Night.
In the inpatient corridor, only the emergency lights were on.
Harsh white light spilled down from overhead.
At fixed intervals, green “Emergency Exit” signs glowed against the dark.
Click.
Click.
A nurse moved slowly down the hallway, flashlight in hand.
The beam swept back and forth across rows of closed ward doors.
The daytime could get chaotic, but at least there were voices.
The hospital at night was something else entirely: a silence that crawled under the skin.
Click.
Click.
A sound from the far end of the corridor.
A soft rustling.
Someone moving.
“Hm?” The nurse stopped and listened, frowning.
It didn’t sound like a patient shuffling to the bathroom.
Sick people had a particular unsteadiness to their step , heavy where they could afford it, light where they couldn’t.
But this sound was too even.
Too smooth.
She walked toward it.
Somehow, work she’d long since made peace with felt different tonight.
Following the sound, she arrived at Room 302.
The door was ajar.
No light inside.
She eased the door open and swept her flashlight through the gap.
The gaunt woman in the bed lay curled under a thin blanket pulled up to her shoulders, apparently still asleep.
Single room.
No one else.
The nurse checked left and right, then exhaled slowly.
She crossed over to tuck in the corner of the blanket the patient had kicked aside.
She approached.
Reached out.
The moment her fingers touched the fabric, Something was wrong.
No sound.
No movement.
But it felt as though the space behind her had gone hollow, and something was staring at her from inside that hollow.
She spun around.
!!, !.
She thought she was seeing things.
For one split second, she was certain she saw a monster.
Bloated.
Enormous.
A round mass of flesh packed wall-to-wall with teeth.
Two huge white fangs jutted from either side like a boar’s tusks, catching the moonlight through the window, gleaming pale and cold.
Its belly bulged with strange ridged patterns , a face, twisted and wrong.
Ugly didn’t cover it.
It didn’t come close.
She tried to scream.
Then she blinked, and the monster was gone.
“That can’t be real…
hah…
hah…” The nurse pressed her hand to her chest, breathing hard.
The rumors.
Every nurse on the night shift had heard the rumors.
She’d never taken them seriously , until right now, when they were all she could think about.
Whatever courage the night shifts had built in her wasn’t enough for this.
And the presence was still there.
Like a strobe.
At first she could only catch it once every three or four blinks, but with each breath her lungs dragged in faster than the last, the monster grew more solid.
More real.
Not a hallucination.
So it was actually, Fear pulled her face into something she couldn’t control.
She was a second away from screaming, “Are you alright?” She whirled.
Himmel stood in the doorframe, hands easy at his sides.
He smiled.
“I happened to see you come in.
You seemed to be here for a while, so I came to check.” A while?
She honestly didn’t know how long she’d been standing there.
She couldn’t find words.
She just waved a hand and forced her breathing level.
“No, I’m fine.
Little dizzy, maybe.” “Then make sure you rest.” Himmel walked into the room and pushed the window open, letting in the night air.
“I’ve got this from here.” Someone else taking over the task , the relief hit her immediately.
Her patrol was nearly done anyway.
She nodded.
“I’ll leave it to you, then.” They traded places.
The nurse stepped out into the corridor.
Himmel drifted to a spot just inside the doorway.
A clean split , one on each side of the threshold.
The instant the nurse turned away, brow creased, rubbing her temples, the soft smile Himmel had been wearing toward her back vanished.
His weight dropped to his left foot.
His torso snapped into a twist.
His right leg swept back , knee bending, coiling , then his calf whipped straight.
BOOM!
A spinning kick.
Point-blank.
Landing dead center on whatever was standing two body-lengths behind him.
GAAAAAHHHHH!—!—!, !.
People who can’t perceive Cursed Spirits can’t hear them either.
The human body protects itself that way.
Jujutsu Sorcerers, though, can see exactly what just happened.
The Cursed Spirit had been watching it all unfold in blank confusion , and then lunged.
Himmel’s heel met it mid-lunge, driving straight into the center of its mass.
The round body folded inward like a phone snapping shut, creased at a sharp angle.
It hung in the air for one suspended moment.
Then it blew outward through the open window like a cannonball.
BOOM, !.
It hit the tree line wrapped in a shockwave and carved a long furrow through the forest floor, hundreds of meters out.
“ROOOOAAAARRRR!!!!” The Cursed Spirit thrashed upright in the muddy hollow it had made and let out a full-throated shriek.
Before it could do anything else with that fury, its whole body locked up , and it dove sideways!
BOOM!
The ground where it had just been sitting was gouged clean out, a teardrop-shaped hole punching straight down.
At the narrow tip of the crater, a white sword rose slowly, shedding particles of light, until the truth came into view.
A disposable chopstick.
It lasted about another second before the forces it had channeled became too much to bear, and it dissolved into smoke.
WHOOSH!
Himmel landed.
He looked at the thing across the clearing and knew exactly what he was dealing with.
[Special Grade Disease Cursed Spirit: Hōsōshin] Because Cursed Spirits are made of accumulated human negative emotion, they don’t truly die.
Exorcise them with Cursed Energy and they simply cycle back through reincarnation, born again.
Powerful ones retain their intelligence through the process.
The weaker ones lose their memories and start over , which is about as close to actual death as the concept gets for them.
Either way…
“You’re one of the strong ones, aren’t you.” Under the moonlight, Himmel stood on a jutting boulder with the moon at his back, looking down.
“Jie — drop the Curtain.” [Received.] Through the earpiece, he and Geto had been coordinating since the start.
Setting a Curtain in the forest, drawing the target out here, boxing it in , that was the plan.
Keep the patients out of it.
[Hold on.
I’m coming now.] “Yeah.” Himmel had run enough exorcisms by now that the routine came easy.
Special Grade, though.
Those were different.
First impression?
(It’s tough.) One kick from him leveled a standard Cursed Spirit.
Grade 1s didn’t fare much better.
But this one had taken the hit and the feedback through his leg had been wrong , not just hard, but strange, like kicking something that shouldn’t be there.
He stayed patient.
He needed Geto present to absorb it once it went down.
No sense finishing things early.
Then the Cursed Spirit moved.
Fast.
Decisive.
It committed without hesitation.
And the ability it chose was, “Ah,” Himmel said.
“That’s a problem.” [Domain Expansion] Cursed Energy flooded outward in every direction, racing past the edge of the clearing, racing past Himmel’s position.
The Barrier closed around him.
The story is already written.