Strange Person
After wearing bandages at Jujutsu High for about a week, Toyama Akira had more or less gotten used to the school’s layout. He could now move around it as easily as if he were on level ground, even without his sight. He did not have Gojo Satoru’s all-knowing Six Eyes, but his dynamic perception was enough to let him live normally while blindfolded. Though, to be fair, he was not exactly living normally.
He was either teleporting or on his way to teleport somewhere. Having lost his sight, his fear level remained sky-high every day. Sometimes, all a student had to do was pat him on the shoulder from behind, and Jujutsu High would gain a calm-faced, expressionless-from-terror, rocket-powered hamster.
And then someone would use the entirety of Jujutsu High as his hamster wheel and dash all over the place.
Once, Fushiguro Megumi had just returned to Jujutsu High when a black-haired boy suddenly appeared and dropped to his knees right in front of him. Fushiguro Megumi: …
Fushiguro Megumi stood there for a full thirty seconds before calmly and slowly retracting, one finger at a time, the hand that had abruptly released his water bottle.
After thinking for a long while, he finally inhaled and prepared to say something. At that moment, the boy in front of him seemed to realize for the first time that there was someone there. He was startled again, then instantly fled.
Fushiguro Megumi, who had just inhaled: …
Fortunately, his phone happened to ring.
“Hey, Megumi, what’s with that guy…”
Fushiguro Megumi exhaled. “He’s very energetic.”
Gojo Satoru: …
Toyama Akira could use dynamic vision to support his daily life. After all, aside from answering the perfectly sealed spatial cube that was the Schrödinger’s cat box of his dorm room, he was basically in motion all day. Life lay in movement.
As for stationary objects, Toyama Akira truly had some trouble sensing what they looked like.
For example, his classmates at Jujutsu High had spent an entire week giving him skirts to wear.
Although he had been tricked before, the boy seemed to have no defenses in this area. All they had to do was tell him, as he felt the fabric and seemed to wonder about its length, “It’s just a pair of shorts, you know?”
Then the unconcerned boy would nod. “Mm-hmm.” And continue feeling the fabric.
No insect shells. No slimy snails. No cursed spirits. No sharp sensations.
Safe.
So the boy accepted the skirt without worry.
When he put it on, feeling it made him think something was not quite right. But then he felt the safety shorts beneath the skirt, and that seemed to confirm it was right after all.
The people at Jujutsu High watched the boy put on the skirt, looking like a quiet young girl, only to hike it up and brazenly feel around inside for the safety shorts.
…
They were silent. They felt guilty. They knew it was wrong, but…
Still…
“Click.”
Toyama spent a miraculous week living the life of a girl, but Toyama himself knew nothing about it.
He had not removed his bandages even once this time. Whenever one of his classmates gave him clothes, he would smell them and feel them as usual. If he found no insect shells and smelled no cursed spirit, he would put them on without a second thought.
The people at Jujutsu High: …
He was a little too obedient.
It made them feel rather guilty.
So, while feeling guilty, they took all kinds of pictures and sent them to their friends at the Kyoto school, forwarding a copy to Gojo-sensei as well.
At first, Gojo Satoru watched as his students, who normally never contacted him and always said that the age gap was too large and they had nothing to talk about, began sending him messages one after another. He complained as he opened them, but the smile on his face was perfectly honest.
Then he saw the black stockings, white legs, and short skirt, and his expression turned solemn as he closed the message.
Gojo Satoru’s supercomputer of a Six Eyes brain flashed through a number of possibilities.
They had meant to send a screenshot of a chat with someone else and accidentally sent it to him.
They had been browsing some website and accidentally tapped the wrong button, sending it to him.
…In short, they had sent it to him by accident.
The first possibilities were easy enough to deal with. He would save the screenshots and have a good laugh at their expense when he returned.
But there was another, far worse possibility.
Gojo Satoru spent a long time mentally preparing himself for the possibility that one of his students had gone astray.
Then he took a deep breath and clicked into the message again. When he saw the familiar bandages, Gojo Satoru went silent.
All right. Someone had indeed gone astray.
But it was another guy.
If it was Toyama Akira, then it did not matter.
There was still a week before Gojo Satoru returned to Jujutsu High, so Toyama decided to go down the mountain and test the results of his recent training.
After tying his hair for a few days, the boy quickly became deft at it. He returned the hair tie to Maki, and from then on, whenever he bound the bandages over his eyes, his hands naturally carried the ends around the back of his head and tied up the little bit of hair at the back, making it look like a small braid.
Then there was the white shirt and dark short skirt. At first, Maki and the others had teased him into wearing black stockings. He had worn them once and then refused.
Before that, no matter what they asked him to wear, the boy had basically never refused. Only this time did everyone assume that he could see, or that he had realized what they had given him.
Instead, they heard the boy say with absolute seriousness, “These stockings snag easily. If I have to run away, they might catch on something and slow me down.”
The people at Jujutsu High: …
His original principles remained unchanged. He was simply following them at a steady pace.
Still, when Toyama Akira was about to go down the mountain, everyone stopped teasing him and properly gave him the boys’ uniform.
On the one hand, it was for the boy’s dignity, which he himself did not particularly care about. On the other hand, there was truly no dissonance whatsoever when he wore girls’ clothes. He looked quiet and reserved, with an air that made him seem easy to bully, which meant he probably would be easy to bully. Everyone had a feeling that he would run into some strange people the moment he went down the mountain.
…Although the sight of the boy fleeing, his calf muscles tensing as he hitched up his skirt and shot away at top speed, was also rather shocking to the eyes.
After the others explained the situation, Toyama Akira changed clothes despite not understanding why.
He had no particular awareness that some clothes were unsuitable, nor did he believe in the principle that a gentleman should not stand beneath a dangerous wall.
Instead, he said:
“I’m always beneath dangerous walls anyway…”
“I’ll run into strange people no matter what I wear…”
“I’m going to die sooner or later…”
Inumaki, who had led Toyama to change clothes: …
The white-haired boy shuddered violently. For some reason, he felt that the chill behind him was even more sinister than the resentment of a special-grade cursed spirit.
He was only going down the mountain. What could possibly go wrong?
That was what Toyama thought. Over the past few days, he had been unable to see anything, yet he could still use his cursed technique throughout Jujutsu High. As a result, he had built safe rooms a thousand meters aboveground and a thousand meters underground.
By teleporting different parts of his body, such as completing a wave through teleportation, he could form smaller spaces. There were even smaller ones. When Gojo Satoru had previously tied Toyama Akira to a hospital bed, Toyama had moved his fingers through teleportation, forming a space as thin as a blade, then used that spatial edge to cut through the restraints.
Thus, Toyama Akira was familiar with, and skilled at, creating [spaces] of different sizes and even different shapes.
If Gojo Satoru knew, he would probably have been greatly pleased. It had only been a month since the boy had learned about his cursed technique, yet he had already developed it to an astonishing degree.
Spatial constructs that could, in concept, [pass through anything] would be unstoppable weapons. A small spatial blade could be used as a concealed weapon to pass through someone’s skull. A large space-cutting slash could even cut a city in half. A vertical space could fall like a hammer from the heavens.
For digging wells.
Toyama Akira discovered that vertical spaces were truly excellent for digging wells.
He dug a thousand-meter well behind Jujutsu High. Then he used the same space to build a safe room a thousand meters in the air.
Large spaces could be used as walls, small spaces as tiles, and thin, small spaces could then be used to join them together, creating a safe room. It was practically an impregnable fortress.
And in these spatial walls, only he could enter, and only he could pass through. He could teleport into the [spatial wall] at any time and then enter the safe room within.
Thus, Toyama Akira used a somewhat larger spatial wall as a [door]. It was large enough for him to teleport into the space and pass through it.
The only problem with this safe room was that living people could not survive inside. There was not enough oxygen, and the temperature was low, among other issues. Still, it seemed nice to die inside. That way, no one could carry away his corpse and perform strange experiments on it to extract his soul.
Although he could not rule out the possibility of someone torturing his soul without needing his corpse…
So he still had to stay alive.
The next day, Gojo Satoru looked at the spending records on the family card linked to his account.
[Essential oxygen-breathing apparatus for climbing the Himalayas × 1000]
Gojo Satoru stared at the words [Himalaya] in silence.
“…”
…It hadn’t been long at all, and he already had a second substitute lined up.
It was not as if he was jealous.
Could one person really find so many substitutes for their white moonlight…?
So he was not jealous.
He was only going down the mountain. What could possibly go wrong?
After recalling the two safe rooms he had built at Jujutsu High, one in the sky and one underground, Toyama Akira confidently left the school and descended the mountain. He continued until he reached the last step leading away from Jujutsu High. He was familiar with every step. He had measured them all with his knees. Now, he was about to set foot on unfamiliar ground.
He was only walking. What could possibly go wrong?
Okay. He seemed to have stepped on something.
Ha ha. That did not seem good.
All right, he had tripped.
“Aaaah!”
During the thirty seconds before he fell, Toyama Akira had to decide whether to question the familiar surroundings first, [There wasn’t a rock here yesterday. What happened?], or fear the unfamiliar future, [What? I’m about to fall. I don’t know this ground ahead of me. What if my forehead happens to hit a cockroach corpse?]
Toyama Akira chose…
“Careful, classmate.”
His falling hand, dragged downward by gravity and completely out of control, was suddenly caught. Toyama Akira stiffened at the unfamiliar contact, then jolted and instinctively tried to flee. But his wrist was held and pulled upward. Whether because his body had been restrained or because his mind had yet to react, he failed to teleport away for an instant.
He steadied himself. Teleporting away now would not be appropriate.
Because the person who had caught him and kept him from falling was human.
A human body. Warm body heat. A gentle male voice above his head. And the faint cursed energy of an ordinary person, not enough to trigger an excessive reaction in him.
“Thank you…”
The bandages concealed the boy’s expression. All the stranger could see was that, after straightening up, he quickly pulled his hand away and took a few steps back. It was unclear whether his face had always been that pale, or whether he had been frightened pale by his near fall.
“It’s nothing. Can you see the road while wearing those bandages?”
It was a very pleasant voice. An ordinary person might have praised its clear timbre and gentle tone.
Unfortunately, the person standing opposite him was not an ordinary person. Toyama Akira merely thought to himself that it was a voice so pleasant it immediately sounded like, “He must be a con man.”
“Hmm. From the looks of it, you’re Satoru’s student.”
There was about a meter or two between Toyama Akira and the unfamiliar man. His first instinct was to think that Maki and the others had said he looked just like Gojo Satoru merch once he put on the bandages. Now, it seemed they had been right.
But he did not obediently answer the man, who seemed to know Gojo Satoru. Instead, he took another step back and raised his head. This time, his bandaged eyes quickly turned toward the man’s face, though he still could not see.
“Are you here to see Gojo-sensei?”
Toyama Akira pretended to ask. After waiting a few seconds without receiving an answer, he continued on his own.
“You’re here to see me, aren’t you?”
Toyama Akira took another step back. “You deliberately waited outside Jujutsu High’s [curtain], the only place where I might stop for a moment instead of immediately teleporting away. After I appeared, you deliberately concealed your presence so that you would not frighten me away. I do not know why I was unable to use my cursed technique when you touched me. Then, when I was already wary, you brought up Gojo-sensei…”
Although the boy’s words were aggressive, his tone remained calm and slightly timid. His feet moved back another step.
This distance was good. While stalling with his words, he had tested it. His cursed technique could now activate normally.
So the boy imitated the young man’s earlier phrasing and said, “From the looks of it, you’re Gojo-sensei’s enemy.”
The man had remained silent until then. Only now did he pause strangely before smiling. “I might be his best friend.”
The boy immediately followed up. “Then you were best friends first, and enemies afterward.”
Toyama Akira suppressed the urge to run. Countless pieces of information were intertwining in his mind, and the feedback he received was far greater than what he showed on the surface.
He was only human… There was nothing to fear.
For the moment, reason had overcome that hint of fear.
His rational mind told him that the person before him was only human. If he removed his bandages now and saw this strange man clearly, determining that he was indeed Gojo-sensei’s enemy, gaining more information would be more important.
So the boy slowly reached behind his head. He unconsciously held his breath as he monitored the man’s movements. While untying the bandages and letting his hair fall loose, he tried to appear calm and composed as he bought time.
“I’d like to know where you got that misunderstanding of me, little friend.”
Toyama Akira paused at being called [little friend].
It was not that he felt anything strange. He merely thought that it sounded like the sort of thing a smiling mastermind and great villain would say from behind the scenes. But the man was probably human, right? It was only his imagination. Just his imagination.
“You said you were Gojo-sensei’s friend, but when you saw me, you said, [From the looks of it, you’re Satoru’s student], instead of, [From the looks of it, you’re the new student Satoru just took in]. Gojo-sensei only has a few students. The jujutsu world should know exactly who they are. So if you were making an observation, you could only have been referring to the new student Gojo-sensei took in, me. But you didn’t. As Gojo-sensei’s friend, you don’t know that he recently took on a new student? Or did your subconscious instinctively try to conceal how much you knew, while you also tried to bring up Gojo-sensei to establish a sense of psychological closeness with me, and simply failed to organize your words properly, sir?”
One loop of bandage fell away. Toyama Akira tilted his head slightly, letting the bandage slide down the bridge of his nose.
“If you’re Gojo-sensei’s friend, why did you deliberately do something that would make me wary at the very beginning?”
“I did help you up, didn’t I?”
Toyama Akira’s eyelashes seemed to tremble. The two loose loops of bandage resting on them stirred as well, as if a subtle ripple had passed across the boy’s face. It was cold, almost mocking, but the feeling soon sank beneath his restrained, lowered lashes.
“You know that isn’t what I mean. I’ve been properly training my dynamic perception lately.”
“You deliberately concealed your presence and deliberately approached me in a way that would [not frighten me]. I did not realize there was anyone in front of me until you caught me.”
“There’s something on you that prevents people from using their cursed techniques…”
It was phrased as a certainty.
But Toyama Akira was actually testing him. He drew out the final sound, and when no answer came, lowered the lingering note into a definite statement.
“You arrived a little too coincidentally. You happened to be outside Jujutsu High’s [curtain], encountering me, someone who only ever stops at the school gate for a moment to test his cursed technique before immediately teleporting away.”
“Is it simply that you dislike entering Jujutsu High by nature, or is it that you [can’t]?”
“You know quite a lot about me.”
The second loop of bandage fell away. With each loosened loop, the black hair tied together at the back of his head came loose a little more, falling in wisps before his slightly lowered, listless gray-green eyes.
“That doesn’t match the way you acted when you first met me, saying, [From the looks of it, you’re Satoru’s student].”
“How did you obtain information about me? From Jujutsu High? Or the Kyoto school? Maki and the others also send information about me to their friends at the Kyoto school.”
The final loop of bandage slowly fell away. While buying time, Toyama Akira used space to test whether he still had a way to teleport away. At the same time, he considered how to obtain more information from this unfriendly intruder.
“…You’re far more interesting than my other children.”
“I couldn’t tell that you were married young.”
Was it his imagination…? That tone, those words, they really did sound like something a great villain would say.
It should be fine. He was only human. What was there to fear?
“I’m starting to like you. The sharpness you’re showing in front of me is quite different from what was in the intelligence reports.”
“Thanks for liking me, but maybe don’t like me just yet.”
“……You might be even more interesting to me than Gojo Satoru.”
“Thanks for the interest, but maybe don’t be interested in me just yet.”
This was getting bad. Why did it feel as if these were the kind of lines a great villain would use to set ominous flags over certain members of the protagonist’s party……?
It was fine. He was human, after all. He wasn’t afraid.
Just watch him.
The bandage fell away completely.
Reflected in Toyama Akira’s gray-green eyes was the unmistakably inhuman stitch across the forehead of the young man in monk’s robes standing before him. For an instant, it felt as if his own mouth had been sewn shut.
The monk’s robes, completely out of place in modern society and more than a little cultish. The stitches on his head, which looked as if they could be opened like a box. The smiling, foxlike eyes. If this were a manga, every commentary creator in the world would point at this character and say, [This bastard is definitely the mastermind].
And although his cursed energy, aura, and body all appeared human, the instant Toyama Akira saw this man, the feeling of electricity running through his entire body and leaving him numb made him certain that this guy was absolutely not human.
It was like thinking he was on the set of “There Is Only One Truth,” only to open his eyes and discover that the culprit was actually the boss from Ju-On.
Toyama Akira: ……
This was not his set.
The fingers Toyama Akira held behind his back were already clenched white. His gaze drifted off to the side, half his soul already gone. But he was afraid that his fear would show. In horror movies, showing fear when confronted by the boss had always meant the background music was about to start, followed by the grand prize of being chased. Thus, although Toyama Akira had already lost three souls and seven spirits, the last thread of his rationality still supported him as he answered in a daze.
“You certainly…… don’t look like someone who married young.”
God, what was he saying?
“Is this someone else’s body?”
……God, sew his mouth shut.
The young man opposite him seemed to pause. His smiling, phoenix-shaped eyes opened fully, reflecting the pale appearance of the boy before him.
……
“It is, yes.”
[In this world, someone might even make use of your body after you die, you know?]
[They might even take your soul and refine it for their own purposes!]
Toyama Akira’s heart and pupils constricted at the same time.
The boy pressed his lips tightly together. His clenched fingers tightened one by one into fists. Then he turned his head and faced the long-haired young man before him, whose inhuman presence was overwhelming. He took a deep breath, tensed every muscle in his body, and schooled his expression into solemnity. After preparing himself mentally, he said:
“I never knew Gojo-sensei had a friend like you. He should have introduced us sooner. I completely misunderstood.”
“Oh, right. What were you saying just now? You came to Jujutsu High to see Gojo-sensei, didn’t you? He’s right now…… Why don’t I call him for you……”
“Gojo-sensei, wait, wait, wait, there’s no need to be so enthusiastic……”