"Mr. Tanaka agreed," the Slit-Mouthed Woman said, setting down the landline receiver. "I pretended to be your mother and told him you had appendicitis and needed surgery at the hospital. That bought you about ten days off."
Shoichi Kano nodded, looking at the laptop on the coffee table in his living room.
He had gotten the laptop from the Q Organization, supposedly to support Toji Fushiguro's tactics. They had never asked what those tactics were, so Kano had not bothered making anything up.
As for internet access, Kano had waited until no one was around yesterday, then secretly tapped into an internet cable elsewhere and connected it to a router to provide Wi-Fi. With a few simple technical tricks, he could then spoof multiple IP addresses and post bounties on the Dark Web.
Once he had finished all that, he texted Toji Fushiguro to ask about the next stage of the plan.
"If anyone accepts a bounty, just send them a token deposit. Those small fry we're using to distract Gojo and the others won't actually finish the job anyway." Though it was only a text message, Shoichi Kano could still feel Toji Fushiguro's distinctive presence between the lines.
"Don't we need to do anything else?" Kano asked.
"No rush. They probably only just picked up the Star Plasma Vessel. Once they're done running around, they'll have to come back to Tokyo. We'll make our move then."
Shoichi Kano thought that made perfect sense, so he closed the laptop and decided to go out for a stroll.
"Sweetie, are you going out?" The Slit-Mouthed Woman looked up at Shoichi Kano as he rose to his feet. She was sitting in front of the television, munching from a tub of potato chips as she watched, with a few crumbs caught on the stitches at the corners of her mouth. "Pick up a few things for Mommy."
"What do you need?" Shoichi Kano asked.
She tossed him a densely written shopping list. Most of the items were women's daily necessities, along with some seasonings, toilet paper, and other things they were running low on at home.
It seemed this Miss Cursed Spirit was determined to keep experiencing human life.
Shoichi Kano folded the list and tucked it into his trouser pocket. "Got it. I'll be back soon."
Then the boy picked up the keys from the shoe cabinet by the entrance, changed his shoes, and headed out.
Shoichi Kano pushed a shopping cart through a large supermarket, holding the Slit-Mouthed Woman's handwritten list in his other hand so he could check off each item as he shopped.
The phone in his pocket rang again. It was a call from the landline at home.
"What's up?" Shoichi Kano did not need to think to know it was the Slit-Mouthed Woman.
"The phone you use to contact the Q Organization keeps ringing," the Slit-Mouthed Woman said. "It says Bayer is calling. Should I answer?"
Shoichi Kano was utterly speechless. Avoiding exactly this situation was the whole reason he had left that phone at home. They were lying in wait for their prey; how could they let people interrupt them whenever they pleased?
"Just ignore it. If it gets too annoying, reject the call and turn it off."
"Okay~"
What Kano did not know was that when Bayer heard "The number you have dialed is switched off," the tall man practically exploded with fury, his face turning tomato red!
He had every reason to panic. Some low-level curse users under him had fallen for Shoichi Kano's bait posts, actually collected their deposits online, and gone off to assassinate the Star Plasma Vessel. Naturally, Gojo and Geto had breezed past them like speed bumps.
Worse still, one clueless dumbass had revealed the location of a Q Organization base before dying-and it happened to be the very place where Bayer was currently staying!
The two killing machines had promptly switched into showing-off-for-a-girl mode. Worried that leaving Riko Amanai elsewhere would be unsafe, they simply brought her along. Suguru Geto had even assigned his cursed spirit Rainbow Dragon to guard her personally.
So the little girl sat on a dragon and watched the show while the two older boys from Jujutsu High played a no-damage dungeon clear inside the Q Organization's building.
With the enemies spawning right in his face, how could good old Bayer not panic? All his usual bluster about Satoru Gojo and Suguru Geto had naturally been nothing but empty bravado. Now that Jujutsu High's "strongest duo" had actually come charging up to him, not wetting his pants was already a commendable display of courage.
In his panic, Bayer naturally thought of that young jujutsu sorcerer who was neither servile nor arrogant, thought clearly, and could break through his metal shield with a single punch. He had given the boy so much money and even introduced him to that lucrative job from the Time Vessel Association. Surely the boy would come save him!
And then came, "The number you have dialed is switched off."
Crack! Furious, Bayer hurled his phone straight at the floor.
He remembered his own words: "If he dies, that's his fate!" They had now come flying back like a boomerang, striking his face painfully.
"Hey!" Just as he was pacing like an ant on a hot pan, at a complete loss, a white-haired high school boy in Jujutsu High's black uniform walked in with a cheerful smile. "Long time no see!"
The boy took off his small, round sunglasses, revealing eyes as clear and blue as the sky. His lips curved with absolute confidence. "I let you get away last time because I wasn't paying attention. You won't escape this time."
"Don't underestimate me!" Bayer felt like a stray cat hissing at a heavy truck on the road. Despite the enormous difference in weight class, he still had to roar his defiance. "You Six Eyes brat from the Gojo Clan!"
"Sorry, sorry~" Satoru Gojo put his sunglasses back on and waved a hand. "It's just that you really are weak!"
If Bayer had known that more than a decade later, a special grade disaster cursed spirit named Jogo would hear those same words, he might have felt a little better.
Regardless, Bayer roared and activated his cursed technique with everything he had. He gathered all the surrounding metal around himself, enclosing his body in a thick, heavy turtle shell.
"What's wrong, Satoru?" Another boy, with a bun and oddly shaped bangs, entered the room dragging a curse user's corpse. The corners of his narrow eyes tilted slightly upward. "Run into some trouble?"
Suguru Geto tossed the corpse aside like a sack of rice, then rubbed the blood off his hand against the wall.
"Geto, look at this." Satoru Gojo was almost laughing himself silly. "This guy thinks he won't die if he wraps himself in a turtle shell."
"Seriously?" Suguru Geto did not consider Bayer a threat either, and an amused smile spread across his face.
"All right, all right, enough playing around." Satoru Gojo raised his hand, gathering a small blue point of light at his fingertips as he intoned the technique's name. "Cursed Technique Lapse: Blue!"
A powerful gravitational pull erupted instantly, drawing the thick metal turtle shell toward Satoru Gojo inch by inch.
Then, laughing wildly, the white-haired boy pressed one hand against the metal shell and used Blue's space-compressing property to launch it away.
Boom! The metal ball smashed through several buildings in succession before finally becoming a scattered mixture of metal fragments and mangled flesh, Bayer included, with nothing left recognizable.
"Hey!" Suguru Geto asked with a smile. "After causing this much damage, how are you planning to write your mission report?"
"We'll worry about it when the mission's over! We haven't finished yet, have we? Who cares!" Satoru Gojo looked utterly unconcerned, merely studying the enormous holes he had punched through the buildings with interest.
Pop! Just as the Bayer aircraft failed its maiden flight, an employee at a clothing store in the shopping mall showered Shoichi Kano with streamers from a party popper.
"Congratulations!" Several young women in staff uniforms thrust a paper medal into Shoichi Kano's hands. "You're our ten-thousandth customer since we opened!"
"Here's your twenty-thousand-yen cash prize. Please keep it safe!" Before Shoichi Kano could recover, two ten-thousand-yen notes had been placed in his hands as well.
"If you'd like to shop here," another young woman said, smiling as she showed him the merchandise, "everything in the store is sixty-five percent off!"
Shoichi Kano realized it was a clothing store, and since he happened to need a few pairs of underwear, he happily went inside to shop.
Not long after he paid and left, his phone rang again. This time, however, it was Toji Fushiguro calling-Kano had given him his personal number.
"The Q Organization's been wiped out." His very first words were a bombshell.
"Huh?" Shoichi Kano's shock was genuine. Mostly because that had happened way too fucking fast. He had gone over there after seven that morning to pick up a laptop, and it was not even noon yet. How was the whole organization already gone?
"You're not dead?" Toji Fushiguro sounded a little curious.
"Of course not."
Toji Fushiguro ended the call with, "Then the plan continues."
The Heavenly Restriction Tyrant did not seem the least bit curious about why Shoichi Kano was still alive.
Before you continue