm, still steady. “But I can refuse the idea.”

Wren leans forward, elbows on their knees, gaze fixed on the street like they’re about to pick a fight with it. “Also,” they add, voice turning sugary in the way that means don’t argue, “I’m buying you something stupid.” A beat. “That’s the rule. You can be mad later. Right now I want hot chocolate, and you’re getting hot chocolate because I’m in charge of terrible decisions.”

“I don’t want—”

“You don’t have to want it,” Isleen says. “You have to drink it.”

I stare at them. At the bench. At the glass.

At the way they’ve built something around me that isn’t a cage. It’s a net. Meant to catch, not pin.

My throat burns again. I hate them for seeing me. I hate them for refusing to let me disappear into usefulness and call it virtue.

Then something shifts, small, almost imperceptible. A movement I don’t have practice making.

A new muscle, like Wren said.

I step into the shelter.

The warmth isn’t real warmth—just trapped breath and glass, the absence of wind—but my skin reacts like it’s been starving. My shoulders drop a fraction. My breath comes easier, like it’s been waiting for permission to be ordinary.

Wren lights up like I just handed them a receipt that proves God can be bullied.

“There,” they say, and the word snaps into place like a stamp. “She’s back in the room.”

Their gaze skims over me, checking for fractures the way other people check for blood. Whatever they see seems to satisfy them. Their shoulders ease by a fraction. Then they clap once, briskly, like they’re calling the next cue before anyone can start feeling things on purpose.

“Alright,” Wren adds, already pivoting toward motion. “Show’s still on. Mission continues.”

They hop up immediately. “Bakery’s right there. I’m getting cocoa. Anyone else want anything? Don’t say no.” They wag the plastic bag like a gavel. “No is not on the menu. This is a heist.”

Masae’s voice goes tiny. “Can I… get tea? If they have it.”

“They have everything,” Wren declares, already marching off, bag swinging, neon painting their hair in quick flashes of colour like the city can’t decide what version of them it wants.

Isleen watches them go, then shifts her stance closer to the opening, still guarding. Hiroyuki stays near the back of the shelter, giving me space without leaving. Masae glances at me like she wants to apologise for existing and decides not to, which is its own kind of courage.

I sit on the bench, careful, as if the dampness might bite.

My hands shake once—small, betraying—and I tuck them into my sleeves.

“I’m sorry,” I say, because the words have been clawing at the inside of my mouth. “For snapping.”

Masae shakes her head too fast. “It’s okay.”

“It isn’t,” I say. “But… thank you. For what you did back there.”

Her eyes go glossy. She blinks hard. “I didn’t know I could.”

“I suspected,” Hiroyuki says, and the certainty in his voice makes Masae look at him like he just handed her a secret folded into a palm. 

Isleen’s gaze stays outward. Her voice comes softer anyway, threaded through the street noise like a quiet stitch. “You did it.”

Masae nods once, like she’s trying to accept ownership without dropping it.

The street continues to exist. Cars pass. A dog trots by in a reflective harness. Somewhere, someone laughs.

Nothing catastrophic happens.

My chest aches with the unfamiliar quiet of that.

The world has taken its hand off my throat, and I don’t know what to do with the space.

Wren returns with four cups, each one steaming, each one wearing a ridiculous dome of whipped cream like a hat. They hand them out like medals they forged personally out of spite.

Mine gets shoved into my hands first.

“Drink,” Isleen says, still not looking at me.

I stare down at the cup. Heat against my palms, immediate and undeniable. Touch that doesn’t ask for anything back.

I drink. I stay.

Chocolate and warmth flood my mouth, sweet and stupid and human.

Wren watches my face like they’re waiting for me to bolt. When I don’t, their shoulders eases and they start talking again.

Masae sips her tea with both hands like it’s sacred. Hiroyuki cradles his cup as if it’s a small living thing. Isleen holds hers like she might throw it at someone if necessary.

I keep drinking.

I keep sitting.

I let them be near me without turning it into a fight.

The new muscle trembles.

It holds anyway.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

Wren peels off first. She salutes with two fingers, gummy worms still in her pocket like backup ammunition, and takes the corner toward the bakery again “for seconds,” she claims, like her stomach is a separate person with its own agenda.

Masae follows after a minute, tugged by the gravitational pull of home and homework and the fragile exhaustion that settles in once the adrenaline admits it has been doing too much work. Hiroyuki lingers long enough to make sure she actually goes, then gives me a look that feels like a soft blanket set on my shoulders without asking.

Then, quietly, he steps away too, the street seeming to make space for him out of habit.

Isleen and I end up walking side by side.

The city has calmed into its early-evening skin. Cars hiss past on wet asphalt. Shop windows glow with that tired, trying-to-be-cheerful light. Music leaks out of a doorway—thin bass, a chorus half-muffled by glass. 

My cocoa cup is empty now, but my hands stay wrapped around it anyway. I keep it as a talisman, proof that I can be given something without paying for it in blood.

Isleen says nothing for half a block.

That’s how I know she’s mad.

Her silence has different weights. Sometimes it’s neutral, a simple absence of words. This one feels like a blade left on the counter. 

I glance at her from the corner of my eye.

Her face is set, jaw firm, gaze forward. She walks like she’s escorting me through a hostile zone even though we’re passing a nail salon with its sweet acetone bite and a little shop spilling cheap sunglasses and novelty fans onto a rack outside.

I clear my throat. “You’re mad.”

“I’m furious,” she says, flat as pavement.

My stomach drops anyway, even though I asked for it.

“I didn’t—”

“You did,” Isleen cuts in, and her voice stays level, which makes it worse. “Your hand went for it.”

I look down at the empty cup. The lid flexes under my thumb. “It was a habit.”

Isleen’s gaze stays forward. “You keep rehearsing the same mistake until it looks like instinct.”

The sentence is plain. The impact isn’t. I feel a shift in my ribs, as if a bolt is sliding into place.

We take a few more steps. A cross street opens to our left, and my brain supplies the earlier intersection anyway—the numbers stuttering, the light jittering, the street trying to coax my hand into motion.

My wrist aches in sympathy, phantom-bright.

“I stopped,” I say.

“I saw,” Isleen replies, like she’s marking it down, not applauding it.

I swallow. “So… you’re wel—”

Her gaze cuts to me, sudden and exact, the way a blade finds the seam in a thing.

“Enough,” she says.

The word stays level, almost casual, then cinches in my chest like a drawstring anyway.

I hate it. I hate how fast my throat closes when someone notices the ugly machinery under my skin. I hate that my first instinct is always to turn it into a bit—shrink it, joke it, smooth it out until nobody can catch a finger on it.

I face forward. “Point taken.”

We pass a puddle holding the red script ‘OPEN’ from a storefront sign. Our footsteps send a ripple through it, and the letters wobble, distorted, like the word can’t decide whether it wants to float or go under.

Isleen’s breath leaves through her nose, careful and even.

“I don’t know what you thought you were doing,” she says, “back there.”

“I was going to fix it.”

“You were going to buy silence,” she corrects. “With your wrist.”

My grip tightens on the cup until the cardboard gives, creasing under my fingers.

“It’s not like I—” I start, and choke on the rest because there isn’t a version of this that comes out clean. There isn’t a defence that doesn’t sound like what it is.

Isleen watches me for a beat.

Then, quieter, she says, “I’m not letting you make that trade tonight.”

The sentence is simple. It hits like a hand on the back of my neck, steering me away from a ledge I keep pretending isn’t there.

I try to answer lightly. My mouth betrays me by shaking.

“I’m sort of… built for it.”

Isleen’s eyes narrow by a fraction.

“You’re built for a lot of things. That doesn’t make all of them acceptable.”

A thin laugh scrapes out of me. “You talk like you’re already writing my obituary.”

Isleen doesn’t look away from the sidewalk. Her answer comes level, almost clinical. “I’m trying to keep you out of the ground.”

The words land wrong, too blunt, too real. My stride stutters half a step, then I force it smooth again.

“Isleen—”

“I don’t have better language,” she says, like the limitation annoys her more than the conversation does, and the plainness of it hits so hard my next step almost misses the pavement.

We slow near a blank wall plastered with flyers: lost cats, garage bands, someone offering tarot readings in a laundromat. The paper edges curl from the moisture. The streetlight above us buzzes, then steadies.

Isleen stops walking.

I stop too, because of course I do. The space between us is suddenly very small, filled with breath and neon and the faint heat of her body beside mine.

She turns fully toward me.

Her eyes drop to my wrist.

“Give me your hand,” she says.

“What—”

“Now.”

I roll my eye on reflex, because I can’t help myself, but I hold out my hand anyway.

Isleen takes it.

Her fingers close around my wrist with a sure, utilitarian confidence, thumb set to the inside where my pulse trips against skin. Warmth bleeds through my sleeve. The pressure is more test than comfort, the kind of hold you use when one wrong shift could turn into a fall.

I try to make a joke and fail. “Are you arresting me?”

Her jaw tightens again. “I’m making sure you’re here.”

My pulse flutters under her thumb like it’s embarrassed to be observed.

I stare at her face. “I am here.”

“You keep leaving,” she says, and her voice cracks just a fraction on the last word, like something inside her tried to move and hit a locked door.

It knocks the air out of me.

“I’m not—” I start, and the rest of the sentence refuses to form.

Because I do leave. Not with feet. With minutes. With the quiet parts of myself that I hand over before anyone can ask for them.

Isleen’s grip remains on my wrist. She seems to realise she’s holding too tight, then refuses to let go anyway, like loosening would be a kind of surrender.

Her eyes lift to mine.

“I saw you,” she says. “That look you get when you’ve already decided your pain is cheaper than everyone else’s.”

My throat burns. I hate how true that is. I hate how it feels like being understood.

“I don’t want anyone else getting hurt,” I whisper.

“I am aware.”

The words come out so simple that for a moment, I think she’s letting me off the hook.

Then she adds, blunt as a slap, “I also don’t want you hurt.”

It shouldn’t feel like a confession. It does.

I blink too hard. My eyes sting.

Isleen’s mouth pulls tight, as if she can feel herself nearing something sentimental, and it disgusts her on principle.

“I’m not good at this,” she says, and there’s the emotional constipation in full, honest daylight. “Talking. About… whatever this is.”

I huff a laugh that tastes like tears. “Feelings?”

Her stare could slice glass. “Don’t push it.”

I nod quickly, because the truth is, I don’t want to push. I want to be held. I want to be told to stop. I want to be allowed to not be the answer to everything.

Isleen’s thumb shifts on my pulse, a small, unconscious stroke that feels like a secret.

“You scared me,” she says.

The admission lands heavier than her anger.

My voice comes out small. “I’m sorry.”

She studies my face as if she’s looking for the part of me that will lie.

“I’m not asking for apologies,” she says. “I’m asking for change.”

My chest tightens. “I don’t know if I can—”

“You can,” Isleen interrupts, immediate, certain. “You stopped today. That means you can.”

I swallow. “It felt… wrong.”

“It felt unfamiliar,” she corrects. 

I stare at her, caught between wanting to argue and wanting to fold into her like a tired animal.

Isleen’s eyes flick down again, to my wrist, to her own hand holding it.

“Listen,” she says, and the word comes out like she’s prying it from her own teeth. Her eyes stay on the pavement, on the seam-lines of the street, anywhere except my face. “If it starts asking for minutes—if you feel your hand drifting—”

“I won’t,” I cut in, too quick, too bright with panic.

Her gaze snaps up.

I swallow and try again, smaller. “Not alone.”

Her shoulders drop a fraction, so slight most people wouldn’t notice. I do. I notice everything about her, always.

I breathe out. My lungs feel like they’ve been locked in a fist for hours.

My voice goes softer. “Are you… going to keep holding my wrist like that?”

Isleen’s eyes narrow. “Do you want me to let go?”

My mouth opens. Closes. I hate myself for how honest my body is.

“…No.”

Isleen’s expression doesn’t change much, but her thumb moves again, a small, careful press that feels like a promise she doesn’t know how to say aloud.

“Then stop trying to be brave in ways that kill you,” she says.

My laugh slips out wrong, too damp at the edges. “God. You make it sound like a vow.”

Isleen’s head turns a fraction, eyes flat and furious. “I’m not proposing. I’m setting terms.”

“Mm.” I try for smug and get honest instead. “Terms with handholding. Scary.”

Her stare could sandpaper paint. “Kohana.”

My name hits like a warning shot. My throat tightens around whatever joke was loading.

I look down at where she’s got me—wrist caught, pulse trapped under her thumb—and murmur, “You do realise this is the part people write poems about.”

Isleen’s jaw works once. She doesn’t dignify it with an argument. Her grip shifts anyway, a recalculation, fingers sliding down until she’s holding my hand instead of my wrist, like she refuses the image of restraint but still refuses to let go.

“Keep talking,” she says, unimpressed, “and I’ll drag you like luggage.”

My mouth curves anyway. Heat creeps up my neck, rude and immediate. “You’d hate that. Too much attention.”

“I hate a lot of things,” she replies, and her fingers lace through mine with brisk finality, like closing a latch. “You’re still coming.”

She doesn’t speed up, but the decision in her hand pulls us forward all the same—past a shuttered bookstore, past the laundromat breathing light through its blinds, toward the tired little sign that can’t keep a steady flicker.

By the time we’re under the awning, rain ticking soft and steady, the sentō is right in front of us like a held breath.

My hand is still in Isleen’s.

I glance down at our fingers. The way her grip is set makes it feel less like holding hands and more like a declaration of jurisdiction. Like she’s claimed this part of me for the night and dares the city to argue.

My mouth pulls into a tired smile before I can stop it.

“You know,” I say, voice soft, like I’m trying not to frighten the moment, “you can let go now. We made it. No crosswalks. No haunted numbers.”

Isleen doesn’t look at me. She looks at the sentō door like it’s a threat assessment.

“I know,” she says.

Then her fingers tighten, one firm squeeze, unnecessary in every practical sense, perfect in every other.

The warmth in my chest is immediate and stupid and makes me want to bite something.

I try again, lighter, because I can’t help myself. “Are you going to escort me inside? Into the sacred land of bathing?”

Her gaze flicks to me. “Be normal.”

“I’m always weird.”

“You’re being weirder,” she says, and there’s the faintest twitch at the corner of her mouth, like a smile trying to escape and getting caught on her teeth.

I swallow, suddenly shy, which is criminal. “Okay. Sorry.”

Isleen shifts her stance closer, her shoulder nearly brushing mine. The awning keeps most of the rain off us, but not all of it. A drop slides down my hair and kisses the back of my neck. I shiver.

Isleen’s thumb drags once over my knuckles, small and absentminded.

Her voice drops, rougher. “You’re shaking.”

“It’s cold,” I say, automatically.

Isleen’s eyes narrow, unimpressed. “Mm.”

I can’t tell if she believes me. I can’t tell if I believe myself. The truth feels like a handful of truths stacked badly: cold, yes. Also, the aftershock. Also, the fact that I’m standing under a flickering sign with someone holding my hand like she means it, and my body has no idea how to parse that.

“Promise,” she says.

My stomach dips. “About what?”

Her jaw flexes once. “About what we already talked about.”

I try to make a joke and fail. My throat is too tight for it.

“…Okay,” I whisper. “I promise.”

Isleen holds my gaze for a beat too long, then she nods.

“Don’t make me regret it,” she says.

Then, quietly, like she’s slipping something into my pocket without letting me see her hand, she adds, “Happy birthday.”

The words land wrong in a way that isn’t bad. Soft. Too human coming from her mouth. My face changes before I can stop it; something flickers up through me, caught between a smile and a flinch, like my body can’t decide whether to accept the gift or bite it.

“…How do you—” I start, and my voice comes out smaller than I meant. I swallow. “I never told you.”

Isleen keeps her gaze level, steady, the same way she keeps her hand around mine, like letting go isn’t on the table.

“You didn’t.”

“That’s not an answer,” I manage, and it comes out half laugh, half accusation, because my brain keeps trying to solve it cleanly and the numbers refuse to line up.

Isleen’s eyes flick away to the sentō sign, to the rain threading off the awning, to anything except my face doing that stupid, hopeful thing. Her jaw works once, like she’s chewing on the idea of explaining herself and finding it unpleasant.

“I’ve met you,” she says. “More than once.”

For a moment, nothing else happens. Rain ticks against the awning in thin, steady beads. The streetlight turns the puddles into bruised glass. A car passes, slow, and the sound drags out like a held breath. I can’t tell if my heart is loud or if the world just got quieter.

My hands go cold under my sleeves. I curl my fingers into my palms until I feel my nails.

Under the awning, the air shifts—close, attentive, like the world leaned in by accident.

My throat goes dry. “Me.”

“You,” Isleen confirms, impatient with how language insists on being specific. “Not this exact you. Not always this age. But you.”

I stare at her. “In your—” I stop before I say past lives, because the phrase feels too neat for something that scrapes this deep. “When you said you’d seen other versions of us…”

Isleen’s grip tightens once, a quick punctuation mark. “Yes.”

Heat crawls up my neck, embarrassment arriving late like it always does. “So you just… carry that around?”

“I carry lots of things,” she says, and it’s almost rude how carefully she keeps the softness out of her voice.

I can’t help it; my mouth tries to make it into a joke so my heart doesn’t make it into a problem. “So I’m predictable across timelines. That’s comforting.”

Isleen’s attention cuts back to me. “No.”

The refusal is immediate.

“You were never predictable,” she adds, and the words come out like she hates that they’re true. Like she hates that she knows.

I blink. My chest does something stupid and tender.

Isleen looks away again, irritation sliding over the moment like a coat. “Sixteen,” she says, as if numbers are safer than feelings. “Quit staring.”

I stare harder out of spite because my body has decided this is the part where it wants to be a teenager.

Her thumb drags once over my knuckles—small, absent, checking that I’m still here—then stills.

“Don’t make it into an event,” she mutters, rough around the edges.

“I wasn’t going to,” I whisper, which is a lie only in the way that wanting something is already a kind of making.

Isleen exhales through her nose, like she’s tired of me and tired of herself for not being able to put me down.

“Good,” she says, and this time it feels like she’s keeping me alive on purpose.

That makes me want to laugh, which is unfair. It also makes my throat burn, which is worse.

I tilt my head, unable to resist one last poke. “You keep saying ‘good’ like you’re training a dog.”

Isleen’s stare could freeze the bathwater. “Do you want me to stop holding your hand?”

My cheeks go hot.

“No,” I say, too quickly.

“Then quit it,” she replies, and she turns toward the door with all the dignity of a person who absolutely refuses to acknowledge how gentle her fingers are.

She tugs me forward—just a little. A steady pull that says: we’re going inside now, and you’re coming with me, and that’s the end of it.

The sentō door slides open.

Heat rolls out like a living thing.

Isleen doesn’t let go. Not even for the threshold. Not even when the light inside turns our skin warm-gold and makes the rain on our coats look like tiny stars.

I step over the line with her, and for once, the world doesn’t ask me to pay.