November 2.
09:23.
The Tokyo Colony spread out around Shinjuku.
"Everyone’s here, right?"
Now that she was effectively half the commander, Maki checked to make sure everyone had gathered properly.
Angel escort team. No issues.
Tsukumo persuasion team. No issues.
Kenjaku pursuit team. No issues.
"Hey, your face looks kind of radiant."
"Does it?"
"....."
The only thing that really bothered her was Nobara, grinning ear to ear and showing off her bouncy skin.
Compared to that, Junpei’s hollow face from that morning flashed through her mind.
Seeing Nobara’s glossy skin brought back the sounds she’d heard last night.
-Haaah! Aaaah!
-Slap!Slap!
There were some things you couldn’t help hearing once you had a body like this.
It was yet another reminder of just how sharp her hearing had become, strengthened by Heavenly Restriction.
Shaking her head to clear away the stray thoughts, Maki decided to keep her mouth shut for the sake of her junior’s dignity.
'...Not exactly my place to say anything.'
-Last night was amazing.
'Shut up, Mai.'
Mai, who had reacted to the sound and gotten excited, had also had a similar experience. That much was a secret.
"Then let’s go in."
Led by Maki and Okkotsu, eight jujutsushi stepped toward the barrier.
When they knocked on the wall, a familiar face popped out: Kokane, chattering in a loud voice.
"Hi! I’m Kokane! A life-or-death game called the Culling Game is being held inside this barrier! Once you step in, you’re a player too!! Even so, are you coming in?"
The jujutsushi exchanged glances, nodded, and answered in unison.
"Yeah. No problem."
The [binding vow] that took effect upon expressing consent.
One by one, the names of those who had voluntarily entered the death game were called, and their participation was confirmed.
-Okkotsu Yuta. Zenin Mai. Itadori Yuji. Fushiguro Megumi. Kugisaki Nobara. Kusakabe Atsuya. Todo Aoi. Choso. These eight have joined the Culling Game.
Now it truly begins.
Having steeled their resolve one last time, the jujutsushi threw themselves into the barrier without hesitation.
"Let’s go!"
To bring the Culling Game to an end.
-----------------------------------
After the other comrades entered the Culling Game, Junpei—left alone—received a summons.
When he entered the principal’s office, he found Yaga with a grimace, clutching his head.
"Did you find him?"
"Yeah. I found him."
"Where is he?"
"A multi-story parking lot site in Tochigi Prefecture. Hakari’s there."
Once Hakari had been added to the plan, Yaga had sent out [the jujutsu world] and assistant supervisors to track him down, and they’d found him quickly.
Reading the report that came in within a day, he felt like he’d aged ten years.
Not only had the bastard been suspended and made no attempt to hide at all, but what he was doing now was also deeply problematic.
"What’s he doing there?"
"He’s been put in charge of the betting matches and is raking in money. By making sorcerers fight each other."
"Wait, the customers are..."
"Almost all non-sorcerers."
Broadcasting fights between sorcerers to non-sorcerers and making money in the middle.
Junpei was left speechless by behavior that seemed to treat secrecy like something you could just throw to the dogs.
After the Shibuya Incident, the rule had become practically meaningless, but they should at least have pretended to follow it.
And since the third-year had only been suspended earlier this year, the fact that he was in charge of the whole operation meant he’d probably been doing this for quite a while.
"I’m not exactly in a position to talk, considering I staged a coup, but... he really is a reckless one."
"He’s always been like that. A total mood-driven maniac. He clashed with the higher-ups more times than I can count."
"So that’s why he got suspended?"
Back then, Gojo Satoru was still in good health.
In fact, Yuji, Okkotsu, and even Junpei himself had all been able to enjoy their school lives safely, out of the higher-ups’ clutches, thanks to his protection.
If it had been Gojo, who hated the higher-ups, he probably would’ve protected Hakari over and over again.
"Both Satoru and I defended him every time, but nothing changed. In the end he went and smashed head-on into them, and there was no way to cover for that."
"You’re making me curious now."
"...He beat one of the council members half to death and left him a cripple."
"Ah."
It was a miracle he’d only been suspended.
'He’s worse than Todo.'
At the very least, Todo was a man who showed tremendous favor to anyone he personally acknowledged.
His antics were outrageous, but it wasn’t as if he didn’t respect rules at all.
Just from the way it sounded, Hakari seemed like the most eccentric person he’d ever met.
"That’s why you’re the right person to persuade him. You’re the only one who can put him down."
"I understand. But the higher-ups have already been cleared out, so if we just march in and tell him straight, wouldn’t he cooperate?"
"That’s not certain. He won’t just believe us at face value, and even if he does, the odds of him calmly agreeing to talk are low. Worst case, he could run the second he realizes you’re from Jujutsu High."
What a pain.
Unlike Fushiguro, who could hide in the shadows, Junpei wasn’t very confident in infiltration.
As he licked his lips with a troubled expression, Yaga brought out the lineup he’d already prepared.
"I’ll send Panda with you. He’s the closest thing Hakari has to a friend."
"If it turns out we know each other... that’s bad, right?"
"Of course it’s bad. Pretend you don’t know him, then use his help to get close to Hakari."
-Once you’re face-to-face, the plan is basically a success.
"After that, do whatever you want. Persuade him with words, or if that doesn’t work, beat him up. I’ll leave it to your judgment."
That was exactly the kind of thing Junpei was most confident in.
"Leave it to me."
-----------------------------------
It took a full day to reach Tochigi Prefecture.
Thanks to riding mapari, they got there fairly quickly, but it was still late by the time they arrived.
Fortunately, perhaps because they were far from Shibuya, the local infrastructure was still functioning properly, and Junpei and Panda took a room at a nearby hotel.
"Sir, pets aren’t allowed... huh?"
"What do you mean? I’m alone here."
"That’s strange. Must’ve been seeing things."
They almost got turned away at the front desk, but Junpei managed to get through the crisis with quick reflexes.
It was a little awkward booking a twin room by himself, but Junpei pretended not to care, took the key, and rode the elevator up.
-Ptooey!
As soon as they reached the room, mapari, which had been floating behind Junpei, spat Panda out.
"Th-that was close..."
"You looked so human I forgot for a second that you were a panda."
"That’s a little insulting, you know."
"I’m the one who booked a twin room with a panda before I even had a girlfriend."
The two of them traded dumb jokes and filled their stomachs with convenience store food.
Holding the cup noodle with his chubby front paw, Panda poured hot water over the noodles and explained the outline of the plan.
"Tomorrow I’ll go in first and check things out. Once I figure out how things are moving, I’ll contact you, and you come in after that."
"What are you going to say if they ask why you came?"
"I’ll say I got suspended too and came to make some pocket money. It’s not every day you get to see Panda fight, right? If I say I want to enter the betting matches as a headline fighter, they’ll probably let me in."
That sounded plausible.
In fact, the higher-ups had their eyes on Panda, a fully self-sustaining cursed corpse, and Hakari probably knew it too.
With that, Junpei decided to leave reconnaissance to Panda and promptly collapsed onto the bed and fell asleep.
Maybe it was the fatigue from the day before, but he felt unusually sleepy today.
-U R MY SPECIAL~
"Ugh, shut up..."
Junpei woke up to the sound of an alarm ringing in his ear.
Checking his phone, he saw it was 9:00 in the morning.
Panda was nowhere to be seen, probably having gone out first.
After showering and heading outside, Junpei habitually checked his messenger app.
There were no messages from Nobara, who he always kept in touch with, since the previous day.
"Is the barrier blocking signals?"
Since it was Kenjaku’s work, just like the one in Shibuya, he’d expected as much.
What mattered was whether they could still contact each other once they were inside the barrier.
If he went in later and couldn’t get any shared information, that would be a problem.
'Though I could just go looking for them myself...'
It would only be a little annoying, not a major issue for him.
What was more troubling was the fact that the people inside wouldn’t be able to contact each other either.
Kenjaku, Tsukumo Yuki, and Angel were all indispensable figures, so they needed a way to report progress..."
'My head hurts.'
He decided to think about that problem later.
Lying back down on the bed, Junpei decided to savor his rare day off.
In a few days, the time would come to spill blood and fight again, so he figured he was allowed this much luxury.
After spending a while surfing the internet, Junpei couldn’t stand how restless his body felt and went out for a walk on a whim.
"It’s been a while since I was alone like this."
For the first time in a long while, Junpei felt as if he’d gone back to the days before he entered Jujutsu High.
A time when he wandered the streets alone, without a single friend.
Back then he had been full of hatred and anger, but now that he had some room in his heart, he thought he might be able to enjoy it more.
"One takoyaki, please."
"That’ll be 620 yen."
'Expensive...'
He tried snacking a little and was reminded just how much prices had gone up.
-Mister! Mister! Mister! Mister! Mister! Mister!
"Oh. So it does work."
"No, that’s bullshit! That’s cheating!"
"That was fun."
"Ghh."
He even overwhelmed self-proclaimed veterans in an arcade fighting game with his jujutsu-enhanced physical ability.
Junpei, proving with his own body that he could have fun on his own.
He’d been making his own entertainment for over a year now, so even though he had a lot more friends these days, he was already a master at it.
By the time he’d spent a long while killing time like that, Panda’s message finally arrived.
[Meet me in the vacant lot behind the parking garage.]
"Oh, nice."
Junpei stuffed the remaining takoyaki into his mouth and headed straight for the place Panda had specified.
Panda, munching on a sausage in a vacant lot where no one ever came, waved to greet him.
"What’s with the sausage?"
"The audience threw it to me."
Looks like the infiltration had gone well.
"Did you meet Hakari?"
"He knows me, so he’s not suspicious, but he’s avoiding me. I only saw his face once when I first entered."
"Do you know where he is?"
"A monitoring room on the rooftop. He’s watching the entire building through CCTV from there. That’s why I called you here."
If something suspicious showed up on the CCTV, it would be a pain.
And since sorcerers could see mapari, the same kind of infiltration as before wouldn’t work either.
"You went there yourself, right?"
"I went out to the rooftop and got as far as the door, but I couldn’t get any closer."
"What do you mean?"
"Whether I walked or ran, the distance between the door and me never got any shorter. It’s probably that third-year’s technique, Kirara’s."
Kirara?
The other third-year was supposed to be a guy.
Was this a case like Megumi?
"You said he’s a man."
"He is. At least, he’s closer to a woman right now."
"No, if he’s a man then he’s a man, and if she’s a woman then she’s a woman. What do you mean, he’s a man but right now he’s a woman?"
"Ha, well, so... let’s just say he’s a man."
From Panda’s perspective, remembering Kirara’s appearance, that was the only way he could put it.
Junpei, who had been wondering what kind of LGBT nonsense this was, quickly stopped thinking about it too.
Anyway, they’d learned that for some reason, they couldn’t directly approach the rooftop door.
Just as Junpei was thinking that maybe a straightforward assault was the only option, an idea struck him like lightning.
"Panda, what was the atmosphere like when you actually fought?"
"Nothing special. There wasn’t a single proper sorcerer, just a bunch of mediocre guys."
Hakari was supposedly in charge of the whole operation.
The most important thing in a betting match was how entertaining the match was.
The more entertaining it was, the more money the audience would bet, and the bigger the take from the commission would be.
And the person in charge had a lot of power over the match.
In other words, it was possible to rig the whole thing if he wanted to.
Thinking of pro wrestling, it seemed entirely possible.
If they put on an exciting match, wouldn’t Hakari notice and naturally come meet them?
"Panda."
"What?"
"Fight me."
"...?"
Malice with a reason descended upon the innocent Panda.
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