The sound follows him home.
Not loud.
Not sharp.
Close.
It rides the space just behind his shoulders, like a second shadow that doesn't quite match his movements. Every step Daiso takes feels measured now—not because he's careful, but because something is watching to see if he will be.
The street outside the school is busier than usual. Parents double-park. Kids spill out in loose groups, laughter colliding, voices overlapping in uneven bursts. A crossing guard raises her sign, lowers it, raises it again.
The wire tightens.
Daiso slows.
He doesn't stop.
That matters too.
At the intersection, a delivery bike skids slightly as it brakes too late. The rider swears, laughing it off, but the laugh is thin. The crowd shifts. Someone steps back. Someone else doesn't notice.
The moment stretches.
Daiso feels it—the exact place where stepping forward would smooth everything out. The wire lays the timing bare, clean as a diagram. A half-step. A pause. The world bends.
He doesn't move.
Not because he can't.
Because he's already tired.
The crossing guard notices the bike wobble and snaps her sign up harder than necessary. Her voice cuts through the noise. "Hold it."
The crowd obeys.
The rider clears the intersection. The tension dissolves into annoyed murmurs.
Daiso exhales.
Then he feels it.
Eyes.
Not one pair.
Several.
Not fearful.
Expectant.
A woman near the curb glances at him, then back at the street, then at him again. Her brow furrows—not in anger, but calculation. A kid beside her nudges his friend and whispers something Daiso can't hear.
The wire hums, pleased.
He hates that.
Daiso keeps walking.
Behind him, someone says, "Wasn't that the kid from yesterday?"
Another voice answers, "Yeah. I think so."
The words stick to his back like damp fabric.
At the corner near his building, the pressure spikes again. Two cars nose toward the same parking space, drivers gesturing sharply through open windows. The air thickens. The argument wants to exist.
Daiso slows.
This one would be easy.
Too easy.
He could step into the space between bumpers, let the drivers see him, recalibrate their anger sideways. He's done it a hundred times without thinking.
He doesn't.
The wire pulls tight enough to hurt.
The drivers escalate—voices louder, arms waving. A door opens. A foot hits pavement.
Someone shouts, "Chill!"
Another voice joins in.
The argument breaks—not cleanly, not well. One car peels off, tires squealing, pride dented but intact. The other driver slams his door and stalks away.
Messy.
Unresolved.
Daiso's heart hammers like he's failed something important.
He stands there too long, staring at the empty space where he could have been.
"You okay?"
He flinches.
Rina Loft stands a few feet away, backpack slung over one shoulder, eyes sharp and concerned. She's been watching him the way people do when they're trying not to.
"I saw that," she says. "You didn't step in."
Daiso swallows. "I didn't need to."
"That's not what I asked."
He looks away. The concrete is cracked here, spider-webbed with old repairs. "They handled it."
"Barely."
"But they did," he says, and the words feel defensive even to him.
Rina studies his face. "You're not a switch," she says slowly. "You don't turn things on and off."
"I know."
"Then why do you look like you just dropped something fragile?"
Because I did, he thinks.
He doesn't say it.
They stand there in the late light, the city buzzing around them, moments resolving without his touch—roughly, imperfectly.
Rina sighs. "People noticed you today."
"I know."
"Some of them are going to start waiting," she says. "Not because they're afraid. Because they think you'll fix it."
The wire hums.
Daiso's stomach twists. "I don't want that."
"Good," Rina says. "Because that's how they make it yours."
He finally looks at her. "What do I do?"
She hesitates.
That scares him more than anything else.
"You choose," she says at last. "Every time. Even when it hurts."
The wire tightens, then settles—listening.
Daiso nods once.
As he turns toward his building, he feels it clearly now.
The city isn't just reacting to him.
It's testing him.
And the next time a moment tips—not into disaster, but into dependence—
He won't be deciding whether to act.
He'll be deciding whether to refuse.
The door to his building swings shut behind him.
Outside, the city keeps breathing.
Inside its countless almosts, a new condition has begun to form—
Not rescue.
Expectation.
And expectation, once learned, is the hardest thing to unteach.