Every pair of eyes lit up. Heads bobbed, and a chorus of small voices answered, "Yes!"
"What kind of magic, mister?"
"Show us, show us!"
They chattered over each other, faces open and bright, watching him with total expectation.
His smile softened further. "All right. Watch closely, then. The magic starts now."
His free hand came to rest on Aii's head. Eyes closed, he let the power inside him stir and eased it into her, careful as threading a needle, and began drawing the corrosion rate down.
Aii tipped her round face up, and there wasn't a flicker of doubt in her eyes.
Only trust, the undiluted kind, a reliance so pure it had no sediment in it. As long as the man in the dark glasses with the reckless grin was standing there, no problem existed that couldn't be solved.
Her small hand had a fistful of his shirt, fingers tightening, her breathing quick with anticipation, as though she already knew something wonderful was coming.
He felt the tug at his hem and looked down at the little one pressed against his side. The smile deepened, and his voice went soft enough to pour.
He raised a long-fingered hand and ruffled her hair, letting the warmth of his palm bleed through, smoothing away the small knot of nerves she was hiding.
Then he dug a fruit candy out of his pocket, peeled the wrapper, and slipped it into her mouth the moment she looked up. Sweetness bloomed across her tongue and her eyes curved into crescents.
"All right, kids. Magic time."
His voice carried easily, light and teasing, and pulled every child in the place into focus.
Hands on her shoulders, he steadied her where she stood, the motions identical to the demonstration before. A fingertip touched the side of her neck with almost no pressure.
No pain at all. The light went out of her eyes, her body went loose, and she folded into his arms like a cat dropping into sleep.
His expression firmed. The flippancy fell away. From his storage space he drew a strangely shaped Cursed Tool, the Inverted Spear of Heaven he'd taken from Toji.
Faint Cursed Energy coiled along it, the metal throwing off a cold sheen that looked twice as grim in the dark of the sewer.
He moved without hesitation, cutting through her limbs with clean, economical strokes, nothing wasted.
It happened faster than anyone could process. Not one drop of blood escaped as the limbs hit the ground, because Reverse Cursed Technique was already running, a pale green halo wrapping her body and sealing every wound the instant it opened.
Enju had gone through the same procedure once. Unconscious, Aii felt nothing at all, the whole thing passing over her like a dream she wouldn't remember.
The other children stood frozen, eyes enormous, none of them breathing.
Especially when her severed limbs struck the floor with a soft dull knock.
A few of the timid ones flinched hard and clapped their hands over their eyes, then peeked through the gaps in their fingers anyway, unwilling to miss the part where the magic paid off.
The scene frightened them. The word "magic" pulled harder. Curiosity beat out fear.
Then came the miracle. Pink new flesh crept out from the stumps under the green glow, spreading, knitting, growing, while the fallen limbs dissolved away in the same light until nothing remained of them.
The children broke, all at once, into a ragged shout of amazement. Hands dropped from faces. Incredible. Amazing. They said it over and over, staring at him with something close to worship.
The severed limbs, and the thin seep of blood the Cursed Energy hadn't quite suppressed, went straight into the mental drawer marked "props."
In their simple accounting, this was all stagecraft he'd cooked up. Not one of them considered that the limbs were real, and none of them guessed that the cheerful little trick was saving her life by the most brutal route available.
Start to finish, from unconsciousness to severance to regeneration, took a minute or two. Too fast to dwell on.
Of all of it, the regrowth was what drained his Cursed Energy and his time.
On his own body, injuries like that would have closed in a blink.
On an ordinary Cursed Child, the effect ran far cooler. He had to meter the energy out, feeding the new tissue by degrees, making certain nothing was left behind to trouble her later.
Then the last of it was done.
Her skin was pale and smooth again, unmarked, as if the whole thing had never happened.
Lashes fluttered. She opened her eyes.
Still fogged with sleep, blinking, she checked her arms, then her legs, then the floor. The faint traces still dissolving down there stopped her. Confusion crossed her face while she tried to reconstruct the last two minutes.
"There we go. Let Miss Sumire check you over again."
He patted her back and guided her forward.
Sumire had the analyzer ready, the usual languor gone from her face. She pricked Aii's fingertip with a fine needle, squeezed out a bead of red, and dropped it into the sample well.
The machine chirped. A new figure appeared on the screen: 18.341%.
Still half-dazed, Aii read it, and the confusion burned off into shock.
She raised a hand and pointed, her voice wobbling. "Mister... my Corrosion Rate went down that much?"
"Of course. When have I ever lied to you?"
He winked and ruffled her hair again.
He'd known what this would do to her. Before today her number had been closing on thirty, with the threat sitting right there at her shoulder.
One session had put her under twenty. For her, that was a second life handed over.
"Thank you, mister!"
Cursed Children learned what corrosion rates meant before they learned much else. She understood better than anyone that the number was her life, the whole of her chance at one.
Joy swamped her. She threw herself against him, arms locked around his waist, tipped her face up and planted a fierce kiss on his cheek.
A beat later she registered what she'd done, went scarlet to the ears, gave an embarrassed little laugh, and turned to bolt.
He caught her hand and shook his head, pointing at the traces still fading on the floor. "Not so fast. Take your magic props with you."
She blinked, then caught on, nodded obediently, and crouched to gather them up, still beaming.
"All right, we'll go by Miss Sumire's list. When I call your name, come up and help with the performance."
He clapped his hands and every head turned.
With Aii's demonstration behind them, not one of the others hesitated. Hands shot up all over, faces eager, terrified only of being skipped.
They'd watched her number fall. They'd felt how gentle he was. Fear had nothing left to stand on, and what remained was curiosity and want.
One by one they came forward. Same method every time: unconsciousness first, then the Inverted Spear of Heaven, then Reverse Cursed Technique.
Every child woke, saw the number, and did exactly what Aii had done. Into his arms, a hard kiss on the cheek, a few of them piping out a small "thank you, mister."
A dozen-odd little girls later, his face was covered in faint lip prints, and Sumire's expression had begun to curdle.
She'd been ready to credit him with something admirable, genuine effort spent on children the world had thrown away, and her opinion of him had risen accordingly.
Now she couldn't shake the impression of a man with a specific taste in little girls using medical treatment as a pretext for cuddles. Her mouth twitched. The look she aimed at him carried a full commentary.
By the time the last one had been treated, the scene had gotten genuinely lurid.
Sewers were dank to begin with, moss furring the walls, a stale mildew smell hanging in the air.
Now the ground was littered with fragments of limbs that hadn't finished dissolving, and blood ran in thin sheets along the cracks in the concrete. The steady drip carried in the quiet. The iron smell thickened, layered over the mildew, until breathing felt like work.
And in the middle of that, the girls who'd had their corrosion rates cut had no idea what had actually happened to them. They'd been to a fun magic show, that was all.
They were delighted, faces glowing, giggling, and their bright laughter bounced off the wet walls in a way that clashed with everything around it.
Picture it: a crowd of small girls flecked with blood, cradling half-dissolved arms and legs, standing ankle-deep in red.
All of them smiling sweetly, roughhousing and chasing each other through a dripping, reeking tunnel. Anybody who walked in on that would feel their sanity slip a notch, a cold crawl up the spine, unable to sort the warmth from the horror.
"All right, everyone. Line up for Miss Sumire so she can check your Corrosion Rate."
He clapped, cutting through the noise, his voice easy.
The chatter died. A long orderly queue formed, each of them stepping up in turn, hopeful and jittery, dreading the possibility their number hadn't moved.
Sumire tested and recorded, one after another.
Her professional composure gave way to open astonishment. Every single rate had dropped hard. Plenty of them had been in the thirties, several past forty.
Any of them could have tipped over. Now they sat between the low teens and the low twenties, with the danger pushed years away.
She'd seen it done with Enju already. It didn't matter. This was not a thing that stopped being staggering.
When the last test was logged, he took the record from her and carried the weight of it over to Elder Matsuzaki.
The old man sat on a stone in the corner, tired-eyed, his face a map of creases, worry parked permanently between his brows.
Their corrosion rates had never once left his mind.
Life down here had improved since Satoru arrived, but the numbers hung over everything, a stone slab on his chest he couldn't shift.
"Elder Matsuzaki, the children's Corrosion Rates are all down. Nothing to worry about for a good while."
He held out the record, his tone level, as though he'd done something barely worth mentioning.
Matsuzaki stared at him, body going stiff, and reached out with a trembling hand to take the pages.