Curse of Ignorance Ch 8

For the first time in a while, I stood at the gate that marked the entrance to the complex of buildings that was the jujutsu school. Around me, a smattering of students of various ages stood here for the same reason that I was. They were waiting for their parents to pick them up.

Up until this point, I had seen a couple parents come and go, leaving with their kid in tow, having the usual inane conversation with them. How have you been? Have you been learning a lot? Have you been eating well? The typical questions that you ask to schoolchildren you haven't seen in a while.

You may be wondering why parents are coming to pick us up. Well, to my parents, and to the parents of the kids standing around with me, this school is a normal school. They don't know about curses, about sorcery, about any of it. And normal schools have summer breaks.

Yep, that's right, it's summer! Trust me, I was surprised too, to learn that so much time has gone by. I guess that's what happens when all the weeks are pretty similar, without any special events to make them stand out. Just wake up, study, train, eat, sleep, repeat. They just all kind of blur together into one big blob of existence.

Standing here waiting has me thinking about the outside, which I haven't done in a while. Lately, my focus has just been training and training and training. All for the sake of my future self's survival. Now, with home practically in reach, I'm feeling strangely nostalgic. Is it weird to be nostalgic for things that you've only been separated from for a few months? Even though living at the base of a mountain is very peaceful and idyllic and all that, I've just been hit by a sudden longing for the city. What does that say about me? Does it even say anything at all?

Before I could sink even deeper into my introspective mood. I heard my name being called.

"Kei!"

Sure enough, when I looked past the gate and into the world beyond, my parents were there, walking along the path. Mom was waving to get my attention while calling my name. When she saw that she grabbed my attention, she picked up the pace, speed walking over to where I was standing. Dad hung back, keeping a more relaxed speed.

When Mom reached me, she immediately wrapped me in a hug, before holding me out at arms' distance in order to inspect me thoroughly.

"Kei! How have you been? You don't send letters often enough! You've grown so tall!"

All this and more came flying out of Mom's mouth, without any room for me to interject or respond. It was like all the things she wanted to say to me within the past few months have been stored up for this very moment.

Dad finally reached where the two of us stood with his ambling pace, giving me a light pat on the back and giving me a simple, "It's been a while".

I felt a smile tug on my lips without any conscious input. I think that I missed my parents much more than I realized.


I woke up on my first day of summer vacation surprisingly relaxed. There was no feeling of disorientation at waking up in the room different from the one that I had grown used to. It was just the gentle stream of sunlight through the curtains brightening up the room and a gradual transition to consciousness.

I stood up and picked the covers up off the floor, where I must have kicked them off in my sleep, and piled them onto the bed haphazardly. Exiting my bedroom and walking down the hall, I poked my head into my parents' bedroom. It was the weekend, so they were probably still sound asleep. I was immediately greeted by the sight of the still forms of my parents snoring away, validating my guess. I decided to let them sleep and went to brush my teeth.

As I did, I planned out my day. At the very least, I had to keep up both my physical training and my sorcery training. I may be away from the school for summer vacation, but that doesn't mean that all students are. Many of the students of the jujutsu school are orphans with no parents or guardians to deceive, or children of sorcery families. They have no need to maintain the guise of being students at a normal school, and thus, are staying behind. They are bound to continue their learning and training, so I have to do so as well in order to keep up.

The good side to this situation, though, is that there is no obligation to spend hours of my time on academic stuff. There was some summer homework, but I could just pick a day to do it and bang it out in a couple hours, no problem. This means that I had a lot of freed up time, time that I could spend on training. This makes it possible for me to not only keep pace with everyone else back at the jujutsu school, but to surpass them in growth rate.

Unfortunately, I wasn't allowed to bring any of the books that I borrowed from the library or any of my personal notes home. It was deemed too risky, as having that kind of stuff at home is just asking for my parents to stumble upon it and have the supernatural side of the world exposed for everyone to see. Jujutsu society did not exist for so long in secret due to a lack of caution. They are very strict about controlling all possible vectors for spreading information about the jujutsu world.

So, my options for training are more limited than usual. Hand signs are pretty much completely off the table, because I don't have the entire list of hand signs memorized. Even if I did, I wouldn't want to chip away at testing new sequences of hand signs anyways, since I wouldn't be able to write down any notes as I typically did, for fear of having my parents stumble across them. I could theoretically practice the couple sequences of hand signs that I memorized in order to shave off some seconds from their execution, but that seems like the type of optimization that you make when you hit your peak and are scraping the bottom of the barrel for any improvement you can get. I'm not that desperate yet.

Progressing on chants is almost impossible as well. At my current level, chants are pretty simple. All you have to do is memorize them and say them without messing up. Memorizing new chants is impossible without the book, and saying them without messing up is trivial, there's nothing to work on in that area.

In the face of these limitations, I ended up deciding to evenly split my time between refining my techniques and working on my cursed energy control. With both brushing my teeth and my planning done, I went downstairs to go get something to eat for breakfast.

While I was looking through the fridge for some fruit or something to fill my belly with, I heard the doorbell ring. Since I was the only one awake at the moment, I went to go check it out.

Instead of opening the door blindly, I tried to peek through the curtains covering the window to see if I could get a glimpse of who was there. Oh! It's Mrs. Fujita from next door! Seeing that it was someone familiar, I went to the door to open it.

When I opened the door, Mrs. Fujita was briefly shocked to realize that it was me, and not either of my parents that answered the door, but her expression quickly resolved into a warm smile.

"Oh, if it isn't little Kei! It's been a while, hasn't it? I thought that you were staying at some private school right now? At least, that's what your mother told me."

"Well, it's summer vacation right now, so I'm home." I tried to appear calm on the surface as I replied, but internally, panic was gripping my heart tightly. Unlike usual, it wasn't because of social anxiety. I actually know Mrs. Fujita well, and I am pretty comfortable with her. She's the kind old lady who lives next door. On many occasions, she has looked after me when both of my parents were pulled away by work. No, instead of social anxiety, it was something far worse.

It was a disgusting creature, looking like a hunched over insect, but with skin and bones instead of an exoskeleton, perched on the shoulder of Mrs. Fujita. It briefly nipped at her neck, leaving behind no marks. Mrs. Fujita didn't seem to notice at all.

It was a curse, there's no other explanation. And it was feeding on Mrs. Fujita! I have to help her! The question was, though, what should I do about it? Do I call for help? Or do I try to deal with it myself? One option feels too slow, the other feels too risky…. As I racked my brain, Mrs. Fujita continued the conversation. "Well, I was planning on giving these cucumbers to your mother." She gestured with a hand that was holding a plastic bag which was presumably holding the aforementioned cucumbers. "I grew them myself, but there's too many for me to eat on my own…."

I forced myself to smile and accept the bag of cucumbers from Mrs. Fujita. "That's very kind of you, I'll be sure to tell my mother about them when she wakes up."

I sensed the conversation coming to its natural conclusion. It was now or never. Do I call for help and wait for the professional jujutsu sorcerers to take care of it, essentially gambling with Mrs. Fujita's life? I have no idea how long Mrs. Fujita will be able to last with a curse draining her energy. She's an old lady without much in the way of youthful vigor. Do I really think she will be able to hold out before help arrives? Or do I attack the curse myself, taking my chances against the raccoon-sized creature? I have no reliable way of judging this thing's strength. Its size suggests that it's on the weaker side of things, but size is not an absolute indicator. There's a nonzero chance that I will be pointlessly throwing away my life if I attack.

"Well, it was very nice seeing you, Kei. I hope that––" I sent cursed energy from my core to the hand that wasn't occupied by the bag of cucumbers as quickly as possible, immediately strengthening it with cursed energy reinforcement as soon as the energy reached its destination. Using that hand, I quickly reached out, backhanding the curse in the face while hopefully making it look like I was just brushing something off Mrs. Fujita's shoulder.

Luckily, it seemed like the curse was caught off guard by being suddenly hit, and didn't have the presence of mind to hold onto Mrs. Fujita's shoulder. As a result, it was sent flying a short ways back, hitting the ground with a soft impact. Good. It would have gotten a lot more complicated if the curse continued to stick to Mrs. Fujita.

I dropped the bag of cucumbers, took two quick steps to get past Mrs. Fujita, then took a big lunging step in order to pin down the curse, which had already gotten back on its feet, with my foot. It struggled a bit, scratching at the air uselessly, but its limbs could not reach my leg. That's when it did something unexpected: it started phasing through the ground. At this sight, a bolt of panic shot through me, skyrocketing my anxiety to levels never seen before.

Without thinking, I grabbed it with my reinforced hand, unwilling to let it escape. The curse immediately started scratching at everything within reach, resulting in stinging pain in my hand and arm. I hurriedly attempted to bash the curse back against the ground. No luck. The curse sunk into the concrete like it was mud instead of having its brain dashed across the ground. The curse within my grip has now moved on to gnawing at my fingers.

I quickly urged some cursed energy down my leg to reinforce it, then pulled the curse into the most awkward knee strike I've ever performed in my life. A meaty thud. The curse stopped attempting to ruin my hand any further. It was dazed, but not yet dead. Another knee strike. This time, I both felt and heard a crack from the curse. Another knee strike. A crunch this time. I definitely broke something within the curse.

Looking down at the monster I held in my hands, it disintegrated into black dust, then that dust faded from existence. Before long, the only evidence of a curse existing was the wounds on my hand and the tears in the sleeve of my shirt.

"What was that all about?"

That question came as a shock. As soon as the fight started, all semblance of rational thought vanished like mist before the sun, replaced by the frantic need to kill the curse. Now that it's over, though, I've come back to my senses a little bit. To Mrs. Fujita, I just started to act crazy out of nowhere. I needed to come up with an excuse quickly.

I turned around to face Mrs. Fujita, making sure to hide my hand behind my back. Sure, it's going to look suspicious, but it's better than trying to explain why I suddenly have scratches on my hand and tears in my sleeve from out of nowhere.

I forced myself to laugh and smile at Mrs. Fujita. "Haha, sorry about that! There was a really big bug on your shoulder! I overreacted a little bit in my rush to kill it!"

"... Right. Well, I'm glad that you killed the big bug. Thanks."

I could very clearly tell that there was suspicion in her voice and her expression, but there wasn't much that I could do about it. I tried to change the topic in order to prevent Mrs. Fujita from thinking about it any further.

"It's no problem! You can think of this as me paying you back for those cucumbers!" I walked over to the bag of cucumbers that I dropped, raising them up, as if to indicate which cucumbers, exactly, I was talking about. "Thanks again for these, by the way, I'm sure they'll be very delicious!" I took a step backwards. I was now standing inside the entranceway of my house. I reached out for the doorknob. "Bye!" With a smile and a wave, I closed the door. I let out a sigh of relief. While I was definitely still under suspicion, I think I handled the aftermath well enough.

However, I had no idea how to completely clear my name within the mind of Mrs. Fujita. Maybe… I should call the jujutsu school about this? Even if they've been exorcizing curses in secret all this time, surely a non-sorcerer accidentally catches a glimpse of an exorcism in progress every once in a while. They'll know how to handle this situation!

The only problem is… I don't have the contact information for the jujutsu school. No phone number, no email, no nothing. I don't even think that the jujutsu school has a mailbox, so I couldn't even contact them with a week or so's worth of delay. I guess they just thought that nobody would be so crazy to cause enough trouble that the school's intervention is necessary? Or was I told some method of contact and just forgot, assuming that I would never need it? This possibility seemed worryingly plausible.

I moved to deposit the bag of cucumbers onto the kitchen table and moved on to trying to get some breakfast in me before the universe tries to interrupt again. I settled on an apple.

As I bit into the apple, I heard the sound of shuffling footsteps from upstairs. The sound of a door closing. The flush of a toilet and water rushing through the pipes in the walls. It seems like one of my parents was awake.

As I was finishing off the last of my apple, I heard the sound of more footsteps making their way down the stairs, then in my direction. It turned out that it was my mother who had woken up.

"Good morning, Kei." She put a hand over her mouth to hide a yawn. "You're up early."

"Yeah, school starts early, so I have to wake up early, you know?" The conversation stopped there. Talking was a bit too brain-intensive when she's just woken up. It's like that for both of my parents, actually.

She made her way to the kitchen counter in order to grab her mug and a packet of instant coffee from the cupboards. She dumped the contents of the packet into the mug, then used the electric kettle to fill it up the rest of the way with hot water. A spoon was retrieved from the drawer in order to stir.

Mom finally noticed the bag of cucumbers when she sat at the kitchen table in order to sip at her coffee. "Kei, what's with the bag?"

"Oh, Mrs. Fujita came by just a while before, when you were both asleep, and wanted to give us some cucumbers. She says that she grew them herself."

"How nice of her." The conversation ended again. It was just the sound of Mom slurping at coffee. I dumped the apple core into the trash. The motion must have caught Mom's eye, because she suddenly questioned me, with all signs of sleepiness gone from her voice "Kei, why is your hand all scratched up?" She immediately set down the cup and rushed over to grab my hand with both of hers, holding it up to her face to inspect it closely. That was when she noticed that my sleeve was messed up from the fight with the curse too. She gasped. "Your sleeve too! What did you do?"

It was time to deploy yet another lie. "Yeah, about that… I saw a stray cat this morning––"

Mom gasped again. "Kei, no! You didn't!"

At this, I hurried to explain myself further. "No, no, it's not what you're probably thinking! I just held out my hand to it! That's what you're supposed to, right? You hold out your hand to let the cat sniff you and get used to you?"

Mom did not even deign to answer my question with words. She just shook her head in disappointment at the hypothetical me that went and got attacked by a stray cat. Well, it's not the real me was any better. In fact, I would argue that what I actually did was worse, considering that curses are deadly creatures and cats, for the most part, aren't.

A long and loud scolding ensued, with many lamentations about how "I didn't raise you to be like this!" sprinkled in for extra flavor.