An apartment. Night. The rooftop.
Mahiru sat down at the edge of the roof. Now that the tide of Cursed Spirits the Culling Game had used to invade this world had finally subsided, the night sky was clear again, and the moonlight was bright again.
Kenjaku stood behind her.
"You said you met another version of yourself," Mahiru said.
"That's right. Fascinating, isn't it?" Kenjaku said from behind her, eyes crinkling with a smile. "They have exactly the same history and the same techniques I do. Though to be precise, the way they construct barriers is a little more advanced than mine, so they may well be older than me."
Mahiru turned her head and met Kenjaku's eyes.
Kenjaku looked into the girl's eyes, lids lowering slightly.
"When you hint at me like that, doesn't it mean you already know something?"
"The other you came from another world," Mahiru said, without the slightest evasion. "And I came from another world too."
The Inverted Spear of Heaven had been secured. Tengen had been abducted. Riko Amanai had been saved. And Toji Fushiguro, beaten and stripped of his abilities by Mahiru, was currently trussed up and stuffed into the junk room of Kenjaku's house.
As of this moment, Mahiru had accomplished every objective she had set for this world.
Which meant it was time to work out how to get back to the world she came from.
But before she left, there was still one fairly large loose end.
Namely: Kenjaku.
Mahiru had indeed pulled this Kenjaku, wearing Kaori Itadori's face, onto her own ship. She had done it by lying.
And now Mahiru was leaving.
On top of that, this woman had just met another version of herself.
That was a hazard she had to clean up. Mahiru needed to be certain this Kenjaku would go on helping her after she was gone.
And if she couldn't be certain?
Then she would kill her.
That was not a joke.
Even the Kenjaku wearing Suguru Geto's body was no match for her, let alone this one wearing Kaori Itadori's. Not for one second did the girl forget what kind of monster was standing in front of her.
If she killed her, Mahiru had any number of ways to explain it to little Itadori, and any number of ways to squeeze everything this woman knew about the Culling Game out of her brain by force.
She had to make sure this one would never turn on her.
"We don't just come from the same world. He and I are enemies," Mahiru said, her voice serious. "And now you're telling me he's another you? No wonder the goal you started out with was so similar to his."
She did not volunteer the fact that she had known who Kenjaku was from the very beginning. She let the woman believe she had only just pieced it together.
Kenjaku went still for a moment.
"Is that so," she said.
Enemies, then.
Thinking it through, it made sense. Mahiru wanted to assimilate the world, and the other her certainly wanted to assimilate the world as well. Those two things could not coexist.
And this girl had brought it up herself, without flinching?
"Are you worried I'll throw in with him?" Kenjaku sounded genuinely entertained, almost teasing. "Fair enough. If you and the other me are enemies, then logically you and I ought to be enemies too."
And by the same logic, if Mahiru could talk this Kenjaku around, she ought to be able to talk the other one around as well.
In theory, both Kenjakus could be persuaded, or neither could.
But that reasoning missed something.
Kenjaku was a lunatic.
"No need to worry, though. Because teaming up with you against another version of myself sounds like so much fun!" The woman broke into an enormous grin.
Right. Kenjaku was completely out of her mind.
This was a creature willing to spend a thousand years waiting and scheming for the sake of one amusing idea. She was, purely and simply, a madwoman who would give up anything if it promised a good time.
A save file someone else has already played almost to the ending — where's the fun in that? Obviously you pick the route that's livelier, more interesting, and has the better ending art.
Tastes and convictions are like that. Once they form, or once they flip, dragging them back the other way is nearly impossible.
At the very least, the Kenjaku sitting in front of Mahiru right now, forced to choose between "Mahiru" and "the other me," had decided that fighting the Culling Game alongside Mahiru was the more entertaining option.
"Of course, if one day I decide running the Culling Game is more fun, I might just switch over and help the other me instead," the woman said cheerfully, sitting down beside her. "So I understand why you don't trust me. Hmm… let's do it this way, then."
"How?"
"You could kill me anytime you liked right now anyway, couldn't you?" The woman smiled and raised both hands in surrender. "So let me be your prisoner."
In other words: establish a Binding Vow. Seal it as a contract.
Mahiru would use the contract to keep Kenjaku on a leash, and Kenjaku would use the contract to anchor the thing she wanted.
Mahiru had set up similar Binding Vows on Maki and Mai. None of this was new to her.
Kenjaku was far weaker now, and she was far stronger. With the precision of Mahiru's jujutsu manipulation these days, a contract between them really would hold Kenjaku in check.
"'Prisoner' is an ugly word, don't you think?"
"Oh? Would you prefer something a little more youthful? Hahaha. Call our contract whatever you like, it makes no difference to me," Kenjaku said, laughing. "Out of everything, there's only one thing I care about."
"Go on," Mahiru said, nodding.
"I want to know whether that goal of yours — assimilating all of humanity — is real."
"You can take it as real." Mahiru tilted her head slightly, her face untroubled. "I really am curious. I want to see what my Domain would look like once I'd assimilated every human being. But…"
"But?"
"But I'm telling you in advance." Mahiru raised one finger. "Afterward I'll probably turn the world back the way it was."
Kenjaku raised an eyebrow.
"Meaning the Assimilation won't be permanent," Mahiru said. "Because I'm interested in what happens after the whole world is assimilated, and I'm also interested in everything else that happens in a world full of humans. I want to watch both. Can you live with that?"
"…Hah. Of course I can. My interests are exactly the same as yours." The woman smiled and put out her hand. "Here's hoping the Assimilation turns out to be interesting enough."
Mahiru shrugged and shook it.
"Sure. Pleasure doing business."
The negotiation with Kenjaku went so smoothly it caught Mahiru off guard.
Though, thinking it over, it made perfect sense.
What Kenjaku wanted to see was where humanity could reach once it had all been assimilated. Whether anyone stayed there afterward, whether that state lasted, was of very little concern to her.
So Mahiru and Kenjaku signed their contract.
The terms were simple enough.
Mahiru promised that one day she would assimilate all of humanity, at least once. In exchange, Kenjaku would obey Mahiru's orders without condition.
Mahiru had not forgotten how dangerous and how slippery this creature was, so she added a clause: before Kenjaku took any action at all, she had to inform Mahiru first.
To stop her from splitting hairs and playing word games.
The contract was necessary in any case.
Because this Kenjaku was an indispensable weapon against the Culling Game and against Sukuna and the rest of them.
With her on board, Mahiru and the others had a chance of arm-wrestling the Culling Game's system itself.
Risk and reward came bundled together. In practice the contract let Mahiru relax to about ninety-nine percent. As for the remaining one percent, she would simply keep watching.
The next day.
Kenjaku had said earlier that their apartment was no longer big enough, so they started house-hunting.
Since they had to keep Tengen imprisoned, they needed somewhere as far from Tokyo as possible.
Mahiru thought about it and, on a hunch, went to look at the abandoned hot spring inn that had served as their base in the modern world.
On this timeline, of course, the inn hadn't been built yet.
The hot spring itself hadn't even been dug.
But the terrain and the surroundings were excellent, and the site was well suited to laying down a Barrier, so they decided to settle there.
Kenjaku even went through the motions of applying for a business license for a hot spring inn.
That took a week.
Mahiru only took part in picking the site. For the days after that she went to find Yuki Tsukumo and, as before, worked on the problem of crossing time and space.
The girl had also considered whether to recruit this era's Yuki Tsukumo into her camp.
In the end she decided against it.
Because honestly, she and Yuki Tsukumo weren't all that close.
"Not that close?!" Yuki bellowed, having overheard the girl muttering. "How many times have you looked me over from head to toe by now? And you've still got the nerve to say we're not close?!"
Compared to Kenjaku, definitely not that close.
To an outsider, Mahiru and Yuki Tsukumo spent those ten-odd days sketching from life in a different spot every day, a picture of peaceful, unhurried living.
In reality, all of Japan was in chaos.
Kenjaku had used Tengen to halt the Culling Game's erosion of this past world, but the earlier outbreak had already let the system finish unfolding itself at the foundations of this world.
Every Jujutsu Sorcerer had become a player in the Culling Game. A considerable number of ordinary people had been dragged in as well, and those tides of Cursed Spirits that had come gushing up out of the earth had left enormous damage behind.
Which was fine, in its way. It meant Satoru Gojo and Suguru Geto certainly had no time to come after them.
So even once Mahiru left this world, Kenjaku and the others would be safe.
In the end, roughly nine days later, Mahiru finally had her breakthrough.
"Whew…"
Sitting on a stone block, the girl looked at the chaotic ellipsoid hanging in the air before her and let out a long breath of relief. "It finally worked…"
Through the door in front of her, she could return to the present.
But only she could pass through it, and each crossing burned an enormous amount of Cursed Energy, so hopping back and forth through the gate whenever she pleased was out of the question.
"You're going back?" Kenjaku came over to stand beside her. "You won't stay another couple of days? I hear Jujutsu High is holding your funeral. Don't you want to attend?"
Tengen trailed along behind her in the form of a white-haired girl.
A Barrier had been laid over this whole area, and inside it Tengen was free to move around.
The only one currently locked in the dark little room in the basement was the thoroughly pitiful Toji Fushiguro.
"Does anyone actually enjoy attending their own funeral?" Mahiru rolled her eyes. "Once I'm gone, remember to keep in touch. And transfer me those System Points while you're at it."
She meant the points on the Culling Game's system panel.
The points meant nothing to Mahiru and nothing to this past world, but they meant a great deal to the modern one.
In the world she came from, the entire population of Japan had been dragged into the Culling Game, and every one of them needed points to stay alive.
Remember all those tides of the Culling Game that had erupted across this past world? Mahiru and Kenjaku had wiped out every Cursed Spirit in them, and inherited the points from that vast slaughter as a matter of course.
So their accounts were now sitting on an absolutely obscene pile of System Points.
For her original world, that was the single most precious resource there was.
"Mm, all right," Kenjaku agreed with a light laugh. "Safe travels, then."
"See you around," Mahiru said quietly, and stepped into the gate through time and space.
…
Rain hissed down in sheets.
In a graveyard with almost no one in it, a man hit the ground hard, pain forcing his eyes wide as he screamed.
An umbrella fell into the mud.
A boy's silver hair darkened with water.
"Hey, Geto… should we kill him?" Satoru Gojo looked down at the man he'd just put on the ground. "Star Religious Group scum. They're the ones who hired the assassin. They're the reason Ran died…"
"You worthless trash!" The man forced himself up on his arms through the pain, shrieking. "Lord Tengen— gah!"
A Cursed Spirit clamped over the man's mouth, so that he could no longer make noise in a place that was supposed to be solemn.
Suguru Geto walked in silence to Miwa Ran's grave and set the flowers the man had kicked apart back into place.
With the country in turmoil, Miwa Ran's funeral had to be kept small for now. Only three people had come: him, Gojo, and Riko Amanai.
How were they supposed to face Miwa Ran's family?
They had no idea.
They had met the young Miwa Kasumi. When the girl heard they were her aunt's classmates, she'd been delighted, and kept asking when her aunt was coming home.
Neither of them could get a word out.
"So, do we kill him? Him, and everyone in the Star Religious Group." Satoru Gojo spoke slowly, turning to look at Suguru Geto, his eyes flat and dead. "Because the way I feel right now… I don't think I'd feel anything at all."
Something flickered in Suguru Geto's eyes.
He looked at the man writhing on the ground.
"No…" His answer came a beat late. "He's… just an ordinary man. The Star Religious Group's leaders, the ones who actually understand the jujutsu world, have probably already fled the country. Wiping out the rest wouldn't mean anything…"
Wouldn't mean anything.
Did it really have to mean something?
Suguru Geto felt the ground tilt under him.
Ran was dead. Nothing could undo that.
But these Star Religious Group people… these bastards… they caused all of this, and now they had the gall to show up at Miwa Ran's grave…
Geto's fists clenched hard, the whites of his eyes shot through with red.
"…So let's hand him over to the police." He turned and walked to Riko, who stood with her head bowed in grief. "Come on, Riko-chan. It's time we went back to the school."
It was, as it happened, the very moment Mahiru left this world.
Mahiru was gone.
And the boys and girls were saying their last goodbyes to Miwa Ran…
After a goodbye like that, they were supposed to keep moving forward.
But this man from the Star Religious Group had cracked something open inside them.
Would Suguru Geto fall? Would Satoru Gojo?
Tengen was gone, so Riko Amanai no longer had to merge with him. Perhaps at that very moment she was wondering whether the properties of her own "Star Plasma Vessel" body could be used to interfere with the Culling Game.
And in this world, apart from Kenjaku and the others… it seemed no one else knew who Miwa Ran really was.
Oh… wait. Not quite…
"Achoo!" In an underground cell beneath Jujutsu High, the New Shadow Style old woman, a prisoner herself now, sneezed.
There was, in fact, someone else. Someone who knew Miwa Ran's identity. Someone who knew Miwa Ran hadn't died at all.
It was only that Satoru Gojo and Suguru Geto hadn't gotten around to talking to the old woman yet.
And the old woman… had no particular opportunity to tell anyone.
____
👻🔥Seek: Walnut-chan on P a t r e o n🔥👻
🔥 New history: Dragon Ball: But I Get Stronger by Taking Girls to Bed — find it on The_Mikudayo
📚 40 chapters ahead at Walnut-chan — every supporter directly speeds up the translations
Let's hit these goals:
🎯 100 Powerstones = 1 extra chapter for the public!