Chapter 40

"Oh, I see!"

"Anyway, let's use this to test whether that boy can see cursed spirits." Kiyotaka Ijichi turned around and took the Fly Head out of its cage. When he turned back, he found that there was no one behind him.

Kiyotaka Ijichi blinked and looked around at the empty surroundings. "Where did he go?"

Meanwhile, Yuji Itadori stood outside a fruit shop with his hands in his pockets. He crouched down and pointed at the apples on the ground. "I'd like some apples. Two will do."

"Sure."

The shopkeeper cheerfully handed him the apples. After paying, Yuji Itadori looked at them, then tucked them into his pockets. He patted his pockets as though satisfied and turned to head back. Just as he was about to return to Kiyotaka Ijichi, he suddenly spotted someone sitting on the overpass.

"Whoa! There he is!"

Yuji Itadori sprinted up the overpass. Hearing him approach, Kamiki Yūhaku turned and saw the boy from Jujutsu High.

"Good morning!"

"Hmm, are you a student at Jujutsu High?" Kamiki Yūhaku gazed at him, his dark green eyes calm. A moment later, he smiled. "Itadori, Yuji?"

"That's right."

Yuji Itadori sat down beside Kamiki Yūhaku, seemingly unconcerned that he was a Special Grade Cursed Spirit.

"Why are you sitting here?"

"Because I wanted to." Kamiki Yūhaku answered gently. "Besides, don't you think you can see a lot from here?"

"Huh?" Yuji Itadori looked out over the edge. An important road ran beneath the overpass, crowded with cars. People walked along the sidewalks in a steady stream, and the shopping streets on either side called out to customers. It looked especially busy.

Yuji Itadori nodded seriously. "You're right! There are lots of people down there, but this is a busy area, so that's normal."

Kamiki Yūhaku leaned against a pillar. "My cursed technique is Prophecy. I can foresee things too, but there's a condition for activating it: I have to see people." Kamiki Yūhaku watched the people coming and going below. "The more people there are, the clearer the future I can see."

"That sounds hard." Yuji Itadori looked at the dense crowd passing below.

"It's not hard at all," Kamiki Yūhaku said with a smile. "I am a cursed spirit with the Prophecy technique, after all."

Yuji Itadori blinked and looked at Kamiki Yūhaku. "Then what do you think is the hardest thing? I mean, everyone has something they find hard to do, right?"

"Being human is the hardest thing."

"Huh?"

"It's nothing." Kamiki Yūhaku looked at Yuji Itadori, then pointed at his bulging pockets. "What do you have in there?"

"Oh, these!" Yuji Itadori hurriedly pulled the apples out of his pockets. There were exactly two. He compared them, then pressed the bigger one into Kamiki Yūhaku's hand.

"I just bought them, because I remembered you seemed to really like apples when I met you." Yuji Itadori sighed. "I heard you were around here before I came, so I thought we might run into each other and bought them in advance. And sure enough, we did."

"Try it! The shopkeeper said they were really good!"

Kamiki Yūhaku looked at Yuji Itadori. After a moment, he nodded, then raised the apple to his mouth and took a bite.

The apple was fresh and crisp, and it made a delicious sound when he bit into it. Juice immediately filled his mouth. Kamiki Yūhaku chewed the flesh, then smiled.

"Thank you." Kamiki Yūhaku thanked him like a human would. "It's delicious."

"That's great. Seeing you eat an apple before made me really want one too, and now I finally get to have one." Yuji Itadori took a bite of his own apple.

The next moment, Yuji Itadori's expression changed.

He chewed the flesh in his mouth, then forced a smile. "Wow, it's so sweet."

"Mm." Kamiki Yūhaku gazed calmly at the sky and replied gently, "Very sweet."

Yuji Itadori lowered his head and stared at the apple in his hand, with one bite taken out of it. Suddenly, he didn't know what to say.

The fruit seller had lied to him. The apple didn't taste good at all. It looked fresh and was full of juice, but it wasn't sweet in the slightest. It was as sour as if it had just formed on the tree, with a bitter edge. A few more bites seemed enough to set his teeth on edge, which was why the shopkeeper had looked so happy when he sold the apples.

But Kamiki Yūhaku had said the apple was sweet and delicious.

Yuji Itadori didn't know whether cursed spirits had a sense of taste, or whether they could eat human food.

All he knew was that the Special Grade Cursed Spirit before him liked something he couldn't experience at all, like a thin spiderweb.

Deceiving others, and deceiving himself.

Chapter 40

Yuji Itadori left after finishing his apple. He seemed to want to say something before he went, but in the end, he said nothing.

He soon disappeared into the crowd. After all, his physical abilities really were impressive, and he could leave in minutes whenever he wanted.

Kamiki Yūhaku actually knew what Yuji Itadori had come here for. Mahito's experiments were becoming increasingly brazen. Every day, he transformed humans into monsters and took them away, acting with utter abandon. He even wanted to draw in a jujutsu sorcerer or two to test the differences between sorcerers and ordinary humans.

Cursed spirits were probably all like Mahito, with an almost childlike cruelty. They cared nothing for life and did whatever they wanted. To them, humans were mosquito blood, weeds they could trample at will.

Kamiki Yūhaku really didn't want to become like that.

"There'll probably be a fight between jujutsu sorcerers and cursed spirits here later." Kamiki Yūhaku stretched. "I'd better leave for now."

He stood and turned to leave. Just then, a woman carrying a bag of groceries passed in front of him. Kamiki Yūhaku could see a person's future ten minutes ahead, so he saw the woman standing by the road, on the steps, while Yuji Itadori stood with the boy he had met before.

Kamiki Yūhaku tilted his head slightly. "Huh? Are they together now?"

A little curious, he followed her. Just then, Kamiki Yūhaku turned his head slightly and looked at the sky.

If he was looking at the sky now, then what he should see ten minutes later was a bridge. On the bridge stood a familiar man, smiling at Yuji Itadori and Junpei Yoshino. Kamiki Yūhaku recognized the man.

Curse User: Suguru Geto.

The next moment, Kamiki Yūhaku turned abruptly, intending to go to the place where he had seen Suguru Geto in the future.

Before leaving, he might as well play a little with the man who was hostile to him.

After all, even hatred was an emotion unique to humans.

He reached the spot five minutes later and stood there calmly. Before long, someone approached from a distance. He wore a black cloak with a broad collar that covered his chin, but the stitches on his forehead were plain to see, as though he had done his makeup to look like Mahito.

The last time they met, Suguru Geto had covered himself up too thoroughly. This was the first time Kamiki Yūhaku had seen the stitches on his forehead.

A scar from an injury?

Suguru Geto clearly noticed him too. He stopped and clicked his tongue. "You again."

"It looks like we're bound by fate." Kamiki Yūhaku smiled as he spoke, as though greeting an old friend. "Don't you think so, Geto?"

"Don't address me like that." Suguru Geto looked disgusted. "What are you doing, showing up here all of a sudden?"

"My foresight showed me you'd be here, so I thought it would be a shame not to come and run into you." Kamiki Yūhaku sighed. "But you don't seem very happy. Cheer up a little. Look, I even came all this way to wait for you."

Suguru Geto frowned. "I don't find the fact that you came here to wait for me interesting."

"Is that so?" Kamiki Yūhaku smiled and changed the subject. "Then we could chat. For example, could you tell me when the injury on your forehead appeared?"

"After all, I can only see the future, not the past, so I'm a little curious." Kamiki Yūhaku watched him. "It's a good topic of conversation."

But Suguru Geto didn't think it was a good topic of conversation.

He had a clear understanding of himself, and it wasn't as though he knew nothing about Kamiki Yūhaku either.

Last time, he had believed that Kamiki Yūhaku was a cursed spirit who posed no threat and had developed killing intent toward him. Even Suguru Geto couldn't understand why a Special Grade Cursed Spirit would be locked up for thirty years unless he posed no threat. But it seemed he had been wrong: this fellow really was hiding his strength.

Kamiki Yūhaku had refused to cooperate with him and, as a result, refused to join the cursed spirits' side. That had long since made it clear that Kamiki Yūhaku hated him for his earlier attack.

So he didn't believe Kamiki Yūhaku had come this time to "chat with him."

At that thought, Suguru Geto released his cursed energy.

"It looks like we'll have to fight if I want to get past you."

"Huh?" Kamiki Yūhaku looked a little surprised. "I wasn't planning to fight you..."

But in any case, that was how things ended up. A Window even observed the battle between the Special Grade Cursed Spirit and the Special Grade Curse User, but by the time the reinforcements dispatched by Jujutsu Society arrived, there was no trace of either the Curse User or the Special Grade Cursed Spirit. Only the marks of the battle remained.

Meanwhile, Suguru Geto finally made it to where Mahito was.

Recovering from his distorted soul, Mahito looked at the belated Suguru Geto. At that moment, Suguru Geto looked little better than him. Since Mahito had recovered, Geto looked especially battered by comparison.

"Did you get into a fight with someone, Geto?"

"You guessed right." Suguru Geto took off his coat, half of it blasted to shreds, and tossed it to the ground. "I ran into Kamiki Yūhaku."

"Oh! He still hates you, huh?" Mahito said lazily. "You've got some nerve, though, trying to manipulate a Special Grade Cursed Spirit. And you actually believed he had no fighting ability at all."