Feeling the burning pain in both cheeks, Tengen could not help casting a resentful look at Satoru Gojo beside her.
Gojo very clearly ignored Tengen's hostile stare. In fact, she had the distinct feeling that if she stared at him any longer, he might turn around and accuse her of harboring unsavory intentions.
Tengen lowered her head and sighed helplessly, then began assessing the state of her body.
Chinatsu's guess had been right. With Chinatsu and Gojo there to back her up, Tengen had decided to gamble everything on evolution.
Though the process had been difficult, painful, and full of setbacks, she had forced herself through it. Only at the moment her evolution succeeded had she let her guard down and lost consciousness, leading to that farce just now.
Standing over Tengen, who sat cross-legged on the floor, Chinatsu repeated what Masamichi Yaga had told her during his earlier phone call.
She had thought that now Tengen was awake, restoring the failed barriers would only take a few minutes. Instead, Tengen's expression changed dramatically the moment she heard the news.
"What? All my barriers have failed!"
Tengen could not help raising a hand to cover her cheek, looking rather haggard.
She had indeed personally erected all those barriers, large and small, across the country, and she certainly had the ability to repair them.
But her cursed energy control did not reach nearly that far. This was not a computer connected to the internet, where a few adjustments on her end would update every barrier nationwide. To actually repair them, she would probably have to travel across the country, fixing them one city at a time.
She had plenty of work ahead of her...
Watching Tengen heave a heavy sigh, Gojo could not resist a quiet, gleeful chuckle.
He had thought Tengen would handle everything from here and leave him with nothing to do. Who knew that the day after he and Chinatsu left the Tombs of the Star Corridor, a mountain of jujutsu assignments would appear before them?
Although Tengen was traveling around the country repairing the failed barriers, restoring them was not something that could be done overnight. Without the barriers, cursed spirits in many areas had begun showing clear signs of unrest.
Most jujutsu sorcerers in Jujutsu Society had now entered "overtime mode." Fortunately, this "overtime" came with "overtime pay," so some of the sorcerers who earned money to support their families by completing jujutsu assignments did not mind it. In fact, they formed the backbone of the overtime workforce.
Sorcerers from jujutsu families were not short on money. They continued exorcising cursed spirits at their usual pace and firmly refused to work overtime.
Now that Chinatsu and Gojo had become "the strongest," their efficiency alone made each of them worth ten people, or even a hundred. Everyone in Jujutsu Society was urging the two of them to put in more overtime.
Although Chinatsu opposed overtime on principle, the barriers failing was, after all, one of the chain reactions caused by her interference in Tengen's storyline. She felt she needed to take responsibility for it.
Tokyo Metropolitan Jujutsu High School.
Chinatsu and Gojo selected and organized the jujutsu assignments they would each undertake next, dividing them by location. For example, one would handle everything to the east and the other everything to the west, sparing them the wasted effort of running all over the place.
While the two of them were discussing their plans back and forth in the classroom, two people appeared in the hallway outside and peered in through the window.
"Our upperclassmen are so motivated! I want to become a jujutsu sorcerer who can handle things on my own soon, too!"
"You'll have your chance in the future, but let's sit this one out. With cursed spirits acting up because the barriers failed, we first-years should avoid adding to their troubles."
After Chinatsu and the others advanced to their second year, Jujutsu High had naturally welcomed a new batch of first-year students.
The boy excitedly declaring that he wanted to stand on his own as soon as possible was named Yu Haibara, while the blond boy beside him, whose bangs swept to one side, was named Kento Nanami.
Both were on Chinatsu's list of people to save, because both of them had died in the original story.
Haibara had died relatively early. During a jujutsu assignment, his superiors had misjudged a cursed spirit's grade, classifying a Grade 1 as Grade 2. The Grade 1 Cursed Spirit had sliced Haibara in half at the waist.
Nanami had died after the main storyline began. During the Shibuya Incident, he had faced the disaster cursed spirit Jogo, buying time against a Special Grade despite being only Grade 1 himself. After suffering severe burns, he had then had his life taken by another disaster cursed spirit, Mahito.
Chinatsu had naturally noticed the two peeking in from outside the classroom. She could safely leave Nanami alone for now; Haibara was her main concern.
Not only was he drawing ever closer to the dangerous part of his storyline, but she also worried that if she failed to save him, news of his death reaching Suguru Geto, who was close to Haibara, might undo all her previous efforts.
Of course, Chinatsu also understood that even if she removed every factor that had contributed to Geto's mental collapse, he could still break down.
Geto's way of thinking was different from most people's. He was far too extreme. Right now, he was fixated on giving everything he had to protect the weak. Once the pillar supporting him mentally shattered, he could easily swing from one extreme to the other.
While Chinatsu was lost in thought over all this, Gojo finished organizing his jujutsu assignments first.
"Sis, I'm heading out. I've already promised Geto I'd play in a basketball game at the park tomorrow, so I can't let these assignments hold me up."
With that, Gojo hurried out of the classroom. After greeting Haibara and Nanami, he quickly ran out of sight.
Chinatsu sighed helplessly. She had no plans, so she could take her "sweet time" working through this huge pile of jujutsu assignments.
Soon, Chinatsu finished organizing her own assignments as well. Just as she was about to leave the classroom and begin her busy schedule as a corporate drone, the phone stuffed into her pocket suddenly went "Beep! Beep! Beep!"
Puzzled, Chinatsu took her phone out of her pocket and discovered that the Elder was calling, which gave her quite a surprise.
Ever since she had enrolled at Jujutsu High, the number of times she and Gojo went home had plummeted. Naturally, fewer trips home also meant less contact with the Elder.
"Hello? Elder? Is something wrong?"
"Chinatsu, are you free right now? If you are, come home for a visit. There are a few things I'd like to discuss with you..."
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