Chapter 21

  Hibana Iemon felt like he was reliving some of the wilder fairy tales that his mother had once told him as a child, back when she was alive. Those were fairy tales of the Jujutsu world of old. The Heian era.

  She had told him about the ancient sorcerer, Ryōmen Sukuna, the King of Curses, who could regularly perform miracles. Negative miracles. Four arms, two faces. He would consume villages worth of people, passing by like a natural disaster without rhyme or reason.

  Hibana Teira was one such negative miracle. A child who spited death. A monster whom no one could defeat.

  The high courtyard, built atop a mountain and paved with carefully cut stone, was populated with almost two hundred bound and gagged figures in a long, long line. The men of the Hibana clan that had transgressed at Teira’s then-corpse.

  And the people of the Mori clan, those Teira had deemed as non-essential in providing the Hibana clan with their lore on barrier techniques. Those people, a scarce dozen or so curse experts, were standing on the front line of the crowd of watchers, looking out at the bound, kneeling grid of figures.

  Tall mantis-like shikigami prowled the area, some flying overhead, others standing near those condemned for death.

  And before them all, between the crowd of watchers and the condemned, floated an ‘Ambassador’ Juchū, as Teira had come to call it. It was a moth-like woman of a sort, with a fair face, and the ability to speak.

  Upon seeing Teira’s savaged corpse, he had felt a deep sense of despair at what would follow. The Hibana clan owed its continued… ‘freedom’ to Teira. She, at least, wouldn’t slaughter them to a man and sell their women and children off to other clans for a profit.

  She had imposed many changes on the clan, but she had never acted counter to their safety.

  Now, however, she was finally beginning to reveal the depths of her spite and resentment. And Iemon could do nothing to stop this.

  She wouldn’t respond to him. Her shikigami ignored him. There were several of them guarding her door. She was keeping herself entombed, clearly due to the trauma of having lost for the first time in her life.

  His pleas for mercy fell on deaf ears. Today, the Hibana clan would truly lose an enormous portion of their male adult population.

  Perhaps this blood sacrifice had always been necessary to enact the sort of changes that Teira had wanted—flipping the dynamic of gender on its head, with women at the top.

  Perhaps he had been na?ve to expect a gentler outcome than this.

  “Mori clansmen,” the ambassador Juchū spoke, floating with graceful bats of its moth-like wings. “For the high crime of perfidy, in engaging us in good faith only to stab us in the back when we were least prepared, I sentence you all to death. By Fertilization. In life, you were deceitful dogs. In death, you shall profit our clan by feeding your bodies to my Juchū. From your corpses, we shall add to our number. From your corpses, the swarm shall proliferate.”

  A shikigami cut the gag off one Mori clansman, freeing his mouth. Just as they did, several dozens of Juchū flew into his mouth and nose, causing him to cry out in shock.

  Then, he fell on his side, spasming. The spasms became more and more spirited until—

  Like the snap of a finger, the man’s features grew bulbous and unformed. Then…

  Sacs.

  The man, now a humanoid outline of egg sacs wrapped in tattered clothing, became still. Everywhere there once was flesh, flesh-colored egg sacs remained.

  And so, the grisly sight repeated. Again, again and again, until all the Mori clansmen were dead.

  All that were left, were the condemned Hibana.

  “For the crime of celebrating the death of your clan head, for seeking to desecrate her corpse as an act of defiance towards her regime and all that she had sought to accomplish, the one-hundred and third clan head no longer sees a reason to save you. None of you are worthy of being saved. All of you are cancers unto society.”

  Iemon closed his eyes. So it would begin.

  “Indeed, to forgive you after your high crime would be an act of unmitigated mercy. A mercy bordering on the divine itself.”

  And Iemon did not know Teira for her mercy.

  “It would be a divine miracle every bit as earth-shattering… as coming back to life.”

  What?!

  The kamakiri began to cut the prisoners loose.

  “You committed your crimes while I was not in this world. Therefore, it can be said that you did not commit your crimes under my watch. Once, and once alone, will you be granted mercy. Remember this day for the rest of your lives. Remember the day that your bodies would have been used to fertilize a crop of Juchū eggs.”

  The freed prisoners looked hollow-eyed up at the ambassador Juchū.

  Then one after another, they bowed to the ground, hands and forehead pressed down in a most profound apology.

  The crowd—even the Mori clan hostages—fell on their knees as well, bowing. Iemon, too, had felt an unmistakeable urge to do the same.

  Teira-sama was… truly at the pinnacle of Jujutsu Sorcery. More divine than human. Hadn’t it been for his disability, he would have reached lower. Unfortunately, it was all he could do to just bow his head.

  He bowed his head and whispered a prayer, begging that their new god would be a benevolent one.

  000

  It took me a while until I understood the significance of the term ‘monkey’.

  Toji had called himself one. I had heard mutters here and there of our own clansmen referring to non-sorcerers as such. Monkeys. Simple-minded, unintelligent beings. That didn’t make sense, obviously. Non-sorcerers made up practically every innovation in the modern day. These monkeys weren’t simple-minded.

  They just could not perceive evil.

  Like the three wise monkeys. Mizaru, Kikazaru, and Iwazaru, who could not see, hear, or speak evil respectively. One interpretation was in their lack of jujutsu. They couldn’t perceive curses, nor ‘speak’ evil by performing jujutsu.

  I could see why sorcerers would come to perceive such people in a negative light. In a way, they were blessed to be able to avoid this part of life. To not be able to perceive this evil was a privilege. Indeed, it was the sorcerer’s job to curse themselves in order to bless the world.

  Then again, I doubted any sorcerer in history had cursed themselves as much as I was.

  My mouth was open in a wordless scream while I was at the bottom of the clay pot, poison breaking down my insides and my outsides at the same time. My only source of comfort was Michiko’s head, which I cradled and poured my quiet screams into. I was hoping to knock two birds with one stone. Three birds, really. My negativity could fuel Michiko’s recovery. That and the poison, which had no harmful effect on her. This poison wasn’t the type to break down cursed energy. Rather, it did the exact opposite. It cursed physical matter.

  The third bird was providing myself with the relief of knowing that she was with me, in silent support. She accepted my pain and misery readily.

  She had space for it. Infinite space.

  At first, entering the kodoku concoction had felt like hell on earth.

  Like Bakuda’s pain bomb all over again.

  To my shock and surprise, the pain didn’t abate over time, either. Neither was it possible for me to get used to it. For a moment, I hadn’t been able to conceive of being inside the pot for longer than a minute. Then an hour. Then a day. And each time I pushed through, I failed to imagine being able to endure for any longer.

  What I did get used to, the small way in which I was able to adapt, was to anticipate that it would always be unbearable.

  That it wasn’t possible to bear this pain.

  Paradoxically, that allowed me to push through, knowing that I could not bear it.

  Doubts crept into my mind. I had no idea how this would work. If it could work, then why hadn’t anyone done this before?

  I’m special. No one has given themselves to this harebrained scheme while undergoing physical maturation.

  My prevailing hypothesis was that growing up under these circumstances would do something for me. That hypothesis was informed by hunches and my own limited understanding of cursed energy. And failing that, I would still walk away with a hitherto unseen grasp of the Reverse Cursed Technique. That was an undeniable benefit.

  Jujutsu sorcery didn’t operate on delusion. There was a ninety-percent chance that this wouldn’t work out the way I expected it to.

  A ninety-nine percent chance.

  Point nine, nine, nine…

  …nine, nine, nine.

  The odds were basically a hundred percent.

  This just wouldn’t go according to plan. And the plan was simple: boosting my body by cursing it akin to how one cursed a tool. That was the main goal.

  All that was left, was mere idle curiosity.

  Gee, but it’s great to not have to see anyone for a couple of years.

  I hugged Michiko tightly. I was still in all-encompassing agony, but that thought was the first bit of comfort I had found in this pot. Solitude.

  Quietude.

  I would still be dealing with people through my shikigami, but that just wasn’t the same. It was better.

  000

  The last few days had harrowed Haruta to her core.

  She hadn’t believed it when the others had said that Teira had died. She had thought it was an awful rumor. She had felt nothing but an all-encompassing desire to see those who spread that rumor punished by Teira-sama once she returned from wherever she had gone to.

  She had kept that same attitude until she had seen her, a hole gouged into her chest, her face pale.

  Haruta had thrown up.

  She had run away.

  She had hidden herself away in some forgotten corner of the clan compound, shaking, begging to wake up from this nightmare.

  And then she had.

  Though she hadn’t witnessed it, Teira had risen from the dead, passing judgment on those that had celebrated her demise.

  Including her father.

  Haruta had taken a moment to cry in solitude such that she could better come to accept the necessity of his death. Her mother would have to work less now, and there would be no more disagreements between them.

  He would no longer look upon her with a warm smile. But he would also no longer hit her in a fit of pique, because he was drunk, and her presence had proven too irritating to him.

  With his death, she would lose out on many future experiences, both good and bad.

  And she would have more room for Teira instead.

  She hadn’t been allowed up the mountain to witness the executions. None of the children had been allowed, by Teira-sama’s orders. Which wasn’t really fair since Teira-sama was also a child. But she was a special case.

  It hadn’t been until the end of the day when she had learned that Teira-sama had spared her father.

  She hadn’t known what to feel about that. All of this was… too confusing. Too harrowing. Teira-sama was clearly more an adult than a child, because she also acted in a way that didn’t make any sense at all. Why condemn someone to execution just to forgive them in the last minute?

  Why did Teira-sama do half the things that she did?

  Haruta had to accept that something about her decision-making process was simply right. She, herself, couldn’t make sense out of it, but that was probably why Teira-sama was the leader and she wasn’t.

  Haruta had promised her that one day, she would be her right-hand woman. She couldn’t falter now.

  That was why she had shown up, along with almost all the clan’s children between the ages of six and fifteen, to a courtyard for a ‘training session’ hosted by Teira-sama herself…

  …or one of her Juchū, at least. Teira-sama was able to make her Juchū huge. And even pretty! It was super cool, and Haruta wanted to learn it as well. They all did.

  “Welcome, everyone,” the Juchū spoke. She had heard it speak before, and it had a weirdly fuzzy quality to it then. Now, it sounded even more human. “I’m glad to see so many boys and girls show up for this training session.” Especially the girls. Haruta hadn’t expected to have any of the girls she knew join her, but practically everyone did. Teira-sama had been clear that girls could be curse experts just like boys, and she had also made the parents too scared to say otherwise, so they all had come. “Before we begin on the fundamentals, I want to begin my first formal address to you, the next generation of the Hibana clan, with this: every single one of you have a right to decide your fates.”

  Haruta drew in a gasp.

  “Whether you’re a girl or a boy. Whether you, yourself, have feelings for those of the same gender or not. You are, intrinsically, worthy of a right to decide your fate. None of you should feel shackled or enslaved to the expectations of your parents. Should you choose to serve the clan, it will be because you feel that this clan is worthy of being served. Because it served you in your hour of need. This is my sincerest goal: to create a clan that serves everyone within it. A clan that views all its members as important. Worthy of respect. Engrave this word into your hearts: respect. Respect your fellows. In time, you will learn the true meaning of respect. It is not enough to just apply its dictionary definition, for respect is not a mere word. It’s a wide concept unto itself. Respect is looking at a girl and not seeing a future wife or a servant to the clan, but the person underneath. Respect is seeing them and thinking of their name first. Respect is being able to model their desires and wishes in your own mind. Respect is the expectation of another person’s agency.”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Haruta found most of those words confusing, but she also liked them. Something about it felt nice. She was going to be like a boy now, and that was really awesome. She couldn’t wait to play around near dusk, getting her kimono dirty like they did. Then her mom would just scold her the same way moms would scold their sons—by lightly chiding them instead of dressing them down and talking about how ‘empty’ their future would be.

  “You boys will learn to respect one another in time as well. There will be no need to uphold the old values. You are not protectors or leaders by virtue of your birth. You will work and contribute in equal standing to the girls. And you may express yourselves in ways that the old customs would not allow. In time, you will understand what this means. You will understand the freedom that comes with this perceived reduction of social status. Know that I do not hate any of you. But know that the days of your fathers have ended. Nothing they taught you will apply henceforth.”

  Haruta stole some glances at the boys.

  Some of them held back tears at the words. Others looked angry. Most looked sad and listless, unable to look at the Juchū directly. They had seen how Teira had treated their fathers and uncles.

  They knew that they stood no chance.

  Heh. That’s my clan head.

  “Girls. In matters pertaining to sorcery, you will be at a disadvantage. You are smaller than boys, so your bodies will not be enhanced to the level of boys. That is fine. Do not take this as evidence that you cannot become sorcerers. Not everyone can become Jujutsu Sorcerers, but a Jujutsu Sorcerer can crop up from anywhere. Anyone. Girl, boy. I am a living testament to this. But you are all free to choose your fates. Now… let us begin.”

  000

  Several impacts all over Western Honshu, three in the Aramata gorge in Ishikawa, and three in a forest outside of Gifu city.

  Atsuya Kusakabe took a long drag of his cigarette as he walked through the blood-drenched hallways of an office building in Gifu city.

  Usami was trailing behind him, looking around, unusually non-hyperverbal. Atsuya remembered something that his friend had said, upon first parting ways from those insectile shikigami.

  Glad they aren’t hostile, eh?

  An Assistant Manager jogged up to the pair of them. “No survivors, sir. It seems like everyone that worked in this building were taken. There’s enough blood in some of the rooms to suggest that at least three people died.”

  What a mess.

  “I think it’s time we finally had a conversation.”

  Atsuya jumped in front of the Assistant Manager, shielding him from the new arrival as his katana was halfway towards leaving its scabbard. Out from a door on the hallway, a… creature walked out. It looked like the cross between a moth and a woman. And it wore a kimono.

  Not a cursed spirit. Its energy was all too… human for that. Not quite, but certainly more than a cursed spirit’s. It was a shikigami, clearly. The same insect-type as before.

  “You did this,” Atsuya said. Usami’s hands were wide. He was readying to activate his cursed technique—for all the good it would do them.

  “The Mori clan were curse users,” the shikigami said. “They used their jujutsu to protect other curse users. They also used it to spy on non-sorcerers in order to profit in the financial sector. Stealing knowledge. Killing rivals if need be. Shaping industry in their little corner of Japan.”

  Atsuya didn’t let up his pressure. “Are we supposed to take that on faith alone?”

  “I mean you no harm,” she said. It had a feminine voice, so Atsuya was inclined to call it a she, though he was certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was speaking to a real human being. A shikigami with this level of cognizance was… unheard of, really. “And if you want evidence, you need only follow me. Yes, before we begin, I will confess that I took care of the Mori clan. I disposed of its main workforce and absorbed those that could be useful to me and mine. In doing so, I have completely blown open one of the most ancient criminal conspiracies in all of Jujutsu history. You may recognize them as the Association of Curse Experts.”

  Atsuya narrowed his eyes.

  He slid the sword down his scabbard. The Association of Curse Experts, eh? Apparently, ever since the Gojo brat had been born, their ilk had lain lower than ever before. Most people in Jujutsu HQ had already written those bastards off as dead once Gojo had grown old enough to put in some real work.

  Evidently, they hadn’t had to wait at all, if this moth girl’s words were to be trusted.

  “I serve as the one-hundred and third clan head of the Hibana. Our inherited technique is Juchū. Though we were a founding clan of the Association, I believe that there may be room for us to rejoin with the Jujutsu Society such that our ancient agreements will once again be honored. We recognize that the process for our reintegration will be long and arduous. For now, we will cooperate with your investigations, within reason. In time, we will have more meaningful meetings. Now, come with me. I will show you to their secret archive, and you may confirm the criminality of the Mori clan with your own eyes.”

  She walked away, not even waiting to be dressed down further. Atsuya clicked his tongue and followed.

  This is so above my paygrade that it ain’t even funny.

  000

  I hugged Michiko tightly as I felt some rather negative news send anguish straight through my core.

  Barrier techniques were my great weakness. Specifically, these were the techniques optimized for disabling cursed tools. Were I to get hit with such a technique, I would be finished. My antennae would stop working and I would become blind and I would lose my enormous range.

  A range that only grew by the day.

  I had just recently hit eighty miles.

  In order to counter a barrier technique that disabled cursed tools, I had to imbue a barrier to my cursed antennae.

  The Mori clansmen were working day and night on a solution. They scribbled on paper talismans, made incantations and gestures, sometimes in groups. Several hands were sometimes required to complete one stage of the barrier’s creation, which made me wonder how one could possibly do all things by oneself.

  Via the process of Subtraction, of course. One of the core tenets of Jujutsu.

  Subtraction was one’s ability to reduce the necessary amount of gestures and incantations to activate a cursed technique, whether it be innate, a barrier, or miscellaneous.

  Once you got good enough at Subtraction, you could just go back to using incantations and gestures for greater effect. Addition.

  I’m learning so much, Michiko!

  This is good for me! This makes sense for me to do!

  I was hungry.

  Swallowing the poison was my solution to that. Also when I was thirsty. My Juchū were working overtime replenishing the lost poison that, for some reason, seemed to disappear into thin air as it burned me alive. It was probably very literally doing that, evaporating over time as its active effect was spent on breaking me down.

  In case that was actually happening, I had my Juchū turn my room air-tight. I would spend years in this state, but I had already learned how to oxygenate my brain with positive energy. I wouldn’t choke to death as long as I didn’t lose focus. And I was too shameless to just lie down and die like a good little girl.

  For the life of me, I just couldn’t stop inflicting myself on the world.

  Isn’t that crazy, Michiko? I’m such a terrible person!

  Unlike most times, this remark on myself didn’t… sting anymore. It felt like an acknowledgment. One that lifted a burden from me. A burden to try and change myself out of self-hatred. The self-hatred was… well, not entirely absent. You couldn’t love yourself and subject yourself to this hell.

  Rather, it had changed. It was less self-hatred, and more… self-respect. But the sort of respect that you gave to a lion in a zoo. You respected its threat as a wild animal and gave it a wide berth. Likewise, you didn’t domesticate a lion. You tamed it.

  I had a clear understanding of what to maul, and what not to maul.

  And right now? I had to maul this barrier technique.

  I pictured my antennae, concentrating deeply. Then, I started chanting and gesturing with my fingers. I couldn’t chant while submerged, but the gestures were doing something. I could clearly tell.

  Barrier techniques were all about picture-perfect visualization of every aspect of energy and the barrier’s shape and intention. With a brain that allowed me to multi-task almost infinitely, my one hurdle had been learning to fasten all those disparate tracks of thought into one coherent whole.

  I kept gesturing, doing away with incantation entirely.

  My cursed energy seemed to well back and forth, like it was trying to tip over into something. I kept building momentum. Tip, tip, tip, until finally…

  I felt the barrier extend between my antennae. A minor extension of my Innate Domain.

  The prelude to Domain Expansion.

  This was a temporary measure, however. It necessitated that I maintain the Prana mudra with my right hand and the Vayu mudra with my left hand.

  I wouldn’t be able to use my hands to fight.

  A temporary measure.

  …but what if it wasn’t?

  My cursed antennae were prosthetics that weren’t protected by my Innate Domain naturally. This protection was what made it difficult for a barrier technique to outright kill you by say, dictating that all electric signaling ceased when the barrier was crossed. Barriers famously could not directly reach in to disable a function of your body.

  Because your Innate Domain protected it.

  And your Innate Domain covered everything that the outlines of your soul covered.

  The solution became clear very quickly, and I was too addled by pain to even doubt myself for a second.

  Either it works or it doesn’t.

  It better damn work.

  000

  Out of the twenty-nine ‘raw sorcerers’ I had made contact with in the region, twenty-seven had instantly accepted my tutelage. My ambassador Juchū was busy relaying their information to Iemon, who was smoking his pipe and nodding along.

  “The turnout is excellent,” Iemon said.

  “I’m not surprised. All of them were from non-sorcerer backgrounds. I can only imagine their terror thus far.”

  To make matters even bleaker, twenty-three of them were children below the age of eighteen. The remaining six were in their twenties, and in varying stages of being utterly savaged. Some were scarred. One missed an entire arm. And they all had a hollow look in their eyes from a lifetime of being chased down by monsters without being able to protect themselves and point to why.

  None had been older than thirty. And you didn’t just stop being a sorcerer with age and a lack of training. They had clearly just succumbed to the life of being walking curse bait.

  “I never agreed, conceptually, with our Slave Corps,” Iemon said. “Truthfully, I’ve always seen other cursed techniques as being nothing but boons to the family. We never should have segregated those individuals with non-Juchū related techniques. I’m tempted to say that this is our second chance at introducing diversity and a range of capabilities to our skillset.”

  I shook my head. “The Jujutsu Society is likely discussing my condemnation as a criminal as we speak. This would go a long way in proving to them that we are more of an asset than a liability.”

  Just proving to them that we were an overwhelming threat was bad politics. The Jujutsu Society was the closest thing this world had to a legitimate government. While it would have been more gratifying to just challenge this government’s sovereignty, I already had my hands full terrorizing the Hibana clan. I had no interest in doing the same to the same Jujutsu Society that housed the human Endbringer known as Gojo Satoru.

  One of my Juchū, another ambassador bug, handed Iemon a fat stack of files. “These are all the details regarding the raw sorcerers. I want you to read them over and notify me about any cogent information that I may have missed. Afterwards, I’ll hand them over to a representative of Jujutsu High. That will likely get them to shut up about the mess down in Gifu.”

  “You might prove too useful too quickly,” Iemon said, looking down at the stack. “And the Society isn’t known for being subtle in its approach to recruiting useful elements.”

  “To that, I have a simple solution.”

  “Let me guess: a demonstration of power.”

  “You know me so well.”

  Threats in a vacuum were bad politics. That’s why you needed a carrot. With this, the Society would both like and fear me.

  And stage two?

  Opening trade relations. I had expedited the process of making cursed silk fabric. We had almost five thousand square feet ready to sell, and from everything my instincts were telling me, this would be enough to have them hold off on any major offensive action, at least for a few more years.

  The Society took its time to deliberate on certain problems. They held their laws and customs sacred, and were utterly willing to throw down at the drop of a hat to safeguard those—but I had positioned the Hibana clan into a gray area by not outright breaking any of their laws.

  All our successes in diplomacy would depend heavily on how braindead our prospective allies were.

  000

  After establishing a signal bridge to Tokyo, I unleashed hordes of Juchū. Over two hundred million, saved up from ceaseless Parasitization and Reproduction in every town and city between Ishikawa and the great Eastern Capital.

  They swarmed the Fly Heads above.

  And on the ground below was the principal of Tokyo Jujutsu High, a portly and elderly man by the name of Hatori, dressed in a dark gray suit.

  He was in a traditional Japanese garden, several gazebos spread about, and he was unerringly gazing at the sky, his bushy gray brows furrowed. Behind him were an army of about twenty suit-wearing individuals. From my research, I knew these people to be ‘Assistant Managers’. Barrier technicians that supported Jujutsu Sorcerers by helping them with the scutwork of curse exorcism. They were the PRT of this world, essentially.

  They were staring above my ambassador Juchū, who was standing in front of them, hands clasped to the front and smiling serenely. “A gift from we to you.”

  “What is this?” the old man rumbled.

  “We are culling the Fly Head population,” I said. “Hopefully, this will bless Tokyo for months to come with good cheer and relief from stress.” Marginally, at least. The stressors in place that had caused this mess to begin with weren’t going anywhere. At least now, there was a lower likelihood for these curses to spiral into a vicious cycle, haunting the population and growing stronger in that way.

  “How many shikigami…?” he breathed.

  “Three-hundred and ninety-eight million,” I said. “It will be over by the end of the day. “Again, we are beyond happy to be able to reconnect with our once-allies in the world of Jujutsu. For too long, the Hibana clan have been remiss in our duties to exorcise curses. No more. I believe that if we work together, we will usher in a new era of peace and prosperity for the Jujutsu Society.”

  The principal took his eyes away from the sky, looked down at my ambassador Juchū, and nodded shakily. “Of course, Hibana-sama. I believe that we… yes, indeed.” He nodded repeatedly. “We accept this gift graciously,” he bowed to me. “We invited you here to discuss the Mori clan incident, including our… adoption of the fifty-three orphaned children of said clan—“

  “I imagine they will make for good Assistant Managers,” I said to him. They had a background in Jujutsu and barrier techniques. If anything, they should be thanking me for that.

  He smiled thinly. “Indeed, yes. Should they choose this line of work, of course. Otherwise, it’s the government’s responsibility to process them.”

  I nodded. “The government’s diligence simply cannot be matched.”

  “Yes, yes, indeed.”

  I spread my arms and leaned forward. “Then I assume our discussion on this matter to be over?”

  “Of course, Hibana-sama. Of course. Again, thank you. We will be in touch regarding more procurement of cursed silk.”

  “We shall,” I said to him.

  000

  Hibana Kenji was grateful that the clan head had… not punished him for deciding to give up on becoming a curse expert.

  Having been blessed with the Juchū technique, it was all his parents had expected of him growing up. Neither of his parents had inherited the cursed technique, and had been relegated to the outer clan as laborers and servants of the inner clan—the curse experts.

  After Teira-sama had… thinned the numbers of the inner clan, they had seen this as an opportunity to have Kenji rise to the top of the clan by becoming a curse expert worthy of his Juchū.

  He had still wanted to keep his Juchū, even after giving up. The clan head had allowed that, too. She had no use for them when she had so many of her own—and so many to share with those that still wanted to train and become stronger.

  Kenji wished them the best of luck, but he wanted no part in all of that.

  Instead, he had found himself a new reason for being.

  And it was called Dragon Ball.

  Toriyama Akira-sensei, the work’s author, was a true genius. The clan head had brought all forty-two volumes of the story, and Kenji had been hooked since chapter one.

  He was on volume seventeen now—or volume one of the Dragon Ball Z series. It followed the protagonist of the first sixteen volumes after he became an adult. Now, there were even aliens from outer space coming to Earth to fight him!

  It was awesome!

  How could one man be so stupid and strong at the same time? All he knew how to do was just fight and eat! It was hilarious to—

  The volume got snatched out of his hand, right as the story introduced a new character by the name of ‘Raditz’.

  Kenji had been reading in the clan park, underneath a tree, far away from the other kids. He didn’t like reading at home since his parents still looked at him with so much disgust after he had given up on becoming a curse expert.

  And the other kids didn’t like him either for giving up. Most of them hadn’t. And a lot of them seemed really bummed out about that. They clearly hated training.

  Like Mutou, who had taken his book, his three friends hanging behind him and laughing. “Oooh, what’s this? A non-sorcerer book? Lame.”

  “Give it back, Mutou!”

  “Look at you, reading manga like a girl! Don’t you know only girls read manga? You’re like my mom!”

  “No! That’s not fair!” Kenji jumped up. “That’s girl manga! This is boy manga!”

  He scoffed, throwing the book aside. “All manga is girl manga. And you’re just behaving like a little girl.”

  “You can’t say that! Teira-sama--!”

  “We don’t have points, genius! We’re kids!”

  “Leave me alone!”

  “You’re not even going to be a curse expert. What right do you have to boss me around?” Mutou sneered. “If you’re not gonna be a curse expert, then what are you gonna be? Just a laborer? You gonna brew my sake when I grow up?”

  “No,” Kenji bit out. “You know what I’m gonna do?”

  He channeled his inner Goku.

  And smiled.

  “I’m gonna draw the best manga in the world!”

  They all stared at him.

  And then they laughed.

  Kenji wished he could be as dumb as Goku. He wouldn’t understand why they were laughing at him. He would have laughed with them.

  Kenji could hear their mockery all too clearly, however.

  “So you just wanna do girly things when you grow up!” one of Mutou’s friends, Hiro, said.

  And in that moment, Kenji recalled Teira-sama’s words.

  The freedom that she had referred to.

  Freedom from this treatment. Freedom from feeling like he was strange and out of the ordinary.

  “Yes!” Kenji proclaimed proudly. “I want to do girly things! What’s it to you?!”

  The dumber of the group, a boy called Manji, was the only one still laughing. The rest looked varying degrees of disgusted and disturbed. “You… you can’t say that,” Mutou said. “You can’t do girly things when you’re a boy. It’s not right.”

  “And being girly is…” Hiro trailed off.

  “Being girly means being strong!” Kenji said. “Because Teira-sama is super strong. So being girly means also being the clan head! So there’s nothing wrong with being girly! I want to be girly!”

  At this point, he didn’t know what he was saying. He just relished the fact that they had stopped laughing, and now he was just pushing their buttons. He could feel that they would beat on him soon, for being weird, and saying ‘wrong’ things, but he didn’t care.

  Mutou’s face grew redder and redder as he spoke, until he cocked his fist back. “You—“

  “That’s enough.”

  In an instant, a moth-like woman had appeared, grabbing Mutou’s fist and yanking him back.

  “You’re suspended from training for one year, Hibana Mutou. You were told, under no uncertain terms, our code of ethics. Assaulting a non-sorcerer would be grounds for termination from the sorcerer corps entirely. It is only due to your age that you’ve been given one final warning. Repeat this stunt again and all your Juchū will be confiscated.”

  Mutou’s mouth opened into a wide gap.

  “And Kenji is right. There is nothing wrong with doing girly things.” She then released Mutou’s wrist, and turned around to pick up Kenji’s book. She turned her head towards the boys. “Dismissed.”

  They sprinted away.

  Teira-sama’s Juchū turned to face Kenji, bowing so that they were eye-level. It presented his book to him. “This book was written for boys, actually,” she said. “But I read it, too. It’s okay for girls to do boyish things, and it’s okay for boys to do girly things. Don’t forget that.”

  Kenji took the book.

  “Teira-sama?”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s… it’s the best manga in the world, right? Dragon Ball?”

  “Absolutely not. Not even close.”

  She then disappeared.

  Leaving Kenji to feel a simmering sense of sheer, all-encompassing…

  …rage!