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Chapter Text

Prologue: God of Weaving

Curses are malevolent entities born from human kind’s negative emotions and desires. They are the embodiment of our darkest thoughts and fears, taking on various grotesque forms and wreaking havoc in their wake. Some experts would say their existence can be traced back to the creation of the very first human. Some would even say their existence was as old as greater cosmic entities. Multiple theories could be made about the curses origin by experts, however one thing remains true; these curses are evil.

***Age Before Names***

The plague had already devoured the village long before the girl was brought to the center of the village.

Ash fires smoldered low in the pits, smoke clinging to the thatched roofs like a mourner’s shroud. The stench of sickness – sour sweat, rotting grains, and the sweet copper tang of blood – lay heavily in the night air. Mothers clutched their wailing babes tight against their breasts, though half of their children’s eyes had gone glassy and their lips turned purple. The old men muttered prayers to hollow gods, their voices brittle and thin, as though the air itself might break beneath their weight.

In the center of them all, bound with rope so tight her wrists bled and her feet turned blue, was a girl.

She was 15 winters old, though hunger had shrunk her into the body of something older. Her raven hair was a wild nest, matted with sweat. Her brown eyes, enormous in her gaunt face, searched the crowd for a mercy she already knew she would not find. She had no mother left to hold her and whisper comforting words, no father to bargain his life to save hers. Orphaned. Mouth to feed. Useless. Cruel words like stones hurled against her skin long before the ropes were tied.

Orphans in her village were considered harbingers of misfortunes. The villagers avoid them like the plague, fearing that a mere touch from them would bring misfortune to them. The touch of an orphan is the worst. It is a curse and it would burn the flesh of good folks. 

The girl touched the skin of her forearm, but there was no pain. No fire. No flesh rotting away from her bones. It felt like the skin of the people she knew. Was she not a good folk?

“She is the rot”, croaked the village elder. His voice rasping. His back bent beneath the years of fear more than age. “The gods demand a sacrifice. She carries the stain. Her mother died of childbirth. Her father died of grief and took his own life. A child that carries such misfortune must be a disgrace in the eyes of the gods. Her death will cleanse us.”

Thin and desperate, the crowd murmured in agreement. Their voice breaks not from conviction, but from terror. No one wanted to believe the sickness was a random coincidence. It had to have a meaning. There had to be someone to blame. Their gods must be punishing them because of something or someone. And so the orphan girl became the scapegoat.

The villagers, tired and angry, dragged her beneath an old tree where the soil was black from older sacrifices. A noose, frayed but strong, dangled from its highest branch.

In the villagers’ eyes, she was no longer human like them. They wanted to see blood, they wanted to see the innocence of a girl taken away and they wanted to see a monster being put down. They were angry, desperate, hungry and tired. They would like nothing more than to use the girl as their sacrifice.

The girl pleaded and cried for mercy, but it all fell onto deaf ears. No one wanted to extend their hand to help her. Some villagers held her down like a rabid animal, while the elder looped the noose around her neck, his hands trembling not from pity but from the tremor of belief. 

She screamed and thrashed like a wild animal, but no matter how much she did as a wild animal snared in a trap, she could not be free. Her strength could not rival theirs. The girl’s legs buckled. She could not breathe. Words tore themselves from her throat, high and ragged. “Please–please–help me…don’t let me die!”

“My fellow siblings! Rejoice! We have found the root of the rot. The gods have been punishing us with this plague and famine for many months because we allowed this monstrosity to live among us! With her being sacrificed, our crops would grow again and the sickness in our village would disappear along with her. Now, pray to the gods so that they may accept our offering!”

The priest started to chant and soon the villagers joined him as well. The verse repeats over and over, each time it gets louder. The girl’s pleas drowned into the chanting, no one could hear her beg for her life.

Was this how she was going to die? In the hands of the very village she so desperately tried to be loved? She worked so hard to prove that she was not a monster like how the villagers accused her of being. She helped the villager, did her chores, treated everyone with kindness despite others throwing rocks at her. She didn’t ask for this life. Was she not a good folk like them? Has she always been a monster to them? A curse? 

If the world wanted her to be a curse, then so be it. 

A curse she shall become.

A flame relighted within her chest and her sorrow turned into rage. “I curse all of you! I curse the gods and the fates! I curse every single one of you here! I wish you nothing but death!”

The villagers forced her to stand above a crate as she thrashed in their iron grip. One of the villagers tried to cover her mouth to silence her, but she bit down on their fingers hard till she could taste copper on her tongue. She spitted blood onto the aggressor's face before she was slapped across her cheeks. Ignoring the stinging sensation, she looked defiantly towards the assailant with pure bloodlust. 

“If there are any entities out there, demons or gods, give me power so that I may curse everyone that has wronged me! I would gladly sell my soul to you!”, the poor girl screamed towards the grey sky, waiting for some higher being to help her as her voice began to drown in the villager’s chants. “I WANT THEM DEAD! I WANT TO KILL THEM ALL!”

 And something was heard. 

The air shifted. A silence deeper than death spread through the village. Crickets stopped their songs, the branches and grass stilled, the coughing of the sick faltered. Even the babies’ cries dwindled, as if their tiny lungs refused to draw breath. The villagers froze, eyes wide and blind, their body stiff as stone. Only the girl could move, her pulse hammering in her ears. 

Shadows bled from the ground. Not smoke. Not fog. Threads. Countless of threads, black and gleaming, spilling from the earth like veins being torn open. They wove through the crowd, brushing against their bare ankles, sliding up their shins. The villagers did not stir as the thread pierce them, seeping into their skin.

The soil churned.

From beneath the roots of the camphor tree, the black threads coiled together, weaving themselves into shape. They did not rise as a body should, but as a tapestry torn from the dark — a thousand strands twisting into a parody of form. A face without features, woven from hair-thin cords, its hollow sockets spilling static light. Its jaw hung open in silence, but the voice clawed at the girl’s chest all the same.

Its limbs were uneven, too many, bent at angles no bone would dare take. When it moved, it was not with the step of flesh and muscle but the flutter of cloth in the wind — sudden, jerking, wrong. Its body unraveled and rewove with every shift, never the same twice, as if it had no true shape, only the suggestion of one.

The villagers’ souls, dragged screaming into the dirt, were caught in its threads, stitched into its body like ornaments. Their faces twisted soundlessly in agony, each mouth frozen in the moment of its last cry. They became its adornments, its veil, its jewelry.

The girl stared up at it, her thin chest heaving, her knees sinking into blood-wet soil. The thing bent low to meet her, its faceless head tilting, threads whispering against her skin like a lover’s caress.

And then a voice. 

Not the voice of a man or woman, not of earth or sky. It was a scrape of shears across stone. The crack of bone splitting. The hiss of a knife through wet sinew. 

“You begged.”

The words thrummed in her chest, not her ears.

“Wh-who are you?”

“Some call me god. Others call me a curse.” The thing’s voice was patient, amused. “Titles are small things. I have been since the fates were young. Your life is thin and hollow — an experiment waiting to be opened.”

Its hand  brushed her cheek. Cold seared where it touched.

“They would cast you away,” it continued. “But I will take you in. Your pain for my pleasure. Your soul for my hunger. Bind yourself to me, little one, and I will weave your fate anew.”

A promise and an edict folded into a single breath. The girl’s lips trembled.

“Call your name and bind me,” the thing said, voice thinning into a whisper that felt like a noose. “Call it aloud, and I will be yours, and yours alone. Your descendants, too, will feel my threads. I will grant you strength. I will take in return what I ask.”

The earth drank the silence that followed.

Without hesitation, she answered with eyes ablazed, “I am Yonamine Momoe, and I curse everyone that has wronged me.”

The village erupted in chaos.

The threads lanced through the villager’s bodies. Mouth wide open, but no sound came. Flesh spit as though cut by invisible blades. Souls – grey, luminous, trembling – were yanked from their ribcage. They withered and screamed soundlessly as they were pulled down, stitched into the earth like flies trapped in a spider’s web.

The girl watched wide-eyed, as her village died. The elder’s throat was torn open, not from the noose but from inside, as if his very soul had crawled out of his body.

In the black soil beneath the tree, the thing that had answered her plea fed on those poor unfortunate souls hungrily. 

The girl’s lips twisted into a smile that was not hers. Her brown eyes shone with light too cruel for a child.

Hell has no fury like a woman scorned.

She, and the daughters born of her blood, walked the earth unseen and unheard. Shadows beneath the tapestry of history. In silence, they sowed controlled chaos, weaving calamity where no eyes could follow. Whispers spread through the ages of women bound to a curse older than time itself, wronged yet inescapably chosen.

The Three Great Clans turned their gaze upon these rumors, seeking to pierce the veil. Yet the hunt was futile; every thread unraveled before it could be grasped. Their attention, divided and consumed by the reign of Ryomen Sukuna, left little room to pursue phantoms.

And so their legacy endured only as myth — nameless women spoken of in fear, half-remembered in prayers and curses, their existence neither proven nor erased. A lineage that lingered like a shadow older than sorcery itself.

Chapter Text

Chapter 1: Thread of The Dead

***Before the Night Parade of 100 Demons***

Year: 2007

The clouds scattered across the pale sky like discarded toys, drifting wherever the wind pleased. Their soft bellies blunted the morning sun, muting the sharpness of its heat, leaving the air dim and cool. It was a day that did not blaze or shine but lingered in the shade of grey, as though the heavens themselves sought to mourn alongside the Takahara family.

At the quiet shrine of the Shinto shrine, incense curled lazily into the air, thin as breath. Ash collected at the lip of the bronze urn, the faintest scent of sandalwood drafted into the air and it clung to the morning chill. A drumbeat sounded once, low and resonant, then faded.

Here, cloaked in all black, the Takahara family gathered to pay respect to their dead kin.

The ceremony was small, almost too small for the weight of grief pressing on the mourner’s shoulders. Etsuko Kaede’s funeral was stripped of excess; no grand offerings, no crowded hall of visitors, no lavish bouquets of mourning flowers. Only the essential rites and quiet prayers spoken by the local priest that carried on the damp breeze. Only a few people came to the funeral. Etsuko Kaede had no husbands, no partners and no children. There was no kin beyond her twin sister—Etsuko Sayuri—who was now known as Ms. Takahara Sayuri after her marriage. What friends Kaede had were scattered due to how solitary she had been most of her life.

”My condolences, Sayuri-san. Your sister was…she was kind.” The woman’s voice trembled as her hands gripped her handkerchief until her knuckles blanched. Tears spilled unchecked down her face. “It feels so sudden. One week she was there in the office at work, both of us went on a lunch break together…and then…she simply —“ The words broke, lost in sobs.

Sayuri bowed her head, resting a steady hand on the woman’s back. “Thank you for being her friend at work, I bet you knew her well. Then you would also know that Kaede hated to be pitied. Hopefully the police could help us uncover the truth. In the meantime, let’s all hope that her soul is at peace right now.”

Her voice was calm, but her eyes betrayed her exhaustion. She had not slept in days after hearing the news of her twin’s death.

It had been nearly a decade since she looked her sister in the eyes. Six years since the quarrel that had split them apart. Sayuri had chosen to marry the love of her life, Takahara Shinji. Something that Kaede had strongly warned against. “Nothing good will come if you bear a child”, she had said with unyielding certainty. Kaede had always been cryptic with her words, something that Sayuri had been used to. However, this had stung Sayuri deeply. 

No matter how hard Sayuri tried to ask why, Kaede would refuse to explain herself. Frustrated by her own sister’s behaviour, Sayuri had turned her back to Kaede as she was swept away with her new husband and her new life. Both became estranged to one another.

Sayuri finally lived the life she wanted. A loving and dedicated husband, four beautiful children and a warm house to return to. Kaede however, now cremated and stashed in a simple bronze urn. Silent and cold to the touch.

The police reported that her body had been found deep within the forest. Frail as she had always been, she looked smaller still in death when Sayuri visited the morgue to confirm the body’s identity. Her chest hollowed out by some unseen violence. There were no signs of a struggle. No tracks, no blood trail, no explanation. The authorities, eager to be rid of the the matter, dismissed it as an animal attack after investigating Kaede’s death for a year. “A boar, or perhaps a bear,” they said. Their reports labeled it as a cold case, a freak accident, and filed it away. Sayuri had begged them to look deeper. They turned her away.

All Kaede left behind were two letters.

The first letter was for Sayuri. It was written in her careful, neat handwriting. Kaede apologised for the quarrel that had caused them to rift apart and became estranged. Words of gratitude to have such a kind and patient sister. Her final reminiscent of their time as sisters. It was soft, warm, gentle as a farewell embrace. Reading it after seeing Kaede’s cold body, Sayuri wept and wailed for her sister to come back. For the first time in a long time, Sayuri let the bitterness of their sisterly relationship go. She forgave Kaede.

The second letter however, was nothing like the first.

It was addressed specifically to her second child, Machiko. How Kaede knew the existence and the name her children puzzled Sayuri because they were estranged for more than a decade. 

The writing was erratic, jagged as if Kaede scrawled in haste, each line slanting wildly as though her hand’s could not keep pace of her thoughts. The words were frantic, fevered even. Sayuri tried to read them again and again to make heads and tails of the contents, yet it remained a puzzle; spirits, bindings, curses. Terms that Kaede had used before in childhood games, when the sisters would whisper of ghosts and hidden worlds. Sayuri had outgrown such nonsense.

But, Kaede never had.

Kaede’s letter did not read like fantasy of their childhood. It read of desperation. Paranoia.

Sayuri folded the letter with shaking hands, her chest tight. Machiko was too young to bear the weight of her aunt’s ravings of the mystical and occult world. A child would find nothing but fear in those frantic words. Machiko would have to wait till she is older. One day, when Machiko is an adult, she would place the letter in her hands and tell her that her aunt was just being paranoid.

For now, these words should remain sealed.

Still, Sayuri could not shake the memories of her sister. Kaede had always had a fascination towards the mythical and the occult. Kaede drifting through countless libraries and shrines, poring over brittle books and scrolls, collecting talismans from shrines as if their life depends on them. She would murmur of places with ‘bad energy’, of spirits moving unsees and of ancient curses that bound families long before their names were written. Their mother had always said that their aunt had influenced Kaede with her peculiar antics. Most had dismissed her as eccentric. Some had mocked her, calling her strange and unfit. A woman out of step with the world.

But Kaede had borne their scorn without complaints. She never chased company, she avoided it. To her, the loneliness did not wound her, instead it was freedom for her. 

Even Sayuri had wondered in her quietest moments, if her sister was chasing shadows. But standing there at the shrine—incense curling upward, the echo of the priest’s words fading—she felt a chill running down her back. “What if Kaede had been right all along?”, Sayuri thought to herself.

The priest’s final chant drifted into silence. A breeze stirred the incense smoke, pulling it apart in strands that seemed, for the briefest moment, to twist into threads before vanishing into the gray sky. 

Sayuri bowed to the dead one last time, her lips pressed tight, then straightened. At her side stood her husband, Takahara Shinji, tall and composed in his black suit. His black hair neatly styled all prim and proper. His hands were folded, his face calm as stone, but the faint lines at the corner of his mouth betrayed the fatigue of a man who lived more in hospitals and operating theatres than his own home. The world called him a brilliant doctor. Sayuri called him her husband. Sometimes, on her loneliest nights, she wondered if she had truly been his wife because of how absent he was in their house.

Beside them clustered their children, four in all their black mourning clothes. Their temperaments already set apart like points of compass.

The eldest, Takahara Kiyoko, stood with her arms crossed and her bleached hair styled in a high ponytail. She boredly picked at her chipped red nail polish to entertain herself from the tedium of the funeral rites. Fourteen years old, loud and wild. Forever chasing the latest fashion magazines, whispers of popularity at school and often getting called to the principal’s office. She had her mother’s sharp cheekbones and her father’s stubborn mouth. She wielded both like weapons. Her siblings she dismissed as nuisances, particularly her younger sister Machiko, whom she mocked without mercy. ‘Weird little ghost girl’, she would sneer at the younger sibling for Kiyoko saw only awkward silence where her sister saw the dead.

Next was Machiko herself—small and quiet—her hands folded primly before her. Dressed in a black Yukata and her black hair styled in a simple braid. Six years old, the middle child who tried to vanish between her sibling’s louder colours. Her gaze lingered on the shrine longer than the other, watching shadows no one else saw. Where Kiyoko was fire and Sora was gold, Machiko was glass; transparent and fragile, always bracing herself for the next crack—too quiet and too skittish. She did not ask for attention, she gave it in careful silence as she tries to hold her family together in ways no one noticed. Always observing in the background and always ready to quietly help those around her.

Sora, at five, stood smugly by Shinji’s side. The first son. The golden boy. His crisp shirt was already untucked, his shoes scruffed from kicking at the gravel path, his chestnut hair slightly disheveled from the uncomfortable hold of the gel. The priest’s words did not interest him, but the glances of approval from his father did. Praise had been poured upon him since birth and he lapped it up greedily. He knows that tantrums were weapons that bent the household to his will. His smile was wide, hos voice loud, his entitlement growing like a weed in rich soil.

Last of all was little Yuu, only four years old, clutching Sayuri’s hand with pudgy fingers. The baby of the family who was adored by all, spoiled by both parents and siblings alike, especially Machiko. His round cheeks flushed in the cool air, his brown eyes bright with curiosity he did not understand yet. He was innocence wrapped in warmth, the axis around which affection spun. For Sayuri, Yuu was her bundle of joy and absolution. For Shinji, he was proof that the Takahara line — his line — would continue.

Together, they looked like a family made whole. But beneath the surface, cracks spidered unseen.

Sayuri’s gaze lingered on Kiyoko and Yuu with softness she did not show the others. In them, she saw fragments of herself; reckless fire of her youth in Kiyoko and the fragile hope of reneal in Yuu. Shinji’s hand rested firmly on Sora’s shoulder, his pride in the boy unmistakable. Yet between Sayuri and Shinji stretched a taut silence, the faint resentment of two who had married too young, bound by love that had aged into duty; Sayuri had gotten pregnant young, then married to Shinji right after he started working.

Between their children, their divisions were already carved. Kiyoko sneered at Machiko’s peculiarity. Sora demanding, grasping and basking in his father’s favouritism. Yuu adored without question. Machiko however, was caught in the middle, the invisible thread, holding where no one saw.

As the ceremony ended Sayuri’s mind returned to Kaede’s letter. Her sister’s frantic words, warnings scribbled in desperation. The thought gnawed at her as she gathered her children close. 

For if Kaede had truly seen something, if the curse she spoke of was real, then it would not be Sayuri who would bore its weight. It would be Machiko.

The ride home was steeped in that heavy, false quiet particular to families after funerals.The car’s hum filled the silence, broken only by bursts of bickering from the backseat.

Machiko sat in the corner of the backseat, hands folded in her lap, her gaze drifting between the window and her siblings. She rarely spoke during these drives as she preferred to listen and to observe as if recording every detail in her brain for later use. It was as if that was her way of showing her love to her family by keeping in mind of small little details of her loved ones.

”I can’t believe it”, Kiyoko groaned, holding her hands up to the light as if she was at a salon instead of the backseat of the car. “My nail chipped again. At a funeral. Do you know how humiliating that is? My friends are definitely going to notice tomorrow. Ugh, maybe I shouldn’t even go to school. We just got back from a funeral.”

”You’re going”, Shinji said without hesitation, eyes fixed on the road. His voice had the clipped precision of a surgeon delivering a diagnosis. No arguments, no appeal.

”But otousan-“

”No.”

Kiyoko slumped into her seat with a dramatic sigh, glaring at the window. “So unfair.”

On cue, Sora leaned forward from his seat, practically glowing with pride. “Otousan guess what? I got a hundred on my maths test yesterday! Sensei said I’m the smartest in the whole class.”

”Good boy, keep it up and you’ll be a doctor in no time,” Shinji said, finally glancing at him in the rearview mirror. His hand reached out to ruffle Sora’s hair, a gesture that drew a smug smile from the boy. “You’ll make us proud.”

Sayuri offered a soft, weary smile. “Sora that’s wonderful. You’ve been working very hard.”

Kiyoko muttered something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like ‘teacher’s pet’.

Yuu, oblivious, sat nestled on Machiko’s lap. His yellow toy pony plush clutched tight in his arms. He murmured to it under his breath, his lips moving as though whispering secrets. At one bump in the road, the toy slipped from his grasp, tumbling onto the floor of the car.

Before he could cry, Machiko bent swiftly and picked it up. She brushed it off gently, placed it back in his hands. “Here”, she whispered.

Yuu blinked at her, then smiled, wide and sweet. “Thank you, Machi-nee.”

She smiled faintly back, “You’re welcome, Yuu.”

The house welcomed them with its usual silence. Shoes lined neatly at the entrance of the house, the faint smell of incense still clinging to Sayuri’s kimono. The children scattered like marbles loosed from a bag. Kiyoko stormed upstairs with the slam of her bedroom door. Sora immediately launched into recounting his test answers for Sayuri, who hummed politely as she started to prepare on dinner, her eyes already dull with fatigue. Yuu toddled to the living room, setting his pony plushie galloping across the table, giggling softly to himself. Shinji immediately went into his home office as soon as he took off his shoes.

Machiko lingered by the entryway, watching them.

The sun dipped low, spilling orange light across the floorboards. Like clockwork, Machiko moved through the house sliding the windows shut, locking doors, checking each latch twice, then a third time. Her small hands pressed against the frames as if testing for weakness. She moved quietly, so quietly her family hardly noticed her absence.

When she returned to the living room, Kiyoko was sprawled on the couch in her pyjamas scrolling through her phone. The blue light casting her face in an eerie glow.

”You’re weird, you know that?”, Kiyoko said without looking up from her phone. “All this locking and checking. Who even does that? None of my friends act like that. Let otousan do it, it’s his job. No wonder everyone at my school and your school thinks you’re creepy.”

”Says the one who got rejected by her crush last month”, Machiko shot back.

”You creep! How did you know about that? Did you go through my diary again?!”

”No, I didn’t! The voices told me”

”Ugh, again with your imaginary voices…this is why I don’t bring you to hang out with my friends, You’re a weirdo!”

Sayuri exhaled, tired, “Kiyoko, that’s enough.”

”What?! It’s true! Are we all just going to ignore that there’s something wrong with Machiko? I mean, who still has an ‘imaginary friend’ at 6 years old?”, Kiyoko said exasperatedly.

Sayuri sternly looked at her daughters, “That’s enough, both of you. Kiyoko, there’s nothing wrong with your sister. And Machiko, it’s not good to lie.”

Kiyoko rolled her eyes and continued scrolling through her phone. Machiko didn’t bother to answer. She only lowered her eyes, hands curling at her sides. She knew no one would truly believe her words.

Her gaze shifted towards the window—towards the darkening street outside. She imagined shadows moving there, slipping between lamplight, just out of sight. Her family thought her strange and her sister cruel, but she knew what she had seen. Monsters did come. She had watched them linger at the edges of the yard, staring, always staring. Waiting for the right time to pounce on her family for an attack.

And if no one would keep them out, then it had to be her.

Sayuri then called the family for dinner. The table smelled of dashi and warmth, a domestic perfume that made the house feel like home rather than a collection of rooms. Sayuri ladled steaming soup into lacquer bowls while Shinji helped Yuu into his boosted chair. 

They ate in the slow, habitual silence that families wear when full of small worries; clinks of chopsticks, the soft scrape of bowls, the occasional murmur of praise for a well-cooked dish. Shinji talked about his work with Sayuri, while their children listened to their conversation. Sora kept on asking his father about his work, wanting to learn more about his life as a doctor. Kiyoko complained theatrically about the funeral food, poking at her rice as if it was a personal offense, while Yuu made delighted muffled noises with his mouth full of salmon and tamagoyaki. Machiko sat between the plates and the warm light, fingers folded, eating in silence. Her eyes glancing to the windows, the doors and the corners of the house ever so briefly as if she was on watch for something sinister.

After the last of the rice has been scraped into its bowl and the plates cleared, Sayuri set down her cup and inhaled softly. The funeral had hollowed her, yet she tried for cheer where she could find it. “Everyone”, she said, voice careful, “it’s been a hard week for all of us…months perhaps. I thought, maybe we could have a family hike and picnic this weekend? Out by the old river trail. Fresh air, a lunch on the grass. We could use a day away.”

A small hopeful smile ghosted her face. It was a simple thing, a token against gread and grief. For a moment, the Takahara household leaned towards it.

Kiyoko brightened first, eyes alight. “Yes! I can finally wear my new shorts. I’ll go with my friends—no, wait, this is family only, right? Whatever. I’ll look good so I can take good pictures to show it off to my friends.” She made a face that was all adolescent glamour.

Sora clapped his hands. “Can I bring my drawing set? And otousan can carry the bag?”

Yuu jumped in his seat, speaking in a swirl of fragmented joy. “I want to bring Pony and have onigiri!"

Shinji tired but willing, nodded. “Saturday. I’ll take the morning off. We’ll have to go early. Bring your hats and water bottles.” He looked at Sayuri. There was softness there, that small, private piece of tenderness he allowed himself. “It will do us good after today’s event.”

Sayuri reached across the table and squeezed his hand, “Thank you.” Her eyes flickered to Kaede's folded letter in her bag, hidden beneath the tea towels. She did not mention it now. The idea of a picnic seemed, somehow, like a small defiance against the funeral’s shadow—against her family’s history of peculiarity. The children buzzed with future plans, voices overlapping in the comfortable noise of a family that still had tomorrow.

Later that evening, the house slid into its usual ritual; baths ran, the children argued over the hottest water as if it was a treasure. Kiyoko’s voice — sharp and bright — echoed as she scolded Sora for trying to steal her mirror. Yuu scampered with his plush, trailing a thread of giggles down the hallway as Machiko chased him down to give him a bath. Sayuri moved with tired efficiency, tucking in pajamas and answering small questions. Shinji checked the children’s homework with practiced precision before disappearing into his study to finish a long report.

When the lights dimmed and the house went quiet, Sayuri and Shinji moved through the children like two constellations, orbiting the small orbits of their offspring. Each child was kissed, tucked and told “good night” with names and soft admonitions, one by one, a cadence that made the house feel held.

Machiko’s room was the last; smallest bedroom out of their four children, neat, the domain of a child who preferred order over ornaments. A single low bed hugged the wall, covered in a plain quilt of muted green. A shelf held a modest stack of books—picture stories, fairytale books and colouring books. Her desk bore a single lamp, a jar of pencils and a pile of carefully folded origami of animals. A single window overlooking the street, mint green curtains drawn but not yet latched. A small night light with a soft amber glow sits on top of Machiko’s bedside table. A drawer held wooden blocks, one with faded horse painted upon it—the same block that had once left a bruise on Kiyoko’s forehead.

Silence fell upon the Takahara household as the night invited them to sleep. However, the quiet did not settle in Machiko’s chest. She lay beneath her blanket, turning slowly, counting to nothing. The day had been long and the funeral’s weight still hummed beneath her ribs. She tried to organise her thoughts into neat piles— school, home, funeral, dinner, picnic — but her mind refused to fold itself so kindly.

Her eyes watched shadows in the corner like old acquaintances. The room was a room by daylight and a map of danger in the night. Her hands found the edge of her quilt and twisted it between her fingers. She thought of the small stinging bruise on Kiyoko’s forehead five years ago. An accident born of terror no one else believed. The memory rose, sharp and searing.

It had begun when Machiko was five. She and Kiyoko had shared a room then, the years smaller and easier to cross. One night she had woken to find a tiny thing latched to Kiyoko’s shoulders. A creature made of the dark between breaths, no bigger than a sparrow yet older than the hush of the house. It clung like lint, a body of thin black thread and glassy eyes. Machiko could see that the creature was giving Kiyoko a nightmare—her sister breaking out in cold sweat and whimpering from her horrid dream.

The creature looked directly into Machiko’s eyes.  In that small bright panic, Machiko had screamed. Everyone woke. In her fright she had thrown a heavy wooden block and it had struck Kiyoko’s temple with a dull thud. The creature flew off from Kiyoko’s shoulder and disappeared into the shadows. Her sister had bled, sobbing and furious as the house erupted in accusations.

They had blamed Machiko’s imagination. She had been scolded, punished and told that monsters were for childish stories and lies should not be told. Kiyoko’s bruise had been proof that reality was a thing to be policed and trimmed of the inconvenient parts. Machiko had learned, then and there, to bury the sight of them. She had to learn the cruel arithmetic of silence; see, act, be punished. Do not see and you will not cause trouble in this household.

But the seeing never stopped for her. The monsters lingered at the margins of her eyes. In the sheen on a window, in the place where the curtain met the sill, in the dark spaces beneath the stairs in the hospitals or school. Small ones, large ones, creatures that crawled like spilled ink or that hung in the air like moths that never moved. Sometimes they passed like visitors. Other nights they hung at the edge of the house, tasting the light.

Always there was a voice, too—so near it felt like a breath in her ear. It did not speak in words at first, but in suggestions; turn the picture frame, open the door, go outside and call them by name. Later, it learned to form words. It told Machiko petty things, secrets of the house— where a lost coin lived beneath the cushion, where a page was torn in a book, where her sister hid her diary, where her father secretly goes at night when everyone was asleep and her parents blow into quiet arguments in their bedroom. Once, it told her that Kiyoko would break a bone if she ran too quickly. Another time it whispered the smallest and cruelest things, “They would not believe you.”

Sometimes Machiko answered aloud in her pillow— a small secret talk between a girl and whatever had learned her voice. She asked it what it was and its name, yet the replies were never answers. Sometimes there was a rustle, a ripple in the dark and once a pattern of cold laughter at her corners like a thing pleased.

The worst nights were when the voice told her to do something small and wrong. Just a tilt of a picture, a loosening of a latch. Once, in those early years, she had almost followed it: a gentle push of the door to let something in. She had stopped because something in the house—something older than her—had recoiled at the scent that passed the threshold. Whatever it was, whatever breathed against her small ear, it did not like to be acknowledged. It did not like the light. And so her family’s scolding had been a grim blessing. Their disbelief had taught her to contain it.

Lately though, ever since the news of Kaede’s death reaching the Takahara family seven months ago, the whispering had grown thin and then none. In the days after the funeral Machiko had expected the voice to swell with the scent of fresh sorrow, to chatter with delight at a grieving house. Instead, it had gone quiet. The figures still moved at the edges of her vision—threads and shadows—but the closeness, the intimate suggestions, had receded like a tide. For the first time since she could remember, the darkness felt slightly less crowded.

She did not know whether to be grateful. The silence felt brittle, like a promise that might break at any time. She turned onto her side, folding her knees close as if to make herself smaller and lighter. Outside, the night settled like a held breath. Inside, the house pulsed with the measured life of sleeping bodies. Machiko closed her eyes and tried to count the seconds between one sound and the next. The darkness leaned in; for a while she pretended she could keep it at bay with folded cranes, with neat rows of books and the steady click of the neighbor’s radio. For once, she could finally fall asleep.

Chapter Text

Chapter 2: Takahara Machiko, An Anomaly

***Before the Night Parade of 100 Demons***

Year: 2007

The weekend arrived with skies too blue to belong to a grieving family. The early light sifted through the shoji screens, laying gold across the tatami, and the house stirred with the noise of children preparing for a day outdoors. The family had spent their night at a villa close to the hiking site. Sayuri packed the basket with practiced hands: onigiri wrapped in crisp nori, tamagoyaki sliced into perfect rectangles, skewers of yakitori glazed in tare, cut fruit pressed into small containers, and bottles of barley tea to stave off the sun. The smell of sesame and soy filled the air, the scent of a house trying to push away mourning with food and ritual.

Shinji, for once unencumbered by his white coat and hospital pager, loaded the family car with blankets and a small parasol. His face was tired, yes, but there was something lighter in him too, the rarest smile ghosting his lips when Yuu climbed onto his shoulders and declared himself “king of the mountain.”

Kiyoko came clattering down the steps last, a tangle of bracelets at her wrists and a baseball cap angled to look fashionable, though the brim shaded nothing. She pouted as she slipped into the back seat. “Do we really have to go hiking? I had plans.”

“You’ll live,” Shinji said dryly, adjusting the strap of the parasol in the trunk.

“Barely,” she muttered, sliding her earbuds in and ignoring her siblings.

Sora followed, smugly cradling a notebook under his arm. “I’m going to draw birds and trees, you’ll see. Otousan, I bet I can draw better than you.”

“I don’t draw,” Shinji said, shutting the trunk.

“Exactly,” Sora replied, triumphant.

Machiko climbed into the car without a word, tucking her small frame against the door, hands folded in her lap. She watched her family fill the seats like pieces in a puzzle, each loud and distinct, and tried to be the quiet space between them. Her gaze lingered on Yuu’s horse plush tucked under his arm, the fabric already fraying at the ear. She smiled faintly when he waved it at her. Machiko helped her youngest brother into the car—with Yuu sitting on her lap like usual.

The car wound its way out to the hiking site, the buildings giving way to stretches of rice fields glistening with water, then into hills peppered with cedar and pine. Sayuri rolled down her window, the wind tangling her hair as she breathed in the green, wet smell of earth. “It’s been too long since we left the city like this,” she murmured.

By the time they reached the river trail, the sun was high but gentle, clouds scattered like drifting sails across the sky. The path was shaded by tall pines, the earth soft with fallen needles, and the air smelled of water. Dragonflies skimmed the surface of the stream, their wings catching sparks of light.

They laid the blanket near a bend in the river, where smooth stones formed a shallow bank. Shinji removed his shoes, rolled up his trousers, and stepped into the water, sighing as the current lapped at his ankles. Sora followed, shrieking at the cold, but quickly boasting about how brave he was. Yuu toddled after them, plush clutched high above his head, until Sayuri caught him by the back of his shirt. “Not yet, little one,” she scolded, though her voice was gentle.

Kiyoko sprawled on the blanket, arms behind her head, sunglasses perched too large on her nose. “Wake me when the food’s ready,” she said, yawning.

Machiko lingered at the edge of the trees, watching, as she doodled in her small notebook. The laughter, the squabbles, the chatter—it all seemed normal, almost painfully so. Yet the shadows beneath the trees bent differently in her eyes. She could see shapes flickering at the edges, dark threads shifting in the branches, curling like smoke before vanishing. The water too carried faces that weren’t reflections, eyes staring back at her from beneath the current. She squeezed her hands into fists. She said nothing as she tried to ignore the anomalies around her. For once, she wanted to try living a normal life.

The picnic began with Sayuri unpacking the food. Yuu clapped his hands, cheering for the tamagoyaki as though it were treasure. Sora wolfed down an onigiri before remembering to praise his mother. Shinji, chopsticks poised neatly, complimented Sayuri on the seasoning. Kiyoko ate half-heartedly, scrolling her phone between bites, though she perked up at the sweet fruit. Machiko’s grey eyes lit up as she bit down onto the onigiri and tamagoyaki.

It was a scene painted for a memory: a family gathered, sunlight dappling through leaves, laughter woven into the sound of the river. For a moment, even Machiko felt the illusion of safety, as though they were simply a family on a picnic, not a house shadowed by whispers and death.

But then, just as she picked up another piece of onigiri, Machiko froze.

Across the riverbank, half-hidden in the shade of the cedars, something was watching. A shape, tall and faceless, threads unwinding from its body like drifting spider silk. No one else seemed to see it. Her family laughed, their voices warm and oblivious, but Machiko felt her chest tighten. The thing tilted its head, and though it had no eyes, she knew it was staring at her. She blinked and the figure was gone.

She quickly looked away, reminding herself to never acknowledge its presence. She continued to enjoy her lunch with her family, pretending not to see anything that was out of place.

The sunlight dimmed, as if a cloud had crossed the sky. Machiko pressed her heels into the smooth stones at the river’s edge, dipping her toes into the current. The water was cool, and for a rare moment, it felt as though it washed away the heaviness she carried. She laughed softly, an almost foreign sound on her lips, when one of her rocks skipped three neat times before sinking beneath the surface.

Behind her, the sounds of her family stitched themselves into a fragile peace. Sayuri and Shinji speaking in low, careful tones, Kiyoko snoring under her cap, Sora bent studiously over his sketchbook, Yuu trotting in small circles beneath the cedar with his beloved plush held aloft like a banner. It was a moment too perfect, a moment that begged to be ruined.

It was ruined.

“Yuu?” Sayuri’s voice broke first, too sharp to be mistaken for casual worry. “Yuu!”

The panic in her tone snapped Machiko’s head up. Shinji was already on his feet, scanning the bank, his eyes widening as he realized the boy had vanished. Kiyoko stirred, confused, then joined in the shouting. Sora clutched at his mother’s sleeve, his notebook tumbling forgotten into the grass. The air itself seemed to thicken with dread.

Machiko’s ears rang. “Go deeper,” the whisper coiled inside her head, smooth and insistent, as if it had never been gone. For the first time in seven months, the voice was back. “The woods. Find him before it is too late...”

Her feet moved before she thought. She ran, weaving through the trees, her family’s voices crashing against her back. Shinji shouted her name, pounding after her, but she was small, nimble, and terrified enough to outpace even him. Soon, the sounds of pursuit faded, leaving only the rush of blood in her ears and the unerring pull of the whisper.

The forest deepened into silence. And then she saw him.

Yuu stood frozen in the middle of a ravine, tiny arms outstretched for balance as he cried. A fallen trunk stretched across the gap, slick with moss, its span too wide, too treacherous for a child. He clutched his horse plush so tightly the seams strained. His sobs echoed, raw and small in the vastness of the trees.

“Yuu!” Machiko called, forcing her voice to steady. “It’s okay. Look at me, not the ground. Just walk towards me.”

He shook his head violently, tears streaking his cheeks. His knees quivered. He couldn’t move. “I’m scared Machi-nee…”

So Machiko edged onto the trunk herself. Each step was careful, deliberate, her arms stretched wide, heart pounding so loudly she thought the trees could hear. She met him halfway, crouched low, and reached for him. “It’s alright. I’ll take you. Just give me your hand.”

Yuu’s tiny fingers slipped into hers, damp with sweat. Together, slowly, they edged back across the trunk. The ground met their feet at last, and Yuu collapsed against her, sobbing into her shirt, clutching his plush between them. Relief washed over her so hard it nearly brought her to tears.

And then—

Snap.

A twig cracked in the undergrowth, sharp as a gunshot.

Machiko froze. The forest went utterly still, birds silenced, leaves suspended in the air. Then came the sound — low, wet, and guttural. A growl. Not of any animal she had ever known. It sound too unnatural.

From the shadow between the cedars, something began to crawl into view. Its body was too long, its limbs jointed wrong, fingers dragging through the soil like blades. A dozen eyes blinked open across its faceless head, each fixed on her and the boy in her arms. Threads of darkness trailed from its mouth, writhing like worms.

Yuu whimpered. Machiko tightened her grip on his hand. A monster had found them and this was the biggest monster Machiko had ever seen. She then heard the voice whisper again in her ears.

“Run.”

Machiko ran as though the forest itself conspired to hold her back. Both of them ran as fast as their tiny feet could let them. The air was damp with the smell of moss and wet bark, each breath burning her throat. Branches slapped her cheeks raw, strands of her hair snagged and tore free, roots tangled around her ankles like grasping hands. Still she ran, driven not by her own strength but by that whisper curling inside her head, soft, insistent, pulling her forward through paths she did not know.

Behind them came the curse. Its pursuit was not like the rush of an animal, but a hideous cacophony of things breaking—branches cracking, stones turning underfoot, the tearing of flesh imagined before it happened. The growl that rose from its throat was low and wet, a rumble that seemed to curdle the very air.

“Keep moving!” Machiko breathed, though the words trembled on her lips, though she feared the pounding of her heart might betray her more than her voice.

Yuu clung to her hand, his tiny hands slick with sweat, his plush horse forgotten in the fall. “M-Machi-nee! It’s here!,” he shouted in fright, his voice breaking into a sob that cut sharper than any branch.

“I know!,” she told him, her breath ragged. “Just run! Don’t look back—”

A hiss like boiling water silenced her. From the shadows, one of the creature’s limbs shot forward. Long, jointed, ending in claws black and wet, it scraped the hem of her dress as she lurched aside. Her heart slammed against her ribs. She pulled Yuu tighter and ran faster, every step stolen from disaster, every footfall guided by that whisper that was not her own.

“This way… faster…”

The forest narrowed, trunks looming tall and crooked, shadows lashing across her vision. And then, fate turned cruel. Yuu’s foot caught on a root slick with moss. He pitched forward with a cry too small, too human for this nightmare. He tumbled from her grip, striking the ground with a hollow sound, his palms scraping raw against stone.

“Yuu!” she cried, dropping beside him, her hands trembling as she tried to lift him to his feet.

The curse surged closer. Its limbs, dozens of them, shot forward like spears. Their movement was too fast, too precise, not animal but something more deliberate, something hateful.

Machiko shoved Yuu behind her. She spread her arms wide, no weapon to wield and no shield but her own thin frame.

The blow struck like a hammer. A clawed appendage lashed across her side and hurled her back. The bark of a tree cracked against her spine. Pain burst through her head, white and jagged, and the world reeled. Her ears filled with a deep ringing, louder than her own scream.

“Machi-nee!” Yuu’s voice tore through the haze. High and desperate, the cry of a boy who could not understand what was happening, only that he was losing the one who should protect him.

She tried to rise. Her body would not obey. Her arms quivered uselessly, her legs tangled beneath her. The forest swam in double. Darkness pressed at the corners of her vision, and still she fought to push it back. She saw Yuu then, small, trembling, clutching at the dirt with his scraped hands as though the earth itself might save him. His face was wet with tears, his eyes red and wide, his lips shaping her name like a prayer.

The curse loomed over him. Its dozen eyes gleamed with a cold hunger, fixed upon the boy as its shadow spilled long and black. Its limbs flexed, preparing to strike.

Machiko’s heart screamed though her lips could not. She would not reach him in time. She would not rise again. She was powerless—a child before a monster.

And then came the whisper, faint now, so faint she thought it might be her own mind breaking.

“Run…”

The word fluttered through her like a dying candle flame, gone almost as soon as it was lit.

The darkness claimed her. The last thing she saw was Yuu, small and helpless, stretching his arms toward her as the shadow fell across him.

And then, silence.

Machiko woke to a voice shrieking in her ear, not her mother’s nor her father’s, but that other voice—the one that had haunted her since childhood.

“Get up.”

Her body obeyed before her mind did. She staggered to her feet, her head swimming, the taste of iron thick in her mouth. The forest seemed darker now, though the sun had not yet fallen. Shadows pooled heavy between the trees. The ground was gouged with marks, the splinter of roots torn loose, branches snapped clean, bark shredded in desperate scrapes. She followed them, stumbling, her bare toes sinking into damp soil.

And then she heard it.

A sound wet and deliberate. The tear of meat from bone, the quiet crackle of cartilage splitting, the soft pull and crunch of sinew stretched to its breaking point. Each sound echoed like a hammer inside her skull. She walked toward it because she had no choice, because the voice drove her forward.

The sight stole the breath from her chest.

Yuu lay crumpled in the dirt, or what was left of him. His tiny limbs had been scattered, torn from their sockets with grotesque ease. His round cheeks, the same ones she had kissed goodnight a thousand times, were smeared red and hollow. The beloved toy pony—his constant companion—lay beside him, darkened with blood, one glass button eye staring lifelessly into the soil.

The curse crouched over his body, a spider-thing of pale limbs and countless eyes, its long arms sinking again and again into the small frame. Its face, or what might have passed for one, was buried in Yuu’s chest. When it lifted, strings of flesh clung to its jaws. It ate methodically, without malice, as though feeding on a hare.

Machiko’s head rang. Her body swayed as if the earth had tilted beneath her feet. She did not know if she would scream, or vomit, or faint where she stood. Her stomach heaved at the smell—the copper stink of blood, the rancid sweetness of opened bowels—but still her eyes refused to close.

On the forest floor laid Yuu, or what remained of the sweet little boy. Machiko could not handle the horrid sight of her dead brother being feasted on by a monster. The sight was too gruesome that she had to empty the contents of her stomach, tears tainted her cheeks, her hands shaking from the fear and shock, her complexion in complete pallor. 

Her brother was dead. Yuu was dead. Killed.

Just a moment ago, she swore she saw him happily playing with her family during their picnic. Laughing along her siblings and parents as they all played hide and seek. He was right there. Smiling brightly with his hands holding his horse plush.He was there happily eating lunch with all of them. And now his glassy grey eyes stared back at Machiko. Void of life.

Fear and sadness bled into something else. Anger.

Her small fists clenched. The tears that blurred her sight stung hot against her cheeks. How dare it killed her precious brother. She hated the thing, hated it with every shred of her being, but she hated herself more. She had been too slow. Too weak. She had let him fall. She had let him die. If only she could have been faster. If only she did not acknowledge that mysterious figure across the river. It was all her fault.

It was then that she felt it.

A hand, vast and cold, resting upon her thin shoulder. It was not the hand of her father, not her mother. It was larger, heavier, weighted with something that pressed deeper than flesh. It gripped her, but there was no body behind it. Only a presence that coiled around her like threads tightening in her lungs.

The forest stilled. The sound of cicadas and birds chirping silenced. The air suddenly went frigid. The voice that haunted Machiko was no longer a whisper. It was clear, cutting, resonant in her bones.

“You could have saved him,” it said, neither man nor woman, neither cruel nor kind. “If you were stronger. If you were faster. But you are neither...”

The hand squeezed, as if to remind her of her smallness.

“I can give you that strength.” The words hummed through her ribs. “As I did your blood before you. Power enough to tear this creature limb from limb. Power enough to drag your brother back from death.”

Machiko’s lips parted, though no sound came out. Her throat burned.

“But every gift has a price, blessed child... Your ancestors bound themselves to me with their souls. You would do the same.”

The hand lifted slightly, tilting her chin so she could not look away from the sight of Yuu’s ruined body.

“Decide, child... Call your name, and I will answer. Bind yourself to me, and his life need not end here.”

The voice was neither woman nor man, neither human nor beast. It slithered through the trees like smoke, like rot. It cut through the stillness of the forest the way a knife shears flesh. Its sound coiled inside Machiko’s skull, a dozen voices braided into one, rising and falling in discordant harmony. And then it laughed.

A cackle, low and drawn-out, like old rope fraying, like shears gnashing on bone. The sound made her teeth ache, her stomach knot.

“Your bloodline…” it hissed, every word unraveling into echoes, “has never ceased to entertain me. Always crawling to me, begging. So eager for power to twist your miserable fates into something else. Call out your name, child. Call it, and my threads shall bind to yours. My power shall be yours.”

Machiko’s chest rose and fell in jagged rhythm. Her hands trembled, streaked with her brother’s blood, but inside her heart something had begun to burn. Grief melted into anger, terror forged into a desperate, trembling resolve.

Her throat was raw, her voice cracked and small, yet the words spilled from her as if ripped straight out of her soul.

“My name… is Takahara Machiko,” she cried, each syllable breaking, “and I want to save my brother…please”

The forest shuddered.

It was as though lightning had struck her veins. Power tore through her tiny body, searing hot, sharp as shattered glass. Her vision tunneled, black at the edges, and then widened all at once, as if she could see with more than eyes alone. For the first time, she saw the voice. Not as an echo, not as a whisper, but as it truly was.

The curse. A cosmic horror.

It towered before her, a grotesque lattice of black threads knotted into the shape of a thing that should not be. Its limbs bent wrong, angles too sharp for any mortal frame. Faces, dozens of them, flickered across its shifting mass, ghastly masks of grief and rage, their mouths all moving in unison yet speaking out of rhythm. The air around it pulsed with hunger, threads writhing with dark, eager joy.

And then those same threads spilled from her own body.

They slithered out from her skin like rivers of shadow, crawling through the forest floor, black veins spreading outward. They reached for the creature still feasting on Yuu. When they struck, they did so in silence, piercing flesh and tendon, wrapping bone, slicing sinew with perfect, surgical cruelty.

The curse shrieked. A sound that shook the air, high and endless, as its body convulsed beneath the assault. Machiko’s threads tore it apart, unraveling it piece by piece. Its flesh smoked as if burned, its many eyes rolled white, and then it collapsed, its form caving inward until nothing remained but a single writhing orb—purple, slick, alive. The soul of the monster.

Machiko barely had time to breathe before the black threads around her recoiled and then surged forward, swallowing the orb whole. The creature devouring the soul was loud, an audible, wet sucking that made her stomach flip. The forest itself seemed to exhale, branches groaning, shadows crawling back into their roots. But the stench, the horror, lingered.

She stumbled forward on unsteady legs and dropped to her knees beside Yuu.

His body was ruined. Small arms torn from their sockets, chest hollowed, ribs cracked like splintered wood. His eyes stared upward, glassy and empty, yet still wide as though death itself had startled him. His chestnut hair all matted from dry blood and dirt. His toy horse lay beside him, its soft belly soaked red, one button eye watching her with cruel indifference.

Machiko gathered what was left of him into her arms. Her fingers pressed uselessly to his chest, smearing blood over blood, as if she could hold him together by will alone. Her voice came out small, broken, but insistent.

“No… no, Yuu… wake up, please. Please don’t leave me… you can’t. You can’t! Tell me how to save you—tell me what to do!”

The threads slithered back to her, curling around her like serpents. And the curse laughed again.

“Bring him back?” it crooned, voices splitting and colliding, sharp as glass, slick as oil. “Oh, child of my blood… you do not yet understand. Life and death are bargains. Everything you take must be paid for. Every gift, every miracle, every thread has its price.”

Machiko pressed harder against Yuu’s chest, sobbing, her tears cutting pale streaks through the grime on her face. “Then I’ll pay it! I’ll pay anything! Just give him back!”

The curse coiled tighter, threads caressing her cheeks, her hands, her small trembling body.

“And so you will learn,” it whispered, “as your foremothers did, that power is never free. Every toll is taken. Every debt collected. And you, little one… you have only just begun.”

The forest seemed to lean in, the world itself holding its breath. Machiko’s fists clenched, blood slick between her fingers.

She would pay the price. Whatever it was.

Because Yuu could not be gone.

Not yet.

“What is the price?” Machiko croaked. Her voice was raw, her throat aching from screams she hadn’t realized she made. She clutched Yuu’s broken body tighter, as if the answer itself might steal him away forever.

The curse shifted, threads writhing like a nest of serpents in the dark. Faces flickered across its surface, smiling, sneering, weeping, and all of them spoke at once.

“The toll,” it whispered, echoing in her bones. “Perhaps your memories. Perhaps your lifespan. Perhaps both. Death and birth are delicate threads, woven only by fate itself. I do not often meddle with death and life… But for the right price, I can change their fate—”

It leaned closer, its faceless visage bending toward her ear. “—I can do it.”

Machiko’s tears fell hot on her brother’s pale, bloodless cheek. Her small jaw clenched, resolve hardening through the fog of terror.

“Yes,” she whispered, a broken plea. “Yes. Take whatever you want. Just… bring him back.”

The curse exhaled, a sound like thousands of shears snapping at once. Its threads writhed with glee. “Then see, child of mine. See what others cannot.”

The air above Yuu’s corpse shimmered. Machiko blinked and gasped.

There, hovering weakly over his chest, was a faint grey orb, no larger than a fist. It pulsed erratically, dim and flickering like a dying ember. With each flicker, the forest seemed to darken, as though even the trees mourned.

“What… what is that?” she breathed.

“Your brother’s soul,” the curse crooned. Its voices layered, discordant, yet dripping with delight. “I have given you sight of the threads that bind flesh to spirit. Few mortals see such things without going mad. Push it back, child. Force it into its husk. Stitch him closed. Make him whole.”

Her small hands trembled. Slowly, she raised them, fingers blotched with dirt and blood. She reached toward the faint orb, heart pounding so hard it rattled her ribs.

“Push,” the curse commanded. “Push with everything you are.”

Machiko pressed her palms against the glowing soul. At once, fire roared up her arms. Not fire of flesh but fire of spirit, grey and white flames that licked her skin, burning from the inside out. She cried out, her voice shrill and ragged, yet she bore down, pushing harder, forcing the wavering orb toward Yuu’s ruined chest.

Her hands blackened at the edges, veins glowing with luminous cracks of grey light. The skin split, blistered, but she did not stop. Tears streamed down her cheeks, her cries breaking into hoarse sobs.

“Please… please work!” she begged, pushing harder, as if her will alone could force her brother back into the world. “Come back, Yuu! You can’t leave me, you can’t!”

Her vision blurred with tears, but in her mind she saw his smile, the way he clutched his pony plush, the sound of his small laugh. She thought of how she would have to face her family without him, how they would look at her, what she would say. Fear clawed at her chest, but she pushed harder.

The orb sank into his body. The flames flared white-hot, then died.

Silence.

Machiko froze. Her hands still hovered over his small chest, charred black and trembling. She stared at him, waiting, praying for something. A twitch of his fingers. The rise of his chest. The flutter of eyelids. Anything.

But nothing came.

Yuu’s body lay still. His eyes glassy, his chest hollow, limbs broken and cold. Dead.

Machiko’s breath quickened. Her chest heaved, her vision spinning. “No… no, no, no…” she whispered, voice shattering into hysteria. “It should have worked—it had to work! Please, move! Breathe! Anything! Please!”

She shook him, cradled him, pressed her ear to his chest as if listening could summon the faintest heartbeat. Her sobs tore through the forest, raw and animal, the grief of a child who refused to understand death.

And behind her, the curse laughed.

It was a sound that split the air, high, jagged, delighted, a chorus of mocking mirth.

“Rule number one, foolish child,” it hissed, threads writhing with glee. “A soul needs a body. Without flesh, without bone, without vessel, it cannot return. You have shoved a flame into ashes. Your attempt was futile from the start.”

Its laughter rose, echoing off the trees, a cruel, thunderous symphony.

“How silly of you,” it sneered. “To think it so simple. To believe hope has no teeth.”

Machiko bent over Yuu’s still form, her hands blackened and cracked, her body wracked with sobs. The curse circled her like a predator, its threads caressing her shoulders, her face, tasting her despair.

“Cry, little one,” it whispered sweetly. “Cry, for your tears are the first thread of our tapestry. Every bargain is born in blood. Every oath begins with loss. And yours…”

It leaned closer, faceless head brushing her ear.

“…has only just begun.”

Machiko’s shoulders trembled, her blackened fingers curling into fists as she hunched protectively over Yuu’s body. Her cheeks were streaked with blood and tears, her eyes red and raw, but beneath the grief was something sharper. Anger.

Her small voice cracked, yet it rang in the dark like steel on stone.

“Why?” she demanded, teeth bared, fury burning through her tears. “Why would you do this to me? To him? You… you tricked me! You promised—”

The curse loomed above her, threads shifting like storm clouds unraveling in the wind. Faces rippled across its surface, each smiling, sneering, gaping with too many teeth. Its laughter rolled again, thick and choking, a chorus of mockery.

“Promised?” it hissed, voices overlapping in jagged dissonance. “Did you think I would help you out of kindness? Out of mercy? Foolish child.”

The black threads surged, twisting around her like a cage. A cold, sharp hand of woven shadows seized her chin, tilting her face up. Its touch was ice and glass, biting into her skin.

“I am no savior,” it spat, its many mouths smiling as one. “I am malevolence made flesh. I am hunger, wrath, envy, despair. I am the rot that blooms in your kind when you spit at the fates woven for you. Evil incarnate.”

Its head shifted, too many eyes blinking at once, glimmering like shards of obsidian. “Some have called me god. Others, curse. I care not for titles. I am older than either. I am older than the fates themselves, older than the first names whispered to the stars. I was born when man first cursed the heavens, when he cried out against what was written for him. I thrive on the hatred of fate, on the desperate clawing of mortals who would break the threads laid before them.”

The forest seemed to shiver at its words, leaves rustling though there was no wind.

“For centuries,” it continued, “your bloodline has been mine. Bound to me by vow and bargain, each generation feeding the tapestry with their fear, their grief, their hunger for more. Your aunt…”

The faces rippled, shifting into one that faintly resembled Aunt Kaede, her eyes hollow, her lips cracked. “…she was troublesome. Clever enough to gnaw through her chain, foolish enough to believe she had freed you. All she severed was my voice. My touch. My whisper. But my tie… oh, no, little one. That has never left your veins.”

Its cold fingers tightened on her face, lifting her higher until her toes barely brushed the dirt. Its faceless head leaned close, mouths grinning.

“And now… you have walked willingly into my snare.”

Machiko whimpered, her hands clawing at its wrist, but it held her easily. Its eyes, dozens of them, blinked in unison, unblinking in their hunger.

“Your family will never escape me,” it whispered, soft and tender, almost like a lullaby. “Not you, not your children, not theirs. You will weave my threads until the last of your line is dust. Such is the toll of your ancestors’ vow.”

Its gaze raked across her face, lingering, curious. Then, with a slow, deliberate motion, it tilted its head.

“How strange you are…” it murmured, its fingers cold and sharp against her tear-stained cheek. “Out of all my contracts, you remind me most of the first. A broken little thing, filled with rage and longing, so desperate for change she would barter her soul for a new weave. I adored her. She birthed a line of puppets that entertained me for centuries.”

Its many mouths curled into a cruel smile.

“And you, Machiko…blessed child…oh, you are different. You are not bound like the others, not entirely. You are an anomaly. A fracture in the tapestry. So many branches splinter from your thread. You could burn. You could conquer. You could destroy or redeem. A wild card.  A storm, yes..I shall call you that, little storm.”

Its laughter returned, softer now, more intimate, yet no less chilling.

“How delightful. It has been ages since I found a thread worth watching. I will savor you, child. Every choice, every stumble, every rise and fall. You will dance for me, as your ancestors did. And I will be entertained.”

The many eyes glimmered, hungry.

The curse’s grip lingered like frostbite on Machiko’s skin, its many voices curling around her like a serpent. Then, slowly, it released her. Its threads uncoiled, withdrawing into the dark with a languid patience, like a spider retreating into its web.

“I will not take anything from you,” it said, tone almost gentle, though its laughter simmered beneath every word. “Not yet. Take this first folly as a lesson, little storm. You sought to unweave death, to stitch back what was lost. But birth and death are threads too tightly bound for me to unravel freely.”

The many eyes glimmered, narrowing.

“Your ancestors paid their toll in blood, in madness, in despair. You will pay yours in time. Your power is mine, your fate is mine. From here on, the weave of your life changes. Every step you take, every choice you make, I will watch.”

It leaned close one last time, the cold edges of its voice pressing against her ear.

“And I will be here to witness it all, your downfall… or your triumph. Whatever thread you spin, child, I will be entertained.”

Then the Binding Demon sank back into the shadows. Its vast body unraveled into strands of darkness, dissolving into the forest floor until nothing remained but silence and the faint echo of its laughter. The oppressive weight lifted from the air, leaving Machiko trembling, her skin clammy and her breath ragged.

The world tilted. Her small body gave out, crumpling beside Yuu’s ruined form. Darkness took her swiftly, swallowing her whole.

When she opened her eyes again, it was to the blinding white glare of hospital lights. For a moment, she thought she was still dreaming. The antiseptic scent, sharp and chemical, stung her nose. Then came the voices.

“Machiko!” Sayuri’s cry tore through the room as she leaned over her daughter’s bed, tears streaking her cheeks. Her hands shook as she clutched Machiko’s wrist as though she might vanish again.

“Thank god… thank god,” Shinji muttered under his breath, though his voice cracked, his usual sternness faltering as he stood by her side, exhausted eyes rimmed with red.

Kiyoko was pressed against the wall, her face blotchy from crying, her arms wrapped tight across her chest. Sora clung to Sayuri’s sleeve, his small body trembling. Both looked at her as if she were a ghost returned from the grave.

“Machiko, what happened?” Sayuri begged. “Where’s Yuu? What-what did you see?”

But Machiko couldn’t answer. Her lips parted, but no sound came. Her body shook, her throat seized, and then, suddenly, a scream ripped out of her.

It was raw, piercing, endless.

She clawed at her own arms, nails digging into her skin until rivulets of blood welled. Her small body convulsed, eyes wide with terror, her screams breaking into ragged sobs as she tore at herself.

“No! No! Stop it, stop it, stop it!” she wailed, though it wasn’t clear to whom, her family, the voices, or the memory of the curse.

The room erupted in chaos. Sayuri tried to restrain her, sobbing, “Please, baby, stop, it’s okay, it’s okay—” but Machiko only thrashed harder, her eyes rolling with terror.

“Doctor!” Shinji barked, his voice breaking with panic. Within seconds, a team rushed in. Hands pressed her down, a needle pricked her arm. Her screams faltered, slurring into broken cries, then into hiccupping sobs. At last, her body stilled, her arms falling limp at her sides, streaked with blood and bandages.

Sayuri collapsed against the bed, her tears dripping into Machiko’s sheets. Kiyoko turned away, covering her mouth as she cried silently, and Sora hid his face in Sayuri’s skirt, trembling.

Shinji stood rigid, his hand pressed to his forehead, as if holding back something threatening to break through his own composure.

Machiko lay there, her chest rising and falling shallowly, sedated into a fragile sleep. But her hands still bore the blackened marks, faint threads of grey cracks glowing beneath her skin like scars that would never fade.

And in the hollow silence of her unconsciousness, deep in the marrow of her being, she heard it again.

A low chuckle. A whisper curling like smoke.

“The first stitch has been made, little storm. Your tapestry begins…”

Chapter Text

Chapter 3: The Beginning of Her Tapestry

***Before the Night Parade of 100 Demons***

Year: 2007

The first thing that Machiko knew was sound. 

A slow steady beeping, sharp as a chisel tapping stone. Each not pulsed into her skull, dragging her out of the heavy fog of sedation. Her eyelids fluttered, lashes crusted with dried tears. The sterile brightness of the hospital stung her eyes, and the smell of clean, chemical, suffocating antiseptic seeped into her lungs.

Beside her, her mother had folded herself awkwardly into a narrow chair, her head lolling at an angle that made Machiko’s neck ache just to look at it. Sayuri’s chestnut hair spilled loose, disheveled from days without care. She had not even removed her shoes. Her hand, thin and pale, rested on the edge of Machiko’s hospital blanket, as if afraid the child might vanish if she lets go. 

Machiko turned her head slightly, wincing at the heaviness of her body. Her father was not in the room. Nor were Kiyoko or Sora. No little Yuu climbing into her bed, giggling, tugging her sleeve. Only her mother remained, hollow-eyed, sleeping beside the steady drone of machines.

The beeping continued, slow and endless. Like a clock ticking down.

”…Okaasan?”, Machiko’s voice cracked, hoarse and small.

Sayuri stirred at once. Her eyes opened, red-rimmed, swollen from weeping. For a moment, she looked startled, then relief washed over her in a trembling sigh. “Machiko.. thank God.”She pressed her hand against her daughter’s cheek, fingers shaking. “You’re awake.”

Her voice broke on the last word, and she bent low, pressing her forehead to Machiko’s. She stayed there, trembling, before pulling back with a weak smile that never reached her eyes. “You must be hungry. Can you eat?”

Machiko nodded weakly. Her stomach was knotted, but she could not say no. Sayuri reached for the tray left untouched by the nurses. Slowly, carefully, as though Machiko were porcelain ready to shatter, she fed her. Spoonful by spoonful, lukewarm broth touched her lips, sliding down her dry throat.

Each bite was heavy, tasteless, but she obeyed, swallowing what her mother offered until the bowl was half empty.

When it was empty, Sayuri sets the tray aside. She smoothed back Machiko’s wild curly hair, her fingers lingering longer than necessary. Then, with a breath that quivered in her chest, she asked. Quietly, cautiously, as if afraid of the answer, “What happened in the woods, Machiko? Where’s Yuu?”

The question pierced through the fog of sedation like a blade.

The small girl opened and closed her mouth. Machiko’s throat closed. Her small hands clenched the blanket, trembling. The memories surged all at once—the snapping of bones, Yuu’s terrified scream, the wet tearing sound of flesh, the curse’s laughter, the fire that burned her fingers black. The voices, the bargain, the soul like a fragile flame she had failed to keep alive. 

Her lips trembled. Tears welled up in her eyes. “I-I tried…Mama, I really tried to save him…” Her words tumbled out in a rush, frantic and broken. “The-There was a monster, it-it was eating Yuu, it-it tore him apart—and it spoke to me, it made me a deal, it said I could bring him back if— if I gave it something, if I-if I pushed back his soul back in- I tried, I swear I tried, but it didn’t work. It didn’t work!”

Her words spiraled into incoherence, tripping over themselves, frantic gasps spilling faster than she could control. Her hands reached for her mother’s clutching desperately, as if Sayuri could pull her back from drowning. “I saw it, Okaasan, I saw it with my own eyes, I saw Yuu’s soul. I tried to push it back into his body, I really did. I tried, I tried, I tried—“

Sayuri’s face paled as she listened. Confusion and dread swarm in her eyes. But more than the words, it was the repetition that struck her. Machiko kept circling back to the same phrases, over and over; threads, curses, bindings, souls. Words too familiar for the woman.

The same words her twin sister Kaede had whispered in life. The same words Kaede had written frantically in that unreadable letter addressed to Machiko before she died.

Sayuri froze, her heart clenching. She stared at her daughter, trembling and wide-eyed, her small voice breaking under the weight of horrors no child should bear. And in that moment, it was not Machiko she saw before her.

It was Kaede.

Her strange sister, raving about curses, spirits, invisible things no one else could see. The woman who had wasted her life chasing shadows, who had dies alone and torn open in the forest.

Sayuri’s breath caught in her throat. Her lips parted as if to speak, but no words came out. She simply looked at her daughter. Her frail, bloodstained child, with a gaze that trembled between fear and grief.

“Is she losing her mind?”, the thought whispered in Sayuri’s head. “Or…is she becoming something else? Something worse?”

Machiko sobbed, burying her face in her mother’s lap. But Sayuri’s hands, though they trembled, her hands did not embrace her at once. For a long, terrible moment, she only stared down, hollow-eyed, at the broken little girl clutching to her as though for life.

In the sterile quiet of the ward, with the monitor beeping steady and cold, Sayuri felt the same chill she had once felt watching Kaede slip further and further from her grasp—into madness, or something darker.

Her sister was gone.

Now, before her eyes, her daughter was beginning to look the same too.

Sayuri’s hand, pale and trembling, drifted down to her daughter’s tangled hair. She stroked it slowly, deliberately, each movement tender yet strangely hollow, as if her body clung to the motions of comfort while her heart lingered elsewhere. Her voice followed soon after, slow and hushed, a murmur meant to soothe.

”Shh…it’s alright, Machiko. It’s alright now.”

The words were sweet, but they rang thin, as though wrapped in glass. Detached, careful, a lullaby sung more quiet that to console. Machiko clutched weakly at her mother’s sleeve until her frantic sobs ebbed into sniffles, then hiccups, then silence. At last, her swollen eyes closed, lashes damp, and the girl sank into an uneasy sleep.

Sayuri remained bent over her daughter for a long while, watching the small rise and fall of her chest, listening to the steady beeping of the monitor. Only when she was certain that Machiko would not wake did she slip free, rising slowly to her feet. She cast one last look at her sleeping child, then turned and stepped out of the ward.

The hall was silent, washed in that strange hospital light that never seem to wane or warm. Sayuri’s hand moved at once to her handbag. With fumbling fingers, she drew out the old and creased envelope. The one Kaede had left addressed to Machiko. She unfolded it carefully, the paper soft from repeated handling. Her eyes devoured the frantic scrawl again, though she already knew the words by heart.

Machiko —

I don’t have time. Read this and burn it if you must. I am Etsuko Kaede — your aunt. Trust nothing I say but do this one thing: do not answer the voices.

In my family the same thing happens, again and again. Always a woman. One girl every generation—somebody becomes its mouth, its hand. When one dies, the tie curls to the next in line and the bargain begins anew. That is how it has been for as long as memory can remember.

If it ever stands before you and offers a bargain, refuse. In every way, refuse. It is not a spirit that keeps promises. It is a hunger. It has no mercy, no weakness you can find with pity or pleading. It is older than reason. It will call itself anything to get you to speak its name. Do not speak its name. Do not say aloud that you hear it. Do not look for it. Do not bargain.

It watched you the moment you were born. It did not want your sister. It chose you. It told me once that your fate would be worse than death, something I learned it likes to watch another’s despair. 

If you can, lay low. Move quietly. Do not seek out sorcerers. Do not draw attention. If anyone knocks at your door asking about spirits, letters, or strange family rites — do not answer them. Burn papers that smell of old ink and fever. Keep your mouth closed even to those you love. The safest thing is the smallest life.

If you are reading this and nothing has happened — good. Keep it that way. If it comes, know this: it will bargain for your life because that is what it eats. It will make you see things, offer you power, offer you a fix for a pain that cannot be eased. All deals take. Always. I am sorry you have to read this and I am sorry I failed.

Never. Trust. It.

— Etsuko Kaede

Sayuri folded the paper once more, though her hands trembled so badly the edges tore. Her jaw clenched, and a shiver cut down her spine. She could not shake the thought that her sister’s madness, the same madness that stole her life, had sunk its teeth into Machiko as well. Some sickness of the blood, festering in whispers and shadows.

She pressed her hand to her mouth, choking on a sob, when a soft voice broke through the hall.

”Sayuri?”

Her husband stood at the far end, shoulders bowed in exhaustion. Shinji’s wite coat was gone, his tie loosened, eyes rimmed with red. He approached with slow steps, searching her face for answers. “Kiyoko and Sora are asleep at home. How is Machiko?”

Before Sayuri could respond, two men appeared from around the corner. A detective, broad-shouldered with tired eyes and a uniformed officer trailing behind him. Their presence turned the sterile corridor heavy, the weight of their silence pressing in.

The detective removed his cap, his expression solemn. “Takahara-san…we’re sorry to inform you. Earlier today, during the investigation of the forest, we were able to confirm that the remains in the forest belongs to your son, Yuu.”

Sayuri’s world collapsed at once. Her legs buckled beneath her, and she clutched the wall to keep herself upright. A wail tore from her chest, raw and animal, the sound of a mother’s heart breaking. Her body shook as though with fever, her cries echoing down the sterile hall.

Beside her, Shinji staggered back, covering his face with both hands. His sobs came harsh and uneven, tearing through the composure of the man who always bore the weight of others’ grief. He leaned against the wall, shoulders convulsing as he tried—and failed—to breathe through the storm.

The detective bowed his head, murmuring apologies neither parent heard. The officer shifted uneasily, as if wishing to disappear.

Sayuri sank to the floor at last, her cries spent but her body hollow, shaking. Shinji dropped beside her, clutching her hand as though it were the only thing anchoring him. Together they wept, two broken halves, as the news of Yuu’s death carved itself into their bones.

And in the ward beyond the door, Machiko slept fitfully, her dreams dark with the memory of threads and teeth and a voice that promised ruin.

The incense clung to the air like fog, sweet and bitter all at once. It burned Machiko’s throat, yet she breathed it in anyway, as though the smoke might choke her back into reality. Chrysanthemums, white and fragile, crowded the altar. Lilies drooped in porcelain vases, their fragrance thick enough to smother. Paper lanterns hung above, their soft amber glows dimly against the heaviness of grief.

And there at the center of it all, was Yuu.

Not his body, not his warmth. Just a photograph. His round face framed by messy strands of honeyed hair, his wide smile missing a front tooth, his tiny arms hugging his pony plushie as though it were alive again. That photograph beamed with life, with innocence, with joy so bright it split Sayuri’s heart anew each time her eyes lingered on it. But Yuu was not here.

He never would be again.

Machiko stood before the altar, her casted arm heavy at her side. Her right hand— its fingers charred black with faint, glowing cracks that only she could see — throbbed witin the plaster, as if her very bones smoldered. Her skin prickled with the weight of her secret. She flexed her fingers uselessly. The plaster held them still, but the phantom burn crept upward like frostbite made of fire.

She wanted to scream. But her mouth was dry, her voice gone. She hadn’t spoken properly since that night.

The room was silent except for the muffled sobs of strangers, the rustle of clothes as mourners bowed, the soft clinking of prayer beads. Sayuri sat at the front, her hands folded so tightly the knuckles shone white. Her eyes were swollen, raw from days of crying, but now she made no sound. She swayed slightly, her lips moving in prayers that had long lost their meaning.

Shinji stood behind her, stiff as stone. His suit hung loose on his shoulders; the man hadn’t slept in days. He stared at the altar with hollow eyes, lips pressed into a hard, bloodless line. Every so often, his throat bobbed as if he wanted to say something, but no words ever came. He turned his face when Sayuri’s shoulders shook too violently, as though he could not bear her grief on top of his own.

Kiyoko and Sora sat together, though not close enough to touch. Kiyoko’s head hung low, her hair shielding her face, but the tremor in her shoulders betrayed the tears she would not let anyone see. Every so often her jaw tightened, and her lips moved in muttered words Machiko could not hear, but she felt them. Condemnations. Blame. Venom.

Sora sat small and quiet, clutching a folded piece of paper to his chest. His latest drawing. He didn’t cry, not openly, but his eyes were swollen and red. His jaw quivered as he bit it shut, as if the sound of his own grief might break him apart completely.

No one spoke to Machiko.

Not because they had nothing to say. But because everything to say would break her.

And yet, she felt it. The glances, sharp and fleeting. The silence was heavy with questions they would not ask aloud.

Her fault.

All of it.

Yuu’s laugh still echoed in her ears. His small hands still reached for her. His scream still tore through her bones. She remembered the way his chest had looked. Open, wrong, splintered. She remembered his plushie, bloodied and discarded, now it sat at his altar. She remembered her own hands pressing against his lifeless body, burning with stolen fire as she begged for him to come back.

He hadn’t.

He never would.

Her knees threatened to buckle, but she forced herself to stand. Forced herself to stare at the photograph. At the smile that mocked her with its innocence. At the proof of a boy who had been whole, once, before she dragged him into ruin. 

She was too weak to save her brother. Too stupid to see the curse’s trickery. Perhaps it was her very own existence that lured the curse that ate Yuu to them. Misfortune seems to follow her like a close friend. She was a magnet for ruin. She was the crack in her family’s foundation. And now her brother was gone because of her.

She felt hollow, emptied out like one of the urns that held incense ash. Her chest rose and fell, but no breath filled her lungs. She blinked, but the world around her swam in a haze. She was there—standing at Yuu’s altar, watching strangers bow and murmur condolences, watching her mother crumple into her father’s arms only for him to stiffen and hold her too loosely—but she was not in her body. She was elsewhere. Floating. Dissociating.

“Little storm…” The curse’s voice slithered through her, low and cruel. “Look at the chaos you’ve caused.”

Machiko’s casted hand shook violently. She curled it against her chest, the heat of its corruption seeping through fabric and bone. Her heart hammered against it as though trying to claw free of her ribs. She wanted to rip herself open, to tear out whatever sickness had made her this way.

Her siblings avoided her. Her parents looked past her. She had become the shadow in their home, the specter in their grief. No longer a daughter, no longer a sister. A reminder. A curse.

She barely ate. Food turned to ash in her mouth. She barely slept. Each night was a torture of memories replayed until her lungs seized. Sometimes she woke screaming, clawing at her casted hand until her skin bled beneath the plaster. Sometimes she woke silent, staring into the dark as the voice laughed softly in her ear.

She had cried until her body emptied itself, until no tears would come. Now she was only hollow. A shell. A ghost bound to a family that no longer wanted her.

She stared at Yuu’s photograph, her lips trembling. Survivor’s guilt slowly choked her.

The weeks after Yuu’s funeral stretched on like winter nights—endless, airless, starless. Grief turned the Takahara household into a husk of itself. Where once laughter and quarrels filled the air like clashing bells, now silence reigned, heavy and sharp, broken only by the occasional sob muffled through thin walls or the brittle slam of a door.

Sayuri moved through the house like a ghost, a shadow stitched from grief and alcohol. Each step was careful, tentative, as if the floorboards themselves might judge her for the absence of her beloved son. Her hands trembled, even when holding a glass at dinner, and the faint clink of porcelain seemed to echo through the empty corners of the house. Wherever she went, the lingering scent of alcohol trailed her, bitter and sharp, a tangible reminder of the solace she sought but could never truly find.

Machiko had learned the secrets of her mother’s despair. Hidden bottles of sake, whiskey, and cheap beer surfaced in the oddest of places: behind the kitchen cupboard, buried beneath the sink, tucked into laundry baskets as if shame itself could hide them. Each discovery tightened a knot of fear and sorrow in Machiko’s chest.

Every evening, Sayuri would settle onto the sofa, her small frame hunched beneath the weight of loss, glass in hand, staring at some invisible point beyond the walls. She drank slowly, methodically, as if each sip could dilute the memory of Yuu’s laughter, the tiny warmth of his hand in hers. And always she waited—waited for her husband to come home from work, to return some measure of comfort she could no longer find alone.

But Shinji rarely returned before midnight. When he did, his clothes reeked of antiseptic, sharp and clinical, a scent that reminded Machiko of hospitals and sterile rooms, of cold surfaces where life and death were measured in charts and beeps. He spent his nights either in the study or in their shared bedroom, a figure more distant than the moon. Even at the rare dinner where he lingered long enough to take a seat, his gaze avoided both Sayuri and the children. Machiko had learned not to look for warmth in those moments; Shinji’s eyes could not bear the weight of their grief, not Sayuri’s, not anyone’s.

Kiyoko’s cruelty sharpened in that silence. She had always been loud, brash, a child who clawed for attention as if the world were a stage. But after Yuu’s death, her words turned to knives, and Machiko was her favorite target.

“You’re a freak,” Kiyoko spat one afternoon, her voice bright and venomous as sunlight on glass. She stood in the doorway of their shared bathroom, arms folded, blocking Machiko’s path. “You didn’t even cry right at the funeral. Just stood there like a freak. Everyone saw it.”

Machiko said nothing, her cast cradled against her chest, her eyes fixed on the floorboards. Silence had always been her shield. But Kiyoko pressed harder, leaning close until her perfume stung Machiko’s nose. “I know you had to do something with Yuu’s death. You should’ve died instead. Yuu was normal. Yuu was loved.”

The words struck harder than fists. Machiko flinched, retreating into herself, but offered no defense. In her deepest mind, perhaps her sister was right. 

Sora, once quick to boast of his drawings, now avoided her gaze entirely. When she entered a room, he edged out of it, clutching his papers like talismans against some unseen force. Once, in the hallway, their eyes met, and he shivered so violently the pencils clattered from his hands. Death follows you, his wide, glassy stare seemed to say. And perhaps he was right.

Nights were the worst. The house seemed to creak with grief, every groan of wood and whisper of wind a reminder of absence. Machiko often lay awake staring at the ceiling, her body a taut wire of exhaustion and fear, her right hand pulsing faintly beneath the plaster, glowing with cracks only she could see. The curse’s laughter slithered through her mind like smoke, soft and patient.

And then one night, the silence broke.

It began as muffled voices downstairs, too sharp and ragged to be ordinary. Machiko blinked awake, her heart quickening, listening. The voices swelled, rising into shouts.

Sayuri’s voice was raw, high-pitched, cracking like glass. “Where have you been, Shinji? Do you think I don’t know? Do you think I’m a fool?”

Shinji’s reply was lower, restrained but strained, like a rope pulled taut. “I’ve been at the hospital. Where else would I be?”

“Liar!” The word split the night. “Don’t you dare say that to me again. I’ve heard you, Shinji. I’ve heard you whispering in your study, late at night, thinking I was asleep. Her name, her voice, your little sighs—you disgust me!”

Machiko pushed the blanket to her waist, her small frame trembling as she sat up in the dark. The floor was cold beneath her bare feet as she slid closer to her door. The voices swelled through the cracks of wood and plaster.

Sayuri again, voice thick with drink, each syllable staggering. “Ever since Kaede died—you’ve been running, hiding, slipping into someone else’s arms! Tell me the truth!”

There was a pause, heavy as stone. Then Shinji’s voice, sharper now, rough with anger. “Enough. Stop this madness.”

“You stop lying to me!” Sayuri’s words broke, trembling with sobs. “Tell me who she is! Tell me how long! Tell me why—”

“I said enough!” Shinji roared, and the house seemed to shudder. For a heartbeat, there was silence, like the air before lightning strikes.

Then Sayuri’s voice returned, brittle as ice. “So it’s true.”

A chair scraped. A glass broke. Machiko imagined her mother with a bottle in hand, her eyes red and wet, her hair loose around her shoulders like a shroud. She imagined her father with his coat still on, his tie loosened, his face twisted into a mask of exhaustion and rage.

Sayuri pressed again, relentless, her grief transfigured into fury. “Why, Shinji? Why her? Why not me? Why not your children?”

Shinji’s voice cracked open, low and vicious. “Because I wanted a normal life, Sayuri. Do you understand that? Normal. But you—you and your damned family! You dragged me into this nightmare. Your sister whispering about curses, your daughter staring at shadows like she’s possessed. It’s not normal. None of it! I’m tired of it!”

Machiko’s stomach dropped. Her nails dug into her cast until the plaster bit her skin.

Sayuri gasped, like a wound opening. “You… take that back.”

But Shinji didn’t. His voice only grew colder, sharper, each word a blade. “I despised it from the start. I despised you. You, your twisted sister, your cursed child. I wanted a wife, a home, a family. Not this.”

A sob tore through Sayuri, but beneath it burned rage. “Get out,” she hissed. “Get out of this house. Now!”

“No,” Shinji snapped. “This is my house—”

“Get. Out!” Her voice rose, shrieked, splintered against the walls. “I will not sleep another night beside a man who hates me and cheated on his wife. You want your normal life? Go live it with that bitch!”

Then came the slam of footsteps, the crash of the front door torn open, and silence, vast and suffocating.

Machiko sat in the dark, small hands pressed to her ears, but the words lingered, cutting deeper than any curse.

“Cursed child.” She didn’t need the Binding Demon’s whispers to tell her what she already knew.

Machiko’s legs moved before her mind could protest. She slipped from her bed, bare feet cold against the floorboards and crept down the hallway. The house was still, suffocating under the weight of the argument that had transpired that night. The air smelled of spilled alcohol, sweat and old heartbreak.

In the dining area, Sayuri sat slumped over the table, her hair loose around her shoulders, damp and tangled, like a shroud draped over a broken corpse. Empty glasses and bottles littered the surface, reflecting the dim light from the overhead bulb. She stared at the room—or through it— with hollow eyes, pupil dilated, cheeks streaked with tears and smudged makeup.

”Okaasan?” Machiko’s voice was soft, hesitant and small. She stepped closer, her casted arm cradled against her chest, trembling as much from fear as from fatigue.

Sayuri’s gaze flicked towards her, slow and deliberate. For a moment, Machiko thought her mother would speak, would acknowledge her after weeks of haunting the hallway as a ghost. But then, with a sudden sharp motion, her mother’s hand struck Machiko across the face. The slap echoed through the kitchen, sharp as a whip.

”You!”, Sayuri hissed, voice ragged and wet with alcohol. “Do you know what you’ve done? Do you know the misery you’ve caused in my life? You, Kaede, this stupid madness in my house— it’s all your fault!”

Machiko’s chest constricted. She opened her mouth to speak, tried to apologise. “Okaasan…I-I’m trying—”

”It’s not enough!”, Sayuri was relentless. Her hands trembled as she grabbed at Machiko, pulling her forward by the shoulders. “Trying?”, she spat with venom. “Trying isn’t enough! Why did you have to be like Kaede? Why can’t I have a normal life for once? Why can’t you be like your siblings? Why?!”

Tears streamed down Machiko’s cheeks, hot and desperate. “I’m sorry! I’m trying! It hurts, mother!, I’m-”

Sayuri’s hands found Machiko’s hair, thick, curled and black. She yanked sharply. The girl cried out in pain lanced through her scalp as her mother dragged her to the kitchen. Sayuri’s eyes were wild, haunted and full of something older than grief; envy, rage and betrayal. With a snap of her wrist, she held the kitchen scissors in her other hand and, without hesitation, began cutting Machiko’s hair.

The first snip took a jagged chunk; then another, and another. Strands of black fell to the floor like dark rain. Machiko screamed, her sobs echoing against the walls, hands flailing to protect herself, but Sayuri’s grip was iron. Each cut carried the weight of her mother’s fury, each strand a testament to the betrayal she felt towards her cheating husband and the daughter who reminded her of him.

When Sayuri finally stepped back, Machiko stood trembling with uneven hair, clumped in jagged locks. Her face streaked with tears and blood from the scalp’s raw abrasions. Sayuri shoved her backward, hands quivering, chest heaving. Machiko could not recognise the woman who stood in front of her. This woman was angry, violent and dangerous. Her mother was once loving, patient and kind to her children. She does not know this scary stranger. 

“Get out of my sight!”, her mother snapped, voice cracking with anger and sorrow alike. “Get out! I never want to see you again!”

Machiko stumbled on the kitchen floor, sobbing uncontrollably. Her cast scraped against the tiles as she curled into herself, her small body wracked with agony of loss, fear and the burning shame of her mother’s hatred. She tried to speak again, to explain herself, but the words dissolved into stifled cries. Machiko quickly stood up and ran into her rooms, diving under her bed for a small sanctuary.

The room smelled of alcohol, blood and despair. Machiko could feel the faint echoes of the curse stirring in her mind, whispering, patient and insatiable. Watching the chaos unfold within her own home. Her mother’s fury still lingered in the air, a cruel resonance that made her ears ring. 

And then she felt it—the faint, almost imperceptible stirrings of the curse in her mind. A whisper, silky and cold, weaving around her thoughts, patient, insatiable. It slithered through the raw edges of her grief, circling her anger, her fear, her shame. “Little Storm, she hurt you…harm her back”

She pressed her palms to the cold tiles, feeling the vibration of her heartbeat thrumming like a drum in her ears. Her mind wavered, teetering on the edge between obedience and horror. The desire to lash out was fierce, primal—a storm building beneath her ribs.

But beneath it all, there was another thread, fragile and quivering: the memory of Yuu. The weight of his absence, his laughter now gone, the echo of his small hands in hers. Machiko’s sobs shook her body, raw and ragged, as the whisper coiled tighter around her will.

“Harm her…”

“No…” she croaked, voice small, barely audible even to herself. Her body shook, a conflicted tempest of grief and rage. The curse hissed softly, amused, patient. “You can, little one. I will give you the strength. I will give you the storm. She will pay, and it will feel like justice.”

Machiko buried her face in her knees, sobbing, the cold tile pressing against her flushed cheeks. Her small fists clenched, fingers scraping against the plaster cast on her arm, lines of gray fractures faintly glowing as the remnants of the curse’s power stirred. Her tears fell into the jagged black hair still clinging to her shoulders, the memory of her mother’s cruelty burning in her chest.

“Little Storm…”

“Leave me alone!”, shouted the girl as she covered her ears with her hands.

The alcohol clung to Sayuri like a second skin, a sheen of despair that made her skin prickle and her hands tremble. She snatched her coat from the hall, tugging it around her shoulders as if it could shield her from the weigh pressing down her chest. Every room she passed was a shrine to misery. Broken laughter frozen in the air, empty plate on the table, the faint lingering scent of blood and grief. 

She stumbled down the street towards the convenience store, boots scuffing on asphalt. The night was quiet, punctuated only by the occasional distant bark or hum of a streetlamp. The cold air bit at her face, sharp and relentless, and the distant glow of the store promised both refuge and escape.

Inside, she rifled through the shelves almost blindly, finally settling on a bottle of cheap beer. She walked up to the counter to pay and her eyes settled on a pack of cigarettes behind the counter. The faint scent of tobacco is a memory of life long past, before she had been a mother, a wife, a grieving widow. She paid for her beer and cigarettes, fumbling with cash, and stepped back into the night. The first drag burned her throat, filling her chest with fire, and she tilted her head towards the stars. The first hit of nicotine giving her the small high she needs. 

“You must have been having a long…and tiring night,” said the voice, smooth, deliberate and unnervingly calm.

Sayuri turned to look at the stranger, her eyes squinting through the dim glow of the streetlights. A woman approached, sharply dressed in a black suit, heels clicking lightly against the pavement. Her presence was calm but deliberate, like a predator sizing up its prey. Sayuri narrowed her eye, suspicion prickling through her fog of intoxication.

The stranger’s gaze fell to Sayuri’s hands—red, raw from gripping the cigarette too tightly. Without a word, she extended a crisp, white, handkerchief. Sayuri hesitated, blinked and took it with shaky hands, wiping her dirty hands. Her drunken mind warred with caution and fatigue, but the gesture was oddly intimate, almost caring.

Sayuri exhaled a long plume of smoke, her words tumbling out unfiltered. “Had a shitty night. My sister died…my youngest son, gone in a freak accident…my husband of ten years has been cheating on me. One of my daughters seems to be mentally crazy. Are you here to ake my night shittier?” Her voice cracked on the last word.

The stranger softly chuckled, a sound that felt entirely too patient. “No,” she said, calm, deliberate. “But it seems….your life has been cursed.”

The word “cursed” hit Sayuri like ice. Haunted her for her whole life. She froze, pupils widening, the cigarette trembling between her fingers. Her glare burned into the stranger. Sayuri clicked her tongue in annoyance. She stepped back about to leave, the stranger produced a business card and extended it to Sayuri.

“Here”, she said, “I work for an organisation that helps special children suffering from…mental health complications. We take them to a local shrine, help them rehabilitate, and integrate them back into society. It seems your child…might benefit from this care.”

Sayuri took the card and stared at the card in her trembling hands. The words hovered in the night, distant and unreal. She felt the cigarette burn between her fingers, embers glowing faintly like the remnants of her hope, or maybe the last spark of patience.

”I don’t have that kind of money,”, she said finally, voice flat, raw. “And I don’t care to send my…freak of a daughter anywhere.”

”We’re a non-profit organisation, backed by wealthy philanthropists. All expenses will be taken care of,” the stranger replied. Her voice calm, unyielding, as though reading the mess in Sayuri’s mind.

Sayuri’s gaze drifted upward, past the stranger, towards the indifferent stars. Machiko the remnant of her twin sister’s madness, the source of every headache, every sleepless night, every reminder of grief and rage, seemed suddenly small and inconsequential in the vast weight of her own despair.

This could be her only ticket to restart her life. Unchained from her past. From Kaede.

Without another word, she spoke—voice cold, detached, brittle from drink and tears: “You can take her. For all I care.”

The stranger’s faint smile never reached her eyes. She slipped the card into Sayuri’s hand, a quiet seal on a choice Sayuri had barely thought through, and melted into the night. Sayuri inhaled deeply, smoke curling from her lips as she stared at the stars. Empty, indifferent, free— if only from the daughter she had long stopped seeing as her own. “What’s the name of your boss again?”

“I work for Geto Suguru.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 4: The Shepard and The Lamb

***Before the Night Parade of 100 Demons***

Year: 2007

Machiko woke to the smell of grilled fish.

For a moment, half-buried in her thin blanket, she thought she had dreamed the night before. The shouting, the smashing bottles, the glint of steel in her mother’s hand. But then she brushed the back of her hand across her cheek and felt the faint swelling, the sting where a palm had struck her. Her fingers tangled in her hair, jagged and uneven, strands hacked off in clumps. The memory came back sharp, like glass underfoot. It had happened.

The air in the house was too quiet. No muttered arguments, no muffled sobbing. Instead, there was the soft scrape of chopsticks against porcelain, the clink of a ladle against a pot. She smelled rice steaming in the cooker, the tang of miso broth, the faint smoke of fish searing on an iron pan. It was wrong. All wrong.

After what happened yesterday, Machiko slept under the bed. Too scared of what had transpired and the possibility of her mother barging into her room with renewed rage. Machiko crawled out and dusted herself from the dust bunnies clinging onto her choppy hair and clothes. She took a deep breath before stepping outside the sanctuary of her room.

When she stepped downstairs to the dining area, her heart lurched.

The room that had been a battlefield was spotless. The chairs, once knocked over in fury, were set neatly in their places. The bottles, shattered across the floor last night, were gone, as though they had never existed. Even the faint stains of spilled sake had been scrubbed away. Only the faint sharpness of bleach lingered in the air, a ghost of what had been.

Her mother stood at the stove, back straight, humming some old tune under her breath. Her hair, which had been wild and matted the night before, was brushed smooth and tied back with a neat ribbon. She moved with practiced grace as she set bowls before Kiyoko and Sora: grilled mackerel, small plates of pickled radish, steaming miso soup speckled with scallions. It could have been any ordinary morning in their household years ago, before Yuu, before funerals, before grief hollowed them out.

“Eat before it gets cold,” Sayuri said, her voice warm, almost musical.

She smiled at Kiyoko as she set a plate in front of her eldest. The girl rolled her eyes but tucked her hair behind her ear and dug into the fish with uncharacteristic silence. She smiled at Sora too, smoothing his hair as he lifted his chopsticks and mumbled a polite “thank you.”

Then her eyes found Machiko.

The smile did not fade, but something in it changed. It was a mask stretched thin over emptiness, a smile with no softness behind it. Machiko felt her chest tighten.

Her place was already set, but not beside her siblings. Not between them, where she had always sat, or opposite them, where she might have shared glances and words. Her tray was waiting at the head of the table, where her father had once presided. Alone. Exiled.

“Today is a special day for you,” Sayuri said, her tone light, pleasant, as if she were announcing a birthday surprise.

Machiko stepped gingerly across the room, her bare feet pattering against the wooden floor. Her hands curled into small fists at her sides. She sat where she was told, lowering herself onto the wooden chair as if it were a trap. The food looked beautiful—rice glistening white and perfect, fish grilled to golden crispness—but her stomach clenched at the sight.

Sayuri lowered herself onto her own chair, folding her hands neatly before lifting her gaze again. Her smile was still there, brittle as porcelain.

“You’ll be going somewhere to be fixed, Machiko,” she said. Her voice was calm, too calm, like a blade hidden in silk. “To heal. To become better.”

The words landed heavy. Fixed. As if she were broken. As if she were not a child, not a daughter, but a mistake to be mended or thrown away.

Machiko’s breath caught in her throat. “Wh-what? What do you mean?…” Her voice cracked, barely more than a whisper. “How long will I be gone?”

Her mother did not answer.

Instead, she lifted her chopsticks, dipped them into her soup, and sipped quietly, eyes closed as though savoring the warmth. When she spoke again, it was as if Machiko’s question had never been asked.

“Finish your breakfast,” Sayuri said, her tone sweet, her eyes still closed. “And when you’re done, start packing your things.”

Silence hung over the table like a shroud.

Kiyoko’s chopsticks hovered above her plate. Her eyes flicked toward Machiko, then away, lips pressed together. Her red nails tapped against the lacquered wood of the table, a nervous tic disguised as impatience.

Sora bent low over his rice, chewing slowly, shoulders drawn up tight. He didn’t look at anyone. Not at Machiko, not at Sayuri, not even at his sister. His silence was heavier than words.

Machiko sat frozen, staring at the fish’s glazed eye staring back at her from the plate. Her throat closed around the rice she had not eaten. Something was coming. She could feel it, the way she felt storms before they broke. Something terrible, dressed up in morning sunlight and the smell of grilled fish.

She lowered her head and picked at her food in silence, her hands trembling.

Machiko ate quickly, the food going down like stones. The rice clumped on her tongue, and the grilled fish had turned to ash long before it reached her stomach. She forced herself to chew and swallow, spoon scraping against the bowl, each bite faster than the last. Better to choke than to leave anything uneaten. The memory of last night’s scissors, her mother’s eyes blazing with liquor and fury, still throbbed like a bruise in her mind.

Kiyoko and Sora worked in silence, the quiet between them louder than any storm. Kiyoko rinsed her dish with quick, clipped motions, her lips pressed thin, her long nails tapping against porcelain like the faintest of drums. Sora scrubbed his plate until his knuckles whitened, sleeves rolled past his elbows, every stroke of the rag stiff with precision, as though the act itself were a spell to keep their family from splitting further. None of them dared to speak. None of them dared to look at Sayuri.

Sayuri moved about the kitchen with a smile so bright it unsettled them. She poured tea for Kiyoko and Sora, smoothed down the cloth on the table, even hummed faintly under her breath. Yet there was no warmth in her eyes, no softness in the curl of her lips. Her gaze slid past Machiko as if she were smoke.

When Machiko’s plate was finally clean, she fled to her room.

Her hands shook as she pulled open drawers, tossing faded shirts and threadbare skirts and shorts into her duffel bag. Jackets, pajamas, sweaters, everything within her wardrobe. She had no sense of how long she would be gone, so she shoved as much as she could fit, each item crumpled and careless. Her blanket, the blue fuzzy one she had clutched since she was small, went in next. Its fabric was worn thin in patches, but it still smelled faintly of soap and safety.

Then she slipped into Yuu’s room.

The air was still, heavy with the faint sweetness of him—warm milk, crayons, the innocence of a boy forever gone. Dust gathered along the shelves where his toys stood in neat rows, untouched. His blanket remained crumpled where he had last lain, the indentation of his small body still etched into the mattress like a scar. His bedroom remained undisturbed like a frozen memory. A sacred tomb.

Her eyes fell on the pony plushie by the bed, its purple fur worn, one button eye loose on a thread. Yuu had taken it everywhere, clutching it close when he was frightened. The bloodstains were long gone after the incident, washed by their grieving mother before his funeral. The sight of it hollowed her chest. She bit down hard on her lip, willing the tears not to fall, then reached forward. Her fingers trembled as they closed around the plush, soft and broken. She pressed it to her chest for a moment, the way Yuu once had, before slipping it into her bag. Something of him. Something she could carry. Something to remember him by. 

The doorbell rang.

The sound cut through the house like a blade.

Machiko’s heart leapt to her throat. She zipped the duffel hastily, the pony tucked within, and stepped out.

At the entrance, the Takahara family assembled. What remained of it.

The door opened to reveal a woman framed in pale morning light. She wore a tailored gray suit, not a wrinkle upon it, her hair drawn back into a low, immaculate bun. A leather satchel rested against her hip. She looked every inch the professional, the sort of woman who belonged in government offices or schools, the sort whose very presence suggested order, solutions, and calm.

Her smile was gentle, practiced. The kind that told children they would be safe, told parents they could rest easy. But Machiko, standing a step behind her mother, felt a prickle race down her arms. There was something beneath the woman’s smile, something coiled and watchful in the way her dark eyes flicked over the family and then lingered—just a heartbeat too long—on her.

“This must be Machiko,” the woman said, her voice smooth as still water. “I’m Manami Suda. I’ll be taking care of her for a little while. Our organization specializes in helping children heal… children who’ve been through difficult times.”

Sayuri’s hands were folded before her, prim and deliberate. Her smile stretched too wide, her eyes too flat. “Be good, Machiko,” she said sweetly. “This is for you. For your future.”

Kiyoko stood with her arms locked across her chest, her chin tilted down. For once, no cruel remark passed her lips. Her expression shifted, unease tightening her brow, though she looked away quickly, unwilling to meet Machiko’s eyes.

Sora’s lips trembled, his fists clenched small and white at his sides. His eyes were wet, but he did not cry. He only stared, as if this moment might vanish if he held it still with enough force. Fear and sorrow wrestled inside him, making him look far older than his years.

Machiko clutched her duffel tight, the edge of her blanket peeking from the zipper. She looked from her mother’s empty smile to her sister’s silence, to her brother’s stricken face, and she felt the truth settle cold into her bones: she was already gone to them.

Manami extended her hand.

“Shall we go?” she asked softly, her voice a velvet thread. 

The morning light streamed around her silhouette, bright but somehow chill, as though the sun itself refused to warm her.

Machiko hesitated. Her fingers curled tighter around the strap of her bag. Somewhere, deep inside her, something whispered of shadows coiled beneath silk smiles. But no words came.

Machiko did not take her hand. Instead, she walked out of her house she once called home.

And just like that, she stepped into the jaws of fate.

The car door closed with a dull, final thunk, and to Machiko it sounded like a lock sliding into place.

She sat small and stiff in the wide leather seat, her thin legs dangling, not long enough to touch the floor. Her duffel bag was clutched in both arms, stuffed until the zipper strained, and atop it she had pressed her fuzzy blue blanket, worn soft with age and covered in tiny frays along the hem. Beneath it, hidden against her ribs, was Yuu’s pony plushie. She had taken it from his room when no one was watching. The button eyes peered out between folds of blanket like a secret, like a witness.

Through the car window, the world still held her family. They stood on the porch of the house—her house, though it no longer felt like hers—watching her.

Sayuri was at the center, straight-backed and stiff, her face fixed in a smile that looked carved out of wax. A mother’s smile should have been warm, full of sugar and light, but there was nothing behind Sayuri’s lips but hollowness. Beside her, Kiyoko stood with arms crossed, eyes sharp and dark with something Machiko could not read. Not scorn, not quite pity, but something worse: silence. Little Sora clung to the railing, his small shoulders hunched, tears shining in his eyes though he said nothing.

No one waved.

The car lurched forward. Slowly, the figures shrank, the porch growing small, then smaller, until it vanished behind them. Machiko kept staring through the glass until her eyes stung. She could not tell if they had lingered to bid her farewell, or only to make sure she was gone.

Manami Suda sat at the wheel, hands pale and steady. She drove with practiced ease, the lines of the road rolling past beneath the tires. The car smelled faintly of leather and lavender, too clean, too sharp. For a time, there was only the low hum of the engine, the muffled rattle of loose change in the console, the sound of Machiko’s own shallow breaths.

Then the woman spoke.

“How’s your day been, Machiko?”

Her voice was warm enough to be mistaken for kindness, light enough to soothe a child’s ear.

Machiko swallowed. Her day? She thought of her mother’s hand gripping her hair, of the glint of a kitchen scissors slicing through black strands until they lay ragged around her shoulders. She thought of the shouting downstairs, the sound of glass shattering, chairs scraping against the floor, the sharp bite of her father’s name in her mother’s mouth. She thought of breakfast this morning, the silence at the table, the smile that did not reach her mother’s eyes.

Her stomach knotted. “…Fine,” she whispered.

Manami smiled at the road. “Good. And how old are you now?”

Machiko fidgeted with the zipper of her duffel. “Six.”

“Six,” Manami repeated, as though she were memorizing it. “Such a wonderful age. You’ll learn so much where you’re going. Grow strong, make friends.”

Friends. The word made Machiko bite her lip. Kiyoko’s jeers, her classmates’ whispers, the cold way the children in the neighborhood turned their backs on her—that was what friendship meant. Even Sora, who had once clung to her hand in the dark, now shrank from her as though she carried death itself on her skin.

The silence stretched. The road outside blurred past—grey houses with drooping eaves, hedges slick with dew, the pale morning sun weak through the mist. The air inside the car felt too heavy, pressing down on her chest. The words tumbled out before she could catch them.

“…Is there something wrong with me?”

The question was so small she almost hoped the woman hadn’t heard.

But Manami’s answer came at once, smooth as a lullaby. “No, of course not. There’s nothing wrong with you, Machiko. You’re special. That’s all. Different in ways most people don’t understand. That doesn’t make you broken. It only means you need the right place, with the right people, who can see you for who you truly are.”

Machiko wanted, desperately, achingly, to believe her. She wanted those words to be true more than she wanted air. But the way Manami’s voice wrapped so neatly around them, the way her eyes stayed fixed on the road, steady and sharp. It felt rehearsed. Practiced. Like lines from a play she had spoken a hundred times before.

“The shrine is very beautiful,” Manami continued. “It sits in the mountains, high and quiet. You’ll be at peace there. You’ll have private tutors, special classes, music, art, meditation. All sorts of things to keep your mind clear and calm.”

Clear. Calm. The words felt foreign, like the names of places she had never been. Her mind was never clear, never calm. It was full of voices, shadows, monsters clinging to the corners of her vision, the memory of Yuu’s scream echoing in her skull. Could a place like that make them go away?

“You won’t be alone, either,” Manami said. “There are already two children there, a pair of twins. They’re close to your age, and they’re very excited to meet you. I think you’ll be great friends.”

Her grip tightened around the plush under her blanket. Friends. Again that word. The ember inside her chest flickered weakly at the thought—flickered, but did not catch flame.

“And when we arrive,” Manami added, “the very first thing you’ll do is meet my employer. Geto Suguru. He’s the one who made all this possible. He’s kind, and wise. You’ll like him. And I think he’ll like you.”

Machiko pressed her forehead to the window glass. It was cool against her skin. Outside, the world slipped away in streaks of green and grey, each mile carrying her further from home but not closer to safety. The pony plush under her hand felt almost warm, as if Yuu’s small hands had left something of him behind in it.

But in her mind, the curse still whispered. “Little storm… you’re going into the belly of the beast.”

Her throat ached, but she stayed silent.

The car drove on.

And Machiko, six years old, already knew she was not being taken to a home. She was being taken to something else.

Something that felt like the end of one life, and the beginning of another.

The mountain road coiled upward like a serpent, narrow and half-swallowed by forest. Cedars rose in endless columns, their trunks dark with age, their branches weaving a roof that allowed only slivers of daylight to drip through. The car’s headlights gleamed off wet bark and moss-slick stone, off the half-rotted torii gates that appeared and vanished in the mist like phantoms.

Machiko sat pressed against the cold window, her duffel clutched to her chest, her cheek resting against her blanket. Yuu’s stuffed pony was tucked beneath it, hidden as though someone might steal it from her if they saw. Every turn of the road made her stomach twist tighter. She did not ask where they were going—her mother’s words had already made it clear enough. Somewhere to be fixed.

At last, the forest broke into an open courtyard of stone, and the shrine rose before her. It loomed like something half-living, half-dead, its silhouette blurred by mist. The main gate, lacquered once in crimson, now peeled and raw, rose above weathered fox statues whose eyes shone slick as though freshly wet. Lanterns lined the path, their paper shades glowing pale despite the daylight, as if their flames burned not oil but something stranger.

The shrine stretched in layers across the slope, a spine of tiled roofs and wooden halls, their beams blackened with age, their eaves dripping with moss. It was beautiful, in the way of old things that endure, but also heavy, watching, the air around it charged like the stillness before lightning.

When the car stilled, silence pressed in. Even the forest seemed to hold its breath.

Manami Suda turned off the engine. Her voice, when she spoke, was gentle, as though she were coaxing a frightened animal.

“Come now,” she said. “We’ve arrived.”

Machiko slid from her seat, shoes crunching gravel. The air bit at her cheeks, colder here than in the valley below. She followed Manami up the worn steps, Yuu’s toy hidden tight in her duffel. Each step groaned beneath her small weight, as though resentful. The fox statues flanked her climb, and for a moment, she thought their mouths were smiling.

The shrine smelled like cedar smoke and incense, thick and lingering, as if the air itself had been steeped in years of prayer and ritual. The scent clung to Machiko’s clothes and hair, heavy and sacred, weaving into her lungs with every shaky breath. The last time she smelled this scent was during Yuu’s funeral, her heart ached thinking about that memory. She grew to hate the smell of incense as it reminded her of the bitter and painful memory of losing a loved one.

Tatami mats stretched wide, cavernous halls, polished to a pale, honeyed glow, reflecting the lantern light in soft, trembling pools. Scrolls of mountains, rivers and ink-brushed cranes hung on the paper walls, their silent eyes observing, judging and waiting. Shadows pooled in the corners, flickering against the warm lanterns, through the flames themselves remained steady, stubborn against the dark.

Manami moved silently, sliding open a door with barely a sound. The chamber beyond was tripped bare of ornaments, save for a few scrolls and a low table. Even the light seemed thinner here, muted, sacred. Machiko stepped inside, small and tentative, clutching her bag as though it were a shield.

Seated cross-legged on a square of tatami was a man whose presence seemed to warp the space around him. Geto Suguru.

He wore plain black robes, but the simplicity did nothing to diminish the gravity that radiated from him. He sat like a mountain, still as stone, yet the room felt impossibly large, impossibly full in his presence. His hair was bound neatly, his posture perfect, every line of his body a testament to control. His face was calm, almost kind in its softness, but his eyes… his eyes were deep purple, dark and infinite, pulling at Machiko’s gaze and weighing her very soul.

“Thank you, Manami,” he said, voice low, calm, without lifting his gaze from her.

Manami bowed, a figure of practiced serenity. She turned to Machiko, offering the same warm, measured smile she always gave. “You’ll be safe here.” Then, as silently as she had come, she withdrew, sliding the door shut with the whisper of a sigh, leaving Machiko alone.

The silence that followed was not emptiness—it was pressure. It pressed down on her chest, made her ears ring, made her small heart beat like a drum. She felt like a mouse in a lion’s den.

“Come,” Geto said, and his voice was not loud, but it carried the weight of mountains and rivers, something eternal and immovable. “Sit.”

Machiko hesitated. Her knees pressed stiffly into the tatami, her fingers clutching the strap of her bag as though it were a lifeline. But she obeyed, kneeling across from him, small and fragile in the vast chamber.

For a long moment, he said nothing. He only watched. And in the way he looked at her—steady, unflinching, quiet—she felt as if he were measuring every scar, every tremor of fear, every fragment of grief that clung to her like cobwebs.

Then he lifted his hand, slow, deliberate, palm open.

Something shimmered there, pulling at the air itself, bending it into a form that seemed both alive and unreal. A curse.

It emerged like smoke made flesh: a deformed goldfish, belly swollen grotesquely, fins shredded, eyes bulging stark white, mouth opening and closing soundlessly as if gasping for the life it could not claim. Its body twitched and writhed above his palm, hovering like a cruel, delicate specter.

Machiko froze, breath catching in her throat. Her body curled back instinctively. She tried to school her expression, tried to pretend she saw nothing, as she had always done. But the image burned itself into her eyes.

Geto’s lips curved faintly, a movement barely perceptible. “You can see it,” he said, calm and absolute, a statement and a challenge all at once.

She shook her head quickly, too quickly, denial flooding her.

“Don’t lie,” he said, voice low but unyielding. It was not harsh, not cruel, but it carried certainty, inevitability. “It’s all right. I know. Because I am the same as you.”

The curse dissolved into smoke, twisting and retreating into nothingness, leaving only the still air and the echo of his words. For the first time since Yuu’s death, since her family’s collapse, 

The room smelled of cedar and faint smoke, a tang that clung to the woven mats and the beams above. Outside, crows called from the treetops, black shapes cutting through a pale sky. Inside, only silence lived, broken by the faint rasp of breath between the two seated on the tatami.

Machiko felt the weight of the man’s eyes upon her. Suguru Geto was not unkind in his manner; his voice was steady, his smile gentle. But his stillness had the gravity of a boulder in a river — immovable, ancient, commanding the current without effort.

“Tell me, Machiko,” he said at last, folding his hands loosely in his lap, “do you know the difference between you and the others around you?”

The word struck her like a stone to the chest. Different. Always different. A black sheep among white. Her classmates had whispered it, her family had breathed it. Different because she stared too long into the shadows, because she spoke of things no one else could see, because misfortune walked beside her like an old friend.

She wet her lips, her voice brittle as she whispered, “Th-that I can see monsters… when others can’t?”

Geto hummed in answer, a low sound that seemed to coil in the air between them. “Yes. But it is more than sight, isn’t it? You felt a pull within you. A change. Since that night.”

Machiko’s chest seized, her fingers clutching the folds of her blanket. He should not know — could not know. And yet his eyes, deep and unblinking, seemed to strip her bare.

“He knows, Little Storm..” 

“H-how did you know about… my brother?” Her voice cracked on the word.

His gaze softened, as though the hardness of stone might give way to the ripple of water. “Your brother’s death was in the papers. A freak accident, they said. Brutal. Unexplainable. No one knew the truth of what happened in those woods.” His voice lowered. “But you know.”

The words burst from her like a wound reopening. “He was killed.” Her small fists clenched. “He was killed by one of those monsters. I told them. I told them, but no one—no one believed me.”

“Curses,” Geto corrected her gently.

Her brow furrowed. “What?”

“They are called curses.” His tone was steady, deliberate, like a teacher guiding a child’s hand across the first strokes of a letter. “Your encounter with that curse awakened something that was sleeping inside you. Your curse energy, a spark, waiting to be lit.”

She blinked at him, confused, as though his words were a language from a dream.

Geto rose, unfolding to his full height, his robes whispering against the tatami. He moved with a languid grace, each step as measured as his words, until he stood by the narrow window. Mist clung to the courtyard beyond, pressing against the wooden frame. He gazed into it as if he were staring through the veil between worlds.

“In this world,” he said, voice almost reverent, “there are three kinds of people. The blind, who know nothing. The sorcerers, who hunt curses. And us—curse users—those born with the energy to shape and command the very things others fear. For ordinary men, curses are stories. Ghost tales to frighten children. But for us? They are truth.”

He turned, his dark eyes finding her again, pinning her where she sat. “That is why you never belonged. Not in your family. Not in your school. You were never meant to fit in their world.”

Machiko’s throat ached. Sayuri’s smile, stretched and brittle. Shinji’s cold silence. Kiyoko’s sneers, Sora’s terrified eyes. Yuu’s small hands reaching before the darkness took him. She felt the sting of tears, hot and unbidden.

Geto crossed the room slowly, the weight of his presence filling the chamber. He lowered himself beside her, one knee bent, his face dipping just low enough to meet her gaze. His smile was quiet, patient. His eyes, though, were fathomless.

“The reason you were sent here was not because you are broken, Machiko. You do not need fixing.” His voice dropped, intimate as a whisper in a confessional. “You need guiding. You need to be shown what you are, what you can be. That is what we do here. That is what I do. I find children who have seen what you’ve seen, who have carried what you carry. And I give them a place where they belong. A family. A home.”

His hand, long-fingered and steady, rested briefly against his knee. Close, but not touching her. An invitation, not a command.

“You are not a mistake,” he said. “You are chosen.”

The word hung heavy in the air, coiling in her chest like fire waiting for breath.

For once, Machiko felt seen. Heard. Not as the strange child with whispers in her ears, not as the burden her mother tried to fix or cast away, but as something more—someone understood. She did not know who this man truly was, only that his words had pierced through the fog of her loneliness like lantern light through a storm. Perhaps that was enough. Perhaps change, even frightening, jagged change, could be good. She needed it.

Geto watched her with the patience of a man accustomed to waiting years for seeds to flower. Before him sat a child broken down to scraps: a cheek purpled by her mother’s hand, eyes swollen from sleepless grief, hair hacked unevenly by a kitchen knife. Her knees bore the small dark constellations of bruises, the badges of a girl kicked aside too often. To him she was a lost lamb, stripped of love and home, a trembling thing in search of shelter. And he—he would be her shepherd.

“Would you like to stay here, Machiko?” he asked, voice as gentle as falling snow.

Her nod was soft, almost imperceptible, but her eyes betrayed her, shimmering with the sudden release of dammed-up tears. The flood came quietly, with hiccupped sobs and small, broken sniffs. She crawled forward on the tatami and pressed herself against him, arms wrapping around him as though she feared he too might vanish.

Geto hesitated—his body stiff, his hand hovering like a man unsure whether to touch fire or not. Then, with careful deliberation, his long fingers brushed through her uneven hair, combing the jagged ends in a gesture that was half comfort, half study. The girl shook against him, clutching as if he were the last tether to keep her from drowning. He let her. He endured her grief the way one endures the rain—silent, steady, with no need to push it away.

When at last her sobs dwindled to shivers, she pulled back, cheeks blotched and wet, her nose reddened. She looked small, hollowed, yet calmer than she had been.

Geto smiled, soft as a priest before an altar. “Now, first order of business,” he said, tone light, practical. “We should have a doctor look at you. Especially your blackened fingers.”

Machiko froze, her swollen eyes widening. “Wait… you can see it?”

The words tumbled out sharp with disbelief. No one else had ever spoken of it—not her mother, not her sisters, not even the doctors. The blackened skin, the cracks etched with dull grey light, had gone unseen, or ignored, as though the world itself had blinded them to it. She had wondered if she was cursed to bear it alone, another mark of her strangeness.

“Interesting…” Geto hummed, studying her with a curious gleam. He reached forward, enclosing her small hands within his own. His palms were warm, his grip firm, and the contrast between his size and hers was stark. Her crooked, blackened fingers disappeared in his grasp like fragile twigs between roots.

“It seems only those who can utilise curse energy can see this,” he said at last, his voice as thoughtful as if he were cataloging an artifact. “Perhaps it's the result of you overexerting yourself.”

He released her hands slowly, as though reluctant to let the discovery go. Then, tilting his head toward the door, he called softly, “Manami.”

The paper screen slid aside, and Manami entered with her quiet, practiced smile. She moved with the silence of someone used to playing roles, her eyes falling briefly to Machiko before shifting back to her master.

“Help her with her baggage,” Geto instructed, “and see to her room.”

Manami bowed once, then crossed the tatami to gather the small duffel bag and the blanket clutched inside it. She paused at the pony plushie tucked beneath Machiko’s arm, but said nothing, simply turned and departed with the child’s meager possessions.

Geto rose smoothly, and before Machiko could protest, he bent and lifted her into his arms. She weighed almost nothing to him, all skin and bone and trembling breaths, and yet she clung to him instinctively, arms around his neck.

“Let us see to your wounds first,” he said, his voice steady as stone. “After that… why don’t I have Manami tend to your hair?”

The words were simple, practical, even kind. But in Machiko’s small heart they bloomed into something she had long been starved of: care. Not the cruel, brittle concern of her mother, but something warmer, something that sounded like safety.

She pressed her face against his shoulder, nodding softly, too overcome to speak.

The infirmary smelled faintly of herbs and antiseptic, of old wood soaked through with time and incense smoke. Paper screens filtered the sunlight into pale gold slats across the tatami floor. Machiko sat on the bed, her legs swinging nervously, her small frame dwarfed by the wide white sheets. 

The resident doctor was a middle-aged man with weary eyes and steady hands. He worked in silence, cleaning the cuts on her knees, tending to the bruises along her cheekbones, his touch brisk but not unkind. Machiko winced no and then, but she held herself still, afraid that any sound might brand her weak. When the doctor took her blackened fingers into her palms, his brow furrowed, though his face betrayed no shock, just quiet resignation. He pressed and prodded gently, but at last he shook his head.

”When did you start noticing these black stains on your fingers?”, the doctor asked.

”It was when I was using my abilities?…”

”And do they hurt?”

”No, they don’t”

The doctor then looked at Geto, “Geto-sama, I believe this is not an injury, but a consequence of her cursed technique. I tried using a reverse curse technique on her, however it seems that the black stain is a part of her permanently. She may develop more if she overexertes herself.”

Machiko’s heart thudded painfully. She lowered her gaze, ashamed, curling her blackened and cracked hand into her lap. To Machiko it looked hideous, a constant reminder of her failure to save her brother. 

But then Geto’s voice cut through, calm and assured, “It’s alright, I think Machiko can manage. We’ll figure something out. Is there anything else, doctor?”

”No, all seems to be sorted.”, the man packed his belongings and gave a small bow before retreating, leaving Machiko alone with her guardian and his ever present shadow.

Manami entered soon after, carrying a small tray of scissors, combs, and cloth. She offered the girl a smile—warm, practiced, and just shy of reaching her eyes—and then set to work. Machiko sat obediently, shoulders stiff, as the first lock of her hair fell against the white cloth draped over her shoulders. Her curls, long and unruly, had always been her pride, the one small rebellion she clung to in a house that never wanted her. Now they fell one after another, the strands littering the tatami like fallen leaves in autumn.

When Manami was done, the mirror showed a different child: her hair cropped short into a soft bob, curling just beneath her ears. Her neck felt bare, her head lighter, as though someone had peeled away a piece of her old self. She touched it with tentative fingers.

She had never worn short hair before. But perhaps this change was not a theft, but a beginning.

“Lovely,” Manami said softly, dusting the last of the clippings from her shoulders. “A fresh start.”

Later, when all was prepared, Geto guided her through the quiet corridors of the shrine until they came upon her room. The sliding door opened to reveal a small space, modest but bright. Wooden floors shone beneath the evening light. Shoji doors faced an inner garden, where moss clung to the stones and a single maple tree reached upward, its leaves whispering in the breeze. A futon bed had been laid out neatly, the sheets crisp and white. There laid Yuu’s pony plushie, carefully placed on the middle of her futon.

There was a wardrobe, small but sturdy, and beside it a low table equipped with pencils, paper, and pen. In one corner, a tiny bookshelf held a row of textbooks, scrolls, and bound volumes—arithmetic and grammar alongside histories of the jujutsu world, its theories and cursed techniques. Lanterns hung from the beams above, their faint glow softened by pale silk shades.

Machiko stood in the doorway for a long moment, her wide eyes drinking it in. It was simple, but it was hers. A room not marred by shouting, not shadowed by broken bottles or jagged glass. For the first time in her short life, the space seemed to welcome her.

She turned back to Geto and Manami, and with a clumsy bow that nearly toppled her forward, she whispered, “Thank you. Thank you for everything.”

Her voice cracked, but her sincerity filled the quiet air.

Geto’s lips curved into the faintest of smiles. “You are most welcome, Machiko. Wash up. Dinner will be brought to your room shortly. Tomorrow, we shall begin.”

He let the words hang there, both promise and decree. “I’ll show you the shrine’s grounds, every path and hall. And then, your studies will start.”

The child nodded, her small hands clutching the hem of her dress. Her heart fluttered with both fear and a strange, cautious hope.

For tonight, she had a bed. For tonight, she had a place. Tomorrow… she would begin to learn what that place truly was.

The morning light spilled pale and golden through the paper screens, painting long bars across the polished floor. Machiko woke with a start, her eyes still heavy, her body reluctant to rise from the warmth of the futon. For a moment she did not remember where she was, the silence was too clean, too gentle, lacking the groan of pipes or the slam of bottles that had haunted her nights at home. Then she caught sight of the little garden beyond the shoji doors: moss gleaming damp from dawn’s dew, a stone lantern still casting the last ghost of a flame. It was not her house. It was the shrine.

She dressed herself carefully. The white top was simple, its long sleeves hanging loose past her wrists, the fabric soft against her still-bruised skin. The hakama were a size too large, black folds swishing about her thin legs, but when she tied the belt and smoothed her hair with both hands, she felt, almost, like she belonged.

The dining hall was alive with low chatter, bowls clinking against trays. The smell of miso broth and rice drifted through the air. Dozens of shrine workers sat cross-legged in orderly rows, their postures neat, their robes clean. Some were adults, others barely older than Machiko, and she wondered if they too had once been strays plucked from places where they were unwanted.

When she stepped timidly into the room, heads turned, and to her surprise, smiles followed. “Good morning,” one said warmly, bowing his head. Another, a girl with braided hair, offered her a place on the mat beside her.

Machiko’s chest tightened. “They… they aren’t glaring. They aren’t whispering.”, she thought to herself. At home, she had been the odd one out, the creepy one. Here, no one flinched. No one recoiled. She whispered a shy “Good morning” back, her voice trembling, but they accepted it as though it were enough.

After breakfast, her stomach warm from rice and tea, she found herself at the tall wooden door of Geto’s office. She straightened her sleeves, smoothed her bobbed hair the way Manami had cut it, and took a breath before knocking.

“Come in,” came the deep, measured voice from within.

The room was as she remembered—scrolls lining the walls, incense curling lazily upward from a small burner, and Geto himself seated cross-legged behind a low desk. His black robes folded about him like shadows, his long hair tied neatly, his presence filling the space with quiet authority.

“Ah, Machiko,” he said, a smile warming his severe features. “It’s good to see you up early. How was your sleep yesterday?”

Machiko wrung her hands. “I-it was okay.” A lie, and not a lie. Sleep had been slow to find her, her mind chasing the memory of her mother’s scissors and her father’s voice raised in anger. But when it came, it was deep, dreamless. No monsters peered from the corners, no shadows pressed against the windows. She realized then what felt different: she had not seen a single curse since stepping foot into this place. “Maybe they’re afraid. Maybe they can’t come here.”, the girl reassured herself.

“Good,” Geto said, cutting through her thoughts as smoothly as though he’d plucked them from her head. “Come. I’ll show you around the shrine.”

The compound was vast, larger than anything Machiko had ever known. Geto moved slowly, allowing her to keep up on her small legs, his voice calm and deliberate as he guided her through each space. First the training grounds, a broad courtyard of packed earth where the grass was kept in pristine condition. A shed sat the end of the training ground with its door being locked by heavy chains. 

Then the classroom. The room was lined with scrolls and low tables, pencils and paper neatly laid out, the faint smell of paper and dust clinging to the air. The dining hall came next, still humming with the last of breakfast. A prayer room followed, its tatami mats spotless, candles lit in rows before the shrine’s central altar. He showed her the wing for official business, where shrine keepers moved in hushed tones with papers in hand, and finally the worker’s quarters, a long hall of sliding doors where lives were kept in ordered silence.

The scale of it all made Machiko’s head swim. It was a world of its own, self-contained and secret, cut away from the city and her family’s house with its broken bottles and rotting grief.

“Are there other kids like me here?” she asked at last, her voice small.

Geto glanced down at her, and the corner of his mouth curved. “Currently, you are the third I’ve taken under my wings. The other two are a pair of twins, near your age. You’ll meet the girls in class later today.”

Machiko’s stomach fluttered—fear, and hope braided tightly together.

Geto led her toward the classroom wing once more, his robes whispering across the floor. “This will be your daily schedule,” he said. “In the mornings, you and the other children will have private lessons with a tutor. Your basic education—mathematics, science, language history. But also…” He let the word hang like a secret about to be revealed. “Jujutsu knowledge. Incantations. Theories of cursed techniques. Our history. And in the evenings, you will be having your training. I will be personally overlooking your training”

They stopped before one of the classrooms. Through the screen, Machiko heard children’s laughter, high and light. Her heart pounded.

“Well, what are you waiting for, kiddo? Get in. Class is about to start.”

Geto’s voice was calm but brooked no refusal. His hand, firm yet oddly gentle, nudged her forward. Machiko shuffled across the wooden threshold, and the sliding doors whispered shut behind her with a finality that made her heart lurch.

The sound of laughter—light, tinkling, the sort of laughter she had so often been excluded from—died at once. Two pairs of eyes turned to her. Twins. The resemblance between them was uncanny: like a mirrored reflection warped only by hue. One, a bright-haired girl with lively, mischievous eyes that glimmered like sunlight off polished brass. The other, her quieter shadow, her brown hair falling like a curtain around her pale, thoughtful face.

Machiko swallowed, the air thick in her throat. Her hands wrung together, her grey eyes fixed on the floorboards. “H-hello,” she stammered. “My name is Takahara Machiko…”

For a heartbeat, silence stretched, taut and merciless. Then the blonde leapt up from her cushion with the quickness of a sparrow. “So you’re the girl Geto-sama has been telling us about!” she chirped, her smile broad and genuine. She darted forward, skirts brushing the tatami, her twin trailing after her with softer, slower steps.

“It’s so nice to meet you!” the blonde declared, stopping so close that Machiko had to lift her head. “My name is Hasaba Nanako—and this,” she gestured with a dramatic sweep of her hand, “is my sister, Hasaba Mimiko.”

Mimiko lowered her gaze politely, her voice a murmur that carried nonetheless. “It’s nice to meet you too, Machiko-san.”

Machiko blinked. She had braced herself for whispers, for cruel smiles or sidelong glances. That was what children gave her—always. Weird girl. A freak. A girl who saw what shouldn’t be seen. Yet here… she was met with smiles. With warmth. It caught her so off guard she almost didn’t know how to hold it. Something within her, long starved and brittle, unfurled like a blossom in spring.

Maybe she could be friends with them.

But before the moment could stretch any further, a throat cleared. Their tutor had entered. A middle-aged woman with a slick low bun and stern features. Her robes were plain, yet there was something unmistakably rigid in her bearing, as if even her shadow obeyed discipline.

“Back to your seats,” she said, his voice flat as stone. “You’ll have time to know each other during lunch. Now we will be having our lessons.”

The three girls obeyed without question. Machiko slid onto a cushion at the low table, the parchment and brushes neatly laid out before her.

The hours that followed slipped into rhythm. Lessons on language, on sums, on the great histories of their land. Incantations whispered between lines of poetry, veiled in the language of the shrine. For many, such study might feel a burden, but for Machiko, it was a balm. She had always been a studious girl. With no friends at home, and siblings who turned colder with each passing year, she had filled her solitude with books, scraps of stories, numbers on a page. Puzzles, exploring the neighbourhood, arts and craft—sometimes if she was lucky, Yuu and Sora would want to play with her—were the small joys of entertainment she had for herself.

She thrived in the order of her studies. In the surety of questions with answers. In the quiet pride of solving what others could not. Even now, though her heart still trembled from the morning, she felt a small satisfaction bloom with every correct recitation, every carefully inked character. She could do this. This, at least, belonged to her.

And beneath it all, a smaller, meaner spark lived still: spite. A prideful little ember that whispered of the classmates who had mocked her, the neighbors who called her strange. She could not strike them back with fists or curses, but here, she could outpace them. Outlearn them. Outshine them.

By the time the midday bell rang, signaling lunch, Machiko’s wrist ached faintly from writing, but her spirits were buoyed. When she rose from her seat, Nanako was already at her side, grinning as though they had been friends for years. Mimiko trailed a step behind, quieter but no less present.

Together, the three walked to the dining hall, side by side.

The sun had begun its slow descent, painting the sky in hues of amber and rose when the chores were finished. Dust motes shimmered like golden embers in the air, stirred by the swish of their brooms. The three girls had swept the shrine’s stone steps, dusted the lacquered pillars, scrubbed the wooden floors until the planks gleamed.

Nanako, quick as a sparrow, had turned the labor into play. Counting each sweep of the broom as though it were a sword stroke, pretending the motes of dust were enemies vanquished. Mimiko followed her sister’s rhythm, quiet and steady, content to be the shadow to Nanako’s brightness. Machiko, though reserved, found herself swept up in their pace. She tried to sweep faster, harder, to keep up, to outdo them even—her chest tightening with a strange joy at the thought of being included.

By the time the chores were done, their cheeks glistened with sweat and their arms ached. Yet laughter lingered, warm and unforced. When the shrine workers offered them sweets and cold barley tea, the girls sat cross-legged on the veranda, sucking on sweet red bean candies, sipping the cool drink until their throats no longer burned. For Machiko, the candy was cloying, the tea a little bitter, but she savored every drop. For once, her efforts had been seen, rewarded, and shared.

When the sun’s light deepened into the orange of early evening, Machiko parted ways with the twins. Nanako’s grin was bright as ever; Mimiko’s parting nod soft, but sincere. For a moment, Machiko lingered, reluctant to leave them, before duty pulled her steps toward the training grounds.

The yard was quiet when she arrived. The wooden floor of the dojo gleamed under the lantern light, and in the center stood Geto Suguru, his tall figure at ease, dark robes draped loosely over his frame. His eyes, deep and steady, found her at once.

“Ah,” he hummed, a low note, a ripple in the silence. “How was your first day of class?”

Machiko startled at being asked, but then words came tumbling out. She told him about the lessons, about Nanako’s chatter, Mimiko’s gentleness. Her voice wavered with shyness, yet the eagerness beneath it could not be hidden. It had been so long since anyone had cared to ask. So long since she had been allowed to sound like a child.

Geto listened, his lips curved faintly, though not unkind. “I’m glad you’re enjoying it so far,” he said at last. “And I hope Nanako and Mimiko aren’t giving you a hard time.”

“No, no—of course not. Nanako-chan and Mimiko-chan were nice to me.”

At that, Geto’s smile softened, his gaze gentled. “I’m glad you’re friends with them, kiddo.” He reached out, broad hand ruffling her hair.

The touch startled her more than his words. It was light, brief, but warm—so warm. Foreign, too. No one had touched her with such casual fondness since Yuu. For an instant, Machiko froze, unsure whether to flinch or lean into it. In the end, she allowed it. She even liked it. The warmth lingered long after his hand had gone.

“Alright then,” Geto said, his voice shifting, steady as a river, but edged with purpose. “Let’s start with your training.” He gestured to the open floor. “In order to harness your ability—your cursed technique—we need to know what it is first.”

“Cursed technique?”, Machiko asked curiously. 

Geto nodded, “Yes, your cursed technique. Every curse user has their own unique innate cursed technique that they were born with. These abilities are hardwired into ones body and it is then activated or ‘awakened’ usually by the age of five or six.” Geto then looked over to Machiko, “In your case, yours stayed dormant for quite some time and it was awakened during a life or death situation that night.”

His gaze sharpened. “Tell me, Machiko. What happened that night?”

Machiko’s lips pressed thin. The question stabbed at her ribs like a blade of glass. That night. The night her brother’s laughter went still, the night her hands blackened, the night the shadows reached for her like chains. She wanted to tell him everything—the curse bound to her even now, whispering its presence—but the thought of his eyes hardening like her family’s kept her tongue shackled. Not yet. Soon. When she was certain he would not turn away.

Instead, she clung to the memory that was safe to give. The memory of the black threads.

“I remember… being angry,” she whispered, her voice a fragile reed in the silence. “So angry. And then—it was like something warm spread inside me, and something… snapped. I didn’t think. I just wanted it gone. I lifted my hands, and these threads—black, with grey light glowing through them—shot out. They pierced the curse, and… it tore apart. Like paper. But when the threads touched it, I felt something. A pulse. Like it was alive.”

“Interesting,” Geto murmured, his eyes narrowing in thought. “It seems your gift has something to do with souls.” A faint smile tugged at his lips, though his tone was grave. “Let try to recreate that scene.”

He extended his hand, palm opening like a priest bestowing alms. His cursed technique stirred, and from the ether a small, low-level curse bled into being.

The thing hissed as its form solidified, a tangle of claws and shadow, spine bent wrong, eyes like pits. Its talons scraped the wood with a nails-on-bone shriek. It writhed against the seal binding it, a caged snarl given form. Harmless to him, perhaps. But to Machiko, it was a nightmare made flesh.

Her breath caught in her throat. Her chest heaved, each beat of her heart slamming against her ribs. She dug her toes into the straps of her sandals as if anchoring herself to the earth. She knew this shape, these whispers. She had seen them in corners of her house, crawling just out of reach. She had felt their eyes on her in the long hours of the night. But never had one been placed before her like this—acknowledged, real, undeniable.

“Do not think of it as a monster,” Geto said. His voice flowed smooth, unhurried, like dark water over stone. His gaze never wavered from her. “Think of it as cloth. You… are the needle.”

Her hands shook. The scars from Yuu’s death were still etched into her fingers, blackened cracks webbing her skin. They throbbed now, an ache that flared with her fear. She wanted to run. She wanted to cry. Yet his eyes bound her in place. His presence was gravity, inescapable.

The curse lunged.

Her scream tore free, high and thin. She flung up her hands.

And then—threads.

They spilled from her fingertips in a wild torrent, strands of black silk finer than spider’s web, veins of pale grey glowing faintly along their lengths. They lashed outward in a frantic burst, arcs of darkness sewn with light. The curse froze mid-lunge, its limbs seizing, its crooked head snapping back as though plucked by invisible strings. It hung there, trembling, a puppet snagged upon unseen threads.

Machiko stared, wide-eyed, breath ragged, her heart drumming so loudly she could hear it in her ears. The black threads quivered in her small hands, trembling like strands pulled too tight. They tugged at something beyond flesh and claw, something deeper, buried beneath the thing’s twisted frame.

Then she saw it.

A pulsing orb—purple, murky, and alive—glowing faintly at the curse’s chest. Its soul. The threads of her making pierced into that orb like needles sinking into cloth. Machiko’s body went cold. It was the same glimmer she had seen before, that night when everything had gone wrong. That same strange light before the curse that was bound to her swallow it whole.

From Geto’s view, he caught the change in her eyes. A glimmer, quick and sharp as a blade catching light—silver, cutting across the grey. His brow arched. “So. That’s her gift.”

“What’s happening, Machiko?” His voice was calm, steady, unshaken. A priest guiding a confession.

“I… I can see its soul,” she whispered, the words trembling. “And the threads—they’re inside it. They’re touching it. I can see how the soul and the body are… stitched together.”

“Good.” His approval was soft, deliberate, like oil poured over water. “That is your thread finding its mark. You’ve made contact. Now—pull. Weave your threads.”

Her fingers shook as she obeyed. The threads grew taut, slicing into the curse’s body. They spread outward in crisscrossing lines, lacing across its torso, crawling over its limbs. The black cords pierced and bound, knotting themselves like sutures. The curse shrieked without a mouth, its form spasming, limbs jerking against bonds that cut deeper the more it thrashed.

Then the pain came.

A white-hot sting seared through her fingers. Sharp, needling fire driving beneath her nails, clawing its way through her hands. Machiko gasped, choked, then cried out. Tears burst from her eyes, her body folding with the shock of it. She wanted to drop it, to run, to rip the threads from her flesh.

“It hurts!” she sobbed, voice cracking. “It hurts—it’s burning!”

A hand came down on her shoulder. Warm. Steady. Heavy as stone. Geto’s touch.

“Power always comes with pain,” he murmured, the calm in his voice unshaken. “Do not fear it. Do not flee it. Direct it. Pain is the thread that teaches you control.”

She bit down on her lip until iron flooded her mouth. Her arms trembled, the threads vibrating violently, on the brink of unraveling. If she let go, the curse would break free. It would devour her.

No. Not again.

With a desperate sob, she pulled tighter. The threads cinched, no longer just binding, but cutting. They dug into seams invisible to the naked eye, pressing along the fault lines of the soul itself.

And then—

A sound like cloth tearing filled the air, a ripping, sickly wet noise. The curse split open along its center, its body unraveling from the soul outward. Smoke burst from the seams as its frame collapsed, breaking apart into tatters of shadow before dissolving into nothing.

The threads snapped and crumbled into ash.

Machiko dropped, knees striking the floor. Her hands curled against her chest, scorched and raw, the blackened cracks on her skin glowing faintly, as though embers smoldered beneath her flesh. She whimpered, clutching them tight, trembling with the aftershocks of power and pain.

Silence. Only her ragged breath broke it.

”Did I do it?”

“Yes, you did. Good job...” Geto moved slowly. Deliberately. Like a priest before an altar. He lowered himself to one knee beside the shaking child, his dark robes whispering against the floor. His shadows stretched long over her small frame. For a moment he did nothing, only watched.

A lamb broken down by its first taste of power. A child discarded by blood, now trembling on the floor of his shrine. Yet even in her pain, she had not fled. She had pulled tighter. She had obeyed.

Soulweaver.

The word threaded through his mind, heavy, weighted. Threads that pierced the soul itself. A cursed technique like that did not belong in some nameless family lost in grief. No, this was born for something greater. A weapon woven by fate, and now placed in his hand.

Machiko whimpered, curling closer into herself. Geto’s hand, warm and steady, descended to brush her hair back from her damp cheek. The ends of her curled bob scraped against his palm.

“You did well, Machiko,” he said softly, his voice smooth as silk over steel. “Better than well. You listened. You endured.”

She blinked up at him through red, swollen eyes. In them, he saw a storm. Fear, sorrow, pain, but also something harder, something that had not broken. A spark, buried deep within the child, waiting to be fanned into flame.

He smiled, gentle but knowing. “This pain you feel now… it will lessen. In time, it will become familiar. And one day, it will become yours to wield, not yours to fear.”

Her lip trembled, but she nodded, just barely. Her tiny shoulders shook as she whispered, “I… I don’t want to hurt anymore.”

“You will hurt,” Geto answered, without hesitation, without cruelty. “But pain, is proof that you are alive. Proof that you are stronger than what would kill you.”

She clung to his words the way a drowning child clings to driftwood. Slowly, he eased an arm beneath her knees and another around her back, lifting her up as if she weighed nothing at all. She stiffened at first, startled by the warmth of another’s hold, then sagged into his chest, trembling still.

Geto rose with her in his arms, carrying her from the training floor toward the corridors beyond. The child buried her face against him, muffling her soft cries into his robes.

His eyes, however, were distant. Cold. Calculating.

A lamb, yes. Bruised, abandoned, and yearning for a shepherd. But beneath that wool, the wolf had already begun to stir.

And he would be the one to raise it.

Chapter Text

Chapter 5: A Knife in The Fold

***Before the Night Parade of 100 Demons***

Year: 2012

Five years had passed since Takahara had first stepped through the gates of the shrine, her duffel bag clutched tight and her hair jagged from her mother’s kitchen scissors. The lost lamb who once trembled in every shadow had grown into something different, something sharper, steadier.

Machiko was eleven now, and the change showed in every inch of her being. She had stretched taller, her limbs long but sturdy, hardened through endless chores and training drills Geto-sama had put her through. The fragility that once clung her like a second skin had sloughed away, replaced by a quiet resilience. Her hair, once butchered and uneven, had grown thick and healthy, falling down her back in a dark braid, a few straight bangs framing her honeyed face. The braid swayed with each movement, a subtle reminder of patience and time she had endured.

Her skin, once warm from sleepless nights and hospital stays, now carried a faint golden warmth, the healthy glow of a girl who lived under open skies and carried buckets of water, swept wide wooden floors, and ate meals that filled her stomach. Even her eyes had changed: those grey eyes, dull and clouded with grief when she arrived, now shone brighter, though there was still a weight in them—a storm hidden deep beneath calm waters.

But not all change was for the better. The black stains that had first marked her fingers five years ago had grown with her, creeping higher each year until now they stretched past her elbows. In places the skin was cracked, faintly glowing as though embers smoldered beneath her flesh. It was the price she paid for wielding the threads of her cursed technique, Soulweaver. She bore it quietly, never complaining, though she hid her hands beneath long black gloves and wide sleeves of her white tops. To others she smiled, but she never let them see the weight those cracks carried.

On this morning, the late summer sun painted the shrine in a warm golden haze. The tiled roofs gleamed faintly, cicadas thrummed in the trees, and incense drifted like pale ribbons from the prayer hall. Machiko knelt in one of the long corridors, broom in hand, sweeping dust into neat piles with precise strokes. Beside her, Nanako chattered as usual, her blonde hair catching the light like spun gold, while Mimiko moved in quieter rhythm, mirroring her sister’s motions as if bound by an invisible string.

The three girls had long since ceased to feel like strangers. Years of shared meals, shared chores, whispered secrets in the dormitories, and bruised knuckles from sparring sessions had woven them together. They were no longer just fellow students at Geto-sama’s shrine—they were sisters. Nanako’s laughter had been the first to coax smiles from Machiko’s lips. Mimiko’s quiet kindness had been the balm to her rawest wounds. Together, they had given Machiko the closest thing to a home she had ever known.

Nanako suddenly leaned toward Machiko, her broom clattering against the pillar as she spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. “Machiko, did you hear? Manami-san is taking us into the town tomorrow. Shopping.” Her bright eyes gleamed with excitement.

Mimiko gave a small nod, her voice softer. “She said we could pick out sweets. Maybe even clothes.”

Machiko froze mid-sweep. Shopping? Leaving the shrine? Her heart gave a faint jolt of unease. She had grown used to the shrine’s walls, to the steady rhythm of its life. Outside lay the world she had left behind—the whispers, the stares, the unseen curses that once clung to her heels like shadows.

“I don’t know,” she murmured, lowering her gaze to the broom in her gloved hands.

Nanako puffed her cheeks, planting her hands on her hips. “Don’t be silly. Manami-san will be with us. Nothing bad ever happens when she’s around. Besides,” her grin widened, mischievous, “you can’t just stay cooped up in here forever like a little ghost.”

Mimiko added gently, “We’d like you to come with us. It won’t be the same without you.”

The words settled in Machiko’s chest, warm and heavy. For years she had feared being unwanted, unloved. Now, two sisters—Geto-sama’s daughters—were asking her to come with them, not out of pity, but because they wanted her there.

She bit her lip, thinking, the broom bristling faintly against the wood. Finally, she nodded, though hesitantly. “Alright… I’ll think about it. But first, I’ll have to ask Geto-sama.”

The twins exchanged a look and broke into matching smiles. Nanako laughed, clapping her hands together. “See? I told you she’d say yes eventually!”

Machiko couldn’t help it. Her lips tugged into a small, rare smile. It felt strange, but good.

Machiko set her broom aside, the bristles frayed and worn from years of sweeping the same long halls. Dust clung faintly to her sleeves, and the smell of incense still lingered in her braid as she untied the plain apron from her waist. Her fingers moved with practiced ease—loops undone, knot loosened, cloth folded neatly over one arm. She had learned to do things neatly here; chaos had no place within the shrine.

Nanako leaned against the nearest pillar, chin in hand, her smile bright as ever. “Don’t forget, Machiko—we’ll ask again later. You can’t wriggle out of this one.”

Mimiko only offered her a shy nod, her quiet eyes following Machiko with a gentleness that needed no words.

Machiko gave them both a small smile, brief as the brush of wind across water, and inclined her head. “I’ll think about it.” She meant it. Their voices lingered even as she slipped down the corridor, apron tucked under her arm.

Like clockwork, her body knew the way. Past the prayer hall where the heavy scent of sandalwood curled from smoldering sticks; through the courtyard where gravel crunched underfoot, the cicadas droning overhead like an unending chorus; around the pond where lotus leaves floated, dappled in sun. Five years ago, the shrine had been a labyrinth, each corner a threat, each shadow a stranger. She had gotten lost more times than she could count, heart racing, hands trembling, too proud to cry out. But not anymore. Now her feet carried her unthinking, turning where they must, stopping where they must. This place was no longer a maze. It was a map she had etched into her bones.

Her home.

The dojo loomed ahead, simple in its lines yet commanding in its presence. Its polished wood gleamed amber in the afternoon light, and the smell of oiled planks and sweat wafted faintly through its open doors. There, on the wide veranda, sat Suguru Geto.

He was dressed simply, black robes loose about him, his long dark hair tied back in its familiar knot. He sat like a man entirely at ease, one hand resting against his knee, the other idly twirling a folded fan. Yet there was no mistaking the weight he carried—the gravity of his presence pressed down on the air around him, serene yet immovable. His dark eyes found her the moment she stepped into view, as though he had been waiting for her all along.

Machiko quickened her pace, her braid brushing her back, and lowered into a bow. “Sorry I’m late, Geto-sama. I was finishing chores with Nanako-chan and Mimiko-chan.”

A faint chuckle rumbled from him, low and unhurried. “Don’t apologize. I can imagine those two well enough. If they weren’t dragging their feet, they were dragging you along with them.” His tone was warm, teasing, but his eyes watched her closely all the same, as they always did.

Machiko let out a small sigh, shoulders loosening. “They do take their time.”

“Of course they do.” His smile flickered, brief, and then it was gone, replaced by something steadier. His fan tapped lightly against his palm. “But that’s their way. Yours is different.”

He shifted, his voice smoothing into the tone she had come to recognize. The voice he used only when teaching, soft as a river’s flow, yet carrying the steel of command. “Today, we’ll polish your skill with the naginata. Your close combat is strong, stronger than most adults could dream at your age. But at mid-range, you falter. A weakness that will cost you if left unattended.”

Her eyes lifted, gleaming with the quiet fire that training always lit in her. She nodded once, sharp and resolute.

Geto watched her, and behind the calm curve of his mouth, his thoughts were a blade’s edge. The girl was remarkable. Five years ago she had been small, brittle as glass, her voice scarcely rising above a whisper. Now she stood straight-backed, her gloves concealing the blackened scars of her cursed technique, her gaze sharp, her movements honed. 

She was a quick study—bright-eyed, sharp, and eager, the kind of student who absorbed every word as though it were scripture. The lessons Geto imparted—small corrections of stance, whispers of strategy, the subtleties of cursed energy—did not linger long in theory. Machiko caught them, held them, and bent them into practice with startling speed. In the span of five years, through relentless trial and error, she had learned to shape her cursed technique, Soulweaver, into a cursed technique uniquely her own.

Hand-to-hand combat, she was clumsy and weak at first. However, with countless hours poured into her training, she excelled with a precision beyond her years. With the twin tanto blades Geto had placed in her hands as a child, she moved with lethal grace, her strikes quick and unflinching, her defense measured and sure. What others struggled toward with decades of discipline, Machiko seemed to claim by instinct and will.

In another life, born beneath the banners of a great clan, her name would already have been spoken with reverence. They would have called her a prodigy.

But she was not theirs. She was his.

Still, she was unfinished. A weapon half-forged, the steel not yet tempered. Geto would polish her, shape her, harden her until no flaw remained. One day she would serve as more than just his student, more than his stray lamb. She would be his shadow. His perfect weapon.

“Come,” he said at last, rising from the veranda with the ease of a man born to command. “I won’t be going easy on you, kiddo.”

The cicadas droned louder as Machiko followed him inside, her heart steady, her gloves hiding hands that had already begun to ache with anticipation.

The naginata felt alive in her hands. Smooth wood, cool against her palms, its iron blade catching the lantern light as she leveled it before her. Her muscles knew the weight of it, the reach, the balance—years of drills had carved that knowledge into her bones. The stance was second nature now, knees bent, weight forward, braid swaying against her back.

Across the dojo, Suguru Geto stood with his arms folded, the hem of his robes brushing the polished floorboards. His dark eyes studied her without warmth, without the fond amusement he sometimes allowed. Here, in this space, he was no father, no shepherd, no loving mentor. He was the stone wall against which she would break, or sharpen.

Machiko exhaled once. Then she moved.

She darted forward, the naginata slicing in a wide arc meant to keep him at mid-range, where he had said she faltered most. Her arms burned with the speed of the swing, the blade hissing through the air. But Geto slid aside with infuriating ease, a step so fluid it seemed he had known her angle before she’d even thought it.

“Better,” he said mildly, “but you’re still telegraphing. You let the weapon pull you instead of guiding it.”

Machiko’s teeth clenched. She pivoted, spinning the shaft to reverse her strike, the blade now sweeping low to cut at his legs. Wood cracked sharply against wood, the training staff he had picked up without her noticing slammed down against her weapon, halting its arc.

The impact jolted up her arms, numbing her fingers.

“Too slow.” His voice was flat, merciless.

She pushed back, twisting her wrists to unhook her naginata from his block. Pain prickled at her hands, even through the gloves. She ignored it. Stepping in, she shortened her grip on the weapon, bringing it in close to jab with the butt end toward his chest.

A laugh. Short, cutting. He caught the shaft just shy of his sternum and shoved, hard. She stumbled, sandals skidding on the wood, only barely catching her balance before the weapon was ripped from her grip.

Her chest heaved. Sweat rolled hot down her back. But she didn’t retreat. She charged, hands snapping the naginata back into place, her feet moving as if guided by the invisible thread of countless drills. Every parry, every sweep, every thrust was muscle memory awakened.

“You’re relying on instinct now. Good,” Geto said, though his strikes grew harsher, his counters faster. He pressed her, forced her onto the defensive, his staff whistling dangerously close with each blow. The wood cracked against hers, again and again, like thunderclaps in the still dojo.

Her shoulders screamed. Her palms burned. Still, she gritted her teeth and pushed harder.

“Do better!” he barked suddenly, the warmth stripped from his tone, leaving only command. “The battlefield doesn’t wait for weak people. Fight to live. Live, or die.”

Machiko’s grey eyes flared. She slid low under his staff, twisting her body, her blade striking upward in a desperate cut meant not for elegance but survival. Sparks burst where the iron edge met his wood. The blow forced him to shift back a step. Just one, but to her, it was victory enough to breathe again.

Her lungs burned, her arms trembled. She steadied her grip and came again, threads of her cursed energy sparking faintly at her fingertips, threatening to bleed into the weapon. She could feel the pull of Soulweaver itching to manifest, that temptation to bind, to cut deeper than flesh.

But Geto’s voice lashed her sharper than any blade. “Control it, Machiko! Do not let your curse control you.”

She bit down on her cry and forced the threads to heel, keeping the fight clean, body against body, steel against wood.

When at last Geto disarmed her, the naginata clattering to the floor with a hollow ring, she was on her knees, chest heaving, gloves torn at the seams, sweat plastering her bangs to her brow. Her whole body trembled, but her eyes burned.

Geto lowered his staff, calm as still water. A small nod, the barest curve of a smile. Approval was rare, precious as gold.

“You survived longer this time,” he said. “Remember that. Survival is the only measure that matters.”

Machiko pressed her palms into the floor, forcing herself upright despite her body’s protest. She bowed, sharp and low. “Yes, Geto-sama.”

For five years she had learned under his hand: pain, pressure, relentlessness. And still she trusted him. Trusted the forge that burned her, the hammer that struck her, the man who would shape her into his shadow.

“Again.”

And so, her training continued.

The dojo smelled of sweat and polished cedar, the air thick with the echo of wood striking wood. For what felt like hours, Machiko’s world was narrowed to the rhythm of strike, parry, block. Her naginata a blur, her muscles singing with effort. Geto moved like a shadow, untouchable, his staff always in the right place, his body always just out of reach. He dodged with the calm inevitability of a tide pulling back, struck with sudden surges that forced her to brace or stumble.

She fought until her arms screamed, until her gloves threatened to split at the seams, until her lungs felt raw from dragging air into them. And when at last her weapon was knocked aside for the final time, Machiko collapsed backward onto the floorboards.

The polished wood was cool against her back, though her body was aflame. Her braid lay half-unraveled, her chest heaved with ragged breaths, sweat gleamed on her skin. Every inch of her ached as though she’d been beaten with stones. Yet Geto, her mentor, sat upon the veranda as if the battle had never touched him. His robes were unruffled, not a bead of sweat upon his brow, his staff resting idle at his side.

“Your guard is still sloppy on the left,” he said, not unkindly but without mercy. His eyes, dark and sharp as obsidian, never softened. “You waste strength when you extend the naginata too far. Your enemy will see it coming before the blade has even left your hands. And your footwork… still hesitant. A stumble could get you killed.”

Each word was a knife, cutting deeper than the bruises on her arms. And yet, Machiko clung to them. She turned them over in her mind even as her chest burned for air, branding them upon herself so that tomorrow she might not fail him again.

And then, at the end of his litany, a pause. A small tilt of the head. The faintest curve at the corner of his mouth. “But you lasted longer today. Your instinct to shorten your grip mid-combat was… clever.”

Machiko’s heart leapt. A smile broke through her exhaustion, shy and fierce all at once. A single scrap of praise, and it was enough to lift her from the ashes of fatigue. Enough to make her believe that tomorrow, she could do better.

Yet as she lay sprawled on the dojo floor, grey eyes half-lidded, her thoughts strayed where she dared not let them linger. To Nanako and Mimiko—the twins who were his daughters, his chosen children. She saw how his gaze softened when they tugged at his robes, how his voice lowered when they laughed. The tenderness he never showed her, though he had given her purpose, given her strength, given her a place where she belonged.

It should have been enough. It was more than she deserved. And yet… the feeling twisted in her chest, sour and sharp as bile. Jealousy.

She closed her eyes and swallowed it down, burying it where it could not betray her. Gratitude must be enough. It had to be. He had made her strong, where the world would have left her broken. Still, in the hollow of her chest, there lingered a wish, quiet and shameful, that he might look upon her as he did them.

Machiko pushed herself upright, every muscle aching, her breath still ragged from the match. Yet her grey eyes shone with a spark of purpose. She smoothed her sleeves, tugged her gloves higher over her scarred hands, and turned toward Geto. He sat upon the veranda, framed by the slanting light of late afternoon, the garden at his back humming with cicadas. To others, he might have looked the very picture of serenity. Composed, untouchable, a priest at rest after prayer. To Machiko, he was her mountain, her anchor, the figure she could always look to when her strength faltered.

“Geto-sama…” Her voice was small but steady. “There is something I would like to ask.”

One dark brow arched as he regarded her. “Oh? Speak, then.”

She pressed her hands together, almost prayerful, and bowed her head before looking up again. “Nanako-chan and Mimiko-chan said that Manami-san will be taking them into town tomorrow. They invited me to go with them. If… can….canIgotoo!?”

The words tumbled out quicker than she intended, her cheeks flushing with something halfway between eagerness and fear. For five years she had known only the safety of the shrine’s walls, the rhythm of study, training, and the quiet companionship of her sisters-in-bond. To step outside, into a world that had once rejected her, still frightened her, but the thought of walking beside Nanako and Mimiko, of being their equal in this little adventure, filled her chest with warmth.

Geto’s smile was slow, deliberate, curving like a crescent moon. His eyes softened, and for a moment he seemed more father than master. “Of course,” he said, his voice as calm as still water. “Go with them. You’ve earned some rest, but be sure to get home before curfew.”

Machiko’s face lit like dawn breaking. She bent into a deep bow, her braid falling over her shoulder. “Thank you, Geto-sama!”

He waved a hand, dismissive but not unkind. “Go on then. Rest. Tomorrow, you’ll have a long day ahead.”

She lingered only long enough to bow again before hurrying out, her sandals whispering against the polished wood. Excitement carried her light-footed through the corridors, her mind already on Nanako and Mimiko’s laughter when she told them the news. For once, her heart felt unburdened, buoyed by the rare permission she had been granted.

The sound of her footsteps faded. The cicadas drowned. Silence settled over the dojo like dust.

And in that silence, the smile drained from Geto Suguru’s face. What had been warm became cold; what had been priestly became predator. The mask slipped, and the true man beneath showed in the hard line of his jaw, in the glint of malice behind his eyes. 

Slowly, deliberately, he reached into the folds of his dark robes and drew out a phone. His thumb moved with practiced ease, pressing a number he already knew by heart.

The line clicked alive.

“The plan is in motion,” Geto said, his voice low, smooth as velvet stretched over a blade. An ominous smirk tugged at his lips, faint but terrible.

And then, as quickly as it had vanished, the mask returned. He closed the phone, tucked it back into his robes, and from the veranda once more appeared the serene, gentle master, waiting for the sun to sink behind the shrine walls.

The day had folded into night, the shrine settling into its familiar hush. Lantern light swayed in the corridors, their glow spilling in long amber strokes across the polished wood. Outside, cicadas had gone quiet, replaced by the lonely calls of night birds echoing across the compound.

Machiko finished her meal with the other workers, the warm chatter a gentle backdrop to her silence. Nanako and Mimiko, as always, were absent—spending their evening with Geto-sama. Machiko had grown used to this rhythm, though a small ache sometimes tugged at her chest when she realized she always dined without them.

Back in her room, she moved through her rituals with the same care she gave her training. She shook out her futon, folded the corners smooth, brushed her thick curls until they frayed into a manageable halo, and washed her hands and face with water that stung cold. The motions grounded her. They made her feel safe.

Finally, she knelt in the corner of her room. The little altar waited there, solemn but alive. Upon the low side table rested Yuu’s pony plush, worn at the seams from years of love. Around it, Machiko had placed small trinkets she collected: smooth pebbles gathered from the shrine’s pond, a pressed maple leaf, a doodle of her family from happy memories, bright wildflowers that she picked anew each week from the shrine’s garden. To anyone else it would have looked childish, but to Machiko it was sacred. It was Yuu’s place in the shrine, as much a part of it as she was.

She pressed her hands together, bowing her head. Her voice was soft, uncertain at first, then steady as the words found her.

“Good evening, Yuu. It’s me again.” A faint smile ghosted her lips. “I hope you’re doing well, wherever you are. I… I had a good day today. It’s strange, saying that out loud, but it’s true. For once, things feel… okay. I’m trying my best to enjoy my days now that I’m at a better place. Geto-sama has been helping me to control my abilities better through the trainings he puts up for me. If I wanted to stay here, Geto-sama said I have to learn how to protect myself against small curses and learn to use my abilities.”

Her eyes flicked to the plush, to its stitched smile, and she laughed under her breath. “Nanako-chan and Mimiko-chan dragged me into chores with them again. They never stop making games out of everything. Today it was a race, who could sweep the fastest. You would have loved it, you always liked when things turned into a game. I tried to keep up with them, but I think Nanako cheats. Mimiko just goes along with her. They remind me of you sometimes, in little ways. They make me feel… like I’m not so alone anymore.”

Her smile faltered, her fingers tightening around each other. “I still miss you, you know. Even when I’m laughing. Even when I’m busy. I’ll be laughing with them, or training, or just… walking around the shrine, and then suddenly it’s there. That night. The sound of you screaming. The way I couldn’t stop it. The curse—” She cut herself short, bowing her head lower. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t talk about that before bed. I know it scares you. It still scares me till today. I think it scared our family too…they haven’t contacted me or even visited me once…not even for my birthday. Maybe its better that way…but I still do miss them.”

A silence stretched, filled only by the faint rustling of the trees outside. Machiko breathed deep, steadying herself. Then she lifted her gaze again, her expression softening.

“But something good happened too. Geto-sama said I could go with Nanako-chan and Mimiko-chan into town tomorrow. Manami-san is taking us. I’ve never gone with them before. It feels… strange. Exciting, but strange. Do you think I’ll like it? Do you think people will look at me the way they used to?” Her voice lowered. “I hope not. I hope this time will be different.”

She leaned forward, adjusting the flowers around the plush with delicate fingers. “Anyway… I wanted you to know. About my day. About tomorrow. I’ll keep talking to you, every night, no matter what. I promised myself that. You’ll always be with me, Yuu. Always.”

Her words trembled, but the smile returned, fragile yet real. With one last bow, she whispered a quiet “goodnight” and blew out the lantern.

Darkness claimed the room, save for the faint silver wash of moonlight seeping through the shoji. Machiko lay down on her futon, staring at the altar, her heart a little lighter, even with the ghosts that never left her.

Machiko whispered her final “goodnight” to Yuu, blew out the lantern, and slid beneath the futon’s thin quilt. The night pressed close. The cicadas had quieted, and the only sound was the rustling of the garden trees beyond the shoji screen.

The dream came upon her like a fever.

One moment she lay upon her futon, warm beneath her quilt. The next she was standing barefoot upon scorched earth. The soil seared her soles, the air burned her throat. All around, a village drowned in fire. Thatched roofs split open with crackling screams, walls collapsed in showers of sparks, the sky painted orange and black.

Bodies lay where they had fallen—men, women, children—strewn like discarded dolls. Their limbs curled grotesquely, mouths frozen in silent terror, blood running into the soot. The stench struck her throat: copper, char, rancid smoke.

And in the heart of it all stood a woman.

Tall, broad-shouldered, posture heavy with exhaustion. Her hands were slick with blood. One gripping a chipped blade, the other trembling as though it had forgotten how to unclench. Her eyes were not wide with madness but hollowed by weariness: too many nights spent running, too many innocents lost, too much blood spilled by her hand.

The woman stood amidst the carnage, unflinching. She raised her chin, and her voice cut the silence—hoarse, ragged, yet commanding. “Come. I know you are watching. Show yourself, Binding Demon.”

The shadows stirred.

They crawled out from between the corpses, rose from cracks in the scorched earth, slithered through the smoke. They stitched themselves into something monstrous, limbs bending at wrong angles, faces flickering and slipping as if no single shape could hold it. Its voice rattled like a chorus of bones. 

Machiko recognised the curse from that night.

“You called?” it sneered. “Slaughterer of the mob. Breaker of the hunt. Yonamine Momoe. What do you seek? Absolution?”

Momoe’s gaze never wavered. “Knowledge. Tell me what becomes of those who follow me—my children, their children, their line.”

The Binding Demon laughed, its voices jagged thunder rolling across flame. “Fate is not free. No coin you carry, no life you could spill—even your own—would buy the sum of lifetimes. What more could you offer me when you’ve cut your life short, memories of your children and lover traded with power. You ask for an ocean and offer but a drop.”

Momoe’s grip tightened on her chipped blade. “Then tell me this: will any of mine break you? Will any cast you off?”

The demon writhed, laughter shrill and many-mouthed. “And spoil the game? Where would be the fun in that?” Its shadowy body coiled, threads wriggling like worms. “But I am merciful when I am entertained. So I grant not the tale of all your spawn, but a glimpse. A morsel of a future that will amuse me.”

“Show me,” Momoe said.

The air split. Smoke swirled, parted. White flames burned around the woman, her brown eyes glowing gold. Before her opened a vision—fractured, shifting, like shards of a broken mirror catching stray light. The whisper of fate unraveling. 

Machiko tried to squint her eyes to peek into the vision, but she could only see clouds of smoke and the fire burning bright.

Momoe watched, and when the vision died, a smirk curved her bloodied lips. “Interesting.”

And Machiko, unmoving, breath caught in her chest, finally saw the woman clearly now.

Brown eyes, rimmed with exhaustion but sharpened by survival. Wild black hair, streaked with silver, tied in a rough ponytail. Sun-darkened skin, scars etched deep. And beneath each eye, a beauty mark, black as ink.

It was as though Machiko looked into her own reflection—but aged, weathered, carved by battle.

Then Momoe’s gaze shifted. Through the smoke, through the fire, through dream and time. Directly at Machiko.

For a heartbeat, Machiko knew—the woman saw her.

The lips curved, faint and humorless. Momoe raised her chin, whispering clear as a strike of steel:

“Trust no one.”

The world collapsed. Fire and corpses and curse dissolved into black.

Machiko’s eyes flew open. She sucked in a sharp breath, chest heaving. Sweat soaked her temples, her throat raw. The moon’s pale light seeped through her shoji, silvering her futon.

Her body trembled, but it was her heart that would not calm. In her mind, that scarred woman’s eyes lingered still, unblinking, refusing to let her go. Machiko could not tell if what she had seen was merely a dream, or a curse’s omen left to rot in her chest. The woman’s cryptic words gnawed at her like worms in fruit.

Then, from the hollow dark around her futon, came a whisper—low, familiar, velveted with malice.

“That was the last parting gift from your great ancestor,” it purred. “It seems I have fulfilled the binding vow.”

Machiko’s breath hitched. Her voice was soft, uncertain, but it found the shadows. “So… you’re the Binding Demon?”

The laughter that answered was like silk tearing in the dark, each thread snapping with glee. “Call me what you wish. I have worn many names. Musubari. The Weaver. The God of Knots. Desmos. All true. All false. I was born when the first of mankind spat in the eye of fate.”

Machiko swallowed hard. “Then… Musubari, tell me—what did she mean? By ‘trust no one?”

From the corner of the room, the shadows thickened. A hand took form there, long and thin, stitched from night itself. It lifted one finger and wagged it at her, mockingly.

“Uh-uh, Little Storm,” it crooned, voice like cords pulled taut across bone. “That was not part of the vow your blood paid to me. And besides… where is the sport in spoiling the game?”

Machiko’s fists curled in her lap. “Then… at least tell me what strength you’ll give me. You promised.”

The thing laughed again, the sound crawling into her bones. Its voice shifted, heavier now, like an ancient loom grinding its wheels.

“All in time. The pattern is never shown before the weaving is done. But hear the threads, and remember them:

The first gift: the eye that glimpses the tapestry yet unwoven. A thread pulled at random, a fate foreseen in fragments, never whole.

The second: the frenzy of the beast unchained. Blood quickens, sinew hardens, and in that storm of rage, death answers swiftly. Enough to bind a mob, enough to choke a village, enough to dye the earth red.

And the last: the shears. To cut what was destined, to mend what was broken, to weave anew against the will of the Fates themselves. The gift most perilous. 

But mark this well, child: every stitch has its price. Every gift, a wound. Every glimpse, a blindness. Every frenzy, a scar. Every thread, a toll of blood. Every cut, a curse. Such is the law of the loom. Such is the law of me.”

The whisper withered into laughter, scattering like moths into the dark, leaving Machiko shivering under her futon, the riddles sinking into her bones like frost.

Fear coiled in Machiko’s bones like ice. The Demon’s words clung to her skin, thick as oil, refusing to fade. Gifts, it had called them, yet every gift carried a wound. The thought of wielding such power, of peering into fates not meant to be seen or unraveling threads that bound the living world together, hollowed her to her marrow.

What if the time came, and she could not resist? What if she reached for that power, not out of necessity, but out of hunger? Would she become like the woman in her dream. Her ancestor, Yonamine Momoe? Broken and empty, a husk gnawed hollow by violence and bargains made in blood.

The memory of those weary brown eyes lingered, stern even through exhaustion, carrying both warning and kinship. Trust no one.

Her chest tightened. Should she tell her mentor? Should she go to Geto-sama and confess the curse that coiled through her veins, the voice that whispered in her shadow? Yet her ancestor’s voice had been clear. The vision of the future was proof enough: betrayal wore familiar faces. 

Surely she could trust Geto. Afterall, he was her mentor. He gave her purpose and a new life.

Her temples throbbed with pain, thoughts swirling like tangled threads pulled too tight. It was too much—the riddle, the omen, the curse. For now, she needed rest. Her body demanded it, her mind begged for it. With weary hands she pressed her palms to her eyes, forcing the tears back.

One truth remained clear in her heart: she would not—could not—reach for that cursed strength again. Not after that night. Not after Yuu. One trickery was enough. The Demon’s gifts would stay buried, no matter the cost.

She lay back on her futon, breath uneven, the shadows along her walls twitching as though they were listening.

Machiko woke with a flutter in her chest, the faint echo of her dream still gnawing at the edges of her thoughts. But today was different, today was brighter. She braided her black curls with careful hands, weaving them into a low braid that rested neatly against her back. From her wardrobe she chose the blue dress Manami had once praised her in—a soft fabric that fell just to her knees, its long sleeves hiding the dark stains that crept past her elbows. She laced up her white sneakers—sturdy, scuffed from use, yet precious because they had been Manami’s gift on her ninth birthday.

Before leaving her room, she paused before the small altar she had made for Yuu. The pony plush, faded but cherished, sat among trinkets and wildflowers she had gathered from the garden. Machiko bowed deeply, pressing her forehead almost to the floor, her braid slipping over her shoulder.

“Wish me luck today, Yuu,” she whispered. “I’ll bring you something nice.”

At the shrine’s great entrance hall, the morning sun poured through the open doors, painting the wooden floor in ribbons of gold. Waiting there stood Geto-sama in his dark robes, tall and composed as ever, Manami at his side with her immaculate poise, and the Hasaba twins, already bouncing with excitement. But there was someone else as well.

A man stood just behind Manami, broad-shouldered, his posture straight though his eyes avoided Geto’s with practiced humility. His hair was dark, cut short, his expression unreadable save for the faint flicker of wariness in his gaze. He wore simple traveling clothes, but the way he carried himself—firm, controlled, measured—spoke more of a soldier than a servant.

Machiko bowed low. “Good morning, everyone.”

Geto’s reply was smooth, his smile easy. “Good morning, Machiko. I see you’re ready.” His gaze flickered briefly to the braid at her shoulder, to the sneakers on her feet. Approval shone in his eyes, though only for a heartbeat. Then he gestured toward the unfamiliar man.

“This is Takashi,” he said. “He will be accompanying you today. A new hand at the shrine. Think of him as your shield should anything happen. You are to stay close to Manami and Takashi at all times. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Geto-sama,” the children answered in unison, though Machiko’s voice was softer, subdued by her usual blend of nerves and respect.

The twins quickly tugged at her sleeves, urging her toward the car. But before she could climb inside, Geto’s voice cut through.

“Machiko. A moment.”

She stopped mid-step, her braid swaying as she turned. Geto extended his hand, and in it was a small coin pouch—leather, worn smooth, tied with cord.

“This is for you,” he said. “Your own money. Use it as you like.”

Her fingers trembled as she accepted it. She bowed low, clutching the pouch against her chest. “Thank you, Geto-sama.”

“Be cautious,” he told her. His voice softened only slightly, just enough for her to catch. “And have fun, Machiko. This is your day, too.”

She nodded quickly, her eyes shining, and hurried into the waiting car with Nanako and Mimiko. Manami followed, sliding into the front seat, Takashi at her side.

The car rolled down the shrine path, tires crunching gravel, and slowly disappeared into the forest road. Geto remained where he was on the veranda, his figure still against the morning light. Only when the car was gone from sight did his smile fade. His hand slipped into his robe, drawing out the hidden phone.

He lifted it to his ear, his eyes narrowing to slits.

“The target has left the base.”

His voice was calm, quiet, yet heavy with intent.

The city was alive in a way the shrine never was. Towering glass buildings reached high enough to scrape the late-morning sun, their mirrored sides catching the light in sharp, dazzling shards. Neon signs blinked even in daylight, as though refusing to surrender to the sun, and crowds flowed along the wide avenues like rivers of color and chatter. Cars rumbled at every crossing, horns sharp and impatient, but it was the voices—children laughing, vendors calling, teenagers in school uniforms gossiping—that truly filled the air. The smell of roasted chestnuts mixed with sweet crepes and the faint tang of exhaust.

Nanako pressed her nose against the window as their car pulled into the shopping district. “We’re going to the mall first!” she declared before the car had even stopped. “I saw a store last time with the cutest summer skirts. I need to get one before they sell out.”

Mimiko rolled her eyes, but her mouth curved in a small smile. “You just want an excuse to drag us to three different shops.”

Nanako crossed her arms. “So? You’re just jealous because I’ll look adorable in mine.”

“Adorable,” Mimiko said flatly, “isn’t the word I’d use.”

Machiko giggled softly at their bickering. Nanako turned suddenly, her eyes shining. “What about you, Machiko? What do you wanna get?”

Caught off guard, Machiko hesitated. “Um… I don’t know. I don’t really need anything.”

Nanako groaned, slumping dramatically against the car seat. “You can’t come shopping with us and say that! That’s like… against the rules!”

“I just…” Machiko fiddled with her braid. “I don’t really have anything in mind.”

“Nevermind.” Nanako pouted for a moment, but her smile returned almost instantly. “Once we walk around, you’ll see something you like. I’m sure of it!”

The mall swallowed them whole in a rush of cool air and chatter. Storefronts gleamed with polished glass, mannequins dressed in bright summer styles beckoning from every corner.

Nanako darted ahead, tugging Machiko by the wrist toward a rack bursting with pastel tops. “See? Isn’t this cute? The magazines say puff sleeves are in this summer.” She held up a pink blouse with ribbons tied at the sleeves, her eyes sparkling.

Mimiko, unimpressed, lingered near a display dressed in dark frills and lace. “This is better,” she murmured, lifting a black skirt with layers of tulle. “It looks like something from a vampire story.”

Nanako groaned. “You and your vampire stuff. Do you ever want to wear something that isn’t black?”

“Black matches everything,” Mimiko countered calmly. “And it’s not trying too hard.”

Meanwhile, Machiko drifted between the racks, uncertain. A soft white blouse caught her eye—plain, comfortable, the kind of thing she could train in without worry. She lifted it hesitantly.

“That’s so you,” Nanako said immediately.

Machiko tilted her head. “Is it? It’s just… simple.”

“Exactly!” Nanako beamed. “Simple and cute. You don’t have to be flashy.”

They tried things on together, laughing as Nanako twirled in a pastel dress, Mimiko adjusted a lace choker with mock solemnity, and Machiko peeked out of the fitting room in a loose, airy blouse that made her look startled when both twins cheered.

From the back, Manami leaned against a rail, her smile soft as she watched the girls bicker and parade about. Beside her, Takashi stood with his hands clasped behind his back, scanning the crowd with the steady vigilance of someone who saw threats even in the harmless shuffle of shoppers.

By the end of their spree, Nanako and Mimiko carried bags stuffed to bursting—skirts, shoes, little accessories they insisted were must-haves. Machiko’s haul was modest: a couple of shirts, a light skirt, and the small silver hairclip the twins had all but forced into her hands.

“It looks good on you!,” Nanako said proudly as she fixed it in Machiko’s braid.

Mimiko nodded once, her approval quiet but sure. “The orchid looks good. It’s very you.”

Machiko touched the clip gently, her cheeks warm. “Thank you… both of you.”

The twins only grinned, proud of themselves as if they had uncovered some great treasure.

Machiko felt strangely at ease beneath the city’s endless sky. The hum of traffic, the chatter of strangers, the dazzle of bright shop windows—all of it was new, all of it alive. For once, she was not the quiet girl at the edges of the shrine, but simply another face in the crowd, another child laughing with her friends. No cruel whispers clung to her heels, no mocking eyes followed her steps. Perhaps such gazes still existed—there would always be people who stared—but she had grown into a body no longer frail, into a will no longer timid. And friends at her side made her stronger still.

Just as they left the last store, Takashi walked towards them with a small paper bag in his hands. “Hey there, look what I got for all of you three”, he said as he showed them three colourful charm bracelets from the bag. “I have younger siblings back home and they loved this stuff. Here, take one.”

Each of the girls took one while thanking Takashi for the thoughtful gift. Nanako beamed as she looked at her wrist, “Look! We all matched! These are like the friendship bracelets I saw in a movie.”

”Thank you, Takashi-san.” Machiko said with a slight bow of her head.

Nanako looped her arm through hers and declared, “Lunch next! Let’s go to the maid café.”

Machiko blinked. “Maid café?”

Nanako grinned wide, eyes sparkling like polished glass. “The waitresses dress like cute maids, with frilly aprons and everything. They do silly little performances when they serve you food like drawing hearts on your omelets with ketchup.”

Mimiko gave a solemn nod. “The sundaes are good. And the omurice.”

Machiko tilted her head, still perplexed, though their enthusiasm tugged a small smile from her lips.

The four of them wove their way through the press of bodies along the avenue. Street musicians strummed guitars, a group of children blew bubbles that shimmered like rainbows in the sun, and hawkers barked their wares from bright stalls that smelled of grilled meat and fried batter. The air was hot, sticky with the warmth of too many people pressed together.

Then, as they turned a corner, Manami suddenly stopped short, patting her bag with a frown. “My wallet—I must have left it at the last shop.”

Her tone was casual, but brisk. She turned to Takashi. “Keep an eye on the girls. I’ll catch up with you at the café.”

The man inclined his head, his smile thin and polite. “Of course. Leave them to me.”

And with that, Manami vanished back into the crowd.

“Alright,” Takashi said, clapping his hands softly. “This way.”

At first, it seemed harmless enough. He guided them along the main thoroughfare, where the streets still bustled with shoppers and laughter. But as they went on, Machiko began to notice the change. The chatter of voices grew distant, drowned out by the low hum of cars. The crowds thinned until only scattered figures remained. Bright shops gave way to shuttered storefronts, their signs faded, their windows dark.

Nanako, oblivious, chatted on about sundresses and parfaits. Mimiko listened in silence, her eyes half-lidded, unconcerned. But Machiko… Machiko felt it.

Her stomach coiled tight.

Years of walking on eggshells, years of Geto’s brutal training, years after that horrible incident, had honed her senses into something sharper than mere instinct. Danger had a weight, a texture in the air, and she felt it pressing down now, thick and suffocating. A feeling of unease bubbled in her chest. Her skin prickled, and the hairs along her arms rose as if the city itself had turned against them.

Takashi walked ahead with steady, unhurried strides, never glancing back, his shoulders relaxed. But the path he took bent them ever deeper into quieter streets, places where eyes no longer lingered, where help would not come quickly.

Machiko slowed her steps, her breath shallow. Something’s wrong.

It wasn’t just Machiko who felt it—that crawling unease, the itch beneath the skin that screamed of danger.

Mimiko, quiet as ever, shifted her gaze from Takashi to Nanako, then flicked her eyes toward Machiko. The smallest of gestures, but loaded with meaning: something is wrong. Her doll dangled in one hand, the porcelain face catching the dim afternoon light, but her other hand gripped its frills with such force her knuckles went white. Her body was taut as a bow drawn to its limit, every muscle strung for flight.

Nanako’s cheer, so constant and bright, drained from her face like water from a broken cup. Her lips pressed into a hard line, her eyes shadowed. When she spoke, her voice—usually bubbling with mischief—came out low, firm, edged. 

“Hey, mister. Where are you taking us? We should’ve been at the café ten minutes ago.”

Takashi slowed his steps, tilting his head back with that same easy smile. His voice was calm, gentle, the kind that might soothe children on any other day. But here it felt wrong, stretched too thin, too smooth. “What? This is a shortcut. The other street’s too crowded. I just wanted to keep you safe, where I could see you.”

Nanako’s tone cut through his softness like a blade. “If you think we’re dumb kids, you’re wrong. Geto-sama will kill you if you try anything funny.”

Machiko’s pulse thudded in her ears. Her hands balled into fists at her sides, cursed energy stirring like storm winds in her veins. Her gloves glowed faintly, the grey cracks underneath pulsing with heat. She wanted to fight, to scream, to grab the twins and run, but every instinct screamed: choose wrong, and you’ll all die here.

Takashi’s mask slipped.

The kind smile twisted into something else—cold, flat, predatory. His lips curled, his eyes dead. He clicked his tongue, the sound sharp in the narrow street.

“Tch. You just had to open your mouths. Should’ve kept playing dumb. Your master won’t be here in time.”

Machiko’s chest tightened. She forced her voice out, though her breath shook. “In time for what?”

The answer came in the shriek of tires.

A black van barreled down the street, swerving too close to the curb. Its brakes screamed, the vehicle jerking to a halt beside them, its paint dull and unmarked, its windows black as night. The side door slammed open with a clang of metal.

Machiko’s instincts flared, Nanako’s fists rose, Mimiko’s doll was clutched like a weapon, but the moment they reached inside themselves, there was… nothing. No cursed energy. Their techniques, their strength, gone like air snuffed from a candle.

“W–what?!” Machiko gasped, her gloves sputtering with faint light that died instantly.

Machiko’s wrist caught Mimiko’s attention. The charm bracelet—bright beads strung innocently together—was glowing. Soft red light pulsed from the etched runes carved into the beads. Her face blanched. “The bracelets…” she whispered, horror thick in her voice.

Takashi’s laugh was low, sharp, and cruel. “Didn’t your master teach you not to take gifts from strangers? Those little baubles are cursed energy nullifiers. Pretty, aren’t they?”

The van disgorged men and women—four, maybe five—faces half-hidden by masks, their movements sharp and efficient. They spread out in a practiced circle, penning the children in like sheep before the slaughter.

Takashi’s voice rose, dripping with pride. “Took me months to worm my way into that shrine, to win your trust. Now, I’ll walk away with the twins—and this little stray too.” His gaze lingered on Machiko, a flicker of curiosity in his otherwise empty stare. “The files didn’t mention you. No reports of Geto taking in another kid. But, oh well. The higher-ups would sort that out themselves.”

The circle of men closed. Cloths darkened with chemical wetness flashed in their hands, the acrid stench of chloroform biting into the air.

Nanako lunged first, teeth bared, her fists swinging wild. A man caught her arm, twisting it, forcing the cloth to her face as she thrashed like a cornered animal.

Mimiko shrieked, a thin, piercing sound, kicking and clawing, her small frame no less vicious for its size. Two men held her down, pressing the cloth against her mouth as her doll clattered to the street.

Machiko fought the hardest. She struck with elbows, fists, knees, anything her body remembered from training. She broke free once, twice, tearing at the grip of her captors. But the fumes clawed into her lungs, burning, heavy, turning her limbs to lead.

Her vision swam. Her throat rasped. Her gloves sparked faintly with light, but no threads came forth.

Through the blur, she saw Takashi standing apart. Watching. Calm.

He looked almost bored.

“Let’s just hope your master comes for you,” he murmured, voice low but sharp enough to cut.

And the world slid into black.

Chapter Text

Chapter 6: The Lamb Learns to Bite

***Before the Night Parade of 100 Demons***

Year: 2012

The first thing Machiko noticed as her mind clawed its way out of the void was the sound.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

A hollow rhythm, echoing in the cavernous dark, like water dripping into an endless well. Each drop reverberated against the silence, sharp enough to pull her from the haze.

Then came the light, harsh, fluorescent, flickering overhead. It buzzed with an electric whine, sometimes sputtering, sometimes flaring, so bright it stabbed at her eyelids. She groaned softly, her lashes fluttering, before forcing them open.

Her body felt wrong. Heavy. Sluggish. Her head pounded like a drum, and though her mind screamed move, get up, fight, her limbs refused. She tried to lift her hands but felt the bite of coarse rope against her wrists. Her ankles were bound tightly, pressing bone against the cold, damp concrete floor.

Blinking through the blur, she took in her surroundings. High ceilings stretched above, supported by rust-stained steel beams, shadows hanging thick between them. The roof was patched with corrugated zinc sheets that creaked faintly whenever the wind pressed against them. The walls were metal, weathered, dull with rust. It trapped the stench of oil, dust, and mold.

Dim lightbulbs dangled from chains fixed to the beams, some flickering, others burned out completely. The illumination was patchy, throwing stretches of darkness between islands of pale light. Scattered across the warehouse were shapes that loomed in the gloom: an idle excavator, half-buried in tarps, stacks of wooden crates damp with rot, rusted barrels reeking faintly of gasoline.

It was no hiding place. It was a prison.

Machiko forced her ears open, straining past the drip of water and the hum of faulty lights. She wanted to find any clue; cars rushing by, voices in the distance, maybe even seagulls, but there was nothing. Only silence, heavy and absolute.

Not far from her, there were movements. Guards.

Figures loitered at every exit: the shutter doors, the side entrances, the gaps in the corrugated walls. Their silhouettes were stiff, watchful, and armed. Even their stillness felt oppressive, wolves in waiting. And there, leaning against one of the central beams with his arms crossed and a cigarette between his fingers was Takashi.

He looked utterly at ease, his face cast in half-shadow, eyes lazily sweeping the warehouse like a man watching embers burn down to ash.

Beside Machiko, small shifts of breath and fabric. She turned her head and saw Nanako and Mimiko, the Hasaba twins already awake. Bound as she was, lying on the same damp floor, their hair clinging slightly from the damp chill.

“Machiko,” Mimiko whispered, her voice barely more than air. “Are you okay?”

Machiko swallowed, her throat raw, but managed a faint nod. She whispered back, her voice steadier than she felt. “I’m fine. You two?”

The twins exchanged a quick glance, then nodded in unison. Their expressions were shadowed but composed—fear was there, yes, but so was steel.

The three huddled closer, their whispers barely carrying.

“Where are we?” Machiko asked, scanning the vast, empty gloom again, though the answer was obvious.

“A warehouse,” Nanako murmured back, her lips pressed into a tight line. “Abandoned. Probably outside the city. I can’t hear any noises outside.”

Machiko hesitated before whispering the question that gnawed at her gut. “…Who are they?”

Nanako’s expression hardened, her usual brightness gone. “Jujutsu sorcerers,” she said, voice edged with disdain.

Mimiko’s tone followed, soft but steady, filling the cracks Nanako left. “They hunt curses. And curse users who don’t belong to their order. People like us.”

Machiko’s brows furrowed. Her heart hammered against her ribs. “But… What do they want with us? It’s not like we did anything.”

Mimiko lowered her gaze, her doll’s button eyes pressed against her chest even though her hands were bound. Her voice was quiet, like a knife slipping between ribs. “They don’t want us. They want Geto-sama. We’re just… bait.”

The word sank into Machiko’s chest like a stone.

Machiko’s head throbbed as she leaned it back against the cold concrete floor, Mimiko’s last words still rattling in her skull. Bait. The word made her stomach twist.

Her gaze flicked toward Takashi, his tall frame half-lit by the flickering bulbs. Smoke curled around him as he exhaled. His expression was unreadable, but she remembered Geto’s warnings about people like him—sorcerers who called themselves protectors of order. The Jujutsu sorcerers.

An organized machine. Efficient. Ruthless. They kept the Jujutsu world buried under layers of secrecy, ensuring that the occult world would remain hidden, unheard, unseen. And anyone who disrupted that order—anyone who challenged the neat walls they had built—was branded a threat.

Geto had told her once, voice even but heavy, “Machiko, if the Jujutsu sorcerers ever find you, they won’t see a child. They’ll see a weapon. And they won’t hesitate to bind you, use you, or destroy you.”

At the time, she hadn’t understood. Why would they fear someone like her? Why would they go after children? She remembered asking, sitting on the shrine steps while he adjusted the sleeve of his black robe.

His eyes had been calm, but behind them a storm churned. “Because not everyone shares my vision,” he’d said. “They believe cursed children exist to serve. I believe cursed children should live as children—safe, unashamed of who they are. Revered, even. Our gifts are not curses. They are proof we are more than ordinary humans. The veil of secrecy should be eliminated and us, curse users, should make our existence known.”

Those words had taken root in her heart. She had carried them with her through every cruel whisper, every mocking glance, every night she curled up as her nightmare haunts her. Geto’s voice was the only thing that had made her believe she wasn’t broken.

But that vision, so simple and so kind, was what had turned him into a heretic in their eyes. Dangerous. A man to be hunted down.

Machiko swallowed hard. Her eyes drifted from the ceiling beams back to the twins, whose faces were set with grim awareness far beyond their years. The unfairness of it all made her chest ache.

“Why?” she thought bitterly. “Why fight so hard to keep us hidden, when all we want is to be safe? To be loved? Isn’t that good? Shouldn’t everyone deserve that?”

She thought of how the outside world had branded her; an anomaly, a freak, a wild dog that needed to be caged or beaten. But Geto hadn’t seen her that way. In his home, for the first time in her life, she was accepted.

Her lips trembled as she whispered, almost too low for Nanako and Mimiko to hear: “…Why would they hate that? Why would they want us to suffer?”

Neither twin answered, but their silence was heavy, confirming what Machiko already feared.

Takashi’s voice sliced through the silence like a blade. “Hello?…”, he answered his phon. “Yes, we have the children with us. Have they made a move?… Copy that. We’ll be sure to prepare.”

He closed the clamshell of his phone with a soft snap. For a heartbeat, the only sound was the rhythmic drip of water in the warehouse. Then his gaze, hard and obsidian-dark, fell upon them.

“Suguru Geto has made his move,” he announced, voice carrying through the cavernous hall. “He’s not alone. He’s brought reinforcements. Everyone stay sharp. Get them ready for transport.”

The guards stirred at once, shoes scraping concrete, shadows shifting. The air grew heavier, oppressive.

Machiko’s heart kicked in her chest. “W-wait!” Her voice cracked, desperate. “Where are you taking us?”

No answer. Only rough hands seizing them, dragging them upright. The cold stink of sweat and iron filled her nose as she struggled. Nanako was wrenched away first, Takashi’s grip biting cruelly into her thin arm.

“Get up,” he barked, yanking her to her feet.

Nanako’s eyes blazed, her small teeth flashing. She sank them deep into his hand. Takashi hissed, a sharp curse spilling from his mouth, before his palm lashed across her cheek with a crack that echoed in the rafters. Nanako staggered but refused to cry.

“You brat,” he spat, shaking his smarting hand.

“Nanako!” Mimiko’s voice rang out, shrill with fury. She hurled herself forward though bound, her doll clutched so tightly her knuckles whitened. “Don’t you dare hurt my sister!”

Machiko thrashed against the guards holding her down. She reached inward, clawing for her cursed technique, but the bracelets burned cold against her skin. The power sputtered, strangled at the root. She pulled at the band until her wrists ached, nails scraping her own flesh raw, but the metal clung fast. “No… there has to be a way…”

If she couldn’t break it, then she would drown it. Overwhelm it. Push until the vessel shattered. Everything has a limit, perhaps these binds do too. She could feel her cursed energy thrumming at the dam, building pressure, begging release. “Everything has a threshold… even this.”

Her breath came ragged, and she clenched her fists. “Come on. Come on.” Her hands flickered faintly, threads of pale light writhing like worms beneath her gloves.

Nanako’s mouth curled in defiance despite the red welt blooming across her cheek. “Hah. Do you really think you’re even close to Geto-sama? Pathetic.”

Her voice was sharp, venomous, but her eyes sought Machiko’s, stalling, buying her time.

“You’re just low-graders,” she spat. “You’ll drop dead the second he gets here.”

Takashi’s composure cracked. His jaw clenched, irritation flashing in his gaze. He stalked forward, boots grinding grit beneath his soles. “Shut up,” he snarled. “You and your master both are a pain in my ass.”

He seized Nanako by the hair and yanked her face up toward his. She screamed, high and thin, her small hands clawing at his wrist. Mimiko shrieked, trying to reach her, but a guard forced her back down, pressing a knee into her spine.

“The higher-ups didn’t tell us to keep you in good condition,” Takashi hissed into Nanako’s face. His breath stank of cigarettes. He drew a dagger, steel glinting under the swaying light. Slowly, almost tenderly, he pressed it against her cheek. A thin line of blood welled up, bright and terrible against her pale skin.

“Maybe a good beating will remind you who’s in charge here.”

“Nanako!” Machiko screamed, panic choking her throat.

And then—snap.

The bracelet cracked with a sound like breaking bone. Power surged from her hands in a flood, threads of cursed energy bursting into the air, glowing gray and alive. They lashed out in every direction, weaving around her captors like living cords. The guards staggered back as she bound them in a heartbeat, the impact of her release flinging them away like ragdolls.

Machiko shot forward in a blur, fury igniting her limbs. Her threads whipped out ahead of her, slicing through the air as she lunged straight for Takashi.

Takashi came at her the instant she broke through the guards. He was fast. Faster than she’d expected for a man of his build. His fist drove toward her like a hammer meant to cave her chest in. Machiko twisted, her small frame snapping to the side, the blow grazing past her ribs with enough force to steal her breath.

She retaliated with a strike to his midsection, sharp and quick, but it was like striking stone. He grinned cruelly and swung again, catching her shoulder. Pain jolted down her arm, her vision flaring white, but she bit back the cry, sliding low and sweeping at his legs. He staggered half a step, surprised by her speed.

“He’s heavy. Strong. But I’m faster.”

Takashi lunged, dagger flashing, but Machiko ducked beneath his arm, threads coiling from her fingertips in a silver blur. She spun, her heel catching his jaw in a sharp kick. The impact rang through her bones. Takashi’s head snapped back, and for a moment he hung suspended before the blow hurled him across the concrete. He crashed into a beam with a grunt, splinters raining down.

Machiko didn’t wait for him to rise. Her threads unfurled in every direction, gray strands stitching themselves through the warehouse with frightening speed, crisscrossing like the frame of a spider’s web. The crackle of cursed energy danced along them, faint sparks leaping whenever two lines crossed. 

The guards closed in, but the first who dared touch the web screamed. He jerked back, clutching his hand—blood streamed down his palm, the flesh sliced clean where the thread had bitten.

“Stay back,” Machiko hissed, her breath ragged, eyes glowing faintly with the strain of her technique.

She turned at once to Nanako, who still writhed in Takashi’s shadow. Her threads flicked, delicate as needles, severing the bindings around the girl. Nanako stumbled into her arms, cheek bloodied but eyes sharp.

“Are you alright?” Machiko asked, voice breaking, hands frantic as she steadied her.

Nanako gave a shaky nod. “I’m fine. Worry about Mimiko.”

Machiko’s gaze fell on the cursed bracelets biting their wrists. The threads in her hands pulsed as she reached inward, sinking into the bindings, tracing the seams. They were intricate, built to smother cursed energy entirely, but nothing was completely seamless. Every weave had its weakness. She forced her threads deeper, finding the cracks like water seeping into stone.

Her fingers tightened. She tugged. The bracelets quivered, sparks snapping across their surfaces.

“Break,” she whispered.

And with a sharp crack, the first one blew like a blown fuse, shards scattering to the floor.

The warehouse erupted in chaos as steel scraped against thread. Machiko’s web trembled, strands snapping one by one as the guards hacked with blades sharpened in cursed energy. The sound was shrill, like harp strings breaking under too much strain.

Machiko forced herself upright, chest heaving, her body trembling from exhaustion and fear. But her eyes, sharp, silver-glinting beneath the dim light, never wavered. She had never fought beyond the walls of Geto’s training ground. Never against men who would kill her if she faltered. Yet here she was, caught in the snare of reality. “The world is cutthroat, Machiko. If you falter, you’re gone.” Geto’s words pressed at the edges of her mind.

She swallowed the fear. “Can you fight?”

The Habara twins didn’t hesitate. Nanako’s lips curled into a grim smile. Mimiko’s fingers tightened on her doll.

“Don’t worry about us,” Mimiko said softly, her voice thin but steady. “Geto-sama trained us for this. This isn’t our first time.”

Nanako’s usual cheer was gone, replaced by cold resolve. “We hold until Geto-sama arrives. That’s all we need to do.”

Machiko gave a sharp nod. “Got it.” Her hands thrummed with cursed energy, cracks of faint gray light glowing under her gloves. The threads uncoiled again, whispering through the air.

The guards surged forward.

Nanako moved first. With a sharp flick of her wrist, the phone clutched in her hand sparked with cursed energy. The grainy lens flared, and in a blink, the nearest guard’s form shifted. He froze, eyes wide, staring at a mirror copy of himself staggering toward him, an illusion so vivid his own comrades faltered in confusion. Nanako laughed, though her voice carried no mirth, only steel. “Confused, aren’t you? Can’t tell which is real?”

The guard snarled, swinging wildly, but his blade cut only air. His comrades cursed as the illusion thickened, multiplying, spreading chaos through their ranks.

Mimiko’s voice followed, soft as a prayer. She pressed her doll to her lips, and with the gesture, her cursed energy pulsed outward. The nearest guard clutched his chest as if his very soul had been grasped, his body buckling under an unseen weight. Blood poured suddenly from his eyes and nose, his scream cut short as he collapsed, twitching on the concrete. Another staggered backward, his cursed energy unraveling like a frayed rope under her gaze. Mimiko’s dark eyes shimmered faintly. “One at a time… I’ll crush you.”

Machiko fought beside them, her threads lashing like whips, slicing across blades, binding ankles, wrapping wrists, cutting just deep enough to force mistakes. Her sight sharpened with Musubari's gift: in her vision, the guards’ souls glowed blue, their souls gleaming at the seams. Every strike she delivered wasn’t just at flesh, it grazed those seams, sending jolts of paralysis through their limbs. One man stumbled, his sword arm falling limp as though severed, and Machiko’s threads bit deeper, binding him to the floor like a pinned insect.

But the guards were skilled. Their cursed blades hacked relentlessly, snapping her threads as fast as she could weave them. One lunged close, blade raised, but Nanako’s illusion pulled him off balance just long enough for Machiko’s thread to cleave across his chest. Another charged Mimiko, but fell screaming as his body locked under her curse.

The three of them fought not as children, but as cornered beasts. Each carrying the lessons drilled into them, each refusing to fall.

Yet for every enemy they cut down or stalled, two more pressed in. Their breaths came ragged, their small bodies straining under the endless tide.

But still—they endured.

Nanako and Mimiko fought like wolves caught in a hunter’s snare, their small frames twisting and staggering under the weight of grown men’s blows. Nanako’s illusions flickered, her cursed phone trembling in her hand as fatigue gnawed at her focus. Mimiko’s doll nearly slipped from her grasp as she whispered curse after curse, each one draining more of her strength, her face pale and clammy with effort. Their movements grew sluggish. Sluggish but defiant.

And Machiko—she could feel her own body screaming. Her lungs burned, her legs ached, her cursed energy sputtered like a candle flame fighting the wind. Her threads snapped more often than they held, the gray glow around them flickering in and out. Yet the guards never relented. For every one that stumbled, another surged forward, their blades glinting with killing intent.

Then Takashi returned.

He moved through the chaos like a shadow cutting across a firelight, his black eyes locked only on her. “Forget them,” he snarled, his voice carrying over the din, “your fight is with me.”

He lunged, faster than she could brace, the dagger’s hilt smashing into her gut. The breath tore out of Machiko’s lungs in a strangled gasp, the world tilting as white-hot pain exploded through her stomach. She staggered backward, her knees buckling. For a moment, she almost folded. Almost collapsed onto the cold concrete beside her own unraveling threads.

But no. She forced her trembling legs to hold. Her vision swam, bile rising in her throat, yet her eyes sharpened through the blur. She dragged air into her chest, ragged and broken, and raised her hands.

The gloves that once shielded her palms were gone, torn away in the chaos. Her bare hands glistened with sweat, her skin raw, fingers stiff with strain. Threads glowed faintly at her fingertips, the cursed energy crackling so violently now that burns seared along her knuckles and wrists. Every movement sent lightning-lances of pain racing up her arms.

Takashi noticed. His lips curved in cruel satisfaction. “Your hands won’t last. Push them any further, and they’ll break before I even have to cut them off.”

Machiko didn’t answer. She only exhaled, long and steady, the ache in her body drowned out by one thought: “If I fall, Nanako and Mimiko fall too.”

Threads lashed. Takashi ducked, his blade flashing as he severed one, two, three strands, closing the distance. She twisted away, her speed saving her by the breadth of a breath, but he pressed harder, his blows heavy, punishing, forcing her back step by step. She tried to flick her threads wide, weaving defenses between herself and the twins, but Takashi slammed her focus back to him with another brutal strike, a sweeping kick that nearly knocked her to the floor.

“Look at me!” he roared, striking again, dagger grazing her arm and drawing a thin line of blood.

Machiko’s chest heaved, sweat stinging her eyes. Her body was at its limit, cursed energy fraying with every desperate strike, but still she raised her trembling hands, threads unraveling in frantic arcs of gray light.

This wasn’t training. This was survival. And survival meant enduring, no matter how much it hurt.

Machiko’s roar tore out of her throat raw and ragged, born from fury and fear and the gnawing ache of her body breaking down. Every strike of Takashi’s dagger, every clash of steel against thread sent fire lancing through her limbs. Her muscles trembled with exhaustion, her lungs dragged in air like broken bellows. But she refused to fall.

“I can’t lose them. Not Nanako, not Mimiko. Not like Yuu. Never again.”

Her movements grew savage, animalistic. Gone was the careful precision Geto drilled into her—the clean lines, the graceful strikes. What remained was primal survival. She clawed at Takashi’s arm when his blade came too close, spat curses through gritted teeth, used her small size to slip under his guard, driving a sharp kick into his shin. She lashed her threads not to bind, but to slice shallow cuts across his face, his arms, anything to buy another heartbeat.

She slammed her shoulder into his ribs and drove him into a stack of wooden crates. Shards splintered and rained down as she scrambled back, weaving threads between the beams above and yanking them down like weighted snares. Takashi cut through them, but she never stopped, turning the environment itself into a weapon.

Every move screamed desperation. Every strike, tenacity. A girl backed into a corner, fighting tooth and nail to live.

Then it happened.

A strangled yelp. A dull thud.

Machiko’s head whipped around in time to see Mimiko crumple to the concrete floor, her cursed doll falling limply from her fingers. Nanako shrieked her name, rushing toward her sister—only to be met with a guard’s fist. The blow snapped her head sideways, and she dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.

The world seemed to tilt. Cold horror surged into Machiko’s chest, freezing her blood. “No…” The word barely escaped her lips, but then it tore free, loud and feral. “NO!”

Her moment of distraction cost her.

Takashi surged in, his dagger clattering against the threads she frantically raised. He batted them aside with brute force, his eyes glinting with malice. His boot drove into her ribs, the impact stealing her breath as she crashed onto the concrete. Before she could recover, the weight of him pressed down.

Takashi planted his foot hard on her chest, pinning her flat to the floor. The pressure drove sharp pain through her lungs, each breath shallow and strained. His shadow loomed over her, dagger gleaming cold above her face.

“You fought well,” he sneered, pressing down harder, the air wheezing out of her lungs. “But all that rage, all that desperation, it’s wasted. You’re still just a child. And children break.”

Machiko’s blackened, bleeding fingers clawed desperately at Takashi’s boot, but the weight was immovable. Her ribs groaned under the pressure, each inhale nothing but a shallow scrape of air. White sparks danced at the edge of her vision, her chest tightening as if the world itself had decided she was not meant to breathe.

Takashi’s voice cut through her fading focus like poisoned glass.

“Pathetic. You strut around thinking you’re strong, thinking you matter. But this isn’t some childish fantasy, girl. This—” he pressed harder, and Machiko gasped as her sternum threatened to snap, “—is the real world. And in the real world, you lose.”

Then, all at once, the pressure vanished.

Takashi’s body lurched, yanked back by an unseen force. His dagger arm wrenched sideways, his balance faltering. He snarled, twisting violently against it. Machiko’s dazed eyes caught the impossible sight—Mimiko, trembling, pale, her cursed doll clutched in her tiny hands. The thread of her technique tethered to Takashi, jerking him off balance like a marionette on its final thread.

Her lips barely moved, but the effort drained the last of her. The doll sagged, her fingers uncurled, and Mimiko collapsed in a faint.

“Fuck!” Takashi roared, tearing himself free. His obsidian eyes snapped toward Machiko, burning with rage.

He stomped forward, seized her by the roots of her unruly black curls, and dragged her across the concrete floor like a broken ragdoll. Pain screamed through her scalp as she hit the ground hard near the twins, the impact forcing up a bitter spurt of blood from her throat.

Her limbs refused her. Heavy. Numb. Like bricks. Her body had burned itself hollow, the adrenaline gone. The guards surrounded them.

From the corner of her blurred vision, she caught a silver glint—the blade, already rising. Takashi loomed over Mimiko, his voice dripping venom. “The higher-ups never said I had to keep you whole. Let’s see how long your sister screams when you’re missing a limb.”

“NO—!” The cry tore from Machiko’s throat, but her body did not move.

Her vision blurred with hot, helpless tears. She screamed inside her own skull, beating at the walls of her weakness. 

“Get up. Get up, damn it, GET UP!” But her limbs remained unyielding. “I can’t…I can’t move…please…please, just this once!”

The blade was brought down fast and it pierced the girl’s arm. Mimiko jolted awake at the pain and she screamed. It echoes across the warehouse.

“Stop it!!”, Machiko sobbed. 

As an act of final desperation, Machiko finally whispered its name. 

“Musurabi, come forth…”

And then, the world shattered.

The air grew heavy, suffocating. The temperature dropped until frost rimed the corners of the steel beams above. The buzzing fluorescent lights overhead dimmed to grey, then to ash. Sound itself bled away, silence ringing louder than any scream.

Time slowed. Every droplet of water from the leaky roof froze mid-fall, hanging crystalline in the air.

And in that silence, he appeared.

Musubari. The Binding Demon. The God of Threads. His form was neither whole nor broken. Woven from shadows and threads that stitched themselves together and unraveled in the same breath. His presence pressed against her ribs harder than Takashi’s boot ever had.

“My little storm,” the thing crooned, and the voice slid through her like oil on a blade. It had no single face—now a man’s, now a beetle’s, now a pale girl’s—each mask rearranging itself with slow, obscene amusement. “Look at you: beaten, broken, pleading. So tidy. So eager for ruin.”

It dropped down on its haunches until it was eye level with her, threads of shadow pooling and sliding over the concrete like living ink. The threads brushed her cheek. Cold, sensate things that felt for frays and weak knots, and Musubari laughed, a sound like needles clinking in a box. “You called. I came.”

Machiko’s throat rasped. Blood and dust clung to her lips. She had no voice that felt like her own; the syllables were pulled out of her by violence and prayer. “Lend me your ability,” she said. “Please. Let me…let me save them.”

The curse’s many eyes brightened. His smile cut wider, and where it showed its teeth there were too many points. “Of course you would beg,” he said, almost tender. “You are made of want. I thought you would. I have the very thing to suit your little hunger.”

He unfolded himself like a loom opening a web. Threads rose, black and thin as nightmare, and they braided about her like coils. They slid over her skin and into the hollow behind her breastbone, and Machiko felt them find the place inside her where breath and memory had once lived. The threads did not cut. At first they simply leaned, patient and inquisitive, as if reading the grain of her soul. Then they sank.

For a second the world narrowed to a single rasping sound. Her lungs forgot how to want air. She felt the black veins unknot and then knot again, felt something ancient and sharp weaving through her blood. The black stains across her fingers leapt like ink, crawling, knotting, up her arms. Grey cracks flared and ran like lightning under skin. Something in her shoulders grew hard and ridged until the skin took on an odd, scale-like sheen. Her nails lengthened, grew curved and hooked like the talons of some hunting thing. Her spine snapped straighter, then arched with an appetite she had never known.

Pain came first—hot, bright, like the slap of iron—but it was only the door. Beyond it lay a different tide. A surge of power so immense Machiko felt dizzy, giddy and drunk. The warehouse fell away. Her veins hummed. The world became a smear of targets. 

With the power came a low, feral hunger, a terrible clarity. Blood not only called to her, it sang. The thought of it flooded her like sunlight through open shutters and also like a storm surge.

She looked down and did not recognize the child who trembled there. She saw instead a thing of predatory design; arms slender and jointed in odd places, shoulders edged with dark ridges that might have been wings in a different life. Spider and dragon, predator and loom, woven into one nightmare silhouette. Her breath came in sharp, clean pulls. Her hands; blackened now, ridged like stitched leather, tensed and flexed with seamless purpose.

Musubari’s voice slithered around the new shape she inhabited. “Harvest Moon,” he said, as if reciting the title of a favored song.

 “An old boon, given to your ancestor Momoe. I will lend you my reserves. I will ease the burn of your weaker seams. For a little while, you will not have to stagger at the cutting edge.” He leaned so close she could see the thread-fine seam of his smile. “In return—listen well, Little Storm—there must be payment.”

He spoke the bargain like a prayer and a threat braided together. “Take and carry to me twenty souls—the bright, warm things that clothe a living heart. Bring them to me within six minutes. Deliver them whole, or I take five years of your life.”

The words were a cold blade. Time sharpened. Six minutes. An impossible measure, a laugh in a cavern. Twenty souls either children or guards and any poor wretch in-betweens. She felt wicked and certain, the clock beginning to tick in some part of her newly hollowed chest.

Musubari’s many eyes glittered as if at the scent of those souls. He crooned, “Go, little storm. Go show me what your ancestor promised me. Make the harvest sing.”

Something in Machiko recoiled. The horror of it rose like bile. The twins, the sharp iron of a blade embedded in Mimiko, Nanako’s face bleeding. She saw Yuu’s small form in the memory of that first night and the sick hot shame of it. She thought of Geto. What he had taught her, the stubborn, foolish light he had given her to keep. 

“You swore,” a small inner voice said, “you swore you would not reach for another bargain.”

And yet, the power spread in her like oil in tinder. It answered the most savage parts of her: protect, destroy, keep what you love. Desperation thinned into a terrible arithmetic: for one life to be kept a hundred might be burned; for one blade to stop a thousand screams—what then?

Her throat made a sound that was half plea, half surrender. Her hands, now not only hers, tensed. She could feel the threads humming under her skin, the loom that would take shape at her fingers. She could feel the first small, murderous instruments forming in the dark.

“I—” The word fractured. In the silence she heard Musubari’s breath, patient as a grave. “—I accept.”

The acceptance tasted of ash. Musubari’s threads tightened once more, as if pleased, and then withdrew, leaving her new body humming and hot with bloodlust. 

The warehouse, once grey and frozen, sharpened again. The six-minute clock was a drumbeat in her veins. In the concrete air the demon’s voice dropped away like a curtain sliding shut.

“Go,” he said, a final, hungry benediction. “Satiate your sanguine hunger.”

Machiko rose, claws flexing, the world narrowing to a single, terrible focus. The choice had unmade her in some way. Made her less and more at once. Her heart beat like a bell, and somewhere inside her the promise to those she loved became a monstrous engine. She moved. The countdown had begun.

A sound broke the stillness.

Click. Click. Click.

Not the drip of water. Not the groan of steel. It came from the thing crouched on the floor. From Machiko.

Her head tilted sharply, too far, too predatory. The sound echoed from her throat, insectile, reptillian—an animal testing the space, assessing, measuring prey.

Takashi froze. The hair at the back of his neck rose as his gaze found her. But the girl was gone. In her place crouched a curse that had learned the shape of a child. Veins blackened and scaled, claws catching the pallid light, eyes feral slits that glowed faintly with ghostfire.

“W-what the—”

The rest of the words bled into a scream.

Machiko lunged. The world blurred with her speed. Claws ripped through his defence, and in the same motion she tore his chest wide as though his ribs were paper. Bone cracked, blood fountained hot against her face, but she didn’t flinch. Her hand thrust deep, deeper still, until her fingers wrapped around something not of flesh but of light.

Blue. Shining. Struggling. His soul.

She yanked. The thing came loose with a scream louder than his own, and as she drew it into her hand the light sputtered, shattered, and vanished like ash on the wind. Takashi’s body slumped to the concrete with a wet slap.

The silence that followed did not last.

The warehouse filled with movement, curses spat, blades drawn. Yet to Machiko there was only one thing left in the world: souls. They glimmered before her sight, blue fires burning in every chest. Twenty-two lights, twenty-two promises, twenty-two meals. Her chest heaved; her jaw slackened into a grin that did not belong to her.

Click. Click.

Then came slaughter.

They rushed her, and she met them with a hunger too vast to quench. A blade caught her shoulder, but she did not feel it. Another sliced the ridges of her scaled arms, she barely registered the spray. She moved with an animal economy, ducking low, weaving threads that flayed flesh like cheesecloth. Blood misted the air, a hot rain that slicked her face and arms.

One guard’s arm fell before he realized it was gone. Another’s legs were bound in a lattice of her threads, the cords tightening until skin peeled, tendon snapped, bone cracked, and he was nothing but a heap of meat screaming for mercy. Machiko’s hand closed on his skull, twisted—snap—silence.

Her claws raked through a man’s chest, pulled his rib cage open like shutters, and ripped the soul burning within. Another, she strangled with threads so thin they slid through his neck without resistance, head toppling to the floor with a dull thud as his soul winked out.

The clicking rose louder with each kill, as though the sound itself were the rhythm of her rampage.

And yet, through the tide of carnage, through the blood slicking her hands and the storm of souls vanishing into her chest—there was a thread inside her, faint but unyielding. 

“Don’t look at them. Don’t touch them. Don’t you dare.”

Her eyes, feral and rimmed with grey cracks, slid once to where Nanako knelt clutching her unconscious sister. Their souls burned so bright in her sight, so fragile, so close, so small, so sweet. Hunger coiled hot and sharp in her gut, urging her forward.

“No.”

Her own voice; quiet, trembling and desperate, echoed within the cavern of her skull. “Not them. Anyone but them.”

She spun instead toward the guards breaking through the doors. Threads lashed out, hooked through mouths, eyes, groins. Blood painted the zinc walls, warm mist filling the cold air. The warehouse became a slaughterhouse. And Machiko, hunched, feral, dripping gore, was the butcher.

One by one, their souls were torn free. Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty-one.

Number twenty-two screamed as she slammed him into the ground so hard his spine burst, the soul unspooling from his chest in tatters. She seized it, drank it in, and then silence.

Only two souls remained in her vision. Nanako. Mimiko. They burned bright blue. So close. So sweet.

Machiko’s body shook. Her claws twitched. The threads around her quivered like starving wolves straining at a leash.

Her breath hitched, torn between madness and mercy. Her bloodlust howled for more, for completion, for harvest. But her heart—or what remained of it—screamed no.

A spear struck her before she could move.

The impact slammed through Machiko’s chest, the force enough to lift her from the ground and pin her against one of the warehouse’s iron support beams with a shriek of tearing flesh and screaming metal. The world blurred in a haze of white-hot agony. Her body writhed, thrashing like a feral beast caught in a trap, claws tearing gouges into the steel as she tried—needed—to free herself.

And then she saw it.

Another soul.

Brighter. Denser. Vast beyond the others she had devoured. It radiated with a familiar gravity, a light so blue and so alive that every cell in her body screamed for it. Hunger tightened in her gut like a vice. She had to have it. It sang to her. 

She needed it.

The warehouse doors groaned wide, and Suguru Geto stepped through, robes dragging against the wet floor, expression calm but eyes sharp. His gaze swept the carnage. The blood, the broken corpses, the haze of cursed energy still thick in the air. His first movement was toward Nanako and Mimiko, who clung to one another, bloodied but alive. He raised his hand, a curtain of curses spilling from the shadows to shield them.

He stood before them like a wall and asked softly, almost absently, “Where’s Machiko?”

Nanako’s throat worked, fear tightening her face. Her voice cracked. “She… s-she is the curse.”

For a heartbeat, Geto froze. He turned, eyes narrowing on the figure bound to the beam. He had faced countless curses, some vast enough to blot out the sky, some old enough to remember empires. But never had he seen one like this. The aura radiating from her was wrong; unclean and unfamiliar, like a curse woven into flesh, stitched over a human heart that still faintly beat.

His mind raced. “A curse? A binding? A possession? Or something worse?”

“No… it’s her.”

Machiko wrenched herself free of the spear with a snarl, blood splattering the wall. Her body hunched low, claws flexing, her scaled arms twitching with violent energy. The threads around her whirred and snapped like taut wires, all aiming at him.

Then she lunged.

Geto did not hesitate. His palm swept through the air, and curses poured forth like a tide—gnarled limbs, fanged maws, talons of bone and shadow. They converged on her, snarling, each one a weaponized monster birthed from his hand.

Machiko met them head-on. She ripped the first curse in half with her bare hands, entrails of cursed matter slopping to the floor. Another she skewered on her claws, tearing out its soul and drinking it in before it dissolved. She twisted through the swarm with unnatural grace, threads slashing, binding, dismembering. Every curse that touched her was shredded, torn apart as though she had been born for slaughter.

Geto watched, his calm expression unmoved, but behind his eyes thoughts tangled.

Her movements—perfectly honed.
Her ferocity—more animal than sorcerer.
Her aura—burning, corrupted, yet human.

His fascination was a spark against the weight of the situation. “So this is what you’ve become, Machiko…”

Still, fascination was not weakness. He measured her through every strike, every desperate slash, each step closer she forced him. Her attacks were brutal, instinctive, nothing like the refined training he had taught her. And yet… they worked. She was fast—faster than she should be. Precise in her savagery.

But she was not untouchable. Not yet.

Geto stepped forward at last.

The curses that swarmed ahead of him dissolved into nothing, as though he had simply dismissed them with a thought. His dark eyes locked onto Machiko, whose breath came ragged and uneven, though her body moved like a predator at its peak. She crouched low, threads quivering around her like the limbs of some arachnid beast, her claws twitching with hunger.

She roared and lunged. She came for him directly.

Geto parried with cold precision, his body flowing between her slashes, his robe flaring with every step. When he struck, it was controlled, efficient—his hand a blade, his cursed energy crackling through the air. But Machiko fought like something untamed, beyond technique: snapping jaws, clawed hands slashing, her scaled arms striking with the weight of stone. She fought dirty, fought desperate, fought with a hunger that made the ground quake.

She was faster. She was stronger. She was savage. And yet… he was always half a step ahead.

Her bloodlust burned brighter, until finally she reared back, her claws crackling with cursed energy, ready to land a killing blow on him. Her entire body coiled with lethal intent.

Then—Tick.

A sharp sound, like a clock snapping its final gear into place.

Machiko froze mid-strike, her claws inches from Geto’s face. Her body locked, trembling as the threads of Musubari pulled taut inside her. Her glowing eyes flickered.

Geto leapt back, landing gracefully a safe distance away, robe whispering against the floor. His expression didn’t change, but in his eyes was the barest spark of disappointment and fascination.

“Time’s up, Little Storm…” Musubari’s voice slithered into her ear, audible only to her. “You were lucky this time.”

Cracks split across her monstrous form, glowing fissures racing down her arms, across her scaled chest, over her face. The hardened shell of the beast splintered, then fell away in fragments, disintegrating into black dust that rained to the floor.

And beneath the wreckage was only Machiko.

A child, bloodied, bruised, her breath weak. Her body trembled once before collapsing into the pool of gore she herself had created. Threads slackened and fell lifelessly beside her.

For a long moment, the only sound was the slow drip of blood echoing in the warehouse.

Geto approached, silent as a shadow. The twins clung to each other, wide-eyed, afraid, but followed. He knelt beside Machiko, fingers pressing lightly to her neck. A pulse. Weak, but steady. She was still alive.

“Well, well,” he said, the words low and almost amused, a cruel amusement that did not touch his eyes. “The lamb has finally shown its fangs.”

He drew the phone from the folds of his robe as if he were drawing a pen from a pocket, and tapped once. Manami answered on the other end as she always did—steady, precise. “We’re done here,” he said with a calm that made the warehouse feel colder. “Lift the veil.”

There was a small thing to be undone first—Takashi, the mole, who had bled them to the order. He had imagined a quieter fate for the traitor; a lesson, a removal, a tidy silence. But Takashi’s treachery had given Geto a better gift: a field to test the child in. Would she bend to the right hand when the world showed its teeth? Would she keep faith, would she kill without flinching? Those questions had been baited and answered in the most terrible of ways.

Geto let his fingers hover above Machiko’s blooded cheek for a long breath. It was neither father’s tenderness nor butcher’s contempt. It was something between. A claim being made with the steadiness of a signature. He had expected to find only a frightened instrument; instead he had found appetite and precision braided into one small, furious body. She had not broken at the sight of his enemies, she had devoured them. That singular fact rearranged possibilities in his mind.

“She will be my shadow,” he murmured aloud, as if testing the phrase in the air. The smile that followed was thin and certain, the kind of smile a man wears when a plan finally proves itself true. 

“And I must have her.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 7: Strike When The Iron is Hot

***Before the Night Parade of 100 Demons***

Year: 2012

The first thing that Machiko knew was weight. It lay upon her like a mountain, her bones pressed deep ino the infirmary bed, her breath shallow as though her ribs were still caught beneath Takashi’s heel. When she tried to lift her hand, it trembled like a leaf and fell back against her blanket. The air was thick with the iron sting of medicine and herbs, and faintly of ink. 

Her eyes moved before her body could. The walls were littered with talismans, old parchment with black strokes that looked half like prayers and half like shackles. They covered the doors, the beams, even the frame above her head. Some were fresh and white, others already browning at the edges, but all hummed with the faint press of a barrier. It was a cage, cleverly hidden behind the mask of protection. Her heart kicked against her chest.

She willed her cursed threads to rise. The familiar thrumming began in her fingers—but sputtered out like sparks in wet ash. Nothing answered her call. Panic gripped her throat. She sat forward despite the ache, despite the leaden drag of her body, but the bed caught her like quicksand, holding her down. She was trapped, sealed, bound again.

The shiver of the paper door sliding open cut through her panic. Machiko froze, her pulse loud in her ears.

And then he was there. Geto. His presence filled the room as surely as the scent of the talismans. Black robes, measured steps, the face she had learned to trust above all others. Relief broke from her chest in a long sigh, and with it, the wild pulse of her fight-or-flight ebbed away.

“Ah,” he said, his voice gentle as though speaking to a child still fevered. He moved to her side, dark eyes scanning her, weighing her with a healer’s patience and a general’s sharpness. “You’re awake.”

Her throat rasped when she spoke. “I… yes.”

“Does it hurt?” His tone was warm, careful, but it held the weight of command.

Machiko shook her head, though every joint ached, though her fingers throbbed with remembered burns. “Just… tired.”

He inclined his head, studying her as if her answer were both truth and lie at once. Then he drew the chair close and sat, the picture of a caring mentor. “You’ve been asleep a week, Machiko. You had us all worried.”

A week. Her mind stumbled over the words. How much had she lost?

“What… what happened? Where’s Mimiko-chan and Nanako-chan?” she asked, her voice small, as if the walls themselves might turn against her if she spoke too loudly. “I remember… Takashi… he—he was going to hurt Mimiko. I couldn’t—” Her hands fisted weakly into the blanket. “I couldn’t stop him. I was helpless. Then… everything turned red. And there was so much blood.”

She let her words falter there, painting herself as the frightened child who remembered too little, rather than the truth of claws, scales, and a curse whispering in her marrow. She dared not tell him of Musubari, dared not confess the black threads in her soul. To lose him, to lose Nanako and Mimiko—to be cast out again—was a terror greater than any nightmare.

Geto’s gaze lingered on her face, unreadable, as though searching for seams she was hiding. For a heartbeat, she feared he saw too much. Then his expression softened, the shadow of a smile curving his lips, and his hand brushed over the talismans nailed into the beam above her head.

“Mimiko and Nanako are fine. They’re awake and they’re resting in their room. You on the other hand….you fought bravely,” he said, his voice silk and iron. “More bravely than most grown ups. That’s what matters.”

Her chest loosened at his words, grateful that the Hasaba twins are safe and sound. Though deep down the fear of Geto finding out her true nature still clawed, whispering, “He must never know.”

Geto’s eyes lingered on Machiko, longer than comfort should allow. They were not the eyes of the gentle teacher she had known, not entirely. He was studying her, dissecting her in silence, like a surgeon laying bare the layers of a body.

But then, as if the weight of that gaze had been no more than a passing breeze, he smiled faintly and folded his hands into his sleeves.

“You remember only pieces,” he said softly. He leaned back, voice calm, deliberate— spinning a net of words as carefully as he spun curses.

“When I arrived, the warehouse was painted in blood. You, Nanako, Mimiko were lying unconscious among the bodies. Every guard cut down, Takashi was killed. I can’t say for certain what sparked such carnage. But, the three of you survived. That is enough.”

Machiko blinked, her stomach twisting. The way he said carnage pressed against the walls of her skull, threatening to drag forth the memory she had tried to bury. Claws, scales, a thousand threads weaving into her soul. Musubari’s voice whispering, “Harvest. Kill. Kill..” 

Machiko forced her breathing steady.

Geto’s tone darkened, measured as the toll of a temple bell. “We were deceived, Machiko. There was a mole among us.” His lips curved downward, feigned regret written across his face. “Takashi. A man I trusted enough to place at my side. He was theirs all along. He was with the Sorcerers. Planted in our home. Watching. Waiting. None of us saw it. Not Manami, not the others. And not me.”

His hands tightened, a small, private motion swallowed by the fold of his sleeve—an almost-penitent gesture that belied the hawk behind his eyes. The lids of those eyes drooped into shadow, but their pupils glittered like a blade. A lie well rehearsed, he thought, and the thought tasted like iron.

He had known. Manami had known. The twins had known. He had allowed it to play out. They had built a trap from their own hearth: leave the girls to stroll the city, arrange a convenient errand for Manami, leave for the mole to take up the opportunity, then watch the snare be sprung. Bait, hook, sinker.

Geto had watched the jaws close with the trained calm of a man who studies how a snake dies. He also wanted to see whether the lamb he had raised would bare its teeth at the hand that fed it. If she had failed—if Machiko had faltered, or turned—then there would have been no poignant scene of betrayal to mourn. He would have seen to it herself: a quiet end, the removal of risk, the reclaiming of power. Better a clean blade than a chance of ruin.

“They meant to take you, Nanako and Mimiko,” he continued, his voice low and steady. “Takashi planned to use the three of you as bargaining chips for me to get captured by the Sorcerers. That was their plan.”

Machiko swallowed, her throat dry. “But… you came.”

“I did,” Geto said simply, the warmth returning to his voice, his mask slipping easily back into place. “And I brought you home. All three of you. You were tended. You are safe.”

He leaned closer, and for a moment his hand hovered above her cheek—not tender, not cruel, simply claiming the space between them. “That is what matters.”

But behind his smile, behind his calm tone, his thoughts raced. He had seen the monster she had become. The power wasn’t hers alone. Something else lived within her, something older, fouler, stitched into her soul. Not her cursed technique, but something darker. A hidden vein of gold—or poison. He needed to know which.

Not yet, though. If he pushed, she would break. Or worse, she would hide deeper. No, he would let her believe her secret was safe. Let her grow comfortable, let her grow strong. Let her believe she belonged.

In time, she would be his blade. His shadow. His weapon.

Machiko’s fingers trembled against the blanket, nails scratching at the weave until it frayed. Her breath quickened, ragged, shallow. The more Geto spoke, the more her thoughts unraveled. She saw Nanako’s face twisted in terror, Mimiko’s collapse, Yuu’s lifeless smile. The blood, so much blood. Her own hands, blackened and clawed, tearing, ripping, harvesting.

And what if Geto knew? What if he saw what she had become? What if he cast her out?

“Breathe, Machiko. You’re no longer there. You’re home now. Safe.”

Geto’s voice cut through her spiraling thoughts like a blade parting silk. His hand came down, not light, not heavy, but steady, pressing on her shoulder. Warmth, anchoring, and yet in it she felt the weight of chains.

“You’ve been with us for five years,” he said, low, patient, every word deliberate. “Five winters and summers. We raised you, sheltered you, trained you. We will always stand by you, no matter what. I know what you’ve endured, kid. No one should bear it. That day was horrific. To watch your family be threatened, to see the blood of so many… that is not a burden a kid like you should carry.”

His eyes, dark and deep, held her gaze, pulling her in. “But this is why our cause matters. This is why I fight. So that one day, children like you, sorcerers like us, may live without fear, without slaughter. Remember this, Machiko: whatever weighs upon you, we are here. For you. Always.”

Her breath hitched, caught like a fish on a hook. For a moment, clarity came. His words brushed against something deep inside her, uncoiling a knot of terror.

And before she could stop herself, the truth spilled forth.

“It isn’t… me.” Her voice cracked. “That thing. That power. It’s not mine.”

Geto said nothing. He did not flinch, did not frown. He only listened, patient as a spider in its web.

“It—Musubari. The Binding Demon.” The name shuddered out of her lips. Even saying it seemed to stir the air, the talismans faintly rustling as if disturbed. “It’s old. A curse. It’s… tied to my family. Always has been. It's always whispering to me ever since I was little. Watching me.” 

Her throat tightened, tears burning. “That day…The day my brother was killed…I made a vow with it. A binding vow. To save Yuu. But it tricked me.”

Her hands gripped the blanket hard, knuckles white. “Now it’s bound to me. It threads through me, in my blood, my soul. It gives me these abilities, but there’s a cost. There’s always a cost.”

She started to fiddle with her fingers, a rhythmic tapping motion on each finger as she tried to soothe her anxious heart. Black stains lingered at hands up above her elbows, faint, as if ink had seeped too deep to wash away. “It makes a demand every time I try to use its abilities. If I fail its demands, it steals away a duration of my life or my memory. And when it’s done with me…” Her voice dwindled to a whisper. “I think it’ll eat me whole. It would take my soul.”

The room fell silent. Only the flutter of a talisman against the wall broke it. Machiko stared down, waiting for his disgust, his condemnation, for him to turn and leave her to rot in this sealed room.

But Geto remained. Still as stone, unreadable, his hand never leaving her shoulder. Only his eyes gleamed, sharp and calculating, a thousand thoughts racing behind the calm mask.

Inside, Suguru Geto was gleaming. Oh, how fortune had favored him. The girl was no mere scrap of raw talent, no frightened stray needing a master’s hand—she was a blade forged in darkness, tempered by blood, a weapon more exquisite than he had dared to imagine. 

The curse within her, this Musubari, was not simply a parasite; it was a wellspring, a vault of power older and crueler than the Jujutsu world itself. To have her bound to him, willingly, loyally… it was as if destiny had placed a jewel in his hand.

Worst comes to worst, he thought, his eyes narrowing ever so slightly, if her loyalty faltered, if she resisted the leash, he would slit her throat himself and pry Musubari from her corpse. But such waste would be regrettable. A tool is always sharper in motion than gathering dust in the grave. Better she live. Better she serve. Better she be his shadow.

Outwardly, he was soft as rain. “Tell me, Machiko,” he murmured, his thumb brushing a smear of dried blood from her temple, his voice the tone of a confessor. “This Musubari—what is it? What kind of curse is it?”

Machiko swallowed, her throat raw. “It… it was born from mankind’s hatred of fate. The anger of those who despised their destiny, who wished to sever the threads that bound them. That hate… became It.”

Her eyes darted, then fell. “I know only one of its abilities. The one It lent me before. ‘Harvest Moon’. It lets me… use its’ curse energy. In return, I have to give it a certain number of souls in a given time. If I fail its demand, it takes years from me instead. The rest… the other abilities… I don’t know them. Not yet.”

Geto leaned back, hiding the fire in his gaze beneath a veil of sympathy. His hand lingered on her hair, careful, reassuring. “Machiko,” he said softly, “it is not your fault. You were desperate to save your brother. Any soul with love in their heart would have done the same. That does not make you weak. It makes you human.”

Her lip trembled, eyes wet. “B-but doesn’t this make me a bad person? I made a deal with a curse—and—and curses are evil…”

“You are not evil or cursed for being bound,” he continued, a teacher soothing a frightened pupil, “nor are you less for carrying Musubari within you. This does not define you—they only test your strength. What matters is this: we will learn to wield it. Together. You will bend Musubari, not the other way around. With discipline, with will, you will remain in control.”

Machiko could hear Musubari laughing at the back of her mind, “This human thinks that Little Storm could control me?…How amusing..”

But Machiko didn’t bother listening to the curse’s taunt, instead she focused on the reassurance from her mentor. His words were like gospel for better tidings to her.

Geto’s smile was warm, paternal, the smile of a shepherd. Inside, it was the grin of a wolf fattening his prey for slaughter.

Weeks bled into one another, long and heavy, before the healers declared her fit to walk again. Machiko’s body still ached, her fingers felt like splintered glass inside their bandages, and her ribs protested with every breath, but she was alive. That was more than she had dared hope for on that night in the warehouse.

The moment she stepped through the sliding door into the shrine’s dining hall, the air was split by a cry. Nanako and Mimiko burst from their seats like arrows loosed from a bow, skirts flaring, eyes already brimming. They slammed into her with the force of their worry, their arms looping around her waist, nearly knocking her back onto the tatami.

“Idiot!” Nanako sobbed into her shoulder, her small fists balled tight against Machiko’s back. “You scared us! We thought—you weren’t waking up, we thought—”

Mimiko’s tears ran silently down her cheeks, soaking into Machiko’s sleeve, though her voice quavered all the same. “We kept trying to see you, but Geto-sama said you can’t be disturbed. Every day. He said you were sleeping. We thought you’re gonna sleep forever… we thought we were gonna lose you.”

Machiko, smaller than either of them, had to fight to keep upright under their grip. Her throat closed as she tried to find words. “I thought I lost you both,” she whispered hoarsely, her bandaged fingers clutching at their shoulders. “If I hadn’t… if I hadn’t moved faster, if I had been weaker—”

“You weren’t,” Nanako said fiercely, pulling back just enough to look at her, her eyes red and swollen like plums. “You fought. You saved us. You’re here.”

Mimiko nodded, her face pale, but there was a fragile smile there. “We’re all here. That’s what matters.”

The three of them clung together in the middle of the hall, children who had looked death in the eye and been returned. Their sobs softened into hiccups, their hiccups into watery laughter, until they were simply three girls, not soldiers, not pawns—just eleven-year-old children afraid of losing each other.

When at last they were coaxed to sit, trays were brought with more than the usual fare. Rice bowls heaped high, steaming miso, crisp tempura, even sweets tucked at the edge of the lacquered dishes. Word had flown across the compound; every servant, every cook, every shrine-keeper had heard whispers of what had befallen them. The extra food was an offering, a balm.

They ate with eyes still swollen, tears dripping now and then into their rice, but for once it did not matter. They were together. They were alive. That, for now, was feast enough.

The clatter of chopsticks was the only sound for a time, the three of them bent over their trays, red-eyed but soothed by the simple act of eating. Steam curled from the rice bowls, and the faint sweetness of bean paste lingered in the air from the treats they had been given. For once, no shadows pressed at their backs, no blades waited in the dark. Just food, and warmth, and each other.

It was Mimiko who broke the silence, her voice small but steady. “Oh—by the way, Machiko… did Geto-sama tell you that we’ll be moving to a new place?”

Machiko blinked, her chopsticks pausing mid-air. “Wh-what? Moving? When?”

Nanako snorted, the sound half a laugh. “Figures. Typical Geto-sama, always forgetting to tell the important things. We’re moving in two weeks.”

Machiko set her bowl down, the words rattling in her chest like a stone dropped into water. “But… why? Aren’t we safe here? We got rid of the spy.”

The twins exchanged a glance before Mimiko answered gently. “It’s normal for us to move around a lot. The Sorcerers are always trying to track Geto-sama down. Before you came, we’d already moved three times.”

Nanako leaned forward, her eyes bright again in a way that almost hid the puffiness around them. “And this time, we’re going somewhere closer to the city. Imagine it—real streets, shops, lanterns at night. Not just forests and shrines all the time.”

Her voice carried the innocent thrill of a child promised adventure, but Machiko’s heart sank all the same. She glanced around the dining hall, at the familiar wooden beams darkened with age, the paper screens patched in places by careful hands, the quiet corners that had come to feel safe. This was the place where her life had shifted, where the mangy stray she once was had found shelter, a home. Here, she had first been called family.

And now it was slipping away.

Machiko forced a small smile for the twins’ sake, but inside her chest there was a heaviness. She would miss this place. Perhaps more than she could say aloud.

Mimiko was the first to notice it—the shadow dimming Machiko’s eyes as talk of leaving hung between them like a storm cloud. She set her chopsticks down, her voice a soft tether. “I know you don’t want to, but… it’s for all of our safety. Maybe this could be good for us.”

Machiko looked at her, lips parted to argue, but nothing came. Perhaps Mimiko was right. Change had been cruel once, wrenching her world apart, taking Yuu and leaving her hollow. Yet change had also brought her here. To this shrine. To the twins. To Geto. To family. Her life had shifted, and somehow she had survived, even grown. Perhaps change could be good again.

They wandered the halls first, running their hands along the wood worn smooth by countless palms. Nanako skipped ahead, chattering about everything and nothing, poking fun at Machiko’s shorter height until Machiko swatted her arm and they both burst into laughter. Mimiko lingered nearer to Machiko’s side, quiet, but now and again offering her soft observations—a crack in a screen they had once peeked through, the patch of tatami where Nanako had tripped during a spar.

In the garden, they sat on the low stones by the koi pond. The water shimmered with the slow gliding of orange and white bodies beneath. The twins tossed bits of rice, delighting when the fish broke the surface in splashes. Machiko only watched, her reflection staring back at her in the ripples. How much had she changed since she first arrived? She remembered trembling hands, nights of silence, a girl who flinched at every sound. Now she had Nanako teasing her, Mimiko confiding in her, Geto shaping her, and Manami fussing over her like an aunt with a sharp tongue but kind hands. It was a strange warmth, a weight she never thought she’d carry: belonging.

The afternoon waned. They walked the shrine’s narrow paths, greeted shrine workers who bowed with gentle smiles, received little packets of sweets pressed into their palms. By dusk, the twins yawned and excused themselves back to Geto’s quarters, Mimiko trailing after Nanako’s boundless energy with her doll hugged close.

Machiko made her way alone through the twilight corridors to her own quiet corner among the shrine workers’ rooms. Her chamber door slid open with a familiar creak, and she froze. It was spotless. Not a speck of dust, not a thing out of place. Geto and Manami must have asked the workers to tend it while she lay broken in the infirmary.

Her eyes moved immediately to the little shrine in the corner. Relief washed over her in a breathless huff. It was untouched—the small mound of Yuu’s memory still standing, his presence still hers. The wildflowers she had gathered for him, wilted long ago, were gone. In their place stood a vase, simple clay, holding fresh white chrysanthemums.

Her chest tightened. Someone—Manami, perhaps, or Geto himself—had cared enough to tend it. To honor him. Machiko stepped closer, kneeling before the shrine. The room smelled faintly of clean paper and the soft, fragrant scent of chrysanthemums. Her hand hovered over the little vase, trembling.

Machiko knelt before the small altar, knees pressed against the tatami, fingers folded tight in her lap. The vase of chrysanthemums glowed white in the dim candlelight, their scent clean, almost too clean. Her throat ached before she even spoke.

“Sorry I haven’t been visiting you, Yuu,” she whispered, bowing her head low until her forehead brushed the mat. Her voice cracked, fragile. “There’s been… a lot. Too much.”

She lifted her head and tried to smile, but it faltered. “You would have liked the trip. We went out of the shrine for the first time in months. I was so nervous, but Nanako and Mimiko— they were so excited. They dragged me everywhere. We bought clothes, shoes, silly things I never thought I’d wear. They made me get this little silver hairclip, said it looked nice on me.” Her hand instinctively went to her hair, touching the empty spot. “I think you would’ve laughed at me. Said I finally looked like a normal girl.”

The smile collapsed. Her voice grew smaller. “But then Takashi… he was a spy. All along. He worked for the Sorcerers. He—he led us away, Yuu. He tried to take us. And I almost lost them. Just like I lost you.”

Her hands clenched into fists, nails digging into her palms. “I fought. We all fought. Nanako, Mimiko, they were so brave. But I—” Her breath hitched.

Machiko’s hands trembled as they rested in her lap. The white chrysanthemums blurred as her eyes welled up. She tried to steady her breathing, but the words spilled out jagged, as if torn from her chest.

“Yuu… I killed them. I killed so many people.” Her voice dropped to a rasp. “Not with a blade, not from far away. With my hands. My teeth. My claws. I ripped them apart like they weren’t even people. Like they were just… things. And the worst part—” she shuddered, rocking forward slightly— “the worst part was that it felt good. For a moment, it felt good.”

Her nails dug into her thighs, hard enough to bruise. “The blood… the screaming… I couldn’t stop. It was like something broke inside me, and Musubari just kept whispering, more, more, more. I could see their souls, Yuu. They weren’t even bodies to me anymore—just little flickers of light waiting to be snatched. I wanted them. I wanted all of them.”

Her voice cracked into a sob. “And now I don’t know where the curse ended and I began. Was it Musubari, or was it me? Maybe… maybe I’m no better than the monsters we were raised to hate. Maybe I was always meant to turn into this.”

She wiped her face with her sleeve, smearing the tears. Her shoulders shook as she whispered, “I saw myself in that moment, Yuu. Not Machiko. Not your sister. Not even a person. I was something else. A beast. A nightmare. And I don’t know if I’ll ever come back from it.”

Her gaze lifted to the little shrine, glassy and desperate. “What if Geto sees that side of me again? What if Nanako and Mimiko see it? They’ll be afraid of me. They should be afraid of me. Because I’m afraid of me. I can still feel the blood on my skin, in my mouth. It doesn’t wash away. It clings. I close my eyes, and I’m back there again—hearing bones break, smelling iron. And a part of me still wants it.”

Her words tumbled faster, more fevered. “I didn’t just lose control, Yuu. I lost myself. I begged Musubari to lend me power, and it did. It made me into something I can’t even name. Something that laughs at the idea of mercy. And when the power burned out, when it left me, I was lying there in all that blood, and it felt like it had taken a piece of me with it. Like I’m less than I was before.”

Her lip quivered, and she pressed her forehead against the mat, her voice small and broken.

“I don’t want to be that monster again. But I don’t know if I’ll get a choice.”

Tears rolled down her cheeks, dripping onto her robe. She tried to swallow them back, but her body shook with the effort. “I didn’t want this, Yuu. I didn’t want to be like this. I feel so dirty. Wrong. And Geto… he knows. I confessed to him. He didn’t hate me, didn’t send me away. But still, I wonder… if he really sees me, or just the curse I carry.”

She reached out and touched the altar with trembling fingers, tracing the worn wood as if it were Yuu’s hand. “We’re moving soon. The twins say it’s for our safety. They’re excited. I should be too. But I’m not. I’ll miss this place. This was the first place that felt like home. My real home. Our home.”

Her tears blurred the world, but she bowed deeply, her small shoulders quivering. “Thank you for looking after me, Yuu. Even when I don’t deserve it. Even when I’ve become something you wouldn’t recognize.”

She lingered there, forehead pressed to the mat, her voice no more than a breath.

Weeks bled into weeks, and at last the day of departure came. Machiko had thought the shrine she had left behind vast enough to lose oneself in, but the new compound was something else entirely. Its whitewashed walls gleamed like bone beneath the autumn sun, tall and unyielding. The roof tiles, black as obsidian, caught the light and threw it back in cruel glimmers. Polished pillars stood like soldiers in endless rows, carved with old sigils that seemed to whisper when incense smoke curled about their bases. The air was heavy with sandalwood and ash, the scent clinging to her hair and robes as she followed Geto and the Hasaba twins into their new home.

There were more people here, too. A veritable army of shrine workers, dressed in muted grays and soft whites, moving in measured steps like parts of a well-oiled machine. Their heads bowed as Geto passed, eyes lowered, hands folded. Even their silence was rehearsed.

Machiko’s new quarters lay in the far western wing of the compound, away from the bustle of the servants’ dormitories. Her own chamber now, no longer a narrow cot hidden amongst the workers, but a room meant for someone above them. It was larger than she expected—spacious, spare, the walls bare but for the faint shadows of old prayers that had been painted over long ago. A paper screen let the pale light through, gentle as milk. The tatami mats were fresh, the bedding folded crisp and clean.

She noticed her little shrine at once, tucked beside the window where the sun fell in slanted beams during the day. Yuu’s face stared back at her from the worn photograph, his smile a memory trapped in glass. Beside it rested his pony plush, threadbare and weary but seated with reverence upon a small altar. Someone—Manami, perhaps—had made certain nothing was lost, nothing disturbed. Relief softened the tightness in her chest. She bowed her head toward her brother’s shrine, whispering thanks under her breath.

The shoji door slid open with a careful hand. Geto stepped inside as if the chamber already belonged to him. His gaze roamed across the walls, the mats, the little altar by the window, then settled on her. “Do you like it?” he asked, his tone smooth, unreadable.

“Yes,” Machiko said quickly, bowing low, her voice small but honest. “Thank you so much, Geto-sama.”

A faint smile curled his lips, there and gone in the same breath. “Good. Then eat, and rest. After your meal, meet me in the training ground. There is much to do.”

She bowed again, obedient as ever, and he left as soundlessly as he had come.

Machiko rose, smoothing her robe, and was halfway to the dining hall when another sound halted her. The scrape of sandals on the wooden walkway. A shrine servant stood framed in the doorway, head bowed, a lacquered tray balanced in her hands.

Machiko blinked. “Oh—th-thank you. But you don’t have to bring that here. I can eat in the dining hall with Nanako and Mimiko.”

The servant set the tray down upon the low table, her movements precise, unhurried. She did not lift her eyes. “Apologies, Takahara-san. But Geto-sama has instructed me to deliver your meals here, from this day forward.”

Machiko hesitated, confusion tugging at her. “He… he did? Can I ask why?”

The woman straightened, her voice flat as pressed stone. “Geto-sama has decreed that the dining halls are for the workers. His students will take their meals within their own quarters.”

The room seemed colder for her words. Machiko rubbed her hands together, uncertain, a tightness stirring in her chest. “Well… is it possible, then, for me to take my next meals with Nanako and Mimiko?”

The servant dipped her head again. “I will be sure to deliver your request to Geto-sama.”

But her voice was without warmth, without weight, and Machiko, too weary to press, accepted it with a small nod. She did not see how the woman’s hands lingered, folding the empty tray against her chest like a shield, or how she left without a backward glance.

Machiko sat alone before the steaming bowl of rice and the small variety of side dishes, her brother’s shrine flickering in the corner of her eye, and for the first time the room seemed larger than it was meant to be.

The training ground lay in a hollow behind the compound, a place where sunlight fell cleanly and the wind moved without whispering secrets. It was a narrow arena of packed earth ringed by low stone walls and the crooked pines the old priests refused to fell. Here the air tasted of sweat and old bruises; here the lessons were not for children but for those who must wear a knife and keep from bleeding. 

Geto stood in the centre of that small theatre, his black robes pressed neat, his hands folded as if in prayer though his eyes watched like a hawk’s. He looked less like a teacher than like the captain of a ship about to set sail into storms.

Machiko bowed to him, the motion so practised that it had become part of her bones. Even now, with the ache still lodged in her ribs, she felt her body answer that old reflex of respect and habit. He inclined his head in return, the faintest trace of a smile catching at the corner of his mouth as if he were pleased a plan’s pieces had all come home to roost.

“Alright, kiddo,” Geto said, and his voice carried perfectly across the hollow. There was no softness in it now. Only the steady temper of a man who had counted the cost of every gamble. “Things are going to be different. After what happened with the Sorcerers, we can no longer move at our usual pace. We have to speed up to get you ready.”

Machiko blinked, mouth forming the habit of an answer she had rehearsed in a hundred quiet hours. “Ready for what?” Her voice was small, but not brittle. There was curiosity. An eagerness that had the rough edge of fear beneath it.

Geto’s gaze sharpened. He took a step closer, and the space between them contracted like a noose. “Ready for what will happen in the years to come,” he said plainly. “Its time to set our plan to motion. A world where curse users don’t need to live in secrecy and shadows. A world where children like you can live in peace. I need you, Machiko. I need you at my side to make my vision of this world come true.”

The name felt like a coin thrown to her—heavy, valuable, and warm from his palm. Machiko felt the heat of it settle into her chest. For a moment the timeline of hurt and healing and long small devotions unreeled behind her eyes: nights in the infirmary, the twins’ tangled arms, the shrine and the koi and the quiet that had once tasted like safety. “Yes, Geto-sama,” she said. 

The answer came in two parts: yes, I will; yes, I must.

Geto did not allow sentiment to linger. His face gathered into a mask of a different cut, one meant for sharp speech. “Are you, though?” he asked, not unkind but unyielding.

 His voice took on the tone of lessons that bend steel. “This isn’t going to be like your normal training. This is not a game. One mistake—the wrong step, the wrong timing, the wrong trust—could set our whole cause back, or end a life. Yours or another’s. Do you understand the weight of that?”

Machiko’s breath hitched. Images crowded her—Yuu laying bloody on the forest floor, Nanako crying over Mimiko’s unconscious body, Musubari whispering into her ear to enact a massacre. The memory of Takashi’s dagger, the spear through her shoulder, the smell of it. She found herself thinking of Yuu and then of the men who had fallen. If she had any hesitation, if any secret she held like a smouldering coal, it was not for Geto now. “I understand,” she said, and the words were steady. They sounded steadier than she felt, but the truth sat in the way her jaw set.

“Until I say otherwise,” Geto continued, “your training and lessons will be directed by me. You will not be in the classrooms with Nanako and Mimiko for the time being. Focus—only focus—on honing what you wield. Mind, skill, body, and your cursed energy. We don’t have time for distraction.” He looked at her with that slow, appraising look he kept for weapons he might trust: not yet possessed, but promising. “Do you understand?”

There was a sting of sorrow in the thought of fewer afternoons with the twins, fewer careless hours. But the sorrow folded back in on itself and became a thin iron of resolve. She could not be selfish. If there were a way to keep others from dying, to make sure no child slept with empty hands again, she would learn it. “I understand, Geto-sama,” she answered, quiet and certain.

Geto’s expression softened for the briefest of moments, like a cloud parting to show a pale moon. Then he nodded once, and the edge returned. “Good. Then we begin.” His hand rose, not in blessing but in command, and the hollow seemed to lean forward to hear what would come next. Machiko felt the old steadiness settle into her bones; fear was still there, but steadier, harnessed. She drew a breath, felt the faint tingle of cursed energy under her skin—a reminder of what she could become and what she must control—and squared herself to the work ahead.

The training yard smelled faintly of earth and steel, a hollow wind whispering through the polished pillars that encircled it. The afternoon sun lay heavy, gilding the dust that rose with every fall of her body.

Machiko stood across from Geto, small shoulders squared though her arms shook. She bowed—because she always bowed—but Geto only watched her with eyes black and cold.

“Fight,” he said.

There was no kindness in his voice. No preamble, no lesson. Only command.

He struck first, a blur of black robes. His hand slammed her chest, and her feet left the ground. The impact tore the air from her lungs, pain blooming sharp. She gasped, doubled over—but his shadow loomed again. A swift kick swept her legs, and she hit the dirt hard.

“Too slow,” he said, his tone flat as a blade. “Sorcerers won’t wait for you to catch your breath.”

Machiko scrambled up, dust sticking to her sweat. She tried to dart to his side, threads sparking faint at her fingertips, but he caught her wrist mid-strike. A twist, an elbow to her ribs, and she was on the ground again, breath ragged.

Her chest burned. Her head swam. She stood anyway. Tried a kick, sharp and desperate—but he seized her ankle, shoved her backward. She landed flat, stones digging into her back.

“Pathetic.” His voice cut deeper than his blows. “You hold back. Always holding back. Why? Because you’re afraid of yourself?”

Her stomach lurched at the words. Her fingers twitched, cursed threads humming just beneath her skin. The memory of black scales, Musubari’s whispers crawling under her skull—she clenched her jaw, smothering the thought.

Geto saw it. He pressed.

“I saw you in that warehouse,” he said, crouching beside her, voice low, deliberate. “You tasted power. You wanted it. You enjoyed the blood.” His eyes gleamed, sharp as broken glass. “So why do you shy away now?”

Machiko’s lips trembled. The memory of Yuu’s lifeless eyes, of Mimiko’s scream, of Nanako’s bloodied cheek rose to choke her.

The slap came sudden. His palm cracked across her face, sharp enough to sting tears from her eyes. She reeled, fell sideways into the dirt.

“Because you’re weak,” he spat. “Because you cling to ghosts. Yuu died because you were weak. The twins almost followed him for the same reason. And still you hesitate.”

Machiko froze, the words burrowing under her skin like barbs.

“Do you want to lose me too?”

Her heart clenched, torn open. She lunged at him, wild, fists flying. No form, no precision. Just fury. Her knuckles cracked against his arm, her knee lashed at his side, but he blocked with ease. One strike to her stomach folded her like paper.

“Not enough,” he said, towering over her bent form.

She coughed, bile rising, and staggered back to her feet. Threads glimmered faintly at her hands—thin, trembling filaments that sparked before guttering out. She dared not push further. Not with Musubari waiting. Not with the fear that she might lose herself again, drown in bloodlust.

Geto’s gaze hardened. “As you are now, you’re nothing but a child playing soldier. I need someone competent. If you can’t become that, you’ll just be discarded.”

The words struck deeper than any blow. She bit back a sob, chest burning, throat raw. But her body moved—she rose, fists clenched, jaw set.

He came at her like a storm. A feint high, a kick low, a palm to the shoulder that spun her sideways. She rolled, gasping, then leapt with a feral cry, teeth bared, striking wild. He caught her arm, twisted, slammed her into the earth.

Dust filled her nose, her mouth. Her ears rang. She thought she might break apart.

“Get up,” he commanded, voice cold as steel. “Or I will leave you in the dirt where you belong.”

Her body screamed no, but she dragged herself to her knees. She had to. She couldn’t lose him. Not like Yuu. Not like everyone else.

Her tears streaked dirt on her face, but her fists rose again. Small, bloodied knuckles trembling, trembling—but raised.

The world shrank to the dust beneath her nails and the pounding in her chest. Pain was everywhere, ringing her bones like iron struck against a forge, yet Machiko rose. She had to. Her body no longer felt like her own, but something raw, trembling, stripped bare. Her eyes burned. Her breath tore ragged from her throat.

Geto stood across the yard, robes unruffled, expression cool as stone. “Again.”

The word rang like judgment. Like sentence.

Something inside her snapped.

She lunged—not with form or grace, but like a beast uncaged. Her small frame shot forward, low to the ground, nails clawing for his sleeve, her teeth nearly bared. Geto swerved, sidestepping, but she spun with him, catching his ankle with a desperate kick. The strike landed clumsy, but it landed. His balance shifted half an inch. Enough to stir a spark in her chest.

She saw his eyes narrow.

Machiko pressed. She ducked under his reach, struck upward with her palm, aiming for his throat. He blocked, of course—twisting her wrist back until pain screamed up her arm—but she did not recoil. She bit at his forearm, teeth sinking through the cloth, a feral move that made him jerk her off with a sharp shove.

“Better,” he said, voice cold, approving. “Ugly. But better.”

Her chest heaved, but something steadied beneath the exhaustion—a grim, dogged clarity. She could no longer afford to fight pretty, fight polite, fight like a child. Pretty things broke. Pretty things died. She had learned that the day Yuu bled out in her arms. The day Mimiko screamed and Nanako’s cheek split open under a knife. She could not—would not—let it happen again.

She thought of Yuu’s face, pale and still. The twins’ arms wrapped around her in tears. The look in Geto’s eyes when he had said she was weak. And her body moved with a new sharpness, like a knife honed on grief.

This time she struck low at his knees, not once but twice, feinting the second into a heel aimed at his ribs. When he blocked high, she pivoted, driving her elbow into his side. It connected, a solid thud that jolted up her arm.

For a heartbeat, she froze. “I hit him.”

Geto’s eyes glittered, dark and unreadable.

Her pause was fatal. His hand snapped to her collar, dragged her forward, slammed her into the dirt once more. Pain flared through her back. Dust filled her mouth. She gagged, coughed, spit, but rose again.

There was no hesitation now.

She circled him warily, crouched low, her movements sharpened, economical. No wasted energy. No foolish swings. She darted forward, striking, retreating, striking again, weaving between his counters like a cornered wolf too stubborn to die. Her blows landed in fragments—an elbow grazing his jaw, a fist hammering his shoulder, a sharp kick to his shin. Small hurts. Inconsequential perhaps—but real.

Her heart thundered. Her body screamed. Her mind narrowed to a single point: I cannot be weak. I cannot lose them. I cannot lose him.

Geto wiped a smear of blood from his lip—whether his own or hers, she could not tell. For the first time, he smiled.

“Good,” he said softly. “You’re learning.”

The words struck her harder than any blow. For a heartbeat, warmth rose through the ache in her limbs. A flicker of pride. Approval. A crumb tossed to a starving girl—and she devoured it.

“Again,” he ordered, stepping back into stance.

And she obeyed, already lowering into hers, teeth clenched, eyes hard.

Somewhere deep inside, a splinter drove further into her heart. The part of her that once cried easily, that once feared blood and killing, was shrinking. Piece by piece, her humanity was being chipped away. What rose in its place was sharper. Harder. Deadlier.

Geto’s weapon was beginning to take shape.

Chapter Text

Chapter 8: M, Unseen and Unheard

***Before the Night Parade of 100 Demons***

Year: 2016

The forest stood tall and still, its trunks blackened by the dying light of evening. The air smelled of pine and damp soil, the last birds muttering drowsy songs before nightfall. In the center of a small clearing stood Suguru Geto, calm as a man waiting for a kettle to boil. He toyed with a scroll, tossing it into the air, catching it again, the parchment spinning once before falling neatly back into his hand. His lips pursed around a low, careless whistle.

It was an almost mocking sound, lighthearted in the hush of the woods.

He knew she was watching.

Machiko crouched above, perched like a shadow upon the limb of an oak, her braid swaying gently against her back. At fifteen she was taller, sinew where once she had been softness, her body scarred and marked from years of hardening. Her silver eyes gleamed faintly through the gloom, narrowed with the patience of a hunter. Her breath came slow and steady, chest rising in a rhythm trained into her bones. Her cursed energy was banked, a dim ember, no brighter than the hum of cicadas.

She had prepared the ground. Silent hours of crawling through mud and roots had seen to that. Threads had been drawn through the clearing, nearly invisible, set with the same precision as a spider weaving her web. A misstep, a dodge, a lunge—every path had been accounted for. She had learned long ago never to meet her master’s strength with strength. To beat Geto, she had to outthink him. Outsmart him. Outsuffer him.

Her fingers flexed within her gloves, claws whispering against the bark. A slow pulse of cursed energy slid down her arms, into the steel, so faint it would not betray her. She stared at the scroll, at how carelessly he juggled it in his hand, as though daring her to try.

Geto sighed, the sound heavy with amusement. “You’ll grow moss on your back before you move, kid-”

He had not finished the thought before her hand snapped. The threads sang taut, slicing the air in three directions at once, a trap sprung with brutal precision.

Geto moved, of course. He always did. He flowed to the right, and the strings snapped there. He darted left, another line waiting, humming like a bowstring. He spun forward, only to find yet another cord biting down, hungry to cut. With each dodge his robe brushed against death.

“Good,” he said softly, a glint in his eye.

Then he leapt back, clear of the web—only for the darkness above to split.

Machiko dropped from the boughs like a blade loosed from its sheath. Her speed was monstrous, no hesitation, no warning cry. She was all claws and silver eyes, the whistle of steel in the air, her descent sharp and certain, aimed for his chest.

Geto caught her claws with the barest shift of his wrist, the steel screeching against his forearm guard. The impact rattled through the clearing, birds bursting from branches in a startled flurry. But Machiko did not falter. She twisted, pressed, then recoiled, her body already flowing into the next strike before the first had finished.

Her hands blurred. A storm of slashes, precise as needlework, ruthless as a butcher’s blade. Each strike was aimed with intent—not wild, not wasteful. She pressed high at his face, swept low at his legs, feinted left and cut right, a dancer in the skin of a predator.

Geto blocked, parried, deflected, his movements elegant, unhurried. But his eyes narrowed when the air itself shivered.

Threads.

They gleamed faintly in the dying light, silver strands too fine to see unless one looked at just the right moment. Machiko’s gaze darted like a hawk’s, her silver eyes no longer soft with wonder but hard, cold, measuring. She saw the seams of him. Not flesh and bone, but the faint glow of his soul, the invisible stitchwork of cursed energy binding him together.

Her threads speared into one seam. A jolt went through Geto’s right arm, his hand stiffening as though seized by frost. For a heartbeat his parry lagged, and Machiko was already there, claws carving toward his chest. He wrenched back, but the edge kissed his robe, tearing fabric.

Another seam pierced. His left knee buckled, pinned for the space of a breath before he severed the line with cursed energy. But by then she had already pivoted, her strike aimed for his ribs. He spun, robe sweeping wide, and the blow scraped air.

She bound him again, a dozen threads firing from her gloves, latching his aura to the earth, to the roots of trees, to the very stones beneath his feet. For a heartbeat, Geto stood pinned like an insect in a web. Machiko lunged, claws outstretched, eyes bright with that cold hunger.

But the man was Suguru Geto. His cursed energy surged, shattering the bindings in a spray of sparks. He slipped aside, and Machiko’s claws bit deep into bark instead, carving a trunk clean through.

Still she pressed him, relentless. The scroll gleamed in the fold of his obi, the lure at the heart of the storm. Every trap she had laid sang awake as their battle spun across the clearing—threads snapping taut across his ankles, pits yawning where roots had been disturbed, stones loosened to roll treacherously underfoot.

This was no longer a child fumbling in the dark. This was a hunter with patience, with cunning. Her traps did not simply snare; they steered. Every dodge he made, every step he took, nudged him toward her blades, toward her reach, toward the waiting maw of her web.

For the first time, Geto’s whistle fell silent.

Geto’s smile thinned, and with a lazy wave of his hand the forest darkened. Shadows thickened, curdled, and from them slipped his spirits—four shapes, foul and unnatural, crawling into being like ink spilled across the earth. One slithered, a coil of scales and bone, jaws clicking. Another shambled, its body stitched together like butcher’s leavings. The last two hovered, eyeless things with too many mouths, their voices a buzzing drone.

“Now, Machiko,” Geto said softly, rolling the scroll once more between his fingers. “Show me how sharp you’ve grown.”

It was no longer one against one. It was one against four.

Machiko’s threads snapped taut in her hands, silver lines gleaming like moonlit wire. She shifted low, weight balanced, her braid brushing her shoulder as she scanned the circle closing in. Her heartbeat did not quicken. Her breath stayed steady. She had learned the hard way—panic was death.

The first spirit lunged. A maw of teeth wider than her chest gnashed down. Machiko flicked her wrist and the threads lashed outward, slicing across the seams of its soul. For a heartbeat, the spirit faltered. She seized it—pulled hard—her cursed energy cleaving through the invisible stitch that bound it. The thing split like a sack of meat, dissipating into smoke.

No pause. She could not pause.

The stitched abomination lurched toward her, claws raised. Machiko leapt back, spinning mid-air, claws of her glove flashing. Threads wrapped its soul, cinching tight, tighter, until the glow swelled, straining against her bindings. She pulled once, sharp as a butcher snapping bone, and the soul burst. The corpse fell apart like rotten cloth.

The hovering spirits buzzed above, circling. Needles glinted between Machiko’s fingers. With a flick, she sent them flying, each tethered by hair-thin threads invisible in the dusk. One needle pinned a seam, the other skewered its twin. With a savage pull she dragged them crashing into each other, and her claws finished the work—one swipe, two corpses gone to vapor.

But Geto was not idle. Even as his spirits fell, his hand swept in counter, sending new ones forward, shifting the field, forcing her back toward the trees. His voice was calm, but his eyes were sharp as knives, studying her. Testing. Weighing.

Machiko adapted. She had to. She shifted to mid-range, weaving her threads in wide arcs, her claws cutting the air, every strike measured to kill, not to warn. Her silver eyes tracked the faintest tremor of cursed souls, darting for seams, tearing them apart with surgical cruelty. Where she could not cleave, she bound—tight, choking holds that crushed the soul until it winked out like a candle flame.

Her body was a blur—ducking low, vaulting high, braid whipping like a lash. Her gloves scraped sparks against bark as she used the trees for leverage, launching herself at angles no normal fighter could track. Threads glimmered faintly in her wake, crisscrossing the clearing into a deadly lattice.

Every move was deliberate. Every strike was to kill.

She was no child sparring with her teacher anymore. She was a hunter, a tactician, a surgeon with claws for hands and threads for veins, cutting apart the battlefield with pitiless precision.

Geto pressed harder.

Where before his movements had been measured, almost casual, now the full weight of his strength came down on her like a storm breaking through the treeline. His cursed spirits multiplied, some clawing through the soil, others dripping down from the branches above like leeches. They harried her, snapping at her from angles she could not guard all at once. His own strikes came faster now, his fists cutting through the dusk like a blade, each swing a hammer meant to break bones.

Machiko darted between them, threads singing from her fingertips, her claws flashing. Every breath came harsh, every muscle screaming. She had fought like this before, against death and worse, but never against Geto at his full intent. This was no lesson, no gentle shaping—this was the forge, the anvil, the hammer. If she faltered, he would crush her.

Her eyes burned cold, but her arms grew heavy, her threads less precise with each flick. She was still fast, still clever, still the hunter he had sharpened—but the gap between them was a chasm she could not yet leap.

Geto saw it. He always saw it.

Her guard wavered—only for a blink, a stumble at the edge of her step, the arc of her claw falling just shy. It was clumsy, obvious enough to tempt. Not too obvious. Not enough to warn him that it was anything but fatigue.

“There,” Geto muttered, and drove in.

He came like a shadow given steel, his staff a black flash through the branches. One blow to break her stance, another poised for her ribs—

Machiko’s hands snapped wide.

The threads she had been laying, thin and invisible, coiled and pulled tight. The threads quickly dug into the seams of his soul. They caught the bark of a tree to his left, the ground beneath his feet, the branches above. For a single instant—a breath, a heartbeat—Suguru Geto was bound. Not crushed, not captured, only caught, his limbs cinched to the wood like a fly in a web.

But a millisecond was all she needed.

Machiko darted in, her body a streak of shadow and silver. Her claws brushed against his side, not striking flesh but slipping deftly into his obi. The scroll tore free in her hand as she twisted away, feet slamming against the tree trunk to spring back out of range.

Geto’s hands lashed where she had been, shattering bark, splitting air. Too slow. She was gone, flipping back into the clearing, landing low, the scroll clutched against her chest.

Her chest heaved. Her braid clung with sweat to her shoulder. The threads at her fingertips quivered, taut and trembling like bowstrings pulled too long. Her silver eyes fixed on him, cold, gleaming, rimmed with exhaustion.

In her hand, the scroll crinkled softly. Victory by the thinnest edge of a knife.

Geto smirked, slow and deliberate, the kind of smile that never quite reached his eyes. He brought his hands together in a measured clap, the sound echoing faintly through the forest.

“Looks like I taught you well,” he said, his voice smooth, almost warm, though there was iron beneath it. “Your stealth and tactical abilities have improved immensely. But remember—” he tilted his head, gaze sharpening like a knife’s edge, “—if you’re in a retrieval or capture mission, do not hesitate. Not even for a breath. The moment you hesitate, you lose.”

Machiko lowered her eyes. Her shoulders trembled, but only faintly, as though her body long ago learned not to betray her weakness. She bowed in silence, muttering softly, “Yes. I will. Thank you, Geto-sama.”

She crossed the torn ground between them, the scroll clutched in her clawed hand, and set it in his palm. The gesture was small, but in it lived every drop of blood, sweat, and fractured will he had wrung out of her.

Geto weighed the scroll only for a moment before tucking it back into his obi. Then his hand fell to her shoulder, heavy as stone, but not without a certain…fatherly press of possession. “I think you’re ready to have a seat at the table.”

The words cut through her fatigue sharper than a blade.

A quiet swell of pride rose in Machiko’s chest, fragile and unsteady, but real. Rarely had she ever won the open approval of Suguru Geto, her mentor, her keeper, her judge. For two years he had torn her down to the bone and built her back again, until the child she had been was gone—burned away by endless drills, bruises that never healed before the next, nights of silent tears muffled into her pillow. Gone were the mornings spent idling with Nanako and Mimiko, laughter bubbling through the shrine halls like clear water. Gone was the chance of living as a child should.

Her life now was training—always training—her body and her will honed and battered, her mind shaped like a blade until she could cut without thought. She had been broken, again and again, in every way that mattered. Broken to be reforged into something he could use. Something he could trust to kill for him.

And yet. In the hollow shell where her innocence had once lived, a spark of pride dared to burn. She had endured. She had survived. She had earned this.

Geto withdrew his hand. “Rest now. Meet me at the shrine’s entrance tomorrow at seven. From this day forward, you will accompany me on missions. I’ll brief you on the details when the time comes.”

Machiko bent her head in another bow, her voice a whisper hoarse with exhaustion. “Yes, Geto-sama. Thank you for the training today.”

Her legs moved on habit, carrying her from the grove, her body battered and spent, bruises throbbing like a second heartbeat beneath her skin. Each step was heavy, yet silent, as she walked the path back to her quarters. The trees rose dark around her, the shadows deepening, and she walked through them alone.

Alone, but with the weight of his words lingering in her chest, like embers that refused to die.

These days, when her limbs ached and her chest burned from Geto’s relentless drills, Machiko longed for the company of Nanako and Mimiko. Once, the twins had been her shield against the silence—their laughter like a balm, their silly quarrels a reminder that she was still a child, that somewhere in the haze of bruises and blood she could still belong. After hard days, they would throw their arms around her, tug her into mischief, whisper stories beneath the covers until sleep claimed them. For a time, they had been her reprieve.

But those days had slipped from her grasp, one by one, until only echoes remained. The twins had their own training now, their own lessons, their own burdens to bear. Their paths crossed less and less, and when they did it was fleeting—a wave in the hall, a smile in passing. Machiko’s hours belonged wholly to Geto: fighting, bleeding, learning, rising, eating, collapsing into sleep only to repeat it all again with the dawn. The cycle spun without pause, leaving no room for play, no room for reprieve.

The shrine they had moved to was grand, yes, but colder. The walls pristine, the pillars imposing, the workers austere. In the old shrine, servants had smiled at her, whispered encouragements, slipped her sweets when they thought Geto wasn’t looking. Here, faces were blank as stone, hands dutiful but distant. She had her own quarters now, larger and finer than before, yet it felt more like a cage than a gift.

Geto told her often that she could bring her fears to him, that he would listen. But she dared not. To confess her worry was to risk being seen as weak, and weakness was a sin she could not afford. Weakness was failure. And failure meant losing everything—Nanako, Mimiko, his cause, her place at Geto’s side. She repeated it to herself with each bruise, each scar, each lonely meal: Be strong. Be sharp. Be ready. For him. For them. For the vision.

When she returned to her quarters that night, the hush of cicadas filled the garden, broken only by the soft trickle of water from the pond. She slid open her door and found her dinner laid out on the low table. The food had grown cold. She did not complain. Gratitude was another lesson drilled into her. She had a roof over her head, a bed to sleep in, meals to fill her belly. What right had she to ask for warmth on top of it?

She ate in silence, every bite bland and heavy, and when she finished she cleaned herself, tending to her wounds with the practiced motions of someone who had done it a hundred times. Her shoulders stiff, her hands trembling faintly from fatigue, she stitched herself together as best she could.

Only when all was done did she allow herself a sliver of peace. She loosed the braid from her hair, thick and curly and black as ink, and drew a brush through it in long, slow strokes. The rhythm was meditative. With each pass, the tension in her shoulders eased, her posture softened, the world fell away. She hummed a tune—soft, tuneless, but it filled the silence. In that fragile ritual, her mind turned quiet. It was the only place left where she could lay down her armor, if only for a little while.

When her hair was detangled and smooth, she knelt before Yuu’s altar. The little shrine sat beneath the window, adorned with his photograph and the worn pony plush that had once been his treasure. She bowed low, her forehead brushing the tatami, before whispering into the stillness.

“Hi, Yuu,” she said softly, her voice catching. “It’s been another long day. Geto-sama pushed me hard today. Harder than ever. I thought I’d break, but I didn’t. I held on. For you. For them.”

She told him of her battles, of her bruises, of the ache she hid behind a bowed head. She told him of Nanako and Mimiko, of how little she saw them now, how she missed their laughter like air. She told him of her loneliness, though the words came in fragments, scattered like broken glass.

“I’m trying,” she whispered, brushing her thumb against the photograph. “I’m trying so hard, Yuu. I can’t fail. Not again. Not when so much depends on me. Not when there’s so many things on the line.”

Her breath hitched. Tears pooled at the corners of her eyes but she blinked them back fiercely, refusing to let them fall.

“I want to be strong. Strong enough so he’ll never have to doubt me. Strong enough so Nanako and Mimiko won’t ever have to cry again. Strong enough so you’d be proud of me.”

Her lips quivered. The words escaped her in a whisper, almost too faint to hear.

“Would you still be proud of me, Yuu? Even after what I’ve done? Even after all the blood?”

Silence answered her, as it always did. The photograph smiled on, eternal and unchanging, while the cicadas sang outside her window.

Her eyes stung, but she held back the tears. She always did. Instead she bowed again, lower this time, her hair spilling forward like a curtain. “Thank you for looking after me. I’ll keep fighting. I promise.”

When she finally lay down to sleep, the shadows pressed close. Yet for a moment, her chest felt lighter, as if Yuu’s presence lingered still, keeping the last fragile shred of her humanity from slipping away.

Machiko stood waiting at the shrine’s gates, the evening air cool against her skin, cicadas droning their endless hymn in the trees beyond the compound walls. She leaned against a weathered wooden pillar, her silver eyes fixed on the world outside—dark fields, the suggestion of forest, the vast unknown. She was clad in black from neck to foot, the garb of someone meant to vanish into shadow: fitted sleeves, hakama pants, silent-soled flats. Her braid had been coiled into a neat low bun, the mark of discipline, of control. The clawed gloves glimmered faintly under the lantern light, and behind her lower back rested a pair of short blades, her tantos, each positioned for swift retrieval. Her pouch was light but prepared, carrying needles, balms, bandages, the tools of one who expected pain and intended survival.

She heard him before she saw him. Footsteps, measured, certain—she had learned his stride long ago. Geto emerged from the dimness of the walkway with something in his hand, his silhouette tall and composed, as if he had not a care in the world.

“Looks like you’re early,” he said, voice smooth, faintly amused. “Good.”

He tossed the object toward her without warning. Machiko caught it easily, her movements honed into reflex by years of merciless drilling. She turned it in her hands. A mask. Sleek, featureless, its surface black and reflective, like still water on a moonless night. Her face stared back at her, warped and diminished in its sheen.

Geto’s tone was patient, but beneath it ran steel. “Wear this whenever you’re out on a mission. We need to keep your identity hidden for your safety. We wouldn’t want anyone recognizing you and trying to track you down, now would we?”

Machiko nodded once, her voice low. “I understand, Geto-sama.”

He stepped closer, his presence filling the air, his shadow stretching long beneath the lantern. “From now on, when you’re wearing that mask, you’re no longer Machiko Takahara.” His words were deliberate, each one dropping like a pebble into still water. “You will be acting as my shadow. You will move unseen and unheard. You will be no one. You will speak when I ask you to.”

The command pressed against her ribs like iron bands. She repeated it silently in her mind, engraving it into herself. His shadow. No one.

“Yes, Geto-sama.”

Satisfied, he allowed himself a small smile. “Good.” His eyes flickered briefly to the mask still in her hands. “Now, how about a codename? Something people can refer to you as, when they don’t know the girl behind the mask.” He paused, as though tasting the thought. “How about… M? Simple, ambiguous, and it has a nice little edge to it.”

“M…” Machiko whispered, testing the shape of it on her tongue. The syllable hung in the air, strange and new, yet curiously right. Her reflection in the mask’s sheen was swallowed, leaving only blackness behind.

Machiko turned the mask over in her hands. Its surface caught the faint lantern light, and her reflection wavered there—a thin, tired face with sharp silver eyes, framed by wisps of black hair pulled too tightly back. It was her face, but not. The longer she stared, the less she recognized it.

“Takahara Machiko… was she still that girl?”

The name felt fragile in her chest, a ghost’s whisper. She thought of the little child who once laughed too easily, who played in temple courtyards with Nanako and Mimiko, who talked to Yuu’s altar at night with tear-bright eyes. That girl was small, soft, weak. That girl had failed.

Now here was this mask, black and featureless, swallowing her reflection whole. No softness, no laughter, no name. No one.

Her throat tightened. To wear it was to disappear. To wear it was to bury Machiko, once and for all. A part of her recoiled—she wanted to cling to what scraps of herself remained, to fight against being consumed by her mentor’s vision. But another part, colder, harder, reminded her that weakness had no place in Geto’s shadow. Weakness got you killed. Weakness got Yuu killed. Weakness has no place in this cutthroat world.

Her fingers curled around the mask, nails scraping faintly against its surface. If being no one meant she could survive, protect, endure—then perhaps no one was all she was meant to be.

She slid the mask on her face. It fits like a glove as if it was meant to be. “I understand, Geto-sama.”

And just like that, the struggle was swallowed, buried deep beneath obedience.

Geto’s smile widened, not warm but sharp, the curve of a man who had carved another piece from the child before him and shaped it into something useful.

"Then, you are M.” He murmured. “Let’s go. We will be meeting with one of our potential allies tonight. The Blind Pig Speakeasy”

Machiko nodded, silent, already moving toward the waiting car. Each step was precise, measured; the years of training had carved instinct into her body. Reflex and discipline overrode hesitation. Her gloved hands flexed once over the hilt of her twin tantos, nestled against her back, ready at a moment’s notice. She could feel the faint pulse of cursed energy coiling beneath her skin, aware of her surroundings, senses stretching just beyond the light of the lanterns.

Geto followed her with his usual calm composure, the long shadow of his presence falling over her like a protective—but equally demanding—cloak. Neither spoke as they slid into the sleek black car parked silently by the shrine gates. The engine hummed low, a purring predator beneath the darkened glass. Machiko kept her posture rigid, hands folded neatly in her lap, eyes forward, the mask hiding every twitch of her expression.

The city lights flickered past as the car cut through the empty streets, reflecting off the black metal and her gloves. She observed everything—the spacing of the streetlights, the faint movement of shadows under alleys, the rhythm of passing cars. Nothing escaped her attention. Years of watching, analyzing, and surviving under Geto’s tutelage had honed her into a living sensor, a shadow moving with deadly patience.

Geto’s presence beside her was quiet, yet constant. Machiko could feel it in the way his body subtly shifted, the minute inflections of his cursed energy brushing against her own. He never once looked at her; she wasn’t there to be acknowledged, only to function. The weight of obedience settled around her chest like armor.

The drive was short, yet long enough for Machiko’s mind to race through every contingency. She anticipated the building before it appeared, the Blind Pig Speakeasy tucked into the side of a narrow street, neon flickering against damp brick, a faint hum of jazz seeping through the cracked windows. The door was black, nondescript, and unassuming—a perfect mask for the underworld dealings within.

Geto’s hand brushed lightly against her shoulder, a subtle signal. Machiko exhaled softly through the mask, the sound barely perceptible. She knew the ritual: enter unseen, stay silent, observe, record, respond only when commanded.

The car stopped, and Geto opened the door, stepping out with the grace of someone born to command, not question. Machiko followed, sliding out in one fluid motion, her movements practiced, silent, her claws scraping faintly against the car door. She stayed in the shadow of his figure, a living echo of the man beside her, a phantom that belonged to no one but him.

“Remember,” Geto said without turning, voice low, carrying only to her, “observe everything. Note everything. Judge nothing yet. Your judgment comes when I command. You will see how alliances form, how power bends to will. Learn it. Learn the rules before you break them.”

Machiko’s silver eyes glinted through the mask, cold, sharp, and unyielding. She had no doubt she would learn. She had to.

Together, they approached the Blind Pig, the night swallowing them whole, two shadows stepping into the den of another world—her first real mission outside the walls of the shrine, her first taste of being M, Geto’s shadow, forged in fire, fear, and obedience.

Every beat of her heart, every shiver of her muscles, was a reminder: she was no longer Machiko Takahara. She was M. And M existed to survive, to serve, and to strike when ordered.

The door opened before them, and the music within seeped out—a smoky undercurrent of brass and tension. Machiko’s breath was steady, the mask hiding any trace of the girl she used to be. She stepped forward, and the night swallowed her fully.

The speakeasy was a hedonistic debacle. Neon lights—red as blood, violet as bruises—flickered and pulsed across every surface, bathing the room in an unnatural twilight. The air was thick with smoke and the acrid tang of alcohol, swirling with the sweet, chemical stench of drugs. Laughter clawed through the haze, hoarse and guttural, overlapping with the clatter of glasses and the occasional sharp crack of a shouting voice. Hostesses, skirts scandalously short, skirts that left little to the imagination, moved with practiced grace through the crowd, offering flirty smiles and sharper daggers in their eyes. Men in expensive suits lingered in shadowed corners, fingers tapping nervously against glasses, eyes darting to the entrances, their murmured words a current of suspicion and veiled threat.

Machiko froze for a heartbeat, letting the sensory onslaught wash over her. She had heard stories from Nanako and Mimiko of the outside world beyond the shrine’s walls, but none of them—none—had prepared her for this. The sheer chaos, the human cacophony layered atop fear and vice, pressed against her chest like a storm. Yet she did not falter. Her hood rose silently over her head, the mask sealing her expression, filtering the smoke and chaos. She became a shadow, not a girl.

Her gloved hands flexed, the claws faintly humming with restrained energy. Every step was precise, every movement deliberate. She mirrored Geto, weaving through the throng without a sound, her eyes catching every twitch of muscle, every glance that lingered too long. She noted weapons, subtle shifts in posture, the way a hand lingered near a coat pocket. Nothing was insignificant.

Geto cleared his throat as they reached the bar. The sound was soft, polite—but in its calm lay authority. The bartender straightened.

She was a mountain of a woman, shoulders broad and solid beneath a sleeveless leather vest. Her arms were a riot of tattoos, snakes and dragons twisting over her skin in ink that gleamed under the neon light. Piercings caught the glow: silver hoops, tiny studs, bars that glinted when she turned her head. Smoke curled from the cigarette dangling from her lips, spiraling upward like tendrils of smoke in a funeral rite. “What do you want?” she demanded, voice rough, edged with disdain. “This isn’t a place for a priest. So scram.”

Geto’s lips curved into a small, deliberate smile, one that promised civility but carried the weight of danger beneath it. “I’m here to meet Negi Toshihisa,” he said, his voice smooth, calm, velvet wrapped over steel.

The bartender’s eyes narrowed, flicking over him like a blade measuring the grain of a stone. The faint click of her tongue punctuated the haze. “So… you’re Geto Suguru? The one who took over that crazy cult. The Time Vessel Association?”

Geto did not answer. He did not flinch, did not shift, did not betray a hint of emotion beyond the practiced mask of politeness. His eyes, dark and steady, met hers directly, unblinking.

For a long, tense moment, she studied him. Her suspicion bristled like a live wire, her hand resting lightly near a knife at her hip. But the smile, the absolute stillness in his gaze, the quiet authority that wrapped around him like armor, spoke volumes without words. She knew—instinctively, without being told—that pressing him further would be dangerous. That smile was no mere politeness. It was a warning. A blade held against her throat, invisible but unmistakable.

Her cigarette bobbed as she clicked her tongue, then exhaled smoke through her nose. “He’s at the back,” she said finally, voice sharp, no longer questioning but conceding. “Room on the left. Waiting for you.”

Geto inclined his head once, acknowledging her words without a flicker of emotion. Machiko’s eyes followed every movement, every twitch, every micro-expression, noting the tension in the bartender’s posture, the way her gaze lingered just long enough on Geto to betray the faintest unease. A lesson in observation, in reading the currents beneath the human face.

She had learned well.

They moved toward the back of the speakeasy, the neon lights fading behind them, the noise dimming to a murmur as they approached the door. Machiko’s steps were silent, her presence nearly unreal, a shadow among shadows. In that moment, as the scent of smoke and sweat and alcohol clung to the air, she felt the old, familiar rush—the pulse of anticipation that came before a hunt, the quiet thrill of obedience sharpened into perfection.

Both the mentor and his shadow slipped inside. The noise of the speakeasy faded behind the heavy door, replaced by a low hum of silence broken only by the faint hiss of a lamp. The room was cloaked in dim amber, light spilling from the few shaded lamps like trickles of molten honey, pooling against plush red velvet couches that looked as though they had soaked up years of secrets, sweat, and spilled liquor. The scent of smoke still lingered in the upholstery, laced with the faintest metallic tang of something darker.

Negi Toshihisa sat in the center of it all, sprawled but not relaxed—a predator at rest. He was a wiry young man built of lean muscle, a thin frame drawn taut with sinew and intent. Mid-length black hair fell in disheveled spikes around his sharp, narrow face, and a scar cut down the right side like a jagged stroke of a blade, an old wound that had never quite healed clean. A headband with parallel line decals sat low on his brow, the faint glint of the fabric catching the lamplight. His clothes—black long-sleeve shirt, matching pants, and light dress boots—were unadorned, functional. Only his eyes, dark and alert as a blade’s edge, gave away the truth: here sat a man who killed for coin, for cause, or for nothing at all.

Geto took the opposite couch with the grace of a man who never asked permission. He sat not as a guest, but as one who already owned the room. Machiko stood close to the door, her hood up, mask in place, her hands folded before her like a supplicant’s. But her posture was not meek—it was the coiled stillness of a drawn bow. She had been taught where to stand: always near the exit, always between threat and retreat, always where her mentor’s shadow stretched longest.

“It’s nice to meet you, Negi-san,” Geto said at last. His voice was velvet, his smile polite, but Machiko had learned to hear the steel beneath that tone. “You’re a difficult man to track down. Always in the shadows unless you have a commission on the black market.”

Machiko recognized the term—mercenary—from Geto’s lessons. Curse Users who took coin like wolves taking scraps: some for the black market, some for the Sorcerers, some alone. Neither black nor white, they lived in the grey between, bound to no master but their own codes. Geto had taught her to watch such men carefully. They were dangerous because they had already chosen freedom.

Negi flicked ash from an unseen cigarette, his tone flat. “My handler said you had a job for me. So tell me. What is it?” Straightforward, no posturing. A man who wasted no words.

Geto leaned forward, his fingers interlacing slowly, a gesture Machiko knew well. It was not casual. It was a slow encirclement. His eyes glinted—not with warmth, but with the predatory gleam of someone who had already found the weak point in his prey. “I don’t have a job for you,” he said. “Instead, I have a proposition.”

Negi’s brow twitched, a flicker of skepticism. He did not interrupt.

Geto’s voice lowered, velvet darkening to iron. “Join my cause.”

The room seemed to shrink around his words. Machiko could feel the air shift, heavy, charged.

“We Curse Users have been operating too long in the shadows,” Geto continued, his tone smooth but rising like a tide. “Always bending to the rules of humans—monkeys.” The word cracked the air like a whip. “While we suffer, while we die, while we’re scorned. You know what I’m talking about, Negi-san. All of us have walked that road. Forced to carry a silent burden while they—the blissfully ignorant—walk free, unknowing of the true world’s weight.”

His smile sharpened. “We deserve better. We deserve a world where Curse Users are free, revered even. Where we don’t have to hide, where we don’t have to claw for scraps at the edge of their tables.”

Negi’s eyes narrowed, but he did not look away. Machiko watched him closely, her silver gaze sharp behind the mask. This was the moment Geto had taught her to recognize: the pause, the weighing of scales. Negi’s scarred face was still, but his fingers flexed minutely against his knee. He was listening. Even if he thought himself immune, the hook was already set.

“That’s a dream for fools,” Negi said finally, his voice quiet but cutting, like a blade in the dark.

Geto did not flinch. He leaned back slowly, spreading his hands as though to concede a minor point, but his smile remained—patient, knowing.

“Perhaps,” he murmured, “but sometimes it’s the fools who remake the world. Sometimes a little madness is necessary to make our vision come to life”

Machiko felt the shift again, subtle as a breath. Geto was pressing him, not with force but with inevitability. She’d seen it before. It was how he had pressed her. A slow burn, a soft voice, an offer of belonging.

Negi’s eyes glittered, sharp as flint in the amber light. He leaned forward the barest degree, like a cat testing the edge of a table. “What do you need?” he asked, voice dry as old leather.

Geto’s smile widened, patient and slow, as if savoring the turning of some private gear. “I need someone to command my little army,” he said. His fingers steepled together, cast in shadow. “A mind—calculated, ruthless, a tactician. Your reputation precedes you. Your handler spoke well, and so did other men of business.” He tipped his head toward Negi, the motion as casual as a man inclining to a waiter, but there was no courtesy in it—only the economy of power.

Negi’s jaw worked for a moment. He measured the risk and found it acceptable. “Fine,” he said at last, voice flat with a kind of tired hunger. “I’ve had enough of the humans getting the best of life while we, the cursed, grovel in their scorn.” His face did not smile. The scar at his cheek twitched as he half-grinned, not with pleasure but with the grim humor of a man who has seen too many worse things and survived them.

Geto’s hands remained folded, the picture of composure, but his pupils narrowed, pleased. “Then welcome to the cause, Negi-san.” He rose with the unassuming authority of a man who had already carved the world to his liking. “One of my subordinates will be in contact soon. There will be a meeting by the end of next week. Come prepared.” The words were brief, efficient—a business arrangement wrapped in the language of revolution.

Negi inclined his head once, curtly. He rose, boots whispering on the carpet, and the room breathed again as if the meeting had been a held breath. He left with a trail of smoke and a quiet, dangerous air, the kind of thing that leaves a place colder when it goes.

Geto was already moving. He slipped from the shadowed room like a knife through oil, and Machiko followed close behind, a small dark thing at his shoulder. Night swallowed them again, the speakeasy’s neon bleeding into fog and the damp. Outside, the city smelled of rain on brick and whiskey and exhaust. It was alive and dirty and exactly the sort of place ideas were bought and men were bought with them.

They walked in silence for a length measured more by the memory than by the footfall. Geto’s voice finally uncoiled, low and even, words meant to be taught rather than tossed. “Learn well, M,” he said. The mask hid whatever flicker crossed Machiko’s face, but she listened; she always listened.

“To get a man to join you, you must first learn how to take him apart,” he continued, and Machiko heard the lesson in the sentence like an instruction carved in stone. “Identify a man’s weakness—his debt, his love, his fear, his pride. Find the interest that keeps him awake at night, the story he tells himself about who he is. Use that. Appeal to it. Or break it. Always keep a set of cards close.” He tapped the side of his temple once, with the faintest of mock tenderness. “Information is king. Learn to read bodies, faces, the cadence of breath. Learn to see what is not spoken. A man’s soul will tell you the rest, if you know how to listen.”

Machiko’s mind sorted the words into files, each phrase another tool in the kit Geto was refining in her. She felt something cold and precise set into her chest: the steady accumulation of instruments—manner, word, timing—each one meant to pry, to open, to exact. The lesson was surgical. Geto taught the anatomy of persuasion the way he taught the angles of a blade.

“Do not show a single card until you must,” he said next, voice almost conversational now, but every syllable measured. “Be as a closed fist. Only when you know the want and the wound do you lay down the offering or the cut. You can charm a man with honey, M, or you can drain him with poison masked as a remedy. Either way, you must be the hand that guides the cup.”

They reached the car where it had been waiting, sleek and black, its surface a mirror of the night. Geto paused at the entrance of the car and gave her a look that was not unkind—no kindness in it, only assessment. “Tonight, you watched and you learned. I did not send you to speak. That will come later. For now, you collect the map. Remember faces, gestures, who leans forward and who watches the hands. The man who hides his left hand is often the liar. The man who swallows before speaking keeps a secret. Little things. Everything is a seam; you only need to find the place to pull.”

Machiko nodded once, small, almost invisible. The mask did not show the tiny twist beneath her ribs—the twist that was hunger for approval, the old need for the warmth of being seen and praised. Geto saw without looking, as he always did, and he smiled at that, the smile of a man who knows his quarry will hunt faithfully once taught.

They slid into the car. The engine slid forward, sound like a cat easing itself into shadow. As they drove through streets washed in neon and rain, Machiko held the night in her hands, cataloguing every lesson, every angle. The city blurred by, but the words were still sharp in her mind: weakness, interest, story, soul. Information is king.

Outside, the world went on drunk, violent, and bright—unaware that men like Geto and shadows like M were shaping the lines behind it, carving future maps with small, meticulous hands. Inside the car, Machiko let the lesson settle like iron into steel.

 She had a deck of cards now, and she would learn, with the patient cruelty of her master, which ones to play.

A few nights had passed, each one steeped in shadow and the scent of smoke and iron, and Machiko moved beside her mentor with the careful precision of a shadow born from years of ruthless instruction. She had learned the rhythm of his work: when to speak, when to wait, when a glance or a pause could accomplish more than a blade. She had seen him negotiate with merchants, curse users, and mercenaries alike—turning words into chains, smiles into threats, and silence into submission. Every gesture, every inflection of tone carried weight; people bent, faltered, or faltered further when he spoke. Machiko understood, in a way no ordinary student could, that Geto Suguru was not just a man—he was the apex of his world. Fear and reverence clung to him like a second skin, a crown invisible yet undeniable.

These nights were lessons in power, in manipulation, in the economy of influence. Recruiting allies, gathering intelligence, arranging deals, and—sometimes—erasing those who proved dispensable. Machiko observed it all: the careful choreography of dominance without display, the subtle pressure applied like water wearing stone, the way a single raised brow could bend men to his will.

Tonight, they were in an abandoned building on the edge of the city. The air smelled of rot, old smoke, and dust disturbed by too many careless feet. A man cowered before them, bound in Machiko’s threads. The sharp black cords wrapped around him like living iron, biting into flesh at each small movement. His eyes darted between Machiko and Geto, wide and desperate.

“P-Pl-please! This was a misunderstanding!” The man stammered, voice shaking, the words ragged and useless.

Geto’s lips curved into a slow, deliberate smile. There was no warmth in it—only the cold amusement of a predator watching a prey flail against inevitability.

“Oh?” he said softly, almost a purr, before his voice hardened like a steel edge. “A misunderstanding? One of my informants saw you meeting with a sorcerer just a week ago. You know I have no patience for traitors. Start talking. Now.”

The man’s teeth ground together; his voice pitched higher with panic. “N-nothing! I swear! He just asked questions…that’s all!”

Geto’s eyes flicked to Machiko. She met his gaze, and for a moment, she saw the faint quiver of truth beneath the man’s fear—a heartbeat, a flicker of soul he could not hide.

“No,” she said, voice calm but absolute.

Geto’s smile deepened, and he snapped his fingers once. Machiko moved with the precision of a living shadow, tightening the black threads that bound the man. They cut into his flesh, biting, stinging, drawing thin lines of blood. His scream was sharp, quick, a sound full of pure, raw terror, yet measured—controlled by the threads, by Machiko’s hands.

Geto watched her with quiet approval, the faintest gleam of pride in his otherwise unreadable eyes. “Good,” he murmured. “Always remember, M—fear reveals the truth faster than any blade. Never hesitate.”

The man trembled, panting, skin pale and slick with sweat. Every instinct in him screamed to escape, to plead, to bargain—but the threads, Machiko, and Geto’s silent command held him fast. The night stretched thick and heavy around them, and Machiko felt a cold, thrilling clarity settle inside her chest. She understood, as she always had under Geto’s patient cruelty: power was not a gift. It was a tool, forged in fear, honed in obedience, and wielded without mercy.

And she, Machiko, M, was learning to wield it with perfection.

Geto’s fingers were slow as a man folding a letter. He drew from the inner sleeve of his robe three photographs—glossy, poorly cropped, the edges nicked where someone had handled them too often—and let them fall like dead leaves at the man’s feet. The pictures lay in the bitter lamplight: the same man—this one now trembling and bleeding—caught mid-gesture with men in dark coats, hands exchanging packets, the furtive angle of a meeting, the surety of commerce. Faces of other sorcerers, blurred and recognizably clandestine, peered back from paper like ghosts.

“Care to explain,” Geto said softly, and every syllable measured, “why were you exchanging information for money with sorcerers?”

The man’s mouth opened and closed like a fish’s; his color receded until his skin had the waxen pallor of old paper. “Th-that was—” he stuttered. “That was to gain information from their side, so I could deliver it to you, Geto-sama. I swear—”

Machiko saw it then: the small, raw twitch in his soul, a tremor too small for the untrained eye but a lamp-flare to hers—deception, or at least omission. “No,” she said, voice flat, final. Not a denial of the photographs but of his explanation; the single word fell between them like a hammer.

Geto moves as a man does when he decides a conversation is no longer needed. He came forward and placed the heel of his hand upon the ragged wound the man had made upon himself to show contrition—the man had pressed there only moments before, searching for sympathy—and the pressure was deliberate, surgical. The man screamed, a thin animal sound, and dug his fingers into the wine-dark lines that the threads had carved into his flesh.

Geto’s face was a mask of sudden civility; beneath it something slow and molten gathered. “You are no different to me than those monkeys you spy for,” he said, his voice a slow blade. “Weak. Quick to bow. You wear loyalty as a costume, but you are only ever yours to sell. If you cannot prove useful—if you cannot be more than a coin in a stranger’s pocket—then you are dead weight. I will discard you.”

He turned then, to her, the motion casual as a man flipping a page. “M,” he said, the single letter an order in itself, “dispose of him.”

The command hung there, paper-thin and irreversible.

Machiko felt the world constrict to a narrow column of cold. Years of training packed into a single breath. The threads around the man’s limbs tightened under her control—black lines like the veins of a carved statue—and the faint grey webbing over her own skin pricked as if in answer. 

Musubari whispered beneath her teeth, “Do it. Finish it. Taste the ease. Death is a door you hold open for those who would take yours, Little Storm.” The voice slid along her bones and left a heat in its wake.

Memory rose, unbidden. A small and stubborn thing that refused to be silenced by steel: Yuu’s desecrated body in her arms; the bloody horse, streaked and abandoned; the exact angle where the world had tipped into a gutter of sound.

Geto watched her with a look he had when he wanted, not to instruct, but to see whether his lesson had taken root. He had taught her that hesitation was a luxury for those who could afford it. He had taught her that hesitation cost blood. He had taught her the arithmetic of survival.

It seems his lesson of crossing her line has yet to take root within her. Her line ends when it comes to taking one’s life. Geto would make sure she would cross it to finally become the person she was meant to be; his personal weapon. His shadow.

Machiko felt the clowning little voice inside her—old and trembling—rise to protest. “This is wrong. You are Takahara Machiko. You are a sister. A friend. A human. You cannot kill for a man’s convenience." However, this wasn’t for anyone’s sake, it was for her mentor. Her anchor. Their cause. His cause.

And yet another voice, hard and patient, threaded with her mentor’s approval, hissed into her ears. “If you will not move, someone else will cut down those you love and call them a fallen ally. If you will not be the blade, you will be the corpse. There will be another Yuu. Another dead person will weigh on your conscience.” 

The man’s whimpers threaded through the air. He babbled more names, names that meant nothing now, bargaining with scraps. His eyes found Machiko’s for an instant—wide, wet, imploring—and in them she read not only fear but the human bargain of ego: “I will live if I am useful. I will lie to live.” 

Her hand tightened on the threads. The claws on her gloves bit through leather; the faint grey fissures along her arm pulsed like stigmata. Up close, the man smelled of cheap wine and old sweat and the sharp chemical tang of fear. His throat moved. He reached, in reflex, for her—plea, prayer, perhaps both.

Geto’s face did not change. He had given her the choice in appearance, but the unseen edges of that choice were iron bound. He had stripped her of easy excuses and placed the ledger in front of her. The ledger’s columns read: Obey = Protect; Hesitate = Cost.

She remembered, faintly, the night when Musubari had sung to her of hunger and of power, promising the bright, clean feeling of control. She remembered the smell of burning hair, the sound of splintering bone, the flush of triumph that had surprised and then frightened her. It had been wrong and right at once; it had been a relief and a sharpening. She had learned then that murder could be a method as well as madness.

A hundred small ghosts crowded the edge of her sight: the altar with Yuu’s chrysanthemums, the faces of those she massacred, her mother’s disappointment. Each memory was a weight or a whetstone, and she could not tell which.

She stepped forward as if the floor required her weight. Her voice was small. “Geto-sama,” she said, the honorific leaving a metallic taste in her mouth, “do you—”

“Do it,” Geto answered, before she could finish the question. A single word, not a counsel, not a promise, only an edict. The old double-edged hunger tasted like ash in her mouth.

The threads in her fingers tightened until the man’s face contorted. Blood beaded where the cords bit, hot and bright. He screamed for his mother and for things that did not exist in that place. His pleas became patternless noise, the desperate expenditure of a man whose ledger had been balanced and found wanting.

She could have loosen the cords. She could have let him live and given Geto every excuse for dismissal, for punishment, for further tests. She could have been the child who failed to be a tool and returned to be broken.

Instead she dropped her hands to the tanto at her back. The blade came free with a muted whisper. Its edge flashed in the lamp’s dying light, clean as a promise. She did not look away when she moved. Her training had taught her how to hold a life steady; her rage—ancient as the dark—gave her the will to finish.

Steel met throat with the soft certainty of inevitability. Blood sprayed in a small arc, warm and coppered, across the dusty floorboards. The man’s eyes widened, then rolled as light left them. His body went slack against the threads that still held him like a puppet with its strings cut. The sound he made at the end was not human laughter but a thin, flat sound of surprise and concession. A gurgle of his final pleas.

The room went very still afterward, as though the world were reconsidering the act. Machiko’s hands trembled, though the tremor was small and distant to her; the grey veins along her arms flared, then dimmed, like coals settling after a sudden gust. Her breath came in spaced, mechanical pulls. She had obeyed.

Geto did not applaud. There was no warmth, no pat on the head. He stood slow as dusk, the shadow of his form swallowing the lamplight. For one brief heartbeat his face softened in a way that had nothing of tenderness and everything of ownership. “Well done,” he said, and the words were a verdict as much as a benediction. But the girl felt nothing—no guilt, no disgust, no remorse—nothing.

In the wrecked hush that followed, Machiko felt something give way inside her. Something that was not pain but the quiet shattering of a line. The line that had once marked her as sister, child, human. The thin line between human and monster was blurred. It did not snap with thunder. It frayed, unraveling quietly, thread by honest thread.

She had done what was asked. She had kept her feet steady, the mask unblinking in her face. She had taken a life because the ledger demanded it, because Geto’s will sat heavy and immovable as judgement.

Outside the abandoned building, the city went on: drunk, small, and unknowing. Inside, the threads lay slack and sticky with blood. Machiko, M, stood very still, and the gray cracks along her skin seemed, in the gloom, to pulse with a life that was not entirely her own.

Machiko has finally become the very thing she was scared of. To Geto, he was finally the perfect weapon for him to bend to his will. 

The room hummed with quiet tension. Curse users, black market merchants, and men who passed for ordinary businessmen, all gathered in the dimly lit chamber, leaned forward slightly, eyes flicking between one another. Whispers carried through the stale air, measured and cautious: He is powerful. He bends even the dead. They watched as some scanned their new allies, calculating. Every gesture, every glance, was a cipher.

Then, as if the air itself had been cut, the door swung open.

Geto entered. The room seemed to inhale and freeze at once. He walked with that slow, deliberate certainty, the weight of his presence folding the room in on itself. Every shadow stretched toward him as if drawn by some silent gravity. 

Behind him, a single figure followed: M. Silent. Controlled. Nothing of the girl who had once wept at Yuu’s altar remained. Her mask caught the flickering lamps, reflecting shards of the light in the empty planes of black. She was the shadow to his command, the knife concealed beneath the cloak of etiquette.

The men straightened, murmuring ceased, breaths held. Even those who had faced death at the hands of curses before paused.

Geto moved to the head of the table and settled into the seat as if he were a king assuming his throne. Machiko, M, fell into place beside him, hands folded lightly before her, the claws along her arms glinting faintly in the amber glow. Her eyes, though hidden behind the mask, carried the chill of a predator unblinking.

“Thank you for coming today,” Geto began, voice smooth but layered with steel. “Now, shall we start?”

Heads nodded, some eager, some cautious. No one dared interrupt.

M’s gaze swept the room. She didn’t speak. She didn’t move beyond the subtle, disciplined shift of her stance. But in the back of the room, where shadows clung thick, several cursed users felt it—an undercurrent of something lethal, patient, and ready.

Geto’s eyes flicked to M, a small, imperceptible nod. Not recognition, not praise—acknowledgment of readiness. The kind that carved a line through innocence and left only a weapon where a girl had once stood.

Chapter Text

Chapter 9: Snake Skin

***A year before the Night Parade of 100 Demons***

Year: 2016

The night was still and hollow, the streets of Tokyo lying empty as a graveyard. Lamps lined the avenues, their pale yellow glow broken by long shadows that pooled in the gutters, shadows that seemed too deep, too watchful. The city slept in silence, but not all souls found rest.

A man ran, his chest heaving, his breath harsh and ragged in the midnight air. His boots slapped the pavement in frantic rhythm, echoing through the hollow street like the toll of a bell. Three others followed, stragglers with eyes wild and white, prey animals in human skin. In the man’s arms, clutched tight against his chest, was a small wooden box, sealed with iron locks and talismans that shivered faintly with cursed energy. He cradled it like a dying child.

“Sh—shit!” he gasped, nearly stumbling, the sweat plastering his hair to his temples. “We have to move, faster! Before it catches us!”

One of the others wheezed behind him, spit flying with every ragged word. “I told you—stealing from that black auction was suicide!”

“Shut your mouth!” the brunette barked, clutching the box tighter as if the words themselves might rip it from his grasp. “You want out? Drop now. But the share—your share—won’t be yours when this sells. This box—this cursed thing—it’s worth more than your miserable life!”

They turned down another street, their shadows long and stretched under the lamps. But the lamps gave no comfort. The silence pressed in around them, broken only by their feet, their panting lungs. Until it wasn’t.

The cry came sharp and sudden, cut off before it could reach its height. One of the men was gone, yanked into the yawning mouth of an alley, his scream echoing off brick and stone, then falling still as if swallowed whole.

“Jinta!” another shouted, slowing in panic—just long enough for the dark to take him too. He was gone in an instant, pulled sideways into nothingness, his scream cut short like a thread snipped by a cruel hand.

“Fuck this!” the last of the subordinates snarled, turning to bolt the opposite way only to freeze as something gleamed in the dark. A needle. A thread of steel. It whistled past like a serpent striking, punching clean through his skull. He hit the pavement with a wet sound, blood already pooling black beneath his face.

The brunette was alone now. Alone with his breath, with his box, with the certainty of death pressing cold against his back. He staggered, stumbled, then broke into a full sprint, the box clutched so tight his knuckles blanched. His mind screamed at him to keep moving, to run until his legs broke, until he could not hear the echo of those screams swallowed by the night.

But the night was not done.

His foot caught on something unseen—something thin, deliberate, sharp as a garrote. A wire, invisible in the dark until it was too late. He crashed to the pavement, the box torn from his grasp, sliding across the stone with a dull scrape. His palms burned, his lip split against the ground.

And then he heard it: footsteps. Soft. Measured. The rhythm of a predator, unhurried, certain.

He rolled to his back, chest heaving, eyes wide with terror. A figure emerged from the shadow, silent as the grave. No face, only the reflection of his own twisted features staring back at him from a smooth black mask.

“Wait—please—!”

The plea never left his lips whole. A flicker of silver, the hiss of steel, and the tanto was buried in his throat. The sound was wet, final. His body twitched once, then lay still, eyes glassy, mouth frozen in the shape of words that would never come.

Blood soaked the stones, glistening in the pale lamplight. Above the corpse, the masked figure stood—slender, deliberate, her gloved hand pulling the blade free with practiced ease. Machiko’s mask caught the dying man’s stare, reflecting it back at him. In those empty glassy eyes, she saw not his fear, but her own absence staring back.

No words. No hesitation. No humanity. Only Geto’s shadow.

Machiko rose from her crouch, her movements quiet, unhurried. The blood on her blade still steamed faintly in the cool of the night. She gave the tanto a sharp flick, spattering the stones with red, then slid it back into its sheath at the small of her back with a whisper of steel on lacquer. The body at her feet was already cooling. She did not spare it another glance.

Her gaze shifted to the cursed chest lying half-shrouded in shadow, its locks still sealed with talismans that pulsed weakly against the dark. It was heavier than it looked when she lifted it, but her grip did not falter. She pulled the slim cellphone from her pouch, dialed with quick, precise fingers, and pressed it to her ear.

“Manami-san,” she said softly, her voice flat, stripped of strain, stripped of warmth. “I’ve retrieved the cursed chest. A cleanup service is required. Things got messy when a group of curse users decided to do a heist during the auction.”

On the other end, Manami’s voice was smooth, detached, as though she had been expecting this very call. “Alright, M. Be sure to report yourself back to Geto-sama. A car will be picking you up.”

Machiko ended the call without reply. The phone disappeared into her pouch again, leaving her alone in the night, the cicadas humming in the distance, the bodies sprawled in alleys and gutters behind her.

It had been seven months since Geto first set her loose upon the world as his shadow. Seven months of blood and silence. Assassination, capture, retrieval, infiltration—each mission blurred into the next until the days themselves became little more than pauses between assignments. A life parceled into objectives. Kill this man. Steal that scroll. Silence the witnesses. The rhythm of her existence was no longer her own.

She no longer fought the numbness. It came easy now, curling around her bones like a second skin. Each kill chipped away another corner of what she had once been, and in its place, something harder, sharper, colder began to take root. Humanity was sand, ground away grain by grain, replaced by iron. Replaced by silence.

And somewhere deep inside, Musubari stirred. The black veins along her arms pulsed faintly beneath her gloves, a quiet hunger that had learned to rejoice at each death she dealt. With every soul silenced, with every seam unraveled, its satisfaction brushed against her mind like a whisper. Her mentor approved. Her contractor approved.

The only voice that did not was her own. And that voice had grown quiet over the months.

Machiko adjusted the chest under her arm, the weight of it no greater than the weight of her mask. The reflective black surface still caught the glow of the streetlamps, and in it, she saw nothing of herself. Only the shadow Geto had made her.

She turned, walking toward the end of the street where the car would come for her. Behind her, the corpses lay cooling in the dark. Ahead, another mission, another order, another night.

Killing was no longer hard. Killing was easy. And that, more than anything, frightened her.

The car rocked gently on the road, its windows blackened against the city’s neon sprawl. Machiko sat still in the back seat, the cursed chest resting on her lap like a child she did not want. The silence was thick. The driver did not speak, and she did not expect him to. Few dared to speak to her these days, even fewer dared to meet her eyes.

“Home”. The word surfaced in her mind, bitter on her tongue. What a strange word to use for the place she was being driven to. Four walls, a roof, a bed—it should have been enough. But home had once meant laughter, the smell of cooking rice, Nanako teasing Mimiko, Manami brushing her hair by lamplight. It had meant warmth, not duty. Not masks. Not blood drying under her nails.

It had been so long since she had felt that warmth. So long since she had known reprieve. The Hasaba twins had become ghosts in her life—sisters once, friends and shadows now. She wondered if Geto had worked them as mercilessly as he had her, or if they were spared. Their faces came to her mind: the brief wave, the quick hello, nothing more. The distance between them yawned wider with every passing day. From sisters, to friends, to acquaintances. To strangers.

“Do they know what I’ve become?” she wondered. “Do they know I am no longer Machiko, but only M?”

The car slowed, then stopped. The driver said nothing. She rose, clutching the chest, and gave him a small nod before stepping out into the shrine’s lamplit courtyard. The doors to Geto’s office loomed before her, carved wood heavy as stone. She lifted her gloved hand and knocked, three quiet raps against the grain.

“Come in,” Geto’s voice called from within, warm and unhurried.

She entered, stepping into the amber glow of lantern-light. The room smelled of old paper and incense. Within stood Geto and his most trusted—the lean and serious Manami, the broad-shouldered Miguel, and Negi, sharp-eyed and silent. They were bent over a low table, maps and scrolls spread across it like the bones of some dead god. Their voices hushed as she approached.

Machiko bowed, her mask still in place. “Geto-sama. I have retrieved the cursed chest as you requested.”

Manami rose smoothly, her robes whispering against the tatami, and took the chest from Machiko’s hands. She bore it to Geto, who received it with a faint smile and turned it over in his palms, examining the seals.

“Report,” he said without looking up.

Like clockwork, her words came sharp and precise, a blade dulled of all ornament. “The auction proceeded without incident. No sorcerer infiltrations. The cursed chest containing Tamano-no-Mae was presented. At that time, a group of curse users ambushed the hall and seized it. They were neutralised soon after. The chest was retrieved. A clean-up team is already at work removing bodies and scrubbing the scene.”

Geto hummed, a note of approval. “Good. With Tamano-no-Mae within our arsenal, our plan nears completion.”

Miguel let out a low whistle, his dark eyes resting on Machiko’s masked face. “Geto-sama, where did you find them? Such a scary person to work with you, no?”

Geto chuckled, slipping the chest onto the table. “Let’s just say I was lucky.”

The man nodded, letting the matter rest. No questions asked. No answers given.

Behind her mask, Machiko said nothing. She knew the rules. They could never know her face, nor her name, nor the cursed contract she bore. They could never know her age, her gender, her true self. Not Negi. Not Miguel. No one.

She was not Machiko to them. She was not even a girl. She was a shadow. Geto’s shadow.

And shadows had no names.

The only people who knew her identity were Geto, Manami, Nanako and Manami. However, nowadays she feels that her true self has been nothing but a distant shadow to them. Even to herself.

Geto cleared his throat, a small sound that cut through the room like a knife through silk. His subordinates rose at once, as if bound by invisible strings. Manami gathered her notes, Miguel rolled his shoulders with a grunt, and Negi muttered something low under his breath as they departed. The heavy doors shut behind them with a resonant thud, leaving only the faint cicada-song seeping through the shutters. The night air pressed in close and warm, humming, restless.

Geto remained where he was, seated before the cursed chest as if it were nothing more than a game piece. One long hand rested atop it, fingers curling and uncurling lazily along the seal, toying with its edges like a boy distracted with a toy he’d already grown bored of. He did not look at her, not yet.

“Remove your mask,” he said at last, his voice smooth and unhurried, as calm as falling rain.

Machiko obeyed without hesitation. She pushed back the hood of her jacket, loosened the straps, and drew the mask free. The hiss of her breath seemed loud in the silence, as though she were exhaling part of herself. Beneath, her face once sunkissed skin was now pale and drawn, lined with weariness no child of fifteen should carry. Her eyes once bright silver, once brimming with unguarded light had dulled into grey steel. Tired, sharp, stripped of their innocence. She lowered her gaze.

Geto’s tone softened, though it was not gentle. There was no warmth in it, only a quiet blade wrapped in silk. “Do you know why I have you wear it?”

Her fingers curled into the fabric of her hakama, nails pressing crescents into her thighs. “So no one can know who I am.”

“Mm.” He leaned forward at last, his shadow stretching long across the tatami, eyes fastening upon her with the weight of chains. “That is part of it. But there is more.” His voice was low, patient, as if he were explaining some immutable truth of the world. “It is not only for secrecy, Machiko—it is for survival. If our enemies knew your name, they would hunt you. They would twist you into their weapon… or worse, they would put you down. Do you understand? To protect you, Takahara Machiko must be hidden. The world does not need a girl with a name. The world needs M.”

Her throat tightened, and for a heartbeat her lips trembled. But she forced the words past them, steady as she could. “Yes, Geto-sama.”

Geto’s smile bloomed faintly, cruel in its tenderness. The smile of a master pleased with a well-trained hound. He rose and crossed the room, robes whispering against the floor. When he set his hand on her shoulder, it was firm, immovable, deceptively warm.

“You are my shadow,” he murmured. “My unseen hand, my knife in the dark. And shadows have no names, no burdens, no past. You do not weep for old ghosts. You do not cling to things that weaken you.” His thumb pressed into the hollow of her collarbone, subtle pressure that drew the breath from her lungs and set her pulse hammering. “I need you to be competent. Strong. Useful. Do you understand me?”

Inside her, a storm raged. Yuu. Nanako. Mimiko. Their names whispered like soft ghosts in the marrow of her bones. She could see Yuu’s smile, hear Nanako’s laugh, feel Mimiko’s hand clutching hers. But she forced them down, forced them deep into the dark where they could not be seen, could not betray her. They were weaknesses. And weakness was failure.

“Yes, Geto-sama,” Machiko said at last, her voice low and stripped of all tremor. It was steady. It was obedient. It was not hers anymore.

For a moment, his smile deepened, satisfied. It was the expression of a man pleased with a tool that had not only obeyed but endured. He released her shoulder at last, the weight of his hand falling away, and turned back toward his table as though the matter had been settled, final and absolute. 

“Good,” he said, smooth as silk drawn across steel. “Rest tonight. Tomorrow you will be assigned a new mission. However”—he paused as he lowered himself into his chair, the amber glow of the lamps catching against his profile—“this one will be different from the others you’ve been to.”

Geto slid a thin sheaf of papers across the table, along with a scatter of yellowing newspaper clippings. His long fingers pressed them into place with absent grace, like a dealer laying cards in a game only he knew the rules to. The ink was faded, the edges worn soft, but the headlines screamed still, even in silence. 

High School Student Found Dead in Classroom. 

Another Tragedy in Miyagi Prefecture. 

Police Baffled by Sudden Deaths of Teenagers.

He looked up at her at last. His eyes, dark as midnight glass, held hers until the air itself seemed heavy with their weight. “A few months ago, one of our informants began feeding us word about a string of strange events in the Miyagi prefecture. A string of deaths of high school students from various schools. Each case is more grotesque than the last. All of them died of an unnatural death. And yet—” he tapped one finger against the edge of a clipping, a sharp click on the wood, “—they share a pattern. Almost the same, every time.”

Machiko’s gaze moved over the headlines, her lips tightening. She had seen such patterns before. Had lived in them. The sight of bodies twisted by unseen hands, of young lives cut short in ways no natural cause could explain. She could almost smell the iron tang of blood on the forest floor, hear the echo of her own past screaming in her ears.

She swallowed against it, and forced her voice low, steady. “A curse is involved.”

“Not just any curse,” Geto corrected, and his tone darkened like a tide pulling out to sea. He leaned back, steepling his fingers before him. “The evidence points to something greater. A Grade One curse. Perhaps even a Special Grade curse. Or”—and here a faint smile touched his lips again, though it did not reach his eyes—“a curse user, who has not realised they’ve awakened.”

He pushed forward another clipping. This one showed the blurred image of a boy’s face, taken at a distance, caught midstep outside the gates of a Sendai high school. The photo was grainy, but there was no mistaking the hollow look in the youth’s obsidian eyes.

“In every incident,” Geto said, his voice a low murmur that seemed to stretch the shadows of the room, “there is one constant. A single student who transfers after each death. Moves on like a shadow fleeing the light. His name is Okkotsu Yuta. Fifteen years old. Living alone. He has just enrolled at a high school in Sendai.”

The name lingered in the air like a curse of its own.

Machiko’s eyes flickered down to the image, studying the boy’s pale face, the uncertain way he held himself. She thought of herself, fifteen, and the weight she bore. Was he a monster in hiding—or simply another child swallowed by forces far greater than he could withstand? She forced her voice out evenly, masking the churn within. “Do you know if he is the cause?”

Geto’s smile thinned, secretive, as though the truth amused him more than the question. “That is what you will investigate.” He leaned forward, folding his hands together upon the tabletop, and his tone sharpened, hard as flint. “You will go undercover. Pose as a transfer student at his school. Watch him. Learn about him. If he is the cause of these deaths, you will bring him to me. If he is haunted—if a curse lingers at his side—you will subdue that curse, seal it, and deliver it into my hands.”

Machiko’s jaw clenched, though she kept her face bowed in obedience. “How long will this mission last?”

“A month.” The word dropped like a stone into still water. “Enough time to see whether he is the hunter… or the hunted. Enough time to root out the truth. Do you understand Machiko?”

Her chest tightened. A month of shadows, of masks, of walking among strangers with a name that was not hers. A month of carrying out her role while burying what fragments of herself remained. She bowed her head, the weight of his command pressing her spine lower. “Yes, Geto-sama.”

“Good.” He dismissed her with the faintest wave of his hand, already turning his attention back to the cursed chest on the table, as though she were nothing more than another piece to be moved across his board. “Rest. You have a long day tomorrow.”

Machiko reached for her mask, its smooth, black surface catching the flicker of candlelight. She raised her hood, fitted the mask into place, and felt herself slip once more into the void of anonymity. When she turned and walked out of the chamber, her footsteps were soft, soundless—no longer Machiko Takahara, no longer a girl of flesh and doubt. Only M. Only her mentor’s shadow.

The day was slipping into the late afternoon, the kind where the sun hung swollen and low, casting the buildings of Sendai in tired amber. The air smelled faintly of exhaust and summer heat, of fried food wafting from stalls further down the street. Machiko stood outside the narrow apartment building that would be hers for the coming month, her shadow stretching long and thin across the pavement.

It was no fortress, no shrine of old stone and silence, only a plain, lived-in block. Families passed her with grocery bags in hand, children darted down the sidewalk shrieking with laughter, a pair of high school students loitered by the vending machine at the corner. Ordinary lives, humming along with no knowledge of the darkness festering just beneath their world. Ordinary lives something she had not known for years. Something that she quietly craves for.

Her eyes lingered on the balcony one floor below her own. That was where her target lived. Okkotsu Yuta. The boy with death trailing in his wake. Geto had chosen the apartment above his with deliberate precision. Easier to watch, easier to listen. Easier to act, should the time come.

Machiko climbed the narrow stairwell, her steps echoing against the concrete, and found the door marked for her. The key turned easily, the lock giving without resistance. Inside, the apartment smelled faintly of dust and emptiness, a place prepared for use but untouched until now. A studio space, humble but sufficient: a low bed in the corner, a kitchenette that gleamed with fresh polish, a small bathroom, a dining table barely large enough for two, a study desk pressed against the window. Spartan, practical.

She tried to sense any curse energy around her—looking for any signs of tampering or break-ins. Machiko closed her eyes as she took in a deep breath to feel the air around her for anything unusual. And there were none. Not even her target’s. Perhaps he was out.

Her possessions filled little of it. The suitcase she carried rattled lightly as she opened it on the floor. First came the clothes—plain, functional, folded neatly into the narrow dresser. Then her humble personal shrine: a worn photograph of Yuu, corners creased with age, set upright against the wall, beside it the small, frayed pony plush that had been his. She smoothed its mane with a finger, as though the gesture could bring warmth to the cold room.

Groceries next—dried noodles, rice, a few vegetables, tucked away in the small fridge. Weapons last, always last. Needles wrapped in cloth, a pair of tantos, vials of balm and poultice for wounds. She found the hidden compartment in the floor of her closet, lifted the loose board, and stowed them away in its darkness. Her mask, her gloves, the black uniform of M—these she folded into an unmarked cardboard box and placed on the highest shelf, where no casual eye would look.

She was efficient, methodical. Yet when all was set, the room still felt barren, cold. It was not a home. It was a stage.

The last of her tasks lay on the table: the file. A slim folder, beige and impersonal, marked only with a false name. She opened it, her eyes scanning the details of the life she was to assume. Age. School. A fabricated history, carefully woven. Another self, waiting to be inhabited.

This was her third time stepping into someone else’s skin. The first had taught her the hardest lesson. It was that no matter how convincing the mask, the smallest crack could undo everything. She had let herself slip once, let herself breathe as Machiko Takahara when she thought the mission was safe enough for a moment’s reprieve. A word too soft, a gesture too familiar, and the knife had found her shoulder. A wound that had nearly unraveled all her work, that had nearly exposed her for who she truly was.

Her hand ghosted over the faint scar beneath her shirt, the ache still alive in her memory. She would not repeat the mistake. Not here. Not now. Not with Yuta.

In Sendai, there was no Takahara Machiko. That name belonged to another life, a ghost tethered to shrines, to training grounds, to nights spent weeping into the silence of her room. Here, there was only the name on the file: Mochizuki Aya.

Aya was fifteen. A brunette with a bob cut that barely brushed her jaw, her hair plain, unremarkable. Eyes black as obsidian, dull and depthless, the kind of eyes that passed over crowds and saw nothing, remembered nothing. Timid, quiet, a girl who would never stand out in a classroom or on a crowded street. The kind of shadow no one noticed because she was ordinary in every way.

Aya did not dream. She wanted nothing more than to get through the days, to shuffle from one year to the next until adulthood carried her away. Her hobbies were forgettable things—reading manga, listening to whatever music the radio played, daydreaming when the teacher’s voice grew dull. She was not fashionable, nor was she plain; she was the middle ground between the bright and the invisible. Average in all things, destined for no more than a decent college and a life unremarkable.

The story of her life was carefully laid into the file. A child of divorce, newly moved to Sendai with her mother footing the bills. An only child, with no siblings to cling to, no friends left behind who might look for her. Her grades were good enough to keep her from suspicion, never so poor as to invite intervention, never so brilliant as to demand attention. A face among many. A girl who drifted, daydreaming, with no tether to bind her.

On her low table lay the tools of Aya’s existence: two sets of high school uniforms, freshly pressed, supplied by Manami’s meticulous hand. A wig, deep brown, cropped blunt at the shoulders, lay nestled in its box like a snake coiled to strike. And the black contacts, their case glimmering faintly in the low light, waiting to smother the bright steel of Machiko’s true eyes.

Machiko touched each item as though it were a weapon. In its way, it was. The disguise was no less a blade than the tanto sheathed in her hidden compartment. This blade cut not through flesh but through self. A weapon that requires her to breathe life into it. To be it.

She tested the wig in the small mirror above her desk, drawing it over her braid, tucking her black hair deep beneath the synthetic strands. A stranger looked back at her, with dull brown locks framing a face pale with fatigue. She slipped in the contacts next, her silver-grey eyes drowned to black, robbed of their edge. The girl in the mirror was no fighter, no killer, no shadow. She was Aya, forgettable, malleable, nothing at all.

The uniform followed. A blazer too stiff, a skirt hemmed at regulation length, socks folded neatly. She tugged at the sleeves and found herself swallowed by its banality. Her reflection grew softer, smaller, and fragile as paper. She studied it with a cold detachment, the way she might study a corpse she had made.

Machiko straightened before the mirror, though she did not allow the girl staring back to stand tall. Shoulders softened, spine eased, chin tilted down just so. The predator in her gaze was shuttered, dulled to a glassy warmth. Her mouth curled into a small, practiced smile. Not too wide and not too shy. The sort of smile a girl like Aya would wear.

She let her breath flow lighter, lifted her brows just a fraction, and when she spoke, her voice was no longer Machiko’s. It was higher, gentler, threaded with a brightness that never cut too sharp.

“It’s nice to meet all of you!” she said, the cadence bouncing with a modest cheer. “My name is Mochizuki Aya. Please take care of me.”

The words rang false in her bones, yet natural on her tongue. Bubbly, but not cloying. Youthful, but touched with a politeness that suggested quiet maturity. Not the hardened soldier she had become, not the shadow Geto had molded, but the ordinary schoolgirl no one would look at twice.

The mask was perfect. So perfect it frightened her. 

Aya’s life was another cage, but one she would have to step into willingly.

The mask had to hold. Aya had to be real. If Aya faltered, if Aya cracked, Machiko would bleed for it and Geto would see only failure.

She set the wig aside, removed the lenses, folded the uniform back into its bag. Tomorrow she would put them on for good, and Machiko Takahara would vanish. Tonight, for the last time, she brushed her braid loose, fingers trembling faintly as she tugged free the silver charms that hung upon it. Her hair fell heavy down her back, a weight she rarely allowed herself.

She quickly uttered a prayer at Yuu’s altar and asked for luck. A small ritual she would do every night, so she could live another day. Withstand another challenge. She then laid down on her bed as she tucked herself to sleep. The new and soft bed felt foreign to her. It was too soft as if trying to swallow her whole.

For a moment she stared at Yuu’s altar, the photo propped against the wall, the toy pony slumped beside it. The only proof she had left that she had once been more than a weapon, more than a shadow. She had been a person. A human.

“Aya,” she whispered into the quiet, as if trying the name on her tongue, as if Yuu might answer to it. But no answer came, only the hum of the refrigerator and the muffled voices of her neighbors below.

Tomorrow, she will become Aya.

And Machiko would disappear again.

Machiko woke with the precision of a metronome, her body already moving before her mind fully caught up. The morning light spilled faintly through the blinds, brushing the bare walls of the apartment with gold. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and made it with crisp, mechanical folds, the corners tucked just so, as if the order of her room could anchor the chaos of the life she wore like a second skin.

She stepped quietly into the bathroom, the tiles cool under her bare feet, and began the ritual that would render her invisible: Aya. Her movements were automatic, rehearsed to the point of muscle memory. She hummed a mindless tune, a thin thread of sound to fill the silence. First came the black contacts, sliding over her silver-grey irises like a second night swallowing the day. Then came moisturizer, subtle strokes of powder and color, enough to erase the sharp angles of her true face without calling attention.

Her hair followed its accustomed path—braided tight, then wound flat against her head. A wig cap hid the last stubborn strands before she tugged on the brown bob, adjusting it meticulously. Several hairpins went into the wig, pressing it into place as if the act itself could seal her identity.

She paused at the edge of the sink, glancing down at her hands. The black stains and grey webbing of her cursed energy still etched across her skin. The reminder of what she had become, what she had killed to survive. One of Manami’s cursed artifacts lay around her neck—a simple chain, unremarkable except for the magic it carried. She fastened it and watched the transformation: her hands, once grotesque and alien even to herself, smoothed into normalcy. The illusion was perfect. Temporary. But for a moment, she felt the ghost of something like normalcy. Something like the child she had once been.

The reflection in the mirror was no longer Machiko. The predator, the shadow, the weapon trained for years under Geto’s relentless hands—those pieces were buried beneath layers of silk and synthetic strands. She was Aya now. Mochizuki Aya. Fifteen. Forgettable. Invisible.

Breakfast was as precise as every other act of her morning: two half-boiled eggs, toast smeared with peanut butter, thin slices of crisp apple, a small mug of coffee, bitter and hot. She ate quickly, with practiced restraint, tasting only the bare minimum while her mind cataloged the day ahead. Teeth brushed again, uniform pressed and spotless, socks pulled smooth.

Before she left, she approached Yuu’s altar in the corner of the room. The photograph caught the last slant of morning light, the little plush horse propped beside it. Her fingers brushed the worn frame, a fleeting softness passing through the steel of her chest.

“Wish me luck, Yuu,” she whispered, voice low, almost swallowed by the silence.

The words were meant for a ghost, a memory, a fragment of the girl she once was. Then she turned, pulling the door closed behind her with quiet finality. Aya exists now. Machiko would remain buried, hidden beneath the careful construction of a life she could show to the world, but not reveal.

Machiko, or in this case, Aya, walked toward the school with a measured leisure that belied the predator beneath. Her stride was loose, almost casual, a mimicry of the ordinary teenager, yet every fiber of her being remained alert. To anyone else, she might have seemed simply curious, taking in the narrow streets and familiar shops with a gentle interest. But Machiko’s trained eyes that were still hers even beneath her false identity, even beneath the mask— was cataloguing every detail.

Which alley could serve as a quick escape if trouble emerged? Which doorway or dumpster offered a shadow to vanish into? Which stretches of sidewalk were crowded enough to mask her presence, and which areas were too exposed for comfort? Her ears, veiled beneath the synthetic strands of Aya’s wig, filtered the ebb and flow of conversation, footsteps, and distant engines. Every sound, every movement, became data to be filed and interpreted.

As she approached the school, the streets thickened with students in uniform, chattering, hurrying, laughing. Aya’s stomach gave a faint, unfamiliar twitch. It had been years since she had been so surrounded by people her age. Most of her peers had been adults, mentors, or the occasional sisters she had trained with—Nanako and Mimiko. That distance had shaped her speech, her posture, her cadence. She had always sounded older, sharper, too aware.

But Aya was a mask carefully honed. She had studied Nanako and Mimiko’s laughter, the ways teenagers hesitated or gestured. She had watched countless hours of media, listened to the chatter of street vendors and cafés, absorbed the cadence and rhythm of high school life. She could mimic it, and she could sustain it. Confidence flowed through her now as naturally as breathing.

The gates of the school loomed ahead, metal and brick, ordinary and unremarkable to most. Aya adjusted the strap of her bag and allowed herself a momentary exhale. She pushed through the gates, weaving into the throng of students, blending seamlessly with their chatter and shuffling feet.

Her next task awaited: the administration office. A banal place for most, a cage of paper and stamps. For Aya, it was the first step into a new identity, the first day of a life she would have to inhabit fully. She entered the office, and the hum of the fluorescent lights, the clatter of keys, the soft murmur of voices struck her like an unfamiliar language.

Machiko, beneath the calm facade, catalogued it all: the layout, the exits, the timing of the clerks’ movements, the gaps in their attention. Every interaction, no matter how mundane, could become vital intelligence later. And yet, on the surface, Aya smiled politely, introduced herself with practiced hesitation, and allowed the mundane rituals of school bureaucracy to swallow her whole.

Aya had become real enough. But Machiko’s eyes; the sharp and cold eyes behind the black contacts missed nothing.

“Ex-excuse me,” Aya’s voice wavered just enough to seem genuine, her hesitation and stuttering a carefully crafted performance. She tugged lightly at the strap of her bag, eyes downcast.

The receptionist, a woman whose boredom clung to her like a second skin, glanced up briefly. “Yes, what can I do for you?”

Aya cleared her throat, straightened her shoulders a fraction, and let a hint of forced confidence lace her voice. “H-hello… I’m a new transfer student here. My name is Mochizuki Aya. I’m here to collect my student card, study materials, and my schedule.”

The receptionist’s gaze flicked over her, unimpressed, before returning to the stack of papers on her desk. She moved with mechanical efficiency, assembling a small pile of materials. Then she swiveled in her chair toward the back office, her voice carrying across the space. “Amari-san, your new student is here.”

Her eyes returned to Aya. “Mr. Amari Daichi will be your homeroom teacher. He’ll be taking care of you from now on. You moved here from Osaka, yes?”

Aya nodded, the motion slight, her expression neutral but polite. “Yes, ma’am.”

As the receptionist busied herself, Machiko’s mind—ever vigilant—shifted seamlessly beneath the mask of Aya. She had read the teacher’s file in advance: Daichi, 56, widower, devoted to his students, meticulous in record-keeping, unwaveringly kind. Beneath the ordinary exterior, Machiko calculated the boundaries he might breach if left unchecked. Too much attention from him could unravel her disguise, drawing unwanted scrutiny. Aya had to remain a ghost in his classroom, observed but not engaged.

She accepted the small stack of papers, her fingers brushing the edges as if testing their weight, noting the practical details while cataloguing the layout of the office, the rhythm of the receptionist’s movements, and the timing of sounds from the hall beyond. Every interaction was data. Every gesture, every pause, a subtle lesson in surviving in a world where even ordinary humans could pose a threat.

Aya smiled softly, practiced and gentle, the kind of smile that drew no suspicion. “Thank you very much,” she said, her tone humble, deferential.

To the untrained eye, she was simply a shy, polite teenager. But behind the blackened mask of her eyes, Machiko was always watching, always measuring, always ready. Aya had to be real, but Machiko had to remain hidden. Both truths existed simultaneously, balanced on the edge of a knife.

Her homeroom teacher approached with a warm, measured smile, the kind that tried to put a newcomer at ease. “Good morning. You must be Mochizuki Aya. It’s nice to meet you. I’m Amari Daichi, and I’ll be your homeroom teacher for this year. If you need anything—guidance, help, anything at all—please don’t hesitate to come to me.”

Aya returned the gesture with a practiced smile, the perfect blend of timid politeness and deference. “Of course, thank you so much, Amari-sensei.” Her voice was soft, gentle, the kind that invited no attention beyond simple courtesy.

Amari led her through the school, narrating the structure of the campus, the rules, the expectations. Aya’s head tilted slightly, lips parting in careful fascination, but Machiko’s eyes were elsewhere—mapping corridors, noting emergency exits, calculating blind spots, cataloging where students gathered and where shadows clung. Every laugh, every whisper, every clatter of shoes across the linoleum floor was data. She stored it all, filing it away behind the mask of Aya.

Finally, they arrived at the classroom. Amari stopped, turning to her with a polite nod. “Alright, you just wait here outside for a bit. I’ll call you in once I’ve settled everyone down.”

Aya’s nod was demure, almost hesitant, but Machiko’s mind ran a hundred steps ahead. The door opened, and she stepped inside. Immediately, the air shifted. A presence—not quite visible, yet oppressive, heavy, suffocating—rolled off the boy in the back corner like a black tide. Machiko froze for the barest fraction of a heartbeat, her hand twitching as if to steady the mask she wore. A flicker of panic threatened, but she forced it down, letting Aya’s posture take over: head upright, eyes forward, shoulders relaxed. Nothing in her stance betrayed her awareness.

The teacher’s voice cut through the tension. “Class, meet your new classmate. She just moved here from Osaka. Why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself?”

Aya turned slowly, letting the timid, careful cadence of her voice fill the space. “H-hello. My name is Mochizuki Aya. It’s a pleasure to meet all of you. Please take care of me.” She bowed, small and sincere, and Machiko caught the faint murmurings of the students: curiosity, whispers, the unspoken judgment of new arrivals.

Amari raised a hand, quieting the room. “Alright, alright, I know everyone is excited to get to know your new classmate, but our lessons will be starting soon. There will be plenty of time for introductions afterward.” His gaze swept across the classroom. “Ah, why don’t you sit beside Okkotsu-san?”

The mention of the name drew a hush over the room. Machiko’s eyes moved instantly, scanning the room. And there he was: the boy her mission had demanded she investigate. He sat at the very back, in the corner, as if seeking refuge behind the other desks. His posture was tight, cautious. The dark circles under his eyes spoke of sleepless nights, of fear. And yet, Machiko felt it: the undercurrent of cursed energy. Foul, monstrous, potent. It clung to him like smoke, thick and untamable, and yet somehow it was hidden beneath the mask of his frailty.

Aya moved forward, steps measured, slow enough to seem uncertain, deliberate enough that no one would doubt her innocence. The room’s eyes followed her, drawn to the sunkissed, quiet figure stepping deliberately toward the back of the class. Whispers rippled like wind through dry leaves. Some students regarded her with mild curiosity, others with a flicker of judgment, but all sensed the unspoken tension: an innocent girl placed near a boy who radiated peculiarity, a boy who seemed not of their world.

She reached her seat beside him, settling into it with careful poise. Her hands rested on the desk, palms down, relaxed, though her mind was anything but. Machiko cataloged his reactions, the subtle twitch of a finger, the way his gaze darted toward her and then away, the tension in his shoulders, the weight of the energy rolling off him in palpable waves. Machiko had to make sure her cursed energy was hidden, so she wouldn’t spook the boy or whatever that clung onto him.

Aya’s eyes flicked subtly toward the boy beside her, taking in the angles of his body, the way his fingers drummed lightly against the edge of the desk, a nervous rhythm that spoke of unease more than boredom. His posture was hunched, shoulders drawn in, as if he could fold himself small enough to disappear entirely. Yet even in that self-effacing slouch, Machiko could sense the power coiled beneath—like a predator crouched behind a veil of hesitation.

She noted the way he avoided direct eye contact, how his gaze flitted to the floor, then to the window, as though measuring escape routes even in a place as banal as a classroom. Machiko’s mind cataloged every detail: the tremor of his hands when he reached for a pen, the subtle tension in the way he leaned forward when the teacher’s voice rose, the silent pulse of cursed energy that thrummed like a drumbeat beneath the surface of his frail frame.

The other students went about their chatter, unpacking bags, adjusting uniforms, exchanging whispered greetings, but Aya—Machiko—was still. Her hands rested lightly on the desk, palms flat, the picture of obedient innocence, yet her eyes did not blink, did not waver. Every movement, every twitch, every fleeting expression from the boy in the corner was a piece of a puzzle she intended to assemble in full.

The teacher’s voice rose above the low hum of activity. “Alright, everyone, settle down. We’ll begin with a quick review of yesterday’s lesson.”

Machiko listened, nodding at intervals, following the flow of the class. But her focus remained on Yuta. She noted how he seemed to shrink further whenever a taller boy passed by, how he flinched at the sudden laughter of a group at the front, how he occasionally pressed his palms flat to the desk as if to ground himself. And yet… there was a spark, faint and erratic, that betrayed the boy’s true nature. The cursed energy radiating from him was volatile, unpredictable, powerful—a tempest held behind a fragile dam.

Her lips curved in the smallest, almost imperceptible smile. This was no ordinary target. He would require careful study. Patience. Observation. Machiko—no, Aya—allowed herself to sink further into the role, her posture softened, her voice quieter in her mind. Here, she was timid, hesitant, fragile. Aya was a shadow meant to fade into the background. And yet, her mind, Machiko’s mind, thrummed with calculation, strategy, and cold appraisal.

Minutes passed. Each tick of the clock was a beat in her silent symphony of observation. Every scratch of a pen, every whispered comment, every sigh of boredom from the class around him fed her understanding. She began to see patterns.

The bell had barely ceased its harsh clang when Aya rose from her seat, the motion smooth, practiced, yet tinged with the faintest air of hesitance. Recess. A brief reprieve, a few precious minutes when she could move unobserved—or so she told herself. The cafeteria was a sea of motion, students flowing like currents through narrow aisles, trays clattering, voices rising and falling like waves on a distant shore. She picked her path carefully, weaving through the throng, eyes cataloguing everything. Every escape route, every cluster of students that could block or obscure her movements, every teacher passing with inattentive eyes.

She collected her lunch—a couple of sandwiches wrapped neatly and a small box of apple juice. Sweet drinks were not her preference; she would have chosen bitter tea or strong coffee. But for Aya, for the persona she would wear today like a second skin, she accepted it. She clutched the box, its crinkling straw a minor annoyance, a small anchor to the facade she was crafting.

And then—they came. A trio of girls, bright, loud, and predatory in their own social hierarchy, approaching like hawks circling a fledgling.

“So, Aya, right?” the tallest girl asked, voice clipped, deliberate. Aya nodded, small, courteous.

“We want to know more about you,” the second chimed, curling a strand of hair around her finger, eyes sharp and appraising.

Aya forced her practiced smile, nerves masked beneath the careful cadence she had rehearsed countless times. “Sure! I grew up in Osaka my whole life, but my mom decided I should move to Sendai for a change of scenery during high school. I like reading all kinds of books, listening to all kinds of music… and I like visiting cute cafes too. That’s pretty much everything about me, haha…” A laugh, soft, almost nervous, escaped her lips.

The second girl’s eyes narrowed, scrutiny sharp, her acrylic nails tapping the air with impatience. “Ehh… you’re boring,” she said, the word harsh and deliberate, a small blade aimed to test.

The third girl, a beige scrunchie wrapped tightly around her wrist, tilted her head, a smirk teasing her lips. “Yeah… don’t you have, like, a boyfriend or something?”

Aya’s cheeks colored faintly—purely performative, an actress’s touch. “Haha… no, not really. I’ve never had a relationship before. But I wouldn’t mind having one… it’s just that maybe no one has ever shown interest in me yet?”

The tall girl rolled her eyes, voice dripping condescension. “Right… as if a boring person like you would even get one.” She waved her hand toward the classroom door, signaling someone. “Babe! Come here for a sec.”

From the back of the room, a boy emerged. Tall, dark, with a casual defiance in the tilt of his shoulders. Tie loose, shirt untucked, ears decorated with glinting piercings. He moved like he owned the hallway, a predator in the guise of a careless teen.

“You called, babe?”

The girl leaned in, pecking him on the cheek, laughter bright and cruelly intimate. “Meet Dai. He’s my boyfriend. So he’s off limits, newbie,” she said, eyes narrowing as she pinned Aya in place with her gaze.

Aya’s nod was immediate, polite, rehearsed. “Y-yeap!”

The girl continued, venom laced beneath a honeyed tone. “If I ever catch you trying to make a move on my man, I will personally beat you up.”

Dai draped an arm around the girl's shoulder, smirking with a careless charm. “Chiyo, babe, you know you’re the only one for me.”

Chiyo’s laugh was musical and insistent, a celebration of possession. “Oh my god, baaabbe, that’s so sweet of you.”

Machiko’s mind, hidden beneath Aya’s mask, rolled eyes invisible to all but herself. The theater of adolescent romance was both tedious and instructive—a display of desire, hierarchy, and social dominance all intertwined. Something that Machiko truly finds annoying.

Before she could endure further, Aya excused herself, stepping lightly, deliberately away from the petty drama. “I-it’s nice to meet all of you. If you need me, I’ll be at my desk,” she said, voice calm, smile practiced.

She moved swiftly, the rhythm of her gait careful yet casual, every step measured. Her desk awaited, a safe vantage point. The moment she reached it, she noted its proximity to the boy she had been sent to observe—Okkotsu Yuta. The space beside him sat empty.

Machiko seated herself, sliding her food before her with quiet precision. Her senses, honed and sharpened over years, flicked her gaze outside the window. There he saw him sitting alone on a bench. She did not breathe him in as a peer would; she measured him, catalogued the aura of latent power, the tension coiled beneath his fragile exterior. He was unaware of the eyes tracking him, the shadow of her presence so close yet unseen.

The room hummed with ordinary teenage noise, laughter, the scrape of chairs, the occasional drop of cutlery. But Machiko—Aya—felt the hum beneath the hum, the pulse of something darker, sharper, more potent. And she waited. Observing. Learning. Calculating. Patient as the shadow she had been molded to be.

Chapter Text

Chapter 10: A Penchant For The Underdogs

***A year before the Night Parade of 100 Demons***

Year: 2016

The second week of her mission came and went, and Mochizuki Aya—Machiko— had settled into her disguise as though she had worn it all her life. She was neither the brightest flame in the room nor its shadow, only a steady, flickering wick that no one bothered to notice. The sort of girl who smiled when spoken to, laughed softly at the right moments, and slipped away before anyone could remember to miss her. A chameleon, perfectly coloured by the dull grey of ordinary life.

Her days passed in quiet observation. In class, she kept to the back rows, always paying attention to her educator’s lessons. It was where neither the teachers nor the curious lingered too long. She answered when asked, listened when needed and watched. Always watching.

Her target—Okkotsu Yuta— was a study in isolation. He moved like a ghost among the living: shoulders hunched, head low, voice barely above a whisper. Machiko had charted his movements like a scholar mapping the stars—school to home, home to the small corner store, then to home again. No friends. No diversions. Always the same route, as though straying from it would wake something terrible from its sleep.

Ever from a distance, she could feel the wrongness that clung to him, that leaked from him—cursed energy spilling like water from a cracked bowl. It followed him, staining the air, clinging to walls and windows, even to the pavement he walked upon. Yet for all the malignant power, he seemed oblivious to it, frightened even, as though the shadow trailing him were a beast he dared not name.

Machiko had seen him notice the lesser curses that sometimes drifted near— the harmless wraiths that fed on scraps of sorrow and bitterness. His eyes would flick towards them, startled and unsure, before he turned away. But none lingered near him for long. They scattered when he passed, shrinking from him as birds from a storm. Even the school, ripe with adolescent misery and festering emotions, was curiously barren of such creatures. It was peculiar. No building that reeked so strongly of youthful despair shouldn’t have been so clean.

Her theory was simple: whatever haunted Okkotsu Yuta frightened even the small curses. Perhaps even devoured them. 

Still, this boy remained painfully human. In the classroom, he was the favored target of predators far less supernatural—monkeys, as what her mentor would refer to them. The older boys toyed with him mercilessly. Tripping him in the hall, stealing his things, vandalising his desk and laughing when he stammered his apologies. He bore it all with hunched shoulders and trembling hands. Eyes downcast like a beaten dog. Weak, fragile and easy. She did not bother to name it. Feelings were luxuries; missions were not. The ledger in her head was exact and cold: observe, catalogue, deduce. She had watched him walk the same path day after day. She had mapped the hours he left the building, the groceries he bought, the way his shoulders folded inward at the slightest sound. She knew his habits as surely as a clock knows its ticks. She had catalogued his fears, his weaknesses, the small rituals that kept him moving from one day to the next. She held all the cards now. Contact, coax, capture — or, if necessary, end him and take the soul-stained prize to Geto.

After the last bell the classroom emptied, the high windows letting the late light slant low across desks and dust motes. It was Aya’s turn to stay behind and do the chores; every student did so, a ritual meant to teach discipline and humility. This evening, the list was shortened by absent pupils — the others had skipped their chores — leaving only Aya and Yuta. The room smelled faintly of bleach and marker ink, a domestic stench that made Machiko’s skin smart with memory.

The mop hummed across the linoleum in slow, methodical strokes, a mall white cloud of dust taking flight with every pass. The classroom had sunk into that late-hour of stillness—chairs pushed beneath desks in neat rows, windows darkening to the gray of evening. Only the fluorescent lights hummed and the soft slap of water against the bucket. Aya moved like a machine: bend, press, pull, wring. Her hands remembered the rhythm well enough that she did not need to think about it. Habit made the motion automatic; the chores she did in the old shrine has made her steadier than most girls her age.

She had her mop, a battered bucket, and the slow, steady movement she used to quiet her thoughts. Aya hummed without thinking — the small tune she hummed at night when she brushed her braid, when she tried to set her shoulders right against the ache. Yuta sat bent over the desks, wiping stubborn graffiti from the oak surface, his hands clumsy with the task.

He worked mostly on his own desk, a small island of crude taunts carved and scrawled into the varnish: Freak. Loser. Pathetic. Creep. There were worse things in black marker — instructions that cut deeper than ink: Kill yourself.

“U-um…”, Yuta’s timid voice broke the awkward silence. “I’m g-going to refill the bucket with water d-downstairs…”

With a practiced smile and neutral voice, Aya replied, “Sure”. With that, the boy clumsily went outside the classroom with a bucket of dirty water. His footsteps echoing in the silent hall and it slowly disappeared in the distance. Aya then made her way to Yuta’s desk to see the crude work of the students in her class towards their victim.

Machiko paused with the mop handle in her palm and felt, for the space of a heartbeat, the old tide roll back. The faces of children from another life floated up like drowned things: Her older sister, Kiyoko, sneering at her; boys from the neighborhood making a game of avoidance from her; the sour, reeking memory of her mother’s drunken words. The shame of Yuu’s death, the hollowing out that followed. The words tasted bitter as old iron. The room, with its flickering fluorescent hum, became a chapel of old injuries.

There was danger in that tenderness. Feelings made mistakes likely to happen. Feelings softened vigilance. She let the moment pass like a shadow crossing a sun. The mask settled back into place.

“You are here to be the blade, not the balm”, she reminded herself, and the memory slid away. She could not afford to place a face upon her target. She had learned that lesson with blood and stitches once: a lapse, a name, a smile — and a shoulder where steel had found purchase. She would not repeat that mistake.

A ripple of laughter outside the window broke the practiced calm, brittle as a struck bell. Voices — coarse, greedy. Machiko’s eyes narrowed. She set the mop aside and leaned to peer through the classroom window. Below, at the back of the school building, Dai—the school bully— and three of the older boys had cornered Yuta. He crouched, small and flinching, hands clamped about his knees. Dai and his lackeys leaned in with the ease of predators, voices thick with the small cruelty only boys can invent. One of them kicked the poor boy carelessly at Yuta’s back. Another plucked a cigarette bud from his mouth and tossed it to Yuta.

”Oi…I told you to give your money to us, freak.” Dai said as he crouched in front of Yuta and a fistful of his hair to make the boy look up to him.

With a meek voice, Yuta stammered out, “I-I’m sorry…but this is the only m-money I have to last for t-this m-month…”

The bully threw Yuta’s head to the ground, “Like hell I care! I need to buy another pack of cigarettes!”

Machiko watched like a scientist at a dissecting table. She measured the distance, the angles, the sound of movement on the concrete. Her pulse did not quicken; she catalogued. If she stepped in, she would alter the data, spoil the natural experiment. If she stepped back, she would have what she needed: how he reacted when pressed, when exposed. 

She could sense that foul cursed energy simmering beneath the boy’s weak exterior—threatening to burst out. Perhaps there was a certain trigger that brought forth the curse that latched onto him. Perhaps the curse would not appear willingly if Yuta called for it. Or perhaps Yuta didn’t want to use the curse. So many theories ran through Machiko’s head as she witnessed the scene in front of her. 

The choice was a cold one. For a fraction of a heartbeat, her mother’s drunken rage and her father’s face of disgust — the parents that scarred her — flashed across the back of her eyes. Then the memory was sheathed. “You do not save; you gather”, she told herself. “You are M. You observe. You report.”

So she stayed.

The bullies had formed a circle around him, boots scuffing the cracked pavement like dogs pawing at dirt before a kill. Yuta lay curled upon himself, a trembling knot of arms and knees, small as a bundled rag. The first kick landed with a dull sound, flesh meeting concrete. Another followed, sharper. Then another. They jeered with the fever of boys who have never learned their own strength, the laughter bubbling raw and ugly from their throats.

From the open window above, Machiko watched. She could hear him between the thuds — those faint, broken words that threaded through the blows. At first she thought they were pleas for mercy, the useless kind of begging a beaten animal made when cornered.

But then she heard him clearly.

“Please stop… I don’t want to hurt you.”

Not help me. Not leave me alone. I don’t want to hurt you.

Machiko felt it then — the air warping, the faint shimmer of cursed energy rising from the boy like steam off fresh blood. It was rotten, foul, ancient. The kind of malevolence that clung to bone. It reeked of graves and cold iron and the thick, wet breath of something that did not belong in the world of the living. Beneath him, the edges of his shadow rippled, distorting, like a slick of oil shifting under light.

Her pulse slowed. She had seen this before. The moment before eruption. The breath before the curse takes shape.

But something else clawed at her chest — not fear. Memory. The laughter of the bullies turned to other laughter, younger, sharper. The voices outside blurred with voices from years long buried. Yuu’s altar at his funeral. Her mother’s slurred voice, heavy with drink and hate. Her father’s silence, heavier still. Kiyoko’s hissed insults, her younger brother’s eyes wide with disgust, or was it fear? Each memory was a nail driven in deep, one by one.

Machiko’s jaw tightened. Her breath came shallow. She wanted to look away — to turn cold again, become M, the shadow, the perfect tool. But the past had teeth, and it bit down hard.

Before she realised what she’d done, she had her hand on the bucket. The dirty water inside stank of dust and soap and metal. She lifted it, the weight of it biting at her wrist, and in a single smooth motion, she tipped it through the window.

The water fell in a gray arc, splashing over the boys below. A chorus of curses and yelps followed. The spell broke.

Machiko stepped back from the window, heart pounding, the sound like a hammer in her ribs. The moment she felt the rush of adrenaline fade, she clicked her tongue, sharp and bitter against her teeth. 

“Stupid.” Her annoyance wasn’t for the risk of exposure — it was for herself. For that brief, weak heartbeat when she’d let the ghosts drive her hand. For letting Machiko surface, even for an instant.

She gathered her things quickly, her movements precise, automatic. The mop back in the bucket. The rag folded. Her bag over her shoulder. The voices below grew louder, the boys shouting, scrambling, furious and confused, scanning the windows for their phantom assailant. But by the time they stormed into the building, Aya was gone — vanished like smoke.

Machiko stood on the school’s rooftop, the city stretched below her in long streaks of dusk and neon. She could see him, a small figure stumbling across the schoolyard, clutching his arm, running. Not away from danger, she realised, but away for it — for the safety of others, not himself. The energy around him quivered like a string pulled too tight, a curse barely held in check.

Machiko’s eyes narrowed behind the lazy mask of Aya’s face. The evening wind tugged at her hair and smelled faintly of rain.

“Interesting,” she murmured.

From here, she looked almost serene. Just a girl watching the sunset after class, but beneath the stillness was a storm. That act of weakness had cost her control. The next time, she told herself, she would not falter. She would watch, and she would not feel.

Yet as Yuta vanished into the twilight, that strange, buried ache stirred again. A sliver of herself she could neither name nor kill.

The next morning came gray and heavy, a thin mist hanging over the schoolyard like a veil. The bell rang, shrill and insistent, announcing the recess hour. The chatter of students rose and fell in waves through the corridors — laughter, footsteps, the clang of lockers and chairs. It was the sort of noise that might have sounded alive once, before her ears learned to sort it into patterns, into meaningless hums.

Machiko—Aya—sat at her desk and glanced sideways. Yuta had come to school after all. His face was a map of purple and yellow bruises, his hands clumsy with fresh bandages. He looked smaller than usual, his shoulders drawn inward, eyes sunken with sleeplessness. Whatever horrors had haunted his night, they still clung to him like cobwebs.

Aya’s gaze flickered away. She packed her coins, rose, and slipped out of the classroom with the soft precision of habit.

The hallways thinned as she walked, the noise of the school falling away behind her. The vending machines stood at the far end of the building, humming softly in their little corner of peace. The air here was cooler, quieter. No laughter. No boys loitering with cigarettes. Only the distant caw of a crow perched on the wire outside.

Aya slipped a coin into the slot, pressed the button, and waited for the dull clatter of the can dropping. Her mind was still elsewhere—on last night, on the sound of her heartbeat after she had thrown the bucket, on Geto’s imagined disapproval should he ever find out about her small slip up. The hiss of the vending machine seemed to mock her for it. 

“Careless”, she thought. “Weak.”

She sensed his presence before she heard his footsteps. Light, hesitant, almost apologetic. She turned her head slightly and there he was—Okkotsu Yuta, hovering at the edge of the courtyard like a ghost afraid to be seen.

When their eyes met, he froze. He looked as though he hadn’t meant to approach her at all, as though his body had betrayed him into motion.

“Yes?” she said, tilting her head, playing the part of the gentle, curious girl, Aya. “Can I help you, Okkotsu-san?”

He fumbled with his fingers, words catching in his throat. “Th-thank you… for yesterday.”

Aya blinked, feigning surprise. “Thank me? For what?”

He looked down, shuffling his feet. “F-for helping me. With the bullies… I-I saw what you did at the classroom window….”

Machiko’s pulse gave a small, betraying thud. The boy was sharper than he looked. She forced a nervous laugh, light and harmless. “Oh, that. Haha, no worries. But let’s, um… keep that between us, alright? I’d rather not become their next target.” She scratched her cheek, sheepish and awkward, every movement studied to perfection.

Inside, she was cursing herself. “Idiot”, she had interfered, and now the target had seen her.

Yuta nodded quickly, his face reddening. “R-right. I won’t tell anyone.”

“Good,” Aya said softly, already turning away. “Well then, I’ll see you in class.”

She made to leave, her heart steady, her mask in place—but his voice caught her again, quiet and trembling.

“Wh-why did you help me?”

Machiko froze mid-step.

The question hung in the air, light as dust motes in a beam of sun. “Why had she helped him?” The answer should have been easy. It was not her place to interfere. He was a variable, a target, nothing more. Yet her hands remembered another day, another frightened child, smaller than her, hugging herself to sleep. Her sister’s hateful eyes. Her mother’s sharp words. The shame that had soaked into her bones.

For a moment, she almost answered him as herself. 

Then, she remembered Geto’s voice — the soft, measured cruelty of it. “You are my shadow. Shadows have no names.”

Machiko straightened her back. Aya smiled. “You were in trouble,” she said gently, voice tinged with bashful kindness. “It didn’t feel right to just walk away. I’m not brave enough to face Dai and his friends head-on, so… that was the best I could do.”

He looked at her then — really looked at her — and she saw it in his eyes: recognition. That fragile, desperate light of someone who had finally been seen. The same light she had worn when Geto first extended his hand and promised her a home.

It made her stomach twist.

She turned away before it could fester further. “You know,” she added, half teasing, half true, “maybe if you stop being so scared of people, you’ll stop being picked on.”

And with that, Aya walked away, her back straight, her can of soda cold in her hand.

When she reached the corner of the hall, she let herself breathe again. Her fingers trembled slightly against the metal, the faintest quiver of humanity threatened to breakthrough the numbness she had built within her for years. She pressed the can to her lips, the taste metallic and bitter.

“For the mission,” she whispered, and swallowed it down.

Night had fallen heavy over Sendai, cloaking the city in a dim, rain-slicked quiet. The kind of night that blurred sound and shape, where every neon sign flickered like a tired heartbeat. In her small apartment, the one Geto had chosen for her, Machiko sat by the narrow window, her burner phone pressed against her ear. The faint hum of passing cars filtered through the glass. Below, the streets shone black and silver with rain.

She was still in her disguise — Aya’s dark wig still clinging damply to her scalp, Aya’s lenses tinting her eyes to black. The mask had not come off, even though the face beneath it ached to breathe.

The phone rang once. Twice. Then a click, soft as a blade drawn in the dark.

“How are things going, M?” Geto’s voice was smooth, low, too calm — the kind of calm that made Machiko’s stomach tighten.

She straightened instinctively, shoulders snapping into perfect posture though no one could see her. “It has been confirmed that Okkotsu Yuta has not… awakened,” she said carefully, her tone measured, factual. “Though he possesses the ability to see curses. Our earlier speculation about a curse haunting him seems accurate. Yesterday, there was an incident — he was attacked by a group of bullies. I was observing from a distance and… the cursed energy around him spiked. Whatever is bound to him was threatening to appear.”

For a moment, there was only the sound of breathing — not hers, but his. Measured. Thinking.

“Well,” Geto said at last, “did the curse show up?”

Machiko’s fingers twitched where they rested on her knee. She could feel the lie taking shape before she spoke it, small and poisonous. “No,” she said, her voice even, practiced. “The curse didn’t appear. The bullies left the scene before the situation could escalate.”

Half a truth, smoothed over like glass.

The other end went quiet again. Not the silence of disinterest — no, this was a silence that weighed. A silence that measured her words, her tone, her breath, her worth. Machiko felt her throat tighten. Sweat beaded at her hairline.

When Geto spoke again, it was soft — too soft. “Continue to observe him,” he said. “Find out what triggers the curse’s appearance.”

“Yes, Geto-sama.”

The line went dead. No farewell. No praise. No warmth.

Machiko sat there long after the call ended, the phone still in her hand, the dial tone echoing faintly in her ear. Only when the sound dissolved into static did she let out the breath she had been holding. Her shoulders sagged, her chest tight. The room around her seemed to contract — the ticking clock, the hum of the refrigerator, the faint dripping of a faucet somewhere — all of it pressing closer until the walls felt too small for her skin.

She had lied to him. This was the first lie she had told him ever since she was entrusted with Geto’s missions. She had lie to the one she owe her life to.

A sharp exhale escaped her lips. Half a sigh, half a growl. She rose from the chair, her movements deliberate, heavy with exhaustion, and crossed the narrow room to her bedside drawer. From within, she drew out a small silver box — dented at the corners, its lid scratched from a month of restless nights. Inside, the cigarettes lay in a neat row, lined like soldiers awaiting orders they already knew would kill them.

She slipped into a thin denim jacket and made her way up the creaking stairs to the rooftop. The night air met her with a chill kiss, smelling faintly of rain and rust. Above, the city sprawled like a dying beast. Lights flickering in tired rhythm, smoke curling from chimneys into the low, bruised clouds.

Machiko tapped a cigarette free, nestled it between her fingers, and flicked her lighter open. The flame sputtered weakly before catching, its glow reflected in her eyes — black from the contacts, yet glinting silver beneath, like something truer trying to break the surface.

The first drag burned her throat, sharp and grounding. She let the smoke spill from her lips, blue and spectral in the night air, coiling upward as if trying to escape her. Her reflection shimmered faintly in the glass pane by the stairwell door — Aya’s face stared back at her. Not Machiko’s. Not M’s. Just another mask over another wound.

The small, vicious ritual had grown into her vice—a bitter tether she clung to in the slow churn of her life. It had begun not as habit, but as a flicker of curiosity. She had found Manami once, perched in the shadowed corner of a rooftop after a mission, cigarette balanced between two elegant fingers, the ember glowing like a dying star. There had been something serene about her then, the way she drew in the smoke and released it in slow, steady ribbons, as if the act were less indulgence and more a kind of meditation. Machiko had watched her and wondered, almost childishly, if the same practice might bring her peace—if in the sharp taste of smoke there might be some stillness for her own turbulent mind.

It hadn’t.

She hated the stench—the acrid film it left on her clothes and skin. She hated the taste most of all, like the scorched dregs at the bottom of a coffee pot left to burn. And yet she kept at it. Because in the choking warmth of her hands around the cigarette, in the sting of smoke biting her tongue and clawing down her lungs, in the reek of chemicals curling out of her lips in a pale, ghostly plume, she could feel. It was a reminder, however ugly, that she was still alive inside her numbness.

She knew the cost. The health warnings were obvious, almost laughable to her now. But why should she care? She had been forged as her mentor’s blade, honed to cut and to be thrown away. On the field there was always a chance her life would end in an instant, swallowed in blood and curses. She was bound to a curse that was older than time itself, tormenting her out of entertainment. Cigarettes or no, she was living on borrowed time. Either way, she would die. This way, at least, she could hold the ember in her hands and call it hers.

Below her, she looked over the quiet small city of Sendai. She watched it for a time, her cigarette glowing ember-red between her fingers.

For a moment, she wondered what it might feel like — to sleep without fear, to speak without a script, to live without a mission. To be.

But the thought slipped away like smoke between her fingers. Shadows did not dream. Shadows served.

She took another slow drag, exhaled, and watched herself vanish into the plume.

Machiko reached for another cigarette, but froze mid-motion. A cold pulse brushed against her senses — thick, foul, familiar. Yuta’s curse energy.

Her spine straightened at once. It was coming closer, climbing the stairwell.

Quickly, she stubbed out the cigarette and tucked it into her pocket. The night wind bit at her face as she darted behind a row of air vents, her movements silent, practiced.

The rooftop door creaked open.

Yuta stepped into the pale moonlight. He moved as though underwater — slow, trembling, empty. His uniform was wrinkled, his collar stained with tears. His eyes were red and swollen, dark circles etched beneath them like bruises of the soul.

In his hand, a kitchen knife glinted dully.

Machiko’s pulse quickened. Even from her hiding place, she could feel it — the despair rolling off him, thick and heavy as tar. His shoulders sagged beneath an invisible weight, and the air around him warped faintly, trembling.

She knew what he meant to do. It was there in every line of his body — that silent surrender, that brittle calm before the fall.

She shifted, preparing to move, to break cover, to stop him before the he could claim himself. But before she could act, the air around Yuta cracked.

Curse energy burst from him like a broken dam. The pressure hit her chest hard, forcing her to brace against the metal vent to keep her footing.

“Yu…ta…”

The voice came from behind him — low, distorted, soaked in malice.

Machiko’s eyes widened.

From the darkness of his shadow, something rose. A figure towering and grotesque, draped in the shimmer of black curse energy. Its hair hung like a veil of night, its face twisting and reforming like oil on water before settling on a white mask with a grin that seemed to stretch wide. It stood behind the boy, its presence blotting out the faint light around him.

And yet, its voice trembled with something close to grief.

“Yuta…” it whispered again, a sound that made Machiko’s skin crawl and her heart tighten all at once.

She had seen curses before, hundreds of them, but this one felt different. There’s a distinct rot that came from the curse. Machiko steadied herself, every instinct screaming between her ribs.

She had found it. The curse.

“Yu…ta…”

The voice carried through the thin night air, soft yet deliberate, and before Yuta could react, the knife in his trembling hands was yanked away. It spun in a silent arc, clinking against the rooftop a few feet away, discarded like a trivial toy.

Yuta’s chest heaved, and his voice cracked as he whispered, “Pl-please, Rika… just let me go. Let me disappear…”

But the curse did not heed his plea. Its movements were slow, deliberate, almost tender, twisting the blade in its grip as if to remind him of its absolute power. Machiko stayed crouched in the shadows, a phantom observer, muscles taut, senses tuned. One misstep, one noise, and the wrong reaction could draw it to her.

“R-rika, please… let me go…” Yuta repeated, voice low, defeated.

The curse did not roar with hatred, nor did it lash with fury. Instead, it leaned closer, placing large, clawed hands onto Yuta’s cheeks with a disturbingly tender precision, the movement almost intimate, like a lover soothing a lover. “Yu…ta… I love… you…”

The words froze in the night, not venomous, not angry, but rotten in their devotion. Machiko’s eyes narrowed beneath her mask. This curse was no simple blight of malice or fear. It was love, twisted and rotting, unyielding and suffocating, born not of hatred but of obsession.

Yuta remained on his knees, shoulders shaking, tears streaking down his face as he surrendered to the inevitability of the curse’s grip. His life had become a loop of desperation and restraint, the weight of a power he could neither wield nor escape pressing down on him. Machiko catalogued every detail—the tilt of his head, the slump of his shoulders, the tremor in his hands. She learned from this, as she always did.

The curse’s hands slid over his head, lingering like a lover’s caress, and slowly, almost reluctantly, it receded into the night, leaving Yuta kneeling on the cold rooftop, trembling and haunted. He rose, each movement heavy with exhaustion, each step carrying the weight of battles unseen. He passed the railing, the rooftop door swinging closed behind him with a metallic thud that echoed in the night.

Machiko waited. A heartbeat. Two. The silence stretched, giving her time to emerge from the shadows. She approached the railing, eyes scanning the cityscape below, processing everything she had just witnessed.

Trigger, Machiko noted. Extreme distress. Imminent danger. The curse responded to it all, manifesting only when Yuta’s body and mind were pushed past their breaking point. A pattern, a key.

She pulled a cigarette from the pocket of her jacket, crumpled and unlit, holding it between fingers that had long since forgotten what it was like to be ordinary. She examined it briefly, lips twitching with mild disappointment. Today had yielded no use, no advantage, no actionable detail beyond the curse’s nature. With a sharp exhale, she tossed it over the edge, watching it tumble and disappear into the darkness below.

Her eyes returned to the empty rooftop, to the twisted knife that the curse had thrown away. Machiko’s jaw tightened beneath the mask. Patience. Observation. Calculation. Today, the board had shifted slightly. Tomorrow, perhaps, she would play her hand.

For now, she should investigate who this curse is, “Rika”, is what Yuta had referred it as. She vanished into the shadows again, silent as ever.

The bell cracked through the halls like a whip and the tide of students swelled. Aya moved with the river—along with it, through it, part of its current and yet not of it. She carried her tray with the careful slowness of someone who knew the meaning of attention: two sandwiches wrapped neat, a small rectangle of apple juice sweating at the corners. Around her, bodies jostled and laughter rose and fell; the air smelled of hot bread and the iron tang of a thousand nerves. She kept her face practiced, bland, the expression of a girl who had rehearsed blandness until it fit like a second skin.

At the foot of the stairwell they loitered—Dai and his pack, an assembly of adolescent thugs who dressed like trouble and believed themselves kings. Their leader had the lazy swagger common to boys who had learned to make noise and to take what they wanted. His tie hung more suggestive than a tie needs to; his jacket rode his shoulders as if already prepared to be shrugged off in a fight. Around him clustered the usual satellites—one with cheerless, easy laughter, another with an ugly smirk and a talent for small cruelties. They were boys of muscle and habit, not of wit; they thought menace could be bought on impulse and loyalty coaxed with bravado.

“Fuck,” Dai said, voice loud as it needed to be to carry in such a place. “Chiyo’s been bitching me to bring her out tonight, but I’m broke.”

A laugh. A scrape of a chair. The world continued, noisily indifferent.

“Just steal from Yuta, man,” said one of the lackeys, a small man with too much swagger for his size, the type who confuses shouting for strength.

“Yeah,” another agreed, lazy as a yes. “Like we always do.”

The leader’s eye sharpened. “We didn’t get the chance that day because someone fucked us up. I’m pissed as hell. Next time I see that fucker, I’ll—” He slapped the rail for emphasis, the sound bright and stupid in the stairwell. “I’ll mess him up.”

Machiko almost laughed at Dai’s bravado. Perhaps his stupidity. Bold of him to assume it was a guy. Stupid of him to think he could beat her up. If he truly did go up against her, he would be lying on the floor dead before he can even open his mouth to berate her. They were pathetic boys playing the role of big, scary men. Little did they know, they are actually at the bottom of the food chain.

She was on the stairs, high enough to pass without being drawn into the conversation and low enough to hear everything. She kept her head lowered in an easy, practiced tilt, lips touching the straw of the apple juice as if she were only a child enjoying a sweet. The banister supported her elbow; the cold box of juice in her hand, its sugar scent cloying and wrong on a tongue that preferred coffee. She drank in the words as a man drinks in weather—because weather meant movement and movement meant opportunity.

“Let’s beat him up for money after school today,” the smallest of them suggested. He said it as if it were a draft plan for a weekend. Others agreed with a noisy, cruel chorus. 

The thought of this was like bait dangling; it should have disgusted her—weak boys preying on a frail boy in the corner—but disgust had been a teacher long ago. Now it was simply raw material. A weapon is forged from what the smith has at hand. This was her opportunity to neutralise the target and steal the curse.

She swallowed the rest of her juice and let the box clatter into the bin with the casual clumsiness of a girl who had never been taught to be careful. The sound was ordinary. The boys’ laughter followed her, a garland of noise that would unloose itself into the patterns of the day. She walked away from the scene.

Her mind, however, had already spun the possibilities. Yesterday’s rooftop had taught her the nature of the thing that clung to Yuta: not malice but a horrible, suffocating tenderness. Rika, the name that had rolled off the curse’s lips like a prayer, was rooted in something that was not only power but possessive, ravenous devotion. Machiko had watched the curse caress Yuta’s cheek as one might stroke a beloved’s hair; she had seen the knife plucked, toyed with, thrown aside. It was not the hunger of spite; it was the hunger of love turned rot-twisted. Where love becomes possession, there is no liberation. Only chains.

Her research lay in the back of head like an endless library, organised and easy for retrieval. A stack of paper lies on the table detailing her current investigations.

Orimoto Rika. The headlines had been small, local things at first—a mother who died of a mysterious cause, a missing father, then a car accident. Rika had been eleven years old when the world folded under her. The car that had killed her had been brutal; the reports tossed bones of the story in small prints across the internet. A careless driver had not seen the child rushing across the road, her head crushed into itself and local townspeople panicked at the scene. The news had detailed that the girl was with Okkotsu Yuta before it happened. He was present at the scene. He had been small and mute, terrified at the incident that unfolded in front of him. 

It was a paper trail and a wound. “How does a little girl morphed into that terrifying curse?”, Machiko wondered. Love had turned Rika into a beast and sealed her hunger for devotion. It had not grown from fear or spite, it had been nourished on devotion, on obsession, on a refusal to let go.

If the curse answered to the extremes of Yuta’s distress, then perhaps that was the key for Machiko to retrieve the curse for her mentor. An assault, a shout, a bloodied face on the linoleum floor—they were all triggers for Rika to appear. These boys would think themselves as men, but they would not know the monsters of this world.

These men would be her bait. Throughout the years under Geto’s guidance, Machiko knew that the smartest move was to observe how the curse would react in the face of its master’s danger. She would let these boys come close to her target, let them speak in their animal cadences in the wrong place—far from witnesses, an empty classroom where the air pooled and sound hollow, a veil in the school ground so the public would not notice the unnatural. Watch the target. See whether the presence materialized was the same as yesterday—tender, tormenting, possessive—or different. 

If the pattern held, Geto would like to know. If the pattern did not, Geto would also want to know. And if the boys’ threat were the lever Geto had asked her to find—if it could pull Rika into the open—then there would be no better bait for a hunter to place before a thing that eats the living.

If the boys attacked, Machiko would not rush into the open. That would be stupidity. She would not be some wild thing to stomp in and snatch the curse like a child seizes a toy. She had learned too well the patience of predators. Watch first, measure the danger, and then strike when the opportunity is right. She would be the shadow at the edge of the fray—close enough to see the pattern, far enough to be unseen. 

She let the thought settle like a stone in the belly of her. Below her practiced face the gears clicked and arranged themselves. Dai meant to make money by picking on a fragile boy; he would instead provoke the kind of event that could be used by taller hands. She felt a small, dry humor at the thought. The world was full of fools who sharpened other men’s knives for them.

Machiko—Aya—approached the class monitor with a practiced frailty, her voice thin as paper. “Excuse me,” she murmured, one hand brushing her brow as though to steady herself. “I think I’m coming down with something. Could you let Daichi-sensei know I’m going to the infirmary?”

The boy blinked at her, taken off guard by the sudden plea, then gave a small nod. “Sure. Get well soon.”

Aya rewarded him with a wan, grateful smile—the kind of smile that vanished as quickly as it appeared. “Thank you.” Her tone was quiet, shy, exactly what was expected of the timid transfer student she was pretending to be.

She turned away, her steps slow and measured as she made her way down the hall. The school corridors were alive with the noise of shifting chairs, closing books, the steady rush of students hurrying back to their classrooms before the bell. Aya moved against that tide like a ghost slipping through a crowd, her shoulders hunched, her head slightly bowed, every motion deliberate.

At the stairwell she veered left, breaking from the path to the infirmary without a flicker of hesitation. The chatter of the students faded behind her, swallowed by the echo of her own footfalls on the steps. One more turn, one more hallway, and she would be clear.

By the time she reached the back exit, the mask of Aya was already fraying at its edges. Her posture straightened, her gaze sharpened, and her steps lost their softness. The timid girl had begun to vanish.

Machiko flexed her fingers as she crossed the threshold into the outside air. The sky was pale and overcast, heavy with the weight of an afternoon storm. She could feel the shift inside her like a blade being drawn from its sheath.

Aya had played her part. Now M would take the stage.

And Aya, for a while, would cease to exist.

Chapter Text

Chapter 11: M’s Folly

***A year before the Night Parade of 100 Demons***

Year: 2016

Evening draped itself over Sendai like a dying ember, the horizon bruised with the fading hues of sunset. The school stood hollow and vast, its halls stripped of laughter, its classrooms emptied in the exodus of students hungry for their weekend freedom. The echo of departing footsteps had long since faded, leaving behind only silence—the kind that felt almost sacred, almost wrong.

Outside the main building, a figure lingered in the deepening dusk. Machiko no longer. Aya was gone. What stood there now was M—the shadow her mentor had forged in fire and blood. The hood of her cloak was drawn low, masking the gleam of her silver eyes and the sharp line of her jaw. Beneath it, her face was hidden by the sleek, black mask Geto had given her. The faintest breath of wind stirred the hem of her uniform as she stood motionless, listening to the quiet hum of the world.

And then she felt it—like a pulse through water. Foul, dense, and heavy, the curse energy radiated from the upper floors of the school. Familiar. Chaotic. Her target. Yuta Okkotsu.
But he wasn’t alone. There were other presences flickering faintly beside his—a handful of weak, human signatures trembling with the stupidity of cruelty. The bullies. The same ones who had spoken his name with mockery that afternoon.

M’s hands slipped into the folds of her cloak as she exhaled. The motion was fluid, graceful, practiced. She began to murmur the words that would separate this place from the rest of the world—an incantation etched into her bones since childhood, as natural to her as drawing breath.

“Emerge from the darkness,

Blacker than darkness.

Purify that which is impure.”

The air shivered. Her voice, low and steady, wove through the empty schoolyard like smoke curling through the cracks of stone. The world seemed to still. Shadows deepened, stretching long and thin, as if recoiling from her words.

Then the veil began to take form—colorless at first, barely visible, a distortion in the air like heat rising from asphalt. It spread outward from her feet, expanding, enveloping the school in its reach. Windows darkened one by one, as though night itself had crept inside. The last glimmers of sunlight vanished, swallowed by a muted twilight that had no source and no mercy.

The building was no longer part of the world beyond. From the outside, to ordinary eyes, nothing had changed—the school remained a quiet structure in the evening light, locked and still. But within the veil, the air grew heavy, thick with curse energy. The fluorescent lights flickered, dimmed, and then surrendered to the dark. The corridors seemed to twist upon themselves, every corner holding its breath.

M stood in the silence, feeling the weight of the barrier settle into place. She could sense its edges, the way a spider feels the tremor of its web. It was flawless. No sound, no light, no scent of what would happen here would escape.

Her gloved fingers brushed the tanto at her hip—a ritual, not necessity. Then she turned toward the door, her steps light, deliberate. The soles of her shoes made no sound upon the ground. She slipped into the building as though she had always belonged to its shadows.

The smell of chalk dust and disinfectant still clung faintly to the air. The faint hum of curse energy guided her, a poisonous thread leading her to the heart of the coming violence.

Above her, somewhere in the darkened halls, boys were laughing. She could hear the edge of it—a cruel, thin sound that echoed strangely within the veil. The kind of laughter born from the arrogance of the ignorant.

M’s pace did not quicken, but her hand drifted once more toward the blade beneath her cloak. Her breath came steady, calm, almost reverent.

The veil had risen.

The hunt had begun.

They closed like a net. Boys in uniform, voices low and coarse, a pack who had learned how to turn boldness into currency. The last bell had bled away and the room emptied as if the sound itself were a summons; desks scraped, chairs pushed back and then the river of students flowed away, leaving only the current of menace gathered in the center. No one stayed. No one dared. The rest of the class had folded around the trouble as if it were a rumor best avoided.

Yuta stood at his desk as if the desk itself were a wall he could lean against. His shoulders were bowed, his hands white at the knuckles where they gripped the edge of the wood. The air about him trembled with the small animal terror of a thing that knows it is trapped; his breaths came sharp and quick, as if he might run or vanish at any moment. He glanced toward Aya’s chair—hope, small and pleading—but the seat was empty. Aya had left at recess and had not returned. He was alone.

“Pl-please, leave me alone… I don’t want to hurt you,” he begged, the words thin and small in the hush that had settled.

Dai answered with laughter, a coarse sound that scraped the plaster. He loomed over Yuta, hand heavy on the boy’s shoulder in a mockery of companionship. “Huh? Hurt me?” he said, voice thick with contempt. “What could you do, freak? You’re pathetic.” Around him the others tittered, cruel teeth showing in sudden, amateur smiles. They reached for cheap theatrics—pushing, prodding, the dull threat of knuckles and fists—meant to mark territory rather than to maim.

“Just hand over your money,” one of them sneered. “We’ll be nice about it.”

“But—” Yuta stammered, the syllable a leaf in a storm.

A fist slammed into the plaster beside his head, making the paint shiver and dust fall like gray rain. The crack was a promise. Dai’s face went hard. “Give us what you’ve got, or I’ll teach you how it feels to bleed on your own floor.”

Something in Yuta’s posture changed then. Not courage—this was not courage—but a terrible, resigned panic. His fingers trembled; he slammed them to his desk as if to pin himself down. The world narrowed to the scrape of shoes on linoleum and the ragged edge of the breath in his lungs.

He felt it—a cold like riverwater coiling around his ribs, a pressure at the base of the throat. He did not want this. He did not want what it would mean to ask the thing that shadowed his life for its favor. Still, with a voice small as a cracked bell he called to it. “Ple-please, Rika… don’t do it.”

The plea had the wrong scent for mercy.

There was no thunder, no cinematic roar. The room was simply there and then not. Behind Dai, from the blank wall where a poster of school rules hung, something moved as if the air itself had taken on a shape. It uncoiled—first a shift in shadow, then a body of crooked geometry coming into being like frost forming on black glass. Hands—too large, too jointed—came first, resting for an instant on nothing before finding a shoulder, a throat, a hairline. The thing that called itself Rika stepped into the classroom with a tenderness so intimate it was monstrous.

It did not strike like a beast. It touched.

The first contact was an obscene mimicry of affection: a palm cupped a boy’s face, fingers splayed delicate as if to brush away a tear. The sound that followed was not a roar so much as a splintering of everything ordinary—desks groaned; the windows rattled; the light dimmed as if a shadow had swallowed some of the sun. Screams began as scattered pips—sharp, human notes—but were swallowed by the movement.

Rika moved like water finding a throat. Her claws—if claws they could be called—found flesh where it was softest: knuckles, the soft undersides of wrists, the hinge of an elbow. There was no deliberation in the tearing, no lust for spectacle. It was neat, efficient, as if she were pruning a sick vine so that only the beloved would remain. Boys who a moment before had been loud and insolent were made small by force of it; they folded on themselves with the quickness of men who discover knife edges where none had been expected. Blood arced in brief, obscene bows. The room tasted of metal and the bright, keen scent of iron.

Dai tried to move, to swing, to reach; a hand—too soft, too constricting—clamped about his throat like a ribbon and the sound he made was a jagged thing halfway between surprise and apology. One by one they stilled. Panic metastasized into choking confusion. The furniture, the posters, the stale air bore witness.

Yuta never moved to strike, though the space had been there—the blade had been in his hand only the night before, a promise meant to end the thing by ending him. He stood as if the world after that single touch had changed all the weights and measures he had learned. Tears ran down his face, silent tracks that could have been rain. The creature that had been the child’s love hovered like a guardian gone mad, smoothing hair, tilting a face to its own, whispering something that might once have been a lullaby. In its closeness there was cruelty and mercy braided into one—an impossible tenderness as lethal as any blade.

The door gave way with a slow groan, the kind that bent sound before it broke.
Every head turned. Yuta’s mouth opened—he meant to shout, to warn—but the word died there, strangled by what stood in the doorway.

The figure was small for the dread it carried: all black from throat to boot, a hood drawn close, a mask like polished obsidian reflecting only the carnage within. It had no face, no name. Only the glint of its claws, curved and waiting.

Rika turned, her head canting in that unnatural way, as though the sinews that held it together had forgotten what it meant to be human. The curse’s voice came as a low, rumbling moan. Then she lunged.

The air cracked.

She moved faster than thunder, a smear of shadow and teeth, claws tearing the space between one heartbeat and the next. But the masked figure was gone before the blow could land—gone like breath in winter. The claws met the blackboard instead; chalk exploded in a white bloom, the board split in two, shards of slate scattering like broken bone.

M reappeared beside her, motion like silk on the edge of a blade. Her strike came quick—three, four, five slashes across the curse’s side. The claws of her gloves carved arcs of cursed light that hummed through the dim air, each movement precise, almost surgical. Where she struck, thin grey lines spread like ink in water—the threads of her cursed technique stitching into the curse’s flesh, seeking the seams of its soul.

The thing that was Rika shrieked. The sound was the death of glass. She spun with inhuman speed, and her claws came up, wild, rending through desks and air alike. M slipped beneath the swing, boots sliding across the linoleum, but even her grace could not outrun the force behind it. A single claw caught her shoulder—just a graze, but enough to send a tremor of pain down her arm.

She countered, low and swift. Her threads flared to life, dozens of them, gleaming like a spider’s web in moonlight. They darted out from her fingertips, catching on Rika’s form, binding for a breath’s time before the curse flexed and the bindings snapped. The shockwave tore through the classroom. Desks splintered. Glass blew out in a silver rain.

M hit the far wall, boots skidding for purchase. Rika was already there, closing the distance, hand like a falling guillotine.

“Move,” M hissed to herself.

She ducked, rolled, came up beneath the strike and drove her clawed glove up into the curse’s chest. The threads embedded deeper this time, anchoring, tightening. For an instant she felt it—the pulse of the curse’s soul, foul and old, slick as oil under her touch. It pulsed once, twice—then ruptured outward.

The explosion hurled her through the window.

She broke through glass and daylight together, her body spinning, twisting in the air. Far below, the schoolyard swam up to meet her. She hit the ground in a crouch, knees bending with the impact, boots cutting twin furrows into the dirt.

Above her, Rika’s howl shook the walls.

M rose. Her mask glinted in the afternoon light, a dark mirror reflecting the ghost that came screaming from the shattered window. She reached behind her back and drew her twin tantos—blades short, silver, humming faintly with the same cursed energy that laced her veins.

“Fine,” she huffed.

Rika dropped like a meteor. She landed hard enough to crack the pavement, then surged forward, a blur of black and crimson.

The first clash came with a sound like splitting stone. M parried a claw strike with both blades crossed, sparks flying where cursed energy met cursed flesh. The recoil forced her back, boots skidding. She pivoted, slicing upward, one tanto catching Rika’s arm and carving through the air, the other stabbing for the creature’s abdomen. The curse batted her aside with contemptuous strength; the blow flung her against a lamppost that bent under the force.

Yuta had followed to the window above, pale and shaking, his voice hoarse. “Rika, stop! Please—stop!”

But his words had no weight here. The curse was beyond his voice now—untethered, rabid, yet still desperate to protect him.

Rika lunged again, and M met her halfway. Blades and claws clashed, cursed light bursting like lightning in the narrow courtyard. M’s threads flared outward again—lines of violet dancing between her blades, anchoring to the ground, the walls, the curse itself. With a twist of her wrist, she pulled.

The lines tightened—biting into Rika’s form, slicing the air with the sound of drawn wire. For an instant, she had it bound. The curse screamed, thrashing, pulling against her snare, every motion cracking stone, warping metal. M’s arms trembled under the strain.

“Stay down!” she hissed through clenched teeth.

But Rika was no ordinary curse.

The creature ripped free with a convulsive shudder, and the backlash flung M back a dozen paces, her mask cracking down the side. Blood trickled from beneath it, dark against her collar. She landed hard, knees digging into gravel, breath sharp and ragged.

Rika reared above her, monstrous and magnificent, her face contorted with both love and wrath.

Machiko’s hand found the hilts of her tantos once more, crossing them before her chest. Threads spiraled up her arms, coiling, alive, waiting for her command.

And Rika charged.

The blades sang, cursed light flaring in the night’s first shadows as steel met nightmare.

Sparks of grey light flared like dying stars each time claw met steel. The sound was jagged, a shriek of metal and something older—soul against soul. The rhythm of battle became its own cruel heartbeat: dodge, bind, attack, parry… again.

Rika pressed like a storm unending. Her movements were grotesque and fluid all at once—arms that bent too far, joints that folded where no joint should be. Her claws carved bright arcs through the gloom, each swing heavy with the hatred of something that had once known love.

M matched her step for step, body coiled tight, breath shallow under the mask. Every movement was a calculation measured in inches and blood. Her tantos flashed silver in the broken moonlight, cutting through the dust and wind as she countered with slashes quick enough to carve the air itself. Cursed threads leapt from her fingertips, luminous and trembling, weaving snares around Rika’s limbs, neck, and spine.

For a heartbeat, the bindings held. The threads dug into the curse’s violet aura, sizzling where her technique bit through that tar-like energy. Rika screamed—no, howled—a sound that rattled glass and bones alike. M twisted her wrist, threads tightening, pulling. She felt the resistance like muscle under her fingers, the cursed soul quivering against her pull.

Then, with a sound like silk tearing, Rika broke free.

The backlash came like a whip. The recoil sent pain crackling up M’s arms, her fingers spasming inside the gloves. She barely had time to raise her blades before Rika was upon her again—a blur of black limbs and purple light.

M ducked, pivoted, rolled to the side as claws raked the earth where her head had been. Dirt exploded upward. She countered low, her right tanto cutting through Rika’s thigh in a crescent arc, cursed energy hissing on impact. Black ichor spilled out, steaming where it hit the ground.

Rika didn’t flinch.

Her other arm came sweeping down, a blow like a falling tree. M blocked with both blades crossed, the impact ringing up her bones. The force drove her backward, boots carving trenches in the dirt. Her breath hitched, shoulders trembling under the pressure.

She disengaged, leaping back, threads flaring once more—ten, twenty, thirty of them, weaving like a living net. They lashed out, embedding into Rika’s body, wrapping tight around her arms, torso, neck. M gritted her teeth, every muscle burning as she pulled. The air around her shimmered with cursed light, veins of violet and black crawling up her arms like ink under skin.

“Stay—down!” she hissed.

The curse convulsed, light spilling from the wounds like oil set aflame. For a heartbeat, Rika faltered—pinned, trembling.

Then she screamed again, and the world split open.

The bindings snapped one by one, exploding in bursts of cursed smoke. The recoil slammed into M like a hammer. Her knees buckled. Blood spattered inside her mask. Her fingers twitched, useless, the nerves gone raw from overuse. She could feel her cursed energy faltering, her control slipping, her gloves—once alive with power—flickering dim.

Still, she moved. Always forward.

She lunged, both tantos raised, crossing in a scissor strike aimed for Rika’s chest. The blades bit deep—but not deep enough. The curse caught her wrists in one clawed hand, squeezing. The bones creaked. Sparks flew between them, grey and purple light colliding, devouring the space around them.

M’s teeth bared beneath her mask. Rika was no ordinary curse. Not the usual first graded curses she has been capturing for Geto. No, this was a Special Grade Curse. A small mistake that she has not anticipated.

Rika leaned close, the scent of rot and iron thick in the air. The curse’s face—half beautiful, half nightmare—hovered inches from hers. “Yu…ta…” it murmured again, as if calling to a ghost.

M twisted, freeing one arm, and slashed upward, catching Rika across the jaw. The cut only made the curse angrier. It hurled her backward, body slamming into a cracked wall. The shock burst through her spine, stars flooding her vision.

She coughed blood into her mask, wiped it away with the back of her hand, and stood. Barely. Her body trembled, her fingers numb.

Pain sang through her body like a struck bell, sharp and unrelenting, but M had long ago learned to move through agony as one wades through water. Pain was familiar. Manageable. It was the world’s reminder that she still had a body to burn.

She tightened her grip on the tantos, breath hissing through her teeth beneath the mask. Her shoulders squared, stance firming against the quaking floor. Across from her, Rika crouched low, feral and trembling, claws carving long grooves into the soil. The curse’s mouth opened in a guttural snarl that seemed to shake the air itself.

M braced. Waited.

Then the creature lunged, a blur of shadow and violet light.

M met her charge head-on. She twisted to the side at the last moment, ducking beneath a sweeping claw that would’ve torn her in half. Her hands shot out, fingers twitching in an intricate motion—and the threads sprang forth, silver streaks in the dim light. They cut through the dust and embedded into the curse’s form, sinking deep into that oily, rotting essence that pulsed beneath Rika’s skin like black tar.

Rika howled—a sound that rattled bone, a scream not of pain but of violation.

Machiko pulled. Hard.

The ground trembled under the force. Rika’s body was wrenched sideways, slammed into the floor with such violence the ground caved beneath her weight. A cloud of dust erupted, swallowing her shape in a choking haze. The walls shook; a light overhead flickered and died.

M didn’t stop. She moved with a predator’s precision, her hands weaving in complex, rapid gestures. More threads spun from her cursed energy, slicing through the air in glimmering arcs. Each one pierced the cloud of dust and found its mark—burrowing deep into the curse’s soul, into the seams and fractures where her energy bled through.

The bindings snapped into place, glowing faintly where they bit into cursed flesh.

“Fucking hell,” M whispered, voice low and deadly.

Rika convulsed, body jerking against the restraints. Her violet aura flared like wildfire, licking at the edges of the bindings, but M forced more energy into the threads. Her cursed energy surged through them—grey lights running through the silver wires—reinforcing the binds until the very air hummed with strain.

For the first time, the curse was still.

The purple glow of her soul dimmed, swallowed entirely by the spider’s web of silver threads pinning her to the ground. The creature’s shrieks turned guttural, half-choked, rage simmering just beneath the bindings.

M didn’t waste the moment. She could feel the threads trembling with strain; the bindings would not last long.

She turned sharply toward Yuta.

The boy was frozen near the doorway, wide-eyed and trembling, his lips moving in soundless panic. He looked so small in the ruined classroom, framed by the flickering fluorescent light—a child still, clutching at the edges of horror he could barely understand.

M’s eyes—cold, silver—fixed on him. The source. The master.

Her fingers twitched again. A flick of her wrist, and three threads shot forward like spears. They embedded into the wall beside him with a solid thunk. Yuta yelped, stumbling backward. His breath came fast, fogging the air.

Before he could move, the threads went taut.

M pulled.

Her body lifted from the ground, rising like a shadow uncoiling. The threads gleamed under the pale light, a makeshift grappling line that carried her across the debris-strewn floor. Her silhouette cut through the dust and ruin—small, quick, merciless.

Her clawed hand drew back, poised to strike, fingertips sharpened to a killing point.

Yuta’s eyes widened, fear and confusion warring in them.

She aimed straight for his chest.

The mask reflected his face back at him—a pale, broken boy on the edge of two worlds.

And for a heartbeat, before the strike could land, something twisted deep within Machiko—something old, buried, human.

But hesitation was a luxury weapons did not afford.

Her body descended, claws cutting through the air like falling blades—

Snap!

The sound tore through the air like a whip crack. The web unraveled. Threads snapped and curled into nothingness as if devoured by an unseen flame.

Rika was free.

In a blink, the curse vanished from where it had been pinned. The air itself seemed to shudder at her speed. A heartbeat later she was behind M—so close her breath, heavy and wet with rage, brushed the back of Machiko’s neck.

Then came the blow.

A clawed hand swung with the weight of a landslide. It struck her side and the world went white. M felt herself fly—bones bending, air punched from her lungs—and then impact.

She hit the wall hard enough to make it scream. The plaster burst outward in a bloom of dust and fractured brick. Her back crunched against the stone, her body folding into itself before gravity claimed her. She slid to the floor, the taste of iron flooding her mouth.

Pain.

Everywhere.

Her ribs felt like shattered glass grinding beneath her skin. Something sharp pressed into her lungs each time she breathed. Her vision swam, the edges dimming, pulsing.

Before she could rise, before she could summon even a whisper of defiance, a great hand—cold and rough as carved obsidian—pressed her against the wall. The claws dug into her armor, through it, through her skin, until she could feel her heartbeat echoing against them.

“Yu… ta…”

The name rolled from the curse’s throat like a broken melody.

M looked up. Through the cracked glass of her mask, her grey eyes met the creature’s face. There was no hatred there—only longing. Twisted, terrible, consuming love.

She should have been terrified.

Instead, she felt fury.

She would not die here. Not after everything. Not after all the blood she’d spilled, the names she’d erased, the sins she’d borne in silence. She had come too far, sunk too deep. Failure was death—but not this kind of death.

She heard Musubari’s whisper again, curling through her mind like smoke. “Use it… the Harvest Moon…”

Her fingers twitched. The temptation clawed at her ribs, the familiar promise of overwhelming power. But she bit it back, teeth gritted against the phantom voice. No. Not yet.

Her cursed energy flickered—thin, exhausted, but alive. She forced it into motion.

Threads rose from the floor like serpents stirred from sleep, faintly luminous against the ruin of the classroom. They circled Rika in widening loops, shimmering with a weak, sickly silver light. M’s hands trembled as she traced the sigils in the air, each motion leaving behind a faint burn of energy that pulsed with her heartbeat.

Rika’s claws dug deeper. M gasped, blood spilling from her lips. But she kept weaving her threads into the seams of Rika’s soul.

Then, with a flick of her wrist, the circle sealed.

The threads lashed inward, embedding deep into the seams of Rika’s soul. It was pulled taut to the ground. For a heartbeat, everything stilled. The curse’s eyes widened—shocked, betrayed—and then her scream tore through the night. It was a sound that made glass tremble, a sound that carried grief and fury in equal measure.

Her limbs convulsed, her body jerking as if struck by lightning. M poured the last of her cursed energy into the weave, forcing the paralysis, forcing stillness upon something that should never be still.

And it worked.

Rika fell. The impact cracked the tiles, a shockwave rippling through the floor. The curse lay twitching, pinned once more by silver threads that hissed and burned against her flesh.

M staggered, panting, every muscle shaking. Her vision blurred at the edges. She could feel her body failing—cursed energy flickering out like a dying candle.

But the path was clear now. She could end it. She could finish Yuta and claim the curse for Geto.

She turned toward the boy, lifting a trembling hand.

Then she froze.

Something prickled at the edge of her senses—faint, but undeniable. Several signatures of cursed energy, strong, disciplined, fast approaching. They were closing in on the veil.

Jujutsu Sorcerers.

M’s blood ran cold.

Geto’s words echoed in her head like a commandment carved in stone:
If a sorcerer intervenes—fight or run. If you can’t fight, run. Don’t get captured. Ever.

He had warned her that if she gets captured, it would be a fate worse than death. They would find out who M is. Who Takahara Machiko is. They would interrogate Machiko of Geto’s grand scheme if they ever get a hold of her. Worst, they might force her to go against her found family. 

Her choice was already made.

With a final glance at the curse trembling on the floor and the boy clutching himself in horror, M dispelled her bindings. The threads dissolved into ash and smoke.

Then she ran.

Through the shattered window, through the bleeding dark of the night. Her body screamed with every motion, every breath, but she kept moving. Her black form darted across rooftops and alleys, silent as shadow, the city’s lights flickering beneath her.

When she finally stopped, it was in a narrow alleyway reeking of rain and refuse. Her lungs burned. Her blood left small, dark blossoms on the ground where she knelt.

She pressed a gloved hand to her side—warmth, sticky and spreading—and stared at the faint glow of the shattered veil in the distance.

She’d failed.

The curse still lived. The boy still breathed.

And Geto would know.

For a long while, M said nothing. She simply knelt there, bathed in the distant siren glow, listening to the sound of her own ragged breath and the whisper of Musubari curling around her mind like smoke.

“Next time,” it murmured. “Next time, don’t hold back.”

Machiko returned to the shrine before dawn. The road behind her still smelled of ash.

Whatever had belonged to Aya was gone — burned to nothing in a rusted barrel behind the trainyard. The smoke had clung to her coat, oily and sour, as she stood watching the last of the girl she had pretended to be turn into gray ribbons that coiled upward into the sky. 

The small apartment in Sendai had been wiped clean: the drawers emptied, the floor scrubbed, the windows washed off her reflection. The smell of disinfectant and hydrogen hypochlorite filled the whole apartment. Not a hair left, not a print. Aya’s toothbrush had been the last thing to go, snapped in two before it met the fire.

By the time Machiko reached the temple grounds, there was no Aya left in her at all. Only M — Geto’s shadow, Geto’s blade, Geto’s protégé.

The shrine loomed in the distance, dark and silent, its paper lanterns pale ghosts in the morning mist. She passed beneath the archway and felt the familiar chill settle into her bones. Inside, the air smelled of sandalwood and iron — incense and blood. She moved through the corridors with her head bowed low, boots whispering over the tatami mats, until she reached the great hall.

Geto waited there.

He sat as though carved from the same black wood as his chair, back straight, one hand resting lightly against his chin. The candles around him threw trembling halos of light, but his face stayed in shadow. Behind him, his followers stood silent — a wall of loyalty, or fear, or both.

Machiko knelt on the floor before him. Her head dipped, her hands rested on her thighs, and her mask reflected the faint glow of the room.

“I failed, Geto-sama,” she said softly. “I could not retrieve the curse.”

The words fell like stones into a still pond.

Geto said nothing. He watched her for a long moment, his eyes unreadable, his silence cutting sharper than any reprimand. Then his voice came — smooth, measured, the calm of a sea before the storm.

“I’m disappointed in you, M.”

It wasn’t shouted. It didn’t have to be. The disappointment in his tone was colder than anger could ever be.

“I sent you on that mission because I trusted you,” he continued. “Because I believed you were competent. And you come back empty-handed.”

Each word seemed to strip a layer of skin from her. Machiko stayed silent. The instinct to defend herself rose and died in the same breath. There was no defense worth offering. Only silence, and shame.

“Everyone leave,” Geto said.

His voice was quiet, but it carried like thunder. His followers bowed and retreated at once, slipping through the paper doors without a sound. The last one to leave slid the door shut behind him with a soft click. The silence that followed was suffocating.

“Remove your mask, Machiko.”

It was the first time she had heard him speak her name in months — maybe years. The sound of it made her chest tighten. Once, it had been a kindness. Now, it was a knife. Slowly, she raised her hands and unfastened the mask. The cold air of the hall bit against her skin.

Geto stepped closer. His robes whispered against the floorboards as he came to stand before her.

He placed a hand beneath her chin, tilting her head upward. His touch was light — too light. The way one might touch something fragile, or dirty. His thumb traced along the bruised edge of her jaw.

“Tch,” he tutted softly. “Looks like the curse did a number on you, kiddo.”

The words almost sounded fond, but the look in his eyes was anything but. His gaze dragged over her swollen eye, the cut across her temple, the blood crusted at the corner of her mouth. She flinched when his fingers brushed too close.

“Did you know that the curse you fought was a Special Grade?” he asked, voice almost conversational. “Do you know how rare that is?”

Machiko swallowed. “Yes, Geto-sama.”

“Do you also know,” he continued, stepping back toward his seat, “that your carelessness has endangered everyone who serves this cause?”

Her throat burned. The shame tasted metallic, bitter, heavy. She bowed her head until her hair fell like a curtain across her face.

“Yes, Geto-sama,” she said. “I apologize for my incompetence.”

He sighed, the sound long and weary, as though her failure had aged him.

“Do you not realize what you’ve put us in?”

Machiko opened her mouth. “Yes—”

But his next words cut through hers like a blade.

“No,” he snapped. His calm had cracked — not shattered, but splintered just enough to show what lay beneath. His voice was low, edged with something far more dangerous than anger: disappointment sharpened into contempt.

“No, you don’t, Machiko. Because if you did, you would’ve known that this world has no room for error.” He leaned forward slightly, his eyes glinting in the half-light. “You falter once — once — and you die. And worse, you make others die for you.”

Machiko trembled. The weight of his words pressed down on her shoulders like a mountain.

“You failed,” he said, quieter now. “And because of that, you’ve put every one of my people in jeopardy.”

She wanted to speak — to explain, to beg, to promise that she would do better — but her voice would not come. Her lips parted, then closed again. Only her eyes moved, glimmering wet in the candlelight.

Geto stared down at her a long moment more, the silence between them stretched thin as wire. Then he turned away.

For the first time since she knelt, Machiko lifted her eyes from the floor. Her voice was small, hoarse, raw from swallowed tears.

“I tried,” she whispered. “I really did try.”

Geto’s gaze was steady, cold as winter glass. “Trying isn’t enough,” he said. “What I need is a capable student.”

The words struck her like an open palm.

And suddenly, she was nine again.

The office dissolved around her — the candlelight, the scent of incense, the looming shadow of her mentor. In its place came the yellow hum of the kitchen light, the sharp smell of cooking oil and hair burning. Her mother’s voice echoed in her skull, a venomous hiss. “You filthy thing. Seeing monsters that aren’t there. You’re wrong — born wrong.”

The sound of the scissors was worse than the slaps. Snip. Snip. Each cut of her hair was a punishment, a piece of her stolen away. Her mother’s hand twisted in her scalp, yanking, dragging her to her knees. Machiko remembered the wet slap of the floor under her cheek, the hum of her own crying until it turned soundless.

And now here she was again, years later — the same posture, the same shame. Kneeling before another figure, another god to be appeased.

Her shoulders trembled. Fear threaded its way down her spine like cold wire. The room felt too small to breathe in. Guilt — thick and suffocating — coiled through her like smoke, and the thought of abandonment gnawed at her chest until it hurt to draw breath.

“Please…” she said, voice cracking. She bowed low, her forehead nearly brushing the floor. “Please, I can make this right. I promise I’ll be better.”

The plea came out strangled. Her throat closed around the words as if even her body was ashamed of them. Tears gathered, hot and heavy, spilling silently past her lashes. They hit the polished floor between them and bloomed into dark little circles — each one a confession.

Geto watched her.

Not with pity. Not even disappointment. There was something else there, behind his calm expression — something like satisfaction. The faintest curl at the corner of his mouth, the quiet hum in his throat.

In that moment, Geto Suguru looked at Machiko the way a craftsman looked at a finished blade — not perfect, not yet, but sharpened to purpose. She didn’t see it. She was too far gone in shame to notice how his gaze lingered, thoughtful and calculating, as if he’d just confirmed a theory about her.

He had known all along.

He had known exactly what kind of curse haunted the boy in Sendai. Knew it was no ordinary spirit, but the Queen of Curses herself — Orimoto Rika. He had known, and he had sent Machiko anyway. Not out of confidence, but curiosity.

He wanted to see what his shadow would do when thrown into the dark.

She had survived — barely — but she had failed, and now she was his again. Entirely.

Geto hummed softly, the sound almost pleasant. “From now on, you are abstained from going on missions.”

Machiko stiffened. The words hit like a blade slipping between ribs.

“You will remain here at the shrine,” he continued, voice smooth, deliberate. “You will train — harder, longer. You will learn to form your Domain Expansion. Until you can do that, you will not step foot on the field again. Do you understand?”

Machiko’s lips parted, but no breath came. The air in her lungs had turned to glass. Her voice, when it came, was faint, almost childlike. “Yes, Geto-sama.”

“Good,” he said simply, the warmth gone from his tone. “You are dismissed.”

She stayed still a moment longer — one heartbeat, two — as if waiting for him to change his mind, to say something kind, something that meant she was still worth saving. But Geto had already turned his eyes away, reaching for the stack of papers on his desk as if she no longer existed.

Machiko reached for her mask. Her hands were shaking as she fitted it back over her bruised face. The familiar weight of it pressed her back into silence. When she bowed this time, she did so with mechanical precision — not out of reverence, but necessity.

She rose and left the room on unsteady legs.

The corridor outside was dim, the paper lamps flickering in the draft. Each step she took echoed too loudly in the quiet. By the time she reached her quarters, her body moved like a puppet pulled by invisible strings.

The door closed behind her with a soft click. The mask came off, and she stood there staring at it — at the reflection of her swollen face, her bloodshot eyes. Her fingers trembled.

Aya was gone.

M was broken.

And Machiko… Machiko was something Geto had built, and rebuilt, and broken again.

The ropes bit into his wrists, coarse hemp rubbing the skin raw where he’d long since stopped feeling pain. The seals pasted on the walls pulsed faintly, breathing with a rhythm of their own, each one whispering the same warning in invisible ink — containment. The air in the room was heavy, thick with old incense and fear.

Yuta Okkotsu sat in the center of it all, head bowed, eyes hollow. He didn’t bother to move. Didn’t bother to speak.

He had grown used to this kind of stillness — the kind that came after disaster. It was the same stillness that followed every time Rika appeared. After the screaming stopped. After the blood dried. After everything went wrong again.

He replayed the last few days in his mind like a curse looping endlessly. The alleyway. The laughter of his classmates turning sharp and cruel. The crunch of bone. The red on the pavement. He hadn’t even seen Rika until it was already too late. Her love, her wrath — both the same thing now.

He had begged her to stop. She hadn’t listened.

She never listened anymore.

If this was the life he was meant to live — haunted, cursed, feared — then maybe dying was the only way left to protect anyone at all.

The sound of metal scraping against wood broke through his thoughts. The door creaked open, spilling a sliver of light into the gloom.

The man who entered was tall — impossibly tall — his hair a spill of white that caught the candlelight like snow. His eyes were hidden behind bandages, but Yuta could feel those unseen eyes on him, sharp and knowing. His presence filled the small cell like sunlight cutting through fog.

“So,” the man said, his voice light, almost playful, yet carrying the weight of someone utterly unafraid. “You’re the one who’s been keeping a queen of curses in your pocket.”

Yuta lifted his head, slow and wary. He stared back blankly. The man’s words didn’t carry malice, but they didn’t carry sympathy either. Just curiosity — deep and dangerous.

“Yuta Okkotsu,” the man continued, stepping closer. The soft tap of his shoes against the stone floor echoed like clockwork in the silence. “You’ve made quite the mess, haven’t you?”

Yuta’s lips parted, but no words came. There was nothing left to defend. No excuses left to make. His life, as far as he knew, was already over.

He let out a breath, low and broken. “If you’re here to kill me… just do it.”

The man laughed — a short, amused sound that didn’t belong in a place like this. “Kill you? No, no, that’s the Higher-Ups’ idea, not mine.”

He crouched down in front of Yuta, close enough that the younger boy could see the faint smile beneath the edge of his bandages. “Relax,” he said, tone softening but never losing that edge of mischief. “If I wanted you dead, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

Yuta frowned slightly, unsure if it was a comfort or a threat.

“Who are you?” he asked quietly.

The man tilted his head. “Gojo Satoru,” he said simply, as if the name itself were explanation enough. “Teacher. Sorcerer. Occasional babysitter of the cursed and the damned.”

He looked at the seals lining the walls, their faint glow trembling as his cursed energy brushed against them. “They’ve got you tied up like a sacrifice. Tsk. Typical of them.” He sighed.

For the first time in days, Yuta lifted his eyes. Gojo’s blindfolded gaze met his — or seemed to. Behind that cloth, Yuta could almost feel the man seeing him. The curse that haunted him. The despair that choked him.

And beneath it all, the spark of something that Gojo, perhaps, saw even when Yuta did not.

Potential.

Gojo turned the blade in his hand, letting the dim candlelight glint off its warped edge. It wasn’t really a knife anymore — more like a twisted relic of despair. Its metal was bent, warped by cursed energy and intention alike, a testament to the moment it had been used. He held it loosely, like one might hold a dead bird, its ugliness neither shocking nor unfamiliar to him.

“Did you make this, Okkotsu Yuta?” Gojo asked, his voice unusually quiet.

Yuta’s eyes flicked to the blade and then away. “It used to be a knife,” he said flatly, his tone stripped of everything but exhaustion. “I tried… killing myself. But Rika wouldn’t let me.”

For a heartbeat, Gojo didn’t smile. He frowned, the expression almost imperceptible beneath the casual tilt of his head. “Kind of dark,” he murmured, dropping the blade onto the stone floor. It clanged once, then lay still. His fingers brushed off the faint residue of cursed energy it left behind.

Then, like the flick of a switch, his usual confidence returned. He straightened, rolling his shoulders with that easy, careless air of his. “Well, guess what? You’ll be starting a new school soon.”

“I’m not going.” Yuta’s answer came fast, without hesitation. His eyes stayed down, fixed on nothing. “I’m not going anywhere.”

There was no rebellion in his voice. Only finality.

“I’m done.” He swallowed, his throat tight. “I’m done hurting people. Done being… this. If it means staying in this room, if it means never seeing daylight again, then fine. I’ll do it. Just… I can’t keep being the reason people die.”

Gojo cocked his head, the faintest quirk of his lips. “Never?” he asked. “You’ll get pretty lonely that way.”

Yuta’s hands trembled against the ropes. He wanted to scream that he was already lonely. That every night he’d lain awake knowing Rika was hovering, that every friend he’d lost had been replaced with silence and blood. But he couldn’t bring himself to say it.

Gojo took a step closer, crouching so he could look the boy in the eye — or at least as close as his bandages allowed. His voice lost its teasing edge. “The curse placed upon you,” he said softly, “it can also save people. Depending on how you use it, of course.”

Yuta’s eyes flicked up at that, startled by the words.

“My advice?” Gojo continued. “Learn how to use it. Understand it. You can cast it all away later if that’s what you decide. But right now, you don’t even know what you’re carrying.”

For the first time since the incident — since the rooftop, since the blood — Yuta looked up fully, meeting Gojo’s unseen gaze. His voice was small, almost childlike. “How can you be so sure?”

Gojo smiled then, but it wasn’t his usual mocking grin. It was quieter, warmer. “Once you’ve seen as much as I have, Yuta,” he said, “once you’ve lived through it, you start recognizing potential when you see it. You’ve survived something most people wouldn’t. You’ve bound something most sorcerers wouldn’t dare touch. That’s not weakness.”

He straightened, offering a hand as though the ropes weren’t even there. “That’s the start of strength. And I can teach you to make it yours.”

The room seemed to shift then — the air just a little lighter, the seals a little dimmer. Yuta didn’t take the hand yet, but for the first time in months, he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to stay sitting.

Gojo stood slowly, brushing the dust from his knees as though the entire conversation had been nothing more than a passing chat. Then, with a flick of his wrist—small, careless—the thick ropes binding Yuta slackened and fell away. They hit the floor in a dull thud, their seals fading into nothing, dissolved by an invisible will.

He hadn’t even raised a hand.

Yuta stared at the ropes, at the way they simply ceased to be, as though the world itself obeyed the stranger’s whim. The air shifted faintly with the ghost of cursed energy—something vast and unknowable that bent the rules around it like heat in the air.

Gojo turned to him, adjusting his sleeves as if freeing terrified teenagers from supernatural bondage was a casual habit. “By the way,” he said lightly, “did you see anyone else during that little incident with Rika?”

Yuta hesitated. The memory came back to him in fractured flashes—blood, screams, the classroom windows shattered into glittering teeth, the floor shaking beneath the weight of something divine and monstrous. And amidst it all, that figure.

“Yes,” Yuta said quietly. “There was someone else. A person, I think. They came into the classroom after… after Rika started killing my bullies.” His throat bobbed. “They fought her. Fought Rika. They were fast—so fast I could barely see them move. Their mask… it was all black, like glass. I couldn’t see their face, but their eyes—” He stopped himself, shaking his head. “No, not eyes. Just a reflection. Cold. Like they weren’t even human.”

Gojo’s easy smile dimmed into a thoughtful hum. “Interesting. And?”

“They… tried to kill me.” The words came out brittle. “I think they could’ve, if Rika hadn’t stopped them. When it was over, they just—left. Before the other sorcerers came.”

Gojo’s head tilted, the faintest flicker of curiosity lighting behind the bandages. He tapped his chin with one finger, a professor pondering a puzzle. “Tried to kill you, huh? That’s rude.”

“Why?” Yuta asked, voice small. “Do you know who they were?”

Gojo didn’t answer at once. His expression shifted—something sharp, keen, almost electric, like sunlight flashing along the edge of a blade. Beneath that lazy calm, excitement coiled, a rare and dangerous thrill reserved only for the truly unknown. All his life, the Six Eyes had shown him everything—every thread of cursed energy, every hidden flaw in the world’s weave, laid bare before his gaze. But this time, when he’d tried to read the remnants at the scene, all he saw was static—chaotic, blinding noise. A blind spot. He could see something within the fog, but he can’t pinpoint what it is exactly.

How… peculiar.

The fact itself raises alarms in his head. He was supposed to have absolute omniscient perception, and yet his Six Eyes couldn’t see what was beyond the fog.

Then, quietly but with unmistakable weight, he said, “Looks like they’re the second person I can’t see.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 12: Perseverance

***11 months before the Night Parade of 100 Demons***

Year: 2017

It was the middle of January. Snow blanketed the shrine grounds, soft and heavy, muting the world in white. The trees sagged beneath its weight, the forest stilled in hibernation, and the air was so cold it bit the lungs with every breath. In that frozen dawn, the silence was broken only by the dull, rhythmic thud of fists striking leather.

Machiko stood alone in the empty dojo, her small frame dwarfed by the heavy punching bag that swayed with every impact. Sweat slicked her sun-kissed skin despite the winter chill, beads tracing down the line of her jaw to fall onto the polished wooden floor. Strands of dark, curly hair had slipped loose from the braid framing her face. The hollows beneath her silver eyes were bruised with exhaustion.

She wore only a black tank top and grey sweatpants, bare feet planted firmly on the freezing boards. The cold gnawed at her, but she ignored it. Pain, fatigue, hunger—all of it was secondary to the quiet, gnawing desperation that drove her. She had to keep training. She had to prove herself. Again. To him.

Geto had stopped watching her. Stopped correcting her stance, her breathing, her aim. Whether that was trust or punishment, she didn’t know. Perhaps both. He was too busy now. Too absorbed in his cause, in the machinery of his growing war. And so she trained alone, the silence pressing in around her like a weight, the emptiness of the dojo echoing her own isolation.

Her hands were blackened and marbled with thin grey fissures and tightly bound in worn wraps. Every strike came with precision, each kick a violent exhale of control and self-hatred intertwined. With every combination, the memories returned: the fight against Rika, the blood, the failure. The training with Geto—his voice, sharp and cold as a blade. Weak. Incompetent. Shameful. The words cut deeper than the bruises she carried.

Unnoticed, her pace quickened. Her strikes grew harder, heavier, until the sound of impact filled the dojo like thunder. Her mind roared louder than her heartbeat. A final blow tore through the punching bag’s seams, a jagged rip spilling sand across the floor like blood onto snow.

The sound snapped her back. Machiko froze, breath ragged, hands trembling.

With a sigh, she went to fetch another bag. The fourth this week. The weight was awkward, heavy against her tired shoulders, but she forced it into place with mechanical efficiency. Once it hung, still and new, Machiko sank to the wooden floor, her back against the wall, the chill seeping into her bones.

For a long moment, she simply stared at the ceiling beams, chest rising and falling. The silence returned. It was thick, suffocating, absolute.

She took a long pull from her water bottle, tilting her head back as the cool liquid poured down her throat. The water was almost painfully cold, but it grounded her. It was sharp and real against the dull ache of her muscles. A few feet away, half-buried in the soft spill of sand, lay a leather-bound notebook. The edges were worn smooth from handling, the cover scarred with use. It wasn’t much. It was something she had bought herself from a roadside stall in Sendai, but it was hers.

Machiko used it to keep track of her progress, to jot down the details of her days that weren’t stained by blood or orders. She never wrote about missions or Geto’s plans — she wasn’t that careless — only the little things: the way the morning light hit the paper walls of her quarters, the smell of cedar smoke from the shrine at dusk, the rare taste of something sweet. Mundane fragments of a life that no longer existed. A life before she became M.

The dojo around her was silent again. The faint scent of sweat and dust hung in the cold air. This place was forbidden to the shrine’s workers, even to most of Geto’s followers. Only a handful had access: Nanako, Mimiko, Manami… and Geto himself. It was their sanctum, their secret. But for Machiko, it was a cage built from duty and loyalty. To the others, she was nothing more than a stray. A quiet human student their master had taken in out of pity or convenience. They didn’t know she was his shadow. His right hand. His blade. M.

Used to be of course.

Machiko clicked her tongue in annoyance as she was reminded of her hiatus from the field. She quickly cleaned up the mess she made in the dojo and gathered her things in silence — her towel, her notebook, her battered gloves — and stepped out into the winter air. The snow crunched faintly beneath her bare feet as she crossed the courtyard back to her quarters, her breath a pale mist before her. She made her way to her quarters.

Her breakfast was waiting as always: a small tray of rice, miso, and tea left neatly by the door. She ate quietly, mechanically, before washing herself and dressing in a clean uniform. Her routine had become a ritual — one that kept her from thinking too long, from feeling too much.

Once done, she settled at her low study table. The surface was buried beneath stacks of brittle old texts and curling scrolls — ancient treatises on Domain Expansion. Their inked diagrams and dense calligraphy carefully written in great detail onto the papers. Machiko ran her fingers over a page, tracing the words she had read a hundred times already.

Geto’s voice echoed in her memory. His voice calm and absolute. “Information is king.”

Perhaps this was another test. Another cruel measure of her worth. He wanted her to master her Domain Expansion, yet left her no guidance. Only silence. If she succeeded, she would prove herself indispensable again. If she failed, she would remain forgotten.

Machiko exhaled slowly and reached for her pen. It trembled slightly between her fingers.

“Then I’ll learn,” she whispered to herself, the vow almost lost to the winter air. To master an ability, one would have to understand it first.

And so she began — reading, annotating, analysing — each line of ink, each concept and theory learned was another step in the long, lonely path towards strengthening herself. Towards redemption for her previous mistake.

From all she had studied and all she had bled, Machiko knew that Domain Expansion was the highest art of a curse user. The crown and the grave of Jujutsu sorcery. To expand one’s domain was to unfurl the deepest part of oneself — the truest self — into the world, and cage it within a space of one’s own making. It was not mere power, but revelation. A curse user’s soul laid bare.

Each domain was different, because no two souls were ever alike. Some were vast and terrible — entire worlds of crimson skies and blackened earth, where every breath reeked of death. Others were small, quiet things, intricate and cruel, like traps woven from silk and shadow. But all of them shared one truth: within the confines of that sacred, cursed space, the will of the caster was absolute. Every technique struck true. Every command became law.

It was, by every measure, the pinnacle of power and the costliest.

To manifest a domain meant surrendering everything. It drank deep from one’s cursed energy, leaving the body hollow, the soul trembling on the edge of collapse. Worse still, if one’s domain was weak or incomplete, it could be shattered outright by another’s stronger reality. Devoured whole by a greater will. In that contest, there was no mercy, no balance. Only domination.

Machiko understood this well. To forge her domain, she would need to expand her cursed technique outward until it filled an entire space, wrapping the world in the shape of her soul. That space had to be hers — defined, controlled, and sealed by her own cursed energy. A place both real and unreal, born from within.

And yet, to shape such a world, she would first need to deeply understand her innate curse technique.

Her curse technique — Soulweaver — is a quiet and intricate art. Where others conjured fire or storms or monstrous limbs, Machiko conjured threads — steel spun from cursed energy, thin as hair and sharper than razors. Her threads could bind, cleave, or weave through the unseen lattice of the soul itself. It allowed her to interact with one’s soul and manipulate their physical vessel.

With her threads, she could slip between those seams, knitting and unraveling the soul itself. She could bind a man’s arm by weaving through the faultlines of his soul, stopping his heart with a single stitch of intent. Paralysing specific parts of their bodies for a brief second. Her art was not one of brute strength, but of precision, of patience and cunning. She fought not with fury, but with calculation, strangling her opponents in invisible nets.

Combined with Musubari’s gift that allowed her to see the souls of others, weaving through souls became as easy as breathing air. To most, the soul was a concept. To Machiko, it was color, movement, light and intent. 

The living bore souls of gray, dim and wavering. 

Jujutsu sorcerers — the gifted, the cursed — burned blue, their energy flowing through them like rivers beneath skin. 

And the cursed themselves — the abominations born from malice — glowed with deep, rotting violet, the hue of wounds that never healed.

Soulweaver was a hunter’s technique, not a soldier’s. A web, not a hammer. Perfect for capture, retrieval, or assassination. Yet it lacked the raw devastation of those who could raze buildings or split the earth. For that reason, many dismissed her as a lesser threat. They were wrong.

Machiko knew her strength lay not in power, but in control. She had to be clever in the way she utilized her curse technique. Every strand she wove was a thought, a choice, a fragment of her will given form. Her art demanded focus, balance, and creativity — a mind as sharp as her threads, and a heart cold enough to cut.

To create her own domain — to make her Soulweaver absolute — she would have to weave not just another’s soul, but her own. She would have to unspool her being, thread by thread, until she could shape her inner world into reality. A pocket realm bound by silver strings, where every movement, every breath, every heartbeat was her to command.

She wanted her Domain Expansion to be simple, to intimidate her opponent, to be surgically precise and to be deadly. To tread between living and dying. To unbalance the scale of life itself.

Machiko could hear Musubari chuckling at the girl’s ambitious idea. “Use me then Little Storm…Things would be so much easier…I could grant you that power if you desire it…for a cost of course”

“No”, Machiko said sternly to the curse haunting her. If she wanted to develop her own Domain Expansion, she would have to rely on her own blood, sweat and tears. She will not be indebted by a curse, especially one that has caused her so much pain and suffering. 

Her Domain Expansion will be hers alone, even if that path was long and cruel. 

Machiko sat before her scrolls long into the day, her hand freezing from the cold wind that blew into her room through the small crack of her window, her breath misting the air. She had filled her notebook with diagrams of impossible patterns — circles within circles, spirals of script and calculations. She traced them absently with her fingertips, and felt her pulse answering. Writing down her own concept and theories of what her domain expansion could be.

“To weave the soul,” she thought, “one must first unravel it.”

And so she continued.

Night had long since bled into the marrow of the world, and still Machiko worked.

The lamps in her quarters burned low. Their flames little more than trembling gold tongues that licked at the stale air. Parchment lay scattered across her desk like fallen leaves, covered in her looping, meticulous handwriting. The floor was a tangle of open tomes and brittle scrolls, some older than she could guess, their ink faded to the color of ash.

Machiko’s eyes were raw from reading. Her fingers, stained with ink and dust, trembled slightly as she turned another page. For hours — no, for days — she had buried herself in study, chasing the shape of her own soul through the language of theory. Where others dreamed of rest, she dreamed of symmetry and logic — of patterns and circles, of runes and ratios that could hold together the impossible.

At last, after what felt like a lifetime of false starts and failed concepts, she understood it. Her Domain Expansion. She had dissected it in every way she knew — the geometry of its space, the flow of its curse energy, the very essence of what it would mean to make into a reality.  The conclusion was both beautiful and cruel: if she wanted to play God in the balance of life and death, she would have to be prepared for the great cost it would demand from her. To sacrifice a part of herself in exchange for power.

To prepare herself, she would need to become greater than her current self. Not merely stronger, but broader. She imagined her cursed energy as water — fluid, infinite — and her body as the vessel that contained it. The jar was small now, fragile, its clay hairline-cracked by years of strain. To wield what she envisioned, she would have to make that vessel vast — widen it, fortify it — until it could hold a tide instead of a trickle. This requires her to train not just her body, but her mind and soul as well.

It was not just training that awaited her. It was metamorphosis.

Machiko leaned back, her spine popping like old timber, and exhaled. The candlelight traced the tired lines beneath her silver eyes, the hollows of her cheeks, the faint sheen of sweat across her brow. For a long while she sat there, just breathing, her mind humming with the echoes of the formulas she had memorized.

Finally, she rose from her seat, her limbs stiff with disuse. The air was cold enough to bite. When she crossed to her small vanity, the frost filmed her mirror’s edges in lacework patterns. With slow, practiced motions, she reached up and undid the tight braid that had kept her hair in place. Her curls fell free, dark and heavy, spilling over her shoulders like ink across parchment.

She took up her brush — its wooden handle smooth and familiar — and began to draw it through the thickness of her hair. The strokes were steady, almost ceremonial. Back and forth, from crown to tip, until the sound filled the small room — soft and rhythmic, the same way her mother once did when Machiko was still small and unbroken.

The tune came unbidden, rising from memory — a lullaby hummed long ago in a kitchen that smelled of tea and steam. Her voice was quiet, almost uncertain, but it filled the silence all the same.

When she had finished, she set the brush aside and turned toward the corner of her quarters, where a makeshift altar sat by the wall. The candle there had long since melted to a stub, its wax pooled like pale tears. Upon the altar lay a few simple offerings: a folded piece of paper, a faded photograph, and a small, worn plush toy — a yellow pony with one ear half torn.

Machiko knelt, the floor cold against her knees. She bowed her head low until her forehead brushed the wood.

“Hi, Yuu,” she whispered. “It’s been a long time since we spoke.”

Her voice was soft, uncertain, like someone addressing a ghost she half-feared might answer. “It’s my birthday today, but I didn’t celebrate it with Geto-sama, Nanako, Mimiko and Manami again this year. We’re all busy right now, and I can’t be mad at them. Maybe things will get better when all of this is over. And…and I’m sorry… I haven’t been good at keeping in touch. Things have been… different. Hard.”

She drew in a breath and exhaled slowly. She steeled herself from feeling anything, “I failed one of my missions. Months ago now. Geto-sama was—” Her throat tightened. “He was disappointed. I almost put everyone at risk.”

The words came out quieter than before, as if saying them aloud might summon the memory of his gaze — cool and disappointed, like the weight of a hand pressing her back into the earth.

“I have to prove to Geto-sama that I’m still worth something,” she whispered, the words trembling from her lips like a confession meant for no one but the dark. “That I can be strong again.” Her fingers curled into fists at her sides, nails biting into her palms until she felt the sting. “If I can’t do even these simple things, then what was the point of all his years training me? Of his faith in me?”

Her voice faltered, barely a breath. “If I can’t be useful… I’ll let everyone down. And if I fail again, they could die—against the Sorcerers, they could die because I was weak.”

She lifted her gaze, though her eyes were distant, unfocused—seeing ghosts of faces she had sworn to protect, shadows of laughter and warmth that once made this place a home. “Everything I’ve worked so hard to protect… everything I’ve bled for… it would all be gone. Like how I lost my family…how I lost you…” 

Her throat tightened; the words came out ragged, frayed at the edges. “You understand, don’t you, Yuu? This is the only home I’ve ever had. The only place I belong.” 

The last word broke from her like a prayer—quiet, desperate, and so small it seemed the night itself might swallow it whole. Her eyes burned, but no tears came. Perhaps she’d spent them all long ago.

Reaching forward, she adjusted the little pony plush — one of its button eyes had come loose, and its head tilted lopsidedly. She fixed it gently, as if afraid it might crumble under her touch.

“I’ll do better,” she murmured. “I swear it, Yuu. I’ll do better. I’m sorry for what I’m about to become”

The silence that followed was soft and hollow. The candle guttered once, then twice, before steadying.

Machiko rose to her feet slowly. Her shadow stretched long across the wall, tall and thin and solitary. She returned to her futon, her movements mechanical now, exhaustion carving deep lines in her face. As she laid herself down, her body felt heavy — too full of thought, too empty of rest.

Tomorrow she would begin. She would train until her body broke and her cursed energy burned her from within. She would expand her current vessel. She would weave her soul into something vast, unbreakable, divine.

Tomorrow, she would start to become worthy again.

But tonight, as the snow whispered against the window and the last candle died, she lay awake staring into the dark and wondered, not for the first time, if she even remembered who she had been before M.

Quietly before sleep claims her, she made a small wish in her heart for everything to go smoothly. “Happy birthday to me, I guess…” she thought to herself before her heavy eyelids closed shut for the night.

Machiko woke before the sun.

The sky beyond her window was the color of slate, the first pallid light of dawn still hiding behind the mountains. The air was sharp with cold, the kind that bit into the lungs and left frost in every breath. She dressed in silence, binding her hands with cloth wraps and pulling her dark hair into a tight braid. The world was quiet enough that she could hear the faint creak of the floorboards beneath her bare feet as she made her way toward the dojo.

The dojo sat apart from the main compound, half-buried in snow and shadow. Its wooden beams groaned with age, its walls thick with the scent of cedar and oil. Inside, there were no candles lit, no sound save the faint whistle of the wind through the eaves. She preferred it that way.

Phase One. Control and Isolation.

She knelt in the center of the floor and exhaled once, long and slow, watching her breath coil in the frigid air. “If I can hear my own threads hum,” she murmured, echoing words once spoken by her mentor, “I no longer need Musubari’s aid.”

Then she closed her eyes.

For hours — for days — Machiko sat in the black heart of the dojo, motionless as stone. The world beyond her skin ceased to exist. She ignored Musubari’s pestering whispers. She reached inward, searching for the faint tremors that lived beneath flesh and bone — the subtle vibration of her own cursed energy, the pulse of the soul.

At first, all she could feel was the chaos of her own heartbeat, the uneven rhythm of breath. But gradually, the noise faded, and she began to hear it — the quiet hum of the threads that ran through her like veins of silver. They sang faintly in her mind, taut and trembling, each one alive with energy.

The training was agony in its stillness. When her focus faltered, the hum grew jagged — discordant, like a snapped string — and her cursed energy bled from her in a thin, cold mist. Every leak was punishment. Every correction was a war against her own impatience.

By the third night, she learned to control it. Her breathing slowed, her heartbeat steadied. The hum of her threads became pure — a resonance so fine that it felt as if her whole body were one living instrument, her soul stretched across its frame like wire.

Perfect resonance meant perfect efficiency. The cursed energy flowed like molten glass through her, dense, smooth, controlled. Her mastery deepened until the very air around her quivered faintly, as though the threads she imagined were not imagined at all, but real — alive, singing beneath her skin.

When she rose from meditation at last, her knees were numb, her throat raw from thirst, but her control was sharper than ever. The silence itself had become her teacher.

Then began the second trial.

For this, she starved herself — not of food or water, but of curse energy. She closed her inner circuits, severing the flow of cursed power within her until she felt hollow, empty, stripped of what made her a sorcerer. The world seemed duller without it. The cold cut deeper. Her movements were heavy and mortal.

Yet she trained all the same. She struck the dummy until her knuckles split, forced her body through endless kata until her muscles screamed for relief. Each motion was a test of discipline — to move without the crutch of her energy, to exist without the hum she had grown to depend on.

By the fourth day, her breath rattled. Her cursed energy, starved for release, clawed at the walls of her mind. She could feel it building — a pressure behind her ribs, like water dammed too long.

When she finally let it loose, it came in a violent surge. Her threads erupted from the grey fissures of her skin, invisible but sharp enough to split the air, and the floorboards groaned beneath her as though the wood itself had felt her outburst.

But Machiko did not lose control. She clenched her fists, drew the threads back in. Her cursed energy writhed like a living thing — wild, furious — and she tempered it. Every flare met with stillness. Every explosion, with restraint. She reigned in the storm until the energy bent to her will again, steady and obedient.

Like starving a flame of oxygen, then teaching it how to burn without devouring everything it touched.

When her body had healed enough to move without trembling, she began the final stage of phase one.

Among Geto’s scrolls, she had found a treatise — brittle parchment bearing the sigil of the Zenin clan. The old warriors had believed in mastering the body first, the energy second. Their method was simple, brutal, and precise: breath is the gate of the soul.

Machiko studied it by candlelight, committing each phrase to memory: “Every inhale draws the curse inward. Every exhale shapes it. The body is the crucible. The breath is the bellows.”

She trained by dawnlight, breath steaming in the cold air. Each inhalation drew cursed energy deep into her core; each exhalation sent it coursing through her limbs, threading through her muscles and veins. Slowly, her circulation network thickened, refined — a thousand tiny rivers flowing with purpose instead of waste. Each time she strengthened the shape of those circuits and trained her curse energy to flow properly, the faster she was able to gather her curse energy and utilise it.

At first, she could hold the rhythm only for minutes before losing focus. Her breath would break, her energy would falter. But day by day, the discipline took root. Her pulse became the metronome. Her body, the vessel. Her energy, the tide.

By the end of the third week, she could feel the difference. Her cursed energy no longer sloshed within her like water in a thin jar — it pressed against her skin, dense and heavy, the vessel expanded and strengthened by ritual repetition.

When she struck now, her movements carried the weight of both silence and storm. Her cursed threads hissed through the air like drawn steel, their hum a pure, perfect note that resonated through the dojo’s walls.

And in the stillness that followed, Machiko stood amidst the cold and the snow, her breath steady, her soul thrumming like a plucked string.

She was becoming something sharper. Something truer.

Something that even her mentor might one day recognize again.

Phase Two. Output and Expansion

“A jar can’t grow unless it’s tested against overflow.”

Those had been her mentor’s words once  when he taught her about the fundamentals of curse energy for the first time— harsh and simple, like all his teachings. Now they were the mantra that kept her upright when her hands began to crack and bleed.

The cold of winter still clung to the world outside, but inside the dojo the air was hot, thick with sweat and the metallic scent of cursed energy. The candles guttered from the sheer pressure that poured off her skin. Machiko knelt in the center of the room, bare arms trembling, steam rising from her shoulders as her breath came hard and shallow. The blackened lines that crawled across her hands pulsed faintly — curse-burns that never truly healed.

She closed her eyes and began the first drill.

Machiko drew in her cursed energy until her body quivered under the strain. It felt like swallowing molten metal — the heat spread through her limbs, her skin tightening, her bones creaking as the power sought to escape. Her control had to be absolute. If she released it, even for a heartbeat, it would tear her apart from within.

She held it.

For seconds.

Then for minutes.

Then until her vision swam.

The grey cracks across her blackened fingers deepened, spreading up her forearms like veins of lightning. The pain was white-hot, sharp enough to make her gasp, but she didn’t stop. Every failure left her gasping in the dirt, her body smoking with residue. Every success was a fraction longer than the last — a little more control, a little more endurance.

Weeks passed that way, measured not by days but by the steady layering of scars.

Her hands became instruments of discipline — black, cracked, and trembling, but steady. When her fingers began to lock, atrophy setting in from overuse, she forced herself to weave threads of cursed energy through her joints, reinforcing the failing muscles with delicate precision. The threads gleamed faintly under her skin, thin as hair and strong as forged wire.

Her hands stopped shaking after that. They burned instead. A living forge she could no longer turn off.

Each cycle of overload and relief hardened her body further, like steel hammered and quenched a thousand times until it sang when struck.

In the seventh week, Machiko began binding herself.

She summoned her cursed threads and let them coil around her own soul. It wrapped around her arms, her ribs, her throat. The steel filaments shone faintly in the dim light, their hum like the whisper of drawn blades. They dug into her soul, biting just enough to remind her of their presence.

It was a test of containment — to keep her cursed energy sealed within, to stop even the faintest leak. The slightest loss of focus, and the threads would tighten or snap, flaying her own vessel.

At first, the bindings cut into her. She learned quickly to adjust her breathing, to let the cursed energy flow with the tension rather than against it. The more she fought the pressure, the tighter the bindings bit; the more she surrendered to the rhythm, the smoother the current ran.

When her energy surged, the threads glowed — when it faltered, they turned dull.

In time, she learned to shape them into tools. 

A coil around her forearm became a shield, hard as steel and sharp as glass.

A spiral around her knuckles, a hammer.

A lace over her ribs, armor.

The dojo walls bore witness to her progress — splintered planks, shredded mats, scorch marks where her cursed energy had burned too bright. Yet every day, her control grew finer. Every thread obeyed.

By the tenth week, she could hold herself bound for hours, moving through combat forms with precision, every motion restrained but deliberate — her own curse turned against herself in perfect discipline.

The last stage of the second phase of her training was the most dangerous of all.

Machiko had read about Reverse Cursed Technique — a sorcerer’s art of turning their own death into life, pain into healing. She wasn’t there yet, not even close. But she could learn from its principle.

So she began sending her cursed energy backward.

Against its natural flow.

It was like forcing blood to run upstream. Every inch of progress seared her from within. Her meridians screamed in protest, her breath catching as her body convulsed with each reversal. Her fingers curled into claws, the old grey cracks blazing like embers.

Each session left her trembling, half-blind, her lips tasting of iron. But she persisted.

The goal was not mastery — it was resistance. To teach her physical vessel how to bear friction, how to hold against its own destructive nature of her curse technique. To temper herself against herself.

Bit by bit, her body began to adjust. Her curse energy no longer tore through her veins like wild fire; it flowed, sluggish but obedient, reversing and returning on command. The pain never left, but it became manageable.

One night, as she stood alone in the darkened dojo, her breath misting in the cold, Machiko realized her hands no longer bled when she drew on her threads. The cracks were still there, yes, but they no longer spread. Her cursed energy flowed through her — slow, deliberate, unyielding — and for the first time, it did not burn.

She flexed her fingers and felt the hum of her Soulweaver through her skin. The resonance was clear, low, and steady.

The jar had grown. Its content fuller than it had ever been.

But more than that, it had hardened — tempered by pain, filled with the sound of her own control.

Machiko exhaled, her breath a pale ghost in the winter air. The silence that followed was heavy, alive.

Phase Two was complete.

And for the first time in a long while, she felt not fear — but readiness. She was ready to create her first Domain Expansion.

Spring had come to the shrine like a slow exhale after a long-held breath. The courtyard of the dojo, once a grave of frost and silence, now teemed with shy life. Grass pushed up from the black earth, wet and green as emerald glass. Tiny wildflowers burst through the cracks in the stones like jeweled stars, their pale heads nodding in the breeze. The trees wore new leaves, tender and bright, and the scent of damp soil clung to the air.

A season of rebirth. Of beginnings.

Machiko stood alone at the center of it, barefoot on the cool flagstones. Her black hair hung loose down her back, brushing the beltline of her training gi. She was leaner now, harder than she had been in winter, all string and wire beneath sun-darkened skin. Silver eyes glinted beneath her dark lashes like cold steel catching sunlight.

Months of pain and study, of blood and blackened hands, had led her here. She had honed Soulweaver until it sang at her command, tempered her body like forged metal, learned to endure her cursed energy until it became part of her marrow. Now she was ready to cross the final threshold — to bring her concept of a Domain Expansion into the world.

At her feet writhed a low-level curse she had hunted that dawn. The creature was bound in a lattice of silver thread, its eyeless head lolling, claws twitching feebly against its bonds. It hissed once, then fell silent, as if sensing what was to come.

Machiko inhaled deeply, her breath steady as a drawn bowstring. She rolled her shoulders back, spine straightening, her stance narrowing into the precision of a blade about to strike. The air around her shifted.

Her cursed energy began to move, slow at first, like a river freed of ice. It coursed through her veins in controlled streams, each channel deliberate, each pulse measured. Her fingers flexed; silver threads rose from the ground at her feet, one by one, until they formed a perfect circle around her. They shimmered faintly in the spring sunlight, weaving and unweaving like living things — a deadly halo of her own making.

Machiko’s hands rose before her, palms open as if to receive a gift, then folded inward like a puppeteer drawing taut her strings. The threads answered her movement instantly, arcing in graceful loops that mirrored the arc of her arms. Her eyes flashed with cold light.

Under her breath, she spoke the name she had chosen — not a shout, but a whisper, as one might name a god:

“Domain Expansion: The Looms of Life.”

The world vanished.

Sunlight, trees, flowers, the blue sky overhead — all were torn away in an instant. Darkness bloomed outward from Machiko’s feet like spilled ink, swallowing the courtyard whole. A dome rose, unseen but felt, enclosing her and the curse in a pocket of reality that was hers and hers alone.

The new space was silent and immense. Threads as pale as moonlight spanned every surface, a web stretching upward and outward, crisscrossing like the inside of a spider’s lair. They gleamed faintly against the blackness, each one trembling with a quiet hum. The floor beneath her feet was not stone but water — still, clear, and perfectly reflective, a mirror to the void above. Her own silver eyes stared back at her from its surface, sharp and alien.

In this place she was not merely a sorcerer. She was the weaver and the hunter, the puppetmaster of a living labyrinth. Her perception sharpened to a knife’s edge; she could feel the twitch of every thread, the beat of the curse’s corrupted soul. Her speed quickened, her reach infinite. The threads around her were no longer bound by number or matter — they were as endless as her will.

Machiko’s lips parted, and though no one else was there to hear, she set the rule aloud, binding it into the bones of her domain as surely as her threads bound her prey:

“If I kill you in my domain in no less than three minutes, your soul will be mine. If I fail…”

She glanced at her dominant hand, flexing her fingers once. “I will repay my failure with the paralysis of my right hand for five minutes.”

The words hung in the air like iron weights. Rules woven into fate itself.

Somewhere at the edge of her mind, Musubari chuckled — a low, amused murmur, like silk sliding over steel. It slithered through her thoughts, but she ignored it. This was her domain. Her loom. Her rules. Not his.

Machiko’s silver threads tightened, singing softly in the dark.

Here, in the Looms of Life, there was no mercy. Only the hunter and the prey.

With a flick of her wrists, the silver threads slackened and the curse was loosed.

It bolted forward like a starving beast, its shape indistinct, a blur of claws and sinew and hate. The thing shrieked, its voice a soundless wail that set the water beneath their feet trembling. Machiko saw its soul before she saw its body — a swirling, malignant knot of purple light thrumming inside its chest, seething and rotten, its flow erratic like a heart gone mad.

Her body moved before thought could catch her. She slipped to the side, light on her feet, her hair whipping across her face. Threads bloomed from her fingertips like silver serpents, darting toward the creature. They pierced into the seams of its soul — a surgeon’s strike — and Machiko felt the immediate jolt in her own chest as the connection formed.

The curse screamed, its voice warping in the air. The web responded to her will. Threads from the reflective water, from the mirrored walls, from the unseen crimson sky above — all began to stir and lash outward. They obeyed her like a living army.

Left. Right. Front. Back. Center.

Every motion of her hands commanded a dozen threads; each thread a blade, a needle, a hook. The curse was trapped in the center of her weave, impaled by shimmering lines of silver light. The sound that filled the domain was no longer silence — it was the taut hum of stretched thread, the music of a loom in motion, cold and beautiful and terrible.

“Lock in,” she whispered.

At her command, the threads drew tight. The curse was yanked upward, suspended midair, its limbs twitching, its mouth opening in a silent howl. Its body convulsed, but the web held firm, shimmering with restrained power.

Machiko stood still, breathing steadily. Her silver eyes flicked once toward its writhing soul, now caught in her sight like a fish tangled in a net.

The taking came next.

She extended her hands and sent forth a flurry of threads — these were different from her normal threads. It was finer than hair, sharper than a knife, it had a tinge of a red glow.They wrapped the curse’s soul in layers, tightening, constricting, binding it in a cocoon of scarlet light. Her cursed energy poured into them, crimson flaring to bright red.

The resistance was immediate. The soul fought back, thrashing within its prison. Machiko gritted her teeth, feeling the strain ripple up her arms, into her shoulders, down her spine. She could feel her own soul tremble at the resistance of the curse. Her hands burned. Her fingertips split. Each pull on the thread felt like tearing sinew from her own body.

Then came the snapping. One by one, the unseen tethers that tied the curse’s soul to its body broke apart — sharp, ringing cracks that echoed like strings breaking on an overstrung instrument.

Snap.

Snap.

Snap.

With the last shuddering tug, the final thread gave way. The curse’s scream cut short, the light of its soul sputtered, and its body crumbled into drifting ash.

For a heartbeat, everything was still. The hum of the threads died down and disintegrated into ash. The web fell quiet. At the center of the domain, above the mirror-smooth water, floated the curse’s soul — faintly luminous, weightless, trembling like a candle flame.

Machiko approached slowly, each step sending small ripples across the glassy surface. Her breath came hard and uneven; sweat rolled down her neck. When she stood before the floating soul, it flickered once — twice — then guttered out, as if some invisible hand had pinched the flame between two fingers.

Her condition had been met.

Cracks appeared in the air around her. Thin at first, then spreading fast — lines of light splintering the dark dome like fractures in blackened glass. The domain began to unravel, threads burning away into ash, water fading into mist.

Machiko felt the cost immediately. Her hands throbbed with dull, electric pain; her fingers were stiff and half-numb. The ache in her body was deep, marrow-deep, the exhaustion that came not from movement but from holding too much power too long. Her knees buckled, and she caught herself with one trembling hand against the vanishing floor.

The last of the domain dissolved around her, the courtyard returning — sunlight, warmth, birdsong.

Machiko stayed where she was, crouched low, chest heaving, eyes fixed on the space where the soul had vanished.

Her first domain had been born — and it had nearly broken her.

But a faint, trembling smile found her lips nonetheless.

The Looms of Life was real.

The air was still humming when she heard it — a sound that did not belong to the wind or the world.

Clap. Clap. Clap.

Slow. Deliberate. Mocking, yet not without admiration.

Machiko’s head turned toward the sound, breath still ragged, silver eyes unfocused from exhaustion. There, framed by the open threshold of the dojo, stood Suguru Geto.

He was dressed in his usual black robes, sleeves loose and elegant, the faintest smile curling on his lips. His presence filled the courtyard as surely as her domain had moments before — calm, cold, commanding.

“That,” Geto said, his voice smooth as lacquered wood, “was spectacular.”

He stepped forward, each movement quiet but weighted, his eyes taking in the faint traces of her unravelled domain — the silver dust still hanging in the air like fallen snow, the faint shimmer that clung to her skin.

“I must admit,” he continued, a glint of amusement in his eyes, “you’ve exceeded my expectations. I thought you’d only begin to form your Domain Expansion by midyear. But here you are…” His gaze sharpened. “Accelerating faster than I predicted.”

Machiko tried to rise — habit, respect, devotion, fear, all at once — but her body betrayed her. Her knees gave way, and she stumbled forward, catching herself with trembling hands. The floor was cool beneath her palms; her pulse throbbed in her ears.

Geto raised one hand, palm outward. “Don’t bother.”

His tone was not unkind, but it allowed no argument.

Machiko stayed kneeling, head bowed, strands of her damp hair clinging to her cheeks. The sweat on her skin chilled in the soft spring air.

Geto regarded her for a moment longer, the faintest tilt of his head betraying thought. “Since you’ve created your first Domain Expansion,” he said, “I expect you to perfect it soon. A half-formed domain is a blade without an edge.”

He turned then, black robes whispering across the floor. “Until then,” he added, glancing over his shoulder, “you will finally be put back on the field, kiddo.”

Her chest tightened. The words struck through her exhaustion like a spark through dry tinder.

“Good job, Machiko.”

The simple phrase carried more weight than any praise she could remember.

Machiko forced the words out between her uneven breaths. “Thank you… Geto-sama.”

Geto gave a faint nod — almost imperceptible — and left. His footsteps faded down the hall, leaving only silence behind.

Machiko remained there on the floor long after he’d gone. The ache in her body was unbearable, but the ache in her chest was something else entirely — pride, relief, and a hollow sort of joy.

The threads had answered her call.

Her domain was real.

And at last, her mentor had looked upon her again.

Chapter Text

Chapter 13: Fractured Faith

***Seven months before the Night Parade of 100 Demons***

Year: 2017

It had been months since she had last seen the world beyond the shrine’s gates. Months since the city’s noise had filled her ears, since neon had burned her eyes, since the scent of asphalt and rain had cut through the air. In that time, Machiko had been remade. Torn down to her bones and rebuilt in silence, forged in ritual and suffering. The woman who once faltered in the face of failure had been tempered into something sharper, something honed.

Her domain expansion was no longer theory nor dream. It was steel and thread and blood — the culmination of sleepless nights and aching hands, of cuts and bruises she suffered from her training, of meditations that blurred the line between body and soul. Within that space she created, her curse technique had finally resonated with her and she was able to brought forth its ultimate form into reality. It flowed like silk, each strand obedient to her will. When she moved, her threads danced to her rhythm, weaving death and divinity as one.

Geto had watched, and Geto had judged. His dark eyes, ever weighing worth against ambition, had seen what she had become. And at last, he had nodded — the smallest tilt of his chin, yet heavy as absolution. 

Her exile had ended.

With freedom, however, came purpose. And purpose, in Geto’s world, always carried a blade’s edge.

Machiko was out on a mission once more.

M — the name she wore like a second skin — had finally returned to the field after months of silence, months of penitence and isolation. Her exile had been long, her atonement harsher still, and now she stood again beneath open sky, the world sprawling before her like a battlefield waiting to be written upon. The weight of her last failure clung to her still, a shadow stitched into her bones. She could not afford another mistake. Not again. Not ever.

Carelessness had cost her once. Arrogance, too. Those twin sins had nearly destroyed her — and worse, had shamed him.

She remembered that evening vividly — the air thick with cursed energy, the stink of fear and iron, the way her hands had trembled as Rika’s form took shape before her eyes. She had thought the curse was merely powerful, another Grade 2 anomaly, fierce but manageable. But what had faced her was not a mere curse. It was a calamity given flesh — Rika, the Queen of Curses, born from love so twisted it became eternal.

The moment Machiko realized the truth, it was already too late. Her plan — the delicate web she had spun to capture Yuta Okkotsu and wrench Rika from his grasp — had unraveled in an instant. Her threads, her defenses, her pride — all had been torn apart beneath that monstrous devotion.

Perhaps she should have asked Geto for guidance. Or sought whispers from their informants before she acted. She told herself that, when sleep eluded her. Always questioning if the outcome would have become better if she had made a better decision. But regret was a useless luxury, and she had burned it out of herself months ago.

Now she had learned. Pain was the finest teacher — and she its most dutiful student.

The failure had cost her dearly. Rika still belonged to the boy, and Geto’s grand designs had been delayed. Yet Machiko had seen how swiftly he recovered, how calmly he began weaving new plans in the dark. He was never still, never idle. His mind was a labyrinth, and even she — who had served at his side for months, even years of being his student — could not see its center.

She knew that new schemes were already in motion. New plots to obtain Rika. To tip the scales against the Jujutsu Sorcerers who guarded her. Plans whispered in candlelit rooms where she was not invited.

Machiko had stood outside those doors more than once as she guarded the entrance — her back straight, her hands clasped, listening to the low and muffled murmurs of Geto’s voice and the occasional girlish laughter of Nanako and Mimiko. The sound gnawed at her like hunger.

Had she not proven herself? Had she not bled for his cause, killed in his name, endured every cruelty of body and soul to earn his trust? Why, then, was she still kept in the shadows like a blade left sheathed?

The questions festered quietly, unwanted yet unkillable. Each time they rose, she smothered them beneath reason.

“No. Perhaps she was overestimating herself again.”

Her mentor always had reasons. His judgment was never without purpose. He saw farther, clearer, deeper than she could. If he had not included her in his counsel, it must be by design. A test, perhaps—he does like to test her on many things—or preparation for something greater.

Yes. That had to be it.

After all, he trusted her with what others could not do. He sent her where no one else could go — into cities and slums, into temples and ruins, into the folds of the Jujutsu world where silence and secrecy were currency. 

“Dirty work”, some might call it, but Machiko bore those tasks as honors. The shadows were where she thrived. The unseen blade, the quiet hand — that was what she had become.

Her heart steadied with that thought, the faintest ember of pride warming the cold within her.

“He has faith in me”, she told herself. “He must.”

And she had faith in him—faith in Geto, in the strength of his convictions, in the grand design of his vision for a better world. There were nights when the fire burned low in the shrine and the air was thick with incense, when she would sit in quiet company with Geto, Nanako, Mimiko, and Manami. In those moments, walls fell away and they spoke with venom and weariness about the world beyond their veil—the cruelty of ordinary people, the blind hatred that had scarred each of them. They would share stories, bitter and jagged, of the mockery and fear they had endured. The disgust in their voices was born not of malice, but of pain.

Machiko listened in silence, though she needed no convincing. She knew too well the flavor of that pain—the sting of being cast aside for something she could not change, for something as intrinsic to her as the color of her eyes. She remembered her mother’s rage, her father’s silence, the shame that festered in the walls of that house. The way they had looked at her, not as a daughter, but as a mistake. Born wrong. Cursed by her very existence. And when her brother died, torn apart by the very thing she was, her family had shattered completely. They had abandoned her, left her to the mercy of a stranger. But Geto had not been a stranger for long.

He had taken her in. He had given her purpose when all she had known was rejection. A home when she had none. A family bound not by blood, but by understanding. Under his guidance, she learned that her powers were not a curse but a gift—a mark of something greater. He told her that their kind were not monsters, not weapons, not abominations born to serve those who feared them. They were human. More than human. And they deserved a place in the light, unchained and unashamed.

It was an idea that grew in her like a flame fed by devotion. A world where no one would have to endure what she had. No more frightened mothers cutting their daughters’ hair in rage. No more brothers dying because the world refused to understand. No more children ostracized for the accident of their birth.

For that dream—for that fragile, blazing vision—Machiko would give everything. She would fight. She would bleed. She would kill if she must. Geto had saved her from a world that wanted her dead, and in return, she had given him her unshakable loyalty. Her faith in his cause was not blind; it was born from gratitude, from pain, from a deep yearning to believe that there could be something better.

To Machiko, Geto was not merely a mentor. He was the axis upon which her world turned. The one who had lifted her from the wreckage of her own ruin and taught her to stand tall again. And if his vision demanded sacrifice—if it demanded obedience—then she would bear it without question.

For him.

For the cause

For the promise of a world where the cursed could finally call themselves human.

She adjusted the strap of her small satchel around her hips and exhaled, her breath curling faintly in the cool morning air. Doubt was poison, and she had no use for poison. A clear mind was a sharp mind — and sharpness was her only salvation.

For now, she would operate in the dark. As ordered. As always.

Geto had sent her hunting again.

A retrieval mission, he had called it — simple, precise, necessary. There was to be no slaughter this time, no needless spectacle. He wanted a live specimen, a Grade 2 curse confined and brought to him intact. A creature that had taken root in an abandoned factory on the southwestern edge of the city, feeding on the fears and grief of workers long after sunset.

Machiko—M—walked alone through the quiet neighborhood streets, her boots whispering against the cracked pavement. The air was damp, still holding the day’s rain. Fluorescent streetlamps buzzed and flickered overhead, casting sickly halos that stretched and stuttered with her passing. The world felt half-asleep here, the kind of silence that swallows breath and sound alike.

Her figure was unassuming — a dark jacket reaching her mid thigh, clawed leather gloves drawn tight around her hands, hood low enough to shadow her face. Beneath the leather and fabric, her cursed energy thrummed like a second heartbeat, faintly audible to her own senses — the low, resonant hum of something alive and waiting to be unleashed.

The school came into view beyond the trees, its windows black and hollow. Faint traces of spiritual decay clung to the air — the residue of fear, cruelty, loneliness. It had been festering for some time.

Machiko stepped closer, one gloved hand brushing against the chain-link fence. The instant her palm touched cold metal, she felt them — the curses. Dozens of them, scattered across the grounds like insects. Most were weak, half-born things spawned from childhood terrors: shadows of forgotten nightmares and bruised knees, phantoms of isolation. But one — one pulsed stronger, heavier, its cursed energy dense and gluttonous, like a living swamp at the back of the school.

“Bingo,” she murmured, her voice little more than breath.

In one smooth motion, she vaulted the fence. Her landing was silent, the gravel barely stirring beneath her soles. She quickly puts up a veil around the area.

She let her cursed energy unfurl in slow, measured waves — faint light blooming along the seams of her clawed gloves, threads of silver glimmering like faint veins beneath her skin. The energy coursed through her body in disciplined streams, every current guided by will.

The weak ones came first.

They always did.

Drawn by the scent of life, the flicker of her energy, they slithered from the dark — misshapen silhouettes crawling from corners and beneath beams of the ceilings, their oily souls flickering like dying embers.

M did not waste movement. With a flick of her wrist, her threads lashed out — thin, glinting cords of steel-like energy slicing through the air. She caught the first curse mid-lunge, wrapping its pulsing form in a tightening spiral. A tug. A twist. A muffled pop — the sound of a soul imploding. The curse withered into black vapor.

Two more followed, their shapes snarling like feral dogs. M pivoted sharply, one leg sweeping low as her hands carved arcs before her — weaving. The threads darted from her fingertips like living serpents, coiling around the curses’ necks, digging into the glowing seams of their souls. Another pull, and the air was split by the faint hiss of dissolving matter.

Her pace quickened. Each step was precise, each breath controlled. She struck like water, flowing and unbroken — kicks snapping into torsos, hands slicing through incorporeal limbs, her threads moving faster than thought.

Then she saw them — three curses rushing her at once, grotesque and shrieking, jaws splitting wider than their faces. M inhaled once, deeply, centering herself. When she moved, she became a blur.

The silver glint of her threads traced through the dark like lines of lightning, weaving a circle around her attackers. In the space of a heartbeat, she had slipped past them — her motion seamless, almost elegant. Behind her, the web snapped taut. All three bodies convulsed midair, their souls bound, crushed, and silenced in the same breath.

When she exhaled, the air smelled of burnt ozone.

The factory’s back lot was near. The air grew heavier, thicker with cursed energy. M’s boots sank slightly into the damp soil as she approached the open field.

And then — she saw it.

The Grade 2 curse loomed at the far edge of the yard, grotesque and swollen, its form spilling over itself like melted wax. Its skin was a sickly green, translucent in places where veins of cursed energy pulsed beneath. It resembled a caterpillar — if such a creature had been carved from fat and rot, its bloated mass quivering with every sluggish movement. Its face, or what passed for one, split open into a wet grin lined with teeth that looked human.

The air around it shimmered, heavy with the pressure of its aura.

It turned toward her.

And in that moment, its eyes — bulbous, milky — locked with hers.

Machiko’s heart stilled, then steadied. The pulse of her cursed energy sharpened, humming low like wire drawn taut.

She had her target.

The order was clear: capture, not kill.

M lowered her stance, fingertips brushing against the dirt as her threads unfurled once more, silver light blooming around her in a widening circle. Her voice was a whisper, carried only by the wind:

“Let’s begin.”

Then she moved.

The creature moved first.

A wet, shuddering motion rippled through its massive body before its arm came swinging down — a limb thick as a tree trunk, its skin glistening with a slick, mucous sheen. The impact cracked the air like thunder.

Machiko was already gone.

Big and heavy — they were always slow. The curse’s strength was its own weakness.

She leapt, twisting through the air with the grace of a blade in flight, and landed lightly atop the creature’s arm. The flesh beneath her boots quivered, soft and cold, the skin sinking slightly under her weight. Her eyes darted across its body — the faint, pulsing fractures of its soul visible to her trained sight, lines of weakness beneath its thick, corrupted aura. Cracks and seams, fault lines where its cursed energy bled unevenly. There. And there. And there.

Targets.

She drew from her belt a cluster of long, slender needles — each one forged of tempered steel, engraved with faint sigils that shimmered like starlight. Her threads, invisible to the naked eye, snaked from her fingertips, attaching to the needles as she ran.

Her body moved on instinct — years of discipline condensed into seconds. She sprinted along the length of the curse’s arm, her jacket snapping behind her like a banner, the needles leaving her fingers one after another. Each struck true, embedding into the soft, trembling folds of cursed flesh, right where she had marked them in her mind.

The curse howled, a deep, hollow noise that rattled the windows of the school. Its other arm came swinging up toward her, massive and clumsy. She ducked low, vaulting off its forearm in a tight arc that sent her sailing over the oncoming blow.

As she spun midair, she loosed another flurry — a rain of silver needles streaking down in perfect formation. They found their marks with a series of dull, meaty thuds. The creature convulsed, its limbs twitching, its eyes rolling white.

Machiko landed atop its head, the last of her needles poised between her fingers.

“Now,” she whispered.

The final strike plunged deep into the center of its skull, the place where its cursed energy converged like a heart. The threads connecting each needle thrummed — alive, resonant.

Machiko closed her eyes and channeled her energy through them. It flowed like molten glass, hot and controlled, surging from her core through the threads, into the web she had woven through the curse’s body. The current hit its soul all at once.

The reaction was immediate.

The curse froze, its limbs locking in place. The air rippled around it, the stench of burnt ozone flooding the yard. Its swollen body trembled, cursed energy flickering erratically, sputtering like a dying flame. Then, with a long, guttural groan, it fell — a mountain of flesh crashing to the ground with a sound that shook the earth.

Machiko landed beside it, her threads retracting in swift, clean motions. With one sweep of her hand, she sent them snaking outward again, wrapping around the fallen creature. The bindings tightened with a shrill metallic whine, glimmering with restrained power.

“Stay down,” she murmured.

Satisfied that it was immobilized, Machiko reached into her coat and retrieved a small wooden seal — plain, hand-carved, and darkened by years of use. She pressed the talisman against the curse’s head. The symbols etched into its surface began to glow faintly as she raised her hand, two fingers extended before her face.

Her voice fell into a low, steady cadence — the words old and sharp, vibrating with intent.

“By thread and soul, by seal and will,

Bound be the spirit, still thy hunger—

Return to silence, return to form.”

The air around the curse warped, the pressure collapsing inward. Its grotesque body began to twist, pulled toward the seal as if by unseen gravity. The screams turned to whispers, then to nothing. In the space of a few heartbeats, the massive creature had been drawn entirely into the small wooden box that now rested in her palm.

Silence returned to the schoolyard.

Machiko stood still for a long moment, her breath misting faintly in the cold air. Her hands trembled just slightly before she steadied them.

Retrieval complete.

She slid the box into her satchel and looked up at the darkened sky. The moon hung pale and distant above the rooftops. Somewhere out there, Geto waited.

And Machiko — ever his faithful student — would bring him what he asked for.

M returned to the shrine, the familiar scent of aged wood and incense curling through the air like ghostly fingers. The floorboards creaked softly beneath her steps, a subtle reminder that she was no longer on the streets of Sendai, no longer the shadowy Aya, but back within the dominion of her mentor. The office waited, dim and cavernous, lit only by the faint glow of lanterns that cast long, wavering shadows across the walls lined with tomes, jars of powders, and trinkets of curses past.

She approached the large, polished desk at the center, her footsteps silent, precise, honed by years of training and obedience. In her hands rested the box, wrapped with care and secrecy, the fruit of her latest mission.

“The retrieval process was a success,” she said, her voice low, calm, as though the act of speaking might betray her curiosity and her lingering questions. She set the box before him with deliberate care, watching as his sharp eyes flicked to its contents.

Geto rose from his chair, the movement smooth, predatory, as if the air itself parted for him. He stood before her, a towering figure of control and menace, his gaze fixed on the box. “Good,” he said, voice even but layered with that intangible weight of authority. “This will be useful for tomorrow.”

Machiko’s brow furrowed, a flicker of unease threading through her trained calm. “May I ask why, Geto-sama?” Her question was careful, respectful, yet edged with the curiosity that clawed at her from beneath years of obedience.

Geto chuckled softly, a sound that carried through the office like the click of a knife against bone. “A complaint has been lodged to Tokyo Jujutsu High. A minor curse infestation at an elementary school. I am reasonably certain that Yuta will be sent there by his teacher—him and his classmates. Satoru always preferred hands-on learning, as always.”

There was a glint in his eyes then, something fleeting beneath the calculating gleam: a trace of fondness, almost indulgence, as if he were amused. “After all,” he murmured, almost to himself, “he does enjoy putting his students to the test.”

Machiko’s hands tightened around the hem of her uniform, her mind cataloging every nuance, every shadow in his expression. “Remember, M,” Geto said, stepping closer, “tomorrow’s mission is observation. You are to report to me—the status on Yuta’s possession of Rika, the extent of her abilities, nothing more. Watch, but do not intervene. Report to me when it's done. I will be there to monitor from a distance the mission if things go wrong.”

His words stung. Did he not trust her to go on this mission alone?

Her lips parted to speak, but the words caught in her throat. Not only that, but the mission felt incomplete, opaque, yet layered with a significance she could not yet grasp. “Yes, Geto-sama,” she said, voice steady, but her thoughts churned with silent questions. Where was he taking this? How did she fit into this grand design? And why did he cloak his intentions so thoroughly, like a dagger beneath a cloak?

He leaned back slightly, a signal that the audience was concluded. “That will be all.”

A small, almost imperceptible tremor stirred in her chest. She could not contain herself. “Geto-sama…” she ventured, hesitant, fragile beneath the weight of his scrutiny. “…if you don’t mind telling me…where are we heading with all of this? What is our grand plan?”

The room grew still, heavy with the scent of incense and anticipation, as if the shadows themselves leaned closer to listen. And Machiko, standing there in her black gloves and mask beneath her hood, felt the faintest twinge of something she had not dared to name: fear, curiosity, and the cold thrill of a puzzle whose answer might reshape everything she thought she knew.

Geto stepped closer, his presence folding around her like a shadow made flesh. For a brief, sharp instant, Machiko felt a pang of regret slice through her—perhaps she had overstepped. Perhaps she should have swallowed her questions, bowed her head in silence, and retreated when dismissed. Trust had always been her shield; now, it felt as if she had cracked it. Her chest tightened with the fear of reprimand, of punishment, of having her incompetence laid bare before him.

Then, unexpectedly, a hand descended onto her head. Light, deliberate, almost gentle. Geto’s large hand was on her hood, ruffling it in a way that struck her as absurdly intimate, almost paternal.

“You must be worried,” he murmured, his voice low and warm, “after working in the dark for so long, huh, kiddo…”

Machiko’s heart stung at the words. To him, she was never a mystery. Never an enigma. He read her like an open book—every hesitation, every flicker of doubt, every secret worry laid bare in the light of his gaze.

“I’m sorry about that,” he continued, crouching so that his eyes met hers directly, the intensity of his presence anchoring her in place. “But I need you to trust me on this. In time, I will tell you. This… is for your safety.”

He leaned closer, his voice softening to a conspiratorial murmur—low, intimate, yet laced with the quiet authority of a man accustomed to obedience. “There is a reason I keep only a chosen few within the circle of my confidence,” he said, each word deliberate, measured. “I cannot risk our purpose falling into the wrong hands. That includes you as well, Machiko.”

His gaze lingered on her, calm yet unyielding, the faintest trace of a shadow crossing his otherwise composed features. “If I were to speak of our plan against the Jujutsu Sorcerers now, you would be in grave danger. And if you were ever to fall into their hands…” His tone dipped, colder now, like a knife tracing the edge of a threat not yet spoken. “…they would not hesitate to use you against me. They would break you apart for the smallest scrap of truth. I will not allow another incident like what happened with you, Nanako, and Mimiko. Not again.”

He exhaled softly, almost as if releasing the weight of his own words. Then, with a small, disarming smile, he reached out and brushed her shoulder—a fleeting, almost paternal gesture. “Just trust me, kiddo.”

Machiko felt his words sink into her like stones sinking into still water—each one heavy, unyielding, yet strangely soothing. The fear that had knotted in her chest began to loosen, replaced by that familiar warmth she only ever felt in his presence. She bowed her head low, her voice quiet, reverent, trembling with devotion forged from years of dependence.

“Of course, Geto-sama.”

In that moment, she understood—or thought she did. He was protecting her, protecting all of them. His secrecy wasn’t born of doubt, but of care. It wasn’t mistrust—it was love. The kind that demanded faith, obedience, and sacrifice. And so she gave it freely. She would follow him, wherever he led, through the dark and beyond.

As always.

Machiko stood upon the roof of an aging apartment building, the tar beneath her boots still warm from the sun. Beside her stood Geto, tall and quiet, his robes stirring faintly in the wind. Below them, the elementary school rested in the hollow of the city — a low, square thing of concrete and glass, ringed by wire fences and the soft laughter of children spilling out into the street.

From this height, they looked like a river of color. Small backpacks bobbed like drifting leaves as the children ran toward waiting parents, their voices echoing through the narrow streets — high, clear, and alive. Teachers stood by the gate, ushering them along, tired smiles on their faces. The scent of exhaust and cut grass mingled in the air.

Machiko watched in silence, her eyes tracing the faces of children she did not know. Each laugh, each shout seemed to pull at something deep inside her — an ache that had never quite healed.

Yuu.

If her youngest brother would have survived that night, she would have gotten the chance to witness him going through elementary school. Perhaps junior high school now. He could have been thirteen years old. He would have been among those children if he were in middle school— loud, smiling, his shoes muddy from the playground, his hands clutching a crumpled worksheet. She imagined him there, running with the others, the wind tugging at his honeyed hair. If only he had lived that night.

If only she had been strong enough to save him.

Her throat tightened. The thought came as it always did, sharp and unwanted: “If Yuu had lived, would Father have stayed? Would Mother still laugh? Would Kiyoko be nicer? Would Sora still fear her?” Perhaps the house would have been warm again. Perhaps she would have gone to high school instead of learning to kill and survive in the world she currently lives in.

But this was her life now. Her family was dust and memory, and she — Machiko, M, the shadow of Geto Suguru — was all that remained.

She straightened, pulling the dark hood over her head. The cold mask of duty slipped back into place. There was no space for warmth here.

“M,” Geto said, his voice calm as still water. “It’s time. I will remain at a distance. You know what to do.”

“Yes, Geto-sama.”

The words left her lips without thought, automatic and obedient.

And with that, she vanished from the rooftop.

Machiko moved like smoke through the city’s bones — silent, weightless, a phantom. The rooftops blurred beneath her, the cold wind whispering through her hood as she leapt from ledge to ledge. Her oversized jacket flared behind her, black as a raven’s wing, and for a moment she looked less a woman than something made of night and intent.

Within minutes, she reached the elementary school. It loomed below her like a hollowed carcass of concrete and glass, its windows gleaming faintly beneath the wan light of the streetlamps. The last of the teachers were leaving — weary shapes fumbling for keys, their laughter faint and brittle in the evening chill. She watched them lock doors and turn off lights, their faces washed in the dull orange glow of the setting sun. When the final beam of light winked out, Machiko moved.

She slipped through the schoolyard unseen, her footsteps as soft as falling dust. Her cursed energy was drawn in tight — a thread coiled around her heart, muted and invisible. To any watcher, she was no more than a breath in the dark, a ripple in still water.

At the back of the building, she knelt by a rusted door. The lock was old, cheap, easy prey. From her pouch she drew a single needle, long and thin as a sliver of moonlight. With deft fingers, she worked it into the keyhole. The soft, rhythmic clicks came like a whispered song — one, two, three — and the door yielded to her touch with a sigh.

The stale scent of dust and chalk greeted her as she slipped inside. The air was cool, still heavy with the faint musk of paper and forgotten lessons. Her eyes adjusted quickly to the dimness. Rows of empty desks sat like tombstones beneath the pale spill of moonlight from the windows.

Every sound mattered here — the creak of the wooden floorboards, the hum of the fluorescent light dying in the corridor, the faint echo of her own heartbeat. Machiko moved carefully, each step measured and deliberate. She could not afford to leave even a whisper of cursed residue behind. The world she walked in was one of evidence and energy, and her mentor’s enemies were hunters who could trace a ghost through a single drop of power.

She made her way to the second floor, her gloved hand trailing lightly along the rail. The hall stretched before her — long, narrow, and empty. It was the kind of place that seemed to hold its breath, waiting for something to happen.

There, where the shadows pooled deepest, she began her work.

From her belt, she drew a spool of thread so fine it was almost invisible — a filament woven with her cursed energy, vibrating faintly at her touch. With careful precision, she stretched it across the corridor, low and hidden, where the eye would glide past it without ever seeing. A trap for the careless, for the unwary.

The thread’s other end she connected to a small chest — the same one she had used the night before, the one that now held a sleeping curse bound tight within layers of reinforced seals. The creature inside was restless; she could feel its hunger even now, thrumming faintly against the bindings. A Grade Two, nothing remarkable, but vicious enough to wound, to provoke.

Once triggered, the wire would snap, the box would open, and chaos would be born in the dark.

Machiko crouched beside her handiwork, eyes glinting silver in the half-light. Everything was placed with the care of a weaver setting her final knot. Every line was taut, every seal secure. She sat back on her heels and exhaled slowly.

Her task was simple: observe and report. But beneath the discipline of her mission, her thoughts drifted.

Yuta Okkotsu.

The name pulsed faintly in her mind, as familiar as it was distant. The boy she was sent to kill, and the boy she had saved. She remembered the way he had stood in the fading light of Sendai — small, trembling, haunted. The way he’d looked at her as though she were the first person who had ever seen him.

“I wonder”,she thought, “has he changed? Or is he still the frightened child who hid behind a monster’s love?”

Only time would tell.

All that remained now was to wait.

Machiko descended the narrow stairwell, her boots whispering against the cold linoleum. The air was still and heavy, thick with the scent of chalk dust and disuse. Somewhere far below, a single light flickered — pale, unsteady — before dying altogether, plunging the corridor into shadow.

She moved like a shadow herself, slipping through the gloom until she reached the narrow stairway that led to the rooftop. The metal door was cool beneath her hands. She opened the door soundlessly and emerged into the open air, the sky yawning vast and endless above her.

From her perch beneath the upper lip of the roof — hidden between two rusted ventilation shafts — she crouched low, her breath shallow, her body poised as if carved from stillness itself. Down below, the world slept, unaware of the predator watching from above.

In the silence, her senses sharpened to a blade’s edge. Every sound rang clear — the faint hum of the city beyond the veil, the distant chirp of a lone cricket, the almost imperceptible vibration from the sealed box below. The curse within it stirred, restless, its hunger pressing faintly against its bindings. Machiko could feel it, that soft and yearning pull, like a caged animal testing the strength of its bars.

She reached for her earpiece, the small motion practiced and precise. “Geto-sama,” she murmured, her voice barely above the wind. “Everything is in place.”

There was a brief crackle of static — then the familiar, silken baritone of her mentor filled her ear. “Good,” Geto replied. “It looks like they’re here. Four of them. Keep your eyes peeled.”

A soft click, and the line went silent.

Machiko lowered her hand, her expression unreadable beneath the dim wash of moonlight. She closed her eyes for a heartbeat, letting her senses fan outward like ripples in still water. She could feel them — the faint tremors of cursed energy drawing near.

Three signatures.

Two were modest, steady — the signatures of novices or low-ranked sorcerers. Manageable. But the third… it pressed against her awareness like a stormfront. Vast, heavy, suffocating. Power layered upon power. Even at a distance, she could taste the density of it, cold and electric against her skin.

And yet — there was supposed to be four.

She frowned slightly. The fourth was silent, absent. Perhaps a non-sorcerer. A civilian. Geto would not have miscounted — not him. But whoever it was, their presence was buried deep enough to escape even her senses.

Then the world dimmed.

A shiver rippled through the air, and the color drained from the sky. The streetlights beyond the gates flickered and died. Shadows lengthened unnaturally, swallowing the edges of the schoolyard. A veil had been cast — thick and heavy, a curtain between worlds. The temperature dropped, the air itself tightening like a held breath.

Machiko rose slowly and moved toward the edge of the rooftop, every step measured, silent. She crouched again beside the vents, cloak rippling softly in the night wind. From this vantage, she could see them clearly now — two figures stepping through the veil’s boundary.

One of them, she recognized immediately.

Yuta Okkotsu.

Even from this distance, she could feel his cursed energy pulse faintly — turbulent, uncertain, restrained only by fear and confusion. The boy she had met months ago in Sendai. The boy bound to that monstrous love. He moved awkwardly, shoulders hunched, eyes darting as though the air itself might attack him.

Beside him walked a girl. Tall, confident, her stance taut with discipline. She carried herself like someone accustomed to command, though her cursed energy was… nonexistent. An oddity, that.

Machiko reached for her earpiece once more.

“Geto-sama,” she whispered. “The target is here. He entered the premises with his teammate. It looks like his teammate seems to be…void of curse energy”

Geto’s voice came through at once, calm and unhurried. “That is Zenin Maki. She’s a civilian masquerading as a sorcerer. One of the monkeys. She possesses no cursed energy.”

Machiko’s brows knitted slightly. “A Zenin with no cursed energy?”

The thought was a discordant note in the symphony of her discipline. She had heard of the Zenin Clan, of course — one of the Three Great Houses of the Jujutsu world. A family of old blood and older pride, whose name was whispered with equal measures of reverence and resentment. The Zenin were said to produce warriors of unmatched skill, men and women born with innate techniques that could shape the world. Their pride in their lineage was legendary, their obsession with purity absolute.

And yet here was one of their own, stripped of everything that defined them — a Zenin without power, a sorcerer without cursed energy.

“Strange,” she murmured under her breath. “That the great Zenin bloodline would allow her to walk the halls of Jujutsu High, let alone become a sorcerer.”

Machiko exhaled slowly, misting the cold air. Below her, the two figures advanced toward the main building. The trap was waiting, coiled like a serpent in the dark.

All she had to do was watch.

And wait.

From her perch upon the rooftop, Machiko watched the battle unfold below. The veil cloaked the world in shadow, and the playground that once echoed with children’s laughter had become a graveyard of whispering curses.

They came slithering out from the dark. Malformed things with faces like torn parchment, limbs that bent the wrong way, and eyes that glimmered with hunger. Their howls carried faintly up to her, a chorus of malice and despair.

And among them stood the two intruders.

The girl — Zenin Maki — moved like tempered steel. Each motion was honed to purpose, her stance rooted in discipline, her strikes quick as lightning and twice as merciless. Her naginata cut through the air in gleaming arcs, slicing curses apart with a single fluid motion. She did not falter, did not hesitate. There was grace in her violence — a predator’s grace.

“So this is the Zenin who bears no curse energy”, she thought. “And yet she fights as if she were born for it”. Even without cursed energy, her precision was surgical, her strength unrelenting. She wielded her weapon as though it were a natural extension of her body — the way a dancer moves through a familiar rhythm, or a killer breathes before the blade sinks in.

Yuta Okkotsu, on the other hand, was every bit the opposite.

He wore the uniform of Jujutsu High now — white jacket, dark trousers, no weapons in his hands at all. But for all his outward change, the boy beneath remained much the same. Machiko could see it in his posture: shoulders drawn tight, knees locked, eyes wide and uncertain.

When the first curse lunged at him, he froze.

She saw him flinch, heard his shout — high and raw and terrified. He stumbled backward as his partner cleaved the monster in two before it reached him. Even from afar, Machiko could see the frustration flicker across Maki’s face, the faint twist of her lips betraying disdain. She barked something at him — sharp, clipped words Machiko couldn’t quite hear, but she didn’t need to. The meaning was clear.

Useless.

Coward.

Yuta’s expression tightened, shame and fear warring within him, but he did not move to fight.

Machiko narrowed her eyes, studying him as a scholar might study an insect beneath glass. His cursed energy flickered faintly. It was weak, inconsistent, like the trembling flame of a candle struggling against the wind. She probed deeper, seeking the presence that haunted him, that monstrous, possessive love bound to his soul.

But Rika’s energy was dormant. Silent.

“Strange”, she thought. “Why does he not call her?” 

The boy was drowning in fear, surrounded by lesser curses that could barely scrape him, and yet he would not summon his demon bride. Did he not know how? Or was he afraid of her — of himself?

A faint breeze lifted Machiko’s hair, brushing cold against her cheek. She folded her arms, expression unreadable, eyes as still as mirrors.

Yuta stumbled again, tripping over debris as Maki dispatched another curse in one sweeping strike. Her movements were growing sharper now. Faster, harder — not out of necessity, but impatience. The disdain in her gaze deepened with every blow. To her, the boy was not a partner. He was ballast. A burden.

Machiko watched them like a hawk, her mind cold and precise. Every twitch of muscle, every flicker of curse energy, every word and gesture. All of it etched into her memory, catalogued and organized like a scholar’s ledger. She had always taken pride in her method. Where others acted on instinct, she relied on structure. Observation. Control.

Below, the girl barked another order. Yuta obeyed — awkwardly, uncertainly — trailing behind as she led the way toward the school building.

Machiko shifted her weight, crouched low against the rooftop.

The trap was waiting inside.

And now her prey had stepped willingly into the web.

Machiko pressed two fingers to her earpiece, her voice a low whisper. “Geto-sama, the target has entered the building. The trap will be triggered any moment now.”

“Copy that, M.” Geto’s voice came through the line — calm, unhurried, a man who knew the shape of the outcome before the first move was made.

Machiko allowed herself a single, steadying breath. The evening air was cool against her face, the smell of rust and rain thick upon the wind. Below, the school crouched like a sleeping beast beneath the veil — silent, waiting to devour what walked within.

And then—

Movement.

Two small shadows darted across her periphery.

Her head snapped toward them. Down in the courtyard, two boys — no older than ten, maybe nine — were sprinting across the cracked asphalt, their shoes slapping hard against the ground. Behind them, black shapes slithered and lurched, the low-level curses she had left to roam the grounds now stirred to frenzy by the scent of fear.

“Shit,” she breathed. Her stomach turned cold. “Children? Where did they come from? I could have sworn this building was empty”

That was impossible. She had checked the building herself. Every classroom, every corridor, every godsforsaken broom closet. The place had been empty. It was empty.

And yet here they were — two boys, faces pale and eyes wide, running for their lives beneath the ghostly pall of the veil.

Her muscles tensed, every instinct screaming at her to move. She could end it in seconds — a flick of her wrist, a thread of cursed energy, and those monsters would be ash. She could leap from the roof, catch the boys before they fell, carry them clear of the danger. Her hand twitched towards her twin tanto.

Then she heard his voice. “You are there to observe and report.” The memory of Geto’s words was sharp as a blade drawn against her skin. Machiko froze. Her breath hitched. Her pulse throbbed in her ears.

If she revealed herself now — if she so much as let her cursed energy flare — the sorcerers around the area would feel it. The veil might flicker, the plan might crumble. And worse… Geto would know. He always knew and he would be disappointed in her again for failing another mission. She would put everyone on their side on the Sorcerer’s radar.

Her mind raced — angles, timings, possibilities — a storm of thought behind still silver eyes. Could she save them and remain unseen? Could she strike from a distance, mask her signature, weave her threads so fine they’d cut the curses but leave no trace?

No. Too risky. Too loud.

“You’ve just earned back his trust”, she reminded herself. “You cannot afford another mistake. Not now. Not again.”

She swallowed hard. “Run,” she whispered to the boys below, though they could not hear her. “Just run before they trigger it.”

But fate was already moving faster than she could.

A tremor ran through the air. The hair on her arms rose.

Then came the sound — a deep, guttural crack, like the world itself splitting open.

The sealed box shuddered, its bindings glowing red-hot for a heartbeat before they burst upon activation of her trap. The curse within howled as it tore free — a wet, violent roar that rattled the glass of the surrounding buildings.

Boom!

A column of dust and debris erupted as part of the upper floor caved in. The ground beneath Machiko quivered with the force. From the wreckage rose the creature — vast, bloated, its flesh a sickly green that glistened like rot beneath the moonlight. Milky eyes rolled in its head. Its limbs were long and uneven, twitching spasmodically as it screamed into the night.

“Fuck,” Machiko hissed, the word half a curse, half a prayer.

Chaos unfurled.

She caught sight of Yuta and Maki through the haze — thrown back by the explosion, their bodies flung into the air like rag dolls. The girl spun mid-flight, reaching desperately for her naginata as gravity dragged her down. The boy clung to her, flailing, his mouth open in a scream that vanished into the thunder of the curse’s roar.

Too slow.

Machiko saw Maki swing — a valiant, desperate strike. The blade of her weapon sang through the air and missed.

The curse’s jaws opened wide, a pit of darkness lined with teeth like shards of glass.

And before she could even move—

It swallowed them whole.

A wet, echoing gulp that reverberated through the ruin of the school.

Silence followed — heavy and absolute. They were gone.

The thing below turned its bulbous head and milky eyes on the two boys. Its gaze was a slow, patient thing like a tide deciding which scraps of driftwood or trash it would swallow next. The children’s screams rose thin and terrified, a high, brittle noise that sliced the night. Machiko felt the sound like a physical blow—a pressure behind the breastbone that made her breath shallow and hot.

Images came, unwanted and immediate: Yuu’s face in that long-ago dark forest, the smallness of him against a world that had opened and bled around him. She saw the way his eyes had gone flat and far away, the way the world had turned to a smear of scarlet and broken things. The memory was not a picture so much of a smell, a copper taste in her mouth, the scent of dug up eart, and it made her hair stand up along Machiko’s arms. Not again, she thoight, clinging to the thought as if it were a plank in a storm.

She jabbed her index finger at the earpiece as if the device were a lifeline and not a leash. “Geto-sama,” she hissed, voice raw of desperation, “there are two kids in the courtyard. They came out of nowhere from the building. Permission to rescue them—now.”

The answer came like a sluice. Cold. Absolute. “Permission denied.”

Machiko’s knees wanted to buckle. “But—“ she began, the plea tearing out of her like a string pulled taut from tension, “they’re children. They can’t protect themselves against these curses. Please, just this once—let me save them.”

”Permission denied,” Geto repeated, his voice firmer now. His words like iron. No softness hovered in them, no hesitation. They were not the voice of a man who weighed mercy against consequence; they were the voice of a commander trimming away sentiment. Machiko could already see how disappointed her mentor’s face is right now. “You failed me once, M. Do you intend to fail me again?”

For a best she could not speak. the world narrowed to the hiss of the veil and the wet, greedy sounds of the curse coming from the courtyard. She pictured the boys small bodies between the curse’s vast fingers and felt bile climb her throat. “But Geto-sama—“ Her voice broke.

“Are you questioning my order?” Geto’s tone sharpened then, not loud but absolute. It carried every lesson he had forced into her sinew and bone for years. “Do you doubt my decision? Do you doubt that every sacrifice we accept is a loss for our future?”

“No,” she whispered, and the word tasted like a lie. She couldn’t deny that there were times like these she questioned if her mentor’s visionary world was worth all the lives she took. For all the misery she caused. In times like these, she would often remind herself that this was for the greater good, a necessary evil to make the world a safer place for sorcerers. There would not be another Yuu, another bloody Mimiko, another crying Nanako and another miserable Machiko. 

Geto always said that all humans were terrible people, they were the ones who reinforced the cruel system that sorcerers are forced to live in today. However, Machiko wondered if that applied to children as well. They were, after all, children—someone who isn't able to differentiate the good from the bad things. They aren’t like those awful adults that Machiko had come across. They were like Yuu. “But Geto-sama, they will die if we do nothing.”

Silence on the line. For the first time since he had taught her to measure breath and will, Geto’s voice lost none of its composure. “They put themselves in harm’s way,” he said finally. “When Jujutsu Tech accepted the mission to clear curses on school grounds, they would send out letters to the school for an early closure. And yet, these two boys did not follow orders. Why should we, who bend fate, bow to salvage the weak when they put themselves in those situations? We do not bow to the weak. We do not become saviors of the careless.”

Machiko stood very still. The wind through her jacket felt like knives. Anger flared inside her, hot and blinding—not at Geto alone but at the memory of every time she reached out and been bitten. 

“Is he for real?” The thought flared and vanished. Her hands trembled where her gloves hid the grey webbing beneath her skin. “Regardless,” she whispered, to herself or to him she could not tell, “they are still children, Geto-sama.”

Below, she could see the curse capturing the boys with its large spindly hands. The sound of the boys’ screams were louder, more frantic. Machiko’s curse energy suppression—the tight, practiced binding that kept her presence still and hidden—began to fray like a rope over a cliff. The thing in her chest that had been stitched by grief and sharpened by training quivered. The threads she had braided into herself to keep Musubari’s whisper and hunger at bay loosened at the edges.

”Stay down, M.” Geto’s voice came again, flat as a stone. “That is an order. If you go rogue, I will subdue you.”

Those last words fell like a gauntlet. They were a threat and a promise both: the hand that had nurtured and taught her could also crush her. The earpiece warmed against her skin. The boys’ cries rose, then faltered. The veil shivered. Around Machiko, the city hummed ignorant and indifferent. 

Should she obey her mentor? Should she throw herself into the shadow of the curse, risk everything she had become—every sharpened instinct, every drop of blood spilled in training—to save the children below?

The first voice came as it always did: quiet, cold, certain. Trust him. Geto knows what he is doing. He has never led you astray. You have followed him through every ruin, every silence, every mission that broke lesser souls. You are his shadow, his weapon. You do not question. You do not falter.

For years, Geto had been the architect of her existence. He had shaped her from flesh and fear into something cold, perfect, and merciless. He had stripped her of hesitation the way a blacksmith strips impurities from iron—burning, breaking, reforging until she gleamed in his image. Every scar was a lesson. Every order, a commandment. She had learned to kill without thought, to bury her heart beneath steel and silence.

And yet now—the weight of this moment crushed harder than any curse. To disobey him was to court ruin, not just for herself but for all who walked in his shadow. A single act of defiance could unravel everything they had bled for. After Sendai, after her failure, she knew what disobedience cost. Obedience was safety. Obedience was survival.

But another voice rose inside her then, raw and feral, cutting through the iron calm of her mind. This is wrong.

That voice was older than Geto’s teachings. Older than her fear. It was the voice that had screamed inside her the night Yuu died. The voice of the child she had been, the sister who had knelt in the mud while the forest rang with her brother’s final cries. She could see it still—Yuu’s lifeless eyes, wide with terror and disbelief, the crimson matting his hair, his small hand reaching for her before it fell limp. That memory had never dulled; it had carved her hollow.

And now, below her, two more children screamed in the dark. Small bodies twisting in terror within the curse’s grasp. Their cries cut short as the curse swallowed them whole. She could see it in her mind’s eye: the curse devouring them whole, patient and unrelenting.

She had watched again, and she had done nothing.

The world blurred—the rooftop melted into the forest floor of that night long ago. The stench of blood filled her lungs. The soil clung wet to her knees. The echo of Yuu’s voice clawed at her mind. She was there again, powerless, broken. Only now, she was no longer helpless—she had the strength, the training, the power—and still, she did nothing.

Then came Geto’s voice through the static, calm and cold as a blade in the dark as she heard him speak through her earpiece. “Some sacrifices must be made. Even the lives of children. This is what it means to fight for the cause, M. For our world. For sorcerers only.”

Her stomach turned. The air seemed to thicken around her, heavy and sour. This—the screams, the blood, the silence after—was the cost of his dream. Was this the world Geto had envisioned? A world without fear, without persecution… built upon the bones of the innocent?

Her heart clenched beneath the weight of that truth. She had bled, killed, and silenced her conscience for this cause, believing it to be freedom. But freedom forged in the deaths of children and innocent people was not salvation. It was a curse in itself.

She had been his shadow, his instrument, honed to precision. But even shadows have edges—and edges, when pressed too far, will cut back. Somewhere beneath the layers of steel and discipline, something human still lived. Something small, fragile, and unbroken. That part of her—the part that remembered Yuu’s laughter, the warmth of his hand in hers—rose screaming.

She had been taught to kill compassion, to silence doubt, to stand still as the world burned. But the sight of those small hands disappearing into darkness shattered something inside her.

What was she fighting for? What had she been bleeding for? What kind of kingdom was she helping to build if its foundation was laid in the blood of children?

The air around her vibrated with their fading screams, each one a hammer striking her skull. Her mind reeled—obedience or defiance, faith or guilt, salvation or damnation. Trust the man who had given her purpose, or trust the voice that reminded her she was still human.

Her pulse pounded in her ears. Her fingers trembled. The mask she wore, the name she had been given—M—felt suddenly suffocating. Heavy as armor. Cold as stone.

She was a weapon forged in darkness. But even the sharpest weapon, when turned against the soul, must break.

And today, Machiko felt that break running through her bones—cracking, splintering—like ice under the weight of something far too heavy to bear.

If this was truly the world she had been fighting for—the world her mentor had promised her—then Machiko wanted no part in it. Not with the price it demanded. Not with the screams it left behind.

She had believed once that her sacrifices would build something noble, something pure. That all her sins, all her bloodshed, would pave the road toward a better world for those like her. But now, as she watched the darkness writhe and the echoes of dying children faded into silence, the truth cut her deeper than any blade. This world—Geto’s world—was built upon rot. And if she kept walking this path, the rot would claim her too.

Her resolve began to waver, trembling at its core. Her pulse roared in her ears as she reached for her own curse energy, ready to unleash it, ready to damn herself for defying him if it meant saving what innocence remained. Her fingers trembled, threads coiling faintly with power.

Then, before her energy could flare, the air shifted—heavy, vile, and ancient. A foul pressure rolled across the courtyard like the breath of some unseen beast. The stench of rot and decay choked her lungs, clinging to her skin like oil. Machiko froze. She knew this curse energy. She would know it anywhere.

Rika.

The world seemed to tremble with her name.

A surge of power burst through the ruins of the school, shaking the earth beneath her feet. With a thunderous roar, the monstrous spirit tore herself free from the belly of the curse that had swallowed her master. Flesh split like paper. Bone cracked. The air was thick with the wet, ragged sounds of destruction.

Rika emerged screaming—a sound too shrill, too wild to be human. Her face twisted with delight, her wide mouth stretched in a grin that bared rows of jagged, gleaming teeth. The moonlight caught the glint of her sharp claws and Machiko felt her stomach twist. There was no hesitation in Rika, no restraint. Only hunger. Only joy. Only bloodlust.

With a feral shriek, Rika lunged at the dying curse and began tearing it apart. Each blow landed with a sickening force. The creature howled and convulsed, but it was already dead, pinned beneath the weight of Rika’s frenzy. She clawed through its flesh, her laughter echoing through the shattered halls of the school. Purple blood splattered across the courtyard walls, dripping down in long, sticky streaks. The scent of it—sweet and rancid, like spoiled fruit—hung heavy in the air.

Machiko crouched low in the bushes, her breath caught in her throat. Every movement was silent, her body trained by instinct to vanish into shadow. And yet, she could not tear her gaze away. The sheer ferocity before her, the raw violence of it—it was monstrous.

Rika, the Queen of Curses.

The thing that Geto wanted. The thing she had failed to capture. And now, here it was again—alive and drenched in the blood of her kind.

In the distance, through the swirling haze of dust and blood, Machiko’s eyes caught a flicker of movement. A boy. Thin shoulders, hair plastered to his face with sweat and grime. Yuta. He was walking—no, staggering—out of the smoke, clutching the unconscious Zenin girl in his arms and the two boys on his back. The children. The same kids who had been screaming moments ago.

They were alive.

Machiko’s breath escaped her chest in a trembling sigh she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Her knees weakened with it. She could almost laugh—almost. Relief washed through her like warmth after a long winter. Somehow, against every odds, the children had lived.

Perhaps Yuta had called upon Rika in desperation, in that brief flicker of courage only born in moments of terror. Perhaps he had willed her forth with the raw instinct to protect. Whatever the reason, the outcome was the same: they had survived. And that was enough.

For now, at least.

The school grounds were quiet again save for the distant hum of dissipating curse energy. The veil began to thin as soon as Yuta made his way to the school gates. Sunlight filtered through the drifting smoke, silvering the broken glass, the spilled blood, the fragments of what once was a place for children to learn and laugh.

Machiko rose silently from her hiding place, brushing dust from her jacket and quickly made her way away from the site. Her heart still pounded, but her face was calm—too calm. She adjusted her earpiece, her voice a whisper.

“Geto-sama. The mission has been completed.”

There was a pause, soft static filling the space between them. Then, his voice came through—steady, cold, controlled. “Good. Meet me up north, M.”

Machiko’s throat felt dry. Her eyes lingered one last time on the distant figures of Yuta and the others, moving toward safety. She turned away, the faintest trace of a sigh caught between her lips.

“Yes, Geto-sama.”

And just like that, the shadow moved on—silent, unseen—leaving behind the ruin and the ghosts that would follow her long after the blood had dried. Questions and doubts lingered in her mind.