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[Strength stat levelled up!]
'That quickly?' Adam completed another situp, curling his core forward to see his cursed technique. 'Have I really been holding myself back this much by not exercising?' Iori blew her whistle, signalling the beginning of their next exercise. Unlike his friend, Fushigoro seemed to have no problem with foreign movements. "Megumi, you're a total bastard, you know that?" The white-haired boy grunted out.
Fushigoro rolled his eyes as he completed the stretch. It was almost annoying how easy the black-haired boy had it, being able to wrap his entire palm around his foot. "It was only supposed to be a toe touch! You're making me look bad, you know?"
Having a qualified dancing instructor for a teacher certainly made the Kyoto students wonder; they all had just as easy of a time as Fushigoro did with all of the stretches Iori was running them through. That left Adam alone as the struggling runt of the group. "Did you want me to push your back for you?" Fushigoro offered boredly.
"No way, I got this," Adam replied confidently. A grunt escaped his throat as he tried to push himself to reach his toes before Iori pulled him out of his stretch when she passed.
"Don't push yourself, you'll get to everyone's level with time." She assured. "Alright everyone, jump up and get ready for some sparring. I'll scramble your names on my phone, so just wait for a call before you begin."
Adam leapt onto his feet with a grin. After all of the boring classes and notetaking, he was happy to be allowed to expend energy. Iori plugged the names into her phone while the students mingled with each other.
"Have you really been skipping Gojo's warmups?" Fushigoro asked cautiously. "I know you can heal torn muscles with reversed cursed technique, but you shouldn't skip the prep work."
"Warmups?" Adam parroted. "He hasn't given me anything to do like this before."
"Not before you go to missions?" Fushigoro asked. Adam shook his head. "Not even in the car on the way there?" Another shake. "Can you reply audibly?"
"Obviously; but to answer your questions, no. I've never done anything like this. I've read about them before in books, but the exercises just seemed boring, so I stopped." Adam explained. "That's how I gained most of my stats before I came to Japan; testing things out and seeing where they went." He looked at the rest of the students surrounding them, each entranced in their own conversations. "But I've also never seen you doing them."
"That's because I do mine in my room as soon as I wake up and before I go on missions." Adam narrowed his eyes." And when I train." Fushigoro added.
"Ugh, so I've totally been missing out." Adam slumped over in depression before Iori called for the student's attention once again.
"Alright everyone, I've selected your partners so head over to them when I call your names. Do not, and I repeat, do not, begin sparring until I give you the go-ahead." She announced sternly. "First, Mechamaru and Kamo." The pair had already been conversing before the announcement, so they didn't have to move. "Next, Fushigoro and Miwa." Miwa cheerfully hopped over the two Tokyo students after saying goodbye to Zenin. "Finally, Pendragon and Nishimiya. Mai, you'll be with me." Adam bid farewell to his friend and his partner before meeting up with Nishimiya.
"Hey." The girl greeted boredly. "Don't hold back just because I'm a girl, you might end up on the floor." She slid into a combat stance despite Iori's lack of signal.
Adam's eyebrows raised in surprise before he slid into his own stance. "I didn't plan on it, senpai." Nishimiya seemed slightly surprised, whether, at the title or response, Adam wasn't sure; either way, the expression was hidden almost as soon as it arrived.
"Good, because I want you to put up a fight." A threatening smirk fluttered across her face for a few moments before her expression returned to a serious one. "I kinda gotta punish you for what you said earlier; girl's pride and all." Adam tilted his head in question, but Iori started the matches before he could speak.
It was immediately clear how large the difference in their skill was once the match started. Each time Adam dodged, he was kicked in his pivot leg, each time he punched, Nishimiya dodged out of the way and attacked his body; despite being a support fighter, it seemed the girl hadn't slouched in her close combat training at all. The only things Adam seemed to have over her were his reach and his strength, both things Nishimiya seemed to make use of as she weaved in between his strikes and tripped him over.
Even when making use of his skills, Adam seemed to just be too many rungs below the girl to be able to fight back; frankly, it was frustrating. "Do you mind staying still for a moment so I can get some revenge?" He asked after receiving another body blow. The attacks didn't hurt necessarily, between Nishimiya not putting an ounce of cursed energy behind them and her muscles being built for agility rather than strength, but she had been annoyingly counting each one out loud.
"17." She said in lew of a real response. The girl weaved under Adam's outstretched fist and thrust her palm into his liver, causing him to tilt forward slightly with a grunt. "Forms aren't how you win fights, they're for practice. Have you ever sparred before?"
Adam used the opportunity to catch his breath before shaking his head. "No, but I assumed this was how spars were supposed to go. You use what you learned." He answered between gasps. The boy's training with Gojo couldn't be considered anything but torture, because any improvements had to be made while he was facing death.
"Hmph, I can tell," Nishimiya replied. "Loosen up a bit, stop focusing on the forms so much."
'I wish that's how it worked…' Adam stole a glance at his cursed technique's page. 'I've finally found a real weakness in this thing.' Unlike cooking, which was a passive skill that improved his culinary abilities, hand-to-hand combat served as an active skill. Because of that, it did exactly how it had been taught and in no other way. He learned the hand-to-hand combat skill along with Boxing, so he only used boxing forms while the skill was active. In summary, his skills were too rigid; at least without levels. "I'll try." Adam eventually responded.
By turning off his skill, he felt the entirety of his body's functions return to him. The dull aching in his arms after so many repeated jabs, the annoying burn in his calf resulting from a failed shuffle, the sweat trickling down his cheek. It all felt so much more real, and by extension, more exhausting.
His technique acted almost like a second, ultra-powerful, brain when it came to skills. Simple domain, reversed cursed technique, barriers, reinforcement, all of these things could be used at once through his panel while still also leaving his brain free to act. But now, taking on the burden of that ultra-powerful brain was bringing out drawbacks the boy hadn't imagined. Sure, his technique is amazingly powerful, but it's also incredibly inefficient. Even just one, a single one of his 18 skills he could activate simultaneously, carried enough burden to make him exhausted when he tried to replicate the same things on his own.
Nishimiya eyed the boy curiously as his posture relaxed and his eyes drooped. His quick, adrenaline-filled breaths became slow, heavy ones as he stretched his back and stood up. She was thankful their teacher was watching closely because if she saw something wrong, she'd stop everyone immediately. "Sorry about that," He breathed.
Adam used one of his hands to wipe down his forehead, before using the same sweat to push his hair out of his face. "I hadn't realized how long it had gotten." He murmured to himself as he finally got a clear view of Nishimiya.
"Are you alright?" Because even if her teacher would stop the spar if she saw something, it didn't mean some things weren't out of her sight's reach. "If you need a break, we can stop for today."
"Nah, I don't need anything like that." Adam shook his wrists to try and get feeling back into them. "I just moved one of my skills from my cursed technique's payload to my own body, it's rather exhausting."
"Then we should–"
"Come on, I wanna try it out." Nishimiya glanced at her teacher while biting her lip anxiously. The woman's attention was elsewhere, on another group, so she couldn't be sure whether to continue or not.
"Fine." She acquiesced. "But tell me immediately if you need to stop." Adam quickly nodded before slipping into his stance. It was far less refined now, but it didn't seem nearly as unnatural when compared to when he had been using his 'skill' to supplement it. "Alright, good. Let's begin."
"So you can access your cursed technique's skills through your body now?" Fushigoro asked. Adam mumbled an agreement before shifting the ice on his cheek towards his eye. "And that ended with you getting punched in the face how?" Adam groaned at the memory before shooting out of his chair. The class had finished just 10 minutes ago, with Adam being by far the most injured. Nishimiya had apologized for the attack but still added that he deserved to speak so perversely about women that morning.
"Since my skills usually control my body automatically, it was hard for me to get my head in the fight." He shifted the bag of ice again, this time back down to his cheek. "I'm not used to controlling my own body during fights, so I ended up relying on my skill to automatically block for me."
"But because you had placed it on your own body, it didn't do it." Fushigoro finished quietly. "It's kind of like your body is a computer. When you engrave your skills onto your own body, you're taking control of them as an administrator; but if you leave them to your cursed technique, it's like an operating system takes over and does all of the heavy lifting instead." He theorized, unaware of the stare being directed at him.
"Woah, you're like, totally a computer nerd," Adam said with a laugh. Fushigoro frowned in annoyance.
"No, it's just an inevitability when you live around someone like Satoru." Adam pointed at the boy with a wide grin. "What?"
"You called him Satoru! You never do that; and since you're doing it now, when we're talking about something you're so fond of…"
"I'm not fond of electronics."
"That must mean you relate Blindfold with fondness. Yes, yes, I see now." Fushigoro chopped the boy on the head with an annoyed grimace.
"Are you sure you didn't get brain damage from that punch?" Adam attempted to grin at the boy but ended up falling back into his chair and slamming his head into the wall. "Wow…she must have really socked you hard." Adam didn't respond for several minutes, causing a worried frown to form on Fushigoro's face. "Adam?" Several more moments of silence passed before the boy began to snore quietly. "Ugh…of course."
'Usually, I would leave him with Shoko, but she isn't around to watch him…' Fushigoro walked over to the door and peeked into the hallway. 'There's no sign of sensei either.' With an annoyed frown, Fushigoro quickly positioned himself in front of his friend and pulled his arms forward. The boy let out a grunt as Adam slumped against his back. "I guess it's up to me to take him to the dorms then." He decided quietly.
"Adam…you shouldn't be moving around so much." A voice far kinder than he remembered echoed in the boy's mind. "If I make a mistake, your father would have to shave your head and then you'd have no hair at all!"
"Nooooo, I don't wanna be bald!" A much younger Adam wailed. "Mum, you can't let him make me bald, you can't!" The woman chuckled at his childish wails, but gently pushed his head back into a straight position.
"Then you have to stay still. " She ordered softly. "Did you gain any skills today?" The younger Adam wanted to shake his head, but he held off doing so out of fear of losing all of his hair.
"No…but that doesn't matter. When I'm 4, I'll get flames like everyone else! Then I won't need any of those stupid skills." His mother's hands ran through his brown hair slowly, the edges of her closed scissors brushing against his fringe before they were removed.
"But Quince doesn't have any flames, are you sure you will have them?" The woman asked gently. She brought up a comb and pulled apart the crow's nest that had formed while the boy was playing. Her scissors glided expertly through the pulled lock, cutting off a sizeable portion of the hair at the back of the boy's head.
Adam twisted around in his chair, and his mother was quick to remove her scissors from his face. "Yeah! My dad said so!" He looked sheepish for a few moments, a frown tugging at his pudgy cheeks. "At least he said I should."
His mother brought him into a soft embrace. "It's alright, even if you don't, I'm here. I'll always be here." Her tone held some sort of finality that the toddler didn't recognize. "Now then, let's get your hair ready for Gabriel's birthday tomorrow." Adam let out a childish squeal of excitement at the mention of the party.
"I need a haircut."
"Stay the fuck still you brat!" Adam cried in pain as he felt his neck being scorched by the intense heat. He hated them, those people who ruined something so sacred to him.
His long, now white hair, was cut down by a thin wire of flame. "You can't even hold one kid down? Get the hell out of here, I'll do it." Raymond, because he never deserved the title of father, ordered away the man who had been brought in to cut his hair. "I'll make it look decent at least, but that's all you'll get from me."
"I hate you," Adam whispered. "Why didn't you just leave me in the library? Why are you sending me away? Where is mum?" Instead of the delicate gliding of scissors he had become used to so many years ago, he felt the edges of his hair being burned by Raymond's flames. Soft thumps resounded around the room as Raymond declined to answer the question.
"Why did you let it get this long? Surely you could have sharpened a ruler or something." The man snatched a comb from a table nearby and tugged it through the boy's knotted hair. "So troublesome; couldn't you have made my job easy just once?"
"I hate you." Was the response he received. "Only mum can cut my hair, nobody else." He felt the comb freeze for a moment before it continued to drag. It caught on a particularly thick knot and the boy felt his head being jerked back painfully as Raymond continued to pull. "You aren't cutting my hair right now, you are torturing me."
The man let out an amused huff as he finally broke through the knot. "Don't be so dramatic, Adam. This is for your own good. After this, we will be apart forever and you won't have to worry about anything here."
"My mother is here, my father left long ago." The comb didn't even freeze as it continued to pull away at knots.
"Don't flinch, I might burn your neck." Adam decided to follow the man's instructions for once, even if everything in his body told him to run away as he felt his hair being cut down to ear length. "There, all done. Pick up your bag and get going, keep your head down and walk quickly, Gabriel is coming back from a mission."
"I'll never forgive you," Adam replied angrily, even as he followed the man's instructions and walked to the door.
"You don't need to, we will never see each other again," Raymond called out. "Good luck, my son."
"You lost all right to that title long ago, Raymond Revine." The door slammed behind the boy's back as he exited Raymond's study. He did as he was told and left the manor in a sprint, ignoring the jeers or snorts sent his way as he made his way to the entrance. Gabriel opened the door just as he sprinted through, right in time for the white-haired boy to use the taxi he had discarded.
"I need a haircut."
"You've said that twice now." Adam opened his eyes to an unfamiliar sight. "If you want, we can ask sensei if we can go into town for one tomorrow." Fushigoro offered quietly.
"Did you know my hair used to reach down to my calves?" Adam asked. He realized he was in the Kyoto dorms when Fushigoro spoke.
"I didn't," Fushigoro replied. "But I guess there weren't many razors or scissors in the library, right?"
"No. There weren't." Adam confirmed with a lopsided smile. For some reason, he chose to stay lying in his bed instead of standing up. "There were some scissors at some point…but they…I can't remember," he remembered well, far too well. They had rusted.
Adam picked at his skin with his nails. The attempt didn't do much, considering he had cut them before getting on the train with Gojo in the morning, but it still brought him solace. Reversed cursed technique washed over his body like a warm shower, healing the small divots he had previously made.
"You've slowed down a lot," Fushigoro noted. "Though I'd prefer if you didn't do it at all." He added tiredly. Adam couldn't see the boy from his current position, but he could imagine a tight grimace on his face when he spoke. It was the same expression he always made when Adam calmed himself down.
"Hey, Megumi?"
"Yeah?"
"What's your least favourite number?"
"Least favourite? Isn't it supposed to be the other way around?"
"Just answer the question."
"Hmm, nothing really comes to mind."
"Not even 396?"
"Why would that be my least favourite number?"
"It's the room your sister is kept in."
"H-How would you know that?"
"Excalibur told me. It has some weird telepathy ability." He remembered Gojo explaining it once he finally took a look. "'A King is always aware of his subjects.' Those who I consider a part of my kingdom can share their thoughts with me if they feel a surge of emotions. Whether that's panic, excitement, fear, ecstasy. I heard your voice when I was fighting Gabriel."
"Gabriel?" Fushigoro parroted. "Was that on a mission you did solo?"
"Oh…I forgot I didn't tell you; I thought Satoru would have." Adam mumbled. "It was that day with the fire. Even if the government shut down the conspiracy and did some major brainwashing thing, there really was a person there that day. He was my blood cousin, distantly related. He was tasked with killing me so the bond Excalibur shares with my family would be severed and the Revines could take it. In exchange for his life, he called upon every ounce of cursed energy he would ever have and put it towards cursed technique output."
"A binding vow…he traded his life to try and kill you." Fushigoro correctly summarised. "How did you survive? Even with your impressive reversed cursed technique, surely you would have been burnt to a crisp."
"I was," Adam confirmed. "As part of my cursed technique, I can die 5 times a year." He heard a pen drop. Fushigoro was standing over him in less than a second, a worried frown on his face.
"How many times?"
"This year or overall?"
Fushigoro cringed in response to the question. "I'm hoping they're the same number, but I know that won't be the case."
"2 and somewhere around 40 overall."
"How are you so calm?"
Adam reached above him and retrieved Excalibur from his inventory. A satisfied, comfortable smile appeared on his face as he felt its steel rest against his body.
"Why didn't you tell me earlier?"
"I didn't want to worry you, but right now I just don't care." Adam felt tears begin to well up in his eyes.
"Why don't you care? Why didn't you trust me?" Fushigoro pleaded.
"Do you not trust me?"
"I trust you…my mind is just…occupied…at the moment." Adam sniffled as he remembered the dream he had just minutes prior.
"With what? Tell me, please."
"I can't remember her face."
Fushigoro's eyes widened.
Kamo ended up making a late lunch for the group. It wasn't anything special, just a few sandwiches for them to share while studying or playing, but it still felt great to eat something after so long. Gojo had forced them on the earliest train in the morning, so they had been forced to skip breakfast.
Adam sat on one end of the couch with Fushigoro next to him, Nishimiya sat next to him, and Zenin sat next to her with a nail file in hand. The sandwiches were placed on the coffee table in front of them but had gone long forgotten in favour of watching Adam get whooped in Mario Kart.
"You know, I'm really starting to feel inadequate with how often I'm being shown up here." The boy joked.
"Is that why you were crying?" Nishimiya asked with a smirk. "Or is it because Gojo wasn't there to kiss your booboos?" Adam instinctively shivered at the idea.
"Don't joke about that stuff, I might get PTSD just thinking about it." Their banter had been going back and forward ever since the boy first entered the kitchen with red splotches under his eyes. "But for your information, I was depressed about how weak sorcerers were becoming."
"And yet I laid you on your ass." Nishimiya quipped immediately.
"Who said I wasn't a part of the statistic?" Adam laughed. He pressed the drift button on his controller and gained an annoyed frown when his character didn't follow through with the action. "You gave me a faulty controller, you witch!"
Nishimiya stuck her tongue out in the boy's direction but still managed to perfectly navigate the course. "Permanent resident's privilege."
"Blindfold said your lot was shy outside of Todo, what the hell happened to that? I was tricked!" Adam grunted as he felt a hand tuck into his hair and pull back.
"You should get this trimmed; or at least something to hold it up." Zenin, who had disappeared from Nishimiya's end of the couch, pulled Adam's hair up into a tiny ponytail. "Hey, are you wearing makeup?"
"What happened to avoiding me? You were totally giving me an ugly look before classes." The boy replied in lew of a real answer.
"It's hard to be annoyed at someone who got their ass kicked by my best friend." She said with a shrug. "Anyway, answer the question. Because I gotta know what brand you use."
"He doesn't use it," Fushigoro answered. "He just naturally has blemish-free skin."
"Wow…I'd kill to have your genes." Zenin commented sadly. The girl hopped out from behind the couch and circled Adam's seated form. "You know…now that you have your hair up…"
"Taken." Adam interrupted. "I'm in love with the job." He joked half-seriously.
"It's in his contract," Fushigoro explained. Adam glanced at his friend with a betrayed look and ended up in last place because of it. "He can't have a significant other or anything like that."
"Woah, woah, is he a model? That's a modelling contract clause, right?" Miwa, as if summoned by the mere mention of it, walked into the kitchen with Mechamaru in tow.
"Something like that," Adam grunted. "Ah, fuck it, Megumi, trade." He threw the controller into his friend's hand and grabbed a sandwich. "I haven't done any shoots though. They think I live in a hospital to take care of a sick relative."
"He already knows it was a stupid excuse." Fushigoro interrupted.
"I came up with it on the spot!" Adam argued between bites. "I dunno, I'll be heading there on Friday for an hour to do some stuff, apparently their summer collection needs a few more photos and could serve as a debut."
"You'll need to cut your hair though," Fushigoro said. Adam groaned at the reminder before nodding.
"Do you not like getting it cut?" Miwa asked. "I like it; I always fall asleep in Momo's chair whenever she does mine."
"Yeah, if you aren't comfortable with going to a normal barber, Momo here does a decent job," Zenin added.
"Decent?" Nishimiya asked, "Next time you ask me for a trim, I'll shave your head. Totally not cute, I tell you." Adam didn't even need to look behind him to see Zenin pale. "But yeah, Pendragon, if you need a cut just tell me beforehand. And make sure to wash your hair, because I'm not gonna do it for you."
"I'll think about it," Adam replied as he grabbed another sandwich. "So what are you all going to be doing tonight?"
Miwa laughed awkwardly in response to the question. "Sorry to rain on your party, Pendragon, but I'll be taking you and Fushigoro out on patrol tonight." She said apologetically. "But we can grab some food while we're out there though!"
"To answer your question." For the first time since he entered the room, Mechamaru talked. "I will be going out on a short mission. There is a curse exuding poisonous gas in the sewers below the city and it's polluting some people's water."
Adam glared at the glass Kamo had put on the counter. "So we shouldn't be drinking tap water right now?"
Mechamaru shook his head. "It is fine to do it around here but if you head towards the south side of the city you might encounter some issues with prolonged exposure."
"So it doesn't even really matter." Adam sighed. "How many people have been injured?"
"2 men are currently in the hospital due to the poison. Outside of them, nobody has been admitted or reported a symptom similar to the ones they're facing." Mechamaru turned away from the group. "I will begin preparing to leave now, have a good night."
"Good night!" The group chorused.
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