Chapter Text
In an ordinary town on an ordinary street, politely nestled at the end of a stretch of ordinary boutiques and storefronts, there existed a tiny little shop that was, for lack of a better word, extraordinary.
Passersby tended to look elsewhere. Their eyes would slide from the stationary store next door to the bakery two doors over, then to the busy crosswalk, but never to the shop with the copper kitten perched above the entrance.
It was understandable – people are busy and have places to be. But if anyone decided to take the time to peer a little closer, they would see the small, lovingly carved, wooden sign that dangled from the awning:
Iori Witchcraft
Potions, Poultices, and Powders
Serving your ...munity for ... years
The sign swayed gently though there was no breeze. Delicate chimes that dangled from the bottom jingled a fluttering melody. For those that overlooked the shop with its stained glass windows and its wooden sign, they might exclaim pleasantly to no one that they hear music in the air as they continue on to more important destinations.
But for those who had nowhere more important to be, for those who had ailments and aches of the modern world or the soul and spirit – they might hear the twinkling melody and look up to see the quaint storefront with the copper kitten above the entryway.
And if they made the choice to enter through the grand revolving door, they’d find themselves pushing against the old wood grain made smooth by countless hands before them pressing exactly where they had. They would even notice that they had to push the door through two full rotations, momentarily trapped in the space between entering and exiting, before finally stumbling through to the other side.
And what a wonder the other side was!
Spanning the entire length and nearly the whole width of the store were old wooden shelves, packed to the brim with glass bottles, jars, and decanters. Each was carefully labeled in a neatly written handmade label and organized first by category, and then alphabetically.
Raw materials were accounted for at the far corner of the store. There were the more common ones, such as jars of pine sap, pitchers of river bottom silt, and the ever-popular eye of newt; and also the more rare. One shelf, for example, contained only phials of human tears. They were grouped together by emotion – tears of love, joy, and excitement, of course. But also of fear, sorrow, and disgust. Hate.
There were the potions too, of course, a staple in every witchcraft shop – rows and rows of any draught or poultice one could imagine. When the sun came streaming in through the stained glass windows, dust motes could be seen floating, shimmering in the air. Those rows and rows of glass acted like a prism, washing the store in rainbow light.
Mosaic tile covered not only the floors but the ceiling as well. At a distance, the random placement of tiles and pebbles and beads of glass stopped looking random at all. When observed at just the right angle, it coalesced into a giant camellia flower, though the angle changed depending on the time of day. “A trick of the light!” some customers would exclaim when the camellia disappeared from view.
And yet, by far the most interesting thing in the quaint little shop nestled at the end of an ordinary street in an ordinary town, was the woman standing behind the counter.
A white ribbon bow swept her dark hair off her shoulders in a low ponytail, while her bangs fell into her eyes. She was pretty – more-so interesting to look at – but still pretty, with a quiet elegance. The book she had opened in front of her took all of her attention.
Her loose white blouse was buttoned all the way to her neck and tucked into a pair of red wide-legged trousers. Something properly modest. Nothing that grabbed anyone’s attention. She preferred it this way.
And if you were to ask her where she’d gotten the scar that began on her right cheek and ended over the bridge of her nose, she’d tell you a different story every time.
The bell at the front of the shop chimed and the revolving door spat out an elderly man. The woman at the counter bit back a dejected sigh.
7:41 PM the clock above the door read.
Just her luck. Nineteen minutes until closing, and of course a customer just had to stumble in. Great.
But an Iori is nothing if not polite, so she called out to the man.
“Can I help you find what you're looking for?” Her voice was so perfectly ‘customer service’ that it hurt her teeth, but the sooner he was helped the sooner she could close up shop for the night.
It was when the man turned around that she realized that he wasn’t elderly at all.
He was young, perhaps a little younger than herself. She’d never seen someone his age with hair as white as his – like fallen snow. And he was tall. Very tall. He slipped off the round sunglasses he'd been wearing despite the setting sun and pocketed them carefully in his jacket.
When he made eye contact with her, she thought: blue. Not just any blue. She thought of the arctic, where glaciers flipped belly-up to expose the rich sapphire of primordial ice. She thought of frozen lakes in the dead of winter, of the bluish white of a supergiant star. Yet, none of it came close to his blue. They unsettled her.
She decided that he looked very cold, and she shivered.
He had to have heard her question, considering he’d turned at the sound of her voice, but he only offered her a bored look in return before he meandered off into one of the rows of shelves. She watched his partially warped and distorted image through the various glass jars and bottles until he disappeared from sight.
Okay, then, she thought, feeling a mild sense of relief that those eyes were no longer on her, and turned back to the book she’d been reading: The Alchemist’s Bloom – Brews for Charm, Luck, and Mischief.
Earlier, a client had come in with a nasty streak of bad luck, and though normally she would have sent him on his way with a sympathetic pat on the back, a quick scrying spell told her that he’d unfortunately stumbled into a bout of what she liked to call ‘chronic misfortune’.
For an unlucky few, bad luck can tend to build up an inertia, leaving little room for anything else. In a way, finding his way to Iori Witchcraft was the first bit of good luck her client had all year. A simple potion with the right ingredients would break him out of the–
“Hey. You own this place?”
The strange, blue-eyed man’s voice jolted her out of her thoughts. He’d appeared in front of her, so suddenly and noiselessly that she could have almost believed he’d spontaneously popped into existence in front of her rather than having walked up to the counter.
“I do. It’s a family business. I’m Utahime.”
The man carried nothing in his hands to purchase, nor did he not deign to return her introduction with his own name. Instead, he leaned down and abruptly popped her bubble of personal space. Had she not reared back instinctively, she was sure that their noses would have touched.
Up close, he unsettled her even more.
She had to begrudgingly admit he was stunningly handsome. Maybe even more than handsome – perhaps even objectively beautiful. Long white lashes fluttered over his eyes like frost, while a sharp jaw disappeared behind the tall collar of his black jacket.
“So. You’re a real witch, aren’t you?” His eyes glittered as they roamed her face, before curiously scanning around her. “Where’s your hat?”
“Witches don’t have to wear hats. It’s not the eighteenth century anymore.” She took a small step backward and bumped into a shelf. Dangling charms twinkled together at the movement. Why did she always get the weirdos just before closing?
“Oh,” he sniffed, frowning. “I would have liked the hat.”
Utahime cleared her throat. The intensity of his stare unnerved her. “Was there something you needed?” She tried to stem the bite of impatience out of her voice – a heavy emphasis on tried. The clock above the door ticked down to closer to closing time.
7:47 PM.
The man continued to stare at her for a moment more before he finally spoke. “Yeah, there is something I need.” Finally he pulled away and straightened up, though not fully as he kept his weight lazily supported with a hand splayed on the countertop. “Can you cure a curse?”
She nearly thanked him for giving her some space, and she took the breath that she’d struggled to take while he’d loomed over her in an effort to steady her heartbeat.
A curse? This was new.
It’s not every day that a person waltzes in and asks about curse breaking. She couldn’t help the way she drew herself up, ears perked, interest piqued.
“Well, for starters, it’s not called curing when it comes to curses,” she explained. Utahime hoped she sounded calm rather than eager. After all, she was an experienced witch, and experienced witches did not become eager. “The proper term is breaking, or cleansing. And it depends – what kind of curse are we talking about here?” She looked him up and down critically, as if the curse could be seen with the naked eye.
He smiled a flat-lipped smile. “Let's just try all of them. All your cures. Exorcisms. Whatever they're called.”
Utahime stared as if he'd just proposed to her, and that their wedding date was tomorrow.
“All of them?” she repeated in disbelief. She ducked under the counter and hefted up an old tome, sending a cloud of dust into the air. Embossed on its front were the words Unbinding Shadows: The Art of Curse Breaking. “Maybe you didn't hear me the first time,” she said to the man, slowly, like he was hard of hearing, “but it would be easier to find the right counter-spell if I knew what we were dealing with here.”
The man coughed politely as she heaved the book open and flipped through the yellowing pages.
“Have you purchased any mysterious paintings lately?”
He shook his head.
“Read any ancient manuscripts?”
“Do I look like someone who reads?”
“Been approached by an old crone?”
“Yeah, my mom. Just kidding. Kind of.”
She had the feeling that he enjoyed being intentionally obtuse and unhelpful.
“Let's just start with the basics or whatever,” the man said, tapping his foot impatiently against the mosaic floor. “If we go through all the cleanses then eventually one of them will have to work, right?”
Utahime huffed, blowing a loose curl of her bangs out of her eyes. The customers that always thought they knew better than her, the actual witch, were… annoying, to say the least.
“It won't be cheap. Each cleanse takes time to prepare, and sometimes they require rare materials that I'll have to close the shop and travel to find, and sometimes the ritual or potion can only be done or created during specific moon–”
The man nodded, half-listening as she spoke, casually flipping his wallet open. He palmed several bills and slid them over to her, cutting her off. “Will this cover the first one?”
Utahime’s eyes widened. Just the first one? She questioned if she'd ever seen this amount of cash in one place before in the entirety of her thirty-one years. This would cover the cost of all the basic cleanses and then some.
She had the sense that she was being bulldozed, pushed down the one path that this strange man deemed acceptable. She wondered if he’d already decided what the outcome of their meeting would be even before he stepped foot in her shop.
It was evident that her reaction wasn’t quite what he expected, and his brows furrowed in an innocent confusion. “Is that not enough? Have some more.” He pulled his wallet out again which finally snapped Utahime out of her stunned silence.
“No! No, this is more than enough,” she stammered hurriedly, pushing some of the bills back to him. “You're overpaying.”
But the man simply pocketed his wallet once more, her protests falling on deaf ears. “I'll be back in a week,” he said smoothly, and rapped two knuckles on the counter. “Have the first cleanse ready by then.”
Before she could react, he reached over and slipped her hand into his own, and he gently brought her knuckles up to his mouth where he placed a mild kiss. “My name is Satoru Gojo. I'm looking forward to doing business with you, Utahime Iori,” he murmured.
And then, so subtle that she thought she might have imagined it, he smelled her. Not in a ‘could possibly be mistaken for normal breathing’ way, but a deep, trembling inhale as his mouth was on her skin.
When she blinked, he was by the door, and she faintly wondered if he'd even kissed her hand at all. The man looked back with darkened eyes and shot her a dazzling grin, revealing a set of brilliantly white teeth for the first time that night. Though…
She squinted, but before she could really confirm if she’d seen what she thought she saw, he turned his back to her.
“Remember— one week.”
Despite the colors of dusk settling over the sky, he slipped those odd, round sunglasses back on and stepped through the revolving door. The bell chimed its goodbye.
She was alone once more.
In a daze, she looked up at the clock.
It was exactly 8:00 PM.
What… was that all about?
Utahime was many things, but easily startled was not one of those things. As a witch, she’d seen many strange and bizarre things in her life, and the art of keeping a cool and tempered head was something she’d been proud to say she had a gift in.
But… that man…
She shook her head vigorously and began her closing routine.
First, the inventory count, then the lights. She blew out each floating lantern, one by one, until the shop was nearly pitch black and enveloped by shadow.
As a child, she’d been terrified of the dark. Early memories of her as a child involved her mother, patting her head and holding her close as Utahime bawled at the top of the stairs that led down to the dark store below.
“Easy, Uta dear. There’s nothing that can hurt you down there. It’ll be yours someday to take care of,” her mother’s voice echoed through her memory. And then came her own, childish wail, “No! It’s mama’s store! It’s mama’s store,” and her mother’s amused laughter followed, trailing off into the ether.
Now, Utahime climbed the steps behind the counter alone.
The sole proprietor of Iori Witchcraft.
The loft on the second floor was, like the rest of the shop, quite modest and cozy, though far messier. Books of every shape and size lay scattered across the tiny dining table and bookshelves that occupied every wall that didn’t have a door or window. Other books sat stacked up on both chairs around the table.
Her bathroom was miraculously book-free, though candles took up the mantle in their stead. They dotted the edges of her tub, on the top of her toilet tank, and lay haphazardly around her sink. Her bedroom was no better – a conglomeration of both book and candle. Somewhere under a pile of books and manuscripts next to her dresser was a desk, though it had seen better days.
The rest of her night was a quiet one. She brewed herself a cup of chamomile tea and perched herself on a pile of books on one of the dining table chairs, chewing on a pencil as she went over the list of the day’s orders and requests, when they were needed by, and what materials she needed to restock.
It was already looking like it was going to be a busy day of potion making for her tomorrow. She grimaced, glancing up at the cauldron that sat in her sink, still uncleaned from yesterday’s mess, and the dusty mortar and pestle balanced delicately in an open cabinet on top of a stack of dangerously balanced plates and cups.
There was a reason why Iori Witchcraft was only open every other day.
Might as well get those clean now instead of tomorrow, she thought tiredly to herself, and pushed herself up from the table, rolling up her sleeves, and made her way to the sink.
.
.
.
.
When she finally crawled under her fluffy comforter to settle in for the night, it was late. Her backs of her eyes ached and their lids felt heavy, but despite every physical sign of exhaustion that her body was singing to her brain as it begged for sleep, it was impossible to not think of the strange man with the blue eyes who’d asked her to break a curse that he refused to explain.
She let out a frustrated sigh and pushed her comforter back with a little more force than necessary, lighting a couple of candles before slipping back down the stairs to the darkened shop below.
Unbinding Shadows: The Art of Curse Breaking still sat open on the countertop, and she collected it into her arms and carried it back to her bed, dust and all.
And, with a deep breath, illuminated by the flickering candlelight, she turned to the first page and began to read.