Dusk closed in, and the moon rose above the branches.
In the night breeze, rain gradually blurred the boundary between heaven and earth. Behind the fluttering bamboo blind, the black-haired girl raised her head slightly and met a pair of faintly glowing, ice-blue eyes.
"Has the white-haired big brother come?"
She slowly turned her head, revealing an innocent, gentle smile.
Seeing Sugawara Satoru, Alluka reached for a paper lantern on the low table nearby. With a window between them, its dim candlelight cast a warm glow around them both.
"Hey, kid."
Seeing that no one was around, Sugawara Satoru pushed aside the bamboo blind, lifted his long legs, and jumped straight in through the window.
Once his feet touched the floor, he looked around the room and said casually, "I've been looking for you for ages. I never thought you'd be here."
Some time ago, Sugawara Satoru had been sent to Harima by his superiors to exorcise a monster. That thing had been causing trouble for quite a while, and being suddenly assigned this task had given him a very bad feeling.
Sugawara Satoru had secretly doubled back in the middle of his mission. That was when he discovered that something was wrong.
Both his father and his uncle, who was poised to become steward to the regent's Kujō household, had begun acting strangely.
His eyes detected cursed energy in both of them that did not belong to them. Sometimes, his father would even falter while speaking to him, like a puppet whose strings had slipped out of someone's control.
All these abnormalities brought the child named Alluka to mind.
After the Fujiwara Clan had used the senior monks of Tōdai-ji as a pretext to take the child away, strange incidents had begun occurring frequently across the land, especially those involving twisted rope people and the inexplicably appearing monster with two faces and four arms.
Sugawara Satoru's instincts told him these incidents had to be connected to that child. Without alerting his father, he had investigated in secret for a long time, finally relying on his eyes to find the shrine hidden in the mountain forests of the Fujiwara Clan's domain.
The exquisite, nameless shrine stood at the center of layer upon layer of tightly secured barriers. Only registered individuals could enter or leave. Fortunately, he knew someone skilled in Barrier Techniques and had slipped inside after the Fujiwara Clan's people left.
Sure enough, he found the child there.
"Do you know what things are like out there now?"
Sugawara Satoru pointed north of the shrine, toward the site of the latest rope person incident.
"Is something wrong?"
Alluka tilted her head. Her eyes were moist, her gray-blue irises pure and clear.
"From what I've seen, there have been at least a dozen large-scale rope person incidents across the land. They're all connected to you, aren't they? Just like what happened to Sugawara Kentarō."
Sugawara Satoru's eyes could tell that the child's body itself contained no cursed energy. He believed the incidents were the work of the cursed spirit attached to Alluka, so he bore her no hostility and did not attack her.
"They'll be very happy."
Contrary to Sugawara Satoru's expectations, the child merely pressed her palms together, an expression of neither sorrow nor joy appearing on her innocent face.
A jujutsu sorcerer's cursed energy came from their own negative emotions. Alluka had none in her body because, before she was born, she had entered into a binding vow with Nanika, who had come into existence alongside her. All the cursed energy in her body would be transferred to Nanika.
Sugawara Satoru looked momentarily stunned. He could not quite understand why this child reacted this way upon learning that so many people had died because of her.
He even saw a trace of unknowing, unfeeling divinity in the girl's face, no different from the expressions of the senior monks he had met.
"You..."
"Do you want to make a wish, big brother? Like those grown-ups? Nanika really likes you!"
Alluka gave him a sweet smile.
The instant she finished speaking, Sugawara Satoru saw the cursed spirit's presence around her body grow stronger.
"Lady Alluka! You mustn't!"
Just as Sugawara Satoru was about to say something, a shrill female voice interrupted their conversation.
A girl dressed in a cherry-blossom-pink outer robe emerged from the darkness and appeared in front of Alluka.
Without a word, she raised a dagger-shaped cursed tool and attacked the white-haired boy before her.
Every thrust aimed for a vital spot, yet her opponent countered each attack before it could land.
After effortlessly blocking a strike with his folding fan, Sugawara Satoru curled his lips in a taunting smile. "Why go to such lengths, Miss Guard? Unless I'm mistaken, you were just off meeting a lover, weren't you? Are you attacking so viciously because you're afraid I'll tell someone?"
He could tell that the girl was a guard because her palms were covered in calluses. Dressed so prettily at this hour of the night, what else could she have been doing but meeting a lover?
The Fujiwara Clan wasn't very good at keeping its people in line.
"Die!"
As though he had struck a nerve, the pink-haired girl flew into a humiliated rage, cursed energy beginning to gather in her hands.
If I'd arrived just a little later, and this man had secretly used Lady Alluka's power... then we...
She hardly dared imagine the consequences.
The Sun, Moon, and Stars Squad had always upheld the principle of "forsake self-interest and serve the greater good." Sneaking away while on guard duty was already a grave offense. She knew the clan she served would surely execute her, and she was determined to kill this man before she died.
"Hengzi, you'll damage this place."
Alluka looked worriedly at the stack of scriptures on the low table.
These books had been brought by the teachers the Fujiwara Clan had hired for her, all of them senior monks from temples.
The Fujiwara Clan believed Alluka possessed the ability to influence the rules themselves. They hoped she would study Buddhist teachings and cast aside her personal emotions, allowing her to serve the clan better.
That stack of scriptures was the coursework her teacher had left for Alluka, and he would check it tomorrow.
"You... you knew?"
The pink-haired girl's voice trembled, her body shaking with fear.
Her family had abandoned her at a temple before she could remember. The Fujiwara Clan had gathered orphans like her together to select the strongest among them, and she had distinguished herself through one deadly battle after another.
Serving Lady Alluka was already a very good position. She no longer needed to rush out on assassination missions every day, but... human desire knew no bounds.
She had become involved with Lord Fujiwara, and he had even given her a name.
A name was what she had longed for most throughout the first half of her life.
She had hidden this secret so carefully, yet Lady Alluka had known all along?
"But I think Hengzi's new name sounds lovely."
In the flickering candlelight, the black-haired girl smiled faintly without realizing it. That smile was gentle and bright, illusory and unreal.