After the plane took off, Dio gazed through the window at Mumbai in the morning.
Sunlight bathed the earth, gilding the high-rises and scattering a silvery shimmer along the coastline. Yet in the shadows beyond its reach, ancient cursed spirits were stirring.
He suddenly asked the companion beside him, "Geto, do you like India?"
Suguru Geto fell silent for a moment, his gaze also resting on the land slowly receding outside the window.
"It's noisy, filthy, hot, chaotic, and torn apart by the gap between rich and poor...
But somehow, it feels real.
Like cursed energy. It comes from negative emotions, but those intense feelings themselves are real."
"Heh..." Dio chuckled.
"What?"
"It means your heart has come back to life!
You're starting to feel the rough warmth of the ordinary world again, instead of staying trapped in the logic of that 'monkey theory' of yours!"
"..." Suguru Geto looked slightly taken aback, but offered no rebuttal.
"You were the first friend I made after coming here-we can call ourselves friends now, right?"
"Of course we can. Why wouldn't we? Dio, after seeing your power, I'm much more confident that our new agenda can succeed." Geto gave him two thumbs up.
He paused for a long time before continuing.
"At some point, so many things started to feel dull. It was as though a transparent film had wrapped itself around me, making it hard for anything to truly move me.
Eradicating cursed spirits, creating a world with only sorcerers...
It's a long, long road. Sometimes I feel so tired. Tired enough to want to lie down and never take another step.
But I'm not alone. I have a lot of family I can count on.
If I fall, they'll help me up. If I can't keep walking, we'll support each other and keep moving...
Before we knew it, we'd come so far down this road. So far that even Jujutsu Society no longer had room for us."
"Then," Dio said calmly, picking up where he left off, "perhaps it's time you went back to Jujutsu High to see Satoru Gojo and Shoko Ieiri again.
When you keep things bottled up, they slowly ferment, swell, and turn sour.
But if everyone voices all their grievances, confusion, and even anger, and talks openly and honestly, perhaps you can resolve everything in one go."
Suguru Geto smiled bitterly. "Honestly, we might end up fighting."
"That's fine too. I'll go with you. Either way, we're putting an end to all those old grudges this time!
Whatever happens, you can't run away again. Promise?"
"...All right."
Suguru Geto finally answered softly, his gaze dropping to his open palm. That was the past he had severed with his own hands, and now had to face again.
"I still have...old acquaintances at Jujutsu High I can contact. Let's return to base first and do our final intensive training."
He raised his head and looked at Dio, a long-absent earnestness from his student days flashing in his eyes. "Once you've taught me Reverse Cursed Technique, we'll go.
The holidays are still a long way off, and there aren't any major missions or events. They...should all be at school."
Time slipped silently through their fingers like sand. Before they knew it, the muggy heat of late summer had given way to the slight chill of mid-autumn.
At Tokyo Metropolitan Jujutsu High School, the fledgling Special Grade Sorcerer Yuta Okkotsu had just returned to campus after an intense outdoor training session with his classmates when he suddenly stopped. He looked toward the distant skyline in puzzlement, his brows drawing together slightly.
"What's wrong, Yuta?" Panda, a mutated cursed corpse, turned his head and leaned his round body closer, asking curiously.
"Uh...I've got this strange feeling that something's coming." Yuta Okkotsu scratched his head, sounding uncertain.
"You're overthinking it," Maki Zenin declared mercilessly without looking back, a bag containing her long-bladed cursed tool slung over her back.
Panda swayed his round body and agreed. "Yeah, you're overthinking it."
"Honey bonito." Toge Inumaki looked back and mumbled the name of a rice ball filling in agreement.
"Huh?"
"Your ability to sense cursed energy is pretty hit-or-miss, Yuta." Panda reached out a furry paw and patted his shoulder with an air of understanding.
Maki drove the point home. "Besides, with someone as absurdly powerful as Rika around you all the time, it's only natural that your senses would get dulled."
"Salmon." Inumaki nodded affirmatively.
Inside the principal's office.
Masamichi Yaga and Satoru Gojo stood side by side at the window, quietly watching the first-years below, who had just returned from training and were gathered together, laughing and chatting.
With his arms folded, Yaga looked at the white-haired man beside him. "Geto and his group went to India a while ago.
They caused quite a stir, but apparently almost no one died, and they cleaned up after themselves thoroughly.
Is something major really going to happen? Could Yuta simply be too nervous?"
"Unfortunately, Principal, that's impossible."
The corners of Satoru Gojo's mouth rose slightly, but there was nothing joking about his tone.
"We've always been badly behind on developments in the Indian Jujutsu Society.
By the time vague reports reach us through roundabout channels, they're already old news.
Two months have passed. That's enough time for him to do a lot."
Almost the instant he finished speaking-
An immense, familiar, utterly undisguised surge of cursed energy slammed into the edge of Jujutsu High's barrier like a falling meteor!
"That cursed energy...speak of the devil!"
Yaga's expression changed abruptly, his perpetually stern face tightening further.
He shoved the window open, and his powerful voice pierced the quiet campus, reaching every corner. "Attention, we have intruders! All sorcerers on campus ranked Grade 1 or above, assemble immediately at the circle by the school gates!"
"Well, that's a surprise. Yuta's intuition actually got it right." Maki unslung the sword bag from her back, her gaze sharpening.
In the circular clearing before the school gates, a cursed spirit resembling a giant pelican, its wingspan exceeding five meters, slowly descended as its beating wings whipped up gusts of wind.
The moment it folded its wings, Suguru Geto leaped lightly from its back.
He paid no attention to the rapidly mounting tension around him, or to the young sorcerers who were trading jabs even as they each assumed guarded stances.
He simply raised a hand and made a casual gesture.
The pelican-like cursed spirit obediently opened its enormous, pliable beak.
Then Miguel, Larue, Manami, Riku, and Nanako and Mimiko, holding hands, emerged from the cursed spirit's mouth one after another-the scene briefly took on a surreal air.
"They're not affiliated with this school, are they?"
Maki narrowed her eyes, scanning the wildly different faces, particularly the two girls in sailor uniforms with cartoon backpacks who looked about her age.
"Salmon roe." Toge Inumaki gave a brief reply to Maki, expressing firm denial and wariness.
"That's a cursed spirit I haven't seen before." Panda tilted his enormous head, curiously studying the docile(?) giant pelican.
"Whoa! What a huge bird!" Yuta Okkotsu couldn't help exclaiming, before something more conspicuous caught his attention. "And there's a foreign guy with no shirt on... It's already autumn. Isn't he cold?"
"Jujutsu High hasn't changed a bit." Suguru Geto waved at the wary young sorcerers with a gentle smile. "Is this a welcoming ceremony?"
"Obviously not!" Panda successfully took on the role of today's straight man.
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