What exactly are you?

Yang Jian hadn't slept well.

It wasn't that the bed was too hard. The dorms at Jujutsu High were better than he'd expected. The problem lay with him-every so often, he woke up and instinctively felt his forehead.

There was nothing there. No split in his skin, no Ghost Eye.

Only smooth skin. An ordinary person's skin.

At dawn, Yang Jian spent a long time staring into the bathroom mirror. The face reflected there looked almost exactly like Yang Jian's in the world of Mysterious Revival. His features were rather cool and sharp, giving him the look of a pretty boy; it was only the supernatural power that had made him look so indifferent.

The only difference was that the person in the mirror had no power at all.

"System."

[Here.]

"How much cooldown is left on the trial card?"

[17 hours and 22 minutes.]

Yang Jian turned off the faucet and dried his hands.

Seventeen hours. For those seventeen hours, he was an ordinary person whom some street punk could knock out with a single punch. And he was about to meet Masamichi Yaga, the principal of Jujutsu High.

Although this principal hadn't had much screen time in the original story, he was definitely not someone who could be easily fooled. A Grade 1 Jujutsu Sorcerer, an expert at making cursed corpses, and an excellent judge of character.

Yang Jian straightened the clothes he'd worn from the hospital, patted out the wrinkles, and opened the door.

Sunlight filled the hallway.

The atmosphere was completely different from last night.

He'd barely taken a few steps when a door opened. A girl in a white coat walked out with a coffee cup and nearly bumped into him.

"Oh."

Shoko Ieiri.

At this point, she was still a young woman in the bloom of youth, without the weary air of someone who'd grown indifferent to everything. But her eyes already held a hint of that same languor.

"You're the guy from last night?" Shoko Ieiri glanced at him.

"Which guy?"

"The ordinary person who survived inside the Veil. That idiot's been going on about it since early this morning. The whole building knows."

Yang Jian raised an eyebrow. Satoru Gojo really did have a big mouth.

"What did he say?"

Shoko Ieiri took a sip of coffee. "His exact words were, 'Picked up an interesting guy last night. His mouth makes you want to punch him even more than mine does.'"

"..."

Yang Jian decided to give Satoru Gojo a taste of his own medicine when they met later.

"Mr. Yaga's office is the last room on the second floor of the main building." Shoko Ieiri pointed with her coffee cup and turned to leave. After two steps, she looked back. "Oh, and he's not in a great mood today. Yesterday's mission report mentioned a few injured second-years."

"Thanks."

Yang Jian headed in the direction Shoko had indicated.

By daylight, the Jujutsu High campus looked like an ordinary school, provided he ignored the things beside the athletic field that clearly weren't normal training equipment-one looked like a humanoid training dummy molded from steel and cursed energy, covered in fist-sized dents.

The second floor of the main building.

The door at the end of the hallway was slightly ajar. The sound of a sewing machine came from inside.

Yang Jian knocked twice on the doorframe.

The sewing machine stopped.

"Come in."

When he pushed the door open, the first thing he saw wasn't Masamichi Yaga himself, but a row of stuffed toys on the desk. There were all kinds, made of cloth and cotton, with a few leaning against one another at odd angles.

Masamichi Yaga sat behind the desk. Sunglasses, a full beard, and muscles that filled out his training clothes. The principal of Jujutsu High was holding a needle and thread, sewing a stuffed panda.

His stitches were exquisitely delicate.

They didn't fit that fierce face of his at all.

For a moment, Yang Jian felt a strong sense of incongruity, but he didn't let it show.

"Sit." Masamichi Yaga didn't even look up.

Yang Jian pulled out a chair and sat down. Besides the stuffed toys, a pile of documents sat on the desk. He caught a few words on the top one-"Tokyo Metropolitan Third Hospital incident report."

"Yang Jian. Chinese. No cursed energy." Masamichi Yaga finally put down the toy and sewing supplies, then removed his sunglasses to look at him. His gaze was harder to handle than Satoru Gojo's. It wasn't a young man's sharpness and probing curiosity, but the steady pressure that came with experience.

"I've read Gojo and Geto's reports. A Grade 1 Cursed Spirit was destroyed by unknown means. You were the only person present."

"Yes."

"How did you do it?"

"A unique constitution." Yang Jian began the explanation he'd prepared last night. "I can see what you call cursed spirits, but I have no cursed energy."

"You can see them, but you have no cursed energy." Masamichi Yaga repeated it. "Then what did you use to exorcise it?"

"My ability doesn't belong to the cursed energy system."

"Then what system does it belong to?"

"I'm still figuring that out myself." Yang Jian's expression didn't change. "That's why I came to Japan. There aren't any institutions in China dedicated to studying phenomena like this-at least, not publicly. I heard Jujutsu High was the leading authority on the supernatural, so I came here."

Half truth, half lie. The logic held together, and he'd deliberately left himself the opening of not fully understanding his own abilities, making it easier to fill in the gaps later.

Masamichi Yaga stared at him for a long time.

Yang Jian withstood that gaze. Compared to those revolting cursed spirits, human scrutiny seemed much gentler.

"That thing on your forehead," Masamichi Yaga said suddenly.

Yang Jian's heart skipped a beat, but his face remained unchanged. "What?"

"Gojo's report mentioned an abnormal fissure on your forehead when he arrived. It healed on its own within seconds. Geto confirmed it as well."

The Six Eyes' powers of observation really were broken. During those few seconds before the Ghost Eye healed over, Yang Jian had thought neither of them had seen it. Apparently, they'd noted everything.

"That's a side effect of activating my ability." Yang Jian didn't deny it. There was no point. Better to volunteer some information in exchange for trust. "It creates a temporary... organ on my body. Once it's over, the organ disappears without a trace."

That part was true.

Masamichi Yaga's expression barely changed throughout. His control over his emotions was leagues better than Satoru Gojo's.

"You're very calm." Masamichi Yaga made a seemingly unrelated remark.

"After being hunted by a Grade 1 Cursed Spirit, sitting here talking to you really is much easier."

The corner of Masamichi Yaga's mouth moved. It was hard to tell whether he was smiling.

"I'm giving you two options." He put his sunglasses back on. "First, Jujutsu High alters your memories, erasing everything related to jujutsu, then sends you away. You go back to being an ordinary person."

"And the second?"

"You stay at Jujutsu High as a special collaborator. You won't be enrolled as a student or take part in regular classes, but Jujutsu High will provide accommodation and basic living support. On one condition-you cooperate with our research so we can determine exactly what your ability is."

Yang Jian pretended to consider it. In reality, he didn't need to think at all.

Erase my memories? Are you kidding? He didn't even have cursed energy; whether that method would work on him was still an open question. If his supernatural resistance blocked the memory-erasure technique, things could get ugly.

"The second."

"Have you thought it through? Staying here means you'll encounter more things beyond common sense."

"What I encountered last night was already well beyond common sense."

Masamichi Yaga opened a drawer, took out a document, and pushed it toward him. "Sign this. It's a confidentiality agreement and collaborator registration form."

Yang Jian picked up a pen and skimmed it. The contents weren't complicated. There were two main points-he couldn't disclose the existence of Jujutsu Society to outsiders, and Jujutsu High had the right to restrict his freedom of movement when necessary.

He signed.

As he left the office, Yang Jian took a deep breath-not out of nervousness, but because he'd genuinely felt stifled. He'd stayed on guard throughout his conversation with Masamichi Yaga. It was more exhausting than fighting that cursed spirit.

Someone was waiting for him in the hallway.

Satoru Gojo leaned against the wall, holding his usual lollipop.

"Passed?"

"What else was I going to do, fly out the window?"

Satoru Gojo scoffed. "Since when was Mr. Yaga so easygoing? Letting some ordinary guy just walk in."

"I'm not ordinary. You said so yourself."

Satoru Gojo adjusted his sunglasses. "I said you were weird. It wasn't a compliment."

"I took it as one."

"You've got pretty thick skin."

"A little stronger than your Limitless."

Satoru Gojo burst out laughing, pushed himself off the wall, and laced his hands behind his head. "All right, Mr. Yang Jian. Your accommodation is in a separate little building beside ours."

"A separate building?"

"Don't get too excited. It's just a converted storage shed. But it's got everything you need." Satoru Gojo tilted his head. "You're a collaborator. Having somewhere to stay is already pretty good. What did you expect, a suite?"

"I figure a storage shed works. At least I won't have you for a neighbor."

Satoru Gojo rolled his eyes.

The two walked down the hallway toward the exit.

"You really don't have any cursed energy?" Satoru Gojo asked again.

"That's the third time you've asked."

"Because it doesn't make sense." Some of the teasing left Satoru Gojo's voice. "I scanned you with the Six Eyes all night-yes, even after I went back. Don't give me that disgusted look. The result was always the same. You're unnaturally clean."

Yang Jian said nothing.

"A Grade 1 Cursed Spirit isn't some pushover. Even I'd have to put in a little effort to take one head-on. Obviously, only a little. But you, someone with nothing at all, made it disappear without leaving so much as a scrap."

Satoru Gojo stopped and took the lollipop out of his mouth. "What exactly are you?"

That question was harder to answer than "Who exactly are you?"

Yang Jian stopped too, turning his head to look at him.

Seventeen-year-old Satoru Gojo. He hadn't yet lived through the Star Plasma Vessel Incident or his best friend's betrayal. He hadn't become the strongest who hid everything beneath a playful grin.

Right now, there was still genuine curiosity in his eyes.

"I'm someone who's still figuring out what he is," Yang Jian said.

Satoru Gojo stared at him for a few seconds, then put the lollipop back in his mouth.

"All right. Then I'll wait for the day you figure it out."

He started walking again.

Yang Jian followed.

The system's countdown continued ticking in his head.

Sixteen hours.

Fifteen hours and fifty-nine minutes.

Would it be a trial card next time, or a supernatural item? He didn't know.

But he knew that in a world overrun with cursed spirits, a twenty-four-hour cooldown was too long. So long that every second could cost him his life. He needed to figure out the system's rules as soon as possible.

And who was behind that cursed spirit someone had deliberately been feeding?

A name came to Yang Jian's mind.

But he couldn't be certain yet.