What Is Teacherly Virtue?
Gojo Satoru felt as though he were bathing a water-phobic husky. After the boy had sunk into the tub and suddenly popped back up, he shook his head, spraying Gojo Satoru’s face with droplets of water. Gojo Satoru:……
Just because Gojo had Limitless, that was no reason for the boy to disrespect his teacher like this!
Still, Gojo Satoru said nothing.
He was currently holding down the head of the boy bathing in the tub with one hand, stopping him from committing suicide, escaping, or diving underwater to investigate the tub’s water pressure and test the possibility of living alone in the deep sea.
At that moment, he was thinking.
He had dragged over a chair and sat beside the tub, legs crossed, one hand propping up his chin while the other held down the boy, who kept bobbing up and down, darting left and right, shooting into the air, and diving back into the water.
Gojo Satoru was thinking very, very seriously.
Even though the boy shook his head and flung water all over him, Limitless kept it from reaching him, so it did not affect his deep contemplation in the slightest.
Even when the boy began trying to teach himself how to swim, then floated on the surface as though he planned to cramp up, drown, and die, it did not affect his calm deliberations.
Gojo Satoru was considering a serious problem.
A problem student who would cause all sorts of trouble the moment no one watched him seemed dangerous to leave unattended at Jujutsu High, both for him and for the school.
But Gojo could not take the boy on missions with him, because he had only just promised that until the boy’s [final battle] with him, he would not take him along on missions ahead of time. This period was supposed to be left for the boy to grow and train.
Gojo Satoru glanced at the boy, who had already gone deathly pale, closed his eyes, and begun blowing bubbles underwater. Gojo Satoru:……
It certainly was excellent growth and training.
Expressionless, he hauled the boy out of the water, then continued thinking.
He could find someone more reliable to watch the boy while he was away on missions.
But…
But, honestly, Gojo Satoru found it difficult enough to keep an eye on him himself. Someone else would probably have an even harder time. So the problem really lay with…
The boy!
Who else spent every day doing nothing, skipping class and neglecting ordinary life, while either plotting to run to Antarctica or dreaming of diving to the bottom of the sea…?
Gojo Satoru felt that the biggest problem was the boy’s constant troublemaking. And the root cause of his troublemaking was… well, his cowardice was incurable, so perhaps he should consider the indirect cause instead.
The indirect cause was that the boy felt no sense of urgency about his [final battle] with Gojo Satoru.
Gojo Satoru had noticed it, too. Although the boy claimed not to understand his own cursed technique, that was only because he believed he did not understand it. After all, the boy thought he was the kind of trash that could not even be recycled, and might need to be sorted as hazardous waste, like spent batteries.
In reality, after Gojo had explained the boy’s cursed technique to him, and the boy had learned that his technique could [escape], the boy had somehow developed an extremely intense survival anxiety during these peaceful months. It had driven him to develop his cursed technique almost in its entirety.
So the boy probably understood very well just how powerful his cursed technique was. But…
He had no idea how powerful Gojo Satoru’s cursed technique was.
Toyama Akira had only just entered Jujutsu High. Everything he knew about Gojo Satoru being [the strongest] had come from Gojo himself or from other people telling him so. He had never faced it firsthand.
This contradictory person both knew he possessed a powerful cursed technique and genuinely believed he was trash. He was like a malformed genius. He was convinced that he was garbage, yet he also assumed that anyone weaker than him was just as useless.
He did not trust Gojo Satoru or the others.
Gojo Satoru had realized that.
The boy’s admiration for Gojo Satoru and the other students at Jujutsu High was mostly the admiration a coward felt for normal people who were not afraid of ghosts. He did not believe these [normal people] truly had the ability to destroy [ghosts]. If he could avoid facing the ghosts himself, then he might as well hide behind them.
Whether he was strong or weak, the important thing was to hurry up and hide.
How should he put it? He really was someone who never blamed himself or wore himself down with pointless self-reproach…
Gojo Satoru sighed inwardly. That was precisely why almost no one noticed that this excessively cowardly boy had actually recognized the difference between his own strength and that of ordinary jujutsu sorcerers.
And even if he had recognized it, he would neither become arrogant nor look down on anyone because of it.
This was not because he had been born with some unbelievably kindhearted protagonist constitution. It was simply because he viewed every human being except himself as an expendable extra in a horror movie. They were like the successive wooden doors standing between him, hiding in the innermost room, and the final monster’s arrival.
Although Toyama Akira knew those doors were flimsy and would certainly be smashed through by the monster, he still hid behind every single one of them equally, hoping equally that each door would hold out just a little longer.
And Gojo Satoru had perhaps merely been classified by the boy as a [slightly sturdier] wooden door.
Gojo Satoru:……
He could at least have upgraded Gojo to a different material.
At minimum, he should have been stainless steel.
……
What Gojo Satoru had to do now was make the boy understand just how strong he was. Only then would the boy take their [final battle] seriously and channel all that damned, demolition-husky energy he had nowhere to vent into improving himself instead of killing himself. That way, Gojo could safely hurry out, finish his work, and come back to look after the kid.
So he had to make the boy understand.
The white-haired young man, who had remained motionless on the chair as steady as a statue, finally moved. Without even turning his head, he reached out and accurately plucked the boy, who had somehow managed to sink upside down into the water, straight out of the tub.
Gojo Satoru stood and lifted the dripping-wet boy high into the air. The boy’s soaked white shirt hung heavily with water. He immediately grabbed the collar with both hands, very properly observing the virtue expected of a decent young man and covering the pale abdomen that had flashed into view for an instant. His wet black hair hung downward, too. At last, the forehead and eyes usually hidden behind his gloomy bangs were fully exposed.
Pale, damp skin. Light-colored lashes strung with droplets, each blink sending another bead of water falling. Gray-green eyes stared motionlessly into Gojo Satoru’s azure ones, pure and bewildered, so straight and inhuman that they brought some strange nonhuman creature to mind.
“Akira.”
“Hmm?”
“I’m going to make you understand.”
“Hmm?”
“I won’t become a door to protect you, you know?”
Gojo Satoru gave the upside-down boy in his hand a little shake. When the boy tightened his grip on the shirt that was about to slip away and furrowed his brows in a daze, Gojo finally broke into a grin.
“I’ll be the one who takes you outside.”
The boy’s pupils narrowed into vertical slits for an instant, then slowly widened as the young man continued speaking. Covering his abdomen, the boy slowed his breathing and listened to the next words from the man holding him up.
“Let’s have a fight right now.”
Were all the people at Jujutsu High battle junkies?
Was that so? Yes, it was.
Toyama Akira asked and answered himself inwardly as he wrung out his damp white shirt, then wiped his wet hands on the clean clothes he had just changed into. After a while, he realized that this had only made both his hands and his clothes wet. So he stared at the wet shirt in his hands for a moment, wrung it out again, and wiped his hands on the dry clothes he was wearing once more.
Gojo Satoru had said, “You look so unmotivated. It seems you don’t realize how amazing Gojo-sensei is~”
The white-haired young man cracked his knuckles, then tilted his head to meet the eyes of the boy he was still holding upside down and smiled. “So your sensei will let Toyama see for himself first. How about it?”
Toyama Akira:……
Was that really the tone of someone asking? Just because you were smiling did not mean I could not tell that you were a smiling tiger. How despicable!
So Toyama Akira [smiled] too. Since Gojo Satoru was holding him upside down, all he had to do was purse his lips slightly to produce a perfect [smile curve].
“You even saw through th… I mean, no.”
Gojo Satoru:……
Did you not realize how incredibly forced that transition had been?
“May I refuse you?”
Gojo Satoru smiled. “Nope.”
Toyama Akira:……
Then why had he asked him?
How despicable.
Memory over. Toyama Akira finally gave his damp shirt one last, half-hearted wring. He had already spent half an hour dawdling in the changing room. If he dragged it out any longer, Gojo Satoru might come in and carry him out upside down again. Only then did Toyama Akira reluctantly shuffle out of the changing room.
One centimeter per step.
He thought that it did not really matter.
He had an escape technique, anyway.
When in doubt, running away was always the best strategy.
Besides…
Toyama Akira had just stepped out of the changing room when he saw his teacher standing in front of him with a cheerful smile, already forming some strange hand sign. Was the middle finger pressed behind the index finger? Then the teacher tugged down the high collar of his uniform and asked him with a smile,
“Ready?”
Could he say he was not ready? Toyama Akira grumbled inwardly as he slowly shuffled forward, the toes of his feet already angled toward an escape route. Then he nodded listlessly.
Fine. Time to run.
Gojo Satoru’s smile deepened.
“Then, domain expansion…”
Hmm?
What was that?
“[Infinite Void].”
Wha…
No…
What the heeeeeell was that?!