Their heavy footsteps carried them over the moss-covered steps as Feng and Nobara slowly emerged from the sinister abandoned building.
The midday sunlight outside was a little blinding. With the massive depletion of cursed energy in his body, Feng had shrunk by roughly a third compared to when he entered the building.
His dark blue Jujutsu High uniform, which had fit him perfectly before, now hung loosely from his shoulders. His trouser legs bunched around his ankles, brushing lightly against the ground as he walked.
The soaked fabric clung to his back, and water dripped from the hem onto the asphalt.
He kept his head slightly lowered, his bangs hiding his somewhat weary, dark red eyes. With both hands tucked into his oversized pockets, he walked steadily beside Nobara Kugisaki, his posture balanced but his movements a little light.
Nobara Kugisaki held the little boy with one hand as his sobbing gradually subsided, while her other hand vigorously wrung out the wet hem of her uniform.
In the sunlight, faint wisps of vapor rose from her short orange hair.
Only when she stepped out of the shadows and saw the figures waiting outside did her tense shoulders finally relax completely.
Yuji Itadori, standing a short distance away, was the first to notice them.
He had been crouching beside Megumi Fushiguro at the roadside, idly counting ants on the ground. Now he sprang up, waving his arms and shouting.
"Hey! Did you finish fighting over there too? Whoa! Kugisaki, how did you get soaked all over?"
Yuji Itadori rushed over. As his gaze swept over Feng's drastically shrunken frame, the excitement in his eyes instantly turned to confusion and worry.
He stopped a few meters away and scratched his head, his gaze lingering on Feng's empty cuffs.
"And Feng... how come you've gotten so much smaller? Did you run into some monster in there that sucks out people's bones?"
"It's nothing serious. Just think of it as a property of my cursed technique," Feng explained.
Megumi Fushiguro also rose and walked over.
He did not shout like Itadori, but after his dark green eyes swept over the cursed residue drifting out of the building and the pair's bedraggled state, his expression turned exceptionally grim.
Megumi Fushiguro keenly picked up on the vast, pure fluctuations of cursed energy lingering in the air. They were nothing an ordinary grade 3 cursed spirit could have emitted.
"The Curtain disappeared much faster than expected. Judging by the state you're in, whatever was hiding upstairs was more troublesome than the report suggested."
Satoru Gojo was leaning casually against the black car used by the assistant supervisor.
He lowered his sunglasses a little, his pale blue Six Eyes flickering behind the lenses as he silently analyzed everything before him.
To his eyes, Feng's current state resembled a slowly evaporating mass of highly concentrated cursed energy, extremely unstable yet maintaining some strange balance.
He straightened, wearing that inscrutable, teasing smile, and clapped his hands.
"Welcome back! Looks like I'll have to rewrite your practical assessment.
Nobara rescued the hostage. Nicely done-as for Feng, you might have turned into a 'mini version' of yourself.
But seeing you display a cursed technique that powerful at your age gave your teacher quite a shock."
Satoru Gojo strode forward on his long legs and naturally placed his large hand on Feng's wet head, giving it a rub. In the process, he blocked Megumi Fushiguro's probing gaze. His tone was light, but his decision left no room for argument.
"All right, now that the kid's been rescued, leave the cleanup to the assistant supervisor.
Our top priority now is-for everyone to go eat their fill! After all, this is our first team outing now that this year's class is officially all here."
"I hope it's somewhere genuinely normal this time..." Feng sighed.
Satoru Gojo let out a hearty laugh, the hand resting on the black-haired boy's head trembling slightly with it. He seemed to find this wish for somewhere "normal" deeply amusing.
He withdrew his hand and slipped it into his trouser pocket, then strode toward the black luxury sedan parked by the roadside.
Sunlight danced over his dazzling silver hair, stretching his slender shadow far behind him.
"The word 'normal' isn't very convincing coming from a student who opened a Domain on his very first mission, Feng."
Satoru Gojo turned his head, an amused curve lifting the corner of his mouth beneath his sunglasses.
Rather than answering directly about their destination, he turned toward Nobara Kugisaki, who was still wringing out the hem of her skirt.
"But since you two look like drowned ghosts freshly fished out of the Tama River, I'll be merciful and pick a place with a premium clothes-drying service and top-quality wagyu."
Kiyotaka Ijichi, the assistant supervisor who had been waiting for some time, slowly opened the car door.
When Ijichi noticed the change in the boy's size, his fingers visibly trembled on the door handle, and cold sweat instantly trickled down his temples.
But under Satoru Gojo's silent gaze, he wisely kept quiet and merely bowed nervously.
"Hey, Feng, if walking's too much trouble, I can carry you on my back! You look as light as a feather right now, anyway."
Itadori spoke with some concern as he looked at Feng's condition.
"No need. My condition just looks a little alarming. It's actually quite normal."
Feng's figure looked rather forlorn inside the oversized uniform. His steps were steady, but each one brought a faint, wet squelch.
Nobara Kugisaki slipped into the back seat first. Eyeing her still-dripping sleeves with distaste, she rolled her eyes at Itadori as he reached out to help.
"Save it, Itadori. He's just drained his cursed energy, not broken his legs.
Instead of carrying someone, why don't you think about how you're going to explain the fifty plates of meat you'll eat later?"
Megumi Fushiguro stood beside the car door. Rather than getting in immediately, he waited until the boy approached, then raised a hand to shield the edge of the roof.
He looked down at the boy's drastically shrunken profile, a trace of deep contemplation flashing through his dark green eyes.
This ability to change one's size and even physical mass according to the surplus or deficit of cursed energy seemed less like a cursed technique and more like a restriction that completely reconstructed life itself.
"Get in. The heater's on, so you should dry off a little faster."
Megumi Fushiguro's tone remained restrained. He only followed the boy inside after Feng had climbed in.
He sat near the door, leaving most of the spacious interior to his shrunken classmate.
With the muffled thud of the doors closing, the sedan slowly pulled away, carrying these young sorcerers-fresh from a life-and-death struggle and held in a strange sort of balance-deeper into bustling, noisy Tokyo.
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