Mio
The Integration hadn't asked permission.
One morning, the world had rules—physics, biology, taxes. The next, it had different ones. And somewhere in the chaos between, while everyone else checked their status screens and compared Classes like lottery results, Mio was dying.
Three days. Her skin didn't fit anymore. She vomited until there was nothing, then kept vomiting, and what came up tasted like the inside of a wound.
The Bureau had a name for it now. Integration Shock—a biological reaction to whatever had rewritten the world. Less than two percent of the integrated population. The studies on why remained redacted.
Nana's voice through the door. Small. Thin. Eleven years old and asking if she should call an emergency crew.
"No," Mio had rasped.
They couldn't afford the dispatch fee then. They couldn't afford it now.
By the time the fever broke and she could stand again, the world had moved on. Everyone else had learned the math of the new reality.
Mio had learned it too.
Every night she opened her System. Every night the same numbers. Burned into her eyelids by now.
[Status]
Name: Tamei Mio
Class: Healer
Grade: F
HP: 106 / 106
MP: 77 / 77
[Skills]
Mend: Cost 32 MP. Restores 45 HP.
[Passive: Overheal]
All healing abilities cost 213% normal MP.
Excess healing is wasted.
External healing sources are rejected.
[Defect: Self-Healing Penalty]
Healing yourself is 50% effective.
Most F-Grade healers spent fifteen mana per cast. Surgeons with scalpels, precise and efficient.
Mio was a firehose with a welded valve. Couldn't scale it down. Couldn't lightly heal a scratch. Forty-five HP, full blast, every time.
A healer who couldn't heal herself. A class meant to mend the world, given to a seventeen-year-old rotting into her mattress.
Seven cup noodle containers on the desk. Curtains drawn so long the dust had married the fabric. Noon looked like any other hour. Three monitors cast blue-white glare over her unwashed hair.
In the reflection—green eyes. Her father's eyes.
She looked away.
Nine months since the Shinjuku Overflow took them both. Back when incursions were spreading faster than delvers could clear them, when whole city blocks vanished into rifts that no one understood yet.
The Bureau called it a tragedy. The news called it a statistic.
The life insurance lasted six months. The Bureau's survivor payout was whatever they could get away with.
Her phone buzzed against the desk. Then again, vibrating against an empty soda can with a rhythmic clink.
"Mio. Mio. Mio. Mio."
Aoi's voice. She'd recorded the ringtone during a sleepover two years ago, back when they were still in middle school, back when the air still moved.
Mio picked up. "I'm not feeling well."
"You're always sick, idiot." Aoi's voice crackled through the speaker, half-drowned by the roar of a train station. "Look, we're heading to Setagaya. You're close to your Bureau quota, right? Come with us. It'll be good for you! Fresh air. Well, incursion air. Same thing."
Mio's eyes traced the water stain on the ceiling. Brown and spreading. Getting worse every week.
"I don't think—"
"I miss you, Mio." The bravado dropped out of Aoi's voice. Just gone. "And you need the money. Be at the Shibuya branch in an hour. And for God's sake, wash your hair."
She hung up before Mio could retreat into a no.
Mio looked at the phone. Then forced herself to stand.
Four steps to Nana's room. She counted them.
Her door was closed, a piece of notebook paper taped to the wood in her careful handwriting:
DO NOT DISTURB. That means you—
The last two words had been scratched out so hard the paper tore. She could still read them underneath: onee-chan[1].
Mio knocked anyway. "Nana. I'm leaving some money on the counter. There's food in the fridge—the curry from yesterday. I'm going out. Won't be back until evening."
Silence. Nana's breathing on the other side. The click-clack of keys had stopped.
"Okay," Mio said to the door. "I'll see you later."
She turned to leave.
The door clicked open behind her. A small body slammed into her back. Thin arms wrapped around her waist, squeezing hard enough to hurt.
Nana's face pressed into her spine. She didn't say anything. Just held on.
Mio stood there. Frozen.
She hadn't made Nana a real meal in weeks. She barely left her room. And Nana was still here. Still waiting. The way Mio had waited outside their parents' hospital room.
"Don't take too long," Nana mumbled into her hoodie. Then, quieter: "You smell like MSG."
"That's because I've been eating MSG."
"That's disgusting."
"It's efficient."
A pause. Then Nana snorted—half-laugh, half-disgust—and let go. The door clicked shut.
Mio stood in the hallway, throat tight, watching the DO NOT DISTURB sign.
I'll be back. I'll always come back.
She left money on the counter, pulled on her shoes, and stepped outside.
The sun was too bright. She squinted all the way to the station.
The train to Shibuya was packed.
A man in a wrinkled suit reading the news, one hand resting on a hilt that hadn't existed three months ago. A teenager's eyes unfocused, finger swiping at nothing. Gear listings. Prices Mio would never afford.
The Bureau's Shibuya branch. Burnt coffee and humming lights. Delvers in mismatched armor crowded the kiosks, checking assignments, collecting bounties.
The clerk—a middle-aged woman with reading glasses and a cardigan that didn't belong in a building full of weapons—looked up as Mio approached.
"Name?"
"Tamei Mio."
The clerk typed. Her fingers slowed. Stopped.
Mio had seen that pause before. The moment when someone's screen showed them exactly what she was worth.
"Healer, Grade F. You're at 87% quota this month." The clerk's voice stayed professional. "One more run and you're clear."
"I know."
The clerk handed over the stamped form without meeting her eyes. "Your party's already checked in. Stay safe out there, Tamei-san."
Mio took the form and found an empty corner near the vending machine.
Around her, parties formed and dissolved. A tank comparing shield specs. Two mages arguing resistances. A B-grade healer being approached by three different groups in as many minutes.
Nobody approached Mio.
Dead weight.
Every run where she hung back, rationing mana. Every split where she took yen she hadn't earned.
Every night staring at the ceiling, calculating how long until Aoi stopped calling.
Any day now, someone would say it out loud. And Aoi's kindness would run out.
And after that—no party, no runs, no contractor license. Just a seventeen-year-old and her eleven-year-old sister, three months behind on rent.
"Mio!"
Aoi appeared from the crowd, silver hair catching the fluorescent light. She grabbed Mio's arm before she could flinch away.
"Come on, Rin's already at the gate. You okay? You look pale."
Mio let herself be pulled. Her feet knew the route. "I'm fine."
Aoi's grip tightened for a half-second—searching Mio's face for something. Whatever she found, she let it go.
"If you say so. Shiori's timing us."
They crossed the floor together, weaving between parties that parted for Aoi's silver hair and closed again behind Mio like she wasn't there. The transport gate loomed ahead—a black arch that hummed with something that made Mio's teeth ache.
Rin was already waiting, shield propped against her leg. The shield's face was a topography of dents and gouges—each one an impact that would have killed Mio outright. D-grade tank. The kind of delver who treated incursions like morning cardio.
She looked up as they approached. Didn't smile. Didn't speak.
Beside her, Shiori's nails were bitten raw. Her eyes tracked something Mio couldn't see—inventory, probably. Her fingers twitched at her side, sorting items that weren't there.
E-grade buffer. She'd spoken maybe thirty words to Mio across three incursions.
"Survival probability with three: 71%." Shiori's voice was flat, eyes still on her invisible screen. "With a healer: 84%. With you specifically..." She checked something. "76%."
Aoi was E-grade too. Rogue. The only reason Mio was here at all.
Two more runs. Maybe three. Then the numbers would finish what they'd started.
But Nana was waiting at home. Nana who made her own lunches now because her sister couldn't get out of bed. Nana who'd hugged her in the hallway like she was afraid Mio wouldn't come back.
The transport gate hummed ahead. Black arch. The air around it tasted wrong—metallic, like blood pooling under the tongue.
Mio's feet slowed.
Other delvers pushed past her. Casual. Bored. For them, gates were commutes. For Mio, every crossing felt like stepping off a ledge and hoping there was ground.
Aoi's hand found her elbow. "Hey. You good?"
"Fine."
She wasn't.
"Let's go," Mio said.
The others looked up. Rin straightened.
Shiori's eyes refocused—actually seeing Mio for the first time.
Mio stepped through the gate.
[1] "Big sister" in Japanese. The crossed-out honorific shows the tension in their relationship.