You never know when you'll need a bit of paper.
The plane was easily one of the worst Cartman had ever sat in. The seats felt stuffed with rocks and resentment, the air conditioning exhaled an unbearable stench of confinement, and the legroom was a direct insult to his imposing figure. To top it off, the engine coughed with the cadence of a chain smoker, drilling into his skull. There weren't even flight attendants to yell at for a miserable bag of peanuts.
It should be said that all his complaints were nothing more than exaggerations, but any scenario that didn't include a plush sofa, cable TV, and unlimited food was immediately classified as an unforgivable violation. His mind needed to focus its misery on the air conditioning and the hard seats to avoid thinking about the stabbing pain piercing his shoulders and back.
Nature was knocking. He struggled out of the middle seat, shoving past what was probably one of the few overweight Asian people he'd ever seen in his life, and ran to the bathroom with the grace of a wounded rhinoceros. In his hand he held a book whose title he didn't even bother to read. After all, a piece of toilet paper with lots of letters or flashy covers was still just a piece of paper with a single, unglorious purpose in its existence.
He had found it on the floor of that infernal place where he fell before running away.
That place was crawling with monsters! He'd once visited Japan with his friends back when his obsession with Chinpokomon was out of control, and back then there were no grotesque, slimy, hideous creatures. Not counting the Japanese themselves, of course. He wasn't going to stay in that filthy country any longer than necessary, and for that reason, he'd scraped together enough money to take the first flight to Mexico.
It wasn't that Mexico was any better in his head, but it was the cheapest and most accessible option at the time. He wouldn't even have to cross the border like the rest of the people he would surely encounter. Just a quick hello to the border guards and they'd let a pure-blooded compatriot through. He was convinced his charisma (or his exhausting persistence) would open the doors to North America the moment he set foot on Aztec soil and he'd make his way back to Colorado.
Since the trip would be long, having something on hand to wipe with in case of emergency was essential. Not even two seconds after entering the bathroom, a blinding light erupted from the ceiling, and from that glow emerged a pair of arms—apparently mechanical and dressed in the sleeves of a uniform he'd once seen in a casino—they grabbed him tightly and dragged him toward absolute void.
A vastness of light, rainbow paths, and an infinite starry firmament welcomed him as he was ripped from the plane's crudeness. His screams, muffled by the void, found no echo in that immensity; the speed of the journey increased until it reached limits his mind couldn't process. In the middle of that cosmic whirlwind, the book he still clutched desperately was torn from his grip by the force of the void, falling eternally toward that abyss of colors until it vanished from sight.
It wasn't destroyed or devoured; the book slid through circles that warped shreds of sky and infinity, fragmenting reality in its wake. The pages, once destined for a vulgar and sanitary end, fluttered like paper wings in the middle of a storm, crossing dimensions where time curved and matter lost its name.
A castaway, a speck of mundane knowledge drifting among stellar auroras and physical laws yet to be written. While Cartman was dragged toward his new destination, the book remained behind, suspended in a drift that seemed infinite.
In one of fate's many twists, the void spat the object out. The book shot forward, breaking the membrane of the ethereal to return to the material, mundane safety of a cardboard box filled with green apples. There, amid the coolness of the fruit and the bustle of a market under the African sun, the involuntary relic waited in silence.
People came and went without noticing the strange book that had appeared out of nowhere. The vendor collected payments listlessly, children played among the stalls, and animals dozed under the usual heat. It was in that moment of everyday stillness that a figure stopped in front of the stall, gaze tired but attentive.
He reached toward the cardboard box. Being the only one able to perceive the distortion still pulsing in the air, he picked up the book with curiosity reaching the clouds.
His messy black hair fell in rebellious strands over a forehead marked by the seriousness of someone who had seen too much. He leaned the black case he carried on his back against a nearby wall to hold the book more carefully in both hands. A strange mix of benevolence and caution crossed his features; the volume didn't belong to any publisher he'd ever heard of—though it wasn't as if he knew many—and the supposed author, according to the elegant but unfamiliar typography on the cover, was no one of renown.
But both the quality of the paper and the exquisite drawing on the cover were signs that this was no ordinary amateur work.
The stall owner didn't miss the golden opportunity and quoted an absurdly high price for the purchase, hoping he was as naive as he appeared. The young man, however, paid no mind to the figure and paid without hesitation. For someone carrying the weight of worlds on his shoulders, money was a trivial concern compared to the mystery the book held. An object that appeared out of nowhere was not something he would ignore so easily.
-----------------------------------
Rémy watched the book's location from the asset management section. ¿How the hell was it possible for a simple book to end up so far away? The geographic point blinked with irritating insistence on a map that clearly pointed to the African continent.
His fingers slid quickly through the system's code lines to verify the object's integrity.
The only thing he could bring to his side as many times as he wanted was Cartman himself; with everything else, he was limited to monitoring the location and checking if the object was damaged or safe. Rémy contemplated the blinking icon on the interface.
¿Should he go after the book?
19,586 km away, a trip of fifteen to twenty-one hours depending on the starting point at a cost of at least 817 dollars to the cheapest destination, not counting transportation, lodging, food, and the return trip.
.....
¡Bah, who cares!
He didn't have enough money; even if he wanted to go, he couldn't even make it halfway. In the end, it was just a book from his old world; no special effects, no magical powers, no sealed demons between its pages threatening thousands of lives.
Rémy deactivated the monitoring screen with a disdainful gesture. By its rank, it was essentially space trash. It wasn't worth risking his integrity for a good story, no matter how much he wanted to read it with coffee in hand and the sunset dazzling his face. In fact, it was more useful in the hands of whoever it ended up with, whatever that person was, they'd just given him 100 credits for basically doing nothing.
Sorcerer, curse, blah blah blah. That person was way too far away to worry about. It was literally impossible to trace their point of origin back to Rémy because, to begin with he wouldn't even bother looking for it. ¿Who in their right mind would cross half the planet for the trail of a book they found interesting?
Leaving aside something that would surely explode in his face, Rémy returned home whistling.
--------------------------
The art of hunting was complicated. It wasn't just brute force or swinging metal claws at the first thing that moved; it required patience, meticulous observation of the environment, and the ability to understand that sometimes the hunter must blend into the landscape before delivering the final blow.
For Cartman, however, "patience" was as abstract a concept as dieting. That was precisely why Rémy's plans became extremely difficult to execute and, above all, supremely irritating. Finding a curse—preferably weak, with amputated limbs and in such deplorable condition it couldn't even move—was more a fever dream than an achievable goal. In his humble 15 years inhabiting this world, Rémy had only come face-to-face with one curse, and probably only because that same creature had gotten lost on the winding paths of life until ending up, by pure mistake, in the village.
Until that moment, he had never encountered supernatural problems.
The idea of "training" Cartman with prey that offered no resistance was logically perfect, but statistically impossible. Curses didn't ask permission to exist nor did they stay still waiting to be a punching bag for a child.
When and where exactly were they generated? This was the first time Rémy sincerely regretted never having bothered to watch even the first episode of the anime. With that information, he undoubtedly wouldn't be racking his brains trying to find even a trace of such aberrations to turn them into fertilizer for his future collection of entities that defied the internal logic of this pigsty.
His treacherous and slippery memory could barely rescue a single fragment from oblivion of that entire story. The image of a white-haired man with blindfolded eyes, a certain Gojo, appearing out of nowhere to kick Itadori's ass on the rooftop of some school, and another where that same boy, later or in another institution, fought a strange jellyfish. In both cases the presence of curses occurred in those buildings saturated with depression, failed love, and failed exams.
That was his only clue so far.
Those seconds were his entire arsenal of canonical knowledge about the world in which he now tried to hunt. He knew nothing of rituals, negative energy classifications, or the true nature of the entities that lurked in the shadows. He was operating completely blind, trying to play a game of chess on a board where he didn't even know the rules, and where the enemy pieces would almost certainly show no mercy if they found him first.
If that was the case… ¡the best thing was to find them first and throw them into a septic tank before they did the same to him!
With that violent resolution echoing in his head, the murmur of everyday life snapped him back to reality. Uniformed students passing by chatted animatedly and carelessly with their friends, partners, or acquaintances. Being a relatively small high school, isolated in the deceptive tranquility of a rural village, almost all the faces were familiar; ties intertwined to the point that everyone had known each other their whole lives or shared some dark secret they preferred not to air.
The worst part of being reborn was, without a doubt, having to go through the entire educational system from scratch. For someone who already possessed the knowledge and maturity of a previous life, being forced to memorize irrelevant historical dates or solve basic equations under the gaze of a mediocre teacher was medieval torture modernized.
Rémy walked in the same uniform as the rest of the students, carrying Newt's suitcase while some classmates, and others from adjacent classrooms, greeted him with the monotonous familiarity of routine. Despite his efforts to be a shadow, his natural efficiency made him stand out in a way he didn't quite like.
—Maître-kun, ¿Did you hear about the generator that exploded yesterday? — his classmate asked—the girl who sat right in front of him in class—turning with a mix of curiosity and the anxious gleam of someone carrying fresh gossip.
—¿Explosion? I didn't hear anything —Rémy replied.
A heated discussion followed, a tide of intertwined voices overflowing with theories from teenagers with lots of imagination, fueled by the inexhaustible fuel of everyday boredom. The classroom turned into a boiling pot of speculation where the exploded generator went from being a technical failure to a sign of the apocalypse or a secret government experiment in seconds.
Some, driven by the social curiosity that always surrounded him, asked about his supposed mysterious cousin, while others tried to drag him into mundane reality with questions about unfinished homework or bitter complaints about poisonous teachers who seemed to enjoy failing half the class.
—¡Maître, help me here!— a teacher shouted during recess, desperately pointing to a series of broken desks in a nearby classroom that looked like the scene of an adolescent battlefield.
—Understood —Rémy replied.
—¡Rémy-kun, the projector in room B only shows static! — a history teacher exclaimed, tugging at his sleeve anxiously.
—Understood. — Rémy didn't even stop. As he crossed the classroom threshold, he extended a hand, adjusted the VGA cable angle, and pressed a sequence of buttons on the side panel. The image of the Meiji era appeared clear and vibrant before he finished crossing the back door.
—¡Maître, the gardening club lock is jammed again! — a group of first-years shouted from the hallway.
Without a word, Rémy pulled a small metal sheet from his suitcase. A sharp twist, a metallic click that echoed down the hallway, and the door swung wide open.
He was called to calibrate the dying internet network in the principal's office, to level a bookshelf threatening to crush the librarian, and even to repair a hole in the bathroom wall.
At the end of the day, a defeated Rémy rested inside the suitcase, more precisely in the section full of bamboo. The fresh, earthy scent of the artificial vegetation was the only balm capable of mitigating the irritation accumulated after hours of being the technical, mechanical, and logistical support for an entire student population. Being there, surrounded by green stalks and soft ambient light, was a truly different experience. No insects, no strong winds, nothing to bother him.
—Hey, Rémy — Cartman's voice boomed.
Well, almost nothing to bother him.
Rémy lazily opened one eye.
—¿What?
—¿What do you mean 'what'? — Cartman complained, his shadow distorted over the entrance to the section. —This guy needs food.
—You'll get it after finishing the job…
The time had come. With quick steps and an exhausted mind, Rémy opened the lid and inspected the surroundings. The night light illuminated the classrooms spectrally, casting elongated shadows that turned desks into silhouettes of strange crouching creatures. The silence of the school, once full of adolescent murmurs and teacher complaints, was now dense. Rémy slipped out of the suitcase and felt the cold linoleum floor through his shoes.
—Everything converges at the same point, we don't need to search for the monster all over the village, Eric.
Cartman looked at him with arms crossed, leaning against the refuge wall while spinning one of his metal claws.
—¿So we stop playing technicians and go burn the chess club or what? — he asked with a grin.
—No, they'll ask me to repair it… — Rémy replied with such dry bitterness it cut the air. The mere idea of having to reassemble charred wooden boards and melted pieces for the fifth time gave him a nervous tic in his eye.
Both now walked down the distressingly long third-floor hallway, checking every bathroom, locker, and blind spot where something could hide. The echo of their footsteps on the worn linoleum was the only sound breaking the sepulchral silence of the institution. Moonlight filtered through the windows in pale rectangles, illuminating dust particles that hadn't been properly cleaned.
Rémy held the suitcase firmly, barely hiding the growing fear as he checked every corner. The locker doors they passed seemed to watch them; the metal emitted creaks that in the darkness sounded like whispers from absent students.
—¿You're some kind of curse hunter or something? I don't see the point in looking for those idiots — Cartman asked, roughly adjusting the football armor he used as improvised protection.
—Neither do I, buddy. Neither do I — Rémy replied, gripping his own case tighter. —But it's what I need to do.
Cartman just sighed.
It was true. Though he'd a thousand times prefer to stay on his couch, he had to move. Part of his motivation was purely preventive; he had no intention of discovering the hard way if there was a system penalty for ignoring curses. However, there was something more. Now that he was fully aware of the existence of monsters that devoured people, whether out of necessity or sheer sadistic pleasure, the idea was unbearable.
¿How many victims had already suffered because of these invisible parasites? The thought hit him with the force of a bitter revelation. The memory of Mrs. Koizumi, who disappeared without a trace last week, suddenly took on a macabre shade. ¿Had she died alone in a dark corner, devoured by something no one else could see? And Sasaki… his classmate and good friend Sasaki, who lost his leg last year in that strange midnight incident. At the time it was an inexplicable tragedy, but now Rémy could see the signature of a spawn.
He had the means, the system, and they would force him to do it anyway. ¿So why not take advantage? Even if his efforts turned out to be a drop in the ocean of curses that would keep spawning endlessly, at least he would try to prevent the death of those within his reach.
Rémy gripped the suitcase handle with force that whitened his knuckles. —Yes, I'm a brave boy… I'm a brave boy — he repeated to himself, trying to convince his racing pulse that he had no reason to back down.
The teachers' lounge door yielded with a metallic groan. Inside, the air wasn't just cold; it smelled of damp paper and something else—sweet and putrid at the same time.
The shadows of desks and office chairs projected distorted across the walls, stretching toward them like pleading fingers desperately seeking something to cling to before vanishing into nothingness.
—Okay, go ahead — Rémy murmured, breaking the heavy silence. With a quick movement, he placed his hand on the plastic shoulder pad of Eric's armor and gently pushed him into the room.
Cartman nearly stumbled but quickly regained balance, letting out a grunt of indignation that broke some of the tension reigning in the room. Rémy entered after him, keeping the suitcase in a defensive position. He used his vision to chase that trail of what he could only describe as putrid energy, a trail that grew more evident with every step they took deeper into the office. At the back of the room, near the principal's desk, one of the shadows seemed to condense into a single fixed point. It moved with oily slowness, emitting a rhythmic gurgle that reminded him of someone trying to breathe underwater.
—It's getting really cold in here —Cartman said. Though he tried to sound defiant, he was aware that this sudden drop in temperature was his own fear manifesting physically. —There's… ¿There's something here, right?"
He turned around, only to see Rémy outside the room. —¡You're doing great! — he said, raising a sign with Cartman's face on it.
—You…
Behind Cartman, the rhythmic gurgle intensified. The oily shadow near the principal's desk rose, stretching like a living column of tar until it brushed the fluorescent ceiling lights, extinguishing the little remaining moonlight. It seemed to possess a thousand hungry eyes and a mouth full of shadow fangs ready to swallow the boy in one bite.
And then, just as the tension was about to break Cartman's sanity, the immense and monstrous thing collapsed upon itself with a sound like a balloon deflating noisily: ¡Pffffft!
From the dissipated shadow remains, a creature emerged, walking unsteadily across the principal's worn carpet. It had no fangs, no tentacles, no multiple bloodthirsty eyes. It was a calico kitten, incredibly fluffy and only a few weeks old, blinking with huge green eyes, confused by the lighting.
—¿Miau? — the ball of fur mewed, rubbing its head against the desk leg with absolute indifference to Cartman's armor.
From the hallway threshold, Rémy let out a sigh of relief that seemed to empty his lungs of all accumulated terror.
—Phew, for a moment I thought… — his words cut off short.
His eye wasn't fooled by the appearance. While his rational mind wanted to celebrate the cuteness of the find, his technical vision registered a different reality. Dark energy emanated from the fur ball with scorching intensity, it was a reactor about to collapse.
In the precise instant the kitten fixed its pupils on Rémy, the truce ended. The tar returned with seismic violence.
The tiny cat body convulsed, stretching at anatomically impossible angles while the tissue tore. The skull split cleanly in half, revealing two overlapping jaws that unfolded like petals of bone and shadow. The tender meow was replaced by the crack of cartilage breaking, and from the creature's throat emerged a guttural gurgle that made the office windows vibrate.
Now, with its divided jaws, it completely ignored Cartman and leaped straight at Rémy's face. The impulse was so violent that the boy barely had time to interpose the suitcase, but the curse, with unnatural agility, climbed the edge and clung to his uniform, scaling toward his throat with claws that felt like ice needles.
—¡Get it off me, get it off! —Rémy screamed.
He forced his arms in a frantic struggle, feeling the fetid, sweet breath of the creature hitting his face. The hallway filled with the sound of his boots skidding on the linoleum. Rémy threw himself backward against the nearest wall, seeking leverage to slam the cat curse. The impact against the wall made several "Distinguished Students" photo frames fly into the air, but the spawn only clamped its divided jaws tighter against the boy's case, searching for an opening to gouge out his eyes.
—¡Die, you fucking bastard! — Cartman's roar echoed down the hallway, followed by the metallic sound of his boots pounding the floor at full speed.
Eric didn't wait for the creature to yield to Rémy's blows. Taking advantage of his running momentum, he launched into a perfect American football tackle, driving his armored shoulder straight into the monster's side. The brute force Cartman had gained after training, combined with the weight of his gear, tore the curse from Rémy's chest with a nauseating suction sound.
Both Cartman and the creature were sent flying toward the center of the hallway, rolling across the linoleum until they crashed into a cleaning cart. Before the spawn could recompose its divided jaws, Cartman pounced on it, driving his metal claws into the mass of tar that had once been a back.
Rémy slumped against the column, gasping with burning lungs and wiping away the black substance remnants that still pulsed autonomously on his uniform. But the panic had already transformed into cold, reactive rage. Without thinking twice, he reached into his suitcase and pulled out his own recently purchased Wolverine claws and ran to Cartman's side.
Blow after blow, stab after stab. Both moved their arms with ferocity, piercing the prone body of the curse writhing beneath them. The metal of Rémy's claws sank into the dark matter, feeling a resistance similar to chewed rubber, while Cartman's slashes tore off shreds of shadow that dissolved in the air before touching the ground.
The hallway was submerged in chaos of gasps, dull thuds, and the agonized hiss of the curse that, overwhelmed by the double offensive, began to lose cohesion.
The curse's form finally disintegrated. Rémy and Cartman remained hunched over, hands on knees, recovering the oxygen the fight had stolen. They glanced at each other sideways, covered in sweat and remnants of that spiritual tar, sharing a second of pure adrenaline.
Then, without a word, an absurd and triumphant energy took hold of them.
As if they had rehearsed it a thousand times in front of a mirror, both rose in unison and began moving with ridiculously fluid synchronicity. Cartman took a quick side step, dragging his feet with agility and pointing at Rémy with a sharp finger motion. Rémy caught the cue instantly and responded with agile crossed footwork, sliding across the stained linoleum like a professional dancer to meet in the center of the hallway.
They high-fived in the air with a perfect snap, spun again on their heels, Rémy pointing forward with an outstretched arm while Cartman stayed beside him in a low, defiant stance, arms spread wide, awaiting applause from a nonexistent audience.
—¡¡WOHH!!
The place they both pointed at filled with red eyes, equal in intensity to the curse.
—Wohh… — both huffed, slowly dropping their arms as the victory music in their heads abruptly cut off and reality slapped them with an icy hand.