..."So... why call it Jujutsu High? It's clearly an organization dealing with superpowers, but it barely has anything to do with the government?"
"Hmm... who knows?"
"Still... the surroundings are pretty nice..."
As the door swung open, the first thing that hit their noses was the mingled smell of wood, old fabric, and loose thread.
All four entered the room as the silver-haired man at the front called out a greeting.
The principal's office?
It didn't feel like one. If anything, it looked like a long corridor with a few pillars forming a little pavilion of uncertain purpose.
They called it the principal's office, but it looked more like half a workshop.
The room was small and dimly lit.
A row of wooden shelves stood against the wall, packed with dolls: bears, rabbits, and stitched-together monstrosities with no recognizable form. Whatever they were made of, their eyes stared straight at the group.
Scissors, stuffing, needles, thread, and unfinished scraps of fabric lay scattered across the table. Even the gaps between the floorboards had a few black threads caught in them.
A low table stood in the middle.
Masamichi Yaga sat cross-legged behind it. His shoulders were broad, his hands a size larger than most people's, and he was holding a needle as he stitched a mouth onto a doll.
The doll's face had already taken shape, but those last few missing stitches only made it look creepier.
Yuji Itadori stopped in the doorway.
"So... is this the principal?"
Satoru Gojo waved a hand, making the introduction casually.
"This is our principal, Masamichi Yaga."
"And don't let his looks fool you. He's pretty meticulous with handicrafts."
Long Xi stood by the door, his gaze settling on the man before him. Masamichi Yaga... one of the few Grade 1 jujutsu sorcerers in the anime.
He was also the one whose fate was the greatest pity. Who would have thought the location of Yuji Itadori's original test would change?
Was it because of Long Xi's presence, or something else?
It really made him curious...
Yaga didn't even raise his head. He uttered just one word.
"Sit."
Yuji Itadori looked at the three beside him, then pointed at himself in confusion when Satoru Gojo signaled him with his eyes.
He looked as though he were asking, Wait, you're making me go alone?
But faced with that unmistakable Yes, you look, he could only obediently sit down.
Megumi Fushiguro and Long Xi remained standing off to the side.
Satoru Gojo was even more outrageous. He leaned against the doorframe, looking utterly relaxed, clearly without the slightest inclination to worry on someone else's behalf.
The room fell silent for a while.
Only the faint sound of a needle passing through fabric remained.
Yaga finished the last stitch and tied a knot. Only then did he set the doll on the table and look up at Itadori.
"Gojo said you ate Sukuna's Finger."
"Yes."
"And you're still alive."
"...So far, it looks that way."
"Do you know what you'll be facing from now on?"
Itadori scratched his cheek.
"I have some idea."
"I'll get dragged into a lot of dangerous stuff, and I'll have to keep finding the remaining fingers and eating them. Then... I'll be disposed of."
He said it far too calmly.
Even someone coldhearted by nature would surely feel a twinge of sympathy on hearing that.
How much more so for someone as kindhearted as Masamichi Yaga?
But Masamichi Yaga offered no comment.
He simply stared at Itadori and continued questioning him.
"Then why did you come here?"
"Why do you want to become a jujutsu sorcerer?"
Itadori froze for a moment.
That question was clearly harder to answer than "Are you afraid of dying?"
But Itadori should already have known his answer.
After a moment of silence, he raised his head.
"Before my grandpa died, he told me to help other people."
"If I can eat all those fingers, then at least a lot fewer people will die."
"And last night-"
He paused, remembering the two upperclassmen who had nearly died in the school building. His throat bobbed.
"I don't want to see anything like that happen again."
After hearing him out, Yaga gave only a brief reply.
"Not enough."
Itadori stared.
"Huh?"
Yaga leaned back, his voice low and heavy.
"Someone else's words aren't your answer."
"Your grandfather told you to save people, so you save them... Fushiguro asked you for help, so you helped... What happens when there's no one there to give you a push? Will you still keep going?"
"Being a jujutsu sorcerer isn't a job where you can do a good deed or two and call it a day."
"People will die."
"You'll see things worse than what happened last night."
"The people you save might go on to hurt others. The results you risk your life for won't necessarily satisfy you.
"When that happens, will you still continue?"
The air in the room grew heavy.
Watching Yaga, Long Xi naturally understood why the principal insisted on personally holding the line at this stage.
Yuji Itadori was no ordinary new student.
He had Sukuna inside him.
Letting him in just because he said, "I want to help people," wouldn't be admitting a student. It would be planting a bomb beneath the entire school.
Who knew when it might blow everyone sky-high?
Itadori opened his mouth, but before he could reply, the newly stitched doll on the table suddenly moved.
It lifted its head, its button eyes fixing straight on him.
The next second, the whole doll lunged.
"Whoa?!"
Itadori instinctively raised his arms to block. With a bang, he and his chair slid backward half a meter.
Apart from the two who knew what was going on, everyone present was caught off guard by the sudden turn of events.
But Satoru Gojo, the teacher who had brought them here, smiled easily.
"Here we go."
"Answer the principal's questions, and try to stay 'alive' while you're at it."
Itadori shouted as he dodged.
"Couldn't you have told me that sooner?!"
The cursed corpse in front of him was already swinging a fist down.
Itadori darted sideways. The fist grazed his shoulder and struck the floor hard enough to shake the tatami.
He immediately punched back, landing squarely on the doll's face, but it did absolutely nothing. It was like hitting soft stuffing-the face sprang right back!
Yaga remained seated, his voice unchanged.
"Keep answering."
"If you live by someone else's dying words, sooner or later you'll collapse along the way."
"I'm not interested in this little burst of enthusiasm you have right now."
"I want to know whether you'll still commit to this path when no one's watching, no one's helping, and you're barely holding on."
Itadori had just blocked a punch when the cursed corpse suddenly accelerated. A clean whipping kick slammed into his chest, sending him stumbling forward two steps.
"I'm not that noble!"
"I don't know if I can do everything without regretting any of it!"
"But I at least know that in a situation like last night-"
He raised his hands, caught the lunging cursed corpse, and slammed it hard into the floor.
"There's no way I could just stand there and do nothing!"
A heavy thud sent loose stuffing trembling throughout the room.
Megumi Fushiguro leaned off to the side and sighed helplessly, looking rather troubled.
"Isn't this guy ridiculously strong?"
"What kind of monsters are you two...?"
As he finished speaking, his gaze shifted to Long Xi, who stood nearby stroking his chin in thought.
That guy's cursed technique was strange. At the time, the amount of cursed energy Fushiguro had sensed from him had clearly been only around Grade 4.
Yet he had delivered a strike most Grade 1 jujutsu sorcerers couldn't manage. Even with an extremely demanding binding vow, that should have been completely impossible.
And this guy in front of him...
It was genuinely hard not to wonder which was more human: Yuji Itadori's body, or the cursed spirits born from humanity's malice.
Was that really the kind of physical ability a human should have?
For some reason, Fushiguro had the strange feeling that Itadori could smash anything apart and simply say, "Well, there wasn't any rebar inside."
But Long Xi paid no attention to Fushiguro's expression. Instead, he was caught up in a strange sensation of his own.
It kept his eyes fixed on Yuji Itadori without looking away for even a moment. Something was wrong with that last hit...
It wasn't anything else. After all, Yuji Itadori hadn't even learned how to use cursed energy yet...
But the strange feeling coming from the cursed corpse kept reminding him... The rhythm was off...
It was like a human electrocardiogram, fluctuating under some circumstances yet becoming unusually steady under others.
That was what it felt like...
When the fist landed, a muffled bang burst out first, followed by an extra half-beat of heavy sinking pressure. It was as though something weighty had suddenly pressed down beneath the floor, dragging even the air an inch lower.
It was brief.
So brief it could have been an illusion.
Yet the cursed energy in Long Xi's chest pulsed along with it.
He stared at their movements, even holding his breath.
There it was again.
As the second punch flew out, that sinking sensation swept past once more.
It wasn't a cursed technique. It felt more like his body, explosive power, and cursed energy had all hit their limits at the same instant, forcibly squeezing out a tiny sliver beyond them.
Something thundered through Long Xi's mind.
Black Flash?
Was my aptitude really that good?
Even his fingers tensed...
The shock was real.
After all, in his previous life, he had been nothing more than an ordinary undergraduate. If he had been any better at something, it was probably just that he had a little talent for gaming.
This feeling of nailing the timing in real life was something that, no matter how he looked at it, required considerable talent...
And I just happened to have that talent?
He tried to grasp that sensation, but he always fell just a little short...
Satoru Gojo glanced his way.
Yaga noticed too.
Neither said anything, but they tacitly agreed on the same thing.
The test would continue.
Before you continue