“You didn’t spend a single point in the end, did you, Mamoru-kun?” After their tea party, Mamoru ended up accompanying Arisu to purchase her daily essentials.
Yet, Mamoru himself hadn’t spent so much as a single point.
To avoid any misunderstanding, it wasn’t a matter of him getting Arisu to pay for him either.
Within the campus stores, there were a few items offered completely free of charge—likely intended as a safety net for students who managed to drain their points down to zero.
Mamoru had strictly restricted himself to those free goods.
“Well, these’ll get me by for now.
If there’s anything I absolutely need, I can always buy it later.” ‘I only grabbed these to avoid looking unnatural, but honestly, I don’t even need these either…’ In truth, Mamoru didn’t even have a use for the free items, but mindful of Arisu’s gaze beside him, he kept his expression perfectly neutral.
“Is that so?” Perceptive as ever, Arisu naturally found Mamoru’s behavior odd, but lacking concrete evidence to work with, she didn’t pry any further.
“Still, that was a ridiculous amount of security cameras.” Sensing that Arisu held lingering doubts, Mamoru shifted the conversation to another topic.
“Ah, so you noticed as well, Mamoru-kun?” The two had visited several shops, and what stood out along the public walkways and inside the stores were security cameras installed at every turn.
Their density was far too high to be meant for mere crime prevention; it was blatantly obvious that they served a second purpose.
“Presumably, our day-to-day conduct is also being evaluated.” “Most likely.” While Mamoru had initially assumed the shopping trip would be a waste of time, noticing the sheer concentration of security cameras beforehand was a valuable harvest.
Had he moved around behind the scenes without knowing, the cameras might have captured his suspicious movements.
Glad I noticed before starting my patrols, Mamoru felt a wave of relief inside.
‘For now, I’ll head out for a loop right after dropping this girl off at the dorms.’ It was just before 4:00 PM.
The sun was slowly shifting toward a faint orange tint, but it was still early enough that walking around wouldn’t raise any suspicion.
‘Covering the whole campus today is out of the question, but I want to plant a few ‘Wedges’ at least.’ “Wedges”—that was what Mamoru called the Cursed Tools imbued with his Cursed Technique’s effects.
Mamoru’s technique was a form of Barrier Jujutsu, primarily enabling spatial manipulation.
It allowed him to teleport to locations marked in advance with his own Cursed Energy, or deploy barriers that could detect Cursed Energy above a certain threshold.
The protective charm he had handed to Chairman Sakayanagi earlier was a Cursed Tool of the same nature.
It was inscribed with a mark that notified Mamoru and enabled teleportation the moment it detected a set amount of Cursed Energy.
The campus spanned an immense area exceeding 600,000 square meters.
It was hardly a space one could cover in a day or two, which was precisely why Mamoru wanted to make whatever progress he could on day one.
“There is the dormitory.” Mid-thought, Arisu’s voice snapped Mamoru back to reality.
Intending to check out the dormitory himself, Mamoru shifted his gaze toward where Arisu was looking— —and froze.
‘…You’re kidding me.’ The student dormitory sitting before them was grand enough to accommodate the entire student body.
True to a state-funded institution, its magnificent exterior made it clear that an absurd amount of money had been poured into its construction.
However, that wasn’t what caught Mamoru’s attention.
‘They’re here…
Curses.
And not just two or three.’ Completely incongruous with its sleek, modern exterior, the presence of Curses radiated from virtually every corner of the dormitory.
‘Are you serious…’ Mamoru repeated the same lament internally.
“Is something the matter?” Perhaps noticing the shift in his demeanor, Arisu called out to him.
Suppressing a twitch that almost broke his composure, Mamoru managed to offer a response.
“No, it’s nothing.” “Is that so?” Sharp as she was, Arisu must have sensed his momentary anomaly, but despite her lingering doubt, she didn’t press the matter further.
Mamoru looked back at the dormitory, deep in thought.
‘How is there this much…?
No, in a way, it makes total sense.’ He had briefly wondered why Curses were lingering everywhere, but the answer struck him almost immediately.
This was a school packed with students harbouring negative emotions—so much so that you could spot Curses dotted along the walkways just by taking a stroll.
The dormitory was where these exact students lived their day-to-day lives.
It was only natural for Cursed Energy to accumulate rapidly in a living space like this.
‘…There haven’t actually been any suicides here, have there?’ It was a grim thought he had previously dismissed, but looking directly at the dormitory made the possibility feel uncomfortably real.
Still, now wasn’t the time to dwell on that.
The presence he felt belonged strictly to low-grade Curses.
They posed no actual threat to Mamoru; the true headache lay elsewhere.
‘Each individual presence is weak, but there are way too many of them.’ Because the building itself was so massive, the fact that they were scattered across such a broad area posed a genuine problem.
Running all around the inside of the dormitory to exorcise them would undoubtedly get him branded as a total creep.
Given that the female dormitory area occupied the same building, that was even more of a risk.
‘This is going to be a huge pain in the neck.’ Normally, the cleanest method would be to lower a “Curtain” during the day while all the students were out and sweep the entire building.
However, that approach ran into two major issues.
Missing school wasn’t the problem—worst case, he could buy his way out of that with points.
The first issue was that a dormitory of this scale bound to have multiple staff members and administrators on duty at all times.
A “Curtain” was a barrier that created a pseudo-night environment to force Curses out into the open while concealing the scene from ordinary people.
Its flaw, however, was that any ordinary civilians already inside the building would end up trapped right inside the barrier.
The second issue was the cameras.
Judging by the sheer volume of surveillance cameras around campus, it was safe to assume the inside of the dormitory was equally packed with them.
With male and female quarters housed in the same structure, it was a near certainty.
With such heavy surveillance, he couldn’t afford to move around openly.
That left him with limited options.
‘Do I just have to exorcise them bit by bit, the slow and steady way?’ If he felt the presence of a Grade 3 Curse or higher, he might resort to somewhat aggressive measures, but the presences he currently sensed weren’t particularly strong.
Worst case, he could ask the Chairman for help clearing the dormitory of people, but causing such a massive scene would likely be undesirable for the Chairman as well.
Patrolling quietly every day to pick them off bit by bit—he concluded that was the safest path forward.
‘For now, planting Wedges around the town can wait.
This takes priority.’ Mamoru immediately reshuffled his priorities.
He decided to set up a mechanism inside the dormitory first, allowing him to immediately detect any changes in the Cursed Energy presence within the building.
‘Man…
this school is such a hassle.’ The situation had strayed far off course from his original plan.
Mamoru wanted to let out a deep, heavy sigh, but he held it back, mindful of Arisu standing right beside him.
Just then, however, Mamoru noticed something unusual about Arisu’s behavior.
She wasn’t looking at him, but rather gazing toward the dormitory with a puzzled, doubtful look on her face.
“Something wrong?” Mamoru threw back the exact question she had asked him moments ago.
“No, I cannot quite put it into words, but…
as we get closer to the dormitory, I feel a sudden chill…
or rather, a strange sensation.” For someone as consistently confident as Arisu, it was a surprisingly vague statement.
Mamoru narrowed his eyes slightly as he watched her.
‘Is she sensing the presence of the Curses?’ It wasn’t a certainty, but the timing was far too coincidental to ignore the possibility.
At the same time, Mamoru recalled his conversation with Chairman Sakayanagi prior to enrollment.
‘The Chairman mentioned he had sharp instincts too.
Is it something in their bloodline?’ Or perhaps Arisu’s extraordinary power of observation stemmed from that same heightened intuition.
It was a somewhat forced assumption, but not impossible.
‘Still, if that’s true, it’s a bit troubling.’ If Arisu genuinely possessed the ability to sense the presence of Curses, it created a delicate situation.
Sensing a presence meant, from another perspective, being easily susceptible to its influence.
Feeling as though something was there, yet being unable to see it—anyone would harbor fear toward an unseen entity.
And Curses were entities born from, and drawn to, those very emotions of fear.
Regardless, letting her focus on it was dangerous.
Mamoru opened his mouth.
“We’ve been outside for a while, so your body probably just caught a chill.
Let’s get inside the dorm.” “I suppose…
you’re right.” Arisu still looked unconvinced, but she nodded and stepped forward.
Entering the dormitory, they received their room keys and dorm life manuals from the caretaker before taking the elevator to the upper floors.
“Thank you for going out of your way to see me to my room.” “Don’t worry about it.
It’s no big deal.” Since Arisu’s hands were occupied with her bag and cane, Mamoru was carrying her luggage for her.
He offered his response casually, showing no sign of minding the extra weight.
Exiting the elevator, the two arrived at the front of Arisu’s room.
“Want me to carry these inside?” “Yes, please.” Under normal circumstances, entering a girl’s room was a situation that required a bit of tact, but today was the first day of move-in.
The interior of every room looked practically identical.
Without hesitation, Mamoru stepped into the room carrying the luggage.
‘No Curses in here.’ Fortunately, there were no Curses inside Arisu’s room.
Sensing no presence in the adjacent rooms either, Mamoru let out a quiet sigh of relief.
“Are you good unpacking by yourself?” Setting the shopping bags down near the entryway, Mamoru asked Arisu.
While the school prohibited students from bringing outside items onto campus, essential clothing and basic necessities had been delivered to each room in advance.
Though he knew better than to touch a girl’s personal belongings, Mamoru offered the question anyway after glancing at the stack of cardboard boxes piled near the entrance.
“Fufu, yes.
There isn’t much, so I will be fine.
Or did you wish to see what kind of clothes I brought, Mamoru-kun?” In response to his question, Arisu offered a teasing smile and teased back.
It seemed Arisu thoroughly enjoyed seeing Mamoru flustered, slipping in playful provocations whenever the opportunity presented itself.
“Nah, not really.” Yet, when Mamoru answered so dryly, Arisu’s expression did a complete turnabout, pouting in clear annoyance.
While she didn’t hold romantic feelings for him, having her playful banter met with absolute zero reaction was apparently a blow to her pride as a woman.
Paying no mind to her sour mood, Mamoru remembered something and pulled his student ID terminal out from his pocket.
“Come to think of it, we haven’t exchanged contact info yet, have we?” Due to school rules prohibiting contact with the outside world, personal cell phones were forbidden.
Instead, the student ID card functioned as an in-school mobile device.
Arisu’s annoyed expression melted away in an instant, replaced by an amused smile.
“My, I did not expect you to bring that up yourself, Mamoru-kun.” With that, Arisu pulled out her own terminal.
“We were gonna need it anyway.” “Fufu, yes, that is true.” And with that, the two exchanged contact information.
Tucking his terminal back into his pocket, Mamoru turned to face Arisu again.
“If anything ever comes up or you get into trouble, let me know.” “Pardon?
…Thank you.” Arisu tilted her head in uncharacteristic confusion at his words.
Up until now, while Mamoru was willing to help if relied upon, he had made it clear that maintaining a close connection with her wasn’t his goal.
Naturally, she found his sudden shift in attitude puzzling.
From Mamoru’s perspective, however, considering the sheer number of Curses and Arisu’s physical condition, worrying about her was unavoidable.
While he anticipated that this gesture would only make her rely on him even more shamelessly, he decided it was far better than letting something terrible happen to her.
“Well then, see you tomorrow.” “Yes.
Have a good evening.” Leaving Arisu behind as she offered a refined bow, Mamoru stepped out of the room.
‘Now then…’ Once outside, Mamoru didn’t leave immediately.
Instead, he turned back toward Arisu’s door and formed a hand seal in front of his chest, locking his index and middle fingers together.
To a normal person, it would have looked like a bizarre, meaningless gesture.
But to a jujutsu sorcerer, the resulting shift would have been starkly evident.
A semi-transparent, glass-like wall materialized directly in front of the door to Arisu’s room.
‘Based on what I glimpsed, the room size should be around this much.’ ‘Well, even if it’s slightly oversized, it doesn’t matter.
Normal people can’t see or touch it anyway.’ What Mamoru had just deployed was a cubic barrier encasing the perimeter of Arisu’s room.
The function he imbued into this barrier was simple: blocking out entities with strong Cursed Energy.
‘This should hold up for tonight at least.’ Barriers created by Mamoru couldn’t maintain themselves indefinitely.
To keep a barrier active, a constant supply of Cursed Energy was required.
Without an ongoing supply, it would naturally dissipate after a set period, depending on the initial amount of energy poured into it.
He wanted to call it a day right then and there, but his actual mission was only just beginning.
“First off, guess I’ll head up to the rooftop…” Muttering lazily to himself, he turned and began walking toward the elevator.
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Author’s Note: By the way, reading through the comments section, I got the impression that quite a few readers are expecting action-heavy combat scenes from the Jujutsu Kaisen side of things.
If so, I must apologize in advance.
At least for the time being, there won’t be any scenarios that accommodate major combat scenes.
After all, the setting dictates that there are only low-grade Curses lurking inside the school for now.
If any massive movement occurs, it’ll likely be during the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons on Christmas.
Though…
whether I can keep writing all the way until that point in the story remains to be seen!