Two nights after the juvenile detention center incident. A mountain road, somewhere out of the city.
"Sorry, you can drop me off here."
In the back seat, Satoru Gojo tilted his head to one side and smiled at Ijichi up front.
Ijichi blinked. He glanced out the window — and looked mildly bewildered.
This was... the middle of nowhere. A mountain road, deep night, rows of trees pressing in from both sides, and the nearest village still a distant cluster of lights. Why would anyone want to be dropped off here?
"Sensei..." Ijichi hesitated. "Do you need to... use the facilities? I mean, it's the mountains, but urinating outdoors is technically..."
Gojo's eyebrow twitched. "...No."
"Then... is it...?"
The other kind?
Gojo flashed his trademark confident smile. "A friend's coming to meet me. I'll wait here — go on ahead."
Ijichi: ???
Who arranges to meet a friend at a spot like this? Is this friend even a real friend?
"...All right," Ijichi said, asking no further questions. He pulled over. "Gojo-sensei... please be careful. You and your friend. Both of you."
"Ha, relax — you know who you're talking to. I'll be perfectly fine." Gojo climbed out, still grinning. "See you. Tell Yaga I'll be there shortly."
Shortly...?
Ijichi thought better of asking. He drove away.
The taillights blinked twice in the dark, then receded down the winding road and vanished around a bend.
Silence settled over everything.
Gojo tucked his hands in his pockets, adjusted the blindfold over his eyes, and strolled to the edge of the road.
In the distance, at the foot of the mountain, scattered lights pricked through the dark — the dim outline of some village.
The night wind moved through the trees. For no particular reason, the man began to smile again.
"You know," he said — speaking to the wind, to no one, to empty air — "not long ago, three of my students ran into some serious trouble. If a certain peculiar cursed spirit hadn't decided to stick its nose in, there's a real chance at least one of them wouldn't be alive right now."
No one answered him.
The mountain wind gave him only silence.
He didn't seem to mind. He kept talking.
"The reason it happened in the first place — the higher-ups assigned them to a deliberately dangerous location. The goal was to get one specific student killed. And the truth is, they've done things like this before. Many times. This was the worst of it, but this rot has been there for a long, long time."
"I really do despise them. I genuinely do."
"Rigid. Selfish. Incapable of seeing past their own noses. They've even reached their hands toward what's mine. Sometimes I think — why not just flip the whole board? Tear this rotting world down and rebuild it from scratch. Honestly... but I always end up pulling back."
He glanced down at the road beneath his feet.
"Because... destruction doesn't actually change anything."
"Think of it this way — if something's rotting, and it's only the leaves, you prune the leaves and move on. But if the rot has reached the roots, pulling them out brings the whole tree down, and everyone sheltered beneath it suffers, and the wind and dust come sweeping in. So the best solution isn't to tear out the roots. It's to cultivate new growth."
He paused for a moment, then lifted his head again.
"So for now — I haven't made a real move yet."
The words dissolved into the night wind.
"That said..." His tone shifted — lighter, lazily curious. "In the course of my investigation, I found something rather interesting. That Special Grade Cursed Spirit — there was one of Sukuna's fingers inside its body. That's not normal, is it? Someone clearly used that finger to cultivate the thing deliberately, and then arranged for it to end up inside that detention center."
He tilted his head to one side.
The blindfold covered his eyes — but something in the angle of that tilt made it feel as though his gaze had passed straight through the fabric, landing precisely on a particular spot of darkness that he had already known was occupied.
"So then — my friend who's been following me all this way—" the corner of his mouth curved upward — "do you happen to know who did it?"
Tap.
Footsteps.
From the darkness on the far side of the road, a figure in a hooded sweatshirt stepped slowly into view — unhurried, steady, footsteps ringing clear and crisp on the empty mountain road.
"No," the figure said. The voice was clear and bright, almost musical. "But Satoru Gojo — I know that you're going to die."
The night wind caught the hood and pulled it back.
Short hair. White. Eyes the color of fresh blood — deep crimson. Fine, sharp features. The girl was tall and slender, the hood falling away to reveal over-ear headphones resting against her hair, one hand tucked in her pocket, slim jeans fitted just right — the whole look carried that effortlessly cool, androgynous energy.
Beautiful, yes — but "beautiful" wasn't quite the right word. Striking was closer. Cool. The kind of face you'd expect to see walking out of an after-school band rehearsal with a guitar case slung over one shoulder.
But she wasn't that.
Because those red eyes — right now, settled in them, still and undisguised, was killing intent. Dense, calm, and making no effort whatsoever to hide itself.
Gojo blinked.
"A girl?"
The presence he'd sensed earlier had been distinctly that of a cursed spirit — or perhaps a cursed user — something that read as profoundly not human. But the one who'd stepped out in response was a girl who looked perfectly harmless, even somewhat striking...
The Cursed Energy signature even read as roughly human...
Hm...
No. Not human. Not really.
Half, at most. Half human, half cursed spirit.
"You're..." He rubbed his chin, his interest quietly igniting. "What's your name? What are you here for?"
The girl stopped walking, standing several meters away from him.
"For a man about to die," she said — her voice completely flat, stripped of any particular feeling — "whether I tell you my name is of no real consequence. However..."
She raised one hand slightly, palm opening toward him.
"As a gesture of respect for the strong — my name. You may call me Jogo."
BOOM——!!
Fire erupted from her palm.
Gold-red, enormous, all-consuming — a conflagration of Cursed Energy that blazed outward in a fan-shaped detonation, swallowing half the sky in an instant. The mountain road, the trees, the roadside brush — all of it was engulfed in a wall of roaring flame. Branches withered and curled in the heat before they could even catch fire. The asphalt began to melt. Scalding waves of air drove the night wind back from every direction.
The fire looked capable of dissolving the world itself.
......
"Come on, come on — you said you'd teach me Barrier Techniques, when does class actually start?" Back at the base, Mahiko trailed behind Kenjaku with both hands on her hips, voice full of impatience. "I've been busy for two straight days. You, meanwhile, have been sunbathing for two straight days. Must be nice."
"Don't worry, I haven't forgotten," Kenjaku said without turning around, flipping through something in his hands. "It's my first time being a teacher — I need a little time to prepare the curriculum."
"Tch, you're such a pretentious..." Mahiko squinted. "Why have you pulled out an office lady outfit — what are you doing with that —"
"But — haha — speaking of interesting things," Kenjaku continued, ignoring Mahiko's visible distress, fiddling with whatever he was holding, voice dropping into a quiet, amused murmur. "You... actually remodeled Jogo's body into that."
What did "that" mean, exactly?
It looked perfectly good, in her professional opinion.
Mahiko shrugged. "What about it? His original form bothered me aesthetically. I made some adjustments. It's not like he complained."
"Jogo does genuinely have no attachment to his own appearance," Kenjaku said, and the tone carried something that was hard to classify — somewhere between fond amusement and quiet wonder. "And I'm already very pleased that you were willing to help him at all. The enhancements you made were clever and practical — I believe Jogo will be considerably stronger because of them."
He paused, then tilted his head.
"I am curious about one thing, though — you appear to have incorporated human flesh into his body, shifting him into a half-cursed-spirit, half-human state. What was the reason for that?"
Mahiko pursed her lips and waved a hand airily. "It just ended up that way. Suits my personal taste, doesn't it?"
"No — what I mean is, Jogo's body is now in a state that can be perceived by ordinary humans." Kenjaku shook his head. "Normally, cursed spirits are invisible to non-sorcerers. But as Jogo is now, regular people can see him. Why?"
Mahiko raised an eyebrow. "Want to know?"
"Very much."
Mahiko held up one finger. "The pre-battle prep I put together for Jogo this time came in two parts. First — I used my technique to physically reinforce his body. Second..."
Second...
Hmhm...
She let the pause hang, a small curve pulling at the corner of her mouth.
"The necklace — do you remember the necklace I gave him? That was a dedicated life-saving device I made specifically for him."
"Yes, I saw the necklace," Kenjaku said, nodding slowly. "That's the life-saving device?"
"That's it." Mahiko let out a small, satisfied laugh. "Let me tell you — I spent a good chunk of yesterday crafting that thing. It's a serious piece of work. Quite impressive, if I do say so myself. But for it to function properly, Jogo's body had to become visible to ordinary humans — which is why I altered his physical form."
Kenjaku slowly set down what he'd been holding and tilted his head.
He knew about the necklace. He'd watched with his own eyes as Mahiko had tinkered with it in her room for a long stretch of time.
That necklace was now hanging around Jogo's neck — and from the outside, it looked like nothing more than an ordinary piece of street-stall jewelry.
"You make me more and more curious," Kenjaku said, smiling. "What is that necklace, exactly? Will you tell me?"
Mahiko laughed out loud.
"You already know perfectly well what's in it. You're asking anyway because you just want to hear me say it out loud. I'm not telling you."
____
👻🔥Here: Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: Group chat of the Dead
✅ Gain early access to 40 chapters for all stories.
✅ Enjoy exclusive content and special announcements.
We have set new community milestones:
🎯 100 Powerstones = +1 Bonus Chapter for all readers
🚀 140 MEMBERS = +5 additional chapters for all series!
👻 P - Walnut-chan