Shared pain

The "hostage" was named Jinichi Zenin. Only when the Eight-Star Gun pressed against his chest did he finally deign to look me in the eye.

I had no cursed energy and could not establish a binding vow, so I had to ask Megumi to make an "unequal agreement" with him-he would take Megumi and me to the Zenin Clan, show me the room where Toji had once lived, and keep Megumi's cursed technique an absolute secret. If he broke the agreement, I would hurt every member of the Zenin Clan equally.

(1)

I had visited Kyoto a long time ago, back when it was still called Heian-kyo. Despite its name, the capital of peace was anything but peaceful. Human lives were lost in ditches, and human blood filled the sewers.

Monsters brazenly burned, killed, and pillaged in the streets. All we could hear were monsters loudly discussing their king. Human voices were few and far between.

Time passed, and the world changed.

Now, all I could hear were the murmurs of men.

"I hear they're Toji Zenin's children. One has a little cursed energy, and the other..."

"Another heavenly restriction? How pathetic. Still, if it's a girl, we could..."

"Could what? Even using her to bear children would bring bad luck."

The blond boy's voice was unusually loud. The outer corners of his eyes tilted upward, and he seemed to be saying it deliberately for my benefit.

I honestly disliked teenagers that age a little. They were always so self-righteous, narcissistic, and arrogant. Sometimes they pretended to be mature; other times, they naively thought they could scheme their way around everything.

Inside one of the Zenin Clan's halls, Megumi was allowed to stand, while I was ordered to kneel.

Not the traditional Japanese kneeling posture, but something more like a full prostration, kneeling and bowing my head to the floor.

Who was I supposed to bow to?

A woman behind me lightly tapped my shoulder, warning me not to look directly at the clan head or show him disrespect.

I ignored her and looked straight at the clan head, seated in the place of honor.

He was not particularly old-barely over sixty at most. His hair was half black and half white, and the body beneath his kimono held plenty of explosive power. But I was certain he could not survive a magazine from Quasar.

He was hardly powerful to me, and even less of a match for Yuanyin.

Why should I kneel before him?

Simply because he was a man who held a prominent position in a small clan?

Looking at the women around me, stripped of all dignity as they devoutly knelt and bowed, I understood Maki's and Mai's suffering without needing a word.

The Zenin Clan was a feudal clan that took male supremacy to an extreme.

The Zenin clan head disdained speaking to me, but I knew he would punish my behavior.

We were led out of the hall. The punishment began with taking something away.

They wanted to take Megumi from my side. Their reason was that I was unworthy.

Such a trite yet utterly predictable line.

For girls born into the Zenin Clan, was the first thing they heard after birth not "Mommy and Daddy love you," or even "Be good, don't cry"?

But instead, "You're unworthy."

You were unworthy of standing to speak, so you had to kneel. You were unworthy of looking people in the eye, so you had to bow your head to the floor.

The most frightening thing was that the person telling me I was unworthy was not one of the lofty Zenin men, but a woman.

"Why am I unworthy?" I asked the woman, holding Megumi in my arms and covering his ears.

The woman reacted as though she had heard the most absurd joke. "Because you're a girl. In the Zenin Clan, girls are unworthy of living in the same courtyard as boys."

"Then where do the girls live?"

The woman pointed at a cluster of low, single-story houses nearby.

Compared with the rest of the Zenin Clan's buildings, those squat houses looked like sheds for keeping animals.

The insult could not have been more obvious.

I had no intention of wasting my breath arguing with her. This middle-aged woman had been steeped in those beliefs for decades. Her acceptance of all this injustice was deeply rooted.

Seeing no reaction from me, she tried to "correct" my behavior and thinking through brute force.

She drew a pitch-black vine whip-a cursed tool-from her sleeve and lashed it at me. I casually caught it, yanked it out of her hands, and tore that flimsy little cord to shreds with my bare hands.

Then I took Megumi's hand and turned to leave. Halfway away, I heard her roar behind me, "So what if you have a heavenly restriction? Those who are not Zenin are not sorcerers, and those who are not sorcerers are not human. Without cursed energy, you aren't even human in the Zenin Clan!"

What a fine saying. Those who were not Zenin were not sorcerers, and those who were not sorcerers were not human.

Wonderful. The Zenin Clan had managed to hit every single one of my sore spots with perfect precision.

(2)

I found Jinichi Zenin and followed him through courtyard after courtyard toward Toji's former residence.

Megumi was subdued the whole way, his fingers interlaced with mine.

All the oppression the Zenin Clan directed at me had indirectly hurt him.

In truth, I had not wanted to bring him.

My years living with Yuanyin, and the tragedies I had witnessed in those times, had been far more oppressive than this. I was not an ignorant child. Nearly two centuries of life, spanning different eras and countries, had shown me clearly how awful human nature could become under the influence of its surroundings.

I did not want him to see any of this.

Megumi was different from ordinary children. Even with fifteen years of experience in his soul, some of his understanding of the world remained pure and clear. Why make him experience this ugliness early, when he would not have to encounter it until more than twenty years into the future?

But he had insisted on coming with me.

He cared deeply about me.

Without even realizing it, he looked at me and relied on me the way a child would look at his mother.

An eldest sister was like a mother. I had always considered that a psychological transference of a younger child's need for maternal love, and thoroughly scoffed at it.

Yet now, for some reason, I found myself sinking into that idea, unable to pull free.

I turned toward him, held him, and patted his back, telling him I was fine and that he should not worry.

Then I turned, slid open the Japanese-style door, and entered the room where Toji had once lived.

(3)

Several lifetimes ago, I had fallen into a dry well.

It was not a pleasant experience, but it stayed with me for a long time. That well had been deep and narrow, damp and cold.

Stepping into that courtyard, I felt as though I had suddenly returned to the well.

The room was narrow, with space for only a cabinet and a sleeping mat.

The room was cold, because it had only three sides. The fourth opened onto a cramped courtyard.

Jinichi Zenin left after we went inside.

Only Megumi and I remained in the room, looking at each other.

I opened the cabinet, took out an old but surprisingly clean quilt, and spread it on the floor, settling the child in first.

Late autumn in Kyoto was colder than in Kanagawa. Even draped over him, my coat was only a thin, flimsy layer.

I tucked him into the quilt. The exhaustion of a long journey was not something a child could simply push through.

Megumi worried about me. "Yuanli, what about you?"

I stroked his head. "Don't worry. I'll sleep in a little while too."

As I gently patted his back again and again, I found myself instinctively wanting to hum a song whose words made little sense.

My thoughts drifted far, far away, reminding me of the days when Yuanyin and I had lain on a wool rug, holding a puppy and following the pictures for guidance.

Before I knew it, I grew sleepy too. Then I had a long, long dream.

In the dream, "I" was a newborn.

(4)

The person who taught "me" to babble was not a mother, but a cautious, timid woman.

She was not very knowledgeable. She recited neither poetry nor preschool lessons. Instead, she read from a book resembling a family genealogy.

She recited everything in a reverent voice: the hierarchy of human worth, the superiority of men over women, and what the Zenin Clan meant.

Whenever she finished, she would bless "me" with hopeful anticipation, saying that "I" would surely become a powerful jujutsu sorcerer someday.

The scene shifted, and my viewpoint rose. "I" seemed to be seven years old.

A rugged-looking older brother stood before "me" and asked, "What's your wish?"

"I" froze for a moment, then blurted out a sentence without thinking.

"Someday, I'll become a powerful jujutsu sorcerer."

Was that really what "I" thought?

"I" did not know.

But at that moment, "I" felt that "I" had to say something.

And that sentence was the only choice.

Time passed quickly. "I" grew taller again, reaching about ten years old.

"I" sat before a closed door, anxiously waiting for a result.

"I" felt deeply uneasy. Fear, tangled with emotions "I" could not name, tormented me.

But how could "I" ease those feelings?

At that moment, "I" remembered that sentence again.

Someday, I'll become a powerful jujutsu sorcerer.

Those words held an indescribable magic, so "I" repeated them silently, over and over, trying to soothe the anxiety within.

The closed door opened, and someone whose face "I" could not make out dropped a single sentence.

"He has a heavenly restriction. He'll never have cursed energy for as long as he lives."

At that moment, heaven and earth spun, and the entire world was utterly destroyed by those words.

The scene blurred and shifted. "I" lay on a crude bed, gazing at the tiny patch of sky squeezed between the eaves and walls.

That patch of sky was so small that "I" seemed able to cover it simply by raising a hand. That patch of sky was so far away that no matter how high "I" jumped, "I" could never escape.

"I" left the room and walked numbly through the Zenin Clan's grounds. Raucous abuse filled my ears.

At first, "I" could still turn a deaf ear to those words. Because "I" still believed a miracle would happen.

Because when "I" woke from dreams at midnight, "I" would still instinctively say that sentence.

But as the voices around me multiplied, until "I" could hear those words even with my ears covered, the thirteen- or fourteen-year-old "me" finally realized that no miracle would happen. Cursed energy would not fall from the sky.

"I" was a one-in-hundreds-of-millions freak.

"I" was the Zenin Clan's disgrace.

"I" was useless.

"I" was trash.

"I" was a damned, wretched bearer of heavenly restriction.

Those words began tormenting "me" again.

"He has a heavenly restriction. He'll never have cursed energy for as long as he lives."

"Someday, I'll become a powerful jujutsu sorcerer."

"He has a heavenly restriction. He'll never have cursed energy for as long as he lives."

"Someday, I'll become a powerful jujutsu sorcerer."

Until I woke from the dream.

(5)

What a long, long nightmare.

I kept my eyes closed, hiding my tears.

That "me"-the ignorant, bewildered child of five or six, the ten-year-old who endured the destruction of his dream alone, the thirteen-year-old boy whose entire worldview crumbled in an instant.

If they were all Toji, how utterly that would break my heart.