"Hello—bro, you in there?"
No response.
The thick coffin gave nothing back. Kira's voice echoed through the empty hall for a long time. The silence was suffocating—nothing but the sound of rain tapping against the window lattice.
Kira checked his watch: 7:20 PM.
He silently calculated the time. About right.
The seeds had been planted long ago. Time to harvest.
He pressed his palm against the heavy coffin lid. Killer Queen placed its hand alongside his.
Click—the sound of a bomb arming.
The lid crumbled away bit by bit, like snow dissolving in sunlight. The thick wooden slab shattered into fragments in an instant, and even those fragments disintegrated—annihilated into invisible ash.
All that remained was the bare bottom of the coffin. Just as Kira had expected, there was nothing inside.
Except for a corpse.
Eyes wide open, complexion not yet fully pallid—it hadn't been dead long. Strangely, the body bore no external wounds and showed no signs of internal trauma. It looked more like its soul had simply left.
Clutched in the corpse's hand was a finger—a dark purple finger. One of the sources of the entire cursed plague.
If Kira remembered correctly, this was the "Devourer" Hanami had spoken of.
"What a performance," he murmured.
BOOM—
Sheer Heart Attack rampaged across Hanami's body. Everywhere it passed, skin shattered and flame bored through bone. Hanami struggled to shake the tank loose, but it was futile.
His entire body was wreathed in fire, yet he refused to die—his mind fixed solely on Nanami Kira's whereabouts. At last, he pieced together Kira's plan. Kira was already inside the hall.
I can't let him get there. I can't let him reach it. He repeated it to himself like a mantra, dragging his ruined body forward, enduring the tank's relentless assault, crawling step by step toward the hall.
Todo coughed up another mouthful of blood—all he could taste was iron. Hanami's last blow had broken both his hands. The cursed energy had spread to his abdomen, rattling his organs out of alignment.
Fighting through the pain, he propped up Mechamaru, who'd collapsed beside him.
Mechamaru's gaze was still somewhat hollow, but the cursed poison had faded considerably. His awareness was returning. He turned his neck—stiffly—and looked Todo in the eye:
"Why did you save me just now?"
"What?"
Todo didn't process the question at first.
"Why did you swap places with me?"
Mechamaru's voice was low. "I'm just a Cursed Corpse. Even if I get smashed, they can fix me. Break me all you want—it doesn't matter."
"Why did you save me? You nearly died. You shouldn't have saved me..."
Todo drove his fist into Mechamaru's chest.
"You idiot!"
He roared, eyes boring into Mechamaru's, his face flushing scarlet, veins bulging at his temples—fury pushed to its absolute limit:
"You're not some goddamn Cursed Corpse!"
"You're a living, breathing human being!"
"You're my friend! I don't have many friends! If I don't save you, then who the hell am I supposed to save?!"
"Moron!"
Mechamaru stared blankly at the raging Todo. Both of Todo's hands were broken, dangling uselessly at his shoulders. Blood covered his face. He was panting hard—clearly suffering severe internal injuries.
And yet this battered man was screaming at him, face red, coughing blood, desperately trying to make him understand: You're human. Not a Cursed Corpse. You're human. Human.
"Idiot!"
Todo punched Mechamaru's chest again.
"Dumbass!"
Mechamaru didn't fight back. Todo's words echoed inside him.
I'm a living person too? I'm not a Cursed Corpse... I'm human? A real, living human?
Todo braced his hands against the ground and slowly pushed himself upright. He extended a hand toward Mechamaru—to pull him to his feet.
"Come on. The fight's not over. We still need you, you moron."
Mechamaru stared at the offered hand. Broad and thick, covered in scars, rain pattering against it in a thin, steady drizzle.
He took it.
"I will become a Sage. I can't die yet. I must become a Sage. I must die at the right moment. I must die at the right moment. I will become a Sage in death."
Hanami crawled forward, one agonizing movement at a time. Cold rain struck his ravaged shoulders, his hands that had been blown to shreds, his back where the spine lay exposed. His body was going cold.
His temperature had dropped so low that Sheer Heart Attack had abandoned him, leaving him alone to die slowly in the bitter wind and rain.
A distance that should have been within arm's reach now felt impossibly far. Hanami kept telling himself not to die, kept dragging himself forward—a moth lurching toward the flame.
Knowing death was certain, he still chose to burn.
He knew he'd die no matter what. But he refused to die like a stray dog in some filthy, lightless alley. He'd rather fall in battle—head held high—than cling to the last dregs of a wretched existence.
"Hey. You're dying, you know."
A gentle voice reached his ears. A pair of wooden geta appeared in Hanami's field of vision. A shadow fell over him, blocking the cold rain—the newcomer had opened an umbrella.
"You were tricked by those people. There was never any cursed spirit capable of devouring all of Kyoto's negative emotions."
In Hanami's peripheral vision, the figure crouched down and drew back his cloak.
A man's face.
Hair combed neatly into place, save for a single thin strand hanging over the left side of his face, swaying gently. His eyes crinkled with a warm smile:
"My name is Suguru Geto. Would you like me to save you?"
Beneath the umbrella, the man called Suguru Geto extended his hand to the dying Hanami.
Clip, clip, clip, clip.
Clip—
Nanami Kira leaned against the coffin, trimming his fingernails. Each clipping was carefully placed into a small glass bottle.
One, two, three... ten.
He counted them all, confirmed the total of ten, then screwed the lid on tight, slipped the bottle into his pocket, and wiped his hands clean.
Should I do my toenails too while I'm at it... He deliberated.
This was the sight that greeted a pale-faced, blood-spattered, half-dead Todo as he shoved the door open:
Kira sitting on someone else's coffin lid, clipping his nails.jpg
"Oh, you're here. I've been waiting forever."
Spotting Todo and the others, Kira gave them a casual wave.
Why does he make saving the world sound like showing up for a mahjong game... "You're here"? Are we the missing fourth player?
Todo's face darkened. Staring at Kira's leisurely pose, he growled:
"Is the cursed spirit dealt with?"
"There never was a cursed spirit."
Kira examined his hands without looking up. "You were all fooled."
He rose from the coffin and walked over to Todo:
"They never had some cursed spirit that could devour all of Kyoto's negative emotions. All they did was trigger an eruption of negativity. They never intended to absorb it."
"They put on this whole act and fooled everyone—not just the sorcerers. The curse users too. Those people would never have dreamed the coffin was empty. Every sacrifice they made was pointless. They threw their lives away willingly for a boss whose grand plan was a sham."
"There was never a second King of Curses."
"It was a con. A con that deceived both sides."
"Impossible!"
Todo's immediate reaction was denial. He stared hard at Kira. "Then what was that terrifying pressure we felt? That suffocating force?"
"Let me ask you: which emotion does Devourer—one of the Seven Po—govern?"
Silence. A long silence.
Finally, Mechamaru broke it, his voice trembling:
"Fear?"
"We were poisoned. From the very beginning, all of us had been dosed with cursed poison—even Hanami, a Special Grade, was poisoned by his own allies. And it was all done for a single purpose..."
"They went to all this trouble, staged this elaborate performance, because the enemy's real objective is something else entirely."
"Nurturing a King of Jujutsu was just their cover story. A smokescreen."
Kira glanced at his watch. Right on time, if his calculations were correct.
"Todo. Remember the assignment I gave you in the car? Let's go. The main event starts now."