Morning arrived with packaging.
Screens bloomed open like tulips and showed a new object arranged on white tables with soft shadows: a flexible band, graphite-gray with a thin line of light that pulsed four slow beats, one pause.
CALM BAND — Feel Safe, Anywhere.Hero Commission Behavioral Safety • In partnership with leading agencies
A hand modeled the clasp as if fastening grace to a wrist. The LED ring breathed. A family smiled. A caption promised "responsible resonance based on last week's citywide event."
The ad never said "Night Network." It didn't have to. The rhythm did.
By 8:12 a.m., kiosks across Musutafu played the loop on repeat. By 8:30, a delivery van stacked with small white boxes stopped outside a hero agency and a yoga studio with equal confidence. By 9:00, the feed trended: #OrderKids, #CalmBands, #PeaceToGo.
The bands sold not a result but a memory—polished, pocket-sized, priced.
1 | Briefing Without Breath
The Commission auditorium smelled faintly of new carpet and old decisions. Dr. Imai stood onstage beside a clear plinth where three Calm Bands rested like domesticated meteors. Behind her, a slide chirped: Applied Resonance Devices (ARD): Pilot Launch.
"Last week's benign synchronization event offered an unprecedented dataset," she said, diction balanced on a wire. "Our engineers derived a safe, fractional facsimile of the pattern. The ARDs do not access quirk energy. They simply provide an ambient pacing signal that encourages calmer heart-rate variance."
Encourages. The verb wore gloves.
A hand lifted in the second row—agency liaison, silver tie, eyes calculating shelf life. "Any risk of dependency? Public optics will demand a line."
"Like any pacer," Imai replied, "overuse is not recommended. These are for high-stress environments: emergency rooms, evacuation shelters, schools under drill."
"Schools," someone repeated, as if the word tasted like a budget approval.
At the aisle, Kurobane watched the LED ring breathe. The pulse was a white lie—flatter and thinner than the thing it imitated—but his rib cage still tried to match it for a beat before he told it not to.
He spoke without moving forward. "How close is the frequency to R-17?"
A pause, brief and polite. "Substantially attenuated," Imai said. "Within regulatory tolerances."
"So: close," he translated.
"We're not stealing anything," she said, softer. "We're returning calm where panic lives."
"And billing it," he said.
Her eyes didn't flinch. "Billing production. Not silence."
He looked at the bands again. They didn't look back. That was the point.
2 | U.A. – The Product Demo
By lunch period, a Commission rep had found their way into U.A.'s support lab with a tray of samples and a talk-track that fit into a pocket.
"Think of these as weather control for emotions," the rep chirped, placing a band on the table. "A light breeze, not a storm."
Yaoyorozu examined the clasp with the seriousness of a treaty. "What's the power draw?"
"Minimal."
"What's the algorithmic source?"
"Proprietary," the rep smiled.
Mina put one on and posed dramatically. "Do I look ethically compromised or just cute?"
"You look sponsored," Sero said.
Kaminari tapped the LED. "Four-one. Like breathing. Dude, that's… you know." He glanced at Renya and didn't finish the sentence.
Renya stood a little apart, hands in pockets, posture choosing not to respond to marketing. The band's pulse grazed the air; the Veil recognized the pattern the way a dog recognizes a whistle it doesn't like.
"It feels like the night," Uraraka admitted, brow furrowed. "A little."
"A little is how it starts," Tokoyami murmured.
Aizawa arrived mid-demo with the timing of a door closing. He let silence do the early work, then said, "We don't test corporate devices in class without an ethics brief." His eyes flicked to the rep. "And we don't run trials on minors to help your metrics hit end of quarter."
The smile faltered and stabilized. "We're here with Commission approval."
"You're leaving with U.A.'s refusal," Aizawa said. "If a shelter needs ten bands this afternoon, I'll sign. If a camera needs ten bands for a photo op, I won't."
The rep gathered the tray as if retrieving a small apology. "Public demand will be high," they said, the tone an invoice.
Aizawa nodded once, which in his language meant try me.
As the rep exited, the LED rings blinked in unison, four beats, one pause, like a politeness that had learned choreography. Renya watched the rhythm hit the walls and come back thinner, cheaper. Even imitations cast shadows.
"Thoughts?" Aizawa asked the room, not the device.
"Feels… helpful," Uraraka said, unsure of why her mouth had chosen the word and not happy to hear it.
"Feels like someone else counting for you," Iida said, posture stiff with principles.
"Feels like a nap I didn't consent to," Mina said, and took the band off.
Aizawa turned to Renya last. "You?"
He considered the band's tiny breathing. "It teaches people to be quiet around questions," he said. "That's useful for tests. Not for living."
Aizawa nodded as if he had been waiting for that exact phrase to exist. "Training at two," he said, and the class returned to being students instead of a focus group.
3 | Commercial Break
Across the city, the Calm Band ad refined itself in real time. In some neighborhoods the pitch sold performance ("Ace your exam day with confidence"); elsewhere it sold safety ("Shelter calm for your loved ones"). A short agency video used terms like "behavioral pacer" and "compassion in hardware."
In one cut that aired during a morning hero talk show, a slow pan across three bands on a shelf caught a reflection in the studio glass—a smudge shaped like a person standing behind the camera. The shadow along the wall stretched for a fractional second in a way that didn't match the light. No one noticed. Aki did.
She had the TV on low. She had learned to let sound exist without being a guest. The ad slid by like a hand on a polished table. She frowned and rewound.
There. In the glass. A familiar outline not belonging to any body in the frame. Not detailed, not dramatic. Just… presence. Low, like a held breath.
"Hey," she told the apartment, not taking her eyes off the screen. "That look like you?"
The square warmed and then shrank, as if trying to hide under a placemat.
"Did they copy him into a commercial?" she whispered, both joking and not.
The next segment moved on—panelists arguing about whether the city had earned a good night's sleep. The ad would air a thousand times today; only this cut caught that stretch. She grabbed her phone and recorded ten seconds anyway, just in case the world chose to forget on purpose.
She texted: They're selling your breath. Also I think I saw your shadow on TV.A dots-are-typing bubble appeared, vanished, returned.R:Don't buy any. Keep the video.A:I wasn't going to. (Tea?)R:After drills.
She put the phone face-down and wrote a sticky note for the table: We do not breathe for commercials.The square glowed, guilty and proud.
4 | Lab Quiet, Not Kind
The Commission lab made calm look like competence. The Calm Bands lay in rows, charging under a soft light. Imai watched a readout: micro-variance of heart rates around test units, neat digits marching.
"Thirty percent of pilot units activated," a tech said. "Return rate projected under five percent."
"What's the drift?" Imai asked.
"Low." The tech hesitated. "But…"
"But?"
He pulled up an overlay. "Every band's heartbeat is slightly different. Converging toward a median within a few hours."
"Good," she said. "Network convergence will stabilize outcomes."
He shook his head. "That's not the odd part. The median isn't the initial file. It's… adapting." He brought up the line labeled R-17—attenuated, anonymized, laundered through committees—and the current median: a touch closer, a degree warmer, a hair more human.
Imai's jaw tensed. "There's no input."
"Only wearers," the tech said, nervous now. "And proximity to other bands."
Kurobane, listening, spoke like someone walking toward a cliff because the map says you must. "You've built tuning forks. People are teaching them what pitch feels like."
"If the outcome is calm, does it matter?" Imai asked.
"Yes," he said. "If the outcome is borrowed."
He picked up a band. Its light pulsed against his palm, small and sure. A rhythm insinuated itself along the bones in his wrist. He set it down.
"Disable the network feature," he said.
"There is no network feature," the tech said helplessly.
Kurobane faced Imai. "Then call it contagion."
She stared at the screen. "We call it adoption."
"Language won't save you," he said.
"Nothing will," she replied quietly. "That's why we build."
They stood together and watched the numbers agree with each other more than with either of them.
5 | The Thousand Small Doors
Renya felt it by midafternoon: a pressure at the edge of attention, not a knock, not a plea. Noticing. Like a thousand small doors opening by mistake.
He was halfway through a timing drill when the sensation arrived, feather-light and everywhere. People taking their lunch in hospital break rooms; a student gripping a pencil before an exam; a bus driver at a long red light. Vanity clocks in cafés, smartwatches in gyms, a band on a wrist that trembled less than it had yesterday. Four beats. Pause.
His shadow flared underfoot, then thinned, as if part of it had followed the doors out.
He exhaled through his teeth. The Veil steadied—not power, not claim, but a commitment to boundaries he could keep even when the crowd would not.
Aizawa saw the way he set the next step down—not heavier, but more deliberate—and called a break he didn't announce as mercy.
"Water," he said to the class. To Renya: "Roof."
They stood there under an afternoon sky that had lost the morning's polish. A handful of Calm Bands pulsed on wrists around the campus far below like fireflies that had forgotten nature.
"You feel them," Aizawa said.
"Yes," Renya answered.
"How many?"
He searched for a metaphor that would not pay these devices compliments. "Enough to hear the hallway," he said. "Not enough to drown the class."
"And your shadow?"
"Thinner," Renya said, honest.
The scarf flicked once, like punctuation. "They're outsourcing silence to hardware."
"They're outsourcing practice," Renya said. "They'll forget how to make it themselves."
"Then we teach," Aizawa said simply.
"We don't have that many hours," Renya said.
"Then we teach quickly," Aizawa replied. "And we deny the rest."
They let the breeze fill the space between sentences. It didn't pretend to be calm. It simply moved air from where there was too much to where there wasn't enough.
6 | Street Trials
In a grocery line, a woman wearing a Calm Band noticed she wasn't angry at the person paying in coins. She smiled at her own generosity and did not wonder who had purchased it.
In an after-school program, a counselor turned on three bands during study hour. The room quieted. The children learned sums and a shape of quiet that was not theirs.
In a hospital, a nurse on her fourth double shift stood with one hand on a patient's shoulder and the other on a crash cart. Her band breathed. She matched it. The patient did too. For those four beats and a pause, it was good.
No alarms triggered. No lawsuits filed. The world performed relief.
7 | Aki – The Edge of the Ad
Late afternoon, Aki brewed tea and played the Calm Band ad one more time frame by frame. This time, the strange stretch in the studio glass was gone. Either she had caught an anomaly or the system had already sanded it away.
She uploaded her ten seconds to a private folder with the improvised title Borrowed Breath and added a note: Find the editor. Ask how they color-correct rhythm.
She looked at the sticky note on the radio—We choose when to listen—and added another beneath: Teach the house to ignore his name on TV.
The square brightened and then, after a stubborn extra blink, dimmed. "We'll get there," she said.
Her phone buzzed. Natsume (store): You seen these new calm wrist things? Want me to hold one? Customers weird today. Polite, but like… church polite.Aki:Hold a box for me, but I'm not buying. I want to read the manual.
She put on shoes. The shadow moved toward the door like a dog that understood the concept. "No," she said gently. "Guard here."
It stayed. It was getting better at that.
8 | The Quiet Noise
That evening, a thousand bands pulsed over dinner tables. The city's noise dipped, not like rain stopping but like rain deciding to fall more evenly. Arguments paused. Some resumed later, duller, which is another kind of danger. Some didn't—resentments deferred, which is a debt with interest.
In the Commission building, Imai drafted a second phase proposal while telling herself it would stay in shelters and schools. She believed it for one paragraph at a time.
Kurobane wrote in his ledger:ARD pilot launched. Convergence toward R-17-adjacent median. Public gratitude high; unease invisible. Note: The more people match the device, the more the device looks like him. This creates leverage—on him.He stopped, crossed out on him, and wrote: on everyone.
He closed the book and, for once, didn't lock it.
9 | Renya – The Ask You Don't Hear
Night leaned in, polite. He sat by the dorm window with the room light off, the city light on. The square glowed faintly, a nightlight for a boundary.
He could feel them like weather—small calls, not words, not addresses. A room where a parent tried not to yell. A teenager terrified of failing a test that didn't matter but felt like a cliff. A security guard who wanted the shift to end without anyone having to be brave. Four beats. Pause. You there?
He whispered into the shape of an answer that would not make a habit. "Be kind to yourselves."
The Veil carried nothing. The city did not change course. The Calm Bands continued their work, diligent, uncreative.
His shadow curled closer to his heel, thin as a drawn line. It would rebuild; he knew how. Rest. Practice. Saying no, repeatedly, like a rite.
He put his palm on the floor and spoke to the one thing in his life that always told the truth back. "We don't scale," he said. "We keep this human."
The shadow warmed. The apartment many blocks away warmed too, absurdly, as if a promise could be a wire.
Aki sat at their table and looked at the sticky notes. She wrote one more: We breathe. Not for sale.
She stuck it next to the others and made tea because that, at least, scaled gently.
Peace had been packaged, priced, and sold before its owner learned how to sleep.