The outer wall of the abandoned building had been eaten away by years of neglect, chunks of concrete peeling loose and dangling at odd angles, exposing cross-sections of rust-red rebar beneath — like wounds that had never healed.
Mahiko stood at the entrance, eyes closed.
She breathed in deep.
Cursed Energy drifted down from the upper floors in thick, slow waves, carrying with it the stench of rot. For an ordinary jujutsu sorcerer, a cursed spirit's Cursed Energy registered as decay, as something foul. But to Mahiko, that same pure surge of soul-energy was nothing but sweetness.
More than one, huh.
She counted silently, eyes narrowing, the corner of her mouth tipping up just slightly.
She pushed open the door and stepped inside.
The stairwell was dim, the floor buried under a thick layer of dust that kicked up in small grey clouds with every step she took.
Mahiko climbed the stairs, trailing two fingers lightly along the wall as she went, reading the faint residue of Cursed Energy left behind in the surfaces.
Here.
And there.
Three floors up, tucked into corners that had been chosen with considerable care — presences crouched in the dark, huddled tight, uncertain whether they'd noticed her arrival yet.
She hadn't been idle these past few days.
Kenjaku had kept his word. He'd thrown a batch of cursed spirits her way for her to absorb and replenish herself.
But they'd all been weak.
So she'd started going out to find her own.
Mechamaru had done a lot of the legwork for her. He'd laid out a detection network across various points throughout Tokyo — sensor nodes disguised as ordinary urban infrastructure, subtle enough that even Kenjaku's perception would have trouble picking them up. Wherever a cursed spirit appeared, Mechamaru knew first. He'd pass the location to her through the earring, she'd go handle it — and by the time the sorcerers from Jujutsu High showed up, the job was already done, the cursed spirit already converted to energy inside her.
As for the earring itself——
Mahiko reached up without thinking and touched her earlobe.
It had been delivered on Mechamaru's instruction. Perfectly ordinary-looking, finely crafted, no Cursed Energy signature whatsoever — and the absence of that signature was precisely the point.
Because it wasn't a cursed tool at all.
It was pure electronics.
Kenjaku's brain could accurately detect traces of Cursed Energy and identify disguised cursed tools — but against a precision electronic device that had never contained Cursed Energy from the start, his perception simply came up empty.
The two of them used the earring as a relay — signal bounced from her end to some other cursed tool Mechamaru had placed elsewhere in the city, then rerouted from that tool to Mechamaru himself. It took a roundabout path and introduced a small unavoidable delay, but it was safe.
Very handy.
Mahiko padded up the stairs, her footsteps barely making a sound.
"How many are in here exactly?" she murmured toward the earring. "Do you have any intel?"
A beat of silence.
"No idea," Mechamaru said, his voice flat with impatience. "Don't you have eyes?"
Mahiko's steps faltered.
"...You are so useless," she said, dropping her volume but letting the disdain bleed through freely. She planted a hand on her hip. "Can you put in any effort when we're cooperating? Wasn't the whole point that you'd scout ahead for me?"
"You never asked me to look up the exact count. Why don't you just ask me to kill them for you while you're at it?" Mechamaru shot back. "I'm not your mother."
"Wow, why are you so rude? Your manners are terrible. Your body is paralyzed, fine, but is your soul rotten too?" Mahiko frowned. "I am out here clearing cursed spirits as a public service. Saving jujutsu sorcerers the trouble, removing threats from ordinary people, and getting some practice in on the side — that's a genuinely good thing I'm doing. I'm working hard. Could you maybe speak to me like a decent person?"
"How should I know what's actually going on inside your head," Mechamaru said coldly.
"...You're impossible." Mahiko stopped at the bend of the staircase, leaned back against the wall, and let out a short huff through her nose. "With a personality like yours — even if you get your body back, Miwa's still not going to look at you twice. You gloomy little shrimp."
"You're the last person who gets to criticize me," Mechamaru fired back. "You shameless, lying cheat."
"Excuse me?! Who exactly did I lie to?" Mahiko's eyes went wide. She swung back hard. "You're the one who's been spying on Miwa through surveillance cameras like some kind of stalker. You're the one who's so lovesick you'd betray your own faction over a crush. And you're lecturing me?"
"..." This time, Mechamaru went genuinely silent — apparently struck somewhere it actually hurt. "...You wait. Once this partnership is over, I'm going to take you out."
"Please," Mahiko said, climbing another two steps, one corner of her mouth curling up. "You really think you could beat me?"
In the original story, Mechamaru's ending had been going down at Mahito's hands. And that fight had gone to Mechamaru with the advantage of information asymmetry — and he still hadn't won. Which made it all the more academic now, given that Mahiko knew every card Mechamaru held.
Once she'd grown a little more, she could absolutely take Mechamaru apart and— well, okay, that was putting it a bit dramatically. He did have some real ability. But there was no universe in which he came out ahead against her.
"..."
Mechamaru said nothing more.
Probably couldn't be bothered to engage further.
Mahiko let out a satisfied huff and raised her head, pulling her attention back in, refocusing on the Cursed Energy distribution radiating from the floors above.
Her eyes narrowed slightly.
With real concentration, the presences lurking in the dark began to take shape — three, four... hm, quite a few. They were all Grade 2, and they felt like they had at least some intelligence, because they were waiting in ambush. Lying still. Even deliberately suppressing their own signatures.
They'd mistaken her for prey.
The corner of Mahiko's mouth curved upward, a faint flicker of amusement rising in her eyes.
Sounds like a good meal.
Not great quality — but quantity more than made up for it.
She drew a deep breath.
And charged.
Blinding speed.
"Guh?"
The first cursed spirit didn't even have time to react before Mahiko's palm was already on it.
She burst out of the stairwell in an instant — the moment her hand made contact, Idle Transfiguration activated at the point of touch.
The cursed spirit's body convulsed violently.
Like a lump of clay being crushed in a fist, its form and shape began to deform from the inside — collapsing inward, contracting, compressing — until it had been pressed into a small, smooth sphere that landed quietly on the floor and rolled away with a soft click.
"GAAAH!!"
The second one snapped back to reality. It saw her coming and immediately bolted in the other direction. Too slow — Mahiko was on it in two strides, palm connecting with the same crisp impact. Idle Transfiguration fired.
Same result.
Two spheres sitting side by side on the floor.
The remaining ones panicked.
They scattered in every direction.
Mahiko looked up, tracking the Cursed Energy signatures as they exploded outward through the building — some heading upward, some sideways, some pressing along the walls toward the darkest corners, fast, and deliberately spreading apart so she couldn't take multiple down with a single lunge.
Intelligent cursed spirits. They knew how to avoid being cornered.
"Oh?" Mahiko stood where she was, watching the signatures scatter, the curve of her mouth only going wider. "Where do you think you're running?"
She raised both hands and sank her attention deep into her own soul. From her fingertips, she began peeling away small fragments — one pinch, then another — rolling them in her palms, shaping them at speed——
Round.
Small.
One, two, three, four — more and more, piling up in both hands, packed dense, each one compressed to the limit, loaded with soul-energy ready to release on impact. Like marbles. Like ball bearings.
Mahiko pulled a deep breath.
And flung both hands wide, scattering them in every direction.
Whoosh——
The spheres shot out toward the four corners of the building.
Then——
BANG. BANG. BANG——
The moment each one drew close to a cursed spirit, they detonated simultaneously — the soul-energy packed inside bursting outward from within, launching a dense spray of razor-thin needles of spiritual force in every direction. Like sea urchins exploding. Like a porcupine erupting. A blanketing volley of fine, needle-sharp spines — and every single fleeing cursed spirit was struck, every one of them critically wounded.
"Look at me! Hidden weapons! Blizzard of Plum Blossom Needles!"
More or less. A name pulled from memory, thrown on at random.
The attack left every one of the cursed spirits critically injured, writhing on the ground, no longer capable of flight. Grade 2s really were just weak~
Mahiko dusted her palms together and began to stroll through the corridors, calm and unhurried as if she were out for a walk.
She went to each one in turn and pressed her palm flat against them.
Idle Transfiguration.
Sphere.
Sphere.
Sphere.
Once she'd made the full circuit — then made it again — Mahiko gathered all the spheres into her cupped hands, slowly absorbed them, and closed her eyes to take stock of what she'd taken in.
Mmm. Noticeably better than the scraps Kenjaku had thrown at her.
But... still not quite enough.
Was there some way to find something stronger——
Thump.
"Hm?"
Footsteps?
Coming from the stairwell — the sound of leather shoes pressing into the dust-covered floor, a sharp clean click, then a second, then a third, the pace unhurried.
Mahiko killed every trace of her Cursed Energy in an instant. She shot sideways into the nearest abandoned room, pressed her back against the wall, and slipped into the shadows. Idle Transfiguration rippled through her — just barely, just enough — and she folded herself into the texture of the room, becoming part of the dust, part of the stagnant air. Soundless.
Cursed Energy fluctuation.
She frowned slightly.
Whoever was coming carried Cursed Energy. A jujutsu sorcerer — not some ordinary person who'd wandered in by accident.
The footsteps passed through the corridor, paused outside the room for a moment — presumably sensing the surroundings — then approached and pushed open the door in front of her.
A sliver of light fell through the gap. Along with it, the outline of the person who had entered.
Mahiko studied the figure from the shadows, eyes narrowed.
A girl.
Short hair, an orange-brown that she'd tucked neatly behind her ears, with loose bangs falling carelessly across her forehead — the look of someone who couldn't be bothered. Beneath those bangs, her eyes were bright. Large, alive, the kind that looked at anything and everything like they were daring it to try something.
Young, too — high-school age judging by her skin. A well-balanced build, and a presence that came with her — not pretty in the delicate sense, but sharp, the kind of striking that made you step back when she walked toward you, something almost imperious in the line of her.
At her hip there was a small tool pouch, and through its opening, the faint silhouettes of several nails.
Mahiko stared from the darkness — and something clicked.
...Wait. Wasn't that Nobara Kugisaki?
What was she doing here?
____
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