𝗰𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗮 | 𝗷𝘂𝗷𝘂𝘁𝘀𝘂 𝗸𝗮𝗶𝘀𝗲𝗻

𝗮 𝗯𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗸

"Good morning Grandma."

"Good morning dear."

You press a kiss against her forehead, right where she likes you to, and clutch the edges of the blanket that's beginning to slip off the steep slope of her shoulders. "Anything to report?"

"I dreamed of your mother."

"That's nice." You wrap the thick quilt tighter around her, tucking it in neatly. (Your daughter, you want to correct her. She was her daughter before she was your mother.) "What did she say?"

"That you're getting into trouble."

You pointedly pretend to laugh. "That joke's just as funny as the first billion times you've told it."

Your grandmother chuckles. (The raspy sounds of her breathing fade in and out of the background.) "Are you getting into trouble? Kichou-chan's been in a mood these days."

"When is she not," you grumble. "Is this channel fine?"

"I'm not senile yet," she chides you. "You're fighting."

"We are not."

"So you started it," she comments smugly.

"Did not." You place the remote by her side even though you know she won't use it. (She likes to pretend she will—she grumbles about getting bored while you're gone—and you humor her.) (She's too weak to even press a button now.) "I'll be back early today."

"Don't you worry about me," she responds, shooing you away emphatically. "You should be out there enjoying your youth."

You roll your eyes. "I love you Grandma."

"I love you too."

/

You reintroduce yourself to Shoko purely out of nerves. If she thinks it's weird she doesn't let it on—she just bows her head curtly as a greeting.

"Utahime advised me to talk with you. I'm not sure why though," you admit honestly.

(Because she's the closest thing Jujutsu High has to a therapist, she figures.)

"Do you have any questions for me?"

You start to shake your head, but after a moment of thought you stop yourself. "You work with curses too, don't you?" You continue when she nods. "Are you a real doctor too, or is dressing as a school nurse part of your disguise?"

"I'm a real doctor."

"Oh." Your eyes widen. "Oh. That was rude of me to ask." (She doesn't correct you.) "Then I guess it'd be silly to ask you if curses are real, right?" (She doesn't correct you about that either.)

"Do you know what a curse is?"

"No."

"How could you know if they do or don't exist then?"

(It's a fantastic point.)

"What is a curse?"

(You're a fast learner. She likes that.)

"In the simplest terms possible, curses form from pools of human emotion. Each emotion has a particular energy—hatred, desperation, selfishness, or even grief—and when that energy is concentrated it can take on a physical form. Curses can feed on this energy, or each other, to become stronger. The danger to humans comes from this feeding—when a curse forms it can leech the life out of its host, or more commonly, when an emotion is absorbed so is the human expressing it."