"SATORU!" Utahime Iori stormed into the room, her shrine maiden uniform dusted with debris, looking absolutely furious. "You do not get to just teleport away in the middle of...."
Right behind her, ducking slightly to fit through the ruined doorframe, stepped Principal Masamichi Yaga. The massive, intimidating man crossed his thick arms behind his back, his dark sunglasses reflecting the dim light of the dorm room.
Ren sat perfectly still on the edge of his mattress, a bead of cold sweat rolling down his forehead.
He was now boxed into a ten-by-ten dorm room with the strongest sorcerer alive, a fiercely strict Grade 1 instructor, and the Principal of Tokyo Jujutsu High. And he was holding an unregistered Special Grade weapon.
"Utahime, shh. Look," Gojo said, not even turning around to acknowledge her dramatic entrance. He pointed a long finger directly at the katana resting on Ren's knees.
Gojo casually tapped his chin. "Ren-kun. I have a very good memory. In fact, it's perfect. And I distinctly remember that dark little katana being registered as a simple Grade 1 yesterday. Why am I currently looking at a Special Grade?"
The room went dead silent.
Utahime stopped yelling. She blinked, her gaze dropping to the blade in Ren's lap. Principal Yaga visibly stiffened, his intimidating posture shifting into absolute, rigid shock.
"A Special Grade?" Yaga rumbled, his deep voice carrying immediate authority. "Satoru, are you certain?"
"Oh, completely," Gojo grinned, pulling his blindfold down just a fraction to expose one gleaming blue eye. "It's practically drinking the ambient energy in the room. Very high-tier stuff. So, student... care to explain?"
Ren's mind raced. He had 25,095 System Points, an incomplete Heavenly Restriction, and absolutely zero logical explanation for what just happened. The "Intimacy Transfer" lie wouldn't work on a piece of metal.
So, he went with the only defense he had left: absolute, weaponized stupidity.
Ren looked down at the dark blade, then looked up at the three elite sorcerers staring a hole through his skull. He let his expression drop into a perfectly blank, completely dumb face.
"I was just holding it," Ren said, keeping his voice entirely flat and innocent.
Utahime stared at him like he had grown a second head. "You were just holding it?"
"Yeah," Ren nodded, gripping the hilt. He offered a helpless, highly unconvincing shrug. "I was just holding it... and then... it kind of, I don't know what happened... it evolved into a Special Grade."
He looked directly into Principal Yaga's dark sunglasses.
"It's hard to believe, right?" Ren added, his tone dripping with forced earnestness.
The silence that followed was agonizing. Yaga looked like he was about to have an aneurysm. Utahime's jaw actually dropped.
Gojo, however, burst out laughing. He slapped his knee, his loud cackle echoing off the cramped dorm walls.
"Evolved?!" Gojo wheezed, wiping a fake tear from his exposed eye. "What is it, a Pokémon?!"
"Satoru, stop playing around!" Yaga bellowed. "A tool doesn't just 'wake up' because a sorcerer has potential! Achieving Special Grade status requires either a Binding Vow of the highest caliber or the forced binding of a Special Grade soul into an inanimate vessel! You're claiming this boy did in an afternoon what takes the Great Families generations to achieve!"
"Principal Yaga is right," Utahime added, stepping forward with her hand resting cautiously on her own hilt. She looked at Ren with deep suspicion. "Who exactly gave you that weapon, transfer student?"
Ren completely ignored the rising killing intent in the room. He looked at Gojo, sticking entirely to his ridiculous narrative.
"Maybe it absorbed some weird residual energy from the baseball game," Ren suggested, his face a mask of pure nonchalance. "I did hit a home run."
Gojo let out another loud laugh, throwing his hands behind his head. "I love this kid! Yaga, we're keeping him. He's hilarious."
"We are going to confiscate that weapon and have Shoko and the technical staff inspect it immediately," Yaga ordered, taking a heavy step toward the bed.
Before Yaga could take a single step toward the mattress, Gojo smoothly intercepted. He blurred across the small space and snatched Nightfall right out of Ren's lap.
"Hold on, Principal! Let the expert handle the dangerous artifacts," Gojo said, holding the pitch-black scabbard up to the dim light.
Ren immediately slumped his shoulders. "Hey," he whined, letting his voice crack just enough to sound like a perfectly petulant teenager getting his favorite toy stolen. "I was holding that. Satoru, give it back, it's mine."
Gojo completely ignored the fake tears. He slid the blade out a few inches. The ambient energy in the room immediately swirled toward the dark steel, drawn in like water down a drain.
"Fascinating," Gojo murmured, his tone dropping its usual playful lilt.
To properly test its capacity, Gojo dropped his Infinity just around his fingertips, allowing his bare skin to grip the hilt. He attempted to feed a microscopic, highly controlled drop of his own limitless cursed energy into the blade.
The reaction was instantaneous and violently explosive.
A massive shockwave of black and blood-red cursed energy erupted directly from the hilt. It sounded like a localized thunderclap inside the tiny ten-by-ten dorm.
The violent flash of red and black lightning arced wildly, mimicking the visual distortion of a Black Flash, but instead of an attack, it was pure, aggressive rejection.