No escorts. No headcount at every corner, just "be back by five," a map with red boxes labeled avoid, and a teacher smile that means please don't make me call parents.
Free exploration day.
Translation: watch them without being seen.
We laid a quiet mesh at dawn. Four anchors: canal, market, shrine belt, theater row. Kunou placed fox eyes at crossings. City warders tucked paper under eaves. Tsubaki traced a clean route for her class that politely stepped around half my bends like she'd drawn them herself. Sitri checked timetables and removed bottlenecks before they formed. Rias did the personable-royalty thing that makes shopkeepers add extra sweets to bags. Dragon bounced like a rubber ball with gravity issues.
Ren took the southern loop with me—hood up, volunteer sash stuffed in his pocket, pulse steady because he remembered to breathe through his feet.
"Checklist?" I asked.
He tapped his temple. "Vendors, buses, bathrooms, bottlenecks. And the three fast ways to the clinic if something stupid happens."
"Good," I said. "Aim for 'nothing to report.'"
He nodded like that was a dare.
Gion first—lanterns, lacquer, cameras, ghosts that keep their own hours. A street "magician" worked origami swallows for tourists. Cute trick. Except the swallows sang the wrong key: a beacon pitch, thin as a mosquito. Not a pull—a pin. You tag enough kids with pins and later you draw a net.
Ren caught it too. The swallow banked toward a group of second-years; he stepped sideways, let it bump his wrist, pinched the paper between thumb and knuckle, and blew once through the fold. The note flipped. Beacon turned to static. He tucked the bird in his sleeve and swapped it for a dead one from an auntie's stand with a bow that said your grandson is clever in body language.
Magician blinked, missed the switch, kept smiling for the bucket.
"Local?" Ren murmured.
"Contractor," I said. "KPI with a hobby. We'll compost their fun later."
He smiled like he'd been given permission to shred a worksheet.
Hibird rode my collar and provided commentary: three chirps for cheap trick, two for good catch. Roll ghosted at curb level, teeth full of sunlight and absolutely not anyone's problem.
Market hour was already a wave. The dull-hum prayer beads had cousins—bracelets that smudged edge-perception enough to make kids' steps sloppy. Ren ran the auntie circuit again with a better tray and the kind of soft voice that turns vendors into accomplices. We bought two "faulty" sets for the box. The hum tasted like a tutorial forum and overconfidence.
By the roasted chestnut cart, Heaven's thread brushed the street—light, clinical, polite. Audit ping. Present? Yes. Hostile? Not today. I let Sky Crown mark the line without tugging back; whoever held the other end ticked a box and moved their attention one district west.
"Same intern?" Kunou asked later, low, passing me a bottle of barley tea labeled as if it had always been mine.
"Same clipboard," I said. "New page."
She made a face that said may they step on small Legos and went to shepherd a pack of first-years out of a photography shop before they posed on the counter.
Theater row holds the easy mazes—the kind you walk into for paper fans and walk out of with a paper debt. Today it held a better one.
A side arcade flickered in a way that had nothing to do with fluorescent lights. Someone had laid a folding barrier: not a trap, a sorter. Kids went in as groups and came out as pairs that didn't match the ones who went in. No one screamed. No one noticed that they'd been edited into new compositions.
Ren looked at me. I tilted my head once: Try it.
He exhaled down his spine and stepped through the threshold with his Cloud slimmed to skin. The barrier accepted him like a polite door. Inside, the path stepped left when it hinted right, mirrors holding whispers at off-angles. He let his breath carry a Mist thread—no illusions big enough to trip his own feet, just fog where the maze wanted edges. When the path tried to peel a pair of second-years off toward a back stairwell, he dropped one of the dead origami swallows and stepped on it. The note inverted; the fold flinched. The hallway straightened. The kids blinked at each other like they'd almost decided to fight and then couldn't remember why.
He came out ten seconds later with three students, a cheap poster, and the quiet, guilty grin of a kid who did a calculus problem in his head and won.
"Grade?" he asked.
"Pass," I said. "Don't get clever for clever's sake."
"Would never," he lied.
Hibird snickered. Roll left a spark the size of a sesame seed on the threshold; the barrier hiccuped and decided to be a doorway again.
We flagged the shop with a city sticker that says maintenance inspection pending. Bureaucracy: my favorite hammer.
At lunch, Dragon almost picked a fight with a signboard because it had a pun on it. The pun lost. His friends dragged him to noodles. Rias thanked a cook like she meant it; the cook stood two centimeters taller the rest of the hour. Sitri's queen bought a guidebook she already knew by heart and enjoyed not needing it. A teacher cried privately behind a vending machine and returned with a smile that stayed on.
Small mercies count.
Midafternoon, the Hero-adjacent smell showed again—teen boys in matching "casual" sneakers and the kind of hair that tries to be a personality. They carried aerosol charms in sling bags. Anti-yokai pepper. Stupid and mean.
We intercepted at the alley mouth. I took the cans without touching hands. Ren held the exit with his feet set like he'd been built there.
"City ordinance," I said. "No mace for ghosts. We do not season citizens."
They tried to square shoulders. I expanded Cloud exactly one layer. Not a threat. A boundary.
One boy's mouth ran ahead of his brain. The other boy's eyes looked at the ground and wished it would open.
"We return these," I said. "Your handler may collect a receipt from the ward office and a lecture from a fox. If you bring different toys tomorrow, bring them in a box labeled evidence."
"Who are—" the mouth one started.
"Maintenance," I said.
We left them with a printed sheet on Respectful Behavior in Spirit Districts. Also a map of the Subway. I am generous.
Three-thirty, the sky turned to gold. Kids turned into geese. Shopkeepers calculated margins and felt good about it. The buses reappeared exactly when the liaison said they would, which is how I know he bribes timetables with cigarettes.
Headcounts. Water bottles. Lost-and-found: one hat, five chargers, an entire bag of mochi someone swore they didn't buy. Dragon slept sitting up before the wheels turned. The presidents blocked the aisle like levees. The queen read a shrine pamphlet like it was fun.
I felt the audit thread flick one more time—so light it could've been imagination. It paused at the shrine's roofline, tasted the wards, and moved on with a notation only Heaven cares about.
Good. Keep walking.
We swept once more after the buses left. Ren re-inked a rain-fat ward again. I handed the aerosol cans to Tanaka with a label that said return to sender with disappointment. The origami swallow went into the dissect later tray. Hibird stole a sesame from an offering and then apologized to the gods with a bow so dramatic Kunou giggled behind her hand.
"Did we do enough?" Ren asked, quiet in the empty street the city keeps for itself after tourists go.
"Enough is the right shape," I said. "Today had that shape."
He nodded, like he could feel the outline too.
Kyoto settled. Lanterns hummed. The map in my chest drew itself thinner and cleaner and tucked in.
No headlines. No angels with clipboards demanding signatures. No foxfire where it shouldn't be.
Just a city that got to be a city, and a bus full of kids who'll remember noodles and sky, not the way a maze tried to edit them.
Guardian work, keep the loose lines from snagging.
Tomorrow: museums. Which means stairs. Which means kids forgetting how legs work in silence. I'm an optimist. I'll bring extra stickers.