U.A. woke like a metronome.
Attendance ticked; corridors carried students in measures of four; the bell gave downbeats no one argued with. Renya matched the tempo—Veil pressed flat, square behind his heel, pace that collected nothing it didn't need.
He felt it by the second staircase: a faint thrum in the air, too regular to be nerves, too polite to be warning. Not loud. Present. The square brightened once as if asking, Is that for us?
No, he told it without words.
It dimmed. The thrum remained—a bassline under the day.
Homeroom framed the morning in reasonable sentences. Yaoyorozu diagrammed a solution, and the board seemed grateful. Iida discovered a new way to raise his hand that might qualify as a kata. Kaminari listened with his whole face, leaning forward when interest won and back when confidence needed to look taller. Uraraka wrote careful notes and smiled at them, as if to make effort feel seen. Bakugou turned pages like challenges.
Renya answered when asked and not when invited. The pulse in the room gathered and scattered with attention—steadier near the front rows where rule-following thickened, surfacing at the back when a joke landed and the tables shared a laugh. Not hunger. Frequency.
He felt it again when Kaminari whispered across the aisle, voice pitched to cooperation.
"Hey, Kurotsuki," Kaminari said, palm angled to hide a grin, "later—spar, but, like, safe? I swear I set my dial."
The pulse rose by half a beat. Loose, warm, a yes-shaped sound.
Renya watched it without watching Kaminari. "After last period," he said.
Kaminari shot finger-guns he instantly regretted and mouthed cool because cool had to be named or it evaporated.
Across the room, Uraraka caught the exchange and didn't interrupt it. Her attention bent toward them like light through glass—gentle, curious, equal. The pulse answered differently near her—lighter, centered, as if it had learned to wait its turn.
Aizawa's eyes drifted from one student to another without lingering long enough to become permission. He didn't narrate what he saw. He didn't have to.
The training hall wore its honest floor. Present Mic's voice was turned down to coach instead of concert. Today's format borrowed from pace drills and chess clocks.
"Two-minute windows," Aizawa said, scarf coiled loosely, posture committed to gravity. "Pairs. One moves, one reads. Swap on the buzzer. No heroics. Precision."
Pairs assembled. Yaoyorozu with Ojiro—levers and tail. Sero with Mina—angles and improvisation. Bakugou with Midoriya, because the universe likes experiments that make teachers stare at their coffee. Renya with Kaminari—wattage next to quiet.
They took their square—a taped box on the floor, harmless until rules climbed inside. The pulse rounded the edges, interested.
"Your read," Renya said.
"My move," Kaminari countered, then smirked. "Okay, my read first." He bounced on his heels, eyes running the pattern: low hurdles, a beam, a dummy to tag, a light that turned red or green depending on whether the path preferred apology or confidence. "You'd take the long way, make the floor behave, turn the red light cooperative."
"Predictable," Renya said.
"Comforting," Kaminari said, and beamed at having improved his own sentence. "I'll move first."
Buzzer. Kaminari vaulted the first hurdle with a happy lack of modesty, planted, turned, drove toward the beam with a hop a coach would fix later. The pulse climbed when he grinned and steadied when he focused; it liked his effort, the way crowds like seeing someone mean it.
Renya read. Not body lines—frequency. The square sent a hair-thin thread to the beam and corrected wobble without claiming credit. Kaminari didn't notice the help; he felt like a person whose shoes had just remembered their job.
Buzzer. Swap.
Renya moved, Kaminari read. He didn't change the course; he changed the asking. Step, breath, step—timing set to the red/green's metronome. When the light flickered ambiguous, the square held no opinion and his footfall didn't argue.
"Uh," Kaminari said mid-read, then laughed. "Dude, you have stealth balance."
"I prefer furniture that looks like furniture," Renya said.
Kaminari's grin went sincere. The pulse near him rose again—fizzy, unarmored. Energy poured off him with the generosity of a space heater that hadn't learned thrift. It didn't leak because he was careless. It leaked because he thought warmth was a civic duty.
The drill turned. Uraraka took a square two lanes over, paired with Sero. Tape sang; weight forgot itself and returned because she asked it to. The pulse answered to her in a different meter—not the fizz of how much, but the quiet of enough. When she said, "You got this," to a beam, the beam believed her.
Renya's second pass carried him past that lane. For a blink, the pulse from Kaminari and the pulse from Uraraka braided. It did not amplify. It harmonized.
The square brightened, interested.
No, he said again. The thread retreated. The music played on.
Aizawa's gaze scraped quietly across the lanes and moved on. He didn't note a number. He noted the habit: Renya not using something, even when something offered itself.
After drills, the room practiced hydration and gossip. Mina folded herself onto the floor and declared the tape "vibes." Sero agreed on principle. Ojiro flexed his tail like a man auditioning to be a bridge. Yaoyorozu offered a water bottle with the air of a grant. Midoriya gave Bakugou space and gratitude in unequal measures. Bakugou glared at gravity for failing to be a worthy opponent.
Kaminari leaned beside Renya against the padded wall, breath high but not loud. "Okay," he said, as if continuing a conversation that hadn't started, "no zapping on the spar. Or, like, minimal zapping. Polite zapping."
"Polite zapping," Renya repeated. "We'll send a thank-you note afterward."
Kaminari snorted. The pulse near him wobbled in agreement. The square stayed framed.
They went three rounds—short, clean, respectful. Renya took angles that let Kaminari be honest. He showed nothing new. He practiced same. Kaminari ended with hands on knees, smiling at the floor like someone who'd had a good conversation with muscles.
"Again sometime?" Kaminari asked.
"Yes," Renya said.
"Cool," Kaminari said, and meant thanks.
Uraraka, passing with a towel and a grin, held his gaze for the length of a light breath. "You were very… you," she said, approving the choice not to audition.
"I strive to remain employed," he said.
"You strive to let other people shine without dimming yourself," she corrected, and then, almost shy: "That's rare."
The pulse around her did a small, satisfied circle. Renya ignored the invitation to decode it.
Lunch found him at a table that wanted nothing from him but witness. He delivered that. Minori from the journalism club waved through the window with a headline on her face. Shinsou drifted past the doorway like a punctuation mark that had decided to leave a paragraph alone.
The pulse sat on the edge of the cafeteria like condensation—collecting where laughter settled, tightening around a first-year's slumped shoulders, brightening near a teacher who bothered to refill napkins. It was not a will. It was a record—a heartbeat of a place that had decided to be for something.
Aizawa crossed the room with a tray that didn't apologize for its choices. He didn't stop. He altered course by a step to pass near Renya's shoulder. The square edged toward the teacher by the width of a coin, then stilled. Permission to share air; nothing more.
Aizawa didn't speak. He didn't have to. That was the class.
Afternoon classes ran like a machine that didn't need oil. Renya watched Midoriya's pencil fight grammar and win. He watched Yaoyorozu edit her own notes mid-sentence and not mourn deletions. He watched Kaminari pay attention the way extroverts do—publicly. He watched Uraraka reach for a question and decide it would be kinder to let it form first.
He felt the pulse change at the last bell—students uncorked, buildings exhaling, campus lanes negotiating traffic. He let it be weather. The square made a small circle under his heel and held shape.
The store did its evening work. Natsume pronounced the new brand of tea "aspirational." He sold three umbrellas to people who refused to admit the sky had made a decision. He sold batteries to someone who wanted them not to run out and rice to someone who needed it to not be expensive today. The bell kept time.
A woman with paint on her fingers bought soap and gratitude; a man with worry in his shoulder bought tape and a plan. The pulse reached there, too—different frequency, same function. The square tapped once, politely.
Near closing, the door chimed and no one entered. He knew the feeling: attention without footsteps. He waited with his palm on the counter, counting to seven. On the fourth count, the pulse pulled like a tide not of water but of memory.
Cold, not temperature—procedure. A floor that remembered being scrubbed for ritual. A blade that had considered itself an instrument, not a choice. A circle that said boundary and meant you can't come back. No color. No screaming. No spectacle. Have the rules. Pay the price. Do it neatly.
He blinked. The store returned. The counter under his hand was laminate and honest. The bell was a bell. The pulse receded as if embarrassed for being the messenger.
He did not move for the length of a breath. Then another. He told the square here and the shadow settled like a person agreeing to sit.
"Everything okay?" Natsume asked from the stockroom, tone that meant I won't ask if you don't want me to tell the truth.
"Yes," he said. "I remembered a room I don't intend to visit."
"Cool," she said, which is how some people bless a decision.
He flipped the sign at the hour. The bell agreed.
At home, evening put its hands in warm water and let worry come clean. Aki had arranged the table as a plan and a joke—rice, tea, a small dish she called chaos because it contained whatever had survived deadlines. She watched him walk in and knew enough not to ask how was your day? She asked, "Hungry?"
"Yes," he said, because hunger should be allowed to be small.
They ate in the easy speed of people who have earned chewing. Aki set her chopsticks down between bites without apology. "It hummed again," she said, casual as weather.
"When?"
"Twice. Once when the neighbor's kid cried next door. Once when I thought about texting you to buy milk."
The corner of his mouth moved. "Which was louder?"
"The milk," she admitted. Then, defensively: "We need milk."
"The square loves logistics," he said. "We should not let it adopt them."
She saluted with her chopsticks. "I told it 'later' both times. The kid stopped crying on his own. The milk will be fine in the morning."
He nodded. "Good."
She poured tea with the seriousness of courts. "You're far away right now," she said. "Not dangerous. Just… far."
"Memory," he said. "Not an image. A temperature."
"Old world?"
"Yes."
"Did it try to recruit you?"
"No," he said. "It tried to pass a policy."
She made a face. "Gross."
They cleaned with the grace boredom affords. The portrait leaned. The scarf kept the chair company. The square waited under the table like a sentence with the verb withheld.
When the dishes shone again, Aki stood and pressed her bare toes onto the square's edge. It brightened exactly once. She smiled. "We're teaching it manners."
"It's teaching us alarms," he said.
"Fair trade," she said. "As long as neither learns greed."
He watched her disappear into the small room that believed being a bedroom was an achievement. He sat where he always sat when the day had filed itself and let breath become arithmetic.
The pulse came back—the one that wasn't the city's. It did not ask. It did not promise. It waited.
"You're hearing more," he said to the second thing. "That isn't permission."
It brightened—only a shade. The crescent—the joy-shape—flickered and passed. Underneath it, a new rhythm: recognition. As if emotion in the building, on the block, in the rooms he would never enter, were steps in a hallway, and the shadow had learned to identify footfalls.
"Names, not meals," he said.
It steadied. Agreement, not appetite.
Outside, a scooter misjudged a corner and recovered without witnesses. Somewhere a television decided to stop being an argument. In the apartment above, someone laughed at a message longer than necessary. The square did not chase any of it. It listened and stayed.
He closed his eyes and let the cold from the store—procedure, circle, choice pretending to be law—move through him until it lost the shape of invitation. He didn't fight it. He let it unspool to its last recognizable thread and fall off the table of his attention.
When he opened his eyes, the room behaved.
He stood, checked the lock, and caught his reflection in the window without giving it a job. The city's lights wrote polite signatures across glass and left.
His phone buzzed once—a message from no name: Small tomorrow. Kurobane. He replied: Smaller. No dots appeared. Good.
He turned the lamp off. The square held. The pulse slowed until it resembled rest.
He lay down with the ease of someone who has chosen to pass rather than win. Aki breathed on the other side of the wall in a rhythm he knew better than his own. The apartment kept the weather out. The night chose patience.
He felt the hum once more, under his ribs this time, as if a room had remembered his name and wanted only to acknowledge it without asking for anything else.
He didn't call it hunger.
He knew better.
It wasn't hunger this time. It was recognition.