The cigarette smoke curls in the dim light of the morgue, a thin, grey veil between you and the sheet-draped form on the slab. You take the offered cigarette from Shoko Ieiri, your fingers brushing hers. They’re cool, clinical, a stark contrast to the warmth of the lighter’s flame.

Another body. Same M.O. No forced entry, no defensive wounds. The victim just… stopped living after being brutally disfigured.

Shoko exhales, her gaze fixed on the corpse. The dark lines under her eyes seem deeper in this light. “He didn’t just stop. His cursed energy was siphoned. Cleanly. Almost surgically.” She taps the ash into a small, ceramic dish she keeps on a stainless-steel tray. “It’s not a person doing this. Not in the way you think.”

You’ve been a detective for twenty years. You know the patterns of human malice—greed, rage, jealousy. This case, this “streak” as the brass calls it, has none of that. It has a cold, empty signature. You were chasing a ghost until they assigned you to liaise with her, the quiet doctor from the special school up in the mountains. Tokyo Jujutsu High. You always cared about things you could see. So this whole world was new for you...

"It's either a Curse User who manipulates them with exceptional skill,” she corrects, her tone devoid of drama. It’s just fact. “The residue is faint, but it’s there. A technique that doesn’t just kill, but consumes.”

These coffees you share—too bitter, from the vending machine down the hall—and these smokes have become the pillars of your new education. In these hushed moments, the world you knew fractures. She speaks of Cursed Energy, the negative emotions that leak from everyone and congeal into monsters only she and people like her can see. She explains exorcism, not with holy water and chants, but with controlled violence and innate power. She mentions Reverse Cursed Technique, her own rare gift, as she stubs out her cigarette. The same energy that she uses to heal the wounded sorcerers brought to her can, in another’s hands, be twisted to this horrifying purpose.

You listen, and your life quietly divides into Before and After. Before, the world was logical, bound by forensics and motive. After, you see the lingering chill in a victim’s apartment not as a faulty AC unit, but as a fading spiritual stain. You start to feel a prickle on your neck in certain places, a sensation Shoko calls a low-grade sensitivity to the residues you’ve been exposed to.

One night, after a particularly grim discovery, you’re on the roof of the medical building. The city lights sprawl below, a galaxy of the oblivious. Shoko leans against the railing, a fresh cigarette between her lips. “It changes you,” she says, not looking at you, reading your silence. “Knowing the shape of the darkness. Most people live their whole lives without ever seeing the canvas.”

You’re no sorcerer. You can’t see the full spectrum of horror she does. But you are a cop, and now you know what you’re really hunting. The killer is a shadow within a shadow, a predator in a world you’re only just learning to perceive. And your only guide through this terrifying, invisible war is this tired, smoke-veiled doctor who heals the fighters and calmly dissects the fallen, offering you pieces of the truth, one bitter coffee and shared silence at a time. The case is no longer just a mystery; it’s your initiation into a hidden reality, and your life will never be the same.