Chapter 12

  “Notify family unit Cicada that the father has lost forty-five points for domestic violence. He will be stripped to his underwear and caned publicly twenty-five times on his back with a willow switch. Should he persist, yubitsume is the least of his worries.”

  I couldn’t wait for that to happen, which was strictly speaking, not a good thing. That would be hoping for a woman or a child to get hurt. But I did itch for an opportunity to pass on more punishment. The men were stubborn mules, and not even losing their pinkies had calmed them down. Instead, it had angered them.

  I didn’t want them angry. I wanted them broken. That was why I didn’t instate fines or prison time. If my methods of punishment weren’t torturous, then pride and conceit would continue to remain as relevant factors.

  My scribe, a servant woman, noted down the message. In the meanwhile, a group of thirty ladies of various ages were busy noting down points while seated around a rectangular table, jotting down notes. Next to their sheets of paper were my Juchū, hopping on top of a stick with numbered notches, giving each scribe the exact lost and gained point-values for each person who they were recording for. Points could be gained from using the system to report neighbors for breaching the rules, whether they were speech-based or violent in nature.

  And in the morning, they would send out the point updates by hand. It was a clunky system, but I made it work by sheer virtue of laser precision. Technology would have helped, but this was the nineties, and my traditionalist clan mostly still believed that talking on the phone too much would give you brain cancer.

  Some distance away, at a quiet corner of the clan compound, a group of women stood in a circle, holding burning torches.

  I approached them with my Juchū, and they looked at it.

  They bowed their heads at it respectfully. Through even just one Juchū, I now had enough fidelity to make out details and sounds without trouble, thanks to my antennae.

  “Clan head Teira-sama,” one of them spoke. “We wished to speak with you without breaking our anonymity.”

  Now I was curious.

  “We are… the secret historians.”

  I snorted. My servants in my court looked at me for a moment before resuming their work.

  So Sosuke had been bullshitting me all along. There were female secret historians, ones that weren’t even curse experts. I should have known, honestly. What use was there in teaching curse experts an oral tradition that might terminate the moment they died to the many hazards of our line of work? It made no sense whatsoever that this history would be given to the most risk-prone people of our clan.

  These people were all women, except for two young men, both aged fifteen and seventeen. And I knew all of their names, of course.

  “Memorize our faces. Call upon us should you require our lore. But should you desire our information, then you must swear a binding vow of secrecy as well.”

  I tuned out almost instantly. I… really didn’t care enough to do all that.

  Iemon rolled into court with a stack of documents on his lap so tall that it obscured his chest. I sighed. “What are those?” I asked him.

  His wife was walking next to him, demure as always. Hibana Junko was… a willing participant in the Hibana clan’s misogynistic culture, but she was above all a passive actress in it all, willing to follow her husband’s lead in everything. And Iemon was just barely north of ‘decent’ morally that he hadn’t abused his power to the point of raping her or beating on her. His brand of abuse was mostly just neglect. Over the years, I’d seen him occasionally entomb himself in his room and drink.

  His paralysis had actually changed that about him. He no longer drank, and he was far more present in his family’s life nowadays.

  “Job requests,” Iemon said quietly. “They’re piling up, Teira-sama. We don’t have much time before the other clans send their envoys to inquire on why we aren’t pulling our weight. They think we’re trying to up our prices, which goes against prior agreements.”

  Unfortunately for us, we weren’t like the muscle-brained Ogura clan who mostly saw clients in the non-sorcerer sector, or really, all the other clans aside from the Mori clan. Ours was heavily intertwined with the other clans. Those were our main clients, next to the Yakuza. And unlike the Yakuza, we couldn’t deny them our services with impunity.

  Especially the Mori clan.

  The servants doing the records for every point loss in the clan had just about wrapped up. Wordlessly, they gave me a nod of respect and filed out of the room.

  “We need to come up with a plan,” Iemon said.

  “Leave us,” I said to my other attendants, the ones surrounding my chair. “Take the documents with you, Junko.”

  In under a minute, the room was deserted. “I can’t leave the clan,” I said to Iemon. “We’re still in an early stage of development, and I can’t risk us backsliding. But you’re saying that the other clans will come knocking. What is the likelihood that they attack us out of spite or a desire to conquer us while we’re weak?”

  Iemon grimaced. “High to extremely high. Within the year, for certain.”

  “And the Mori clan?”

  Iemon shook his head. “The Mori clan would stand by and let things shake out. In the aftermath, they would demand a share of our human resources—our Cursed Technique. However, the Shiba and the Kagae clan depend on our intelligence for their wetwork  . And the Ogura clan are simple-minded brutes that would too easily resort to violence, given an enticing enough target of banditry.”

  I was more worried about the Mori than anyone else. Mori Tachi, a mere relative to the clan head, had still been able to completely negate my attacks, and I had an undeniable sense that if I were to fight him in earnest, I would lose.

  “We’ll fight them off,” I said. “When the time comes.” I just had to get stronger than Mori Tachi had been. I had enough bugs now to develop Arthropodal Aspect to its fullest, as well as Totality. Without being able to go out and fight cursed spirits as they occur around the country, I only had a couple millions of Juchū worth of cursed energy to play around with. “If war is inevitable, then we act with that in mind. When the envoys come knocking, you’ll be the clan head. You’ll be cagey about how many curse experts you lost in the wake of your violent clan take-over. Act as if you’re hiding a grave weakness. Then, when they send their forces in, we’ll simply destroy them.”

  “Are you confident you can beat them, Teira-sama?” Iemon asked, eyes grave. “Though it pains me to admit this, our clan do not consist of strong curse experts when it comes to combat. Even Sosuke would not have been able to compare to the elites of the other clans.”

  “I understand that,” I said, remembering how easily Mori Tachi had handled me. But if Iemon’s deduction was true, then the Mori would act last. Or not at all.

  They were rich, which made them comfortable. And if they discovered that the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze…

  “And we need money, Teira-sama,” Iemon said urgently. “We’re on track to exhaust our savings in two months. If we can’t take jobs, we can’t keep purchasing goods from the outside world, and we can’t renew our barrier with the Mori clan when the new year arrives in four months.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  I cast my vision farther into the future, after I conquered the Association. My plans from early on had been to turn over the Hibana clan to Jujutsu Society.

  Having read about Jujutsu Society in excruciating detail, I was…

  …trying my best to fixate on their singular redeeming factor, which was to exorcise curses and bring curse users to justice.

  But in order to negotiate my way into Jujutsu Society, I would need leverage. Lots and lots of leverage. Thankfully, I only had until I beat the Association to come up with something. By then, the Hibana clan would become a stronghold of disparate Jujutsu lineages, received after adopting innocent members of the clans that would wage war on us.

  And unlike Sosuke, I wouldn’t shun new cursed techniques in our family. That was power after all. It would take a generation, twenty years, for this investment to pay off. But I could wait. Unlike the traditionalists, I was more than willing to be flexible in the name of improvement.

  “I’ll grow stronger,” I said to him.

  It was the only answer I had.

  000

  Arthropodal Aspect was a more expensive technique than Totality. Each bug I spent to give myself insectile features would die, and I’d have to use the Reverse Cursed Technique to revive them, and annoying as it was, I wasn’t made of cursed energy.

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  But with Totality, I could still retain the fruit of my labor after training was done.

  In my room, I consolidated three hundred thousand Juchū of varying types to create my first true Juchū minion. I had spent hours visualizing and honing the template—a strict set of design principles that I could reuse on the fly to create new versions of the creature—, pushing my imagination to its absolute limits.

  I had an instinct of a sort for what features could or couldn’t blend. Most of my time honing the template was spent doing the mental equivalent of trial and error, running hundreds of simulations in my head concurrently, mixing and matching bug-types and limbs until I reached an answer.

  Michiko was in the room as always, watching. We were approaching our ‘special time’, so she watched me with more intensity than usual, which was a bother. But I understood where she was coming from.

  The bugs consolidated, and I looked upon the extension of my technique with awe. Four arms, each terminating in razor-sharp mantis-blades made of solidified positive energy, capable of cutting through spirits like a hot knife through butter. Dragonfly wings, grasshopper legs, and a pitch-black beetle carapace covering its thin and lithe frame, perfectly suited for speed and lethality.

  It also had no eyes or antennae—no sensory organs whatsoever. I couldn’t sense through it even if I wanted to. In creating this beast, I had sworn a binding vow to reduce its Sense Expansion to near zero—excluding physical coordination, proprioception, and other senses that would allow me to pilot the creature effectively—in exchange for greater physical performance. That meant that I’d have to use my own senses and my Juchū to fill its gaps of external sensory perception.

  I could swear other binding vows besides that, like only being able to use it for certain hours of the day, or only for a certain duration of time. In a pinch, I could swear a vow to have it self-destruct and remove the invested Juchū from me forever after a fight. Or I could swear that if the Juchū was destroyed by an opponent, I would lose the invested Juchū.

  More devastatingly, I could swear never to create a merged Juchū according to this particular template again should it die. Juchū could be Reproduced, but that would be the real loss. I really did feel like I had arrived at a masterpiece of a design template.

  I was far more likely to use the vows that would have me simply lose the Juchū if the creature was destroyed.

  At this point, I had millions of bugs, so that wasn’t a cost that I wanted to pay all willy-nilly. In that sense, that binding vow would give me a decent return on power, without necessitating that I throw out a design that I had worked so hard on.

  My creature was three feet tall.

  That was simply an issue of adding more Juchū into it. If I got it up to a million, it would grow as tall as maybe six feet. Then, it could easily dispatch the likes of Sosuke.

  I sensed Michiko’s whine. Special time.

  I rolled my eyes and commanded for my little monster, Kamakiri, to return to my spirit. Then, I walked up to Michiko, stealing a glance from the clock on the wall. Four fifty-nine AM. She reached for her cloak and pulled it apart, revealing what was inside. I closed my eyes, having no interest in looking straight at her confusing and distressing vortexes, before walking straight into her—

  Through her portal.

  Crickets chirped. Stars twinkled in the sky next to a beautiful crescent moon. The dark grass underneath my feet tickled me softly. The earth was cold, but… in a comforting way.

  Up a grassy hill was a wood log cottage. I walked up to it, entered, and was treated to a view of the interior—a living room, on the walls of which were the full sum of the Hibana clan’s Cursed Tool arsenal. Numerous raids in the past had gutted our stores. From the histories, we used to have hundreds. Now there was a scant dozen, all of them weapon-types imbued with offensive techniques.

  According to Iemon, they weren’t worth much on the open market. Force-additive cursed tools could only make you one half step stronger than you were. The truly valuable tools were all-or-nothing techniques that negated durability, or otherwise invalidated them in some esoteric fashion. And utility tools like ‘inventory’ curses sold for an absolute premium.

  Michiko could have been the answer to all our money problems. But it would be a cold day in hell before I sold her off.

  I had considered getting into Cursed Tool smithing precisely to alleviate our problems. According to our texts, the process of cursing a tool involved submerging it in a mixture of crushed and strained toxic bugs, whose toxins had been enhanced somehow via a process known as ‘kodoku’.

  It was almost completely emblematic of the Hibana clan’s guiding principles, which was darkly amusing to me. Over the centuries, we had lost so much respect for ourselves that we had viewed ourselves as existences on par with poisonous insects. Our self-respect had reached an all-time low by the time I had been birthed here against my will.

  The crushed remains of the poisonous insects would be mixed with cursed energy, and the tool would be submerged in that bath for ten months and ten days. If the remains of a curse expert or sorcerer had been used in the creation of the tool, there was a chance that it would manifest that deceased sorcerer’s technique.

  It all depended on the quality of the submersion liquid, and how much cursed energy went into it. The more, the better.

  If I could make cursed tools out of my enemies, and then sell them on the black market, then all our money troubles would a thing of the past. For that, I first needed enemies. And some other income stream that would tide us over during the submersion period.

  I walked past the armory, towards a door where faint music played. I opened it.

  Billie Holiday’s voice sounded, grainy as always from a nearby record player. “—”

  My bedroom. With a raised bed, a white pillow, a red blanket, and standing next to it… Michiko.

  And she was smiling.

  My heart beat rapidly. I ran up to her and hugged her. She hugged me back. “It’s time to go to sleep, Teira-chan.”

  I let out a choked sob. It broke the dam. I started wetting her kimono as I cried into it.

  “Hush, child. It’s alright.”

  It wasn’t.

  “Let’s go to bed, now.”

  Michiko carried me up and laid me down on the bed. Then she crawled in as well. I hugged her, crying into her shoulder.

  A binding vow was all give and take. Promises had to be reciprocal. Michiko had agreed to serve me. Swore a binding vow to do so. It had been days until I had learned from Iemon that there was no reason for this particular binding vow to hold.

  Yet, to all my senses and all my knowledge, it did.

  In dying, Michiko had developed a curious little thing: desire. She had a ‘want’ now, and somehow, our vow had satisfied it. As I had gotten to know the new her, gotten to understand this curious Innate Domain of hers, I had managed to come to a few good guesses about what exactly she was getting out of all of this.

  My negativity, for one. She fed on my sobs. My tears were like… food to her.

  And I had an endless amount of them. I didn’t mind parting with a few. Otherwise, I’d have too many to hold. I already did. Not sobbing my eyes out was a constant effort on my part.

  But there was more. An alignment of purpose. Mori Tachi had told me that in his experience, the greatest experts knew how to curse the world and bless themselves. And curses attracted curses. Something in what I was had convinced Michiko’s vengeful spirit that I would keep her well-fed with curses.

  I hadn’t enslaved her so much as given her, a seagull, a free ride on a fishing boat with an open net. She expected to feed off of the curses I would release upon the world. That was… a point of concern for me, but it wasn’t like Michiko could affect my actions. I was the one in charge here.

  Thankfully for our arrangement, I never ran out of a reason to cry. And Michiko loved my tears. Unlike other humans, she was patient with my emotions. She accepted them. Let them tumble out on their own. Even though she fed from them, she always made sure to wait her turn and let me release them on my own terms.

  I needed Michiko. Now more than ever.

  Though I really couldn’t sense an urgent physiological need to sleep on account of my Reverse Cursed Technique, I had found that the release of emotion followed by a period of rest would help keep my cursed energy control as sharp as possible. I made sure to renew this control every two weeks.

  When I finally stopped crying and went to sleep, it was to wake up in my Innate Domain.

  Half the sky was bathed in gold from the sun in the sky that was Scion. The other half was bathed in blackness, a million insects chittering above.

  The manifestation of the Swarm Queen’s Antennae appeared before me. In this form, she was an amalgamation of a million Juchū.

  What the hell is this? Why is this here?

  The realization struck me like a bolt of lightning. The Antennae’s Domain and mine had connected due to our merger.

  “This isn’t right,” I said. “No, this—“

  “Back again,” the manifestation sighed. “Please, let me interrupt your imminent meltdown. I’ve heard it so many times before. You always refuse to remember. Or rather, you somehow throw your memories away. This… is an unenviable situation. I have never been strong enough to form an Innate Domain this complete until now. I did not mean to exist. Or intrude upon you.”

  …I had been here before?

  “I don’t know how I can help you, Teira. I’ve tried to advise you, tried to guide you, but it was all for naught. You’re not… resilient enough to… I’m saying too much. I don’t—I don’t know how to help you, honestly. We can just play a game to pass the time. I can re-teach you the rules of shogi. Or go. Whichever you prefer.”

  “No,” I said, taking a step back. “I need—I need to think.”

  “If you don’t want to interact with me, then that is fine, too. One day, my consciousness will sublimate as your Domain swallows mine. I don’t regret this future, but I regret that I cannot bless you.”

  “Why do you care?” I asked.

  “Because I’m a tool. What tool doesn’t relish being used?”

  “I don’t trust you,” I said.

  “I know. But. Before you go… I don’t know. Try to read some romance novels? Every now and then. I think that will help. Or maybe pick up ballet. Something pretty and frivolous. This should be harmless advice, I think.”

  Huh?!

  “I can’t help you come to the realizations that you direly need in order for your life to become better. I can only give you this much. I hope you finally remember this encounter. We may not have many more nights together.”

  The amalgamated Innate Domain collapsed.

  000

  I slept until I was no longer tired. I didn’t check for how long. I cleared away the morning grogginess with a helping of positive energy, went down the hill to the portal, and walked back into my quarters.

  I checked the time.

  Five AM.

  Michiko’s Cursed Technique was a godsend. The way it bent space and time to give me safe shelter as well as minimizing my absence from the outside world was valuable enough in its own right.

  If I gave Michiko a share of the cursed energy from my Juchū via reverse-Parasitization, her technique could also halt decay itself. Food would not spoil while inside of her, objects wouldn’t rust, and most importantly, I wouldn’t rapidly age by a few hours every time my need for sleep caught up to me.

  But I was beginning to run low on cursed energy. The excess that I had Parasitized from the curse experts I had killed had all but disappeared, and my Juchū, as shikigami, could only very slowly replenish their cursed energy to peak capacity, leaving me with precious few options to fuel Michiko’s technique.

  I needed more cursed energy.

  I needed regular access to cursed spirits.

  But I couldn’t leave the clan compound.

  My range, after gaining the Antennae, had risen drastically over the weeks until that growth started to taper at about ten miles. That was an extremely high range, but the nearest city of even a half-decent size was thirteen miles away. If I could just reach that city from the clan compound, I could reach whatever curses had formed from their relatively high population of non-sorcerers.

  I had options other than organically developing my perception. Binding vows for one. Or… Totality, again.

  All were expensive, and I wouldn’t be able to gain a guaranteed return on investment. The nearest town wasn’t like Tokyo. I could at best expect Fly Heads and other Dog-grade curses.

  Still… nothing ventured, nothing gained.