Chapter 57

It took an embarrassingly long amount of time for Ito Aoi to collect her thoughts after her date. A lot had happened: new experiences both profound and minor. She had done something that she had never thought herself capable of in a million years.

She had gone on a date with a boy.

The steps she had taken had been titanic. She had explored a part of herself that she thought she had buried over the years she had spent singlemindedly dedicating herself to Jujutsu Sorcery.

In doing so, she had wasted not only her own time, but also the time of another boy, one that she thought she had liked, but didn’t really. Not to that extent, at least.

Geto-kun was handsome, tall, and kind. He was also very absentminded, and somewhat careless with his words. Aoi knew that he’d make a girl happy someday. Unfortunately, that just wouldn’t be her.

Next time, she needed to make sure before she asked a boy out. Ever since her injury, she had become entirely undaunted by the prospect of interacting with her peers. Where before, she had been affected by a paralyzing fear of rejection, a fear that was entirely absent during her exorcisms, now she had almost no fear whatsoever.

That had made her reckless.

Still, she wasn’t daunted by the fact of her failure. All failures were learning experiences, and she had learned more about her own likes and dislikes. That was valuable knowledge.

She would need more of that dauntlessness now.

She had taken the bus back home to her neighborhood, and was now standing in front of her family’s dojo.

She wanted to tell them everything. It wasn’t a matter of needing their support. That ship had sailed years ago.

This was not for her. This was for them.

She could die at any day, at any mission. There was no accounting for the risks that she took on while in the line of duty. There might come a day where her parents would be informed by an assistant manager that their daughter was dead. And there was no telling whether they would be apprised of the true circumstances behind said death. Jujutsu regulations were clear about the importance of secrecy.

It was time that they learned.

She wondered what she would do if her parents tried to stop her from pursuing Jujutsu.

She knew the answer. It disappointed her, on a personal level, that she would likely continue to selfishly pursue her vengeance, but it did not surprise her. She had acted selfishly for years already.

She clenched her fists, and opened the door to the dojo.

In the end, nothing changes.

I’ll still destroy every last one of those monsters.

000

“In the end, he just wasn’t my type,” Ito grinned sheepishly as she recounted her experience to the rest of us girls in the first year. We were occupying a corner of the dormitory common room, sitting in a circle. I was in the seiza position on the floor, wearing a comfy jinbei that was black. To my right was Shoko, who was sitting cross-legged on top of a throw pillow. She wore shorts and a tank top.

The rest wore much the same. Suzuki was lying sideways on a couch, taking up most of it. Her head was resting on top of Takahashi’s thigh as she listened to Ito’s story, Takahashi currently hunched over and applying red nail polish to her toenails with meticulous care. Aomori was there as well, but she was busy reading a light novel that I didn’t recognize.

“How’d he handle the rejection?” Shoko asked.

“He was perfectly gentlemanly, I think,” Ito said. “He understood. I think it was for the best, anyhow. I didn’t quite get the impression that he was very interested, you know?”

Takahashi scoffed. “Wasn’t very interested, huh?”

Suzuki grinned. “Oooh, sounds like you’ve got a story to tell.”

“Oh!” Ito sat up, grinning. “You went on a date too, didn’t you, Hana-chan?”

“Yep. Gojo asked me out.”

Suzuki laughed. “You all should have seen her when she was getting dressed up! She looked like a supermodel by the time she was ready to go!”

“What a waste,” Takahashi groaned.

“You… wanna talk about it?” Suzuki asked.

“It’s not like I don’t like him,” Takahashi murmured. “I was happy he asked me out. He also paid for a bunch of stuff. The food was really nice. Honestly, his behavior wasn’t even that bad, either. I mean, it was bizarre, don’t get me wrong. He’s absurdly into anime and video games. And Jujutsu. He kept… critiquing me.” She rolled her eyes.

“Yikes,” Suzuki grimaced.

“That’s Gojo, alright,” Shoko chuckled.

“But he dressed up,” Takahashi sighed. “He looked really nice. And he called me pretty…” her tone became tender at the end, before she stiffened. “Which I am. And I’m not ashamed of that. I know I have good features, and I take good care of myself. I don’t look this good by accident.”

“Oookay?” Suzuki chuckled awkwardly.

“I’m really good at discerning people,” She said as she did the final touches of her makeup on her last pinky toe nail. “Specifically what they like and don’t like. I believe it to be my special talent. When Gojo asked me out, I jumped on the opportunity that I had been too scared to seize for myself. And why was I scared? What reason would I have to fear a boy’s rejection?”

“So, what happened? What did he do?”

“Nothing,” she said. “He did… absolutely nothing!” She punched her thighs. “He felt like a stranger to me. Like someone that barely even saw me. I felt invisible to him. He called me pretty, but did he even mean it, or was he just stating the basic fact? I didn’t get anything from him. Why did he even ask me out if he doesn’t even like me?”

“Uh,” Shoko looked down, unwilling to speak up about her involvement in Gojo’s arcane decision-making process. It wasn’t really her fault, but I could see why she would take some blame from it.

“So I broke it off cleanly,” Takahashi went on. “Even though I didn’t really want to. I could have tolerated the weirdness. Maybe even come to like it over time. He’s… really cute, after all. But if there’s one thing I can’t compromise on, it’s my need to be liked. Is that so wrong?”

“What?! Of course not!” Suzuki sat up to sit besides Takahashi, putting a hand on her shoulder. “What the hell’s even the point if he doesn’t even like you?”

“And I don’t just want to be liked,” Takahashi went on, a fire igniting in her eyes, and her voice deepening. “I want to be loved. I want my man to starve for me and stare at me constantly like I’m the first big meal he’s seen after days spent wandering through a desert with no end in sight! I want to be a focal point of his life!”

She then stood up. “I don’t ask for much at all! Only unquestionable loyalty and single-minded dedication! I require devotion! Is that so, so wrong?” She shook her head and raised her fist. “No—I don’t care. If I’m wrong, then I don’t want to be right. But Gojo… oh, that Gojo. He meant to make a devoted follower of me! He wanted me to worship him! Ours was a match doomed to destruction and nothing else, for a Goddess will not share the heavens with a God.”

Suzuki shimmied away from her slightly.

“Perhaps our match would have proved too powerful for this world to contain,” Takahashi mused idly, looking over her fingers. Then she snorted. “Perhaps Gojo, in realizing this, turned his gaze away from me in fear of what we could have accomplished together.”

“Maybe he just didn’t like you?” Aomori suggested, still reading her book.

Takahashi slumped over, pouting. “I don’t know what I did wrong. Or if I even did anything wrong.”

“No,” Shoko said, “go back to your megalomaniacal speech. You were onto something, I think.”

Takahashi slumped harder, all her previous confidence lost.

“You were brave,” I said to her. She perked up. “And wise,” I added. “Others might have deluded themselves into thinking there was anything they could do to change a person’s attraction to them. You, however, identified the mismatch of interests and did something about it. You did well.”

Takahashi beamed at the praise, and I smiled at her. She then turned her chin up with a satisfying smirk. “I’m not the type of girl to pine for a guy that won’t give me the time of day. I will simply move on, because I am worth more than that.”

Positive affirmations, and a good attitude. I was glad for her. She would be alright.

And as for Gojo and Suguru…

…my Juchū watched from the sky as they swam together out in the cold darkness of the pacific ocean, laughing and horse-playing together.

They would be alright, too.

I smiled in contentment.

000

In a grassy field somewhere in the Kyoto Jujutsu High compound, Hibana Haruta and Zen'in Naoya struck each other in the face at the exact same time.

To my pride, Naoya was the first to buckle. Rather than let himself get attacked from every direction by an angry swarm of Juchū, he used his Projection sorcery to skip backwards in a single second, dividing his movements during that timeframe into twenty-four discrete frames of movement.

Like in an animation.

I had no idea what Zen'in Naobito had thought by letting Naoya go to school. This wasn’t the modus operandi for the big clans—their heirs tended to be taught at home, where none of their rivals could glean information about their technique.

The Gojo clan had fought their heir regarding his wishes to enroll, according to Gojo himself. Yet the Zen'in clan had sent Naoya of their own volition.

There were plenty of reasons as to why they sent him, but I couldn’t exactly pin down the most important one—the one that truly tipped them over to do this. I thought differently enough from the big clans that trying to intuit their motives were difficult at best.

Whatever reasons they may have had, their efforts had backfired dramatically. Haruta had been able to pin down the rules of Projection sorcery after mere days of butting heads with the clan heir. She had reported every detail gleaned to myself, and I had observed their fights as well in order to fill in the blanks, if any. There hadn’t been any blanks. Haruta’s report had left nothing to be desired.

Now, even if Haruta failed to be able to defeat Naoya in an engagement that mattered—say, for example, the exchange event, or even an all-out war against Jujutsu society—the information she had gathered would prove enough to handle not only Naoya, but the ‘fastest sorcerer of the modern era’ himself: his father, Naobito.

I was also long overdue a sit-down with that man. Toji had vouched for him, despite his own history with the Zen'in clan. That meant something.

I’d have to see him in his Kyoto estate, if he’d let me. I didn’t relish an opportunity to be snubbed by those bastards, but I had to at least follow up on Toji’s advice.

Naoya created distance. Haruta had her Juchū spread out around her, in every angle to try and cover Naoya’s approaches. Her Juchū, unlike mine, were as big as dogs at best. She couldn’t fill the air with a suffocating swarm of bugs either, as that degree of Sense Expansion tended to overload her brain. I had yet to come up with a solution for that, as well as all the other drawbacks of my clan’s Juchū technique. The best I could do for them was to use Totality to merge many Juchū into bigger, fewer and stronger ones.

I still believed there was a solution out there. I doubted that Hibana herself had received help from something like the Administrator in order to pull off the feats that she had.

I watched the match. Naoya, having racked up on much experience regarding Haruta’s usage of the Juchū technique, carefully measured his approach, barely even moving his eyes as he did. Wise. If he mapped his approach with his eyes, then Haruta would obviously be able to keep up.

Instead, he gave the entire stage a once-over, kept his eyes fixed on Haruta, and mapped his approach from memory.

Haruta countered this by moving her Juchū. Naoya followed their movements with his cursed energy perception, but there was only so much that could do without him using his eyes as well.

It was the mark of a true master, being able to fight in the dark, however. Haruta was pushing him towards that height by making him rely less and less on his physique and more on his cursed energy.

He should be relying on both, but this was probably where his current limits lay. These were limits that could only be expanded by ceaseless practice. I had always found that it was more difficult to improve the physical than the spiritual. It required far more sacrifices.

Like pulling one’s eyes out.

Naoya activated his technique, zipping around the stage, maneuvering past the stationed Juchū, and managing to weave his way just behind Haruta, where he planned to strike her with all his strength in the back of her head.

With his elbow.

The back of Haruta’s head grew a stinger, which Naoya struck with all his power, piercing his skin.

I couldn’t imagine that Haruta had tried this trick many times before. Otherwise, Naoya might have been more reserved in how hard he meant to strike Haruta.

Haruta still staggered forward from the blow of the shock, but it was Naoya that had been left bleeding, and injected with a paralytic that would make his arm useless in time.

One of the many ways that I served my clan was in providing my sorcerers with an array of toxins that they could insert into the Juchū I had given them. This way, they could store and use these toxins at will. Unfortunately, this system relied too heavily on me, something I did very much want to change in time.

Haruta shook off the daze of the strike to the back of her head. She clearly hadn’t prepared properly for it, and was now paying the price. Normally, I would fault her, but Naoya’s skill in hand-to-hand combat was immaculate, and his speed was difficult to intuit properly, choppy and strange as it was.

Still, the damage she had sustained was not enough to halt the rhythm of combat for too long.

Naoya dodged away from one of Haruta’s strikes and tried to use Projection sorcery to get away, only to be locked inside a frame of glass the instant he tried.

A weakness of Projection sorcery was paralysis in any capacity, it seemed. Paralysis led to an inability to control one’s movements, which would inevitably lead to the penalty for breaking the rules of Projection sorcery, which was to be turned into a two-dimensional image locked inside a pane of glass for one second.

During this time, if someone broke the pane, you would be freed from it, but also heavily damaged by the blow.

Haruta didn’t hesitate to shatter the glass with a brutal kick that sent Naoya’s now three-dimensional form flying away, and rolling in the dirt.

Naoya took too long to get up that he could claim that he was still in the fight. In realizing this, he pounded on the dirt with his good hand and growled. “I’ll get you next time!”

Despite Haruta’s showing today, these fights didn’t always tend to go her way. They were evenly split, thirteen wins each. The biggest difference in wins that they had had was two, which the other quickly rectified. They were almost perfectly matched, but in a good way.

Many people who became rivals with others tended to fixate on ways to defeat their rival at the cost of becoming generally better. These two were bettering themselves in their quest to defeat one another, leaving very little behind at all. A good rivalry.

I landed my Juchū, a simple beetle with a human mouth, on Haruta’s shoulder. She started in surprise at its arrival. “You let your guard down,” I said. “Let me sneak up on you.”

“The fight was over,” Haruta said.

“The fight’s never over. You just won one round. This is your next round. And you lost.”

She growled. “I did,” she said.

“Now for your third round,” I said. “Yamamoto Joichi is returning to Kyoto Jujutsu High.”

Haruta walked away from Naoya, but wisely kept some eyes on him using her Juchū. He likely wouldn’t attack, but it was important to not put anything past your rival, or you would lose. “Sooner than I expected. I suppose his name is Kamo Joichi now.”

“Exactly,” I said. “So you understand, then.”

“Understand…?”

“I admire your spirit, Haruta. I always have,” I said. “You’re my favorite student, after all. But I need you to understand one thing: it’s my place to cause a political shitstorm. Not yours. You’re allowed to defend yourself and others from him, but I don’t need you provoking him.”

Haruta was an eager subordinate, but it was those that you had to watch out for. An unmotivated subordinate would at worst do too little. An eager one would do too much.

I didn’t like things being done without my explicit permission. Too many years in the Hibana clan had made me unused to people making decisions for themselves, and my proximity to Haruta might have given her the impression that she wasn’t bound to my every whim, which was problematic.

“Of course, Teira-sama.”

“How do you think him and Zen'in will get along?”

“Like a house on fire,” Haruta snorted, her tone reeking with sarcasm. “My friend Shigemo spoke to him the most, and I doubt the boy’s worldview even allows for friends. He styles himself as some kind of crime boss. A bully who only has underlings. Zen'in would never allow himself to be in his circle if it meant submitting himself to another’s authority.”

“A tripartite rivalry, then,” I said. “That’s good.”

“Bad for Kyoto in the Exchange Event,” Haruta said. “We won’t be able to work together effectively with so many big personalities in the mix. And Zen'in is far more popular than I am in our class.”

I doubted Joichi would win too many hearts and minds himself after what he pulled.

“That’s good for us, I suppose,” Haruta said. “The worse Kyoto does, the better Tokyo does. Then we’ll benefit.”

I chuckled. “I’m already a Special Grade. The Exchange Event is meant to boost your reputation in the world of Jujutsu. Why would I want to sabotage anyone, or even take any sides for that matter?”

“Huh?”

“It’s simple, Haruta: we fight to our heart’s content, whether it’s in the group matches or the one on one matches. That’s what I’ll do, and that’s what I recommend you do. I don’t care if Tokyo wins or loses, as long as I win. This isn’t the sort of war where strategy is necessary.”

I flew away from her shoulder then. “I just wanted to warn you about Joichi. Good luck.”

She bowed her head at me. “Thank you. Goodbye, Teira-sama.”

While Haruta mentally prepared for the arrival of the first enemy she had made coming to Kyoto Jujutsu High, Tokyo’s school was abuzz with anticipation for yet another practical Jujutsu lesson.

000

“There are a myriad ways to reach mastery in Jujutsu Sorcery.”

Yaga Masamichi spoke to the first years with his usual degree of sternness and authority. To Jun, the buzz-cut sporting man always seemed to give off an unmistakable aura of authority intertwined with the threat of power. This served to give him a ‘thuggish’ aspect that was further reinforced by the style of his cut, and the vocabulary he used when agitated by certain members of Jun’s class.

Yaga delivered this lecture in a dimly lit classroom whose walls were covered in paper tags. On the ground was a drawing of a circle lined with other shapes, made of some loose white substance that was either chalk, or finely ground salt. It was a barrier, a foundational art within Jujutsu.

The circle had eight smaller circles on its perimeter, each equally spaced, and each containing a lit candle at its center.

“The same number of ways as there are innate techniques out there,” Yaga-sensei continued. “But innate techniques are not the end-all be-all of Jujutsu Sorcery. I, myself, am an example of this. I construct entities known as ‘cursed corpses’ that bolster my combat ability by giving me an advantage in numbers. These differ from ordinary shikigami in that they have a physical substance, and can be perceived by non-sorcerers. Their method of construction also differs quite drastically from shikigami. As I find myself uniquely capable of following this method, I therefore prefer cursed corpses to shikigami.”

He pulled a doll out from the inside of his jacket—a stuffed animal of some kind, with boxing gloves. Jun had seen a couple of these things keep watch over Hibana as she performed her custodial duties, a punishment for starting a fight with Gojo.

Yaga shocked the doll with a surge of cursed energy, awakening it. Its felt eyes opened, and it turned its head this way and that, as though in search for prey. Yaga shocked it with cursed energy once more, deactivating the ‘cursed corpse’, and reinterring it inside his inner pocket.

“Now, can anyone recite for me the foundational arts of Jujutsu?”

Jun raised his hand. Yaga nodded at him. “An innate technique,” Jun began, then “barrier techniques. Cursed tools. Binding vows. Shikigami.”

Though Jun wasn’t really sure where cursed corpses fell into this system. Were they perhaps a form of autonomous cursed tools? Perhaps, if they differed enough from shikigami as Yaga claimed.

“Correct,” Yaga-sensei said. “Thus far, you’ve learned the theory for how to cast a veil, which will form your foundational understanding of all other barrier techniques. You’ve been educated on the volatile nature of binding vows. It is still too early for most of you to make use of these, however, so I’ve seen fit to shelve it until you are all ready. As for cursed tools—many of you still need to figure out your fighting style first. Walk before you run. Once you have mastered hand-to-hand combat, only then will you be worthy of a tool. Innate techniques are your own responsibility to train and improve, especially if you wish to keep yours a secret.” Jun tried to hide his reaction to that statement the best that he could, as one such case of a person that wanted to keep their technique a secret.

He had no illusion, however, that the likes of Gojo and Hibana hadn’t already sussed out his technique’s particulars already. Gojo liked to brag about how his Six Eyes allowed him to read someone’s innate technique without them even using it, and Hibana’s sensory capabilities were legendary in their own right. He doubted that he could keep anything a secret from them. Or Ieiri and Geto by extension, as people connected very closely to those two.

Other than those four, it seemed like no one was really any the wiser about his Coward’s Dance, which Jun appreciated greatly.

To all appearances, he was likely just preternaturally slick and well-coordinated.

“That all leaves shikigami,” Yaga said. “Some are blessed with the power to create shikigami naturally. Some sorcerers create shikigami in order to allow their techniques to function properly, or reach its potential. The bottomline is that everyone can create their own shikigami, whether or not they have innate techniques. Today, we will be uncovering your shikigami’s optimal form.” He gestured towards the barrier circle. “Your shikigami can look like whatever you imagine, but its form will be affected by whatever innate technique you imbue it with, or whatever material you make it out of, such as crippled cursed spirits. Still, simply because you have the freedom to decide on any form doesn’t mean that you can do so very easily. Indeed, the best shikigami are ones whose forms resonated deeply. Today, we will discover what this raw form looks like for you. Then, you will use that information for any subsequent attempts to create shikigami. Keep in mind: shikigami creation is compulsory for everyone. Whether or not you end up making something useful out of it doesn’t matter. You all need to learn this knowledge. Even you, Hibana.”

Hibana was the strongest shikigami user that Jun had ever heard of. She obviously didn’t need the lesson, but then again, the same could be said for every lesson that Jujutsu High offered. And the same could be said for Gojo as well.

Coming to school just to make friends. What a blessed life they’ve led.

Meanwhile, Jun was still wrestling with the minor problem of figuring out how to stay alive until graduation.

He sometimes wondered how life felt like before the threat of death had been so real. Of course, back then, death hadn’t seemed like such a terrible option. By all accounts, his situation had improved.

“I’ve never made a shikigami before,” Hibana said, her black orbs staring blankly at the ceiling. Then she blinked. “Uh, without my technique, of course.”

“I have,” Gojo said smugly. “Did it back in the clan. Wasn’t really my thing, though. I’m not really a team player.”

Jun paid close attention to Geto’s reaction to this. He was one of four students in class who had no need for this lesson as well. He wasn’t a shikigami user, but his cursed spirits acted in a similar capacity. His only drawback was that he seemingly couldn’t mould his cursed spirits the way a shikigami user could model theirs to suit their needs.

That drawback was, of course, shattered by the fact that he also had access to a multitude of cursed techniques from the curses in his army.

“Any volunteers?” Yaga-sensei asked.

Jun activated his Coward’s Dance, automatically filtering out Gojo, Geto and Hibana as he did. He had grown used to tossing their signatures out wholesale, as they tended to have a bad habit of suffocating him. These days, it seemed to be getting worse, too. Especially when he looked at Geto, whose growth was staggering to behold. He’d heard rumors that he would be named the next Special Grade of Tokyo Jujutsu High.

He refocused on the barrier circle, searching for threats. There were none of a physical nature, but his Coward’s Dance still gave him an ill premonition. A psychological threat.

Nothing, then.

He walked into the middle of the circle, where the threat was most palpable, and gave the teacher a nod. “I would like to see what my shikigami’s optimal form is.”

Yaga-sensei hummed. “It is a form that you will curse upon seeing. A form that you will find most disturbing.”

Scary, in other words.

Jun cursed inwardly. He’d have to steel his heart then, and ensure that whatever the hell it was he saw, he couldn’t react to it at all.

“I’m ready.”

Yaga-sensei stomped his foot on the floor, sending a shock of cursed energy through his foot. The white circle, a few centimeters away from where he stomped, lit up.

The barrier activated.

The air in front of him shimmered and bulged.

Then it contracted into a ball of utter darkness, growing larger and larger. When it was the size of a melon, ribbons of darkness shot out from it, wrapped around the ball and seemed to constrict it into shape, like a sculptor choking a piece of clay into something…

…something cursed.

It was a black bird with an expression that was almost human.

No. Too human.

It grinned. Inside its beak were human teeth. It had multiple eyes on each side of its head. Those eyes were bent into scowls that, combined with black bird’s unnerving grin, filled his soul with a surety that bad times were ahead.

And it was mocking him.

Bullying him.

He wanted to kill it. Wring its neck and stomp on it. He wanted to throw it in a tub of acid and watch it dissolve.

Focus. It’s just a projection. An image of something I find disturbing.

Out of context, the bird looked simply like an unnerving creature, similar to a cursed spirit in the form of a crow. There was no reason to revile it so. He was certain that his classmates saw nothing overtly objectionable about it, beyond its similarity to a cursed spirit.

…and Jun’s foul mood gradually began to lift as he considered how sick it looked.

Jun hadn’t truly given shikigami creation much thought upon first learning that it was a universal art of Jujutsu that anyone with enough cursed energy could perform. He had figured that his path laid in mastering a weapon and using it, along with his Coward’s Dance, to increase his advantage over his foes.

How would Coward’s Dance channeled through a shikigami look like? Would it perhaps widen his range, and inform him of distant threats? Could the bird be the storage device for a version of his ability that predicted future threats?

But!

What if this bird was not a crow?

What if…

What if it was a raven?

“T’is some visitor,” Jun said in English. “Only this and nothing more.”

He gave the bird one last look and walked away from it, his mind buzzing with ideas.

Satoshi Ren snorted. “It’s just a damn bird. How’s that supposed to scare anyone?”

He walked up to the center of the circle, trying to shoulder-check Jun out of his way. Jun, as always, smoothly avoided him, and spared him a few internal curses.

“Alright, I’m ready!” Satoshi shouted. “Show me my thing!”

The barrier circle activated once more.

This time, the apparition that appeared before Satoshi was not an animal, but a shuffling decomposed human, naked but too withered to determine its sex at a glance.

“Shit!” Satoshi took a step back in fright from the zombie.

“Is-is that a zombie?” Gojo asked incredulously, laughing as he did. “They’re like, the weakest monsters out there!”

Satoshi glared at Gojo. “Not if there’s millions of ‘em!” He then walked out from the circle in a huff, still clearly shaken by what he had seen.

“Next,” Yaga-sensei said tiredly.

“It occurs to me,” Hibana began, “that we’re all seeing each other’s psychological vulnerabilities. Why must we do this in front of everyone?”

“Inspiration,” Yaga-sensei answered. “Your image of an optimal form may still be useful for someone else. Would you deny the class this opportunity to improve just because you’re shy?”

Hibana stepped forward then. “Don’t blame me if anyone soils themselves in utter terror, then.”

She walked in the middle of the circle, and waited patiently.

The circle activated.

An apparition appeared before her.

It was blazingly bright, and… human.

Golden skin, long hair, foreign features, and a white bodysuit. He was floating in the air, as though flying. The man was conventionally handsome, and his expression was one of unmasked grief.

Hibana clenched her fists, glaring daggers at the image. Then she sighed, and relaxed her posture. “Beware the superman,” she murmured. She seemed to wrestle for more words then, before deciding to just leave.

Beware the Superman, a twist on the adage coined by Nietzsche, "Behold the Superman". Jun recognized the reference, but he couldn’t square it with what he was seeing. Was this man supposed to be the idealized human? If so, then why would Hibana curse him so? Was this akin to the koan of killing the Buddha if you met him on the road?

“My turn!” Gojo squealed eagerly as he skipped into the middle of the circle. “I hope I get a dragon, or a demon lord or something cool like that.”

The apparition that appeared before him was his exact height.

And exact shape.

And his exact appearance, save for some vital differences.

This image’s grin was bloodthirsty, its eyes were unhinged, and its fingers were… clawed.

The humor drained out of Gojo in real time upon seeing the creature.

“The self-own of the century,” Hibana chuckled. “The most disturbing thing you can think of is your own ugly face.”

Gojo’s grin returned, and he looked up at the ceiling. “Come to think of it, how do any of you weaklings even get any sleep at night, knowing that if I were to turn on humanity, there’s nothing anyone could do to stop me?”

Jun coped with that fact by trying not to think very hard about it.

It worked wonders, really. He only woke up in a cold sweat once a week these days.

“Who is scared of you, Gojo?” Ieiri asked. The comment was clearly meant as disrespect, but it served to lift Gojo’s mood.

“You should be!” Gojo replied.

Just then, he ran over to Ieiri, tackling her and lifting her up in a bear-hug.

“Gojo!” Yaga-sensei roared over Ieiri’s own shrieks. Gojo unceremoniously dropped Ieiri on the ground. “See me after class. Next.”

Nakamura Daiki went into the circle then. The dreadlocked boy seemed in genuine distress, counter to his usual swagger as he stepped into the center. Yaga activated the barrier, summoning Nakamura’s optimal image.

A beaten-down puppy dog with broken bones.

It looked dead.

Nakamura’s lips quivered. “Aw.”

“Is that a dog?” Takahashi asked. “You curse dogs? Puppies?”

“No!” Nakamura replied hotly. “I’m cursing whoever did this to the dog! Man…” he shook his head. “But what’d be the point, anyway? Can’t bring back the dead, can I? Best I can do is sing for ‘em.” Then, having collected his thoughts, he turned to Yaga-sensei. “Wait, the hell am I supposed to do with a dead dog, anyway?”

“That’s not my problem to solve,” Yaga-sensei said. “Jujutsu is a deeply personal pursuit. Whatever works for you, works usually almost exclusively for you. If shikigami are not your wheelhouse, then you are free to pursue the other arts. That being said, it is important that you give it a proper try first. This is what this lesson is for.”

Unlike the various mundane subjects offered in Jujutsu High, Jujutsu courses were all exclusively pass/fail. This meant that you could pass even if your result was not particularly viable in combat. The only grading that mattered in Jujutsu was what Grade the higher-ups decided to put you in, and theoretical mastery had almost no bearing in that. All that mattered was field performance.

“Next!”

Ito Aoi stepped forward.

Her apparition was some kind of purple fuzzy monkey with three eyes and a cross-shaped mouth.

Ito reacted to the form by losing all facial expressions, subtly shifting her footing into a combat stance, and mustering her cursed energy. She managed to snap out of her trance before following through with her threat, thankfully.

Ieiri Shoko was next.

Her optimal image was a rotund creature of a sort, vaguely human in appearance, with a transparent midsection inside of which another rotund creature floated in a suspension of liquid.

“Two figures,” Yaga-sensei said. “This is interesting. Shikigami that contain two creatures in one form are capable of performing dual functions that compliment one another very elegantly, although this of course depends on the technique imbued within it.”

“Gross,” Ieiri said.

Takahashi Hana’s apparition was a muscle-bound brute with four arms wielding two bats, one studded with nails, and another covered in barbed wire. It wore a hockey mask and a black hoodie. It looked like the very personification of violence.

“It’s ugly,” Takahashi whimpered.

Aomori Sakura was next.

What she summoned was a brown orange monster out from a storybook. It had a large cavernous mouth rowed with razor sharp teeth, and had enormous sharp spines along its back.

Aomori clicked her tongue. “A tarrasque. Hate those things.”

She then just walked away without explaining herself any further.

Up next was Ishikawa Takumi.

His apparition took the shape of a classical depiction of the grim reaper in a large voluminous robe whose hood shaded its head, its skeletal hand holding a scythe.

“Creepy,” Ishikawa muttered. Fortunately for him, he didn’t need skill in shikigami creation to excel as a Jujutsu Sorcerer.

Perhaps if he created a shikigami that could draw for him…

He’d suggest ideas to Ishikawa later.

Suzuki Yui’s apparition was a decrepit bird woman that looked like too specific an image for Jun to pin down its importance. It seemed like the images people summoned were either generally fearsome things or just uniquely disturbing to their psychology.

Jun hadn’t put much stock in his own capacity for superstition, but to be spooked by a black bird was… dishearteningly clichéd to him. He had to work on that.

Finally, Geto Suguru’s turn had come up.

He walked in the middle of the circle and waited patiently for his turn to be terrorized.

His apparition?

An object.

A crown.

The first image shown to not be living—or having once lived, considering Nakamura and Satoshi’s images.

“Inanimate shikigami are rare,” Yaga-sensei explained. “And impractical for most purposes. Of course that varies depending on the innate technique imbued within it.”

Geto nodded stiffly as he stared at the crown.

“Now that you all have an inkling of what your optimal forms are, I want you all to work on slowly constructing your shikigami based on these forms. Once we return to our regular classroom, I’ll hand out all the components necessary. Be diligent, and if you are lucky, you may unlock a new dimension to your Jujutsu Sorcery.”

Jun suppressed his own grin as he considered what to call his shikigami. Nevermore or Lenore?

No.

Midnight Dreary.