Chapter 7
The bento box on the roof was empty.
Eriri put away her chopsticks, but her eyes secretly drifted toward Genji beside her. The April midday sun filtered through the gaps in the water tower, casting dappled light and shadow across his indigo hunting robes. The thousand-year-old ghost who called himself a "Grade 3 or 4 sorcerer"—no, now she knew he called himself a shikigami—was looking at the Tokyo skyline in the distance. His profile looked thoughtful in the light.
"So…" Eriri finally couldn't hold back, breaking the silence. "Yesterday you said you're not a ghost, but a shikigami?"
Genji turned his head, his gaze refocusing on her. He nodded, his tone returning to its usual half-serious, half-casual state. "Mm. Strictly speaking, I am now considered 'Zen'in Genji the Shikigami'—the eleventh shikigami of the Ten Shadows Technique."
"Aren't all shikigami… animals or monsters or something?" Eriri recalled various anime scenes she had seen. "Like your Jade Dogs and the giant snake. Can a person be a shikigami too?"
"Normally, no." Genji sat cross-legged, hovering in the air—a gesture he was growing increasingly comfortable with. "But I'm a special case. The essence of the Ten Shadows Technique is 'manipulating shadows,' and shadows can contain many things. In my later years, I spent a long time researching how to transform my consciousness, memories, techniques, and even physical information into the form of a shikigami."
He held out his palm. A faint flicker of indigo cursed energy lingered at his fingertips, gradually condensing into a tiny, swirling shadow sphere.
"See this? This is now the core of my existence," Genji said. "A shikigami core composed of cursed energy, encompassing my entire being. As long as this core is not destroyed, I can always maintain my current form."
Eriri leaned closer, looking at the spinning sphere with curiosity. It didn't look like matter, nor exactly like light and shadow. It was more like… a conceptualization.
"What about your body? Your original body?"
"It decomposed, turned into cursed energy, and became part of the shikigami." Genji said this lightly, as if he were talking about something as ordinary as "I donated my old clothes." "It was a necessary cost. If you want to span a thousand years, ordinary flesh won't hold up."
Eriri processed this information. A person voluntarily giving up their body and transforming into a non-human entity just to… wait?
"Why?" She asked the core question. "Why did you do this? Just because you said… the Heian period was too boring?"
Genji lowered his hand, and the shadow sphere silently dispersed into the air. He was silent for a few seconds, then smiled—a smile with something complex in it: nostalgia, anticipation, and a faint trace of loneliness that Eriri couldn't quite identify.
"Boredom is one reason," he admitted. "The Heian period… how should I put it? The entertainment options were too barren. No internet, no games, no anime. The aristocracy's pastimes were reciting poetry, viewing flowers and the moon, or watching song and dance performances. At first, it's quite novel. But after a few decades, it gets really dull."
He paused, his gaze drifting into the distance. "Besides, I was a time traveler. You know what that means? I knew how wonderful the future would be—smartphones, the internet, globalized culture, all kinds of creative works… but I was stuck in an era a thousand years in the past. I could only imagine it and never experience it myself."
Eriri suddenly understood how he felt. If she were suddenly transported to an era with no manga, no games, not even electricity, she would probably go crazy.
"So you… turned yourself into a shikigami, waiting to be summoned in the afterlife?" She asked. "But that's too risky! What if no one ever summoned you? What if the person who summoned you was a bad person? What if—"
"What if I waited a thousand years and ended up possessing a high school girl who draws erotic manga?" Genji finished her sentence, the corners of his lips curving into a narrow arc.
Eriri's face turned red. "Hey!"
"Just kidding." Genji waved a hand, his expression turning serious. "To be honest, I never expected to wait this long. My original plan was that when the next generation's Ten Shadows user appeared, someone would try to summon me within a few hundred years at most."
"Why were you so sure?"
"Because I am Zen'in Genji." He said this matter-of-factly, but there was no arrogance in his tone—only the calmness of stating a fact. "A complete Ten Shadows user, the only one to subjugate Mahoraga. The strongest sorcerer of the Heian period. My very existence is a precious 'heritage.' In later generations, if someone awakens the Ten Shadows Technique, the clan elders will definitely tell them: 'Among our ancestors, there is a man named Zen'in Genji who turned himself into a shikigami. If you can summon him, you will gain excellent assistance.'"
He broke it down on his fingers: "First, I can guide my descendants in their training and share a thousand years of combat experience. Second, I am a powerful combat force and can help them exorcise cursed spirits. Third, I can tell them much lost knowledge about ancient techniques and enchantments… How could anyone pass up such a good deal?"
Eriri listened and felt that this logic was indeed sound. If she were a Zen'in descendant, she would definitely be tempted to hear that there was an "ancestor shikigami" who could be summoned.
"Then why…?" She hesitated. "Why did a thousand years pass and no one summoned you?"
After this question, the air on the roof became quiet for a moment.
Genji didn't answer immediately. He turned his head to look at the school building of Toyonoki Academy in the distance, at the students running on the playground, at the high-rise buildings lining the Tokyo skyline. The sunlight fell on him, giving his hunting robes a faint glow, but also making his already transparent figure seem even more ethereal.
"I've thought about it too," he finally spoke, his voice very soft. "A thousand years… it's a very long time. Long enough for a clan to flourish and decline. Long enough for techniques to be lost and rediscovered. Long enough for people to forget many things."
He turned and looked at Eriri, with an emotion in his eyes that she had never seen before—not sadness, not anger, but a kind of almost academic bewilderment.
"Maybe my requirements were too high," Genji speculated. "To summon me, several conditions had to be met: first, you must be a Ten Shadows user. Second, you must have enough cursed energy to sustain my existence. Third, you need to know the summoning method—a method that only existed within the Zen'in clan's lineage."
He shrugged. "Maybe over the past thousand years, the Zen'in clan never produced a worthy descendant. Or maybe one appeared but died before reaching adulthood. Or maybe…"
He paused, lowering his voice. "They simply didn't need me."
When he said this speculation, Genji was very calm. But Eriri inexplicably felt a tightness in her heart.
"Didn't need you?" She repeated. "What do you mean?"
"Exactly what it sounds like," Genji said. "The research results I left behind—the theory of cursed energy, the analysis of cursed techniques, the development of the field… if future generations were able to fully inherit and develop this knowledge, then the overall level of the jujutsu world should be very high. So high… that they no longer need a thousand-year-old 'antique' to point the way."
He laughed, this time with clear self-mockery in his smile. "Think about it. If modern sorcerers can use Domain Expansion as a common skill and Reverse Cursed Technique as a common skill, then what value is someone like me, a 'Grade 3 or 4 sorcerer'? If they summoned me, it would probably be as a historical relic to put on display in a museum: 'Look, this is our ancestor from a thousand years ago.'"
Eriri looked at him. This thousand-year-old ghost, this shikigami, was speaking in the most relaxed tone about what was probably his greatest loss: he had waited a thousand years, but he might have been left behind by time long ago.
"But now you're with me," Eriri suddenly said. Her voice was not loud, but very clear. "Even if you weren't 'summoned,' you still came to this era. And…"
She paused, her cheeks flushing slightly, but she insisted: "And you've helped me a lot. The Reverse Cursed Technique. Rescuing me in English class. And… eating and talking with me. You are valuable to me."
Genji was stunned.
He turned his head and looked at Eriri. The blonde girl was holding her face, her fingers unconsciously curling the ends of her hair. The roots of her ears were clearly red, but her eyes were serious.
After a few seconds, he laughed. Not a self-mocking smile, not a polite one, but a genuine, warm smile.
"Thank you," he said, genuine gratitude in his voice. "You're the first person to say that to me."
The wind on the roof blew, lifting Eriri's golden hair. Finally, she turned her head and met Genji's gaze. His indigo figure was reflected in her blue eyes.
"So…" She cleared her throat and tried to steer the topic back. "Are you… my shikigami now? Because I 'summoned' you?"
"Technically, no," Genji returned to his usual tone. "You didn't perform a formal summoning ceremony, and we haven't established a shikigami contract between us. My current situation is more like… an accidental attachment. Like a magnet accidentally picking up a piece of iron without going through the formal 'attraction' process."
This metaphor made Eriri laugh out loud. "What if we did form a contract? What would happen?"
"Then an official shikigami-sorcerer relationship would be established," Genji explained. "I could be summoned and appear directly from your shadow, and the burden of cursed energy would be partially borne by you. But at the same time, you could control my actions more precisely, and with my consent, even temporarily borrow my techniques."
Eriri's eyes lit up. "Borrow techniques? You mean… I could use Reverse Cursed Technique too?"
"Theoretically, if you had enough cursed energy to fuel it," Genji looked at her thoughtfully. "But your cursed energy has almost no fluctuation. You're a completely ordinary person. To use my jujutsu, I would probably have to take the initiative to lend you my cursed energy, or…"
He stopped, as if considering something.
"Or what?"
"Or I could teach you the basic methods of cursed energy control," Genji said. "Although you were born with weak cursed energy, the fact that you can see me and speak with me means your perception of cursed energy is stronger than that of ordinary people. Maybe… you could try training."
This proposal made Eriri's heart beat faster. A sorcerer? Her? An ordinary high school girl?
"I… can I?" Her voice was uncertain, but her eyes were already shining.
"Let's give it a try," Genji said lightly. "It's not like we have anything better to do. But I'll warn you in advance: developing cursed energy is very tedious and requires long-term persistence. If you give up halfway, I won't encourage you like some gentle teacher would."
"W-Who would give up halfway?!" Eriri puffed out her chest. "I'm the kind of person who can stay up for three days straight to meet a manuscript deadline! I won't lose to anyone in terms of persistence!"
"That's good," Genji smiled. "But first, we need to solve a simpler problem."
"What problem?"
"You're going to be late for afternoon class."
Eriri suddenly looked up at the school building—the warning bell for the end of lunch break had already rung, and the number of students in the hallways was rapidly dwindling.
"Oh no! Next period is Chinese language class, and the teacher is really strict!"
She hastily packed up her lunchbox, grabbed her school bag, and ran toward the stairs. After a few steps, she turned around and shouted:
"See you tonight! Come home this evening and start teaching me cursed energy!"