Jujutsu High — the training grounds.
Nobara asked Megumi, "Did those two catch some kind of disease?"
Megumi was quiet for a moment. "Itadori's fundamentally broken too, if you ask me."
Because off in the distance, Yuji and Todo were sprawled flat on the training field in matching starfish poses, lying side by side staring up at the sky.
Not long before, Todo had blown the training ground gate clean off its hinges with a thunderous kick, stormed in, walked straight up to Yuji, and — without preamble — demanded to know what type of woman Yuji liked.
Yuji answered.
Then Todo burst into tears, declared through sobs, "So you really are my kindred spirit," and immediately launched himself at Yuji. They traded blows — and when it was over, both of them collapsed onto the ground shoulder to shoulder, wearing the identical expression of a man who had just eaten a deeply satisfying meal, basking in the afternoon sun. The onlookers, meanwhile, remained in a state of speechless, baffled paralysis — the kind that only comes from watching two people and thinking: what is wrong with you two?
They'd known Todo was a strange person. They just hadn't imagined he was this strange — and they definitely hadn't imagined that Yuji's frequency would sync perfectly with his.
"Their world is beyond our comprehension," Mai said flatly.
Mai had actually come to pick a fight with Jujutsu High (Tokyo). But after witnessing those two's baffling display, she'd completely lost the urge. The air that had been thick with tension was now, somehow, perfectly peaceful.
"Come see a Kotada idol concert with me!" And then Todo extended an even more bewildering invitation: "It's this afternoon!"
Kotada was an idol. Todo was absolutely obsessed with her.
"Who's Kotada?" Yuji said blankly. "I'm not really into idols."
"But you knew she was an idol just now," Todo said, raising an eyebrow. "Looks like you know who she is after all."
"But those concerts need tickets, don't they?"
Todo immediately plunged a hand into his pocket and produced a thick wad of tickets, which he fanned out in front of Yuji like a hand of playing cards. Every single one featured the same beaming female idol. His voice was utterly unashamed — practically boastful: "I bought extras in case I lost any!"
Mai and Miwa: ...
"Ohh, very well prepared!" Yuji's eyes lit up and he gave a genuine thumbs-up. "You really do love this idol, huh. I'm impressed."
Megumi and Nobara: ...
"So, are you coming?"
"I mean, I'm not against it." Yuji turned and called out to the others, "Anyone else want to come?"
"Hey, I'm just going to say —" Mai crossed her arms and frowned. "Todo, don't tell me you've forgotten why you came here? You're supposed to deal with that blue-haired Cursed Spirit."
"Shut it!" Todo waved a hand. "Obviously I'll show up when the blue-haired Cursed Spirit appears! Right now what we need to do is get ourselves into peak fighting condition! And if I don't see Kotada's concert, I will be a broken, listless shell of a man!"
"Oh, so you're here to deal with that blue-haired Cursed Spirit," Megumi said, blinking.
"Yes." Mai looked as though she'd finally found her opening. A mocking, scornful smile spread across her face as she tilted her head toward Megumi. "Who told your whole Tokyo crew to go out mob-handed and still come back empty-handed? Looks like without Yuta around, Tokyo has no one worth a damn after all."
Her tone was pointed. But what Mai said was, technically, the truth.
No one could argue back.
"It's fine." Todo waved it off. "That blue-haired Cursed Spirit — I'll clean her up next time."
"Really?" Nobara looked skeptical. "That blue-haired Cursed Spirit is a real handful."
"Todo is... actually really strong," Megumi said quietly.
Nobara blinked. "For real?"
Yes. For real.
Todo was genuinely powerful.
"Speaking of which — where's your Megumi Fushiguro?" Todo suddenly changed the subject, looking left and right. "Where?"
"Why are you looking for him?"
"With my kindred spirit here, this exchange event was never going to be boring," Todo said. "But I still want to check — is Megumi Fushiguro an interesting person?"
Ah. That.
Miwa and Mai exchanged a glance.
He's about to have another episode.
"Does being interesting really matter that much?" Yuji tilted his head.
"Of course!" Todo's voice shot up several decibels. "Boring people are nothing but a damper on everything around them! A boring life is no different from being dead!"
"But everyone feels bored sometimes, don't they?" Yuji said, rubbing his chin.
"Not me! My life has always been interesting!" Todo grinned with absolute confidence, then swept his gaze around again. "So where is Megumi Fushiguro? Where is he?"
Yuji pointed at Maki Fushiguro. "That's Megumi Fushiguro right there."
Todo froze.
He looked at Maki Fushiguro. He confirmed that yes, that was in fact a girl.
"That's Megumi Fushiguro?" Todo looked completely lost. "What do you mean?"
"Exactly what I said." Yuji shrugged.
"This is the kind of thing you need to actually pay attention to." Mai gave Todo the look one reserves for the hopelessly dense, sighed, and turned to Megumi. "Megumi Fushiguro's name is now Maki Fushiguro. After being attacked by the blue-haired Cursed Spirit, she was turned into a girl."
Turned into a girl… by the blue-haired Cursed Spirit?
Todo turned to look at Maki Fushiguro.
— Turned into a girl???
Todo's eyes went wide with shock.
Maki hesitated for a moment, then nodded. "Yes. I became a girl. I still don't really know why that Cursed Spirit did it."
Todo stood frozen. Five seconds of silence passed.
Then — to the absolute bewilderment of everyone present — he sank to his knees on the ground, turned his face up to the sky, and let two streams of tears pour freely down his face.
Everyone: ?!?!
What is he doing NOW?!
Yuji moved to help him up. "Hey, Todo, what's wrong?!"
But he barely got his hand out before Todo waved him off.
"No, kindred spirit. I need a moment to myself right now. Because…" Todo closed his eyes, his voice trembling slightly, "I just realized… just realized… how utterly, unbearably boring my life has been up until now."
His voice echoed across the training grounds.
"Compared to that blue-haired Cursed Spirit, I'm boring to the bone…"
...
"Stop crying." Yuji patted Todo on the shoulder. "Come on, let's all go see the idol concert together. What do you say?"
— — —
"All confirmed?"
"Yep, good to go." Mahiko flipped through the scroll in her hands and nodded.
Mahiko was currently in an abandoned section of the underground subway system. Kenjaku had sent the research materials he'd promised her — documents on Mahoraga — via Cursed Spirit courier. She'd verified everything. Time to get to work.
Mahoraga worked the same way as Simple Domain: it was a survival tool for someone who couldn't deploy their own Domain, a way to stay alive inside someone else's.
"Just so you know, what I make isn't guaranteed to be convincing," Mahiko said.
"Please do your absolute utmost," Kenjaku replied.
Since Kenjaku had said that much, Mahiko wasn't going to deliberately make the fake Cloaked Figure obviously fake.
The seed of doubt had already been planted. That was all Mahiko needed to accomplish.
The rest was Kenjaku's problem.
To keep Jujutsu High from tracing anything back to Suguru Geto, he would have to scramble hard to clean up the aftermath. While he ran himself ragged doing that, Mahiko could sit back and watch the show.
This fake Cloaked Figure was different from the last one.
Last time, Mahiko had made the fake out of a Cursed Spirit — no trace of her own Jujutsu Technique inside. But this time she'd made it from a clone. She'd severed the connection to herself, but if anyone examined it carefully, they'd be able to detect the residual imprint of her Technique.
As for the small Cursed Spirits, those were all ready-made stock sent over by Kenjaku.
Mahiko finished quickly.
"How are you so practiced at this?" Kenjaku muttered from the side.
Mahiko shrugged. "Something this simple isn't much harder than folding a paper airplane."
Once it was done, Mahiko handed the finished puppet over to the Cursed Spirit Kenjaku used for transport.
"Everything from here on is up to you. How you run the puppet show is your business," Mahiko said. "I'm going to rest."
"I didn't actually want to trouble you in the first place — the problem is that Rime and I are both tied up right now," Kenjaku replied.
"Huh? What are you two doing?" Mahiko said. "If you're both tied up, what about Jogo and the others?"
"Jogo and the others aren't here either. They've gone out — I didn't pay much attention to where. But even if they were here, they'd be useless for this, wouldn't they?"
So where had Jogo and company gone?
Mahiko was mildly puzzled.
But that wasn't what puzzled her most. What puzzled her most was what Kenjaku and Rime were actually doing that had them both so occupied.
Clearly, the trouble Mahiko had caused Kenjaku this time was significant — he was genuinely pressed for time. And yet even so, he still couldn't put down whatever he was currently working on.
What on earth was it?
"But if I follow the puppet and someone spots me, the whole puppet show falls apart, doesn't it?" Mahiko said.
"You make a fair point." Kenjaku finished the first half of his sentence and then fell silent for a long time. Then, without any connection to what they'd been discussing, he suddenly asked something else entirely: "…Mahiko. What is it that you truly want?"
Hm?
"What do you mean?"
"What you truly want… I suspect it isn't actually [creating a world for the new humanity], is it?" Kenjaku asked slowly. "You must have some other reason you're living for… What is it? What do you truly want?"
Kenjaku had begun to doubt Mahiko's motives and intentions.
He should have started doubting her long ago.
But there was a world of difference between nursing a suspicion in silence and actually voicing it. Saying it out loud was a completely different signal. It meant Kenjaku no longer saw Mahiko as equivalent to the other three Calamity Cursed Spirits — and it meant he had realized he had absolutely no control over her.
This confirmed that Mahiko's instincts had been correct, and that her choice to make trouble for Kenjaku had been the right one.
And now, what she needed to do was reassure him — bring her threat level down in his eyes.
So Mahiko kept her expression perfectly neutral. "My goal is to build a world for the new humanity. Though I don't think every last human has to die. Personally, I think humans make for rather entertaining pets — like livestock, but cuter."
"Is that so. Pets." Kenjaku was quiet for a moment, then let out a soft laugh. "Regardless — I just finished talking with Mechamaru. My Cursed Spirit will bring the puppet you made to him. You don't need to worry about it anymore."
"Mechamaru?"
"The sorcerers from Kyoto have been arriving one by one to catch you — Mechamaru's among them now. He's one of ours. We can stage the scene with him and there's no risk of anyone seeing through it."
Mechamaru would stage a fake confrontation with the puppet, then bring back its remains to Jujutsu High. No one would be the wiser.
After that, once he'd chipped away at the suspicion on Jujutsu High's end, Kenjaku would find a way to make the whole matter of Suguru Geto's corpse quietly disappear.
Kenjaku still had plenty of work ahead of him.
"Fine by me," Mahiko said. "But there's still one more thing I want to ask you."
"What?"
"About Domain Expansion," Mahiko said.
She'd been researching Domain Expansion for a while now, but had hit a wall. After turning it over in her mind from every angle, she'd decided to just ask an expert.
Mahiko explained the difficulty she'd been running into.
"I see… So incorporating your Technique into the barrier causes the barrier to collapse?" Kenjaku mused. "The difficulty varies depending on whose Technique it is — there's no blanket rule. But it really is remarkable: your situation is genuinely rare."
Domain Expansion was a deeply advanced art.
Most people couldn't open a Domain because they hadn't developed a deep enough understanding of their own Jujutsu — they couldn't manifest their innate realm outward through their Technique.
Mahiko was different.
Her problem wasn't insufficient understanding of her own Technique — if anything, she had developed it too deeply. She could manifest her innate realm outward. But her barrier couldn't bear the weight of the innate realm she was trying to sustain.
"There's nothing to be done about it," Kenjaku said. "Everyone is pitching a tent — yours just happens to be impossibly thick and heavy and enormous. All you can do is keep training until you find the optimal load-bearing point, or find a way to make the poles holding up your tent thicker and sturdier."
Just a metaphor.
Mahiko stroked her chin.
A new idea was forming.
"Oh. Alright, thanks."
"Mm. I'm going back to work."
Kenjaku's Cursed Spirit departed, carrying the puppet Mahiko had made.
And Mahiko narrowed her eyes, preparing to attempt Domain Expansion again.
What Kenjaku had just said had nudged her thinking in a new direction.
The reason she couldn't open her Domain came down largely to this: the weight of her Technique and innate realm far exceeded what the barrier she could produce was able to support.
So then — what if she made her barrier smaller?
In the original story, during the final battle between Satoru Gojo and Sukuna, Gojo had used the method of compressing his Domain's barrier to increase its density — and by doing so, dramatically strengthened the shell's durability.
Mahiko wanted to try the same approach now.
A Domain was something she desperately needed.
Without one, she would always be a step below.
If she could successfully deploy her own Domain, her combat power would undergo a complete, qualitative transformation.
Snap.
Then — no point hesitating. Time to try.
Mahiko wove her hands into seals.
Cursed Energy surged through the space around her. A black barrier began to form, rising up to encircle her.
And this time, as the barrier climbed and closed in overhead, it looked different from every previous attempt — it was contracting, and the density of the barrier's outer shell was rising.
A flash of light in Mahiko's eyes.
— "Domain Expansion!"
____
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