Chapter 75

Jujutsu High, Tokyo
10th September, 12:45 JST

Despite my growing disillusionment at reality post-high, I was enjoying myself.

This was also in spite of everything that had happened. My failure with Iori-senpai stung, and my dispensing discipline on Naobito’s kid had been irritating at the time, but that sting and irritation was eased by the revenge. That, and being able to bloody a rival’s nose without risking all-out war with the conservative faction.

Such occasions were worth their weight in gold, occasions in which I just flat-out wasn’t in the wrong for flexing my strength. And deep down, Naobito would wake up to understand this, too.

I was too strong for him to act the entitled old father about how I had treated his son. He had to swallow it, else risk the extermination of his clan. It would be easy for him to swallow it, too, because he knew how unacceptable his son had been.

I’d check up on that son of his later, as I was intensely curious to understand what the shrooms had shown him. I’d shake him down for that trip report later.

Apart from that, I was also seriously enjoying what I was sensing. Haruta fighting against Suguru, and somehow winning—for a while, at least.

The universe seemed to bend to protect Haruta and punish Suguru, which could only be the work of Shigemo Haruta’s cursed technique.

That boy had suddenly become extremely interesting to me. It was a shame that he was so cooperative and non-evil. He was definitely not nearly evil enough that I could justify scouring his flesh from his bones, and using those bones to create a cursed tool with his innate technique engraved into it.

It was a lot easier to carry around an amulet than an entire person, after all.

Still, that wasn’t necessary, and given how well he had performed in this stress-test against Suguru, he was more than effective enough to be worth the hassle of carrying his entire weight around. He was an order of magnitude worth that hassle.

Better yet would be training him to become an effective partner to Haruta, someone that didn’t have to be carried around while still contributing massively in a fight.

And in the meanwhile, Kobayashi Jun was proving to me, once again, why he was the ideal holder of Maiden’s Heart. I could almost see his future. He would be heaped with such accolades and praise that he would have no choice but to internalize just how strong he was. This internal understanding of his strength would give him the confidence to wield my cursed blade in time.

If not, then…

Well, I really didn’t want to destroy Maiden’s Heart, even though I had lied to Jun that I would. The waste was too massive to justify.

Ito Aoi was performing as expected. Her Grade One confirmation was in the bag, no matter who I had to bribe to make that a reality. If no Grade One was willing to step forward, I would make them.

The same went for Haruta. She was well deserving of Grade One now, and not just any type of Grade One. I knew that she had it in her to contend against Special Grade curses. She had dug far enough, with that Pink Scarab technique of hers, to unlock a new ceiling to her potential. She was still a novice, but only a novice among the truly powerful.

With Shigemo supporting her, becoming a de-facto Special Grade entity (for as long as his technique held) was far from impossible for Haruta.

It was a shame that Shoko had to miss out on all this, but she had made her choice.

Seeing all of the damage that Haruta had wrought, she had made the entirely correct choice by surrendering and avoiding damage.

Irritating. She might use this as a precedent to bow out of any tough fight. There was no telling how reinforced her cowardice would become after this.

Ito Aoi’s performance spoke for itself. Five Grade Ones and a battle on even footing against a Special Grade sorcerer was great enough on its own, and yet I had no clue how strong she could potentially become with that Simple Domain mastery of hers.

And all of a sudden, now Suzuki Yui was beginning to show off the depths of her malice as a Jujutsu Sorcerer. She was the closest person in my team to me, which lended me an ideal resolution to observe both her and that Black Flash she had landed on a gamble with her own life on the line.

And for a moment, she had become powerful enough to turn me into a fine red mist with a single punch. My base form, at least.

Zen'in Kazuya walked in front of me, somehow missing me despite not trying my best to hide. Instead, I had just positioned myself directly in his blindspot, all the while cloaking my energy as tightly as possible.

The yukata-wearing boy was scouting his surroundings for opponents when I pulled at the scruff of his robes.

He reacted by drawing his sword, spinning his body, and missing my neck by an entire head, as I had ducked right on time.

When he saw that it was me he had tried to cut, he jumped backwards and tightened his grip around his katana.

I read fear in him. Fear. Anger. Hatred.

Grief.

I had killed no Zen'in as of yet. He had no reason to hate me. Neither had I killed anyone that a boy like him would conceivably have been in contact with.

And he wouldn’t have learned of my run-in with Naoya. Communicating from the outside was strictly forbidden and controlled by Tengen’s barrier.

Zen'in Kazuya was emotionally invested in the Zen'in party-line, of treating me like a most hated foe.

What a waste of emotions. Cogs like him should recognize that they were cogs, and stop feeling emotionally invested in the greater machine. What was the point in that? He was a cog, but still a human.

Thinking about this from my perspective, and of his position from the perspective of another Hibana clanmember, I had to acknowledge that his mindset was convenient. It was convenient to the people in power, and to me.

The confused tumble of negative emotions slowly seemed to disappear, giving way for a growing stench in the boy’s brain, a familiar stench that many had directed towards me in my clan.

It was just hatred.

“Nothing to say to me?” I asked him. I could feel that he did. All the words in the world were held back by his willpower and discipline. To speak to me was to view me as human, and he would not make that mistake.

Bloodlust.

He wished to kill me.

If he knew that he could get away with it, then he would kill me. Just like Naoya.

I felt Michiko stir in my spirit. She wanted to erase this threat. I forbade her.

“I’ll give you one free shot,” I said. I then pointed at my throat.

“Swear it,” he instantly responded.

Before I did, the world suddenly expanded, folded, and ate me whole.

I was inside utter darkness. I could only see Michiko’s cloaked form standing in front of me.

“We need to talk,” she said to me.

“I have everything under control—“

“I don’t mean the boy,” she growled. “You haven’t cried to me. Why?”

I blinked.

Right. Our… crying sessions.

“It has been one month,” she continued. “You were on the verge of crying to me when you began consuming your drugs. Then, you stopped altogether.”

“I’m… feeling better,” I said. “Do you have something against that?”

“Your lies disgust me, Teira-chan. You don’t feel better at all. You feel worse than ever before.”

I rolled my eyes. “I told you not to speak to me while I’m high—“

“Because then I might tease out from you all the new painful thoughts you’ve created, only to hide them away inside some compartment in your mind and never to revisit them. Because that is what you have been doing, Teira-chan. I can sense it, because I know you.”

I closed my eyes and clenched my teeth as her words pulled on my psychology mercilessly. Painfully.

The drugs made me feel younger than I actually was, and somehow wholer.

And therefore, there was more for my memories to damage. More to destroy and corrupt and to age up once again.

I had doomed myself without even knowing it. There was a flood of emotions that had built up right under my nose, turning me into a ticking time bomb of emotional instability.

I had to cry to Michiko, I had to—

No.

I just had to take control.

“It is a fool’s errand to keep these feelings repressed,” Michiko went on. “It might lead to your death, Teira-chan. A mountain of sorrow smothering you to death.”

“There must be something beyond this,” I said. “A step forward that doesn’t involve doing the same thing I’ve done since I was eight years old, once every two weeks.”

“And what is wrong with giving me your pain?” she asked.

“Because as I do, I get better at making more pain for you,” I argued.

“No matter what you do, you will never be rid of your pain,” Michiko said. “That’s why I’m here: to eat it all for you. As you get better at summoning your pain, you are merely venting it more efficiently, but the source, the soil of your pain, cannot disappear for as long as you remember what made you into the person that you now are.”

The person that you now are.

As if this was the last step in my evolution.

As if this was the ultimate me.

My emotional numbness disappeared, and I felt it all—for just a moment.

The sum total of all the pain that my ceaseless drug-induced introspection had generated. Seeing my past in a new light, with lenses of child-like innocence.

Hidden away conveniently, waiting for the moment to burst forth.

And then, once I cried, it would just build up again, in an endless cycle. Never had the fractal nature of the universe induced such despair in me until now.

I wanted out of this cycle.

I wanted to be better.

Just as much, I didn’t want to be better. I wanted to suffer.

I wanted to see how far my suffering would take me, because I was good at suffering. I could handle it. Michiko didn’t know, but I could handle it.

“You can’t make demands of me,” I said quietly. “Our binding vow was never a two-way deal. I promised you safety from me in exchange for your obedience, that I won’t kill you as long as you obeyed my every word.”

“Then what will you do?”

What will I do? The options were to cry and vent to Michiko about all the painful things that the psychedelics had taught me—only for me to compartmentalize and promptly forget all those things—or to simply… not do that, and see what happened.

Perhaps this would help my psychology reach a stable point, finally? Was that what awaited me, a mastery of my emotions and actions?

That felt like an unaccountably attractive option, compared to bawling my eyes out every fortnight.

And besides, there was no telling how healthy this current set-up was for me. At the end of the day, while Michiko was a benefit to my psychology, she was still a cursed spirit, and every time I cried to her, I felt eight years old again.

Still, at eight years old, I had grown the calluses necessary to withstand my grief.

Now, something about the drugs I had taken had shaved those calluses away.

I wasn’t sure that I could handle another crying session.

“Pardon me,” Michiko said. “I thought I was speaking to the Teira that finally saw an end to her monstrosity, a Teira that wished to lead Jujutsu Society to an era of peace. Cursed spirit I may be, I still care more about blessing you than cursing the world, but if you wish to curse the world, then I will join you. No matter what you decide, Teira-chan, I will obey you. I will kill whoever you wish for me to kill. Even Gojo Satoru, should you need it.”

“I don’t need that,” I said. “Right now, at least.”

“I would eat your guilt and despair such that you would never succumb to it. The longer you marinate in this poison, the more control you will lose. I will do what I can to shield you from the consequences.”

“I don’t need that,” I repeated.

Michiko could only see two paths for me: one that returned me to the status quo, and another that would see me transform into a monster in truth. Either way, she was happy, as long as I did what I pleased and didn’t hurt myself.

I disagreed with this simplistic judgment on principle, but I needed more time to think, more time to—

“But you will, in time. This is the path you’ve chosen. It is a fine path.”

I clenched my fists, preparing to rip a chunk out of Michiko for fucking with my brain like this.

Try as I might, the impending violence never left the planning phase of my mind. I could just order her to injure herself and she would, but even that felt impossible to me.

I had a soft-spot a mile wide for this monster.

Now, I was even softer on her.

“I told you to shut up whenever I’m high,” I said, knowing that I was as sober as I could get, currently. With each discrepancy I noticed in my brain’s chemical composition, I corrected it with either cursed energy where a subtractive action was needed, or positive energy when I needed to replenish or heal nerve terminals and other sequelae of MDMA and mephedrone’s neurotoxicity.

I still very much felt psychologically altered, but all that was merely due to the aftershock of how massive my high had been.

And having chased that high away, I was left with an acute regret that I had even bothered in the first place.

Michiko was right. I was not doing well at all.

More devastatingly, I was doing badly in a way that could easily become the problem of others, because my humanity mattered little in the face of my existence as a walking military prowess.

A military prowess that could think and—very rationally—identify that killing my rivals one after another until they were all dead was the only thing that made sense in the world.

Gojo couldn’t stop me. While he spent the minutes, to perhaps an hour, fighting my real body—and perhaps even losing—I would still have the use of all of my billions of Juchū. I could wipe out all of Japan to a man, let alone a few hundred to a thousand Society sorcerers.

Nothing, and no one, could save Jujutsu Headquarters, the Big Three, and the holdout clans of Jujutsu Society that could potentially refuse to bend the knee to me.

Nothing.

What would it take for me to decide to walk down this path?

I sensed, immediately, that it was the wrong question to ask.

The right question was: what could stop or dissuade me from doing the obvious—that was, winning?

Without another word, Michiko returned me to the world, and Zen'in Kazuya was long gone, running at top speed away from a battle that he had only pretended to be ready for.

Without my presence, I could sense the sum total of the utter terror that he had been bottling up.

It was a shame with him. He had given himself up to the Zen'in clan, mentally, bodily and spiritually. He was nothing but an extension of the elders’ wills. I could smell it in him. His only pride in his individuality was in how much better he was at serving the Zen'in clan’s bottom line than the rivals he had in his clan. Other than that, his identity was more Zen'in than Kazuya.

And true to that identity, he was entirely willing to kill me and take the fall for it if it benefited his clan. He hadn’t said a word to me, but that intention of his was as clear as day to my senses. He would kill me given half a chance.

Not in the way that Naoya would kill me for daring to be an independent woman. He would kill me because I stood in the way of Zen'in greatness. Such was his mode of thinking.

This made him ideal for my purposes.

For now, I was done playing the Cursed Spirit Battle Royale.

The real show would start tomorrow, and it would mark my decisive victory over Jujutsu Society.

No more agonizing about which path to take. There was no need for me to choose. I just had to do what was expected of me—to win—and react accordingly to the reaction of others.

Go with the flow, but don’t fight against the ugly options too much.

It doesn’t matter how I win, as long as I win.

000

Jujutsu High, Tokyo
10th September, 12:46 JST

Cursed Rhythm and Poetry was an art, not a science.

There was science in art, especially music. Daiki knew that easily enough from having leafed through books on music theory from public libraries.

It was boring crap all meant to explain the vibe that Daiki could grasp intuitively, without words. Just sounds. Humming. Beat-boxing if the need arose.

With these tools, Daiki cooked up a rudimentary instrumental track for his song, using a synthesizer that Taku had drawn for him.

“Do, re, mi, fa…” he kept clicking through the keys to find the right notes, and then checked them against the melody that he had in mind.

After a minute of experimentation, he sensed that he had the sequence of notes down pat, but not quite the sound that he wanted. He switched through different instrument settings until he landed on… some sound he couldn’t really put his finger on, but it sounded right.

That was just the intro.

A random idea occurred: vocals on top of the intro before the beat drops and the real song begins.

“These walls… have eyes…” Daiki hummed. “No. If these walls could talk…” he shook his head.

It needed to be something freakier.

“Say your last prayer…” Daiki began. “Today you are a player…”

Unfortunately, the idea was too big for Daiki’s musical facilities. In short, he just didn’t have the voice to pull this off.

“Aomori-san,” he waved her over to him. With her arms folded, she approached him.

“What do you need?”

“I need you to sing.”

Aomori was, thankfully, not completely lacking in common sense. In fact, her voice was pretty acceptable, a solid 5.5 out of 10. Not good, but the important thing was that it wasn’t bad.

Somehow, as they worked on this musical piece in the middle of a forest filled with cursed spirits, Daiki felt the output of his cursed energy ramp up at a constant pace. Taku-chan’s art constructions were specifically created to boost Daiki’s cursed technique output.

In a way, that made them ideal partners. Within the bounds of their respective spheres of art, they could do anything.

“Da ra ra ra ra,” Daiki muttered, loosening his tongue as he plotted out the freestyle in his head.

This was the first time he had ever created a background OST, but he was excited to get this show on the road.

He turned every speaker up, and these were magic speakers. Once Daiki’s Cursed Rhythm and Poetry took hold, they would be extra magic. 

Aomori’s mastered vocals filled the air, backed by his instrumental intro.

And then, Daiki spat.

000

Nakamura Daiki of Tokyo Jujutsu High stood on a stage in a dark room lit by multicolored lights, giant speakers behind him belting out loud, bassy sounds.

Haruta was just one girl in the massive crowd of faceless watchers, having come to experience this concert, this… rap.

But, why? I don’t think I even like music to the extent that I’d…

Haruta closed her eyes and focused, ignoring the lyrics as she groped her way towards some form of understanding of her situation. She felt like there was something she was forgetting, some pertinent information that would make this day make more sense.

Where am I? She opened her eyes and looked around.

Then she saw her. The tall form of Teira, dressed in a black kimono, her black eyes staring into hers. Her mouth was a thin line.

“Teira-sama!” she shouted, but her voice was drowned out by Nakamura.

It was then that she remembered who she was, where she was, and what this might be.

She honed in on his lyrics, grasping for more clues.

“Better believe I’m a player,
MC slayer, illest rhymes in Japan, you better pay up
My pockets get bigger, my money gon’ stay-up
Point my tool at Kyoto fools, they duck
Y’all getting murdered tonight, for certain
When Aomori’s Domain Expands on y’all, it’s curtains,
For there ain’t no one that can beat her mighty tower,
When she, me, and Taku join forces, we got power!”

The world flashed white and the confusion disappeared, as well as the large crowd, the stage, the concert, everything.

All Haruta experienced now was pain, and a dark stone brick hallway lined with flaming torches in equal intervals, and more pain.

So much pain.

Haruta wanted to give up. She wanted to—

“Urgh…”

She turned her head to where Shigemo was, writhing in agony. She felt a flare of panic at seeing the state of him.

Bossing him around and dictating every aspect of his life was something that Haruta could easily swallow, but seeing him hurt due to how much she had used him, inspired a far more vivid feeling of guilt and shame in her heart.

But all that was far secondary to the floating box of text that hovered a few feet before her eyes.

Welcome to the Tower of Doom Version Alpha
Story and gameplay by Aomori Sakura
Art and items by Ishikawa Takumi
Music by Nakamura Daiki

You are in the Domain known as the Tower of Doom Version Alpha.

Two paths lie ahead of you: the path of escape and the path of victory.

To escape, you must find a staircase that leads to a lower floor and brave the difficulties there. Or, you may simply surrender, as this barrier is still protected by Tengen’s charm.

To win, you must find a staircase that leads to an upper floor, defeat monsters, and then the boss monster. Once you have done this, you may proceed to the dungeon core room where you may destroy us, the creators of the Tower of Doom.

Monsters will occasionally drop loot that will aid you in your travels.

If you have any feedback, and I mean any feedback whatsoever about this Domain’s game design, then we implore you to write a long and detailed letter, and then shove that letter where the sun doesn’t shine. This is version alpha. I know it’s bad. Don’t talk to me about it.

This was a domain, then. Haruta absorbed the necessary information only. Two paths, one up and one down. The downward path led to escape while the upward path led to victory.

The downward path existing was a sign that this Domain was… weak. Domains were meant to be inescapable. That, and the fact that she was still alive. No sure-hit had struck her as of yet, which rendered the Simple Domain rather useless in this situation.

Escape could potentially mean admitting defeat in the Exchange Event’s first round. There was no telling whether or not one would appear on the inside or the outside of Tengen’s barrier if one chose this route.

Thus, the only option was to climb, and win. 

The window soon disappeared once she was done reading.

She released her Juchū, filling the air with external sensory organs to better understand her surroundings, and the approaching threat.

He used larger Juchū to help her up to her feet, and then just to stay up. She stepped closer to Shigemo’s near-corpse.

Then, she raised her fists.

“Can you talk?” Haruta had wanted to ask.

Instead, what had come out was “Guh—“ then, she gagged on her blood and saliva. Then, she coughed.

Shigemo’s glazed eyes looked up to her, and he…

He grinned.

Then he chuckled. That sudden expansion of his chest instantly ended his mirth, and his expression twisted into agony.

The threats arrived, and music began to play. Modern, bassy music that reminded her of that bizarre imaginary concert she had just been treated to.

Skeletons.

They were just human skeletons. Cursed spirits could take on myriad shapes, but this was shockingly underwhelming and well within a person’s imagination. The latter was a sign that these were not spirits, but rather shikigami.

More and more clues of her situation rolled in as the skeletons arrived. She sent her Juchū at them, not bothering to fight with her real body.

The skeletons were extremely fragile. Within seconds, they all collapsed, and then disappeared.

One skeleton disappearing flashed with a bright blue light. In that skeleton’s place, a glass bottle of some kind of red liquid with a cork stopper appeared.

Another window appeared before her eyes.

Ding! Greater Health Potion gained!

This—what the hell did you do to my system? The chance that a skeleton drops a health potion, much less a Greater Health Potion, is astronomically low, this isn’t supposed t—

I can’t take it back what the fuck—

The window disappeared.

The bottle was shaped like a heart, too awkward to stand on its own, so it laid on its side.

No way, she thought.

Excitement, wariness, and bafflement filled her heart at the sight of this object, which reminded her only of something that could exist in fiction.

In video games.

She looked at Shigemo’s face to confirm her suspicion.

By the time Geto Suguru had them both dead to rights, Shigemo had only two miracles left. One had now been used to separate them from Geto. This was the Domain that they had now found themselves in—one that also hadn’t instantly killed them, which Haruta would take as a win.

The other…

…the last miracle was gone as well. This filled Haruta with the confidence to have one of her Juchū retrieve the ‘healing item’ for her.

She drank from it.

Within seconds, her body knitted itself back together as though the Reverse Cursed Technique had somehow burst out from the liquid.

She didn’t drink all of it. She only drank enough to return her to fighting form, sparing the rest—half of the bottle’s volume—for Shigemo. She gently poured it into his mouth, and it was all he could do to swallow the bare trickles that landed in his mouth at first.

Once the first drops entered his system, it became easier and easier to give him the rest.

Finally, the potion was empty. The glass bottle disintegrated once the last drop left it.

Shigemo sighed in relief. That sigh of relief became a sustained groan that soon turned into a scream.

He stood up and ran around, shouting more.

Suddenly, he whirled on his feet and faced Haruta. “No more! No more! I almost died, you crazy fucking—”

She put a hand over his mouth and shushed him. “We’ll talk about that later when we’re not—“

Shigemo laughed at her face. “Fuck this. I quit.”

He disappeared, just like that.

Regrettable as it was that she had bruised her relationship with Shigemo, now that she had used up all of his miracles, he was as good as useless anyway. He’d only get in the way in her next fight, and now, without him, she could include more features in the Pink Scarab suit.

Thinking about the fights ahead, and especially her fight with Geto, she wondered if it was wise to chase him now that she had lost her ace in the hole.

She considered the prospect of cutting her losses against a far superior foe, and then promptly shot it down with prejudice.

Someone had to lose this fight for her to be satisfied, and it really didn’t matter who, but what she wouldn’t do, was to run away from that guy.

No way in hell.