[You can feel a warm, thick stream of blood pooling down your back.] [Are you flying right now?
Where are you even headed?
Your brain feels completely fogged over, and your thoughts have slowed down to a painful crawl.] [——Mahoraga’s raw strength had completely blown past anything either of you could have anticipated.] [You originally figured that as long as you deployed your wings and took to the sky, the monster wouldn’t be able to touch you.
But its leg strength was so utterly terrifying that it could effortlessly leap into the air and swat down a dragonfly blurring at top speed.] [Your high-speed insect armor build, powered by dragonfly wings, was never designed to tank heavy hits.
Just from briefly throwing yourself behind Yuna Okotsu to shield her from a single slash of that Sword of Extermination, you had been reduced to this pathetic state.] [A massive, gaping wound–stretching over forty centimeters long–cleaved its way from your left shoulder all the way down to your lower back…] [The sheer rate of blood loss was astronomical.
Even though Yuna immediately scrambled to channel her Reverse Cursed Technique with everything she had, an external application of healing energy is notoriously inefficient.
It takes precious time for a physical body to knit back together, and during that crucial window, the blood currently spraying out of you isn’t going to miraculously magically pop back inside.] [The very first thing that comes into focus through your blurry vision is Yuna Okotsu’s face, absolutely drenched in tears.] [To be completely honest, from the very first day you met her, you always felt her face was practically made for crying…
Not out of any malice, of course, but her brows always furrowed just a bit deeper than everyone else’s.
Her eyes were usually buried behind a chaotic curtain of messy black hair, too timid to lock gazes with anyone, making her impossible to read–except when she was sobbing, which was the only time her raw, vivid emotions actually broke through.] [Maybe she was just born under a tragic star, destined to walk this earth simply to pay back a debt of sorrow with an endless stream of tears.
Maybe that was why she always got bullied, why Rika latched onto her in the first place, and why crying just looked so natural on her…] [Scalding hot tears splatter onto your cheeks.
It feels as though winter has abruptly ground to a halt, her eyes dissolving like icicles melting off a roof, sending down a steady, pathetic patter.] [——The Reverse Cursed Technique keeps pumping into you, yet your condition shows absolutely zero signs of turning around.] [To make matters worse, even though something seemed to have briefly bottlenecked it a second ago, Mahoraga has already resumed its terrifying advance…
Right now, there is only a single person alive on this planet capable of putting that monstrosity down, and she is currently pinned down all the way out in Kyoto, utterly unable to break away.] [Yuna’s reaction slowly shifts from her initial, frantic panic into a hollow, quiet stillness.
The only thing you can register is the faint, rhythmic trembling of her shoulders.] [“…Tachibana…
kun.”] [She is currently carrying you on her back, cutting through the sky.
In a desperate bid to maximize her flight speed while sustaining the raw output of her healing technique, she has dispelled every single insect adaptation save for her dragonfly wings.
You can only lean weakly against her shoulder, staring sideways at her gorgeous face.] [It creates a fleeting illusion…
a bizarre trick of the mind that makes you feel as though the two of you are still just lounging around back in the dorm room, aimlessly chatting about completely ordinary things that have absolutely nothing to do with jujutsu, or anyone else in the world.] [When she speaks, her words are thick and distorted, laced with a heavily stifled whimper.] [“Tachibana-kun…
are you still awake?
Let’s…
let’s talk about something, okay?”] [To drift off to sleep right now meant definitive death.] [“When I was little, there was this one time I wanted this specific doll so badly.
I pestered my parents for ages until they finally gave in and bought it for me…
But once I actually had it, I was only thrilled for a tiny bit before I just threw her up on the shelf and never looked at her again.”] [“Thinking back on it now, maybe it wasn’t the doll itself that I actually wanted.
I think I just loved the feeling of being completely consumed by a desire, you know?
That anticipation alone was what made my heart race.”] [True to her word, she doesn’t utter a single syllable about the brutal battlefield spinning around you.
She simply speaks in a soft, incredibly gentle cadence, sharing completely trivial, ordinary snippets of life.] [“Like going out to eat, or watching the fireworks…
Doing those things completely by yourself is honestly pretty boring.
But if you make a promise to do them with someone else, then the entire period spent waiting around for that day becomes something incredibly magical.”] [“Tachibana-kun…
what’s your favorite food?
I can’t remember if I ever told you, but mine is cabbage marinated in sesame oil…
If it’s okay with you, next time…
can we go get some together?”] [Your thoroughly scrambled brain is completely incapable of processing the fact that she is actively flying straight toward the cursed warehouse.] [When you run into a bear out in the wilderness, you don’t actually need to outrun the bear itself–you only need to outrun the person standing next to you.] [Perhaps…
just perhaps, if she drops you off with Squad One at the warehouse, those sorcerers can stall Mahoraga for an extra minute.
And that single minute might be the exact window Ms.
Gojo needs to make it back.] [But the toll for that gamble–would be the absolute and total eradication of the current generation of Tokyo Jujutsu High from the annals of history.] [Through the hazy fog of unconsciousness, you feel your body being gently lowered onto the ground.
Yuna kneels down directly beside you, leaning her upper body over yours.
First, she presses her ear to your chest to check your pulse…
Letting out a swift sigh of relief, she shifts closer, her breath brushing right against your ear.] [“Tachibana-kun, remember when I told you that I wanted to stay in a place that could accept even the most wretched, despicable parts of my soul…?
I’m sorry I never had the courage to tell you, but when I said those words, I wasn’t talking about Jujutsu High.
I was talking entirely about you.”] [“I’m an incredibly awful person…
I spend every single day wallowing in self-pity, talking about how I’ve committed horrible sins and how I should just hurry up and die.
But at the end of the day, everyone else is always the one cleaning up my pathetic messes, while I just shamelessly sit around wanting someone to validate me, craving someone I can completely lean on and throw tantrums to.”] [“That night at the abandoned hospital, even though I claimed I didn’t want to drink your blood anymore, deep down inside I was absolutely thrilled.
I was so incredibly happy that someone actually existed who wouldn’t run away in terror, someone who wouldn’t be afraid of me even after I hurt them…”] [“Even seeing the look of sheer discomfort on your face whenever I drank your blood made me so happy.
I’d think to myself, ‘Wow, look at how much pain this person is in, yet he still refuses to abandon me.’ And in the end, just to catch a glimpse of that exact expression again, I found myself craving your blood even more…
I’m completely toxic, aren’t I?”] [“Even right now, my mind is plagued by the most despicable thoughts…
Like how if I flee to the warehouse, maybe Senior Hakari and Ms.
Kusakabe will jump in and do something, and maybe…
just maybe, both of us will walk away alive.”] [“But…
but still.”] [Her voice is remarkably tender–so profoundly gentle that it sends a strange, instinctive bolt of dread directly through you.] [“The only ones allowed to throw endless tantrums…
are children.
I can’t force my selfishness on the world anymore.”] [“There are still so many, many things I wanted to experience with you, Tachibana-kun…
But I’m sorry.
I’m so, so sorry.”] [You can feel her fingertips lightly tracing the contours of your cheek, mimicking the exact manner she held you the very first time she bit you…
Then, leaning down softly, she brushes away the stray strands of hair framing your forehead.] [A slightly bitter, sharp tang–resembling the scent of an unripened citrus fruit–lingers for a brief fraction of a second, before breaking away.] [“…Thank you for everything.
And please, take care of yourself.”] [“Rui-kun.”] [Yuna Okotsu slowly pushes herself up to a standing position.
She reaches down, giving a deliberate twist to the ring resting on her ring finger–the exact one you had personally slipped onto her hand.] [“My life, my future, my everything…
all the things that I finally started to find a shred of value in because of you–you can have every single bit of it…”] [“–So please, just this once, lend me your strength, Rika.”] [“Ugh…
f-fine, whatever, Yuna…
What’s the deal with that Rui guy anyway…?
Ugh, forget it, I won’t even ask.
Just take the raw power, take all of it…”] [For some inexplicable reason, even though Yuna Okotsu had finally summoned the absolute resolve to go down in a blaze of mutual glory, the manifestation of Rika towering behind her shoulder looked as if she were actively suffering from a severe bout of constipation.] […It didn’t take long before the looming silhouette of Mahoraga breached the definitive perimeter of her maximum cursed energy output.] “Whoa, whoa, time out!
Hold the phone, system!” Rui interjects from outside the simulation, a spike of genuine panic hitting him as he watches the narrative unfold.
“Did you completely lose track of my traits?
I distinctly remember having a ‘Binding Vow of Ultimate Sacrifice’ trait tucked away for a rainy day!
Deal’s made, crack open the next quarter of my soul and take it!” If this trajectory kept running unchecked, the main heroine was going to get completely written out of script.
As a hardcore story enthusiast, he absolutely refused to tolerate a bad ending!
[System Notification: Replying to Host.
In the current simulation branch, Mahoraga has already fully adapted to every conceivable offensive permutation of the Construction Technique.
Consequently, even if you trigger the Binding Vow of Ultimate Sacrifice, victory remains mathematically impossible.
Furthermore, unleashing this vow guarantees the permanent demise of the Host, rendering a perfect ending impossible to achieve.
In a best-case scenario, it would merely leave the current simulation’s heroine to spend the remainder of her days drowning in absolute, eternal regret…] “Bro, that’s literally peak fiction right there!
You say that like it’s a bad thing!” Rui retorts instantly.
“Who cares about that?
Who wouldn’t want to activate an ultimate sacrifice play, get absolutely diced into mango cubes like a tragic hero, and then watch a gorgeous girl sobbing uncontrollably as she desperately tries to piece the cubes back together?
She can’t fit them right, her tears are falling faster, she’s crying harder, she’s piecing faster–that’s pure cinema!” […Processing.
Trait “Binding Vow of Ultimate Sacrifice” has been successfully triggered.] —