Death list

Satoru Gojo called Ijichi, and the car pulled up shortly afterward.

Mashiro and Satoru Gojo got in and asked Ijichi to drive to the Affairs Department building.

Ijichi held the steering wheel, his eyes fixed on the mountain road illuminated by the headlights.

The car jolted along the rough, uneven mountain road.

In the back seat, Satoru Gojo pulled his blindfold up over his eyes and sank into the seat, breathing evenly. It was hard to tell whether he had fallen asleep.

Mashiro glanced at him and sighed softly, thinking of how little time he had to rest.

She silently channeled her cursed energy and used Sound Wave Control, silencing all the noise inside and outside the car.

A little while later, Satoru Gojo woke again and straightened his clothes.

Mashiro quietly released her cursed technique and asked, "Did you look at the data Nanami found?"

"I did. The former employee's account, the backup terminal, the department head's medical records-all three leads point to the same group." Satoru Gojo flipped his phone over. "But he didn't have time to pull the backup logs from the physical server. We'll fill in that gap tonight."

The Affairs Department building stood east of Jujutsu High's main campus, a three-story concrete structure with ivy covering its exterior walls.

At this hour, every window was dark. Only a motion-activated light glowed in the entrance hall.

Satoru Gojo swiped his card at the entrance, and the glass doors slid open.

The server room on the third floor was at the end of the corridor. It was small, with four server racks lined up side by side, and the hum of their fans filled the space.

A desk stood against the wall with three terminals on it. A thin layer of dust coated one of their screens.

Mashiro walked over to that terminal and ran a finger along the edge of the desk, leaving a streak in the dust.

"No one's used this one recently. The dust settled naturally. It hasn't been wiped."

"The backup terminal." Satoru Gojo stood in front of the racks and took off his sunglasses, his Six Eyes glowing faintly in the darkness.

His gaze swept over the racks' metal casings and stopped at the side of one. "This server has cursed residue on it. Very faint. It's been here for over forty-eight hours, so it wasn't left today."

Mashiro sat down at the backup terminal and pressed the power button.

The screen lit up, and the startup progress bar crept forward. She brought up the system logs.

The data Nanami had sent earlier already marked the suspicious times: twelve hours before the Juvenile Detention Center mission was issued, a former employee's account had been activated.

Three hours before the mission was issued, the backup terminal had been brought out of sleep mode.

One hour after the mission was issued, the operation logs had been overwritten.

The backup logs were offline. The records on the server could be deleted, but there was another local backup they couldn't erase.

"Found it."

On the screen was a copy of the operation log, recording the complete execution of two commands.

The first issued the Juvenile Detention Center mission through the Window System, classifying it as Grade 2 and omitting the presence of a special grade cursed spirit.

The second sent an emergency mission in the Saitama area to Tokyo's Second Branch through the Assistant Supervisor system, specifically assigning it to Grade 1 Jujutsu Sorcerer Kujo Mashiro.

The two commands had been issued four minutes apart from the same terminal. The login account belonged to Takashi Yamada, an employee who had left two years earlier.

But Mashiro kept scrolling and found a record in the logs that hadn't been completely overwritten: three different administrator accounts had been logged into in succession in the early hours of the morning.

"Three accounts," Mashiro said, pointing the record out to Satoru Gojo.

"Department head Sakakibara Shigeru logged in at 2:31 a.m. and scheduled the mission to be issued automatically."

"Deputy department head Yoshio Tanaka logged in at 2:33 and activated the permissions on former employee Takashi Yamada's account."

"Hikaru Sato from the Technical Supervision Bureau logged in at 2:37, executed the dispatch command, and scheduled an automatic overwrite six hours later."

Three accounts, three logins, with gaps of two minutes and four minutes. Clearly, one person had used three accounts with different permissions to complete the entire process step by step.

Satoru Gojo put his sunglasses away and looked at the three names on the screen. There was no smile on his lips.

"The department head was responsible for sending the meeting room notice, while also obtaining medical records in advance to establish an alibi. His permissions were used to access the template, but he wasn't the one actually operating the terminal. All he had to do was provide his account. The deputy department head activated the former employee's account so the commands couldn't be traced back to anyone still on staff. Hikaru Sato handled the final dispatch and covered their tracks. Three people, three stages."

Mashiro took a picture of the operation log. "The department head and his deputy are both clerical staff, but they have cursed techniques too. Hikaru Sato is the Window System's technical director, a Grade 3 Jujutsu Sorcerer."

Satoru Gojo walked over to the server and placed a finger on the metal casing where the cursed residue was strongest.

"Here. Hikaru Sato left cursed residue while operating it. I can sense his cursed technique type. It's a low-level cursed energy detection technique. I've memorized his cursed energy signature."

"So Hikaru Sato was the one who tampered with it. Sakakibara Shigeru supplied his account and took sick leave. Yoshio Tanaka activated the former employee's account."

Mashiro stood and tapped her fingers twice beside the keyboard. "Two clerical staff and one technician. There's someone above them."

"Sakakibara Shigeru's predecessor, the one who moved up to Jujutsu Headquarters." Satoru Gojo put his sunglasses back on. "The department head's account was remotely logged out in the early hours. The logout record shows an IP address somewhere in Kyoto. But it went through three redirects, so pinpointing the final location will take more analysis."

"That's enough." Mashiro slipped her phone into her pocket. "You've memorized Hikaru Sato's cursed energy signature. All that's left is to find them."

Satoru Gojo looked at her. Mashiro's face was expressionless, but her fingers were typing on her phone much faster than usual.

The expression she'd worn upon rushing back from Saitama overnight and seeing Itadori's corpse was gone, replaced by this calm focus.

Mashiro put her phone away and told Satoru Gojo, "Send me the address once you find them."

Satoru Gojo nodded and left the room.

Mashiro followed him out and closed the server room door. The motion-activated lights in the corridor switched off automatically, plunging the entire floor back into darkness.

As they left the Affairs Department building, Ijichi rolled down the car window and watched them approach.

"Mr. Gojo, are you finished investigating?"

"We are."

Ijichi didn't dare ask outright who they had uncovered. He simply nodded.

Mashiro got into the back seat, took out her phone, and opened LINE.

Her chat with Nanami was still displaying his last message. She typed a few words and sent them.

"Mashiro": Three people. Sakakibara Shigeru, Yoshio Tanaka, Hikaru Sato.

Nanami's reply came quickly.

"Nanami": Hikaru Sato submitted a request for annual leave a week ago. His leave starts the day after tomorrow. If you're going to look for him, tomorrow night is the best time.

"Mashiro": Got it.

The phone screen went dark, and the car fell quiet again.

Mashiro sank into the seat and slowly traced two circles on her knee before stopping.

Those three were the executors, not the mastermind, but the executors had to die too.

The one who remained was still at Jujutsu Headquarters in Kyoto.

I woke up to find that the number of novel readers worldwide had dropped a thousandfold, while mine stayed the same!

Waaah, so many people are reading! Thank you, everyone, meow~

Dear readers, if you spot any problems with the setting, please leave a comment right where they occur. I really don't have time while writing to carefully check everything against the original.

If I see them and can fix them, I'll do my best. If they're too difficult to fix, please go easy on me and just consider it a change that happened as the world adapted to Mashiro, or2.

That's all, meow!