Can I Still Escape After Clinging to a Powerful Patron’s Leg?
Toyama Akira was certain he had transmigrated.
The evidence was overwhelming.
As soon as he woke up and opened his eyes, he saw an eyeball hanging upside down from the ceiling, dangling down toward him.
Its pupil was pitch-black and narrowed to a slit. Like some transparent, viscous fluid leaking from shattered vitreous humor, it slowly dripped from the bloodshot eyeball, sticky strands stretching as it descended…
It was only a few centimeters from landing on his eyelashes.
That rancid, cold, damp stench seemed to fill his nostrils, and somehow, through a kind of synesthesia, made every hair on his body stand on end.
Toyama Akira’s breath caught.
In the midst of that suffocating brush with death, he calmly thought:
He had definitely transmigrated.
Because there was no way he could have been living in a world where something this horrifying existed.
Not if it was him.
The instant Toyama Akira’s body finally regained sensation after being locked rigid with terror, he shot upright from the bed.
At this point, one had to marvel at the boundless physical potential humans could unleash under extreme fear. Before this, Toyama Akira would never have imagined that he could suddenly snap his waist tight, use his core strength to launch himself from the bed in a truly terrifying fashion, duck low to avoid the sticky, slime-like monster touching him, and then, in the very next instant, shoot toward the balcony like a cannonball.
There was no need to stop him.
In a world this terrifying.
Toyama Akira continued along his escape route without the slightest hesitation, bursting out onto the balcony. He did not even realize that, in that one second, he had flipped over the railing with terrifying ease.
If he died, he died.
To be honest, compared with facing the monster behind him, he felt that dying was obviously the better option.
And so, in the instant he fell, the terror-tensed face of Toyama Akira unconsciously broke into a faint, relieved, blissful smile. Then…
Amid the howling wind of his fall, Toyama Akira saw the eyeball’s writhing tentacle chasing after him at the same speed.
Toyama Akira: …….
What the fuck!!!!
He still had to run.
“So, that’s why I latched onto your leg.”
Toyama Akira looked up.
He was still wearing the dusty pajamas he had rolled around on the ground in, while the person whose leg he had seized was wearing a pair of trousers that looked expensive and immaculate. This made Toyama Akira somewhat worried that he might dirty them and get charged for the damage, but his hands still did not loosen their grip in the slightest.
He looked up with a sincere, composed expression. “It’s not that I don’t want to let go. My body is still trapped in a state of terror, so my hands are completely rigid. I’ve lost control of them.”
That word order… Had he lost control of his tongue too?
Gojo Satoru: ……
Wasn’t this just being so scared he couldn’t move anything at all?!
Gojo Satoru had encountered people who could see cursed spirits and were frightened out of their wits. He had also encountered people who, upon awakening their cursed techniques, had been so terrified by cursed spirits that they did astonishing things.
But he had never met anyone like the boy in front of him, who had been frightened and awakened his cursed technique at the same time. With astonishing control over both his technique and his body, he had teleported straight to Gojo Satoru’s feet and grabbed him by the… leg before Gojo could even react.
The boy merely looked up at him and explained with complete sincerity. “My legs are weak. I really can’t stand.”
Gojo Satoru, who had just started considering recruiting the boy to Jujutsu High after seeing his cursed technique: ……
The boy’s cursed technique was excellent.
After hauling him to a nearby café, Gojo Satoru propped his head on one hand and prepared to begin explaining the jujutsu world.
Across from him, the boy, who was wearing nothing but pajamas with Gojo’s coat draped over his shoulders, held the freshly served hot coffee in both hands and kept his head lowered. He looked quiet and calm, but Gojo Satoru remembered that the boy’s expression had been just as calm when he had clamped all five fingers around Gojo’s leg like a claw. The boy was still deathly pale from fright!
The pale-faced boy seemed to notice Gojo Satoru’s gaze. He looked up and smiled gratefully at him.
A smile that did not reach his eyes. Even the corners of his mouth were still trembling.
Gojo Satoru: ……
“You should stop smiling.”
The boy immediately let the corners of his mouth droop and sighed in relief. “All right.”
Gojo Satoru: ……
“The [monster] you encountered this morning is called a cursed spirit. The ability that let you travel through the air and appear at my… feet is what we call a [cursed technique]. Beyond ordinary people, there has always been another world. We call it the [jujutsu world]…”
“I think I’ve transmigrated.”
“So… huh???”
Gojo Satoru, in the middle of his explanation, was abruptly interrupted by the boy’s calm statement, leaving his mind completely blank. “Huh???”
The boy raised his head, his expression serious and composed.
He spoke with absolute certainty, and even a hint of the relieved acceptance of someone thinking, So that’s how it is.
“I must have transmigrated.”
Gojo Satoru: ……
Gojo Satoru picked up the hot milk in front of him and took a strategic sip, intending to calm himself down first. “And what makes you say that?”
“I have no memories from before this. I only remember my name.”
“Actually, now that I think about it, I seem to remember nothing except waking up today. I can’t even remember why I live in that building.”
Huh.
That was kind of interesting.
Gojo Satoru slowly set down his cup of milk and casually wiped the white residue from his lips. “Maybe it’s some kind of memory disorder? I think there are people who can only retain a day’s worth of memories.”
“Impossible.” The boy’s rebuttal was firm, his expression calm and serious. “In a world where terrifying creatures called [cursed spirits] exist, as you put it, I definitely wouldn’t be able to survive.”
“I would kill myself.”
The boy said it with unwavering certainty.
Gojo Satoru: ……
Gojo Satoru had initially wanted to say that was far too extreme, but remembering the sensation of the boy clinging tightly to his leg made the words stick in his throat.
Okay.
All right, all right.
Fortunately, even though the boy was utterly convinced that he had transmigrated, he remained remarkably calm.
Toyama Akira smiled, his face deathly pale. “I’ll find somewhere safe and die. If I succeed, I should be able to go back, right?”
Gojo Satoru once again took a strategic sip of milk. “And if you fail?”
The boy’s expression was peaceful and blissful. “For people living in this world, an early death is God’s mercy.”
Gojo Satoru, who lived in this world and had clearly not received God’s mercy, jerked his hand and spilled most of the milk. His expression remained perfectly calm, as though nothing had happened, while he secretly wiped the table with a napkin. Maintaining a solemn demeanor, he changed the subject. “Listen to me. Your cursed technique is exceptional.”
“Once you’ve mastered it, you could even kill me with ease.”
At that, the boy looked up at Gojo Satoru. All he knew at present was that the white-haired young man in front of him was a teacher at some Jujutsu High in the jujutsu world, an industry professional named Gojo Satoru. He had no idea how much weight the name [Gojo Satoru] carried in the jujutsu world, and at the moment, he probably placed more faith in the god of death than in jujutsu sorcerers.
So the boy merely gave him a light, polite smile. “I don’t need to kill you. I only need to kill myself.”
Gojo Satoru: ……
Okay, great…
Gojo Satoru set down the milk. He had finished wiping the table too. With a sigh, he snapped his fingers.
And then, all at once…
The world went dark.
Toyama Akira stared up in confusion, only to discover that the servers in the corridor, the customers at the neighboring tables, and the pedestrians outside the window…
Everyone had vanished.
Rather, only their table remained, suspended in a deep blue darkness that seemed almost alive.
“See? Jujutsu can do this much.”
“As for cursed spirits…”
As the young man’s voice dragged on, a bizarrely shaped cursed spirit, apparently captured somewhere, was dragged over.
“Thud.”
Gojo Satoru looked across the table.
The boy had fallen off his stool again.
Gojo Satoru: ……
Gojo Satoru snapped his fingers again. The cursed spirit brought over for the demonstration disintegrated into dust.
“They can be exorcised just as easily.”
“And you…”
The young man leaned down as well, looking at the boy beneath the table. His face was deathly pale, and his eyes were vacant.
“Yours is the strongest of them all.”
Gojo Satoru said his cursed technique was teleportation.
However, it was somewhat different from ordinary teleportation.
“The spatial path you use for teleportation can be wielded as a weapon. And it’s a kind of space that even I can’t understand. It appears to be a conceptual cursed technique. In other words, if you wanted to, you could teleport behind me right now, and my Limitless wouldn’t be able to stop you. Your space would simply cut me in half.”
“Do you know what that means?”
Gojo Satoru’s sunglasses slid down his nose, his blue eyes dark and solemn.
“That’s wonderful…”
The boy beneath the tabletop sighed with admiration.
Gojo Satoru thought that was probably the correct response, but for some reason, because it had come from this particular boy, it also felt somehow wrong.
The boy slowly raised his head.
“It means I can escape to Antarctica…”
“Huh???”
As soon as the boy said it, his expression grew even more resolute. “I’ll leave right now, then. Goodbye…”
“Wait…”
“Huh? Wait…”
Gojo Satoru thrust out a hand, but the boy had already shot upright. Then, with a loud “thud,”
“I didn’t teleport, Mr. Gojo…” the boy said in confusion, clutching his head.
He had hit it.
Gojo Satoru: …
By now, Gojo Satoru had grabbed the coat draped over the boy’s shoulders. He inhaled, then exhaled, reminding himself not to frighten this talent who tried to kill himself whenever he got scared. He did his best not to think about how he, Gojo Satoru, was currently crouching beneath a table with an abnormal boy who believed he had transmigrated, discussing teleporting to Antarctica.
Gojo Satoru succeeded.
Gojo Satoru held himself back.
Gojo Satoru spoke in the calmest, gentlest tone he had ever used, one that would be least likely to frighten anyone.
“Listen until people finish talking, you little brat. You can only teleport to places where you can imagine the path of teleportation, understand? If you keep rushing off to escape, I’ll tie you up and hang you on the wall of the cursed spirit dungeon while playing The Shining on a loop.”
Toyama Akira: …
Toyama Akira’s pupils shook violently. Tears welled up and fell, then welled up again, but he ultimately held them back.
“All right.”
“So.”
Gojo Satoru snapped his fingers.
The barrier dissolved. The surrounding crowd began moving again, and the café once more filled with noisy voices. “How much of what I just said did you take in?”
The boy was still trembling as he crawled out from beneath the table. His fingertips shook so badly that Gojo Satoru felt if he put a piano beneath them, the boy could play Trepidation all by himself.
The boy hesitated. “………Escape to Antarctica?”
“Cursed spirit dungeon.”
“You said my cursed technique is based on reproducing a teleportation path according to my own imagination to reach the destination. At the same time, the space used for teleportation is a conceptual heterogeneous space that even you can’t perceive, and it can be used as a spatial weapon. It is the strongest cursed technique, which I can use offensively.”
Gojo Satoru:………
He could repeat it back perfectly?!
Gojo Satoru felt that the boy was like a snail frightened into a stupor. He looked completely motionless, as though dead, but if someone made him wish he were dead instead, by frightening him, he could apparently come back to life.
“So, do you want to become my student?”
“No.”
Gojo Satoru pressed one finger against his knuckle, still managing to restrain himself. “With professional training, you could become a special grade in the blink of an eye.”
“No.”
“By then, you could easily exorcise any cursed spirit. Nothing would be able to frighten you anymore. Oh~”
Gojo Satoru drew out that “oh” with an endlessly winding intonation, practically grinding the word out through clenched teeth.
But Toyama Akira was absorbed in the thought, Huh? Me, fighting cursed spirits? Seriously?
He would instinctively leap to Antarctica and disembowel himself the moment he saw a cursed spirit. Come to think of it, he needed to go to Antarctica at least once, or else he would never be able to imagine the route there and escape to it. Fighting cursed spirits was impossible. He could die, but he absolutely could not…
Toyama Akira’s voice cut off mid-sentence. A hand suddenly pressed down on his head. The young man’s hand forced his head up, and through the gaps between the fingers, their veins standing out tautly, the boy could only see the handsome, dazzlingly sunny smile on the young man’s face.
“Do you think I’m asking you?”
Toyama Akira: …
So scary.
“All right…”
After thinking it over, Toyama Akira still hesitated. He pried the young man’s hand away and said sincerely,
“You… You could have just said that from the beginning. Of course I would have agreed.”
Gojo Satoru: …