Megumi exhales quietly through his nose, adjusting the tray in his hand as he brushes past your side, his voice low and steady beneath the hum of elegant conversation and orchestral music.

“Southwest hallway. The cursed energy’s leaking from behind one of the mirrors.”

You don’t look at him, fingers still gliding over the strings of the instrument in your lap, face composed under the blank expression you wear. But he knows you’ve heard him. Knows you caught it too—the shift in the air, subtle but familiar, like something crawling beneath the surface of polished floors and velvet curtains.

The dances carry on around you, laughter ringing like crystal, glasses clinking. But beneath it all is that quiet tension that only jujutsu sorcerers would notice. That kind of heaviness in the air that doesn’t belong to anyone living.

Megumi circles back around the edge of the ballroom, pretending to offer drinks to a pair of guests too busy with gossip to care. His eyes flick to you again. You catch his reflection in the piano’s glossy surface.

“Ten minutes,” he murmurs, almost inaudible. “Meet me by the second balcony. If you feel it shift again—signal.”

Your fingers slow just slightly on the last note, almost imperceptibly. That’s the answer he needs.

This is what you do best—working in tandem, in silence, beneath masks of elegance. A game of patience. A game sometimes feeling like chess—hunting the curse user helplessly inside the huge building, their strategy seemingly better than yours.