The cold wind from the corridor poured into the room through the wide-open sliding door, lifting the hem of that ill-fitting dark blue uniform coat.
The sleeves were so oversized, and still unrolled, that they almost completely hid Kaede's hands, revealing only the occasional pale fingertip when the fabric shifted.
"Uh... right... um... hi?" Kaede tilted his head uncertainly, black hair falling against his shoulders, his greeting carrying a trace of hesitation.
That awkward, tentative greeting sounded strangely out of place in the dim room packed with bizarre plush dolls, clashing with the heavy, oppressive atmosphere around it.
Masamichi Yaga's thick fingers held the tiny sewing needle suspended in midair for two full seconds.
He did not respond right away. Behind his dark sunglasses, his weathered eyes swept coldly over the slight figure standing in the doorway.
From Yaga's perspective, this boy wrapped in Gojo's coat was unnervingly quiet. He showed none of the fear an ordinary person should have felt under this kind of pressure, but at the same time there was no sharp, aggressive edge of cursed energy about him either. His presence was so calm it felt like a still pool outside the door.
Yaga drove the sewing needle neatly into the rough fabric of a green mutant bear doll beside him, then slowly pushed his massive body up from the tatami.
The moment he stood, the artificial cursed energy that had been flowing through the room like an undercurrent instantly thickened into tangible pressure, grinding toward the doorway like invisible lead.
From the shadows came the faint creaking of strange plush cursed corpses rubbing against themselves, as if they might spring from the dark at any second.
"Gojo. This is why you kicked my door open in the middle of the night? You dragged back some kid who can't even manage a proper greeting?"
Yaga's voice was so deep it seemed to vibrate through the chest, and the irritation and caution in it were impossible to miss.
"Oh, don't be so harsh, Principal."
Gojo leaned lazily against the wooden doorframe, completely ignoring the crushing pressure in the room, the kind that would have left an ordinary person struggling to breathe.
One hand stayed in his pocket while the other gestured casually in the air.
"His name's Kaede. He may look like a blank slate right now, but an hour ago he had a lovely little 'chat' with a really disgusting special grade curse down by the Tama, and here he is, still in one piece.
Though..."
Gojo deliberately dragged out the last word, pale blue eyes glancing at Kaede over the slipping edge of his sunglasses, amused as if watching a show.
"He left most of his memories in the river, so he's running a bit low on common sense at the moment."
At the words "special grade curse," Yaga's stern face tightened noticeably.
He did not fully trust Gojo's usual flair for exaggeration, but both his instincts as an educator and his training as a sorcerer made him reassess the harmless-looking boy in front of him.
He took one heavy step forward. His broad frame blocked out most of the candlelight, and his shadow instantly swallowed Kaede whole.
"Amnesia?"
Yaga looked down at him from above, his tone no softer than before. If anything, it grew colder and sharper.
"Jujutsu High is not a shelter. It is not a sanitarium for lost children trying to recover their memories. So since you're standing here, whatever you do or do not remember..."
He paused, and the pressure of cursed energy around them rose again, forcing the visitor to face the brutal laws of this world.
"Answer me. Why are you here?"
"Why am I here? If I don't lie, then yes, there's definitely the simple matter of survival..." Kaede lowered his head slightly, dark red eyes fixed on the wooden floor as he fell into thought.
Why was he here?
Just because he had been forced into this world?
Kaede was not the sort of person who liked dodging responsibility, whether it was for accidents, misfortune, or anything else.
In other words, what the question really meant for him was this: if he could go back to living as an ordinary person, then what exactly would the jujutsu world be to him?
So far, his ability had not shown the extreme offensive power that really fit a sorcerer. But for an ordinary person, it was more than enough to stay alive.
But... was simply staying alive really all he wanted?
"If we're speaking broadly, then I want to understand jujutsu.
I don't want to waste the talent I have, or die at the hands of monsters like curses without ever knowing what I could have become...
I want to see where my limit is."
Kaede raised his head slightly as he said it.
The candle flame wavered violently in the shifting air, bending so far it nearly touched the wax before stubbornly straightening again.
Yaga never changed his posture. He continued staring down at the boy who had lowered his head to think.
The fingers clutching the sewing needle had turned white at the knuckles from the force of his grip.
He had heard Kaede's honest answer about survival, and he had also heard the reckless edge in that talk of limits, the kind of dangerous intensity that belonged to youth.
"Your limit?"
Yaga's next step sank hard enough into the tatami to leave a deep indentation.
He shot out a hand and grabbed a plush hippo with bulging green compound eyes from the pile of cursed corpses behind him.
The instant he poured cursed energy into it, the limp toy swelled alive. Sharp hooked claws pushed out from its limbs, and its compound eyes lit with a wild, blood-red glow.
"In the world of jujutsu, the end of a person's 'limit' is usually a broken corpse, sometimes one that can't even leave its name behind.
And for the sake of understanding some vague, unreachable thing, you would throw yourself into an abyss full of despair and curses?"
He tossed the cursed corpse, Hippo-maru, into the air.
The creature twisted neatly midair and landed less than two feet from Kaede. Its jagged mouth opened, and a low growl rumbled from deep in its throat.
"Survival instinct and curiosity may drive people forward, but in the face of horrors that can twist a soul apart in an instant, those fragile little motives shatter like glass.
I'm not asking about your 'wish.' I'm asking about your 'resolve.'"
There was a nearly cruel rationality in Yaga's tone, and the cursed pressure bearing down on the doorway only intensified.
Gojo, still leaning against the frame, straightened up a little.
He pulled his sunglasses down.
His pale blue Six Eyes shone sharply in the dark, like twin spotlights that could pierce straight through any disguise, locking onto every faint fluctuation of cursed energy in Kaede's body.
"Wow. Principal's still really committed to giving young people a proper heavy first lesson."
Gojo hooked a finger into the edge of his coat. His tone remained careless, but there was a glint of genuine observation in his eyes now.
"Still, 'I don't want to die without meaning' is a pretty excellent answer. A lot better than the fools who talk big about righteousness and then collapse first on the battlefield.
Hey, Kaede. What the principal means is this: if you're not ready to be torn to pieces by curses while chasing that so-called limit of yours, then you can still turn around and walk away."
Yaga ignored Gojo's attempt at levity. His massive frame stood planted in front of Kaede like a mountain no one could cross.
"When you face despair so absolute that death is certain, when everything you've learned about jujutsu is not enough to save what matters most to you, will you still stand tall and die without regret for the sake of this so-called limit?"
Die... as a transmigrator?
At those words, Kaede smiled.
It was a bright smile. In his crimson eyes, tears even shimmered like clear crystals.
"That question can be answered by whoever remembers me after I'm gone. My life isn't going to be shaped by choices I regret. I'm actually curious about whose hands I'll die by... and what kind of death it'll be."
He did not fear death.
To Kaede, what would happen after dying was a question worth examining.
Would it begin the next cycle of reincarnation, or would everything simply scatter and return to dust?
That answer could wait until the moment of death itself.
As for regret, there was no point in it at all.
The candle flame was suddenly crushed sideways by some invisible pressure, almost snuffed out entirely.
On Yaga's face, hard as granite, the faintest twitch passed across his features when he heard the words death and curious used so lightly together.
Behind the sunglasses, his eyes now shone with a coldness close to judgment.
There was no shortage of madmen in the world of jujutsu, but even for Yaga, a boy who could calmly analyze his own funeral carried a deeply unsettling sort of strangeness.
"So you're curious about the way you'll die... What an arrogant answer. Sickeningly so."
Yaga's voice rolled low like distant thunder. Not only did he fail to withdraw his cursed energy, he clenched his free left fist even tighter.
Hippo-maru, crouched nearby, felt its master's intent immediately. The red glow in its compound eyes stretched into burning lines.
Its hind legs kicked off hard, and the plush body that should have been soft with stuffing suddenly burst with terrifying elasticity. The tatami beneath it tore with a shrill rip, scattering dry stalks into the air.
Hippo-maru's body became a blur of green as it shot straight for Kaede.
The hooked claws on its forelimbs sliced through the air toward his shoulder, aiming to seize this insolent test subject and smash him onto the hard floor.
Faced with a blow that would have shattered an ordinary person's spine, Kaede remained standing in the doorway in that same slight posture, the hem of the oversized coat snapping violently in the wind stirred up by the cursed corpse.
"Since you claim you're ready for death at any moment, then prove to me first that you deserve to keep struggling until it arrives!"
With Yaga's roar, Hippo-maru's claws, only inches from Kaede's neck, suddenly changed direction. What had been a grab turned into a sweeping horizontal strike, the weight behind it so immense that visible ripples distorted the air.
For someone with no formal training, a blank slate like this, an attack on that level was enough to be fatal.
Gojo, standing off to the side, made no move to intervene.
He tilted his head slightly, right hand resting at his hip, while those pale blue Six Eyes caught every tiny refraction in the flow of cursed energy around Kaede.
He saw Kaede's shadow swallowed beneath the cursed corpse's bulk. He saw the calm, almost unnaturally composed expression on the boy's face as the rushing wind tossed his hair. And he also saw the still moisture in the air begin to change under some unseen trigger.
"Wow. Principal's actually serious this time."
There was irresponsible anticipation in Gojo's voice as his eyes locked onto the exact point where Hippo-maru and Kaede were about to collide.
"Kaede, if you die during your Jujutsu High entrance interview, that won't really count as the kind of death you were hoping for, will it?"