Kyoto, Jujutsu High.
Several days had passed since the upheaval at the Goodwill Event, and life was gradually returning to normal.
Aoi Todo, Mai Zenin, Kasumi Miwa, and the others had long since returned from Tokyo.
Although the Goodwill Event had been cut short, and the final "baseball game" had ended in victory for Tokyo Jujutsu High.
Overall, however, the event had caused no irreversible losses.
On the surface, at least, everything was as usual.
Mechamaru stood beneath a covered walkway at the edge of Kyoto Jujutsu High's training ground.
His steel body gleamed cold and hard in the afternoon sunlight.
But Mechamaru's consciousness-the thoughts of Kokichi Muta himself, almost completely paralyzed and submerged in life-sustaining liquid inside a Nutrient Pod in some distant underground facility-was wandering.
(You're just a Cursed Corpse... You've got some nerve saying that...)
The words that Panda, the Cursed Corpse from Tokyo Jujutsu High, had said to him at the Goodwill Event a few days earlier echoed in his mind.
Mechamaru hadn't answered then.
He couldn't answer.
Because he was different from Panda. Panda was a Cursed Corpse with self-awareness.
He was merely a human born with a severe illness, who could only act through a puppet in his place.
Mechamaru wasn't his body, merely a "tool" he extended outward, a medium through which he observed the world and interacted with others.
Someone who depended on a Life-Sustaining Device and a mechanical shell just to stay alive...
A defective product.
What right did someone like him have to talk about the world?
He couldn't even... confess to the person he liked.
"What are you thinking about, Mechamaru?"
A gentle voice came from beside him, interrupting Kokichi Muta's thoughts.
Mechamaru's metal head slowly turned toward the voice.
It was Kasumi Miwa.
She wore Kyoto Jujutsu High's