Sanguine Serenity 2

It was said that wherever the Yachiru walked, money and blood flowed in equal quantities… That was not a lie. Not in the slightest. Like with all things, it started with a rumor. Rumors of a girl, a child that killed in the same breath as she healed. An actual child. Anyone would’ve been inclined to ignore them if the news had perhaps come a decade or two ago. But after Gojo Satoru, rumors had grown to bear more weight, and Mei Mei was always listening for rumors.

That was how she’d kept herself and Ui Ui alive this long. Sifting through the probable and the unlikely, calculating risk and also weighing profit, staying two steps ahead of anyone who might pull her into their mess if it wasn’t worth it, and even if it was worth it, it didn’t matter if she didn’t live to enjoy it.

Mei Mei was no Gojo Satoru. She was not cursed and burdened with the title of the strongest. She didn’t have the compulsive need to play hero and save everyone. Mei Mei was a ridiculously simple person. She was a businesswoman.

A few years ago, when a panicked client reached out in the dead of night, Mei Mei had barely stirred. The man’s insistent calls and breathless chatter over the phone had already roused a baby Ui Ui, who peeked sleepily from the blankets, but Mei Mei kept her smile easy and her voice syrup-smooth.

“Good evening,” she greeted, feigning warmth with disgusting ease. “How can I help you?”

She listened, at first only half-interested. He sounded like an easy mark. Another rich man in trouble, one that had finally bitten more than he should, she had assumed. Another easy payout. The client was no sorcerer, no cursed ties. Just a politician. A very nervous one that had somehow offended someone he believed would be a threat to his life, and somehow had gained the connections to contact her.

By all accounts, it should have been a simple job. She was already calculating the fee in her mind when the man stumbled over a single word in his rushed ramblings, a single word that froze her cold.

“Yachiru.”

The name landed like a pin drop in a silent room, and the caller, realizing his mistake, fell quiet immediately. Mei Mei’s smile held steady, but behind it, her mind raced. She gave a soft, nonchalant hum, pretending to consider his request as she rapidly ran the calculations.

Yachiru.

A child, supposedly. Somewhere between ten and fourteen, if the rumors were right. An exiled Kamo, her sources whispered, yet one that had left on her own accord, and knowing how the clans treated their female progeny like cattle to be traded, she had to have created a blood-stained path out if she had wanted to leave. A child the world had held its breath for at her birth. A child spoken of in the same breath as a young Gojo Satoru.

Mei Mei asked herself a simple, brutal question: Could she beat an early teenage Gojo Satoru?

Her thoughts had flicked to the memory of Gojo at that age. She had not known him personally then, but she had seen the boy-child from afar. Monstrous talent, blinding arrogance, and the raw and untouchable power that came with his presence and a single blue-eyed gaze from him.

The answer was clear. So was her decision.

“Ah,” she said sweetly, “did you say the job starts immediately? I’m so sorry, but I’ll have to turn it down. I’m caring for my little brother right now, he’s barely more than a babe, you see, and I won’t be able to hand him off for a mission with such vague parameters and tight timing. Please forgive me.”

“I’ll increase your commission,” the man rushed out, desperation climbing in his voice. “An extra hundred thousand dollars for every day, up to a week, all expenses pa—”

Mei Mei hung up. The phone slamming into the receiver before her greed could make her reconsider.

She had known even back then in the depth of her heart that it had not been worth it. Perhaps if it was a year or two earlier, she might’ve allowed her greed to win, but that was before Ui Ui. Before her useless bum of a mother gave birth to her little brother and dumped him on her lap before running away at the fear of the expense it would take to raise two children.

Her excuses had more truth this time than they usually did whenever she rejected jobs. A baby’s cry drew her attention, and she discarded the somber thoughts from her head as she returned to her bed and the little pale-haired baby in it that stretched his hands toward her.

“Who’s my little baby, you are, you are.” She whispered to him, as she brought a finger in range of him and watched him grab it with a cry of victory, followed shortly by giggles. She watched him with a maternal smile on her lips, the dreary conversation already put behind her and forgotten. After all, she needed to be alive to spend money.

She had thought that would be the last of it, hoped for it even, but fate had another thing in store.

December 11th 2017

It was not often that Mei Mei was surprised.

She prided herself on reading people, analyzing them, predicting them. She watched them the way she watched the stock markets, or the rising novelty of crypto: with cold detachment, assessing risks and rewards, always searching for the sweet spot to profit.

If you had asked her to bet on who among the jujutsu world’s stars would eventually crack and go rogue, she wouldn’t have hesitated. Gojo Satoru. She would have put money on him without blinking.

The signs were there. A barely hidden lack of empathy in general, unless it was cultivated. Impulsive usage of overwhelming power most of the time. It wasn’t hard to imagine it happen: Gojo realizing the true depth of his power, growing weary of the paper-thin shackles the higher-ups called authority, and finally snapping. Shredding the jujutsu establishment in what people might politely describe as a purge, though she imagined it would look more like turning old scrolls to confetti.

She had even been prepared for it.

In that scenario, she and Ui Ui would already be on the first flight out, maybe to Belize or some quiet corner of the world where her investments could cushion them from the fallout. In her meticulous planning, she had even created a contingency plan that accounted for even darker outcomes.

If, somehow, the coup happened quietly and she got the news too late, she wasn’t above rolling over. She would offer her services, at a steep discount, maybe even for peanuts. But not free. Never free.

Not even if her life was on the line. Her predominant sin was greed, but there was enough space for pride as well, as long as it reinforced her greed.

So it came as a monumental shock when she heard the news that it was the least likely person she expected to break that did. The Suguru Geto that she knew held human life on a platform, more than the lackadaisical and borderline sociopath that was Gojo Satoru.

Geto had truly cared. About the ills, about people, about the place of sorcerers in protecting regular and mundane humanity from curses, often without any personal gain. Geto Suguru had been a step away from going full-blown ascetic judging by his pierced ear and preferred mode of dressing. She had met them on more than one occasion discussing the value of human life, and Geto had always been the one to fight and argue for the sake of mundane humanity.

So it was a whiplash to hear about his sudden change in demeanor and stance. The Night Parade of a Hundred Demons. Mei Mei was not sure about how Geto planned to accomplish his overarching goal of ridding the world of humans, but it was a step forward. A first step that brought war between the two factions: sorcerers and rogue curse users. After that, and if Geto Suguru won, it would mean the end of an age as they knew it.

The date of the Night Parade’s opening was already given. It was little more than a week away, and it grew closer. Her advance payment for her role in it was already paid into her account. As one of the few first-grade sorcerers with the capability of killing special-grade curses on the weaker end of that spectrum, she had charged an outrageous fee, one that had not been enough to make Satoru even blink.

Yet if there was one thing that defined Mei Mei, it was greed, overwhelming, insatiable greed.

Her existential fear, the gnawing dread of poverty, spurred her more fiercely than any curse or opponent ever could. That was why, even with a bank account fatter than the purses of some mid-level corrupt politicians, she still accepted another job, mere weeks away from the coming Night Parade of a Hundred Demons. It was easy work. Nostalgic and cliché work, even. The exorcism of a haunted house.

However, beyond the tug of her ever-hungry greed, she’d also taken the job as a way to gently ease Ui Ui into the brutal world of curses and sorcerers.

Her little brother walked at her side, small hands tightly gripping the massive, gleaming axe that was her signature weapon.

He wore a white top, black shorts, and neat suspenders; his light hair was parted carefully to one side, still soft and fine despite the short cut. His wide eyes darted anxiously over the surroundings, watching every shadow with tense worry.

Mei Mei gave a low chuckle and reached over to ruffle his hair, feeling the way he instinctively leaned into her touch.

She leaned down, her voice a warm whisper. “Don’t worry about anything, Ui Ui. I’ll be right beside you the whole time.” That was all it took. She watched his shoulders drop, his tension ebbing as he offered her a small, trusting smile. Together, they pushed open the creaking doors of the abandoned building.

Inside, the smell was the first thing that hit them.

Blood.

Thick, cloying, metallic, and sharp, it hung in the air like a rancid fog. The floor was stained and completely slick with it, pooling in places where the uneven wood dipped, streaking the walls where bodies had been dragged or hurled. The majority of the bodies she could see were human.

Mei Mei crouched beside one, inspecting the remains. They had been eviscerated and dismembered, yet all the injuries were razor-thin and sharp... Surgical. She tensed. There weren’t many in Japan who fought like that.

"Mei Mei?" her little brother called out from behind her, and she turned and gave him a comforting smile before refocusing on the bodies. Mixed among them were the slowly fading husks of curses, grotesque shapes with limbs like twisted blades or eyeless faces, their corrupted blood shining purple as it seeped into the floorboards. Someone had been here before her, accomplished her mission for her.

She might've mistaken it for the job of the dead people she saw scattered around, but the injuries put a halt to that thought. The curses and the humans died the exact same way, to the exact same kind of blows. Whoever accomplished her mission as well as killed the people and the curses was a third party. Judging by the curse energy she could feel further in, they were still present.

"Come, Ui Ui, we'll have to go a bit further."

Ui Ui clutched the axe tighter, his breathing shallow as they stepped carefully over the carnage. Mei Mei remained unfazed, her sharp eyes roving and calculating. This was supposed to be a regular haunted house. She had expected maybe a curse or two. Where did all these people come from?

Each room they passed told the same story. This had been a massacre. Not even a battle, the dead people had not even had the chance to struggle back. It had been a slaughter. Effortless, precise, and thorough. That was how overwhelmingly out matched they had been.

Finally, they reached the parlor. In there they saw a sea of tranquility. A table holding a steaming pot of tea and cups. Two chairs facing each other.

There, seated calmly amidst the wreckage, was a man Mei Mei knew by reputation and by sight. No wonder the curse energy she had sensed had felt familiar. Suguru Geto turned and looked at her with a faint, almost bored smile playing at his lips. His long black hair, tied back in a loose knot. His dark robes were spotless, as if the chaos of the building had not touched him in the slightest.

But it was the unfamiliar woman opposite him that made Mei Mei’s stomach tighten. She sat elegantly, her eyes closed as she sipped tea from a delicate porcelain cup. Her long, black hair fell like a curtain over her shoulders, framing a face that was as serene as it was unreadable. Her features were narrow, and aristocratic. Her skin was pale and her lips were blood red.

She wore a black kimono, with her waist wrapped with a white and black cloth, and over all of that was a white hakama the edges stained dark red where they touched the ground and blood had seeped in.

At her side, resting casually against the arm of her chair, was a long, slightly curved sword, its blade still wet, still dripping. She had found the source of the slaughter.

The woman was every inch a portrait of calm, her posture graceful, her expression soft, and yet, the blood that stained her hands, her clothes, the very floor beneath her, told another story entirely. Mei Mei didn't need to wrack her brain to figure out who the woman was despite having never seen an official picture. Unohana Kamo. The child prodigy that had also been known as Yachiru. A woman that killed with one hand an healed with the other.

Mei Mei smiled slowly, fingers flexing ever so slightly at her sides. She had not anticipated this. Not tonight.

“Ah,” she murmured under her breath, just loud enough for Ui Ui to hear. “Stay close, little one.” Ui Ui nodded, stepping half behind her, eyes wide.

Across the room, Yachiru’s gaze finally lifted, pitiless and hollow black eyes stared back at her and for a heartbeat, Mei Mei felt the weight of cursed energy, more cursed energy than she had sensed in all her life. A disgusting amount of monstrous cursed energy that had no place in the body of someone so young, so seemingly delicate.

Then those eyes closed and for a second Mei Mei assumed she had imagined it, till she looked to where Geto sat, and she saw the faintly visible tremor his hand underwent as they picked up a cup of tea as he sipped it, and Mei Mei found herself wondering what the hell she had stepped into.

A/N: I’ve burned through my backlog for CE already, and after falling sick this past week, I haven’t had much time to rebuild it. Rather than rushing and stumbling through the next chapter, I decided to take a step back and spend a fraction of the time polishing this draft instead. Apologies.

Now, For Sanguine Serenity I’m experimenting with something a reader suggested a while ago: using only POVs from other characters. It should be interesting if nothing else.