At the same time outside, while Nobara and Junpei were fighting Eso and Kechizu.
Yuji and Megumi were smashing the exits of the mole curse one after another.
Boom!
Yuji’s fist slammed into the curse’s head, but the curse popped out through another hole.
And there, Megumi was waiting.
“Its way of attacking from behind is simple.”
All of its victims had been stabbed to death from the back.
That was its habit.
Slash!
Megumi’s blade flashed like lightning and split the curse clean in two.
But that, too, was a feint.
The curse, realizing they couldn’t catch it, grinned slyly, and—
Crunch!
Divine Dogs’ claws tore it cleanly apart.
“Told you. Simple.”
“Nice, Fushiguro!”
Yuji came running from afar and threw him a thumbs-up.
Thanks to the two of them steadily tightening the net, they succeeded in exorcising it.
But the joy of victory lasted only a moment before Megumi felt something off.
“As I thought... something’s still there. The barrier hasn’t closed.”
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s not over yet. Letting your guard down is—”
—dangerous.
Rustle...
Something hanging from the ceiling dropped down between Yuji and Megumi.
Thud.
A pure white, slender body.
Four eyes stuck on top of its head.
A huge mouth twisted into a sneer.
A special-grade vengeful spirit that had finished its transformation greeted them.
“!”
That face was familiar.
He had already seen it once before.
Yuji and Megumi froze in place.
The curse at Yasohachi Bridge had existed since the victims were middle schoolers.
The answer to the unresolved mystery of why that curse had only started acting now was right in front of them.
The first victim, murdered in June.
The month Yuji swallowed Sukuna’s finger was also June.
“That thing... that’s the finger, right?”
“.....”
This was resonance.
Triggered by Yuji’s incarnation in June, the thing that had been lying low had released its cursed energy.
Both Yuji and Megumi could understand that much.
-The person you saved might end up hurting someone else.
Blood trickled from Yuji’s tightly bitten lip.
“Don’t blame yourself, Itadori. This isn’t your fault.”
“...I’m not blaming myself.”
“But... I think I’m the one who has to deal with this.”
Yuji set his stance and charged the curse.
Having experienced Black Flash in his fight with Hanami before, Yuji was on another level now.
The curse, too, did not let its guard down in the face of this formidable opponent.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
Yuji twisted his head to dodge the blows and pummeled the curse’s body with a rapid barrage.
Unlike back in the juvenile detention center, when he hadn’t been able to land a single hit, this time the damage was clearly piling up.
“It’s working! We can win!”
Kreee!
No matter how fast the curse was, it couldn’t beat Yuji in close combat.
Bang!
Yuji shifted his weight and kicked the curse in the stomach, driving it back.
“Nue!”
Then Megumi’s Nue swooped in, crackling with lightning.
But this curse, unlike the one from the juvenile detention center, wasn’t going to go down so easily.
Paang!
The cursed energy compressed in its hand and fired like a slingshot, piercing Nue’s wing and flying straight at Yuji.
“Ghk!”
He blocked it in time, but the attack’s piercing force was no joke; Yuji’s arm didn’t escape unscathed.
Even with cursed energy wrapped around it for defense, the wound was deep enough to tear off a bit of flesh.
And that still wasn’t the end of it—the follow-up shot was already forming without delay.
“Divine Dogs, Totality!”
Grrrr!
Megumi’s Divine Dogs lowered their bodies and charged, claws bared at the curse.
At the same time, the curse’s still-charging cursed-energy bullet pierced the Divine Dogs’ front leg, and the curse’s body was sent rolling across the floor.
“Die!”
Just as Yuji’s fist was about to punch through the curse’s stomach, light exploded beneath the prone curse.
“Itadori, no!”
KWA-BOOOOM!!
With the sensation of overwhelming cursed energy crashing down on him, Megumi lost consciousness.
-------------------------
This was a story from not long ago, after the exchange event ended and everyone returned to their daily lives.
Crash!
“There. Another win for me.”
“Tch.”
“Well, well. What a surprise. You actually asked me for training. Did getting passed up make you anxious or something?”
Megumi panted hard and looked up at Gojo.
Normally, his pride would never let him ask this man for help.
And the fact that Gojo was smiling in circles like he knew everything already was annoying as hell.
“Well, I can’t exactly afford to be picky right now.”
“You really hate it that much?”
Gojo clicked his tongue awkwardly, then turned a little more serious.
This kid always looked indifferent and cold, but he actually had a fiery temperament.
Gojo, who had watched Megumi grow up, knew it well.
Megumi hated losing with every fiber of his being.
“Your skill is one thing, but your latent potential is just as good. Maybe even better than those two.”
“Then why...”
“What’s left is a matter of mindset.”
-You don’t know how to give it everything, do you?
Megumi’s head flared hot at the way his desperation and effort were being dismissed.
What the hell was that supposed to mean? He knew damn well.
He knew how he had been compensating for close combat through sheer bone-crushing effort, and how he stayed up late researching ways to use his shikigami.
“Are you saying I’m not giving it my all?”
Gojo calmed the fuming Megumi down.
With an expression of utter disappointment, like he was looking at a child who didn’t understand a word, Gojo began explaining the reason for what he’d just said.
“I’m not saying you aren’t doing it. I’m saying you can’t. Like that baseball game last time. Why did you bunt?”
“........”
Why did I?
He didn’t really know himself.
He just thought that was the most optimal decision at the time.
“Even if you got yourself out, you wanted to get Nobara on base, right? That’s admirable.”
“But if it were Yuji or me, we’d go for the home run.”
“What about Yoshino?”
“He... just can’t play baseball. Still, if Junpei had Yuji’s physical ability, he’d definitely have gone for the home run too. Just listen to me first.”
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with bunting. Baseball is a team sport, and everyone has a role.
But jujutsu is an individual sport.
“Working together with other jujutsushi is important, though.”
“Yeah, sure. But no matter how many people are on my side...”
-When you die, you die alone.
Megumi was already being overwhelmed by Gojo’s presence.
You can only build strategies around materials that underestimate both yourself and others.
You can’t imagine a stronger version of yourself that exists in the future.
Maybe because of your [technique], you think that in the worst case, if you die, everything will be solved.
At that rate, you can’t become anything, not even me—let alone Nanami.
“There’s a world of difference between ‘I’ll win even if I die’ and ‘I’ll win by dying,’ Megumi.”
Give it everything.Be greedier.
Gojo’s flick to his forehead snapped Megumi out of the memory.
-------------------------
“My head hurts.”
Clutching at his foggy consciousness, Megumi groaned at the hot sensation trickling down from his head.
“How many seconds has it been? Was Divine Dogs destroyed? No, the technique must’ve been dispelled...”
After blinking a few times, his vision returned to normal.
Yuji came into view, equally bloodied and locked in a brutal exchange with the curse.
Thud! Thwack! Thump!
Thanks to the shockwave earlier, something must’ve been broken, because his movements looked a little awkward.
And yet Yuji kept trading blows with the curse without so much as a groan.
He let as much as possible slip past, took the hits he couldn’t avoid, and still drove his own fists in.
He wasn’t afraid of getting hurt or bleeding at all. If anything, the curse looked like it was starting to get scared.
The more that happened, the more fiercely the cursed energy wrapped around Yuji’s fists burned.
Megumi felt like he finally understood why Gojo had said he and Yuji were different.
The depth of their obsession with victory was on another level.
A fighter willing to bleed gladly, and ready to throw the dice on a comeback without hesitation.
Unlike himself, who would give up and prepare to self-destruct in the face of uncertain odds, Yuji would keep thrashing and push toward the light no matter what.
“Ha...”
Admitting it made him feel lighter.
Probability? Stability? Possibility?
Forget all that desk-bound nonsense. He’d throw everything he had into the fight.
Win or die, one of the two endings was waiting for him.
Well, whatever.
He’d find out when the time came.
“Fushiguro...?”
“You think I’m gonna let you get ahead of me like that!”
Imagine it.
More freely.
The future self who had surpassed his limits!
“Let’s see you try it!”
Cursed energy raged deep in Megumi’s gut as he formed hand signs.
He abandoned a precise outline. The barrier already existed here.
The moment cursed energy gathered, he forced it outward and squeezed out the depths of his shadow to the limit.
Squelch...
“Whoa, what is this?”
Kiiiih?
A sorcerer’s growth curve is not always gradual.
Right this moment, Megumi was stepping into the realm he had always dreamed of.
The ultimate sure-hit, sure-kill trump card every sorcerer dreams of at least once.
The supreme art that Nanami Kento had longed for so desperately, but never managed to obtain.
The innate domain that everyone is born with was released outward, painting an overwhelming scene.
“Domain Expansion.”
-Chimera Shadow Garden.
The shadows filled the floor, occasionally revealing the forms of shikigami.
Overwhelming cursed energy flooded the barrier.
At this moment, the ruler of this space was Megumi.
“Hah! Hahahaha!!”
He’d done it.
It was horribly ugly and incomplete, but he’d done it.
That was enough.
Yuji, still fighting the curse, was speechless at the sight too.
It was a long way from the Fuji Mountain or Gojo-sensei’s version he’d seen before, but even this was more than enough to inspire awe.
“How did you do that? How did you do that?!”
“I’ll explain later! First, that guy!”
Because of how much cursed energy a Domain Expansion devours, it couldn’t last long.
They had to settle this within that time.
Kyaaaah!
A toad shikigami sprang from the shadows and bound the curse’s legs.
As the curse tried once more to gather cursed energy and fire, two figures burst out of the shadows to block it.
Thwack!
Megumi’s roundhouse kick and Yuji’s dropkick landed cleanly on the curse’s face.
While the curse was still reeling, the attacks kept coming, battering its body mercilessly.
They didn’t even give it room to defend.
Whenever it tried to gather cursed energy, Megumi would spring out from somewhere and smash its side from an angle.
If it tried to counterattack with its hands, a shadow shikigami would grab it from behind, and Yuji would bring an elbow down from above.
At this rate, it would lose.
Deciding that, the curse began preparing the same attack that had blown the two of them away earlier.
It wasn’t as subtle as before, but the mass of cursed energy gathering in its hand was threatening.
This time, thinner.
It aimed for the overlap in their movement and sniped.
Whoosh!
The fired bullet of cursed energy shot straight at Megumi at high speed.
With no cursed tool to block it, a clear death crisis was upon him.
Pah!
He had thought there might be something more, but the energy bullet simply pierced through Megumi’s hand and forehead and passed on.
Kihahaha!
For a moment, the curse thought it had won, but Megumi’s shadow-clad clone melted into the Domain.
The real body had already hidden itself in the shadows while the curse was charging up.
A freer interpretation of the technique. A split-second feint born from it.
That created a massive opening in the curse, and it had to pay the price for its arrogance.
-Kwoooooo...
The wound from the earlier wide-area attack.
A sincerity to cut the enemy’s throat before Megumi’s Domain collapsed.
In this compressed, extreme moment, Itadori Yuji’s true value came out.
Physical ability surpassing Zenin Maki, the heavenly restricted monster.
Innate combat sense.
And the power of a curse granted to him.
He is loved by the black flash.
Black
Flash
黑
閃
Thud-kwaaaang!
Even Hanami, with its extreme defensive power, couldn’t endure that force.
Yuji’s Black Flash slammed home, and the curse’s body burst apart.
With the owner of the barrier dead, the incomplete Domain also vanished.
Outside, the two of them saw Junpei and Nobara flying in from afar.
“It’s over.”
“I’m exhausted...”
“Fushiguro? You’re not dead, are you? Snap out of it!”
-----------------------------
I hate evil people.
Because they keep living and breathing with their meager imagination and sensitivity.
I can’t stand good-natured people either.
Because they forgive those evil people, and think forgiveness is some kind of noble virtue. It makes me sick.
Tsumiki was the textbook definition of a good person.
In first grade, my father and Tsumiki’s mother. One parent from each side fell in love and vanished into thin air.
Back then, a suspicious white-haired man said:
“-Your father was a sorcerer from the Zenin family, a fine lineage. He was such a hopeless bastard that he ran away and had you.”
“-I was your father’s best card, the one he’d been saving for the Zenin family.”
The mystery of the vanished money was solved right then and there.
I’d apparently been sold to the Zenin family.
“-How’s that? Pretty pissed off, right?”
Yeah. I was pissed off.
Especially at your total lack of sensitivity.
And yet that infuriating man...
He smoothed over the Zenin family matter and, on the condition that I would work as a sorcerer in the future, got financial support for me and Tsumiki from Jujutsu High.
“Sorcerer, my ass. What a joke.”
Who was I supposed to help?
There was a time I thought that way.
It’s still one of my regrets.
Not long after I moved up to the third year of middle school,
Tsumiki was cursed.
Unknown identity. Unknown source.
They say there are countless people like her all over the country.
Leaving behind only the fact that nothing could be known, Tsumiki fell into unconsciousness.
-If I have time to curse someone, I’d rather think about the people I care about.
Always smiling, always saying lofty things.
-It’s not a bad thing if you can’t forgive people. That’s part of Megumi’s kindness, isn’t it?
She even affirmed the core of who I was.
And yet, when I hurt someone, Tsumiki would get genuinely angry.
I hated that.
I thought it was the hypocrisy of someone who only cared about staying safe.
But now I know I was wrong.
Just as I choose who I want to save, she must have chosen me and worried about me too.
I was wrong.
I was such a kid.
I’ll apologize, so wake up already.
Idiot sister.
------------------------
“Huh? He smiled!”
“This bastard’s smiling?”
“Leave him be. Maybe he’s having a good dream.”
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