Chapter Text
Market days are always exciting – both in good and bad ways.
On the one hand, you get to meet people, sell your goods and pick up the latest gossip here and there. On the other hand, you are eyed with suspicious interest. The older villagers treat you with open mistrust. The younger ones are less hesitant. They’re the ones who buy your herbal mixtures, potions, ointments and gingerbreads. The children are the most curious and when no one is looking, you slip a piece of gingerbread to one or two of the kids.
The villagers tolerate you. They see you as a herbalist; just like those who can be found in many other villages in the kingdom of Zenin. Eccentric, but harmless.
Next to your stall (a simple folding table with a checkered cloth) the potter has set up her shop. The wide table, on which she has displayed all kinds of clay pots, mugs and earthenware dishes, bends precariously in the middle under the weight. Her children, two girls and a boy, are hiding behind her. All three have flaxen hair, caramel-colored eyes and mischief written all over their faces. They cling to their mother’s skirts, watching you curiously from a safe distance.
You ignore the little pests and instead turn your attention to your regular customer, who hesitantly approaches your displays. She is wearing dark pants instead of a dress under her red coat and has pulled her hood so deep in her face that only her mouth is visible. “I need a cure for moon sensitivity”, she says so quietly that you have trouble hearing her over the hustle and bustle of the market.
You nod and reach for a bunch of dried lavender with valerian and lady's mantle. With your other hand, you open the leather pouch on your belt. The bottle you pull out is as long as your thumb and contains a silver liquid. With a few simple movements, you hide the bottle among the dried herbs.
“I've adjusted the mixture and used less belladonna this time. The headache should disappear over time. But you should use it more sparingly. Only two drops every evening; not three or four.”
Your customer nods with an expressionless face and you already know that she will disregard your instructions and take double the dose. She always does this and you can't even blame her. The young woman is a loyal regular, but not of her own free will. She has only told you the bare minimum about herself: Her last name is Fushiguro and she was haunted by a cursed spirit when she was a little girl. She doesn't know who sent this cursed spirit after her. But since this encounter, she has had to swallow potions and pills to stop the mark, that the curse has left on her, from spreading. The potion you brew especially for her suppresses the curse inside her so much, that she only turns into a werewolf for a few hours on the night of the full moon.
Her fingers are ice-cold as she accepts the bundle of herbs and hands you a sizable amount of coins. You quickly slip the money into your belt pouch.
“Is there anything else?”, you ask when your counterpart makes no move to leave, as she usually does.
She peeks out from under her hood and pushes the red fabric back so that you can look her straight in the face. Two clever eyes shine at you, but worry lines have formed between her brows. “A group of jujutsu sorcerers came to the village last night. There are five of them; four men and a boy. Probably their apprentice.”
The salesman's like smile melts from your face like hot wax. “Excuse me?”, bubbles out of you in disbelief.
“I happened to be passing by when the inn’s wife told the baker about her newest guests. It looks like they're jujutsu sorcerers from one of the royal courts. I don't know what they want here. Above all, I don't know why there are five of them. But I thought it was only fair that I warn you.”
You feel sick to your stomach. Jujutsu sorcerers exorcize cursed spirits and hunt down those who can manipulate and use cursed energy for their own purposes.
Those like you – curse witches.
And those like the woman in front of you, who strictly speaking cannot cast curse magic but carries a curse herself.
“Do you have a safe place for the coming full moon?”
She nods, but it's an unconvinced nod. “The old quarry; a day's walk from here. The tunnels are deserted and I can't hurt anyone down there – and the cursed spirits that live in the caves and tunnels will leave me alone.”
Following an impulse, you hand her a small cloth bag. She looks up at you in surprise and you quickly close her cold fingers around your gift before she can protest. “These are protective spells,” you whisper to her. “If you're in danger, put one of them in your mouth and chew. The spell suppresses your cursed energy for a good twenty minutes; if a Jujutsu sorcerer is following you, they won’t be able to sense your cursed energy or the curse lingering on you.”
She looks at you with wide eyes. And then she smiles, and her smile is genuine, saying more than a thousand words. Grateful, she nods to you before vanishing into the bustling crowd of villagers, ox carts, noisy children, and barking dogs.
The news that jujutsu sorcerers are in the village won’t leave your mind. Even after the sun has disappeared behind the thatched roofs, your thoughts keep circling back to that one topic.
When the market overseer—a sickly-looking man with a white ruff—steps forward and croaks at the people to pack up their stalls and head home, you’re still trying to make sense of why five jujutsu sorcerers have taken interest in this backwater village. Maybe they’re just passing through. There haven’t been any recent reports of curse users, marauding bandits, or sudden deaths in the area.
Sighing, you pack up the remaining goods in your basket.
All in all, it’s been a good day for business: the mayor’s scribe bought hemorrhoid ointment for his master, the blacksmith picked up a dozen gingerbread cookies for his children, and the innkeepers’ precocious daughter, blushing furiously, quietly asked for a contraceptive.
Your way home takes you past the inn. Even from a distance, it’s obvious that the inn keeper has more customers than usual. The baker, as well as the blacksmith’s wife, and the old tailor are huddled by the open window of the tavern, chatting with the innkeeper’s wife—who seems to be made up of two-thirds of bosom and good humor. In a boisterous voice, she talks freely with her visitors.
“… real men, and so charming!”
“So it’s true, that they were sent by the royal court?”
“Exactly, but not ours. Imagine — they’re from over there! These jujutsu sorcerers serve the royal Gojo clan.”
“What do they want here? Lord Zenin has plenty of his own jujutsu sorcerers at his court. Why do we need their jujutsu sorcerers?”
“They wouldn’t tell me, and even Carla couldn’t get anything out of them, though we…”
The snippets of conversation you catch in passing are telling enough to leave you thoroughly confused. It’s extremely rare for jujutsu sorcerers from a neighboring kingdom to show up here. There must be more to this than it seems. You think of your regular customer and desperately hope these sorcerers aren’t after her.
Once again you are torn out of your mental haze. This time by the baker's brats – two red-haired boys – who sing this song in their crowing children's voices.
Hansel and Gretel lost their way in the forest,
It was so dark and so bitterly cold.
They came to a little house of gingerbread fine,
Who might the master of this little house be?
Anger mixed with hot shame rises up in you like in a fermenting vat. Your face becomes so hot that it itches and suddenly your vision turns red as you see the two children running back and forth in front of the bakery.
By the two-faced King Sukuna, two weeks of chicken pox on your little hairless asses! Curse and devil over-
You slap your hand over your mouth in horror, but the disaster has already happened. Out of nowhere, two fleshy vines with jagged nettle leaves wrap around the children's heads. The two boys suddenly stop playing and stare at each other blankly. Then a whole field of red pustules blossoms on their faces. When the younger one starts screaming at the top of his lungs and crying for his mother, you make a hasty getaway.
At least it’s just chickenpox, you try to justify your impulsive curse, but it doesn’t quite work. The guilt weighs heavy on your shoulders. You’d undo the curse in an instant, but if anything is more suspicious than a sudden illness, it’s its immediate cure. You don’t want to make the bakers—or yourself—a target for accusations. People are too quick to see things that aren’t there.
Fortunately, the curse vines are invisible to normal humans.
Unfortunately, it won’t take long for the five jujutsu sorcerers in the inn to spot them and draw their own conclusions.
Even worse is the fact that you lost control over something so stupid—a mere children’s song. Perhaps another few years will have to pass before you can laugh about the incident yourself. Right now, though, laughter is the last thing on your mind.
The incident took place several years ago. At that time, you had just settled down in the kingdom of Zenin to build a new life as an apothecary and leave your past as an evil curse witch, loyal member of the Sisterhood and follower of the two-faced King of Curses, Sukuna, behind you.
Your first home was an abandoned hut in the forest, which you quickly made your own. After some renovation work, your new home was ready and you focused on building up your business. There was already an herbalist in the neighboring villages, whose ointments and tinctures helped with chills and muscle tension, but not with more specific issues.
Your potions, curse ointments, pills and teas made with curse energy provided relief. Your home-baked gingerbread also helped to increase your popularity in the first few months.
And so your new life as an apothecary and gingerbread baker could have been a complete success in the broadest sense - if the two pests hadn't turned up in your garden one day.
Hans (or Hansel, as he introduced himself) was as skinny as a twig, with a wiry fuzz sprouting above his upper lip. Gretel reminded you of the innkeepers’ daughter; she followed Hansel around with a doe-eyed expression, giggling at every stupid remark he made. They didn’t look like siblings. In fact, they weren’t even children anymore but spoiled teenagers, sixteen or seventeen years old.
First they trampled your front garden (including some valuable potion ingredients). Then they feasted on your freshly baked gingerbread through the open window, which you had placed on the windowsill to cool down.
You are not a misanthrope; you were and are always ready to help someone in need, even if it's just to give them shelter or provide them with a meal. But even Hansel's question: “So you really do live all alone out here in the forest? Aren't you afraid that something might… happen to you, old lady?”, should have been a warning.
The two brats had (allegedly) got lost, wandered through the forest for two days and were now sitting at your kitchen table, eyeing the oven-fresh gingerbread and your furnishings, which are quite unusual for human eyes. What caught their interest was an open casket full of brass rings and crushed pyrite, which they had probably mistaken for gold because of the color.
The end of the story is largely known.
There was a fierce brawl and Hansel somehow managed to push you into your own oven, which had thankfully already cooled down enough for the heat to be unpleasant but not life-threatening. Faint with rage, you had to listen to Hansel and Gretel turn your home completely upside down. When they finally realized that you weren't hiding mountains of coins, or gems and certainly no gold bars in your hut, they left empty-handed and in a bad mood.
You had to stay two whole days in the god-damn oven before you were rescued from your predicament by a friend of yours, Yuki Tsukumo.
You would have preferred to forget this embarrassment as quickly as possible, but just a few years later the song of 'Hansel and Gretel', who defeat a man-eating curse witch in a gingerbread house, was on everyone's lips and made it quite difficult to forget.
The path winds through the fields straight towards the forest where you have built a new house – far from your former home further west in the Zenin kingdom. It smells of freshly cut grass, meadow flowers and pine cones. Birds are chirping, a farmer with a frayed straw hat on his head greets you as you pass by. The sun is low and bathes the world in beautiful gold.
Your worries disappear for a few minutes.
…
There are inns and there are inns. This one is clearly the latter. And Kento Nanami should know, because he has been a guest in many inns in his life.
The landlady, whose curiosity is as great as the size of her breasts, has been prancing around their table all evening, probably hoping to pick up some snippet of their conversation. She stops far too often and generously fills up Geto's and Toji's mugs, even though they haven't finished their drinks yet.
Nanami never drinks when he is on a mission. Neither does his apprentice, Ino Takuma, who slides back and forth on his chair with obvious discomfort. He can't blame the boy. The daughter of the two landladies gives him sultry glances across the bar, but blushes every time Ino accidentally looks in her direction.
A little further back in the taproom, two women in provocative clothing are sitting at a table with four men. Over the course of the evening, the two have disappeared up the narrow staircase to the guest rooms with men in various stages of drunkenness. After a while, the men came back down the stairs with awkward grins and were greeted by their drinking companions with crude jokes and good-natured mockery.
“...and then he said: ‘Guess what, I already had a shot at it!’ Get it, he's the royal huntsman and he had a shot at it!” Gojo laughs so loudly that some of the people at the next table turn to them, annoyed.
Nanami closes his eyes with a sigh and massages the bridge of his nose with two fingers.
Satoru Gojo and Suguru Geto are having a great time. Geto is well on his way to getting drunk and Gojo's black blindfold is tilted alarmingly to the left, while he shoves another gingerbread cake with a thick layer of icing into his mouth. A “courtesy of the house”, as the landlady called it.
Laughing, the two jujutsu sorcerers lean shoulder to shoulder and have been telling one anecdote after another all evening. “If you have to explain your own joke, it's not funny”, Nanami interjects. “My only ray of hope is that I won't have to put up with you tomorrow.”
“Oh come on, you old fart! Tomorrow you'll have all day to be grumpy and boss poor Ino around. Tonight, you have fun!” Gojo chuckles and licks sticky icing off his fingertips.
“I'll have fun when our job is done. Speaking of which”, after Nanami has made sure that the landlady is out of earshot and out of sight, he reaches into a pouch on his belt and pulls out three folded sheets of paper. “Here are the wanted posters you asked me for.”
Everyone leans forward curiously.
Three faces stare back at them.
The first drawing, made with hasty strokes, shows a young man with dark hair and a horizontal mark across his nose. 'Choso Kamo' is written underneath.
The second drawing is little more than a black outline that could be either a man or a woman. The name 'Kenjaku' is shown underneath.
The third drawing shows a woman whose left side of her face is covered by a thick braid. Her name is 'Mei Mei'. And behind it comes the addition 'curse witch'.
Finally Toji Zenin stirs, resting his strong forearms on the tabletop. “And that's my mission. Just so we're clear, you stay out of my business. Because I need the damn money.” For his part, he slides a wanted poster across the table. The drawing of a beast, half man, half wolf, grins at them, snarling.
“A werewolf or - more likely - something that resembles a werewolf has been spotted in the surrounding villages”, Toji reports. “The animal has killed sheep and oxen and a few weeks ago it has attacked an elderly woman. It is said to prowl around in an old quarry during the full moon. If I kill the werewolf, I'll get almost 5 million yen-ducats.”
Gojo whistles through his teeth. “Five million is quite a lot of money. We won't get our reward until we've brought that one back safely.”
“Well, we have to find him first”, Geto says with a heavy tongue, pointing to the picture of the young man with the line across his nose.
“Who’s this Choso?” Ino asks curiously.
“This is one of the bastard sons of Noritoshi Kamo, King of the Kamo Empire. Years ago, Noritoshi is said to have kidnapped a noblewoman from one of the surrounding counties, held her captive in his dungeon and violated her in the most brutal ways imaginable. Nine sons were born from this ‘union’. These children are said to be half human and half cursed. The mother and her eldest son finally managed to escape from Kamos' palace. Rumor has it they’ve been hiding somewhere in the Zenin kingdom.”
“And why is this Choso wanted?”, Ino continues to ask.
Gojo runs his fingers through his silver-white hair and gives a pained smile. “Officially, no one is looking for him. Nevertheless, some very powerful curse users and curse witches are after him - and they all come from the Kamo kingdom. Something is seriously wrong over there. Our scouts are increasingly reporting special-category curses appearing in the vicinity of the palace. People are disappearing without a trace or being killed. On top of that, the Sisterhood of the Curse Witches wants to hold their Sabbath in the Kamo Empire. And to make matters even worse, rumors are circulating that one of the most powerful curse users has appeared in the Kamo Empire: Kenjaku. He was supposedly present at the creation of these children.”
Gojo exhales loudly. “Whatever these people have in mind for the Kamo boy and his mother, it can't be good. But we will get ahead of them. The Council of Elders has therefore instructed us to track them down and bring them to the Gojo Kingdom. However, as relations between our kingdoms are already on a knife’s edge, we have to proceed in complete secrecy. Otherwise war could break out.”
There is a tense silence at the table.
Nanami does not envy the two jujutsu sorcerer nor their mission. But there is probably no one better suited for such a suicide mission than Satoru Gojo or Suguru Geto.
He himself is on a mission with his apprentice to exorcize a level 1 curse that has taken up residence in an old bell tower.
And Toji Zenin, an outcast of the royal Zenin family, is making a living as a mercenary and is now chasing after a werewolf.
“Oops, I haven't got anything left to drink”, Geto mumbles after a while and peers into his mug with a narrowed eye. The alcohol has reddened his cheeks. Gojo laughingly pats him on the shoulder and cheerfully waves to the landlady, who immediately rushes to them with a new bottle of berry wine. “Would you like some more-”
“WHERE ARE THEY?!”
The inn’s door bursts open, and a man in house slippers and a crookedly buttoned nightrobe stands in the doorway. The few guests jolt upright, staring at him—some in shock, others in surprise.
“Hey now! What’s with all the noise?!”, the innkeeper squawks, setting the wine bottle down beside Toji. Without the slightest hesitation, Toji grabs it and fills both his and Geto’s mugs nearly to the brim. Grinning conspiratorially, the two toast each other.
“My sons have been cursed! I've heard you have jujutsu sorcerers in the house, Madam Innkeeper!” The man in the crooked-buttoned robe stumbles into the taproom. Desperation is clearly written on his face.
Nanami looks at his companions. Geto and Toji are busy with themselves and their mugs of wine, Gojo shoves another gingerbread into his mouth and chews with full cheeks, while Ino ducks his head to avoid the searching gaze of the innkeepers daughter.
With a resigned sigh, Nanami rises from his chair. “My name is Kento Nanami. What can I do for you?”
The man comes up to him with his hands outstretched and pushes the innkeeper harshly aside when she tries to stand in his way. “My sons suddenly fell ill this afternoon, they have a high temperature and a purulent rash all over their bodies. I don't know what to do. No medicine is working and the illness came on so suddenly that there must be a curse involved! I don't have much money in the house, I'm just the baker here in the village, but I'll pay you in one way or another, I give you my word. But I beg you to help my children!”
Before Nanami can say anything in reply, the door opens again and a woman in a plaid nightgown and a white bonnet on her head enters the inn. She pushes two red-haired boys in front of her, who are not only pale as corpses, but also covered all over with red pustules.
Nanami immediately sees the problem: the boys' heads are wrapped in several fleshy vines whose nettle-like leaves seem to be waving maliciously at him. The baker is right. His sons have indeed been cursed.
Behind him, Ino gasps audibly. “Are those... ivy vines?”
“Something like that”, Nanami confirms quietly. He pulls a cloth-wrapped knife from the sheath on his belt and marches resolutely towards the woman and her children. She has placed her hands protectively around the boys' slender shoulders; her face is ashen with worry.
Nanami grabs one of the fleshy vines, giving them a careful tug. One of the boys whimpers softly. With a well-directed slash of his knife he cuts the cursed plants. They burst open like overcooked sausages. Purple liquid splashes over the faces of the boys, who blink up at him with wide eyes. Then the color returns to their cheeks.
“That wasn't a spontaneous curse”, Nanami speaks his thoughts. The tendrils curl at his feet like dying beetles, leaving residues, faint traces of cursed beings, on the well-worn floorboards.
The baker looks at him with a mixture of gratitude and horror. “Not a spontaneous curse? Do you think someone cursed my children on purpose?” The baker's wife gasps audibly and hugs her boys protectively.
The taproom is almost completely silent. Everyone looks up at Nanami, who is secretly annoyed that he opened his mouth at all.
“Who would want to do something like that to my children? They've only just grown out of their diapers!”
“Maybe someone cursed your children out of revenge on you”, interjects a man with a thick moustache.
“Maybe it was the turnip farmer's servant. That good-for-nothing only had to put his bread on tab last week because he couldn't pay”, interjects another man, fueling the discussion further.
“Or it was the potter with her spoiled brats!”, the landlady now also speculates.
“No, it was probably that herb witch from the forest!”, an old man calls over to them from the corner of the tabroom. “She walked past your bakery just before your children fell ill, don't you remember, Anton?”
The baker moves around.
Nanami also pricks up his ears at the term 'witch'. “Who is this herb witch?”, he asks.
“A curse witch!”, comes from the old man.
“She's not a curse witch!”, the baker’s wife interjects angrily and, turning to Nanami, she continues: “Here in the village, we call her the ‘herb witch' because she lives alone in the forest and sometimes she seems a bit eccentric. She comes to the village every other day and sells healing ointments, potions, herbal teas and tinctures and things like that. She also bakes excellent gingerbread.”
Gojo, his mouth still full of gingerbread, immediately stops chewing.
“But the old tailor isn’t wrong when he says that she just came from the market and passed by our bakery right before our children were struck by this awful curse”, the baker admits.
“But she had no reason to harm our children! Besides, we don’t even know if she can cast curses —let alone whether she is a curse witch!”, his wife counters.
“Still”, the baker mutters, then turns back to Nanami. “I’d be very grateful if you could go see the herbal witch and find out if she… if she might have…”
“If she might have cursed your children?”, Nanami finishes the sentence for him.
The baker nods. His wife presses her lips together but says nothing.
“My apprentice and I are currently on another mission and unfortunately we can’t afford any delays,” Nanami says. The baker’s shoulders slump in disappointment. “But I’m sure my two companions here, the famous jujutsu sorcerers Satoru Gojo and Suguru Geto, would be more than happy to visit this ‘herbal witch’ first thing in the morning and investigate.”
Geto, who had only been half-listening, looks up from his wine mug, visibly perplexed. Gojo appears just as caught off guard. Then, he gives Nanami a good-natured smile and silently mouths, You bastard.
Nanami returns the smile briefly before giving the baker—who practically oozes gratitude—a reassuring pat on the shoulder.
For Geto, the next morning begins with a hellish headache. Gojo, on the other hand, who has not drunk any berry wine, suffers from a hellish stomach ache thanks to the absurd amount of sugar-glazed gingerbread cookies he ate. The two jujutsu sorcerers lean forward in their chairs like shadows of themselves and let their eyes wander around the empty taproom.
Meanwhile, Toji, who is sitting next to them at the table, is eagerly shoveling several fried eggs and fried bacon strips with sourdough bread into his mouth, which the landlady – this time the owner of the inn and not her busty wife – has slammed onto the table without saying a word.
Nanami and Ino have already left.
“At least we don't have to throw ourselves into a fight,” mumbles Geto with a heavy tongue, stretching his arms over his head with a groan.
Gojo leans back in his chair and stares up at the ceiling without seeing anything. “Still, Nanami didn't have to give us this stupid side quest,” he grumbles. “Now we have to walk into some forest and tell some old lady not to curse little children. What a waste of time! The old woman probably can't see or cast any curses at all and is just being slandered by her neighbors. The real culprit is probably already gone.”
“Look on the bright side: we can sober up on the way there.”
“You can sober up”, Gojo replies and adjusts his blindfold.
After a while, Toji also takes his leave. He says, that he has to hurry and meet some kind of whistle blower, who has information about the werewolf. And then Toji is suddenly in a great hurry to get out of the inn. Gojo and Geto only find out the reason half an hour later, when the innkeeper (the unfriendly one) shouts after them that Toji ‘forgot’ to pay his bill and that they now have to pay for their colleague as well.
The two jujutsu sorcerer set off late in the morning.
Before, Geto had taken the opportunity to take a closer look at the remains of the residues. The curse markers were still faintly visible on the wooden floorboards – as well as the unmistakable signs of curse witchcraft. Gojo and Geto had exchanged meaningful glances; perhaps this 'herb witch' was not as innocent as they had first assumed. The landlady (this time the friendly one) as well as the old tailor gave them directions to the house of the supposed curse witch and so the two of them march down the road that leads them out of the village and directly into the forest.
…
“Hello, anyone home?”
Panicked, you startle out of your sleep and blink disorientedly against the incoming sunlight. It takes a moment before you realize that you are lying in your bed – not trapped in an iron furnace between hot ashes and glowing coals.
Sometimes you still have nightmares, but they become less frequent.
“Hellooo~?”
Still half-asleep, you try to get up—only to immediately tangle yourself in your blanket. You hit the floor with a painful thud, just in time to be greeted by Bertil.
With an unreal buzzing sound, the cursed spirit opens its bloated mouth and drags its violet tongue lazily across your face.
You briefly consider whether you should just lie there on your floor and play dead. At some point, your visitor will surely give up and disappear.
But whoever is out there in front of your door won't give up.
With a resigned sigh, you pick yourself up, wipe the sticky saliva from your face and grab a knitted cardigan, that you carelessly threw over the back of a chair the night before, as you walk past.
Bertil looks after you and croaks. The toad-like cursed spirit has been with you for what feels like half an eternity. It appeared shortly after the incident with Hansel and Gretel. By now you're sure that the hatred you felt for the two youngsters and the panic you felt in the dark, hot oven was a kind of catalyst for its creation.
“Hellooo, we know you're there! We heard the noise!”
Exasperated, you pull on your cardigan and shout in a loud, sleep-ridden voice: “Yeah, chill! I'm coming!”, and quietly in the direction of the cursed spirit: ”Bertil, heel! Hop on my shoulder.”
The cursed spirit blinks its three eyes and leaps. Mid-air, its body shrinks to the size of an ordinary toad. Awkwardly, it lands on your right shoulder.
As a precaution, you gather a small amount of cursed energy in the palm of your hand. As soon as the knocks has died down, you yank the door open.
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