Why?

Cold wind from the corridor poured into the room through the wide-open shoji door, lifting the hem of the ill-fitting navy uniform jacket.

The loose sleeves had not been rolled up and almost completely covered Feng's hands, revealing only an occasional glimpse of pale fingertips as the fabric shifted.

"Uh, um... hmm... hello?" Feng tilted his head uncertainly, black hair falling over his shoulders, his voice tinged with hesitation.

The slightly awkward, tentative greeting rang out abruptly in the dim room piled with bizarre stuffed toys, utterly at odds with the solemn, oppressive atmosphere.

Masamichi Yaga's thick fingers held the tiny sewing needle suspended in midair for two seconds.

He did not immediately return the greeting. Behind his dark sunglasses, his world-weary eyes coldly scrutinized the slight figure standing in the doorway.

To Yaga, the boy wearing Satoru Gojo's jacket was strangely quiet. He showed none of the fear an ordinary person should have felt under such pressure, yet there was no aggressive edge to his cursed energy either-his presence was as still as a pool of stagnant water outside the door.

Yaga precisely drove the sewing needle into the coarse fabric of a green mutant bear beside him, then slowly pushed his massive body up from the tatami.

As he rose, the artificial cursed energy that had been swirling through the room like an undercurrent instantly became a tangible pressure, bearing down on the doorway like invisible, heavy lead.

In the shadows, several oddly shaped plush cursed corpses gave faint creaks of rubbing fabric, as though they might launch themselves out of the darkness at any moment.

"Satoru, is this why you kicked my door open in the middle of the night? To bring me a brat who can't even manage a proper greeting?"

Yaga's voice was so deep it seemed to resonate in the chest, his tone distinctly displeased and wary.

"Aw, don't be so harsh, Principal."

Satoru Gojo leaned casually against the wooden doorframe, completely ignoring the pressure of cursed energy inside the room that would have left an ordinary person struggling to breathe.

He kept one hand in his pocket and made a casual gesture with the other.

"His name's Feng. He might look like a blank slate right now, but just an hour ago, he had a little 'chat' with a particularly disgusting special grade cursed spirit at the Tama River, and here he is, all in one piece.

"Except..."

Satoru Gojo deliberately drew out the last word. His azure eyes peered over the rims of his slipping sunglasses, flicking toward Feng with a hint of amused anticipation.

"He left all his old memories in the river. Right now, he's seriously lacking in common sense."

At the words "special grade cursed spirit," Masamichi Yaga's stern face visibly tightened.

He did not entirely trust Satoru Gojo's perpetually exaggerated delivery, but his perceptiveness as an educator and instincts as a jujutsu sorcerer made him reassess the seemingly harmless boy before him.

He took a heavy step forward. His towering body blocked most of the candlelight, and an enormous shadow instantly engulfed Feng.

"Amnesia?"

Yaga looked down at Feng from above. His tone did not soften in the slightest; instead, it grew colder and sharper.

"Jujutsu High isn't a shelter, nor is it a sanatorium where lost children come to recover their memories.

"Since you're standing here, no matter what you still remember-"

He paused. The pressure of cursed energy around them climbed again, forcing the visitor to confront this world's brutal laws.

"Answer me. Why did you come here?"

"Why I came here? To be honest, there really were survival-related reasons that left me with no choice..." Feng lowered his head slightly, his dark red eyes fixed on the wooden floor as he sank into thought.

Why did I come? Was it only because of this supposedly unavoidable transmigration?

Feng was not someone who liked shirking responsibility, whether for unexpected events or anything else.

In other words, the question meant this to Feng: assuming he could return to an ordinary person's life, what would Jujutsu Society mean to him?

So far, his abilities had not demonstrated the extreme offensive power suited to a jujutsu sorcerer, but they were more than enough to keep an ordinary person alive.

But... was simply staying alive really what I wanted?

"Looking at the bigger picture, I want to understand jujutsu.

"I don't want to waste my talents and die at the hands of those monsters called cursed spirits...

"I want to see where my limits lie."

Feng raised his head slightly as he spoke.

The candlelight shook violently in the rapidly shifting air currents. The slender flame nearly bent down to the edge of the wax, only to stubbornly straighten the next instant.

Masamichi Yaga continued looking down at him, the eyes behind his sunglasses fixed on the boy before him, who was pondering with his head lowered.

Yaga's grip on the sewing needle was so tight that his knuckles turned white.

He had heard the honesty in "survival," and he had also heard the reckless bravado peculiar to youth in "limits."

"Limits?"

Yaga's next step left a deep indentation in the tatami.

He abruptly reached behind him and plucked a stuffed hippo with green compound eyes from the pile of cursed corpses.

As he poured cursed energy into it, the limp hippo instantly swelled. Sharp hooked claws emerged from its limbs, and a crazed scarlet light flashed in its compound eyes.

"In the world of jujutsu, the end of those 'limits' is often a mangled corpse that can't even leave a name behind.

"You would throw yourself into this abyss of despair and curses just to understand something so nebulous?"

He casually tossed the cursed corpse named Kawamaru into the air.

Kawamaru nimbly flipped in midair and landed steadily less than half a meter from Feng's side. Its serrated mouth opened, and a muffled growl rose from deep in its throat.

"Survival instinct and curiosity can certainly drive you forward, but faced with horrors that can twist even your soul in an instant, those fragile things will shatter like glass.

"I'm not asking about your 'wishes.' I'm asking about your 'resolve'-"

An almost cruel rationality seeped into Yaga's voice, and the cursed energy pressing toward the doorway only grew stronger.

Satoru Gojo straightened from the doorframe and reached up to lower his sunglasses.

His azure Six Eyes shone brilliantly in the darkness, like two spotlights capable of piercing every disguise, locking onto every minute fluctuation of cursed energy in Feng from the side.

"Oh, my. You still love giving young people a 'heavy' first lesson, don't you, Principal?"

Satoru Gojo hooked his fingertips around the edge of his jacket. Though his tone remained flippant, a trace of serious scrutiny passed through his eyes.

"Still, 'not wanting to die meaninglessly' really is an excellent reason. Much better than those idiots who spout noble ideals and then fall apart first on the battlefield.

"Hey, Feng, what the principal means is-if you aren't ready to be torn to pieces by curses on your way to discovering your limits, there's still time to turn around and leave."

Yaga ignored Satoru Gojo's banter. His towering body stood like an impassable mountain, firmly blocking Feng's path forward.

"When you face the despair of certain death, when the jujutsu you understand can't save what matters most to you, will you still be able to hold your head high and die without regret for these so-called 'limits'?"

Me, a transmigrator, dying...?

Yet at those words, Feng smiled.

He smiled happily, so much so that crystalline tears even welled in his vivid red eyes.

"I'll leave that question to the people who remember me after I die. My life won't be filled with choices I regret. I'm really looking forward to finding out who will kill me, and how I'll die."

He was not afraid of death. To Feng, what would happen if he died was a question worth investigating.

Would another round of reincarnation begin, or would everything disperse and return to dust?

That question would have to wait until the moment of death for an answer. As for regret? There was absolutely no need.

At that instant, some invisible pressure forced the candle flame hard to one side, nearly extinguishing it.

Upon hearing the words "how I'll die" and "looking forward," Masamichi Yaga's granite-hard face actually gave a slight, tightly restrained twitch.

The eyes behind his sunglasses now flashed with a cold light that verged on judgment.

Madmen were hardly rare among jujutsu sorcerers, but a boy who so calmly dissected his own funeral carried an indescribably unsettling air, even to Yaga, who had seen more than his share of life and death.

"Looking forward to how you'll die... What a nauseatingly arrogant answer."

Yaga's voice was as deep as thunder rolling across the horizon. Rather than withdrawing his cursed energy, he abruptly clenched his empty left fist.

The cursed corpse Kawamaru, which had been crouching nearby, sensed its master's will. The scarlet glow in its compound eyes instantly stretched into dazzling streaks.

Its hind legs drove down hard. Its soft, cotton-filled body unleashed astonishing spring force, and the tatami beneath its feet gave a piercing rip as fragments of straw flew wildly through the air.

Kawamaru became a blurry green streak in midair, precisely locking onto Feng in the doorway.

Its barbed claws whistled through the air straight toward the boy's shoulders, attempting to slam this insolent challenger into the hard floor.

Facing an impact powerful enough to snap an ordinary person's spine, Feng remained standing in the doorway, his figure still looking rather slight. The hem of his jacket snapped wildly in the fierce wind raised by the cursed corpse.

"If you're already prepared for it at any moment, then first prove to me that you have the right to keep struggling before that death arrives!"

With Yaga's furious shout, Kawamaru's claws abruptly changed direction mere centimeters from the side of Feng's neck. The grab became a sideways sweep, its tremendous force even creating visible ripples in the air.

An attack of this magnitude could inflict a fatal wound on a "blank slate" who had yet to receive any formal training.

Standing off to the side, Satoru Gojo showed no intention of intervening.

He tilted his head slightly, his right hand resting on his hip. In that instant, his azure Six Eyes caught every tiny refraction in the flow of Feng's cursed energy.

He saw Feng's shadow below obscured by the cursed corpse's body, saw the wind tousle the hair framing that almost excessively calm face, and saw some of the previously tranquil moisture in the air undergo a qualitative change in response to some trigger.

"Wow, the principal's really serious this time."

There was an irresponsible anticipation in Satoru Gojo's voice, his gaze locked firmly on the point where Kawamaru and Feng were about to collide.

"Feng, if you die during your Jujutsu High interview, that hardly counts as the 'death you were looking forward to,' does it?"