“Sure enough, you find this classic scene everywhere.” Shu watched coldly, then activated his Sharingan.
Through the Sharingan, he clearly saw a mass of curse energy coiled around the overweight boy.
It was even denser than what had been inside yesterday’s corpse.
Worse, the energy was already starting to break past the limits of his skin, forming the faint outline of a spiral shell across his back.
“Found him!” Shu turned toward Tsunade.
“See that fat kid getting beaten?
His name is Katayama Norio.
In the future I saw, he’s the first person who transforms into a snail.” “He’s been bullied for years, so his mind is constantly trapped between fear and inferiority.
In a cursed place like Kurouzu-cho, those negative emotions are basically perfect fertilizer for the curse.” “Before long, a hard spiral shell will grow from his back, and his entire body will degenerate into a snail person.
He’ll lose his humanity forever.” Shu narrowed his eyes.
“He’s already showing the early symptoms.” Tsunade frowned.
“A snail person?
That’s seriously disgusting.” With that, she strode toward the bullies.
“Hey, you little pieces of trash.
Had enough fun yet?” The four boys stopped and turned around, openly sizing Tsunade up.
The one in front pointed at her arrogantly.
“Who the hell are you, old lady?
This is a school!
Outsiders should mind their own business.
Get lost!” “Old…
lady?” Tsunade stopped dead.
A vein immediately bulged on her forehead.
“Heh…
Old lady, huh?” A terrifyingly cold laugh escaped her lips.
She vanished from where she stood, appeared in front of them, grabbed two boys by their collars, and casually swung her arms.
Bang!
Bang!
The two sturdy teenagers flew more than ten meters before smashing hard into a brick wall.
Neither managed to get back up.
The remaining two had never seen anything like it.
Their faces turned white, and they fled screaming without a second thought.
Tsunade walked over to Katayama, who was still curled up on the ground, dragged him upright, and pressed him against the wall.
Then she began examining him.
“Still in the early stages.
Easy enough.” Fūinjutsu!
Complex black sealing formulas rapidly spread across Katayama’s back, weaving together over the infected area.
The curse energy was forcibly suppressed, then pulled free from his body and sealed away.
As the curse disappeared, the strange cold dampness surrounding Katayama vanished with it.
His sluggish body gradually returned to normal.
At the same time, a familiar notification sounded.
[Ding!
Reincarnator has successfully saved the key plot character Katayama Norio, altering the original course of the story.] [Reward: 1 D-Rank Side Plot and 1,000 Reward Points.] Hearing the crisp notification in her mind, Tsunade dusted off her hands with satisfaction and smiled.
“Done.
Where’s the next target?” “The next one?” Shu spread his hands.
“The curse is still in its early stages.
It’s not like infected people are lying around everywhere.” “Then what?
We just sit around and wait?” Tsunade sounded almost disappointed.
“Of course not.” Shu shook his head.
“If we don’t know who’ll be infected next, we just keep an eye on Goshima Kirie and Saito Shuichi.” For the next two days, Shu and Tsunade practically revolved around Kirie and Shuichi.
Finally, on the evening of the second day, the curse reached for Kirie.
The sky was growing dark as Kirie and Shuichi walked home from school side by side.
Without warning, a cold wind swept past.
Kirie’s normally smooth hair suddenly began twisting uncontrollably.
Within seconds, it curled into a distorted spiral.
Her hair seemed to develop a mind of its own, whipping wildly through the air.
“H-Help!” By the time Shu and Tsunade arrived, Kirie had already collapsed onto the road.
Her mutated hair had wrapped tightly around her neck and was constricting harder by the second, nearly strangling her.
Her face was turning blue as she desperately clawed at the strands around her throat.
“Kirie!
Let her go!” Shuichi’s eyes went red with panic as he desperately tried to tear the hair away.
But the spiral hair possessed terrifying strength.
With one violent lash, it threw Shuichi straight into a nearby brick wall.
“What a troublesome thing.” Shu pulled a kunai from his pouch as chakra burst beneath his feet.
Body Flicker Technique!
His figure blurred.
In an instant, he appeared directly in front of Kirie.
“Don’t move!” Shu barked and slashed.
Slash!
The kunai flashed through the air.
His movement was fast and precise, cutting Kirie’s spiral hair off cleanly at the roots without touching her scalp.
“Cough!
Cough!” Kirie grabbed her throat and desperately sucked in fresh air.
Yet the severed hair on the ground didn’t die.
It writhed violently like pieces of a snake that had just been cut apart.
“Tch.
That’s disgusting.” Shu’s hands rapidly formed seals.
“Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique!” A blazing fireball erupted from his mouth and engulfed the writhing hair.
An acrid burnt stench filled the air as the cursed strands were reduced to black ash.
[Ding!
Reincarnator has successfully saved the key plot character Goshima Kirie, altering the original course of the story.] [Reward: 1 D-Rank Side Plot and 1,000 Reward Points.] Shu froze.
‘Even the heroine is only worth a D-Rank?’ But after thinking about it, he quickly understood.
Kirie wasn’t supposed to die from this incident anyway.
Even without Shu’s intervention, Shuichi would’ve eventually saved her with a pair of scissors according to the original story.
Saving her early only changed the plot by a relatively small amount.
Still, Shu couldn’t help feeling a little regretful.
Because he’d dealt with Kirie’s hair problem early, the female classmate from the original story had lost the person she was competing against.
Without Kirie’s long hair provoking her jealousy, that girl never developed the same cursed hair mutation.
She had escaped disaster.
Which also meant Shu had lost another potential plot point to farm.
‘That’s the chain reaction you get from changing the story.
Nothing I can do about it.’ After calming the shaken pair, Kirie brought Shu and Tsunade back to her home.
But the moment they stepped through the Goshima family’s front door— “Spirals!
This is the perfect spiral!
Hahaha!” “It’s beautiful!
I’m going to create the most beautiful pottery in the world, covered in the finest spiral patterns!” “I’ll dig up every last bit of soil in this town and fire all of it into spirals!” …