Nanami stopped Junpei.
Technically speaking, a Jujutsu sorcerer is born one — it's simply in their nature. But there are exceptions: people who never realize their talent in childhood, only to stumble into their Cursed Energy by accident as adults. From the outside, this looks no different from a sudden awakening. Left unsupervised, such individuals become a major destabilizing force for ordinary society and the Jujutsu world alike.
So, out of a sense of duty as a fellow sorcerer, Nanami had no choice but to question Junpei thoroughly.
"What do you want to ask?" Junpei said, a touch wary, taking half a step back.
Nanami didn't answer directly. He just jerked his thumb toward the other end of the corridor. "Let's talk somewhere else."
Before Nanami had even entered the school to deal with the Cursed Spirit, he had already been in contact with Jujutsu High's cleanup crew. The scene here could be handed off to the staff arriving shortly. He led Junpei out of the school and into one of Jujutsu High's small, off-the-books safe houses.
"Have a seat."
Junpei sat down.
He was still holding his muscular form. The hulking physique looked nothing like his real self — a useful layer of anonymity that kept his true identity hidden.
"Your name is Yoshino Junpei. Correct?"
…Ah. Busted.
Junpei went rigid on the sofa, pupils shrinking to pinpoints.
Wait — how did they find out?
"Our colleagues are very efficient," Nanami said. "They cross-referenced the security footage — identified everyone who entered the school but wasn't accounted for afterward. That led them to you. So your Jujutsu Technique can alter your appearance?" He paused, then added evenly, "Don't be alarmed. I have no ill intentions toward you. We are the guardians of order and the good — our job is to eliminate creatures like the ones you saw back there and protect ordinary people."
"You're… the good guys?"
"Yes. We are." Nanami gave a slow, measured nod, his eyes fixed unwaveringly on Junpei's. "The dangerous one, in fact, is the blue-haired girl who was with you. She is a very real threat."
— The blue-haired girl.
Those five words hit Junpei like a slap. His expression flickered — just barely — and Nanami, watching carefully, let his gaze drop a fraction. His hunch had been right.
It hadn't been difficult to guess that Mahiko was involved. The cleanup team had discovered that every teacher and student in the building had been evacuated under Cursed Speech hypnosis — every single one except Junpei. The method matched closely what Miwa Kasumi had encountered before.
On top of that, they had confirmed the Curtain over the school hadn't been Junpei's doing. The most likely culprit was the blue-haired Cursed Spirit — who had almost certainly been lurking nearby during the fight.
What was that blue-haired Cursed Spirit playing at now?
Nanami genuinely could not figure out what she was trying to accomplish. Feeding Junpei a completely fabricated worldview — all that talk of "Stand Users" and "Yoshikage Kira" — none of it made any sense.
But one thing was beyond doubt: anything connected to that blue-haired Cursed Spirit automatically jumped several threat levels. It demanded serious attention.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Junpei said.
Nanami shook his head. "Your face just told me everything."
Cold sweat prickled down Junpei's spine.
Nanami rubbed his chin in thought. "It looks like you're trying very hard to cover for her. But why? Haven't you noticed that everything that blue-haired Cursed Spirit taught you is wrong? What exactly did she tell you? What is she to you?"
What is she to me?
The answer was simple: benefactor and the one she saved.
Junpei remembered clearly — Mahiko had told him she was a bad person, being hunted by people who called themselves good.
"If someone from Jujutsu High comes looking for you," she had said, "just go with them. That world is where you belong. Good kids should be with other good kids."
That was what Mahiko had told him, back then.
"By the way — if they ask about me, you can tell them your power came from me. If they want to research your abilities to understand me better, cooperate with them fully."
"But… wouldn't that be dangerous for you, Miss Mahiko?" Junpei had asked, genuinely confused.
Mahiko had just waved it off with an easy shake of her head. "It doesn't matter. You were always meant to be on the side of justice. Go ahead and treat me as the enemy — as much as you like."
Treat me as the enemy, as much as you like…
Ha.
Junpei quietly clenched his fists, bit down hard, and kept his expression perfectly still. "I don't know what you're talking about. And I'm not going anywhere with you. If you're done asking questions, I'm leaving."
You must be joking.
There's no way I'm making friends with people who are enemies of Miss Mahiko.
If someone as genuinely good as Miss Mahiko gets branded as evil — then there's something deeply wrong with justice itself.
And even if justice isn't wrong, then I'm the one who's wrong. I was never really a good person to begin with, after all.
No matter what. No matter what.
Betraying Miss Mahiko — that's one thing he could never do.
"As an adult in a position of responsibility, I need you to come in for an evaluation," Nanami said, frowning. "I suspect that blue-haired Cursed Spirit has hypnotized you. Don't get worked up — I won't hurt you. If there's a meal you want, or a manga you'd like to read, I'll buy it for you."
Nanami was still trying to calm him down.
But the Junpei standing before him had revealed a stubbornness that even Mahiko herself had never anticipated.
"I'm leaving," Junpei said, and stood up.
Nanami frowned and stood up too.
The two of them faced each other across the safe house, gazes clashing like live wires.
"I think you need to calm down," Nanami said.
"The one who's not calm and is getting aggressive," Junpei replied, "is you — because you saw me trying to leave." He held his ground. "If you're going to keep me here by force, then I'm going to have to find a way out."
Nanami was silent for a moment.
He drew his blunt sword. "Then I'm sorry — I'm going to have to get physical."
The two stared each other down.
Junpei took a slow, deep breath.
"ORA!" The blue Shikigami known as Star Platinum materialized and hurled the sofa straight at Nanami.
The fight erupted in an instant.
But the wind-up had been too obvious.
Nanami sidestepped the sofa with ease.
He noted, however, that at this range, Junpei could have simply sent the blue Shikigami straight in with a punch.
But he hadn't done that.
It probably wasn't a deliberate strategic choice — more likely, the boy was afraid his fist would actually hurt him.
He'd never fought another person before. He was holding back out of basic human decency.
Something shifted behind Nanami's eyes.
He could see it clearly now: this was a genuinely good kid — and one who had never once raised a hand against another human being.
Nanami made his own decision to hold back as well.
He pocketed the blunt sword and closed in with a fist wrapped in Cursed Energy.
"ORA!"
Star Platinum swung.
Two fists met with a thunderous crack.
"—!" Nanami's eyes went wide.
Absurd strength.
Nanami was a powerful Grade 1 sorcerer — and by all measurable indicators, Junpei's Cursed Energy output should have placed him around the Grade 2 level.
So why did that punch hit like a freight train?
Nanami was genuinely rattled. He felt, not for the first time, that he had miscalculated.
Damn it. As he'd feared — anything connected to that blue-haired Cursed Spirit simply could not be predicted by normal standards.
"ORA ORA ORA ORA——!!"
But one punch was just the beginning. Star Platinum launched into a relentless storm of blows — blinding speed, fists blurring into afterimages one after another.
Nanami stopped holding back on defense, throwing both arms up to meet Star Platinum's onslaught with everything he had.
Nanami was shocked. But so was Junpei.
He's incredible.
The blond man in front of him — he was something else entirely.
If fighting those Cursed Spirits earlier had felt like swinging a hammer at tofu, then this — this was like swinging a hammer at a concrete wall.
So this is the world Miss Mahiko lives in… a world full of monsters like this.
Whoosh —
Nanami tilted his head; Star Platinum's punch cut through empty air. In the same motion, Nanami drove a fist straight into the Shikigami's midsection.
BANG!!
The Ratio Technique — activated.
This was Nanami's Jujutsu Technique: locate the 7:3 point on any object, strike it precisely there, and the Technique forcibly generates a structural weak point at that exact location — regardless of any other conditions.
It could punch through anything. An inescapable critical hit.
This time, to avoid seriously injuring the boy, Nanami dialed it back slightly — but even restrained, it was devastating.
The impact sent Junpei flying — boy and Shikigami launched together — straight into the wall. Junpei felt his internal organs twist with a pain so violent it made him gag.
"—!!"
He dry-heaved. Despair settled over him like a stone.
He's too strong…
Can't get caught. Can't. Mahiko gave him power — and she had also warned him: if he were captured, these so-called "good guys" could extract information about Mahiko by studying his body.
If he got caught, Mahiko's secrets could be exposed.
If Mahiko's weaknesses were revealed because of him — if the gift she gave him became the very blade turned against her back — then he might as well be dead.
"Again!" Junpei looked up at Nanami, eyes blazing red. "Watch yourself!"
Another vial. Injected into his own body.
Unlike every time before, the pain this dose brought was nearly instantaneous — it nearly shattered his will entirely in a single wave — but in that same instant, the entire world seemed to slow to a crawl before his eyes. As though reality itself had ground to a halt.
Special Compound — [Za Warudo Serum].
In a single moment, it pushed the boy's physical parameters — strength, reaction speed, Cursed Energy output, all of it — to their absolute maximum, producing an effect that mimicked stopping time itself.
This was Mahiko's ultimate trump card, designed specifically for him.
At full overdrive, the duration Junpei could sustain this state — from his own perspective — was three seconds.
Just three seconds.
And after those three seconds, his body would be completely burned out, stripped of any further combat capability.
If he couldn't decide the fight in the next three seconds, he was finished.
"AAAAAH——!!"
Junpei screamed. His body was already reverting — the hulking frame shrinking, his voice pitching upward from a man's low rumble toward something lighter and higher.
He roared and drove his Shikigami forward with everything he had — a single, decisive punch aimed straight at Nanami.
A fraction of a second before it connected — without any warning — it was as though a string inside his head snapped. Every ounce of strength drained out of his body at once. He crumpled to the floor, and the overdrive mode went dark.
Thud.
Nanami reacted several beats late, stumbling back a few steps, something unreadable flickering in his eyes.
In that instant — that single instant — the boy had moved at a speed Nanami had never anticipated. A speed that had blown clean past the outer limit of what Nanami could react to.
It didn't mean one punch would have finished Nanami — but it had, without question, genuinely frightened him.
Still — it seemed the boy had failed.
The accumulated toll of the fight had pushed his body past its limit, and driving it into overdrive on top of that had simply been too much.
In the end, Junpei was a boy who had held his Jujutsu Technique for less than a day. How could he have beaten Nanami?
"You don't need to be this afraid." Nanami stood over Junpei. "Why are you resisting so hard? What did that blue-haired Cursed Spirit tell you?"
What did she tell me…
Junpei was gasping for air, barely able to breathe.
"Judging by your reaction…" Nanami shook his head slowly. "Did she say terrible things about us?"
"Justice?" A faint, breathless laugh escaped the boy's lips.
He laughed — in ragged, broken bursts — the sound laced with something that might have been bitterness ground between clenched teeth.
"If you're justice," he said, "then someone who was already saved by evil… is already evil themselves, aren't they."
Nanami paused.
Before he'd even fully processed the meaning of those words, he felt it — Cursed Energy building again, radiating off the boy's body.
Again? How is there anything left?
Nanami sharpened his focus, hand snapping to the blunt sword. "I'm advising you to stand down. You cannot beat me."
That was simply the truth. Nanami outclassed Junpei in every way — experience, Cursed Energy, all of it. If Nanami had been fighting seriously from the start, Junpei would have been finished long ago.
But the boy himself knew that. He already understood exactly how wide the gap between them was.
And yet, the Cursed Energy gathering around him now — it wasn't to win.
It was to make sure he didn't become a blade in the enemy's hands. A blade pointed at Mahiko's back.
—"Oh, right — one more thing, Junpei. I've placed a special capsule inside your body… the innermost one. Think of it as a last resort I built for you."
—"Once the capsule activates, it can get you out of one life-threatening situation. But be warned: after you use it, your body will be in terrible shape, and it will take a very, very long time to recover. So remember — save it. Use it only at the very last moment, only when your life is genuinely on the line."
Yeah. I understand. I already realized.
This is that 'genuinely on the line' situation she was talking about. Isn't it?
Because if these people who call themselves justice used his body to forge a blade against Mahiko, he would be too ashamed to go on living anyway.
Evil? Justice? What does any of it matter?
The moment Mahiko saved him, his path was set.
Betraying Mahiko — that was the one thing he could never do.
"Capsule — open!" he screamed, and surged his Cursed Energy. The unique capsule Mahiko had placed inside him began injecting its contents into his bloodstream.
Nanami tensed and backed away.
"AAAAH——!!" And the boy — he screamed in agony as the fluid flooded through him, dropping to his knees.
Steam —
Cursed Energy vaporized into a rising cloud of steam.
Nanami couldn't see through it.
He only knew the boy was in agony. That his body was contorting, transforming, inside the haze.
The screams were wrenching to hear. The sight of it — what could be glimpsed through the steam — was not something easy to look at.
What did that blue-haired Cursed Spirit do to him?
What on earth did she put into this boy's head?
By now, the boy had likely been pushed to the edge of an abyss, guided there by that sadistic blue-haired Cursed Spirit. And Nanami could do nothing about it.
He felt guilty. Guilty in the way only an adult can — watching a child suffer and being powerless to stop it.
Nanami closed his eyes. As if he simply could not bear to watch anymore.
A few seconds passed. The steam began to settle. And then — Nanami heard a sound.
A clear, soft, distinctly delicate "…?"
Nanami blinked. He slowly opened his eyes — and found himself staring directly into the face of a black-haired girl sitting in the last wisps of fading steam.
"—?!?!" Junpei registered the situation and let out a shriek he couldn't begin to contain.
No — wait — wasn't this supposed to be a last resort?!
He — she — HOW DID SHE TURN INTO A GIRL?!?!
____
👻🔥Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: COTE: Confessing to Sakayanagi From the Start
🎯 100 Powerstones = +1 Bonus Chapter for everyone