The hospital ceiling had water stains that looked like a rabbit fighting a dragon.

  Or maybe that was the morphine talking.

  Suzume blinked, trying to focus. The rabbit was winning, which felt wrong on multiple levels. Dragons should beat rabbits. That was just basic ecology. Or mythology. Or—

  "Oh good, you're awake enough to look confused."

  Yumi's face materialized above her, blocking the rabbit-dragon conflict. The reporter looked exhausted, her usually perfect makeup smeared, designer jacket wrinkled like she'd slept in it. Which, judging by the hospital chair pulled close to the bed, she probably had.

  "How long?" Suzume's voice came out scratchy. Her throat felt like she'd been gargling gravel.

  "Fourteen hours." Yumi poured water from a pink plastic pitcher into a paper cup. "You've been in and out. Mostly out. The healers say you had seventeen broken bones, internal bleeding, a punctured lung, and enough bruising to make you look like modern art."

  [Seventeen? I guessed twelve.]

  A healer in green scrubs checked something on a clipboard.

  "Eighteen, actually. We found another fracture in her left foot." He had the bedside manner of someone who'd seen too much weird shit to be impressed anymore. "I don't know if you've got your own healing skill or potions or whatever, but whatever it was, it kept you stable. Most people would've died from half these injuries."

  "Most people would have died a few times over in my place."

  "Suzume," Yumi sighed, "you are-"

  "Stupid?"

  "I would have said impossible, but stupid works too," the healer said. He made another note. "Your body's healing well. Another session this afternoon and you can leave tomorrow."

  He left, shoes squeaking on the linoleum.

  Suzume tried to sit up. Pain shot through her ribs like someone was playing xylophone on them with hammers.

  "Okay, ow. Give me the damage report."

  Yumi crossed her arms.

  "Good news or bad news first?"

  "Bad. Always bad. Like ripping off a bandaid."

  Yumi pulled out her phone, swiping through what looked like hundreds of notifications.

  "Your face is everywhere. That footage of you collapsing on the street went viral in about thirty minutes. #RescueGirl is trending worldwide. Someone identified you within two hours."

  "Okay, I've gone viral. How viral are we talking?"

  "Your Stickypedia page already has your blood type." Yumi turned the phone around. There it was—a full entry for 'Aoi Suzume,' complete with her age, the university she'd dropped out of, her sister's death, even her fucking shoe size somehow.

  If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  "The good news," Yumi continued, "is that I managed to get to you before any other reporters. Kenji and I basically formed a human barrier while the ambulance came. Your equipment's safe, your identity was going to come out eventually anyway, and you're alive. That last one's pretty significant."

  Suzume's phone sat on the bedside table, screen dark but somehow menacing. She knew what waited inside it. The moment she turned it on—

  "How many messages?"

  "When I checked an hour ago? About three thousand."

  [Three thousand. Jesus.]

  She picked it up.

  Her hand shook slightly, though whether from exhaustion or anxiety she couldn't tell. The screen lit up and immediately started vibrating like it was having a seizure. Instagram notifications, Twitter mentions, text messages, missed calls from numbers she didn't recognize, emails, Discord pings—

  One message stood out.

  "Really? Rescue Girl?"

  From Kasumi.

  [Oh no. Oh no no no.]

  Another message followed it, sent ten minutes later:

  "We need to talk."

  Then five minutes after that:

  "I trained with you. I TAUGHT you. And you didn't tell me?"

  Then:

  "Pick up your phone."

  Then:

  "I'm not mad. Call me."

  Then:

  "Okay I'm a little mad."

  The last one, sent two hours ago:

  "The Association is moving. Call me before they do something stupid."

  "Shit," Suzume breathed.

  "Which shit specifically?" Yumi asked. "There's a lot to choose from."

  Before Suzume could answer, Yumi grabbed the remote and turned on the wall-mounted TV.

  "Speaking of shit, you need to see this."

  The screen flashed to life mid-news conference. Takeshi Yagami, director of the Player Association, stood at a podium. The Player Association logo gleamed behind him. His expression had that particular flavor of bureaucratic disappointment that middle managers perfected when someone fucked up their paperwork.

  "—cannot condone vigilante actions, regardless of intent," he was saying. Cameras clicked away like metallic rain. "The System exists for a reason. Regulations exist for a reason. What Miss Aoi has done, while perhaps admirable in spirit, is fundamentally dangerous and illegal."

  A reporter's voice:

  "But she's saved so many players. The bureau's own report states—"

  "The bureau's report is still being compiled." Takeshi's smile could've frozen hell. "What we know is that an unregistered individual has been entering restricted areas without authorization, interfering with active operations, and putting both herself and others at risk."

  [Interfering? I SAVED people, you suit-wearing piece of—]

  "Furthermore," Takeshi continued, adjusting his glasses, "operating as an awakened individual without proper registration is a violation of the Awakened Citizens Act. As of this moment, Aoi Suzume has forty-eight hours to present herself to the Player Association for registration and evaluation."

  Another reporter:

  "And if she doesn't?"

  Takeshi gave a theatrical pause.

  "Then she will be classified as a rogue element and treated accordingly. The Association has resources dedicated to handling such situations."

  "Are you threatening her?" someone shouted.

  "I'm stating legal reality." His eyes found the camera, staring straight through it. "Miss Aoi, if you're watching this, I encourage you to make the right choice. Register. Follow proper channels. Work within the system, not against it."

  The conference dissolved into shouted questions. Yumi muted it.

  Silence filled the hospital room. Even the rabbit and dragon on the ceiling seemed to have stopped fighting.

  "A fugitive," Suzume said slowly. "He's saying if I don't register, I'm a fugitive."

  "That's the general translation, yeah."

  "Can he do that?"

  "The Association has a lot of pull. They basically wrote the Awakened Citizens Act." Yumi sat on the bed's edge. "But public opinion matters too. You're trending higher than their last three PR campaigns combined. People love you."

  "People love Rescue Girl. They don't know me."

  "Same difference right now."

  Suzume's phone buzzed. Another message from Kasumi:

  "Watching the news. Takeshi's an ass but he's not bluffing."

  [Forty-eight hours.]

  She'd gone from anonymous nobody to public enemy number one—or public hero number one, depending on who you asked—in less than a day.

  The Association wanted her leashed.

  The public wanted her story.

  Kasumi wanted answers.

  And somewhere in that mess of wants and demands and expectations, Suzume had to figure out what she wanted.

  [I want to save people.]

  But that was the simple answer. The real question was whether she could do that within the system that had let her sister die, or if she'd have to keep fighting it from the outside.

  [What do I do now?]