What Reassured Him
Gojo Satoru swore that he had been walking down the road perfectly normally, just like any other morning when he had work.
The morning sunlight was beautiful, the air was fresh, and the road was clean.
It inevitably reminded him of the day he had met Toyama Akira…
The boy who had suddenly appeared in front of him, the leg he had suddenly been hugged around, the deep trail of blood that had suddenly stretched for several miles…
……
Hm? What blood trail?
Gojo Satoru looked down. The boy hugging his leg, his face smeared with blood and even scraps of flesh tangled in his hair, lifted his head.
When had he…
Gojo Satoru: ……
Just as he had on the day he met Toyama Akira, Gojo Satoru clenched his fist, reached out, and tremblingly brushed aside the boy’s bangs. When he saw those familiar eyes and brows, his hand trembled again before he silently lowered it.
“Gojo-sensei, let me tell you…”
“Hm? Why are you leaving?”
“I went to sleep at 5:20 today. Looks like I haven’t woken up yet.”
Toyama Akira: ……
It was already 13:14, no, it was already one in the afternoon.
“……What happened?”
Toyama Akira had not fully regained his senses. The color of his eyes continued shifting through shades of dark and light. Gojo Satoru had him by the collar, while Akira clung tightly to his trouser leg.
Gojo Satoru: ……
Toyama Akira’s consciousness was still terribly muddled. His subconscious and his reason twisted and tore at each other, while one thought continued to echo through his mind.
[Find Gojo Satoru]
[Stay by Gojo Satoru’s side]
Why?
The program would stop running at this point.
Why?
Like lines of code flickering on and off, the words would flash across a black screen.
[He is the strongest…]
A question mark appeared again.
[He can protect you…]
Another question mark appeared.
Or was it…
[He can protect…]
[the ordinary people who are about to face you after you lose your mind?]
Toyama Akira had originally thought that returning to Gojo Satoru would bring his fear level down from its terrifying 49%.
While he still had that last sliver of reason, he watched his fear level approach 50%. His remaining rationality immediately drove him to make a decision. He pierced that man through, his body becoming drenched in blood. At the same moment his cursed technique activated, the needle that had been pressing heavily toward 50% seemed to suddenly lose the weight forcing it downward and snapped back to 49%.
Thus, Toyama Akira had more or less figured it out. Once his fear level rose, the only way to lower it was probably to use his cursed technique.
He still had 1% of his reason left, so he had quickly found Gojo Satoru, thinking that perhaps he would feel safe once he reached him, and that his stubbornly high fear level might even drop to zero.
Even if that did not work, Gojo Satoru was the person Akira currently knew who was most likely to stop him after he lost his mind.
Only…
Gojo Satoru stared for a while at the red fabric of the boy’s collar, so saturated with blood that a single squeeze might wring more out of it. His mouth set heavily, giving away nothing of his expression. He only rubbed his fingers, wet and slick with blood, then, after who knew how many thoughts had passed through his mind, his face grim, reached to help the boy up.
“You really aren’t the one I was looking for…”
The cerebral cortex was still throbbing painfully under the constant shrill stimulation of [fear level 49%]. Toyama Akira knew that clinging to Gojo Satoru’s leg could not dispel his fear.
So he could only…
No one could tell what thoughts were going through the blood-streaked boy’s mind. He lowered his head, and the blood that had not yet dried stuck his hair to the side of his face. His loose hair fell to his shoulders before the blood finally slid along his jaw and dropped abruptly.
At the instant the falling drop of blood shattered, some other image seemed to overlap within Gojo Satoru’s Six Eyes…
His pupils contracted. Instinctively, he reached for the boy…
But his hand closed on empty air.
All he heard was the boy’s low, broken sigh dissolving into the air.
“You really aren’t it after all.”
Gojo Satoru stared at his hand, which had shot out, grasped at nothing, and had yet to withdraw, frozen in midair.
His mind took a step too long to process the boy’s words. Only then did he notice what came after that tone of disappointment, a tone that made his heart clench.
A pronoun. [It].
“……”
Gojo Satoru’s mouth, which had just fallen open in stunned bewilderment, snapped shut. His lips pressed into a straight line.
“One day, I’m going to tie you to Antarctica and throw you into a cursed spirit’s mouth.”
Fear could only be consumed by using his cursed technique…
The principle was rather like how, late at night, doing homework was the only way to use up one’s energy. If one played on one’s phone, played games, or read novels, one’s energy might even increase.
Toyama Akira knew that the mechanism behind this [fear level] was probably not so simple. Was it really safe to exchange fear for the use of his cursed technique? Yet when his fear surged, his reason would also disappear, and his cursed technique would be used without order. It was entirely possible, extremely possible, that he would be driven toward indiscriminate destruction. He might even become something truly terrifying.
When Toyama Akira was frightened out of his wits in a nightmare, he would sometimes wonder whether he could become a ghost too. That way, he would no longer be the one being frightened. But that choice was always the last resort. When a monster came chasing someone to their door, their first thought would certainly be to run, not to reach out and say, “Big brother, I don’t want to be human anymore either. Can I join you?”
Living as a [human] was Toyama Akira’s instinct.
To consume such a high fear level as 49%, it looked as though only a long trip to Antarctica would do…
The boy thought calmly while desperately suppressing the corners of his mouth.
When Gojo Satoru returned to Jujutsu High, he saw the traces of Toyama Akira’s earlier battle at the foot of the mountain.
The familiar remnants of the boy’s cursed energy, followed by…
The countless mingled scents of cursed spirits.
It was almost possible to picture how the boy had been surrounded and pursued the moment he left Jujutsu High.
The area around Jujutsu High had always been a cursed-spirit vacuum. There was no way so many cursed spirits of different levels and with such varied auras could have gathered at the foot of the mountain without someone arranging it.
Moreover, whoever had set this up had to know Toyama Akira’s circumstances very well. If curse users or other humans had tried to hunt the boy down, he might have easily killed them in return. But if it had been cursed spirits…
Gojo Satoru thought of the boy fainting after killing only a few cockroach cursed spirits in the training room. He also remembered how he had once tried to coax Akira into accompanying him on an exorcism mission, spending an entire month taking the long way around and waiting for the timid boy to walk out the door.
It was a little like carefully luring a rabbit out of its burrow, placing carrots down one at a time and waiting for it to slowly emerge.
Then some bastard had suddenly reached straight into the rabbit hole, dragged the rabbit out, and gotten beaten half to death by it.
Gojo Satoru: ……
“That kid is my student.”
Gojo Satoru shoved his clenched hand, the veins standing taut across its back, into his trouser pocket and kicked open the door to the old orange’s office.
“Even if someone gets to beat him up, it can only be me. No, I mean, I can only be the one to beat him up.”
Whoever had hunted Toyama Akira down had been extremely careful. The nearby surveillance cameras had [coincidentally] broken that day. Their battlefield had also been outside Jujutsu High’s [curtain], so the [curtain] had not recorded that person’s cursed energy. Combined with the chaotic traces of cursed spirits scattered across the site, the investigation had yielded no results at all.
They could only make a rough deduction. Whoever had surrounded Toyama Akira had definitely been targeting Gojo Satoru. It was obvious. Aside from Gojo, the boy had not dared offend anyone else. The attackers also had to know the boy’s cursed technique and habits extremely well. Somehow, they had even learned when Toyama Akira planned to go down the mountain for training. Gojo Satoru knew that Akira’s circle of friends was tiny. The only people who knew he was going down the mountain were people at Jujutsu High. Then…
Gojo Satoru remembered the pictures his student had kept sharing with him during that period. Although he did not want to look at them a second time, he dug them out anyway and asked his student whether he had shown that information to anyone else during those days. As expected, Maki and the others admitted that they had sent them to friends at the Kyoto school. So they had more or less found the source of the leak.
Someone capable of commanding so many cursed spirits. Someone capable of hiding so many cursed spirits in Tokyo.
Other than…
It could only be those old oranges. The three great families had never stopped raising all sorts of cursed spirits in their cursed warehouses.
Even if the old oranges had not been responsible…
Gojo Satoru cracked his knuckles.
It would not hurt to hit them first.
Jujutsu High had been under a bit of a pall these past few days. Everyone knew that Toyama Akira had barely begun his training before he had already gotten someone else killed instead. They also knew that Gojo Satoru had caused an uproar among the higher-ups because of it, an uproar that had kept Ieiri Shoko working overtime for several days. The Tokyo and Kyoto school student group chats had also been flooded by Miwa Kasumi with every frame of Gojo Satoru beating people up.
Looking at the pictures of Gojo Satoru, his expression cold, not even moving as a single snap of his fingers sent the roof flying, everyone at Jujutsu High: ……
They could not shake the feeling that their own heads were getting a little drafty.
The boy had been ambushed the instant he went down the mountain. Although every cursed spirit at the scene had clearly been dealt with by the boy, and the ambusher also appeared to have been seriously injured judging by the amount of blood, the one who had suffered the more serious injury was probably the boy’s already fragile mental state.
The boy had been frightened away again, and nobody knew where he had gone…
“He went to Antarctica! Where else would he go?!”
Whenever everyone asked where Toyama Akira had gone, Gojo Satoru would inexplicably slam his hand on the table and shout in fury. Everyone gradually realized that this was Gojo’s forbidden subject. They should not provoke him lately, especially not by mentioning…
“Huh, Sensei guessed right. How did you know Toyama went to… Mmph, mmph!”
Several people at Jujutsu High moved with lightning speed and covered Okkotsu Yuta’s mouth, while he still wore a bewildered expression.
But it was already too late. The moment Gojo Satoru heard the name [Toyama], his brain automatically filled in the blank.
[Antarctica].
The white-haired man rose at once. At 1.9 meters tall, he cast an oppressive shadow across the floor simply by standing up. The dark fabric of his uniform pulled taut, its creases stretching cleanly downward. Step by step, the heels of his dress shoes struck the wooden floor as he walked toward Okkotsu Yuta, whose mouth was being covered by his classmates on both sides.
The black-haired boy had both arms held by his classmates, yet still maintained the posture of someone holding out his phone to show them something.
Gojo Satoru did not need to remove his bandages or lean closer.
He could see the contents clearly.
A post on a social media feed, a photograph of a frozen, snow-covered wasteland devoid of human life, and a caption written in a familiar tone.
[What can the falling snow be compared to? To shedding one’s mortal shell and ascending to immortality…]
As Gojo Satoru stared at it, his grip on Okkotsu Yuta’s phone suddenly tightened as he broke into a broad grin.
As he read the words aloud, the phone case cracked.
“Shedding your mortal shell and ascending to immortality, huh…”
“Then Sensei will come and help you shed your mortal shell and ascend to immortality.”
“Crack…”
Okkotsu Yuta stared at the spiderweb of cracks across his phone screen. The instant Gojo Satoru vanished, he swiftly caught the phone. It still contained plenty of pictures of him and Rika.
He stared silently at the shattered screen for a long time.
Panda and the others assumed he was mourning the broken phone case.
“Come on, we told you not to mention Toyama or Antarctica in front of Satoru lately.”
“Mentaiko.”
“But don’t worry too much.” Maki patted Okkotsu on the shoulder. “The memory card should be fine. When Gojo gets back, squeeze him for a replacement and get an even better phone.”
Yet Okkotsu continued staring silently at the phone screen.
After quite some time, a dark shadow appeared and instantly shoved its way through everyone at Jujutsu High before clinging to Okkotsu’s shoulders. Its enormous inhuman lips opened and closed, releasing a buzzing sound that made any human who heard it suffer a headache.
“……”
“Rika…”
“So this isn’t some white-moonlight replacement getting discovered, followed by a chase where one runs and the other pursues, ending in a wife-chasing funeral pyre after all. Although it might actually be a funeral pyre.”