Their footfalls sounded softly as they walked down the hall. Nishimiya and Miwa walked alongside Mai as if it were only natural.
“This won’t earn us any points or money,” Mai said, without turning.
“I just like hanging with you two,” Nishimiya said.
“Actually, money is a sticking point,” Miwa said. “Let’s try to do this on the cheap.”
Confronting this cursed spirit wasn’t worth the risk. It could all be for nothing. No one would praise them, and plenty would criticize them. Nonetheless, they kept walking.
“Hey, Mai?” Nishimiya asked. “Do you really care that much about that girl?”
“Of course not,” Mai responded. “She’s a twit.”
“Then why’re you going to help her?”
“I …” Mai tried to think of something to say, but her brain couldn’t produce anything. She said the first thing that came to her, then regretted it immediately. “I just don’t want to hate myself, that’s all.”
She bit her lip. It hurt in the cold night air.
There’s a large cemetery south of K Women’s University. Now that the girls had an idea that the cursed spirit might go in that direction, it was easy to follow its residuals. They went south from the cemetery, crossed some railroad tracks, passed a temple, and walked along a road with a rundown wooden fence dividing off an older part of town.
Empty and overgrown plots of land and moss-covered warehouses. Dark playgrounds and straggling stands of trees. This street was a veritable mass of fear, and Mai thought it would be an easy place for a curse to haunt.
They followed to where the residuals were thickest, advancing down the road and reaching what appeared to be a dead end dominated by a large building.
“This is a school, right?” Miwa asked softly.
“It was. Now it’s empty,” Nishimiya answered.
Sorcerers knew that large, empty institutions were prone to becoming receptacles for curses. Schools were foremost among such places, and nothing presented more ideal conditions for curses than an abandoned school in an old town.
The residual trail led inside the school. Shining the flashlights on their smartphones, the girls spotted a fresh bloodstain alongside the residuals running through the courtyard.
“Now what, Mai? It could be dangerous to just walk in the front door,” Nishimiya said.
“You two stay on standby until I call you,” Mai instructed.
“You’re going in alone?” Miwa asked.
“You heard what Tanabe said, right?” Mai replied. “This cursed spirit is crafty. It only targets people who sense cursed spirits but can’t fight them.”
“But Mai, you—” Miwa began.
Before she could finish, Mai walked on. From a few steps ahead, she turned and gave the other two a mildly self-deprecating smile.
“Yeah, I’m the weakest.”
Those words indicated to Nishimiya and Miwa that Mai intended to use Construction. It was a cursed technique that created something from nothing. It got good results, but it consumed a lot of cursed energy and carried a heavy physical burden. It could only be used once per day. Mai was a grade 3 sorcerer, so with her cursed energy, if she tried to use it too soon …
“It’s too dangerous, Mai,” Nishimiya warned.
“I knew that when I came,” Mai replied. “Don’t worry. After I get an idea of the school layout, I’ll text it to you. Then just follow my instructions.” She stepped toward the darkness of the school entrance. “Pay me back for my help at the Goodwill Event.”
The other two girls watched as Mai, wrapped in a black coat, disappeared into darkness.
Curses are dreadful things. They hurt people and they take lives. They are obviously the natural enemy of human beings, who consider themselves the pinnacle of creation. Sorcerers sometimes forget this obvious fact. Perhaps that’s because sorcerers have means of fighting curses, or because their senses numb in the face of circumstances so far removed from ordinary life. Either way, they may think they know this fact deep in their bones, but that is not always the case.
Even Mai, who knew she wasn’t a first-rate sorcerer, had a way to fight back, and that had made her cocky. That’s why she hadn’t been able to think of such a tactic sooner: using cursed energy to lay a trap beforehand.
After using her cursed technique, however, she lacked the cursed energy to resist a grade 2 curse. Furthermore, she had been physically exhausted, her pulse pounding, her nose bleeding. Now she had wounds all over, like a rabbit that had been attacked. Even exorcising a fly head would be a strain.
In that state, Mai stumbled to the end of the hall on the third floor. She recalled the cursed spirit she’d confronted, and with that memory came fear.
“Fouuund … youuu …”
Its appearance was abnormal. Horrible burns covered its body and its six sinewy arms. Its face, swollen like a volleyball, featured four vertical slit-like eyes. They peered this way and that, then all simultaneously turned on Mai.
It didn’t have lips, and its bare teeth gnashed as it laughed. Its expression was inhuman, yet contorted with negative human emotion. It was ugly, but long, wavy black hair gave it the faint appearance of a young woman. It wasn’t human, but it had something reminiscent of human features, and that was precisely what made it so viscerally revolting.
You could tell at a glance how essentially wrong it was. This was a curse. It was an enemy of humanity that gnawed at the known world.
No, Mai thought. No, no … I’m scared. I’m scared and I’m sick of this struggle.
Sorcerers had the worst job. Her true feelings welled up within her. Fear, so intense it felt like it might freeze her blood, made her ears ring. She tried to make a sound, but her throat was too dry. Nonetheless, she swallowed and gritted her teeth.
Yuu was beside the cursed spirit. She was still breathing, but she wasn’t unharmed. Her eyelids were bruised and swollen, and her cheeks were misshapen, as if the cursed spirit had corrupted her. Her right leg was bent and broken, so she couldn’t have run. Her left arm was missing from the elbow down. Even without the cursed spirit’s corruption, she would soon bleed to death.
It looked less like the cursed spirit had tried to harm her, and more like it had simply played with her until she broke. That told Mai everything she needed to know about how the cursed spirit viewed humans. To it, Yuu was a replaceable toy, and now the replacement had just shown up.
“Mai … ?” Yuu said. She opened her swollen eyelids and her eyes fixed on Mai.
Mai couldn’t tell if the tears in the corners of Yuu’s eyes were from fear or relief. When she saw her face, however, Mai had to take bold action.
“Close your eyes. If you can’t see it, it’s like it isn’t there,” Mai said.
Mai chose the dumb option.
She had come far enough that she could no longer flee. All she could do now was proceed as if she weren’t at all worried. She raised the revolver she carried and cocked it with a firm gesture.
“C’mere, ugly.”
The muzzle flash lit up the darkness. The bullet was absorbed into the cursed spirit’s head. It would have been one thing if Mai could have laughed about how the cursed spirit was more foolish than it looked, but that wasn’t the case. The cursed spirit didn’t need to dodge. Because Mai hadn’t charged the pistol with any cursed energy.
“Looking … Looking? Looking … looking? Looking?”
The cursed spirit swung its long, slender arms and began walking with a sluggish gait. Its speed was like that of a snail. Then it slowly began to pick up the pace, cackling as it approached Mai.
After confirming that the cursed spirit had pulled away from Yuu, Mai was careful to hold her aim as she backed up. Just looking in its eyes was enough to make her break out in a sweat.
With a trembling thumb, she cocked the revolver and fired again. These fruitless attacks were wearing away her spirit as well as her supply of bullets. Her aim was off, so the bullet marred the wall. Then the cursed spirit finally started running after her.
Mai also took off running at full speed down the hall, but she couldn’t afford to lose sight of the cursed spirit. She turned around frequently to train her eyes on it, leading it on with herself as bait.
Kicking off the old tiles and pushing off the old wallpaper, Mai flew down the dusty stairwell a few steps at a time. She looked back as she navigated a landing to see the cursed spirit using its six arms to scurry behind her like a spider.
“Those arms sure can stretch, huh?”
The arms provided mobility and had a longer reach than she had first assumed, so Mai had to be careful. She couldn’t let it catch her, but she couldn’t afford to lose it either. She was risking her life in a game of tag in which she could neither escape nor get caught.
“Looking?” it asked.
“Urgh …” Mai groaned.
The arms extended suddenly, grabbing the hem of Mai’s coat. Her skin crawled, and panic drove away rational thought. She bit her lips, tried to stop her arms from shaking, and shot at her coat with the gun to blow it off.
Despite fear, panic, and exhaustion striking her over and over like a whip, she continued running at full speed. Her lungs hurt, and her legs felt as though they were in shackles. All of her body’s physical signals were reprimanding her for such reckless effort.
Nonetheless, she couldn’t stop. She couldn’t let Yuu die, and she couldn’t let herself die either. She wouldn’t let herself be a sacrifice, no matter what. That wasn’t just because she wanted to save her own skin, and it wasn’t just because she wanted to save Yuu. If she didn’t help the girl and get out of here alive, her own words would have been a lie. Mai was running because she couldn’t let that happen.
“Looking? Look? Looking? Look?” the curse said.
“You’re noisy!” Mai retorted.
Mai felt like her legs might come off, but she sped up anyway. Soon, she reached the end of the second-floor hall, which dead-ended in a plain white wall. Mai might as well have dashed down a blind alley.