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It was an ordinary, unassuming afternoon when Souya stumbled upon something dredged from the depths of Chifuyu's worst nightmares.
The sight left him reeling—nothing could have prepared him for the sight of it.
Nor the realisation of what it had meant. It had been years since his mother had cut ties with his father’s family, her resolve born from a fierce determination to distance herself from the madness that plagued her in-laws. It had never been contested, whether or not she had loved his father, but the rest of his family…
The rumours surrounding the loveless marriages born of convenience, of the unrelenting chase towards power and the greatest inherited techniques had been entirely truthful. No one in that cursed family dared to risk being cursed, no love was worth their soul.
No soul was truly worth anything in such a despicable family.
After his father had died, his mother had scarcely waited for the earth to swallow his casket before whisking her son away in the dead of night. She had left without even a single goodbye, thrown down her weapons, and stripped herself of any value they thought she or rather her son could have had.
Good riddance, she had said when he had wised up enough to truly understand.
What was value when it came at the price of your humanity, of your humility.
She had carved a new life for them, a new name, a new identity, free from the weight of the cursed family that had once loomed over them.
At least, they had until this afternoon.
The Kawata twins, two of his rather close friends, had recently developed an insatiable fascination with the occult, an obsession that could have rivalled the quirks of Hina's nerdy younger brother, Naoto. Unlike Naoto however, who could lean on Takemitchy's time-leaping shenanigans to justify his peculiar fixations, the twins were driven purely by boredom.
Restless and aimless, they spent the day chasing after the endless tales of 'paranormal' phenomena propagated by online netizens. Without so much as a computer of their own, their clownery played out in full view of the public at the local library—until their commotion earned them an unceremonious eviction mere moments ago.
What Chifuyu couldn’t understand, was why this had so quickly become his problem.
Chifuyu wasn’t even meant to be there. Booted out the house with strict instructions to fetch his mothers extensive shopping list, he had finally been trudging his way home, arms leaden with bags full of groceries when the twins had spotted him from across the road and promptly dragged him into their antics.
Faced with Nahoya's relentless insistence and Souya's imploring gaze, Chifuyu had resigned himself to the loss of his promised peaceful afternoon lazing away at home, and followed along head bowed in reluctant surrender.
Now, Chifuyu's mistake had been assuming that their so-called 'investigation' as they had rather dramatically dubbed it, would amount to nothing. He had figured that people lied all the time, whether for attention or fleeting amusement, so he couldn't be blamed for not taking their 'mission' seriously. Heck, the general public couldn’t even see the monstrous curses that lay on their very shoulders and haunted their dreams, so what could they possibly know about the supernatural?
But then, as Nahoya rummaged through a random, dilapidated wooden box left abandoned by the roadside, something that might have once held leaflets or served some other forgotten purpose, he feels it.
Suddenly, there is something in his hand and a shiver races down Chifuyu's spine as cursed energy begins to pulsate from the mysterious object, the hair on his arms raising on end.
The twins could be excused for their ignorance. Of course, to the untrained eye, the object appeared to be nothing more than an old, abandoned box. Its exterior adorned with strange paper charms— the kind found at shrines—marked with intricate, deliberate strokes in a deep, red ink.
It was the type sold with frequently fraudulent promises of warding away evil and offering protection.Yet, unlike the usual dull paper offerings, these charms seemed almost alive. The intricate strokes glinted faintly, as if the ink itself carried a lingering heat.
No, Chifuyu deduced, it was unlikely they were there just for protection.
These were a warning, a desperate attempt at keeping whatever held inside sealed away. Whatever lay hidden within that weathered box pulsed with an ancient, restless energy as though it had spent centuries yearning to escape.
The air around it felt heavier, charged and furious.
Chifuyu couldn't shake the feeling that some things were never meant to be found, and definitely not like this.
The twins regarded the box with mild skepticism. Sure, it looked strange, odd even. But, in all honesty it looked more like a discarded prop from some low budget play than anything truly extraordinary.
The worst part was that Chifuyu couldn't even blame them for the assumption.
Whoever had hidden the thing clearly hadn't put much thought or effort into keeping it out of sight. If three dumb teenagers had managed to stumble across it, then it's supposed secrecy was laughable at best.
He felt a flicker of short-lived relief when both boys seemed to lose interest almost immediately, but he wasn't about to get his hopes up. If there was one thing Chifuyu had learned in the years since joining Toman, it was to never get his hopes up.
Calm moments never lasted and especially not when the twins were involved.
Before he could get a word in edgewise, Nahoya had snatched up the box and stuffed it into his pocket with the nonchalant declaration that: "It''ll make a decent decoration for our room at least."
A decoration.
A potentially cursed, definitely dangerous, ancient something as decoration.
Chifuyu felt like pulling his hair out, feeling his sanity slowly slipping away. His fingers twitched, itching to grab the stupid thing and hurl it far away from them, somewhere no one would find it again.
How could he even begin to explain the sheer danger and complete stupidty of holding onto something like that without sounding completely insane?
Especially as the twins seemed entirely unbothered.
Neither boy gave the faintest hint of concern as they turned away from the pile of junk where they found the box, casually strolling off as if they hadn't just unearthed something that might cause untold disaster.
Chifuyu trailed after them in a daze, still reeling from the sheer stupidity of it all.
What kind of careless, incompetent, good-for-nothing sorcerer just leaves a cursed object lying around in plain sight?
It was madness—irresponsibility on a scale that boggled the mind.
He groaned inwardly, already dreading the calamity that was bound to follow and the responsibility now on his shoulders to report what had happened.
Because, with things like this, the calamity wasn't a question of 'if' but 'when'.