"So, are you going to accept the offer?"
"..."
The three of them, lost in thought at the Angel’s voice, came back to their senses.
Before Megumi could even answer, Yuji, his eyes burning with resolve, spoke first.
"Yeah. I accept...."
"Wait."
The one who stopped Yuji from casually offering up his own life was Nobara.
Before Yuji could give a proper answer, Nobara clamped a hand over his mouth and looked at the Angel with a calm expression.
"Why?"
"Could we talk it over with our teammates for a moment? I’d like you to step out."
"Is this something I shouldn’t hear?"
"Not exactly, but we still can’t fully trust each other yet, can we?"
"Fair enough. Let’s go, Kurusu."
"Ah, but I still have something to say to Fushiguro...."
Kurusu looked reluctant, but under the Angel’s firm tone she pouted and left the room.
Once she was completely out of earshot, Nobara grabbed Yuji by the collar.
Thwack
"What the hell do you think you’re doing?"
"I just thought it was what I had to do."
That nonchalant answer twisted her expression.
"Then why did you even tell us Sukuna is a fallen angel?"
"If I’m not careful, I can’t let you two shoulder the risk of a [bond] too. Dying is enough for me alone."
"That’s exactly why it pisses me off!"
He was always like this.
Acting like he himself was nothing, never once thinking about the people he’d leave behind.
He hadn’t even swallowed Sukuna’s finger because he wanted to, and yet he still tried to take on the heaviest burden of all.
That infuriatingly self-sacrificing attitude was unbearable.
"Fushiguro, say something too!"
"...We do need the Angel’s cooperation, but that doesn’t mean I can let you throw your life away."
"Then do you have another way?"
They tried to persuade him to change his mind, but when Yuji turned the question back on them, Nobara and Megumi were left speechless.
Just as he said, if the Angel refused to cooperate, there was nothing they could do. If they captured Kenjaku or Tsukumo and interrogated them, maybe they’d find a lead, but with no way to contact them right now, even that was doubtful.
Cruelly enough, there were only two choices before them.
"If I can save the whole world by sacrificing one life, that’s cheap."
Either let Itadori Yuji die, or ignore the chaos of the Culling Game and leave it alone.
"I’ve really thought about this a lot. I’m absolutely not making this decision on impulse."
"......"
Megumi and Nobara still looked unconvinced.
Maybe for the rest of their lives, they’d never fully understand what he was thinking. No matter how close they were, they could never become him.
The problem was that he was in a position where he had to be special, and if he told them that, they’d probably give up too.
"I was never supposed to be born in the first place."
"What the hell are you talking about...."
Yuji began to tell the story of his past with a pained expression.
"Did you ever wonder about this? Why Choso calls me his little brother, and why I can control Sukuna."
"I did think it was weird, but what does that have to do with anything?"
"It has everything to do with it."
-Because I’m an artificial human Kenjaku made to use as Sukuna’s vessel.
The faces of the two listening went completely white.
The secret was finally coming to light.
His special ability to control Sukuna, his body that surpassed human limits.
All of it was talent bestowed on him by the shadowy mastermind working behind the scenes.
"Why in the world...?"
"I don’t know the full details, but I think Sukuna is like Kenjaku’s insurance policy. The reason I was forcibly made to participate in the Culling Game was probably because of some kind of contract between the two of them."
There were other reasons too, but Yuji didn’t want to say even those.
He recalled what Kenjaku had said that day at the Kamo clan mansion and swallowed the rest of the words.
"You just need to remain an existence that draws curses in."
If he said out loud that he was the source of all misfortune, it would only make him feel miserable.
And if he admitted it himself, then his comrades who tried to save him, and Gojo who opposed the execution, would all become accomplices who had gone along with it.
It was enough for him alone to carry the cause of all sin and misfortune away.
"Do you get it now? My life was nothing but Kenjaku’s chess piece. Swallowing Sukuna’s finger, becoming a jujutsushi, all of it was probably planned. If I keep getting played for a fool, who knows what’ll happen."
"E-even so... that doesn’t make the years you’ve lived up to now a complete lie."
"I agree with Kugisaki. No matter how you’re born, in the end it’s up to you to decide how you live."
They tried everything they could to change his mind, but Yuji’s resolve didn’t waver.
"Then listen to me. This is the path I chose for myself."
"........."
"Fushiguro, do you remember the day we first met?"
"...How could I forget?"
With a gloomy expression, Megumi nodded.
He realized there was no way to change Yuji’s decision.
To reassure him, Yuji gave a faint smile and, for the last time, spoke his true feelings.
"I’m glad I saved you that day. I’m sure I was supposed to save you then and disappear."
"Itadori...!"
"I dragged out something that should’ve ended long ago. I kept trying to find a reason, believing there had to be something even a bomb like me could do.... And now that role has been given to me."
Thank you.
For putting up with my stubbornness all this time.
"So,"
I’m leaving the rest to you.
"Are you done?"
After finishing the story and calling Kurusu back in, Megumi accepted the offer.
"I accept the offer, Angel."
"Good thinking."
"However, I have one condition."
At Megumi’s next words, Yuji swallowed his bitter feelings.
He hadn’t managed to change his mind either.
'Itadori. At least stay alive until this is over. Junpei still doesn’t know about any of this...'
'Take some time to say goodbye to everyone, and see for yourself how the world gets saved. Dying comes after that. This is my last request as your friend.'
'...Okay.'
In the end, he had accepted.
Maybe he still didn’t want to part with them. Even after making up his mind over and over, maybe some lingering attachment remained.
He felt pathetic for his weakness, for not being able to bring it to an end right after steeling himself.
"We’ll kill the fallen angel after we end the Culling Game and free the Prison Realm."
A counterproposal that reversed the order from the Angel’s original offer.
Seeing Megumi speak so confidently, the Angel bit her lip and showed her displeasure.
"What are you thinking?"
"I just think this is more rational."
"In the end, without me, none of you can do anything anyway, can you? It wouldn’t be wise to get on my bad side."
He’d expected her to react like this, but Megumi had prepared his answer.
"First. You don’t know where the fallen angel is right now, do you?"
"I don’t. That’s why I asked for your cooperation."
"If you’re planning to scour the entire Culling Game looking for the fallen angel while there are still three rankers left, forget it. It’ll take too long, and you never know when some variable will pop up."
"If the barriers disappear, there’s even a chance the fallen angel could run. I’d rather kill it before the game ends."
"Leave the search to us. We have a rough idea where it might be."
It was a slightly dangerous statement, but there was no helping it.
Without doing even this much, he couldn’t change the Angel’s mind.
"Why not just go find it right now? I don’t understand why you’d deliberately make things more complicated by reversing the order."
Megumi swallowed his tension and explained the second reason.
"You can’t beat the fallen angel by yourself. If you won’t accept the condition, then we won’t cooperate either."
"How dare you!"
As the Angel roared, Megumi growled back without backing down.
"Don’t throw around the word ‘dare’ so lightly. You need us too, don’t you? I don’t know which side is more desperate, but right now we’re equals. Don’t forget that."
"......"
"It won’t take that long anyway. Gathering 1,000 points can be done in as little as a week."
"Are you certain?"
"By then, Yoshino will have joined us too, so things will get easier. You just have to wait. I swear on my soul that if you hold out until then, I’ll let you kill the fallen angel."
Wasn’t negotiation all about momentum?
As Megumi pressed harder, the Angel’s resolve began to waver little by little.
'Angel. Couldn’t we just do what Megumi said? We need cooperation too, so there’s no reason to leave a bad impression.'
'....'
With Kurusu’s quiet persuasion added in, the Angel’s heart tilted further and further to one side.
She was hiding something, but she didn’t seem to have any malicious intent.
Her assessment of Itadori Yuji’s character after watching him for two days also played a part.
'The game master’s authority is being handed over too, and breaking the seal isn’t that difficult...'
In fact, the other side had far more to do.
If the groundwork was finished, the current second-place ranker had agreed to help hunt down the fallen angel, so achieving their goal would become twice as easy.
If they could gain his cooperation in exchange for waiting, it wasn’t a bad deal at all.
In the end, she decided to take a step back in this negotiation.
"Fine. I’ll accept the condition. But you must keep your promise that Yoshino Junpei will cooperate."
"Thanks for giving in. I look forward to working with you."
"Likewise."
Megumi took Kurusu’s shyly extended hand in place of the Angel’s, and the [bond] was formed.
They had connected their cursed energy and made an irreversible promise.
Megumi squeezed his eyes shut and steadied his complicated feelings.
'Itadori...'
Kurusu couldn’t see the expressions on Nobara and Yuji behind her, but Megumi could.
Nobara had turned her head away, apparently trying hard to hold back tears, while Yuji was smiling sadly.
It was such a sorrowful, painful sight, accepting one’s fate like that.
"So what do we do now?"
"For now, we’ll have to stay hidden until we gather 1,000 points. It’d be a pain if we ran into a ranker by bad luck."
Even if that weren’t the case, there was still the chance they’d wander into a clash with Tsukumo or Kenjaku.
Kenjaku was especially dangerous.
'Why didn’t Kenjaku discard the Angel?'
It was a question that had nagged at him ever since entering the Culling Game.
There was no way he wouldn’t have known that the Angel’s technique could erase barriers.
He wanted to believe Kenjaku had simply hoped it would fail, or had forgotten and left it alone, but considering Kenjaku’s nature, that seemed unlikely.
Megumi prayed that even this wasn’t part of his plan.
'Idle Transfiguration has already been used up, and as long as we don’t meet him directly, there’s no room for him to pull any tricks.'
All he could do was hope the Okkotsu group handling that side would bring good news as soon as possible.
"That does seem likely. I’ll leave the escort to you."
"In any case, it looks like no full-scale clash has broken out yet, so before things get any more chaotic, let’s head to the neutral zone quickly...."
Just as Megumi was about to say that, his sense of cursed energy picked up something.
Nue, which had been watching for anyone approaching this way, had been shot down by something.
"...!"
"What is it?"
"Nue’s been taken out. Something’s coming this way."
Megumi quickly recalled Nue and summoned it again, only to be shocked.
It wasn’t dead, but parts of its body were blackened with burns, and there was a huge hole torn through one wing.
It was a miracle it had survived at all. At the very least, it wasn’t an injury it could recover from by the end of the day.
Even then, the presence that had shot Nue down kept approaching.
Faint, but incredibly fast.
The fact that it could conceal its energy this well meant one thing: it was a master.
"Get ready!"
At Megumi’s urgent shout, everyone prepared for battle, and then someone broke through the window and flew inside.
Zzzzt
Static crackled through the mint-colored long hair tied up in an unusual style.
The intruder casually swung the [Jutai Kyosodo] in his right hand, then licked his lips as he looked over their faces.
"You guys look pretty strong."
"Who are you?"
"Kashimo Hajime."
The current number one ranker.
A crazed killer who had amassed over 400 points.
He had appeared before them.
'Damn it, what the hell! I didn’t expect him to meet us before Yoshino did....'
"Before we fight, there’s something I want to ask."
Resting his body lightly on the [Jutai Kyosodo] and bracing himself with one hand on the floor, Kashimo asked his question.
"Do you know where Sukuna is?"
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