Tokyo, Jujutsu High, afternoon.
Cicadas buzzed noisily in the dense woods, but the still air was filled with an oppressive force enough to make any Jujutsu Sorcerer break out in a cold sweat.
It was the physical manifestation of humanity's deepest fears.
Yet in this environment, Mizuki Makoto was hiding around the corner of an old school building, his expression solemn as his fingers flew across a tablet.
"The pupils need to be a little cooler... Yes, like the frozen waters of Lake Baikal. That icy blue that could draw in a person's very soul—that's the essence. The vermilion beauty mark on her forehead should be rounder, too. This collision between 'divinity' and 'the Fallen'—that's art..."
Mizuki Makoto muttered to himself, his gaze so fervent it looked like he might burn through the screen.
On the screen stood a woman with snow-white hair and eyes like blue sapphires, bowing slightly.
She wore Gojo Satoru's signature arrogant smile, but her outfit had been replaced with an extremely daring nun's habit.
She bowed slightly, making a one-handed salute that was intensely provocative. The black gauze shrine maiden outfit, originally a symbol of holiness, had been given a plunging neckline and a high slit by Mizuki Makoto's mischievous hand, boldly showing off her delicate collarbones, voluptuous curves, and a pair of legs so long and slender in their sheer white stockings that they seemed almost illogical.
The final, perfect touch was the vermilion dot on her forehead. Against the cool tones of icy blue and snow white, it stood out, lending her a hint of allure and danger.
It was a masterpiece that perfectly blended "divinity" and "seduction." The arrogant, self-assured smile at the corner of her mouth was practically taunting the world: Even dressed like this, no one in this world could lay a finger on me.
This was Mizuki Makoto's masterpiece—Gojo Mai: Saintess Arc.
"Perfect."
Mizuki Makoto closed the tablet with satisfaction and let out a long breath.
Just then, a ghostly voice sounded behind his ear without warning:
"My, Makoto-kun. I know I'm handsome, but drawing me like this... Hmm, as an 'older sister'? And aren't the clothes a little too skimpy?"
Every hair on Mizuki Makoto's body stood on end.
He didn't need to turn around. Only one person in all of Japan possessed that sweet, abyssal surge of Cursed Energy, too terrifying to look at directly.
He stiffly turned around and saw a tall man in a black Jujutsu High uniform, blindfolded and crouched on the wall. He held a bag of freshly bought Kikufuku and gazed down at him with interest.
"G-Gojo... sensei." Mizuki Makoto's mouth twitched as he tried to discreetly hide the tablet behind his back.
"Don't bother hiding it. The Six Eyes can see more than you think."
Gojo Satoru blinked into existence in front of him and casually took the tablet. He lowered one corner of his blindfold, and the figure of "Gojo Mai" was reflected in those eyes that could see through everything.
The air seemed to freeze in that instant.
Mizuki Makoto was already calculating how long it would take to dig a hole in the woods behind Jujutsu High and bury himself in it.
"Makoto-kun." Gojo Satoru suddenly stopped smiling, his voice turning a little somber.
Mizuki Makoto's heart sank. "Sensei, I can explain. It's actually a form of performance art..."
"No." Gojo Satoru lifted his head, a dangerous, excited light glimmering in his icy blue eyes. "I wanted to ask why this version of 'me' isn't holding my favorite limited-edition daifuku. Wouldn't an older sister character be better with that kind of gap moe? And the 'thickness' you gave Miss Mai here—is it... 30D? Shoko would be so jealous if she saw this, wouldn't she? And that one-handed salute—is it based on how I looked at work yesterday?"
Mizuki Makoto: "...Huh?"
"Also, if you lifted the lines of her waist by another two centimeters, she'd feel even more 'divine.'"
"Makoto-kun, you're good at drawing, but your understanding of the 'strongest' is still shallow. Her gaze is arrogant enough, but it's missing some of that 'I alone stand supreme in heaven and earth' spirit."
Gojo Satoru pointed at the drawing, spouting nonsense with a straight face. "And you need to capture that feeling of—if one day I accidentally get cut in half, I'd still praise my opponent in my final moments for being strong, while regretting that I couldn't let him enjoy himself. That kind of open-mindedness."
Mizuki Makoto was utterly bewildered. "...Sensei, maybe you shouldn't go around setting up such bizarre death flags?"
His teacher really had fried his brain with Limitless, hadn't he?
"Sensei, the point isn't the daifuku. I'm drawing you as a woman!" Mizuki Makoto couldn't help blurting out. "Shouldn't you lock me in the detention room or blast me into a shooting star with Hollow Technique?"
Gojo Satoru tossed the tablet back to him and put his blindfold back on, a playful smile curling at the corner of his mouth.
"Why would I be angry? It's pretty interesting."
He patted Mizuki Makoto on the shoulder, hitting him hard enough to nearly send the protagonist soaring into the sky.
"Compared to the boring rumors those Rotten Oranges in the higher-ups make up, I like Makoto-kun's 'sincere' work better. But..."
Gojo Satoru's form began to blur in the air, the prelude to a teleport.
"Since you used my face as a model, I'll be looking forward to tomorrow's promotion test. If you lose, I'll print out this picture and put it on the noticeboard by the school gate, with the caption: 'Mizuki Makoto's Fetish Made Public.'"
"...You're the real demon here, Gojo-sensei!"
Watching Gojo Satoru's back begin to disappear, Mizuki Makoto suddenly seemed to remember something. He jumped up and shook his fist at the air, shouting:
"And another thing, sensei! That's blatant slander! It's defamation! You're destroying the reputation of an honest high school student!"
Gojo Satoru's form paused in midair. He tilted his head, seeming quite interested in hearing this "little monkey's" last words.
"Oh? What part was slander?"
"My type is obviously mature, elegant older women like Mei Mei!"
Mizuki Makoto stood righteously with his hands on his hips, his voice loud enough to startle the cicadas in the trees. "Someone like you, who has nothing but your looks and strength, whose awful personality keeps all of Jujutsu Society awake at night, and who even steals little kids' Kikufuku, is completely outside my hunting range!"
Mizuki Makoto looked righteous. "Do you know what people outside say about you? 'A white-haired cat with a perfect everything-except-his-personality.' Who'd want to date a cat that does nothing but wreck the house every day and steal his students' sweets? Please don't use your cheap imagination to judge my refined taste!"
The air fell silent for three seconds.
Gojo Satoru, who had already been about to teleport away, twitched visibly at the corner of his eye. He lowered his blindfold, his icy blue Six Eyes scrutinizing this audacious student as though trying to figure out if a Cursed Spirit had kicked his brain.
"...A woman like Mei Mei, who's always got her eyes on money?"
Gojo Satoru put his blindfold back on and gave a soft, inscrutable chuckle. "Makoto-kun, your taste is... unexpectedly 'expensive' and dangerous. I'll pass your words on to her exactly as you said them. I'll also ask if she'd be willing to charge you a little 'compensation for reputational damage' over that drawing."
"Hey! There's no need to do that, sensei!"
Whoosh.
Gojo Satoru vanished completely.
Mizuki Makoto slumped against the wall, utterly drained, and wiped the cold sweat from his forehead.
Only after he was sure the oppressive Cursed Energy had completely faded did he let out a long breath. His terrified expression instantly shifted into a scheming grin that said everything was going according to plan.
Those Rotten Oranges in Jujutsu Headquarters had no idea what kind of hellish creature the student they'd labeled "of academic interest only" in his file really was.
[Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical College · Student Record] • Name: Mizuki Makoto • Year of Enrollment: 2017 • Grade: Grade 3 Sorcerer (provisional) • Innate Cursed Technique: [Echo Mimicry] • Technique Summary: By observing with his eyes and sensing Cursed Energy, he can replicate another person's Cursed Technique for a short time. • Evaluation and Drawbacks: Because of its extremely poor compatibility, copied moves usually have only 1%–50% of the original's power, and appear as unstable blue visual static. It has been deemed "a shoddy tribute of purely ornamental value." The student is extremely dissatisfied with this evaluation and claims that the upper limit of his Cursed Technique depends on his "spiritual resonance" with the subject.
"'A shoddy tribute of purely ornamental value'... Heh, that's so gentle it almost makes me want to cry."
Mizuki Makoto muttered self-deprecatingly, his fingertips lightly rubbing the edge of his tablet.
His innate Cursed Technique was a taboo that could give all the higher-ups in Jujutsu Society heart attacks.
Its name was—[Limitless Cognitive Parasite].
Unlike the elegant and sacred bloodline gift passed down through the Gojo Clan for a thousand years, Mizuki Makoto's [Limitless] was fundamentally a form of "cognitive theft."
The name had nothing to do with space. It referred to the condition for activating the technique's feedback: having absolutely no moral limits.
As long as the "rumors" Mizuki Makoto made up caused his audience to develop a distorted perception, he could share power from his target. The strength of the feedback strictly followed three nearly perverse variables:
1. [Degree of Deviation from the Facts]: The greater the difference between the lie and the truth, the stronger the feedback. (For example, spreading a rumor that Gojo Satoru was gay yielded a hundred times more than claiming he liked salty tofu pudding.)
2. [Target's Strength]: The higher the target's Cursed Energy level, the higher the upper limit of the power he could share.
3. [Public Acceptance]: The more people who believed the rumor, and the more deeply they believed it, the closer the shared power came to the real thing.
Put simply, the further Mizuki Makoto's "rumor" strayed from the truth, the more widely it was accepted—for instance, if he could make all of Jujutsu Society, including Gojo Satoru himself, sincerely believe that Gojo Satoru was actually his, Mizuki Makoto's, own son, then he could mince Sukuna into filling right there on the spot.
But for now, he was still at the starting stage of "petty theft gets you executed." To stay alive, he had to wrap this malicious Cursed Technique in a seemingly harmless shell called [Echo Mimicry].
This tightrope act was more thrilling than playing "Good Days" while Suguru Geto lay dying in front of Gojo Satoru.
What could he do? The Cursed Technique he'd gotten wasn't some hot-blooded hero's power. It was The Story of How I Became the Strongest by Spreading Rumors.
Gojo Satoru's laughing happily now, but if he ever finds out what I'm doing—and what I'm planning to do... he'll probably give me a literal Domain Expansion and exorcise me in the physical sense.
At the very moment Gojo Satoru accepted it as true, the Cursed Technique inside Mizuki Makoto burst into a greedier pull than ever before.
[Technique Assessment (Formula Logic):] • [Degree of Deviation]: Turn the strongest man of the era into ■■. Assessment: Extreme! • [Target's Strength]: Special-Grade Sorcerer (Gojo Satoru). Assessment: Highest level! • [Public Acceptance]: Gojo Satoru himself mistakenly thought, "This kid really captured the likeness and got the details right." Assessment: Extremely slight.
Tsk, maybe next time I should draw an oh-ho-ho Gojo Mai, or a ■■■ Gojo Mai—
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