After the Deal Was Settled

The Star Plasma Vessel Incident felt like one long dream.

If Shoichi Kano hadn't felt sore all over when he woke up groggily the next day (he still hadn't fully recovered from the beating Suguru and Tamamo-no-Mae Incarnate had given him, and then he'd taken Kenjaku's Anti-Gravity technique on top of that), he might almost have thought none of it had really happened.

Half asleep, he reached out to feel beside him, only to find empty space and a person-shaped indentation.

Miss Slit-Mouthed Woman was already up.

"Get up and have breakfast, baby." A few minutes later, she came into the bedroom to wake Shoichi Kano.

Today, instead of her spaghetti-strap nightdress, she wore a Chinese-style set of sleepwear Shoichi Kano had picked up for her while shopping at the mall.

The upper part was a red nightdress edged with embroidered golden phoenix patterns. It was a little more modest than the spaghetti-strap dress, revealing only a hint of cleavage, but the snug fabric instead gave her curves a tantalizing, half-concealed beauty. As the saying went, if you wanted to make a nude picture sexier, you could try adding shoes and stockings. Slit-Mouthed Woman's outfit had much the same effect.

The skirt was made of gauze, falling naturally like drifting mist to cover her legs, leaving only her delicate feet and their sharp, metallic-black toenails exposed. Even those feet were neatly enclosed in properly fitted slippers, keeping them from touching the dust on the floor.

"Do I look good?" Noticing Shoichi Kano staring at her, she deliberately twisted her waist and struck a few poses, making the gauzy skirt ripple like water stirred by a breeze.

Shoichi Kano propped himself up a little to conceal the little Kano that was on the verge of pitching a tent. "Mommy, why did you agree to that woman's deal? Doesn't that leave us at her mercy?"

Slit-Mouthed Woman smiled faintly and touched the stitches at the corner of her mouth. "Oh my, baby, are you worried about Mommy's safety?"

"Don't worry." She straightened her collar. "Once Mommy absorbs Sukuna's Finger and studies some Barrier Technique theory, there won't be anything to worry about!"

Shoichi Kano relaxed a little. "I thought you were going to kill me when the time came."

"Why would I do that?" She leaned closer and gently poked Shoichi Kano's cheek with a sharp black fingernail, bringing with her a cool waft of fragrance that mingled green tea, sandalwood, and decaying wood.

Then she tried to pull Shoichi Kano up so he could get out of bed and have breakfast.

"Hiss!" That tug pulled at the painfully sore muscles all over Shoichi Kano's body, making him suck in a sharp breath.

"That's just cruel," he said, grimacing as he rubbed his shoulder. "Have you got no heart?"

"Gross." Slit-Mouthed Woman narrowed her eyes at him. "Why are you even putting on a Kansai accent?"

In any case, Shoichi Kano got out of bed grimacing like that, but every movement made his whole body ache. After breakfast, he wisely chose to rest in bed.

Fortunately, his homeroom teacher, Mr. Tanaka, visited that afternoon (he had called the Kano family's landline beforehand to check on things). When he saw Kano lying weakly in bed, he immediately dismissed his earlier suspicions that the boy had been faking illness.

Clearly, Shoichi Kano had just been discharged after surgery and was resting in bed!

"Kano," Mr. Tanaka said, looking kindly at Shoichi Kano as he lay in bed, "if you're still feeling unwell, don't push yourself. I can give you a few more days off. Come back to school once you've recovered."

"I'm sorry to trouble you, but please take good care of him," Mr. Tanaka said, setting the gift he had brought on the bedside table. "This is a little something for your child. Please accept it."

Slit-Mouthed Woman stood smiling beside Mr. Tanaka, meeting his eyes.

Thanks to the Barrier Technique she had set up, Mr. Tanaka could sense Slit-Mouthed Woman's presence despite being an ordinary person with no aptitude for cursed energy. But because his eyes couldn't directly perceive cursed spirits, his brain compensated somehow, allowing him to see a figure that matched his imagination.

So, in his eyes, Slit-Mouthed Woman wasn't a female humanoid cursed spirit with grayish-white skin and stitched slits at the corners of her mouth, but a young married woman who bore some resemblance to Kano.

"Oh," Kano said, struggling to sit up. "You... you really shouldn't have. Thank you for going to so much trouble, Mr. Tanaka."

"Just stay in bed." Mr. Tanaka stepped forward and gently but firmly pressed Shoichi Kano back down. "I look forward to seeing you back at school."

Slit-Mouthed Woman seemed to have become hooked on playing human. She chatted with Mr. Tanaka for quite a while, effortlessly drawing out information about Shoichi Kano's life at school. She even learned things that Shoichi Kano's father, Takeshi Kano, didn't know.

Mr. Tanaka, meanwhile, had assumed all along that the woman before him was Shoichi Kano's mother, so naturally he told her everything he knew. Within a few exchanges, he had spilled all of Shoichi Kano's secrets.

Before long, the two of them were sitting across from each other at the dining table, talking. Slit-Mouthed Woman even brewed Mr. Tanaka a pot of tea and poured him a cup.

"Mrs. Kano," Mr. Tanaka said with a smile, "the boy is actually quite bright, but he doesn't like working hard at his studies. He always thinks doing just enough is fine, and that's not a good habit."

"I'm sorry for the trouble, but please keep a closer eye on him when he studies at home."

Sitting opposite him, Slit-Mouthed Woman crossed her legs. Her red nightdress, paired with her skin tone and the smile formed by her split mouth, gave her an eerie air.

But all Mr. Tanaka saw was Mrs. Kano nodding repeatedly in response to his words.

"Of course." Slit-Mouthed Woman lifted the cup of tea before her, took a small sip, and slowly set it down again. "Still, educating a child requires parents and the school to work together. Neither side can do without the other."

"Very insightful!" Mr. Tanaka wholeheartedly agreed.

The rest of the visit went pleasantly for both host and guest, and Slit-Mouthed Woman even got up to see him out herself.

Only after Mr. Tanaka stepped out of the Kano home did he realize something was wrong.

He suddenly remembered Kano's enrollment records, which clearly stated that his mother had died long ago.

Then who was that woman he'd just been chatting and drinking tea with?

Why hadn't he noticed anything wrong when he came in?

That unsettling discrepancy made his skin crawl, and his steps involuntarily quickened.

Once Kano had more or less recovered from his lingering injuries, he returned to school to enjoy a spell of peaceful student life.

It was already approaching June 2006, and Kano's high school had entered its end-of-term review period. Most of the teachers had stopped teaching new material and were taking the students through revision instead.

Mr. Tanaka, who taught math, took it further than anyone. As soon as class began, he handed out an A4 sheet covered in problems, gave them half the lesson to finish it, and spent the other half explaining the answers.

Shoichi Kano was currently sweating his way through that sea of problems. Honestly, he'd rather fight Suguru Geto again than do this kind of math.

He hastily worked out the sine value the problem asked for in his head, only to get a number greater than two, forcing him to go back and check the question. Only after confirming that the function's domain was the complex numbers did he relax.

Then Shoichi Kano reached for the two small metal tins inside his desk. The larger one was his lunchbox, containing a lovingly prepared lunch from Miss Slit-Mouthed Woman. Its only flaw was that, no matter what she made, she always cut some kelp into thin strips and arranged them to look like black stitches. He wasn't sure whether that was her personal logo.

The smaller tin contained Jiayun Fruit Candy, a human snack Slit-Mouthed Woman had asked Shoichi Kano to buy for her. After she ate a third of it, Kano had swiped the rest.

Now, that mostly full tin of Jiayun Fruit Candy had become Shoichi Kano's trusty aid for surviving boring math classes.

He deftly opened the tin without looking, picked out a candy as though drawing a lottery ticket, and popped it into his mouth without checking it.

Only when the slightly astringent sweet-and-sour taste bloomed on his tongue did he realize he'd gotten lemon.

"Hey." Hiroshi Yamakawa poked him in the back from the seat behind him. "What are you eating? Give me one."

Shoichi Kano sighed, took out another candy at random, and passed it back beneath the desk.

"What are you two doing over there?" Sure enough, Mr. Tanaka noticed something amiss. "Focus on your work!"

Hiroshi Yamakawa had just put the candy in his mouth when Mr. Tanaka's shout startled him, nearly sending it down his windpipe.

"Cough, cough, cough!" He coughed a few times and hurriedly spat out the pale-purple, grape-flavored candy. The hard fruit candy hit the floor with a crisp clack.