Chapter 34 (continued)

Unsurprised by Satoru Gojo's question, Kamiki Yūhaku smiled. "Take a guess."

"I hate guessing games." Gojo looked annoyed. "I'm still pissed off. You promised not to cause me trouble, but now those bastards in the higher-ups are all blaming me for failing to keep an eye on you. If you're this strong, why didn't you kill them before?"

"What a pain."

Kamiki Yūhaku held his hands behind his back, his dark green eyes full of amusement.

"That's because I'm looking for someone. Did you know, Gojo? There are limits to the prophecies I can make. Even this eye can't see a person's entire future. It only shows me certain things, and it doesn't even tell me how many years into the future they are."

"So when I can't find out exactly when a prophecy will happen, all I can do is wait. There's nothing else I can do."

Gojo nodded. "Then what did you foresee?"

"You, Gojo," Kamiki Yūhaku said. "Thirty years ago, I foresaw your birth."

"Huh?"

"You believed that?"

Gojo frowned and strode over. The moment he reached out and grabbed Kamiki Yūhaku, he found he had caught nothing but air. Gojo froze for a moment and removed his blindfold. The real world appeared before his eyes, and the Special Grade Cursed Spirit called Kamiki Yūhaku dissolved into the air, leaving only traces of Cursed Energy behind.

In other words, when they first met, that guy had left a fake puppet in his place and slipped away in his real body?

Gojo withdrew his hand. He frowned slightly, then put his blindfold back on.

How had he done it?

Whether he had concealed his Cursed Energy or escaped right in front of him, Gojo's Six Eyes, which could see all Cursed Energy, hadn't noticed a thing.

Everyone in the world had negative emotions, and negative emotions gave rise to Cursed Spirits. Cursed Spirits could use Cursed Energy from birth, so traces of Cursed Energy were everywhere in the world. The Six Eyes could see Cursed Energy clearly, so, in theory, even if Kamiki Yūhaku created a body, Gojo should have noticed.

But he really hadn't seen the slightest trace of Cursed Energy. It was as if Kamiki Yūhaku were a Special Grade Cursed Spirit without Cursed Energy.

"What a pain," Gojo murmured. "Looks like there's no getting an answer out of him. I'll have to look for information on him from thirty years ago."

In theory, Jujutsu High students always had a mountain of records. Whether they came from sorcerer families or had been invited to enroll, almost everything about them was usually investigated. Every mission they undertook at Jujutsu High was recorded, and the records were kept even if they dropped out.

There was only one possible reason for all of someone's Jujutsu High records to be cleared out.

That was what had happened to Suguru Geto when he became a Curse User. The higher-ups had retrieved his Jujutsu High records and sealed them in a special archive. After the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons, the file he had left at Jujutsu High had simply been marked with a red "deceased" stamp.

A Curse User?

Gojo left the Kamiki Clan's former residence and went to an intelligence agency reserved for the higher-ups. He entered on the pretext of retrieving information, obtained the registered list of Curse Users, then sat down on a nearby sofa and opened it.

There weren't many Curse Users, and after Gojo appeared, they had all gone into hiding. Gojo flipped through the files, but he didn't see Kamiki Yūhaku's name.

"Was my guess wrong? Wasn't he a Curse User?"

After a few seconds of silence, Gojo put the list of Curse Users back and pulled out the list of "pending Curse Users" beside it.

It was a list of people suspected of being Curse Users whose status couldn't be confirmed. Most of the people on it were placed under close observation until the higher-ups determined whether they were Curse Users.

Gojo opened the list, and after only a few pages, he saw Kamiki Yūhaku's name.

[Kamiki Yūhaku, age 17, Special Grade Prophet.]

[July 24: Used Cursed Energy to kill one non-sorcerer. After deliberation, he was placed on the pending list. Should another such incident occur, his Jujutsu Sorcerer status will be revoked immediately, and he will be sentenced to death.]

[August 12: Deceased.]

Less than twenty days had passed between the two events.

"If you saw someone and foresaw that they'd become a really, really bad person, what would you do?"

Someone had once asked Kamiki Yūhaku that question.

"What would you do?" Kamiki Yūhaku had asked in return.

The other person had been taken aback, seemingly surprised that Kamiki Yūhaku had thrown the question back at him. But he soon began to think, and after a long while, he shook his head. "I don't know."

"If you really foresaw that someone was a terribly bad person, you could save so, so many people in the future by killing him now. It sounds perfect, but at that point, the murderer wouldn't have done that terrible thing yet. He'd suddenly be killed because of a future someone happened to see."

"That sounds kind of sad."

"So you can't kill him," Kamiki Yūhaku had replied. "Because prophecies have a lot of limitations. All I can see is the outcome, not how it came about. So no one knows whether something I did for the sake of that outcome caused the outcome we have now."

The other person had looked surprised. "So even if you saw a terrible future, you wouldn't change it?"

"I'd still change it. For example, if someone was going to die at West Station today, I'd tell him not to go there today. That would probably prevent his death."

"Oh! Just like when you warned me last time!"

"Of course, if I thought he had to die, I'd kill him too," Kamiki Yūhaku had said.

After all, Kamiki Yūhaku wasn't some saint.

Kamiki Yūhaku had never agreed with killing someone in advance just because he had seen that they would be a terrible person in the future. Saving the future that way was a fallacy. Still, when he was at Jujutsu High, the higher-ups had constantly hinted that he should use his prophecies to eliminate people who were a threat to them...

Unfortunately for them, Kamiki Yūhaku was no fool. Having once been an intelligence agent, he was better at judging what those people were thinking than one might imagine.

More than he wanted to use prophecies to kill people who would harm the world, he hated having his ability used by the higher-ups to eliminate those they opposed.

Fortunately, he was the Prophet, so he could lie and fob them off.

But Kamiki Yūhaku really had killed someone because of this.

It was a woman. She looked no different from anyone else, except that she seemed to have just left the hospital. A bandage was wrapped around her forehead, and she looked sickly and frail. Kamiki Yūhaku had encountered her in a crowd while returning from a mission with a classmate from his year.

The moment he saw her, his Prophecy suddenly activated, and Kamiki Yūhaku saw a scene straight out of hell.

Death, destruction, countless people falling to the ground like blades of grass. Blood and explosions turned the entire train red. Eventually, the battle spread across the whole city, leaving countless dead and injured.

Although he couldn't tell exactly when it was, it seemed to be Halloween. There were still young people in Halloween costumes on the streets. He also saw a Special Grade Cursed Spirit fighting a white-haired young man in a Jujutsu High uniform. Ordinary people who couldn't see the Cursed Spirit watched the fighting young man in confusion, then were caught up in the battle and killed or injured in countless numbers.

And all of it was connected to the frail-looking woman before him.

After thinking it over for a long time, Kamiki Yūhaku decided to kill the seemingly innocent woman.

It was something that could have stayed hidden forever, but the classmate who had gone on the mission with him turned out to be an undercover agent sent by the higher-ups. He reported that Kamiki Yūhaku had gone off on his own, and the higher-ups brought in several specialists to investigate relentlessly. At last, they found traces of what had happened.

That moment of impulse gave the higher-ups leverage over him. They used it to threaten Kamiki Yūhaku, demanding that he use his prophecies to eliminate outliers who would appear in the future, but he refused.

"You'll be classified as a Curse User."

"You'll have to leave Jujutsu High, and you may even become an enemy of Jujutsu Sorcerers."

"Obey orders or keep being stubborn. The choice is yours."

At the time, Kamiki Yūhaku had truly been fed up. He kept regretting that he had ever acted, and in the end, he could only stall by asking the higher-ups to give him time to consider it.

In the end, the higher-ups received no answer from Kamiki Yūhaku, and Kamiki Yūhaku found no solution.

Because he died.

On that night, he lost everything.

Even when he opened his eyes again as a Special Grade Cursed Spirit, he still had nothing.

Kamiki Yūhaku stood on an overpass, the wind blowing against his face with a slight chill. Of course, even though he was now a Cursed Spirit, he could still feel nature.

"Hey!"

Kamiki Yūhaku heard someone calling him.

He turned around, and the next moment, he saw Mahito standing there with a strangely shaped Cursed Spirit.

He was very short, with a head shaped like a volcano and only one eye, but at least his appearance was fairly proportionate.

"We finally found you." Mahito and the other Cursed Spirit walked over. "This is Jogo, the companion I told you about."

Kamiki Yūhaku looked at him, then smiled after a moment. "Hello."

"The Cursed Spirit who was imprisoned by Jujutsu Society all that time? I heard you fought Geto?" Jogo walked over and looked at Kamiki Yūhaku. "Want to join us?"

"No!" Kamiki Yūhaku acted like a sulking child, even crossing his arms in a big X in front of him. "Suguru Geto wants to seal me and use me as his tool. I hate him, and I'll never work with him. Unless you drive him away, I'm not going back with you."

Jogo and Mahito: ...

Like a little brat.

"Besides, I still have someone to look for out here." Kamiki Yūhaku sat on the overpass, swinging his legs. Then he pulled an apple out of somewhere and bit into it with a crisp crunch.

Mahito crouched beside him curiously. "Are you still looking for that person?"

"Yes."