A Curse for Bitter Summer

"Shoko-sensei—! Save me—! I'm dying, I'm really going to die—!"

Tokyo Jujutsu High, infirmary.

The air, which should have been quiet and solemn, was now thoroughly torn apart by a miserable, piercing howl. Mizuki Makoto, the "Grade 3 sorcerer" who had smashed through a barrier with his skeletal right arm half an hour ago, was currently wrapped from head to toe in thick bandages, looking exactly like a freshly unearthed mummy.

But this mummy possessed none of the serenity of the dead. Instead, in an incredibly bizarre pose, he clung desperately to Shoko Ieiri's thigh like a huge, wriggling maggot.

"Waaah! Shoko, look at my hand! The flesh is all gone! There's only bone left! Will I be too weak to even hold chopsticks and eat instant noodles from now on? Am I going to become a useless cripple who can only stay alive on a ventilator?"

While bawling his eyes out, Mizuki Makoto rubbed his bandaged face desperately against the hem of Shoko's white coat. If one ignored the clear-eyed mercenary calculation lurking deep in his gaze, his pitiful act could genuinely be called heart-wrenching.

"Let go."

Shoko Ieiri sat in her swivel chair with an unlit cigarette between her lips, the dark circles under her eyes twice as deep as usual. She lowered her eyes to look at the creature "maliciously acting cute" by her feet, her exhausted expression clearly saying, Why didn't I just let Satoru bury you in the first place?

"I won't! Not unless you give me six months of paid sick leave! And a premium nutrition allowance too! The cursed energy residue from that special-grade cursed womb has definitely been damaging my brain cells. Hurry up and look, Shoko-sensei—don't my eyes seem clearer now? Stupider, even?"

Mizuki Makoto raised his head and tried his best to widen those eyes full of "please support me," attempting to launch an attack called Weakling's Cutesy Attack.

"Mizuki Makoto, let me remind you of something." Expressionless, Shoko Ieiri reached out with two fingers, precisely pinched his ear, and yanked it sharply upward. "Your hand has already been completely regenerated with Reverse Cursed Technique. As for this 'brain cell damage' you mentioned, according to my diagnosis, that's probably an innate intellectual defect. Reverse Cursed Technique can't cure terminal stupidity."

"Ow, ow, ow, ow! It's going to tear off! My ear's going to fall off!"

Mizuki Makoto let out a pig-slaughtering shriek, but his grip around her thigh only tightened. "Shoko-onee-san! Lady Shoko! Your gentle fingers are practically a miracle! If you said the word, I'd even wash Gojo-sensei's underwear for you... no, forget washing his underwear. That's too inhumane. Just give me triple compensation instead!"

"That scumbag was right." Shoko Ieiri sighed and finally gave up struggling, letting this "maggot" hang from her leg. "You really have no class at all as a jujutsu sorcerer. Honestly, when I saw that arm of yours with the bone exposed, I thought you might finally not be Scumbag Number Three anymore. But apparently..."

"Can class be exchanged for triple pay? Or a tablet subscription?"

Mizuki Makoto sniffled loudly. "I got this badly hurt protecting Tokyo Jujutsu High's important property—namely, myself! That stitched-up freak was terrifying!"

"Enough with the act." Shoko Ieiri rubbed her temples hard and smacked a report onto Mizuki Makoto's bandage-wrapped head. "Satoru has already investigated it. It was Suguru Geto's... the curse user Suguru Geto's handiwork."

At the name "Suguru Geto," Mizuki Makoto's wriggling paused for an imperceptible 0.1 seconds before he immediately started crying even louder.

"Sensei, Suguru Geto did this to me! It was a trap personally laid by Gojo-sensei's 'one of only two best friends'! If I hadn't needed to deal with the special-grade cursed womb he left behind, would I have ended up so... exposed?"

As he spoke, he seized the opportunity to tighten his hold on her thigh. His humble tone carried a trace of barely concealed menace.

"When I revealed my Limitless technique to you, you still doubted me. But now I've paid a blood tax for that 'youth' of yours! Shoko-sensei, can you really bear to watch a child crippled for justice—and money—withering away in agony from a lack of material? Can you really stand letting that bastard Suguru Geto laugh in the shadows while I can't even find material to write a novel slandering him?"

The hand holding Shoko Ieiri's cigarette trembled slightly.

She looked down at the utterly shameless boy by her feet. Normally, she would have only thought he was, like those two scumbags, irredeemable human trash. But just earlier, when she had stitched up Mizuki Makoto's wounds herself, she had indeed felt a familiar stubbornness within those lingering cursed energy fluctuations.

Suguru, you scumbag, you already...

"...Enough acting. You got tears all over my socks."

Shoko sighed heavily and finally gave up on kicking the "maggot" away. She remembered the proposal Mizuki Makoto had made a week ago—the unethical plan to dismantle the strongest through rumors.

"Let go and get me a cup of coffee. Two sugar cubes. If you don't stir it evenly, go lie down in the incinerator yourself."

"Right away! Sit tight, Editor-in-Chief!"

Mizuki Makoto flipped himself upright with startling agility, showing none of the dejected, wriggling-maggot demeanor from before. Though still covered in bandages, he moved as nimbly as a monkey that had just stolen a banana. Boiling water, grinding beans, lighting a cigarette, massaging shoulders—he flowed through the full five-star "exploitation" service routine, determined to restore Shoko's old queenly feeling from when Nanami and Haibara had practically worshipped her at Jujutsu High.

Beneath that groveling facade, Mizuki Makoto's mind was racing.

This was so that his Limitless technique could truly be put to use—not merely as a pure fantasy for drawing doujinshi. Rather, he would weave rumors out of real material, mislead the public's perception, and use the "curse" of lies to steal genuine "power."

"Makoto-kun, I don't want to see you turn those memories into pure trash." Shoko narrowed her eyes, enjoying the pressure on her shoulders. "You'll submit the manuscript to me for review first. That's our Binding Vow. If you dare to half-ass it, the backlash from the Binding Vow will make you unable to draw even stick figures for the rest of your life."

"Don't worry, Shoko-sensei." Mizuki Makoto leaned close to her ear, his eyes gleaming like a conspirator's. "This time, I'm not drawing doujinshi. I'm writing a novel. I'll use the most delicate prose to knead those real details into the most absurdly tortured romance. I've even thought of the title—Bitter Summer."

Words were the medium he had carefully selected. In this prejudice-filled jujutsu world, no one would imagine that a youth whose mind was filled all day with "white-stocking shrine maidens," and whose aesthetic standards were exceptionally upright, was secretly a master of angst capable of writing delicate male romance. To maximize his technique's feedback, he had endured the nauseating churn in his stomach and spent days and nights crawling through women-oriented sites with bizarre art styles. In those swamps filled with pink bubbles and indescribable writing, he had forcibly honed a style of male romance literature so delicate and emotionally twisted that even professional fujoshi would blush after reading it.

With that blind spot in people's perceptions, even if Gojo Satoru discovered it someday, his first suspicion would be that Shoko Ieiri had finally been crushed by this godforsaken life and developed a creative obsession!

"That day... the popsicle Suguru bought."

Shoko Ieiri slowly spoke through the steam rising from her coffee. Since Mizuki Makoto's flesh and blood had already paid the price, she no longer hesitated. Her voice carried a morbid nostalgia she herself had never noticed.

"Satoru snatched the bigger half, then deliberately dripped melted sugar water onto Suguru's collar. Suguru's expression then wasn't anger. It was an utterly helpless sort of indulgence. He didn't even wipe it off. Instead, he took off Satoru's sunglasses, put them over his own eyes, and said, 'Satoru, you've gotten weaker.'"

"'An indulgent gaze,' 'sugar syrup on the collar,' 'exchanged sunglasses'... Oh ho ho ho! Nice!"

Mizuki Makoto rapidly recorded everything on his tablet, moving so quickly that he nearly left afterimages.

"Shoko-sensei, more, more! Those 'sugar laced with arsenic' details are exactly what readers love! Once Bitter Summer starts serializing on the dark web, not only will I be able to draw power from it, but even Suguru Geto hiding in the shadows might get so furious from this socially fatal gossip that his cursed energy goes haywire!"

"Go create, then." Shoko Ieiri exhaled a ring of smoke, her gaze somewhat unfocused. "Stop getting in my way."

"Understood! I guarantee it'll feel even more real than reality!"

Mizuki Makoto struck a dashing farewell pose at Shoko before vanishing through the infirmary door.

Shoko Ieiri stared at the empty room, her fingertips brushing the warm coffee.

"...Making the false become real?" she murmured. "Turning those two idiots' story into something like this... Makoto-kun, you really are a sinner through and through."

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