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Toyama Akira really did not want to fight Gojo Satoru.
He was caught in a paradox. If he wanted to beat Gojo Satoru, his only chance was when he was in a state of [Fear]. But he did not want to hurt Gojo Satoru, because that would make him even more [Afraid], and he might eventually lose control of his reason.
And if he was not [Afraid], then he definitely could not beat Gojo Satoru, which meant he would have to be dragged off to exorcise cursed spirits. He did not want to fight cursed spirits either.
The black-haired boy sat suspended high above Antarctica and lamented.
“This is like, ‘Fish is what I desire, and bear’s paw is also…’ No, that doesn’t sound right.”
“Let me think. Hmm…”
“Oh, right!”
“It’s like, ‘I can’t embrace you while holding a blade, and I can’t protect you if I put the blade down.’”
Gojo Satoru, who had just arrived in Antarctica and heard him: …
“Do I really have to fight?”
Toyama Akira was carried by the back of his collar from the Southern Hemisphere to the Northern Hemisphere, then dragged by the back of his collar from the entrance of Jujutsu High to the teachers’ building. Finally, he was lifted up and dropped onto a stool in an empty classroom.
Toyama Akira nodded politely. “Thanks, Didi driver. One-star rating. Next time, grab me by the front of my collar. The back is choking me.”
Gojo Satoru habitually blocked out the boy’s nonsense, pulled out the chair opposite Toyama Akira with a screech, then swung his long legs over and sat down. Bracing his elbow on the desk, he leaned closer. “Why…”
“You know this too, don’t you? Even if you don’t accept missions to exorcise cursed spirits, people like the ones who came to the foot of the school last time will still come looking for you. You’ll have to deal with cursed spirits sooner or later, so what’s wrong with accepting a mission?”
Toyama Akira was silent for a while. Only after some time did he raise his head and look at Gojo Satoru. “Gojo-sensei, you sound like one of those top students asking a bottom student, [If we’re going to have final exams anyway, what’s wrong with taking dozens of weekly and monthly tests?]”
Gojo Satoru had already been doing his best to get used to filtering out the boy’s remarks, but this one nearly made him choke anyway. Gojo Satoru: …
“Should I praise you for having vivid analogies, or for having such a vivid self-assessment?”
“You can praise me for both. Thank you, sensei.”
Gojo Satoru’s lips moved. He thought for a moment, then moved his hand instead. In the end, he chose Yaga’s method of praise.
Toyama Akira did not know that Gojo Satoru’s educational methods had been inherited directly from his own teacher. All he knew was that, clutching his head, he had learned that the negotiations had failed.
A fight was unavoidable now. The problem was how to fight it. They could not actually take things to the point of a battle to the death. But if Toyama Akira went all out, then once fear took control of his mind and left him unable to think, a battle to the death was precisely what it would become.
As he had told Gojo Satoru, his attitude toward accepting exorcism missions was like a college student facing finals week: procrastinate for as long as possible, put it off until the last day, and then suffer for only one day.
As for the possibility of hurting Gojo Satoru, the feeling was more like…
Toyama Akira searched for an analogy in his mind.
Like the terror of accidentally scraping the wig off a bald homeroom teacher when opening the door?
Or the suffocating despair of finally finishing all your homework on the last day of vacation, only to watch it fall into a river right in front of you?
Come to think of it, why were all his analogies so grounded in everyday life?
Had he really once scraped off a bald homeroom teacher’s wig?
Toyama Akira thought about his current homeroom teacher.
…
It was such a relief that Gojo-sensei still had all his hair.
“So, let’s do three-on-three.”
Jujutsu High, the rear mountain.
Remembering that someone could move within a radius of one minute, Gojo Satoru had brought Toyama Akira to the rear mountain for the safety of the school buildings.
Three-on-three…?
Where were the other three people supposed to come from?
Toyama Akira frowned in confusion. “Can you use the Shadow Clone Jutsu too?”
Gojo Satoru: …
“Huh? What are you talking about? Why is there a [too] in that sentence…”
“I mean, to prevent this entire rear mountain from being wiped out. The trees here were cut down halfway just over ten years ago, and a lot of them still haven’t grown back. Let’s make a binding vow concerning [three].”
“Each of us can attack only three times. If one person fails to escape all three times, they lose.”
“Ah, running away. I’m good at that, so Gojo-sensei must have assigned me the role of [attacker]…”
Toyama Akira was halfway through his heartfelt observation when he realized what that meant. He raised his head in sudden, dejected understanding.
“That’s right.” The white-haired teacher smiled brightly. “Don’t look at me like that. [Running away] is something I’m very bad at too.”
Toyama Akira: …
What was this guy seriously humblebragging about?
Toyama Akira fell silent for a long while. Then, as if he had suddenly figured something out, he tugged at the corner of his mouth and sneered.
“Rules are meant to be broken…”
The boy teleported in an instant.
Teleportation failed.
The boy pressed his lips together. Under Gojo Satoru’s expressionless gaze, he calmly changed his wording.
“…aren’t they?”
Gojo Satoru: …
Gojo Satoru had known Toyama Akira would try to run. The boy fled an average of twenty-four times a day, so it would have been strange if he did not run when faced with a fight. That was why…
“This isn’t the rear mountain at Jujutsu High. I tricked you.”
This was an illusion he had prepared in advance, woven from cursed-energy barriers like prismatic mirrors. In other words, every judgment Toyama Akira made about the direction of space here was wrong.
“Which means you can’t run away, okay?”
Toyama Akira’s expression gradually darkened. He raised his head and quietly looked at the much taller young man opposite him.
The shadow cast by the young man’s body covered the boy’s pale face. Even his light gray-green eyes had merged into the darkness, becoming dim and shadowed.
Gojo Satoru had thought this through very carefully.
The countless prisms of cursed energy cut up and obstructed the space around them, making it suitable for only small-scale, short-distance teleportation, just enough to produce heterogeneous space capable of attacking.
So he could not run.
He could only…
The white-haired young man opposite him yanked off his blindfold. His white lashes lifted, and clear blue eyes met the boy’s calm expression.
Gojo Satoru watched Toyama Akira stiffen slightly and smiled.
“Come after me.”
“Akira.”
Toyama Akira’s pupils contracted.
He could attack only three times.
In reality, Toyama Akira’s head was still buzzing constantly, as though someone had put a mosquito inside it.
Should he attack Gojo Satoru? Should he win?
Attacking someone he had designated as his own protective shield was like asking a character whose pathfinding only allowed forward movement to start walking backward. His programming conflicted.
Gojo Satoru had no idea what Toyama Akira was thinking. He could only see the boy frowning slightly, looking troubled, before raising his head and surveying the surroundings.
The area was divided by invisible prisms of cursed energy, prisms only Gojo Satoru, with his [Six Eyes], could see. Toyama Akira could not see them. He could only detect traces of cursed energy through his weak danger perception. Of course, if he were sufficiently afraid right now, what he could sense would be much clearer. But Gojo Satoru was here, so he could not become sufficiently afraid.
The precisely arranged prisms could be seen only by Gojo Satoru, and the distances between them were unclear. They were probably no more than a meter apart. Besides restricting Toyama Akira’s long-distance teleportation and escape from the fight, they could also limit his short-distance teleportation from certain angles, making it entirely possible to calculate the points where he would appear, especially when Gojo Satoru could see the prisms and use the Six Eyes to calculate at high speed.
It felt less like a [fight] and more like [practical combat training].
The thought passed through Toyama Akira’s mind. “…So what should I do?”
Hearing the boy sigh, Gojo Satoru raised his brows and chuckled. He opened his mouth to say something when…
There was a break in the air. He did not hear the whistling wind of someone circling around behind him. Instead, a chill came straight from his back.
Gojo Satoru lowered his brows and smiled again. He merely turned sideways, appearing completely at ease, and narrowly avoided the column of space that instantly connected the area in front of him to the space behind him. At the same time…
Without raising his head, he reached out and accurately caught the arm of the boy who had just appeared from teleportation. Then he pulled.
“Now that’s what I call a decisive move.”
Toyama Akira was still immersed in the tension of his ambush. When he was suddenly grabbed, he had only enough time to look up in shock before his arm was yanked toward Gojo. He saw the blue eyes rushing toward him and the smile curving beneath them.
“You could have teleported straight behind me and pierced through me. Even if that failed, you could have immediately started adjusting your next route. Why circle around before appearing? What were you hesitating over? The initial surprise attack was good, but your reaction was a little slow, kid.”
Without the boost from fear, Toyama Akira’s physical and mental reaction speeds were merely excellent by ordinary standards. He had no foundation in martial arts, no combat experience, and no combat awareness.
In the eyes of a jujutsu sorcerer, especially one with extensive combat experience and the Six Eyes, like Gojo Satoru, that was nowhere near enough.
But…
The boy lowered his head and sighed.
“What can I do if I can’t make myself afraid…”
“First…” The man drew out his voice.
“Failure…”
“Mm…” Gojo Satoru first lifted the dazed boy, whose soul seemed to have left his body, by the collar and straightened him up. Only then did he speak. “There’s something subtle about the interaction between your space and my Limitless. In other words, I can sense it when your space is about to reach me. And…”
Gojo Satoru’s voice dropped as he continued, and Toyama Akira did not hear what he said.
Gojo Satoru did not say the rest aloud. Besides…
Besides, damn it, after having his thighs hugged so many times before, whenever space familiar to him was about to break through his Limitless, his back would inexplicably prickle, his entire body would break out in gooseflesh, and he would react instantly.
Fortunately, the boy’s reactions were not as fast now as they had been when he was clinging to Gojo’s thigh. Otherwise, Gojo would have to stay tense and deal with him seriously.
“Akira, try attacking while you aren’t afraid…” Gojo Satoru paused and considered his wording. “While your emotions are relatively stable.”
“Rely only on your rationality, Akira.”
Gojo Satoru lowered his head, his blue eyes fixed on the crown of the boy’s bowed head. “Aren’t you worried that fear will make you lose control of your reason?”
“You’re still my student, and I’ll bring you back safely even if you succumb to fear, but…”
“Let me see the power of your rationality…”
As the young man finished speaking,
the boy beneath his palm vanished.
To the left?
The air rippled faintly. Gojo Satoru lowered his brows as space suddenly pierced through the air beside his left ear, sending the hair at his temple flying.
He still hadn’t appeared? Looks like he had listened to what Gojo said.
Gojo did not know how Toyama had determined the direction. Had he simply been charging blindly, teleporting wherever teleportation was possible, then connecting his starting and ending points into a spatial pillar to launch a surprise attack?
Wind brushed past his ear from the right again. Gojo Satoru licked one canine, kept his hands in his pockets, bent at the waist, and dodged.
Although the first attack did indeed seem to suggest that possibility, that Toyama did not know where his teleportation points were and was simply going wherever he could teleport, then connecting the spaces afterward. The spatial thrust in the first ambush had not been aimed precisely at Gojo. It had pierced through a point slightly to the side of him.
But…
Looking at the heterogeneous space that had passed by his side a second time, the deviation was almost exactly the same as that of the previous spatial thrust.
It was deliberate. That had to be it.
Considering the amount of calculation involved, Gojo Satoru pressed his lips together and smiled.
“Hey, I don’t need you to go easy on me, Akira.”
“I haven’t gone easy on you, after all. If you lose, I’m taking you to meet a special grade.”
…
The next spatial thrust seemed to be deviating even farther.
Gojo Satoru guessed that Toyama Akira had some kind of plan, so he stood up straight with his hands in his pockets and smiled. “I’ll give you a discount, courtesy of your teacher. Before you appear next time, all the attacks so far will count as only one…”
He finished speaking.
“Second.”
The boy appeared. At the same time, several spatial pillars that had just been launched suddenly materialized, closing in from all directions and sealing off Gojo Satoru’s escape routes.
“Eh?” Gojo Satoru spread his arms, since a spatial pillar happened to pass beneath them. “Are you trying to catch your teacher?”
The space woven into a net instantly contracted as the boy who had appeared brought his five fingers together.
Gojo Satoru was still smiling up at the boy with his hands spread. “Looks like you’re trying to crush your teacher.”
However, in the instant before the spatial restraints finished closing, the white-haired young man who should have been trapped inside the net vanished.
Toyama Akira’s pupils contracted, and his gaze instinctively shifted to the side. He could not see the cursed-energy prisms or sense any obvious fluctuations of cursed energy, but his mind quickly deduced the result anyway. Had Gojo used the prisms to reflect an afterimage?
Had he left the afterimage there because he had already noticed the plan?
Then where was Gojo Satoru now?
Hot breath suddenly sprayed against the back of his neck. The damp heat slipped through Toyama Akira’s collar as the lips behind him opened and closed.
“Too slow, Akira. Once the plan is noticed in advance, it doesn’t count as…”
Gojo Satoru’s voice abruptly stopped.
…The plan.
The space Toyama Akira had prepared in advance thrust toward Gojo’s chest.
Only then did Gojo Satoru break into a smile.
“So this was your plan.”
“That was the third attack,” Toyama Akira corrected.
Gojo Satoru looked at the spatial thrust stopped against his chest, a good five centimeters away, and smiled. “That doesn’t count as an attack, though.”
Gojo Satoru sighed. The instant he noticed something was wrong, even before he saw Toyama Akira’s movements clearly, he could have dodged. Five centimeters was more than enough distance.
Toyama Akira’s plan had been good. He simply lacked combat awareness. Combat was not a pure game of strategy. It was not a matter of ‘I’m right, so you’re wrong.’
Before the final moment arrived, he could not decide that his own steps had more or less worked and then leave the outcome unwritten. In the jujutsu world, even death could be reversed through some kind of forbidden technique, let alone an opening of five whole centimeters.
But Gojo Satoru did not dodge again. The third attack was already over.
“Although the reversal in your plan was pretty interesting…”
Gojo Satoru caught Toyama Akira’s wrist as the boy’s thrust recoiled. The boy in front of him stiffened, but obediently turned around to face him.
“If the attack doesn’t land, how will you know whether it succeeded?”
“You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, Akira, but a fight isn’t chess…”
Gojo Satoru slowly guided Toyama’s wrist toward the chest he had originally aimed for. At first, Toyama Akira did not understand what Gojo meant to do. He only heard the young man’s voice.
“It’s not like seeing that the board has already reached a dead end and shouting [checkmate] is enough to end the game. Until the final moment, no one knows whether another reversal will happen, so…”
Gojo Satoru guided the boy’s hand downward. Toyama Akira tilted his head, still trying to work out whether this meant the fight was over or whether he had won. Then he saw…
“So look, at an ordinary jujutsu sorcerer’s speed, you have to thrust down at least this fast…”
Gojo Satoru suddenly drove his hand downward.
Toyama Akira: …
Toyama Akira watched the transparent gleam of space sweep past his eyes. It was like a blade, its crystalline radiance slicing through the crystal of his gray-green eyes. His brows twisted in pain at once.
“Gojo-sensei, that was a little extreme…”
Gojo Satoru did not hear the boy’s tiny whimper, soft as a mosquito. He merely continued, “See? I can dodge even at this speed. So until the final moment, don’t ignore the possi…”
Gojo Satoru watched as, in the instant before the spatial thrust in his hand was about to pierce downward, Toyama Akira suddenly reversed it.
He watched the boy’s expression of sudden relief when the thrust pierced back into himself and blood burst out.
Gojo Satoru: …
So until the final moment, never ignore the possibility of a reversal.
“I think you’re a little too extreme.”