Minamoto Soujun sat cross-legged by the tea table, his back to the window. On the back of his neck, an eye had opened, gaze sharp as it swept the room.
Inside that eye its structure was being fine-tuned. Where it needed more, he added; where it needed less, he cut back.
For example, blood vessels across the retina. Too many and they scattered light, blurring vision. Too few and the eye would starve and wither. Balance was everything.
How much was optimal. Where exactly should they be placed. He had to discover the best configuration for himself, one that cooperated with the rest of his tissues to create the most perfect structure and yield greater performance.
That meant endless adjustment and trial.
He kept constructing new eyes from flesh, burning through cursed energy to restore what was spent.
Two hands scribbled across a notebook, sketching cross-sections of ocular anatomy, the margins filled with cramped notes of experiments and hypotheses.
Think, propose, test, verify. Rule out what failed. Repeat the process.
Another set of hands flipped through books for reference, mining knowledge to spark inspiration.
Another set braced the table, calmly cradling a teacup.
And yet another idly toyed with the Flyhead curse, pinching and squeezing it in his grasp.
For Soujun this was work and rest combined. The last stages of eye optimization were tedious and repetitive, requiring neither full focus nor forced inspiration.
Take it slow.
He was currently running his body at four parallel tasks, each hand engaged, each process flowing to the limit of what he could sustain. He relaxed while still moving experiments forward.
This Flyhead had a strange connection to him.
At six years old, when his innate technique was on the cusp of awakening but stalled at the gate, it had been the Flyhead's incessant buzzing that drove him into frustration, breaking the deadlock and pushing him through into success.
Back then he had nearly crushed it to death by accident. Later his mother sealed it inside a glass jar, where it remained for four years.
When he turned ten, he came across it again and remembered. He released it, tied it to his hair, and it had stayed there ever since.
The thing never grew tame, always trying to escape. Maybe Soujun still was not strong enough, his cursed energy not vast enough to make it kneel.
He knew curses could be domesticated. Plenty of sorcerers kept them, whether by technique or sheer strength.
Flyhead should have submitted by now. Even without intellect, it had instinct to seek advantage and avoid harm. After all this time being punished and beaten down, it should have yielded. But this creature was the exception.
Fine. Stay tied.
A strand of hair extended and wrapped the struggling curse tight, leaving only its white wings exposed to beat furiously in the air.
He had no plan to free it or exorcise it.
Both of them were rebels.
You refuse to bow. I refuse to stop forcing you.
Soujun had a collection of curses under his hand. Most were weak, small-bodied things.
He was raising them for experiments, testing theories, not for strength but for their functions.
Now a strand of hair turned crimson at its tip and drove into the Flyhead's left arm.
The thing sensed danger and thrashed, but the strands held it fast.
Soujun fed it a trickle of cursed energy. At once it stilled, lulled by the pleasure of the connection.
Gulp, gulp.
The red hair tip gave off an eerie swallowing sound.
Before his eyes its left arm withered and shrank away, until nothing was left. In its place a mesh of crimson veins spun from his hair, still linked at the shoulder.
A moment later flesh swelled again, bone, muscle, and skin forming. A new arm had been constructed.
The curse's expression was one of bliss, oblivious to the replacement.
Long ago Soujun had realized his technique could not control anything severed from his body.
Shed hair, clipped nails, or constructed organs—all became uncontrollable once detached.
Perfect Control only had two states: none or all. It never degraded with less vitality. As long as a trace of life remained, his control was absolute.
Then the thought struck him.
What if he eroded the Flyhead's left arm away, replaced it with one of his own creation powered by a hair connection.
Would that not let him control the curse perfectly.
—
The new left arm hung limp. It looked bizarrely out of place on the frail, ugly body, and wholly asymmetrical against the other arm.
An abomination, a weak little Flyhead now bearing an arm sculpted to human ideals.
Of course it looked wrong. Because the arm was Soujun's, only scaled down. Its essence remained his.
He could feel the arm clearly, knew it was hungry for energy.
Red light pulsed down the hair strand into it.
The hand clenched. Strength returned.
The Flyhead flailed with its other limbs in panic.
Its tiny brain could not understand. Instinct alone drove it to reclaim its body.
Soujun released his grip and let it move freely.
The arm would slowly spread through the Flyhead, consuming and replacing. In time even its soul would be drawn into the transformation, a kind of grafting assimilation.
What result would emerge, he did not know.
That was the thrill of experiment.
Whatever happened, the thing would become unique.
You are special, but from now on you are mine.
He would not erase its will, nor seize direct control.
No. He meant to break it.
Physical submission counted too.
—
At dawn Soujun stood on his second-floor balcony, gazing far into the distance.
He could see past half the city. See flowers, birds, insects, every detail.
His pupils dilated until they filled the iris.
He looked up. The airplane overhead came into crisp focus, the ridges on its shell, the pilot's facial features.
This was still not the limit.
Eagles were said to see up to thirty-six kilometers. Flying at three thousand meters, they could track a tiny animal among countless moving shapes below, shift their focus instantly, and strike without error.
Soujun narrowed his eyes. His pupils contracted to pinpoints. Across the street a stray dog rooting for scraps froze under his stare, trembling, whimpering, pinned like prey under a hawk's gaze.
Soujun turned away, satisfied. The eagle-eye construction was complete. Phase one of the double-eye project had succeeded. Trials showed it worked beautifully.
He leapt from the balcony, landed smoothly, and walked out the gate onto the street, full of interest in everything he saw, like a newborn discovering the world.
On the way he bought steamed buns from a roadside stall. Passing the stray, he tossed it two.
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