Touma woke to the sight of Mio standing in the corner of the safehouse bedroom.

Not a voice. Not pressure. Not the private commentary that had lived only in his head. She was simply there, solid enough to throw a thin shadow against the suspicious beige ceiling, her presence an argument the room could no longer ignore.

The cheap rental carpet, the broken lamp, the faint smell of dust and instant coffee and disinfectant—all of it suddenly felt wrong in a new way. Private space had stopped being private the moment she became visible.

He stared. Heat climbed his face.

Mio looked back at him, offended and watchful at once, as if checking the walls for hidden teeth. Her posture was composed, but fear sat readable in the set of her shoulders.

“Stop staring,” she said.

He tried blinking her away. She remained. The safe layer between the strange and the ordinary world was gone; whatever clerical error had kept her limited to him had grown large enough to become visible.

He reached for the blanket without thinking. His hand passed straight through her knee.

Mio jerked. “Warn me before you do that.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“That’s what makes it worse.”

The lag in her movement was slight, but real. Accidental contact was no longer theoretical. The social geometry of the room had rewritten itself around a presence that occupied space and still wasn’t fully solid.

“Can you feel anything?” he asked, the question broader than it should have been.

She understood him too well, the way she always had. “Physically or emotionally?”

He didn’t answer. She already knew the distinction mattered.

Pieces of procedure returned to him in fragments. Visible Mio was more alive than the version that had only spoken. He could see the tightness in her shoulders, the careful breath before she spoke, the deliberate choice of where to rest her hands. Fear was no longer something he had to infer; it was written on her.

She paced the narrow strip of floor between the futon and the kitchenette counter. His body kept treating her like the center of the room. Every glance found her. Being watched by her had become a physical fact.

The door opened. Nico stood in the doorway, trying too hard to look calm and failing.

“You’re both awake.”

Touma’s voice came out uneven. “You knew she could do that?”

“No. Too fast.” Nico’s eyes moved between them, rattled and operational at the same time. “First problem: the closed system just started talking back.”

Mio remained visible under the doorway’s witness rule. The limiter was stable for the moment; the projection was not. This was not a school presentation. The side effect had the precision of a person.

“She takes the side where we continue existing,” Nico said. “Other systems may register her now. Cameras. Biometrics. Active recognition filters. Maybe humans.”

He looked at Touma, then at the girl who should not have been standing in the middle of a cheap safehouse bedroom.

“Bad enough for you?”