Sayaka, Sayaka Kurosawa. A young girl of 15 years old from a poor family.

Married off to the Kurosawa household, one of a fairly financially stable merchant house. Their conditions were visible in their nicely decorated and colourful furniture and walls.

Her beauty helped her a lot when it came to her getting into a wealthy household. She looked especially beautiful in her wedding dress. Her wedding seemed quite grand as well.

The situation wasn’t very unusual. Beauty was a very much needed factor in the Edo period. Otome sighed, "Seriously..."

Kusuriuri side eyed her, "That reaction doesn’t suit you, Wakka."
Otome side eyed him back, "Why not?" her lips pressing into a thin line as she raised an eyebrow, indicating she was waiting for an answer.

Kusuriuri chose not to answer and simply looked ahead.

Her husband, Kokkuri, who was 20 years old, was extremely kind to her, the next scene showed such. He was helping her in getting to know the people, introducing her to everybody.

However, her household was not kind to her at all. She was berated and insulted by the in-laws all the time, the scene showed. It was clear due to her looking down with a sorrowful expression and a woman scoulding her with an angry expression pointing here and there, while everyone else just kept smiling wickedly seeing her get scolded, indicating they enjoyed berating her.

And it didn’t helo that Kokkuri's parents were dead, so the elderly relatives were his aunts and uncles along with their heirs.

The next scene showed her standing by the door as her husband left the house early in the morning.

"She is smiling here. It seems like she liks her husband." Otome observed out.
"But he returns late." Kusuriuri added as the next scene showed him returning late at night.

"He is a merchant so that's understandable." She shrugged.

Since her husband used to work outside being a merchant, and return late at home, he didn’t know about such occurrences.

"She could have just told him." Otome made a dead pan expression.
"It's not that easy to tell your husband something like this. Especially someone as poor as hers wouldn’t dare to. Poor families usually have their daughters basically sold off to their rich in-law household, and thus the in-laws have a lot more control than you might suspect. Since you live in an entirely different spectrum, you might struggle to understand their struggles."

Otome sighed, closing her eyes and slightly putting down her chin as she did so, "You are right. I really don’t understand the hesitation."
"And yet you can predict their next moves." Kusuriuri smiled slightly.

"Just because I can, doesn’t mean I always understand the emotional motive behind it. I would never treat myself badly, you see?" She shrugged softly.
"Neither would I." Kusuriuri agreed.

[Lol.....don't jinx it bro.]

It seemed that Sayaka didn’t like being treated badly as well, as the rage she felt everyday pent up horribly behind heart.

The very gloomy atmosphere of the scenario of the room she stayed in and her angry expression were very powerful proofs of that.

And just like that, after quite some undefined time, one day, she finally got the courage to speak to her husband about it.

It was a rare case scenario where the husband was actually horrified at how poorly they treated her in his absence.

"Wow, he actually cares for her too." Otome grinned refreshingly.

The next scene showed Kokkuri in arguments with the household members. As Kokkuri confronted his family, they got into a huge quarrel, getting very heated on it, as a vase and a few show pieces were broken by them. Things ended with Kokkuri leaving the house with Sayaka taking her hand, taking the business along with him, as he was the owner of it at that moment.

".....Wow." Kusuriuri didn’t think they would end up loving each othee to this point.
"Love after marriage it is then." Otome smirked, "Although it’s illegal."
"How so?" Kusuriuri raised an eyebrow at her.

"In our time-line, we have a law of that, and according to that law, this marriage is not legal." She explained as vaguely as she could.

"Is that so? Sounds interesting."

The next scene showed Sayaka and Kokkuri in their new home. Happy. Content with their lives, smiling at each other in a loving gaze. On the other hand, with them being separate from their family, the Kurosawa household gradually started getting low on the economy, as Kokkuri only gave them a small portion of the earned money from the business sales. The empty money boxes were a striking evidence of that.

The family eventually got extremely fed up with it, but for the family to inherit the business again, they need to kill Kokkuri, his wife and any wards or children they had.

Which is exactly what they did.

"A knife? They really are going to go for it?" Otome scrunched up her eyebrows.
"I suppose they do." Kusuriuri closed his eyes as he said so.

The knife was not used on Sayaka though.

Sayaka died with multiple hands choking her violently, developing the current croaking sound she emitted currently.

"So, are they gonna stab Kokkuri then?" Otome speculated as she put a hand on her chin.

Her husband was killed in his sleep, with the knife.

"Well...you ended up being right." Kusuriuri side eyed her.

"She became a vengeful Onryo for this eh?" Otome reasoned. A small hint of sadness crept into her smile.

The rage that Sayaka felt in her early marriage life carried with this kill, made the birth of a curse.

"Ju-on..." that name slipped out her lips absent mindedly.

Kusuriuri heard it, but chose not to say anything about it.

The scene not too long after showed a girl's body covered in the pool of her blood. In the dead of the night. The family relatives had already left after killing them.

"...This always gives me the ick. Why do people leave bodies after killing? Anyone can find out about it." Otome made a face.

Her father seemed to have gotten used to his daughter's weird talks about corpses as he only said one sentence, "Not everyone is as cautious as you, Wakka, and neither is everyone as witty as you to figure out the culprit."

"I know that very well." she clicked her tongue. "Even so, it still gives me the ick." She seemed displeased.

Sayaka's dead pupils, seemed to start moving again. Long black hair emerged from the walls.

The next scene was blood. And afterwards, the dismembered body parts of the people of Kurosawa household.

An entire pile of limbs, stacked on top of each other in a neat little fashion.

Sayaka didn’t spare anyone.

The current house they were in, was the same Kurosawa household.

"The truth has been found." Kusuriuri nodded.

Clink!

The vision ended abruptly.

Kusuriuri's eyes widened, "What the-"

Otome suddenly screamed, "Look out!" her face contorted in fear and worry as she pulled him out of the Onryo's coming grasp. Kusuriuri stepped away on his own too.

"Be care-." He didn’t have the time to finish his sentence before they split apart.

The Onryo was behind Otome looking menacingly, its long black hair entangled in her neck.

Kusuriuri's heartbeat sparked dangerously as he warned her, "Behind you!"

The ghostly claws wrapped tightly around her, Otome gasped, "Fuck!"

Kusuriuri used ten or so ofuda talismans to get her away. But they weren’t enough. They burned away, but Sayaka's hands were still on Otome's neck, strangling her effectively.

"What the fuck???" He didn’t think the curse was so powerful.

"Ah!" Kusuriuri visibly flinched hearing the raw scream out of her voice, and the snapping of her right shoulder.

"Wakka!" Kusuriuri held out his hand, to draw out the entity from her.

Kusuriuri found himself in a situation of a double deja vu.

The time when he faced the Bakeneko, and the time he faced the Nogitsune.

"She wants others to suffer just like she did." Kusuriuri's fangs sharply bit teeth, hard enough to draw blood.

Clink!

All the three items were now in place. And yet, he couldn’t draw his sword.

His mouth was quickly covered by several ghostly hands. These were the vengeful souls of the people who were killed by Sayaka. They were now extensions of the curse alongside Sayaka.

They were the ones making the noise in the upstairs when they had just arrived at the house.

It was only a few seconds as Kusuriuri felt his mouth be closed off, but his vision was still intact, and all he was Otome's body getting contorted with her bones being broken one by one, as she screamed out in pain, it made a cut deeper than any pain he had ever felt.

The ofuda talismans in his clothes were released one by one.

"Ahhh!" the ghosts scrambled away, the bind on his face disappearing.

"Let her go!" Kusuriuri commanded Sayaka with a harsh voice as he stretched out his hand, this time, he sent hundreds of talismans, all at once.

Kusuriuri was shocked to see that they only managed to let her get away to a brief distance with a grunt.

Otome's limp body lay down on the ground with a loud thud.

Kusuriuri didn’t waste this opportunity, "With the shape, truth, and regret gathered around, my sword shall now be unsheathed!" his voice sounded angrier than usual to himself.

The sword, unexpectedly, sounded even angrier than him.

"UNSHEATHE!" the rasped and angry voice echoed boundlessly through the house even through the chaos.

Kusuriuri's long white hair flew freely, as his sword was unsheathed.

To his utter horror, he realised that Otome's soul was weak enough to not be able to enter the plains of the Ayakashi, she was on the brink of death and if this Mononoke is not killed now, she will die as the damage can only be repaired by the purple earrings when the Mononoke is dead.

One slash.

Kusuriuri could see Sayaka in visible pain. His heart didn’t satisfy.

Two slashes.

His left hand held the sword invertedly as he made a deep slash of the entire Mononoke.

Three slashes.

Sayaka lay on the ground in pain, her black hair all around, her eyes pitch black. Kusuriuri stepped towards her, not minding the boundless voices of her victims that were extensions of the curse.

"How dare you hurt my child?" His voice was even more chilling than Sayaka's croaking.

She looked at him with eyes that showed fear, such was the effect of his question.

Kusuriuri's red eyes appeared a deep maroon due to his anger.

Those eyes, they were truly alike Otome at this moment.

"I say 'forgive me' to many Mononokes, especially ones as wronged as you in their living times. But you...you have stripped yourself off of that right."

As he said so, he gave a final slash to the Onryo, hearing it disappear with a loud scream.

His sight of scenes changed, and he quickly rushed to the now limply fallen body.

"Come on... come on, come on...wake up. Wake up, child!" Kusuriuri's voice was laced with the layers and layers of panic felt from before till now. Only that he was masking it all along for the sake of cutting the actual root of the problem.

The purple earrings were already doing their job.

His only fear was that he was too late.

Too late. Those words were like nightmares clawing at him right now. Even thinking about it made his hands shake as he held on to whatever was left of her.

"Gods, please, please. Please. Please..."

There was always a first time for everything. This was his first time in such a horrible panic. Otome didn’t wake up yet, her pulse was weak and feeble. Her body was healing, and yet her pulse was still weaker than it should be.

"Wakka...don't leave...stay with me, stay with me, you stay with me..."

It was likely that Sayaka had almost snapped her neck to a fatal point. The purple earrings were taking their time.

Kusuriuri's hands were shaking violently by the seconds passing. He could feel the sweat in his palms and the acceleration of his heart in his chest. He was scared of what he would do knowing he let her die. That he let this little child who trusted him, die.

He would rather carve out his own heart and place it on her chest, so she could live again. He would rather meet death than let her meet harm.

She wasn’t his blood, and yet, he could clearly understand the feeling of every parent seeing their child on the brink of death.

Shino, who wanted to do everything to protect her son.

Mizue, who screamed and cried for her daughter when she died.

The countless parents he had come across while exorcizing Mononokes, who had lost their kids.

He could understand them all now.

Otome opened her eyes to a distraught Kusuriuri, as she immediately felt the shake of his hand that was tightly clasping hers, the entire time, she assumed.

She immediately tried to sit up, but her bones had just healed, she ended up spraining her joints, "Ah!"

"Wakka!" He noticed her eyes opening and immediately went to aid her. He didn’t realise his eyes were showing all the dread he was feeling.

At least, to Otome, it was all the more clear just how afraid he was of her dying.

"I am sorry...I worried you..." Her feeble voice attempted to express her hurt, but she couldn’t convey it too well, coughing out.
"Don’t speak..." he lifted her up slightly to help her sit, "How do you feel?"

"Like shit." she spoke honestly, groaning, "I worried you. Of course I won't feel well." She looked down.

"Worrying me is the least of the troubles right now. Why are you always so afraid of worrying me? I thought we were over this Wakka..." The hurt was very palpable through his words.

"I can't help it. Besides, aren't you the same?" She smiled weakly. Some drops of cold sweat were rolling down her forehead due to the pain, still healing.

Kusuriuri hugged her softly, "Don’t you call me Oyaji? I have the right to worry about you. Don’t take that right away from me please." he rubbed soft soothing circles on her back, effectively making her feel even better.

His arms were always warm, and filled with care.

Otome couldn’t say anything anymore with her throat clogging up.

More than one year had passed, and she still couldn’t get used to the fact that she had someone to rely on.

It was so hard to grasp something so far, that seemed so vague. Something that she wanted so much but was hesitant to take when it seemed impossible to have.

"Don’t ever say sorry for worrying me. I worry because I care."

If someone told him last year that he would say something like this, he would have been amused, maybe even laugh a little. But now, this was reality.

The reality that he had come to care for her like this.

And he could never deny such truth.

Kusuriuri could finally feel at ease seeing her healing well, the peaceful expression on her face.

What he didn’t know was it wasn’t just the healing that made her so happy.