“Huh?
You’re not Grandma…
Sorry, I got the wrong room!” Receiving no response, the girl seemed a bit bewildered.
“Um, then do you happen to know where Room 306 is?” “…” “Hellooo?” “…” Met with continuous silence, the girl seemed to get a bit stubborn.
She sneakily tiptoed around half the room until she was standing directly in front of Rui’s face: “He-llooo?” Rui simply closed his eyes and began silently counting in his head.
One, two, three…
He always did this whenever the doctor came to run exams.
Once he closed his eyes, the pain of drawing blood was just pain, and the words—whether full of pity or cold indifference—were just background noise.
By the time he counted to one hundred, they would vanish from the room like a phantom.
Ninety-nine, one hundred.
Rui exhaled deeply—and opened his eyes.
What he saw was a pair of beautiful, amber eyes.
The owner of those eyes was crouching beside the hospital bed, quietly tilting her head at the exact same angle to meticulously study his face.
“Your skin…
it’s so white and pretty.
Were you born like that?” *Pretty?* This skin, which would ulcerate and rot if it so much as encountered fresh air or water, was nothing short of a literal curse.
Rui lacked the energy to lose his temper, suddenly feeling entirely devoid of interest…
He pulled the blanket back over his head, silently handing her an eviction notice.
The girl—the girl named Yujina Itadori—stood up in confusion and walked out of the room, pausing with every step.
At the doorway, she couldn’t help but look back at the boy on the bed.
She didn’t understand why he had become so unhappy when she had explicitly been complementing him.
[…A childhood-stage Yujina Itadori was still in the process of understanding the world around her.] [Young children always assume that their own feelings can be applied universally to the entire world.
Therefore, it was difficult for her to comprehend why many severely ill patients would actively avoid others, even their own flesh and blood.] [She had merely spoken her most brutally honest thoughts to you.] [“You mean that patient?
Ah, though it’s a bit improper to say…
it’s honestly best if you don’t interact with him too much.
He has a highly severe immune system disorder.
They say his skin sloughs off and peels just like a snake shedding its skin…
If you see that, it’ll definitely traumatize you.”] [Having obtained this intelligence from the nurse, she returned to your ward the very next day.] [“I’m sorry…
I didn’t think about your feelings.
I just carelessly went and made comments about your body…”] [You completely ignored her.
Consequently, for the next month, she came by every single day, pulling up a spot right at the head of your bed to chat with you entirely unprompted.] [In reality, by the third day, you had already told her that you forgave her and that she should stop coming…
but she proved to be unimaginably persistent.] [At first, she would just say her apologies and promptly leave.
Gradually, it evolved into: “Whoa, Grandma’s face looks so hilarious when she gets her shots!” or “Listen to this, I caught a super huge rhinoceros beetle at school today!”…] [It was entirely filled with trivial matters that didn’t matter in the slightest.
She would speak in an endless, torrent-like stream, while you kept your head turned away, listening in perfect, unbroken silence.] [Human beings always grow accustomed to the environment they adapt to.
That was the sole reason you willingly stayed inside this cramped, suffocating ward, and why you felt the doctor utilizing your body for clinical drug trials was entirely natural and not worth criticizing…] [So now, you also began to view her sudden afternoon appearances by your side—smiling brightly as she chatted about anything and everything—as a permanent fixture of your daily routine.] [It felt as though things were exactly as they were supposed to be, and that these days would never see an end.] [“Um…
my grandma is being discharged from the hospital tomorrow.”] [—You should have realized long ago that a day like this would eventually come.] [Yujina Itadori’s expression was somewhat complicated as she lightly bit her lip.
You couldn’t tell if she was feeling guilty?
Reluctant?
Or perhaps experiencing the profound loneliness of leaving a playmate behind?] [Those specific, nuanced emotions were simply too far removed from you.
Having lacked any semblance of a social life for ages, you parted your lips to say something, only to realize you were completely stuck on the very first step of sorting out your own feelings…] [What exactly did you think of her?
Did you want her to stay?
Did you not want her to leave?
Did you want to trap her alongside you within this tiny hospital room?] [You didn’t know.
Even though you didn’t know…
your chest still felt terribly tight and stifled.] [“I’m sorry, and thank you, even though I never managed to find out your name.
Also…
goodbye.
I hope you get better.”] [That was the absolute last time you ever laid eyes on her silhouette inside this hospital.] […] [“The ‘curse’ affecting your body is called a Heavenly Restriction.
Regrettably, this is not a medical illness, and our raising of you was never for some superficial research value.”] [“As a jujutsu sorcerer, labor for the Kamo Clan, Rui.”] [Following your separation from Yujina Itadori, you spent six entirely blank years inside that hospital room.] [Then, out of nowhere one day, the doctors dressed you in a heavy, suffocating hazmat suit and escorted you out of the hospital…
You fully expected to be dragged into an autopsy theater, but instead, you arrived at a traditional, sprawling Japanese estate radiating ancient historical wealth.] [The Kamo Clan—one of the Big Three Families, absolute, genuine jujutsu world old money.] [“Your innate technique…
is highly exceptional.
But commit this to memory: outside of active combat, under no circumstances are you to heal yourself.
Maintain that body exactly as it is right now—you ask why?
Fool.
A Heavenly Restriction is a ritual that exchanges physical frailty for massive cursed energy reserves.
Only by perpetually maintaining your decrepit state can you accumulate cursed energy to deploy at a critical juncture, understand?”] [“Furthermore, don’t even entertain the thought of defying the Kamo Clan…
The Kamo Clan has entirely funded your living and medical expenses at the hospital all these years, and we placed a Binding Vow upon your soul long ago.
If you resist, your life will be forfeit in an instant.
Conduct yourself wisely.”] […Idle Transfiguration.
This was your innate technique.] [You faintly sensed that you possessed a second innate technique that was the exact polar opposite of Idle Transfiguration—one capable of utilizing cursed energy to construct the physical forms of inorganic matter.
You chose to share this fact with absolutely no one.] [It turned out that as early as age six, when your technique first awakened, they could have easily taught you how to manipulate cursed energy and heal your own body.] [Thus, you began to master everything required of a jujutsu sorcerer—a task that proved to be astonishingly simple for you.
With a mere casual touch, the vast majority of cursed spirits would instantly dissolve into absolute nothingness before they could even let out a dying shriek.] [No one within the clan was willing to spar with you, a sentiment shared even by the few Grade 1 Sorcerers among them.
Having accumulated for nearly a decade under a Heavenly Restriction, your sheer volume of cursed energy had undeniably breached the threshold of Special Grade.
To describe it as a bottomless abyss would not be an exaggeration in the slightest…] [Combined with the lethal offensive power and limitless endurance of Idle Transfiguration, there was likely not a single sorcerer across the entirety of the Big Three Families who could guarantee a clean victory against you.] [Ugly rumors regarding you began to circulate wildly within the Kamo Clan.
They deeply feared your overwhelming strength, whispering that you weren’t human but a curse incarnate.
Yet, at the exact same time, they utterly despised your status and mocked your broken physical form—relying entirely on the absolute security of the Binding Vow to treat you like a caged wild beast to be taunted at their leisure.] [You said absolutely nothing.] [—Endure.] “Did you see that?
It’s genuinely repulsive…
that innate technique.
Why on earth does the Clan Head permit that kind of monstrosity into the Kamo estate?” [—Exorcise cursed spirits.
Do what needs to be done.] “He’s nothing more than a blade anyway, who gives a damn?
Once we’re done using him, he’ll find some random ditch to go die in on his own.” [—Just hold on and wait.
Sooner or later, something good will happen.] “Didn’t we explicitly command you not to use your technique to heal your own body?
Are you deaf, you piece of trash?
Your cursed energy is the property of the Kamo Clan!
Use the agony of those open wounds to remember your place!” [—Endure.] [—If you do not endure, you will not survive.] [That very night.] [The Kamo Clan was annihilated.] [The clan’s elite sorcerer combat unit, “Shima”—comprising a grand total of 47 personnel—was slaughtered to the last man.] —