Daiso didn't answer her.
Not because he didn't understand—but because the word weight settled somewhere that already hurt.
Rina waited. She was good at that. Not staring. Not rushing. Just standing close enough that leaving would feel like a decision instead of an escape.
Traffic breathed around them again. Engines idled. Tires whispered over asphalt. The city relaxed now that it hadn't been embarrassed.
Daiso slid his hands deeper into his pockets and felt the tremor still running through his fingers. It always came after. Not during. During, everything lined up too cleanly to shake.
"If I don't hold it," he said finally, eyes still on the street, "it goes wrong."
Rina's jaw tightened. "That's not how that works."
"It is," he said. Not defensive. Certain. "I've tried."
She studied him in silence, eyes moving the way people's did when they were mapping something dangerous. "You're saying you choose to do this."
He shrugged. "It's already happening."
That answer bothered her more than if he'd claimed some kind of power.
A wind kicked dust across the sidewalk. Paper scraped along the curb and caught against Daiso's shoe. He nudged it free without looking.
Rina straightened and checked the street behind them, then the one ahead. "Where are your parents?"
"At work."
"All the time?"
He nodded.
That tracked too neatly. Rina exhaled and made a decision she didn't ask permission for. "You hungry?"
Daiso blinked. The question landed sideways, missing all the places he'd braced for impact. "I… don't know."
"That's a yes." She adjusted her backpack again and started walking. This time she didn't look back.
He followed.
The block changed as they moved—storefronts narrowing, shadows stretching where the buildings leaned closer together. The air smelled different here. Old oil. Bread from somewhere unseen. Something sour and human underneath it all.
Daiso's shoulders loosened by degrees. He didn't notice until he almost tripped on a broken slab and caught himself too fast.
Rina noticed.
"You okay?" she asked, softer this time.
"Yeah." He wasn't lying. The pressure had shifted. Not gone—never gone—but redistributed. Like someone else had a hand on the door now.
They reached a corner deli with a flickering sign and a bell that rang too loud when Rina pushed inside. Cold air washed over them, sharp and clean. Daiso sucked it in without meaning to.
The clerk barely glanced up.
Rina grabbed two bottles of water, a sandwich she didn't inspect too closely, and a small pack of something sweet. She slid them across the counter, paid, and motioned him outside again.
They sat on overturned milk crates by the back wall, graffiti layered so thick it felt structural. The sandwich was warm. Greasy. Real.
Daiso ate like he wasn't sure it would still be there if he stopped.
Rina watched him without comment.
"You ever tell anyone?" she asked after a while.
He swallowed. "No."
"Why not?"
He wiped his hands on his shorts. "They stop listening. Or they start watching me too close."
"That sounds worse."
"It is."
She leaned back against the wall, metal cool through her jacket. "You know this isn't fair, right?"
He frowned. "What isn't?"
"This." She gestured vaguely—at him, the street, the invisible thing humming just under his skin. "None of it."
Daiso thought about the crosswalk. The kid at the curb. The way the air always tightened before something broke.
"If I don't do it," he said, "someone else gets hurt."
Rina closed her eyes for a second.
When she opened them, something had changed. Not in him.
In her.
"Then we find a way you're not the only one paying for it," she said.
His chest felt strange at that. Open. Unprotected. "How?"
She smiled, thin and determined. "I don't know yet."
That answer scared him more than all the others.
Across the city, unseen and uninterested in sandwiches or milk crates, the system that had ticked forward earlier logged a second anomaly—small, human, and inexplicably persistent.
A variable that did not resolve.
A boy who did not walk away.
And a woman who decided not to let him carry it alone.