At five to nine, Yang Jian stood outside the infirmary.
The door was half open, and the smell of disinfectant drifted out. Shoko Ieiri sat at her desk, writing, her white coat sleeves rolled up to her elbows, exposing her slender, pale wrists.
Yang Jian knocked on the doorframe.
Shoko didn't even look up. "Come in. Take your shirt off."
"That direct?"
"Would you like me to offer you tea first?"
Yang Jian pulled off his long-sleeved T-shirt and draped it over the back of a nearby chair.
Shoko turned around with a stethoscope in her hand. Her gaze swept over Yang Jian-not an appraising look, but a doctor's examination of a patient: quick, professional, and devoid of unnecessary emotion.
"Sit on the examination table."
Yang Jian sat down. The cold surface touched his back, making him flinch.
Shoko pressed the stethoscope against him. The metal was cold enough to make his muscles tense.
"Relax. Take a deep breath."
Yang Jian complied.
Shoko listened at several spots, then changed positions and listened again. Her expression barely changed, but her movements grew slower.
"Heart rate: fifty-eight," she said.
"Is that low?"
"On the low side. Athlete territory." Shoko took off the stethoscope. "But your muscle mass doesn't suggest regular exercise."
Yang Jian didn't explain. He really hadn't exercised. His body had been like this ever since he crossed over-slow heartbeat, low body temperature. It might have been related to residual supernatural power, or to the crossing itself.
Shoko began the routine checks. Blood pressure, blood oxygen, pupillary reflex, knee-jerk reflex. She recorded every result carefully.
Then came the blood draw.
When the needle went in, Yang Jian glanced down. His blood was a normal dark red, and it flowed normally, too.
"How long until the results come back?"
"Two hours for the blood count. The biochemistry results will be ready tomorrow." Shoko sealed the tube and labeled it. "We can test your cursed energy aptitude now."
She took something out of a drawer.
It was a palm-sized disc made of an unidentified material, its surface covered in densely engraved patterns. A milky-white stone was set in its center.
"Put your hand on it."
Yang Jian pressed his right hand against the disc.
The stone showed no reaction.
No glow, no vibration, not even a change in temperature.
Shoko waited ten seconds.
"Try your left hand."
He switched hands. Same result.
The stone lay there lifelessly, no different from an ordinary pebble.
"Cursed energy aptitude: zero." Shoko put the disc away and wrote a few lines in her notebook. "Not even any latent aptitude. You're more ordinary than an ordinary person."
"Thanks for the compliment."
"It wasn't a compliment." Shoko set down her pen. "Ordinary people have at least some latent cursed energy fluctuations. Even if they've never awakened it, the foundation is still there. You don't. Not a trace. That's not normal."
Just as Satoru Gojo had said. Absurdly clean.
"Let's look at your hand next."
Shoko came over, took Yang Jian's right hand, and turned it palm down.
She pressed the pad of her finger against the same spot as yesterday and held it there for a few seconds.
"Still two degrees lower."
Yang Jian said nothing.
Shoko took a handheld thermal imager off a nearby shelf. It hardly looked like standard infirmary equipment. She had probably gotten it specifically for him.
The screen lit up. A small patch on the back of Yang Jian's right hand was noticeably bluer. Its edges were distinct, its shape irregular, and it was roughly the size of a coin.
"The area is a little larger than what I felt during yesterday's examination." Shoko stared at the screen.
Yang Jian's attention wasn't on the thermal imager.
He was looking at the system panel.
[Cooldown: 2 hours, 31 minutes.]
Two and a half hours.
"Your forehead," Shoko said suddenly.
Yang Jian snapped back to attention.
Shoko raised the thermal imager and aimed it at the center of his forehead.
On the screen, an even smaller cold spot appeared in the middle of his forehead. It was much fainter than the one on his hand, but it was definitely there.
"Here, too?"
Yang Jian had no room to deny it. The thermal imager showed it in black and white-no, red against blue.
"Two low-temperature areas, both at the locations where anomalies were observed on you last night." Shoko turned off the device. "Wherever your body used that power, it left a trace."
She looked at Yang Jian without pressing him, but the meaning in her eyes was clear.
"Just ask whatever you want to ask," Yang Jian said.
"I won't ask where it came from. That's Mr. Yaga's business." Shoko returned the device to the shelf. "I'm only asking about the medical side. Will these low-temperature areas expand?"
Good question.
Yang Jian wanted to know that himself.
"Not so far." He was telling the truth. Since last night, the patch on his hand had only expanded a tiny amount, almost too little to count.
"'So far,'" Shoko repeated. "The next time you use that ability, the low-temperature areas will most likely keep expanding."
"What effects will that have?"
"I can't tell at the moment. Blood flow is normal, nerve conduction is normal, and the local tissue shows no signs of necrosis. The temperature is simply low." Shoko picked up her notebook and leafed through it. "But I've never seen a case like this. I've treated plenty of physical changes caused by cursed energy. Yours is different."
"How?"
"Cursed energy affects the body from the inside out. It alters the meridians first, then the tissue. Yours works from the outside in. The surface skin changes first, while the underlying tissue remains normal."
Shoko's analysis was far more thorough than Yang Jian had expected. A Reverse Cursed Technique user's understanding of the human body really was beyond that of an ordinary person.
"Put another way." Shoko leaned against the edge of the desk. "These traces on you weren't left by power you generated yourself. They're remnants of an external power that attached itself to you. Your body is the vessel, not the source."
A vessel.
The word made Yang Jian think of Yuji Itadori.
The two were different, of course. Itadori was Sukuna's vessel; he was a trial card's vessel. But fundamentally, Shoko was right. His body didn't generate power. It merely held it.
The trial card gave him the Ghost Eye for ten minutes. After it was gone, his body retained part of its imprint.
"Are we done?" Yang Jian asked.
"More or less." Shoko closed her notebook. "Come back in three days. We'll check whether the low-temperature areas have changed."
Yang Jian hopped off the examination table, picked up his T-shirt, and pulled it on.
"Your body fat is on the low side," Shoko added before he left.
"Complimenting my figure?"
"Telling you to eat more. It wouldn't look good if word got out that a collaborator had starved to death in a Jujutsu High dorm."
Yang Jian left the infirmary. Sunlight filled the corridor, and the air was dry. He could still feel the lingering pressure of Shoko's fingertip on the back of his right hand.
The vessel, not the source.
Then what about the thing that crawled past the window last night?
If supernatural power was "marking" his body, could things that sensed the supernatural sense him, too?
Yang Jian walked to the vending machine at the end of the corridor, inserted a coin, and pressed the cola button.
The machine hummed for a few seconds and dispensed a can.
He bent down to retrieve it, his gaze passing over the machine's glass panel.
His own reflection appeared in the glass.
And behind him, at the corner of the corridor, a length of something white drew back out of sight.
Yang Jian's hand stopped on the can.
He didn't turn around.
The vending machine's glass wasn't clear enough to show more than an outline. White, a narrow strip, yet twice the length it should have been on a normal person. Deathly pale and swollen.
It appeared for less than half a second before jerking back out of sight.
Yang Jian's hand froze on the can.
A chill shot up his spine.
He didn't turn around.
He took out the cola, straightened up, and casually pulled the tab. He took a sip.
Cold.
He turned and stepped forward.
The corridor was empty. There was nothing at the corner. The floor was clean, and there were no marks on the walls.
But the low-temperature patch on the back of his right hand suddenly grew colder again.
The same feeling as last night.
Broad daylight. Inside Jujutsu High.
That thing had gotten in.
Yang Jian stood holding his cola for a few seconds, then turned toward his little building. His pace was neither fast nor slow, his posture relaxed.
When he reached the stone path, he glanced at the main building's second-floor windows out of the corner of his eye.
The curtains in Yaga's office were tightly shut. Shoko was drinking coffee by a window. On the third floor, Satoru Gojo hung halfway out of a window, playing on his phone.
Everything was as usual.
Yang Jian opened the door to his little building. Locked it. Drew every curtain.
"System."
[Here.]
"How much cooldown is left?"
[2 hours, 7 minutes.]
Yang Jian sat on the sofa, staring at the cola on the coffee table.
"Two hours."
That white thing had appeared inside Jujutsu High.
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