As expected.
After a round of loving discipline, Itadori successfully enrolled.
Early the next morning, at Harajuku Station.
Dressed in his brand-new uniform, Itadori looked around. "Aren't we here to pick up the last new student? Why didn't Jiahao come?"
Leaning against the railing, Fushiguro said, "He's probably studying the school's defensive arrangements and the Broadcast Room's operating instructions right now."
Hearing that Jiahao wasn't coming, Itadori visibly relaxed, body and soul.
"I wonder what the last new student's like. I just hope they're not as... otherworldly as Jiahao."
Fushiguro instinctively nodded in agreement, then glanced at Itadori, who wore goofy pink sunglasses and held popcorn in his left hand and a crêpe in his right.
"Honestly, you don't look like a normal human either."
Before long, their gazes locked onto a short-haired girl nearby wearing the same uniform.
Short orange hair, and an unmistakably commanding presence!
She could lift a model scout who looked to weigh two hundred pounds off the ground with one hand. Commanding indeed.
Itadori said, "This isn't good. This feeling..."
Fushiguro said, "Yeah... this familiar feeling."
They exchanged a glance. There was no doubt about it... their final female classmate gave off the same aura as Jiahao.
"Hey, over here!"
Surrounded by beautiful women asking for photos, Satoru Gojo waved to Kugisaki.
"My name's Nobara Kugisaki."
With one hand on her hip, Kugisaki looked down at the two boys imperiously. "Cheer up, boys. Your splash of red is here."
After introducing themselves, the three followed Satoru Gojo's misleading promises to an abandoned building across from Roppongi Cemetery.
"Didn't you say we were coming to Roppongi for a feast?!"
Pointing furiously at the building across the street, which leaked an aura of curses, Kugisaki stamped her feet at being tricked. "Even so, isn't this welcome ceremony a little too shabby?!"
Satoru Gojo said, "Think of it as an entrance test. You can have your welcome feast once you pass."
"Fine."
"But speaking of which, Sea Urchin Head and the Pink-Haired Gorilla over there said there was another new student. Why doesn't he have to take the test?"
On the drive to Roppongi, Fushiguro and Itadori had briefly told Kugisaki about Jiahao.
Kugisaki understood that prestigious schools in big cities had strict standards.
But having a privileged student with connections in her class would really piss her off.
Simply because she wasn't the one with connections!
Satoru Gojo smiled. "There's no point testing him. That guy could deal with a curse of this level in one punch."
"Oh, really!"
Kugisaki gave a curt reply, swept both hands past her waist to draw a hammer and steel nails, and strode toward the cursed building's entrance. "I can deal with something this level in one swing of my hammer!"
Watching her walk away, Satoru Gojo smiled.
Good. She looked like an iron lady who refused to be outdone.
"Yuji."
Itadori, whom Kugisaki had dubbed the Pink-Haired Gorilla, snapped out of his thoughts and took the kitchen knife Satoru Gojo offered him.
"Only a curse can kill a curse."
"You haven't learned how to control cursed energy yet, so use a cursed tool for now."
Once Itadori and Kugisaki entered the building, Satoru Gojo and Fushiguro squatted by the roadside like a pair of street loafers and waited.
"Is there any point to this test?"
Squatting on a stone bollard, Fushiguro asked, "The school already has records of Kugisaki's combat experience, right?"
"Yeah."
Leaning against the curb, Satoru Gojo nodded. "The assistant supervisor reported everything about Nobara to the school ages ago."
Her abilities, her life history, even eighteen generations of her ancestors had been thoroughly investigated.
Satoru Gojo said, "But curses out in the provinces aren't on the same level as the ones in Tokyo."
"Besides, this test isn't just about her strength. Her affinity with cursed energy and how crazy she is are what I want to see."
"What jujutsu sorcerer isn't crazy? If Nobara had an ordinary, unremarkable personality, I'd actually advise her against enrolling at Jujutsu High."
Ordinary people without enough mental resilience couldn't handle insane cursed spirits, or comrades dying before their eyes.
Boom!
As they spoke, an ugly cursed spirit missing an arm smashed through the building's wall and fled into the air.
Before Fushiguro could finish it off, the cursed spirit let out an agonized howl and turned to ash in midair.
Satoru Gojo grinned. "Not bad. They're both pretty crazy."
"Oh, right. I almost forgot to ask."
After confirming that the two new students were safe, Satoru Gojo turned to Fushiguro. "You spent three days with Jiahao. Did you ever see him use a cursed technique?"
Fushiguro frowned deeply, carefully recalling those three decidedly unpleasant days of Jiahao's trials.
At the park a few days ago, the curse user Fushiguro had considered fairly strong had returned to heaven after taking just one Hao Flash.
They had spent some time together, yet he apparently didn't even know what kind of cursed technique Jiahao possessed.
Watching Fushiguro's expression grow increasingly strained, Satoru Gojo had his answer.
"Honestly, I'm kind of curious."
Meanwhile, at Jujutsu High.
"Was that really necessary? Putting up a barrier around one lousy Broadcast Room?"
Standing outside the Broadcast Room, Jiahao shook his head and sighed softly.
The next second, the contact lenses Itadori had mocked as Sharingan emitted a faint fluctuation of cursed energy.
Three tomoe spun within Jiahao's pupils, and a rift of nothingness opened in the space before him.
Jiahao stepped forward, bypassing the barrier and entering the Broadcast Room.
Ignore the risks and proceed.
Six in the evening, at dusk.
After familiarizing himself with the Broadcast Room, Jiahao received a message from Satoru Gojo.
It contained the location of an upscale restaurant in Roppongi, along with a group photo of teacher and students.
The photo's caption read: [Hot-blooded youth]
In Itadori and Fushiguro's eyes, Jiahao was a complete lunatic.
But in Jiahao's eyes, every member of the main cast in that photo was just as deranged.
The heroine among heroes, Nobara Kugisaki.
The strongest, who lived amid Hao without recognizing Hao: Satoru Two-Point-Five Gojo.
The chicken-foot vessel born from Mommy Kenjaku: Yuji Itadori.
And the self-destructing superhero who couldn't take any pressure: Megumi Fushiguro.
"The last crazy leading lady's here. The main cast is complete."
"According to the plot, there are only a few months left until the final Hao showdown with Sukuna. I need to pick up the pace on my Hao points."
Jiahao put his phone away and immediately returned to his dorm room to change into a brand-new outfit.
Half an hour later.
At an upscale restaurant in Roppongi, the refined social elites kept casting discreet, complicated looks toward Satoru Gojo's table.
A white-haired man with a blindfold and picture-perfect looks, Itadori fighting a bloody battle against his steak with a knife and fork, Kugisaki demolishing sushi like a whirlwind, and Fushiguro keeping his head down as he desperately tried to make himself invisible.
Fushiguro lowered his voice. "Were you two starving ghosts in your past lives? At least try to watch how you're behaving!"
With half a piece of steak still stuffed in his mouth, Itadori mumbled, "Can't help it. The beef here is too good!"
Kugisaki slammed the table. "Don't you know I get a nasty temper when I'm hungry?!"
"Do you know how long I went hungry on the train coming to the big city from that middle-of-nowhere backwater?!"
Kugisaki swept her viciously ravenous gaze across the room, and the elites secretly watching them all lowered their heads.
Just then, the restaurant manager's panicked voice rang out from the stairs to the second floor. "Sir! Sir!"
"This is an upscale restaurant that requires reservations. I'm afraid we don't serve improperly dressed guests!"
"What counts as properly dressed?"
"At the very least... please take off that tail behind your backside first."
"...Can't do that."
Everyone looked toward the voices, then collectively froze.
An orange martial arts uniform, a broad dark-blue sash, white wristbands, and black kung fu shoes.
Anyone who had watched Dragon Ball knew this was the outfit Goku wore to the World Martial Arts Tournament.
But where the character for "Go" should have appeared on the uniform's chest, a huge "Hao" had been painted in red instead.
Combined with the newcomer's golden, skyward-pointing spiky hair, there was no doubt he was cosplaying a Super Saiyan. No... Super Saiyan Jiahao. No... Uchiha Super Saiyan Jiahao, because he had the Sharingan too!
Yet the most eye-catching thing was the motorized tail swinging nimbly behind Jiahao's backside, so flexible and lifelike that it could even bind the protesting restaurant manager and suspend him in midair.
When Uchiha Super Saiyan Jiahao reached the second-floor dining area and discovered a crowd of social elites watching him, he grew even more excited!
There was a kind of public humiliation where he felt none, but everyone else felt it for him.
Watching Jiahao approach step by step, Fushiguro and Itadori wished they could dive straight under the table.
Kugisaki, who had been stuffing her face, was already dumbstruck. Only Satoru Gojo still managed to maintain a semblance of composure.
Until Jiahao slipped a hand into his shirt pocket and switched on his portable speaker, at which point Satoru Gojo silently lowered his head.
"Stumbling into the heavenly court~~"
Before you continue