Nanami Kento arrived without ceremony.
No sirens.No crowds.No curious civilians pretending not to stare.
The street had already been cleared, yellow tape stretched lazily across both ends like a half-hearted warning. It fluttered faintly in the night breeze, the only movement in an otherwise stagnant scene.
Nanami stepped beneath a flickering streetlight and stopped.
The cursed energy was still here.
It wasn't overwhelming. It didn't crash against his senses the way a semi–special grade normally would. Instead, it lingered—thin, uneven, scattered like ash after a fire that had burned too quickly and died too suddenly.
"…So it wasn't a false alarm," he muttered.
He adjusted his glasses and took a slow breath.
A curse of that level should have dominated the area. Bent it. Claimed it. Places like this usually felt wrong long before a sorcerer arrived—pressure in the air, a weight behind the eyes, a sense that something unseen was watching.
But this street felt… hollow.
Nanami began walking.
His footsteps echoed softly against the pavement as he moved with practiced efficiency, eyes scanning, senses extended. The cursed energy clung to odd places: the base of a lamp post, the side of a vending machine, the cracked edge of the sidewalk. There was no center. No core.
That troubled him.
He crouched and pressed two fingers against the asphalt. The cursed energy rippled faintly at the contact, recoiling like disturbed water.
Not dispersed.Not purified.
Interrupted.
Nanami straightened slowly.
"A formation that never stabilized…" he murmured. "Or one that was cut short."
Neither explanation sat well.
A semi–special grade curse didn't half-form. Even sudden manifestations followed rules—ugly, violent rules, but rules nonetheless. They gathered emotion, accumulated resentment, fed on repetition.
This one felt rushed. Forced. As if it had been torn into existence before it was ready.
Nanami expanded his search radius, moving methodically outward. The cursed energy density fluctuated subtly as he walked—stronger in one direction, thinner in another—but never enough to establish a clear origin.
Like a trail that had been smeared by an unsteady hand.
"Too unstable," he thought.
This wasn't a place that had grown a curse.
Which meant the source hadn't been the location.
It had been people.
Nanami slowed.
People meant patterns.Patterns meant environments.
Hospitals bred despair thick enough to choke on.Factories radiated exhaustion and resentment.Schools—
His gaze lifted slightly.
"…Children."
Children leaked emotion without restraint. Fear, loneliness, confusion—raw and unfiltered. They didn't know how to suppress it. Didn't know they were supposed to.
If something sudden had happened—something intense enough to fracture a soul before it could settle—it would explain the spike. The instability. The incomplete residue left behind.
Nanami exhaled quietly.
He followed the thinning trail east, away from the main road. The buildings grew older here. Smaller. Less maintained. Windows dark. Paint peeling. A place forgotten by convenience and attention alike.
Then he saw it.
A modest building set back from the street, its lights still on despite the hour. Warm light glowed behind thin curtains, an island of quiet persistence in an otherwise neglected block.
Nanami stopped across the road.
The cursed energy here wasn't stronger.
It was closer.
It brushed against his senses faintly, like the echo of a presence that had already moved on. Not hostile. Not aggressive.
Human.
Nanami frowned.
"That's… wrong."
A curse born here should have been violent. Dense. Saturated with malice. This energy felt fractured, like something that had been pulled apart before it could decide what it was meant to become.
Nanami's jaw tightened.
If his conclusion was correct, then this wasn't simply a matter of exorcism.
It was aftermath.
He stepped forward—
And the air shifted.
The cursed energy spiked.
Not explosively. Not violently.
Suddenly.
Nanami's instincts screamed.
He turned—
Reality buckled.
A distorted presence unfolded near the building, its form stuttering as if the world itself couldn't agree on what it was looking at. Limbs stretched and recoiled unnaturally, edges blurring and snapping back into focus. It was tall, then not. Solid, then hollow.
A curse.
But wrong.
It screamed—not in rage, but in something closer to confusion.
Nanami moved instantly.
"There's a curse present!" he barked into his communicator, already activating his technique. "Initiating engagement."
He closed the distance in a single breath, striking with precision honed through years of repetition. His blow landed cleanly—
And passed through resistance that wasn't there.
The cursed energy collapsed inward instead of pushing back, then rebounded chaotically. A violent pressure wave tore through the air.
Nanami barely had time to brace.
He was thrown back, his body slamming into the pavement with bone-rattling force. Pain flared along his side as the breath was driven from his lungs.
"…Tch."
He rolled and forced himself upright, teeth clenched. The curse staggered, parts of its form dissolving into black mist as if it couldn't hold itself together.
It was weakening.
Rapidly.
But instead of retreating, its movements grew erratic. Unfocused. Desperate.
Nanami's eyes widened as its attention shifted.
Toward the building.
"No—!"
The curse surged forward, ignoring him entirely.
Nanami pushed off the ground, pain screaming through his ribs as he gave chase—but then he felt it.
Another presence.
Close.
Untrained.Unstable.But unmistakably—
Cursed energy.
Nanami froze mid-step.
He turned his head sharply.
There—near the edge of the street. A boy stood frozen in place, face pale, body rigid with fear. The cursed energy around him stirred involuntarily, reacting to the curse like a pulled thread.
Resonating.
Nanami's breath caught.
"…So you're here too."
The curse hesitated.
Just for a heartbeat.
Its twisted form shuddered, edges rippling as if something inside it was straining against itself. It turned slightly—not toward the children, not toward Nanami—
Toward the boy.
Nanami felt a chill crawl up his spine.
This wasn't normal.
The cursed energy signatures weren't just similar.
They were… aligned.
Nanami forced himself forward, placing himself between the curse and the building, stance firm despite the pain lancing through his side.
"Stay back!" he ordered, voice sharp. "Do not move!"
The boy didn't respond.
He couldn't.
Nanami could see it in his eyes—the paralysis, the shock, the raw instinct screaming survive.
The curse twitched again, its form shedding fragments of itself with every movement. It was breaking apart, unraveling faster than it could act.
And yet—
It didn't leave.
Nanami clenched his jaw.
"A curse that won't flee. Won't stabilize. Won't finish forming…"
His grip tightened.
"And a child who shouldn't be able to stand here at all."
The situation had spiraled far beyond a routine assignment.
Whatever had happened in this place…
It had created something that didn't fit.
An echo without an origin.A soul without a destination.And a boy standing at the center of it all, whether he knew it or not.
Nanami drew a slow breath, steadying himself.
This wasn't over.
Not by a long shot.