Uninvited Guests

An hour after Dio exorcised the monster, three figures appeared in the abandoned neighborhood.

"That Grade 1 cursed spirit's already kicked the bucket~"

The speaker was a blond white man with a bare upper body.

A pair of heart-shaped pasties covered his nipples. He sat leisurely with his legs crossed atop a huge hand-shaped summon hovering about a meter above the ground, his body swaying with its gentle rise and fall.

"Whoever exorcised it didn't even try to hide their cursed residue. It's practically screaming, 'I did it! Come find me!'~"

Another young man, with bandages covering his forehead and right eye, stepped forward and crouched. He reached into the cursed energy residue lingering in the air, then closed his eyes to sense it.

A few seconds later, he opened his eyes and said, "According to the residue, there was only one sorcerer. He exorcised it purely with bare-handed attacks reinforced by cursed energy. The fight was short. The cursed spirit barely put up any real resistance."

"He didn't put up a Curtain to block anyone's view, or clean up the residue to cover his tracks..." The blond man propped up his chin, drawing out his words. "Could it be-"

"An unaffiliated sorcerer, and one who only recently awakened." The bandaged young man finished the thought, stood, and dusted nonexistent dirt off his hands.

"He just awakened and could already exorcise a Grade 1 cursed spirit bare-handed?" The blond man whistled, his heart-shaped pasties trembling slightly as his chest moved. "Without even using a cursed technique? Isn't that a little ridiculous, Geto dear?"

"He certainly... has talent." The young man called Geto gave an open, cheerful smile. "Since we're already here, let's go meet him."

The following afternoon.

Having just "replenished" his travel funds at a gang hideout, Dio carried an unremarkable canvas bag stuffed with cash toward his temporary lodgings-a cheap studio apartment on the edge of an old residential neighborhood.

Then, at the foot of the apartment building, he encountered three uninvited visitors.

Their leader was a handsome, black-haired man wearing a dark five-panel Buddhist robe, his shoulder-length hair tied into a bun.

His features resembled a bodhisattva's, with slender eyebrows and large, fleshy earlobes adorned with oversized studs. A long lock of hair hung over his forehead.

To his left stood a shirtless foreign man with blond hair and blue eyes.

On his right was a brown-haired young man whose right eye was tightly covered with white bandages.

Their positions vaguely suggested an encirclement, yet they maintained a carefully judged distance that would not immediately raise alarm.

Their leader took half a step forward, offered a practiced, gentle smile, and spoke. "Hello. Do you have time to talk?"

Dio's gaze briefly rested on the three of them. Then, with complete confidence, he closed his eyes, briefly sinking his awareness into a "reassuring atmosphere," as though pressing his ear to the earth and quietly listening to the faint pulses beneath the world's surface.

Through his unique martial arts technique, Mind's Eye, he could "see" the same unusual energy fluctuations surrounding all three, setting them apart from ordinary people. They shared a source with the monster he had killed yesterday, but were more orderly and restrained, like the difference between domesticated animals and wild beasts.

Yet this energy did not seem vast or oppressive. It did not even give him any tangible sense of danger. Perhaps... they were not particularly strong?

In that case-

He opened his eyes again, his expression returning to its usual casual indifference, and nodded to the gently smiling, black-haired young man. "Sure. What is it?"

The black-haired young man took another step forward, pushing the limits of personal space.

"My name is Suguru Geto. I'm a jujutsu sorcerer. From the traces left in the cursed residue, we learned that you exorcised a Grade 1 cursed spirit bare-handed yesterday. You possess truly remarkable power."

"I've always believed that great power should serve an equally great purpose, creating something of greater value."

"Have you... ever felt confusion, dissatisfaction, or perhaps... some deeper doubt about this world, where curses run rampant, ordinary people remain oblivious, and so many sorcerers refuse to move beyond their old ways?"

Before he had even finished speaking, Suguru Geto closed the remaining distance with a series of short steps that looked ordinary but were astonishingly swift. He darted right up to Dio, reached out with both hands as naturally as could be, and clasped Dio's right hand.

Dio's brows drew together almost imperceptibly.

In the next instant, he sharply flexed his knuckles with a faint crack, like a precision mechanical latch coming undone. With a deft twist and pull of his wrist, his hand slipped free of Suguru Geto's clasp.

At the same time, he smoothly retreated two steps, restoring a safe distance.

He casually shook his freed hand in the air. The faint cracking of his joints had already subsided, as though his escape a moment earlier had been an illusion.

"Hold on. You're talking a little too fast, and that's a lot of information at once."

Dio looked straight into Geto's still-smiling eyes, which had betrayed a faint flicker of surprise, and asked the basic question that mattered more to him right now.

"Yesterday was actually the first time I'd ever encountered one of those 'monsters.' So, according to you, the official term for those things is 'cursed spirit'?"

Suguru Geto withdrew his hands, his fingertips brushing lightly against the cuff of his robe. His smile remained unchanged.

"Yes. Energy-based life-forms composed of the power of curses-cursed spirits. They're born from humanity's negative emotions."

"Fear, anger, hatred, despair, jealousy, arrogance, regret, shame... these emotions that we can never completely eliminate gather in places humans cannot perceive, becoming monsters that devour lives."

He raised a hand and pointed toward the distant city skyline, crowded with high-rises.

"Worldwide, the number of unnatural deaths and disappearances averages over a million each year. A large proportion of those people fall victim to curses. That works out to thousands of deaths from curses every day. A staggering figure, isn't it?"

"Those non-sorcerers are like walking, unstable sources of emotional energy, constantly producing new cursed spirits."

"To preserve order in the ordinary world, jujutsu sorcerers, who wield that same power of curses, work ceaselessly in the shadows as 'cleaners' whose task never ends."

"In other words, this world has somehow arrived at the contradiction of making the strong adapt to the weak. How lamentable!"

Ignoring Dio's wariness, Suguru Geto took another half-step closer, the sleeves of his robe fluttering lightly.

"It's no different from the supreme beings of creation stifling their own evolution. Ridiculous, isn't it? It's time for humanity to devise a new strategy for survival. That's why I hope you'll lend us a hand."

"So what can I help with?" Dio asked, mustering some interest for the moment.

"It might frighten you, you know?"

"I'm all ears. Go ahead."

Suguru Geto's smile widened, though his tone remained steady. "Kill every non-sorcerer and create a world inhabited only by sorcerers."

The air seemed to freeze for a moment. The blond man and the bandaged young man waited tensely for Dio's answer.

Dio's expression did not change. He merely tilted his head slightly, as though he had discovered an interesting math problem.

"Oh, genocide. What would that accomplish?"

"If we kill every non-sorcerer, no new cursed spirits will ever be born again. The source of curses will be severed completely. Pain, fear, pointless sacrifice-all the tragedies born of curses will become history."

So said Suguru Geto.

Only after several seconds did Dio slowly speak. "...Because ordinary people's negative emotions give rise to monsters called cursed spirits, you've decided to kill them all and solve the problem once and for all. Surely something drove you to such a radical idea. Did a cursed spirit kill someone important to you?"

"Yes, that's right. But more importantly, I think they're too useless to be worth protecting."