Weird revision walk behaviour

There is this topic 'jt/partial-clone-proto-v2' currently cooking in 'next' and pointing to ba95710a3b ({fetch,upload}-pack: support filter in protocol v2, 2018-05-03). This topic is built on top of the merge commit ea44c0a594 (Merge branch 'bw/protocol-v2' into jt/partial-clone-proto-v2, 2018-05-02), which gives me the creeps, because it shows up in some pathspec-limited revision walks where in my opinion it should not:

  $ git log --oneline master..ba95710a3b -- ci/
  ea44c0a594 Merge branch 'bw/protocol-v2' into jt/partial-clone-proto-v2

But as far as I can tell, there are no changes in the 'ci/' directory on any of the merge's parents:

  $ git log --oneline master..ea44c0a594^1 -- ci/
  # Nothing.
  $ git log --oneline master..ea44c0a594^2 -- ci/
  # Nothing!

And to add to my confusion:

  $ git log -1 --oneline master@{1.week.ago}
  ccdcbd54c4 The fifth batch for 2.18
  $ git log --oneline master@{1.week.ago}..ea44c0a594 -- ci/
  ea44c0a594 Merge branch 'bw/protocol-v2' into jt/partial-clone-proto-v2
  $ git log -1 --oneline master@{3.week.ago}
  1f1cddd558 The fourth batch for 2.18
  $ git log --oneline master@{3.week.ago}..ea44c0a594 -- ci/
  # Nothing, as it is supposed to be, IMHO.

This is not specific to the 'ci/' directory, it seems that any untouched directory does the trick:

  $ git log --oneline master..ea44c0a594 -- contrib/coccinelle/ t/lib-httpd/
  ea44c0a594 Merge branch 'bw/protocol-v2' into jt/partial-clone-proto-v2
  $ git log --oneline master..ea44c0a594^1 -- contrib/coccinelle/ t/lib-httpd/
  # Nothing.
  $ git log --oneline master..ea44c0a594^2 -- contrib/coccinelle/ t/lib-httpd/
  # Nothing.
  $ git log --oneline master@{3.week.ago}..ea44c0a594 --
contrib/coccinelle/ t/lib-httpd/
  # Nothing, but this is what I would expect.

I get the same behavior with Git built from current master and from past releases as well (tried it as far back as v2.0.0).

So... what's going on here? :) A bug? Or am I missing something? Some history simplification corner case that I'm unaware of?