Late autumn in Kyoto had painted the sunset the color of thick blood splashed across old flagstones.
“Mizuki Makoto, are you deleting them or not?!” Zenin Mai’s revolver was pressed hard against Makoto’s forehead, the cold muzzle making his scalp prickle.
Her normally cool, vicious face had turned an unhealthy shade of crimson from sheer humiliation, and she was breathing like a fish hauled out of water—partly because he had secretly photographed her, and partly because his mouth was capable of talking the dead back to life.
“Mai-nee, as an artist, I never make backups.
I merely create new life from discarded drafts.” Makoto held both hands in the air, wearing the harmless smile that made Utahime-sensei want to kick him on sight as he delivered a lie so blatant even a ghost could see through it.
“Besides, that lace choker really suits you.
It proves my taste is—” “It does suit you.
Makes you look like a very refined stray dog.” A Kansai-accented voice, thick with malice, drifted lazily in from the mouth of the alley like a slick, venomous snake.
Click.
It was not the sound of a gunshot.
It was the sound of some taut string inside Mai’s mind snapping.
The revolver that had been aimed so fiercely at Makoto’s forehead abruptly tilted aside, and Mai began to shake violently.
The fear called “Zenin,” buried so deeply it had seeped into her bones, had completely paralyzed her will the instant she heard that voice.
At the same moment, Miwa Kasumi—who had been awkwardly staring at the ground and counting ants—lowered her gaze.
“New Shadow Style.” With a small twist of her toe, a perfect circle of force burst across the flagstones.
Her Simple Domain was an instinctive act of protection; one callused hand clenched tightly around her sword hilt, and steel scraped sharply against the sheath as she drew just enough for its edge to point toward the alley entrance.
Miwa might normally be the kind of working girl who would beam over two hundred thousand yen, but the instant a companion was threatened, Kyoto Jujutsu High’s conscience showed a resolve so sharp it bordered on desperate.
‘Ah, that expression.’ Makoto adjusted his monocle, and an odd gleam of excitement flashed behind the lens.
‘Kusakabe-sensei might actually scold you for this, Miss Miwa.
Still, that fragile look hovering on the edge of collapse after years of being controlled…
I’ve never seen Mai-chan like this before.’ Makoto did not turn around to look at the blond man approaching them.
Instead, he stepped forward, gently patting Miwa’s stiff shoulder with his left hand.
The soft touch took some of the suicidal resolve out of her Simple Domain.
“Relax, Miwa-chan.
A background extra at this level isn’t worth spending your year-end bonus on.” Then, before Mai’s mind could recover from its crash, Makoto reached out with his right hand and tipped up her chin.
He formed a large check mark with his thumb and index finger, his fingertips slowly brushing across her trembling skin.
“Hello, Mai-chan.
A proper model should look at the camera at a time like this.” Leaning close to her pale face, he spoke with the flippant air of someone appraising a damaged painting.
“A minute ago, you had your whole soul shining just to squeeze an extra two hundred thousand yen out of me.
So why are you suddenly lagging because someone barked ‘stray dog’?
That expression is terrible.
It’s going to lower the value of my entire composition.” “M-Mizuki…?” Mai stared at him in shock.
Fear and the outrageous familiarity of his touch collided in her mind, and the suffocating terror that had nearly drowned her was somehow diluted by the sheer offensiveness of it.
“Take your hand off her.” Zenin Naoya walked forward at an unhurried pace, his eyes as cold as a snake’s.
Looking at Makoto’s brazen display of living off women with his head held high, he sneered, “One of Satoru-kun’s dogs certainly has wandering hands.
You live off women outside, and now you’re trying to lay hands on even the Zenin clan’s trash?” Makoto’s fingers paused beneath Mai’s chin.
He tilted his head and looked at Naoya with profound pity.
“Um…
was it Zenin Bendy-a?
First, being supported by women is a man’s pride, just like a certain man from the Zenin clan—what was his name again?
Zenin Toji?
No, sorry.
Fushiguro Toji.” He gave a light, mocking laugh, and his fingertips slid from Mai’s chin to the curve of her throat as though checking the quality of a work of art.
“Second, could you please stop acting like you know my teacher well enough to call him Satoru-kun?
Gojo-sensei has never mentioned your name when he takes Maki and the rest of us out for dinner.
That sort of one-sided familiarity is generally called being obsessed with yourself.
Frankly, it’s nauseating.” “You—” The veins at Naoya’s temples bulged as cursed energy flickered wildly around his fingertips.
“Don’t get angry yet.
There’s something that should hurt even more.” Makoto wore a smile straight out of Gojo Satoru’s playbook as he drove in the final blade.
“You’re weak, after all~ Gojo-sensei doesn’t remember trash very well.
And with you being this weak…
I doubt Toji-chan, whom you worship so much, even knew who you were before he died.” “I’ll kill you!” At that final sentence, Zenin Naoya finally snapped.
His face, so convinced of its own nobility, twisted with rage, and every pore seemed to ooze murderous fury at the blasphemy against his faith.
“That thing…
that filthy, degrading piece of trash that insults Toji-sama…” Naoya glared at Makoto as he pulled a crumpled scrap of artwork from inside his clothes.
It was a draft page from the Gender-Swapped Jujutsu High side story Makoto had left at Tokyo Jujutsu High.
“You actually dared to draw Toji-sama in such a pathetic pose?!” ‘You white-haired bastard, just wait.
The next issue of Gender-Swapped Jujutsu High will have high-school-girl Gojo getting thoroughly worked over by a dark-skinned, genderbent big-sister Toji until she can only whimper.’ Naoya’s body blurred as his rage pushed the opening motion of Projection Sorcery to a speed that nearly tore the air apart.
“You turned that man into a woman…
trash like you, with no reverence for the strong, deserves to be ground into paste and thrown into a wild dog’s bowl!” To ordinary eyes, Naoya became an afterimage, flashing unpredictably through the narrow alley at twenty-four frames per second.
The sharp boom of displaced air followed in his wake as he crossed the space between them in an instant.
“Mizuki—!” Mai’s fractured warning had barely begun to leave her throat when Naoya’s fist, wrapped in violent cursed energy, tore through the air and stopped just before Makoto’s nose.
‘Huh?
She wasn’t scared stiff, and she even tried to warn me?
That’s unexpected…
I think I’m starting to see you a little differently, Mai-chan.’ Makoto still had time for that flippant thought.
‘It’s true that I can’t see someone moving at twenty-four frames a second.
But using Projection Sorcery to ram straight into Limitless?
Are you serious?’ As a transmigrator, Makoto understood the weaknesses of these cursed techniques better than anyone.
Against someone like Todo Aoi—a monster of both brute strength and intelligence, with an IQ of 530,000 and instincts as sharp as a beast’s—the advantage of knowing the future was often difficult to exploit.
But when the opponent was someone like Zenin Naoya, whose technique was rigid and whose personality was full of holes, a fraudster misleading a rabid dog was almost easy enough to make Makoto hum.
‘Zenin Naoya, the classmate who only knows how to bully cousins ten years younger than himself, the moment I saw that crumpled genderbent Toji sketch in your pocket, your death sentence was already written~’ Makoto had deliberately thrown out that contemptuous “Satoru-kun,” deliberately insulted Naoya’s faith with “kept man Toji,” and deliberately ripped apart the most sensitive corner of his pride by calling him weak, all for this moment.
He wanted rage to overwhelm Naoya’s reason and arrogance to make him choose the technique that best displayed his supposed genius.
If Naoya had remained calm and relied only on cursed-energy reinforcement in a close-quarters fight, Makoto would have been at a severe disadvantage.
With only three uses of a trial version of Limitless that could last three seconds each, plus an incomplete Thin Ice Breaker at no more than half the original precision, he might have held the upper hand briefly—but the longer the fight went on, the more certain his defeat would become.
‘Unless I risk burning out my brain by forcing out something like Blue Echo or Blue Rage here, and drag Miwa and Mai into a large-scale attack with me.’ ‘But of course, you’re too proud to choose anything except Projection Sorcery at a time like this.’ Projection Sorcery was built around preset movements.
Once the user accelerated, they had to plan out twenty-four frames of movement in their head; if even one frame failed because of outside interference, the technique’s own rules would freeze the sorcerer for one second.
And the infinite distance created by Limitless was the most unreasonable outside interference in the world.
Bzzz—!
A dull vibration shuddered through the air.
Naoya’s sure-kill fist stopped less than a centimeter from Makoto’s glasses.
The frame he had planned as “contact” became an unreachable void before Infinity.
[Technique judgment: Movement failed.] [Result: Forced freeze.] “See, Naoya-chan?” Makoto was still holding Mai’s chin.
He did not even look at the blond man standing rigid beside him like a wax statue, merely turning his head slightly to regard Naoya’s eyes as they began to twist with fear under the technique’s backlash.
His smile was darkly, unmistakably Gojo-like.
“Rhythm matters in art.
Getting stuck in front of my camera like that really ruins the composition.
So—” Time seemed to freeze along with Naoya.
Makoto did not throw a punch at once.
Instead, he smiled with almost saintly gentleness and lifted his right hand, moving slowly and tenderly as though inviting a lover to dance.
His fingers slid down Naoya’s frozen arm before locking tightly with the other man’s cursed-energy-filled hand.
“Naoya-chan, got you.” Makoto murmured in a voice so syrupy it made the skin crawl.
If not for the glowing blue sphere of attraction collapsing violently between their clasped palms—more commonly known as Cursed Technique Lapse: Blue—it might actually have made for a tense composition that would send more than a few fujoshi into hysterics.
Unable to move under the backlash of his technique, Naoya’s eyes shook violently as he felt the terrible suction in his palm.
This was no handshake.
It was a black hole kissing his bones!
“Now for the art of exerting force that Brother taught me.” Makoto’s eyes sharpened, the laughter in his pupils nearly spilling over.
He drew in a deep breath and bent his knees slightly, his entire body taut as a fully drawn bow.
‘The essence Todo Aoi emphasized while beating—no, teaching—me these past few days was this: cursed energy does not come from the dantian.
It erupts from the tremor of the soul, traveling through the twist of the waist and hips!’ Makoto sharply rotated his hips.
The muscles around his waist tightened like steel cables and produced a startling burst of force, driving his shoulder and arm as he threw a heavy punch loaded with virtual mass.
[Echo Mimicry: Star Rage] It carried the weight of an African elephant after a Domain Expansion—or an entire detached house.
Just this once: come on, let’s lift with everything you’ve got!
Rip.
The sound of fabric, flesh, and ligaments tearing beneath high-frequency shockwaves and absolute attraction scraped painfully against the ears.
A shockwave powerful enough to overturn the whole alley exploded outward, and Zenin Naoya was sent spiraling away like a golden spinning top, his body twisting through the air as he smashed through five walls in succession before vanishing into the dust.
His right arm, caught by Blue’s unreasonable pull and wrenched by the terrible centrifugal force of Star Rage, remained behind.
Makoto was still frozen in his punching stance, gripping the severed limb in a scene that was spectacularly out of place.
Silence settled over the alley.
A dead, absolute silence.
Mai’s face went an alarming shade of red as her revolver slipped from her hand and clattered across the stone.
Miwa trembled so hard she nearly drew her sword by reflex; both girls had stopped looking at Makoto as though he were merely a scumbag and started looking at him as though he were a special-grade disaster wearing human skin.
The brutal, stylish scene lasted less than three seconds.
“…Hiss!” Makoto’s upright posture suddenly locked into place at an unnatural angle, and the severed arm fell from his hand with a wet slap against the flagstones.
A sharp, bone-boring agony detonated in his lower back and shot straight to the top of his skull.
Todo Aoi’s violent method of exerting force had clearly been developed for gorilla-built freaks, not for a physically hopeless artist who spent most of his life sitting in an electric wheelchair and survived through being kept by women and spreading rumors.
In that full-power twist, Makoto’s body had…
completely broken down.
“M-my back…
I threw my back out…” Bracing himself against the wall, Makoto nearly cried from pain as all the elegant composure of a master fraudster and the intimidating aura of a second-generation scumbag crumbled at once.
‘No.
If you’re doing a good deed, see it through.
You can’t stop at ninety-nine percent.’ Shaking, he pulled out his phone and hobbled over to photograph Zenin Naoya, whose condition was uncertain.
Then he called desperately toward the blue-haired figure standing in the distance with her sword in hand.
“Miwa-chan…
stop counting ants!
H-help me up…
and while you’re at it, see if this guy has a credit card on him.
Check whether the balance can cover my massage bill…
Todo’s muscle-brain method isn’t about exerting force at all.
It’s suicide!” [Tokyo Jujutsu High · Future Hope (Don’t Add the Principal)] [I’m Studying a Very New Form of Art]: [Image] [Image] The first picture showed Zenin Naoya’s face flattened into a strikingly postmodern shape by Star Rage’s impact, hanging upside down from a ruined sign in a scene of exquisite irony.
The second showed his severed arm, torn away by Blue’s attraction and looking especially desolate beneath the setting sun.
[I’m Studying a Very New Form of Art]: @Maki Maki-chan, does your Zenin clan have some sort of strange fetish?
Why does this heir of yours enjoy pressing his head against the sole of my shoe so much?
Honestly, getting my new shoes dirty is such a pain.
[I’m Studying a Very New Form of Art]: @Strongest Teacher Gojo-sensei, the Kyoto assignments are finished.
I also found an idiot in an alley who was shouting about “cleaning house” for you.
To protect your good name, I helped him physically uninstall a few unnecessary parts.
A tiny matter like this is surely something the strongest and most protective teacher in the world can clean up perfectly for his beloved student, right?
♡🫰🏻 The group chat fell silent for a full ten seconds.
[Panda]: …Makoto, you really are fearless.
You took Naoya apart?
That was Naoya, right?
That was definitely Naoya?!
[Inumaki Toge]: Makoto, Yaga-sensei called Gojo-sensei out just now.
He’s still getting yelled at.
[Maki]: …Nicely done, second-generation scumbag.
But the blindfolded asshole has been out there for almost twenty minutes already.
That’s a record.
Good luck.
[Okkotsu Yuta]: …Um, Makoto-kun, take care.
I think Gojo-sensei’s hair has gotten shinier.
Literally.
[The Strongest · Invincible · I’d Win] has joined the chat.
[Strongest Teacher]: Oh?
Isn’t this Naoya-chan?
It’s only been a few days.
How did you become so three-dimensional…
ah, no, so two-dimensional?
[Strongest Teacher]: Still, Makoto-kun, even though your teacher really is very strong, my phone is being blown up by calls from Jujutsu Headquarters at a rather inconvenient time.
[Strongest Teacher]: To reward your diligence, I’ve decided to leave every statement of defense to you!
Also, after the Goodwill Event, the intensity of our “special training of love” will double.
Be grateful when you accept your teacher’s cleanup work, okay?~ [Okkotsu Yuta]: …Makoto-kun, take care.
[System: Mizuki Makoto has enabled Do Not Disturb.]