Reaching the third floor, before he had even rounded the landing of the stairs, Yasui caught a faint, raspy sound—the kind of wheeze someone makes only when their throat is being squeezed shut.
Under his hundredfold five senses, it sounded piercingly clear and distinct.
His ears pinpointed the exact location.
Without breaking his stride, he moved at high speed, and the first thing that met his eyes was a freakish, bizarre creature.
A Grade 3 Cursed Spirit, crafted with a total lack of aesthetic care.
Its skin and flesh looked as though they had been mashed to a pulp and kneaded back together, its facial features displaced, with several eyes growing in places they had no business being.
Right now, every single one of those eyes swiveled in unison toward Yasui, filled with a murky yet undeniable malice.
Its fingers were withered, resembling tree branches or dried rat carcasses.
Those revolting, dried-up rat fingers were currently choking the neck of a little girl, lifting her clear off the ground.
The little girl looked about four or five years old.
Her long, water-blue hair stood out starkly in the dim, abandoned building, making her small face appear all the paler.
Her face was drenched in tears, the tip of her nose flushed red, and though her mouth hung open, no sound could escape.
Tears simply spilled down her cheeks in heavy drops.
The moment she caught sight of Yasui, a faint ray of pleading light surged into her eyes.
The Cursed Spirit didn’t speak—Yasui had no idea whether a Grade 3 Cursed Spirit was capable of speech in the first place.
But its intent was crystal clear.
Those dried-up rat fingers choking the girl’s neck tightened a fraction, then loosened slightly, while its seven or eight pairs of cloudy eyes glared at Yasui.
The message couldn’t be more explicit: take one more step forward, and this kid’s neck gets snapped.
Feels a bit familiar.
Nobara Kugisaki seemed to have run into this exact dilemma before, didn’t she?
Yasui tilted his head as he watched the scene play out, the expression on his face identical to that of an innocent bystander idly scrolling through a video comment section, only to be suddenly hit with a bewildered: “Wait, so you’re telling me the person behind the screen isn’t at fault here?”
“Hey.”
He opened his mouth, dragging out his Kansai drawl lazy and long.
“Are you a fucking idiot?
Trying to threaten me with someone else’s life?”
As he spoke, he casually thrust his hands into his pockets and leaned to the side, looking for all the world as if he were just annoyed by the dust in the place.
“What’s that got to do with me?”
With those words, as if suddenly recalling something amusing, he swiped open the System Store in his mind.
A hundred points—not a lot, but not a little either—was just enough to purchase an item he had glanced at earlier.
The next second, a black boning knife materialized out of thin air in his hand.
The blade was jet-black all over, looking less like metal and more like the solid shadow of something given physical form.
The blade was exceptionally thin, almost translucent at the edge.
Holding it in his hand, he could feel a chill creeping from his palm all the way into the marrow of his bones.
Yasui lowered his head, turning the knife over and over in his hands as if admiring a piece of fine craftsmanship.
This thing will definitely make quick work of butchering a pig.
He had seen people use boning knives on cows, sheep, and pigs before.
The knife was fast, and the butcher was skilled.
Right on cue, the system interface popped up a description before his eyes:
[Boning Knife: Special Cursed Tool.
Ignores Cursed Energy defenses to deal direct Soul/Physical damage to the target.]
[Usage Requirement: User must make a blood sacrifice.
Permanently bound upon activation.]
[Note: With each use, there is a 60% probability that the user’s attack will affect not only the target, but also the user simultaneously.]
“Tsk.”
Reading down to the final line, the corners of Yasui’s mouth curled up.
“Fun.”
The Grade 3 Cursed Spirit stared at the black boning knife that had suddenly appeared in Yasui’s hand, a clear flash of blank confusion passing through its misaligned eyes.
It didn’t possess much intelligence, but it had enough to realize that “manifesting a weapon out of thin air” was definitely abnormal.
Its revolting finger pressed a little harder against the skin of the girl’s neck, drawing a few beads of blood that trickled down her throat.
Then it looked back at Yasui, an explicit warning lingering in those cloudy eyes.
*Drop the weapon.
However, by the time it turned its head back, the only thing remaining in its field of vision was a black shadow already bearing down on its face.
Grade 3 Cursed Spirit: *?*
That doubt didn’t even have time to take shape.
The boning knife had already plunged fully into its body.
The moment the blade made contact with the Cursed Spirit’s flesh, whatever Cursed Energy defense or intangible physique unique to Cursed Spirits meant absolutely nothing in the face of this knife.
Just as fast as the blade was Yasui’s fist.
Working in tandem, the boning knife and his fist triggered the collapse of the Cursed Spirit’s body.
Like paper consumed by fire, it shattered and peeled away from the wound outward.
A light breeze blew, and—hey.
Guess what happened?
Scattered.
Gone.
Yasui continued to admire his knife.
The Grade 3 Cursed Spirit was gone, just like that.
It didn’t even have time to let out a single scream.
Dismissing the boning knife back into the system space, Yasui turned around, bent over, and scooped up the little girl who had fallen onto the ground, still staring blankly.
The girl’s whole body was rigid.
Her tiny hands clutched at his clothes, her eyes wide, looking like she had yet to recover from what just transpired.
Yasui leaned his face close to hers, his lazy Kansai Japanese ending on an unexpectedly pleasant drawl.
“Hey, whose kid are you?
Do you know where your house is?”
The little girl stared blankly at the face leaned in close before her.
This person had long hair tied in a low ponytail resting over his shoulder.
The lines of his brows and eyes weren’t soft, yet because his skin was so pale and his eyelashes so long, he possessed an impossibly stunning, strikingly vivid face, paired with slightly curved purple eyes.
Combined with that lazy demeanor, it was hard to tell for a moment whether he was a big brother or a big sister.
The little girl stared at him for several seconds, her face turning red, bit by bit.
Lowering her eyes, she spoke up timidly, her voice tiny and soft as she gave an address.
Yasui raised an eyebrow upon hearing it.
That place wasn’t anywhere close to here.
What was this brat doing wandering off this far all by herself?
He didn’t pry further, first holding the girl up to size her over.
Then, freeing a hand, he gently brushed away the few strands of blood-stained, water-blue hair by her neck to reveal the wound underneath.
It was scratched open by the Cursed Spirit’s nails—not deep, but the skin was broken, leaking a few drops of blood.
It didn’t look particularly serious.
But since it was caused by a Cursed Spirit, who knew if there might be some nasty infection or mess involved?
Was that ever mentioned in Jujutsu Kaisen?
He hadn’t paid attention, so he didn’t know.
If you don’t know, just ask.
So he called out directly to the system in his mind.
“Quick question: will a wound like this get infected?”
[No infection will occur.]
The system answered crisply in that nauseatingly cute voice, making one constantly want to choke it to death.
Yasui thought for a moment and said, “If you’re lying, your whole family dies.”
System: …
*Are you sick in the head?*
[This system takes full responsibility for everything it says.]
The system’s voice remained nauseating, though it paused for an extremely subtle fraction of a second before appending, [By the way, dear Host.
I don’t have a family.]
“Got it, an orphan.” Yasui’s tone was breezy, as if discussing a trivial matter that needed no second thought.
He was an orphan too.
He was plenty familiar with these things.
System: …
[Orphans don’t work like that…]
“You don’t have human rights, so you don’t fit the definition of an orphan anyway.
Alright, alright.”
While bickering with the system in his head, he spent 0.3 points in the System Store to redeem the items needed to treat the wound—povidone-iodine, cotton swabs, and a small roll of breathable gauze.
Setting the little girl down on a slightly cleaner concrete ledge nearby, he squatted down.
His movements were unexpectedly gentle; he first dipped a cotton swab in povidone-iodine, carefully cleaning around the few bloodstains on her neck before cutting a small piece of gauze to tape over it.
The whole process was quick and quiet.
Meanwhile, the system kept grumbling in his head with things like, “Host, you are truly inhuman, lacking basic human empathy.”
The system was once again completely ignored by him.
Having finished the treatment, he picked the little girl back up and started walking toward the address she had given.
The little girl hugged his neck obediently, her whole face as red as a cooked shrimp.
She didn’t dare hug Yasui too tightly, her breathing light, as if trying to confirm that this embrace was real.
The interaction between the person and the system took place entirely in his mind, so the little girl didn’t hear a single word.
After walking a few steps, Yasui suddenly spoke: “Hey.”
The little girl raised her head a bit: “Mm?”
“Why did you run off to play inside an abandoned building?”
His tone was as casual as chatting.
“And so far away from home, too.”
The little girl froze instantly.
Fiddling with her fingers, she dropped her head, the tips of her ears turning visibly red.
She mumbled for a long while before squeaking out a voice as tiny as a mosquito’s buzz: “I…
I was playing hide-and-seek with my friends.
I thought if I hid further away, they wouldn’t be able to find me…”
“Is that so?” Yasui nodded, his expression looking deeply serious and understanding.
Then he grinned.
“I see.
I’ll make sure your parents give you a good thrashing later.”
Little girl: !
The little girl snapped her head up, her eyes brimming with tears in an instant.
Her tiny hands clutched his clothes, her voice turning frantic in her panic: “Sister…
can we not…?
My mom will really beat me up…”
Normally, her mother never allowed her to play near these unfinished buildings because they were haunted.
Today, she had snuck out on her own.
If her mother found out, getting beaten was an absolute certainty.
Mom hits really hard.
Dad might even beat her too.
“Hehehe, I can’t hear you~”
Yasui turned his head to the side, his chin slightly upturned in a posture as infuriatingly smug as an arrogant cat.
He didn’t bother correcting her mistaken form of address.
Simply out of laziness.
He couldn’t be bothered to correct a four-or-five-year-old child and explain to her why a boy would grow his hair long.
It was too much trouble; better to just let her call him whatever she wanted.
The little girl looked at him aggrievedly, tears welling in her eyes until they finally fell with a *splat*.
Yasui didn’t give a damn about her tears.
Holding the child, he strode down the twilight street with a brisk step, cheerfully humming an unrecognizable tune under his breath.
After humming a section, he looked down at the crying girl in his arms and spoke with a smile, his tone dripping with gloating delight:
“Someone’s gonna get beaten…
Let’s guess who it is~”
The little girl cried even harder, her shoulders shaking as her tears soaked a small patch of the clothes on his shoulder.
“Hahaha…”
LanLi: …you.