Kyoten tried, stubbornly, to be itself again.
By late afternoon the square had a broom in every corner and a neighbor at every broom. The sound of sweeping stitched the village back together one stripe at a time. Children were shooed indoors and then slipped back out to peek. Someone rehung a lantern that had the good sense to pretend it had never fallen.
Inside the outpost, the world did not pretend. The egg rested in its cloth nest, breathing a patient green. Kenji's notes spread like a map whose edges wouldn't stop moving. Reina Hoshino stood with her coat off and her sleeves rolled, the kind of neat that would still be neat after a storm. Pulsebun paced. Aiko stood at the window, watching Kyoten be brave.
"We can't hold the village forever," Reina said, not unkindly. "If the signals escalate, they'll do it where the network is strongest. That means the capital."
Kenji's pencil paused. "You want us to come."
Reina met his gaze. "I want the person the system responds to where I can keep her alive."
Pulsebun stopped pacing. "Define 'keep alive.' Because the square tried to define it as 'barely.'"
Reina's mouth tightened. It wasn't a smile. "Travel safely, minimal exposure, controlled tests. In return, you get access—data, records, facilities. And a better chance of not being steamrolled when the city decides what to do next."
Aiko pressed her fingers to the window frame. The grain was smooth where years of shoulders had leaned. She thought of the ovens warming, of her father's habit of tapping the side twice to listen for heat like a musician tuning a drum. She thought of the circle in the ruin, of the way the air had stepped aside when she opened her hands.
"My father," she said, quiet enough that the window almost didn't hear. "I need to speak to him."
Reina nodded. "You should. We leave at dawn. There's a maintenance rail two valleys east. We'll meet it." She opened a case that looked like a book and produced three paper cards stamped with a crest Aiko didn't recognize. "Temporary travel permits. Don't lose them."
Kenji turned one over, studying the ink. "Official enough to work. Nondescript enough to not invite questions."
"Exactly," Reina said. "Pack light. Bring only what you can't replace."
Pulsebun pointed to himself. "Me."
"Obviously," Aiko said, and Pulsebun tried very hard not to beam.
They broke like a meeting that had decided to be a journey. Kenji began to dismantle his notes into stacks that could be carried and reassembled. Reina disappeared to file a report that would say as much as it needed to and nothing more. Pulsebun hid the overheating lantern from himself again and then, five minutes later, found where he'd hidden it and hid it better.
Aiko took a breath, tucked the door key into her sleeve, and went home.
The bakery smelled like late afternoon—flour settling, crust cooling, the last batch of anpan glistening under a thin brush of syrup. Her father, Daichi, stood behind the counter counting coins and not counting the way the day had gone wrong. He looked up like the sun cracking through cloud.
"There you are," he said, relief softening his face. "I heard shouting. And then not shouting. And then more shouting."
"I'm fine," Aiko said, and it was mostly true. "We all are."
He listened to everything she didn't say. "You're leaving."
Aiko's mouth trembled. "Just for a while. To the capital." The word felt too big in her mouth. "With Kenji. And… an investigator. There are things I need to—"
"—do," Daichi finished gently. He came around the counter, dusted his hands on his apron, and held her by the shoulders as if she might float away. "Your mother would tell you to be brave. I will tell you to be careful. And to eat. Even brave gets wobbly without food."
Aiko laughed wetly and hated that she was crying and loved that she could. "I didn't want this."
"I know," he said. "Some doors open when we knock. Some open when they recognize us. You were recognized." He wiped her cheek with his thumb. "Bring back your stories. And yourself. I can bake without you. I can't be without you."
She leaned into him for one long, anchoring minute. When she pulled away, she set three anpan into a cloth and tied it snug. "For the road."
"For the road," he agreed. He looked past her shoulder and lifted his chin. "Watch over her."
Pulsebun, who had been pretending to be a sack of flour very poorly, saluted. "With my face."
"That is not where eyes go," Daichi said, and then, lower, to Aiko, "Trust Kenji's questions. Not everyone's answers."
She nodded. He kissed her forehead like it was a ritual older than the Guild and handed her the door key she'd already stolen into her sleeve. "Go, my girl."
By dusk they were back at the outpost. Reina had repacked the room into a state that would make a searcher work for their supper. Kenji had tucked the probe into the false atlas spine and slipped the atlas into a satchel that made it look like he was just very passionate about railway maps. The egg—glow steady, circuits faint as frost—went into a wooden box lined with soft cloth and steadied with rope. Aiko added the anpan to the top and then took them back out because crumbs inside a miracle felt rude.
They slept badly and woke early. Kyoten at dawn is different from Kyoten at day. The square stretched and yawned. Carts waited like patient animals. Mist braided itself around fence posts. They left without a procession. Aiko hugged her father once, twice. He let go the second time.
Reina led them along a hunting path that remembered being a road. They kept to trees. The world widened into sloped fields, then closed into forest again, then opened to a valley scraped smooth by a river that had elsewhere to be. Kenji kept pace with a scholar's legs and a courier's stubbornness. Pulsebun scouted the way shadows scout. Aiko walked in the middle and listened—not for birds or wind, though she heard them, but for the now-familiar hum under the world. It was quieter out here. It was never gone.
They reached the maintenance rail by noon. It cut the valley in a single patient line, metal shining where grass hadn't reached yet. A narrow platform held a signal box, a bench, and a faded poster so old it had become art about itself.
"Trains still come out this far?" Pulsebun asked, doubtful and delighted.
"Freight," Reina said. "Workers. Sometimes people who aren't supposed to." She checked her watch and then the angle of the sun. "We have fifteen minutes."
Kenji set the box with the egg on the bench and sat beside it like a guard who knew guards could fail. Aiko sat on the other side and touched the rope, adjusting it for the seventh time. Pulsebun hopped onto the signal box and pretended not to be vibrating.
Aiko looked down the long tracks. The rails converged into certainty. "What if the capital tries to take it?" she asked, voice low.
"They'll try," Reina said, candid as weather. "Everything that matters gets tried. Our job is to set terms before we get set on."
Kenji leaned forward, elbows on knees. "We gather what we can on our terms. We decide what to share. I'm not going to be useful to anyone if I'm the sort of scribe who can't sleep."
"You don't sleep," Pulsebun said.
"Then I'm not going to be useful if I'm the sort of scribe who can't pretend," Kenji admitted.
Aiko breathed. The box answered with a soft glow that warmed her hands without touching them. The faint gold threads flickered and settled. She wanted to say something to it. She didn't know if it understood words. She said them anyway.
"Please don't hatch on a train," she whispered.
A horn sounded, distant, courteous. Wind arrived early. The train curved into view—short, purposeful, a machine that knew what it was for. It slowed with a sigh and a clatter, and the door on the third car opened with the polite insistence of someone knocking twice and then letting themselves in.
The conductor took their permits with a face that had been trained to see everything and make nothing of it. "Maintenance line to South Spur," he said, stamping with authority and boredom. "Capital connection after that if schedules behave."
"Do schedules behave?" Pulsebun asked.
"Like cats," the conductor said, and moved on.
They found a compartment and slid the box under the seat as if that could hide the way it quietly illuminated the shadows. The train pulled itself forward. Fields unwound. Trees took a step back. Kyoten slipped its hand out of Aiko's and pretended it didn't mind.
Reina unfolded a small map and pointed, not to impress but to inform. "We'll disembark before the main yard," she said. "Avoid crowds. There's a service gate."
"Do you always plan exits before entrances?" Kenji asked.
"Yes," Reina said. "You only get to improvise if you prepare first."
Pulsebun pressed his face to the window. "Everything looks slower when it's moving," he announced, which made no sense and also did.
The car rocked. Aiko closed her eyes. Somewhere under the rails the hum changed. Not louder. Closer. The probe in Kenji's satchel stirred, a moth inside a false book.
"Aiko," Kenji said quietly.
"I feel it," she answered.
Reina sat very still. "Describe."
"It's like the web we saw," Aiko said. "But not the picture—the thing itself. Threads, some thick, some thin, some frayed. And…" She opened her eyes. The world outside blurred. "And something noticing that I can notice."
"Can it see the egg?" Pulsebun asked, sudden and sharp.
Aiko looked at the box. The gold circuits under the green glinted like a thought deciding to be a sentence. "I don't know."
Kenji's hand hovered over the satchel. "We could check the probe."
Reina shook her head. "Not here. Not unless you want to announce ourselves to anyone listening for exactly that."
Aiko nodded, relieved and disappointed at once. The train took a bend. The hum ebbed the way tide does when the shore changes shape. She let out a breath she hadn't counted.
They ate Daichi's anpan in small, reverent bites. Pulsebun declared them "essential for morale." Kenji declared them "evidence of perfect dough development." Reina declared them "good." Aiko didn't declare anything. She chewed and tasted home and realized that, for once, it didn't make her want to turn back.
Fields became warehouses. Trees became poles with wires that carried conversations she couldn't hear. The sky picked up a stain of smoke and ambition. The train sighed again, braking into a place that knew how to be a city.
Reina stood. "Second stop," she said. "Be ready."
They gathered the satchel and the box and the courage that looks like keeping your face steady when your hands want to shake. The door slid open. Air different from Kyoten's came in—busier, thinner, full of what-ifs.
On the platform, the world wore a coat of noise. Men in vests, women in coats, wheels and voices and the clang of a distant bell. Aiko kept one hand on the box and one on the rail until both felt like hers.
"Eyes up," Reina said, which meant: look like you belong.
They stepped down into a river that had never heard of Kyoten. The river didn't care who they were. That was terrifying. That was freeing.
Aiko glanced at the box. The egg pulsed once—quiet, sure. Kenji took the lead, not with swagger but with purpose. Pulsebun walked at Aiko's knee, electricity dim and ready. Reina's badge caught the light and threw it somewhere useful.
The capital waited beyond gates and checkpoints and the rest of the road.
Behind them, Kyoten held. Ahead of them, a network woke. Between them, a girl who had wanted to bake and a world that had recognized her.
Sometimes doors open when you knock.
Sometimes they open because you are exactly the shape they were waiting for.