"Fuck."
The word left Carter's mouth like steam, thin and bitter, gone the moment it touched the air.
He stood half-hidden behind the carcass of a vending machine, shoulders hunched against a cold that had nothing to do with weather. Tokyo was quiet in the wrong way. Not peaceful. Not resting. Just… emptied. The kind of silence that came after something had eaten its fill.
Carter dragged a hand across his quarter-zip and felt grit grind into the fabric. Beige once meant clean. It meant school, pictures, harmless days. Now the pullover was stained with smoke and dirt, scorched along the cuff, and stiff where something had dried and he refused to name it. His camo cargo pants hung looser than they used to, torn open at the thigh. He looked worse for wear, and worse for being awake.
Three days.
Three days since Shibuya.
Three days since the city turned into a slaughterhouse and left him walking through the leftovers.
Three days since he'd seen his classmates, kids he'd laughed with on the bus, kids who'd complained about the itinerary, lying in the street with eyes that didn't track anymore.
Fresh corpses.
The phrase came back like a receipt you couldn't get rid of. Paper you crumpled, but it still held the ink.
Carter swallowed hard and forced himself to breathe.
He was small, five-six on a good day, built lean and quick, the kind of body people underestimated until it moved. His skin was dark, his face tight with exhaustion that sat under his eyes like bruising. Dreadlocks framed his head in thick ropes, some tied back, some loose. One loc ran down the side of his face, dyed grey like a slash of ash through black. It made him look older than he was, or maybe that was just the last three days doing their work.
He peered around the corner.
A convenience store sat ahead, its sign still flickering in a stubborn loop, bright and cheerful in a world that had stopped being either. The glass doors were shattered. Inside, the aisles were wrecked. Spilled snacks, toppled shelves, scattered cans glinting under emergency lights that should've died hours ago.
And in the middle of it all, like it had paid rent and claimed the space, sat a curse.
Carter's jaw tightened.
"Just my luck," he murmured, letting frustration come out first because fear didn't help. Fear never helped. It'd been almost nine hours since he last ate, nine hours of dodging and hiding from monsters that showed up at night. His world had gone from studying to survival so fast it still felt like whiplash.
The thing was a swollen parody of life. Skin the color of old bruises, purple dulled to something sickly and faded. Tubby, heavy, its mass folding into itself like soft clay. The proportions were wrong, arms too thick, neck too short, head squashed down like it had been pressed by a careless hand. It didn't breathe the way living things breathed. It just existed, and the air around it felt tainted, like rot dressed up as air.
It hadn't noticed him yet.
Carter flexed his fingers and let cursed energy roll into his palms. Two slips formed, receipt paper cheap and thin, the kind you usually stuffed into a pocket without thinking. One in his left. One in his right. Three inches by seven. Small enough to be nothing.
But in this messed up, upside-down world Carter Shyne had found himself in, it was something.
"He doesn't look too difficult," Carter whispered, mostly to steady himself.
His left thumb smoothed the paper flat. Ink bled up from the fibers without a pen, dark as a bruise, shaping itself into letters that were too neat for his shaking hands. A rule written into the world.
Mandate Mode: No Advance.
Simple. Clear. He needed the first rule to land clean, something that kept distance in his favor.
"Maybe—"
The thought snapped.
His stomach twisted like something inside him had caught the scent of a predator. A deep warning climbed his spine and tightened behind his ribs. Carter froze, dreadlocks barely shifting as he pressed closer to cover.
The curse's head turned.
Slow at first, like it was listening.
Then it angled toward him with sudden certainty, and Carter felt the moment it found him, like a cold finger tracing down the back of his neck.
Its cloudy pits locked on.
The world narrowed to that gaze, to that wrong attention.
Then the curse moved.
Not fast in the way a sprinter was fast. Fast in the way something enormous didn't need to hurry and could still reach you. It lurched forward, shoulders scraping the doorframe, knocking over shelves like they were made of air. Cans exploded into motion, rolling and clattering across tile. The whole store shook under its weight.
Carter's breath caught.
No time for the careful plan. No time to place the mandate perfectly.
He raised his right hand.
"Harden!"
He threw.
The slip snapped through the air and stiffened mid-flight, paper turning rigid and sharp, like laminated steel pretending to be a card. It punched into the curse's side with a sound like wet fabric tearing and stuck there, biting deep.
The curse jolted, confused, pain arriving late like an afterthought.
Carter didn't let it process.
Another slip appeared in his hand, already buzzing with cursed energy. Charge Mode. The paper hummed against his fingers like a held breath.
He flicked his wrist and sent it.
The slip struck and detonated.
A concussive pop bloomed through the aisle, force slamming outward, rippling the curse's body, blasting debris into a storm. Dust and shattered glass leapt into the air. The flickering sign outside stuttered as if the blast had startled electricity itself.
Carter ducked his head as grit peppered his face. For a heartbeat, all he could hear was ringing and the low groan of broken shelving collapsing.
When he looked up, the curse had sagged, its purple bulk slumping sideways into the wreckage. Not dead. But stunned. Hurt. Held in place long enough for the next move.
Carter let out a breath that shook on the way out.
Relief tried to spread through him like warmth.
He strangled it before it could.
His hands stayed raised. His eyes stayed sharp.
Because in Tokyo, the moment you exhaled like it was over was the moment something proved you wrong.
Carter summoned two more slips, not realizing he was coating them in energy his mind didn't even have words for yet. The paper felt warmer than it should, alive in his fingers, like it was waiting on permission.
He lifted his hands, squared his shoulders, and tried to pretend his heart wasn't kicking his ribs like it wanted out.
He was ready to end it.
Then someone walked through the fight like it wasn't a fight.
A man in a traditional Japanese robe leisurely strolled into the space between Carter and the curse, unhurried, almost bored, like he was stepping around a puddle. Like the purple thing squatting in the convenience store didn't matter. Like Carter didn't matter either.
Raven hair fell down his back, neat and heavy, paired with a bang that reached below his chin. The robe sat on him too clean, too calm, not a single thread out of place. No blood. No dirt. No panic.
"In only three days," the man said, amusement soft on his tongue, "you seem to have a grasp of your innate cursed technique."
Carter didn't answer. His breath hitched. This wasn't amusing. Not to a freshman college student whose life had been ripped out by the roots.
The man stepped closer to the violet creature, and the curse attacked on instinct, like it didn't understand what it was looking at.
Carter watched the curse's body begin to compress, folding in on itself, cursed energy warping and tightening until it became a sphere. It was like the air itself was obeying him. Like the curse didn't get to die messy or loud. It just got erased into something small enough to swallow.
"And it seems you're not even Japanese," the man continued, voice still lazy.
Carter could barely breathe. He could see it, the abundance of cursed energy wrapped around the man like a second skin. He could feel the presence behind it too, a weight that hinted at hundreds, maybe thousands of spirits, all crowded just out of sight. It wasn't just pressure. It was suffocation. Like standing too close to a storm that wanted to kneel your lungs.
The man swallowed the sphere and made a sour face.
"Grade 2," he said, disappointed. "No matter how much I do this, I'll never get used to the taste. Tell me your name again?"
He waited for Carter to respond like they were old friends.
When Carter didn't, the man's smile sharpened, and a low laugh slipped out of him.
"My, oh my," he murmured. "You can see them, can't you."
"How?" was all Carter could muster, the word scraping out of him. "How can one man have… that."
Fear was there, sure, but it wasn't only fear.
It was the sick realization that he'd stumbled into something that didn't belong on the same scale as him. A monster in human clothing, wearing calm like a mask.
Carter's mind started running anyway, fast and desperate. Ten meters to the right man hole cover. Fire escape at his five o'clock. Six-story building. His body tried to map the street into an answer.
Every route ended the same.
The man took Carter's dilated pupils as his answer and laughed again, softer this time, like he was pleased.
"To have such keen eyes," he said. "Truly, everything is going according to plan."
He walked toward Carter.
The presence closed in, and Carter's throat tightened so hard it hurt.
To live, he found the only option that didn't look like immediate death.
Play along.
"C-Carter, sir," he choked out.
Intrigue flickered in the man's eyes.
"Hm," he said. "Sounds American."
He towered over Carter, robe hanging loose, posture casual, like this was nothing. Then he slapped his forehead like he'd forgotten something small and mundane, and that tiny gesture made Carter's skin crawl. Sweat slipped down Carter's face while his thoughts spiraled.
Did he want me to answer.
Is this a test.
Clearly I'm American.
It has to be a test.
Is he going to kill me.
Am I going to die.
Can I escape.
I can't read his face.
"Where are my manners," the man said. "My name is Kenjaku. I came to give you a Kogane. You destroyed yours as soon as it spawned."
A skull with wings appeared beside him. Its body was short and stubby, pitch black, with an upside-down heart at the end of its tail.
"Hi, I'm Kogane," it chirped, full of youthful glee, a complete contrast to the dread choking the air.
For a moment, the world went silent.
A thousand-year-old special grade sorcerer and a novice curse user stood in the street. One looked entertained, present, almost relaxed.
The other looked like he was trying not to drown.
Carter forced himself, for the first time in the whole encounter, to meet Kenjaku's eyes. Carter's brown were withered and tired, but still alive. Kenjaku's were hollow, devoid of anything but something cold, like an empty room you didn't want to step into.
"Carter," Kogane said, breaking the silence, "are you ready to participate in the Culling Game?"
Kenjaku turned his back like it was his cue to leave.
"Kinda boring," he thought, already walking away.
But Carter's eyes burned a hole in his back.
Carter's lids squeezed shut for a moment in defeat.
"Shit," he muttered, pure spite.
Then he opened his eyes again and found resolve sitting in the same place fear had been. His slips dissipated. He stood up straighter, drew a breath like he was about to dive into deep water.
"Who are you."
Three simple words that almost killed him just saying them.
Kenjaku paused, then smiled again.
"Maybe not so boring after all."
"I'm the person who orchestrated this," Kenjaku said. "Tokyo. Shibuya. The Culling Games. It's part of a bigger piece I'm trying to illustrate, you see."
"Shibuya." Carter's nails dug into his skin at the name.
"So you're the man who caused the Shibuya incident."
Carter knew it was illogical to ask. He knew there was nothing to gain from the answer. But people could only swallow so much before it came back up.
Amusement touched Kenjaku's mouth again as Carter's cursed energy flared with his anger.
"You're going to attract curses if you keep outputting your cursed energy," Kenjaku said, smug and casual, like he hadn't just admitted to mass murder.
"Answer the damn question!" Carter's nostrils flared. Veins stood out along his arms.
Kenjaku didn't respond. He just squared his shoulders with that playful grin that said everything without saying anything at all.
"What will you do with the answer," he asked, tone calm, almost polite.
Carter's posture dropped. His mouth opened, closed, opened again, but no smart response showed up. His fists clenched like something invisible was holding him down.
His knees hit the street.
Gravel pressed into his skin, sharp and real. Carter lifted his head toward the sky like he could find something there, but all he found was broken skyline and grey cloud.
The ache in his stomach. The strain in his muscles. The lead in his legs. The itch of dirt on his skin. For a moment, he had a thought so ugly it scared him.
Do I want to die.
"Do you wish to die?" Kenjaku asked, watching him. "Because if so—"
"Never that," Carter cut in, softer than he'd been the whole time.
"But I don't know this world anymore," he said, voice shaking. "Curses. Cursed techniques. Culling Games. The horde of monsters that seem to be lurking in the shadows."
His hand clutched his collar like that quarter-zip was the last thread tying him to his dorm, to normal, to a life that made sense.
"I don't know what the hell is going on." Tears broke at the edges of his vision.
"Help me understand," Carter roared, locking eyes with Kenjaku.
Kenjaku chuckled at the panting boy.
"Help you understand jujutsu?" Kenjaku repeated, like the word itself was funny. His chuckle turned into laughter.
"Yes," Carter said, desperate and honest. "I have no idea what jujutsu even is. Tell me something. Anything. Please."
Kenjaku closed his eyes for a moment, like he was savoring it. When he opened them again, the smile was still there.
"Why not," he said with a shrug. "Listen, boy. For the next seventy-two hours, I'll give you a crash course on jujutsu. If you accept, you'll join the Culling Game on the seventh day."
Carter's mouth fell open.
He looked like he'd been punched by relief and dread at the same time.
"Are you going to sit there like a monkey," Kenjaku said, "or are you going to be a sorcerer."
Kenjaku drew blood across his palm.
Carter's eyes dropped to the crimson line, and Shibuya flashed again. Faces. Voices. That one harmless night that turned into a graveyard.
He grabbed a shard of glass near him. Almost weightless. Jagged. Honest. He drew blood from his palm with a wince.
"For your first lesson as a jujutsu sorcerer," Kenjaku said, "a deal means nothing without a pact. Be wise who you make it with, because they are binding."
Their palms collided.
Blood pressed to blood.
The air tightened, like something invisible had just shut a door behind him.
Carter knew this man was trouble the moment he saw him.
But to live, he'd make a deal with the devil.