[Another year slipped by in a world full of curses. It passed so quietly you almost didn't notice.]
[Right on schedule, the New Year's draw arrived with the Simulator's usual cold little chime in your head.]
[Draw complete.]
[Obtained talent card: Document Maniac [N]]
[Effect: Dramatically increases your writing speed when processing official paperwork, composing mission reports, and drafting budget requests. Additionally, any report you submit will induce a state of "critical cognitive surrender" in the reviewing official approximately three pages in, drastically improving approval rates for outrageous reimbursements and special requisitions.]
[You stared at that N-rank card dripping with bureaucratic sarcasm and rubbed the bridge of your nose.]
[Not long after you officially joined the staff at Jujutsu High, someone came looking for you one evening around dusk. Atsuya Kusakabe, Grade 1 jujutsu sorcerer.]
[Even among fellow Grade 1s, Kusakabe had a reputation everybody knew. Coward, slacker and a hardcore realist. The man had turned self-preservation into a personal art form.]
[But the Kusakabe standing in front of you looked nothing like that lazy, go-with-the-flow image. His eye sockets were hollow, the whites of his eyes full of red veins, and there was a desperation on his face he couldn't hide.]
[The moment he confirmed nobody else was around, the question came spilling out. Was it true? Was he really standing in front of the "father" who created Panda, a Cursed Corpse with a soul, capable of thinking and acting on its own?]
[You confirmed that much and stopped there. The truth behind Panda's creation was tied to a promise you'd made to protect Masamichi Yaga. That secret wasn't yours to expose.]
[Just hearing you admit it seemed to give Kusakabe air again. He took a ragged breath, like a drowning man finally breaking the surface.]
[Then, in a voice already cracking, he told you why he'd come.]
[His sister had shattered. Her son, his nephew Takeru, had died young, and the grief had hollowed her out so completely there was barely anything left.]
[He had come to beg.]
[He wanted you to use that life-making Cursed Corpse technology to bring his nephew back.]
[As he spoke, he reached into his jacket with the care of a man handling something sacred.]
[What he pulled out was a small stuffed bear.]
[The fabric was worn smooth in places, pilled in others, with loose threads fraying from the seams. It had been Takeru's favorite thing when he was alive, the toy he held even in his sleep.]
[You looked at the bear, soaked in a living person's tears and stained with a dead child's Residual Cursed Energy, and forced yourself not to get dragged under by the grief hanging off it. When you answered, your voice came out calm enough to sound harsh.]
["Mr. Kusakabe, the dead don't come back. Forcing fabricated soul data into a Cursed Corpse, stitching together a counterfeit life... that's playing god. It goes against every natural law there is. And even if I succeeded, it still wouldn't be him."]
[But Kusakabe didn't lash out the way grieving people usually did.]
[This Grade 1 sorcerer, the man who treated safety first like religion and never bowed to anyone, dropped to the stone floor so hard the sound cracked through the corridor.]
[His hands were shaking when he raised the battered stuffed bear above his head and offered it to you. Tears finally broke loose.]
["Hayase... I'm not stupid. I know it won't be the real Takeru. I'm not trying to play god and drag the dead back..."]
[His voice broke so badly it hurt to listen to.]
["But my sister sits by the window every day just staring at his clothes. She's cut her wrists twice. She's the only family I have left... I just want to give her a lie she can keep living for. Even if that lie becomes a curse, I'll carry it. Please..."]
[You looked down at him kneeling on the cold stone and said nothing.]
[You didn't take the toy.]
[Instead, your mind went back to a cluttered workbench covered in scrap cotton and half-finished dolls, and to Masamichi Yaga standing beside you, saying words that had never really left your chest.]
["Hayase, I know that perfectly well. Even if the creation succeeds, it will never be the person who died. It's only a vessel carrying the living's memories of the dead. Something new. Something manufactured. A curse."
"But in this jujutsu world, where death and separation are everywhere, for the people who leave and the people left behind..."
"Maybe even that kind of false reunion can still be a small comfort."]
[The second you remembered why Yaga had started pursuing Fully Independent Cursed Corpses in the first place, you already knew what your answer would be.]
[Even so, you looked away first and reached down to pull Kusakabe back to his feet.]
["I need to consult someone before I decide. After all... I'm only this technology's father in name."]
[You brought the request to Yaga.]
[After hearing the whole thing, his reaction was almost the same as yours. He didn't give an answer right away. First, he wanted to see the situation with his own eyes.]
[Kusakabe drove the two of you to a quiet care facility on the outskirts of the city.]
[You only caught a glimpse through the small observation window in the ward door, but it was enough.]
[The young woman slumped in the wheelchair had become almost skeletal. Sunlight fell across her face and did nothing for it. Her eyes were empty, not even the faintest spark left. Half-hidden by the protective restraints around her wrists were layer after layer of red, raised scars.]
---
[Back at Jujutsu High, Yaga's expression hardened into something you'd never seen on him before.]
[He locked the workshop door, then made Kusakabe swear a Binding Vow, severe enough that nothing said in this room, and nothing about the technology behind it, would ever leave these walls.]
[Kusakabe agreed without even pausing to breathe.]
[Only then did Yaga take off his sunglasses and tell the desperate brother the truth behind Panda's birth.]
[After that, he fixed Kusakabe with an unblinking stare and asked one last time:]
["Are you sure about this, Kusakabe? Understand this clearly. Even if we succeed, it will not be your nephew. It will be a Cursed Corpse loaded with your nephew's behavioral patterns and memory imprints. It won't grow. It's a counterfeit, stitched together from broken soul fragments."]
[Kusakabe drew in a long breath.]
[His fists clenched so tightly his knuckles went white. When he spoke again, every trace of his usual evasiveness was gone. What remained was simple, ugly conviction.]
["If someone gets trapped in the spiral of losing a loved one and can't crawl back out, then how are they supposed to face the long, brutal life still waiting for them?"]
["My sister... if she doesn't have something tying her to Takeru's memory, she won't survive. If a fake phantom is what it takes to give her a reason to keep living, then I'll carry the sin of making that curse myself."]
[Looking into those grief-ravaged but steady eyes, Yaga let out one long, heavy sigh.]
[In the end, the three of you accepted the commission.]
[To reconstruct the soul fragments of the boy named Takeru as faithfully as possible, you asked Kusakabe for everything. Belongings, Audio recordings, Notes on daily habits. Even his sister's descriptions of her child, dragged out of memory one detail at a time.]
---
Next Target 1800PS :)