Before the world learned new words—gate, break, clearance level—people still worried about the old ones.

  Rent. Overtime. Flu season. The price of eggs.

  On mornings when the sky looked harmless, Hifumi Li sometimes let herself pretend nothing had changed. She rode the elevator up with the other employees, swiped her badge, and tried not to look at the emergency map taped beside the time clock.

  EVACUATION ROUTES

  DO NOT PANIC

  DO NOT ENGAGE

  The paper had been replaced so many times the tape marks never truly came off.

  “Lunch?” Kaede asked.

  Kaede Isaki sat at the next desk over, shoulders tight like she expected the ceiling to collapse any second. Her suit was immaculate, her expression less so. Hifumi had learned to read Kaede’s panic the way some people read weather—small shifts in breathing, the micro-tremble in her fingers, the way her eyes kept finding exits.

  Hifumi glanced at the time.

  “Yeah,” she said. “If we go now, the line won’t be too bad.”

  Kaede nodded too quickly, like she’d been waiting for permission.

  They left the building with the rest of the lunch crowd—ordinary employees streaming out of the strongest guild in the world, like the title meant free coffee or better air. Outside, the city moved with the practiced steadiness of people who had accepted that disaster could arrive on schedule or without warning.

  Hifumi tried not to think about the last time the sirens went off.

  She tried not to think about the way the lobby had smelled afterward—metallic and burnt, like someone had struck flint inside the walls.

  McKing was only a few blocks away.

  It was bright in the way fast food places always were, like the lights were meant to bleach away stress and make everyone look a little less tired. The menu screens flickered through glossy photos. The smell of fryer oil was familiar enough that Hifumi’s shoulders loosened by a fraction.

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  The fryer popped behind the counter, oil crackling like it always did. Someone argued about sauces.

  Normal, Hifumi thought. Safe enough.

  Kaede clung to it like a life raft.

  They waited in line behind a group of college kids arguing about sauces, behind a man in a suit talking too loudly into his phone. Hifumi listened to the noise—meaningless, comforting noise—and felt her breathing even out.

  Kaede leaned in, voice low. “Do you think… today will be quiet?”

  Hifumi didn’t answer immediately.

  Quiet days existed. Sometimes. They were rare in the way miracles were rare: you didn’t plan around them.

  “I hope so,” Hifumi said instead, honest in the only way she could afford to be. “We’ll be back before the afternoon meeting.”

  Kaede’s mouth twitched into something that wanted to be a smile.

  It was their turn.

  Hifumi stepped forward, tucking a loose strand of light-blue hair behind her ear as she reached for her wallet, eyes flicking briefly to the menu before settling back into the familiar hum of the restaurant.

  Kaede stood a little too close, brown hair tied low at her neck, fingers twisting nervously around the red clips near her bangs as she scanned the room for exits.

  “Hi—”

  The kitchen disappeared.

  Not the staff. Not the equipment. Not the lights.

  The entire space where the kitchen should have been—gone, as if someone had scooped it out of reality with a clean, careless hand.

  In its place was nothing.

  Not darkness. Not smoke.

  Just… absence. A blank cavity behind the counter, edges too straight and too wrong, like a missing piece of the world.

  For a second, nobody reacted.

  Then someone laughed, uncertain, the way people laugh when they don’t understand a joke but want to believe it’s harmless.

  A tray clattered to the floor.

  Kaede’s hand locked around Hifumi’s sleeve.

  Hifumi stared at the hole in the building, her brain searching for explanations it could file into a neat report.

  Renovation.

  Optical illusion.

  Gas leak.

  Emergency training exercise.

  None of the words fit.

  The air felt colder.

  The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, steady and indifferent, as if the world hadn’t just opened its mouth and swallowed a room.

  “Hi…fumi,” Kaede whispered, voice thin. “It’s… gone.”

  Hifumi swallowed.

  Kaede’s grip hurt. Hifumi was grateful for the pain. It was proof that at least one thing still behaved normally.

  “We should leave,” Hifumi said.

  Kaede nodded too fast again.

  They stepped back.

  Slowly, because fast movements felt like an invitation for whatever had taken the kitchen to notice them.

  Somewhere behind them, a customer asked, “Is this part of a promotion?”

  Somewhere outside, a siren began to rise.

  Hifumi didn’t know it yet, but by the time it stopped, someone very important would already be reading their names.

  Hifumi didn’t look away from the empty space until the door was between them and it.

  Only then did she breathe again—shallow, shaky—like she’d been holding her lungs hostage without realizing it.

  Kaede whispered, almost pleading, “We’re just staff.”

  Hifumi’s throat tightened.

  “I know,” she said.

  And the universe, it seemed, did not care.