Chapter 41

An obsession turned into a bond.

The young man's increasingly blurred figure actually began to solidify, taking on a familiar yet distorted state.

A trace of astonishment flashed across Satoru Gojo's desolate yet tense expression.

This was the true special-grade vengeful cursed spirit...

This was the true appearance... of being cursed.

Filthy cursed energy, resembling unbreakable chains, firmly trapped that bird.

They willingly accepted it.

They both relished this outcome with sweet devotion.

Has the curse taken shape?

Takizawasei closed those emerald eyes that had been surging with overwhelming emotions.

His madness, soaked in tears, and his grief, which threatened to overflow, were simultaneously concealed by his lowered eyelids.

In a daze, Satoru Gojo caught his limp, falling body.

"......Sei?" he called out in a low voice.

Takizawasei did not respond to him.

He seemed to have been left in a very peculiar state.

Vengeful thoughts entwined his body, and mighty cursed energy surged. Two obsessions—different in origin yet identical in nature—were tightly intertwined, firmly enveloping him.

It was as if they were gestating, waiting for the moment to finally break through the earth.

"......"

Even time seemed to freeze due to their motionless postures.

The ordinary people who had fled into the distance were holding their breaths, not daring to make a sound. Looking closely, each of their necks was gripped by a cursed spirit, forcing them not to utter any noisy or unsightly sounds.

Satoru Gojo held Takizawasei tightly, a suppressed sob breaking from his throat.

Then, as if something had collapsed,

A vast torrent of cursed energy poured out. It was a height humanity had never been able to stand upon, the pinnacle that only the strongest could reach. The churning cursed energy transformed into tangible pressure. Ordinary people were hit so hard by this force that they could not even steady themselves. Their brains roared as if countless pieces of information had been received in a single instant, and their ears were filled with chaotic noise. Yet amidst this hysterical chaos, they seemed to hear someone letting out a mournful wail.

"Gojo!"

Suguru Geto, the only one capable of withstanding the impact, shouted at the top of his lungs.

Utmost pain, utmost vengeful thought—they were on the verge of transforming into the ultimate curse.

The cursed energy possessed form, possessed light, and thus the two figures at the center of the vortex became blurred.

Suguru Geto hurriedly released a vast number of cursed spirits, instinctively devouring that cursed energy.

What on earth is this—?!

Rin江夏, who had arrived a step too late, also stared blankly at this scene.

——Is this a natural disaster?!

"What on earth... has happened?"

***

This chaos lasted for only ten seconds.

Ten seconds was already an eternity for the strongest.

He used those ten seconds to accept reality and take Takizawasei's words to heart.

Takizawasei had said: Wait.

The young man's original intention was—do not give up on this world.

Malice, conspiracies, ordinary people, sorcerers, higher-ups, the dark underworld—do not let them face destruction.

"Gojo..."

Suguru Geto softly called out to him.

It carried a cautious probing, a heart-wrenching worry. He had seen Satoru Gojo like this before, back when Takizawasei had been stabbed by Toji Fushiguro and Gojo, believing he was beyond saving and gripped by a fatal despair, had held him with that same icy, apathetic expression that seemed incapable of perceiving anything.

And now, the Satoru Gojo before him...

It was as if a part of him had been completely excised. His lucid, heavenly eyes reflected a detached divinity, and even his expression had vanished.

"Geto..."

Satoru Gojo scooped up Takizawasei.

The young man's neck hung limply, his hands dangling at his sides. Satoru Gojo carefully straightened his head, letting him lean against his chest.

"I'll leave the aftermath here to you."

The strongest sorcerer spoke with a semblance of calmness, though in the eyes of his dearest friend, he appeared utterly soul-sapped. "Sorry, I have no way to spare a thought for you right now."

"No, don't say things like that..."

Suguru Geto, who had remained uninvolved from beginning to end, slightly lowered his eyelids, concealing the flickering light within his eyes.

He turned all his pain into a sob that never spilled past his throat. His teeth were clenched, his jaw tightened, and the veins on his neck bulged slightly from his forbearance. The obscure and suppressed aura made him look somewhat gloomy and terrifying, yet the dark-haired youth merely maintained a posture of absolute non-interference.

The curse of the strongest sorcerer, the curse of love, was the most unbearable oath in this world.

It was merely starting all over again...

Suguru Geto thought with utter exhaustion, "Cursed him, Gojo."

Bring him back to us once more.

No one would oppose such an outcome.

No one could oppose it.

His gloomy eyes glanced toward the trembling ordinary people. Feeling a surge of annoyance, he forced himself to look away.

"The Heavenly Restriction was released. I heard from Sei that he was handed over to the Headquarters and supposedly should have been dealt with."

"Yeah, I know." Satoru Gojo walked past him, his state异常ly wrong. "Sorry, I'm not in the mood to deal with this matter right now, but I will definitely investigate it."

Naturally.

Suguru Geto ironized with a bitter twitch of his lips.

In the end... they had still failed to stop those people.

In that cold winter, the Cursed Spirit Manipulation user standing at the crossroads of life had witnessed his friend being ground down into an unrecognizable state by human malice.

Thus, he discovered that there were far too many things that could not be done on the side of the light.

All the rats lived in the shadows.

They lay dormant with infinite patience, waiting for the right moment to tear their prey into pieces.

***

Satoru Gojo brought Takizawasei back to Jujutsu High.

Not the Gojo family estate, because he knew Takizawasei disliked that place.

Compared to the lifeless Three Great Families, Jujutsu High, filled with vibrant and spirited youths, was undoubtedly more suited for him.

Shoko Ieiri was treating Toge Inumaki's wounds. She stared intently at the hole pierced straight through his chest until it completely healed before she relaxed slightly. Nearby, Yuta Okkotsu was also nervously watching the situation.

"Senior, how is he?"

The brown-haired woman had a piece of candy in her mouth. "Nothing serious anymore. He'll be jumping around in no time."

"How does Reverse Cursed Technique work?"

"You want to learn?"

"Yeah." The dark-haired boy clenched the ring hanging in front of his chest. "The feeling of watching your comrades get hurt while being completely powerless... is utterly terrible."

"It seems pretty simple to me, but somehow others can never quite grasp the trick. Even Gojo can only heal himself..." Shoko Ieiri was speaking casually when she suddenly felt a sensation as though her heart had skipped a beat, leaving an empty hollow.

An indescribable intuition told her that someone had arrived, and the situation was far from optimistic.

She turned her head. Heavy footsteps echoed outside the infirmary, sounding somewhat sluggish.

Yuta Okkotsu was stunned for a moment, then stood up in pleasant surprise, "It's Gojo-sensei!"

The infirmary door was slid open.

Yuta Okkotsu's smile froze on his face. First, he saw Takizawasei covered in blood, his frail appearance shocking to the core, and only then did he shift his gaze to Satoru Gojo's face.

...The other's expression made Yuta Okkotsu feel a sense of unfamiliarity.

For the first time, he saw on the face of this unreliable youth—so often criticized for his excessive ego—a silence far more terrifying than composure.

It seemed to be a silence incapable of perceiving the outside world, or rather, a silence where nothing in the outside world could trigger any emotional fluctuations within him.

Pure, cold tones; even those eyes had turned inhumanly detached.

The light falling from the incandescent lamp overhead felt chillingly cold, as if by illusion. Yuta Okkotsu's throat tightened as he asked, "Takizawa... what's wrong with him?"

He carefully scrutinized Takizawasei's chest. No rise and fall? Was it too weak for him to discern, or had it vanished altogether?

Satoru Gojo walked straight past him, and Yuta Okkotsu's gaze closely followed. Anticipating the worst possible outcome, he began to tremble uncontrollably.

Satoru Gojo placed Takizawasei on a clean bed, lowering his eyelashes to gaze at the young man's face. "Shoko, take a look at what's wrong with him."

His voice... betrayed no obvious problem.

Shoko Ieiri approached, reaching out to press against Takizawasei's carotid artery, only to touch an empty cavity.

She paused, nonchalantly wiping the blood from her fingertips, checked Takizawasei's breathing and heartbeat, and then, like a ruthless forensic doctor, pulled back the young man's eyelids to observe his pupils.

Then, she delivered her conclusion, "He's dead."

Yuta Okkotsu gasped.

The rationalizations he had used to comfort himself completely collapsed. Above Satoru Okkotsu's response, the sound that first echoed in the room was his own sobbing.

"Sorry..." Realizing that his crying had drawn the gazes of the two seniors, Yuta Okkotsu miserably covered his face. "Sorry, sorry... I'll step out for a moment."

He did not look into Satoru Gojo's eyes.

Just as he chose to walk out of the room to process his emotions rather than asking for the reason first, he knew that the person grieving most right now was definitely not him.

Before anger could set in—before the fury and hatred of learning that Takizawasei had been killed could take hold—Yuta Okkotsu felt an overwhelming, crushing powerlessness and sorrow.

His tears dripped onto the floor.

For the first time...

Yuta Okkotsu slowly squatted down, curling up in a corner.

For the first time, ever since becoming a sorcerer and stepping into this extraordinary realm, he was confronting death directly.

The one who had brought him in was Takizawasei.

How strange...

Yuta Okkotsu buried his face in his knees.

How strange, how did that youth who had laughed heartily and thrown an arm around his shoulder upon their first meeting... end up like this?

And Satoru-sensei, who had lost him, what would he become?

"Yuta..."

Sensing his sorrow, Rika crawled out from the floor in front of him, the greater part of her form concealed within deep darkness. Her mouth opened and closed. "Yuta, it is... even something I fear..."

Yuta Okkotsu thought in a daze,

He was a special-grade vengeful cursed spirit, feared even by Rika.

"...Does that mean this isn't just a simple death?"

Yuta Okkotsu murmured aloud,

"Can he not be defined by human death?"

***

"Dead?"

In the infirmary, Satoru Gojo repeated those syllables.

"Yeah, all his vital signs have disappeared," Shoko Ieiri affirmed. "What's bizarre, though, is that his body hasn't gone cold, and presumably it won't stiffen either. He was already in such a chaotic state of being a hybrid between a cursed spirit and a human; I can't be certain what he will eventually turn into... Should I heal all the wounds? We can proceed with the funeral rites immediately."

This sounded somewhat like a macabre joke.

And Satoru Gojo agreed, "Yeah, clean him up first."

Shoko had healed the wounds, but the task of cleaning him fell to Satoru Gojo.

He touched the corners of Takizawasei's eyes, where blood had been soaked with tears before drying and oxidizing into a deep brown.