Cold is the night. Distant skyscrapers glitter as the stars in the milky way. It would be a gentle night, but there is the sound of a madwoman laughing. There is the sound of laboured breaths; of a body hitting shingles. There is the sound of girders striking concrete, striking gravel, striking steel. There is the sound of a boy scrambling to his feet. She guffaws, and the hero runs. He must. For she has shattered the world, and its shrapnel brays for his blood. Train tracks unearth themselves. Shipping containers rear their heads at him, and pounce, missing by inches. Dust abounds. It would be easy to die. To surrender to the weapons she arrays for his destruction. To rest. But he cannot. He fights for a cause grander than his own life. To die is to be selfish. So, he presses on. The hero rises from debris like a god from the machine, like a myth cut from stone, and in her drunkenness — drunk from power — the villainess doesn't see the fist until it connects. All fades to black.
An Esper. It was almost like she was an Esper. Yuriko awoke to the crashing of waves, and a ceiling she recognised. Ah, that's sky alright. Ol' reliable. There may be monsters now, and she may very well be schizophrenic, but at least her inability to see the stars was consistent. Thanks, light pollution, very cool. Suffice to say, she was miserable.
The beach was not exactly the most accommodating place for a teenage girl to sleep, but she had slept in worse places. Besides, Yuriko was quite a light sleeper and if what she was assuming of her delusions was correct, she almost dared a—
Remorse teetered at the edge of her senses. It was the shape and size of a football — a soccer ball. It rose from the water, shaking itself off like a puppy. Yuriko sat erect, using her eyes to confirm what her gut was feeling.
It was an eyeball, giving itself the most thorough saline wash in the history of optometry. Just an eyeball. No face, no body, no brain. And yet, it spoke.
"So–rryy." It spun twice on the spot. "I choose me. I'm soorry."
She was overtaken by a sudden sense of calm. Okay, she thought. This was the new normal. Yuriko thought back to the first creature: to the strength that was born from her fear; her dark excitement. It flared around her body like a funeral shroud. Ah. Her one anchor through the madness. She clenched a fist experimentally. It made her feel stronger. Bolder, but maybe using it had been the wrong decision.
The eyeball snapped in her direction, pupil dilating. There was hunger in its...eye.
"I choose me!"
Its distorted voice rolled towards her as it did. The girl didn't panic. Under the examination of her new senses, this creature came up...lacking. It was slow. Compared to the thing she had killed yesterday, it was missing a certain oomph factor. A gravitas to its place in her mind. Yuriko stepped out of its path at the last second. Her leg swung back, spring loading her muscles with potential. Then in an instant, it released. She kicked the damn thing for all it was worth. Somewhere in Brazil, Ronny Heberson was smiling.
The eyeball landed in a disfigured heap.
"I'm sorry." It sobbed, as it lost definition, lost weight, lost depth, and returned to the ambience of the morning.
***
"Magnificent."
The feed in his mind cut off violently.
Deep down, he had always felt contempt for non-sorcerers. He had tried to disguise it as noblesse oblige — it was only natural for the weak to help the strong — but there it was in its definition. Weak. He had always seen them as weak.
Suguru Geto looked down at the quivering man at his feet. On top of his head sat an eyeball matching the proportions of the one the girl had destroyed. It was after all, the missing pair of the curse he had sent to watch over her. A large optic nerve ran from the back of the curse, and into the man's left eye socket. The right...was already bleeding and hollow. It was funny. It seemed even curses could have twins under the laws of Jujutsu.
Geto ripped the curse free of the man, pulling something important loose in the process. The non-sorcerer flopped dead on the ground.
His trappings were a mockery of their faith. A golden kasaya over a black yukata. He had initially donned the costume on a whim, long before he had planned his identity as a curse user. Now, he revelled in the irony. Long hair, and a soft, kind, (but butt-ugly) face. To the ignorant masses, he was a Buddhist monk. Good counsel. A deliverer. And what was a monk without the patience? He believed he had been tolerant enough of those animals. They brought to him their problems. Oh, their unceasing, vanishingly insignificant, problems, and he made them a part of his strength. He swallowed their envy; let their shame sit heavy in his stomach. That was their sole purpose: his apotheosis.
And he would be a deliverer. For the deserving. For his own kind. The cattle should thank him for letting him use them like this. What higher honour was there for creatures who dared to hope that salvation lay in anything less than their complete annihilation? But this girl? She was kin. Geto remembered the crater at the park. The traces of her cursed energy that he had erased to keep the zookeepers from discovering and assimilating her into their fold. She was family, even if she didn't know that yet.
"What did you see?" asked his secretary, Suda Manami.
"She sensed it," he smiled, though his eyes creased in soft irritation. "Even in her sleep, I couldn't get close."
Manami stroked her non-existent beard in thought.
"She's not a newbie, then? It would explain how she could exorcise that Grade Two—No, I suppose I should say Grade One now."
Bird of Prey, as they had lovingly named it, had been a curse that preyed exclusively on bird watchers. It had flown under the radar of the overworked Jujutsushi; too busy anticipating Geto's next move or putting out whatever fire the apes kept lighting. It hadn't all together been the most powerful tool, but its speed had had its uses. Imagine their surprise when its residual energy registered at a higher grade than it had been just the day before.
"That or living amongst monkeys gave a reason to stay on her toes." Geto scoffed. "When we wiped her from the footage, did she look like a girl with a plan?"
"No," Manami conceded.
"Please, get someone to clean this up," he gestured at the body on the ground. The curse in his hand shrunk down to the size of a jawbreaker. "It smells even worse than it did before."
Geto stood and made his way to the door. His fists tightened as he went. Injustices like these were what affirmed his beliefs. This was why his Kyoto–Shinjuku plan couldn't afford to fail. Why he needed the Queen of Curses. It made his stomach turn. At least Riko had known her place in the world even if it hadn't been fair to her. He could only imagine what was going through that poor girl's head right now.
***
No. Yuriko fell to her knees. No. No. No. The tears found her eyes before she could stop them. It had been yesterday. In the evening. If she hadn't been busy skulking and running about the city, avoiding a police force that wasn't even looking for her, she would have gone. But it was too late. She had missed it. Yuriko kneeled outside the cold, dark venue. There would be no further entry.
"Forgive me, Takada-chan."
Huh? She blinked. She didn't think she had said that out loud...
"You're right. You didn't—"
She found a hand on her shoulder.
"—But I know your pain. It is mine."
Yuriko looked up at the muscular giant she hadn't noticed was kneeling beside her. There were tears in his eyes too.
"The city was a little louder than usual. I wanted to keep her safe, but it meant I didn't get to see her either."
She could only nod along silently. After all, Yuriko didn't know how one was supposed to report a missing patient. Maybe the orderlies weren't far behind?
"Make sure you watch the Christmas special. It's her last public appearance this year."
"I will," Yuriko said. She smiled awkwardly. "I uhm... I haven't eaten all day, so I'm gonna go do that." She couldn't have gotten up fast enough. When she was sure she was at a safe enough distance, she spoke without thought. "See you at the next one."
Aoi Todo watched the girl round the corner as his five Centillion IQ giga processor fired up.
"A sorcerer to be sure." He could feel her cursed energy, as wild an untamed as it was, like a maelstrom ripping a hole in the ocean. There were orders— the flimsy panicked attempts of old men trying to hold on to power. Any sorcerer unaffiliated with their organisation was to be treated as a target; a threat. But no fan of Tadaka-chan's could ever be a curse user. So, he watched her as she faded off into the distance. "See you at the next one, friend."