Dagon, the special-grade curse born of the sea.
Led by Geto Suguru, the faction of special-grade curses always held their meetings within Dagon’s domain.
A peaceful scene. Warm sunlight and a pleasant sea breeze.
It was a view that could outclass any resort ten times over, if not for the fact that it was inside the belly of a special-grade curse that swallowed people whole without a second thought.
But now, the atmosphere at the Tankon Horizon had sunk lower than ever before.
“Buuuu... Hanami... Hanamiiii...”
“...So Hanami has passed on.”
“.........”
Dagon was sniffling and sobbing.
Jogo kept his head bowed, looking grim.
Mahito’s expression was unreadable.
After checking each face in turn, Geto clicked his tongue inwardly.
The ultimate objective had been achieved, but the losses incurred along the way were painful.
Shigemo Haruta, who should have reported the test results of the Curtain, had gone off to do God knew what and ended up getting captured alongside Kumiya Juzo.
As the one who had personally created the result in question as a master of barrier techniques, he had no reason to doubt the Curtain’s effectiveness, but losing valuable data was still irritating.
The biggest problem was Hanami.
Hanami, who had believed it would not die unless it ran into Gojo or Sukuna, had died.
That meant one less valuable asset to pin Gojo down in Shibuya.
“The goods?”
“Recovered without issue. The Cursed Womb: Death Paintings, numbers one through three. Six of Sukuna’s fingers.”
Geto reached out to take the cursed objects from Mahito, who answered with forced cheerfulness, and for an instant he felt killing intent.
Hanami’s death did not merely mean a loss of combat power.
It meant a comrade who had followed the plan Geto had so confidently proposed was dead.
That alone was enough to stir ripples in the hearts of the curses.
“Geto, what exactly happened here~? Didn’t you say there was a mole?”
“Yoshino Junpei’s level as a first-grade jujutsushi was only confirmed on the day of the operation. And you fought him yourself, so you know better than anyone that he wasn’t that strong, don’t you?”
After the incident settled down, Geto finally made contact with the mole and heard the full story.
Gojo’s movements had been completely sealed off. Sukuna’s reverse scale had not been touched.
And yet the real variable had been Yoshino Junpei.
A common, run-of-the-mill shikigami user, the sort you could find anywhere.
His poison trait was rare, but beyond that there was nothing especially remarkable about him.
Geto had thought he was just some lucky little survivor, but his potential had far exceeded expectations.
“Fair point. I suppose it wasn’t something you could have handled.”
Mahito nodded with a grin.
At those words, which sounded almost like agreement, Geto’s brow twitched.
Of course, that movement came not from trust but from suspicion, and that suspicion was not misplaced.
“But what am I supposed to do about that? I don’t care anymore, and right now I want to kill you.”
“Agreed. We never should have trusted humans in the first place.”
Jogo, ash scattering from his head, reached toward Geto’s throat with a threatening air.
Mahito also loosened his hands and finished preparing for battle.
“Want to try me?”
“I see no reason not to, human.”
Geto answered calmly, but inside he was already calculating coldly.
‘An internal conflict at a time like this. I can suppress them, but... it’d be a waste to expend Jogo here. Especially Mahito, for “that thing”...’
Just as the tension was about to boil over,
“You humans!! How dare you!! You killed Hanami?!! You actually killed Hanami?!!”
Dagon’s voice, heavier than usual, overwhelmed everyone in the room.
‘So it finally matured into an adult form.’
“Dagon...!”
Adult Dagon tore free of its round, cute shell and burst forth.
The Dagon that had been in a cursed-fetus state had undergone metamorphosis, triggered by the death of a comrade.
Limbs covered in a dull, dirty red.
Eyes gleaming with a sinister glint.
A body that was hard and rough.
“You said his name was Yoshino Junpei, right?! I’ll kill him! I’ll kill him!”
As Dagon howled, the domain itself roiled with its emotions.
At the shoreline that had been sending out gentle ripples, rough waves rose up, and fish shikigami that had appeared at some point swam violently beneath the surface.
“Calm down, Dagon!”
“You trying to get us all killed?”
“But Hanami!”
“I understand how you feel. The chance will come someday. So rein in your anger. Anger loses its meaning the longer it stays.”
At Jogo’s seasoned words, Dagon huffed and puffed, but gradually forced its excitement down.
Mahito pretended to wipe away sweat, then flashed a sly smile at Geto, who was still sitting there with a perfectly relaxed expression.
The atmosphere from moments ago was already gone. The fighting spirit that had been heating both sides had also cooled with Dagon’s growth.
“What a shame. I wanted to fight you at least once, Geto.”
“Not really. You’d be a bit much for me.”
Mahito shrugged, then lay back on a sunbed and started reading a novel.
Jogo, after soothing the depressed Dagon, approached the snickering Geto.
“Remember this, Geto. We may be cooperating now because our goals align, but once Gojo Satoru is sealed, things will be different.”
“Scary.”
“How long do you think you can keep acting so relaxed?”
Jogo growled sharply, then returned to his original spot and lay down with his back turned.
The sight of his back, burdened with suppressed rage, somehow looked lonely.
“...Let’s meet again in the wasteland a hundred years from now, my friend.”
It was a quiet voice, but Geto could hear it.
So he’d gone on and on about being the real human, and now he was actually trying to act like one.
The way he clung to a cause reminded Geto so much of his former self that he nearly laughed out loud.
After silently mocking Jogo, Geto thought of the one who had ruined his plan.
‘Yoshino Junpei. I thought he’d be a useful tool.’
Poison.
And shikigami.
He was sure he had seen something like that somewhere before.
“Ah.”
Right. The Heian era.
Though much had changed over the long years, the basic outline was almost exactly the same as in his memory.
To think there would still be a survivor of “that clan” even now, nearly a thousand years later.
‘This is getting interesting.’
Geto Suguru—no, Kenjaku, the barrier technique user who had lived for over a thousand years—found the situation delightful.
Descendant of those once called the Dark Moon Cursed Poison. Just how far will you show me?
Please, don’t bore me.
------------------------
“And now, the human casualties. Three second-grade jujutsushi, one semi-first-grade jujutsushi, five assistant supervisors, and two Kigen-bu. All of them were jujutsushi stationed at Jujutsu High and had been operating separately from Gojo and Principal Yaga.”
“Tch.”
“We’re waiting on Ieiri’s report, but there’s no doubt this was the work of the curse Nanami encountered before.”
“Should we share this with the students and the other jujutsushi?”
Utahime cautiously asked for an opinion after hearing Ijichi’s report, but the two principals objected.
“No.”
“Better if only the higher-ups know for now. We can’t let them become convinced that a special-grade cursed object has leaked among the curse users. Did the curse users we captured confess anything?”
“One of them isn’t exactly tight-lipped, but he’s impossible to have a normal conversation with. The other one spilled everything pretty quickly.”
Scratching his head, Ijichi recalled what he had just heard while interrogating Kumiya Juzo and Shigemo Haruta.
Kumiya Juzo had only rambled about nonsense, saying he wanted to make a coat rack stand or something, but Shigemo Haruta was different.
“The goal was to steal the cursed object as a test of the new Curtain. A Curtain aimed at a specific target, one that makes barrier division happen faster.”
“Who gave the order?”
“The client was a monk with white hair and a bowl cut. He said he’d provide a special-grade curse, and all I had to do was buy time and report on the Curtain’s results. Well, I got caught and ended up like this anyway.”
“Anything else?”
“I really don’t know anything beyond that. I’m just a guy who works for money, all right? Ah... if it weren’t for that bastard, I could’ve killed more...”
A monk with white hair and a bowl cut.
It matched the only useful piece of information salvaged from Kumiya Juzo’s incoherent testimony.
“A monk with white hair and a bowl cut, huh. Any ideas?”
“Wasn’t he just throwing random crap out there? Is there a jujutsushi good at extracting confessions somewhere?”
“How in the world did a curse and an outsider manage to infiltrate Tengen’s barrier in the first place?”
“It must’ve been because of that special-grade curse. A barrier probably wouldn’t work on a curse with such unusual energy. Junpei said it was a curse born in the forest, didn’t he?”
A white-haired monk.
The stolen cursed object.
The special-grade curse.
All the pieces were scattered and didn’t fit together well.
As Gojo pondered their objective, he sank into thought.
‘Were they worried about Yuji’s potential being strengthened through Sukuna’s fingers? Or about the curses becoming stronger? Something doesn’t sit right.’
“For now, let’s be glad the students are safe. We did exorcise a special-grade curse without major casualties, after all.”
“Hmm...”
“But the exchange event is obviously canceled.”
At this point, with students injured and an outside enemy clearly aiming for the competition, it would be impossible to continue the exchange event.
All the teachers nodded in agreement, but one person was different.
“Wait, that’s not for us to decide, is it?”
“Then what are you suggesting?”
“Let’s ask the students themselves!”
“Satoru, you really...”
------------------------
At that same time, the first-year students at Tokyo Metropolitan Jujutsu Technical High School were gathered in the infirmary, eating pizza.
“Who ordered the Hawaiian pizza!”
“That was me...”
“You heretic! Why the hell would you put pineapple on pizza and then eat the warm stuff, huh?!”
“Eek!”
“He’s a patient, leave him alone.”
“Yuji...!”
“But Junpei, pineapple pizza is a little...”
“Ghk.”
Junpei had tried to sneak pineapple pizza into the order, only to nearly get hit by Nobara, but Yuji stepped in and things somehow settled down.
The children, chewing on their pizza, turned their eyes to Junpei lying in the bed.
“For how intense that fight was, you look pretty fine.”
“There was almost no physical damage. I just burned through my cursed energy to the bottom.”
“Junpei, you’re tougher than I thought. What happened in there?”
“We were beating each other up, and I pretended to pass out. That bastard let his guard down. The moment I saw an opening, I grabbed him and ground him to pieces.”
“You mean that chainsaw you showed us?”
“That thing eats cursed energy too fast to use for long. At the very end I did expand my technique through armor, though...”
“Ooooh!”
Yuji’s eyes lit up at the mention of rotating the armor and using his whole body like a chainsaw.
After all, the things boys dream about from childhood tend to be transforming robots, giant dinosaurs, and full-body armor.
“Show me sometime too!”
“Haha, if I get the chance...”
“Honestly, boys are all the same...”
At that moment, Megumi, who had been quietly listening from the side, cut in with a jab at Yuji.
“Leaving Yoshino aside, how did you pull off that Black Flash at the end?”
“Black Flash?”
Yuji tilted his head, hearing the term for the first time, and Nobara continued the explanation.
“It’s a phenomenon where, when cursed energy and impact are almost perfectly synchronized, the power gets amplified.”
“I see.”
“What kind of reaction is that? Black Flash isn’t something just anyone can do. There’s practically a wall between jujutsushi who’ve experienced Black Flash and those who haven’t!”
“C-calm down.”
“Pfft.”
“What’s so funny, Yoshino?”
“Nothing.”
Nobara was getting heated, Yuji was flustered, and Junpei was enjoying the whole thing.
Megumi, who had been silent until then, joined the friendly scene.
“You’ve gotten stronger, Itadori.”
“Uh... you think so?”
“Your total cursed energy and your control over it are both much smoother. I can tell at a glance.”
“Hmm... that much?”
Even when Yuji reacted with indifference, Megumi kept going without hesitation.
Nobara and Junpei both made slightly fed-up faces and shook their heads at the same time, then immediately looked away, uncomfortable that they had made the same expression.
“Back then, we each said our own truth was right. I still think so. But to put it another way, that means both of us were wrong.”
“......”
“Of course, whether you can accept that is another matter. But if you want to accept it, you have to be able to carry out your own will. A weak jujutsushi can’t even see their own will through.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“I’m going to get stronger too. Soon enough, strong enough to surpass you.”
Yuji gave an awkward laugh and was about to brush it off as typical Fushiguro behavior when he suddenly noticed something odd.
“But I didn’t really do anything except land the final blow this time, did I? Junpei was the one who actually beat him down.”
“Uh...”
“Why are you getting a rival complex over me? Wouldn’t Junpei, as another shikigami user, make more sense?”
Megumi met Junpei’s gaze, and Junpei stared back blankly.
After glancing over Junpei as he turned away shyly, Megumi clicked his tongue inwardly.
‘If I only judge by technique performance, I think I might be ahead...’
But he had no confidence he could win.
If it were Junpei before he summoned Black Scale, maybe he could have done something. But now things were different.
That absurd cursed-energy control. The poison that dominated in direct combat. The seemingly limitless utility of his shikigami.
He still hadn’t even tamed the remaining five shikigami of the Ten Shadows Cursed Law, and if he fought Junpei now, he would lose nine times out of ten.
He might be able to win if he pulled out his trump card, but that would amount to self-destruction, so it wasn’t even worth considering.
“You’re a first-grade jujutsushi. We’re talking about a different level.”
“Even if you hype me up like that, nothing comes out of it, Fushiguro...”
“Yoshino, you need more confidence. You’re the one who actually exorcised the special-grade curse.”
“Ahaha...”
Junpei gave an embarrassed laugh and looked down at the pizza box for no reason.
Nobara, who had been knocked out early in the fight, tapped Junpei’s shoulder with a face that mixed irritation and self-reproach.
“Tch, I just had bad luck this time. Don’t leave me out!”
“I’m talking to Fushiguro right now. Why are you butting in, Kugisaki?”
“You keep acting up every chance you get, don’t you?”
Nobara was about to flare up at Junpei’s cold, mocking smile when she hesitated.
Unlike her, who had been unable to do anything and dropped out early, Junpei had fought until the end.
From what she’d heard, it was also Junpei who had subdued Kamo Noritoshi when he was inciting Yuji’s pursuit.
And... she owed him.
He had taken her, injured and all, to a safe place.
Because he had led the fight up front, the others hadn’t been seriously hurt.
And she hadn’t had to watch someone die right in front of her.
“Yoshino.”
“What?”
“Thanks.”
“Huh.”
She wanted to punch him for that utterly dumbfounded reaction, but she held back.
Fine. I’ll let that one slide.
You were kind of cool this time.
“Anyway, can’t you two get along a little—”
Yuji was in the middle of complaining when,
“So you were all here!”
Bang!
A huge man burst in, shoving the infirmary door open with brute force.
It was Todo Aoi.
The one who had played a decisive role at the very end had come looking for them.
“Todo...?”
“Why are you here?”
“I meant to ask earlier, but I have something I’m curious about.”
Ignoring the children’s wary expressions, Todo dragged over a chair and plopped down in front of Junpei.
The pressure radiating from his massive frame made Junpei feel his body involuntarily shrink back.
‘What do I do? This guy got beaten by me.’
He was definitely here to get revenge while Junpei was weakened.
It was a hopeless situation, but his cursed energy had recovered somewhat.
The instant Todo showed any sign of attacking, he’d suppress him again!
Just as Junpei was about to form a hand sign, Todo opened his mouth.
“Yoshino Junpei, what kind of woman is your type?”
“......Huh?”
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