Ever since I first learned to walk, I would sometimes see things that no one else could.
Because of that, while children my age went to the pediatrician, I had to make the rounds of psychiatric clinics.
Of course, even very, very young children can read people’s emotions. They may actually be more sensitive to them.
By the time I learned to distinguish between things only I could see and things nobody else could see, I had learned how to pretend I saw nothing.
My parents were delighted.
"It’s Minami’s birthday today, so we’re going somewhere special for dinner!"
It was some kind of restaurant in some number-star hotel, wasn’t it?
Thanks to my parents making a reservation at a restaurant that took over two hours by car to reach for my birthday, I got to taste an extravagant full-course meal unlike anything I had ever had before.
It was really delicious.
"Mooom~ It’s raining~"
"Oh my, it is. We should hurry home."
"Don’t you worry! There isn’t a salesman at Hikita Trading Company who can drive better than I can! Trust in my driving skills—I’ve endured plenty of hellish business trips to the provinces!"
On the way back, rain began pouring down.
The drizzling rain gradually intensified into a downpour. But to me, nodding off from a food coma, it was nothing worth worrying about. Then I vaguely heard my parents anxiously saying that it would be terrible if the soil at the foot of the mountain washed away and blocked the road, and I turned my bleary eyes toward the window.
Would it have been better if I had just kept sleeping then?
On the mountainside stood a gigantic monster, so huge it seemed to cover the entire sky.
A grotesque creature with mouths where its eyes should have been.
Despite having no eyeballs, perhaps it sensed me looking at it. It stared precisely in my direction—at our car.
The instant I felt our eyes meet, the monster grinned and stomped its foot.
The world shook, and a landslide began. The falling dirt and rocks came down squarely upon the car my family was riding in.
"Damn it, honey—!!!"
"Aaaaah—!!!"
The car was swept away by the mudslide, broke through the guardrail, and plunged off the cliff.
Whoooosh...
"We put up a curtain. How did this car come straight in without being diverted?"
"I don’t know... Huh? Nanami! This child is alive!"
"First, this child needs emergency treatment. Haibara, can you do it?"
"No, you need to keep that cursed spirit tied down. My technique is better suited for this."
"...Don’t die."
"You too. Don’t let that child die, okay?"
I do not remember anything after that.
What I vaguely remembered was that some extremely tall older boys had an odd conversation. I could not remember the details of what they said.
And when I opened my eyes, I was in a hospital bed.
I was alone.
-
"...What the hell was that dream?"
It was so vivid that, for a dream, it felt like I had reincarnated as a beautiful girl through gender-swapping.
Was this... Minami’s past memory?
Why had Minami’s memories flowed into me in the form of a dream?
Because of the binding vow we made last time? ...No, a mere binding vow could not possibly create a link strong enough for memories to flow through. If it could, binding vows would be something people could not casually make with others.
It would make sense if the binding vow Minami and I shared had developed to the level of a contract rather than a binding vow.
Minami seemed to have considerable talent for jujutsu.
I stole a glance at Minami, sleeping softly beside me.
She was pretty.
...For the record, Minami originally slept on the floor. After it was revealed that she was my wife, I gave her the bed, but she stubbornly insisted that she could not possibly make her master sleep on the floor, so we simply started sleeping in the same bed. We really only slept. I have not touched her yet.
Still, what kind of past did Minami have?
Wasn’t she just a beautiful middle-schooler-syndrome girl obsessed with weird urban-legend setting collections?
And the ones who saved her had definitely been Nanami and Haibara, back when they were students at Jujutsu High, right?
"Mmm..."
"I don’t know. Let’s just sleep."
Feeling Minami’s warmth beneath the covers, I closed my eyes again.
-
"Daisuke, here is your schedule for today!"
"Schedule? Did I have anything scheduled for today?"
I had corrected the way Minami addressed me from Master to simply Daisuke.
She was not merely a maid but ‘my wife (for real),’ after all. It felt a little strange to keep calling me that.
"The higher-ups have summoned you!"
"The higher-ups?"
For some reason, it seemed that my schedule for the day had been delivered to Minami first.
Perhaps because this was the first time since marrying me under the guise of employment that she was doing something maid-like, Minami was incredibly excited.
The higher-ups who had summoned me were the Jujutsu Headquarters.
When someone said “the higher-ups” here, they were the only people who came to mind, but they really were insanely high-ranking, so I was still a little dumbfounded.
"Zenin Daisuke... Have you been well these past days?"
"I have been well, thanks to you. Have you been keeping well yourself, sir?"
"Yes, hm."
Standing amid the old men of the Jujutsu Headquarters, who liked to conceal themselves completely while looking down at people from above, was more oppressive than I had expected.
And I knew that the old man speaking familiarly to me right now was one of the Zenin family elders. He had originally been distant, but for some reason, after that matter of employing Minami—our engagement—he had changed into a genuine grandfather figure.
As I exchanged some pointless pleasantries with the family elder, another old man opened his mouth.
"That is enough asking after one another. Let us proceed. Child of the Zenin clan. We have a secret mission to assign you."
"A secret mission?"
An impatient old man.
But I did not want to talk at length here either, so I did not argue and answered only with what was necessary.
"Today, at a juvenile detention center in West Tokyo City, a cursed womb of an unidentified special-grade cursed spirit has been confirmed."
"?"
A juvenile detention center... could it be?
"We will dispatch the current first-years of Tokyo Jujutsu High to this incident. You are to accompany them on this mission and, under the guise of dying in battle, eliminate Sukuna’s vessel."
"...Understood."
-
When I left the Jujutsu Headquarters and went to the pavilion, Minami was waiting for me.
"You’re back, Master!?"
"Why are you so excited? More importantly, you switched back to that again."
"Because I did some proper maid work for the first time in ages! And as your wife, I’m proud to see that you, Master—Daisuke—are so favored by the higher-ups!"
"That favor is not necessarily a good thing."
I had received orders to kill Itadori Yuji.
For now, I agreed because, if we entered the juvenile detention center and events followed the original story, Itadori would die at Sukuna’s hands anyway. There was no reason to make them dislike me immediately.
But the greater problem was the reaction of those Jujutsu Headquarters old men, who had been strangely friendly with me for some time now.
Wasn’t that exactly the reaction of people who considered me a piece completely on their side?
I was a first-year student, Itadori’s classmate, and the disciple of Gojo Satoru—the man they were wary of.
Maybe... I was beginning to understand.
When I thought back on the actions of this body—Zenin Daisuke.
Until right before I possessed him, he had been an average Zenin male chauvinist bastard, doing his part to uphold the Zenin clan standard.
Then, immediately after I possessed him, he enrolled at Jujutsu High and became Gojo Satoru’s student. During that process, I strongly insisted on Tokyo Jujutsu High over Kyoto Jujutsu High.
And less than half a year later, I brought home a girl who seemed talented at jujutsu and promptly made her my wife.
In other words, the Zenin clan did not know how I had changed after possessing this body. From the omniscient perspective of the Zenin clan establishment and the Jujutsu Headquarters old men—
Disposable trash A, cast out by the family, suddenly acquires a cursed technique. Politically, he sides with their arch-enemy Gojo Satoru and becomes someone to watch.
They think he has gone crazy and betrayed the clan, but then he drags out obsolete regulations to womanize, making them believe he is still the very image of a traditional Zenin male chauvinist bastard—still one of their people.
A pawn that would be easy for us to use is right under Gojo Satoru’s nose? Isn’t that the perfect spy to exploit?
Ah, so that was why Gojo Sensei’s reaction to me taking Minami as my wife had felt a little uncomfortable, even though I had not understood it at the time?
He had begged and pleaded to take in a kid the Zenin clan had thrown out, only for me to suddenly start making moves that politically aligned me with the Zenin clan and the upper echelons of the jujutsu world!
Politically, I had practically been openly advertising a completely different allegiance from everyone else at Tokyo Jujutsu High!
Which meant—
"When Maki Zenin awakens her perfect Heavenly Restriction..."
The odds that I would die alongside her had risen exponentially.
My life.
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