The Choice Beneath the Tomb

The main hall of the Tomb of the Star Corridor was too quiet.

Riko Amanai had imagined many things about the place where her life would end. She had imagined something sacred, something beautiful, something that would make the word "assimilation" feel less like being erased.

Instead, she found stone, still air, and a path that seemed to continue into a darkness meant for someone else.

Suguru Geto stopped beside her.

"From here, you continue alone."

Riko's hands tightened around the hem of her clothes.

Ren stood several steps behind them, watching without expression.

Geto looked at the path ahead, then at Riko. "When Principal Yaga gave us the mission, he used the word erasure."

Riko turned toward him.

"Not protection. Not guidance. Erasure." Geto's voice stayed gentle, but the gentleness did not soften the meaning. "That word made it sound like a sin."

"A sin?"

"Yes."

Riko swallowed.

Geto extended one hand toward the darkness, then turned his palm back toward the way they had come.

"You can continue. If you choose that, we will send you forward. Or you can turn around and leave with us."

Riko stared at him as if she had not understood the words.

"Can I really go back?"

"Yes."

"But Tengen..."

"If Tengen has a problem, then Tengen can have a problem with us."

That was absurd. Too absurd. No one spoke that way about Tengen. No one spoke that way about the fate Riko had been taught to accept since childhood.

But Geto did.

Ren said nothing, which somehow made the promise heavier.

Riko's vision blurred.

She had known since she was young. Adults had told her in careful voices that she was special, that her existence had meaning, that the day she joined Tengen would not be death. They had told her she would live on in a greater form.

When her parents died, she told herself the pain would disappear when the day came.

When she felt alone, she told herself loneliness would disappear too.

If Riko Amanai was going to be erased, then every sorrow Riko Amanai carried would vanish with her.

That had sounded comforting when she had nothing else.

Then Kuroi had smiled at her across a breakfast table.

Her classmates had laughed with her.

Gojo had dragged her into ridiculous arguments.

Geto had spoken to her like her choice mattered.

Ren had accepted her coin as if it were a real payment and not the trembling wish of a girl trying to buy her own life.

The sea in Okinawa flashed through her memory. The shopping street. The taste of crab. Kuroi's hand. Gojo shouting at a crab like it had insulted his family.

Riko covered her mouth.

"I..."

The first word broke.

Then all the words came out at once.

"I want to stay with everyone. I want to go back to Okinawa. I want to shop again. I want to get angry when I want to get angry and cry when I want to cry. I want to be with Kuroi. I want to live."

Her voice echoed through the hall.

No divine punishment came.

No ancient judgment fell.

Only Geto's hand remained in front of her.

Riko reached into her pocket with shaking fingers and pulled out a coin. It was not much. It was not enough to hire anyone, let alone the most dangerous agency in Tokyo.

She turned to Ren and held it out.

"Please."

Ren looked at the coin.

Then he took it.

"Payment received."

Riko's breath caught.

"The agency principle is simple," Ren said. "Take the money. Remove the trouble."

Geto smiled.

Riko wiped her eyes, then grabbed Geto's hand and ran back the way they had come.

At the corridor entrance, Kuroi sat with her head bowed. Exhaustion and grief had settled over her so heavily that, when she heard hurried footsteps, she thought she was imagining them.

"Kuroi!"

She looked up.

Riko stood there, alive and breathless.

Kuroi's lips trembled. "Are you... Tengen?"

Riko shook her head hard. "I am Riko."

Kuroi tried to stand and nearly fell. Riko caught her and hugged her so tightly that both of them shook.

"Let's go home," Riko said.

Kuroi closed her eyes. "Yes."

Ren and Geto waited behind them without interrupting. Some bonds had to be allowed to return to their own shape.

When they finally emerged from the passage, Gojo was sitting near the crater he had made earlier. He looked up, saw Riko, and blinked.

"Huh."

Riko frowned. "What does that mean?"

"You look the same."

"Of course I look the same."

Gojo tilted his head toward the sky and smiled.

Kuroi's relief lasted only a breath before fear returned. "What about Tengen?"

Geto's answer was calm. "Then we fight him."

Gojo stood and stretched. "We are the strongest."

Riko stared at them, then laughed through what remained of her tears.

Elsewhere in Tokyo, in a sealed room belonging to the Jujutsu Association, no laughter existed.

The room held almost no furniture. A futon rested on the floor. Candlelight fought against the darkness and lost slowly.

Tengen sat in meditation.

A kimono-clad elder entered without making a sound. He knelt and lowered his head.

Night deepened.

Tengen opened his eyes, and pale starlight spread through the room.

The elder's shoulders trembled.

"Report."

"Star Plasma Vessel Number Two, Riko Amanai, accepted the retrieval-and-assimilation mission," the elder said carefully. "Afterward, the Divine Kingdom Cult placed a fifty-million bounty on an assassin site."

Tengen listened without interrupting.

"The attacks included Q, two groups of unaffiliated curse users, and two assaults by the Divine Kingdom Cult. One cultist entered Jujutsu High's barrier. All attempts failed. Riko Amanai survived."

"Continue."

"The Star Plasma Vessel was brought to the entrance of the Tomb of the Star Corridor. After she entered with Suguru Geto and Ren Zenin, observation was cut off. We suspect she was brought back out."

"Wrong."

The elder froze. "Forgive me. Our information is incomplete."

"From the moment they approached the outer corridor, surveillance was cut off. Without a report from Jujutsu High, you cannot accurately locate Riko Amanai."

The elder pressed his forehead lower.

"Stop monitoring her," Tengen said. "She is no longer necessary."

The elder did not understand, but he did not dare ask.

The candles flickered.

Cursed spirits appeared in the room like stains spreading through water.

Tengen's eyes opened wider. White light poured out, and the intruding spirits dissolved before they could take form.

A voice laughed from the remains.

"Tengen. You still chose to go back."

Tengen's expression did not change. "Cast-off flesh should not speak as if it is the original."

"Cast-off?" The voice twisted with rage. "I am not your cast-off body. I am the lord of the Divine Kingdom Cult. I am God."

Tengen looked into the empty air.

"The world is sick," the voice continued. "Humans crawl like worms and call it civilization. Abandon that useless human shell. Evolve. Rebuild everything."

Tengen did not argue.

There was no point arguing with faith that had already devoured reason.

The voice steadied. "Ren Zenin, Satoru Gojo, and Suguru Geto are watching you now. After what happened with the Star Plasma Vessel, perhaps you will not survive the next five hundred years."

The connection broke.

Silence returned.

Tengen lowered his eyes.

His cast-off body remembered too much. Barriers. Openings. Old habits. During the assimilation cycle, Tengen had not watched the barrier carefully enough. The cult had used that gap to enter Jujutsu High.

He sighed.

Far away, inside the Divine Kingdom Cult, the man called God stood in a damaged office and stared at nothing.

Tengen had chosen rebirth over evolution.

Again.

God's madness cooled into something sharper.

"Clean the room."

Two young believers in ordinary clothes knelt at once.

God looked down at them, and his expression became generous.

"You have served well. I will reward you with glorious evolution."

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