Once everyone had left, Tetsuhiro breathed a sigh of relief and finally explained to Madara:
"I actually already know what that damn thing is."
"Then why didn't you say so sooner? What the hell is it?"
"I was trying to protect your image, wasn't I? First, where it came from: I picked it up by the Portal, so it's probably something from another world. While I was examining it just now, a scene appeared in my mind."
"In that scene, a middle-aged man and a young man were fighting on bamboo poles, with lots of little pools beneath them. The middle-aged man fell into one, and when he jumped back out, he'd turned into an animal!"
"And after the young man fell in, he came back out as a girl!"
"A girl?! Then that means...?"
"Then someone beside them explained that the pools they'd fallen into were cursed springs. The one the boy fell into was called the Spring of Drowned Girl. Its curse came from a young girl who drowned at Jusenkyo fifteen hundred years ago. Once triggered... well, you know the rest."
Hearing that there was a way to temporarily turn back into a man, Madara initially brightened and hurriedly asked, "Did that person say how to lift the curse?"
"Unfortunately, no."
"Damn it!" Madara snapped in a sweet voice. "You didn't miss anything, did you? I refuse to believe there's no way to lift this curse."
"How could I miss something that important?" Tetsuhiro said. "Go home and try turning back first. Remember, pour a bucket of hot water over your head, at least eighty degrees. A hot bath works too."
Madara froze. The anger gradually faded from his face, replaced by disbelief and embarrassment.
He hadn't expected the way to change back to be so simple.