Tokieda

Suguru Geto had a new assignment, given to him by Masamichi Yaga. The location was a city called Matsumoto in Nagano Prefecture. The assignment: a semi-grade 1 cursed spirit had taken up residence in an abandoned hospital, and three people had already gone missing. When Masamichi Yaga handed him the mission sheet, he added, "Be careful this time. There's something unusual about this cursed spirit."

"Unusual how?" Suguru Geto asked.

"It doesn't attack people." Masamichi Yaga's voice was low. "All three missing people disappeared inside the hospital, but there was no residual cursed energy, no blood, and no sign of a struggle. It was as though the air had swallowed them."

Suguru Geto looked at the photograph on the mission sheet. The abandoned hospital looked ordinary: a gray-white building with broken windows and nothing visibly unusual about it. But he knew that things with no visible abnormalities were often the most dangerous.

Three hours later, the car stopped on a road on the outskirts of Matsumoto. The outline of the abandoned hospital was visible in the distance.

Suguru Geto got out and stood beside the road. As usual, he released a dozen or so low-grade cursed spirits and sent them into the hospital to scan it. They flew silently into the building, and the information they brought back pieced itself into a hazy map in his mind. The hospital had three floors: one below ground and two above. The cursed spirit was on the second floor, in a room at the end of the hallway. Its cursed energy fluctuations were faint and unstable, consistent with a semi-grade 1 cursed spirit. But there was something indefinably wrong about the surrounding cursed energy environment. It was too clean, so clean that it seemed something had deliberately cleared it out.

He entered the hospital and climbed the stairs. The windows had been boarded shut, letting in only a few slivers of light. The door to the room at the end of the hallway stood half-open. Suguru Geto walked over and pushed it open. The room was small, perhaps once a patient room. Fixtures for hospital beds still remained on the walls. The window was boarded shut, and broken glass and rusted metal frames lay scattered across the floor.

A man stood in the very center of the room.

He wore a black coat and looked about thirty, with short hair and a scar running from the end of his eyebrow to his cheekbone. He stood with both hands in his pockets, looking at Suguru Geto with the corners of his mouth slightly raised.

"Suguru Geto," the man said, his voice low and flat. "I've been waiting for you for a long time."

Suguru Geto did not move. His hands hung at his sides, only a few centimeters from the Cursed Sword at his waist. Beneath the skin of his chest, echo gave a violent throb.

"Who are you?" Suguru Geto asked.

"My name is Tokieda." The man took a hand out of his pocket and opened it, palm up. A black mark sat in his palm, something deeper that seemed to show through from beneath his skin. The mark pulsed slowly, in time with his heartbeat. "I'm here to collect something."

"What?"

"That thing inside you." Tokieda's smile did not change. "Echo."

Suguru Geto's eyes narrowed slightly. "You know about echo?"

"Yes. I knew before you did." Tokieda withdrew his hand and slipped it back into his pocket. "Ichiro Nakajima was my teacher. The thing inside him and the thing inside me are the same thing."

Suguru Geto watched him. A deep red light began to shine from Tokieda's chest, like congealed blood. It shone through his clothes, the patch of light pulsing slowly, in perfect time with the echo in Suguru Geto's chest.

"You have echo too," Suguru Geto said.

"Not 'too.'" Tokieda's voice was low. "It's the same one. When Ichiro Nakajima died, the thing inside him split in two. One half went to you. The other came to me."

The room fell silent for a few seconds. Suguru Geto watched the dark red glow on Tokieda's chest and felt echo pulsing in his own.

"What are you here to collect?" Suguru Geto asked.

"Your half," Tokieda said. "The two halves of echo were originally one. They've been apart too long, and they want to come together again. Either you die or I do."

Suguru Geto drew the Cursed Sword.

Tokieda moved too. He was astonishingly fast, appearing in front of Suguru Geto in an instant. His hand came out of his pocket, the black mark on his palm glowing as it absorbed all the surrounding light. Suguru Geto twisted aside, and his blade sliced across Tokieda's arm, opening a wound. Blood welled out, black and thick as ink.

Tokieda did not retreat. He extended his hand, aiming the black mark on his palm at Suguru Geto's chest. An immense suction surged from the mark, like an invisible hand seizing the echo in Suguru Geto's chest. Echo throbbed violently, so fast it seemed about to burst. Suguru Geto could feel it being pulled out. This was power from the same source, echo calling to echo.

Suguru Geto gritted his teeth and poured cursed energy into the blade. The runes along its edge lit up with a pale blue glow. He swung, the blade's light tracing an arc through the air toward Tokieda's arm. Tokieda withdrew his hand, and the suction vanished. He stepped back twice and looked at the wound on his arm. Black blood dripped to the floor with a sizzling sound, as though it were eating into the surface.

"You're stronger than I imagined," Tokieda said. "Just what I'd expect from a special grade sorcerer."

"Nakajima's records never mentioned you," Suguru Geto said.

Tokieda smiled. "Nakajima didn't know I existed. When he died, echo split in two. One half is the one inside you. The other went to someone he'd never met: me. He didn't know me. I didn't know him either. But echo did."

The dark red light in his chest grew brighter. Suguru Geto could feel echo pulsing in his own chest, as though it were saying, He's right.

"Suguru Geto," Tokieda said, "I'm not here to kill you. I'm here to take back what belongs to me. Echo is divided. It's incomplete. An incomplete echo will slowly disappear. The half inside you is shrinking, isn't it? The half inside me is shrinking too. Not because it no longer needs to grow, but because it's disappearing. Both halves are disappearing. It can only survive if they come together."

Suguru Geto looked at him. "Echo wants to live?"

"It does." Tokieda's voice was low. "It isn't a cursed spirit or a curse. It's a form of life. An incomplete life. It needs its other half to become whole. Just as a person needs their other half to become whole."

Suguru Geto remembered the line in Nakajima's notebook: "It isn't trying to hurt me. It just doesn't know how to exist." Echo did not know how to exist because it was incomplete. It was only one half. The other half was inside Tokieda.

"If the two halves come together," Suguru Geto said, "what will happen?"

Tokieda was silent for a second. "I don't know. Maybe I'll disappear. Maybe you'll disappear. Maybe we both will. Maybe we'll both survive and become a new existence. I don't know. But echo knows. It wants to reunite. It always has."

Tokieda withdrew his hand, and the black mark on his palm slowly dimmed. He turned, walked toward the door, and stopped without looking back.

"Suguru Geto, I won't force you. Neither will echo. It's waiting for you to decide." His voice was low. "But don't take too long. Both halves are disappearing. Once yours shrinks past a certain point, they'll never be able to come together again."

He left. His footsteps echoed down the hallway, growing more distant until they finally vanished at the stairwell. Suguru Geto stood alone in the dim room, holding the Cursed Sword as the pale blue light along its blade slowly went out.

Suguru Geto sheathed the Cursed Sword at his waist and left the room. He went downstairs, left the hospital, and walked toward the car parked beside the road. The assistant supervisor was smoking beside it. At the sight of him, the supervisor put out the cigarette and opened the door. Suguru Geto settled into the back seat and closed his eyes.

Echo, he said in his mind, was that man telling the truth?

Echo did not answer. But it pulsed once. Neither confirmation nor denial.

The car started and headed back to Jujutsu High. Suguru Geto leaned against the seat, feeling echo's pulse. It was smaller than a fist now, and still shrinking. Tokieda was right. It was disappearing. It needed its other half to survive.

He opened his eyes and watched the scenery rush past the window. Farmland, wheat seedlings, utility poles, the sky.

Should he let it become whole again?

He did not know the answer. But he knew the question would not wait long. Echo was disappearing. It was only a matter of time. Once it shrank past a certain point, he would no longer have a choice.

Suguru Geto closed his eyes. Before his consciousness sank into darkness, he thought of the dark red glow in Tokieda's chest. It was different from his own light, but their pulses were synchronized. Perfectly synchronized.

Echo, he said in his mind, do you want to reunite?

Echo pulsed once. Suguru Geto understood what it meant: I want to live.

Suguru Geto said nothing more. He simply leaned against the seat, feeling echo's pulse, and returned to Jujutsu High in silence.