Yaga didn't fold Touma Hayase into the curriculum on his first day. Instead, he gave him the rest of the afternoon to settle into his dormitory and get his bearings.
The second day arrived quickly, and true to what the simulation had shown, Masamichi Yaga didn't rush into formal lessons. He started the same way: having Gojo, Ieiri, and Geto each explain their Innate Techniques to the class.
When the three of them finished, a brief silence settled over the room. Every pair of eyes drifted toward the corner where you sat.
Yaga nodded in your direction. "Hayase, you're up. I've read your combat report, but I want to hear how you understand your own technique."
Gojo let out a low whistle and tugged his sunglasses down, one pale blue eye peeking over the rim. He glanced your way with the idle curiosity of someone flipping through a magazine.
Then his gaze landed on your body, and he went still.
Those eyes, the Six Eyes that held the depth of sky and ocean in their irises, contracted sharply and locked onto you. The atmosphere in the classroom turned strange.
"Hey, hold on." Gojo cut straight through the proceedings. The careless smirk was gone, replaced by something caught between confusion and genuine scrutiny. "New kid, did you eat something weird last night?"
"Hm?" Geto turned, puzzled. "Satoru, what are you talking about?"
Gojo ignored him entirely. His finger leveled at Touma, brow furrowed. "Your Cursed Energy total is off. Compared to when we met yesterday, you've jumped at least thirty percent. Nobody's Cursed Energy grows that fast overnight. That's not how the human body works."
A sharp glint passed through those pale blue eyes, probing, as if he meant to peel Touma apart layer by layer. "What did you do?"
Touma didn't flinch.
He sat there, quiet and composed, his heartbeat steady. The increase was the simulation's reward made manifest. What the others perceived as a single night had been a full year of lived experience for him.
"Does it matter, Gojo?" He reached up and adjusted his black-framed glasses. "Maybe my understanding of jujutsu... deepened a little."
"Hah? Deeper understanding makes your mana bar go up? You think this is an RPG?" Gojo's skepticism was immediate. He opened his mouth to press further.
Touma cut him off and launched into his own introduction. "The truth is, my technique has been active since the moment I walked into this classroom."
"What?" Geto's eyes narrowed. He was a Special Grade sorcerer. The idea that a technique had been running in his presence without his noticing...
"My technique is called Phantom Night Parade." Touma's tone stayed unhurried, measured. "The effect is straightforward. The first stage is reading. Through contact with, or proximity to, someone's Cursed Energy, I analyze the structure and principles of their technique."
His gaze shifted to Gojo. No hesitation, no deference. The look in his eyes was closer to academic curiosity. "Take your Limitless. From my perspective, it's a precision operation that drags Zeno's 'Achilles and the Tortoise' paradox into physical reality. The computational load is so massive that even your brain hovers on the edge of overload at all times. That's why you're always eating sweets for the glucose, right?"
Gojo blinked. Then a cold smile spread across his face. "I see. So it's not just extra Cursed Energy. Your eyes got sharper too. Figuring all that out is a neat trick, but..." He leaned back in his chair, arms folded, pure provocation. "Looking is all it is."
"True." Touma nodded and rose from his seat. His gaze fell to the edge of the lectern, where a stub of chalk Gojo had flicked earlier lay on the floor.
"Phantom Night Parade's second stage is replication. Since you're so curious about where my overnight Cursed Energy went, Gojo, let me show you exactly what it was spent on."
He extended his right hand, palm aimed at the chalk stub from across the room. Cursed Energy stirred inside him.
"Cursed Technique Lapse: Blue."
The air shivered. Nothing like the terrifying spatial distortion Gojo could produce.
But through the Six Eyes, Gojo saw it. The stable structure of space in front of Touma's palm dipped into a tiny negative value. Absolute vacuum. Forced convergence.
The chalk stub on the floor snapped toward his palm as though seized by an invisible fist, moving at a speed that had no business existing in normal physics. It wasn't pulled. The space where it had been was compressed out of existence, and the chalk had no choice but to relocate.
Touma caught it cleanly, then set it on Gojo's desk.
It rolled twice and came to rest beside an expensive leather shoe.
Silence.
The classroom had become a vacuum of its own.
Yaga's jaw hung open. The attendance roster in his hand nearly clattered to the floor.
Behind Geto, the Cursed Spirits he carried sensed their master's emotional spike and began to writhe with agitation.
Ieiri sat bolt upright. Her lighter slipped from her fingers and hit the floor with a sharp click.
And the biggest reaction belonged, of course, to Gojo.
He stared at the chalk. Then his head snapped up to Touma. His sunglasses had slid to the tip of his nose, and behind them, those pale blue pupils were trembling. The expression on his face belonged to a man witnessing something that had no right to exist.
As the bearer of Limitless, he understood what had happened better than anyone in the room. Crude, yes. Lacking any precision calculation. Ugly, even. But the underlying principle was unmistakably the attractive force of Blue.
This guy had replicated his technique with a pitiful amount of Cursed Energy and no Six Eyes to guide the process.
He'd never even seen Blue performed.
"You..." Gojo's voice came out dry. But the confusion in his eyes had burned away completely, replaced by the feverish excitement of someone who'd discovered a new species. "So that's why your Cursed Energy spiked. Your body had to adapt to handle this kind of reckless stunt. Using a normal person's body, no Six Eyes, to brute-force Blue... Ha! You really are insane."
Touma settled back into his chair and pushed his glasses up, the picture of harmless composure restored.
"A crude imitation. Miles from the real thing." He met Gojo's gaze, voice steady. "But give me enough time, Gojo, and nobody in this classroom will have any secrets left."