Chapter Text
Chapter 13: Fractured Faith
***Seven months before the Night Parade of 100 Demons***
Year: 2017
It had been months since she had last seen the world beyond the shrine’s gates. Months since the city’s noise had filled her ears, since neon had burned her eyes, since the scent of asphalt and rain had cut through the air. In that time, Machiko had been remade. Torn down to her bones and rebuilt in silence, forged in ritual and suffering. The woman who once faltered in the face of failure had been tempered into something sharper, something honed.
Her domain expansion was no longer theory nor dream. It was steel and thread and blood — the culmination of sleepless nights and aching hands, of cuts and bruises she suffered from her training, of meditations that blurred the line between body and soul. Within that space she created, her curse technique had finally resonated with her and she was able to brought forth its ultimate form into reality. It flowed like silk, each strand obedient to her will. When she moved, her threads danced to her rhythm, weaving death and divinity as one.
Geto had watched, and Geto had judged. His dark eyes, ever weighing worth against ambition, had seen what she had become. And at last, he had nodded — the smallest tilt of his chin, yet heavy as absolution.
Her exile had ended.
With freedom, however, came purpose. And purpose, in Geto’s world, always carried a blade’s edge.
Machiko was out on a mission once more.
M — the name she wore like a second skin — had finally returned to the field after months of silence, months of penitence and isolation. Her exile had been long, her atonement harsher still, and now she stood again beneath open sky, the world sprawling before her like a battlefield waiting to be written upon. The weight of her last failure clung to her still, a shadow stitched into her bones. She could not afford another mistake. Not again. Not ever.
Carelessness had cost her once. Arrogance, too. Those twin sins had nearly destroyed her — and worse, had shamed him.
She remembered that evening vividly — the air thick with cursed energy, the stink of fear and iron, the way her hands had trembled as Rika’s form took shape before her eyes. She had thought the curse was merely powerful, another Grade 2 anomaly, fierce but manageable. But what had faced her was not a mere curse. It was a calamity given flesh — Rika, the Queen of Curses, born from love so twisted it became eternal.
The moment Machiko realized the truth, it was already too late. Her plan — the delicate web she had spun to capture Yuta Okkotsu and wrench Rika from his grasp — had unraveled in an instant. Her threads, her defenses, her pride — all had been torn apart beneath that monstrous devotion.
Perhaps she should have asked Geto for guidance. Or sought whispers from their informants before she acted. She told herself that, when sleep eluded her. Always questioning if the outcome would have become better if she had made a better decision. But regret was a useless luxury, and she had burned it out of herself months ago.
Now she had learned. Pain was the finest teacher — and she its most dutiful student.
The failure had cost her dearly. Rika still belonged to the boy, and Geto’s grand designs had been delayed. Yet Machiko had seen how swiftly he recovered, how calmly he began weaving new plans in the dark. He was never still, never idle. His mind was a labyrinth, and even she — who had served at his side for months, even years of being his student — could not see its center.
She knew that new schemes were already in motion. New plots to obtain Rika. To tip the scales against the Jujutsu Sorcerers who guarded her. Plans whispered in candlelit rooms where she was not invited.
Machiko had stood outside those doors more than once as she guarded the entrance — her back straight, her hands clasped, listening to the low and muffled murmurs of Geto’s voice and the occasional girlish laughter of Nanako and Mimiko. The sound gnawed at her like hunger.
Had she not proven herself? Had she not bled for his cause, killed in his name, endured every cruelty of body and soul to earn his trust? Why, then, was she still kept in the shadows like a blade left sheathed?
The questions festered quietly, unwanted yet unkillable. Each time they rose, she smothered them beneath reason.
“No. Perhaps she was overestimating herself again.”
Her mentor always had reasons. His judgment was never without purpose. He saw farther, clearer, deeper than she could. If he had not included her in his counsel, it must be by design. A test, perhaps—he does like to test her on many things—or preparation for something greater.
Yes. That had to be it.
After all, he trusted her with what others could not do. He sent her where no one else could go — into cities and slums, into temples and ruins, into the folds of the Jujutsu world where silence and secrecy were currency.
“Dirty work”, some might call it, but Machiko bore those tasks as honors. The shadows were where she thrived. The unseen blade, the quiet hand — that was what she had become.
Her heart steadied with that thought, the faintest ember of pride warming the cold within her.
“He has faith in me”, she told herself. “He must.”
And she had faith in him—faith in Geto, in the strength of his convictions, in the grand design of his vision for a better world. There were nights when the fire burned low in the shrine and the air was thick with incense, when she would sit in quiet company with Geto, Nanako, Mimiko, and Manami. In those moments, walls fell away and they spoke with venom and weariness about the world beyond their veil—the cruelty of ordinary people, the blind hatred that had scarred each of them. They would share stories, bitter and jagged, of the mockery and fear they had endured. The disgust in their voices was born not of malice, but of pain.
Machiko listened in silence, though she needed no convincing. She knew too well the flavor of that pain—the sting of being cast aside for something she could not change, for something as intrinsic to her as the color of her eyes. She remembered her mother’s rage, her father’s silence, the shame that festered in the walls of that house. The way they had looked at her, not as a daughter, but as a mistake. Born wrong. Cursed by her very existence. And when her brother died, torn apart by the very thing she was, her family had shattered completely. They had abandoned her, left her to the mercy of a stranger. But Geto had not been a stranger for long.
He had taken her in. He had given her purpose when all she had known was rejection. A home when she had none. A family bound not by blood, but by understanding. Under his guidance, she learned that her powers were not a curse but a gift—a mark of something greater. He told her that their kind were not monsters, not weapons, not abominations born to serve those who feared them. They were human. More than human. And they deserved a place in the light, unchained and unashamed.
It was an idea that grew in her like a flame fed by devotion. A world where no one would have to endure what she had. No more frightened mothers cutting their daughters’ hair in rage. No more brothers dying because the world refused to understand. No more children ostracized for the accident of their birth.
For that dream—for that fragile, blazing vision—Machiko would give everything. She would fight. She would bleed. She would kill if she must. Geto had saved her from a world that wanted her dead, and in return, she had given him her unshakable loyalty. Her faith in his cause was not blind; it was born from gratitude, from pain, from a deep yearning to believe that there could be something better.
To Machiko, Geto was not merely a mentor. He was the axis upon which her world turned. The one who had lifted her from the wreckage of her own ruin and taught her to stand tall again. And if his vision demanded sacrifice—if it demanded obedience—then she would bear it without question.
For him.
For the cause
For the promise of a world where the cursed could finally call themselves human.
She adjusted the strap of her small satchel around her hips and exhaled, her breath curling faintly in the cool morning air. Doubt was poison, and she had no use for poison. A clear mind was a sharp mind — and sharpness was her only salvation.
For now, she would operate in the dark. As ordered. As always.
Geto had sent her hunting again.
A retrieval mission, he had called it — simple, precise, necessary. There was to be no slaughter this time, no needless spectacle. He wanted a live specimen, a Grade 2 curse confined and brought to him intact. A creature that had taken root in an abandoned factory on the southwestern edge of the city, feeding on the fears and grief of workers long after sunset.
Machiko—M—walked alone through the quiet neighborhood streets, her boots whispering against the cracked pavement. The air was damp, still holding the day’s rain. Fluorescent streetlamps buzzed and flickered overhead, casting sickly halos that stretched and stuttered with her passing. The world felt half-asleep here, the kind of silence that swallows breath and sound alike.
Her figure was unassuming — a dark jacket reaching her mid thigh, clawed leather gloves drawn tight around her hands, hood low enough to shadow her face. Beneath the leather and fabric, her cursed energy thrummed like a second heartbeat, faintly audible to her own senses — the low, resonant hum of something alive and waiting to be unleashed.
The school came into view beyond the trees, its windows black and hollow. Faint traces of spiritual decay clung to the air — the residue of fear, cruelty, loneliness. It had been festering for some time.
Machiko stepped closer, one gloved hand brushing against the chain-link fence. The instant her palm touched cold metal, she felt them — the curses. Dozens of them, scattered across the grounds like insects. Most were weak, half-born things spawned from childhood terrors: shadows of forgotten nightmares and bruised knees, phantoms of isolation. But one — one pulsed stronger, heavier, its cursed energy dense and gluttonous, like a living swamp at the back of the school.
“Bingo,” she murmured, her voice little more than breath.
In one smooth motion, she vaulted the fence. Her landing was silent, the gravel barely stirring beneath her soles. She quickly puts up a veil around the area.
She let her cursed energy unfurl in slow, measured waves — faint light blooming along the seams of her clawed gloves, threads of silver glimmering like faint veins beneath her skin. The energy coursed through her body in disciplined streams, every current guided by will.
The weak ones came first.
They always did.
Drawn by the scent of life, the flicker of her energy, they slithered from the dark — misshapen silhouettes crawling from corners and beneath beams of the ceilings, their oily souls flickering like dying embers.
M did not waste movement. With a flick of her wrist, her threads lashed out — thin, glinting cords of steel-like energy slicing through the air. She caught the first curse mid-lunge, wrapping its pulsing form in a tightening spiral. A tug. A twist. A muffled pop — the sound of a soul imploding. The curse withered into black vapor.
Two more followed, their shapes snarling like feral dogs. M pivoted sharply, one leg sweeping low as her hands carved arcs before her — weaving. The threads darted from her fingertips like living serpents, coiling around the curses’ necks, digging into the glowing seams of their souls. Another pull, and the air was split by the faint hiss of dissolving matter.
Her pace quickened. Each step was precise, each breath controlled. She struck like water, flowing and unbroken — kicks snapping into torsos, hands slicing through incorporeal limbs, her threads moving faster than thought.
Then she saw them — three curses rushing her at once, grotesque and shrieking, jaws splitting wider than their faces. M inhaled once, deeply, centering herself. When she moved, she became a blur.
The silver glint of her threads traced through the dark like lines of lightning, weaving a circle around her attackers. In the space of a heartbeat, she had slipped past them — her motion seamless, almost elegant. Behind her, the web snapped taut. All three bodies convulsed midair, their souls bound, crushed, and silenced in the same breath.
When she exhaled, the air smelled of burnt ozone.
The factory’s back lot was near. The air grew heavier, thicker with cursed energy. M’s boots sank slightly into the damp soil as she approached the open field.
And then — she saw it.
The Grade 2 curse loomed at the far edge of the yard, grotesque and swollen, its form spilling over itself like melted wax. Its skin was a sickly green, translucent in places where veins of cursed energy pulsed beneath. It resembled a caterpillar — if such a creature had been carved from fat and rot, its bloated mass quivering with every sluggish movement. Its face, or what passed for one, split open into a wet grin lined with teeth that looked human.
The air around it shimmered, heavy with the pressure of its aura.
It turned toward her.
And in that moment, its eyes — bulbous, milky — locked with hers.
Machiko’s heart stilled, then steadied. The pulse of her cursed energy sharpened, humming low like wire drawn taut.
She had her target.
The order was clear: capture, not kill.
M lowered her stance, fingertips brushing against the dirt as her threads unfurled once more, silver light blooming around her in a widening circle. Her voice was a whisper, carried only by the wind:
“Let’s begin.”
Then she moved.
The creature moved first.
A wet, shuddering motion rippled through its massive body before its arm came swinging down — a limb thick as a tree trunk, its skin glistening with a slick, mucous sheen. The impact cracked the air like thunder.
Machiko was already gone.
Big and heavy — they were always slow. The curse’s strength was its own weakness.
She leapt, twisting through the air with the grace of a blade in flight, and landed lightly atop the creature’s arm. The flesh beneath her boots quivered, soft and cold, the skin sinking slightly under her weight. Her eyes darted across its body — the faint, pulsing fractures of its soul visible to her trained sight, lines of weakness beneath its thick, corrupted aura. Cracks and seams, fault lines where its cursed energy bled unevenly. There. And there. And there.
Targets.
She drew from her belt a cluster of long, slender needles — each one forged of tempered steel, engraved with faint sigils that shimmered like starlight. Her threads, invisible to the naked eye, snaked from her fingertips, attaching to the needles as she ran.
Her body moved on instinct — years of discipline condensed into seconds. She sprinted along the length of the curse’s arm, her jacket snapping behind her like a banner, the needles leaving her fingers one after another. Each struck true, embedding into the soft, trembling folds of cursed flesh, right where she had marked them in her mind.
The curse howled, a deep, hollow noise that rattled the windows of the school. Its other arm came swinging up toward her, massive and clumsy. She ducked low, vaulting off its forearm in a tight arc that sent her sailing over the oncoming blow.
As she spun midair, she loosed another flurry — a rain of silver needles streaking down in perfect formation. They found their marks with a series of dull, meaty thuds. The creature convulsed, its limbs twitching, its eyes rolling white.
Machiko landed atop its head, the last of her needles poised between her fingers.
“Now,” she whispered.
The final strike plunged deep into the center of its skull, the place where its cursed energy converged like a heart. The threads connecting each needle thrummed — alive, resonant.
Machiko closed her eyes and channeled her energy through them. It flowed like molten glass, hot and controlled, surging from her core through the threads, into the web she had woven through the curse’s body. The current hit its soul all at once.
The reaction was immediate.
The curse froze, its limbs locking in place. The air rippled around it, the stench of burnt ozone flooding the yard. Its swollen body trembled, cursed energy flickering erratically, sputtering like a dying flame. Then, with a long, guttural groan, it fell — a mountain of flesh crashing to the ground with a sound that shook the earth.
Machiko landed beside it, her threads retracting in swift, clean motions. With one sweep of her hand, she sent them snaking outward again, wrapping around the fallen creature. The bindings tightened with a shrill metallic whine, glimmering with restrained power.
“Stay down,” she murmured.
Satisfied that it was immobilized, Machiko reached into her coat and retrieved a small wooden seal — plain, hand-carved, and darkened by years of use. She pressed the talisman against the curse’s head. The symbols etched into its surface began to glow faintly as she raised her hand, two fingers extended before her face.
Her voice fell into a low, steady cadence — the words old and sharp, vibrating with intent.
“By thread and soul, by seal and will,
Bound be the spirit, still thy hunger—
Return to silence, return to form.”
The air around the curse warped, the pressure collapsing inward. Its grotesque body began to twist, pulled toward the seal as if by unseen gravity. The screams turned to whispers, then to nothing. In the space of a few heartbeats, the massive creature had been drawn entirely into the small wooden box that now rested in her palm.
Silence returned to the schoolyard.
Machiko stood still for a long moment, her breath misting faintly in the cold air. Her hands trembled just slightly before she steadied them.
Retrieval complete.
She slid the box into her satchel and looked up at the darkened sky. The moon hung pale and distant above the rooftops. Somewhere out there, Geto waited.
And Machiko — ever his faithful student — would bring him what he asked for.
M returned to the shrine, the familiar scent of aged wood and incense curling through the air like ghostly fingers. The floorboards creaked softly beneath her steps, a subtle reminder that she was no longer on the streets of Sendai, no longer the shadowy Aya, but back within the dominion of her mentor. The office waited, dim and cavernous, lit only by the faint glow of lanterns that cast long, wavering shadows across the walls lined with tomes, jars of powders, and trinkets of curses past.
She approached the large, polished desk at the center, her footsteps silent, precise, honed by years of training and obedience. In her hands rested the box, wrapped with care and secrecy, the fruit of her latest mission.
“The retrieval process was a success,” she said, her voice low, calm, as though the act of speaking might betray her curiosity and her lingering questions. She set the box before him with deliberate care, watching as his sharp eyes flicked to its contents.
Geto rose from his chair, the movement smooth, predatory, as if the air itself parted for him. He stood before her, a towering figure of control and menace, his gaze fixed on the box. “Good,” he said, voice even but layered with that intangible weight of authority. “This will be useful for tomorrow.”
Machiko’s brow furrowed, a flicker of unease threading through her trained calm. “May I ask why, Geto-sama?” Her question was careful, respectful, yet edged with the curiosity that clawed at her from beneath years of obedience.
Geto chuckled softly, a sound that carried through the office like the click of a knife against bone. “A complaint has been lodged to Tokyo Jujutsu High. A minor curse infestation at an elementary school. I am reasonably certain that Yuta will be sent there by his teacher—him and his classmates. Satoru always preferred hands-on learning, as always.”
There was a glint in his eyes then, something fleeting beneath the calculating gleam: a trace of fondness, almost indulgence, as if he were amused. “After all,” he murmured, almost to himself, “he does enjoy putting his students to the test.”
Machiko’s hands tightened around the hem of her uniform, her mind cataloging every nuance, every shadow in his expression. “Remember, M,” Geto said, stepping closer, “tomorrow’s mission is observation. You are to report to me—the status on Yuta’s possession of Rika, the extent of her abilities, nothing more. Watch, but do not intervene. Report to me when it's done. I will be there to monitor from a distance the mission if things go wrong.”
His words stung. Did he not trust her to go on this mission alone?
Her lips parted to speak, but the words caught in her throat. Not only that, but the mission felt incomplete, opaque, yet layered with a significance she could not yet grasp. “Yes, Geto-sama,” she said, voice steady, but her thoughts churned with silent questions. Where was he taking this? How did she fit into this grand design? And why did he cloak his intentions so thoroughly, like a dagger beneath a cloak?
He leaned back slightly, a signal that the audience was concluded. “That will be all.”
A small, almost imperceptible tremor stirred in her chest. She could not contain herself. “Geto-sama…” she ventured, hesitant, fragile beneath the weight of his scrutiny. “…if you don’t mind telling me…where are we heading with all of this? What is our grand plan?”
The room grew still, heavy with the scent of incense and anticipation, as if the shadows themselves leaned closer to listen. And Machiko, standing there in her black gloves and mask beneath her hood, felt the faintest twinge of something she had not dared to name: fear, curiosity, and the cold thrill of a puzzle whose answer might reshape everything she thought she knew.
Geto stepped closer, his presence folding around her like a shadow made flesh. For a brief, sharp instant, Machiko felt a pang of regret slice through her—perhaps she had overstepped. Perhaps she should have swallowed her questions, bowed her head in silence, and retreated when dismissed. Trust had always been her shield; now, it felt as if she had cracked it. Her chest tightened with the fear of reprimand, of punishment, of having her incompetence laid bare before him.
Then, unexpectedly, a hand descended onto her head. Light, deliberate, almost gentle. Geto’s large hand was on her hood, ruffling it in a way that struck her as absurdly intimate, almost paternal.
“You must be worried,” he murmured, his voice low and warm, “after working in the dark for so long, huh, kiddo…”
Machiko’s heart stung at the words. To him, she was never a mystery. Never an enigma. He read her like an open book—every hesitation, every flicker of doubt, every secret worry laid bare in the light of his gaze.
“I’m sorry about that,” he continued, crouching so that his eyes met hers directly, the intensity of his presence anchoring her in place. “But I need you to trust me on this. In time, I will tell you. This… is for your safety.”
He leaned closer, his voice softening to a conspiratorial murmur—low, intimate, yet laced with the quiet authority of a man accustomed to obedience. “There is a reason I keep only a chosen few within the circle of my confidence,” he said, each word deliberate, measured. “I cannot risk our purpose falling into the wrong hands. That includes you as well, Machiko.”
His gaze lingered on her, calm yet unyielding, the faintest trace of a shadow crossing his otherwise composed features. “If I were to speak of our plan against the Jujutsu Sorcerers now, you would be in grave danger. And if you were ever to fall into their hands…” His tone dipped, colder now, like a knife tracing the edge of a threat not yet spoken. “…they would not hesitate to use you against me. They would break you apart for the smallest scrap of truth. I will not allow another incident like what happened with you, Nanako, and Mimiko. Not again.”
He exhaled softly, almost as if releasing the weight of his own words. Then, with a small, disarming smile, he reached out and brushed her shoulder—a fleeting, almost paternal gesture. “Just trust me, kiddo.”
Machiko felt his words sink into her like stones sinking into still water—each one heavy, unyielding, yet strangely soothing. The fear that had knotted in her chest began to loosen, replaced by that familiar warmth she only ever felt in his presence. She bowed her head low, her voice quiet, reverent, trembling with devotion forged from years of dependence.
“Of course, Geto-sama.”
In that moment, she understood—or thought she did. He was protecting her, protecting all of them. His secrecy wasn’t born of doubt, but of care. It wasn’t mistrust—it was love. The kind that demanded faith, obedience, and sacrifice. And so she gave it freely. She would follow him, wherever he led, through the dark and beyond.
As always.
Machiko stood upon the roof of an aging apartment building, the tar beneath her boots still warm from the sun. Beside her stood Geto, tall and quiet, his robes stirring faintly in the wind. Below them, the elementary school rested in the hollow of the city — a low, square thing of concrete and glass, ringed by wire fences and the soft laughter of children spilling out into the street.
From this height, they looked like a river of color. Small backpacks bobbed like drifting leaves as the children ran toward waiting parents, their voices echoing through the narrow streets — high, clear, and alive. Teachers stood by the gate, ushering them along, tired smiles on their faces. The scent of exhaust and cut grass mingled in the air.
Machiko watched in silence, her eyes tracing the faces of children she did not know. Each laugh, each shout seemed to pull at something deep inside her — an ache that had never quite healed.
Yuu.
If her youngest brother would have survived that night, she would have gotten the chance to witness him going through elementary school. Perhaps junior high school now. He could have been thirteen years old. He would have been among those children if he were in middle school— loud, smiling, his shoes muddy from the playground, his hands clutching a crumpled worksheet. She imagined him there, running with the others, the wind tugging at his honeyed hair. If only he had lived that night.
If only she had been strong enough to save him.
Her throat tightened. The thought came as it always did, sharp and unwanted: “If Yuu had lived, would Father have stayed? Would Mother still laugh? Would Kiyoko be nicer? Would Sora still fear her?” Perhaps the house would have been warm again. Perhaps she would have gone to high school instead of learning to kill and survive in the world she currently lives in.
But this was her life now. Her family was dust and memory, and she — Machiko, M, the shadow of Geto Suguru — was all that remained.
She straightened, pulling the dark hood over her head. The cold mask of duty slipped back into place. There was no space for warmth here.
“M,” Geto said, his voice calm as still water. “It’s time. I will remain at a distance. You know what to do.”
“Yes, Geto-sama.”
The words left her lips without thought, automatic and obedient.
And with that, she vanished from the rooftop.
Machiko moved like smoke through the city’s bones — silent, weightless, a phantom. The rooftops blurred beneath her, the cold wind whispering through her hood as she leapt from ledge to ledge. Her oversized jacket flared behind her, black as a raven’s wing, and for a moment she looked less a woman than something made of night and intent.
Within minutes, she reached the elementary school. It loomed below her like a hollowed carcass of concrete and glass, its windows gleaming faintly beneath the wan light of the streetlamps. The last of the teachers were leaving — weary shapes fumbling for keys, their laughter faint and brittle in the evening chill. She watched them lock doors and turn off lights, their faces washed in the dull orange glow of the setting sun. When the final beam of light winked out, Machiko moved.
She slipped through the schoolyard unseen, her footsteps as soft as falling dust. Her cursed energy was drawn in tight — a thread coiled around her heart, muted and invisible. To any watcher, she was no more than a breath in the dark, a ripple in still water.
At the back of the building, she knelt by a rusted door. The lock was old, cheap, easy prey. From her pouch she drew a single needle, long and thin as a sliver of moonlight. With deft fingers, she worked it into the keyhole. The soft, rhythmic clicks came like a whispered song — one, two, three — and the door yielded to her touch with a sigh.
The stale scent of dust and chalk greeted her as she slipped inside. The air was cool, still heavy with the faint musk of paper and forgotten lessons. Her eyes adjusted quickly to the dimness. Rows of empty desks sat like tombstones beneath the pale spill of moonlight from the windows.
Every sound mattered here — the creak of the wooden floorboards, the hum of the fluorescent light dying in the corridor, the faint echo of her own heartbeat. Machiko moved carefully, each step measured and deliberate. She could not afford to leave even a whisper of cursed residue behind. The world she walked in was one of evidence and energy, and her mentor’s enemies were hunters who could trace a ghost through a single drop of power.
She made her way to the second floor, her gloved hand trailing lightly along the rail. The hall stretched before her — long, narrow, and empty. It was the kind of place that seemed to hold its breath, waiting for something to happen.
There, where the shadows pooled deepest, she began her work.
From her belt, she drew a spool of thread so fine it was almost invisible — a filament woven with her cursed energy, vibrating faintly at her touch. With careful precision, she stretched it across the corridor, low and hidden, where the eye would glide past it without ever seeing. A trap for the careless, for the unwary.
The thread’s other end she connected to a small chest — the same one she had used the night before, the one that now held a sleeping curse bound tight within layers of reinforced seals. The creature inside was restless; she could feel its hunger even now, thrumming faintly against the bindings. A Grade Two, nothing remarkable, but vicious enough to wound, to provoke.
Once triggered, the wire would snap, the box would open, and chaos would be born in the dark.
Machiko crouched beside her handiwork, eyes glinting silver in the half-light. Everything was placed with the care of a weaver setting her final knot. Every line was taut, every seal secure. She sat back on her heels and exhaled slowly.
Her task was simple: observe and report. But beneath the discipline of her mission, her thoughts drifted.
Yuta Okkotsu.
The name pulsed faintly in her mind, as familiar as it was distant. The boy she was sent to kill, and the boy she had saved. She remembered the way he had stood in the fading light of Sendai — small, trembling, haunted. The way he’d looked at her as though she were the first person who had ever seen him.
“I wonder”,she thought, “has he changed? Or is he still the frightened child who hid behind a monster’s love?”
Only time would tell.
All that remained now was to wait.
Machiko descended the narrow stairwell, her boots whispering against the cold linoleum. The air was still and heavy, thick with the scent of chalk dust and disuse. Somewhere far below, a single light flickered — pale, unsteady — before dying altogether, plunging the corridor into shadow.
She moved like a shadow herself, slipping through the gloom until she reached the narrow stairway that led to the rooftop. The metal door was cool beneath her hands. She opened the door soundlessly and emerged into the open air, the sky yawning vast and endless above her.
From her perch beneath the upper lip of the roof — hidden between two rusted ventilation shafts — she crouched low, her breath shallow, her body poised as if carved from stillness itself. Down below, the world slept, unaware of the predator watching from above.
In the silence, her senses sharpened to a blade’s edge. Every sound rang clear — the faint hum of the city beyond the veil, the distant chirp of a lone cricket, the almost imperceptible vibration from the sealed box below. The curse within it stirred, restless, its hunger pressing faintly against its bindings. Machiko could feel it, that soft and yearning pull, like a caged animal testing the strength of its bars.
She reached for her earpiece, the small motion practiced and precise. “Geto-sama,” she murmured, her voice barely above the wind. “Everything is in place.”
There was a brief crackle of static — then the familiar, silken baritone of her mentor filled her ear. “Good,” Geto replied. “It looks like they’re here. Four of them. Keep your eyes peeled.”
A soft click, and the line went silent.
Machiko lowered her hand, her expression unreadable beneath the dim wash of moonlight. She closed her eyes for a heartbeat, letting her senses fan outward like ripples in still water. She could feel them — the faint tremors of cursed energy drawing near.
Three signatures.
Two were modest, steady — the signatures of novices or low-ranked sorcerers. Manageable. But the third… it pressed against her awareness like a stormfront. Vast, heavy, suffocating. Power layered upon power. Even at a distance, she could taste the density of it, cold and electric against her skin.
And yet — there was supposed to be four.
She frowned slightly. The fourth was silent, absent. Perhaps a non-sorcerer. A civilian. Geto would not have miscounted — not him. But whoever it was, their presence was buried deep enough to escape even her senses.
Then the world dimmed.
A shiver rippled through the air, and the color drained from the sky. The streetlights beyond the gates flickered and died. Shadows lengthened unnaturally, swallowing the edges of the schoolyard. A veil had been cast — thick and heavy, a curtain between worlds. The temperature dropped, the air itself tightening like a held breath.
Machiko rose slowly and moved toward the edge of the rooftop, every step measured, silent. She crouched again beside the vents, cloak rippling softly in the night wind. From this vantage, she could see them clearly now — two figures stepping through the veil’s boundary.
One of them, she recognized immediately.
Yuta Okkotsu.
Even from this distance, she could feel his cursed energy pulse faintly — turbulent, uncertain, restrained only by fear and confusion. The boy she had met months ago in Sendai. The boy bound to that monstrous love. He moved awkwardly, shoulders hunched, eyes darting as though the air itself might attack him.
Beside him walked a girl. Tall, confident, her stance taut with discipline. She carried herself like someone accustomed to command, though her cursed energy was… nonexistent. An oddity, that.
Machiko reached for her earpiece once more.
“Geto-sama,” she whispered. “The target is here. He entered the premises with his teammate. It looks like his teammate seems to be…void of curse energy”
Geto’s voice came through at once, calm and unhurried. “That is Zenin Maki. She’s a civilian masquerading as a sorcerer. One of the monkeys. She possesses no cursed energy.”
Machiko’s brows knitted slightly. “A Zenin with no cursed energy?”
The thought was a discordant note in the symphony of her discipline. She had heard of the Zenin Clan, of course — one of the Three Great Houses of the Jujutsu world. A family of old blood and older pride, whose name was whispered with equal measures of reverence and resentment. The Zenin were said to produce warriors of unmatched skill, men and women born with innate techniques that could shape the world. Their pride in their lineage was legendary, their obsession with purity absolute.
And yet here was one of their own, stripped of everything that defined them — a Zenin without power, a sorcerer without cursed energy.
“Strange,” she murmured under her breath. “That the great Zenin bloodline would allow her to walk the halls of Jujutsu High, let alone become a sorcerer.”
Machiko exhaled slowly, misting the cold air. Below her, the two figures advanced toward the main building. The trap was waiting, coiled like a serpent in the dark.
All she had to do was watch.
And wait.
From her perch upon the rooftop, Machiko watched the battle unfold below. The veil cloaked the world in shadow, and the playground that once echoed with children’s laughter had become a graveyard of whispering curses.
They came slithering out from the dark. Malformed things with faces like torn parchment, limbs that bent the wrong way, and eyes that glimmered with hunger. Their howls carried faintly up to her, a chorus of malice and despair.
And among them stood the two intruders.
The girl — Zenin Maki — moved like tempered steel. Each motion was honed to purpose, her stance rooted in discipline, her strikes quick as lightning and twice as merciless. Her naginata cut through the air in gleaming arcs, slicing curses apart with a single fluid motion. She did not falter, did not hesitate. There was grace in her violence — a predator’s grace.
“So this is the Zenin who bears no curse energy”, she thought. “And yet she fights as if she were born for it”. Even without cursed energy, her precision was surgical, her strength unrelenting. She wielded her weapon as though it were a natural extension of her body — the way a dancer moves through a familiar rhythm, or a killer breathes before the blade sinks in.
Yuta Okkotsu, on the other hand, was every bit the opposite.
He wore the uniform of Jujutsu High now — white jacket, dark trousers, no weapons in his hands at all. But for all his outward change, the boy beneath remained much the same. Machiko could see it in his posture: shoulders drawn tight, knees locked, eyes wide and uncertain.
When the first curse lunged at him, he froze.
She saw him flinch, heard his shout — high and raw and terrified. He stumbled backward as his partner cleaved the monster in two before it reached him. Even from afar, Machiko could see the frustration flicker across Maki’s face, the faint twist of her lips betraying disdain. She barked something at him — sharp, clipped words Machiko couldn’t quite hear, but she didn’t need to. The meaning was clear.
Useless.
Coward.
Yuta’s expression tightened, shame and fear warring within him, but he did not move to fight.
Machiko narrowed her eyes, studying him as a scholar might study an insect beneath glass. His cursed energy flickered faintly. It was weak, inconsistent, like the trembling flame of a candle struggling against the wind. She probed deeper, seeking the presence that haunted him, that monstrous, possessive love bound to his soul.
But Rika’s energy was dormant. Silent.
“Strange”, she thought. “Why does he not call her?”
The boy was drowning in fear, surrounded by lesser curses that could barely scrape him, and yet he would not summon his demon bride. Did he not know how? Or was he afraid of her — of himself?
A faint breeze lifted Machiko’s hair, brushing cold against her cheek. She folded her arms, expression unreadable, eyes as still as mirrors.
Yuta stumbled again, tripping over debris as Maki dispatched another curse in one sweeping strike. Her movements were growing sharper now. Faster, harder — not out of necessity, but impatience. The disdain in her gaze deepened with every blow. To her, the boy was not a partner. He was ballast. A burden.
Machiko watched them like a hawk, her mind cold and precise. Every twitch of muscle, every flicker of curse energy, every word and gesture. All of it etched into her memory, catalogued and organized like a scholar’s ledger. She had always taken pride in her method. Where others acted on instinct, she relied on structure. Observation. Control.
Below, the girl barked another order. Yuta obeyed — awkwardly, uncertainly — trailing behind as she led the way toward the school building.
Machiko shifted her weight, crouched low against the rooftop.
The trap was waiting inside.
And now her prey had stepped willingly into the web.
Machiko pressed two fingers to her earpiece, her voice a low whisper. “Geto-sama, the target has entered the building. The trap will be triggered any moment now.”
“Copy that, M.” Geto’s voice came through the line — calm, unhurried, a man who knew the shape of the outcome before the first move was made.
Machiko allowed herself a single, steadying breath. The evening air was cool against her face, the smell of rust and rain thick upon the wind. Below, the school crouched like a sleeping beast beneath the veil — silent, waiting to devour what walked within.
And then—
Movement.
Two small shadows darted across her periphery.
Her head snapped toward them. Down in the courtyard, two boys — no older than ten, maybe nine — were sprinting across the cracked asphalt, their shoes slapping hard against the ground. Behind them, black shapes slithered and lurched, the low-level curses she had left to roam the grounds now stirred to frenzy by the scent of fear.
“Shit,” she breathed. Her stomach turned cold. “Children? Where did they come from? I could have sworn this building was empty”
That was impossible. She had checked the building herself. Every classroom, every corridor, every godsforsaken broom closet. The place had been empty. It was empty.
And yet here they were — two boys, faces pale and eyes wide, running for their lives beneath the ghostly pall of the veil.
Her muscles tensed, every instinct screaming at her to move. She could end it in seconds — a flick of her wrist, a thread of cursed energy, and those monsters would be ash. She could leap from the roof, catch the boys before they fell, carry them clear of the danger. Her hand twitched towards her twin tanto.
Then she heard his voice. “You are there to observe and report.” The memory of Geto’s words was sharp as a blade drawn against her skin. Machiko froze. Her breath hitched. Her pulse throbbed in her ears.
If she revealed herself now — if she so much as let her cursed energy flare — the sorcerers around the area would feel it. The veil might flicker, the plan might crumble. And worse… Geto would know. He always knew and he would be disappointed in her again for failing another mission. She would put everyone on their side on the Sorcerer’s radar.
Her mind raced — angles, timings, possibilities — a storm of thought behind still silver eyes. Could she save them and remain unseen? Could she strike from a distance, mask her signature, weave her threads so fine they’d cut the curses but leave no trace?
No. Too risky. Too loud.
“You’ve just earned back his trust”, she reminded herself. “You cannot afford another mistake. Not now. Not again.”
She swallowed hard. “Run,” she whispered to the boys below, though they could not hear her. “Just run before they trigger it.”
But fate was already moving faster than she could.
A tremor ran through the air. The hair on her arms rose.
Then came the sound — a deep, guttural crack, like the world itself splitting open.
The sealed box shuddered, its bindings glowing red-hot for a heartbeat before they burst upon activation of her trap. The curse within howled as it tore free — a wet, violent roar that rattled the glass of the surrounding buildings.
Boom!
A column of dust and debris erupted as part of the upper floor caved in. The ground beneath Machiko quivered with the force. From the wreckage rose the creature — vast, bloated, its flesh a sickly green that glistened like rot beneath the moonlight. Milky eyes rolled in its head. Its limbs were long and uneven, twitching spasmodically as it screamed into the night.
“Fuck,” Machiko hissed, the word half a curse, half a prayer.
Chaos unfurled.
She caught sight of Yuta and Maki through the haze — thrown back by the explosion, their bodies flung into the air like rag dolls. The girl spun mid-flight, reaching desperately for her naginata as gravity dragged her down. The boy clung to her, flailing, his mouth open in a scream that vanished into the thunder of the curse’s roar.
Too slow.
Machiko saw Maki swing — a valiant, desperate strike. The blade of her weapon sang through the air and missed.
The curse’s jaws opened wide, a pit of darkness lined with teeth like shards of glass.
And before she could even move—
It swallowed them whole.
A wet, echoing gulp that reverberated through the ruin of the school.
Silence followed — heavy and absolute. They were gone.
The thing below turned its bulbous head and milky eyes on the two boys. Its gaze was a slow, patient thing like a tide deciding which scraps of driftwood or trash it would swallow next. The children’s screams rose thin and terrified, a high, brittle noise that sliced the night. Machiko felt the sound like a physical blow—a pressure behind the breastbone that made her breath shallow and hot.
Images came, unwanted and immediate: Yuu’s face in that long-ago dark forest, the smallness of him against a world that had opened and bled around him. She saw the way his eyes had gone flat and far away, the way the world had turned to a smear of scarlet and broken things. The memory was not a picture so much of a smell, a copper taste in her mouth, the scent of dug up eart, and it made her hair stand up along Machiko’s arms. Not again, she thoight, clinging to the thought as if it were a plank in a storm.
She jabbed her index finger at the earpiece as if the device were a lifeline and not a leash. “Geto-sama,” she hissed, voice raw of desperation, “there are two kids in the courtyard. They came out of nowhere from the building. Permission to rescue them—now.”
The answer came like a sluice. Cold. Absolute. “Permission denied.”
Machiko’s knees wanted to buckle. “But—“ she began, the plea tearing out of her like a string pulled taut from tension, “they’re children. They can’t protect themselves against these curses. Please, just this once—let me save them.”
”Permission denied,” Geto repeated, his voice firmer now. His words like iron. No softness hovered in them, no hesitation. They were not the voice of a man who weighed mercy against consequence; they were the voice of a commander trimming away sentiment. Machiko could already see how disappointed her mentor’s face is right now. “You failed me once, M. Do you intend to fail me again?”
For a best she could not speak. the world narrowed to the hiss of the veil and the wet, greedy sounds of the curse coming from the courtyard. She pictured the boys small bodies between the curse’s vast fingers and felt bile climb her throat. “But Geto-sama—“ Her voice broke.
“Are you questioning my order?” Geto’s tone sharpened then, not loud but absolute. It carried every lesson he had forced into her sinew and bone for years. “Do you doubt my decision? Do you doubt that every sacrifice we accept is a loss for our future?”
“No,” she whispered, and the word tasted like a lie. She couldn’t deny that there were times like these she questioned if her mentor’s visionary world was worth all the lives she took. For all the misery she caused. In times like these, she would often remind herself that this was for the greater good, a necessary evil to make the world a safer place for sorcerers. There would not be another Yuu, another bloody Mimiko, another crying Nanako and another miserable Machiko.
Geto always said that all humans were terrible people, they were the ones who reinforced the cruel system that sorcerers are forced to live in today. However, Machiko wondered if that applied to children as well. They were, after all, children—someone who isn't able to differentiate the good from the bad things. They aren’t like those awful adults that Machiko had come across. They were like Yuu. “But Geto-sama, they will die if we do nothing.”
Silence on the line. For the first time since he had taught her to measure breath and will, Geto’s voice lost none of its composure. “They put themselves in harm’s way,” he said finally. “When Jujutsu Tech accepted the mission to clear curses on school grounds, they would send out letters to the school for an early closure. And yet, these two boys did not follow orders. Why should we, who bend fate, bow to salvage the weak when they put themselves in those situations? We do not bow to the weak. We do not become saviors of the careless.”
Machiko stood very still. The wind through her jacket felt like knives. Anger flared inside her, hot and blinding—not at Geto alone but at the memory of every time she reached out and been bitten.
“Is he for real?” The thought flared and vanished. Her hands trembled where her gloves hid the grey webbing beneath her skin. “Regardless,” she whispered, to herself or to him she could not tell, “they are still children, Geto-sama.”
Below, she could see the curse capturing the boys with its large spindly hands. The sound of the boys’ screams were louder, more frantic. Machiko’s curse energy suppression—the tight, practiced binding that kept her presence still and hidden—began to fray like a rope over a cliff. The thing in her chest that had been stitched by grief and sharpened by training quivered. The threads she had braided into herself to keep Musubari’s whisper and hunger at bay loosened at the edges.
”Stay down, M.” Geto’s voice came again, flat as a stone. “That is an order. If you go rogue, I will subdue you.”
Those last words fell like a gauntlet. They were a threat and a promise both: the hand that had nurtured and taught her could also crush her. The earpiece warmed against her skin. The boys’ cries rose, then faltered. The veil shivered. Around Machiko, the city hummed ignorant and indifferent.
Should she obey her mentor? Should she throw herself into the shadow of the curse, risk everything she had become—every sharpened instinct, every drop of blood spilled in training—to save the children below?
The first voice came as it always did: quiet, cold, certain. Trust him. Geto knows what he is doing. He has never led you astray. You have followed him through every ruin, every silence, every mission that broke lesser souls. You are his shadow, his weapon. You do not question. You do not falter.
For years, Geto had been the architect of her existence. He had shaped her from flesh and fear into something cold, perfect, and merciless. He had stripped her of hesitation the way a blacksmith strips impurities from iron—burning, breaking, reforging until she gleamed in his image. Every scar was a lesson. Every order, a commandment. She had learned to kill without thought, to bury her heart beneath steel and silence.
And yet now—the weight of this moment crushed harder than any curse. To disobey him was to court ruin, not just for herself but for all who walked in his shadow. A single act of defiance could unravel everything they had bled for. After Sendai, after her failure, she knew what disobedience cost. Obedience was safety. Obedience was survival.
But another voice rose inside her then, raw and feral, cutting through the iron calm of her mind. This is wrong.
That voice was older than Geto’s teachings. Older than her fear. It was the voice that had screamed inside her the night Yuu died. The voice of the child she had been, the sister who had knelt in the mud while the forest rang with her brother’s final cries. She could see it still—Yuu’s lifeless eyes, wide with terror and disbelief, the crimson matting his hair, his small hand reaching for her before it fell limp. That memory had never dulled; it had carved her hollow.
And now, below her, two more children screamed in the dark. Small bodies twisting in terror within the curse’s grasp. Their cries cut short as the curse swallowed them whole. She could see it in her mind’s eye: the curse devouring them whole, patient and unrelenting.
She had watched again, and she had done nothing.
The world blurred—the rooftop melted into the forest floor of that night long ago. The stench of blood filled her lungs. The soil clung wet to her knees. The echo of Yuu’s voice clawed at her mind. She was there again, powerless, broken. Only now, she was no longer helpless—she had the strength, the training, the power—and still, she did nothing.
Then came Geto’s voice through the static, calm and cold as a blade in the dark as she heard him speak through her earpiece. “Some sacrifices must be made. Even the lives of children. This is what it means to fight for the cause, M. For our world. For sorcerers only.”
Her stomach turned. The air seemed to thicken around her, heavy and sour. This—the screams, the blood, the silence after—was the cost of his dream. Was this the world Geto had envisioned? A world without fear, without persecution… built upon the bones of the innocent?
Her heart clenched beneath the weight of that truth. She had bled, killed, and silenced her conscience for this cause, believing it to be freedom. But freedom forged in the deaths of children and innocent people was not salvation. It was a curse in itself.
She had been his shadow, his instrument, honed to precision. But even shadows have edges—and edges, when pressed too far, will cut back. Somewhere beneath the layers of steel and discipline, something human still lived. Something small, fragile, and unbroken. That part of her—the part that remembered Yuu’s laughter, the warmth of his hand in hers—rose screaming.
She had been taught to kill compassion, to silence doubt, to stand still as the world burned. But the sight of those small hands disappearing into darkness shattered something inside her.
What was she fighting for? What had she been bleeding for? What kind of kingdom was she helping to build if its foundation was laid in the blood of children?
The air around her vibrated with their fading screams, each one a hammer striking her skull. Her mind reeled—obedience or defiance, faith or guilt, salvation or damnation. Trust the man who had given her purpose, or trust the voice that reminded her she was still human.
Her pulse pounded in her ears. Her fingers trembled. The mask she wore, the name she had been given—M—felt suddenly suffocating. Heavy as armor. Cold as stone.
She was a weapon forged in darkness. But even the sharpest weapon, when turned against the soul, must break.
And today, Machiko felt that break running through her bones—cracking, splintering—like ice under the weight of something far too heavy to bear.
If this was truly the world she had been fighting for—the world her mentor had promised her—then Machiko wanted no part in it. Not with the price it demanded. Not with the screams it left behind.
She had believed once that her sacrifices would build something noble, something pure. That all her sins, all her bloodshed, would pave the road toward a better world for those like her. But now, as she watched the darkness writhe and the echoes of dying children faded into silence, the truth cut her deeper than any blade. This world—Geto’s world—was built upon rot. And if she kept walking this path, the rot would claim her too.
Her resolve began to waver, trembling at its core. Her pulse roared in her ears as she reached for her own curse energy, ready to unleash it, ready to damn herself for defying him if it meant saving what innocence remained. Her fingers trembled, threads coiling faintly with power.
Then, before her energy could flare, the air shifted—heavy, vile, and ancient. A foul pressure rolled across the courtyard like the breath of some unseen beast. The stench of rot and decay choked her lungs, clinging to her skin like oil. Machiko froze. She knew this curse energy. She would know it anywhere.
Rika.
The world seemed to tremble with her name.
A surge of power burst through the ruins of the school, shaking the earth beneath her feet. With a thunderous roar, the monstrous spirit tore herself free from the belly of the curse that had swallowed her master. Flesh split like paper. Bone cracked. The air was thick with the wet, ragged sounds of destruction.
Rika emerged screaming—a sound too shrill, too wild to be human. Her face twisted with delight, her wide mouth stretched in a grin that bared rows of jagged, gleaming teeth. The moonlight caught the glint of her sharp claws and Machiko felt her stomach twist. There was no hesitation in Rika, no restraint. Only hunger. Only joy. Only bloodlust.
With a feral shriek, Rika lunged at the dying curse and began tearing it apart. Each blow landed with a sickening force. The creature howled and convulsed, but it was already dead, pinned beneath the weight of Rika’s frenzy. She clawed through its flesh, her laughter echoing through the shattered halls of the school. Purple blood splattered across the courtyard walls, dripping down in long, sticky streaks. The scent of it—sweet and rancid, like spoiled fruit—hung heavy in the air.
Machiko crouched low in the bushes, her breath caught in her throat. Every movement was silent, her body trained by instinct to vanish into shadow. And yet, she could not tear her gaze away. The sheer ferocity before her, the raw violence of it—it was monstrous.
Rika, the Queen of Curses.
The thing that Geto wanted. The thing she had failed to capture. And now, here it was again—alive and drenched in the blood of her kind.
In the distance, through the swirling haze of dust and blood, Machiko’s eyes caught a flicker of movement. A boy. Thin shoulders, hair plastered to his face with sweat and grime. Yuta. He was walking—no, staggering—out of the smoke, clutching the unconscious Zenin girl in his arms and the two boys on his back. The children. The same kids who had been screaming moments ago.
They were alive.
Machiko’s breath escaped her chest in a trembling sigh she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Her knees weakened with it. She could almost laugh—almost. Relief washed through her like warmth after a long winter. Somehow, against every odds, the children had lived.
Perhaps Yuta had called upon Rika in desperation, in that brief flicker of courage only born in moments of terror. Perhaps he had willed her forth with the raw instinct to protect. Whatever the reason, the outcome was the same: they had survived. And that was enough.
For now, at least.
The school grounds were quiet again save for the distant hum of dissipating curse energy. The veil began to thin as soon as Yuta made his way to the school gates. Sunlight filtered through the drifting smoke, silvering the broken glass, the spilled blood, the fragments of what once was a place for children to learn and laugh.
Machiko rose silently from her hiding place, brushing dust from her jacket and quickly made her way away from the site. Her heart still pounded, but her face was calm—too calm. She adjusted her earpiece, her voice a whisper.
“Geto-sama. The mission has been completed.”
There was a pause, soft static filling the space between them. Then, his voice came through—steady, cold, controlled. “Good. Meet me up north, M.”
Machiko’s throat felt dry. Her eyes lingered one last time on the distant figures of Yuta and the others, moving toward safety. She turned away, the faintest trace of a sigh caught between her lips.
“Yes, Geto-sama.”
And just like that, the shadow moved on—silent, unseen—leaving behind the ruin and the ghosts that would follow her long after the blood had dried. Questions and doubts lingered in her mind.