Frost pillars

Jujutsu High saw its heaviest snowfall since winter began.

Overnight, the entire campus was buried in snow half a person deep. In the morning, the hallway doors would not open, and everyone had to climb out through the windows.

Classes for the lower years were canceled. Yu Haibara and Kento Nanami were assigned to clear the snow from the entrance of the administration building all the way to the main gate. Each had a shovel, and they shoveled the snow to the sides of the path. Haibara shoveled quickly, Nanami slowly, but they made about the same progress. Suguru Geto stood at the entrance of the administration building, watching them shovel from one end to the other, then back again.

Kiryū stood behind him, holding a scanner. A string of numbers appeared on the screen. Kiryū copied them onto his clipboard, then said, "That's enough. Come back at seven tonight." He turned and left, his footsteps gradually fading down the hallway.

Suguru Geto did not return to his dorm. He put on his coat and walked out into the snow.

The snow covered his ankles. With every step, he had to pull his leg free before taking the next. He walked slowly, not because he could not move faster, but because he did not want to. The cherry tree on the hill behind the school had its branches bowed beneath the snow. No one stood under it. There were no footprints in the snow. He was the first person to come here today.

He stood beneath the tree for a while, then crouched and brushed away the snow around its roots with his hands. There was an old scar on the trunk, carved with a knife during his first year at school. He had carved "Geto" there. Now the bark had swallowed most of it, leaving only the tail end of the last character visible. He pressed his fingers against the scar and felt the rough, icy bark.

He called silently: Echo.

Echo gave a pulse.

"Do you know this tree?"

Echo did not answer. But it projected an image into his mind. The image showed this tree, though not as it was now. It was younger, thinner, and someone stood beneath it. The man wore an old-style Jujutsu High uniform, his long hair hiding his face. He stood beneath the tree without moving.

Suguru Geto did not recognize the man. But he knew who he was. Ichiro Nakajima. Forty years ago, Ichiro Nakajima had stood beneath this tree too, had watched it bloom, and perhaps had carved something into it as well. Suguru Geto lowered his gaze to the trunk, but found no carvings where Nakajima had stood. He had carved nothing. He had only stood there and looked.

What had Ichiro Nakajima been thinking when he was here?

Echo did not answer. But the image slowly changed, and Ichiro Nakajima's figure began to turn transparent. Finally, the image settled on one detail: Ichiro Nakajima's hands. They hung at his sides, his fingers slightly curled, the skin beneath his fingernails blue-purple. Not from the cold, but from depleted cursed energy. Even as he stood looking, he had already been dying. He simply had not finished dying yet.

Suguru Geto took his hand from the trunk and stood. Snow began falling again. The grains landed on him, but he did not brush them off. He only stood there, looking at the tree.

On Wednesday, Suguru Geto encountered Satoru Gojo at the training grounds.

A patch of ground had been cleared, roughly twenty meters square, surrounded by waist-high walls of snow. Satoru Gojo stood in the center, his Six Eyes especially bright in the reflected snowlight. He wore a black turtleneck, its sleeves rolled up to his elbows, exposing the lean lines of muscle in his arms. Before him stood a training punching bag designed to withstand impacts from cursed energy. Several splits had already opened in its surface. Sand leaked from them, forming a small pile on the ground.

"Geto, what are you doing here?" Satoru Gojo did not turn around.

"Came to see you."

"You've seen me. Go on."

Suguru Geto did not leave. He sat on the wall of snow and watched Satoru Gojo hit the punching bag. Satoru Gojo's fists moved fast, too fast for Suguru Geto's eyes to follow. Every punch whistled through the air. The bag sprang away beneath his fists as though shocked by electricity, only to be struck by the next punch and spring away again. His breathing remained steady, neither quickening with the speed of his punches nor growing heavy with their force.

After about ten minutes, Satoru Gojo stopped. He turned, leaned against the punching bag, and looked at Suguru Geto.

"Geto, what have you been looking at lately?"

Suguru Geto paused. "What?"

"The way you look at people has changed again."

Suguru Geto fell silent for a second. The images Echo had shown him included Haibara, Nakajima, and Satoru Gojo. He had thought he hid it well, but Satoru Gojo's Six Eyes saw everything. Perhaps they could not see the images themselves, but they could see the changes in his eyes as he watched them.

"I've been looking at things I can't see," Suguru Geto said.

Satoru Gojo tilted his head. "Quit speaking in riddles. I don't get it."

"Neither do I."

Satoru Gojo stared at him for a few seconds, then smiled. He straightened away from the punching bag, walked to the snow wall, and sat beside Suguru Geto. The snow crunched beneath him. He took a piece of candy from his pocket, unwrapped it, and put it in his mouth.

"Shoko says that egg inside you is conscious."

"Yes."

"It talks to you?"

"It talks. Shows me images. I don't always understand."

Satoru Gojo chewed the candy, looking at the distant snow wall. It was high enough to hide the sports field beyond it.

"Geto," Satoru Gojo said, "have you ever considered that thing might not have been left behind by cursed spirits?"

Suguru Geto looked at him. "What do you mean?"

"Cursed spirits leave traces when they die. That's what Nakajima said. But Nakajima wasn't a scientist or a researcher. He was just a jujutsu sorcerer like you. What he said might not be right." Satoru Gojo's voice was low. "Maybe that thing wasn't left behind by cursed spirits. Maybe you left it behind."

"Me?"

"Your cursed energy is mutating. Maybe that thing didn't come from outside you. Maybe it's a byproduct of your own cursed energy coming together."

Suguru Geto stayed silent for a long time. He had never thought about it from that angle. If it was a product of his own cursed energy mutating, then it was not residue from cursed spirits. It was something of his own. It was inside him because of the changes taking place within him.

"Satoru," Suguru Geto said, "why do you think that?"

Satoru Gojo crunched the candy and swallowed it.

"Because the way you look at people has changed," he said. "It hasn't gotten stranger. It's gotten deeper. You look at Haibara more gently than before. You look at Shoko more quietly than before. When you look at me..." He paused. "You're closer than before."

"What do you mean?"

Suguru Geto's throat tightened.

"You used to look at me like there was a river between us. Now you look at me like you're standing beside me." Satoru Gojo turned and met Suguru Geto's eyes. "That thing is inside you, but it hasn't pushed you away. It's drawn you closer. If it were residue from cursed spirits, it should be pushing you toward loneliness, toward madness, toward death. But it isn't. It's bringing you closer to other people."

Suguru Geto said nothing. Snow landed on his eyelashes, and he did not blink.

"So it wasn't left behind by cursed spirits," Satoru Gojo said. "It was left behind by you. It's you."

On Friday, Suguru Geto had his weekly checkup in the infirmary. Shoko attached probes to his chest, arms, and neck, then switched on the scanner. Waveforms flickered across the screen. Shoko frowned as she watched them.

"Echo has gotten smaller."

Suguru Geto paused. "What?"

"See for yourself." Shoko turned the screen toward him. A red curve on the waveform chart represented Echo's size. Over the past week, the curve had trended slowly downward. The change was slight, but it was definitely shrinking, from the size of two fists to 1.8 fists.

"That's impossible," Suguru Geto said. Echo had always been growing. Since he returned from Zama, it had gone from the size of a pinhead to an egg, from an egg to a fist, and from one fist to two. It had never gotten smaller.

"The data doesn't lie." Shoko turned the screen back and wrote a few notes in her log. "Did you do anything unusual last week?"

Suguru Geto thought it over. He had done many things last week: read Nakajima's journal, watched the images Echo showed him, stood in the snow for a long time, and talked with Satoru Gojo at the training grounds. But those were everyday things, nothing unusual.

"I talked with Satoru Gojo," he said.

Shoko raised her head and looked at him. "Talked?"

"He said a few things to me. About Echo."

"What things?"

"He said Echo might not have been left behind by cursed spirits. That I might have left it behind myself."

Shoko fell silent for a few seconds. She did not say, "That's impossible," or, "Maybe he's right." She merely lowered her head and continued writing in her log. When she finished, she removed the probes, turned off the machine, and turned to look at Suguru Geto.

"Geto, whatever Echo is, it's getting smaller. That's a good thing."

"I know."

"Do you know why?"

Suguru Geto considered it. "No."

Shoko took a cigarette from her pocket, placed it between her lips, and lit it. She took a drag and slowly exhaled, letting the smoke drift through the air.

"Maybe it's because it doesn't need to grow anymore," she said.

Suguru Geto looked at her. "What do you mean?"

"It's inside your body so it can exist. If you let it know it already exists, it won't need to keep growing." Shoko's voice was level, as though she were talking about something perfectly ordinary. "Maybe it's been growing all this time not because it wants to, but because it isn't sure it's allowed to exist. Every time you talk to it, it becomes a little more certain. Every time you watch an image it shows you, it becomes a little more certain. When Satoru Gojo said those things to you, did something inside you loosen?"

Suguru Geto remembered how he had felt that day at the training grounds, after Satoru Gojo finished speaking. It had felt like relief. As though someone had untied a cord around his chest, and suddenly he could breathe freely.

"Yes," he said.

Shoko nodded. She stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray, stood, and walked to the window.

"Geto," she said without turning around, "Echo is getting smaller. That's a good thing. But it isn't shrinking because it's going to disappear. It's finding another way to exist."

Suguru Geto sat up on the bed, put on his shoes, and left.

That evening, Suguru Geto wrote in his diary in his dorm room. He wrote the date in his notebook, then continued: "Echo got smaller today. From the size of two fists to 1.8 fists. Shoko said it doesn't need to grow anymore. Maybe she's right. Maybe Echo has been growing all this time not because it wants to take over my body, but because it isn't sure it can stay. Every time it grows a little, it's asking me again: can I be here? I've never answered that question. I've only observed it, recorded it, studied it. I've never told it, you can be here."

He closed the notebook and set it beside his pillow. He turned off the light and lay down. The skin over his chest began to glow, the orange patch of light like a quiet eye in the darkness. He pressed his hand to his chest and felt Echo pulse.

Echo, he said silently, you can be here.

Echo gave a pulse.

You don't need to grow anymore. I won't drive you away.

Echo's pulsing slowed. It was not fear, not tension, but something quieter and deeper. As though it were saying: okay.

Suguru Geto closed his eyes. Before his consciousness sank into darkness, he felt Echo's emotion, as though it were saying: thank you.