22:45.
Ino-Kashira Line, Shibuya Station Avenue.
Buried in the wreckage of a collapsed building, Junpei groaned.
"Ah....ah....."
His eyes seemed burned too, because he could barely see anything ahead of him.
It was a similar injury to before, but far worse this time.
Something heavy seemed to be pinning him down, making it hard to breathe, and he had no sensation below the neck.
This time, he was truly in danger of dying. Something that should never have been broken had been broken.
The feeling of slowly drifting toward death in the darkness was terrifying.
Even Nobara’s remote reversed technique seemed to have reached its limit, because there was no sign of recovery at all.
And yet the first thing he thought about was the safety of the others caught up in this.
"Na....nami....san.....Maki.....senpai....Naobito...san..."
A hoarse, pitiful voice called out to his comrades, and an answer came back.
"They’re all dead. If not, they will be soon."
The last voice he heard before losing consciousness.
It was Jogo, the one responsible for all of this.
"Yo....u....how......"
"I released my [Domain Expansion] the moment the hit landed, so you must have thought I was dead. It was risky, but I managed to survive."
Why. How.
Why did it end up like this?
"That man was an unexpected variable, but in the end he protected the shadow boy instead of attacking me. I got lucky."
Stop.
"Even though I used up a lot this time, I can recover quickly. I have plenty of time, so I’ll savor this slowly."
No matter how Junpei screamed inside, Jogo’s calm explanation continued.
As if he wanted Junpei to hear every last word before dying, he clung to him with cruel persistence.
"What did you come here for? You threw yourself into a death trap like a moth to a flame, and all you’d get out of it is some petty sense of satisfaction. Or was it to avenge Mahito? How unfortunate."
"Ugh....."
"In the end, once this is over, weren’t you planning to go home and live the same dull life as before? That’s the limit of humans. You sacrifice your lives like candles in the wind for an ideal, but you’re always worrying about what comes after."
"S....top...."
"No. I’ll keep going. I can’t allow the one who slaughtered my comrades to die in peace."
This is a war for the greater good.
A war to decide whether curses or humans will survive a hundred years from now.
Were you prepared to give your life for such a upheaval?
"No, I suppose not. A brat with such a short life as yours could never understand."
At those words, Junpei wept blood from his unseen eyes.
His organs twisted with murderous rage, and nausea rose in his gut.
"Guh...."
"Disgusting. You look no different from a rat crawling along the roadside."
Humiliation.
To be forced to listen to a curse insult him while he could protect neither his comrades nor himself.
Was all the skill he had honed meaningless before a true natural disaster?
Jogo, pleased by his fierce reaction, ground his teeth with a face twisted between rage and pleasure.
"You lot sacrificed your lives and gained nothing. Hanami and Dagon, the ones you killed, will someday be reborn."
We’ll meet again on the wasteland a hundred years from now.
Mahito, whom you hated so much, will also stand proudly beside us as a human in his own right.
But you won’t be there.
"Until that day comes, I’ll destroy everything you cherished. The comrades still alive, your lover too. Just sit quietly in hell and watch the new world unfold."
"......"
Before he knew it, Junpei was sobbing like a child.
In the depths of his crushing helplessness and grief, he let go of everything.
The happiness of ordinary days he could never return to, the sense of accomplishment from all those days of hard training.
None of it remained in Junpei’s mind anymore.
Now all he wanted was swift rest.
From his scorched throat came a choking, hacking sound that barely formed a word.
"K....ill...."
"Is there any need to finish this? You’ll die even if I leave you here."
Jogo rose, clutching his throbbing wound, and turned away without hesitation.
At the same moment, Junpei’s head dropped limply.
"Goodbye, Yoshino Junpei."
May you burn without end, even in hell.
----------------------------------
"........."
In the pitch-black darkness, Junpei opened his eyes.
'So I died.'
He no longer wanted to think about any of it.
He had protected nothing, achieved nothing.
Gojo. Nanami. Maki. Naobito.
Yuji. Megumi. Nobara.
All he could do, now that he was already dead, was go ahead and wait for them.
Teacher Gojo had said it clearly: there was no death without regret for a jujutsushi.
His regrets were overflowing, spilling over.
When he died, he had been alone. He had stepped forward so confidently, only to fail to protect even his comrades. In self-loathing and helplessness, Junpei prayed desperately.
Please, let him never have to see them here again.
And if they did come, let it be only after they had grown into bent old men and women, so late that it would be no more than a reunion.
"I’m sorry, Nobara....I’m sorry......."
When the face he could never see again surfaced in his mind, he could not hold back his tears.
Then it happened.
-Paat
Light came on from above and illuminated a silhouette.
"What is it....?"
Junpei hurriedly wiped away his tears, stood up, and headed toward it.
It was something he would never have done normally, but what did that matter when he was already dead?
Staggering along aimlessly, Junpei finally saw the face lit by the glow.
"Hello."
And there he froze.
[Junpei, you’re about as stupid as the people you think are idiots. That’s why you die.]
[Y....u.....ji......why......?]
How could he forget?
The memory of the day everything began.
The strange distortion that had saved him from death.
"We finally meet face-to-face."
A timeline where fate had not changed.
Something toyed with like a plaything and cruelly murdered,
Junpei’s end stood before him.
"What are you."
As if struck on the head, Junpei took a step back.
Ignoring him, the monster spoke.
"I am you."
Or the body.
Or the soul.
Or the technique.
"And, your world."
----------------------------------
Which came first, the soul or the body.
The answer to that argument, a world formed in the name of a technique, stood before Junpei’s eyes.
At last, he had come face-to-face with his own essence.
It was so hideous he could not bear to look at it, and at the same time so lovable he could not bear it.
Perhaps sensing the gaze that held both disgust and affection, his essence gave a bitter smile.
"Don’t look at me like that. I’m you, aren’t I?"
"....."
"Well, I understand why you’re confused. I suddenly popped out and started spouting nonsense, so of course you’d be thrown off."
"You know that well."
Even when Junpei snapped back, his essence pretended not to hear and kept talking.
"Still, the fact that you still don’t know where this is means your condition is definitely bad."
"What are you talking about...."
Looking around, Junpei soon realized that this place, which he had thought was the afterlife, felt strangely familiar.
He had definitely seen it once before.
His inner world, the one he had encountered while absorbing Tsumiki’s curse.
"Innate Domain...?"
"Correct."
"Then....I’m not dead yet."
"That’s ambiguous. Your soul is still alive, but your body is on the verge of death. At this rate, you’ll meet death in the literal sense."
At that, Junpei gave a hollow laugh.
So he was going to die after all.
"Then you should’ve just left me alone."
"Are you really going to give up like this?"
Junpei’s frustration burst out at those words, so casually spoken.
"You called me here just to spout some obvious sermon?!"
Nanami-san, Maki-senpai, Naobito-san—all of them are dead. Because I made a stupid call.
Nobara will probably die too, soon, at the hands of that volcano-headed bastard. Because I killed the seaweed and the octopus just to get revenge on Mahito.
If I hadn’t fought that man.
No, if I’d just run away and left him behind like Fushiguro said at the start, the others might have survived.
Even while saying this, I hate myself for regretting that I should’ve let Fushiguro die!
"No, the real mistake was meeting Mahito in the first place."
If I hadn’t spoken to Mahito,
If I’d realized sooner that I was being used while drunk on vanity,
If only, if only........
"I can’t endure this reality anymore! Ever since my mother died because of me!"
In the end, his origin was regret and escape.
Unable to accept a reality where someone precious died because of him, he chose to become a jujutsushi.
Back when he knew nothing, he had thought it was some vague sense of duty. Foolishly.
"Someone like me.....should never have been born."
He could no longer stand watching anyone die helplessly in front of him.
Even worse, he found himself disgusted that he felt nothing when ordinary people died, as long as they had nothing to do with him.
He could not truly chase an ideal, and yet he was too weak to pretend to be realistic. That contradiction was his own nature.
This was the truth of what he had never been able to tell anyone, not even Nobara, whom he loved most.
Watching Junpei, who sat collapsed and crying tears one after another, his essence whispered softly.
"What happened to the resolve you had at the beginning, to solve everything yourself?"
"It was all an illusion. I was deceiving myself so I could run away without getting hurt...."
"Even if you deceived yourself, if you believe it’s true, doesn’t it become true?"
Junpei lifted his head and met his essence’s eyes.
"Soul and body are the same. There’s no need to decide which comes first. There is no such thing as a correct answer in this world."
"Then why am I....."
"That’s why you’ve been given a second chance."
Speak.
What is the meaning of your existence?
For what do you live, and for what do you fight?
"...I don’t know."
"You already know. You just can’t bear your own contradiction, so you deny it."
"...."
"Were the nearly two months of time you’ve built up all meaningless?"
".....No."
"Then stand up and fight."
This is the story you started, after all.
With those words, Junpei’s body slowly rose upward, following the light.
As he surrendered himself to the light, his essence’s final advice reached him from behind.
"Don’t forget."
All the curses and blessings piled onto you are still ‘you.’
As the light grew brighter, his essence’s form could no longer be seen.
In the sensation of his body slowly floating upward, Junpei closed his eyes.
My complete self.
'I' am soon the 'world.'
The 'world' is soon the 'technique.'
What defines all of this is.......
---------------------------------
Leaving the nearly dead Junpei behind, Jogo was about to turn and leave when he suddenly faltered.
"....?"
Something was wrong.
He should have been on the verge of death, so where was this energy coming from?
"!!"
From Junpei’s burned, blinded body, cursed energy unlike before was pouring out.
Like a butterfly just before it emerges from its chrysalis.
Jogo, who had immediately moved to sever his breathing, froze at the shocking sight before him.
Otsuki.
Kouban.
Heukrin.
Jeomdeungak.
The shikigami summoned one after another.
'Wasn’t Yoshino Junpei only able to summon one shikigami at a time? No, more importantly, where is that cursed energy coming from!'
He had clearly exhausted all his cursed energy in the battle against Jogo.
That body was nothing but an empty shell.
And yet, as if denying Jogo’s thoughts, Junpei’s mouth opened and murmured a single word.
"I offer."
With that, Otsuki, who stood at the very front, opened its mouth wide.
-Crunch!
Kouban, which symbolized "sprouting."
-Crunch!
Heukrin, which symbolized "circulation."
-Crunch!
Jeomdeungak, which symbolized "completion."
The other three shikigami were swallowed one after another into Otsuki’s mouth, and its form began to change little by little.
The shikigami that represented everything Junpei was, the shikigami that symbolized the life he had lived.
Having endured harsh trials, they fulfilled their roles and vanished completely.
What he gained by facing his essence.
To offer oneself up and devour oneself to form a single complete world.
That unknown concept, forged from the unity of soul, body, and technique, was trying to descend upon this world.
There was no longer any room for impurities to intrude into Junpei’s world.
The near-perfect ideal he had achieved was what humans called a god.
Now that all preparations were complete, the end of that grand ritual had finally arrived.
"Akasha Yurayura."
Life is struggle.
Fight, seize, and devour.
For that purpose, you must have been born.
Sea God.
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