Rina didn't walk him home.
That would've made it too neat.
Instead, she walked him halfway—far enough that the street he lived on came into view, close enough that leaving him felt deliberate.
Daiso noticed the difference immediately. The air changed when people decided to go. Not the act itself—the decision before it.
They stopped at the corner where the sidewalk cracked into uneven slabs and a streetlight buzzed like it was tired of existing.
"This is me," Daiso said.
Rina nodded, eyes flicking once toward the building. Old. Paint peeling in long curls. Windows open despite the heat. Voices leaking out—arguments, laughter, a television too loud.
"You good?" she asked.
He hesitated.
That was new.
"Yeah," he said, then corrected himself. "I think so."
She didn't smile at that. "If you ever don't think so—" She paused, searching his face. "You don't have to carry it quiet."
Daiso looked down at the concrete. He could feel the day settling into him now that it was ending—the afterpressure, the echo of all the things that hadn't happened because he'd been there.
"How would I tell you?" he asked.
Rina pulled a marker from her pocket, uncapped it with her teeth, and wrote a number on his wrist. Her handwriting was sharp. Confident.
"Like that," she said. "Or you don't. Either way, I'll know."
She capped the marker, stepped back, and then—unexpectedly—ruffled his hair once, quick and awkward.
"Don't grow up too fast," she said, already turning away like she didn't trust herself to linger.
Daiso watched her go until the space she'd occupied stopped feeling warm.
Only then did he look at his wrist again.
The number hadn't smudged.
Inside the building, the air was thick with heat and old cooking oil. Someone laughed too hard in a neighboring apartment. A door slammed. Life pressed in.
Daiso kicked his shoes off and sat on the floor instead of the couch. The concrete under the thin carpet was cool. Anchoring.
He closed his eyes.
Not to sleep.
To listen.
The building creaked. Pipes knocked. Somewhere outside, a siren wailed, then dopplered away. The city's rhythm played itself through him like a familiar song.
Usually, this was the part where the weight came back full force.
It didn't.
Not completely.
It hovered instead—present, insistent, but no longer singular. Like the door was still there, still pushing, but someone else had leaned a shoulder into it with him.
Daiso opened his eyes.
That scared him.
Because if the weight could be shared—
Then it could also be taken.
And he didn't know which thought frightened him more.
Far above him, beyond streets and lights and rooms where children tried to understand responsibility too early, a system adjusted its internal baselines by a fraction too small to notice.
A second data point connected to the first.
A human link.
Not causal.
Relational.
The kind of variable that never showed up as a spike—
Only as persistence.
Daiso lay back on the floor and stared at the ceiling fan as it rattled itself into motion.
He counted its rotations until his breathing matched.
Tomorrow would come.
And for the first time, that thought didn't feel like a warning.