"Qingxiao, I don't understand myself anymore."
"I always believed that Jujutsu existed to protect ordinary people.
But lately... my belief in the 'value of ordinary people's existence' has been completely shaken.
They're weak, and they have a fragile, gentle side that deserves protection.
But that same weakness breeds endless ugliness and malice, rotten to the roots."
His Adam's apple bobbed slightly. His voice carried a rarely revealed exhaustion and bewilderment, a sense of weightlessness he might not have been willing to expose even in front of Satoru Gojo:
"Qingxiao, I've never told Satoru this."
He turned to glance at the person beside him, a trace of self-mocking weariness in his eyes:
"He stands too high, too pure. He can't understand what it's like to be caught in this tug-of-war, neither here nor there.
But you're different. You have your own code for how you do things. I want to hear what you think."
The soda in Qingxiao's fingers stopped in midair, and his heart lurched. I'm done for. I'm a military man, not a man of words!
He could fight ten people at once, but dealing with a situation like this gave him the biggest headache.
Eight hundred comforting lines raced through his mind, only for him to reject them one by one.
Inside, he was frantic enough to claw at the walls, but on the outside, he had to keep looking like an attentive listener as he forced himself to put together a response.
"I can't tell how to draw the line anymore, whether I should accept them or despise them.
On one side is the me who looks down on ordinary people from the bottom of my heart. On the other is the me desperately denying that contempt, forcing myself to protect them.
As a Sorcerer caught between