No thunder. No prophecy, just yard lights, wet gravel, and a schedule.
The rail yard sat like a metal lung, breathing in freight and exhaling noise. Tanaka met them at the service gate with a hard hat and a badge that made rent-a-cops salute without knowing why.
"Corners are yours," he said. "Two meters of annex approved. Try not to make geometry a hostage."
"Trying," Alaudi said.
Ren adjusted his borrowed vest. Hibird nested under the brim of his cap like a smug emblem. Roll rode in Alaudi's hood, king of the hill.
They walked the map once. Four staples in waiting: fence junction, signal box, camera pole, bumper post. Alaudi set faint Cloud anchors—nothing dramatic, just a promise: hold still when I say so. Sky Crown drew a ghost-grid over the yard, measurements clicking into place like someone finally used a ruler.
The device arrived as "ballast": a pallet of glass cullet shrink-wrapped to look useful. Under it, the ring—shoulder-wide, inscriptions cute enough to embarrass a Latin teacher.
A crew in reflective vests did everything wrong very competently. They placed cones where they wanted cameras to look. They laughed just a little too loud. One knelt at the ring and pressed a thumb to a sigil like he was praying to Wi-Fi.
Alaudi wore the white armband.
"Maintenance," he told the nearest guard, voice flat.
"Didn't get the memo," the guard said automatically.
"You did now," Alaudi replied.
The guard considered the armband, considered not getting yelled at by a boss who existed only in emails, and waved them through.
Ren took the camera pole. "I can dull the shine," he murmured. "Not illusions. Just… put boredom on the lens."
"Do it," Alaudi said.
Ren exhaled, palms open. The Mist he'd learned to not use as a lie eased out as a filter, cooling the sensor's curiosity. On screen, the crater of interest became worksite beige. Viewers swiped away without knowing why.
The foreman snapped two fingers. The ring woke.
It didn't roar. It tilted. The ground around it forgot how to be flat. A seam opened between rail and ballast, a shallow mouth. Lights shivered as if someone had told them the idea of straight lines was outdated.
Alaudi stepped in. Cloud unrolled with the patience of a tarp; Sky counted inches like a petty accountant.
"Left seam," Ren called. "Under your foot. And—uh—curb of the soul three meters back."
Alaudi stapled both. The tilt resisted, then accepted, like a table that finally quits wobbling once you find the right matchbook.
From the far service shed, a man in a high-vis jacket broke into a run, duffel bouncing against his hip. Not ramen-shop runner; different posture. Different training. He went for the signal box.
Three-tailed lieutenant slid into him with a scooter again because apparently that was her brand now. Papers ricocheted. Tanaka emerged like a punchline and cuffed the box instead of the man, evidence before ego.
The ring operator smiled in the small, punchable way of people who think they accounted for you.
Then the air above the ring folded inward—a sleeve inside a sleeve. A pocket room. Not big. Big enough to grab a name, a hairpin, a rumor and yank.
Ren went rigid. "They seeded an anchor. Something from a shrine. Not ours."
Alaudi felt it too: a polite tug toward spectacle. Cameras that had been bored began to consider waking up.
"No," he told the Crown, and meant it to the city, to the ring, to whatever junior member of a larger stupid idea thought this was clever.
Cloud flattened, a hand over a mouth. Sky traced the fold's rim with the care you save for glassware you can't afford to replace. He didn't crush it. He caged it. Edges met without cutting.
Mist, a whisper only the device could hear: you're a rehearsal, not a show.
The sleeve stuttered, hungry but suddenly aware that dinner was canceled.
"Front axle seam," Ren said out of habit, nerves bouncing him back to yesterday's bus. Then, steadier: "Two micro-leaks near the cone cluster. And the operator's thumb is the switch."
"Roll," Alaudi said.
Roll dropped from his hood, sparked once, and parked on the operator's boot like a paperweight from a god that understood HR. The man yelped, foot anchored by the idea of shame.
Hibird chirped three times—their internal reset count.
"One," Alaudi said, loud enough for the ring to decide it was being supervised. "Two."
On three, he pulled the Cloud staples back a finger's width and put them down again, like a heartbeat. The fold's rim matched his rhythm because he gave it nothing better to follow.
The ring dimmed. The sleeve unrolled itself like a dog spitting out a slipper.
Silence.
No cheers. No dramatic collapse—just a device that remembered it was junk and a yard that remembered it had trains.
The crew looked lost in the way people get when their trick requires the room to want it. The room did not.
Tanaka's phone chimed. "Civil code violation logged. Secondary unit has your ramen runner on yesterday's prints. Coordination with prosecutors… yes, yes, I love court too, thank you."
The lieutenant squatted by the ring with a chalk pencil, tracing each sigil like she was writing a grocery list. "Same artisan," she murmured. "Same petty Latin. Same supply chain. We can ladder this."
Ren sagged and then tried very hard to pretend he hadn't. He checked the pole feed; half the comments were about train aesthetics and one guy begging for someone to drop a bass line.
Alaudi lifted the ring with Cloud fingers, gentle but nonnegotiable, and set it on a confiscation dolly. He pulled the cullet pallet over it with human hands.
"Paperwork," he said to Tanaka.
"Forms waiting," Tanaka said, delighted. "Receptionist has ink warmed. She says if the apprentice writes neatly, she will consider the matter of lollipops."
Ren lit up like a festival float.
They cleared the yard methodically—tags, photos, signatures. Alaudi kept the armband on until the last cone was stacked. Then he looped it onto his belt, signaling the night he wanted: uneventful.
As they left, a train rolled past slow, cars whispering a noise that sounded like gratitude if you were arrogant enough to hear it that way. Alaudi didn't. He took it as a good sign anyway.
Back at the shrine, Kyoto breathed like it had done math right the first time.
Kunou waited on the steps with a paper fan and the posture of a tiny auditor. "Mother says 'adequate.' I say 'very adequate.' Also, do not let Tanaka talk you into a press quote."
"No quotes," Alaudi said.
"No gloating either," Kunou added, and then—after a beat—"A little private gloating is fine."
Ren produced a folded copy of his field notes like a magician: corners labeled, times marked, handwriting tragically earnest. Hibird pecked the margin to sign. Roll paw-printed the bottom, leaving a brief violet stamp like a mayor's seal.
"Good," Kunou said, reviewing like a judge. "No trumpets. No headlines—just results."
Ren pretended he hadn't been hoping for trumpets. Alaudi pretended he didn't notice.
Sky Crown settled behind his sternum, not pushy—just present, like a hand on a map that remembered where the staples had gone. It liked collaboration. He allowed it the smallest nod.
"You felt it, right?" Ren asked, quieter. "When it tried to be a show."
"Yeah," Alaudi said. "We didn't let it."
Ren's grin was all teeth and relief. "We bored them to death."
"Boredom is undefeated," Alaudi said. "File that."
He set the armband on the offertory box. The white looked stupid in a nice way against old wood. A reminder: authority you can remove is the kind worth keeping.
They ate noodles under the eaves, steam fogging the night just enough to make the world kind. The city hummed. The rail yard existed, no longer interesting, exactly as planned.
No medals. No speeches—just a form stamped, a map corrected, a place that stayed itself.
Tomorrow, more edges. Maybe a quiet morning. Maybe not.
Either way, the Guardian slept like someone who had made a promise and kept it.