After confirming the special grade threat ticking away like a time bomb inside the pink-haired boy, Satoru Gojo took Yuji Itadori to see Masamichi Yaga as though carrying a lost stray dog.
This was an ancient, impossibly stubborn tradition at Tokyo Jujutsu High: the perpetually stern principal personally tested every new student's character, will, and deepest reason for becoming a jujutsu sorcerer, using cursed corpses that looked adorably clumsy but could actually break someone's ribs with a single punch.
Yet, contrary to all those old fossils' expectations, Yuji Itadori showed not the slightest wavering under Masamichi Yaga's oppressive questioning in this trial that could only be called an interrogation of the soul. He did not even display the hesitation any ordinary person should have had.
Because before this, in that dim basement plastered with yellow sealing strips, he had already openly discussed the boundary between life and death with Satoru Gojo.
The teenager who looked like a sunny, cheerful boy had already acknowledged, with an almost cruel calm, his resolve to serve as Ryomen Sukuna's vessel and die after swallowing all the curses.
For a madman who did not fear death, who even upheld a "proper death" as his life's creed, Masamichi Yaga's verbal probes were like a breeze brushing over stone, incapable of stirring even the slightest ripple in Itadori's heart.
Of course, precisely because of this, after sensing the chillingly pure resolve within the boy's soul...
Though Masamichi Yaga's sunglasses concealed his expression, after a long silence, the harsh challenges and tests he had prepared ultimately turned into a heavy sigh.
And so Yuji Itadori joined Tokyo Jujutsu High quite smoothly, becoming the school's most unusual first-year student.
What came next bore all the hallmarks of Satoru Gojo's signature, utterly whimsical personal style.
With a grand wave, he