Chapter 2

  “Hey!” Sadakuno shouted. “Hey! She cheated! That disgusting whore cheated!”

  I shrugged.

  I turned to the rest of the crowd, about to speak to them, before Hanako grabbed me by my hair and dragged me out of the room.

  000

  “How!” She slapped me. “Dare you?!”

  She slapped me again.

  “That was Sadakuno-sama! That you humiliated!”

  I didn’t care. The slaps were soft. At worst, they would bruise me. They wouldn’t dislodge my teeth, however. They were far too weak. In a few weeks, the bruising would reduce. And that was fine.

  As long as they didn’t kill me, it was fine.

  And they wouldn’t kill me. That was why they needed the Juchū battle ritual in the first place: because to get stronger in the Hibana clan, one had to absorb a rival’s Juchū.

  Hanako didn’t stop me until one of her slaps cut the inner lining of my cheek, causing me to spit out the blood that I was reluctant to swallow.

  Clearly, she just wanted to see me bleed.

  The morning after, the caretaker that awoke me was not Hanako-san, but someone else.

  The old, wizened lady grinned at me widely. “I am Mezuko. Nice to meet you.” She grinned as she sat in seiza next to my floor-bed.

  I sat kneeled opposite from her, hands on my laps, and nodded. “I am Teira. Nice to meet you, too.”

  She nodded.

  “Now, Teira. You did… a bad thing.”

  The Juchū, no doubt.

  She seemed to wait for me to answer. Rather than do that, I just stared into her eyes, hooded as they were from heavy eyelids threatening to smother her orbs.

  She broke first. “A woman’s place is not beside a curse expert, young one. Don’t you already know that? We stay three steps behind our husbands. We obey our fathers in childhood, our husbands in marriage, and our sons should we become widows.”

  I didn’t say anything to that.

  She raised her hand up high.

  And brought it down on my skull.

  The heel of her palm struck me hard enough on my crown that I saw stars.

  I looked back up at her. “Answer me when I speak to you, Teira-chan.” She grinned in that witchy way.

  I grinned, nodded, and said, “I will surrender my Juchū when someone has taken them from me, in rightful combat.”

  She hit me again.

  And then again.

  The second hit to my crown brought the wind out of my chest, and made me wonder if this wouldn’t actually give me brain damage.

  The time she tried to hit me for the third time, I sent my Juchū at her.

  “Aaaaah!”

  She immediately started batting the air, but it was for naught. I swarmed her head.

  And I could do nothing else but just crawl around on her head as she smacked her face, trying to get rid of the bugs.

  Her own Juchū came out to defend her. She had seven.

  Big mistake, you old hag.

  I diverted my focus to them, and started turning them, one after another.

  In a handful of seconds, they were mine.

  She laid on her back, batting away bugs that she couldn’t even touch—that couldn’t even hurt her—and I stood up. “Those are mine now, too.”

  She kept hitting her face to no avail.

  I kept tormenting her.

  000

  Thirty-two Juchū now.

  According to my third caretaker assigned to me, a younger lady, aged only twenty-five, I was now a rather high-tier member of the clan.

  Hibana Taniko hugged me closely as we sat in my floor-mattress, trying to rock me to sleep. In the meanwhile, I tried to grill her. “So, the only way for us to gain more Juchū is to take them?”

  “Precisely, baby-darling.”

  “Can’t you kill people for them?”

  “No, of course not! It’s strictly prohibited to kill another clansman.”

  “But for their Juchū? Would anyone kill me in my sleep for mine?”

  “That’s not how it works, baby-dear. If it was, we would simply breed clansmen for their Juchū and harvest them while they were defenseless!”

  This particular caretaker was infuriatingly handsy, in how she tickled my stomach and rubbed at my head. It made my skin crawl. I wanted her to leave as soon as possible.

  And yet, the information she was giving me made all too much sense. It… squared perfectly with my own deductions.

  They couldn’t just take the Juchū. They needed them manifested first.

  The reason why the Hibana clan kept such a massive nursery in the first place was because they needed as many Juchū-users alive in the first place, in order for their more promising curse experts to take them.

  “How many Juchū are there?”

  “At any given time, there’s close to two-thousand.”

  Oh…

  What the hell was I going to do with two-thousand bugs?

  “So few?” I asked.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Taniko giggled. “Our Juchū are capable of many things, young one. Do you know what?”

  I didn’t, in fact.

  All I knew, from the moment I had first manifested them, was that I could sense each and every one of them as though they were my right hand.

  The first time I had summoned them, in my bare tatami-floored room, I had tried to control them the same way that I could control my normal bugs.

  I could.

  Each and every single one of them were as easily controllable as trying to straighten or tense my right hand. And I had that control completely in tandem with each and every one of my bugs. Even with my recent influx.

  I was clearly tapping into something beyond just talent. The way the others controlled their Juchū looked far more human, like they were manually focusing on each individual’s actions, and were thus exceedingly clumsy in how they controlled them.

  The conclusion I drew from that, was that I was getting help. From it.

  And yet, I couldn’t hear the administrator in the back of my head. The voice was absolutely quiet. The influence had stopped, somehow.

  Yet the power remained. The multitasking, at least.

  “Our Juchū can extend our senses. They can even parasitize cursed energy from spirits, turning them into remote batteries for our jujutsu.” That was what they labeled our power: Jujutsu. And similarly, our sworn enemies were the ‘Jujutsu Society’. “Though it is a wasteful expenditure, we can even use our Juchū to take control over cursed spirits via the mechanism of ‘Control’.”

  I hummed. “Then… Parasitization, Senses, and Control. Those are our powers?”

  “Yes, Teira,” she said as she reached lower on my stomach. I grabbed her hand, stopping the descent in a fit of panic. She pulled her hand away and rested it on a nearby pillow instead. Meanwhile, I tried to not pant in horror and disgust at what I had felt. “Parasitization, Sense expansion, and Control. These are our three primary powers as Juchū Users. But hear me, Teira. The only safe method to use this cursed technique is via Sense Expansion. If we use our power conspicuously, there is a great chance that our rivals may destroy our Juchū. And if even a single one of your Juchū is destroyed, it can never be recovered. Unless…” I waited patiently for her to continue. Evidently, she had expected me to prompt her, but I had next to nothing to say to her at this point. I really just wanted her out of my room. “Unless you develop the skill of ‘reverse cursed technique’.”

  She refused to elaborate. And I was truly, intensely curious. Thus, after almost twenty seconds, I finally acquiesced. “What’s that?”

  “The Reverse Cursed Technique is a mythical power, Teira. It will allow our Juchū to not only regenerate from destruction, but it may also allow our Juchū to replicate. It will square your total amount of Juchū. And it will allow you to reproduce destroyed Juchū by simply expending your cursed energy!”

  Ah! “And… there are how many Juchū in the clan?”

  “Uh… there’s two-thousand, darling. Why do you ask?”

  “…No reason.”

  That was… four million Juchū then. A decent enough swarm, especially given those other powers, but still…

  …Not nearly enough, honestly.

  And that was only if I could learn this ‘Reverse Cursed Technique’. “Why is it mythical?”

  “Why? Because not a single member of the Hibana clan has been able to learn it in over two hundred years.”

  “How do you learn it?”

  Her hand started reaching again.

  I grabbed it harder, pushing it away.

  “Hmm… go to sleep, my dear.”

  She sat in seiza next to me as she watched me go to sleep.

  I didn’t actually sleep until she left the room. Even then, I doubted that I had been able to steal away more than a scant few hours.

  000

  Inside the meeting room that hosted all the highest figures of the clan, Hibana Iemon watched surreptitiously as the clan-head surreptitiously picked at his hair-sticks—the Swarm Queen’s Antennae. They were the prized Cursed Tool of the Hibana clan—a pair of black needle-sharp sticks with silver engraving of butterflies and flowers.

  Of course, the Tools were useless atop Sosuke-sama’s head, inactive as they were. Given that no one in the clan really knew the Reverse Cursed Technique, that would remain a fact for many generations to come.

  The sight, to Iemon, felt like a microcosm of the clan’s greater situation. All pomp and pageantry. Their art was kept in remembrance of a past generation, one that dared to keep their heads high in spite of the threat from the Jujutsu Society.

  Now, all Iemon could see were bitter old men, fighting over bugs for no other reason than to simply have them. Few would ever risk them doing actual work for the clan. Those with fewer than ten tended to use theirs more often, while those that hoarder scores only wanted them for their numbers.

  It was silly.

  As the servant women poured a measure of sake to waiting wooden box cups before each elder, Iemon focused on his Juchū, reaching his senses through the dozen or so shikigami spread around the room invisibly.

  It was a funny joke that the elders in this room even bothered to whisper in the first place, given the fact that everyone in the room likely had it thoroughly bugged already.

  “You’ve gained weight, Sosa-san. Are you using your Juchū to sneak bites of food from the kitchen while no one’s looking,” Iemon muttered quietly underneath his breath while he looked straight at the elder in question, Sosa, who was across the table, eight seats away.

  Sosa glared at him.

  While he privately enjoyed tormenting the foolish old man, Iemon focused on more important things as well, like the whispers between Mitsuzuka and Tabito.

  “Sadakuno has been crippled. That’s the fact now. Without even a single Juchū to his name, he can never win another.”

  “Just when we managed to land on the least offensive choice for heirship, this happens. What a bother.”

  In Iemon’s opinion, this was probably for the best. Controversy was the lifeblood of any collection of sorcerers and experts. This might lead the clan to do something actually interesting for once.

  Doubtful. With the birth of the Six Eyes and Limitless user in the Gojo clan, things were looking darker than ever for their modest little clan that clung so tightly to past glory.

  “I have more sons,” Sosuke-sama said loudly. Infants. Even Sadakuno had been a less-than-ideal choice for heirship, given his young age. Ideally, the heir should be someone ready to take on the burden of leadership at a moment’s notice. The life of a curse expert was fraught with danger from all sides: society, the underground, and the very curses that they occasionally did battle against.

  And it was worse for those born with the Cursed Insect Technique, for when a Juchū was lost, it could never be recovered.

  Unless, of course, one used the Reverse Cursed Technique of legend.

  “In the meanwhile,” Sosuke said through gritted teeth. “We can consider Mitsuzuka as the interim-heir.” He didn’t meet the old man’s eyes as he announced that. But the old man grinned widely at the news that he no doubt already expected to hear. Mitsuzuka, like Sadakuno, was in the category of ‘least offensive’ as picks for leadership. “However, should I die to unexplainable causes, then the interim-heir will be Iemon.”

  Iemon had… not expected that.

  “That’s random.”

  “Not bad, however. Iemon’s only thirty. And he has many children.”

  “And he is Teira-chan’s uncle as well.”

  Unfortunately.

  Iemon’s life had been nothing but a bad circus act for the past six years. His beloved brother, whose seed was so powerful that it managed to split a child into five parts, had then inadvertently killed his own wife by afflicting her with that accursed burden.

  Then days later, he let himself get killed by some Jujutsu Sorcerers while doing a job for the Yamaguchi group, botching it severely in the process. Their close relationship with the Yakuza had frayed since then, and Iemon had been sent to job after job, cleaning up after that man’s messes.

  And yet that foolish man’s legacy persisted in troubling the clan, in the form of that mutant spawn of his.

  Iemon sighed. What a bother.

  “And what do we do about Teira anyway?” Someone whispered. It was hardly worth keeping track of the identities of the whisperers. The clan respected this form of opinion-sharing as nominally anonymous, at least until the whispers crossed a certain line. “She has thirty-two Juchū now. The uppity harlot stole seven more from her second caretaker!”

  And the council would have been up in arms about that if it wasn’t so damn funny. Mezuko was an old hag, anyhow, with one foot in the grave. Her Juchū were wasted on her.

  “Teira will begin her education in curse use,” Sosuke announced. “She will learn alongside the clan’s young boys until she is crippled.”

  “What if that doesn’t come to pass?” someone whispered. “What if she just keeps winning?”

  “That’s a silly thing to assume.”

  “Based on her track record—“

  “Against an old hag and a wastrel son—“

  Sosuke reached into his bun, ripped out one of the Swarm Queen’s Antennae, and threw it towards the whisperer, narrowly missing him before the needle lodged into a wooden frame on the wall. “My son was not a wastrel.”

  Was. In Sosuke’s mind, the young boy was probably already dead. He might as well be. He would be relegated to a position as an enforcer. While he no longer had the technique, he did still have cursed energy that he could use to strengthen his body. It was a menial and lowly position, but it was better for the clan if the Juchū users received good protection.

  “This little girl will be crippled during her education. Then she will marry and support Sadakuno,” Sosuke explained patiently. “That is all.”

  Iemon flew one of her Juchū inside Teira’s room. He couldn’t see very well through only a single one—usually, he’d need five to ten for a high fidelity view—but he could sense cursed energy quite easily through the bug.

  Teira had summoned her Juchū. She was playing with them. Thirty one were in the air..

  They were moving in a dizzying circular pattern, forming stars and elaborate shapes with their paths. She controlled them—

  His view was gone.

  Iemon gasped.

  Iemon’s total number of Juchū had dropped. From eighty-seven to eighty-six.

  Without even realizing it, his Juchū had been captured.

  Iemon slapped a hand over his mouth to prevent others from seeing his grin.

  This would surely not go as Sosuke was expecting.