Things went almost exactly the way Touma expected.
Almost.
The only difference was small enough to be funny.
He had figured Mei Mei would handle the matter herself. She was practical, greedy in the cleanest possible way, and she knew how to squeeze value out of every job. In Touma's head, she would spar with him directly and use that as a loophole around New Shadow Style's annoying secrecy rules.
Technically, she would not be teaching him. She would just be fighting him.
Very different. Very legal. Very Mei Mei.
What Touma had failed to account for was that Mei Mei's capitalist instincts were even sharper than that.
She took Touma's payment, sliced off a very comfortable "brokerage fee" for herself, and used the rest to hire a still-young Atsuya Kusakabe as his dedicated sparring partner.
Honestly, the logic was flawless.
Touma had paid her to let him experience New Shadow Style. Mei Mei had not taught him a single secret. She had merely introduced him to someone who happened to fight with New Shadow Style. Kusakabe, as a hired sparring partner, had every right to use his techniques while attacking and defending. If Touma got hit enough times and somehow observed his way into learning something, well, that was Touma's business.
No rule broken. No penalty triggered.
And Mei Mei still got paid.
The funniest part was that even Mei Mei, sharp as she was, had no idea that her clever little arrangement fit right into a much larger plan.
Touma had lied to her about Phantom Night Parade.
His Innate Technique could replicate New Shadow Style directly. New Shadow Style was not beyond him. In the simulation timeline, he had already spent years fighting beside Kusakabe. He had seen the style, studied it, and copied it.
The difference was in the mechanics.
Innate Techniques like Limitless or Ten Shadows were carved into a sorcerer from birth. Their cursed energy carried that information naturally, like a fingerprint. As long as Touma analyzed the residual traces, he could pull the data out.
New Shadow Style was different. It was a learned technique, not something born in the body. Its full structure only appeared when the user actively performed it, when cursed energy flowed through the exact circuits needed for the form.
Touma could copy it.
He just did not want to waste a Phantom Night Parade slot on it.
Those slots were limited. Every one of them was a strategic asset, not something he could casually spend because he felt like practicing sword draws. New Shadow Style was useful, especially as a countermeasure against Domain Expansion, but that was all it was. A countermeasure.
It would not be enough to beat the stitched man who would one day steal Geto's body and walk around with a nightmare cabinet of Cursed Spirits and stolen techniques.
New Shadow Style could be part of the answer.
It could not be the whole answer.
There was also another issue, one Touma cared about just as much.
Plausibility.
The surface-level rules of Phantom Night Parade had been public for a long time. Analyze first, replicate second. Everyone knew that much. Which meant Touma could not just walk around using techniques he had no business knowing in this timeline. If he displayed something too early, or too cleanly, people would start asking questions.
Some obscure Curse User's technique from the simulation? Easy enough to cover. "I picked it up from a wild Cursed Spirit on a mission." Vague, annoying, hard to disprove. Even Gojo's Six Eyes could not call him a liar if Gojo had never seen the original user.
But New Shadow Style was not obscure.
It was known. Too many people in the jujutsu world had seen it before.
If Touma suddenly started practicing flawless sword draws in the workshop with no teacher, no sparring partner, and no record of exposure, it would look bad. Very bad. The kind of bad that made adults stop smiling.
He needed a legal origin point.
A name on paper.
A training partner.
Once he had that, he could train openly on the practice grounds. After that, he could quietly stack his absurd passive skills, Tryhard included, and shove his proficiency to the ceiling before anyone had time to question the pace.
Also, this was reality. Not the Simulator.
No resets. No retries. No convenient restart after wasting a month.
If money could save him time, he would spend it. Simple as that.
Mei Mei, to her credit, worked fast.
One day.
That was all it took for Kusakabe to be standing outside the gates of Tokyo Jujutsu High the next morning.
When Touma walked out to the old torii gate and saw him for the first time in this timeline, his steps slowed for half a beat.
Kusakabe was younger. His face had not settled into that tired adult roughness yet, and his hair was still thicker. But the rest of him was exactly the same.
Especially the posture.
Hands buried in the pockets of his trench coat. Shoulders hanging like the world had personally offended him. The whole man gave off the same energy as always.
God, this is a pain. Can I clock out yet?
Perfect match.
Kusakabe noticed the dark-haired kid staring at him like he had just seen a ghost and frowned. He rubbed at his stubbly chin.
Did I forget to shave? Is that why this brat keeps looking at me?
The silence stretched a little too long. Kusakabe's discomfort climbed right along with it.
He cleared his throat.
"So... you're the weird kid Ms. Mei Mei mentioned? The rich one who's apparently paying to get beaten up by New Shadow Style?"
Touma pulled himself back together. A mild smile settled on his face.
"That's me. I'll be in your care for the foreseeable future, Mr. Atsuya Kusakabe. Please, follow me."
The fact that Touma used his full name did not bother Kusakabe. He assumed Mei Mei had handed over his whole background before closing the deal.
Which was fair. She absolutely seemed like the type.
Kusakabe, a man who avoided trouble the way normal people avoided fires, was never going to land on the real explanation.
So he yawned, followed Touma inside, and the two of them headed toward the open-air training grounds.
Unfortunately, they did not make it there cleanly.
On the way through the corridor, they ran straight into Yaga, Gojo, and Geto. The three of them had been talking about something, but all conversation died the moment they saw Touma walking with an unfamiliar man in a trench coat.
Touma gave them the short version.
He had paid Mei Mei. Mei Mei had hired Kusakabe. Kusakabe was here as a New Shadow Style sparring partner.
The hallway turned weird.
Gojo pushed his round sunglasses halfway down his nose.
His blue eyes widened. His jaw dropped. His whole face twisted into one giant, wordless question.
Since when does Touma Hayase need someone to teach him anything?
Geto and Yaga handled it better.
Geto tucked his hands into his sleeves. Surprise flickered through his eyes, but only for a second. As someone whose life goal basically involved eating and cataloguing thousands of unique Cursed Spirits, he understood Touma's motivation almost immediately.
He understood it on a spiritual level, actually.
I don't need this right now, but it's rare, so into the collection it goes.
A small smile crossed Geto's face.
One obsessive collector recognizing another.
Yaga, meanwhile, felt the deep crease in his brow relax for what might have been the first time in weeks.
Touma choosing to spend his energy learning a defensive skill was fine. More than fine. It was much better than the boy locking himself in that dim workshop day after day, trying to carry a burden no teenager should have been forced to touch.
Yaga had watched Touma long enough to understand it.
The boy was living under what Yaga could only call the curse of saving everything.
And no, forcing a kid to rescue the world, erase every regret, and somehow stay emotionally healthy at the same time did not sound like a path to happiness.
So this was good.
A new focus. A safer one.
Yaga would take that win.
While Geto and Yaga were quietly processing the situation in their own ways...
"Hah...?!"
Gojo's mouth fell open so wide it looked fake.
He stabbed one long finger at Kusakabe, who looked more confused by the second, then whipped it back toward Touma. His face twisted with pure suffering. Not normal suffering either. This was deep, personal, melodramatic suffering.
The face of a man who had just realized he threw away a winning lottery ticket.
"...?"
Touma stared at him.
"...?"
Kusakabe stared too.
Neither of them had the slightest idea what was happening inside the head of this white-haired disaster, though Kusakabe had at least heard the rumors.
Everyone had heard the rumors.
Ever since Gojo mastered Hollow Technique: Purple, his reputation had taken a sharp turn into public menace territory. He had been firing that thing often enough that everyone at Tokyo Jujutsu High, Assistant Managers included, now lived with a quiet background terror.
The only saving grace was that Gojo himself had started getting bored.
After all, nobody could take the hit. Once people saw Purple's power, the reactions stopped being fun. Every victim gave him the same dead-eyed stare afterward, the look of someone who had accepted that life was suffering and Gojo Satoru was its delivery method.
That got old, apparently.
But Gojo's current shock had nothing to do with New Shadow Style itself.
It was Touma.
Touma had voluntarily lowered his head and asked someone else for instruction.
For New Shadow Style, of all things.
The Gojo Clan elders had made Satoru study it once when he was younger. Back then, Gojo had been soaked head to toe in the absolute confidence of Limitless. To him, New Shadow Style was a survival tool for weaklings, the sort of thing someone needed only if they planned on getting hit.
He had gone through the motions.
Half-learned the forms.
Barely bothered with Simple Domain.
Then he quit.
And now...
Now the full weight of his mistake hit him like a truck.
He could have been Touma's teacher.
He could have stood above him with perfect legitimacy. He could have made Touma bow his head, use polite language, and call him Master Gojo.
The ultimate power move.
Gone.
Wasted.
Thrown away because younger Satoru had decided homework was beneath him.
Grief washed over Gojo's perfect face. It was so dramatic, so completely overblown, that he looked like a man mourning a hundred million yen.
"...?"
Geto noticed first.
His narrow eyes filled with open disgust.
What the hell is wrong with you now?
"...!"
Yaga inhaled sharply.
Years of cleaning up after Gojo's nonsense had trained his instincts too well. Every alarm in his body went off at once. Somewhere behind those round sunglasses, a bad idea was forming.
Yaga tensed, ready to stop the problem before it became a problem.
Too late.
Gojo converted heartbreak into action in less than a second.
His new resolution was clear and stupid and completely unshakable.
He would not let some random guy Mei Mei dug up steal his rightful chance to one-up Touma by acting like a teacher.
Gojo moved.
One moment he was with the group. The next, he was right in front of Touma, close enough to be a personal space violation.
He spun around and clamped both hands onto Touma's shoulders with a loud clap.
Hard.
Too hard.
Touma's shoulders immediately started complaining.
Gojo leaned in until his sunglasses were almost touching Touma's forehead. His face was grave. Dead serious. The kind of expression a person used when announcing the end of the world.
"Touma! If you're willing to learn something as dusty as that... then you'd be interested in other techniques too, right?!"
Touma stared at him.
His shoulders were going numb. His brain, meanwhile, was still trying to catch up with whatever insane road Gojo's thoughts had taken to reach this point.
He blinked once.
Under Gojo's stare, Touma finally managed an answer.
"Uh... probably... yes?"
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