Juchu Kaisen - 52

Chapter 52

“Eleven Grade Ones, one registered Special Grade, and numerous lesser curses all told,” the council recounted proudly. “Excellent work, Geto-san.”

Suguru shifted a little in awkwardness. Ito was standing right next to him in the darkly lit room of the secret council chamber. He glanced at her face to gauge her mood. She seemed in her own head, smiling at nothing.

“Confirm to this council that you are, indeed, capable of summoning these spirits, including Tamamo-no-Mae Incarnate.”

Rather than tell them, he just showed them.

All the Grade Ones that could fit in the room appeared out of portals, and one Special Grade—the one they called Tamamo-no-Mae.

But just to hammer the point home, he also summoned Kuchisake-onna.

They were both different from the first time Suguru had encountered them. Tamamo-no-Mae was whole once more—including those voluminous robes of hers. Beyond that, she also just felt stronger, which didn’t make sense at all.

…unless the version of her that he had faced had been in a diminished form.

That was… terrifying to consider.

Kuchisake-onna, who had gone a round with Satoru before being sealed up, had also recovered her strength—and that, too, felt nearly boundless to him.

Both of these curses had depths to them that Suguru could scarcely understand at the moment. He’d need to figure it out first thing after this meeting. Thankfully, it was Saturday, so he would have the entire day to himself.

The council ‘ooh’d and ‘aah’d at the display. He gave them a few more seconds to admire the sight before dismissing them back into his inner dimension.

“Do you sense that you are at your limits?” one in the council asked.

“Not at all,” Suguru said. “I suspect that my inner dimension is either extremely large, or it simply stretches to accommodate every new arrival. But…” he paused to think for a moment. It was just a wild theory, but he slightly suspected that size wasn’t a concept that applied to his inner dimension, and that even cursed spirits stopped having a ‘size’ when they entered it.

But why tell them that? He wisely decided not to do that, and simply shook his head. “But it remains to be seen,” he completed.

“Incredible. Remarkable.”

Suguru continued his verbal report of the mission, bringing up the topic of the curse user colluding with the sentient curse.

“Tamamo-no-Mae incarnate could speak,” Suguru said. “And it hinted at a conspiracy amongst other curses of its kind.”

“We shall look into that matter,” the council replied—almost flippantly. “You need not concern yourself with this any longer.”

Suguru wanted to emphasize the importance of that tidbit, however. They already had a written version of the report—this verbal report was just for ceremony, and probably just to get a look at his development up-close. Still, he felt that this threat had to be taken more seriously. “The curse user claimed that the cursed spirits have—“

“We will not repeat ourselves,” the council said. “Thank you for this report.”

“We would have appreciated you taking in the curse user alive,” one in the council said. “Ito Aoi—you were the one who dealt the killing blow—ah. Hold on. The nature of the wound you sustained. This was reported to have occurred after your battle with the first Grade One, and right as the battle against the curse user and the additional curses commenced, yes?”

“Yes,” Ito nodded.

“…A blade was inside your skull. While you fought.”

Ito nodded. “Yes.”

“…How could you survive such a blow?”

“The medical report is even more confounding,” another council member said. “An axe-head buried five inches into her skull, through her face. The use of the Reverse Cursed Technique was involved in healing her, of course—Ieiri Shoko, the close associate of Hibana Teira, was apparently notable all along.”

“Was it your technique, Ito-chan?”

“No. I simply… didn’t die,” she said. Then, she nodded, as if to signal her satisfaction with that story. In her defense, what else could really be said.

“You should not have killed the curse user. He had important information. You recklessly and thoughtlessly—“

“That’s enough out of you,” Suguru said quietly. The room was stunned into silence. “I won’t tolerate any more of this.”

“You speak out of line!” the council shouted. All the while, Suguru considered the ramifications of his conduct.

Worst case scenario, they’d withhold his Special Grade designation, but even that wouldn’t fly beyond a certain point. He had proven that his Cursed Spirit Manipulation was an indispensable boon to Jujutsu Society.

That made him indispensable.

It didn’t hurt that he also had powerful friends.

Cronyism was distasteful when adults did it, but Suguru couldn’t deny how exhilarating it was to leverage his connections at his young age. No, he had nothing to worry about, and much fun to have.

Teira and Satoru were right in the end—there was no making friends with these fools. He still wanted to cooperate, but he would rather they meet him most of the way, than the other way around.

Suguru continued. “If you invited her here to berate her, a day after she almost lost her life while fighting on behalf of humanity, then I’ll spare you your breaths and simply leave. Come, Ito.”

Ito gaped. “Ah—uh… okay.”

Suguru ignored the indignant shouts.

Outside the council chamber, he met Teira and Shoko.

Teira sighed. “I still hate that I can’t hear what goes on in there. But judging by your raised pulses, you were either kissing on each other, crazy style, or you had yet another blowout with the bigwigs.” Teira grinned. “So, which is it?”

Ito looked away, blushing furiously. Meanwhile, Suguru debated on summoning Tamamo-no-Mae so she could blast Teira into the stratosphere.

Shoko walked by them, into the building. “Thanks for warming them up for me,” she patted Suguru’s shoulder playfully. “I’m going to looove this.”

Teira cupped her mouth and shouted after her. “Don’t promise them anything for free! One billion yen for every cut you heal!”

000

“It’s not an exaggeration to say that we are the most important high schoolers in all of Jujutsu Society,” I began our meeting in Michiko’s domain. Suguru, Gojo and Shoko were sat on a table with me, and Michiko was hovering over us, serving us all tea. “Even you, Shoko. Do get a big head.”

“I’ll try to,” Shoko said, taking a sip of her tea.

“Okay, okay,” Gojo nodded. “Cool, cool, cool. Also, what the hell is this?”

“Somewhere private,” I said. “Somewhere even Tengen won’t be able to hear us. You know, when you’ve spent your entire life invading people’s privacy, you tend to get an appreciation for that very thing.”

Suguru snorted.

“Don’t be rude,” Michiko said to Gojo, growing fangs as she did.

“Also, you heard the rules,” I said. “And I actually won’t stop Michiko from mauling you if you break them—that’s your problem, entirely.”

Gojo groaned. “This is st… not ideal. But I’ll bear with it, because the tea is good,” he nodded at Michiko. “But still. Teira. How in the world did you manage to tame a cursed spirit this powerful? I didn’t know it was even possible without covering them head to toe in talismans.”

“We swore a binding vow to one another,” I said, taking a sip of my tea. “I failed to protect her in life—“

“I failed to protect you,” Michiko said. “That is my greatest regret.”

“It talks,” Suguru eyed Michiko with burning eyes.

“You hungry?” I grinned. “She’s a friend, not food.”

Suguru turned to look at me. “I didn’t know they could just talk. How…?”

“This one is a Vengeful Cursed Spirit,” I said. “So it makes… some amount of sense. She came from a single person, after all. Tamamo-no-Mae Incarnate is actually in a similar boat. She’s the reincarnation of an often-appearing Vengeful Spirit based on the empress consort known as Fujiwara no Nariko. But!” I raised a finger. Michiko summoned a black cloaked figure with a bug-like face in the corner of the room. It, too, sat on a chair. “This is Kurourushi. It talks.”

“Another pet curse?”

I snorted. “Look at the top of its head.”

There was a Juchū on there. It was small, but it contained no less than a million Juchū. It was a Totality whose main mass existed inside of Kurourushi and underneath its cloak, where it Controlled the cursed spirit directly. “He’s not interested in swearing any binding vow, and I can’t make him if he doesn’t want to. It goes against the spirit of the vow, after all. They should be freely given.”

“Free me…”

“It’s a Special Grade,” I said. “A powerful creature. I use it to train my clansmen. I’d let you have him, Suguru, but you’d have to defeat him first. I’m not Gojo—I won’t give you any freebies. So,” I snapped my fingers, and Michiko removed Kurourushi from the room. “Let me know whenever you’re ready. As for my partner Michiko: She’s safe,” I said. “Well… everyone else is safe from her. She does have a bad habit of embarrassing me.”

Michiko sniffled and nodded. “I understand that you hate me, Teira-chan. I’ll try to give you and your friends privacy, then.” She retreated from the room.

“No, that’s not—!” but she kept walking. I groaned. What the hell was she playing at?

“That was mean of you,” Shoko said, grinning slightly.

“She tries so hard for you,” Gojo said, shaking his head and clicking his tongue. “And this is how you repay her.”

If it wasn’t for Michiko’s rules, I would have given them both a piece of my mind.

“I brought you here to reveal to you all something,” I said. “It might cause you to look at me in a different light. You might even call me evil for doing this. I’m sure that by the end of this conversation, you’ll understand my side of things.”

I told them about my reach. I told them about how I could potentially singlehandedly take the fight to every curse in the country, but I refused to. I allowed them to exist in certain places. I funneled them out of a desire to not drive their evolution any harder than I already had.

“It’s too late,” Suguru said, frowning. “They’ve… already evolved. That’s what he told me—the curse user.”

“Ugh,” Gojo groaned. “So now they’ll be even more of a pain to deal with. Thanks a lot, Teira.”

I threw my hands in the air. “Well, screw me for thinking that it was possible to win this war. How naïve of me.”

“Win?” Gojo asked. Then he laughed. “Teira, we don’t win. Do janitors win at cleaning?”

“And you’re fine with that?” I scowled. “Doing the same thing over and over again instead of winning once and for all? Because you’re strong?”

He nodded. “Hell yeah. I’d rather be happy and crazy than miserable and sane. Like most other sorcerers.”

“Well, I’m here to fucking win,” I said.

“Don’t be rude!” Michiko called from another room.

I rolled my eyes. She wouldn’t dare maul me. She’d dismiss the Domain before it got to that point, which was also annoying because I wanted to have a private conversation.

This didn’t even have to take place in an expanded Domain. Michiko’s innate domain, which she called ‘Timeless Sanctuary’—named after her technique—, was equally opaque to anyone on the outside. But it had all my stuff in it, and I didn’t want Gojo to go looking around for treasures, or uncover any of my secret countermeasures against him.

“I fight to win,” I said. “I get that no one has ‘won’ in history. I get that it doesn’t make sense to think that it’s possible. But I know that it is. Anything is possible in Jujutsu—even ending Jujutsu once and for all, if it means ending all cursed spirits. They evolved to become my match. We’ll evolve right back, and we’ll go ahead relentlessly until we win.”

“Erasing all cursed energy?” Gojo asked. “Is that what you mean by ending Jujutsu? Honestly, I can’t get behind this.” He looked around the room. “Anyone else? Heck, even you, Teira? Would you give up your power for the greater good? Who would you even be after that?”

That was a difficult question that I didn’t think was worth pondering, as it would only slow me down from what I knew was the right thing to do.

Before I could answer, Shoko put a hand over my arm. “She’d be my friend.”

Her words were like a blow to my chest. Where the hell had that come from?

And why did it… buoy me so much?

“D’aww,” Gojo smiled. “Well, I for one don’t think it’s a good trade.”

“You’d fight me on this?” I asked him.

“I would.”

Times like these, Gojo appeared aggressively his own age.

There was no point in having this conversation with a child. Deciding the future course of humanity with a bunch of children… foolish.

“Sorcerers don’t generate cursed spirits,” Suguru said. I focused on him as he spoke. “That’s because we can control our energy and plug our leaks. In doing so, our collective energy doesn’t coalesce into curses.”

“What’s your point?” Gojo asked.

“If erasing cursed energy is on the table—somehow—how about… giving everyone cursed energy?” Suguru asked. “Actually, enough cursed energy that they can control it.”

“How would we even begin to do that?” Shoko asked.

“A cursed technique,” I said. “Or ten. Working together.”

“And where are they?” Shoko asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Just because the solution doesn’t exist now doesn’t mean it will never exist at all. Until then, it does pay to consider our options. Erasing cursed energy returns the world to a state of stability. Turning everyone into a sorcerer would erase cursed spirits, but then everybody would be a sorcerer. If inequality and supremacy was bad enough as it was before, it would become a hundred times worse after that. But…” I sighed. “That’s all I wanted to say. The meeting can end now. Michiko.”

The Domain collapsed, bringing us back to the training field for Jujutsu lessons.

“That was sudden,” Shoko said to me as Gojo threw an arm over Suguru, taking him away to get some training done with his new Special Grade curses.

“I just realized very suddenly that I was speaking to a brat,” I said. “There wasn’t any point in doing that.”

“You said I might change my opinion of you after hearing you out,” Shoko said. “I think I have, actually.”

Not surprising. To reveal that I was essentially making a cruel calculus to let people die because I feared the threat of an unknown promise more than I valued individual lives would be jarring to anyone. Any sorcerer death that occurred was on me. Ito almost dying had been on me.

“Sorry,” I said.

Shoko smiled. “On second thought, I don’t think the opinion changed. Really, it just became stronger.”

I raised an eyebrow at that.

“You carry so much on your shoulders, Teira. Let’s have a quiet day. Hang out. Chill for a—“

“Ah!” I pointed at her. “You little—I almost forgot! We had a meeting with some clan heads today, didn’t we?”

000

I hadn’t expected Gojo’s attitude to rub me so harshly that I’d still be carrying around that sting, even hours after my secret meeting.

With Shoko in tow, we descended Mount Ushiro and entered a waiting car on the road at its foot—a black SUV that belonged to my clan. The ride was mostly quiet as I came to terms with the fact that Gojo had managed to hurt me.

Embarrassing as that fact was, I didn’t see fit to share it with anyone. And he hadn’t really hurt me as much as he had disappointed me. Severely.

It was hardly a day since one of our classmates almost died to a curse user, and his conscience was so inert that he wouldn’t even consider a scenario that took away his power if it meant saving the world.

I shouldn’t have expected anything different from him. Jujutsu Sorcerers weren’t heroes. We were overly proud janitors with a competitive streak a mile wide. Still, a part of me had thought that Gojo would be different. I saw him as more of an anomaly than a true Jujutsu Sorcerer, but I supposed that analysis had been entirely wrong.

Perhaps it was just because he was young that he couldn’t help but fail to meet my expectations, admittedly massive as they were.

And I was just being the childish fifteen-year-old who thought powers and a do-gooder attitude would be enough to help people, all the while deluding myself into thinking I wasn’t in the game just to escape from my shitty life.

I reached into my kimono for a bottle of sake, and my hand froze.

I wasn’t in the mood to drink. I usually felt this way any time I remembered my past life, or imagined what Taylor Hebert would think of the current me.

I had a lot to unpack in that regard.

As per usual, I would just… not. The world wasn’t burning, and I was doing fine enough as it was without bringing myself to think about difficult topics like ‘how to win the eternal war against cursed spirits’ or ‘am I the bad guy?’ Pointless distractions, and the latter was an unnecessary question. I knew that I was a monster. I didn’t need anyone to absolve me of my sins. As far as I was concerned, no one in existence had that ability, or the right to. Not even in the heavens.

My sins were mine to bear.

“You seem off,” Shoko said to me. She rolled down the window and brought out a pack of cigarettes from her pocket. “Is it about the cursed spirits?”

“Gojo is unreliable,” I said. “Which is… par for the course. I assumed that a crisis on this scale would serve to wake him up, or cause him to grow up a little, but he’s still holding strong to his childish and selfish ways.”

“Because he wouldn’t give up his power in your imaginary scenario?”

“Shows a lack of resolve. To help people.”

“…You told me that we weren’t supposed to be heroes.”

“To manage your expectations,” I said. “People who try to be heroes often end up hurt. It’s much safer to just do what you can. More helpful too, for the most part. Be a soldier instead of a hero.”

“What does that mean?” She took a drag of her cigarette and let her hand dangle outside the window.

“Heroes rise to the occasion and go beyond themselves. Soldiers fall back to their level of training. One’s a miracle, another’s reliable. The latter is what the world needs. What it runs on.” I looked outside the window, at the forest on the outskirts of Tokyo. “But if we can’t even imagine saving the day, once and for all, what is it all for?”

“I’m sure Gojo would want the world to be saved,” Shoko said. “He’d just… like to have his cake and eat it, too.”

The mentality of the powerful and the arrogant. Gojo Satoru was both.

I felt a stab of worry for him, then. This act of his would probably be the death of him.

Then again, maybe I was taking things too seriously. A conspiracy of cursed spirits sounded like insanity, in all honesty. As did a ‘revolution’. And Gojo deserved to have a carefree childhood as much as any other fourteen-year-old did.

I hoped they’d get to enjoy what was left of their childhoods, then.

Today, I’d have to be an adult again.

“I find it odd,” I said, “that you haven’t once mentioned anything about what I just revealed to you. About my own efforts to exorcise curses. Or lack thereof.”

I spoke in a low voice, trusting the partition keeping things private from the driver.

“You seem to have all the agonizing down pat,” Shoko said. “Not sure if there’s anything I could reasonably contribute to what is no doubt an extremely long discussion. I don’t think it matters, though—I know you’re doing the best you can.”

I snorted. Shoko was being too generous with her kindness as of late. It was strange, but… not unwanted.

The SUV deposited us at a hotel in Minato with a good view of the Tokyo Tower. The concierge led us towards the elevator, and through the hallway towards the conference room that this meeting would take place in.

“I feel woefully underdressed,” Shoko muttered as she swiveled her head around at the swanky hallway with patterned wallpaper, a luxurious red carpet, and fine wooden doors. The hallways and the outer building was quite western, but I was sure the conference room would be more culturally appropriate. I didn’t actually know for sure—Iemon had set everything up. He was the main point of contact for all these assholes.  

“Well, thank god you’re a Jujutsu Sorcerer and not a call girl,” I said to her. She was just wearing her uniform, but I was wearing a black and white kimono reminiscent of my usual style of dress back in the Hibana clan. “You look fine, Shoko. You look… dashing.”

“Gee, thanks, mom.”

“The bee’s knees, even.”

 The concierge stopped by the last door on the hallway, indicating for me to enter. I cleared my throat and straightened my back before entering.

The minor clan heads of Jujutsu Society were waiting, including some… controversial figures. The head of the once-evil Inumaki clan was there. They had apparently accidentally managed to birth a sorcerer with much potential, just last year, going against an order to drive their clan of sorcerers and their technique into extinction via selective breeding.

There were others, too—clans that should have already been extinct due to their dearth of sorcerers, but were holding onto this world by the skin of their teeth. Worthless in the eyes of many, but desperate to return to their former glory.

They’d have a chance to, should our talks go well.