Chapter Text
It had happened again. Toge had accidentally cursed someone. He didn’t mean to! But he was still 8, and just wanted to talk. Toge had tried to explain to his father, that he only wanted to get his cousin to look at the squirrel, but he wasn’t listening.
“But-! I just wanted to show him the squirrel and he doesn’t know JSL, and I got frustrated so I accidentally whispered ‘look’,” signed the young Inumaki to his father. His father only stared back, unimpressed with his explanation.
“Your cousin is nine. Sign language starts at 10 unless you’re born with cursed speech, and you know this Toge. This is the second time this month that you’ve messed up, and I will not have a failure as a son!”
Toge flinched. His father wasn’t born with the markings. He didn’t know the pain of being silent for days, even weeks on end, never daring to utter a word. But his father was right. He couldn’t be a failure.
The white-haired boy bowed his head in apology and waited for his punishment to be announced. Usually, he just had extra schoolwork and chores, and a lecture on how and when to use his voice, of course. Nothing too harsh, just enough to get the message across. But this time, Toge’s father looked much angrier than usual, leaving the 8-year-old in fear of what his punishment would be.
“I want you to run 10 laps. Then you will do your extra school work and go to bed without dinner. The clan head is getting impatient with your training, so I have permission to do whatever is needed to get it to stick that you will not speak. Understood?”
His blood ran cold. 10 laps? That was 16 kilometers! He was expected to be a Jujutsu Sorcerer and training started early, so Toge could 2 laps, but not back to back! His legs would give out. But what choice did the 8-year-old have other than to obey his father?
Toge nodded and took his leave. He made his way back home to change into shorts and a shirt made of lighter material before his 10 laps of hell began.
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Sometimes, Inumaki loved his family. And sometimes, I don’t, he thought.
Right now, he did not love his family. Or maybe he did love them but didn’t like them. Could things work like that? At this point, all he cared about was his legs not giving out.
Just finish the lap, he told himself. Just keep going.
Lap 3 passed.
Then Lap 4.
His feet had blisters that yelled in protest at every step he took.
Lap 5.
He had scraped his knees so many times that he lost count.
Lap 6.
His head was pounding, but he was almost halfway there.
Lap 7.
His blisters had popped, and new ones were forming over them.
Lap 8.
His mother had taken his now-empty water bottle and left a full one in its place.
Lap 9.
His legs trembled like he had his own personal earthquake.
Lap 10.
His mind was flying with thoughts of anything, anything, that would keep him going.
As soon as that last lap of hell was over, Toge collapsed.
Unfortunately, he didn’t pass out, and lay there, hot and sticky on the track. It was an average-looking track, the standard kind that you’d find at any high school. Big and green, a full completion of the circle was a kilometer.
It was getting dark out now, but he didn’t want to crawl back to the children’s quarters. All the kids 8-14 lived together to form a ‘bond’ or something like that. At least he had a bottom bunk, and wouldn’t need to climb a ladder. Most 15-year-olds leave for a sorcery school by then.
There were two other cursed speech users under the age of 18 who had been born with the Serpent Eyes and Fangs seal. It wasn’t rare, but definitely not common either. One was a 14-year-old boy named Akiro, and a 17-year-old girl called Hayami. Hayami was Toge’s favorite even though he saw her the least. People always called her beautiful. He had called her pretty once, and she told him that he didn’t need to think like that yet. That was two years ago, and he still wasn’t entirely sure what Hayami meant by that.
Akiro was supposed to be his role model. The best of the best. And he really was powerful, with a strong throat that could handle the kickback from cursed speech. Akiro didn’t speak unless he was required to. He was strong and could run and dodge and fight for hours. But the 14-year-old was viler than the cough syrup his clan produced.
He kicked at the younger children, hid their things, framed them for things he did, because “Oh, but how could Akiro do it? He’s perfect!”
One of his favorite targets of late had been Toge himself.
Someone broke a dish? Oh, it was Toge’s fault! Someone punched one of the little kids? Must have been Toge.
Poor, weak little Toge who took out all his envy on his clan members.
The white-haired boy may have been weak, but who cared? He was 8 years old! He didn’t care about that yet. He shouldn’t have to. It wasn’t fair, he thought, crawling over to his water bottle to down some of the water.
No, it really wasn’t.
He trudged back to the quarters for the children. He still had homework to do. But at least fractions are much less complicated than his training. The clan head, Inumaki Yaketsuku, has extreme prowess in cursed speaking. He could say sentences full of words and would still take almost no damage to his throat! But Yaketsuku was getting on in his years and was almost 80 years old. It was a miracle to live that long as a sorcerer. And so, his focus drifted onto the young ones of the clan, those who showed promise. Toge was on that list by default, solely because of his cursed markings. He had average grades in school and had only just started physical training.
Flopping onto his bed, Toge took out his math homework and a pencil, slowly sitting up to write his answers in the little boxes. Math was something the young Inumaki was good at. It never changed, and you just had to follow the instructions. Mizuki said that would change when it got harder. Mizuki was one of his only friends, mainly because she was a bit of an outcast too. She was born mute.
All the parents whisper that she was a disgrace to the clan, but he didn’t think so. They both couldn’t speak, and it united them. She was 11 to his 8 though, and always had older kid stuff to do.
Toge’s stomach growled. He began to stand on shaky legs, before sitting back down, remembering what his father said: “Then you will do your extra school work and go to bed without dinner.”
Right. No food.
It was only 7:30 according to the clock on the gray-blue walls, but he might as well go to bed.
When he stood up, his legs nearly gave out, and he leaned against the bunk bed. Slowly but surely he made his way to the communal bathroom the boys shared. He brushed his teeth at one of 7 sinks and looked at the row of shower stalls in the large bathroom. Only 4 boys lived in the dorms including Toge, leaving the bathroom mostly empty. I should probably take a shower… but I want to sleep more. He looked at the showers again. Might as well.
He grabbed a towel off the rack and stepped closer to the shower cubicle, leaning in to turn the water on. The hot spray blasted his back, and he was suddenly thankful he had decided to take a shower. He ended up taking way longer than was normal and spent a total of 18 minutes in the shower. Honestly, Toge didn’t feel all that guilty for wasting water even though he supposed he should.
He toweled off his shaggy hair. White hair wasn’t all that uncommon of a color when your world revolved around training hard enough to fight curses made of negative things that normal people couldn't see. Yeah. Not strange at all.
Toge pulled on his sleeping clothes and looked in the mirror. For a puny 8-year-old, he looked pretty tired.
Hm. Maybe his legs would hurt less tomorrow and he could get Mizuki to play a game with him. Sometimes, they played hide and seek. Usually they played board games though, like Monopoly or The Game of Life. Sometimes they played battleship. It was on those days that Mizuki and he felt most happy, playing under a tree in the courtyard while the clouds drifted on lazily overhead.
Mizuki and he liked to stay out as late as possible in the summer, sitting under the stars with a flashlight propped up by them so they could see each other’s hands in the dark. There wasn’t much trouble they could get up to, so the two of them were free to roam around the land the Inumaki clan owned.
The children lived in dorm-like rooms as soon as they turned 8, with boys and girls separated. The rooms were really old and made for more people than the 9 children that lived there. 4 boys and 5 girls total. All of the parents had their own houses, and all of those houses are in neat little rows that form a square. Most of the houses are empty though. Jujutsu sorcerers didn't live to be old. The Inumaki grounds also housed an impressive training facility that visitors often used, and a meeting building for clan head and elders.
People always talked about how few jujutsu sorcerers exist, but Toge didn’t get it. He could think of all the clans out there and knew that hundreds of sorcerers exist. And that was just an estimate!
In the entire world, are there only sorcerers in Japan? That didn’t make sense. Everywhere he went students and elders alike complained about being short-staffed. But couldn’t they just get sorcerers from around the world?
Toge stared at his wall. His mind had too many thoughts to fall asleep, but thinking about sorcerer politics or whatever hurt his brain.
So instead the boy thought about Hayami. He had last seen her 8 months ago and before that almost a year. He missed her. She was always nice to him and scowled when people said he was weak.
The last time Hayami had visited, her hair was blue instead of its natural white-blonde color. When he asked she had said, “I didn’t want to look like everyone else in this damn clan. We all have stupidly light-colored hair, and that's not a bad thing, but I want to stand out. I want to be bold.”
To be bold. What did it mean to be bold? Was it refusing to do the dishes when you still had and it wasn’t your turn? Was it taking down big curses? Or was it helping those in need even when you got no reward?
Toge didn’t know.
How could he? He wasn’t bold. He just did what people told him to do and tried not to be as weak as people thought him to be. Still, he thought Hayami’s hair looked nice and told her so. She smiled and patted his head.
It was nice to be touched. Only Mizuki and his mom gave him hugs. Mizuki also holds his hand when they went running through the trees, shaking with silent laughter. Toge wasn’t sure what would happen if he laughed and didn’t want to find out, so he resigned himself to doing it silently. That was okay though. It was enough to be able to play with Mizuki.
Mizuki was taller than him, standing at 152 cm. He was only 134 cm tall according to the measuring tape that they had borrowed from a storage shed. She had light gray hair that fell just past her shoulders and shining, happy, hazel eyes. Sometimes she had bruises and wouldn’t tell him where she got them, instead brushing off his questions and going back to whatever they were doing.
Mizuki also had training, but her teachers didn’t care if she skipped, so she only went to the history classes and the math ones, writing down notes and practice problems to pass to Toge. Math was what he was good at. Toge sometimes helped his friend with it. Yeah. Life was pretty good, even if his legs ached.