"Kira, you're saying you know where Sukuna's Finger is?"
Principal Gakuganji raised an eyebrow, mildly surprised.
He'd always known that Nanami Kira from Tokyo had a knack for solving curses, but he hadn't expected the man to find his answer in barely two days.
"Mm..."
"Where?"
Kira didn't answer directly. He smoothed the tatami cushion flat, made sure there were no wrinkles, and only then sat down. He took a sip of the tea Miwa had just brewed—its fragrance filled the small room, the faintly bitter aroma leaving the air slightly heady.
He took another sip, then asked offhandedly, "Principal Gakuganji, how have you been feeling lately?"
"Feeling?" Gakuganji's eyebrows rose even higher. He seemed unsure where Kira was going with this. "Feeling... pretty good, I suppose?"
"That's good. Maintaining a positive mindset is important for your health."
"Kira, stop speaking in riddles." Gakuganji smiled helplessly, waving his hand in surrender. "Just tell me what you know."
"Your students have been fighting amongst themselves." Kira watched the tea leaves floating on the pale green surface—rising and falling like duckweed adrift on a jade lake. "Kyoto hasn't been peaceful lately, either."
"Kira..."
"A few days ago—the day before yesterday, actually—your students and I ran into two Curse Users at the Kyoto Building. One Grade 3, one Grade 1."
"Didn't you kill them?"
"Perhaps." Kira smiled without taking the bait. "But before I 'killed' them, I heard the Grade 3 Curse User say this:"
He cleared his throat, then imitated the man's melodramatic cadence, delivering the line with theatrical relish:
"'Motto, motto, motto! More hatred, more fear—let our Cursed Spirit grow!'"
"...And?" Gakuganji's lip twitched. "As far as I know, engineering disasters to feed negative emotions to their Cursed Spirits is standard practice for Curse Users."
"No—not 'his.'" Kira corrected him, emphasizing the key word. "He said 'our.'"
"This wasn't personal. It was organized. Not his Cursed Spirit—their organization's Cursed Spirit."
Gakuganji's expression turned serious. He straightened up, listening intently.
"Let me start with some data: two weeks ago, Kyoto's suicide rate began trending upward. And it was also two weeks ago that your people first—and only—detected traces of Sukuna's Finger."
"What are you implying?"
Kira set down his teacup and gazed out the window. Early summer morning—mountains blanketed in green, wisps of cooking smoke rising from the village below, farmers already working the fields. He looked for a few seconds, then pulled his gaze back to Gakuganji.
"The entire city of Kyoto has been cursed. A curse we know nothing about is spreading through people's hearts."
Silence.
"That's absurd! At that scale, even a Special Grade Cursed Tool couldn't pull it off!"
"What if it's a Heavenly Restriction?"
Heavenly Restriction. A binding imposed at birth—sacrificing one thing to gain extraordinary power in another.
Maki traded her Cursed Energy for superhuman physical ability. Kokichi traded his bodily health for the power of a Semi-Grade 1 sorcerer. And according to Kira himself, he'd been born with Cursed Energy but couldn't use Cursed Techniques—a Heavenly Restriction that gave him Killer Queen, his extraordinarily powerful Shikigami, in exchange.
"If a Special Grade Curse User was born with a Heavenly Restriction—sacrificing other abilities for an innate talent in casting curses—and then consumed one of Sukuna's Fingers on top of that... would that be enough?"
"Still not enough."
"Correct. Still not enough. That's why the curse has only spread at a very shallow level—so shallow it's virtually undetectable. It incubates inside people like a virus, spreading slowly. Through interactions, through every glance, every expression, through words. Negative emotions spread across Kyoto like wildfire."
"Once the negative emotions reach a critical threshold, a certain organization—let's call them 'X' for now—launches terrorist attacks. The first attack happened at the Kyoto Building, but Todo and I happened to stop it, and you passed it off as a gas explosion."
"But that absolutely wasn't the last one. They'll conduct multiple coordinated jujutsu attacks across the city—buildings, plazas, airports—to detonate the citizens' fraying nerves, to ignite the dark emotions that have already hit the tipping point. When that happens, all of Kyoto will be plunged into unprecedented panic and darkness. Everyone will fear for their own safety, suspicious of everyone else, consumed by paranoia and distrust."
"The government's failure to act against the attacks will drive citizens to march in the streets, launch protests—and in all that unrest, the negative emotions will spread even further. The curse will propagate like a virus, wider and wider... until eventually, the curse will rule the entire city."
"Kyoto will become a real-life Gotham."
"And all of this is for one purpose. I said it at the very beginning—to cultivate a single..."
"...You don't have enough evidence."
"Principal Gakuganji, have you been feeling irritable lately?"
"I said you don't have enough evidence! If this is true, then it means someone—an organization!—is using a Special Grade Cursed Tool and a Special Grade curse as soil, feeding it the terror of an entire city, all to cultivate a single Cursed Spirit!"
"Principal Gakuganji, have you been feeling irritable lately?"
"No Cursed Spirit can absorb that much negative emotion! If it succeeds, it'll be a second Sukuna!"
"This is utterly absurd! Absurd!"
"Principal Gakuganji, have you been feeling irritable lately?"
"I am not the least bit irritable!"
Gakuganji slammed the table, sending the teacup flying. His white brows and beard were in disarray, his face flushed crimson—but then, suddenly, his expression froze.
"I'm asking you: have you been feeling irritable lately?"
Kira watched Gakuganji's outburst with the detached calm of a bored spectator. He wanted to end this pointless conversation as quickly as possible.
"From where I'm sitting, you seem quite irritable. You're not usually this quick to anger—after all, this was just my hypothesis. What happened to you?"
"...You little punk."
Gakuganji caught on. He laughed despite himself, jabbing a finger at Kira's nose. "You little punk—you used me as a test subject?"
"I wouldn't dare."
"But the fact that someone as composed as you can't control your emotions the way you normally would—that you're feeling agitated—tells me this 'curse' has already spread quite far."
Gakuganji's face reddened with embarrassment.
Kira noticed, and offered some comfort. "Don't worry about it. I've been infected too."
Over the past few days in Kyoto, Kira had lost control of his impulses several times.
At the handshake event, he'd wanted to collect the hands of every idol present. In the taxi, he'd nearly killed the driver over a detour. He'd assumed the business trip was simply disrupting his peace of mind, but now he'd found the real culprit.
"You still don't have conclusive evidence."
Kira didn't get angry. He smiled, maintaining his calm expression.
"I am the evidence."
"Oh?"
"Ever since I was a teenager, I've had a peculiar trait: whenever I feel agitated, my fingernails grow faster."
"And since arriving in Kyoto, my fingernails have been growing at twice their rate in Tokyo."
"Prove it."
"Then I will."
His hand—resting on his knee, hidden below the short table—rose slightly, letting Gakuganji see the details. On those pale, slender fingers, the neatly trimmed nails shot upward like bamboo in spring, stretching visibly until they'd grown a full half-inch long.
"At this length," Kira said softly, his expression perfectly still, "I want to kill someone."