Six months.
The world had figured some of it out. Not all of it — maybe not even most of it — but enough. The panic had settled into something more like routine, the way people adapt to anything if you give them long enough. Gates were still appearing. People were still dying in the ones nobody had gotten to yet. But the ones up to Floor 26 had been cleared at least once now, mostly by organised groups who'd spent months building something that actually worked.
They called themselves guilds. Kairo found this faintly embarrassing on their behalf. The name stuck anyway because the internet decided it fit and the internet won most things by sheer volume.
The largest one — Horizon — had cleared Floor 26 in Nagoya two weeks ago with a team of eleven. Lost two people in the second phase. Cleared it anyway. The footage had gone everywhere, the surviving team standing at 3am in an empty street looking at where the gate used to be.
Kairo had watched it once. Floor 26 had always been a long fight. He'd done it in under nine minutes. Their team took forty-three.
Still. They'd done it.
The stat rewards had started showing up around month two — not every gate, not always, but sometimes after a clear the team would find their numbers had moved. Two or three points distributed across different stats, nothing dramatic, nothing that actually changed what a person was capable of. Everyone had been very excited about it. Guild leaderboards had appeared online tracking who'd gained what across which floors.
Kairo had looked at one once and closed the tab.
The government had also built a school.
It was Yuki's idea and she'd had it at seven in the morning, which was when she had most of her worst ideas.
"No," Kairo said, before she finished the sentence.
"You don't even know what I'm going to say."
"You're going to say we should sign up for the ability school."
She stared at him. "How did you—"
"You've had your phone open on their enrollment page for three days."
She looked at her phone. Looked at him. "I was just reading it."
"You highlighted sections."
"I highlight things when I read."
"You don't highlight things when you read."
She put the phone face down on the desk. "I think it would be interesting," she said. "We've been in this apartment for six months."
"We go outside."
"To beat gates."
"That's outside."
"Kairo." She turned in her chair to face him fully. Legs folded under her, his hoodie sleeves over her hands, hair half-loose from sleeping. Six months had not changed any of the fundamental facts of her. "We know everything about every floor already. I want to do something different."
"School isn't different. It's just sitting down being told things."
"It's people," she said. "Real ones. Who talk about normal things."
He looked at her.
She looked back at him with the patient expression of someone who had already decided and was giving him time to catch up.
"They'll recognise me," he said.
"You haven't shown your face clearly anywhere. Every clip is too far or too fast." She tilted her head. "Fake your last name. Keep Kairo, change Azren." She paused. "And please don't change your hair."
"Why."
"It's nice."
He looked at her flatly. "You're only saying that because we have the same hair."
"That's not—"
"And the same eyes."
"I'm complimenting you—"
"You're complimenting yourself."
"They look better on you!" she said, which was clearly not what she'd planned to say, because her ears went pink immediately and she turned back to her phone very fast.
He watched the side of her face.
"So yours are worse," he said.
"I'm done talking about this."
"You started it."
"I'm finishing it." She put the phone down. "Partner track. We go in together, leave together. You fake your last name. Yes or no."
He looked at her for a moment. Then — "What name."
She recovered quickly, the pink fading. "Kato. Everyone's named Kato."
"Kairo Kato."
"So normal it hurts," she said. "Perfect."
He looked at her. She smiled at him — the full one, the one she had when something went exactly the way she wanted — and he thought, not for the first time in six months, that he genuinely had no working defence against it.
"Fine," he said.
She crossed from her chair to his and had her arms around his neck before he'd fully processed the decision. He caught her, which he always did, which she'd apparently decided was reliable enough that she didn't check first anymore. Her face pressed into the side of his head.
"Thank you," she said.
"You were going to keep asking."
"Obviously. But thank you anyway."
His hand settled on her back. She pressed a kiss to his jaw, then put her chin on his shoulder with the contentment of someone who had exactly what they wanted.
A comfortable quiet.
Then — "Your hair really is nice though."
"Yuki."
"I'm just saying—"
"You're complimenting yourself again."
"I have great hair," she said simply. "So do you. It's just a fact. You're welcome."
He looked at the wall. She stayed exactly where she was, entirely unbothered, and he put his arm back around her because there was nothing else reasonable to do.
The school was in Shinjuku, which Kairo found annoying on principle.
Converted university building, three floors, new signs over old walls, the smell of renovation that hadn't fully aired out yet. Staff still figuring out their jobs. The orientation cohort was about forty people — mostly nineteen or twenty, a few older, all of them carrying the slightly dazed energy of people who'd had abilities for six months and still weren't quite used to it.
All of them had blue status windows.
Kairo stood at the back of the room with Yuki beside him. She'd wanted to stand rather than sit and he hadn't argued, partly because he preferred the sightline. He was looking at the room the way he always looked at rooms. She was looking at it the way she looked at everything new — taking it all in.
"So many people," she said quietly.
"Forty-three."
"I know the number." She glanced up at him. "I mean they all came from somewhere. They're all worried about something different."
"You're overthinking a room."
"You're threat-assessing a room full of students."
"Habit."
She patted his arm with her sleeve. He looked down at the shapeless white cuff where her hand should have been. Six months and it still happened.
Up front, the instructor was going through floor classification systems, stat distribution theory, ability activation principles — things Kairo had understood from experience long before this curriculum existed. Yuki listened with her cheek resting against his arm, fingers loosely around his sleeve, the way she stood when she was comfortable and not trying to manage it.
The girl next to them glanced over. White hair on both of them. Matching red eyes. Her expression did the fast recalculation and then she very deliberately looked back at the front and stayed there.
"She thinks we're siblings," Yuki murmured.
"Same hair same eyes same shade exactly. It's the obvious conclusion."
"We're not siblings."
"I know that."
"It's still weird that everyone—"
"You look like me," he said. "What do you want them to think."
She opened her mouth. Closed it. Looked at him sideways. "I want them to think we're cool and mysterious."
"They probably think that too."
"Along with the sibling thing."
"Along with the sibling thing," he agreed.
She made a small frustrated sound and looked back at the front. A boy two rows over had already glanced back at them twice, doing the same thing everyone did — looking at Kairo, looking at Yuki, looking at Kairo again, then leaning to mutter something to the person beside him. The person beside him looked over. Then they both looked away when Kairo looked back.
"They're doing it," Yuki said, without turning her head.
"Yes."
"It's going to happen all day."
"Yes."
She sighed quietly, then reached up and took his hand where it rested near her shoulder and just held it, sleeve-covered fingers around his. He let her.
The boy two rows over glanced back. Saw the hands. Looked confused. Looked away.
"Now he doesn't know what to think," Yuki said.
"Good," Kairo said.
First practical session: ability range and output.
They went one at a time on marked spots while the instructor took readings. Most of the cohort managed a three or four before things got unstable. A boy named Sota — fire type — hit six and both eyebrows disappeared in a single clean line. He reached up and touched his forehead, felt the absence, looked at his reflection in someone's phone screen and said "again?" in the tone of someone for whom this was genuinely not the first time.
Yuki turned her face into Kairo's arm.
"Again?" she whispered.
"He did it last week apparently. Heard him mention it in the corridor."
She made a sound against his sleeve that was trying hard not to be a laugh and not quite managing it.
Hana — the girl from orientation, barrier type — held a steady five for thirty seconds and looked genuinely pleased. She kept glancing over at Kairo and Yuki in the way people did when they were trying to figure something out without asking directly.
Kairo's turn.
He stepped onto the marker and brought Detection up to about two percent.
The instructor checked her equipment. Checked it again. Looked at him. "Your range is showing as—" she paused. "That's the entire building."
"Yes."
"At two percent output."
"Yes."
She stared at him for a moment. Wrote something down with the expression of someone filing a note under problems for another day and moved on.
Yuki's turn.
She walked to the marker. Rolled her left shoulder once. Looked at the empty air in front of her, and then almost casually, like she was swatting something away, threw a very light jab at nothing.
The shockwave hit the far wall so hard the mounted whiteboard fell off completely.
Everyone flinched. Someone dropped their phone. Sota grabbed the person next to him with both hands out of pure reflex. The instructor's clipboard hit the floor. The ceiling lights flickered once.
Yuki lowered her hand.
Complete silence.
Hana was staring at her. Sota still had his hands on the stranger he'd grabbed. The boy from earlier was pressed back against the wall with the expression of someone reconsidering several recent life decisions.
Yuki looked at the fallen whiteboard. Then at the dent in the plaster behind it. Then at the instructor. "Sorry about the board," she said.
The instructor picked up her clipboard very slowly. Looked at the wall. Looked at Yuki. "What," she said, "was that."
"Output test," Yuki said pleasantly, and walked back to where Kairo was standing.
He looked at her.
"Too much?" she said.
"You took the whiteboard off the wall."
"I barely—"
"I know," he said. "That's the problem."
She looked at the dent. "I'll buy them a new one."
"You don't have money."
"You have money."
"I'm not buying the school a whiteboard."
"Kairo—"
He kissed her.
Right there. In front of forty-three people, one fallen whiteboard, one dented wall, and a man Sota still hadn't let go of. He put his hand against her face and kissed her properly and she made the surprised sound — the real one — and grabbed the front of his shirt with both fists and kissed him back without hesitating, and it wasn't brief. When they finally pulled apart both of them needed a second. She blinked. He blinked. Neither of them said anything immediately because neither of them had quite enough air yet.
He turned away and raised his hand to cover the lower half of his face, rubbing his jaw slowly. It didn't fully cover the colour that had come up across his cheeks. He was aware of this. He left his hand there anyway.
The room had not made a single sound.
Yuki, still holding his shirt, gradually became aware of forty-three people staring at them. She let go. Smoothed the fabric. Lifted her chin.
Sota had not moved. He was looking at Kairo. Then at Yuki. Then at the matching white hair and the matching red eyes and then back at what had just — in front of everyone —
"They're—" he started.
"Not siblings," Yuki said immediately.
"I wasn't—"
"Everyone thinks that," she said. "We're not."
Sota opened his mouth. Closed it. Looked between them. "You look exactly the same though."
"We're aware," Kairo said, which came out slightly less flat than usual because he still had his hand half over his face.
Hana, from across the room, very quietly: "I don't — what is—" she stopped. Regrouped. "What is happening."
Nobody answered her.
The instructor had not moved. She was holding her clipboard and looking at them with the expression of someone who had run many orientation sessions and never once expected this exact sequence of events in this exact order.
Kairo looked at the room. Looked at the whiteboard on the floor. Looked at Yuki beside him with her ears completely red.
He lowered his hand.
"Can we move on," he said, to the instructor.
The instructor opened her mouth. Closed it. Looked at her clipboard like it might tell her something useful.
"Sota," she said, with enormous effort. "You're next."
Sota finally let go of the man he'd grabbed. The man stepped sideways, slowly, without a word. Sota walked to the marker with the careful movements of someone who had decided that whatever he'd just witnessed was not his business and he was going to get through the rest of this day by focusing exclusively on himself.
He then singed both eyebrows off again.
Nobody reacted. The bar for what counted as remarkable had shifted significantly in the last three minutes.
The walk to the corridor afterward was quiet for about ten seconds.
"You did that on purpose," Yuki said.
"Yes."
"In front of everyone."
"Yes."
"They all think we're siblings and you just—" she stopped. Looked up at him. "Why."
"You destroyed the wall," he said. "I redirected the conversation."
She stared at him. "That's why."
He said nothing.
"Kairo. Is that actually why."
One beat too long.
"It redirected the conversation," he said again.
She looked at the side of his face. The colour was still there, just slightly, at the edge of it — the hand had covered most of it but not all. She'd seen it. She was always going to have seen it.
She turned forward. Said nothing.
But she reached up and pulled his hand away from his face and held it instead, sleeve-covered fingers around his, and she was very carefully not smiling and doing a bad job of it.
"It redirected the conversation," she said, quietly, to no one.
"Yes," he said.
"Sure," she said.
He didn't say anything else. She kept not-smiling. They walked.
Behind them, drifting down the corridor from the room they'd left, Hana's voice carried clearly.
"They are one hundred percent siblings."
Yuki made a sound. He felt her shoulders shake once, twice. She pressed her face into his arm and laughed into his sleeve, properly this time, the real kind, and he watched the top of her head and let her.
"It's not funny," he said.
"It's a little funny," she said, muffled.
"It's not."
"It's a little bit funny," she said again, and kept laughing, and his hand tightened around hers and he said nothing else about it.
Outside, the city was doing whatever it was doing. The map would have new dots tonight. The archive was still locked. The evening was just starting.
Some things were very simple.