After Itadori exorcised his sixth grade 1 curse during his nighttime training, Teacher Gojo brought him to a jujutsu sorcerer named Kento Nanami.
"I can't join you on this mission, so go with my reliable junior, Nanami~"
Gojo introduced Nanami with a cheerful smile.
"He's a very dependable, proper adult!"
Hearing that from inside the innate domain, Sukuna couldn't help silently snarking-
So you do know you're an utterly unreliable, improper three-year-old, Satoru!
After handing Itadori over to Nanami, Gojo hurried off to tackle other missions.
Meanwhile, Sukuna secretly studied this jujutsu sorcerer he had never met before from inside the innate domain.
The tall, lean blond man wore a crisp, immaculate suit. He looked neat and efficient, his expression so serious that even his greeting was meticulous and earnest.
He looked mature and composed, radiating the dependability of an adult.
Sukuna immediately felt a surge of respect-
I never would have imagined someone like this could be that three-year-old Satoru's junior...
Shouldn't it be the other way around?
If Gojo had even half this man's maturity and composure, he wouldn't have turned out like that!
With a mission to handle, Nanami moved decisively, and Itadori immediately followed.
The two rode in Ijichi's car to the movie theater where their mission awaited.
Three students had died here that day, their bodies left in horrific condition.
They should have been human, yet their heads had taken on terrifying shapes, like mutated cursed spirits.
Itadori looked at the photographs of the three dead students. From Ijichi's explanation, he learned that none of them had been directly "killed." Instead, their deformed heads had caused intracranial hypoxia, indirectly leading to their deaths.
A curse capable of doing this could clearly have killed people normally, yet it had deliberately chosen such an agonizing method.
...This wasn't simply murder anymore...
Itadori clenched both fists, anger blazing in his eyes.
I can't let this curse keep hurting people like this!
[What a sick sense of fun...]
Sukuna muttered that under his breath, too.
He disliked this sort of thing. It made him deeply uncomfortable.
With little enthusiasm, he told Itadori, [Let's finish this quickly and head back.]
Itadori nodded at his words.
I have to deal with this curse as quickly as possible!
Reality, however, soon slapped him in the face-
After he easily killed a "curse" that had suddenly appeared and attacked him, Nanami noticed the watch on its wrist and took out his phone to photograph the curse they had brought down.
A terrible premonition froze solid in his heart.
Itadori stared at the "cursed spirit" in the photograph, his pupils contracting.
"Cursed spirits... don't show up in photos, do they?"
He raised his head and stared blankly at Nanami. The fist that had just dealt that "curse" a fatal blow trembled slightly in the rain.
Suddenly, Itadori didn't dare think about what he had actually struck down.
"They're human."
In the break room, Shoko Ieiri's voice came through Nanami's phone on speaker, shattering his last faint hope.
What he had killed... what he had thought was a "curse"... really had been a human being.
The boy tightly clasped his still-trembling fist with his other hand.
His heart turned ice-cold-
Although he had vaguely sensed long ago that this day might come once he became a jujutsu sorcerer, now that it actually had, he still felt utterly lost.
He had killed someone.
A human being-
It felt as though some set of scales in his heart was slowly tipping, then shattering.
[...ji...]
[...Yuji...]
[Yuji-!]
Itadori remained dazed for a moment before realizing Sukuna was calling him, then hurriedly murmured, "Mm."
With Nanami sitting beside him, he didn't dare respond too obviously. He didn't know whether Teacher Gojo had told Mr. Nanami about Sukuna's situation.
He lowered his head, listening in a haze as Sukuna spoke to him.
[Listen to me, Yuji.]
Sukuna had called four or five times before Itadori finally responded, leaving him terribly anxious.
Though he felt sorry for those mutated humans, he wanted even less to see his kid become like this.
Afraid that Itadori might soon stop hearing him again, he spoke quickly.
[Before they ever met you, they had already been turned into something else-something that wasn't human anymore-]
[Looking like that, they couldn't possibly have survived in the human world.]
[Even if you hadn't killed them, no good future would have awaited them. You only helped free them from that cruel fate a little sooner-]
[You were saving them!]
He hurried through it all in one breath, then paused.
Then he added in a much quieter voice:
[At least... at least if I'd been turned into something like that... I'd definitely rather someone help end my life sooner...]
Itadori: "..."
That last remark was unexpectedly persuasive coming from his Sukuna...
Whew...
He let out a breath.
He tried hard to stop dwelling on it.
It had already happened. No amount of thinking could take him back to before it did.
He couldn't keep sinking into despair. He didn't want his Sukuna to worry about him.
Inside the innate domain, Sukuna still hadn't received a reply from Yuji, and his worried voice continued rambling on-
[If nothing else, think of it this way-]
He racked his brain for the words that would help his Yuji recover fastest.
[It's better for us to do it than to push it onto someone else... like Kugisaki and the others, right? See, you didn't just save the people involved. You saved other sorcerers, too. Isn't that impressive?]
...Weird... Something about what I just said feels strange...
Sukuna frowned in confusion, but couldn't pinpoint what was wrong.
Ha...
Itadori couldn't help wanting to laugh.
Why does my Sukuna's mind work in such strange ways?
...But he really did feel that it was enough for him to face something like this. He couldn't let other jujutsu sorcerers go through it, too.
He was someone destined to "disappear." He was the best person to handle this sort of thing.
His hand stopped trembling, and the bleak expression on his face gradually settled into calm.
Sitting beside him, Nanami watched the boy's change with some surprise. He hadn't expected him to recover so quickly.
"Itadori...?" he ventured.
Itadori abruptly raised both hands and slapped his cheeks hard with a loud smack, startling both Nanami and Sukuna.
Light returned to the boy's eyes. He seemed to be answering Nanami's question, and Sukuna's as well.
"I'm okay now. Just like..."
-Just like you said, Sukuna.
"Let this sort of thing end with me!"
"Let's find that curse quickly and exorcise it!"
"We can't let there be any more victims."
His gaze was bright and resolute once more.
Whew...
After being tense for so long, Sukuna finally breathed a sigh of relief.
That's my kid. He didn't get trapped in some vicious cycle of self-blame.
So...
Let's hurry up and find that bastard curse!
How dare it make my Tiger feel that awful... I'll beat it to death!
Far away, Mahito was explaining what curses were to Junpei Yoshino, who had sought him out, when a sudden chill crept up his back.
He sneezed several times in quick succession, looking bewildered.
Can curses catch colds, too? What is this strange feeling?
I feel chilly all over. Should I put on more clothes?
Before you continue