Suguru Geto

People always discuss the smell that first assaults their senses when it comes to a car wreck. For Yuna, it wasn't. She had replayed it over and over again in her head. Her coworker had the idea of telling a Japanese Legend, a story he once heard about Gozu, or the cow's head, a terrifying story. A Japanese Legend of an evil spirit that kills upon retelling the contents of its story out loud. The more Dylan talked about the story, the bus trip towards a company retreat slowly became something ominous.

The way Dylan started to twitch was just subtle. Like something trying him on like a suit.

"... he didn't stop till the bone snapped in half." He continued the story. The air had thickened. Nearly nauseating. Dylan had taken to walking up and down the bus retelling this grisly story, "One by one, he plucked a bone from the screaming woman."

He leaned forward, staring straight into Yuna's eyes, and an inch away. She should have known that something wasn't right.

"Maybe.. Maybe you should stop, Dylan." Keiko had requested, visibly shivering. Dylan had reached out, suddenly grabbing her by her face.

There was no time to scream, but the sound of someone's head being crushed barehanded was a sound that would live with Yuna forever.

Just as fast as Keiko's body dropped. Dylan started to slaughter, moving at an inhuman speed like he was possessed. Killing the bus driver last. Not a soul moved forward to grab the steering wheel.

Dylan was blocking it, almost welcoming someone to try to get past him. Until the bus turned straight into the guard rails. Sending everyone aboard flying within.

A miracle, possibly, but all the while shaken up. Yuna and a handful of others had survived. She felt that heavy air just over her shoulder. Lingering and urging her to retell the story. A story she couldn't remember, but couldn't say that someone else didn't. Her gaze went towards the other co-worker who survived.

"... he didn't stop till the bone snapped in half." The woman mumbled. Yuna's heart dropped. It felt like a wider-scale problem.

While the medics arrived on scene, cops and news reporters. Yuna sat quietly at the back of the ambulance. Bruised up, cut up from the glass, and having a broken arm. She couldn't stop shaking.

---

The principal’s office was quiet, save for the low hum of the air conditioning and the steady, heavy cadence of Yaga’s voice. Sunlight streamed through the windows, catching dust motes in the air as Yaga held up a printed report, his expression grim.

“A mass casualty event on the Tomei Expressway,” Yaga stated, his eyes moving between the two young men standing before his desk. “A charter bus carrying foreign employees of a tech firm. Collision with a truck, but the initial cause of the crash appears to be… internal violence. Survivors report one of their own began attacking others mid-transit, exhibiting strength and speed far beyond human capability, before killing the driver.”

Satoru leaned against the wall, his blue-tinted sunglasses pushed up into his snow-white hair. He let out a low whistle. “Sounds messy. Cursed spirit possession?”

“Likely,” Yaga confirmed. “But there’s a complicating factor. Several survivors are reporting an intense, lingering… pressure. A compulsion. One has already begun repeating fragments of a story the perpetrator was telling before the attack.”

Suguru, standing with his hands clasped behind his back, his long black hair tied neatly in its half-up style, frowned. His brown eyes were sharp, thoughtful. “A story?”

“A Japanese legend. Concerning an entity called Gozu,” Yaga said, setting the report down. “The details are unclear, but the nature of the compulsion suggests a cursed technique tied to narrative transmission. A memetic hazard. Hear it, and you feel compelled to repeat it. Repeat it, and… well.”

“And you become the next vector,” Suguru finished, his voice low. “A cursed story. How poetic.”

Satoru grinned, a flash of white teeth. “So we’ve got a talking curse! Do we get to shut it up?”

“This is serious, Satoru,” Suguru chided gently, though a faint, dry smile touched his own lips. “If this compulsion spreads through the survivors, or through the first responders…”

“It could trigger a chain reaction,” Yaga nodded. “The scene is still active. Local authorities are treating it as a tragic accident and a case of sudden, severe psychosis. They are unaware of the metaphysical contamination risk. I need you two to go. Assess, contain, and exorcise. Priority one is to isolate the survivors and determine if the compulsion has taken root. Use a Curtain to quarantine the area from non-sorcerer interference.”

Satoru pushed off the wall, stretching his arms overhead. “A road trip! Sweet. Do we get a company car?”

“You’ll take a school vehicle,” Yaga said, deadpan. “Geto. You have experience with nuanced cursed energy analysis. I want you to lead the assessment. Gojo, you’re on containment and brute-force exorcism if needed. Do not engage with the story yourselves. Do not let anyone recite it to you. Am I clear?”

Suguru gave a slight, formal bow of his head. “Perfectly clear, Principal.”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t listen to the scary story,” Satoru said, waving a hand. He slung an arm around Suguru’s shoulders. “Come on, Suguru. Let’s go be heroes. Maybe we’ll get to ride in an ambulance.”

Suguru allowed himself to be steered toward the door, though his mind was already racing ahead, parsing the implications of a curse that spread through words. As they stepped out into the hallway, the bright afternoon sun of the campus grounds before them, he glanced at his best friend.

“A memetic curse,” Suguru mused aloud, his tone contemplative. “It’s almost elegant in its cruelty. It preys on the most human of impulses—to share a story.”

Satoru adjusted his sunglasses, his playful demeanor settling into something more focused, a switch only Suguru could really see. “Elegant, sure. But it’s still just a curse. We’ll crush it. After we deal with the poor saps who heard it.” He looked at Suguru, a smirk playing on his lips. “Bet you twenty bucks one of them is cute.”

Suguru sighed, a long-suffering sound that was mostly fond. “Your priorities are, as ever, a marvel to behold.”

The scene on the Tomei Expressway was a controlled chaos of flashing lights, the low growl of idling engines, and the tense, clipped radio chatter of emergency personnel. The mangled bus, half-crushed against the twisted guardrail, was a stark monument to the violence. Police tape cordoned off a wide area, and the air carried the sharp, sterile scent of antiseptic wipes mixed with the coppery tang of blood that hadn't yet been washed away by the rain.

Suguru stepped out of the black sedan, his dark eyes immediately scanning the perimeter. He took in the positions of the police, the clustered ambulances, the gurneys with their solemn, sheet-covered burdens. His expression was calm, analytical, but a deep frown creased his brow as he felt it—the residual cursed energy. It wasn't a single, dense locus, but a sickly, clinging miasma that seemed to hang in the air itself, whispering just below the threshold of hearing.

"Ugh," Satoru said beside him, wrinkling his nose. He hadn't even bothered to push his sunglasses down. "Tastes like cheap horror movie and regret. You getting this, Suguru? It's... sticky."

"It's pervasive," Suguru confirmed, his voice low. He watched as a paramedic helped a woman with auburn hair and glasses over the guardrail. She was dusted with dirt and small cuts, but seemed remarkably intact given the circumstances. One of the survivors. His gaze lingered on her for a moment, assessing. No overt signs of possession, but the miasma was thickest around the triage area where the other survivors were being treated. "The narrative vector is active. It's clinging to them."

"Then let's get this party started," Satoru said, cracking his knuckles. "Curtain time?"

"Curtain time," Suguru agreed. He raised a hand, his fingers moving in a subtle, practiced pattern. Cursed energy, dark and fluid, began to pool at his fingertips. "Emerge from the darkness, blacker than darkness. Purify that which is impure."

The sirens were still there, the radios still crackled, but the sounds seemed muffled, distant, as if heard through thick glass. The sky above the crash site had taken on a strange, bruised hue—a deep, twilight purple that bled into the edges of the normal afternoon blue, contained within a perfect, shimmering dome that arched high overhead. It was beautiful and deeply wrong.

Satoru and Suguru were now moving with a purpose that set them apart from the scrambling emergency personnel. Satoru was already walking toward the cluster of ambulances, his hands in his pockets, his posture deceptively casual. He seemed to be talking to a police officer, who was nodding along, then gesturing for his colleagues to start moving back, away from the survivors.

Suguru was closer. He had finished whatever intricate hand gesture he’d been making, and now his calm, sharp brown eyes were scanning the area. They landed on on the paramedic, “Excuse me,” he said, his voice a deep, calm baritone that cut through the muffled chaos. “My colleague and I are with Special Disaster Response. We’ll be taking over care and containment for the survivors. Please direct your team to begin evacuating the area outside the perimeter.”

The paramedic blinked, confused. “Special Disaster…? I haven’t been briefed on—”

“The briefing is happening now,” the young man said, his tone leaving no room for argument. The paramedic seemed to understand, as his confusion shifted to wary acceptance. “The incident involves a… contagious biohazard risk. Standard quarantine protocol. Your safety is paramount. Please, move your team back beyond the yellow tape.”

As the paramedic hurried off, radio in hand, Suguru turned his full attention towards the ambulances. Where three survivors were. Yuna, a woman yet to be named and {{user}}.