"A jujutsu sorcerer is actually a government official?"
Kurumi stared at Shun in surprise.
Shun shrugged. "A lot of the time, investigating cursed spirits requires that kind of status."
"Does it pay well?" Kurumi went straight for the key point. "Do you get insurance?"
"..."
Shun was speechless.
"Is that really what you are focusing on?" he asked helplessly.
"Of course. If the salary is high and there is insurance, I might want to do this job too."
She said it like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Shun shook his head. "Putting aside whether you even qualify to become a sorcerer, this job has an extremely high mortality rate."
"How high?"
"For example, at my school, maybe only three to five people manage to graduate alive each year."
"Only three to five people in a whole school graduate alive every year?"
Kurumi's eyes flew wide.
Shun thought he had finally scared her a bit and nodded heavily.
Of course, he did not mention how many students Jujutsu High actually had, and he had exaggerated more than a little.
Either way, it was better if she stayed away from this mess.
Suddenly, he felt his arm grabbed.
"Hm?"
Shun looked over, surprised.
Kurumi's eyes were full of earnest pleading.
"Shun, you should drop out," she said seriously.
"I will take care of you."
"..."
He did not know whether to laugh or cry.
He patted her on the head. "Relax. I am actually a lot stronger than you think."
"But you could not even handle that cursed spirit yesterday."
"..."
The corner of his mouth twitched.
Did this girl not know how to talk nicely?
He sighed. "Even if I run into a cursed spirit I cannot beat, I can still run away. Besides, in this day and age, who does not have a few extra lives lying around?"
"???"
Kurumi stared at him, baffled. Then her hand reached around toward his lower back.
"Hey, what are you doing?"
Shun slapped her hand away in alarm.
She was not even pretending to be subtle anymore, was she?
Staying at her place really did feel a bit like a wolf walking into a tiger's den.
Kurumi looked disappointed. "I wanted to see if you had a cat tail. Otherwise, how could you have a few extra lives?"
"Pervert," Shun said coldly.
"I am not," she protested.
"I saw you blushing. Your breathing sped up too."
He looked at her with undisguised contempt.
"Hehe? Did it?"
Kurumi stuck out her tongue in a playful little gesture.
Shun rolled his eyes. "Hurry up and get to class."
"Yes, yes."
She nodded.
It was about time. If she did not go in now, she really would be late.
"See you after class then."
She waved at him and ran toward her classroom.
Shun watched her back for a moment, then began wandering around the school grounds.
What exactly was the connection between Kurumi and that cursed spirit?
Had that spirit formed from her resentment after her parents died and her relatives bullied her?
Or had it come from something else?
Maybe she had come into contact with a special cursed object at some point.
There were too many possibilities.
As he inspected the school, Shun turned them over in his mind.
After about half an hour and a full circuit around the main teaching buildings, he headed up to the rooftop.
From the highest point, he looked down over all of Sugisawa High.
Six Eyes opened.
In Shun's vision, the flow of cursed energy across the entire campus became clear.
"How strange. A school this big, and there is barely any cursed energy."
He had found a problem.
Curses were not exactly the same as traditional "spirits," but even in ghost stories, schools were prime haunting grounds.
Maybe things were not obvious in broad daylight.
Curses were different.
The more people there were, the more likely they were to appear.
More people meant more negative emotions, and that meant more cursed spirits.
In a place like a school, even if all the students were just kids, Shun had no doubt about how much malice they could feel toward one another.
On top of that, in Japan, school bullying was hardly rare.
"Maybe the students here all have wonderful character," he said with a snort. "Yeah, even a dog would not buy that."
"In other words, someone or something has been actively cleaning things up."
That was the only conclusion that made sense.
If it was a sorcerer cleaning up, that was not too surprising.
If it was a cursed spirit cleaning up other curses, that would not shock him either.
Plenty of cursed spirits enjoyed devouring their own kind to grow stronger.
He had met one before and even gotten several useful techniques out of it.
"Oh?"
At that moment, a loud cheer rose from the sports field.
"Hm?"
Shun followed the sound with his eyes, and his expression shifted in surprise.