Chapter 3

  I suspected heavily that cursed energy had a mental effect on curse experts.

  I sat in seiza in the very back row of a classroom filled with children. All of them wore what looked like karate gi, while I was the only one wearing a kimono, aside from the instructor, a surly-looking man in his mid-forties.

  All of us were being given a primer on cursed energy, also known as ‘negative energy’. Emotional energy that was negative in nature. The weight of humanity’s negativity gave rise to cursed spirits—monsters that just wanted to kill people. As curse experts, we were expected to harness our negativity, rather than letting it seep out and clump up to form these curses, which in effect made us innocent of the cursed spirit epidemic plaguing the nation.

  Rather, we were far more likely to just become curses, ourselves.

  I recalled how much glee I had taken in tormenting Mezuko. How much dislike and vitriol that I bore for the clan, and the wider world. All of it was… rather overwhelming.

  Until I had been otherwise convinced that this wasn’t the case, I had to treat this situation like I was being mastered, and act accordingly.

  Our clan, the Hibana, were unique in the world of curses, because apparently it wasn’t normal for an inherited technique to be this common. All the best clans had extremely uncommon inherited techniques, many of which didn’t regularly manifest even generationally. Our clan’s descendants inherited the Juchū as a matter of course in comparison. Half was the number.

  The half that didn’t make the cut… I suspected that somewhere in this traditionally Japanese compound, there was a child-sized wood chipper or something.

  Oh, yes. That almost slipped my mind: but these people were fucking evil. Every single one of them.

  It had gotten to the point that I suspected that my best bet in this new life would be to find this Jujutsu Society that these lunatics kept ranting about, and tentatively join them.

  I tuned out the instructor once he started retreading information that I was already aware of—like how Juchū battles worked—and instead focused on something just deeper than where to go.

  Why go?

  To be a hero again? Because clearly, that was what this was: fighting monsters, saving people, heroism.

  I had a truly unaccountable number of options before me that didn’t include once again risking my life in order to save people, or appealing to the masses.

  “—non-curse experts and non-jujutsu sorcerers cannot see curses. In fact, they are not even aware of this world of ours.”

  Huh?!

  I perked up at his words, almost in shock.

  They… didn’t know? If they didn’t know, then…

  If all of this was going on in the shadows, where was the accountability? Who was even to say that the Jujutsu Sorcerers were the good guys if all of them were operating under the veil of secrecy? It all reminded me far too much of how Cauldron operated.

  “This is because it is better for the populace to be ignorant of curses. Otherwise, their fear will end up generating even more curses, which would negatively affect our profits. Now, profit means—“

  That was our clan’s justification, but I would bet my bottom dollar that the ‘good guys’ saw this as deceiving the masses for the ‘greater good’.

  As… correct as that may be in this particular situation, the circumstance was rife for exploitation.

  And what was to be done about that, anyhow?

  I frowned in thought. I was thinking too long-term, wasting my time when I should be considering my immediate future: what I was supposed to be doing now in the interest of freeing myself.

  Step one, learn curse use.

  I needed to be able to defend myself at a moment’s notice, especially if that bitch ever tried something while I was asleep. Just the thought of her catching me unawares sent shivers down my spine.

  I suppressed my desire to kill her. That wasn’t me. It was the cursed energy turning me violent and bitter.

  I was not a killer.

  “Now, children,” the instructor announced. “Close your eyes and try to focus on your spirit.”

  The spirit, the vessel for our cursed energy. Most of it was inside a ball in my center of gravity, and it extended thinly across my body.

  “Many of you are not controlling your cursed energy efficiently. It should remain inside your body, trapped in an aura. If it escapes, it is considered wasted energy. If it escapes continuously, you will have an impractically low amount of cursed energy to use on your techniques.”

  I furrowed my eyebrows. Was I… doing something wrong?

  From the moment I had first sensed the Juchū manifest within my spirit, and my cursed energy welling up and spilling out from me, I had simply willed it to stay close to me instead.

  I had intuited that I needed the cursed energy inside, so I had done exactly that.

  Was there something else I was supposed to do besides that?

  “Hmmm… I’m glad that you at least know this much, Teira-chan,” the instructor said slowly. “It is good that you’re not slowing down our classes overmuch. You should know that we are only retreading this ground for your benefit.”

  That was convenient. “You’re doing a good job,” I said. “Please continue.”

  He growled at me. “Come here.”

  Huh?

  I stood up and walked up to him between the students. Was I… meant to present my hands to him—

  His hand flew. It struck me right on my face.

  I fell and rolled away, utterly dumbstruck.

  Once my roll came to a stop, I inspected my teeth one after the other.

  No loose teeth.

  My lip felt numb.

  The left side of my face was throbbing with my heartbeat.

  “Stand up. Come here.”

  He won’t kill me.

  It’ll be a waste of my Juchū.

  I walked up to him slowly, meeting his eyes.

  He slapped me on the other cheek, sending me sprawling once again.

  The Reverse Cursed Technique was a legendary power, said to be able to heal any wound. I wished that I had it now more than ever before.

  “Go back now,” the instructor said.

  I did, returning to my seat and kneeling down.

  “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down, young Teira,” he said. “That, and mouthy children. If you ever disrespect me again, I will ball my fist. Do you understand?”

  I averted my eyes from him and simply nodded.

  That was stupid of me.

  I shouldn’t have been so openly combative. I prided myself on being able to keep a level head and dealing with monsters. Why had that changed all of a sudden?

  Perhaps the six years spent as a defenseless child had done it?

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  Maybe it was good to admit, at least only to myself, that I was at the edge of my rope? And that the cursed energy affecting my mind was probably not doing me any favors?

  Nothing a change in environment wouldn’t fix, of course. One day. Hopefully.

  I listened to the instructor and focused on my cursed energy, meditating as I did.

  The energy was corrosive, harsh, fluid, heavy. It was liquefied malice.

  It could enforce my body, turn me into a brute. But I wondered if it was actually ‘enhancing’ me, or just enhancing my ability to harm people. It seemed like that was the underpinning principle of cursed energy: negativity.

  Maybe that was silly? Maybe all my musings were entirely off-base, but… something about this interpretation spoke to me.

  I let my cursed energy leave my ‘spirit’ and go into my body instead. It was confusing until I began to think of my body as having layers occupying the same space in three dimensions. The body was in one layer—the physical layer of reality. The cursed energy was in another—the metaphysical layer. Or the spiritual layer.

  Perhaps this layer was only perceptible to people like us, and that was why we could see curses and not normal people? Could cursed spirits affect physical matter, then? Clearly, there seemed to be some sort of bleed-through between layers otherwise. Or maybe the cursed spirits were more ethereal in nature, causing issues to people just via their proximity, like sickness or bad luck.

  The cursed energy that went into my body made me feel… right.

  Just right.

  I felt protected finally, for the first time. Safe.

  So safe, in fact, that it almost felt intoxicating. No, this was intoxicating. It was power, after all. Power through negativity.

  Leveraging spite and malevolence.

  “Alright now, group up. Teira-chan, you will fight against Matsumoto-kun.” I tried to see past the swelling in my face, at the tallest kid in the entire classroom who stood up from his seiza and grinned at me, pounding his fist like a bully from a bad movie. He had to be almost five and a half feet tall. Was he twelve?

  That was far too young. I didn’t want to really hurt him after all.

  The kids made room for us, and I poured as much cursed energy into my body as it could hold.

  “Matsumoto-kun, teach this one the strength of curses. Try not to break any bones.”

  I raised my fists.

  He inched towards me in a stance that looked like… karate. Hands held flat and in odd positions.

  I inched towards him and—

  Just as I reached his relatively massive wingspan, he struck. Or at least tried to. I had seen it coming.

  I slid around his chopping arm, stepping into his guard, and hit his unprotected liver.

  He flew back a little before rolling hard on the ground, his body completely contracted as he favored the middle of his torso.

  Ah.

  Cursed energy truly was powerful.

  “Hmph,” my teacher snorted. “This sparring match goes to Teira. Back now.” He shooed me away like I was a minor irritation.

  I would… consider finding the best ways to irritate him within propriety. He had clear boundaries, and I would enjoy tap-dancing on them.

  Was it productive?

  Not really.

  But I needed this. It was the cursed energy fueling my spite, no doubt, but that didn’t make a difference to me. I had precious few ways to unwind, and this seemed oh-so-fun.

  And it might teach me more about Japanese culture.

  I walked up to the sidelines and watched as the instructor completely ignored Matsumoto, instead selecting two more students to fight amongst one another.

  These were far more evenly matched. Both five feet tall, both the same weight.

  Rather than focus on them, I tried to focus on their energy. Was it even possible? It should be. If we could see curses, then—

  I saw it now. Wispy auras of a color beyond human comprehension surrounded them. Spite. Negative energy.

  And… their auras seemed to move before they even attacked.

  One boy tried for a right cross, entirely telegraphed through the movements of his energy.

  His opponent still reacted too slow, sustaining a hit to his shoulder.

  His opponent, angered, was about to kick him on his calf.

  He did exactly that an entire second later.

  Was this… what we were supposed to do? Telegraph our movements? Had I made a mistake fighting Matsumoto by keeping my cursed energy spread out across my body?

  I considered asking the teacher, but that would be ‘nail sticking out’ behavior, and he had made his stance on that quite clear.

  I could ask my closeted child molester of a baby sitter—whom I was certain that the higher-ups had foisted on me as a punishment for screwing with their kid.

  And then I’d give the Prime Minister of Japan a lap dance right afterwards, before driving off in my gold-plated Ferrari to take a space shuttle to my Lunar habitat mansion.

  I supposed I’d simply have to suffer in ignorance silently.

  000

  I watched intently through my swollen face each fight, and found that my conclusion had been correct all along.

  “You can’t keep letting your cursed energy announce your movements,” the instructor, Hirotada-sensei, had berated a particularly slow learner, whose opponent kept dancing away from his movements. Every single child was bad at not telegraphing their energy, but the kid was somehow even worse. In my senses, it looked like an outline of him was dragging him into movements that he was intending on making entire seconds in advance.

  Clearly, he had a good head on his shoulders to be able to plot his steps so early on, but his cursed energy was betraying his every intention.

  Obviously, this tendency was something that Hirotada-sensei was trying to train out of us. I wondered how bad I was, though I couldn’t exactly shadow box or anything—nail and hammer.

  Eventually, class did finally end. Matsumoto had been taken to an infirmary at some point. “Now, in case any of you would like to Juchū battle, I will be here for another hour to supervise.”

  Finally!

  I had thirty-three now, having taken one late into the night after finding a bug spying on me. I would try to make it a constant habit to take those Juchū that had intruded into my personal space, even without a ritual battle. If anyone had a problem, they would have to admit that they were watching me in my room and—

  Wait.

  Could I put the normalization of such behavior past these people, even?

  What if I was in the wrong, in their eyes?

  No one had raised a complaint, so I was guessing that I was off the hook, but maybe I should consider leaving those bugs alone for the time being.

  “I want to challenge Teira!” One boy stepped up. “Two—“

  “I accept.”

  Two was quite little, though.

  He backed away in fright.

  “Two against one of yours!” he then quickly squealed. Huh?

  “Fine.”

  What, had he lost his nerve all of a sudden? Still, it would be interesting to see how I’d fare compared to him.

  I raised my hand and released a Juchū through my palm. He opened his mouth and let them crawl out of it. It was obvious that this was mere showmanship—the curse users didn’t actually need to have them come out of their mouths. It was just a gross and off-putting show to unnerve your opponent. That did fall flat in this circumstance, since everyone and their grandmother had seen this before.

  His bugs looked like scarab beetles, red in color. Juchū were interesting in that they could take different forms, as long as you ‘willed’ them to change in this way. The scarabs were good for fights, flies were nimble and agile, dragonflies were just very fast, and there were other forms besides.

  They all emphasized the three statistics of the cursed technique in different proportions: Sense Expansion, Control and Parasitization.

  Mine was a fly. Black, an uncommon color in the clan, and apparently a ‘bad omen’—but then again, what wasn’t?

  I liked the flies. They were all-rounders. Fast, nimble, and they did have attack power, only you had to be really precise about where to hit. The flies had mandibles that could decapitate and capture Juchū as long as you struck them in the seams of their carapace, between their bodies and heads.

  He glared at me. “Okay, let’s fight!”

  My Juchū flew towards his faster than he could react. I had its mandible open wide as it crashed into the beetle’s head, piercing through its eye, and then quickly crawling towards the neck seam before making quick, surgical cuts.

  Within just two seconds, I had captured his Juchū. His red scarab turned black and moved just in time to defend my fly from his second scarab. He bit it, holding it still while my fly went to work on his scarab.

  Snip, snip. Done.

  Thirty-five, now.

  “What?! She cheated!”

  I turned to the instructor. He looked red in the face.

  Was he really going to accuse me of cheating? How did one even cheat in this game?

  “Teira wins.”

  Thank you.

  I turned to the rest of the kids. “I can wager one against someone else’s ten,” I said.

  “No take-back!” Some idiot child shouted.

  000

  I had forty-five now.

  And I had some fun as well!

  Quick aerial maneuvers and confusing dog-fights were the name of the game when operating under such a stark difference in Juchū. And when one became two, things became dramatically easier. After all, I could multitask better than my opponent could. He split his swarm and let me gain two more by falling into the exact same trap that had allowed me to win his Juchū in the first place. Once I had four, I attacked directly, and won in seconds.

  I tried to goad someone into a one-on-twenty, but it turned out that not only had I ‘crippled’ the kid I had just challenged—no one in the room had twenty. Only the grown-ups had that many.

  I gasped. “Guys! I have an idea! Why don’t three of you take me on? And I’ll only use one Juchū!”

  “Teira,” Hirotada-sensei growled.

  “And if I lose, I’ll give each of the winners all forty-five of my Juchū,” I grinned innocently, past my swollen face. “Fifteen each!”

  “Me!”

  “Me!” A few of the boys began to scuffle. “I have twelve! Only the ones with the most Juchū should compete or she’ll just win!”

  “I have eleven!”

  “I have ten!”

  “I have ten, too!”

  “Okay, let’s play rock paper scissors for it! Best of three!”

  The loser of that quick game looked despondent, but he had no idea about the bullet he had dodged.

  Contending with three minds would be tricky. Especially if they were attacking thirty-one against one.

  I released my black fly. The three kids opposite to me opened their mouths.

  000

  I had spent exactly one single minute feeling a sense of tension. Then, I had captured one. Then another.

  With three to their twenty-nine, it was simpler than ever to beat them individually. I split my swarm into three, focusing on each of them, and played the same pattern that had let me beat the first guy.

  One became two, then four, then a direct attack.

  My longest bout yet. But I could see the finish-line—

  Hirotada-sensei struck me on the head. “Sloppy technique!” he shouted into my ear.

  His hits were kitten-soft, and they couldn’t shake my focus. I was already passively enforcing my body with cursed energy, having learned my lesson from the last time he had hurt me.

  The direct attack was going exactly—

  He punched me. I fell on the ground, on my hands and knees.

  —the direct attack had went exactly according to plan.

  He kicked me.

  I won.

  I returned the swarm into myself and stood up. Hirotada-sensei raised his fist. “Lower your cursed energy.”

  I didn’t say anything to that.

  But I wouldn’t obey that demand.

  “I said lower it!” he shouted.

  “She will do no such thing.”

  A man dressed in a black yukata patterned with white floral patterns and butterflies walked into the room. He had a top-knot and kept his arms inside his outer robe, which made him look like a samurai of old. He had shoulder-length hair and piercing eyes.

  “Iemon-sama! This child has crippled four of my students!”

  “They knew what they were getting into, accepting a challenge from her.”

  He then looked down at me, and gave me the ghost of a smile, but I could sense so much contempt in it.

  “Obviously, it seems that you are too big for this class,” Iemon said. “That’s all fine. I can take over from here on out.”

  He went on one knee and put a hand on my shoulder, pulling me closer. “And you will owe me your undivided loyalty, Teira. My niece. Or I will ensure that you have no allies in this clan. Understood?”

  “Understood,” I whispered.