The rescued victims huddled together, faces pale and eyes wide with a terror that went beyond the quake. They'd blamed the aftershocks, never imagining Cursed Spirits were the real threat.
Then, a small hand trembled in the air.
A little girl, her body shaking from pain and shock, forced herself to speak. One of her legs was pinned and crushed under a heavy beam, blood soaking her white dress. "Before… I was playing with Nanako and Mimiko," she whispered through gritted teeth. "They said… they were going to the first-floor infusion room. To find Doctor Shoko."
Geto Suguru and the other man exchanged a sharp glance—a location. Hope.
In a flicker of motion, Gojo Satoru teleported the survivors outside the curtain and reappeared at Geto's side. "Well?"
"My curses have found many bodies," Geto said, his expression grim. "Not Shoko or the girls. Not yet."
The ordinary victims had been dragged underground and crushed instantly. The images, relayed through his curses, were unbearable.
"Then no news is good news. But we're out of time," Gojo stated, his usual levity gone, eyes deadly serious.
Geto nodded, pushing his cursed energy output to its limit. The swarm of spirits beneath the earth churned faster, digging, searching.
Suddenly, Geto's focus sharpened. "Found them!"
Thirty meters down, his curses had located the target: a massive, catfish-like Cursed Spirit, lazily circling a collapsed filing cabinet. Inside, Ieiri Shoko used her own body as a shield, cradling Nanako and Mimiko. Reverse Cursed Technique flickered over her continuously, healing the damage as the earth pressed in, but it couldn't create air. The two girls were already unconscious from lack of oxygen, and Shoko's own awareness was fading, sustained only by sheer, stubborn will.
Without hesitation, Geto split his swarm. One group shot toward the catfish curse, encircling it. The other began meticulously carving away the rock and soil around the cabinet, relieving the pressure before carefully lifting the entire mass upward.
As the twisted metal was peeled back, Geto rushed forward. The three forms inside were compressed, battered—but breathing. Faint, but there. A tense breath he didn't know he was holding finally escaped him.
Alive. As long as they're alive, we can fix this.
Now, with Shoko safe, a cold, grim focus settled over him. He turned his attention—and the remainder of his curse army—back to the catfish spirit.
His curses descended on it with vicious precision, not to consume, but to rend. Whenever it tried to flee deeper, a wall of spirits blocked its path. Herded, trapped, and finally forced up through the ruptured ground, the creature was shoved violently into the open air.
It writhed, exposed and disoriented—a subterranean horror suddenly naked under the sky. Geto watched, his expression icy. The rescue was over. Now, it was time for retribution.
The creature's scarred, ugly body twisted in the air, thrashing in naked terror.
"Satoru!"
Geto's voice was a sharp blade of rage. He didn't need to say more.
"I know!"
Gojo's hand was already raised. A sphere of swirling, violent red light coalesced at his fingertips, condensing a catastrophic density of cursed energy. He didn't fire it—he released it.
The "Red" didn't shoot; it expanded. A pillar of pure, obliterating force, wide as a building, swallowed the catfish curse whole. The air screamed, boiling away from the energy's edge. Space itself warped and shimmered like a heat haze around the blast, which roared on for ten full seconds—an eternity of annihilation.
When the light and sound finally receded, the space where the curse had been was empty. Perfectly, utterly empty. Not even ash remained.
Silence fell, broken only by the crackle of settling debris. It was into this silence that Kamo Itsuki arrived, his expression grave. Without a word, he knelt beside Shoko and the girls. His hands glowed with the refined, gentle light of Reverse Cursed Technique, coaxing breath to deepen and consciousness to return. Once they were stable, he moved swiftly to the other survivors, mending crushed limbs and staunching internal bleeding.
The rescue was a success. Shoko, Nanako, and Mimiko would live. But the victory was hollow against the backdrop of loss.
Days later, under a heavy, grey sky, a crowd gathered amidst the ruins of the hospital. Dressed in black, they stood in silent mourning, holding flowers that seemed too bright for the grim scene. Tears traced quiet paths down stoic faces—a community grieving friends, family, and the unsettling normalcy that had been stolen from them.
Later, in the sterile quiet of a Tokyo Jujutsu High recovery room, Shoko, her voice still rough, pieced together the story for Geto and Gojo.
"I was almost out of energy," she said, lighting a cigarette with a slightly trembling hand. "The wounded just kept coming. Then the ground… moved. It wasn't an aftershock."
In the chaos, she'd spotted Mimiko's puppet, Yukimi. With no other option, she'd ordered it to distract the curse, buying seconds. She'd grabbed the girls and ran.
"It was no use. The thing's technique was instant. Yukimi was gone—sent straight down—before it could even twitch." Her clinical tone barely masked the frustration. "But seeing that… I understood the mechanism just before it turned on us."
Her last-ditch move was the filing cabinet. She'd shoved the girls inside and crammed herself in after them, using the metal structure to distribute the crushing pressure of the deep soil. Then, it became a war of attrition: her dwindling cursed energy and relentless Reverse Cursed Technique against the immense, steady weight of the earth.
"After that," she exhaled a plume of smoke, her eyes distant, "it was just about holding on. Waiting to see which would run out first: the air, my energy, or my will."
She looked at Geto, then at Gojo, her gaze weary but clear.
"You two were late."
Gojo flashed a grin that didn't reach his eyes. "But we showed up for the grand finale, didn't we?"
Geto said nothing. He simply looked from Shoko to the sleeping forms of Nanako and Mimiko in the next room, his jaw set. The catfish curse was gone, exorcised into nothingness. But the memory of its victims, and the image of Shoko's battered form shielding those children in the dark, was a different kind of weight—one not so easily dissolved.
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