14 Chapter 14

They sat around a table with three chairs and three cups of tea. Jiki ignored the glare the old woman was giving him, while Nobara vibrated in her chair with the hyperactive energy of a teen.

Focusing his gaze on the interior decoration of the house, he noted his earlier assumption about the house was correct. It was at least over two hundred years old, with wooden floorboards that had been replaced and old statues dotting the house.

The table they sat around had the bearing of age, even though it was pristine and well taken care of. The cups had nearly imperceptible scratches formed from long use.

The moment he dropped his cup after taking his last sip, the older woman spoke.

"So what're you doing here, kid? This region is off-limits to your clan."

That was news to him; he blinked back at her, his features passive. Satoru had not told him anything about this when he let him know he was traveling here. Unless it was information Oldman Tatsumi forgot to pass on. After giving it another thought, he realized the older man probably passed it on, and Satoru just didn't care.

Showing naivety or ignorance never helped anybody and would set him on the back foot against the already hostile woman, so he ignored her question and asked one of his own instead.

"Something is going on in your village; what is it?"

"That's none of your business, brat."

"It became mine the moment Aiko was forced to come back here to take care of her comatose parents," he fired back with more anger than he expected.

"The Ito family was affected as well," the older woman asked, suddenly tired and losing all the fire and vinegar that seemed to fuel her. But her words were a confirmation that she knew what was going on.

"I told you that already, Grandma," Nobara spoke from her place on the table, looking at the older woman with a concerned gaze.

"I see."

The older woman had a faraway look in her eyes. Before she finally stood up, grabbed her cane, and walked out of the house.

"Forgive her; her memory is not what it used to be," Nobara started as they both watched the older woman walk toward the forest.

"According to the villagers, a few years ago, something happened. Something she won't tell me anything about. But what everyone knows is that it was caused by a man and a woman. Both with white hair," she finished, giving a glance at his.

So whatever happened here occurred just before he was born. He didn't like mysteries in general, and this particular one seemed to be growing even more complex with the more people he spoke to about it.

"Anyway, how long are you staying for? We don't generally get visitors around here," she asked while parting her hair to the side in what he noted was a bashful gesture.

"We've not decided yet," he answered with a shrug before standing up to follow the older woman heedless of the disappointed look on the younger girl's face.

It took him less than a second to pick up her tracks and start following just behind. Her footsteps took her from the clearing and further into the forest.

He stopped at the border of the forest, this close, he could feel the heavy and malevolent cursed energy that was tinged by great amounts of desire and grief. He took a solid breath before plunging in.

His first step into the forest was two times heavier than it should be. The second was three times as heavy, he noted with a frown as his feet sank into the soft earth by an inch, and he felt the pressure weigh heavier on him.

Looking at the footprint of the older woman, he noted that hers remained constant throughout. So whatever was applying the pressure was purposely restricting him from entering.

For a second, he considered if he was about to enter a domain. He had never actually witnessed one, and the only person he knew with access to one spent most of his time at Jujutsu High.

Shrugging away the thought but keeping it at the back of his mind, he let his cursed energy flow from the pit in his core and felt it sink in and reinforce his more fragile frame.

Fifty meters in, and he already had an idea of where the older woman was heading too. On his journey over, there was only a single noteworthy structure here, and it was not exactly a stretch of the imagination to figure out that was where she was heading too. A few more meters in, he could see the clearing vaguely ahead of him and stopped.

The pressure had also gotten worse, he noted with an annoyed frown. If he took another step toward it, the pressure weighing down on him would slow him down more than he was ready to accept, especially in a combat situation.

"I'm surprised you even managed to make it this far, brat," the older woman called out without looking back from her position ahead. "Then again, you managed to deflect my maximum hairpin, so I guess you're not just a random brat heh." He turned his eyes at her before moving them to the huge structure she stood in front of.

It was a straw doll, as he accurately noted before. Its features are lost to time and weather. The details got clearer this close. The chain that held it bound was rusted and corroded. The spikes that held the statue down were originally eight, he judged by the holes in the ground. Now all that remained was three. The paper talismans on the statue looked faded and torn.

The longer he stayed this close, the more time he had to acclimate to the pressure weighing on him. He felt himself forcing air down his lungs as he looked at the woman's unaffected back as she stood in front of the structure, while he struggled.

"If you knew what was here, you wouldn't have dared get this close," she continued before turning her head back to give him a grim smile. "Then again, you Gojo have always overestimated yourselves. Leave boy. I'll come find you."

He gave her a flat stare and in an unfamiliar show of brashness, he held his ground until the sudden creaking of the chain and a snap sent him ankle-deep into the ground.

In the space of a heart beat, he jumped back, fully cratering the ground, while giving the older woman and the statue one last look before retreating.

The farther he got away from the straw doll, the more the pressure seemed to fall off him, till he was out of the forest completely.

He considered waiting for the old woman indoors but thought against it. Noon was close, and he had still not spoken to Aiko. Instead of roof hopping, he started walking towards the house, uncaring of the eerie stares he received.

Halfway to the building Aiko's parents called home, he met the older woman; Old woman Kimiko. She stood in the middle of the pathway seemingly waiting for him. Unlike when he was with Aiko, the woman didn't care to hide her feelings about him.

"What're you doing here?"

He ignored the question and sent his cursed energy into his eyes, activating his sharingan once more. Staring down at the woman once more, he noted a familiar cursed energy wrapped around hers. The closest approximation he had was the silky and mutable nature of a spider's webs, sunk deep into an aged frame.

The same cursed energy he felt back in the forest. He glanced around and realized the street was suddenly empty. Priming his cursed energy once more, he allowed himself to settle into a loose stance.

It was all coming together slowly now, but he had an idea of what was going on. The clues had been vague, and the stories distorted. But his title of a once-in-a-generation prodigy was not just because he was a better killer than most.

Matching his silence and half-lidded stare with an ever-increasing snarl on her face, she moved to speak once more before a spike of cursed energy coming from the forest silenced her. This time with his senses on full alert and his sharingan active, he picked the thread linking the woman back to the forest.

The woman's previously furious appearance seemed to mellow out, giving him a lazy look that matched his own and a smile that reminded him of a cat. She spun on her heels and walked off without a word.

He watched her walk away with jerky movements and followed her steps with an increasing frown, till she turned the corner. Continuing his walk down to the house with more haste than he began, he burst into the house preparing for the worst, only to meet the red-eyed and surprised figure of Aiko carrying a plate of food.

"I wanted to get you breakfast, but I was not aware of when you left," she started with a guilty expression on her face. Even in a time like this with her world falling around her, she still tried to serve him.

"It's alright, Aiko," he replied to her, tone soft. "I just went for a walk."

Her eyes drifted down to his midriff, and she spotted the bloodied gash where Old woman Kugisake's spike almost tore through his side. Rushing to his side in one smooth movement, she dropped the plate and food and maneuvered him into the closest chair while ignoring his complaints that she shouldn't bother.

Removing his shirt with smooth familiarity, she went to her bags before bringing out a first aid box, cleaning up the cut, and bandaging it.

"It was just a flesh wound, you know," he told her while poking at the bandage he was sure was bound tighter than needed.

"That is not enough reason to walk about with an open injury; what if it gets infected?" She looked down on him with an imperious tilt of her head.

The unseriousness of the moment had them burst into laughter. Aiko laughed for a few long seconds before he suddenly heard the laugh transition into hiccups and sobs. Moving to his feet, he held her tight in a hug and wrapped her around himself. For the first time, he realized they were almost the same height.

"It's alright, Aiko. I'll get them out of there and put a stop to what is happening," he promised her with certainty lacing his tone. It didn't take long for her to fall asleep in his hands, and it took him the work of a minute to lift her up, climb the stairs, and place her in the bedroom they were supposed to share.

Her bed was still untouched as she never had the chance to sleep in it since she spent the past twenty-four hours taking care of her parents. Her sudden exhaustion was understandable.

This was the first chance he had to really check out Aiko's parents, and he took it. He stood in front of their open-eyed comatose forms and opened his senses completely. A deeper look at them formed a frown on his face once more.

The same web-like structure of cursed energy he found in old woman Kimiko was also spread around their body. From the way their cursed energy was diluted and drawn out, he assumed it was a variation of the same technique. But instead of controlling or puppeteering their bodies, it seemed to drain them of something; if he were to guess, he'd say their innate life force in order to bolster something else. So where was it going to, the statue?

 xxxx

Knock, knock.

His attention was broken from observing the comatose couple as he snapped his head to the door. The sound of footsteps coming down the stairs forced his eyes back up it to see Aiko walking down as she rubbed her eyes awake.

"I know someone is awake in there; don't keep an old woman waiting." The annoyed voice of the old hag Kugisake forced him to frown even harder. Aiko rushed to the door suddenly wide awake, opening the door to the woman; she rushed up and buried the woman in a full hug.

"Granny Kugisake."

"It's okay, kid; Granny Kugisake is here now. Where are they?"

He sat up and stretched his stiff body to the cracks and pops of bones and joints. The old woman's eyes snapped to him, and he stared her down with uncaring eyes before tilting his head at the comatose couple on the chair.

She broke off the hug from Aiko before walking up to the old couple and grabbing them by their hands and closing her eyes. Her heavy sigh seemed to confirm her fears, and she staggered back to her feet with Aiko's aid.

"I always knew it would come back to torment us. I just never thought we would be alive to suffer it, you know," the old woman started, with a faraway look in her eyes even as Aiko guided her to a chair to sit.

"What are you talking about?" Aiko asked with a sudden fearful expression.

The old woman was silent. Staring back at the couple with unseeing brown eyes.

"A mistake" she began. "Our blood-soaked and cursed history.

"We were desperate enough to serve her as a deity for centuries when one of the vengeful spirits held Japan in a tight and even bloodier grip. She feasted and grew off our pain and blood for centuries. Can you imagine what centuries of that would create?"

The image that was beginning to form was one he was finding himself increasingly hard to imagine.

"Centuries passed, and her power both protected and leashed us to her will. It took long enough, but one day even we got tired of the sacrifices we had to make and decided to put an end to it, at least some of us did," she finished with a harsh laugh that was all pain and zero humor.

"Some of us had grown so reliant on her, so used to that control that they couldn't accept the thought of losing that rigid structure of their life." She kept quiet after that, seemingly lost in thought.

"What happened, Granny?" Aiko broke her thought, with her hand held tight in front of her.

"We asked for help," she said simply, before sinking back into bitter memories. "Even with help, we were not powerful enough to be certain of a sure kill, so we managed to seal and bind her instead through trickery. The seal would've lasted another generation before it started to weaken if not for that bitch." The sudden vitriol from the woman shocked him, but his only response was a raised brow; he had an idea of who she was talking about after all.

"Old woman Kimiko," he stated.

"Kimiko," she agreed with a nod.

"She argued against the binding, and I was stupid enough to think my old friend was more concerned about our safety than her true hidden loyalty to Her."

"So she botched it?" Aiko asked as she sat herself down on shaky knees. "What do my parents have to do with this?"

"Not at first, she didn't. The sealing ritual went off without a hitch, as few people knew what it planned to happen. I had hoped with her sealed, maybe just maybe our future generations would have a chance for a life without her corruptive touch lingering."

It clicked in his head.

"That's why almost all the other older people in town have a technique slowly awakening on them, but not the younger children," he spoke, looking at her with his Sharingan active. Now that he knew what to look for, he could see the same web-like structure around the woman. "That was why you were able to be in her presence so easily."

"Yes," she agreed easily, even as she stared back at his Sharingan unnerved.

"But I saw the same thing on the kids that tried to bully Nobara."

"What?" The woman suddenly stood up; her strength seemingly returned.

"That's impossible. She's not free yet."

His flat-eyed, apathetic stare was his only reply.

"That bitch, Kimiko. She must have found another way past the seal," the older woman growled out in anger. "She had been her most subservient follower before we managed to seal her."

"And my parents?" Aiko interjected once more.

"I was not certain earlier, but I am now. Kimiko must've found some way to get past the weakened seal, and it must've used that chance to reactivate its implanted technique on the people weak enough to be unable to resist.

"Why was Kimiko happy Aiko was back then?" He asked, suspicion heavy in his tone.

"Why else?" The older woman answered with a sardonic tone in her voice. "To return things back to the way they were."

Cold sweat went down his back as he remembered the way the particular technique on Aiko's parents worked. Instead of simply manipulating their body, whatever this cursed spirit was, it was sucking out their life force instead.

A variation of its original technique?

"The cursed spirit is trying to break free and incarnate ," he stated as he sent searching eyes back at the older woman, hoping she would prove him wrong for the first time. Her steady grim nod was enough reason for him to curse his intellect.

A centuries-old cursed spirit. He could not even imagine how much more powerful she had grown, with the villagers as her farm, for them to struggle to seal her instead of killing her on the spot.

"What was its name?" he asked with a deep breath as he prepared himself.

"Special grade Cursed spirit; Jorogumo," the old woman whispered the name in a low tone and wary eyes that searched the darkness.

Yet, for all her whispering, the name had a certain metaphysical weight to it that hung in the air, seemingly stifling, while phantom clacking of archaic feet on the wooden floorboard rang out. The mere mention of the name was enough to draw its attention to them.

A special grade? "I'll have to call Satoru," he said as he gave the scared Aiko a glance. Jiki won't let his pride stop—

A shout tore through a ragged throat as it echoed out from farther away from them.

"Emerge from darkness blacker than darkness. Purify that which is impure."