The board goes up before the sun.
ACTIVE GATES
E‑21A — Gate Break in 10h
D‑21C — Gate Break in 9h
C‑09D — Gate Break in 29h
A‑12C (Nakano) — Gate Break in 70h
OPERATION LANTERN (KUROJIMA S‑GATE) — BRIEF IN 9 DAYS
Names move when someone comes back. Paper covers the ones that don't.
Kaelen reads it once. He doesn't read it again. The rent slip sits folded in his palm. Same weight as yesterday. He lets it cut.
Eat later. Work now.
Reiss finds him under the board with a paper cup that's already cold. "Name."
"Kaelen Dremeir."
The pencil moves.
E‑HUNTER (PROVISIONAL)
"Reporter to E‑rank," Reiss says. "Killhouse at six. Rooftops after. If your hands bleed, ten percent. If they don't, two."
"Ten," Kaelen says.
"You always try."
Quartermaster's cage smells like oil and stitched leather. The woman behind the mesh doesn't waste words. She lays out a short‑glaive, matte and mean, ninety centimeters with weight forward.
"Pipe won't save you," she says. "Beak. Hooks. Pries. Tape the grip every morning."
He tapes it to his hand until the handle is his hand.
"Knives," she adds—curved beak‑knife, straight keel‑knife. "If you reach them late, you reach them wrong."
He pockets them without thinking about pretending.
"Two‑shot glass‑bore," she finishes. "Shatter rounds. Close. Quiet. Last resort."
He doesn't feel bigger. Just more honest.
Killhouse—Room A. Foam walls. Steel frames. Chalk crosses where you learn the hard truth about your steps. Mika is already there; hood down, hair damp. Her glaive leans where the wall learned not to breathe.
Reiss holds a stick and a timer. "Not speed," he says. "Breath. Door one—breathe. Door two—step. Door three—fall."
Kaelen stands on tape. Two chalk marks thirteen feet apart. A third at a wrong angle. He breathes out through his teeth.
"Don't lean unless you mean to fall," Mika says. "If you mean it, finish."
Door one. Enter left. Beak tight. Shoulders small. No target. Good.
Door two. Step. Check. Rope in his head. Breath low. Keep the body quiet.
Door three. First foot brushes chalk. The second isn't a step. It's a drop inside his own frame. Short fall. Beak lands like it has somewhere to be. The sound shows up late.
He misses by a finger.
"Again," Mika says.
He keeps doing it until the tape bleeds, until his lungs obey, until his feet stop trying to lie. He stops only when his hands won't close without flinching.
Rooftops. Dawn makes Tokyo look honest. Chalk crosses where confidence should be. Mika drags the stub into two tight marks.
"Two motions," she says. "Gasp before the edge and you don't stoop today."
He runs a thumb over Beak's grip. The coin taste of yesterday's Core still sits under his tongue like a bill he hasn't paid.
Do it or watch someone else go on the wall.
First step. Second is the drop. He hits the cross. Beak locks. The sound is late, like it had to think about it.
"Again."
He does. He misses by a knuckle. He does. He stops when his chest betrays him. He does. He hits it twice in a row. He stops when his hands shake too hard to hold a knife like a promise.
Mika nods once when he isn't looking. She only spends that when it matters.
Back at the board by nine. Chalk has shifted.
ACTIVE GATES
E‑21A — Gate Break in 9h
D‑21C — Gate Break in 8h
C‑09D — Gate Break in 28h
A‑12C (Nakano) — Gate Break in 69h
Jane slides up with a plastic cup of broth. Steam fogs her face. "You look upright," she says.
"Barely."
"Good. Gates hate panic. They love pride." She glances at his hands. "Nice tape."
"It'll bleed again."
"Everything does."
Tenji pushes a kit bag with his boot. "D‑twenty‑one‑C," he tells Mika. "Short run. Anchor in the middle. If it pulls, we pull back."
"Squad," Mika says. "Tenji. Jane. Anchor."
A man with a buckler and rope cleats lifts his hand. He doesn't offer a name. Room men don't need them.
Mika looks at Kaelen. "You carry. If you want a swing, earn it."
"Copy."
They pass the money board.
D‑21C CLEAR PAY
— Core (D): 40,000¥ per unit
— Energy crystals (D): 8,000¥ per kilo
— Hazard: +10% if handler signs blood drawn
— PRIVATE BUYERS OUTSIDE (NOT GUILD)
Someone taped a rogue flyer over part of it: CASH NOW. NO QUESTIONS. GOOD PRICES.
Mika tears it down and crumples it. She keeps it in her fist.
D‑21C sits under an overpass that forgot how to breathe. People drift to watch because fear needs errands. A bun seller works the corner. A man sells glass‑bore rounds out of a shoebox and looks like he'd sell his name for change.
The Gate opens. They go in.
Inside: tile too clean, boxes too neat. Air that wants to be polite. Kaelen marks left wall, tapes mirror, ties rope. Anchor plants cleats and breathes like a door owns his pulse.
"Listen," Tenji says.
Jane tilts her head. "Not yet," she says. "It'll crack when it wants to."
Square room. Scuff lines. Low ceiling. Floor patient. The air tips forward.
It picks Kaelen. Of course it does. Until rooms forget his shape, they won't.
It reaches.
He could lean. He could let the new line in his chest pull like a hooked key.
Not yet.
First step. Second is the drop. Short fall. Beak lands on a joint pretending to exist. It breaks like ceramic. Sound is polite and late. He doesn't chase.
Don't mark what makes you stupid.
The thing adjusts. It cheats toward Jane. She moves her weight half an inch; her ankle lives. "Shut up," she tells the room.
Kaelen's hands change without permission. Hook. He squeezes where a channel should be. The thing shudders like it remembers gravity.
Anchor hauls rope. Tenji steals two seconds of breath from the wrong places. Mika doesn't speak until she has to.
"Now."
Her cut lands three seconds late. The wound shows up after the mind. The body catches up. The floor does what floors do.
The room tries a push, small but honest. Jane hums one flat note at a tile; it stops wanting to jump. The pressure leaves. They walk out.
The bun seller smiles without showing teeth. The bullet seller counts cash. A rogue leans on rail with a bag that clinks.
"Guild pays slow," he says. He bumps Kaelen's shoulder like a friend. "Sell hot."
No one answers. He grins with the wrong half of his mouth and goes find a street that likes him.
Kaelen sets the bags at the cage window. The scale lies; the quartermaster hits it; it tells the truth. Hazard pay: 18,000¥. Shards: 16,000¥. Total: 34,000¥. Rent: 42,000¥.
He pockets the shortage like a bruise.
A woman posts a fresh sheet on the bounty board.
OPEN BOUNTY — THE KNEELER
500,000¥ ALIVE — 200,000¥ DEAD
UNOFFICIAL — GRAY CHALK
Mika rips it down and lights it in a steel tray. The paper burns without asking for drama.
Reiss steps over. He looks at Kaelen's tape, at the chalk on his boots, at the way he's still reading exits like someone told him to. He nods once.
"You didn't chase," he says.
"I wanted to."
"Keep wanting."
He taps the board. Chalk shifts with no hands near it.
A‑12C (Nakano) — Gate Break in 69h
A‑12C (Nakano) — Gate Break in 68h
Jane stops breathing for a second. Tenji looks at the floor like it did something wrong. Mika's jaw ticks. Reiss doesn't write it down.
"You're on E‑twenty‑one‑A," he says. "Three hours. Eat. Tape. Don't bleed if you can help it. It only pays eight hundred today."
Eight hundred. He nods. That number is a person he won't hit.
He buys a bowl from a stall that doesn't water its broth. Egg, salt, two slices of pork. He eats standing, back to a door. Jane leans next to him and steals a noodle without asking. He lets her.
"You shouldn't be alone after a bite," she says.
"I've been alone longer."
"That isn't safer," she says.
Their shoulders touch because there aren't many good ways to stand in this city when you're scared that look like courage. It isn't romance. It's room.
He returns the bowl. He cups steam on his hands because it's free.
The board breathes.
E‑21A — Gate Break in 3h
Reiss taps the chalk. "You're on it."
Mika's voice is quiet. "Don't lean unless you mean to fall."
Kaelen nods. He feels the line behind his sternum tug like it wants permission. He doesn't give it yet.
Eat later. Work now.
He tapes fresh mirror tiles into his coat. Checks Beak. Checks boots. Checks the rent slip like numbers move if you stare. They don't.
He looks in a window. His reflection is alone. Good. He doesn't have room for two.
They move.