Shadow World

After that day, Satoru Gojo came to see me every few days.

Every time we met, he asked all sorts of strange questions.

This was probably the curiosity unique to children his age.

I was especially tolerant of that.

I tried to find a suitable answer to every question he asked, and judging by his reactions, I felt I was doing pretty well.

Satoru Gojo: "Don't you get bored cooped up in your courtyard every day?"

Without batting an eye, I said, "Not really. There's actually a door in my courtyard that connects to another world. I go there to play every day, so I don't get bored at all."

Satoru Gojo: "You're lying! My eyes can see everything perfectly clearly. There's no weird door in your courtyard!"

Me: "That's just how it looks on the surface. You'll understand when you're a little older."

Satoru Gojo fell silent.

...We'd already had plenty of conversations like that.

I could make up dismissive answers on the spot. Even if I didn't know what I was saying myself, as long as I acted sufficiently unruffled, I could shut Satoru Gojo up, make him doubt himself, and send him deep into thought.

That gave me a moment of peace and quiet.

Hehe.

Children were so easy to fool.

Another month passed.

Over that month, Satoru Gojo seemed to have found a new source of amusement. The questions he prepared grew increasingly outlandish, as if he wanted to see what else I could make up.

He progressed incredibly quickly, moving from questions I could easily answer, like "Do you get bored staying in your courtyard?" to utterly unanswerable ones like "Why were you able to awaken the Ten Shadows Technique?"

...How was I supposed to know why?

It was just luck.

Just then, inspiration struck, and I remembered a rumor I'd seen during a Jujutsu theory lesson-

"The Six Eyes and the Ten Shadows Technique are born together."

That was because each successive bearer of the Six Eyes and the Ten Shadows Technique had appeared during the same period-a remarkable coincidence.

It was understandable that the Jujutsu Society would speculate about that. I didn't know whether it was true, either, but it gave me the perfect excuse.

So I casually made something up. "Maybe there's a special bond of fate between us?"

After all, you had the Six Eyes, and I had the Ten Shadows Technique. Wasn't that exactly the sort of connection between Cursed Techniques that were born together?

But for some reason, the moment Satoru Gojo heard that, his little face flushed bright red. He protested at the top of his lungs, "No way! There's no bond of fate between you and me!"

Me: "..."

A question mark slowly formed in my mind.

What had gotten into him?

I was just about to ask when he immediately said, "I-I just remembered I haven't finished today's hand-to-hand combat lesson. I'm going back!"

Then he left without looking back.

...Children this age really were hard to understand.

He hadn't been gone long before I felt mentally exhausted.

Had my thinking fallen behind? Could I no longer keep up with how people thought these days?

Was I the old fossil all along?

I was starting to doubt myself.

So I turned and asked the guard standing respectfully to one side with his head lowered, "Was there something wrong with what I said?"

The guard was just as baffled. After pondering it for a long while, he ventured, "...Perhaps young master Gojo truly loves learning?"

It seemed the problem really did lie with Satoru Gojo.

Perhaps he'd suddenly remembered his unfinished task and blushed out of shame.

So that was it.

After finally figuring out what he'd meant, I felt a wave of mental exhaustion.

Even though I'd become a child myself, getting along with children really was still so hard.

The next time he came, I'd find an excuse to hide.

I'd already lost interest in dealing with him.

But hiding... realistically, I wouldn't be able to pull it off.

According to him, I stood out in his field of vision like a light bulb in the dark.

What should I do?

Today, after my Divine Dogs and Nue returned from their walk, they seemed exhausted from playing and went straight into my shadow to rest.

A sudden thought struck me: What was it like inside my shadow? Could I go in? If I did, would I be able to see my Shikigami?

Once that thought took hold, it spread unstoppably like wildfire.

Damn it, I really wanted to know.

So, with a strange feeling in my heart, I closed my eyes, calmed my mind, and tried to resonate with the Shikigami that had already entered my shadow. Then I followed that faint, elusive sensation-

One step, two steps, three steps...

I opened my eyes.

Well, damn.

This was bad. I seemed to have discovered something unusual inside my shadow.