"Let's see. So, there's Tsukumo, Okkotsu, Satoru, me, and now, her," Geto Suguru counted each on his fingers. "I'm so proud of our era."
Then he grabbed the steering wheel and pulled.
SCREECH.
The vehicle swerved off-road, as a stream of fluid narrowly missed, striking a lamppost with just enough force to utterly deform it.
"Jesus!"
"What was that!?"
"I don't think we want to know, Mimiko."
Even through the car's filters, the superheated stench was overwhelming. The twins gagged, as they did their best 'Shounen Manga Mother' impression, and stopped breathing. It still amused Geto that they could find anything disgusting anymore. He thought their attendance at public schools would have desensitised them to filth. Oh, and all the 'people' they'd killed. It was cute, really.
"Ugh, I can't wait for that" —Mimiko's words became muffled as she mumbled through her doll— "to get Uzumaki'd."
"It won't get the chance to be," he smiled, canines on full display. "She exorcised it." A pregnant pause. One he expected and much appreciated. His brain surged with dopamine as he pondered the implications. Another one, and so soon after the last. "I thought maybe she could be a Grade One—I thought that was pushing it—but to think..."
Manami was the first to recover. If she was still shocked, her face didn't betray that.
"The Jujutsushi have had a sorcerer camped here since Sunday. Special Grade One. He's bound to have noticed that. We need to meet her, now."
"No, I say we let them make first contact."
"Geto-sama..." she grumbled. "Are you willing to risk—do you want to lose a talent like that? To them?"
"Manami," he laughed, raising his hands in mock-surrender. "They sent a Zenin."
"And?"
"Zenin Naoya."
"Oh."
Never interrupt your enemy when they're making a mistake. What a horrible first impression to make. Really, it could have only been worse if they'd sent Ogi. Geto wanted to thank the genius who'd made that call. This experiment—though he was loath to call it that—had thrilled and worried him in equal measure.
They clap, and they clap. She's dead, and they clap like it's just the greatest show. Their plastic smiles; their engineered elation. Their sin. Their white, white sin. Clothes stained in the phantom blood of an innocent body.
Suguru, says the boy with a girl in his arms, and the world in his eyes. Should we kill these people?
And the word 'people' rings hollow in his ears. But he answers with the lie he has sustained and is in turn sustaining him.
No, Suguru answers. There has to be a point.
He meets the eyes of one amongst the throng.
And just like that, the lie is extinguished.
Whatever her reason, Suzushina Yuriko had decided to put herself in the path of danger, just to lead some monkeys back to safety. That was a pain point. An incompatibility between the girl and the philosophies of his family. It was an unfortunate start, but nothing an honest conversation between equals couldn't solve. He would teach the value of her life, before she lost something more precious.
***
She took a sip of her coffee—black—and let the bitterness wash the horrid taste from her mouth. For once, the calming effect of caffeine had no hold on her, as she endured the stares of her fellow schoolmates.
"So..."
"So."
"So?"
"So...?"
"What?!" Yuriko couldn't take it anymore.
The three had been sitting at a bus stop, and it was already beginning to gnaw at her. Clearly, they wanted an explanation.
It wasn't enough that she had saved their lives and shared some of her clothes with them, they also expected her to repackage what remained of their former worldview into a nice little bow. What could she say? She was almost as lost as they were.
Wait, she had saved them. Really saved them. Two people were still breathing because of her. Why didn't she feel good about it? Wasn't there supposed to be some coming to God—science—moment where she realised her higher calling and made it her life's work to blah, blah, blah. No, at most what she felt was an insidious, and growing sense of relief. Relief that she, once again, no longer owed anything to anyone.
She wanted to tell them to shut up, but then the sight of the shivering Itadori and his dumb potato-puppy dog face stole the heat from her anger. He cut a pathetic figure wearing her hoodie—which was baggy on her—but at least a size and a half too small for him. His hair, still damp, flopped over his ears. Sasaki wasn't doing much better. The girl was a little closer to Yuriko's size, so she was wearing her favourite off brand knitted jumper. White was her colour, but it certainly wasn't Sasaki's.
"Tch. You'd better wash and return those."
She didn't have that many clothes to spare, but what remained of their uniforms was shredded, and they had reeked. In fact, they still reeked, but it was no longer bad enough that she felt the need to filter it out.
Note to self: let more of the bad smells pass through, so you don't develop an odour intolerance. The math readjusted itself.
"Where do I begin...?" No, really, where? There was still time for a little gaslighting, provided that she—
Sasaki leaned in just a little too close.
"Ow!"
Like a fly hitting a windshield. Damn it. Well, Yuriko had some questions of her own, might as well make it a trade.
"First of all, tell me if you can see this." She held up her hand.
"See what?" asked Itadori.
"Hm. Focus."
"Still nothing," Sasaki muttered, but if she was upset about it, Yuriko wouldn't be able to tell, the way her eyes widened as she rubbed her nose. A smile threatened to split her face open.
Yuriko lowered her hand. To her, it was glowing. Dimmer than usual, but still.
Yuriko had wondered if the stuff her ability ran off was renewable. She had never exhausted it before today, but she also didn't have any reason to think it would last forever. Thermal dynamics and all that. Luckily, it did recover. Not as fast as she would like, but fast enough that it should be outpacing the rate at which it drained to sustain her field.
The problem really was her inefficiency. She couldn't help but to pour out more than she needed. Even now, she could feel it. Her irritation rolling off her skin like an avalanche. She could trigger its movement, but as things stood, she could barely reign it in. Doubly so because she was tired. If she wasn't careful, what little remained of the temperamental thing would destroy the bench right from under them.
"I guess I'll start with that then," she sighed.
***
There you are.
Zenin Naoya was anything but patient.
The broad-shouldered, bleached-blond man sat at a balcony overlooking the urban sprawl. He swirled the wine in his glass, catapulting the fragrance into his airways, but its effect was limited. Rush hour was dying down, but still the stench of congestion crowded the air, like the untalented crowded his living spaces back home.
"Tch."
He had been in this city with its subpar accommodations for nearly a week now. Him. The head of the Hei. Confined to a mere high-rise apartment that was lower valued than even the servants' quarters at the clan compound. Damn you, old man. He was thinking, of course, about his father. But then he remembered another old man, who had been particularly tight-lipped after his little slip up. "Girl" and "good kid," were all he had to go off. Why are you even still alive, if you're not going to be useful? Old farts should die, the lot of them.
Mr. Good-of-the-clan, Zenin Naobito was the one who reinforced the order to send Naoya here. Apparently, something about Sendai had raised the hackles of that immortal thumb under the Tokyo Jujustu High campus. And one did not simply ignore the wishes of Tengen-sama. Especially not with how far out of their favour the Zenin clan had fallen.
Naoya's mind, not for the first time that day, wandered to Toji, and he smirked. It wasn't that Tengen was displeased with the Zenin clan. It's that Tengen was scared of them. As they should be.
"Zenin-sama. There's been a disturbance."
"Finally!" Naoya rose to his full height, towering over his servant, like the distance in their stations. Her gaze lowered. He smirked. "Where?"
"Truthfully, we're not too sure. The cursed energy was scattered over a wide—"
But because he wasn't a fucking bloodhound, he grabbed her by the collar and lifted her chin with his thumb. He glared into her eyes as her lips quivered. Better.
"I. Said. Where? Narrow it down." his tone got dangerously low.
"Mo-most likely—"
"Wheeeere. Is. It?" His spit punctuated his irritation.
"Sugisawa Municipal. But it could be—"
"That's enough from you," he said. Then he dropped her. "Three steps behind."
***
"Wait, so spirits—"
"Not sure I would call them that."
"—Are real. You can see them, but we can't until...?"
"I don't have enough data points to draw a definitive conclusion." Yuriko played with an unruly strand of hair. "Right now, my theory is that you can see them under certain environments, or when you yourself are under certain stressors. You did see toilet-bound Hanako, didn't you."
They both nodded. Yuriko filed that away for later.
"There was something suspicious about that encounter though," she said. It just positively stank of intention—of subterfuge. That large presence that vanished just as she noticed it felt oddly human...could it have been...?
"So, uhm," Sasaki slashed through that train of thought. "What are you, then?"
Yuriko blinked. She had anticipated the question, she just didn't imagine it sounding so...
"Rude." She scoffed. "Though, I suppose it would be a perfectly reasonable, and acceptable question—under Nazi occupation, of course."
"Sasaki-san..." said Itadori, putting a hand over his mouth.
The girl in question was absolutely tripping over her words, as her mouth and brain waged war on her curiosity.
"No—No. Uhm, sorry. Really sorry, that's not what I—"
"Relax," said Yuriko. "I'm just..."—she trailed off— "I don't know. I don't know what I am."
And her own honesty caught her off guard. She would have said an 'esper'. Yuriko pillowed her forehead on the back of her hands. It was the convenient explanation. Here she was sensing things beyond the ordinary range of perception, and wasn't that literally what ESP (extrasensory perception) was defined as? But for her, the word esper now carried a specific connotation only she could understand. A connotation that she didn't quite match, either.
"An esper!"
Huh? Yuriko stared blankly at Itadori.
"You know, like from Mob Psycho 100," he said.
"Mob...what?"
"Yeah!" Sasaki piped up. "You see spirits—"
"Again, I wouldn't call them that..."
"—And you use supernatural powers to exorcise them! Great thinking Itadori!"
"Mob Psycho? You know..." then his face fell flat in an... was that an impression of something? "The anime came out last year?"
"Oh. I haven't watched anime since... Dad won't..." but then she caught herself.
She watched as Itadori Yuji's face hardened; his dumb potato-boy eyes grew alarmingly sharp as he watched her. Yuriko squirmed on the bench. For a moment, she entertained the idea of a particle that governed time—what she would give to accelerate it. It was the longest conversation she had ever had with any other student of Sugisawa. What was taking the bus so long? Yuriko took another sip from her empty coffee can.
"Your dad won't...?"
She stiffened as Sasaki's question fell, but before she could deflect, Itadori spoke up.
"Oh." He dropped a fist into his palm. "Is that what you were doing on the roof?"
"The roof?" Sasaki asked.
Yuriko threw a glance in his direction, her face fell still with manufactured composure. He couldn't have. No, he absolutely wasn't, but could he have been...? He'd overheard the conversation between the nurse and her father, hadn't he? He knew. Oh fuck, he knew. And he was covering for her.
"I went upstairs, and boom," Itadori mimed an explosion with his hands. "It looked like that one scene—you know— the dragon ball scene. With Yamcha in the crater? Except instead of Yamcha, it was Suzushina-san. Did you have to fight another spirit?"
Never mind. She was going to throttle him. Whatever gratitude she felt was crushed under a neon tide of embarrassment. Her cheeks flushed, and against her pale skin on the canvas of the evening, they were practically glowing. But the lie came out regardless.
"Yeah! That's it. Big spirit. You should have seen it. Bigger than the school, even. I barely got away with my li—"
"Wait, I thought you said that you wouldn't call them 'spirits.'" Sasaki interjected.
The vacuum of space was practically a circus of petulant toddlers compared to the silence that followed.
Yuriko's entire face flushed red.
"Hey, Sasaki! Your bus!" Itadori shouted.
***
What. The. Hell.
He stood on the roof of a multi-story office building. He stood close enough to the sky to taste its ozone as the ants walked beneath him.
Somewhere on the right he made out the sound of a baby, crying out in a stroller, but when he looked, the only parent around was a man. In the distance he saw a bus leave a station, and a boy and girl behind, the pair most likely discussing something utterly inane. Good for the boy, Naoya conceded, at least she was pretty.
Salary men were slumping and bumping their way towards nowhere, like they had a reason. Women flittering about, like they had places to be. Like they didn't belong to the domestic space. Zombies, the lot of them. He scoffed. Naoya wasn't like Geto Suguru. Unlike that upstart, he very much understood their roles in society, but did non-sorcerers always have to be so unseemly? So unaware?
None of them looking up. None of them seeing the man who stood above them, in more regards than one. None, except the girl—what?
It was now that he could see. Not only her hair, which fell like snow beyond her shoulders, but her eyes. Her red eyes. Red like gemstones. Red like crystalised sheets of blood, and they were staring right at him. Not in his general direction, but right at him.
Naoya blinked. That shouldn't have been possible. He was hiding his presence, coiling his energy deep within like a spooled yarn. How had she found his thread? She couldn't have even seen him from that angle! Even he had to reinforce his eyes just to make her out from this distance.
Then he grit his teeth as he made out her expression. Unimpressed, flat, with her lips pulled to one side of her face. She was the picture of contempt. Pure contempt. She felt his presence and all she had to show for it was contempt?
"Good kid, my foot."
The look she shot him, or rather at his position, was shifting to something that resembled murderous intent.
Naoya traced his first set of twenty-four frames and accelerated.
It had to be a cursed technique, some sort of sensory perception trick. It had to be the overpowering cursed energy, unwieldy, but undeniably potent. It had to be her appearance, so conveniently like... It had to be anything but her presence, and the ease at which he was noticed that reminded Naoya of him.
He shot towards her as he cued the next set of frames.
Did she think she was him. That she mattered? That she was strong? And what use did a girl have for strength? She reminded him of Maki. She reminded him of... No! He rejected her on principle. Every fibre of his body, every atom was made to denounce her.
And so, Naoya closed the distance, screaming closer as he broke the sound barrier.
He wouldn't give her time to react. He would grab her, he would beat her, and prove to himself, and to her, that she was just another weak—
***
"Huh? Did you hear something, Suzushina?"
"Fucking birds, I swear."
"Birds?" Itadori looked incredulous as, to his credit, Yuriko noticed he had almost been able to track that object.
Whatever it was, it was gone now, so it may as well have been a bird either way. With the threat gone, she dropped her reflection.
"Why didn't you get on the bus with your friend?"
"Hehe," he rubbed the back of his neck. "So, you noticed, huh?"
"Your non-verbal conversation was incredibly subtle," Yuriko said, making sure she pronounced the 'b'.
She turned her head to make eye contact, and it looked like it was Itadori's turn to squirm. He stared at the ground and twiddling his thumbs before he seemed to muster up the courage.
"You've... been living at school, haven't you?"
She blinked. "You're a blunt one," she hissed with a little more heat than she felt.
"You can stay at mine, if you want."
This time, her eyes narrowed and her brow creased.
"Incredibly. Fucking. Blunt. What do you want?"
"Want?" he said, and he had the temerity to look confused, too.
"What are do you expect to get out of this?"
Yuriko didn't have a particularly high opinion of what she looked like—not that she understood the mechanisms of a 'crush' either way—but she supposed teenage boys would be teenage boys. The superpowers would probably made her more interesting to him, too. She was scowling now.
"Or perhaps, you feel like you owe me one? Well, I'll spare you. We're even, now. I was repaying a debt; you saved my life, I saved yours. Tit for fucking tat. Even Stevens. The scales are balanced."
"Who's Steven? Is he British?" he asked. Fuck.
Yuriko had known liars. She'd known liars all her life. From the neighbour who said she didn't hear anything, didn't see anything. To the teachers at every school, she had ever been to, who acted like high performance meant well-adjustment. Yuriko knew liars, even when they were lying to themselves, and that was fine. Liars were predictable. Liars were safe. At least she knew what to expect from them.
But who the fuck was Itadori Yuji? And why did he look so fucking unlike a liar?
"You're not going to ask questions? You're not going to ask if I ran away from home?"
"Did you?" he tilted his head.
"I walked."
"Huh."
And that was it. No follow-up. Her countenance decayed.
"What about your family? Your parents? There's no way they'd be okay with this."
"Well, it's just me," that gave her pause. If he actually tried anything, she could just kill him. No witnesses. "Used to live with Gramps, but he's at Sugisawa hospital now," Itadori chuckled. "He'd probably smack me upside the head if I didn't at least make the offer."
"Not Touhoku?" she asked.
"No. Do you know someone there?"
"Not really, never mind."
Yuriko thought of the mess that the school bathroom and surrounding area had become, which would no doubt make it another crime scene. It wouldn't hurt, she supposed, to have an actual roof over her head and an alibi. If the boy wanted to be exploited, then who would she be if she didn't oblige? It wouldn't be forever, either.
"Just to be clear. I won't owe you anything if I stay?"
He nodded.
She was studying him now. There it was again—that expression she couldn't quite understand or even begin to parse. Could other people make it too, or was it a weapon exclusive to Itadori Yuji? Pending further anaylsis.
Maybe with time she'd learn how to filter out the effect it had on her.
"So," she said, shielding half her face with a palm. "When's the next bus then?"
***
He was already planning how to fudge the report. Naoya, Zenin Naoya, lay broken on the beach. Exposed to the elements with broken arms, and some broken ribs. If it wasn't for reinforcement, he might have actually died.
[And what a tragedy that would have been].
A special-grade cursed spirit. Yeah? It was strong. But I'm the head of the Hei. I handled it. You should have seen it, blew a chunk out of a school. Just don't bother checking.
"Zenin-sama..."
Just great. The help.
"And where... have you been?" said the man, and his voice ran hoarse from so much screaming. The night spent on the beach had not been kind to him.
"Three steps behind, Zenin-sama."