No escorts. No parade, just buses and teachers with clipboards.
They rolled up to the canal in a line that made the carp scatter. Homerooms spilled onto the pavement: chatter, cheap suitcase wheels, the smell of boxed lunches and hair gel. Tour leaders checked headcounts like they were counting stray lightning.
I walked the shadow line—one step off the crowd, Cloud thinned to a film. Ren wore a volunteer sash and the serious face he thinks hides his nerves. Hibird tucked under my collar like a brooch with opinions. Roll paced the curb, absolutely not visible unless you had the right kind of problems.
Sky Crown drew dotted lines over the day. Three bright points pulsed: market corner, shrine gate, temple courtyard. Not danger—density. Story magnets.
"Morning, folks!" the city liaison yelled. "Groups A and B, canal walk. C, market. D, temple." Bless him for being loud enough to sound official without stealing oxygen.
I felt them before I saw them.
Not the devils—the orbit. Attention sticks to certain kids like lint. The boy in the hoodie laughed too big for the time of day. Power coiled under his sneakers and yawned. The redhead nearby carried her name like a standard. The dark-haired president watched routes the way I watch choke points. The tall girl at her shoulder tracked edges and exits; queen behavior without the crown.
Ren breathed, small and steady. I bumped his wrist once. You're okay.
"I know," he mouthed. He did. Mostly.
We let teachers do the front-facing. I kept canal-ward: a net you can't feel unless you try to swim through it.
First stop, the stone bridge.
A guide explained gods of water. Phones clicked. The hoodie kid—Dragon—leaned over the rail to film a koi. The koi sang.
Not a metaphor. Somebody had embedded a whisper-charm in a coin stuck between stones. When kids leaned in, it murmured open-syllable nonsense meant to lure hands down. Old trick. Bad angle. Slippery moss and tourist ankles make a mean pair.
I let Cloud slip under the rail and turn the stone into too boring to touch. The song drifted off like a radio losing signal. Dragon blinked, frowned, shrugged. His friend with the ponytail pulled him back by the hood before any laws of comedy got tested.
One tingle, faint and sour, skated across the canal—observer energy. Not youkai. Not holy. Human curiosity with a lab coat. KPI or something nested inside it? Or just a blogger hoping for footage of a dunked student and a headline about Kyoto's Haunted River Eats Teen. Doesn't matter. I widened the film. They filmed boredom.
We moved.
Market hour turned the road into a vein—vendors, aunties, knives, sweets that make kids forget they're on a budget. Ren's don't crash into old ladies bends did their job. The Sitri girl clocked my bends the way a math kid recognizes the shape of an answer and didn't call it out. Points for her.
At stall eight, a set of prayer beads hummed wrong.
Looked right. Felt… greased. Dampened awareness, not enough to knock you out, just enough to blur. Teachers picked them up thinking "souvenir." Kids love blurring. Adults too.
I raised two fingers. Ren slid in, asked the vendor to try a different hook—smile, apology bow, oh these are off-singing a little, want the ones that sound like rain instead? He swapped the tray with a copy that didn't try to make brains fog. Vendor didn't blink. Bless market logic: if a kid says your product hums wrong and offers to improve your margins, you let them.
I pocketed one bead to dissect later. The hum wasn't Hero Faction; it was local. Sloppy. KPI subcontractors dabbling in ward-dulling? Could be. Could be a cousin of a cousin who learned three lines of a charm on a forum. Either way: not today.
Dragon bought manju and declared them holy. The redhead smiled in a way that would make a city tax collector forgive late filings. The president mumbled something into a route map and adjusted the flow around an alley without knowing she'd avoided a place where foxfire likes to flirt with polyester. It's nice when competence syncs without meetings.
Second pulse: shrine gate.
The line of kids passed under the torii and came out quieter, how it always does when a threshold works. Kunou waited with a volunteer sash of her own and a smile weaponized to disarm teachers. She met my eyes, didn't nod because that would make a story, and directed Group C to handwashing with the speed of a child raised by logistics.
At the basin, a charm thrummed—not dulling this time, pricking. Little needle of intent, small as a splinter in a finger you use too much. I didn't like the angle on it. Too precise to be casual. Too weak to be a move. A test. Is the Guardian watching? Yes.
Cloud folded the charm into a bubble and passed it into Roll's mouth. He chewed, sparks popping like old candy. Hibird warbled good boy because she's a menace.
"Everything okay?" a teacher asked.
"Never better," I said, which was true. Better means boring. We were winning on points.
Third pulse: temple courtyard.
Shoes off. Wood under foot. Sound changes. Even children try not to echo.
I saw her before she looked for me.
Tsubaki Shinra carried stillness like an instrument. Her eyes skimmed the hall, found the trick bends we'd set along the edges, and let a corner of her mouth twitch: acknowledgment, not greeting. Sona Sitri consulted a posted schedule, calculated ten steps, and re-routed her homeroom out of a monk's path without breaking the column's rhythm. Rias's gaze tracked Kunou for half a heartbeat too long and then kindly looked away. Good line. Good leash.
Dragon paused at the offertory box, dug in his pockets, and dropped coins like they meant more than prices. The box sang thank you. Not a charm. Just wood happy to be used for what it is.
I felt it then—a ripple that didn't belong to the trip, didn't belong to the KPI, didn't belong to mischief.
Heaven's thread tugged.
It brushed the temple roof, slid across the courtyard, tested the shrine boundary, and withdrew like a cat's whisker touching glass. Not attack. Range test. Census. Who's home?
I didn't flare. I let Sky Crown hold the map in my chest and traced the thread back as far as you trace without blinking. North-northwest. Clean. Sterile. Someone counting pieces on a board they don't own. Angels don't prefer Kyoto. They tolerate it. This felt more… managerial.
Ren glanced over, felt me feel it, and stilled his shoulders. Good kid.
"Everything okay?" Kunou said at my elbow, voice pitched for only me.
"Paperwork's ghost cousin," I said. "We're getting audited by God's intern."
She snorted, tails twitching once. "Shall I send them a form?"
"Please."
We let the wave pass. The kids prayed for good grades and better luck. Teachers counted heads by whisper. Aunties whispered back when whispers got too loud.
Day ended where it should: sunset on stone, students taking pictures of a sky that pretended it didn't work for anyone.
The buses loaded. The dragon waved at the city like it had waved at him first. The presidents closed ranks. The queen looked back one more time—at the gate, not at me—and filed that the threshold felt kept.
Good.
We walked the route once more after wheels and laughter vanished. The dulling beads went into Tanaka's confiscated until boring box. The whisper coin got pried and plastered with a city sticker that says historical artifact—do not remove because nothing stops a teen like paperwork glued to a rock. Ren re-inked a ward line the rain had fattened. Hibird stole a crumb off an offering and repented loudly when Kunou glared.
On the way out, I felt that Heaven thread tug again—lighter this time, as if the intern had found the checkbox they needed and was already halfway to another building.
Fine. Audit me. You'll get the same thing everyone else gets: forms filled, lines clean, exits clear.
No trumpets. No fallen feathers, just a city tucked in and a map that didn't try to surprise anyone.
Guardian work, Chapter Twenty-Two: keep the story magnets from pulling blood. Let the kids go home with sweets and photos instead of headlines.
Tomorrow, the itinerary says "free exploration." Which is rich. Nothing is ever free.