The dawn air at Tokyo Jujutsu High was cold and crisp.
There was a silence unique to a school nestled deep within the mountains.
The time before sunrise was usually when boundaries grew thin and guards lowered, but here, it was the opposite. The forest was asleep, but the barrier was wide awake.
The very air reacted to a single footfall.
Itadori Yuji stopped in the middle of the campus.
It wasn't that his momentum from walking had been cut short. It was simply that this was where he needed to stop.
A gravel path stretched from the main gate to the main building. Summer trees lined both sides, and the edge of the auditorium roof was submerged in the distant darkness. A very thin mist clung to the ground.
Two presences.
One above.
One in front.
"You're quieter than I thought."
A voice dropped from above.
Yuji looked up. There, perched on the edge of the main building's eaves with his hands in his pockets and his legs dangling, was a boy. Striking white hair, an attitude bordering on arrogance rather than confidence, and eyes that looked like they could justify all of it.
Gojo Satoru.
He stood up lightly from the eaves and, instead of jumping, descended as if stepping on the empty air itself. The sound of his toes touching the ground was so light that for a moment, it seemed like his shadow was struggling to keep up.
Yuji watched his landing in silence.
Light, as expected.
He was still incomplete. Yet, he was already different.
An ordinary sorcerer moves their body and then activates their technique. Gojo Satoru was different. His movements themselves were already under the protection of his Cursed Technique. Whether conscious of it or not, the habit of manipulating space to his advantage was etched into his very being.
"The Higher-Ups contacted us."
Gojo spoke with a grin.
"Those boring old farts were making some very interesting faces for the first time in a while. Unidentified, unaffiliated, Special Grade equivalent, top-priority surveillance target."
He paused and took a step toward Yuji.
"Itadori Yuji. That's right, isn't it?"
"It is."
"Not hiding your name, I see."
"There's no reason to hide it."
The corners of Gojo's mouth curled up.
"Nice. The confident type."
"You're talking as if you aren't one yourself."
Gojo gave a short laugh at the reply.
At the same moment, another person stepped out from the shadows near the entrance of the main building.
Geto Suguru approached at a calm pace, stopping at an even distance from the two. He didn't show overt interest like Gojo. Instead, he scanned Yuji's face, hands, feet, and even the minute shifts in his weight. It was less an observation and more of a judgment.
"The fact that the Higher-Ups sent you here..."
Geto spoke.
"Means they don't have the confidence to handle you themselves."
Yuji looked at him for a moment.
This was the Geto of those days.
Eyes that hadn't yet collapsed.
The face of a man who believed in something so straight and narrow that it made him brittle.
Only Yuji knew that.
"Likely so," Yuji replied. "At least, they felt that way last night."
Geto's eyebrows twitched ever so slightly. Gojo laughed as if he liked that answer even more.
"'Last night,' huh?"
He tilted his head while standing. His blue eyes pierced straight ahead.
The Six Eyes.
Those eyes didn't just see a lot.
They read the flow, gauged density, and anticipated the structure of a Cursed Technique. While the current Gojo hadn't perfected everything as he would in the future, that made him even more raw. He was already a genius, but because he was still unrefined, he was even more dangerous.
Gojo spoke in a low tone.
"Strange."
"What is?"
"You."
It was a blunt statement, but coming from him, it felt strangely natural.
"Words like large, strong, or deep Cursed Energy... they don't explain it. It's large, but that's not the end of it. There are no gaps, but it's not so full that it's sluggish either."
Gojo narrowed his eyes.
"And the strangest thing is—"
He paused, as if holding his breath.
"You're not even remotely surprised to see me."
Geto added quietly, "It's the reaction of someone who already knows Satoru."
Yuji didn't answer. He didn't just 'know' him.
He knew through what eyes this man saw the world, how far he could go, and exactly where he would fall apart.
He knew no one would believe him if he said it now.
Gojo smirked, perhaps taking Yuji's silence for another meaning.
"Now I'm even more curious."
Geto shifted only his gaze.
"Surely not."
"Yep. That."
"You're serious?"
"Of course."
Gojo turned back to Yuji.
"Let's have a go."
His words were light. His eyes were not.
Geto didn't intervene immediately. It wasn't because he knew it was futile to stop Gojo, but because he wanted to see for himself as well.
Just how much power did this person possess to make the Higher-Ups practically dump him on them? If he was a powerhouse that even Gojo Satoru found anomalous, they had to confirm it.
Yuji looked back and forth between the two. Gojo was openly inquisitive. Geto tried to hide it, but his gaze spoke volumes. This was necessary.
Yuji asked briefly, "Is this a test?"
"Something like that."
"Not surveillance?"
Gojo shrugged his shoulders.
"That's the adults' business."
"Then?"
Gojo's grin widened.
"I just want to fight you."
Yuji fell silent and looked at him. It wasn't a threat, but a pure impulse. A face that wanted to verify firsthand: Is he stronger than me? Is he hard to handle? How does he fight?
In that instant, the corner of Yuji's mouth twitched ever so slightly.
Small, and for just a second.
Gojo's expression warped oddly.
"You just laughed, didn't you?"
"No."
"You did."
"It was because you're cute."
Silence fell a beat later.
Yuji saw Geto close and open his eyes. His face was a mask of either stifled laughter or an oncoming headache.
Gojo let out a bewildered scoff.
"Wow. That's a first. No one has ever called me that the first time we met."
"It's not common for people to ask for a fight right off the bat, either."
Just as Gojo was about to retort, Yuji added, "Not one by one."
"What?"
"Both of you. Come at me together."
This time, even Gojo couldn't immediately find his words. The dawn air felt like it was being sliced thin.
Usually, when faced with Gojo Satoru, an ordinary person first looks for a way to run. But the boy before them spoke calmly, as if he were simply choosing sparring partners.
Geto asked lowly, "Against both of us?"
"It'll be faster that way."
Yuji looked between the two.
"One pressures from the front, while the other sets the stage. That's your style, isn't it?"
Now, even Geto's expression changed.
He'd been read.
No, it wasn't a guess—it was a conviction. Before they had even exchanged a single blow, he had already pinpointed the structure of how he and Gojo operated together.
Gojo clicked his tongue.
However, he didn't look angry; rather, he looked more excited.
"Fine. This just got really interesting."
He stepped forward.
"Don't complain if you get hurt."
"Will you?"
Instead of answering Yuji, Gojo just smirked. Before the smile could even fade, his body vanished.
He was fast.
It was less a movement and more of an omission of space.
To anyone else, it would have looked like teleportation. But Yuji knew. That wasn't just movement; it was an entry. A movement where he had already calculated the distance and angle to penetrate, completing a straight-line transition with absolute certainty.
Gojo's right punch surged toward Yuji's jaw.
Limitless.
He hadn't mastered Reverse Cursed Technique yet, so he wasn't at the stage where he could manipulate his technique with infinite smoothness like in the future. Yet, it was already lethal.
Gojo in this era overwhelmed opponents with his sense of distance and the calculations of the Six Eyes rather than technical operation. A distance that felt reachable but wasn't; a sensation where the more the opponent tried to counter, the more their own rhythm fell apart. He knew this perfectly.
Yuji tilted his head a half-beat late. The fist grazed past his cheek.
At the same time, his left hand rose to press against the inside of Gojo's wrist.
It was light.
He didn't push, and he didn't grab.
He simply pressed the momentary junction point where the Cursed Energy flow transitioned through the joint. Gojo's gaze changed ever so slightly. It wasn't surprising that the opponent dodged his strike and trajectory.
The problem was where he touched.
The point where the linkage from the wrist to the elbow and then the shoulder flickered for the briefest moment. The boy in front of him had pressed that microscopic gap—something that barely became visible even to the Six Eyes—without a hint of hesitation.
'He's reading me.'
Once that certainty set in, Gojo grinned. Fine. He could do more. That was when Geto moved.
Without even taking his hands out of his sleeves, he opened the shadows. Black masses slid out across the ground. Four Cursed Spirits. All different types. One for binding, one for sensory disruption, one for flank pressure, and the last one for a pure breakthrough.
Geto was different from Gojo.
While Gojo used raw power to ignore structure, Geto used structure to dismantle his opponent. He was adept at dividing space, fracturing judgment, and forcing a momentary delay.
Two Cursed Spirits closed in from the left and right, while another erupted from beneath his feet. The last one circled far behind, sticking to his rear blind spot.
Good positioning.
Cutting off the escape route and vision while Gojo swept through the front.
Yuji didn't move a single step.
He used the back of his hand to shove the jaw of the spirit coming from the right, twisting its trajectory, and used a short elbow strike to the head of the spirit pouncing from the left. For the binding-type rising from beneath his feet, he stepped exactly on the line where the core passed with his toe, severing the technique's connection.
And for the final one aiming for his back—he didn't even look as he spun on his heel.
THUD.
With a dull sound, the spirit's upper body buckled and shattered. Throughout it all, Gojo was already launching his second entry.
This time, he was lower.
Not the jaw, but the solar plexus. A strike to kill the breath.
Instead of dodging, Yuji stepped inward.
Gojo's eyes widened.
Usually, people retreat. When facing Limitless, the choice to close the distance is tricky. One wrong move and you're the one who breaks.
Yet Yuji did the exact opposite, penetrating into Gojo's most comfortable range.
Not the wrist, but the shoulder.
The moment Yuji tapped the top of his elbow, Gojo's center of gravity shifted very slightly. It wasn't enough to completely collapse him, but it was enough of a vibration to prevent his next move from being clean.
In that split second, Geto didn't miss it.
He intentionally channeled a spirit toward Gojo. To a normal person, this would have hindered their ally, but for Gojo, nothing touched him. Conversely, the opponent simply lost another option.
Overlaying Limitless and a Cursed Spirit on the same axis was a level of coordination only Geto Suguru could pull off.
Even seeing this, Yuji didn't force a breakthrough.
He turned his body halfway, letting the spirit's charge slide off his shoulder, and stepped aside a split second before the junction point between Gojo and the spirit was created.
The spirit's claws tore through empty air, stopping right in front of Gojo's clothes. They were blocked by Limitless.
Geto's eyes narrowed. That movement wasn't just a simple evasion.
Yuji was instinctively reading the boundary where Limitless took effect. Without the Six Eyes. Relying solely on experience.
A thin layer of dust rose. Gojo and Geto increased their distance simultaneously. In the middle of the campus, their cold breaths mingled white between the three of them.
Gojo was the first to laugh.
"Alright. It's true."
"What is?"
"That you're strange."
Yuji didn't reply. Gojo rubbed his chin with the back of his hand.
His expression remained playful, but his gaze was different from before. The interest remained, but on top of it was a clear layer of focus.
"Suguru."
Geto responded only with a look instead of an answer.
"Let's sync up."
"I've been doing that since the start."
After their brief exchange, the space behind Geto opened wide.
This time, the numbers were different.
Thirteen Cursed Spirits.
He didn't charge them all at once.
Three above, two to the left, three behind, four at the bottom front, and one hidden beneath the ground.
And above it all, Gojo stood.
The front for pressure through raw force, and the rear for stripping away options. This was far too clever for a mere resonance between two students.
Yuji slowly scanned the formation. Then, he exhaled a very slow breath.
In that instant, the air settled.
No one saw a technique activate.
There was no incantation, no hand sign, no excessive explosion of Cursed Energy. But the lingering scent of Cursed Energy floating over the campus became ordered in a single moment. The chaotic flows settled as if being tidied, and the scattered pressure found order around Yuji.
Geto's expression hardened for the first time.
'Cursed Energy control...?'
This wasn't a matter of volume.
It wasn't even pulling from the flows floating in the environment.
Quite the opposite. He was suppressing the overwhelming Cursed Energy within himself so precisely that he was forcing every surrounding flow into silent submission.
Gojo grinned even as he witnessed the scene.
"Good."
And then both charged at once.
Gojo took the frontal breakthrough. Geto folded the array of Cursed Spirits to match that push. This time, it wasn't just above and below, but front and back simultaneously. A method to cut off vision, tighten his breathing, and force a single reaction.
Usually, a person is too late the moment they make that choice.
But Yuji's body wasn't late.
His right hand rose, parrying Gojo's straight line outward. His left hand snapped down in time with the Cursed Spirit erupting from beneath the ground. His knee shattered the jaw of the binding spirit coming from the side, and his heel crushed the core of the spirit distracting him from the rear.
Even amidst this, Gojo continued his third and fourth entries.
He was fast. Incredibly fast.
The current Gojo, who hadn't mastered RCT yet, might be at a disadvantage if the fight dragged on, as the smoothness of his technique's operation hadn't reached its final form.
Because of that, he was even more daring. The aggression of a genius who closes a match in a short time. Trusting the calculations of the Six Eyes, he came in deeper and faster.
A good judgment.
But what Yuji saw was the end of that judgment. As Gojo erased the distance once more and reached out with his right hand, Yuji didn't dodge this time.
He took a step forward.
And right in front of Gojo's chest—at the exact point just before Limitless reached its highest density—his palm stopped.
It didn't touch.
And yet, Gojo's gaze changed.
What surged through the palm wasn't impact, but the very structure of the pressure. Even knowing he would be blocked by Limitless, Yuji used that very surface to read the thickness of the distance and the grain of the technique.
It was a sensation he'd never felt before. Not an attack, but a probe. It was so short and so deep that for a moment, he felt like he had been read first.
In that instant—Yuji spoke lowly.
"Black Flash."
A short phrase.
No actual strike landed.
Because of Limitless.
Yet Gojo instinctively took a step back. A spark of black lightning had flickered briefly at the tips of Yuji's fingers before vanishing.
It wasn't a display for the sake of intimidation. He had truly set up a Black Flash to match the margin of error right before contact.
Since it was blocked, the activation didn't complete, but its precision alone was more than enough.
Gojo grinned as he pulled back.
Silently this time.
Geto also stopped his movements.
The four spirits were still circling Yuji, but they could no longer move inward. It wasn't that the technique had been severed or that they were being controlled; strangely, their rhythm had simply collapsed.
It wasn't because the opponent was strong. It was because the center of their rhythm had been stolen.
Silence descended over the campus.
Gojo was the first to speak.
"That was a bit of a shock. That was a Black Flash just now, wasn't it?"
"It looked like you intentionally triggered a Black Flash."
Yuji lowered his hand.
"Want to end it here?"
"No."
Gojo grinned, scratching his chin.
"I want to keep going, but if we continue now, it'll become a real fight."
As soon as he finished, Geto let out a small sigh.
It wasn't a sigh of dismissal, but of agreement. Anything beyond this was no longer a test. It would exceed the bounds of what they should handle. The probing battle that two students could maintain had ended just now.
Geto asked Yuji, "Where on earth did you learn to fight like that?"
Yuji didn't answer for a moment.
Where.
Amidst too many deaths.
At battlefields where he had arrived too late.
At the end of grinding down a version of himself that was never enough to survive, let alone save anyone.
In the end, he only spoke briefly.
"A long time."
Geto didn't ask further after hearing that. Gojo watched Yuji's face for a long time before suddenly bursting into laughter.
"Nice."
"What is?"
"You."
Gojo shoved his hands into his pockets.
"I like you. Even more so because you're annoyingly strong."
Geto muttered from right beside him, "That sentiment isn't particularly helpful."
"It is. For one thing, it's fun."
Gojo narrowed his eyes toward Yuji again.
"But one thing has become certain."
"What?"
"The reason those damn geezers sent you here."
His smile grew a bit thinner.
"It's because they're afraid."
Geto didn't deny it.
In fact, that was the most accurate way to put it.
That power wasn't hostile yet. But it wasn't exactly reassuring either. Because they couldn't know what he knew, why he came here, or why he appeared at the same time as them.
And above all—as a result of their clash just now, both already knew.
Itadori Yuji wasn't simply a strong Special Grade. He wasn't some frontrunner of their generation.
Those were the movements of someone who had practiced the act of combat for too long, and gone too far. He inhabited the body of a student, but the grain of his combat was anything but.
Yuji looked back and forth between the two.
Gojo Satoru.
Geto Suguru.
It wasn't too late yet.
The moment that thought crossed his mind, Yuji's gaze darkened briefly. Gojo didn't miss the change, but he couldn't read its meaning.
"What's wrong?"
Yuji shook his head. "Nothing."
Geto asked slowly, "Do you truly intend to stay as a student?"
Yuji answered, "For the time being, at least."
"Then I suppose we'll have to keep an eye on you."
"Leave it to me," Gojo grinned. "That's my specialty."
Yuji didn't give any reply to that. He only gave a very faint, almost imperceptible nod.
The dawn light was gradually bleeding through the mist.
No one knew yet.
Where this meeting would lead. Just how many directions of the coming seasons these three standing in the middle of the campus would change.
But at least one thing was certain.
On this morning, Gojo Satoru and Geto Suguru realized for the first time.
The fact that they had not yet reached the highest peak.
And that someone who had already ascended much farther stood right before their eyes.