After the Serpent

In the office of the Divine Kingdom Cult, God sat with his eyes closed.

The chair beneath him was comfortable. The room had been repaired after previous damage. The air smelled faintly of disinfectant and old incense.

Someone pounded on the door.

"My God, forgive my rudeness. The laboratory has had an incident."

God's eyes opened.

"What happened?"

The messenger dropped to his knees. His body trembled, and for a moment fear stole his voice.

God forced his own anger down.

"You are forgiven. Speak."

"After you left the laboratory, screams began inside. When we entered, all researchers were unconscious."

"How long after I left?"

"About two hours."

God's gaze sharpened.

Two hours.

Pale eyes appeared in his memory again.

"Ren Zenin," he murmured. "Was it you?"

He went to the laboratory immediately.

The room looked orderly at first glance, as if nothing catastrophic had occurred. That made the situation worse.

"Do we know the cause?"

"Not yet. After we entered, the monitor used to observe Yamata no Orochi exploded. We suspect an unforeseeable error occurred on the serpent's side."

"Yamata no Orochi..."

God's fingers brushed the wound on his arm.

"When they wake, I want to know everything."

"Yes."

He returned to his office with a mind that would not settle.

If he could not understand the problem, he would not sleep.

"Perhaps that old thing Tengen knows something."

At the outer edge of the commercial district, civilians had gathered behind the cordon.

Some stared at the unconscious black-clad personnel on the ground, too afraid to approach. Others cried names into the ruined street. A few held phones, recording because terror had become habit.

Gojo and Geto appeared from the gray haze.

"Someone came out!"

"Tell us what happened in there."

"Sir, I am from a television station. Do you know what occurred today?"

"You came out alone? Why did you not bring my wife and child back?"

"Monsters. They are just like the thing that killed our families."

A stone flew toward Gojo.

Infinity stopped it in the air.

More stones followed.

Gojo looked at the crowd. The oppressive air of the district still sat in his chest, and the sight of people throwing stones at the ones who had entered that hell to help them made something unpleasant rise in him.

"Geto," he said. "Can I kill them?"

His tone was light.

It was not a joke.

"There are enough corpses in there. No one would notice a few more."

Geto's eyes moved over the crowd. For an instant, something violent flickered in them. The Killing Stone at his side warmed faintly, as if agreeing.

Then he saw the camera behind the reporter.

The impulse sank.

"Let's go," Geto said. "They are venting because they lost people. Killing them would not change that. More would only come."

Gojo studied his friend for a second.

Something in Geto's voice was wrong.

But every sorcerer in Tokyo had been pushed to the limit recently. Curses were appearing everywhere. Geto had been swallowing them at a pace no one should have to endure.

Gojo trusted him to adjust.

Armed personnel finally moved the crowd back. Geto's cursed spirits carried the unconscious sorcerers out one by one. The soldiers could not see the curses, but discipline kept them from reacting when bodies floated through the air.

When Yaga called again, Gojo had to return to work.

"When this is over, I am taking a real vacation."

"You say that every week."

"This time I mean it."

Gojo vanished.

Geto remained in the rain that began to fall over the ruined district.

He had always believed sorcerers existed to protect the weak.

Recently, after so many cursed spirits, so many deaths, and so much human ugliness, that belief had begun to grow a shadow.

Worse, he did not dislike the shadow as much as he should.

When Gojo asked whether he could kill the crowd, Geto's first instinct had almost been yes.

If not for the camera, would anger have made the decision for him?

Geto looked up as lightning split the gray sky.

"What would you do, Ren Zenin?"

The question dissolved into rain.

The next day, no major news outlet reported the commercial district honestly.

The Kyoto Daily called it a sudden magnitude-seven earthquake and advised residents to prepare properly for aftershocks.

Online, the truth fought to survive through posts that were deleted and reposted, clipped and mirrored, mocked and believed.

"Yamata no Orochi is real."

"Stop living in fantasy. That thing was too beautiful to be a demon."

"Then why did so many videos point to the commercial district?"

"Director Haitani from a tokusatsu studio already said it was footage from a new project. The district was a set."

"That sounds like a cover-up."

The official response was simple: deny less, redirect more. Families of the dead received large compensation payments. The story slowly sank beneath explanations that were easier to live with.

In the sealed meeting room of the Jujutsu Association, the higher-ups watched the original footage.

No one spoke first.

The elder at the head of the table tapped the documents in front of him.

"Does no one have anything to say about the commercial district?"

The others remained still, eyes lowered.

"According to a Grade 2 sorcerer from the Zenin clan, there was another Yamata no Orochi in the district."

That broke the room.

"Another?"

"The first one's status is unknown. We do not know whether one lived, one died, or both still exist."

The elder continued, voice slow.

"We also need to determine whether either serpent is connected to Ren Zenin. More precisely, whether he became one of them."

The room grew colder.

"Finally, someone must compile a very concise report on the incident from beginning to end and deliver it to Tengen."

Every gaze moved to the end of the table.

A kimono-clad elder sat there with a bitter smile.

His status was the lowest. His purpose in these meetings was to carry messages to Tengen.

The work sounded easy.

It felt terrible.

"I will go."

No one objected.

The elder gathered the documents and left before the next discussion began.

The elder waited until the door closed.

"There is one more question. Why was the first Yamata no Orochi visible to ordinary people?"

At first, several people looked puzzled.

Then understanding spread.

A cursed spirit, no matter how powerful, should not have been recorded so clearly by civilians. Yet all survivor accounts described the first serpent like an emerging special-grade curse.

"An artificial cursed spirit?" someone said.

Several gazes turned toward a man in glasses and a white lab coat. The coat looked too clean to have seen much actual laboratory work.

He pushed his glasses up calmly.

"Do not look at me that way. I study curses, but I have not reached the stage of creating a god."

"Then what have you produced after all these years?"

"We fund you without limit and get a few Grade 1 cursed tools in return."

"Some gutter researchers seem to have done better."

The man ignored the insults.

"If that serpent was artificial, it was still a half-finished product. If you can obtain its production method, I guarantee one thing."

His eyes brightened.

"Amaterasu will descend into this world."

The others did not share his reverence. They heard opportunity and began making their own calculations.

The elder saw enough.

"Meeting adjourned."

Everyone left quickly.

Their attention had already moved from fear of Orochi to the possibility of owning it.

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