Chapter Text
The first major incident at Tokyo Jujutsu High that summer was not the arrival of the new students, or the rumored changes to the mission-grading system, or even the year-long aftermath of Yaga Masamichi dragging the Gojo clan’s Six Eyes through the school gates with the grim determination of a man delivering a sealed explosive.
It was the air conditioner on the third floor of the girls’ dormitory dying, completely and without dignity, on the first day of July.
It died thoroughly. Irreversibly. Like an old dog that had exhausted the last of its loyalty, it gave one low, miserable groan at 2:13 in the afternoon and then stopped working in front of an entire floor of horrified girls. The moment the cold air disappeared, heat seemed to receive official permission to enter. It rose from the floorboards, slipped through the window frames, gathered in the corners, and poured through every half-open door in the hallway. A few second-year girls stood frozen, their faces close to despair, reacting to the broken air conditioner like it had become a campus-wide emergency.
Tokyo was unbearably hot that day. Down the mountain, the asphalt had been baked pale. The glass doors of convenience stores opened and shut, releasing brief slices of cold air into the street. When a train passed in the distance, the vibration of the tracks traveled through the trees, thin and muffled, the sound softened by the heat. Jujutsu High was built in the mountains and should have been cooler than the city, but once the July wind stopped, the shade became only decorative. Cicadas cried from deep in the woods, their noise pressing against windows, walls, and eardrums until the entire mountain seemed to burn.
Iori Utahime stood at the end of the third-floor hallway with a screwdriver in her hand, looking up at the now-silent outdoor unit. Her hair was tied into two high pigtails, the ends slightly messy from sweat and hot wind, a few loose strands sticking to her cheek. It was a cute hairstyle, light and girlish, the kind of thing that should have belonged in an advertisement for summer soda. But at that moment, with her brows drawn together, her sleeves rolled to her elbows, and a smear of machine oil on her palm, Utahime looked ready to throw anyone who caused further trouble out the window along with the toolbox.
She had only been passing by.
On her way back from the records room, several second-year girls stopped her beside the hallway vent and claimed the air conditioner “seemed like it might still be fixable.” Utahime should not have trusted the phrase “seemed like.” In the jujutsu world, anything that began with “seemed like” usually ended in an incident report.
Mei Mei stood behind her, her long hair loosely pinned up, holding a small handheld fan. The fan was running at full speed, but the air it produced felt as though it had just been pulled from a bowl of hot water. She looked at the outdoor unit, then at the screws, tape, and detached metal cover scattered near Utahime’s feet, and said with the calm of someone evaluating an investment that had already failed, “I suggest deducting the repair cost from the school’s safety budget. This temperature constitutes a threat to life.”
Utahime stepped down from the chair and tossed the screwdriver back into the toolbox. The metallic sound rang too clearly in the stifling hallway.
“You can tell Yaga-sensei that yourself.”
“That is your job,” Mei Mei said. “I only express opinions when compensation is involved.”
Utahime fastened the toolbox and looked again at the outdoor unit. It hung outside the wall, yellowed, rusted at the corners, like many things at Jujutsu High, obviously overdue for replacement, but repeatedly postponed because it had not yet broken beyond use. She could already imagine the maintenance request process: submit the form, wait for approval, prove that the air conditioner was in fact dead, wait for someone to decide whether its death counted as natural wear, and finally, on some autumn morning, receive a message saying repairs had been scheduled. By then, summer would be over, and everyone on the third floor would already have been steamed alive.
Mei Mei turned off the small fan. The blades slowed gradually, like an insect deciding to surrender.
“We can move to the first-floor classrooms tonight. At least they have ventilation.”
“Yaga-sensei will catch you sleeping in a classroom.”
“If he wants me back on the third floor, he can pay for a new air conditioner first.”
Utahime was about to answer when laughter burst up from the training field below.
It was loud, bright, and utterly unrestrained, like someone had cracked open an entire bottle of ice-cold soda in the middle of the suffocating afternoon. It was not that Jujutsu High lacked laughter. Students laughed after missions, after winning training matches, when the cafeteria auntie gave them an extra piece of fried chicken. But most laughter here was short, like a match struck in exhaustion, bright for a moment before going out. The person downstairs was different. His laughter moved through the school with the certainty that the whole summer should make room for him.
Utahime did not need to look down to know who it was.
Gojo Satoru had been enrolled for less than a year, and he had already succeeded in making everyone at Tokyo Jujutsu High remember his name, from teachers and assistant managers to the cafeteria staff.
Of course, the jujutsu world had known the Six Eyes was coming long before Gojo stepped through the gates of Tokyo Jujutsu High. His birth had already been weighed, discussed, and feared in rooms where old men lowered their voices out of habit. By the time he arrived, the legend was almost settled.
Then Gojo opened his mouth, stole dessert from the cafeteria, ignored three separate instructions before lunch, and made it painfully clear that no one had prepared for the actual boy.
He was late. He was picky. He brought desserts onto the training field. He and Geto Suguru had already broken through a temporary first-year barrier twice, and when Yaga lectured them, Gojo had very seriously suggested that if they had managed to break it, then perhaps the barrier’s quality deserved reflection.
Yaga’s face that day had been as dark as the sky before a storm. Utahime had passed by and heard only half the lecture, yet she had already concluded that this year’s first-years were going to shorten everyone’s life.
Mei Mei followed her gaze downstairs.
On the training field, Gojo was holding a bottle of iced soda in one hand, the other arm draped over Geto’s shoulder as he said something. Geto lowered his head and laughed, gentle-faced, a trace of indulgence hidden at the corners of his eyes. Ieiri Shoko sat under the shade of a tree with a lollipop in her mouth, the white stick resting lazily between her teeth. An open medical textbook lay in her lap, and a medical kit sat by her feet. She looked entirely uninterested in taking part, though she missed none of the entertainment. A few crumpled candy wrappers peeked from her pocket. When Gojo and Geto began arguing again under the sun, she lifted her eyes only briefly, already certain that someone would need bandaging before the day was over.
The three of them stood in the summer sunlight with their uniform jackets open, white shirts stirred faintly by the wind, young and beautiful and noisy, their laughter spilling across the field before the heat could swallow it.
The white lines along the training field glared under the sun. Melted ice water pooled near the vending machine. Beyond the mountain line, heat rose from the city and washed the sky pale. Tokyo lay below with its trains, convenience stores, asphalt crossings, and freezer cases packed with cold drinks. Jujutsu High sat above it in a separate pocket of summer, surrounded by talismans, training dust, idling mission cars, casualty numbers nobody said aloud, and students laughing before the next assignment called their names.
Gojo suddenly looked up, already aware of the gaze on him. Wearing lightly tinted sunglasses, he waved toward the girls’ dormitory through three floors and a whole sheet of heat-distorted air.
“Utahime—” he called, drawing out her name. “Are you secretly watching me train?”
Several girls in the hallway fell silent at once, then someone failed to hold back a laugh. Utahime’s grip on the toolbox tightened. Mei Mei very considerately took one step aside, leaving her space by the window.
Utahime leaned out of the window, her voice carrying cleanly across the training field. “Gojo, if you still have energy to yell after training, come fix the third-floor air conditioner.”
Gojo tilted his face up. The sun gathered in his white hair, cold and brilliant against the heat of the training field. For one second, his grin paused. “If I fix it, will Utahime be so moved she treats me to shaved ice?”
“If you fail, I’ll stuff you into the outdoor unit.”
Geto laughed beside him, eyes curving. Shoko finally took the lollipop from her mouth and clapped slowly twice. Gojo did not look threatened in the least. If anything, he seemed pleased to have been scolded. He tossed the soda bottle into Geto’s arms and called back up, “Utahime is so scary. It’s already this hot, and you’re still getting fired up. You’ll get heatstroke.”
Utahime was about to reply when Yaga’s voice came from behind her.
“Iori.”
She turned. Yaga stood by the stairwell with a file envelope in hand. Summer heat had done nothing to loosen his collar, his sleeves, or his expression. He looked at the students gathered in the hallway, then at the toolbox on the floor. One eyebrow rose, very slowly.
“The air conditioner?”
“Broken,” Utahime said. “It needs to be replaced.”
Yaga was silent for a moment. That silence contained the school budget, the maintenance process, administrative delay, and all the real-world curses even jujutsu sorcerers could not exorcise. At last, he handed the envelope to Utahime.
“There’s a mission.”
Mei Mei’s small fan started humming again.
Utahime took the envelope, her fingers grazing the edge of the brown paper. The file had almost no weight. She had learned to distrust that kind of lightness. Sometimes it meant a clean assignment. More often, it meant the first person sent to look had stopped too early.
She opened the seal and pulled out the first page.
Former Miyazawa Residence, western Saitama Prefecture.
Mission grade: Grade Two.
Objective: investigate suspected cursed spirit residue and three disappearances.
The disappearances had occurred over the past two weeks. The first involved the owner of a nearby guesthouse, who heard a child singing inside the old residence at night and went in to investigate, never to come out. The second was a local police officer who entered the house during the day to confirm the situation, lost radio contact two hours later, and whose car was found the next morning at the mountain road entrance. The third was an assistant manager who went missing during an exterior survey two days ago, leaving behind only partial barrier readings. The readings suggested stable cursed residue within the old house, but not enough to classify the case above Grade Two.
Utahime skimmed through several pages. A photograph was clipped in the middle: a large old Japanese house with black roof tiles, low eaves, a deep corridor, and a well in the courtyard. The photograph seemed to have been taken at dusk. A wind chime hung beneath the eaves, tree shadows slanted across the stone steps, and at first glance the house looked nearly beautiful in its abandonment.
Then her gaze caught on the door. It stood half-open at the end of the corridor.
Cursed-energy readings offered nothing useful. Utahime’s eyes kept returning to that narrow gap at corridor’s end. Stone steps, hanging eaves, courtyard well, all of it led back there. Whoever had taken this picture had arranged the house around one dark opening.
She turned the photograph over. On the back was a line written hastily by an assistant manager.
All clocks inside the house have stopped. Identical time: 15:17.
“Just the two of us?” Utahime asked.
Yaga nodded. “Frontline personnel have been pulled to other missions. The area around the residence has been evacuated, and the exterior is sealed. You and Mei Mei will confirm the structure and decide whether the mission needs to be upgraded. If anything feels wrong, withdraw immediately.”
Mei Mei stood beside her. The first thing she asked about was not danger.
“What is the fee?”
Yaga looked at her.
Mei Mei said calmly, “A Grade Two mission, three disappearances, and two third-years assigned. The pricing is unreasonable.”
“Come back alive first. Then talk to finance.”
Mei Mei nodded, as if she had successfully obtained a verbal guarantee. “I will treat that as a promise.”
Utahime reviewed the materials again, her fingertips pausing on the floor plan. Main house, side building, storehouse, courtyard, well, small rear shrine. The building was larger than it had appeared in the photograph, and the lines of the floor plan were old and blurred. She made small pencil marks at several potential barrier nodes and circled the directions from which the missing people had entered. All three disappearances were near the western side of the main house, close to the records room and inner courtyard.
Gojo’s voice rose again from the training field. He seemed to be arguing with Geto over which ice cream in the vending machine was least terrible. Shoko lazily told them both they were noisy, the lollipop stick tapping lightly against her teeth. Sunlight caught on the chain-link fence at the edge of the field, and the air looked almost white with heat.
For one strange moment, Utahime felt as though the mission, the disappearances, the broken clocks, and 15:17 were all still far away. Below, the first-years kept laughing in the sun, careless and alive, and the sound made the file in her hand feel lighter.
“When do we leave?” Utahime asked.
“In half an hour,” Yaga said. “The car will be at the front gate. Don’t overdo it.”
He said that to nearly every student. Repetition should have turned the sentence into procedure, something filed alongside mission briefings and departure times. But he meant it each time, with that stern, awkward care he rarely softened for anyone. The jujutsu world wore sincerity down quickly. Yaga still managed to place some of it in his students’ hands before sending them out.
She closed the envelope. “Understood.”
Mei Mei had already turned back toward the dorm to change. Halfway down the hall, she looked back and asked, “If the mission gets upgraded, will compensation be calculated according to the actual grade?”
Yaga seemed to lose a fraction of his patience. “Come back alive, and I’ll ask finance myself.”
Mei Mei left satisfied.
Once she was gone, Yaga said to Utahime, “One more thing. If you fail to report back within an hour, I’ll send in a rescue team.”
Utahime looked up. “Who?”
Yaga did not answer immediately. Below, a loud blast came from the training field. The temporary barrier rippled with blue-white light, struck from the inside by some unseen force.
Geto’s voice followed. “Satoru, you said you’d only use thirty percent.”
Gojo replied lazily, “I thought that was thirty percent.”
From the shade, Shoko added, “Yaga-sensei is going to kill you.”
Yaga closed his eyes briefly, clearly suppressing something. Utahime looked down at the field. Gojo stood amid settling dust, still wearing the kind of grin that made people want to stuff report papers into his mouth. He did not seem to think he had caused trouble again. If anything, he lifted one hand toward the third floor with an innocent little gesture. Geto stood beside him, gentle-faced, making no visible effort to stop his classmate. Shoko had retreated farther away, evidently deciding not to be associated with any possible damages.
Yaga said, “Gojo, Geto, Ieiri.”
Utahime was silent for a moment. “Rescue?”
“If necessary.”
“I would rather crawl out.”
Yaga looked at her.
Utahime tucked the file envelope under her arm, her voice even. “Yaga-sensei, I’m not questioning their strength. I’m questioning Gojo’s brain.”
A faint change crossed Yaga’s face. He drew in a breath, then let it go without sound.
“That’s why I’d send Geto with him.”
The comfort of that statement was limited.
When Utahime went downstairs, the commotion on the training field had not ended. The damaged barrier had been temporarily repaired by an assistant manager, and Yaga stood at the edge of the field lecturing. Gojo stood carelessly; Geto stood a little straighter, though the amusement in his eyes had not disappeared. Shoko held the medical kit like someone who already knew everyone would get hurt eventually. The lollipop had shifted to the other side of her mouth, its stick pressing lightly into her cheek.
Utahime intended to walk around them, but Gojo’s eyes were too sharp. From halfway across the field, he called out to her. “Utahime, heading out on a mission?”
She stopped and turned back. “That has nothing to do with you.”
Gojo came over, his shadow falling across the ground before her. Up close, his height made Utahime straighten before she noticed herself doing it. Heat still clung to him from training.
His white hair was damp at the temples, and his sunglasses had slipped down his nose, leaving his eyes exposed. That blue caught her first. Clearer than the summer sky above Tokyo, almost weightless in its brightness, with no shade for anything to hide in. Utahime looked at him for half a second longer than she intended, then looked away. Under that gaze, even silence felt poorly defended.
He glanced at the file in her hand. “Grade Two? Need my help?”
“No.”
“So decisive. You’ll hurt my enthusiasm.”
“You have enthusiasm?”
“I do,” Gojo said. “It just usually isn’t free.”
Mei Mei came down at exactly the right moment after changing. Hearing this, she stopped beside them and looked at Gojo seriously.
“You charge by the job too?”
Gojo smiled at her, bright as ever. “Depends on the client.”
“If you underprice yourself, you’ll disrupt the market.”
“You can train me, Mei-san.”
“My training fees are expensive.”
“I’m rich.”
Utahime could not listen anymore and turned to leave. Gojo followed for two steps, posture loose, purpose poorly concealed. His gaze flicked to the envelope in her hand, then back to her face. He looked careless most of the time, but his attention was sharp, like a cat pretending to sleep in the sun, ears always turned toward movement.
Geto joined them with a calmer presence. His black hair was tied back, one loose strand resting near his forehead. Before he spoke, he smiled at Utahime, mild and attentive, then met her eyes with the kind of courtesy Gojo rarely bothered to imitate.
“Utahime-senpai, Mei Mei-senpai. Have a safe mission.”
Utahime’s impression of Geto was better than her impression of Gojo. For now, at least. Geto was also strong, smart, and carried the composure typical of gifted first-years, but his sharpness was wrapped in gentleness. Unlike Gojo, whose sharpness seemed eager to press itself against someone’s face and demand evaluation.
“Thank you,” Utahime said.
Gojo immediately looked at Geto. “Suguru, why are you so good at acting well-behaved?”
Geto smiled. “Because it’s useful.”
Shoko walked over slowly from behind, medical kit in hand. “If you come back injured, try to do it before ten. I don’t want overtime.”
Mei Mei said, “Treatment fees can go to Gojo. He just said he’s rich.”
Shoko looked at Gojo and nodded. “Good idea.”
Gojo spread his hands. “Why did this suddenly become my responsibility?”
Utahime had no desire to listen to them continue. The mission car had already arrived at the school gate, the black body of the vehicle parked under the shade, its windows reflecting sharp sunlight. She took a few steps before hearing Gojo call out again.
“Utahime.”
She turned back, patience nearly gone.
Gojo stood in the sun with that same infuriating smile. He tossed the iced soda in his hand toward her. Utahime caught it instinctively. The bottle was so cold that her palm tightened around it. Condensation slid down the plastic and wet her fingers.
“Cool down on the road,” he said. “So you don’t actually get heatstroke.”
Utahime looked down. Lemon flavor. Sharp and clean on the wrapper, far from the cloying sweetness Gojo usually favored. When she looked up again, he had already turned back to Yaga’s lecture, hands loose at his sides, leaving the small kindness behind like he had simply lost interest in it.
Mei Mei had seen the whole thing.
“Do you want to drink it?” she asked.
Utahime shoved the bottle into the side pocket of her mission bag. “I just don’t want to waste it.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“It’s written all over your face.”
Mei Mei smiled and pulled open the car door. “Then your observational skills are improving. Remember to keep that up during the mission.”
As the car drove out of the school gates, Utahime saw the training field recede in the rearview mirror. Gojo had started arguing with Yaga again. Geto stood beside him pretending to mediate, and Shoko had already returned to the shade to flip through her medical textbook. The sunlight shortened their shadows until they fell neatly between the white lines of the field. From a distance, their voices blurred into one bright, restless sound that followed the car until the gate turned the corner from view.
Utahime looked away and opened the mission file.
The Former Miyazawa Residence was not particularly close to Tokyo Jujutsu High. The car passed through the edge of the city first, then continued west along a mountain road. Afternoon light followed the windows all the way, heating the air inside the car. At the foot of the mountain, students in white shirts stood outside a convenience store holding half-melted popsicles; at an intersection, a red traffic light seemed to glow with heat, and a taxi waited before the crosswalk, its roof reflecting hard white light. Farther ahead, the city thinned. Apartment buildings retreated behind them, and trees and old mountain roads slowly took over.
The assistant manager was a man in his thirties named Tanabe. He did not speak much and wore thin silver-framed glasses. He drove so steadily that it made people drowsy. Mei Mei sat in the passenger seat and had already begun asking about mission subsidies, hazard pay, transportation reimbursements, and whether compensation would be calculated according to the actual grade if the mission were upgraded. Tanabe answered seriously at first. After fifteen minutes, he seemed to regret not pretending to have a sore throat before departure.
Utahime sat in the back, spreading the documents over her knees. Her pigtails swayed faintly in the warm air inside the car, the ends brushing her shoulders and occasionally touching the sweat at the side of her neck. The mission materials really were too thin. Three disappearances, exterior readings, several photographs, and an old floor plan. She marked several potential barrier nodes with a pen and circled the directions from which the missing people had entered.
As she was reading, Mei Mei suddenly reached back from the passenger seat.
“Soda.”
Utahime did not look up. “Didn’t you bring water?”
“Your bottle is colder.”
“That was from Gojo.”
“Then it should be put to use.”
Utahime took the soda from her bag and tossed it forward. Mei Mei caught it, glanced at the label, and did not immediately open it.
“Lemon.”
“Yes.”
“Gojo doesn’t usually like lemon.”
“Why are you asking me?”
Mei Mei twisted the cap open. The fizz cracked softly. “Because he gave it to you.”
Utahime finally looked up. “Mei Mei.”
“I’m here.”
“If you say another word, I’ll remove your name from the compensation form.”
Mei Mei took a sip and handed the bottle back, her smile faint. “An effective threat. You’re becoming more and more suited to being a senpai.”
Utahime accepted the bottle and noticed a trace of moisture at the rim. She paused, then did not drink from it. She put it back into her bag. Outside the window, the city had fully thinned out. Convenience stores, gas stations, and residential buildings were replaced by forest. Sunlight leaked between dense trees, flashing across the interior of the car. Utahime looked down at the floor plan again, her finger stopping at the well in the courtyard.
Beside it was an old label: Semi-zuka.
“Tanabe-san,” Utahime asked, “what is Semi-zuka?”
Tanabe glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “A local legend. The Miyazawa family used to perform some kind of ritual there. The details are unclear. Supposedly, in summer, they buried cicada shells beside the well to pray for children to grow up safely.”
Mei Mei leaned back against her seat. “That doesn’t sound very auspicious.”
“The records don’t show a direct connection to curses,” Tanabe said.
Utahime looked at the plan. The well, the Semi-zuka, the clocks stopped at 15:17, the three disappearances. Each detail could be explained individually, but together they felt like several faint strings, their knot not yet visible. She circled Semi-zuka and wrote a question mark beside it.
The car reached the blockade at 3:02 p.m.
The checkpoint had been set at the entrance to the mountain road. Several police cars were parked along the side, and local officers had already been persuaded to leave under the explanation of a gas leak and structural safety risks. Tanabe got out to speak with the on-site personnel. Utahime stood beside the car and organized her equipment.
The mountains held heat close. It gathered beneath leaves, crawled under collars, and carried the smell of wet soil and rotting foliage. Cicadas shrilled from every direction, turning the forest into one continuous vibration.
Mei Mei took her axe from the trunk and tested its weight. “The exterior residue isn’t strong.”
Utahime nodded. She felt it too. There was indeed cursed energy coming from the direction of the old residence, but it was not dense, more like a layer of dust clinging to old wood. From the readings alone, Grade Two was not unreasonable. The problem was the number of missing people. The gap between weak residue and repeated disappearances was too large. The gap itself was suspicious.
Tanabe returned and handed them two communication earpieces. “The exterior curtain has been set, but it hasn’t fully suppressed the internal barrier. Report in every ten minutes after you enter. If there’s no response for more than twenty minutes, I’ll contact the school.”
Mei Mei asked, “And the rescue team?”
Tanabe glanced at Utahime, clearly aware of her opinion on the designated rescuers. “Yaga-sensei has put the first-years on standby.”
Mei Mei looked satisfied. “If Gojo participates in the rescue, the fee should be recalculated. His market value is high.”
Utahime put in her earpiece. “Can you stop talking about money in every situation?”
“No,” Mei Mei said. “Money is the most honest form of record. How much someone is willing to give for someone else always ends up on the books.”
Utahime did not argue. Mei Mei had her own worldview, and it was cleaner than many of the higher-ups’ pretty words. At least Mei Mei never pretended sacrifice was free, or that students’ lives naturally belonged to the jujutsu world.
The two of them walked up the mountain road. The Former Miyazawa Residence sat halfway up the slope, and the path had long since fallen into disrepair, weeds pushing through gaps in the stone steps. Utahime walked in front; Mei Mei followed half a step behind. A black bird lifted from a branch, wings brushing leaves with a soft sound. The closer they came to the old house, the louder the cicadas became. At one point, Utahime suddenly realized there were no other sounds around them. No birdsong. No wind through leaves. No distant cars.
Only cicadas.
The old house appeared after a turn in the path.
The residence was larger than the photograph had suggested, and older. Black roof tiles sloped over low eaves. Beneath them, the wind chime hung without a sound. The courtyard gate stood ajar, rain and sun splitting its wooden panels. Heat clung to the mountain path behind them. Near the house, the air changed. Cold rose from the threshold, damp and mineral, carrying the smell of stone shut away from daylight.
Utahime stopped before the gate and checked her watch.
3:16 p.m.
She wrote the time into her notebook.
“One minute left,” Mei Mei said.
Utahime looked up and found that an old clock had indeed been placed beside a stone lantern in the courtyard. Its glass face was cracked. Its hands had stopped at 3:17. There was no reason for a clock to be sitting in the courtyard. It looked as though someone had put it there deliberately, so that those who entered would see it.
The wind chime remained silent.
At 3:17 p.m., Tanabe’s voice came through Utahime’s earpiece.
“Iori-san, Mei-san. Communication check.”
“I hear you,” Utahime said. “We’re at the entrance. Preparing to enter.”
“Received. Report back in ten minutes.”
Utahime tucked the notebook into her inner pocket and pushed open the gate.
The hinge gave a long cry.
There was a well in the courtyard, its rim covered in moss. Beside it was a small mound of earth with several faded wooden markers stuck into the ground. The writing on the markers had blurred, though some of the names could still be made out. Utahime crouched and looked for a moment without touching them. Mei Mei stood behind her, a black bird perched on her shoulder, its head tilting slightly.
“This place smells like money,” Mei Mei said.
Utahime asked, “What does that mean?”
“Not coins, and not bills. Ledgers. Contracts. Transaction records.” Mei Mei looked toward the main house. “What did the Miyazawa family do?”
Utahime checked the file. “It says they were a local prominent family. Medicinal goods and educational donations.”
“That usually means there was another business.”
Utahime stood. The main house door was shut, its paper yellowed and torn at the edges. She placed a talisman on the doorframe. The paper did not burn or darken. The cursed residue was weak; the barrier reaction stable. She pushed open the door, and an old smell came out at once: dust, wood, damp tatami, and a very faint trace of incense.
At the entrance, shoes had been arranged in a row.
Men’s shoes, women’s shoes, children’s shoes. All of them were too neat. Utahime shone her flashlight across them and saw that one pair of police shoes still had fresh mud on them. One of the missing people. She did not touch them, only took a photograph and recorded the location.
Mei Mei looked past her into the house. “No curse behind the door.”
Utahime wrote the time, place, and discovered items into her notebook, then clicked the pen shut.
“Let’s go.”
Once they entered the main house, the door slid shut behind them. Cicada cries outside dropped into a sudden hush. A moment later, the sound returned through timber and plaster, thinned by the walls, shifting from forest noise into something trapped inside the rooms. Summer pulsed there, faint and persistent, answering from one darkened corner to another.