She genuinely didn't have much interest in killing people.
Why? Simple — she actually liked these characters quite a bit, so she didn't want them dead.
Do what you want, skip what you don't. That was all there was to it.
So then why had she modified Inumaki's body?
Honestly, she didn't have any particular attachment to Inumaki as a character. She liked other characters more. Changing him into a girl had been purely spontaneous — the jujutsu equivalent of carving "I was here" into a park bench.
Nothing better to do, so why not? It's not like leaving him alone would've gotten her anything.
That was roughly the mentality.
As for the animal ears and tail — heh — those were one hundred percent Mahiko's personal tastes.
The one downside was that the male population of Jujutsu High had dropped yet again. A few more incidents like this and Mahiko was going to accidentally turn the whole school into an all-girls academy.
But it wasn't purely mischief, either. She had made some genuine physical improvements to Inumaki's body, along with a few modifications to his Jujutsu Technique. The Cursed Speech itself was still Cursed Speech at its core — a Jujutsu Technique is an interconnected system, and tinkering with it blindly without a backup is a recipe for disaster. So rather than rewriting the technique itself, she'd simply layered a new activation condition on top of it.
Namely: singing.
The concept of delivering Cursed Speech through song — that part Mahiko had genuinely set up to help Inumaki. Really.
Besides, the idea itself was genuinely interesting, wasn't it? Mahiko was honestly curious what Inumaki's fights would look like going forward. It was going to be a blast to watch.
Though she hadn't changed all that much, in the end. The core was still Cursed Speech.
Mm…
Still, the real reason — the most important reason — she'd abducted Inumaki in the first place was that she'd been interested in his Jujutsu Technique.
Yes. Within the same day that Inumaki had been taken, she had already learned Cursed Speech directly from him.
Cursed Speech was a powerful Jujutsu Technique. A convenient one. And, frankly, an incredibly fun one.
With Cursed Speech active, anything the user says aloud is automatically transformed into a [Curse] — language saturated with Cursed Energy.
Say "lose control of your bladder" and the target will find themselves in a very unfortunate situation. Say "become a red stone" and something unidentified will come flying straight into an enemy's mouth.
Of course, Cursed Speech has its limits.
It inflicts serious damage on the user's own throat. The strain is enormous. The more powerful the command — or rather, the harder it is to actually realize — the greater the backlash, and the worse the damage to the throat. Cursing a target stronger than yourself compounds that backlash even further; overuse will destroy your own voice entirely. So for all its apparent omnipotence, Cursed Speech in Inumaki's hands was never truly invincible.
Curse someone far above your level, and a single command could leave you vomiting blood from a shredded throat.
But in Mahiko's hands? That was a different story entirely.
She could heal her own throat with [Idle Transfiguration].
Backlash? Please. Just fix it and move on.
She could even control multiple mouths at once.
Burn one out, switch to another and keep going.
She could have her clones deliver the curses too. In the original story, a phone call could transmit Cursed Speech — which meant the voice didn't need to come directly from her own mouth to take effect. An indirect delivery worked just fine. Passing the curse through a clone to speak it should work on the same principle.
In Mahiko's hands, the ceiling of Cursed Speech had been raised dramatically.
And even setting aside raw firepower — purely as a combat support tool, Cursed Speech was already first-rate.
When Inumaki faced opponents stronger than himself, landing offensive blows with Cursed Speech was nearly impossible. Commands like "explode" or "shatter" directed at enemies far above his level would wreck his throat after one or two uses, and the results weren't even guaranteed to be worth it.
But Mahiko didn't rely on Cursed Speech for damage output.
She had her hares and Idle Transfiguration for that.
So in a fight, a low-intensity command through Cursed Speech — something like "trip" or "freeze for 0.1 seconds" — the kind with minimal backlash — would be worthless for Inumaki fighting solo. No damage means no payoff.
But for Mahiko? Those same commands were terrifying.
Imagine fighting Mahiko, and suddenly one of her hares whispers "fall down" right in your ear. You immediately faceplant into the ground — and then Idle Transfiguration arrives to greet your face.
Just thinking about it was scary.
But the potential of Cursed Speech didn't stop there.
Mahiko was currently pondering another possible application.
"Excuse me, big sis — do you have any books on psychology or hypnosis here?"
Inside the city public library, a blue-haired little girl stretched up on her tiptoes, leaning over the service counter, flashing a radiant smile at the female librarian on the other side.
The librarian blinked, momentarily dazzled by the smile. She looked down at this absurdly cute blue-haired girl and smiled back. "Psychology is on the fourth shelf on the east side. Hypnosis-related material you'd probably find in the psychotherapy section."
"Thank you, big sis!" Mahiko bounced off happily.
She was researching whether Cursed Speech could be used for hypnosis.
The idea was actually quite logical.
Cursed Speech could "curse" a person with a short verbal command.
Commands like "blow away" or "explode" all operated on the macroscopic physical world.
So if it could affect the physical plane — Mahiko wondered — could it also affect the human mind? The soul? Consciousness?
Plenty of movies and anime depicted hypnosis as whispering a few words in someone's ear to instantly control or incapacitate them. Cursed Speech operated on rule-based power. Maybe it really could achieve direct hypnosis.
Oh, and don't conflate Idle Transfiguration's "soul manipulation" with hypnosis's "mental manipulation," by the way. Using Idle Transfiguration to tamper with memories would require extraordinarily fine-tuned precision — swimming through the ocean of neurons in the human brain, identifying which synapse corresponds to which memory, which region governs which emotion…
That was still way too hard.
Mahiko's jujutsu precision was high, but even she shouldn't underestimate the complexity of the human brain. It was one of the most intricate structures on the entire planet.
Hence the research. Hence the study of hypnosis.
And so she had come to the library — in her human form, a blue-haired little girl — to browse the relevant books.
"Nothing too special, I guess." Mahiko flipped through a few hypnosis books, looking mildly disappointed.
She'd already known, really. Real-world hypnosis wasn't the mystical finger-snap mind-control it was in movies and anime.
In practice, hypnosis was largely an auxiliary tool for psychotherapy — helping patients relax, recall memories, open up more during sessions. Nothing dramatic.
The psychology and hypnosis books she'd found confirmed that. None of it was quite what she'd been hoping for.
Still, she did find one volume that looked useful.
It was a compiled casebook — two hundred documented cases of hypnotherapy conducted by psychologists from around the world. It included detailed transcripts of the therapists' induction scripts.
She could at least pick up some patterns from the actual language used in hypnotic inductions.
Probably more useful than improvising on her own.
Mm… but honestly, a Jujutsu Technique always needs to be tested in practice before you really understand how to use it.
Mahiko closed the book and looked around.
The library was quiet. There were quite a few patrons, all studying or reading.
She began to consider whose misfortune she'd be borrowing for her little experiment.
Heh heh.
The blue-haired girl broke into a mischievous grin.
____
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