The morning classroom buzzed with its usual noise, bright and careless. Sunlight knifed through the windows and laid sharp white bars across the blackboard, bleaching half the chalk marks into ghosts. Pages rustled. Chairs scraped. Someone near the back laughed too loudly at something that wasn’t funny, and the sound bounced off the walls in a way that made it hard to tell where it came from. Yu Shiro sat at his desk and opened his notebook like he always did, pen poised, posture pretending to be normal.

  His pen moved as if he were taking notes, but the lines came out subtly wrong. The characters leaned. The spacing warped. Every stroke betrayed the restlessness coiled in his chest, as if his hand couldn’t stop translating the tremor inside him into ink. I’m writing, but I’m not here. The teacher’s voice rolled on at the front, steady and practiced, and Yu nodded at the right moments out of habit. None of the words stayed.

  The warmth in his palm—last night’s inheritance—refused to fade into memory. It wasn’t heat like a fever, and it wasn’t numbness either. It felt like dipping his hand into lukewarm water that wasn’t there, the sensation clinging to the inside of his skin as if his body had learned a new element. Every time he gripped the pen, that phantom “water” rose to meet him, quiet but insistent, tugging his focus away from the board. The plastic barrel of the pen felt too light, too ordinary, like a toy trying to impersonate a tool.

  Yu exhaled through his nose and tried to anchor himself in the present. The chalk squeaked. The clock ticked. Someone coughed. It should have been enough—small, predictable noises that meant life was still life. Instead, everything sounded distant, like static behind a wall. I can’t concentrate at all. The thought came with a bitter edge, because it wasn’t just distraction; it was the sense that his hand was no longer entirely his.

  The “water” in his palm wasn’t still. It flowed. Not visibly, not in any way that would show on skin, but he could feel a direction to it the way you could feel wind change before you saw the leaves respond. It sought. It listened. It waited for something to connect to, and the fact that it wanted anything at all made Yu’s throat tighten. Bind, he thought, and the word clicked against his teeth like a key he didn’t know how to turn.

  A voice slid in from the side, breaking through his spiral.

  “Hey, did you hear?” Harukawa leaned in from the next seat, lowering his voice—though not enough to keep their neighbors from hearing. His expression was half excitement, half the kind of thrill boys got when news sounded like a rumor. “Yesterday’s news said there was suspicious access to an Orbital Satellite.”

  “Huh? Hacking a satellite? What is this, a sci-fi movie?” He waved a hand as if dismissing the entire idea with physics. “You gonna remote-control stuff in space or something?” The boy in front of them snorted and twisted around in his chair with a grin that said he’d been waiting to comment.

  Laughter rippled around them, light and meaningless. Someone tossed in a joke about aliens. Someone else mimed holding a controller, thumbs twitching. The teacher’s voice faltered for a second as she tried to pull the class back, but the laughter did what laughter always did—it spread first, reason later.

  Yu didn’t laugh. The words hit him like a fingertip to a bruise. Remote-control. Unlock. Access. The casual phrasing overlapped too well with the sensation in his palm and the Returner’s quiet certainty: open the door, and it comes. Yu’s pen stopped mid-stroke, and a single ink blot pooled on the page, spreading into a dark circle like a stain you couldn’t unsee.

  He stared at the blot until the edges fuzzed. The classroom sound drained into a muted roar. In his palm, the “water” pressed outward, responding as if the very idea of “access” had given it hunger. It’s just news, he told himself, but the thought didn’t settle. His hand felt too awake.

  Yu forced a small smile to keep anyone from looking too closely and lifted his pen again. The teacher had resumed the lecture, chalk tapping the board, but Yu wrote without understanding, copying symbols like a machine. Under the desk, his fingers flexed once, slow and careful, and the phantom warmth answered like it was waiting for permission.

  Last night wasn’t a dream. And it’s not staying contained.

  ?

  After school, the hallway throbbed with activity, the building exhaling pent-up energy. Students hurried toward clubs, voices bouncing off lockers and classroom doors. Sneakers squeaked against the polished floor. Someone slammed a locker shut so hard it rattled metal down the corridor like a gunshot. The air smelled faintly of deodorant, chalk dust, and the sweet bread someone was eating as they walked.

  Yu packed his textbooks slowly, letting the noise wash over him. He moved as if he had all the time in the world, but the truth was he didn’t want to step outside and feel the sky again—not with his palm humming like it had its own pulse. He zipped his bag, checked his phone without opening EWS, then checked it again like he expected it to change by staring.

  “Shiro. A moment, please.”

  Yu looked up. Mamiya-sensei stood in the doorway, posture relaxed, tone gentle, eyes searching behind her glasses as if she were looking past his face for something he was hiding. She was the kind of teacher students described as “nice” because she didn’t shout, but Yu had always felt there was steel under the softness. Her gaze didn’t drift when she decided to pay attention.

  “Yes?” was all he managed, his mouth went dry. She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t call him out in front of anyone. She simply stepped aside, implying he should follow. Yu obeyed, uncertain, slipping into the flow of the hallway with her as if being led by a quiet current.

  They passed classrooms where club posters peeled at the corners, passed a stairwell that smelled like floor cleaner, and then she opened a door Yu rarely saw used. The science prep room greeted them with dim light and a dust-scented chill, the air stale in a way that made Yu think of old textbooks and forgotten experiments. Shelves lined the walls, crowded with glass jars, labeled boxes, metal stands, and instruments that looked like they’d survived multiple curriculum changes out of spite.

  On the desk, she placed a paper cup of instant coffee, the kind that came from a vending machine and tasted like it remembered beans from a distance. The cup was warm; steam curled up in a thin thread and vanished.

  Mamiya-sensei folded her arms and leaned against a lab bench, casual enough to look like she was about to gossip. Her eyes stayed steady.

  “You’re learning from the Returner, aren’t you?” she said.

  Yu’s heartbeat stumbled. He felt it in his throat. “How—” he began, but the word died because he didn’t know how to finish it without confessing everything.

  She didn’t press. She didn’t demand. She spoke like a researcher offering a hint to a student who’d reached the edge of their understanding.

  “Perhaps I can give you a clue as well,” she said, “from a researcher’s perspective.”

  Yu’s fingers curled around the strap of his bag until the fabric creaked. The “water” sensation in his palm stirred as if it recognized danger and leaned closer.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Mamiya-sensei lifted the coffee cup, took one careful sip, and set it down again with a soft tap.

  “EWS isn’t transmitting the other world’s images directly like a camera,” she said, as if explaining the difference between a lens and a sensor.

  Yu blinked once. The statement shouldn’t have surprised him—EWS had never made sense—but hearing it said out loud made the floor tilt slightly in his mind. Then what am I watching?

  “It converts information,” she continued, “through mana as a medium, then translates that into electronic signals.” Her tone was calm, unhurried, like this was the most ordinary mechanism in the world. “What we see on our screens is not raw mana. It is interpreted mana.”

  The phrase hit Yu like cold water. Interpreted mana. Mana into data. Data into mana.

  His stomach tightened as if the words had formed a loop around his ribs. If the stream was interpretation, then the boundary between worlds wasn’t a wall—it was a translation layer. Something that could be misread, bent, exploited. Something that could carry more than it should if the “interpretation” changed.

  Yu heard his own voice from days ago in his head—his shout, impossible and real. He remembered Rize stopping. Rize searching. Rize whispering that she’d heard someone. If it’s interpreted… then what else can it interpret?

  “That’s all for today,” she said, and the room suddenly felt smaller. She nodded once, final. “Think about what that means. You may go.” Mamiya-sensei didn’t add warnings. She didn’t dramatize. She simply offered the bare fact like a scalpel placed on a tray and left for him to decide whether to cut.

  Yu stood there for a second too long, the bag strap biting his fingers, mind racing with pathways he didn’t have the vocabulary to name. He wanted to ask how she knew about the Returner. He wanted to ask what she’d seen. He wanted to ask if she’d ever felt the “water” in her palm, if she’d ever heard a voice across an impossible line.

  Instead, all he managed was a stiff, quiet, “Yes.”

  As he left the prep room, the fluorescent hallway lights felt too bright, too flat. The school noise returned like a wave, and Yu moved through it like he was underwater.

  ?

  By the time Yu reached home, the sun had dipped low enough to turn the streets amber. The neighborhood looked normal—bikes parked in driveways, laundry swaying on balconies, a dog barking somewhere behind a fence. The ordinary details should have soothed him. Instead, they felt like scenery painted around something that had shifted behind his eyes.

  When he opened the front door, warm cooking smells drifted from the kitchen—stir-fry sizzling in oil, soy sauce caramelizing, the faint sweetness of mirin. The familiar rhythm of everyday life wrapped around him, and for a moment his shoulders loosened as if his body had been holding tension for hours without permission.

  His mother turned from the stove with a smile that belonged to a world where satellites were distant and mana was fiction. “Welcome home, Yu. Wash your hands, okay?”

  “Yeah,” Yu answered automatically, voice quieter than he intended.

  He slipped his shoes off and went to the sink. Water ran over his fingers, clear and cold. Soap foamed, the scent clean and sharp. He scrubbed until his skin squeaked, as if cleanliness could erase last night’s inheritance, Mamiya-sensei’s words, the way the “water” in his palm seemed to listen.

  Dinner was set neatly: grilled fish with crisped skin, vegetables in a small bowl, miso soup steaming softly, rice bright and white in the center. The steam rising from the soup curled like the kitchen steam from the Returner’s place, and for a second Yu’s mind tried to overlay the two. Two kitchens. Two worlds. Both full of heat and routine.

  “Oh right,” His mother removed her apron and sat down opposite him. She lifted her chopsticks with the casual confidence of someone who had never hesitated over a meal in her life.

  “That child from before—Claval-chan, was it?” she said, mid-bite, tone light. Yu froze. His chopsticks hovered halfway to his mouth, fish trembling at the tips. The name hit him so hard his heart skipped a beat. Don’t say it like it’s normal, he wanted to beg, even though she clearly thought it was.

  His mother didn’t seem to notice his panic. She took a sip of miso soup, eyes half-lidded in contentment, then added as if discussing the weather, “That kid’s a boy, right?”

  The room tilted. Yu’s throat tightened so fast he almost choked.

  “Wh—what are you talking about?” His voice cracked, high and thin, betraying him completely. He hated it instantly.

  “Oh, come on. I have eyes, you know? The bone structure, the way he moves. It’s fine.” His mother laughed gently, the sound soft against the clink of bowls. She picked at her rice, unbothered. She gestured vaguely with her chopsticks.

  Fine. The word landed like a weight.

  “You’re friends, aren’t you?” she continued, smiling like she was trying to reassure him about something he hadn’t even said. “It’s modern times.”

  Her easy acceptance tightened something in Yu’s chest, not because he disagreed, but because she was treating an impossible reality like a quirky guest and nothing more. Someone from another world—someone whose existence should have shattered the rules of his life—had stood in his room, touched his world, and his mother had swallowed that impossibility like it was just a strange name and an odd haircut.

  Yu lowered his gaze to the miso soup. Steam rose in pale curls, blurring the surface like a fogged screen. Two worlds, he thought, and the idea made him dizzy. Two realities, lined up at one table like they’re neighbors.

  ?

  After dinner, Yu went to his room with the quiet urgency of someone trying not to run. The hallway light was harsh; his room lamp was softer, a small pool of warmth on his desk. The familiar mess waited for him—notes, a mechanical pen, his phone lying face-up like it was watching him back.

  He dropped his bag, sat heavily on the edge of the bed, and let his shoulders sag. The moment he stopped moving, the sensation in his palm rose like a tide reclaiming shore. Lukewarm water under skin. A subtle pressure. A promise of connection.

  Yu lifted his hand and stared at it as if expecting to see veins glowing.

  “…[Bind,]” he murmured. Saying it out loud made it real in a way thinking didn’t. The Returner’s voice echoed in the back of his skull: open the door, and it comes. Mamiya-sensei’s words layered over it: interpreted mana.

  Yu picked up his phone and typed the word into the search bar. Results flooded in—definitions, uses, examples. To tie. To bind a book. To bind a wound. To bind data. To link variables. To attach one thing to another so it couldn’t drift away.

  Yu stared at the screen until the words stopped being words and became shapes. Not “tie” like a rope, he thought, frustration sharp. Not something you can see. He scrolled, eyes narrowing. “Bind” in programming. “Bind” in networking. “Bind” as in coupling. Holding pieces together invisibly, so two systems behaved as one.

  “I want something that holds things together invisibly,” he whispered, and the sentence felt like it belonged to him even if he didn’t understand why.

  Then an icon caught his eye—wireless earphones, a settings page he’d seen a hundred times. The pairing method displayed in friendly, stupidly simple text: Just bring them close to connect. Yu’s heart stuttered. Close enough to touch. Signal bridging layers. Two systems linking without a cable, without a visible path, just proximity and permission. His gaze slid from the phone to the mechanical pen on his desk. It lay there like it had never mattered to anyone, plastic body catching lamplight, metal tip pointed toward nothing. Yu extended his hand slowly. His fingers hovered over the pen, not touching. His breath went shallow, careful, like a loud inhale might scare the sensation away. Connect, he told himself. Not with fingers. With the flow.

  He recalled last night’s feeling—the Returner’s palm against his, the flood of light, the “water” in his hand exploding outward until it had weight. He tried to summon that without the pain, without the blinding flash. He tried to open, the way the Returner had said, without knowing what “open” meant inside a human body.

  A faint tension hummed through the air, so subtle he wondered if he’d imagined it. The skin of his palm prickled. The lukewarm “water” surged toward his fingertips as if eager to leave his hand and find something to latch onto. For an instant, the pen wavered. Not dramatically. Not levitating. Just… a minute shiver, like something had tapped it and it hadn’t decided whether to obey.

  Yu’s breath caught in his throat. His fingers trembled, and the tension in his palm spiked like a held note. Clack. The pen rolled slightly, a small, undeniable movement that ended with a quiet stop against the grain of the desk. The sound was tiny. In the silence of his room, it might as well have been a gunshot.

  Yu lowered his hand slowly, afraid that moving too fast would break whatever fragile thread he’d just felt. His heart hammered, loud enough to drown out the hum of the house. The warmth in his palm didn’t fade; it pulsed, steady and alive, like it was pleased with itself. He stared at the pen as if it had betrayed the laws of the universe by obeying him.

  “It moved,” he whispered, and the words tasted like disbelief. He flexed his fingers once, slow, feeling the “water” shift beneath his skin like a living current. It still had no shape—no clear form, no rules he could name—but it was undeniably there. Not a metaphor. Not a trick.

  “…This is [Bind,]” Yu said, and his voice came out steadier than he felt. He curled his hand into a fist, not tight enough to hurt, but firm enough to claim ownership of the sensation. In his palm, the lukewarm flow gathered, waiting. The connection he’d found was small, fragile, and terrifying, but it was real.