Yūko asks the woman if she has any bad habits, and she says no (a cloud of black smoke starts flying out from her that she can't see). Yūko mentions her pinkie seems stiff and the woman admits, yeah, it's been unable to bend at all. So, first story we have in xxxHolic, besides Watanuki literally stumbling onto the store and getting caught up into it, is of a young looking woman (claims to be 22) who also stumbled onto the store (big theme of fate and predestination). And the series does a very unsettling job on showing this. There must be a price they can pay (memories, services, items of emotional significance, the works), and they must be willing to actually do work themself to save themself. Now I have 'helps' in air quotes, because Yūko is not really someone who's going to pick someone up and help them out of good will. She 'helps' with people suffering from addictions and magical curses, for vague and spiritual prices. To better contextualize, the base premise of the series is about a high schooler named Kimihiro Watanuki stumbling across a store that deals in wishes, ran by a Witch named Yūko Ichihara. Emphasis on tried, because trying to enter it revealed it to be a story with probably the most fucking crooked moral compass I've ever seen in a piece of fiction.

Naruto blood prison safe mode