Was busy with stuff yesterday😅
Anyway, sorry for the delay, but here it is. Enjoy.
Powerstones and comments are greatly appreciated. And if you enjoyed it, add it to your library.
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After my… how should I put this?
My enthusiastic introduction to cursed spirits?
No, that sounds too clean.
My aggressive philosophical debate with a monster using ice weaponry?
Yeah, let's go with that.
After I was done having my one-sided discussion with the disgusting thing, Jubei and I had a stare-down for a full two minutes.
I stood there as the thing's blood vanished slowly with the curse and looked up at the old man.
I was expecting something like caution, fear, horror, or maybe concern. Some reaction that would be appropriate after witnessing a four-year-old walk into a cage, pin a cursed spirit to the floor with an ice weapon bigger than himself, ask it the meaning of life, and then execute it when it failed to answer.
That's a reasonable thing to have a reaction to.
But Jubei's response was nothing like what I expected.
"Kid," he said, scratching his beard, "you can't just do that randomly."
"Wha-?"
"The seals on that cage are a pain to replace. Do you have any idea how long it takes to get a talisman specialist out here? Three weeks minimum. And the paperwork? My old bones can't handle it."
I stared at him in total confusion.
Seeing my somewhat bewildered expression, he raised an eyebrow.
"What? You think you can scare me, too?"
I recovered from my shock and shook my head. "Not scared, but… curious? Cautious? Maybe a bit judging?"
To which he laughed, as he slid the naginata back onto his back.
"Kid, I have seen enough madness in the sixty-seven years I've spent in the circus we call home. A four-year-old with anger issues and a fancy ice stick doesn't even crack the top ten."
"Oh..... Okay."
That was all I could say.
He walked past me into the cage and crouched down, inspecting the paper seals along the bars. Running his fingers over them, checking for damage. His cursed energy pulsed faintly as he tested each talisman slowly.
After a while, he sighed with relief. "No damage to the seals. That's a relief. It would be a nightmare getting them fixed."
Then he straightened up and looked at me again. With his expression serious this time.
"And if you're going to have a moment like that again, make sure there are no people around. You almost harmed your classmates."
That made me pause.
The words hit differently than I expected. I understood that I almost messed up.
My cursed energy had erupted in an uncontrolled way.
If Jubei hadn't intervened, hadn't used his own technique to shield them and throw them to safety…
I could have hurt them.
The same people of this clan I'd sworn to protect this morning.
The irony was bitter as always.
"Understood." That was all I could say.
He grinned and patted my head and said, "All good, brat. Now go. That's it for today's class."
I bowed and left.
Hours later, I was ambushed.
Not by a curse, an assassin, nor by anything that my Six Eyes could have warned me about in time to prepare an appropriate defense.
The ambusher was my dear brother.
Ryu came out of nowhere, scooped me off the ground, and started shaking me with the enthusiasm of a man who'd just won a war.
"THIS IS SO EPIC!"
Currently, my family is gathered for dinner. The low table was set with the kind of meal that reminded me this wasn't a normal household. Steamed rice in bowls. Grilled sweetfish from the river, arranged on ceramic plates with pickled plum and grated daikon. Simmered vegetables in a broth, seasoned with miso.
Alas, I couldn't start eating, because my brother hadn't stopped shaking me.
"YOU NOT ONLY LEARNED SOMETHING THAT TOOK YUKA A LIFETIME, BUT YOU ALSO LEARNED HOW TO ENHANCE YOUR BODY USING CURSED ENERGY?"
Shake. Shake. Shake.
"AND IF THAT WASN'T SURPRISING ENOUGH-"
More. Shake. Shake.
"YOU MADE A SUPER COOL WEAPON AND KILLED A GRADE FOUR CURSE? AT THE AGE OF FOUR?"
He said all of this in a single breath, which left him oxygen-deprived as his face turned red.
He finally let me go to refill his lungs with that good old oxygen.
That was a huge mistake.
Yuka, the clever fox that she was, saw the opening and struck. Her hand came down on the back of his head with the precision of someone who had been doing this for years.
Thwack.
"Ow!"
She pulled me away from him and cradled me in her arms.
"You are going to hurt him one day," Yuka said, with a pissed face.
Ryu grabbed his head, inhaled dramatically, and pointed at her. "How can you NOT be excited after hearing what he did?"
"I am excited," she said.
She then began to gently comb my hair with her fingers. Running them through the light blue strands slowly, carefully, untangling the small knots that had formed during my eventful day.
This was her way of showing love. Not loud, not dramatic, not physical in the way Ryu's was.
I leaned towards her, as I secretly enjoyed this too.
Ryu huffed. "Doesn't look like it."
Just then, my mother laughed from across the table. "Enough, children. Eat your dinner first, then go to bed. Remember, you two have training tomorrow."
The effect was immediate.
Yuka's hand stopped on my head. Ryu stopped moving. Both of them went rigid for a fraction of a second, as if the word "training" had flipped a switch in their brains that overrode everything else.
They attacked their remaining food, and within minutes, they were done.
Yuka set me down gently, leaned in, and kissed my forehead. "Goodnight, Rei," she said softly as she walked out for the dinner hall.
Ryu slapped my back hard enough to make me stumble forward, and yelled "GOODNIGHT LITTLE BRO, YOU'RE THE COOLEST," and sprinted out of the room like the building was on fire.
I watched them go with a warm feeling in my chest.
Twins, I thought. Supposedly the same age. Sharing the same blood. Raised in the same house.
My father, apparently thinking the same thing, set down his chopsticks and said, "It is still so hard to believe they are twins."
My mother laughed. "This never gets old."
Then they stopped as they focused on me.
I looked back at them.
I could see it in their postures. The shift in their mood. The way my father's shoulders had straightened, and the way my mother's hands had folded in her lap, one over the other. The way their cursed energy had settled into that steady, deliberate calm that adults use when they're preparing for a conversation they'd rather not have.
This was about the shed.
Of course it was.
My father took a final bite of his food, set down his bowl, and looked at me directly.
"I assume you know what we're going to talk about?"
No circling around the topic? I appreciated that.
"Yes," I said. "About the incident today."
My father looked at my mother. She gave him a small nod.
She turned to me, and her voice was gentle and measured at the same time. The tone she used when she was being careful with me, which I was learning meant the conversation mattered more than usual.
"We have two questions, Rei. And you can answer them only if you're comfortable with it, okay? We don't want to make you uncomfortable."
I looked at her and smiled.
Both of them reacted. My father's eyes widened slightly, and my mother's breath caught. Just for a moment, just enough for me to notice.
Still not used to seeing me smile? It will take a while for them to get used to it.
"I totally understand that," I said. "And I appreciate your thoughtfulness."
My mother recovered and returned the smile. "Thank you for understanding, snowflake."
She paused, and then finally asked.
"Why do you hate the cursed spirits?"
That's it?
The question seemed obvious to me. So obvious that I answered it with a question of my own.
"Are humans not supposed to hate curses? Their goal is always to harm us, is it not?"
My mother nodded. "Yes. Every sorcerer fights curses. That's our duty. But what Jubei described to us…" She hesitated, choosing her words. "It sounded much more personal than duty. The way you spoke to it. The way you looked at it, and the way you exorcised it. Your father and I wanted to understand why, so we could help you if you needed it."
Oh.
That made sense. From their perspective, their four-year-old son had walked into a cage and spoken to a cursed spirit with a level of hatred that went beyond professional obligation. They weren't asking because they were judging me. They were asking because they were worried.
"It's nothing that deep," I said. "I love the world I live in. The mountains, the sky, the people." I looked at both of them. "This family, this clan. All of it. And those things, those cursed spirits, their only purpose is to destroy that. To take something beautiful and turn it into something ugly."
I paused.
"That, I can't, and will not allow."
Hearing this, both my father and mother exhaled.
"If that's the case," my father said, "then it's all good."
My mother nodded, the concern in her eyes softening. "We just wanted to make sure, snowflake."
Fair enough.
Then my father's expression shifted again.
The second question.
"As for the second question."
He leaned forward slightly.
"How do you know about the weapon you made?"
I blinked.
The question caught me off guard. Not because it was unexpected, but because of the way he asked it. There was weight behind it. More weight than a simple question about a cursed technique should carry.
He wasn't asking out of curiosity.
He was asking as if the halberd meant something.
Both of them were looking at me with an intensity that I hadn't seen before.
They knew what the halberd was.
Or at least, they knew something about it.
Interesting.
"I don't know, I just felt like creating a weapon that resonated with myself, and the weapon was made. It wasn't a conscious choice. The cursed energy just… took that shape."
As I said this, both of them stared at me.
My father looked at my mother. My mother looked at my father. One of those silent conversations that couples have when they've been together long enough to communicate entire paragraphs with a single glance.
I watched the exchange. I couldn't read all of it, but I could read things like surprise and disbelief.
The more they acted like this, the more confused I got. They acted like they'd heard of this before.
Like the halberd wasn't random.
Like it meant something much bigger than a four-year-old making an ice weapon on instinct.
I looked at their faces, and I knew one thing with 100% certainty.
This is going to be way deeper than I thought.
--<<>>--
What is it going to be?? I wonder👀👀👀