Getou Suguru stepped in front of Asou Akiya. "You know us?"
Then he lowered his guard. "Those eyes are… rather special. Are you the young master of the Gojo clan that Yaga mentioned, the one visiting today?"
Very few people in the jujutsu world had ever seen the "Six Eyes" with their own eyes. But once one beheld Gojo Satoru's vast, sky-colored pupils, there was no room left for doubt about his identity. Getou Suguru had recognized him in precisely this blunt, unmistakable way.
"Hello," Getou Suguru said politely, treating him as a guest. "I'm Akiya's classmate, Getou Suguru."
"..."
Gojo Satoru froze, utterly stunned. His unparalleled power of perception—something that had always set him apart from the rest of the world—failed him for the first time.
The two people he was most familiar with: one claimed not to know him at all, while the other treated him as an outsider visiting the school.
The "Six Eyes" flooded him with vast, chaotic fragments of information. His brain couldn't process them in time; a low buzzing filled his head, his facial muscles stiffened, and he stared blankly at Asou Akiya and Getou Suguru, forcibly pushing himself to prioritize analyzing the situation in front of him.
[I triggered the school's alarm when I entered—so I'm the intruder?]
[After seeing my eyes, Suguru said I'm the "young master of the Gojo clan who's visiting today"?]
[Akiya and Suguru both said they don't know me, one after the other, and they address each other with such familiarity. Either Suguru somehow became a special-grade sorcerer in just a few days and is pulling an elaborate prank on me, or Akiya seriously lowered his standards for friendship and the two of them have already become close friends.]
[Neither Suguru nor Akiya is wearing a red cord.]
[Before winter break, the Akiya I knew had already stopped wearing old clothes.]
[Am I dreaming? Hallucinating? Suffering from amnesia? Did I get hit by some kind of transformation technique?]
[The "Six Eyes" can't find any traces of other techniques on them. They really are Asou Akiya and Getou Suguru.]
[So what the hell is going on? !]
Gojo Satoru was still a straightforward highschool boy, the kind of boy who loved battle shōnen and children's anime. He had never watched time-travel series or read isekai light novels, and the "common sense" in his brain couldn't find a single matching case. With no precedent to cling to, he could only pin his hopes on Asou Akiya.
Gojo Satoru's eyes flashed with ferocity. "Akiya, I know you're a smart guy—what the hell are you two plotting?"
He issued a warning, sharp and emphatic: "Today is my birthday!"
Then he raised his voice in an outright threat: "If you don't explain this clearly right now, I'm beating the two of you up!"
"Yaga? Shoko? Where the hell is my dorm?" Gojo Satoru poured a massive amount of cursed energy into his eyes. Brilliant blue light surged as the "Six Eyes" flared to life, the radiance in his pupils expanding his field of vision to its limits.
Yet most of what he could see was blocked by Tengen's barrier. Furious, he cursed the one who had erected it without restraint. "I'm going back to my own school—what the hell is the barrier blocking me for?!"
In a hurried sweep of his gaze, Tokyo Jujutsu High was still the Tokyo Jujutsu High of his memories—and yet, it lacked any trace of his own presence.
The flowerbeds bore none of the marks where he had once trampled and crushed them.
The training grounds showed no sign of the battles he had fought there with Getou Suguru.
In the classrooms, there were only three desks and chairs; the extra ones were stacked uselessly in a corner.
Most of the rooms in the boys' dormitory were unoccupied, dust gathered thickly on their doors. Only two nameplates hung there: "Asou" and "Getou." The door marked "Gojo" was gone.
The Gojo family's construction crew had vanished without a trace.
Even the school forest—blocked off by the barrier—refused him entry, denying him any glimpse deeper into the heart of Tokyo Jujutsu High.
Outside the school gates, it was no longer the scene of him destroying the woods for Asou Akiya. Instead, it was Getou Suguru who had torn through the trees for Akiya, leaving behind the lingering residue of cursed spirits. And because of a lack of funds, the filled-in soil had been covered with nothing more than cheap turf.
Not far away, Yaga Masamichi was walking over, grumbling as he came, "The Gojo family sends someone over without even notifying the school's teachers in advance—always stirring up trouble."
On the other side, Ieri Shoko was walking alongside two upperclassmen.
She was recounting what had happened earlier that day.
Utahime Iori exclaimed loudly, "Gojo Satoru—who is that?"
Mei Mei explained calmly, "He's from one of the Three Great Sorcerer Clan and the heir of the Gojo clan. He rarely appears within the jujutsu world."
Ieri Shoko responded with composure, "If he's willing to enroll, then he'll be our junior in the future."
She lowered her head to check her phone.
Reading the message aloud, she said, "Asou just texted me, telling me not to go near the school gate… huh? What happened over there?"
Farther away still, the assistant supervisors were discussing the topic of the "Six Eyes" over their phones. None of them recognized Gojo Satoru personally; all they knew was that the Gojo family had a reclusive young master with the "Six Eyes." Rumors from the outside world described him as white-haired and blue-eyed—a mysterious figure who almost never showed himself.
Every word spoken, every reaction and gesture, turned into the most unfiltered feedback, all of it flowing straight back to Gojo Satoru.
He recalled more and more unsettling details. Earlier that day, when he boarded the bus to look for Akiya, the driver hadn't recognized him at all, staring as though seeing his striking looks for the first time, even asking whether he was Japanese.
Then, when he approached Akiya's seat, Akiya had glanced at him once and ignored him, withdrawing his gaze as if wary of the "Six Eyes."
It felt as though a bucket of cold water had been dumped over Gojo Satoru's head. His anger twisted his expression.
"No way!"
"What kind of joke do you think this is?!"
"We've been classmates for a whole semester, and after winter break you're all pretending you don't know me? I don't believe it—does the school really have the guts to expel such an outstanding student like me?!"
Asou Akiya + Getou Suguru: "..."
As expected of you—at a time like this, you still refused to accept reality, insisting on treating it as nothing more than an "expulsion."
At a crucial moment, it was only natural for the true acting powerhouse, Asou Akiya, to step onto the stage. He moved out from behind Getou Suguru and, just as Gojo Satoru wished, spoke the truth aloud:
"Gojo-sama, I have observed you for quite some time now, and I can confirm that there are no signs of deception in what you've said. However, the classmates I know are Getou Suguru and Ieri Shoko, and in all of my memories of attending school this year, there has never been a you."
Asou Akiya calmly soothed Gojo Satoru, his tone steady and rational. "If it isn't the case that all of our memories have been collectively tampered with, then to borrow a line from Detective Conan—there is only one truth. And that truth is that the problem lies with you."
Gojo Satoru: "..."
Gojo Satoru: "I—"
Getou Suguru, unwilling to remain a piece of background scenery, cut in sharply, interrupting the exchange. "Akiya!"
Getou Suguru declared with conviction, "There's no way our memories are wrong."
A subtle shift passed through Asou Akiya's pupils, a faint glimmer of intrigue surfacing as he replied, mildly amused, "But that doesn't necessarily mean he's mistaken either."
Turning to Getou Suguru, he continued, "Suguru, once the teacher arrives, I suspect what comes next will be quite a surprise."
No sooner had the words fallen than Yaga Masamichi, dressed in his instructor's uniform, walked up to stand before the three of them.
"Good day, Gojo-sama."
"..." If it were just his classmates joking around, Gojo Satoru might have been able to accept it—but Yaga? Yaga was a serious man.
Gojo Satoru, who didn't yet understand Yaga Masamichi well enough, opened his mouth, at a loss for words.
Asou Akiya suddenly dropped a thunderbolt of a statement:
"Dad, this person says he's our classmate."
Yaga Masamichi frowned slightly. "This semester has already ended. If the young master of the Gojo family wishes to enroll, it would be better to wait until the new term."
Gojo Satoru's neck nearly snapped as he jerked his head around. "Dad?"
He tried to turn to Getou Suguru for confirmation, but Getou Suguru's expression remained calm, as though he hadn't heard anything shocking at all. "Suguru, didn't you hear that? Akiya just called Yaga 'Dad'!"
Getou Suguru faithfully adhered to the script in his mind: in this parallel world, Teacher Yaga had adopted Asou Akiya.
Gojo—surprised yet? There's even more coming.
Getou Suguru stifled a laugh inwardly.
"Yaga Masamichi, a Grade One jujutsu sorcerer," Asou Akiya continued, calmly laying out the relationships. "He is our homeroom teacher, and also my adoptive father." Yaga Masamichi looked stern as ever, yet his mood was unmistakably light; before the formal adoption of Asou Akiya, he was treating this as a rehearsal of sorts.
Blasted by one shock after another, Gojo Satoru stood there utterly dumbfounded.
Asou Akiya tilted his head slightly. "You believe yourself to be our classmate, yet you don't even know about something like this?"
He pinched his chin, pondering. "Let's assume you aren't lying, and that you're experiencing hallucinations or have been affected by a cursed technique. Fabricated logic has a hard time filling in complete interpersonal relationships, so let me ask you something."
With clear curiosity, Asou Akiya asked, "In your understanding, who am I?"
Gojo Satoru refused to submit to passive questioning, yet his thoughts followed the line of Akiya's voice all the same, growing more muddled by the second.
"You're Asou Akiya," he said at last. "My classmate and friend. An orphan—both parents dead. You awakened cursed energy under the stimulus of death. You don't have a cursed technique, but your ancestors might have some connection to my family."
"I've never heard of myself having any ties to the Gojo family."
Asou Akiya denied it flatly.
More than that, he corrected the discrepancies with calm precision. "After I lost my parents, I did not awaken cursed energy at all. I was only a distant relative of Teacher Yaga's wife. Later, I exhausted myself trying to recapture the sensation of standing on the brink of death. I slit my wrists repeatedly, forcing myself to see cursed spirits in Shinjuku during the summer. After I finally awakened cursed energy, the Yaga couple adopted me."
Gojo Satoru froze in shock. "You… you cut your wrists just to awaken cursed energy?"
Asou Akiya ignored the question entirely and turned to Yaga Masamichi. "It was because of Dad's recommendation that I was able to enroll smoothly."
Yaga Masamichi replied with magnanimous calm, "Even without me, you still had the talent."
Getou Suguru, who appeared to understand everything on the surface, clicked his tongue inwardly. Terrifying—Akiya's fabricated backstory was logically flawless.
In this parallel world where Gojo Satoru did not exist, Asou Akiya had endured countless hardships to awaken cursed energy, had been adopted by Yaga Masamichi, and became a first-year student at Tokyo Jujutsu High.
His friends were Ieiri Shoko and Getou Suguru. On missions, he usually followed Yaga Masamichi or Getou Suguru; during breaks, he returned to the Yaga household to rest, using the ample time to grow stronger. With a self-imposed Binding as a time limit, he mastered Black Flash, ultimately reaching the level of a quasi–Grade Two sorcerer.
Getou Suguru did not know Gojo Satoru. Shortly after enrolling, he became friends with Asou Akiya, and Akiya never refused companionship. However, their relationship never went any further—there were no Halloween cross-dressing incidents, no sharing a bed.
Asou Akiya gained two close friends, yet lost the drive to chase after "light."
His attitude toward Gojo Satoru was listless, devoid of energy.
He did not love the sky.
He did not love white snow.
Though he was momentarily surprised by Gojo Satoru reaching out to him, though he felt curiosity, he would never take an extra step beyond that.
A faint smile lingered on Asou Akiya's lips, his gaze hollow and barren, a desolation laid bare under the scrutiny of the Six Eyes.
Getou Suguru stood beside Asou Akiya, yet it was as if he had not stepped into Akiya's world at all, maintaining a subtle distance.
In that instant, a strange taste rose in Gojo Satoru's chest.
So this… is a school without me?
The two of them were far too calm.
Gojo Satoru stopped flying into a rage. After a brief silence, his mind—naturally inclined toward logic and the sciences—latched onto the theory of parallel worlds with unnerving clarity.
Even so, he still could not quite believe that he had truly crossed into another world. He cut straight to the heart of the matter and asked sharply, "Then the three Bindings on your body—weren't they meant for me?"
Asou Akiya's expression instantly turned strained, as if someone had pressed directly onto an open wound. His gaze met Gojo Satoru's, flickering faintly, as though he had believed him.
"Of course not."
"Then… in another place… is it like that?"
He murmured under his breath, his words fragmented and unclear.
Turning his back to Getou Suguru, Asou Akiya raised a hand to shield his mouth and spoke a single sentence that only Gojo Satoru could see.
["Save us, Gojo Satoru."]
Tears glimmered in his pupils.
As though something utterly horrifying had happened—something that spiraled completely out of control in a world where Gojo Satoru did not exist.
...
Gojo Satoru's mind crashed to a halt.
Akiya… Akiya was calling out to him for help—
Had he really come to a parallel world?