A fair portion of it was medicine made specifically for children. He'd even packed fever patches sized for small foreheads.
Sumire's eyes flickered at the sight. Something rose in her chest she couldn't name, surprise and confirmation braided together.
She'd assumed this was a whim. It hadn't occurred to her that he would think it through this carefully.
Down the ladder they went, rung after rung, until they reached the tunnel below. Maybe the whole district had been rubble long enough that nobody used the sewers anymore. Maybe this stretch of pipe had been abandoned from the start.
Whatever the reason, the passage held none of the damp muck they'd expected. Dry underfoot. No filth, no scattered garbage. Even the walls had been wiped down, the work of someone who cared.
They followed Hana through what felt like a maze, turning and turning again, and after ten minutes a faint warm glow appeared ahead.
"Elder Matsuzaki, I'm back!" She broke into a run toward the light, her voice bright with it.
Around one more corner the tunnel opened into a wide chamber.
A dozen or so girls, most of them about Enju's size, sat in a quiet circle. At the center of them stood a man in plain clothes and old glasses, somewhere near fifty, holding an aluminum pot with the paint chipped off it. He was spooning something grey and pasty into the chipped bowls held up to him.
At the sound of Hana's voice, every head turned. The man they called Elder Matsuzaki turned with them.
"Hana! You're back!"
"Where did you go last night? We were all so worried."
"I'm so glad you're okay!"
The girls swarmed her, talking over one another, small faces tight with concern. Hands took hold of her arms and turned her, checking her over for injuries.
"I met someone kind yesterday." Hana's eyes crinkled with the smile. She tugged Gojo forward by the sleeve. "He let me stay the night, and he brought me all the way home today."
She presented him to the group. "This is Gojo. He's the one who saved me yesterday. Otherwise I'd never have seen any of you again."
He'd never told her his full name. She'd picked it out of their conversations and kept it.
Three strangers, appearing from nowhere. Every girl in the room took half a step back. So did Matsuzaki. Shoulders drew in, faces went guarded, and under the wariness sat something closer to fear.
Gojo looked them over. Red-rimmed eyes, sallow skin, the bare walls around them, the unidentifiable paste in their bowls. Behind the dark lenses his pale blue eyes lowered a fraction, and something in his chest pulled tight.
Hana laid the whole story out for them, start to finish.
When she reached the part about the two officers, about being lured somewhere quiet so they could kill her, the room went rigid. Several of the smaller girls grabbed for whoever's hand was nearest, eyes shining wet.
They understood that fear completely. The number of people in the world who wanted them dead ran long.
But Gojo had stopped it, Hana said. He'd stood between her and them.
By the time she finished, the strangers still made them nervous, though most of the fear had drained out of the room.
They'd met more than enough people who hated Cursed Children. Some had used food as bait before. Yet not one of them believed a man would kill two police officers just for a chance at a handful of discarded girls.
"Mr. Gojo. Thank you for saving Hana. Thank you."
Matsuzaki came forward, and his back, already bent, folded lower still. He bowed deep, his voice rough and thick with it.
"There's no need for that." Gojo caught him by the shoulders and eased him upright, gentle about it. "I did what anyone should. Feed the children first, though. They all look hungry."
He pulled the Inventory Curse around as he spoke and began drawing supplies out of its belly, one item at a time.
Matsuzaki opened his mouth to say something and stopped. Out of that small cloth doll's stomach, like a conjuring trick, came a two-pound can with LUNCHEON MEAT printed clean across the label.
Gojo pulled the ring. Rich, heavy meat smell rolled out into the empty tunnel.
"These are yours, Elder Matsuzaki." He set the can down on the ground, tone still mild. "They might help a little."
By the time he'd finished talking, a small mountain had risen at his feet.
Canned meat, mostly, the smell of it filling the chamber. Some canned fruit, sweet stuff. Sacks of rice and flour beside them, and medicine sorted into labeled packets. Two crates' worth, stacked neat around his boots.
Matsuzaki took off his glasses, the frames battered and one lens split with a crack, and scrubbed hard at his eyes with a sleeve washed pale from years of use.
The girls stared too. Wide eyes locked on the cans, small mouths pressed shut. Not one of them moved to grab anything. They stood there, quiet, wanting it so plainly and waiting so patiently that it hurt to watch.
Matsuzaki was old enough and had seen enough to recover first.
Whether the man was a magician or something stranger, whatever trick made the crates appear didn't matter. The food was real. The medicine was real. It would keep these children alive.
An ordinary man with no abilities at all, raising a dozen and more discarded girls in the sewers under a dead district, and getting one meal a day into them took everything he had.
They were too young to fend for themselves. The world above was full of people who wished them harm. Even going out to look for food meant risking your life to do it.
He didn't feed them tasteless paste by choice. He fed them paste because he had nothing else.
Each girl ate little enough. Multiply that by twenty, day after day, and the number sat on his chest like a stone.
Now, with all of this, he and the children could breathe.
His eyes went red as he looked at the man in front of him. Tears cut down the creases of his face and kept coming.
And then there was the medicine. The thing they needed most.
Cursed Children healed from wounds far faster than anyone else.
That didn't make them immune to illness.
A common cold, a fever, an infection in the lungs, seasonal flu. Anything that got inside them worked exactly as it did in any other child.
Worse, if anything. Years of poor food and a home under the street had left their immune systems weaker than most.
He'd lived through it more than once, sitting with a sick child in his arms and feeling the breathing slow and stop.
He'd tried everything.
Cold water on a burning forehead.
Weeds dug out of the rubble because someone claimed they were medicinal, boiled into tea.
Standing outside a clinic in the city center with his pride in his pocket, begging a doctor for a few fever pills.
Almost every time, all he could do was watch a small bright life dim out.
Looking down at the sorted packets, the children's fever medicine, the anti-inflammatories, the cold powders, the antiseptic and gauze and bandages for cuts, his eyes stung.
His vision blurred over completely.
"Mr. Gojo. Thank you." The words came out around something he couldn't swallow. He bent low again.
"Children. Thank Mr. Gojo." He wiped at the corner of his eye and turned to them, voice soft.
"Thank you, Gojo!"
They straightened up together and said it in one clear chorus.
Their voices rang thin and young, like wind chimes at dawn with the dew still on them, carrying nothing but gratitude.
The bolder ones looked right at him, eyes shining, grinning.
The shy ones hid behind a friend and offered half a face, adding their thanks in a whisper, cheeks pink with it.
Listening to them, Gojo's mouth curved.
He reached up and pulled the sunglasses off, letting the pale blue show, so his eyes could land on the children more kindly.
"You're welcome." He kept his voice low, careful not to startle them. "I didn't realize there'd be this many of you. If I had, I'd have brought more."
He looked over a dozen thin small bodies, and something like guilt threaded through it.
"No, no. Mr. Gojo, this is more than enough." Matsuzaki waved his hands, earnest. "This will take an enormous weight off us."
He'd never in his life seen this much food and medicine in one place.
Enough to carry them steadily through months. Enough that nobody would have to worry about the next meal.
"He's right." Hana stepped forward and tipped her face up at him, smiling until her eyes crinkled. "This is loads already. If it weren't for you, we'd never get to eat food this good."
"I only wish... I only wish we'd had medicine sooner."
At the back of the group, a girl with hair cut level to her ears and a scatter of freckles twisted the hem of her shirt. The words came out barely above a breath.
In the silence of the tunnel, everyone heard them.
Matsuzaki's face went stiff with embarrassment. He glanced at Gojo, uneasy.
He was terrified this kind man would hear it as ingratitude, as grasping for more, and take offense. His mouth opened to scold the girl, then closed again, because she was already grieving and he didn't want to frighten her. So he stood there, hands useless at his sides.
"Did something happen?"
No anger in Gojo at all. He came forward two steps, crouched down slowly until his eyes were level with theirs, and asked it gently.
"Sayaka... she got sick. She died."
The girl's mouth trembled as she pressed it shut. Her eyes went red. The words came out small.
Around her, the smiles faded one by one.
Grief replaced them, thick and unmoving.
A few of the youngest ducked their heads and wiped at their faces with the backs of their hands.
For girls who had only each other, losing one of their own landed like a blow that never fully stopped falling.
Sayaka had been the gentlest of them.
She'd helped Matsuzaki feed the little ones.
She'd told stories at night to whoever was afraid of the dark.
She'd slipped her own portion, never large to begin with, to whichever sister was hungrier.
And a fever had taken her. No medicine, no way to reach a hospital, three days of burning, and on a cold night she was gone.
They couldn't even give her a proper headstone.
They buried her in a patch of rubble that caught the sun, and told each other she wouldn't be cold there.
Something in Gojo's chest pulled tight.