Art for a Long-Lost Friend's Reunion

Tokyo Metropolitan Jujutsu High, at the school gate.

The noon sun was so vicious it seemed ready to melt the bluestone path. Mizuki Makoto sat in the corridor's shade, his pen scratching across the paper as he refined the latest chapter of Gojo Mai: Household Affairs, specifically the illustration titled "Gojo Mai Bathing."

Heh heh, yes! This was exactly the shattered feeling of "a god's fall from grace"! Perfect! This was the pinnacle of my artistic career!

"Hehe... You captured that moment of 'divinity collapsing' quite well."

A black parasol silently opened above his head, shielding him from the glaring sunlight.

Makoto turned his head and saw a pair of narrow fox eyes carrying a gentle smile.

The man wore an imposing five-panel kasaya, his long hair neatly tied into a half-bun. He stood quietly beside Makoto's wheelchair, like a monk genuinely visiting an old friend.

"Ah, mister." Makoto calmly flipped the drawing page over, his acting utterly flat. "Life's hard, so I draw some 'forbidden' material to scam sponsorships. Want to buy one? Since you've got a pretty 'ancient Greek statue' vibe going on, I'll give you twenty percent off."

"An ancient Greek statue? What an interesting assessment." Suguru Geto bent down and carefully examined the broken string of prayer beads in the drawing. "But Makoto-kun—you don't mind if I call you that, do you? The 'her' in this picture is wearing her kasaya backward. Right over left is how the dead are dressed. Though for that man, perhaps that sense of 'self-destruction' suits him better."

[Remember this site's domain name. Read novels smoothly anytime.]

"Mister, you've got some insight." He followed Geto's lead, his left hand swiftly sketching across a blank page. "But I think the struggle to desperately grasp the last bit of light in despair is more moving. Like an ideal you know will fail, yet you still put on a magnificent kasaya and carry it out. Isn't that kind of self-indulgence an art in itself?"

Geto's eyes lit up. It was the illusion of having found a kindred spirit.

"The art of self-indulgence? Well said." He straightened up, the black parasol covering half his face. "If such an ideal can be commemorated with a grand 'destruction,' that would not be an unworthy form of ultimate aesthetics."

"Mister, if the teacher hears you saying dangerous things like that, he'll tear you down as an illegal Special Grade structure." Makoto said it half-jokingly, though his pen had already quietly descended.

"He's already there."

Geto turned around.

"They are my students. Don't instill your twisted ideas in them."

Geto's hand holding the parasol paused slightly. He slowly turned his head, the corner of his lips rising in an expression that looked exactly like one worn by an old friend reunited at last, and softly said to the white-haired man:

"Satoru, it's been a long time."

Then Geto dropped his gentleness and began his usual speech to Okkotsu Yuta. Beneath the bright noon sunlight, almost sarcastically brilliant, every word was clear.

"Yuta, come with me. We noble sorcerers should not be bound by those foolish 'monkeys'..."

As he spoke with mounting emotion, the grandeur of the "Cult Leader" reached its peak beneath the sunlight.

"Ah... ah-choo!"

Makoto's sneeze was extremely deliberate.

At that instant, from the stack of "inspiration sketches" on his lap, the sheet he had suddenly been inspired to draw while discussing "the art of self-indulgence" with Geto—a remarkably realistic, extraordinarily faithful picture that even carried an incredible, solemn Buddhist quality—precisely took flight in the invisible current of cursed energy released in perfect coordination by Gojo Satoru.

It spun elegantly twice through the air, then, as if guided by fate, landed with a smack perfectly across Geto's nose as he spoke.

Geto's speech came to an abrupt halt.

He reached up and peeled the drawing from his face.

The instant he saw what was on it, the air before the school gate seemed to freeze. This was not Geto suppressing his anger. This was his thought process crashing after being struck by something too extreme.

It was not a rough sketch. It was a dignified, solemn, realistic portrait of the Gorilla Cult Leader, one that even carried a certain air of "philosophical contemplation"!

The gorilla's facial contours—especially its cheekbones, brow ridge, and mouth—perfectly overlapped with Suguru Geto's face under some bizarre "cognitive distortion." It wore an almost identical imposing kasaya, and its profound, even compassionate gaze was like a mirror at that moment, clearly reflecting Geto's current appearance.

Below the gorilla were two lines of writing, wildly cursive from overwhelming shock but still perfectly legible:

[Brother, I discovered that if we kill all ordinary people, cursed spirits will never be born.]

At that moment, Makoto felt as though he could already see Meng Po on Yellow Springs Road waving at him.

Gojo Satoru stared at the realistic gorilla portrait in Geto's hand, then looked at Geto's face, which had gone stiff as a statue.

"Pfft—Hahahaha! Geto! Hahahaha! When you were declaring your 'great cause' just now, I didn't notice... But now that I look at it, this picture is basically your self-portrait! Hahahaha! Even the patterns on its kasaya are exactly the same as yours! Hahahaha!"

Gojo Satoru let out the most disrespectful, lung-busting laughter of his life.

"Makoto! You're a genius! I'm definitely having this framed and hanging it over the main entrance of Jujutsu Headquarters!"

"Um... sorry."

I huddled behind Gojo Satoru, trembling with atrociously bad acting.

"That was my artistic realization after talking with mister about 'extreme aesthetics and the theory of disciplined evolution'! I only wanted to draw an inspirational comic about a gorilla pursuing a great cause... I really didn't know it would look so much like mister! Please forgive my damned artistic intuition! Teacher, save me! The Evolutionist Cult Leader has manifested!"

Geto looked at the drawing in his hand.

The compassionate Gorilla Cult Leader was inside the picture, and the compassionate Cult Leader Geto was outside it.

The drawing's realism made it impossible for him to numb himself by dismissing it as "a brat's prank." He felt a visceral disgust that struck straight at his soul. It was the humiliation of seeing his pain, his ten years of great cause, and all his efforts reduced in one instant to "the ravings of a gorilla" by some incomprehensible absurdity.

A cold, sticky, violent Special Grade pressure exploded outward, enough to make ordinary people suffocate instantly. The drawing in Geto's hand turned charred black in an instant, and amid the flames, the compassionate Gorilla Cult Leader's face seemed to twist.

But in the end, he took a deep breath and forcibly suppressed his urge to kill. Taking action on Gojo Satoru's turf was clearly not a wise choice.

"...Satoru, I'll remember this student of yours."

Geto's expression darkened terribly. He turned and led his "family" into the gaping mouth of a bird-shaped cursed spirit. No matter how one looked at his departing stride, it carried the impatient air of someone who never wanted to see another gorilla again.

Silence returned to the school gate.

"Makoto, I could practically smell the malice you gave off just now."

Gojo Satoru pulled down his blindfold and looked at me with a faint smile.

"Teacher, I'm just a terrified disabled sorcerer."

Mizuki Makoto reopened his workbook and quietly scribbled a note beneath the discarded gorilla sketch: [Today's cultivation insight: When the Cult Leader saw himself in the mirror beneath the bright sunlight, the emotional reaction caused by the clash between "self-deification" and "the reality of one's species" was delicious—absolutely delicious! Maki-chan didn't see it, but I'll draw this story across ten pages and stuff them through the crack beneath her dorm door.]

Silence returned to the school gate.

"Teacher, I want wagyu. Add a serving of daiginjo this time. After all, I just performed an 'artist's dimensionality-reduction strike' in front of a Special Grade."

Gojo Satoru stopped smiling and poked my forehead with one finger, his tone extremely firm.

"Food is fine, but minors absolutely cannot drink alcohol!"

As if recalling some painful memory, he added with an extremely disgusted expression, "And what's so good about that bitter, throat-burning stuff? That biological weapon that can make someone black out until noon the next day is only for people with no taste... No, anyway, as my student, you should come drink strawberry-flavored cola with me instead!"

Mizuki Makoto looked at this "strongest teacher," who was supposedly once easily knocked out by alcohol at a party, and fell into deep thought.

Sure enough, the least logical thing in this school, aside from that lawless panda, was this substitute teacher with Special Grade alcohol intolerance.

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