Enrollment, a Harmonious Day
Toyama Akira knew only one thing about himself: his name was Toyama Akira. Everything else had been dug up for him by Gojo Satoru.
Still, the boy took the fact that he knew nothing about his own origins or past in stride.
For one thing, [It’s perfectly normal for a transmigrator not to know anything about their life in this world.]
For another, [He’d die and return to his own safe world sooner or later, so there was no need to worry about worldly attachments.]
Gojo Satoru, who knew about these two thoughts of the boy’s: ……
Isn’t he just insane? Gojo thought gravely, pressing his lips together. He can be raised.
Toyama Akira. Both parents deceased. He had previously lived with his uncle’s family while attending school, but after his uncle’s entire family also died, the boy dropped out and became a shut-in, living off the inheritance left by his elders. Gojo Satoru had already retrieved his school records and was in the process of arranging his enrollment. At the same time, he had tossed the information he’d dug up about the boy’s background to the transmigrator, who was still earnestly researching how to [die and return].
Toyama Akira’s mouth fell open when he saw his identity in this world.
Apparently, I’m the cursed lone star myself. Looking at the row of gray names under his list of relatives and acquaintances, Toyama thought gravely.
Starting out as an orphan. A classic transmigrator setup.
He just hadn’t expected himself to be practically illiterate, too.
Toyama cheerfully read through his own file as if it were someone else’s story, and even managed to think with a fairly good attitude: He hadn’t even finished compulsory education, yet he was going straight back to school at a vocational college. Good thing he didn’t have parents, or they would have beaten his legs broken.
However, the smile at the corners of Toyama’s mouth soon drooped again.
If he refused to attend this vocational college, the white-haired teacher who had picked him up would break his legs too……
Toyama thought his new teacher was a little short-tempered.
But he didn’t dare say so.
He was also very good at comforting himself.
At least his teacher wasn’t a cockroach or a spider, nor a demon from The Shining, and certainly not a slime cursed spirit hanging from the ceiling.
At least he was still human.
Toyama thought that, in this terrifying world, this was truly the most comforting thing of all.
In reality, half of Gojo Satoru’s “short temper” was caused by the boy he had just picked up.
The boy was a minor and had no guardian, so in order to arrange his enrollment, Gojo had no choice but to register him under his own name as someone in his care.
Having already taken in the Fushiguro siblings, Gojo was quite familiar with the procedure.
Although his uncle’s family had left the boy a house, he refused to go back there no matter what.
Because a cursed spirit had once hung from the ceiling inside.
When the boy brought up the matter, he was practically sobbing and sniffling, and nearly grabbed Gojo by the trouser leg to kneel again. “I can’t go back! If you see one cockroach in a room, that means there are a million cockroaches inside!”
Gojo rubbed his brow as he watched the normally quiet, shy, composed boy turn into someone who would drop to his knees anywhere at the slightest provocation.
But no matter how Gojo explained that the cursed spirit in his room had already been exorcised, the boy still refused to go back.
He clung tightly to Gojo’s trouser leg. Sometimes Gojo even wondered if his reflexes had somehow deteriorated. Why else had his Limitless failed to knock the boy’s hands away every single time?
It was only much later that Gojo discovered the reason. Even unconsciously, the boy was gifted enough to use his cursed technique to [pass through] Gojo’s Limitless on a conceptual level, and then successfully clutch his trouser leg, wiping his snot and tears all over it.
Whenever the boy grabbed his trouser leg, Gojo tried to act like a good teacher and look up proudly. See? Hadn’t he said his new student’s cursed technique was incredible?
But in reality, humans really couldn’t stay that calm.
“So stop using your cursed technique to grab my thigh, you little brat!!!”
There was actually more back-and-forth after that. Gojo got angry and insisted on taking the boy home to see whether the cursed spirit really had been completely exorcised. But the moment he mentioned returning to the room where a [cursed spirit had caused trouble], the boy dropped to his knees with a thump. After a while, he raised his head again and looked at Gojo with such determined eyes that Gojo couldn’t help but turn to stare. Then the boy produced a knife. When had he even gotten a knife? He pressed it against his own throat.
“Sensei, please don’t force me to die.”
Gojo Satoru: ……
Gojo wondered if he had only told the boy to go home. He hadn’t told him to return to the afterlife.
After this series of incidents, Gojo could no longer look at the normally pale and quiet boy normally. Whenever he saw him, his calves instinctively tensed.
Gojo thought gravely. It was time for him to improve himself.
Next time the boy lunged for his trouser leg, he had to be able to kick him away in one go, right?!
In short, although they had bickered and made a mess of things, Toyama and Gojo had both gotten the results they wanted.
With the [strongest] living in the same apartment and keeping watch over him, although Toyama wasn’t sure whether that was a title Gojo had given himself, he hadn’t encountered a single cursed spirit these past few days. He slept soundly every night, and after waking up, devoted himself to researching tour groups to Antarctica.
As for Gojo, although he was physically and mentally exhausted these past few days, he had at least completed all the enrollment procedures for the brat. At last, he could kick him into Jujutsu High.
Gojo Satoru: ……
Had taking care of Megumi really been this exhausting?
Toyama chattered incessantly as they walked.
“Are there cursed spirits at Jujutsu High?”
“Since Jujutsu High is on a mountain, does that mean there are lots of bugs?”
“Do I have to fight cursed spirits too? Huh? I don’t, right?”
“Do jujutsu sorcerers kill bugs? I’ll die if I see a spider or a cockroach.”
“Do the dorm rooms have mosquito nets? They should, right? Are we allowed to use insecticide here? Are jujutsu sorcerers the kind of people who can’t kill living things, meaning they can’t kill bugs either?”
The white-haired young man wearing sunglasses walked coolly ahead while dragging the boy along by the back of his collar. Toyama’s feet trailed across the ground as he counted on his fingers and chattered incessantly behind him.
The reason Gojo was dragging him was that the boy had encountered Yaga’s cursed corpses at the entrance to the school building and was still so terrified that his legs had given out.
When they finally reached the classroom door, Gojo stopped. With practiced ease, he lifted the limp person behind him by the collar, straightened up, and pulled the cotton from his ears before flicking it away.
“Hmm? What were you saying just now?”
Toyama: ……
“Oh, if you’re not saying anything, then it must be nothing, right? Come on, come on, prepare a few lines for your self-introduction and then go meet your future classmates inside.”
Huh?
A self-introduction?
What self-introduction?
Scenes of a classroom filled with silent students flashed through Toyama’s mind. The moment he entered, every single gaze would snap toward him.
Wait, and he was still expected to introduce himself after that?
That was so terrifying…
“It’s terrifying……”
Gojo was pushing the boy through the doorway, but the boy had dug his feet into the ground so hard that he had carved two furrows three feet deep, stubbornly anchoring himself to the doorframe. Gojo fell silent.
“……I really want to know if there’s anything you aren’t afraid of.”
At that, the boy secretly glanced sideways at Gojo, then lowered his eyes, looking somewhat embarrassed.
Gojo raised a brow. Did that mean the boy was only unafraid of him?
The boy lowered his head bashfully. “Actually, I’m super afraid of you too, Sensei.”
Gojo Satoru: ……
He was hopeless!
Gojo finally stopped holding back the vein throbbing at his temple and exerted considerable force with his hand.
“Bang!”
The boy fell through the doorway.
His feet left behind two deep furrows gouged into the ground, along with a cloud of dust.
“H-Hi……”
Toyama tried to open his eyes, raise his hand, and greet everyone naturally. “Everyone…”
But before the word “hello” could even leave his mouth, a shadow suddenly descended over him.
Toyama shuddered violently and fled in an instant.
This wasn’t good either!!!
“Huh?”
When her attack missed, Zen’in Maki looked somewhat confusedly at the long cursed-tool spear in her hand.
She quickly spun the spear once and aimed it at the pale boy who had somehow flashed to the side.
When Gojo-sensei had announced yesterday that a new classmate would be joining them, he had said that the new student was incredibly strong. He had told them to [give him a proper welcome] and use the opportunity to test whether their recent training had improved them.
Zen’in Maki hadn’t understood the way her white-haired bastard of a teacher had gritted his teeth while smiling sweetly. She had only noticed the words [incredibly strong].
The last time Gojo had said something like that had apparently been when he brought Okkotsu in as a transfer student. Not long afterward, Okkotsu had become a special grade sorcerer.
Would this boy be the same?
Maki narrowed her eyes and looked up. Then…
Uh, was he trembling?
Seriously? His lips had gone white from fear.
Even Okkotsu hadn’t been this timid when he first enrolled…
Maki noticed that the boy’s slightly unfocused gray-green eyes were fixed on her cursed tool.
“What is that……?”
Toyama had only been startled by the sudden attack when he entered the room. Once he realized that the attacker was human, he relaxed. However…
The weapon in the girl’s hands was strange.
It gave him a terrible feeling.
If he had to compare it to something, it was as if a cockroach cursed spirit had been chopped up, boiled down into juice, and used to temper the spearhead.
“Hmm, this? It’s a grade 2 cursed tool I borrowed from the storeroom.”
Gojo raised a brow from the doorway. He hadn’t taught the boy anything about cursed tools yet.
He could sense it already? As expected, the boy was extremely sensitive to anything [terrifying] related to cursed energy.
Toyama had no idea what a cursed tool was. He could only lift his face, slick with cold sweat, and try to negotiate. “Could you… could you not use that to attack me?”
Maki smiled.
Hope lit up in Toyama’s eyes when the girl across from him smiled. Then…
The spear thrust forward.
“Since you put it that way, I really have to use it to attack you now.”
Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…
Toyama’s eyes remained locked on the spear as it repeatedly stabbed toward him.
He genuinely felt as though the thing had been tempered in cockroach juice. Or perhaps cursed-spirit juice. Either way, it was basically the same thing.
He didn’t even dare touch it. When the cold spearhead swept past his face as he suddenly leaned backward, an image instantly surfaced in Toyama’s mind: the icy wings of a cockroach brushing across the tip of his nose.
Toyama was so frightened that no sound came out.
……
The gray-green pupils in the boy’s eyes became even more unfocused.
[Fear level accumulated 1%]
Ah.
Huh?
Toyama had instinctively teleported to the back of the classroom. He was rubbing his nose furiously over the horrible association he had just imagined when he heard the voice inside his head.
Wait.
What was this?
The system?
Toyama knew that some transmigrators came with systems. It made sense that he might have one too, but…
Why was the first thing it said something about a fear level?!
He knew he was timid, but it didn’t have to mock him like this, damn it!
Then he saw the spear fly through the air once again, stabbing toward him.
Get out of the way, get out of the way…
This wasn’t even about being timid or afraid. Something soaked in the stench of cockroaches, or cursed spirits, or whatever it was, was about to touch his nose. What was there to be afraid of? What was there to fear?
Ahhhh, it was going to touch him! He was going to die! Somebody save him!
The boy’s gray-green eyes went blank for an instant. Then, with incredible flexibility, he twisted his body upright through a full 180 degrees, as if he had stepped on something invisible and used it to propel himself out of the way.
Toyama couldn’t help rubbing the gooseflesh on his arm. When the spear grazed the side of his face, he suddenly sensed something and looked up. His eyes flicked over the scene. Just as the spear was about to pierce the wall beside him, it seemed to be stopped by something invisible. The boy’s lowered fingers twitched.
The invisible space suddenly contracted under his control, then shot rapidly toward Zen’in Maki.
Maki’s pupils contracted, and her bangs flew upward. Somehow, the spear she had thrust out had been redirected and stabbed into the wall behind her.
“Hmm? He can already use his heterogeneous space without being taught?”
Gojo stroked his chin. His sunglasses slipped slightly down his nose as he looked with interest at the scene only he could [see].
The boy had just used [space] to teleport from the front entrance, where Zen’in Maki was standing, to the back of the classroom.
The [space] connected by the boy’s teleportation into a rectangular prism still existed inside the classroom.
It could disappear from this world or manifest within it according to the boy’s will. He had made it manifest, using it to gain leverage and twist his body out of the way of Maki’s thrusting spear. Then, when the spear entered the wall, he had caused the [space] to manifest and move, sending the weapon back to pierce the front wall of the classroom.
He hadn’t been taught either physical combat or how to use his cursed technique.
He could do this much purely through fear and instinct?
At last, Gojo smiled with a hint of genuine relief because of the boy.
And then…
“Ah, sorry I’m late. Are you the new student?”
With a bang, the classroom’s back door was pushed open. A black-haired boy hurried into the room from the back of the classroom. His black hair hung over his forehead, and he was just as pale as Toyama, wearing Jujutsu High’s white uniform. He looked delicate, refined, and gentle, with the unmistakable air of an introvert.
Toyama was just about to relax and force a smile as he looked up to greet the boy, who was apparently his new classmate, when the boy walked through the doorway with a smile.
Along with the enormous monster behind him, completely unobstructed.
“Plop.”
Gojo Satoru: ……
“Don’t kneel!!! Ahhh, you idiot!!”