Water splashed up from the potholes as two tall figures, one in black and one in white, walked side by side across the crosswalk and melted into a family restaurant hung with a glowing “Open 24 Hours” sign.
Wakaba Mutsumi still stood rigid beneath the eaves at the entrance of the practice room.
She held her pose, clutching that pink long-handled umbrella, the icy cold of the rain making her thin chest rise and fall ever so slightly—yet it carried away not the slightest trace of the suffocation lodged in her heart.
Saki—she’d walked far away.
That staggering blue figure had already been completely swallowed by the curtain of rain.
I’ve ruined it again…
Wakaba Mutsumi lowered her eyes, staring at her own reflection in the puddle, sliced into broken fragments by the neon lights.
No matter when, no matter who—anything I want to hold onto, in the end I’m the one who turns it all into a mess.
All I had to do was hand over the umbrella…
All I had to do was take one step forward, even just shove the umbrella into her hands…
But I…
I couldn’t do anything at all.
“I never once found being in a band fun”…
Those were the words I’d said myself.
But that isn’t true at all…
Tomori’s singing was lovely, Rikki’s drumming was so cool, Soyo’s bass tone was always so gentle…
And then Sakiko, she…
It was me…
Wakaba Mutsumi stiffly lowered the umbrella, the dull sound of the rain hammering the ground grating on her nerves.
At some point she couldn’t pin down, this bustling, crowded street had taken on a different look in her eyes.
In the shadows behind the trash cans, beneath the mottled water stains on the walls, things roughly the size of rats—yet far more revolting than any rat—were darting about at high speed.
This was not the first time Wakaba Mutsumi had seen such a nauseating sight.
Ever since she was small, they had always bred in unseen corners alongside all kinds of negative emotions.
She didn’t know what they were—only that as long as she pretended not to see them, those things wouldn’t come near.
But in this moment, as the sense of helplessness and self-loathing swelling within her threatened to drown her completely, those revolting shadows grew clearer than ever before, creeping along the base of the wall toward her feet.
Wakaba Mutsumi didn’t flinch away—she merely looked down coldly at those horrifying things trying to inch toward the top of her foot.
How disgusting.
Just like me.
Just then, Wakaba Mutsumi instinctively turned her head, looking toward the family restaurant the two men had just walked into.
From the very start, she had noticed those two.
Or rather—it would have been hard not to notice them.
There were other pedestrians on the street hurrying to get out of the rain, yet the presence of those two was so jarring it was as if someone had gouged two blank patches straight out of a pitch-black canvas.
That tall, white-haired man wearing a blindfold, and that languid black-haired boy who seemed unable to muster interest in anything.
The glance they’d cast over a moment ago—just a casual sweep of the eyes—had sent a tremor through Wakaba Mutsumi, as though she were being dissected.
It was a dread born of biological instinct, a fear in the face of absolute “strength.” What troubled her even more was the “cleanliness” surrounding them.
In Wakaba Mutsumi’s field of vision, the filthy, terrifying creatures scurried back and forth, as if the entire street were their playground.
Only the places those two had passed through were different.
The crosswalk, the traffic-light pole, beneath the streetlights…
Within a radius of several meters centered on them, a zone of absolute vacuum seemed to have formed.
Those monsters that tried to approach, the instant they touched the edge of that region, were like the last snow meeting the blazing sun—dissolving silently, without so much as a struggle.
Wakaba Mutsumi gazed fixedly at the blurry glass window of the restaurant.
Then she withdrew her gaze, gathered the umbrella back into her arms, and quietly left.
……
“I’ve never once found being a sorcerer fun.” Inside the family restaurant, Uchiha Ayato said as much to Gojo Satoru.
“This line of work is high-risk and dead-end, and on top of that you’re forced to mingle with a pack of peers who could go berserk at any moment—the mortality rate’s higher than going to the Middle East as a US soldier.” Uchiha Ayato propped his chin on one hand, eyelids drooping slightly, a world-weary languor in his eyes that had seen straight through everything: “I agreed to go to the Tech College, sure, but I think we should hammer out the terms first.” “In short—the price has to go up.” Ayato cut straight to the point: “I want the authority to act on my own discretion, exemption from all mandatory dispatch missions, and if at any point during a mission I judge it can’t be completed, I get to withdraw whenever I please.” “Also, my monthly stipend can’t be lower than the standard for a high-end white-collar worker in Tokyo’s Minato Ward.” “That’s my bottom line—one clause short and it’s off the table.” “Yay!
The extra-large strawberry parfait is here~” Gojo Satoru’s eyes lit up, and he completely ignored that long string of conditions Ayato had just thrown out.
A uniformed waiter, sweating buckets, pushed a dessert cup piled with fruit tart and a snowy mountain of cream onto the table, then retreated to a safe distance as though fleeing.
Gojo Satoru grabbed the long-handled spoon and, right in front of Ayato, dug out a huge scoop of cream and shoved it into his mouth: “Mm-mm-mm, the sweetness is just right!” He chewed, his words muffled, nodding again and again: “No problem at all—every one of those conditions, I can agree to them, you know.” “Salary, authority, whatever—I’ll go shake down those rotten oranges for you, and worst case I’ll just draw it from the Gojo Clan’s private accounts.” “Anything that can be solved with money, Teacher here has never considered a problem~” “That said…” The next moment, Gojo Satoru abruptly stopped eating his dessert.
He straightened his upper body, planted both hands on the tabletop, and suddenly leaned in close, right up to Uchiha Ayato’s face.
He even removed his blindfold, exposing those “Six Eyes” entirely to the open air: “Let’s set those tacky little matters aside for now.” “Come on, let me have a look!” “Compared to those worldly little schemes of yours, Teacher here is so curious about those eyes of yours right now I could go mad.” “Just how did you do it earlier?” Gojo Satoru’s gaze locked tight onto Ayato’s eyes, the corners of his mouth splitting open to bare gleaming white teeth: “Without using Cursed Energy, without unfolding a Domain Expansion, just one instant of eye contact, and you went straight past my five senses and forced false information right into my brain…” “It’s a little similar to my Domain Expansion, hm~” “Come on, come on, tell me, Ayato-kun!” “Haah…” Uchiha Ayato let out a sigh, his eyelids drooping low; when he raised them again, his black pupils had already been steeped in crimson, three black Tomoe slowly revolving against the blood-red background.
“What a grown-up with no sense of boundaries you are.” Ayato kept his loose, easy tone, his crimson eyes staring straight into the sky-blue mere inches away: “This is my Innate Technique.
You can call it the ‘Sharingan.'” “As long as I don’t go blind, these eyes can see through the flow of Cursed Energy and copy techniques and martial arts.” “That thing from before was also a minor function of these eyes—you can think of it as a mental attack that doesn’t require unfolding a Domain Expansion.” Unhurried, he laid his trump cards out on the table, going all in on full disclosure and frank honesty.
In the jujutsu world, this kind of act has a most unassailable name—— Technique Disclosure.
“Oh my?
You can even copy techniques?” Gojo Satoru drew out the tail end of his words, his gaze glued to those three revolving Tomoe in Ayato’s eyes: “Interesting—a very, very interesting pair of eyes.” “That said, Ayato-kun, if Teacher here remembers correctly…” Gojo Satoru pointed at Ayato’s eyes with his spoon: “Just now in the alley, your eyes clearly had only two Tomoe, didn’t they?
How’d they turn into three now?” “Secretly powering up right in front of me—are you trying to give your teacher a sense of crisis?” This was no offhand quip.
Under the observation of the “Six Eyes,” the flow of “Cursed Energy” in Ayato’s eyes had become several times more complex than before.
To this, Uchiha Ayato wore a perfectly composed expression: “Isn’t this common sense?” “Just a moment ago, I disclosed the information about my technique to you—an outsider—holding nothing back.” “Voluntarily exposing your trump card in exchange for an amplification of power—that’s a ‘Binding Vow,’ isn’t it?” “So, the Sharingan grew stronger, and the Tomoe went from two to three.
Perfectly reasonable, no?” Gojo Satoru stared at Ayato for a good few seconds.
The next instant, he suddenly burst into laughter, throwing his body back hard: “Hahahahaha!” “Reasonable!
Too reasonable!” Gojo Satoru put his blindfold back on, once more concealing those dangerous sky-blue eyes: “Alright, this deal is sealed!” “All your conditions, including whatever protests those rotten oranges might raise—I’ll take care of all of it, consider it Teacher’s special favor for an outstanding student.” He scooped up the last spoonful of cream, by now somewhat melted, tossed it into his mouth, and chewed with a loud smacking sound: “Principal Yaga and I will recommend to the Higher-Ups that you be made a Grade 1 Sorcerer.” “The formal paperwork and assessment mission will probably be delivered into your hands tomorrow.” “Try not to go and die by accident, Ayato-kun.” “Teacher here is very much looking forward to seeing you report in at the Tech College after spring break~”