Special Grade Cursed Spirit!

Tokyo's nighttime traffic was an absolute mess.

The taxi crawled along the streets of Bunkyo like a snail.

On both sides, all he could see were the rear ends of cars with their taillights lit, red and white mixed together like a city artery that couldn't digest its contents.

Wangchuan leaned against the window in the back seat, his chin resting on his arm. As he watched the streetlights slowly slide backward outside, his expression grew darker and darker.

"If I'd known..."

He muttered to himself, "I'd have flown here myself."

The taxi driver glanced at him in the rearview mirror, probably having heard his passenger speaking Chinese without understanding it, then turned back.

Wangchuan watched the illuminated sign reading Suntan Medical University draw closer at the street corner.

Finally, unable to stand it any longer, he took out his money and opened the door. Leaving behind a "Keep the change," he grabbed his suitcase and jumped out.

At the hospital entrance.

Wangchuan tugged at his shirt collar. He had barely stopped when a tall, thin figure hurried out of the shadows beside the hospital's main entrance.

"Wangchuan!"

The man wore a somewhat ill-fitting black suit.

His tie was slightly crooked, his forehead covered in sweat. As he ran over, his leather shoes struck the asphalt in a rapid clatter.

"Wangchuan, why couldn't I get through when I called you just now?!"

Kiyotaka Ijichi skidded to a stop in front of him.

He bent over to catch his breath, his voice carrying a hint of resignation at having been saddled with an unpleasant job.

"Mr. Gojo told me to wait for you here. He said you were arriving tonight. I'd originally planned to pick you up at the airport..."

Wangchuan pulled up his suitcase handle and nodded at him, his tone casual. "We meet again, Ijichi."

"Y-yes..." Ijichi straightened and wiped the sweat from his forehead. "It's been a while."

"As for my phone." Wangchuan took it from his pocket and waved it.

"I just got off the plane. It was switched off, and I hadn't gotten around to turning it back on."

"What, didn't that guy Gojo tell you I'd be late?"

For a moment, Ijichi's expression was complicated.

In the end, it turned into a short sigh.

"...This again."

"Every time, Mr. Gojo just says, 'Go pick him up,' but then he always tells me at the last minute that you've arrived..."

He paused, lowering his voice a little. "And this assignment... he was supposed to handle it himself."

"Mm-hmm." Wangchuan tugged at the corner of his mouth. "He told me. He's busy with something else."

"He's busy with something else..." Ijichi repeated quietly.

"He's always busy with something else."

"He had me find someone else to help deal with that Grade 1 Cursed Spirit last time, too... and this time it's a Special Grade outright."

"Hey, hey, hey, don't put it like that." Wangchuan reached out and patted Ijichi on the shoulder.

The touch was light, with a hint of lazy reassurance.

"I'm getting paid, you know."

"Gojo's paying me a hundred million yen for this. You can't call that dumping it on someone else. That's hiring outside talent at a premium."

Ijichi glanced at him and stopped complaining.

After all, having worked together so many times, he knew perfectly well.

Wangchuan was like Satoru Gojo: though neither ever spoke seriously, when it came time to act, they never messed around.

In some ways, he was even more reassuring than Satoru Gojo, because Satoru Gojo had to spend ten minutes running his mouth before acting, while Wangchuan only did it for three at most.

"Well, let me brief you on the situation."

Ijichi took a small folded notebook from his inside suit pocket, opened it, and quickly scanned it under the streetlight.

"This Special Grade Cursed Spirit has the internal code name Eclipse."

"Mm."

"It's an amalgamation of resentment produced by repeated abortions... in this hospital's obstetrics and gynecology department over the past twenty years."

"According to our investigation, the negative emotions of at least several dozen fetuses that died prematurely accumulated here over a long period. It gradually took shape in recent years and was confirmed as a Special Grade not long ago."

Wangchuan listened as he walked toward the hospital's main entrance without stopping.

Ijichi hurried along just behind him to one side, continuing to read.

"According to the information Mr. Gojo provided, this Cursed Spirit's form is unstable. Its main body should be active in the old maternity ward on the second basement level. Its range is approximately..."

"Got it, got it."

Wangchuan waved a hand, already stepping onto the stairs at the hospital entrance.

Standing at the edge of the Curtain, Wangchuan tilted his head back to look at the black membrane.

"Oh, you've already got it set up? Pretty efficient."

He shoved his suitcase into Ijichi's hands. "Watch this for me."

"Huh?! I-is it all right to leave it here?!"

"What else? Should I carry my suitcase while fighting a Special Grade Cursed Spirit?" Wangchuan curved his lips at him. "That would look way too unprofessional."

Ijichi stood there holding the suitcase.

He watched Wangchuan turn and walk toward the hospital's main entrance, the white lights casting a long, thin shadow behind him.

After a few steps, Wangchuan suddenly turned back as though remembering something. "Oh, right, Ijichi."

"Yes?"

"How ugly is that Eclipse thing?"

Ijichi froze for a moment. "...Ugly?"

"The picture Gojo sent me looked like a lump of sludge with dozens of eyes growing out of it."

Wangchuan curled his lip. "It'd better not be uglier than the photo, or I'll have to charge Gojo extra for emotional damages."

With that, he walked inside.

Ijichi stood where he was, holding the suitcase.

"...Same as ever, Wangchuan."

He muttered quietly and looked down at the suitcase in his arms.

A string of seashell wind chimes hung from the handle, clinking against the suitcase's surface with tiny, scattered sounds.

"...What is this?"

Puzzled, Ijichi nudged the wind chimes, then sighed and sat down on the edge of a nearby flower bed. He took out his phone and sent Satoru Gojo a message:

[Mr. Gojo, Wangchuan has arrived. He's already entered the Curtain.]

[By the way, do you know what that string of seashells hanging from his suitcase is...?]

Three seconds later, a reply came.

[Ah! He brought it! Great! That's my souvenir. No stealing! Ijichi, don't steal my seashell wind chimes!]

Ijichi looked at the string of exclamation marks on the screen, silently locked it, and slipped his phone back into his pocket.

"Mr. Gojo is getting more and more absurd, too..." he said quietly.

The lights inside the hospital were deathly white.

The corridor was very quiet.

Wangchuan switched on his phone's flashlight.

The beam swept over the department signs on either side: obstetrics and gynecology, ultrasound room, fetal heart monitoring room... every word carried an uncomfortable implication.

"Ah... almost there."

He yawned, a little moisture gathering at the corners of his eyes.

At the end of the second-floor corridor, he turned left, and the sinister aura grew thicker and thicker.

"So creepy..."

Wangchuan rubbed his eyes, making the phone's beam sway.

"I should've come tomorrow. Fighting a Cursed Spirit at night, and an obstetrics one at that. What rotten luck."

As he spoke, he yawned again. This time, he really was sleepy.

He hadn't adjusted to the time difference yet. It was afternoon in Miami right now, all sunshine, beaches, and bikinis, while this lousy place-

"Where..."

A voice rang out.

It was very soft, very thin, like an infant's whimper flattened and stretched into a long thread.

"Where are you..."

Wangchuan kept walking, merely directing his phone's beam toward the end of the corridor.

There was nothing there but a half-open door, its sign reading Delivery Room 3.

"Mommy..."

"So cold... so dark..."

The voices surged in from every direction, writhing along the walls, as though countless mouths were pressed against the wallpaper, speaking at once.

"This routine again..."

Wangchuan drew back his phone's beam and simply switched off the flashlight.

The corridor sank back into dimness, with only the faint green glow of the emergency lights remaining.

"So damn noisy."

The moment he finished speaking, the half-open door at the end of the corridor exploded.

Wood splinters and fragments of the doorframe flew everywhere as an enormous, twisted, blackish-purple body, stretched beyond all shape, surged out from within.

It was roughly two meters forty tall, and overall looked like a fetus forcibly stretched to an enormous size.

Its head was large, its body small, its limbs grotesquely long and thin. Its skin was a deep, bruiselike purple, its surface covered in wrinkles and cracks.

Most unnerving were the tentacles: more than a dozen long, thin, blackish-purple appendages resembling both umbilical cords and IV tubes hung from its torso.

Their tips curled slightly as they dragged across the floor.

Its face had no normal features.

Dozens of eyes of different sizes were packed densely across its head.

The largest were the size of fists, and all of them were turning, all of them searching.

Then those eyes fixed on Wangchuan at the same time.

"I... want to be born..."

Its mouth was where its chin should have been, a split vertical slit that opened and closed, producing a wet, hoarse voice accompanied by the sound of bursting bubbles.

"I want... to be brought into the world..."

Wangchuan looked at the thing and fell silent for two seconds.

"...You look like that and still want to be born."

He spoke without expression.

"Even a doctor would tell your mom to try for another one."