Tide Man
Toyama Akira had actually put a locator in every link of his spatial chain. Even Gojo Satoru’s Six Eyes could not see what had been placed inside a conceptual space like that. Still, Gojo would definitely have politely suspected that there was something inside.
So Toyama Akira had simply put a locator in every link of the spatial chain.
Gojo Satoru might guess that he had put something in there, but he probably would not guess that every single space contained something.
After all, no normal person would give someone a gift with eleven locators hidden inside it.
As Toyama Akira had expected, Gojo Satoru had marked the locator he gave him with his own cursed energy. So even if his Six Eyes could not see what was inside the space, he could still recognize that cursed-energy mark.
And just as Akira had expected, once Gojo found one of the locators he had secretly hidden, he would assume that there was only one.
So after putting the locator Gojo had given him back inside the pendant hanging at his chest, Toyama Akira patted his chest in relief.
Excellent.
He had successfully placed a locator on Gojo Satoru. That way, when Gojo encountered the point in the stitched-up brain’s plan, Akira would be able to immediately find Gojo’s location and rush over.
The reason Toyama Akira had been able to find Gojo’s exact location and cling to him for dear life immediately after encountering the stitched-up brain was that Gojo had happened to be returning from a mission. He had been in Tokyo, and Akira knew the feel of his cursed energy so well that even after losing consciousness, he had been able to follow the scent right to him.
However, Gojo Satoru would not necessarily always be in Tokyo.
He would not necessarily always be in the Northern Hemisphere, either.
If they were too far apart, Akira would not be able to sense Gojo’s aura. In order to learn Gojo’s location and hurry over even while he was in Antarctica, Toyama Akira thought Gojo’s idea was genius. All he had to do was put a locator on him.
“Sigh.”
The boy had already achieved his goal, but he still sighed with sorrowful brows and eyes. “If Sensei doesn’t like the gift…”
As he spoke, the boy reached toward Gojo Satoru’s neck, only for the young man to grab the spatial necklace and dodge away.
“Hey, hey, who said I don’t li… don’t want it anymore? Don’t think you can take back something after giving it to me.”
“Huh? Sensei likes it?” The boy started to withdraw his hand.
“Well, it’s passable. At least the design shows some taste.”
The boy stared at the necklace around Gojo Satoru’s neck.
Gojo Satoru ran his fingers over the necklace resting against his collarbone.
Everyone from Jujutsu High at the doorway watched the two of them perform their invisible-object routine.
“…”
“Inumaki, can you see it?”
“…Mentaiko.”
Had Inumaki been excluded from their world entirely?
“Panda, can you see it?”
“…The necklace they’re talking about? Uh, yeah… Maybe it’s something only humans can see?”
Don’t casually shift the blame onto a cursed corpse.
“Okkotsu, can you see it?”
“…”
“Ah, sorry. Rika was saying something… strange again just now. What were you asking, Maki?”
Zen’in Maki: “…”
She did not particularly want to know what strange thing Rika had been saying.
Zen’in Maki’s gaze shifted into the room. The white-haired teacher was holding air in his hands and lavishly praising it together with the black-haired boy.
When Gojo Satoru praised the air in his hands for the third time for being so transparent, Zen’in Maki: “…”
You two are being way too trendy.
After exchanging gifts, Gojo Satoru and Toyama Akira’s relationship became slightly more normal. Of course, if there were a word meaning something even less than [slightly], everyone at Jujutsu High would probably be delighted to adopt it.
The main reason was that the date of the battle Toyama Akira and Gojo Satoru had agreed on was approaching. Although Gojo was still somewhat reluctant to stop ordering Toyama around…
How should he put it? There was a certain nervous excitement to being a little terrified because the other person was completely insane, and then feeling even more strangely thrilled because he could order that insane person around while being terrified.
Gojo Satoru felt that his mental state was perfectly normal.
He still wanted to have Toyama write the next several mission reports that were completely untouched and due tomorrow, but teaching Toyama was, of course, more important now.
After all, when the boy used his cursed technique, he relied entirely on instinct, fear, and instinctive fear.
He lacked systematic knowledge of jujutsu, as well as physical training.
Most importantly, the boy’s control over cursed energy was still stuck at the [reckless] stage. Gojo suspected that the [sometimes being unable to remain rational because of excessive fear] Toyama had mentioned was also caused by this way of using cursed energy.
A jujutsu sorcerer was supposed to control negative emotions such as fear, not be controlled by them.
“So, let’s start by trying to hit this can with cursed energy.”
The boy’s gaze followed Gojo’s finger toward the two cans sitting on the cabinet by the wall.
“…Cursed energy?”
“Yep. Hit the first can with cursed energy, then use your cursed technique on the second one…”
“How do you use cursed energy?”
He left the sentence hanging.
Gojo Satoru: “…”
I guessed you were the crude, heavy-handed type, but I had not expected you to be this crude.
“Uh… well, imagine hitting something from a distance. Let the energy created by your emotions flow into your fingertips, then…”
Gojo watched the boy spread his feet, rotate his toes against the floor, incline his head slightly, furrow his brows, and extend two fingers with a firm, decisive expression as his cursed energy burst forth…
“…”
Gojo Satoru: “…”
“Did you hit it already?”
The boy hesitated.
“…I did hit it, right?”
Gojo turned around. He could see it without turning, of course, but turning around did give him a clearer view of the can on the cabinet. It looked exactly as it had a minute ago.
Gojo Satoru: “…”
After a long moment of thought, Gojo hooked a finger over his lips and said, “There is a live red cockroach inside that empty can. It is currently preparing to crawl out. Its antennae have already poked out of the opening, and it is about to…”
“Bang!”
“…Did I hit it?”
The boy, eyes tightly shut, spoke with trembling fingers.
Gojo Satoru: “…”
Gojo turned around.
“Were you talking about the can or the wall?”
Toyama Akira: “…”
“I was talking about the cockro…” Noticing Gojo’s gaze, Toyama Akira finished without changing expression, “…the can.”
Although the first step of the lesson, [recognizing cursed energy], had encountered a tiny little problem, Gojo Satoru decided to continue following the lesson plan.
“Good. Akira knows what cursed energy is now, right?”
“Huh? I don’t kno…” Noticing Gojo’s smiling face looking down at him, Toyama Akira smoothly changed his answer. “…I wouldn’t not know.”
Excellent. A double negative meaning yes. Next level.
Gojo pushed up his sunglasses, indicating that this part was complete. He put an arm around the boy’s shoulders and started leading him toward the sofa.
“Now, we’ll learn stable cursed-energy output. Let’s watch a movie!”
The boy stumbled when Gojo pulled him along. Only then, looking past the young man’s arm, did he notice that he had just wrecked part of the wall. He hesitantly spoke up.
“…Aren’t we going to fix the wall?”
“It’s only one wall.”
The white-haired young man did not even turn his head as he continued walking, his arm hooked around the boy’s.
“Huh?”
“Don’t worry, Akira. By the time you finish the movie, all four walls will probably have collapsed.”
Toyama Akira: “…”
The second wall collapsed just after Gojo Satoru brought out the cursed corpse Yaga used to test cursed energy.
Toyama Akira had almost managed to convince himself to listen to Gojo and hug the ugly, ugly-looking doll. But the moment he touched it…
“Bang!”
The cursed corpse, sensing the boy’s surging emotions, immediately threw a punch.
Then the boy punched it away.
Gojo Satoru: “…”
Two self-criticisms.
The first was for the wall Toyama Akira had broken.
After a while, Toyama Akira stared blankly at his hand, then looked up at the wall the cursed corpse had crashed through. Only then did some sense return to him through the cold sweat covering his body. “Sorry, Gojo-sensei. My dynamic vision is a little too good.”
When Gojo Satoru retrieved the cursed corpse, he looked at the newly broken wall.
Okay. Three self-criticisms.
Gojo placed a hand over the boy’s cold, sweaty one. Since the boy had broken the cursed corpse that measured fluctuations in cursed energy, the strongest, whose Six Eyes could measure cursed energy, would simply act as the boy’s human cursed corpse.
“Huh? Ah, ah… There’s no need to trouble yourself, Gojo-sensei…”
The sofa was a little small. Toyama Akira had already felt uncomfortable when he and Gojo sat down on it, especially because Gojo, completely unaware of anything, had casually leaned back. With his long arms and legs, he draped an arm behind the boy’s neck, his long legs crossed in front of the boy’s toes. Toyama Akira felt as though he had been entirely enveloped in Gojo’s presence.
“It’s not a matter of troubling me…”
The man’s hand pressed down, easily pinning the boy’s hand, which was gripping the sofa cushion. His fingers curled slightly, the veins showing along the faintly arched back of his hand. Then, suddenly, he pressed down on the hand that instinctively wanted to flee in alarm, pinning it in place. The sofa cushion sank slightly beneath it, then sprang back.
Completely captured. Escape sealed.
Gojo Satoru still had one leg crossed over the other. He did not look at the boy beside him, whose entire body had gone rigid in an instant.
“The cursed corpse just broke. There’s really nothing in this room more durable than Gojo-sensei…”
Toyama Akira: “…”
The boy’s throat felt dry and tight. He turned his head away and took a long while to find his voice again.
“Gojo-sensei.”
“Hm?”
“I won’t allow you to call yourself a thing.”
Gojo Satoru: “…”
“Bang!”
Toyama Akira looked at the cursed corpse’s fist as it shot toward Gojo Satoru’s face, only to be stopped by Limitless.
He swallowed, then calmly pointed at the cursed corpse and spoke to the grim-faced Gojo beside him.
“See? The cursed corpse isn’t broken.”
Gojo Satoru broke the cursed corpse.
Toyama Akira was pinned to the sofa by Gojo’s grip on his hand and made to continue watching the movie.
“Let’s start with an arthouse film.”
Gojo pressed the button on the remote.
“Let’s not put on anything too stimulating yet.”
The boy hesitated at that.
“Can we watch something about the sea…”
Gojo turned around. “Aquaman?”
“Operation Sea Wolf?”
“Dolphin Bay Romance?”
“Sea…”
Toyama Akira: “…”
For a moment, Toyama Akira had no idea how to say the words [SpongeBob SquarePants].
…
Half an hour later, Gojo Satoru put on SpongeBob SquarePants for the boy who had just returned from Antarctica.
The boy watched Patrick seriously, his emotions perfectly stable.
Gojo Satoru seriously watched the emotionally stable boy and wondered why.
“…Why are you afraid even during an arthouse film?”
“The background music is scaring me.”
“You were afraid when it was muted in the middle, too.”
“The visuals were scaring me.”
“You were afraid during the empty shots at the end, when there were no visuals or sound…” Gojo, who had nearly taken a half-day trip to Antarctica just now, grabbed the boy, who had taken a full-day trip to Antarctica just now. He tugged at his hair in disbelief. “Are the empty shots scaring you, too?”
The boy was silent for a moment.
“Teacher, you’re scaring me, too.”
Gojo Satoru: “…”
Gojo inhaled and considered switching SpongeBob to a curse about a sea demon. Then he thought of Antarctica, and the distance between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. In the end, he inhaled again and switched SpongeBob 1 to SpongeBob 2.
After doing that, Gojo collapsed onto the sofa and stared at the ceiling, reflecting on his teaching career.
What could make the boy a little afraid, without making him so terrified that he could cross from one hemisphere to the other every time and find love thousands of miles away?
As Gojo pressed his fingers to his throbbing temples, he felt the sofa moving, too.
He turned his head and saw the boy looking down, tugging at his sleeve and fidgeting as though uncomfortable. When he sensed Gojo’s gaze, the boy’s body stiffened, but he still avoided looking back at him.
“Huh? Are you really that uncomfortable sitting with your teacher?”
“You’re a little too close.” The boy tugged at his sleeve, his hands gathered over his knees. Gojo tilted his head in confusion, only then noticing that the boy had bent his body away from him like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Gojo Satoru: “…”
“If you dislike your teacher this much, I’ll be very hurt, you know?”
Gojo suddenly remembered that when the boy had first entered Jujutsu High, he had said that he was afraid of Gojo, too. But during the time they had spent together afterward, Toyama had left him so frequently speechless that Gojo had forgotten the boy had ever said he was afraid of him.
Could he be the sort of person who was slightly less afraid when there was serious business to handle, but became socially anxious during ordinary interactions once he had nothing to do?
“…Are you really afraid of me, your teacher?”
“Afraid.” The boy nodded without hesitation. He still did not dare look over.
Gojo Satoru: “…”
“You could at least take a moment before answering so decisively. That hurts your teacher, too…”
“Because Gojo-sensei is too handsome.”
…
Hurt…
Gojo Satoru really wanted to keep being hurt.
But he could not stop the corners of his mouth from curling upward.
Once the boy had said those words, it seemed as though the floodgate of confession had finally opened smoothly. “Everyone must be afraid, right? Someone who’s tall, handsome, and sparkles like a model. You can tell at a glance that a person like that would get stared at everywhere, so when you see one, you…”
“Envy him?”
Toyama Akira finally turned his head. His gray-green eyes reflected Gojo’s handsome figure, lounging casually with one arm draped over the back of the sofa and his legs crossed.
“…Get scared.”
He was afraid of the effortless naturalness of an extroverted person like this, who had no self-awareness whatsoever.
Gojo rubbed his chin, apparently thinking.
“But you’re not so afraid that you instinctively want to run away, right?”
Toyama Akira froze. He thought about it, then honestly shook his head. “No.”
“It’s just that you really want to use your toes to dig out a sewer, hide inside, and safely avoid being stabbed by the dazzling radiance of this super-trendy handsome guy.”
Gojo Satoru: “…”
The super-trendy, extroverted handsome guy, Gojo Satoru, was shocked by the fear of the super-gloomy, socially anxious introvert.
Gojo Satoru: Utterly stunned and completely unable to understand.
“Huh? Why don’t you want to teleport away immediately? Is this kind of fear different from the fear you usually experience, Akira?”
Toyama Akira froze. His brows and eyes were equally blank with confusion. He lowered his gaze slightly and thought about it seriously. After a while, as though he had arrived at an answer, he spoke without hesitation.
“Because without Gojo-sensei, I would die.”
“So I can’t feel fear toward Gojo-sensei.”
Gojo Satoru: “…”
Gojo fell silent for some reason. After a moment, he lowered his crossed leg, then switched which leg rested on top. He pressed his knuckles against his lips, released them a moment later, licked his lower lip, and sat upright, the muscles in his shoulders and back surging like mountain ridges as he rose.
“So if I took you out into the city, you would…”
“Be politely afraid for a moment.”
Toyama Akira answered at once. He imagined the scene of this 1.9-meter-tall handsome man walking beside him in a blindfold while countless passersby stared and secretly took pictures. Without the slightest hesitation, he continued,
“Then I’d find a sewer to hide in for a while and follow Gojo-sensei from there.”
Gojo Satoru: “…”
He would rather follow me through the sewers than leave me. I’m crying.
“Then what if I took you out to eat, like we did when we first met, that is, when you were mentally stable and functioning normally?”
Toyama Akira imagined Gojo Satoru at some upscale restaurant, handsomely flourishing a black card, handsomely reciting a string of dishes he couldn’t understand, and then handsomely declaring, [My treat.]
“……I’d probably want to go work in the kitchen, carrying tea and fetching water. That feels more like where I belong.”
Gojo Satoru: “…”
“Then what if we went to an amusement park together?”
Just hearing the words [amusement park], that brightly colored paradise for extroverts, was already painful enough for Toyama Akira. Add a name as blindingly dazzling as [Gojo Satoru], and Toyama Akira clutched his stomach, which had already begun to spasm.
“Does Gojo-sensei need a bodyguard…… the kind who can’t do anything but is really quick to go AWOL?”
Gojo Satoru: “…”
Gojo Satoru patted the boy on the shoulder. Already hunched over like a shrimp, the boy shuddered several times from the impact.
“I get it!”
“If we want Toyama to experience emotions that aren’t quite so overwhelming…”
“How about you go on a [date] with Gojo-sensei?”
Toyama Akira: “…”
“I think that emotional stimulation is still pretty overwhelming.”
Gojo Satoru watched the boy’s tightly controlled, twitching brow, his trembling lips pressed firmly together, and his…
His feet, tensed as though they were excavating a four-bedroom apartment with a courtyard.
Huh? No way. This actually works on him……
Gojo Satoru felt as though he had finally found the boy’s weak spot. Usually, startling him too badly would send the boy fleeing to Antarctica. An experience of social anxiety like this, though, was just right for him.
Gojo Satoru thought about the amusement park, the children’s meals, all the themed accessories and photo spots. The corners of his mouth lifted involuntarily, and he gave the boy another hearty pat on the back.
“That’s paradise.”
Toyama Akira imagined the amusement park packed with people, the endless lines, and a crowd of bright, glamorous humans who looked as though they lived in another world, laughing and joking all around him.
“……Hell.”
Then Toyama Akira imagined that there might be a man standing beside him who was 1.9 meters tall, exceptionally handsome, wearing sunglasses, and so dazzlingly cool that he looked like a walking lightbulb.
Toyama Akira felt his stomach begin to hurt again.
“That’s purgatory……”
“It’s decided, then. We’ll…”
Toyama Akira tried to reach out and stop his teacher. He was not ready to memorize the map of Tokyo’s sewer system.
But just as he was about to raise his hand, Gojo Satoru suddenly pulled down his blindfold, revealing eyes that shone like pearls in the dim room.
Toyama Akira was blinded for an instant. In that instant, Gojo Satoru seized both his outstretched hands in both of his own.
“Go on a [date] with your teacher.”
Toyama Akira: “…”
“I don’t want to…”
“Hmm, if we go on our date tomorrow, that means the day after tomorrow is the final battle. Perfect timing for a fight to test the results of our date!”
Toyama Akira: “…”
Toyama Akira listened to those familiar yet unfamiliar words.
[Date], [date] followed by [a fight to the death], [have a fight] to test the [results of the date].
“……”
“Hmm? Akira. What’s wrong, do your knees hurt?”
“…..No, sensei. I’ve just come down with a sudden case of rheumatism.”