Shoko didn't say anything right away. She just took a slow sip of her dark roast, her dark, exhausted eyes watching him over the rim of the cup. Finally, she gave a single, slow nod.
"Exactly," Shoko said, lowering the cup. "For a curse, regenerating a limb is as easy as breathing. They just push their natural energy into the wound. No multiplication required."
Ren tapped his fingers against his bicep. The tactical calculus in his head was already spinning, moving far past the idea of simply patching up his own injuries.
"Then..." Ren started, his dark eyes snapping back down to meet hers. "Shouldn't positive energy be highly lethal to curses? If they are purely negative constructs, hitting them with pure positive energy should be like pouring bleach on a shadow, right?"
Shoko's lips twitched. The faint, genuinely bored expression returned to her face. She took a slow drag of her cigarette, exhaled, and nodded again.
"It is. It's absolute poison to them," Shoko confirmed, her tone dropping into that crisp, register. "If you can output pure positive energy directly into a cursed spirit, it will instantly eradicate almost any of them. It completely destabilizes their physical composition and vaporizes them on contact."
Ren rubbed his chin, his mind racing. He didn't care about healing right now.
"So..." Ren murmured slowly, squinting at the empty metal autopsy tables as the ultimate idea formed in his head. "If that's true... isn't there some way to somehow imbue a cursed tool with positive cursed energy? Like, channeling it into a blade instead of a person? Because if someone could do that, wouldn't it essentially create a one-hit-kill weapon against any curse?"
She let out a slow, disbelieving exhale, shaking her head. She reached over, tapping the ash into her glass tray.
Ren kept his face neutral, though he felt a small spike of triumph. "So, I'm right? It would work?"
"In pure, isolated theory? Yes," Shoko said, picking up her coffee cup again. She took a sip, her brown eyes locking onto him over the rim. "But in actual, practical application? It's basically impossible. For three very glaring reasons."
She set the cup down and held up a single finger.
"First, the rarity of the output. Like I told you, creating positive energy inside your own body to heal yourself is already incredibly difficult. But pushing that energy outward—outputting it into another person, or in your hypothetical, into an inanimate object—is a completely different beast. Satoru Gojo, the strongest sorcerer alive, cannot output positive energy. To my knowledge, the only people who can are myself, one of our second-year students currently studying overseas, and maybe a legendary curse or two. If you can't output it, you can't coat a weapon in it."
She raised a second finger.
"Second, the energy cost. You remember the math? Negative times negative. Because you have to multiply cursed energy against itself, it costs roughly twice as much energy to produce a single drop of positive energy. Constantly channeling that into a blade during an active, high-speed fight would violently drain almost any sorcerer's reserves in seconds. You'd be left completely exhausted and wide open for a killing blow."
Ren frowned, his tactical mind chewing on the logistics. "Okay. But what if you didn't channel it live? What if you imbued the weapon beforehand? Made it a permanent cursed tool like Maki's glasses?"
Shoko smirked, holding up her third finger.
"That brings us to the third and final reason. The physical mechanics of cursed tools. Standard cursed tools are created when a sorcerer's negative cursed energy naturally seeps into an object over months or years of constant, agonizing use. They are essentially sponges for negative emotion."
She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the desk, her gaze piercing.
"But positive energy isn't a sponge. It's highly volatile. It is fundamentally designed to obliterate negative energy. If you try to force a charge of pure positive energy into a regular weapon, it won't hold the charge. The positive energy will just violently eat away at whatever residual negative energy is already in the metal, and it will end up destroying the medium holding it. Finding a way to make an object permanently hold a positive charge without it dissipating or shattering the blade is an art that modern Jujutsu society simply does not possess."
Shoko leaned back in her chair, taking another long drag of her cigarette. She exhaled a thick cloud of smoke, looking at Ren with a mixture of profound exhaustion and genuine respect.
"So, congratulations, Ren. You just invented the ultimate anti-curse weapon in your head," she deadpanned.
"Now you just have to find a sorcerer with a bottomless gas tank, an impossibly rare output ability, and a magical blacksmith capable of doing something no one has done in a thousand years to actually build it for you."
Ren let out a long, slow breath, running a hand through his dark hair. The sheer magnitude of the hurdles Shoko had just casually listed out would have been enough to make most sorcerers give up entirely.
"Ahhhh," Ren muttered, leaning back in his chair and staring up at the fluorescent lights.
Ren dragged a hand down his face, letting out a heavy, deeply exasperated sigh.
The sheer magnitude of the hurdles Shoko had just casually listed out would have been enough to make most sorcerers give up entirely.
"So, let me get this straight," Ren muttered, looking at her through his fingers. "He sent me down here to learn a technique I physically lack the battery power forr."
Shoko took another drag of her cigarette, her expression unimpressed. "Welcome to my world."
"Fuck Gojo," Ren stated bluntly.
"Agreed," Shoko replied without missing a beat. She raised her paper coffee cup in a mock toast.
"He is a relentless, walking migraine. I've been telling the higher-ups to just deport him for years."
Ren let out a short laugh, the tension in his shoulders finally dropping an inch. He watched as Shoko stood up, turning her back to him to begin sorting through a stack of Manila folders on the stainless steel counter behind her desk.
"Do you ever actually leave this basement, Doc?" Ren asked, leaning forward on his knees.
"Or do they just slide trays of coffee and cigarettes under the door to keep you running?"
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