Sigh…
Fine.
Mahiko wasn't stupid enough to actually believe she could outrun him.
Kenjaku had been alive for over a thousand years. If he could pinpoint her birthplace with that kind of precision, then he absolutely had some means of tracking her.
So after running for a while, she stopped.
Shibuya.
It was still daytime.
Neon lights criss-crossed overhead. Giant screens rolled through advertisements. The crowd surged in from every direction, passing through her body like she wasn't even there.
She stood at the very center of all that glittering noise — and not a single person could see her.
Cursed spirits were invisible to ordinary humans. She was still in a purely spiritual state, having not yet sculpted herself a body of flesh that the average person could perceive.
Carried along by the flow of foot traffic, Mahiko sighed again.
Fine. If running isn't an option…
Then what comes next?
First things first: she had to find a way to grow stronger. Strong enough that when the day Kenjaku finally made his move arrived, she wouldn't just be a pawn waiting to be slaughtered. Strong enough to walk away from the hellscape of the Shibuya Incident in one piece.
Both the heroes and the villains had more than enough reasons to kill her.
Which meant getting stronger was, right now, her only path to survival.
But how, exactly, was she supposed to get stronger?
Mahiko stopped at the edge of the sidewalk and began methodically sifting through everything she knew about the character of "Mahito."
In the original story, Mahito was a character with an extraordinarily high growth ceiling and an equally extraordinary intuition. He was exactly the type who'd be driven to the edge of a cliff by the protagonist — looking for all the world like he was about to be finished — and then suddenly have a lightning-bolt moment of "Ha! I get it now!" and evolve on the spot, turning around to beat the protagonist into the ground.
In the early arcs, Yuji kept beating on him — and the more he got beaten, the stronger he became. By the time the Shibuya Incident rolled around, Mahito had outright shed his skin and emerged in his final form. He'd started as the work's early-arc boss and grown, step by step, into its mid-arc boss.
So logically speaking… Mahito's core path to power was combat.
Grow through battle. Break through at the limits.
That made sense. That was perfectly conventional wisdom.
But "go fight" was not the answer she was looking for.
It was like saying "if you want better grades, do more practice problems" — well, obviously. Everyone knows you need to do practice problems. The real question is which ones, how, and where to start.
Alright. Let's think about this properly. What were the core tools Mahito actually used in combat?
First: *Idle Transfiguration* as a direct attack — touching another person's body, making direct contact with their soul, and then reshaping it. In the lore of Jujutsu Kaisen, the soul determines the body; alter the soul, and the body changes with it. A person whose soul was transfigured would, at minimum, have their body twisted into something monstrous. At worst, they'd die on the spot. This was Mahito's most essential killing strike.
Second: *Transfigured Humans* — using the ability to reshape others' bodies and souls to transform living people into monsters that obeyed her commands, preserving enough combat capability to serve as her own personal forces. The original Mahito had assembled a whole army of Transfigured Humans, and eventually turned the technique into something almost artistic. Beyond direct attacks, this was Mahito's primary offensive strategy.
The first method required real combat experience, honed slowly over time. There was no rushing it.
The second, though — accumulating Transfigured Humans was the most direct way to expand her fighting power. If the numbers were high enough, even individually weak units could form a frontline-filling army.
"So… the way to grow stronger isn't really fighting. It's more like…" The blue-haired girl rubbed her chin thoughtfully.
It was — killing people.
On the first point: if she wanted to improve the level of her *Idle Transfiguration*, she could either build up her proficiency through repeated kills, or she could increase her own Cursed Energy reserves and the sheer mass of her soul.
And Mahito's Technique had a uniquely special mechanism in the entire series — soul energy and Cursed Energy were linked, and could be converted into one another. So the fastest way to increase her Cursed Energy was to devour other people's souls.
Which meant killing people.
And on the second point — transforming ordinary humans into monsters was, equally, killing people.
"Heh…"
So, to sum it up: the fastest, most direct, most immediately effective path to power was *killing people*.
Not just a few, either — massively and continuously. Devour human souls, grind them down, convert them into fuel for herself. Transform the living into a half-cursed-spirit army, conscript them into her battle order. The more she killed, the more she consumed, the more she transfigured — the stronger she'd become.
Mahiko looked at the crowd around her.
Endless, flowing, unstoppable.
"So… kill people, huh…"
Men and women, salarymen and students, elderly and children. Not a single one of them could see her. She could reach out and touch any one of them at will — transfigure their soul before they even had a chance to react. Kill them without hesitation.
There would be no resistance at all.
If she devoured everyone on this street… she wouldn't become overwhelmingly powerful overnight, but her strength would take a massive, definitive leap forward. And she could start building her army of Transfigured Humans right here and now.
And beyond that —
Mahiko drifted toward an old woman.
The old woman was walking a small dog, standing at an intersection waiting for the light to change, one hand kneading her own shoulder — it looked like it ached pretty badly.
It was in the moment of drawing close to her that the cursed spirit's instincts surged up like a tide.
Hunger.
Not the ordinary kind of emptiness in the stomach. What flooded her mind was something deeper — a craving that originated from the soul itself.
Like a vampire lusting for blood, every single pore of her being screamed at her to devour the soul of the person before her, to fill the void inside herself.
She was a cursed spirit. She had an innate aggression toward humans — something closer to predatory instinct than mere hostility.
The old woman's soul was right there. Right there.
So close.
She was losing her grip on herself.
Should I kill her?
Do I actually go through with this?
…Well, does it even really matter?
A voice inside her said.
Yeah. It's like this now, so even if I kill someone — it doesn't really matter, does it?
She wasn't human anymore. She was a cursed spirit. A monster born from the dark dregs of human emotion. She didn't have to abide by human morality anymore — just as a wolf doesn't have to follow the rules made for sheep.
And it wasn't like she'd be killing for fun. She was doing it to survive. If she didn't grow stronger, Kenjaku would swallow her whole. Yuji Itadori would hunt her down. Her soul would be trapped in the cycle of reincarnation forever, too terrified to ever be reborn — now that would be a life not worth living.
This was survival necessity.
Just a few lives, in exchange for her own continued existence.
No matter how you ran the numbers, that wasn't a losing trade.
So killing people doesn't matter, right?
It's reasonable, isn't it?
Her hand was trembling.
For a few seconds — or maybe tens of seconds — her fingers shook, her palm wavered, she wrestled with herself —
And in the end, she placed her hand on the old woman's shoulder.
The Technique activated.
The old woman gave a small shudder.
Beep —
The red light turned green.
The crowd surged forward onto the crosswalk. The old woman stepped along with them, her little dog trotting at her side. She walked a few paces, then seemed to sense something, and looked back over her shoulder.
Hm? Nothing there.
Odd. She could've sworn something was there just now…
The old woman puzzled over it for a moment, then reached up to rub her shoulder.
The ache was gone.
How strange.
But… well. That's a good thing.
She turned her head and walked on, her little dog pulling her along into the crowd.
Mahiko was still standing in the same spot, watching the old woman's silhouette disappear into the sea of people.
She let out a long, slow breath.
And gave a small, self-deprecating smile.
Sorry… to myself, I guess.
I still can't do it.
Can't is can't.
If she lost even the capacity to feel empathy for other people — then she wouldn't count as having lived again at all. Right now, all she wanted was to live as the person she wanted to be.
...…
...…
…Ugh. I really am the unluckiest creature alive.
---
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