Watching Chou Fei's defeated, self-destructive display, Kira knew he'd achieved his goal.
The whole omniscient act had been deliberate.
Crush the soul fragment's spirit first. Break him down, and everything afterward would go smoother.
Because Kira needed to buy time. He needed it to look—to anyone watching—as though he and Yoshinobu Gakuganji had been in deep, private discussion for a long while.
"So."
Chou Fei, still wearing Gakuganji's body, spoke in a listless drawl:
"So what's the real reason you came to see me?"
"You're in contact with the Cursed Spirits. I want their location."
Chou Fei let out a contemptuous snort, lifting his eyes from beneath those bushy white brows. Something dark glinted in them.
"And why would I tell you?"
"Seems you don't understand the situation."
Kira clapped his hands. A pale-pink shadow flickered through the air and vanished.
Gakuganji's body was that of a Grade 1 sorcerer, but Chou Fei was merely a soul fragment—a single po. The maximum a po could draw from a host body was Grade 2 at best. The body's true strength was far beyond his reach.
Before he could dodge, Killer Queen was already pressed against him. Chou Fei's vision blurred; his right arm went cold, suddenly weightless, as if something had simply... vacated his shoulder.
He looked down. His left arm had been blown clean off at the joint. The blast tore through flesh and soul alike, ripping at a spirit-body that was already fractured beyond repair.
It was like ten thousand ants crawling through the inside of your skull, their tiny mandibles gnawing at your brain matter one morsel at a time. That was the scale of the pain.
"AAAARGH!"
Chou Fei's face twisted into a rictus of agony. He glared at Kira with feral hatred, his remaining hand clamping down on the edge of the stone bench so hard that all five fingers sank into the rock. Stone chips and blood sprayed together.
"Quiet."
Kira stood with his arms crossed, looking down at Chou Fei. Beside him, Killer Queen sat on a small stool, mimicking its master—arms folded across its chest, chin slightly raised, cat-slit pupils angled downward in an identical look of lordly disdain.
"Kira! Do you have any idea what you're doing? Real or not, in the eyes of the jujutsu world you're assaulting a principal!"
"I've already killed several members of the higher-ups. One more principal won't make a difference."
To Kira, it was all irrelevant. Going from a four-star upstanding citizen to a five-star one—what was the difference?
Time was going to reset anyway.
"I'm asking you: where are Suguru Geto and the others?"
"I curse you."
Chou Fei raised his head. His pupils were shot through with red, his expression pure venom:
"I curse you! I curse you!"
"Just kill me."
"I curse you to never know peace!"
"Kill me!"
His head drooped. His eyes stayed wide open, staring at nothing. Waiting to die.
A slender hand settled on his shoulder. Terrifying cursed energy began to gather, sending out waves that made the air itself tremble.
Geto had mentioned it before—that Nanami Kira could wield jujutsu. But feeling that monstrous pressure firsthand still made Chou Fei's blood run cold. Even without a shikigami, on cursed energy alone, Kira stood at the absolute peak of Grade 1.
The energy surging through his shoulder intensified. Grew more and more oppressive. Kira seemed to be executing an enormously powerful technique.
Chou Fei squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the end. Seconds crawled past. He was still alive.
"Reverse Cursed Technique."
The stump of his shoulder itched. He turned to look—flesh and blood were slowly knitting themselves back together, reconnecting with the arm that had been blown apart moments ago.
"Killer Queen only converted the muscle tissue around your joint into a bomb. The severed surface is clean and flat—reattaching it with RCT is quite simple."
Kira's calm voice drifted to him, patient and explanatory.
Chou Fei's expression shifted from hatred to bewilderment.
"You're... not going to kill me?"
Kira dusted off his hands. He checked his watch—still not too late. If he caught the bullet train back to Tokyo tonight, he could be in bed before eleven. A satisfied smile crossed his face.
"I'm not going to kill you."
His expression was perfectly composed. "That's not my job. I have no interest in overtime."
"Just now, I turned your body into a bomb. So after I leave—don't tell anyone about tonight. In return, I won't detonate it."
"I won't lose to anyone, but I still despise conflict."
"That's my only condition. I hope we can enjoy a pleasant partnership."
Kira rose from his seat and walked toward the exit, descending the stone steps one at a time, his figure gradually shrinking until it disappeared from Chou Fei's line of sight.
At the gate, his steps halted. He turned.
Moonlight draped over him. Pale silver light played across his fingertips as he raised a hand in farewell, rippling the watery glow of the moon itself:
"Until next time, Chou Fei. A pleasure doing business."
Chou Fei stared after him, face dark, and gave a single nod.
"We have a traitor among us."
Steam billowed from the hot spring. A haze of mist hung in the moonlight, lending the scene a dreamlike quality—every grim face half-obscured, half-revealed.
Suguru Geto reclined against the edge of the spring, eyes narrowed to slits, surveying those present with a smile that wasn't quite a smile.
"Mahito is dead. Why would Nanami Kira go back to that cinema?"
Mahito had acted with meticulous discretion. He hadn't leaked any excess cursed-energy signatures. There was no way Kira could have sensed anything.
Unless someone had tipped him off. Or the whole thing had been a trap from the start.
"Geto. You know me."
Jogo crossed his arms, his expression sour. Jets of heat pulsed from the volcano atop his head, mingling with the spring's steam until the air around him was nearly opaque:
"Betrayal isn't in my nature. And given my intellect—"
"—pulling that off would be a stretch."
Geto nodded, then shifted his gaze to Hanami.
".Me understand you, Geto."
".Jogo as same I'm."
Geto nodded approvingly once more, then finally turned his attention to Dagon.
It was still in its Cursed Womb form—a soft, squishy lump. Presumably a Special Grade Cursed Spirit born from humanity's fear of the ocean.
"Never mind. You're the same as Jogo."
Geto withdrew his gaze from it and looked out at the murky night sky. The moon hung fat and orange, as if a layer of gauze had been ground across its face.
"Each of you has your strengths. I know that. But Hoshino Ei—her, I'm not familiar with."
Unlike Chou Fei, who trusted his own severed hand unconditionally, the Cursed Spirits had always regarded Hoshino Ei with suspicion.
"You think the traitor is that Hoshino woman?"
Hanami straightened up, the thought flashing through his mind.
"That's it!"
Jogo surged to his feet. His temper flared with him—lava erupted from his crown and splashed into the water, flash-boiling the already scalding spring into a plume of steam.
"She's the one who provided the plan! She's the only one who had the opportunity to tip off Kira!"
"I always knew that woman couldn't be trusted! She's been around Kira for so long—she turned on us ages ago!"
He paced through the water, voice rising with every step:
"She must have arranged the whole thing with Kira beforehand—used the plan to lure Mahito out and ambush him! It was a trap from the start!"
"Calm down, Jogo."
Geto raised a hand, signaling restraint. His expression remained placid, his voice soft:
"It's possible this is simply Kira trying to drive a wedge between us."
"Regardless, our plan doesn't change. Collect the fingers. Make Yuji Itadori—or Nanami Kira—swallow them."
Mid-sentence, Geto paused. His eyes narrowed further; a crease formed between his brows.
"What is it, Geto?"
"The Windows I placed at Kyoto Jujutsu High just sent back intel. I stationed them outside the barrier to avoid detection, so they can only monitor who enters and exits."
They had never trusted Chou Fei.
Geto's voice dropped:
"Just now, Nanami Kira and Yoshinobu Gakuganji held a secret meeting in Kyoto."
Yoshinobu Gakuganji—one of Hasegawa Kaede's Seven Spirits, and naturally on the same side as Hoshino Ei.
"...That could just be a normal visit, couldn't it? Kira just killed people. Seeking shelter with someone he knows would make sense..."
"As Kira was leaving, he said something. He was near the edge of the barrier when he said it—close enough for the Windows to pick up."
"He said: 'Until next time, Chou Fei. A pleasure doing business.'"
"Hoshino Ei and Chou Fei are traitors."