One thing should be made clear from the start: Mahiko had always acted in accordance with her own principles.
She genuinely had no desire to turn Junpei into a girl. That kind of change might affect his social life.
But this thing she'd prepared — it was meant to save his life.
Strange as it sounds, it really was a life-saving measure. The girl-transformation had no other purpose.
At its core, it came down to the fact that Junpei's Technique compatibility and attunement were significantly higher in a female body. It also allowed the "Last-Ditch Toxin Enhancer" she'd built into him to activate far more effectively.
That was why she had stressed it so carefully, over and over: this is only for life-or-death emergencies. Use it at any other time, and you will deeply regret it.
See? He turned into a girl. Isn't that pretty awful?
Mahiko hadn't lied. Not even a little.
As the price for a limited-scope Binding Vow enhancement, Junpei would be stuck as a girl for a very long time — unable to revert back to a boy. Combined with a specially formulated toxin, this would let her overdraft her Cursed Energy and Jujutsu Technique, granting her enough power to handle certain life-threatening crises in a short window.
Like right now.
"How is this…" Junpei was stunned speechless.
Wasn't this thing supposed to save her life?
WHY DID IT TURN HER INTO A GIRL?!
Comprehension failed. Thoughts stalled completely.
Her already slender boyish frame had grown even more slight. The black clothes hung off her like a borrowed costume — sleeves dangling past her wrists, fingers too delicate to believe.
She reached up and touched her own face. The texture was completely different.
The boy — oh, no, the girl — was on the verge of tears.
Is this really a life-saving measure, Miss Mahiko? I know you like to joke around, but is THIS the right moment for jokes?! Waaah…
She tried to stand. Her center of gravity had completely shifted, and she immediately stumbled, nearly crashing to the floor.
The oversized black outfit billowed around her like a cape. Not a single thing she was wearing fit her body.
She caught her own reflection in a nearby pane of glass — a stranger stared back at her. A girl with black hair falling to her shoulders, and a rather cute face. But where was the life-saving part?!
Where did the promised life-saving measure go?!
And when Nanami caught sight of the girl, one of his eyebrows gave an involuntary twitch.
That sense of déjà vu…
Right. Now he could say it with complete certainty: that blue-haired Cursed Spirit had done something to this boy.
"You —" Nanami started to speak.
And then — a violent surge of Cursed Energy erupted from Junpei's body all over again.
An enormous jellyfish Shikigami materialized directly behind her.
Nanami flinched.
There's another Shikigami?!
But unlike before, this one's Cursed Energy signature was far more powerful — at minimum, it was operating at the level of a Grade 1 sorcerer.
"?!"
Junpei was just as shocked as he was. She realized she had lost control of the jellyfish Shikigami — lost control of her own Cursed Energy entirely. Before she could react, tentacles had already coiled around her small body, lifting her, wrapping around her, swallowing her like an airbag deploying around a crash dummy.
The girl let out a startled shriek. The tentacles swallowed the sound whole.
She was pulled inside the jellyfish.
Has the Technique gone berserk?
Nanami was deeply unsettled. He drew his blunt sword.
The next second — contrary to everything he'd expected — there was a loud bang, and the jellyfish Shikigami slammed straight through the door of the safe house and bolted outside at high speed.
Nanami blinked. He didn't process it in time.
They just… ran?
He sprinted after them.
But outside the safe house door was nothing but a wide-open construction site.
By the time Nanami burst outside, the jellyfish Shikigami had already grown wings from both sides of its body and launched itself straight up into the sky.
It flew?!
Nanami just stood there, dumbfounded.
Because Nanami could not fly.
He had answers for most things, but a flying opponent? A genuinely flying opponent moving that fast and that absurdly? There was nothing he could do.
"Pfhah!" From inside the jellyfish, Junpei thrust her head out and gasped in huge lungfuls of air.
She'd escaped?
Junpei's heart leapt.
No matter what — she'd gotten out. Staying alive and keeping Miss Mahiko's secrets safe were what mattered most.
The wind roared past her ears.
Junpei finally let herself breathe — but in the very next second, she caught a flash of blue in the corner of her vision.
Hm?
Junpei turned her head, and there — standing on the rooftop of a nearby building — was Mahiko.
Miss Mahiko?
Their eyes met.
Mahiko's expression, right now, was one of pure bewilderment.
"Huh??" Mahiko stared at the airborne Junpei with complete incomprehension. "Wait, what — what is happening right now?
"Why did you activate the life-saving measure I gave you?!"
Mahiko had designed the whole thing with the intention that Junpei would use it later, in a major crisis like the Shibuya Incident — something that would give him the power to protect his own family. She hadn't remotely expected the boy to trigger it now.
Did he get into a fight with Nanami and nearly get beaten to death?
Mahiko genuinely could not understand it.
She'd just "lost" the black-robed figure in the sewers — let Kenjaku deal with that headache himself — and come back up to find Junpei drifting through the sky wrapped in a tentacle monster.
She watched Junpei drift toward her, and moved to meet her.
"What danger did you run into?" Mahiko asked.
"I escaped," the girl said, blinking rapidly.
"Why did you need to escape?" Mahiko frowned. "Did the people from Jujutsu High hurt you?"
"No, the blond man didn't hurt me." Junpei shook her head. "But he wanted to take me with him — make me go to school on their side."
Mahiko: ...
Mahiko: "So you went through all THIS just to skip school?!"
"No no no, it's not like that!" Junpei waved her hands frantically. "I wanted to protect Miss Mahiko's secrets!"
Mahiko: ?
Junpei kept going. "Didn't you say they could learn your secrets by studying the power in my body? I didn't want that… those people are your enemies, Miss Mahiko, so I didn't want to help them with anything…"
Mahiko went quiet.
She was, for a moment, somewhere between laughing and wanting to cry.
This time, helping Junpei had really just been a casual thing — a throwaway act of kindness, mostly useful as a way to make things difficult for Kenjaku. She'd never had any intention of keeping Junpei by her side.
What she actually wanted was for Junpei to go to Jujutsu High. That was what she'd planned for.
In her mind, Nanami would correct all the wrong information she'd fed Junpei, then keep training him, and he'd grow into a properly qualified sorcerer at Jujutsu High with real ability to protect himself. He'd make friends with Yuji Itadori and the others. He'd find genuine companionship.
As for whether the sorcerers could extract anything from Junpei's body that could be used against Mahiko — or learn anything about Mahito through him — that simply wasn't going to happen. Jujutsu High couldn't pull that off.
Mahiko had already made all the necessary preparations for that.
Otherwise, how could she have felt comfortable handing Junpei over to Jujutsu High at all?
Keeping Junpei near her was actually the less safe option. Mahiko was at the center of a storm right now — walking the edge of a cliff herself. She couldn't guarantee her own safety, let alone anyone else's.
After hearing Junpei's full account, Mahiko felt she had nothing left to say. She'd told herself she wasn't like the original Mahito — she hadn't brainwashed Junpei, hadn't done any of what Mahito had done in canon, so she'd assumed Junpei wouldn't trust her unconditionally the way the original story had played out.
Apparently, she'd miscalculated.
The Junpei standing in front of her, now a black-haired girl, trusted her completely. Depended on her completely.
It was a common problem among kids who'd never really been accepted. The moment someone genuinely acknowledged them and helped them, they attached themselves completely — heart and soul, no turning back.
She watched the black-haired girl's face light up with pure joy right in front of her. If you imagined a tail, it would be spinning like a propeller.
"Miss Mahiko! I really worked so, so hard!" The black-haired girl blinked up at her, practically begging for praise.
Mahiko sighed.
"I'm grateful you tried to keep my secrets, but there actually aren't any secrets about me in your body." She clicked her tongue. "And while I understand you want to follow me — I don't want to take you along. You're human. I'm a Cursed Spirit. Just go to Jujutsu High. Go back to the world where you belong."
"…?"
Junpei's eyes widened slightly at those words.
How could she not understand everything hidden in what Mahiko had just said?
Miss Mahiko didn't need her anymore.
Junpei wasn't a fragile child. Quite the opposite — she was tough. Or at least, she'd been holding up the tough exterior she showed the world for a very long time.
It had been ages since Junpei had let anyone outside see her soft, vulnerable side.
So the fact that she now felt like crying said something.
Not because she was a crybaby by nature, but because she couldn't keep the wall around her heart intact while standing under this person's gaze.
Tears spilled down her face, one after another, and Junpei was crying for real now, words coming out in broken pieces.
"B-but…" Junpei sobbed in front of Mahiko, barely able to string her words together. "Doesn't that mean I didn't help Miss Mahiko at all…?"
"I never wanted your help" — that was what Mahiko was about to say. She told herself she should be blunt here, put up a wall, make the rejection clear.
But then she saw the girl crying, and her resolve softened.
…Honestly? If Junpei had still looked like a boy, Mahiko definitely wouldn't have gone soft.
But Mahiko had accidentally made Junpei's girl form way too cute.
Thwack.
Mahiko tapped Junpei lightly on the head.
A cool sensation flowed through Junpei's entire body.
She could feel the exhaustion inside her rapidly fading away.
"I'm not your dad. Please don't expect so much from me." Mahiko kept her voice deliberately flat and cold.
Junpei came from a single-parent household — raised by her mother alone. Which meant she'd always been starved for a father figure. That was where most of this dependence on Mahiko came from.
She needed someone to look up to, someone to admire — someone who only had to stand there, just exist, and make Junpei feel that everything was going to be okay.
And Mahiko, right now, in Junpei's eyes, was playing exactly that role.
A guardian who represented absolute safety. An elder — or, more specifically, a father.
I don't want to be your dad, though. This is getting out of hand.
You want me to be your dad? Did you even ask your mom how she feels about that?
To cut off that notion entirely, Mahiko forced herself to be completely and unambiguously final about it: "I only helped you on a whim. Now go back."
"…Is it because I'm too weak?" Junpei's eyes trembled.
"No. You're actually quite impressive." Mahiko shook her head, but her tone didn't soften. "But your current strength isn't enough for the dangerous world I move through. Not even close."
Junpei opened her mouth.
So it really was because she was too weak.
...
And so Mahiko watched from the rooftop as Junpei left.
She stayed until she confirmed that Junpei had actually gone to find Nanami. Only then did she slip away.
The truth was, saving Junpei hadn't been purely a throwaway impulse either. A big part of it was simply that when she'd read Jujutsu Kaisen in her previous life, she'd always thought Junpei's fate was too cruel.
But the biggest win from all of this clearly wasn't becoming someone's surrogate father — it was successfully making things difficult for Kenjaku.
She'd caught the unmistakable sound of Kenjaku losing his composure during their call earlier.
And in fact, Kenjaku was still talking in her ear right now.
"Mahiko, I need you to do something for me," Kenjaku said. "This is important."
"What is it?" Mahiko deliberately sounded as unbothered as possible. "If you need to catch that black-robed person, why not send Jogo and the others?"
"They're not with me. They've gone out."
"Huh?"
Gone out? Gone where? Those three hadn't gone shopping again, had they? Is anyone keeping an eye on them?
"Besides, this isn't something those three can handle," Kenjaku said. "Only you can help with this."
"Then I'm setting conditions," Mahiko said. "In those old texts you gave me, there was something called [Miyakogakuro]. Can you do that? Are there any technique scrolls on it? I want to learn it."
"Agreed." Kenjaku accepted immediately — making it obvious just how badly Mahiko's move had rattled him. "I'll have the scroll delivered to you via Cursed Spirit right now. In the meantime — please, make it fast."
Mahiko raised an eyebrow. "Sure, sure — but what exactly do you need me to do? What's got you this frantic?"
Kenjaku would never tell her the truth. She was asking already knowing that — just working to chip away at his negotiating position.
Sure enough: "No time to explain. Just go."
Mahiko smiled. "Sure thing~"
She already had a rough idea of what Kenjaku was going to ask.
Something along the lines of visiting Suguru Geto's "grave," stirring up trouble for the sorcerers, providing cover for Kenjaku's follow-up moves…
But when she actually heard the request, it was so much more unhinged than she'd anticipated.
"I need you to create a clone or a double — whatever you can manage — and impersonate the black-robed figure who appeared at the school earlier. Go in front of the sorcerers and get exorcised," Kenjaku told her. "That person's identity is crucial to our plan."
Oh my god.
Mahiko genuinely burst out laughing inside.
I'm supposed to disguise myself as myself.
——————
Relax — I'm not going overboard with the feminization. I only tweaked Junpei's little setup as a precaution. Everyone can stop worrying about me repeating myself with the feminization arc.
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