Please, leave a stain on this vast emptiness

Chapter 13

Tsumi watches his first-year peers piling into the back of the car, all three share a slight baffled look as the younger male waves while closing the car door for them. Tsumi has the tendency to cling, he sticks to those he feels an attachment for like warmed maltose syrup, be it training, mission or even a stroll, he shadows behind quietly.

The same male just shook his head when the dispatch order for first-year students arrive.

The allocated assistant director for the dispatch, a man who appears too wearied and aged for his tender age of twenty six, rolls down his driver seat window, voicing the others' question: "You are saying you will pass up this mission Jūnisakura-san?"

"Yes, there is something to do today. I should head off separately unless my presence is absolutely required at the scene, Ijichi-san." Tsumi walks to the open window to respond.

"Well..." Ijichi ponders, unlike the other students of Jujutsu Tech, Tsumi, his tryingly frail condition and technique restricted, is never candidate for a mission, yet the boy always tag along with the dispatching students. When the exorcism target is no stronger than grade 3, Tsumi would be by their sidelines observing the combat. However if the cursed spirits are much stronger, he needs to refrain from even stepping inside the curtain, for both his safety and those in the mission.

If the cursed womb in this case is able to undergo metamorphose, prediction is it will become a cursed spirit of high grade.

Ijichi nods as he starts the engine, it is probably for the best if the boy is not waiting for his friends in stress alongside him later, especially in this bad weather.

With Ijichi's tacit consent, Tsumi wishes his fellow students luck as the car drives out of sight.

"Guess I am back here sooner than expected. If they are still here then I have done all for naught." When Tsumi arrives at the foot of the rain-soaked mountain, he sighs while tucking away a wet lock of hair. Distances away on the steep incline, tip of a black tinted dome barely peeks out from the sea of forest.

A curtain invisible to the ordinary, hiding away the main Jūnisakura estate.

The tone of the curtain is darker, indicating it has been tremendously reinforced, probably every family member is out for such precaution to be taken. Tsumi's prediction is proven correct. Good, just returning to this hellhole irritates me, to face them is only going to aggravate both me and them.

Members of the Jūnisakura clan do not leave their estates, the number of outings in one's life could be counted with a hand, the only exception is the members living in the main estate, whom inspects the branch estates constantly, Tsumi's mother is brought back from a branch family by his father, the current head.

Tsumi has scheduled this date from the past patterns in his recollection, and has patiently waited for the past few months. This is a dangerous gambit, but one he must take to slip inside his father's study.

Treking his way into the dark veil, the sky blacken on the other side, a night sky he has seen perpetually for fourteen years of his life. Immediately, his heart weighs heavy, depression clouds his mind as memories surge, as bleak and sombre as the looming curtain above his head. Tsumi wants to turn around and escape, afraid this darkness will swallows him back in, locking him again when he is just beginning to taste happiness.

But, Komen is on the other side. Tsumi reminds himeself, he and his little sister are separated by the same darkness, he could only get to her through the darkness, he will regret turning away and moving on, leaving her on that other side.

Kneeling on the ground, shivering and clutching the hem of his dripping mantelet, Tsumi collects enough motivation to compose himself and press on, pulling away the storm shutters to break in through the veranda.

Maneuvering noiselessly from corridor to corridor, Tsumi stealthily reaches the empty study and starts sieving through the stacks of record and report on the designated shelves. Five minutes later footsteps approach and the sliding door creaks open again.

Already recognized the distinctive mixture of skin and metal in the steady thumping against wooden floor, Tsumi does not even look up from the two papers he is comparing in his hands as he greets: "You are getting slow, Shin."

Kabaya slides the door close as she sighs: "Welcome back, young master, I wish you would dry your feet first instead of leaving all those wet splotches on the tatami."

"They dry quickly, besides only you would be sharp enough to get alerted." Tsumi replies as he shuffles through another shelf.

"Yes yes..." Kabaya approaches from behind to drop a tea towel on his hair and starts drying, as servant prohibited from contact with Jūnisakura members outside of her bodyguard duties, she could only afford to be motherly away from prying eyes: "Why are you sneaking back here?"

"Filtering." Tsumi trusts Kabaya, both siblings essentially being raised by the woman secretly: "By ruling out locations like peeling off layers of oninion, I'm bound to find the place they abandoned Komen in. It's stupid and tedious, but the only method I have right now."

Tsumi spends the next few hours on all the shelves while Kabaya stands guard outside of the study, directing other servants away. When Tsumi slides the door open and step back into the corridor again, Kabaya turns toward him expectingly.

"Comparing expense report from recent years, she has not been sent overseas." Tsumi gazes into the distance before comforting his own mind: "This is good, I can reach her, if I find her."

"That's good news." Kabaya gives him a reassuring smile: "Japan is relatively small, after all."

    "I should go, I've spend too much time here already, it's getting stuffy." Tsumi murmur as he begins walking, this place is stifling, plus his classmates are probably back in school by now.

"Before you go." Tsumi stops as Kabaya calls out while placing something in his hand, looking down he sees an umbrella: "I went through fifteen minutes drying your hair, don't let my efforts go to waste."

Upon returning to Jujutsu Tech a few hours later, Tsumi is hit with a litany of cruel news he is not expecting.

The cursed womb in the mission turned out to be a special grade spirit.

Nobara is unconscious.

Megumi is critically injured.

Yūji is dead.