Normally, the first thing anyone arriving at Kyoto Jujutsu High ought to do was pay their respects to Iori Utahime-sensei.
Mizuki Makoto stood before the weathered plaque bearing the words Kyoto Prefectural Jujutsu High and instinctively touched the two charms keeping him alive: Ieiri Shoko’s handwritten letter of recommendation, and an expensive, limited-edition Kyoto sake that Shoko had specifically told him to line up and buy.
[Seriously, at this moment, I genuinely want to bow down and thank Shoko-san.] Makoto knew perfectly well that if the letter had been signed by Gojo Satoru, Iori-sensei would have kicked him, backpack and all, straight into the Kamo River to feed the fish before he made it through the gates.
After all, the white-haired man’s reputation with Iori had long since fallen below negative infinity, and being “Gojo’s personal student” was a red-name debuff in Kyoto that could set off hostilities at any second.
“I’ll give Shoko that much.” In her office, Iori Utahime’s expression softened slightly as she looked at the bottle of sake on her desk.
She gave the delicate-looking boy before her a sidelong glance; he looked weak enough to blow away in a strong breeze, yet somehow had the unmistakable face of someone from Gojo’s faction.
“Since you’re another member of the White-Haired Menace Victims’ Association, you can stay here without worrying.” “As long as you don’t cause trouble, no one at Kyoto will drive you out.” At that moment, through Makoto’s extremely flattering filter, Iori-sensei seemed to radiate the merciful light of the Virgin Mary herself.
Unfortunately, even the Virgin Mary could protect him only from storms outside the school.
She could not protect him from the “best friend” inside it.
Kyoto Jujutsu High’s routine was rigid to a genuinely terrifying degree.
At six every morning, just as Makoto was dreaming of a deeply meaningful artistic exchange with Miss Gojo Mai—the gender-swapped version—someone would blast open his dorm-room door with brute force.
“Wake up, brother!
The morning air is filled with the fragrance of Takada-chan!
Let us discover the weight of the soul through sweat!” And so, every morning, Makoto was carried off to the rear mountain like a chicken in Todo Aoi’s grip.
The other Kyoto students, mainly Kamo Noritoshi and Nishimiya Momo, watched with pity, sympathy, and the faint solemnity of people silently wishing someone a peaceful journey to the afterlife.
The good news was that he had temporarily escaped Gojo Satoru’s one-sided massacres—training sessions with no room for interaction, where the man casually acted as though he were trying to reduce Makoto to atoms.
The bad news was that although Todo’s fists were not quite as absurd as Gojo’s, they still qualified as a miracle of physics.
“No!
Brother, that sidestep was too stiff!” “You have to imagine space as a thin cicada wing and glide along the grain!” With a heavy impact, Makoto was sent flying by Todo again.
Although he used his cursed technique to deflect most of the force, the sensation of being scraped head-on by a heavy tank still kept his fragile artistic life perpetually one step away from collapse.
Fortunately, Kyoto was not filled entirely with humanoid weapons of mass destruction like Todo.
“Mizuki-kun, are you all right?
I picked up some bruise ointment from the infirmary…” ‘Miwa, you’re an angel!’ In Makoto’s eyes, Miwa Kasumi was practically an angel who had fallen into the mortal world.
Whenever he lay sprawled across the training ground like a dead dog, struggling for breath, Miwa always arrived right on time with a healing smile and a bowl of red-bean soup at the perfect temperature.
She was a devoted Gojo Satoru fangirl, but she was such a genuinely good person that Makoto could not bring himself to tell her the truth: her idol was actually a pervert who stole and wore his own female students’ skirts.
Zenin Mai was another regular visitor.
Compared to Maki, who seemed to enjoy putting Makoto in physical chokeholds and trying to dismantle his rib cage, Mai was almost as gentle as the girl next door—provided one ignored the venom in every word she said.
“You can’t even get up after something like that?
Has Tokyo really fallen so far that they’re accepting paper-thin models like you now?” Mai would sneer as she casually tossed him a can of iced cola.
Makoto soon discovered that plenty of things guaranteed to get him killed if he tried them with Maki—studying her eyelashes up close, whispering nonsense in her ear, or abruptly commenting on the details of her outfit—earned him nothing more than an elegant eye-roll or a harmless shot from Mai’s Construction technique.
‘As expected, tsunderes are an artist’s inexhaustible source of material.’ Life as a refugee was comfortable, but one could not live without money.
The cost of drawing materials, upgrades for his tablet, and the daifuku he bought Miwa as a “thank-you fee” soon pushed his wallet to begin making a pathetic little noise: ‘Nope, I’m broke.
I’m seriously broke.’ Once again, he had to thank Ieiri Shoko’s letter.
Thanks to his dual status as “Shoko’s friend” and “Kyoto’s temporary exchange student,” Iori Utahime took especially good care of him.
She not only waived his meal expenses, but also allowed him to take on lower-grade missions for commission as an exchange student.
The missions were usually done in teams.
The most common arrangement was Todo handling demolition through excessive violence, Mai handling getting teased by Makoto until she drew her revolver, and Makoto himself.
His role was simple: um, torment Mai—no, use Thin Ice Breaker from the rear to deflect any stray attacks, while simulating the wild flow of Todo’s cursed energy in his mind to gather inspiration for his Special-Grade Observation Journal.
Occasionally, when Mechamaru, the ultimate workhorse, was offline for maintenance, Makoto teamed up with Miwa Kasumi instead.
Those missions were less like work and more like an offline fan meeting for Gojo Satoru devotees.
“Mizuki-kun, um…
I heard you’re the only person besides Gojo-sensei who can use Limitless.” “You’ve seen it before, right?
That move where space gets pulled in with a whoosh!” Miwa clenched her fists, her eyes shining with fervent fan-girl excitement.
Makoto looked into those eager eyes and sighed helplessly.
His output was nowhere close to Gojo Satoru’s practically limitless scale, but as a Semi-Grade 1 sorcerer, he could still produce a dangerous enough imitation of the real thing.
Just then, a Grade 2 cursed spirit that had generously volunteered itself in the name of art came roaring toward them.
“Watch closely, Miwa.” “This is the Makoto-kun Limited Edition.” Makoto raised one finger and hooked it lightly through the air as Limitless seized hold of the space before him.
“Cursed Technique Lapse: Blue.” In an instant, the space around the cursed spirit’s core collapsed violently.
Terrifying attraction, like an invisible black hole, twisted its massive body into a lump of warped flesh before erasing it completely.
“Waaah!
It’s Blue!” “The scale is smaller, but it has exactly the same cool, merciless feeling of cleansing everything away!” Miwa bounced on the spot in excitement.
“Then what about the red one?” Makoto smiled faintly, brought his fingers together again, and reversed the flow of his cursed energy.
“Cursed Technique Reversal: Red.” Dazzling scarlet light roared forward, blasting away the last scraps of the cursed spirit along with several massive trees in the distance.
He could defeat a weaker special-grade cursed spirit if he pushed himself hard enough to pass out, so using it to instantly kill a Grade 2 was like firing a cannon at a mosquito.
Yet as he watched Miwa’s innocent, radiant smile of admiration, Makoto suddenly felt that serving as Gojo Satoru’s stunt double was not such a bad job after all.
At dusk, Makoto sat atop the dormitory building, letting Kyoto’s cool evening breeze wash over him.
Todo Aoi made every bone in his body creak daily, and Mai’s sharp tongue still stung, but a life where he did not have to worry at every moment about Gojo Satoru teleporting in, punching him into the distance, and forcing his face to elbow the ground was truly one he never wanted to leave.
[Stay a little longer…
Even one more day would be enough.] Makoto unpacked a fresh stylus and began sketching the old eaves of Kyoto Jujutsu High beneath the setting sun.
[As long as Gojo-sensei hasn’t realized I’m actually taking a paid vacation here, my artistic spark can keep burning…
probably.]