In the end, Gojo Satoru never managed to give Sherlock the student ID that had been shattered into pieces.
After lying around for a while and annoying Sherlock a little more, Gojo finally left the infirmary.
And the moment he disappeared, Sherlock’s suffering truly began.
What suffering?
Anyone who had ever gone through a painful series of injections could probably imagine it.
After seven straight days of needles, follow-up treatment, and Shoko calmly ignoring every complaint he made, Sherlock developed a very real sense of dread whenever he saw the school nurse approaching with medical supplies.
It was especially unfair because Shoko, with the beauty mark beneath her eye and her permanently tired expression, looked far too harmless to inspire that kind of fear.
There was some good news, at least.
Sherlock’s official ranking had been approved.
Grade 2 jujutsu sorcerer.
Technically, his evaluation mission had involved a Grade 1 curse rather than the Grade 2 target listed in the report, and he had only survived because Gojo returned from his assignment in time.
Still, after Gojo raised hell over the incident, Sherlock not only received his promotion but also a substantial compensation payment.
What Sherlock didn’t know was just how furious Gojo had become.
If Yaga hadn’t deliberately called him before Sherlock’s mission and sent him the assignment details, Gojo might not have realized anything was wrong until after returning to Tokyo.
By then, Sherlock could already have been dead.
And if Gojo couldn’t recognize that Sherlock’s evaluation had been deliberately arranged to put pressure on him, then he had no business calling himself the strongest.
The higher-ups had clearly expected Sherlock to encounter trouble.
They had even sent someone to observe his evaluation from a distance.
But once the observer saw that Sherlock’s cursed technique appeared to be little more than teleportation, they lost interest and withdrew.
Whether Sherlock survived afterward apparently wasn’t important to them.
And even if he did survive, so what?
From their perspective, a teleportation technique wasn’t especially threatening.
Even if Sherlock eventually stood beside Gojo and became part of his faction, the higher-ups assumed he’d simply become another useful subordinate attached to the strongest sorcerer.
Gojo wasn’t stupid.
He understood exactly what they were thinking.
He simply neglected to tell them the most important part.
When Gojo arrived at the abandoned hospital and effortlessly destroyed the Grade 1 curse, the Six Eyes picked up traces of what Sherlock had done.
Even Gojo had been surprised.
And that was before considering the violent distortion in space he’d sensed from far outside the hospital when Sherlock pushed Flying Thunder God to its limit.
As far as Gojo was concerned, Sherlock’s potential ceiling might actually exceed his own.
Unfortunately for the higher-ups, the people who spent most of their lives sitting in meeting rooms had no idea how dangerous Sherlock’s cursed technique could become.
Yaga wasn’t particularly pleased with them either.
After what had happened to Suguru Geto, Yaga had become far more sensitive to the way jujutsu society treated young sorcerers.
Sherlock’s evaluation mission only made that distrust worse.
Unlike Gojo, who focused primarily on making sure Sherlock could survive whatever came next, Yaga was more concerned about what the mission might do to Sherlock psychologically.
And the abandoned children’s hospital raised several troubling questions.
The hidden basement Sherlock discovered should never have existed.
Once investigators searched the site properly, they uncovered evidence suggesting that a curse user had been operating beneath the hospital and carrying out horrific experiments under the cover of a pediatric facility.
Worse still, the Grade 1 curse Sherlock encountered didn’t appear to have formed naturally.
Someone had cultivated it deliberately.
And Yaga suspected it might have been created with Gojo Satoru in mind.
The reason was simple.
According to Gojo’s report, the brain-shaped curse had almost no meaningful ability in direct combat.
Its strength lay in its unusual mental interference technique.
Even someone as powerful as Gojo had experienced a brief lapse in concentration when exposed to it after Sherlock lost consciousness.
That made the entire situation much harder to interpret.
Had someone been experimenting with a weapon designed to interfere with Gojo?
Or had Sherlock simply been thrown into the middle of it as part of a separate attempt to test Gojo’s reaction?
Yaga couldn’t tell.
Fortunately, Sherlock himself didn’t appear interested in dwelling on any of this.
He was far too busy enjoying the compensation money that had suddenly landed in his account.
Unfortunately…
The near-death experience had changed something in him.
How should it be described?
Sherlock had finally stopped overthinking everything.
Originally, his grand plan had been simple.
Keep his head down.
Avoid powerful sorcerers and curses.
Attend fan events.
Eventually settle somewhere peaceful.
And if life somehow turned him into the protagonist of a ridiculous romance game along the way, even better.
That was why, despite possessing Flying Thunder God and remarkable cursed energy reserves, Sherlock had spent years hiding both.
He’d been terrified that showing too much would attract the attention of someone far stronger than him.
But after almost dying inside that hospital, Sherlock finally came to a different conclusion.
If trouble could find him even while he was desperately trying to avoid it…
Why keep living as though every decision needed permission?
If danger was coming either way, then he might as well enjoy himself before it arrived.
The higher-ups probably never imagined that one little attempt to irritate Gojo would produce a problem they might eventually find even more exhausting than Gojo himself.
And the first signs of Sherlock’s new attitude appeared immediately after Shoko finally released him from medical supervision.
After seven miserable days of treatment, Sherlock desperately needed what he considered emotional rehabilitation.
So naturally, he went looking for Gojo.
The two understood each other almost instantly.
That same evening, teacher and student disappeared together for a suspiciously private planning session.
Early the next morning, an assistant supervisor arrived at Tokyo Jujutsu High carrying documents for Yaga and a new mission assignment for Gojo.
He found the campus practically deserted.
Masamichi Yaga was gone.
Ieiri Shoko was gone.
Gojo Satoru was gone.
And so was Gojo’s troublesome new student.
All four had vanished.
The higher-ups panicked.
Yaga and Sherlock weren’t the real problem.
Gojo and Shoko were.
Gojo Satoru was the only Special Grade sorcerer they could reliably contact and assign missions to.
Shoko, meanwhile, was their irreplaceable specialist in Reverse Cursed Technique.
If both disappeared at the same time, the delicate balance jujutsu society relied upon would immediately become unstable.
Especially because the curse-user side still had an unquestionable Special Grade of its own.
Suguru Geto.
Without Gojo, the higher-ups had no Special Grade sorcerer immediately available to counter him.
What about Yuki Tsukumo?
First they’d have to find her.
And knowing Yuki, by the time she decided to answer a call, the higher-ups could have been wiped out several times over.
So while jujutsu headquarters descended into chaos trying to locate the missing Tokyo staff…
Far to the north, in Hokkaido, Masamichi Yaga slowly opened his eyes.
The first thing he saw was an unfamiliar ceiling.
Yaga froze.
His immediate assumption was that Jujutsu High had been attacked.
Then he reconsidered.
No.
If that had happened, he would’ve noticed something before losing consciousness.
His second thought was considerably worse.
Had someone used a cursed technique on him?
Yaga carefully got out of bed.
He approached the door, opened it, and prepared himself for a fight.
Instead…
He found Shoko sitting lazily in the living area wearing a yukata and drinking.
She looked completely relaxed.
When she noticed Yaga standing in the doorway with an expression of absolute confusion, Shoko casually lifted one hand.
“Morning, Sensei.” Yaga stared at her.
“Would you mind telling me where we are?” His jaw tightened.
“And what exactly is going on?” His voice sounded as though every word had been forced through clenched teeth.
Shoko showed no concern whatsoever.
She calmly lit a cigarette and exhaled.
“Hokkaido.” Yaga’s eye twitched.
“Sherlock decided to spend his compensation money on a vacation.” Another drag.
“We got here using his cursed technique.” She shrugged.
“As for anything else, I have no idea.” Shoko pointed toward the window.
“You’ll have to ask those two.” Yaga followed her finger.
Outside was a private ski slope attached to an expensive hot-spring resort.
For several seconds, he saw nothing unusual.
Then movement appeared near the top of the slope.
Yaga stared.
Sherlock was crouched on Gojo Satoru’s back.
Gojo himself was floating horizontally a short distance above the snow with both arms extended in front of him like Superman.
Then the two of them shot downhill.
Fast.
Far too fast.
They skimmed above the snow like some deranged human maglev train, Sherlock clinging to Gojo’s back while both of them laughed like escaped lunatics.
Their voices echoed across the nearly empty ski resort.
Yaga’s vision went dark for a moment.
Then he shoved open the glass door and stepped onto the balcony.
His roar thundered across the mountainside.
“SHERLOCK!” “GOJO SATORU!!!!!!!”