The backlash from Inumaki's Cursed Speech was making itself felt now — clearly, visibly.
So by the time she sang the final line of lyrics, her voice had already gone noticeably, seriously off-key.
But fortunately——
It still counted as a song. Just barely.
The power of the Cursed Speech rode the melody through regardless, and the effect landed squarely on Maki Zenin.
And so that leap Maki had thrown herself into mid-air — the speed of it was suddenly, violently amplified, the momentum behind it surging all at once, and she came down directly in front of Mahiko and Nishimiya Momo.
If Nishimiya Momo had anticipated how high Maki would reach, she could certainly have angled her broom upward and gained altitude in time to dodge.
But she didn't react in time.
Inumaki's Cursed Speech had struck too suddenly — so suddenly that Nishimiya Momo was still blinking in bewilderment when Maki was already on top of her.
"Big lunch? What are we having for the big lunch?" Mahiko blinked her large eyes and asked.
Nishimiya Momo, with Mahiko still held in her arms, felt panic wash across her face, her pupils shrinking to pinpoints.
There was no time to gain altitude now. The front of the broom dipped under the sudden weight — Maki had already landed squarely on it.
With the strength Maki Zenin possessed, and the martial skill she carried — Nishimiya Momo hadn't even had a moment to react before Maki gently, effortlessly lifted Mahiko free from Nishimiya Momo's arms.
"How does kaiseki cuisine in Ginza sound?" Maki said with a grin. "We'll get Satoru Gojo to expense it afterward."
"But didn't something happen in Ginza? Isn't it sealed off?" Mahiko blinked. "And who's Satoru Gojo?"
"You——!" Nishimiya reached out to snatch Mahiko back.
But Maki simply pushed off lightly from the broom with the tip of her foot, light as a feather.
She launched herself into the air and landed cleanly on the rooftop of a tall building nearby.
"Huh — sounds like you're right." Maki's eyes went wide. "Maybe somewhere else then? Do you like eel?"
"Eel is good," Mahiko offered her verdict.
"Eel it is." Maki laughed.
"Damn it!"
Above, Nishimiya Momo wheeled her broom around, intent on giving chase——
But in the next instant, from the ground below, came a sharp crack of iron chain snapping.
Panda had wrenched itself free of the iron net that had been wrapped around it.
It swept a park bench up off the ground and hurled it straight toward Nishimiya Momo, forcing her to wheel away and evade.
At the same time, now that Inumaki was no longer suppressing him, Kamo Noritoshi reclaimed the initiative in battle. He drove Inumaki back with a single punch, then twisted his head up toward Maki and Mahiko on the building's rooftop above.
Kamo Noritoshi gritted his teeth.
He could not let Mahiko be taken from right before his eyes like this.
But Panda came charging at him again in that same moment, blocking Kamo Noritoshi once more. The two of them tangled with each other all over again.
And Inumaki, for her part, switched tracks — cutting the song and beginning to harry Nishimiya Momo in the sky above with raw Cursed Speech.
"I'll be taking Mahiko with me then!" Maki called out cheerfully, then turned and broke into a sprint across the rooftops with Mahiko tucked in her arms, bounding from building to building at speed.
Her pace was extraordinary. Within moments, the Kyoto students left tangled in the fight below had lost all sight of Maki and Mahiko entirely.
All things considered — pretty lucky.
The one who'd carried Mahiko off wasn't just anyone. It was Maki Zenin. And for Mahiko, that was actually an extraordinarily fortunate turn of events.
Lucky in the sense that…she wouldn't have to spend enormous energy engineering something troublesome, manufacturing some excuse to find herself alone with Maki.
They were already alone.
"Want to find somewhere to rest for a bit first?" Maki tilted her head and suggested.
Over on Inumaki and Megumi Fushiguro's side, the chaos was still in full swing.
But Maki, for her part, had begun to…take Mahiko window-shopping.
She'd said big lunch, but it was still only the morning, so Maki said she'd take Mahiko out to have some fun first.
In truth, Maki had no experience whatsoever looking after younger siblings…so she had no idea where to go. But it hardly mattered — Maki had told Mahiko that wherever she wanted to go, she'd foot the bill.
So Mahiko raised one hand and pointed at a place.
"Uh...this is..." Maki stared up at the enormous sign overhead reading "Maid Café," and opened her mouth, then closed it. "You want to go in here?"
She turned. What she saw was a blue-haired girl with eyes sparkling like stars. "Yeah!"
The corner of Maki's mouth twitched. She let out a helpless sigh and gave in.
And in that moment of giving in, the nightmare began.
"Maki-nee! You've got this! I believe in you!"
In the private room, Maki stared down at the maid uniform in her hands, her expression thoroughly pained. "Do I…really have to wear it?"
This particular maid café had a selling point: girls could change into the establishment's maid costumes here. The idea, apparently, was to draw in couples for a bit of immersive roleplay.
Mahiko hadn't spotted any couples.
But an opportunity like this — she absolutely had to make Maki try it.
These people kept fighting over her like she was some precious treasure, which was entertaining enough — but they at least owed her an appearance fee, didn't they?
And faced with Mahiko's request, Maki's first instinct had been to refuse — what was this, a joke? There was no way she was putting that thing on.
Anyone else who'd dared make that request — man or woman, it didn't matter — she would have made sure they learned a lesson they'd never forget.
But the problem was that the one making the request was a teary-eyed, blue-haired little angel.
"I saw this kind of shop in manga once...but I never had the chance to actually go..."
"I was born without parents...the orphanage teacher promised she'd bring me here for my twelfth birthday...but she broke her promise in the end, and I was left waiting..."
Blah blah blah...words to that effect.
Deeply touching. And deeply manipulative.
Maki was completely taken in.
And so Maki raised both hands in surrender. "Alright, alright — fine, I'll wear it!"
With great reluctance, wearing an expression of absolute unwillingness, she stepped into the fitting room to change.
Mahiko sat on the sofa with the look of someone who had won a great victory, swinging her legs, humming happily to herself.
...And, while she was at it, she quietly moved the glasses Maki had taken off to a spot that was easy to miss and hard to accidentally knock over.
Maki's Cursed Energy was vanishingly small — so small that without assistance she couldn't even perceive Cursed Spirits, let alone sense Cursed Energy.
She needed her glasses to sense Cursed Energy and see Cursed Spirits. Without them, she was no different from an ordinary person.
Maki almost never took her glasses off.
But just now Mahiko had made a deliberate point of coaxing Maki into removing them, and here they were.
Creak——
The fitting room door swung open.
For the guests' convenience, each private room had its own fitting room.
Maki stepped out, her expression slightly uncomfortable. "I've changed...the outfit's on. It's on."
But something felt deeply strange.
The Zen'in family was profoundly patriarchal, with deeply traditional values — and Maki, who had spent her whole life pushing back against her clan, naturally harbored an equal disdain for becoming anything resembling a docile, demure Yamato Nadeshiko.
Which was another way of saying that words like "soft" and "sweet" had never once applied to her.
Maki Zenin was simply, purely, cool.
And in truth, Maki's looks were exceptional — it was just that her usual combination of a high ponytail and square-framed glasses was such an aggressively unflattering pairing that it obscured what she actually was. Without that combination, she would genuinely have been recognized as one of the great beauties in the canon.
Case in point: right now.
Maki was genuinely stunning.
The maid uniform Mahiko had chosen was nothing improper — it was a long dress, nothing provocative about it.
And at the same time, Mahiko could tell at a glance that Maki had no idea how to do her makeup — her face was completely bare...but even so, the effect was breathtaking.
That sharp, fierce face framed by loose, falling hair — together they brought out something in Maki that called to mind a glacier, or a drawn sword.
The tall, dark-haired girl in the maid uniform was like something out of a fantasy novel — one of those "werewolf battle-maid" archetypes — at rest, a delicate and fragile ice sculpture of pure beauty, but in combat...you just knew that somewhere inside that slender frame lived something extraordinarily dangerous, like a blade still in its scabbard.
It was only after meeting Mahiko's gaze that Maki's expression turned a little self-conscious.
"Uh — it's not weird, right?" Maki's brow furrowed slightly.
This was the first time she'd ever worn something like this, and she couldn't quite put the feeling into words.
She'd only changed her clothes...why did it feel like this?
Maki's thoughts were in a tangle.
Then she saw Mahiko's eyes sparkling. "You look so pretty!"
Maki scratched her cheek and turned her face away to dodge the look.
"Honestly...this kind of outfit isn't really suited to me. Megumi Fushiguro's the type who'd actually suit this style..."
Oh well. It was for Mahiko to see, so it didn't really matter.
And besides — all of them, these sorcerers, having to track down a single Cursed Spirit, and every last one of them ending up dependent on a little girl who'd only been exposed to the world of jujutsu for a short while...honestly, it was a bit embarrassing.
They felt genuinely bad about putting Mahiko through all this.
So granting a girl's small wish — that was the very least they could do.
"Maki-nee!" And then Maki saw the blue-haired girl sitting on the sofa beckoning to her, while simultaneously patting her own thigh. "Come here!"
"What?"
Maki didn't quite follow what Mahiko meant.
But she came over anyway and sat down beside her.
"Let Maki-nee rest!" Mahiko pointed at her own lap. "Lap pillow!"
Huh? What was this now?
Maki shook her head. "I don't need to rest."
Mahiko shook hers. "No — Maki-nee must be exhausted right now. You need to rest."
The girl's gaze was stubborn.
Maki thought...this was probably just some kind of roleplay game that little kids did.
She sighed. "Alright then."
And she gave in.
Was she tired? ...Honestly, yes. She was.
Or rather — there wasn't a single student at Jujutsu High who hadn't been exhausted these past few days. Nobara's kidnapping. The terrorist incident. The exchange event and the whole business of tracking down a blue-haired Cursed Spirit...one thing after another, piling up without pause, pressing down on all of them until it was hard to breathe.
Sorcerer burnout was just the standard way of things — but the kind of bone-deep, body-and-soul exhaustion she felt right now had been almost absent from her life in the past year.
So...a rest couldn't hurt.
Might as well pass the time.
And Mahiko was inviting her, after all.
Maki gently turned onto her side and lay down, resting her head in Mahiko's lap.
And Mahiko smiled softly and began to stroke Maki's hair.
"Maki-nee has always had it so hard, hasn't she?" she said with a gentle smile. "You can sleep a little, you know?"
As she spoke, she brought her hand down and covered Maki's eyes.
Maki sighed. "I don't need to——"
"I said," Mahiko repeated with a smile, the cursed seal on the tip of her tongue glowing, "[Sleep]."
Cursed Speech activated.
Maki's body went rigid. Her pupils dilated.
Under the force of the Cursed Speech, she sank directly into sleep.
And Mahiko smiled her little scheming smile, reached out, and quietly opened a barrier — one that would be easy to miss.
——Got her.
Just as she'd thought — this time, being alone with Maki Zenin was the luckiest possible outcome for her.
Because she hadn't had to do a single troublesome thing. She'd gotten exactly what she wanted without any effort at all.
Pretty slick, honestly.
____
👻🔥+40 ch: Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: Samsara Game: Starting in The Long Dark with My Waifus
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