[After a few more minutes of small talk, Mei Mei lifted her coffee cup with practiced elegance. She hadn't agreed to anything yet.]
["Tracking that man's movements... even for my network, it'll take time. He's a professional ghost, after all."]
[She slowed her words, watching you through the curtain of her hair with eyes that seemed to cut straight through pretense.]
["And hiring him for a job? That doesn't come cheap."]
["If you've got some messy work that needs doing, why not come to me directly? Assassination, bodyguard detail, whatever it is. I'll give you a generous alumni discount."]
[You knew exactly what this was. A probe. And if you didn't hand her a convincing reason, the woman who worshipped nothing but money wouldn't just half-ass the job. She'd turn around and sell your suspicious behavior to the highest bidder.]
[So you adjusted your glasses and slipped into a tone of near-obsessive academic fervor, delivering the story you'd rehearsed long before sitting down.]
["You've got the wrong idea, Miss Mei. My interest in Toji Zenin has nothing to do with hiring him. He's critical to my research."]
["Oh?"]
["I build Cursed Corpses. And Heavenly Restriction, the trait that trades Cursed Energy for an extreme physical body, is a missing piece in my work on autonomous Cursed Corpses."]
["What I want to know is whether that kind of physical structure can be artificially replicated. If I could apply the principle of zero Cursed Energy and maximum durability to a Cursed Corpse's frame, it might be possible to create the perfect weapon."]
[Even Mei Mei, who had heard just about everything in her line of work, went still for a moment.]
[Her gaze swept your face, hunting for cracks in the lie. But the fever in your eyes and the airtight logic disarmed her suspicions.]
[Of course, you'd quietly equipped the Life is Like a Play card before opening your mouth.]
[To her, you were just another prodigy Masamichi Yaga had churned out. Head full of Cursed Corpses and techniques, nothing else. A wild dreamer, sure, but the purely technical obsessives were always the safest ones to deal with.]
["I see. Spending every last cent for the sake of academic research? How touching."]
[A professional smile returned to her lips.]
["If that's what the client wants, then I'll take the job."]
[Over the months that followed, you pulled nearly all your focus away from building Cursed Corpses.]
[Because you'd come to terms with something: in this simulation, you weren't the protagonist who could bend fate.]
[Going up against Toji Fushiguro, a walking natural disaster, after a year of crash-course training? Delusion... Nothing more.]
[The real battle would fall on the shoulders of Satoru Gojo and Suguru Geto, the two chosen ones.]
[You were just a normal person. A sorcerer slightly stronger than average, with the minor advantage of knowing what came next.]
[All you could do was be there when the building started to collapse and hand them the one umbrella that mattered.]
[Before the second spring arrived, Mei Mei's intel came through on schedule.]
[Beyond the background details you already knew, several crucial specifics emerged. He was addicted to gambling, horse racing in particular. He'd been lying low recently, seemingly waiting for a big contract. And then the most important piece of all: a name.]
[Shiu Kong. A Korean broker who operated in the grey zone, and the only reliable channel for reaching Toji Fushiguro.]
[You committed the name and contact information to memory, then told Mei Mei the truth: you had no plans to make contact yet. The funds were gone. You needed to rebuild your finances before moving to the next phase.]
[Time slipped past. The cherry blossoms at Jujutsu High bloomed again.]
[The annual card draw arrived.]
[The system interface unfolded in your mind, light flashing across it.]
[Congratulations. Card obtained: Masochist [R]]
[Card description: You don't know why. Maybe something got crossed in the wiring. You're just built different. Pain is no longer a warning signal. It's adrenaline. It no longer drags you down mentally. Instead, it pushes you into varying degrees of heightened focus.]
[Passive effect: Physical sluggishness from pain reduced by 50%. Minor boost to reaction speed while injured.]
[You stared at the description. The corner of your mouth twitched.]
["The name sounds... deeply questionable. But this is practically tailor-made for combat."]
[It meant that even with a severed limb, you could keep swinging like nothing had happened. Swing harder, even. Pair it with Reverse Cursed Technique, and you'd become the most insufferable thing on any battlefield. The kind of fighter no one could put down or peel off.]
[Then the timeline snapped forward.]
[Just like in the previous simulation, Kento Nanami and Yu Haibara joined Tokyo Jujutsu High as first-year students.]
[Some time after that, when Shoko failed to reach Utahime, who'd been sent on a mission in Shizuoka, the Assistant Manager classified the mission as a contact loss.]
[Satoru Gojo, Suguru Geto, and you. The three of you were dispatched as reinforcements.]
["There's a seriously complex barrier deployed inside. The kind that scrambles your sense of direction."]
[Geto studied the gloomy building ahead, rubbing his chin.]
["What a pain. Why don't we just level the place?"]
[Gojo yanked his sunglasses down, impatient already. Cursed Energy gathered at his fingertips.]
["Utahime and her team are probably huddled in some corner crying anyway."]
["Hold on."]
[You stepped in front of the one-man demolition crew and pushed your glasses up. Something sharp flickered behind the lenses.]
["If you force-break the outer structure, the spatial barrier inside could collapse. That puts them in more danger, not less. Leave this to me."]
[Before Gojo could argue, you'd already crossed the threshold.]
[You knew this mission inside and out.]
[The culprit was a Cursed Spirit with first-grade potential, wielding a technique called Flowing Corridor.]
[In the last simulation, you'd extracted and decoded that very technique from this exact spirit.]
[Now, you'd fight poison with poison.]
[Inside, space warped. Hallways stretched like Möbius strips, folding endlessly back on themselves.]
["What are you doing here?! Be careful, there's no way out!"]
[Utahime's panicked voice carried from somewhere ahead. She and Mei Mei were trapped in a dead-end loop on the second floor.]
["Don't worry, Utahime."]
[You stood calmly at the heart of the distortion, Cursed Energy cycling through circuits you knew by heart.]
["Flowing Corridor."]