Gojo Satoru disappeared for an entire two weeks.
Fourteen whole days.
Sherlock was already living at Jujutsu High, and under Shoko’s influence, especially with her studying nonstop for her medical licensing exam, he had somehow been dragged into an equally brutal study routine.
Still, there was no denying one thing.
These had been the most peaceful two weeks Sherlock had experienced since meeting Gojo Satoru.
Nothing else even came close.
Sherlock might have been enjoying the silence, but the conservative elders running jujutsu society certainly weren’t.
Not for a single day.
The reason was simple.
None of them knew what had gotten into Gojo.
Every few days, another outrageous proposal landed on their desks.
Reorganize Jujutsu High into a proper college-level institution.
Create an accredited undergraduate jujutsu program.
Establish graduate courses.
Offer master’s degrees.
Doctorates.
Formal academic qualifications for sorcerers.
Every proposal somehow became more elaborate than the last.
To the higher-ups, the entire idea was absurd.
Jujutsu sorcerers were ultimately field operatives sent out to deal with curses.
As far as those old men were concerned, the education provided by Jujutsu High was already more than sufficient.
Why would sorcerers need bachelor’s degrees?
Why would they need graduate school?
Unfortunately, the person submitting these proposals was Gojo Satoru.
They couldn’t exactly tell him what they really thought.
So they had no choice but to grit their teeth, attend meeting after meeting, and endure whatever new idea Gojo decided to throw at them.
Masamichi Yaga suffered right alongside them.
Almost every time Gojo submitted another proposal, Yaga would be summoned before the higher-ups for a meeting.
And every single time, those same elders would subtly suggest that perhaps Yaga should encourage Gojo to exercise a little restraint.
Yaga understood perfectly well what they wanted.
He simply pretended not to.
Why?
Because he was the principal of Tokyo Jujutsu High.
Did they honestly think he hadn’t noticed what the higher-ups had been doing since Gojo became a teacher?
Of course he had.
Yaga wasn’t blind.
A large part of the reason Tokyo’s campus was so understaffed could be traced directly back to the people sitting comfortably at the top of jujutsu society.
If they were willing to bury Gojo beneath bureaucratic obstacles, then Gojo responding with an avalanche of perfectly legitimate proposals seemed only fair.
Besides, every suggestion Gojo submitted followed the rules.
He hadn’t once used his position as the strongest sorcerer to threaten anyone into accepting them.
So Yaga was perfectly happy to stand aside and watch the higher-ups suffer.
Admittedly, when he eventually learned that most of these ridiculous proposals had originated from the one student Gojo had dragged into the school, Yaga felt a faint pain somewhere around his chest.
Still…
Ever since Suguru Geto’s defection, Yaga had watched Gojo bury himself beneath responsibilities that no one his age should have needed to carry.
Now that he’d finally found a student who genuinely amused him, Yaga couldn’t bring himself to interfere too much.
Sherlock, meanwhile, knew absolutely none of this.
He had spent the past two weeks buried in Jujutsu High’s official textbooks.
And after reading through them carefully, Sherlock reached one very firm conclusion.
The higher-ups were completely full of it.
The reason wasn’t complicated.
If you removed the ordinary high-school subjects, the useful explanations of cursed energy, and the basic information about curses, a disturbing amount of the remaining material read less like education and more like institutional doctrine.
One message appeared again and again.
Jujutsu sorcerers exist to protect ordinary people from curses.
Sherlock wasn’t impressed.
He’d already lived long enough across two lives to have a fairly settled view of the world.
He didn’t need a textbook telling him that risking his life for strangers was automatically some sacred obligation.
Even some of the supposed factual explanations about jujutsu society bothered him.
He had argued about them with Shoko more than once.
The most obvious example was the textbook’s claim regarding Gojo Satoru.
According to the official explanation, Gojo’s birth had disrupted the balance of the jujutsu world, causing curses everywhere to grow stronger.
Sherlock had immediately questioned that.
After asking Shoko about Gojo’s age, the timeline was easy enough to work out.
Gojo Satoru had been born on December 7, 1989.
And what happened shortly afterward?
Japan’s enormous asset bubble began collapsing around 1990.
Stock prices crashed.
Property values fell.
Companies folded.
Families lost savings.
People who had thought themselves wealthy suddenly found themselves drowning in debt.
The consequences didn’t disappear after a year or two, either.
The economic stagnation that followed would hang over Japan for decades.
And according to the very same textbooks, curses were created by the negative emotions of ordinary people.
Fear.
Stress.
Resentment.
Despair.
If that was true, then wasn’t there an incredibly obvious alternative explanation?
Perhaps curses hadn’t suddenly become more numerous because a baby with the Six Eyes had been born.
Perhaps the collapse of an economic bubble, followed by years of uncertainty, unemployment, ruined livelihoods, and social anxiety had produced an enormous surge in negative emotions.
Which would naturally produce more curses.
To Sherlock, that explanation made far more sense.
Blaming the entire increase on Gojo’s birth was ridiculously convenient.
Even if there really was some kind of balance between sorcerers and curses, Sherlock still didn’t think the official explanation held together particularly well.
Suppose Gojo’s birth placed an enormous weight on the sorcerers’ side of a scale.
How would the other side compensate?
By creating countless weak curses that could be easily exorcised?
Or by producing a small number of exceptionally powerful curses capable of acting as genuine counterweights?
Obviously the latter made more sense.
If the world really did maintain some supernatural balance, then Sherlock suspected the major special-grade curses he vaguely remembered from the original story were far more likely to be the actual response to Gojo Satoru’s existence.
Not every random curse born after 1989.
Simply blaming a worldwide rise in curses on one person’s birth felt less like analysis and more like finding a convenient scapegoat.
When Sherlock first explained this theory to Shoko, she stared at him for several seconds.
Apparently, she’d never looked at the issue from that angle before.
Sherlock naturally took advantage of her silence.
“You should read more.” Shoko’s eyes narrowed.
Sherlock immediately regretted speaking.
After reminding him exactly who controlled access to medical treatment at this school, Shoko sent him out on several errands as punishment.
But once he was gone, she picked up her phone.
Then she sent Sherlock’s entire argument to Gojo.
It was the first time Gojo had ever seen anyone question the established explanation in quite that way.
Whether Sherlock was actually correct was impossible to say.
But Gojo enjoyed reading it.
A lot.
More importantly, the theory gave him something worth thinking about.
Because if Sherlock’s reasoning was even partially accurate, then there was another possibility.
Somewhere in the world, there might already be one or more curses powerful enough to qualify as special grade.
Curses that jujutsu society hadn’t discovered yet.
That thought made Gojo considerably more alert.
Naturally, he didn’t share those suspicions with anyone else.
Still, Sherlock’s argument had put Gojo in such a good mood that when he finally returned to Jujutsu High after spending two exhausting weeks clearing missions…
He decided to reward his student.
Gojo stood at the front of the classroom wearing his usual infuriating grin.
“Good news, Sherlock-kun!” Sherlock looked up from his books.
“I’ve decided to waive your theory exam!” Silence.
Gojo smiled brightly.
Sherlock’s eye twitched.
What?
He had spent two straight weeks studying.
Two weeks!
Sherlock couldn’t remember working this hard even during the most important exams of his previous life.
And now this damned white-haired bastard had walked into the classroom, opened his mouth, and casually announced that the exam no longer existed?
Something inside Sherlock snapped.
He shot out of his chair and swung a fist directly toward Gojo’s unfairly handsome face.
Unfortunately, Gojo wasn’t carrying any of Sherlock’s marks this time.
Infinity activated automatically.
Sherlock’s fist stopped roughly fifteen centimeters from Gojo’s face.
No matter how hard he pushed, it couldn’t move another inch.
Gojo’s smile grew wider.
“Excellent!” He gave Sherlock an approving thumbs-up.
“So energetic!” Sherlock’s face darkened.
Gojo continued happily.
“I never imagined that after only two weeks apart, Sherlock-kun would miss his beloved Gojo-sensei this much!” Sherlock’s fist trembled.
“Since you’re clearly overflowing with enthusiasm…” Gojo clapped his hands.
“It’s time for the next stage of your education!” Sherlock suddenly had a terrible feeling.
Gojo’s grin became brilliant.
“Physical training!” Sherlock stared at him.
“…” Then his expression collapsed.
Sherlock: !!!