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They call her Maine.
It’s not her name, not really, but she’s not sure she has one anymore. The girl that came before her is a stranger as sure as the girl that will come after her.
The girl before her was in possession of a strange power, something small, yet infinitely large.
She called it ‘Instinct’, because she found herself utterly unable to make it make sense to those around her.
Somehow, someway, she always found a way out of a situation, knew the exact right steps to get past an obstacle.
That man pointing a gun at her?
She knew to lunge in low and slightly to the left and his shot would go wide.
A crowd crush?
She knew exactly the person she could clamber onto to find herself above the sea of flesh and safe from death.
A witch bearing down on her with hands lit with flame?
She knew the exact trajectory to avoid the blast and counter with a single shot from her pistol.
All in all, it was an unimpressive power to those who could make the earth tremble beneath their feet and the sky bend and warp to their will.
The girl before her never knew how to explain that power, but the girl who is in her place does.
It's ‘Luck’.
It's a ridiculous power that manipulates probability.
This girl doesn’t remember what she was called before this moment, before these people pull her from the dirt and shine light in her eyes.
She doesn’t know if it matters as they force her to her feet; trembling, naked, and dirty, pushing her towards a black-paneled van.
For now, her name is Maine.
Maine walks out of the facility in the outfit of one of the on-shift nurses. Her hair has grown over her forehead, hiding the silver coin of tissue in between her brows.
Behind her, people hurry to and fro.
“--Project Kansas is resisting, we need--,”
In her cell, the night guard sleeps, her form a perfect match for Maine in height and weight. A locker in one of the break rooms is ajar, left unlocked by a careless orderly.
Around Maine’s neck is a keycard, snatched from a laptop left unattended.
“Thanks Kansas,” she mutters to herself as the ground shakes and the man’s enraged howl thunders through the building.
Newbies always make a fuss on their first day.
“That’ll be ten ninety-seven, darlin’,” the clerk says as he bags up her gas station snacks, “cash or card?”
She sets a twenty on the counter, crumpled from where she had stuffed it into her large overcoat. Her eyes are on the waving arm of a plastic cat. Its smile is made lopsided by peeling paint and the small sign in front of it appeals to the masses.
Grab some mochi ice cream! Buy 1 get 1 free!
“What’s Japan like, this time of year?”
The cashier grins, crow’s feet spidering from his eyes.
“It’s wonderful--lots of snow in Tokyo, turns it into a wonderland.”
The man places the change in Maine’s palm and slides her purchases across the counter.
“If you get a chance, you should visit.”
Maine hums in reply and stuffs her money in her pocket carelessly, juggling her bag and grabbing the hot tea in her palm.
The bell rattles as she steps out of the small store, revealing an empty, dirt road and miles of yellow fields.
Her breath puffs out in a cloud of steam as she sips at her drink cautiously.
“Maybe I should go,” she decides idly.
She looks down and spots a red stain on the side of her boot. She walks up to the asphalt of the single road and rubs the worn leather on it until the stain is obscured.
When she looks up there is a black speck barreling towards her and she catches the sound of a rumbling engine.
She squints and tilts her head.
It's too narrow to be a car--must be a motorcycle.
She stuffs her plastic bag into her coat pocket and sticks out her thumb.
One ride is as good as any other.
Her name is Yuki and she is a shaman.
"Like the state?"
Maine nods and slurps at her margarita as the worn, wooden patio under their feet shivers to the tune of guitars and trumpets.
The woman's accent is thick, but she's quick to understand everything around her and she stares at Maine the same way she did when she first pulled over to let the girl hop on her bike.
"Interesting--do all shaman’s here use an alias?"
Maine shrugs vaguely.
“Wouldn’t know, most of the tribes in the south keep to themselves, understandably.”
Yuki’s eyebrow twitches up.
“Tribes?”
Maine blinks innocently.
“You said shamans right? Unless you’re talking about the roadside con-artists that pretend to be mystical masters and such.”
“No, not those-- jujutsushi, ” she clarifies, “those that fight curses.”
Maine tilts her head.
“Fight curses? Like physically?”
Yuki sighs.
“Yes, with cursed techniques,” her hand lights with a dim glow as she holds it up, “see? Like yours.”
Maine lunges across the table and claps her hand over the other woman’s fist, her energy twisting out of her skin for half a second to smother the flare.
“Are you insane?” she hisses, “you can’t do something like that out here!”
Yuki smirks playfully.
“Non-shamans can’t--,”
“Of course they can’t!”
Maine pants.
“I don’t know how you do it in Japan, but you’re already pushing it walking around like you do, without even trying to suppress yourself, but if you keep something like this,” she shakes the hand still in her grasp, “up, you’ll wake the land, or worse bring the Bureau down on our heads.”
Yuki frowns at Maine’s uncharacteristic, from the woman’s admittedly small experience, passion about the subject.
“‘Wake the land’?”
Maine mulishly stuffs a scoop of salsa into her mouth using a slightly soggy nacho, resentful of the alarmed throbbing of her heart in her chest.
“Spirits or curses, whatever you call them--they sleep in the land, no one knows who did it specifically, if it was from before a time when the European settlers colonized the continent or after, the tribes probably know, but good luck getting them to talk about it with an outsider” she shakes her head dismissing her own thoughts, “point is, too much energy, or energy that moves too fast can wake them and that’s never a good time for anyone.”
Yuki hums, fascinated and leans back in her chair, making the aging wicker creak.
“I’m strong enough to handle a curse or two.”
Strong enough? Maine wants to laugh. When it comes to the spirits of the land, you don’t fight, you appease .
Every country has a sordid history that it wants to hide, but the Americas?
Their history breathes down their neck everyday, the slaughter of millions over the course of barely four centuries through disease, forced relocation and outright slaughter. On top of the already lengthy history of the indigenous people. The stewards on the land they stand on and their suffering imprinted into the very ground they walk on. That’s not even taking into account the terrible consequences of chattel slavery, the inhumane treatment of humans over the course of centuries.
Even today those negativities echo in the great gorge of atrocity that crouches over the history of the country. They resonate with the great and small tragedies of the descendants of those that suffered.
The shamans of the many indigenous tribes continue to steward the land, to appease it, but they would not and could not expend themselves to protect little fools that howled at the sleeping beast under their feet.
Maine knows a little bit about the history of Japan, but she can theorize that its long history leaves room for breath, that the people of that land were people born to it.
In the Americas, that is not always the case, in the Americas the last four centuries have compressed the suffering of a millenia.
The Bureau--well, that’s a story for a different time.
Maine rubs at the scar on her forehead and sighs.
“Even if you can, I would rather not.”
Yuki laughs.
"Alright kid, I'll keep my techniques minimal."
In Maine's senses she glows like a beacon, even without the focus of her power trying to flare.
To the point Maine is surprised the woman had even noticed her powers when she first let her hitchhike.
Maine sighs.
If this is minimal, she'd hate to see what the maximum is.
The screen door rattles as it's pulled shut and Maine looks up from inspecting her nails, picking at her damaged cuticles.
The woman slams the inner door for good measure as she scowls at the Japanese woman standing outside.
Yuki looks like she wants to kick through the delicate mesh, hands clenched and a vein throbbing in her neck.
“Don't,” she advises blandly, because she's pretty sure Yuki hasn't noticed the quiet menace of the totem pole in the yard behind them.
The woman turns to glare sharply at Maine, before taking a calming breath.
“That's the fifth shaman, and still no one willing to talk,” the woman finally sighs, hand pushing her hair back as she turns to step down the porch stairs.
Maine follows her, rattling down the wooden steps without care.
“ ‘Dunno what you expected--you're lucky they even let us on the rez.”
Yuki makes a frustrated noise.
“They don't even let me talk .”
Maine rolls her eyes slightly.
Of course they don't; only Bureau Freaks and insane people walk around slopping cursed energy around like Yuki does.
It's like the woman is constantly cranking the arm of a slot machine using a bag of endless coins. Eventually she'll hit a jackpot--in this case, wake a spirit of the land.
One could only hope it would be a minor spirit that escaped the great blanket of appeasement, but Maine doubts it, not with the sheer volume of energy the woman obviously possesses.
What does that make Maine, then? Willing to follow this odd woman around and try to answer her strange questions?
“Maybe I should try the Bureau?”
Cold flashes against Maine’s brow and her hand rises to rub at the tingling coin of scar tissue on her forehead.
“Bad idea,” she opines.
Yuki turns to give her a sharp look over her shoulder.
“They’re a government agency aren’t they? They might have more information.”
Maine sighs and stops walking, rocking on her heels and contemplating ditching the woman. Yuki stops and turns to her, arms crossed.
“Why would that matter?” she says instead of walking in the opposite direction, “they’d want to take you in and vivisect you, they’re not gonna make an exception just ‘cuz you’re foreign.”
Yuki puffs out a frustrated breath.
“They wouldn’t be able to,” she refutes confidently, arrogantly. Then she makes her way to the end of the trail, throwing a leg over her bike.
Maine watches, gaze hard.
That's the thing about Yuki, maybe it's a thing about Japanese sorcerers, but Maine has only ever met this woman.
She thinks herself as godly, above it all; immune and separate.
Yuki thinks so linearly, in absolutes--that strength is enough, that the power of her energy can bend the land to her will. That when it wakens she will be able to slay it, confident in her fists and power.
It's a bit maddening to witness, after seeing entire towns swallowed, having stared into the great maw of Coyote threatening the moon. After seeing the shadows of the Buzzard’s wings stretch across the horizon, so close to the earth. One beat away from decimating everything .
What could Yuki’s manifestations of cursed power do to the spirits of the land? Gorged existences, fattened and painfully encased by the suffering that vapors up from humanity.
They are not physical things, monsters that grasp and groan. They are nature and belief given form, you cannot fight the air you breath and the fruit that nourishes you.
Not when you work within the laws of man, when you explain the breadth and effect of your power along the axis of ‘virtual mass’ and ‘momentum’.
Maine closes her eyes and lets out a long, idle breath.
Then she hops onto the motorcycle behind Yuki.
“Hey, how do you say ‘stupid’ in Japanese?”
The woman barks out a laugh as the vehicle under them roars to life.
Maine looks up from the black and white pixels of the Gameboy when Yuki slams the motel room door open. Her sucker comes out with a pop as she eyes the woman.
Singed and annoyed, Yuki glares back as Garuda slithers under the bed, looking battered.
“Don’t say a word.”
Maine’s brow ticks up and she returns to her game as Yuki flops onto the bed and screams into the pillow. Probably breathing in billions of parasites from the cheap motel fabric.
“I couldn’t even get one book ,” the woman moans, “the computers all blew the moment I even pressed a key--they set their entire filing storage on fire.”
Maine snorts.
“Yuki, it's the Bureau ,” she drawls.
The woman just turns back to the pillow and screams again.
Chlorine burns in her nostrils as the sun beats down on them.
The copse of trees that stretch around the back of the motel are green and lush.
The cicadas drone
“How do you feel about coming back to Japan with me?”
Yuki is relaxed on the pool side chair, shaded by their parasol.
Maine kicks her feet, enjoying the resistance of the water and eyeing the flickering form peeking at her from between the trees.
The thing is so wispy Garuda isn't reacting and Yuki hasn't twitched.
“You want to adopt me?” Maine jokes lightly. The misty figure leans forward slightly when she turns to her companion, but she reorients quickly and catches its gaze, making it freeze, observed.
Yuki huffs an amused breath.
“Maybe I should, you could pass as my little sister with that baby face.”
Maine casts her gaze between them pointedly, her dark olive tone to Yuki's pale, her bright hazel to the woman's dark brown.
Then she remembers to turn and the wispy figure stops just outside the treeline.
“Adopted sister,” Yuki clarifies.
Maine purses her lips.
“What does my face have to do with it anyway?”
Yuki rolls her eyes.
“I'm barely twenty-three. I don't think anyone will buy me adopting a twin for myself.”
Maine furrows her brows.
“Yuki…I'm seventeen.”
Yuki jerks up with a creak of the plastic slats, pushing her sunglasses up.
“What?” she nearly shrieks, making Maine wince and cover the ear closest to the woman.
“I'm seventeen?”
Yuki stares at her.
“You're a high school student?”
Maine scoffs.
“ Please , as if I ever had time for that, but Japan sounds fun--I'll tag along.”
Yuki lets her sunglasses drop and pushes them up her nose.
“Do you think they could pin me for kidnapping?” the woman ponders with so little alarm Maine doesn't even understand why she bothers asking.
The wavering wisp is at the fence.
Main reaches out and it seethes over the cobwebbed metal of the chain-links. It pools into her cupped palms and burbles slightly, faint cries like that of a distressed child echoing from deep within.
She hums to it, her energy strict and tightly wound as she keeps it from crawling up her chest and into her lungs to choke her and steal her breath.
She cradles her arms and rocks it, until the misty, wavering mass of eyes settles into a vaguely child-like form, barely more than a baby.
“Rockabye baby…” she sings senselessly as Yuki opens up her magazine with a sharp thwip and Garduda's head rises and sways.
She sings to it until the bright sun turns orange and it drips from her arms, appeased and once again sleeping beneath the earth.
Japan is filthy.
Her hands clap over her nose and mouth the moment she steps off the plane and into the terminal.
Pools of heavy concentrations and gaseous clouds of energy drift across her senses, so dense in places she can actually see illusory heat shimmers. Little cursed spirits buzz like flies in corners and over the heads of people. Near the first aide station and the bag check, negativity gathers like a beacon.
It makes her eyes tear up at the intensity and bile rises in her throat.
She jumps when a familiar hand falls on her shoulder.
Yuki guides her, stumbling, to one of the chairs, helping her sit. The woman's voice is muffled through the rush of blood in her ears as she makes sure Maine has her passport.
She waves weakly to the woman and pats the front pocket of her hoodie.
It’s so weird to look at the thing and see her own face staring back, accompanied by Kanji and katakana she can barely read after Yuki’s crash course during their cross country road trip.
Not to mention it'd been placed in her hands so easily. All Yuki had done was walk into the Japanese embassy in New York, flash her passport and some kind of extra ID and they had rushed to press Maine through getting her picture taken and given her a last name that matched exactly to the kanji of Yuki’s.
Her picture is a little frazzled looking, owl-eyed in shock and fingers still blackened with ink from the paperwork and them taking her prints.
Something cold presses into her cheek, a water bottle.
She didn't even notice the woman leaving.
She gulps it down like it's the first liquid she's had in days, ignoring the terrible, sticky taste from the residual cursed energy within.
Holy shit, how will she survive ?
A piece of cloth is handed to her when firm fingers force her desperate clutch away from the plastic of the bottle.
A face mask, laced with familiar energy.
She hooks it over her ears and shudders in pure relief.
There is still the sweetly rotten smell of Yuki's cursed energy in her nostrils, but that is the only energy she can distinguish alongside a slightly perfumed scent of flowers likely sprayed onto the mask.
The massive concentrations of energy still press on her temples and make her eyes water as they adjust, but it's not so bad with the mask blocking most of the residuals from slithering down her windpipe.
She slumps and moans.
“How do y'all live like this?”
Yuki chuckles.
“It's just a little cursed energy,” the woman answers in Japanese, pointedly, “I didn't know you were this much of a wimp.”
Maine shoots her a glare.
“It's no wonder you're practically blind compared to most shamans,” she answers in the same language, faintly accented, “if you have to deal with this--this,” she groans and rubs at her eyes, “I don't have the word,” then, in English, “mass fucking assault?”
Yuki cackles, making a few heads turn.
A hand hooks under Maine's arm.
“C'mon, let's get past customs and I'll take you somewhere better for your delicate constitution.”
“Oh, fuck off .”
It really wouldn't be so bad, if sensing cursed energy didn't use all five senses. It's something she’d realized isn’t common in Japan when Yuki had eyed her like a crazy person the first time Maine redirected them after sniffing a restless spirit on the wind.
Faint and burning, it'd been young, thick with the smell of butchered meat and despair, hiding beyond the boarded up windows of a small shop.
When Maine had told her of the hiding spirit the woman had practically dragged her into exorcising the damned thing. Ignoring Maine’s explanation that it was young, not hurting anyone, and more importantly, asleep .
The local Bureau Freaks had noticed the fountain of cursed energy in downtown Dallas immediately .
Being in a car chase on the back of a motorcycle in the height of Texas summer is not fun .
Anyway, the way Maine sees it, because the cursed energy in the U.S is so suppressed by the Great Appeasement the shamans and sorcerers there had to be extremely alert to any shifts. Leading to a tendency to identify energy with all their senses and without sending their own power out to ‘ping’ like a radar, in contrast to Yuki. Especially since the best way to survive was to learn how to suppress and quiet your energy to avoid waking anything too big to handle.
More than once Yuki had been taken by surprise by a Freak or spirit “popping out of nowhere”, before Maine caught on that the woman genuinely had been caught off guard.
Not that it matters, monstrous as the woman’s strength is. She and Garuda punched through spirits and Freaks with ease--and gave Maine premature gray hair while they did it.
Yuki is so fortunate for Maine’s Luck, or she would have ended up antagonizing some kind of land god and been swallowed whole, probably wiping out a local population with her foolishness on the way out.
Slumping after Yuki, clinging to her hand and feeling childish about it, Maine suddenly understands why the Japanese woman uses that radar technique and why she had been so lost trying to find sorcerers in the U.S.
Here, where the cursed energy concentrations are so high they make her teeth ache, it doesn't make sense to be so sensitive.
The radar would be practically invisible under the seething filth and properly calibrated it would identify ‘solid’ concentrations like spirits or other sorcerers easily without alerting any but the most sensitive.
In the U.S the technique is like broadcasting you want to be devoured by the land.
In Japan it’s just skill and prudence.
She hands her passport over when Yuki wiggles her fingers in front of her bleary eyes.
“Tsukomo Mana?”
The official squints at her suspiciously, and she grunts an affirmative and pulls down her mask, holding her breath. Yuki stares him down until he stamps the customs form and lets them through, returning their passports.
Yuki blows out a breath as they step out of the airport. It's somehow worse outside. Maine kind of wants to cry as she presses the mask more firmly over her face.
A man waits for them at the curbside in a pressed suit among a multitude of drivers, a sign that contains Yuki's full name in katakana stands out brightly against his dark outfit.
Yuki grumbles a bit under her breath, obviously missing her bike.
It will be a few more days until it arrives, and Maine is relieved she won't have to deal with the open air as they make their way through the congested streets of Tokyo.
The man gives a sharp, perfunctory bow in greeting when they walk up and doesn't so much as blink when Maine refuses to hand over her backpack, just calmly takes Yuki's duffle to store in the trunk.
“So you have money-money ,” Maine teases, voice raspy and still slightly pained.
Yuki waves her off, eyes critical as she looks Maine over, taking in her squinted, red-rimmed eyes and clammy complexion as they slide into the car.
“Is it really that bad?”
Maine groans an affirmative, letting her head fall to the blessedly cool glass of the window.
“I'll adapt,” soon, hopefully.
Yuki hums.
“Well, our first stop should help--the Tokyo Technical School is surrounded by barriers to block out stray energy, the concentrations are much lower there.”
“A school?”
Yuki hums in confirmation, flipping open her phone and clicking through menus. The box with her new sim card lays open and empty on the seat between them.
“It's also one of the greatest repositories for knowledge about jujutsu and I want to look through it--confirm some things.”
Mana sniffles, congested. Is it possible to be allergic to cursed energy?
“Your whole ‘eliminate all the curses’ thing?”
Yuki nods.
“I thought the U.S was almost devoid of cursed energy and sorcerers--there was nothing before I picked you up, same with most of Europe and Northern Africa--even India.”
Maine squints at the woman doubtfully; that just doesn't sound right.
Yuki's lips quirk up.
“But after you told me everything about the Appeasement and how things worked, I began to think--why is Japan so different?”
Maine busies herself taking a packet of tissues from her backpack and wiping at her runny nose.
“I can tell you what’s different--it's filthy here.”
Yuki snorts.
“I’m pretty sure those places I went had plenty of sorcerers, I just wasn't looking in the right places--expecting them to be just like Japanese sorcerers, expecting the cursed energy there to be the same as it is here,” she licks her lips, eyes bright, “but it isn't, a good number of those Bureau Freaks could have been Grade One in Japan and a few of the curses we did run into were strong --but even you said they were considered manageable compared to the larger ones.”
Maine noisily blows her nose.
“So?”
Yuki throws her hands up and accidentally knocks a hand into Garuda’s carapace. She winces and pats at her shikigami, apologizing like it's a precious pet and she doesn't use it like a dodgeball regularly.
“I don’t know yet, I need more information--y’know I went to India first?”
Maine ticks her brow and shakes her head.
“They have one of the densest populations in the world, equal to Japan, I thought it would be my best shot--I found nothing, same when I traveled across China,”
Yuki leans her chin on her knuckles, looking out the window into the streets of Tokyo.
“By the time I started looking more westward I was desperate--until I found you.”
Maine blinks at the woman.
“We’re always taught that the reason Japan is so steeped in curses is our population density and our dark history--,”
Maine snorts.
“Then Britain should be shitting out curses large enough to cross the Atlantic,” she offers, tone dry.
Yuki giggles, her eyes still glittering.
“It's a foundational teaching, it never occurred to me to question it--it's such a simple answer but it just never came up until I met you .”
Maine hums.
“So why is Japan different?”
Yuki’s expression is full of fervor.
“I don’t know--but I now know the path to finding out .”
Jujutsu Tech is beautiful. The grounds are resplendent with greenery, delineated by carefully maintained stone paths. In the distance are the curved, sharp roofs of the traditional buildings that make up the complex. It's almost worth the tortuous journey up the endless steps.
Maine is in shape, she's well muscled and a runner to her core.
Her cardio is great .
But she doesn't usually do almost two miles of stairs while suffering curse energy induced allergies.
She leans against the torii the moment they reach the top, panting and coughing as she pulls her mask down.
Yuki wrinkles her nose when the girl is forced to spit to get rid of the gummy congestion in her throat.
Still, once she passes through the barrier, the filth pressing down on her and invading her lungs lessens dramatically.
She straightens with a relieved sigh and instinctively says a short, sincere thanks to the spirits of the land for the relief.
The cursed energy swirls around her subtly, making her eyes pop open. It's such a small movement, an invisible eddy in deep waters, she knows Yuki didn't notice.
Huh.
Yuki leads her to the library. They pass by a small sports field, a cluster of buildings that look like housing and what seems to be a nature park.
She catches a glimpse of a few specks in the field, probably students hanging out by the look of it. Unless they're a class of three .
Through the sweet rot of her curse infused mask she wears the sharp, wonderful scent of paper invades her senses when they step into the library building.
Her excitement is short-lived. The attendant at the desk refuses to let her pass with Yuki, no matter what the woman says.
No official sorcerer ID?
No entry.
Yuki sighs heavily.
“Just wait here for me, okay?”
Maine grunts an affirmative and flops on a nearby bench, spreading herself out and getting herself comfortable under the judging eyes of the person manning the desk.
She tucks her bag behind her head and heaves a strained sigh.
Ass.
She begins drifting, exhausted by her congestion and burning eyes. She wasn’t lying earlier about it being much better within the barrier of the school, but the concentrations of cursed energy are all still mind-bogglingly dense.
She could adapt, she would adapt--but it's her first day. For now she can only focus on breathing, closing her eyes and hoping this headache doesn’t turn into a migraine.
Somewhere between napping and resting meditation a truly foul amount of cursed energy steps through the door.
It’s coming from a person, two people actually, with a more unassuming third accompanying them.
Her hand rises instinctively to press her mask more firmly to her face.
“A new student?” a voice sings, every word dripping with curious disregard. Immediate resentment kindles in Maine’s chest. Holy shit, how could one sentence be so annoying?
One of her eyes opens a slit, to find the source of the terrible voice.
It's always the pretty ones.
The sardonic thought lingers as she catches sight of him and his arrogant grin.
Hair so white it looks like a cloud has taken residence on his head, his chin is sharp and defined with a mouth that looks unfairly attractive around a baring of perfect, white teeth.
He looks like he stepped off the set of a modeling shoot.
His companions are a little more down to earth.
A dark haired boy with black hair and sharp, tired features and a girl with a heart shaped face and lovely, dark eyes.
The tall boy steps forward in sure, graceful strides, tilting the dark lenses of his glasses down as he sweeps his gaze over her form.
It's like there are two miniature suns of cursed energy shining down on her from disks made up of glimmering blue fractals.
“You’re foreign?” he switches to exaggeratedly slow Japanese, and mimes with his words, “Are--You--A--New--Student?”
There’s a muffled slap of skin on skin as the dark haired boy drops his forehead into his palm and the girl’s gaze goes vague and her face twists with second-hand embarrassment.
Maine stares into the space over his shoulder and contemplates turning over and pretending to be asleep.
Instead, “I not speak Japanese,” she says in a nearly incomprehensible accent.
The guy's eyebrows rise.
“That is okay,” he says in accented English, a vaguely British twist to his words, “I can speak English, can you?”
“No habla ingles,” she answers blandly, eyes drifting away from his intense scrutiny.
How long is Yuki going to take?
“Spanish, I can do that one too,”
Smugly, in a fucking Spanish accent. Her face immediately twists with annoyance at the lisp.
“Okay, okay,” she groans in Japanese, “fine--what the fuck do you want?” she finally sits up and hisses under her breath when the guy refuses to back up, legs brushing her knees.
Fuck, he stinks. His overwhelming energy is seeping under the protection of her mask, smelling like air pollution and ozone.
“Oho--so she can speak.”
“Satoru,” the other boy finally speaks up, “you’re being a dick.”
A hand grips the back of the boy’s, Satoru’s, collar and drags him back.
The boy bobs his head in a bow.
“Sorry for him--we don’t usually see other sorcerer’s our age unless they’re students.”
Maine blinks laconically and sniffles, coughing wetly and ignoring the minute crinkle of the guy's nose at the sound.
If Satoru smells bad this one smells magnitudes worse. Like necrosis of flesh in a wet garbage dump, the film of his cursed energy hiding a swirling mixture of differing powers like an oil slick.
The faint buzzing of their energy is like mixing the unpleasant sound of glass going through a grinder and the bubbling wetness of a gaseous bog.
Her stomach lurches slightly.
“Sure--I’m not a new student,” she waves her hand in a shooing motion, “I’ll be gone soon, so feel free to leave me alone.”
The dark haired boy’s polite smile twitches slightly at her dismissal.
Satoru frees himself by slapping his friend’s wrist away.
“Don’t be a wet blanket Suguru--so what brings you to our wonderful campus foreign-girl?”
Maine squints at him.
“I have a name.”
He twirls his fingers in a ‘go ahead’ motion.
“And it is…”
“None of your fucking business.”
He lets out an amused scoff.
“Then foreign-girl will have to do.”
This guy would benefit from getting stabbed, she decides. Right in the middle of his stupid grin.
“What's this?”
“Yuki!”
She grabs her bag and hurries to the woman, sliding behind her and pushing her face between her shoulder blades. Her senses fill with that sweetly rotten scent, pushing out the combination of the boy's and their friend.
Tucked under one of Yuki’s arms is a stack of twine bound books.
“I'm being bullied,” she whines to the woman, tone flat, “make them leave me alone.”
Like she's a middle schooler complaining to her big sister and not almost a legal adult.
The woman huffs an amused breath and pats her on the head like she hasn't seen Maine shoot a man in the chest without flinching.
“Are you bullying my little sister Gojo-boy?”
The kid grins at her.
“Of course not Tsukomo--I never knew you had a sister.”
“Now you do.”
“You’re Tsukomo Yuki, the infamous Special Grade sorcerer?” Suguru’s voice is slightly skeptical.
There’s a grin in Yuki’s voice as she answers.
“Oh, I like the sound of that--you’ve heard of me?” her chest puffs up with pride.
“Yeah, the only Special Grade that refuses to take exorcism missions and does nothing but travel abroad.”
Maine claps a hand over her mouth to muffle a snicker as Yuki deflates.
Her shoulders jump when Gojo’s presence leans around Yuki’s shoulder to scrutinize her, the uncomfortable, crawling tingle of his regard needling her skin.
“Is she why you spend so much time abroad?”
“Maybe--I actually wanted to meet you two while I was here,” she leans forward slightly, pushing into Gojo’s space, “tell me, what kind of woman is your type?”
His answer is immediate and shameless.
“Strong.”
Yuki hums contemplatively while Maine rolls her eyes.
“And you, Geto?”
The boy stares at her blankly, nonplussed.
“Is that really appropriate?”
Yuki wrinkles her nose and wraps an arm around Maine’s shoulder.
“That’s a marker of a boring man,” she informs the girl, tone wise.
Maine sighs.
“Or the marker of someone who’s not shallow,” she rejoins blandly.
Yuki scoffs and begins leading Maine to the doors.
“I’ll talk to you two soon,” the woman calls over her shoulder, “my precious little sister and I need to rest from our long flight--don’t run off!”
Maine is dragged to the residential building with little fanfare. She half expected that they would leave and find a hotel, but she’s relieved she doesn’t have to deal with the oppressive amount of negative energy that blankets the land.
She makes herself at home on the single, king sized bed, ignoring Yuki nudging her shoulder.
“C’mon Maine, I was just dropping off some reading materials, your room’s on the other side of the hall.”
Maine grumbles and pulls the blankets over her head.
“Wrong, my bed now.”
Yuki chuckles and says something else, but Maine is already drifting off to the land of dreams.
Getting to Japan was more trouble than it's worth.
Well, maybe it would be worth the trouble, come Christmas.
Her head fills with scenes of winter wonder, glittering and beautiful. Tokyo must be breathtaking under it all, in the grip of the cold and covered in fluffy, white snow.
She curls tighter, a slight smile pulling at her lips.
It will be fall soon, on the cusp of the winter months.
Just enough time to get used to everything and figure out a plan for a winter tour in Tokyo.
How lucky.