Chapter 68

Jujutsu High, Tokyo
10th September, 12:23 JST

It took five minutes of pummeling the Tokyo student to the ground for Haruta to realize that there was some kind of innate technique at play, preventing her from fully finishing the boy.

It wasn’t the Reverse Cursed Technique. To her preternatural senses enhanced by her Juchū technique’s Sense Expansion, she sensed cursed energy holding his body together just barely. He was a puppet of ruined flesh and broken bones held aloft by a wireframe of cursed energy.

She could kill him. She knew that there were only so many blows he could resist before his cursed energy guttered out. He wasn’t invincible, just hard to kill.

Rather than risk that, she attached two dog-sized Juchū to his back, making them grab him by his shirt and fly him off to the end of the barrier while he was still regaining his bearings.

That…

…had been a good fight for her.

It hadn’t been challenging and she hadn’t learned anything at all, but it had felt good. Better than good, in fact.

It had almost been enough to let her forget the last words that Ieiri had imparted on her.

Shigemo stepped out from the shadows, arms folded. “Seriously, girl. You need to relax.”

Haruta glared at Shigemo.

Over the weeks that they had gotten to know each other, their pretense of friendship had gradually withered as Shigemo had continuously tried to weasel his way out, and Haruta had been forced to gradually ramp up her tyranny.

Then all at once, things had collapsed. Right after suffering a defeat from Naoya in one of their many bouts, Shigemo had said something insensitive, and Haruta had then proceeded to… kick him around a little.

Just a little.

In the end, Shigemo had finally gotten the picture: Haruta was the boss, Shigemo was the dog. She had no interest in the boy aside from what his innate technique could offer her, and she needed the beginnings of a powerbase in Kyoto Jujutsu High, so Shigemo had been an appropriate first recruit to her little bloc.

After their squabble, things had finally stabilized into a comfortable relationship.

Most of the time.

Occasionally, her dog would get yappy. “Don’t ever say that to me again,” Haruta whispered.

Shigemo raised an eyebrow. “You can’t stop me from feeling like this act is beneath you,” he said. “And thus, me. Listen, I know I don’t have a choice in all this, and that’s fine. You can be my boss. I needed one anyway. But I don’t want my boss to be crying over lost friendships like some middle schooler! Think of the optics!”

Optics? Shigemo had a classical hoodlum mindset, it seemed. Power and image went hand in hand in the world of non-sorcerers, the world that he had grown up in.

The same could be said for the world of Jujutsu, potentially.

Still, this particular topic was…

“Butt out,” she growled to him. “It’s personal.”

“So what if this Teira doesn’t want to be your friend?” he continued, in complete disregard for his life and limbs. “Who cares? You don’t need friends! You have me!”

A billion of him was not enough to replace Teira. “Something I’m increasingly beginning to regret,” she said. The blond boy was… an awful person to begin with. And he was weak. Grade Four. The only reason he had made the selection was because he had passed the preliminary exam with Haruta’s help. In her mind, he wasn’t really a partner, but a living, speaking cursed tool.

Six bursts of unimaginably good luck. That was Shigemo Haruta’s technique. She had discovered this while throwing him into all manner of dangers and seeing how he stacked up. He was effectively indestructible for as long as those six purple fang tattoos under his eyes were still filled with color.

In practice, he was just implausibly lucky and capable of avoiding even the most inevitable of defeats.

And if Haruta was close enough to the splash zone of an inevitable defeat that might affect Shigemo, she could share in his luck as well.

“No, you’re not,” Shigemo said, tilting his head to the side. “Rather than worrying about friendship with Teira, why don’t we focus on what’s actually important? That bastard Joichi. If we run into him, it’ll be a rematch even if we’re on the same team. And he’ll be even stronger than the last time, since he’s carrying around cursed spirit blood.”

Haruta felt tempted to kick Shigemo around a little to make him stop talking about Teira, but that might end up burning one of his six miracles. That wasn’t a resource she wanted to spend very lightly.

And, infuriating as he was, he also had a point. Ieiri Shoko had put to words one of Haruta’s deepest shames and desires, mocking them right in front of Shigemo. She had also made Haruta aware of this seething jealousy of hers. All this time, she had seen Ieiri as an undeserving gnat, but to also be jealous on top of it…

Annoying.

But life was life. What would Teira do? She wouldn’t be in the position of hopelessly trying to win someone’s friendship in the first place. She was too smart.

Thus, Haruta had to be smart as well. She still wanted to be Teira’s right-hand woman. That position had nothing to do with friendship. It was all respect and subservience.

Her desire to be friends with Teira was wrong.

Teira would never be her friend, and that was for the best.

…but she really did want to have friends.

The only problem was, everyone in Kyoto sucked. Either they hated her, or they feared her and wanted nothing to do with her. The big clans had incentivized everyone to ostracize her, and the only social contact she had managed to form was the one with Shigemo.

Even then, the big clan kids had tried to talk him out of being ‘friends’ with her. That had been one of the factors leading to her enslaving him to her bloc in the first place. That had been for his own good, as well. Now that he didn’t have a choice but to be her lackey, he could use this as a reason to rebuff the clan kids whenever they offered to take him in in exchange for sabotaging Haruta in some way.

She also made sure never to allow him to speak with anyone without her listening in, just in case. Figuring out how to synchronize her sleep with his had been a hassle, but it had paid off. Shigemo had no hours of the day where Haruta couldn’t listen in on his conversations. It was perfect.

Shigemo’s tone softened. “My point is,” he walked gently up to her. “You’re Hibana Haruta. You’re too cool to worry about loser-shit like this.”

She really liked being called cool, even though she knew that this was mere manipulation. Shigemo’s angle was self-interest, and he genuinely did believe that she had better things to focus on for their collective good, but his primary motivation was self-interest.

“Now ain’t the time to worry about friends,” Shigemo continued. “Simply put, let’s kill some Tokyo students.”

Haruta whirled on her feet as something entered her radar with extreme speed.

Not a cursed spirit.

A sorcerer.

Haruta summoned half a dozen flying Juchū and sent them towards the sorcerer.

Each of them were destroyed the moment they approached. Still, they had given her a clear image of who was about to arrive.

A short dark-haired girl, a hundred and fifty centimeters tall, with a bob-cut. She had a scar over her left eye that disappeared above her hairline.

And she was moving with a Simple Domain encompassing her.

Ito Aoi, of a non-sorcerer background, first-year of Tokyo Jujutsu High. Semi-Grade One.

Shigemo had taken his position: far back.

Meanwhile, Haruta prepped the battleground, surrounding herself with Juchū that both crawled and flew.

Once Ito finally burst into Haruta’s clearing, she didn’t immediately attack, which was to Haruta’s disappointment. She would have preferred Ito arriving half-cocked on the information front, extending too far and being punished for it.

Haruta could have immediately launched her own attack, but that would mean extending herself and perhaps being punished for that.

She knew that Ito’s Simple Domain enhanced her martial arts. It probably drastically increased her reaction speed. Potentially, it was also increasing her output the same way a Domain could when extended. That was a longshot, however. A barrier that helpful was almost never portable, and this one clearly was.

If all it did was increase her reaction speed, it was still a remarkable feat of fundamental Jujutsu. Was she being helped along by some manner of innate technique?

“I’m Ito Aoi,” she began. She then looked over Haruta’s shoulder. “Jujutsu Sorcerer. Will he fight as well?”

“No,” Haruta replied honestly. “I will be more than enough. I’m Hibana Haruta.”

“You have Teira-san’s name and technique,” Ito observed. “You must be related.”

 Was… she making small-talk? Haruta fought off the urge to reply sarcastically to that top-tier deduction of hers, recognizing that she was still riding on a wave of irritation from her conversation with Ieiri Shoko.

Still, what could she possibly say in response to that? “Well, yes,” she settled.

Ito’s cheeks seemed to heat up a little. “Uh. Let’s fight.”

The following three seconds were manifold.

Haruta sent her swarm of Juchū towards Ito in an unrelenting, dense wave of creatures.

Ito straightened her fists into hands and transformed herself into a cyclone of blades, rotating and slicing through all of her Juchū. Haruta had counted on this initial burst of enemies not instantly defeating Ito. Having become used to fighting people with preternatural speed, she knew that the name of the game was chess.

She had to lead Ito into a position that would lead to her defeat.

She approached Ito, arriving physically at a crack in her defenses, striking her back and sending her flying upwards.

She had lost her leverage.

Haruta’s Juchū were in hot pursuit of Ito, who flipped her body upside down and—

Kicked off the very air, appearing on the ground on all fours. An instant later, she threw herself at Haruta, who now realized that there were a precious few number of Juchū between them.

Arthropodal Aspect activated, pink chitin extruding from her body as she took Ito’s blow on her forearms, jumping so that she would fly backwards with the blow.

Ito didn’t let up, chasing her and grabbing onto her.

Ito’s flat hand hovered over Haruta’s throat, and she felt death approach.

Still, something had stayed Ito’s hand.

It hadn’t been common sense. Rather, it had been the side of Haruta’s hand, covered in a blade made of chitin, stuck next to Ito’s own neck.

Her counterattack had been so automatic that Haruta hadn’t even noticed executing it.

Still, all this had done was let them reset the board.

They disentangled from one another mid-air, pushing away from each other and landing on the forest floor, each one still and watching the other.

“You’re strong!” Ito said, her eyes wide.

“You’re—“ wait, what?

Was that… a compliment? Why? To throw her off?

Yet, everything about the girl’s exterior screamed genuine.

“You too!” Haruta replied. “What’s your grade?”

“Semi-Grade One,” Ito replied.

“Same…” Haruta said.

Semi-Grade One. Ito was a Semi-Grade One, and Haruta was still having trouble with her. Did that mean that she really was a world away from Grade One, as all her teachers and classmates claimed? As Teira claimed?

What more did Grade One require? The Black Flash.

“I want to fight you!” Ito said.

Yet, she was lowering her hands.

What?

“But…” Ito continued, grinning sheepishly. “It would be a waste of an opportunity.”

Haruta tilted her head. “How so?”

Ito put her hand over her chest. “I believe I’m worthy of becoming a Grade One. I think you’re worthy as well.”

Haruta blinked. “Why?”

“In my class, I’m second only to the Special Grades,” Ito said. “I’ve dealt with Grade Ones before. I’ve become far stronger since then. And you’re strong, too. Strong enough to defeat me, maybe.”

But what would that prove to Jujutsu Society?

Ito was strong, and if Haruta ignored Teira’s overinflated demands of strength, she could acknowledge that she, too, was strong. She had grown stronger since entering Kyoto Jujutsu High, and she had started off as Semi-Grade One at that point.

Beating Ito would be fun, but it wouldn’t prove anything, and it might drain her energy too much.

“I really want to fight you,” Ito said, smiling sadly. “But I also want to rank up. Maybe we can fight in the individual battles, but I feel like I still have better opportunities to chase right now.”

Better opportunities?

Ito seemed to realize it the moment Haruta did as well. “Special Grades!” They both said at the same time.

Gojo Satoru and Hibana Teira were Special Grades among Special Grades. They were untouchable.

Kamo Joichi, and Geto Suguru? Not so much.

“Alright,” Haruta nodded. “You go after Kamo Joichi while I go after Geto Suguru. Is that fine with you?”

She shrugged. “That’s fine with me. Just, don’t hurt him too badly if you can. He’s not a bad guy.”

Haruta nodded, although she was already angling to scar just his ego, and not his body.

“What about Kamo?” Ito then asked. “Should I take it easy on him?”

“Kamo is a piece of shit,” Haruta rolled her eyes. “Go buckwild.”

Ito’s eyes widened and she nodded. “Okay!”

Haruta narrowed her eyes at Ito. All this was barreling towards her at speeds that she wasn’t accustomed to at all. Why was she being so helpful? Did she owe Teira-sama a favor? Perhaps. Still, she felt she needed to ask. “Did Teira put you up to this?”

Ito Aoi shook her head. “Not at all. I’m here for my own reasons.” Then, she walked up to Haruta and stuck out her hand. “I know we’re supposed to be enemies, but for now, let’s shelve our fight until after we’re done showing off to the higher-ups, okay?”

Haruta nodded rapidly, and took the hand.

What a… cool girl.

They shook hands, and Haruta cracked into a grin. Upon meeting this girl, her day had somehow become better. Still, she refused to allow herself to be swayed by mere words. “Let’s swear a binding vow non-aggression until we are both ready to fight again.”

“That depends,” Ito said. “Will we fight again?”

Haruta hardened her grip on Ito’s hand, though not enough to cause her harm. “Absolutely.”

Ito nodded. “Then, let’s make the vow.”

Haruta sensed an opportunity as she held Ito’s hand. If she played her cards just right, she could defeat the girl right here and right now.

As could Ito, no doubt.

That would make no sense, considering their prior conversation, but victory was still victory. Deception was not a sin in sorcery when it led to victory. Nothing was.

Ultimately, she had to make a leap of faith and trust in Ito, if only for the short period of time in which they were bound by vow.

Shigemo inched closer to Haruta upon her Juchū prodding him from the back. Just to be safe.

Still, with nothing else in the way, they swore their vow.

They pulled their hands back, and Haruta felt a weight leaving her body, and she saw Ito in a new light. No longer a threat, but as a person. Better yet, a person that she was partial to being in the presence of. She didn’t quite like her yet, but she felt the potential for that as well.

“I’ll find our respective knuckleheads for us,” Haruta said.

“That is kind of you,” Ito said. True, Haruta was not benefitting nearly as much from this deal as Ito now was. “What can I do in return?”

Something had to be given in return for this help, even if Haruta was happy with the terms that they could eventually meet back up, after Ito had hopefully managed to defeat Joichi. It was a longshot, but she far preferred seeing Joichi eat dirt than let her team have him as an advantage.

Still, she didn’t wish to completely sabotage her team. An idea arose from that desire.

“Don’t exorcise any more cursed spirits,” Haruta said. “Not until you’ve beaten Joichi, and then me.”

Ito nodded easily. She must have racked up quite a few points already, then.

This wasn’t a binding vow, but Haruta decided that she would trust it anyhow. Ito’s motivations were simple to wrap one’s head around, and Haruta didn’t sense that there was anything that she was missing from her.

“Great!” Shigemo clapped his hands once. “I’m Shigemo Haruta, by the way.”

Ito bowed her head at him in greeting. “It’s a pleasure.”

All the while, Haruta sent her Juchū out to look for Joichi and Geto Suguru.

Finally, she found them both.

They were in the same place, readying for a fight.

Haruta grinned. “Follow my lead,” she said as she took off into the forest in a dead sprint.

000

Jujutsu High, Tokyo
10th September, 12:32 JST

Geto Suguru watched as Kamo Joichi ran into the Tokyo team’s three non-first-years. Suguru hadn’t really bothered to learn their names, and he was decently certain that he had already kicked all their asses once before, on the first day of school.

That had been a thoroughly anticlimactic evening. Suguru had never been the type to look up to his upperclassmen, but he had imagined that things would be so much different in Jujutsu High. His upperclassmen were meant to be powerful and inspiring, not least of all utterly fantastical.

Unfortunately, the most fantastical elements of Tokyo Jujutsu High were all in his year, and in his friend group. The upperclassmen had bunched up around the middle of the bell-curve, even accounting for growth over the years. The first-years, however? They were all on another level.

In any case, if Suguru couldn’t have cool upperclassmen—with the exception of Mukai Reiko, who captained the karate club that he went to—he could at least become a cool upperclassman after the first year was over.

He looked oddly forward to that.

Suguru watched from atop a flying purple jelly-fish cursed spirit while standing on its back. Another one sat right next to him, a monkey-like creature with binocular eyes that could telescope at will. Suguru’s eyes were closed as he focused everything on connecting his senses to the monkey-like curse.

It was difficult, but Teira had taught him that it was possible. The abilities granted by innate techniques were more flexible than many believed, which was why inherited techniques were such a big deal. They grew stronger as generations passed because more and more extension techniques were discovered.

The Hibana clan were especially blessed in this department. Almost everyone seemed to have their Juchū technique, which was why Teira knew so many extension techniques.

Using Teira as a template, Suguru could potentially learn himself some extension techniques, but it was a slow-going process. He had yet to make progress on cracking the Reverse Cursed Technique, even while using his inner dimension to cheat, and Sense Expansion required his full concentration.

Kamo Joichi had stopped to take stock over his dwindling moon of cursed spirit blood hovering above his head, large enough to fill up a modest bedroom. The vanishing effect caused it to smoke black as it evaporated.

Suguru had watched him fight cursed spirits while in the sky, observing how it was that he managed to take control over cursed spirit blood. It seemed that the stronger the spirit was, the more Joichi had to damage it before he could control its blood. He left the spirits on the brink of death so as to delay the vanishing effect and moved on to find more spirits.

He couldn’t seize the blood from an undamaged spirit. Suguru had also sent some of his weakest Grade Threes towards Joichi just to watch how he fought, and he was thankfully unable to instantly defeat them by just manipulating their blood.

He still defeated them instantly, but that was only by his own strength.

After Joichi stopped, the three Tokyo students not from the first-year had run into him.

Rather than run away in terror, they had chosen to fight.

The ensuing battle had taken only a single minute. Suguru had thought of joining in at some point, but the sheer efficacy at which Joichi dismantled the three was too fascinating to disturb.

He was a decent fighter. A bother, but at least that meant that Suguru would be forced to dig deeper. Perhaps, he would end up managing a Black Flash again? There really hadn’t been a better feeling than that, and he was eager to revisit that high.

Suguru cracked his neck and sighed, as Joichi was just about done with the three. “How are we going to do this?”

He summoned a dozen Grade Threes and kept them confined within that ‘hallway’ between his inner dimension and the real world. This threshold was the key to his Supreme Art, the Uzumaki. By squeezing the cursed spirits tightly, their substance became broken down into highly unstable raw energy.

From behind him, Tamamo-no-Mae Incarnate appeared. She opened her wide doll-like mouth as she approached the runaway energy of the miniature Uzumaki and swallowed it whole.

Then, she began to concentrate her own energy, feeding it into the miniature Uzumaki inside of its mouth. She charged the beam, Suguru holding her back from firing early until all his Tokyo teammates had been transported from Joichi’s vicinity.

When the last one disappeared, a strike to his head rendering him mercifully unconscious, Suguru threw his hand down.

Tamamo opened her mouth and let out a white-hot blast that speared the ground at breakneck speeds.

Directly at Joichi.

In the last moment, he had positioned his moon of purple cursed spirit blood to take the beam head-on.

The ensuing explosion veiled him from sight.

Suguru looked around desperately through the forest.

He heard a whistling.

He turned around, summoned a fat humanoid Grade Three cursed spirit, and allowed it to take three purple javelins of solidified cursed spirit blood on its back in his place.

He dispelled the cursed spirit to allow it to recuperate inside of his inner dimension. Thankfully, Joichi hadn’t been able to use those javelins to take the spirit away. Suguru would like to use it at least a few more times. It was an excellent meatshield that was especially good at dissipating blunt force trauma. Not especially good against piercing damage, however, unless the projectiles hit bone and not flesh. The bones were very hard and tough.

Suguru jumped off his jellyfish and fell towards Joichi’s location. He fired purple arrow after purple arrow at Suguru’s falling form. Suguru summoned a Grade One spirit that looked like a blue fish with arms and legs. It dove down next to him and grabbed onto the sky, causing the world and his path downwards to twist in a wide spiral shape, allowing them to easily avoid the arrows. Just as they were to hit the ground, the fish twisted their path so that they were going up instead, for only a bit. The momentum of their downward fall dissipated, and they landed safely.

Kamo Joichi was only twenty meters from him, and barely looked scratched at all, except for a chunk of his coat being gone.

The most damage he had taken was in his orb of cursed spirit blood, now the size of a fully inflated beach ball.

“They say you’re a Special Grade, too,” Suguru said. “That doesn’t sit right with me, punk.”

The white-haired punk in question smiled thinly. He was just as tall as Suguru, but seemed even more muscular. His eyes were… too wide.

This boy seemed an entirely different monster to Teira, whose monstrosity was tempered by a genuine desire to make the world a better place.

All Suguru saw in this one’s eyes was selfishness. Amusement. A thirst for power.

And evidently, he was bad enough that Teira wouldn’t mind him dying.

“Join the club,” Joichi snorted. “The way I see it, there are too many damned Special Grades, already. I was thinking of thinning the herd a little. Get rid of you, that damned Daimonji, that bitch Hibana, and finally that asshole Gojo.”

“You dream big, I’ll give you that,” Suguru said. He had his own ambitions, of course, but he wasn’t stupid enough to spout them this early into his training. Satoru and Teira had a headstart over him over a decade long, and that meant quite a bit. “But I really can’t see you getting one over on me, let alone them. Blood Manipulation? Worthless. I manipulate actual problems. Curses.”

Joichi snorted. “That so? I am the problem. I don’t need anyone, or anything fighting for me, least of all some irrelevant fucking ghosts that no one with actual power gives a shit about. Tell me, who actually gets killed by cursed spirits? Is it the Special Grades? Or is it all the other shmucks who think hard work and attitude makes up for even a crumb of talent? So tell me: why the fuck should I be scared of you?!”

Geto Suguru smiled.

Joichi had put Suguru’s insecurities into words in the best way possible. If Joichi had said this to Suguru earlier in the year, it might have hurt him. He might have questioned his qualifications to the extent that his fighting spirit would be affected.

“I’ll tell you why,” Suguru grinned sharply. “It’s because—“

“Geto Suguru!” someone screamed far away.

Suguru whirled towards the source of the noise. It was deep into the forest.

“Kamo Joichi!” someone else screamed.

Ito burst past the trees, rushing towards Joichi, who instantly readied his ball of purple blood. “He’s mine, Suguru!” she shouted as she charged him, a Simple Domain encompassing her.

Dammit. Still, this was good. They could defeat him more easily now, even if that victory of his would be tainted by the cheapness of ganging up on someone.

Wait. He’s mine?! What the hell did she mean by that? He was Suguru’s! Before he could respond, a stab in his spiritual perception alerted him to another presence.

A bug-like shikigami, bright-pink, sending chills up Suguru’s spine in a way that even a Grade One couldn’t achieve.

The color of this dog-sized wasp threw him off, however. Bright pink. All of Teira’s Juchū were pitch black, but this one was pink. He recalled that Iemon’s Juchū was a dark purple. It seemed that everyone’s Juchū were colored randomly. These were certainly not Teira’s.

Suguru punched it.

It exploded.

Absolutely not Teira’s.

More pink bugs appeared. Suguru summoned some fodder in response, but stopped as he realized that Joichi could take advantage of that.

And speaking of Joichi, how was she doing against Ito? Worry bubbled up in Suguru’s chest that Ito might have bitten off more than he could chew. He quickly risked a glance at their fight.

Ito was a whirlwind of hands and feet, expertly managing to deflect, block, and avoid all of Joichi’s strikes, all the while as she kept speeding up.

Finally, that obnoxious cousin of Teira’s burst into view, wearing some blond boy as a backpack.

“Wash your neck, Geto!”

He remembered how much smack she had talked back in Obon.

And he remembered how rudely the two girls had interrupted a battle that he had very much looked forward to.

Screw it.

“Enough games,” he growled.

He re-summoned Tamamo-no-Mae, summoned Kuchisake-Onna, and finally, Kurourushi.

If he was going to be forced to endure these irritations, he would at least make sure their intrusion was as brief as possible.