[A mere two days later, before the nerve pain in Nanami's reattached arm had even fully subsided, new mission orders arrived.]
[No leave. No counseling. As though the torii gate that had nearly claimed their lives, the berserk Grade 1 monster, had been nothing more than a minor scheduling hiccup on their work calendar.]
[Watching them leave the school grounds, you noticed the change in Nanami.]
[The blond boy who'd once carried himself with meticulous precision, who'd approached the sorcerer's profession with unflinching rigor, now walked with a slight hunch in his shoulders.]
[The light in his eyes, that drive to cut down curses, was gone. In its place was a suffocating blend of fatigue and disgust.]
[The numbness of someone who'd seen the jujutsu world for the heap of filth it was and had nothing left but mechanical obedience.]
[Days crawled past in that stagnant, oppressive atmosphere.]
[One afternoon, an envelope stamped with an urgent red seal was delivered to your desk by an assistant manager who handled it with something close to reverence.]
[You tore it open and pulled out the documents.]
[Mission location: a remote, isolated village.]
[Objective: Investigate multiple cases of villager disappearances and bizarre deaths. Suspected Grade 1 (or near-Grade 1) Cursed Spirit activity. Identify the cause and eliminate the threat.]
[Assigned personnel: Special Grade Jujutsu Sorcerer Suguru Geto. Grade 2 Jujutsu Sorcerer Touma Hayase.]
[Looking at this sickeningly familiar file, your fingertips seized. Your entire body locked in place.]
[You'd braced yourself for this. But when fate's gears ground forward and shoved this moment in front of you, a wave of disorientation still hit.]
[You hadn't expected it to come so soon.]
[That remote village. That ignorant, sealed-off place where two innocent twin girls were locked in cages and brutalized.]
[In one of your simulations, it was the place where you'd witnessed, firsthand as an Assistant Manager, the final snapping of the string in Suguru Geto's heart called "protect non-sorcerers."]
[That was the day he slaughtered all one hundred and twelve villagers, cemented his blood-soaked path of righteousness, and killed the version of you that tried to stop him.]
["This mission... is something wrong?"]
[A voice heavy with nasal congestion and bone-deep fatigue drifted down from above you.]
[You snapped back. Geto had appeared at your side without you noticing. The dark circles under his eyes looked like ink that refused to dissolve. He'd lost so much weight his cheekbones jutted sharp beneath the skin.]
[Seeing you frozen over the mission file, and with the near-disaster involving Nanami and Haibara still fresh, he'd assumed this urgent dossier contained some kind of death trap.]
[He leaned in to read it.]
["Remote village... suspected Grade 1 Cursed Spirit..."]
[Geto muttered under his breath, brow furrowing slightly. Nothing seemed particularly outrageous. For a Special Grade, a Grade 1 investigation was routine.]
[He turned to you, those lusterless fox-narrow eyes carrying a flatness he hadn't noticed creeping in.]
["Is there a problem with it, Hayase?"]
[You closed your eyes. Drew a long breath.]
[The stench of over a hundred corpses, the phantom sensation of a Cursed Spirit's blade punching through your chest in the simulation, surged back through your senses.]
[You closed the file. When your eyes opened, they'd settled into that near-cruel calm.]
["It's nothing."]
[You looked at the classmate standing before you, the one about to step onto a path of carnage, and answered in a tone whose double meaning only you could hear.]
["I was reminded of some people I used to know. And some things that have already happened."]
---
[Mountains rose like massive black walls.]
[The black sedan had rattled along winding mountain roads for what felt like hours before finally arriving at the mission site, a village that modern civilization had forgotten entirely.]
[The air carried the smell of rotting leaves and something else, something stale and closed-off that turned the stomach.]
[The moment the car stopped, you pushed the door open and stepped out.]
[Crumbling wooden houses. Eyes watching from the shadows. It matched your memory of the massacre's backdrop with perfect, sickening precision.]
[You turned and rapped on the driver's window.]
["This is far enough. Don't follow us in. Head back the way you came and pick us up tomorrow morning."]
[Your smile was pleasant, your voice calm, carrying a finality that left no room for argument.]
["Huh? But..."]
[The Assistant Manager's face twisted with distress. He wiped cold sweat from his forehead.]
["Hayase, that's not standard procedure. This mission has a suspected Grade 1 Cursed Spirit. Protocol requires me to maintain observation and communication from outside the barrier..."]
["That's exactly why I'm telling you to leave."]
[You cut him off, your tone warm but threaded with the right measure of gravity.]
["The terrain here is too confined. If a fight breaks out, we can't afford to split our focus protecting you. For your safety, and so we can investigate and eliminate the threat without reservation, the best thing you can do is go. If anything goes wrong, the responsibility is mine."]
[If Gojo or some other high-and-mighty sorcerer had used this excuse to shoo someone away, the Assistant Manager would've bowed, apologized, and stood his ground on principle.]
[But you were different.]
[Among every Assistant Manager in Jujutsu High's network, your name was synonymous with "reliable." You were mild-tempered, never pulled rank, and on more than a few missions you'd handled the report writing and terrain surveying yourself, tasks that belonged to the support staff, so flawlessly that they wondered if you'd been an Assistant Manager in a past life.]
[Faced with what seemed like genuine concern for his safety, the man swallowed his objections with gratitude.]
["Understood... then I'm counting on both of you! Please be careful!"]
[The black sedan turned around. Its taillights vanished into the mountain darkness.]
[Geto stood by the torii gate at the village entrance, studying you with an expression you'd never seen on him before.]
["Why did you arrange it like that?"]
[His brow creased, sharp instincts zeroing in on the discrepancy.]
["The file says suspected Grade 1, but the Residual Cursed Energy here is almost nonexistent. This doesn't look like a place with a Grade 1 Cursed Spirit entrenched in it. Why did you deliberately send the monitor away?"]
[You didn't answer immediately. You adjusted your glasses, then started walking toward the village at a pace so slow it was almost contemplative.]
["If the mission brief already assumes Grade 1, then staying a little more alert, or slowing down a bit, can't hurt."]
[Your voice was level.]
["We can use the time to sort through a few things."]
["Sort through things?"]
[Geto watched your unusual behavior, his confusion deepening.]
[The you he knew would've hit the ground already moving, tracking down the village chief for a briefing, probably already scanning the area's Cursed Energy flows with your technique.]
[Not strolling along like an old man in a park, making cryptic small talk.]
[From Geto's perspective, something had been off about you since the moment you'd laid eyes on that mission file.]
[You stopped walking. Turned. Looked deep into Geto's exhausted, fox-narrow eyes.]
["Suguru, did you know?"]
["In the eyes of ignorant ordinary people, sorcerers who wield power... are themselves a kind of 'aberration,' no different from a Grade 1 Cursed Spirit."]
["Human fear has never bothered to distinguish whether that power is used to kill or to save."]
[Geto's whole body went rigid.]
[Buried in your words was something dangerous and achingly familiar, the same thought that had been tearing itself apart inside his skull through countless sleepless nights.]
["Hayase... what are you getting at?"]
[He locked onto you, and the dead stillness in his eyes churned with emotions too tangled to name.]
[Before you could lay it bare, a clatter of frantic footsteps shattered the standoff.]
["Oh! Wonderful! This is wonderful!"]
[A gaunt old man, face carved deep with wrinkles, wearing a threadbare kimono, came scurrying out of the shadows with a handful of villagers clutching farm tools behind him. They moved like hyenas catching a scent of blood.]
[The village chief. He practically threw himself at your feet,.]
["You're the masters Tokyo sent, aren't you?! You're finally here to deal with those monsters?!"]
[Geto's train of thought derailed. He had zero patience for this frothing, spit-flinging monkey.]
[But he forced down his irritation and followed standard procedure.]
["Please calm down. Regarding the disappearances in this village..."]
["It's those two monsters!! They did it all!!"]
[The village chief didn't hear a word Geto said. He whipped around and jabbed a skeletal, trembling finger toward the far end of the village, where a decrepit wooden shack sat chained shut in the darkness.]
[Every feature on the old man's face contorted with hatred and fear, twisting into something barely human.]
["It's them! Get rid of them! Kill them! Then the village will have peace!"]
[Geto froze. His gaze traveled past the ranting old man, followed the line of that bony finger, and settled on the shack that radiated despair.]
[Every instinct he possessed as a Special Grade Jujutsu Sorcerer screamed a warning.]
[Wait.]
["Monsters"... to be dealt with?]
[Monsters locked inside that shack?]
[He knew one thing for certain: a so-called Grade 1 Cursed Spirit was the kind of catastrophe that a fully armed tank battalion couldn't handle.]
[Locking one inside some village shack was out of the question.]
[These people didn't even possess Cursed Energy. They were ants. They couldn't so much as see a Cursed Spirit.]
[Which raised the real question.]
[What these ordinary villagers had locked in a cage with every ounce of their malice, what they wanted the sorcerers to come deal with...]
[What exactly was it?]
---
Next Target 500PS :)