Sorry for the late update, the webnovel schedule bugged again :/
———
The weak always travel in packs, and low-grade cursed spirits are no exception.
Under the combined tutelage of Yaga Masamichi and Geto Suguru, Asou Akiya charged into the swarm without disappointing anyone. His hands were empty of weapons, yet every fist blazed with cursed-energy flames. He struck again and again, shattering Grade-4 spirits as though they were made of glass.
He maintained the most economical rhythm possible, mind ice-clear, never stepping into a trap that would turn the tide against him.
Most sorcerers do not lose because of raw power; they lose because of the heart. Newcomers cannot suppress the primal terror that rises when facing a cursed spirit head-on. The aura of malice born from humanity's darkest emotions is utterly alien, like stumbling across a xenomorph in the flesh. The number of humans who can instantly raise a weapon and fight like a Predator is vanishingly small; simply not collapsing in fear already marks one as brave.
When the spirits burst, their blood was a deep, sickly violet. Akiya took care not to let any trace of exhilaration show on his face.
He knew Yaga-sensei was watching, measuring his combat value, already drafting the training regimen that would shape his future.
Who doesn't secretly dream of wading through blood in battle?
How exhilarating it was.
Especially the cold, thick blood of enemies… the more, the better…
Perhaps it was an instinct awakened the moment his cursed energy first ignited, but the greatest technique Akiya had grasped by pure intuition was cursed-energy flame. Scorching fire that manifested his inner self and melted the twisted, wicked bodies of cursed spirits with contemptuous ease.
Every punch meant the death of another Grade-4.
Every dodge sent cursed energy coursing through his limbs, reinforcing an ordinary human body until it moved like an elite athlete.
Before long he had cleared the outer perimeter of Grade-4s and found himself surrounded by several Grade-3s. His gaze never wavered, his focus razor-sharp. He learned to trust his fists, to trust his mind, to trust everything he had forged through sweat and pain. More than anyone, he cherished these hard-won chances to fight, willingly entrusting his life to the powerful teacher and classmates who stood behind him.
Fearlessness. The readiness to throw one's life away when necessary—was itself a rare talent.
"A sorcerer has to be a little insane to grow strong."
Yaga Masamichi had understood that truth years ago. When he taught, he always took care to unleash his students' natures, because what he wanted was exactly that hysterical, all-consuming madness.
In the past, however, Jujutsu High had lacked reliable logistical support.
Akiya had arrived in a golden age.
Ieri Shoko's existence guaranteed sorcerers' safety to the greatest degree possible and created the very opportunity for Akiya to become stronger.
Other sorcerers kept a polite distance from Shoko and, since her treatment was free, dared not burn through stamina and cursed energy recklessly just because the Reverse Cursed Technique user was on duty. Classmates were different. Shoko, waiting back at school for her friends to return, would conserve her strength all day and then pour everything she had into saving them.
Gojo Satoru materialized out of thin air with a violent surge of cursed energy that made Yaga—who had been quietly observing Akiya—flinch.
The white-haired boy was savagely clutching a cursed spirit's severed head by the scalp, fingers sunk deep, deforming the skull. He announced with boyish glee, "I won!"
He had beaten Geto Suguru in their race.
He had exorcised his Grade-1 first and claimed the head of the semi-first-grade in the basement.
Yaga's face darkened with fury. "Gojo. Exorcise it. Now."
Sorcery was a deadly profession; as a teacher he despised this kind of behavior and would never condone toying with prey.
Satoru hugged the head tighter, pouting. "No way! I'm saving it to show weird-bangs later."
"Let go." Yaga lunged, seizing Satoru's arm in a practiced restraint hold.
"You let go first!" Satoru wheezed, face turning red but stubbornly clinging to his trophy.
"What on earth are you two doing?" Geto Suguru's voice drifted from the hospital entrance as he emerged, catching sight of teacher and student locked in their absurd tussle from afar.
Yaga released Satoru on pure reflex.
The instant he did, Satoru shot away like a loosed arrow and bounded straight to Suguru's side. His eyes were bright, innocent, almost childlike—the gaze of a great predator that had temporarily sheathed its claws. Beautiful beyond reason and backed by strength without equal, he dangled the cursed spirit's head in front of Suguru's face and sang, "See this?"
"Mine. And you can't have it~"
The next second his fingers clenched.
Right in front of Suguru, the semi-first-grade spirit's skull exploded with a wet crunch.
Brain matter and violet blood burst outward in a grisly fountain.
Limitless kept every drop from touching Satoru himself; every last bit splattered across Suguru instead.
The topknot boy stood frozen, eyes wide in horror, face and hair dripping with thick purple gore. One lock of his bangs clung wetly to his forehead.
"GO—JO—SA—TO—RU!"
A fight that would have leveled the block was one heartbeat away.
Yaga roared like thunder. "Gojo! Geto! If you start fighting right now, the two of you will be paired on every single mission from this day forward until graduation!"
Suguru, whose rage meter had just hit critical, felt ice water pour down his spine at the thought of that hellish future. He shuddered.
"I'm sorry, sensei. That was impulsive of me."
He bowed a perfect ninety degrees.
Head low, apology delivered, disaster narrowly averted.
Satoru, however, refused to let it go. He poked the wound with gleeful precision. "What's wrong, weird-bangs? Scared of a little teamwork? With that kind of cowardice, you'll never make Special Grade. Huh—what's this?"
His sharp eyes had caught a palm-sized black orb peeking from the pocket of Suguru's wide-legged pants, radiating the cursed energy of a Grade-2 spirit.
"It's a cursed spirit orb," Suguru answered quickly, shielding it protectively. The memory of the spirit that had just died so messily was still fresh. "Something I plan to subjugate with Cursed Spirit Manipulation later."
Satoru stared at the orb's size and completely failed to imagine anyone swallowing it. "First time I've seen your technique in action. Subjugate it right now—go on."
Suguru ignored him entirely and turned to Yaga. "Has Akiya come out yet?"
Yaga's expression softened with genuine pride. "He's still inside, working hard to adapt to real combat."
In terms of pure combat talent, Akiya remained a distant third behind the two monsters, but he possessed a heart that did not fear death.
Unfortunately, the very quality Yaga praised looked pathetic in Satoru's eyes.
"Super. Duper. Weak."
He spoke the unvarnished truth, letting emotion carry the words before tact could catch up, utterly indifferent to the glares from both teacher and classmate.
"No amount of effort is going to change that," he continued idly, Six Eyes rendering judgment without mercy. "Akiya's just an average fighter with low cursed energy and no standout gifts. Even if he trains until he drops, there's a hard ceiling waiting for him. I don't want him on my missions—he'll only slow me down."
Suguru met the Six Eyes head-on, unwavering. "We don't get to decide someone's right to chase their future just because they're weak right now."
Satoru's reply was ice. "That's exactly how survival works in the Three Great Families."
Suguru did not flinch. "But he is not from the Three Great Families."
Satoru snorted, shrugged, and slipped back into careless nonchalance.
"Fine by me."
His expressions had grown richer lately, his personality sharper and more vivid, yet true humanity still surfaced only in fleeting glimpses.
Suguru's simultaneous rejection and pull left a faint, nagging discomfort coiled somewhere under his ribs.
"I'll be watching," he added, voice light, almost playful.
How exactly would a classmate who was secretly little more than a servant manage to claw his way through the jujutsu world and survive?
From time to time Satoru didn't mind watching the weak put on their little dramas; what truly irritated him was Suguru standing on some moral high ground and lecturing him as though he were the one in the wrong. It was a novel and deeply annoying sensation.
Just then, as their conversation died away, Asou Akiya finally emerged, dragging his ordinary, battered body back to them.
The two boys fell silent at once.
"Hey," Akiya greeted with a tired but genuine smile. Scrapes and bruises marred his face, yet fire danced in his eyes, painting them bright and alive.
"Akiya." Satoru spoke first, cutting Suguru off, his tone the same casual drawl he used every day at school, as if he had been born with the talent to overturn every social nicety without effort. "You're slow. Weird-bangs and I have been waiting forever."
The joy in Akiya's expression dimmed. He studied Satoru for a long, quiet moment.
Even Yaga thought the remark had been unnecessarily harsh for a first field exercise.
"Sensei, Suguru—no need to comfort me," Akiya said softly, asking them both to hold their tongues for now.
He walked forward until he stood two deliberate steps from Satoru and stopped. The sticky violet blood on his skin and clothes was already evaporating, but the stench of cursed spirits clung to him, a stark and filthy contrast to the immaculate, untouchable Divine Child across from him.
"Satoru," he began, voice steady, "with those eyes of yours, can you guess what I want to say?"
"…I'm not a mind-reader."
"But I am."
Silence.
"You're thinking your time is more valuable than mine. The weak are troublesome. Being told by teachers and classmates to protect the weak is even more troublesome. You have no interest in becoming the kind, upstanding sorcerer everyone expects."
Akiya looked like a wreck, yet every word cut sharp and clean, as though trying to slice straight through the invincible wall of Limitless.
"But you stayed anyway. That means something in you has already changed. So tell me, Satoru—is all that impatience aimed at me… or at the rules society keeps trying to force on you?"
Akiya met the Six Eyes without flinching, cold and piercing as winter starlight.
At that moment the Divine Child was far more terrifying than any cursed spirit.
Yet the Gojo Satoru who had walked through these school gates was no longer purely divine.
The one who longed for youth, who dreamed of ordinary school days, was "Satoru," not "Gojo."
"I'm not afraid of you calling me weak," Akiya said quietly. "It's the truth."
Then, to the classmate who had been unfriendly, who had given him no face, who had made him feel unhappy and wronged, Asou Akiya extended his hand.
"We are classmates. In every class there are top students and failing students. You can be more talented than me, more confident than me, born into far better circumstances than me, but none of that gives you the right to mock the ones who are struggling. I am trying. I am not someone who has given up on himself."
"In all those school-life anime you love so much, they must have taught you how to get along with classmates, right?"
"Come on. Just lightly hold my hand."
The weeks they had spent in close proximity had quietly laid the groundwork for this exact moment.
Under Geto Suguru's stare (which suggested he was watching an alien attempting to impersonate a human), Gojo Satoru wavered almost imperceptibly. The ice in his expression cracked; hesitation crept in; the inhuman wall of rejection began to crumble under the assault of a childish, almost petulant curiosity.
"You feel it, don't you?" Akiya continued, voice gentle but unwavering. "The person standing in front of you, using every last ounce of strength just to stay on his feet, is no threat to your life at all."
"I am your classmate. I am the companion who will never, ever hurt you."
Akiya spoke of simple, beautiful things, and little by little he slipped past the infinite defense of Limitless. From the frozen, impossible distance he reached through and closed his fingers around Satoru's hand, catching the white-haired boy (the same boy he had chased off to bed only this morning) in his palm, staining that flawless skin with a faint smear of cursed blood.
The Six Eyes registered it with absolute certainty: every trace of negative emotion in the boy before him had vanished in an instant.
Gojo Satoru, who had always trusted the Six Eyes above all else, found himself utterly bewildered.
Holding hands.
Could something so small really produce happiness?
Akiya guided Satoru's hand upward until the palm rested against his own sweat-damp forehead, as though teaching him the weight of mortal effort, the cost of ordinary struggle.
"I believe you wouldn't hate someone who genuinely loves your smile."
The Gojo clan worshipped the sacred, expressionless mask of their heir above all else. Yet yesterday, before leaving for Kyoto, Akiya had begged not for the protection of clan power or overwhelming strength, but for a single smile.
"Don't scowl like that. Smile. Everyone at Jujutsu High will like you just as much as I do."
Come down from the altar already.
Akiya's eyes curved with decisive, radiant warmth.
"Satoru."
…
Gojo Satoru stood rooted in silence. After a long hesitation he chose to believe, and when the smile finally broke across his face it was like clouds parting to reveal blinding sunlight.
"Really? Everybody likes my smile? Then I'm not mad anymore!"
"Weird-bangs, what about you?"
His first instinct was to demand verification from Suguru.
Understanding that the moment Satoru lowered his guard he was nothing more than a regular fifteen-year-old boy, Akiya shot Suguru a quick, urgent glance: Come on, play along. First we turn him into the happy-go-lucky, brainless Satoru, then we deal with him together later.
Suguru considered the bargain, decided it was worth it, and answered with calm sincerity, "Yeah. You look better right now."
He refused to lie outright, but the white-haired boy beaming like an idiot… really wasn't all that annoying.
But that's only while he's in this good mood!