Getou Suguru lost consciousness.
Gojo Satoru seized both of his hands while Asou Akiya took firm hold of his feet. Together they lifted him in the solemn, almost ceremonial manner one carries a coffin, bearing the tall young man between them.
Ieiri Shoko walked a few paces behind, treating the shallow scrapes across Getou's face and pressing cool fingers against the swollen lump on the back of his head to bring the swelling down.
All one meter eighty-something of Getou Suguru was carried this way, unconscious and limp, the entire long distance home.
Shoko trailed at the rear, a lollipop stick protruding from the corner of her mouth, idly watching the backs of the two boys ahead of her as they navigated the way.
The four of them first disposed of the cursed spirit and carefully erased every trace of cursed energy residue. Only then did they stop in front of the Getou family gate. They slipped on clean shoe covers and disposable gloves, then rang the bell.
It was Getou's parents who opened the door—they had clearly been waiting.
"Suguru-kun…?"
"He's fine," Gojo answered immediately, voice light. "Just asleep."
Asou Akiya stepped forward. The usual mischief was gone from his expression; instead he carefully supported Getou's torso, sharing the weight more evenly with Gojo.
The faces of Getou's mother and father grew even more complicated.
Their son had become a jujutsu sorcerer. He attended a bizarre school. He made bizarre friends. And now, somehow, even his birthday had become something strange.
"Auntie, Uncle," Asou said quietly, "we'll take him up to his room."
His gaze swept across the modest family interior in a single practiced pass—enough to locate the staircase and deduce that Getou's bedroom must be on the second floor. Without another word he and Gojo maneuvered the unconscious boy through the doorway and began ascending the stairs, leaving Ieiri Shoko alone on the ground floor.
Shoko stood in the middle of the living room, hands in the pockets of her coat, and calmly began to imagine a murder scene.
She pictured exactly where the body would fall, the arc blood would paint across the walls, the direction it would spray depending on which artery was severed first.
This was only the second time Getou's parents had met her.
The previous occasion had been during the skin test. Back then she had worn a white coat, and because she looked so young, they had assumed she might be the weak link among the sorcerers—the one who could be gently persuaded to reveal something, anything, about the hidden world their son had been drawn into. Yet her lips had remained tightly sealed. She completed the test with calm efficiency, packed up her equipment, and departed without leaving them even a single crumb of information.
It was as though all jujutsu sorcerers were a tribe utterly devoid of human warmth.
And yet—if they truly lacked all feeling, all compassion—why would they go to such extravagant lengths to throw an elaborate birthday celebration for someone else's son?
Asou Akiya had explained the purpose plainly: to dissolve, once and for all, the long-festering tensions that had built up within this household.
"Getou-kun," he had said quietly at the time, "has never had a proper place to explode with emotion."
Now, standing alone in the living room, Shoko heard Getou's mother approach her hesitantly.
"Miss," the woman began, voice soft but curious, "I heard that today we're all supposed to 'die' once. Are you… planning to stage a home invasion murder?"
Shoko blinked. "Hm?"
"We could take reference from television dramas…" the mother continued, almost eagerly, as though offering a helpful suggestion.
"Oh—no, I'm sorry," Shoko replied, shaking her head with a faint, polite smile. "We already have our own script. It's probably a little different from what you're imagining."
She declined the offer without hesitation.
A home-invasion murder? With Getou Suguru present in the house, what kind of intruder could possibly break in and kill anyone?
Shoko turned the question over in her mind: exactly what was Asou trying to achieve by orchestrating this simulated patricide and matricide? Was it meant to serve as a stark warning to Getou—a reminder to protect his parents? Or did Asou genuinely believe that, ten years from now, the boy they all knew would truly lose his way and turn the blade on the very people who raised him?
Her thoughts drifted back to the contents of the script Asou had prepared.
According to the outline, Getou Suguru—at twenty-six years old—would return home one day and immediately become embroiled in a violent argument with his father. The mother, hearing the shouting, would come out to see what was happening. Upon catching the substance of their exchange, she would be overwhelmed with terror. Then, abruptly, tears would stream down Getou's face. He would gaze steadily at both of his parents, pick up a fruit knife, drive it straight through his father's chest—and only afterward would he kill his mother.
As an outsider reading those cold lines on the page, Ieiri Shoko could not help but feel a quiet, almost morbid curiosity.
What, exactly, had those two people said to their son in that imagined future—to make even Getou Suguru weep before he raised the knife?
Unfortunately, the scripts each of them had been given were all different.
She had never been the person who truly understood Getou Suguru. She was not the pivotal turning point capable of swaying his decisions. Ten years from now, she doubted very much that her role would have shifted in any meaningful way.
So she accepted—without resentment or surprise—her own state of partial, half-formed knowledge.
Up on the second floor, Asou Akiya found himself facing a small but immediate problem: who exactly was going to be the one to undress Getou Suguru?
Gojo Satoru promptly clapped both hands over his own eyes, spun around on his heel, and declared with theatrical solemnity, "Akiya, you handle it. I swear on my life I won't peek!"
Asou Akiya regarded him flatly. "Please don't act like covering your eyes actually accomplishes anything."
Gojo, visibly torn between genuine embarrassment and stubborn refusal to leave the room, lingered anyway. With a faint sigh, Asou Akiya resigned himself to the task. He began peeling off Getou's casual home clothes. The moment he rolled the shirt up past Getou's abdomen, Gojo—still supposedly blindfolded—burst out with uncontainable excitement:
"Getou's pecs are huge!"
Asou Akiya: "…"
Without another word he gripped Gojo by the shoulders, marched him backward, and shoved him firmly out into the hallway. "Wait outside for a minute. Please."
He closed his eyes to block out any unnecessary distraction, then moved with practiced, clinical speed—stripping away the last of Getou's everyday attire and dressing him instead in the simple black robes and formal kesa of a monk. When he opened his eyes again, he slipped a pair of plain geta sandals onto Getou's feet.
The high-school boy who had been lying on the bed moments earlier was gone.
In his place lay the freshly transformed figure of "Cult Leader Getou Suguru of the Pan-Star Cult {1}," serene and otherworldly even in unconsciousness.
" Satoru," Asou called toward the door. "You can come back in."
Gojo stepped inside, took one long look at the changed Getou—and then, without explanation, bolted back toward the stairs.
"Shoko!"
Ieiri Shoko, who had remained downstairs wondering what fresh chaos was unfolding now, heard her name and followed the sound of pounding footsteps upward with mild puzzlement.
When she reached the bedroom doorway and saw for herself, understanding dawned at once.
"Wow," she said softly, eyes widening just a fraction. "Getou's become a monk."
Getou Suguru lay there with his long hair fanned out across the pillow, eyes peacefully closed in deep, undisturbed sleep. Dressed now in the formal five-part kesa robes of a Buddhist monk, the thick, prominent earlobes that the costume emphasized gave him an unmistakable air of gentle compassion—as though he were a merciful holy man who had long since renounced the world, rather than a jujutsu sorcerer who daily wrestled with curses.
Asou Akiya held a wooden comb and was slowly, methodically running it through Getou's dark strands. With each measured stroke, the tension in Asou's own brow seemed to soften and smooth away, as though the simple act were calming something inside him too.
What the comb drew away, he thought quietly, was misfortune. Calamity. All the bad luck that might otherwise cling.
The script they were following was nothing more than a fabricated tale—yet precisely because it was false, it threw into sharper relief the fragile, irreplaceable beauty of the reality they still shared: a reality in which no one had yet been parted by death or estrangement.
Gojo Satoru and Ieiri Shoko simply stood and watched the quiet scene unfold.
"It looks almost like an image of enlightenment," Shoko murmured, voicing the soft impression that came most naturally to her as a woman.
Whether it was the recumbent monk or the boy patiently combing his friend's hair, the tableau carried an unmistakable power to remind anyone who saw it that there could still be goodness and grace left in the world.
Gojo, never one to read the atmosphere correctly, broke the stillness with perfect innocence.
"Getou's hair is already pretty long… Do we still have to make it even longer according to the script?"
Asou Akiya paused mid-stroke, the comb hovering. Then he smiled—bright, determined, almost proud.
"I'm a perfectionist," he said simply. "Yes. We have to extend it. Absolutely."
Gojo immediately pulled out his phone and fired off a message to the top-tier makeup artist and stylist the Gojo family kept on permanent retainer.
By the small hours of the morning the specialist had arrived at the Getou residence, jet-lagged but impeccably professional. She wore several hats at once, but her first order of business was to seamlessly attach a cascade of glossy black extensions to Getou's existing hair. When she finished, the strands reached all the way to his waist—just as the character reference image demanded. She even took care to style the ends so they kicked outward slightly, giving the tips a faint, artful fluff of volume that looked both deliberate and untamed.
Her second task was subtler: she trimmed and shaped Getou's eyebrows with surgical precision, refined his hairline ever so slightly, and made minute adjustments to the contours of his features that shifted the overall impression his face gave.
The stylist—whose own manner carried just the faintest trace of theatrical femininity—stepped back to admire her work and sighed in genuine admiration.
"A boy with long hair who still looks this strikingly masculine… It's really quite rare."
Gojo Satoru crouched beside the bed, still buzzing with enthusiasm, and immediately struck up a conversation with the stylist.
"Hey—I could totally pull off long hair too!"
The makeup artist had been about to offer an obliging nod to her wealthiest client, the kind of automatic flattery one reserves for someone who pays the bills. But then she caught a proper glimpse of Gojo's face beneath the dark lenses of his sunglasses—the kind of devastating, almost unfair beauty that made words catch in the throat.
She blinked.
"…"
Handsome man, if you grew your hair long it would simply become an entirely different kind of devastating.
The stylist quickly schooled her expression, banishing the starry gleam from her eyes, and turned with crisp professionalism toward Asou Akiya instead.
"Any other requests?"
Asou Akiya studied Getou Suguru's sleeping face for a long moment. The last traces of boyish softness had vanished under the weight of the styling; what remained was sharper, older, already carrying the faint shadow of the man he would one day become.
"Deepen the under-eye bags a little more," he instructed. "Add just a touch of red at the outer corners of the eyes. Keep the lips in that unhealthy, bloodless shade—exactly the look of someone who's cried himself raw and exhausted. And please use products that won't come off easily if someone tries to wipe them away with their fingers."
The stylist gave a small, appreciative laugh. "Excellent idea. You clearly know how to play these games."
She set to work without delay, moving with the focused efficiency of someone who understood that no amount of skincare could ever fully undo the damage of staying up all night.
At 1:50 a.m., Getou Suguru stirred once—only long enough for a sedative to be administered. His eyelids fluttered shut again almost immediately, sinking him back into deep, drugged sleep.
By 2:30 a.m., the major transformation of Getou was complete.
At 2:50 a.m., Asou Akiya and Gojo Satoru descended the stairs. Downstairs, the makeup artist was now working alongside Ieiri Shoko to prepare Getou's parents. This round of makeup carried a very different purpose: the delicate, uncanny art of turning living, breathing people into convincing corpses. It was, in every sense, practical special effects performed in real life.
At 4:00 a.m., Getou woke a second time—only to be gently but firmly pressed back into unconsciousness.
By 4:05 a.m., the cosmetic work on Getou's mother and father was finished.
At 5:00 a.m., Ieiri Shoko completed her own overnight look: heavy, deliberately exhausted smokey eyes and the faint weariness of someone who had spent too many nights in the infirmary. She was now perfectly made up to portray the twenty-six-year-old female school doctor of Tokyo Jujutsu High.
Three long sessions of makeup and transformation had at last drawn to a close.
The only two people in the house who had escaped any cosmetic alteration were Asou Akiya and Gojo Satoru. Asou was playing the role of someone already deceased—no need for living color or vitality. Gojo, meanwhile, had the perfect alibi for his unchanged youthful face: the ever-present black blindfold that covered his eyes and conveniently hid the fact that he still looked far too young for the gravity of the scene they were about to stage.
They had watched, from start to finish, as the full miracle of professional makeup artistry unfolded before their eyes.
Gojo Satoru let out a long, impressed whistle.
"No wonder all the girls these days are obsessed with makeup. It really is just like painting on a new skin."
His Six Eyes caught every tiny imperfection in excruciating detail—the way the powder caked in fine lines, the faint separation where foundation met the natural edge of the skin. The thicker the makeup, the more obvious the seams became.
"Shoko when she grows up looks way worse with all that on. She was prettier before the makeup."
Asou Akiya immediately dropped his voice to a warning murmur.
"You are absolutely not allowed to say that to Shoko's face."
Gojo blinked innocently.
"Oh… right."
But inside his head a different thought flashed brightly: I can totally tell Utahime that one.
Asou Akiya, reading him like an open book, added without missing a beat,
"And you are also not permitted to say it to Mei Mei or to Utahime-senpai. It would be extremely rude."
Gojo's mouth opened, then closed again.
"…"
He glanced left and right, suddenly theatrical.
"Wow, someone's got a lot of rules around here. Is this the corpse from the script talking back already?"
Asou Akiya remained perfectly unruffled.
"You only get this quick with your tongue when someone's hit a nerve."
Gojo clicked his tongue in annoyance.
"Tch. Mind your own business."
Asou Akiya chose not to dignify that with a response. Instead he turned his full attention back to Ieiri Shoko, and together the two of them set about carefully constructing the scene of a catastrophic cardiac hemorrhage.
Gojo, unable to stay still, began pacing in restless circles around them. He wanted in—he really did. His finger kept darting toward the blood packets, poking and prodding at precisely the wrong moments, thoroughly disrupting the quiet, conspiratorial rhythm the other two had fallen into as they arranged every gruesome detail of the murder tableau.
Finally both Shoko and Asou turned on him in unison.
"Satoru," Shoko said flatly.
"We can handle this. Go stand over there."
Gojo wilted instantly, shoulders slumping like a scolded puppy. He shuffled away to the far side of the room, looking for all the world like the world's most dejected spectator.
Fresh blood flowed slowly across the wooden floorboards of the Getou family's first floor, pooling and spreading in dark, glistening trails.
At last Asou Akiya turned toward Gojo Satoru and gave him something to do.
"Come help."
Asou Akiya started up the stairs. Gojo leapt after him in a single fluid bound, clearing the entire flight and landing lightly on the second-floor landing.
Asou Akiya pressed the bloodstained fruit knife firmly into the center of Getou Suguru's palm—deliberately choosing the right hand, of course, since Getou was right-handed.
"What's the passcode?" Asou asked, already holding Getou's phone out toward Gojo. "I need to adjust the date for him."
Gojo's grin turned sly and knowing. "Heh heh…"
His fingers flew across the screen, entering the code without hesitation.
Asou Akiya opened the settings and carefully advanced the phone's date exactly ten years into the future—to this very day, a decade from now. Details like these were what made immersion complete.
Gojo then wrapped his fingers gently but firmly around Getou's wrist. Using a precise, specialized technique of muscle stimulation—one that both he and Asou had practiced and mutually approved—he triggered a series of involuntary twitches in Getou's hand. The fingers closed tight around the handle of the fruit knife, gripping it with realistic tension and force.
Asou Akiya slipped the phone back into Getou's pocket.
Next he placed a single printed invitation on the bedside table.
It read:
[Tokyo Jujutsu High Alumni Reunion Invitation]
——Date: 8:00 a.m.
——Venue: Bulgari Hotel Tokyo, First Floor Grand Ballroom
——Please arrive on time.
Time, event, location.
He had never handed Getou the full script—yet he had now given him every necessary clue.
By 6:00 a.m., Getou's parents had finished watching their son's transformation. They took their assigned positions and collapsed exactly as planned: the father face-down beside the staircase handrail on the first floor, the mother face-up in the very center of the living room.
At 6:31 a.m., Ieiri Shoko administered the sedative injections. Getou's mother and father slipped instantly into unconsciousness.
At 6:40 a.m., Gojo Satoru and Ieiri Shoko hurried back to their respective spots to don the final props and costumes they would need.
By 6:45 a.m., Asou Akiya had finished installing and positioning the indoor surveillance cameras throughout the house. With everything set, he slipped away without a sound.
At 6:50 a.m., the Getou residence stood sealed—every door and window tightly shut. Inside, an oppressive silence reigned, broken only by the sharp, metallic tang of blood that now saturated the air. Outside, the faint, cheerful jingle of a newspaper delivery boy's bicycle bell drifted past as he rode by on his morning route.
At 7:00 a.m., a man walking his dog along the quiet street paused when the animal suddenly began to howl—long, mournful cries directed straight at the Getou house, hackles raised and ears pinned back.
At 7:10 a.m., the persistent barking finally pierced through Getou Suguru's uneasy slumber and pulled him awake.
On the bed, Getou stirred slowly, eyelids fluttering open. The sleep had been fitful, haunted by a relentless succession of nightmares that left no clear memory behind, only a lingering sense of dread.
He pushed himself upright—and froze.
There was no pain. No injury. His body felt strangely whole, untouched. Yet beneath the wide, flowing sleeves of the monk's robes he now wore, his right hand was clenched around the handle of a fruit knife, its blade still gleaming and wet.
"What… is this?"
He stared down at the sharp edge in his grip, a cold premonition sinking into his chest.
Fresh, uncoagulated blood slid slowly along the steel, dripping in thick drops that vanished into the dark fabric of his sleeve—sticky, frigid, clinging.
And then he smelled it.
The unmistakable, coppery scent of human blood.
The odor did not unsettle him. Instead, it sharpened his focus. Calmly, methodically, Getou reached for his phone, thumbed in the passcode—and his expression locked in place for a single, frozen heartbeat.
The screen read: February 3, 2016.
That was the true jolt.
In the very next instant understanding crashed over him like cold water. He swung his legs off the bed and rose in one swift motion, already moving.
"The phone itself hasn't changed, but the date has? Satoru—you really did sneak a look at my passcode, didn't you? Akiya, setting the time ahead was definitely your doing. Shoko—I must have been out cold for hours because of you too, right? The three of you really teamed up for this one. You're all having way too much fun."
He let out a short, dry breath that was almost a laugh.
"My birthday event has officially started. Let's see exactly what kind of game you've prepared for me."
Getou's gaze fell to the bedside table. He picked up the printed invitation resting there and scanned the text.
The first clue lay plain before him: an invitation to attend a class reunion—ten years in the future.
He did not rush to leave the room right away. Instead, he first stepped in front of the mirror—and the moment he saw his own reflection, the sight of himself clad head to toe in monastic robes nearly dazzled him into momentary blindness.
In this birthday script, the twenty-six-year-old "Getou Suguru" had apparently seen through the vanities of the mortal world and renounced it all to become a monk!!
"A monk?!"
"This has to be Akiya's idea!!"
Veins bulged dramatically at his temples as he squeezed out an unnaturally gentle, almost saintly smile. With the reunion invitation clutched in his left hand and the fruit knife still gripped tightly in his right, he flung the door open with furious momentum and stormed out, ready to confront the birthday "celebration" that had begun while he was unconscious from late last night until this morning.
Downstairs.
The unusual pattern of bloodstains immediately caught his eye.
Getou stumbled forward two unsteady steps, nearly pitching headfirst down the stairs. His eyes widened to the point of splitting as he beheld the bodies of his parents lying below.
Countless black vortices burst into existence around him—swirling violently in front and behind, blooming outward in chaotic, furious spirals.
"Dad! Mom!!"
...
The wolf has come again, but this new script delivered an entirely fresh experience.
TL Note:
{1} Ahem, I just realized—once again—that Pan-Star Cult is just another MTL mistake and it's supposed to be the Star Religious Group. So uh, which name would y'all prefer out of the two? Should I keep using Pan-Star Cult or should I change it to Star Religious Group?