Chapter 2: Curse
"Yes, I can see them too," Mai chuckled softly. "Please don't call me by that name. It upsets me a little."
"What should I call you then?" Haruhiro asked cautiously.
"Mai is fine," she replied, her tone devoid of teasing this time. "I have a bad history with my family name, you see."
Haruhiro nodded in understanding. "Mai-san it is, then."
"You can drop the honorific too."
"No, you're older than me. I have to respect you."
Her mouth twitched. "...do I look that old?"
"Huh?" Haruhiro was confused. "Well, you give off a mature aura, so I subconsciously assume you're older than me. Could I be wrong?"
Mai relaxed her mouth, shrugging her shoulders. "No, you're not wrong."
"So, what's the deal with you going to my late friend's house?"
She stopped smiling, her expression turning serious as she pondered his question.
After a moment, she nodded. "I suppose it was fine."
As they reached the gate to the house's courtyard, the monster with a worm-like bottom greeted them.
"Another... challenger?" he said in his detached voice.
The two of them ignored him.
"Curses are their calling, you see," Mai began to explained. "In short, they are evil creatures born from the negative emotions of humans. I am a student of one of the two school facilities that focus on educating people like you, who can see curses and perhaps the power to deal with them to help society from their atrocities. They usually have these special powers from birth. Speaking of which, what's your ability?"
Haruhiro hesitated to share it, to be frank. "It's nothing special.
"Abiding Anxiety. By channeling my negative energy into certain parts of my body, I can make those who touch me experience a decrease in the speed at which they weigh their decisions. Basically making them hesitate to do something. It's all about support, to be even shorter. Even with my martial arts, the moves I can make are still very limited because of that support ability."
"It was called Cursed Technique. And the energy you're referring to is Cursed Energy. When one reaches a certain level, they can see curses and even develop their own unique abilities."
"What about yours, Mai-san?"
Mai smirked confidently. "Hah! I won't tell."
'Not that I care either way.'
"But there's someone else just like me, hm...?" Haruhiro felt a sense of relief washing over him, for some reason.
"If you wish, you can enroll in a jujutsu high school," Mai suggested.
Haruhiro wasn't thrilled about that idea, though. "They work on eradicating these kinds of creatures, don't they?"
The creature with the worm-like underbelly had lost interest and left at some point, probably entering the house.
"...yeah," Mai's tone were flat, as if she was hiding something from inside. "They do that."
"I don't feel like doing that, if you ask me."
"I envy that."
"Come again?"
"It's nothing."
'From the way she talks, she doesn't seem to enjoy her own work,' Haruhiro realized. 'She mentioned something about problems with her family. Does that have anything to do with it?'
Ignoring him, Mai deftly slipped through the gate, unlocking the door with a key-like object, or well, just a key.
Haruhiro, though curious about her possession of the key, didn't probe too deeply. Once inside, their bare feet met the cool floor. A corridor stretched ahead, flanked by two doors on the left and one on the right - a scene familiar to Haruhiro.
"Can you feel it?" Mai inquired.
"Very clearly," Haruhiro replied, his senses tingling with an unpleasant aura that hung in the air. The menacing laughter of a creature echoed around them, its drool almost brushing Haruhiro's face as it dangled from the hanging string lights.
"You... going to play?! Play... dare... with me?!"
'This isn't the creature's doing,' Haruhiro deduced, feeling a pressure unlike any he'd experienced before. 'Where is this coming from?'
Trying to bear it, he confronted Mai. "You still haven't answered my question. What did you come here for?"
Mai appeared utterly indifferent to the menacing atmosphere, which raised Haruhiro's suspicions. Maybe he was being deceived.
He pressed her. "Why are you really here?"
"Don't look at me suspiciously like that," Mai retorted, her voice laced with teasing. "I was assigned to trace the curse user who killed your childhood friend, you know?"
"Choco's... murderer?" Haruhiro's mind went blank for a second.
"Yes," Mai said, her eyes narrowing sardonically. "Her murderer."
"Let's... play..."
The curse, poised to tease him as well, froze. Without hesitation, it withdrew, sensing an unseen threat in the room.
'This is...' Mai flinched, realizing her words had most likely triggered something unexpected. 'I might've said too much.'
Haruhiro's previously calm curse energy had become uncontrollable the moment she mentioned his childhood friend's 'murderer'. His energy capacity was unremarkable, to be frank, leaving Mai bewildered about why it affected her so profoundly.
'No, wait a minute,' she thought, her eyes widening in realization. 'Me? Faltering over a man with that much cursed energy capacity? That's impossible.'
'Did he unconsciously release his cursed technique?'
Involuntarily, Mai distanced herself from him. As she did, the uncertainty in her vanished, and Haruhiro regained his composure, his eyes wide with astonishment. The room crackled with tension.
"Ah, sorry. I lost my temper a bit there," Haruhiro admitted.
Mai regained her composure, offering a slightly awkward smile. "It was my fault for dropping that bombshell so suddenly. No need to apologize."
Mai forgave Haruhiro. However, the curse lingering in the house showed no signs of one. "You're... dangerous... Must disappear..."
Haruhiro reflexively glanced behind him, and just as he did, a muffled "Bam!" resonated through the room. The curse's head burst, releasing a torrent of purple liquid before it fell, finally silenced like so many other familiar threats he had encountered.
"He was noisy. You won't mind if I shut him up, yeah?" Mai stated matter-of-factly, brandishing a pistol that seemed out of place in her hand. Its dark hue and the silencer attached to it spoke of a world far more dangerous than the one Haruhiro knew. Mai blew the smoke from the pistol's cartridge, a satisfied glint in her eyes.
"Do you trust me now?" she asked.
"...who wouldn't?" Haruhiro sighed. To doubt her now seemed akin to inviting his own demise. "Still, the incident happened almost a month ago. Why only now?"
"We investigated before, but everything led back here," Mai explained. "This location was the starting point of it all."
"What kind of clues did you find then?"
"Before that, are you familiar with cursed objects?" Mai inquired.
"How many cursed things exist in this world, honestly..." Haruhiro mused, bewildered.
Mai shrugged. "That's just the way it is."
Haruhiro took a moment to recall. "Well, I'm not familiar with that term."
"In reality, explaining it is no easy task," Mai admitted. "So, let me give you the raw version of the primary problem here.
"Let's start with the history of Ryomen Sukuna, the King of Curses. He was infamous in ancient times and was supposedly defeated by the sorcerers of that era... or so the story goes. He had twenty fingers, all from his hands; he possessed four hands in total, they say. These twenty fingers were Sukuna's power, which he separated and sorcerers sealed away until now. They can't be destroyed. The Curse King's might is beyond comprehension, and even a single finger holds immense power. One of them is believed to be here."
"What makes these fingers so dangerous, apart from being linked to Ryomen Sukuna?" Haruhiro inquired.
"The danger lies in their ability to attract curses if unsealed, and they might grow into special-grade curses when consumed by them. Their power is terrifying. Not that I've ever faced one," Mai explained.
"Huh..." Haruhiro began, feeling a detachment from the conversation. "Wait, that sounds incredibly dangerous. Why am I involved in this mess?"
Mai chuckled. "Well, half of it is for work, really. I wanted to inquire about any strange occurrences around your childhood friend before her death."
'Half of it, huh... Leaving that aside.'
Haruhiro snorted. "There's nothing strange, I'm sure of it."
'Choco remained true to her nature, even as her life neared its end.' Haruhiro had known her since early childhood, having been friends before they even entered elementary school or kindergarten. He understood her better than most people.
"In that case, do 'you' think there was something specific that might have provoked the curse user to target her?" Mai inquired.
Haruhiro pondered the question earnestly, his brow furrowing in concentration. "...I can't say."
As far as he was aware, the experiences he had were entirely normal for him. While he recognized that these occurrences were far from ordinary for regular people, Mai, with her knowledge about curses, would be as useless as the former either, knowing that the information they had of one is vastly different.
"That figures," Mai responded, her shoulders sagging slightly in expectation of this answer.
"What's the other reason?" Haruhiro half-anticipated her reply.
"You have a curse technique that could be useful," Mai answered. "From what I observed just now, your ability might extend beyond mere touch. It could be channeled through your aura, or perhaps even sound. That could create openings in an enemy's defenses, don't you think?"
Haruhiro remained silent.
Mai thoroughly checked every room in Choco's house: her bedroom, her mother's room, the bathroom, before eventually arriving at the living room. Haruhiro was clueless about what she was searching for until he noticed something unusual.
'That, huh...?' he muttered under his breath.
Near the open window in the kitchen connected to the living room, he spotted something resembling a human footprint.
'Homeless man...? It doesn't seem that way.'
"Hm," Mai mused, inspecting the area around the window. "Let's investigate further."
After a moment, she decided to open the window, jumping over it. Haruhiro reluctantly followed her lead.
Behind Choco's house lay a small patch of wild grass, cordoned off by a waist-high wooden fence. As Haruhiro ventured further, he noticed more footprints. This time, they weren't human.
'Curses. Not any ordinary ones either... They're strong,' Haruhiro observed.
Mai, on the other hand, had a theory forming in her mind.
'Could it be that Ryomen Sukuna's Finger Seal has been broken?' she wondered. 'Either intentionally, or due to the seal weakening and breaking on its own... I'd take the later.'
Mai knew that Sukuna's finger could draw curses to feed on it. In the worst-case scenario, they could transform into cursed wombs, giving birth to finger-bearers, an exceptionally potent level of curse that Mai didn't fancy her chances against.
'That human footprints... They're fleeing in panic. They belong to the curse user, without a doubt. Perhaps the culprit was too occupied running from the curses attracted to Sukuna's finger to bother concealing their tracks.'
A wide smile crept across Mai's face. 'This is a significant lead. I need to report this immediately.'
Mai vaulted over the fence, intending to call her supervisor, Utahime, from her cell phone. However, Haruhiro's sudden interruption shattered her focus.
"Doesn't it seem too quiet, Mai-san?" Haruhiro's voice held a note of alarm.
"What's too quiet?" Mai looked around, noticing the almost complete absence of sound after Haruhiro pointed it out.
"...I'll contact my guide," Mai indifferently responded, searching her phone for Utahime's contact. However, her attempts to make the call were met with failure. She realized the connection was lost. She tried other contacts, only to encounter the same issue. It was then that Mai absentmindedly glanced up at the sky. At once, her eyes widening in horror.
'This is the worst-case scenario.'
"What's that?" Haruhiro, unable to comprehend the flying object in the sky, stared in confusion.
'A womb of a baby?' Haruhiro speculated. 'That said, what's inside doesn't seem like one.'
Mai chuckled sourly. "It's a cursed womb."
Weekly Power Status
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Ranking 
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