Juchu Kaisen - 48

Chapter 48

Geto Suguru, despite himself, had imagined Tokyo Jujutsu High to be a new beginning to his school life—one that would allow him to be among equals, and allow him to express himself fully.

He had even imagined finding love of all things. A girl might confess to him, and also be able to handle the ‘secret’ part of his life, because it was no longer such a secret.

He was an old hand at rejecting girls. Keeping secrets was as sure a relationship-killer as anything else, and he really didn’t have the time or patience to pretend to be something that he was not. He had never truly been able to be sincere with a girl.

He hoped that might change.

The girls of Tokyo Jujutsu High, however, were… not what he expected at all.

He and Ito Aoi walked through the hallways of an evacuated hospital that was now infested with cursed spirits. Watarai Regional Hospital, in the Mie prefecture, had been closed for renovation after another company had purchased it, despite its cursed reputation.

After all, this had been the stomping ground of one serial murdering doctor who was currently on trial being really quite bad at his job—on purpose at that.

Ito took the lead, despite otherwise being a very passive person. Suguru had no idea how to talk to her, really. It had been charming at first, but now it was beginning to grate on him.

They were headed to the psych ward of the hospital, which was the complex’s main draw. Since mental health was a rather sore subject, people saw fit to send their ill to this town in the middle of the sticks, far away from ‘civilization’. Unfortunately, that also made them prime targets for bad actors.

They were about to reach the psychiatry wing, so Suguru finally spoke up. “The curses were said to be in there, so we should… stick together. I can take out the small fry all by myself, so save your strength for the strong one.” A Grade One, apparently. This was Suguru’s first mission, and they had thrown him into the deep end of the pool just like that.

Probably on account of his rudeness to the higher-ups, but if that was the case, he saw no reason why Ito should suffer like him.

Not that they would suffer. Suguru was not the same untrained sorcerer that had struggled against Grade Ones in the past. He had trained for weeks to shore up his lacking fundamentals, practically rebirthing himself in a baptism of cursed energy manipulation.

Ito nodded.

She pushed the door to the wing open wide, revealing a horde of Grade Fours stuck to the walls and ceilings like mold, and a few roaming Grade Threes at the end of the hall.

Suguru stretched out his hand and activated his technique.

With this many small fry, he could cheat by condensing them all into one single ball, which he did. In seconds, the hallway became awash with cursed energy as the tiny ones dissolved into streams and collided above his palm in a vortex of ill light.

By the time they had fully formed into a ball, Ito was already off exorcising the Grade Threes. Suguru clicked his tongue as he swallowed the ball, ignored the taste, and jogged after her.

As per usual, she ripped them apart, and where applicable, used their remains as weapons to take out the other ones. More than once had Suguru seen this fighting style in the back of his eyelids, or in his dreams—not quite nightmares, but they came close to being them. Ito’s fighting style had branded itself in his mind by sheer virtue of its brutality.

Right now, he could let go of his instinctual fear and appreciate it for how… creative it was. In a morbid, nigh-on psychopathic way. In the eyes of a warrior, anything could be a weapon. Even the arms and legs of your enemies.

She didn’t pause as she finished with the three Grade Threes, instead disappearing further into the psychiatry ward, following her senses.

Suguru absorbed the damaged Grade Threes in passing, which slowed him down. It wasn’t polite to walk and eat, so he wasn’t used to that form of multitasking at all.

He was further slowed down by having to quickly check each room for potential survivors. The managers said that there could be as many as four.

Each time he just barely managed to reach Ito, she had already left a strew of crippled curses for him to eat, being thankfully thoughtful enough to leave them alive, if only just barely. He had little need for Grade Threes, and could already absorb those without any difficulty, either. The only ones he had to struggle against were in Grades One and Two.

A misshapen rat here. A malformed humanoid without a neck there. One creature was literally just an oversized nose. Another was a sea-urchin-like ball of black spikes that had cracked open in the middle, and was missing several of its spikes as well. Suguru wouldn’t have been surprised if Ito now used those as improvised spears.

He grit his teeth. Screw this.

He released a flood of cursed spirits down the hall in front of him, allowing them to catch up to Ito and help her along. Playing clean-up was infuriating. He didn’t get why she was treating him with such dismissal in the first place.

His curses did their job and slowed her down just in time for him to catch up. They were finally done with the first floor, and were looking at the door to the emergency stairwell.

“Let’s check the next one,” Suguru said. Ito nodded. “Also. Ito-san. Why do you keep running ahead? We can accomplish more if you just slow down.”

Ito shook her head. “I was meaning to ask you… speed up, please.”

“We do need to check for survivors.”

“We’ll do that after we confirm the deaths of the cursed spirits,” Ito responded clinically. There wasn’t a trace of that usual stutter in her words. “That’s the policy. We’re not meant to save people until we’ve ensured our objective, Geto-san. And I would like for you to speed up rather than slow down. In my experience, it’s better to hit cursed spirits with shock and awe, rather than let them anticipate our arrival. I’ve heard that you come from Kamakura. It’s a far smaller city than Tokyo—which means, the curses are not only weaker, but less intelligent there. You might not have had a need for a psychological aspect to your approach, but I can assure you, it is necessary.”

“But this isn’t Tokyo.”

“That’s not relevant to the case that shock and awe is more effective anyhow.”

Suguru sighed.

She wasn’t wrong.

Still, the way she viewed the work didn’t sit right with him. She was strong enough to be able to make some concessions to the rigid way of Jujutsu Sorcery, but she’d rather think of fighting than saving. He had come to expect this sort of thinking from the likes of Satoru and Teira, but to see Ito embody this ethos as well was sobering. He was tempted to question his own understanding of this work.

“Fine.”

She kicked open the door to the emergency stairs—heedless of the damage she was causing—and disappeared up the steps.

What the hell is wrong with her? The vandalism wasn’t wrong so much as it had happened with such a startling lack of hesitation that it beggared belief how this could have been the same Ito. That, coupled with her casual dismissal to saving people before the objective was done made her even less comprehensible to him.

He sent his cursed spirits outside of the building and had them scale the walls, looking for his quarry. All the while, he just focused on shadowing Ito, who seemed to really just be having the time of her life, really.

Finally, the hallways gave way to some serious contenders. Grade Two, judging by their cursed energy. Though, judging a cursed spirit’s Grade by its energy alone wasn’t exactly right. The whole thing was all too arbitrary—the only way to understand it, really, was through practice and experience. He was thankful that his own technique grounded the Grading system in reality, for he could sense that he could not absorb these without weakening them first.

These were in the shape of a deer with legs that looked twice as long as they should have been, a toad-like creature with a big stomach and a clay pot in one hand, and a humanoid black bird whose hands covered its facial features, and extra wings covered its chest and nether regions.

Suguru raised his hand and made a gesture akin to a finger gun, and shot.

He could decide how quickly a curse could eject from his inner dimension, and there was really no better use for those vermin-like Grade Fours and lower. A black squid-like thing shot out from in front of his finger and struck the black bird in its stomach. It failed to penetrate.

The bird revealed a gap in the hands covering its face, exposing its mouth. It screamed.

Instantly, the world tilted on its head as him and Ito stumbled backwards. Suguru fell on his butt, but Ito… she straightened. And she rushed towards the deer-creature, fist cocked back.

Suguru stood up and began reinforcing his inner ear in order to prevent the bird creature’s attacks from penetrating again. Then he rained down a hail of cursed spirit bullets at both it, and the toad spirit.

The toad spirit raised its clay pot, taking the attack inside of it. The curses dissolved into pure energy inside, while the bird jumped from wall to wall, trying to avoid the projectiles.

He jumped away as the toad-thing pointed the opening of his clay pot on him, blasting a wide furrow through the hallway.

Suguru grinned sharply. Interesting technique. I can’t wait to add you to my repertoire.

He tackled the bird thing while it was mid air, summoned a cursed spirit in the shape of a big ball with a powerful jaw lined with sharp teeth, and used it to bite a chunk out of the bird thing’s neck. While it bled out, he used Cursed Spirit Manipulation to turn it into a ball.

He quickly swallowed it and hurried to summon a wall of cursed spirits in front of him as the toad thing was about to use its energy beam.

It feinted, and instead pointed it towards Ito, who was still busy with her own deer monster.

“Ito!” Suguru screamed, but she ignored him.

She just kept pounding away at the deer, grabbing its neck in a grapple, and twisting its body with her own without care for the attack that would come her way—

Just as the energy beam went off, Ito had wrestled the deer creature into a position that completely obscured herself from the toad’s beam. Instead of herself, the deer took the attack.

Purple blood sprayed as the long-legged deer-thing buckled. Suguru shoved his arm towards it and turned it into a ball, all the while as Ito pursued the toad—

It was running away.

She took explosive steps after it, straightened her hand, and buried it into the creature’s spine. She then dragged it back towards Suguru, by its spine, and began to methodically apply stomps to its body, weakening it just enough that he could absorb this one, too.

She presented it to him emotionlessly, like a cat having captured a mouse for its owner.

“Thank you,” Suguru nodded to her.

She wasn’t entirely thoughtless. Nor was she selfish about wanting to fight—even though she clearly wanted to fight. He converted the last Grade Two into an orb, devoured it, and took a moment to steel his nerves.

There was the disgust, and the disgust at the disgust. He couldn’t imagine that this tiny cost to his technique would hamper the likes of his friends, and yet it always felt like he was approaching the limits to his tolerance every time he ate these things too quickly.

What the hell am I supposed to do about this?

Changing his relationship with his Cursed Technique was easier said than done. He had tried to embody a spirit of self-sacrifice, tried to don a more ‘heroic’ demeanor, he had written grandiose speeches in his mind about what good he was doing by using his technique.

None of it made it any easier. Especially not when he kept being buffeted on all sides by the demands of this work—to set heroism aside, and become a warrior instead.

What did that leave him with? Certainly not a moral edge that he could take comfort in.

He snapped out of his disgust in a moment and took off to the nearby stairwell.

In truth, he could have just flooded the entire hospital with low-level curses, and then honed in on the spot where most of them died due to enemy curses. He couldn’t share his senses with them, but he could detect their deaths from his connection to them.

Unfortunately, Yaga had been strict about limiting structural damage. Ideally, the hospital should remain standing by the time they were finished with their work.

So while Suguru released his curses, he also made sure to command that they didn’t break too many windows or shatter too many doors as they made their way ahead of him and Ito.

They burst through the door to the next floor, and instantly, Suguru felt seven of his Grade Threes disappear almost instantly. Not that it mattered—he had heard and sensed the explosion of energy that had caused it quite loudly. He didn’t even confer with Ito as they both honed in on the sound, ripping through the hallways at full speed.

The Grade One—a humanoid monstrosity made of bristling muscle, one eye on each hulking shoulder, and a mouth that split its torso wide open in a mocking grin—held too hospital beds aloft as though they were weapons.

Ito’s form flickered.

The Grade One made to clap its beds together, forcefully enough to crush Ito’s rushing form.

Not on my watch.

He spared only a singular moment to chide his blood-drunk classmate as he shot a burst of cursed spirits at the monster at full force, willingly sacrificing their lives. Apparently, his attacks became stronger if he willingly made such a sacrifice. Fortunately for him, he would sacrifice as many curses as it would take to win.

The shotgun burst of cursed spirits struck each of the monster’s eyes, but it didn’t stop it from trying to clap the beds together just as Ito was airborne, kicking into—

Into the creature’s stomach mouth.

She shot past the clapping beds, into the monster’s mouth, causing it to step back at the unexpected force. Ito clamped both hands around the monster’s upper and lower teeth and began to push.

Her forearms bristled with veins and muscles as she poured every fiber of her being into hyper-extending the monster’s stomach jaw.

It dropped a bed with its right hand and tried to reach for her, but Suguru had already arrived with a singular punch, expending his full force on this one attack.

He needed to make it count.

One strike.

Black Flash—

The attack struck, but it was entirely missing the warping of space and the sudden burst of black lightning, signifying that he had failed. Yet again.

That… didn’t really stop the monster’s arm from flying back, however, bending the wrong way. He had crippled the arm well enough with that punch, but still he couldn’t shake a sense of disappointment.

Ito shifted, from prying the teeth with her arms, to suddenly pulling her body towards the teeth such that her legs were on the lower teeth, and her hands were on the upper ones. Her calves and thighs bristled as she performed a squat from hell itself, forcing the monster’s mouth as wide open as possible.

“Exorcise it!” She cried.

He shook himself from his… terror? And struck the monster again.

Then again.

Then again.

Ito roared as she finally managed to rip the monster in two, standing straight as the monster’s torso shattered in half horizontally.

She jumped off from it, purple blood still coating her arms and legs, and Suguru quickly turned the creature into a ball.

“That was risky,” Suguru said. Alone, Suguru had trouble imagining that she could exorcise the curse without taking heavy damage. That was only if she faced it conservatively, instead of jumping into the belly of the beast. Literally.

“I trusted you,” Ito said calmly. “And now it’s done. Th… thank you. This was… a productive… experience.”

Suguru blinked. Back to the stuttering again?

“Do you think you’re weird, Ito?”

“H-huh?” she looked away. “I mean… I don’t…”

So she did.

Suguru felt like he might have had the best measure of Ito’s personality, purely based on their prior bout and this collaboration, and it was clear that she was definitely some kind of lunatic. The kicker was… she felt badly about it.

That was a shame. Jujutsu High was where lunatics were supposed to be.

“I think it’s time you stop thinking like a non-sorcerer,” Suguru said. “Or like they might be watching you. I can’t speak for how eager the others might be to exorcise curses as you are, but that doesn’t mean you should be withdrawn from them. You’re among… your people, I suppose.”

He had been about to say ‘equals’, but that wasn’t quite true.

Ito was far from an equal to Grade Fours that dared call themselves sorcerers. Or even the clan sorcerers that had been in this world all their lives, and had yet failed to attain the rank of Semi-Grade One.

Ito Aoi flushed. “Then! Thank you for fighting alongside me! I really enjoyed it! Very much! And… honestly, I enjoyed fighting with you, too! It was very, very fun! Thank you for that… Geto-kun!” She clasped her hands together. “I hope we can keep working together.” She smiled sheepishly and added: “Even though your cursed technique makes me sick to my stomach. Heheh.”

Suguru cycled through several emotions, until he landed on mirth and stayed there. He chuckled heartily at her bluntness.

He really couldn’t blame that sentiment. He was taking in the power of their sworn enemy. Even if his cursed spirits fought on his side, the poor taste of the technique was plain to see. And in his case, experience directly.

“That makes two of us,” he said.

Then an axe head hurtled itself into Ito’s face, blowing her against the wall of the hallway. She came to a sliding stop on the floor half a dozen meters away, laying on her back, her skull pulsing with blood.

“Bullseye!”

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A/N: I meant to update yesterday, but this flu/cold/sickness thing is kicking my ass at the moment. I'll try my best to update twice more before the week is over, but I might not be able to update on Wednesday or Friday as is my usual intention. I'm very sorry for that.