Planning the Operation

After hanging up, Toji Fushiguro headed for the racetrack exit on his own, treating Shoichi Kano and the Slit-Mouthed Woman as though they were invisible.

The Slit-Mouthed Woman's raised hand remained frozen in that stiff, grasping pose. Her fingers twitched for a long while, clawing at empty air, before she finally lowered her hand in resentment.

"That wretched human... how dare he... how dare he ignore me!" The Slit-Mouthed Woman kept muttering beside Shoichi Kano. He could feel waves of cold rolling off her, making late May in Japan feel like the start of winter.

Some passersby with weaker constitutions had even started sneezing.

"All right, all right," Shoichi Kano said, tugging at her sleeve. "Let's catch up first."

Sure enough, Toji Fushiguro had clearly slowed down on purpose. With his physical abilities, he could have vanished in the blink of an eye. But he was moving at an ordinary person's pace now, so Kano and the Slit-Mouthed Woman could easily pick out his back in the crowd.

Once Shoichi Kano and the Slit-Mouthed Woman caught up, Toji merely glanced back at them, his expression unreadable, and gave a quiet grunt before continuing forward with his head down.

"Do you have any thoughts on this job, Mr. Fushiguro?" Shoichi Kano tried to get him talking. "Perhaps we could compare notes. It would make coordinating easier when the time comes."

Meanwhile, the Slit-Mouthed Woman was still angry about being ignored. She conjured a pair of scissors with her cursed energy and cursed technique, intending to give him a moderately painful stab as a little payback.

But when the Slit-Mouthed Woman circled behind him and prepared to strike, Toji Fushiguro seemed to have eyes in the back of his head. With the smallest possible movement, he took half a step sideways, just enough to slip beyond her reach.

Then, without even turning around, he slapped Shoichi Kano on the back. Kano felt as though his stomach acid was about to shoot out through his nostrils!

A moment later, one of Toji Fushiguro's hands rested on Shoichi Kano's shoulder, poised to crush his shoulder blade. He applied no pressure, but the threat was clear.

Toji Fushiguro never looked back. He simply kept his grip on Kano's shoulder.

Standing behind him with scissors in hand, the Slit-Mouthed Woman found herself in a bind. Stabbing him would certainly feel good, but her pet's shoulder would probably end up with a comminuted fracture.

So she flicked her wrist, letting the scissors dissolve into cursed energy and return to her body, conceding defeat.

Only then did Toji Fushiguro release Shoichi Kano's shoulder. He even gave it a few light pats, as though they were good buddies, without saying another word.

He took his betting slips to the counter and cashed them in. After confirming the amount was correct, he continued toward the exit.

The Slit-Mouthed Woman and Shoichi Kano had no choice but to follow.

The trio walked through streets and alleyways in silence, broken only by Shoichi Kano and the Slit-Mouthed Woman's hushed muttering. Toji Fushiguro led the way without saying a word, his face betraying neither joy nor sorrow, leaving his true feelings impossible to read.

Several minutes later, he finally stopped in front of a small apartment building.

He fished a set of keys out of his trouser pocket, opened the door, and turned toward Kano and the Slit-Mouthed Woman waiting behind him. "Come in."

He was sparing with his words. After that invitation, he said nothing more and simply headed inside.

Kano and the Slit-Mouthed Woman, one human and one cursed spirit, exchanged a glance for half a second before deciding to enter.

They figured Toji Fushiguro probably wasn't so bored that he would have set traps inside with cursed tools beforehand.

Kano and the Slit-Mouthed Woman followed Toji into the apartment, where they encountered a Spiky-Haired Boy.

He looked about five or six years old and held a plump, purple cursed spirit shaped like a caterpillar, but with a baby face. The boy glanced up at Toji as he entered. Toji gave a cold snort, avoiding all eye contact as he walked around the boy and farther into the apartment.

The Spiky-Haired Boy pressed his lips together and looked at Kano and the Slit-Mouthed Woman, the two "uninvited guests." A fleeting spark of curiosity crossed his eyes before his face returned to its cold, disinterested expression.

"That kid just saw me, didn't he!" To the Slit-Mouthed Woman, the boy's cursed energy felt quite distinctive, completely unlike Toji Fushiguro's body with its total lack of cursed energy. He was likely a promising candidate to become a jujutsu sorcerer. "He definitely saw me."

The Spiky-Haired Boy responded with a slight nod. But like an autistic child, he said nothing, merely hugging the caterpillar cursed spirit as he stepped aside to let them pass.

Well, then. After meeting the "Heavenly Restriction Tyrant," Toji Fushiguro, they had now also met the unflappable Megumi Fushiguro, childhood edition.

"That's my son, Megumi," Toji Fushiguro said only after Kano and the Slit-Mouthed Woman reached the living room, his expression still unreadable. "I'm not much of a father. Sorry you had to see that."

As he spoke, he wasn't looking at either Shoichi Kano or the Slit-Mouthed Woman, making the sight rather strange, as though he were talking to something in empty space.

"No, it's fine," Shoichi Kano said, tentatively trying out a profound Chinese proverb. "As the saying goes, every family has its own troubles."

Since Kano had translated the saying directly from Chinese into Japanese, its grammatical structure wasn't particularly easy to understand. It was even somewhat awkward. But after pondering it for a while, Toji Fushiguro actually nodded emphatically in wholehearted agreement!

"Forget it." He waved a hand, his tone softening a little, though not by much. "Enough about that. Do you have any plans or information you need to tell me? The Q Organization didn't send you two here to be dead weight, did they?"

Shoichi Kano decided to make use of the advantage he had from reading the original story. "I do know a few things. For example, exactly which jujutsu sorcerers Jujutsu High sent to protect the star plasma vessel, Riko Amanai."

Toji Fushiguro's gaze immediately locked onto Shoichi Kano. Although there wasn't a trace of cursed energy in Toji's body, Kano's instinctive sixth sense began screaming warnings at him. This was unmistakably what it felt like to be targeted by an apex predator.

The Slit-Mouthed Woman also noticed Kano instinctively retreat half a step. She prepared to reach out and steady him, planning to add a few mocking remarks afterward.

But Kano straightened slightly, forcibly resisting Toji Fushiguro's oppressive presence, and began laying out his information without servility or arrogance. "Mr. Fushiguro, as far as I know, the bodyguards Jujutsu High sent should be Satoru Gojo and Suguru Geto. Their innate cursed techniques are..."

Only then did Toji Fushiguro develop a little interest in Shoichi Kano. This boy was a jujutsu sorcerer, the kind of person he hated most, but he showed none of the Zenin Clan's extremist attitude that anyone without a cursed technique wasn't human. Nor was he afraid of Toji's Heavenly Restriction Tyrant constitution. The look in his eyes seemed to be nothing more than respect for a capable senior, which felt pleasant to Toji, as though he had found a little of the "acceptance" missing throughout his life.

By contrast, the female cursed spirit's gaze irritated him. She looked at him as though he were some curious specimen. His strength was the only reason she didn't openly express that disrespect.

Comparison could change everything. With the Slit-Mouthed Woman there as a point of reference, Toji Fushiguro found Shoichi Kano far more agreeable!

Of course, the Slit-Mouthed Woman probably had no idea she had just given Kano a well-timed assist. She merely continued studying Toji Fushiguro, tracing the contours of the muscles beneath his T-shirt in her mind and imagining how much stronger she could become if she absorbed his Heavenly Restriction Tyrant constitution...

"Hmm." Only after Shoichi Kano finished presenting the "information" in his head-which was really the plot he remembered, heavily altered and filtered for details that sounded like findings from an intelligence network rather than an omniscient view of the original story-did Toji Fushiguro speak. "What you've said mostly matches the information I have. Now let me explain my thoughts."

He reached beneath the coffee table, pulled out a folded sheet of A3 paper, and slowly unfolded it.

Kano and the Slit-Mouthed Woman looked closely and discovered that it was a rough map of the area around the Tombs of the Star Corridor at Tokyo Jujutsu High.

"Because of my unusual constitution," Toji Fushiguro took the trouble to explain, "I can fool the vast majority of barrier techniques. So I sneaked in a few days ago, scouted the terrain a little, and drew this map."

"So how will this map come into play, Mr. Toji?" Shoichi Kano asked, playing the straight man at just the right moment.

Toji Fushiguro naturally ignored Kano's somewhat presumptuous form of address. "It'll be part of my plan, of course. I've already received the advance payment from the Time Vessel Association. About thirty million yen."

"When the time comes, I'll give that money to you. Use it to post all sorts of contracts on the dark web for assassinating the star plasma vessel. Muddy the waters and keep that Six Eyes brat from the Gojo Clan running himself ragged."

"And when he finally lets his guard down," Toji Fushiguro said with a broad grin, the vertical scar at the corner of his mouth twitching slightly like a venomous snake poised to strike, "that's when he dies."

"You two will handle Suguru Geto and the star plasma vessel." Toji Fushiguro's tone sounded less like a discussion of assignments than a statement of fact. "As for Satoru Gojo... I'll kill him myself."