Kyoto Jujutsu High second-year student, Miwa Kasumi.
She wasn’t having a particularly good day either.
Sunlight filtered through the dense canopy of towering trees, casting broken patches of light across the forest floor covered in fallen leaves.
At that moment, Miwa Kasumi was moving alone through the forest being used as the Goodwill Event grounds.
Everyone knew that the jujutsu world was full of lunatics, extremists, and people with more than a few screws loose.
But Miwa Kasumi was different.
Very different.
Not because of her cursed technique.
As a Grade 3 sorcerer, she didn’t even possess an Innate Technique of her own.
And certainly not because she was especially powerful.
At Grade 3, the word “strong” didn’t exactly apply to her.
What made her unusual was that she had somehow managed to preserve an ordinary person’s kindness and, even more rarely, an ordinary person’s common sense while living in the jujutsu world.
She cared about her classmates.
Whether it was Ultimate Mechamaru, who only ever appeared before them through mechanical puppets, Zenin Mai, who always looked like everyone around her owed her millions of yen, or Kamo Noritoshi, heir to the Kamo Clan and a user of Blood Manipulation…
And yet someone like her had been given a mission by the principal that she deeply wanted no part of.
During the Goodwill Event, she and the others were supposed to kill a student from Tokyo Jujutsu High.
Itadori Yuji.
As the vessel of Ryomen Sukuna, Itadori Yuji’s position within jujutsu society was admittedly complicated.
Some people didn’t even treat him as an independent human being.
But Miwa Kasumi, the blue-haired girl with long, side-swept bangs, still couldn’t bring herself to seriously want to kill another Jujutsu High student.
Besides, she was only a Grade 3 sorcerer.
Her greatest ambition was simply to graduate from Jujutsu High as soon as possible, advance to a higher grade, earn more money, and help support her family.
To an ordinary person, someone who had become a sorcerer for reasons like that would probably seem unusually sensible.
By jujutsu sorcerer standards, however, she was practically an anomaly.
And Miwa had decided to remain that way.
So now that the Goodwill Event had begun, she used supporting her teammates as an excuse to leave the planned route and quietly avoid the mission to kill Itadori Yuji.
Even so, her hands tightened around the katana she always carried, and determination shone in her bright blue eyes.
She didn’t want to kill anyone.
But if she wanted to rise through the ranks as a sorcerer, she still desperately wanted Kyoto to win this Goodwill Event.
Although the competition between Tokyo and Kyoto Jujutsu High was fundamentally a team battle, points were also awarded based on the number of cursed spirits each side exorcised.
For that reason, more than a dozen low-level cursed spirits had been released into the forest to serve as targets.
Miwa’s first priority was finding them.
Only after that would she worry about defeating Tokyo students for additional points.
Unfortunately, things weren’t going her way.
Miwa had already separated from the main group and spent quite a while carefully searching the dense forest alone.
She still hadn’t seen a single cursed spirit.
“I wonder how everyone else is doing…”
“Todou isn’t actually going to do something terrible to Itadori, is he…?”
Feeling useless after failing to find even one curse, Miwa murmured under her breath while using her katana to push aside a bush blocking her path.
Her thoughts were still full of concern for the others.
Then her words abruptly stopped.
Her trained senses had finally picked up something deeper in the forest.
A faint but unmistakable trace of cursed energy from a cursed spirit.
“Finally!”
Shing.
Her katana left its sheath.
Cursed energy surged from Miwa’s core and spread through her body with every heartbeat, reinforcing her entire frame and concentrating especially heavily in her legs.
With cursed energy strengthening her body, her running speed instantly surpassed normal human limits.
She became a blue blur weaving rapidly through the trees.
“I’ll gladly take this point…”
Miwa rushed at full speed toward the location where the cursed energy was strongest.
But before she could even finish the enthusiastic thought, her entire body froze in place.
What appeared before her wasn’t the low-level cursed spirit she had expected.
Dark purple chunks of cursed spirit flesh were scattered across the ground, slowly dissolving into nothing.
And standing in the middle of the remains was a black-haired boy with naturally messy curls.
Looking thoroughly bored, he casually flicked cursed spirit blood from the oversized, thick-backed blade in his hand.
Was someone from Tokyo faster than me…?
No.
That cursed energy is unfamiliar.
He’s not from Jujutsu High!
Once Miwa’s brain finally caught up, her thoughts accelerated instantly.
Her grip tightened around her katana.
How is someone from outside Jujutsu High inside the Goodwill Event grounds?
This place is protected by Tengen’s barrier…
And what’s with this guy?
He looks about my age, but just looking at him is making every instinct in my body scream at me to run.
However, Miwa was a formally trained sorcerer.
She knew figuring out the stranger’s identity wasn’t her first priority.
Her immediate reaction was to keep her katana ready with one hand while pulling out the phone issued by Jujutsu High with the other.
She needed to report the appearance of an unidentified sorcerer to the faculty.
“Piercing Blood.”
Miwa had just lit up the phone screen and pressed the call button when she heard the boy in front of her speak calmly.
He hadn’t even looked at her.
The next instant, before she had time to blink, a crimson thread tore past her cheek.
It struck the phone in her raised hand with perfect accuracy.
Crack.
The device exploded into fragments.
[Grade 3 Cursed Spirit killed.
65 EXP absorbed.
20 gold obtained.
Current EXP: 1,388.
Current gold: 791.
332 EXP required to reach the next level.]
Hearing the system notification, Atsushi recalled the thread of blood formed by Blood Manipulation.
The pallor caused by his anemia gradually faded as the blood returned to his body.
“It took forever to convince Hanami to go deal with the sorcerers while leaving the low-level cursed spirits in the forest to me.”
“I’ve barely killed a few, and I’ve already run into a Jujutsu High student.”
Now that the Goodwill Event operation had begun, Atsushi looked at the blue-haired girl standing frozen in shock after he destroyed her phone and let out a helpless sigh.
“I haven’t had many chances to exorcise curses these last few days, either.
I only just reached Lv.4…”
“But I can’t exactly leave with her here, can I?”
He paused.
“Wait…”
“Long blue hair, side-swept bangs, cute face.”
“Isn’t that Miwa Kasumi?”
Only then did Atsushi finally recognize her.
“…Cute?”
“Cute…?”
Miwa was still stunned by the fact that a complete stranger had just used Blood Manipulation, the inherited technique of the Kamo Clan, one of the Three Great Families.
Then Atsushi’s abrupt comment reached her ears.
Her thoughts short-circuited for a moment.
Like an ordinary high school girl suddenly being complimented out of nowhere, two completely inappropriate patches of red appeared on her cheeks.
She even became slightly flustered.
“W-Well…”
“Good reaction.”
Atsushi gave her a faint smile.
“No wonder Mechamaru fell for you.”
“Unfortunately, I’m going to need you to take a nap for a while.”
Atsushi casually adjusted his grip on the Special Grade Cursed Tool Dragon-Bone and slowly began walking toward Miwa.
“A nap?!”
Miwa’s first reaction to that extremely suspicious statement wasn’t even to fight.
She instinctively covered herself.
But unlike Miwa, who had misunderstood what he meant and hesitated, Atsushi showed absolutely no intention of going easy on her.
The brutal, thick-backed blade in his hand tore through the air and came down toward Miwa without hesitation.
Clang!
A piercing crash of steel exploded through the forest.
Miwa finally realized that by “take a nap,” Atsushi simply meant knocking her unconscious.
Her sorcerer’s instincts kicked in just in time.
She gripped her katana with both hands and met Dragon-Bone, which Atsushi had swung one-handed.
A burst of brilliant sparks erupted between the two blades.
So heavy…!
His body looks so thin.
He almost looks sick.
But the cursed energy behind that strike is stronger than mine?
Is this harmless-looking guy actually a Grade 2 sorcerer?
Miwa was forced backward after blocking the blow.
Her feet carved two deep trenches through the soil.
She had used both hands and put everything she had into blocking.
Atsushi had only swung his weapon with one hand.
And yet her palms were still trembling uncontrollably around the katana’s handle.
Breathing heavily, Miwa stared at the boy in front of her with lingering fear.
Atsushi looked as though he’d done nothing more strenuous than swat away a fly.
And after that single exchange, he made no attempt to immediately follow up.
I put the Attribute Point from reaching Lv.4 into Total Cursed Energy again.
Good.
It looks like my body’s cursed energy output still hasn’t hit its limit.
At this point, I should already be above an ordinary Grade 3 sorcerer.
For now, I’ll keep increasing Total Cursed Energy.
As long as I keep expanding my overall reserves, the maximum amount of cursed energy I can output at once should continue increasing…
That brief clash with Miwa gave Atsushi a rough idea of how strong his cursed energy output had become after three upgrades.
On the other side, Miwa swallowed nervously as Atsushi slowly began approaching again.
Should I run?
The most important thing right now is telling everyone that an outside sorcerer has infiltrated the Goodwill Event.
But his cursed energy is clearly stronger than mine.
If we both reinforce our bodies, I probably can’t outrun him.
And he has the Kamo Clan’s inherited technique…
If Piercing Blood hits me in the back while I’m running, I’ll definitely die.
The two stood facing each other in the forest, each lost in their own thoughts.
“Relax.”
As though he had seen through Miwa’s hesitation, Atsushi suddenly tried to “reassure” her.
“I’m not going to kill you.”
“That first attack was just me testing the strength of my cursed energy.”
“You’re a Grade 3 sorcerer, right?”
“Looks like you don’t have an Innate Technique either.”
“You’d probably be better off giving up.”
“I don’t exactly know any gentle way to knock someone unconscious, but Jujutsu High has sorcerers who specialize in medical treatment…”
As Atsushi’s calm voice continued through the forest, the distance between them steadily shrank.
“So even if I’m a little rough…”
“You won’t die, right?”
The blade flashed again.
In Miwa’s eyes, the black-haired boy had no malice whatsoever in his expression.
And somehow, that only made him look even more like a demon.
(To be continued.)