She blinked. Her shoulders dropped. A sharp, ragged breath ripped through her teeth. "I... yeah. I'm fine."
She snapped her head around, her eyes going wide. "But Nitta—"
Ren was already kneeling over the manager.
Nitta sat slumped against the brick, taking fast, shallow hitches of air. Both hands clamped her side. Dark blood welled thick between her fingers, soaking the white fabric of her blouse.
Ren pushed her hands aside. The slice was clean—a lateral line across her ribs. Not lethal right now, but a heavy bleeder.
He grabbed the hem of his black undershirt and ripped a long strip clean off. The thick cotton tore like wet paper in his grip. Nobara's gaze snagged on the sharp ridges of muscle exposed beneath the fabric, then snapped instantly back to the street.
Ren bound the strip tight around Nitta's ribs, knotting it hard over the gash. Nitta hissed through her teeth, her eyes squeezing shut. The dark red stain stopped spreading.
"Keep pressure on it when you walk," he said. He stood, shrugging his uniform jacket back into place. "It'll hold until you clear the curtain." He looked at Nobara. "Can you get her out?"
Nobara straightened, tightening her grip on her hammer. "Obviously. Who do you think you're talking to?"
The corner of his mouth twitched. He took a single step.
The space between them simply vanished. His thumb brushed the side of her temple, smearing a thin streak of blood away from a cut over her eyebrow.
Nobara froze.
"Good." His voice dropped. "If you die out here, I'm going to be annoyed about that coffee I owe you." A slow smirk pulled at his mouth. "Besides. It'd be a damn shame to lose my second-favorite girl at Jujutsu High."
Heat flooded Nobara's face. She swatted his hand away, driving an accusing finger hard against his sternum. "Second?! You absolute—I hope a Special Grade swallows you whole!"
Ren laughed. A quiet, genuine sound that scraped against the dead silence of the street. He turned and headed for the station entrance, his boots crushing the shattered glass.
"See you on the other side, Kugisaki," he said, keeping his back to her.
Nobara stood there, her cheeks burning. She slapped both palms hard against her own face, shook her head once, and grabbed Nitta by the uninjured arm.
"Come on, Nitta-san," she muttered, hauling the manager upright and steering her north.
"Let's go before I do something I regret."
Behind them, the pitch-black maw of the station swallowed him.
...
Ren left the alley, keeping his eyes locked on the Mark City station.
Halfway across the street, he froze.
His ears popped. The crisp autumn wind vanished, replaced in a heartbeat by air so thick and damp it clung to his skin like a wet towel. The scattered trash on the pavement stopped skittering, dropping dead to the concrete.
He looked up.
Through the intact glass of the station's upper concourse, nothing seemed physically broken. Yet the air around it felt impossibly heavy. It was a suffocating pressure, as if an invisible, crushing weight had been dropped over that specific section of the building.
"Domain Expansion," he muttered.
Ren broke into a sprint, taking the station stairs two at a time. The closer he got, the clearer the devastation became. The heavy entrance doors were already blown out. He stepped through the twisted frames, his boots crunching loudly over a carpet of shattered glass. Inside, the concourse was a graveyard of pulverized concrete and warped metal.
And in the dead center of the ruin sat the source of the pressure: a massive, pitch-black sphere floating just above the floor.
He didn't hesitate. Ren held out his left hand, triggering his inventory. A faint, translucent grid flickered to life in the dim light. He reached into the empty space, his fingers wrapping solid around the hilt of his katana.
Stepping up to the smooth, ink-like surface of the barrier, he braced his stance. He pulled the sword back and drove the point straight into the shell.
The dome shrieked. Purple lightning lashed out, crackling violently as the blade bit deep. With a harsh twist of his wrists, Ren dragged the steel downward, carving a jagged tear into the domain.
Blinding tropical sunlight flooded the dark station, followed instantly by the roar of crashing ocean waves.
Ren tightened his grip, shifting his weight to step inside.
Then, the hairs on his neck stood straight up.
There was no spike of cursed energy. No sound of approaching footsteps. Just the suffocating, primal certainty that a predator was standing directly behind him.
He tried to swing the sword around.
But He wasn't fast enough.
A fist slammed between his shoulder blades like a wrecking ball. The concrete beneath his boots instantly spider-webbed from the sheer downward force of the blow. The air violently evacuated his lungs as he was launched off his feet, catapulted straight through the glowing tear he had just created.
The ruined station vanished.
Ren hit the water hard. He skipped across the ocean surface like a thrown stone, tearing up massive sprays of saltwater before slamming into a white-sand beach. Tumbling end over end, he finally jammed his boots and his free hand deep into the sand, dragging himself to a painful halt.
"Dammit," he coughed, spitting out a mix of seawater and sand.
He forced his head up. Above him, the jagged crack in the sky was already sealing itself shut.
But a split-second before the dark slit vanished, a figure stepped through.
The man landed softly on the shifting water. A tight white shirt clung to his heavily muscled frame, his dark baggy pants rippling in the artificial sea breeze. A jagged scar marked the corner of his mouth.
Toji Fushiguro.