"Whew...!"
Itadori let out a long breath as he set down the last of his luggage.
That finished the unpacking.
Learning the campus. Sorting out his things. Greeting people.
It had been a tiring blur of one thing after another, but overall, it felt pretty good.
Jujutsu Sorcerers were supposed to be people with something a little broken in them.
Even so, he'd felt a solid sense of decency from them.
"Mind if I interrupt for a second?"
Knock knock. Someone rapped on the already open door and called out to Itadori.
It was Zenin Maki, wearing glasses.
Those glasses were for seeing Cursed Spirits.
She didn't need them right now, but she always kept them on her.
Because they were a gift from Kadoc.
"Ah, yes. Um... who...?"
Yuji turned toward Maki as he asked.
She's pretty. Totally my type.
The thought crossed his mind for a moment, but the stronger impression was that she was intimidating enough to raise goosebumps.
"I'm Maki, a second-year. I'm one year above you, so that makes me your senior."
"Ah. Nice to meet you. I'm Itadori Yuji."
Yuji hurriedly got to his feet and bowed.
The moment he heard she was a senior and not an enemy, he relaxed.
"Oh. So should I call you Maki-senior?"
"Yeah. I don't like being called by my family name. Anyway, let's get along from here on out."
"Yes. Please take care of me."
Yuji usually spoke casually, but for greetings, he kept things polite.
It was their first meeting, after all.
"You've probably got a lot on your mind, so get some rest. I just came to see your face."
"Ah, okay."
Maki gave him a wave and left.
It felt a little abrupt, but it hadn't been a bad meeting.
"A Jujutsu Sorcerer, huh."
With a heavy drop, Itadori flopped onto the bed and muttered to himself.
A life where you put your life on the line.
It would be a lie to say he wasn't afraid, but he'd already made up his mind.
A proper death.
His goal was to stop the hollow kind of death where people were devoured by Cursed Spirits.
And along the way, he'd save people too.
'Grandpa.'
His grandfather, Wasuke, had told him to help people.
Being a Jujutsu Sorcerer fit that perfectly.
Not in the light, but in the shadows.
And there, he would save people who died without ordinary society ever even knowing.
Itadori had already resolved to grow stronger for that sake.
And naturally, he'd resolved himself to eat cursed objects too.
"Sukuna's vessel?"
"Yeah. There's this absolute piece of trash named Sukuna, and you're the only one who can erase his traces."
A demon that had rampaged through the old Heian era.
Fingers split off from that soul.
Itadori's mission included swallowing those fingers one by one.
As Sukuna's completed vessel, and his prison.
"Wouldn't eating something like that be insanely dangerous?"
"Hard to believe, but there's already one inside your body. It's sealed, so it hasn't activated."
"What?!"
There was already a finger inside him.
Even now, just remembering that explanation made his head throb.
Still.
The thought that only he could do something important didn't feel bad at all.
From now on, he was a Jujutsu Sorcerer.
At those words, Itadori's heart pounded hard in his chest.
We often go out under the pretense of a stroll and hunt down Cursed Spirits.
It lightens the workload for the Jujutsu Sorcerers.
And while we're at it, we're also searching for Mahito.
I'm not stacking experience points like before, but I do feel like I'm getting healthier.
Maybe this is a kind of normalization.
"Master. This way."
Koyanskaya of Light, Assassin, looped herself around my left arm and guided me forward.
Koyanskaya of Darkness, Foreigner, took my right arm.
A Koyanskaya on each side.
The soft, overwhelming pressure of their breasts against my arms made me absurdly happy.
Even if all we did was turn down empty alleys.
At this point, I wouldn't have had a single complaint if the whole day ended with nothing but wandering around like this.
"Huh? Kadoc? What are you doing here?"
The moment we rounded the alley and stepped out onto a broader street, my eyes met Gojo Satoru's.
He was holding bread in one hand.
"I was out on a date. What about you, Gojo?"
"Me? Finished a mission and now I'm killing time. I was gonna half-ass the report later. But..."
Gojo, blindfold over his eyes, strode toward us.
He was over 190 centimeters tall, practically a walking utility pole.
"The whole area nearby's been scrubbed clean. No Cursed Spirits anywhere. Was that you?"
"We were making the rounds while on a date."
"Ah. So that's it."
Gojo let out a short laugh and gave us a little space.
Maybe because he wasn't acting as a teacher right now, he seemed much freer.
"Oh, right. Since I ran into you, stay and talk for a bit. If I'm talking with you, I can call it a work meeting. Makes for a good excuse too."
"I don't mind."
I apologized to the two Koyanskayas with a glance and nodded.
We could finish the rest of the date after the conversation.
"Great. Let's head somewhere suitable."
Gojo led us off somewhere.
When we arrived, it was a family restaurant.
I'd been to family restaurants before, but this one was new to me.
And yet, even though it was my first time here, it felt familiar.
The male part-timer with weirdly sharp instincts who seemed close with his little sister.
The manager who looked like one wrong word would make him burst into flames.
And even the layout itself was familiar.
It was that family restaurant from Jujutsu Kaisen, the one that had only appeared briefly.
'So I actually ended up here.'
I sat down without thinking and unconsciously tensed my shoulders.
It felt like if I let my guard down, I might spontaneously combust.
"What do you want to eat? My treat, so order whatever you like. That goes for you two as well."
"My, how generous."
Assassin smiled with her eyes as she looked over the menu.
Even though she wasn't the type to gain weight from eating, she still looked oddly careful about her choice.
Foreigner, on the other hand, was completely at ease.
Just like me.
"I'll have a parfait."
"I'll go with omurice."
Gojo gave his order first, and I followed.
The two Koyanskayas also chose from the dessert side of the menu.
"Then shall we talk a bit while we wait for the food?"
"Sure."
Gojo and I faced each other and nodded.
There was nothing especially grand about the conversation.
Just light exchanges about how each of us had been doing.
How the Cursed Spirit search was going, things like that.
'So it really is a work meeting.'
A Jujutsu Sorcerer's role was to eliminate Cursed Spirits.
Since that was exactly what we were discussing, calling it a work meeting wasn't wrong.
"Oh, and about Yuji. The kid's solid. He's got talent too. Just the right amount of crazy to be cut out for jujutsu."
Gojo smiled, the corner of his mouth curling upward.
That sharp grin made it obvious he was genuinely pleased.
"He's good, right?"
"Yeah. And he's polite, upbeat too. That type's rare among Jujutsu Sorcerers. Most of them are gloomy, like Fushiguro Megumi."
I nodded at Gojo's words.
Megumi had his funny moments, sure, but serious and brooding definitely fit him.
"Speaking of which, how's Megumi doing?"
"He's doing fine. A few days ago, he even subjugated Mahoraga."
"What?"
My eyes went wide before I could stop them.
I hadn't heard a word about that.
"Huh? You didn't know?"
Gojo tilted his head.
Of course I didn't know.
Megumi had enrolled at Jujutsu High, but he wasn't living in the dorms.
Like Maki and Zenin Mai, he commuted.
Normally he would've stayed in the dorms, but...
There was the risk that someone might target Sae or Tsumiki.
Choso was assigned as a guard, but that still wasn't enough to put anyone at ease.
There was no way Megumi could just live in the dorms under those circumstances.
"Not at all. Why didn't he tell me?"
"It only happened a few days ago, so that's probably why. He was probably waiting until things settled down a bit."
"Did you see it yourself, by any chance?"
"Yeah. I put up the curtain and acted as observer. He said he'd feel bad asking you for help a second time, so he asked me instead."
At Gojo's answer, I pressed a hand to my chest in relief.
Gojo wasn't lacking in firepower, but even so, it had still been dangerous.
'...He really didn't have to go that far.'
I understood how Megumi felt, but it still left a faint bitterness in me.
At the same time, I couldn't help finding it admirable.
"So how did he do it?"
"First, he layered a bunch of shikigami onto [Piercing Ox] with his extension technique. Guess he was aiming to boost firepower over speed."
Originally, Megumi's extension technique hadn't carried that much weight.
At most, it had been things like combining Toad with Nue.
But after I got involved, his technique had evolved far beyond that.
More varied. More aggressive.
So I could imagine him reinforcing [Piercing Ox] through extension techniques, but...
I hadn't expected him to actually pull it off.
"And then?"
"Zenin Toji ran interference and held Mahoraga back while Megumi supported him. Since the adaptation had been reset, the Soul-Liberation Blade worked on it really well too."
"That makes sense."
"Ridiculous, right? Even I was dumbfounded seeing it in person."
Megumi mounted the fused [Piercing Ox].
Then he ran, and ran, and ran over an insane distance.
Mahoraga naturally chased after him.
Apparently it turned into a full-on pursuit race.
Because the sorcerer maintaining the curtain was Gojo, he could cover a massive area.
Over a kilometer, from the sound of it.
Then, instead of stopping outright, Megumi used a braking maneuver that shortened his stride.
He slipped out through Mahoraga's legs as it surged forward, then slammed into it hard.
Mahoraga had moved one step ahead to block him.
Megumi's [Piercing Ox], lagging one step behind, crashed in from the rear.
It wasn't impossible. Just insane.
'That's crazy.'
The size of the curtain during the Shibuya Incident had looked to be around that scale too.
So the fact that Gojo had covered an area that wide by himself was astonishing.
Just raw talent, I guess.
"So he really did it."
"You said he failed last time, right? He built a plan off that failure, so it makes sense he'd succeed. Megumi's talented, isn't he?"
"He is."
That was true.
Even Sukuna had practically drooled over him like some rabid dog in heat.
Megumi's technique was one thing.
He also had real talent for how to use it, but his biggest problem had always been that suicidal summon-first mindset.
'Wait. Then that means...?'
If he could preload the summon instead of going for mutual destruction...
Then Cursed Spirits wouldn't pose any obstacle at all.
'It's over.'
Against Cursed Spirits specifically, Mahoraga was far better than a Servant.
Anything it touched practically melted.
And if Okkotsu Yuta copied that and used it too?
Then there'd be two Mahoragas.
Okkotsu would have to subjugate Mahoraga himself first, of course, but...
The difficulty of subjugation would probably be lower for him than it had been for Megumi.
Okkotsu's technique was Copy.
He had more than enough cards to crack Mahoraga, and Rika was with him too.
If they got hold of it, that was game over.
The lineup was strong enough that those words came to mind on their own.
Three Special Grade Jujutsu Sorcerers.
Megumi, loaded with Mahoraga... not that suicidal idiot, but Megumi.
Toji and Maki, both under Heavenly Restriction.
Mai and Naoya, now able to use the Construction Technique without restraint.
At this point, the setup was so good it almost forced you to let your guard down.
Worrying about it felt rude.
"Your food is here."
Right then, an employee arrived with the dishes we'd ordered.
My heart had been hammering from the shock, but now it gradually settled into something calmer.
"Oh, there it is. Eat up. If it's not enough, order more."
"Thanks for the meal."
I gave a quick word of thanks and immediately picked up my spoon.
It was a little disappointing that there were no side dishes, but this was Japanese style, so I accepted it.
I dug straight into the omurice.
Not bad.