To make it easier for Kano to carry the money away, Bayer even had his men clear out a small leather bag for him.
With over three million yen, Kano at least wouldn't have to worry about basic living expenses for a while.
"About that job to assassinate the Star Plasma Vessel," the Slit-Mouthed Woman said after they returned home, changing into a light, breathable nightdress with spaghetti straps while idly swinging her delicate feet. "Sweetie, are you really going?"
Shoichi Kano scratched his cheek. "I've already got the money, so it doesn't really matter if I go. Killing a middle school girl... I feel like that's a little..."
The Slit-Mouthed Woman stopped swinging her legs and tilted her head slightly at him. "Are you sure? If you don't go, they'll definitely have some way to settle the score with you."
Shoichi Kano froze for a moment, but quickly reasoned it out. "Surely not. They don't know where I live. The only way they can contact me now is through Mr. Kobayashi's phone."
"If I take out the SIM card and turn it off, how are they supposed to track my location?"
The Slit-Mouthed Woman chuckled before saying, "Since you're so confident, sweetie, how about a bet with Mommy? I bet they've used some kind of tracking method on you."
Shoichi Kano thought this was a sure win. He might even be able to use the opportunity to regain a little control. "Sure. What are we betting?"
"Just one thing." The Slit-Mouthed Woman held up a finger. "The winner can order the loser to do one thing. Of course, nothing life-threatening, and nothing that hurts anyone else. How does that sound?"
Her hands were as graceful as a hand model's, but sharp black nails grew from them, catching a faint glint of lamplight as she raised her finger.
Shoichi Kano nodded, and the bet began immediately.
"Then how do we prove who's right?" he asked.
"Come here." The Slit-Mouthed Woman beckoned him over.
Shoichi Kano stepped forward.
Then, with a quick sweep of her hand over his body, a clump of cold, gray cursed energy appeared in her palm.
"There. You lost." Her eyes gleamed with the satisfaction of a successful scheme, as though she believed her little pet Kano could never escape her grasp.
Naturally, Shoichi Kano refused to accept it. "Isn't that just your own cursed energy? What does that have to do with our bet?"
The Slit-Mouthed Woman gave him an amused look, kneading the ball of cursed energy in her hand like a stress toy. "Why don't you actually try sensing it?"
Shoichi Kano had already realized that it contained a clump of unfamiliar cursed energy, but he stubbornly kept arguing. "I don't care. That's your own cursed energy."
So the Slit-Mouthed Woman smeared the little ball across Kano's face. Since it wasn't an offensive cursed technique, and she had also controlled her strength, all he felt was a chill against his skin, as though someone had splashed ice water in his face.
"You'll be washing Mommy's feet tonight~" As she withdrew her hand, she winked seductively and blew him a kiss.
Kano could only accept defeat!
After dinner, true to the spirit of honoring a lost bet, Shoichi Kano actually fetched a basin of warm water and set it down in front of the Slit-Mouthed Woman.
"Shouldn't you say something?" she asked with a smile, the stitches at the split corners of her mouth pulled taut.
Kano took several deep breaths, then spoke with exaggerated intonation. "The warm water is ready. Mommy, please let me wash your feet!"
"That's more like it. Such a good boy."
The Slit-Mouthed Woman lightly kicked off her slippers, revealing feet that were soft and silky to the touch, with a graceful, delicate shape. Apart from their cold temperature and slightly inhuman grayish-white color, they certainly qualified as exquisite feet. Paired with her sharp, gothic-style "pedicure," they were practically divine!
But even with a perfectly legitimate excuse to admire and fondle those lovely feet, what followed was still rather torturous-she wouldn't keep them still, working all sorts of little movements into the foot washing. Sometimes she scratched Kano's palm with her nails; sometimes she deliberately kicked out, almost shoving her water-beaded sole into his mouth...
She even had a whole pile of demands. One moment the water was too cold or too hot, and the next Kano's massage pressure was wrong, or he hadn't worked out the tension in her meridians and acupoints. If that wasn't nitpicking, it was certainly inventing faults where none existed.
Kano was starting to lose his temper inwardly. You're a fucking cursed spirit! What goddamn acupoints do you have?!
But the Slit-Mouthed Woman seemed to be watching his eyes and microexpressions the whole time, so she always stopped teasing him just as he reached his breaking point, swiftly snuffing out his anger. Several times, just when Kano was about to snap, she suddenly reined herself in, leaving him unable to vent. It was like emotional edging.
Just as Shoichi Kano was about to have a meltdown, Miss Slit-Mouthed Woman finally decided she'd had enough fun. She lightly scratched his palm with her toenails, making him feel a faint sting.
"All right, you've been such a good baby." She pulled her foot out of Kano's hands, then casually brushed its top against his hand. "Now dry Mommy's feet."
Shoichi Kano did as instructed with a miserable expression.
Having just enjoyed her foot massage, the Slit-Mouthed Woman was now taking little sips of Coca-Cola she'd retrieved from the fridge-a glass bottle with a plastic straw in it-while her dark gray eyes remained fixed on the television.
Shoichi Kano also noticed... Miss Cursed Spirit liked chewing on her straw while drinking!
One end of the straw had already been mangled beyond recognition.
"Can't you move over a little?" Shoichi Kano wanted to sit on the couch and rest too.
"Call me Mommy." She spread her legs in an utterly ungraceful pose, looking determined to monopolize the entire couch.
Shoichi Kano had no choice but to lean close to her ear and say it in a voice as faint as a mosquito's buzz.
Having finally earned a chance to catch his breath, he naturally turned on Mr. Kobayashi's phone to check whether the Q Organization had sent him any messages.
Sure enough, one of the latest texts concerned Toji Fushiguro. Mr. Toji had expressed some interest in the "sorcerer" who wanted to work with him, hoped to meet him, and had arranged a specific time and place.
The message had probably been relayed by Bayer, because at the end of the text, Bayer had sternly warned Shoichi Kano to watch his words and actions around Toji, or even he wouldn't be able to protect him.
Shoichi Kano didn't know how to reply, so he typed "Read" on the phone's keypad and hit send.
"I'll go see whether Dengeki Bunko has replied." Finding the lovey-dovey Japanese drama on television uninteresting, Kano returned to his study and switched on the computer.
The Slit-Mouthed Woman continued watching with rapt interest. Perhaps she'd cast herself as one of the characters in the show.
Sure enough, Kano still hadn't received a reply to the submission he'd emailed Dengeki Bunko. With nothing else to do, he decided to explore this world's dark web.
In his previous life, he'd tinkered with traffic relays and proxy routing through the Tor network-The Onion Router. That was a gateway to the darker side of the internet. Although he hadn't succeeded back then, he still remembered the general method.
Since it was only 2006, internet security measures weren't nearly as stringent as they would be in 2025 or 2026. Shoichi Kano actually managed to find a loophole and access that shadowy side of the internet from his home computer.
Of course, the so-called dark web wasn't a specific website like Guangming Online or Baidu. Strictly speaking, it was a collection of unregulated internet addresses that couldn't be accessed directly and hosted large amounts of illegal activity.
Kano wasn't particularly interested in graphic, bloody, or brutal material, so he went straight to the dark web pages related to jujutsu sorcerers.
Then he saw Mr. Bayer, the Q Organization's strongest combatant, the leader of his own faction within the organization, and a sorcerer whose technique was Metal Manipulation.
At that moment, Mr. Bayer was holding a squared-off, blunt blade and talking animatedly into a livestream camera. There were even several assistants behind him acting as his hype men.
"Come on, fam!" Bayer brought the blunt blade close to the camera. "A special grade cursed tool! Ever heard of the Slaughter Demon? This is the blade!"
"Doesn't every jujutsu sorcerer need a cursed tool that feels right in their hand?"
"Yes!" "Exactly!" "Facts!"
"This is essential gear for any jujutsu sorcerer," Bayer continued, pitching the item in his hand. "Swing this thing, and even a special grade cursed spirit has to give you some room, right?"
"These are all mass-market offline staples, endorsed by Toji Fushiguro himself!"
"Today, I, Bayer, just want to make friends with you all. A special grade cursed tool originally priced at over a hundred million yen-today, you won't pay a hundred million! You won't pay tens of millions! Just-159,800 yen!" Bayer's delivery grew increasingly frenzied, complete with wild gesticulations that made him look possessed.
"Holy shit, boss, you can't!" Several male assistants who looked like petty gangsters scrambled to restrain Bayer. "At that price, we won't even cover our costs!"
Bayer broke free of their grip. "Get the hell out of my way! I'm your boss! Don't tell me what to do! I'm here to give the fam a bargain today!"
"Come on, fam! If you're interested, just-buy now!"
At that point, a female assistant behind Bayer spoke up too. "Fam, we've only got ten of these cursed tools! Once they're gone, they're gone! If you want one, you'd better hurry!"
What Shoichi Kano didn't know was that when Bayer said, "Even a special grade cursed spirit has to give you some room," the Slit-Mouthed Woman had already been standing behind him.
She had kept her presence suppressed the whole time, which was how she escaped Kano's notice.
"Pfft!" In the end, though, she couldn't hold it in and laughed aloud.
"When did you come in?!" Shoichi Kano turned around, finally discovering his uninvited guest. "Please knock before coming in next time!"
"Sorry, sorry." The Slit-Mouthed Woman waved a hand, then brought her face close to Shoichi Kano's, her eyes filled with the doting amusement of a mother whose child had entered his rebellious phase. "Looks like my sweetie has finally grown up. You even have secrets you can't let anyone see now."
"I hope you weren't just jerking ○○ in front of the computer screen, sweetie."
Shoichi Kano bristled and hissed, only for the Slit-Mouthed Woman to push him back into his chair with one hand. She even had the leisure to tease him. "All right, all right. Mommy knows you're very strong, sweetie. But what I just saw Mr. Bayer selling on that livestream wasn't a special grade cursed tool, was it? I have enough of an eye to tell that much."
"If you could buy a special grade cursed tool for a hundred thousand yen," Kano said, curling his lip, "Japan's Jujutsu Society would have had its entire economic system collapse ages ago."
"My guess is that this guy," the Slit-Mouthed Woman speculated, "picks up some scrap metal from a junkyard, reshapes it with his cursed technique, and pours a little cursed energy into it. Once it barely passes for a cursed tool, he can sell it."
"Now that's a business with no overhead. I finally know where the Q Organization gets its operating funds." Her smile took on a sly edge.
Before you continue