A Peaceful Day
When everyone at Jujutsu High heard that Gojo Satoru was going on a [date] with Toyama Akira, their first reaction was:
[Those two are going to torture each other again.]
Still, everyone at Jujutsu High was curious about who would end up torturing whom more.
For that reason, Maki and the others secretly started a betting pool.
“Since Satoru was the one who suggested it, he must have some evil plan, right?”
Panda pushed his pawful of chips into the circle marked [Gojo Satoru].
“Salmon.”
He had no idea what that meant, but Inumaki pushed two chips at once into the circles marked [Toyama Akira] and [Gojo Satoru].
“Well, I don’t think Toyama’s going to be the one who loses out. He looks ridiculously timid, but he’s actually got a mind of his own.”
As Zen’in Maki spoke, she tapped her chip into the circle marked [Toyama Akira].
Okkotsu Yuta had just returned from a mission in time to catch the betting. He felt that placing bets on something like this was a little inappropriate, but under pressure from his classmates, he still thought it over seriously. “If Gojo-sensei is planning to go on a [date], and the [date] is at an amusement park, then Toyama would be at a disadvantage.”
Okkotsu Yuta, who could understand Toyama Akira in certain respects, stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Toyama would probably feel uncomfortable in a situation like that. Especially with Gojo-sensei…”
“Hm?”
Yuta’s words were abruptly cut off by a familiar voice from the doorway. He froze and looked up, while the classmates behind him quickly rolled up the betting table and hid it behind their backs.
“Were you talking about me?”
The tall teacher was leaning against the doorframe with one hand. Backlit, his features were difficult to make out, and all that could be seen was a tall, handsome silhouette. Only when the sunlight outside dimmed as the door slowly closed did Gojo Satoru’s appearance gradually come into focus in Yuta’s constricted pupils.
“[Especially Gojo-sensei…]” The white-haired young man repeated Yuta’s words as he straightened up and slowly walked over, his hands in his pockets.
“Especially Gojo-sensei… what?”
Okkotsu Yuta: ……
Yuta looked at the young man in front of him, dressed in a black suit and a floral shirt, wearing a blindfold and hair styled with enough product to walk straight onto a YSL runway without changing a thing.
The outfit was formal and flamboyant enough to look like something meant for a fashion show, but on him, it merely became an accessory to his presence, as though it were [just clothes.] It brought out, in dazzling fashion, all the handsomeness usually hidden beneath the oppressive atmosphere surrounding a jujutsu sorcerer. The clean lines around his waist were sharp and stylish. Two buttons had been undone at the collar, revealing his collarbones. A faint vein stood out on the back of his hand, while the gleam of the jeweled cuff links set off his pale skin. And there was no need to mention his already conspicuous white hair, now carefully styled, or the crisp sound of his dress shoes striking the floor. Even standing casually, his exceptional height and physique gave him an almost suffocating presence.
Okkotsu Yuta: ……
Yuta thought of his friend’s outfit, pieced together from clothes donated by everyone at Jujutsu High, worth no more than 5,000 yen from head to toe. He thought of that perpetually disheveled hair falling into his eyes, and the listless air of someone who seemed capable of dropping dead wherever he happened to stand.
Okkotsu Yuta: ……
This was bad.
He felt as if he understood the danger a little too well.
“If Sensei were wearing sunglasses, it would be even better…”
“Huh, huh? Would sunglasses really be better? I thought the blindfold was more…”
“That’s not what I meant.” Yuta calmly shook his head.
He was only thinking that if Gojo Satoru were wearing sunglasses, Toyama Akira might still be able to take them off him with trembling hands and use them to shield his eyes…
Yuta calmly covered his own eyes, which were close to being blinded by the glare.
Silently, he mourned for his exceedingly timid friend.
Don’t die.
No.
Hang in there, Toyama.
The moment Toyama stepped out of the dormitory and saw Gojo Satoru, he wanted to die.
It was difficult to describe what he had felt when he opened the door and saw a figure shining like a gold-plated explosion.
In that overexposed radiance, his wrinkled shirt, his messy hair sticking up from sleep and refusing to lie flat, and his deathly pallor all seemed to be washed out of existence.
Toyama Akira: ……
He silently lowered his head and glanced at the wrinkled cuff of his shirt, still stained with cola. Then he looked at the smooth, lustrous cuff hanging from the young man opposite him. A single cuff link seemed to shine more brightly than his entire life.
Toyama Akira: ……
Had he somehow traveled to another world?
Then why wasn’t he dead?
Toyama Akira closed the door.
“Hey, it’s already nine, isn’t it? We said we were going to the amusement park today, remember? Gojo-sensei got up at six, you know?”
The door was slapped again and again. Toyama Akira had his back pressed against it, trembling along with the shaking panel as though some monster from a horror movie were waiting on the other side. He bent over in anguish, covering his face in despair.
Wasn’t agreeing to leave at nine just another way of saying he could sleep until 8:59?
Surely nobody had gotten up at six, ironed their clothes, styled their hair, polished their shoes, eaten an exquisite breakfast, and then come looking for him because of this?
Gojo Satoru, who had gotten up at six, ironed his clothes, polished his shoes, styled his hair, sprayed in hair product, exercised for his health, eaten a nutritious meal, finished dessert on the way, and then come to Jujutsu High: “So… are we heading out yet?”
Toyama Akira: ……
Toyama Akira squeezed his eyes shut in agony and groaned, “Does Gojo-sensei really have to go out dressed like that?”
He was already an exceptionally handsome man, and now he radiated the kind of aggressively dazzling, socially successful aura that made Akira feel faint. He could already imagine what the two of them would look like walking together.
Passersby would look at him and see the protagonist of a school horror movie who had escaped a mass evacuation.
They would look at Gojo Satoru and see the protagonist of The Amazing XXX.
Toyama Akira had a condition where being looked at one extra time made him feel as if he would die. Other people’s gazes seemed capable of poking holes in him. A few more pokes, and he would turn from a paper person into an air person.
Gojo Satoru, on the other hand, looked like the sort of person who could walk down the street while photographers aimed long lenses and flashed lights at him nonstop, and still adapt perfectly. Actually, wherever he went, there were bound to be enough eyes on him to rival a press conference.
“Hm? What’s wrong with this?”
Right. I know, teacher, you were already handsome under ordinary circumstances, and dressing up only made you more handsome.
Right. It was nothing more than going to an amusement park with a ridiculously handsome man who sparkled like a light bulb wherever he walked.
Gojo Satoru wasn’t embarrassed, so clearly this was an attack meant to make him embarrassed.
Would he be embarrassed? Would he be nervous?
His emotions were perfectly stable. There wasn’t the slightest bit of…
Behind the door, Gojo Satoru looked at the new cursed tool in his hand, which measured the stability of emotional cursed energy.
“……As expected, it’s going to max out.”
……
“Good thing I scavenged a hundred of these from the old orange.”
Gojo looked at the motionless door, then at the measurement tool in his hand, which had maxed out and shattered.
“A hundred should be enough, right?”
……Would it be enough?
“……Please wait a moment, Gojo-sensei. I haven’t changed yet. We can leave once I’m dressed.”
After a long silence, the boy’s voice finally came from behind the door.
The good news was that his tone sounded perfectly steady. There was no sign that anything was wrong.
The bad news was that there being no sign of anything wrong was the biggest sign that something was wrong…
Gojo Satoru unconsciously tightened his grip on the emotional cursed-energy measurement tool in his hand. It resembled a thermometer and could measure the emotional cursed-energy fluctuations of multiple nearby living beings. As long as Gojo kept his own emotions stable, it would clearly display the emotional fluctuations of the boy closest to him.
He didn’t understand it, but he had gradually realized that the boy suffered from social anxiety when exposed to the gazes of many people. This fear was different from the kind that made him want to flee to Antarctica. The latter was a reflexive jolt of the nerves after being pricked by a needle. The former was like being called to the front of the classroom and made to stand while everyone else sat listening to the lesson, a long, drawn-out form of mental torture.
Of course, some people might prefer the latter to the former. Better a short, sharp pain than a long one. Dying for real was better than dying of embarrassment.
But Gojo Satoru, who had never experienced social death, thought it was a wonderful thing. It would be an excellent way to train the boy’s ability to control the stability of his cursed energy.
He had already made up his mind. He would show the boy the measurement tool and tell him that if, after they reached the amusement park, he could keep his emotional stability value below 60 for the entire time, Gojo would end this [date] trial and bring him home.
To avoid [social death], the boy would probably draw on that potential of his, which always became remarkably useful in extreme circumstances, and force himself to control his emotions.
Gojo Satoru smiled at the thought. He lowered his head and looked at the tool in his hand.
The number displayed on the cursed tool fluctuated around 60. That was his emotional value.
Gojo Satoru didn’t know why he suddenly felt inexplicably worried.
Was it because the boy’s voice just now had sounded so normal that it had become abnormal?
But no matter how he looked at it, this plan was completely harmless to him. After all, the only person who would suffer social death was the socially anxious boy. Gojo himself wasn’t socially anxious at all, so how could he possibly…
“Screeech…”
While Gojo was still thinking, the door opened. Since it opened outward, Gojo, who had been waiting by the door with his hands in his pockets, leaned back to make room. His thoughts continued lazily along the same track.
So there was nothing to worry about.
He wasn’t going to…
The boy stepped out.
Gojo was still looking down at the cursed tool, so his gaze was angled downward. The first thing he saw was the boy’s dress shoes. So the boy did care about this [date] after all? Had he finally given up those sneakers with their shoelaces tied into impossible knots? Black socks…
Hm? Something wasn’t right. These socks were a little thin.
They clung thinly to pale skin, following the curve of the boy’s calves. A faint sheen of skin showed through the black fabric.
Did he really need to wear socks this long? Was it because he was wearing shorts?
Oh. It was a short skirt.
So…
Gojo Satoru: ……
The Six Eyes were a step slow, but they quickly caught up.
So those were black stockings…
Gojo Satoru understood.
Gojo Satoru had an epiphany.
Gojo Satoru finally understood what social death was.
“……Do you really have to wear that?”
Twenty minutes later, outside Toyama Akira’s dormitory, the conversation from twenty minutes earlier was repeated.
Not only was the conversation the same, but Gojo Satoru’s movements were also identical to those of the boy dressed as a girl beside him.
The same pained hand over the eyes, the same stiff turn of the head.
The same…
Explosion of the cursed-energy measurement tool.
Toyama Akira already knew about the measurement tool from Gojo. Hearing it max out and shatter, he painfully furrowed his brow, then managed to spread it into a smile. “Gojo-sensei has the Six Eyes, after all. If your control over cursed energy, and over your emotions, is this unstable, how are you supposed to teach students?”
Gojo Satoru: ……
Nobody had told him before he took the job that he would have a student who, after losing eight hundred points of health to inflict a thousand points of damage, would absolutely insist on doing so.
“Could it be that this is your emotional fluctuation?”
“No, Gojo-sensei.” The boy’s tone was perfectly calm, just as it had been when he said [Please wait a moment] from behind the door. “My heart died a long time ago. What emotional fluctuations could I possibly have?”
Gojo Satoru: ……
Your heart may be dead, but your body can still dress up as a girl and make me die of embarrassment. How terrifying!
Gojo Satoru and Toyama Akira left.
When a dazzlingly dressed yet inexplicably grim-faced white-haired young man emerged,
Panda: “Wow.”
Then he reached out for the bet.
A short while later,
a familiar yet unfamiliar black-haired [girl] emerged behind the white-haired young man.
Everyone at Jujutsu High: ……
Maki: “Wow.”
Then she reached out and slapped Panda’s hand away before grabbing the chips herself.
Inumaki Toge glanced to the left at Gojo Satoru’s face, which was ashen as a plate of vegetables.
He glanced to the right at Toyama Akira, whose soul seemed to have left his body.
In the end, he nodded, took one chip from each hand, and collected the two chips from Panda and Maki.
“Salmon.”
That was his victory!
Panda, who had bet on Gojo Satoru: ……
Panda glanced at Gojo, who had dressed up brilliantly for the day.
“……He really is an unstoppable young master.”
Maki, who had bet on Toyama Akira: ……
Maki glanced at Toyama Akira, whose short skirt and black stockings made him look like an elegant, beautiful young lady.
“……And the young lady’s just as unstoppable.”
Okkotsu Yuta, who had witnessed everything: ……
“……”
“……Rika, I know what you want to say. Don’t say it yet…”
Gojo Satoru thought that, no matter what happened, it would be best if they didn’t run into anyone they knew.
It wasn’t that Toyama Akira’s outfit was particularly painful to look at. Toyama might have been the student most suited to cross-dressing that Gojo had ever seen. Before this, he had always thought Okkotsu might suit it too, but Rika had stopped that idea.
Inumaki had once been made to wear Maki’s school skirt after Gojo brought him over, and Maki had beaten him up afterward. But that had mostly been for laughs. After all, no matter how delicate and pretty the boys at Jujutsu High looked in their uniforms, once their calves and arms were exposed, their clean, handsome muscle lines were obvious. Their masculine bone structure and the direction of their muscles were easy to see.
But Toyama Akira was different. There was no sign that he had ever exercised. Like a delicate, bookish student at an ordinary school, his arms and calves were pale and frail from a lack of exercise and sunlight. His frame was small, too, so when he wore women’s clothing, there was none of the obvious discordance usually caused by a male body. Instead, the quiet, reserved quality of his appearance became even more pronounced.
He looked like a quiet, lovely girl.
The sort of quiet, lovely girl who could travel back and forth to Antarctica ten times in a day, smash four walls with a single movie, and scream at a cockroach while sweeping across the battlefield…
A quiet, lovely…
Gojo Satoru squeezed his eyes shut. The Six Eyes operated at an extraordinarily high speed, sending a bizarre succession of images flashing through his mind. One moment, the [girl] beside him lowered her head, revealing a graceful neck. The next, that [girl] pushed back her bangs, sweating coldly as she knelt before him and begged him to deal with a cockroach. Then the [girl] beside him spoke in a deliberately soft, delicate voice, followed by the boy’s firm, ringing voice: [Gojo-sensei, please let me go to Antarctica.]
It felt like watching a snow hare stand up, crouch down, stand up, crouch down. One moment it was cute in exactly the way he liked, and the next it was pulling up a willow tree by the roots and preparing to transplant it in Antarctica.
Gojo Satoru: ……
For the first time in his life, Gojo Satoru hated his Six Eyes so intensely.
But before long, he hated his Six Eyes for the second time in his life.
After the Six Eyes observed every detail of the boy’s transformed appearance and set off a chain of associations, Gojo’s mind filled with standing snow hares, uprooted trees, flowers planted in Antarctica by Daiyu, and then…
Associations switching between the northern and southern hemispheres.
In short, Gojo Satoru’s brain was forcibly held hostage for ten seconds.
During those ten seconds:
“Huh? Gojo, what are you doing here?”
A jujutsu sorcerer in civilian clothes happened to walk toward them.
“Hm? A girl? Are you two on a date?”
Gojo Satoru didn’t respond, while Toyama Akira still remembered the [date] setup Gojo had explained earlier.
So he nodded demurely and addressed the person in front of them, a former senior who had once been bullied by Gojo Satoru and was now a teacher at the Kyoto school, Utahime.
“Yes, we’re on a date.”
After thinking it over, he added his identity, to avoid any misunderstanding.
Gojo Satoru came back to himself and was about to explain, but the boy beside him, or rather, the [girl], quickly added:
“I’m Gojo-sensei’s student.”
“Crack…”
Gojo Satoru thought the cursed-energy gauge he was wearing had split.
It took him a moment to realize that he was the one who had split.
“Scumbag.”
Utahime delivered her verdict.
“You’re actually dating a female student? What a complete scumbag…”
Gojo Satoru: ……
Gojo Satoru had to put considerable effort into stopping Utahime from sending the gossip to everyone at the Kyoto school. The moment he looked up, he saw it again…
“[Date]?”
The person standing across from the boy was familiar too. It was his former junior, Nanami Kento, who had since quit.
Of course, the boy’s reply was familiar as well.
“Yes. We’re on a [date].”
“I’m Gojo-sensei’s student.”
Gojo Satoru: ……
“Crack.”
This time, it really was the cursed-energy gauge breaking.
“Did you do that on purpose, or were you not…”
Toyama Akira immediately answered, “By accident.”
Gojo Satoru: ……
“That answer was way too fast! Obviously you did it on purpose!”
Gojo Satoru clenched his fist and swung it viciously toward the boy’s head…
Then, at precisely that moment, the boy looked up. His bangs slipped behind his ear, revealing a smooth, pale forehead and clean features. His gray-green eyes widened for an instant, his slightly pale lashes trembling. Those luminous eyes, reflecting the subway lights as if filled with water, captured Gojo Satoru’s reflection, along with the fist suspended in midair.
“Oh…” [The girl] looked at Gojo Satoru’s raised fist and suddenly understood. “Gojo-sensei doesn’t hit girls. What a gentleman…”
The fist came down.
Toyama Akira: ……
There wasn’t a gentlemanly thing about him.
Along with Gojo Satoru’s fist, Toyama Akira also received the cursed-energy gauge Gojo had been carrying.
The measuring cursed tool was actually designed to measure the stability of emotions being converted into cursed energy. Gojo Satoru was very confident in his ability to control the conversion between his emotions and cursed energy, but after half of the gauge had just cracked and only one intact gauge remained in his hands, his confidence in himself had transformed into faith in Toyama Akira instead.
He was certain that this guy would make him lose control and crack the last gauge too.
To prevent himself from spending the entire day getting emotionally wrecked and forgetting the important matter of training the boy’s cursed-energy control, especially after going this far and already enduring those looks from both his senior and junior, he absolutely could not fail again.
So Gojo Satoru handed the gauge to the boy. “My eyes can see the numbers on it, you know. Even if you hide it, I can still see it. So…”
Because he had just been about to hide the gauge inside his clothes, Toyama Akira said in horror, “So your eyes can actually see through things? I’m not wearing any under…”
Gojo Satoru covered his mouth with perfect accuracy. “So hiding it won’t help. As long as I see the reading stay steadily below 60 for ten minutes today, we’ll wrap up the rest of our itinerary right away…”
The boy blinked. His lips moved with difficulty behind the man’s palm. “Isn’t this… mm, isn’t this a date?”
Gojo Satoru looked over calmly.
“Do you city people call mutually torturing each other a date?”
“Is that trendy now?”
Toyama Akira: ……
Who had come up with this trendy-person suggestion in the first place?
When they reached the amusement park, they were admitted almost without waiting in line because someone had bought every VIP pass available. Looking at the priority-pass app on his phone, Gojo Satoru thought that perhaps he really did want to speedrun the whole thing.
After entering the park, quite a few people tried to approach him for photos, conversation, or his contact information. He was striking, excessively handsome, and practically glowing, after all.
Then they would notice the boy beside him, [the girl].
And then came the classic question.
“Who is this…?”
“Yes, we’re on a date. I’m Gojo-sensei’s…”
Are you a broken record?!
Gojo Satoru grabbed the boy by the collar and dragged him away.
On the occasions when he failed to seize the boy’s collar in time, the boy, in his effort to escape the title of [broken record], would say:
“Yes, I’m his younger sister, who’s still in school. Huh? What does he do? A gambling-addicted father, a sick mother, a student trying to stay in school, and a broken… Ah, sorry, he’s back. I’ll let him hit me first.”
“Yes, I’m his adopted son… daughter. Want to know about his love life? A man this handsome has obviously already… Ah, sorry, I’m about to get hit again. One moment.”
“Yes, I’m his…”
God.
Gojo Satoru finally caught up this time.
After shaking off the crowd of people asking for photos, he swiftly slipped through the throng like a fish and reached the boy’s side. Then he abruptly bent down, hooked an arm around the boy’s neck, and smiled at the girl across from them.
“Yes, he’s my magic assistant.”
Toyama Akira: ……
What kind of character setup was this? Why hadn’t he been given a script? He couldn’t do magic…
“Do you know what kind of magic he’s best at?”
Gojo Satoru had already traded his blindfold for sunglasses and undone two of his shirt buttons. The sunglasses slipped slightly down his nose. There was a faint sheen of sweat on his face from the sun and the crowd, making his fair skin seem to sparkle in the sunlight, not to mention the bright, smiling blue eyes revealed beneath the slipping lenses.
The girl across from him went blank. Blushing, she could only shake her head stupidly.
Seeing this, Gojo Satoru snapped his fingers with a grin.
“Then let’s give everyone a demonstration…”
Toyama Akira, who had instinctively grabbed the hem of Gojo Satoru’s clothes: ……
Huh? Why so loud? Everyone was looking over…
This was a little scary…
“A live magic show with no preparation or props…”
Toyama Akira, pinned beneath the growing attention of the crowd: ……
Were introverts just extroverts’ toys?
Were they? Yes, they were.
Toyama Akira realized just how malicious Gojo Satoru’s intentions were. With so many ordinary people watching, he had no way to escape without exposing his cursed technique.
His throat had already tightened and his calves had begun to weaken under the weight of all those eyes. But then…
“Our performer, my bravest and most courageous student…”
Toyama Akira: ……
So this was what had been waiting for him.
It felt like Gojo was deliberately calling him out to mock him.
“…will make a person disappear in three seconds…”
Toyama Akira: ……
He was blatantly mocking him!
Toyama Akira watched expressionlessly as his teacher took off his jacket and threw it over the boy’s head.
This prop was very expensive, but wasn’t the performance a little unprofessional?
“Three…”
All right, his teacher seemed to be enjoying himself.
“Two…”
Why was he doing this to him? What had he done wrong? Damn it, aaah…
“One…”
“Witness a miracle…”
The magic trick succeeded.
The living person disappeared.
Toyama Akira had really wanted to stand there and let Gojo Satoru’s magic trick fail, but with so many people watching him and whispering among themselves, Gojo had been right. He could only hold out for three seconds.
Then, a minute later, while his teacher gestured and signaled with his eyes, silently conveying, [Hurry back and let me finish the part where I turn the person back. Do you want your teacher to embarrass himself? …Wow, you’re really heartless.]
Toyama Akira: ……
How had he managed to read an entire sentence on a face wearing sunglasses?
Toyama Akira returned beneath the jacket after Gojo Satoru snapped his fingers twice, gave him three meaningful looks, and finally drew the shape of a cockroach in the air with cursed energy. The jacket was immediately whipped away.
Toyama Akira heard a collective gasp.
The magic trick succeeded.
The dead had returned.
“Good, good, good. Not bad. Akira kept his reading below 60 the whole time he was doing the magic trick.”
After the performance, his extroverted teacher praised it as an excellent spontaneous test. Even so, when he saw the boy’s pale face and cold sweat, he took him to a less crowded area outside the park before speaking again.
Toyama Akira: .
Toyama Akira thought Gojo Satoru was very good with words. The reading had stayed at 0 the entire time, yet he had phrased it as being below 60.
Zero was the gauge’s lower limit, not his.
“Now, now, your emotions are pretty stable, Akira…”
The young man seemed to vaguely realize that he had gone a little too far with a student who was already socially anxious. He put an arm around the boy’s shoulders and patted him firmly a few times in an attempt to comfort him.
The boy lowered his brows helplessly. “Don’t treat me like some child with wildly unstable emotions. I just don’t normally make a point of controlling them. Aside from the fear I can’t control, I can use reason to keep my other emotions in check.”
The boy also seemed to want to lighten the mood, so he made a joke. “When I get serious, my emotions are extremely stable and very…”
“Bang.”
The gauge in the boy’s hand suddenly exploded.
……
The sharp crack of a bullet tearing through the air seemed to leave his ears ringing as well.
His pupils contracted until they were nearly vertical. After remaining frozen for two seconds, the boy shifted his gaze toward the side of Gojo Satoru’s head.
The bullet’s shriek and the instant explosion of the gauge had overlapped. The bullet was now visible, blocked by Limitless and stopped two centimeters from Gojo Satoru’s temple. The spatial blade that instinctively followed after it was a fraction too slow. It sliced through the bullet, and then…
The shattered shell fragments passed across the boy’s contracted pupils. It was as if those sharp, broken edges had truly cut into his eyeballs, causing a strange, painful spasm in his brows and eyes.
The fragments fell to the ground with a clear chime.
“Clink.”
Only then did suspended time and space seem to begin flowing again.
Gojo Satoru never once looked at the disturbance beside him. He merely continued patting the boy’s shoulder, making the boy’s body jerk with every pat.
“Now, now. It’s probably someone the old orange has hired. They always use this kind of trash to disgust people. When they use an ordinary-person killer, their status as an [ordinary person] creates all sorts of problems when it comes to taking action. It’s really…”
Gojo Satoru’s voice seemed to come from underwater, stirring waves that surged into Toyama Akira’s ears again and again, but the sound reached him distorted. He could only feel the suffocating pressure in his chest.
Gojo Satoru made a disgusted face and began dramatically fanning the air as he prepared to say something else. Then he noticed that the boy had not spoken for quite some time, and his expression darkened again. “……Akira, what’s wrong?”
Toyama Akira was still clutching the fragments from the gauge’s sudden explosion. He had no Limitless, nor had he used space to keep the fragments away. The cursed tool’s shards pierced his skin and embedded themselves in his flesh as his hand clenched instinctively, and blood began to trickle from his palm.
What Toyama Akira had originally wanted to say was that Gojo Satoru had always underestimated his rationality.
When he wasn’t afraid, he was actually capable of controlling his other emotions with reason.
But…
“I’m fine, sensei.” Toyama Akira drew a deep breath, feeling pain in his chest. He lifted his head and smiled. With his uninjured hand, he patted his chest. “The gunshot just startled me. I haven’t recovered yet.”
Gojo Satoru glanced at the boy’s still-bleeding palm and frowned. Then he looked at the boy again.
Perhaps it was only his imagination. He had the distinct feeling that…
The boy’s pale eyes seemed to have grown darker.
A deep green, with black, vertical pupils.
A familiar voice sounded in the depths of his heart, which had been calm all day.
[Fear level 1%]
Having an ordinary-person killer attack a jujutsu sorcerer who was out in the open and under the watchful eyes of so many factions was indeed an excellent plan.
If the attack failed, it could still serve as harassment. After all, it was far too degrading for a special grade sorcerer to deal with an ordinary person, and doing so risked violating the jujutsu sorcerer regulations.
As for ordinary people, it was easy to hide among even more ordinary people and make a jujutsu sorcerer hesitate to act. Ordinary people also had their own social networks. Deal with one person here, and you might instead bring down the grief-stricken vengeance of their friends and relatives. You were a jujutsu sorcerer. You were supposed to protect ordinary people. How could you act against them?
Besides, they had not actually done anything. They had only fired a sniper rifle. Would Gojo Satoru die from being shot with a modified cursed-energy bullet? Of course not. It was merely a harmless little joke.
But…
“This is frightening… sir.”
The boy held a man by the collar. His already-dark eyes seemed even more terrifying in the pitch-black night, as if only the black of his pupils remained. Toyama Akira glanced around. His mind quickly calculated a suitable sniping position, and he teleported there with the man still in his grip.
As soon as they landed, the ordinary-person killer he had been holding by the back of his collar collapsed to his knees.
Toyama Akira did not understand why he had knelt, but he was terribly afraid that the man’s hands would shake when he fired later.
So he could not help becoming anxious himself, his voice trembling slightly. “Sir… I don’t know how to snipe. If your shooting later doesn’t reach the level you demonstrated when you sniped my teacher this morning, then I’ll have no choice but to… Sigh, I don’t know what to do. I’m a little scared… Should I give you a different pair of hands? Or perhaps attach the gun to a severed arm? What should I do…”
Then Toyama Akira watched as the sniper tremblingly got back up and set up his rifle, desperately trying to steady his hands. Although he did not understand, Toyama Akira still let out a genuine sigh of relief. His chest had felt as if anxiety had twisted it tight.
Toyama Akira removed the bullets from the magazine and put them into space one by one.
The bullets disappeared.
As he clumsily loaded the bullets back into the magazine one by one, he muttered an explanation.
“Don’t worry, sir. You only need to aim at the heads of those old… old orange men and shoot.”
“You don’t need to consider whether ordinary bullets can pierce a jujutsu sorcerer’s brain.”
“Because my space can pass through everything in this world, including several brains that are so stupid they’re genuinely frightening.”
“Mm… yes, bullets wrapped in my space can do that too.”
“So you only need to fire. The bullets wrapped in my space will pass through their brains, and then I’ll make the space [vanish]. After that, I’ll use a little of what I learned from that man with the stitched-up head to erase the residual cursed energy.”
“Finally, you, the man who [betrayed them because you couldn’t agree on your payment and somehow really did kill the higher-ups with a gun], can complete the last step. Is that all right?”
Toyama Akira finished loading the final bullet. His pale hand slowly moved closer, and when he handed over the magazine, he pressed down on the man’s trembling hand.
“Go ahead, sir. Once you’re finished, I’ll give you the thing I want most. So don’t be afraid.”
Toyama Akira’s hand was trembling too. His palm was even slick with cold sweat.
He heard the gunshots and smelled the gunpowder. The air itself seemed to tremble with every sudden report.
He trembled all over in the night.
He trembled because of the bullet that had stopped two centimeters from Gojo Satoru’s temple.
He could not imagine what he would do in this world if even Gojo Satoru were gone.
……Gojo Satoru.
When he thought of living, Gojo was the refuge he thought of.
When he thought of death, Gojo was the only key he could imagine.
Toyama Akira raised his pale face and watched the spray of blood erupt in the night.
Only when the fear-level alarm gradually subsided did he finally smile in relief.
He said, “Don’t be afraid, sir.”
“Because the most frightening thing has already passed.”
Only you people died.
“My teacher is still here.”
“That makes it…”
“A little less frightening, doesn’t it…?”
[Fear level reduced to zero]