Mio looked away too quickly.

That was what caught Touma: not the sarcasm, not the way she held herself as though she could make the room apologize first. It was the speed with which she turned her face when he looked at her.

“You’re worried about people seeing you,” he said.

“I’m worried about people deciding what they’re seeing.” She glanced back at him. “There’s a difference.”

He stood beside the futon, unsure what to do with his hands.

“We don’t have to make this public.”

“This?” Her mouth tightened. “Very normal. Excellent start.”

“That wasn’t what I meant.”

“Try phrasing it less like you’re discussing the removal of a nervous system.”

From beside the desk, Nico made a small noise that might have been a cough.

“I should probably—” He gestured toward the hallway.

Neither of them helped him finish. Nico edged toward the doorway and looked out, giving them the back of his head.

Without him between them, the room seemed smaller. The air conditioner had gone quiet. Touma could hear the faint movement of Mio’s sleeve when she folded her arms.

“Do you want to sit down?” he asked.

She looked at the chair.

“Am I allowed?”

“Of course.”

“Good. For a second I thought we were still operating under haunted-projector rules.”

He almost smiled. “I don’t know what those are.”

“Neither do I. That’s what makes them so restrictive.”

She lowered herself onto the chair beside the desk.

It squeaked.

Touma let out a breath before he could stop himself.

Mio looked up. “Don’t make that face.”

“What face?”

“Like the furniture just accepted my application.”

He looked away, caught.

The chair had held her. That was all. An inexpensive chair in an inexpensive room had taken her weight and made an ordinary, irritated sound.

He had needed that more than he wanted her to know.

“Sorry,” he said.

“That one’s worse.”

He tried to arrange his expression into something that did not require an apology.

Her fingers rested along the edge of the seat. Too carefully, he thought. As though she was waiting for permission to relax them.

The jokes were still there. So was something beneath them, something he had mistaken for embarrassment because embarrassment was easier to recognize on a face.

“Can you eat?” he asked.

Mio stared at him.

The question sounded worse now that it was outside his head.

“I mean—do you need anything?”

“A less alarming opening question.”

“Right.”

Until then, he had kept reaching for ordinary solutions. A chair. Water. Something to eat. But he did not know what being here cost her, or whether anything he offered would help. He had seen a body and assumed he knew which questions came next.

His hand moved before he had decided what to do with it.

He stopped.

Mio’s eyes dropped to it.

“You were going to ask something,” she said.

At the doorway, Nico shifted.

“I really should go.”

“Wait,” Touma said.

Nico stopped. For a moment Touma could not have explained why he had called him back. He wanted help, perhaps. Someone who knew how to remain useful without making everything worse.

But Nico was looking at the doorframe with painful concentration.

“No. Sorry,” Touma said. “It’s fine.”

Nico nodded and slipped into the hallway.

Touma waited until his footsteps had faded.

“I was going to ask if it hurt.”

Mio’s fingers tightened against the chair.

For an instant, the room did something Touma could not quite follow. The desk’s edge seemed to slip out of alignment with itself. The space beside her shoulder shivered, then settled.

He blinked.

Mio was watching him.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Convincing.”

He sat on the edge of the futon, leaving the space between them clear.

“Does it?”

She looked down at her hands.

“It’s difficult.”

He waited.

“Trying to hold a shape that makes sense.”

One of her fingers twitched. She tucked it beneath the others almost immediately.

“All right,” he said. “Then we need some ground rules.”

Her gaze sharpened. “We do?”

“For me.”

That seemed to interrupt whatever answer she had prepared.

“No surprise touching,” he said.

“An ambitious social policy.”

“And tell me if something hurts.”

“Touma—”

“I mean it.”

“I don’t want to be a problem.”

He looked at her hands, then back at her face.

“People are problems,” he said.

She gave him a flat look.

“That sounded better before I said it.”

“I hope so.”

“I mean people need things. They get hurt. You have to ask them questions instead of assuming you know.” He rubbed his palms against his knees. “You don’t have to make everything easy for me.”

She was quiet.

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

“You will?”

“Yes.”

“Even if it doesn’t make sense?”

“Yes.”

She studied him for long enough that he wanted to add something, make the promise more convincing. He kept quiet instead.

“All right,” she said at last.

It wasn’t trust. Not yet. But she had stopped looking for the quickest way out of the conversation, and he thought she might want to believe him.

Then someone appeared in the doorway.

“Oh,” the support tech said.

Touma turned.

The man had stopped with one hand against the frame. He looked at Mio, then at Touma, then back at Mio.

For half a second, his expression held the startled wonder of someone witnessing a miracle.

The wrong kind.

“Who’s that?”

Mio became perfectly still.

Touma stood too quickly. The futon shifted behind his knees.

“Not your business.”

The words came out harder than he had intended. He saw their effect at once: the tech’s surprise, then his attention sharpening.

Embarrassment and fear arrived together. Touma was standing in front of Mio as though there were something to hide, and the man in the doorway had noticed.

Whatever he had thought he was seeing, he was already turning it into a story.

“I was just looking for Nico.”

“Then look for Nico.”

The tech glanced past him again.

“Leave,” Touma said.

The man raised his hands and backed into the hall.

Touma shut the door.

It was a cheap door. He had never been so aware of that before.

Behind him, Mio said, “Well. I would have preferred more notice before the dramatic reveal.”

He turned.

She was still in the chair, her hands arranged neatly in her lap.

“I’m sorry.”

“That was public.”

“I know.”

“No.” Her voice stayed level. “That wasn’t someone wondering about something. He saw me.”

Touma looked at the door.

There were too many people in the building, too many chances for a glance through an open doorway. He had been thinking about how to prevent a rumor. Someone already had an account to give.

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

“We lie.”

Mio looked at him with an expression he could not immediately read.

Then she let out a breath.

“That was appallingly quick.”

“I can make it sound more considered.”

“Please don’t.”

There was something almost fond in the disgust, which made him feel worse and better at once.

He sat down again.

Mio watched the closed door.

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

Touma’s answer came before he could soften it.

“You’re not a mistake.”

She turned toward him.

He felt suddenly exposed. There was no joke in what he had said, nothing she could answer lightly without both of them noticing the effort.

He let it stand.

Mio gave a small, shaky laugh.

“You’re making that face again.”

“I know.”

This time she did not tell him to stop.

For one second, the room became bearable.

Then something scraped beyond the wall.

Touma lifted his head.

Not footsteps. Not the door moving in its frame.

The sound came again, softly, near the bedroom entrance: a slow drag, as though someone on the other side had placed a fingertip against the wall and drawn it along the surface.

He stared at the plaster.

There was no visible movement. Still, he had the unpleasant impression of pressure gathering behind it.

His limiter pulsed cold.

A warning.

Mio’s hands closed around the edge of the chair.

Touma looked at her. The sarcasm was gone.

“Don’t let the **system** decide what I am,” she said.

The scrape deepened inside the wall.

Touma had the sudden, sickening sense that something had heard her—and leaned closer.