"Kon"

To guard against the unexpected and keep things from getting out of hand, Tsukasa Hatayama followed the two of them, staying close enough to draw Kitetsu at a moment's notice.

As luck would have it, they had barely taken a few steps into the Kindergarten when ten rats appeared up ahead, blocking their path. Each was about as burly as Tyson.

Yu Haibara clenched his fists with the resolve of a man facing death. The muscles bulging along his arms made an endearingly stark contrast with his delicate, lively face.

Kento Nanami drew a deep breath and pulled the blunt blade from his back, his expression grave. It was an unusual-looking weapon, its blade wrapped in spotted, striped bindings.

The two took up offensive stances, ready to face the ten rats, but the creatures seemed so afraid of Tsukasa Hatayama behind them that they did not dare attack.

The Cursed Spirits' behavior left Tsukasa Hatayama a little frustrated. These days, every low-level Cursed Spirit that saw him was so terrified it lost the ability to fight.

Ultimately, they were probably afraid of the Cursed Energy inside him. After all, nobody could take a Cursed Spirit with half a Nine-Tails' worth of power lightly.

So far, the Cursed Pressure he had unleashed amounted to only half a percent of his Cursed Energy. If he released half of it, Tokyo Ward 24 would become an inferno.

Sometimes, he felt rather helpless about the Hōgyoku. Not only did it refine Cursed Energy around the clock, but every time it woke from its slumber, it gave him the equivalent of a hundred Grade 1 Sorcerers' Cursed Energy.

Over time, it was turning him into a Cursed Energy version of the Nine-Tails. By the time the main story began, his reserves might have accumulated to a staggering three Nine-Tails' worth.

By then, even a tiny burst of Cursed Pressure could leave Sukuna dizzy, sweating buckets, and utterly bewildered as he exclaimed how beautiful Tsukasa was.

"..."

Just imagining that unbearable sight gave Tsukasa Hatayama goosebumps all over. He shuddered, finding it rather hard to accept.

Meanwhile.

Kento Nanami and Yu Haibara noticed what was happening and charged in without exchanging a word. They took five each, dropping one with every slash or punch.

The Cursed Spirits were already weak fighters. With fear added to the mix, all ten lost any ability to resist and fell beneath the blunt blade and fists.

The waves of stench rising from those puddles of purple blood made Yu Haibara and Kento Nanami grimace. Nauseated, they turned away and dry-heaved.

Tsukasa Hatayama noticed and kindly reminded them, "If you can't stand the smell, use Cursed Energy to temporarily disable your sense of smell. And brace yourselves, because the stronger a Cursed Spirit is, the worse it stinks."

Cursed Spirits were born from people's negative emotions, all of which were bad. Thus, the stronger a Cursed Spirit became, the more foul-smelling its purple blood was.

Hearing their senior Hatayama's kind advice, the two quickly used Cursed Energy to disable their sense of smell, finally suppressing the urge to keep retching.

After pulling themselves together, Yu Haibara and Kento Nanami cautiously entered the School Building.

To give them a chance to grow, Tsukasa Hatayama did not follow this time. Instead, indulging his inner child, he sat on a little pink wooden rocking horse.

He gently rocked back and forth, swaying with its rhythm, while taking out his phone to reply to an email from his senior, Mei Mei.

It read, "It's only been a few months, and my little junior is already a senior himself~ Are the juniors you're leading girls?"

"They're not girls. They're two younger male students. Their aptitude and adaptability are both excellent. As long as they don't die along the way, they both have what it takes to become Grade 1 Jujutsu Sorcerers."

Tsukasa Hatayama pressed send, and a reply arrived within seconds.

"Why did they have to be boys? Girls would've been better. Then I could deduct some of your money. What a shame."

A smile shone in Tsukasa Hatayama's eyes as he read it. He replied, "Deduct it if you want, senior. As long as it makes you happy, I'll be happy too."

After he sent that message, the reply took considerably longer to arrive.

"You're so sweet~ You almost moved me to tears. Since you've offered, I'll make you happy just this once."

"I'm deducting a hundred million. You still have two billion and a pendant deposited with me."

Still unconcerned about the money, Tsukasa Hatayama replied half-jokingly, "That's quite a deduction. Aren't you worried I won't have a penny left by the time I'm eighteen?"

"Hehehe... Once you run out, I'll lend you more, then deduct it again. We'll keep going round and round like that, and eventually, you'll belong to me~"

Tsukasa Hatayama's cheeks flushed. He typed a reply, deleted it, then typed it again. The words "belong to me" had unsettled his normally composed heart.

After receiving no reply for a long while, Mei Mei sent another message. "Are you free tomorrow? If you are, want to go shopping with me?"

Tsukasa Hatayama quickly replied, "I should be. Even if I'm not, I'll make time."

"Then it's a date. Don't stand me up, you silly junior!"

Tsukasa Hatayama closed his phone and muttered in confusion, "I shouldn't be an idiot. I'm first in both academics and combat. Why did Mei Mei suddenly call me one?"

As the saying went, when God opened a door, he closed a window. Tsukasa Hatayama was precisely such a case.

While he puzzled over it to no avail, Mei Mei, far away, was giving her phone a round of physical cleanup with the Cursed Axe.

Don't ask why. If anyone did, the answer was that old flip phones were laggy!

Boom!

Before Tsukasa Hatayama could think any further, a gigantic dark green rat rose from the distant School Building. Below it, Haibara and Nanami fled desperately with children in their arms.

"Chil... dren... chil... dren... chil... dren..."

The rat chased them like a mad thing, its enormous body making the ground groan beneath it.

Tsukasa Hatayama gave the two running toward him an odd look. How was this rat a Grade 3 curse? It was clearly a Grade 1 curse.

He really did not know whether Haibara and Nanami were fated for this or whether heaven was playing a joke on them. Their very first mission had turned out to be this troublesome.

"Senior... hah... hah... we'll leave the rest to you."

The two ran behind the rocking horse, panting. Both exhilarated and shaken, they clutched the three children and sought shelter behind the strongest, certain he could easily exorcise the approaching curse.

Tsukasa Hatayama remained calmly seated on the little rocking horse and leisurely raised his right hand toward the giant rat.

He bent his middle and ring fingers to touch his thumb, with his thumb and little finger slightly raised.

"Kon."

An enormous, sinister black fox head burst out of the ground and savagely bit the charging rat Cursed Spirit into a sky full of bloody spray.

The two watching from behind froze, lifting their chins in a daze to stare up at the huge fox head their senior had summoned.

Before they could keep staring, the eerily beautiful fox head shattered like glass and vanished from their sight in the blink of an eye.

"No need to be so surprised, you two. I made that fox head out of dark matter. You can think of it as a little toy."

Tsukasa Hatayama offered a brief explanation, then stood to examine the three children's injuries. Their little faces were almost covered in disgusting, blinking little eyes.

This was curse erosion, a slow death caused by injuries inflicted by a Cursed Spirit. Once the eyes covered nearly their entire bodies, death would be close.

But to someone who could use Reverse Cursed Technique, it was nothing more than a few little eyes growing on them.

Tsukasa Hatayama raised his hand again. Red Cursed Energy brimming with positive energy covered all three children, giving them a full-body treatment.

Seeing that Haibara's and Nanami's uniforms were somewhat tattered, Tsukasa Hatayama covered both of them in positive energy as well, just to be safe.