Chapter 62
"Are you done with the dishes?!"
Tsumiki yelled from the living room, and he scowled as he continued swiping the dishes clean while mumbling a reply. He was the dreaded, Toji Fushiguro, the bastard of the Zenin clan, sorcerer killer, and all-around menace, and here he was, forearm-deep in a tub of soapy water, washing dirty plates.
"I didn't get a reply," a menacing voice called out from behind him, and he felt a chill down his spine.
He turned slightly and let out a smile at the overly innocent look on the girl's face. She wasn't fooling anybody, but neither was he.
"Almost."
She nodded at his reply before a more familiar smile spread across her face, her eyes squinting just like her mother used to.
She moved to his side and slipped an apron over her chest, then put on elbow-length rubber gloves before joining him at the sink.
"Come on, I'll help you finish up."
He almost allowed a more natural smile to spread across his face... almost.
Then he turned back to the dishes, and the two of them fell into a relaxing routine, where he washed and passed the dishes to her, and she rinsed and flipped them to dry.
They were like a well-oiled machine. Neither needed any real conversation—just working through the queue of stacked dirty plates on the side. This left Toji wondering how he managed to get himself two perfect children. Even if one wasn't his by blood, she was his by deed.
"Where's Megumi?"
Tsumiki hummed a bit before replying. "He said something about slacking off for the past couple of days and falling behind, so he's been preparing to go to that weird school you enlisted him in. Was that really necessary?"
He didn't slow to a stop as he dearly wished. Tsumiki was perceptive enough to catch up on any slacking from his end. Instead, he allowed the question to bounce around in his head.
Had he really needed to let Megumi go? It was all too easy to say he had been strong-armed due to the deal he made with the little malevolent-eyed Gojo, but the truth was that Megumi deserved more. More than what he had to offer.
His greatest spark, the one attribute that could make him a monster to match the rest of them, was his cursed technique—and good teachers were hard to find among the roving bands of curse users Toji was more familiar with.
"Yes, yes it was."
Tsumiki eyed him for a long second before letting out a defeated sigh. "I guess there's nothing to be done. I was already growing tired of running every time we got word Gojo Satoru was gunning after us. Plus, I guess it's good for Megumi too."
"Huh?" he replied with a raised brow.
"You didn't notice? He seemed spirited and happy and it's more than just about seeing me. When he was packing, it was like he knew what he wanted to do now or was looking forward to seeing someone."
Toji allowed himself to think about it for a few seconds when it suddenly came to him—the pink-haired brat who had shared a room with him.
"I think he made a friend or was it a boyfriend? Some squirt by the name Itakamatsu Yam, or something."
The look Tsumiki directed at him was enough to let him know he must have somehow mangled the name. Yet instead of apologizing, he shrugged his heavy shoulders. It wasn't his fault that men had such boring and drab names.
"A friend..." Tsumiki noted, ignoring his other guess as her voice drifted. "That's nice."
Their pleasant conversation was disrupted by a knock on the door. Not the kitchen door—the main door.
Toji focused. His superhuman senses sharpened as he listened to the two heartbeats just outside.
You could tell a lot about a person just from how steady their heartbeat was—the ease of their breath, the presence or lack thereof of a nervous or impatient tick, like feet tapping against the ground.
All these details, when put together, told a story. A story of lack of fear. A story of overwhelming strength. A story of an absolute monster on par with him. He felt the edge of his lips rise just the slightest in anticipation.
"One of the Gojos is here," he noted as he slowly removed the elbow-high rubber gloves. Tsumiki matched him with rapid movements as she dumped the gloves beside his and ducked, opening the lower kitchen compartment and fiddling with something before her hands finally reappeared holding a shotgun.
He nodded at her. Tsumiki was no sorcerer and as mundane as humanity came, but he had trained her all the same.
She slowly and gently racked it, so it wouldn't make a sound, at least not one that was loud enough to announce the presence of the weapon. Then turned and nodded at him. Still, he raised a brow at her, halfway tempted to just knock her out. There was no training he could ever put her through that would make her anything more than a pest against either one of the two Gojos. But he didn't bother, for one simple reason.
They had knocked.
That the first time they had knocked had resulted in destroying half of a hospital, as well as multiple buildings while costing the city millions of dollars in repairs, was discarded.
So he moved, waving Tsumiki to stay behind as he walked toward the door. Megumi poked his head out of his room the moment Toji got to the hallway, but he waved the boy back and continued his slow, casual walk until he got to the door. Then, without any hesitation, he opened it, revealing the annoying smirk and blue-eyed stare of Satoru Gojo, with a purple-eyed boy standing right behind him.
His least favorite Gojo.
"What do you think about finally getting a job, old man?"
Toji instinctively slammed the door in the white-haired bastard's face the moment he heard the word job. But it was too late. The more annoying Gojo had taken a step forward, and that was enough to keep the door from slamming shut. Toji was left wondering:
Where did his life go so wrong?
...
Toji sat with his legs crossed and his hands folded as he stared at the blonde boy opposite him.
Purple eyes stared back at him.
The tense atmosphere was spoiled by Tsumiki barely containing herself, bouncing on the cushion just to the side of them.
...
"You mentioned a job?"
Tsumiki started with an interrogating tone the moment Gojo Satoru sat down on the cushion offered to him. Not that Toji offered one, but luckily for the tall fucker, his daughter was a nicer person than him.
The blue-eyed sorcerer stared back at the young girl in amusement. "You seem to have recovered well. Toji said something about memory loss or something along those lines."
Tsumiki frowned in response and glanced at Toji, but he waved her along. There was no need to bother hiding things from the Gojo. Whether they liked it or not, for now, they were allied. And while Gojo Satoru was a mediocre teacher, according to Megumi, he was also a powerful sorcerer. His eyes could see into and understand the whole sorcery jargon better than Toji ever could.
Tsumiki turned back to Satoru after getting Toji's approval. She took a deep breath to steady herself before she began to speak. "It's not just memory loss."
That sentence was enough to perk the blue-eyed sorcerer's attention, and he leaned forward, with a hand on his chin.
"Oh?"
Tsumiki squirmed under his focused attention before she continued. "The feel of clothes on my skin has become nauseating, while I find myself instinctively styling my hair differently sometimes."
The more Tsumiki spoke, the further the Gojo leaned forward.
"I know how to make rice balls and how to fold fronds into leaves to create packaging for them. I have… memories of things I never did." She trailed off with her cheeks flushing red, then she noticed that Gojo Satoru was staring at her with a seriousness absent since he arrived.
"Ho, Jiki was right to be concerned. I didn't see it back then because of the flux of cursed energy that came with separating Yorozu from you, and how quickly Toji disappeared with you, but I can see it now."
"Yorozu?" Toji asked from his seat, frowning.
"The woman that was sharing a body with her. She was primed to take it over sometime in the future. She was also a sorcerer from the Heian Era."
Toji frowned at the realization, his body tensing as an unfamiliar feeling of anger began to build.
"Anyway, congratulations, Tsumiki-chan," Satoru started with a clap, all seriousness gone as a wide smile spread across his face. "You're a sorcerer now."
"What?!" The exclamation came from three different places, including Megumi as he poked his head out from behind the door where he had been eavesdropping. He quickly ducked back, realizing his teacher was present, and he'd been playing hooky for days.
The only person who remained silent was the platinum blond-haired boy, who simply stared at them with heavy eyes.
"Calm down, calm down. I got excited and wanted to use that particular phrase, but you're not exactly a sorcerer. I guess calling you a curse user would be more accurate, but that has the whole villain connotation to it. So we'll settle for window just for the sake of it. Even if you're not officially one." The Gojo mused for a bit before a snap of Toji's fingers forced him to refocus.
"Moving on! My theory is that the process of putting you in a coma was to prepare your body for Yorozu's perfect incarnation. We disrupted that process by forcing her out early, but still, some of the foundations had been laid and she woke up in your body when she was getting pulled out.
This means that some parts of her were left behind—memories, skills, mannerisms, quirks, even cursed energy."
Seeing the continued shock on their faces, Satoru continued with a smirk. "But worry not. It's small, even if it's there, a partially imprinted technique and a little cursed energy, which elevates you from the dregs of mundane humanity. But not exactly prime sorcerer caliber yet.
Which means that, like a window, you can see curses, but you don't necessarily have the power to fight back and win. At least not with the cursed energy you have right now, although…"
Satoru trailed off in thought, but Toji had zero intention of keeping quiet.
"This Yorozu, can she come back? Can she possess her again?"
The question dragged Gojo back from his thoughts, and he looked at them. "I doubt it. I killed her myself. A Red to the side of the dome obliterated her body from the waist up." He gave Toji a calculated look before continuing. "Of course, you wouldn't know what that is. I only had Blue when we fought."
Toji bristled at the challenge, his lips twitching upward as his scar twisted the grin into something more malicious.
"We can recti—"
"That's enough." Tsumiki cut him off, giving both of them a scolding look that had no business being on a 17-year-old's face.
Toji leaned back into his seat while Gojo shrugged, raising his hands in mock surrender.
"Fine. But the risk to you now is minimal. The few dregs and shreds of memories and quirks you have shouldn't be enough to incarnate her again."
Tsumiki thought for a moment, then gave a heavy nod. "Okay, I can live with that."
Gojo Satoru clapped again before refocusing on Toji. "Since we're done with that little distraction, I think we should revert back to why I came here in the first place. Namely, I need you to teach Toge here a bit."
Toji raised an eyebrow at that. Then he turned to the purple, dead-eyed kid before turning back to the Gojo. "You want me to teach a sorcerer sorcery?" he remarked, beginning to consider if he hadn't truly left the Gojo with brain damage when he stabbed him in the head.
"Huh, are you stupid? Of course not." Toji felt a blood vessel pop in his head, but one look at Tsumiki forced him to swallow his reply. The Gojo continued with an even wider smirk.
"Toge is a magnificent sorcerer with a better grasp of sorcery than some sorcerers three times his age. No…" It looked like it physically hurt the Gojo to say the next words, but he managed it all the same. "You're… unconventional. It's a mindset gotten from a heavier dose of the mundane life than a regular clan-based sorcerer is ever going to get. The Inumaki are an old clan, which comes with the advantages and disadvantages of a well-known technique. That's where you come in."
Tsumiki picked it up before he did. "You want him to make him just like Toji. A sorcerer killer that fights atypical to the way regular sorcerers fight."
The Gojo frowned, then turned to the purple-eyed boy before continuing. "What I want doesn't matter. It's what he wants that matters. So, what do you say, Fushiguro?"
Toji almost gave a no as a response instinctively, both to spite the blue-eyed bastard and because he had little interest in taking in a student, but the look in Tsumiki's eye changed his mind.
"Fine. I'll do it."
Gojo clapped with a wide smile. "Wonderful. So I'll be leaving you in his hands. You kids have fun."
…
Toji finally let out a grunt before asking, "So what's your name, kid? And what can you do?"
The kid had a paper with him and immediately began to scribble on it. When he was done, he stretched forward to pass it to Toji, but Tsumiki was not having it.
Having been his secretary—and the major reason he was no longer a broke, financial mess due to his overspending and impromptu gambling—she took the paper from the kid's outstretched hands and read through it, her expression brightening the longer she read.
"Cursed speech? That's why you write instead of speaking."
Toji had had enough and snatched the paper out of her hand, reading what the boy had written.
Name: Toge Inumaki
Age: 17
Grade: Semi-Grade 1
Cursed technique: Cursed speech
Skills: Experienced at Hand-to-hand combat, expert cursed energy manipulation, and experienced cursed tool usage.
Record: 2 semi-grade one missions
Toji raised his head and looked at the demure boy once again. "A little too young for a semi-grade one, aren't you?"
The kid shrugged in response and began to move his fingers but stopped abruptly. Hand signs? Well, that was an ingenious way to communicate for someone who couldn't speak. Yet like every language, your partner had to be just as conversant in it to hold a conversation.
"The Inumaki clan are the ones that imbue their words with cursed energy, right?"
"Yes," Megumi answered as he found his way into the living room, a bag over his shoulder as he waved at the seated Inumaki. "Although not everyone gets the inherited technique. Hello, Senpai. Bye-bye, Senpai. Give him hell."
Megumi finished. Toji noticed the way his son made jerky hand signs, lacking the fluency of someone professional. Still, it was more than Toji or Tsumiki were aware of, something that did not escape his underage secretary, who picked up on how Inumaki fired back words with rapid finger movements.
"Hey, Megumi, wait back. You can help with communication!"
"No can do. I'm already far back enough, and my classmates are already going on missions without me. Good luck, though." Megumi fired a peace sign at them halfway past the door, his other on the doorknob as he made his great escape.
Before Tsumiki could fire off a rebuttal, he slammed the door in her face, and considering the patter of footsteps Toji heard, Megumi was hoofing it before his older sister did grievous harm to him.
"He's really grown up this past few months without me, hasn't he?" Tsumiki asked with an overly forlorn look as she stared at the door.
Toji had no answer to her question, so he turned away and focused on the easier battle.
"So what exactly do you want, kid? Why exactly are you here?"
The purple-eyed kid stared at him for long seconds before taking the pen and paper and beginning to scribble once more. When he was done, he passed it to him. With Tsumiki distracted, Toji grabbed it and read.
"I want to kill a certain group of people."
The words were written in kanji that expressed the boy's feelings more than his facial expressions did. Sharp, jerky, and angular writing.
"Huh. Wouldn't have expected it from one of you." With a flick of his wrist, Toji rapidly folded the paper and shoved it into his pocket just as Tsumiki turned to face them.
"I don't know your target, and I don't care. But if you're coming to me, then you'll need to be more than a semi-grade one sorcerer."
Toji thought about it, head tilted as he stared back at the boy.
"I can teach you a lot, but like the bastard said, your cursed technique is your greatest strength and your greatest weakness…"
He trailed off as a memory came to him. "I've killed one of you before. Did you know that? An Inumaki of some small renown."
The boy tensed, his eyes narrowing, but he didn't make any other movements. Meanwhile, Tsumiki slapped him on the arm with a frown on her face.
"Toji!"
He waved her off and continued. "I was called the sorcerer killer, Tsumiki. I've killed a sorcerer from just about all the major clans, even a Gojo. That he refused to stay dead is not my fault. But my point is, the Inumaki was one of the easiest to kill. Do you know why?"
It was a rhetorical question, so he wasn't surprised when he didn't get an answer.
"Simple. U.S. military-grade earmuffs. That was all the preparation I took. And the man was dead in a minute. Which brings us to you. Off the top of my head, there are two major restrictions behind your cursed speech: the strain on your body and its already-known weakness of the words needing to be heard. The second can theoretically be circumvented by the first if you pack so much cursed energy into the words, while the first can be circumvented by learning the reverse cursed technique."
He raised his brow at that, and the boy responded with a shake of his head. Figures. If the boy had already learned RCT, he wouldn't be here.
"What about using your CT in other ways to mitigate the damage while also reinforcing it to get past blockages? It's basically all about sound." Tsumiki intruded enthusiastically, leaning closer to a suddenly nervous Toge. Toji relaxed back into the seat with a smile. Tsumiki was smart—too smart and curious for her own good, and that was his goal from the beginning: to get her invested in the conversation. Not that he needed to make too much effort.
Toge nodded, so she continued.
"Your cursed technique utilizes spoken words, right? And words are basically thoughts transmitted through sound, waves, and vibrations. Have you tried to amplify with cursed energy, not just your words, but the vibrations straight from your vocal cords? Do you think it would put less strain on your body since you're not amplifying the words themselves?"
He could see the moment the idea sank into Toge's head as his purple eyes widened. Tsumiki had always been at the top of her class from the moment she stepped into a school. If there was anyone who could work together with the kid in novel ways to use his CT, it was her.
Toge instantly picked up his pen and paper and rapidly wrote something down before passing it to Tsumiki, who speed-read through it before letting out a laugh.
"That's wonderful. What if we—"
At that point, Toji got to his feet and walked out of the room, a frown settling on his face. Tsumiki was sufficiently distracted now, which should take her mind off Gojo Satoru's words. But Toji hadn't forgotten those ominous words, not even for a second.
As he walked off, his thoughts shifted to what to do about Tsumiki as well as training the kid on how to be a sorcerer killer. That should be fun, he remarked to himself with a dark laugh.