Two days later, Mahiko set out with Kenjaku.
She'd spent those two days wrestling with the decision. In the end, she went anyway.
The reasoning was simple: Kenjaku couldn't make a move against her. Not now.
She was Mahito. An indispensable piece in his plan. And she hadn't fully grown yet — she was still a green, unripened fruit. Kenjaku needed her to mature, to grow stronger, to play her role when the critical moment came. Until then, he had no reason to pluck her from the vine.
So she was safe.
At least for now.
...
Besides — she genuinely was curious about where he was taking her.
...............
Kenjaku took her to Kyoto.
A large reservoir on the outskirts of the city. Below the dam.
Mahiko followed Kenjaku through the dam's maintenance corridor, walking for a long time, until they stopped in front of a heavy metal door. Dense jujutsu sigils were carved across its surface, and the barrier layered over it was thick as a physical wall.
Kenjaku knocked. They waited. The door opened.
Inside was an enormous metal vault — roughly the size of two basketball courts, with a high ceiling and walls, floor, and ceiling all composed of cold, flat metal panels. It was almost entirely bare. Vast and empty.
Almost.
At the dead center of the vault stood a bathtub.
It was filled with some unidentified liquid that shimmered with a dark, dull luster. A mass of pipes descended from the ceiling and connected to the tub, like a life-support system. And at the center of the tub — there was a person.
A person wrapped from head to toe in ribbon-like bandages covered in glowing sigils, submerged in that unknown liquid. The runes on the bandages pulsed with a faint light, as if maintaining some fragile and precarious balance. The half of a face visible above the surface bore skin so ruined it looked like the aftermath of severe burns.
Mahiko drew a sharp breath — inwardly.
That's… rough.
That is genuinely, deeply rough.
She'd already worked out where this was. She already knew who was in that tub.
——Mechamaru.
Kenjaku had brought her here, and the figure before her was Mechamaru — a student at the Kyoto Sister School of Jujutsu High, a traitor to the jujutsu world in the original story, secretly cooperating with Kenjaku behind the scenes.
"Have you given any more thought to the arrangement I proposed?" Kenjaku's voice carried easily through the vault, his tone unhurried.
The bandaged figure spoke as well, voice cold and edged with hostility: "Thought about it? What is there to think about? You haven't delivered on what you promised me. You said you could treat my Heavenly Restriction. You've given me zero proof of that."
Kenjaku smiled faintly, turned, and stepped to one side — presenting Mahiko.
"Which is exactly why I brought her today. This is the… person who can treat you."
Mechamaru's gaze settled on Mahiko.
Mahiko looked back at him.
Mechamaru. Real name: Kokichi Muta. A student at the Kyoto Sister School affiliated with Jujutsu High. A Semi-Grade 1 sorcerer on paper — but in reality, his power far exceeded that classification. Any way you looked at it, the man was formidable.
He also carried one of the cruelest conditions in the entire jujutsu world: the Heavenly Restriction.
The Heavenly Restriction… how to explain it. It was something like an innate gift and something like an innate curse at the same time — an equivalent exchange carved into the very depths of the soul, present from the moment of birth.
Those who bore a Heavenly Restriction gained extraordinary power in one domain — and were forced to pay an equal or greater price in another.
Mechamaru's Heavenly Restriction granted him a Jujutsu Technique with a range of operation so terrifying it was almost inconceivable. In theory, it could cover the entire Japanese archipelago. He could operate mechanical puppets from thousands of kilometers away, fighting through them as if they were his own body.
The price: his physical body was, for all practical purposes, destroyed.
His lower body was almost entirely paralyzed. His skin was so fragile that even moonlight could burn him. He had spent his entire life lying in this lightless vault, living through remote-controlled puppets — attending school, interacting with the world, fighting — all through surrogates. He had never seen sunlight with his own eyes. Had never walked on his own legs. Had never touched another person with his own hands.
And the reason the original story's Mechamaru had betrayed the jujutsu sorcerers and sold information to Kenjaku was precisely this: *Idle Transfiguration* was the only technique in the world capable of undoing a Heavenly Restriction.
He wanted his body back, more than anything.
Desperately enough to take a suicidal gamble.
A tragic character. Pitiable and infuriating in equal measure.
And yes — his body could only be healed by Mahiko's Technique.
Because the Heavenly Restriction was, at its core, a soul-level "contract" — written into his genes. Medicine couldn't touch it. Reverse Cursed Technique couldn't touch it. The only method was to directly rewrite the soul itself — which happened to be the central function of her Technique.
She was the only person in the world who could heal him.
Mahiko felt something stir in her chest. A flicker of genuine feeling.
You know, she thought, when you really sit down and think about it — without Mahito, half the pivotal plot points in Jujutsu Kaisen would simply fall apart. Recruiting a mole? That's on her. The Shibuya Incident's entire setup? Her. Mahito's Technique is load-bearing infrastructure for the whole story.
And yet she ends up the most wrecked of them all.
Unbelievable.
"A cursed spirit." Mechamaru stared at Mahiko, his brow creasing. He seemed to be struggling with why a cursed spirit could possibly treat his condition.
Mahiko hopped down the steps and bounced over to Mechamaru's tub with a light, easy gait. She loomed over the edge and looked down at him, tilting her head with a playful raise of her eyebrow.
Rough.
Really rough.
Even rougher up close.
This man's body barely looked human anymore.
"My, my." Mahiko cocked her head to one side, grinning. "You look like a mummy."
Mechamaru's frown deepened. "…You can actually treat me?"
"Mm-hm." Mahiko extended one finger and waggled it in front of his face. "Let me see just how bad the damage is."
"Don't touch me."
"Don't be ridiculous — how am I supposed to treat you without touching you? Be good and hold still for big sis."
Counting her previous life, she really was older. No inaccuracy there.
Mahiko reached out and gave Mechamaru's left pinky finger a gentle poke.
*Idle Transfiguration* — activate.
Her perception sank into Mechamaru's soul.
Hmm…
Somewhat complex. But not unmanageable.
Mahiko focused, starting from the smallest possible area. She touched only the sliver of soul corresponding to his left pinky finger — and gently smoothed away one small "anomaly," restoring that fragment of soul to its natural state. Healthy.
Mechamaru's left pinky gave the faintest tremor.
His eyes went wide.
The change to the finger was small — but unmistakable.
The skin had healed. Pale and clean, entirely unlike the ruined flesh around it. Viewed from a distance, that one intact, healthy little finger looked like a piece of white jade set into dead wood.
It actually worked?!
Mechamaru's pupils contracted sharply.
He stared at his own left pinky — watched it flex and extend, flex and extend, flex and extend — the first time in his life that finger had ever felt strength. The first time he had ever understood what the word "healthy" actually meant in his own body.
Even something this small.
"…It actually works."
His voice wavered, just slightly.
"Of course it does." Mahiko smiled with satisfaction — then released her hold.
"However—"
She tapped the pinky again, lightly.
Mechamaru's pinky reverted instantly, back to exactly as it had been before.
"That was just a sample." Mahiko stepped back and looked at him with a cheerful grin. "Can't let you have it for free, can I? Full treatment comes after the deal is concluded."
Mechamaru fixed her with an intense, unreadable stare. His expression was layered — resentment there, unmistakably — but beneath it all, buried at the very bottom, a single thread of hope he couldn't quite suppress.
"Don't worry," Mahiko said, dusting off hands that had nothing on them. "A defective little monkey body like yours is nothing I can't handle."
Mechamaru's reply was cold and flat: "Between a filthy cursed spirit and a monkey, I'd sooner be the monkey."
Mahiko burst out laughing, then bounced back to Kenjaku's side.
Kenjaku stepped forward, his gaze settling on Mechamaru.
"You've seen what we're capable of. We can fulfill our promise — a complete removal of your Heavenly Restriction."
Mechamaru said nothing.
"In exchange, you will act as our informant within the jujutsu sorcerer camp. You will provide us with the intelligence and cooperation we require as our plan unfolds. Once it is complete, we will heal your body in full. After that, we go our separate ways and neither party interferes with the other."
Silence settled over the vault for a long time.
"…Deal."
Mechamaru's voice was quiet.
...............
The footsteps faded.
Kenjaku and the bouncing blue-haired girl left the vault. The heavy metal door swung shut behind them, and the deep, resonant clang of metal on metal echoed down the corridor for a long time.
Mechamaru lay in the tub, staring up at the web of pipes crossing the ceiling overhead.
Heh.
Go their separate ways. Neither side interferes.
He wasn't an idiot.
He would never trust those two.
The man wearing Suguru Geto's face was a cunning, razor-sharp old fox. The blue-haired cursed spirit was no innocent either. They were dealing with him not out of goodwill, but because they needed him as a piece on their board. The day his usefulness ran dry, those two would turn on him without a second thought and have him killed.
That was simply true. Yes, they had formed a non-aggression pact — but the pact only held until the treatment was complete. The moment the pact ended was the moment the real battle began.
Mechamaru understood this perfectly.
But wasn't he using them just as thoroughly?
He would pretend to trust them. Pretend to be willing to hand over intelligence. Pretend to be their obedient mole. But his real plan was this: at the final stage of the deal — the very moment his body was healed — he would use the Cursed Energy range granted to him by his Heavenly Restriction, a range that spanned the entire Japanese archipelago, to contact Satoru Gojo directly.
The moment Gojo knew their location and came, it would all be over.
The strongest jujutsu sorcerer would arrive in an instant and crush them both to nothing.
So this was a transaction, yes. But it was also a game.
After the betrayal was out in the open — who would win? Would they drain him dry and silence him first? Or would he manage to hold on long enough for Satoru Gojo to arrive? Or would he, relying solely on himself, turn the tables and take them down alone?
Yes. This gambit carried enormous risk. A near-suicidal level of risk.
He didn't care.
I will definitely…
If he couldn't break free of the Heavenly Restriction's curse, he could never stand at her side as a normal person.
I will definitely——!
If he could never stand with her in the sunlight for as long as he lived, then he would rather stake everything on a single throw.
Even a near-suicidal gamble. He would play it.
Mechamaru closed his eyes. Breathed deeply. Let himself grow still.
Then he did what he did after every meeting with them: he checked the room.
He released an extremely faint thread of Cursed Energy — like a radar — and swept it across every corner of the vault, every crack, every panel of the wall. He was searching for any surveillance-type cursed spirit Kenjaku might have left behind.
He knew how cunning they were. When doing business with something that had lived a thousand years, every single step had to be taken with extreme care.
Scan complete.
None this time.
Last time they had placed one, but he'd found it. This time, they hadn't left a surveillance unit inside — perhaps they'd positioned one outside instead. It didn't matter.
Mechamaru let out a small, quiet breath of relief.
Then——
"Hm?"
Something was wrong.
His left hand.
The pinky.
The pinky that had been treated and then reverted — was moving.
Not because he was moving it. It was moving on its own.
Mechamaru snapped his gaze down to his left hand.
His left pinky was contorting in a manner that defied comprehension. The skin at the fingertip seemed to melt, reshaping itself. And then — something grew from the tip of the finger.
A tiny figure. The size of a palm. Cartoonish. Blue hair.
The little figure stood on his fingertip, gave itself a shake, lifted its head, and beamed a radiant smile straight up at Mechamaru's face — then waved.
"Well, hello there, Mummy Boy! We meet again!"
Mechamaru's brain went completely blank.
For one moment, a thousand thoughts collided in his mind — and then they all converged into a single one.
"What did you leave on me?!" He let out a furious shout. "Cursed spirit——!!"
____
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