I passed people I didn't know and would never remember. A woman on her phone. A man arguing with a vending machine. A kid dragging a stick along a fence, making sparks and sound.
I felt something.
Not clearly nor sharply. Just faint impressions.
The woman was anxious. Not panicking—just that low, simmering anxiety that lived behind her eyes like a browser tab she never closed. The man was irritated, but underneath that was embarrassment. The kid was bored, violently so.
I blinked and pedaled faster.
"Okay," I muttered to myself. "time to head back."
I rode past a park. Sat on a bench for a while. Watched pigeons fight over nothing. Noon crept in quietly, like it didn't want to startle me.
Nothing happened.
Eventually, I circled back home.
My dad was already in the driveway when I got there, half his body swallowed by the hood of our car.
"Ah," Kouki said, voice echoing from the engine bay. "Perfect timing. Hand me the… thing."
I squinted. "The thing?"
"The shiny thing."
"That narrows it down to literally everything."
He popped back up, grease on his cheek, grinning like this was the funniest situation imaginable.
"You're never gonna survive adulthood," he said.
"I'm doing pretty well with adolescence so far."
"Existing doesn't count."
He handed me a wrench. "You like cars yet?"
"No."
"Still?"
"Still."
He sighed dramatically. "Tragic. Absolutely tragic."
We worked in silence for a bit. Well—his version of silence, which involved humming and making engine noises that no engine had ever made.
"You know," he said eventually, "cars aren't that complicated."
I raised an eyebrow. "You say that like they don't break over the slightest touch."
"Only if you treat them wrong," he said. "Everything's got parts. Fuel. Engine. Movement. You mess one up, the whole thing stalls."
He tapped the engine lightly. "Fuel's useless without a good engine. And the best engine in the world won't run on bad fuel."
I froze.
Arata's words slid into my memory.
"…Huh," I muttered.
Dad glanced at me. "Something click?"
"Maybe," I said. "So fuel's like… potential?"
"Exactly," he said, pleased. "And control? That's experience. You don't rev a cold engine unless you want it dead."
I swallowed.
Spiritons weren't power. They were what made power possible. And ghosts—gravebinding—onmyōji arts—those were just machines.
I tightened my grip on the wrench.
"So," Dad continued, oblivious, "you don't have to like cars. Just respect how they work."
I nodded slowly. "Yeah. I think I get it."
He smiled. "Good. Now don't drop that."
I dropped it.
By the time we finished, my hands were dirty and my head felt… clearer. Like grounding myself in something mechanical had pushed the ghost noise back a little.
I sat on the porch, stretched my legs, and breathed.
Normal things.
I almost forgot—
A flicker.
Not fear. Not emotion.
Just a gap.
Something had gone quiet somewhere it shouldn't have.
I stared out at the street, heart thumping once, hard.
Somewhere, far from my quiet street, something was being born.