The request came quietly: Guest seminar at the Commission Academy for Trainees. Topic: "What to Do When You Don't Know."
Aizawa said yes for him. "You're going," he told Renya. "They'll hear it from you or from someone worse."
The room was a lecture hall pretending to be a dojo. Trainees sat with the posture of people trying to become diagrams. Instructors lingered along the walls, arms crossed, experiencing pedagogy as audit.
Renya wrote nothing on the board. He said, "Tell me what you do when you're not sure."
A trainee with excellent hair said, "Follow protocol."
"Good," Renya said. "And when protocol is quiet?"
A woman in the second row said, "Ask for guidance."
"Good," he said. "And when no one answers?"
A silence spread, then fragmented. Someone said, "Trust my training." Someone else, "Trust my gut."
He nodded. "Both fail. That's why we're here." He told them about the verbs. He didn't sell. He demonstrated, calling a trainee up and running a kindness drill: ask for permission to touch a shoulder, check if the person wants advice or water, own the urge to fix, repair by leaving a card with a number for tomorrow instead of rescuing today.
It felt small. It always did. The room learned anyway.
A hand rose. "What about villains?" the excellent hair asked. "This is for citizens."
"Villains are citizens," Renya said, and the room tilted. He let it. "But yes, they're also a different category of problem. The verbs don't make you weak. They make you accurate. Accurate hurts the right thing."
An instructor cleared his throat. "We don't want to slow our kids down in a fight."
"Then teach them where speed belongs," Renya said. "And where it kills."
A trainee in the back asked the impolite version. "Why you?"—with the tone of someone who'd seen the memes and not the work.
"Because I've been wrong loudly and lived," he said. "And because your city won't forgive you for doing what it taught you to do. So teach it back."
After, in the corridor, a small knot of trainees cornered him not to challenge but to ask for more examples, more failures, more sentences they could practice in their mouths before the day made them swallow them. He gave what he had and refused to pretend it was enough.
Imai found him by the elevators. "Thank you," she said. "They needed a door."
"Doors need locks," he said.
"Not this one," she replied.
Kurobane stepped out of the elevator and joined them. "You're scheduled for a follow-up," he said dryly. "The kids filed a petition. Make him come back."
Renya groaned. "I'm being mandated."
"Voluntarily," Kurobane said. "The only mandate worth obeying."
A call came from the hospital that patched recruits when training made bruises large enough to count as lessons. A nurse wanted a consult on a case: a man Overturn had injured, jaw wired, eyes angry, heart exhausted. "He won't talk to cops," she said. "He won't accept help. He will accept boredom. You're very boring."
He went.
The man stared at him like a window. Renya sat. They sat. Two minutes, five. The monitor beeped a rhythm that refused to be music.
Finally, the man said, thick through metal, "You that guy."
"I'm a guy," Renya said.
"You broke the world," the man said. "Made heroes think too much."
"I made some heroes listen," Renya said.
The man swallowed. "He didn't listen. The one who hit me."
"I know," Renya said.
"What's your verb for that?" the man asked.
"Repair," Renya said. "But it will have to come from the right hands."
"What if it doesn't?"
"Then the city owes you," Renya said. "Not just law. Us."
The man stared. "Us?"
"Neighbors," Renya said. "People who owe each other better recipes than revenge."
The man snorted, then winced, then cried in a way that didn't want witnesses. Renya stayed and counted the ceiling tiles like prayer beads.
Before he left, he wrote a number on the whiteboard. Not his. A community coordinator who specialized in getting bills canceled and locks changed and therapists with room. He pointed. The man nodded. Door opened.
At home, Airi had fallen asleep on the couch again, textbook tented over her chest like a small roof. He moved it, tucked the blanket, sat by the window with Version 1.1 on his lap and a pen he didn't intend to use.
A message from Aki arrived: Jar was full tonight. Someone left a bus pass and a note: "For the kid who keeps missing the last train."He wrote back: Doors everywhere.Aki:Don't lock them.R:Only when needed.Aki:Teach the keys.R:Tomorrow.
Across the street, someone taped the six verbs to a mailbox. He didn't know if the mail would be better for it. He liked that someone tried.
He closed his eyes. The city moved without asking permission. Good. He'd never wanted to be its permission.
Tomorrow he'd stand in another room and ask another set of hands to find the right distance. Tomorrow would misuse him again, misquote him again, and get something right anyway.
He could live with that.
He'd leave the door open.