The mission briefing was three sentences long. That should've been the first sign it was going to be weird.
"Persistent cursed energy residuals detected in an abandoned agricultural plot in Saitama Prefecture. No confirmed cursed spirit. Investigate and report."
Yaga handed the folder to Geto, because handing anything to Gojo was the same as throwing it in the trash. Gojo was leaning against the doorframe of the classroom, arms crossed, sunglasses catching the overhead light. He hadn't even sat down.
"Saitama," Gojo said flatly. "You're sending us to Saitama."
"I'm sending you to investigate a potential curse," Yaga corrected. He was sitting behind his desk with a half-finished doll in his hands, needle and thread poised mid-stitch. The doll had a round face and button eyes. It looked like a rabbit. "It's been flagged three times in the last month by auxiliary managers in the area. Low-level readings, but consistent."
"Consistent low-level readings," Gojo repeated. "So it's nothing."
"If it were nothing, it wouldn't have been flagged three times."
"Auxiliary managers flag their own shadows sometimes."
Yaga didn't look up from his doll. "You're going. Take Geto. Take Ieiri."
"Why Ieiri?"
"Because the last time I sent you two alone, you forgot the curtain, and it ended up on the evening news."
Gojo opened his mouth. Yaga's needle stopped. The silence was very specific. Gojo closed his mouth.
Geto, who had been reading the folder's single page the entire time, looked up. "There's not much here. Just coordinates and the residual readings. No description of the area?"
"Farmland. Mostly abandoned. The nearest town is about four kilometers out." Yaga resumed stitching. "It should be simple. Go, look around, report back. If there's a curse, exorcise it. If there's not, I want documentation on why the readings are showing up."
"Thrilling," Gojo said.
"Leave by noon. And Gojo-"
"Yeah, yeah. Curtain. I know."
"You didn't know last time."
They took the train. Gojo complained about the train. Geto read a book. Shoko Ieiri sat between them with her earbuds in and her eyes closed, which was her standard method of coping with both of them at the same time.
It was a Tuesday in early spring. The kind of day where the air couldn't decide if it was warm or cold, so it just sat there being nothing. The train was mostly empty by the time they hit the rural stops, just a few old women with shopping bags and a guy asleep against the window with his mouth open.
Gojo had his feet up on the seat across from him. His dark blue uniform jacket was zipped up to the collar, round sunglasses firmly in place even inside the train car. He was tapping his fingers on his knee in a rhythm that didn't match any song.
"This is a waste of time," he announced. Not for the first time.
Geto turned a page. "You said that already."
"Because it's still true."
"We haven't even gotten there yet."
"Exactly. We haven't gotten there and it's already a waste of time. That's how much of a waste of time it is."
Shoko pulled one earbud out. "If you both shut up, I'll buy you something from the vending machine at the station."
"What kind of something?" Gojo asked.
"Whatever's there."
"That's not a compelling offer, Ieiri."
She put the earbud back in.
The coordinates led them down a dirt road that hadn't seen a car in what looked like years. Weeds pushed through cracks in the concrete where it met the shoulder. Past that, fields. Most of them were overgrown and dead, tangled with dried stalks and grass gone yellow. Abandoned farming plots, just like the file said. The kind of place that made you feel like you'd stepped backward in time, except everything was dying instead of growing.
Except one plot.
Geto noticed it first. He stopped walking and held up a hand, and Gojo almost walked into him, which earned Geto an irritated noise.
"What?"
"Look." Geto pointed.
About two hundred meters off the road, set back between two collapsed storage sheds, there was a patch of green. Not just green. Bright green. In a sea of brown and grey decay, a neat rectangle of soil had been cleared and was full of..crops. Actual crops. Rows of them. Rice, by the look of it, though neither of them were farmers. Small, dense, impossibly healthy looking.
"That's... not abandoned," Shoko said, pulling both earbuds out now.
Gojo pushed his sunglasses up his nose. The Six Eyes were already doing their thing behind the dark lenses, reading the space around them in ways neither of his classmates could fully understand. "There's cursed energy here. Faint. Really faint. It's all over that patch."
"A curse?" Geto asked.
"Doesn't feel like one." Gojo tilted his head. "It's too... I don't know. Calm. Curses don't feel calm."
"Could be a cursed object buried in the soil," Geto suggested. "That would explain the persistent readings without a visible spirit."
"Maybe."
They moved off the road and into the field. The dead grass crunched under their shoes. As they got closer, the green patch came into sharper detail. It wasn't just rice. There were vegetables too, arranged in tidy little rows. Radishes. Some kind of leafy green. Bean plants climbing up sticks that had been carefully pushed into the dirt. Everything was small-scale, like someone's personal garden, but the growth was... wrong. Too advanced for early spring. Some of these plants looked like they were in full summer production.
And there was someone there.
He was crouched in the dirt at the far edge of the plot, back to them, doing something with his hands in the soil. He was small. Short. Wearing a loose, pale linen tunic that looked like it belonged in a museum, tied at the waist with a cloth sash. Loose trousers tucked into straw boots. A thick, worn scarf bunched around his neck despite the mild weather. On his head sat a wide conical straw hat, the kind rice farmers used to wear in old paintings.
He hadn't noticed them.
Gojo looked at Geto. Geto looked at Gojo.
"That's a person," Gojo said.
"I can see that."
"A person who is... farming. In the middle of an abandoned field. In clothes from three hundred years ago."
"I can also see that."
Shoko stepped up beside them. She squinted at the figure. "Is he the source?"
"The cursed energy is coming from the plants," Gojo said slowly. "But it's also coming from him. Same signature. He's putting it into the ground."
They looked at each other again.
"So he's a sorcerer," Geto said.
"He's something."
Gojo started walking toward the plot. Geto caught his arm.
"Curtain first."
"It's a farmer in a field, not a special grade."
"Curtain. First."
Gojo made a face behind his sunglasses but held up a hand. The barrier went up without much effort, a translucent dome settling over the area. Inside it, the light dimmed slightly, the way it always did.
The figure in the field flinched. His head came up. The straw hat tilted as he turned, and they got their first look at his face.
He was young. Their age, maybe. Soft features, almost delicate. Round face. Wide dark eyes that were currently going very, very wide. A single stalk of grain was clenched between his teeth, sticking out the side of his mouth like a crooked cigarette. And on top of his head, underneath the hat, his black hair was gathered into two upright shapes, rounded bun-like things that stuck up through openings in the hat's top. They looked like ears. Rabbit ears, almost.
The bun-ears were standing straight up. Then, as the kid processed the three uniformed teenagers standing at the edge of his garden, they slowly tilted sideways.
He stared at them. They stared at him. The grain stalk bobbed as his jaw worked nervously.
"Um," the kid said.
"Hi," Gojo said.
The kid bolted.
He was not fast. He scrambled out of his crouch, tripped on a radish, caught himself, and started running across the field in a way that made it clear running was not something he did very often. His straw hat flew off and tumbled into the bean plants. The scarf streamed behind him.
Gojo didn't move. Geto didn't move. Shoko raised an eyebrow.
"Should we... chase him?" Shoko asked.
"He's inside the curtain," Gojo said. "He's not going anywhere."
Sure enough, the kid hit the edge of the barrier about fifteen seconds later. He didn't slam into it. He just stopped, hands out, pressing against the invisible wall. He pushed. It didn't give. He pushed harder. Nothing. His hair-buns, which had been pointed backward in panic-mode, slowly flattened down against his head.
He turned around.
Gojo waved.
The kid's mouth opened and closed. The grain stalk was gone, he'd spit it out somewhere during his sprint. His eyes were darting between the three of them, and there was something in his expression that wasn't just fear. It was the look of an animal that had been running from things for a very long time and was very tired of it.
Geto stepped forward. He was better at this part. He kept his voice level, hands visible at his sides. "We're not going to hurt you."
The kid pressed his back against the barrier. He was breathing hard. Up close, he was even smaller than he'd looked from a distance. Barely came up to Geto's shoulder.
"We're from Tokyo Jujutsu High," Geto continued. "We're students. We were sent to investigate cursed energy readings in this area." He paused, watching the kid's face for recognition. "Do you know what cursed energy is?"
The kid stared at him. His hair-buns twitched, lifting maybe half a centimeter. Then he nodded, very small.
"Okay. Good. That makes this easier." Geto took another step. "What's your name?"
Silence. The kid's eyes moved from Geto to Gojo, who was standing with his hands in his pockets looking bored, then to Shoko, who gave him a half-nod that could be interpreted as friendly if you were generous.
"...Haru," the kid said. His voice was quiet. A bit rough, like he hadn't used it in a while. "Nozomi Haru."
Geto blinked. The family name first. Old-fashioned. Then again, everything about this kid was old-fashioned.
"I'm Geto Suguru. That's Gojo Satoru and Ieiri Shoko. We're second-years." He waited. "Haru, are you the one growing those plants?"
Haru looked back toward his little garden plot. His hair-buns lifted a bit more, not all the way up, but partway, like he was cautiously hopeful that this conversation might not end with him getting hurt. He nodded again.
"With cursed energy?"
Another nod.
"How long have you been out here?"
Haru's mouth twisted. He looked down at the dirt. "Here? A few... a few weeks, maybe. This spot. I move around."
"Move around from where?" Gojo asked from behind Geto. He'd pushed his sunglasses up into his hair, and his blue eyes were looking at the kid with open curiosity. Not hostility. Just interest, the way he looked at anything unusual. "Where do you live?"
"I don't," Haru said. "Live anywhere. I just..-I find places. Empty fields. Places no one uses anymore. I grow things for a while and then I move."
Shoko had walked over to the garden while this was happening. She crouched by the row of rice and touched a stalk, rubbing a leaf between her fingers. "This rice is fully mature. It's March."
"I know," Haru said, like he'd been caught doing something wrong.
"Rice doesn't mature until September."
"I know."
"So how.."
"He's accelerating the growth," Gojo said. His eyes were still on Haru, but his attention was clearly split, reading the cursed energy layered into the soil and the plants. "He's flowing cursed energy into the ground and it's speeding up the plant cycle. That's what the auxiliary managers have been picking up. It's residual from the technique."
Geto looked at Gojo. "That's an innate technique."
"Yeah."
"He's a sorcerer."
"Barely. His output is... I mean, it's there, but it's low. Really low." Gojo looked at Haru again. "No offense."
Haru didn't seem offended. He seemed like he wanted to sink into the ground.
"How old are you?" Geto asked.
Haru's hair-buns did something complicated. They went up, then to the side, then sort of half-down. His face went through a similar journey. "That's... I don't... it's hard to explain."
"Try."
"I look..I think I look about seventeen. Or eighteen. I'm not sure anymore."
Geto caught the phrasing, I think I look. Not I am.
"How old are you actually?" he asked carefully.
Haru pulled at his scarf, bunching it higher around his neck. His eyes went to the ground again. "There was an object. In my family's field. A long time ago. I dug it up by accident when I was planting. After that I just... didn't get older."
The three students looked at each other.
"A cursed object?" Shoko asked from the garden.
"I think so. I didn't know what it was. I was just a farmer. My family was.. we were in Mino Province. During the..." He trailed off, searching for words. "I don't know what you call it now. The Tokugawa period."
The silence that followed was the particular kind of silence that happens when someone says something that should be impossible but the evidence is standing right in front of you in straw boots.
"The Edo period," Geto said. "You're from the Edo period."
"I think so. Yes."
Gojo let out a short breath. Not quite a laugh. "Huh."
---
They let the curtain down. There was no curse to exorcise, no threat to neutralize. Just a kid. Or whatever he was, sitting in the dirt next to his impossible garden, pulling another grain stalk out of a pocket in his tunic and putting it between his teeth because it seemed to calm him down.
Geto sat across from him on an overturned crate. Gojo leaned against one of the collapsed shed walls with his arms crossed. Shoko sat on the ground with her legs crossed, looking at Haru with the quiet, clinical interest she usually reserved for things she wanted to take apart and understand.
Haru talked. Not a lot, and not easily. The words came in bursts, with long pauses in between where he'd chew on his grain stalk and look at the sky like he was reading it for weather.
The basics came out in pieces. He'd been a farmer's son. His family grew rice. One day he dug up something in the field. He described it as a small stone tablet with markings he couldn't read. After he touched it, things started changing. His plants grew faster. Cuts healed quicker when he ate what he grew. And he stopped aging.
He didn't say what happened to his family. He didn't have to. The way his hair-buns pressed flat against his head when Geto asked about them said enough.
"I watched them get old," Haru said, and then didn't say anything else for a while.
After that, he drifted. Decades. Centuries. Rural Japan was big enough and empty enough that a quiet kid who kept to himself and grew things in unused fields could go unnoticed for a long time. He'd hear things, occasionally, stories about curses, about sorcerers. He stayed away from all of it. He wasn't a fighter. He wasn't anything, really. He was just a farmer who couldn't die.
"Have you ever exorcised a curse?" Geto asked.
"No."
"Fought one?"
"No. I run." He said it without shame. Just a fact. "I'm very good at hiding."
"Clearly," Gojo said. "You've been hiding for what, three hundred years? And no one in the jujutsu world picked you up?"
"I stay in places where people don't go. And my energy is small. You said so yourself."
Gojo tilted his head, acknowledging the point.
Geto leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Haru, what have you been eating?"
Haru blinked. His hair-buns perked up slightly, confused by the question. "What I grow. Rice. Vegetables. Sometimes I trade with people in nearby towns if they'll take produce."
"And you've been doing this for three hundred years."
"More or less."
Geto sat back. He looked at Gojo. They had one of those silent conversations that people who've known each other long enough can have, mostly conducted through eyebrow movements and slight head tilts.
Gojo's contribution was a shrug that said your call.
Geto's response was a slight narrowing of his eyes that said this is not just my call and you know that.
Gojo shrugged again, harder. And yet.
Geto turned back to Haru. "We need to bring you back to the school."
Haru's hair-buns went flat so fast they made a soft sound against his scalp. "What? No. I don't, I'm not a sorcerer. I grow vegetables."
"You have an innate cursed technique. You produce cursed energy. By definition, you're a sorcerer."
"A very, very weak one," Haru said quickly, as if this would help his case.
"That doesn't matter. You've been flying under the radar, but now you've been flagged. If we go back and report an unregistered sorcerer with a cursed technique living in a field in Saitama, Jujutsu Headquarters is going to send someone out here. And the next person they send might not be as patient."
Haru clutched his scarf. "I haven't done anything wrong. I just grow things."
"I know. Which is why it's better if you come with us and we sort this out properly. Our teacher is the principal.. Well, he's about to be the principal. He's reasonable."
"Debatable," Gojo muttered.
"He's reasonable," Geto repeated firmly. "He'll figure out what to do with you. At minimum, you need to be registered."
Haru looked at his garden. The rice swayed gently in a breeze that barely existed. The beans climbed their sticks. The radishes were fat and healthy in the dirt.
His hair-buns slowly, reluctantly, rose to half-mast.
"Will I be able to come back?" he asked. "To the plants?"
"We'll work something out," Geto said, and he meant it.
The train ride back was different.
Haru sat by the window, pressing his face close to the glass as the countryside blurred into suburbs and then into the city. His eyes were wide. His hair-buns were fully upright for the first time since they'd met him, swiveling slightly like antennae as he tracked buildings, cars, signs, everything.
"What is that?" he asked, pointing at a billboard with a woman holding a can of coffee.
"An advertisement," Geto said.
"For what?"
"Coffee."
"Oh." Then a pause. "What's coffee?"
Gojo, sitting across the aisle, looked at Geto with an expression that clearly communicated: this is going to be a whole thing, isn't it.
Geto ignored him. "It's a drink. Bitter. People like it."
"Like tea?"
"Sort of."
"Hmm." Haru's buns tilted thoughtfully. He went back to the window. A moment later: "Why is everything so loud?"
"That's just Tokyo," Shoko said without opening her eyes.
Haru watched a cluster of high-rises pass by. Something in his expression shifted. Not fear exactly, but the slow, heavy realization that the world had moved on without him in ways he hadn't fully understood from his fields. His buns slowly drooped to half-mast.
He put a new grain stalk in his mouth and chewed quietly.
---
The stairs up to Jujutsu High were long. Haru didn't complain, which earned him a small amount of respect from Shoko, who hated the stairs and complained every time. The torii gates passed over them one by one as they climbed, red arches framing the mountain path.
Haru stopped at the first one. Looked up at it. His buns went straight up.
"These are very old," he said.
"Yeah," Gojo said. "Keep moving."
Haru kept moving. But he touched each gate as he passed it, fingertips brushing the wood lightly, like he was saying hello to something he recognized.
The campus opened up before them at the top. the old buildings, the courtyards, the trees. Haru stopped again. This time no one rushed him. Even Gojo paused for a second, because the look on Haru's face wasn't just surprise. It was something closer to recognition. Not of the specific place, but of the style. The traditional architecture. The wooden beams. The stone paths. For the first time since they'd found him, Haru looked like he was standing somewhere that made sense to him.
His hair-buns stood perfectly upright. The grain stalk bobbed as he almost smiled.
"It looks like home," he said quietly.
Then Geto's hand landed gently on his shoulder, steering him toward the main building. "Come on. You need to meet Yaga-sensei."
"Is he scary?"
"A little bit."
Haru's buns went sideways. He chewed his grain stalk faster.
Yaga was in his workshop. He was always in his workshop when he wasn't teaching or yelling at Gojo or sitting in meetings he didn't want to be in. Today he was stitching a new doll, this one had a round body and stubby arms. Some kind of bear, maybe.
Geto knocked on the open door. "Sensei. We're back from Saitama."
"Already?" Yaga didn't look up. "Report."
"No curse. No cursed object at the site. The source of the residuals was..." Geto paused and stepped aside.
Haru was standing behind him, half-hidden, scarf pulled up to his nose. Only his eyes and his hair-buns were visible. The buns were pressed completely flat.
Yaga looked up. He looked at Haru. He looked at Geto. He looked at Gojo, who was leaning in the doorway again. He really liked doorways. With a grin that said good luck with this one.
"Explain," Yaga said.
Geto explained. It took about five minutes. Haru stood there the whole time, clutching his scarf, eyes fixed on the floor. Occasionally his buns would twitch when Geto mentioned something specific, like the accelerated plant growth or the approximate three centuries of age.
Yaga listened without interrupting. When Geto finished, Yaga set down his doll and his needle. He took off his glasses, cleaned them on his shirt, and put them back on.
"Goddamn," he said.
He stood up and walked over to Haru. Yaga was a big man. Standing in front of Haru, the size difference was almost comical. Haru's head came up to about the middle of Yaga's chest.
"Look at me," Yaga said.
Haru looked up. His eyes were the size of teacups.
"You're the one growing those plants."
Haru gives a tiny nod.
"And you've been alive since the Edo period."
Haru then gives another nod. But tinier
"Do you have any identification? Documentation? Anything?"
Haru's buns slowly tilted to one side. "I have... seeds?"
Gojo snorted. Yaga shot him a look.
"Alright," Yaga said. He crossed his arms. "Here's what's going to happen. You're going to stay here tonight. I'm going to contact the higher-ups and figure out what to do with you. You are not to leave the campus. You are not to use your technique on school property without permission. Understood?"
"Yes, sir."
"How much cursed energy do you have?"
"Not very much."
"He's not lying about that," Gojo said from the doorway. "It's barely above civilian level. I've felt stronger output from some of the auxiliary managers."
"But he has an innate technique," Yaga said. It wasn't a question.
"Yeah. He does."
Yaga looked at Haru again. For a long moment, he just studied him, the straw boots, the linen tunic, the scarf, the hair. The conical hat, which Haru had retrieved from his garden and was now clutching in his hands like a shield.
"Can you fight?" Yaga asked.
"No, sir."
"Can you defend yourself?"
"I can run."
"From a cursed spirit?"
"I've been running from things my whole life. Things that are..bad. Dark. I don't know what they all were. I just know to run."
Yaga's expression didn't change, but something behind his eyes shifted. A small thing, like a door cracking open.
"Do you want to learn?" Yaga asked.
Haru's buns went up. Then sideways. Then halfway down. Then up again. The grain stalk bobbled frantically.
"Learn to... fight?"
"Learn to be a sorcerer. Learn to control what you have instead of leaking it into fields where it gets flagged on reports and I have to send my students to Saitama on a Tuesday."
"Hey," Gojo said.
"This is a school," Yaga continued. "If you're going to be here, you're going to be a student. That means classes. Training. Rules. Structure."
Haru looked at Geto. Geto gave him a small nod.
He looked at Shoko. She shrugged. "The food's decent."
He looked at Gojo. Gojo grinned. It was the kind of grin that was either reassuring or terrifying depending on how well you knew him. Haru did not know him at all.
Haru looked back at Yaga. His buns were trembling slightly. A vibration, like a tuning fork. He pulled the scarf away from his mouth.
"Okay," he said. "I'll try."
Yaga nodded once. "Good. Geto, find him a room. Ieiri, take him to get something to eat that he didn't grow himself. Gojo-"
"Yeah?"
"Go file the mission report."
"The report? We didn't even fight anything!"
"Then it should be a short report. Go."
Gojo stared at him. Yaga stared back. It wasn't a contest. Gojo pushed off the doorframe, muttered something under his breath, and walked away.
Geto put a hand on Haru's shoulder again. "Come on. I'll show you the dorms."
As they walked out, Haru glanced back at Yaga. The big man had already picked up his doll and resumed stitching, as if a three-hundred-year-old farmer appearing on his doorstep was just another Tuesday.
Haru's buns slowly, cautiously, rose to their full height.
He followed Geto into the hallway, the grain stalk clenched between his teeth, and tried to remember the last time someone had told him to stay somewhere instead of telling him to leave.
He couldn't.