The afternoon drags.
Not slow—heavy.
Each class adds weight instead of time. Daiso feels it stacking in his shoulders, in the back of his throat, in the way his breath keeps catching a fraction too high in his chest. The wire never loosens completely now. It just adjusts, sliding under everything like a second nervous system.
Math. Reading. Science.
All of it happens around him.
A pencil snaps two rows up. Someone laughs too sharp. A chair scrapes at the wrong angle. None of it turns into disaster, but each almost leaves a residue that clings to him, sticky and exhausting.
By the last bell, Daiso feels wrung out.
The hallway floods again. Bodies. Noise. Motion without direction. The wire tightens, thrumming with overlapping possibilities.
He moves with it—instinct guiding his steps before thought can catch up. Left instead of right. Pause. Duck through a gap that doesn't exist a second later. He avoids collisions he never consciously registers.
Someone brushes his sleeve and mutters, "My bad."
Another kid stares a beat too long, then looks away.
Attention.
Daiso hates how aware he's become of it.
Outside, the air is warmer, thicker. Late-afternoon sun bleeds orange across the pavement, stretching shadows long enough to trip over. The courtyard empties fast—kids scattering toward buses, bikes, parents' cars.
Daiso heads for the long way home.
He doesn't know why, exactly. He just knows the direct route feels wrong today.
The wire approves.
He cuts through a narrow side street lined with chain-link fences and overgrown weeds. The smell here is damp earth and rust, sharp enough to clear his head. His steps slow. His breathing evens out.
For three blessed seconds, the wire softens.
Then—
Laughter.
Not happy.
Testing.
Daiso freezes.
Down the block, near a boarded-up storefront, three older kids crowd around someone smaller. A backpack hits the ground. A shoe scrapes concrete as the smaller kid stumbles.
The wire snaps tight.
Daiso's heart slams once, hard enough to hurt.
He sees it—how this goes. How it escalates. How a shove becomes a fall, how pride turns into cruelty because there's an audience now.
He steps forward.
Then stops.
Rina's voice surfaces uninvited. You don't always have to be first.
His chest aches with the effort of holding still.
The smaller kid pushes back, weak but defiant. One of the older boys laughs and shoves him again—harder this time.
The wire screams.
Daiso moves.
Not toward them.
Between.
He steps into the open space of the street, just close enough to exist in the boys' peripheral vision. He doesn't shout. Doesn't threaten. He simply arrives where the moment hasn't decided what it is yet.
The laughter stutters.
One of the boys frowns, confused. "What are you looking at?"
Daiso meets his eyes.
Not challenging.
Present.
The wire twists, bending the tension sideways. The smallest delay—a half-second where no one knows what to do next.
The smallest boy scrambles for his backpack and bolts.
One of the older kids curses. Another snorts. "Whatever," someone mutters.
They drift apart, bored now that the shape of the moment has changed.
No fight.
No heroics.
Just a thing that doesn't happen.
Daiso's knees threaten to give out once they're gone. He leans against the fence, metal biting cold through his shirt, and lets the tremor take him.
That was worse than before.
Because they noticed him.
Not as a threat.
As interference.
He swallows hard and pushes himself upright.
The walk home feels longer after that. Each step carries the echo of what he did—and what he didn't.
At his building, the front door sticks like it always does. He shoulders it open and climbs the stairs slower than usual, every muscle aching with the effort of restraint.
Inside his apartment, the noise greets him—TV blaring, voices overlapping, someone arguing about money in the next room. Normal. Loud. Safe.
Daiso drops his backpack by the door and sinks onto the floor.
His hands won't stop shaking.
Because today taught him something new.
It isn't just that the wire responds to danger.
It responds to recognition.
And once people start adjusting around him—once moments learn his shape—
They don't forget it.
Somewhere far above cracked sidewalks and narrow streets, a quiet system registers another alignment.
Not an anomaly.
A repeatable behavior.
A child-shaped correction appearing where escalation used to live.
The pattern sharpens.
And this time, it does not look away.