Me: No More Fast Updates

Also Me, because I have no consistency: Updates days later.

So.

Shoko's grandfather is a dick.

It's only been about five seconds, and that much is already immediately clear. Percy can tell that it's not just an off day or bad circumstances behind it - not just from the arrogant way he seems to dismiss the four of them in favor of glaring at Shoko, and not even from the insult he's just thrown in her face in front of all of them.

It's the look in his eyes that clinches it - anger and contempt, bordering on hate.

It raises Percy's hackles at once, and Suguru stiffens at his side. Satoru's posture doesn't change much, but he's paying just as much attention as either of them.

"'Recalcitrent wretch', huh?" Shoko says dryly, but there's no inflection in the flatness of her voice. Not an iota. "The first time you see me in years and that's what you come up with? Classy."

Kiyohira's nostrils flare with his outrage.

"Insolent-!"

"Father," The woman at his side interrupts, which is really for the best because Percy is one word more away from punching the guy in the mouth and moving on, no backstory or explanation needed. "This is not the best time for-"

"Do not interrupt me, daughter!" The old man thunders and the woman falls silent and lowers her head. He turns back to stare at Shoko, and Percy's cursed energy is already surging under his skin, ready to explode out in a wave, when he abruptly turns away. "But very well."

The sudden segue throws them all for a loop, and Percy finds himself blinking in surprise when Kiyohira begins to march up the path to main house with a furious gait, leaving the four of them and his flustered daughter behind.

"Apologies." The poor woman bows to them and gestures to Shoji-sensei first. "If you would follow me?"

Shoko snorts humourlessly "Lead the way, Kazuha-obasan"

Oh. The pieces click into place.

That's why she looks so familiar - This is Shoko's aunt.

Still on edge and more than a little bewildered in the worst of ways, the five of them end up following the clan head's daughter into their home.

It's a large, looming kind of place. All traditional and expressively opulent, with tatami floors and engraved shogi doors and a hundred other subtle construction details that someone who was even mildly interested in internal decor would have probably found fascinating, but to Percy, it just seemed excessive.

He'd never be comfortable living like this.

"In here."

They step into a wide, long-stretching room, lit by torches that bathe it in a dull, orange glow. There are talismans and sigils rife with sealing script hanging down from the rafters and candle holders, and the air is rich with the scent of incense, candlewax, and something else that was sharply unpleasant - to say nothing of the faintly perceptible weight of cursed energy.

Kiyohira is already in there and waiting for them, and he waves an impatient hand as they catch sight of him.

"Behold - your mission."

On the ground before them are six sorcerers of varying ages. The youngest of them is probably only a few years older than Percy and his friends, but the oldest looks like he could give Kiyohira a run for his money in the age department, and all of them are pale and sallow-faced - unnaturally so.

If their skin looked any more unhealthy, Percy couldn't honestly say that he'd be able to tell it apart from the washi paper Yaga likes to keep stocked in his office.

"Kiyohira-sama." Shoji-sensei steps in carefully, drawing the old man's attention. "Perhaps it would be best if you were to explain the situation at hand."

"Finally," Satoru mutters boredly, and their sensei's fingers twitch like he desperately considers turning around to silence him but thinks better of it. It's Suguru who ends up driving an elbow into his side and clearing his throat pointedly.

Franky, Percy wouldn't have bothered.

"These are six of our clan's active sorcerers." It's Kazuha who steps in to explain hurriedly, eyes flickering between Satoru and Kiyohira like she's afraid the old man will blow a gasket if he hears Satoru's increasingly annoyed muttering - which would only end horribly for him, but oh well. "They have been reduced to this state for well over a week now. A strange residual of cursed energy lingers on them, some manner of effect we've not seen before, and any attempt to exorcise it and awaken them has been met with failure."

The woman wrings her hands nervously, gesturing to the closest first.

"We continue to care for them in their... present condition, but they are wasting away. It was our hope that Sho-"

She pauses, her eyes closing heavily. Shoko doesn't so much as twitch.

"- that my niece could attempt to waken them with her reverse-cursed technique."

"I see."

Shoji-sensi nods slowly and turns to Shoko.

"Well, Ieri-san?" He asks gently, as if wary of setting her off.

Scratch that. He's definitely wary of setting her off, that much is obvious.

Their sensei isn't an idiot - none of them have missed the rising tension in the room, from Kiyohira's disdain to Kazuha's fretful panic and Shoko's apparent apathy to it all.

"Yeah, sure."

Shoko's voice would be agreeable, but there's something in the way she deliberately pauses and turns to stare at her grandfather. Whatever it is he sees there has the old man coldly raising his chin and staring down his nose at her in a way that has Percy's urge to punch him in the face growing exponentially.

Except his classmate - who still doesn't know him wholly but clearly knows him enough - turns to stare at him pointedly and Percy realizes without her needing to say a word that she wouldn't appreciate the effort, no matter how entirely deserved it would be.

Fine.

He forces his jaw to unclench as Shoko kneels down beside the sorcerer nearest to her, a middle-aged man with short-cropped hair, and places a hand on his forehead.

"Let's get this over with."

There's a swelling in the air as Shoko's cursed energy does something, and then her hands light up with a pale, ghostly white glow. Percy feels his anger dim a little in place of a little reluctant fascination.

There's no visible effect that he can see beyond the muted light show, but he already knows that what's happening is no less impressive for it.

Reverse-used technique.Positive energy.

Being able to heal others was such an incredible power. Once upon a time, he would have killed to be able do to the same- heck, he still would.

Finding out that water doesn't heal him the way it once did a lifetime ago had been one hell of a rude awakening there.

He's distracted from that frustrating line of thought when Shoko frowns. The sorcerer she's tending to hasn't shown anything in the way of a reaction, but she must be getting something because she raises her free hand and presses it against his chest, the glow slipping past the blankets and the coverings over him and seeping into his flesh.

The minutes drag on.

"Well?" Kiyohira demands, arms folded across his chest. His tone is utterly dismissive as he looks down at Shoko in a way that is just terrible for Percy's self-control and his future health prospects.

Shoko frowns in return, not looking up from her work.

"It's strange. My energy is doing something, but it's not affecting him." her frown deepens. "It's like I'm healing a wound that's not even there."

"And what exactly is that supposed to-?"

And that's when the sorcerer's eyes snap open and he shoots up with a horrible, agonised scream.

...

Half an hour later, Kazuha ends up guiding the five of them to the guest house across the estate, bowing as she stops before the door.

"Allow me to apologize for the circumstances-"

"Please, Kazuha-san, there's no need-"

While Shoji-sensei busies himself reassuring the woman that none of them have taken offence - and they have, for reasons that are plenty obvious - Percy exchanges pointed looks with Satoru and Suguru.

The three of them none too subtly turn to Shoko, who seems content to ignore them and the rest of the world with all the apparent patience of a saint.

Honestly, it's a little disturbing.

Then again, what else was new tonight?

After the sorcerer - Kenji-san, apparently - had woken up, things had descended into chaos very quickly.

The man had been hysterical, screaming and wailing and clawing at his face in such a deranged panic that he'd nearly gouged out his owneyesbefore Shoji-sensei had restrained him.

Even then, he'd kept roaring at the top of his lungs and thrashing in their sensei's hold like an animal fighting for its life.

"She's coming! Gods help us, she's coming!"

Whatever that had meant - and it was nothing good, hysterical delusion or no - no one could tell. Eventually, Shoji-sensei had needed to knock him out because he'd bitten threw the inside of his cheek, clean through his tongue and started spewing blood everywhere.

It was exactly as ugly a scene as it sounded, and Kiyohira had ended up storming off in an unimpressively impotent rage, furious at the state of his clansman and the complete lack of rhyme or reason for his breakdown.

The fact that he didn't even thank Shoko for staying behind to heal the damage the man had done to himself meant that his score with Percy was well into the negative triple digits by now, and he had a pretty good feeling it was going to sink even lower before all was said and done.

"Shoko." All of them turn to stare at Kazuha, and the woman looks like she's about to quail at the attention even as she tries to focus solely on her niece. "If you wish... If you'd like to... I can prepare a room in the main wing-"

"No need. I still remember where my old room is." Shoko raises an eyebrow. "Unless you've had it boarded up or converted into a storage closet or something? I wouldn't be surprised."

Kazuha flinches like she's been stabbed.

"No. It... it remains as you left it."

There's a lot to unpack there, but Shoko doesn't hesitate to leave it at that.

"Great. See you all in the morning."

Then she whirls on the spot and marches off into the night without a single glance back.

"Well," Satoru says, voice eerily cheerfully in the silence that follows. "I think that went well."

Suguru closes his eyes. "Satoru..."

"What?"

They both turn to glare at him.

"Just... get some rest." Shoji-sensei sighs tiredly in their general direction, before turning back to Kazuha. "I'd like to ask you some questions regarding this mission, if it's no trouble at all?"

The woman hesitates before she nods slowly.

"As you wish."

Percy gets the sense that none of them will be sleeping well tonight.

...

The next morning is a tense affair that kicks off right as the sun rises.

Before Kazuha or one of her comes to invite them over to breakfast, Shoji-sensei herds the three of them into a conversation. Percy takes one look at him and blanches.

"No, seriously, did you get any sleep last night?"

His teacher regards him with a dead gaze and eyebags that have eyebags.

"As a matter of fact, Jackson-san, I didnot." He looks at them gravely. "We have our work cut out for us. Kiyohira-sama did not provide ample information when he filed the mission request. It's more than just six sorcerors who've been incapacitated by this... effect."

Suguru frowns. "It's bad, isn't it?"

"Very much so. There have been reports of civilians from the village exhibiting the same symptoms - dozens at least, and likely more. There's also been a string of disappearances and an excess of third and second-grade curses congregating and sowing chaos among the civilians who aren't cursed by this technique - if it even is that."

"It's something like that." Satoru agrees, startling them all. "I can't tell what it is, but my eyes can see foreign cursed energy just fine and the stuff that was inside all six of those sorcerers definitely came from the same source."

Percy turns to stare at him. "You couldn't say anything yesterday?"

Satoru shrugs. "Would it have made a difference?"

... Probably not, actually. Not if they still didn't know what was causing this.

Shoji-sensei seems to agree.

"We need to investigate this further. The Karasu clan's attempts to handle this situation have been..." Shoji-sensei seems to struggle to find the right word, before sighing in defeat. "Utterly abysmal."

"If things are so bad, why not call people in sooner?" Suguru asks in disbelief. "Why did they wait so long to ask for help?"

Satoru rolls his eyes.

"Isn't it obvious? Pride. They kept deluding themselves into thinking they could handle it like total idiots until it blew up in their faces and they realized that they couldn't. I'm guessing something big must have happened, more than just that handful sorcerers dropping like flies, right?"

"Yes." They all turn to stare at their teacher expectantly. "Karasu Kota, the heir to the clan, has fallen under the same affliction. He's being attended to in a separate sealing chamber."

Satoru snorts. "That tracks."

Shoji-sensei gives him a look that Percy thinks is meant to be stern but comes out exhausted instead.

"He's two years younger than you all - only a child."

Fair enough, but it still makes an icky kind of sense.

Civilians were acceptable casualties. Sorcerers were a much bigger problem, but the heir to the clan himself?

Absolute disaster - it's no wonder why Kiyohira had momentarily swallowed his pride and called for help.

... Percy hates politics.

"Regardless of the circumstances, we must begin. Gojo-san and Geto-san, you'll be coming with me. We need to look into the abundance of curses in the village proper. Jackson-san?"

Percy blinks in surprise.

"Yes, sensei?"

"Find Ieri-san." Shoji-sensei smiles wearily. "I have a feeling that leaving her on her lonesome wouldn't be in anyone's best interests."

...

In the end, Percy manages to find Shoko through sheer dumb luck.

He catches sight of her marching across the grounds as he makes his way up to the main house, and he bolts in pursuit.

"Oi, Shoko!"

She glances, spares him a look and what might be a muttered greeting, and then turns right back around and continues marching.

She probably wants to be left alone.

He still ends up following her regardless, because the one thing he does best besides fighting is ignoring any potential good decisions in favor of gut instincts and split-second impulses, and then working his way out through whatever fallout he inevitably lands in next.

Besides, what was the worst that could happen?

...

By the time they stop walking, Shoko's led them far out of the Karasu clan estate and deep into the cedar forest that Percy had spotted a glimpse of the day before.

They walk most of the way in companionable - or something close to it - silence, and that doesn't change until they step into a grassy clearing and Percy finds himself staring at the sight in front of him.

It's a small, stone path, leading to a well-weathered torii gate that looks positively ancient, with a pair of Komainu lion sculptures placed on either side of it. Beyond them, a set of sight stone steps paved the way into a small, aged shrine that was only just large enough to let one person step through and looked like one strong breeze away from collapsing.

"Wow." Percy breathes lowly.

He's not much for religion in this second life - which is endlessly hilarious whenever he stops to think about it - but there's still an air to this place that has him instinctively sitting up and paying attention.

To what, he's not exactly sure.

Shoko doesn't have the same reaction.

She marches right up to the tori gate and pauses, before continuing past it. She doesn't go into the shrine, though.

Instead, she climbs the stairs and turns to sit down on the top step. Her hands go into the pockets of her overcoat, and she whips out her pack of cigarettes and her lighter.

"Shoko..."

"What?" She stares up at him as he moves past the torri gate and takes a seat next to her, eyeing "You're not going to tell me not to smoke, are you?"

"Nah." There's a time and a place, after all, and this is neither. "I was going to ask if you were okay."

"I'm fine." She lights a cigarette and takes a long, steadying puff, exhaling heavily after catching sight of Percy's skeptical look. "Completely fine. Why wouldn't I be?"

"The grandpa from hell, maybe?"

She chokes on a cloud of smoke at that and then devolves into startled laughter.

"Fair enough." She agrees.

There's a pause.

"You're not going to ask what the story is?"

Percy shakes his head.

"I don't care."

She raises a brow.

"Really," Percy stresses the word, turning to look at her wholly. He doesn't want her to doubt him here. "I just about care about you. If you want to talk about it, great. If you want to ignore it and just sit out here, that's good too. So long as you're good, I am too."

He's not going to lie and say he's not curious, but in the long run, he doesn't trulycare - So long as Shoko isn't making a bigger deal of it , he wouldn't either - though he was still liable to drop-kick her grandfather if it came down to it, but that was a whole other can of worms.

Shoko looks at him for a long minute, seemingly considering that.

"You actually mean that, don't you?" she says at last.

He shrugs, and she gives him a half-hearted glare.

"You are sickeningly sincere."

"I am?"

"You are, and it's gross."

"Ah. That's bad?"

"You should feel bad."

"Okay, I do."

"Good. I'm glad."

They nod to each other very seriously.

Then Shoko's lips twitch, and they both start snickering.

When they're done, the air feels a little lighter. Shoko leans back a little and backs in the sunlight, eyes going half-lidded for a little while.

Percy stares, just a little, and wonders if that's it.

"This was my mother's favorite spot when we lived here, you know?" She offers conversationally, staring up at the torri gate in front of them. "Her place of 'ungrudging peace', whatever that nonsense is supposed to mean. Figures that I'd end up digging history up here of all places."

Another beat passes.

"It's not much of a happy story, but I guess you've already picked up on that." She begins out of the blue, taking another shot of her cigarette before fixing her gaze somewhere along the tree line ahead of them. "My father was the old man's heir. Big-shot clan heir of a not-so-big-shot clan. He met my mother in Kyoto, during the Ubon festival some seventeen years back. They went on a mission together, got along well, blah blah blah, and they ended up getting hitched."

She inhaled lightly.

"They moved back here when she got pregnant - the old man was thrilled, apparently, and gave them just about everything they could have wanted. And everything was sunshine and rainbows for a good little while."

"And then something went wrong."

"Yeah." Shoko smiles sardonically. "I was born."

Percy feels something in his stomach drop straight down.

"See, sorcery clans tend to almost always favor male heirs. My being born a girl really threw a wrench into my grandfather's dreams, and my father wasn't exactly thrilled, either."

"Shoko, that's absolute crap."

"I know that, but they didn't." She shrugs in 'what-can-you-do?" kind of way. Percy immediately hates it. "Still, I think I would have gotten away with that terrible crime if things had been a little different. I had good cursed energy reserves - nothing like you on your worst day, you absolute freak, but enough to make put up a good showing against the rest of us normal people."

"But..."

"But I didn't inherit an innate technique. Not everyone has one, you know? And my birth was difficult, so my mother had trouble getting pregnant again." Another puff of cigarette smoke rises up between them. "I still remember the collective meltdown that happened when all that came out. Lots of yelling, lots of broken furniture - it was all very dramatic. When it was over, so was my stint as the heir's heir. My grandfather stripped the title from my father and adopted some kid who's related to us by some shared ancestor six generations back as his heir."

Percy startles. "Kota, right?"

Shoko looks surprised at the name drop, so he tells her about the conversation with Shoji-sensei. By the time he's done speaking, she's laughing.

It's not happy laughter.

"So it took the precious heir being put at risk for the old bastard to remember me. And when I do arrive, he doesn't even let me see him-probably afraid I'd screw up and screw him out of his golden goose." She snorts and looks away, "Figures. Yeah, that's the brat. I've never even met him, but he's male, he's got the cursed energy to be a sorcerer and he's inherited an old, powerful technique. 'Divine flame' or some other pretentious crap like that. In my grandfather's eyes, he was the perfect backup plan"

Percy finds himself staring again.

He opens his mouth, closes it, then tries again a second later in a distinctly strangled tone.

"That's it? That's why the old bastard hates you?"

Of all the stupid, spineless-!

Shoko laughs again, in the same hollow, empty way.

"He never needed a better reason. Especially after my father raged about his lost position and moved us to Tokyo. Then he left us there."

"...What?"

A second after he asks, he thinks that he might not want to know.

Shoko tells him anyway.

"My father left us. He blamed my mother for not giving him a son and he blamed me for existing as a failure, I think, so he up and left. Kazuha-obasan was the only one from his side of the family who kept in touch and came to visit. Well," She raises her head and thinks aloud. "At least until I was twelve, and I figured out the reverse-cursed technique. Then my grandfather started sending letters to, and I quote, 'discuss the possibility of a betrothal'."

Percy chokes.

"He tried to get you married?"

"Probably? To his little chosen heir, I think." She looks amused by the way he splutters helplessly. "I wasn't paying attention, and my mother refused anyway. That's why I'm the 'recalcitrant wretch', if you were wondering."

How she manages to sound so nonchalant as she says it, Percy doesn't know. It takes effort to lower his voice to a reasonable octave when he goes to speak again.

"And what did your father say?"

"He never heard. He spent all the years after we moved to Tokyo trying to win back his heirship by becoming a great sorcerer, and he ended up getting his face bitten off going after a grade-one solo a few months before my tenth birthday."

When and where in the unholy hell does this story end?!

Percy tries to keep his internal screaming off his face, really he does, but something must slip past anyway because Shoko laughs wryly.

"It is pretty bad, isn't it?"

Bad doesn't cover it.

Percy's not often lost for words or regretful - he almost never shuts up and he's the type to own his mistakes so completely they stop being mistakes and start becoming dots in the rearview mirror, actually - but he's got nothing to say and 'regretful' doesn't even begin to describe how miserable he feels after listening to this utter freaking tragedy of a story.

He's also feeling more than a little murderous and is liable to stab her grandfather the next time he sees him - which should have all kinds of problematic downsides in the long term, but honestly, he's not seeing very many at the moment.

Luckily, he doesn't get a chance to voice any of this.

There's a change in the air, a sudden pressure that wasn't there a moment before, and a figure runs out into the clearing in front of them.

It's Kazoha-san, and she's a sight.

Her hair is strewn wildly, her breaths are heaving and painful, and her kimono is littered with dirt stains and tears like she'd just taken a tumble across the forest floor as she ran.

Percy can feel Shoko's confusion at the sight.

"What-?"

Kazuha catches sight of them abruptly, and her eyes well up with panicked tears.

"Curse-!" She manages to spit out, and then the tree line behind her explodes as the biggest reptile Percy has ever seen erupts out of it and charges at them with a bloodcurdling roar.

...

Shoko's childhood in a nutshell:

/Ao0RGFK/

Also, ShokoandPercy internally when her tragic backstory is interrupted by the plot:

VQqqmxI/

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