[Under the weight of absolute force and your gaze, stripped of every trace of emotion, the villagers finally understood fear. These people who had spent their lives festering in these mountains, solving every problem with ignorance and violence, had kicked against something that would not move.]

[The lock you’d crushed one-handed, the farming tool you’d plucked away like taking candy from a child. Silence fell over the scene like a funeral shroud. Not one of them dared step forward. Not one dared twitch. They stood rooted where they were, trembling like quail lined up for slaughter.]

[And before the police could make the long drive up from the town below, it was Geto who returned first, slipping back from the darkness where he’d gone hunting for the true culprit.]

[A faint whisper of displaced air, and his tall silhouette materialized from the tree-shadows at the village’s edge.]

[His expression was dark, brows knotted tight, and in his eyes sat something caught between disbelief and bitter mockery.] 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

[He moved to your side and kept his voice low as he delivered the results.]

[The thing responsible for the so-called spiritings away and deaths plaguing this village wasn’t some terrifying Grade 1 Cursed Spirit. It barely qualified as Grade 2. What Geto had found was a pitifully weak, low-grade Cursed Spirit that hadn’t even developed a fully formed Innate Technique.]

[Its ability was singular and passive: it could briefly scramble the spatial awareness and sense of direction of any living thing that wandered too close.]

[Because the village sat on steep mountain terrain, any villager unlucky enough to stumble into its range would lose their bearings and, with no one around to notice, walk straight off a cliff.]

[The spirit itself was nearly stationary. It barely emitted any Residual Cursed Energy worth detecting.]

[Which was precisely why the observation members of Windows had catastrophically misjudged it during remote sensing. They’d mistaken its invisibility for a terrifyingly advanced concealment ability, inflated its threat level accordingly, and classified it as a quasi-Grade 1 or even a full Grade 1 Cursed Spirit of extreme destructive potential.]

[Hearing Geto’s report, you couldn’t suppress a weary sigh at the sheer, wretched irony of it all. These villagers had been dying because of their own ignorance and treacherous geography, and in their desperation for something to blame, something to pour their terror into, they’d heaped every sin and curse onto two defenseless children without a shred of hesitation.]

[None of this, of course, needed to be explained to the villagers. You had no intention of trying.]

[They were non-sorcerers, incapable of perceiving Cursed Spirits. In their understanding of the world, Cursed Energy simply didn’t exist.]

[And now that Geto had compressed that pitiful low-grade spirit into a pellet and swallowed it, there would likely never be another supernatural threat anywhere near this village again.]

[Not long after, the night split open with the harsh strobe of red and blue lights and the wail of a siren. A patrol car finally nosed its way into the lifeless village.]

[Whoever had taken your call apparently hadn’t given much weight to your very serious suggestion about sending extra units. Two car doors thumped shut, and out climbed exactly two officers, one older, one younger, both in uniform, from a single battered cruiser.]

[The Assistant Manager stepped up immediately, slipping into his role as official liaison with practiced ease.]

[The jujutsu world’s affairs were, as a rule, never disclosed to civilians. For exactly this kind of situation, Windows and the Assistant Manager system maintained a polished, well-rehearsed set of cover stories and bureaucratic protocols for interfacing with secular authorities.]

[The two officers had arrived wearing the glazed look of men dragged from bed for a late-night call. That changed the moment the manager flashed his special credentials and began outlining a case involving unlawful confinement, severe child abuse, and a mob with violent tendencies. Both faces went rigid.]

[It got worse when their flashlight beams found the two girls, skeletal and crusted with blood, and then swept upward to the dense wall of villagers still gripping hoes and sickles, eyes glinting with feral hostility. Cold sweat broke out across both officers’ foreheads. Their composure visibly cracked.]

[They were outnumbered, badly, in a place so remote that a distress signal might never make it out.]

[And these weren’t rational people. These were fanatics steeped in superstition, the kind who could talk about killing without blinking.]

[If things went sideways and the mob turned on them, two beat cops armed with batons and a single sidearm could very easily end up buried in these mountains, added to the list of line-of-duty deaths without anyone ever knowing what happened.]

[But the Assistant Manager adjusted his glasses, the lenses catching the light, and stepped in front of them with absolute calm. His tone left no room for doubt: there was nothing to worry about. The two seemingly ordinary Tokyo high schoolers standing behind him were more than enough to ensure that no riot would occur.]

[Bracketed between your invisible wall of force and the secular authority of the police, the preliminary scene investigation and initial statements from the village chief and key suspects ground forward through the small hours, the atmosphere thick enough to choke on.]

[The first wave of officers could only manage to hold the situation and secure the primary suspects. The real sweep, the large-scale evidence collection, would have to wait for the second wave of reinforcements arriving the next day.]

[That night, Black sedan.]

[The heater hummed on low. The two traumatized children had finally collapsed against the back seat, on the verge of passing out from sheer exhaustion, when you extended both hands. A soft, warm glow bloomed from your palms: the light of the Reverse Cursed Technique, the light of life itself.]

[With exacting precision, you controlled the output of positive energy, feeding it gently into Nanako and Mimiko’s ravaged bodies.]

[You sealed the deep lacerations that were one infection away from turning fatal. You eased the relentless, screaming pain that had become their constant companion.]

[As that warmth spread through them, both girls clutched the hem of your coat and, for the first time in years, let every last guard fall away. They sank into sleep, true sleep, safe and dreamless.]

[You could have healed them completely in a single night. Every grotesque scar erased, every wound closed so perfectly that not even a speck of new scar tissue would remain.]

[But until tomorrow’s proceedings were finished, until the forensic examiners and police had completed their evidence collection, you held yourself back.]

[The reason was coldly practical. If the police showed up the next morning and found two children who were supposed to be severely abused victims suddenly looking like the picture of health without so much as a scratch, their first thought wouldn’t be medical miracle. It would be suspicion, aimed squarely at you. They’d assume you’d spent the night applying Hollywood-grade prosthetic makeup to these kids and hauled them into the mountains to run some elaborate new breed of fraud.]

[The evidence had to be preserved. Raw, undeniable, and impossible to look away from.]

[Morning sun cut through the mountain fog and fell across the village, illuminating every crime it had hidden in darkness.]

[After a thorough handoff with the second wave of officers who’d come up in force from the town below, along with the transfer of every sharp, damning photograph the manager had taken, you were finally free to leave. The sedan pulled away from that nauseating place.]

[The prosecution, the cross-referencing of statements, the full grind of legal proceedings still stretched ahead, long and slow. But that was the domain of civilian law now. Your presence was no longer required.]

[The black sedan wound its way down the mountain road, the village shrinking behind you. The air inside the car hung quiet.]

[Nanako sat beside you, staring out the window with eyes that had regained the faintest spark of life, watching the scenery scroll past in reverse.]

[Then she turned to face you. Her voice was small but edged with a stubborn intensity.]

["Mister... those bad people. What’s going to happen to them?"]

[You looked down at her small face, tight with anxiety and fragile hope, and answered in a tone that was steady and warm.]

["They’ll face the punishment they deserve under the law. They’ll go to prison. They’ll pay for what they did to you."]

["Then... will they die?"]

[You looked into the depth of her gaze and found something there that made your chest tighten: hatred, pure and ancient in a face far too young for it. You shook your head. The most honest answer you could give.]

[The law had its limits. Based on the severity of the injuries documented, most of the villagers wouldn’t face the death penalty.]

[The moment she saw you shake your head, Nanako grabbed the hem of your shirt.]

["Why?! Why can’t you kill them? They’re evil! Every single day, they wanted us dead! So why can’t someone just kill them right now?!"]

[The air inside the car seemed to solidify. Mimiko lifted her head too, fixing you with the same look: hatred braided tight with incomprehension.]

[In the front passenger seat, Geto had been resting with his eyes closed. They opened now. He didn’t turn around, but you could feel it with perfect clarity: every fiber of his attention had locked onto you.]

["Listen to me carefully. Those people are irredeemable scum. But the fact that they did terrible things to you does not automatically grant you the right to do whatever you want with their lives."]

[A beat of silence. Your voice filled the stillness of the car, resonant and undeniable.]

["The reason this world has laws, rules, all that tedious red tape, is to hold the baseline. To keep civilization from collapsing into an endless cycle of retaliation, animals tearing at each other until there’s nothing left. You are victims. No one questions that. But being a victim was never a license to become the perpetrator. The moment you cross that line, the moment you take their lives the way they tried to take yours, you become exactly what they are. Or something worse."]

[You could see it in Nanako’s and Mimiko’s eyes: a deep, startled confusion rippling beneath the surface. They were too young. Grasping this kind of social contract would take years they hadn’t lived yet.]

[But only you knew the full truth. Those words, heavy as hammer blows, had never been meant solely for two little girls whose minds were still forming.]

[Your gaze lifted, threading through the car’s interior to land precisely on the rearview mirror. And there, reflected in its surface, your eyes met his.]

[Geto was staring at you through the mirror. Unblinking.]

[Those sharp, usually guarded eyes now held an expression of staggering complexity: shock, recognition, and the slow, grinding work of a mind confronting something it couldn’t easily dismiss.]

["Remember this. It doesn’t matter who you are, how much power you hold, or how monstrous the crime committed against you. Everyone should face consequences built on rules, consequences that are fair and just. Strength exists to uphold order. Never to stand above it."]