Curse of Ignorance Ch 9

After that ordeal, I was sitting on my bed cross legged and with my eyes closed. What was I doing? I was working on my cursed energy control, as I had planned not too long ago. Instead of trying to achieve more control by twisting the energy within me into more and more complicated knots like I usually do, this time, I was going back to the basics. Making a sphere.

In theory, spheres are pretty simple. Just make an object whose surface is equally distant from your designated center all over. In practice, though, that's pretty hard to achieve. By nature, spheres are perfect objects. If the surface is off by even a little bit, it can't be called a sphere anymore. Basically, it's very easy to make sphere-like objects, but making an actual sphere approaches a level of difficulty so hard that it might well be impossible. There are always points that you can nitpick and point to. That spot over there's too flat, that spot over there is too bulbous, that sort of thing. Sure, as my control progresses, those points grow smaller and smaller, but they still exist.

So, why am I making a sphere? It's because it's a good benchmark. Like I said, a sphere is simple in theory, so the idea came very easily to me when I began to take this "cursed energy control" thing more seriously. I remember how my first attempt at it went. While it wasn't hideously lumpy, it was still decidedly egg-shaped. I've made a couple more attempts at it since, comparing against past attempts every single time. By doing this, I can really prove to myself that I'm improving, motivating me into keeping it up. Today, I'm establishing another baseline for myself. It felt like a good time, considering it was the start of summer break. I'm planning on making use of all that extra time for training, so it'll probably be good to try the sphere again after the break ends.

So there I was, making my sphere. Getting the general shape was quick and easy. I just directed my cursed energy to fill in an imaginary mold in the shape of a sphere. Getting the details right, though, was much harder. This was due to the fact that there was no "mind's eye" for me to inspect the cursed energy inside me with. Instead, my sense for cursed energy is linked to my sense of touch. The cursed energy inside my body elicits tingling sensations, even in places that shouldn't be able to feel tingly, like my brain. When I focus, these sensations resolve in a sense of weightiness, like that part of my body is heavier than it should be. In a way, making a sphere is about as much of an exercise in my cursed energy sensing ability as my cursed energy control. I have to interpret these strange sensations and convert them into useful adjustments to my cursed energy.

I fell into a rhythm. Inspect the sphere. Make a small change. Inspect the sphere. Make a small change. It was meditative. It struck the perfect balance between being mindless enough to clear your mind, while being engaged enough to keep your mind from wandering. Eventually, I reached a point where I felt like I hit my limit. Every time I tried to make one change, a fix I had done elsewhere undid itself.

I let the sphere collapse into a less well-defined blob. With my latest benchmark set, it was time to move on to the actual training. Holding my blob of cursed energy in place, I siphoned off another bit of cursed energy from the whirlpool in my torso.

At first, I moved the two blobs of cursed energy in synchronicity. When one blob moved, the other blob moved. When one stopped, the other stopped. When one went up, the other went up. And so on. Then, I had them act like mirrors of each other. They still both moved and stopped at the same time, but instead, when one went left, the other went right. When one went forward, the other moved back. And so on. Those were pretty easy, so I moved on to making the two blob's movements as unrelated when possible. They stopped and started independent of each other. While one blob moved in a spiral, the other zigzagged. When one blob traced a figure eight, the other took random ninety-degree turns every half a second. This was where the real difficulty lied. The movement of my cursed energy was a slow, hesitant thing. It was a far cry from the smooth, confident motions that I was envisioning inside my head. There were many moments where I found that I had unwittingly synchronized my blobs, and now I had two blobs moving in spirals or figure eights or whatever other pattern I came up with.

I'm not really the type of guy who is able to multitask, not even the kind where you're not actually doing two things at once, just switching your focus rapidly between both tasks. I don't even think I can do the things I'm trying to do with my cursed energy using my hands, which should be more intuitive.

Still, this training was absolutely necessary. I needed to be able to multitask with cursed energy, as the fight with the curse had shown me. To not be able to multitask was almost akin to fighting with only one hand. Someone else might look at my fight and think that my multitasking ability is fine. That since I was able to reinforce both my hand and my knee at the same time, that's good enough. I see it completely differently. That wasn't really multitasking. At that time, I was maintaining the position of the cursed energy in my hand, while focusing on moving cursed energy to my knee. That's barely any different from just having one bit of cursed energy that I'm trying to control. The effort required to maintain the position of cursed energy is negligible. What I'm aiming for is real, actual multitasking. Multiple bits of cursed energy moving at the same time, taking entirely different paths. After all, I'm not just going to be reinforcing my limbs in the future. I'll also have to use cursed energy to activate my innate curse technique, too, once that decides to finally manifest itself. When that time comes, I'm going to need to be used to moving multiple bits of cursed energy in tandem in order to be able to fight effectively.

I continued to train, moving my cursed energy this way and that. When it began feeling like I was starting to train myself to move my cursed energy in pre-set patterns instead of actually working towards better multitasking, I moved on to imagining different scenarios in a fight where I would need multitasking, and tried acting accordingly. For example, what if I need to reinforce my left forearm in order to deflect a hit and my right hand in order to counterattack, but I currently only have a single bit of cursed energy separated out? I acted the scenario out, working to split off a bit of cursed energy from the central swirling mass, while simultaneously urging the already detached bit to go and reinforce my arm. The first time, I was too occupied with separating and directing the second bit of cursed energy, making it so the original bit of cursed energy only barely made it past my shoulder before the imaginary hit connected. The second time, I overcorrected, with the original bit of cursed energy making it in time to block the hit, but with the second nowhere near by right hand. I tried again and again, improving incrementally until I reached a plateau. At that point, I stopped in order to take a break. I had been focusing really hard for a long time.

I flopped down onto my bed and allowed my mind to wander. Almost inevitably, my thoughts were drawn to the fight with the curse. What could I have done better? Should I have fought it in the first place? I made a snap decision, but impulsive decisions usually aren't smart decisions. I even compounded the issue by telling impulsive lies to both my mom and Mrs. Fujita. They're paper thin, and any amount of thought might reveal the deception, deepening suspicion.

It was during this period in which I was contemplating my actions that I suddenly had a very good idea. Earlier, I thought that I had no way to contact the jujutsu school. I just had the realization that this wasn't necessarily true. While I was right that there was no way to directly contact the jujutsu school, there was an avenue for indirect contact that I did not consider before.

Mr. Amano.

He was the one that came to my door and recruited me into the jujutsu school in the first place. Since he is capable of acting as their representative, he'll surely be able to contact them in some way. Heck, I've been kind of tunnel visioning on the jujutsu school as the solution to my problems. Maybe Mr. Amano would be able to solve the problem entirely by himself.

The thing that makes this idea so good is that I actually have a way to contact Mr. Amano. Or at least, I think I do. Back when my parents weren't really sure about the whole situation, Mr. Amano gave us his business card. We used the information on that card to call Mr. Amano twice, once in order to arrange a tour of the school, and another time in order to confirm my attendance at the jujutsu school. This business card is the key. As long as that business card is still here, then I'm set. All I needed to do was hope that it hasn't been thrown in the trash or something in the meantime between then and now.

I didn't know exactly where the business card was, but I did have a good idea on where to look first. Within the living room of our house, there was a coffee table that isn't really used for coffee. Instead, it is used as a place to dump a lot of different things. Free pens from work, the latest stack of envelopes from the mail, and so on. It is very likely that the business card has been dumped at that very spot instead of being thrown in the trash, since it "could be useful later".

With this destination in mind, I made my way out of my room and down the stairs. I was quick, but didn't rush. While the fact that suspicion has possibly been raised in Mrs. Fujita is important, it wasn't urgent. Five seconds wasn't going to be the difference between the maintenance of the status quo and complete societal upheaval due to the reveal of the existence of the supernatural.

I reached my destination. I gave the surface of the coffee table a once over. The cup full of pens can be safely ignored, as well as the tin of cookies. That stack over there looks to just be envelopes, so that can be checked later. My attention turned to the messy stack of loose paper. This seemed to be the most likely spot for the business card.

I took a seat on the sofa next to the coffee table and moved the stack of papers onto my lap. I briefly leafed through it, skipping over large chunks at a time in order to get a general idea of the state of things. It seems like it's in reverse chronological order, which is good. I flipped over the entire stack in order to get a look at the paper that was on the bottom. I went through it one by one this time, until I found something with a date on it. It was from a couple of months ago, so before we even decided that I was going to jujutsu school. This is good. At the very least, there's going to be a chance that the business card is in here, so I'm not wasting my time.

I started skipping through the stack of paper again, looking for the month that we received the card. I overshot, and was forced to backtrack more carefully until I finally reached the correct month. I transitioned to going through the papers one by one, keeping an eye out for anything smaller than a full sheet of paper. It didn't take too much longer until I actually found it. The business card. I took it out, then returned the rest of the papers to where they were previously.

Now all I needed to do was make the call. There was no better time to do it than now. My parents were out buying enough groceries to last the next week, so I had the entire house to myself. I wouldn't have another good chance to talk about curses without the risk of being overheard for a while.

I went to use our landline telephone. I punched in the phone number on the card and waited. One ring. Two rings. Three rings. A click.

"Hello? This is Amano Ken. Who am I speaking to?" A warm, almost comforting voice came through the phone.

I decided to cut right to the chase. "I fought a curse that was feeding on my neighbor, and I think that she's suspicious of me now."

The voice that was previously so warm instantly turned cold. "Explain. Now."

Hearing this sudden shift for the second time, I couldn't help but dislike Mr. Amano. It wasn't that he seemed to be inherently unfriendly, though that did play a part in my dislike. No, it was the fact that he seemingly chose to lie about his whole personality. And for what? To lure children into a life of danger? The worst part of it all was that he was good at it. Even though I already witnessed what lies beneath the "customer service" mask, I instantly forgot about it when I heard that friendly voice come through the phone. With that kind of acting ability, I wouldn't be surprised if this unfriendly personality was also fake. It makes me want to doubt everything out of paranoia. What is real? What is fake? I didn't like this feeling.

Still, I pushed through the feelings of dislike in order to explain the events that led me to call. Throughout the whole explanation, the other end of the phone call was completely silent, to the point where I was wondering if Mr. Amano hung up without me noticing. It was only when I explained the hasty lies I told to both Mrs. Fujita and my mom in the aftermath, did I finally hear some feedback.

"Hahhh." It was a sigh with a distinctly frustrated edge to it. "You just had to go and create more work for me, didn't you? All of this just because of a curse that sounds like it isn't even grade four?"

Less than grade four. Mr. Amano thought that the curse was less than grade four, the lowest official grade in the grading system used by jujutsu sorcerers. Meaning that anyone with the barest modicum of training in jujutsu sorcery would be able to kill that curse. Hearing this complaint, I couldn't help but feel defensive. It felt like Mr. Amano was judging me for overreacting. That wasn't fair though! Of course with the information that I told him, you could figure out that the curse wasn't that dangerous. But the issue was, at the time, I didn't have that information. I risked my life for it.

The grades were invented in order to have a system for figuring out which sorcerers get sent to which missions. Grade four sorcerers will be able to handle grade four curses, grade three sorcerers will be able to handle grade three curses, and so on. A curse's grade is a measure of how dangerous it is. The problem is, the only surefire way to actually measure danger is for someone to get hurt. Sure, you can try to get a general idea of a curse's grade using metrics such as the amount of cursed energy and the size of the curse, but there were some problems with that. The first problem is that I can't sense cursed energy that's not in my body yet. I'm sure I will gain that ability as I continue to improve, but right now, it's not an option. So, that method is out. Second, size can vary a lot within a grade ranking. There have been many occasions where a curse is much larger or much smaller than the average for their grade. So, that's not an absolutely reliable indicator.

I really had no way to tell if the curse was a danger or not, so I did what I thought was best at the time. This is what I wanted to argue, in such a well-structured and persuasive manner that Mr. Amano had no choice but to agree. I opened my mouth in order to fight back at the implied judgment I heard in Mr. Amano's words. "I—"

But Mr. Amano continued to speak, steamrolling over what turned out to be a feeble attempt at protest. "I don't really know what you expect me to do about this. I'm not a miracle worker, you know? Normally, we try to prevent this kind of thing from happening in the first place by having people put up Curtains before fighting."

I felt my heart begin to sink as I registered the words coming through the phone. I barely spared any thought to wonder about what a "Curtain" was. Instead, all of my thoughts were focused on how, from the way that Mr. Amano was speaking, it almost seemed like… there was nothing he could do to solve this?

After a short pause, Mr. Amano's voice came through the phone's speaker again. "You're lucky that the suspicion seems light. If it were stronger, then there really would have been nothing that could be done. Expect someone to come by soon."

A click, then a repeated low tone signaling the end of the call. Where before my heart felt like it was sinking, it now felt like it was swelling with hope. My chest hurt from the mood whiplash. Someone is coming by soon? Someone… that's not him? That's what he was getting at before? That while he couldn't do anything to solve it, someone else can? This guy…. I felt my dislike of him grow even stronger.