Megumi Fushiguro and Yuji Itadori's fight was still going on.
And Mahiko had already been scooped up and carried off by Miwa Kasumi.
Miwa sprinted the whole way, apologies spilling out of her mouth nonstop. After doubling back through two whole city blocks, she finally glanced over her shoulder, confirmed no one was in pursuit, and let out a breath of relief — setting Mahiko down from her arms at last.
The two of them settled onto a bench at the side of the road.
Miwa pulled off her gas mask and gulped down great heaving lungfuls of air.
Several gasps later, the girl seemed to suddenly remember something. She scrambled into her shoulder bag and produced a cup of bubble tea — shaken into a bit of a mess from all that running — and held it out with both hands.
"Please forgive me!" Miwa immediately pressed her palms together and bowed her head in apology. "But I absolutely have to earn results in this exchange event — I need the qualifications and a recommendation to advance as a jujutsu sorcerer. So please, Mahiko-sister, please help me out!"
Miwa had once been Mahiko's "victim" — and had also been the one Mahiko chose to spare. So her feelings about the blue-haired Cursed Spirit were... she was willing to believe this one was something different from the rest.
And because of that, she wasn't exactly on board with the capture-and-eliminate order handed down from the higher-ups in the jujutsu world.
Capture a Cursed Spirit?
Sure, she'd go through the motions.
But whether or not she actually captured the blue-haired Cursed Spirit was a separate matter from the task of carrying Mahiko away. She'd been assigned a job, so she had to at least look like she was doing something. Her future livelihood was riding on her career as a jujutsu sorcerer — she couldn't afford to come across as half-hearted about it.
And besides, when she really thought about it — whisking Mahiko away from the middle of all that explosion was, in a sense, also protecting Mahiko from the fallout of that battle. So Miwa, for her part, could just barely make peace with herself over it.
"Oh, you brought her?" came a voice from farther down the street, growing steadily closer.
It was Zen'in Mai speaking.
And Mai hadn't come alone.
On her left was a petite girl with a broomstick slung over her shoulder and two absurdly enormous braids jutting from either side of her head — that was Nishimiya Momo. Her Jujutsu Technique was simple: she could fly on her broom.
On her right was a narrow-eyed, rather handsome man dressed in a neat set of traditional shrine-keeper robes. His name was Kamo Noritoshi. He was one of the very few members of the Kamo family who hadn't been infiltrated by Kenjaku, and the Jujutsu Technique he wielded was the Kamo clan's hereditary art — Blood Manipulation.
"Hey, good to see you again, Mahiko-sis." Mai curved her lips upward and raised her right hand toward Mahiko in a lazy wave. In that hand was a McDonald's breakfast kids' burger — one of their more popular ones. "Did you eat breakfast yet? I brought you some."
Tokyo and Kyoto schools were rivals. They traded barbs at each other as a matter of course. But when it came to the little blue-haired girl, every single one of them, without any prior agreement, went completely soft.
Who could bring themselves to say a harsh word to such an adorable little blue-haired angel?
"Thank you, big sister." Mahiko, as ever, never turned down something tasty.
She started eating the burger, the picture of docile obedience.
Kamo Noritoshi and Nishimiya Momo both greeted Mahiko in turn. Once the pleasantries were done, Kamo Noritoshi turned and glanced in the direction of where Todo Aoi and Yuji Itadori were still going at it.
"There he goes again, running off to cause trouble on his own." Kamo Noritoshi sighed, his tone saturated with exasperation. "Honestly... utterly undisciplined."
Todo Aoi was technically a Kyoto student, but in practice he almost never moved in coordination with the others. He always did exactly what he felt like doing and went wherever he wanted to go.
Kamo Noritoshi bringing Mahiko here now was, really, nothing more than riding the wave of Todo Aoi's latest bout of recklessness.
Mahiko took another obedient bite of her burger and looked up at the people gathered in front of her. "Are all you big brothers and sisters here to catch that blue-haired Cursed Spirit?" she asked.
"Yes, that's right." Kamo Noritoshi nodded. "We're here to apprehend the blue-haired Cursed Spirit, so we were hoping to get some information or assistance from you."
"Is that so?" Mahiko tilted her head. "What do you want to do with her once you catch her? Do you want to kill her? But I heard from Fushiguro big sister that the blue-haired Cursed Spirit might be a good monster..."
Her tone was the very definition of innocent.
Kamo Noritoshi heard this and furrowed his brow.
"On that point, our principal's assessment is that Nobara Kugisaki may have had some kind of mental breakdown and misunderstood the situation. My own assessment is roughly the same," he said. "Without seeing it with my own eyes, I'm going to hold to the established understanding that Cursed Spirits are inherently evil."
"After all, that Cursed Spirit is supposedly capable of mentally hypnotizing people," Zen'in Mai said, dropping onto the other end of Mahiko's bench with her legs crossed. "Sure, Kugisaki's psych evaluation didn't turn up anything — but what if the evaluator was just not very good?"
Ah. So that's how it is.
Mahiko lowered her head and took another bite of her burger, now with a clear picture of where these Kyoto students stood.
More or less: "No idea — we just follow the principal."
When you're clueless about what's actually going on and everyone around you is just passing along hearsay, the stance and opinions of your most immediate superior will always end up determining where you land.
The principal of Jujutsu High's Kyoto branch was himself a member of the jujutsu world's conservative faction — rigid to the bone in his thinking. So viewing Mahiko as a threat to be eliminated was, in its own way, entirely understandable.
But there was something else that was nagging at Mahiko.
By all rights, in the original story, that principal would also be secretly ordering his students to take advantage of the chaos of the exchange event to kill Yuji Itadori — because Yuji was hosting Sukuna inside him, and the conservative principal wanted him eliminated before he could become a problem.
But now, watching these Kyoto students... well. None of them seemed to have any intention of moving against Yuji Itadori. Every bit of their attention was focused entirely on her.
Something felt off. Mahiko couldn't quite put her finger on what, exactly — but something that should have been good news was now, in her eyes, radiating an unmistakable wrongness.
"And what about Yuji big brother and the others?" Mahiko blinked, doing her best impression of naive curiosity. "Are you enemies with Yuji big brother? Is their fight really going to be okay?"
The other side certainly wasn't going to tell the truth. Mahiko's reason for asking was to watch their faces.
And their faces... showed absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.
"Whatever they're doing is their own business." Zen'in Mai's expression was one of weary resignation. "Our job is to go find the blue-haired Cursed Spirit. That's all."
It really seemed like... they hadn't received the order to "kill Yuji Itadori" at all.
Why? What was the reason?
Which butterfly had flapped its wings to cause this change?
It was actually a very small thing — but in this moment, it sent a profound sense of wrongness rippling through Mahiko.
The girl sank deep into thought, turning it over and over in her mind.
Then Mai stood up, stretched languidly, and said: "Let's go. We'll find somewhere else to talk about the blue-haired Cursed Spirit."
Fine by Mahiko. She didn't particularly care either way.
Right now she was just tagging along with these people and going with the flow.
But then, all of a sudden, she blinked — and looked toward a figure that had appeared at the side of the road.
The person was short, wearing a hood pulled up over their face, features impossible to make out.
It was still early morning. The street was empty.
The road was wide — and yet this person was deliberately walking close. Too close. That wasn't right.
"..." Mai's brow pinched. She'd noticed too.
Kamo Noritoshi frowned as well and called out: "Excuse me, friend — hold on a moment."
The hooded figure stopped in their tracks.
"Friend..."
The hooded figure murmured — seemingly repeating Kamo Noritoshi's word back — and the voice that came out was unexpectedly clear and girlish.
"Friend..."
A surge of Cursed Energy erupted, and everyone's expression snapped to alert.
This Cursed Energy arrived alongside a strange, lively musical tune — both emanating from the figure standing before them.
"Friend... is in position..."
The hooded figure pulled back their hood.
It was the girl — Inumaki — smiling at the people in front of her.
She opened her mouth, and a song laced all through with Cursed Speech came pouring out.
"Let's~ all~ play~ a~ game~~"
____
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