No sirens. No raid, just envelopes.
A rubber-banded brick of certified mail waited on the shrine step like a threat that paid postage. Ren brought it in like it might bite. Hibird pecked the green delivery slips until they gave up and curled.
I slit the top one.
NOTICE OF UNLICENSED PRACTICE.
NOTICE OF IMPROPER WARDING.
NOTICE OF PUBLIC NUISANCE—"UNAUTHORIZED CHIME INTERFERENCE."
Ten flavors of the same thing: paper trying to do what fists couldn't.
Tanaka arrived while we were halfway through the stack, set a convenience-store coffee beside the pile, and didn't ask—just started sorting by agency.
"Half real, half theater," he said, flicking one letter into the bin of actual problems. "Someone filed everything available on the menu."
"Who's 'someone'?" Ren asked.
Tanaka turned one notice so we could read the sender line. Kyoto Purity Initiative. An address that belonged to three other nonprofits and a tax attorney.
"Front," I said.
"Of a front," he said. "KPI files, city prints, newspapers amplify. Paper tiger with good PR."
Hibird hopped onto an envelope and stamped it with her feet like she was approving a treaty. Roll tried to eat a certified sticker and lost the fight on principle.
Yasaka came in at the tail end, tails low, eyes amused. "I see the tiger found your porch."
"Do we burn it," I asked, "or frame it?"
"Neither," she said. "We bore it."
Plan A again. Good.
"Two steps," Tanaka said, counting. "We cure anything that's technically true—update ward postings, file your 'I exist' forms—and we attend their public forum and talk until no one wants to listen to them ever again."
Ren perked. "Talking that makes people leave counts as a win?"
"It's the only win," Tanaka said.
I flicked open the last envelope. Notice of Education Liaison Review. Tomorrow. Board of Education. A school trip schedule tucked inside.
Ren read over my shoulder. "Kuoh Academy? From—"
"From Kuoh," I said. The names on the roster would read like a light novel table of contents if they included the right columns. They didn't. But I knew the timing. Volume 9 was on the horizon whether Kyoto liked arcs or not.
Yasaka's eyes cut to me. "They're requesting a safety briefing and a route blessing."
"And a quiet guardian," I said.
"And a quiet guardian," she agreed.
Fine. I could walk a route.
I couldn't stop paperwork wanting attention.
—
We fixed the easy stuff before lunch.
Ren re-inked the ward placards, neat brush, Mist steadying his hand when the stroke wanted to wobble. I added a small Cloud overlay to keep kids from daring each other to peel the corners. Hibird supervised quality control by chittering when Ren's serif got too try-hard. Roll took a sticker like a medal and patrolled the offertory box with exaggerated professionalism.
Tanaka filled out my Practitioner Declaration with the speed of a man who had learned to love checkboxes because loving anything else would require therapy. Yasaka signed the shrine's Revised Warding Plan and stamped it with a fox seal that made the paper behave.
By late afternoon we had a folder labeled Boring On Purpose.
"Forum's at seven," Tanaka said, pocketing the folder. "Board of Ed at four-thirty. We can do both if we don't linger."
"I never linger," I said.
Ren coughed into his sleeve to hide his face.
—
The Board meeting was fluorescent lights and chairs that punish fidgeters. A woman with a perfect bob read agendas like sutras and gave us ten minutes. Ten minutes was enough.
Yasaka opened with the official phrases—cultural partnership, student safety, respect for boundaries. I drew the route on the map with Cloud the way a chalk line draws itself: temple, canal, two markets, three places where tourists discover their ankles. I marked the quiet pockets we preferred for blessings. Ren added a one-page Do/Don't for teachers in plain language: Do ask a shrine volunteer before touching anything. Don't chase foxfire. If a coin sings, put it down and call this number.
They nodded. Teachers love numbers.
A vice principal tried to ask if "the Guardian thing" meant we were private security. Yasaka said "No," in the tone that turns a question back into a chair. The bob-haired woman thanked us for our time and stamped the route with a polite clack that sounded like permission and insurance in one.
Outside, Ren exhaled. "That was almost… normal."
"Don't curse it," I said.
Sky Crown ticked once behind my sternum—thin lines sketching future footfalls through Kyoto streets. It didn't feel like a crown. It felt like tomorrow's map arriving early so I could choose where not to trip.
—
The forum lived in the community room of a library that had never forgiven its carpet. Folding chairs. A projector that hummed like a thoughtful bee. Banners for KPI done in the kind of tasteful sans serif that hides teeth.
The emcee wore sincerity like a tie. The columnist who wasn't PHALANX sat three rows back, two phones out, face already doing the "we ask hard questions here" mask. Three shop owners I recognized from the canal. Five aunties who had decided to be here in case the meeting needed to remember manners.
We didn't take the front. Yasaka sat near the aisle with the lieutenant. Tanaka hovered by the AV rack like a gremlin with credentials. Ren took a side wall where bored teenagers instinctively look when it gets boring. I stayed standing.
The emcee opened with concern for tradition, slid into outsider forces, and landed on unaccountable actors changing Kyoto without consent. He didn't say my name. He didn't need to.
They called public comment. A man asked if our "patches" were mind control. An auntie told him to take off his Bluetooth thing if he was worried about possession. Laughter did the small work only laughter can do.
Then the emcee gestured at me. "Since one of the… figures… in question is here—would you care to address accountability?"
"Sure," I said.
I stepped up without touching the microphone. No aura flex. No tricks. Just a list.
"Accountability looks like this," I said. "If I break a thing, I fix it. If I can't fix it, I pay for what someone else needs to fix it. If I'm wrong, I say it out loud and then stop being wrong."
I held up a certified letter. "This one says I'm an unlicensed practitioner. That was true at nine this morning. It's not true now. Paperwork exists. I filed it. Warding notices were two meters too far inside the gate. We moved them. Your formal complaint about chimes we didn't install? We wrote the patch that turned them back into doorbells. And we asked the printer who was helping the people who did install them to print city warnings for a month as penance."
I put the letter down.
"If you have a real thing, we'll cure it. If you have theater, we'll bore it. If you're trying to make a stage out of this room, try another venue."
The emcee tried to regain the floor with a question about mandates. Yasaka answered with memoranda. He tried to get Ren to explain Mist like it was a cult secret. Ren explained it like he was showing someone how to breathe in cold weather without scaring their lungs. The columnist tried to wedge in what about when the Guardian leaves and got buried under the aunties telling him Kyoto didn't start last year and won't end when a boy with a blog gets bored.
Tanaka put the Boring On Purpose folder on the resource table and watched six small business owners take pictures of the Do/Don't handout like it was a recipe card.
By the time questions ran out, the projector had given up humming.
We didn't linger.
—
Night laid the routine back over the city. Kunou met us at the gate with thermoses and a scolding for missing dinner. Hibird accepted tea like it was her achievement. Roll took a fish-shaped cracker and then, remembering professionalism, pretended it was a confiscated artifact.
"Tomorrow the students arrive," Yasaka said, walking the path with us. "I'll have two tails on each tour group and three on the perimeter."
"I'll walk the shadow line," I said. "Canal first. Market second. Temple last."
"Good," she said. Then, softer: "You prepared for the noise they carry with them?"
"Teenagers?"
"Main characters," she said, and a smile ghosted the edge of it.
Sky Crown drew a light dotted line at the word market and another at temple. Two points tingled like names I hadn't said aloud yet. Sitri. Shinra. Not tonight. Tomorrow.
Ren jogged ahead to re-check his illusions along the curb—soft bends that slow careless feet without turning ankles. He'd learned to hide kindness as infrastructure. Kyoto likes that.
At the top of the steps, the shrine bells were still bells. The wards hummed like content cats. The certified letters sat rubber-banded on the shelf next to the offering envelopes, tamed.
No trumpets. No glowing sigils in the sky, just a route, a map, and a city that had chosen boredom as its sharpest blade.
Guardian work, Chapter Twenty-One: file the form, walk the line, leave the stage to people who think stages make them tall.
Tomorrow, we shepherd tourists and future devils and one dragon in a hoodie past the parts of Kyoto that bite. And if paper tigers show up again, we pet them to sleep.