Soon enough, autumn turned to winter and winter turned to spring.
As the months passed and March approached, it was nearing your final year exams, and you began to study a lot more so you had to cut down on your shifts at the coffee shop and training with Gojo. You tended to study late at the library, and sometimes Nanami would pick you up to drive you somewhere new for dinner.
Today, you felt uneasy for some reason. As you worked through your studies, you chalked it up to stress. However, this wasn't the typical exam season stress. This felt slightly different. The uneasiness increased every page turn of your textbook, every sigh you breathed out. You looked up from your desk, and out the window in front of you to watch the rain fall outside. Normally, rain soothed you while you were studying, but today it didn't seem to be working. It felt like you were on edge, and you thought maybe you were catching a cold. You thought it was unseasonal for early March, but so was the downpour outside, so perhaps it was throwing off your immune season.
Lost in contemplation, you were startled when you heard a loud bang behind you. You jumped out of your seat and whirled around, only to see that a textbook had fallen off of the library shelf behind you. Then you felt a sharp pinch in your back, making you wince. You must have turned around too fast.
"I must really be getting sick", You whispered to yourself. You began to get a headache, and decided to pack up for the day since it was already almost dinnertime. You threw your things into your bag and slung it over your shoulder, when you realized that you forgot an umbrella. It was sunny just that morning, so of course you thought you wouldn't need one.
When you got to the street, you decided to power walk to the train station to get out of the rain as fast as possible. As you walked the rain soaked your hair and poured down your back. You were thankful for the plastic file folders that were keeping your notes intact. After a couple of minutes, the headache got worse. You were just looking forward to getting home so you could sleep it off. You trudged on, trying to ignore the fact that you were probably getting a really bad cold.
Nanami had finished work for the day quite late, after having to do overtime on a mission. He was annoyed that the day was longer than usual, and opened his umbrella up as he walked to a local restaurant to get some dinner. Down the road he spotted you, trudging onwards with no umbrella.
Surprised, he called out to you, but you didn't seem to hear him. He decided to pick up the pace to get closer to you, and you looked up and spotted him.
"Oh, hi Nanami-kun..." You smiled weakly, then your knees buckled as a sudden wave of dizziness hit you, and you dropped your bag as you slumped forwards.
Nanami instantly dropped his umbrella and lunged forwards to catch you by your shoulders, leaning down and worriedly asking if you are alright. Your head lulled downwards instead of acknowledging him, and that was when he noticed that something was wrong with your cursed energy.
He called out your name in a sharp and urgent tone, and got no response. He called it out a second time, lifting your head gently to see if you were still conscious. You looked up at him, the rain making his neatly parted hair fall forwards into his eyes, raindrops splattered on his sunglasses and streaming down his defined cheekbones and dripping off his jawline. You could slightly see through his sunglasses as his eyes scanned across your face, looking for a sign that you were okay.
"I think I'm catching a cold..." Your eyes rolled back as you lost consciousness. As Nanami held onto your body, he knew what was wrong and jumped into action. He hugged your torso against his with one arm as he pulled his phone out of his pocket, and called Gojo.
"What is the keycode to your apartment." He asked tersely.
"Oh Nanami-kun, I didn't know you wanted to go so fast," Gojo responded jokingly, not knowing that Nanami's tone was stern because something bad had happened.
"It's urgent. Y/N has been cursed." Gojo instantly responded with his door code. Nanami told him to bring Ieri as soon as possible, and hung up.
Nanami picked you up, and was thankful the streets were so empty that no one noticed him carrying a young unconscious girl. He knew that Gojo's apartment was nearby, and that taking you to a hospital would not help you. As he ran to the apartment, he could feel cursed energy radiating off of your back. He wondered how long you had this curse, and how you could have survived it.
Arriving into the apartment, he didn't bother to take off his shoes or dry off as he rushed you into the bedroom and laid you down on the bed. He had no respect for Gojo's personal space and belongings, knowing that he was getting his neatly made bed dirty. He checked your heart rate and breathing, worried that your heartbeat was so slow and your breathing was shallow and labored.
He rolled you over, reaching to lift the back of your shirt up, but hesitated. He suddenly felt awkward that he was undressing you, but shook it off quickly when he reassured himself that it was in order to help you.
Lifting up your shirt, he discovered that your back was covered in deep blue veins, radiating outwards from a single point in the center of your spine. He paused, staring at the monstrosity on your back. As each second went by, the veins grew a little. It was progressing fast.
This is worse than what Nanami feared would happen to you. He feared you would lose friends in battle, or be injured, but this curse was quickly killing you. Nanami's heart twisted with grief, terrified that your life as a sorcerer was finally killing you.
It was only minutes before Gojo slammed open his front door, with a grumpy Ieri in tow. "How is she?" He asked. Ieri's hair was messed up and she appeared befuddled, and Nanami immediately knew that Gojo had dragged her the entire way there with his superhuman speed.
All Nanami could respond with was "not good." He had never seen a curse progress this fast, the web of veins entangling to make a horrendous purple-blue mass.
Ieri's expression changed as soon as she saw your state. She rushed forwards, hovering her hand over the mass. "It's a grade 3 cursed spirit. I can stop its growth but I don't know if I can remove it." She explained, immediately getting to work. She took a pair of scissors out of her pocket and cut your top completely off, resting her hands on your bare cursed skin. Nanami felt the blood rush to his head and left the room, asking Gojo to come with him.
While waiting for Ieri to finish, Gojo offered Nanami some fresh clothes and a drink, but not before telling Nanami that he looked terrible. Nanami knew he was a mess currently, which was so uncharacteristic of him. He gladly accepted Gojo's offer, needing the comfort of warm clothes and alcohol. Nanami pulled off his wet jacket, revealing his soaked dress shirt that was glued to his skin. Despite the grave situation, Gojo's face pulled into a smirk at the sight of a drenched Nanami as he tossed a towel to him.
The two sat in relative silence in Gojo's living room until Ieri stepped out, saying she had done what she could at the moment, and you had woken up once the curse had stopped progressing.
She let the two back into the room and sat you up on some pillows, explaining the situation to you. She told you that you were incredibly unlucky, that this was the exact type of curse that you were particularly weak to. You innately absorbed the cursed energy that it emitted, quickly tainting the energy within your body and allowing it to grow unhindered. You smiled weakly at the irony of your misfortune, your raspy breathing still slow and heavy. Gojo steeled his expression as he heard this, a revelation coming together in his mind.
"We can't rule out that this was a targeted attack." Gojo said out loud. Nanami was bewildered.
"How do you know?" Nanami asked uneasily.
"Her cursed energy mostly isn't her own. She absorbs it through the things she touches, which means she has absorbed some from me, and someone must have detected that." Gojo explained in a straightforward, but grave manner. "The people who want me dead can't touch me, but they can touch her. If they were watching her, they would know exactly which type of curse to use in order to figure out what she was capable of."
Ieri spoke up, shocked. "I've never seen such a blatant attack-"
"We let this happen to her." Nanami's voice was stern and grave as he cut her off. You winced, not from pain but from heartache.
"Guys," You rasped, struggling to speak. "It was probably a coincidence, I was at a really old library." You tried to cheer them up by suggesting that the abundance of curses at your university library were to blame, but the state of your breathing didn't help. You coughed, and Ieri lifted you up so you could sit forwards and get a deeper breath.
"I'm going to the school to pick up some things that will help her exorcize this." Ieri explained. "She needs to do this herself, otherwise we risk harming her."
You gave a thumbs up as she left the room quickly. Gojo crossed his arms, and you could feel him expand his range of detection to more than the entire city block, although through this he remained completely stoic as he searched for any threats.
Nanami stepped up to your side. He looked at your hand, but was too afraid to hold it. You noticed this, and was about to reach out for his, when metallic bile rose in your throat and you coughed, dark viscous blood coming out of your mouth. You lifted your hand to catch it, your head lulling forwards once again as Nanami caught you. Gojo quickly got a towel for you, rubbing your shoulder to comfort you as you wiped the disturbing and unnatural blood onto the previously white towel.
Once Ieri came back, she shooed the boys out of the room as she removed your shirt to wrap your entire torso with strangely marked cloth. She explained that it was bindings that would protect your body during the exorcism. You felt kinda awkward when you looked down and saw your torso wrapped up like a cheesy horror movie mummy, but once Ieri put your cut up top back over you and invited Gojo and Nanami back in, you became nervous.
"I have an idea." Ieri spoke up. "I saw this energy ring at the school, and realized that it conducts cursed energy quite well." She turned to you and held out what looked like a stone costume necklace, who looked back at her with a puzzled expression.
"So," She spoke to you, "if you hold onto it while the three of us channel our cursed energy into it, we may be able to overwhelm the curse easily."
Your expression changed to a determined one as you nodded your head. The four of you grabbed onto the ring at once, and you concentrated on the curse attached to your back, allowing your innate skill to freely absorb all of the cursed energy that flowed through the ring.
Immediately, searing pain radiated from that single point in the middle of your spine. You gritted your teeth, trying not to let the pain overwhelm you as you concentrated as much cursed energy as you could into your back.
It felt almost like your spine would tear out of your body when suddenly all of the pain vanished, and you felt the bindings over your torso disintegrate. Letting out a deep breath, Ieri let go of the ring to look at your back.
"It's gone." Ieri spoke, the most cheerful that you had ever seen her be. You smiled in relief, tears welling up in your eyes as she continued. "You're going to be pretty exhausted for a bit. I suggest you stay here for the night, if that is okay with Gojo-san."
"Yeah, I can sleep on the couch." Gojo said. "I'm just happy to have my precious student alive and well." He grinned.
The three of them left the room to let you rest, and you quickly fell into what felt like the deepest sleep of your life.
~~~
Long one, you're welcome! Things have started getting ~spicy~ with your powers as a sorcerer! Also, I've finally introduced ring-chan! Despite the very mundane appearance, this ring is quite important. It is one-of-a-kind, and thought to be over 1000 years old. Sorcerers nowadays don't know what it's used for other than conducting cursed energy, which you can do within your own body yourself, so they think it's pretty useless and that's why it's not kept under strict surveillance at the school.
The wrappings on the other hand, are incredibly difficult to produce. Shoko just sacrificed a 75-year-old seal to protect your body from burning up while exorcising the curse. Of course, she wouldn't tell you about this. And of course, she would make up a fake reason for it suddenly being turned into normal medical bandages inside its storage box at the school :D