Kenjaku

October 31, 2018.

18:10

Shibuya.

Aoyama Cemetery, where Mei Mei's team was waiting.

"Kaneki."

"Were you waiting for me?"

An exceptionally gentle voice rang out.

"Yes." Ken Kaneki sat on a bench, his expression calm as he watched Kenjaku approach.

He wore a Five-Strap Kasaya.

His hair was tied in a bun.

The only thing that looked a little out of place was the line of stitches across his forehead.

"Should I call you Aunt Kaori?" Ken Kaneki looked at him and asked, "Or should I call you Kenjaku?"

"Either is fine."

With a gentle smile on his face, Kenjaku sat down beside Kaneki.

"In your plan..."

Kaneki asked another question. "Am I a player?"

Kenjaku gave him a hollow smile. "I'm curious. How did you learn about all this?"

At that,

a smile curled Kaneki's lips. "Are you sure you want to discuss something so important in front of all these cursed spirits?"

As his words fell,

the air around them grew scorching hot.

There were no flames, yet the heat seared his skin.

"You can see them?" Kenjaku looked at him curiously.

Kaneki's expression remained calm. "No."

He was telling the truth.

He really couldn't see cursed spirits, but his senses were sharper than an ordinary person's.

He could sense cursed spirits.

Or, more accurately, danger.

Unable to read anything from his expression, Kenjaku called out, "Jogo."

At that,

the temperature around them dropped, though it was still hot.

Only then

did he answer, "No."

"You're very unusual, but your aptitude isn't sufficient. You don't meet the requirements for a player."

The culling game.

He had spent many years planning it.

To ensure his plan succeeded, he set extremely high standards for the players.

Kaneki was speechless.

Ever since he had concluded that he probably couldn't awaken a cursed technique,

he had deliberately told Itadori that he dreamed of becoming someone with superpowers.

Those words had been meant for Kenjaku.

He had hoped Kenjaku would remember him when creating the players.

Then,

relief crossed Kaneki's face.

Fortunately, he hadn't put his faith in some elusive stroke of luck. He had chosen to take concrete action first.

From the moment he had used a scheme to save Kokichi Muta, he had been prepared for Kenjaku to come looking for him.

The only thing slightly different from what he had expected was the timing.

He had thought Kenjaku would come sooner.

If he had come sooner,

Kaneki could have done more.

But he hadn't expected Kenjaku to wait until this critical moment, just before the Shibuya Incident began.

"Tell me."

Kenjaku lowered his eyelids slightly. "How do you know about me?"

"What if..."

Kaneki looked at him and asked, "I don't tell you?"

A kindly smile appeared on Kenjaku's face. "Then I'll kill you..."

He spoke the coldest words in the gentlest tone.

At that,

Kaneki countered, "Then you'd just abandon the optimal plan?"

"Compared to that..."

Kenjaku's smile remained unchanged. "Eliminating an unpredictable factor like you comes first."

For that,

he could afford to wait a little longer.

"Before I tell you..." After a moment of silence, Kaneki said, "You have to make me a jujutsu sorcerer."

He was gambling.

He had the aptitude to be a sorcerer.

He was someone who had crossed into another world, after all. Surely he couldn't have nothing going for him.

After hearing that,

Kenjaku laughed, thoroughly amused.

He laughed for quite a while before looking at Kaneki. "After all these years, your dream still hasn't changed!"

Clearly,

he knew what Kaneki's dream was.

Then,

he asked Mahito to alter Kaneki, giving him a brain like a sorcerer's.

Next...

Kaneki felt a cold hand settle on his forehead, and he seemed to hear those words.

"Idle Transfiguration."

Soon...

he saw a repulsive, stitched face wearing a malicious smile. Beside it stood two cursed spirits that looked neither human nor ghost.

Jogo and Hanami.

"Talk."

Kenjaku urged him impatiently.

Kaneki looked at the three cursed spirits before him without speaking, but his meaning was clear.

"Human!"

A blast of hot air erupted from the volcano atop Jogo's head, and a ball of flame formed in his palm.

Yet,

Kaneki's expression didn't change.

He simply looked at Jogo calmly.

At that moment,

out of the corner of his eye, he noticed another cursed spirit hiding behind a nearby gravestone.

Half a face peeked out to watch them.

When it noticed his gaze, it ducked back out of sight.

Its entire body was red, it looked like an octopus, and a white cloth rested on its head.

-Dagon!

Finally,

the four disaster curses left.

Only then did Kaneki quietly begin recounting his past. "You see, I..."

"Was born different from everyone else."

"From the moment I came into this world, there were strange memories in my mind."

"Later..."

Kaneki looked up at the sky. "I realized they were the future."

Kenjaku froze at his words.

"You see..."

Kaneki turned to look Kenjaku straight in the eye and smiled. "I saw you in those memories, Aunt Kaori."

At that,

Kenjaku smiled.

That explained it.

Back then, he had thought there was something strange about the way Kaneki looked at him, even as a baby.

Indeed,

Kaneki and Itadori were neighbors.

They had been neighbors since childhood, only separating when Itadori moved to Jujutsu High.

"Your situation..."

Kenjaku smiled. "I've never encountered anything like it."

His gaze as he looked at Kaneki brimmed with curiosity and desire. He wanted to uncover everything about him.

Unfortunately,

if Suguru Geto's body hadn't been so important to him, he would have wanted to possess Kaneki instead.

"What did you see?"

Kenjaku asked curiously.

"I saw a lot of things and came to know a lot of people," Kaneki replied. "There's a lot I can't remember clearly anymore."

"But..."

"I remember certain things about you very clearly."

That was perfectly reasonable.

Science had an explanation for this: childhood amnesia.

It referred to people's inability to remember events from before the age of two or three.

Never mind ages two to three-even things that happened between four and six weren't necessarily remembered.

In reality,

he remembered far more than he claimed.

Not only did he remember Jujutsu Kaisen, he also knew aliens would invade Earth sixty-eight years later.

Kenjaku kept staring into Kaneki's eyes.

He saw no sign of lying. Kaneki seemed like a sincere person laying his heart bare.

And precisely because he seemed too much like one,

Kenjaku

didn't believe Kaneki was hiding nothing.

"Kaneki," Kenjaku asked with a sinister smile, "have you really forgotten that much?"

At that,

Kaneki's gaze darkened slightly. "That doesn't matter. What matters is that I saw you die."

"Oh?"

Kenjaku's interest was piqued. "Who killed me?"

"Yuta Okkotsu."

Kaneki didn't conceal it.

When dealing with a monster who had lived for over a thousand years, his words had to contain enough truth.

"I don't believe he's capable of killing me." Kenjaku's gaze turned cold.

Unconditional copying of cursed techniques.

Bottomless cursed energy.

Those were merely achieved through the binding vow of keeping the soul of the person he loved most.

"But..."

Kaneki spoke evenly. "That man you look down on was the one who cut off your head with his own hands."

He deliberately didn't mention how many strikes it had taken.

That would lead his listener to instinctively assume the two had fought a great battle.

"In the end..."

"He acquired your Cursed Technique."

"He possessed Satoru Gojo's body to fight Sukuna to the death."

At those words.

A smile appeared on Kenjaku's face. Those words revealed quite a lot.

First: Satoru Gojo had been unsealed.

Second: Satoru Gojo was dead.

Third: Sukuna had won!

He certainly didn't believe those sorcerers from Jujutsu High were a match for Sukuna.

Even if.

He was dead.

His plan was still moving forward.

"Make a Binding Vow." Kenjaku looked at Ken Kaneki. "Next..."

"I want to make sure everything you say actually happened!"

Kenjaku's expression turned icy.

His meaning was clear: if Ken Kaneki refused to make a Binding Vow, he would kill him!