What Fear Fears Is Terror
Toyama Akira figured the man opposite him probably knew he was afraid.
How he had figured it out, Akira had no idea. He had not knelt, run, or screamed. He was merely drenched in cold sweat, deathly pale, and trembling in the legs. Could even that give away his fear?
Terrifying indeed!
Toyama Akira watched the man approach step by step. His feet, which seemed to have been glued to the floor by his own cold sweat, finally recovered their feeling. He instinctively took a step back, intending to teleport away at once, and then…
Black fluid descended behind him.
Toyama Akira turned his head instinctively.
The green hills and stone steps of Jujutsu High were completely submerged by the black fluid, and a black curtain descended from the sky. Yet it seemed to be more than the [curtain] Gojo Satoru had mentioned to him once.
Was it some kind of special barrier?
The blackness that flowed down from the dome and enveloped everything seemed to faintly reveal a grid of dim light, square and crisscrossing like floor tiles. Then a strange voice, as if coming through a voice changer and transmitted through a receiver, began crackling beside his ear.
Toyama Akira’s foot, already moving back to teleport away, halted. His entire field of vision was enveloped by the black barrier, and he lost his sense of space.
But it didn’t matter. This was exactly what he had been training for. Even if his eyes could no longer provide spatial information, his feet remembered the point where he stood. All he needed was to visualize it in his mind,
and rely on his other senses…
Heat suddenly sprayed across the side of his face.
“It’s the imaginary cursed spirit’s space, you know.”
Toyama Akira’s pupils contracted. He spun around and saw the man’s face, which had somehow arrived right in front of him.
The man was smiling.
His fingers slipped between the smiling lips and slowly pried them apart. The mouth opened. The pitch-black oral cavity grew larger, and larger…
Large enough that Akira could almost see the black throat.
And then…
Right in front of the boy, he vomited out a cursed spirit.
Toyama Akira: ……
The boy calmly wiped the front of his face, which had been sprayed with the cursed spirit’s fluids.
His heart was equally calm.
[Fear level 29%]
Toyama Akira rather wanted to drop to his knees and beg the man through tears to stop frightening him.
But in reality, he had not shed a single tear so far. He was drenched in cold sweat, and his calves were trembling, but he still showed no sign of kneeling.
That was because Toyama Akira knew his limits. Not everyone was Gojo Satoru.
Not everyone, when faced with a weakling kneeling and begging for mercy, would instinctively feel exasperated at their uselessness…
Rather than…
Toyama Akira drew a deep breath. He had been moving straight backward, without changing the direction of his toes, and he had kept track of the length of each step. Therefore, even though the entire space had been dyed black, making direction and distance impossible to distinguish, he could still close his eyes and construct a three-dimensional coordinate system in his mind with himself as the origin. It was just that…
Toyama Akira exhaled. As the cursed spirit’s cold, sticky skin was about to brush against his cheek, he abruptly twisted sideways and dodged. That movement was like the prelude to something. The instant Akira evaded the attack, Kenjaku seemed to chuckle, and darkness suddenly surged behind him.
Countless cursed spirits rushed toward the boy.
……Like a black tide of cockroaches, a black sea made of densely packed insect shells that would fill his vision the instant he opened his eyes. But that was only an illusion. The black sea contained only inhuman compound eyes, dangling eyeballs, mucus, and smooth, fluid tissue, along with every other thing Toyama Akira felt he would physically vomit from touching.
He had no choice but to run…
Toyama Akira lowered his eyes. The soles of his feet left the ground.
The coordinate axes derived from the origin instantly contracted, and the boy teleported away from the origin. The mental space he had constructed shattered in an instant.
Not everyone was Gojo Satoru.
Not everyone, when faced with a weakling kneeling and begging for mercy, would instinctively feel exasperated at their uselessness…
Rather than…
Draw a blade the instant they saw a weakling, eager to torment them even more.
“Toyama-kun, I mean you no harm. I only want to discuss something with you.”
In the pitch-black space, the boy’s figure was actually nowhere to be seen. Only streaks of light, like the tails of meteors, flashed through the darkness. Each sudden appearance tore through the black tide, instantly blasting apart multiple cursed spirits. Then the boy would briefly appear amid the sky full of blood and slime from the shattered spirits, seemingly to come out for some air, or perhaps to…
“Urk!”
Avoid vomiting in his own space.
Toyama Akira’s mind no longer had the strength to think about something like, [You really are after me. You even know my name.] He was still doing his best to dodge the chunks of cursed spirits raining down on him.
How should he put it? He felt that slicing open a cursed spirit with a flash, then appearing in a cool pose amid a sky full of cursed-spirit corpses, would surely look incredibly impressive.
But when imagining a cool entrance, all he had to do was move his brain. When he was actually being drenched in a foul-smelling rain of corpses, there were many more things to consider…
So Toyama Akira dodged while…
“Urk! I know… cough, cough, urk! So please… cough, urk! put the cursed spirits away… urk, then I can talk… cough cough cough cough…”
Kenjaku: ……
Kenjaku watched the boy, who was vomiting violently while moving through the tide of cursed spirits like a startled rabbit. He regarded him with a complicated, peculiar look for quite some time before folding his hands and smiling with lowered eyes.
“All right.”
He said it.
Then he watched as every cursed spirit he had summoned was pierced through from behind the boy by streaks of light like comet tails, creating a black rain across the sky.
Except for the pale boy at the front, who looked as though he might die from vomiting in the next second.
Not a single one survived.
Toyama Akira and Kenjaku both understood that this discussion was not as simple as it appeared on the surface.
Kenjaku might not have originally intended to [discuss] anything. His initial plan might not have been to [test the boy’s capabilities, then discuss matters] so gently. More likely, he had intended to eliminate him outright.
Toyama Akira still did not know why, or why it had to be him. He had already kept such a low profile and stayed home so much, so why were people still refusing to leave a shut-in alone?
Did he really want Akira dead? Fine, then kill him directly instead of frightening him with something like this!!
As promised, Kenjaku snapped his fingers. Somehow, all the fragments, chunks of corpses, and pus from the cursed spirits were swept away in an instant. He still did not withdraw the barrier resembling a black curtain, though. He was probably afraid the boy would escape.
Toyama Akira was not standing on the ground. He remembered that every floor tile here seemed to have been smeared with the cursed spirits he had crushed into fragments with his space earlier. Toyama Akira: ……
Toyama Akira stood calmly on the steps of his own space. From his elevated position, he looked down and…
“Urk!”
Kenjaku, who had been about to speak: ……
Toyama Akira and Kenjaku were probably in a situation where neither could do anything to the other.
Every cursed spirit Kenjaku summoned could be easily pierced through and exorcised by Toyama’s space.
And Toyama…
“Urk! Once you’re done… cough, cough, urk! hurry up and send me back. I feel like there’s a strange smell here… urk.”
Kenjaku: ……
If the boy had not been vomiting as he spoke, Kenjaku probably would not have realized that there was any strange smell.
Toyama Akira was genuinely afraid of cursed spirits. Physically afraid. Even now, he was doing his best to resist the urge to smooth down the gooseflesh on his arms. He felt as if the aura of cursed spirits had gotten onto his hands, making them filthy, as though an African giant snail had dragged its disease-ridden body across his arm, leaving behind a sticky, damp trail.
Toyama Akira did his best to restrain his fear. The fear level that had been rising rapidly earlier had been nearly exhausted after he killed all the cursed spirits. If he continued to be afraid and lost consciousness now, the result would not be good. Being unable to control his body or clearly recognize what he was doing was not only dangerous, but uncomfortable as well. Toyama Akira wanted to avoid that.
So he had better come to the negotiating table.
Then he had to maintain his rationality and awareness as much as possible, before fear completely occupied his mind.
First, he had to find out…
“What exactly do you want?”
The boy raised his eyes, his gaze clear.
That is, if one ignored the corner of his mouth, still wet with saliva after his recent vomiting.
Kenjaku sighed. “I only came to see Toyama-kun…”
What a lie. A would-be murderer and a fraud.
“And, if possible, I would like Toyama-kun not to interfere with our plans at a critical moment.”
With the cursed spirits no longer interfering, Toyama Akira’s mind, still overactive from the lingering fear, worked rapidly. His deathly pale face remained stiff with terror, making him look excessively cold and severe. His gray-green eyes also appeared devoid of emotion.
“Will my cursed technique interfere with your plans?”
Toyama Akira quickly reached his conclusion. Before the smiling man opposite him could speak, his lips pursed as he clearly prepared to brush the matter aside with some subtle wording. Akira spoke bluntly again.
“Your plans are related to Gojo Satoru, aren’t they?”
“Toyama-kun, aren’t you being a little too perceptive…” Kenjaku finally let out a helpless sigh and smiled wryly.
“……If you’ve been locked in a cockroach house and made to stomp forty-nine cockroaches to death before being released, anyone would be too perceptive…”
Kenjaku understood the boy’s metaphor and raised his brows with a smile. “Oh, what an interesting metaphor. Toyama-kun, do you think cursed spirits are cockroaches?”
Toyama Akira was about to say something when he looked up and saw the man opposite him open his mouth wide again, preparing to pull another black lump wrapped around a cursed spirit from his throat.
Toyama Akira: ……
“Urk!”
……
“So…” Toyama Akira covered his stomach, wiped his mouth, and said weakly, “why do you people think I would save Gojo Satoru?”
The form of address [Gojo Satoru], along with the boy’s tone, which sounded as though he did not trust Gojo Satoru, made Kenjaku raise a brow. For an instant, he paid little attention to the deliberately natural, indifferent way Akira had pronounced [you people].
“Oh, as far as I know, Gojo Satoru was the one who brought you back to Jujutsu High. Is that information incorrect?”
The young man asked with a smile.
Toyama Akira’s lowered eyes flickered.
He had instinctively failed to avoid the word [you people]. That meant this man had a group, and there was a strong possibility he was on equal footing with the others, which was why Akira’s subconscious had settled on a collective term like [you people].
The address had changed from [Satoru] to [Gojo Satoru] after Akira deliberately used [Gojo Satoru]. It seemed that the earlier intimate address, [Satoru], had very likely been an act. It was probably what the original owner of this body had called Gojo-sensei. This man might not know Gojo-sensei personally, but he knew a great deal about him, and seemed quite wary of him as well.
The analysis took place in an instant, sweeping through the boy’s mind like flowing water.
On the surface, the boy merely lowered his head, making his eyes and brows impossible to see, and continued speaking without pause. “How does that count as [bringing me back]? He was the one who tied me up and dragged me back to Jujutsu High. Who would want to deal with things like cursed spirits anyway…? They’re disgusting.”
The boy’s final words were far too sincere. On top of that, as he spoke, he seemed to think of something else, and his expression changed at once. He immediately twisted his head aside and vomited again.
Kenjaku: ……
Kenjaku’s smile stiffened slightly, but he quickly returned to normal and said, “Even so…”
“It’s difficult to put my mind at ease when Toyama-kun is only saying that verbally.”
“Should we establish a binding vow?”
At those words, the boy’s trembling back, bent over from vomiting, went still. He wiped his mouth and raised his head to look over.
“You intend to do something to Gojo Satoru at some point, but you didn’t expect Gojo Satoru to take me on as a student. And my cursed technique happens to be capable of saving him, correct?”
“Really… speaking with an intelligent person like Toyama-kun isn’t always a pleasant experience.”
Toyama Akira nodded. “I understand. It’s just like how talking to you right now makes me want to… urk!”
Kenjaku: ……
Kenjaku was silent for a while. He began to wonder whether, if he prolonged the conversation, the boy might vomit himself to death.
“Cough, cough… so, all I have to do…”
The boy futilely dry-heaved stomach acid while speaking with difficulty, his brows drawn together. “All I have to do is establish a binding vow with you, and you’ll let me go today, correct?”
Toyama Akira lowered his head and vomited. This was not an act. His stomach was constantly cramping from fear, and stomach acid burned its way up his throat, bringing up fine threads of painful blood. His lowered, unfocused gaze passed through the transparent space beneath his feet and landed on the floor, wavering indistinctly. His pupils constricted again and again. When he had landed earlier, Kenjaku had even joked, “Forty-nine cursed spirits. At this rate, Toyama-kun could probably qualify for special grade with ease.” At the same time, the electronic sound in Akira’s heart, repeating endlessly like an alarm, seemed to play over and over in response.
[Fear level 49%]
[Fear level 49%]
[Fear level 49%]
[Fear level…….]
Like some terrible alarm, it had never once exceeded 50%.
What would happen if it did?
He was already having trouble maintaining his rationality. He could not afford to gamble on this.
“That depends on what sort of binding vow Toyama-kun establishes.”
The young man smiled.
Toyama Akira smiled as well, though the slight curve of his lips was quickly suppressed by pain. The boy knitted his brows, pressed a hand to his still-cramping stomach, and slowly straightened. “All right.”
“If you do not summon any more cursed spirits or do anything else that would frighten me before allowing me to leave safely, then I will not save Gojo Satoru at the point when you intend to do something to him. If I violate the vow…”
Toyama Akira drew out the words and raised his head, staring straight at the man who had been watching him all along.
The man was still smiling, but the smile had clearly grown more rigid. His pupils contracted slightly, suggesting that he was also very concerned about the terms of Akira’s binding vow.
Toyama Akira paused and suppressed the corners of his mouth. He squeezed his eyes shut, his brow furrowing painfully, as though he had made some difficult decision that went against his ancestors.
“Then I will die without entering the cycle of reincarnation, and my soul and spirit will be annihilated.”
His words fell.
The binding vow took effect.
The sufficiently ruthless condition instantly wrapped around the demand Kenjaku had made.
“Is that acceptable?”
The pale boy, slightly hunched as though vomiting had left him in agony, looked over with a painful tremor between his brows.
Kenjaku froze. He wanted to nod, but some inexplicable instinct told him that something was wrong. The boy’s vow was indeed as ruthless as it could possibly be.
“……Acceptable.”
“One more thing. Nothing that happened today can be mentioned to Gojo Satoru. You must keep it secret from anyone connected to Gojo Satoru or standing on his side.”
“All right.”
The boy showed no hesitation.
In an instant, the binding began to wind around them, gradually tightening…
[Fear level……]
[Fear level percent,]
[percent,]
[49%]
[50%]
[49%]
[50……]
The color of the boy’s eyes shifted constantly, his pupils trembling unconsciously.
It was as if a long-neglected needle were trembling between 49% and 50%, dragging out the harsh sound of rusted gears grinding against one another. At the brink of the threshold, when the rust-covered needle could no longer hold and began to sink with the turning gears, its tip about to settle on 50%…
“I’ll be going, then…”
The boy raised his head.
He patted Kenjaku on the shoulder.
“All right…?”
Kenjaku froze and realized that, for some reason, the boy’s hand on his shoulder had reached him from behind.
Hm?
His returning consciousness first reminded Kenjaku that the boy who had just been speaking should have been standing in front of him.
A moment later, his returning awareness finally registered…
The body pierced through, the blood exploding outward.
And, like the chunks of cursed-spirit corpses earlier, it erupted into a sky full of blood behind the boy, who now stood behind him.
Compared with the blood and chunks of cursed spirits, the boy seemed to find human blood somewhat less frightening.
Kenjaku’s stiffly shifting eyes caught the boy’s expression as it relaxed for an instant, pale and splattered with blood.
[Fear level 49%]
With one last thread of reason remaining, the boy wiped at his face. His eyes flickered between ink-black and gray-green, while clotted blood matted the black hair scattered over his shoulders. Blood splashed across his pale face like falling plum blossoms. Like a killer from a night of Saw, the boy’s eyes shifted for a long while before he finally broke into a smile.
They settled into a slightly deeper green.
“…Go find Gojo-sensei.”
This was the boy’s last shred of reason.
“And be sure to tell him…”
When Kenjaku’s body hit the ground, his pupils were still trembling at those words.
The binding vow had clearly stipulated that he could not tell Gojo Satoru…
“I can finally have my soul and spirit utterly destroyed.”
…
Huh?