Go Eat a Fist

Masamichi Yaga's gaze swept over all four of them in turn.

This year's incoming class was absurdly talented.

Talented enough to make Kyoto green with envy, talented enough to draw the eyes of the entire Jujutsu Society. But their problems were just as absurd.

So absurd that, on the night Masamichi Yaga finished reading all the new students' files, he lay awake for three solid hours.

Satoru Gojo.

The Gojo Clan's bearer of the Six Eyes and Limitless, the person who had changed the balance of the Jujutsu Society from the moment he was born.

The Six Eyes only appeared once every few centuries in the Jujutsu Society. The last bearer had single-handedly redrawn the power map for several generations. This one was even more outrageous: he had not only the Six Eyes, but Limitless too. Putting those two together was like heaven dealing every good card to the same person.

A brash, headstrong, unmanageable dead cat.

To him, the rules of the Three Great Families were less compelling than a convenience store sale flyer. He had sent all the old men of the Gojo Clan's blood pressure soaring, yet there was nothing they could do about him.

Shoko Ieiri.

A rare user of Reverse Cursed Technique. Though her ability was still unstable, her talent was already enough to keep the higher-ups watching her closely.

Reverse Cursed Technique was rare in itself. Those who could output it to others were rarer still; there were only a handful in the entire Jujutsu Society.

She seemed the least troublesome: quiet, a woman of few words, neither causing trouble nor provoking it.

She would even calmly deliver a perfectly aimed quip when everyone else was arguing at the top of their lungs.

But Masamichi Yaga could tell that this girl wasn't well-behaved. She simply couldn't be bothered to cause trouble. Being obedient and being lazy were two different things.

Obedience meant doing as you were told. Laziness meant deciding it wasn't worth the effort.

And Shoko clearly belonged to the latter category.

Suguru Geto.

Cursed Spirit Manipulation, astonishing reserves of cursed energy, and, despite his ordinary background, enough potential to make any family covet him.

With no bloodline advantage and no family resources, he had made it far enough on talent alone to earn special admission to Jujutsu High.

Gentle and steady, he handled people and situations with a comfortable sense of restraint.

Mild-mannered and polite.

Masamichi Yaga had seen too many people of this type. The gentler and more resolute they seemed, the more stubborn they tended to be about certain things. He considered that a good thing.

As for Yan Si.

Masamichi Yaga's gaze lingered on him for an extra half second.

Not much. Just half a second.

But amid that steady sweep of his gaze, the half-second pause was already conspicuous enough.

Able to attract cursed spirits, able to output Reverse Cursed Technique, complicated origins, personality unknown.

"Unknown" was a word Masamichi Yaga had added himself.

The remarks section of Yan Si's file had originally read, "Lax disposition, unpredictable behavior, requires observation."

After reading it, Masamichi Yaga had fallen silent for a long time, then added a note beneath it in fountain pen: "Requires strict supervision."

After some thought, he crossed out "supervision" and changed it to "attention."

Not because he had gone soft, but because he felt "supervision" might be too mild a word for Yan Si.

What this person needed wasn't supervision. It was an alarm that followed him everywhere.

Noticing his gaze, Yan Si looked up.

Those violet eyes appeared from behind his loose black hair and curved in a smile at him.

His smile was so sweet and obedient. His lashes lowered slightly, the curve of his lips was just right, and even the little vermilion mole between his brows looked especially innocent in that smile.

Yes, this was a beauty trap.

If Masamichi Yaga hadn't already read this person's mission records from mid-March to the present.

If he hadn't known that Yan Si had hacked a Grade 2 Cursed Spirit half to death and left it for Suguru Geto as a "snack."

If he hadn't heard an Assistant Supervisor report that Yan Si had used a super-powered flashlight to scare the Assistant Supervisors huddled in a corner.

Then perhaps he would have thought Yan Si was someone like Suguru Geto.

Masamichi Yaga withdrew his gaze and turned a page in the files, the paper making a crisp sound in the quiet classroom.

He continued, his voice a shade deeper than before. "You will take theory classes, undergo physical combat training and cursed energy control training, and gradually begin participating in missions. Missions are not games, sightseeing trips, or after-dinner strolls, and they certainly aren't something you do for fun."

He was plainly looking at Yan Si and Satoru Gojo as he said that last sentence.

Not a passing glance, either. He fixed his gaze on them, locked on, and tried to nail those words into their brains with his stare.

Yan Si blinked with perfect innocence.

His lashes fluttered lightly twice, his face full of Teacher, what are you talking about? I don't understand-yet the curve of his lips hadn't changed at all. If anything, it had lifted a fraction.

It was the smile of someone who remained utterly unruffled after being exposed, as practiced as a troublemaker who had been singled out by teachers countless times and never once repented.

Suguru Geto silently looked away.

Satoru Gojo hadn't caught the specific story behind that sentence-or rather, he had caught the general outline and didn't care in the slightest.

He had picked up only the key phrase: "for fun." That happened to be what he was best at, and what interested him most.

Propping his chin in his hand, elbow on the desk and body leaning forward, he suddenly asked, "Teacher, do we have training today?"

He showed absolutely no awareness that interrupting a teacher was rude.

Masamichi Yaga looked at him. Of course he had noticed the abrupt change of subject.

But he also knew that preaching to people like Satoru Gojo and Yan Si was about as effective as tossing pebbles into a waterfall.

You wouldn't even hear a splash.

"Yes."

He said.

Satoru Gojo's eyes lit up behind his sunglasses.

A little of the Six Eyes' blue light leaked out around the edges of the lenses.

He leaned farther forward, until the front legs of his chair were almost off the floor. "Beating people up?"

"A basic assessment."

"Isn't that just beating people up?"

The corners of Satoru Gojo's mouth lifted as he spoke in a tone that declared his logic indisputable.

"No." Masamichi Yaga was expressionless.

"Can we fight?"

"You can't just fight whenever you please."

"So we can fight under certain conditions." Satoru Gojo enunciated "certain conditions" very clearly, his voice brimming with the joy of getting his way.

Masamichi Yaga: "..."

Suguru Geto suddenly understood a little of why Teacher Yaga would snap chalk in his hand.

It wasn't anger. It was the helplessness of I'm clearly speaking Japanese, but somehow he manages to translate it into an entirely different language.

Satoru Gojo wasn't arguing for the sake of arguing. He genuinely had his own system of logic. Every piece of information that entered it was automatically translated into whatever he wanted it to mean, and the translation was smooth and seamless.

Yan Si, meanwhile, raised his head with great interest, finally shifting out of his lazy sprawl. He sat up a little, braced his hand on the desk, and rested his chin on the back of it. His violet eyes lit up. "What does the basic assessment test? Can we make our classmates experience pain?"

Shoko paused in the act of biting her lollipop. Her teeth tapped lightly against the candy without biting down.

Suguru Geto whipped his head around so fast he nearly strained his neck. "Yan Si."

Yan Si tilted his head toward him, looking as innocent as a cat whose name had suddenly been called. "What?"

He blinked.

Suguru Geto lowered his voice to a breath forced between his teeth, every syllable filled with a normal person's earnest effort to reason with a lunatic. "Don't ask questions like that on the first day."

Yan Si lowered his voice too, mimicking his tone as he leaned closer to Suguru Geto and said quietly and earnestly, "But I really want to know."

"No, you don't."

"Yes, I do," Yan Si insisted.

"No, you don't." Suguru Geto stared into his eyes, his tone shifting from persuasion to something bordering on pleading.

Satoru Gojo heard them.

Of course he heard them.

He had been listening the whole time.

He turned all the way around from the front row and pulled his sunglasses down, revealing his azure eyes. "You like making other people experience pain?"

"I don't like it or dislike it." Yan Si turned toward him, and the two met each other's eyes across Suguru Geto.

He smiled, dazzlingly bright, the red dot between his brows gleaming faintly under the lights. "Want to try?"

Teacher Gojo could get his first taste in a moment.

Ha ha.

Satoru Gojo's lips lifted, that curve growing from a smile into a grin, then from a grin into an expression that could give any teacher nightmares. "Sure."

"Enough!"

Masamichi Yaga finally ran out of patience.

Fuck patience.

With these two, he just needed to hit hard!