The next day, Asou Akiya treated Yaga Masamichi to sukiyaki.
The two sat facing each other across a low table, a steaming iron pot between them brimming with vegetables, paper-thin slices of beef, and perfectly round meatballs.
The meatball recipe—personally taught by Itadori Yuji thirteen years in the future—had been flawlessly recreated.
Even Gojo-sensei had praised them.
Akiya politely urged Yaga to start first, weaving respect for his teacher into every small gesture. The occasional burst of playful energy was only to close the distance between them. By the end of the meal, Yaga's stern mask had completely melted away.
Yaga savored the food with obvious contentment. "Come on. Let's go register your cursed energy signature."
Tokyo Jujutsu High was enveloped by Lord Tengen's barrier—hypersensitive to cursed energy. Unauthorized sorcerers using power on campus triggered alarms.
Yaga had forgotten yesterday; and Akiya hadn't reminded him either. He had simply waited patiently.
Probably because there had been no new students last year. The teacher was out of practice.
"No cursed spirits spawn inside the school," Yaga explained, unconcerned about Akiya's ability to look after himself. Sorcerers were all ridiculously self-sufficient after all. After registering the boy's signature, he added, "But that could change. Get used to a sorcerer's life. Build stamina. I'll teach you proper training methods these next few days when I have time."
Akiya thanked him again, sincerely moved that Yaga was already this devoted before term even started.
Yaga, unused to such direct affection, changed the subject. "What animal do you like?"
"Cats!" Akiya answered instantly.
Yaga gave a short "Oh" and told him to wait.
Ten minutes later he returned from the faculty office carrying a colorful knitted cat doll. Its official name was "cursed corpse." It could absorb cursed energy and move.
"Pour a tiny thread of cursed energy in—nothing strong. Sorcerers need to learn precise output; dumping everything at once is pointless. Keep your flow steady and it'll purr and sleep."
Seeing how Akiya was already in love, Yaga added generously, "Play with it as long as you want. Return it when you're done."
Akiya clutched the cat as it immediately tried to "demolish" the room and infused a careful trickle of energy. "Thank you for the enrollment present, sensei!"
Yaga's face darkened. "I didn't say I was giving it to you."
Akiya wasn't intimidated by the scary face at all. His eyes turned huge and dewy, pure black pearls glistening with moisture, small-animal pleading mode fully activated.
"But I really, really love it… I want to raise it… Please, sensei! Yaga-sensei! I never even had a stuffed toy to sleep with at the children's home…"
Yaga's weak spot was pierced clean through.
A child who had lost his entire family liked the doll he had made.
"…Fine."
"Yay!" Akiya cheered, words tumbling out lightning-fast. "Sensei is too good to me—I have no way to repay you! This year on International Teachers' Day I'm absolutely giving you a present. You're not allowed to refuse!"
Yaga suddenly suspected he had been expertly played.
Was this what maxed-out social skills looked like?
Whatever.
A respectful, affectionate sorcerer student was a rare species worth protecting.
Yaga waved a hand. "Take good care of it. It's shy. Bring it to me if anything breaks."
Akiya had already named it. "Don't worry! I'll be Rainbow Kitty's best owner ever. Yaga-sensei really does give off married-man energy—your fatherly love for cursed corpses is super heartwarming."
Yaga: "…"
Yaga, shocked numb: "How the hell do you know I'm married?"
Akiya smiled brightly. "It's obvious at a glance. Yaga-sensei is completely different from every other sorcerer."
Sorcerers are a demographic with an astronomically high single rate.
Good income, wide experience, the crazier they are the stronger.
The few who manage to couple up are almost always the ones who still carry warmth inside, and who, after endless solitude, finally meet someone who fits.
Yaga Masamichi was exactly that kind of man—someone capable of warming others.
"It's love," Akiya declared lightly, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"People who understand love know how to give it, and deserve to receive it."
"You little brat, spouting nonsense like you know anything," Yaga growled, ears red. Then, in a thunderous voice: "Rainbow Kitty! Beat him up good! Don't let him sleep a wink tonight!"
Instantly the knitted cat's button eyes blazed with cartoon flames.
Every cursed corpse was a child in Yaga's eyes—hand-knitted, given a cursed-energy core by his own hands.
Love given and love returned.
Not a curse, yet more binding than any curse.
That was how, years later, a living panda cursed corpse would be born.
Walking along the forest path, Akiya rubbed Rainbow Kitty's big rumbling face and thought:
[If Yaga-sensei were willing to throw his corpses into battle and mass-produce them, he'd probably be the newest special-grade sorcerer.]
[So cute.]
[No shedding, no litter box.]
[One hundred percent understands Yaga-sensei's heart—I'd never let these babies be sacrificed to filthy enemies!]
He coaxed the doll expertly, drawing out a thread of cursed energy born from negative emotion and feeding it like milk.
Perhaps because his previous life had been completely ordinary—no cursed energy at all—his soul was like untouched paper, never soaked inside and out by this world's dark curses.
His control was frighteningly precise; he could feel every shift in the energy, the way clean fingers instantly notice a transparent spider thread.
He suspected that, under Jujutsu Kaisen physics, his soul was something like a natural Binding Vow at the spiritual level: zero cursed energy, and therefore impossible for cursed energy to alter its essence.
Because his soul's origin was fundamentally different from everyone else's in this world.
Proof: he had slipped into the original owner's body without resistance, memories perfectly intact, no identity confusion.
Whether that theory would hold would be tested thirteen years from now—
by the special-grade cursed spirit Mahito, who could see and touch souls.
…A little dangerous.
Akiya's thoughts drifted pleasantly as he enjoyed his solitary walk.
…
Mid-March.
He went into the nearest town to meet his light-novel editor and picked up his very first, belated royalty payment.
Newbie rates were cabbage-level, and no one knew if the book would sell once released, but to an orphan scraping by, it was rain in a drought.
Writing wasn't his only backup plan. He was already scouting part-time night jobs in case the money ever ran dry.
One perk of awakening cursed energy: his stamina and ability to pull all-nighters had doubled.
Bicycles were common in Japan. At the parking area he crouched, unlocked the bike Yaga had given him, and carefully placed the publishing samples in the front basket.
Not just his own light novel—he had also bought a photogravure magazine popular with current high-school boys. Research material: he needed to understand exactly what made 24-year-old Inoue Waka so charming that she became Gojo Satoru's favorite celebrity.
In his previous life he had never paid attention; by then she was in her forties, married with children, long retired from the public eye.
The only recent news he knew came from the Jujutsu Kaisen collaboration: she had thanked 16-year-old Jade-Era Gojo for making her his phone wallpaper and shyly admitted she knew the anime too… and wanted to set Gojo as her wallpaper in return.
Akiya stared hard at the magazine cover.
Mature, elegant beauty.
He snorted.
Geto Suguru the "one and only best friend"?
Utahime the girl Gojo teased for ten years?
Weak. All of them.
To Gojo Satoru's fans across two worlds,
this woman right here was the real romantic rival who had survived the dimensional barrier and was still flirting back.
Gojo Satoru, congratulations.
You two really did run toward each other across worlds.
She genuinely likes you.
The black-haired boy pedaled leisurely, humming, when his pocket chimed: ding-dong, ding-dong.
He braked, answered. "Sensei?"
Yaga's voice was curt. "Get to the front gate."
Akiya glanced at the road behind him. "I'm off-campus. It'll take at least half an hour to bike back."
Yaga sighed. "I'll wait. Hurry. Your new classmate just arrived."
In just a few days Yaga had already figured out Akiya's pattern: reliable in big things, reliably absent in small ones. A fifteen-year-old boy who could never sit still did not exist. Morning sweat from exercise, afternoon vanished into thin air.
At the school gate, a black car idled nearby.
A man and a girl stood on the stone steps.
The man was Yaga Masamichi.
The girl wore the first-year uniform, a suitcase at her feet.
Hearing the squeak of brakes, the short-haired brunette with a lollipop in her mouth and a beauty mark beneath her right eye turned.
Straight out of a shoujo manga:
a handsome black-haired boy leaped the last few steps two at a time, bicycle in one hand, sweat glistening at his temples, cheeks flushed from exertion, lips curved in a bright, open smile, eyes clear and warm as he looked at the two people waiting.
The instant his reflection fell into her eyes, that smile grew even wider—
as though coming home to something wonderful.
The sunshine-type?
That was Ieiri Shoko's first impression of her new classmate.
Completely wrong, yet unforgettable.
"Sorry to keep you waiting. I'm Asou Akiya."
Up close,
he bowed neatly to Yaga, then straightened.
Ieiri Shoko let her gaze slide away, tone flat. "Ieiri Shoko."
In that moment her eyes accidentally landed on the two books in the bicycle basket and she went quiet.
The top one featured Inoue Waka in all her voluptuous glory—impossible to miss.
Akiya didn't flinch at being caught. He simply laughed, frank and shameless.
"The clerk recommended it. Didn't have time to hide it—my bad. I wanted some common topics with people my age, and the boss swore every high-school boy is obsessed with Inoue Waka gravure right now."
With the same breezy honesty he pulled out the second book—the one hidden underneath—and offered it to her.
"This one's a light novel by a rookie author. Consider it a meeting gift."
"It's about the onmyōji."
"I figured onmyōji and jujutsu sorcerers have a lot in common. Should be fun."
He dismantled the awkwardness as easily as breathing.
Ieiri thought: Interesting.
Caught red-handed with gravure and doesn't even blush—he nerves of steel.
Then she noticed how he immediately reached for her suitcase without being asked.
Hm.
Pretty gentlemanly, too.
…
The bicycle, a cheap transport to the outside world, is a symbol of freedom.
Just like the boy who hopped off the bicycle carrying no airs at all.
He was warm, open, and instantly easy to like.
A sincere smile was the sharpest weapon for making friends.
A gravure idol magazine was the fastest way to reveal a teenage boy's taste in women.
Inoue Waka: older, curvaceous, the exact opposite of Ieiri Shoko's type.
Shoko spotted the "evidence" at a glance and mentally filed it away.
Akiya didn't underestimate her powers of observation for a second.
The woman who, in the original story, floated above all grudges and disputes was frighteningly perceptive.
In a way, the two of them were alike.
He saw through the entire underworld plot of Jujutsu Kaisen;
she saw through the rotten future waiting for them all.
Reverse Cursed Technique: hallmark of the strong, life sentence for the weak.
Ieiri Shoko would spend her entire life under the higher-ups' leash, barred from the front lines, forced to sit in the infirmary as every sorcerer's personal healer.
When dealing with smart people, strike the heart first and end it fast—never give them time to study you.
Akiya had decided they would get along, so he engineered a first meeting that felt light, harmless, and fun.
Human relationships start with surface-level understanding, graduate to casual teasing, and only then become the kind of friendship where guards finally drop.
Reverse Cursed Technique.
The acquired skill he wanted most in the world.
Insanely hard to learn, but once mastered, the jujutsu world would never dare kill you.
He handed the bicycle to Yaga, took Shoko's suitcase, and walked beside her, giving the campus tour in Yaga's stead.
A little taller than her—just over 170 cm—no sense of oppression. When he ducked his head slightly to speak, his voice was soft, his refined features a pleasure to look at.
Ieiri Shoko considered herself highly guarded, yet she couldn't find a single reason to reject this witty boy's friend request on LINE.
For one terrifying second she wondered: Am I just a face-con?
Then she saw his profile picture: the rainbow knitted cat.
Akiya laughed lightly. "Handmade by Yaga-sensei himself. A gift."
Shoko glanced at Yaga in disbelief.
Who would've thought the scary homeroom teacher was a secret cute-stuff lover?
Yaga's expression didn't flicker. "I'm your first-year homeroom teacher and a cursed-corpse user. Making them is part of my technique. I can make one for you later too."
Same treatment for boys and girls— truly a model educator.
"You two are early," Yaga continued. "Two more classmates still haven't shown up. If you need anything, ask me or Akiya-kun. He's already been living here a while."
Akiya jumped in with playful drama: "Please don't hold back—ask me anything! Until the other two legendary classmates arrive, I'm gunning for the title of Yaga-sensei's most obedient, most considerate student. I hear one is a once-in-a-millennium genius and the other a once-in-five-centuries prodigy. If they turn out well-behaved and sensei forgets I exist, I'll be devastated."
Yaga glared.
"It won't happen."
Shoko's usually quiet heart rippled.
She felt, for the first time, the gentle consideration of both teacher and classmate.
She mentally pumped a fist, suddenly excited for the remaining two.
What kind of people earned such glowing praise from Asou Akiya?
They must be amazing!
—
Author's Note:
First classmate to appear: Ieiri Shoko
User of Reverse Cursed Technique, the school's designated healer. The moment she was discovered, the higher-ups never let her out of their sight again.
Next chapter's classmate: Geto Suguru
And everyone knows why Gojo Satoru shows up last, right?
Because after he found out when school started, it never occurred to him he was supposed to show up early.