Uchiha Ayato knelt on one knee on the floor, cradling in his arms the unconscious Wakaba Mutsumi, now soft and limp as a rag doll.
The Sharingan’s eye power had reached into the girl’s mind and put her under a temporary hypnotic sleep.
In the new memory script he’d written for her: none of the heroics had ever happened.
She was simply a poor little fish who’d been frightened senseless in the middle of a storm — The moment the monster came at her with its scissors, the terror had cut off her consciousness like a wire, and she’d passed out on the spot.
She wouldn’t remember anyone named Uchiha Ayato.
Wouldn’t remember the bolt of lightning that had split the darkness.
Wouldn’t even remember the agreement the two of them had just made here in this ruin.
In three days, the short-term hypnosis would break automatically, returning every true image to her intact.
Until then, she was a perfect, thoroughly-shaken ordinary victim.
“Alright.
Sleep well.” Ayato threaded his right arm under Wakaba Mutsumi’s knees and lifted her off the debris-covered floor.
Less than two minutes after he’d hung up the phone, the thick, ink-black hemispherical Curtain surrounding the villa began dissolving from the bottom up — crumbling into scattered black particles that dissolved into the night sky.
As the night air flowed back into the room, a rapid clatter of footsteps came down the hallway.
“Uchiha-san!” Ijichi Kiyotaka burst through the wrecked doorframe, panting, his tie askew, a fine sheen of sweat across his forehead.
The moment he was inside he was already scanning the environment.
“It’s…
already over?” Ijichi swallowed.
His voice came out a little dry.
He’d gotten Ayato’s call, brought down the Curtain, and sprinted in from the perimeter at full speed.
A Quasi-Special Grade cursed spirit.
A threat capable of causing mass casualties on a wide scale.
Before Ayato and he had even arrived, the Windows had already guided residents within a five-hundred-meter radius to evacuate.
On the way over, he’d run through countless catastrophic scenarios in his head and braced himself for the real possibility that half the residential block would be flattened.
But the closer he’d gotten, the more his jaw had dropped — and when he’d finally arrived, the shock had peaked.
Yes, the villa’s walls had taken damage.
The floor was covered in scorch marks from intense heat.
The windows had been blown out, wind howling through the gap.
But that was all.
No craters from cursed energy collisions.
The main structure of the villa was intact.
The chandelier downstairs was still hanging peacefully from the ceiling.
For a battle involving a Quasi-Special Grade, this level of damage was so minimal it might as well have not happened at all.
And then there was the girl he was holding…
He’d even had the room to rescue a survivor?
That was fast.
From the moment he’d deployed the Curtain to the moment he’d gotten Ayato’s call — the time in between was shockingly, almost absurdly short.
He’d been mentally preparing to call for reinforcements in case Ayato got into serious trouble.
But this boy hadn’t just won — he’d won so cleanly it looked effortless.
A monster.
The thought rose involuntarily in Ijichi’s mind.
Even a Special Grade sorcerer might not be able to control a battle at this level with this kind of speed and precision.
The microscopic control of power — the way he handled it like it weighed nothing — was completely beyond Ijichi’s mental model of a “new student.” No wonder Gojo-san was willing to make an exception for him.
“She’s injured.
Well — was injured.” Ayato cut off Ijichi’s spiral of thoughts with a chin-tip gesture toward the girl in his arms.
“Her luck held.
She must’ve fainted from shock the moment Kuchisake-onna came in — pulse is steady, breathing’s even, no significant physical injuries.” Ijichi nodded rapidly, pulling out his pocket notebook.
“U-understood.
Since the victim wasn’t caught in any actual fighting, I’ll immediately contact the medical team.
They’ll handle follow-up counseling and cleanup as well.” He wrote quickly, and stole a sideways glance at Ayato while doing so.
“Uchiha-san, you…
weren’t injured in the battle, were you?” Ayato shook his head, unbothered.
Ijichi closed his notebook, drew a long breath, and bowed deeply.
“Regardless — thank you so much for tonight.” “Resolving a Quasi-Special Grade with damage this minimal…
your ability far exceeded what we’d estimated.
I’ll file a thorough report to the Supervisory Division.” “Just doing the job.” Ayato said simply.
Ten minutes later, blue-and-red lights strobed at the villa’s front gate, sirens and ambulance wails weaving into some kind of manic late-night symphony.
Uchiha Ayato watched from a distance as several women in white coats moved efficiently through the courtyard with a stretcher, carefully loading Wakaba Mutsumi onto a disguised ambulance.
They weren’t medics, strictly speaking — they were Jujutsu High’s logistics team, fully capable of handling not just wounds but “traces.” “Uchiha-san, the victim has been safely transferred.
The Windows will handle the rest of the cleanup.” Ijichi pushed his glasses up and looked at Uchiha Ayato.
“Shall I drive you back to your residence, or do you have other plans?” “Back, please.” Uchiha Ayato stretched with a satisfied groan, eyes narrowing pleasantly.
“Early to bed, early to rise.
I’ve still got school tomorrow.” Just as the two of them were about to leave, a jarring screech of brakes cut through the heavy air.
A luxury car hadn’t even fully stopped before the door was shoved violently open.
Wakaba Takafumi — comedian, a familiar face on television — came staggering over the police tape, stumbling forward.
His usual easy humor was gone.
What replaced it was sheer, overflowing panic and dread.
Behind him, the acclaimed actress Mori Minami pressed a hand over her mouth, eyes instantly flooding with sparkling tears.
“Mutsumi!
Where’s my Mutsumi!” Takafumi roared at the air, his voice hoarse.
“Mutsumi-chan…
you have to be okay!
How would Mama live without you?!” Minami let out a sharp cry and crumpled into her husband’s arms like all the strength had been cut from her legs.
This impromptu performance was well worthy of a nomination from the Japanese Academy Film Prize.
If Uchiha Ayato hadn’t seen Wakaba Mutsumi alone in that basement, hugging her guitar in solitude, he might’ve actually been moved by this picture-perfect scene of devoted parents.
But at this moment, everything about it was absurd.
Mori Minami, mid-sob, ever so subtly shifted her position so that the moonlight caught her profile at just the right angle — sculpting out the curve of her devastated fragility.
Wakaba Takafumi’s manner of speaking to the police followed the textbook of trained grief-acting to the letter.
Truly a showbiz family.
The talent was awe-inspiring in its own way.
If Wakaba Mutsumi was awake right now and could see this, she’d probably find the so-called “concern” more nauseating than Kuchisake-onna herself.
Uchiha Ayato spared one last glance at Mori Minami mid-wail, and in the brief moment their eyes met, he let the corner of his mouth curl — just barely — into a sardonic smile.
Let’s go, Ijichi-san.
Nothing left here for us.
Ayato pulled the back door open and slid smoothly into his seat.
“Ah!
Yes, of course!” Ijichi Kiyotaka snapped out of his daze and quickly started the engine, carrying Uchiha Ayato off into the night.
On the other side, Mori Minami leaned her head against her husband’s shoulder.
Her peripheral gaze drifted quietly toward the direction Ayato had gone.
In that brief exchange of looks, she had read the contempt and the lofty arrogance in his eyes.
The sharp instincts she’d spent years honing kept telling her — in that space crowded with officials and personnel — the black-haired boy who looked about the same age as her own daughter was the one true core of it all.
To be continued…