"Yes, the situation is extremely dangerous — why hasn't a Grade 1 sorcerer been sent in to support them yet?"
Ijichi stood at the outer perimeter of the juvenile detention center, phone pressed flat against his ear, voice kept deliberately low but coming out fast. "They've been inside far longer than any normal mission should allow. Something has clearly gone wrong in there."
Whatever the voice on the other end said, he didn't really hear it — he'd already heard those same words several times over by now.
He had lost count of how many calls he'd made. Reinforcements were not coming.
Ijichi ended the call. He drew in a long, slow breath, tucked the phone into his pocket, and brought his gaze back to the detention center.
He had heard everything happening inside.
Explosions. The crack and boom of impact. A faint tremor that traveled up through the soles of his feet — all of it told him that whatever was unfolding in there had long since exceeded the scope of any reconnaissance mission. And all he could do was stand here. Wait. Pray that those three kids were still alive.
It wasn't that he didn't want to go in.
It was that if he went in, he would just be one more corpse.
Ijichi tightened his fist and fixed his eyes back on the outer wall of the detention center.
And then — at precisely that moment —
BOOM!!
A pillar of brilliant azure light erupted from within, punching clean through the detention center's outer wall.
Like a blinding aurora tearing itself free — it burst through stone and concrete, trailing a shrieking howl of displaced air, carrying with it a cascade of shattered rubble and billowing dust, exploding outward from the inside with devastating force.
Ijichi was startled backward a full step, very nearly losing his footing. The moment his brain caught up with his body, he snapped his gaze straight toward the breach.
The explosion had already ended.
Smoke drifted slowly through the gap in the wall, thinning as it spread.
He felt it.
The Cursed Energy signature of the Special Grade Cursed Spirit that had been nesting inside the detention center — it was dissipating. Rapidly dissipating. The flame of that Special Grade's power was being snuffed out by something, and though a last trace of warmth still lingered in the building, it wouldn't hold for much longer.
Ijichi stood frozen for a full three seconds.
The Special Grade's presence... was fading?
Someone killed it?
Those three students?
Or...
Sukuna?
He knew Yuji Itadori was Sukuna's vessel. A Cursed Energy attack of that magnitude — it didn't feel like something a student could produce. And if not a student... then there was only one other possibility.
Had Sukuna lost control?
Fear moved through him. He swallowed hard. His better judgment waged a brief and losing war against every instinct he had — and in the end, he walked toward the breach, toward that ragged, irregular hole blown through concrete and steel, to see for himself.
The smoke continued to thin. The outline of the gap grew clearer with every passing second — an irregular wound in the wall, torn open by sheer force, the edges of the concrete split and crumbled, rebar bent and exposed to the air.
There was someone standing inside the breach.
Long hair. Not tall. Back turned toward him, silhouette indistinct in the lingering haze.
Long hair — was that Fushiguro?
Ijichi quickened his pace, the urgency in his chest pulling the words out before he'd even decided to speak: "Fushiguro — are you all okay in there? Is everyone safe?"
The figure turned its head slightly.
And then came a laugh — bright and clear, like the ring of a silver bell.
"Of course everyone's safe," a voice said, light and easy and completely unbothered. "After all, I'm the one who dealt with the cursed spirit."
Wrong.
Ijichi went rigid in an instant.
That voice was wrong!!
It wasn't Fushiguro Maki. It wasn't Nobara Kugisaki. It wasn't any voice he recognized — none of the voices that should have been in there.
This was a voice he had never heard before. Young. Airy. Weightless in a way that made the hair on the back of his neck stand straight up.
And the owner of that voice sounded so utterly, serenely pleased with herself.
That light, drifting, cheerful quality — it hit him somewhere deep and primal, and his skin erupted in goosebumps from his shoulders all the way down his back.
And at that same moment, the last of the dust settled.
Blue hair, long and vivid. White dress. A face like an angel's — and wearing, upon that angel's face, a grin of absolute, unrepentant wickedness.
Ijichi's mind began moving at full speed.
A blue-haired cursed spirit. The appearance of a girl, pristine and untouched...
"!!!"
He remembered.
This was the one Fushiguro had encountered in Shibuya — the one that could manipulate the human body, alter its own appearance, the cursed spirit that had been specifically flagged in the report as Extreme Danger.
Why was she here?!
And the Special Grade's Cursed Energy was dissipating — she killed it??
His gaze dropped slightly.
The girl's left hand hung loose at her side — and from that hand, pinched by the collar, a person dangled like a ragdoll, completely limp, clearly unconscious.
Yuji Itadori.
The color drained from Ijichi's face in an instant.
"Hey there, mister — I know, I know, try not to look at me like that, okay?" The girl tilted her head, blinking with enormous innocence, her voice soft and sweet enough to be almost convincing. "Look — I rescued your three students from a Special Grade Cursed Spirit. Shouldn't you be thanking me? And besides," she added, eyes curving into a smile, "I have no interest in your souls whatsoever. In fact, I even have a little gift to give you."
A gift?
Ijichi hadn't even finished processing that sentence when the girl reached into her pocket and produced something — dry, withered, dark reddish-brown.
A finger.
Wrapped in an aura of Cursed Energy so dense and oppressive that looking at it felt wrong.
"Sukuna's finger?!"
"That's right. Sukuna's finger." The girl gave him a slow, deliberate wink, the corner of her mouth curling upward. "I found it inside the Special Grade's remains. It's actually why that cursed spirit had managed to reach Special Grade at all —"
She held it up and gave it a small, idle wave. "Yuji Itadori can contain Sukuna's soul, can't he? So this —" she let the implication hang — "should suit him perfectly."
With that, her gaze drifted down to Yuji, still dangling from her hand.
Ijichi didn't move.
The girl didn't wait for his reaction — she didn't wait for a single second. She simply pressed Sukuna's finger between Yuji's lips, tipped his head back, and confirmed he had swallowed it.
Across Yuji Itadori's body, a pulse of Cursed Energy rippled outward — one ring, two rings — spreading like concentric circles on the surface of still water. Then it went quiet.
The third finger. Just like that, inside him.
"Well," the girl said, her tone perfectly casual, as though none of this was anything at all, "even if I hadn't done it now, someone else would have fed it to you eventually." She dropped the unconscious Yuji to the side without ceremony, dusted off her hands. "So think of it as me saving everyone a little trouble in advance."
Ijichi stared at all of this and could not produce a single word.
Then — from deep within the rubble — came the sound of footsteps.
Steady. Deliberate. Stepping over broken stone, over cracked and shattered flooring, one careful step at a time.
Fushiguro Maki walked out of the haze. Black hair disheveled, blood seeping from her sleeve, those dark green eyes cutting through the smoke and locking onto the blue-haired girl with an expression so layered and complex that Ijichi couldn't begin to read all of it at once.
"You..." She bit down on each word. Eyes fixed on the blue-haired girl, jaw set. "What exactly are you trying to do..."
Yuji was unconscious on the ground. Nobara Kugisaki was nowhere to be seen. Her own soul had been thoroughly rummaged through by a stranger's hands, and a lingering, bone-deep weakness still clung to every part of her that refused to leave — they had apparently been saved, and yet it didn't feel that way at all.
This creature's behavior defied every category she had for understanding it. So all Fushiguro Maki could do was follow the deepest, oldest part of her survival instinct: ready herself to fight.
She gathered Cursed Energy. She called up her technique. She settled into a stance — full alert, full guard.
And she knew, with complete clarity, that it was useless.
She had just watched this blue-haired cursed spirit consume the soul of a Special Grade Cursed Spirit with her own eyes. She could feel it clearly — the way the other's Cursed Energy had shifted in the aftermath. The way it had grown.
Mahiko was stronger now. Fuller. And Fushiguro Maki's own state was...
Could she win?
No.
She would die.
Unless she used Mahoraga. Unless she turned it into mutual annihilation.
Facing that expression — the sharp, braced expression of someone preparing for the worst — Mahiko tilted her head, gave a small shrug, and did neither of the things Fushiguro Maki was braced for. She didn't step forward. She didn't explain herself.
She just let her gaze rest on the black-haired girl for two quiet seconds.
Then she turned around and started walking — toward a completely different direction, in no particular hurry, with the unhurried ease of someone who had finished her shopping and was heading home.
"Nobara Kugisaki is somewhere I hid her, by the way."
Her voice drifted back from that retreating silhouette — light, effortless, not even bothering to turn around. "If you want her to make it out alive, you'd be better off going to find her right now instead of wasting time on me. After all, I can't exactly guarantee that wherever I left her is completely safe~"
She didn't stop after saying that.
Under the combined gaze of Fushiguro Maki and Ijichi, she simply walked away — unhurried, untroubled, completely unbothered — as though the entire juvenile detention center were the back garden of her own home.
____
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