Sapporo is a distinctive city. Its people are diverse. In Tokyo, each district—Shibuya, Asakusa, Shinjuku, Akihabara, and so on—has its own characteristics, and people tend to gather in districts according to their personalities, which has given rise to terms like “the Shibuya type” and “the Akiba type.” Sapporo, however, is a jumble. Youth gather in the shopping centers, nerds hit up shops selling anime swag, rickety shops line the shopping arcade, and the red-light district is a maelstrom of adult desires. These all mix in close proximity to one another, sometimes on opposite sides of the same road.
Of course, that meant a mixture of human emotions also congregated there: resentment, jealousy, anger, discrimination, obsession, envy, hatred, greed. In other cities, negative emotions would sort into different districts just as people do, but in Sapporo, there are no such distinctions.
Then there’s the underground passage, a long tunnel and a vast underground space. Designed for convenience, that tube that connects most of the city’s main facilities crowds together and carries along a wide variety of people and their negative emotions as they go to board their trains.
At first glance, this subterranean area seems full of life and impressive to behold, but to the sorcerers it looked like a crucible of the human spirit.
“This place makes the job easy. You could practically just follow your nose,” remarked Gojo.
“Yes. Something feels obviously wrong.”
The air in this underground city, with its immense amount of human traffic, was stagnant. The dismal aura was distinct. A sorcerer capable of following a cursed spirit merely from the residuals of its cursed technique would find this easier than tracing the source of a gas leak.
Nanami and Gojo threaded through the shifting crowds as they tracked the aura south. After ten minutes, they reached the end of the new, fashionable area and stepped into an older area with a much different appearance. The layout was convoluted, with side passages and subway yards. But instead of the crowd thinning out, congestion worsened. And somewhere amidst all those people coming and going …
Within this river of people was a zone that was … stagnant.
“Um, Nanami?”
“Yeah. There it is.”
The two sorcerers were looking at a mother holding a baby. A boy of about five or six stood at her side.
As they drew near cautiously, Gojo and Nanami listened closely to the mother and son’s conversation.
“Akito! Can’t you understand?!”
“No, Mom! Stop carrying it! I don’t like it!”
“You’re a big brother now, so stop being selfish,” the mother reprimanded. “Look what you’ve done … Natsuki is crying!”
“No, no, no! I’m not a big brother!”
The mother looked vexed as she shifted the baby Natsuki in her arms.
Of course, she did care about the boy named Akito, but an infant demands a parent’s attention. And the woman was deeply attentive to it. Her face as she cradled the tiny form radiated a love so intense it bordered on insanity.
She was at a loss for how to handle her fussy son while consoling the baby. The average person wouldn’t have noticed anything unusual, and might even find the scene charming. A young boy felt that the new arrival was dominating his mother’s affections, so he was throwing a fit. Most adults would see the situation as amusing and commonplace.
But the boy named Akito was too distraught for the sorcerers to write this off as a mere tantrum.
No doubt he felt like he had lost his mother’s attention. However, his animosity toward his younger brother was excessively harsh. The mother herself probably knew that, but her initial attempt to weather the tantrum with an uncomfortable smile turned to embarrassment, exhaustion, and anger.
“How can you say such a thing?!” she demanded.
“Because it’s true!” said the boy.
“This is your little brother! You mustn’t be mean!”
“That’s not my little brother!”
“Akito!”
Enraged, the mother gave in to her emotion and swung her arm to slap her son. But the painful sound of her hand striking the child never came. Nanami had grabbed her wrist.
She gaped at him. “W-what are you doing?!”
The mother’s confusion was understandable. From her point of view, Nanami and Gojo were suspicious individuals who were intruding.
She knew that physical punishment was wrong, but she hadn’t been able to stop herself from lashing out over her son’s comment about the infant, and the intervention of complete strangers was unacceptable.
However, Nanami and Gojo had reason to step in—as concerned citizens and as sorcerers.
“Let go of me!” the woman cried. “This is none of your business!”
“Actually, it is,” Nanami said. “Do you know what it is you’re holding?”
“What … ?”
“Oh, I get it. This is what the dolls are.” It finally dawned on Gojo.
“Agh!”
Gojo was leaning in to peer at the baby in the mother’s arms. “I wondered what we’d find … and there it is.” He looked up at Nanami. “Selling such a thing and calling it a resurrection of the dead is the height of fraudulence!”
“S-stop it! Don’t touch Natsuki!”
“Huh? Is that thing really so important? More than the child crying at your feet?” Gojo asked.
“Of course! I gave birth to this one too!”
“No, you bought it, right?” Nanami said.
At his words, the mother froze. Then she shuddered with a despair as intense as if he had forced his bare hand into her innards and grabbed her spine.
It was clear from what Nanami said that he knew what she had done.
“Cursed corpse?” The mother repeated Nanami’s words, puzzled. Her intonation was awkward. She seemed unfamiliar with the term.
“Yes. That’s what this thing is, simply put. Would it be easier to understand if I called it a cursed doll?”