Riko Amanai

"Please do not do that."

A panicked voice sounded nearby.

A woman riding a calf-like cursed spirit swayed toward the group. Her face was full of worry. Only after seeing Riko alive and energetic did she finally breathe.

"Miss Riko, they really are on our side."

The woman hurriedly explained. Seeing an outsider arrive, Gojo and Geto stopped messing around and put Riko back on the ground.

"I am sorry, everyone. My name is Misato Kuroi. I am responsible for caring for Miss Riko."

She jumped down from the cursed spirit's back and bowed lightly to the three of them.

Gojo and Geto felt slightly embarrassed. Ren did not feel much. Bowing was common in Japan. Although he did not like such complicated etiquette, he had no reason to interfere with how others behaved.

"What are you riding?" Riko asked.

Either she had courage, or she lacked sense. She had only just escaped Gojo and Geto's grasp, but she was already staring at the monster beside Kuroi with interest.

Kuroi climbed back onto the bull-headed spirit and answered with a slightly blank tone.

"This is the technique of the gentleman with the bangs."

"Could you call me something else?" Geto asked.

"That is amazing," Riko said, looking at him curiously. "A technique that controls cursed spirits? Aren't cursed spirits the greatest enemy of the jujutsu world?"

Her tone carried a childish lack of understanding. She clearly knew very little about the jujutsu world.

Geto smiled helplessly.

"My cursed technique is Cursed Spirit Manipulation. As the name suggests, it lets me control cursed spirits."

Seeing Riko's interest, Gojo became unhappy.

"I thought she would be afraid or sentimental about the merger. Instead she is like this. What a sumo girl."

He was obviously still bothered that Riko had blushed while looking at Ren, but had slapped Gojo.

In Gojo's mind, his own looks should have been more popular.

"If your technique is that amazing," Riko said, ignoring Gojo, "then if you collected all cursed spirits, would wars stop?"

She had once heard that cursed spirits could not truly be eliminated. As long as humans existed, cursed energy would flow from negative emotions. Even if cursed spirits were exorcised temporarily, more would be born later.

That was what cursed spirits were, the undying shadow of humanity.

If this strange man with bangs could collect every cursed spirit, perhaps far fewer humans would die.

Geto understood what she meant almost immediately.

His mouth curved into a bitter smile.

"It is not that easy. Not to mention how many powerful and unknown beings exist in the world. Once you reach the scale of the whole planet, the number of cursed spirits is beyond what I can manage."

Geto's limit was enough to control thousands of cursed spirits. Against ordinary enemies, that number could crush almost anything.

But compared with the entire world, thousands was tiny.

Only a sheltered girl would imagine using Cursed Spirit Manipulation to control all cursed spirits in the world.

Still, Geto's gaze drifted to Ren.

If it were him, he might be able to do it.

At that moment, Geto remembered the alley where countless cursed spirits had knelt before Ren like subjects before a god.

The power that stood above all cursed spirits was the true devil.

"Fine," Riko said, disappointed for a moment. Then she turned toward Gojo, a mischievous smile appearing.

"Hey, silver-haired boy. Show me respect. I am Tengen. Tengen is me."

"Listen carefully. Some ignorant people confuse assimilation with death, so I will tell you once. After assimilation, I will become Tengen, and Tengen will become me. My thoughts and soul will continue."

She spoke like a child proudly showing off a toy.

"You are still a student, right?" Ren said with faint teasing. "The way you talk reminds me of someone. You must have trouble making friends at school."

His words stabbed Gojo at the same time.

Geto quietly laughed.

"A person without many friends should be easier to send off," Gojo said, ignoring the blow from Ren and teasing Riko instead.

When Riko heard Ren, she looked up at the black-haired boy who had first held her. Red rose on her cheeks again.

"That is not true. At school, I am no different from a normal person."

Her tone toward Ren became unconsciously gentler.

But when she noticed Gojo's ambiguous gaze moving between her and Ren, her face turned as red as an apple. Her eyes became bright, and no one knew what she was imagining.

"Ren," Gojo said, nudging him with his shoulder. "Looks like Tengen has fallen for you."

Ren glanced at Gojo's face, which was full of bad intentions.

"If she is going to school, she should already be late."

He looked at Riko and touched his chin.

"What?"

Riko turned pale.

"Kuroi, what time is it? Morning? Afternoon? What exactly have I missed?"

Soon after, Gojo sat on a bench with his phone and complained to Yaga.

"So the girl insists on going to school. I say we just grab her. Or like Ren said, cut her in half, put her in a suitcase, and deliver her to Tengen."

Yaga's voice on the other side was serious.

"Do as she says. We must satisfy all of Riko Amanai's requests. It is part of the agreement."

"Huh? Wouldn't returning to Jujutsu High be safer?"

"That is also what I think. But this is Tengen's order, so satisfy her as much as possible. She will not be herself for much longer."

Gojo hung up with a helpless expression.

"They really are lenient with her."

He looked toward Ren, who seemed to have fallen asleep on the bench, and complained. If they brought Riko back to the school, she would be safe. Now they had to handle such troublesome things.

What surprised him was that Ren, who hated trouble, said nothing.

"Do not say it that way, Gojo," Geto said.

He looked toward the classroom where Riko whispered with her friends.

"If you think about it carefully, once that child becomes Tengen, she will never see her family, friends, or important people again."

Compared with Gojo, Geto was more emotional. He could sense the sorrow hidden behind Riko's forced cheer.

"Let her do what she wants. It is our mission."

Gojo stopped speaking. He leaned back like Ren and looked at the endless sky.

"Geto. Gojo."

Ren slowly opened his eyes. The sky reflected in his pale pupils.

"Do you really think a teenage girl at the start of her life wants to become an old person's vessel?"

Gojo and Geto fell silent.

They did not know what kind of person Riko truly was. But no matter who it was, no one would want to become another existence's vessel, even if that existence represented the highest authority in the jujutsu world.

"For the jujutsu world," Geto said after a long silence.

Ren laughed softly. His mouth curved with disdain.

For the jujutsu world. What a grand excuse.

"Ren, I have always wanted to ask you something," Geto said, staring into his eyes. "What do you think sorcerers are?"

"Sorcerers?"

Ren repeated the question.

"I have never considered myself a sorcerer. I am only an ordinary person who wants to live according to his own thoughts."

"When I am happy, I laugh. When I am angry, I erase the source of the trouble."

"I do not have any great principle called sorcerer duty. I only want to be myself."

"And only I can be myself."

Bitterness appeared in Geto's eyes.

Ren Zenin was different from everyone. Even someone as strong as Gojo could not be as free as him. He was the freest person in the whole jujutsu world.

He had no grand ideal of sorcerers. He had only the principle behind his agency.

In a certain sense, Ren truly was not a sorcerer.

Geto looked at Gojo.

"What about you, Gojo? What do you think sorcerers are?"

"Me?"

Gojo pointed at himself.

"Yes. I have wanted to ask for a long time. You often forget to cast Curtains and look down on many rules of the jujutsu world. So I want to know what you think."

"Worrying over weak people is exhausting," Gojo said impatiently, still annoyed by Yaga's morning lecture.

Geto's tone became firm.

"Gojo, listen. The survival of the weak is the condition of this society. Supporting the weak and restraining the strong is exactly why sorcerers exist."

"Oh?"

Gojo slowly straightened. His sunglasses slid down, revealing blue eyes that stared at his old friend.

"That is a righteous argument."

"And I hate righteous arguments."

"You talk about responsibility and protection, but have you thought about it? Forcing reasons and responsibility onto jujutsu is already thinking from the position of the strong. You keep saying support the weak and restrain the strong, but in the end, are you not still deciding everything from your own position?"

Geto's expression changed.

The Killing Stone swayed faintly near his chest.

He pointed toward the school gate.

"Go outside and talk, Gojo."

A huge cursed spirit's shadow appeared behind him. Countless vicious eyes stared at Gojo.

"What? Are you afraid of being lonely?"

"Go by yourself."

Gojo held his sunglasses with one hand, and layers of Infinity seemed to overlap around him.

Ren had already disappeared the moment the two began arguing.

He walked through the quiet school with a lazy expression.

"Arguments about ideals really do not suit you two. And they are noisy."

He was looking for a quiet corner when a clear female voice called his name.

"Mr. Ren."

Ren turned and saw Kuroi running toward him.

"Mr. Gojo and Mr. Geto have disappeared somewhere," she said, breathing hard. "There is something I can only tell you."

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