The first thing Kairo noticed, approximately four seconds after the warmth of the moment had settled, was that Yuki was not wearing anything.
He looked down. She looked down. A brief silence passed between them, the kind that has a very specific shape.
"Hm," Kairo said.
Yuki looked up at him. Her expression was caught somewhere between dignified and completely at a loss, which given the circumstances was reasonable. "I didn't choose this," she said.
"I know."
"The summoning didn't exactly come with—"
"I know," he said again. He was already moving toward his wardrobe, her hand still loosely caught in his because he had not thought about letting go of it and she had not moved away, so they crossed the room together in a slightly awkward sideways walk that neither of them commented on. He pulled the wardrobe open one-handed, scanned it briefly, and reached for a white oversized shirt from the second shelf. He held it out.
She took it and looked at it. Then at him. "This is yours."
"yup."
"It's going to be very big on me."
"This is the smallest shirt I own."
She put it on. It fell to mid-thigh, the collar wide enough to sit off one shoulder. She looked down at herself, then back up at him with an expression that was trying very hard to be neutral and not entirely succeeding.
Kairo looked at her for a moment. Something about the image — his t-shirt, her white hair, the red eyes blinking at him from inside an oversized collar — registered somewhere in his chest and stayed there without his permission.
"It fits," he said.
"It doesn't fit," she said.
"It covers you," he said. "That was the goal."
She looked at him for one more second, then stepped forward and tucked herself against his side again, pulling his arm around her with the calm certainty of someone returning to a place they had already decided was theirs. He let her. His arm settled around her shoulders without discussion.
They moved back to the desk together and sat down, her legs folded beneath her on the chair she had pulled flush against his, close enough that their shoulders were in constant contact. She had not let go of his sleeve. He had not suggested she should.
The news feeds were still running.
Kairo had the laptop open, three tabs across different sources, and Yuki was reading alongside him with her chin lightly resting on his shoulder, her eyes moving across the screen at the same pace his did. Every few minutes something shifted — a new report, a new location, a number that climbed and didn't come back down.
"The gates," Yuki said. "Show me the footage."
He tabbed to the NHK feed. The aerial shot of Shinjuku was still broadcasting, the gate clearly visible from above — a dark circular void sitting in the middle of a six-lane intersection, its edges undefined, light bending away from it rather than reflecting off it. The surrounding area had been cleared to a radius of roughly two hundred metres, though the clearing was imperfect and still in progress. Every few minutes the camera caught the shape of something being drawn inward — a sign, a piece of loose debris, once a car that had been left too close to the cordon line.
"The number," Yuki said.
"Seven," Kairo said. "Visible from outside. You can read the floor designation from a safe distance, which means you can know what's inside before you go in."
"Before anyone goes in," she said.
"If they're paying attention."
She watched the footage for a moment. "What's on Floor Seven?"
"Armoured land crawler," he said. "About the size of a transit bus. Fast on flat ground, weak at the joint between the second and third dorsal plates. Three-second wind-up before it spits acid — the neck extends first, telegraphs it clearly if you know what you're looking for." He paused. "I killed it forty-two times."
Yuki looked at him.
"You counted?"
"Efficiency tracking."
She looked back at the screen. "And the people it pulls in. They go to Floor Seven."
"They get dropped into the floor environment," he said. "The game always had a grace period before boss activation — the floor loads, gives you thirty seconds to orient before the entity becomes aggressive. That should transfer." He considered it. "Probably."
"Probably," she echoed.
"The game's rules have held consistent across everything else that transferred. There's no reason to assume the grace period is an exception."
"So someone pulled in has thirty seconds to figure out they're inside a tower floor, understand what's coming toward them, and either fight it or find somewhere to survive."
"Yes"
"With whatever abilities they had in the game."
"Yup"
"Most people didn't make it to Floor Seven in the game," she said.
"Most people didn't make it to Floor Three," he said back.
A brief silence.
"How much do you want to bet," he said, his voice carrying the same level tone it always did, "that the first person they send in through the cordon has a support build."
Yuki pressed her lips together. It wasn't quite a smile. "That's not funny," she said.
"It's a little funny," he said.
"It's not."
"It's statistically predictable, which is the same thing."
She turned her face into his shoulder briefly, and he felt the exhale of something that was trying not to be a laugh and mostly succeeding. He didn't comment on it.
The gates, as the next two hours of reporting slowly clarified, followed a consistent logic.
The number on the exterior corresponded exactly to the floor number from Beyond the Veil. The size of the gate appeared to correlate with the floor — lower floors producing smaller openings, higher floors producing larger ones. The Shinjuku gate, a Floor Seven, was approximately the width of two cars side by side. A gate that had opened in Osaka, reported forty minutes after Shinjuku, displayed the number Twelve and was noticeably wider, the cordon around it pushed back further.
A gate in Sapporo displayed the number Twenty-Three. The surrounding area had been evacuated at a radius of five hundred metres.
Somewhere in the Sea of Japan, a fishing vessel had reportedly encountered a gate on the water's surface displaying a number in the seventies. The vessel had not reported back after that initial transmission.
The gates did not move. They did not grow after appearing. They simply held their positions and pulled, steady and indiscriminate and patient, drawing in anything that came within range of their event horizon. The pull was not violent — it was mild at safe distances, growing stronger as you approached, becoming irresistible at approximately six to eight metres depending on the floor level.
Things pulled through did not appear to die immediately upon entry. That much was confirmed by two separate incidents — one in Shinjuku, one in Fukuoka — where people who had been drawn in against their will had survived long enough to transmit audio from inside the gate environment before the signal cut out. Both described the interior as matching game environments exactly. Both described hearing something moving in the distance.
Neither transmission continued past forty seconds.
"The problem," Kairo said, "is that the people who know the floors well enough to go in and clear them are mostly solo players who built for solo play. High damage, low survivability. They're not built to extract civilians."
"And the people who built support and healing skills can survive in there with others, but can't fight," Yuki said.
"Yes."
"They'd need to cooperate."
"Players don't cooperate," he said. "Not naturally. Beyond the Veil didn't incentivise party mechanics past Floor Forty. Below that, everything was clearable solo with enough grinding."
Yuki was quiet for a moment, her fingers absently turning the fabric of his sleeve over and over.
"The gates are going to keep opening," she said.
"Yea."
"And people are going to keep going in."
"Some by choice," he said. "Some not."
She looked at the screen. The Shinjuku gate was still there, still broadcasting, the cordon lights small and orange against the dark void at the intersection's centre. "And you're just going to watch."
"I'm watching now," he said. "I haven't decided what comes after now."
She turned and looked at him directly, close enough that he could see the exact shade of red in her eyes, the same shade as his, the same shade as the status window still faintly visible at the edge of his peripheral vision.
"You're not going to go in there for anyone else," she said. It wasn't a question.
"Nope," he said.
"But you might go in eventually."
"If there's a reason relevant to me."
She held his gaze. "I'm relevant to you."
"Yep."
"So if I had a reason to go in—"
"Then I'd have a reason," he said.
Something in her expression settled — not quite satisfied, not quite resigned. Somewhere in between, the way things settle when you have received an honest answer rather than a comfortable one. She turned back to the screen and tucked herself more firmly against his side, her head returning to its position against his shoulder.
"Tell me about the other floors," she said.
"Which ones."
"All of them," she said. "We have time."
He looked at the screen for a moment. Then he leaned back in the chair, her weight warm against his side, and started talking — Floor One, the stone corridors, the weak mob clusters, the thing players did on their first three visits before they understood the movement patterns. Floor by floor, in the same flat measured tone he used for everything, the room quiet around them and the city loud beyond the curtains, and Yuki listened with her eyes half-closed and her fingers still holding his sleeve and occasionally asked a question that told him she had been paying close attention to every word.
He hadn't talked this much in one sitting in years. Possibly ever.
He didn't notice until he was most of the way through Floor Thirty-Four.
It was sometime after midnight when the knocking came.
Three knocks. Careful. The kind that try to be audible without being intrusive.
Kairo stopped mid-sentence. Yuki lifted her head from his shoulder and looked toward the door with a slight furrow between her brows.
He already knew it was Rina. He had registered her heartbeat moving toward his door approximately thirty seconds before the knock, recognisable by now — he had mapped the building's residents by habit in the first few uses of Detection, and her particular rhythm was the one most frequently located on the other side of his wall.
He looked at Yuki. She looked at him.
"Your neighbour," she said.
"Yea."
"The one who brought the bento."
"Mhm."
Yuki's expression was unreadable for exactly one second. Then she slid off her chair, unhurried, and before Kairo had fully stood up she had moved behind him and stepped up onto the back rung of his chair to bring herself level, looping both arms around his neck from behind. Her legs came up and off the floor completely, her weight settled across his back, her chin resting on top of his head.
"Go ahead," she said pleasantly.
Kairo stood there for a moment. Adjusted. Reached back with one arm to make sure she was stable.
"You're doing this on purpose," he said.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she said.
Yuki's expression was unreadable for exactly one second. Then she slid off her chair, unhurried, and before Kairo had fully stood up she had moved behind him and stepped up onto the back rung of his chair to bring herself level, looping both arms around his neck from behind. Her legs came up and off the floor completely, her weight settled across his back, her chin resting on top of his head.
"Go ahead," she said pleasantly.
Kairo stood there for a moment. Adjusted. Reached back with one arm to make sure she was stable.
"You're doing this on purpose," he said.
"I don't know what you mean," she said.
He walked to the door. She rode his back with the complete composure of someone who found this entirely normal. He unlocked the door and pulled it open.
Rina stood in the hallway, still in her day clothes, her blue status window glowing at her shoulder, her hand half-raised as if she had been considering knocking again. She opened her mouth to speak.
She looked at Kairo.
She looked at the girl hanging off his back, white hair loose over both their shoulders, long bare legs dangling, his oversized white t-shirt sitting off one shoulder, red eyes looking back at her with the calm and faintly curious expression of someone who has absolutely no concerns about the current situation.
Rina's mouth stayed open.
A long beat of silence moved through the hallway.
"Rina," Kairo said.
"…Hi," Rina said. Very quietly.