Rain taught the shrine to breathe slower. The cedar darkened, the steps went slick, and Ren learned what balance meant when the world tried to slide him off it.
"No," Alaudi said, tapping Ren's heel with a tonfa. "Weight under you. Let the board carry it. Don't fight the floor; bribe it."
"I don't think floors take bribes," Ren muttered.
"They do," Alaudi said. "You just haven't paid the right way."
Hibird counted beats from the beam. Roll patrolled the puddles and left tiny flashes that flickered out like swallowed stars.
No alarms. No temple bells—just the quiet you get when a city is listening for something and doesn't know what it is yet.
The wards brushed him twice, then a third time with intent. A fox runner appeared at the gate, shook rain from two tails, and offered a sealed strip.
Alaudi broke it. Yasaka's hand—sharp, spare.
Kamo river. Mid-bank. Gridding attempts. Prefer quiet correction.
He folded the strip into his sleeve. "Field work."
Ren made a face that wanted to be brave and mostly was. "Now?"
"Before someone learns something they shouldn't."
They took the back lanes—wet stone, wet leaves, wet laundry pretending to be banners—and the river laid itself out: gray ribbon, low water, reed chorus. The pulse on his ribs resolved into points.
Not a single spike. A net.
Charms glued to bridge rails, tucked under benches, knotted into those cheap tourist bells—each one too dumb to be scary, all together smart enough to be useful. Ping, ping, ping: When does Kyoto blink? Where are the seams?
Ren crouched by a bell, rain dripping off his nose. "These… aren't ours."
"Worse," Alaudi said. "They're good copies of ours with the safety scraped off."
"Hero Faction?"
"Or someone who wants to sell homework to them," he said.
He didn't rip them. He didn't break them. He breathed Sky until the map on his ribs went crisp, then slid Cloud between the net and the river like an extra skin. Mist lay over it—a thin, invisible veil.
"Lesson," he said. "If someone asks for the truth in a way you can't stop, you don't give it. You give them a story they can't use."
Ren's eyes narrowed. "We… lie to the sensors."
"Politely," Alaudi said. "And consistently. One bad data point is a mistake. A thousand matching bad data points is a conclusion—just the wrong one."
He set rhythm.
Every fifth heartbeat, the dome he'd laid hiccuped—one millimeter, one breath—enough to tell the bells the city blinked two blocks west of where it did. Ren watched, then matched his pace to Hibird's soft count, Mist teasing the cheap talismans into singing the tune Alaudi fed them.
Across the river, a paper crane twitched on a lamppost. Ren didn't notice; Hibird did. The bird hopped like a tiny officer and chirped once.
"Watcher," Alaudi said.
The crane's head tilted. It had good ink and the mean little logic of a bounded shikigami. It was also greedy. When it tasted the clean curve of Cloud dome, it leaned in, trying to drink more than it should.
Alaudi let it.
He gave it a mouthful—sweet, empty, harmless—and when the crane opened wider, he tipped a jar around it. Violet glass. Lid like a thought closing.
The crane went stiff.
"Do I smash it?" Ren asked, eager and a little frightened.
"We're not toddlers," Alaudi said. He turned the jar in his palm. The crane's ink traced a seal that wasn't youkai work and wasn't proper onmyōji either—imported lines in a Japanese coat.
He unstitched the teeth, left the mouth. Then he wrote on the air with Cloud—a note the size of a smirk.
Wrong city.
He let the jar go. The crane zipped up into the rain, wobbling like a drunk trying to look sober.
Ren exhaled. "That felt… good."
"It felt like buying time," Alaudi said. "Good is for tea."
They walked the bank and tuned the net until the river sang back the wrong song. Ren got better at laying Mist in a line you couldn't see even when you knew where to look. Twice, he overreached; twice, Alaudi tapped his wrist without looking.
"Cost matters," Alaudi said. "Spend enough to win. Not enough to teach."
A woman with a clear umbrella paused near them, eyes on her phone and not on them in the way people have when they're acting like scenery. The umbrella didn't throw a shadow right.
"Keep breathing," Alaudi said without moving his mouth.
Ren nodded one heartbeat late.
The woman drifted closer. Her phone's camera had the wrong reflection. Her umbrella ribs held a thin wire that hummed off-key.
"Excuse me," she said, in the polite tone of strangers and spies. "Do you know if there's a festival today? The bells…"
"Not today," Alaudi said. He glanced at the umbrella ribs. "Bad day to test waterproof equipment."
Her eyes didn't blink right. "Pardon?"
"You'll need a better fuse if you're going to hide a sniffer in a thing that collects static," he said. "And a hat."
Lightning likes tall things. Umbrellas, opinions, arrogance.
She smiled like she'd been told to try smiling. "I'm just—"
"Walking," he said, and with that he let Cloud dome press the ribs by a finger-width. The hum stuttered, then fell silent.
She felt it. Barely. Her smile went brittle. "Ah. Thank you."
"Have a good day," he said, and turned away, because forcing someone to choose between running and staying is a choice; removing their toy and leaving is a leash. She took the hint and drifted downriver where the data was now guaranteed to be bad.
Ren waited until she was gone. "She was—"
"Borrowed," Alaudi said. "Human skin, rented attention. Someone far away learning cheap tricks. Let them learn the wrong ones."
They finished the net. The rain eased. The river forgave them for the lies because the lies were for a good reason and rivers like reasons.
On the way back, the fox runner reappeared, wetter and smugger. Another strip: Saw the crane come back to its nest with your note. The nest looked unhappy. Thank you. —Y
Ren read over his shoulder and grinned despite himself. "We're… snark-mailing the enemy."
"We're letting them know the rent is due," Alaudi said.
Back at the shrine, Kunou sat on the step with her hands wrapped around a teacup too big for her. The cup said "World's Best Aunt" in English, probably stolen from a gift shop.
"You were by the river," she said, as if she'd followed the stitches in the wards like string.
"Yes," Alaudi said.
"Mother said to tell you she appreciates the lack of fireworks."
"Tell your mother I charge extra for fireworks," he said.
Kunou's mouth did that pleased line. "I'll tell her you said you don't work for free."
"I didn't say—" he began, then saw her eyes and stopped. "Fine. That's close enough."
She sipped. "Did you break their toys?"
"We taught their toys to lie," Ren said, getting in before Alaudi could be boring about it.
Kunou looked genuinely impressed. "That's ruder."
"Effective," Alaudi said.
"Rude," she repeated, satisfied.
They trained until the rain gave up and the air smelled like clean stone. Ren's stance lasted longer than his complaints. Hibird sang something triumphantly off-key. Roll chased a beetle and pretended it was a great strategic victory.
Evening settled with that Kyoto-weight that felt like a hand on a shoulder. The wards brushed him once, warm.
Ren sat beside the offertory box and poked his own chest, as if the Sky Crown might have installed itself when he wasn't looking. "Do you think I'll ever… feel the map?"
"Maybe," Alaudi said. "Maybe you'll feel something else. Not everyone gets the same instrument."
"What if mine is bad?"
"Then you learn to play around it," Alaudi said. "Or you build a band."
Ren considered that. "Is that what this is? A band?"
"Gods no," Alaudi said. "Bands argue about merch."
Kunou reappeared long enough to put three wrapped sweets on the step and act like she hadn't. "Mother said you should eat," she said, which in Princess meant: We see you working. We see you not asking for anything. Ask for food at least, idiot.
Alaudi took one. "Tell your mother her courier service is getting too efficient."
Kunou bowed with all the gravity of a queen signing a treaty and left.
They ate. The sweets were too sweet. Ren tried to pretend he didn't like that.
Night pulled the shrine quiet. The city's lines on his ribs shifted, subtle as a cat turning over. He felt the false net do its job, heard—in that place where hearing and feeling were the same—the far-off click of someone drawing a wrong map with confidence.
He put the broom away. He put the tonfa away. He stood in the doorway and let the quiet say: Keep going.
No banner. No chorus. Just the work.
"Again tomorrow," he said.
"Again," Ren echoed, and for once it didn't sound like dread.
Hibird tucked his head under a wing. Roll sparked once in agreement and went to sleep crouched on the offertory box like a weird violet guardian.
The city breathed. The lies held. The line on his ribs hummed.
And somewhere in a room he would never see, a crane unfolded a message written on the air and a stranger frowned at Wrong city without understanding that what it really meant was **Right man.**