["Right here! Master, this is the place!"]
[The village chief practically scampered to the dilapidated shack at the edge of the village, his face twisted into a nauseating cocktail of fanaticism and sycophancy. His skeletal fingers snatched at the rusted chain padlocked to the wooden door, filling the air with a grating shriek of metal on metal.]
[He was already fumbling for the key, ready to throw open the door that held the "monsters" and present it like a gift, proof of the village's righteous commitment to purging evil.]
[BANG.]
[A hand reached past the chief's shoulder and slammed flat against the rotting wood.]
[The force sent a groan through the entire door frame, swallowing the rattle of the chain dead.]
[The chief flinched so hard his whole body spasmed. He turned, slack-jawed.]
[Your expressionless face stared back at him from the murk of his clouded eyes.]
["M-Master... what is the meaning of this...?"]
[He shrank into his collar, bewildered. Around him, the villagers who'd trailed along with their torches and farming tools ground to a halt, exchanging uneasy glances.]
[In their minds, the sorcerers were here. The next step was obvious: open the door, destroy the monsters. What was there to think about?]
[You didn't look at the chief's face, that landscape of deep crevasses and deeper malice. Your eyes stayed fixed on the rough grain beneath your palm.]
["It's dangerous in there. I need a moment to... make some preparations."]
["O-Oh... alright then..."]
[The chief was brimming with suspicion. He couldn't fathom what kind of "preparations" were needed to open a door. But the instinctive deference these rural people held for important figures from Tokyo won out, and he released the chain with an awkward, retreating shuffle, choosing to wait and watch.]
[Silence fell over the front of the shack. The only sounds were the night wind keening through dead branches and the villagers' muffled, ignorant whispering from a few paces back.]
["Why'd the sorcerer stop?"]
["Maybe the monsters in there are too strong?"]
["What's there to be scared of? Just burn those two jinxes alive and be done with it..."]
[You ignored the buzzing malice around you, as persistent and mindless as flies, and turned your gaze toward Geto, standing a few steps away.]
[The expression on his face had gone past grim. It was the ashen, greenish pallor of someone whose stomach was trying to crawl out through his throat.]
[You held his stare and spoke the words that fell between you like a verdict.]
["At this distance... you can feel it now. Can't you, Suguru?"]
[What you meant by "feel" wasn't the suffocating, massive Residual Cursed Energy of some Grade 1 Cursed Spirit. It was the two faint, trembling threads of human Cursed Energy behind that flimsy wooden door, so weak they were on the verge of guttering out.]
[Geto was brilliant. Perhaps the sharpest mind at Jujutsu High outside of Gojo himself.]
[The mission file had read Grade 1 Cursed Spirit. Then came the chief's absurd claim that the monsters had been locked up. Layer on top of that your strange behavior throughout the trip, your vague hints, your deliberate dismissal of the Assistant Manager...]
[Every thread, combined with the two feeble pulses of Cursed Energy his Special Grade senses now registered, fused into a single, detonating picture.]
[He didn't even need to question how you seemed to know what was coming. The cruelest truth was already laid bare before him.]
[Behind his eyes, the image was already forming. What he would find behind that reeking door.]
[Not some fanged, blue-skinned curse. Two children. Young sorcerers whose only crime was possessing Cursed Energy, being able to see what ordinary people couldn't. And for that, these ignorant "monkeys" had caged them, chained them, and brutalized them in every way their cruelty could devise.]
["Hayase..."]
[Geto's voice came out raw and shredded. His eyes bored into the hand you kept pressed against the door.]
["What are you still waiting for?"]
[You didn't move. You knew better than anyone what hell looked like on the other side of that wood. You hadn't stopped the chief to buy time. You'd stopped him to catch Geto before he fell.]
[You looked into those eyes, bloodshot from rage and the collapse of everything he'd believed in, and spoke with careful, deliberate weight on every syllable.]
["I just need you to face what's behind this door with a clear head."]
["Suguru. I don't want you to use what you see in there as an excuse to fully embrace that... irrational idea you floated back at school."]
[You were reminding him. Pulling him back to the argument by the vending machines.]
[Reminding him that no matter how vile these non-sorcerers were, no matter how sick they made him, the moment he brought that blade down, he'd become the very thing he despised. A monster that wouldn't spare even infants.]
[Geto's body seized with a violent tremor. He understood the warning.]
[But his expression only darkened further. The gentle smile that had always lingered at the corner of his mouth was gone, replaced by something cold and hollow and utterly void.]
[You'd been as clear as language allowed. Behind that door was the perfect antithesis of every principle he'd ever held, the strong protect the weak, fight for the greater good. As a Special Grade Jujutsu Sorcerer, it was a sight his soul could not absorb.]
[Geto's lids lowered. In those narrow, fox-like eyes, the last flicker of something human was dying fast.]
[He didn't answer your warning. He didn't argue.]
[He just raised his head and, in a voice stripped of all warmth, gave a single command.]
["Open it."]
[The villagers kept chattering among themselves, their ignorant gazes ping-ponging between the two of you, baffled by the tension crackling in the air between the masters.]
[These oblivious people had no idea that once that door swung open, what walked free wouldn't be any so-called monster.]
[It would be a god on the verge of slaughtering every last one of them.]