"Geto! Hurry up—Akiya brought some insanely good Sendai specialties!"
Gojo Satoru squatted in front of the low table, shoveling desserts into his mouth at lightning speed, polishing off two Kikufuku in the time it took to blink.
Geto Suguru, having received the message, soon arrived at Gojo's dorm room.
With the three of them finally gathered, Geto set down a bag of souvenirs from his business trip the day before and handed them out in return to his two classmates. For Asou Akiya—who was receiving regional gifts for the first time—it was a small but genuine surprise.
"What is it?" Akiya asked.
"I went on a trip to Kawasaki City," Geto explained. "Gojo's gift is a local specialty from Tama Ward—a Doraemon figurine I bought at the Fujiko·F·Fujio Museum. As for yours, I went to the neighboring district and bought it near Shin-Yurigaoka Station. It's a longevity Daruma tumbler."
Asou Akiya immediately took a liking to the black Daruma doll and could hardly bring himself to put it down.
After searching it up on his phone, he learned that the Daruma tumbler was a traditional Japanese good-luck charm: its eyebrows symbolized auspicious fortune, its cheeks longevity, and its beard peace and safety.
Moreover, Daruma dolls came in twelve different colors, each carrying a distinct meaning.
A black Daruma was said to store and accumulate good luck.
Seeing how much Akiya liked it, Geto kept completely quiet about how long he had spent choosing the gift. Beside them, however, Gojo—utterly uninterested in the all-too-familiar Daruma—cheerfully placed his own present on the bookshelf next to Nobita. Surrounded by multiple Doraemon figures, Nobita looked like a boy enveloped in happiness.
Geto sat down on the floor, reached for a dessert, and asked the other two, "Which flavor of Kikufuku is the best?"
"Matcha," Asou Akiya replied.
Gojo Satoru offered his own opinion. "Matcha's too bitter. Fresh cream is the best."
Geto tried the matcha flavor first, then moved on to the fresh cream flavor Gojo had recommended.
The bun-haired boy ate with exceptional refinement, the product of good upbringing. Only after he finished did he reveal his youthful nature—using the pad of his finger to wipe away the powdered crumbs at the corner of his mouth, then licking his fingertip as he carefully savored the lingering sweetness on his tongue.
He gave his verdict. "The matcha leans bitter, the fresh cream leans sweet. If you combined the two, it would be even better."
He seemed to realize a beat too late that he had "said the wrong thing," and deliberately turned to Asou Akiya and added, "I wasn't implying anything."
Asou Akiya smiled. "Of course not. I wouldn't overthink it."
After all, Geto—if you can reach a monk-like state of enlightenment even while eating meal replacements, then something as trivial as Kikufuku hardly matters.
Behind his back, the flip phone Asou Akiya had set down glowed faintly, its screen displaying a trail of search results:
[How many wards are there in Kawasaki City?]
[Where is Shin-Yurigaoka Station?]
[How far is Tama Ward from Shin-Yurigaoka Station?]
[Official introduction of the Fujiko·F·Fujio Museum]
[How much does a high-end black Daruma tumbler cost?]
It did not take long for Asou Akiya to figure out where the black Daruma tumbler had been bought.
—Kawasaki City, Asao Ward, Japan's town famed for longevity.
Gojo Satoru didn't want to look, but the Six Eyes took in every movement between the two of them, making him understand the meaning hidden behind the souvenirs, as well as the subtle ways classmates expressed friendship. His curiosity about Asou Akiya shifted into a new understanding. To Gojo, both Asou Akiya's probing and Geto Suguru's indirectness felt like unnecessary trouble. If something was tasty or fun, that was already enough.
Geto Suguru did not stay long and left on his own. Asou Akiya moved to sit beside Gojo Satoru and watched him play his game.
The white-haired boy had long fingers, nimble as they gripped the controller, every movement fluid and pleasing to the eye.
He stared intently at the game screen. As joy and frustration rose and fell, faint curves appeared at the corners of his lips; occasionally, a small canine tooth flashed into view. His gaze carried the dangerous sharpness of a hunter locking onto a target, patiently waiting for the moment to strike and defeat the enemy.
Rebellious yet traditional, conservative yet eager to try new things—that was fifteen-year-old Gojo Satoru.
Asou Akiya wanted to watch him grow, to see him step into maturity, to live a brilliant life unlike any other.
This was no longer just a two-dimensional character on a page.
This was the real Gojo Satoru—a heart beating in his chest, warmth radiating from his body, each strand of hair visible to the eye, pores fine and clear, the soft white of his body hair almost translucent. When he stood in the sunlight, his entire figure seemed wrapped in a gentle halo of light.
For that sake, Asou Akiya was willing to stand against Kenjaku, and against the world itself.
Perhaps, if Gojo Satoru were to ask him one day, he would say with genuine bafflement: Huh? Why would I be an enemy of the world? Since when did I ever become public enemy number one?
A faint smile curved across Asou Akiya's face.
When Gojo Satoru was born, this world had, in truth, offered him a blessing.
Later, that blessing slowly spoiled, corroding bit by bit until it fermented into a curse. The mangaka did not love Gojo Satoru. They did not love clear blue skies either. The Gojo Satoru who debuted in the official guidebooks under the title of "the Strongest" ultimately became a side character who met a bleak and desolate end in the original story.
In his previous life, many people had said that "the Strongest" was itself a curse laid upon Gojo Satoru—a title that cost him his friends, forced him to survive on only two or three hours of sleep a day, and condemned him to endlessly rush from one exorcism to the next. The name "the Strongest" was glory. It was a crown. But for those who truly loved him, it was never meant to be a blade hanging over his head, threatening to fall at any moment.
"I'll take the Halloween bet," Asou Akiya said quietly.
An hour later, while Gojo Satoru wasn't paying attention, Asou Akiya left behind that simple promise and slipped away without a sound.
Back in the dormitory, Gojo Satoru stopped moving his fingers. On the screen, the game character froze in place.
A game without spectators immediately lost half its fun.
Cross-dressing?
Heh. Hehehe… interesting.
Gojo Satoru tossed the controller aside, grabbed his phone, and dove onto the bed, already scrolling through e-commerce sites and browsing the Halloween costume promotions with sparkling interest.
October 16th, Sunday—the Tokyo Marathon began in grand fashion.
Asou Akiya decided to test his physical limits. He deliberately refrained from reinforcing himself with cursed energy and took off at full speed from the starting line.
In the realm of athletics, jujutsu sorcerers possessed certain innate advantages over ordinary people. They have faster physical recovery, less sweat loss, no need to constantly drink water or consume energy bars along the route. If vitality were compared to a flame, then a sorcerer's flame always burned brighter and steadier. At the beginning, Asou Akiya maintained an excellent pace, but as the marathon entered its latter half, his speed steadily declined. Ahead of him, the Black runners played to their natural strengths, sprinting with explosive power, and before the finish line, they left Asou Akiya—the jujutsu sorcerer—far behind.
Only then did Asou Akiya realize, half amused and half exasperated, that he had grown complacent.
He hadn't even managed to make it into the top ten.
After the Tokyo Marathon's live broadcast aired, Utahime Iori, who loved watching sports programs, spat out a mouthful of beer in shock. She bolted out of the dormitory and grabbed Ieiri Shoko by the arm, shouting, "Hurry up and look—Asou-kouhai is on TV!"
With nothing better to do over the weekend, Ieiri Shoko was instantly invigorated. She squatted down in front of the television together with Utahime, the two of them camping there to watch the marathon unfold.
Utahime laughed openly. "He went out way too fast. Now he's running out of steam in the second half."
She glanced sideways at Shoko and asked, "Should we take a photo and send it to the class group chat?"
Shoko took a picture as a keepsake, but she didn't send it to the group. "I'll just keep it for myself."
Utahime took a big gulp of beer. "He really doesn't look like a jujutsu sorcerer at all."
"Why do you say that?" Shoko asked.
Utahime spoke without thinking. "If he were using cursed energy, how would it be possible for those guys to take first place?"
Considering Asou Akiya's personality, Shoko replied, "He probably just wanted to test himself."
Lately, Asou Akiya had been training in "Black Flash," pushing his physical limits to the extreme, so he wanted to see exactly where that limit lay.
Shoko muttered under her breath, "I can't help feeling that Asou's been in too much of a hurry lately. Could it be because of Halloween?"
Utahime slung an arm around her junior's shoulders. "So, how are you spending Halloween this year?"
"You know me," Shoko said. "I rarely go out."
Utahime's expression fell in disappointment.
"There's no need to feel sorry for me," Ieiri Shoko said with a smile, reaching out to gently pat her senpai on the head. The straightforward, guileless senpai was always the most endearing. "I have some pretty good classmates. They'll help me arrange everything. I just need to wait for their invitation."
Utahime's eyes welled up as she asked loudly, almost whining, "Are Shoko's classmates good to you?"
Shoko answered coolly, "Very good. Lately, they've been getting better and better."
Sometimes, when she noticed the way those scummy high-school boys ostracized people, she was genuinely speechless. The male students would even get jealous over a female classmate—how childish could they be?
Gojo and Geto were nothing but two immature idiots who didn't understand how to make friends.
Night fell, and the boys' dormitory sank into quiet.
Asou Akiya soaked in the bathtub, leaning his head back, knees drawn up to his chest. Under the bathroom light, the darkness in his eyes gradually dispersed.
"The professional life of every ordinary jujutsu sorcerer is nothing more than a marathon," he murmured.
"And at the end of that road…"
"Lies a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood—belonging to the weak."
Were third-grade jujutsu sorcerers weak? Yes. They couldn't even reliably protect themselves.
It wasn't that he had never considered an easier path. Before next year's Star Plasma Vessel mission began, he could investigate every family in Japan with the surname "Fushiguro," narrow the addresses down to Saitama Prefecture—on the grounds that Fushiguro Megumi attended Urami East Junior High School. He could kidnap Fushiguro Megumi and use him to threaten Fushiguro Toji into abandoning the mission, thereby saving everyone's lives, including Toji's.
And yet—what would be the point?
Every time Asou Akiya chose to save someone, there was always a prerequisite.
That his actions would be met with goodwill in return.
Kidnapping someone else's child was simply too despicable a method.
Fushiguro Toji, the man he threatened, would never feel gratitude toward him. At best, Toji would harbor hatred, further confirming his belief that jujutsu sorcerers were utterly revolting.
Fushiguro Toji despised the jujutsu world and loathed jujutsu sorcerers. He would happily kill people for a bounty, and the only exception to that rule was Gojo Satoru. Toji wanted to kill the "Six Eyes" to prove himself, but he would never take Gojo Satoru's life just to claim a reward.
The self-abased yet prideful Heavenly Tyrant acknowledged only one thing: another powerful opponent.
Asou Akiya did not fall within the scope of that man's mercy.
That lone wolf would fix him with a gaze full of killing intent, watching him relentlessly, until the day it finally lunged forward and tore out his throat.
[I cannot save you.]
Because we were never meant to meet in advance, never meant to form a bond.
[I give up on saving you.]
Because you no longer need my salvation, and your pride itself longs for a fierce, all-out battle.
[We are enemies. I have no right to forgive you in Gojo Satoru's place.]
Asou Akiya submerged half of his face into the hot water of the bathtub. His expression gradually turned frighteningly cold as he once again reaffirmed his own stance.
In Jujutsu Kaisen, the Hidden Inventory arc—sixteen-year-old Gojo Satoru and Geto Suguru escort Amanai Riko back to Tokyo Jujutsu High. Not long after stepping through the school gates, Gojo Satoru deactivated the "Limitless" technique he had kept running continuously for three days, only to be ambushed instantly by Fushiguro Toji. In that life-and-death battle, Gojo Satoru was stabbed seven times from start to finish: one stab through the chest, a penetrating wound; one to the neck, tearing him open; four into his right thigh; and the final blade driven into his forehead.
After such a battle, who could possibly forgive Fushiguro Toji in Gojo Satoru's stead?
No one.
Sixteen-year-old Gojo Satoru was carved into the title of "the Strongest" by those seven wounds. At the brink of death, he comprehended Reverse Cursed Technique, and the very first thing he did after crawling out of that pool of blood was to set off in a frenzied search for his enemy.
In his desire to take revenge on Fushiguro Toji, Gojo Satoru completely forgot about Amanai Riko and Geto Suguru, leaving them utterly behind.
One could easily imagine just how stubborn and obsessive his state of mind was after clawing his way back from the dead.
Once those two went to war, it would end only with death—there would be no truce, no retreat.
Reality, however, was not a novel. When nineteen-year-old Gojo Satoru first met six-year-old Fushiguro Megumi, he immediately pulled a sour face, speaking half in jest as he talked, his fingers casually forming the hand sign for "Purple." Years later, when twenty-nine-year-old Gojo Satoru fought Ryomen Sukuna, he openly expressed his disgust for Fushiguro Toji, because Sukuna was using Fushiguro Megumi's body, and that face looked far too much like Toji's.
Asou Akiya knew all too well that if he were to stand in front of Fushiguro Toji, forcibly stop "Purple," and beg the two of them to reconcile, the outcome would be a complete break with Gojo Satoru. There would be no second possibility. Gojo Satoru would never forgive such an action.
What benefits, what future gains—Gojo Satoru did not care about any of that. All he wanted was to win it back.
"Things have finally become clear."
Asou Akiya slipped on his bathrobe, the only one he owned among his loungewear.
"My way forward is to master 'Black Flash.'"
If he could not learn Black Flash, then as a Grade Three jujutsu sorcerer he would be fit only to stand on the sidelines and watch gods fight, forever unable to escape the limitations imposed by talent and birth.
At Tokyo Jujutsu High, sorcerer students were generally taught how to write their death lletters, yet Yaga Masamichi, as their homeroom teacher, had never once made this year's first-year students write wills. Nor did any assistant supervisor dare to teach such a course, fearing they might get beaten for it.
Yaga Masamichi placed great expectations upon them. He hoped they would live on forever, never needing to write such letters.
To grow stronger, one must defy.
Asou Akiya wiped his hair dry, drew out a sheet of letter paper, and sat down at his desk, sinking into memories that stretched far back into the past, lingering over them for a long, quiet time.
The previous "will" he had written had been remarkably effective.
Unfortunately, he could no longer summon the same carefree state of mind that had once allowed him to casually write about a ridiculous, comedic love triangle.
The dormitory light was still on in the depths of the night. Asou Akiya, who had always kept a disciplined daily routine, had become someone who secretly stayed up late. Through the window, he could see that the other two male students had already turned off their lights and gone to sleep, the building swallowed by silence except for his room.
The conditions for mastering "Black Flash" were laid out plainly before him. Asou Akiya would have to achieve a level of focus he had never reached before in battle, casting aside everything from both of his lives, pushing past his limits, and touching the very core of cursed energy. This meant that he could no longer allow his mind to wander through trivial thoughts. He would have to finish writing his will, and only then could he learn from Itadori Yuji, shouldering for himself the weight of a "death sentence."
Yet he could not bring himself to write even a single stroke.
Without him, Geto Suguru would live to twenty-seven, Gojo Satoru would live to twenty-eight. Both of them would outlive him.
And yet… they would not be happy.
The contents of this will would only add to the burden of their worst memories.
Asou Akiya propped his cheek against his hand, his gaze gentle, as though he were speaking of something that had nothing to do with him at all. "I'll find a place," he murmured softly, "and die quietly there, doing my best to make it not look too ugly."
At last, in the early hours of the morning, Asou Akiya finally grasped the fountain pen. The ink-fed nib touched the paper, releasing a soft scratching sound as it began to move.
[All this time, I have wanted to raise a cat, to stay with it as it grows up and grows old.]
[If my death will make you feel sorrow, I am sorry. I truly did my best. Please cremate my body, copy the information of my soul, and make me into a cursed corpse.]
[In the next life, I wish to become a cat and stay by your side.]
[—Asou Akiya.]
[Written in the early hours of October 17, 2005.]
He pulled open the drawer and took out the red cord he had received during the Tsukimi Festival, fastening it around his wrist and carefully adjusting the length until it fit just right.
He wanted to be stopped.
That shameful heart of his was still gambling on a faint, threadlike hope.
He first glanced at the black daruma doll placed on his desk—a charm that symbolized longevity—then all strength drained from his body. He lowered his head, and in an instant the color vanished from his face. Smiling faintly, he leaned down and pressed a gentle kiss to the red cord around his wrist.
"This," he said softly, "is the 'binding' I place upon myself."
"If I fail to learn 'Black Flash' before Halloween, October 31st of this year, then I will go and die."
Beneath the lashes of the black-haired boy's eyes, the ultimate terror that humans feel toward death erupted at last. Tears slipped free of reason's control and fell in rapid succession, trembling as they dropped.
Was it worth it? It was worth it. Was he going to die? At last, he was finally going all out.
Death countdown: 332 hours.
...
Please allow me, for this world, for you who stand within arm's reach—
to offer up a love that will be regarded as a curse.