Sendai City.
It was about a three-hour Shinkansen ride from Tokyo, a relatively inland region.
Its local specialties were...
Smack.
—I wasn't interested.
Kana Shizumi closed the travel guide in front of him. As the announcement drew nearer, he let out a soft breath and rose to his feet.
They were about to reach their destination. Before then, he needed to check his luggage so he would not leave anything on the train... though more importantly, he needed to reconsider the purpose of this trip.
To be frank.
He had come for Itadori.
Yuji Itadori—the vessel of Sukuna, the youngest of the Death Paintings, the proponent of gear theory, the ultimate murderer of Shibuya(?), the man who would later become the Tiger Heavenly Emperor.
In the sequel set sixty-eight years after the original story, he had become famous for freely landing Black Flashes at will, firing a Piercing Blood with automatic tracking, and unleashing a Dismantle with a range of roughly seven thousand meters.
But such an incredible character was currently just an ordinary high school...
No.
Wait, wait, wait.
He did not seem all that ordinary, did he?
Even without eating Sukuna's Fingers in the original story, the kid could display physical abilities far beyond human limits... he was practically an upgraded dark-skinned athletic student.
Considering that Itadori had been personally given birth to by Kenjaku and tampered with, there was probably more to the strength of his body.
Kana Shizumi had come here specifically to verify a suspicion.
—Before Itadori came into contact with Sukuna's Fingers, Kenjaku should have merely been keeping watch over him.
By not actively provoking Itadori, Kenjaku probably wanted to continue observing him on one hand, while avoiding alerting anyone on the other.
After all, Itadori's grandfather was still alive.
Wasuke Itadori!
Surely a daughter-in-law meeting her father-in-law again would feel at least a little awkward!
And this old man was an even more heavyweight figure. Though the original story had not shown him possessing any sorcerer talent, jjxx had added a "Sukuna's brother" patch to him during the post-sale service.
That directly caused the later Cursed Continent to gradually evolve from a conflict between the righteous and the wicked into a story about the younger generation bringing people along to beat up their revived great-uncle...
Not only could Wasuke Itadori see through Kenjaku's scheme, he had also made the heavyweight declaration, "You must die surrounded by others."
In the sequel, Itadori said he could still live for several hundred years. We therefore had reason to believe that this was probably a Binding Vow Grandpa Wasuke Itadori had established with his life...
You are not allowed to die unless people are surrounding you!
Of course, all of that was just joking for now. Judging from the current situation, Wasuke Itadori probably did have something extraordinary about him...
Though Kana Shizumi wanted to take the opportunity to fleece him for something, he had to think his actions through and stay within his limits.
If he accidentally offended Kenjaku and made that guy "unhappy"... motherly love? Kenjaku would directly pull an energy-recovery move on him!
So after weighing it up, Kana Shizumi gave up on the idea of contacting Wasuke Itadori.
It was better to focus on Yuji.
So how was he supposed to find this outstanding man? Kana Shizumi did not have any system assistance, and finding someone in a place like this was not exactly convenient.
Kana Shizumi calmly pulled out his phone and opened Google Maps.
Sugisawa Third High School, Miyagi Prefecture.
This was the good thing about remembering the original story... You had to go to school, right? If he waited there, could he really fail to catch him?!
Following the map's directions, Kana Shizumi soon set off. He found the area near his destination at around eleven that night.
Naturally, since it was already so late, the school's club activities had mostly ended as well.
Theoretically, he could only see Yuji the next day.
But... Kana Shizumi had other plans. He stopped at the gate, looked inside for a while, then revealed a subtle expression.
This school itself had something worth noting.
For example...
"The finger hidden inside that louvered box."
Standing where Fushiguro had stood in the original story, Kana Shizumi looked at the old setup before him. He tried opening it and glanced inside.
"..."
A wooden box sat within.
Kana Shizumi took it out and inspected it in his hand.
It felt almost exactly the same as the ones in the Kamo Lineage's Cursed Vault. He opened it and took a glance inside.
Mm~ That half-rotten smell.
The thing really was here.
Rustle, rustle-rustle~
Hearing the strange, faint sounds coming from nearby, Kana Shizumi turned halfway around and cast a glance into the distance.
He could vaguely make out writhing outlines on the school rooftop and in the bushes nearby...
Cursed spirits.
With just a brief sense of them, he could roughly gauge their strength.
"Some guys who could barely reach Grade 2 strength..."
They were a little stronger than mere fodder. If they showed hostility, they could easily kill ordinary people.
They had already reached the level of touching the "supernatural."
"Unlike the collection in the Cursed Vault, this louvered box has no function for concealing its presence... so it has more or less become something like a source of curses, attracting these things here?"
That made sense. And a school was a place full of emotions to begin with. If some young person happened to get dumped or something, that negative emotion would only taste even more "delicious."
As for classifications...
As everyone knew, sorcerers and cursed spirits were rated differently under the grading system.
For example, under normal circumstances, a Grade 2 sorcerer should be able to crush a Grade 1 cursed spirit.
In that regard, fighting above one's grade was not some privilege exclusive to protagonists... though exceptions occasionally existed.
For instance, that mantis which fought Itadori during the original Shibuya Arc. Since it had no cursed technique, it could only be classified as Grade 2 according to the standards.
But its body was quite strong, and it possessed a certain degree of combat intelligence. Its actual strength was probably around Semi-Grade 1...
"So blindly trusting the rating system is not advisable."
After all, Sukuna and the early finger-bearing cursed spirits were both classified as "Special Grade." Could those two really be mentioned in the same breath?
Ahem, back to the point.
—Kana Shizumi had no mission requiring him to exorcise cursed spirits, and there was currently no reason for him to clash with them.
His focus was this finger.
As a link capable of changing the plot, directly taking it away would certainly shift the course of events dramatically!
So what should he do? Should he take it?
Before you continue