Brain Flower, Headcanon

New chapter is live.

Settle in, take your time, and let's see what waits in the dark 🖤

✦

Before long, Hisashi Zenin appeared on the third floor.

The one-armed sorcerer walked up to them, placed a black case on the windowsill, entered the code, and opened it.

On top of a case packed full of cash sat a thick sealed document envelope.

Hisashi picked up the documents and handed them to Gojo, his tone calm.

"This contains all of the Zenin Clan's accumulated experience with the Ten Shadows Technique. Gojo-sensei may inspect it."

Gojo accepted it casually and flipped through the pages in front of everyone without the slightest hesitation.

"Wow. Ha."

"The Zenin Clan's top-secret records, handed over to an opposing family just like that..."

"Is that really okay?"

Gojo looked at the one-armed sorcerer across from him, mischief filling his gaze.

He lifted a corner of his bandages and stared directly at the stump where Hisashi's arm had been severed.

"You've clearly become a Grade 1 sorcerer, and that guy still treats you like this..."

"You really don't resent him at all?"

Right in front of Yaga and the others, Gojo openly tried to drive a wedge between Itsuki and the one-armed sorcerer.

Or perhaps wedge was too soft a word.

He was peeling open a bloody truth.

The long period he had disappeared the day before had been spent returning to the Gojo estate to search for every intelligence summary on Itsuki.

Gojo had guessed there was something twisted about him. He had not expected the boy to be this harsh toward his own clan's sorcerers.

"No need for your concern. The clan head treats his subordinates well enough."

Hisashi calmly spoke a line that went against every visible fact.

Gojo was left speechless.

That expression, still and emotionless as an old well...

For a moment, he almost admired the way Itsuki managed his clan.

"Mei Mei-san, this contains the payment for the last mission. Anything extra may be treated as a bonus."

"Also, the clan head asks that you keep the details of the commission as confidential as possible."

"Of course."

Mei Mei accepted the case from Hisashi and smiled beautifully.

"A reasonable request from an employer is something I always honor."

Only after Hisashi turned and left did Mei Mei happily begin counting the bills inside the case.

"As expected of the Zenin clan head... so generous."

She murmured with a smile.

"Mei Mei-san, does that mean you're on the Zenin side?"

Gojo tilted his head and asked with a grin.

"Taking sides?"

Mei Mei stacked the counted bills neatly in the case, her red lips parting.

"Don't misunderstand, Gojo-sensei."

"Where the money is, I am."

"Things that cannot be turned into money hold no meaning to me."

With that, Mei Mei lifted the case and left with light steps, her silver ponytail swaying behind her.

Night fell under gentle moonlight.

Three days had passed since Itsuki left Jujutsu High.

At the Zenin estate, only the servants' houses on the outskirts still had lights on.

In the core area of the estate, only the two dim yellow lamps inside the pavilion continued to flicker.

For three days, after clearing the Zenin sorcerers out of the estate, Itsuki had kept his Mangekyo Sharingan active the entire time.

It was the only way to ensure no one could sneak into the Cursed Warehouse.

That level of caution showed proper respect to a thousand-year-old hand moving behind the curtain.

Footsteps gradually grew louder in the darkness.

Itsuki raised his eyes toward the sound, and the figure slowly became clear.

Short hair. Black clothes. A tall human woman.

She had a clean oval face and smiling eyes.

But the malice in her gaze, along with the stitched mark across her smooth forehead, made her presence deeply unsettling.

"Clan Head Itsuki. I've admired you for a long time."

The woman's voice was gentle as she walked openly into the pavilion and sat on the prepared sofa.

Itsuki picked up the teapot, faint cursed energy spilling from his fingertips.

Moments later, the tea that had long since cooled began steaming again.

Itsuki poured a cup and lifted it, his expression calm.

"Likewise."

"The name Noritoshi Kamo is famous enough to reach my ears."

Noritoshi Kamo: head of the Kamo Clan from one hundred fifty years ago.

An evil jujutsu sorcerer who researched the fusion of cursed spirits and humans, known as the stain of the Kamo Clan.

He held the title of history's most evil sorcerer.

Something strange flashed across the woman's face, but she quickly suppressed it.

She lifted the teacup in front of her and answered with narrowed eyes.

"No wonder Zenin sorcerers have been watching me for years."

"I'm genuinely curious. Where did the Zenin clan head hear this secret?"

"And how did you see through a former identity of mine?"

The woman's body was named Kaori Itadori. She was the biological mother of Yuji Itadori, the protagonist of the story Itsuki remembered.

The sorcerer currently occupying Kaori's body was named Kenjaku.

He was an evil sorcerer who had lived for more than a thousand years. Noritoshi Kamo was only one insignificant identity among the many he had worn.

Itsuki took a small sip of hot tea, considering which of the prepared explanations he should use.

After a moment of silence, just as he was about to speak, Kenjaku made a guess first.

"Incarnation..."

Itsuki did not answer. He simply continued tasting his tea.

Looking at Itsuki's composed expression, Kenjaku seemed to find answers for the many doubts in his mind.

The voice coming from the woman's body was no longer gentle. It had become a hoarse male tone.

"Which era did a dead soul like you crawl out of?"

"The early Meiji period?"

"Or..."

"A thousand years ago?"

Kenjaku had decided on his own that Itsuki was a dead soul who had taken over a body.

After all, in Kenjaku's mind, the twenty-one-year-old Itsuki had no reason to know the identities he had used.

Kenjaku had that much confidence. Not even Satoru Gojo's Six Eyes should have been able to see through the disguise of this body at a glance.

Add Itsuki's highly targeted arrangements and his ability to use multiple techniques just like Kenjaku himself.

No ordinary boy could have done all that.

Only incarnation and body possession could explain it.

"Oh?"

Itsuki smiled in genuine surprise. "Kenjaku, you're as clever as ever."

Even Itsuki had not expected Kenjaku to rationalize his identity for him.

Every explanation he had prepared became useless.

None of them was as reasonable as the identity the brain had invented on his behalf.

What an unexpected pleasure.

"An incarnation from a thousand years ago. No wonder you recognized me at a glance."

Kenjaku touched the scar on his forehead and nodded, as if everything now made sense.

Across a thousand years, awakened cursed techniques had appeared in enormous numbers.

If one or two sorcerers had lived a millennium and mastered a method of taking over bodies like his, it would be surprising, but not impossible.

Kenjaku had seen far too much across all those years.

Even though he sensed no cursed object aura from Itsuki, he was certain the person before him was not one of the beings he had made contracts with a thousand years ago.

But calling out his true identity had, in Kenjaku's mind, confirmed Itsuki as an incarnation.

With that thought, Kenjaku's hidden gaze shifted to the coffin behind Itsuki as he analyzed the old monster's purpose.

The information Jujutsu High had received said Suguru Geto had died at Itsuki Zenin's hands.

Kenjaku had infiltrated the Zenin estate two days earlier.

In his eyes, the barriers around the Cursed Warehouse were full of flaws. The problem was Itsuki sitting at the entrance.

Those blood-red eyes, unseen for a thousand years, were the reason Kenjaku had remained hidden until now.

"Why lure me here?"

Kenjaku raised his head and looked at Itsuki, his gaze deep.

A thousand years ago, the golden age of jujutsu sorcerers.

Once Kenjaku decided this was another old monster from the same era, the last trace of contempt in his heart vanished.

Only curiosity remained.

And caution.

✦

✦

✦

Want to keep going?

You can read ahead on my Patreon, with early access, previews, and extra story updates 🔑

https://www.patreon.com/c/EliasVane