Morning opened like a door he hadn't locked.
Renya woke into stillness that was not empty; it was attentive. The apartment knew where every object lived—cup on the left, blade case parallel, notes stacked by topics that never touched. Light slid under the curtain and drew a pale rectangle on the floorboards beside the porcelain bowl. The shadow lay just shy of it, like a student who had learned where the line was and was deciding whether to test the teacher.
He breathed once and the room answered.
"Square," he said quietly.
Under the counter, darkness stitched itself into a clean outline—a palm-wide square, edges true. The air cooled by the smallest possible agreement.
"Stay," he said.
The shadow did not move.
He set water to boil, rinsed the bowl as if it recognized ceremony, and placed the cup exactly where the day expected it. Steam rose in a thin column. The square remained square.
He finished the sword sequence with the Veil smoothed to an almost reflective gloss. No flare. No cleverness. Honest motion. The square remained square.
He lifted the cup, tasted the heat, and waited. Patience is a form of measurement. After sixty seconds, the shadow twitched as if remembering a body has itches.
He set the cup down.
"Again," he said to himself, and to the thing that heard without ears.
He opened the door and stepped into the hall.
He counted his steps to the stairs—twelve down, nine to the right, twelve more. He stood under the building's mailbox and listened to the light pool overhead. Somewhere above, a neighbor coughed like a clock. Somewhere below, a television rehearsed its morning. He stayed until discomfort asked for attention and then returned to the apartment.
The square held.
"Good," he said. "You pass with supervision."
A key turned next door. Aki's door. She came out with damp hair and a scarf in the process of becoming a knot. "You're testing it," she said, as if narrating a documentary for which she had no patience.
"Yes," he said.
"And?"
"It obeys when watched."
She made a face. "That's not obedience. That's manners."
"Both are useful," he said. "One is cheaper."
She grabbed the kettle and performed breakfast with a competence the kitchen trusted. "Do you want me to make it misbehave?" she asked, mock-innocent.
"No," he said. "I want you to be you. That is already a sufficient experiment."
She rolled her eyes and set a plate in front of him with the authoritative care someone gives to feeding stray gods: here, this, eat, behave. Then she paused, eyes dropping to the floor. "It's… brighter where I stand."
He followed her gaze. The shadow had thinned beneath her feet, not disappearing—light doesn't win here—but retreating to accommodate. Softening.
"Because you thanked it," he said.
"That's ridiculous," she said, flushing.
"Correct," he said. "And factual."
She knelt, palm hovering over the pale rectangle near the bowl. "Can I… ?"
"Yes."
Her hand descended into air instead of liquid; the shadow did not leap to fill it. It listened to the intent and adjusted by a degree so small only people who lived on degrees would notice.
"It wants to help," she said softly, surprised by her own certainty.
"It wants to be permitted," he said. "Helping is one method."
She stood, patted the scarf into a neater compromise, and declared judgment: "You two are exhausting."
"Accurate," he said.
"Try not to make it love me more than you do," she added, half a joke trying not to reveal its weight.
"It learned 'love' from watching you," he said. "It won't teach me the wrong version."
She blinked hard, nodded once, and left the room before sincerity could spill.
When the door closed, he looked down at the square. It pulsed once and then flattened with the obedient boredom of an honor student.
"We begin," he said.
He kept the test small. The day tried to be ordinary; he let it. After class, he did not cut through the market or practice in the park. He took the long route home, past reflective windows that pretended to be curious, past a crosswalk that overestimated drivers.
At the curb, a cyclist's bag strap tangled itself in a handlebar. The bike jerked at exactly the wrong angle. A kid stepped from the opposite side without looking up from a screen. Geometry wanted a collision.
The shadow stirred under Renya's shoe.
"No," he said, one word and a small weight behind it.
It froze. The cyclist managed physics; the kid's shoe caught on a painted line and betrayed him into safety. Disasters enjoy comedy when denied.
The urge receded. The shadow returned to the small square inside his mind where he had drawn it this morning—command obeyed, restraint rewarded.
He exhaled through his nose. "We can train this," he said.
The evening discovered him agreeable. The square, repeated across hours, held.
Training yielded to ritual yielded to endurance. At the dojo, the master watched him in that precise way of people who measure progress by what doesn't happen.
"Your edges are honest," the old man said. "Still too polite to be art."
"I'm not aiming for art," Renya said.
"Then you're safer than you think," the master replied. "Art asks for witnesses. Survival asks for receipts."
They sparred once. A sequence opened; a line presented itself. The shadow offered a shortcut—an elegant bind that would end the exchange in two heartbeats instead of four.
"No," he told it, and completed the longer route.
The master's eyes thinned with approval. "You refused the clever thing," he noted. "Good."
"Cleverness is expensive," Renya said.
"Only when unpaid," the master returned. "Your debt is in control. Keep paying."
He failed the second test at the convenience store.
It wasn't dramatic. A woman reached past him for a carton of eggs at the edge of a too-high shelf. Her sleeve caught on a protruding price tag holder. The carton tipped. The shadow rose like a hand and cupped the fall. Six eggs survived, six didn't. He hadn't told it to move.
The woman gasped, then laughed with relief that didn't ask permission. "Lucky!" she said. "Oh—sorry—mess—"
He steadied his voice. "It's fine," he said, and helped her find another carton, careful to touch nothing else.
She paid. She thanked the air. She left. The register blinked at him without pity.
Renya crouched and wiped the floor very clean. He didn't speak until the motion was done.
"Square," he said.
The shadow returned to position and sulked like a good student asked to re-copy neat handwriting.
"You may respond to danger," he said. "Not clumsiness."
It brightened by a degree and then dimmed—understanding without liking.
He put a sign on the endcap in block letters: ASK FOR HELP. He replaced the eggs and replaced the price tag holder with one that did not hook sleeves. The simple tools of mortals could be made to work. The square held through the rest of the shift.
At closing, he poured tea into the porcelain bowl. The steam curled, hesitated, and thinned into the shape of a habit.
"Tomorrow," he said, "we fail better."
Kurobane heard it before he saw it.
He wasn't listening to Renya; he was reviewing resonance data from random civic events the way other people do crosswords. Noise frames the signal. Occasionally, noise tells the story.
The underpass incident and the drill tone harmonized; he had already filed that away as something the world would punish him for understanding too late. Tonight, he skimmed complaints about a transformer, a broken bus door that made passengers chant about refunds, a street musician whose power produced synesthetic protests.
Then, at 19:14, a mild anomaly near a neighborhood convenience store: a tiny, disciplined flare—a permission shape. Not a wave. A nod.
He knew without proof. He pulled the camera feed for the minute in question. The device blacked the view at the exact moment the eggs fell; by the time image returned, a boy was crouched with paper towels and a woman was apologizing to a world that did not ask her to.
Kurobane rewound the resonance line and listened to the note again—small, quick, apologetic.
"Accident compliance," he murmured. "He's teaching it manners."
He sat back and let the thought become a sentence: It listens to him because it cares what he thinks. That, more than control, suggested humanity. Not human. Human-adjacent.
He typed and then deleted: Recommend increasing trust. The Commission did not speak that dialect. He wrote instead: Subject demonstrates containment. Maintain proximity. Close enough.
Aki noticed first—again.
It wasn't the eggs. She didn't know about those. It was the way shadow on the wall lifted before she reached for a book on the top shelf, then flattened because the decision had been reconsidered, then lifted again when she smiled at it without moving her mouth.
"You like being seen," she told it.
"It likes you," Renya said from the doorway.
She jumped. "Don't be creepy."
"I live here," he said. "Creepy is cheap rent."
She pointed at the tilt of darkness above the bookshelf. "Can I test something?"
"No rituals," he said automatically.
"No rituals," she agreed. "Just… feelings."
He weighed caution against curiosity and discovered they rarely pay the same currency. "Five minutes," he said. "Then we eat and pretend to be normal."
"Deal."
She stood in front of the shelf, eyes on the shadow line, and did nothing. That was the test: do nothing, and mean it. After a minute, she let herself think about the book—want, not need. The shadow did not move. After another minute, she let herself want something else: Renya not going where she couldn't go. The shadow brightened where her toes were.
Renya felt it—like weather through a window he had not left open.
"Aki," he said—warning, not scolding.
She didn't look away. "It changes when I worry," she said. "Not when I want a thing."
"Emotion is a higher currency than object," he said. "You just proved a theorem philosophers rent for speeches."
She frowned. "So if I want you safe, it listens."
"If you fear me lost, it listens," he corrected. "Those are not the same wish."
She held very still. "Can it be taught to prefer the first?"
"Yes," he said. "If I prefer the first."
Her eyes softened in that way he had never been able to argue against. "Then practice," she said.
He nodded, small. "Eat," he said, to change the subject and honor it.
They did. The rice tasted like survival pretending to be comfort. The shadow stayed politely in its square, brighter under her chair legs than under his.
He brought the test to the dojo because tatami tell the truth.
He described only what would be understood: not demons, not cultivation, not worlds that had sliced him into someone the Commission would not hire. He spoke about power that responded to intent and had begun to practice initiative.
The master poured tea and considered. "Intent is contagious," he said. "So is discipline." He set one cup in front of Renya and one on the floor where there was no guest. "Talk to both."
Renya looked at the second cup and decided to accept the metaphor as medicine.
"My rules," he said, clearly. "Save when called. Learn when invited. Do not embarrass me in grocery stores. Do not choose her."
The room breathed like an animal that had decided to like its cage. The second cup steamed, cooled, accepted.
"Now say what you will do," the master said. "Rules for a thing are also rules for a man who would keep it."
He found the words without consulting pride. "I will warn before using. I will show and not show as needed. I will turn away hunger dressed as efficiency. I will prefer safety that does not bruise. I will keep room for her."
The master drank. "Good," he said. "You made a mirror and a mask in one sentence."
"What happens if it fails?" Renya asked.
"Then we discover whether your mercy is a reflex," the master said, "or a skill."
They went to the mat. The square in Renya's mind persisted. The shadow obeyed.
The Commission sent another invitation two days later: Closed-Door Panel—Scenario Case Studies. Kurobane's name was at the bottom, not as sender, as attending.
The room was small enough to be honest. Three panelists—one pro hero with a quiet power, one precinct captain with careful eyes, one Oversight analyst whose job was to translate between forms and people. Ten candidates in folding chairs.
"Case One," the analyst said, projecting text onto a portable screen. "A teammate's uncontrolled flare threatens a civilian. You can stop it by using a technique you've hidden. Cameras are present. What is the right choice?"
Hands went up. Answers flowed like predictable rivers: safety first; transparency matters; trust the team; protect the brand. The hero scratched a note; the captain watched the phrasing of verbs; Kurobane cataloged the shapes honesty takes when it tries to pay rent to policy.
Renya lifted his hand late. They waited.
"You stop it," he said. "You do not reveal how. You ensure witnesses can describe outcome, not method. You debrief in private and accept blame in public if the story asks for it."
The captain's brow creased. "Why accept blame?"
"Because blame is gravity," Renya said. "It keeps chaos from floating into places it can't be caught."
The hero nodded once—less a vote than an acknowledgment. The analyst wrote narrative handling beside his number.
"Case Two," the analyst said. "A civilian you care about is being used to draw you out. Do you avoid the trap at risk to them? Or accept the trap and risk escalation?"
Renya didn't wait for the show of hands. "Neither," he said. "You change the stage. You make the trap unprofitable."
"How," the analyst asked, curious enough to leave curriculum.
"You move the perimeter where cameras already are," Renya said. "You turn their leverage into liability. You make the choice look bad to whoever asked for it."
Kurobane's eyes warmed by a degree. The hero smiled, sharp and brief, like recognizing a blueprint. The captain did not smile at all, which in his language meant keep talking.
"Case Three," the analyst said. "You notice your power acting without instruction."
A cold wire ran through the floor—resonance without sound. Renya met Kurobane's gaze for exactly a heartbeat.
"You make rules," Renya said. "And you obey them too."
Silence. Respectful. Unafraid. The panel concluded with the ordinary choreography of forms and thanks. As they left, Kurobane caught Renya's pace with no visible effort.
"You passed the test you wrote," Kurobane said.
"I prefer to be graded on my own problems," Renya replied.
Kurobane looked at him like a man who had found a piece that belonged to a puzzle the manufacturer had discontinued. "You're teaching it ethics," he said. "Not just boundaries."
"It listens to incentives," Renya said.
"That makes you dangerous to the wrong people," Kurobane said.
"And useful to the right ones," Renya said.
"Those categories slide," Kurobane reminded him.
"Then I'll slide better," Renya said.
The agent's mouth tipped. "One day," he said, "you'll ask me for help before the second choice."
"One day," Renya agreed, "you'll offer before the first."
They separated like two lines that knew they would cross again.
Night did what it does: it put everything in the right color. The square held at his feet. The shadow learned to like the tightness of rules, the way athletes learn to like practice that hurts less over time. Aki slept with the window cracked open because winter was still a rumor and she liked pretending to be braver than the air.
At 02:11, the charm hummed—faint, curious. A tracker within two blocks. He went to the window and saw nothing but the honesty of empty streets. Somewhere, someone measured. He opened the door and stood in the hallway until the humming thinned into apology.
"It's listening," he said, meaning more than one thing.
He turned back inside. The room had shifted a hair—the cup slightly left of where he had placed it; the scarf on the chair folded one loop neater. The shadow lay flat, staying inside the square like a promise kept. He let the smile happen where no one, not even the second thing, would file it.
"Good," he said to the air, to the day behind, to the test ahead. "You listen. I choose."
The city practiced dawn behind the curtain. He poured water into the porcelain bowl and watched the surface go still in exactly three heartbeats, as if even liquid could learn.
When he sat to breathe, the breath came as agreement, not argument. The square did not waver. Aki turned once in her sleep and stayed, small and infinite in the same measure.
Between power and permission, a new thing had begun to grow: trust.
He would keep it small. He would let it live.