The two of them, one in front of the other, walked silently out of the station and turned into a relatively quiet path leading toward a residential area. The setting sun cast long shadows, and the surrounding air seemed to become thick and heavy due to Sukuna's presence.
Just as Utaha was thinking about how to speak next, to complete Sukuna's inexplicable task without scaring the girl—
"That's right, little girl, I naturally won't harm you."
A deep, magnetic, yet undeniably majestic male voice abruptly rang out on the silent path.
This voice was entirely different from Utaha's clear, cold female voice. It was filled with an ancient sense of oppression.
Miko nearly screamed in terror and looked at Utaha in horror. A mouth had grown on her face.
It was that phantom! That terrifying four-armed shadow was speaking!
Sukuna's voice carried a hair-raising interest, as if he had discovered a new toy. "However, I have something that I wish to borrow from you to study."
"Bor... borrow what?" Miko trembled, asking in an almost unconscious whisper as a massive, ominous premonition seized her tightly.
At that very instant, Utaha felt her consciousness suddenly pushed down by an invisible giant hand. In an instant, she lost control of her body and sank into a dim, bystander's perspective. Her "vision" remained, but her body was no longer under her control.
Control was completely taken over by Sukuna within a thousandth of a second.
The expression on "Utaha's" face changed instantly. The forced softness vanished completely, replaced by a nearly inhuman, cold focus and cruelty akin to a research maniac. On her left cheek, that slit suddenly tore open, and a crimson eyeball and mouth emerged once more.
Miko watched this happen, her mind going blank. Extreme terror left her unable to even scream, her body as stiff as an ice sculpture.
Swish!
In the blink of an eye, controlling Utaha's left hand, Sukuna moved at a speed the naked eye couldn't catch. Leaving an afterimage, like the most precise surgical scalpel or a venomous snake catching prey, he lunged forward.
The target was Miko's eyes—those eyes wide with terror and filled with tears, eyes that could glimpse "reality".
Pfft!
A faint, almost inaudible sound rang out.
"Ugh!!!"
Miko felt an indescribable, heart-wrenching pain in her eyes. Her vision was instantly blurred by a warm, viscous liquid, followed by boundless darkness. The intense pain was so sudden and strong that she was temporarily rendered speechless.
Sukuna controlled Utaha's left hand, his fingertips already stained with bright red blood.
Almost at the same moment the left hand completed the extraction, Sukuna controlled Utaha's right hand to rise, a soft green light containing powerful vitality emerging in the palm—it was Reverse Cursed Technique.
A positive energy based on the principle of "negative times negative equals positive," capable of stimulating cell regeneration and healing wounds.
The right hand, carrying this ball of life-filled light, was pressed onto Miko's bloody eye sockets where the eyeballs had just been gouged out.
The gentle energy surged in, and the agonizing pain receded like a tide.
Miko could even clearly feel her damaged eye tissue frantically regenerating and reorganizing at an incredible speed. Nerve connections, blood vessel reconstruction, retinal repair... the entire process happened within a mere second or two.
When Sukuna moved Utaha's right hand away, Miko subconsciously blinked.
She could see!
The light of the setting sun, the familiar street, and Utaha's face before her, now calm again but filled with horror...
Everything had returned to normal. Not even a trace of pain remained, as if that heart-wrenching agony and the moment of darkness had just been an extremely vivid nightmare.
But the blood on her cheeks that hadn't dried yet, carrying a metallic scent, and the terrifying memory of that unspeakable pain and near-death sensation lingering in her soul, all cruelly proved that everything that had just happened was real.
Sukuna had controlled Utaha's body to gouge out her eyes in an instant, and then completely healed them in another.
"Mon... monster... You're a monster!!!"
The massive psychological impact was like a tsunami that completely destroyed the dam of Miko's sanity. She let out a shrill, distorted scream filled with primal terror and collapse.
Her legs seemed to have all the bones sucked out of them instantly, no longer able to support her weight.
Thud!
She collapsed onto the cold, rough ground. Tears and snot flowed uncontrollably, covering her pale cheeks. She didn't even bother to wipe them, only using her hands to grip the ground tightly, her nails almost digging into the concrete.
Her body shook violently as she desperately scrambled backward on all fours, trying to get away from the demon in human skin who was approaching step by step.
At this moment, Utaha, having regained control of her body, felt the warm blood of another girl on her left fingertips that hadn't completely dried, and the faint metallic scent lingering in her nose. She stood frozen in place as if struck by lightning.
She looked down at her blood-stained fingers, then at Miko. A wave of nausea surged up in her stomach.
"Blegh—"
She could no longer hold it back, bending over to retch violently as tears burst from her eyes uncontrollably.
It wasn't because of the smell of blood, but because... these hands had just participated in a cold-blooded act of extreme violence.
Even if the wound was instantly healed, the utter cruelty of stripping someone of their senses in an instant made her shudder from the depths of her soul.