Suzuki, who had closed his eyes, abruptly opened them, as he realized how dangerous their situation was.
"Maki?"
While Mai was busy running around the estate, aggressively barking orders at the surviving Hei members to clean up the catastrophic mess left behind by Satoru Gojo, Maki had stayed behind.
Why did Mai allow her twin to stay alone with the new Clan Head?
Because Maki was strong.
Unlike Mai, who still heavily struggled to master her Construction Sorcery, Maki possessed a Heavenly Restriction. Her lack of cursed energy was entirely compensated by overwhelming, superhuman physical prowess. She was the absolute perfect bodyguard.
Suzuki might have hidden it well behind his stoic glasses and cold corporate threats, but it was physically impossible for a fight against the strongest sorcerer alive not to take a massive toll on his body. He was currently at his absolute weakest, his brain practically steaming from the overclocked physics calculations. Naturally, Maki was the best person to protect him from any lingering danger.
"...I really don't think it's appropriate for me to be lying down like this," Suzuki muttered, his voice slightly hoarse.
Suzuki was a healthy, fully functioning young man, after all. His exhausted brain might have been focused on survival, but his body was intensely, acutely aware of the incredible softness cradling the back of his head. The firm, athletic strength of Maki's thighs combined with a plush, yielding warmth was undeniably intoxicating.
He inwardly cursed himself. Why was his body reacting like a normal, hormone-driven teenager when he had just barely escaped having his brain fried?
Was it the adrenaline of almost dying?
It wasn't an exaggeration. While everyone else in the world viewed Gojo Satoru as a goofy, untouchable prankster, Suzuki had been entirely on edge the entire fight. One miscalculation, one missed frame during Unlimited Void, and Suzuki would have been rendered a drooling vegetable for the rest of his life.
If I didn't have the Manager...
Suzuki suppressed a shudder. He would be lying if he said he didn't resent Gojo. But that resentment highlighted the fundamental difference between Suzuki and the natives of this twisted world.
Jujutsu Sorcerers were entirely desensitized to killing. It was their daily reality. But Suzuki wasn't a killer. He genuinely despised taking human lives, even if those lives belonged to deranged Curse Users.
To the Jujutsu society, violence was just a job. A bloody, traumatic chore used to clean up the messes left behind by negative human emotions. But Suzuki knew that this perpetual cycle of violence was exactly why the Jujutsu economy was so incredibly lucrative.
Yet, because of that grim reality, Suzuki wanted to completely restructure the world. He wanted to forge an environment where future generations—perhaps even his own future children—would have the freedom to live normal lives without having to slaughter curses or humans just to pay the rent.
How would he achieve that?
First, he needed to shatter the perception that sorcerers were disposable freaks. Currently, they were entirely alienated by normal society. If you were born with cursed energy—making up less than one percent of the global population—you were treated as a dangerous outcast. You were drafted into a secret war and paid minimum wage unless you were a Special Grade anomaly.
Suzuki wanted his family to have choices. If a sorcerer wanted to become a baker, a tailor, or a corporate lawyer, they should be able to. But to buy that freedom, they needed overwhelming financial leverage.
He knew his corporate views were radical. A meathead like Gojo could never understand the sheer, suffocating desperation of the weak. Gojo's only solution to a problem was to physically obliterate it.
Suzuki knew his path of economic reform would be incredibly difficult—his battle with Gojo was merely the opening move of a much larger war against the status quo.
Yet, despite all his grand, world-changing ambitions, he had absolutely never calculated encountering a sudden, highly erotic romantic comedy trope in the middle of a ruined courtyard.
Maki's lap felt incredible, but his logical mind screamed that taking advantage of her kindness while he was physically exhausted was highly inappropriate.
He braced his hands against the floorboards to push himself up, but Maki's hands suddenly moved. Her slender, calloused fingers slid into his hair, gently but firmly pressing his head back down against her plush thighs.
The movement brought their bodies dangerously close.
"Maki...?" Suzuki blinked, looking up at her upside-down face.
"Just rest, okay?" Maki whispered, her voice uncharacteristically soft. "You're completely exhausted. I know I can't be of much help to you when it comes to the complex stuff, but... I'm here. Let me support you."
"Maki..."
Suzuki looked up into her eyes. He had spent years viewing her as the stubborn, scarred young woman he needed to protect from the clan's cruelty. But looking at her now, feeling the undeniable heat radiating from her skin, he realized she had fully grown into a remarkably striking woman.
"Thank you," Suzuki sighed, finally letting his muscles go limp. "Just having you here watching my back is more than enough. But... you are an incredibly charming woman, Maki. Being this physically close to you... it isn't exactly good for my focus."
Those quiet words seemed to flip a hidden switch deep within Maki's mind.
"...Do you really think I'm charming, Nii-san?"
"Aren't you?" Suzuki looked at her genuinely.
Even with the faint scars that marred her athletic body from years of brutal close-combat training, she was breathtaking. She never bothered with makeup or skincare, and she acted tougher than most of the men in the Hei unit, but none of that diminished her raw, natural beauty. Her Heavenly Restriction gave her a physical perfection that was entirely magnetic.
"Thank you..." Maki smiled, a faint, alluring blush dusting her cheeks. "I never thought you would actually find me charming, Nii-san."
"...Why wouldn't you think that?"
"Because I'm not." Maki looked away slightly, her fingers unconsciously tracing the line of his jaw. "I'm not soft and feminine like Mai. I don't even know how to act like a normal girl. But... it seems I'm charming enough to actually make the great, calculating Clan Head lose his calm."
Suzuki's breath hitched slightly at the physical contact. "...Are you deliberately teasing me right now, Maki?"
Was it really that obvious that his body was reacting to her?
"No, it's just..." Maki hesitated. She looked back down at him, her sharp eyes piercing right through the lenses of his glasses. "I like you."
"...."
Suzuki froze. The confession slipped from her lips so smoothly, so naturally, that it completely short-circuited his brain.
"You know my old dream, right? About becoming the Clan Head?" Maki asked, her hand sliding down to interlock her fingers tightly with his.
"Yeah."
"I thought that if I became the Head, I could finally change this shitty family. I didn't want to stay a victim. But whenever everyone else mocked me and told me I was useless garbage, you were the only one who looked at me and told me I could actually do it."
"Of course you could have."
"I wanted to become the Head so I could give you a better environment," Maki confessed, her voice thick with emotion. "A safe place where you could do your physics and your research without having to worry about the Elders. But... instead, you went and did everything on your own. You took over the world in a single day. And I... I'm just a burden to you now."
"That is absolutely not true, and you know it," Suzuki said firmly.
"Yeah... thank you," Maki's gaze darkened, a sudden, intense heat swirling in her eyes. "But... I still want to stay by your side, Nii-san."
"Maki?"
Suzuki suddenly realized the atmosphere had shifted entirely. The protective, sisterly vibe was completely gone.
"I thought fighting was the only way I could ever be useful to you," Maki murmured.
Her eyes turned dangerously predatory. She looked at him not as a brother or a leader, but like a starving predator finally claiming her long-awaited prey. She slowly licked her bottom lip, a gesture so deeply sensual it made Suzuki's pulse pound in his ears.
"But... I'm really glad you think I'm charming, Nii-san."
She leaned down. Suzuki could feel the undeniable, heavy friction of her smooth, muscular thighs shifting against him. The physical evidence of his rising heat was pressed dangerously close to her stomach, and instead of pulling away in embarrassment, Maki leaned into the sensation. A thrilling, intoxicating rush of pure feminine dominance washed over her, reveling in the fact that she was the one making the untouchable genius completely unravel.
"Nii-san..."
Suzuki's calculated mind completely flatlined. It felt as if the entire world had paused.
As her dark hair curtained over them, her lips met his in a clumsy, desperate collision. Her strong hands wrapped tightly around his shoulders, pulling him flush against her heat. The initial awkwardness lasted only a second before Suzuki's instincts took over. He shifted his weight, his hands finding the curve of her waist, effortlessly matching her desperate pace and guiding her through the heated, breath-stealing exchange. The damp heat of the kiss deepened, completely enrapturing them both in their first, intoxicating taste of absolute surrender.
Meanwhile, entirely disconnected from the cursed politics and heated romance of the Jujutsu world, the fourth Suzuki was sitting quietly in the back of a stuffy high school classroom.
It was the absolute tail-end of his third-year semester. He let out a heavy sigh, aggressively ignoring the loud, obnoxious laughter of his classmates echoing across the room. They were completely ignorant, carelessly playing around and gossiping without a single thought for their looming futures—a classroom full of naive kids whose ultimate, depressing prospects amounted to nothing more than part-time convenience store workers or absolute NEETs.
Suzuki, however, was already lightyears ahead of them. Having already secured his elite acceptance letter to the prestigious Economics Faculty at Tokyo University, he calmly tapped his pen and went back to studying his advanced collegiate textbooks, completely unaware of the multiversal chaos—and the lap pillows—his alternate selves were currently experiencing across reality.