Chapter 55

“Teira, why are you smiling so much?” Gojo asked, as a non-sequitur at the end of one of his long rants about video games.

The four of us were walking up a hill in a standard residential neighborhood like any other in Tokyo, on our way to a certain person’s home, all the while as I privately amused myself with the thought of how they’d react to a surprise of mine.

Then he gasped. “It can’t be—you secretly loved your birthday party, didn’t you?”

Four days had passed since then, giving me time to wind down from my after-birthday blues. During this intervening downtime, Shoko had thankfully gone ‘easier’ on me, for a lack of better terms.

She finally managed to respect my needs for less stimulation, but only after discovering that this period of reduced activity also came with less intense training. Indeed, she only accommodated me once she realized the personal benefits that it would bring. Although she was my friend, she was also self-centered to a fault, like a cat that would devour their owner’s corpse in the event of starvation.

Although, if I was being honest, I wouldn’t resent such a fate after my death. In fact, I’d be glad to know that my cat wouldn’t starve to death after I passed. Maybe that was why I was still so fond of Shoko, even though I knew that she was worthless as a friend.

My grin returned at the thought of her reaction as well. They would all pay for my birthday.

“You’ll find out in due time,” I said.

All three of my friends grimaced at me at the same time.

And then, they scooted away from me.

I smiled even more at that.

“Please don’t make it hurt,” Shoko said.

“No, no, no, it won’t hurt. Physically,” I said.

I reached out my hand, and sent Michiko a mental command to release something from the vault in her Timeless Sanctuary.

Out came a katana inside a white scabbard. The handle was covered in something that resembled leather. The pommel and crossguard were white and smooth, like polished ivory.

“I was thinking,” I said as I held the katana in my hands, inspecting its scabbard carefully, “that Yumeko might use this as the focus for her Misfortune technique. Provided it can be directed, of course. You’ll be the judge of what she can and can’t do, Gojo, with your Six Eyes.”

I handed the sword over to Gojo, who took it in his hands gingerly. I held a poker face as he touched it. Or, really, he held it in his hands, but in a sheathe of Infinity to prevent him from making direct physical contact with it.

“I’ll… try,” he said.

“I forgot to ask,” Shoko said to Gojo, “but if you can see whether people have innate techniques or not, can you see if I have one?”

Gojo looked closely at Shoko, lifting his shades as he did. Then he hummed. “Yes, I see. Your innate technique is Hypnotizing Mole.”

“Huh?”

“That mole under your eye. It’s got hypnotic properties.”

“Are you hitting on me or something?” Shoko asked, eyebrow raised. “It’s really clumsy.”

“I mean, it’s a distracting blemish,” Gojo went on. “I don’t see why I would even bother.”

“Ah, there we go,” Shoko nodded.

“Satoru, that’s rude,” Suguru chided. “Your mole looks fine, Shoko.”

Gojo handed the sword over to Shoko and inspected her more closely. “I definitely can’t see any innate technique. Sorry. In fact, I can’t see any reason why you’d be so talented at the Reverse Cursed Technique, either. There’s nothing about your cursed energy that would imply that you have an advantage over others. But in terms of cursed energy and techniques, you’re the same as Ito. Both of you have nothing.”

Shoko sighed, fiddling with the sword, getting her paws all over it. Heheheh.

“I gather it’s quite rare,” Suguru said, “for sorcerers to have innate techniques in the first place. Yet only five out of twelve in our grade don’t have any. That's not even half. Quite curious.”

“Five? That’s way too many. Who are you talking about?” Gojo asked.

“Let’s see,” Suguru began. “There’s Ito, Shoko, Aomori, Satoshi, and Jun.”

“Aomori? The weird one who keeps to herself? Nah, she definitely has an innate technique. She just hasn’t used it in combat yet. Same goes with Satoshi—he’s got one, but I don’t think he’d even be able to use it if somebody told him what it was. He’s kind of an idiot. And Jun has one too. He uses it all the time. It’s really quite something.”

As for Aomori, eventually, she had managed to earn Yaga-sensei’s approval, and a provisional Grade Four designation, making her the nominally weakest student in our class. After that point, she had practically redoubled her efforts to complete her personal project which, to my understanding, was some kind of fantastical setting akin to a Dungeons and Dragons stage. A dungeon with traps, monsters, rewards, the like.

No one was forcing her to be a Jujutsu Sorcerer, which was why I found her attachment to her project rather puzzling. If she wanted to spend time doing that rather than train to become stronger, she was free to do just that. It was odd. I had tried talking to her about it, but she hadn’t exactly been forthcoming about her motivations.

“Nevertheless,” Suguru continued, as Shoko handed the sword to her. Hah. “Our grade is unusually strong. I find it quite interesting.”

“I’ve got an idea,” Gojo said, grinning mischievously. “Let’s do a daytrip to Kyoto High, all four of us, and scout out our competition one of these days. I’m dying to see their Special Grades.”

“And get your ass kicked by them,” Shoko grinned.

“I’m a Class Three Special Grade,” Gojo said proudly. “Class Three. The oldies said so! I’m the only one of my kind.”

“When you’re about to fall asleep,” Shoko said, “do you ever hear Teira say ‘Domain Expansion’ and wake up in a cold sweat?”

“Alright,” Gojo said, “I’m sick of this baseless slander. Teira. You, me, tonight.”

“Nope,” I smiled.

“What? You can’t—you can’t say no!”

“I just did.”

Gojo’s gobsmacked expression morphed into amusement and he shrugged. “Okay. Like you have a choice.”

He was right that if he initiated a fight with me, I’d be forced to defend myself, and thus enter into a fight with him in earnest. Running away would then count as defeat.

If I made myself constantly unavailable, and engineer circumstances such that we couldn’t fight—whether due to the potential for collateral damage, or disciplinary action—I could potentially put off our fight indefinitely.

Then I would be sacrificing time spent training Shoko. I could do it through a Juchū, but Gojo might just destroy it to spite me.

I might just have to fight him. What made him so confident, now? Was it Falling Blossom Emotion or Simple Domain? The Gojo clan wasn’t technically supposed to have access to the Simple Domain technique—it was designed by a school of unaffiliated Jujutsu Sorcerers and purposefully kept from the powerful clans in order to even the playing field. That, of course, wouldn’t stop someone like Gojo from being able to copy it just by seeing it with his Six Eyes.

I had done pretty much the same myself, with a dramatically weaker perception for cursed energy than he had.

“Fine,” I said. “We can fight. But on one condition: we won’t fight again until the Exchange Event.”

“Deal!”

I intended on turning this into a Binding Vow later on. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Gojo’s word—I just preferred this method when Jujutsu was on the table. It was good form, and built a good habit for dealing with sorcerers whom I didn’t trust.

An anti-domain technique would prove tricky, as the Domain was currently my preferred method of dealing with his Infinity. Would I be forced to improvise an anti-anti-domain technique, perhaps?

We finally arrived at the Fushiguro residence, a humble abode no bigger than any of the others around. I had to wonder how Toji earned enough to afford to live in this place, given that he was an uneducated hick from the countryside—to a non-sorcerer’s perception—and Mrs. Fushiguro had likely been sick for a while now, unable to work. I reached my enhanced senses into the house, and spied a construction uniform in Toji’s closet. That tracked.

Toji was at the door by the time we arrived at his gate, having likely detected us from far away with his enhanced senses. He opened the door and beckoned us in with a tilt of his head. Just then, Suguru returned my sword back to me.

We took our shoes off and entered. Just then, Yumeko ran down the stairs frantically, shouting as she did.

She then tripped over nothing at all and was about to make a landing so rough that it would break a non-sorcerer’s neck.

Toji caught her without even looking, flipping her bodily and making her land on her feet. “Ah! Thank you dear! But! You!” she pointed at me. I was currently in my ‘human’ form, having just been outside in public. “I don’t want my husband working for you anymore!”

Yumeko was a fit woman with short, messy hair. And clearly, a rather spirited personality. Only three weeks after being discharged, she was already up on her feet and risking her life.

Toji sighed.

“A deal was struck,” I said to her. “Thanks to us, you’re alive. And now he works for me again. That’s how it is.”

“I never asked for this!”

“To be alive?” I asked.

“Honey,” Toji said. “Please stop.”

“No! I don’t want you getting involved with these people. Sorcerers are bad news!” She then turned to me. “If my life is your bargaining chip, then… feel free to kill me!”

“Ignore her,” Toji said.

“Alright,” I said. I took off my glasses and relaxed my soul. My eyes returned to their usual blackness and my skin grew paler.

Yumeko screamed, hiding behind Toji.

“I thought you wanted to be killed,” I said to her.

“Stop it, Teira,” Shoko said. “She’s in recovery. And she’s still my patient, kinda, so don’t I have a say in whether you kill her or not? And besides, she’s pregnant. Be more gentle with her.”

Yumeko yelled. “What?! Uh?” She looked to Shoko then Toji repeatedly. “I mean…” she reddened.

“Ah,” Shoko looked down, shuffling awkwardly.

That was a rookie mistake on Shoko’s end. She had assumed enough personal familiarity with the subject that she had spoken out of turn.

“I knew,” Toji said evenly.

“Huh?!” his wife gasped, looking up at him while he wore an entirely neutral expression.

“I didn’t smell blood on you for two months,” Toji said. “No shit, I knew.”

“T-then, why didn’t you say anything?” Yumeko asked.

“Was waiting for you to make a decision or whatever,” Toji shrugged. He looked up at the ceiling.

“A decision?”

“Whether you’d keep the baby or not,” Toji said. “That decision’s got nothing to do with me.”

“I-it’s your child, Toji!”

“I’m sure it is—but it’s still up to you. Growing up where I did, I had my fill of people seeing their wives as destined carriers of their children, but I’ve seen the real world, too. I know women can choose if they want it or not,” he turned his gaze down at her and pulled her closer to him by her lower back. She yelped as he pulled her in. “The choice is what makes it special, Yumeko. It’s what makes it real. But whatever you choose, I’ll have your back, alright?”

“Toji…”

“Take your time.” He then turned to me. “Until then, let’s try and solve this problem of yours.

“Fushiguro-san,” I said. My voice tore her from her fixation on her husband—whose unconditional support truly irritated me, for how little it left to be desired. “You said that sorcerers are bad news. I know. I’ve worked all my life to make that no longer be the case. If you can count on anyone being an exception to your experience with sorcerers, whatever they may be, you can count on it being the four of us.”

I had no idea how much she knew about her husband’s history, but I wasn’t interested in exposing that at the moment. My eyes were on the job, which was trying to help solve Yumeko’s problem.

“Are you going to make him kill?” Yumeko asked.

“Maybe,” I said. Yumeko clenched her fists. There was fear in her, still. I could easily smell it. But the defiance in her frame tried its best to cover it up. “Whatever ends up happening, I won’t make that decision lightly. I aim to reform Jujutsu Society. And Toji will help. He owes me. He owes me more than you can imagine. Our bond of duty preceded your bond of love, but I am willing to share him. Be grateful for that.”

She swallowed.

“Quit scaring my wife,” Toji said. “And let’s get started. My show’s about to be on.”

000

We sat on the floor in the living room, around a low table where the sword laid. Yumeko was sitting cross-legged, her infant cradled on her lap. Megumi was busy trying to catch the black butterflies dancing in front of him, but his reflexes were quite underdeveloped. In terms of cursed energy, he had a high amount as it was—not nearly enough to outmuscle a grown non-sorcerer, but it boded well for his future. I predicted that by the time he was four, he could very likely stand his ground against grown-ups.

“So I’m also a sorcerer,” Yumeko said. “With a cursed technique, too?”

“Yup,” Gojo said, nodding while his arms were folded. “In terms of cursed energy, you’ve got above average stores, but the real magic is in that innate technique of yours. It basically turns you into a sinkhole for ambient cursed energy—the kind that is released by your average non-sorcerer during their daily life.”

“And I turn it into bad luck? For myself?” her mouth hung open in surprise. Then she grimaced. “Man, that sucks! What the heck is that?!”

Gojo shrugged. “You tell me. Cursed techniques aren’t meant to be deadly to oneself. But then again, that’s an unscientific way to look at things. It could be that you were just born with one of the many random mutations that make life unviable. Like a baby born without a heart or something crazy like that.”

Toji growled. “Don’t give me that shit.”

“Best case scenario,” Gojo continued. “You’ve been directing your misfortune inwardly either because you’re such a pure soul that can’t imagine hurting anyone else—“

“Screw that! I don’t want to be unlucky!” Yumeko shouted. “Help me! This is terrible news!”

Gojo nodded. “I figured that was the case. The other option is that you’re just an untalented hack who never properly learned Jujutsu. Good thing about that is that it can be fixed. So, let’s do a crash course on Cursed Energy Manipulation to start with—and give your baby over to his purehearted papa. Just in case.”

Yumeko grimaced and quickly handed Megumi over to Toji. Toji then snatched one of my butterflies from the air and handed it to his son, who grabbed it and started playing with its wings, trying to pull them apart.

Like father, like son.

“Then,” Gojo continued, “we can direct the technique to the sword. And the sword is special because…?” he looked pointedly at me.

I grinned. “It is completely made of me.”

The room was quiet. Confused, most likely. “Of you?” Shoko asked. “You mean by you?”

“Yes,” I said. “I made it. A lesser known fact about me is that I am a prolific cursed tool creator, owing to how easy it is for me to create the necessary subtances required to curse tools in the process. Due to this, I’ve created plenty of Special Grade cursed tools in my life. Mostly because I was desperate to create a weapon powerful enough to counter Gojo Satoru. This particular project, which I call the Maiden’s Heart, was also made by me. And also of me.”

“I knew I heard that right,” Gojo spat.

“It’s made of my body. All of it. The iron was gathered from my blood. The carbon in the steel came from my bones. The sheathe is made of my bones as well. The leather binding is made of my skin. Everything is me. Obviously, I utilized the skill of my family’s swordsmith to assemble it all into one weapon, but the raw materials were entirely produced from my body.”

Suguru was desperately rubbing the palm of his hands over his jacket, Gojo stuck his tongue out in disgust, and Shoko just shook her head.

“Why?” Shoko asked tiredly.

“Almost every cursed tool worthy of the name is made of people,” I said. “That’s usually where the technique comes from. I wanted the Cursed Tool to awaken my innate technique, and perhaps my special talent as well, that allows me to be such a standout among my clan members. Unfortunately—no pun intended—it did not do precisely that. Instead, it somehow became cursed, in the classical sense.”

I reached for the sword and pulled it out of my sheathe. My cursed output lurched by twenty percent. “It grants power, but in exchange, it’s liable to hurt its wielder. It’s an unlucky weapon. Cursed. This isn’t unprecedented when making cursed tools. At times, the end product can prove unpredictable, and not representative of the materials that went into creating it.” The result was rather random, and also not very useful for me. I could avoid the ‘bad outcomes’ that the sword subliminally nudged myself towards by simply honing my senses and avoiding them, but it was a distracting thing to do. My clansmen were far worse at using it. One promising warrior had lost four fingers on his left hand trying to use it.

I didn’t need the extra output either, so the sword was mostly stuck inside its scabbard, in its sealed form where it could not bring bad luck.

“I figured this might resonate well with Yumeko’s technique,” I said.

Yumeko blinked. “How can the sword be made of you when you’re sitting right there, whole and healthy?” Then she gasped. “You’re a ghost! I knew it!”

Gojo laughed.

“I’m not a ghost,” I said. “I can just grow back what I used on it.” Perhaps that had to do with why the Juchū Technique or my Cursed Trait had not been engraved in the sword.

“Enough bullshit,” Toji sighed. “Let’s just get started. Six Eyes—guide my wife. Yumeko, get started on the Cursed Energy Manipulation.”

Yumeko closed her eyes. “Alright, so I just have to meditate and sense my ki, right? I bet its in my stomach, right? And then, I just gotta… Uh…”

“No, you’re on the right track,” Gojo grinned.

I expected this process to take a while.

What I didn’t expect was for something to click, like the universe itself snapped into some unknowable configuration, all at once.

It was like space shattered like a mirror, only to abruptly snap back together, and—

Megumi cried.

Toji snarled in shock.

Suguru, Shoko, even Gojo were all hunched over, ready for action, their hearts beating like drums.

And I felt that same primal fear in my own chest, causing my heart to beat as well. My mind was hyperfocused on all of my senses, and I summoned a hail of sensory Juchū, expanding them across the entire neighborhood to try and search for threats, to forestall an inevitable misfortune that would claim my life.

“I feel something,” Yumeko muttered. “Dear—can you quite Megumi? He’s distracting me a little.”

“Yumeko,” I breathed. “Stop. Please.”

Anything could happen. The ground underneath us might give away from a build-up of stresses that had fractured the asphalt and the bedrock. A cable might snap suddenly from a telephone wire, hitting a house and causing a fire. A neighbor might have left the stove on for too long—

Danger was all around us.

“Hmmm,” Yumeko’s eyes were still closed. “I do feel something. I think… alright, so I was supposed to put it in the sword, right?” She reached for the table and tapped around for the sword. She found it and picked it up. “Alright—misfortune in!” Then in stilted English, “bad luck beam!”

The tip of the sword’s scabbard tapped against a fragile glass corner of the low coffee table, causing it to shatter instantly.

“Ah!” Yumeko yelped, throwing the sword away. Gojo threw his hand up, locking it in place with Infinity. A fraction of a second later, Toji—still holding a bawling Megumi—already reached for it. Gojo pulled it away from him with his technique.

The wave of horror finally passed.

“Ugh,” Yumeko looked at the table and clicked her tongue. “Nobody move—“

I summoned Juchū in the vague shape of vacuum-cleaners, and had them suck in the glass shards, “don’t bother,” I said. “Gojo.”

“The tool was cursed,” Gojo said. “She managed to direct it after all. After… awakening it.”

“Holy hell,” Shoko breathed. “I almost pissed my pants.”

 “Awakening it?” Yumeko asked. She looked around the room, and finally managed to sense the tension.

 I sighed, shaking my head. We weren’t going anywhere for a while.

000

After an hours-long interrogation, bottlenecked by Yumeko’s abysmal understanding of Jujutsu, we had finally managed to lock down some vital facts about her innate technique.

Firstly, and most importantly, in cursing Maiden’s Heart, she had burned out her technique for the time being. Gojo reported, and Yumeko corroborated, that her cursed technique was unresponsive. Gojo reckoned that it would take the span of several days to recover, and in the interim, Yumeko was free from her misfortune.

Maiden’s Heart had seemingly been affixed with a mark of cursed energy that turned it into a target for Yumeko’s singular use of her technique. She wasn’t able to keep feeding the technique, but whatever the hell she had done (and we really didn’t know what), it had worked.

The sword was very cursed now.

Held aloft by Gojo’s Infinity, it hovered between the four of us and Toji. Yumeko was putting Megumi to bed while we discussed amongst one another.

“I don’t sense that a tether has been formed or anything,” Gojo began. He pinched his chin, looking uncharacteristically serious as he examined the sword with all his focus. His black shades hung in the air next to his head, also held up by his Infinity. “Which is a shame. That’s what we were counting on—trying to shift the target of Yumeko’s Misfortune to an external object.”

“But she did,” Toji argued. “The sword’s cursed now, right?”

“The sword is cursed,” Gojo nodded. “But we haven’t really learned much from how the technique works, either—only that Yumeko burned it out. Probably because she’s too clumsy with her energy. She might have gone max output too quickly, or handled the technique in some other way that caused it to burn out. It’s a shame she can’t tell us what—your wife is seriously untalented at Jujutsu.”

“Shut up about my wife before I put my fist up your ass,” Toji growled.

“Scary,” Gojo remarked flippantly, all the while grinning. “Moving on—if the goal was to turn the sword into a long-term solution, a lightning rod for the misfortune, the result remains to be seen. Maybe Yumeko can leave more than one ‘mark’ for her Misfortune? Maybe this was a one-time investment of Misfortune, and the sword is now ‘filled’, so to speak? And we still don’t know if the reaction was so powerful because the sword itself was already cursed with misfortune from the start. But we have created a problem on our hands,” he spread his hands around the sword. “A truly spectacular problem, might I add,” Gojo’s grin widened. “This thing is mega-cursed. And Fushiguro-san’s situation is still rather precarious.”

“I’ll station a Juchū here from now on,” I said to Toji. “Using it, I’ll be tutoring your wife in Jujutsu in order to help her control her technique. Hopefully, that’ll prevent any more blowouts in the future.”

“Hmmm,” Gojo tilted his head, still looking at the sword. “I think that Yumeko’s misfortune will remain fixed on this sword for as long as the mark persists. So when the technique cools down again, it might still use this as the target. All that remains to be seen is how long the mark lasts, whether there are any range limits—you know, basic technique testing.”

He levitated the sword closer to Toji, who shook his head. “I don’t want that sword anywhere near my house.”

“Michiko,” I said. A rift in the air moved towards the sword, swallowing it up, Infinity and all.

“Ah!” Gojo cried out in surprise as the sword disappeared. I grinned smugly. Infinity was inviolable, but it remained weak against spatial transfer. That made sense. It couldn’t be penetrated, but it could be encompassed.

I resummoned the sword. “Is the mark still there?” I asked Gojo.

He hummed in displeasure at me before refocusing on the sword. “Yep. Still there. I’m guessing that rules out any range limits, too. Well, at least for the mark still persisting. Whether it continues being fed Misfortune or not remains to be seen, of course.”

I took the sword by its handle, and pushed it out the scabbard by an inch.

I felt my output increase by a whooping double.

And I could feel it increasing, too—

“I brought tea—whoops!”

Yumeko, who had entered the room with a tray of green tea, tripped over a bump in the carpet, causing scalding hot green tea to crash all over me.

That stung.

I shut the katana into its scabbard, and pushed it back into Michiko’s Timeless Sanctuary with a sigh before activating my Reverse Cursed Technique.

The sting of the hot liquid couldn’t compare to the indignity of having drinks spilled on me. Dammit.

“Goodness, are you okay? That was really hot!”

“Eh, don’t worry,” Gojo chuckled. “Ghosts can’t feel pain.”

 I summoned some Juchū to clean up after her.

“I thought…” Yumeko looked down nervously. Shoko put a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

“That wasn’t you, I think. It was the sword. Right, Teira?”

“Pretty much,” I said, trying to maintain my composure for Yumeko’s sake.

The Maiden’s Heart was a powerful weapon, but it was also entirely useless if this was how it was going to behave to its maker.

…It did have potential as a backhanded gift, though. The main effects were potent enough to label the sword a powerful Special Grade cursed tool, among the greatest in existence. I was sure Kamo Akihito or or Zen'in Naobito might accept it.

“That concludes our business, I suppose,” I said as my insectile minions streamed around Yumeko to discard of the broken cups and the washcloths soaked with green tea. Then, I summoned an ambassador Juchū and put a hand on its shoulder. “I’ll leave this here, for you.” I turned to Toji.

“I’m really sorry, Teira-chan,” Yumeko said. My irritation bled away and I nodded.

“It really wasn’t your fault.”

Our departure was mercifully swift after that. After a quick trip into the Timeless Sanctuary, I had a new change of clothes, and we were on our way back to Jujutsu High—or, more likely than not, a place to eat before making the trip back.

As we walked down the residential neighborhood, Gojo bumped my shoulder. “About our duel…”

“Somewhere out in the woods, yeah?”

“Let’s… cancel it,” he grinned widely. “Not because I’m scared, mind you. I just don’t think beating you without a large enough crowd to witness it will sting as badly for you, and just as you live to see me suffer, I can’t deny that it too fills my heart with so much joy. So let’s throw down in the Exchange Event instead. But, on one condition,” he raised a finger. “You stop talking smack about how you beat me with your Domain Expansion.”

He drove a hard bargain, but for the sake of pragmatism, I had to accept his offer. “You’ve got a deal.”