Chapter 4: Rebelling Against My Gorgeous Mentor - Jujutsu Kaisen: A Blessing for the Cursed World

Late at night, exactly two o'clock.

Tokyo Metropolitan Jujutsu High, boys' dormitory.

"Phew—"

Mizuki Makoto let out a long breath and locked his door.

To keep Gojo Satoru's unreasonable eyes from suddenly popping out of the ceiling, he casually spread a copy of Secrets of the White-Silk Shrine Maiden across his desk, disguising himself as a wholesome teenager preparing to take off in the middle of the night.

That was called professional dedication. After all, Gojo Satoru's "Six Eyes" could see through the flow of cursed energy, but they could not see through the black heart filled with the urge to deceive, honed by a boy struggling to survive.

He put on anti-static gloves and took out the old computer Shoko had modified under "technical guidance." The signal passed through seven public relay points, made a huge loop through Tokyo, Osaka, London, New York, and Shanghai, then landed precisely on the administrative building's base station at Kyoto Prefectural Curse Technical College.

Normally, someone who had been torn apart by a Special Grade cursed spirit during the day and had only just recovered from severe injuries should have collapsed into bed. But Mizuki Makoto's mind had never felt clearer—sure enough, people did not get tired while doing bad things. This thrill of immorality worked better than any stimulant.

Mizuki Makoto's fingers left afterimages across the keyboard, the crisp tapping sounding like a series of dense incantations.

So-called "Lie" was, in essence, a kind of curse as well. It was born from suspicion, misunderstanding, and malicious amusement between people. And he was the only one in this world who could drink deeply from this absurd curse. As long as the lies he brewed were fragrant enough, the truth of the entire world would obediently get drunk and collapse.

"Real details are the skeleton; outrageous emotions are the flesh. Hehehehehe, Gojo-sensei, are you ready to socially die inside the imaginations of every sorcerer in Japan?"

He slammed down the Enter key.

Pen name: [Rain Falls in Kyoto] Title: Bitter Summer

The signal circled the world through seven physical proxies before landing precisely on the servers of those conservative old mandarins at Kyoto Jujutsu High. For my own safety, Kyoto Jujutsu High, please carry this blame properly.

In this novel, Mizuki Makoto tossed together the fragments Shoko had provided—the sugar stains on a collar, exchanged sunglasses, the sticky afternoon cicada cries—into a grinder called "tragic romance." With prose so melodramatic and depressing that even a dog by the roadside would want to cry after reading it, he rewrote that piece of history:

[...Gojo Satoru finally realized that Limitless could block every attack, but it could not block the silhouette of that man leaving. In the sugar water sliding down his collar, he tasted the curse called "best friend."]

"Blergh—!" After writing that passage, Mizuki Makoto dry-heaved into the trash can first. "Would anyone really believe something with such a thick artificial-sweetener taste? Once I send this out, my own bottom line will probably defect too."

The answer was: everyone was mostly just here for the entertainment, but that "entertainment" itself was a subtle, enduring curse.

In this oppressive, hopeless Jujutsu Society, this "top-secret unofficial history between the strongest jujutsu sorcerer and the strongest curse user" was more thrilling than any Special Grade cursed object.

The dark web forum [Roppongi Eye] instantly exploded:

• [1F: Anonymous Jujutsu Sorcerer]: Holy shit... the writing is insane. I don't think a scumbag like Gojo Satoru could possibly be this devoted, but that "popsicle sugar water" detail... I fucking worked part-time at that shop. Jujutsu High students really did love going there!

• [14F: Anonymous Sorcerer]: Good grief, looking at it this way, those two really were kind of gay-gay back then. I used to think Suguru Geto defected because he lost his mind, but after reading this novel... tch, what is this feeling of "abandoned by the whole world, but the one person I never wanted to abandon me was you"?

• [45F: Anonymous Sorcerer]: It's ridiculous, but with those two scumbags' personalities, if that was the reason, then somehow... damn it, everything makes sense!

• [77F: Anonymous User]: "My sincerest apologies for reading this during my break. Judging by the details mentioned in the article, the author clearly possesses an exceptional understanding of that period.

As for the content... while I believe describing those gentlemen's relationship as a 'tragic romance' displays an extreme lack of professional ethics, I must admit that, given my understanding of Mr. Gojo's warped personality, this 'irreversible regret caused by self-centeredness' makes damned logical sense.

Simply put: if those two really did have something going on, it wouldn't be entirely impossible. Gojo Satoru is dogshit. That is all."

Mizuki Makoto nearly laughed out loud when he saw that comment.

"That familiar snarky flavor... Mr. Nanami, thank you for injecting the heaviest cornerstone into my lie during this overtime-filled night!"

No one had truly been brainwashed, but from the moment everyone subconsciously thought, If it's those two assholes, maybe it's not completely impossible, a crack had been struck into what had once been solid reality by that ambiguous wavering.

[Technique Assessment (Formula Logic):]

• [Degree of Inaccuracy]: Portraying the strongest man alive as a melancholic, suffering gay man. Assessment: Extremely high!

• [Target Strength]: Special-Grade Sorcerer (Gojo Satoru). Assessment: Highest level!

• [Public Recognition]: Approximately 500 jujutsu sorcerers and 2,000 assistant supervisors have developed slight cognitive wavering that it "makes logical sense."

"Ohohoho~ I'm going to be filled up! No, no!"

Mizuki Makoto suddenly straightened his back and let out an utterly deranged, vulgar laugh. He felt an immensely cold curse arise from the void. It was not his cursed energy; it was sludge formed from humanity's malicious speculation and pink fantasies about "the strongest."

The cruel iron law engraved into Jujutsu Society's DNA—A sorcerer's cursed energy was determined from birth! It was the class one was born into as a human, the unreachable heavens ordinary people could never touch even after exhausting their entire lives.

Yet at that moment, Mizuki Makoto elegantly held a straw called Bitter Summer and drank wildly from the curse called "Lie" released by the world itself.

That was how one fought using the curse of "Lie." Not everyone needed to believe it without question. They only needed to entertain the thought that "this possibility exists." Those collective, distorted views became false power, forcibly filling in the deficiencies that had once been impossibly distant from Mizuki Makoto.

There were no miracles that created something from nothing in this world. He had merely refined every "what if?" and "that's so exciting" in the world into fuel for himself to squander.

Feeling that thick, crazed cursed energy inside him, almost enough to burst his blood vessels, he raised his bandage-wrapped right hand and made a grasping motion in the dark air.

Bzzzt—!

The spatial repulsion that could have shredded a beginner now gathered meekly around his fingertips like an obedient cat. A deep-blue sphere, like a miniature black hole, spun soundlessly and madly in his palm, tugging the surrounding light into a faint distortion.

"This is... [Blue]."

This time, no muscles tore apart under unbearable strain; no bones gave off teeth-grinding cracks from violent backlash; nor was there any agonized roar as though his soul were being squeezed dry.

Mizuki Makoto looked at the deep-blue orb representing a technique at the pinnacle of the Jujutsu Society, felt the earthshaking transformation within himself, and curled his lips into an exceptionally despicable smile as he murmured:

"Just a bit of entertainment can let me skip over that dead line determined at birth... Still, I'm not even as good as Nanami during work hours. I'm probably around Semi-Grade 1, right?"

He adjusted his glasses, cocked his head at the empty room, and gave a brilliant smile utterly devoid of sincerity.

"As expected of the strongest, Gojo-sensei. Just a tiny bit of leaked romantic afterglow has benefited me immensely... desuki to death, love you."

Meanwhile, outside a convenience store.

Gojo Satoru stared at his phone, the red bean paste and fresh cream daifuku in his mouth caught in his throat before he could swallow.

As the "strongest jujutsu sorcerer of the modern age," he had dealt with countless kinds of curses in his life: Special Grade ones, ancient ones, even ones operating on some conceptual level. But he had never imagined that one day, he would be precisely pierced through by a kind of malice called "pure love."

"Kyoto Jujutsu High's... Mr. Rain?"

He pulled down his blindfold, and his azure Six Eyes flickered wildly beneath the cold glow of his phone screen.

"What the hell is this supposed to be?!"

Gojo Satoru let out an undignified wail outside the convenience store, drawing glances from passing office workers—who, upon seeing his face, then gave him the subtle look that said, Oh, it's that tragic-romance protagonist.

He, Gojo Satoru, twenty-eight years old, had a sexual orientation as straight as steel. Probably. His current number of romantic relationships was zero—after all, in this utterly rotten Jujutsu Society, he spent every day balancing the higher-ups, teaching students, exorcising cursed spirits, and even squeezing out sleep through teleportation. Where was he supposed to find the mental space for some "Bitter Summer-style tragic romance"?

"'In that drop of sugar water, he tasted the poison called best friend'... Blegh, who the hell came up with that line? Back then, I just thought that popsicle was too sweet!"

What chilled him the most was that the details in that novel were accurate to an eerie degree. Even his own brain had begun developing some bizarre false association: whenever he recalled that time, the novel's melodramatic lines automatically popped up and flooded his mind, like malware squatting in his memories and refusing to leave.

"The details are all right, and even Nanami commented that it's 'not impossible'..."

Gojo Satoru rubbed his throbbing temples. Though physical space remained as solid as ever, he could feel a massive, sticky "curse of gazes" converging on him from every corner of Japan. It was the collective malice of thousands of readers after finishing the novel, all looking at him as if to say, So you're that kind of person.

"Hey, hey, this is too much. This public-opinion curse targeting my 'pure body' is even more troublesome than Toji..." Gojo Satoru showed an utterly deranged, twisted smile. "Mr. Rain, right? If I find you, I'll definitely let you experience what Limitless means on a physical level!"

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Rebelling Against My Gorgeous Mentor