The barrier had already been dismantled by the time Fushiguro arrived.
That meant two things. First, the exorcism was complete. Second, whatever remained was no longer considered dangerous enough to justify containment. The order of operations mattered. It always did. Barriers were expensive, loud, and bureaucratically visible. Removing one was a statement. This site no longer required attention.
Megumi stopped at the perimeter anyway.
The street looked ordinary in the way disaster zones always tried to. Asphalt scrubbed clean. Storefront glass replaced, not repaired. A vending machine hummed where one had not been before. The air carried no pressure, no distortion. No sensation that could be logged under cursed perception without stretching definitions.
He checked the time against the report.
Thirty-seven minutes since neutralization. Within margin.
Two auxiliary sorcerers stood near the curb, both already halfway into the posture of waiting to be dismissed. One held a tablet. The other held nothing and looked relieved about it.
"Fushiguro," the one with the tablet said. No honorific. That was fine.
Megumi nodded. He did not ask what grade the curse had been. If it mattered, it would still be active. If it didn't, it would already be a footnote.
"Residual sweep came back clean," the sorcerer continued. "Negative flow decay within expected parameters."
Megumi knelt, palm hovering an inch above the ground.
Cursed energy moved like heat through water when it lingered. It spread, thinned, lost definition. What he felt was none of that. The surface was neutral. Not empty. Neutral. The difference was technical but important.
"How long did it take to collapse?" he asked.
"Barrier?" the second sorcerer said. "Standard. Six minutes."
Megumi nodded again.
He released Divine Dog: Totality.
The shikigami emerged soundlessly, dark fur absorbing light rather than reflecting it. Its presence did not disturb the air. It lowered its head and inhaled.
Nothing.
No recoil. No tension. No aggression response. Totality's ears did not flatten. Its tail did not still. These were involuntary tells. Megumi trusted them more than instruments.
"Any civilian contact after evacuation?" he asked.
"None reported," Tablet said. "Area cleared. Local police logged it as a gas leak."
Megumi stood.
He walked the length of the street slowly, counting steps without meaning to. His shadow fell ahead of him, stretching slightly longer than the buildings justified. He stopped. Looked down. Adjusted his stance.
The shadow corrected itself.
He waited another second anyway.
The auxiliary sorcerers exchanged a look that tried to be invisible.
Megumi dismissed Totality and summoned Nue instead.
The winged shikigami flickered into existence above him, electricity crackling faintly along its feathers. Megumi didn't command it forward. He simply let it hover. The air around Nue reacted normally. Ionization dissipated evenly. No localized resistance.
Still, the hum lingered a fraction longer than it should have.
"Any complications during exorcism?" Megumi asked.
Tablet scrolled. "Primary sorcerer reported no deviation. Curse manifested fully, resisted briefly, then destabilized."
"What was the trigger?"
"Unknown. Likely accumulated resentment from repeated urban redevelopment."
Megumi made a sound that was not quite agreement.
He stepped into the building at the center of the site. The entrance had been rebuilt quickly, drywall still faintly warm from curing compound. Inside, the smell of new materials overpowered everything else. It was effective camouflage. Freshness masked absence well.
He stood in the lobby.
This was where the curse had anchored, according to the diagram. A convergence point. Structural stress. Emotional throughput. Standard.
Megumi closed his eyes.
There was nothing pressing against his perception. No weight. No pull. Just space. The kind that behaved too politely.
He opened his eyes.
"Run another residual sweep," he said.
Tablet hesitated. "Sir, readings already—"
"Run it."
The auxiliary complied. Instruments activated. Numbers populated. All within tolerance.
Except one.
Tablet frowned. Adjusted the settings. Recalibrated.
The number disappeared.
Megumi watched the process without comment.
"Probably sensor lag," Tablet said, too quickly.
Megumi turned.
"How long have you been doing this?" he asked.
"Three years," Tablet said.
"And you trust the sensors?"
"Yes."
Megumi nodded. "Then trust them when they misbehave too."
Tablet swallowed. "It corrected itself."
"So did my shadow," Megumi said. He did not elaborate.
He walked toward the stairwell. The building was empty. That had been verified twice. He still checked every landing. Habit was not superstition. It was training.
At the third floor, he stopped.
The temperature was correct. The lighting was correct. The air circulation was correct.
The sound was not.
Footsteps echoed back at him half a beat late.
He stood still. Stopped breathing. Listened.
The delay vanished.
Megumi exhaled.
He did not summon another shikigami. He did not draw a weapon. There was nothing to fight. Nothing to confront. Only something to observe failing to violate any specific rule.
He returned to the lobby.
"We're done," he said.
The auxiliary sorcerers relaxed immediately.
Tablet began closing files. "I'll submit final confirmation."
Megumi paused.
"Flag it as low-grade residual potential," he said.
Tablet blinked. "But readings—"
"Flag it."
Tablet complied.
Outside, the sun had shifted. The street looked convincingly alive now. Pedestrians passed without hesitation. No one glanced at Megumi twice. That was how it was supposed to be.
He took one last look at the building.
From this angle, his reflection in the glass lagged behind him by a fraction of a second.
He did not look back to confirm.
The report would read: **Site cleared. Curse neutralized. Residuals within acceptable limits.**
And it would be true.
Mostly.
Megumi returned forty-eight hours later because the follow-up window required it, not because anything had been reported.
That distinction mattered. Paperwork triggered action more reliably than instinct ever did.
The site looked better in daylight. Municipal efficiency had done its quiet work. Planters lined the sidewalk now. A banner hung from a lamppost advertising discounted rent. Someone had decided optimism was a cost-effective sealant.
Megumi stood across the street and waited for the sensation that usually arrived late.
It didn't.
He crossed anyway.
This time, he came alone. No auxiliaries. No tablet. The absence of witnesses simplified observation. It also removed excuses.
He stepped into the building.
The lobby smelled lived-in now. Coffee. Cleaning solvent. Something fried, faint and stale. Human presence had weight. It pressed down on cursed residue the way fresh snow buried footprints without erasing them.
Megumi closed his eyes.
Nothing surged. Nothing recoiled. No cursed pressure bloomed in response to being noticed.
Instead, the space behaved.
That was the problem.
He released Rabbit Escape.
The shikigami scattered across the floor, dozens of small bodies darting into corners, under furniture, along walls. They were good at provoking reactions. Their cursed energy signature was irritating by design.
The rabbits reached the far end of the lobby and stopped.
Not froze. Not panicked.
They simply hesitated, then continued, slower.
Megumi frowned.
He dismissed them and moved deeper into the building.
The stairwell was quieter than before. Sound dampened naturally here, the way older buildings swallowed noise. He counted steps again. The echo returned correctly this time. No delay. No lag.
At the third floor, the temperature was off by half a degree.
Not enough to matter. Enough to register.
Megumi leaned against the railing and waited.
Time passed. Nothing happened. The building did not respond to scrutiny. It did not resist. It did not provoke. It tolerated.
He summoned Nue again.
The shikigami appeared without crackle this time. Its wings unfurled. Static crawled along the feathers and dispersed immediately, as if absorbed by the air.
Nue tilted its head.
That was new.
Megumi watched carefully. Shikigami reactions were honest. They had no incentive to dramatize.
"Go," he said.
Nue flew the corridor length, brushing light fixtures as it passed. No alarms triggered. No cursed backlash followed.
At the far end, Nue slowed.
It did not turn back.
It circled once, then landed.
Megumi approached.
The hallway here ended in a maintenance door. It was unlocked. It should not have been. Building codes were consistent about that.
He opened it.
Inside, the room was empty. No equipment. No storage. Just bare concrete and a faint smell of ozone that had no source.
Megumi crouched.
His shadow stretched forward, touched the opposite wall, and remained there when he shifted.
He stared at it.
One second passed.
Then it corrected itself, snapping back into alignment.
Megumi stood.
This was not a manifestation. Not an entity. Not a remnant clinging to existence through will or resentment.
This was behavior.
He closed the door and returned to the stairwell.
On the second floor, he encountered a woman exiting an apartment. She startled slightly when she saw him. Not because of cursed presence. Because she hadn't expected someone there.
"Sorry," she said reflexively.
Megumi nodded and stepped aside.
As she passed, her shadow brushed his.
For an instant, it moved against the light.
She didn't notice.
He did.
Outside, Megumi checked his phone.
No alerts. No new reports. No flagged incidents. The city was functioning. That was the metric that mattered most.
He opened the report draft he'd started earlier.
**Follow-up inspection conducted. No hostile cursed activity detected. Minor environmental inconsistencies observed. Within acceptable variance.**
He paused.
Deleted the last sentence.
Replaced it with: **No actionable deviations recorded.**
That phrasing would survive review.
Megumi submitted the draft, then locked his phone.
Across the street, a child dropped a coin. It rolled, wobbling, then settled on its edge for half a second too long before falling flat.
No one reacted.
Megumi walked away.
Behind him, the building remained.
Occupied. Documented. Cleared.
And behaving perfectly.
The report returned three hours later with redactions already applied.
Megumi hadn't expected speed. He hadn't expected delay either. The system moved when it decided something was small enough to process efficiently. This was apparently one of those things.
He read the sanitized version on his phone while standing in the corridor outside the Commission's regional office. The lighting buzzed overhead. Someone had chosen a frequency that discouraged lingering.
**Incident classification:** Contained
**Threat level:** Null
**Residual assessment:** Non-hostile environmental variance
**Follow-up requirement:** None
The phrasing was familiar. Comfortingly blunt. It left no space for interpretation, which was the point.
Megumi scrolled.
The section he'd written about delayed responses had been removed entirely. The mention of sensor disagreement was gone. The term "behavioral inconsistency" had been replaced with "instrument calibration anomaly."
He stopped reading.
Inside the office, clerks moved paper between trays. Screens flickered. Phones rang and were silenced. The machinery of exorcism ran better after the fighting stopped. Combat was inefficient. Administration scaled.
Megumi stepped inside.
At the intake desk, a man in a dark suit glanced up. "Fushiguro. You're early."
"The report came back," Megumi said.
The man nodded, already reaching for a stamp. "Standard closure. Good work."
"It isn't work," Megumi said. "It's confirmation."
The man smiled faintly, the way people did when correcting children without wanting to be obvious about it. "Same difference."
Megumi said nothing.
He watched the stamp come down.
**FILED.**
The sound was soft. Final.
"Any objections?" the man asked, already sliding the folder aside.
Megumi considered answering honestly.
There was no curse to point to. No active threat. No metric that crossed a line demanding escalation. The building was occupied. No injuries. No reports. No evidence that would survive review without being translated into something harmless.
Objection required substance.
"I'll note it in my personal log," Megumi said instead.
The man shrugged. "Suit yourself. Just don't open a new case without cause."
Cause was a word that implied sequence. Trigger and result. Before and after.
This reminded Megumi of something closer to residue. A condition that persisted because nothing acknowledged it.
He left the office.
Outside, evening had settled. The city's cursed baseline hummed at a manageable level. Neon signs flickered. Traffic crawled. Life continued because it always did.
Megumi stood at the crosswalk and waited for the signal.
Across the street, a television played in an electronics store window. The image glitched briefly. A frame repeated. Then it corrected.
No one noticed.
Megumi crossed when the light changed.
He did not return to the building again. There was no justification for a third inspection. Repetition without escalation was inefficiency. He knew how the Commission viewed inefficiency.
Days passed.
The site appeared in a monthly summary as a resolved incident. One line. No footnotes.
Megumi read it once and closed the document.
That night, as he stood in his apartment, he noticed his shadow touching the wall before his body did.
He turned off the light.
The shadow disappeared.
The room behaved normally.
Megumi lay down.
Tomorrow, there would be another site. Another exorcism. Another closure.
This one was finished.
The file said so.