It wasn’t even ten in the morning when I went to the dining room for breakfast. I had barely taken a few bites of bread when Mr. Toshihiro sat across from me and began studying me with unsettling attention.

  My eyes were heavy. My back stiff. My legs still sore.

  “Did you sleep well, Maki?” he asked in that calm tone he used whenever he wanted to tease without sounding like he was teasing.

  “Perfectly,” I lied.

  “Your face disagrees.”

  Mr. Toshihiro stood before I could argue.

  “Come with me.”

  I sighed, brushed the crumbs from my hands, and followed.

  He was walking faster than usual. His steps were shorter, restrained. There was tension in the line of his shoulders, a weight in the silence between us.

  “Put this on,” he said, handing me a dark gray scarf.

  “Is it magical winter season or something?”

  “So you won’t be recognized.”

  Won’t be recognized.

  By who?

  I wrapped the scarf around my neck and lower face, leaving only my eyes visible. The scent of the bazaar still clung to my clothes—spices, parchment, aged wood. But from Mr. Toshihiro I caught something different. Strong black tea. Medicinal herbs. And the faint trace of burnt wood.

  “We won’t be training here today,” he added, adjusting the smooth, featureless mask he was wearing.

  “Where are we going, Mr. Toshihiro?”

  “To places where magic was misused.”

  A chill ran down my spine.

  The moment we stepped out of Ziwanda, he changed. No longer imposing or otherworldly—now he looked like an ordinary office worker of average height, forgettable at a glance. When he noticed my surprise, he commented casually:

  “Not all masks are ornamental.”

  The sun hovered near midday. The city vibrated with that strange in-between energy—restaurants filling up, children dragging oversized backpacks, motorcycles roaring like urban dragons.

  I walked half a step behind him.

  “Is there… a lot of that kind of magic, Mr. Toshihiro?”

  “More than there should be.”

  We turned down streets I rarely visited. The shine of downtown faded—fewer glass storefronts, more peeling paint. Graffiti outnumbered advertisements. The noise didn’t vanish; it simply lowered, as if someone had turned down the world’s volume.

  At some point, I realized I no longer knew exactly where we were.

  “Memorize this place,” Mr. Toshihiro said, subtly indicating the corner. “Never come here alone.”

  I forced myself to take it in—the flickering copy shop sign, the rusted lamppost, the faded mural of a woman with blue wings.

  And the alley.

  Narrow. Wedged between two old buildings. From the outside, it looked ordinary—trash bins at the back, damp stains on the walls, cracked pavement.

  But the air…

  The air felt heavy.

  Mr. Toshihiro stopped at the entrance.

  “This is one of the breach points.”

  “Breach points, Mr. Toshihiro?”

  “Places where the fabric between your world and others has thinned. Where magic was used without restraint. Without respect. Without understanding the cost. Scars like that don’t close on their own.”

  “And we’re here to… put a bandage on it?”

  He didn’t smile.

  “Today you will learn to see what most people prefer to pretend doesn’t exist. And you will help me contain it.”

  He turned toward me fully for the first time since we left.

  “If I tell you to close your eyes, you close them. If I tell you to step back, you step back. No arguments.”

  Something in his tone erased any impulse to protest.

  “Understood, Mr. Toshihiro.”

  We stepped inside.

  The city noise died in a single pace. Engines. Voices. Footsteps. Gone. The air turned cold and still, like a forgotten basement.

  Even the light felt wrong. The sun still shone above, but its rays seemed to filter through dirty water before touching the ground.

  “Breathe normally,” Mr. Toshihiro said. “Don’t let the place deceive you.”

  He moved forward slowly, hands slightly away from his sides. I followed.

  “What happened here, Mr. Toshihiro?”

  He took a moment before answering.

  “Someone brought magic to a place that wasn’t ready to bear it. And they spilled it over people who didn’t understand what was happening.”

  We reached the end of the alley. A brick wall covered in layered graffiti.

  Mr. Toshihiro knelt and placed his palm against the ground.

  “A door was opened here. Not one of ours. One that should never have existed.”

  I crouched beside him. The concrete wasn’t just cold—it felt alive. A deep static tingled beneath my skin.

  “Is it closed?”

  “Partially. What remains is a residue.”

  He slid his fingers along the pavement, murmuring words I didn’t recognize. Thin blue filaments of light emerged under his touch, tracing lines across the ground and up the walls, revealing a circle long hidden beneath dirt and neglect.

  And then the wall changed.

  Not the bricks.

  The shadow.

  Part of it peeled away—thick, like condensed smoke—and began to take shape.

  It had no clear features. A mass of black mist, shifting and reforming. Where a face should have been, there was a deeper void.

  And yet I knew it was looking at us.

  “Don’t move,” Mr. Toshihiro whispered.

  The thing spoke.

  “Why…?”

  Its voice was layered. Overlapping. Broken fragments of sound.

  “Why… did you… leave us…?”

  My stomach dropped.

  It wasn’t speaking to me.

  The shadow tilted, as if recognizing him.

  “Too late…” it murmured. “It’s… too late…”

  “They are not here,” Mr. Toshihiro said quietly. “You are only remnants.”

  “Remnants of… people?” I asked.

  “Remnants of fear. Of pain. Of guilt. The magic used here seeped into the earth… into the stone… into bodies. Over time, it gathers. And it wants to repeat itself.”

  The entity drifted closer. The air grew heavier.

  “Toshihiro…” it whispered—clearer now.

  His name.

  “You said… you would protect us…”

  Something shifted in him.

  I saw it.

  A nearly imperceptible tremor in the angle of his shoulders. His fingers curling slightly.

  “Enough,” he said.

  The shadow made a sound that was both laughter and sobbing.

  “You left us…”

  “Maki,” he said without looking at me. “Close your eyes. Now.”

  The vibration in the air was unbearable.

  I obeyed.

  The incantation that followed was nothing like the ones he had taught me. It was low. Contained. No brilliance, no spectacle. It sounded like a prayer—laced with fury and buried guilt.

  Pressure built in my chest.

  Then came the scream.

  A single explosion made of a hundred voices tearing at once.

  Something ripped.

  And then—

  Silence.

  “You may open them.”

  The alley looked the same. Dirty. Old. But clean of that suffocating weight. Sunlight fell normally now. The blue circle faded slowly into nothing.

  Mr. Toshihiro stood upright.

  His hands were still trembling.

  “What was that?”

  “A seal. It should not break again.”

  “What it said… were they really…?”

  “Not in the way you’re thinking.”

  I wanted to press further.

  I didn’t.

  “What would have happened if we hadn’t come?”

  “People would have begun feeling compelled to pass through this alley. Some would linger longer than they should. Some would hear voices. Some would never leave.”

  I swallowed.

  “Unused magic stagnates,” he continued. “Misused magic rots. And when it rots, it spreads.”

  I looked at the walls differently now.

  “Was it Akuma who—?”

  “Do not speak that name.”

  I fell silent.

  We waited until the last blue sparks faded.

  “And me?” I asked at last. “Because I mostly just stood there being a scarf rack.”

  His illusory face hinted at a smile.

  “You kept your eyes open. And you did not run.”

  He turned to me.

  “I needed you to understand that not everything that happens in the Nebenbei stays there. Your world carries our scars.”

  Our.

  We stepped out of the alley.

  The noise of the street returned at once—horns, laughter, a dog barking. The sun felt too bright.

  Everything looked the same.

  For me, it wasn’t.

  We walked in silence.

  “If magic can do that…” I finally said. “If a mistake can leave something like this behind… why keep teaching it?”

  He glanced at me.

  “Because it can also do the opposite. Heal what others have broken. Protect. Change the course of stories that seemed condemned.”

  He paused.

  “And because you are here. And I will not allow someone like you to grow up in ignorance.”

  I had no answer.

  That day, a crack opened in the image I had of Mr. Toshihiro. And through that crack came, in equal measure, respect, admiration… and the unsettling realization that he might be far more human than he ever allowed himself to appear.