Chapter 91: The Awakening of the Cursed Womb: Death Paintings
The night lay over Tokyo like stagnant water.
At Tokyo Jujutsu High, deep within the repository that stored cursed objects gathered over centuries, the air was cold and heavy. Shelves lined the darkness from end to end, layered with seals, talismans, and suppression formulas. Every object locked away here carried enough malice to plunge a city into chaos if mishandled.
And tonight, the barriers opened without a sound.
"Oh, this smell really takes me back."
Mahito wandered through the corridor with his hands in his pockets, looking less like an intruder and more like a tourist strolling through an old museum. The stitched curse's blue hair swayed lightly as he tilted his head from side to side, admiring the rows of sealed objects with open amusement.
His fingers drifted over a shelf crowded with wooden boxes covered in paper seals.
Then he stopped.
"This one."
He smiled and peeled the seal away.
The lid creaked open.
Mahito's expression froze for a fraction of a second.
Inside the box, where three cursed wombs should have been resting, only one remained.
The eldest of the Death Paintings.
Choso.
Kechizu and Eso were gone.
Officially, the Jujutsu world had already recorded them as exorcised during the Yasohachi Bridge incident.
Mahito clicked his tongue.
"So only the firstborn is left."
There was disappointment in his tone, but not enough to matter.
He reached in and lifted the embryo carefully, studying it in the low light.
"Well, you're still better than nothing."
His smile returned, thin and ugly.
"I've heard you're the strongest of the brothers. And more importantly…"
His eyes narrowed.
"You care a little too much about family."
That made Choso useful.
Mahito tucked the embryo away, then let his body melt into a dark liquid that slipped through the ventilation shaft and vanished into the city.
Somewhere in Tokyo, far from the school and far below the streets, an abandoned basement sat steeped in mildew and rot.
A man was tied to a chair in the middle of it.
Ordinary.
Unremarkable.
Terrified.
He stared at the stitched curse in front of him with eyes so wide they looked ready to split.
Mahito crouched down in front of him, smiling brightly.
"Don't worry. It'll only hurt at the beginning."
Then he forced the embryo into the man's mouth.
The victim convulsed instantly.
His throat bulged.
Veins burst up beneath the skin of his neck and face. His body arched so violently the chair scraped backward across the concrete. His stomach swelled, then collapsed inward, as though something inside him was tearing through flesh and bone, forcing a new shape into existence.
The scream that left him was so shrill it barely sounded human.
Then it stopped.
All at once.
A tremendous burst of cursed energy erupted upward from the basement like a blood red pillar, so dense and violent that the concrete ceiling cracked.
The pressure alone dwarfed what Kechizu and Eso had shown together.
Mahito stepped back, looking pleased.
When the cursed surge finally settled, a man was standing where the ordinary victim had been.
Tall.
Lean.
With a strange hairstyle and a streak of blood like a painted mark across the bridge of his nose.
The eldest of the Death Paintings had awakened.
Choso slowly raised his hands and looked at them in silence.
"Who…"
His voice was rough, as though it had not been used in years.
"Who am I?"
Then, without warning, he pressed a hand to his chest.
Something was missing.
No, not missing.
Distant.
A hollowness had opened there, one tied to blood and instinct and bonds deeper than memory.
His brows knit together.
"Kechizu…"
"Eso…"
The names came out on their own.
And with them, the confusion in his eyes began to change. It darkened. Sharpened. Grief took shape first, then something even heavier.
Mahito leaned against the wall and watched with obvious enjoyment.
"Oh. So you can already feel it."
Choso turned toward him.
Mahito's smile widened.
"Your little brothers are dead."
The words dropped into the room like poison.
"Killed by Jujutsu sorcerers from Tokyo Jujutsu High."
He spread his hands in mock sympathy.
"Cruelly, too. I heard they didn't even leave bodies behind. Burned to ash by a swordsman named Yami."
Choso's eyes narrowed instantly.
"Dead?"
The word came out flat.
Dangerously flat.
Mahito nodded with theatrical sadness.
"They had only just awakened too. Poor things. They barely even got to see the world before they were erased."
For a moment, the basement went silent.
Then Choso's cursed energy shifted.
Not outward.
Inward.
Condensing into something heavy and volatile.
"No."
Mahito raised an eyebrow.
Choso's gaze had cleared completely now.
"If they were dead," he said, voice low and hard, "I would know."
As the eldest of the Death Paintings, he shared a connection with his brothers that went deeper than sight or distance. It was faint now, blurred and intermittent, but it was still there.
Not cut.
Not dead.
Blocked.
Hidden.
Something powerful stood between him and that bond, but it had not been severed.
Mahito, unsurprisingly, did not look disappointed.
In fact, his smile deepened.
"Oh? So you don't believe me."
He pushed himself off the wall.
"Then go verify it."
His tone remained almost playful.
"The man named Yami is at Jujutsu High right now. If your brothers are still alive, then they're probably in his hands."
He let the next words sink in before finishing.
"And if they're not…"
The air in the basement trembled.
The killing intent that burst from Choso was so violent that the walls seemed to groan under it.
His eyes turned bloodshot.
The confusion was gone now.
Only fury remained.
"Yami."
He spoke the name like he was biting through it.
No matter what the truth was, he had to find him.
If his brothers were alive, he would drag them back.
If they had been killed…
Then blood would answer blood.
"I'm going to Jujutsu High."
Choso left the words behind like a sentence.
Then he moved.
His figure blurred into a crimson streak and shot out of the basement so fast that even Mahito's gaze followed him for an extra beat.
"What a frightening attachment."
Mahito chuckled softly and looked toward the exit.
"Go on, then."
"Make a mess."
"Muddy everything up."
His eyes glinted in the dark.
"And while you're at it…"
"Draw out the most troublesome variable."
Only after Choso was long gone did Mahito's smile curl into something uglier.
"The stage is getting interesting."
At Tokyo Jujutsu High, in the boys' dormitory, Yami sat cross legged on his bed with Shiranui resting across his knees.
Moonlight spilled in through the window.
He moved the cloth over the black blade with slow, careful precision, wiping away the last trace of dust from the polished steel.
Since the Yasohachi Bridge incident, Kechizu and Eso had been hidden in one of Mei Mei's safe houses, known only to her and Yami. They had been purified, yes, but in the eyes of the Higher Ups, they were still former Special Grade cursed object vessels.
If he brought them openly onto school grounds, those rotten old men would call it treason before the door finished closing behind him.
Yami ran the cloth once more along the blade and glanced at the moon outside.
"By now…"
He spoke under his breath.
"…the eldest brother should be awake."
He already knew what Mahito was trying to do.
He knew Choso would come.
For a man like that, a brother was not negotiable.
"I just hope you're not too reckless."
His gaze drifted down to the floorboards.
"Replacing the floor once was expensive enough."
He sighed, but the faint light in his eyes betrayed him.
There was anticipation there.
Not bloodlust.
Something quieter.
Respect, perhaps.
For a man willing to turn against the world for his family.
Then the barrier around Jujutsu High shook.
A violent fluctuation rolled through the campus perimeter like a stone dropped into still water. The next instant, a mass of cursed energy drenched in the smell of blood pierced straight through the outer defenses and rushed inward like an arrow.
Yami looked up at once.
That presence was coming directly toward the boys' dormitory.
A smile touched the corner of his mouth.
"So you're here."
He stood, slipped his coat over his shoulders, and picked up Shiranui.
"Come on."
He rested the sheathed blade lightly against his shoulder.
"Let's go welcome our guest."
Boom!!!
The playground erupted.
A blood red figure dropped from the sky and smashed into the earth with enough force to leave a crater behind. Dust and broken turf sprayed outward in a circle.
Nearby, Maki and Panda, who had been finishing late night training, both spun toward the impact on instinct.
Maki's cursed tool came up at once.
Panda lowered his body, all humor gone from his expression.
As the dust cleared, the figure in the crater straightened slowly.
Choso stood there with his head lowered, blood soaked cursed energy curling around him like smoke. His eyes were red. His whole body radiated pressure sharp enough to sting exposed skin.
Maki felt cold sweat gather at the base of her neck.
"That pressure…"
Panda's face hardened.
"He's not normal."
Maki didn't take her eyes off Choso.
"No. He's Special Grade."
Then she narrowed her eyes.
"And that smell…"
Her grip tightened around the polearm.
"Death Painting."
Choso didn't even look at them.
"Give my brothers back."
His voice was so cold it barely sounded alive.
Maki took a step forward anyway.
"Hey."
She leveled the weapon toward him.
"I'm talking to you."
Choso finally moved.
Not toward her.
Not physically.
But the cursed energy rolling off him surged all at once, exploding outward in a dense wave of blood scented pressure that forced both Maki and Panda back several steps.
"Don't stand in my way."
This time, there was no mistaking it.
He had already decided they did not matter.
His gaze lifted toward the boys' dormitory.
Toward the place where the scent he was searching for lingered strongest.
He could smell them.
Kechizu.
Eso.
And mixed with that faint, precious trace, the scent of the man he had come to find.
"Found you."
His lips peeled back into something that was not quite a smile.
He slammed his hands together.
Blood gathered between his palms and compressed rapidly, churning with enough force to distort the surrounding air.
"Yami."
Inside the dormitory, Yami stood by the open window and watched the scene below.
The blood saturated killing intent rising off Choso was so thick it might as well have been visible.
Yami let out a small breath through his nose.
"What an impatient guest."
He glanced once at the polished black blade in his hand.
Then down at the blood red figure below.
"You came charging into someone else's house…"
A faint smile curved at his mouth.
"…without even taking your shoes off."
.....
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