Mahiko coughed up blood.
The backlash had been severe.
Just now, she had used Cursed Speech in a forceful attempt to dissolve the Binding Vow that Miwa had made with herself — and the recoil was vicious. Her throat took the full brunt of it, shredded beyond use, her voice gone entirely.
Part of that, perhaps, was because Mahiko had no family lineage of Cursed Speech training the way Inumaki did. Her throat simply wasn't as hardened, as battle-tested as his.
But it also proved something else: unraveling a Binding Vow that a person had made entirely with themselves — a promise to no one but their own soul — was genuinely, brutally difficult.
"Ugh." Mahiko rubbed her throat.
To be honest, it really hurt.
It was almost as if... her vocal cords had simply detonated the instant she'd invoked Cursed Speech. An ordinary person with no special conditioning would probably have just died on the spot.
How terrifying, backlash. I don't think I'll ever forget you. (Not that it was actually all that terrifying.)
Mahiko wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth, then applied Idle Transfiguration to repair her own throat. The scorching sensation faded away, and her vocal cords knit themselves back together.
She looked up again at the girl before her — suspended by tentacles, feet dangling well above the floor.
Miwa was slicked all over with the gooey residue the tentacles had left behind. Her long blade lay on the ground a few steps away. The scabbard at her hip sat empty — a silent, damning testament to the fact that she had been disarmed, with absolutely nothing left to fight back with.
Hanging there in mid-air, the girl looked on the verge of tears. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her lower lip clamped hard between her teeth, one lone teardrop balanced at the corner of her eye — trembling on the edge, not quite falling.
It was the face of someone who had been thoroughly, utterly bullied into despair, but was biting down hard and refusing to make a sound.
Honestly, it was kind of pitiful.
Even Mahiko felt a small, reluctant pang of sympathy.
She cleared her throat twice — testing out her freshly repaired voice — and then spoke.
"How about this, Miwa Kasumi... hmm — what if we made a deal? You help me run a little experiment, and in return, I won't hurt you — and I won't leave any lasting side effects either. Afterward, whatever reward you want, I can give you that too."
Mahiko blinked her big eyes, her tone earnest, her voice as soft and soothing as someone comforting a small child.
Miwa, hearing those words, immediately assumed she was being mocked. The humiliation that washed over her was even worse than before. She bit down on her lower lip, eyes glistening, and turned her face away, her voice barely a whisper: "Just... just... as long as you let the others go... whatever you want me to do... I'll agree to it..."
Oh my god, are you some warrior maiden who got captured by a villain and is bracing herself for degradation?
What is with that expression.
Did Miwa really not believe her?
Well. Fair enough, honestly.
"Alright, alright, I hear you — I'll release them," Mahiko said, rubbing the tip of her nose. "I'm willing to establish a proper Binding Vow with you right now. That should put your mind at ease, shouldn't it?"
A Binding Vow?
Miwa looked up at Mahiko at that, her expression shifting with surprise. "You want to form a Binding Vow? ...Are you serious?"
"Of course I'm serious," Mahiko replied.
Miwa was silent for a few seconds.
A Binding Vow couldn't be faked. If this Cursed Spirit was genuinely willing to seal one, then she was serious about not hurting her or anyone else.
All she'd have to do was participate in some experiment.
As for what kind of experiment... the blue-haired Cursed Spirit had said the experiment only concerned her. So even if the spirit was playing word games and the experiment turned out to be lethal — the only one dying would be Miwa herself.
That was fine, then.
In Miwa's eyes, the blue-haired Cursed Spirit before her was so overwhelmingly powerful that she stood no chance at all. And yet the creature was actually willing to forge a Binding Vow as a guarantee of everyone's safety. For a girl teetering on the edge of breakdown, that was an extraordinarily precious mercy.
"Then... okay." The girl bit her lower lip, wearing the expression of someone humiliated but resolved to face her fate with dignity. "I agree. What does the experiment involve?"
She looked at the Cursed Spirit before her.
And Mahiko broke into that mischievous grin of hers again, raising one finger. "The experiment is — be my maid for one hour."
"?" Miwa froze.
What kind of experiment was that supposed to be?
But before Miwa could think it through — her pupils snapped sharply to pinpoints.
Because two tentacles had suddenly extended from behind Mahiko.
Unlike the violent crimson tentacles from before, these two were slimmer, their tips slightly parted like budding flowers, drifting slowly toward either side of Miwa's head — more precisely, closing in on her two ears.
The buds opened a little further, and from inside them emerged two even finer tendrils. Moist. Soft. Carrying a faint warmth and the gleam of some unidentified fluid — curling toward her earlobes to envelop them.
Miwa's brain short-circuited in that instant. Every inch of her skin erupted in full-body goosebumps, like electricity ripping straight through her.
"WAIT!!"
She remembered.
She had seen scenes like this — in certain not-quite-reputable manga!!
Of course a girl knew exactly what that was supposed to represent!!!
What the heck!! —
Was this that kind of thing?! —
"Mmmph!! —" The girl squeezed her eyes shut, her entire body going rigid, teeth clenched so hard they creaked, her face draining white with genuine terror.
And as the girl waited in desperate dread for whatever was coming next, Mahiko, for her part...
"Uh..."
Mahiko looked at the two tentacles she'd extended.
Then looked at Miwa's expression.
Then looked back down at her tentacles.
.....
"Hmm..."
Yeah, okay. This was maybe just a tiny little infinitesimal bit not great.
If she kept going like this it was going to get flagged for sure.
Mahiko's mouth twitched violently, and she hastily retracted the tentacles.
She'd only been trying to craft a little device that could loop Cursed Speech commands directly into someone's ears — conducting sound waves through tentacles was the simplest, most efficient method — but the visual was... deeply, deeply inappropriate.
New approach. It's fine. One moment.
She was absolutely going to make this scene presentable.
Mahiko reached into her pocket and pulled out a small stuffed rabbit. She kneaded it, squished it, smooshed and shaped it — until it had transformed into a pair of adorable, fluffy over-ear headphones.
That should work now, right?
Mahiko gently placed the bunny-ear headphones onto Miwa's head.
Miwa felt something get set on top of her head, and cautiously opened her eyes.
Fluffy.
Soft.
...Headphones?
"...???"
Miwa stared in bewilderment at the blue-haired girl before her.
Mahiko had already stepped back one pace, straightening her collar with exaggerated ceremony — and then snapped her head up with a grand flourish —
"And now! Please allow Miss Miwa to fully enjoy my latest creation!"
The blue-haired girl spread her arms wide, beaming.
"— Mahiko's Thunderstruck Hypnosis ASMR!!"
Miwa blinked.
Hypnosis? ASMR? What?
She'd just opened her mouth to ask — when in the very next second, the sound of Cursed Speech came pouring out of the headphones.
The commands looped in rapid, unrelenting succession, one layered over the next at breakneck speed, densely packed, flooding into both ears like a rising tide — slowly, inexorably pressing her consciousness down, deeper and deeper, into somewhere she couldn't resist.
The pupils of Miwa Kasumi's eyes lost their focus once more.
____
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