Chapter 31

  “Do everyone in big sorcerer clans wear kimonos, or is it just you?” Shoko asked me that as we headed towards the common room together. It was on the top floor of our residential building—Tachibana House—, and we were taking the stairs up, followed by the girls from our year. They were remarkably quiet around me—had been for the whole day. I hoped eventually we could break the ice. Maybe we would up in the common room?

  I looked down at my robes and shrugged. “Our fashion is pretty old school, but after getting so used to it, I prefer it heavily over the understated western style.”

  “And you’re filthy rich enough to splurge on it whenever. Every day is summer for you, huh?”

  “You calling me spoiled?” I grinned. “Pampered from birth?”

  “Hmmm. I’m guessing you’re about to lead into a tragic backstory or something.”

  “Why?”

  “Just based on your tone,” she said. “In case you are: can I ask you to… not? I mean… eventually, but right now, I’m a little too tired to hug you and… tell you everything will be okay or whatever.” She yawned. “I hate running.”

  “You need training,” I said. “I’ll give you some tips, alright? I trained a lot of the kids in my clan as well, and they’ve turned out to be decent sorcerers.”

  “Don’t wanna,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Don’t got the talent,” she said. “I’ll probably just die to some curse on my first mission. Training will only lengthen the agony. It’s like how the pirates of old didn’t know how to swim. You know that? So in case your ship got sunk, you wouldn’t die slowly, but rather, very quickly.”

  “That sounds… incredibly made up,” I said.

  Suzuki Yui seemed remarkably unspirited as she followed me from behind, not saying a word.

  “Suzuki,” I said. She perked up immediately. I slowed down to walk next to her up the stairs. “I want to apologize. For calling you an ant.”

  “Wha—“

  “I made a promise to Yaga-sensei to not rub in my status or strength to the other students,” I explained. “You provoked me, but instead of resolving our conflict straightforwardly, I opted to belittle you instead. I don’t think you’re an ant, Suzuki.” Such a supremacist way of thinking didn’t become me. I didn’t gather strength to oppress the weak. A part of me had carried this regret for the better part of the entire day, and I hoped that this apology would prickle my pride enough that I wouldn’t repeat myself.

  Besides, if I wanted to have some fun, then it was far more productive and satisfying to pick on the strong.

  “O-oh.”

  “And… your desire to test your strength was valid. If not a little unwise, given that you stepped up to me of all people.” Rotten luck, that. She only had fate to blame.

  She chuckled. “Yeah…”

  “It’s important to you, isn’t it? Being strong.”

  She nodded. “Damn right. I’m here to become the best sorcerer that I can be.”

  “Shoko,” I said. She was walking up ahead, and in acknowledgment, she just tilted her head. “I want you to learn from Suzuki’s example. Truth be told, I find it deeply upsetting when someone as young as you takes their own death in stride.”

  “Meh. What’s the point of being delusional?”

  I frowned. “I find it deeply upsetting, Shoko,” I repeated. She looked over her shoulder at me, then sighed, closing her eyes.

  “Fine. Sorry.”

  “Only an idiot takes their own death as a given,” Suzuki snorted. “Don’t know how you even get out of your bed with such an attitude.”

  “Everyone dies,” Shoko replied. “I may have taken it a little too far.”

  I’d drag her into training, kicking and screaming. “An hour before dawn tomorrow, Shoko.”

  She slumped over in defeat. “I hate you.”

  “I’d rather you live to hate me, than die loving me,” I said.

  She slumped down even further.

  Once we finally reached the top floor, and the common room—a place with couches around a TV, a ping-pong table on a corner, a wide table, and bookshelves lining the walls—something about the atmosphere seemed off.

  All the older girls, our upperclassmen, were looking at us. Or me, really. My robes weren’t that ornate. It was a really simple, black yukata with insectile patterns.

  “It’s cold in here,” Shoko remarked dryly.

  I didn’t need super senses to read the room, but it did help.

  One girl walked up to me. She was wearing a pair of gray sweatpants, and a white tank top that revealed bristling muscles and scars across her arms. She had a gray pony-tail and piercing eyes. A fourth-year by the name of Mukai Reiko. I was eleven when one of my kamakiri had saved her from a tough spot.

  Reiko was a big-shot in her year. The strongest female sorcerer in school, arguably the strongest student sorcerer period—not counting myself or Gojo Satoru, of course. And she was the dorm captain of Tachibana House—the dorm building containing all the girls in the high school portion of the school.

  “I have a question for you, kouhai,” she said. I lidded my eyes slightly, preparing for a problem. “You’re the one with the bug shikigami. From the Hibana clan. Right?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Your shikigami saved me. Right?”

  Uh… “Yes.”

  “Were they all yours?” she asked. “The ones that approached most of us?”

  “Yeah… pretty much,” I said. “Do we have a problem?”

  She snorted. Then she closed her eyes and shook her head. “Not at all.”

  The other girls began to approach me, crowding both myself and my classmates behind me. I prepared for violence.

  Then they bowed. Thirty-four out of the forty-five girls in the room.

  Even Reiko. They all bowed at the waist.

  Then they shouted, “Thank you!”

  After a few seconds, they stood up straight. Reiko grinned at me. “Welcome to Tokyo Jujutsu High, Hibana-san. We’re really glad to have you here.”

  …Huh.

  000

  “For the last time, I’m not ducking your challenges because I’m scared of you. I just don’t wanna piss off Yaga,” Satoru sighed.

  He and Suguru were in the middle of their dorm building’s hallway. Opposite from them were Ren and the guy with the dreadlocs, constantly listening to music. Daiki was his name.

  Daiki grinned. “Teach got you running scared, eh? I expected more from you, big dog.”

  “You don’t even…” Satoru winced, closing his eyes as he tried to formulate a way to get this through their thick skulls. “Listen. I’m a raid boss. You’re a level one noobie. You don’t have the qualifications to challenge me. Level up a little and come back, so I don’t kill you in an instant. That’s how this works.”

  “I ain’t worried,” Daiki smiled.

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  “Yeah, no shit—it’s because you don’t have a frame of reference to be worried. Let me guess: you figured out how to use your cursed technique and now you think you’re invincible. Maybe it’s a strong technique. Maybe it could even get past Infinity. But then you’d have thrown away your shot at beating me with your dogshit fundamentals hampering you every step of the way. Do you get that? Jujutsu isn’t just about cursed techniques.”

  “Meh,” Daiki said. “You’re just scared.”

  “Satoru,” Suguru said softly. As if Satoru needed to be calmed down or something. He wasn’t stupid.

  “You’re stupid,” Satoru said before walking past him.

  “And you’re a coward!”

  Ren said nothing, which was interesting. He was usually one to fly off the handle at the slightest provocation.

  The beating he took from Kobayashi and Yaga-sensei must have knocked some sense into him. That was good. Probably boded well for his survival too, since Satoru couldn’t see a future in which such a hothead could ever survive as a Jujutsu Sorcerer.

  Kobayashi, though… now, there was a strong kid that somehow also knew his place at the same time. Those were rare. The young and talented often tried to overreach out of sheer confidence, only to get smacked down and humbled by life. Kobayashi played his cards well.

  Without a flashy technique, a Jujutsu Sorcerer’s best recourse was to keep their cards close to their chest and not get involved in fights that they couldn’t win.

  Not that anyone could even come close to threatening Satoru. Only Teira could do that. That was a slight shame.

  Hanging out with her was fun, but it did get to a certain point where he had to move away from her for his own mental health. Hopefully, over time, they’d strike a more bearable balance.

  Still, he wanted to see her again. Fight her again.

  He cast a glance over his shoulder. His Six Eyes could easily make out Teira’s cursed energy through the many walls and the distance separating their two dorm buildings. Her toxic cursed energy. Satoru had only noticed it after activating his Infinity, but aside from her hits managing to pierce through his defenses to put pressure on his nerves, they also carried a lingering property of a sort, that made his own cursed energy control slightly cruder.

  She was just full of tricks.

  That was okay. He had learned half a dozen things from fighting her, and he desperately wanted to apply his new knowledge. He knew that if he did, it would cause some kind of political incident. He had already been skirting close to the edge of acceptability. And there was no way that Teira would agree to anything. She was straight-laced to a fault.

  Satoru stopped dead in his tracks to think.

  He looked up at the ceiling and smiled.

  Man. Nothing about this school was anything I had ever expected.

  Why do I even care what Yaga thinks? Why…

  “Changed your mind, Gojo?” Daiki caught up to him and faced him.

  “Satoru,” Suguru said tiredly. His tone was really so exhausted. And Daiki seemed to be itching for a sorcerer battle.

  And yet, something held him back.

  Why do I care what any of these people think?

  Ugh, screw it.

  “Suguru. Can we talk?”

  Ren walked ahead, towards the staircase leading up to the common room.

  Daiki grinned hungrily. “So—“

  “Get lost, small fry,” Gojo said.

  “Who’s the small fry?” Daiki asked. “Me?”

  “Seriously. Just give me a minute.”

  Daiki scoffed and turned around to leave. Soon, the hallway was empty, except for himself and Suguru. He turned to face him, grinning. “Look, man…”

  While Satoru looked for the words to express his… frustration, Suguru spoke up. “We’re going to be late for registration at this point.”

  “If I’ve been a headache,” Satoru began. Then he felt a surge of shame at starting off with such weak-sauce words. “Man, it’s been a long day, huh?”

  Suguru… smiled. “Guess so.”

  Satoru looked up, and rubbed the back of his head. “I, uh…”

  What the hell was he trying to say?

  I’ve never had a friend before in my life, and if I screwed this up, then I’m sorry.

  I’ll try to be less…

  …well, me.

  No. He couldn’t give his own identity up just to fit in better. It didn’t make any sense.

  “You’ve been a real handful, Satoru,” Suguru said. Ouch. “I’ve never met a person more self-assured, and less self-aware at the same time. You’re… truly insane. But… I don’t mind.”

  Satoru’s eyes widened. He looked down from the ceiling, to Suguru, and saw a bright, albeit tired, smile. “First day in a new school can be hard for everyone. Don’t sweat the little stuff, Satoru. I know you’re trying. In your own… concerningly insane way. But if I’m being honest… I’d… prefer to have crazier friends this time around. Friends I can actually talk to, about all this crazy stuff. The sorcery. And all that. I didn’t have any of those, before. Before I got to this school, I was alone. No one could understand. Not even my parents. But now…”

  Satoru’s shock wore off, and he grinned. “Alright, then. Guess I was just panicking over nothing. Let’s hurry up to registration, then.”

  000

  “They put the lives of every student in this school in danger, and all you did was… take them out of gym class? Force them to run errands for you?”

  Yaga was in the middle of a darkly lit room, six secret councilmembers arranged around him in a hexagonal pattern, concealed by wooden doors.

  Handling the council was easy. He would have been grateful if it had just been them.

  Instead, they were joined by the clan heads of the Big Three. The esteemed Gojo Manjiro, Zen'in Naobito, and Kamo Akihito.

  The whole fucking crew had come to bust his balls. Typical.

  Kamo Akihito had been the one to reprimand him.

  “I’m far more concerned that you punished Satoru,” Manjiro said. “When he clearly acted in self-defense.”

  Did he honestly believe that? He couldn’t. He knew his… ward well. Knew of his history of seeking out Hibana, even at the threat of destabilizing Jujutsu Society.

  “More concerning is her threat level,” Naobito said. He had brought his gourd of sake for his meeting. He never went anywhere without it. Strange man. “We’ve clearly underestimated her. Special Grade: Class One was created to label those Special Grades with powerful abilities, but lacking fundamentals in Jujutsu Sorcery. Even discounting all her other… abilities… she used a Domain Expansion. Even the mighty Gojo Satoru met defeat—“

  “He was not defeated!” Manjiro shouted. “The domain shattered instantly!”

  “So they drew,” Naobito shrugged. “That makes no difference in the end. It’s time we come to appreciate her level of power. I propose we move her up to Class Three.”

  Invincible against non-Special Grades.

  I really shouldn’t be here.

  As a Jujutsu Sorcerer, Yaga Masamichi had a duty to uphold the stability of Jujutsu Society.

  As a teacher who wished to see his students grow, he had no business whatsoever listening to old men sharpen their knives as they contemplated how to deal with his student. It was disgusting and unbecoming.

  “May I be dismissed?” Yaga asked curtly.

  The clan heads stopped squabbling to look at him in silence.

  Manjiro cleared his throat. “The Gojo clan would like to put forth a motion to replace this first year class’ homeroom teacher with someone more capable of controlling his students.” Mad that Yaga wouldn’t budge on the punishment against Satoru, no doubt.

  The funny thing with both Jujutsu Academies was that, for the purposes of Headquarters and the Big Three, the academies contained pretty much all of the next generation’s Jujutsu Society, which made their impression of Gojo Satoru far too important. The Gojo clan wanted to control their impression. Actually, they had never wanted Satoru to even so much as step foot in this school. Satoru’s image was just as important to them as his true strength.

  And they were mad that Yaga had tarnished that narrative, by trying to equalize Satoru with the other students, and also punishing him.

  “Don’t waste your breath,” Naobito sighed, shaking his head. “I would veto that motion every time. Yaga may not be strong enough to force these children to do anything, but he’s a better option. He’s not as politically exposed as other candidates. He hails from no clan, whether minor or major. He exists in-between the cracks of every faction there is. He’s ideal.”

  That, too. Yaga wasn’t worried about being replaced. The amount of forces and interests that had converged into allowing him this position were uncountable. He was stuck fast to this role by sheer virtue of how much effort it would take to replace him with a non-controversial pick. It was the way of politics in the Big Clans.

  If the Kamo clan said that the sky was blue, the Gojo clan would call it black just to spite them, while the Zen'in clan would claim that the sky didn’t exist.

  “More concerning is the lack of a severe enough punishment for the girl,” Kamo Akihito said. “She should be expelled for what she did. What say you, Yaga?”

  Expelled, thus cutting short the deal she had made with HQ, to allow the Hibana clan into the Society. That was… an extremely unwise maneuver, in Yaga’s estimation. “If I expel Hibana, then I will have to expel Gojo,” Yaga said, kicking the proverbial ball over to Manjiro.

  “Absolutely not!” Manjiro caught the ball instantly.

  “Then we must renegotiate our terms with the Hibana clan,” Akihito said. “We made this deal long before she so recklessly decided to scour the lands for potential sorcerers to the point that she has made irreparable changes to our Society’s structure. She acts in bad faith. We all know this.”

  “Moreover,” Manjiro added, “we already have a policy for redeeming outlaw clans. The Inumakis are our precedent: we force them to breed out their sorcerers, and stop them from performing Jujutsu. Why should the Hibana clan be exempt from this?”

  “Absolutely,” Akihito said. A rare occasion in which two clan heads agreed. That was a bad sign. “Why should we simply sit still and bear it? Her bad faith politics and the fact that her clan is somehow exempt from suffering the consequences of their criminality? Hibana Teira must be punished somehow, and we must reconsider our relationship with the Hibana clan. You must punish her, Yaga.”

  “What does the council say?” Yaga asked.

  Yaga sensed hesitation in the air. Likely because the Big Three had arrived. Thus, they couldn’t maintain their agenda with impunity, or the clans would rightfully identify that they had been bought by the Hibana clan.

  The Big Three knew that already, but their physical presence was enough to remind the councilmembers of who their original sponsors were.

  And, of course, that should any of them overplay their hands, the Big Three knew exactly who they were, and would use violence if necessary to cause them to behave. Where Hibana Teira approached them with gifts, the Big Three preferred the old ways, instead.

  The Jujutsu ways.

  “We see no need to jettison our working relationship simply from this one minor lapse,” one of the councilmembers said. “Hibana Teira has displayed contrition adequately by surrendering to Yaga-sensei’s authority and allowing herself to be punished to his satisfaction. We trust in Yaga Masamichi’s judgment, and will therefore leave the matter to his discretion.”

  Passing the ball back to him, now.

  They would pressure him to amend his judgment, and claim that Hibana Teira needed more punishment. The council didn’t want her expelled, but they wouldn’t stop him if he did it.

  The Big Three’s stance was crystal clear.

  And they could kill him, should he refuse.

  Unfortunately for them, he would die for his students. “I consider the matter settled,” Yaga said. Manjiro clicked his tongue, and Akihito scowled. Naobito just shook his head. Truthfully, that reaction frightened Yaga more than the other two’s. He seemed resigned, almost, in what he felt he needed to do.

  Let them come.

  “You are dismissed,” the council said.

  Yaga stood up and left the room.

  Whether he’d live to see tomorrow, Yaga knew one thing. Never would he ever live with the regret of not protecting his students to the best of their abilities. As long as that was the case, he could die in peace.