"Make a wish? Can it be any wish?"
The monk thought for a moment and lowered his head, about to ask something else, but the child had already stopped answering him.
The two of them entered the hall. Aside from the younger brother of the current Fujiwara Clan head, several novice monks and warrior monks were there, but the abbot was absent.
Toward the end of the Nara period, tensions between the Emperor's faction and the Fujiwara Group had intensified. Constrained by the power of the clergy as well, the Emperor had ordered the capital moved to Heian-kyō.
Now the Fujiwara Clan had risen to prominence again through the influence of the Chūgū, while the Emperor wanted to support religious sects to centralize power. These three forces supported one another while each pursuing its own interests.
So even Tōdai-ji alone was far from a united front.
Alluka looked up curiously, glancing around.
There were no Buddha statues enshrined in this hall. It looked like a place for resting.
"Repeat what just happened."
The younger brother of the Fujiwara Clan head, who served as Chancellor, questioned the monk with the suture line across his head in a rather stern tone.
"...Everything was normal at first. Just as I was about to step into the room, she asked me three questions."
He recounted what had happened at the entrance. Fujiwara frowned slightly. "A wish? Three questions..."
In their era, children with a talent for jujutsu were plentiful. The Fujiwara Clan alone had more than one training facility, and those children's jujutsu came in all varieties, but he had never heard of anything involving wishes.
Fujiwara signaled to Master Genkai with his eyes.
The monk with the suture line across his head also wanted to understand how this child's cursed technique worked. He lowered his head slightly. "Young benefactor."
He wanted to ask how the child's wish-granting cursed technique was activated, as well as where those Rope Persons had come from.
But the child ignored him.
After looking around the hall for a while, Alluka suddenly asked the novice monk beside her a question.
"Big brother, what's your name?"
She tilted her head, a smile spreading across her childish face, radiating innocent delight.
The novice monk in an ocher robe raised his head nervously. After the senior monk nodded, he answered with a slight stammer, "This humble monk is Huixiang."
He had only recently entered the monastery and had not progressed very far in his training.
"Then, big brother Huixiang, could you do a dance?"
"Huh?"
The novice monk let out a bewildered sound. He had never expected the child to make such a request.
Alluka knelt on the couch and clapped her hands. Her long, silken black hair fluttered slightly in the breeze as she gazed intently at the novice monk, looking sweet and well-behaved.
"The requests changed?"
Fujiwara rested a hand against his chin, pondering the reason.
The child had said her ability was granting wishes. Did she make requests according to her mood, or was there some other reason?
While he was thinking, Huixiang had already agreed to Alluka's three requests with the senior monk's permission.
Unlike Genkai's, the three requests he agreed to were a little harder, such as dancing and giving her a horsey ride.
They sounded like a child's pranks.
Yet once all three requests had been fulfilled, that seemingly inhuman monster with black vapor seeping from its features appeared again.
Its horrifying face turned toward Huixiang, its body as stiff as a rusted wind-up toy.
"Do you have a wish?"
The thing inhabiting the child, which resembled a cursed spirit, repeated the question several times in a shrill, piercing voice.
Huixiang looked nervously toward Lord Fujiwara.
"Try asking it to make you a jujutsu sorcerer."
Fujiwara frowned, eager to discover the outcome.
He had intended to have Huixiang question this thing, whatever it was-a cursed spirit or a monster-but on second thought, wouldn't it be better to simply make a wish and see whether it could be fulfilled?
What were the conditions for its so-called wish granting? How far could it go?
If he wished for the Emperor to die, would the Emperor die immediately?
He wanted someone else to test the result.
With the lord's approval, Huixiang hesitated for a long while before asking cautiously, "Can you make me a jujutsu sorcerer?"
Huixiang came from a collateral branch of the Fujiwara Lineage. His cursed energy was so faint that he could not see cursed spirits, and he was rather slow-witted, so his father had sent him to the temple to become a monk.
The monks of Tōdai-ji had countless ties to royalty and the nobility. Here, he could at least be assured of food and clothing in these troubled times.
Now, upon hearing that he might be able to become a jujutsu sorcerer, a small spark of hope unexpectedly stirred in Huixiang's heart.
"Sure."
The unidentified thing with the deathly pale face agreed to his request in a flat voice.
The instant its voice fell silent, the atmosphere in the hall turned strange.
The wooden window lattice began rattling for no reason. Several large holes burst through the paper-covered sliding doors from outside, and cold wind rushed in, blowing the objects on the tables in the hall into disarray.
The sky seemed to change color. As everything flickered between light and darkness, a vortex of cursed energy so dense it was pitch-black materialized from nowhere and visibly poured into Huixiang's body.
His muscles tore through his monk's robe as something like gas raced beneath his skin.
Unlike Sugawara Kazukazu, Huixiang had not specified a precise amount in his wish. The cursed energy being poured into him, which embodied negative emotions, amounted only to an average level.
Even so, those emotions were difficult to endure.
The young monk lay prostrate on the floor, roaring and howling for a long time. After enduring it for tens of minutes, he rose to his feet with bloodshot eyes.
At that moment, he felt the vast cursed energy that had appeared within him out of nowhere and confirmed that he had truly become a jujutsu sorcerer.
The distorted space around him began to settle, and the vortex of cursed energy, like a mass of dark clouds, gradually dispersed.
A jujutsu sorcerer's cursed technique was innate, while cursed energy could be developed through training.
But that did not mean an ordinary person who could not even see cursed spirits could become a jujutsu sorcerer with a respectable amount of cursed energy within tens of minutes.
Stunned by the sight, everyone present was momentarily speechless.
After a brief silence, Fujiwara, who held the office of Imperial Inspector, found his voice again:
"Once the requests are fulfilled, a wish can be made. Then... what about refusing? Genkai, try again."
At that moment, his mind raced.
If wishes could be made endlessly, their Fujiwara Clan could create countless jujutsu sorcerers. Or perhaps he could hide the child away. When the time came, even the position of clan head would not be beyond his reach.
The monk with the suture line across his head answered with a stiff expression, "Lord Fujiwara, this..."
He had no desire to become a pawn used for trial and error.
Whether out of intuition or some other reason, he felt that refusing a request might have something to do with those corpses twisted into Rope Persons.
It was a lovely thought.
But just as he finished speaking, the child who had been so sweet and obedient held out both hands and asked softly:
"Big brother Genkai, could you give me your right kneecap?"