Chapter 70

Jujutsu High, Tokyo
10th September, 12:36 JST

“Did you guys really just interrupt my nap right now?”

Gojo said this to the squad of Kyoto upperclassmen that had veered closely to the tree whose thickest branch he was resting on top of, while they argued loudly.

To my senses, he seemed to weigh the pros and cons of engaging them in battle.

That was, until they ran away from him screaming.

I sensed him continue to weigh his options until the sheer bother of getting up smothered his willpower with ease.

Then, I told Michiko to open a portal between him and me, and stepped through it.

I landed at the foot of the large branch that he slept on top of, where the branch almost touched the tree’s trunk.

The branch rose upwards, letting Gojo look at me without having to raise his head. “Oh,” he said, his tone dripping in disappointment. “Hi.”

“Hi, Gojo,” I said, then I thought about my greeting a little more. “Satoru, I guess.”

Gojo blinked at me, and then he frowned. “Okay,” he closed his eyes.

He said nothing after that.

“I sense a distinct lack of welcome,” I said.

He said nothing to that, either.

I then sat down on my knees, my kneecaps inches from his feet. “I’ve given a lot of thought to a lot of things,” I began. “And, to be honest, I’m curious to understand you a little bit more, you know? The parts of you that you don’t usually talk about. We’ve known each other for a while know, and as much as I’ve surmised from your personality by observation, I don’t think that’s a good replacement for good old sincerity. So,” I spread my arms. “Let’s have it. Just this once.”

“Nah,” he said.

What? “What do you mean?”

He pushed himself upwards a little, grinned, and then shook his head at me. “I don’t want to discuss anything with you, Teira.”

“Why?” I asked. “Listen, I promise this isn’t a prank or anything, and I’m not going to try to hurt you or anything. I know you have no reason to trust me, but—“

“No, I think you’re telling the truth,” Gojo said. “Which is why I don’t want to discuss a damn thing with you. Not while you’re filled to the gills with chemicals that are literally turning you into a cartoon version of yourself. You want to hear my uncut and sincere thoughts, Teira? I think you’re being a disgrace to the self that I befriended, and I’m not confident that the person I’m speaking to is really my friend at all.”

Holy shit. “Where the hell do you get off acting like—“

“I don’t want to talk to you,” he repeated. “We’ll run this conversation back tomorrow once whatever the hell you put in your body has run its course, but not a moment before then.”

Fuck this. “The entire time I’ve known you, I’ve been varying degrees of drunk. I’m not any more different from then, and I just want to try something new, experience reality in an angle that I haven’t done before. Now you’re sitting here and acting like I’ve spat on everything that I once stood for, and betrayed you or something. Are you hearing yourself? We’ve had our differences, Gojo, but this contempt of yours goes beyond the pale.”

He pushed himself to sit upright, his expression incredulous. “Beyond the pale? Are you hearing yourself? And your reasoning is all off. I don’t look down on you! If anything, I look up to you, like slightly. Maybe half a degree upwards. My problem with interacting with you when you’re like this comes from the fact that I don’t want to take advantage of your utter idiocy and complete lack of common sense, and honestly, I find your whole Zen act to be incredibly boring. Do you understand me, Teira? You’re boring. And you’re being weird. You sitting here like this, talking to me, feels slimy to me. It feels gross, like a sickly sweet dessert that just expired. You know that taste? It’s in my mouth every time I see you like this. I hate it.” He laughed mockingly as he said that. “So shut up about,” he gestured vaguely at me, “about you. I don’t care about you. This is about how I feel.”

“You’re being a child, and I get that it’s your right because you are a child, but honestly—“

“You know what my boundaries are,” Gojo interrupted me. “All I need from you, Teira, is to be confident that whatever the hell that’s inside your brain that’s making it impossible for you to shut that damn trap of yours, is long gone. Alright? Seriously, what the hell did you take? Is its main effect just making you open up about your feelings in the way a loser would?”

I didn’t talk to him that much, but… “I mean, yeah. Pretty much.” Between the mephedrone and the MDMA, I was very much in the mood to dictate a ten-thousand-page autobiography in the most melodramatic and cheesy way possible.

I saw nothing wrong with that.

Gojo clenched his jaw and tried to lie down, without saying anything more.

“Why do you think I’m weird?” I asked him.

“Shut up, I don’t want to talk with you. Final warning.”

Oh my god.

All these people were so annoying.

The power of Gojo’s rejection caused me to fantasize about scooping out the portions of my brain affected by the drug, just so I would lose this constant desire to talk.

I closed my eyes, and focused my Reverse Cursed Technique on my brain. Getting rid of poisons was an order of magnitude easier than trying to dislodge all the psychedelic molecules lodged fast inside my serotonin receptors. I did, however, have an option to remove the concentration of chemicals in my blood, waiting in line to affect my brain.

I summoned a mosquito Juchū to siphon blood from my body while I regenerated more blood. I had precious few other options, besides going to Michiko’s Timeless Sanctuary to sleep off the rest of the effects.

I was by and large done being high for today, thanks to my extremely suboptimal environment. The available literature was big on ensuring that one’s trip environment was as safe and comfortable as possible. This battle royale in the woods unfortunately did not meet the qualifications.

As far as bad trips went, mine had been decidedly mild. Nothing like what Naoya was going through.

I giggled. “You know, I just saw Naoya—“

Infinity was a convergent series.

The inverse of infinity was a divergent series.

Red was a divergent series of infinity brought forth to reality. Blue was the convergent series.

Blend those two infinities together, and you had imaginary mass: the physical representation of the value zero. Pure and utter destruction.

Gojo had explained this concept to me more than once in an attempt to annoy me.

What he hadn’t explained was just how quickly he could fire one off in a fit of annoyance.

The Hollow Purple hovering over his unflicked fingers, pointed at me, was no bigger than a tennis ball, and yet I knew that it would shear a hole through me, sure as rain.

I threw myself away from the tree just as it exploded from the impact. The Purple hadn’t even detonated. It was still travelling—

Towards Suguru!

Shit!

“Dammit!” Gojo roared as he floated down from the savaged tree, his blue eyes wide and staring into the distance.

The Hollow Purple passed relatively harmlessly, and all it did was interrupt Suguru’s battle.

“Look what you made me do!” Gojo shouted at me. He ripped his sunglasses off and glared with such pointed irritation that I felt like a child being chewed out.

I showed him the middle finger, and walked away.

Everyone was being weird or irritating towards me. Whatever empathogenic effect was left swimming around in my head, it was all gone now.

I just wanted to be alone.

000

Jujutsu High, Tokyo
10th September, 12:39 JST

Daimonji Matsuda, the Young Dharma Protector of the Shingon Conservatives, kept his fingers in the Reasoning Mudra as he contemplated the sight before him.

In this room that he was in, there were thirty Grade Ones watching the screens showing the thirty students of each Jujutsu High as they competed in the exchange event. The only one not Grade One was himself. Some were retired, but most were active-duty. These people represented all the Grade Ones in Jujutsu Society that were promoted in the common way. The clans and some factions had their own fair share of Special Grade Ones, but these were all the resources that had been raised in the most neutral way yet—by way of Jujutsu High, a relatively recent development in the world of Jujutsu.

Eighteen of the Grade Ones hailed from Kyoto while only twelve were from the Tokyo school. They were all raptly discussing who they would nominate for what Grade. Grade Ones were only allowed to nominate a single person every year, and even then, that person had to be someone that they had never taught before. This way ensured that promotions to Grade One were decided based on merit and not connections.

They discussed the performances of the likes of Ito Aoi, Mei Mei (real name unknown), Hibana Haruta, and Zen'in Naoya.

They discussed spiritedly, throwing themselves into the subject as if to ignore what they had all borne witness to, an event that had almost forced Matsuda himself to rush to the Event as quickly as possible to put an end to things.

Quiet as a desert, the audience had watched the fight between Zen'in and Hibana, utter shock and horror seemingly oppressing everyone’s breathing as the former made brutally quick work of the latter, until—

Hibana Teira awakened.

The subsequent events were unclear. She had forcefed him something, and then the feed had cut as she had erected a veil to hide her activities. Soon, Naobito arrived on the scene to collect his son, and that had been that.

One assistant entered the room from the door right next to where Matsuda sat, on the far back of the auditorium. She slid him a note and quickly retreated. He had tasked her on apprising him of Zen'in Naoya’s situation. He was apparently stable. The famed healer Ieiri Shoko had addressed the grievous damage to his face and ear that he had suffered, and the poison was apparently some kind of sedative that had rendered Naoya-kun delirious and unintelligible. Seemingly, the most relevant bit of damage was to his mind, and only time would tell whether that damage was serious or not.

And the Grade Ones in the room continued going on and on and on about the promising crop of students in this year’s Exchange Event.

“Something bothering you?” asked the girl sitting next to him, Mukai Reiko. She was a fourth-year in Tokyo Jujutsu High and one of the youngest Grade Ones around. She had long silver hair tied up in a ponytail, and wore a sleeveless dark blue turtleneck sweater, revealing arms bristling with muscle and covered in scars. She had clearly seen her fair share of battle, and at such a young age.

“I merely find it disorienting how quickly we’ve moved on,” Matsuda said.

“From Teira?” she smirked. “Well,” she sighed, tilting her head sideways as if to jog her thought process. She was as irreverent as any Grade One her age had a right to be. “Her whole deal is overwhelming displays of terror. It’s sort of what she does. You get used to it as a Tokyo student.”

Hibana Teira. Matsuda owed his life to her, but this was the first time he had ever seen her. The rumors were true. She had sheet white skin, eyes like obsidian orbs, and a pair of hairpins that stuck out from her head like antennae.

That, and she was a consummate master of the Reverse Cursed Technique, clearly based on just how little Naoya’s barrage of attacks worked in the end. He had done damage, and that was the horrifying part: that damage simply hadn’t stuck.

Yet, what sort of mind did it take to receive such punishment for any reason, much less to simply intimidate someone?

All signs pointed to Teira merely reveling in inducing true despair in her opponents. What lengths would she go to terrorize those she viewed as her enemy?

And why did she look the way that she did?

“Her… appearance,” Matsuda said carefully, so as to not offend. “Do you know the reason why it is the way that it is?”

“She didn’t go into detail,” Mukai looked up at the ceiling. “But the skinny of it is: she experimented on her own body as a child to become more talented in Jujutsu.”

Matsuda blinked. “As a child?”

“Yep,” she nodded. “Listen, I never really bothered to learn why, because I’m decently certain that I don’t want to know why, but… I don’t think it matters,” she grinned, giggling slightly at the end. “I like her. She’s good people.”

Like her?

Matsuda drew deep breaths to try and shed his distress and his untoward feelings. He sensed that he was making the age-old mistake of judging a book by its cover, but too little of what Hibana Teira was made sense to him.

Born in a clan of curse users not even known for their combat prowess, they had a long history of sorcery and yet none of them had ever reached the level of Special Grade in the past. At the age of eight, she inherited the clan after a brief power struggle, and then proceeded to unite all the clans in their coalition of curse user clans.

All this at eight.

And more had followed.

Matsuda had fallen into this one-woman whirlpool of change, change and more change.

Hibana Teira was like a strange variable in an equation that represented the universe. Without her, things would make more sense, and yet, without her, nothing would be the same.

And Matsuda was so, so tempted to join the others in mindless discussion of who deserved to be promoted, and to forget those glaring streaks of utter inhumanity that showed on that young girl.

To excuse it, for the greater good.

“Why do you like her?” Matsuda asked.

What about her appealed to anyone’s sensibilities of goodness?

“It’s simple,” Mukai smiled. “She’s on my side, in a way no one has ever been before in my life. She’s especially popular among the girls, but everyone respects her, really. You’d be stupid not to. She’s just… the one everybody respects.”

She did seem to get along very swimmingly with the Kyoto second-year. She didn’t seem to be interacting with Hibana under any sort of duress. In fact, Matsuda had raised her estimation of Hibana based on how peaceful she was in these games. She had embodied a commendable attitude in Matsuda’s opinion.

All of that had changed at the flip of a switch, however.

“And what about these displays?” Matsuda asked. The way Mukai had worded it, she made it seem like this sort of thing was standard fare for her.

“It’s basic carrot and stick, my guy. Do right by her and she’ll do right by you. Take her for an idiot, and she’ll make sure you regret it. If you ask me, there’s no better way to exist as a woman in this world.”

Of course, there was nothing wrong with demanding respect where it was due. Still, this seemed entirely too excessive. “Do these displays of her ever bother you?”

“I mean, her first fight against Gojo was kind of freaky, but no, not really. Not even right now. Tell you what, I didn’t buy it for even half a second that that kid Naoya had the upper hand,” she scoffed. “Not my Teira. And besides, we do Jujutsu. Our job is scary by nature. This much is nothing in comparison to being a Grade Three facing up against a Grade One cursed spirit that was initially rated as Grade Three. Fighting against steep odds is a hell of a lot scarier than just watching Teira play around a little.”

Matsuda nodded. Perhaps, it truly was just nothing then.

Perhaps he simply needed to speak to Teira himself and establish a basis of a good relationship? If she was as personable as Mukai claimed, then that wouldn’t be difficult at all.

000

Jujutsu High, Tokyo
10th September, 12:35 JST

In terms of his cursed energy and his physical stamina, Kobayashi Jun was one-hundred percent fine. As good as the Coward’s Dance was, as long as Jun only used it sparingly while relying more on his conventional senses to anticipate threats, he could get away with perhaps hours of optimal use. The only thing that was really draining his cursed energy was the enforcement to his body.

That enforcement in turn allowed his baseline physicality to not be overly strained, as long as he struck upon an efficient degree of cursed energy use. Too much, and he would be wasting power. Too little, and he would be wasting physical energy.

He had managed his resources perfectly.

All but one resource, really: his nerve.

I can’t keep doing this, I’m so damned scared, I’m seriously, seriously freaking out I can’t do this when will it end why does it keep going on why am I here why am I even doing this?

Kobayashi Jun was no coward.

That was why he followed the synesthetic trails of his Coward’s Dance towards yet another threat that was liable to eviscerate him, as the others almost had.

He was running on the forest floor, keeping hidden in the shadows as best as he can. He paused by one tree to let his slightly tired legs rest.

Unconsciously, he felt for his throat.

On his throat, a three-inch line barely deep enough to cut through his skin and draw blood, lay.

That line laid right above his jugular vein.

Coward’s Dance had pulled him from the jaw’s of death.

And it had done so again and again. His coat had holes and tears on it. There was a tear on his chest that hadn’t reached skin at all, only the coat and his white shirt underneath.

A lock of hair had been trimmed as well from one of the many close brushes he had had.

Jun was no coward, and yet each near death compounded and added to the chorus that played in his mind on repeat, that he really was not in any form to continue chasing whatever goal he was chasing.

He was not Grade Two material. Everyone watching him must have known this. They must have seen through his smooth act, and instead beheld only just how much he was floundering to survive. Any minute now, Yaga-sensei would pull him out of the competition due to how he so recklessly endangered his own life.

He was rolling the dice every time. Even if they were weighted, one bad roll would still mean the end of him.

He was weak.

He wasn’t enforcing himself enough. He wasn’t powerful enough physically to use the Coward’s Dance to its optimal potential. His sword skills were dull. He had only scratched the surface of his attempts to incorporate shikigami into his fighting style.

Grade Three is a good grade. I have so much to learn. I’m not ready to be promoted.

He should just say the words: I surrender.

He had racked up enough points. Nine was an okay number. He had fought his hardest. The diehard Jujutsu Sorcerer would keep fighting until they had nothing left, but the shrewd Jujutsu Sorcerer would rather play the game of promotion and ensure that they only gave exactly what they needed to give to achieve their objective.

Jun saw himself as the latter type. He had no confidence that he was the type to jump headfirst into a doomed fight just to give his comrades some time. Such a degree of goodness felt foreign to him. He was not a hero. He didn’t have the gall to ever claim that he came slightly close to being one. Thus, he had to be the latter type of sorcerer, because it was the only way to live that he felt made innate sense.

He should surrender.

After this last cursed spirit. Then, I’ll surrender.

Jun made a standing jump up to the branch of a tree, hopped from tree to tree, and stopped, hiding behind the trunk of a tree that was only one tree away from a clearing in which the cursed spirit, his prey, lay.

The clearing was wide and circular, perhaps thirty meters across.

The cursed spirit… had to be Grade One.

It was humanoid, entirely black from head to toe, and five feet tall. Currently, it was busy swimming leisurely in a pit of utter blackness, likely generated from its innate technique. It had no eyes. No mouth. It was a smooth facsimile of a person, pitch black.

And its very substance roared with power in Jun’s cursed energy perception.

Fuck.

He activated his Coward’s Dance, revealing a confusing jumble of lines and colors, a complex map of safety from this threat.

How do I even… begin to tackle this—

He felt a shift in the pattern, not from the spirit having noticed him. No, he felt it further behind.

Someone was trying to sneak up on him. A human. A Kyoto participant.

Jun readied himself but otherwise tried to pretend that he hadn’t noticed. His mind was too occupied on this newcomer to continue trying to make sense of the game plan that Coward’s Dance was giving him.

The newcomer stopped on a tree near him, in one of his blindspots.

Would they try to steal this cursed spirit from him? Or sabotage the fight and take advantage, sweeping both him and the spirit at once?

They had their game.

Jun had his. And the way he saw it, his game could benefit the both of them, if the newcomer was amenable.

“We might as well just put our cards on the table,” Jun said calmly, but loud enough for the newcomer to hear. He turned to their tree, where they still kept hidden behind the trunk of it. “I’m in no mood for a mutually destructive mess.”

He heard a high-pitched hum.

Out from behind the tree, a woman walked out. She had long white hair that reminded him of Gojo, tied in a ponytail. She wore a black shirt, a gray-blue tie, and a waist-high buttoned skirt that reached all the way to her her mid-shin, where her boots started. “You noticed me. Impressive.”

…way too pretty.

Damn it. As much as it shamed Jun to be this way, he did have a difficult time talking to pretty girls. He was better than he was at the start of the school year, but only because he had found a method that worked for him. Essentially, he would psychologically castrate himself, shooting down every stray thought as quickly as they popped up, while trying his best to fixate on a given girl’s worst physical feature, in his opinion.

In this case, it was the white-haired girl’s eyes, bent in an upward curve. Her eyes were pretty, but if Jun let his thoughts wander, he only saw malevolence in those eyes.

He knew nothing about her, of course, and he refused to allow that thought to set root as well, but this was enough to keep him focused and on-topic.

The very fact that all this mental effort was required in the first place was infinitely embarrassing. Luckily, no one else had access to his loser-mind but him. Unless this girl in particular had an innate technique that allowed her to read minds.

He aborted that train of thought with a vengeance.

“Do you want to fight me?” Jun asked.

“Hmm,” she pinched her chin, looking upwards. “That depends. What’s your Grade?”

“Provisional three,” he replied.

She smirked. “That right there’s a Grade One, you know.”

“I’m well aware.”

“Grade Three…” she nodded. “There’s no profit in taking you out.”

This was why he had surrendered this information in the first place. His only hope was that she would be a rational actor, the same type of sorcerer as he was.

“And you?” he asked.

She snorted. “Sizing me up, are you? I’m a Semi-Grade Two, confirmed rank. I’m shooting for Semi-Grade One this Exchange Event. I could really use the head of just one more Grade One cursed spirit.”

As could he.

“Unfortunately, I’ve set my heart on this Grade One,” Jun replied. “And from my understanding of the game’s rules, it’s winner takes all. We won’t be sharing points even if we both contribute to defeating the Grade One.”

“So, how will we do this?” the girl asked. “Got any ideas?”

He did, and most of them were even quite relevant to the situation at hand. The others, that bade him to socialize and try to make nice with this girl, were severed from his consideration as they occurred.

He couldn’t trust her. She was equally likely to just turn up her charm and fool him into thinking they had a rapport, as to actually be a trustworthy and sincere person. The look in her eyes didn’t help Jun’s estimation of her, either. He had to behave as though she would betray him if given half a chance.

They were, after all, on opposing teams.

As much as there was little value for her to gain in defeating him, that didn’t mean that there was no value. For all they both knew, there was a hidden points system that also counted defeated enemy sorcerers. Even without that, it was still a net benefit for one’s team to defeat members of the other team.

But first thing first, introductions. “I’m Kobayashi Jun, first-year. You?”

“My name? I’m Mei-Mei, sixteen. Second-year.”

“We can take turns,” Jun suggested. “The order of our turns can be decided based on a game. Whoever loses has to go after the winner, and only after they’ve forfeited their attempt. If both of us forfeit our attempts, the cycle continues anew until one of us is defeated and removed from the game.”

Mei Mei chuckled. “Pass. How do I know that whatever game you decide, you won’t win it with whatever innate technique you used to detect me? You’re a sensory type, aren’t you?”

While he had planned on winning a game of rock paper scissors using Coward’s Dance, he also hadn’t been opposed to the concept of losing and letting her take the first turn.

In his eyes, with the confusing jumble of information granted to him by Coward’s Dance, he deduced that neither of them were really enough to defeat the Grade One alone. At least, without one person softening it for the other.

“Then what do you suggest?”

Mei Mei sat down on the branch of the tree, and Coward’s Dance cut her threat level in half in response. She was opening herself up for an attack. Showing her stomach as a show of trust. “The Exchange Event is good for getting promoted, but what I find to be its most interesting aspect are the networking opportunities it affords us. Right now, we’re enemies. But what about next week, after this is all done and dusted?”

“If we were to meet again in the line of duty, then I would merely set our school’s rivalry aside and work alongside you,” Jun replied honestly. “I don’t put much stock in school pride, especially not if it gets in the way of advancing my career.”

“I like the way that you think,” she said, pointing at him. He pressed down the flutter in his stomach with sheer force of will. “And I wouldn’t say no to testing a collaboration of ours. So here’s what I’m thinking: we team up against the Grade One. Winner takes all, but the point isn’t to win individually. It’s to beat the Grade One. Towards that end, we forget the game itself and just focus on exorcising the curse.”

Jun wouldn’t let that fly in a million years without swearing a binding vow to keep her honest. Gradually, he felt like his estimation of hers was becoming more and more correct. She was not the trustworthy and sincere type. That didn’t necessarily make her untrustworthy, but for the purposes of interacting with her, he had to rule out generosity and kindness as a factor informing any of her decisions.

He had to look for her angle.

She was thinking beyond the games. She was career-oriented, like him. If her words were to be trusted, she was even willing to help support Jun in his exorcism of this Grade One, if the opportunity arose. By that same virtue, he would have to help her if an opportunity arose.

Perhaps this was a test to see how serious Jun was about his career, and not just the game?

Now that he thought about it, he was curious to see how serious she was. If she was worthy of a business partnership with him.

The most that Jun would lose in this partnership was the chance to gain four points from the Grade One.

And if she did help him, she might owe him a favor. She might even introduce him to her network.

“I normally wouldn’t make this offer to just anyone,” Mei Mei continued. “But like I said, I like the way you think. I’ve also seen you fight. Grade Three is a mistake. Who did you piss off to get saddled all the way in the back rows like that? Or maybe your improvement was just that explosive?”

She had seen him fight? Then she was a sensory type as well.

Jun thought some more.

There was a chance that she was completely and utterly full of shit, willing to use him and then dump him with no other consideration for his long-term career plans. Jun wasn’t proud enough to imagine that losing his loyalty would mean much to some stranger like her.

It probably didn’t.

She was going to betray him.

Coward’s Dance was not made for dancing between the fires of social peril, but innate techniques were plastic and dependent on the user’s sincere interpretation. Thus, it confirmed what Jun was thinking. She could not be trusted, even bound by a vow. She played the Exchange Event, this game of networking, and another game above all those other games.

Games within games within games.

What was Jun’s game?

Slow and steady.

He would help exorcise this cursed spirit.

He would even help her win if it came down to it. Victory was good and all, but learning who to trust when his life was truly on the line was far more important.

“I suppose I will let you fool me, then,” Jun simply said. “Let’s swear a binding vow, and then begin strategizing.”

The binding vow was the bare minimum, but Jun knew better than to believe that it would entirely solve the issue of trust. The best lies were the ones that weren’t lies at all. Jun should know, he was an excellent liar.

Somewhere in this binding vow, there would be a crack that Mei Mei would exploit. If he was lucky, he’d discover his own cracks as well. If he wasn’t, then he could at least learn from her deceit.

Mei Mei’s grin sharpened. “Attaboy.”

By now, there was no longer a shred of Jun that felt desire at this woman. Only wariness.