SilentReader: How about Curse-Breaker Harry, as
the job he chose. It could be interesting. He could also threaten
people with curses, and just like put a jelly-legs curse, tap-dancing
hex etc. Or something that makes you clumsy which would be really bad
for a ninja.
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The ninja looked up from his papers and
then with a wary look passed his papers on to another ninja.
Harry grew even more worried when this
same reaction repeated a few more times, with each ninja looking at
Harry with strange cautious looks.
The fifth ninja looked at the papers at
least five times before he spoke to Harry. But even he had a cautious
look. “On this paper, you’ve listed your job as a,” he
hesitated.
“A curse breaker,“ Harry
finished the sentence. He didn’t know what had pushed him to blurt
that title out as his job when getting his paperwork but he had to
deal with it now.
“You have religious training?” the
ninja asked in a hushed voice.
“Not really,” Harry said, surprised
that that portion of his paperwork worried the ninja.
“What exactly do you do?” the ninja
asked.
Harry shrugged. “Exactly what it
says, I break curses.”
The ninja’s lips pursed and his eyes
twitched at the word curse. “What kind?”
Harry would have liked to use Bill’s
actual job description as the basis of what he did, but that would be
a complicated facade to maintain even in the short term. “Curses on
people.”
“How do you know if a person has
one?”
“I don’t,” Harry said. “If
people think they‘re cursed, then I’ll work with that.”
“And how do you break them?” the
ninja asked.
Harry hesitated. But the ninja’s
reactions inspired a crazy idea. “I curse them.”
The ninja stared at him with wide eyes.
“What?”
“With a temporary non-deadly curse,”
Harry explained, suddenly in salvage mode, as he made up the details
of his job to sound less terrible. “Something that lasts for a
minimum of a day, at least. And when they have suffered through my
curse, I’ll remove my curse from them. And then they’re curse
free.”
“You can cast curses?”
“I can,” Harry admitted without
hesitation. That wasn’t a lie, even if he had a different
definition of a ‘curse’.
The ninja leaned back and away from
Harry.
“I won’t curse any uncursed
people,” Harry said. He didn’t want them to bar him from entry
into Konoha because he was too scary. “And I won’t curse people
on other people’s requests or demands.”
“You won’t?”
“If someone asks me to curse someone
other than themselves, they’re the ones that will end up cursed.”
“You’ll curse them?” the ninja
asked.
“I’m not the only source of curses
in this world.” Harry felt proud of that sufficiently ominous
statement. With their obvious aversion to curses, an unknown force
that cursed malicious intent might prevent people from asking him to
hurt others. “I’m probably the only one who doesn’t use any
permanent or life-threatening curses. I’m just interested in
breaking curses.”
The ninja frowned down at the paper for
a long while. Then he took a stamp and pressed it on Harry’s
documents. “If we get any complaints you have done otherwise, then
your stay in Konoha will be reconsidered.”
Given the ninjas’ demeanour about
curses, Harry didn’t expect any work.
But within a day of getting his
apartment, a middle-aged woman clad in gleaming grey outfit that
matched her eyes, sat in front of him, asking for help. As she
fiddled with the teacup he had given her, she took a deep breath and
said in a barely audible voice, “My mother-in-law cursed me.”
Harry stayed silent. He didn’t know
what to say.
The woman took his silence for support
and continued, “I married her son ten years ago and we have no
children.”
Harry felt the first inklings of just
what a bad idea his made-up job could be.
“I’ve been to the hospital and they
say I’m perfectly healthy but,” the woman looked up from her
teacup with a frown. “It’s been ten years, and that woman is smug
at her victory. She keeps telling my husband, he shouldn’t have
married me. If he had married someone else, then he’d have children
by now.”
“Your mother-in-law is still alive
then?” Harry asked.
“Unfortunately,” the woman groused.
Harry had definitely chosen the wrong
career to make up. Hoping to sidestep this entire situation, he said,
“I’m not sure if you heard about how I work. The only way I can
break curses is if I curse you.”
The woman bit her lip but didn’t seem
horrified at the idea. “As long as it’s not deadly...”
“It’s a temporary curse,” Harry
said. “So there’s a chance it won’t get rid of the curse
already on you.”
“I’m willing to try,” the woman
replied, her soft voice strong with conviction.
Harry didn’t want to pretend that he
could help this woman. But the desperate determination in her eyes
told him she wouldn’t leave without something. “I’ll give you a
temporary curse. You’ll need to come back so I can remove it.”
When she nodded, Harry held out his hand.
Without an ounce of hesitation, she
grabbed his hand.
An instant later, Harry let go. “That’s
it.”
With confusion, the woman said, “But
nothing happened.” She gasped and touched her throat with wide
eyes.
Harry nodded. “You can’t stay
silent to avoid it.”
For the first time, the woman
hesitated, her fingers still at her throat. But she straightened and
said, “I will.” The hoarse demonic voice that issued from the
usually soft-spoken woman’s mouth was one of the simpler
voice-altering spells that Harry knew.
It was only after she left his
apartment that Harry realized that he hadn’t told her when to come
back to remove the ‘curse’.
Either way, having put a ‘curse’ on
someone, Harry happily told his next few visitors he couldn’t help
them until his current client’s curse ran its course.
A week later, the woman returned to his
apartment, laughter in her grey eyes. Her obvious amusement sounded
strange when she spoke in the demonic voice Harry had given her. “My
mother-in-law didn’t like the way I talked to her this week. She
left our house.”
“I didn’t think the voice would be
that hard to hear.”
“Oh no, the sound of my cursed voice
had nothing to do with her dislike.” She smiled, looked ten years
younger. “It was what I said to her. I‘m not confrontational but
something about the cursed voice was liberating. I couldn’t help
telling her what I really felt. What I’ve felt for years. Thank
you.”
“Congrats?” Harry offered.
“Even if I never have children after
this, what you’ve given me with this curse, it’s not something
I’ll easily forget. But it’s time to get rid of this voice,”
the woman said with a chuckle. “For my husband’s ears at least.”
After a quick shake of hands, Harry
said, “That should do it.”
“Thank you,” she said again and
smiled even wider at the return of her ordinary voice. Though soft,
there was a new confidence in the way she spoke.
A knock on the door prevented Harry
from replying.
Harry opened the door to find a man at
the door. Clad in an outfit that Harry had seen the ninja wear, the
man bowed, but made no move to enter the apartment. “Sorry to
bother you, but I’ve come for my wife.”
“Everything’s already finished,”
the woman said from inside the apartment.
The lines on the ninja’s face
smoothed out and his eyes softened at the sound of her soft voice.
“Did you think it wouldn’t be
fixed, dear?” She asked with a laugh as she came to the door. “What
would you have done if the curse couldn’t be lifted?”
“I would have managed,” the man
said.
His wife laughed at him. “You always
were a terrible liar.” She turned to Harry and said, “Thank you,
again. I’ve left the payment on the table.”
“But...” Harry protested.
“You’ve earned it,” the woman
said with a firm tone. “Truly.” She turned to her husband, “Shall
we go have lunch to celebrate?”
“Of course,” the ninja said.
Pupiless lavender eyes turned to look at Harry with a cautious look,
before the ninja bowed again, “Thank you.”
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Look at Harry, being all helpful. I'm sure that lovely couple won't need to bother Harry ever again.
Polar
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