The lights in the corridor seemed to dim for an instant, then brighten again.
Yuki Tsukumo's voice spread through the empty corridor, unhurried, mapping out paths few people had ever taken.
"Unlike non-sorcerers, sorcerers' cursed energy doesn't produce cursed spirits. Of course, that excludes cases where sorcerers become cursed spirits after death. Sorcerers leak less cursed energy, and they have more control over it. Most of it gets consumed by their cursed techniques. What little escapes isn't enough to form a cursed spirit."
Suguru Geto interrupted her there. Not deliberately. The words simply poured into his ears, circled through his mind, then collided with something that had been stuck in his throat all along, knocking loose a sentence even he hadn't expected.
"Then wouldn't killing all the non-sorcerers solve it?"
His voice was soft as he finished, so soft he might have been talking to himself. His gaze rested on the floor. The corridor lights cast his shadow at his feet, a small huddled shape, like an animal curled in on itself. He didn't look at Yuki Tsukumo, or at her expression after hearing those words.
Yuki Tsukumo fell silent. The silence wasn't long, but it was long enough for the corridor lights to steady again, long enough for the perpetually flickering light in the distance to flicker one last time, long enough for one wave of cicada cries outside the window to give way to the next.
"Geto." Her voice dropped half a note. It wasn't solemnity, but something closer to acknowledgment. "That is indeed one solution."
She paused, as though checking that she hadn't misspoken.
"The simplest solution."
The simplest solution. As those words landed, applause sounded in Suguru Geto's ears again. It didn't come from the corridor. It rose out of his memories. The members of the