And You Call Yourself a Sorcerer? I'm a Realist (1)
Late at night, on the slum-worn streets of District 54, I stopped in front of a tavern. A tiny skull mark was stamped beneath the door handle.
This is the place.
I knocked, and a strawberry-nosed man in shabby clothes appeared.
"We're not taking customers today. Get lost."
"—And when I flung the door wide, there stood the moon."
The moment I recited the verse, Strawberry-Nose dropped his irritated smirk and took up the next line.
"Ho. Chasing after white clouds, is it not?"
"In the blue-green stream."
"There lies the visage of a Bad Friend. Enter, then."
The instant I stepped inside, a long lock of hair shot out and seized Strawberry-Nose by the throat. At the tip of it sat a woman's head, perched on a plastic mannequin — narrow eyes, hair a wild and tangled wreck. I'd heard from the detective that there was a sorcerer who manipulated hair, but this was something else entirely.
"Khack— khack—"
"You've got some nerve. I told you not to let anyone in today."
"B-but he knew the Alliance passphrase. That man in the white robe."
Mo Hae-yeon flung the now-violet-faced, unconscious Strawberry-Nose aside. She hopped down from the mannequin and came walking toward me on her hair as if it were a set of legs, looking for all the world like a spider.
So they call her the Hanging Ghost because she moves around with nothing but a head left...
"You should've said so sooner. You're from Alliance headquarters?"
"I wish to speak with Captain Reaper. Alone."
"No. The kid's recovering in a safe house. Talk through me."
"I'm the one who actually runs things around here, you know," Mo Hae-yeon added, preening.
So much for playing it heavy and requesting a private audience.
"You made quite the scene out there, but you look pretty intact."
"Hey, hey — I've only got a head left, and I look intact? That vulgar Namgung bitch chopped up my Giga clan prosthetic. Orihalcon, no less. What kind of monster is she? I barely even regenerated this gorgeous hair of mine."
From where I was standing, the one left with nothing but a head looked a lot more like the monster.
Namgung was the sword, Yongso the dragon, Gamram agriculture. Among the Twelve Great Clans, the Giga clan specialized in mechanical jujutsu. There were even bloodlines that had replaced every part of the body except the brain with machinery. So she'd gotten her hands on a Great Clan prosthetic that had leaked onto the black market.
"Eagle, grab a few bottles, would you? There should be some Spiritus. That one too."
"Grrrrrr."
A griffin beastman — something between an eagle and a lion — slowly set the bottles on the table. This would be Skin Walker leather, then: wear a Nephilim's hide and you inherit its power. Whether his mind was gone or that was the price of the jujutsu, I couldn't say. Didn't much matter. He just kept making animal noises.
"So there's a human who drinks that rotgut. What's headquarters want, then?"
Mo Hae-yeon asked it like she was already counting on a reward. I swallowed my rage, held up three fingers — thumb and pinky folded down — and spoke.
"First."
"Haaah? First what?"
"I wasn't sent by Bad Friends Alliance headquarters."
I folded my index finger. I'd learned their passphrase from Jujutsu Return, after all. The Bad Friends Alliance operated out of abandoned taverns in the slums; recite the common password at a door stamped with a certain mark, and they let you in.
"Second. I'm a sorcerer who copies other people's jujutsu."
"This guy's a lunatic. What kind of innate cursed technique is that? If it's true, go on — copy Hair Hangman."
Mo Hae-yeon snorted. Unfazed, I raised my middle finger.
"Third. You know Hwang Seonpung, the Last Words Collector?"
"He's the spiritual pillar of our District 54, so yeah. The raid on Namgung was a requiem we offered the old man."
Attacking Namgung with that kind of sophistry. Even so, I kept my voice even as I folded the raised middle finger.
"I killed Hwang Seonpung."
"Don't make me laugh. Is the Alliance Leader running a loyalty test, or—"
I dropped a sword hilt from my robe sleeve, and Mo Hae-yeon's face went rigid. It was the dedicated object of Falling Wind Cleave, the innate cursed technique that forged blades of wind. Good thing I'd picked it up at the scene.
"Y-you killed the old man?"
Mo Hae-yeon drew a deep breath, as if trying to sort the chaos in her head.
"That's right! I killed him! I murdered Hwang Seonpung. He went poking around a place that had nothing to do with me, so I paid him a personal visit. He used to say a person's last words were the completion of their life — you know what Hwang Seonpung's last words were?"
"…………"
I nodded, and put on the voice.
"GRAAAAH!! GRAAAAH!! Reaper!! Mo Hae-yeon!! Cameleon!! I'm the Demon Slayer, Hwang Seonpuuung!! He begged with snot and tears running down his face. He's killed a lot of people, but I've never seen anyone die that pathetic."
In reality, Beomseongiltu had cut him down in a single blow, and he'd never said any last words of the sort. The effect, however, was immediate.
"I don't care if you killed him or not — insult the old man and I won't forgive you!"
"KWEEEAAAK!!"
I'd successfully pissed off District 54's two Bad Friends, who lived and died by friendship.
Good. It's getting genuinely hard to recognize me.
The snow-white robe I was wearing was a gift from the V-type Nephilim Minogame — a special-grade object once used by the King of Jujutsu. He had used it to hide his face, since people who beheld his countenance would faint and some would even die, and to contain the cursed energy that overflowed from his body. In other words, it could also hide the pathetic fact that I had almost no cursed energy under ordinary circumstances. More than anything, I liked how roomy the sleeves were for stashing things.
I pulled my junior sister's XD pistol from my cuff and wrapped both hands around it.
One-Sword Style: Calamity Burn
The moment I recited the Dual Kings of All Arms' incantation, Mo Hae-yeon — who'd been about to wall herself off with hair — flinched. She must have remembered my claim that I was a sorcerer who copied innate cursed techniques. She hurriedly gathered her hair, braided it into something like a baseball bat, and swung.
"I got caught off guard by that vulgar bitch last time, but this thickened hair won't be cut by a slash anymore!"
I pulled the trigger.
BANG—
The shot roared past, grazing Mo Hae-yeon's cheek. A little more accuracy and that would have been a headshot. Shame. Guess I was a long way from being a marksman like Junior Sister Ran. The recoil made the bones in my wrist throb. A familiar sword really was better.
I tossed the pistol aside.
"Shit. That was just a regular gunshot?"
Now it was even easier to treat her weak point — the brain — as a target. Realizing it had been a bluff, she started unraveling the complicated braid.
Go ahead and sue me from the grave.
One of the condiments the Gamram clan had sent. I flung a bottle of camellia oil I'd picked up rolling around the ruined Namgung estate into the gaps of her bunched hair.
"It's slippery! What the hell did you do to my silky, bouncy haaair—!"
Mo Hae-yeon couldn't control her now-limp, slumping hair. Camellia oil was supposed to soften it. They used to use the stuff as a shampoo substitute, apparently.
"KYEEEEEEK!"
The Skin Walker hoisted me from behind and tossed me like I weighed nothing.
—CRASH
I smashed through a table and the displayed liquor, colliding with the wall.
"That hurt, bird-brain."
The force of it was enough to black out my vision for a second. I drew the Changgun Sword from my hip and locked eyes with the Skin Walker.
"Kuuuurrrgh."
The Skin Walker raised a lion's forepaw and swung its thick arm. I caught the blow descending from overhead on the Changgun Sword. A heavy shock surged through me. The floor cracked beneath my feet and my body shook, but I smiled in triumph and asked the Skin Walker a question.
"Why is an eagle's beak yellow? What's the reason?"
"KUOOOORGH!!?"
He must have taken the utterly absurd question for an incantation, because his momentum faltered for a moment. I drove into the opening as he hesitated, face bewildered. My right arm, gripping the sword, shot upward with tremendous force. The Skin Walker threw up an arm to block on instinct — a wild animal's reflex, maybe.
"KUEEEEEK—!"
My blade tore through the muscle of his arm and shattered bone, and he threw his mouth open in a howl.
"Allow me to introduce a new sibling of the Nine Dragons Nine Forms. I've chosen you!"
Having bought myself time, I pulled a stoppered test tube from my sleeve. A red salamander inside it worked its mouth open and shut.
The Tang clan, who ran hospitals, had originally been a family that researched poison arts. Even now that they'd become a house of miracle doctors, they still raised a number of highly venomous creatures. I'd swiped this one on the way out of the hospital, drawing on what I remembered from Jujutsu Return — an artificial Nephilim that had given living form to the Gu Poison Technique. A Gu Salamander.
Whirrr.
The moment the test tube went into his beak, the Skin Walker chewed it on reflex.
"KUEEEEEEK—!"
The gu poison took hold immediately. His eyes rolled back and he foamed at the mouth.
"Jaehyuk! You son of a bitch — if you're a sorcerer, fight with jujutsu! What kind of farce is this? Oh, you just love copying, don't you!!!"
Mo Hae-yeon, having regained control of her hair, transformed it with a low hum into something like a drill.
"I get it! You're a Namgung non-sorcerer, aren't you? After everything the kid did for you..."
"You inferior species—!"
Bloodshot-eyed, she launched the hair drill. I grabbed the convulsing Skin Walker's hide and shoved with everything I had.
THUNK—
Mo Hae-yeon's hair punched clean through the Skin Walker's belly. Vapor rose from the harsh liquor that had shattered and flooded the floor. Her hair was soaked through with oil. Two enemies, strung together like a chain of sausages. Jujutsu that manipulated hair and hide — both highly flammable. What I had to do was obvious.
I flicked the last item sleeping in my sleeve — Detective Park's lighter. From the camellia-oil-soaked center of her hair, crimson flame raced across both their bodies in an instant.
"GUOOOOOORG!"
"It's hooooot. Kiddooo, save meee—!"
At some point the screams died with the ashes. After the flames surged up, only the smell of burning filled the tavern.
"Wake up."
I slapped the unconscious Strawberry-Nose across the cheek, over and over. He sat up trembling, and I grabbed him by the collar and hauled him into the air.
"H-hyaaagh!?"
His eyes went wide with shock at the sight of the officers' charred corpses.
"Where's Reaper?"
Those two had been extras in the end. To free my junior sister from the nightmare, I had to kill the ringleader — Reaper.