Amid the ruins, Feng's heavy footsteps sounded through the standing water.
With the faint patter of rain washing over mud, his dark blue Jujutsu High uniform swayed in the wind and rain.
His steps shattered the dark dome of sky reflected in the puddles as he approached the broken support pillar, one step at a time.
Where the pillar's shadow met the muddy water, a pink-haired boy lay on his back.
The black markings on his face, symbols of the King of Curses' cruelty and arrogance, faded rapidly like lingering snow in sunlight.
The second pair of eyes beneath his own had already closed and vanished, blending completely into the texture of his skin.
Control of the body had changed hands.
Yet cold rainwater poured mercilessly into the enormous bloody hole in his left chest.
It was empty. The heart that should have been beating there had long since been casually torn out.
Pale blood vessels and severed muscle tissue lay exposed to the air. Around the wound, there was none of the cursed energy glow unique to Reverse Cursed Technique, the sign of life and regeneration.
Before surrendering control, the King of Curses had left him no gift of healing.
Did I fail... damn it, is this still following the original plot?
If only I knew Reverse Cursed Technique... Feng thought, biting his lip, his body trembling slightly from exhaustion.
He had already fought one battle before arriving, and his opponent just now had been the King of Curses.
"Itadori!"
From the edge of the domain nearby, Megumi Fushiguro's hoarse voice tore through the monotonous curtain of rain.
Ignoring his depleted cursed energy and the searing pain throughout his body, he stumbled into a desperate run toward them.
When he saw the fatal cavity in the pink-haired boy's chest, Megumi Fushiguro stopped dead several meters away, his pupils contracting in shock.
Cold rainwater dripped steadily from Megumi Fushiguro's chin.
He clenched his teeth, his mind racing, trying to find even the faintest chance of turning this hopeless situation around.
But the iron law of Jujutsu Society pressed against his throat like a cold blade-losing one's heart was an irreversible death sentence for anyone unable to use Reverse Cursed Technique.
The pink-haired boy lying in the muddy water moved his fingers slightly.
Yuji Itadori slowly opened his once-bright brown eyes. Now, they were already losing focus.
The downpour battered his pale face mercilessly. He opened his mouth and spat out dark red, bloody froth mixed with fragments of lung.
"Ah... it's you, Fushiguro..."
Itadori's voice was so faint that the rain almost drowned it out, his vocal cords producing a thin, airy rasp.
He barely managed to pull up the corners of his mouth, giving a pale smile in the rain that still held a measure of relief.
"Kugisaki... is she okay?"
Megumi Fushiguro dropped to his knees beside Itadori. His hands hovered in the air, trembling slightly, but he dared not touch that shattered body.
His voice was so dry it came out distorted.
"She's fine... she's already gotten out safely. You idiot, why..."
"That's good..."
Itadori's unfocused gaze passed over Megumi Fushiguro, settling on the thick, rolling clouds overhead and the endless curtain of rain.
In his peripheral vision, the dark blue figure standing nearby was a blur. The flame of his life was rapidly burning out in the downpour.
"Sorry, Fushiguro... I'm afraid you'll have to live to a ripe old age without me."
The pink-haired boy's head tilted limply to one side, and his heavy eyelids closed.
The hand he had tried to raise lost the last of its strength and fell heavily into the muddy water, sending out a small ring of ripples.
He made no further sound.
The rain around them seemed to grow even more somber at that moment.
The King of Curses' cursed residue in the air slowly broke down under the continuing Rainfall, leaving only a deathly silence hanging over the ruins.
"I..." Feng still wanted to say something, but in the next instant, he collapsed to the ground and lost consciousness.
Cold incandescent light spilled across a stainless steel autopsy table.
An exhaust fan gave off a dull, monotonous hum, mixing the pungent smell of disinfectant with a faint scent of tobacco.
Satoru Gojo leaned his tall frame against the cold tiled wall.
His black blindfold covered most of his face, but the air of frivolity and teasing that usually surrounded him had dropped below absolute zero.
His Six Eyes took in information from his surroundings at every moment. A glaring white sheet covered the metal table in the center of the room.
Yuji Itadori lay there-a cold corpse with no heart, his cursed energy utterly extinguished.
The rotten higher-ups' intent was now plain: they had used the sudden Special Grade Cursed Spirit incident to kill Sukuna's vessel by another's hand.
Satoru Gojo's jaw was taut, his hands clenched inside his pockets.
Rather than surrendering to pointless fury, his abyssal mind was conducting an utterly rational reckoning and analysis.
Shoko Ieiri leaned against a piece of equipment on the other side, a half-smoked cigarette held between her slender fingers.
She exhaled a plume of pale bluish smoke. Heavy dark circles marked the skin beneath her eyes as her gaze passed over Itadori's corpse to another medical bed in the room.
A body wrapped in thick medical bandages lay quietly on its back atop the bed.
Cold saline flowed continuously through several IV lines into the veins of his pale arm.
The fatal gash across his chest, deep enough to split a person in two, was now covered by a thin layer of new skin.
"This is nothing short of a miracle in the history of medicine and jujutsu."
Shoko Ieiri flicked the ash from her cigarette, her voice carrying the particular calm and fatigue of a clinician.
"A heavenly restriction that relies entirely on cursed energy and liquid.
"If I hadn't immediately stopped all conventional emergency treatment in the ambulance on the way back and switched to direct intravenous injections of the highest-concentration saline, his heart and lungs would have failed completely before all his moisture evaporated.
"What an absurd constitution."
Satoru Gojo did not answer. He turned his head slightly, his gaze piercing through his blindfold to fix on the medical bed.
His Six Eyes keenly detected signs that the body's cursed energy circulation was reviving.
As tiny bubbles rose through the IV lines, the white sheet on the bed gave an almost imperceptible rustle.
Feng opened his eyes slightly.
Satoru Gojo watched those dark red eyes slowly reveal themselves beneath the glaring fluorescent lights.
The body on the bed was stiff and utterly weakened by grave injuries and cursed energy depletion, but that distinctive fluctuation of cursed energy, like deep water, had unmistakably begun flowing again.
"Hey, Sleeping Beauty finally decided to wake up?"
Satoru Gojo straightened, the heels of his leather shoes tapping crisply against the terrazzo floor.
He strode over to the medical bed on his long legs and looked down at the patient who had just awakened.
His tone remained as carefree and light as ever, but the suffocating, icy pressure in the room had not diminished in the slightest.
"Welcome back to the world of the living.
"Considering how you looked like you might evaporate at any moment when Ijichi hauled you into the car, Shoko already had a second scalpel ready."
Shoko Ieiri stubbed out her cigarette and approached.
She glanced habitually at the heart monitor displaying a steady rhythm, then slipped her hands into her white coat pockets and stated the facts in a flat voice.
"Your vital signs are stabilizing again. The saline provided the physical medium you needed to reconstruct your body, but you'll have to replenish your depleted cursed energy yourself.
"Until then, I suggest you stay flat on your back and behave. Don't let those freshly healed organs tear open again."
Satoru Gojo pulled over a wheeled stool and sat astride it backward, folding his arms across its backrest.
He rested his chin on the backs of his hands, his blindfold facing the dark red eyes that had only just opened.
He did not look at Itadori's corpse on the neighboring table. He was forcibly suppressing the destructive impulse to bring down the entire leadership of Jujutsu Society.
As the strongest, he had to draw absolute reason out of the maelstrom of his emotions.
"Megumi has already reported everything that happened at the Juvenile Detention Center.
"Forcing open a domain to neutralize a Special Grade Cursed Spirit's cursed energy, even devising a way to force the King of Curses into point-blank close combat..."
Satoru Gojo's voice gradually deepened, taking on a probing, analytical edge.
"As an 'exception' with no record whatsoever in Jujutsu Society, you delivered a madman's performance in combat. And you did save Megumi and those civilians from a hopeless situation."
Satoru Gojo paused for a moment. The air around him seemed to grow still with his silence.
"But what happened afterward?
"During that final stretch, from the moment Yuji-that kid-regained control of his body until he collapsed, what contingency did Sukuna leave behind?
"I want to hear your assessment, as the only eyewitness who was there and fought him head-on."
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