The lab introduced itself by denying it was a lab.
Plants by the window. A carpet that pretended to be soft. Two chairs that agreed with posture. On the wall, framed prints of ocean waves that had never met salt. The machines hid behind clean panels, cables tucked into sleeves like shy snakes.
"Non-invasive resonance analysis," the placard said, the way rain says it is only weather.
Renya sat. The square kept to his heel, coin-small, polite. A sensor dome hovered over the table like an idea that wanted to be objective.
Dr. Imai clasped a tablet to her chest with the warmth of a librarian and the precision of a metronome. "Thank you for agreeing, Kurotsuki-san. We'll ask you to perform ordinary tasks while we log ambient patterns. Read, drink water, breathe." A smile, correctly measured. "No heroics."
Kurobane stood near a frosted pane, hands in his pockets, looking like a man who had been invited to a dinner and brought weather instead of wine. He nodded once, the common language for I'm here if the room lies.
"Begin with this," Imai said, sliding a thin booklet across the table. The cover: CIVIC ETHICS: CASES in a font that believed in committees.
He opened to a random page. A train is in motion… Of course it was. Trolleys love labs.
"Read silently," she said.
He did. The letters steadied themselves into law. Under the table, the square felt the room lean forward—machines are audiences too, if you put a red light on them. He kept his breath on a count that refused to be interesting. In the monitor reflection, a line rose and fell with the agreeableness of someone being watched.
"Now," Imai said, "drink water."
He lifted the paper cup, and the dome hummed as though thirst had a waveform. He set the cup down and the hum answered in reverse, sympathetic.
"Can we… try a mild social variable?" a tech asked, eager. Imai nodded. The door opened. Kaminari leaned in like a sunbeam that had gotten lost.
"Yo," he grinned. "They told me to be a variable."
"Be polite," Renya said.
"Polite zapping only," Kaminari promised, then realized this was not that kind of test and stood very still, which for him is a peak act of heroism.
"Speak to him," Imai said softly to Renya.
"What did you have for breakfast?" Renya asked.
"Regret," Kaminari said, then, more helpful, "Toast. Jam. The pink kind."
The monitors didn't spike. They aligned. Two heartbeats slid closer without touching. On a heat map, two silhouettes cooled by one degree.
Imai tapped the screen. "Note coherence increase on verbal engagement. No quirk deployment."
"Or," Kurobane said, "note that friends calm each other."
Imai's stylus paused. "Correlation observed."
"Meaning human," he said.
She didn't argue. She didn't have to. The machine would do it for her later.
"Last measure," she said. "We will show you a short clip from the U.A. evaluation. Watch normally."
The screen showed the corridor, the red/green lights, the dummy that believed in cooperation. He watched himself refuse to be dramatic. On the graph, the line went flat—not dead, not disinterested: defined. The dome's hum tried to follow and discovered the edge of its job.
Kurobane looked at that flatness and exhaled as if the air had elected to be useful. He had wanted the machine to be bored. It had learned manners instead.
"Thank you," Imai said. "We'll compile."
"Compile slowly," Kurobane suggested.
Her mouth almost smiled. "We always do."
U.A. did containment by definition.
Nezu, small and sovereign, sat at the head of a table that obeyed him. Aizawa leaned in the chair opposite, every line of him a sandbag against a rising river.
"The Commission's report will be charming," Nezu said. "The footnotes will not."
Aizawa rubbed the bridge of his nose, an old habit that had learned to be ritual. "You can't measure calm without disturbing it."
"I'll embroider that on a cushion," Nezu said lightly. Then: "We need a firewall made of policies so boring that ambition trips over them."
Aizawa slid a page across. "Parent/guardian consent refresh every quarter. Student veto clause reinforced. Liaison hours capped. No proximity monitoring during rest."
Nezu read, whiskers attentive. "And we add: calm in our documentation means the absence of coercion. Not the absence of noise."
"Make them sign our dictionary," Aizawa said.
Nezu smiled, showing teeth the way a piano shows ivory. "Language is governance. If they write inside our words, they live inside our rules."
A knock. A courier with a stack of sealed envelopes. Nezu stamped them with a stamp that loved ink and war equally.
Aizawa lingered at the door. "He won't tell me when he's not okay."
"He will if we teach the room to ask," Nezu said.
"Rooms are learning too fast," Aizawa muttered.
Nezu's eyes sparkled. "Then we teach them boredom as a virtue."
At home, the world persisted in happening without permission.
Aki vacuumed quietly, a prayer made of electricity. The shadow under the table adjusted the cord before it snagged; she thanked it with tone, not words. The kettle rehearsed steam. The radio decided that the afternoon demanded an ad for a product that promised serenity in three payments.
She turned it off and let the apartment earn its quiet.
The TV across the hall—thin wall, thick opinions—piped in a panel show about U.A. A perkiness of anchors; images of heroes; a still from evaluation day. Renya's name appeared on a lower-third that wanted to be a ribbon.
The square answered. Not loud, not sudden—warm. It brightened under her palm where it rested on the wood, and the brightness traveled along the table's edge like a hallway light turning on in segments.
"No," she said gently, tracing the line back with her fingertips. "You don't need to react to his name."
It dimmed, obedient. Then a beat later, a stubborn flicker at the corner, as if a child had raised a hand again. She laughed despite the worry. "I see you."
She tested it. "Renya," she said aloud.
The square brightened once, like a hello.
She tried, "Mr. Aizawa."
A whisper of light. Respect.
"Kurobane?"
A faint, wary pulse. Not fear. Not trust. Complicated.
"Dr. Imai," she said.
Nothing. Then, belatedly, a small polite glow—someone learning to greet a stranger in a hallway.
She filled a sheet of paper with names and the shadow's answers, then looked at what she'd done and folded it away, embarrassed to be teaching furniture social skills.
The neighbor's TV said Kurotsuki again, confident as a headline.
The square brightened before she could stop it.
She set both palms on the table and breathed, slow and deliberate, until the wood cooled. "We are not a notification system," she said. "We are a home."
It listened. It stayed.
But when the anchor said his name one more time—Kurotsuki Renya, the student some say can make a crowd behave—the light under her right hand pulsed… and didn't quite extinguish.
"Okay," she whispered. "We teach this together."
She made tea, a ritual rearranged into curriculum.
Back in the lab, the second phase put on a white coat and asked not to be feared.
"We're going to change the environment slightly," Imai said. "White noise, dimmed light, mild visual prompts." She gestured, and the room agreed to be gentle.
Renya nodded. The Veil flattened in his chest like a sheet pulled tight: not a wall—a level.
White noise began. Not static—rain without weather. The plants by the window believed it. The sensor dome hummed a harmony. A tiny text came to his phone—Aki: TV says your name. House says hello. He put the device face down without reading the second sentence in time to stop the muscle that softened his mouth.
On the monitors, a trace wavered. Imai's stylus hovered. "What was that?"
"Human," Kurobane said, not asking.
Imai toggled a visual: a soft blue gradient that design committees had named trust. The machines leaned closer to their own graphs.
"Think of something calming," she said.
He thought of the square under a cheap table, brightening when someone whispered thank you to wood. He thought of a letter folded along a perfect seam. He thought of Aizawa's voice when the sentence carried a thin thread of heat that students mistook for boredom.
The line smoothed. The dome hummed on pitch. In the city's map, a pixel downtown (an apartment shaped like a decision) warmed by half a degree.
Imai tapped the city's ambient feed. "Cross-reference drift," she told a tech. The tech stuttered. "We… don't have permission for city ambient in real time."
"You do now," she said without moving her mouth. The graph obeyed.
A small dot far from U.A. rose and fell, matching R-17 for three beats.
Kurobane straightened. "Zoom."
The map enlarged and blurred into anonymity. The dot pulsed once more and flattened.
"What is that?" a tech asked.
"Coincidence," Imai said too quickly.
Kurobane didn't correct her. He stared at the dot until it learned to be ordinary.
"Next variable," Imai said, choosing momentum over alarm. "We'll show you words."
The screen presented phrases in a neutral font:
RESCUECONTROLOBEDIENCECHOICESISTERBOUNDARY
He kept his breath even. The line on R-17 shrugged at RESCUE and considered CONTROL like an old acquaintance at a bus stop. OBEDIENCE flattened to bureaucracy. CHOICE made the white noise sound briefly like ocean. SISTER rearranged the dome's hum into a lullaby it had never heard. BOUNDARY brightened the square under his heel and dimmed the rest of the room.
Imai's pen moved. "He's truthful," she whispered, and maybe she meant the lines, or maybe she had seen his face.
"Enough," Kurobane said. He didn't raise his voice. The word carried anyway.
She glanced. "Last—just a phrase."
The screen filled with three words:
CALM ON DEMAND
Something in the lab cooled. Not air. Expectation.
Renya looked at the words and decided they were a danger disguised as a product. The square under his heel made itself thin as paper. He inhaled and did nothing with the breath.
The line refused to perform. The dome's hum faltered and then chose not to harmonize.
Imai nodded once, professional approval. "Data logged."
"Delete it," Kurobane said softly.
She didn't pretend she hadn't heard. She didn't agree either.
"Session complete," she announced.
Aizawa watched afternoon become the shape of students finding exits without knocking over chairs. He checked a message from Nezu—legal sent the cushions—and allowed one corner of his mouth to express humor.
On the roof, he looked at the city the way a teacher looks at a future he intends to grade. He could almost feel the river of attention moving along avenues: talk shows, streams, speculation. He wondered how many of those currents would try to empty into one boy.
He texted Kurobane: If the lab asks for calm on demand, I burn the lab.
Kurobane replied: They asked. He refused politely. Bring a smaller match.
Aizawa exhaled. The scarf loosened by a loop. Gravity accepted the compromise.
Evening put its hands on Aki's shoulders and asked her to forgive it. She did, with conditions.
She wrote a single sentence on a sticky note and put it on the radio: We choose when to listen. The square brightened in agreement, then, in a very small rebellion, brightened again when the TV across the hall said his name.
"Fine," she said. "We'll practice."
She turned on the sink and timed dishwashing to a rhythm that called itself ordinary. The water made a rehearsal out of noise. The apartment hummed on pitch.
Her phone vibrated. R: Done. Home soon.She answered: Tea ready. Table calm.
The square glowed, pleased by its report card.
In the lab, Renya stood to leave.
Imai thanked him with sincerity that had learned to disguise appetite. "You were… helpful."
He inclined his head. "So were you."
Kurobane fell into step without falling into conversation. At the door, he said, "When they asked for calm on demand—"
"I didn't pay," Renya said.
"Keep exact change," Kurobane said.
The hall outside smelled briefly of ocean, though no window had opened.
He paused. For a fraction of a second, a pressure at the edge of his attention bent toward downtown—toward cheap wood and a folded letter. He felt hello across a distance it had no business crossing.
On the monitors they had already stopped watching, two frequencies matched for exactly one heartbeat: R-17 and a dot the lab could not name.
A tech noticed late and printed the frame. The printer jammed. By the time he cleared it, the graph had forgotten how to confess.
Imai stood alone in the lab and stared at the dome. "You learned something today," she told it. She didn't know whether she was speaking to the machine or the space beneath.
The dome hummed because that is what machines do when they don't have verbs.
Night put the city in parentheses. U.A. went dim in the way institutions do—light still on in rooms where futures were being ironed. The Commission offices shut their glass eyes with the satisfaction of agendas checked. A roof learned dew.
Renya unlocked the apartment. The door recognized the hand. Aki looked up and handed him a cup before they spoke. They sat. They drank. The square held its line like a good sentence.
"Lab?" she asked.
"Measuring," he said.
"House?" she said.
"Learning," he said.
She raised an eyebrow. "To do what?"
"To ask," he said. "And sometimes to answer."
She nodded. "We'll teach it the difference."
He put his palm on the table. The warmth that met it was not his alone. He could feel—absurdly, tenderly—the echo of a hand that was not in the room and would never be, the way a name changes air. He thought of Imai's graph and wanted it to be a letter instead.
"Guard," he told the square. "Not notify. Not predict."
It brightened once, a promise.
He slept without dreaming, which is a kind of mercy. The apartment practiced quiet as curriculum. The world continued to select its verbs.
Somewhere in storage, a corrupted printout showed two lines kissing for an instant and then departing without proof. A tech tossed it, and the bin learned confidentiality.
Between one heartbeat and the next, the Pulse learned what distance meant—and decided it didn't matter.