Rina Loft didn't walk away.
She should have. Adults always did after the moment passed—after the street behaved, after nothing bad happened. They took relief like a receipt and moved on.
She stayed.
Daiso noticed because staying changed the air.
He swung his feet once, heel brushing concrete, and felt the echo of the near-miss still buzzing under his skin. Not fear. Something heavier. Like holding a door shut with one hand while pretending it wasn't pushing back.
Rina shifted her backpack higher on her shoulder. "You do that a lot?" she asked.
"Do what?"
She nodded toward the crosswalk, toward the invisible thing he'd stepped into. "That."
Daiso looked at the light as it cycled red again. The cars lined up neatly this time, obedient. He shrugged, small. "I count."
"That's not what I meant."
He traced the crack in the curb again with his toe. The concrete was warm. Steady. Safe. "People go when they think they're supposed to," he said. "Not when it's right."
Rina frowned—not confused. Processing. Like she was fitting his words into a place they didn't belong. "You're… what, eight?"
"Almost nine."
She let out a breath through her nose. "That's not normal."
Daiso didn't argue. Normal was a word people used when they didn't want to look too close.
A bus hissed again down the block. The sound made his shoulders tighten before he realized they had. He forced them down, one at a time.
Rina noticed that too.
"You okay?" she asked.
He nodded. Too fast. Then corrected it with a slower one. "It feels… loud. Before things happen."
"Loud how?"
He searched for the right word and didn't find it. Words were slippery when they mattered. "Like everyone's about to talk at once."
Rina crouched, sudden and close enough that he could smell laundry detergent on her jacket. She didn't reach for him. That mattered.
"And if they do?" she asked.
"They crash," Daiso said. Simple. True.
For a second, neither of them spoke. The cicadas filled the gap, relentless. The city kept breathing around them.
Rina straightened. "You shouldn't be sitting here alone."
"I'm not," Daiso said, and meant the street. The sounds. The spaces.
She followed his gaze and saw nothing but asphalt and paint. "Right," she said anyway. "Come on. I'm headed that way."
He hesitated.
Not because he didn't trust her. Because leaving meant releasing the pressure, and he didn't know what happened when he let go.
A horn blared somewhere too long. His chest tightened again.
Daiso stood.
They walked together. Not close. Not far. The sidewalk felt different when someone else matched his pace—less fragile, more deliberate.
At the corner, a group of kids burst out of a bodega, laughing, shoving. One stumbled toward the curb.
Daiso stopped.
Rina kept going two steps before she realized. She turned, saw his posture shift—shoulders angled, eyes fixed on the space where the kid would land.
"Daiso?" she said.
He stepped forward.
The kid tripped, recovered on a hand, scraped a knee instead of falling into traffic. He swore, then laughed, friends pulling him upright.
No one noticed the boy who'd moved first.
Rina did.
She stared at Daiso like she was seeing him for the first time all over again. "You didn't even touch him."
Daiso's hands shook. He shoved them into his pockets. "I don't have to."
Something hardened in Rina's expression—not fear. Resolve. "You shouldn't be alone with that," she said.
He looked up at her. "With what?"
"The weight," she said. "You're carrying it like it's yours."
Daiso opened his mouth to answer—
And somewhere deeper in the city, far beyond streets and sirens, a process ticked forward one step ahead of schedule.