Numbers

"Don't talk about my little sister like that!"

Yuji Itadori pursed his lips in anger. He couldn't help stepping forward and taking Nanika's deathly pale little hand, upset on his sister's behalf.

His sister really could grant his wishes, yet this dark-haired old guy still had such a rotten attitude. He was so annoying.

Toji Fushiguro rubbed his chin with interest.

When the child's dark other side had appeared just now, that immense force had made it difficult to keep his grip, dragging the child straight to the ground.

Their positions earlier had kept him from getting a good look. Now, the transformed black-haired boy looked nothing like a human, but rather a mass of contradictions wrapped in filthy, cloying cursed energy steeped in malice.

The child was closer to a cursed spirit than a human.

The black-haired child didn't seem capable of attacking. That extraordinarily powerful cursed energy he had sensed probably belonged to this cursed spirit.

With cursed energy on this level... had this child been cursed by a special grade cursed spirit?

None of the sixteen special grade cursed spirits registered with Jujutsu High seemed to coexist with humans. And then there was this curse user hiding beneath a busy city who could use Reverse Cursed Technique...

Those worthless bastards at Jujutsu Headquarters and the Three Great Families were as useless as ever.

During the few seconds Toji Fushiguro remained silent, Nanika stared straight at him and repeated her earlier words, as though following a fixed program.

"Toji Fushiguro, do you have a wish?"

"Any wish at all?"

Toji Fushiguro gave a flippant whistle.

Ever since his wife had passed away, he had stopped believing that good fortune would ever come his way.

He had never heard of anyone having a wish-granting cursed technique. There were no all-purpose wish machines from anime in real life. Even the Construction Technique, which could create physical objects out of thin air, was the most useless cursed technique in the Zenin Clan. Not only did it waste vast amounts of cursed energy, but what it could create was limited.

He simply assumed this cursed spirit was playing some sort of game with him.

At some point, the muscles in the arm gripping his cursed tool had tensed. If the child before him made even one wrong move, Toji Fushiguro was ready to cut the child down on the spot.

But when he didn't answer, the cursed spirit simply gazed eerily at him.

The curse user's brows had remained tightly furrowed ever since the cursed spirit appeared, and Uraume's expression had only grown darker.

Seeing no sign that Uraume intended to attack, Toji Fushiguro raised an eyebrow, a mocking smile appearing on his face.

"Can you conjure up five hundred billion?"

Toji Fushiguro had simply tossed out a random number.

He had only said five hundred billion because any random cursed tool he owned was worth hundreds of millions, and he had even sold his only son for the hefty price of one billion.

Those figures seemed perfectly ordinary to him. He didn't believe a cursed spirit could produce money, either. He treated it as a joke and intended to see what would happen to the child and the cursed spirit once the binding vow ended.

"Okay."

Nanika nodded stiffly, revealing a somewhat wooden smile.

As soon as she finished speaking, countless banknotes began raining down beneath the subway station ceiling.

The denominations varied from note to note, ranging from the largest, ten thousand yen, to the smallest, one hundred yen.

The banknotes appeared above everyone's heads as if out of thin air. They fell quickly, pouring down in a seemingly endless stream.

"Are you so broke you've lost your mind? Making a wish like that!"

At the sight, Uraume's expression turned ugly. Uraume scooped Alluka up and began fleeing toward the exit.

Japan's largest banknote was worth ten thousand yen, yet this idiot Toji Fushiguro had wished for five hundred billion. At the rate the notes were falling, the entire subway station would soon be buried in money.

Uraume remembered the terror of the time Nanika had buried Lord Sukuna's residence in meat.

Watching banknotes actually begin raining down, Toji Fushiguro fell utterly silent.

He hadn't expected this thing to actually produce banknotes.

And so much cash, at that.

Toji Fushiguro, whose daily routine consisted of earning money and then losing it betting on horse races, knew exactly how much space five hundred billion in cash would take up. He felt distinctly unwell.

This was all his money! But he had no way to carry it away!

Why hadn't he added a few more words and told that cursed spirit to transfer it straight to his bank account?

Toji Fushiguro regretted it at the thought.

During his battle with Uraume, aside from Wasuke Itadori's group, some of the people in the subway station had been killed underground by the curse user, while some of the others had fled. Still, a handful had hidden in corners to watch the commotion.

When money inexplicably began raining from above, those in hiding could no longer stay put. Crying out, they scrambled out to gather it.

But no matter how much they picked up, the money never ran out. In the blink of an eye, their bodies were buried beneath it.

In that brief span of time, Uraume had already reached the subway entrance with Alluka.

Wasuke Itadori had realized something was wrong early on, hoisted Yuji onto his shoulder, and followed Uraume outside.

He couldn't match a jujutsu sorcerer's speed, but years of martial arts practice had kept the old man in good shape. As he ran, he sneakily grabbed a handful of banknotes and stuffed them into his pocket.

By the time they escaped aboveground, the entire subway station had been buried in money.

Countless banknotes were still surging up out of the subway entrance like living things.

The curtain the curse user had erected had disappeared at some point. Pedestrians noticed the strange activity in the area, and upon seeing so much money, they ran over excitedly and crouched down to pick it up.

Drivers also pulled over at the sight of all that money, hurriedly getting out and rushing over, afraid that arriving a moment too late would mean picking up less.

The drivers behind them weren't pleased with the cars stopping ahead. Amid the sounds of collisions and clamoring crowds, people swarmed in from every street, converging on the out-of-the-way subway station.

The chaos erupted with astonishing speed.

The Windows who had detected the abnormal cursed energy in the area hadn't yet received support from any jujutsu sorcerers. Upon observing the scene now unfolding, they fell utterly silent.

As the crowd grew, screams, the sounds of trampling feet, and the sirens of police arriving in response echoed beneath the neon lights.

Uraume took Alluka, Wasuke Itadori, and the others home, pushing against the flow of the crowd.

Before long, news that seventy-six people had died in a stampede in Sendai appeared on the daytime news.

Watching the footage of bodies mingled with money, Wasuke Itadori still felt shaken.

Looking at his grandson playing happily on the sofa, he truly didn't know what to say.

He had been through far too much that day.

He had witnessed phenomena that defied science with his own eyes. Uraume actually possessed strange supernatural powers, and there had been that strange black-haired man who killed without even blinking.

Wasuke Itadori, who had spent his life tucked away in a remote city like Sendai, had never seen so much money, nor had he ever imagined that money would one day claim so many lives.

Alluka was largely responsible for those people losing their lives, and Wasuke Itadori was now deeply worried that the police would trace it back to their home.

More than anything else, he was terrified that Alluka would be taken away...