[From that day forward, a conviction had taken root in Kento Nanami, a boy who worshipped rationality and hard evidence above all else: Touma Hayase's instincts are terrifyingly accurate. The kind of instincts that save lives.]
[Because of that, Nanami had gone into this supposedly Grade 2 mission with every nerve on high alert.]
[His caution saved both their lives. When they passed through the torii gate and the so-called Grade 2 Cursed Spirit unleashed the overwhelming pressure and embryonic domain of a Grade 1, Haibara's first instinct was to draw his blade and fight.]
[Nanami didn't hesitate for a fraction of a second.]
[Your warning blared through his skull like an alarm. He grabbed Haibara by the collar, abandoned every thought of offense, and ran.]
[The Spirit's attack came in an instant. To cover Haibara's retreat past the barrier's edge, Nanami used his right arm as the price, taking the killing blow meant for his partner and buying them both a scrambling, desperate escape.]
["That Spirit was no Grade 2... it was a Grade 1 monster."]
[Nanami's body still trembled faintly against the pillow, lingering terror swimming in his eyes.]
["If I'd hesitated for even one second, or if I hadn't taken your warning to heart..."]
[He glanced at Haibara, who was still wiping away tears beside him.]
["We wouldn't have left enough behind to bury."]
[You stood at the bedside in silence, staring at the hands that had performed Reverse Cursed Technique moments ago.]
[Because of your words, Haibara hadn't been cut in half. Nanami hadn't walked away with a scar carved permanently into his psyche. They were alive.]
[But there was no joy in your chest. None at all. Only a suffocating sense of powerlessness.]
[You turned and walked to the window, gazing out at the dense green canopy surrounding Jujutsu High.]
[You understood with perfect clarity: as long as Haibara and Nanami remained sorcerers, danger would trail them like a shadow, every single day.]
[Today it was a Grade 1. Tomorrow? The day after?]
[The rotting intelligence apparatus at the top, the mentality that treated lower-ranked sorcerers as expendable consumables, could send them into a death trap again at any moment. And that wasn't even counting the Windows personnel, who didn't even qualify as consumables.]
[And you?]
[Your gaze dropped. Your system's simulation function operated on a merciless cooldown: one chance per year.]
[This time, you'd happened to know Haibara would face a fatal encounter in this window. You'd issued the warning early, and thanks to the butterfly effect left over from the Star Plasma Vessel incident, Nanami had listened.]
[A miracle built on countless coincidences stacked end to end. But miracles don't happen every day.]
[You couldn't predict next year.]
[You couldn't guarantee you'd always be there at the right moment, saying the right words. You couldn't protect them forever.]
[You lifted your eyes toward the blinding sun.]
[Of course you wished you could be as powerful as Satoru Gojo.]
[The Gojo of today could fly. Could maintain perfect defense around the clock without a single gap. Could solo every dangerous Special Grade mission thrown at him. One man holding up half the sky of the entire jujutsu world.]
[If... if you had that kind of absolute power, you could shoulder every danger yourself. You could crush every threat with overwhelming force before tragedy ever struck.]
[But you weren't a god. You weren't Satoru Gojo.]
[And even someone as godlike as Gojo couldn't be everywhere at once. So the only real answer was to solve the problem at its root, to eliminate curses and Cursed Spirits at their source. You believed that with everything you had.]
["Hayase-senpai?"]
[Nanami noticed the shift in your mood, a note of concern in his voice.]
["...It's nothing."]
[You turned back, sealing every emotion behind your glasses, your voice settling into that calm that made people feel safe.]
["Get some rest. As for the higher-ups... I'll have Professor Yaga demand an explanation. If they disguised a Grade 1 as a Grade 2 and handed it to you, they're going to answer for it."]
[A mortal has a mortal's way of doing things.]
[Since you couldn't sweep the board clean with violence, you'd start by digging out the rats hiding in the dark, the ones manufacturing these tragedies, one by one.]
---
[The air pressure in Masamichi Yaga's office was low enough to choke on.]
[A thin white envelope sat on the desk. That was the sole trophy Yaga had brought back from demanding answers from the higher-ups.]
["What's this?"]
[You looked at the envelope, already knowing the answer.]
["The 'compensation' for Nanami and Haibara's mission."]
[Yaga pulled off his sunglasses and pinched the bridge of his nose, his voice thick with exhaustion and humiliation.]
["The people upstairs said that while the intelligence division made a minor discrepancy in the threat assessment, the mission target was never eliminated, so it qualifies as mission incomplete. However, given that the participants sustained serious injuries, they made an exception and issued the full payout for the original Grade 2 mission as a consolation fund."]
[You stared.]
[The pay that already belonged to a Grade 2 mission, repackaged under the label of consolation. For the Grade 1 Cursed Spirit that nearly killed them. For Kento Nanami's severed arm. For a catastrophic intelligence failure...]
[No apology. No accountability. No recalculation at the Grade 1 rate. Nothing but this flimsy envelope.]
[A laugh tried to claw its way out of your throat. The corner of your mouth twisted into something viciously ironic before you could stop it.]
[In that moment, the value of a human life was rendered concrete before your eyes. Kento Nanami's right arm and Yu Haibara's life, combined, were worth a few hundred thousand yen in Grade 2 mission pay.]
["Professor, have those rotten oranges at the top... always been this nauseating?"]
[Across every simulation you'd run, whether as an assistant manager or a student, you'd rarely had direct access to the upper echelon's inner circle. You knew they were corrupt. You hadn't realized they could be this brazen.]
[Yaga looked at the ice in your eyes and let out a long sigh.]
["It's always been this way. That's the kind of place the jujutsu world is."]
[He paused, his tone shifting into something more complicated.]
["But... this level of shamelessness, not even bothering with the pretense, openly dumping blame on the field operatives... it's worse than anything I've seen. Even I don't understand why they've suddenly become so emboldened."]
[Yaga didn't understand. But somewhere in the dark, you'd already caught the thread of that cruel logic.]
[Your gaze drifted to the window, and in your mind rose the image of a white-haired guy floating in midair, casually firing a Hollow Purple that carved chasms into the earth.]
[It was because of Satoru Gojo.]
[Gojo's awakening had turned him into a flawless, tireless, unbeatable mission-processing machine.]
[For the men sitting behind their screens at the top, now that they possessed a divine engine capable of handling ninety-nine percent of all crises...]
[The ordinary gears that kept breaking down, needing repairs, daring to complain, had lost any value worth cultivating or protecting.]
[Two consumables who'd nearly died against a Grade 1 Cursed Spirit? What right did they have?]
[Broken ones get tossed. Dead ones get replaced. That was the logic now.]
[The precision of this twisted system filled you with a helplessness that settled bone-deep.]
[And the most pathetic part? As a student of Jujutsu High, as the healer who patched up the wounded, you were a cog keeping this meat grinder running too.]