If Itadori Yuji had been in the courtroom, he would have looked at his friend with a pained expression and thought, "Why didn’t you deny it?"
Of course, since they were the kind of people who shared similar pain, he wouldn’t have said it out loud.
If he wanted to deny it, he could have denied it all he liked.
He couldn’t escape responsibility for Yoshino Nagi’s death, but he hadn’t done anything wrong enough to be judged by a total stranger as an accomplice.
That was true from an objective point of view too.
A foolish seventeen-year-old boy, cut off from the world, had been seduced by a curse’s vile tongue.
That was all. He had never intended to bring Sukuna’s finger home, nor had he ever harbored the intent to murder his mother.
The boy’s罪 was trusting the curse too much, and failing to consider the possibility that it might stalk him.
For a boy who had just gained power and stepped into the world of jujutsu, it would have been far too cruel to demand that he act cautiously against an unknown malice.
Guilt remained, but there was no need to belittle himself or wound himself with self-reproach.
The culprit who had killed his mother and humiliated him had been defeated miserably, reduced to something worse than death.
The bitter wound left in his heart had been quieted by the weathering of time and the precious people gathered around him.
Maybe because he had relieved so much of that pent-up resentment. The boy who used to keep a cigarette like a keepsake in his mouth was able to go without nightmares for a while.
And yet, only now did he realize it.
His mother’s death had already become part of what he was.
The beginning of his decision to become a jujutsushi had been the trauma born from his mother’s death, and the "revenge" meant to resolve it.
In a short, dense span of a little over two months, he had run himself ragged, struggling to escape the memory of that horrible day.
At the end of that road, the boy who looked back on himself admitted that the venomous nightmare he had thought was eating away at him had become the meaning of his life.
The guilt of having caused his mother’s death was the force that kept the boy from breaking.
The rage and despair he felt at seeing her horrific end were the boy’s strength.
All of that grand narrative gathered piece by piece, became lessons, and made him who he was now.
So he would not deny it.
Not the ignorance of his immature days, when he had been blinded by power.
Not the self-loathing that made him want to tear his body into a thousand, ten thousand pieces.
All of it was "me."
-------------------------------------
[Guilty, Confiscation]
A guilty verdict was handed down, and a confiscation penalty was imposed.
However, the punishment that would sentence him to death at the end was not issued.
As the procedure ended, the courtroom vanished like a mirage, and the three men and women returned to the stage.
Even as they shifted into combat stance, Higuruma simply let the hand holding the baton hang limply at his side.
"Tch, so the death sentence didn’t stick..."
Uro’s muttered complaint didn’t even register.
Right now, his head was full of nothing but the meaning of Yoshino’s brief confession from moments ago.
"I did it."
Why confess there, instead of denying it or staying silent?
Why?
Before he could sink any deeper into thought, a fist filled his entire field of vision.
-Whoosh!
Higuruma, snapping back to his senses, reflexively leaned his body backward.
He braced himself with one hand on the ground and extended the baton, wrapping it around his torso.
Digging in his waist and twisting, he violently flipped the baton backward, taking Junpei with it.
-Bang!
"Nice!"
Uro flew toward Junpei, who had been slammed into the floor.
Junpei sprang up and threw a punch back at her.
His fist slipped through the distorted air, and Uro’s long leg lashed out to smack his calf.
-Snap!
A clear sound rang out and a sharp pain shot through him, but Junpei wasn’t about to take it lying down.
Feeling through the distorted air, he snatched Uro’s long hair and swung an elbow at close range, twisting her jaw around.
As he pummeled the face of his disoriented opponent, Higuruma’s hammer, swollen to a size that could crush a person with ease, came flying in.
-Bang!
The impact he failed to block spread through his whole body, and the wooden floor beneath his feet caved in.
'That baton can change size and shape however he wants. It’s not as dangerous as the Executioner’s Sword, but somehow it feels even more troublesome...!'
-Grrrr....
A test of strength continued between Junpei and Higuruma, with Junpei pinned beneath the hammer.
The tense balance gradually collapsed, and the hammer head pressing him down began to wobble.
Higuruma, teeth clenched and refusing to let go of his grip, met Junpei’s eyes.
When his gaze met those burning eyes, Higuruma found himself loosening his strength without meaning to.
-Thoom!
The hammer bounced upward, and even as Junpei rushed in, Higuruma couldn’t look away.
Rage.
Sorrow.
Regret.
Self-mockery.
It was packed with every negative emotion imaginable, and yet it shone brilliantly with sheer will.
Higuruma had been a lawyer for nearly ten years and had seen all kinds of people, but never once had he been this shaken.
'Why? Yoshino Junpei....'
Why did you admit to the crime?
Why? Why?
-Pow!
Even while being struck and sent flying, the question did not stop.
Somehow, the pain in his chest from being so tightly blocked up hurt more than the numbness in his jaw.
"...?"
Junpei was just as puzzled.
He had expected Higuruma to go berserk trying to fight after failing to hand down the death penalty.
He couldn’t understand why, after growing so frighteningly strong and keeping up, he had suddenly gone limp.
"Why....."
"Why?"
"Huh?"
As Higuruma got up, wiping away blood, his expression was twisted by emotions he himself couldn’t explain.
Some unknown passion surged up from deep inside his chest.
Higuruma bit his lip hard and sank back into the thoughts he had been unable to finish earlier.
To approach the human heart.
That meant understanding human weakness.
'Liar. You said you’d get me found not guilty.'
'Teacher, thank you for believing in me.'
The weakness of the perpetrator. The weakness of the victim.
Every day, every day, every day, every day, every day.
It had always been tiresome.
Ugly.
Every time he reached out to another person, that was what he found himself thinking.
"You’re no different, Yoshino....!"
"What are you talking about...?"
Junpei tilted his head at the incomprehensible words, but Higuruma’s rampage did not stop.
The trigger was simple, but the story behind it was not.
In an instant, all the resentment he had pressed down into his heart for ten years, all the weakness of the people he had accepted, burst out through the cracks.
Without even knowing who he was aiming at, Higuruma began pouring out everything he had wanted to say without caring who heard it.
"All humans are!! Weak and ugly! No matter how noble a soul you want....!"
It was sickeningly tiresome.
Taking care of other people’s hearts, and looking back at my own ruined self.
"There’s nothing beyond that!! The darkness in front of you is just darkness!! Even if you light a fire, all that waits there is dazzling emptiness once again!"
What must it feel like, for a genius who devoted his whole life to a belief, to realize that belief was wrong?
To stand at the end and discover that nothing remained, that he himself had failed?
-Crash! Crash! Crash! Crash!
Higuruma lengthened the hammer’s handle and began unleashing a ferocious assault.
Round, hollow dents were carved into the floor one after another beneath Junpei’s retreating feet.
The raw gem of dazzling talent he had possessed from the beginning.
It resonated with the sticky emotions hidden deep in his heart and once again brought about growth.
In this moment, Higuruma had reached the highest level a normal first-grade jujutsushi could attain.
'He suddenly got faster...'
-Whoosh!
The hammer swept beneath Junpei as he jumped.
Just then, Uro, having recovered from her damage, flew in and joined the melee.
Cracked fissures spread across Junpei’s back while he was still in the air.
Ushunatan (宇守羅彈)
-Bang!
A clean hit to the back.
But contrary to expectations, Junpei neither took damage nor was pushed back.
The cracked fissures peeled away, revealing a watery aura rippling over Junpei’s body.
"How!"
"I figured this would happen."
His trump card for breaking Uro’s distortion without relying on a simple domain.
The result of the second trial could not be overturned, but the move he had prepared this time worked beautifully.
The reason Jogo had been able to avoid instant death inside [Jeomdeungak] during the Shibuya Incident.
An anti-domain measure that could be used even without a technique, as long as there was space to empty.
The practice of the one who had already reached that level, training to go even further—
[Expansion]
Now the distortion no longer worked.
The fist advancing toward Uro’s body, as she hurriedly distorted her face forward, pierced straight through the rippling air—
-Pow!
and caught her true body.
"Ghk!"
Uro’s waist folded from the inside out.
Junpei left her kneeling and collapsing on the floor behind him and leaped toward Higuruma.
The waiting baton swung down, and Junpei flipped his body in midair to dodge it lightly before dropping toward Higuruma.
Higuruma, preparing a counterattack, suddenly turned his head away as a light pierced his eyes.
The fluorescent lights on the theater ceiling shone behind the boy as he flew in like a streak of light.
'I won’t become a judge.'
'Oh...? Then tell me why.'
All humans are weak and ugly.
'...It doesn’t suit someone like me, who isn’t interested in climbing the ranks.'
But at that time, at least until that time.
That filth that no other living thing possessed was precisely what he thought deserved reverence.
'Why.'
The question swept over him again.
He couldn’t understand the boy approaching straight toward him with the light at his back.
It was not the weakness he always saw, nor the ugliness, nor the emptiness beyond it, but something else entirely.
-The evidence submitted by the judge is shared with the sorcerer before it is opened.
'The evidence submitted concerns the curse that deceived you, Mahito!'
You did not aid in your mother’s death.
Then why did you admit guilt?
Did you want to atone for the crime and lessen your guilt?
If not then....
Did you accept your weakness and reach the brilliance I had been searching for all along?
-Pow!
The backlight cutting through the darkness was too bright for the man sunk in darkness.
Higuruma Hiromi could no longer fight.
-----------------------------------
-Crash!
"Cough..."
"...Hey?!"
Junpei panicked when Higuruma gave up his counterattack and collapsed.
He couldn’t even begin to guess why Higuruma had ended by shutting his eyes and turning his head away instead of swinging the hammer one last time.
Unable to finish things, unable to help him up, Junpei stood there awkwardly while Higuruma answered himself in a low voice.
"You didn’t harbor intent to kill, and you didn’t provide the murder weapon or open the door for the culprit either."
"What are you even talking about? Can you say it in a way I can understand...?"
"In the murder case committed by Mahito, your actions constitute grounds for exoneration."
"...! Wait, how do you know about Mahito—"
"In other words, you’re not guilty. You bear no responsibility."
Words that directly denied the ruling of the second trial.
You are not guilty. You are not responsible. If it had been the old him, he might have begged anyone to forgive him, might have craved those words.
But he no longer sought forgiveness from others.
There was no one left in this world he needed to apologize to.
Instead of forgiving himself, Junpei made that his goal, his ideal.
"...Even so, it’s still my fault."
"Why?"
"Because I was ignorant, and weak."
The weak are ignorant, and weak.
That was clearly a sin.
"...Is that so?"
Surely the reason the filth of the weak could also be beautiful was because they struggled to overcome it.
"Why did you give up on counterattacking just now?"
"...Because it was blinding."
"...?"
That was all he had to say.
He had no desire to thrust his own darkness at someone else and ask for understanding in such an ugly way.
He didn’t want to dump the pain he had endured all his life onto this boy.
-Thud
"Damn it, don’t make me laugh, Higuruma....!"
Though it seemed one woman staggering up over there disagreed.
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