Chapter 1: Chapter 1
I am not normal.
Now that might seem like a cliché for someone to think in this day and age. Everyone is pushing to be unique, become a celebrity or just find that one thing that sets them apart.
Me on the other hand? I'm not your average kid living in Japan.
I remember everything that has happened in my life since I was six months old. I started having conversations when I was one. I started teaching myself about the world with the family computer when I was two. And can I just say, it took less than an hour into my self-imposed biology lesson before I was redirected to a porn website. Apparently, as soon as puberty hits, most humans generally become obsessed with sex and someone came up with the idea of profiting from it. Good for them.
My name is Kenji Rao and I'm four by the way.
But besides the fact that I'm smarter than the average toddler, I seem to be the only one who can see the disgusting parasites that cling to the odd person here and there. Either that or I also have the freakiest imagination you can think of on top of an unnatural intelligence. But considering how the people complaining about back pain got sucker-punched by those freaks just before they mentioned it, I'm sticking to the theory that I can see what they can't.
And today, the day after my birthday, is also when I got a belated present from some ghostly tattoo artist. Because on my chest is the outline of a pentagram that I haven't been able to keep my eyes off since I spotted it in the mirror. And just like that, random pieces of information start to flood my brain at a speed I can barely keep track of.
Cursed Energy.
Curses.
Demon Seal.
Instruction.
Cursed energy is present in every sentient lifeform that feels negative emotions. People with high levels of cursed energy can manipulate it for a variety of effects like seeing curses and, if you're talented enough, you are born with a Cursed Technique.
Curses are the byproduct of every negative emotion felt by every living person on the planet and all of that unnoticed cursed energy being produced begins to coalesce into Cursed Spirits that inevitably cause whatever harm they can get away with.
This Demon Seal is an inherited Cursed Technique. It can only be inherited by the descendant of the original user with the 'Wisdom of God', whatever the hell that is. Over time, it absorbs the cursed energy of its user and when the outline is completely filled in, a 'Demon' will emerge from the seal and take on the form of what the user feels will suit their personality the most.
Looks like I finally have my answer about why I'm so different from my parents and everyone else I meet. And now I know why those disgusting maggots wouldn't die when I tried stabbing them with the kitchen knives that I got my hands on.
Only a curse can kill a curse. You have to fight fire with fire.
And more and more of them had been coming to the house these last few days. And that's apparently because the vermin were attracted to sights of cursed energy, usually places like a graveyard or an old hospital filled with dying patients. And here I was, basically lighting up my house like a neon sign offering my leftover energy. How was I supposed to know I was leaking cursed protein?
First thing on the agenda was controlling the energy coming from me and working on cleaning out the house. I looked at myself in the mirror one more time, imagining the future version of myself that I could become. I would learn everything I could about cursed energy, find out how to make my cursed technique even better than the original creator and I would become the strongest in the entire world!
"Kenji! Time for school sweetie!" My mother's voice came from downstairs with her usual happy attitude.
Okay, take the wind out of my sails why don't you? But mark my words Mom, you're going to known as the mother who brought a future king into this world.
Maybe I'm maturing so fast I'm already in that chuunibyou phase I read about? Eh, I don't care. I'm not living in a fantasy if I actually have superpowers to make my ideas a reality.
Now to deal with the dozen kids in my class that can just about string a sentence together. Maybe this is what they meant when they say ignorance is bliss. Too bad those idiots didn't realise that knowledge is power.
And so, I started my journey to mastering my cursed energy and the different ways I could use it. By mastering how to act interested in subjects I'd learned when I was two.
Mastering how to control cursed energy is not hard to do, just hard to explain. You have to control your emotions so you don't fly into a rage, but that doesn't mean you can't get angry or upset. People like me who can use cursed energy naturally start leaking off the excess like a TV on standby gives off electricity, and if they get mad, it's like they turned it on, maxed out the volume and attached speakers and LED lighting surrounding it. What I had to do was learn how to unplug the TV and turn it on to my favourite channel without getting emotional.
I learned how to do that in a week.
My control isn't great right now, but every single cursed spirit in my house is now dust in the wind. There was even one of those mutated piles of flesh hanging on the ceiling fan while it was spinning like it was enjoying a ride at an amusement park.
I jumped up and bitch-slapped it into oblivion. I am now the world's strongest toddler!
I've also noticed that the pentagram on my chest has started filling in, starting from the top of the star, and slowly moving down to the bottom-left point. And by slow, I mean it's barely covered a centimeter of the distance.
Now that my house is clean, I spend most of my time reading up on historical figures associated with the supernatural, different mythologies from around the world, and all kinds of fiction that can give me ideas for different ways to use cursed energy.
The first was obviously Japanese mythology, local deities for war, love or luck were useless to me. Then I turned to the historical figures like Abe no Seimei who could supposedly tell the future, command oni and exorcise demonic spirits. I don't know about the first two, but he could have been like me if his story was true. But why would I care about the future when I can make my own? Apparently fictional onmyoji can make shikigami to use as servants to do simple tasks, so that has potential.
Then I turned to other popular mythologies like the Norse, who used magical weapons with special powers. That's a definite possibility.
The Greek gods have aspects like weather, death, war, love, the sun and moon, and wine of all things, but stuff like that doesn't interest me in the slightest.
Then the Egyptian gods who are basically the earlier version of the Greeks who happened to have animal heads.
Then I covered my bases by looking up the Abrahamic faiths like Christianity. I couldn't be bothered to look at the difference between a catholic or a protestant, or reading the bible. Neither was I interested in a god that was supposedly perfect and good but punished everyone that disobeyed him.
Perfection doesn't exist and anyone who claims otherwise are hypocrites that need a good punch to the face.
But there was one thing that appealed to me that worked with the negative aspect of cursed energy.
The Seven Deadly Sins and the Seven Heavenly Virtues.
They were the apparently the seven things that could either damn your soul or save it.
Serve in Heaven or Rule in Hell.
And to that I say… Why not both?
Gluttony.
Lust.
Greed.
Envy.
Wrath.
Sloth.
Pride.
All of these sins apparently damn you to Hell, but to me, you need these things if you want to be human in the first place.
Looks like I've decided on what my Cursed technique is going to be in the future.
Sadly, it took over a year for the majority of the seal to fill itself in and it seems like it stopped just at the edge of completion and it was driving me insane!
I was currently glaring at my bento box, trying to figure out what I was missing, when out of nowhere a small hand snatched up my food. I looked up in surprise at the classmate that I barely recognised. I was a bit of a loner in school, because if I forced myself to interact with anyone my age, I can guarantee that I would start banging my head against the wall while feeling my IQ drop, so I can guess that all of my classmates found me weird and avoided me. It didn't help that I showed them up by being the smartest in class, which obviously ruffled a few feathers, no matter how old you were.
The kid in front of me was one of the older ones, a little overweight for his age with an arrogant smile stretching his chubby cheeks. According to the TV shows I watched back home, it was usually the fat kids that were bullied in school, not the other way around, but I guess the younger you were, looks didn't mean as much as how much you could push around others with your size.
"Don't you know you're supposed to eat your food and not just look at it? I thought you were the smartest in class, stupid foreigner." Ah, so this is racism. I was wondering if it would ever happen to me, considering how I looked compared to everyone else. And calling me stupid after mentioning how smart I am compared to the rest of you? Wow, what a burn. Someone call the school nurse, I feel wounded.
See, although my mother is Japanese, my father? Not so much. My mother is the perfect woman for most Japanese men. Long black hair, smooth skin, good body proportions and objectively quite beautiful according to everyone in her life, especially Dad. Speaking of my father, he was middle eastern who moved over here after travelling a few countries around the world and found work here as a translator, before meeting my mother and settling down as a private tutor for affluent families with business overseas, while my mother worked as the head nurse in the Emergency department of the local major hospital. And I took after my dad in looks with darker skin, and while he kept his shocking white hair short with a small pointed goatee, I grew mine out into a loose ponytail down to my upper back.
In short, I grew up in a normal family, but I looked different from anyone else, so that means I'm looked down on by a couple of people.
"Can I have my bento back, whoever you are? My mother made it for me." I asked calmly.
"Oh yeah? Make me, freak! You should go back to where you came from." He said, trying to sound tough. Pretty sure kids my age don't become this xenophobic by themselves. Looks like someone has been learning a few new words from mommy and daddy.
"Actually, I'm still hungry. This food is too good for you anyway." Just as he was about to stick his fat fingers in the food that my mother made for me, for the first time in my life, I felt genuinely angry at a real person and grabbed the bento box from his hand and gripped the fingers hovering above my food and twisted before he even realised I was standing next to him.
"Agh! Let go! Let me go, please!" He was knelt down on the ground, tears forming in his eyes as he screamed for mercy. All I did was stare at him from above with contempt as I carefully placed my reclaimed bento back on my desk.
"I hope you learned something today. You don't judge people just because they're different, and I hope you become a better person after this. Until then, stay away from me." At this point, he was a whimpering mess not worth my time. His friends were standing around us with fear in their eyes, and backed off when they caught me staring at them. As I got ready to let go of the kid's fingers, the door slid open to reveal our teacher making a quick swivel of her head to look around the classroom quickly.
She saw our situation immediately and made a quick decision.
"Kenji, let go of Haruto this instant!" She shouted with authority that she hadn't shown up until now. So, this kid's name was Haruto, huh? Not like I'll remember him by the end of the day. I did as I was told and let go of the boy.
Our teacher came over to us and looked at Haruto's hand before telling him to go to the Nurse's office with one of the friends he surrounded himself with, then turned to me after seeing him leave class.
"Come with me, Kenji. We're going to discuss your behaviour." My behaviour, huh? I'm not going to challenge her in the middle of class in front of everyone. That's just going to make her want to punish me even more than she already does. I carefully pack away my lunch before following her out of class.
We came to a small office with a computer in the corner and she sat down opposite me with a small round table in front of us.
"Kenji, I'm disappointed in you. I thought you would already know it's bad to hurt someone else, especially your classmate. What brought this on? You've not been yourself today." Mrs. Kyoka was my homeroom teacher and I liked her a lot for someone who wasn't my family. She didn't abuse her authority, she was kind to all of her students and better yet, she didn't talk to me like I was just a regular child. She recognised that I was different and tried her best to accommodate me and gave me books to read during her lessons.
"That kid tried to take my food after insulting me. Foreigner and freak were the words of the day." I said casually without any venom. Mrs. Kyoka looked even more disappointed now, but not with me.
"I'm sorry you were insulted like that Kenji. But you still shouldn't hurt others over food. I'll talk to Haruto too, so he knows in the future that I won't tolerate insults in my classroom. Do you think you can try to be nicer to him and your classmates from now on?" She was incredibly sincere in her request, but honestly? I thought I was already being the nicest I could tolerate being.
"I'll try." That doesn't mean I'll succeed.
She smiled. "Thank you, Kenji. Now why don't you have your lunch in here until the bell rings and I'll take you back to class?" Her offer was too tempting so I accepted. I unwrapped my bento box and picked up some rice before I heard a growl. I tensed up, thinking a curse managed to get inside the room, and schools were in the top ten places to go if you wanted to find a curse, but after seeing none with a cursory glance, I spotted Mrs. Kyoka blushing from across me.
"Do you want some, Mrs Kyoka?" I asked while gesturing to my lunch. A small ping sounded in my ear, while my heart thrummed more strongly for a second before it settled down and left me confused for a second.
"No! Um-I mean, no thank you, Kenji. I'm on a diet." She admitted with a nervous smile. I raised an eyebrow and looked up and down her body. Mrs. Kyoka was in her early twenties and, from what I could see, she was perfectly healthy, no sign of excess fat and was quite the looker. I realise I don't have the hormones to appreciate beauty at this age, but that doesn't mean I can't tell when I'm looking at someone attractive. But that was when I noticed everything else about her.
It was the small details at first. First her high cheekbones were slightly more pronounced, almost as if her cheeks were sunken. There were one two many bags under her eyes. Her makeup was slightly heavier today, probably to cover that almost invisible spot on her forehead, possibly from stress. Then I noticed her nails that were slightly worn down by bite marks.
"Mrs. Kyoka, are you starving yourself?" My question was so sudden, it seemed to take her off guard, because her eyes widened and she started stuttering.
"Here, have some of mine." I offered my food again before she could get an answer out, but this time it wasn't a question.
"No, there's no need. I've been gaining some weight recently, so I need to cut back a bit." There was that nervous laugh again.
"You're a terrible liar, Mrs. Kyoka. Not eating isn't healthy and you're clearly under some stress. You're biting your nails and you're trying to cover up any signs of it with makeup." I started explaining to her. Her eyes kept widening before her eyes began to turn red and moisten. That was proof enough for me. Someone was forcing her to go on a diet.
"Please, have something to eat, Mrs. Kyoka. I don't want you to hurt yourself after already being hurt by someone else." She looked down at her lap in sadness before nodding in defeat.
I pushed the box to her and passed my clean chopsticks over too. After taking a few bites, a smile came over her before the tears started flowing without restraint. I just kept looking at her, making sure she kept on eating until she was full. Before she knew what had happened, all of the food in front of her was gone and she stared down in shock then looked up at my smiling face.
"Kenji, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to- I didn't realise…" I gave a little chuckle at her panicking.
"Don't worry about it. I'm just glad you ate something. As payback, you could tell me why you've been forcing yourself to go on this stupid diet, when you clearly don't need to." I offered. It was kind of shitty for me to manipulate the situation like this considering her situation, but I was doing it to help someone I cared for, not to control and hurt them for my benefit.
"It was my boyfriend. He's been pushing me to lose weight, saying he was losing interest. We've been together for years, but we've been struggling since I finished my studies, and when I finally got this job, he said I was getting fat." Her confession was heartfelt and I'm sure she's forgotten I'm one of her students at this point, but it revealed the issue to me. Some insecure, limp-dicked loser landed a girl way out of his league, got jealous about her starting out on a successful career and couldn't stand having a confident girlfriend. Probably used the fat angle to make up for the fact he couldn't get it up.
"Let me make this perfectly clear Mrs. Kyoka. You are a beautiful lady with a solid career in front of you, with the kindness and patience of a Saint, if dealing with us kids on a daily basis is any proof. You deserve better than someone who can only put others down to feel better about themselves." And there she goes blushing up a storm again. I wonder if I'm going to be this good at talking to girls when puberty finally hits. Wonder how many grandkids Mom and Dad want.
"Can I guess that your name is on the documents of where you live?" She nodded easily, clearly not getting the point.
"Then kick him out. He can't handle being with someone more successful than him, so he's trying to take control and ruin whatever he can to make himself feel better. As thanks for all the help you've given me since we started this year, take my advice and start fresh. You'll meet someone else, but make sure they deserve you next time." After my long-winded rant, the bell rang, knocking Mrs. Kyoka out of her wide-eyed stupor before she wrapped up my bento box delicately, knelt in front of me and gave me a quick hug before returning it to me. I suppose it would be unfair to ask her to wait thirteen years for me. Oh well, wrong generation I guess. Too bad for her.
The end of the day came sooner than usual to me, and before I left, Mrs. Kyoka had a word with whats-his-name about insults before sending him home. Then she gave me a grateful smile with a nod before walking out of the room confidently with determination in her gaze. Looks like my job here is done. At least now I know I'll have a career in psychiatry if ruling the world doesn't pan out.
I wonder if I'm setting my expectations too high…
Nah!
I got off the bus and made my way home in no time at all. After food with my parents and plenty of quality time spent with them, I headed upstairs and took a bath. Just as I walked passed the bathroom mirror, my seal caught my eye.
It was filled in.
In a mad rush, I made it to my bedroom before immediately flooding cursed energy into the seal and in a burst of cursed fire, a figure started forming directly in front of me. It was sitting on the floor against the wall. It had a bald head, a smiling face forcing his eyes closed, and a robe surrounding it but pushed aside to accommodate a massively protruding belly that reminded me of a fat Buddha without the long ears.
"Hello Master. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance." Said the 'Demon' with a jovial tone. This wasn't what I was expecting today, but I'm definitely not complaining!
"Nice to meet you, I guess. You mind introducing yourself?" I spoke back.
"Why, of course! You may refer to me as Gluttony, and I look forward to devouring everything in our path!" Said the entity with excitement and happiness.
"Gluttony huh? So does that mean I can start using my cursed technique now?" I asked. The entity simply shook his head negatively with a smile still on his face.
"I'm afraid not, Master. You must first pass the test, after all there is no such thing as a free meal!" He explained with a chuckle.
"What kind of test are we talking about here?" Gluttony opened his eyes for the first time and his happy smile was replaced with something slightly more sinister.
"Why, we must test your will of course. You have come to understand the importance of not indulging to the point of obesity, but also the dangers of ignoring your cravings. If you eat too much, you become fat and lazy, but what is the point of living if you can not enjoy a delicious meal? Hahaha!"
Okay, makes sense. Now I understand why the seal filled itself in today instead of when I thought it would. Now it should be easier to get the other sins done faster after I fill in the seal again.
"So! In order to obtain the power of Gluttony, you must endure the pain of starvation, hahaha!" Wait, what?
Suddenly, it was as if all of the food in my stomach vanished into nothingness and I hadn't eaten anything in days!
"What the hell did you do!" The shock of pain was so strong, I barely kept my voice down to a reasonable volume so my parents didn't start running upstairs. It felt like my stomach was trying to eat itself!
"Why, this is your test of course! For the next seven days, you will be in a constant state of starvation, but you must also eat three full meals per day or you forfeit the test. You must savour every bite, knowing it will never satisfy you, and if you happen to miss even a single meal, you will forfeit the test. And if you forfeit, you will be unable to use cursed energy or retake the test for the next seven days." I could feel my eyes widening in horror as more and more of the test's conditions were revealed to me. Just the pain from the last minute was the worst feeling I'd ever experienced in my short life up until now.
"I look forward to celebrating your success, Master. Perhaps over a delicious banquet, hahaha!" And with that significantly more annoying laugh, Gluttony vanished in a swirl of cursed energy that swirled back into the cursed seal.
That night was the worst night's sleep I had ever endured and I could feel that the following days would be even worse.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone