[No little tangerine from my family would ever badmouth me!]
Determined to unearth more proof, Gojo Satoru finally switched his brain into high gear and began paying attention to every tiny detail.
When the cherry-blossom viewing drew to a close and everyone gathered for a group photo, the prime spot in the front row went to Ieri Shoko, which was fair enough. But the best position in the second row should have been his! Satoru's face twisted into open displeasure as Asou Akiya smoothly edged him aside.
Akiya took his place directly behind Shoko and flashed a bright victory sign at the camera.
Geto Suguru glanced at Satoru with mild disapproval. "You're too tall. You don't belong in the center."
Left with no choice, Satoru puffed out his cheeks in a sulky pout and stationed himself to Akiya's left, forming perfect symmetry with Suguru on the right.
Click. The flash flared.
Three boys of strikingly different beauty framed Shoko like devoted guardians.
[No little tangerine from my family would dare steal my spot!]
Yaga Masamichi needed to escort his wife home, so he told the students to take taxis back on their own.
Inside the taxi, the four of them sorted out seating. Once again Satoru found himself exiled to the front passenger seat, forced to watch Suguru, Shoko, and Akiya squeeze happily into the back row. The three of them laughed and chatted the entire ride, leaving Satoru utterly ignored.
He stayed silent, pulled out his phone, and searched for the "Mixi" site, determined to get to the bottom of things.
So far, not one classmate had added him on any social app.
[No little tangerine from my family would dare leave me out!]
[They're definitely dying to praise me the most!]
The Gojo clan had showered Satoru with unconditional adoration his entire life, filling his confidence to overflowing. The very idea that he might be unpopular simply did not exist in his mind. He unilaterally decided the other three were just too shy to invite him into their conversations.
Back at Tokyo Jujutsu High, Satoru returned to the dormitory without a single word, which actually made Suguru—who trailed behind—uneasy.
Suguru was not the sort of person who gave classmates the silent treatment.
The problem was that Satoru's mouth really was infuriating!
Akiya spoke quietly. "We'll have to be more careful from now on. He doesn't know his own strength, he loves to play, and the entire Gojo clan stands behind him."
When Gojo Satoru wasn't causing minor mischief, he was clearly saving up for something big.
Against cursed spirits he was careful never to endanger allies.
When he had no enemies to fight, allies were the ones in danger!
After reminding Suguru to stay alert, Akiya pushed open his own door, clearly intending to end the conversation there.
Suguru watched the two boys disappear into their rooms, then drifted to the edge of the corridor. He tucked his hands into the wide sleeves of his yukata, already perfectly at ease in the traditional garment. Tilting his head, he gazed out at the dry-stone garden bathed in moonlight. The sight seemed to rinse his soul clean. Since enrolling, he had found no time to hunt cursed spirits, which meant no need to swallow the foul orbs. Both his mood and his appetite had returned to their very best. For once he had space to think about his future.
Today's flower-viewing had woven new threads between them all. Suguru could feel Akiya's guarded attitude softening, if only a little.
Sooner or later, both he and Shoko would accept Gojo.
After all, the jujutsu world needed a monster like that.
Geto Suguru kept repeating the sentence to himself, trying to drown out Akiya's earlier theory on friendship. Deep down, he dreaded the possibility that he might actually turn into the kind of person who only befriended Grade-1 sorcerers and above.
That would be deeply abnormal, wouldn't it?
He wasn't someone who judged people by strength!
For the moment, his original beliefs won out over Akiya's philosophy. In this one instance, Suguru decided, Gojo had been right: the weak had no business dictating the values of the strong. He himself was far more powerful than Akiya, so it was only natural that Akiya should listen to him instead. That way, both of them could walk farther along the path of sorcery, couldn't they?
Suguru's thoughts tangled into a hopeless knot.
Meanwhile, sprawled across the sofa in his dormitory, feet propped on the armrest, Gojo Satoru received three thick dossiers on his classmates.
"Let's start with… weird-bangs!"
He still harbored a grudge against Akiya, so he deliberately reached past that file and snatched Geto Suguru's first.
"Oho, weird-bangs has parents. Only child, just like me." Satoru's eyes brightened as he hunted for similarities. Limitless corresponded to unlimited potential; the instinctive longing for a kindred spirit drove him to learn everything he could about the boy who might one day command every cursed spirit in existence. "Went to elementary and middle school, straight-A student, good at basketball, even got love letters—why do they include that kind of thing? I'm definitely getting love letters soon!"
"Could see curses from childhood, technique awakened around age six, stomach scans at the hospital, parents called a psychologist? Ha! They thought weird-bangs was making it all up."
After finally meeting peers outside the estate, Satoru laughed far more than he ever had at home.
"Been quietly exorcising spirits ever since? Playing anonymous hero?" He skimmed the rest of the upbringing with selective interest. "Stayed in his hometown until fourteen, then met a sorcerer in Tokyo—must've been Yaga-sensei who recommended him. Lucky he never ran into a curse user."
Satoru tossed the file aside with a disappointed huff. "Nothing embarrassing in here. Where's the good stuff?"
His mischievous claws turned toward Ieri Shoko's dossier next.
"Shoko… damn, that's rough." For once he made a sympathetic noise toward a girl, though his expression didn't change in the slightest. Having witnessed countless ordinary people die to curses, he read on in a lazy drawl. "Awakened reversed cursed technique as a child, immediately placed under Headquarters protection, forced to heal their wounded for free ever since. Became the higher-ups' precious little treasure that absolutely cannot be damaged, hmph."
Until a replacement was found, Headquarters would never allow anything to happen to her. Even today's flower-viewing had required Yaga-sensei's strenuous guarantees plus two ridiculously strong classmates before permission was granted.
"And finally… you."
Satoru's eyes gleamed with ill intent. Information gathered through Gojo family channels was practically infallible. If he couldn't dig up dirt on Suguru or Shoko, surely he could on this one.
"The beginning's boring. Couldn't see curses at all as a kid?" He flipped page after page, skimming Akiya's first fourteen years the way one endures a low-rated drama out of sheer stubbornness.
"A few days before his fourteenth birthday, 'gas explosion' at his residence? Old-fashioned cover story."
"Parents deceased. Asou Akiya suspected to have manifested cursed energy."
"Confirmed: neither parent possessed cursed energy or sorcerer bloodline. Zero connection to the jujutsu world. Within ten generations, Asou Akiya is the only member of the Asou family to awaken cursed energy post-birth. No innate technique."
"This guy really isn't a little tangerine?!"
Satoru executed a perfect carp-like flip and sat bolt upright, refusing to believe the orphan backstory printed in black and white.
It felt fake.
Ordinary sorcerers groveled before him—or at the very least bowed deeply. Low-grade commoner sorcerers were even worse: most lacked the courage to face cursed spirits directly and treated active-duty sorcerers with reverent awe. Give them a logistics job and they counted themselves lucky; the lowliest post in the jujutsu world was still enough to live comfortably in Tokyo.
Yet this Akiya faced him and weird-bangs—two future special-grades—without a trace of fear.
Where on earth had his sense of self-preservation gone?
There wasn't even a hint of it. The guy had the nerve to provoke him to his face!
Satoru kept reading, eyes narrowing.
"After that, Asou Akiya lived in a Yokohama children's welfare institute. Frequent minor injuries, constant trips to clinics and hospitals, bandages regularly wrapped around neck, wrists, and forehead. Wild-born sorcerer children lack adult protection; a single glance from a cursed spirit is enough to trigger an attack. Few survive to adulthood without guidance. Weird-bangs spent his childhood in and out of hospitals too."
"Occasionally traveled to Tokyo and blew every yen his parents left him on dessert membership cards?"
Satoru blinked. "Desserts aren't that good."
Raised on the Gojo clan's meticulously balanced, mostly bland diet, he only ate sweets to counteract the brain-drain of Limitless. He was far from the hopeless sugar addict some assumed.
Still, he couldn't help picturing himself converting the entire Gojo fortune into dessert cards.
Heh. The old tangerines back home would have collective aneurysms.
Then his gaze snagged on the next line.
"Visited Kyoto late last year. Temple offerings. Donated to Indonesian disaster relief…"
An orphan scraping the bottom of the barrel, yet still handing out charity like a saint? Didn't add up at all.
"Kyoto!"
The birthplace of Japanese sorcery. His hometown. Territory of the Three Great Families.
That location, that exact timing—it was too perfect.
"Little tangerine!"
Satoru spat the words like a curse.
"No matter how well you pretend, you can't fool me. There's a hole in this file." He refused to believe the Gojo clan's intelligence network couldn't uncover which Kyoto sorcerers Akiya had met. The guy knew way too much about the jujutsu world. Weird-bangs constantly asked him questions. Satoru had genuinely assumed Akiya came from one of the minor clans.
"He understands my personality perfectly—makes me dinner, drags me out of bed, even tells Yaga to look after me when I'm being a brat. Definitely a tangerine. No, the clan finally got smart and hired an outsider for once."
"A non-bloodline sorcerer carrying the one-way binding vow the family loves to keep secret."
"It has to be a vow tied to some interest exchange with the Gojo clan. Little tangerine's just a hired hand doing his job. Probably already on the family payroll in secret. The Six Eyes don't lie. Every clue points back home. The clan trusts him—that's why they sent him to handle my meals and schedule. When I asked on the phone if they were spying, they denied it because they knew I'd tear the roof off if I found out. Then they threw Headquarters under the bus to clear his name…"
"No one outside the family cares about me. No one else knows exactly what I like to eat. Even on the very first day, when I hated the sight of him, that little tangerine still asked Yaga to take care of my lunch."
At that moment, the World's Greatest Detective · Gojo Satoru saw the clan's entire scheme with blinding clarity.
"Asou Akiya belongs to me."
Hell yes. Now he could openly order the little tangerine to cook whenever he wanted.
What "independent living, no servants" nonsense?
He was only roughing it to give his classmates face and enjoy the campus experience. It wasn't because he was too lazy to cook!
"Weird-bangs, heh heh heh…" Satoru rolled around on the sofa like a possessed snake, shredding the dossier in gleeful revenge. "I'm gonna make you watch the classmate you care about most become my friend—my loyal, obedient little servant. I'm gonna have him—"
His brain short-circuited for three full seconds. In all his fifteen years, Gojo Satoru had never once needed to scheme.
Then inspiration struck.
"—make my bed, cook my meals, clean my room, and write all my reflection letters!"
He had been punished so many times that he had long coveted Asou Akiya's godlike ability to churn out flawless reflection letters. The infuriating part was that if he himself never asked, Akiya simply pretended not to notice.
The little tangerine only ever volunteered to write them for the weird-banged neighbor beside him.
Damn it! Where was his professional pride?!
___
[Mini Theater]
Gojo Satoru: "I've got serious detective talent! (maximum confidence)"
Asou Akiya opens his mouth, hesitates, then looks at him with the fond pity one reserves for a beloved but slightly slow puppy.
Congratulations—Asou Akiya has officially been promoted to "one of Gojo Satoru's family retainers."