“I can tell this guy is short on help. It’s strange that a third-rate curse user could establish a base so boldly without anyone bringing down the hammer,” Gojo commented.
“Cursed spirits concentrate in cities, and sorcerers distribute their activities accordingly, which inevitably leads to neglect of the outlying areas.”
“We could just let a seedy curse user like this go without it causing any major problem,” speculated Gojo, “But the seller preyed upon that poor woman.”
“So we gotta bring down the hammer.”
Together, they kicked in the curse user’s door. The wood and hinges screeched, and dust flew. The two sorcerers made a rude entrance worthy of a yakuza movie.
The one they’d taken to calling the Doll Maker shot to his feet.
“Wh-who’re you?”
“If we look like customers, you need an optometrist, bottom-feeder!” Gojo said.
“We’re sorcerers. Proper ones.”
“Unlike you.” Gojo’s tone bore an unusual degree of contempt.
The room they had just barged into gave a new meaning to the word tacky. The interior decor was heavy-handed and indiscriminate; it was impossible to tell whether the theme was Japanese, Chinese, or Korean. Fake mummies and a guardian lion. A viper in formaldehyde. A painted black mask resembling something that would be sold in a souvenir shop.
The attire of the room’s master, the Doll Maker, topped it all.
His clothes, made of cheap fabric, were vaguely reminiscent of something an onmyoji or a Shinto priest might wear. In addition, he had wrapped himself, as if with bandages, in crude seals that could only have contained miniscule amounts of magic, if any at all.
He looked like he was wearing a costume. Everything about his appearance was an insult to real sorcerers. His clients might be regular people, but it was laughable to think he could fool them.
“Sorcerers? Oh, I s-s-see … Y-you’re sorcerers too!”
“What do you mean, ‘too’? Surely you don’t count yourself among sorcerers!” Gojo exclaimed.
Nanami probably felt the same way. The crease in his forehead was deep, and it expressed a visceral hatred for the Doll Maker’s existence and his crimes. He wasn’t holding a weapon, but he took a stance that would allow him to engage in battle at any moment.
The Doll Maker was a fake sorcerer, but even a regular person would have found Nanami, a grade 1 sorcerer, intimidating. It would be foolish—or crazy—to take him lightly.
“Uh … uh … um … W-why are you here?” stammered the Doll Maker.
“If you don’t know why we’re here already, then just shut up. Playing dumb isn’t cute,” said Gojo
“I … I don’t have any time! No time at all!”
“Neither do we. It’s almost four o’clock. This may be a business trip, but we shouldn’t be working outside of regular business hours,” Nanami replied.
Nanami and Gojo advanced together toward the Doll Maker.
If the two stayed side by side and blocked the door of the cramped room, the Doll Maker would have nowhere to run. They had him cornered.
The Doll Maker didn’t have many options. He could play it reckless and try to flee past the two sorcerers, he could put up a crude resistance by swinging a blunt object, or he could submit
to capture.
In the end … the Doll Maker didn’t choose any of these.
“H-h-h-h … help me!” he screamed.
“Huh?” Nanami and Gojo were taken off guard by this outburst.
“I … I-I-I … I’m … I’m so glad you’re here!” The Doll Maker dropped to his knees and grabbed onto Nanami’s legs. “I was actually going to look for you myself! For real sorcerers, I mean! Y-you gotta help me! If you want money, I have some saved up! So, please!”
That was when Nanami and Gojo noticed something wrong. The Doll Maker certainly wasn’t worthy of being called a curse user. A single first-year student at Jujutsu High—never mind Nanami—could easily suppress him. That’s how weak the Doll Maker was as a sorcerer or a curse user.
Too weak.
The cursed energy in the cursed corpse wasn’t strong, and the cursed technique was simple, so the doll was no more than a sham that could respond mechanically to human prompts. The Doll Maker, however, was too weak even to have done that.
It was hard to imagine that the man before their eyes, the man clinging to Nanami’s legs, was a curse user, even at a low level. Nonetheless, he was indeed emanating an amount of cursed energy equal to that of the cursed corpse.
Which led them to a specific conclusion.
“Nanami …” Gojo began.
Nanami understood. “We thought he was cursing people for sport, but it turns out he’s a victim himself.”
As if those comments served as a signal, a change occurred in the man. He ripped off the many seals wrapped around his clothes. Several arm-like appendages shot out from underneath, like whips.
Nanami made a small movement as though to dodge, with minimal movement, but suddenly changed tack.
As he moved, a few small bug-like creatures flew at him from the tips of the swinging arms. Evading their attacks, Nanami whipped off his suit jacket and used it to bat down the bug-like things.
The Doll Maker’s body was transforming into a doll of flesh. Human and doll fused into a contorted mass. His neck and left arm retained some semblance of their original form, but the left side of his chest and below were horribly deformed. A doll’s head, twisted in aggravation, was biting into his heart. Several wooden skeletal structures, sharp as bamboo spears, intersected and pierced his flesh as over 70 percent of his body transformed into a doll, giving him the silhouette of a spider.
“Aaaaaagh! Help, help! Money! Money! I’ve got money, so exorcize th-this! G-g-get th-this thing out of me!”