Chapter 24

  The ride to Tokyo was, as it usually was anytime he had to fly anywhere, quite bumpy. Teira’s giant dragonflies weren’t prone to avoiding turbulence. Over the years, Iemon had tried to design a more accommodating cabin, even going so far as to hire freelance designers and engineers all across Japan. Their consensus had been that without a pilot that didn’t “hypothetically” travel at over three thousand kilometers an hour, no flight could ever just be smooth without a truly unreasonable amount of material engineering to go with it.

  And Teira? Well, she valued efficiency over comfort any day. And though she regularly took a soft hand with children and outsiders, she had very little mercy to spare for anyone above the age of eighteen as of her ascent to clan head.

  The cabin in question was a plane with seats rowed on the sides of the plane itself, similarly to the military movies that Teira had imported from the outside world—the ones from America. For some reason, the little girl had such a fascination with America. America of all places. He would have assumed that a girl her age would have been more fascinated with France or Britain, really. Or maybe Spain, or, really, any of those beautiful European countries.

  America, though? Something about that particular pick in country rankled Iemon. Probably the fact that they had massacred so many of his countrymen, then proceeding to castrate the dog-emperor.

  Yes, Iemon hated the emperor. That was his lot as a member of a so-called ‘tsuchigumo’ clan. But to see him laid low by foreigners? That rankled him worse.

  If Teira had known of his personal beliefs, then she likely would have doubled down anyway, so he had wisely kept his mouth shut.

  At least now, she was humming and dancing in the middle of the cabin while a rap song played. A Japanese rap song, but a rap song, nonetheless.

  And to think that this was an improvement compared to the last few months.

  He still had so much to tell her. The Nagoya incident? The Cursed Parade in Okinawa? How come she hadn’t acted then? What was the reason?!

  Thousands had died.

  Iemon knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Teira acted most frantically when it came to saving lives. Many a times, she had sacrificed her Juchū and her attention to safeguarding the lives of non-sorcerers. In that capacity, Iemon didn’t view her as a hypocrite. She truly idealized the goals of the so-called Jujutsu Society.

  “Here!”

  Iemon, shocked out of his reverie, looked up to see Hibana.

  No, Hibana Teira.

  Cursed Spirit—

  No. She was a person.

  Heavens. A person.

  Her? How could she be a person? And what—

  “Drinky-drink. You look tense.”

  In her hand was a small porcelain cup filled with sake.

  He shook his head. “No, I don’t—“

  “It’s not sake. It’s one-hundred and eighty proof rice-based hooch. It’s a bottle of sake in one glass, really.”

  She dangled the cup in front of him.

  Immediately, he saw the appeal. Yes. He would rather drown himself in the provided elixir than to continue swirling down this abyssal vortex of utter horror.

  Horror.

  Before he had even taken the cup, he felt a part of himself already becoming drunk. Not from the liquor, but from the prospect of having it.

  With that imaginary spirit buyoing his heart, he asked, “what is our plan, Teira-sama?”

  “Drink,” she said. “You should drink. We’re just about to land.”

  He sighed. Then he downed the cup in three, agonizing gulps. Heavens above, this is some nasty, disgusting drink!

  “Fukui Ryo-sensei said it best himself,” she said. Then she started humming. “Durururdurururdurururu—ahhhh, he’s amazing. Yes, he said that. Through his piano. Let’s play that, actually!”

  Suddenly, the music in the cabin changed. To some Jazz song.

  “It’s called improvisation,” Teira said. “Follow my lead, alright? And listen, Iemon. Uncle.” She grabbed his shoulders and grinned at him. “I no longer hate you!”

  Huh?!

  “W-why?!”

  “Because! I got over it!” She said. Then, she cackled. “Hahahahahahahah! It’s true! I no longer hate you! I don’t hate anyone, anymore! It’s all in here!” she poked her fingers to her chest. “Not there!” She gestured vaguely to the air.

  Then she hugged him.

  Oh god, no, please, don’t let me die god, please—

  “You worked hard,” she whispered. “And I’m proud of you.”

  What?!

  “I’m here to bless the world,” she whispered. “Even if it means cursing myself. Your smile… is my reason for being. So smile, uncle. Smile. Try your best. And if you smile, then I will smile.”

  Iemon tried his best to split his lips into a grin.

  Teira hummed, looking disappointed. Then she patted him on his cheek. “Yeah, I get that. Let’s try to look more in control next time, okay? After all, you are my uncle.”

  Why did that proclamation sound like such a curse?!

  000

  Next to one another, Teira and Iemon had made the trek up to Jujutsu High. Or, rather, the Tokyo: Metropolitan Curse Technical College.

  To non-sorcerers, this was a religious school, recognized by the government. Purposefully hidden by the government in order to continue keeping this aspect of Japanese life a secret.

  “I don’t look that scary,” Teira remarked casually. They walked together alone. Teira had transformed her Juchū into a beetle with a comfortable chair attached to its back, which he sat on. It crawled him up the steps with such smoothness, the chair stabilizing and keeping him upright at all times, that it hardly felt like he was moving.

  Still, he preferred his own chair. After all, this creature was entirely outside of his own control.

  And as for how scary she looked…

  The very fact that she was drawing breath was unexpected of her. Not on account of her years-long sabbatical in a vat of poison, but just purely based on how she looked.

  And her aura.

  A non-sorcerer might just see a young girl doing her best impression of Yuki-Onna for that non-sorcerer holiday known as ‘Halloween’, but sight alone told only half the story.

  “September, 2001,” she said. “Or, year twelve, Heisei era. Kind of funny that the era started exactly when I was born. Almost makes one feel like the emperor himself. Though he wasn’t born in 1989. Interesting that I missed the millennium shift, however.”

  “Do you remember Okinawa?” he asked her.

  Her eyes took on a deadly glint. “I do. The cursed spirits of this day are becoming increasingly dangerous. And difficult to deal with indirectly. I never even saw the face of my foe. They just cut my signals off and acted with impunity while I was busy protecting Niigata from what I judged was an even worse outbreak of cursed spirits. But history will only remember the tragedies.”

  Then she smiled. “But we have no cause to regret this day in particular. Today will be a good day, Iemon. I can feel it. It will be a good day because I’ve decreed it.”

  And due to that, something terrible was about to happen somewhere. No doubt about it.

  “Ah—you can take this chair if you want. I went all-out in giving it all you need. I also opened a path for your Juchū to slip past its neck armor, where you can capture it if you want. It can fly, too!”

  Why was she being so nice?! That was arguably worse than her usual attitude.

  Back in the day, he would know where he stood with her. Her boundaries had been clearly marked. Don’t get close. Don’t treat her like family. She is the clan head and I am just the humble vice.

  Nevertheless, he sent his Juchū in the weakspot that she indicated, intent on capturing it.

  While Sense Expansion remained one of the biggest deterrents for members of the Hibana clan to be able to take on many Juchū, Teira-sama, in her wisdom, had found a way around it. Those who had reached Tiger-grade—no, Semi-Grade One—had been allotted a hundred thousand Juchū worth of shikigami, all packaged inside larger beasts of various shapes and specialities, depending on what role the particular curse expert—no, sorcerer—wanted to fill.

  Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

  She promised that whosoever reached her standards of Grade One would receive a kamakiri. One with eyes, of course. It would be weaker than hers, and whoever piloted it wouldn’t have nearly as much skill as she did, but it was still a Demon-grade spirit.

  Iemon finally found the insect’s ganglia, and ‘severed’ it, capturing his chair-beetle-thing. As he did, it shifted colors, from Teira’s pitch black, to his own dark purple. And he could move it, now.

  The controls were simple. Intuitive. Teira could have made the creature extremely complex to pilot. He had almost expected it, as a sort of white elephant gift that was more of a hassle to take care of than anything else. Instead, she had clearly designed it with a drastically weaker Juchū user in mind.

  “…Thank you,” Iemon said, hoping that his gratitude didn’t count as ‘getting close to her’.

  “It’s a shame I can’t heal you, since outputting pure positive energy is pretty much impossible,” she said. “This should suffice, I suppose.”

  “There are legends of famous healers who could use the Reverse Cursed Technique on others,” Iemon said.

  “I’ve determined them to be false, since it’s outside of my ability.”

  What a draconic way to view reality. Iemon couldn’t help but grin. That’s our Teira-sama.

  Soon, they reached a Torii gate, upon which several men stood to welcome them. One of them had a buzzcut and looked thuggish, especially given his sunglasses. There was a fat old man in a wheelchair, somehow making Iemon feel less self-conscious about his own mode of conveyance. The back handlebars were being held by a suited gentleman, likely an ‘Assistant Manager’. Tokyo Jujutsu High had a fondness for western attire, on account of how cosmopolitan Tokyo was. As such, their supporters weren’t dressed in traditional attire. Not even the old principal, Dojima Hatori.

  Grade One, back in the day. A real menace to the community of curse users as well. He had been Teira’s primary point of contact in the last few years, however.

  And all of them looked aghast at the sight of her.

  As they approached, Hatori spoke first. “Welcome to Tokyo Jujutsu High. Iemon-sama, I presume,” he greeted Iemon first. Enormous mistake. “And…?”

  “This is Hibana Teira-sama, one-hundred and third clan head of the Hibana,” he said. “You’ve corresponded via Juchū.”

  Teira drew herself up, clawing for height, though her five-foot frame didn’t lend her much. “Pardon me if I would rather save the speaking for my address of the secret council,” she said. “My compulsory arrival has left me in no mood to observe the required social niceties.”

  She had cause to be angry, and even impatient. The clan had spent several fortunes buying the loyalty of the secret council—a process made additionally complex with the fact that they had to discover their identities in the first place. She had even gone beyond the pale by making positive connections with almost every member of the Jujutsu Council—whose identities weren’t as secret, thankfully.

  Her gifts had been enough to outright fund the expansion of the sister schools to better accommodate the influx of raw sorcerers.

  “Our sincerest apologies for that,” Hatori said. “Please, accept my apology. It is just that—“

  “Also, the reason why I’m not showing off my shikigami right now is because I really want some of those hidden sorcerers in the trees to jump out, so I can rip their heads off in an instant and show you, in no uncertain terms, that the only reason why I’m not a threat is because I don’t want to be one.”

  As they reached the crowd, she walked past them, not even acknowledging them. “I’ve been generous, I’ve been gracious. Even looked past that episode in which one of you snooped around in my clan compound, almost killing themselves in the process. I kept my cool.”

  “We-we-we mean you no harm!” Hatori cried as his Assistant Manager pushed his chair to keep up. Iemon’s crawled next to her.

  “Please, believe us,” the thuggish sorcerer said. “Hibana-sama, the only reason why we’ve been eager to make contact with you is because it simply does not make sense for us to put our trust in an unseen figure.”

  “But I’m supposed to be content with the secret council being, well, secret.”

  “We know you know.”

  Teira looked over her shoulder, then up at the brutish sorcerer.

  “This is merely a formality,” the sorcerer said. “The Big Three Clans have grown far too nervous as of late. This gesture would go a long way in silencing your opposition. But we recognize your contributions to Jujutsu Society, and we believe that there is little in the way of your reintegration, should you just labor to meet us halfway.”

  “We both know I’ve gone further than halfway,” she said. Then sighed. “But I suppose that it does take this much to wash away the stink of history.”

  “Thank you for your understanding.”

  What a miracle that was.

  000

  The Jujutsu Council’s secret chamber was supposed to confound the senses and conceal the identities of its council members.

  To Teira, they may as well have been naked in broad daylight, of course. Iemon had heard how she described the sensory input she received from her antennae, and how that input had jumped drastically ever since she… ripped her eyes out and replaced them with prosthetics.

  Prosthetics that now felt like cursed tools in their own right.

  The Sensory Expansion that Iemon received from his beetle chair was also enough to allow him to make out the exact shapes of the individuals behind the wooden doors lit with a warm, orange light.

  “We are glad to finally make your acquaintance,” one of the council said. “Before we begin, would you kindly introduce yourself formally? Your name, and age?”

  “My name is Hibana Teira. I was born in the very year that the Heisei era commenced, making me as old as this era. I am female. Right-handed. I don’t know my blood type, and I suspect that I will never have any use for that information.”

  “You’re twelve?”

  “And a third,” she said.

  “And you lead the Hibana clan? You control the Juchū?”

  “Most of them,” she said. “I let a few of my clansmen have some. As a reward for good behavior.”

  “You control the clan?”

  “With an iron fist,” she said. “Iemon is testament to that. Tell them, Iemon.”

  “She is, for all intents and purposes, our sole hegemon,” he said. “Everything she says, goes. We have no council of elders. She executed them all. She also executed our entire stock of sorcerers.”

  “With the sole exception of you,” one of the council said, making Iemon squirm slightly.

  “We did need new beginnings,” Teira said. “Liquidating the old guard was my pleasure, if it meant improving the clan and transforming it into a societal benefit. And as for Iemon, I’ve only suspended his sentence.”

  What?! That was the first he heard of that!

  He had to assume that she was just saying that to appease the council.

  “What?!” one of the council shouted. “You—you brought a cursed spirit into this chamber! You snuck it through our barrier!”

  “Oh!” Teira gasped. “I completely forgot.”

  And Iemon had forgotten to ask.

  Dear heavens above, why did he forget?!

  He had been so dazzled by her sheer good mood that his mind had ceased to function properly, for he had allowed his mind to slip from the single most problematic aspect of Teira-sama—namely her attachment to her dead caretaker’s vengeful spirit.

  Michiko coalesced next to Teira in her cloaked form and bowed. “This is Michiko. She’s my… partner, for a lack of better words. If you are unsure of your safety—don’t be. Michiko will not harm anyone that doesn’t make a move to harm me. I have bound her to my will with a Binding Vow.”

  “Impossible! Why would a vengeful spirit—“

  “Once we start throwing around accusations of dishonesty, talks will begin to break down,” Teira interrupted. “And when talks break down, actions take precedent. And when actions take precedent… let us hope that our talks will not break down. For now, you must simply trust that I have things under control. And then we can move on to more fruitful matters. Like, for example, deciding the Hibana clan’s future among the Jujutsu Society. Before we move onto that, I will say one thing: my own patience is beginning to run thin regarding the prospect of ever coming to an amicable resolution with HQ and the Big Three.”

  The council was quiet.

  Michiko disappeared back into… wherever the hell Teira had hidden her.

  After a few minutes of quiet deliberation, they finally spoke. “We were not expecting someone as young as you,” they said.

  “Is it really that much of a problem?” she asked. “You can consider this a boon, in fact. I have no attachment to our old ways. Clearly. Whether or not you choose to believe me about how I restructured my clan thoroughly by getting rid of almost all the old blood, this should at the very least give you more confidence that my clan’s inclusion into your ranks is purely a benefit.”

  “We have considered this,” they said. “And we wish to reassure you that our relationship with your clan still remains strong. We do not seek to exploit or interrogate you to such a point that you should lose faith in us. We understand that this process is laborious on your part, but we request that you understand just how much we stand to lose, should we involve ourselves with a clan of former lawbreakers.”

  “All the ones who broke laws are dead,” she said.

  “We understand this and we applaud your prudence. Still, we require—

  “I’m not giving you any more money.”

  “This is not about money!” one of the council members retorted hotly.

  Iemon rolled his eyes. It was always about money.

  “It’s because you think I’m weak,” Teira said. She started leaking cursed energy, like a pool of pitch that grew from her feet, darkening the surroundings.

  Iemon made his beetle back away from her as he took her in, once again.

  The kodoku jar had stripped Teira of all skin color, leaving her as white as snow itself. She had a head of hair so long that it nearly reached her ankles. Her eyes were a twin pair of absolutely dark orbs, exactly the same color as her hair. And her antennae had grown longer somehow, and bent slightly at the ends. Her lips were a dead, blueish purple as well.

  That was before.

  Now, black lines spread at the end of each of her lips by an inch, before bending sharply upwards towards her cheekbones, where they then bent again, disappearing under her ears. Markings like sharp, black fangs extended downwards from the end of her lips as well, and spots on her forehead, surrounding her eyes, started appearing. Black beads, like the simple eyes of an insect.

  Eight such beads.

  “I am not weak,” Teira said quietly. She raised her chin, revealing that cross-shaped scar on her throat. Not even the years spent bathing in poison had rubbed away all trace of the injuries she had sustained while fighting that monstrous assassin.

  Cursed energy gushed forth from her in a devastating wave. Then again. Then again. Synched to the beating of a heart.

  “I know that your prevailing theory is that I use barriers to achieve my strength,” she said. “The truth is, I have yet to master these skills. No, my power is… a lot more straightforward. I’m just strong.”

  The fang tattoos stretched down her chin, and the chin bone began protruding downwards in the shape of the fangs until—they pierced the skin, revealing shiny black fangs like mandibles made of obsidian.

  “You worry about Michiko as if I didn’t bring two and a half billion Juchū through your barrier. I packed my entire network away before I arrived here, deep inside my spirit. At this very moment, I am the strongest that I have ever been in my life.”

  The antennae began to lengthen. And… thin spines began to grow out of them. They were tightly arranged, and they gave the antennae an ovaloid shape.

  Then… it all disappeared. The markings, the bristles on her antennae, the mandibles—everything. Teira returned to looking like a ghost.

  “Just thought you should know.”

  Quiet.

  A quiet that persisted for several, agonizingly long minutes.

  And then, finally, “the council calls for a recess.”

  000

  “The council has arrived at a proposal,” said the council.

  “And the proposal is imbecilic,” I growled. I had heard everything from outside, obviously. The only thing I couldn’t perceive was whatever the hell was going on in the middle of Tengen’s shut-in plaza where the miserable old hag presumably was. “I won’t do it.”

  I knew this good mood of mine wouldn’t last. I knew it. I had allowed the world to get one over on me by not being prepared.

  Fucking typical.

  “You will have several years to prepare your clan in your absence—“

  “That’s not the point,” I said. “This is beyond unnecessary. I’m not a child.”

  “Truth be told, Hibana-san, cleaning your clan’s name is the work of a generation. Perhaps even several,” the council said. “The Big Three’s pressure has become too great to ignore. You must take this step, or the situation will never improve.”

  “It is a humiliation,” I argued.

  “It is a chance,” the council said. “A chance to cement your presence among the younger generation, and work in direct service of Jujutsu Society’s most dearly upheld goals. Indeed, it is a sacrifice of several years of your life, but it will not be in vain. This is truly the most significant gesture you can make in order to cement our working relationship.”

  I grimaced. The very fact that they dared suggest—

  Think this through.

  If I declined this, then I would have to build a separate Jujutsu Society from scratch. One without government legitimacy or connections, and one in which my subordinates would be under constant threat of being imprisoned or murdered.

  Knowing all this, was setting all that up a better use of my time than… this?

  Almost. It almost was.

  But not quite.

  I wasn’t doing this for just myself. I was doing it for the children of the Hibana clan, the generation that I meant to bless with a better way of life. And for the innocents that would be caught in the crossfire of my struggle for power.

  Do it for them.

  Do it for… Haruta.

  “If I do this,” I said slowly. “It’s done. No more argument. We become a recognized clan, government approval and all. We gain full privileges of membership.”

  They discussed amongst each other for a few minutes before getting back to me.

  “Yes. Once you graduate, that can be arranged.”

  This is so…

  …fucking stupid.