Chapter 66

Jujutsu High, Tokyo
10th September, 12:06 JST

Hibana Haruta stood atop the disintegrating corpse of a behemoth Grade One, her friend Shigemo cowering next to some trees. He had only watched the fight with a bated breath, letting Haruta do all the work. His own cowardice was only half the reason. The other half was that Haruta sort of hated fighting alongside the blond boy.

Their wavelengths seemed to be terminally mismatched, which was a shame. Ultimately, Haruta refused to try and force a resonance. She preferred being the sole threat of her self-made squad of two, using Shigemo-kun as the occasional good luck charm should the need arise.

“That’s eight points!” Shigemo called out.  

“Fourteen,” Haruta corrected. She lowered slowly to the ground as the last of the spirit disappeared. “My Juchū were busy taking out some of the Grade Threes while I was fighting this one.” It was the reason why it had taken her so much time to exorcise this mere Grade One. A whooping two minutes.

And no Black Flash.

Not yet.

She had everything she needed to become an elite sorcerer but that singular turning point, the Black Flash. It was the one thing that she needed, that she felt would open her doors and give her the ability to one day compete with Special Grades. After the Black Flash, she would attain the Reverse Cursed Technique, which would, in tandem with her own Juchū technique, give her enough bugs to work with to essentially grant her the same unlimited energy that Teira had.

Of course, she could never live up to what Teira had. She was a true freak of nature, by all accounts. Haruta could, however, come close. Anyhow, she was not competing against Teira, but against every other sorcerer out there, bar Gojo Satoru.

Her best hope for a Black Flash had been in finding and exorcising the Special Grade curse solo, but very quickly into the battle, she had observed Gojo Satoru making short work of that creature with trivial ease.

Her next best hope was to find, and summarily beat the shit out of Geto Suguru, the far less impressive Special Grade of Tokyo Jujutsu High.

Her next best hope was to strap Shigemo around her body and then launch an all-out attack on Gojo Satoru that could potentially cement her legend in the world of Jujutsu, should Shigemo’s cursed technique hold for long enough. She disliked this idea strongly. All it said was that Shigemo was the factor that would allow her to overturn the rules of nature.

She needed to strike a balance. Shigemo was an emergency measure, but all that Haruta was, had to be achieved with Haruta’s strength.

“How’s your cursed energy?” Shigemo looked her up and down.

“One hundred percent,” she replied. She Parasitized every cursed spirit that she ran into. With the Reverse Cursed Technique, this would have given her infinite endurance. Unfortunately, her body was still fallible, even if her energy was all but.

And with that fallible body, she found that she now needed to conserve energy. She had exorcised enough cursed spirits. Fourteen was… not a good number at all, but she would take it for now. While she was still more or less in good form, she should focus on eliminating some Tokyo students.

She should focus on Shoko.

Shigemo had five points, and all six of his miracles still ready to pop at any given time. He was pulling his weight just barely, providing every other member of their team was at five points or more. Joichi was at twenty-three points and counting, which let him pull the weight of four teammates alone. Haruta was pulling the weight of two.

Naoya was… difficult to pin down. He was too fast for her Juchū to follow, and she could only count points based on the cursed spirits she observed the exorcisms of. She put him at a conservative fifteen, purely due to his strength.

The Kyoto team would take this game, provided only six other teammates had just over thirty points combined. That was five points each, with one having six points.

She could count on Mei Mei, the white-haired crow manipulator, to have at least this much or more, but her kills were difficult to pin down.

Haruta could lower the requirement from six other teammates having such an amount of points, to just relying on five other teammates having more than twenty-five points, as long as she got one more point.

She spied for more Grade Three curses and opened her mouth to speak when, within her radar of Juchū, she saw her.

Ieiri Shoko, three hundred meters away, running north-east, towards a Grade Two that they had sensed, one of the rare few left, in fact. By this point, the barrier was only about a thousand meters in diameter and shrinking by the minute.

By the time the barrier had become small enough, there would be one massive battle for resources that could potentially decide the outcome of the entire game. Before then, it was imperative that she thin the herd on Tokyo’s side.

Making an enemy out of Jujutsu Society’s only real healer was questionable at best, but on the bright side, it might cause her to have to rely entirely on herself. If that was enough to allow her to attain the Reverse Cursed Technique, then it would be all the more worth it.

That, and seeing that undeserving lout’s tear-stricken face as she beat her to an inch of her life.

She had no right to take up so much of Teira-sama’s time. No right at all. Perhaps Teira-sama was blinded by the prospect of friendship, too blinded to see how much of a parasite that Ieiri was?

Teira-sama would wake up to reality once Haruta was done with her. She would realize how useless Ieiri was.

Haruta walked up to Shigemo, who raised an eyebrow. “Now what?”

“We’re flying.”

Shigemo rolled his eyes, but didn’t resist as he raised his arms just before Haruta hugged him around his stomach and hauled him on top of one of her shoulders. “We need to find a better position than this,” Shigemo said, but Haruta ignored him in favor of focusing on Arthropodal Aspect.

Every use of the technique burned her Juchū, and Teira-sama had warned Haruta that she wouldn’t help her replenish during the Exchange Event. Instead, she had given Haruta an impractically large stockpile of Juchū. She could only really use one percent of their number in their manifested form. The rest, she just used for the Arthropodal Aspect extension technique.

Dragonfly wings grew out of her back, and she shot up to the sky, and then with unerring accuracy towards Ieiri Shoko, intending on striking her with the full force of her flight, and hopefully eliminating her instantly.

No. She didn’t need such a base surprise attack for that lout. She’d target her bruiser instead, the heavily damaged classmate of hers that she was running alongside of. That same classmate had been the first to draw blood from the Kyoto team, eliminating two teammates of hers and injuring two more, causing them to eventually meet defeat at the hands of cursed spirits.

He had single-handedly lowered the Kyoto team’s power by almost a third. Such an insult could not go unanswered.

She picked up speed as she lowered her trajectory, allowing gravity to lend her additional momentum. In the last split second, the boy realized something was wrong, but it was too late.

Haruta’s fist bore into the boy’s face, and launched him through several trees, breaking them one after the other.

Ieiri was alone.

Haruta threw Shigemo off her shoulder. He landed with ease and took to the sidelines, all the while as Ieiri stood straight, fists balled and her expression severe. “Teira’s sycophant,” she said. “Nice to meet you again.”

Haruta growled. “You—“

“I really don’t have time for your jealousy-laden nonsense, so why don’t we just skip to the part where you kick the crap out of me and move on?”

She then spread her arms widely.

Haruta saw red.

How dare she?

“You’re not even going to try?!” Haruta roared.

“And extend the inevitable?” Ieiri asked. “I know you’re stronger than me. You might even be stronger than Ito. You’re a Grade One who’s spent her entire childhood training. Why should I compete with you when I know that you’re stronger? Do you think I’m dumb?”

“You don’t get to feign weakness!” Haruta spat. “You’ve got the Reverse Cursed Technique! Moreover, you can heal! That puts you above Gojo and even Teira-sama! How dare you act like that means nothing?!”

Ieiri rolled her eyes. “You aren’t hearing me.”

“This is the end of the line for you, Ieiri. Once I’m done with you, no one will bother with you again. Least of all Teira-sama.”

Ieiri’s fists tightened. From this distance, Haruta’s Sense Expansion told her everything about what was going on inside her surprisingly toned body. Her heart was beating despite her relative lack of exertion. Her cursed energy roiled gently and measuredly, but with a nigh-imperceptible degree of violence. She was angry. Livid.

“So it does bother you that you are useless,” Haruta said. “Good. At least you’re not a complete fool.”

Ieiri slowed her breathing, and relaxed her hands.

Then, she cracked into a grin. “I don’t… have to do this at all. None of this decides what I’m worth. You don’t decide what I’m worth.”

“Coward,” Haruta said.

Her heart calmed down and she just nodded. “You know what? Whatever. You can say whatever you want. It truly means nothing to me. You mean nothing to me, and I mean this with every fiber of my being. And what’s more? I have something you will never have, because you were born in the wrong place. I have your precious Teira-sama’s friendship, and you? You just don’t. And I don’t have to do anything to still be better off than you are, to have what you can’t. So why do I have to listen to you wave your tongue about how you’re stronger than me? It’s a fact. Just like my friendship with Teira is a fact. And I could get stronger than you at some point, but you can still never be friends with your clan head.”

Haruta had had enough.

She activated Arthropodal Aspect, coating her fists and legs in chitin and granting herself the proportional hopping power of a grasshopper.

She launched towards Ieiri fast enough that she felt the pressure of the air as though it was water.

Her fists were inches from taking Ieiri’s head clean off when she whispered something infuriating.

“I surrender.”

She disappeared.

Haruta’s fists punched nothing but air.

She screamed.

And in the middle of all her rage and anger, she saw that Tokyo student she had pulverized stumbling towards her, raising his fists for a fight that she would gladly oblige.

000

Ito Aoi was quite bad at mental math these days. That had nothing to do with the catastrophic head injury that had rendered her functionally illiterate. She had always been weak in this area, which meant that tallying points was difficult at best.

That, and determining exactly which cursed spirits counted as which Grade. In her opinion, she had everywhere from five points to twenty, based on the five cursed spirits she had dispatched. They all seemed equally strong, and they were also the ones that prickled her senses the most, making them the ‘strongest’, or Grade One. They didn’t really feel that way to her, however, and that was an issue.

Was she pulling her weight or was she falling behind? Should she focus on curses or other players? She was leery on going for the Kyoto team without backup. She was proud of her own strength, but she wasn’t delusional about it. She could die in this game if she didn’t take it seriously, and from the rumors she had heard, the Kyoto Special Grade Joichi had almost killed someone on his first day of school, someone that Teira was related to.

In a way, this was both a game and not a game at the same time. Ito agonized between the choices of treating this as real-life or a game. Cursed spirits were cursed spirits, but going after people was supposed to be something of a step down in acceptability, morally at least.

As someone with genuine experience in taking another person’s life, she felt that this dilemma should be simpler for her, but without that element of killing intent, things were much more difficult.

That, and the fact that the Kyoto players were her future colleagues, one and all. Why sow seeds of enmity this early into her career as a sorcerer? If someone defeated her in any of the two rounds, she doubted that she would lose any sleep over this, but what if she ended up beating someone who was used to holding grudges? That would make her life more difficult for no reason at all.

Perhaps she should just write off Kyoto as a place where she would ever make friends? What a difficult and needless sacrifice this was.

Still, she wouldn’t miss out on her opportunity to confirm her Grade, and perhaps even upgrade it to a Grade One flat. These opportunities only came once a year, and if she was named Grade One as a first-year, the remaining three years in Tokyo Jujutsu High would become trivial. She would only have to worry about passing her general courses. A tricky prospect, considering her recent learning disability, but nothing she couldn’t overcome given time and effort.

Before she could earnestly make the decision to go after her fellow sorcerers, she sensed one approaching her at a mindboggling pace.

Instantly, she shot into a stance and erected a Simple Domain around her.

The figure stopped before her.

He wore a light gray hakama, a navy blue kimono only visible above his waistline, and a button-up white shirt underneath that kimono.

He was blond, and smirking in a way that made the hairs on her arms stand on edge. Cleverly, she chose to look away from that oddly disturbing face of his. She didn’t need to look at his face to know that he was clearly here for her.

In a way, she was grateful. He had taken the choice to fight other sorcerers out of her hand, and thus if she beat him, he would likely not be as indignant as if she had sought him out instead.

“The Simple Domain,” he smirked. “Geez, you are just a commoner after all. And an ugly one, too. What happened to your face?”

Her face? Ah, was he referring to her scar? “I was stabbed by a curse user,” she replied.

Wait, ugly? Did he seriously just call her that? Aoi wasn’t angry so much as baffled by the sudden venom.

He chuckled. “You’re joking. Ah well. Too bad he marked you for life. Now, no one will ever want to date you.”

Huh? What a random thing to say. They were in the middle of a fight amongst sorcerers and cursed spirits, and he was talking about her dating prospects as though that factored into anything important.

And besides, she was done dating for the time being. There was no one that interested her to the point that she wanted to go on a date again, and the first one had been a slightly weird experience. Suguru-kun was nice, but not really her type anymore.

Neither was this guy. Should she share that observation?

Well, he had been the first to throw around random nonsense, so why not meet him halfway with her own? “That’s only according to you, and you’re not really my type in the first place, so that means your opinion doesn’t matter to me at all.” That was really her entire train of thought regarding the subject. Still, it felt odd for her to share all this. None of this was relevant to the situation at hand.

He clicked his tongue. “Stop acting hard to get. You’d open your legs to me in a split second if I showed even the slightest interest in you, you slut.”

What?!

Where did all this come from? “Have we met, before?” And had she, in that initial meeting, inadvertently offended him to such an extent that he would just say these things to her off-the-cuff?

“No, you haven’t had the pleasure until now, slut.”

The last word sent her back to one of the many Women’s Union meetings she had sat in on, in which Teira gave speeches about how much the big clans hated women. Aoi had listened raptly, but a part of her had never really been able to grasp the more over-the-top manifestations of this women hate. She certainly hadn’t ever had any first-hand experience with it.

If she had never met this man before, and he truly despised her to this extent, then this was clearly according to what Teira had spoken about all this time, all the things she mentioned about the big clans that the older and more experienced girls around them attested to and related to deeply.

There was no reason to this boy’s hate. He just had to believe himself higher than her. He felt that life owed him that position.

And now, it fell on Aoi to pop that bubble of his and drag him down to size. Do her part to impose the equality of genders in Jujutsu Society, by petitioning in the most classical Jujutsu way of all—by being stronger than her opposition.

“What’s your name?” Aoi asked.

“Zen'in Naoya, slut.”

“I’m—“

“Slut. That’s your name.”

Aoi blinked. She opened her mouth to speak again, but he interrupted her again. “You don’t matter, slut, so don’t talk as if you do. By all means, do try to stop this impending asskicking of yours, but your feeble resistance won’t make a difference. I’m the heir to the Zen'in clan, not your equal.”

Well, if she didn’t have to talk, then she wouldn’t. That was probably for the best anyway, since talking was mostly for people that she liked.

A long time ago, she had been more sparing with her words, for fear that they might have been wrong. She had been less confident about her place in the world.

She had lacked knowledge.

Near death had given her all the knowledge that she needed. It had given her the confidence to exist as a human being, even if it had taken some function from her. She considered it an even trade, however.

She liked being able to communicate to her friends at will. She liked being able to say that she had ideals and beliefs. She liked being able to vocally stand for something.

Thus, just for herself, she spoke the words that meant so much to her. “My name—”

“—Slut—” Zen'in interrupted

“—is Ito—”

Zen'in Naoya became a flicker in her vision. As he crossed through her Simple Domain, her body moved entirely on its own.

Her eyes widened to their widest extent, and she raised her elbow, just as Naoya was to punch it. Cursed energy burst from that sharp bone. Naoya struck it at full strength, stumbled, and transformed into a pane of glass, his image frozen in the time after he struck her elbow.

Soft finger bones meeting the ball of an elbow never ended well. She would wager that she had broken some of his digits the way her own elbow was feeling, which wasn’t the best. She would have to take it easy on it for the coming melee.

As she readied to grab the glass pane and investigate it closer, Zen'in burst out from it, the glass disappearing. He landed on his feet, raising his left arm.

He approached, this time considerably slower. He threw rapid strikes, but she deflected or blocked each one, all the while testing his own defenses.

Unless he once again used the same preternatural—and quite frankly, unnatural—speed of his, her Hundred Eye Zone was more than enough for him. She didn’t have to think to move her body. Her body was given a direct route to sensing all the world within a short two-meter radius. All it required in terms of conscious control was the focus necessary to not let her move her body in a way that caused her to lose balance.

It was a tightrope walk between using too much control—and thus losing speed and efficiency—and losing control, which could tie her up in nonsensical movements. The perfect balance was subtle and slight, but this Zen'in was an ideal enemy.

All in all, she was grateful to have met him at this time, his poor behavior notwithstanding.

He managed to land a grab on her that instantly froze her.

Her Hundred Eye Zone was still active, and told her everything: she was inside a glass pane just her height and width, but pressed into two dimensions. Zen'in pulled his fist back and shattered her.

She burst out from the shattered glass—not in peaces, but in one damaged piece. It felt like every part of her body had been hit with hammers at the same time. How had this happened?

She took her Hundred Eye Zone with her as she flew, but Zen'in once again enabled that unnatural speed of his, instantly catching up with her, this time preparing to grab her again.

She kicked the hand out of the way, disrupting his plan—and transforming him into a pane of glass.

She recalled instantly how long he had been a pane of glass the last time. About one second.

She had to destroy him while in this form, the same way he had destroyed her. Perhaps he had run afoul of some condition of his technique, and was now trapped in its offensive application?

But she was still flying.

She couldn’t reach him in time.

No.

She could.

She just… had to generate her own leverage.

She had no innate technique. No cursed tool. No special inheritance from some age-old sorcerer clan or institution.

All she had was her cursed energy and her ability to mold it according to her desire.

She flipped her body mid-air so that her front was facing the ground, pulled her legs closer to her body, pooled cursed energy on her feet, and…

She kicked off the air.

No. Not the air.

She kicked off her own cursed energy, putting her flight path directly in front of the pane of glass, now flying towards her.

She pulled her fist back and struck the pane as hard as she could.

Zen'in burst out from it and flew, coughing up a lung as he did.

Finally, Aoi landed. She was in slight pain, but it was nothing that wouldn’t go away on its own in a couple of hours.

“My name is Ito Aoi,” she continued amidst his coughing fit, refusing to let these words die in her throat. “And I am a Jujutsu Sorcerer.”

Zen'in glared with all the hatred in his eyes, gnashing his teeth. “I’ll kill you!”

She felt the shock of his killing intent wash over her like a wave of cold water, chasing away the part of her inner animal that was social, leaving behind nothing but a high-strung instrument of survival and killing.

All that remained was her name, and her role. Ito Aoi, Jujutsu Sorcerer.

I’ll kill you, the threat had uttered.

And so, she loosened her fists into straight hands. Thus were the stakes of this battle.