The little girl forced her head up. Blood at the corner of her mouth had washed away some of the grime on her face.
Pain and struggle filled those crimson eyes, and beneath both of them, something stubborn that wanted to live.
She looked up at Satoru Gojo and said nothing. No thanks, no words at all.
Not because she didn't want to. She hurt too much to speak.
A girl barely ten years old, beaten for that long by two grown men with training behind their fists. A normal person would already be dead, organs ruptured somewhere inside.
Only a Cursed Child could take that much and still be breathing, their vitality and healing far past anything human.
Gojo studied the small dirt-streaked face, the blood drying at her lip.
He didn't flinch from the filth on her. He reached out, calm, and rested his hand lightly on her forehead.
Warmth spread from his palm. Faint at first, like something imagined, and the pain began to ebb.
She thought she was inventing it. Then it became undeniable.
Heat flooded through her, sudden and total, and her broken body knitted itself back together in the space of a blink. Every ache gone.
She sat up, bracing against the concrete, staring at her own hands. One went to her stomach and pressed.
"It's... better?"
"It doesn't hurt?"
"Your injuries are healed."
Gojo's voice stayed gentle. He ruffled her hair.
"Th... thank you."
Enju Aihara rushed forward, dropping to her knees in front of the girl. "Are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere?"
In her panic she'd forgotten entirely about the impossible thing Gojo had just done.
The girl looked at her, and her eyes went red.
She knew this face. They'd lived in the 39th Area together, once.
When she'd cried out for help earlier, it had been the last desperate try of someone who already knew how it ended. That she'd actually been saved never entered her mind.
Her throat closed. She threw her arms around Enju and sobbed.
"I thought... I thought I was going to die."
"Thank you. Thank you both."
Enju's own tears came. She couldn't help it.
The world's hatred of Cursed Children ran that deep. Knowing it changed nothing. There was no lever to pull, no way to fix it. All they could do was endure.
While the two girls wept, Gojo rose and walked toward the two shapes on the floor.
The police officers lay motionless, alive or dead unclear, neither reacting to his approach.
He stopped over them and looked down.
Hard to picture. Men sworn to keep order, emptying their cruelty into a child.
And from the way they'd talked, this hadn't been the first time. If he hadn't shown up, they had worse planned for tomorrow.
Garbage.
Gojo had spent enough time around Cursed Spirits to consider himself acquainted with human ugliness. Cursed Spirits were that ugliness given shape.
But looking at these two, he found them more repulsive than any Cursed Spirit he'd exorcised.
A Cursed Spirit kills because that's what it is. Instinct. Born into it.
These men killed to feel something. They'd made cruelty a hobby.
"You hate them." Betty stood at his shoulder, voice level.
She'd stayed beside him through all of it, before and now.
"Coming from you, that's like asking whether I hate Cursed Spirits."
"I'd say you like Cursed Spirits considerably more than this."
"You're not wrong."
He pulled off his sunglasses, revealing eyes the color of ice under water.
"Thinking about it, Cursed Spirits can be almost endearing. They kill on instinct. Simple motives. Plenty of them spend most of their existence sitting quietly in some dark corner, bothering nobody."
Nothing in his tone rose or fell. But Betty had known him long enough to feel the anger packed down beneath it.
"Compared to these two? Much more endearing."
"Understood." She nodded once and started toward the bodies.
She had no appetite for killing. Kindness came naturally to her. For these two, though, she'd handle it gladly if it spared him the trouble.
A hand caught her wrist before she took a second step.
"I'll do it," Gojo said. "I don't enjoy dealing with the weak. But I don't dislike it enough to run from it."
Betty glanced back at him, then smiled and stayed put.
He raised a hand. An invisible force closed around both men.
The unconscious officers drifted up off the concrete, weightless, like a scene shot for a haunting.
Except there were no ghosts here. Only the man holding the power.
"Remarkable," Sumire Muroto said, coming up beside him. "I assumed what you had was something like a Repulsion Shield. Clearly I was wrong."
No protest from her. No plea. Only appetite, plain in her voice.
"Ms. Muroto, I did tell you that becoming my personal consultant was your good fortune."
As he spoke, one of the floating bodies reached the ceiling, hung there a heartbeat, then slammed downward.
Crack.
Bone shattering, sharp and unmistakable, under a heavy wet thud that rolled through the gutted building.
"Wait!"
Rentaro Satomi's voice, too late.
Nothing about the officer's fate bent to it. Death had already been decided.
Flesh against reinforced concrete. Every bone in his body went at once, and what happened to the organs underneath didn't need describing.
He woke from unconsciousness into it, eyes flying wide, a spray of dark blood and tissue leaving his mouth. Two twitches. Then stillness.
Rentaro stood frozen, watching a man die three meters in front of him.
He hadn't believed Gojo would actually do it. Not to a police officer.
"Something you needed, Rentaro?" Gojo didn't turn around.
"Gojo, what are you doing? They're police. You can't just kill them."
"So if they weren't police, it would be fine?"
"No. That's not what I said."
Rentaro closed the distance in three strides and locked eyes with him. "Assaulting an officer is illegal. Killing one is beyond that. You're committing a crime."
Gojo turned his head. Something unreadable moved behind the pale blue.
"So they did nothing wrong?" He gestured toward the girl still clinging to Enju, both of them crying.
"They did. There's no law that lets police slaughter Cursed Children for sport. But if they broke the law, the law should punish them. Not you, deciding on your own. That makes you no different from them."
The words landed in a building that had gone silent. Even the two girls had swallowed their sobs and turned to look.
"Ha." Gojo laughed, soft and short. "Rentaro. What do you think the law actually is?"
"Order. The foundation everything stable is built on." No hesitation. "If everyone acted like this, the city would collapse even without Gastrea. And with Gastrea out there, we can afford it even less..."
He kept going, earnest, that small flashlight beam nothing next to whatever was burning in him.
Gojo pulled out his phone and dialed.
"Moshi moshi. Good evening, Mr. Gojo."
The call connected fast. A warm voice cut Rentaro off mid-sentence.
"Seitenshi. I have a question for you."
The name dropped into the room and silence swallowed everything again.
"Please, go ahead." At her desk, the Seitenshi straightened, attentive.
"Cursed Children who haven't broken any law hold the same rights and duties as any other citizen. Correct?"
"Yes." She had no idea where this was headed, but answered at once.
"Suppose I came across two men beating a Cursed Child, clearly intending to kill her. I intervene. They ignore me and open fire on me instead. If I fight back, that's self-defense?"
Her expression went blank. What is he...
She hesitated, then spoke carefully. "Under current law, yes. That would qualify as self-defense."
"And if I killed them?"
"Also, yes."
The words had barely left her when a muffled impact came down the line.
"Mr. Gojo? Is something happening there? If you're in any trouble at all, please tell me, I..."
"In that case, I won't hold back."
"Abandoned building, West Sanchome. Third floor. I've just killed two officers in self-defense. Send someone to clean it up." A pause. "One more thing. They radioed for backup. I imagine you'd rather avoid any unfortunate misunderstandings."
Her mind went white.
Then it clicked, everything he'd asked falling into shape.
It had actually happened. And the aggressors were the men paid to keep the city in order.
She had always paid attention to the Cursed Children. She knew exactly how much this city loathed them.
She hadn't known the loathing reached into her own government. Or that it no longer bothered to hide.
"I understand." Her voice dropped several degrees. "I'll handle this personally, and I'll give you an answer you're satisfied with."
"Oh, one more thing. Have I broken any laws here? I'm a very law-abiding person, after all."
"No. Not even the most senior attorney could raise a question about your conduct. You have my word."
The call ended there.
Gojo lowered the phone and gave Rentaro, silent now, a small shake of his head.
"Rentaro. If the things you care about actually worked, this wouldn't have happened."
"You're right that order matters. That law matters. I'm not arguing."
"But what does that have to do with me?"
"That kind of righteousness doesn't accomplish anything. It only makes people sick."
He said it smiling.
Righteous arguments had always struck him as nonsense. Laughable. He didn't act because principle told him to. He acted because something in him wanted to.
Saving this girl. Removing those two.
So there was nothing in Rentaro's position he felt any need to concede. Not even to Suguru Geto, his closest friend, had he ever given ground on this.
"Anyway. I don't think there's much left to discuss, is there? If you believe I've done something wrong, then next time this happens, feel free to get there before I do."
"With your strength, you should manage."