Suguru Geto also stopped, and Miguel and Larue came to a halt behind him.
After hearing Wangchuan out, he did not rush to answer.
He turned slightly, shifting his gaze from Wangchuan to an oden shop glowing with warm yellow light at a nearby street corner.
Steam gently puffed out the cloth curtain at the entrance, carrying the sweet, light aroma of broth.
He tipped his chin toward the shop.
"Shall we sit down and talk?"
Wangchuan followed his gaze to the oden shop, then looked back at Suguru Geto.
"Your treat?"
"My treat."
"Sure."
The oden shop was small, with a long counter separating the owner from the customers.
Several steaming, partitioned iron pots were set into the counter, with daikon, eggs, fish balls, and chikuwa bobbing in pale brown broth.
Only one middle-aged man sat in the corner drinking beer, and he barely looked up when the four entered.
Wangchuan took the innermost seat, Suguru Geto sat beside him, and Miguel and Larue sat opposite them.
The owner handed over bowls, chopsticks, and small plastic dishes, then poured each of them a cup of hot tea.
Suguru Geto picked up his chopsticks, dipped them in a little yellow mustard in the small dish before him, and put a piece of daikon into his mouth. He slowly chewed and swallowed before speaking.
"I do have no use for that cursed tool myself."
"But my family needs it."
As he said "my family," his gaze naturally swept across the counter.
Miguel sat next to the wall.
His hands rested clasped on the counter. When Suguru Geto mentioned his family, his expression did not change; his steady gaze simply rested between the two of them.
Larue sat on the outside, his white skin looking a little paler under the warm yellow light.
He held his teacup without drinking, his gaze quietly and cautiously appraising Wangchuan for a moment before withdrawing.
Following Suguru Geto's gaze, Wangchuan looked at Miguel, then Larue, his eyebrows shifting slightly.
"Them?"
"That's right," Suguru Geto said evenly.
Suguru Geto set down his chopsticks and took a sip of tea, his gaze looking somewhat indistinct behind the rising steam.
"I can offer a high price."
Wangchuan also picked up his chopsticks, took a fish ball, blew on it twice, and put it into his mouth, chewing slowly.
He quickly ran through the numbers in his head.
A cursed tool he had made himself.
The material costs were low.
He had picked up an ancient bronze mirror blank from an abandoned warehouse belonging to Jujutsu Society, added several layers of sealing cursed techniques, and infused it with a little of his own cursed energy's rules.
Its actual production cost probably amounted to less than ten million on the cursed tool market.
But priced according to its function, a cursed tool capable of forcibly containing cursed spirits below Special Grade was indeed scarce on the market. It could command a price in the hundreds of millions.
He swallowed the fish ball, set down his chopsticks, and picked up his teacup.
"How much?"
"Two billion."
"Yen?"
"Yen."
Wangchuan's hand paused in midair with the teacup, and his eyes narrowed slightly.
That was expensive even for a Special Grade cursed tool.
He had originally thought Suguru Geto would offer five hundred million or a billion.
Two billion... That meant he really needed this thing, or rather, really didn't want this cursed tool to fall into anyone else's hands.
He set down his teacup and tilted his head, his lips curving into a beaming smile.
"Deal."
Seeing that beaming expression, Suguru Geto smiled too and raised his teacup toward him.
"Here's to working together."
"Here's to working together."
Miguel and Larue said nothing across from them, merely exchanging a glance.
Miguel picked up his chopsticks and began taking some oden, while Larue placed the bag he had been carrying on the counter and pushed it toward Wangchuan.
"The deposit."
Wangchuan pulled the bag over, opened a narrow gap with one hand, and glanced inside.
Inside were neatly arranged bundles of banknotes. At a glance... probably around fifty million.
He closed the top, set the bag beside him, and nodded to Larue.
"How will you pay the balance?"
"I'll have Manami arrange a bank transfer," Suguru Geto replied. "Would you be able to provide your account details?"
"I'll send them to you later."
"All right."
For the next few minutes, the four quietly ate their oden.
Steam slowly rose from the broth pots beneath the warm yellow lights, and bamboo skewers made soft popping sounds as they pierced eggs and fish tofu.
Wangchuan picked up a kelp roll and took a bite, then suddenly seemed to remember something.
He set down his chopsticks and reached into the inner pocket of his coat, feeling around.
Miguel and Larue both glanced warily at his hand, but soon relaxed again.
What Wangchuan took from his pocket was a palm-sized mirror.
It was round, edged with a ring of dark silver metal, and its surface looked somewhat cloudy, as though a layer of mist had lingered over it for years without dispersing.
The back was bare of any ornamentation, with only a shallow circular indentation in the center.
He casually set the mirror on the oden counter, right between the daikon pot and the egg pot, alongside the steaming bamboo skewers and little dishes.
Suguru Geto put down his chopsticks, his gaze settling on the mirror.
Miguel also stopped what he was doing and turned to look.
Larue straightened slightly.
"This is... the cursed tool you mentioned?" Miguel's voice was a little deeper than expected, his Japanese carrying a slight African accent.
Wangchuan nodded.
"Yeah."
"It's called the [Mirror of the Imaginary]."
He picked up the mirror, pinching its edge and angling its surface toward the shop's lights. Under the light, its cloudy surface took on a faint silvery-gray sheen, reflecting nothing at all.
"Once the holder points the mirror at a target and activates their cursed energy..."
He extended his other hand, tracing his fingertips above the mirror's surface as though demonstrating an invisible path.
"The nothingness within the mirror temporarily swaps places with reality."
"Simply put, the target gets sucked into the separate space inside the mirror."
"And locked inside."
"The limit on what it can imprison depends on the user's grade as a jujutsu sorcerer."
He turned the mirror over, showing Suguru Geto and the other two the plain indentation on its back.
"A Grade 1 jujutsu sorcerer doesn't need to meet any prerequisites to imprison cursed spirits of Grade 1 or below. You can take them straight in."
"As for Special Grades."
He paused, twirled the mirror once between his fingers, then set it back on the counter.
"It's best to beat the target half to death before taking it in."
"Otherwise, it burns through a lot of cursed energy."
He picked up his chopsticks, took a piece of daikon, and blew on it, then added something as though he had suddenly remembered:
"Oh, right."
"It can only imprison cursed spirits."
He took a bite of daikon and repeated indistinctly.
"You can't put people inside."
"Hmm... at least, I've never tried putting a person inside, so I don't know whether it can."
Before you continue