In the empty underground infirmary, the only sound was the steady beep... beep... of the heart monitor.
Harsh surgical light poured straight down onto the hospital bed.
Layer after layer of heavy bandages wrapped Kaede's body tightly. At the sites of the puncture wounds Sukuna had left behind, dark red blood was slowly seeping outward, mingling with the cursed-energy cross section beneath, something that should have been clear and fluid like water, but now looked shriveled and ghostly.
Saline dripped one drop at a time through the IV line, slowly entering that damaged body through the needle in his vein.
"So pain... I don't really feel much physical pain. If I had to describe it, it's more like a dull, foggy heaviness.
If reverse cursed technique is the multiplication of cursed energy, then yes, trying to generate completely opposite positive energy inside a body already saturated with cursed energy is incredibly difficult... but by that same logic, for a being whose whole body is made of cursed energy, this kind of precision control should also count as instinctive behavior.
That said... Sensei, can I understand the 'multiplication' of reverse cursed technique as taking two equal quantities of cursed energy, forcing them together, and producing a positive result from two negatives?"
Hearing that hoarse line of reasoning from the bed, Gojo Satoru slowly straightened from where he had been lazily leaning against the wall.
"Force them together? Merge them?"
Gojo gave a soft laugh and snapped his fingers crisply in the air.
Behind the black blindfold, the Six Eyes were precisely tracing the faint circulation of energy inside the body on the bed, a body built entirely from cursed energy.
"Nope. If you're just gathering equal amounts of cursed energy together, that's only addition.
One lump of negative emotion plus another lump of negative emotion just gives you a bigger lump of negative energy."
He stepped forward on his long legs and raised both hands, holding his two index fingers opposite each other in front of his chest.
"Multiplication means absolute collision and crushing force. Like forcing two massive gears spinning at high speed to bite into each other in reverse.
That's not peaceful fusion. It's violent friction and compression right up to the threshold of destruction, until something completely opposite sparks into life."
At the foot of the bed, Shoko Ieiri shifted her gaze from the bandages to the vital monitor beside it.
She reached over and adjusted the IV flow valve, metal giving off a soft click.
"Not feeling pain isn't exactly good news."
Her voice carried the cold objectivity of a doctor.
"Pain is the first line of self-preservation for any living thing.
Sukuna's slash left a scar directly on the soul, severing the cursed-energy feedback in that portion of your body. That's why everything feels dull and foggy.
Right now, you're like a precision container with a leak, too numb to even sense that your insides are collapsing."
Yuji Itadori, sitting cross-legged on the autopsy table, grabbed at his pink hair, his brow twisting into a knot.
He looked at Gojo, then at Kaede, his whole face full of confusion and disbelief.
"Gears? Sparks? So basically, you have to cause some kind of explosion inside your own body, and then use the light from that explosion to heal yourself?"
Yuji swallowed hard, his voice rising on its own.
"That sounds like it would just blow you up!"
Gojo slipped both hands back into his pockets, the smile on his face widening with barely hidden danger.
"Exactly. Yuji's instincts are surprisingly sharp every now and then."
His gaze fell from above onto the bed, and his voice turned especially cold and serious.
"That's exactly why your margin for error is effectively zero. Since you're literally made of cursed energy and water, there's no buffer.
If those 'gears' fail to lock together properly, the negative energy running wild will detonate you from the inside. There won't even be steam left.
That's what it means for instinct itself to use death as collateral. Before you even begin, you'd better be ready to be blown to pieces."
Kaede slowly lifted one arm, wrapped thickly in bandages.
As he turned his palm upward, a faint liquid sound stirred through the stagnant air.
A mass of clear water welled up out of nowhere, gathering into a small floating sphere above his hand under the pale light, the cold underground ceiling reflected across its surface.
"What if I do it outside my body? Since there's not really any difference, my technique is bound to me anyway... but if it blows up like that, at least it shouldn't kill me completely."
Gojo's hidden gaze locked instantly onto the floating water sphere.
Through the Six Eyes, the flow of cursed energy inside it was laid completely bare.
He kept his hands in his pockets and tilted his head slightly, letting out a small noncommittal laugh.
"A creative idea. You could even call it a clever loophole. But you're overlooking the most basic logic of cursed energy circulation."
He walked to the bedside, long steps unhurried.
Then he extended one elegant finger and stopped a few inches away from the sphere. Separated by Infinity, he lightly tapped the air in front of the transparent ball.
"Cursed energy is born in the gut and circulates through the body's pathways. The body is the engine. The reactor. The thing that bears the pressure of all high-level operations.
Once cursed energy leaves the pathways of the body, it turns into loose sand that's lost its compression.
Trying to perform that kind of ultra-precise, microsecond-level 'multiplication' in an external medium that lacks both internal pressure and structural restraint..."
He withdrew his hand, the curve of his mouth taking on a kind of cruel rationality.
"It's like trying to ignite nuclear fusion inside a leaky plastic bag. It won't create positive energy. It'll just collapse into chaos at the point of friction.
And worse, because your technique is bound to you, that sphere of water is still conceptually an extension of your body."
Shoko, leaning against the metal medicine cabinet with her arms folded, let a stern glint pass through the exhaustion under her eyes. She stared at the water sphere, then shifted her gaze back to the badly wounded body in the bed.
"Gojo's right. For a 'Heavenly Restriction'-type body built entirely out of cursed energy, external operation isn't some safety valve. That water is, fundamentally, a piece of your flesh."
She pushed herself upright, the hem of her white coat swaying softly.
"If it goes unstable and collapses outside your body, the backlash will travel straight through the connection between you and your technique, with virtually no loss, and slam directly into your core.
Without the distance to act as a buffer or the body's internal channels to bleed off force, that backlash would tear your already damaged cursed-energy circulation to pieces.
No, you wouldn't explode in the usual sense. But your cursed-energy structure would dry out and die like a drained puddle."
Still sitting cross-legged on the autopsy table, Yuji stared at the harmless-looking little water sphere, his brown eyes wide as his throat bobbed nervously.
"Oh... so it's like holding a stick of dynamite with an ultra-short fuse?
Even if you throw it a little bit away from you, the fuse still burns back instantly and takes your whole arm with it, right?"
Yuji clutched at his pink hair, his face full of worry and frustration, then turned toward Gojo.
"But Gojo-sensei, if doing it inside the body makes you explode, and doing it outside the body kills you with backlash, then isn't this just a dead end?
Can anyone actually do something like that?"
Gojo did not turn around.
He lowered his gaze to the bandaged body on the bed.
The atmosphere around him seemed to sink slightly under the pressure he gave off.
"That's why it's called a miracle. No retreat. No shortcuts. No clever little safety route.
Either you force those gears to lock inside the high-pressure reactor of your own body while staring straight at the fear of being torn apart... or you lie here quietly and accept being an injured patient who needs protection."
He bent down slightly, and a smile full of suffocating pressure spread across his beautiful face.
"But the fact that, even in this state, you're still trying to find loopholes in how the technique works proves your brain hasn't broken yet.
Now pull that little 'piece of flesh' back in. Until your wounds have healed, stop wasting the cursed energy you're already leaking by the bucket."
"I'm not trying to kill myself right now. A Heavenly Restriction really isn't much of a blessing... if I were made of ordinary flesh and blood, things would be a lot easier."
Shoko lowered her eyes, her gaze sweeping over the layers of bandages wrapped around his body.
She slid both hands back into the pockets of her white coat and gave a cool, dry snort.
"Ordinary flesh and blood?"
Turning her head, she glanced toward the row of sealed steel morgue drawers deeper in the medical room, the same deadened chill in her expression that came from someone who had seen too many bodies.
"If you were ordinary flesh and blood, you wouldn't be lying in this bed with fluids still going into you. You'd be in one of those drawers.
A sorcerer's daily life is basically dealing with meat grinders. Against that level of slash, an ordinary body wouldn't even leave enough intact for a medic to know where to begin stitching.
Your Heavenly Restriction at least preserved your outline."
Sitting on the autopsy table, Yuji shrank a little at that.
He lowered his head and unconsciously grabbed at the fabric over his chest.
Just a few hours earlier, claws had punched straight through him there, and that sense of hollowness where flesh had been torn away still seemed to linger in his bones.
"Yeah... Shoko-san's right."
Yuji's voice came out heavy, carrying the lingering fear of someone who had actually died once.
"An ordinary body really does break way too easily. When my heart got ripped out, there wasn't anything left except cold and despair.
I couldn't move a finger. I couldn't even say one full sentence."
Gojo crossed his long legs and leaned his back once more against the cold concrete wall.
Behind the black blindfold, the Six Eyes seemed to keep calmly assessing the body beneath the gauze on the bed.
His mouth twisted into a merciless grin, and his voice echoed in the empty room.
"Don't complain too much about something so gifted. Plenty of mediocre people would kill to have a life-saving charm like this."
He pushed off the wall, his shoes clicking sharply against the polished floor, and stopped beside the metal guardrail of the bed.
His tall frame blocked most of the glaring light at once, casting a deep shadow over Kaede.
"If you'd had an ordinary body, the moment you were hit by Sukuna's Dismantle and Cleave, you would've been evenly diced into several thousand neat little chunks.
The only reason you can still lie here and complain is because that 'water body' you dislike so much forcibly delayed the verdict of death."
Gojo leaned in slightly, both arms braced on the bed rails, closing the distance.
The suffocating pressure unique to a special-grade sorcerer spread out with his steady breathing.
"So stop fantasizing about impossible hypotheticals.
If you can't change the nature of the container, then the only option is to light the fire of reversal inside the frame you already have."
"I was just complaining, that's all," Kaede said helplessly.