Chapter 1: I was eating an ice cream and...
Chapter Text
I guess when my parents chose my name they weren't thinking that I would spend most of my childhood, adolescence and young adulthood surrounded by annoying kids who would take the slightest opportunity to make fun of me. Objectively speaking, the name is kind of cute, although I didn't want to acknowledge it until I was old enough to forgive my old parents.
Dad was the one who decided on the root of my name, and Mom was the one who stuck with the ending. No matter which root Dad chose, my name absolutely had to end in -mi, meaning “beauty.” Mom didn't want me to continue the family tradition of naming daughters with the ending -na (vegetables), like her, who was named Nabena (“pot of vegetables”).
However, Dad only knew how to do one thing in life, so he decided to name me after his favorite creation: Katsumi. Katsu, as in katsu sando—a pork-cutlet sandwich. So I was a beautiful pork-cutlet sandwich.
To tell the truth, that wasn't the worst of it, but rather the resounding combination with my surname. I shouldn't complain, since my last name is the most common in the whole country. Wherever you go, you might meet a Sato. But I don't think you will ever meet a Sato Katsumi.
Whenever the teachers called the roll, the kids were always ready to tease me.
“‘Sato Katsumi?’”
“‘Sa-ton-katsu-miii!’”
“‘Oink, oink!’”
And then a flurry of laughter that wouldn’t stop until the teacher called the next name.
No, there was still the worst of the worst to come: even after the children had learned my name as Tonkatsu-san and no one bothered to correct them, Dad would greet me at the bakery door with a:
"My little Buta! Give daddy a hug!"
So everyone in the family, including Mom, who had clung so tightly to -mi, called me Buta-chan even when I came of age three years ago. A week ago, when I turned 23, they went so far as to make me a cake topped with a little pig made of marzipan.
I threw a fit and decapitated the little marzipan pig before the celebration was over.
"They call me a pig again and I don't respond!"
My brother Ichiro was laughing his head off, with the camera recording everything but the important stuff. My parents and my friends, who also wanted to hold in their laughter, were infected by Ichiro sooner rather than later. In the end the anger didn't last long enough, but at least I got my point across, and it was the best birthday present I could have been given.
"Hey, Katsumi, you didn't get a job, did you? Do you want to postpone starting pre-med until next year and help me at the bakery?" Dad asked me the next day.
Well, I was just an undergraduate, but my purpose was to start an undergraduate degree in medicine, then a master's degree, and finally a doctorate to make a career as a doctor. It was a well-paying, respectable profession that would help bring money into the house. Ichiro, as the heir to the family, already ran the ryokan on Mom's side of the family, so my choices were a bit freer.
However, I had already taken a year off. If I started undergrad until 2015 and not 2014, as I had planned, I wouldn't finish my education until 2027, which was bad enough, because I wouldn't be able to practice until I was 36.
I seriously thought about it all night and, in the end, decided that the best thing to do was to take an extra year off from studying. If I could do that by helping my parents in the business, what better way to do it.
Dad helped me get clothes and a filipina in my size, plus hairnets to cover my hair. I would be handling dough and other ingredients, so I didn't want customers to start complaining that there was hair in their sandwiches.
I found real charm in making different doughs, stirring flour with water of different temperatures and using not only wheat yeast but also sake starters. The art of bread making was something new to me, because of my name's fault, I had never been interested in approaching dad's trade.
To get to the bakery I had to travel from home. It was close to the big office buildings of Harajuku and five minutes from the station of the same name. For practical purposes, Shibuya was only a fifteen-minute walk away, so it was ideal for a stroll as soon as I finished my shift at the bakery.
In 2014 there were only two options: either you worked 10 hours a day for six days a week, or you worked 12 hours for 5 days for a total of 60 working hours. The contract with my own dad was no different. He paid me every yen for my efforts, but the money would have barely been enough for me to live precariously and eat once a day. Thank heavens, at my parents' house I had a soft bed waiting for me every night.
The first week was total torture. My arms, back and legs ached, and I even got dizzy from the heat in the kitchen. Dad clicked his tongue once, thinking that maybe he had made a mistake in offering me a job, but he didn't comment.
After all, he needed employees, too. The energy expended making bread was no laughing matter, and over the years workers didn't last more than a week or a month at most. Even Ichiro had not been able to cope with the pressure and preferred to go to the countryside to run a ryokan, which represented a different kind of stress, but which he liked better.
I, of course, demonstrated the baker's gene as soon as I got used to the place. I would get up at 4:30 in the morning, when even the roosters weren't crowing, and hurry to wash my face, change and head for the subway to get to the bakery by 5:30 and help Dad so that the office workers could start buying bread at 7 o'clock.
Dad drove a small Atos, but he was usually at the bakery by 4:00 in the morning. After a while working this way, I realized that the dark and lonely streets were not the safest thing for a girl.
It wasn't just that there were drunks or kidnappers hiding in the alleys, but sometimes I felt ominous presences following me or approaching me. Sometimes more intensely, sometimes less so, but they were always there.
When I told my parents at dinner, Dad was quiet for a long time. The next night, while Mom was serving dinner, Dad called me to the kitchen table to talk to me.
He was a very traditional man, very methodical, but also very loving. He handed me the keys to his Atos and said:
"You have one month to learn how to drive. Between Ichiro and I we will buy you a car. Then you can leave the house later and get to the bakery on your own."
That was unexpected for me, but welcome. Dad set aside some money and gave me five-hour days so I could go to driving school. Within two weeks, I had learned the basics, and for the next two weeks Dad let me drive the Atos home.
After the agreed month, Dad and Ichiro had a huge argument because Dad just wanted to buy something cheap and functional, but Ichiro wanted to give me a sports car with a convertible. I thought it was unnecessary too, but I wasn't even the one who would buy it, so I decided to accept whatever they would give me. In the end they came to an agreement: they would buy me a cheap sports car.
The process of getting used to the sports car from the little Atos took me about three weeks, a small crash and two visits to the mechanic, but in the end I made it. I stopped fearing for my safety and the dark alleys of Harajuku.
My salary, of course, was not enough to pay for such a car, so Dad decided that I would pay for everything else: gas, maintenance, taxes and paperwork. That would also teach me to be an independent person when it came to my own car.
Plus, it was even easier to get around Shibuya and the surrounding area. I loved to take a few laps as I left the bakery, watching the frenetic activity of the busiest intersection in the world, and then go home.
Sometimes Dad would send me out to buy some supplies, or Mom would call me to stop by the supermarket for ingredients for dinner. Sometimes Dad would wake up tired, because he was already old, and sit waiting for me in the kitchen, with a cup of black coffee in his hand, to go to the bakery at my time and not his.
Sometimes I would simply park the car near the parks near the Harajuku offices and finish a two scoop ice cream or a milkshake with tapioca before getting back in the car and going home.
Some might say I was content with little, but my aspirations were simple and so was my life. Other than sometimes feeling cold or small moments of panic, as if someone evil was watching me, the truth was that my life was pretty ordinary.
I had only three friends: Akiko, Hiromi and Yumi. The first wanted to be a chef, the second a teacher and the third was married to her high school boyfriend, Sano. I had only two friends, both former classmates of Ichiro: Takashi and Koji, who, being seven or eight years older than us, looked after us like little sisters. Of course, there would be no shortage of quarrels between Takashi and Hiromi, but Ichiro always kept them at bay for me. I never had pets, I never had enemies, and although I fell in love at every school level of my life, from preschool and elementary school through junior high, high school and college, my love life was a tabula rasa.
Sometimes I would go out on gokon organized by college senpai, but I did it more out of commitment than anything else. After all, Ichiro used to tease me to no end whenever he saw me around a boy. I was never without my little revenge when that happened: as soon as I saw a girl hovering around my brother, I ran to hug him and glared at the girl in question.
If I couldn't have a love life, neither could he.
However, Ichiro went to live at the ryokan when I came of age. He was getting busier and busier and it was difficult to commute back and forth from Kyoto, so he decided that he would come home only on holidays and birthdays, and even then only on those because holidays tended to be busy seasons.
Just like that, the jealousy and absolute control that my older brother used to exert over my love life ceased. Although it was all due to my parents' conservative upbringing, it was still annoying that Ichiro would hang around me like a watchdog every time he smelled a boy approaching.
He started having girlfriends almost immediately. He met someone on the shinkansen , then at the train station, then at the ryokan, then at the ryokan baths. He was a total casanova, but there was little he could do in Tokyo when his little sister was around to repay him for the jealousy and antipathy he had shown toward my classmates for so many years.
I was calmer in every way, especially because, although I no longer had Ichiro, I saw Dad every day, and he was a traditional man who stuck to his principles. Perhaps for that reason, the attention in the bakery was divided by gender: I’d ring up the women at the register, and Dad would always handle the men.
One day in March, one of those last tugs of the cold season before giving way to spring, I went to the Harajuku parks and bought myself a three-ball ice cream. I sat on a bench under a tree in front of a small artificial lake. I had never been to that part of the park before.
As I enjoyed the cool breeze on my face and the taste of the first scoop, I congratulated myself for having found such an extraordinary place. You don't always find such peaceful and harmonious places, much less in a place as busy as the surroundings of Shibuya.
At that moment, a man, looking like a salaryman, sat down at the other end of the bench. I glanced sideways at him, but the man said neither fu nor fa as he sat down, a bag of konbini in his lap.
He pulled out a casse-croûte—just a simple sandwich—ate it in three bites, then downed a fizzy drink in three gulps. He tucked the empty bottle and wrapper back into the conbini bag, tied it off, and dropped it in the bin. The man didn't look at me, didn't say anything at all. He simply walked away past the bench.
Perhaps his presence was a bit imposing for me, because as soon as he left, I felt a slight weight lift off my shoulders.
He was very tall for just being Japanese and, in fact, had blond hair that appeared to be natural. Also, knowing the trends of Japanese companies, I doubted that this man was allowed to dye his hair, so it must be natural blond.
His hair was combed to his left side and his attire was conventional, not to say boring: a pristine white shirt, two-piece pinstriped suit with a black background and a burgundy polka-dot tie, tightly fastened at the collar.
My first impression of him was very vague, or perhaps I remember it that way. Although I hadn't been interested at all, I checked the time, finished my ice cream, and the next day returned to the same bench at the same time.
The clerk arrived a few minutes later. He didn't say anything, didn't look at me. He just sat in his place (what would be his place from then on), ate his snack and left.
The next day he did the same thing, and the next, the same thing. The only thing that varied was that, at times, I could feel mysterious weights lifting from my shoulders, as if I had been carrying something. Each time I checked there was nothing at all, so I convinced myself that these were just my ideas.
Friday he didn't arrive, although I waited two hours for him, but on Monday, on time, the clerk showed up at the park and sat in his place. On Tuesday, determined to befriend the silent clerk, I took a small, carefully wrapped bread roll with me and, when I saw him introduce himself, I said:
"Hello, sir, would you like some?"
In retrospect, I feel I looked a little suspicious, but we were already at least bench buddies. We'd been sitting together for a week, so at least there was a small glimmer of trust, right?
"Hey... thanks."
His voice was deep and even. It reverberated in my ears like parsimonious, unfamiliar music.
He looked at the anpan for a few moments. His eyes were small, tired. Then he ate it in three bites, just like everything else he ate sitting on that bench. I smiled as I watched him eat. I wanted to brag to him that I had prepared the anko paste for the anpan myself, but I backed off. I felt it was not the time to reveal something like that.
"It tastes very good, thank you very much."
Then he ate his appetizer, drank his drink and left, but this time he gave me a parting glance.
He didn't speak again all week, but I said to him on Wednesday:
"Hello, sir! Today I brought a melon pan, it's very crunchy!"
And on Thursday:
"Hello! This is curry bread."
And on Friday:
"Hello! This is dorayaki."
On Monday, finally, I decided to bring him katsu sado. I hated that bread because of my name, but Mr. Clerk didn't need to know that. Besides, the bakery customers loved Dad's recipe.
The man greeted me in his deep, lilting voice, a serene:
"Good morning, miss."
And then he set about eating his katsu sado. This time, however, a few things changed. The man was not carrying any snacks other than the bread I gave him. When he got up and left, saying goodbye, he left a strawberry Ramune with a Post-it on the cap taped to the top: “Nice day.”
I smiled. He was a very proper man, with manners, who seemed to be as calm and resolute as his voice and his look.
When I got home I took the marble out of the ramune and put it in a small box on my desk, next to the carefully written note. The clerk's handwriting was simple, but somehow it seemed elegant.
The next day I brought enough curry buns for both of us to eat and, as if we had agreed, he bought a green tea for himself and a pineapple ramune for me, along with a new note of “Nice day.”
We ate in silence, him taking three bites of each loaf, me not counting. When he got up to take out the trash, he said goodbye in his gravelly voice and left.
The next day he was already there. He offered me a melon Ramune, and he had a Calpis. I carried a couple of bagels with egg and tomato. We thanked each other for our mutual gifts, said our goodbyes and went our separate ways.
Thursday he bought me lemon ramune and I brought him toasted garlic bread. His face lit up when he saw it, so I figured that must be one of his favorites. I made a mental note to bring him more bread made with garlic.
Friday also came before me and he gave me a pineapple ramune. I don't like pineapple, but he didn't have to know that. I made a couple of focaccias with mortadella and caramelized onions in olive oil. It didn't go at all with the artificial flavor of the pineapple.
But he said:
"Have a nice weekend, miss."
And I felt my heart flutter.
"My name is Katsumi, sir. Sato Katsumi."
He didn't scoff or try to hide any smile. Instead, his face lit up like when he saw the garlic bread, as if it gave him something priceless.
"Have a nice weekend, Sato-san."
Chapter 2: Gifts
Chapter Text
My collection of marbles and notes had grown to five, and I couldn’t have been happier. I wondered how I could get him to tell me his name—and what else I might do so he’d keep some memory of our meetings as well.
After a fruitless search on the internet and social media, and after my friends gave me the most far-fetched answers in the world, I told my mom that I had a bench buddy who brought me Ramune.
I don't know how I described the man, the office worker, because Mom thought it was charming that my friend had gotten me to start collecting marbles and was shy enough not to have told me his name until that moment. I just thought he was reserved, but Mom thought my friend was a grade-schooler.
“Why don't you wrap the bread you bring him in beeswax wrap? It's a little expensive, but if you want him to keep something as a keepsake, it's ideal.”
I spent the whole Sunday walking around Tokyo until I found the beeswax wrap—that elusive thing. It was very easy to use, but very difficult to reuse according to the instructions. I didn't mind, however, because my purpose was for the office worker to keep the wrap, not to reuse it.
So on Monday, half an hour before I left, I chose the fabric that best matched the cheese buns and wrapped my gift. Dad looked at me suspiciously as I got in my car and headed for the park.
He was already there when I arrived.
“Good afternoon, Sato-san,” he greeted me.
“Hello, sir! Today’s bread is wrapped with beeswax wrap. You can keep it, if you like.”
I admit I was nervous to explain this, but I didn't want the man to throw the wrap in the trash without knowing that it was worth twenty times more than the paper napkin that wrapped my own bread. He unwrapped the wrap carefully in the palm of his large hand and ate with elegance. The cheese buns were small—about biscuit-size—so he ate them in two bites instead of the usual three.
All week we did the same thing, and so did the next week and the next. There were slight variations. Once a squirrel stole the last piece of stollen. Another time, the office worker gave away half of his kebab to a homeless man. And another time, I gave half of mine to a German Shepherd who got loose from his owner.
After two months, he said to me:
“I feel like a fool for letting so much time pass, but my name is Kento Nanami.”
I smiled, because it was true that he had let so much time pass. Although we were bench mates and I had almost forty marbles on my desk, Mr. Office Worker had barely opened up enough two months after we met.
“Kento… Nanami-san. Now I can finally put a name to your face, Kento-san.”
“I thought you were going to make fun, Sato-san—that's why I didn't tell you my name at first,” he confessed, with a worried look. “There's this popular romance anime, the girl's name is Nanami. One of my senpai used to tease me a lot about it.”
“Kamisama Hajimemashita?” I asked, dumbfounded. “My brother and his friends like anime, but I don’t really watch anime, haha… I’m more used to people making fun of my name.”
“But it's beautiful. Doesn't it mean ‘to be successful’ or ‘to overcome adversity’ in katsu?”
That made me laugh a lot. Not only was Nanami the first one who didn't make fun of my name, but he didn't even think about pork chops when I introduced myself.
“It's actually because of the katsu sando,” I confessed.
Nanami looked confused, which was charming.
When we said goodbye, he said to me:
“Listen, Sato-san, I won't be able to come tomorrow.”
That threw me off the cloud I was on, but I tried to pull myself together.
“Will you come the day after tomorrow?”
“Maybe. There's a fluctuation in the stock market and… ah, maybe I can come on Friday next week?”
“… Sure! Work comes first, Kento-san.”
“See you soon.”
“Bye-bye!”
When I got home, I ate half of my dinner and asked Dad:
“What is a ‘fluctuation in the stock market’? Which stock market?”
“If I'm honest, daughter, I have no idea what you're talking about.”
Mom, Ichiro and my friends didn't know either. Koji, who was studying economics, was the one who tried to explain it to me, but he was a lousy teacher. Hiromi offered him free tutoring so he could teach better, and that made Takashi—who hadn't been involved with her for about a year—jealous.
During those days I spent my time collecting and cutting beeswax wraps, researching bread recipes and sorting my small collection of marbles. I would read over and over the little notes made on the same sticky office Post-it paper, a classic yellow color, similar to Nanami's blond hair. Not only did he write “Nice day,” but “Happy Friday,” “Nice week,” “Quiet night,” “Use an umbrella,” and so on. Always little sentences of two or three words.
I, too, started writing notes to him and putting them next to the beeswax wraps. Mine were made with a Rilakkuma pad and gel inks, so they were much more colorful and feminine than the sober notes Nanami gave me. I tried to follow his trend of two or three words, with things like “Good job,” “Cheer up,” “Well done,” “Rest well,” and so on.
I didn't know if Nanami kept his notes and wraps with the same fondness, but I wanted to think he did. I wanted to believe that our meetings in busy Harajuku were a breath of fresh air for him and that he could count on me to have his ten minutes of peace and quiet.
Nanami did not return on the Friday he promised, nor did he return the following Monday or Tuesday. I returned home with disappointment painted on my face, so Mom kept my dinner in the refrigerator in case I got hungry.
Dad woke up with a bad cold the next day. He sent me to open the bakery as normal, showing me what each key was for, and allowed me to lock up the shop at five in the afternoon, so I could walk around with my bread wrapped as usual.
In my heart of hearts, I thought there was no need for him to give me permission, because Nanami had disappeared, but I didn't say anything to Dad. The only one who knew about my “bench buddy” was Mom.
I drove through the silent city, which was just waking up, and parked the car in the same parking spot as every day, a few meters from the front door of the bakery. This time the shutter was down and the whole place was dark.
I entered the alley and opened through the back door, turning on all the lights I was able to turn on before the ominous feeling overcame me. I didn't like the dark or the loneliness, and although the bakery had always been warm and welcoming, I wasn't used to being by myself in that quiet, lonely space.
I did everything I had to do and at 6:40 in the morning I wrestled with the shutter at the entrance so I could pull it up. It was dirty and heavy, and it was only until almost 7 o'clock that I discovered that there was a long metal tube with which it was easier to manipulate the shutter. I felt like a fool for quite a while.
The office workers ravaged the plain bread and the students ravaged the sweet bread. I served everyone equally, men and women, and had little moments of crisis because at times it seemed like the little bakery was packed to the brim.
At 8:30 a man came into the bakery. At that hour I was always in the kitchen, eating breakfast, so it was the first time I had seen him. As soon as the door closed behind him, he stood in place, surprised.
“Nanami!” I shouted, excited. A moment later, I cleared my throat and corrected myself: “Kento-san, how have you been?”
“Good morning, Sato-san,” he quickly pulled himself together. He picked up a tray, placed the last casse-croûte of the day and set it on the counter.
Separated by a table, standing across from each other, I could tell the difference in height. My forehead came up to his mouth, and the crown of my head to his nose—but only because behind the counter we had a small platform and a mat to reduce the impact of the floor, meant to keep us from getting too tired standing all day. I was almost certain that my head only reached his shoulders, and I was able to confirm my theory over time.
I didn't know whether to charge for the snack he was taking, because I gave him the bread I brought him every day, but as I juggled with the cash register, not knowing what to do, Nanami placed a 10,000-yen bill on the counter and took the casse-croûte in his hand before saying:
“See you later, Sato-san.”
“Ah! Your change, Kento-san!”
“You can give it to me later.”
That promised a new encounter, so I smiled at him.
“I hope to see you today—no pressure, though.”
He smiled briefly but said nothing.
The rest of the day was quiet. Mom came in around three o'clock, assuring me that Dad was feeling better. She hardly ever worked the counter, so we closed at five o'clock and she stayed to prepare the next day's dough.
In general, Dad stayed until eight, so it was understandable that he had fallen ill after working sixteen hours a day for forty years. Every chance I got, I reminded him he needed to hire more helpers—at least one to close and one to open—but he wanted nothing to do with men living under the same roof as me.
Nanami gave me strawberry Ramune and I brought him a bag of cookies that paired perfectly with the Calpis he bought. I gave him the morning's change, though my hand shook when my fingers touched his palm and a 500-yen coin slipped from his hand and hit the floor.
I squatted down to pick up the coin and give it to him, but our gazes met for a few seconds that seemed intense to me. He seemed to scrutinize me, as if looking for something in me. I looked away, as if I hadn't noticed, and handed him back his coin.
When I got home, refreshed and more energetic, Mom was reading Dad the riot act because it was obvious he was still sick but he wanted to go check on the bakery. At the end of the day, Mom and Ichiro convinced Dad that it was best to hire helpers so he could get more rest, so he talked to Takashi to help him open the bakery and to Akiko to help him close.
My schedule was reduced to a 7:00 to 4:00 day, but my pay remained the same. However, my encounters with Nanami also decreased. The stock market kept fluctuating, whatever that meant, and sometimes it was a bit of a drag to wait for hours until he could take a break from work to go to our bench in the park.
So our new encounters were shorter and less close. We had become accustomed to eating and talking for twenty minutes, and now we could only exchange greetings in the morning, when he went to the bakery to buy his lunch.
At first I felt Dad's watchful eye, but his presence at the bakery dwindled until he was only going for three or four hours during the afternoon. It proved Mom right, because for the first time in his life Dad could rest comfortably without feeling anxious that the bakery was going to burn down.
So Nanami and I started exchanging gifts once again. He would bring me a drink and a note every morning and I would give him loaves of bread wrapped in beeswax wrap, with a nice Rilakkuma note topping the little package.
Nanami always paid for this bread, so at a certain point it didn't seem like enough, because it wasn't as if I could get chatty with him if I had a whole line of customers waiting behind me.
At the beginning of July I gave him a bento alongside the bag with his casse-croûte and looked at him expectantly, feeling my face turn red.
“It doesn’t mean anything—I just wanted to make it,” I said.
He was silent for quite a while. There were no customers that morning and Takashi was busy in the kitchen, behind the door. For all intents and purposes, it was as if we were alone.
“I’ll gladly accept it, Sato-san.”
I sighed, relieved.
Nanami left very serious that day, but the next morning, when I gave him a new bento—hoping not to push it—Nanami set the first bento box on the counter with a note different from the notes he left on the drinks.
At first he stood there, with the new bento in one hand and the casse-croûte in the other, but then he thanked me and said goodbye.
Inside my container was a stew I’d never seen, over a generous scoop of jasmine rice. The note read, “This is chicken with chili; I hope it is to your liking, Sato-san.” The drink that day was a soda, which, with its fizzy, cold texture, went well with the food. The other note read “Nice morning,” following the same pattern as always.
The lunch exchanges began. I would give him tenderly arranged bentos, with specific ingredients like fine herbs, garlic, spices and olive oil, because he seemed to like them so much, and in return he seemed to experiment with food from all over the world and brought me wonderful dishes every day.
Beeswax wraps and notes kept being exchanged, and instead of Ramune marbles, Nanami brought me the third lunch with a paper tulip on top. That made me smile.
Sometimes he would give me tulips, one at a time each day, until I formed small bouquets that I put in pots on the shelf behind the counter. Sometimes he would give me sakura—and sometimes roses of every color. They were all made of paper, delicately made.
I wondered what time Nanami did all that. He seemed to work almost as hard as Dad. He had dark circles under his eyes and sunken cheeks, so most likely work kept him constantly stressed. I didn't know his schedule or what he did, so I had no idea how to help him beyond giving him sincere smiles and making him a bento every morning.
When I managed to complete three bouquets of flowers, Nanami asked me for my contact information. He saved me as “Sato Katsumi,” but I saved him as “Nanami.” I was tempted to add a heart to the name, but I didn't want my excitement to show.
In the evening, he sent me his first message. It was a simple “Do you like noodles?” I replied with the sticker of a nodding Rilakkuma, but I didn't know if Nanami understood that, so I also sent, “I really like them!”
That gave me the idea to run to the convenience store to buy some noodles but, as if Nanami knew my intentions, a new message came to my phone. “I hate noodles, Sato-san. Have a nice evening,” followed by a smiling kitty sticker that didn't fit into the conversation at all. For some reason, that made me laugh.
My lunch the next day consisted of fettuccine with carbonara sauce. I made him a whole side of pita bread with roasted garlic in oil in addition to his lunch. At about ten o'clock, Nanami sent me, “That was delicious,” accompanied by a sticker of an angry tengu mask. I laughed again.
The messages just revolved around the next day's lunches, thanks for the food, or meeting up to go to our bench in the park. Every day we asked if we liked this or that, and only once did Nanami dare to write, “I want some chocolate.” His message made me smile, because it meant that we were beginning to forge a bond of trust between us.
I arrived at the bakery with sweet and dark chocolates that I made myself, and wrapped them up along with some cookies and a bit of coffee for him.
This time, my lunch had a real rose in it. Nanami waited patiently as I lifted the rose. On the stem a note was taped:
“Would you go out with me on Saturday?”
I looked up after reading the note. He wasn't looking at me, but he was still there, standing at the counter.
“Nanami-san?” I tried. It was the first time I had said his name since I’d shouted it in surprise when I saw him enter the bakery.
He looked me in the eyes and I, taking advantage of his attention, nodded. He gave me his tired smile, said goodbye, and left.
Chapter 3: First date
Chapter Text
At 2:50 in the afternoon, Akiko arrived on time for her shift. When she stood at the counter next to me, I told her about Nanami. She was beside herself with joy, as excited as a little girl. Our group chat, which included the four girls but also Ichiro and his friends, began to fill up with an avalanche of messages.
When I left work, before I could start the car to go to the park, I got a call from Ichiro. I knew I had to answer, because he was very insistent, so I answered the call on the third ring.
"You're still too young to have a boyfriend, Katsumi!"
"What nonsense are you talking about? Mom had you at nineteen!"
"I said you're too young!"
"Ha! You dare try to scare Nanami-san away and I'll tear your hair out!"
"Wait, wait, wait, is that a girl? Are you a lesbian? Is it my fault?"
I briefly thought of the anime Kamisama Hajimemashita.
"It's a man! A very tall one! And handsome!"
Ichiro burst out laughing, so I got angry and blocked him for a few days.
I spent the whole week excited about the big event—my first date in twenty-three years with a man I liked. Akiko and Hiromi accompanied me to a girls’ afternoon to pick out the best outfit. And on Saturday, as if I were getting married too, Yumi came home very early and put a whole series of products on my face. Everything felt and smelled good, so I ignored the fact that I was getting ready at six in the morning to go out at six in the evening.
I spent all morning and part of the afternoon exfoliating my skin, talking nonstop with Yumi and with Hiromi, who arrived a few hours later, and getting message after message from Ichiro. At 4:30, Dad found out I was going on my first date with a boy, but it was too late to stop me from going out.
I wore heels, stockings, a knee-length dress and a warm trench coat, plus a matching purse. My friends matched small jewelry, hairstyle and makeup, and when I saw myself in the full-length mirror, I couldn't recognize myself.
"Aren't we overdoing it?" I asked, nervous.
"It's your first date, Katsumi!"
"We must exaggerate!"
Dad was very quiet when we went down to the foyer to leave. Mom complimented my appearance, excited as much or more than my friends. However, as we were leaving, Dad got up from his chair and said, "Give me five minutes," before running upstairs to change clothes.
Mom smiled, amused.
"Your dad knows he needs to stop being stubborn."
He came down six minutes later, dressed in street clothes. He dropped my friends off at the nearest station and then drove me to Shibuya, to the Hachiko statue. On the way he was very quiet, until he asked:
"Is he a good man?"
I wanted to go on and on about Nanami. About his big hands and his suits. About his dull ties, his tired look or his forehead. I could have told him about his subtle smile or his deep voice. About his height, his polished shoes and his immaculate shirts. About his notes explaining where the dishes he prepared for me were from or about the paper flowers in the bakery flowerpots. About his complete ignorance in the use of messaging stickers or his elegance in speaking. About his stoic and even off-putting personality. About his taste for bread, garlic and things with alcohol.
I could have told him so many things, but all I said was:
"He is."
And that was all Dad needed to give his approval.
We arrived at the Hachiko statue at six o'clock. Nanami was already there. He was wearing black pants, brown shoes and a brown shirt, no tie or jacket. My legs felt like jelly when I saw him, because he stood out with his blond hair and thick arms. And not only because of that, but because he was cradling a huge bouquet of roses in his hands.
When I was close, Nanami offered me the bouquet and greeted me with:
"Good afternoon, Sato-san, you look beautiful today."
I would have fainted right there.
I accepted the bouquet of roses, admired them for a moment and then said to him:
"Oh… hi, Nanami-san… I… brought you some bread."
My friends would have laughed at me. I, on the other hand, wanted to bury my head in the ground. A loaf of bread seemed completely absurd next to a bouquet of roses, but Nanami seemed satisfied with his bread wrapped in beeswax wrap and a short note: "Thank you for asking me out."
"Shall we go?"
Nanami offered me his arm, like a gentleman, though I wanted to hold his hand. No, actually, I wanted to grope his arms, but I couldn't confess it out loud even if I were tortured.
At first we didn't talk about anything at all. A comfortable awkwardness, expected, magnified by the closeness, was born between us from one moment to the next. And it died suddenly too, when Nanami broke our silence with:
"I saw the car you got out of, Sato-san. Was it your father?"
"Ah, yes! Dad is a bit traditional but he's not so strict. I think he's softened up a bit."
"Next time I'll introduce myself to him, if you don't mind, Sato-san."
Next time? Will there be a next time? I thought. I couldn't hold back the smile.
"How was work?" I asked, more relaxed.
"How much confidence do you think we have?" he answered me with another question.
I frowned for a moment. "Enough to… be friends?" I suggested.
Nanami smiled. "To be honest, Sato-san, work sucks."
My jaw dropped. I knew that office workers used to complain about their jobs, especially at company dinners or in front of their wives. Even Dad would sometimes spout rudeness after rudeness until a six-pack of beer would relax him, after a particularly difficult day.
"What's the job like for you, Sato-san?"
"Mmm, it was a little difficult at first. Dad has been baking bread since he was a kid and has worked in that bakery for forty years. That's where he met Mom. But neither Ichiro nor I had the slightest interest in baking bread. I discovered only recently that it can be satisfying. Actually, I may give it up next year to go to medical school. Only time will tell."
"Do you like medicine?"
"It's a good profession. Respectable, well paid. Although I would graduate at thirty-six. Until recently I imagined myself in a doctor's gown, but now… I find the chef's jacket very comfortable. I think I'm good at it."
"You look lovely in whatever you wear."
Nanami averted his eyes as he said this.
Our destination was the Shibuya Hikarie Tower. On the eleventh floor it had a huge space called Sky Lobby, from which the famous Shibuya Crossing could be seen. At 6:40, with the sky already painting itself in reddish hues, the view was breathtaking.
I stood there, etching in my retinas every image: the orange sky, the influx of people, the advertisements, the neon, the movement—and next to me, Nanami. He remained impassive, like an oak tree, looking at the landscape as if he were in a museum. Sometimes, as on that occasion, he seemed absent.
We stood there for about twenty or thirty minutes, simply admiring the place. I don't think we moved because my fingers were intertwined with his, and I just wanted time to stand still so we could always be like that.
"Are you hungry, Sato-san?"
I immediately noticed the change. He stopped using keigo, though he still called me by my last name. I smiled at this, without letting go of his hand.
"And you, Nanami-san?"
"I made a reservation," he said simply.
Sometimes he seemed so surly, like a cat on guard, but that was part of his charm.
I nodded and let Nanami lead the way, but neither of us let go of the other's hand.
"Table for two, in the name of Kento Nanami."
"Welcome, dear customers," the host looked a lot like Alfred from Batman, but I didn't comment.
The restaurant was formal, but not to an ostentatious point. It was somewhere between elegant and casual, like Nanami's outfit that day. Even so, the prices were still exorbitant, perhaps because we were in Shibuya.
Nanami put his hand on mine, as if he knew exactly what I was thinking, and said:
"I'm the one who invited you tonight, Sato-san. Order whatever you like."
After ordering, we both stood up almost at the same time, which drew stares. We announced almost at the same time that we were going to the bathroom and I laughed (he just smiled), so we escorted each other to the entrance of both restrooms and parted.
There were many women in the ladies' powder room, all dressed more opulently than I was. Even though I was well dressed, neat and groomed, I still looked like a broom next to the beautiful women that night. Even my straight, flat hair looked like a broom.
I wondered if I should put on more blush, until a girl let out a soft giggle and caught my attention. She was wearing an understated dress that suited her very well, her hair pulled back in a high ponytail, and she had almost as many dark circles under her eyes as Nanami. She looked about twenty-four or twenty-five and was taller than me. Some people had such good genes…
"Are you here with a guy?" she asked.
I nodded, a little nervously.
"Is he your boyfriend?"
I shook my head—though I wish he were.
"So he asked you out?"
"How can you tell?"
She laughed.
"Put on more blush. If he's not an idiot, he’ll notice and say something eventually."
I don't know why I listened to a stranger, but I did. I opened my purse, put on my blush, got the go-ahead, and started to head for the exit.
At that moment I felt an ominous presence and, suddenly, as if something were pressing down on my shoulders. I admit I must have been a little scared but, in theory, there was no one and nothing but the woman and me in that bathroom. However, the feeling of pressure disappeared just as quickly as it had appeared.
I touched my shoulder, confused, and decided it was nothing.
When I saw the table, Nanami was already there. He was a very proper man. He was sitting with his back straight, waiting for me. He wasn't fiddling with his phone or looking away.
I was about three meters from the table when a woman sat opposite Nanami. I was immediately jealous. She was tall, with red hair and an F-cup. Her breasts stood out from her dress in a majestic way, leaving nothing to the imagination.
But despite her strong presence, Nanami's was overwhelming, especially when I wasn't near him. More than annoyed, he seemed angry at the woman's interruption.
"You looked so lonely and I decided to keep you company…" she said in a honeyed tone.
"The best company I could have tonight is not you, if I may say so," Nanami still maintained his chivalry above all things. "Could you leave? My companion might get upset."
"Are you talking about that little girl who comes with you? Haha! I thought she was your little sister."
"I'd appreciate it if you'd leave me alone," he blurted out, fiercely.
I chuckled. Admittedly, the stranger had accomplished what it had taken me months to do: get Nanami to stop talking to me with keigo.
After the woman withdrew, annoyed, the evening went very well. We tasted a good steak, talked about many things and Nanami introduced me to the world of wine.
However, as I had only ever had a little sake at celebrations, three glasses of wine were enough to blur my vision.
At about ten o'clock, wobbling on my heels, I clung to Nanami's arm and somehow made it to a quiet park. That felt unheard of to me. A quiet place in Shibuya at ten o'clock at night seemed impossible.
Nanami's arm was around my shoulders, with his left hand on my left shoulder. His right hand and mine were loosely entwined. His thumb, rough and warm, formed circles on the back of my hand as the world stopped spinning.
My head on his chest felt just right.
At eleven-thirty, my head clear and my heart in turmoil, Nanami dropped me off at my front door. He was going to leave just like that, but I wouldn't let him.
I tightened my arms around his torso. He was surprised, but reciprocated my embrace almost immediately. We stayed like that for a long time, so long that even the cab driver turned off his car but not his meter.
It was almost midnight when I entered my room, feeling like I was walking on air. I didn't know if it was the wine, the closeness of Nanami or the perfect night, but I had a lingering feeling of warmth that welled up in my chest and ran through my entire body.
When I woke up the next morning, after ten o'clock, Mom put a bowl of miso soup in front of me. My head was pounding. She said:
"For the hangover, honey," and she laughed lightly as Dad lifted his eyes from the paper and looked at me reproachfully.
"Ichiro owes me five thousand yen," he announced. "He said you were lying about what he looked like, and I told him my daughter would never lie."
A silly grin came to my mouth. Of course I wouldn't lie. Nanami was handsome, tall, elegant and perfect. His sunken cheeks, hard jaw and dark circles under his eyes didn't look flawed to me at all.
Chapter 4: Red and lit
Chapter Text
Perfecto. Aquí tienes el Capítulo 4 en inglés, fiel y pulido, con marcadores donde el texto original pasa a ser explícito para que tú lo traduzcas por tu cuenta. El formato de marcador es:[EXPLICIT PASSAGE #1 — brief label]
From then on, Nanami gave me almost as many paper flowers as real flowers. When he wanted to ask me out—about every two weeks—he would bring me bouquets of roses with cards attached. Our second date was at an aquarium. We met at a nearby station, but this time Nanami drove me all the way home in his car.
“I don't want you to think I have bad intentions, Sato-san. I think it’s a risk to get into the car of someone you barely know.”
And yes, it was. I didn't quite understand what he did at work, I didn’t know how old he was or when his birthday was. The only things I knew were his name, that he worked in Harajuku (and hated it), and all his food preferences.
Still, talking to him was quite an experience. I never felt pressured or uncomfortable. I never felt neglected or stupid. He knew about a lot of things and had meticulous, almost OCD-like routines with proportions, measures, and quantities, so it was fascinating to watch him talk about postmodern art while dividing his mashed potatoes into five bites.
By that point I had learned almost all his proportions: three bites for bread and three gulps for drinks, five for stews, twenty spoonfuls for soups. He chewed thirty times before swallowing.
He hated noodles not because of the taste, but because of the difficulty of dividing them into exact proportions. The one time he agreed to eat them, I saw him awkwardly twirl the pasta around his fork, frowning like someone watching a disaster.
I couldn’t hold back my laughter.
“It’s not funny, Sato-san,” he said—but he smiled as he said my name.
At the end of September, after a few dates, Nanami sent me a terse message: “I’ll pick you up this time.”
Hiromi and Akiko were helping me pass the hours before my date when Nanami showed up at my front door. From my window, we caught a glimpse of him carrying several bouquets of flowers and a cake.
The three of us stumbled downstairs and stopped short when Mom opened the door and gawked at Nanami.
“Are you Kento-san? You’re so tall!”
“Mom!”
“Oh—excuse the rudeness. Would you like to come in for a moment?”
Dad had already changed into street clothes, so Nanami’s arrival still took him by surprise. Inside our house he looked out of place—tall and blond, traits rare among the Japanese. I think even Ichiro struggled to meet his eyes, since Ichiro’s gaze came up to Nanami’s nose.
“A pleasure, ma’am,” Nanami said, offering the largest bouquet and the cake to her.
She lit up like a little girl with a new toy. “For me? Oh! No one has given me flowers in twenty years!”
Dad grunted from his seat in the living room.
Then Nanami turned to us. “You must be Hiromi-san and Akiko-san. Forgive me for not using your family names—Sato-san hasn’t mentioned them. Sato-san, good afternoon.”
He gave each of us a bouquet, but out of the four he carried, only mine was red roses. He gave my friends freesias or alstroemeria—flowers of friendship and trust—and white tulips to Mom.
In the crook of his arm, Nanami carried one last item: a chilled bottle of sake. He offered it to Dad with a small bow.
“Nice to meet you, sir.”
“You’re not buying me with alcohol, boy,” Dad said, disdainful. “Sit down. Women, go to the garden.”
For the first time in my life I was afraid of Dad’s traditional streak, so I stayed hidden behind the kitchen door to listen. Mom and my friends, just as curious, stood beside me in silence.
“Your name is… Nanami? My daughter does nothing but chatter about you all day. ‘Nanami this,’ ‘Nanami that.’ Frankly, I’m sick of it.”
“Kento Nanami, sir—yes, that’s my name.”
Dad growled again. He went to the counter for two glasses and a corkscrew and let Nanami, as the younger man, pour for both.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-three, sir. I just turned twenty-three in July.” (That made me think about why, in the early days, Nanami would examine the bentos I gave him.)
“Hmph. You look older,” Dad said, sipping and clearly enjoying the taste. “You’re a stockbroker, I understand.”
“I’ve been there two years. It’s steady—respectable and well paid.”
“I see my daughter’s phrases have rubbed off on you,” Dad smiled briefly. He drank again, fell quiet, then met Nanami’s eyes. “What are your intentions with Katsumi? Are you serious?”
“I am, sir. I want to marry her.”
Euphoria erupted behind me, and I turned to jelly. I crouched, trying not to lose my grip on reality. Barely six months after we met, and Nanami was formally at my house.
“Hmmm.” Another grunt. For a moment, I thought Dad would kick him out, but then he said, “She looks happy every time she says your name. And you’ve always seemed serious and reliable—even when I was the one ringing you up at the bakery. You stand out, I must say… My only condition is that you do things in order, as they should be done. It’s too soon to ask for her hand.”
“I only want to show my sincerity, sir. We’ll do only what Sato-san wishes.”
I hid my face in my arms, stunned. My friends bounced like lunatics, stifling squeals. Mom, more mature but no less excited, stroked my head before stepping into the kitchen.
“Can I cut the cake? I want you to eat something so Kento-san can digest the alcohol before driving.”
“We’re not finished, woman!”
“The house is too small, dear! We can hear everything!”
Nanami smiled nervously, which I found endearing.
My friends had a bite and left. Soon it was just the four of us, sharing a cake from a gourmet pastry chain.
“This cake is so good! And the frosting!” I said, to break the silence.
“Katsumi, do we have cream cheese at the bakery?” Dad asked, focused on texture. I nodded. “Wonderful.”
Dad said nothing more until he staggered off to bed—too drunk to stay up.
“You must be home before midnight, Katsumi,” he muttered as he climbed the stairs.
“Your father is very funny when he sets his mind to it,” Mom said, still admiring her flowers out of the corner of her eye. Then, to Nanami: “Katsumi hasn’t had any boyfriends in her whole life because of her father and brother—it’s a miracle she didn’t rebel, Kento-san. But we’re not in the Meiji Era anymore. And it’s almost eight; it wouldn’t do any good to be back before midnight. If you have to stay out, do it. But don’t upset your father too much, dear. Children should come naturally in marriage.”
“Children?!”
I choked on my bite of cake, stunned.
Mom and Nanami traded a conspiratorial smile, and the moment passed.
When I got into Nanami’s car for our date that night, we were quiet for a long while. It was a bit uncomfortable, but not enough to make me want to leave. It was the kind of discomfort that visits you when you realize your life might change drastically.
At a red light, Nanami looked at me. “How are you feeling, Sato-san?”
I stayed quiet for a beat. “Moved… for some reason.”
He chuckled softly. “I’m glad it’s not a bad feeling.”
He took me to Meiji Jingu Gaien—tucked away from the city’s rush, a peaceful tunnel of ginkgo trees, their leaves holding on to the last green before autumn.
We didn’t see a soul nearby. Perfect, really. He took my hand and we walked in silence, cicadas and small creatures rendering the trees’ rustle into music.
At some point, Nanami stopped, cradled both my hands in his, and studied them for a long while. Then he lifted his gaze to meet mine—waiting, inquisitive.
“Would you date me with the intention of marriage, Sato-san?”
My face lit up. I smiled wide; he smiled back, and I pulled him into my arms. I didn’t say “yes,” but my actions said it for me.
We stayed like that, settling into our new roles. I was his girlfriend, and he was my boyfriend—my first boyfriend. I was grateful to Dad for pushing me to help at the bakery, to my brother for the sports car that took me to the park every day. I was grateful to the world.
I lifted my face from his chest to look at him. Admiration and affection in his eyes—and a trace of unease, as if he were afraid I might vanish.
Naturally, our lips met in a soft kiss. I tilted my head, heart hammering, and his hands slid down my back to draw me closer.
We kissed again, deeper this time; our breaths found the same rhythm. Heat gathered under my skin. His hands traced the safe lines of my back and waist, and I melted into him.
Another couple passed by.
“Get a room,” the girl said.
We broke apart—because it was the right thing to do—but neither of us was ready to stop.
I took his hand and we hurried to the car. The parking lot was empty and quiet; no one saw me open the passenger door and gently push him into the seat before climbing in after him, straddling his lap.
“Stop, Sato-san! This is—”
I found his mouth in the sudden darkness and kissed him again, pouring my heart into it. My pulse matched his, wild, chest to chest. My fingers slipped into his hair; his hand settled warm and steady at my waist.
I did what I always wanted to do: stroke his hair, his ears, run my fingers down his neck, feel the muscles in his arms.
Nanami resisted with all his might, but in the end, a Nanami I didn't know until that day won. Something began to rise between his legs, and he, breathing heavily, put one hand on my knee and the other went straight to my breast to feel it.
This time, it was he who kissed me, who touched me. He moved his hand from my breast to my bare back, barely caressing me with his fingertips, sending a shiver down my spine. His other hand circled my knee before slowly moving up my bare leg until it found my underwear. With our eyes accustomed to the darkness, Nanami silently asked my permission, and I, as if I knew what he was going to do at that moment, nodded and let myself go.
Nanami slipped his hand under my underwear and his fingers caressed my sex. His eyes pierced mine as his fingers caressed my lips. I felt hot and wet as his fingers explored my mouth for the first time. After a while, when I stopped shuddering at the slightest touch, Nanami made circles with his middle finger, moistened by my own fluids, and slowly pushed it inside me.
I moaned audibly and dropped my head back, overwhelmed by the new sensation. I could feel my insides throbbing around his invading finger. Nanami took advantage of the access to my neck and kissed it with wet lips. At the same time, his thick finger slid out and back in again. He did this until I was riding his hand myself while his thumb caressed me higher up, at a spot that felt delicious.
Honestly, I couldn't believe that a couple of hours ago I was choking on the idea of having children. His hands touched me here and there, rendering the little protection my dress offered useless. My sighs mingled with his irregular breathing, and the truth is that I stopped worrying about prying eyes the moment I sat on top of him.
A few seconds later, I reached a climax I had never felt before. A feeling of pleasure spread from my crotch to my fingertips, passing through my hips, my breasts, and my back. I didn't know that a single finger inside me could cause such an effect, because it was the first time in my life I had done something like that.
Nanami gently withdrew her hand and sucked her middle finger while I watched. I felt my face burning, because I had never thought of tasting my own fluids.
“You taste sweet,” he said to me.
“Maybe somewhere more comfortable?” I whispered, suddenly aware of how close we were to testing our limits.
“You shouldn’t push my limits, Sato-san.”
“What are you talking about…?”
I realized then that my question—and the way I’d moved—only tempted him to go further. That wasn’t my intention; I also agreed with Dad that I should keep my chastity until marriage. But honestly, it felt so good being perched on his lap that the rules I’d been raised with blurred at the edges.
On impulse, I tangled my tongue with his; he nipped my lip, gathered my hair to kiss along my neck, and gave my hip a gentle squeeze. Maybe I should have understood these tiny rebellions were a prelude to what might happen if we kept going—but I didn’t care.
“Your father wants us to do things in order,” Nanami said, clinging to reason like a lifeline. He wouldn’t take his hands off my bare skin. He breathed me in and left a trail of kisses along my collarbone.
“You said we’d do whatever I wished, didn’t you?”
He sighed, smiling. “Are you sure? I don’t know if doing this on our first night is…”
“I think our first day was when you returned my bento with food. I think I realized I was in love from then on.”
“It was my birthday that day… Imagine my surprise when the cute girl at the bakery made me a bento and told me not to give it any meaning.”
“Good timing, past me,” I said, congratulating myself.
Nanami kept stroking my back, then asked once more:
“Are you absolutely sure?”
“Yes. I trust you.”
Chapter 5: Nanami's house
Chapter Text
Nanami asked me three more times before he was convinced. He talked about my father, about the implications, and about me following a man I barely knew to his place. I was starting to worry that Nanami kept referring to himself as “a stranger” as he straightened my clothes, settled me into the passenger seat, then walked around the car to get in and start the engine.
At first he didn’t speak at all, but then he asked a simple question:
“What’s your favorite color, Sato-san?”
That caught me off guard. “The color of the sky, I guess? I like a clear sky. Though blue in general isn’t so bad. What’s yours?”
“I’ve never really thought about it. I’ll say I like the color of your cheeks. That day we went to Hikarie, I couldn’t stop looking at them.”
It was the most romantic thing I had ever heard and, as usual, I felt like the inexperienced girl I was. First bread, then a color. Still, I remember all these moments with love.
Nanami lived in a run-down apartment building. Unlike my home—painstakingly built by my parents on their own lot thirty years ago, when Ichiro was still a baby—Nanami’s place wasn’t even his. It was a tiny rental with only the bare minimum for living decently: a narrow entryway and a narrow corridor dividing two halves of the unit—on my right, a small kitchen, a bathroom with a shower, and a washing machine; on my left, a closet, a kotatsu, and an insane number of books.
So single men really do live with the bare minimum, I thought as soon as I stepped into the cramped, half-dark entryway. There was a small shoe cabinet filled with pairs that looked new and polished, and by the door, just one pair of house slippers. I was about to take off my heels and set them aside when Nanami opened a box on top of the cabinet and took out a brand-new pair of slippers, still wrapped.
“Try these. I hope they’re your size, Sato-san.”
They were, in fact. I figured maybe Nanami kept that sort of thing on hand in case someone needed to come in—but if so, wouldn’t they be larger, in case the guest was a man? I didn’t dwell on why he had a new pair exactly my size; later I realized he’d bought them for me.
Nothing was out of place. Not a speck of dust. No stray personal effects. No dirty dishes—nothing. And yet, above the book stacks as tall as I was, a corkboard stood out as the only splash of color in that sober, indifferent room. I recognized my Rilakkuma sticky notes and the squares of waxed cloth, clean and pinned along the board’s lower edge. Nanami had kept every single note and cloth I’d given him.
He rubbed the back of his neck, nervous. “I’m starting to think this is a mistake. I should have taken you to a nice hotel…”
“I like being here,” I cut in. “It feels like I’m finally getting to know you for real.”
“Would you like something to drink?” he asked after a taut few seconds.
“Sure.”
There was just enough space in the little kitchen for a table and two chairs. Nanami offered me one, turned to open the fridge, and gave me a perfect view of his back. My hands burned to touch him, but I felt I should hold back a bit longer.
Small and stoic as the place was, I could still tell he owned expensive ceramic tableware, spoons that looked like silver, and premium groceries tucked into the rickety fridge—not to mention the clothes and shoes he wore every day. The furniture seemed old, but what it held were the kind of things you’d find in a rich man’s home.
Nanami made instant coffee and poured it into two cups. He set out cream, milk, and sugar for me, then sat down. He stirred his coffee with care, even though it was plain black and ready, and waited while I sweetened and lightened mine before taking his first sip.
We talked about unimportant things: the weather, stock market fluctuations, the movies in theaters. That sort of thing. Nanami didn’t rush me, wasn’t impatient or rude. He drank his coffee like the perfect gentleman he was.
When we finished, we both reached for my cup at the same time. I think we both meant to pick them up and stand, to put a little space between us; instead, our hands met. Then our eyes.
Then our lips.
My milk-and-sugar lips; his, straight coffee.
I stood, leaning over him as I kissed him. He, still seated, didn’t have time to rise; his hands found my knees, toying with the hem of my dress. My underwear was still damp.
I had no objection when Nanami's hands traveled under my dress, caressing my thighs until they found their way to my underwear. He pulled it down until it fell to my ankles. We both looked down, him with his hands on my hips. That seemed to please him, because the bulge in his crotch grew again.
Instead of removing his hands, Nanami continued his journey up to my waist and then to my breasts. He caressed them under my bra. I could only see his fingers protruding from under my dress.
Nanami unhooked my bra and, with one movement, removed my clothes.
I was naked for the first time in front of a man, under the warm electric light.
Nanami's eyes filled with me. He caressed my breasts, pulled one of my nipples (a moan, almost like a whisper, escaped my mouth), and then stood up.
His sudden presence, tall and imposing, was exposed before me. His crotch at the height of my stomach, his intense gaze in my eyes.
He caressed the pink of my cheeks and gave me a chaste kiss. Just two pairs of lips making silent promises.
Then the frenzy.
Two wet tongues dancing as Nanami unbuckled his belt and took off his shirt, wrestling with it. He unzipped his pants, slid them down his legs, and kicked them off when he was finally standing in front of me in his underwear.
Finally.
I caressed his arms, his chest, his back, his neck. He did the same, lifted me off the floor, and carried us to his bedroom. I wrapped my legs around his waist and my arms around his shoulders.
He must have been in great physical shape, because he held me with one hand on my bare butt while with the other he found his futon, laid it out on the tatami floor, and laid me down on it.
“Sato-san…”
“Please… take it all the way.”
Nanami didn't need any more questions, any more permission. He kissed my mouth, my cheeks, and my collarbone. He kissed my nipples and my belly button. He gently spread my legs and buried his face between them. He slowly ran his tongue along me, causing me to arch my back and scream.
“What...?” I tried to form words, but the tingling sensation spreading from my sex to the rest of my body prevented me from thinking. Rather, it was as if the whole world was focused on Nanami's tongue tasting my vulva.
I was experiencing an ever-growing feeling, recognizing my second orgasm of the night when Nanami pulled away for a moment. He stripped completely naked and wrapped his erect penis in a condom. I watched him do it expertly, as if he always did, and for a moment I felt jealous of all the girls he had had sex with before me.
Nanami kissed me again as he positioned his member at my entrance. He gently parted my lips and inserted the tip, just enough to make me cry out in pain. Tears streamed down my face, and all I could think about was that I would bleed at any moment, and I didn't know what could be worse: the pain, the embarrassment, or not being able to look at him anymore for fear of remembering how the night would be ruined.
But Nanami calmed me down. He pressed his sweaty chest against my breasts, moaned between my ear and my neck, and sighed softly, “Katsumi...” at the same time as his penis entered me, slowly but decisively.
I screamed. I'm sure I dug my nails into his back and it was he who was bleeding. I felt my insides trying to assimilate the invader, but it was a titanic task, considering his size. I should have seen it coming from the moment I saw his robust build; it was obvious that I wasn't going to be dealing with a Japanese size.
He didn't move, he didn't do anything at all while I continued screaming, scratching him, and crying. But once I got used to the size and he saw that I was calmer, Nanami slowly pulled it out and put it back in. He rested inside me again, giving me a chance to recover.
He pulled out and pushed in again, always gently and carefully. At first, I felt pain because of his size and everything that was happening, but as he performed his ritual, entering, exiting, entering, I got used to it and realized that my hips were moving, anticipating his entry.
The rhythm increased, although I didn't realize it until he lifted one of my legs, taking it by the inside of the knee, and made sure to look me in the eyes as his member began a race to penetrate me.
At some point, I didn't know if it was seconds or minutes later, his penis whipped me furiously while he bit me all over. He sat on his legs, held mine by the ankles, and smiled dangerously as he thrust himself hard into me.
He didn't talk during sex. Sometimes he would say my name in the throes of pleasure, whispering in my ear, as if he didn't want to be heard. However, his activity in bed was diametrically different.
Once I got used to his strength and vigor, Nanami never backed down. Even though I cried and scratched him, I have a feeling he would have stopped if I had told him to.
But the truth was that I didn't want to stop, either. After all, Nanami gave me three orgasms in a single night on the day I began my sex life.
I didn’t know when I fell asleep, but when I woke, a few things were different. I was wearing satin pajamas in my size, with new underwear. I was tucked into Nanami’s futon, and the room was slowly filling with morning light. Strangely, I felt fresh—like I’d gone to bed after a shower.
I stood up, but there was an ache in my hips and inner thighs, and my sensitive nipples were peaked under the satin. I hugged myself as if I were cold—but really it was to hide the state of my chest.
“Awake? Good morning, Katsumi-san.” Nanami wore a crew-neck shirt and joggers; his straight hair was unstyled.
Never in my wildest dreams had I pictured him in casual clothes—no button-downs, no dress slacks, no slicked-back hair.
“You look very handsome, Nanami,” I blurted, stunned.
The tips of his ears turned red, though he tried not to show it. By now I could read his moods, even through the poker face he wore, as if he didn’t want anyone to see the real him.
He pulled the kotatsu over to the foot of the futon and set a cushion on the left side, right in front of the towers of books. Then he brought in a tray from the kitchen, loaded with food. Two bowls of white rice, miso soup, a piece of grilled fish for each of us, the best tamagoyaki I’d ever seen (better than Mom’s), little dishes of pickles, and a pitcher of green tea. He laid everything out and said:
“Come, Katsumi-san—let’s have breakfast.”
I’d heard about aftercare from my friends. Even Hiromi—who’d clung to Ichiro for so long—knew about it. But only Yumi had been lucky enough to get breakfast after her first night. It was more urban legend than fact: supposedly, after the first time together, the girl wakes to find her partner making her breakfast.
I think it’s something every girl should experience.
Nanami and I ate in silence, enjoying the morning and each other’s company, with no hiccups to trouble us. The food was delicious, and a peaceful air wrapped around us.
In daylight, I could see how small the place was for someone Nanami’s size. There were too many books—so many it seemed they could topple any second and bury us both.
“Do you like reading that much, Nanami?”
“I do, but I don’t read very often,” he sighed. “My work is important, Katsumi-san.”
“More important than reading all those books?” I asked.
I didn’t want to pry. It struck me as odd that Nanami had so many books, and some looked untouched. But it felt like what Ichiro used to do when he was younger: run to the shop for the new issue of Jump and… wait.
He could have read on the subway home, or before diving into homework with the minimal effort of an average student. Instead, Ichiro would set the stage—finish chores and distractions, even eat and bathe—before putting on comfy pajamas, lying in bed, and reading the volume before sleep. He even had a rule about the day: it had to be Saturday, so everything would be perfect.
“Well, money is the most important thing to me,” he said. After two or three bites, he added, “No—that’s not quite true. I think there’s someone more important than money now. But you can’t fill your stomach with love.”
Nanami was pragmatic, not prone to romance. He could have told me I mattered more than money because he loved me, but I’d learned to read the workings behind his words. Besides, the tips of his ears kept turning red, despite all that well-practiced stoicism.
So Nanami hadn’t reached “his Saturday” yet. He had tasks and distractions to clear before he could settle in with his books. When I looked again at the stacks behind him, I thought it best to help. I didn’t know what day of the week he was on—but I could get closer and find out.
Nanami wanted to leave the dishes for later, but I refused. He’d done more than enough for me; the least I could do was tidy up the kitchen.
Meanwhile, he sat and watched me with a cup of tea in hand. There was nothing suspicious or controlling about it—he seemed fascinated, as if he couldn’t quite believe I was moving around his kitchen. I understood; I’d felt the same excitement seeing him in my home the day before.
Chapter 6: A curse
Chapter Text
Luckily, I didn’t get a scolding from Dad for not coming home. Mom covered for me to the end, sending him off to check prices for the ingredients he wanted to try. He was a big fan of inventing and tweaking bread recipes, and he always ended up selling them if he saw potential.
The weeks went by in the blink of an eye. Sometimes I saw Nanami every day. He stopped buying casse croute and, instead, would swing by the bakery to exchange lunches and little gifts with me. The paper flowers and bouquets kept coming, as did the notes. I kept giving him waxed cloths, but also regular cloth, handkerchiefs, Rilakkuma notepads, and lots of smiles.
He was so stoic, so distant. He kept his composure despite my flirting, as if nothing could touch him—maybe because he didn’t want anyone to see his softer side in public.
Even so, I noticed what no one else did. When I switched my lip balm from a nude to a coral shade, Nanami couldn’t stop staring at it, as if he wanted to vault the counter and kiss me. Or when I tucked my fringe behind my ear to clear my face and he looked like he wanted to stroke me. Or those times I said his name and the tips of his ears flushed.
Sometimes we went back to the same bench where we’d met and kept up our casual, brainy conversations. Then something would happen. His hand would brush mine. Our eyes would meet. Nanami would catch my perfume on the evening breeze.
So we’d go—trying to respect traffic laws, but still hurrying—to his place. Nanami wouldn’t just take off his shoes and suit when he came in; he’d take off his composure too. He’d kneel in the entryway and slip his hands under my skirt, or pin me to the wall and undress me in one motion.
Even though we traded notes, flowers, and lunches—kept apart by a wooden counter—in the privacy of his home we were like two animals in heat. Our tongues tangled frantically and our genitals met through our clothes, eager for contact.
He ruined my underwear on more than one occasion, so I ended up with my own lingerie drawer in his wardrobe. Needless to say, I didn't mind the lost clothes so much when I got on all fours with my butt in the air and he whipped me with his member while pulling my hair.
The bakery was packed on Halloween, but Nanami didn’t show. He apologized—work was getting intense. It wasn’t really a problem; Dad would have scolded me if I’d started flirting with my boyfriend while hellish lines snaked behind him.
Akiko, Ichiro, and Takashi were called in to help at the bakery all day. Even I had to arrive at four in the morning with Dad. At first I thought he was overdoing it and felt annoyed, but when we had to restock the displays at ten a.m., I was shocked—we usually didn’t start running out until four or five in the afternoon.
We made a mountain of themed breads and they sold great, because Dad had wisely prepped a ton of tapioca the day before. The breads and drinks were a hit, and we had to restock twice more before eleven at night, when Dad announced:
“We’re closing!”
We all sighed—me the most. Working almost twenty hours straight in a bakery is not my idea of a perfect Halloween.
While Ichiro and Takashi hurried to close up the shop, Akiko, Dad, and I tallied the till at full speed. We all worked diligently; the last thing we wanted was to be there until one or two in the morning.
I did the numbers in a rush, used to the battered calculator Dad had handed down when he put me in front of the register.
“So when are you going to introduce him to us?” Ichiro asked. I kept calculating, ignoring him. “I mean your elderly boyfriend.”
I hit two wrong keys and ruined the total. Dad gave his usual grunt, snatched the calculator, and adjusted his glasses to see how to fix it.
“You’re a fool, Ichiro. Nanami isn’t old. He’s only six months older than me.”
“Oh, come on—the guys are jealous of Nanami-san,” Akiko said, brushing it off. “Even Yumi’s husband heard and thought he was going to get dumped for not being as romantic as Nanami-san…”
“But are we talking about the dead-eyed guy who swaps lunches with Katsumi-chan?” Takashi asked. “I don’t buy that he’s only twenty-three.”
“Can you all be quiet?” Dad snapped, irritated. Ichiro couldn’t hold back a laugh. “Here—go take a walk. You’re getting on my nerves…”
Dad handed each of us five thousand yen, as if Akiko and I were still in high school and could tour Tokyo on that money with Ichiro and his friends. Truth was, it barely covered an onigiri and a soda, but we thanked him, and once we were out the door we laughed about how old-fashioned he’d become.
Maybe he still saw us as kids. Maybe that’s just an older-parent thing—thinking of your children as eternally young.
“I’ll tell Nanami to come to the ryokan in December,” I announced.
Ichiro objected—it was still almost two months away—but I didn’t want to rush Nanami. If we could go, we would; if not, we’d see.
Even though I told Nanami I wanted to visit my family’s ryokan in December and introduce him to my brother, the topic didn’t come up again for a good while, because the frequent visits stopped. There was a problem with the market—the blessed market. Companies were going under and stocks were in free fall, so Nanami and his colleagues had to sort out whatever mess was unfolding.
Nanami tried not to let it affect his visits and gifts, but every time I managed to see him—maybe weekly, maybe every other week—he looked more and more exhausted. I suggested he pause the gifts for a while, and I reminded him about the trip to see my brother, since it was only three weeks away.
But it seemed that not seeing Nanami was wearing me down too. I felt more and more tired and discouraged. Even though I used face creams, ate on time, and slept enough, my shoulders felt heavy and my face looked more and more haggard.
In the end, on December 23rd—the day I’d planned to travel with my family and Nanami—I was laid up in bed, very sick. I felt devastated, not only because I’d gone weeks without a word from Nanami, but because I didn’t know why I was so ill. I’d taken supplements, seen several doctors, and even consulted a fortune-teller at Hiromi’s suggestion, to no avail.
I hadn’t been able to get out of bed for two days, and although Dad was skeptical at first, my ashen face and huge dark circles convinced him something was wrong.
“Now you look more like that boyfriend of yours…” he said, which got a weak laugh out of me, though I figured I was delirious.
Arms folded, Dad sat beside my bed. He didn’t say it out loud, but his furrowed brow showed how worried he was. A few days earlier I’d heard him comforting Mom while she cried. They were both on edge, and I wasn’t in any better shape.
No one at home—friends or relatives—knew what was happening to me. I trembled and chattered my teeth; my limbs were cold and pale. My gaze was empty and dull, my lips cracked, and my stomach hollow. By mid-morning, when we were supposed to leave so we’d arrive at the ryokan before dark, I was bedridden.
Suddenly Mom shouted:
“Kento-san is here! Kento-san came! Oh! Kento-san, my baby is very sick. I think she got sick because she thought you’d left her… She isn’t eating, she’s babbling, she’s as pale as a corpse…”
Her words, mixed with grief and helplessness, rang through the house as they climbed the stairs to my room. I stared at the doorframe, dazed from lack of energy.
Nanami filled the doorway like a huge shadow. I raised a hand, though I think it just flopped back onto the bed. I think Nanami sighed then—I’m not sure.
“May I ask you to leave Katsumi-san’s recovery in my hands?” he asked.
“I thought you were a stockbroker, not a doctor,” Dad shot back, but Mom pressed his shoulder, pleading. “Can I trust you, boy? Honestly, I also thought you’d forgotten she existed.”
“I never could,” he said. “I know I’ve neglected her. You can scold me later. For now, please go and close the door.”
Dad lingered a little longer—which felt like an eternity in my condition—but no one could blame him. He’d only seen Nanami in person four or five times, so it was natural to hesitate before leaving his daughter with him.
“Let Nabena be present,” he suggested, though it felt like an ultimatum. After all, a traditional man keeps his traditions.
“All right,” Nanami said after a taut pause.
Dad gave a curt nod, looked at me once more, and left, closing the door.
“Mother, you need to be strong,” Nanami said, moving around my room. He checked under the furniture, inside my closet—even the ceiling, as if searching for insects. “Mother, I’m going to tell you something and I need you to believe me.”
“You’re scaring me, Kento-san…”
“Mother, look me in the eyes.” Nanami took Mom by the shoulders. “Katsumi-san is possessed by something called a ‘curse.’ It’s draining her energy, and if we let it go on, it could kill her before the year is out.”
Mom’s legs gave way. Nanami sat her where Dad had been, but kept watching her, waiting for a sign.
“How can you say such a— Are you joking, boy?”
“Never—not even by mistake—would I play with Katsumi-san’s life. I’m telling you the truth.”
Mom broke down, sobbing.
“Up to now…” Nanami began, then fell silent for a moment. He continued when his thoughts settled. “A few years ago I stopped… hunting those things. I would sit on a specific bench in a specific park, eating a specific kind of bread at a specific time, every day. I always sat in the center of the bench—until I saw Katsumi-san sitting in my spot, with a ‘curse’ over her head… At first I ignored it; it wasn’t serious. Some people go years possessed without ever noticing. Sometimes they’re lucky enough to meet people like… like me… and those people exorcise the curses before they get out of control. Before it could harm her, I exorcised that curse—but a few weeks later another one latched on. And when we went to Shibuya—the first time you saw me—someone else removed another curse from her. Mother, what I mean is… Katsumi-san’s energy is very attractive to curses. They’re usually small, but the one now…”
“The one now?” Mom shot to her feet, alarmed, but Nanami sat her down again and stepped between us.
“Mother, it mustn’t realize we know about it. If the curse senses it’s about to be exorcised, it could drain all of Katsumi’s energy and kill her before it flees. Curses know when they’re being watched.”
Mom covered her face, tears streaming.
“Save her! Save her, Kento-san!”
“I will, Mother. Please step back.”
Mom pressed herself to the door, hands still over her face. Dad realized she was crying and tried to come in, but Mom wouldn’t let him.
Trusting no one would interfere, Nanami turned to me and fixed his gaze on a point about half a meter above my stomach. His hand hovered in the air, as if gripping something. He made a sign with his free hand and then slashed through the air.
A hideous shriek—like a bawling animal—shook the whole house. Mom and Dad heard it clearly.
A few seconds later, my vision cleared and the trembling stopped. The room came into focus. Nanami by my bedside. Mom crying.
Nanami knelt and stroked my cheek. A warmth spread through me—indescribable.
“How are you, sweetheart?”
“Nanami!” I shouted, delighted.
I pushed myself up and threw my arms around him. He held me, supporting my weak body.
“Katsumi!” Mom cried, sobbing her heart out. “My daughter!” She rushed in and hugged the two of us as if we were one.
Dad managed to come in then. He saw Nanami holding me while I clung to him, and Mom wrapping us both in her arms. A sob escaped him, and he nodded—acknowledging whatever Nanami had done. Then he wiped his eyes and covered them for a moment; Dad was one of those men who believed men shouldn’t cry.
My recovery seemed miraculous. I touched my hands and face, amazed to feel warmth and softness again, then looked at Nanami’s face to be sure I wasn’t imagining things—and burst into tears.
“I thought you’d abandoned me, you idiot! You jerk! You cold-hearted blockhead!”
I called him every name I could think of, but Nanami let it all pass and kissed me back—on the mouth, in front of my parents, in my room. Strangely, it was Dad who ushered my stunned mother out to give us some privacy.
When I’d had enough of his mouth, I studied him for a moment, then rested my head where his chest met his collarbone.
“You look exhausted. Are you okay? Are you sleeping?”
Nanami sat on the bed with me in his lap, absently stroking my back.
“What about you? You still haven’t answered me.”
“Lately my shoulders felt heavy and I couldn’t sleep well… I thought it wasn’t that bad…”
Nanami went quiet for a long moment, as if he’d lost his words, then spoke again.
“You know, my job is to take money from the rich and make them even richer. It’s that simple. Frankly, no one would care if a stockbroker disappeared. But a lot of people would be affected if your bakery disappeared. Still, work like mine—so far outside the natural human cycle—pays more. Logically speaking, it’s nonsense…”
I frowned at him. “Are you bragging?”
“Not at all,” he said flatly.
“Ha, sorry. It’s just hard to grasp right now. Actually… I think your job is always a bit hard to grasp.”
“How do you feel?” he asked again.
“Isn’t it strange? I think just seeing you has made me completely better. You’re my perfect medicine, Nanami. Thank you for coming. Thank you…”
Nanami glanced around my room again. I understood, to some extent, what had just happened—but I wasn’t ready to talk about it. Much less about the bits I’d heard: curses, possessions, exorcisms. That awful shriek.
I wasn’t ready for that conversation.
Nanami seemed to make up his mind. “I need to speak to someone privately, Katsumi-san, but I don’t want to leave you alone for even a moment.”
His words put a silly smile on my face. I clung to him, soothed by his presence.
“If you want me not to ask questions, I won’t. If you want to tell me about it, you can.”
He relaxed, stroking my back and arm for a bit until he seemed more decided. He took his phone from his pocket and stared at the screen for a few seconds, still wavering—then the call tone rang.
“Hello? It’s Nanami—we need to talk,” he said. Someone answered, though I couldn’t catch the words. “Yes, I can visit the sorcery school after New Year’s.” A man’s laughter on the other end. “What are you laughing at? Anyway, clear a slot for January second.” A question, then Nanami: “Because no, I’m busy right now.” Another reply. “Not a chance. I’m finally doing what I want to do. I’m not dropping it just to go look at your face.” More laughter, a few words. “That’s right. See you.”
The words “sorcery school” echoed in my mind—but I’d promised not to ask. When Nanami hung up, he looked at me; our eyes met. He set the phone aside and focused on me.
We kissed, his hands slipping under my pajamas to explore my back and stomach. He was just about to unfasten my bra when the door flew open and Akiko blurted:
“Hey, I heard you were—gah! What are you two doing?” She slammed the door shut. “If that had been your dad, he’d have killed you! Get downstairs, now—your mom’s about to cancel the trip.”
Nanami and I sighed in unison. Because our reactions matched, we started laughing—he, politely; me, in loud giggles.
“Give me a second,” I said. “We’re good, right? We’re going to my family’s ryokan?”
“Of course. I had a small setback, but…”
“Then go downstairs and convince Mom everything’s fine, please.”
Chapter Text
Nanami looked at me as if he didn’t want to move, but then he did. He gave me another kiss—one I welcomed—and left my room. Akiko was still there, having heard everything.
“Ah! Heh, heh, heh… a girl’s gotta look out for her friends, y’know…” When Nanami greeted her and went downstairs, Akiko rushed in just as I was undressing for a shower. “Good heavens, Katsumi! Did you two already…?”
“Shhh! Keep your voice down!”
“How many times?”
“Honestly, I lost count.”
“NO WAY!”
“Shut up, I mean it!” I threw my pillow at her, flustered. “I’ll tell you later. Let me get ready now. I don’t want Nanami to see me like this.”
“Oh, please—he was just eating your face a second ago…”
“Enough, Akiko!”
She teased me a bit more, then beamed and headed for the door.
“We were all worried about you, Katsumi. We just called Ichiro. He was about to board the shinkansen to come see you.”
She didn’t wait to see my reaction.
I looked at myself in the mirror. My lips were chapped and I had deep circles under my eyes, but that was all that remained. My cheeks were rosy, my skin looked healthy, and warmth ran through my body. Whatever had happened to me, only traces were left.
I felt so grateful—and happy—that Nanami was there.
I showered and got ready in a hurry, picking out everything I needed for our stay at the ryokan. We had to move fast, no matter what. Our destination was on the outskirts of Kyoto, almost to Shin-Osaka—about 500 kilometers away. Even with the shinkansen it would take a while, because once we arrived we’d need a bus and then a van.
When I went downstairs I was nervous. The house was quiet, so I thought Nanami’s efforts had been in vain. But the moment I reached the bottom step, I realized everyone was outside arguing about the cars. Takeshi had brought his van and Nanami his car. On top of that, my sports car and Dad’s little Atos were already parked, making it hard to maneuver.
“Katsumi’s car is bigger,” Takeshi said. “That one and the van. We can leave the Atos and Kento-san’s car here, if you don’t mind.”
“It’s no trouble, but…”
“Park in my spot, Nanami, so we don’t bother the neighbors,” I said.
Everyone stared at me then, as if witnessing a miracle. I felt self-conscious for a second. Then Hiromi—who still hadn’t greeted me—ran over and hugged me, and the moment passed.
“Load my luggage—I’ll grab the keys,” I announced.
We spent twenty or thirty minutes in a full-on commotion just to figure out seating. Hiromi and Akiko squeezed into the back of my sports car, while Nanami looked awkward as my copilot. I guess it was because we were usually in the opposite roles. My parents rode with Takeshi along with all the suitcases, and we pulled out toward the station.
“Hey, Nanami-kun, are you really twenty-three?”
“You work as a stockbroker?”
“Do you have brothers? Cousins? Any friends as handsome as you?”
My friends were relentless. I burst out laughing at their attempts to pry information out of Nanami and nearly tipped the car, which made me laugh again when Nanami corrected the wheel just in time. My friends screamed first, then laughed.
The three of us chatted non-stop, and despite the motion, the laughter, and the music blasting from the speakers, Nanami fell fast asleep with his arms crossed.
When we pulled into the station parking lot and I parked, my friends slipped out as quietly as possible, saying they’d let me know when they’d paid for the space and gotten our train tickets. I thanked them, delighted.
Nanami’s dark circles were impressive. But unlike me—who was perking up by the hour—he genuinely seemed to need rest. The trip would do him good, even if he had to return to that tedious office after New Year’s.
“Departing in thirty minutes, seats XX and XX—hurry,” Takeshi’s message read.
“Nanami…” I called softly, not really wanting to wake him. I cleared my throat and spoke louder. “Nanami, we’re at the station.”
He startled, as if he couldn’t believe he’d fallen asleep, and looked around for me. When he found me, he relaxed, stretched with a sigh, and got out of the car.
The train ride was comfortable and quick. Mom and Dad were seated far away, so we didn’t even catch a glimpse of them. Takeshi sat between Akiko and Hiromi, while Nanami and I shared a double seat. We were half-expecting a guard to scold Takeshi, but no one moved him.
At first we chatted a little, but we kept bursting into laughter and having to apologize, so we opted for silence. The motion and the quiet lulled us all to sleep.
Akiko nodded off first, then Takeshi and Nanami. Hiromi and I traded a few words and surrendered to our naps. When I came to, it was because Nanami was gently shaking me.
“We’re here, sweetheart,” he whispered.
“Oooh, mote-ki,” Akiko stage-whispered.
“Mote-mote,” Hiromi replied, refreshed from her nap.
My face burned long before I opened my eyes, so my friends laughed at my expense and started gathering their things.
If anyone knew the phases of love, it was Akiko. She had a name for everything—including this. Mote-ki just meant love going your way. The irony. Just a few days ago, Akiko had been Nanami’s biggest hater for vanishing off the radar.
Nanami hauled my two huge suitcases plus his own travel backpack. I don’t know why, but I was sure he could have carried me too—though I didn’t test it. Instead, we spilled out of the frenetic station and took three taxis to the bus stop.
After the bus—an hour’s ride—we got off in a rugged area. Luckily we still had daylight, but the sky was already orange when a beat-up van rolled up.
The van had only six seats, counting the driver’s, and there were seven of us with ten suitcases. The trunk filled up with Akiko’s, Hiromi’s, and my luggage, so the remaining four—belonging to Takeshi, Nanami, Mom, and Dad—were shoved inside once we were seated.
Nanami and Takeshi ended up side by side, and Mom told Akiko and me, “You’ll have to sit on their laps if we want to arrive tonight.”
I was used to it, but Akiko hadn’t been that close to Takeshi in years. I settled on Nanami’s lap without a second thought, my butt right over his crotch.
Akiko, with more trouble, managed to balance almost on Takeshi’s knees, and he looked just as uncomfortable. Hiromi took the chance to tease them, though she seemed jealous.
Once Mom, Hiromi, and Dad filled the remaining seats, the elderly driver pulled away. Shielded by the poor visibility, Nanami slipped his hand under my bra. I tried to make small talk with Akiko, though she was busy with her own worries—one bump away from turning Takeshi on with the van’s jolts.
When we reached the ryokan, Akiko jumped up, causing a bit of chaos as we climbed out. I noticed Takeshi had a problem in his lap, and Takeshi noticed Nanami’s hand under my clothes. One look between us was enough: silence.
A woman a little older than Mom came out to meet us—her older sister. She’d lost her children in an accident, so the ryokan had ended up in my brother’s hands, though no one had planned it that way.
“Nabena, Sato-kun… and my little Buta-chan!” my aunt exclaimed, overjoyed. I let her use my old nickname only because she was crying. “Oh, dear! Ichiro-kun made such a fuss this morning. We almost closed the ryokan to go to Tokyo. How are you?”
“I think it was just a cold. Don’t I look better?” I asked.
My aunt agreed and suggested my parents had exaggerated my condition. She greeted my friends, was pleasantly surprised to meet Nanami, and invited us in to see our rooms.
For a moment I thought Nanami and I would get our own room, but my aunt was as traditional as Dad. Akiko, Hiromi, and I would share one room, while Takeshi and Nanami took another. I sighed at the arrangement.
“You should just get married already,” Yumi said from the doorway.
We all lit up when we saw her. She, her husband, and Koji had arrived at dawn, so all my loved ones were there that day.
As we stepped into the corridor on our way to the hot springs—thrilled to be the four of us together again after months—Ichiro came straight at me and hugged me tight. He looked relieved to see me there, as if he’d sensed he might not again.
“Where is he?” he asked when he set me down. “Mom told me everything. Where?”
“Asking for me, Ichiro-kun?” came Nanami’s deep voice behind me. I felt a tad jealous he wasn’t using keigo right from the start. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, brother-in-law.”
His words brought a smile to my face. Ichiro looked at me, then at Nanami, and his expression hardened. He crossed the hall toward him, his feet thudding on the wood. We all tensed, expecting him to throw a punch—he looked like an enraged bull. After a few intense seconds, Ichiro reached Nanami and, before anyone could stop him, hugged him.
Not only did his friends and Yumi’s husband stare, stunned—my friends and I froze as well. Even Nanami seemed unprepared; I think he expected a hit.
“Too many people here,” Ichiro said loudly. “Come on, man. We need to talk.”
Nanami followed my brother in silence, face flushed. That stung. I’d had to work for months to draw out anything close to a blush with my flirting.
“I thought Ichi liked women,” Koji muttered, lost.
“That’s my boyfriend, idiot!” I snapped.
The mood stayed light, and even with the guys’ jokes I had a blast on the way to the springs. We spent about an hour chatting and laughing, and when poor Yumi started overheating we had to get out.
When we came back through drifting steam, clean and relaxed, my friends slid open our room door and a surprise “Happy birthday!” made me jump back.
I’d completely forgotten it was my birthday—but apparently no one else had. Ichiro had prepared a cake, and Dad—the master baker—wrestled with piping bags to decorate it with a tiny Rilakkuma wishing me a happy birthday.
Everyone was there, even my aunt and Koji’s girlfriend, whom I didn’t know. It underscored how strange the day had been, and gave me a new perspective on that morning.
We ate cake, and my friends and parents showered me with gifts. The star was a giant Kiiroitori that Yumi had lugged from Tokyo. Everything felt carefully planned, which I loved.
“It’s Katsumi-san’s birthday—shouldn’t we leave them alone?” Koji’s girlfriend suggested, meaning Nanami and me.
Traditionally, the birthday girl would celebrate with her partner, but honestly, I’d spent the whole day with Nanami. He had literally saved my life that morning; I couldn’t have been happier.
And the next day, on Christmas Eve, we went out and I got to see Nanami in wafuku. It was a sight for sore eyes, since I was used to seeing him in Western clothes (or without them).
I did my part and wore a warm kimono, and I asked Nanami to take studio photos as a keepsake. The place even had a couple’s package: two copies of our photo together and a small print of each of our solo shots.
Nanami stared at my photo for a long time. I still looked a little worn, but I was smiling at the camera with joy and affection—because that’s how I felt. The next time I went to his place, I saw both photos—mine and ours—on his kitchen table, where he could see them every morning at breakfast and every night at dinner.
Christmas and New Year’s were great. The ryokan was packed, so by Christmas, Hiromi and my parents had joined the frenetic rush of serving guests, and by December 31st even Nanami and Koji’s girlfriend were pitching in.
Even so, we didn’t stop enjoying the trip. Ichiro and the guys folded Nanami and Sano into their antics, and we did the same with Koji’s girlfriend. While Nanami and Ichiro got into a fight because of something Takeshi said about my bra on the way there, we grilled Koji’s girlfriend about what exactly she saw in him to be so in love.
When I heard about the fight, I was mortified—and mad, especially at Ichiro—since Nanami’s right cheek was red and his lip split. But aside from a swollen cheek and a cut lip, he’d come out fine. He seemed good at taking blows.
Ichiro, on the other hand, had a busted nose. He served guests with a nasal voice until someone complained and he had to rest until mid-January, when his nose—and his voice—looked better.
No one blamed Nanami for the broken nose—not even Dad. In fact, I think that was the final step in Dad accepting Nanami as his future son-in-law, because he said, convinced:
“No self-respecting man lets himself be beaten when the quarrel is about his woman.”
At first I was sure Dad knew what we’d been doing at Nanami’s place and in the van, but later I let it go. If Dad knew, Nanami would’ve been sent back to Tokyo with both cheeks swollen.
Notes:
Hi! I'll be using a little bit of DeepL and DeepSeek here and there to bring you the translated chapters as soon as possible. Remember that my mother tongue is Spanish, so I don't want you to have to work too hard to understand my own translations. Even so, I check every sentence so that I don't change the sense and direction of the story, I hope you found it easy to read this chapter!
Chapter 8
Notes:
This chapter was translated with ChatGPT help.
Chapter Text
When we got home on the morning of January 2, Nanami told me he had to go somewhere important and that he’d talk to me that evening. I let him go, nervous.
While I was putting away my gifts and souvenirs—exhausted from the frantic trip—I remembered the phone call Nanami had made while sitting on my bed. I sat in the same spot, taking in the mess I’d left behind: the unmade sheets, the bathroom in disarray from my rush to leave.
“The sorcery school…” I repeated.
As those days in Kyoto wore on, I had managed to piece together almost everything that had happened. Nanami’s exact words to my mother. Ichiro pulling Nanami aside the moment they met, saying Mom had told him everything.
I remembered with absolute clarity the exhaustion, the pain, the cold—and how it all vanished in an instant, right as something shrieked above me as if unwilling to disappear. As if I really had been possessed by something.
Mom told me, almost in passing, that the women in her family had often suffered fainting spells and premature deaths, but that it had all stopped about twenty-four or twenty-five years ago. Everyone theorized—almost in secret—that my conception had ended those tragedies. Even my mother and my aunt were the last two survivors of the family line, though I’d always chalked that up to old folks’ tales.
The dates lined up to a point: things quieted down one December more than twenty years ago, but not completely. Some relatives said it happened when I was conceived, which made no sense, since like any human I was born nine months later. Others—more accurately—said the family’s calamities stopped abruptly in early December, a year before I was born, in 1989.
Whatever happened—an event, a birth—something in the world changed at that moment, but it clearly wasn’t me, no matter what they attributed to me. Maybe they only started saying it around my twenty-fourth birthday because we’d begun to notice that I—unlike the other women in the family—had never fainted or fallen seriously ill… until I met Nanami and went almost a month without seeing him.
Nanami came by that night as promised, just before eight. He chatted with Dad for a while, then we drove to his place.
On the way—and for the first time in months—Nanami was very quiet. The break had done him good: no more dark circles, no tired eyes, no drawn, papery skin. But he seemed to be shutting down, like a shell retreating to its natural state.
“Everything… okay… at the… school?” I asked.
Nanami set his jaw. He clearly wasn’t ready to talk about it. I didn’t mind. He’d taken almost a year to tell me anything beyond “stockbroker” about his work; I could wait another to hear about the sorcery school.
Even so, a little before we reached his neighborhood, Nanami broke the silence.
“Seven years ago, I had a friend. We were sent on an assignment way above our level…” He trailed off, turned into the lot of his worn-down building. “Haibara Yū.”
He said the name. Strange as it was, it rang terribly familiar—especially because we’d been saying it all through the holidays.
Maybe he left that silence for me to process, because he added, “Koji-san’s girlfriend—Haibara Mina-san—is Yū’s younger sister. Small world, right? She doesn’t even know how he died.”
I covered my mouth, shocked. Seven years ago. Nanami had been only sixteen when he lost the friend he still couldn’t speak about.
We sat a moment in silence after he cut the engine. Then he seemed to steady himself, got out, and opened my door—something he rarely did because I never let him.
I hugged him the second he was close. He wrapped me up, and I think he trembled a little. I don’t know if he was crying—vulnerable there in the stillness of the parking lot—but I poured as much warmth and love as I could into that embrace, letting him know he could show his feelings.
After a while, when he’d calmed, he kissed my forehead, and we went upstairs.
We made dinner, joking about Ichiro’s nose and the fight with Nanami. I did it to lighten the air and, after a few minutes, he relaxed. We ate at his tiny table, stacking the plates and making sure our framed photos didn’t end up splattered with sauce.
When we’d finished and were sipping hot green tea, Nanami drifted back into that quiet for a few minutes. Then he spoke—and once he started, he told me everything.
“There’s something called ‘curses.’ They’re born from people’s impure desires and feelings. Prisons and hospitals are breeding grounds for them. Curses are made of cursed energy and tend to possess objects, places, and people they can feed on to keep existing… There are very weak ones, like… the kind that usually possess you.” He cleared his throat, uncomfortable, and continued when he saw how intent I was. “But there are powerful curses too. I suspect the one that latched onto you did it in Shibuya, near the bakery; it was grade four and about to mutate to grade three by the time I exorcised it. Mutation’s rare—but not impossible.”
“What are they like?” I asked. “Creatures, like in the movies? Like Hanako or Okiku?”
“Mm.” He really thought about it, eased by how I was taking this in. “You’d be giving them too much credit if you pictured them as ghosts. They’re usually much more violent—and uglier. Some are disgusting.”
“But if all this is real… I mean, I’m not saying you’re lying,” I said, nervous. “It’s just—I’m sure I didn’t start to feel anything was off until after I began working at the bakery. Actually, a little later… when…”
“When we met, right?” I fell silent and frowned. “Right behind that bench in the park, a woman was brutally murdered around this time last year. She turned into a vengeful spirit, and two days after the police tape came down, I saw you sitting there. The curse was perched on your shoulders, but you didn’t seem to notice.”
“Ah—I thought you sat next to me because my beauty dazzled you.” He smiled, brows slightly knit, almost apologetic. I couldn’t stop thinking about my sudden fears, how the quiet bakery I’d known my whole life could become terrifying in an instant. “How many of those… things… have you taken off me?”
“Almost twenty, counting the last one,” Nanami admitted. “Don’t get me wrong: curses or not, I would’ve approached you anyway. In fact, I’d have preferred you had nothing to do with them. Then I could’ve lived my whole life as a sad Harajuku office worker married to a beautiful woman who smells like bread.”
“I hope that’s a pleasant smell,” I said, at a loss.
He laughed softly.
“There’s a… sorcery school. Formally, the Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical College. Four years of study to become a sorcerer. They protect people—humanity—from curses. People like you, Katsumi-san.”
“I’m guessing you and Yū studied there,” I said. He nodded. “And I’m guessing… whatever happened to Yū is why you left that world to become an office worker. And I’m guessing you’re telling me all this because you went there today to talk to someone…”
“You’re very smart, sweetheart,” he said fondly. “At first I wanted to ignore you. I was fed up with sorcery, and all I wanted was to make money and retire twenty or thirty years before everyone else. That first exorcism was only because I saw you sigh—like you were tired. Maybe it was just the bakery hours, but I didn’t like seeing you like that. And you looked better when I left. But when I kept seeing curses on you—sitting on your head or your shoulders, clinging to your arms, wrapped around your legs—I started to suspect… It isn’t normal for someone who can’t control cursed energy to be possessed. Once in a lifetime, maybe twice if they’re unlucky. But eighteen in a year? Even if they were all weak, something was wrong.” He sighed, defeated, and took my hand, forgetting his tea. “I want to marry you as soon as possible, Katsumi-san. I don’t want you to suffer. I want you safe, somewhere secure. That’s why, when the chance for a promotion came up, I neglected you for a moment—but… even though it was just three weeks… you almost died, and I was obsessed with making money to buy you a house…”
His voice broke. He breathed, steadied.
“I spoke with my senpai today—Gojo-san. He’s still in the business, you know—exorcising curses like it’s a job. The pay’s decent, though for the risk level it’s basically a slap in the face, but…”
“Tell me something,” I said. He looked up. “What makes you want to go back there? Is it… me?”
“I thought…” He tightened his hands around mine, like he needed to hold on. “I thought I had no purpose in this world. After my friend died I was furious, so I took a safe job that paid well. But, you know…”
“Being a stockbroker sucks, doesn’t it?”
“It does,” he said with a tense little laugh. “It’s a damn drag. I don’t feel happy, or fulfilled, or whatever people are supposed to feel in order to function. But since I met you, it’s like the colors came back, Katsumi-san. Pathetic or ridiculous as it sounds—your notes, your lunch boxes, the cloth squares on my wall, all those little memories, the paper flowers, the marbles, the laughter, the bed… I think you gave me the whole world back. And on your birthday I realized I’ve simply been in denial for seven years. I ran from that place because I was afraid I’d end up like Yū—another cog in a system that sacrifices pawns to keep moving—but…”
“The world outside that college is exactly the same,” I whispered, understanding. “And at least if you’re there, you can do your part to protect people.”
“And, above all, to protect you.” He gave my hands one last squeeze, then stood, took a step toward me, and knelt. He pulled a small box from his pocket and set it in my hands. “Marry me, Katsumi.”
It was an engagement ring—simple and elegant, like him.
I accepted it—just as I accepted his doubts, his nature, his true work as a sorcerer, and the careful way he loved me.
Chapter Text
Nanami talked about celebrating our engagement in March and getting married in November. Things happened so fast that even when we were only weeks from getting engaged, I still couldn’t believe it.
At first, Dad hit the roof. Traditional as he was, he liked having me at home. After all, in another era they would’ve married me off long before I came of age. But Dad and Ichiro had always been overprotective, so when we announced the engagement date, both of them complained until my ears rang.
Mom and my friends were thrilled. They started scouting the best places to buy their dresses and kimonos and wanted a big, crowded party.
By late January I noticed Nanami was wearing the blue shirt I’d given him for Christmas. After months of seeing him in white shirts, the blue was a breath of fresh air.
“You look great,” I told him. The khaki suit matched the shirt perfectly and fit his body so well. “But that tie doesn’t match at all.”
He was still wearing that boring polka-dot tie. Even though I was supposed to be hunting paper fans for the engagement ceremony, I spent my time combing shops and department stores for ties.
Never underestimate how hard it is to find the simplest part of a man’s outfit. Cufflinks, a tie, a tie clip—those can be the toughest to buy, especially as gifts. It’s as tricky as picking the perfect necklace or earrings to give a woman.
I bought seven ties in total. But when I tried them on him one by one, I didn’t like any of them. Nanami saw me getting frustrated and argued there was no need for him to wear a tie. In fact, it wasn’t even required at his new job.
“More importantly—could you come with me to the school in the next few days? One of my superiors wants to examine you. It’ll be the only time I ask you to go, and I’ll understand if you don’t want to show up.”
I was a little curious, to be honest, so I forgot about the tie and agreed to be examined.
Nanami didn’t take me in his own car; instead, a Window (as he called him) picked us up in central Shibuya after I finished my bakery shift. The man looked like the type who often had stomach trouble—pretty nervous, wiping sweat from his forehead every few seconds.
“This is Kiyotaka Ijichi-kun, one of my kouhai from school,” Nanami introduced. “Say hello, Ijichi-kun—this is Sato Katsumi, my girlfriend.”
“Hic!” Kiyotaka seemed to choke on his own spit, which I found a little silly and kind of cute. “S-sorry, I just never thought Nanami-san would have a girlfriend.”
Nanami’s expression twitched, like he wanted to yell at him. Kiyotaka noticed and hurried into the car. I stifled a laugh as Nanami and I slid into the back seat.
The ride was long, but Nanami and I spent it talking about dinner plans and other bits of our private life. Kiyotaka seemed reliable; honestly he looked more like a discreet assistant than an exorcist—but then again, I’d only met one.
We arrived at the school at dusk. There were a bunch of old-style buildings, small shrines, torii gates, and loads of greenery. I think I even caught a glimpse of a huge forest nearby.
“The person who’s going to examine you is Shoko Ieiri-san. She has a medical degree and she’s kind, so you shouldn’t worry,” Nanami told me.
His neutral tone didn’t prepare me for the fact that Shoko Ieiri was a woman—and a very beautiful one at that. She was taller than me, had longer hair, curvier proportions, and a lovely face.
“Oh, the Shibuya girl!” she exclaimed when she saw me. “So? Was the guy an idiot, or did he notice?”
I recognized her. This time she wasn’t wearing makeup, her hair was down, and she had on work-friendly clothes and a doctor’s coat, so it would never have occurred to me to connect her with the stunning girl I’d met at Hikarie on my first date.
I smiled reflexively at the sight of her.
“We’re dating now,” I clarified, tipping my head slightly toward Nanami.
She smiled back.
“Well, you’ll have to come with me, Katsumi,” she said, hooking her arm through mine as if we’d been friends forever. “You two… go take a walk or something,” she shooed them with a flick of her hand.
Nanami clicked his tongue, annoyed. It was the first time I’d seen that expression on him, so I watched him for a moment as he left, Kiyotaka trailing behind.
“Never thought Nanami-kun could be so clingy. Doesn’t suit him,” Shoko remarked offhandedly. “So, how did you two meet?”
I told Shoko everything from the beginning. While I talked, I couldn’t stop admiring the grounds. The place looked pretty empty, and although we occasionally passed people wearing some kind of uniform, that didn’t seem to be the norm.
“Nanami-kun told me he’s exorcised at least eighteen curses from your body since he met you, mid-March last year. That’s a little over ten months—which isn’t normal. You know that, right?”
“Yes. I didn’t know anything about it, but the last one nearly killed me, so Nanami had to explain what was going on. I think my mother and my older brother know about that last curse, too; they basically think he’s some kind of ghost-buster, ha ha.”
Shoko laughed heartily, amused.
“It’s good that your family accepts him despite his… uniqueness. He’s always been apathetic and standoffish. A bit severe, if you ask me.”
“It’s true—at first I thought he was pretty surly, like an old cat.”
Shoko laughed again.
“But it seems he really loves you, you know? He came back after seven years of cutting off all contact with us. He even had to buy a mountain of sweets for that idiot Satoru to get him to speak to the big shots on his behalf and let him return. He’s swamped these days because there won’t be new students until next year, so little Takuma and Ijichi have been assisting Nanami on multiple missions—including some that had been unresolved for months or even years, since that idiot Satoru only accepts the top-level ones… Sorry, I’m rambling. I rarely have a girl to talk to.”
I understood. If I suddenly lost my own friends, I’d be at a loss, so I tried to keep her talking and join in as much as I could.
“What’s it like being a doctor?” I asked. “I was planning to start last year, but…”
“You fell in love, didn’t you?” Shoko nodded, answering her own question. “Happens to us women all the time—it’s nothing to regret. Sometimes we find something more valuable than a career, and that’s nothing to be ashamed of. Besides, I couldn’t give you an accurate opinion anyway.” She shrugged. “I don’t even work at a hospital or see the general public. I just needed the fundamentals to do my job.”
The buildings could’ve been in old Kyoto; I felt more like I was in a Shinto shrine than a school in the middle of Tokyo. After a while, we reached an office.
Shoko flipped on the lights. In front of us were three tables holding three cages, each larger than the last. A fourth cage sat directly on the floor.
I felt an intensely malevolent presence coming from the largest cage, but I calmed myself. I was with Shoko, someone Nanami seemed to trust. Surely nothing would go wrong.
“Come here, Katsumi,” she called. “Listen, here’s what we’re going to do next: I’ll draw blood samples at different moments during the experiment. You don’t have to be nervous.”
“And what’s the experiment about?”
“See the cages?”
“You’re not planning to put me in them, are you? Not even a baby would fit in the smallest one…”
Shoko laughed again.
“My days would be so much fun if you were my coworker, Katsumi… Hold on a sec.” She dialed a number and waited. “Akari-chan? Bring the idiots; it’s time to run the experiment.” She hung up and turned back to me. “All you have to do is go a little closer to the cages when we tell you.”
Go closer to the cages? Wasn’t I already close enough?
As a thousand questions popped into my head, a boy and a very pretty school-uniformed girl joined us. Kiyotaka came in behind them. The three of them froze in the doorway.
“What is all this, Shoko-san?” Kiyotaka asked, looking paler by the second. His eyes were fixed on the big cage.
I looked again at the same cage, but I didn’t see anything.
“There’s something in there, isn’t there?” I asked.
“Move it, Ijichi!” someone kicked Kiyotaka’s shin from outside and then sauntered in like he owned the place. He was pale as an albino and wore a blindfold over his eyes, though I wasn’t sure he could see at all. “Hey there, sis-in-law! You’re pretty—though not my type.”
“And there’s no reason she should be, Gojo-san,” Nanami reproached as he came in behind him. “Don’t worry, I’m here.”
My body, which had been strung tight, relaxed the moment I saw him.
“Come here, Katsumi,” Shoko called.
She had a rack with nine labeled, empty vials. She sat me down while the others took their positions: the two students and Kiyotaka in the back; Nanami by the smallest cage; Gojo by the largest, leaning as if he were on a stroll. Shoko prepped the crook of my arm and drew the first sample.
“Draw 1: Before,” the label read. I felt a twinge of nerves again, but seeing Nanami’s face calmed me.
“Now we’ll leave the next part up to you, Katsumi,” she said, stowing the first tube. “We have a pair of non-prescription glasses. With them, you’ll be able to see what’s inside the cages. Don’t worry—everyone here can protect you from what’s in there. Well, except the kids and Ijichi; they’re just here to observe.”
The students protested, but they didn’t budge an inch. All of them stood nearly behind Nanami, as far from the big cage as possible.
I looked at each cage again, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t see anything.
“Let me have those glasses, Shoko-san,” I said.
Shoko, Gojo, and the girl perked up, but Nanami seemed nervous—no, he looked afraid.
“If something goes wrong, you might start seeing them anywhere…” he warned.
I paused, the glasses inches from my face. Then I said, “These things are what give you all so much trouble, right? Let’s try it, Nanami.”
He sighed, yielding. I steeled myself, drew a breath into my lungs, and slipped the glasses on. All four cages held creatures, screeching like mad and trying every which way to escape. The only one that stayed more or less still was the smallest.
The second cage held a grotesque creature about the size of a dog, with a fish’s head and humanoid limbs. It looked everywhere, confused, letting out a long, “Eeeerk! Eeeeeerk!”
In the third cage, a gigantic eyeball the size of a head darted frantically about, making the optic nerve that held it twist in a grotesque way.
In the last cage was a pale, humanoid creature with some kind of appendages—or tentacles, or whatever—sprouting from its torso. The moment it realized I was looking at it, the creature—eyeless but with a huge mouth—shrieked at me, rattling the cage, though the cage itself didn’t so much as budge.
I took two steps back, terrified.
“Take the glasses off; you don’t have to see them for the exam,” Nanami said, stepping between the cages as if they were empty. He filled my field of vision and took my face in his hands. “I told you you don’t have to do this, Katsumi-san. We can go home and everything will be fine.”
“No one else seems scared—not even of that thing,” I pointed at the largest creature, which looked ready to kill us all.
“That’s because we’re used to Curses, Katsumi. We know it can be a bit shocking for some people,” Shoko soothed me. “But we need to examine you to find out what’s special about you.”
I inhaled and met Nanami’s eyes.
“I’m okay. I can do it,” I assured him.
He clenched his jaw, like he didn’t agree, but nodded again. I was beginning to think he could be quite overprotective.
Nanami took his place behind the first table, and I focused on the small creature, trying to ignore the others.
“See the keys in front of the cages? You can use them to open the locks,” Shoko instructed. “All you have to do is… touch the creatures. If possible, let them possess you.”
“Possess me?” I squeaked. I glanced at Nanami in concern, then tried to steady myself. “What kind of creatures were the ones that possessed me last year?”
“Like this one,” Nanami said, resting his hand on the smallest cage. “And the one that nearly killed you was like that,” he pointed to the next cage over, “only it was already pretty fat by the time I exorcised it.”
I breathed a little easier and nodded.
“I didn’t even notice most of the time, so I guess it’s okay if this thing climbs onto my shoulders.”
I took the key to the small cage and stepped up to open it. The instant I touched the padlock, the misshapen creature latched onto my hand and I yelped, dropping the key.
“Katsumi-san…”
“It’s fine, it just startled me,” I smiled at Nanami, though my voice wouldn’t cooperate with the calm I wanted to project.
I tried again and let the creature touch me as I opened the cage. Once it was open, it clung to my hand, climbed up my arm, reached my shoulders, and hugged me. I barely felt its weight or smell, but I was disgusted. It felt like letting a sewer rat scurry across my arms.
“Is it getting bigger?” the girl asked, surprised. “Is that possible?”
“It shouldn’t be, but if Curses get enough Cursed Energy, they can evolve,” Nanami explained.
“Come here, Katsumi, quick,” Shoko called.
She prepped my arm and drew the second sample. “Draw 2: Fly-Head,” the label read.
Then, as if it were nothing, Shoko flicked her hand and the creature dropped dead to the floor. She gathered the remains with gloves and sealed them in a bag before taking a third sample. “Draw 3: Midpoint.”
“How do you feel?”
“I thought it would be worse. Honestly, it just grossed me out.”
“Good. We’ll do the same with all of them, okay? We’re monitoring every step, so don’t be alarmed if something happens.”
I nodded.
Next up was the fish-head. The moment I touched the lock on its cage, the Curse raked my hand hard enough to tear the skin and draw blood. That seemed to rile up the other two Curses, because they started thrashing in their cages.
The fish-head Curse burst out and flicked a forked tongue, licking the blood from my hand. It immediately ballooned from dog-size to lion-size. I stumbled back, but the Curse barreled into me, climbed on top of me, and wrapped its long, thin fingers around my neck.
“Katsumi!” I heard Nanami shout my name, but I was a little busy trying to get the giant fish off me.
Notes:
Hello! Lidia here. I'm back with some translated chapters after a long time. All of the chapters I'll be posting from now on have been partially translated with the help of ChatGPT and DeepL.
Chapter 10: An experiment
Chapter Text
I still had the cage key in my hand, so I didn’t even think before driving it straight into the Curse’s round eye, piercing it. A second later, Nanami pounced on the Curse and cleanly severed its limbs with a bandage-wrapped hatchet. This Curse dropped too, the key still lodged in its eye.
I gulped air any way I could, prying the fingers off my crushed throat. Then I ran into Nanami’s arms and clung to him, hiding my face, because I knew I’d started to cry. His heart was hammering.
Shoko, the boy, and Gojo rushed over to examine the Curse. Kiyotaka hung back, shielding the girl.
“You all saw it too, right? The moment it tasted Katsumi’s blood… this thing skipped months of evolution. And why on earth isn’t it vanishing?” Shoko muttered, scribbling frantically. “I missed the fourth draw, but we can do the fifth and keep going…”
“No more.” Nanami sounded furious. He was holding me while I still shook from the shock. “Heal her so we can go, Ieiri-san.”
“We can’t let you take her right now, Nanami,” Gojo said, stepping between us and the door. “It’s not that I have any special interest in her—she can’t even see Curses without help. But you’re going to walk her out of here without knowing what’s going on? Some rogue sorcerers could hear about her and snatch her.”
“No one has known about her for twenty-four years,” Nanami shot back, annoyed.
“No, no—but even lower-grade curses have ways of passing messages. ‘Oh hey, guess what! There’s this girl who can make us evolve! Don’t you want a taste of her blood?’ Worst-case scenario, and you’re not around to protect her. Let the experiment finish so Shoko can give us a diagnosis.”
I wiped my tears. I was scared, but I didn’t want to go through something like that again. If I had to, I’d let myself be possessed two more times so Shoko could figure out what was happening to me—though we were all starting to have an idea.
“Nanami…”
“For hell’s sake, Katsumi! You don’t have to be so cooperative!” he barked, furious. Seeing me vulnerable in his arms, he calmed himself. “I’m sorry. I… I won’t shout at you again. I promise.”
Nanami set me in a chair. Shoko drew my blood, then infused me with an energy that felt wonderful. Through the glasses it showed up white, like a faint glow. Strength flowed back into me and my wounds closed.
I felt ready for the third possession—but it was even worse than the second. The giant eyeball wrapped its black body around me like a snake and began to expand at an alarming rate. It felt like living tar tightening around me.
“Keep your mouth shut! On three, hold your breath!” Shoko ordered, wrestling with the Curse to get at my arm. “One! Two—! Three! Damn it! I can’t pull her blood!”
I felt someone clamp down hard above my wrist as I fought not to asphyxiate. It was like a living sack trying to strangle me. A sharp sting at my wrist kept me conscious.
Seconds later, someone lopped off the Curse’s eye-head and the tar stopped crushing me. This time Nanami and the students hurried to hack the rest of its body apart to free me.
“Good heavens,” I managed once I could speak again.
Shoko drew more blood—no asking this time.
We all looked at the last Curse, already near frenzy in its cage, bawling. We knew if we let it out, it would kill me. Even Gojo, playful and carefree at first, studied it seriously.
“Given the trend, that thing could jump to Grade 1—or even Special Grade,” he said. “Only Nanami, Shoko, and I would walk away.”
“So what do we do? Stop the experiment?” Kiyotaka asked.
“I don’t want to die today,” I said, panicking. “Nanami and I are getting married in November.”
“Oooh, congrats!” Gojo beamed. Of everyone present, he looked the cheeriest—and the most eccentric.
“Let’s do something simpler,” Shoko said, scanning her notes. “We’ll skip the possession. Come to think of it, I don’t even know if a Curse that strong could possess a human without killing them. We’ll feed it a little of your blood, Katsumi. Satoru and Nanami need to be up front, keeping it contained.”
I agreed almost immediately. I didn’t want another thing wrapped around my body or my neck.
We moved out into a wide courtyard. Kiyotaka took position in front of me and the two students, while Shoko wrote nonstop on her clipboard. Gojo really did handle Curses like everyone said—he had it by the neck as it thrashed, trying to snag him with the tentacles on its torso.
Nanami stood beside him. He went to Shoko, took the vial that had been left empty for the fourth draw—now filled with my fresh blood—and approached the Curse. He uncapped it.
By instinct, the Curse ignored Gojo entirely and fixated on the smell of my blood. Nanami stepped in, flicked the open vial into its mouth, and he and Gojo leapt back a couple of meters, staying close enough to keep it in hand.
“It’s excited! I’ve seen few curses get this worked up!” Shoko called. “It’s still Grade 2, right?!”
“It’s evolving! Don’t come closer!” Gojo warned.
As soon as he said it, the Curse began convulsing and twisting. To me it looked like it was suffering, but the others disagreed.
“Ugh, gross,” the girl muttered. “It’s enjoying the blood.”
Seconds later, right before our eyes, the Curse swelled from human-sized to a boiling mass riddled with oozing growths, its mass quintupling. It grew and grew until it was as tall as a tree, and from its bowels came a resounding, “KATSUMIII!”
“Don’t call her by name, you son of a—!” Nanami roared. He was already on edge; at this point anything would have set him off.
“GIVE ME MORE! GIVE ME MORE!” the Curse screamed, out of control.
Before our eyes, it changed again. The disgusting, suppurating mass compacted like a deflating balloon and started taking on the shape of a three-meter-tall man. We all trembled and traded panicked looks from behind Kiyotaka’s back.
“GIVE ME MORE! GIVE ME MORE, KATSUMI! GIVE ME MO—!”
Gojo and Nanami split it in two right then. The half-formed body hit the ground on either side of them, leaving a revolting smear of black blood.
“Satoru?” Shoko asked, staring, stunned, at the remains.
“As you saw,” Nanami answered for him. “You all felt it, didn’t you?”
“It jumped two whole grades on just a little blood,” Gojo said. “It was turning into a Special Grade. Congrats, sis-in-law: your blood and Cursed Energy are basically catalysts for them.”
Shoko pushed her hair back, astonished. The students and Kiyotaka let out a breath when Gojo and Nanami turned their backs on the Curse, and my legs gave way.
“HEY! What the hell are you doing bringing a Special Grade Curse into the courtyard?!” bellowed a big, dark-skinned man.
Nanami quickly hid me behind him and scooped me up without turning toward the newcomer.
“Explain everything to the principal, Ijichi,” Gojo said, clapping Kiyotaka on the shoulder.
A second later, Gojo, one half of the Curse, Shoko, and the students were gone—vanished from sight. Kiyotaka was left in the middle of the chaos, trembling under the big man’s shouting.
“You’d better tell me everything, Ijichi!”
“What’s going on, Nanami? Is Kiyotaka-san going to be okay?” I asked.
“No idea,” he admitted, jogging down the path with me in his arms. “But the moment I walked into the room and didn’t see Principal Yaga, I knew neither Gojo nor Shoko had asked permission to run the experiment… Don’t worry, the principal dotes on both of them. And on Ijichi-kun, though he denies it. They’ll let us know when they have the results.”
Despite all the fear, exhaustion, and rushing around, that pulled a laugh from deep in my chest. They all seemed so spontaneous and close in a way different from my friends and me. I guess facing death together bonds people in a different way.
Chapter 11: Nanami's office
Chapter Text
At my request—and at the request of everyone who’d been there that day—Nanami gave me everyone’s numbers. Shoko and the girl, Akari Nitta, texted me right away. Takuma Ino and Kiyotaka sent a quick hello and that was it. Gojo spammed my inbox, so Nanami blocked him for me and told me not to worry if he got offended.
A week later, Nanami invited me to his new “office.” Many jujutsu sorcerers keep their own spaces to hide their movements from the public eye, and Nanami was no exception.
The building was in central Tokyo, very well located. Brick, a little weathered. The sign outside said “Tokyo Shuei Prep School,” but the main entrance was shuttered, so you had to go in through the alley. Inside it was eerie and cavernous, full of old, dusty supplies that once belonged to real students.
Two places were in decent shape: a classroom and a large office. The classroom had double desks and a green chalkboard. The office, on the top floor, had a freshly placed desk, two armchairs, a small table, and a display cabinet in back that was still empty.
The building felt forlorn and gloomy, maybe because it had been abandoned so long.
“I can heat some water for tea while Ieiri-san comes,” Nanami said as I looked around.
“How about we pretty it up a little?” I asked.
“Nothing too personal—and definitely nothing that could point back to you,” he clarified. “Petty thieves or squatters don’t worry me, but if someone dangerous broke in and realized you exist… I’d rather keep personal things to a minimum.”
“Okay… but at least a couple posters and… a few books for when you get bored. That’d be fine, right?”
Nanami nodded, agreeing with me. He gave me that faint smile he always did.
When the water boiled, Nanami turned off the little hot plate in the office and sat beside me. He started to prepare the tea, but something distracted him. He looked straight at me, relaxed.
“Are you seducing me, Katsumi-san?” he asked.
“What are you talking about?”
I was wearing a pretty summer dress that day. The straps were wide and the neckline modest, but the fabric was so light it had ridden up without my noticing when I sat down.
Nanami drew me onto his lap, straddling him, and kissed me, his hands stroking my thighs. I hadn’t intended to seduce him, but since we were there—why waste the chance?
One hand slipped beneath my underwear while the other pushed my dress straps—and my bra straps—down to bare my breasts. My nipples sprang into view, still soft. They stiffened at the barest touch of his tongue and fingers. I moaned, already flushed, and Nanami’s fingers explored between my cheeks while he focused on tasting me.
That’s when the door flew open, and I had déjà vu.
“We’re here, Nanami!” Gojo announced.
He froze in the doorway at the same moment I shoved Nanami’s face away, squeaked, and covered my chest, scrambling to set my clothes straight.
“That idiot…” Nanami sighed.
“Move, Satoru! And for heaven’s sake, learn to knock, moron. You have no idea what you could be… walking… in… on…” Shoko also froze a beat, but recovered faster, so I managed to sit beside Nanami in time. “I brought the results,” she said, opting for clinical efficiency so Gojo’s presence wouldn’t embarrass us any further.
“Excuse me. Gojo-san. Nanami-san, Sato-san, good afternoon,” Kiyotaka greeted. He pretended not to notice anything. “Oh! Looks like you were about to make tea. Shall I help?”
“How long do you plan on spacing out, Gojo Satoru?” Shoko scolded.
“I’d never seen a woman’s breasts,” he confessed.
Kiyotaka almost spilled the teapot all over Shoko’s papers. I hid my face in my hands and felt Nanami’s mounting fury beside me. If he had even a shred of respect left for the supposed Strongest Sorcerer, I think it died that day.
After a while, things calmed down. Gojo plopped into Nanami’s swivel chair and put as much distance between us as the room allowed so he couldn’t see me. Maybe out of consideration—or maybe he was still awkward.
Kiyotaka served everyone a lovely tea, and then Shoko handed out copies of the results and began explaining what she’d found.
“Ino-kun and Akari-chan were tasked with investigating your family background, Katsumi,” she said. She sat with legs crossed, relaxed, as if this were an everyday thing. “We needed to verify a few things, given that Yaga-sensei nearly took our heads off for smuggling four Curses into the school illegally.”
“Take your heads off?” I squeaked.
“Just an expression,” Nanami dismissed. “I told you the principal is far too indulgent with them.”
“He really is,” Kiyotaka agreed.
“Anyway,” Shoko continued. “The investigation showed that your Kyoto-side lineage carries a particularly exquisite blood, as far as Curses are concerned. Think of it like blood oxygen levels: those have to be ideal for the body to function, because oxygen feeds our cells. Breathing deeply or doing aerobic exercise helps bring in more oxygen, which translates into more energy. Well, it’s as if you had that ‘extra oxygenation’ congenitally. Your blood is full of especially potent Cursed Energy that makes Curses evolve by leaps and bounds. I also examined the Curses’ corpses. It was tricky—they usually decompose quickly after being defeated. Unlike the ones Nanami exorcised, which I think vanished almost immediately, these lingered a bit longer and seemed to share DNA with you. It’s as if they were…”
“Your little babies,” Gojo suggested. The comparison made me nauseous.
“In a manner of speaking,” Shoko conceded, though she clearly hated agreeing with him. “More concretely: you may be a kind of walking ‘Cursed Vessel.’ It may be that some of those Curses didn’t possess you, Katsumi—they were born from you. Which would explain why Nanami exorcised so many.”
I clapped a hand over my mouth, stomach churning. “I think I’m going to throw up…”
Gojo stepped aside as I bolted for the bathrooms. I felt a bit better standing there gripping the sink, focusing on my breathing.
My life had flipped since my birthday. From heavy batches of dough and tomorrow’s lunchboxes, my new worry was that a bunch of disgusting things were now being born from me—and Nanami and his colleagues were hunting them down.
When I felt steady, I lifted my head to check my face. A creature with hair jutting in every direction and broad teeth grinned back at me.
“Ka…tsu…mi…” it breathed in my ear.
“Na… Nanami!” I cried, terrified. I stumbled into a door and hit my head. A thin ribbon of blood ran from my right temple, and I felt the Curse’s mouth lapping it up. “No! NO!”
I grabbed the Curse with both hands—surprised at my own bravery—and hurled it. It smacked Gojo square in the face. A split-second later, Nanami’s unwrapped axe sang through the air and pinned the Curse to the metal door.
Nanami sidestepped a dazed Gojo and ran to me, scanning for any other sign of danger. I clung to him crying—something I seemed to be doing a lot lately.
He drew me into his lap and shielded me, not caring about anyone or anything else. He covered my eyes with his hand and kissed my forehead, ready to do whatever it took to calm me.
“It can’t be,” Shoko said, breathless. “It was the most likely theory, but it still sounded absurd… Katsumi, tell me—I need to know—does anything hurt?”
“No,” I whispered, not sure anyone could hear through Nanami’s hand over my eyes. “What’s happening?”
“You don’t want to know,” Nanami said flatly. “What are you waiting for?”
I suddenly felt the faint absence of a weight over my stomach. I knew it then: another Curse—right behind the first—had appeared.
I burst into tears again, terrified by what was happening. Not even Nanami’s presence could soothe me at that point, so Shoko administered a sedative. The last thing I knew, I was in the bathroom of an abandoned school, with four sorcerers wondering how on earth I’d created two Curses right under their noses.
Chapter 12: The Separation
Chapter Text
“Tell me the truth, sweetheart—did you two have a fight?” Mom asked at dinner, a month later.
“He’s just really busy, Mom. Remember that stretch last year before the Kyoto trip? It’s… similar,” I explained.
My parents weren’t convinced. They still thought Nanami was a stockbroker, and we kept that lie to the end. After all, “sorcerer” didn’t sound especially “respectable and well-paid.”
But the truth was, we hadn’t actually fought. After grilling Nanami with a thorough round of questions, Shoko realized that contact with them was what was affecting me. It sent the concentration of Cursed Energy in my body—and especially in my blood—spiking to alarming levels. So much energy overflowed that it was only natural for Curses to form from the smallest trigger.
Shoko recommended immediate distance. We all assumed things would spiral out of control and Curses would torment me—but the opposite happened. As soon as I kept away from Nanami, it was as if nothing had happened. No Curses, no Cursed Energy, no walking demon hatchery.
I knew the sorcerers were watching me from afar. Sometimes it was just Takuma and Nitta “out for a stroll.” Sometimes even Shoko or Gojo would swing by the neighborhood around the bakery. But no one approached; no one waved back. Not even Kiyotaka, whom I ran into more than once in Shinjuku traffic.
The worst part was losing Nanami’s trail entirely. He left the little rental, blocked my number—at my insistence, to follow Shoko’s orders—and sealed up the Shuei Prep building tight so I couldn’t get in. And I didn’t even know the school’s exact location.
By late February, I was starting to panic. Was everything we’d done and shared going to amount to nothing? Just like that?
It seemed like the best option. I stopped suffering from Curses, and seeing or even sensing them grew rarer and rarer. That’s normal for a human—an entire life with no contact with the thing that terrifies us.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about Nanami, about him walking into the bakery at any moment. To my surprise, Kento Nanami is the most resolute, steadfast person I’ve ever met. He didn’t waver once, didn’t look back, didn’t say my name—almost as if I’d never existed. If he had, he would’ve disobeyed Shoko to come see me and fix things together.
I wasn’t as pragmatic as he was. I checked my phone’s location history, and on the first Sunday in March I set out for my only lead on all of them: the Jujutsu school.
There were plenty of Curses in the area, but that pseudo-lesson on their grades (while I let them possess me) paid off. They’d stopped being dangerous creatures in my mind and turned into background set dressing.
In fact, since I’d gone so long without contact with sorcerers, even higher-grade Curses weren’t interested in me. They passed right in front of me and regarded me as an ordinary human. And I did everything I could not to let on that I could see them.
I would’ve actually reached the school if a man hadn’t planted himself in my path on a lonely lane, arms crossed as I stumbled and landed flat on my butt. A normal human has no reason to fear minor Curses—but an obviously strong man is the worst enemy for a woman walking alone.
“I’m Masamichi Yaga, the guardian of this place. You can’t go any farther. State your purpose.”
The principal who indulged Gojo and Shoko. I relaxed a little. At least I knew who to haunt if something happened to me and I turned into a vengeful spirit.
“Where is he?” I asked, dusting off my clothes.
“That’s a new record for Satoru’s fans…”
“I couldn’t care less about Gojo Satoru!” I snapped. “I want to see Nanami.”
The principal’s eyebrows shot up. “In a little over twenty-five years of his life, that’s the first time a girl hasn’t been looking for him. Are you Katsumi Sato?” I nodded. “Sorry, kid. It’s Sunday. Do you think Nanami works on Sundays?”
“I need to talk to him.”
“I don’t think so.” I was about to argue, but the man stepped in close, and for a second I was genuinely afraid—until a familiar weight lifted from my shoulders. “See how you get possessed the moment you approach a sorcerer? Stop prowling around here and go back to your life. And take this.” Yaga pulled a wooden box from behind him and placed it in my hands. “Don’t think he handed this over willingly. It took four sorcerers to hold him down so this box would make it to me. I tried not to read anything—don’t worry.”
I opened the box. Inside, perfectly arranged, were the fabrics, the notes, a few paper flowers he’d never given me, the seven ties I’d bought him, and the photo we’d taken at Christmas.
I was devastated, but I knew Nanami was doing all this for my sake, so I tried to understand. Underneath, I was worried and heartsick. Still, a surge of anger rose in my mouth, and I snapped at the man:
“You didn’t even do your job right. The most important thing is missing, and I won’t accept this back unless it’s from his own hand. Tell him that as far as I’m concerned, I’m still planning our engagement party this month—with or without him.”
“How would you throw an engagement party without the groom?” Yaga sputtered. “No—that’s not the point. Sato-san!”
He called after me, but I was already stomping off down the path.
I put all the marbles, notes, paper flowers, and photos back in the same box and pushed it under my bed. At first Ichiro and Takeshi joked at my expense, but they stopped when I burst into tears.
In May, with sakura season fading, I decided to buy an ice cream and stroll through the park where I’d met Nanami. Of course I thought he might be there, waiting on our bench—but that was just wishful thinking.
At least, that’s what I thought—until I really did see someone in black with light hair sitting there. My ice cream fell out of my hand as I ran to check who it was.
But the closer I got, the clearer it was that it wasn’t him. He was sprawled back, ankle on opposite knee, hands in his pockets. His hair was white, not blond, and a white blindfold covered his eyes.
Satoru Gojo.
My heart sank; it felt like my soul hit the ground.
“Turns out lovers know each other very well,” he said, turning his face toward me. Deep down I still wondered how he could see. “Nanami told me about this spot. Said he used to rest here before heading home, but he stopped for fear of running into you.” He explained. It had nothing to do with me anymore, so I turned to leave. “Don’t you want to hear what I came to say?”
I wanted to be proud and just walk away—but I couldn’t. I sat on the bench and looked at where his eyes should have been.
“Well, Shoko found something interesting about your condition a few months ago,” he said. “If you infuse your blood with Reverse Cursed Technique, it becomes poison to Curses. Neither she nor I—nor even Nanami, the consummate rule-follower—wanted to report this to the higher-ups. Not even Yaga knows.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“It’s excellent. If that leaked, you’d be the perfect lab rat for fighting Curses, locked away in some God-forsaken place. Just think—your blood with Cursed Energy makes Curses evolve out of control, but a single drop imbued with Positive Energy is perfect for annihilating them…”
I didn’t grasp the magnitude of what he was saying. For starters, I didn’t even know what Reverse Cursed Technique really was—and Gojo was one of those people who assume you already know everything about the topic at hand. I didn’t ask the basics; I just wanted him to finish and tell me why he was here that day.
“What I mean is…” (In my head I screamed, Finally!) “…if we apply Reverse Cursed Technique to you, not just your blood, then maybe—just maybe—we could make Curses stop noticing you. But only for a brief time. Blood stayed imbued for a few days before the effect dissipated. Ideally, you’d learn the technique yourself, but only a few of us have that privilege—and only after years of training. Not even Nanami can do it.”
“So then…?”
“Shoko tested your blood on humans,” he said, just like that. “Wild, right? She injected sorcerers—and non-sorcerers. When the blood was infused with Positive Energy, all of us got sick to varying degrees; the blood with Cursed Energy boosted our own energy. Among non-sorcerers, something similar happened—the imbued blood put some in the hospital, while your natural blood let them see Curses. The interesting part was a woman we didn’t know was pregnant—we gave her imbued blood…”
“Tell me nothing happened to the baby.”
“Nah, don’t worry. Both she and the baby developed absolute immunity to both Positive and Cursed Energy,” he said. “They’re perfectly fine, it’s just… if they turned evil, even I’d have trouble taking them down. But that’s not the point. The point is: if you got pregnant and we applied Reverse Cursed Technique to you, the same thing could happen. You could become immune, and Curses would leave you alone. It’s highly likely. Nanami wouldn’t have to worry about some monstrous thing stalking you again.”
I went quiet for a moment. Then I stood up, furious.
“Nanami and I were going to get married. Having a baby isn’t the issue here. Why are you telling me this?”
Gojo stayed where he was, silent. Then he spoke.
“As I said, it’s impossible for Nanami to perform the technique. It needs to be done—preferably at conception—to take effect immediately. Only Shoko and I know what’s going on. And as far as I know, a woman can’t impregnate another.”
“You’re insane, you know that?” My voice cracked. “I’d rather never see him again than try to be with him using your method.”
“Then stop waiting for him and take off that ring. Go live your life somewhere else. He’s already forgotten you. He sent me on his behalf so you two wouldn’t have to talk.”
I covered my face; I’d started crying.
“He hasn’t forgotten me,” I said between sobs.
“How can you be so sure?”
“He hasn’t returned the last note I gave him.”
That was the last conversation Gojo and I ever had.
But it was only May 2015—and all I wanted was to see Nanami again.
Chapter 13: A Man's View
Notes:
This is from Nanami's perspective
Chapter Text
I think what I miss most about her is the color in her cheeks when she looks at me. I feel like a failure, a mediocre man, yet to her I seem to be some kind of ideal.
She’s small and soft. I’ve carried her more times than I can count. Her candid laugh would fill my ears as I hauled her from place to place, coaxing her to keep talking about whatever we were talking about. With her, the words never stopped.
The first month after I stopped seeing her was the worst. Not even in my teens did I have such a ravenous sex drive. The hormones had never bothered me so much—until I stopped smelling her perfume.
I had to move. It was impossible to keep my sanity in a place with so many traces of her. I packed away her clothes, her pajamas, her slippers, all her gifts, and the photo of the two of us smiling in Kyoto—just a day after I saved her from being consumed by a Curse.
But I couldn’t put her individual portrait away with the rest. She’d complained herself hoarse about the dark circles under her eyes, the gauntness, how strange she looked—but to me she was the most perfect woman on Earth. I kissed the glass over her face and slipped the little print out of its frame.
I meant to write the date on the back, but she’d beaten me to it. The funny thing is I always lower my guard with her, so I hadn’t even noticed when she wrote behind the photo: “Have a lovely life with me, darling. Yours, Katsumi. 12/24/14.”
A deep pain bloomed in my chest, but I ignored it. I tucked the photo carefully into my wallet—knowing it would get scuffed if I wasn’t careful—and planned to get it laminated as soon as I could.
When I moved into the new place, I was surprised by how bad I felt. It was a good house—spacious, bright, comfortable, perfect to live in—yet all I could think was how happy she’d be to live somewhere so warm.
She liked ponds with goldfish, so I had one built in the yard.
She liked café au lait with two sugar cubes, so I started drinking it that way, even though it was much too sweet for me.
She liked animal print, so I found the most horrendous tie I could, just because the pattern reminded me of her.
She liked me in sky-blue shirts, so all my shirts became sky blue.
My indispensable helper, Takuma-kun, often said he enjoyed assisting on missions with me. According to him, my instructions were easy to follow and he always felt at ease.
I was only trying to be the adult I wish I’d had on my own missions before graduation. If only Yuu-kun and I had had an adult like that, maybe I wouldn’t have sprinted out of the school the moment I graduated. At least, that’s what I tell myself. Otherwise I might have ended up like Geto-san who, wherever he is, is surely still up to no good.
But I’m not capable of writing off all of humanity. One person’s gratitude, trust, safety, and genuine love were enough to bring me back to the school. So I just wanted to be a dependable adult for Takuma-kun—so that Yuu-kun wouldn’t turn in his grave.
“Hey, Nanami-san,” he asked me once. “That watch you always wear—is it special?”
He went from calling me “Kento-sensei” to “Nanami-senpai” in a single day, and when I told him that annoyed me, it finally became “Nanami-san.” I still didn’t love it, but it was tolerable.
“It’s a family heirloom,” I told him. “My grandfather left it to me when he passed away.”
My family history doesn’t bother me. Takuma-kun looked moved for a second, but he knows sentimental talk irritates me, so he let it drop. I don’t see anything remarkable in being an only child whose parents died very young. I don’t even remember them.
The one I miss, now and then, is my grandfather—my mother’s father. He was Danish, much taller than I am as an adult, with unforgettable blue eyes. He wanted me to grow up in my father’s country, so he learned Japanese and took me to and from school until I turned fourteen.
He died soon after, leaving me a small fortune and his watch. From then on I began to see Curses, and Yaga-sensei recruited me, placing me in the same class as the only boy my age: Haibara Yuu.
Yuu-kun said my watch was cool, so when Takuma-kun said the same, I smiled inwardly.
On our way back to the school one day, waiting for Ijichi-kun to pick us up after an exhausting shift, I saw a small shop full of plush toys. I asked Takuma-kun to wait a moment, went in, and came out ten minutes later—just as Ijichi-kun pulled up.
Neither of them asked why I had a thirty-centimeter Korilakkuma tucked under my arm, but they gave each other a look—communicating in silence. They remembered, as well as I did, the little Rilakkuma keychain on Katsumi’s bag when we took her to the school.
I added the Korilakkuma to the ever-growing pile of plushes, mugs, pins, keychains, and other merchandise. It all went into a small room I used only for storage, collecting dust. By that point I’d sunk at least half a million yen into things no one might ever use.
A week later, Takuma-kun gave me a bear-shaped Rilakkuma notepad. Maybe he was testing me—or maybe he honestly wanted to comfort me—but his contribution made me happy, because it was the exact style Katsumi switched to when her other notes (the ones with characters gobbling almost all the page) ran out.
Sometime after that, those idiots ambushed me—Gojo, Mei, Ieiri, and a kid from the Inumaki clan who pinned me while Gojo-san and Ieiri-san ransacked the house until they found the box with all the gifts Katsumi had given me.
“It’s for your own good, Nanami-kun,” Ieiri-san said, sounding like she was trying to convince herself. “I think she’ll feel better knowing how carefully you kept her things.”
Days later, when I saw Gojo-san again, I punched him so hard it would have killed anyone else. Not him. Even so, it was satisfying that he let me land it. We both know he deserved it.
I would have liked to hit the women and Inumaki-kun too, but I chose to keep personal vendettas to a minimum.
One rainy night in March, Ieiri-san told me about applying Reverse Cursed Technique to Katsumi’s blood. She explained the whole methodology and how she’d realized the simplest way was to apply it to Katsumi during conception. That way she’d be rid of the excess Cursed Energy and could live without trouble.
I’d rejected being a sorcerer for so long—despite my aptitude—that when it came time to put skills on the table, I wasn’t even the best option for Katsumi. To be blunt, the only one who could pull off a technique of that level while having sex is Gojo Satoru, and the mere idea of him so much as laying a finger on Katsumi made me sick.
Gojo-san wasn’t content to leave things as they were. I suppose he’s always on alert for anything Geto-san might do—especially if he learned of Katsumi’s existence. Not just him, but the organization’s bigwigs too.
I wasn’t the only one uneasy; only a handful of us knew about Sato Katsumi. And simply staying away from her wasn’t a real solution. We all knew she needed something permanent, or she could fall into a dangerous enemy’s hands.
I understood perfectly that she needed to shed that hidden power—and that the most viable path forward was the one none of us dared say aloud. Maybe in another universe they met first, and no one had a problem with her giving birth to a perfect little albino baby.
But even when Gojo came to me two months later saying he’d made her cry with his proposal, I couldn’t picture them together in any world. Oil and water.
I hit him again—not just because he actually made that proposal, but because he made her cry.
“If you so much as go near her again…” I warned.
It worked. He never approached her—or even mentioned her—after that. We both knew it was his own choice. He wasn’t afraid of me. Far from it. Gojo Satoru could kill me if he wanted. He was being considerate—to her and to me.
Deep down, I was grateful.
My birthday came around again; the only ones who celebrated with me were Ijichi-kun and Takuma-kun. I remembered the lunch she’d made me the previous year, when all I could think about—as an office drone—was touching her cheeks to see if they were as soft as they looked.
I drifted back to the bench where we met. She was there, sitting with a distant look. Then she started to cry.
An hour later she got into her sports car and left. Thankfully there were no Curses—or people—nearby.
As the months passed, she smiled again. By August she looked better; by September it seemed like she barely remembered me. In October she still visited the bench, but she didn’t cry. In November—when we were supposed to be married—she stopped going.
In December she quit the bakery.
She turned twenty-five.
All her friends called me, even Ichiro-kun. I didn’t answer any calls or messages, but I didn’t block them either.
Hiromi-san sent me a photo. She looked beautiful in the ryokan’s yukata, smiling like she’d never had a care in her life. She wasn’t wearing the ring anymore. “She talks to someone every day; I thought it was you,” she texted.
It hurt. I emptied every bottle in the pantry and nearly gave myself alcohol poisoning. It was better if she just lived her life. Better if she smiled, talked to someone else, forgot me.
I could get over it.
I had to.
But I still missed work on Christmas Eve and Christmas—despite those days being hell for sorcerers.
2016 began, and all I could think was that exactly a year before we chose to sleep in until six in the evening after welcoming the New Year at the shrine. On our way back to the ryokan, we got lost because we wanted a little privacy, so I made love to her in Kyoto’s dark streets until we found our way and slipped into the first empty room we saw—before making love again.
I thought it was you.
Hiromi-san’s words ricocheted in my skull like a mantra that wouldn’t let me rest.
On Valentine’s Day I cried for the first time. Not a scene of shaking sobs—just tears I couldn’t hold back anymore. When Nitta-san and Ieiri-san gave me friendship chocolates, it was impossible to keep my eyes from welling.
I missed Katsumi so much that the smallest thing brought her back to me.
In March, two years since I met her, I returned to the bench—but it looked neglected. She hadn’t been there in months.
I gave chocolates to Nitta-san and Ieiri-san on White Day.
In July, another birthday.
In August, we finally recruited the first members of a new generation of sorcerers: Inumaki Toge, Zen’in Maki, and Panda. I wasn’t even sure about the last one, but he seemed like a good sort and secretly gave me a few panda trinkets—which didn’t clash at all with the one-million-yen Rilakkuma collection.
In November, one of the strangest cases came to the school: a human possessed by a Curse. I think the precedent of Katsumi weighed on Gojo-san, because this kid, Okkotsu-kun, was under his protection almost immediately.
Katsumi turned twenty-six in December 2016, but this time I got no calls and no messages. Maybe her new boyfriend—whoever he was—wasn’t a mediocre idiot like me, the man who walked away from her without a fight.
Chapter 14: February 14th
Chapter Text
Ijichi-kun and Takuma-kun started acting strange when February began. They whispered, traded odd looks, and seemed closer than ever.
When Ieiri-san mentioned last year’s chocolates, I realized that might explain my kouhai’s weird behavior. Maybe they didn’t want me to cry again, but by then thinking about Katsumi didn’t hurt anymore. Everything was running smoothly: I kept perfect office hours, had Sundays to myself, and spent my free time hunting new items to add to my two-million-yen Rilakkuma collection.
On Tuesday night, February 14, I came home after a long day handling minor jobs. Nothing major—just the usual sightings of third- or fourth-grade curses hassling people. Only one possession all month. Everything seemed to be going like clockwork, though I knew Gojo-san and his students were taking the tougher cases.
The moment I shut the front door, I sensed something off in the house. A presence—new, yet familiar. Very, very familiar.
It wasn’t in the kitchen or the living room. Not the storage room or the bath, not the yard or by the pond. That left only one place: my bedroom. I headed there with the wrapped axe in hand, debating whether to raise it.
Nothing could have prepared me to see Katsumi sitting on the edge of my bed in a tiny satin-and-lace nightgown. I looked frantically around, but she wasn’t a Curse, nor a ghost.
I rushed to her—still holding the axe—but when my palm felt the skin of her cheek and I knew she was real, not some spell or figment of my imagination, I dropped the axe and focused on her entirely.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
I’d laid protections around the house, but I wasn’t sure they’d hold if she accidentally created Curses.
“I’ve been working too much,” she said. My whole body shivered at the sound of her voice, like it recognized her timbre on instinct. “You’re right: sorcery sucks.”
I frowned, not following—until her hands lit with a white glow, the same light Ieiri-san gives off whenever she heals us.
“I learned the Reverse Cursed Technique,” she said, as if it were nothing. “So… please… the only thing I want right now is to hold you.”
She’d learned a technique I couldn’t even aspire to. How? When? And what about the person she was supposedly talking to every day? Her carefree smile? Thirteen months with no contact at all?
I wanted to ask a hundred questions, but she rose, wrapped her slender arms around me, guided me gently, and sat me on the edge of the bed. Then she leaned in and kissed my forehead.
I was grimy and exhausted from the day, but I forgot all of it the instant her lips touched my skin.
“You wear strange glasses now—I’m guessing it’s so Curses won’t notice you can see them, right?” She took them off. Then she caught my tie in her hands. “And what is this… tie… so original?” She couldn’t hold back a laugh. It was music to my ears. “I hope you weren’t thinking anything weird when you bought it. It’s so—”
“It reminded me of you,” I blurted. I didn’t explain well, and she frowned, worried, so I simply loosened it and tossed it aside. “May I… may I touch you?”
“You’ve never needed my permission, Nanami,” she said my name as if she’d missed saying it.
I’d missed hearing it on her lips even more.
“Katsumi…”
She straddled my lap. I realized immediately she wasn’t wearing anything under the nightgown.
We had a sober moment first—holding each other tight, telling each other with our arms how desperately we’d missed one another.
Then I tore the nightgown, threw her onto the bed, and took her nipples into my mouth. She yelped at the surprise, then moaned hard when I opened her legs and buried my face between them. I savored her with my tongue while she writhed and came with only a touch or two.
I don’t think she’d restarted her sex life with anyone else, judging by how intensely she came the instant I touched her.
That made me feel better, because I’d become a damn celibate myself; my libido had dwindled to nothing over those months.
The moment she twisted under my tongue, my penis hardened in my clothes. I stripped in a rush, but at the last second I wanted to rip my own head off.
“I don’t have condoms here, you know…”
“We don’t need them,” she assured me.
Her father once said he’d break my legs and skin me alive if his daughter didn’t reach marriage chaste—but he didn’t need to know that in that moment I pressed the tip of my erection into her and pushed hard enough to make her cry out.
I knew she was fine. I knew I hadn’t hurt her. Still, I paused in case she wanted to stop. Instead, that faraway look, those flushed cheeks, that open mouth—all of it invited me to fuck her.
I took the invitation literally, set my hips into a steady, practiced rhythm, and she—wasting no time—placed her hands over the center of her chest and her lower belly.
“I can feel your thing going in and out!” she blurted.
It threw me for a second because I wanted to laugh out loud, but lust pressed harder. I kept thrusting so hard I thought I might split her in two, but she moved with me, perfectly in step.
When I felt heat spilling from me, a cool sensation spread across her skin at the same time. She kissed me—and then Positive Energy washed over both of us. A beat later, she lost consciousness.
A sudden chill seized me when she went limp, but it was only exhaustion—from doing what supposedly only Gojo Satoru could: having sex while performing Reverse Cursed Technique.
I could breathe again once I realized she was only asleep. I exhaled, relieved, settled her on the bed, and ran to draw a bath. I looked for her old pajamas, but I suppose Ieiri-san did me an unexpected favor when they took the other box of Katsumi’s belongings.
I bathed her with me. With her back resting against my chest, the past months felt like a quiet, fogged-over stretch of time—as if I’d slept through them. I dressed her in one of my shirts, which was even bigger on her than the nightgown I’d ripped, and tucked her into bed with care.
“Thank you for coming back,” I said.
I lay beside her and fell asleep.
Like clockwork, I woke at six a.m. She wasn’t beside me, but it was as if her essence filled the house. I didn’t panic or jump up when I didn’t see her.
If anything, I felt like I was used to this life.
I headed to the kitchen, hair sticking up in all directions. She was there, bustling, finishing two grilled fish for a traditional Japanese breakfast—the same way I’d pampered her the first time.
She was barefoot, wearing only my shirt, sleeves rolled, my apron tied around her waist—too big, so she’d wrapped it and knotted it above her navel. Thankfully the shirt covered her backside or I might’ve had an accident with my penis right then and there.
“I’m glad you’re up,” she said with a huge smile. Her hair was in a messy bun, bangs clipped back with tiny Gudetama pins. “Shall we eat?”
“Let me help,” I said.
She took off the apron and hung it while I set the table. She’d made grilled fish, tamagoyaki, a mountain of rice, and miso soup. Curiously, instead of the usual daikon pickles or something similar, she’d prepared a salad of cooked vegetables with vinaigrette.
We ate in silence and finished with chilled green tea.
After a long quiet stretch, I lifted her in my arms and settled her on my lap in the living room, ignoring my schedule and everything else. We stayed wrapped around each other for a long while; she was about to doze off when my phone rang.
“Sorry, Nanami-san—I know you’d planned to take the day, but they’re sending Yuuta on a mission with Toge, so we need coverage elsewhere,” Takuma-kun said as soon as I picked up.
I sighed. Katsumi had heard every word and only lifted her shoulders in an easy, conciliatory shrug.
“Give me twenty minutes, Takuma-kun. Ijichi-kun will probably go with the kids, so you should come pick me up. You can drive.”
I could hear him smiling on the other end before he hung up.
“I’m jealous of him,” Katsumi said, hugging me tighter. “You two see each other all the time and seem to adore each other.”
I chuckled, [[EXPLÍCITO]]squeezing her bare butt under the shirt[[/EXPLÍCITO]].
“Can I wait here for you? I want to talk.”
“Of course,” I said, hugging her once more and kissing her before I stood. “I bought this house with you in mind, so you can consider it yours too… Have you gone into the storage room behind the kitchen?”
“I thought it was the bathroom, but it’s locked.”
“Right… here.” I handed her the house keys without thinking, pointing out the one for the storage room. “There’s something in there I think you’ll like.”
Her eyes lit up.
She saw me to the entryway, cheeks aglow with charm. Since we met, it was the first time she’d said goodbye to me at my front door. After all, her father must never know we were sleeping together before marriage.
When I got in the car, Takuma-kun was grinning impishly, like he’d pulled off something to be proud of.
“How was your Valentine’s night, Nanami-san? Katsumi-san gave us chocolates—divine,” he said, cheeks flushed.
“You and Ijichi-kun need to be more careful with people’s addresses,” I scolded. His smile was about to vanish when I added, “But thanks. It was a great night.”
“Ah—heh, for a second I was scared… She insisted, you know? She stayed in touch with Ieiri-san for a long time and bribed me and Ijichi-kun with bread from another world.”
“I suppose her modus operandi is winning men over with bread,” I joked, though inside I was boiling with jealousy. Two men had enjoyed Katsumi’s bread for who knows how long before they finally deigned to give her my address. And on top of that, she’d given them chocolates—and not me.
When a Curse knocked Takuma-kun into a puddle of muddy water and he had to ride back in Ijichi-kun’s back seat, I felt my revenge was complete. They both still stank the next day, despite drowning themselves and the car in soap and air freshener.
That night, I knew someone was waiting at home for me, so it felt good to see the lights on. Katsumi was on the couch, watching TV. She was fully dressed: long-sleeved turtleneck, jeans hugging her body, Totoro socks. Her hair was up in a high ponytail, bangs still pinned back with Gudetamas.
“Nanami!” she cried when she saw me, running in for a delighted hug.
I remembered the first time I saw her at the bakery—how she’d shouted my name with the same excitement, the same shining face she was giving me now.
“How was your day?” I asked out of habit. I’d have been happy even if she’d said she spent the whole day wearing a groove in the couch.
“It’s divine! The gift, I mean. The gifts. How long have you been putting something like that together? It’s too much—must be a million or two in there…”
“Because everything reminded me of you, darling,” I admitted. It felt good to see her thrilled to use so much merch she loved. “Every time I think of you, that collection will grow.”
She burst out laughing. My chest warmed at the sound.
“Ah—when you left, I felt a little silly, you know? Hang on.” She disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a white cake box, a rectangle box, and a cellophane bag of cookies. “I never found the right moment to give you my Valentine’s gifts, so I hope it’s not too late. I made all of it.”
I felt like an idiot when I saw the heart-shaped cake, the box of chocolates—sweet, bitter, semisweet, and with liqueur—and the bag stuffed with different types of cookies. Between Ijichi-kun, Takuma-kun, and Ieiri-san, I’d only gotten about twenty chocolates; I felt ridiculous for being jealous of them.
We shared the cake and cookies as we settled in, muting the TV.
“I want to open a bakery,” she said suddenly.
For some reason I’d thought she’d left it behind for good, so I felt oddly relieved to realize she hadn’t. Someone who’d truly abandoned baking a year ago wouldn’t have made such professional, delicious cookies and cake.
“And this,” she added, taking the engagement ring I’d given her from her pocket. “I’d like you to put it back on me. I didn’t want it to get damaged while I was training, so I put it away.”
Katsumi had adopted my habit of talking in half-phrases. I knew she was telling me she wanted to open a bakery—and get married—just without saying it outright. Come to think of it, she didn’t even say “yes” when I asked her to be my girlfriend.
“I should speak to your parents again,” I said, taking the ring. I sighed, heavy. “Do you think they’ll accept me… again?”
“I think it’ll be a little harder this time. But they know I’m with you right now. If they were completely against it, they would’ve tied me up and locked me in my room. That’s the only way I wouldn’t have come.”
I smiled sadly. My resolve had been firm—I was ready to let her go—but all the time and effort I’d poured into not thinking of her vanished the instant I saw her sitting on my bed.
I slipped the ring back onto her finger with a new goal: to give everything of myself to keep her in my life, and make her happy.
Si prefieres otro estilo de etiqueta (por ejemplo, <<<EXPL>>>), dímelo y lo aplico desde el próximo capítulo. Además, si quieres que te entregue dos archivos por capítulo (texto limpio + pasajes explícitos aparte), también lo hago.
Chapter 15: Living Together
Chapter Text
After that, I steeled myself to visit her parents again. Unfortunately, I couldn’t make time until mid-March, so when I finally showed up—with pricier gifts, more resolve, and more fear than the first time—everything went sideways fast: Katsumi threw up right there in the living room the moment she smelled the whipped-cream cake she loved.
“I wanted to tell everyone more calmly, but… I’m one month pregnant.”
Ichiro-kun choked, and her mother fumbled the teapot, which nearly crashed and caused a disaster—until Takuma-kun, who’d insisted on coming with me, saved both the teapot and the moment.
Then Sato-san lunged at me and landed a punch so hard not even Curses could match it. Takuma-kun blocked the second blow, and just then Ichiro-kun jumped into the fray. I tried to take the hits—I knew exactly what I’d walked into—though deep down I was elated that I’d be a father in October.
“Stop fighting!” Katsumi cried, frightened, and stepped between us.
I reacted at once and pulled her into my arms, so she didn’t get hurt. We all froze—her father most of all, already regretting starting the fight.
Then he barked, “You’re going to take responsibility and you’re getting married!”
I gaped and could only blurt, “That’s exactly what I want!”
A laugh slipped out of Takuma-kun, poorly disguised as a cough. Later he told me he’d never seen me so out of my element—bruised, hair a mess, and wearing a stupid expression.
“We have to get you married soon,” Sato-san pressed. “What will the—?”
“No one should have to say anything!” Nabena-san cut in, angry, interrupting her husband. “Nanami-san and Katsumi took time because, uh…”
“Because Nanami-san needed to regularize his Japanese paperwork and secure a house before the wedding,” Takuma-kun offered quickly.
“Exactly! And Katsumi needed, uh…”
“She couldn’t decide on her future, so she needed to try working as a baker and get some instruction from a doctor to see what she wanted to do,” Ichiro-kun supplied.
Half-truths—or lies seasoned with truth—are the best tools for silencing gossip. In any case, everyone agreed we owed no real explanations to people it didn’t concern. Let them be content with the fiction we crafted that day. The only people who mattered were family and close friends.
“Since we’re all here and there’s a little sake, why don’t we celebrate the engagement right now?” Ichiro-kun suggested. “I hear that guy is your… workplace protégé or something…”
“Takuma… Ino-kun is more than a protégé,” I clarified. “He keeps saying he wants to inherit my grandfather’s watch. He’s probably the closest thing I have to living family.”
I didn’t look at Ino-kun when I said it, but I’m sure he was moved. He’s always talking about how beautiful and cool my watch is, and I had, in fact, overheard him telling Ijichi-kun he’d ask me for it in my will.
No one objected. Even so, we sprinted to the nearest convenience stores to throw together a small celebration, and Ijichi-kun ran home to bring Ino-kun a freshly pressed suit.
“That guy’s wearing a suit too—put him in the photo,” Ichiro-kun said when Ijichi-kun walked in.
After the chaos, we toasted and mingled as if nothing had happened, though the left side of my face kept swelling and Ino-kun had had the nerve to yank Ichiro-kun’s hair. Even so, we took a photo like the family we meant to be.
Getting ready to live together was exhaustive. We weren’t just dealing with the pregnancy; there were emergency jobs, and the hunt for a well-located storefront to open the bakery.
Sometimes Katsumi seemed ready for everything. She woke early, dropped by my place, and spent the day eating roasted vegetables and chocolates while she scouted spaces—also wedding venues, dresses, guest favors, and a mountain of other things.
At times, though, Katsumi cried a lot. Ieiri-san and Nitta-san advised me to be patient with her. Pregnancy is never simple, least of all for a first-time mother.
Still, she startled me some nights by sitting on the edge of the bed in tears, begging me not to go.
“I’ll never leave. I’m right here,” I told her softly.
“Spend Halloween with me. Don’t go to work,” she said.
I figured it was that sixth sense women have—they somehow know when their baby is coming. That’s what I thought. But if so, she should’ve asked for a wider window, just in case; I couldn’t understand why it had to be such a specific date as October 31.
I turned twenty-six in July. This time we held a big party at my house. Katsumi organized everything; even Gojo-san and his students got invitations, though only Zenin Maki and Inumaki Toge joined us.
“Panda wanted to come, but we didn’t let him,” Maki-san explained to Nitta-san.
“Good thing he didn’t—there are civilians here,” Nitta-san sighed.
“Tuna mayo,” said Inumaki-kun.
Hiromi-san, Akiko-san, and Yumi-san were especially charmed by Inumaki-kun; they found it adorable that a sixteen-year-old spoke only in food words, even if they didn’t understand him.
“What about Yuuta Okkotsu?” Ino-kun asked.
“Are you insane?” Nitta-san thumped him on the head, glancing at Katsumi, who was chatting animatedly with Ieiri-san and her friend Koji-san. “I don’t think it’s wise to let Rika-chan near someone like Katsumi. Don’t they say she’s capable of…?” Ichiro-kun wandered past, so they lowered their voices, “…capable of exorcising Curses with her body?”
“Bonito flakes.”
“Not exactly with her body, right?”
“Salmon.”
“So like, by touching or something?”
“Bonito flakes.”
“No one can understand you if Panda’s not around.”
“Seaweed.”
“Stop talking about her and go mingle,” I scolded. All the kids stiffened, surprised to hear me so close. “Where did you leave Gojo-san?”
“Ijichi was supposed to bring him—who cares if he’s not here?” Maki-san shrugged.
“Tuna mayo,” Inumaki-kun replied.
In the end, Gojo-san burst in shouting, “Nanami, happy birthday!” and sprayed me with cider.
For his grand entrance in front of a big crowd, he took off his sunglasses and let everyone admire his beauty—including Katsumi. She actually blushed when she saw him, then looked away.
A heaviness settled in my chest, but when everyone left and we were alone, Katsumi curled into my arms and said, “Don’t let Gojo Satoru douse you in booze. I could see your chest through your shirt and undershirt.”
“Weren’t you looking at his eyes?”
“Oh please, whatever. I think your gentle gaze is far more beautiful. And your shoulders are broader; I like your chest; and Little Chick feels more at ease near his father. Isn’t Papa the handsomest, Little Chick?” she asked, cradling her belly.
She was nearly five months along and already showing. I loved holding her while we cradled our baby; I could stroke her and fall fast asleep.
If not for Ino-kun waking me from daydreams, I swear I’d never get out of bed.
It wasn’t unusual for Katsumi to stay over. At first, her parents raised hell—cohabiting without being married isn’t common or well-regarded, even if you’re engaged.
But over time they relented. Katsumi was spending so much time commuting and at my place that they preferred she move in for good when she hit seven months. The risks were many; better she stay put in one place.
She didn’t stay still, though. She must have inherited her father’s early-riser, tireless streak: by six she was already eating or prepping sides; at seven, when I left, she was always in the entryway to see me off; at 7:30 she’d go for a walk and chat with the elderly ladies and neighborhood moms; at 10:30 she’d hit a local café for brunch. Then she’d come home, start bread from scratch, and continue researching locations and suppliers. At one she’d eat something from the dishes and sides her mother and I had prepped. Then music, reading aloud from interesting books she’d found in my collection, and prenatal exercises.
I knew all this not because I was spying, but because she’d text me photos almost every hour. I replied with shots from the office or the car when I wasn’t the driver; my frames usually included Ino-kun or Ijichi-kun, and she always laughed that, at twenty-six, I still hadn’t learned how to take a proper selfie.
When I got home, she always met me with a kiss and a hug—but as October drew closer, she was more and more worn out. Her belly was huge; she stopped going out daily and cried more often about Halloween.
Chapter 16: The Birth
Chapter Text
One crisp morning in mid-October, Ino-kun and I were in the middle of tracking a grade-two Curse out to an empty lot when Ijichi-kun started yelling at the top of his lungs.
“Nanami-san! Ino-san! Hurry! Let someone else take this one!”
“Seriously? You doubting our skills or what?” Ino-kun grumbled. I wasn’t thrilled either—our work was finally paying off. Small Curse or not, better it not exist at all.
“Katsumi-san’s gone into labor!”
The moment I heard her name, I turned my back on the Curse and sprinted for the car.
“If you don’t exorcise it in five seconds, kiss the watch goodbye!” I warned Ino-kun. By the time I finished the sentence, the Curse was gone.
He flashed me a wide grin and quickly caught up. We dove into the car as it was already rolling, and Ijichi-kun floored it the second the doors slammed shut. We blew through several red lights, nearly flattened a cat that sprang onto the hood, and almost wrapped ourselves around a light pole—but we made it in time to find Katsumi in the front garden, neighbors gathered around her while we waited on the ambulance.
I rushed to her, and she clutched my arms the moment she saw me.
“There’s one,” she panted through the pain. “I think it’s grade one. In the living room. It hurt so much my energy got contaminated…”
“Ino-kun!” I called. He came at once. I scooped up Katsumi, kissed her forehead, and transferred her into his arms. He’s strong; I knew he could carry her without trouble. “Get her safely to the hospital. I’m counting on you.”
Ino-kun cast a quick glance at my front door and understood immediately.
“Trust us and catch up, Nanami-san.” Then he spun and bolted for the car. “Call Akari, Ijichi! We need her here!”
“Thank you for your help, everyone,” I told the neighbors. “Please clear the area—my wife just remembered she left the stove on and we could all blow sky-high.”
The three ladies, the elderly man, the unemployed guy, and the two kids sprinted away.
“Why is he going inside instead of backing off?!” one of the women cried.
“I’m police!” I lied, and stepped in.
There weren’t one but three Curses, and one of them was indeed grade one. It looked like a damned giant baby—so disgusting that if I’d eaten anything, I’m sure I would’ve thrown up on the spot. The other two were also humanoid, smaller, both grade two.
To be fair, I could have handled three high-grade Curses without backup. I’m disciplined and meticulous. Besides, I was desperate to get out of there; not even a Special Grade would have stopped me.
“Arise from a darkness blacker than black,” I intoned, focusing as a Veil settled over the house, “and purify all that is impure.”
Once I felt the Veil take hold, I ripped off my tie, unwrapped my cleaver, and readied myself. I was fully prepared to sacrifice the entire house if it bought me even a minute at the hospital.
The Curses lunged all at once, incapable of forming a plan. Thankfully they were dense and stupid; otherwise the bastards would’ve slipped into a neighborhood full of innocent, edible people.
Still, stupid or not, they were powerful. They slammed me through furniture and walls, wrecking everything in their path.
One of them punched a hole in the wall dangerously close to the two-and-a-half-million-yen collection. That pissed me off more than the new TV or the pricey furniture.
I took one head clean off and hacked the limbs off another before smashing its skull like a watermelon. The giant baby bellowed and tried to pancake me the same way, but I was faster and drove a solid blow into the middle of its warped torso.
The strike didn’t finish it, so I flooded my fist with Cursed Energy, waited for the opening, and detonated a Black Flash across that thing’s face. Its head exploded into a thousand pieces.
A heartbeat later, Gojo-san dispelled my Veil and strolled right into my house.
“Looks like I’m late to the party,” he said, as if walking into people’s homes uninvited were normal.
“You can help Akari Nitta clean this mess,” I said, grabbing Katsumi’s sports-car keys.
Akari was outside, looking both worried and annoyed, but her expression softened as soon as she saw me.
“Did you really take down all three by yourself, Nanami-san?” she asked.
“Well, it clearly wasn’t Gojo-san. I have to get to the hospital and—”
“You should change,” she suggested.
I bolted back inside the moment I saw all the blood, bruises, and ichor on me. If any neighbor was peeking through a window…
“You don’t usually make that kind of rookie mistake, Nanami,” Gojo-san teased, sprawled on the couch like a tornado hadn’t just torn through the place. “Shoko’s at the hospital—no one uses Reverse Cursed Technique better than she does.”
Objectively, the best user was sitting on my couch, but I didn’t say it aloud. I sighed instead, rattled by what I was about to ask.
“I need you close to her, same as Ieiri-san—at least until she stops generating Cursed Energy out of control. No matter the cost.”
He didn’t speak, that irritating smile still on his face. If I could see his eyes, I’d know what he felt; with half his face serene, I couldn’t tell.
“I’ll do it for free,” he said at last, unmoving. I frowned. “She still doesn’t interest me,” he added, as if reading the worry on my face. “With a little training she could surpass you and be grade 1, but that doesn’t seem to be her thing. Shoko told me she just wants a peaceful life. And if I dared to give my opinion, I don’t think she’d make a good sorcerer. If someone matters more than your comrades, you won’t do this job well. In fact, do you think you’ll do this job well from now on?”
He wasn’t wrong. In this line of work, you lay down your life for others—especially the young. Even so, I wanted to believe the only reason Katsumi didn’t enroll was age and preference. She wanted something simple and comfortable, a respectable, well-paid job; letting sorcerers siphon her blood was not on her list.
She seemed content to perform the Technique when needed, but I doubt she cared for dealing with Curses. That was why she trained in secret and only came to me in February.
“Remember when you called me back to work?” I asked after a beat. “It was because of her. I want to protect her—and anyone standing behind me.”
Gojo-san gave me a cryptic smile.
“Your selfishness—and Katsumi-chan’s—is very different from his,” he murmured, quiet but clear in the stillness of the room.
As I stripped off the bloody clothes, I murmured back, “It isn’t selfishness. It’s love.”
He laughed, a sound that carried mockery and pity. Or maybe envy.
By the time Gojo-san and I reached the hospital, everyone was there—her parents, Ichiro-kun, Ieiri-san, and Akiko-san. I sensed, more than knew, that Akiko-san might end up my co-sister someday, but I didn’t care right then. Ino-kun and Ijichi-kun stood a little apart, as if not wanting to intrude on the family tableau.
“Where the hell have you been?!” Ichiro-kun barked. “She won’t deliver if you’re not here!”
He looked about to lose his mind. And I’m certain I would have lost mine—to her father—if I’d been a minute later.
I ran toward the commotion of doctors and nurses. A second before I stepped in, I heard her voice, full of strain and pain.
“NANAMIII!”
I scrubbed in and threw on a gown as fast as I could.
“I’m here!” I shouted back.
Her eyes lit up. Even drenched in sweat, face flushed with effort, hair a mess and breath ragged—with a full ten centimeters of dilation—she was still the most beautiful woman in the world.
“Why the hell did you wait for me?” I scolded, though I’d promised never to yell at her again.
“He’s your baby too, idiot!” she snapped. Never, not once since we’d met—not even in front of her parents or friends—had Katsumi called me any of the names she used that day. “You took too long, moron!”
“I’ll never be late again,” I promised, squeezing her hand. I could feel traces of Reverse Cursed Technique there. “Just focus on the baby—Ieiri-san and Gojo-san are here.”
She squeezed back so hard she nearly crushed my hand.
“Push, ma’am! The baby’s ready!”
“I got it! I’m pushing! I’m pushing!” she yelled. “Don’t you dare leave, Nanami, you dummy!”
“I’m here!”
“Don’t go!”
“I’m here,” I kept repeating.
She pushed and then started crying, terrified the baby would get stuck and they’d have to do a C-section. Her sobs and screams rang through the ward, drowning out the midwife’s instructions and her family’s encouragement.
“Dammit! Why is this so hard?! Tell our son to come out already!” she screamed, grinding my hand to dust.
“S-s-son… m-mommy says…”
Katsumi burst into laughter mid-labor.
Moments later, when she finally delivered and the baby let out a wail loud enough to rattle the glass, she collapsed, half-asleep. I was on my knees, holding her hand, shaking.
“Vitals stable—she’s just exhausted,” a doctor said, squeezing my shoulder. I breathed again.
“Man, what willpower,” a resident muttered. “She held that baby for hours in full dilation…”
“Congratulations!” a nurse beamed. “It’s—!”
“Her canal’s still dilated!” another nurse cut in.
“Contractions continuing!”
“Oxygen! Pull the IV!”
I staggered back to my feet, rattled.
“Husband, do you consent to emergency C-section?” the midwife asked.
My head buzzed. Then what had just happened?
“Sir—husband!” another nurse called.
“Wait—crowning!” someone shouted.
“Oh my god!”
“Vacuum!” the midwife ordered. “Mother’s vitals!”
“Stable, but she’s asleep!”
“Oh my god!” someone repeated.
“Assistance—NOW!”
Scrambling, bodies rushing everywhere—and then another newborn’s cry, sharp and bright. We all froze. Even some staff looked baffled. While the midwife cut the cord and tied off the new bellybutton, everyone stared at one another.
And as if to head off disaster, the midwife checked Katsumi again.
“The dilation…” The entire team paused beside us relatives, holding their breath. “It’s gone.”
We all exhaled at once. My mother-in-law had a nervous episode and nearly fainted when she saw two nurses giving Katsumi oxygen. Ichiro-kun sank to the floor.
“Congratulations!” the first nurse chimed again. “They’re boys!”
“But we only picked a name for one,” I said, brilliantly.
Gojo-san burst into laughter, and though some glared at him, I couldn’t help feeling amused too—before I broke down in tears.
Katsumi had insisted on only being told about complications; she didn’t want to know the baby’s sex. The sonographer hadn’t thought to mention there weren’t one but two. Everyone agreed to scold us at some point for that decision, though keeping the suspense had been exciting in its own way.
Once the boys were taken to the Newborn Room, tiny tags on their ankles reading “Sato Baby 1” and “Sato Baby 2,” Nabena-san had another scare when her husband’s legs gave out and he fainted.
“Dear!” she cried.
I caught Sato-san and hefted him up quickly.
“It’s all right, Mother,” I soothed. “Ichiro-kun! Help your mother.”
“This way, Dad,” the nurse who’d guided the babies called.
“Please stay with the boys,” I asked Ino-kun, Ijichi-kun, and Ieiri-san. Gojo-san stayed with Katsumi, despite Ichiro-kun and Akiko-san’s reluctance.
After a while, when Ichiro-kun and Akiko-san stepped out for air, Katsumi’s mother pulled me aside—away from curious ears—and whispered:
“Nanami-san… those people who are always with you—are they like you? Ghost hunters? Is that your job?”
Katsumi had warned me that Mrs. Nabena and Ichiro-kun repeated to one another that I was a ghost hunter, and it still amused me. I took her hands—small, soft, slim, pale, so much like Katsumi’s—and cupped them in mine.
“I assure you it’s a respectable, well-paid job, Mother. And yes, they’re my comrades-in-arms.”
“That’s not the point,” she waved off. “Isn’t it dangerous?”
“Katsumi and the boys won’t be left unprotected, if that’s—”
“No, silly!” she burst out, desperate. “Son, even on your own birthday you looked exhausted. Are you sleeping well?”
Something bloomed in my chest. I smiled to reassure her.
“I think I’ve rested more with Katsumi than in my entire life, Mother.”
“That’s good, son. Live a long time. If the work with those… ghosts… gets too hard, step away from it. We’ll help you.”
From then on, Mrs. Nabena called me “son.” Sometimes people even mistook Ichiro and me for brothers, not brothers-in-law. Sato-san, for his part, stuck with a curt “Nanami,” but he still clapped my shoulder and wore a serene expression—like he was proud of me.
Chapter 17: The Twins
Chapter Text
Nitta-san only came by the hospital to ferry Ijichi-kun and Ieiri-san back that night—the cases were piling up, and we couldn’t have every sorcerer in Tokyo standing around admiring a pair of newborns.
The next day, Maki-san took it upon herself to nickname the second baby “Huevito” when she and Inumaki-kun visited the nursery window. She had Okkotsu-kun and Panda on a video call. Since everyone had been under the impression there was only “Pollito,” the news that they were twins caught them all off guard.
A little later, Yaga-sensei came to the nursery glass to look in on the babies with the teens—and to haul them back to the school.
“Hold up, did you get a good look? Panda? Yuuta?” Maki-san asked, angling her phone toward the boys.
“Human babies are way too tiny!” Panda exclaimed from the other end. “But don’t you think they’re ugly?”
Maki-san turned the camera on me. After a sharp intake of breath, Panda hung up. Inumaki-kun choked back a laugh—unnatural for him, who’s usually unflappable.
“Time to go, you brats,” Yaga-sensei scolded, though he looked just as amused by Panda’s slip; after all, Panda is his kid. “Get to the car. Nitta came with me.”
Maki-san and Inumaki-kun left without even saying goodbye to Gojo-san. They always call him an idiot and a creep because they treat him more like an older brother than a teacher and seem not to respect him—but I’m certain they’d trust him with their lives, like everyone who knows him.
“What do you think of them, Yaga-sensei?” I asked, because I genuinely wanted his opinion.
He studied the babies with a critical eye for a while, then said, “I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s noticed.”
The boys radiated Positive Energy as if they were generators with visible electromagnetic fields—at least to sorcerers. Ieiri-san, Ino-kun, and Okkotsu-kun looked impressed, while Gojo-san just shrugged, as if he’d expected this outcome.
“They were conceived, gestated, and born under the Reverse Cursed Technique, so the strange thing would be if their bodies contained Cursed Energy,” Yaga-sensei said, clearly intrigued. “But we’ll need to teach them to control their Energy, or they’ll become targets for the organization—or for rogue sorcerers.”
In other words: the higher-ups, or Geto-san. Hiding the properties of Katsumi’s blood was already difficult; now I had to add training and protecting not one but two infants. I wasn’t complaining—coming back to Jujutsu Tech was about protecting her and everyone behind me.
“I think a good method would be to steep them in Cursed Energy, but we’ll have to wait until after their first birthday. No point risking a pair of creatures who don’t even have names yet… I’m heading out, Nanami-kun. I’ll send a gift with Ijichi. Congratulations.”
“Yaga-sensei,” I called as he was leaving. He turned back. “Are you going to inform the higher-ups about Katsumi and the boys?”
He was silent for a long, heavy beat. The older baby started crying, and a nurse came to soothe him.
“Even Satoru has been working to hide the girl’s existence. And Shoko—she managed to train her for a year to use the Technique. You really think I’d blow all that so someone like Gakuganji could find out?”
I bowed, both respectful and grateful, and he accepted it without fuss. At least we wouldn’t have problems in the next few years—provided we could solve the issue of the boys’ excess Positive Energy.
Once Katsumi was stronger, she and I took turns getting used to caring for the twins. The older one was slightly heavier, with hair the color of spun sugar, almost cotton-candy blond. The younger had dark hair and striking blue-gray eyes—very much like my grandfather’s when he was alive.
For some reason, Ieiri-san and Sato-san became fast allies, though I suspect it was because they both love to drink. So it wasn’t surprising to see them, along with Ichiro-kun and Ino-kun, handling everything so Katsumi and I could focus on rocking the babies.
Three days after delivery, Katsumi came home. Nitta-san and Ijichi-kun had done an extraordinary job repairing the wreckage, so when we brought the new family members in, the house was completely restored.
“Come see Pollito and Huevito’s room!” Yumi-san cried—she and her husband had helped turn the room next to ours into the babies’ bedroom.
All our friends contributed—paint on the walls, protections, Totoro, Rilakkuma, and Gudetama art, two cribs, two shelves, and a mountain of diapers, baby clothes, blankets, towels, and toys the twins would be able to use in a few weeks or months.
I don’t know exactly who did it, but some of the students had drawn a big, slightly crooked shishimai on one wall and gone to town making paper lanterns for a cozy glow.
We tried putting the boys in separate cribs, but the moment we divided them, they howled. The solution was to push the cribs together—at least until they got bigger.
Katsumi was very emotional and cried buckets. For the first week, either Gojo-san or Ieiri-san watched over her in shifts, but once she recovered, she herself kept applying the Reverse Cursed Technique so her blood wouldn’t emit Cursed Energy again.
We needed to keep Cursed Energy out of the house—who knew what harm it could do to children who had none at all. So between the Windows, Gojo-san, Ino-kun, and me, we reinforced the house’s foundations with portable Curtains to cloak Katsumi’s Technique and the boys’ overflowing Positive Energy.
My home turned into a bustling museum—people in and out all day. The most annoying was still Gojo-san, but Katsumi’s friends were the most frequent visitors; I finally gave them spare keys so they’d stop calling me every time they wanted to see her and the babies.
A week later, our schedule was still packed.
In the morning we went to city hall to file our marriage registration. Katsumi had touched herself up a bit—rosy cheeks, a navy dress matching her shoes. The babies stayed with their grandparents, which made moving around easier.
When it came time to update the family register, she smiled and chose my surname without hesitation. After we took a little photo to commemorate it, it was the boys’ turn.
We submitted the documents and finally named them. Katsumi’s smile was radiant as she wrote their names next to her new last name. Once we finished the paperwork, the new family registry was ready.
I stared at it for a long while, mixed feelings washing over me. I never thought I’d marry and have children as a jujutsu sorcerer—much less with a woman who, if she chose, could surpass me in strength and technique.
Kento Nanami
July 3, 1990
Kento Katsumi
December 23, 1989
Kento Akira
October 17, 2017 — 1:14 p.m.
2.78 kg
Kento Minato
October 17, 2017 — 1:19 p.m.
2.41 kg
We held the Oshichiya—the seventh-night naming ceremony—properly at home. A calligrapher brushed Akira and Minato’s names onto a pair of wooden plaques, as tradition dictates.
Everyone was there when we arrived—even Panda. Maki-san lied that her “friend” was stuck in a panda suit; it was chilly out, so no one minded. After a few hours, people just accepted the guy in a panda outfit wandering around the house.
The only one missing, as always, was Okkotsu-kun. I’d already talked it over with Katsumi, but she didn’t dare face him. She’s afraid of curses—even weak ones—and the last thing she wanted was a jealous vengeful spirit getting into the house. Besides, Okkotsu-kun wasn’t comfortable with even the remote possibility that Katsumi might exorcise Rika-chan by accident.
From what we heard, at first Katsumi’s friends played it straight because her father and Nabena-san were present. But after a few hours—and Panda and Gojo-san’s antics—the mood loosened until it felt more like a friends’ get-together than an Oshichiya. The babies didn’t seem bothered by the chatter and laughter.
I felt a deep sense of fulfillment when “Pollito” and “Huevito” started being called by their names: Akira and Minato. Even if the nicknames stuck in everyone’s heads, I hoped the boys would be addressed by their given names as they grew.
On the night of October 31st, at Katsumi’s request, I stayed home. I kept in touch with the school; nothing special happened aside from a few stray curse traces. She even insisted that Inumaki-kun—and, of all people, Gojo-san—be careful, and she invited Ijichi-kun to spend the afternoon with us.
“I have a bad feeling,” she kept saying.
At first no one put much stock in it—not even me. But now that she could see curses, with our babies brimming with Positive Energy, and given her earlier “premonitions” tied to curses born from her, Ieiri-san suggested we humor her, just in case.
Whatever that feeling was, nothing happened that day.
Chapter 18: A moment
Chapter Text
By mid-November I was catching my breath at the school, with Ijichi-kun, Mei Mei, and Ino-kun cooking up a hypothetical drinking bet. Everyone agreed Ieiri-san would mop the floor with me.
I was about to retort when I felt the air change, though I couldn’t place why. Mei Mei noticed too; we traded a quick look just as Yaga-sensei let out his trademark “GODDAMN!” at what had to be a catastrophe.
We moved at once toward one of the campus paths, on alert. A huge white bird was ferrying four curse users: a man bare from the waist up, two girls about the students’ age, and the much-feared Geto-san—whom I hadn’t seen in ten years.
Geto-san was spouting a string of nonsense at Okkotsu-kun, barely acknowledging the other three students, when Gojo-san confronted him.
“Back away from the kids, Suguru,” he said.
“I’d heard the first-years were exceptional, and now I see why,” Geto replied. “So this was your handiwork…”
Maki-san bristled when he called her a “Zen’in failure” and a “monkey.” That, of course, also angered Okkotsu-kun; he slapped Geto’s hand away and shot back:
“I can’t help someone who insults my friends.”
“And what exactly did you expect to achieve by coming here?” Gojo finally cut in, stepping between Geto-san and the boy.
“To declare war,” Geto said, calm as ever. I shivered, and my colleagues reacted much the same. He raised his voice to address us: “All of you, listen closely and pay attention. At dusk on December 24th we’ll hold the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons. We’ll stage it in the greatest crucibles of curses: Shinjuku, in Tokyo, and sorcery’s mecca, Kyoto. We’ll release a thousand curses in each location. And their orders will be ‘massacre.’ If you don’t want hell unleashed, you’ll have to come stop us. We’re going to run rampant, freely cursing.”
We stood stunned at his announcement—some of us even jumped when one of the girls with him shouted something about a crêpe shop, so out of place I wondered if I’d imagined the whole exchange.
“I’ll be taking my leave,” he said, as casually as if he weren’t facing the Strongest Sorcerer.
“And you think I’ll let you?” Gojo asked, furious.
Yes, well—every semi–grade 1 or higher sorcerer in Tokyo was there, even Ino-kun despite being grade 2. We hadn’t come just to give Gojo moral support.
“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Geto replied, still turned from us, dismissive. He surely felt that no one behind Gojo-san and Okkotsu-kun could challenge him. He was probably right—but that didn’t make the slight sting any less.
Curses erupted everywhere, hemming in the kids, while Geto and company mounted the giant bird and took off. Unable to reach him, we hunted down the curses he’d released on campus. It wasn’t exhausting, but we each went home with our own thoughts.
When I got back, all I wanted was to hold Katsumi and the boys until I fell asleep, with no dinner and no conclusions about what Christmas Eve would bring.
The next day every Tokyo sorcerer and assistant gathered. The air was taut. Of those present, Mei Mei, Ieiri-san, and Gojo-san seemed the tensest—maybe because they’d watched Geto-san’s break and slide into villainy up close. I wouldn’t have recognized him if not for his voice; his eyes, unlike the teasing gaze of the seventeen-year-old I remembered, were now sadistic and merciless.
Despite our efforts—and a decade of nonstop work since Geto severed ties—Ijichi-kun said, “Given the reduced curse reports in recent years, it’s plausible he’s amassed two thousand.”
A dispiriting conclusion. How had he gathered so many right under our noses? Unheard of.
“Statistically, most will be grade 2 or lower,” Ijichi added. “And being generous, he can’t have more than fifty curse users.”
An average of forty curses per user. Three or four at once already wore me out—how was I supposed to face forty in a single night? The number was maddening.
“That’s the scariest part,” Gojo-san said. “He’d never start a war he couldn’t win.”
“Goddamn!” Yaga-sensei barked. “Summon all students, the three clans, and the Ainu sorcerers! This time we’re going to exorcise Geto—that damn Curse—completely!”
Ieiri-san had already slipped out by the time he finished. Gojo-san, unreadable as ever, stood while the rest of us moved.
A few days later, while I was juggling how to shutter the bakery and the ryokan on December 24th, Ijichi-kun informed me I’d be Tokyo’s only deployment to Kyoto. Ino-kun would stay in Tokyo.
It made no sense. With Inumaki-kun, Panda, and the Kyoto kids at the front, I still wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on Ino-kun. With that in mind I spoke to Kusakabe-san and asked him to shadow Ino just in case.
In contrast to my gloom about what lay ahead, Katsumi was elated. She was about to turn twenty-eight, the twins would be two months old, and soon she could start moving on her shop. Every day together was a comfort and a joy.
When December began, I came home one evening to find only Katsumi there. The babies were nowhere in sight. She ran to the entryway, flung her arms around my shoulders, and kissed me—a rarity for her.
I froze when she asked:
“Welcome home, my husband. What would you like first? A bath? Dinner…? Or me?”
She was irresistible, of course. With curses prowling and her pregnancy’s after-effects, we’d had little time to be close.
The moment I saw her standing there, I couldn’t hold back. I pulled her against me and returned the kiss, feeling her hands strip away my clothes. My weapon landed somewhere in the hall; my garments traced a path to the bed—where she lay down utterly naked, desire shining in her eyes.
I loved her as I had never loved anything or anyone. She was the one who’d approached me first, who brought me gifts and words, who shouted my name, who trained for over a year just to be with me. She had given me her heart and her body; the least I could do was worship and care for them with everything I had.
I buried my face between her thighs and she cried out, thrilled. After two boys her belly was slack and traced with stretch marks, and I traced every line and inch of skin as if it were the most exquisite thing in the world. With hands and mouth I roamed her, leaving no spot unattended. She writhed beneath my tongue’s maneuvering at her center.
When I felt her clench at the peak of orgasm, I kissed her navel, her nipples, and finally her mouth. She tangled herself around me, insatiable, rubbing her bare heat against my hardening length.
We struggled for control. Back when we met, neither of us could’ve imagined this. I’d never been with a woman and she’d never been with a man, yet it was so natural—so easy—to rip her clothes and take her with a frenzy.
She bit and scratched, sucked and kissed everywhere, seizing the upper hand. She straddled me and moaned loud; she grasped my hot, slick shaft and guided it into herself with deftness. She writhed and cried out—accusingly, as if the momentary sting were my fault.
Maybe it was. I didn’t care.
I let her claim only that much victory; I immediately took her hips and slammed up into her, burying myself to the hilt. A guttural sound tore from my throat and she dug her nails into my chest, screaming.
We found an erratic rhythm that soon smoothed into harmony—her rising and falling, rolling her hips with eyes glazed and skin sheened with sweat; me gripping her, my length lashing her, hair damp with my own sweat. I came too soon, but neither of us stopped moving as our bodies composed a lewd duet.
Strangely, that made me hard again. I set her hands and knees to the mattress and drove into her slick heat once more. It still wasn’t enough for me; she was already far gone.
I leaned over her, bracing her limbs with my arms, and lifted her, letting her drop onto me with force. She cried out, but her strength had left her; she surrendered to the moment, rapt. I held her—her back to my chest, her legs spread, her sex sliding blissfully along my shaft; her arms limp and swinging as my hands cradled her nape—while her whole body rose and fell to the rhythm I set.
I climaxed a second time, glorious, and managed to pull out in time to spill on the sheets. We collapsed together, spent—she from my rough handling, I from the long day.
I curled around her, covering her sweaty, come-smeared body with mine. As we cooled I felt the day’s weight. I wanted to tend to my wife rather than leave us like that, but I fell fast asleep to her heartbeat slowing and her breath syncing with mine.
Chapter 19: Family
Chapter Text
Day-to-day life with her and the boys was exciting, though a bit exhausting. Sometimes Akira and Minato seemed to coordinate just to torment us; they’d both start crying at once, kicking because they wanted our attention—almost always in the middle of the night.
Katsumi would get up immediately, but I took a little longer. Even so, I was always there with her, helping to soothe whichever baby was mine to hold at that moment. And because, on rare occasions, she’d fall asleep while holding one of the boys, I had to rescue the situation before it turned into a disaster.
Akira was fond of throwing up on me—or peeing on me. His first laugh, which almost sounded mocking, was when I was dressing him after a bath and he pooped on me.
Minato preferred being in his mother’s arms and cried with true fervor when she turned to look at me or kissed me.
Despite the affronts, the bodily fluids, and the sleepless nights, we were both very happy raising our sons. And we could always turn to Nabena-san when we felt overwhelmed or worried.
On December 19th, Ino-kun and I arrived at the house while my in-laws were visiting. As always, Ijichi-kun was our on-call assistant.
Katsumi was debating with her father about a cloud bread I secretly wanted to eat, though it wasn’t the time. The two-month-old boys were playing safely in the living room, lying on their stomachs on a plush blanket while their grandparents and their mother watched them closely.
“We’re home,” I announced in the entryway, handing house slippers to Ijichi-kun and Ino-kun.
“Welcome!” Nabena-san called out cheerfully. “Son! Boys! Have you eaten?”
“Oh—please don’t trouble yourself, ma’am…” Ijichi started to demur, but Ino-kun was quicker and offered sweets to her.
“Hello, ma’am! How are you today? We brought melon and some delicious manju. Pardon the intrusion.”
“No one’s given me a melon in twenty years!” she exclaimed. Katsumi stifled a laugh at her father’s face. “Oh, Ino, you’re so sweet. Come in, Ijichi-kun—how about some oden and tempura? It must be freezing out there, come on in…”
I headed for the living room, where the little ones lifted their heads when they saw me. Akira stretched out his tiny arms, opening and closing his hands—his signal that he wanted me to pick him up—so I granted his wish. Minato just gave me a smile. I kissed Katsumi on the forehead, something I was in the habit of doing in public, and greeted my father-in-law formally; he was absorbed in watching his grandsons play.
“Son! Aren’t you hungry?” Nabena-san called from the kitchen, bustling around with help from Ino-kun and Ijichi-kun.
“Have you eaten?” I asked, looking to Katsumi.
“We have. It’s almost time for the boys. Go on to the table—Dad’s oden is great.”
Sato-san wore a look that could be called proud and smug. He always put that face on when it came to cooking or his bakery.
“I’ll be delighted to try it, Father.”
I got up to go to the kitchen, but Akira cried the second I set him down beside his brother, so I took him with me. The difference between the boys was obvious. Though physically identical—and the initial weight and hair/eye color cues didn’t help much—Akira was more attached to me and Minato to his mother, so everyone learned their names quickly.
“Pollito can’t be apart from Papa Nanami once he sees him,” Ino joked, grinning. “Why isn’t Huevito like that? Will he let you hold him, Nanami-san?”
“Honestly, not much,” I admitted. “Sometimes he even gets upset if I show affection to Katsumi. He’s very possessive of her. But he smiles at me, and sometimes I can rock him to sleep.”
“Sometimes?”
“When Katsumi’s busy with Akira. I think, for Minato, the only man allowed near his mom is Akira. Those are the only times Minato deigns to be with me without crying.”
“Ha! You lost to your own son,” Ino teased. Ijichi looked amused too; even Nabena-san smiled serenely. “Doesn’t seem to bother you, though.”
“I could never be upset about something like this,” I smiled down at Akira, and he babbled back with a grin. “They’re my pride and joy—they can monopolize Katsumi their whole lives if they want.”
We ate heartily. My in-laws’ cooking was marvelous, worthy of a Michelin-starred restaurant. Katsumi had inherited some traits—her mastery of baking and desserts—but her savory cooking left a lot to be desired.
I remember bursting out laughing the first time I tasted a nabe so salty it scalded my mouth, because I couldn’t believe those same hands had made cookies and cakes with a professional pastry chef’s excellence. Katsumi got very mad at me and threw me out of my own house, but I still laughed every time I remembered.
When we finished and helped Nabena-san clean up, Ino charmed Akira with a bottle of breast milk and carried him to the living room. He brought another bottle for Minato, who was set in a rocker, before Katsumi asked her father to come into the kitchen.
I smiled at the sight of Ino taking care of the boys. He’d admitted he wasn’t good with babies, having never been around one up close, but in truth he was a natural. He could have been a great babysitter or nursery teacher—but the kid was also very good at fighting Curses. I suppose he chose what he was best at, same as I did.
“Mom, could you come here a moment?” Katsumi asked.
Nabena-san sensed a tense moment. They knew this had to do with my work, since Ijichi was still with us. Both of them were taut and expectant.
“Is it just me, or have you gotten bigger?” Katsumi’s father asked, giving me a better look. “Of course I’m not imagining it. Your muscles and legs are thicker. Have you been exercising for that hunter job?”
My whole body tightened. Ino looked up, alarmed, and Ijichi went pale. It wasn’t common to discuss our profession with outsiders; we preferred to leave the crude “ghost hunter” lie in place so we didn’t have to deal with it.
But “hunters” was a lot closer to “exorcists.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the man scolded, firm. “Did you think I’d keep believing you work eight to six in an office? With those muscles? Coming and going with a bunch of people during business hours? I’d have to be an idiot. And besides, I doubt there are that many ghosts in daylight to need an office schedule. Lastly… does anyone really think a kid like him would be stuck in an office?”
He pointed at Ino, who was struggling because Minato had just peed on him. Ijichi let out a nervous laugh. No one could picture Ino in an office, so I suppose I’d let my guard down with my in-laws. I sighed.
“Unexplained deaths and disappearances each year exceed ten thousand,” I explained. “A large share are caused by Curses. They’re born from Cursed Energy—the anger, hate, and sorrow that people emit.”
“Like a poltergeist or a tulpa?” Sato-san asked.
“That’s actually pretty close,” Ijichi answered. “Curses are essentially ‘spiritual’ and invisible to an untrained human eye. Only certain people can consciously handle their own Cursed Energy. They train for four years and are then considered sorcerers or exorcists. Only we, the exorcists, can deal with Curses. Though I’m just an assistant; the ones who handle the… more dangerous… Curses are people like Gojo Satoru and Nanami-san. Even Ino-kun, if he gets promoted to grade 1 someday.”
Ino flashed a charming smile when Katsumi’s parents turned to him. They surely hadn’t imagined him fighting whatever it was they pictured Curses to be.
“That said, we have a very serious problem on our hands,” Ijichi drew their focus, adjusting his glasses. He set down a current photo of Geto-san before Katsumi and her parents. He looked like a harmless monk. “This man is a wanted criminal—he’s murdered hundreds of innocent people,” he explained softly, as if he didn’t want the babies to hear. “About a month ago he came to our base to declare war. Shinjuku and Kyoto will be the epicenters.”
“When?” Katsumi’s father asked. He didn’t question the info or doubt Ijichi’s words. He simply chose to believe us and move forward.
“December 24th.”
Katsumi looked at me, surprised and afraid. I took her hand and squeezed to reassure her, but she sent that worry right back. I’d chosen to tell her at the same time as her parents because I didn’t want to alarm her beforehand.
“What does that entail?” Nabena-san asked. “Are you going to fight evil people?”
We both fell silent. Even Ino chose silence, continuing to play with the babies as they drifted off.
“There aren’t many evil sorcerers. This man leads a small select group,” Ijichi said, pointing. “We’ll hardly see bad people. Our opponents are Curses.”
“It can’t be that big… How big is it?”
“The metropolitan government has decided to evacuate Shinjuku, Harajuku, Shibuya, and central Kyoto to be safe,” I explained. “It’s a large-scale operation. He threatened to release so many Curses that, if civilians are around, we can’t protect them—not with that many loose.”
“How many?”
Ijichi swallowed before answering. “We’re anticipating two thousand. A thousand in Shinjuku and a thousand in Kyoto.”
“But… but there are enough of you, right?” Nabena-san smiled anxiously. When she looked at me, it was like watching her own son go to war. “You can handle something this big, can’t you?”
“In truth, we’re not sure,” I confessed, before I could walk it back. “Each of us would need to take down forty Curses—but realistically, we shouldn’t count assistants or doctors, so it’s more like fifty Curses per person at minimum.”
Katsumi and her parents went stone-faced. Especially her—she began to tremble and covered her mouth, distraught. Of course she’d be the most affected. She seemed terrified of Curses in large numbers ever since the incident at the school. Two or three were manageable, but she couldn’t picture me fighting more than fifty.
Seeing her go pale and start to shake, I stood at once to tend to her.
“Ijichi-kun, coordinate everything,” I ordered without looking back. “Katsumi, my love, look at me.”
“You can’t go,” she said flatly. “I’ll hate you if you do.”
Katsumi burst into tears. The boys stirred in their sleep at the sound, on the verge of waking. We’d sworn not to trouble them with my work, so I quickly scooped Katsumi up and carried her upstairs to our room.
She clung to me, anxious.
“You know this line of work is risky, sweetheart,” I tried to calm her, but she sobbed harder. “There are many kids risking their lives. It would be irresponsible of me to step aside.”
“Even with Akira, Minato, and me?” she reproached between sobs. I hadn’t seen her this worried since Halloween.
“…Even with you three, my love. It’s my duty. I don’t want the guilt of sending Ino-kun to the front while I cower in the back.”
“What if I go with you?”
“Never!” I shouted—louder than I should have. A pang hit my chest at the very thought of her on a battlefield, fighting Curses. “I would never let you risk yourself like that.”
“You’re a fool, Nanami,” she scolded, face wet with tears. She hadn’t called me names since the day she gave birth. “What am I supposed to do if something happens to you?”
“Look at me, love,” I told her. She held my gaze. “I’ve been training to be as strong as I can be. Do you really think I’m going to die?”
She stared, and I saw a new resolve in her eyes. She gripped my shirt, wrinkling it. She kissed me with passion and tenderness and held me tight.
“I’m going to give you vials of my blood,” she said.
“Absolutely not…”
“I’m going to give you my blood to use in an emergency. If you don’t accept it, you’re not going anywhere. I’ll be furious if you leave without taking it. I’ll change the boys’ surname and disappear from your life. I’d rather raise them alone than live with the agony of not being able to go protect you.”
“Katsumi…”
“Please!” Her voice broke. I knew I wouldn’t change her mind. “Please. Please…”
“Stop begging, love. I’ll accept. Please stop crying.”
Even so, Katsumi cried for a long while, until she fell asleep.
I left her for a moment to go down and set things in motion. Ijichi offered to take my in-laws home so we could continue the discussion en route. When I asked about Ino, I instinctively turned to the living room. He’d fallen asleep, with both babies sleeping beside him.
“Let him sleep. If we wake him, the boys might get spooked and not want to go back down,” I said.
I tucked all three in with enough blankets and pillows, then watched them for a while. They breathed calmly, safe within the house’s protections. It was the first time I’d ever seen Ino-kun asleep.
Chapter 20: Night Parade of a Hundred Demons
Chapter Text
Katsumi held a small birthday dinner on December 23rd. She was very worried about everyone, so seeing us before the big day put her a little at ease.
When everyone left, Katsumi gave me a small leather box. It looked freshly sealed with talismans imbued with Cursed Energy. I’d have to break the seals to look inside, so I just weighed it in my hands.
“There are twelve small vials of my blood infused with Positive Energy. Shoko-san told me the box can keep the blood fresh for about a year. But the shelf life isn’t the point—she said all you need to do is break the seals and throw the vials. The glass is fragile, so it’ll shatter even if you fumble them. She said even Special Grades could suffer a lot.”
“How does she know? There aren’t any Special—” I remembered Rika-chan and shut my mouth. “I’ll use them carefully.”
“Throw them all if you’re in danger. I don’t care—we can make more. If I could be with you…”
“Everything’s going to be fine. I swear.”
All I could do was reassure her. She slept clinging to me the whole night until I got up at four to get ready.
The cursed-seal box was about the size of a phone box, which made it handy. Ino-kun had gotten me a belt pouch; I slipped the box inside and hid it under my jacket.
I looked in the mirror, knowing neither the box nor the axe showed. Just an office worker in a tie and odd-looking glasses.
Katsumi started crying again when I said goodbye at five. The boys cried by extension, picking up on their mother’s distress.
I kissed all three on the forehead and left.
I reached Kyoto at eight in the morning, and at nine I finally saw my comrades. Many old classmates welcomed me with open arms; they hadn’t seen me since I came back to the school.
Utahime Iori-san looked me up and down and gave her approval. She’d changed a lot since high school. She used to have a bright look and a face prone to smiling, but now the dimmed gaze and the scar made her look hard-edged. I think my wife gives me a bit of her vibe, though Iori-san has always seemed sad and lonely to me.
“Your face looks great,” she praised. “You’re radiating a lot of Positive Energy. Did Shoko treat you before you came?”
“I was exhausted, maybe that’s why,” I lied.
Among the higher-ups, only Yaga-sensei and Gojo-san knew my family existed. The others who knew were assistants, Ino-kun, and a handful of students—and I wanted it to stay that way. I didn’t want word spreading to Kyoto for Gakuganji to discover I was hiding three people who produced Positive Energy, two of them infants who couldn’t even talk yet. After the disaster with Toji Zen’in, I had no idea what they’d do to my children.
The attack, however, didn’t start until nearly ten hours later. Thankfully, all the ryokan, homes, and nearby shops had evacuated the day before. I even hid Ichiro-kun’s ryokan behind a veil, though I wasn’t sure it would hold through the whole battle.
The curses were huge, several definitely first grade, but I managed without touching the box. Even if Katsumi insisted she could replace the blood, I’d rather never have to ask her to draw blood for my sake again. It felt vile, because it made me think that if the higher-ups learned of her, they’d use her the same way—drain her dry, and now that Akira and Minato existed, they’d do it to them too.
I don’t hold the bigwigs in high esteem—and I have my reasons.
Near eight o’clock, worn down and sitting at a count of seventy-nine curses, I realized there were a lot of kids being devoured on the main street. The scene was disheartening.
They were crushed and torn in half, chewed, heads ripped off. Some weren’t any bigger than Ino-kun. I burned with rage. Not only at the curses and Geto, but at the higher-ups, even at Yaga.
Those kids weren’t at fault for being weak. They were meat shields so the damned bigwigs could stay in their hidey-holes and keep scheming, snug under Tengen-sama’s roof and never taking a hit.
Feeling hatred seep from every pore, I stopped a girl from the Kamo clan and stepped forward, making all the kids halt in place.
“Nanami-san…” one said. I’d only met him that day and already liked him. He stared at the scene, terror on his face.
“I’ll handle it,” was all I could get out. I didn’t have the breath for more. Every fiber of me was focused on the curses ahead.
I loosened my tie, tested the weight of my weapon in my hand, and dashed at the closest damned creature. It was bigger than five elephants put together and had already done enough damage to my comrades.
The idiot turned its enormous mouth toward me and reared up as if to reach me when I leapt to get a better view. My technique drew a weak point across its body and I sliced it without hesitation, soaking myself in its purple blood.
I touched down for barely an instant, then ran for one of its limbs and severed it. Then the other, without ceremony. The huge thing crashed down, beaten.
Curses like giant bugs the size of trucks spilled from the surrounding buildings. For a moment, I was grateful there were no civilians around that night.
I pulled the tie off entirely, wrapped it with Cursed Energy in my fist—and suddenly felt I could string together more than one Black Flash. I shredded one of the beasts with the first Flash. Another leapt at me, and I fired a second. I fell back a step, drew a breath, charged my fist, and a third beast exploded under another Flash. I inhaled, pushed off into the air, lined up another target without mercy—and a fourth Black Flash blazed in my fist.
The first beast recovered despite its two severed limbs and tried to swallow me, but my technique was faster, etched a weak point across it, and I cleaved it in two. Excess Cursed Energy and purple blood cascaded everywhere.
My tally hit eighty-four then, but it wasn’t enough. I didn’t want the kids fighting—so I’d take on another fifty curses for every kid who’d died, and even for every kid still alive.
I was done.
I kept going, again and again—and again, and again. Three Flashes. Then my technique, then my expansion. Three Flashes again. Technique. Brief breather—just enough for a sip of water—then my technique again. Two Flashes. One Flash.
I never again in my life managed four Black Flashes in a row, but at least that night—when I pushed past four hundred curses so the kids wouldn’t have to—our phones chimed, announcing Yuuta Okkotsu’s victory over Suguru Geto.
Suguru Geto, the one behind the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons, was dead.
The last curse went down at one in the morning, but by then I was so spent I lay down in the middle of the street and fell asleep. Iori-san told me the kids improvised a bed and watched over me until help arrived.
When I woke up, I realized I was in one of Kyoto High’s dorms. I downed three glasses of water before I could breathe right, then turned on my phone screen. It was 7:30 a.m. Christmas.
I ran to the sink to wash my face and wipe off the ichor and blood on my shirt. I looked a mess—like a vagrant—but I couldn’t delay.
I started a video call with Katsumi. I thought she’d take a while to answer, but her phone didn’t even ring once before her face filled the screen. It looked like she’d cried and hadn’t slept.
“I’m never going to forgive myself for making you feel like this, sweetheart,” I said.
“Were you hurt?”
“I’m in one piece. I’ve had worse, I swear. It’s over.”
“I know. Ijichi-kun told me. Ino actually came over,” she said, turning the camera to Ino-kun and the boys. “He says he defeated forty-nine curses by himself.”
“I expected nothing less,” I conceded—because it was true. Even ten fourth-grade curses can be a big problem for an experienced sorcerer if you’re careless. Forty-nine is a great feat for someone only a year out of graduation. “Don’t cry anymore, love. I’m going to rest a bit, and I’ll be back this afternoon.”
Katsumi finally smiled, and that smile was all I needed to feel better.
I hung up and sprinted to shower. I could sleep on the train.
The only reason I didn’t use a teleportation technique was because I didn’t want to expose the location of my beloved wife and kids. And because I don’t know that technique the way that idiot Gojo does.
Katsumi.
Akira.
Minato.
I thought their names as I clipped the blood-vial box back onto my belt.
Minato.
Akira.
Katsumi.
Katsumi.
Katsumi.
Thank you for making me so happy, Katsumi.
Chapter 21: From an Outside Perspective
Notes:
Ijichi's POV Start
Chapter Text
My name is Kiyotaka Ijichi, and I’m about to turn twenty-seven. As an efficient, quick-on-the-uptake Window, I notice a lot of things. For instance, that Gojo-san eats way too many sweets; I don’t understand how his teeth haven’t fallen out. I suppose it’s because he’s a special-class human.
I also notice that Ieiri-san keeps a stash of alcohol in her office big enough to set the whole school on fire. She insists it’s “disinfectant,” but the Blue Label and Jack Daniel’s labels suggest otherwise.
I pick up on things like the furtive looks Ino-kun gives Nanami-san when they head out together to hunt Curses. If they weren’t both men, I’d think Ino-kun was in love with Nanami-san—though that shouldn’t be. It wouldn’t be right anyway; Nanami-san is married and has children.
I notice, too, how much Nanami-san worries about the students. He’ll take on all kinds of Curses himself so the kids don’t have to leave campus unless they want to.
That attitude is the exact opposite of Gojo-san’s, who shoves them toward danger with a sardonic grin. At least he does with Maki-san, Inumaki-kun, and Panda, since Okkotsu-kun left on a secret mission right after his Curse, Rika-chan, was exorcised on Christmas Eve last year.
One of the newer changes around here is the patisserie that opened in Nanami-san’s neighborhood. It has a small sit-down area for a slice of cake with something cool or sweet to drink, and it’s run by the mother of a pair of local twins: Mrs. Katsumi Kento.
Katsumi-san is Nanami-san’s wife. Her existence is a secret from the higher-ups, but lately she’s been attracting attention because her cakes and cookies are out of this world. She keeps going viral—not just for the pastries and the relaxed vibe, but because plenty of men drop by hoping she’s available.
Most give up when they see her rocking or nursing her babies, but a few are stubborn about it. I suppose Nanami-san’s office-hours schedule is… inconvenient in such cases.
Because of this, Ino-kun and I have been stopping by every two or three days. Sometimes one of her friends or her mother is there, but mostly she’s alone, working. She smiles at customers and keeps her cool—professionally—whenever someone tries to cross the counter line.
Fortunately, the twins seem to sense those men’s intentions, because they almost always cut the advances short with a cry or a fuss. Katsumi-san goes to them, attentive as any good mother, and leaves things to Ino-kun or me.
At six-thirty each day, Nanami-san arrives and takes the reins. He drops the axe and the vial case in the stockroom, ties on an apron with the shop’s logo, and steps out with that tired, calm smile to deal with the lingering men—and the wave of women who start to arrive.
Many of those women are there for Nanami-san or for Ino-kun. They’re bolder with the latter, but there’s no shortage of young ladies who “forget” personal items or leave their cards or phone numbers.
So when the shop closes, I notice the jealousy—on both sides. They don’t fight, but brows knit and glances are exchanged as the pile of “forgotten” things and phone numbers grows day by day.
Since I notice all this, I make sure to offer a solution before it becomes a problem.
“What if you two show you’re married—and in love? People might back off when they see it.”
Both balk at my suggestion. Fair enough. They grew up in Japan, where work and social culture don’t really allow public displays of affection—even in your own business—even if you’ve been married a few months.
But then, on a day when the twins’ grandparents had taken them out, Nanami-san pushed through the shop door hard enough to rattle it. The glass spider-webbed, and before anyone could gasp he was behind the counter, pulling Katsumi-san into a possessive embrace with one arm while clamping down on a man’s wrist with the other.
The stranger wasn’t letting go of her, and she was clearly frightened. Unfortunately, she’d been alone when he came to hassle her.
“What do you want? Who are you?” the man snapped at Nanami-san.
“What do I want? I want you to let her go, get out of my sight, and never come near her again.”
“Let go, idiot! You think you can assault a customer?”
Instead of letting go, Nanami-san tightened his grip. The man yelped and tried to wrench free, but it was useless.
“Stay away from my wife,” Nanami-san ordered, fury barely held in check.
Even I know not to make this man angry. He puts up with Gojo-san’s bad jokes, stays unmoved by the students’ tantrums, and doesn’t flinch when his kids pee or spit up on him—that’s what babies do. The only time he shows a dopey smile is when his wife scolds him.
But there are three things he won’t tolerate: jobs going sideways, a student getting hurt, or anyone laying a hand on Katsumi-san. I suppose little Minato inherited that possessiveness—no one gets near his mother without property damage. Or, in this case, a broken bone or two.
Nanami-san is no longer the scrawny office worker who came back after seven years away. His father-in-law complains a lot, but he’s right: Nanami-san has put on muscle that would intimidate the average Japanese guy—though it makes the young ladies who visit sigh.
After another squeeze—nearly snapping the wrist—the stranger got the message and bolted, clipping my shoulder on the way out. Katsumi-san relaxed and wrapped her arms around Nanami-san’s torso.
“I think I need a helper,” she said aloud.
And Nanami-san, the devoted, decisive, reliable husband, answered:
“Why don’t we put up a notice for a boy from a nearby high school? I don’t want any girls—it invites misunderstandings.”
Katsumi-san agreed almost immediately. It confirmed, again, how much trust there is between them—enough that Nanami-san doesn’t consider a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old boy “competition.”
A girl, even of the same age, would be trickier. Girls are charming young, and lately they’ve been drooling over a married man instead of chasing after young Ino, who isn’t seriously attached.
Before the day was out, Katsumi-san taped a hand-drawn help-wanted sign in the window, hoping a good kid would answer it. Nanami-san, however, asked her to drive the car home because he had an errand, and climbed back into the school car.
“Do me a favor, Ijichi-kun. I need wedding bands.”
“What happened to the engagement ring?” I asked as I pulled away.
“Technically, we’re not engaged anymore—we’re married. She stopped wearing the ring and’s been waiting until there’s time and money to hold the ceremony.”
“I guess that’s complicated with two little rascals, a brand-new shop, and a pile of open cases…”
“I wanted to marry her last November, but the birth was barely a month behind us. I didn’t want to stress her. Then the whole Geto-san thing happened and… now she’s focused on the Valentine’s mega-sale and all that.”
“I heard Akiko-san and Ichiro-san got engaged,” I tossed out. “I think that stressed your father-in-law too—now that Akiko-san’s planning her wedding and his daughter moved out to open her own place, he’s busy again. Takeshi-san’s about to quit his job.”
“I think they both need new help, but Katsumi’s case is urgent,” he said, head tilted back against the seat, massaging the bridge of his nose, exhausted. “I’m not letting another idiot put hands on her… and about the wedding… I’d like to do it as soon as possible. I’ll talk to her.”
Chapter 22: The Boy Under the Bridge
Chapter Text
Nanami-san bought a beautiful pair of wedding bands, but he can’t bring himself to give Katsumi-san hers. He feels the timing and the setting aren’t right. For someone with little experience in love, he’s a hopeless romantic.
Things did improve—for a few weeks. Two part-timers filled the slot for not even two months total. The first thought he could handle it but quit right after February 14th, saying the workload was too much. The second arrived days later and fled after White Day.
Katsumi-san didn’t get discouraged. Through the rest of March and all of April she couldn’t find anyone, which only worried Nanami-san. He wanted to march straight into the high school and hand-pick the next part-timer, but we both know that’s not how it works.
One day in early May, after we’d wrapped our errands and I’d dropped off Ino-kun, I rode with Nanami-san toward the patisserie to help his wife with the evening rush. We were crossing a highway bridge over one of those little creeks you see all over this side of town when he said:
“Stop. Pull over.”
Before the car had fully halted, he was out and looking down from the guardrail. I doubted it was a Curse—otherwise I would’ve felt it too.
I put on the hazards and joined him. Below, a small high-school boy was being stomped and clubbed by a pack of students. Their laughter carried all the way up to us.
When they’d had their fun, they tossed their sticks and wandered off, still joking. They left the boy curled tight on the ground, shuddering with pain.
“Let’s go,” he said.
I didn’t know what Nanami-san intended. We’re not supposed to get involved with civilians unrelated to Curses, so I hesitated. But he headed down the embankment with purpose and approached the boy by the creek.
The teen shot us a terrified look as we came near. I suppose he had to stay on guard in case the others came back to “play.” He didn’t relax just because we’d appeared.
“Who are you? What do you want?” he demanded, scowling as if to burn holes through us. Nanami-san crouched and looked him over.
“I’m police, kid. What’s your name?”
The boy seemed to trust the words, even though Nanami-san neither flashed a badge nor dressed like a cop. I suppose that’s the level of poise and gentleness he gives off.
“I don’t… want to give my name,” he said.
He shrank back the instant Nanami-san’s hand moved toward him—only for that hand to ruffle his hair and give a light pat.
“Come with me. My wife can do something about those injuries.”
“How am I supposed to trust two strangers? What if you kidnap me and kill me?”
A fair point. Heavy words.
“Look at my colleague,” Nanami-san said. Being put on the spot made me stiffen, and I felt my face heat. “He might be weaker than you. Do you really think he’s some evil criminal?”
The boy looked me up and down, but he still didn’t quite buy it; he spat:
“Not interested. I don’t want anything.”
Nanami-san stayed there a few seconds longer. His expression barely changed, but I knew he was disappointed. He stood, turned his back on the boy, and started away.
“Let’s go, Ijichi-kun. I don’t want Katsumi worrying if we’re late.”
“Oh—right, we should hurry. You haven’t seen your kids in two days, have you?”
Something tugged my jacket hem. I turned to see the boy’s fingers gripping the fabric.
“Do you have photos of them?” he asked.
I had no idea where that came from, but Nanami-san stopped dead, came back, and pulled out his phone. He lit up the screen to show his lock screen: Katsumi-san holding one of the twins at the shop entrance. She’d been so happy that day she burst into tears; the neighbors thought Nanami-san had done something to her.
He unlocked the phone. The home screen was a collage of the twins—sleeping, crying, eating. Any time he’s had a particularly hard day, I’ve seen him just stare at that screen, remembering his little ones.
“Can I go with you?” the boy asked.
I was glad. No one could keep distrusting someone like Katsumi-san—she has a radiant smile and beautiful children. Nanami-san is always talking about how lucky he is.
“Of course. Let’s go. She’ll be calling any minute,” he said.
The boy came along, rubbing his right side. He took the back seat and scanned every exit route, but a few minutes later he relaxed when Nanami-san’s ringtone chimed. With help from Ino-kun, he’d set it to “From Sunset to Sunrise” by Hiroyuki Sawano, just because he remembered it was Katsumi-san’s favorite song.
“Hello? Hi, my love,” he said, his tone softening into the one he uses only for her. “Of course I’m on my way—don’t scold me… We had a small hiccup; I’ll tell you later. Anything happen…? Good, I’m glad. We’re almost there. Is that Akira…? Is that Minato? Mm… Ijichi-kun, step on it—the kids are fussy.”
I obeyed. Thankfully we were close; otherwise he’d have given me a killer look for getting stuck in traffic.
The moment I parked, he was out at a sprint. The boy and I took a few seconds longer. By the time we got inside, Nanami-san was already behind the counter, lifting Akira into his arms.
“Babababa!” the child wailed through tears.
“I’m here, Akira. I’m here… Hand me the case, Katsumi. Can you welcome our guests? Take a breather,” he told his wife.
She had dark circles and a simple ponytail. I hadn’t seen her like that since she was training to use Reversed Cursed Technique. She held little Minato, who’d caught the crying bug but was calming now that his brother had stopped.
“Hi! Ijichi-kun, nice to see you again. Will you come back? Grab a slice of cake and follow me to the kitchen,” she said.
The boy looked at me; I nodded toward the chilled display. All we had to do was pick a favorite slice and head in. I did so, but the boy hesitated.
“I… I don’t have my wallet.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “They won’t mind even if you pick the most expensive cake. You’re their guest.”
He minded, apparently. He chose a cheap melon pan and followed me behind the counter—off-limits to regular customers.
“Abababa…” Akira babbled, happy to finally see his father, reaching with clumsy little hands for his face.
The kitchen was a mix of industrial gear and older furniture. Katsumi-san had tried to gift her father several appliances—top-end fridges and stoves—and since he’d done the same for her, they picked what best fit each shop and felt grateful to each other.
Together with Ino-kun, Ichiro-san, and Takashi-san, Nanami-san had made a little table-and-chair set for her. He wanted her to have a place to rest and feel comfortable even in the kitchen, so they built a round table with four sturdy, comfy chairs. Everything was painted blue—her favorite—with white and orange flowers carved and painted along the chair backs and table rim. The result was a bit rough—none of the four are carpenters—but they put their hearts into it and “christened” the set by eating there after finishing.
“What’s your name, friend?” Katsumi-san asked. The boy, of course, didn’t answer. “Do you like coffee? Or would you prefer hot chocolate?”
“…Coffee is fine,” he said, eyes on his melon pan.
She struggled a bit to lift the water kettle, so I set my cake down and went to the stove to make coffee for the three of us. She thanked me and sat, handing Minato a teether to keep him busy.
“I’m Katsumi Kento—I own this patisserie,” she said. “This is Minato, the younger. Akira’s the older. And my husband is Nanami Kento.”
“That’s right,” I said, watching the kettle. “I’m Ijichi Kiyotaka. Pleased to meet you. It didn’t seem right to introduce ourselves earlier.”
The boy was quiet for a while, then asked, “If you own a patisserie, how could you help with my injuries? I don’t get it.”
“It’s easier to show you,” she said with a calm smile, understanding why he’d come with us. Then, gently: “May I have your hand for a moment?”
He looked at her perfect hand—short nails, long white fingers. We’ve told her she ought to wear the engagement ring Nanami gave her, but she insists they’re already married—and an engagement ring would make some people think they still have a shot. Well, it’s true: people can be twisted.
Convinced it was just the hand of a woman holding her baby in the other arm, he slowly offered his right hand. I braced myself for Minato to go berserk because someone else was reaching toward his mother, but he only watched, curious.
“Close your eyes,” Katsumi said.
She did the same. Positive Energy flowed from her hand into his, encircling him like a warm vapor. In moments, every visible wound was gone. He opened his eyes, stunned—and saw something in her and the baby that startled him. He gasped and jerked his hand back as if burned.
“Sorry! That was rude,” he said. “I just didn’t expect…”
“Didn’t expect an express treatment?” she joked. “Don’t worry. But it isn’t free,” she added. He tensed. “Your ‘payment’ is… telling me your name.”
“Ah…” He even looked a little disappointed she wasn’t asking for money—maybe he’s used to being scammed. “I’m Junpei Yoshino, ma’am. Nice to meet you.”
“All right. Yoshino-san, how do you take your coffee?” I asked, pouring three cups.
“Uh… One spoon of sugar and a little milk.”
“Got it.”
I fixed his cup. Then hers—two sugars, cream, and milk. Then mine—cream and half a spoon of sugar.
This sort of thing relaxes me. I know how most of Tokyo’s sorcerers take their coffee. Nanami-san likes one sugar—or none, if possible. Gojo-san wants six sugars and enough milk to forget it’s coffee. Ieiri-san doesn’t drink it. Yaga-san prefers cream and two sugars. Fushiguro-kun, Gojo’s soon-to-be protégé, is the only sorcerer I know who drinks it black.
As an assistant, making coffee is one of the first things you learn. You learn people’s tastes and tells—and it tells you things about them. Coffee, beer, and the way they hold chopsticks—those three reveal a lot. Whether they’re good, bad, or pretentious. Whether they have happy days.
But I also believe a little bread baked with love, a little coffee made with care, and a quick “express treatment” can work wonders on another human. Junpei Yoshino gives a quick smile after his first sip, and that makes me happy.
“Tell me, Yoshino-kun—do you have any hobbies?” asked Katsumi-san, sipping after thanking me.
“Yeah… I really like movies…”
“Have you seen Inuyashiki yet?” she asked, excited. “I think it just came out. And the one with Arata Mackenyu?”
“Impossibility Defense? The adaptation of the manga Funōhan, right? I thought it was good, though IMDb shredded it.”
“Ah, I wanted so badly to go to the theater!” she sighed. “I love my life, but sometimes I lament not being able to go back to high school. University and work rob you of your soul—and your time…”
Thanks to her, Yoshino-san opened up. They talked about a ton of films, critiqued and compared them, praised performances and directors—things I don’t really follow, since I’ve spent the last decade assisting Jujutsu sorcerers. Even so, I was glad for him, and by the time the shop had emptied out, he looked comfortable and at ease.
“I should get going, Mrs. Katsumi,” he said eventually—he knew he’d taken nearly three hours of her day. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her talk so much. “My mom will worry if I’m too late.”
“All right, Junpei,” she said brightly. “Help me with Minato, Ijichi-kun. Come on, Junpei—I’ve got a gift for you and your mother, if you’ll accept it.”
He followed her once Minato was in my arms. The kid looked at me with big eyes—he recognizes me, but he isn’t as cozy with me as with his parents. His eyes got shiny, and he started searching for them. I hurried out and stood near Nanami-san so he wouldn’t fret.
Katsumi picked out a strawberry shortcake and boxed it for Junpei. He looked ready to refuse, but accepted when she insisted it was also for his mother.
“Come visit us, okay? You’re welcome any time, Junpei.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Katsumi. And thanks to everyone—Kento-san, Kiyotaka-san.” He bowed to us all.
“Wait… isn’t it too late for you to go alone?” she fretted, glancing our way.
“Don’t worry—the station’s close, and I know the way home from here.”
“Take care, Yoshino-kun,” Nanami-san called from behind the counter. “You can come here whenever you need to.”
Junpei blushed, said his goodbyes, and left just as the streets turned properly dark.
“I don’t know if I can not worry,” Katsumi said aloud.
Nanami-san and I agreed in silence. It’s not like we’d found him just out for a stroll, after all.
Chapter 23: Yoshino Junpei-san
Chapter Text
Our worries, as it turns out, were well-founded, because a few days later Yoshino-san comes back to the patisserie. It’s already late—late enough that Ino-kun and I are pulling down the shutter while Nanami-san and Katsumi-san juggle the twins and tidy the lockbox and next day’s doughs.
He limps in with a black eye. A thin thread of blood runs from his left temple, he’s cradling a shoulder, and several fingers sit at wrong angles.
Ino-kun tenses up, reading “dangerous stranger,” but I stop him with a shake of my head.
“Come in, Yoshino-san,” I say when he’s at the door. I keep my composure even as I watch him drag his feet, hunched and beaten, eyes on the floor. It’s like looking at myself in junior high, before I found my place at the School.
“Junpei!” Katsumi-san gasps when she sees him. She covers her mouth, anguish in her eyes. Nanami-san sets his jaw and gathers both twins into his arms so his wife can focus on the boy; it isn’t jealousy—he looks angry, but not at anyone here.
I’m getting angry too.
“Who did this to you?” Katsumi-san asks, rattled. “God, I don’t know if I can—You need a hospital, Jun—”
“No! Please…” he begs, voice breaking. “I don’t want to worry my mom. She was so happy with the cake you gave me…”
“How did you make it all the way here? The station guards didn’t stop you?”
“They stole my money again,” he admits. “They also smashed my phone.”
By now even Ino-kun looks upset about his situation. If he walked from Kawasaki to Roppongi in daylight and no one helped, people are more indifferent than we like to think. Times like this I remember why Nanami-san quit on us for years—and why Geto-san turned against humanity.
Katsumi-san’s eyes brim. Nanami-san, who can’t stand to see her shed a single tear, hands the twins to Ino-kun and steps in to rub her back—just to tell her he’s here.
She swallows hard, dabs her eyes, and meets Junpei’s gaze with resolve. “I think I’ll have to touch you a bit this time. Is that okay?”
He nods silently. He can’t look her in the eye—not after making her cry.
She takes his hands with the same gentleness she ices a cake—with care and affection. His fingers snap back into place one by one. Then the collapsed shoulder, then the swollen eye and the bruises along his face and neck.
“Anywhere else?” she asks, checking his face and hands again and again.
He frowns and hikes his pant leg to the knee. The flesh is ground-purple, and bone peeks through the bloody mess.
“I think they wanted to break my leg, but got bored when it wouldn’t go.”
Her eyes fill again. I clench my fists; Nanami-san stands there tense beside them. Maybe he feels helpless because we let the kid leave without a school or address last time—but Junpei only volunteered his name. It felt like he wanted to hide his whole life from us. Or hide himself.
I know that look. Shame and collapse. Lips pressed down into a near-pout. To us he’s just a kid—and one we can’t properly protect.
“That magic you do, Mrs. Katsumi, it’s warm,” he says once the leg looks new. “I guess it’s a good sign that it’s white, right?”
“Oh God—can you see it?” she blurts, hand to mouth. Ino-kun, Nanami-san, and I are no less shocked. “Don’t tell me that’s why they beat you?”
“No! Not at all! Please don’t worry, Mrs. Katsumi,” he says, on the verge of tears. “I couldn’t see anything before, I swear. I noticed only after you healed me the first time.”
“Junpei… have you seen… strange creatures?”
He swallows and just nods.
“I suppose they were always there, and I just never noticed,” he says. “My school’s infested. Even the station and the streets around here. You know the only place I feel okay? Right here. There’s nothing inside and that makes me feel safe.”
“Yoshino-kun… Even if you don’t want a hospital, you need to let your mother know you’re safe. It’s almost ten and you’re a long way from Kawasaki,” says Nanami-san. “Do you know her number?”
“But my mom…”
“Then we’ll drive you home,” he insists. “Come on, Ijichi-kun. You, too—this concerns you. Katsumi, come with me.”
She stands. She’s about to follow him into the kitchen, but first she hugs Junpei.
He freezes, embarrassed.
“What?” Ino-kun asks, watching the blush climb.
“Well… I think this is the first time any woman who isn’t my mother has ever hugged me,” he mumbles.
Ino-kun snorts, loosening up, then properly introduces himself and brings the twins over so Junpei can meet them up close.
“They look so much like their parents,” Junpei says softly, watching as one baby’s tiny fist wraps around his index finger while the other gnaws a teether.
“Babababa… abababa…” both babble. We’re all waiting for their first real words.
Katsumi-san looks brighter when she comes back with Nanami-san. He kisses her hand; suddenly they’re in their own little world, love in her eyes as she stretches on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. He smiles back and kisses her forehead, as he always does in public.
I’ve heard secondhand that they keep a very active bedroom life; even Ino-kun keeps saying he doesn’t want to discuss it. Still, once they step outside, Nanami-san is so courtly you’d think he treats her like a sacred deity every hour of the day.
It reminds me—just in passing—of the time Gojo-san teased him about that. He said, “I don’t know why, but you give me the vibe of a guy who pins them to the wall, yanks their hair, and takes them from behind,” to which Nanami-san gave no verbal answer, but his ears went a shade redder. That was answer enough for Gojo-san—and for me.
Right now they look like a pair of schoolkids until Minato cuts in with a shout, like, “That’s enough, Mom, Dad!” Ino-kun chuckles as if he understands the twins perfectly. Even smiling, a small shadow passes over his face. I notice these things. I always do.
“Can you take Katsumi and the boys home, Ino-kun?” Nanami-san asks, handing over the keys to her sports car.
“You know I can, Nanami-san,” he says. The twins cling to him like he’s their own big brother. “Shall we, Katsumi-san?”
“See you, Junpei, Ijichi-kun. I’ll be waiting at home, love.”
The twins are out cold as soon as they’re buckled into their car seats—it’s late for them. Off go Ino-kun and Katsumi-san.
Then it’s our turn. Like the first time, Junpei takes the back seat and dozes off a few minutes later. Thankfully, he gave us his address.
Nanami-san insists on driving. We blew past “office hours” ages ago, and he won’t make me rack up more assistant overtime, so he takes the wheel and leaves me riding shotgun. I hadn’t seen him drive in months.
“Yoshino-kun…” he calls—but the kid has fallen hard asleep. No wonder; we just mended a compound leg injury. “I don’t want to leave him to his fate, Ijichi-kun.”
“I agree,” I tell him. “How can I help?”
“He can already see Cursed Energy, so he could enter the School easily, right? I honestly think his life could be better…”
“You’re sure he isn’t a delinquent getting payback?” I ask.
“He gave me the same impression Okkotsu-kun did the first time I saw him,” he says, driving smooth. “And even if he faked concern for his mother—which I doubt—the torment in his eyes is real. If it goes on, it could end in tragedy… You never know what kind of scum he might run into next.”
“You care for him, sincerely. I think I do too,” I say, watching the passing streetlights. “Seeing him is like being back in my own junior high. Kids pick a target and never let go. It wasn’t obvious with me, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t cruel. When you’re the target of bullying, there’s blood, tears, sometimes even urine and feces. Kids always find horrible ways to hurt people.”
His house is small. It seems just right for mother and son—no one else lives there. When we knock, his mother opens the door, wary—until she sees him. Then she runs forward, tears streaming, and crushes him in a hug.
“I thought something happened to you, idiot! What about your phone? Why didn’t you answer?”
“Mom, Mom! It’s okay. These are Kento-san and Kiyotaka-san, they’re… they’re police, Mom,” Junpei lies.
Mrs. Yoshino is more suspicious than her son—she’s not buying “police.” Thankfully, Yaga-san worked with Metro Government so we second-grade-and-up folks have official badges now; we’ve tried to get rid of IDs ever since Geto-san mined Yuta Okkotsu’s life out of his.
I’m ready to pull ours from the briefcase when she asks:
“Is there something you officers need to talk about…?”
“As a matter of fact, yes,” I say, pushing my glasses up to hide my nerves. “I know it’s late, but we won’t take more than thirty minutes. May we come in?”
Junpei seems to realize we’re going to spell everything out to his mother—both times we met him—and he looks terrified. Still, I think Nanami-san and I agree: better he hate us for telling her than end up worse.
“Please, officers,” Mrs. Yoshino says, opening the way. We follow her and her son inside.
It’s old and a bit gloomy, but full of love and charm. Junpei’s hair is the same straight jet-black as his mother’s—hers curls at the tips. Both have faint circles under their eyes; if we didn’t know better, we might think they were siblings.
“Beer? It’s late and I don’t have much to offer.”
“…Probably not appropriate to drink in the home of two civilians,” says Nanami-san—though our shift ended hours ago. “Don’t worry, ma’am. I’m Nanami Kento. This is Ijichi Kiyotaka.”
“Pleasure,” I add.
“May we sit? We need to discuss something important.”
“You seem rather stern,” she says—Katsumi used to say the same when she first met Nanami-san, and she had reasons. “I’m Nagi Yoshino. Go to your room, Junpei, the officers—”
“It’s better if Yoshino-kun stays, ma’am,” Nanami-san says. He sits when she gestures to the dining nook.
She takes the chair across from him; Junpei and I sit in the remaining two. Silence presses for a few long seconds; then Nanami-san begins:
“Both Ijichi-kun and I are posted officers at the prestigious Tokyo Metropolitan Technical College of Religion. Our duty is to watch the grounds and serve as guides and guards to the students,” he says—close enough to the truth. “We recently encountered your son, Junpei Yoshino-kun, and realized he possesses a key aptitude for a full scholarship to study at our School for four years. He’d graduate around nineteen or twenty, then either attend university or serve as an officer with us.”
“A key aptitude?” Nagi-san asks. Junpei is still staring, as if to keep us from telling her about the beatings.
“He can… see… beyond what most people can,” Nanami-san stumbles briefly, then continues. “The School’s program is thorough, but it’s only open to those under sixteen who can grasp our… worldview.”
“Is that so? But Junpei just started high school.” She’s about to shut us down. “And I’m sure you’ll ask for money at some point. You could be scammers…”
“You can visit us,” he insists. “We need Yoshino-kun—he could be a great ally. Students receive full room and board and a stipend for duties matched to their development. We’re sanctioned by the Metro Government and all paperwork is in order, so we can guarantee our legitimacy…”
“The new intake already began, but recruitment is flexible—we get very few candidates, and they come from all over Japan,” I add. “We have a sister campus in Kyoto; kids from the south usually study there.”
“But Junpei… Son, is this something you want?”
He looks from us to her. He seems grateful we haven’t said a word about the bullying or his new sight. Maybe that’s why he nods and says, “Can we give it a chance? I want to see where they work.”
“Mmm. I don’t know. I still think it’s a scam,” Nagi-san sighs. She searches our eyes for a lie, but we only want Junpei out of that school before it breaks him. “Give me an address and a contact number. We’ll be in touch.”
We can’t push further; we both know it. If she decides to keep him at his school, we’ll have to find another plan—or let him go. If we tried to “save” every bullied kid, it would swallow us whole.
Nanami-san writes the School’s address on a sheet, then his mobile and mine. We reiterate the invitation; she almost shows us out—late as it is—so we take our leave.
On the way back to Roppongi, we’re both deadly serious.
“I don’t think we were very convincing,” is all Nanami-san says as we drive toward home.
Chapter 24: The Unasked-for Disciple
Chapter Text
Katsumi-san and Ino-kun ask about Yoshino-san for a few weeks, but in the end we force ourselves to let it go. I suppose things improved for him, because he never contacted us or came back to the patisserie.
In June the new first-year group “fills out.” Megumi Fushiguro, son of the terrifying Toji Zen’in, is the first to arrive at the dorms. He’s phlegmatic and fussy—the polar opposite of his brilliant handler, Gojo-san.
Fushiguro-kun is sent out to the sticks to retrieve a Cursed Object, one of Ryomen Sukuna’s twenty fingers. The School’s been hunting them for years; whenever we locate one, it has to be brought in and secured.
Instead, not only does Fushiguro-kun fail the mission even with Gojo-san supervising, he comes back to Tokyo with a weird, buff high-schooler who ate the Cursed Object. Now he’s the vessel of the King of Curses—and worse, that Curse can manifest through his body. His name is Yuji Itadori.
When Gojo-san pleads his case to the higher-ups, I get a faint déjà vu of last year and the name Yuta Okkotsu. He and Rika-chan already gave me terror and anxiety attacks; now I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with the actual King of Curses sealed inside a sixteen-year-old.
The last student—and only girl—is Nobara Kugisaki. She’s radiant and bold. She looks a lot like a young Ieiri-san, especially the haircut and those bright eyes.
She and Fushiguro-kun seem to get along well with Sukuna’s vessel, which makes this whole situation feel a little less dire.
On July 3 we celebrate Nanami-san’s birthday. Katsumi-san and her father make a three-tier cake covered in exquisite buttercream, plus a huge banquet spread through the Kento living room and kitchen.
When Nanami-san, Ino-kun, and I arrive from work, everyone’s already there: Katsumi-san, her parents, her friends, Ieiri-san, Gojo-san, and Inumaki-kun as well. Panda and Maki-san are on a mission, so they’re absent. And since Fushiguro-kun & Co. don’t know about Nanami-san’s family, it’s better not to have more people from the School around.
The littles now have their own area, a spot everyone can see with toys, wards, and soft nooks so they can be comfortable. Katsumi-san has dressed them to match their nicknames. Akira’s in a romper that makes him look like a chick, and Minato looks like a sunny-side-up egg.
We surprise Nanami-san with a loud, “Happy birthday!” from everyone present.
It’s a party we needed. He greets everyone, including his in-laws. But the moment the babies see him, they go wild. They’ve learned his schedule all too well.
Minato crawls almost all the way out of his penned area—startling everyone, since he’s so small and no one expects him to move that fast. Then, right before our eyes, he pushes up to his feet, hands raised toward Nanami-san—and before he can plop down on his butt, Nanami-san is laughing and scooping him up.
For a few seconds the serious, curt, impassive Nanami vanishes, replaced by a man who lifts his nine-month-old high and beams, elated. A happy man. A man content.
Akira bursts into tears because, for the first time, he isn’t getting Dad’s attention.
“Forgive me, Akira—come here,” he says.
“’Pá!” Akira sobs. “Pa… pá!”
The twins’ grandparents are crying.
“Call Ichiro!” Grandpa demands. “Akira just said his first word!”
Katsumi-san is crying in the kitchen, overwhelmed by her boys’ progress. It’s the first time Minato has sought out his dad of his own accord—and not only that, it’s the first time Akira tries to form a word.
I suppose for Nanami-san and every sorcerer present, life’s beauty is something we can remember every time we picture those twins clinging to their father. The joy in simple things—a birthday, a family gathering. Things practically forbidden to sorcerers.
Late July, everything seems to nosedive when Yuji Itadori is killed by the Curse possessing him. Luckily, Gojo-san, Ieiri-san, and I witness his resurrection—but you can’t just stroll out and say, “Actually, he didn’t die.”
Gojo-san insists on hiding Itadori-kun for a while. After all, what Gakuganji-san and the rest of the old men want is for him not to exist.
Now I’m juggling two secrets: the existence of Katsumi-san and her children, and the fact that Itadori-kun is actually alive. I have to keep both safe—especially the part about two natural Positive Energy users who are learning to walk and talk.
In early September a report crosses my desk about a strange attack on three students… in Kawasaki. The moment I see the location I read carefully, bracing for the worst. And the worst is confirmed after a short read: three Satozakura Junior High students died of intracranial pressure due to a sudden mutation. The only witness: another Satozakura student named Junpei Yoshino. I recognize him on the CCTV—bolting from the darkened theater, terrified.
I run too—but to inform Nanami-san. Even if Yoshino-kun didn’t want involvement with us, his name on that report has dragged him neck-deep into our swamp.
“They might try to assign one of Gojo-san’s students,” Nanami-san says, methodical. “Tell him I’ll take the case.”
“At once!”
Gojo-san grins at the offer. “I get to rest a little!” he whoops, overjoyed.
Soon after I learn the real play: Gojo-san brings Itadori-kun and Nanami-san together. Until now they hadn’t met—Itadori-kun “died” shortly before Nanami-san’s birthday.
Itadori-kun gets invited to the abandoned prep school that serves as Nanami-san’s outpost, but that’s it. The office has changed a lot over the years, by the way. The walls are still gray and the artificial light still makes the air feel heavy, but there are traces of Katsumi-san everywhere.
Horror and thriller movie posters (her favorites), waxed cloths, fantasy and horror books (also her favorites), and a coat rack where Nanami-san can hang his crisply pressed jackets. If someone rummaged thoroughly, they’d find a few of her notes taped under his desk—or that his phone has gigabytes of photos and videos of his wife and children.
Fortunately, Itadori-kun isn’t nosy—beyond asking whether the severe, buttoned-up Nanami Kento even watches movies.
“I picture him in a mansion, spinning classical music on a turntable while sipping wine,” he says, twirling an imaginary glass.
I bite back a laugh, because nothing could be further from the truth. His home is a chaos of bread and cookie dough, a five-million-yen Rilakkuma-and-friends collection (plus Panda’s donations), baby toys, and an infinite loop of “Donguri Korokoro.” The twins’ latest obsession, in fact, is the Anpanman march.
Sometimes even Katsumi-san gets sick of the music and prefers total silence.
Nanami-san doesn’t drink wine or nibble camembert in a silk robe while the turntable plays, but he does have a private vinyl collection and a bottomless sea of books. Between Katsumi-san, Ino-kun, and Nanami himself, that library gets two or three new volumes a week—though I don’t think he’s had time to read any. He hasn’t even managed to have a wedding ceremony.
Itadori-kun doesn’t know we’ve met Junpei Yoshino and his mother in person. We think it’s for the best. The moment feelings get tangled with work is the moment you lose sight of your purpose. That’s why Nanami-san didn’t push to contact them.
Even so, he worries in his own way. Both of us hope Yoshino-kun hasn’t turned into a Cursed User. That could be disastrous—he could lead straight to the fact there’s an uncertified sorcerer who can use Reversed Cursed Technique almost as well as Shoko Ieiri, and that she has a pair of twins who possess no Cursed Energy at all.
No one knows what the consequences of those children’s existence might be, so not even Yaga-san has wanted to bring it up. As long as they act and seem like normal kids, I suppose everyone will look the other way.
When we finally spot Junpei Yoshino walking near his home, he’s in street clothes. This surprises Itadori-kun, but Junpei hasn’t attended school in a while. I guess he couldn’t mesh with his classmates and ended up dropping out. Also, I don’t know if Itadori-kun can see it, but Junpei’s hands carry an abnormal Trace, like he’s been in contact with whatever mutated those three boys’ heads—boys who, conveniently, were some of his bullies.
I brief Itadori-kun on the mission: we’ll use a fly-head to recreate one of four hypothetical cases. In the first, if Junpei has lost the ability to perceive Curses, you help him. In the second, the same—he might perceive the fly-head but be unable to defend himself.
The third case is the scary one: if Junpei manages to exorcise the Curse on his own, we apprehend him on the spot.
“By force?” Itadori asks.
“By force.”
And in the fourth case, we run and call Nanami-san. Though since he’s already found the culprit’s lair, we shouldn’t be bothering him right then.
We get out with the cage and the little Curse. While I’m staring at it, I remember the experiment years ago to determine Katsumi-san’s abilities. We duck behind cover as we draw level with Junpei, and I crack the cage to release the Curse—but when Itadori-kun says, “Ah, there’s someone else,” it’s too late; the Curse is already loose.
He handles it well enough. Junpei doesn’t react with hostility to the Curse or show any powers of his own. A moment later, Itadori yanks the pants off a passerby and sprints away with them. I freeze, stunned. Seconds later he reappears from the far corner—like he looped the block—shoots me a confident grin, and heads straight for Junpei.
Well, he seems to have it under control, so I retreat to the car to wait for news.
For better or worse, I’m not someone who can take on even the weakest Curses. If they choose to flee or hide, I can’t keep up. All I can do is watch them go.
Like right now. I know my phone is ringing, but I’ve got to snag the Curse that popped out as I headed for the car. Even if I can’t exorcise it, I can at least trap it so someone else can deal with it.
Once I do, I head back. I’ve missed a call from Itadori-kun, so I dial him back. He answers immediately.
“Hey, Ijichi-kun, I’m at Yoshino’s house.”
“At his house?” I’m rattled. We were supposed to probe his ties to the culprit… “Doesn’t that seem a bit—?”
“Relax… Anyway, I’m gonna have dinner.”
“ Dinner?! I’m coming right away. If anything weird happens, get out fast.”
This carefree child, I think. Even if Junpei were responsible for the attacks, I doubt he could kill Itadori-kun outright, but I have to hurry and pick him up.
Still, I’ve made a serious mistake as his handler. The carefree Gojo-san wouldn’t care, but if the stern Nanami-san scolds me for this… I’ll definitely end up crying!
I glance in the rearview mirror—fear in my eyes, sweat beading my brow. I’m done for if Nanami finds out, I’m done for if Nanami finds out, I’m done for if Nana—
“Hurry up! Now! You don’t want to cry in front of another adult, do you?!” I bark at myself, firing up the engine.
Right then my phone rings again. Not Itadori-kun. The last person I want just now.
“He called sooner than I thought! I’m gonna get chewed out!” KENTO NANAMI flashes on my screen. My hand shakes as I answer. “Hi—sorry,” I blurt the instant the line opens.
Idiot, he doesn’t even know yet.
“Huh?” Nanami-san sounds faintly perplexed, then continues, “I sent you my location. Come pick me up, please. I need to get back to school for treatment from Ieiri-san.”
“Treatment?” I ask, alarmed. He has a wife at home who could handle lesser injuries, but I suppose the last thing he wants is to worry her.
“Don’t worry—it isn’t life-threatening. Katsumi and the kids would be nervous if I walked in like this.”
“Thank goodness,” I exhale. “I’ll rendezvous with Itadori-kun and then swing by for you.”
“He isn’t with you?”
I’m an idiot… At least he’s busy enough not to fixate on me. I breathe slowly; maybe he’ll save the lecture for later.
Once I’ve calmed down, I floor it toward Junpei’s house. He recognizes me at once—and, curiously, doesn’t greet me. On the contrary, he pretends not to know me. I guess he really wants nothing to do with us.
I pretend too, for all our sakes. If he was only at the scene by chance, there’s no need to tangle further. Even so, Itadori-kun sings his praises, just like Katsumi-san did when she first met him.
On the drive back to the School, Itadori keeps sneaking looks at the back seat, where Nanami-san is reclined, pressing a hand to his wound.
“What is it?” Nanami asks without turning.
Itadori stiffens and shoots me a surprised look. I shrug and keep my eyes on the road.
“What’s your house like, Nanamin? I got curious.”
Nanami sighs. The nickname grates on him, but it’s too late to change it. Even so, I can see the light in his eyes in the mirror.
“It’s a big, warm house, full of light and noise. Lots of color. It always smells good. I wasn’t even thinking about my own tastes when I bought it.”
“Oooh… I still can’t picture it. Doesn’t sound like you.”
“What am I like?”
“Uh… a little stern and boring?”
Nanami laughs—honestly—for the first time since he met the boy. I suppose with age he’s come to find it funny that his first impression is “strict, inflexible man,” when nothing could be further from the truth. He’s the most affectionate, gentle, loving person I’ve ever known.
Though he can’t sing and he hates noodles.
Itadori-kun must think his mentor’s snapped, because he gawks like he can’t believe he’s hearing laughter. I laugh too—at the kid’s expense—and feel a twinge of shame remembering I was scared of him when we first met.
Chapter 25: Satozakura Incident
Chapter Text
One day.
Just a single day was enough for everything to spin out of control. Junpei Yoshino had become a Cursed User and took his entire school hostage. At his house we found the body of Nagi Yoshino, along with Sukuna’s second left pinky. There were Traces of sorcery everywhere, and we believe spirits drawn by Sukuna’s finger attacked Nagi Yoshino. Everything below her waist was missing. No trace of blood was found at the scene, and Nagi Yoshino’s body lay in her bedroom. When we lifted the sheets, bags of ice were covering the corpse.
Even though Nanami-san had already identified Mahito as the culprit behind the mutations in the theater incident—and as the likely mastermind behind Nagi Yoshino’s murder—Yaga-san issued an execution order for Junpei Yoshino. The worst-case scenario.
Nanami-san and I deliberated for weeks about whether to go after him by force. If we’d been more decisive, Nagi would still be alive and Junpei would be safe with us.
Even so, we couldn’t keep wringing our hands. We had to act, and fast. I was about to leave the College with Nanami-san, nervous about what might happen, when Itadori-kun intercepted us in the corridor.
He didn’t want to believe Junpei Yoshino was responsible for the hostage situation. Maybe he was being manipulated. Well, even if that were true, we already knew he had hurt several people. Our code as sorcerers orders us to kill for less than that.
Nanami-san told me to go ahead and prep the car while he folded his arms and confronted Itadori-kun. He usually doesn’t brace himself like that; maybe he was afraid his frustration—and the faint attachment he felt for Junpei Yoshino—would make him lose his temper in front of the worst possible person.
Itadori-kun wears everything on his face: a furrowed brow, dull eyes, lips turned down. His whole expression screams disagreement, pent-up fury. And although my first thought was that he’d come to plead for Junpei Yoshino, I couldn’t have been more wrong, because the boy said:
“You’re hurt, right? Take me with you next time. ‘My partner died, but I couldn’t be there for him. Why? Because I’m just a kid.’ I don’t ever want to have to say something like that.”
Nanami-san’s face tightened further. I knew he was remembering Yuu Haibara. Remembering Geto-san. I knew he was thinking about how hard it was for Gojo-san to deliver the killing blow to his best friend, even if he was an evil sorcerer who’d murdered countless people. I knew he was thinking about his wife—and above all, the twins—and how he didn’t want that cursed, uncertain future for them.
I also knew Nanami-san had already grown fond of Itadori-kun. He’s a bright, stubborn kid who wins people over; it’s impossible not to get attached.
“No means no,” Nanami-san said, as firm as he has always been with him. “As you already know, the enemy is a patchwork of scraps that manipulates and uses human beings. Many of its victims can no longer be saved. In this job, the time will come when you must kill other people.” Itadori-kun’s face collapsed into shock and pain. “But that time is not now. Please understand.” He lowered his gaze, holding back tears—pouting, just like Minato when he can’t see his father anywhere. “Being a child isn’t a sin. I’d appreciate it if you kept watch over Junpei Yoshino.”
Around two in the afternoon, when a Veil was reported over Satozakura High, Nanami-san wasn’t even nearby. He had gone out with Ino-kun to investigate yesterday’s battleground. That left only Itadori-kun near me.
Itadori-kun called Nanami-san immediately, anxious. Luckily, he answered.
“I’m going in, Nanamin,” he said the moment the line connected.
“You can’t, I already told you this morning,” Nanami-san’s voice echoed down the hall, reverberating in the silence. “Since there’s a Veil at the scene, Mahito is very likely alive and inside Satozakura High. I’ll be back right away. Be patient and wait there, Itadori-kun.”
Itadori-kun hung up on him. I’m sure Nanami-san took it as an affront—or perhaps he tried to be patient with Itadori-kun because he knows that in fifteen years he’ll live through the same thing again, only doubled.
The boy turned toward me, but I was already blocking the corridor. Not that I could do anything to stop him. I’m little more than an assistant with the gift of seeing Curses, whereas he had superhuman speed and strength long before becoming Sukuna Ryomen’s vessel.
“Move, Mr. Ijichi,” he said, very seriously. Sometimes I think he’s a grown man in a teenager’s body. Sometimes I even catch myself thinking he could be one of the twins.
“Our job is to help others. And that includes those who are still students, like you.” My voice shook. I hadn’t helped Junpei Yoshino at all. I’d just let everything slip through our fingers. I remembered, in passing, that I couldn’t even protect Itadori-kun when it mattered and Sukuna killed him. One way or another, I had already failed both boys. “I won’t make the same mistake again. You must not go, Itadori-kun.”
He didn’t meet my eyes as he sprinted past. He knew he was doing wrong and disappointing not only me but also Nanami-san, yet his loyalty and sense of duty outweighed his respect for authority.
Me too. I should be like him. I’ve been in this world ten years; he’s been here only a few months. How can he be so decisive, steady, and noble? Is it because he has a power that helps him have the confidence I lack?
I’m just an assistant. And what good have I been to Itadori-kun and Nanami-san in this matter? I haven’t helped in the slightest.
So I called Nanami-san for the first time in a long while. He’s always the one who calls me first. It felt so strange to hear the ring and then his deep, puzzled voice.
“Hello? Did something happen, Ijichi-kun?”
“The blood vials,” I managed. “According to the report, the Curse called Mahito can modify the soul by touching the body. What if the vials are the solution?”
Nanami-san was silent for so long I was afraid the call had dropped, or that he’d hung up. He’d had those vials hanging from his belt for nine months and hadn’t even opened them. Using them meant using his wife’s blood for the same ends the higher-ups would pursue if they found out she existed. I knew that.
“Is anyone else around you?” he asked. I knew he was holding back the urge to shout at me.
“I’m alone. I made sure of it.”
“Don’t you dare ever mention anything related to her again.” Then he hung up.
I let out the tension in a sigh. Nanami-san is terrifying when he yells, but he inspires an insane dread in me when he doesn’t explode and instead scolds me with words dripping anger. He’s never like that with Katsumi-san; to some extent I envy her—she’ll never have to see her husband reprimand her the way he does me.
There’s an unspoken rule among Yaga-san, Ieiri-san, and the rest of us—including Nanami-san and me. Everyone who knows about Katsumi and the Kento twins is obliged not to say anything even remotely related to them at school. Even over the phone, in the furthest corner from listening ears.
Walls have ears, of course. I know some people wonder about the little case Nanami-san carries at his waist. No one talks about it, but even Itadori-kun has noticed it. Sooner or later, no matter how hard we try—even if we weigh every step, every word, every whisper—the secret of Nanami-san’s family will come out.
I hope it’s not soon.
Heart in my throat, I turned to run for the car and catch up to Itadori-kun. But he was no longer on campus. Had he actually started running all the way to Kawasaki? I hoped not, but knowing his impulsiveness, I began preparing myself.
About half an hour later I finally spotted him. He really was running! Out of breath and drenched in sweat, Itadori-kun was tearing down the road at a monstrous speed. I honked several times until the kid gave in and stopped, hands on his knees as he tried to drag air into his lungs.
“Get in,” I told him, and he did immediately. He knew he couldn’t run all the way to Kawasaki, even if he could match a car’s speed. “Before we head there, we need weapons.”
“Are you serious?”
“Very serious… But first,” I turned toward him and fixed him with as stern a look as I could muster—which isn’t much, because even my confidence fails me at important moments. “Swear on your life… No, that’s too dramatic… Just swear you won’t tell anyone. Not even Nanami-san.”
“Nanamin?”
“Swear it!”
“I swear! I swear neither Sukuna nor I will say anything!”
“This filthy brat…” Sukuna’s voice came from a tiny, fanged mouth that opened on the boy’s face. Disgusting—and terrifying.
My face went blue while the little mouth laughed, then said, “Fine. I’m not interested in this useless fool’s secret,” and vanished again.
“Don’t do that again,” I said, trying to calm down.
“I can’t actually control that. It’s like when you need to let out a fart.”
An… interesting analogy, I must say. Despite the circumstances, Itadori-kun smiled at his own joke. I wish he could always be the goofy, silly kid hidden beneath all those muscles.
Chapter 26: Nanami's wife
Chapter Text
On the way to Kawasaki, a certain bakery sits just off our route. I scan the area, wondering if Nanami-san might’ve swung by before heading to the school, but it doesn’t add up. He’d been near Junpei Yoshino’s place yesterday—doubling back to Roppongi just to see his wife would be absurd.
Itadori-kun gawks at the storefront: the cakes look divine, there’s laughter, the clink of cutlery against plates. Paper flowers crowd the windows. The whole place smells like bread, cream, frosting, and coffee.
Inside, right by the counter, there’s a small warded playpen where two babies are playing. One is blond like his father; the other has his mother’s brown hair and intense blue eyes like his paternal great-grandfather, who was Danish. The moment they see me they both start babbling: “Ijiji! Ijiji!”
“Ijichi-kun!” Katsumi-san exclaims when she spots me; then she notices Itadori at my side. “Hello! It’s been a while since I’ve seen that uniform. Are you in the same year as Maki-chan and the others?”
“Maki… Zenin? She’s my senpai,” Itadori answers, still staring at the overflow of Positive Energy radiating from her and the kids—and at the Veil wrapped around the bakery. He leans close and whispers, “Hey, Ijichi-kun, who is she?”
“Come on, boys, have a slice of cake,” she says.
“Oh, we’re just passing through—thanks for the offer, Katsumi-san. We need to speak in private.”
“Nanami called me earlier. He said you’d probably come with a boy,” she says, smiling. “Come on, Shoko taught me how to prep everything.”
My hand flies to my mouth. It never occurred to me Nanami-san would predict my thinking.
“Seriously, who is she?” Itadori asks, louder now.
We follow Katsumi behind the counter. There are customers, but no one waiting at the register, so we can leave the floor unattended for a few minutes.
“You’ve surely got time for a little tea and cookies,” she chirps.
“Not today, Katsumi-san. I’m sorry.”
She looks a touch let down, but does her best not to show it.
“So, what brings you here, Ijichi-kun, Itadori-kun?”
“You know me?”
“Of course!” Her smile returns. “Nanami never stops talking about you. I was so jealous until he clarified you’re a student at the School.”
That’s when Itadori connects the dots. He hears the babies babbling out front, sees the young, pretty shopkeeper, and blurts, “You’re the pork-bowl!”
Katsumi’s smile vanishes. “…What?”
“Nanamin once said he wanted pork bowl. And, well, your name is Katsumi… Katsudon… it tracks.”
I want to laugh, but that’ll only make it worse. For a second, she looks like the young and slightly immature girl she still is. She’s only twenty-seven, already raising twins, running a bakery, and married to a strange man who provides for the household by hunting Curses. Strip all that away and she’s still a young woman who hates having her name linked to katsudon.
“That idiot Nanami,” she snaps for the first time since giving birth. I slip up and snort; she shoots me a look. “It’s not funny! This won’t stand. He’s going to hear it when he gets home.”
“Are you his girlfriend, Katsumin? No—wait—the kids look way too much like him. Are you his wife?”
“Bingo!” The new nickname doesn’t even seem to bother her. “And don’t bring up katsudon again, please.”
“Call me Yuuji. Sorry, Katsumin. Won’t happen again.”
“All right then—what happened that made you come?”
I’d hoped to stretch out the preamble, but introductions are done. They’re already on first names and nicknames five minutes in. There’s nothing to gain by waiting, so I take a breath and lay it out: “An execution order has been issued for Junpei Yoshino. His mother was murdered, and we suspect his entire high school is currently sealed under a Veil with a very powerful spirit inside. A lot of people could die.”
“Junpei?” she says, horrified, as if I’d just said one of her sons’ names. “Nanami told me things were fine with him. How is this…?”
“Guess Nanamin can lie for people’s sake too.”
For the first time, Katsumi seems disappointed in Nanami. Maybe it’s the first time she realizes he hides things.
“I know he didn’t want me to worry… No—more like, I know he didn’t want me getting involved.” A tear slips down her cheek before she looks us in the eyes. “Junpei’s a good kid. I’m sure we can look after him. Can you take me to him?”
“No!” Itadori and I shout in unison.
“Are you crazy, Katsumin? I promised I wouldn’t say a word about you. I’m not even supposed to know you exist—same with the kids.”
“Nanami will kill me if you get within a hundred meters of Satozakura. Absolutely not.”
“Then I know exactly what you want from me right now, and I’ll give it to you—on one condition,” she says, pulling a metal case of fresh vials from a cabinet, topped by a syringe in its wrapper. “Bring Junpei Yoshino back to me safe and sound.”
Right before our eyes, Katsumi Kento slides the needle into the crook of her elbow and fills six vials with her own blood. Her face pales, the color drains from her lips, but she stays steady.
“I’m sure you’ve noticed I’m a bit abnormal, Yuuji,” she says as she slots the vials into a small metal rack and tucks everything into a leather case. “I naturally produce far too much Cursed Energy. I’ve been told it’s enough to give that idiot Gojo a fight. But that energy tormented me—I couldn’t live in peace. Shoko taught me the Reverse Cursed Technique, and I’ve kept it active ever since. My babies don’t possess any Cursed Energy at all because they were carried and born fully under the Technique. That means my blood, imbued with Positive Energy, is highly lethal poison to Curses.”
Itadori lifts a hand to his cheek—right where Sukuna’s rude little mouth tends to appear. This time the mouth opens on the back of his hand, grinning. Katsumi blanches and staggers back, nearly dropping the blood case.
“I think I am interested in this useless man’s secret,” Sukuna purrs, clearly amused. “But I can only do so much in a single minute. Will that be enough to devour you, girl?”
“Jerk, I made a promise and I’m keeping it! Let’s go, Ijichi-kun!”
“I haven’t promised anything,” the mouth looks elated; a single eye unfurls above it. “In fact, why devour her when I could sire offspring with her instead? You know the drill: nine months and she’ll bear invincible beings…”
Itadori snatches a vial—glass, so it’ll shatter if a fight leaves no time to unscrew a cap—and smashes it against his neck, where Sukuna’s face has almost fully manifested. A strange scream tears out of Itadori as a vapor of Positive Energy engulfs him. A few burning seconds later, the curse’s mouth and eye are gone from his skin.
“Is he dead?” Katsumi asks, horrified to see her own blood splashed on a teenager.
“Of course not, but I bet I scared him good. You hear that scream?” Itadori grins, pleased as if he’d won the lottery. “For him, maybe it’s just a jab he’ll recover from fast, but I felt a massive Positive discharge through my body. This is definitely going to help if that spirit really sealed the school in a Veil.”
Katsumi and I exchange a look. We agree: this kid is crazy in his own way—and maybe that’s because he’s been trained on the side by Tokyo’s craziest sorcerer. When Itadori steps out to greet the twins, Katsumi leans over and whispers, “Remind me never to let Satoru Gojo teach the boys anything.”
Curiously, the babies don’t cry or fuss around him. They take his hands, alert and even smiling. And Itadori—confident Sukuna will keep quiet for a while—lifts both at once to get a better look.
“They’re the spitting image of Nanamin. If he’s got a hot wife and kids, why’s he so stiff? He should relax.”
Katsumi wears a nervous smile until he puts the boys back in their playpen. The kid isn’t offended—he flat-out admits he wouldn’t have gone near them if he thought Sukuna might act up.
We pile back into the car with only five blood vials left and a dry stain on Itadori’s uniform. Time is tight. According to the local Windows, someone’s entered the school—a figure in black with a huge jellyfish floating around him.
It’s Junpei Yoshino.
“We have to stop him before he kills someone, Itadori-kun. If that boy kills or irreversibly harms anyone, Nanami won’t hesitate to execute him on the spot.”
Katsumi Kento trusted us with her blood on one condition: bring the boy back safe. We’re both determined to do it. I’m more than determined. I don’t want to fail as an adult ever again.
Chapter 27: Losses
Chapter Text
Silence is almost absolute. Thankfully there are no civilians nearby: the Windows and the police have lied about a raid after “someone” announced a shooting inside the school.
That doesn’t happen in Japan. It’s nearly impossible for an average middle-class student with no connections to obtain a firearm. Even the yakuza have a hard time. Even we sorcerers live under regulations—the key one being that our bullets can’t harm humans.
Some citizens are skeptical, but respect for the police still holds. Neighbors keep their distance—even if they don’t buy the story—so there’s no need to hide Itadori-kun as he carefully slips the vials into his jacket pockets.
“I’ll go in, grab Junpei even if I have to force him, and come back,” he promises, resolute. “Don’t enter, Ijichi-kun. I don’t want you in danger.”
A teenager—practically a child—protecting an adult. I couldn’t feel more pathetic if I tried. I only manage a nod and leave everything in his hands.
As soon as Itadori-kun steps through the Veil, things turn catastrophic. Shattering glass, detonations, his desperate shouts as he fights. He sounds… furious. I fear the worst has already happened.
Nanami-san arrives in his own car and doesn’t bother to shut the door or look at me. He sprints past, draws the axe from his back, and disappears into the Veil.
Again, catastrophe. Noise and commotion. A normal human sees a perfectly ordinary school, unmarred; we, however, can hear, see, and feel the Veil—and if we went in we could witness what’s actually happening.
No one wants to go in. Mahito has been confirmed inside—the patchwork Curse that can reshape a body with a touch. Of course no one wants to go in.
At some point, all we can hear is Itadori-kun screaming in helpless rage as he pounds on something that sounds hollow. A wall? No. A barrier… a Domain Expansion.
For the first time in years I press my hands together and pray—to Buddha, to God, to Vishnu. Losing two comrades helps no one. Losing Nanami-san would shatter his family. And the whole world would drown in fire and blood if Sukuna Ryomen seized full control of Itadori-kun’s soul. Things could not look worse. Of all times, why isn’t Gojo-san here?
I pray and pray until tears slide down my face. I know I can’t do anything. I know I’m no match for anyone. I’m a man pushing thirty whose best skill is advanced Excel. I’m utterly useless as a sorcerer—almost a civilian.
Another enormous report—like an overfilled balloon bursting. A crash toward some kind of storm drain, and then Nanami-san’s voice, far off. I can’t make out his words, and I don’t care. I thank every god I know: Nanami-san and Itadori-kun are alive.
Nanami-san starts shouting Itadori-kun’s name in panic. I revert to the worst thoughts. Outside, a witness without standing, I don’t even know what’s happening. No more.
I clench my eyes shut, ball my fists, and step into the Veil. One second later, the Veil lifts and all the Windows rush in at a run. I’m nothing but a cowardly, scrawny assistant.
I run with them. There’s heavy property damage, but nothing the School and the Government can’t pay for. We find Itadori-kun on the floor with multiple wounds—holes clean through him. He’s bleeding out; Ieiri-san is rushed to the scene.
All the students, teachers, and the principal are in the gymnasium, unconscious. On the stage, purple with bruises and covered in blows, lies a single student. He’s alive.
Near the second-floor stairs, Nanami-san and Ieiri-san find another injured student, face-down on a pile of shattered glass and blood. He’s completely naked. My heart freezes.
He’s limp, barely breathing. Burn marks from repeated cigarettes dot his forehead, and a red blotch runs from his left cheek down his torso. Ieiri-san fingers his neck for a pulse, rises in silence, and announces, “He’s alive. Barely. His body carries the same Rastro I saw on Nanami-kun yesterday. And this blood… This blood isn’t his. I doubt it belongs to anyone else here. It doesn’t look like the Curse’s blood either.”
Nanami-san and I trade a look. I know he’ll yell at me, but my decision saved a life today—and I’m more than satisfied. I’d do it again and again.
There are three altered bodies near the third floor. Small and grotesque—but we all know they were once human. We treat them as they deserve, sealing them in black bags as the corpses they now are.
Ambulances, paramedics, detectives, and forensics arrive an hour later. Three ambulances carry off Itadori-kun, Shota Itou, and Junpei Yoshino, while a single coroner’s van takes the three bodies found on the third floor. We explicitly request that the bags, as well as students Itadori and Yoshino, be transported to the Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical College. Shota Itou can be treated wherever civilians with money are treated.
Once the scene is scrubbed and we’ve collected all usable evidence, the detectives remain to speculate about what in the world happened. What went on at that high school for the most popular boy to end up poisoned in a gym full of people, and the kid he supposedly bullied to be found naked and dying far from the scene? How do you explain the damage? And who were those gloomy types who looked like members of some religious sect?
Detectives always ask versions of the same questions whenever Windows clean up after us to keep them from suspecting the existence of Jujutsu. It gets complicated sometimes, but we’ve been doing this for centuries—and with phones and the internet, coordination is easier.
By nightfall, Itadori-kun wakes in the infirmary, wounds closed. I suppose there’s an upside to being the vessel of the King of Curses. The boy breaks down sobbing the instant he realizes where he is. It pains me to see him like this.
Then he turns his head and sees the next bed: Junpei Yoshino, bandaged and in hospital clothes. He’s stunned.
“What? How…?”
“Turns out Katsumi-chan’s blood can reverse Curse damage,” Ieiri-san explains around a cigarette. “He’s not out of danger. His entire body was modified and then pushed back to ‘natural’ in a very short span. He almost died from the shock. He may yet not survive treatment and recovery. But right now, he’s alive.”
“Is there a way to know if he’ll make it?” Itadori’s voice is choked with grief.
“None. Don’t pin your hopes on me or on Katsumi-chan. Until now we didn’t even know Passive Mutation existed—much less that it could be undone.”
Itadori-kun stares at Junpei Yoshino for a long time. A ventilator breathes for him; an IV hangs at his side; a blood bag runs into his arm. Its label bears only two words and a date: “Prototipo EP4 – 31 de diciembre de 2018.” Still, both Itadori-kun and I understand that blood can only belong to Katsumi Kento. Roughly half a liter.
If I had to guess, I’d say that among all her stashes of alcohol, Shoko Ieiri hides liters of Positive-Energy-imbued blood for cases like this. As I understand it, Katsumi-san’s blood loses potency after a year—so that date likely marks when the charge will fade and the blood will cease to be lethal to Curses and instead become a potion of Cursed Energy.
“I’m going to circulate Katsumi-chan’s blood through his whole body. I don’t know what it’ll do, but it should help.”
As she says this, we watch another line slowly draw Junpei Yoshino’s own blood out. It’s tar-black, without hemoglobin or oxygen. He’d be another slab in the morgue if we hadn’t asked Katsumi-san for help.
Calmer, Itadori-kun gets up and leaves the infirmary without looking back. He trusts Ieiri-san, so he leaves the medicine to her and heads for the School morgue.
I accompany him in silence, but don’t enter. Nanami-san is already inside, and whatever they say isn’t my business. Still, their voices carry through the quiet space to my ears.
“You were told to rest, weren’t you?”
“And my scolding?”
“Scolding the man who saved my life would be base,” Nanami-san says. I agree.
“I saved you?”
“The patchwork spirit’s ritual meddles with the soul. When you invaded his Domain, he ended up touching Sukuna’s soul. That saved me.”
“But I didn’t switch places with him.”
“Sukuna never came out; the enemy went to him.”
“Then it wasn’t me. It was his whim.” Itadori falls quiet, then says, “Nanamin, I killed people today. Everyone dies—that’s inevitable. But I wanted them to die with dignity. That’s how I used to think. So I always looked for ways not to pull the trigger. But after doing it, I don’t understand anything anymore. What’s a dignified death?”
“Even I don’t know,” Nanami answers firmly. “We might think the good should die in peace and the bad punished, but most people aren’t good or bad. Death awaits everyone, but not everyone dies the same. Trying to guide them all to a dignified death sounds… laborious. I wouldn’t recommend it. But whatever I say, you’ll try anyway, won’t you? Just make sure you don’t die doing it. Just as I would have died if you hadn’t been there, there are many who will need you. Because you’re already a sorcerer, Itadori-kun.”
I know those words mean a lot to him. He’s been chasing Nanami-san the whole time, desperate to prove his worth as a sorcerer.
Nanami-san opens the morgue door and finds me waiting. His hand lifts—and a hard slap lands across my cheek.
“I know I can’t prevent it forever, but are you aware…?”
“Katsumi-san gave us her blood of her own will…”
“I’m not talking about that!” he shouts, on the edge of losing it. “I know that without Akira and Minato she’d have gone with you to the high school herself. I know her. I can’t stop her from intervening in School affairs. What infuriates me is that now the King of Curses himself knows she exists.”
Neither Itadori-kun nor I have told him the vile things Sukuna said in that bakery kitchen, but you can’t hide anything from a man who’s always talking with his wife. Of course Katsumi-san wouldn’t keep something like that from him. The thing talked about devouring her—and breeding with her. Of course she’d be terrified. If a simple fly-head makes her cry, I can’t imagine how she felt seeing a jeering mouth promise awful things.
He scolded me instead of Itadori-kun, but it doesn’t change my conviction that I did the right thing.
In early October, once everything was processed and filed away, Junpei Yoshino opened his eyes.
Chapter 28: Survivor
Notes:
Junpei's POV Start
Chapter Text
My heart hurts.
I know it shouldn’t. I have both legs, both arms, my eyes, my nose. The excruciating pain I felt when my body changed shape—right before I blacked out—is just a blurry memory now.
Sometimes Yuuji-kun visits. He sits beside me, looks at me for long stretches without saying anything, and then leaves. Sometimes it’s a tall, pretty woman with dark circles under her eyes who smokes like there’s no tomorrow. I hate the unmistakable smell of cigarettes and alcohol, but it reminds me of Mom, so I let it slide.
Sometimes it’s Nanami Kento, the strange man who offered me his hand that distant day. Tall, blond, tired-eyed. His ringtone is melancholy, and he has the aura of some old sage who’s lived too long.
Sometimes he radiates happiness—not like someone smiling, but literally, as if his body were covered in happiness, like a vapor, or like a Rastro. It’s her Rastro, I’m sure.
Her. Katsumi Kento.
Mrs. Katsumi was very kind to me. She fed me, laughed with me, healed my wounds, and even cried for me.
I felt something strange the third time I saw her. Nanami Kento lifted her into his arms and kissed her with passion. I felt irritated. I wanted to pull them apart, so I turned on my heel and went home, because I wasn’t sure what was happening to me.
When I got home and saw Mom, I figured it out. I’d fallen in love with Mrs. Katsumi, as absurd as that sounded. After all, I only saw Mom as Mom, but I could never see Mrs. Katsumi that way.
“So?” Mom asked me one day. “Are we going to that school to check it out?”
“Nah, I’m not interested.”
If I went to the School I’d probably see Nanami Kento, and I didn’t want to see a hair of him. I was furious with him because I couldn’t hold Mrs. Katsumi.
Mom dropped it and threw away the card with Nanami Kento’s and Assistant Kiyotaka’s contacts. A little later I got fed up with school and quit, and oddly enough, Mom supported my decision; even then she never brought the School up again, because she thought I was firm.
But I wasn’t. I’m not.
I feel Mrs. Katsumi’s Rastro everywhere. I even feel it invading me, healing me. I felt it just before I lost consciousness at the high school, and I’m feeling it right now as I open my eyes and get used to the shapes and sensations around me.
I’m wrapped in hospital clothes, and I know I’ve lost a lot of weight and muscle. My cheeks are hollow, my skin shines it’s so pale, and my hair is greasy.
“You’re a miracle, Yoshino-kun. You’re completely recovered,” Nanami Kento announces, somewhere between proud and astonished.
I want to slap him because her Rastro is on his lips. They must kiss every morning when they wake up. But I focus on what matters most right now.
“What happened?”
“You suffered a Passive Mutation and went into cardiac arrest. The Positive Energy from my wife halted the mutation and reversed it before you experienced brain death. Your blood was also completely replaced with hers. Congratulations! Now you’re a sort of… brother? of hers. You’re a bit skinny, but you’re healthy. You’d better get your strength back—Katsumi’s been wanting to see you ever since you collapsed.”
The hatred that surges up when he calls her “my wife” gives way instantly to excitement. She wants to see me. Me!
It takes me three days to recover enough to leave the infirmary. I do it all for her. Because I want to see her. I want to be near her. And I want Nanami Kento to go far away and never come back.
It’s not just because he’s Katsumi’s husband that I want him gone—it’s because I’m sick of him. He talks about sorcery, responsibilities, Cursed Energy, and a bunch of other nonsense. Talks and talks without stopping. I’m irritated—why won’t he just shut up already? I just want to get out and see Katsumi.
It’s October fifth.
As we walk the School corridors, me stewing at Nanami Kento’s chatter, two figures approach from the other end. One is a tall, slender man with white hair. He wears a black band over his eyes.
The other is Yuuji-kun. When he sees me he runs over, grinning, and squeezes me in a hug that almost cracks my ribs. He lifts me into the air, laughing. He’s genuinely happy to see me, so I mirror his smile.
It feels like I haven’t smiled in years.
“Hmmm,” the white-haired man makes a strange face, as if examining me. He looks me up and down—at least it seems like it. Then he says, “Tell me, Junpei, do you see the marks on Yuuji’s face?”
I don’t even know this guy and he talks to me like we’re old friends. Rude. Still, I look at Yuuji-kun, and, yeah, I see the marks he means. They’ve always been there, at least as long as I’ve known him.
“Oh?” a deep voice comes out of Yuuji-kun’s face, from a toothed mouth that wasn’t there a moment ago, right where his mark is. “Is this the same punk I mocked a while back? He’s got the same blood as that girl. Are they siblings? That means I can devour you and breed with her…”
“Shut up, idiot, before I execute your vessel right here,” Nanami Kento snaps—his methodical, sober attitude vanishes. A furious man is now threatening Yuuji-kun, axe drawn, huge banks of Cursed Energy gathering in both hands.
Yuuji-kun just slaps himself hard, like he’s killing a mosquito. Despite the situation, the white-haired man cracks up laughing.
“Well, well, what a disastrous welcome,” the white-haired man says, still chuckling. “I’m Satoru Gojo, kid. I’m the mentor of the first-years, which includes you, of course.”
I frown. No one’s said a word to me about enrolling here. Even so, Yuuji-kun looks thrilled. After that weird mouth fades from his face, he claps my shoulders and says we’re classmates—and we could even share a dorm room.
None of this makes sense. I’m overwhelmed. So Nanami Kento shifts back to businesslike and turns away.
“You can bring him up to speed on the School later,” he says. “For now he’s coming with me. We have three places to hit before nightfall.”
“If you’re going to that bitch with all the Cursed Energy, I want in,” the voice pipes up from Yuuji-kun’s face again.
Enraged, Nanami Kento practically teleports to Yuuji-kun and decks him so hard the kid goes flying and passes out. Satoru Gojo just whistles, impressed.
“Give Itadori-kun my apologies when he wakes up, Gojo-san.”
“Nah, doubt he’ll mind,” he shrugs, carefree. “Come back soon, Junpei. We’ve got to figure out how to present a Cursed User and a dead sorcerer in front of all his classmates.”
A dead sorcerer? But to all appearances Yuuji-kun is alive. Or he was before Nanami’s punch.
As we step out the main gate, the pretty doctor who treated me while I was convalescing lifts a hand from a distance, smoking. She stays taciturn and gives me a look full of understanding and worry—almost maternal—amid this grim welcome.
Nanami and I walk for a long time, covering nearly the whole School and a run of gloomy, shuttered galleries.
I startle when I see a thin, stooped man with square frames. He looks older than the first time I saw him. It’s Ijichi Kiyotaka.
“Hello, Yoshino-san. How are you doing?”
“I guess better than you,” I answer on reflex, then regret it. Kiyotaka-san smiles briefly, but the worry never leaves his face. I guess that’s why his hairline’s already receding.
“Let’s go,” Nanami Kento barks, climbing into the passenger seat.
As I settle into the back, I realize it’s the same car that picked me up months ago, when Itou and his crew beat me to a pulp. That’s when I met Katsumi.
Katsumi… I want to see her. I want to see her.
But we arrive somewhere very different. A cemetery.
“Come on,” Nanami Kento repeats.
No.
I didn’t know.
I didn’t want to.
Nanami Kento clamps an iron hand around my arm like a shackle and pulls. He drags me between stone graves until we stop at one that looks very new. Fresh flowers, paper flowers, wreaths. The stone bears a Buddhist sutra: “All compounded things are impermanent.”
The stone says, in kanji, the name Nagi Yoshino, followed by her birth and death dates: 24/12/1985 – 15/09/2018.
I collapse when I see it.
No.
Not Mom.
I remember all the anger, the resentment, the hate I felt. All the confusion. The betrayal by Mahito.
Mom.
Mahito must have killed Mom.
I have no proof, but I don’t need it.
My heart hurts.
I crumple and cry for so long I don’t even notice when the air turns cold from the fine drizzle needling us. Nanami and Kiyotaka stand silent beside me, sheltering me from the cold drops with huge umbrellas.
When I feel like I’ve cried enough to fill a lake, I get to my feet, staggering. Nanami’s hand on my arm is gentle this time; then he sets it between my shoulder blades. He guides me to the car in silence.
Our second stop is my house. The blood’s been cleaned. Nothing is out of place. Instead, only Katsumi’s Rastro remains. I know she was here, cleaning and tending the house while I was unconscious.
“Grab what you need. Clothes, books, that sort of thing. We couldn’t do anything about the deed until you woke up. What do you want to do with the house?”
“I don’t care. Technically it belongs to that man anyway, but Mom hoped he’d come back into our lives someday.”
“I don’t think she had that hope,” Nanami contradicts me. I hate that he does. “If she’d expected your father to return, she’d at least have kept his surname. You’re your mother’s son, and that’s fine.”
Then why did we stay?
I can’t answer my own question. I just wander through the house, seeing empty beds, clothes that will never be worn, the old fridge, the couch no one will ever sit on again.
Mom has three albums tucked in her closet. The first is a small collection of her whole life: kindergarten, a few grade-school and middle-school photos, and then more than half is high school and college.
The second album is all me. One ultrasound, two, three. I guess Mom really liked getting ultrasounds. Pictures of a wrinkly, ugly baby; I suppose all newborns are ugly. A kid tearing around with a towel tied like a cape, pretending to be a superhero. Asleep among toys. Face smeared with cheese. My grade-school graduation, then middle school. I look pretty happy in those; I don’t even remember some.
The third is her wedding album. There are people I don’t know, but I recognize some from Mom’s college photos. The man in the suit beside her has my eyes and he’s tall; the guy doesn’t even look happy. But Mom is the most beautiful bride I’ve ever seen. Her smile is huge, like the whole world’s happiness is concentrated in her face.
I take the prettiest photo from her wedding (where she’s alone, showing off her dress and bouquet) and the other two albums. The rest can be tossed or burned—I don’t care.
By the time we get into the car for the third time that day, the rain has strengthened. It slides down the windshield like thick tears and turns the afternoon into the most unsettling of nights. I peer through the fogged glass, but I can’t see anything except lights cutting the dark.
I don’t quite understand how Kiyotaka is so sure behind the wheel. I guess it’s ten years of being an assistant.
We pass by Katsumi’s bakery but don’t stop. There’s a boy behind the counter, but he seems to be struggling to count the money.
“Ino-kun never gets used to bakery work,” Nanami says aloud. “I think Katsumi would fire him if I weren’t the one who recommended him.”
Kiyotaka looks like he wants to laugh, but he lets it go, because the bakery is two blocks from the house that’s our third destination. It’s big and airy, and it stands out in the stormy dark like a safe, warm space.
When we get out—two men and a boy hurrying under two umbrellas—I can hear a children’s song growing louder. It rings through the entryway where we shake off the water. It plays through the dining room, the kitchen, the living room. It’s not deafening, but you can hear it everywhere, as if the music were coming from the walls.
There are two chubby babies in the living room, piled among cushions, blankets, and plushy pillows. They’re playing with stuffed animals. It feels like half a lifetime since I first saw them. They’re small and beautiful, just like their mother and—much as I hate to admit it—very much like their father.
Akira, the elder, has his mother’s eyes and his father’s hair. He’s as blond as he is. Minato, his twin, has dark brown hair like Katsumi, but his eyes are gray or blue depending on the light. From what I heard, both twins got a dose of Danish genes.
The moment we come in, the twins go wild. They squeal, “Dada! Dada!” trying to reach Nanami first.
Minato wins. He clings hard to Nanami’s pristine shirt and giggles when Nanami lifts him up. Akira veers toward Kiyotaka, then locks eyes with me. I’m surprised: his eyes light up, like he recognizes me.
“Mama!” he shouts, showing off a smile with a few tiny teeth. I scoop Akira up and lift him, and the baby hugs me and says again, “Mama!”
“What’s going on?” Katsumi comes from the back of the house, flustered. Maybe she only heard the boys suddenly talking, because she looks rattled and nervous. One quick glance at the entryway and she relaxes completely—then gets just as excited as Akira.
“Junpei!” she cries, delighted. She hugs me, arms wrapping around the baby between us. We’re about the same height, so her cheek brushes mine.
Akira and Minato look confused. They look at their mother, then at me, as if trying to figure out what’s happening.
“Holy crap, you look like you could be my kid brother,” Katsumi says, looking me up and down. “And you feel like… like you’re me. Do you feel it?”
I feel it.
I see it.
My hair has turned brown—the exact same shade as Katsumi Kento’s. My eyes look like hers. My aura. Everything.
As if I were an extension of her.
As if I were her.
SousaVitorino on Chapter 6 Wed 18 Dec 2024 12:07AM UTC
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aliso on Chapter 6 Sat 31 May 2025 08:33AM UTC
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