The next day, under Naoya Zenin's resentful gaze, I breezily left with my cousin Toji.
We got into the car sent by the clan, and it slowly pulled away.
Watching the scenery recede, I felt a wave of calm.
Toji Zenin wasn't much of a talker either. As soon as he got in, he closed his eyes to rest.
For a while, the car was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop.
The jujutsu sorcerer driving kept his eyes straight ahead as he broke the silence. "Young Master, the information for this mission has already been placed in the car. The mission site is a school in Tokyo, and the cursed spirit is Grade 1. Please exercise extreme caution."
I picked up the documents beside me.
A Grade 1 Cursed Spirit. Cause of manifestation... school bullying. The most recent sighting had been at 23:58 last night. Four students and one teacher were dead, and three students were missing.
Good grief.
In my previous life, I'd heard that school bullying was a serious problem in Japan, but I hadn't expected even an elementary school to produce a Grade 1 Cursed Spirit.
I found it unbelievable.
I set the documents down and slowly exhaled.
"Young Master, Jujutsu Headquarters has requested that you do your best to rescue the missing child, then exorcise the cursed spirit."
For convenience, I had accepted the mission directly from Jujutsu Headquarters, but thanks to a certain unspoken understanding between them and the Three Great Families, I could skip a lot of the hassle.
"How long have those three students been missing?" Toji Zenin suddenly opened his eyes and asked.
"Almost a day."
After almost a day exposed to a Grade 1 Cursed Spirit, unless a powerful jujutsu sorcerer was protecting them, their fate hardly needed any thought.
-They were probably already dead, turned into nourishment for the cursed spirit's growth.
In this world where cursed spirits existed, ordinary people with no means of protecting themselves seemed especially fragile. One moment of carelessness could leave them killed by monsters born from negative emotions, and their families wouldn't even be allowed to know the true cause of their deaths.
Their lives had barely begun before they were reduced to nothing.
How pitiful.
"Young lady, don't tell me you're overflowing with compassion?" Toji Zenin warned me. "Let me make this clear up front. If some bizarre savior complex gets you into danger, I won't care whether you live or die."
"Huh? Weren't you sent to protect me, Toji?"
"Was Father's offer really that unappealing?"
Toji Zenin's expression darkened. "Why did he even tell you that?"
I shook my head. "He didn't. It was my Rabbit Escape. The rabbits can blend into shadows and gather information for me."
But I disliked all that complicated, noisy information and had no interest in other people's gossip, so I rarely used that trick.
Only when my father in name suddenly told me he had found someone did curiosity prompt me to hide Rabbit Escape in his shadow and casually listen in.
I hadn't known who my father in name had approached, and I hadn't recognized Toji's voice then either. I had only felt that the person on the other end spoke with a contempt for everything, though it was different from Satoru Gojo's.
I hadn't heard my father in name call him by his name. He had only said "you."
Presumably, they were on fairly good terms in private.
Then my father in name had offered his terms in exchange for protecting me-"leaving the Zenin Clan."
Only then had I realized that I wasn't the only one here who despised the Zenin Clan.
After hearing how I had obtained the information, Toji Zenin fell silent.
It really was... a skill that was practically cheating.
After a while, he finally came back to his senses. For the sake of the terms Naobito Zenin had offered, Toji Zenin kindly reminded me, "You just said that out loud? Does this guy need to be dealt with?"
His casually delivered words carried a chilling indifference.
-As though he were merely discussing whether a wildflower or a blade of grass by the roadside should stay, rather than a person's life.
The driver kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead as though he hadn't heard a thing, as though he wasn't the person being discussed behind him... only his body had tensed slightly, and his hands had unconsciously tightened around the steering wheel until his fingertips turned white.
"It's fine. He doesn't matter."
Of course I wouldn't kill him. After all, I didn't care if what I had just said got out.
-Even if they knew, so what?
Could insects shake a lion just because they knew it was fierce?
That would be utterly absurd.
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