## **Translation**

Mio looked away too quickly.

Touma had been trying not to stare. Apparently, trying was still something she could see.

“It’s not you,” she said.

He waited.

“Not exclusively you.”

“That’s reassuring.”

“I’m worried about people.”

“People in general?”

“People who look at something and immediately need to decide what category it belongs in.” She picked at the edge of her sleeve. “Before they decide whether to talk to it.”

The air conditioner had gone quiet. Without it, the room seemed to be waiting for him to say the wrong thing.

“We don’t have to make this public,” he said.

Mio looked back at him. “Existing?”

“I meant—”

“I know what you meant. But eventually someone walks through a door, and then I’m public. That’s not the same as being normal.”

“We could ask people not to make a big deal out of it.”

“Could you phrase that a little less like you’re arranging to have my nervous system removed?”

Nico made a small, unhappy sound by the desk.

“I’m going to be outside,” he said, and moved toward the doorway.

Touma couldn’t blame him. Nico had been useful when there were procedures to follow. Now there was a girl standing beside the futon, and none of them knew what being useful meant.

With Nico no longer between them, the room felt smaller.

“You can sit down,” Touma said.

Mio glanced at the chair.

“That sounded more authoritative than I meant it to.”

“No, it’s good. Very reassuring. Sit, stay, please don’t become a haunted projector.”

“I wasn’t thinking that.”

“You paused before answering.”

“Because I was trying to work out what a haunted projector would do.”

She almost smiled. Then she lowered herself onto the chair.

It squeaked.

Touma let out a breath before he could stop himself.

Mio stared at him.

“Don’t make that face.”

“What face?”

“The one where you’re relieved the furniture works on me.”

He looked down.

It was a cheap chair. One leg sat unevenly on the floor, and the fabric had worn smooth along the front edge. It shouldn’t have mattered that it held her weight.

It mattered so much that he was embarrassed.

“Sorry.”

She shifted, and the chair squeaked again.

For a moment, the room had made space for her without asking anything.

Then she folded her hands too carefully in her lap, and he saw how much effort she was putting into looking unimpressed.

The jokes weren’t making her less afraid. They were giving her something to do with her face.

“Can you eat?” he asked.

Her eyebrows rose.

He wished he could retrieve the question.

“I mean, do you need to? Or want to? I could get something.”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh.”

There were things he had assumed came with a body. Hunger. Tiredness. The knowledge of whether something hurt.

He had no idea which of those assumptions he was allowed to make.

Her hand rested near the edge of the desk. He wanted to take it.

The wish was so immediate that his own hand moved before he stopped it.

Mio noticed.

“You were going to ask something.”

At the doorway, Nico shifted.

“I really should—”

“Wait,” Touma said.

Nico stopped. Touma looked at him, then at Mio, and realized he had no reason to keep him there except that being alone made every word feel larger.

“Sorry. It’s fine. Go.”

Nico left, pulling the door almost shut behind him.

Touma sat on the edge of the futon.

“I was going to ask if it hurt.”

Mio’s expression changed.

For an instant, the edge of the desk seemed to jump sideways. Or her shoulder did. Touma couldn’t tell. He blinked, and everything was where it should have been.

“That,” he said quietly.

She looked at her hands.

“I’m trying.”

“I know.”

“No. I’m trying to hold a shape that makes sense.”

He didn’t know what to say to that.

One of her fingers twitched. She pressed it still with her other hand.

“Okay,” he said. “Some rules, then.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“For me too.”

She watched him.

“No surprise touching,” he said. “I ask first.”

“All right.”

“And tell me if something hurts.”

Her eyes dropped again.

“I don’t want to be a problem.”

“You’re allowed to have problems.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“I know.” He rubbed his palms against his knees. “I just don’t think people stop being people because being around them gets complicated.”

“That would eliminate most people.”

“Everyone I know.”

She breathed out through her nose.

He left the silence alone this time.

“If something feels wrong,” he said, “tell me. I’ll listen.”

She studied his face.

“You’ll listen even if you can’t see it?”

“Yes.”

“Even if something else says I’m fine?”

“Yes.”

Her fingers loosened slightly.

He couldn’t call it trust. Not yet. But she kept looking at him, as though she wanted to find a reason to believe him and was afraid of choosing one too soon.

The door opened.

“Hey, Nico said the—”

The support technician stopped in the doorway.

His gaze moved from Touma to Mio, then back again.

“Oh,” he said. “Who’s that?”

Mio went perfectly still.

Touma stood too fast. The futon frame knocked against the wall behind him.

“Not your business.”

He heard how it sounded only after he had said it.

The technician’s expression changed.

First there had been surprise. Then curiosity. Now there was something worse: the pleasure of having walked into a story.

Touma felt embarrassment and fear arrive together.

The man wasn’t looking at a person who might need help. He was looking at the wrong kind of miracle, something he could take into the hallway and describe.

“I was just—”

“Leave.”

The technician raised his hands.

“Okay. Fine.”

He backed out and shut the door.

Touma remained standing.

That had been public.

Not a warning about what might happen later. Someone had looked at her, asked what she was doing there, and watched Touma behave as though she needed concealing.

Behind him, the chair creaked.

“Well,” Mio said. “There goes my dramatic reveal.”

He turned.

She was smiling with only her mouth.

“Sorry.”

“You didn’t open the door.”

“I made it worse.”

“You were impressively suspicious.”

“I noticed.”

She looked toward the hallway.

Too many people had already seen too much. Whatever explanation they chose now would arrive after the guesses.

“What do we do if people start asking?” she said.

“We lie.”

Her expression twisted.

“That was disgustingly immediate.”

“I can be useful.”

“Apparently in very specific ways.”

There was something almost fond in it. He didn’t let himself lean on that.

Mio looked down at her hands again, then deliberately uncrossed them.

“If I’m going to be seen,” she said, “I refuse to be seen as a mistake.”

Touma felt the answer before he had time to make it safer.

“You’re not a mistake.”

She looked up.

He hadn’t softened it into a joke. Now it stood between them, more exposing than anything else he had said.

Mio gave a small, shaky laugh.

“You really need to stop saying things like that without warning.”

“Should that be another rule?”

“Possibly.”

For one second, the room was bearable.

She was still frightened. He could see it in the way she held her shoulders, in how quickly her eyes returned to the door.

But she was sitting in a chair, talking to him, and he had managed not to make every part of it worse.

Then something scraped outside the room.

Touma turned his head.

Not footsteps.

Not the door.

The sound came again, thin and slow, from the wall beside it.

Like a fingertip dragging along the other side.

He stared at the plaster.

There was no visible movement. Still, he had the unmistakable sense of pressure being applied from within, something testing how little distance remained.

The limiter pulsed cold against him.

Not reassurance.

A warning.

Mio had stopped smiling.

“Touma.”

He looked at her.

“Don’t let the system decide what I am.”

The scrape came again, deeper this time.

It sounded as though something had heard her and leaned closer.