Chapter 18 – Part 2: Wild Bloom
The moment the train doors slid open at the edge of Tokyo's eastern line, Nobara Kugisaki knew something was off.
She stepped onto the platform with that familiar impatience dancing in her steps, her straw-colored bag slung carelessly over one shoulder. But her usual bravado didn't settle. The air felt… different. Too clean. Like the rain had come through not to cleanse but to erase.
"Smells like old flowers," she muttered, wrinkling her nose.
Megumi Fushiguro stepped beside her, dark hair wind-swept as always, his eyes already scanning the alley behind the platform. "There was a cursed spirit reported three days ago in this district," he said. "Then another one yesterday. Patterns like that mean something's changed."
"Great. Love when things change," Nobara said, sarcasm sharp.
Yuji Itadori jogged up behind them, hood down, hands behind his head. "Didn't they say it was just a cleanup job?"
"They did," Megumi answered flatly. "But they also said that last time."
Their second-year chaperone said nothing. Kinji Hakari, temporarily assigned to monitor them, leaned against a nearby vending machine, chewing gum like he had nowhere better to be. His bleached tips caught the light, and his sharp eyes flicked toward a faint shape down the road.
"You feel that?" Hakari asked, voice casual but low.
Megumi nodded. "Yeah. It's… not normal cursed energy."
"Not even sure it *is* cursed energy," Hakari murmured.
They moved as a unit, slipping into side streets. It wasn't long before they saw it—a long scorched streak down a building's side, the windows melted as though by acid, but overgrown with vines. Not natural ones. These vines shimmered faintly, like they were caught between being real and being remembered. Megumi placed a hand on the wall. The concrete felt warm.
"Still zone," Hakari said. "Didn't think they were real."
"You've heard of these?" Megumi asked, surprised.
"Rumors. From some of the higher-ups who've started acting like superstitious kids. 'Ghosts that even ghosts fear,' they said." Hakari tilted his head, chewing a little harder. "But I've never actually seen one."
"Are we going in?" Yuji asked, glancing toward a partially collapsed stairwell that led deeper underground.
"We're going in," Hakari said. "And you're all on alert."
They descended into a forgotten station, the power dead, the lights flickering in through holes in the ceiling. The space was riddled with graffiti and the smell of wet rust. But beneath the decay… there was something stranger.
As they moved through the station, something shimmered on the far wall. It wasn't a cursed spirit—not exactly. It had form, but it was stretched and incomplete, like someone tried to sculpt a spirit from instinct instead of energy. A mimicry. It shifted when it saw them.
It wept.
A ripple ran through Yuji's spine. "Did… it just cry?"
"No," Nobara said. "It's *mocking* crying."
The spirit's body twisted, arms unraveling into tangled limbs of ivory and bone, sprouting shapes like old cathedral arches and folded wings that never quite formed. It *looked* like something holy—if you squinted and ignored the rot beneath its half-made skin.
"Whatever this is," Hakari said, cracking his neck, "it ain't our usual cursed junk."
The spirit didn't charge. It pointed—to the far wall. Carved into the concrete, in deliberate spirals, were faint impressions. A name was missing. A signature never signed.
Yuji's eyes narrowed. "Someone's been here."
Then, in a blur of movement, the spirit lunged—not toward them, but toward the carving. Nobara reacted first, slamming her hammer into the floor and pinning the spirit's leg with a nailed curse mark. It shrieked—a keening, echoing sound that sounded like a question and a scream at once.
"Megumi, now!" Hakari barked.
Megumi's shadows rose—wolves, lunging.
But the spirit didn't fight them. It flung itself backward, folding in on itself like a collapsing prayer, and whispered something.
Megumi paused. "Did it just say…"
"'Thief,'" Hakari finished.
Yuji looked around. "Who the hell did it mean?"
Silence answered.
And then, as the spirit flickered and faded, not dying but *withdrawing*, it left behind only a mark scorched into the ground.
A flower. Blooming in reverse.