"Hey, Hanami… what do you think?" "About what?" "About… humans."
It wasn't all that long ago, really.
Jogo had been gazing up at the night sky, asking Hanami for her thoughts.
"My thoughts?" The golden-haired girl seemed a little puzzled, but answered honestly. "I just hate them. Simple as that."
"Why do you hate them?" "Because humans destroy the environment." "You're not a tree — you're a Cursed Spirit. Can't you think about things from a Cursed Spirit's perspective?" Jogo said, mildly exasperated.
Hanami just laughed softly. "Then you might as well think of me as a tree. I don't mind."
Jogo went quiet.
"Are you troubled by something? Is it Suguru Geto's plan?" Hanami asked. "I haven't really been paying close attention lately — did something go wrong?"
"Mm, no, not that," Jogo said, nodding, then shaking her head. "It's Mahiko. Something's off with her."
"Mahiko? What about her?"
"Mahiko seems to genuinely like humans. I don't think she'll stand with us when we build a new world."
"Oh, yeah, I can kind of see that. So what?"
"I've been wondering… whether she'll end up on the opposite side from you and me. We're supposed to be comrades."
"Ohhh, the old 'friends turned enemies' plot. I've seen that on TV."
"So I've been worrying — that one day, she'll come to kill me. And I'll have no choice but to fight her."
"You're worried you'll go soft on her?"
"I won't go soft. I'm just annoyed." Jogo frowned. "Whoever stands against me — I won't go soft on them. Anyone."
"Fair enough, I agree with you. Even the closest of comrades, once they become enemies, are nothing but enemies." Hanami smiled, then asked with curious amusement, "Speaking of which — if Suguru Geto and Mahiko ever came to blows, what would you do?"
"Geto and Mahiko fighting?" Jogo clicked her tongue, her expression like someone who'd just been asked a hilariously obvious question. "Why would you even need to ask something that clear-cut?"
"How so?"
"Mahiko and I turning against each other is an internal matter between us Cursed Spirits." Jogo curled her lip. "Who does Geto think he is, exactly?"
And so.
In the night sky, a column of pink flame erupted upward, blazing like a brilliant sun.
Jogo gazed down from on high at Kenjaku, Rime, and the others with an absolute, bone-deep cold in her eyes — a killing intent heavier than anything she had ever shown, even against Satoru Gojo.
"Who do you think you are?" Jogo's voice was glacial. "You dare lay a hand on my comrade?"
If anyone asked what Mahiko meant to Jogo… well, Jogo wouldn't exactly say anything kind.
The girl had pranked her more than once. Annoyed her more times than she could count. Every time Jogo thought back to the moments they'd spent together, not a single memory came up that wasn't something she'd rather forget.
But that was precisely why Jogo could feel it — the living, breathing reality that she truly had a comrade.
A Cursed Spirit born in the ancient past, who had lived for a thousand years — and only now had she found someone she could call that. And in one moment, she discovered that someone was trying to take that hard-won comrade away from her. How could she be anything less than absolutely furious?
And so.
Kenjaku's grand plan to build a new world for Cursed Spirits — in this moment, in Jogo's eyes, it was all filed neatly under one category: complete and utter nonsense.
And so.
Above the dark of night, a scorching sun rose.
——Scorching Love: Kaleidoscope Meteor Shower.
The flames bloomed like a pink, searing sun in mid-air, crashing headlong into the glacier.
Rime's output of ice-based Cursed Energy had already been immense to begin with — but against Jogo, whose output had been amplified in reverse by the Binding Vow Mahiko had engineered, it simply wasn't enough.
The flames swallowed the entire glacier in an instant, roaring past it and surging straight toward what lay beyond. Kenjaku and Rime scrambled to dodge, but the flames caught them anyway.
BOOM —
The explosion rang out. Pink fire detonated across the rooftop, blasting a scorched, gaping hole clean through the building's entire top floor.
"Jogo?!"
Mahiko, cradled in one of Jogo's arms, stared wide-eyed and twisted around in shock. "What are you doing here?"
"…You'd rather I hadn't come?" Jogo gave Mahiko a sideways glance. "If anything, what I want to know is — something this big, and you didn't call me?"
"…"
Mahiko opened her mouth — and found herself completely silenced by the sheer audacity of Jogo turning this around on her.
Honestly, it had never once crossed Mahiko's mind that Jogo would come here — here, as a comrade, to help her.
The stereotype of the calamity Cursed Spirits that the original story had left stamped in her head, combined with the fact that she'd never been able to figure out what Jogo and the others were actually thinking ever since she crossed over — it had made Mahiko cautious, and she had always quietly assumed that Jogo and the others were still on Kenjaku's side.
"I thought you'd be standing with him," Mahiko said, looking at Jogo.
"Then you're an idiot," Jogo replied, flat and immediate.
Mahiko: "…?"
Mahiko had absolutely no idea how to respond to that.
Meanwhile, over on the hotel floor, Rime gritted her teeth and pushed herself up from the rubble, gathering icy Cursed Energy in her hand once more.
At the same time, several bird-shaped Shikigami came flying out of the smoke and dust — Druv's Shikigami, which meant Druv had also recovered enough to fight.
Jogo was powerful, but not more powerful than Kenjaku.
Mahiko could feel the state of her own Jujutsu Technique's circuit-break, and estimated roughly how long it would take Kenjaku's side to recover. Her nerves tightened.
"We need to move. Now." Mahiko urged Jogo.
Kenjaku's technique circuit-break would end faster than her own, for certain.
There was nothing to be gained by having Jogo stay here and fight Kenjaku and the others. The smart play was to simply run. Jogo could fly now — escaping would be trivially easy.
And hearing Mahiko's words, Jogo swept a glance over the figures on the hotel rooftop, narrowed her eyes, and recognized the danger the opponents posed.
"You've done well to hold on this long," Jogo said. "Next time, call me."
Then, without a moment's hesitation, Jogo wrapped Mahiko up and transformed into a blazing meteor, shooting off into the night sky.
Back on the hotel rooftop, at that very moment, Kenjaku's technique circuit-break had only just barely lifted.
He watched the streak of flame carrying Mahiko away until it vanished into the darkness above, and bit down hard.
"Damn it…"
Kenjaku genuinely hadn't anticipated that Jogo would come to Mahiko's aid.
He had, vaguely, harbored suspicions about the allegiances of the other three calamity Cursed Spirits — which was precisely why he had deliberately not brought them along on this operation.
What he hadn't foreseen was that Jogo would directly and completely turn against him, all for Mahiko's sake.
Well. Things had just gotten thoroughly interesting.
It was entirely predictable now — all four calamity Cursed Spirits would break free from Kenjaku's control entirely.
"Heh…" Kenjaku curled his lips, letting out a laugh of indeterminate meaning. "What a failure this whole plan turned out to be."
He hadn't intended to personally intervene from the start, true — and the Curtain he had laid down had been solid, and both Ishiryuu and Rime were people who could defeat Mahiko in a straight fight.
And yet, even so, they'd been run ragged back and forth, until the opponent somehow conjured a Domain Expansion that had no business existing — and nearly sent the whole thing off the rails.
"A miscalculation…"
He shouldn't have moved against Mahiko like this.
He hadn't captured Mahiko, the framing had failed, and on top of that, he had pushed the other calamity Cursed Spirits clean out of his camp.
A complete and utter failure.
It wouldn't be an exaggeration to call today the most humiliating day Kenjaku had experienced in several centuries.
"What do we do next?" Rime walked over, pressing a hand to her still-unhealed wound, and murmured, "Down below — the jujutsu sorcerers are on their way up."
Kenjaku gritted his teeth and looked back at the wreckage strewn across the rooftop.
"The troublesome part is only just beginning."
He had never wanted to expose intelligence about his open-boundary Domain, and had absolutely no desire to use even a fraction of his own Jujutsu Technique here.
But now his intelligence was already leaked, and because the Domain had been used, his technique's traces were scattered all across this place.
There was no longer any hope of cleaning those traces away.
Kenjaku extended his hand and formed a seal. Behind him, an enormous Cursed Spirit materialized — resembling a great Buddha, but with the head of an elephant.
It was a Special Grade Cursed Spirit, one that had appeared in the original story as well.
Taking advantage of the window before the people from Jujutsu High reached the floor, Kenjaku summoned it now.
If the traces couldn't be erased, then the only option was to move every section of the building that bore the mark of his Cursed Energy — all of it, in one go.
This Special Grade Cursed Spirit was capable of telekinetic transport, but first a large section of the building would need to be severed from the main structure, then hurled into the sea.
Kenjaku glanced down at the floors below.
None of the people Jujutsu High had sent were particularly strong. The plan to throw the structure into the sea was viable. No one could stop it.
The only issue was that a fierce battle had just been fought, and Kenjaku still needed to minimize his own direct involvement — which meant what came next would demand an enormous expenditure of effort and energy…
In that moment, an emotion called regret surfaced, unexpectedly, in Kenjaku's heart.
If he had simply chosen not to move against Mahiko… things would never have escalated this far.
What a miscalculation…
"Heh…" But then Kenjaku smiled again. "Still, though. This is… far too interesting."
Kenjaku hadn't felt this exhilarated in several hundred years.
Living long… was the right call, after all.
And so, the next morning — the second day — every jujutsu sorcerer carrying out missions outside Tokyo received a news bulletin dispatched by Jujutsu High.
The bulletin contained a detailed summary of the previous night's events, along with a planned framework for follow-up handling of the incident.
Every sorcerer who read it was left stunned — to think that something this enormous had unfolded in Tokyo.
And after reading through the entire bulletin and taking in every detail, the sorcerers reached the next item: the latest directive issued by the upper echelons of the jujutsu world.
It was an order addressed to all jujutsu sorcerers.
The latest, most urgent, and most critical order Jujutsu High had ever issued.
[The blue-haired Cursed Spirit is hereby designated as the primary elimination target for all jujutsu sorcerers. All sorcerers, except those engaged in critical ongoing missions, are to prioritize participation in the hunt and encirclement of the blue-haired Cursed Spirit above all else.]
[Jujutsu High, on behalf of all jujutsu sorcerers, declares: we will not rest until that blue-haired Cursed Spirit is dead.]
"Ugh, seriously…" Mahiko stared at the message on her phone, her brow twitching. "The old men at Jujutsu High really are textbook experts at turning everything upside down…"
"Mahiko-nee-chan, Mahiko-nee-chan…" Just then, a tiny Kin-chan came running over with a sniffle, clutching at Mahiko's legs, looking absolutely pitiful and on the verge of tears. "Please save my friend…"
Mahiko blinked, pulling her attention away from the bulletin and looking down at the small blue-haired girl in front of her. "What's wrong? What kind of friend?"
"Stinky-nee-chan Jogo… she's going to eat my friend…" Little Kin-chan wrapped herself around Mahiko's leg and, like a witness at a trial, pointed an accusatory finger toward Jogo in the nearby kitchen — who had an apron tied around her and was holding a frying pan, apparently about to grill fish. "Please save my friend…"
Mahiko's brow twitched.
Oh no.
She just watched Jogo place the frying pan directly over her own head.
"Wait a second!"
What on earth are you planning to cook with?!
"Hands off that fish!!"
____
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