Tokyo. A certain high-end hotel.
An entire floor of the hotel had been sealed off. All guests evacuated.
The corridor was empty save for a handful of figures in Tokyo Prefectural Jujutsu Technical College uniforms, their expressions grave.
Nanami glanced back over his shoulder at the open hotel room door. Inside, the white-haired girl was still undergoing further examination by the doctor.
"Inumaki's body is fine." He turned his gaze back to the students — Maki and the others — waiting in front of him. "Or rather, Inumaki's situation is the same as Megumi Fushiguro's."
They — well, she — had been turned into a girl. That was all. Beyond that, no other harm had been done.
Physical functions normal. Memory and personality intact. Everything unchanged except for gender.
Identical to what had happened to Megumi Fushiguro.
"Oh — though there is one more thing." Nanami raised a hand and tapped the side of his mouth. "Inumaki's Jujutsu Technique has been altered."
Yuji blinked. "The Technique's been altered?"
"Yes. You all heard Inumaki speaking just now, correct?" Nanami looked around at them. "Did any of you feel the effect of the Cursed Speech?"
Yuji: "Huh?"
Now that he thought about it — yeah.
When they'd entered the room earlier, there had definitely been a girl's voice speaking inside. But it hadn't registered as Inumaki, because the timbre had changed completely.
Thinking back on it now... when he'd heard those words, he really hadn't felt the effect of Cursed Speech at all.
Inumaki's Cursed Speech... was gone?
Panda panicked: "What's going on?! How can a Technique just disappear?! Does that mean—"
"It didn't disappear." Nanami cut him off. "The activation condition for the Cursed Speech has changed."
"Activation condition?"
"Correct. Ordinary speech no longer triggers it." Nanami drew a finger along the side of his own throat. "Now, for Inumaki to activate Cursed Speech — she has to sing."
Everyone stared.
"Sing???"
What kind of condition was that??
They all looked at each other.
Panda asked: "Does that mean... like, the words only form Cursed Speech if they're spoken with a melody?"
"Mm... it's not quite that simple." Nanami rubbed his temple. "Singing means... well, it has to be the original lyrics of an actual, widely recognized song. Do you follow what I mean?"
For example, take the phrase "explode."
It wouldn't work to melodically sing the syllables "ex-plode" with a tune. Instead, she would need to sing an actual lyric from a real song — something like "one more look and it'll explode" — melody and lyrics both correct, and well-known enough for people to recognize. Only then would the Cursed Speech activate properly.
"What a bizarre activation condition." Even Nobara was floored — and struggling to keep a straight face. "Isn't this kind of... ridiculously over-the-top?"
"Mm, ha... yes. Right now there are specialists inside teaching Inumaki a dance, testing whether singing and dancing at the same time can further amplify the Cursed Speech's effect." Nanami glanced into the room at Ijichi, who was performing a mysterious shoulder-shimmy dance at the little white-haired girl with complete seriousness. Nanami held his composure by a thread. "Anyway... no idea why."
Nobody knew why.
Nobody knew what the blue-haired Cursed Spirit's purpose was in doing any of this.
With Inumaki rescued, the sorcerers' wound-tight nerves loosened just slightly — and almost immediately, they found themselves thinking that the blue-haired Cursed Spirit's behavior was utterly baffling.
That blue-haired Cursed Spirit was just... pranking people.
Mahiko had changed Inumaki's Cursed Speech technique. On the surface, it looked like she'd made the conditions stricter. But in practice, she hadn't really changed anything, hadn't weakened anything — in fact, if you thought about it carefully, it was actually an improvement for Inumaki.
All she'd done was swap the trigger from "talking" to "singing."
Learn a few songs ahead of time, and it's not even hard. Want to blast someone away? Sing "fly forward with joy." Want to blind someone? Sing "who says only those who stand in the light are heroes." Maybe if the mood is right, belting out a verse of AIZO could even let her pull off a Domain Expansion at the last second...
In any case — whatever the reasoning — this change to the condition didn't affect Inumaki's ability to fight going forward.
If anything, it made Inumaki's everyday life easier. (Setting aside the matter of something important having been confiscated.)
Because Inumaki's Cursed Speech had always been both her greatest weapon and her greatest shackle.
Since Cursed Energy automatically attaches to words when she speaks, Inumaki essentially couldn't hold a normal conversation with anyone — say the wrong thing casually and she could hurt the people around her.
What Mahiko had done freed Inumaki from that. From now on, she could talk to people normally.
That was, honestly, an enormous gift.
In other words — the blue-haired Cursed Spirit had actually helped Inumaki. She'd resolved a life obstacle that had burdened Inumaki her entire existence.
Calling it a good deed wouldn't even be an exaggeration.
"...Right, and maybe the overalls would help too..."
Muffled, strange sounds drifted out from inside the room. The sorcerers standing in the hallway looked at one another, and in each other's eyes they found the same bewilderment.
So — why?
The blue-haired Cursed Spirit had helped Inumaki. But... at the same time, that same blue-haired Cursed Spirit had reportedly killed over twenty ordinary people at a factory.
She had spared sorcerers again and again — had even helped them. And yet she was also supposedly ruthless, with no regard for human life.
What was going on?
A Cursed Spirit who kills civilians — and yet turns around to help sorcerers? The contradiction between those two behaviors left everyone present thoroughly confused.
"That blue-haired Cursed Spirit said... she's never killed anyone." Yuji spoke up then, his voice a little lost. "So maybe... the culprit behind the factory incident is someone else entirely?"
Nanami's eyes flickered.
"Stay vigilant. Keep up the manhunt. And... dig deeper into the factory incident," the blond man said. "If the killer there was truly some other sorcerer or Cursed Spirit, then we redirect our target."
He wasn't saying this out of some naive belief that a Cursed Spirit could be a friend or a good person. Cursed Spirits couldn't be left to run wild unchecked.
He simply understood priorities.
A Cursed Spirit or sorcerer who massacres humans — that needs to be eliminated first. A Cursed Spirit who doesn't kill can wait a little longer.
Provided, of course, that those people were truly not killed by the blue-haired Cursed Spirit.
"Killed... over twenty people?" While Yuji and the others were still reeling, Mahiko was equally stunned. "That's a pretty massive body count. No wonder they were looking at me like they wanted blood."
"You're certain it wasn't you, right?" Mechamaru's voice came through her earpiece, flat and serious. "Because the manner of death at the scene matches your Technique almost perfectly — Reverse Cursed Technique can't heal the wounds, the souls are twisted, the bodies transformed into monsters. The only person we know with that kind of method is you."
"Ugh, use your brain for a second." Mahiko clicked her tongue. "What would I gain from lying to you?"
"Fair point — I'm your accomplice." Mechamaru said. "So you have no other leads?"
Mechamaru hadn't been available these past few days — he still had things to deal with at school. But when he heard the news, he'd immediately carved out a window today, slipping away from his teachers' watch at the last possible moment to come find her.
Yes.
While Mahiko had been holed up in the abandoned building working on Domain Expansion, a factory had been attacked.
Over twenty workers were dead. The manner of death was horrific — and almost perfectly consistent with her Technique.
Souls twisted. Bodies warped into inhuman shapes. Wounds that Reverse Cursed Technique could not heal.
On top of that, Window observers in the area had spotted the silhouette of a blue-haired Cursed Spirit nearby — so the sorcerers had unanimously concluded that Mahiko was behind the massacre.
"They say they have photos." Mechamaru continued. "A Window operative caught your back on a cursed-tool camera."
"Photos? If they have photos, shouldn't they be able to tell it's not me?" Mahiko said.
"The photo is blurry."
"...Then let me see it."
"I don't have it."
"Are your hands broken? If you don't have it, go get it."
"Tch." Mechamaru clicked his tongue. "I can try to get it for you... but honestly the photo probably won't tell us much. The real issue is the method of killing and the Technique used — they genuinely look just like yours."
Something was very wrong here.
Mechamaru had come precisely because he found the whole thing deeply suspicious.
If Mechamaru had actually believed Mahiko killed those people, he wouldn't have come to ask her. After all, Mahiko was a Cursed Spirit.
If Mahiko had killed people, Mechamaru would have resented her for it and kept his distance — but he wouldn't have come to ask about it.
Because a Cursed Spirit killing humans was, objectively, a perfectly normal thing.
The problem was that the timeline and location simply didn't add up.
At the time of the deaths, Mahiko hadn't been anywhere near that factory. Unless she had specifically and secretly sent a clone to do the killing — which was the kind of thing Mechamaru would have noticed.
But why would Mahiko need to sneak around when it came to killing?
There was no reason for her to hide it from him.
They were partners, accomplices. If she'd killed someone, she'd just say so outright — what was there to hide?
"Then who did it?" Mechamaru mused. "Is there a second Cursed Spirit out there with a Technique identical to yours?"
"Impossible." Mahiko clicked her tongue. "You sorcerers really do have low collective IQ sometimes. First, get me that photo. And while you're at it, get me the remains of the victims too. Whatever you lot can't solve — I'll solve it."
Going by the original story, it genuinely shouldn't be possible. In canon, she was the only one. There was no second Cursed Spirit in existence who possessed Idle Transfiguration.
She was more inclined to think the sorcerers had made a mistake.
Because, in truth, she had never actually demonstrated her ability to "turn humans into Transfigured Humans" in front of anyone. The sorcerers had no idea what real Transfigured Humans looked like — so it was entirely possible they'd misidentified the work of some third-rate Cursed Spirit and pinned it on her.
It turned out being merciful had its downsides too.
Since no one had seen how brutal she could actually be when she chose to be, they were now pinning some other low-level villain's dirty work on her instead.
"I still haven't finished with the school matter. Give me a couple of days to wrap that up, then I'll come find you." Mechamaru said.
Mahiko rolled her eyes. "Then be quick about it. Don't drag it out for a week. When you're done, I'll track down the real culprit — when we find them, the credit goes to you, and you help clear my name. Not that it matters all that much to me, but it's still annoying to have someone else's crimes on my tab."
Mahiko's refusal to kill wasn't some hypocritical performance to maintain a "good-person" image — she simply didn't want to kill. But if someone genuinely disgusted her or pushed her far enough, she'd raise her hand and end them without a second thought.
Since transmigrating into the Cursed Spirit Mahiko, she'd long since stopped caring whether she came across as a good person or a bad one.
But even so — having someone else's crimes dumped onto her still left a sour taste.
And on top of that, the whole thing was giving the sorcerers motivation to hunt her down.
Just yesterday she'd been caught in an encirclement — thankfully she'd been well prepared.
She was now maintaining a ring of clone micro-drones hovering a hundred to two hundred meters around her at all times, monitoring the surroundings and guarding against another surprise ambush.
Last time it had been Nanami leading a group of students — and they'd failed. But next time, there was no guarantee it would only be one Grade 1 sorcerer.
Better not to get cornered at all.
So finding the real culprit quickly — getting these sorcerers to chase the actual killer and leave her alone — was a top priority right now.
Mm... actually, wait.
Better hold off until Mechamaru brought her some leads.
Right now she had something far more interesting to occupy her — a new ability she'd just learned. Compared to how entertaining this was, everything else could wait its turn.
Heh heh... because this was Cursed Speech.
This was going to be incredibly fun.
____
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