Chapter 64: Traffic Jam

Mio

Mori was slumped in the backseat, wearing a mask. Sniffing and coughing like a terminal patient.

“Couldn’t you have just stayed home?” Kaito said, one hand on the wheel.

It was rush hour. Cars honking, the smell of rubber through the cracked window.

“And miss your first squad deployment?” Mori’s voice came through the mask wet and nasal. “Segawa would reassign me.”

“To bed rest.”

“To someone else’s squad.” She blew her nose into a tissue and tossed it into a plastic bag between the seats. The bag was already half full. “He’s been looking for an excuse since the block-leveler.”

Kaito didn’t argue. He merged into the left lane and let a delivery truck pass.

Mio sat in the passenger seat. Jii had found a spot in her jacket pocket, cross-legged with the daggers across her knees. Her yellow eyes stayed on Mori.

“So the knight is your arm now,” Kaito said.

“Yeah.” Mio flexed the fingers. They responded faster than her real hand ever had. “It’s heavy.”

“How heavy?”

“I almost drowned in the tub.”

Kaito’s grip shifted on the wheel. “Do I need to ask?”

“Nope.”

He let it go. That was the thing about Kaito. He asked once. If you didn’t answer, he drove.

Mori leaned forward between the seats. Her eyes went straight to the jacket pocket. Jii stared back without blinking.

“That’s like the little metal man I almost obliterated on your first outing.”

“You could put it that way.”

“The one that crossed half of Shibuya to find you while I was trying to kill you.”

Mio’s jaw tensed the slightest.

Even when she’s sick she can be such a prick.

“That’s the one.”

Mori studied Jii for another second. “Can I pet it?”

“Don’t think she’d let you.”

“It’ll warm up to me.” Her giggle turned into ugly coughs. Must be karma. Mio’s subtle smirk knew it too.

Traffic crawled. A motorcycle weaved between lanes close enough to scrape the side mirror. Kaito didn’t flinch.

“Three squads today,” he said, merging onto the Chūō Expressway heading west. “Ours takes Ajinomoto Stadium in Chōfu. C-grade overflow, went active yesterday evening.”

He changed lanes without signaling. A taxi honked behind them. The driver rolled down his window and screamed something about Kaito’s mother.

“Fuck off,” Kaito said, eyes on the road.

“Second squad’s clearing a hive in Shinjuku-Sanchōme. Third is handling a swarm breach in Tachikawa.” He glanced at the rearview. “Once all three sites are down, we converge.”

“On what?” Mio asked.

“B-grade nested. Showed up on scanners two days ago in Kokubunji. Bureau’s been holding a perimeter but it’s destabilizing. They want it gone before it pops.”

“So the stadium is the warmup.”

“The stadium is the job,” Mori said from the back. “The nested is the job after the job.”

She coughed into her mask. “Hobgoblins at Ajinomoto. Organized. Shields, formations. Orc elites in the upper levels. At least one troll, maybe two. Biometrics weren’t sure.”

“Segawa-san also said they set up perimeters for any signs of exterior forces,” Kaito added.

Mio looked at him. “Like…”

“Like the ones we encountered. Like the ones that blew up your apartment,” Mori said.

Mio glanced at Kaito. “You know about it?”

“I was briefed, yeah.”

She turned back to the window. Shopping districts blurred past. Salarymen on crosswalks. A woman pushing a stroller through a green light.

So much had happened in the past few days she could barely keep the timeline straight. The man fat as a sumo wrestler, gaping hole in his chest. The woman with the glowing eyes who’d ripped Mio’s arm off and told her things she wasn’t ready to hear.

Skinny knowing her father’s eye color.

And underneath all of it—Nami. An aunt she’d never known existed, chained somewhere beneath the building they’d just left.

Segawa had told her that much. Just enough to shut her up. He hadn’t told her why.

Level 30. That’s when the rest came. Shizuka had said so. She also said the rest wouldn’t be a surprise. Mio wasn’t sure which outcome she preferred.

In her pocket, Jii shifted. One dagger tapped against the fabric twice. Whether that was a nervous habit or a signal, Mio couldn’t tell.

The Bureau had blockaded the area three intersections back. Concrete barriers and agents in plainclothes waving traffic away with construction signs.

A jogger argued with one of them at the corner. No press. No ambulances.

Kaito parked in a cracked lot behind a shuttered convenience store. Weeds through the asphalt. A vending machine near the entrance still humming, lights on, nobody buying.

A Bureau van sat nearby, doors open, medical cots visible inside. Standby unit.

They walked the last block on foot. The air smelled different this close. Burnt metal and wet concrete and a sweetness that made Mio’s teeth itch.

Two Bureau agents in dark suits fell in beside Mori, tablets out, talking logistics. She nodded along, blew her nose into a fresh tissue mid-sentence, and kept walking.

She was Mio’s age. Maybe a year older. Shorter without the heels she usually wore. In the field jacket and surgical mask with her ponytail stuffed under a cap, she looked like a high schooler who’d wandered into the wrong parking lot.

She stopped. Turned to face them both.

“Formation’s the same as always. Mio-san up front, Kaito-san on the flank for DPS, I cover from range.” She sniffed. “Segawa-san said we can’t fuck up. Or he’d call my parents. So do your jobs. Then after we clear the B-grade incursion, I get to go home and soak my feet.”

One of the suits glanced at Mio. Then at the arm. Then back to his tablet.

“Clear,” Mio said.

Kaito adjusted his sword at his hip. The hospital band was gone but the tape residue still clung to his wrist.

The shimmer hung between two concrete pillars at what used to be the stadium’s south entrance. A heat-haze ripple that warped the air behind it into a color that didn’t belong to this side of the sky.

In Mio’s pocket, Jii had stood up. Both daggers drawn, lips pressed tight.

Mori coughed twice into her elbow, hard enough that the suits behind her exchanged a look. She straightened up. Wiped her mouth with her wrist.

Then the prompt appeared.

[Engine: New Objective]

Bloom Absorbed: 0 / 100,000

Reward: 10,000 XP

One hundred thousand. She ran the math against everything she’d harvested since Meguro. The slimes, the constructs, the daemon she’d been too slow to claim, the elf who’d walked into fire.

All of it together didn’t touch six figures.

The Engine wanted more than she’d ever taken in a single run. A week ago, that number would have stopped her cold.

Nami-sama, I wonder what you’re like.

Mio stepped ahead.

Kaito straightened his spine, sheathed sword in hand. The tape was still there. Mori put an airpod in. Some nightcore music blaring. Her eyes met Mio’s.

Mio turned toward the shimmer.

She was the tank. That, she could do.

“Let’s go.”

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