Mio
Mio woke up in the Lawson.
The real one.
Fluorescent lights buzzing overhead. Refrigerators humming against the far wall. Cold tile beneath her cheek.
For a long moment, she just lay there. Staring at the underside of a snack shelf.
A price tag dangled above her: ¥148 for melon bread.
Then the notifications came.
[Incursion Cleared]
[Grade: F]
[LOOT ACQUIRED]
Items have been placed in your System inventory.
She opened her inventory.
[Inventory]
Silver Hair Clip (Damaged)
Chipped Dagger (Rusted)
Shattered Shield Fragment
Torn Leather Strap
Everything they'd carried. The junk they hadn't bothered to sell. Funneled to her because she was the only one still breathing.
The cores—whatever they'd actually earned in there—must have gone to the Bureau. Standard recovery protocol, probably. The valuable stuff never made it to survivors.
Aoi's hair clip. The one she'd worn since middle school. The one that had fallen into the dirt when the vines split her skull.
Vendor trash now.
Mio closed the window.
Another notification. Different color—gold-edged, pulsing faintly.
[ENGINE: OBJECTIVE]
Clear C-Grade Incursion: 0/1
Time Remaining: 17:32:47
Reward: 5,000 XP + Lootbox
She stared at it.
The System didn't give quests. The System tracked stats, managed inventories, processed loot. It didn't want things.
But the Engine did.
She dismissed it. The notification minimized to the corner of her vision—still there, still counting down.
Not gone. Waiting.
Her phone buzzed. Bureau app.
NOTICE: Meguro Branch incursion flagged for review. All surviving participants must report to nearest Bureau office within 24 hours. Failure to comply may result in credential suspension.
Twenty-four hours. They weren't waiting for her to file a report at her convenience.
The money—¥150,000, her share of the emergency assignment—was still at the Bureau.
She'd have to check out at a kiosk to collect it. Explain why four delvers went in and one walked out.
Tomorrow's problem.
She checked the time. 4:12 AM.
The incursion had started at 18:47. Over nine hours ago. She'd been dead for some of that. Or close enough.
The memory hit her all at once. Not gradually. All of it.
The cathedral. The vines. The ultimatum.
Three may leave. One must die.
Shiori's ice in her chest. Aoi's dagger at her throat. Rin's boot on her wrist.
We'll take care of Nana.
Her breathing went ragged. Her hands started shaking.
She curled into herself on the cold tile floor, knees to her chest, and she—
She cried.
Not quiet tears. Ugly, heaving sobs that echoed off the empty shelves and the humming refrigerators.
Snot and spit and sounds she didn't recognize as her own voice.
They left me.
They did the math and they left me to die.
She'd known Aoi since middle school. Before the Integration. Before any of this.
Aoi had been her friend when being her friend meant something other than party composition and damage calculations.
And when it mattered—when it really mattered—she'd looked at Mio and seen a number.
Mio pressed her forehead to the tile and screamed.
The sound bounced off the walls. Empty. Meaningless.
No one heard.
When she was done—when there was nothing left but hiccups and salt—she lay there in the silence.
A shape moved at the edge of her vision.
She flinched—but it was just a cat.
A stray, grey and thin, watching her from between the shelves. Its eyes caught the overhead glare—two yellow coins in the dark.
They stared at each other.
Then it bolted, disappearing through a gap in the entrance that shouldn't have existed.
The incursion was closed. The Lawson was real again. But it had left a crack behind.
Mio got up.
Knees first. Hands on the cold tile. Then her feet.
Nana was waiting.
The trains weren't running at 4 AM, so she walked. Meguro to Shibuya. Shibuya to home.
An hour and a half through empty streets, past convenience stores with their lights still on, past drunks in loosened ties weaving toward nowhere.
The sky was starting to lighten when she reached the building. Grey-pink at the edges.
She climbed the stairs to the third floor.
Reached for her keys.
The door swung open before she could use them.
Nana stood there in her pajamas. The ones with the little cats.
Her hair was a mess—tangled, unwashed, like she'd been running her hands through it for hours.
Red eyes. Tear tracks on her cheeks.
"Where—" Her voice cracked. "Where have you been?"
Then she crumbled.
Her legs gave out and she fell forward, small hands grabbing fistfuls of Mio's hoodie, face pressing into her stomach.
The sobs that came out of her weren't words. They were sounds—raw, animal, the kind of crying that hurts to listen to.
Mio caught her. Sank to her knees in the doorway, pulling Nana against her.
"I'm here." Her voice was hoarse. "I'm here. I'm sorry."
"You said evening." Nana was hitting her chest now, weak fists that didn't hurt. "You said evening. I called you. I called you so many times—"
"I know. I'm sorry."
"I thought you were dead." The words were muffled against Mio's chest. "I thought you left. Like Mom and Dad."
The last thread holding Mio together crystallized.
"I'll always come back." She pressed her face into Nana's hair. Strawberry shampoo. The one she'd picked out herself. "I promised."
"You took too long."
"I know."
They sat there in the doorway, the grey morning light brightening around them.
Her sister in her arms, tears soaking through her hoodie.
Eventually, Mio pulled back. "Let's go inside. It's cold."
Nana nodded, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
Then she looked at Mio. Really looked.
Her face went white.
"Onee—" Her voice cracked. "That's blood."
Mio looked down.
Her hoodie was stiff with it. Brown, dried, crusted into the fabric. The hole where Shiori's ice had punched through was ringed with a dark stain covering half her torso.
"I'm okay," she said. "It's not—"
"That's too much." Nana's eyes were wide. "People don't... that's way too much."
"I know."
"You should be dead."
"I know." Mio pulled her back into a hug. "But I'm not. I'm here."
Nana was trembling.
"What happened?" Her voice was muffled. "What happened to you?"
"I'll tell you. Tomorrow. I promise."
Nana pulled back. Eleven years old. Waiting.
"You promise? Actually?"
"I promise."
Nana nodded. Wiped her face. The armor going back up.
"You smell like something dead."
"Yeah."
"You're buying me breakfast. Somewhere nice."
"Okay."
She went to her room. The door closed.
Mio stood in the hallway. Alone.
After a long moment, she pulled out her phone. Opened the camera. Flipped it to face herself.
The mark had felt like a nail through bone. There should be something. A scar. A symbol burned into the skin.
Nothing. Smooth. Unmarked.
Whatever Gaian had done, she'd written it somewhere deeper than flesh.
Same face. Same black hair, matted with blood she'd need to wash out.
The sea glass color of her eyes, a distinct emerald now.
Hungry.
She turned off the camera.
Her stomach growled.
But it wasn't food she was hungry for. An ache in her chest. An itch behind her eyes.
She needed something.
She pulled up her status.
The Engine interface—still strange, still new. A level where none had existed before.
[Status]
Name: Tamei Mio
Class: Biomancer
Level: 1
HP: 340 / 340
Reservoir: 0 / 12,500
Full HP. Empty Reservoir.
The ache made sense now. The Reservoir was a void. Waiting to be filled.
She reached inward. Found Vitalize.
[Casting: Vitalize]
[Reservoir: 0 — Insufficient]
[Drawing from HP]
The pain was immediate.
Not the dull ache of the void. Sharp. Real. Like something being ripped out through her chest. She gasped. Her vision went white at the edges.
Then the warmth came.
[Vitalize: Healed]
[HP: 340 → 306 → 340 (×2.13)]
[Excess → Reservoir]
[Reservoir: 38 / 12,500]
It flooded back—more than she'd lost, impossibly more, filling the wound and spilling over. The ache eased. And beneath it, deeper, the Reservoir stirred. Drinking in the excess like dry earth taking rain.
She stared at the number.
Thirty-eight. From hurting herself.
Again.
The pain. Sharper now—or was she just anticipating it?
The warmth. God, the warmth.
[Reservoir: 76 / 12,500]
Again.
[Reservoir: 114 / 12,500]
The hunger eased. Just a little. Like scratching an itch that had been building for hours.
She kept casting. The rhythm settled into her bones—the sharp bite, the flood of relief, the Reservoir drinking deep. Her head started feeling light. Pleasant.
The pain wasn't getting smaller. She was just starting to like it.
After twenty minutes, she stopped. The Reservoir had crossed a thousand.
Not bad. But not fast, either.
At this rate, filling the tank would take hours. Days.
But there was another way. She checked her passives again.
[Life Bloom]
When a creature dies within 10 meters, a Bloom manifests.
Blooms last 60 seconds.
Absorb to fill Reservoir.
Death. That was the real source.
Her eyes drifted to the windowsill.
Nana's plant. The little succulent she'd been trying to keep alive for three months. Brown at the edges, overwatered, barely hanging on.
Mio walked over. Touched the pot.
Cool. The soil was damp. But the leaves were soft. Dying already.
She squeezed.
The pot cracked. Soil spilled through her fingers. The roots came apart in her palm, fragile as wet paper.
The plant died.
She hadn't expected anything to happen. Plants weren't creatures. They didn't have HP—not in the System's eyes.
But the succulent had been alive. Barely. And now it wasn't.
Maybe that was enough.
A tiny light appeared.
Hovering just above the broken stems. Faint green-white, no bigger than a firefly, pulsing steady—
A bloom.
She stared at it. It wasn't fading. Not yet. The timer said one minute.
Her hand moved on its own. Reached out. Touched the light.
Cold. Sharp.
The bloom dissolved into her fingertips, and warmth rushed into the empty space in her chest.
[Life Bloom: Absorbed]
[Target: Potted Plant]
[Max HP: 3]
[+3 → Reservoir]
[Reservoir: 1,041 / 12,500]
Three points. From a dying succulent.
Not much. But it felt different than the Vitalize drip. Cleaner. No pain required.
And that wasn't what made her stare.
It was the choice.
The bloom had been there. Waiting. A full minute to decide.
She could have let it fade. Could have watched it wink out and disappear.
But she'd reached for it. She'd wanted it.
She looked at the dead plant in her hands. Brown. Dry. Empty.
Then at her reflection in the window. Same face as always. The ache in her chest, quieter now.
A plant gave her one point. A goblin might have a hundred HP. An orc, five hundred. A boss—
The space in her chest stirred. Not hunger. Something colder.
Potential.
She could stand in the middle of a fight. Let things die around her. And every corpse would bloom, and every bloom would feed her, and she'd use that feeding to make more corpses.
Biomancer.
The word tasted like iron.
The sun was coming up.
Orange light crept through the window, painting the bathroom tiles in warm stripes.
She looked at the broken pot. The spilled soil. The dead plant.
Nana would be upset. She'd tried so hard to keep it alive.
Mio would buy her a new one. A better one.
She pulled up her abilities one more time.
[Spark]
Cost: 50 Reservoir.
Cycles life energy into a devastating bolt.
Overcharged life makes it toxic.
Applies Necrotic Blight. Requires tissue contact.
Stacks.
Fifty Reservoir per bolt. And anything it hit would start rotting from the inside.
She closed the screen.
She looked at her hands.
She wasn't dead weight anymore.
She was something else entirely.
Her phone buzzed. Bureau app.
[INCIDENT REPORT REQUIRED: Meguro Branch]
Assignment Duration: 9h 25m
Expected Duration: 2h
Please confirm party status.
Someone was asking questions.
She found the incident report form on her phone. Mandatory fields. Checkboxes. A single text box for "additional details."
Mio typed as little as possible.
Anomalous entity encounter. Nested incursion layer. Party deceased. Incursion cleared.
The truth. Half-truths. The lies she could live with.
She didn't mention the ultimatum. Didn't mention who struck first. Didn't mention watching the vines drink them dry while she bled out on the cathedral floor.
Submit.