Chapter 137 - Plan Moved Forward Ahead of Schedule

Jujutsu High Infirmary. Shoko Ieiri leaned against the operating table, the loose strands of hair at her forehead soaked through with cold sweat. On the hospital bed, Kokichi Muta, seventeen years of Cursed Energy completely hollowed out of him, suddenly wrenched his chest upward.

"Cough! Cough, cough, cough!"

Like a man violently dragged up from the bottom of the ocean, he convulsed into a fit of raw, choking coughs. Black blood poured from the corners of his mouth in thick, dark mouthfuls. His eyes snapped open. His vision hadn't even focused yet when his right hand shot out and locked around the sleeve of Masamichi Yaga, who stood beside the bed.

"Tokyo... something terrible is about to happen!"

Kokichi Muta's voice came out hoarse and cracked, barely a voice at all. Those words hit the room like a stone dropped into still water. The air went dead silent.

Yaga pressed his hand firmly down on Kokichi Muta's trembling shoulder, his voice low and steady. "Lie still. Take your time. Tell me exactly what happened."

Kokichi Muta gasped for air, chest heaving. His gaze swept across every person in the room and finally settled on Satoru Gojo and Suguru Geto. It's all over. That was the only thought left in his head. I'm a traitor to Jujutsu High. By the rules of the Jujutsu world, there's only one thing waiting for me. Execution.

His eyes went red. A bleak, hollow smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. Like a man who had nothing left to protect, he opened his mouth.

"I did it."

Kokichi Muta stared at the white ceiling.

"I'm the mole. The barrier frequencies for the Exchange Event, the fake surveillance feeds sent to the outside — I tampered with all of it. For the past month, those Cursed Spirit cannibalism videos spreading across the internet, I helped strip the blocks on those too, so the Four Great Calamities could absorb the panic and terror of an entire world."

Kokichi Muta ground his back teeth together. "That Special Grade Cursed Spirit called Mahito came to me. His offer was Idle Transfiguration, he'd use it to heal this ruined body of mine. That was the deal."

"You sold out your comrades for a healthy body?" Yaga's voice was cold enough to draw frost.

"If I refused, he was going to massacre everyone in the Kyoto Jujutsu High dormitories!"

The whites of Kokichi Muta's eyes were laced through with red.

"And yes. I did want a normal body. I wanted to walk out into sunlight like a normal person. To go see them."

Guilt was written across every line of his face. He closed his eyes and waited, for Yaga's judgment, or Satoru Gojo's.

"All that buildup, and it's over something this small?"

A loud, carelessly cheerful voice broke the silence wide open. Toji dropped down from wherever he'd been perched, dusted off his hands, and walked to the hospital bed with his usual purposeful stride. He reached out and ruffled Kokichi Muta's bandage-wrapped head.

"For the sake of your comrades' lives, you carried the filth of betrayal alone, suffering in the dark without a single word!"

Toji wiped the corner of his eye.

"That's passion! That's heart! Now that is a real man! That's exactly what youth is supposed to look like!"

Kokichi Muta's eyes flew open. Is this guy missing a few screws? I'm a traitor. And he's not hitting me. He's praising me? Kokichi Muta looked over at Satoru Gojo and the others. Not one of them reacted. He had absolutely no idea what was happening.

Toji's expression settled. "Don't go thinking the adult world is so fragile it can't take a hit, you little punk. It's just human nature. Put someone else in that broken shell you've been stuck in and they might've sold out twice as much and twice as fast."

"But..."

"There are no buts."

Toji cut him off flat.

"Even without you playing mole, those rats hiding in the gutters would've found some other dirty trick. Young person makes a mistake, you sweat it out and you take back what you lost. Don't sit there looking like some old fossil about to commit seppuku. It's embarrassing."

A sting of bitterness welled up behind Kokichi Muta's eyes. Satoru Gojo spat his lollipop stick into the trash.

"Your little mess isn't what interests me." His tone was easy. "What interests me is what you said before. About something terrible happening in Tokyo."

Yaga got himself together, pulled up a chair, and sat down. "Keep going. Everything you know."

Kokichi Muta drew a slow breath.

"The Four Great Calamities. Jogo, Hanami, Dagon, and Mahito."

He spoke fast.

"Over the past month or two, they've been absorbing the panic and hatred that's been exploding across the entire internet. Their power has gone through a qualitative shift. I could feel it through the mech's sensors. Their abilities are already far beyond the range of any ordinary Special Grade."

Suguru Geto stroked his chin. Four Special Grades with intelligence and Domain Expansions? If that's true, it's more than a little troublesome.

"They can go head-to-head with a Special Grade Jujutsu Sorcerer now." Kokichi Muta looked at Satoru Gojo as he said it.

"Oh?" Gojo's eyebrow arched. "High praise."

"It's not just the four of them."

Kokichi Muta bit down and dropped the next bomb.

"Kenjaku. I don't know how he did it, but he's brought in two more allies."

Yaga was on his feet instantly. "What kind of allies?"

"I never saw them directly. When they met, I only sensed them once from a distance, through the mech's detectors."

Kokichi Muta thought back to the readings that had blown past every limit on his instruments.

"Both of those unknown allies are Special Grade."

Four Calamities who had already broken past their limits. Two unknown Special Grades. And one endlessly calculating Kenjaku pulling the strings. Yaga's expression went dark. Seven Special Grade-level enemies assembled in one place. Forget Tokyo, that was enough force to overturn the entire world.

"Bottom line." Kokichi Muta looked around at all of them. "They've gathered everything they have. They're going to unleash an unprecedented riot in Tokyo, and soon. The target is clear: wipe out every core combatant Jujutsu High has, all at once."

Silence. Toji rubbed his chin, and his grin stretched wider. Six Special Grade punching bags. Megumi had been getting soft lately. Perfect opportunity, grab a couple of Special Grades for him to work on. Satoru Gojo let out a quiet laugh. He turned toward the window and stretched.

"Six Special Grades." There was nothing in his voice that resembled tension. "Sounds like quite the spectacle."

Kenjaku. That spineless turtle who never came out of the shadows. He was actually willing to put every card he had on the table? Gojo wasn't afraid of Kenjaku making a move. What drove him crazy was that man buzzing around behind his back like a fly that wouldn't die.

"Satoru. Don't underestimate them." Yaga's warning was sharp and hard. "If those two mystery allies are also sorcerers from a thousand years ago, we know nothing about what they're capable of."

"Doesn't matter."

Gojo turned his head. His pale blue eyes caught the light through the gap in his blindfold.

"Whatever schemes Kenjaku has. Whatever filthy trump cards he's been stacking in that gutter he lives in."

The corner of Gojo's mouth curved.

"The strongest is here."

"We'll win."

At the same time, deep beneath Tokyo. In an abandoned wartime air-raid shelter, water dripped in a slow, steady rhythm from the sewer pipes overhead. A mass of black mucus seeped through a crack in the wall and oozed into the main control room, crawling and pulling itself back together across the rubble-covered floor.

Kenjaku stepped out of the shadows, turning a small cube in his fingers, its every surface plastered with Sealing Talismans.

"Mechamaru isn't dead?" His tone was flat. Impossible to read.

"That Cursed Energy-less muscle freak came crashing out of the sky!"

Mahito's teeth were grinding.

"Mechamaru was pulled out by him. Our whole plan — it might be completely blown."

Kenjaku looked at Mahito's wrecked, furious face. He didn't get angry. Instead, his hand stopped turning the cube. He pressed his palm slowly over his forehead. A low sound worked its way up from his throat, a laugh, but barely. It got louder.

It bounced off the bare concrete walls of the shelter, filling the empty space, and kept building until it wasn't a laugh anymore. It was something unhinged, something that had broken past every restraint.

"Blown?" Kenjaku lowered his hand. The smile on that stitched-seam face was warped. "So what."

"The rat ran. Then we blow the cage down entirely."

"It doesn't matter anymore. If that's how it is — the plan moves up."

Kenjaku looked down at the Prison Realm resting in his palm.

"I'm going to make this entire world go completely, utterly mad."

➤ Next: Exposing the Existence of Cursed Spirits, Society Descends into Chaos