Mahito couldn't quite grasp how the old man's soul functioned. In the end, he could only fall back on the ways humanity had been described in poetry, novels, and films to make sense of it.
"Is it because… you're in despair?"
Mahito narrowed his eyes as he looked at the old man.
"Despair so deep your soul is on the verge of death. So deep you can't even produce resentment or curses anymore…"
He quietly memorized the appearance of a dying soul. So this was what it looked like. No secretions at all, perfectly shaped, almost like a gemstone.
"That's not it…"
The old man shook his head.
"I just felt worn down by too many things. Work, wealth, honor…
But at that moment, I felt relieved. My soul became very light."
Mahito had just started thinking about making someone else despair later to see if he could produce another soul like this, when the old man's words pulled him back.
"Not despair? Relief?"
Saishū slowly stood and walked over.
"Because you've lost everything, there's nothing left for you to lose…"
The old man heard the new voice but showed no surprise, no change in expression. He only nodded gently.
"That's right. After I lost everything, nothing mattered anymore. When I lost my eyes, my world became nothing but endless sound and wind.
No matter which direction I faced, it felt like staring into a night sky without stars. That was the first time I realized how vast the world truly is…
I felt… free."
Mahito blinked.
People out there lived under the open sky, yet shut themselves inside boxes.
The old man lived in a tunnel beneath a bridge, yet understood the vastness of the sky better than anyone.
Mahito gave up trying to explain the old man through the knowledge he had accumulated. Instead, he began using him as a model to observe another possibility within humanity.
"Not all wanderers are lost."
"Quoting Tolkien here feels a little out of place."
The old man had caught the line from a book Mahito had casually read before. Mahito smiled, genuinely amused.
The old man asked his first question.
"Do you like reading?"
"I'm just collecting knowledge."
"Being well read is a good thing."
After waiting for a while and seeing that the old man had nothing more to say, Mahito lowered his gaze back to the book in his hands. For the first time, he felt a sense of peace coming from a human being.
Time passed quietly like this. One human and two Cursed Spirits living together in a tunnel.
For Mahito, who tried to analyze human souls through films and novels, his conversations with the old man were unexpectedly helpful.
Why do people get angry? Why do they feel fear?
Why do humans trust others? Why do they betray them?
Whenever Mahito encountered something he couldn't understand, he would ask the old man and let him help him make sense of it.
...
"May I ask you a question?"
One afternoon, Saishū suddenly spoke. Mahito looked over in surprise. The four-faced monster was actually using such polite language with a human.
"Of course. As long as you don't mind my answer."
Saishū's third face turned toward the old man.
"If something is destined to fail, is there any meaning in doing it?"
The old man fell silent.
The human reflected quietly. The Cursed Spirits waited without a sound. For a moment, the tunnel sank into a strange, warped calm.
"If I handed you a book that ends in tragedy, would you still read it?"
He didn't answer directly, but Mahito understood what he meant.
Whether a book ends in tragedy has nothing to do with whether you choose to read it. The prose, the plot, the ideas woven through it, those are what give it meaning.
In the same way, success and failure are not the whole meaning of an action. Remember why you started. Don't cling to how it ends.
Saishū remained deep in thought. Mahito set his book down on the hammock and hopped off.
"Grandpa, I'm going to buy some books. Do you need anything to eat?"
It all felt natural. Maybe it was respect for this unusual human. Maybe he didn't want his test subject to starve. Maybe it was like tossing food to a stray cat or dog. Who knew. Perhaps even Mahito didn't.
When the old man shook his head, Mahito walked out of the tunnel. Saishū followed. After all, his purpose in coming here was to protect Mahito from dying too soon.
...
"After watching him for a while, I've realized he's a bit like those enlightened monks I've read about…"
Mahito spoke as they stepped out of the bookstore and onto the street, glancing at Saishū.
Whenever the topic turned to the old man, the four-faced monster's tone always sounded a little more normal.
Mahito glanced at the Heart Sutra in his hand.
"Maybe he was just born with that kind of aptitude. Introverted people probably have more chances to talk to their own souls. Maybe that makes it easier to awaken their potential?"
Saishū looked at him.
"You're trying to use that old man to figure out the real way to cultivate Cursed Energy, aren't you?"
"Of course. He can see souls, after all. Even if we can't deduce the proper cultivation method, maybe we can at least figure out how to stimulate the manifestation of Cursed Energy. Then we could turn 'talented' people into Curse Users."
Mahito looked up at the sky. It was completely clear today.
"Didn't that person say it? 'Use our growth to offset their decline.' If we create Curse Users and have them fight Jujutsu Sorcerers, it's both entertaining and in line with that idea~~"
Saishū didn't respond. He simply walked behind Mahito in silence.
At that meeting, this young Curse had seemed so bored. But he might have been the only one who truly listened and immediately began putting those ideas into action.
...
"This is so damn annoying!!!"
A shout came from nearby.
The two Cursed Spirits turned toward a high-rise building.
On the rooftop stood two young men, one thin and one burly. Each held a bottle of alcohol, drinking as they vented their frustrations into the open air.
"Damn it. They all just play dumb, and in the end they'll pin everything on me. I swear, I want to kill them!"
"You say that, but if it really came to it, could you actually do it?"
The burly man took another swig of alcohol.
"Heh. It'd be easy~~"
"For real?"
Mahito narrowed his eyes. He could easily make these two see him, let them face the consequences of their desire-soaked words and actions. But the old man had shown him that human souls might hold other possibilities.
Let them keep dreaming under the skyscrapers.
Mahito glanced at Saishū.
"Well… shall we? Let's catch a movie first, then head back and read."
"Ugh… the cinema again?"
"It's Earthworm Man II. Feels very much your style~~"
"Hehehe~~"
...
By dusk, the two Cursed Spirits were walking back from the cinema. Mahito kept talking about the plot, and the closer they got to the tunnel, the lighter his steps became.
He couldn't wait to return to that comfortable tunnel, curl up with a book, and sort through the parts he still didn't understand.
"I told you! Killing someone is nothing to me!"
A voice that shouldn't have been there drifted out from inside the tunnel.
The two Cursed Spirits stepped into their "little nest," the place where a human and Cursed Spirits had been living together.
Something was wrong.
The old man lay on the ground in an unnatural position. The two young men stood on either side of him.
The thin one glanced at the drunken brute.
"Wasn't that just a spur-of-the-moment thing? He's so old, he might actually die…"
"So what? He's just some old bum hiding in a pile of trash. Who's going to call the cops for him?
We only came down here to puke, and this old geezer had the nerve to tell us to get lost."
"Alright, alright. It's done. Let's grab some detergent later. Our clothes got filthy coming into this tunnel."
"Buy some bento first… Throwing up made me hungry again…"
Mahito walked over and bent down to look at the old man.
His soul was still clear. No secretions. No blemishes.
"Are you going to die?"
"…Ah…"
The old man answered with the loudest sound he could manage.
Mahito quietly observed his soul. There was no wavering, no sorrow. It simply waited for its own dissolution, like an iron tree finally blooming.
Mahito felt genuine admiration.
"Grandpa, congratulations. You're about to be free…"
But just as the words left his mouth, several drops of "dew" formed on the old man's crystal-like soul.
Mahito's pupils trembled, as if something flawless had just been stained.
"Why? You were about to be liberated. You were about to become perfect. Why…"
"Thank you…
I don't know who you are. But you let this useless old man know that, in his final moments, he wasn't alone…"
The old man was gone.
Mahito stared silently at the body before him. Now it was nothing more than an empty shell without a soul.
What he couldn't accept was the smile on the corpse's face. Those final drops of "dew" were the last thing that immaculate soul had secreted.
The old man had already found freedom, yet at the moment of death, he chose to bind himself again.
"Yes… What was I expecting? Humans are just like this…"
The admiration on Mahito's face faded away. He slowly stood up and placed his hands on the two humans beside him.
"Idle Transfiguration…"