The ocean inside Rei did not behave like an ocean.
That would have been easier.
Oceans had surfaces. Horizons. Tides that obeyed the moon with enough consistency for sailors to pretend they understood them. Oceans could drown you, yes, but they were honest about their size. You saw the water. You smelled salt. You heard waves before they broke against stone.
Yuta Okkotsu’s cursed energy reserve template was not like that.
It was a room under a room under a room.
A depth beneath the floor of his soul.
Most of the time, Rei could not reach it fully. The System had been clear: developmental foundation, juvenile vessel limitations, future-imprint instability. The template was not pouring the full force of Yuta’s eventual monstrous reserve into a seven-year-old body. It was creating space. Expanding capacity. Teaching his cursed energy to grow toward an impossible shape without letting the shape manifest all at once.
That sounded almost gentle when written in the System’s clean black text.
It was not gentle.
It was pressure.
Every morning, Rei woke with the sense that something inside him had stretched overnight while the rest of his body was still trying to understand the previous day’s measurements. Some mornings, his hands shook when he held his brush. Some evenings, he felt hollow with exhaustion after using no more cursed energy than usual. Once, during preliminary instruction, Hayato Inoue dropped a wooden practice charm behind him and the sudden sound startled Rei badly enough that cursed energy surged from the hidden reservoir to the surface of his skin.
The Masking Protocol caught it.
Barely.
For half a second, the room’s paper seals trembled.
Moriyama looked at the wall.
Then at Rei.
He coughed into his sleeve and made himself look embarrassed.
Akiha noticed.
Of course she did.
Daigo did not, because Daigo was busy being angry at a practice target that had failed to validate his family name.
That was fortunate.
Rei spent the rest of the day with his cursed energy folded so tightly inward that his head hurt behind his eyes.
By evening, the System had updated.
[Warning]
Reserve bleed detected
Trigger:
- sudden physical startle
- emotional spike
- insufficient surface suppression
Masking Protocol strain: moderate
Recommendation:
- establish low-output circulation discipline
- avoid reflexive reserve access
- avoid panic
Rei stared at the last line.
Avoid panic.
Brilliant.
He wondered if the System would next recommend avoiding gravity during falls.
Haruto noticed before Rei told him.
The next morning, instead of sweeping Rei’s legs or making him practice controlled reinforcement against the wooden post, his father placed a shallow bowl of water on the courtyard stones.
The bowl was plain ceramic.
The water was still.
Rei distrusted it immediately.
Haruto stood across from him with his sleeves tied back.
“Sit”
Rei sat.
Rain had passed during the night, leaving the courtyard stones dark and clean. The morning air smelled of damp moss, old wood, and smoke from a distant kitchen fire. Sayuri was not on the veranda. That meant she was watching from somewhere less obvious, or she had decided the lesson belonged to Haruto alone.
Rei suspected the first.
Haruto pointed to the bowl.
“Put cursed energy into the water”
Rei did.
A thread of dark warmth moved from his hand into the bowl.
The water rippled.
Too much.
Haruto’s expression did not change.
“Again. Less”
Rei withdrew, breathed, and tried again.
The surface trembled.
“Again. Less”
On the fourth attempt, the water barely moved.
Haruto nodded.
“Hold it there”
Rei held.
Five seconds.
Ten.
His cursed energy wanted to settle into the pattern Kusakabe’s control had taught it. Thin. Stable. Practical. Nanami’s reinforcement remained quiet, unused. Yuji’s body sat beneath his posture, keeping him still.
The deeper reserve remained behind the mask.
Good.
Then Haruto struck the floor with his wooden practice knife.
Crack.
Rei flinched.
The water jumped.
Not much.
Enough.
Haruto watched the ripples spread.
“Again”
Rei’s jaw tightened.
His father struck the floor again.
Crack.
Ripples.
Again.
Crack.
Ripples.
Again.
On the seventh attempt, Rei managed to keep the surface still.
Then Haruto threw the wooden knife at him.
Not at his face. Not fast enough to injure. Fast enough to trigger instinct.
Rei’s hand snapped up.
Cursed energy surged.
The bowl cracked down the center.
Water spilled across the stones.
The courtyard went silent.
Rei stared at the broken bowl.
Haruto looked at the water flowing between the stones.
“Dead”
Rei’s stomach tightened.
“It was only a bowl”
His father’s gaze lifted.
“That was not the lesson”
Rei lowered his head.
No.
Of course it was not.
The bowl had been a room. A hallway. A civilian. A classmate. A report. A mask. A life fragile enough that one uncontrolled reaction could break it even if the original threat had not.
Haruto crouched and picked up one half of the bowl.
“You have more cursed energy than your profile suggests”
Rei went very still.
The words were quiet.
Not a question.
Not an accusation.
The Masking Protocol pressed down around him like ice.
Haruto did not look at the System. He did not see the template. He did not know the name Yuta Okkotsu or the shape of the ocean under Rei’s soul.
He knew his son.
That was worse.
Rei forced himself to speak.
“I am trying to hide it”
Haruto’s fingers tightened around the broken ceramic.
The admission hung in the cold air between them.
Too much.
Not everything.
Enough.
“From whom?” Haruto asked
Everyone.
Gojo.
Kenjaku.
Tengen.
The higher-ups.
The clans.
The future.
You.
Me.
Rei stared at the wet stones.
“People who would want to know why”
Haruto closed his eyes for one breath.
When he opened them, something in his face had settled into a decision.
“Then we train as if discovery kills you”
Rei looked up.
His father placed the broken bowl aside.
“No more pretending your only problem is being too observant. If you leak, you are seen. If you surge, you are measured. If you panic, you become someone else’s question”
Rei swallowed.
“Yes”
Haruto stood.
“Again”
Rei looked at the broken bowl.
Haruto pointed toward the veranda.
“There are more bowls”
That was how the next stage of training began.
Bowls.
Cups.
Lacquer trays.
Paper strips balanced over water.
Candles placed beside fragile charms.
One week later, Haruto made him maintain a thread of cursed energy through a bowl of water while Sayuri asked him arithmetic questions. The week after that, while she asked about mission records. Then while servants crossed the courtyard unexpectedly. Then while Haruto threw pebbles near his feet. Then while a controlled fourth-grade residue sample sat sealed in a box behind him, whispering faintly against the back of his senses.
The lesson was simple.
The world would not wait for him to feel ready before startling him.
So he had to become difficult to startle.
Not fearless.
Fearless people died stupidly.
Difficult to startle.
There was a difference.
The System tracked it without praise.
[Low-output circulation discipline established]
Reserve bleed frequency reduced
Masking Protocol stability increased under controlled stress
Current Masking Protocol: 64%
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Sixty-four.
Rei should have been pleased.
Instead, he found himself staring at the percentage and wondering what kind of child measured survival in increments.
A jujutsu child, apparently.
The first time Haruto took Rei to an actual post-mission site, the sky was the color of old ash.
It was early spring, but the air still carried winter in its teeth. Rei wore a dark coat over his training clothes, a scarf Sayuri had wrapped twice around his neck despite his protests, and the small charm pouch at his side. Inside the pouch were three blank talismans, one old reminder charm from Sayuri, and a folded copy of the first page of Hase Ryohei’s report.
Haruto had given it to him before leaving.
“Why this one?” Rei asked
His father tied the outer cord of his own coat.
“Because we are going where he died”
Rei’s hands went cold.
Haruto saw.
Good.
If he had not seen, Rei might have hated him for it.
“Is the site safe?” Rei asked
“No site is safe. This one has been cleared”
That was not the same thing.
Rei knew better than to ask again.
They traveled by train first, then by car driven by a registry assistant who spoke only to confirm turns. Kyoto thinned around them. Traditional streets gave way to concrete, narrow roads, shuttered shops, convenience stores, apartment blocks with laundry hanging from balconies despite the cold. Civilians moved through the morning without seeing the residues clinging to corners.
A woman walked under a railway bridge while arguing into a phone.
A child in a yellow hat dragged his feet behind his mother.
A man smoked beside a vending machine, unaware that a smear of old fear clung to the wall two meters from his shoulder.
Rei watched through the window and felt the hidden reserve beneath his mask stir faintly at every trace.
Not enough to leak.
Enough to remind him.
Haruto noticed his focus.
“What do you see?”
“Too much residue for a normal street”
“Normal streets always have too much residue”
Rei looked at him.
His father’s face remained calm.
“People suffer in public more often than they admit”
That was not comforting.
The underpass waited at the edge of a pedestrian route beneath a raised road, half-blocked by temporary barriers and paper notices that told civilians there had been maintenance work. The notices were professionally boring. That meant jujutsu administration had written them.
No one questioned boring notices.
People questioned blood.
They did not question inconvenience.
Haruto signed in with the registry assistant stationed near the entrance. The assistant glanced at Rei only once, then looked back at the paperwork. Good. The report had done its job.
A support child accompanying his father for supervised record-copying duty.
Useful.
Understandable.
Not important.
The underpass smelled of damp concrete, rust, and old water.
The lights overhead flickered even though the maintenance notice claimed electrical work had been completed. Rei did not like that. He liked it less when Haruto paused at the entrance and opened a small paper packet.
Inside were two talismans.
One for Haruto.
One for Rei.
“Anchor charm” Haruto said “Place it under your inner sleeve”
Rei obeyed.
The charm stuck cold against his wrist.
“What does it anchor?”
“Your attention”
Rei looked into the underpass.
The far end seemed ordinary. Wet floor. Stained walls. A faded poster peeling near the corner. Someone had painted over graffiti badly enough that older lines still pressed beneath the fresh layer like bruises.
The residue was not ordinary.
Fear had soaked into the concrete.
Not one fear. Layers. Some civilian. Some curse-born. Some sorcerer. Hase’s final moments were not visible as a scene, but the traces remained in the way pressure gathered along the left wall, where his cursed energy had sharpened too quickly, then broken.
Rei’s throat tightened.
The hidden reserve stirred.
Masking Protocol compressed.
Haruto’s voice cut through the sensation.
“Breathe”
Rei did.
In.
Hold.
Out.
The anchor charm cooled further against his wrist.
Haruto watched him.
“If you cannot continue, say so”
“I can continue”
“That was not the instruction”
Rei looked at him.
His father’s expression was severe.
“If you cannot continue, say so”
Rei understood.
This was not about ability.
It was about obedience to limits.
“Yes”
Haruto nodded.
They entered the underpass.
The sound changed immediately.
Outside noise dulled behind them: cars, footsteps, distant bicycle bells. Inside, every drip of water became too distinct. The temporary lights hummed. Rei’s shoes clicked softly against concrete.
Haruto stopped three meters from the wall where Hase had died.
He did not point at first.
“Tell me the official sequence”
Rei unfolded the copied page from memory, not physically.
“Hase Ryohei entered from the east side at 18:42. Initial inspection found three low-grade curses formed around confinement fear and darkness residue. He neutralized the first near the entrance, the second beneath the central light fixture, and the third near the west stair. He began writing preliminary summary beside the north wall. Fourth curse emerged from within the concrete through residual accumulation and attacked from behind. Fatal injury occurred before assistant returned from external perimeter check”
Haruto listened.
“Good. Now tell me what the report does not know”
Rei looked at the wall.
He let Residual Threading open carefully.
Not fully.
Never fully.
The underpass unfolded in threads.
Some were old and useless. Civilian footsteps. Rainwater. Rats. Children daring each other to run through at night. A man sleeping here once, hungry and angry. A woman crying near the entrance months ago. Maintenance workers. Registry seals. Hase’s cursed energy: controlled, tired, practical. Three flashes where curses had been neutralized.
Then the left wall.
The residue there was wrong.
Not just a hidden curse emerging.
Pressure had been building inside the concrete before Hase arrived.
Longer than the report implied.
The fourth curse had not formed during the mission.
It had waited.
Rei’s fingers curled.
Haruto did not interrupt.
“The fourth was already here” Rei said
“How do you know?”
“The residue inside the wall is older than the exorcism traces. It was compressed. Not wandering”
“Continue”
Rei stepped closer.
The anchor charm pulsed once.
He stopped.
Not too close.
“Hase-san neutralized the visible curses. That changed the pressure. The fourth moved after the other three disappeared”
“Moved toward what?”
Rei’s eyes followed the thread.
Not Hase.
Not at first.
His gaze shifted to the floor near the center of the underpass.
There was a faint mark where a seal had been placed and removed.
“Toward the assistant?”
Haruto’s eyes narrowed.
Rei corrected himself.
“No. Toward the exit. Hase-san was between it and the exit”
Haruto remained silent.
The report had said attacked from behind.
True.
Incomplete.
The curse had been trying to flee, or reach the open path, or follow the external fear outside the tunnel. Hase had been writing near the wall because that was where the summary had begun. He had become an obstacle by doing his job in the wrong place at the wrong moment.
Not hunted.
Not targeted.
Killed anyway.
Somehow that felt worse.
Rei’s stomach twisted.
The reserve beneath his mask shifted.
A drop of water fell from the ceiling.
Plink.
His cursed energy stirred too sharply.
Haruto’s hand landed on his shoulder.
Not hard.
Enough.
“Surface”
Rei breathed.
In.
Hold.
Out.
Masking Protocol flattened the surge.
The underpass returned to damp concrete and residue instead of memory swallowing stone.
Haruto did not remove his hand.
“What did you almost do?”
Rei swallowed.
“Leak”
“Why?”
“I was angry”
“At?”
The curse.
The report.
The world.
The fact that Hase had died because a thing wanted out and a man was standing there with a brush in his hand.
“At how stupid it was” Rei said
Haruto’s grip tightened for one second.
Then released.
“Most deaths are”
The sentence entered Rei like cold water.
Haruto turned toward the wall.
“Record correction”
Rei blinked.
“What?”
His father handed him a small clipboard and a brush pen.
“Supplemental observation. Not official conclusion. Write what you can support”
Rei stared at the blank paper.
The dead deserve accuracy.
His hand steadied.
He wrote.
Supplemental observation by Rei Mikage under supervision of Haruto Mikage.
Residual compression within north wall appears older than the visible exorcism traces.
Fourth curse likely preexisted initial neutralization sequence.
Movement pattern suggests attempted displacement toward exit path rather than direct predatory targeting of Hase Ryohei.
Recommendation: future underpass inspections should test interior wall compression before visible curse neutralization is assumed complete.
He stopped.
The words looked too clean again.
Still no grief.
But better.
Hase’s death would remain recorded.
Now it would also become useful.
Rei hated that the distinction mattered.
Haruto read over his shoulder.
“Good”
Rei looked at the wall.
“Will it change anything?”
“Perhaps”
“That means probably not”
“That means perhaps”
Rei turned to him.
Haruto’s face was unreadable.
“Records do not save the dead. They may save someone who reads them later”
Rei looked at the supplemental observation.
Someone later.
That was how jujutsu endured, then.
Not by honoring sacrifice properly.
By turning it into procedure.
The thought was ugly.
The thought was necessary.
The anchor charm warmed against his wrist.
At the far end of the underpass, a civilian child’s laughter drifted faintly from the street above.
Rei closed his eyes.
Hase Ryohei.
He repeated the name silently.
Then opened them.
A thin black residue line near the west stair pulsed once.
Rei froze.
Haruto saw his face change.
“What?”
Rei pointed.
“There”
His father turned.
The line pulsed again.
Not old.
Not from Hase.
Not from the cleared curse.
Something had been left behind beneath the fresh maintenance seal near the stair, a knot of residue so small it could have been dismissed as staining if it had not just moved.
Haruto drew a talisman from his sleeve.
“Stay behind me”
Rei obeyed.
Almost.
He stayed behind, but he looked.
The knot trembled.
A mouth opened in the wall no wider than a coin.
A whisper came out.
Not words.
Not exactly.
The emotional shape was clearer than sound.
Trapped.
Trapped.
Trapped.
A remnant.
Not a full curse.
Not yet.
A seed.
Haruto placed the talisman against the wall.
The whisper sharpened.
The hidden reserve inside Rei responded.
Too much.
Not with fear.
With depth.
The remnant was small. Pitiful. Almost nothing. A stain with a mouth. Rei’s expanded reserve could crush it if he poured even a fraction of his actual potential through his hand.
That was the danger.
The sense of ease.
The temptation to solve small things with hidden oceans.
Masking Protocol tightened.
[Warning]
High reserve response detected
External profile at risk if output exceeds registered support threshold
Rei stepped back.
Haruto’s talisman flared.
The remnant burned away with a weak hiss.
The wall became only stained concrete again.
Haruto lowered his hand slowly.
“Good”
Rei frowned.
“I did nothing”
“You stayed behind me”
The words struck harder than praise.
Rei wanted to argue.
The System wanted efficiency. The future demanded preparation. His memory was full of disasters caused by people failing to act in time. He had power growing under his skin now, more every week, and a weak remnant in a wall should have been nothing.
He had done nothing.
And his father called it good.
Haruto turned to him.
“Do you know why?”
Rei looked at the wall.
“Because using too much would expose me”
“That is one reason”
“There are more?”
“Yes”
Haruto slipped the spent talisman into a disposal pouch.
“A sorcerer who acts every time he can becomes predictable. A child who solves every problem near him becomes convenient. A hidden reserve used for a remnant teaches your body to reach for excess when restraint would do”
Rei lowered his eyes.
“Power has habits”
“Yes”
That was another lesson.
Not all restraint was fear.
Some restraint was maintenance.
They completed the site review in silence.
At the exit, Rei turned back once.
The underpass looked smaller from outside.
Less oppressive.
More ordinary.
That felt dishonest, but perhaps ordinary places were allowed to keep their disguises too.
The registry assistant accepted Haruto’s supplemental observation with bored politeness until he saw Rei’s name on it.
Then his expression shifted.
Only slightly.
Haruto noticed.
Rei noticed Haruto noticing.
The assistant placed the paper into a folder marked for review.
“Your son wrote this?”
“Under supervision” Haruto said
The assistant looked at Rei.
“Thorough for his age”
Rei bowed.
“My father corrected me”
True.
Useful.
Safe.
The assistant smiled in the vague way adults smiled at children whose usefulness they had not yet priced.
“A promising field recorder, then”
Rei lowered his gaze.
“That is what I want to become”
It was not entirely a lie.
That was why it worked.
On the ride home, Haruto seemed satisfied and troubled.
Rei had learned that those two states often traveled together in parents.
The car moved through late afternoon traffic, rainwater shining along the road in long gray ribbons. Rei held the folded copy of his supplemental observation in his lap. His wrist still carried the anchor charm’s faint warmth. His hidden reserve sat deep and quiet, like something pretending to sleep.
Haruto spoke first.
“You did well today”
Rei looked at him.
“Except for almost leaking”
“You noticed before it became visible”
“The wall remnant reacted”
“To the site. Not necessarily to you”
That was kind.
Too kind.
Rei looked down.
“It felt easy”
Haruto waited.
“To destroy it” Rei said “It felt like I could”
His father’s expression did not change, but the air in the car did.
“And did that frighten you?”
“Yes”
“Good”
Rei almost smiled.
His parents said that often when he admitted fear.
Good.
As if fear were a tool they were relieved to find in his hand.
Haruto looked out the window.
“Ease is dangerous. Especially when earned too early”
Rei thought of Gojo again.
Not as the strongest.
As a child for whom many things would become easy before anyone around him could teach him what ease might cost.
“Does Gojo feel that?” Rei asked
Haruto’s gaze returned to him.
“What?”
“That things are easy”
A long pause.
“I do not know”
“But you think he does”
“I think a child with the Six Eyes and Limitless will learn many wrong lessons before life has the strength to correct him”
Rei looked at the rain-streaked glass.
Then quietly said “What if life never has enough strength?”
Haruto did not answer.
There were questions even fathers could not safely touch.
That night, Sayuri read Rei’s supplemental observation.
She took longer than Haruto had.
Not because she needed longer to understand. Because she was reading the spaces around the words.
When she finished, she placed the paper down.
“You wrote as if someone might live because of it”
Rei blinked.
“I thought that was the point”
“It is one point”
“What is the other?”
Sayuri looked at him.
“To know what kind of person you become when no one lives because of it”
The room was warm.
The words were not.
Rei looked at the paper.
Hase Ryohei’s death had already happened. No correction would change that. No improved procedure could reach backward through time and move him one step away from the wall. No record could make the underpass less stupid, less damp, less final.
The dead deserve accuracy.
But accuracy did not resurrect.
“I do not know” Rei said
Sayuri nodded.
“Then keep the record”
Rei looked up.
She folded the copy and returned it to him.
“Not all records are for the registry”
He understood.
Private records.
Names.
Corrections.
Mistakes.
The cost of usefulness.
That night, Rei began a notebook.
Not a System archive.
Not an official field record.
His.
The cover was plain dark cloth. The first page had no title. He considered writing People I Could Not Save and immediately hated himself for the drama of it. He considered Future Changes and rejected it as dangerous. He considered leaving it blank.
In the end, he wrote one line.
Names the record should not flatten.
Then the first name.
Hase Ryohei.
He stared at the page for a long time.
Then, beneath it, he wrote:
Died in underpass after neutralizing visible curses. Fourth curse likely preexisted inside wall. Death was not heroic in shape, but his report allowed correction. Remember that procedure can be grief if written honestly.
The sentence was clumsy.
Too adult in some places.
Too childish in others.
True enough.
He closed the notebook and hid it beneath a loose floorboard Haruto definitely knew about and Sayuri had probably chosen not to mention.
Then he opened the System.
[Cursed Archive Roulette]
Field Record Event completed
Post-mission site exposure survived
Supplemental observation submitted
Reserve bleed suppressed under remnant stimulus
Restraint maintained despite high-output temptation
Cursed Energy Quantity:
- Yuta Okkotsu — Future-Imprint
Developmental integration: stable
Masking Protocol: 67%
Rei exhaled.
Sixty-seven.
Another message appeared.
[Condition progress]
Cursed Energy Efficiency: 31%
Barrier Technique: 29%
Combat Skill Template: 14%
Reverse Cursed Technique: 8%
Efficiency had jumped.
Why?
Restraint, perhaps.
Low-output circulation.
Not destroying the wall remnant with too much energy.
The System rewarded not only action but correct non-action.
Rei did not know whether to feel proud or manipulated.
Then the interface shifted.
[Personal Record detected]
Non-System memory archive established
Effect:
- identity stabilization improved
- future-imprint dissonance reduced
- emotional overflow risk slightly reduced
Soul Perception / Soul Resistance category progress: 5%
Rei went completely still.
Soul.
The word sat there quietly, more dangerous than Yuta’s ocean.
His reincarnation had always been the unanswered question beneath every other question. The System had called him a second life anchor. It had identified him as a juvenile vessel. It had given him Yuji’s body and Yuta’s reserve, both future-imprints tied to souls with terrible destinies. But it had not explained what he was.
A soul from another world inside a child born here.
A son who was and was not his parents’ son.
A living contradiction wearing a family name.
Soul Perception / Soul Resistance: 5%.
He closed the System immediately.
Not because he did not want answers.
Because he did.
Too much.
Some categories should not be opened in the dark after visiting the place where a dead man had become a line in a report.
Rei lay back and placed one hand over his chest.
The ocean was quiet.
The mask held.
The notebook rested beneath the floor.
For the first time in days, sleep almost came easily.
Then the room changed.
Not visibly.
The protective charm near the door trembled once.
Rei’s eyes opened.
He did not move.
The air tasted faintly wrong.
Not like a curse.
Not like residue.
Like attention.
A thread slid across the outer edge of the Mikage estate barrier, thin as hair and gone before the household seals could fully react. Haruto would notice by morning. Sayuri might already be awake. The servants would know nothing.
Rei kept his breathing even.
The System did not open.
That frightened him more.
Whatever had brushed the estate was either too subtle for warning or not hostile enough to trigger one.
For a moment, Rei thought of the Kamo guests.
Then Daigo’s Zenin branch.
Then the registry assistant reading his supplemental observation.
Then every file he had touched.
Then, finally, a man with stitches across his forehead smiling through someone else’s face.
His cursed energy stirred.
Masking Protocol pressed down.
Do not leak.
Do not shine.
Do not become a question.
The attention passed.
The barrier settled.
The room became ordinary again.
Rei remained awake until dawn.
When Haruto came to wake him for training, his father stopped at the doorway.
He saw Rei sitting upright.
He saw the charm near the door.
He saw the lack of sleep.
Neither spoke for a moment.
Then Haruto said “You felt it”
Rei nodded.
“What was it?”
Haruto’s face was calm in a way that meant the answer mattered.
“I do not know”
This time, ignorance was not a mask.
It was the truth.
Haruto looked toward the corridor, toward the estate’s outer barrier, toward the world beyond their walls.
Then he said “Good. We start there”
Rei stood.
His body was tired.
His cursed energy was steady.
The ocean waited below.
The mask waited above.
And somewhere outside the Mikage estate, someone or something had brushed against his carefully built life and moved on without leaving a name.
The world was beginning to remember that Gojo was not the only child worth watching.
Rei Mikage understood, with cold clarity, that the underpass had not been his first step into the field.
It had been his first footprint.
And footprints could be followed.