Outside Jujutsu High.
Panda, the special cursed corpse Principal Masamichi Yaga had created with his technique, Puppet Manipulation, lay against the school gate, rubbing his belly as he waited for his classmates to arrive.
"They're taking forever~"
Panda muttered lazily to himself. In fact, even though he had yet to formally meet his classmates, he already knew who they were.
As a special puppet created by Masamichi Yaga, Panda had been raised like a son since childhood. Getting his paws on something as trivial as a student roster could hardly have been easier.
The Zenin Clan's little tyrant, the Inumaki Clan's Cursed Speech User, the boy genius who had received special treatment several years ago, and the two girls that person from the Gojo Clan had invested in since they were young...
Six students in a single year. That number had already broken Jujutsu High's record.
As Panda pondered this, drowsiness crept over him, and he let out a huge yawn. Just as he was about to sneak in a little nap, two students who happened to have met on their way there appeared nearby.
"You're a new student too, right? I'm Zen... just call me Maki. What's your name?" Maki Zenin introduced herself to the person beside her, carrying a naginata-like cursed tool over her shoulder.
"Salmon!"
"Huh?"
"Salmon! Salmon!"
The boy beside Maki Zenin repeated himself several times with growing urgency, then suddenly stopped speaking. He opened the backpack he was carrying, took out a book, and flipped it to the first page.
Three characters were written in the bottom-right corner of that page: the boy's name.
"Toge... Inumaki? Oh, I get it. You're a Cursed Speech User. We're classmates from now on, so here's to getting along!"
Maki Zenin casually reached over and clapped Toge Inumaki on