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It was terrifying. Everyone was on edge, jumping at shadows.
They immediately asked Inumaki to use Cursed Speech to test each person in turn.
Inumaki found a line from the theme song of a certain famous detective anime and used it as the test — the lyric roughly amounting to "speak aloud your hidden identity." She went through every single person one by one, until her voice had gone hoarse. The only one she didn't dare test was Yuji Itadori, out of fear of disturbing Sukuna. No one showed any sign of anomaly.
Only then did the group let out a collective breath of relief.
"But does Inumaki's Cursed Speech even work on that blue-haired Cursed Spirit?" Miwa Kasumi immediately grew worried again. "Doesn't that blue-haired Cursed Spirit — hypnotize herself?"
Hypnotizing herself, temporarily altering her own memories… in that case, would Inumaki's compulsion-to-tell-the-truth curse still be effective?
"Is there a Cursed Speech lyric that can directly reveal someone's identity?" Miwa Kasumi asked. "Something like… making a person's real name appear on their forehead?"
"Difficult." Inumaki shook her head. Cursed Speech was a curse — not kotodama. Making words into absolute law was simply beyond its reach.
"Haah… maybe the matter of the blue-haired Cursed Spirit… is already beyond what we can solve." Yuji Itadori said this with a flickering look in his eyes.
And that sentence was the conclusion they had arrived at after a lengthy back-and-forth.
What if the blue-haired Cursed Spirit had already become one of them? What if she had already infiltrated the upper echelons of the jujutsu world?
Once the seed of mutual suspicion was planted, it would grow into something truly horrifying — and that kind of suspicion, far more than any powerful enemy out in the open, had the potential to cause a real crisis.
So they couldn't allow that line of thinking to fester in everyone's minds.
They weren't inclined to believe that the blue-haired Cursed Spirit would have prepared in advance — using hypnosis or some similar method to make herself immune to Inumaki's interrogation.
So… let's just assume everyone here is normal for now.
"I think the matter of the blue-haired Cursed Spirit… is going to require a Special Grade sorcerer." Megumi Fushiguro sighed as well.
It would be so much better if Satoru Gojo were here.
Satoru Gojo's Six Eyes should be able to see straight through the blue-haired Cursed Spirit's identity.
"So let's wait for Gojo to come back," Megumi Fushiguro said. "He shouldn't be much longer."
The outcome of the exchange meet still mattered, of course — but now that the blue-haired Cursed Spirit had everyone's skin crawling, continuing to fixate on winning and losing felt pointless.
"In that case, going forward —" Kamo Noritoshi spoke up and picked up the thread. "To prevent the blue-haired Cursed Spirit from conducting any further infiltration, and to allow us to keep watch on one another, I suggest we move in groups of three or four from here on out. That way we can at least prevent anyone from being left alone."
Kamo Noritoshi's proposal met with unanimous agreement.
And so they began dividing into teams.
Yuji Itadori, Nobara Kugisaki, and Todo Aoi formed one group, named: "Best Bros and the Third Wheel Squad."
Miwa Kasumi, Nishimiya Momo, and Kamo Noritoshi formed another, named: "Traditional Kyoto Squad."
Inumaki, Panda, and Megumi Fushiguro formed one group, named: "Our Animal Friends."
Once everyone else had been sorted, the ones remaining were Maki Zenin, Zen'in Mai, and Mahiko —
Which happened to make a neat "Triple-Ma Combination."
"Inumaki can't keep running these tests — her vocal cords can't withstand that kind of load," Kamo Noritoshi said. "All three of you must keep each other within eyesight at all times."
Meanwhile, Mahiko sat off to the side with her cheek resting on her hand, watching the whole thing play out.
She didn't mind.
When Inumaki had used Cursed Speech to test her identity just now, she had actually anticipated it long ago. But the method she had used wasn't the troublesome one Miwa Kasumi had described — the "hypnotize yourself into believing you're someone else" approach.
She had simply gotten ahead of it by protecting herself with Cursed Speech first. Specifically, she had used a curse to construct an interference interception layer along her own auditory pathway, targeted against Cursed Speech. If someone used Cursed Speech to attack her soul, Mahiko's defense would automatically redirect that curse attack onto a decoy soul she had prepared.
It was a technique similar to deploying flare decoys to throw off a missile lock — letting the enemy's curse land on the "false target" Mahiko had set.
In truth, this trick hadn't originally been designed to counter Cursed Speech. She had designed the "soul decoy" to defend against Nobara Kugisaki's Technique — though she'd later found it worked even better against Cursed Speech.
The meeting concluded. It was evening now.
They were to split up temporarily and rest.
But even resting was done by team.
Each group of three went their separate way.
Mahiko had no idea where the other groups had gone. All she knew was that her own group — her, Maki Zenin, and Zen'in Mai — needed to go check into a hotel room together.
"Heh, what rotten luck, ending up with you." Zen'in Mai crossed her arms and sneered coldly. "Why don't we just go tell them to let you move around on your own… because I don't think that blue-haired Cursed Spirit would bother targeting a deadweight like you."
Maki Zenin and Zen'in Mai had started taking shots at each other.
In public, these two sisters had always been at odds. Until the day they actually laid their feelings bare with each other, trading blows was the norm.
"Oh really? Because you just got absolutely wrecked by that deadweight a little while ago, didn't you?" By the hotel bedside, Maki Zenin was taking off her glasses and pulling off her top, all while mocking Zen'in Mai. "If I hadn't held back, you'd be dead right now, Mai."
Zen'in Mai's brow twitched.
"Trash that can't even see Cursed Spirits." Zen'in Mai grinned through clenched teeth. "Can you even kill a Cursed Spirit without a cursed tool?"
"Oh my, what's the Construction Technique user with only enough Cursed Energy for a single bullet talking about?" Maki Zenin grinned right back. "Without your handgun, you don't even have the right to set foot on a battlefield, do you?"
The two of them bickered on and on, trading insults, the air between them growing thicker with tension by the second.
By all rights, as an obedient, sweet little girl, Mahiko should have gone over with tears welling in her eyes right about now, tugged at the hems of their clothes, and said something like "Please don't fight, sisters, can't we all just get along" — wrapped the whole thing up like a nice little dumpling.
But she didn't.
Not because she was lazy.
But because she was busy taking advantage of the opportunity to covertly admire their figures.
Maki Zenin was the athletic type — her figure was the best of the three, full of a powerful, toned energy.
Zen'in Mai also trained regularly, but her figure wasn't quite as powerful — she was the slender type.
With her glasses off and her long hair down, the two sisters looked almost identical.
The two of them were busy quarreling. Mahiko was quietly over to the side, feasting her eyes.
Then the three of them prepared to take turns in the bath — but just as Maki Zenin was about to go first, she suddenly realized that meant she'd be alone. So it was decided: all three of them would bathe together.
The hotel was certainly luxurious, but it's unlikely anyone could have anticipated three people being crammed into a single bathtub.
Mahiko felt like the meat patty in the middle of a hamburger.
Sleeping was no different.
It was a room with a large double bed. Mahiko became the no-man's-land between Maki Zenin and Zen'in Mai.
The two of them wouldn't settle down even in bed — bickering nonstop into Mahiko's left ear and right ear respectively. Now that Mahiko couldn't admire anyone, she just started feeling annoyed.
If she didn't step in and put a stop to it, these two could keep going at each other all night.
"Could the two of you please stop fighting…" (voice slightly trembling, as if on the verge of tears)
Only then did Maki Zenin and Zen'in Mai realize they really had been ignoring Mahiko's feelings. Both of them apologized to her in turn.
"I'll let you off the hook for Mahiko's sake." Zen'in Mai said, wrapping one arm around Mahiko's. "You won't be this lucky next time."
Maki Zenin snorted a cold laugh and fired back: "Don't flatter yourself."
And then she wrapped her own arm around Mahiko's other arm.
"Mahiko doesn't like your type at all."
Zen'in Mai's brow twitched. She raised an eyebrow toward Mahiko, her expression hovering somewhere between a smirk and a genuine question: "Oh really? Then Mahiko, tell us — which one of us do you like?"
Mahiko slowly let her expression go completely blank.
Could you two just be quiet for a moment?
Though the question had been asked aloud, in practice, the two of them didn't actually wait for Mahiko to answer.
Each hugging one of Mahiko's arms with a huff, they went quiet after a while — and then both of them drifted off to sleep.
Mahiko had both arms held from either side.
The meat patty in the hamburger, once again.
She lay in the dark, staring up at the ceiling, sinking slowly into thought.
At this point, part of the reason she was willing to stay among the people of Jujutsu High was to freeload off their resources; the other part was to watch and wait for Kenjaku's next move.
By now, Kenjaku's side should have had enough time to recuperate.
It was probably… about time for the next phase of his plan?
Mahiko lay there, quietly turning over in her mind how the opponent would play his cards, and gradually drifted off to sleep.
Little did she know, Kenjaku had never once left Mahiko feeling bored.
And in the dead of night that very same evening, Mahiko was jolted awake by voices murmuring near her.
The girl feigned a groggy, half-asleep awakening.
What she saw were two young women, their faces pale with shock and disbelief.
"The old master of the Zenin family… is dead?" Maki Zenin asked, unable to believe it.
Zen'in Mai stretched the corner of her mouth: "Yes. It's true."
Mahiko froze as well.
The news left her unable to process it, even for a moment.
Naobito Zenin… was dead??
____
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