Idle Death Gamble

"Kin-chan!!!! They came for you!!!"

At Kirara Hoshi's words, the atmosphere between Itadori and Kinji Hakari instantly dropped to freezing point.

"Itadori, buddy, let me ask you something..."

Another slash swept through the sheet-metal room, this time cutting one of the surveillance cameras clean in half.

"Just what did I ever do to piss you two off?"

"No—I, I..."

Itadori flashed aside to dodge the wineglass hurled at him. Then Kinji Hakari's curse-energy-infused foot slammed into him, sending Itadori flying and punching a massive hole through the monitor console as well.

"Fushiguro, what the hell are you doing?!"

Itadori rolled across the ground several times before getting back on his feet and looking toward Fushiguro—who was currently facing off against Kirara Hoshi.

"Long story short, I ran into Kirara Hoshi the moment I came out of the underground garage!"

"How do you know my name?!"

With a thunderous crash and the howl of tearing air, the small room's door was kicked violently toward Fushiguro. The hand sign in Fushiguro's hands had not yet been released as he raised one hand toward the flying door.

"Divine Dog!"

Two black curse-energy slashes split the door in half—though they also took a considerable toll on Fushiguro.

"Itadori!! Plan B!!!"

"Yeah!!"

Plan B? What the hell were they muttering about? That upperclassman ran an underground fight club. If they just had a good, passionate brawl, he should be willing to listen properly.

That had been Itadori's proposed plan, and they had originally decided against using it. All they needed was to win Kinji Hakari's favor, gradually bring up the Culling Game, then drop the bomb that Satoru Gojo had been sealed away, along with the news that the idiotic higher-ups had already been wiped out.

But judging by the current situation, the one with the problem was him instead.

"You guys here to challenge my place? I remember cleaning out every underground fight club around here—are you some new upstarts? Just you two brats?"

Kinji Hakari casually flung off his vest, then flipped out onto the road and swept his gaze over the two before him.

The black-haired kid used a slashing-type technique. He looked familiar, but I don't know him—the pink-haired kid's technique is unknown, but judging from the amount of curse energy he's showing as he gets ready to fight, he's at least a semi-grade 1 sorcerer.

Two semi-grade 1 sorcerers... Could they be from Jujutsu High?

Kinji Hakari looked toward Kirara Hoshi and gave a subtle signal with his eyes. Kirara Hoshi nodded.

"We—we came to find you."

Fushiguro spoke first. They could talk for now—at most, the curse energy in his body could only activate Divine Dog another ten times. He needed to use this conversation to recover his own curse energy.

"That much is obvious. Which fight club are you from? Did one of the guys I shut down send you?"

"We—we're from a Tokyo underground fight club!"

Fushiguro whipped his head around to stare at Itadori in disbelief, while Kinji Hakari let out a long sigh.

"You're from Jujutsu High?"

"Huh? How did you know?"

"Idiot!! He didn't know!!!"

Seeing the expression of just as I thought on Kinji Hakari's face, along with Itadori's belated look of realizing he had been tricked, Fushiguro could only roar.

"What the hell? So after all this, the school sent people to catch us—didn't they already suspend me? Do they really have to drive us into a corner?"

"Wait, we weren't sent by the school!!"

"Who the hell would believe that?!!!"

As he spoke, Kinji Hakari took several steps forward—then swiftly formed a hand sign.

"Domain Expansion!"

With the index finger and thumb of one hand forming a ring above, the other hand held flat beneath it, his hands formed a circle before his chest. Then the scenery before the two changed in an instant—as though they had entered a transparent train speeding at full force, the surrounding landscape stretched and blurred away.

"Idle Death Gamble!"

A pure white space instantly enveloped them. Megumi Fushiguro immediately formed a hand sign as well—but his severely depleted curse energy made it impossible for him to deploy a Domain.

As the sound of a train pulling into the station rang out, the rules of Idle Death Gamble were force-fed into Itadori and Fushiguro's minds within 0.1 seconds, briefly causing their brains to shut down.

"Pachinko?!"

Itadori recovered first—after quickly reviewing the rules in his mind, Kinji Hakari's sandbag-sized fist was already before his eyes—

BOOM!

Itadori was sent flying backward and crashed into the train that had pulled into the station, while Kinji Hakari kicked Fushiguro away beside him.

While we were reading the rules, he had already made a draw?

Having read the rules, Itadori naturally understood that the current scene was the process of drawing a reward.

As Itadori struggled to rise inside the train, his earpiece lit up with Fushiguro's voice.

"My curse energy is too low. I need to lie down for a while—buy me some time."

"Oh!"

Having agreed, Itadori flashed aside, dodging the small steel ball infused with cursed energy that Hakari had fired at him.

As the small steel ball from the second bet turned into a red reserve ball, the animation slowly began to play. With the male lead, Yuhui Yamaguchi, making his appearance, Hakari leaped several times and vaulted into the train car—

"So it's Private Railway Pure Love Train!? I'd heard there was a machine like this, but I'd never actually played it."

Itadori raised an arm to block Hakari's punch, then closed in and drove an elbow into him, knocking him back. Hakari, sent retreating by the blow, looked—

"You're still underage, aren't you? Would they even let you into a pachinko parlor?"

"You just need to fake it, right? Hey! That job where you can make 1 million by working an hour a day... it isn't gambling, is it?"

"Who knows?"

The two traded punches aboard the "packed" train. As Itadori dodged, he searched for chances to counterattack—so far, Hakari's attacks were still within a manageable range, but the current situation was completely unfavorable for Itadori.

As two number fives appeared behind Hakari, Itadori confirmed that the train was now in Seat-Grab Commuter Reach—

"Even if you don't hit the jackpot, this domain is still pretty bad for us!"

"Isn't that just what domains are like!"

Hakari launched himself into a flying kick, sending Itadori flying out of this car and into another. Then he got back up and ran toward the car where Itadori was.

Having taken the heavy blow, Itadori barely pushed himself up from the floor. Then he saw Yuhui Yamaguchi before him, hanging his head in dejection.

"Hakari-senpai! Looks like you didn't win this time!"

Stepping over the floor that was gradually turning white, Itadori charged at Hakari. Cursed energy slowly gathered around his right hand.

"Black Flash!"

With the eruption of black lightning, Itadori's fist blasted Hakari away—while also shattering the red train door that had appeared.