"Kyoto, second year. Aoi Todo. Introduction complete."
"What kind of women do you like? If you're into men, that's fine too—just answer me. A man's tastes reveal the whole of him. Any guy with no interest in women is himself a boring guy, and I hate boring guys."
"Look how interesting Kira-kun is!"
"Same as me—he prefers tall women with big asses!"
Kira's expression didn't change. Through the visual link shared by Utahime Iori, he watched Todo bantering with Yuji and the rest. He took a sip of tea.
He registered the sidelong looks from the colleagues around him. The insufferable, teasing smile on Satoru Gojo's face.
An awkward silence spread through the tatami room.
He cleared his throat. Sipped again.
Would you shut up? If you're going to fight, then fight already...
"And more than that—Kira-kun has sworn he'll win over every idol in the industry! What a magnificent ambition!"
The silence deepened.
Pfft— Gojo laughed out loud.
The sunlight beyond the window was so bright. The shadows of flowers by his knees crept slowly with the sun, drifting behind him. Cicadas cried low, steady, grating:
Zit-zit. Zit-zit. Zit-zit.
Otherwise, not a sound inside.
Quiet. The kind of quiet that made skin crawl.
Ahem... Kira cleared his throat again, sipped—and only then discovered the cup was empty. Utahime Iori leaned over to ask:
"Another cup?"
"No thank you."
The silence continued.
"Yuji Itadori. What kind of woman do you like?"
"Ora! Tall girl with a big ass, I guess?"
Yuji's earnest voice drifted through the shared sight.
"Excellent! Truly excellent! As expected of a former student of Kira-kun's!"
"Like teacher, like student..."
Utahime's shoulders were shaking, one hand clamped over her face. Gojo's grin turned increasingly shameless. Principal Masamichi Yaga leaned back on instinct, wearing an expression that plainly read: The entire jujutsu education system is finished.
Kira reflexively took another sip. The rim had nearly touched his lips before he realized—the cup had been empty for a while now.
He set the cup down, covered the rim with the lid, glanced at his watch. 10:30. The Goodwill Event had only just begun.
"By the way—how's the handling of Principal Gakuganji going?"
He was reaching for a topic.
"The old man's dead—what's there to handle? We can only hope his replacement isn't some idiot. Bet you it is."
"Still investigating."
Utahime shot Gojo a vicious look. Gojo shot it right back—then, perhaps remembering that Utahime couldn't see his eyes behind the blindfold, our good teacher Gojo resorted to sticking out his tongue.
"No residual cursed energy at the scene. According to the Windows, he was in bed at the time. A large hole abruptly opened through his chest, and he died in an instant. No sign of intrusion. Nothing."
"Our working theory is some kind of 'voodoo doll'-style technique. That would explain how someone could kill across any distance."
"Makes sense."
Silence fell again.
Mercifully, the back-and-forth in the shared vision was finally over. After all that chatter, they had finally started the fight.
Aoi Todo's Boogie Woogie was a tricky cursed technique—even Megumi Fushiguro and Yuji Itadori together weren't his match. Farther out, Panda, who was on tracking duty, had locked up with Mechamaru. Momo Nishimiya was sweeping the sky on her broom. Kasumi Miwa had just been kicked savagely into the bottom of a lake by Maki Zenin—who, moments later, began her one-on-one duel with the other Zenin-blood girl, Mai Zenin.
As for Hoshino Ei... No one knew where she had slipped off to.
A few days ago, she had already awakened her new shikigami ability. Kira's conjecture had been correct: fate would not change just because time flowed backward. Whatever the process, every path emptied into the same ending that Destiny had charted.
The new shikigami ability was troublesome. A threat, too.
Kira had never fully trusted Hoshino Ei. More accurately—he did not trust anything. He doubted everything in the world.
Which is why, on that very first day—that Monday—
When he encountered Hoshino Ei in the alley for a second time, he had made a verbal Binding Vow with her.
In exchange for Kira revealing the memories from four days into the future, Hoshino Ei would be barred, permanently, from ever leaking or exploiting Kira's secrets. She could not, under any circumstances, betray him.
He had wanted to go further, to demand more—but Binding Vows enforced equivalent exchange.
That was the most he could get.
"Kira. About your commendation for exorcising that Special Grade cursed spirit—word's come down from above."
Masamichi Yaga cleared his throat, breaking the room's quiet.
"You declined the assessment for promotion to Special Grade. Under the principle of equivalent exchange, you are therefore entitled to make one request of the academy—or to claim one cursed tool from the Inbutsu Pavilion. Below Special Grade."
Kira's eyes narrowed slightly. His finger tapped the rim of the teacup, one beat at a time. A pause. Then:
"At the academy... is there a travelogue written by a monk named Manyo?"
"It would likely be a fragment. Nara period, roughly."
"Manyo?"
Yaga raised an eyebrow. Clearly he had never heard the name.
He murmured a few low words to the attendant beside him. The man nodded, offered a slight bow, and left the room—presumably to consult the records.
The day stretched long. The Goodwill Event had reached its climax by now; students' cursed energy was surging out in every direction, exploding, flung wide with all the abandon of youth.
The flower-shadows behind his knees had completely vanished, the sun now gone around to the back of the house, by the time the attendant returned.
"Kira-kun, I'm afraid not. There's no travelogue by any Monk Manyo in our holdings."
Yaga shook his head, sipping his tea.
"We did, however, find the man. Manyo—yes, Nara period, what was then the golden age of jujutsu. He was a Grade 1 sorcerer. Crossed over to Tang China during Jianzhen's voyage east, then traveled widely from there, his footsteps reportedly reaching as far as ancient Rome. As for his character—ah... quite the libertine."
So that monk—Jinjun—had been a sorcerer after all.
Kira's brow eased slightly. He pressed on:
"And the academy doesn't have his travelogue at all?"
"...Not a copy, no."
Yaga met Kira's serious gaze and shook his head. Then, as something came to mind:
"I could make inquiries on your behalf... Ah, that's right. The jujutsu world is about to host a rather grand auction. Most of the lots are relics from Nara-period sorcerers. What you're looking for may well turn up there."
"If it does, buy it outright. The academy will cover the bill."
"An auction, is it..."
Kira looked out at the lowering sun, at the layered green, at the shrilling cicadas.
Summer was at its end. And once again, Kira could hear the footsteps of fate.
Exactly as he had heard them in his youth—closer, closer, closer...
Something was calling him.
What he did not know—what no one knew—was that in a certain shadowed corner:
An eye opened.
Laced with malice, with amused cruelty—as though it were the essence of evil itself.
Wreathed in mountains of corpses and seas of blood. In bones and wasteland.
"The Arrow"... is it?
It murmured. The corners of its eyes tilted up.
"The Arrow. The Arrow."
A new world was coming. And every fallen thing would be reborn.
Whether good or evil.