Kiss the Sleeping Beauty

Zenin Maki woke from her nap on the soft hospital bed, looking completely dazed.

Before she could fully recover from the exhausting strain of caring for a patient, she opened her eyes and found three heads lined up in her field of vision: Inumaki Toge's peeking "little head," Panda's adorably goofy "big head," and idiot Mizuki's "dog head," finally awake and brimming with ingratiating eagerness as he desperately tried to make his presence known.

Seeing Maki's gaze gradually sharpen, Mizuki Makoto nervously wrung his hands behind his back. His brain instantly overclocked as he tried to defuse the crisis in the most primitive way possible.

[Skill activated: Cheek Rub!]

Like a large dog, Mizuki leaned closer, trying to raise Zenin Maki's affection for him through this completely defenseless gesture of intimacy.

System notification:

--[Cheek Rub] activation successful.

--Affection increase assessment... failed.

"I love you the most, Maki-chan!" Mizuki declared, his eyes sparkling with sincere (guilty) light. Speaking at lightning speed, he launched into confession (begging-for-his-life) mode. "To repay you for watching over me, I suppose I have no choice but to offer myself to you and form a girls' band with you for the rest of our lives!"

As he spoke, Mizuki pulled open his clothes.

"Come on, don't go easy on me just because I'm a delicate flower. Ravage me to your heart's content!"

"Bonito flakes (take care)." Inumaki Toge spat out two words expressionlessly.

"Maki, maybe we should just bury him. I've already dug the hole in the medical office's backyard," Panda said gravely.

Listening to this toe-curling nonsense, Maki felt no emotional response whatsoever. If anything, she almost wanted to laugh. She slowly sat up, pushed up the glasses on her nose, and somehow curved her lips into an exceptionally gentle—even radiant—smile.

Yet behind those lenses, killing intent had already solidified into something tangible.

"Mizuki, I don't know what you did just now, but my instincts tell me every word coming out of your mouth right now deserves a beating."

Maki flexed her knuckles, producing a crisp series of pops. Her voice was so gentle it sent chills down the spine.

"I'll give you three seconds to confess what exactly you did behind my back after waking up. If you're sincere, I'll only beat you half to death today."

"Come on, Maki-chan, how could you say that—I'm a patient who just woke up from a ninety-nine-day coma. What could I possibly have done?"

But the truth was, the frog's brain had been touching your belly all along.

[Cheek Rub] could certainly close the distance, but its price was fatal.

Maki reached out and gently patted Mizuki Makoto's back. She even thoughtfully smoothed his breathing, her fingertips slowly traveling upward until—like she was grabbing a guilty puppy that had just wrecked the house and was covered in ink—she clamped down hard on the back of his neck.

"I see... so you're a patient."

Maki's smile became increasingly kind, while her voice grew gentler and more terrifying. "A 'Sleeping Beauty' who slept for ninety-nine days, right? Then ordinary calls clearly won't do. You'll need a prince's kiss to wake up completely—Panda, get over here! Kiss him right on the mouth!"

"..."

The hospital room fell completely silent.

There was no roaring, no response.

Mizuki Makoto stiffly glanced sideways. While he had been frantically using his "cheek-rubbing technique" to divert attention, his two comrades, Panda and Inumaki, had already displayed an extraordinary will to survive. With coordination as seamless as if they had rehearsed it thousands of times, they quietly stuffed every marker they had used in the crime into Mizuki Makoto's back pocket at lightning speed.

After completing the framing, the two held their breath and, as lightly as feathers, inched their way out through the door.

Bang!

They had even thoughtfully locked the hospital room door from the outside.

"Salmon (farewell, brother)..."

Inumaki's pitying voice faded into the end of the corridor along with hurried footsteps.

At that moment, Maki's grip abruptly intensified. She pointed at the dark ink streaks on Mizuki Makoto's face—the evidence left behind when he had doodled on Maki's face while she slept, only to accidentally rub the ink back onto his own face during the cheek rub.

Then her gaze slowly lowered toward the conspicuous marker tips protruding from Mizuki Makoto's back pocket.

"Since you're a 'Sleeping Beauty,'" Maki said, her other hand already clenched into a fist that creaked, "then I'll be responsible for beating you back into eternal sleep. I'll also clean up the 'tools of the crime' in your pocket. What do you think?"

"W-Wait, Maki-chan! That's planted evidence! Those two bastards... ah—!!!"

Mizuki Makoto's bloodcurdling screams rang through the hospital room, echoing throughout Jujutsu High's medical office.

Little brother Makoto, could you stop attacking Big Sister Maki's shoe soles with your face?

This farce rapidly escalated behind the locked door.

"Talk it over? Before you turned yourself into a 'Sleeping Beauty,' did you talk it over with me—us?"

Maki's tone was as flat as stagnant water. Yet she did not actually use force to dismantle Mizuki Makoto into parts. Instead, she planted one foot on his face, which had only just finished swelling.

She tilted her head slightly, the daylight reflecting a cold arc across her lenses. Her gaze fell on Mizuki Makoto's back pocket, where the caps of red, green, and black markers jutted out like a peacock fanning its tail.

Mizuki Makoto's face was squashed out of shape, and his gaze was forced onto Maki's bare foot.

"Th-Those were stuffed in there by Panda and Inumaki! They're the real masterminds!" Like a duck whose throat had been seized by fate, he flailed his limbs in feeble resistance. "Maki-chan, listen to my sophistry—no, my explanation! Maki-chan, I really did just wake up. My body's so weak I can't even circulate cursed energy on my own. If I suffer violent assault at a time like this, I might become Jujutsu Society's first Special Grade victim to die from 'visiting family'..."

"Who's your family, you shameless bastard?!"

"Waaah... Anyway, I was wrong, Maki-chan. Forgive me."

Mizuki spoke in a sticky, utterly undignified voice, carrying a cutesy whine so revolting it made one want to call the police on the spot. Not only did he make no attempt to escape the foot on his face, he instead melted into a puddle of sludge and collapsed along with the pressure, loosely holding Maki's ankle with both hands as though supporting the base of some sacred statue.

"That filthy mouth of yours—"

Just as Maki was about to increase the force beneath her foot, she suddenly felt something strange against her sole.

Her body abruptly stiffened.

"Mizuki... you pervert..." Maki's voice began to tremble, and her entire face instantly flushed tomato red.

Mizuki Makoto raised his eyes. The purple in his eyes, which had not yet fully faded from the burden of his technique, now brimmed with a perverted, teasing smile.

"Maki-chan's taste... is a salty bitterness overflowing with 'hard work' and 'tsundere,' huh."

"Die!!!"

Maki finally snapped. All gentleness vanished from her face, replaced by a fury strong enough to blow the hospital room's ceiling away. She yanked her foot back, then unleashed a heavy series of kicks powerful enough to blast apart the air itself.

"Panda! Dig the hole deeper! I'm burying him vertically!! Headfirst!!!"

"Ah! Don't draw on my eyes! Those are my 'Pseudo-Six Eyes'! If you draw them crooked, I won't be able to see Gojo-sensei's dirty secrets clearly! Maki-chan, have mercy! Hey, that's Panda's marker! The ink is oil-based—it won't wash off!"

The screams in the hospital room became increasingly miserable. Meanwhile, on the tree-lined path leading to the school cafeteria, Panda and Inumaki walked along with light steps.

"Fish flakes." Inumaki Toge calmly pulled an onigiri from his pocket and stuffed it into his mouth, his eyes filled with the serenity of settled dust.

"It's fine. That Mizuki guy's life is tougher than a cockroach's." Panda took a big bite of bamboo shoots, his tone carrying the wisdom of sacrificing a fellow Daoist to save oneself. "Rather than worrying about him, I'm more worried that after Maki uses up those markers, she'll discover we actually still have two boxes of spares in our pockets..."

"Tuna mayonnaise." Inumaki nodded with deep agreement.

Under the lingering glow of the sunset, the faint sound of windows shaking came from Jujutsu High's medical office building, along with the final wail of a vile sorcerer with "no moral bottom line whatsoever."

"Maki-chan! Don't draw on my neck! It tickles there! Hahahaha, save me... I confess! Gojo-sensei's doujinshi really was drawn by me! But the role I assigned you was 'the righteous cuckold'! Don't kill me—!"

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