"Hey, waiter. Bring me a bottle of beer first."
While Yuto was still cooking in the kitchen, the tall man at the counter called out to Tohru.
The dragon girl wrinkled her nose in displeasure, but she still brought him a bottle of beer.
The restaurant had mead now, but it kept beer as well—any restaurant ought to offer a few kinds of drink for its customers.
If there was only one, that wouldn't be very friendly to the guests.
Bang!
Tohru put a little force into it and slammed the can down in front of him, then turned and walked off.
The man ignored her and picked up the beer.
He turned the can in his palm, his eyes narrowing.
He was thinking.
And when he saw the date, the shock inside him only grew.
2019...
'Yare yare...'
He couldn't help sighing to himself. This time period wasn't good at all.
Kujo Jotaro, born in 1970.
Right now he wasn't even an adult yet.
'This world... it seemed...'
Jotaro turned over all sorts of possibilities, and somehow he slowly came to accept the strange situation in front of him.
His throat moved. Then he pulled the can open and drank the whole thing down in one go.
"Tch. After all these years, beer still hasn't gotten any better."
His low voice carried a note of complaint.
"Then would you like to try a different drink?"
Yuto's voice came from in front of him.
Jotaro raised his head and looked at him, his expression still calm, almost cold.
"Fine. I'll try something else, then." Jotaro said it flatly.
The corner of Yuto's mouth curved up, and he turned to Tohru.
"Tohru, pour him a cup of mead." With that, he set down the dish in his hands. "Beef fried rice. Please enjoy."
This was what Jotaro had ordered.
When it was placed in front of him, his expression shifted slightly—only a faint change, but enough to break through the coldness he'd worn until now.
"This smell..." Jotaro murmured, surprised.
Yuto only stood quietly in front of him with a smile.
After a moment, Jotaro slowly gripped the spoon and scooped up a mouthful of fried rice.
The instant it went into his mouth, his expression turned to shock.
Even his cold eyes widened a little.
The purple figure that had appeared for an instant earlier flashed out again—and this time Yuto caught sight of it directly.
He saw it more clearly now.
That phantom-like thing floated in the air. A sense of pressure, weight, power—all of it came from that figure!
Yuto's eyes narrowed.
Until now, the customers who came to the restaurant had covered just about everything, from the real to the fantastical.
But something like this was a first, and he couldn't help wondering about Jotaro's identity. Was he human? Or some other humanlike being?
While Yuto was thinking, he didn't notice that Jotaro was watching him, his gaze extremely complicated—full of shock, surprise, disbelief, and a dozen other things.
"Hey, Boss. You can see it, can't you?"
The sudden words made Yuto pause.
He didn't catch on right away. "Mm? See what?"
"This. This evil spirit." Jotaro set down his spoon and pointed at the phantom beside him, his face heavy and serious.
That left Yuto even more stunned.
'An evil spirit?'
"Yes, I can see it."
His answer eased Jotaro's expression a little. "Then, Boss, do you know anything about this evil spirit?"
At that, Yuto could only shake his head.
He'd just been wondering about it himself, so of course he knew nothing.
"I see... Then why can you see it?" Jotaro showed a flicker of disappointment before turning serious again.
Yuto glanced at Tohru beside him. "Is seeing it difficult? Tohru, you can see it too, right?"
"Hmph, of course." Tohru's displeasure still hadn't fully faded.
That shook Jotaro even more.
Until now, he'd always believed he was the only one who was special, the only one who could see the evil spirit clinging to him.
But tonight he'd met people who could see it too.
The shock of it stayed with him.
"Before this, no one could see it. You're the first people I've met who can." Jotaro spoke very seriously, his eyes grave, though no one could tell what he was thinking.
Yuto's thoughts shifted, and he looked toward Erina and Hisako.
Right now the two girls were staring at him with completely blank faces.
Erina truly had no idea what he and the others were talking about.
An evil spirit? Something they could see? Why couldn't she see anything at all?
"Nakiri, Arato, can you two see it?" Yuto asked.
The two looked even more confused, and both shook their heads.
That made Yuto started thinking.
"It seems seeing the evil spirit takes some kind of special ability. Or maybe there has to be something unusual about a person before they can see it."
After a short silence, Jotaro reached that conclusion.
In the past, he'd never met anyone who could see his evil spirit, which was why he'd thought he was the only special one.
Now that others could see it, the conclusion wasn't hard to reach with a little thought. Jotaro skipped school and cut class, but he was actually a sharp man.
Yuto nodded silently.
His thinking ran the same way.
"Why do you call it an evil spirit?" Yuto asked.
At that, a trace of pain and helplessness crossed Jotaro's eyes before it settled back into cold indifference.
Jotaro didn't answer right away.
He took a cigarette from inside his coat, and just as he went to light it, Yuto stopped him.
"Sorry, no smoking in the restaurant." Yuto said it with a smile.
"Sorry." Jotaro paused, then put the cigarette away.
He picked up the mead Tohru had brought and took a sip; the taste changed his expression slightly, but he didn't say much about it.
Instead he began to talk about everything he'd been through because of this evil spirit.
Before this, no one had been able to see the spirit behind him, so he'd had nowhere to talk about it.
Tell anyone else, and they'd only think he was crazy.
Now he'd finally found a place to get it off his chest!
This whole stretch had left him deeply irritated, though it wasn't quite sadness—more like frustration.
After a while, Jotaro roughly laid out what had been happening to him lately.
Because of the evil spirit, he'd put people in the hospital.
Because of it, he'd been treated like a thief.
Because of it, he'd been laughed at.
All sorts of messy things.
Most of them, though, ended the same way: anyone who got into a fight with Jotaro ended up in the hospital.
At first Yuto's expression didn't change much as he listened.
But the more he heard, the more dazed he got.
Jotaro's experiences were a little too intense. Putting people in the hospital that casually... this evil spirit really was fierce!
"Hey, Boss. Do you get it? Because of this evil spirit, I can't even go to school anymore. If I go, I'll hurt people without meaning to." Jotaro's tone was full of irritation and helplessness, and a few flickers of impatience showed in his cold face, making him look even more frightening.
"Wait. What did you say?" Yuto cut in, confused, and looked at Jotaro in disbelief.
Jotaro was puzzled. "I said I'll hurt people."
"Not that. The part before it."
He grew more confused.
"School?" he said, testing it, and Yuto nodded hard.
"JoJo... you're a student?" Yuto looked at him, baffled.
JoJo was the name Jotaro had told him to use during their talk—it was what his friends called him.
At the question, Jotaro tugged at his hat.
"Do I not look like one?" Jotaro said flatly.
What part of him looked like a student?
That serious face—he looked like an adult, plain and simple.
"I'm a genuine high school student." Jotaro said it very seriously, his voice rising a little without his noticing.
Yuto nodded in a daze.
A high school student who was skilled at smoking and drinking, then.
"Besides, can't you tell this is a school uniform?" Jotaro tugged at his clothes again and looked at Yuto, clearly displeased.
"That's a school uniform?" Yuto was shocked all over again.
The long coat.
The thick golden chain.
Wasn't this the kind of outfit some mafia wore?
This was actually a school uniform?!
"Yeah, of course. I've always worn my uniform properly, like any student." Jotaro's face was serious.
He wasn't lying.
Yuto's face was serious too.
He really had never seen a school uniform this unusual before.
No—wait.
That Housen school from before probably counted as a strange one as well. Thinking of it that way, Jotaro's history of laying people out started to seem less remarkable.
f even the uniform looked this intimidating, then knocking a few people flat almost seemed reasonable.
Once he reached that conclusion, his expression cleared.
Noticing the change, Jotaro tugged the brim of his cap down again.
"Yare yare daze..."
Then he went on with the evil spirit.
It had first shown up not long ago. Jotaro had been beating someone when the spirit suddenly emerged from behind him and took over, nearly beating the man to death.
After that it appeared several more times, always when Jotaro lost control of his emotions, and every time it came out it would batter someone with a relentless storm of punches.
At one point he'd even thought about having himself locked up, believing that behind bars he could at least keep anyone else from getting hurt.
He'd planned to turn himself in the next morning—yet tonight, somehow, he'd ended up here instead.
A strange turn of events indeed.
"That's the whole story. Going by my plan, I'll be in jail tomorrow morning." Jotaro leaned back slightly, and as he did, the evil spirit appeared behind him and formed a solid backrest.
"Still, it can be pretty useful. It can do all kinds of things." He spoke as calmly as ever.
Yuto watched him lean so easily against the spirit and fell into thought.
He didn't really believe the thing was evil.
From everything Jotaro had described, every time it appeared it had been trying to help him.
Seen that way, it might be better called a partner—the only strange part being that this partner had been born from inside his own body!