"Pfft, hahaha! You-what he just said was a dig at himself."
The blonde beauty burst out laughing, utterly tickled by Haibara's frankness and honesty.
Suguru Geto didn't mind either. It would actually have been worse if Yu Haibara had understood what he was and what he'd been saying.
Realizing he seemed to have put his foot in it, Haibara scratched his head with an awkward smile, hastily said goodbye, and fled the scene.
Now only Suguru Geto and the strange woman remained.
"What an honest, adorable kid. Is he your junior?"
The woman sauntered over and plopped down beside Suguru Geto. Though her eyes followed Yu Haibara's retreat, she didn't stop teasing Geto for a moment.
Perhaps because she genuinely seemed to mean no harm, Suguru Geto was willing to chat with her a little longer.
After all, socializing outside work was important too, wasn't it?
"Personally, I think a healthy dose of suspicion is just as important for a sorcerer."
Oh? You little brat. Was that aimed at me?
The blonde beauty was amused by his answer. Suspicion? Of whom? Obviously the stranger who'd suddenly struck up a conversation with him.
A little teasing, and he went straight for the sore spot. What a nasty personality.
"So, Geto, are you not going to answer my question?"
"Why don't you answer mine first? Just who exactly are you?"
He still refused to answer. Out of options, she could only straighten up and look Suguru Geto in the eye.
"Special grade sorcerer, Yuki Tsukumo. Ever heard of me?"
Suguru Geto froze at that. Special grade?
"So you're the one..."
"Huh? You've heard of me? Go on, tell me!"
Suguru Geto clearly knew who she was! So this less-than-forthcoming kid actually understood how powerful she was. Not bad, not bad.
Looks like I'm pretty famous after all!
Heh heh heh.
Seeing Yuki Tsukumo like this, Suguru Geto couldn't help remembering a famous saying from China he'd heard by the sea.
Give her an inch, and she'll take a mile.
The woman had almost lost... no, she'd completely lost any semblance of an adult. She shamelessly leaned toward Suguru Geto, pointing at herself with an expression that practically said, "Go on, praise me. I can take it."
Even her nostrils flared with excitement as she breathed...
Gross!
Though Suguru Geto found Yuki Tsukumo's behavior repulsive, he didn't show it. He merely delivered a cutting remark in an indifferent tone.
"A special grade who never does any work, just wanders around the world like some loafer."
Looking at Yuki Tsukumo again... she seemed to have lost not just her adult dignity, but her human form too. Her previously radiant smile had wilted like a frostbitten eggplant.
She muttered under her breath, "Fucking Jujutsu High, slandering me..."
Her voice was listless, her words drawn out. Her feelings were palpable even from a distance.
Was she sulking?
A grown woman, sulking like this?
Apparently it wasn't slander. This female human really was a loafer.
"Just kidding. My philosophy simply differs from Jujutsu High's."
Perhaps Suguru Geto's reaction was too dull, or perhaps Yuki Tsukumo wanted to salvage a little of the dignity she'd already lost.
She grew serious, sat upright again, and laid out her thoughts to the boy beside her.
"Everyone here treats the symptoms, not the cause. Find a cursed spirit, then exorcise it. How many centuries will it take to end things that way?"
"That's why I've been searching for a way to address the root cause."
Suguru Geto listened to her rambling, his eyes still full of distrust, though there was admittedly a little more interest than before. "The root cause?"
Seeing him ask, Yuki Tsukumo made a shocking statement.
"Not exorcising cursed spirits, but preventing them from being born."
Her words struck Suguru Geto's mind like thunder, each one hammering into him.
He suddenly remembered his own thought. If only there were no curses.
Exactly! If cursed spirits weren't born, curses would naturally lose their fundamental function.
If cursed spirits could be wiped out at the source, if they stopped emerging like disgusting maggots...
But how?
It wasn't that he'd never considered these things. But whenever he thought about them closely, his mind automatically raced down a path of no return.
Cursed spirits were things born from the faint cursed energy that leaked out of ordinary people. Under normal circumstances, they wouldn't become too rampant.
But once ordinary people experienced negative emotions such as despair, malice, or murderous intent, their cursed energy would unconsciously leak out, fostering the birth of cursed spirits without their knowledge.
Seeing that Suguru Geto understood this, Yuki Tsukumo smiled and shared her current conclusions. "There are two possible solutions at present."
"First: eliminate cursed energy from all humanity."
"Second: teach all humanity to use cursed energy."
"I think the first has decent potential and broad applicability. We have a precedent in Toji Zenin, after all."
At that familiar name, Suguru Geto's eyelid twitched, and he instinctively pressed a hand to his chest.
That day, that man had taken all of them down...
"I once wanted to study him, but he refused. It's a real shame someone like that died."
Suguru Geto frowned. "He's not dead."
Yuki Tsukumo: ?
"He's not dead?"
This woman's information network really sucked...
What the hell? With Satoru Gojo's personality, hadn't that bastard gone straight off to blow Toji Zenin away?
"Doesn't matter. Anyway, I'm currently trying to teach all humanity how to use cursed energy. You know, sorcerers don't produce cursed spirits when they die."
Suguru Geto paused at that. He'd never considered it.
Yuki Tsukumo added, "Of course, it isn't absolutely impossible. There's one exception."
"Cases where sorcerers become curses after death."
"But overall, they produce far fewer cursed spirits. So... if all humanity became sorcerers, the cursed spirit problem would improve."
Suguru Geto fell silent. Yuki Tsukumo had led his thoughts into forbidden territory he'd never dared explore, and the ideas in his head kept racing.
If there were no curses, cursed spirits wouldn't appear. If ordinary people didn't harbor pointless hatred and resentment, the world wouldn't be so ugly...
If... there were no ordinary people, if there were no non-sorcerers, wouldn't the cursed spirits that had always plagued Jujutsu Society...
Wouldn't that mean...
"Couldn't we just kill all the non-sorcerers..."
The words slipped out... lost in thought, Suguru Geto hadn't even realized what he'd said.
"Geto..."
Suguru Geto: !
What did I just say! Killing all the non-sorcerers... that's something a curse user would do!
"You have a point."
Huh?
Yuki Tsukumo seriously considered Suguru Geto's words. "If all non-sorcerers died, there would be no one unable to control cursed energy, so cursed spirits would stop being born."
"But ultimately, I'm not that extreme."
She laughed it off, completely missing the faint smile Suguru Geto revealed when he heard someone call his idea feasible.
He smiled at his own stupidity, and at how pathetic he was.
Stupid enough that once he'd found a solution, he couldn't forget it; pathetic enough to see something like this as a lifeline.
A sudden rain fell over Jujutsu High, its clamor making Suguru Geto increasingly irritable.
Silence. He lowered his head in silence, sorted through his thoughts in silence, and responded to Yuki Tsukumo's endless chatter with silence.
If only there were no curses...
"Utter nonsense!"
The sound of rolling tires echoed down the corridor as someone in a wheelchair quietly emerged from around the corner.
Suguru Geto, who had been silently sealing off his heart, suddenly felt that voice pry open a crack. He looked nervously toward the newcomer.
Dressed all in black, with the same spiky hair as always, he wore an arrogant expression even though he was confined to a wheelchair.
Kamo Xu had made his triumphant return to life!
"Asahi!"
Suguru Geto's eyes suddenly lit up. Kamo Xu had been unconscious all this time, and no one knew when he would wake up.
He'd never imagined it would be today!
"Yo, side bangs. Got dumped by a girl and now you're quietly nursing a broken heart?"
"Screw you!"
The brat was mocking him the moment they reunited. His words had dampened the joy of their reunion considerably.
"Looks like a lot happened while I was out. Look at you, all worn out. You look completely drained."
Kamo Xu wheeled himself to a stop near Suguru Geto. Seeing that the once high-spirited boy had still inevitably ended up like this after what happened with Toji Fushiguro, he couldn't help feeling a pang of sympathy.
He let out a long sigh and placed a hand on his good friend's shoulder.
"You overcomplicate simple problems and oversimplify complicated ones."
"When it's a true-or-false question, you insist on finding a third option. When it's multiple choice, you insist on mashing the answers together."
"Cursed spirits aren't fundamentally different from the food chain in nature. More humans means more varied thoughts, and naturally, more cursed spirits."
"But as cursed spirits increase, so do jujutsu sorcerers. That's a fundamental rule of this world."
Kamo Xu looked at Suguru Geto and shared his own views and ideas, completely different from Yuki Tsukumo's theory of addressing the root cause.
"The world automatically balances yin and yang. The stronger the jujutsu sorcerers become, the stronger the cursed spirits become too. I can't say for sure whether killing every non-sorcerer would truly eliminate cursed spirits..."
"Or whether it would turn the surviving sorcerers into a new kind of cursed spirit."
"Trying to break the cycle is itself a form of arrogance."
Yuki Tsukumo was quite surprised by Kamo Xu's words, both by his unusual perspective and by the insight he possessed at such a young age.
Ignoring Yuki Tsukumo, Kamo Xu focused on his good friend's state of mind. "Geto, don't push yourself so hard. Just do what you can."
"No one could have done anything about Riko Amanai. Her death wasn't your fault..."
Suguru Geto's face scrunched up as he said helplessly, "She's not dead."
Kamo Xu: ?
"She's not dead?"
Your information networks are equally lousy!
Before you continue