[Your gaze sweeps across the room, across the mountains of adorable dolls piled on every surface.]
[They all have fangs or claws, vicious in their own way, but their eyes... every single pair carries something almost human in its expression.]
[Yaga's hand goes still.]
[He doesn't scold you for overthinking, the way he normally would. Instead, he sits in silence for a long time, then slowly turns to face this student he can't seem to figure out, and the little monkey perched on his shoulder that seems almost alive.]
[The old you? He never would have said a word.]
[But the you standing here now, the talent you've shown, makes him think that maybe, just maybe, you'd actually understand.]
["Hayase, do you know what a Cursed Corpse truly is at its core?"]
[Yaga picks up a core still faintly pulsing in his palm, his voice low.]
["Every Cursed Corpse that exists right now, even your Wukong, is just a puppet. They run on Cursed Energy fed to them by the sorcerer. The moment that energy runs dry, they're nothing but fancy ornaments."]
[He pauses, then continues.]
["What I'm researching is a Cursed Corpse that's fully independent. Self-sustaining."]
["You mean alive."]
[No hesitation. Straight to the heart of it.]
["You could say that."]
["I've been trying to take the 'data' of the dead, the information of their souls, and copy it into a core."]
["If it works, it stops being a tool that needs recharging. It becomes a living thing, capable of refining its own Cursed Energy, possessing its own will."]
[A self-deprecating smile crosses his face.]
["Sounds insane, right? Desecrating the dead. Toying with souls."]
["No."]
[You reach up and touch the cold head of the Wukong on your shoulder. Your expression doesn't waver.]
["If it were just copying for copying's sake, then yes, that would be desecration. But what if it's done to hold onto something? To carry it forward?"]
[Yaga freezes. He studies you for a long, searching moment.]
["You're right. And I know, deep down, that even if I succeed, it won't be that person anymore. It'll just be a vessel carrying the living's memories of the dead. A brand-new thing, manufactured. A 'curse,' in its own way."]
[He sets the core down. His voice carries a thread of tenderness wound through something heavier, something bleak.]
["In a world like the jujutsu world, where death and separation are the only constants, whether for the ones who've gone or the ones left behind..."]
["Maybe that kind of false reunion is enough. Maybe it's at least a small comfort."]
[You receive the preliminary blueprints for Fully Independent Cursed Corpse theory.]
[You look at the blueprints in your hands, then at the Wukong on your shoulder, a quiet thought forming.]
["If I could bring Wukong truly to life..."]
["A Fully Independent Cursed Corpse. A real partner that doesn't need my Cursed Energy to fight. Unlimited action, unlimited potential."]
[Time bleeds away in the dim workshop, measured only by the tireless spark of Cursed Energy.]
[Over the days that follow, your classmates barely see you at all.]
[Gojo and Geto stay busy exorcising Cursed Spirits on the outside, driving their Assistant Managers half to death in the process.]
[Ieiri camps out in the dissection room or the infirmary, killing time in a haze of cigarette smoke.]
[And you? You've practically moved your bedroll into Yaga's private workshop.]
[It's a stretch of time both mind-numbingly tedious and utterly absorbing.]
[The research into Fully Independent Cursed Corpses is harder than anything you imagined.]
[It goes far beyond complex Cursed Energy circuit weaving. It touches on the replication of soul data, the balance of tri-core resonance, and that most elusive element of all: the soul's capacity for self-observation.]
[Even with the Tryhard card boosting your recovery, even with Yaga holding nothing back and teaching you everything he knows, progress crawls like pushing a cart through a swamp. Every inch forward costs blood and sweat.]
[Then again, what you're attempting to touch is the domain of gods: the creation of life itself.]
[You have no idea how many years it took Yaga to pull off this miracle in the original timeline.]
[All you know is that replicating a perfect living being from scratch in a single year is next to impossible.]
[Simulation progress: Month Six.]
[The core theory of "full independence" is still stuck on the bottleneck of core compatibility rejection.]
[But you don't beat your head against the wall. You pivot, taking every breakthrough you've made in core stability over these six months and pouring all of it into upgrading the combat-ready Wukong.]
[Inside the workshop, Yaga watches the figure in the center of the testing ground. Behind his sunglasses, a flicker of awe.]
[Wukong still stands at fifty centimeters, compact as ever, but its internals have been rebuilt from the ground up.]
[Its skeleton has been reforged from melted-down fragments of special grade cursed tools you acquired at steep prices. And in its hand now sits the Fake Monkey King's Staff, a custom cursed tool with extending properties.]
["Go."]
[A single thought. No hand gestures, no finger puppeteering. Just a ripple of Cursed Energy.]
[Wukong vanishes from its spot, so fast it barely leaves an afterimage.]
[The next instant, a half-meter-thick wall of reinforced concrete in the testing ground is punched clean through by a black iron staff.]
[This isn't a doll anymore. This is an untiring, pain-immune killing machine packed into a frame so small it's nearly impossible to track.]
[Against an ordinary Jujutsu Sorcerer, the current Wukong stands a real chance of a solo kill.]
[Simulation progress: Month Nine.]
[As the Star Plasma Vessel mission draws closer, your upgrades to Wukong have hit the ceiling of your available materials and techniques.]
[You stare at it, and there's no relief in your chest. Only a weight that's hard to name.]
[At this point, aside from those two special grade freaks, there probably isn't anyone at Jujutsu High who could reliably beat this monkey.]
["But it's not enough."]
[The image surfaces in your mind...]
[The man they call the Sorcerer Killer.]
[You're clear-eyed about this.]
[You don't believe that one year of work and a fifty-centimeter monkey are enough to match a monster who almost killed Satoru Gojo.]
["Can't put all my eggs in one basket."]
[You close your eyes, running through every possible scenario of the coming fight.]
[If you send Wukong to duel Toji Fushiguro one-on-one, there's only one outcome: a pile of shredded cotton on the ground.]
[It can't be your ace. It can only be a wild card.]
[A shield to take the hit.
["Bit cruel, isn't it, Wukong."]
[You reach up and stroke Wukong's head.]
[Wukong doesn't respond. It just tilts its head with a mechanical click.]
[It isn't the miracle Yaga spoke of, the one with a soul. It's a weapon you built to keep yourself alive.]