[The truth of Panda's birth stayed buried.]
[Even inside Jujutsu High, you and Yaga never said it out loud. You just both understood. Some things were safer left that way.]
[Three months later, in the barrier-sealed basement, you watched the little black-and-white fuzzball wear itself out, then recover its own Cursed Energy at a speed that made your blood run cold.]
[It wasn't drawing from an outside source. The circulation was fully internal. Self-sustaining.]
[Which meant the answer was right in front of you.]
[A fully autonomous artificial Cursed Corpse. Self-aware. Capable of generating its own Cursed Energy.]
[Yaga hadn't created it with war in mind. To him, this had been research, pure and simple. A scholar trying to reach life through the framework of a Cursed Corpse.]
[But you knew exactly what the people at the top would see.]
[Not a life. Not a miracle.]
[A weapon.]
[The second word got out, every old parasite in the jujutsu bureaucracy who dreamed of obedient, tireless, disposable armies would come running. And once that door opened, nobody would be able to shut it again.]
[Since Cursed Corpses didn't grow the way living creatures did, Yaga kept adjusting Panda's body as its mind developed, giving that growth a shape it otherwise never would've had.]
[By now, Panda could recognize both of you on sight.]
[It could even call your names, sort of.]
["Yaga... Tou..."]
[Sitting on the floor with a rubber ball clutched in its stubby paws, it blinked up at you both with those round, innocent eyes.]
[You watched Yaga fine-tune one of its joints. After a long silence, you finally spoke.]
["Sensei. Panda isn't just a Cursed Corpse anymore."]
["It's alive. We can't keep it locked down here forever."]
[Yaga stopped moving.]
[One big hand rested on Panda's head. He stayed like that for a while, saying nothing. In those few quiet seconds, he seemed to age right in front of you.]
[When he finally spoke, his voice came out low and tired.]
["I know. But the moment people find out, they'll put it on a table, cut it open, and try to mass-produce it."]
[You stepped closer and met his eyes.]
["I know. That's why we need a different story."]
["We tell them Panda was an accident. A freak mutation from one of my cursed experiments. A one-time disaster that happened by sheer luck and can't be repeated."]
[Yaga's head snapped up.]
["Do you get what that would put on you?"]
["Better than anyone."]
[You didn't let him keep arguing.]
["The higher-ups will believe 'Hayase did something insane and got lucky' a lot faster than 'Masamichi Yaga calmly and deliberately achieved a historic breakthrough.' That's just how their brains work."
"And if they come digging after that, let them. I'll deal with it."]
[This wasn't some vague fear. You knew exactly what kind of people would want this technology.]
[It wasn't that you underestimated Yaga. He was strong. But after what happened at the Zenin estate, you'd gotten a much clearer picture of how the gap between Grade 1 sorcerers actually worked. People loved to exaggerate it. In reality, outside monsters like Gojo and Geto, the difference wasn't always that huge.]
[If Yaga got jumped by several enemies on that level at once, he wouldn't walk through it the way you could.]
[You kept pressing. Eventually, Yaga gave in.]
[Only after that did Panda's existence get revealed inside Jujutsu High.]
[Gojo's brows shot up when he first heard about it. Then you explained the cover story, and he backed you immediately.]
[News traveled fast.]
[A few days later, the higher-ups called you in for a private inquiry, exactly like you'd expected.]
[The interrogation room was dim and stale. Behind paper screens, shadowy figures sat in a row like rotting judges presiding over some ancient little court. They questioned you for hours.]
[It didn't matter.]
[With Life is Like a Play running under your skin, you became the role completely. A reckless researcher obsessed with Cursed Energy. An idiot who pushed too far, got absurdly lucky, and stumbled into something he couldn't reproduce if he tried.]
[Every pause was deliberate. Every shift in expression landed exactly where it needed to. Every half-truth came wrapped in just enough technical nonsense to sound real.]
[They'd even brought in a sorcerer trained to detect lies.]
[The result came back clean.]
[Your story was true.]
[The mutation could not be replicated.]
[It had all been chance.]
[And caught between your airtight performance, the awkward political thread tying you to the Zenin clan, and the fact that Satoru Gojo's shadow was basically hanging over your shoulder... the higher-ups couldn't find a clean way to press the issue. In the end, they let it go.]
[Panda received official recognition.]
[No more hiding underground like some dirty secret.]
[From the outside, people naturally started calling you Panda's father.]
[You hated that.]
[You knew who the real father was. The rough, soft-hearted man who had built Panda with his own two hands.]
[Then the new year rolled in, along with the Simulator's cold, familiar notification.]
[Draw complete.]
[Obtained talent card: Corporate Slave [N]]
[Effect: Your body has gradually adapted to sustained high-intensity output. Between 9 AM and 9 PM, Monday through Saturday, your stamina ceiling increases (+20%).]
[You stared at the card for a long moment.]
[Then rubbed your temples.]
[Seriously?]
---
[And just like that, graduation season arrived.]
[Only three people were left in your year: Gojo, Shoko, and you.]
[Yaga still prepared the ceremony carefully, same as ever. He even wrote "Congratulations, Graduates" across the blackboard in ornate lettering.]
[But when Gojo stepped into the classroom and saw how empty it was, there wasn't a trace of celebration on his face.]
[His usual grin was gone.]
[Hands in his pockets, dark glasses on, he looked out the window and muttered quietly:]
["Four of us enrolled. Three of us are graduating. What exactly are we celebrating?"]
[Nobody answered.]
[The room turned bitter in an instant, full of the kind of silence that said too much.]
[Everybody knew who he meant.]
[The dark-haired boy who had once stood beside him, argued with him, laughed with him, dreamed with him about what it meant to live as the strong.]
[That boy had chosen a different path. One soaked in blood. One that wasn't coming back.]
[You looked at Gojo's profile, at the faint shadow of grief softening the usual sharpness there, and before you could stop yourself, you spoke.]
["Satoru..."]
[You didn't even get the rest out.]
[He turned, crossed the distance in two long strides, and clapped a hand over your mouth.]
["Don't."]
[His voice was flat, sharp enough to stop you cold.]
["Don't start with 'you should've stopped Suguru' or 'you should've done more.' He made his choice. That's on him."]
["The world doesn't run on what-ifs."]
[Then his hand dropped.]
[His eyes drifted back toward the cherry blossoms outside, and when he spoke again, his voice had gone quieter. Younger, almost.]
["I was just complaining a little. That's all."]
[That was enough to kill whatever ceremony mood had been left.]
[There were no long speeches after that. Hardly any laughter, either.]
[They skipped straight to the group photo.]
[On the school grounds, Yaga stood behind the camera and waved at the three of you in annoyance.]
["Hey. You three. Smile. It's a graduation photo."]
[The shutter clicked.]
[Despite his efforts, only Shoko, standing in the middle with an unlit cigarette hanging from her lips, managed the faintest little smile.]
[Gojo looked straight into the camera without expression.]
[You adjusted your glasses, face blank.]
[And beside Gojo, there was an empty space.]
[Just wide enough for one more person.]
[Afterward, Shoko waved and headed back to the infirmary. Yaga left to deal with a mountain of handover paperwork.]
[Gojo stopped you before you could go.]
[When he turned, the usual laziness was gone from his voice.]
["Hey, Hayase. After graduation... what are you gonna do?"]
[You looked at him.]
[The answer came immediately, without even a second of thought.]
["Me? I'll keep working as a jujutsu sorcerer. There are still things I need to finish."]
[The seriousness slid off Gojo's face. A smile curled at his mouth, like he'd expected that answer from the start.]
[Then he said, very simply:]
["Stay. Help me, Hayase."]
[You blinked.]
["Stay... help you?"]
["After what happened to Riko, and after Suguru left, I spent a long time thinking."
"You've seen it too, right? The people running this world. The jujutsu world is a cesspool."
"Self-serving cowards. Inbred idiots. Arrogant fools. All of them. Rotten to the core."
"I'm going to tear this whole broken system down and rebuild it."
"Honestly, if I wanted to, killing every geezer at the top would be easy."
"But even if I did that, the next batch would turn out the same. Same rot, different faces. If the structure stays the same, nothing changes. The tragedies just keep looping."
"And if I rule through fear, nobody's really going to follow me. Not from the heart."]
[He straightened.]
[Behind the dark lenses, those pale blue eyes felt hot enough to burn straight through you.]
["So I decided I'm staying at Jujutsu High. I'm becoming a teacher."
"I'll raise strong, smart people myself, from the ground up. Allies who can stand beside me."]
[He paused.]
[When he spoke again, his voice softened in a way you almost never heard from him.]
["I know you want the same thing."
"You want to change all of this too. It's just... you keep trying to carry every damn bit of it by yourself."]
[Then Gojo held out his hand.]
["Trust me, Hayase."]
["Nobody is better suited to being a teacher than you."]
[You looked at the hand hanging there between you.]
[You had been the dog under somebody else's boot in the Zenin compound.]
[You had been a trainee Assistant Manager crawling around the bottom of the ladder.]
[You knew exactly how twisted this world was, because you'd lived at the part people liked to ignore.]
[And because you'd seen that ugliness from the bottom, you also understood how heavy the road ahead really was.]
[Not everyone had the kind of absolute power it took to force their way upstream through a river of blood.]
[You and Gojo did.]
[Not many others could say the same.]
[Just like the day Suguru Geto hadn't taken your hand, you didn't take Gojo's either.]
[But you chose to trust him.]
["Okay."]