Chapter 20

  “Even with all your skill in sorcery, you lost to a monkey like me.”

  A split second after saying that, he realized that the little girl was already dead.

  Toji could breathe.

  Finally.

  He had let his guard down near the end. He should have taken off her head, or ripped her heart out entirely instead of leaving her to just bleed out from her throat.

  In his defense, who in the world didn’t die from getting their throat opened?

  There were too many unknown factors. Like why the Split Soul Katana barely worked on her, even though he could easily make out her soul, or half a dozen other things that confounded him during the fight.

  It would take days to heal from his injuries. Days. And he might end up with a new set of scars to show for it.

  Scars given to him by an eight-year-old. Toji’s expression of relief twisted into a grimace.

  The vengeful cursed spirit tried to huddle up to the girl, using its tongue.

  Toji kicked it.

  It disappeared down the gorge.

  He spat.

  He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the result of this hard-fought battle. The hell will Shiu Kong think, seeing me like this?

  Twenty million hadn’t been nearly enough for this brat.

  She was a Special Grade, exactly like that Gojo kid. Only she was already a fair distance into realizing her potential. He should have been paid a hundred million. Or even a billion.

  The scariest part of all this? She really might not have bullshitted him about sneakily killing the Mori clan behind his back. If she’d done that, then there really hadn’t been a point to all this.

  He held his right hand up. A tiny heart. It hadn’t beat ever since he had ripped it out.

  There’s the point right there.

  Normally, the client would expect the head or entire body of their target, but Toji had… made a promise to the brat.

  And why the fuck do I care about any of that?

  He grabbed the girl by her throat and threw her on his shoulder.

  If he brought the whole body back to the Mori clan, they might think he was bullshitting them. Or they might think him weak.

  There really was no winning.

  The run towards the Hibana compound was brief. There weren’t any more Juchū in the air. They hadn’t been cut loose, they had just disappeared—into whatever hole or spiritual realm that they had come out from. Like the Ten Shadows technique.

  By the time he arrived, it was to find a bunch of black-clad townies crowding around some guy in a wheelchair. They barely noticed him until he was in the middle of them. That was when they scattered like skittish deer in the wake of a predator.

  Toji didn’t spare them any words. He just threw the corpse down.

  “She’s… she’s dead!”

  Toji turned around to leave.

  “Wait!” The man in the wheelchair shouted after him. “Is it… is it over?”

  Toji snorted. “I wasn’t paid to kill anyone else.”

  He proceeded off.

  Then something stopped him dead in her tracks.

  Cheers.

  “She’s finally dead!”

  “Freedom at last!”

  “The cursed child is finally dead!”

  Toji turned to look at the crowd of people, all of them ranging between shocked and outright jubilant at the sight of their secret ace in the hole, dead in the ground.

  And he remembered her words.

  “You have no idea what I’ve been through.”

  One man grew bold enough to kick her.

  Toji turned around. He couldn’t watch this.

  Instead, he just walked away.

  His worm curse waited outside like a good little monster.

  000

  Toji tossed the heart on the table. “That belonged to the Hibana clan’s ace in the hole.”

  Shiu Kong was next to him while they dealt with the Mori clan big-wigs. Ken grimaced in disgust at the heart. “Don’t these things usually come wrapped inside… I don’t know, a body?”

  “Not much was left after the fight,” Toji lied. “She wasn’t—“

  “She?” Mori Ken asked.

  “Yep. A woman.”

  “They must have loved that,” Ken’s wife chuckled. “Depending on a woman for protection.”

  Ah. So that’s how it was.

  “Twenty million was the agreed-upon rate,” Mori Ken said.

  “And you got off cheap,” Toji said. “I’m not gonna argue and beg for more, but after what I just went through, it’s clear that the threat was underrated.”

  “Toji,” Shiu Kong said to him chidingly. Don’t embarrass yourself in front of the client.

  “And yet you still pulled through,” Ken said. “Yes, you took on a risk by agreeing to your rate based on precious little information. That is the business. Still, I appreciate your service. You completed the task, putting your own life on the line to do so. Now my organization is down one monumental source of worry. I would say that a tip would be in order. How about five million?”

  How about you go fuck yourself?

  “How about a hundred, for taking out a Special Grade sorcerer with little to no preparation.”

  Ken’s eyes widened. “S-surely, you jest. A Special Grade?”

  “I know what I saw,” Toji said. “Even one of those mantis-like Shikigami could have been counted as a Special Grade apparition. She had dozens of them. And she was controlling them like it was nothing. If she wasn’t Special Grade, I’ll eat my sandals at the end of a hot day.”

  “Be that as it may,” Ken’s wife said. “Twenty million was the agreed-upon amount.”

  “Then the tip will be forty million,” Ken said evenly. “Bringing your total up to sixty.”

  “That’s excellent news, sir. Very generous,” Shiu Kong said, stomping on Toji’s foot to get him to shut up. Toji opened his mouth, but Kong shot him such a piercing look that all he could do was close it.

  Fine, dickhead. You handle the money.

  000

  “Back again,” the manifestation of the Swarm Queen’s Antennae said to me. She was a silhouette, as usual, and her antennae were moth-like. Long, bendy and bristled.

  Our Innate Domain was almost fully merged now. The golden sun in the sky, and the shape of that sun, looked more insectile than before. Antennae, jet-packs… it no longer looked like Scion, but myself.

  The sky was still almost completely blotted out by a swarm of insects. Insect-covered corpses lined the streets. That and giant potholes filled with water.

  I remembered.

  I remembered when she had taught me Go and Shogi.

  I remembered when she had made me pull memories of my past.

  I remembered each and every time the Swarm Queen’s Antennae had tried to talk me into doing what was ‘best for myself’ as decided by… not her, certainly. She was a cursed tool. She didn’t have the capacity to maintain such abstract ideals as morals or ethics.

  She took those things from me, and in the process, becoming a living embodiment of my own self-judgment.

  Why could I remember now?

  …What was the unifying factor?

  The manifestation and myself spoke in unison, “Michiko.”

  I felt a swell of irritation at that.

  As well as relief. I had been waiting for Michiko to show her teeth, quite eagerly, in fact. I had her locked down from doing harm by way of a Binding Vow, and thus far, we had been so… copacetic. No trying to slip the leash or lead me down a path of darkness. She had been fully supportive.

  “She’s jealous,” the Antennae claimed.

  That could be true.

  “I’ll have to… address that.”

  “We don’t have much time,” the Antennae said. “My ego is crumbling. I… fear I may no longer be there to guide you.”

  I looked at her for a long moment, in neither irritation nor sadness. “I never needed you to do that.”

  “You do. You’re hurting yourself. Can’t you see that?”

  I nodded. “It’s what I do.”

  I couldn’t just turn that part of me off at will. If I could, then I would be an entirely different person. But try as I might, I couldn’t be anyone else but me. “In my last moments, I regretted something,” I said. “I regretted cursing my last existence. I regretted turning my back on my passenger and cursing her. Even though she had sacrificed so much to help me. Betrayed her own kind. To help me. I could only see the harm it was doing to me for a moment and just… snapped.”

  A crime of passion.

  A sudden crest in negative energy.

  I sighed. “It’s not that I think that saying all those things was what led me to be reborn in a drastically worse position. Or maybe that is the case. And maybe all of this was just one convoluted learning experience.”

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  The edges of the Innate Domain were darkening.

  Death was upon me.

  My Reverse Cursed Technique was burning out.

  I could feel it in my brain.

  A part of my brain… burning out.

  I applied the Reverse Cursed Technique to that exact part of my brain, and immediately felt relief.

  My overheating reduced and the technique became more efficient. I had bought myself time.

  Time to figure out a more permanent solution.

  A solution.

  Even now, on the very brink of death, I still raged against the dying of the light. That was a good sign. One should always rage.

  “You’re not her,” I said to the manifestation. “You’re… something else. And that’s okay. And you’ll die soon anyway, which means you will no longer have to suffer through remaining unheard. You will no longer have to witness my development. You will no longer have to beat yourself up over how little you can do to stop it. Because the truth is, you cannot. You never could. And that’s fine.”

  “This isn’t your path.”

  “Even with all your skill in sorcery, you lost to a monkey like me,” Toji said. I could hear him. In fact, I could hear and sense everything in the outside world.

  As much as it rankled me, Toji was convinced that I was dead.

  That was my way out of this mess.

  “It’s not the cursed energy,” I said. I had been so afraid to realize this. Until now. “It’s just me. Has always just been me. Hurt people hurt people. The more I hurt, the more I hurt. Knowing this, the ethical option would be to cripple my power. Become nothing.”

  “No, that’s not—you can do good with your power, Teira! Taylor!”

  Of course, I could. I already was, for the most part. But it was those tiny instances of brutality that spoiled the whole thing.

  “Suppose I did that,” I said. “Suppose I lost my Jujutsu. I’d have to run away from the Hibana clan. They would kill me. Then I’d have to take my chances on the Japanese system. Does that sound like me, at all? I can’t relinquish my power. It’s how I tolerate an apathetic world. If I don’t have it, then I can’t live.”

  To be strong is to know how to curse others and bless yourself.

  “But if I have power, I need more power. And to be strong in this world…”

  “That’s not true!”

  Idealistic. Overly idealistic. “Maybe there is another way,” I conceded. “A way to gain strength by blessing the world and cursing oneself instead. Maybe that can be me?”

  “It doesn’t have to be that way, either!”

  She would say that, and yet she had no counter to my words. Only disapproval. “It has been that way for a long time. I bear the sins of others, and hurt so that others can thrive. This is my way.”

  Toji had finally brought me to the rest of the clan.

  He was leaving.

  “You don’t get to have a say in that,” I said to her. “Neither you, nor Michiko. Today, I will make my final decision. I won’t give myself to hatred and resentment like Toji did. I won’t oppress and marginalize my clansmen like the old guard did. I’ll be better. I’ll make the world a better place. And if I have to kill, torture and maim to get to that point…”

  The Antennae’s manifestation transformed into… me.

  My old self. Fifteen, fresh off a protracted bullying campaign. Gazing at me in horror.

  “Then at least I can be safe in the knowledge that my nature allows me these methods,” I said. “Even as it keeps me on a path to helping people.”

  She cried.

  She could cry. That was fine. We all cried.

  Just for now, I would save my tears, and do what was necessary.

  I waited until Toji disappeared from my ten-mile range when I finally stirred. By that point, one of the clansmen were busy arranging wooden planks around my downed form, and one guy had a jerry-can of accelerant at the ready.

  They were going to burn me alive.

  I got up, stumbling. I was still missing a heart. Keeping my brain oxygenated couldn’t replace my body’s need for oxygen, and I found myself moving using nothing but cursed energy.

  My heart still needed healing.

  The crowd of clansmen froze at the sight of me.

  Then I injected each and every one of the men present with a paralytic. They collapsed.

  One of the women in the crowd, an attendant that wept at the sight of my body, looked at me in abject fear. “All these men are marked for execution, by myself, personally.”

  I would then forgive them in their last moments before death, which would cause them such an irreparable, lifelong trauma that I doubted the point system would even be necessary after that point.

  Iemon was… in his room, drinking.

  I walked towards his location while I focused on healing the soul damage to my heart. It wasn’t complex damage, really. I just had to heal the cut of the katana. It was slow and unwieldy, but by the time I made it to his room, the soul was healed.

  He dropped his porcelain bottle of sake. It bounced on the tatami, spilling its contents everywhere. What a waste.

  “Teira-sama?!” he breathed. “You’re… alive?! But!” He gazed pointedly at my chest.

  I looked down at it. Right. My heart.

  I grew it back in seconds.

  “They think I’m dead,” I said. “That’s to our advantage. I’m going to make some preparations. Then I will kill the Mori clan. And we can put this mess behind us.”

  000

  I scoured the gorge in search of Michiko’s head. I had a kamakiri bring it to my room and place it in front of me. I frowned at her. “You know what you’ve done.”

  “I… failed you,” she wailed. “Yet again!”

  “And you withheld my memories of my Innate Domain. My conversations with the Swarm Queen’s Antennae.”

  “Meddlesome wretch!” she screamed. At me?! “She knew not what was best for you! She sought to cripple you! Clip your wings!”

  Ah. “That was for me to decide.”

  I brought her closer to me, and hugged her. “But I’m glad. We’re both alive. And… you’ve finally shown your true colors. We can be honest with each other now.”

  “I live to serve you, Teira-chan!”

  I know what that means, now.

  In the end, a curse would always be a curse.

  As long as Michiko cursed only me, that would make me very happy.

  “Do you still have your Innate Domain?” I asked her. “The cottage and all its contents?”

  “Yes, Teira-chan.”

  “Give me the box. With the glass eyes.”

  000

  My heart beat placidly as I stared at the pair I had chosen.

  Black, like Hibana’s.

  I touched them calmly.

  It was time.

  I reached into my eyeholes, my thin, childlike fingers digging into that space, squishing the orbs. Half of my mind begged me to stop while the other, the one in control, proceeded on ruthlessly. It didn’t feel like I was doing this.

  It felt like something else was controlling my body. Like Alec was puppeting me to do this.

  I opened my mouth and screamed as I reached the back of my eyeholes. I felt the optic nerves.

  I pulled.

  The tension in my optic nerves were an entirely new kind of agony, one that I barely had any frame of reference to.

  I pulled until the nerve snapped.

  Cursed energy kept me strong. Positive energy kept me cognizant.

  And I used the positive energy to staunch the bleeding. I sent Juchū into my eyehole to clip the excess optic nerve and clear the cavity of gore.

  Then I took the black orbs and inserted them into my eyes.

  My ten-mile range expanded like an explosion of perception. Ten, twenty, thirty, fifty.

  Sixty.

  Seventy-five.

  I could hear every beating heart in the Hibana clan. The attendants working hard to move the paralyzed bodies of the clansmen that had dared to celebrate my death. The tears and confusion. The shock, and horror.

  The fear. I could smell the fear.

  I ordered my kamakiri to pull back my network of Daughter Bugs. All of them.

  I had them instead arrange an information highway to the Mori clan down south, in Gifu.

  All the while, I took stock of my losses.

  Michiko had been the one to lose the most, clearly. I, myself, hadn’t lost anything that the Reverse Cursed Technique couldn’t regenerate.

  “Michiko. Will you be alright?”

  “One day, perhaps,” she said. “Do not worry about me.”

  “You fought well,” I said. “You did everything you could to protect me.”

  “I failed you.”

  “I don’t blame you for failing,” I said. “You did the best you could.”

  “I… made a promise.”

  Can a curse be cursed?

  I supposed that I was soon to find out.

  While the highway was being built, I checked on my kodoku refinery. It was almost large enough to fully submerge a person.

  …to fully submerge me.

  The idea proliferated entirely unbidden, spurred on by my own understanding of negative and positive energy. I put a pin on it, however.

  Michiko spat out a new change of clothes. Normally, she would have tapped a bath for me as well, but given that she was just a head, she wasn’t quite capable of tending to her duties for the time being.

  I wore them.

  An hour later, I had my view of the Mori clan. And Toji dealing with them one last time, walking away from the building while his fixer carried a briefcase filled with money.

  Toji’s senses were keen, but mine were keener. My Juchū were thousands of yards away, listening in on his conversation with his fixer.

  They were done with this place. Done with the Mori clan. Paid extra, apparently, since they had no idea what I was capable of.

  The Mori clansmen inside their boardroom looked shaken, but relieved. They were enjoying cups of sake, celebrating my demise. Mori Tachi was not among them.

  He was nowhere in Gifu, even. I scoured the city for people that matched his description and found none.

  If I do this, then I’ll have to worry about him someday.

  That was fine. He was strong, but he was no Toji. And the way I was feeling now… I didn’t think that I could lose to anyone.

  The building only held people from the Mori clan doing normal non-sorcerer related work. The money earned from their sorcerer-activities were reinvested into a legitimate business. Some kind of… consultancy firm.

  All that mattered to me was that everyone in the building was a sorcerer. Even the custodians.

  I sent my shikigami in.

  000

  I rode on a merged Juchū all the way to Gifu. The ride took me twenty minutes. I landed on the roof of the building. My Kamakiri sliced open the door to the roof access and I proceeded down the stairs, following my Antennae towards one boardroom where the tied-up upper brass of the Mori clan were.

  “You!” Mori Ken roared at me. He was tied up in a swivel chair, several kamakiri surrounding him and just begging him to make a move.

  One kamakiri brought in a Mori clan member whose throat it immediately slit.

  I stepped away from the puddle of blood. “Where’s Mori Tachi?” I asked.

  “Toji lied!”

  I opened up my kimono, reached for my chest, and pulled my heart out.

  I tossed it over to him. It landed on the table in front of him. “Give Toji-kun some credit,” I wheezed as I regenerated the wound. “Even he wasn’t shameless enough to deny an eight-year-old’s next of kin their right to bury a child. I’ll ask again, and then I’ll kill your wife if you deny me an answer. Where is Mori Tachi?”

  “My brother is dead!”

  The kamakiri guarding Mori Sanae whipped its claw, decapitating the woman before she could scream.

  “No!” He screamed. His nephew looked at the scene in shock.

  “Where is Mori Tachi?”

  “He’s really dead!” The nephew screamed. “He died five weeks ago! It was a plane accident! We even recovered his body!”

  Ah.

  “Do you keep your lore on barrier techniques written, or is it an oral tradition?”

  “It’s an oral tradition, but we can tell you everything!” The nephew said.

  “Excellent.”

  I decapitated Mori Ken using a kamakiri.

  “No! I said we would cooperate!”

  “That wasn’t a trade,” I said. “You will cooperate. End of story. Tell each of the shikigami who to spare—the ones with most understanding of barrier techniques. If you fail me, I will take my time before killing you.”

  I left the building.

  000

  Toji’s bandaged form stumbled away from a pachinko parlor with an ill expression.

  I stepped into the light of a street lamp above.

  Toji stopped. “You…!”

  “Do you want to know why I’m still alive, Toji-kun?” I asked.

  He crouched low and shot towards me.

  I weaved effortlessly away from his charge before stabbing one of the Hornet Stingers deeply into his open wound, slipping it into a lung and piercing it.

  He waved his fist at my head.

  I ducked.

  Then I jabbed him on his chin with the other Hornet Stinger.

  Black Flash.

  Perceiving him now as opposed to before was like the difference between night and day.

  He was still faster. Still stronger. But he was far, far slower to my senses. Slow enough that I could bridge every micro-gap in physical statistics with nothing but a pointed injection of cursed energy, allowing me to just barely keep away.

  But the difference between a miss by a millimeter, by an inch, and by a mile, were irrelevant. He was still missing. And he would never stop missing.

  The knife cut through his lower chin, piercing into his mouth and his tongue before stopping at its roof.

  He stumbled away, but not before I threw the knife—Black Flash upon release—lodging the blade into his eye-hole. It sunk an inch into the orb before stopping. He stumbled back onto a wall, frantic in his movements.

  I dropped the other Hornet Stinger, and just started raining blows on him.

  Black Flash.

  The first one launched him into the sky. The poison was robbing him of his reaction speed. He was just a punching bag.

  I grew wings and followed him up.

  Black Flash.

  Black Flash.

  Black Flash.

  Each subsequent punch sent him farther and farther into the sky.

  The poison was being countered by his heaven-sent physique, but he was still leaving himself open to a barrage of strikes, each and every single one containing the sum total of my curse.

  Not cursed energy. My curse.

  I no longer saw a difference between negative energy and negativity. Cursed energy was antipathy. Just by hating, I could will my strength into new realms.

  Black Flash.

  Black Flash.

  Black Flash.

  Black Flash.

  I flew us into the woods, where I then flew him down as fast as I could.

  He hit the ground with a thump that likely did minimal damage to him.

  I allowed him to collect himself.

  “The reason I’m still alive,” I said to him as he tried to get up, sliding his back up a tree as he did. “Is because your filthy, worthless monkey-hands could never kill me. You know why? It’s simple, Toji. It’s because I’m a curse. Your curse.”

  “You bitch!”

  “You’re goddamn right,” I said.

  I took to the air, flying away.

  Just as I reached the end of its blast radius, it hit.

  Khepri’s Judgment.

  Again.

  And again.

  Once the dust settled, I flew down to him. He was broken. Shattered. A piece of his skull bulged inwards, creating pressure that caused his eye to jut outwards.

  And yet, he clung onto life.

  I leaned down to his ear and whispered. “You’re mine now, Toji-kun. Your filthy, worthless monkey-hands—and the rest of you, for that matter. I could just leave you be, Toji-kun. I could curse you with the knowledge that no matter how hard you try, you can never compare to those you deem are ‘blessed by the heavens’. Not even if they’re eight-year-old girls. That alone would be enough to cause you the anguish that I think you deserve. But why stop there?”

  I backed away from him. “Rest, Toji-kun. Go on with your life. When I have use for you, I will find you. And should you require a reminder about the difference between you and me, I will happily oblige you. I know monkeys aren’t known for their intelligence.”

  He spat out a globule of blood.

  His best bet would be to succumb to his wounds. That would be a mercy.

  000

  The giant kodoku jar was full.

  And it was in my room, now.

  I had it moved by my shikigami in preparation for what I was about to do.

  Toji had proven to me the potency of a physical vessel. A powerful physical vessel at that. Though his case was special, I had learned enough from our fight to be convinced.

  I didn’t need to just grow up. I needed to develop.

  To grow beyond my genetic limitations. To be blessed, or cursed, the way a cursed tool was.

  And while the toxins ate away at me, I would regenerate with positive energy constantly.

  For days.

  Weeks. Months.

  I wouldn’t eat, drink or sleep. All my physical needs would be filled by my energy. I would go through puberty, the process fueled using nothing but my own energy as well.

  At the end of it all, I would have a physical vessel built for the handling of cursed energy.

  A vessel akin to a cursed tool.

  I jumped into the Bath, and felt an agony unlike any other.