"Want to hear the truth?" Tsumiki Fushiguro, eyes sparkling, grabbed Fushiguro Maki's face and wagged it left and right. "I think it's actually pretty nice that you can't change back... I quite like you looking this way."
"It is not nice!" Fushiguro Maki blushed faintly and dodged Tsumiki's hands. Overjoyed at seeing her sister rescued, even Fushiguro's expression had gone soft and gooey. "...Though there really isn't anything to be done about it... because that woman made it so I can't change back even if I wanted to."
It was already past noon, edging into the afternoon.
By this point, two or three hours had passed since Mahiru woke Tsumiki up.
The scene of Fushiguro Maki hugging her sister and bawling her eyes out had already passed too.
Mahiru had saved her so fast that the jujutsu assistant keeping watch outside the door, hearing the heart-rending sobbing inside the room, got such a fright that they assumed Tsumiki had died. They rushed in, only to discover that Tsumiki had in fact been brought back to life.
Tsumiki was to be discharged, but several of the students were minors, and a Cursed Spirit was nominally still an enemy of sorcerers, so none of them could handle the paperwork on her behalf. So they called Nanami Kento to help.
Nanami was standing in for Satoru Gojo's position as guardian.
By the time Nanami arrived, Tsumiki had just finished her physical examination—which was really just routine procedure for the paperwork. With Mahiru's precision in jujutsu manipulation, how could there possibly be any lingering aftereffects left on Tsumiki?
Afterward, Nanami stayed behind at the medical clinic to deal with other matters, while Mahiru, Fushiguro, and the others headed outside, saying they were going to have a big feast to celebrate.
"Hahaha..." Tsumiki chuckled softly, drawing her hand back, and then suddenly grew a little wistful. "So that's it... so many things have happened..."
Tsumiki had been comatose for a very long time.
For her, it was as if several years had been crossed in the blink of an eye.
After waking, the world had already changed completely.
So it turned out this world had sorcerers.
So it turned out her own little brother had become a little sister.
So it turned out her sister already had reliable companions.
So it turned out... according to what that blue-haired girl said, she was a sacrificial victim caught up in some conspiracy.
"Thank you, thank you for saving me." Tsumiki bowed slightly toward Mahiru in heartfelt gratitude. "I don't have anything to repay you with... but if there's anything I can do to help you, I'll give it my all."
Fushiguro Maki also put on a serious expression as she faced Mahiru.
And Mahiru?
Mahiru, who had been cheeks puffed out, frantically scarfing down grilled meat, saw the two of them suddenly turn so solemn, blinked, and hurriedly swallowed the mouthful of food in one gulp.
She put on a smug expression. "Aiya, it's no big deal, just something I did along the way."
Saying it was "along the way" wasn't modesty—it was because this matter really was that simple.
The reason Tsumiki had fallen comatose was simply that her body couldn't withstand the Cursed Energy.
Mahiru only needed to make a slight adjustment, and the problem resolved itself with ease.
For now, Mahiru still hadn't extracted the cursed object housing the soul of the ancient sorcerer "Yorozu" from Tsumiki's body.
That step was the comparatively troublesome and time-consuming part.
The soul within the cursed object had already shown signs of fusing with Tsumiki's soul, and it couldn't be eradicated in a short span of time.
So Mahiru came up with a compromise.
In the original story, Kenjaku used Mahito's Idle Transfiguration to awaken the soul of "Yorozu" inside Tsumiki's body.
And Mahiru had just now set up a reverse safeguard on Tsumiki's soul.
After this, even if Kenjaku used the Idle Transfiguration he had stored up to awaken "Yorozu"'s soul, it would be intercepted by Mahiru's reverse safeguard.
So there was no need to worry about it anymore.
"Besides, if we're talking about payment, Fushiguro has actually already sworn to give it to me." Mahiru flashed a mischievous grin. "Fushiguro... her payment is more than enough."
Although in Mahiru's eyes this whole thing had been a trifling effort, Fushiguro Maki, in the heat of her emotions, had nonetheless sworn an oath right there in the ward to render payment to Mahiru—and had even mysteriously, unilaterally formed a Binding Vow with herself.
Now there was no getting out of giving some payment.
That being the case, Mahiru no longer stood on ceremony.
She proposed that she wanted to study the Ten Shadows Technique inside Fushiguro's body. Yes, Mahiru still had her eye on Mahoraga.
If she could thoroughly master the Ten Shadows Technique, then even if her Cursed Spirit's physiology prevented her from subjugating it, she would at least have a trump card to rival a royal-flush bomb up her sleeve.
The jujutsu pattern for summoning Mahoraga was far too difficult to learn; without Fushiguro Maki's long-term cooperation, she likely had no way of replicating it.
So the girl made this her requested payment from Fushiguro.
And Fushiguro, of course, agreed without the slightest hesitation.
"And there's also the big feast Fushiguro is footing the bill for!" Mahiru said, scarfing down another mouthful of grilled meat. "...I'm already satisfied!"
"Too bad so many shops are closed right now, so all we could do was buy meat and grill it ourselves." The one doing the grilling was Yuji Itadori. He said, "A citywide blackout is just terrifying."
The engineering crews were carrying out emergency repairs. Word was the power lines had all been fixed, but the generators at the power station alone just couldn't be sorted out.
Tokyo was trying to find a way to buy electricity from other cities, and even from other countries.
Still, because of the blackout, the refrigeration had failed, which was the only reason they'd been able to buy this incredibly premium beef so cheaply—so it wasn't all bad.
Right now, they were camping out on the rooftop of some building.
The whole city was in chaos, and here, on the contrary, no one bothered them.
"Big sister Tsumiki, you'll come stay at my place afterward too, right?" Mahiru suddenly suggested. "After all, the cursed object can't stay in your body forever; once I've extracted it, I'll send you back out to live on your own."
"All right." Tsumiki nodded. "I'll do whatever you say."
The cursed objects were all crafted by Kenjaku, made for housing human souls.
There was no essential difference between "Yorozu"'s cursed object and Sukuna's fingers; if there was any, the only one was that there was a single cursed object for "Yorozu," whereas the cursed objects housing Sukuna's soul had been split into twenty.
At the cost of "the soul's slumber," the cursed object gained its own indestructibility in exchange.
Until "Yorozu" awoke, Mahiru likewise had no way to destroy the cursed object.
Repackaging it back into a cursed object was difficult as well.
Because the "patent" for crafting cursed objects was monopolized by Kenjaku.
Mahiru would probably need to research it from scratch.
Tsumiki would likely be staying at Mahiru's place for a very long stretch of time.
"How boring this is."
Abruptly, an out-of-place voice rang out. Several of them froze.
As one, without prior agreement, they all looked toward the source of the voice—namely, Yuji Itadori. Yuji Itadori himself was stunned for a moment, wondering why everyone was looking at him, before it dawned on him that the one who had spoken was Sukuna.
On the side of his face, a ghastly mouth split open from the cheek and let out Sukuna's voice.
"This sob-story melodrama is way too boring, don't you think?" Sukuna said. "Cursed Spirit, you can get me out of here, can't you? Care to make a deal?"
"Hey! Who said you could talk!" Yuji Itadori frowned, reaching up to clamp a hand over the side of his face and cover Sukuna's mouth.
But Sukuna promptly opened another mouth, this time on Yuji Itadori's forehead.
"Being trapped inside this brat's body is truly boring, and watching this disgusting sob-story melodrama is boredom upon boredom." Sukuna let out a sneering laugh and said, "Let me out—you're capable of that, aren't you?"
Everything Mahiru had just done had been witnessed by Sukuna.
Sukuna had perceived that Mahiru had the ability to set him free.
So he came right out and said it.
"Whatever you want, I can give it to you... or, you could also try to kill me," Sukuna said. "Are you interested? My word absolutely counts."
Before he got riled up, Sukuna's credibility score was something you could trust.
Hearing this, Mahiru began to tilt her head in thought.
"I can also turn into a woman," Sukuna added as an extra clause. "As for the matter of gender, it makes no difference to me."
These words made Mahiru's eyebrow twitch.
"No... do you have some kind of misunderstanding about me...?"
It's not like I'm some depraved freak... Why is it that both you and Satoru Gojo assume I'm interested in turning people into beautiful girls?
Just what kind of image of me do you all have in your heads?
____
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