June 2018, Sugisawa Third High School, Sendai City, Miyagi Prefecture.
"A Stevenson Screen?"
Standing beside a somewhat neglected strip of greenery at the edge of the sports field, Megumi Fushiguro looked at the white wooden box with its peeling paint and spoke into the phone pressed to his ear, his voice full of astonishment and exasperation.
He frowned slightly, incomprehension written across his usually expressionless face, and could not help asking another question.
"They just casually stored something as incredibly dangerous as a Special Grade Cursed Object here? Isn't that way too strange?"
On the other end, Li Shunchen's voice remained as composed and unruffled as ever as he methodically explained the somewhat absurd yet realistic logic behind it.
"Stevenson Screens are usually set up in secluded corners of school sports fields or rarely visited strips of greenery. Aside from students on duty or science teachers occasionally recording weather data, ordinary students would never randomly open them. Geographically speaking, these fixed outdoor facilities also make retrieval and monitoring relatively convenient for Assistant Supervisors. Another point is that Jujutsu High established this storage policy a long time ago, so generally, the higher-ups won't spend any extra effort relocating them. Most of the time, they simply send someone to maintain the seals on the wooden case at regular intervals."
As Megumi Fushiguro listened to this explanation, he still felt at a loss for words over such a perfunctory, bureaucratic approach, but naturally, he would not deny the practical validity of Li Shunchen's reasons.
He sighed and reached out to open the Stevenson Screen's unlocked louvered door.
Yet amid a faint stirring of dust and the creak of old wooden hinges, what greeted Megumi Fushiguro was nothing but a few tattered cobwebs in the corners.
"...But there's nothing in here."
Megumi Fushiguro spoke