Puzzle

"You've been spacing out all day." Shoko's voice came from his right. She had already taken the cigarette out of her mouth and held it between her fingers, still unlit. "Seven times since this morning. I counted."

"Why would you count that?" Suguru Geto asked.

"Boredom," Shoko said, but she didn't sound as though she was joking. "Besides, you aren't usually like this. You're usually the most alert of the three of us. You don't even zone out when Satoru falls asleep."

"Hey, when did I fall asleep?" Satoru Gojo cut in indignantly.

"In class."

"I was resting my eyes."

"The kind of eye-resting that involves snoring?"

Satoru Gojo opened his mouth, realized he apparently had no real argument, and turned his head away with a huff. Shoko gave him a deadpan look, then turned to Suguru Geto, her eyes plainly saying: see? That's what he's like.

Suguru Geto almost laughed.

Not "almost." The laugh had already reached his lips before he forced it back down. Because he suddenly realized how long it had been since he had walked side by side with Satoru Gojo and Shoko like this. Not physically side by side, but with no resentment, no need to keep his guard up, as naturally as breathing.

There had been no one to walk beside him in the Time Vessel Association. Only followers, subordinates, tools. He had stood above them all, empty space surrounding him, like an idol enshrined for worship, with no living soul nearby.

"Geto," Satoru Gojo said suddenly.

"Hm?"

"You're really not coming on the mission with us?"

"I told you, I'm taking today off."

"But you took yesterday off."

"So I'm taking another day off."

Satoru Gojo stopped and turned to face him. Sunlight fell across the athletic field from the side, gilding his white eyelashes. He tilted his head at Suguru Geto, his one exposed azure eye narrowing slightly, like a cat studying its prey.

No, not prey.

A puzzle.

"Geto," he said, his voice a little lower than usual, with less flippancy and more of something Suguru Geto had never heard from the seventeen-year-old Satoru Gojo, "what are you afraid of?"

Suguru Geto's heart skipped a beat.

But his expression didn't change at all.

"Afraid?" he said, his voice as calm as a windless lake. "What would I have to be afraid of?"

"Don't know." Satoru Gojo shrugged. "But the flow of your cursed energy is off."

Shoko looked up at Satoru Gojo. She didn't understand what the Six Eyes could see, but she understood him. This seemingly carefree genius rarely spoke in that tone. When he did, it meant he had genuinely seen something.

Suguru Geto fell silent.

Three seconds.

Five seconds.

Then he said, "I've been thinking about something."

"What?"

"If one day I did something really terrible," Suguru Geto said, looking at Satoru Gojo, his voice perfectly level, as though they were discussing whether the cafeteria's saury tasted good today, "what would you do?"

The air suddenly went still.

On the athletic field, Yu Haibara had finished his run and was talking to Kento Nanami. A crow cawed in the distance. Wind swept through the cherry trees, shaking loose a few leaves that had already begun to yellow. They landed on the stone path with a faint rustle.

Satoru Gojo looked at Suguru Geto.

Seventeen-year-old Suguru Geto. Black hair, black eyes, a neatly worn uniform. He looked like a model student.

But behind those eyes was a twenty-seven-year-old soul.

Satoru Gojo watched him for a long time.

Then he smiled.

It wasn't his usual smile. Usually, his smile was broad, unrestrained, childlike. This one was soft and faint, like a leaf settling on water, barely raising a ripple.

"That's such a stupid question, Geto," he said.

"Is it?"

"Yeah." Satoru Gojo slipped his hands back into his pockets, turned, and continued walking. His voice drifted back from ahead, half scattered by the wind, but Suguru Geto still heard every word.

"If you did something really terrible, I'd beat you up, then drag you back."

He paused.

"You can't get away from me anyway."

With the unlit cigarette between her lips, Shoko looked at Satoru Gojo's retreating back, then at Suguru Geto. She said nothing, only took a lighter from her white coat pocket, squeezed it in her hand, and put it back.

Then she started walking too.

Suguru Geto stood where he was, watching Satoru Gojo and Shoko walk away. Sunlight fell over them, stretching their shadows long, long enough to reach his feet.

The corner of his mouth shifted.

This time, its curve was a little more pronounced than it had been that morning.

He stepped forward and followed them.

That afternoon.

Suguru Geto didn't return to the dormitory. Instead, he went to Jujutsu High's Archives Room.

This was the first step in his plan.

Yu Haibara's mission was in Zama, a city not far from Tokyo. Its population was small, but five people had recently disappeared in succession. The Jujutsu Association's preliminary investigation had attributed the incidents to a grade 2 cursed spirit, so they had sent only an underclassman to handle it.

Grade 2.

Suguru Geto knew it wasn't grade 2.

In his memories, Yu Haibara had encountered a special grade cursed spirit. It wasn't an investigative error. That cursed spirit could "hide" its cursed energy fluctuations. Its cursed technique involved "suppression," allowing it to reduce its own cursed energy to almost nothing and fool every conventional detection method.

That was also why Yu Haibara had died.

No one had known there was a special grade cursed spirit there. Not even Jujutsu High's monitoring system had detected it. Yu Haibara had gone alone, faced it alone, and died alone in that place no one knew about.

They hadn't even been able to bring his body back intact.

Suguru Geto sat in a corner of the Archives Room, a map of the Kanto Region spread before him. He tapped the name "Zama" twice with his finger, then slowly traced outward along the lines on the map.

Zama. The surrounding cities are Ebina, Atsugi, and Sagamihara. All of them had recorded cursed spirit sightings in 2007, but none were high-grade. The question is, where did that special grade cursed spirit come from? Did it already live in Zama, or did it migrate from somewhere else?

If it migrated, there should be traces along its route.

Suguru Geto began going through the mission records in the Archives Room. They were all on paper. In Jujutsu High's old-fashioned way, every mission report had to be handwritten and filed, with computers serving only as a supplement. He read carefully, page by page, pulling out every report of a cursed spirit of "unconfirmed grade" appearing in the Kanto Region.

Time ticked by.

The Archives Room gradually grew dim. No one came to turn on the lights, and Suguru Geto didn't get up either. He sat there, continuing to turn the yellowed pages by the last traces of daylight outside the window.

He found three suspicious reports.

The first: June 2007, Atsugi City. A jujutsu sorcerer had encountered a cursed spirit stronger than anticipated during a mission. Though the mission had ultimately been completed, the report noted, "The cursed spirit's cursed energy fluctuations were unstable, alternating between strong and weak, making its grade difficult to determine accurately."

The second: July 2007, Ebina City. An assistant supervisor had felt "an unusually intense sense of pressure" while surveying the site, but it had subsequently disappeared. The investigation had failed to detect any cursed spirits.

The third: July 2007, Zama City. An initial investigation report. It was unsigned, written in a scrawl, and only two lines long: "Residual cursed energy present at the scene, but its source cannot be traced. Further investigation recommended."

A month later, Yu Haibara had been sent to carry out that "further investigation."

Suguru Geto spread the three reports on the table and stared at them.

Not a coincidence.

That special grade cursed spirit had been active around Zama since July. It had been moving, testing the waters, slowly expanding its range. Jujutsu High's monitoring system had picked up its traces, but hadn't realized they all belonged to the same entity. They were too scattered, too faint, so faint that each one alone seemed no cause for concern.

But what if they were pieced together?

Suguru Geto closed his eyes and built a map in his mind. In September, it would return to Zama and wait for Yu Haibara to arrive.

No, not "wait." "Hunt."

Special grade cursed spirits were intelligent. They weren't lesser beings like ordinary cursed spirits, capable only of instinctive attacks. They could think, plan, and lay traps. Yu Haibara hadn't been "sent" somewhere dangerous. He had been "lured" into a hunting ground prepared long before his arrival.