"Gojo Grade 3—"
"Shut up, bitch."
Nanami Kira spoke softly. His black eyes held no ripple at all.
Hoshino Ei had been found. It should have been impossible.
He hated when things exceeded his expectations. Hated anything that fell outside his plans.
It made him irritable—and irritation was the mortal enemy of a quiet life. Irritation, irritation. He had believed he would never feel this way again, had believed his heart would never be stirred again. Yet here it was. The irritation clawed at him anyway.
His nails were growing. He bit down on his thumbnail, brow furrowed, thinking.
What had happened? Hoshino Ei's Concealment could fool even him—discovery was a fantasy. An impossibility.
Geto Suguru's group couldn't have done it. Under the principle of Equivalent Exchange, erecting a Curtain this powerful required a proportional sacrifice. The enemy had already been sealed inside the Curtain, while the barrier nodes lay outside it—meaning those trapped within could never locate the nodes unless they broke through the barrier itself. But if they could break the barrier, they wouldn't need the nodes in the first place.
That logical paradox drove the Curtain's cost to its historical maximum.
The nodes had to be placed somewhere findable. They had to be unguarded.
Those were the conclusions Nanami Kira had deduced, and they were the reason he had felt safe leaving Hoshino Ei outside to destroy them.
Something had gone wrong. Geto's people could not have discovered her. It was impossible.
Irritation. Irritation. Irritation.
"Gojo, how dare you be so insolent—"
Nanami Kira's right hand swept past Sorako's cheek. A gentle brush.
Boom—
A terrifying eruption of Cursed Energy. A silent explosion ignited invisible fire, kicked up a massive pressure wave, tore open the air around Sorako and whipped her hair into chaos.
Her expression froze. She felt the Cursed Energy surging beside her—that spine-chilling aura. For the first time in her life, death felt this close. She stared into Nanami Kira's calm eyes, and through those pupils dark as midnight, she thought she saw gravestones. Row after row of them.
"I've been trying to play this game with you people in a civilized manner. I can't kill you, so please. Shut your mouth."
"You think I truly can't afford the price of killing someone?"
He looked at her. Cold nails hovered near her cheek. Dark Cursed Energy flickered along their edges like a cobra's fangs, glinting cold in the bitter night air.
"The last self-proclaimed noble has already been written into my 'diary.'"
He leaned in close to her cheek. By her ear, he murmured:
"I was so very sad at the funeral."
His left hand withdrew from beside her face. He shook it once, and the black Cursed Energy coiled around it slowly dissipated.
"Don't think so highly of yourself."
He left those words behind and walked away. The warehouse ran deep, the light was dim, and the darkness swallowed him inch by inch.
Hoshino Ei was in trouble. He had to find a way to fix this.
As Nanami Kira's hand pulled away, the breath Sorako had been holding finally escaped—a slow, shaking exhale. All the strength seemed to have drained from her body. What remained was only a leaden helplessness, so heavy she could barely lift her own arms.
Noble honor told her to resist. To defend the dignity of a sorcerer. But biological instinct screamed at her to stay far away from this man. The discomfort was physical—it robbed her of any will to fight back, made her want only to submit.
He was that cold. That merciless. Those eyes were that inhuman—less a person than a Cursed Spirit.
A curse without emotion.
The purest darkness.
He had treated her like an object. No different from a table or a bench. In all Sorako's years, she had never encountered someone who so completely disregarded her. She had always been the family's darling, the rising star of the jujutsu world, and never once had she been handled so roughly. This was a feeling she had never known.
Unable to resist. Only able to submit. A strange sensation, and—to put it crudely—she
Heaven's Way is without kindness. It treats all things as straw dogs.
A line from Laozi surfaced in her mind at once.
Its meaning: the Way of Heaven is impartial. All creatures are the same to it—no hierarchy of noble and base. The saying did not mock Heaven's coldness or lament the people's suffering. On the contrary, it praised Heaven's all-encompassing neutrality. It favored no one. It disfavored no one. It simply followed the course of nature.
Divinity. Kento Gojo possessed a quality of divinity. It was only a feeling in her heart.
How absurd.
And yet—if it were true, then what could possibly make a god this angry?
5:03.
The warehouse stretched wide and empty. Footsteps struck the bare floor and sent hollow echoes ringing through the space.
Nanami Kira chewed on his fingernail, black eyes fixed on the ground.
His arm was injured. Outwardly it appeared fine, but the pain had gone so deep he had lost all sensation. Even Reverse Cursed Technique struggled to heal it. It seemed his earlier display had triggered the auction after all.
But he had done it anyway. Knowing full well it would trigger the auction, he had done it—because it felt good. Because it brought his heart back to calm.
Nothing could override his will. Not even Amber Mansion.
The boundary between night and day was vague here, especially on an overcast day with no visible sun. There was no telling when true nightfall would come.
The night before, he had leaned against the door and tracked Sayahi-san's movements. When the last sound outside died away, it had been around half past six.
So nightfall in this place came after six-thirty.
Time was running short. He continued thinking.
Geto Suguru neither would nor could see through Hoshino Ei's Concealment. Then who could?
Eliminate the impossible. Whatever remains—however absurd—is the truth.
Crack. He bit through his nail.
He spat the fragment onto the floor and stared ahead with those unchanging dark eyes.
It was Amber Mansion. Amber Mansion could see through Hoshino Ei's technique.
Once before, when Hoshino Ei had snuck into the warehouse to steal the Monk Manyo's travel journal, it was Amber Mansion that had detected her.
Honestly...
He patted the hand resting against his chest, and said with a faintly mocking smile:
"You really have a talent for making enemies."
"Don't... be so rough..."
The little hand in his arms was terribly weak. Its fingertips trembled, and from within it came a pitiful voice in his mind:
"It hurts..."
Although she could recover, two-thirds of her soul had already been destroyed.
Nanami Kira's expression darkened—though not out of concern for Hoshino Ei's safety.
It was simply that, if this idiot died, the aftermath would be genuinely troublesome.
"Why didn't you run? You should have sensed something was wrong."
"Because Kira-kun told me to destroy that barrier node. I had to do it."
Hoshino Ei pressed herself gently against his chest. Starlight began to gather, and from the scattering motes of silver light a girl stepped out—silver hair, crimson eyes. She let her head droop against his chest, her voice muffled and low:
"But I messed up again. Pretty useless, right? Hoshino Ei is just a useless hand—I'm sure you've thought that, Kira-kun."
Nanami Kira instinctively tucked his left hand—trembling faintly from pain—into his trouser pocket.
She gripped the edge of his sleeve. Held on. Her face buried against his chest, her snow-white hair tickling him. Her voice wavered:
"I can't help it. Hoshino is just that useless. Just a little Cursed Spirit, nothing more... can't do anything right. Always this useless, always disappointing you, Kira-kun."
Pressed against him, she whispered: "Can't do anything... can't finish anything... no value left to use. You won't throw me away, will you, Kira-kun?"
She was truly terrified of being abandoned. Terrified of the darkness in that frozen cellar. That was why she fought so desperately to prove herself.
To prove she still had worth.
"Hoshino."
She raised her head. In her wine-red pupils, Nanami Kira's reflection stared back.
He tilted his head down slightly, meeting her gaze:
"There is a bond between us. We swore a Binding Vow, that summer. I chose not to kill you, and in exchange I told you my secret. The price—you would be used by me, commanded by me, for the rest of your life."
"That is the curse between us."
"We have already cursed each other."
"A curse unto death."