"Jiahao, aren't you coming back with us?"
Itadori waved and called out from the car window.
His face solemn in profile, Jiahao waved a hand and gazed up at the sky. "Tonight, the moon is..."
"VROOOM!!!"
Before he could finish, both cars floored their accelerators and drifted down the mountain.
In the blink of an eye, their taillights disappeared.
Jiahao: "..."
Was that really necessary?
Jiahao shook his head, then stepped into the Kamui dimension.
Three seconds later, Jiahao reappeared on the mountaintop in a brand-new outfit.
Octopus-like bangs split into multiple strands, paired with high-tech glasses for tracking and navigation.
A blue blazer, a white shirt, gray shorts, and a red bow tie.
An anesthetic watch loaded with knockout drugs, and a high-tech belt containing a soccer ball.
As that familiar, syrupy background music began to play, Great Detective Kehao made his dazzling debut beneath the moonlight.
On the deserted mountaintop, Great Detective Kehao slowly approached the spot where Spirit Medium Granny had first sat cross-legged to perform her ritual.
Jiahao crouched and made a show of scooping up a handful of dirt, rubbing it between his fingertips. "Judging by how the dirt has settled, the Granny-Sun Duo must have been lying in wait here for at least half an hour."
"In other words, while I was still cruising through the streets of Tokyo, the three curse users had already arrived here to prepare."
Great Detective Kehao stood up and pushed his glasses up with one finger.
"Although the Shit Geezer and Spirit Medium Granny both kept insisting before they died that Jujutsu High had a mole, I don't believe it."
"Just a few days ago, the Higher-Ups hatched a plot that nearly killed Itadori. They shouldn't have the nerve to get on Satoru Gojo's nerves again so soon."
"Besides, even those old fossils among the Higher-Ups couldn't have known I'd take this mountain road back to school."
"The only way to accurately predict my route and when I'd return would be surveillance."
"While Satoru Gojo was still in the restaurant, I doubt the mastermind would have risked challenging the authority of the Six Eyes."
"And I never felt anyone watching me along the way."
"You probably happened to discover my route back while following Itadori, shortly after Satoru Gojo left."
Jiahao chuckled. "Heh. You tried to use the Higher-Ups to divert attention, but you still came up one move short."
"Now, let me guess. Just who is the mastermind constantly monitoring Itadori, the vessel for Sukuna?"
Manually turning up the music, Great Detective Kehao suddenly spun around and pointed toward the distant shadows.
"There is always only one truth!"
"Come out, shadowy culprit!"
"Whoosh!"
The night wind howled, the rising mountain breeze carrying the fresh scent of nighttime vegetation.
After a brief silence, rhythmic applause came from the shadowed slope Great Detective Kehao was pointing at.
"Clap, clap, clap-clap-clap!"
"Truly impressive, Mr. Great Detective!"
Inky-black hair, half tied into a bun, and a five-strip Buddhist robe.
Across his forehead ran an unmistakable stitched scar.
Suguru Geto-or, more precisely, Kenjaku, who occupied Suguru Geto's body-emerged from the shadows. "I am deeply impressed by such sound, well-supported deductions."
Looking at Kenjaku, Jiahao smiled as though everything had gone exactly as expected. "So you really were the mastermind... shadowy culprit."
For the sake of his grand future swagger plans, Jiahao had no intention of exposing Kenjaku's true identity just yet.
Still, that omniscient perspective of being the only sober one in a drunken world really did feel wonderful.
Watching Jiahao inexplicably slip into self-satisfaction, Kenjaku's mouth twitched. "Well, you can call me Suguru Geto."
"Geto works too. If you call me Suguru, though, I'm afraid a certain someone might get jealous."
"Fine."
Jiahao tilted his head back to admire the moon. "So, Geto, was my deduction correct?"
Looking at the confident Jiahao, Kenjaku hesitated slightly.
After a moment, Kenjaku tucked both hands into his sleeves and narrowed his eyes in a smile, carefully choosing his words. "There were a few errors, but not many."
Great Detective Hao looked at Kenjaku in surprise, his brow furrowing. "Where was I wrong?"
Jiahao had known all along that Kenjaku was hiding in the shadows, but not because of any deduction.
Back when Jiahao was beating the hell out of the Shit Geezer and Spirit Medium Granny, the highest Valor Points on the scene had periodically floated out from Kenjaku's hiding spot.
It would have been hard for Jiahao not to notice.
Someone who could arrange for curse users to test him and yield more than eight hundred Valor Points.
Other than Kenjaku, Jiahao couldn't think of a second candidate.
He had identified Kenjaku as the mastermind first, then worked backward through the process.
How could my supposedly flawless swagger-fueled deduction show have any errors? Was Kenjaku just too stubborn to admit it?
Under Jiahao's suspicious gaze, Kenjaku had no choice but to take out a phone to prove he wasn't a sorcerer who liked to lie. "Um... actually, finding your location wasn't that complicated."
On the large, white-lit phone screen, a red dot blinked very close to the center.
Kenjaku said, "Technology advances rather quickly these days. Once you lock onto a number and an ID, you can locate the device's owner."
Jiahao took out his phone and experimentally stepped back twice. The red dot on Kenjaku's phone moved with him.
"CRACK!"
Jiahao crushed his phone in one hand!
Fuck your mother!
How the fuck did that make sense?!
Instead of properly training their Cursed Techniques, a bunch of mystical jujutsu sorcerers were messing around with high-tech shit?!
What the hell was a thousand-year-old fox like you doing keeping up with the latest trends?!
He'd been wondering why Valor Points kept floating out of that shadowy corner when, for once, he'd actually tried making a serious deduction instead of showing off.
So all that analysis had amounted to jack shit!
Kenjaku must have been watching from his hiding spot, dumbfounded too!
He had never imagined phone tracking would be part of the picture.
Fuck. Tomorrow, I'm getting myself a brick phone.
If that doesn't work, I'll dump some system points into hacking and find a chance to give Kenjaku a taste of his own medicine.
In just a few seconds, hundreds of plans for getting back at Kenjaku flashed through Jiahao's mind, while his face remained perfectly unruffled.
Jiahao waved a hand. "I see. Exactly as I deduced."
Kenjaku glanced at the pulverized phone at Jiahao's feet and fell silent.
It's just the two of us here. Could you stop showing off?
What the hell did you even deduce just now? How was that the same?
How was your skin thicker than mine when I'd been alive for a thousand years?
Despite his inward grumbling, Kenjaku maintained a gentle smile. "Indeed. It was exactly as you deduced."
He delivered the lie without blushing or missing a heartbeat.
Fuck. This guy really was disgusting.
The two smiled at each other.
They looked like kindred spirits amid foul hills and stinking waters, twin stars of a thoroughly wretched landscape.
After their awkward smiles came another stretch of silence with nothing to say.
Kenjaku, who had come with a purpose, spoke first. "Mr. Great Detective, what are you doing here?"
Jiahao: "Admiring the moon."
Kenjaku: "...Let us admire it together."
Jiahao: "...All right."
And so, Jiahao forced himself to admire the moon for the sake of showing off.
To achieve his goal, Kenjaku was forced to join him.
An hour later...
With his hands clasped behind his back, Jiahao discreetly flexed his fingers, gazed up at the bright moon, and began, "People today cannot see the moon of ancient times..."
What came next again? He had racked his brains and come up with only that single line of swagger-worthy poetry that more or less fit the mood.
Never mind the poem's meaning or imagery. At least there was a moon overhead and a moon in the verse.
When Jiahao failed to produce the next line for a long while, Kenjaku once again had no choice but to speak. "Yet today's moon once shone upon the ancients..."
Fuck, you even knew poetry from the Dragon Nation, huh?!
So what if you'd lived a thousand years? What the fuck were you showing off for?!
Refusing to concede, Jiahao once again churned his brain!
He churned and churned...
Dawn broke.
Before you continue