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Every urban sorcerer knows that hospitals keep them in business. There’s no greater hotbed of pain and anxiety; hospital curses spawn quickly and even more quickly get out-of-hand. Some lower-grade sorcerers even wear their local hospital’s volunteer uniform when they go in just so long-term patients won’t grow suspicious of seeing the same faces over and over again. Yuuta, like any sorcerer with half a second’s experience, knows that.
It’s precisely because he should’ve been able to recall that knowledge when it became relevant that he wishes he’d seen this coming.
A monkeylike curse clings to the receptionist’s stooped back. A little boy wearing a face mask itches at his arms, not realizing his skin is crawling with a swarm of curses like horseshoe crabs. A girl in a middle school uniform with a cap covering her bare head is tailed by a four-armed curse as tall as a grown man. It’s unusual to see so many in such a small space, but they’re nothing new. Yuuta sits a few seats away from the horseshoe crab boy just because he knows that watching him will make him feel itchy, but he’s not concerned. Curses can sense his cursed energy just as he can sense theirs, and few of them ever want to test their luck.
But a tug at his sleeve tells him he should’ve thought through all of the ways this could go wrong.
“Tou-chan,” his son’s sleepy voice pipes up. “Why does that lady have a monkey?”
“A…what?”
Yuuta feels like he’s walked into a freezer, the shock of cold that shoots up his spine is so strong. He should be trying to remain calm, not to look shocked – but Shinsuke’s face falls, no doubt noticing that he isn’t, and his curiosity turns to apprehension.
“The lady in the front,” he says, pointing in the direction of the receptionist. “She has a monkey.”
This shouldn’t even be surprising. Shinsuke is just getting to the age when these sorts of things start to manifest. But Yuuta has never really thought about whether or not his children would ever see curses, and he’s entirely unprepared to explain them to a five-year-old.
“It’s…not a real monkey,” Yuuta says cautiously.
“Why?”
“It’s…um,” Yuuta flounders, “I’ll tell you when we go outside.”
Shinsuke looks up at him, eyes wide and a slight frown dimpling his pudgy cheeks. He scans the room; his eyes land on the taller curse who stands over the middle school girl. “There are weird people here,” he murmurs.
“Shin-chan,” Yuuta says gently, “that’s not very nice.”
“He has too many arms,” Shinsuke tells him. “And there’s bugs on that boy.”
By now, the middle school girl is giving Shinsuke an odd look, and it’s probably not long before horseshoe crab boy will catch on, too. Maki’s gone, back in the recovery room with their daughter because they’d only allowed one person in, and he can’t wait for her to jump in with an explanation. But he can’t very well just brush off the question, either.
“Wanna go for a walk?” he asks.
Shinsuke nods, his head heavy against Yuuta’s shoulder. It’s early for him to be awake, and he’s barely keeping his eyes open, but he’d been so anxious that they hadn’t wanted to make him wait until daytime to see his sister. Still, he’s much too tired to walk, and Yuuta thinks it’s better that way. He’s anxious, too – he’d been briefly convinced that Tsugumi’s emergency appendectomy was going to send him to an early grave – and it all feels safer when he’s holding Shinsuke.
“Shin-chan?” he asks once they’re out in a deserted section of the hallway.
He sleepily grabs a fistful of Yuuta’s shirt. “Mm?”
“Do you remember what mama and papa do for work?”
“Fight bad guys,” Shinsuke answers.
“Kind of.” Yuuta can’t help but chuckle at that answer, nor wonder what the twins’ preschool classmates think when one of them mentions what they think their parents do all day. “But the bad guys we fight, they’re not people.”
“Mm?”
“They’re more like…” Yuuta trails off. ‘Monsters,’ the obvious comparison would go, but he has a feeling that would have the opposite of the desired effect. He wracks his brain for a moment. “You know Pokémon?”
Shinsuke nods. “Like on the cards.”
“Exactly.” Yuuta chuckles. “You know those little creatures on the cards?”
“Mmhm.” Shinsuke gives him a questioning look. “You fight Pokémon?”
“Not quite.” He chuckles at the image – Maki, brandishing Playful Cloud, running after a fleeing Bulbasaur. “They’re not exactly Pokémon. That’s just…kind of what they look like.”
They’ve reached the end of the hallway now, and the door to a deserted terrace adjacent to the cafeteria, but – somehow – it’s not locked. He takes a seat, wrapping his jacket around Shinsuke against the early-morning cold.
“Tou-chan,” Shinsuke says plaintively, “I don’t get it.”
“Those creatures are called curses,” he goes on.
That, Shinsuke seems to understand. “They look scary.”
“They can be,” Yuuta agrees, stroking his hair. “But most people can’t even see them.”
“But they were everywhere,” Shinsuke protests.
“Only if you can see them.”
“You see them,” he points out.
“I do,” Yuuta agrees. “Mama can see them if she wears special glasses.”
“I don’t have glasses.” This seems to confuse Shinsuke. “You don’t have glasses either.”
“Nope,” Yuuta chuckles. “That’s just Mama.”
“Why?”
“She’s special.”
“Okay.”
“And people who can see curses,” he goes on, “for a lot of us, our job is to protect people from them.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re bad guys.”
Shinsuke peers up at Yuuta from beneath his jacket. “Why?”
“They hurt people.”
Shinsuke frowns. “All of them?”
“They’re…” Yuuta trails off, wondering if he’d made a mistake in wording it that way. “Some of them are just annoying,” he deflects. “Like the monkey one. I bet that one just felt weird.”
“Like how?”
“Like, mm…maybe it felt like the lady was wearing a really heavy backpack and she couldn’t take it off.”
“Oh.”
“Some of them are like that. They don’t hurt people, but we still don’t want them.”
Shinsuke frowns. “Are there nice ones?”
It’s such a Shinsuke question to ask that Yuuta almost laughs. “I wish there were.”
“But there’s not?”
“Well…curses are made out of bad feelings.” Close enough. “So it would be kind of hard for one to be nice.”
“Made out of feelings?” Shinsuke echoes.
“It’s hard to explain.” Which isn’t an excuse his son will accept, he’s sure. “But…when people are mad, or hurt, or they remember something sad, uh…that’s when curses get made.”
Shinsuke’s eyes widen. “When I get sad, it makes curses?”
“Um…well…”
Kids, Yuuta has learned since his were old enough to ask questions, have a way of hitting on the simplest questions with the most complicated answers. Their accuracy is utterly pinpoint when it comes to figuring out exactly what he doesn’t know how to explain.
“That’s really complicated,” he admits. “But no.”
“But you said…” Shinsuke trails off mid-sentence.
“I said?” Yuuta prompts.
But Shinsuke, for whatever reason, doesn’t press. “Are there lots of them?”
“What, curses?”
“Mmhm.”
“Yeah,” Yuuta tells him, adjusting his jacket for better wind protection. “There are.”
“Can Tsu-chan see them?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“What happens when you fight them?”
“They go away,” Yuuta replies.
Or something like that. Let him believe, Yuuta figures, that it’s as simple as that, and that the curse never wins; never let the thought cross his mind that one day, his parents might not come back.
“Okay.”
“You don’t have to be scared of them,” he says. “Mama and I, we’re good at getting rid of them.”
And everybody else Shinsuke considers family, too. He’s lucky that way, surrounded from birth by the best in their field.
“Okay,” Shinsuke repeats.
“But the thing is that most people don’t know about curses,” Yuuta goes on. “And if you told them, they might get really scared.”
“Yeah,” he agrees.
“So maybe if you see somebody with a curse, don’t tell them.”
“Like the bug boy?”
“Exactly like the bug boy.”
“I won’t tell.”
**
“You have a minute?”
Maki gives Yuuta a questioning look. “Now?”
“I know,” he says under his breath. “It’s just…important.”
She looks over at Tsugumi, fast asleep against too-big pillows, and Shinsuke, sitting patiently beside the bed in a chair because the doctor had given him a sour look when he had tried to climb in with her. Then she turns, getting the nurse’s attention. “Can my husband and I step out for a second?” she asks.
“Of course,” the nurse replies, smiling sympathetically, and Maki sighs, following Yuuta out the door.
“This better actually be an emergency,” she says, a little annoyed.
“I know.” Yuuta leans back against the wall beside her. “I wouldn’t have asked if it wasn’t. It’s just, uh…” he scratches at the back of his neck. “Earlier, in the waiting room…”
Maki looks over at him raising an eyebrow. “What?”
“…Shinsuke saw curses.”
Her eyes widen. She swears under her breath.
“I tried to explain things a little, but he’s going to ask questions, so…I thought you needed to know right away.” He rubs at his temple. “Sorry I had to tell you like this.”
Maki wonders when her heartrate picked up so much speed. “Thanks,” she says faintly. “For the heads-up.”
“You okay?”
“Why would I not be? We knew this would probably happen.”
“Just wanted to make sure.”
“Thanks.” Maki pauses to inhale, and on the exhale, she reaches for Yuuta’s hand, an instinct in moments of doubt that she’s not bothering to suppress. “What a day, huh?”
Yuuta can only manage a shuddery chuckle in response. “How’s Tsugumi?”
“About as good as she could be.” Maki threads her fingers through Yuuta’s. “She’s a tough one.”
“Gets it from you.”
“Recovery’s gonna be a nightmare, though.”
“Yeah,” Yuuta sighs. “Probably.”
“And Shinsuke?”
“Worried sick.”
“About Tsugumi or the curse thing?”
“Tsugumi, thankfully.”
“What exactly did you tell him?”
Yuuta smiles sheepishly. “It’s a long story.”
“Quick version?”
“Pokémon were involved.”
“Pokémon, huh?” Maki manages to crack a tiny smile. “That’s…a way to put it.”
“My alternative was ‘monsters,’” he tells her. “Didn’t want to make it worse.”
“Smart.” Shinsuke is an exceedingly sensitive child; Maki owes at least three-quarters of her recently-learned tact to that fact. “You holding up okay?”
“Ask me again in a few hours.”
“Yeah,” Maki sighs. “I thought so.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“She’s fine now,” she says softly. “Everything went well.”
“I know, but what if it hadn’t?”
Maki shrugs. “No point in asking.”
“And what about Shinsuke?”
“Yeah,” Maki concedes, sighing. “That one’s harder.”
**
“Is Tsu-chan gonna make a curse?”
Maki startles from her paperwork at the question. Shinsuke, not waiting for an answer, crawls up onto the couch beside her and – as he often does when he wants something – stares.
“Why,” she asks, “would you think she was going to?”
“’Cause,” he says.
“Because why?”
“’Cause tou-chan says people make curses when they get hurt,” he explains. “And Tsu-chan got hurt really bad.”
“She’s not hurt, bug,” Maki tries to reassure him. “She had to get something taken out of her stomach because it was making her sick.”
“But she says it hurt,” he protests.
“Well, it did,” Maki concedes, “but she’s getting better.”
“But is she gonna make a curse?”
“No, bug. No curse.”
“No curse,” Shinsuke repeats, then brightens. “Okay.”
He runs off, probably to share the news with his sister, before she can even think of a reply. Not surprising, really. He’s an inquisitive kid, always figuring out things that shouldn’t be nearly as obvious to a five-year-old, but he won’t bother collecting answers if he can’t share them with his sister. Faintly, Maki wonders if she was ever like that; she doubts it. If she ever was, she can’t remember.
She shoves that thought aside. She has one child recovering from emergency surgery and one who’s had his entire world thrown off-axis, and the last thing she needs to add to that piling-up heap of problems is her own past.
An outpatient operation isn’t enough to spawn a curse, she answers silently when he leaves. It takes months or years for that much cursed energy to pile up. But she’s glad she didn’t have to explain that – how misery builds and builds. He’s too young to forget how to smile.
(She had been, too. But her twins – she swears on her life that they’ll never stop laughing.)
**
Subtlety and tact are concepts that, unfortunately for anyone who’d like to instruct him, get rather lost on Okkotsu Shinsuke.
“Kazuki-san,” he says out of the blue, politely setting aside his plush whale to give the babysitter his full attention. His parents hadn’t wanted him to tag along to Tsugumi’s post-op appointment now that they know he sees the curses there, so for once, he has his beloved babysitter all to himself. “Can you see curses?”
Kazuki, taken aback, blinks. “Um,” she stammers, “well, yes, I can.”
Apparently satisfied, and apparently unconcerned about the fact that his parents had expressly instructed him not to talk about curses outside of his family lest he accidentally inform somebody uninitiated of their existence, Shinsuke nods. He picks up his whale again and, for a moment, simply stares at it. Kazuki, kneeling on the opposite side of the low table, looks bewildered.
“Shin-chan,” she asks, “why do you want to know that?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Shin-chan?” she prompts again.
“Tsu-chan says she doesn’t see them,” he says sullenly.
Kazuki’s expression softens. “You wanted to know if I did because she can’t?”
“She says she wants to see,” he tells her. “But she doesn’t.”
“Oh,” she says softly. “I see.”
**
“Kazuki-chan told me you’re worried about Tsugumi.”
Shinsuke, half-asleep, blinks up at Maki when she comes in, but he doesn’t really seem to register what she’s saying, nor does he reply.
“You don’t need to,” she says, sitting at the edge of the bed beside him. He’s still unresponsive, looking up at her with glassy eyes. “You sleepy?”
“No,” he answers.
“Oh. All right.” She smooths her hand through his hair. “But you don’t have to worry about Tsugumi, okay?”
“Okay,” he says quietly.
“There’s nothing wrong with her,” Maki tells him, and thinks to herself that her mother probably would’ve fallen over dead before she’d have had this conversation with Mai at Shinsuke’s age. Her fist clenches around his comforter. “It doesn’t matter if she can see curses or not.”
“She’s sad,” Shinsuke protests.
“I know, Shin-chan. But she’s okay.” There’s nothing they can do for a little case of feeling left out except try to hammer it into the twins’ heads that nothing is wrong with either of them. “Someday she’ll find out that she’s good at things you aren’t, too. It’s just how life works.”
He doesn’t answer, blank-faced as he stares up at her, and Maki takes that as her cue to go.
“Sleep tight, bug,” she whispers, kissing his forehead.
“G’night, Mama.”
**
“I wanna go to school.”
“Tsu-chan, that’s not a good idea,” Yuuta automatically replies.
“It doesn’t hurt,” Tsugumi insists.
He turns to kneel in front of her, then lifts Tsugumi’s chin to look up at him and shakes his head fondly. “Are you sure, or are you saying that because you just want to go back to school?”
“I’m sure!” Tsugumi insists. “I feel fine!”
“Tsu-chan, they cut your tummy open,” he protests, wording it as delicately as he can while retaining the gravity he knows will make Tsugumi listen. “You really have to rest.”
“But it doesn’t hurt anymore.”
“Even if it doesn’t,” he says patiently.
“Tou-chan, I’m fine!”
“We can have yakiniku,” he offers, grasping at anything he thinks will convince Tsugumi to forget about going back to school three days after an emergency operation. She truly is her mother’s daughter. “I’ll go get it from that place you really like.”
“But I got better,” she protests, dangerously close to frustrated tears. “And Shin-chan is going.”
“It takes longer than three days to get better after you get that sick, Tsugumin.”
“I’m better now!”
“Tsugumi-“
He stops mid-sentence when Tsugumi grabs at the hem of her shirt. He doesn’t realize what she’s doing, though, until she pulls it up over her stomach.
“See?” she asks, pointing to the unblemished skin around her incision. “It went away.”
Yuuta blinks a couple of times. It doesn’t change what he sees – there’s no scar, no sutures. Not even a mark. It looks exactly as it had before her appendectomy.
“Tsugumi,” he asks, too shocked to be suspicious, “how did that happen?”
“I dunno.” She shrugs. “But it doesn’t hurt anymore.”
“Did you take out your stitches?”
“Mm-mm.” She shakes her head fervently. “It just stopped hurting. Then when I took my bath, the stitches were gone.”
But she can’t…didn’t…
He’s seen enough reverse cursed technique to know what it looks like, but there’s absolutely no way that a child as bright as Tsugumi would’ve refrained from commenting on the hordes of curses at the hospital if she could see them. It just doesn’t make sense to think she could’ve inadvertently mastered such an advanced technique when, as far as anyone knows, she can’t even do that. But…
“Do you remember when it stopped hurting?”
“Yesterday morning,” she says.
He thinks back. She’d been resting all day; he can’t think of any opportunity she would’ve had to have gotten herself healed somehow. “Right when you got up?”
She nods. “It hurt at night,” she tells him, “so Shin-chan came in.”
“And slept in your room?”
Tsugumi nods.
“I see.”
“So?” she perks up. “Can I go to school?”
**
She goes to school.
“I’ll explain later,” Yuuta whispers when Maki gives him her Okkotsu-Yuuta-are-you-out-of-your-damn-mind look.
Which he does. Not very succinctly, and with much throat-clearing, but does nevertheless.
“So, um,” he finishes, “I think we have a bigger problem on our hands than we realized.”
Maki shoots him another look. “Ya think?”