The sweet osmanthus at Tokyo Jujutsu High had come into bloom.
Clusters of golden blossoms, like ripening ears of wheat, swayed gently in the autumn breeze, scattering themselves across the shrubs and dusting the benches in a soft yellow veil.
Asou Akiya sat beside the school's athletic field with a book cradled in his arms when something cold suddenly pressed against his cheek. His cursed energy senses immediately caught the presence of two familiar figures. He lifted his head to see Geto Suguru holding out a can of cola to him, while Gojo Satoru was already drinking his own, having yet to learn the virtue of sharing. Whenever he bought drinks from the vending machine, he always harbored the childish hope that pressing the button twice might somehow grant him a buy-one-get-one-free miracle.
Behind his sunglasses, Gojo's eyes flicked discreetly toward Asou Akiya.
There was no red cord on his wrist.
There was no red cord in his pockets either.
For several days now, Gojo Satoru had been living in considerable misery, all to uphold the promise he had made—that after Asou Akiya and Geto Suguru removed their red cords, he would no longer casually spy on his classmates using the "Six Eyes."
When he gave that red cord to Asou Akiya, he hadn't thought much of it. Now, however, things had taken a turn for the worse. The moment Asou Akiya stepped out of his immediate vicinity, Gojo had to forcibly restrain his own mind—compelling himself to ignore Asou entirely, not to track the lingering scent of his cursed energy, not to observe his every movement, not to wonder whether he was cooking something delicious, and not to judge whether he had grown stronger.
Gojo Satoru tried to empty his mind, but torrents of information still flooded in regardless, utterly unconcerned with his well-being.
"Akiya," he said at last, "I'm exhausted."
Unable to break his promise, Gojo could only resort to roundabout ways of expressing how miserable he felt.
"If you're tired, then go back to the dorms and rest," Asou Akiya replied calmly. He popped open the can of cola, took a sip, set it down in the empty space beside his thigh, and turned another page of his book. Today's reading was about the manufacturing process of low-grade cursed tools.
"I'll read about barrier techniques," Geto Suguru said, pulling an old, timeworn volume from his bag and sitting down to read alongside them.
What's so interesting about books like that?, Gojo Satoru complained inwardly, silently grumbling about the two of them.
Although he hadn't brought any books with him, Gojo rummaged through his bag, pulled out a handheld game console, and found a place to sit down. Even so, the "Six Eyes" were running nonstop, fixed tightly on Asou Akiya, as if trying to make up for all the time he had been forced not to look.
As a result, Gojo was involuntarily fed information—Asou Akiya's most recent height, his current level of cursed energy, and countless other details streamed in without pause.
Since when did the Six Eyes become this starved?!
All he had done was restrain himself and reduce how often he looked at his classmates. Geto Suguru wore the red cord and allowed him to look during the day; Asou Akiya refused to wear one, so fine, he wouldn't look. But how was it fair that the Six Eyes could so brazenly record every scrap of information anyway?!
"Ahhh!"
Gojo Satoru finally snapped.
He strode over to Asou Akiya, pressed his palm down on the open book, and stopped him from turning the page.
Asou Akiya: "?"
Geto Suguru, no longer overreacting, laughed with deliberate restraint and said, "Someone's been drinking medicinal tonics every day lately—too much internal heat."
Gojo rolled his eyes. "They're supplements the Gojo family sent to help me condition my body."
Geto asked, "Aren't you already pretty healthy?"
Gojo was led completely off track by the question and immediately started bickering back. "None of your business. I'll drink whatever I feel like."
Seeing this, Asou Akiya lowered his head back to the book and brushed Gojo's hand aside.
There were no longer any bite marks on Gojo's palm. Just like their previous conflict, once they returned to Tokyo Jujutsu High, it had quietly dissolved without anyone saying a word. The two of them were no longer bound by a verbal master–servant dynamic, but had learned instead how to maintain a genuine relationship as classmates.
"Akiya~"
That voice—forever skilled at luring attention—surfaced once again.
"My eyes are killing me," Gojo Satoru said, tugging on Asou Akiya's arm. "Let's go back to the dorm together." He clearly didn't want to return alone; at moments like this, he was no different from a small child afraid of being by himself.
"Are they really sore?" Asou Akiya found himself unable to keep reading and had no choice but to worry about Gojo.
"I swear I'm not lying!" Gojo declared with absolute conviction.
Asou Akiya stood up. "Geto, I'm going to give him a warm compress for his eyes. You should also be careful not to overuse yours."
Geto Suguru, who hadn't noticed any sign at all that Gojo had strained his eyes, replied indulgently, "Can I come watch?"
Asou Akiya was taken aback—what on earth was there to watch?
Gojo, however, agreed immediately. His visibly delighted expression made it clear how much he wanted the three of them to go back to the dorm together and hang out.
Inside Gojo Satoru's dorm room, the white-haired boy lay sprawled on the sofa, a warm, damp towel placed over his eyes. The aching, swollen discomfort beneath his eyelids slowly eased under the moist heat, and his mind relaxed as well, soothed by the closeness of the two people beside him. Asou Akiya gently massaged his temples, careful not to touch the area of the "Six Eyes," giving Gojo a sense of safety.
Geto Suguru wandered over to the shelves displaying Gojo's figurines and clicked his tongue in amazement. "Gojo, you even bought Naruto figures? And your favorite character is actually Hatake Kakashi?"
With his eyes still closed, Gojo replied, "He's not my favorite. I bought him so I could take off the mask."
Geto was completely convinced by that reasoning. He leaned closer to the Hatake Kakashi figure, carefully checking for signs of disassembly.
"So—did you see his real face?"
"No."
A devoted figure collector, Gojo Satoru had dismantled several Hatake Kakashi figures in the process—only to end up buying an entire new batch afterward.
After all, the official source material had never intended to reveal Kakashi's true face ahead of time.
Geto Suguru soon made another unexpected discovery. "You even have the Yu Yu Hakusho animation discs?"
Gojo replied casually, "Anything that's popular on the market, I've bought the whole set."
Yu Yu Hakusho was an early-generation anime, created by the renowned manga artist Togashi Yoshihiro. Geto had heard of its reputation before; it was wildly popular among middle schoolers, famous as a hot-blooded series where the protagonist dies in a traffic accident right at the start. Personally, Geto was far more interested in Hunter × Hunter. Even knowing that Asou Akiya had watched it, he had never felt the urge to go back and catch up on old shows.
Among classmates, interests didn't have to align perfectly—seeking common ground while accepting differences was enough.
That was how Geto Suguru saw it.
Then he recalled Asou Akiya's bookshelf when he had first enrolled: empty shelves, not a single volume of manga in sight.
The boy with the tied-up hair fell silent for a moment. A familiar prickling sensation crept over his skin, goosebumps rising before he even realized it. He didn't dare look at Asou Akiya, pulled out the disc, and asked stiffly, forcing himself to speak, "Gojo… can we watch it together?"
Gojo lifted the damp towel that had already lost its warmth and walked over to the player. "Put it in already."
Geto cooperated, sliding the disc into the player, finding the remote, and pressing a button lightly. The television flickered to life as the animation began to play.
He returned to his seat beside Asou Akiya and offered him a polite, restrained smile.
Asou Akiya responded with a cool, indifferent expression.
Recommended in April, watched in September—the yellow daylilies had already gone cold halfway; whatever enthusiasm there once was had long since passed its prime.
Asou Akiya said calmly, "You two take your time watching. I've already seen it, so I won't keep you company."
His intention to leave was doomed from the start. Gojo Satoru and Geto Suguru joined forces and physically dragged him back.
"Come on, watch it with us!"
"Yeah, Asou, you can even spoil things for us!"
Two people who were afraid of being lonely held on to another classmate—someone who was good at warming others, yet kept his own thoughts carefully tucked away.
The opening of Yu Yu Hakusho remained a startling setup even when viewed years after its conclusion. A fourteen-year-old delinquent middle schooler, crude and unruly at first glance, dies in a traffic accident while trying to save a small child chasing after a bouncing ball. His soul is unable to enter the cycle of reincarnation and can only return to the places he once lived, watching in spirit form as his single mother weeps until she breaks down, as his childhood friend grieves in silence, and as the world continues to turn after his death.
Urameshi Yusuke—male, a protagonist who would rather be the head of a chicken than the tail of a phoenix—was innately competitive, fundamentally kind, and lacked a rigid black-and-white worldview. Judged by the junior king of the Spirit World as "someone who should not have died," he is set upon an absurd, laugh-cry-inducing journey toward resurrection.
"He's so fun to watch, this guy!"
Gojo Satoru munched on snacks as he watched the anime, laughing out loud at Urameshi Yusuke's antics.
"That's incredibly rude."
Getou Suguru frowned at some of Urameshi's cruder gestures, clearly repelled by such an ill-mannered delinquent middle schooler.
"I think judging a person by their actions alone, no one is flawless—but if you judge by the heart…" Asou Akiya spoke up, voicing the impression he had formed of Urameshi Yusuke many years ago. "He's a very perfect human being."
Yes—perfect.
By the end of the series, Urameshi Yusuke is about eighteen years old. His mental fortitude and strength of will crush those of nearly every supporting character, and he naturally rises as a leader. He is that kind of protagonist—grounded and approachable, yet able to laugh and talk freely with countless powerful beings. To him, the world is chaos itself, where light and darkness bloom side by side within his soul. He embraces every companion's unsightly past and lives out the brilliant, blazing life that a hot-blooded shōnen protagonist is meant to have.
The protagonist of Hunter × Hunter, Gon Freecss, carries a trace of his shadow, yet never quite reaches the same heights as Urameshi Yusuke.
After all, that man is acknowledged across the Three Realms as one of the Demon Kings.
With a human heart, he forges the dignity of the strong, clawing his way up from the very bottom, commanding the power of half-demons to defend the human world. To him, demons, monsters, and spirits of all three realms are friends rather than enemies. In the end, he willingly abandons immortality and authority, choosing instead to marry his childhood sweetheart and happily open a small ramen shop together.
What an astonishingly clear-minded and open-hearted life—one so complete it inspires envy.
The Gojo Satoru of the future will be this kind of powerhouse as well, indifferent to immortality and power, living purely in accordance with his own will.
Without realizing it, Asou Akiya turned to look at Gojo Satoru. "Gojo, if you were in that world, you'd probably become friends with Urameshi Yusuke, wouldn't you?"
Gojo Satoru replied lazily, "No idea. I'll keep watching, I guess? Right now he looks pretty weak."
He stuck out his tongue. "When I was fourteen, I was way stronger than him."
Hearing that, Getou Suguru felt a faint pang of disappointment.
After hesitating for a moment, Asou Akiya lowered his voice and said softly to Getou Suguru, "Promise me you'll watch it to the end. There's a special character in it—the prototype for Chrollo Lucilfer from Hunter × Hunter. I hope you'll find him."
With that hint, Getou Suguru felt a new spark of interest in the anime. "Find him?"
"When you do, tell me," Asou Akiya said with a smile, nodding gently. Yes—find him, and in doing so, find the shadow that belongs to you as well.
One of the later antagonists of Yu Yu Hakusho: Sensui.
A human powerhouse with multiple personalities, an idealistic martyr whose spirit has shattered and whose body is ravaged by terminal illness—he is the only man in over a hundred episodes of the anime who has ever truly killed Urameshi Yusuke, and even after every S-class demon in the series has appeared, his strength still ranks comfortably within the top five.
Sensui: the strongest among humans—yet a man who was driven utterly mad by an ordinary human named Sakyo.
With casual, almost careless actions, Sakyo delivered a brutal truth to this so-called strongest man—
Demons are nothing more than toys to humanity; humans with money and power are the true rulers of the world.
You think you are protecting humanity?
Humanity will never thank you. Humans are an extremely selfish species—so long as they live, they will trample other beings beneath their feet.
So what did Sakyo do in this anime?
He simply stood smiling in front of Sensui, watching demons get thrown into machines and crushed into pulp.
Sensui is a more tragic, more thoroughly broken, fully upgraded version of Geto Suguru; Sakyo is the embodiment of darkness on the side of ordinary humans, far surpassing even the Time Vessel Association. The "Chapter Black" arc of Yu Yu Hakusho records every atrocity humans have ever committed against demons throughout history. Anyone who watches the "Black Chapter" will either develop a split personality or go completely insane—only demons with unshakable hearts can endure it.
Does the jujutsu world have its own "Black Chapter"?
Yes, it does. Kenjaku's thousand years of memories are the most extensive "Black Chapter" of all, recording every sin a sorcerer's life can commit and every inhumane experiment imaginable.
On the television screen, the first three episodes—bright yet weighted with gravity—came to an end.
Asou Akiya did not spoil a single word. Propping his cheek on his hand, he smiled as he watched Gojo Satoru and Getou Suguru.
Dear classmates, in this anime, the strongest faction is the demons—
but the cruelest one is humanity.
Comparing darkness?
Whether it is the S-class demons of the Yu Yu Hakusho world, or the "Four Disaster" curses of the Jujutsu Kaisen world…
none of them can compare to the darkness that resides in Sakyo's heart.
If he were to transmigrate into the world of Yu Yu Hakusho, Asou Akiya has a single dream: to share a cigarette with Sakyo, to mark down the location of the Demon World tunnel as a personal landmark, and finally, in the series' grand finale, to sit inside the ramen shop opened by Urameshi Yusuke and eat a bowl of ramen cooked by the Demon King himself.
When he transplants that dream into the world of Jujutsu Kaisen, it becomes the equivalent of—
Asou Akiya hardens his resolve and makes a childish yet stubborn wish in his heart:
[I want to see Geto Suguru smile from the bottom of his heart. I want to mark the location of the Shibuya Incident. And then I want to eat a birthday cake personally made by thirty-year-old Gojo Satoru—and it must be a low sugar one. Even a little too much sweetness earns a bad review!]
—
Author's Note:
The author is here to recommend something—strongly recommending the anime Yu Yu Hakusho.
That is, assuming everyone can get through the art style of the first episode, since it is, after all, an early-era animation.
The story arc is exceptionally complete, the character growth is solid, and the supporting cast is nearly flawless. Many characters in Hunter × Hunter can trace their prototypes back to this anime—including Hisoka and Chrollo.