[Everything happened too fast.]
[Too fast, too brutal, too final.]
[It wasn't just Geto's Curse Users who locked up. The Jujutsu High side froze too. Nobody had expected the execution to be that savage.]
[A second ago, Nanako had been squealing over Panda with her phone up like a tourist. Mimiko had been standing there in sullen silence, clutching her weather doll. Now both girls looked completely blank, like their minds had stalled out.]
[Their mouths hung open. Their faces twisted with shock, but no scream came. It was like something had grabbed them by the throat and crushed the sound before it could get out.]
[Their legs started shaking first. Then their knees gave way, and both of them collapsed into the cold mud, where Larue's blood and bits of brain had already splashed across the ground.]
["Gulp..."]
[Further back, Takuma Ino stared at the blood still spraying from the headless corpse and swallowed hard enough to hurt. When he spoke to Kento Nanami beside him, his voice came out thin and shaky.]
["N-Nanami... was Mr. Hayase always this terrifying...?"]
[And Ino knew exactly what he meant by terrifying.]
[Part of it was simple enough. The sheer physical force. Crossing that distance in an instant and blowing a man's skull apart with one throw. But that wasn't the part making his spine go cold.]
[What really got to him was how naturally you had done it. No pause. No ceremony. No visible struggle. You killed Larue as casually as someone pouring a glass of water.]
[Ino had never gone through Tokyo Jujutsu High's main campus. The version of you he knew was the man in the infirmary, smiling gently while patching up wounded juniors, patiently explaining cursed techniques when someone had questions. Dependable, calm and easy to trust.]
[He respected that version of you.]
[He had never imagined that underneath all that patience was something this vicious.]
["..."]
[Nanami didn't answer.]
[He pushed his goggles a little higher on the bridge of his nose. Behind the lenses, his eyes had gone dark and complicated.]
[Even as your former classmate, even as someone who still worked alongside you, he'd never seen this side of you before. No restraint, no softness, just naked killing intent rolling off you like heat.]
[On paper, the two of you held the same rank. First-grade sorcerers. But Nanami was honest with himself. If that throw had been aimed at him instead, there was a very good chance he wouldn't have stopped it. Even if he somehow blocked it with cursed energy reinforcement pushed to the limit, he'd probably lose an arm for the effort.]
[And in a fight between sorcerers, losing an arm might as well be a death sentence.]
[That thought dragged up an old story, one people in jujutsu circles had been repeating for years. The tale of your solo midnight raid on the Zenin Clan's main compound. Everyone knew it. Nobody knew the details. It had always sounded more like myth than fact.
Until now.
Watching this, Nanami finally understood what those rumors had been trying to describe. The polite, composed Touma Hayase everyone dealt with every day had always been real. But so was the thing under it. Cold, violent and extremely good at killing people.]
["...This is the first time I've seen him like this too."]
[Nanami muttered it so quietly it barely counted as speech. Somewhere along the way, his grip had tightened around his short blade.]
[Maki felt that shock a little differently.]
[The sight of a Curse User crumpled in a widening pool of blood dragged her straight back to that night years ago, the night everything changed, the night you almost killed her father, Ogi Zenin, with a single strike.]
[But back then, there had still been a line in your eyes. You had stopped where justice stopped. You had never gone further than you had to.]
[That line was gone now.]
[The killing intent in your gaze had become something solid and absolute. It wasn't a sword held back anymore. It was a blade fully drawn, pointed at evil without the slightest hesitation.]
["Sensei..."]
[Maki's fingers whitened around the hilt of her long blade. There was shock in her eyes, sure, but there was something else too. Something deeper. Something close to reverence.]
[Panda was startled by how sudden the violence had been, but he didn't think there was anything wrong with it.]
[The guy had admitted it himself. He was a Curse User with innocent blood on his hands. A jujutsu sorcerer putting him down was just how things were supposed to go. If anything, mercy here would have been the real insult.
And Panda trusted your judgment completely. As your student, and in every way that mattered, as your son, he wasn't going to doubt you for even a second.]
[The one who took the hardest hit from all this was Yuta Okkotsu.]
[He was still too green. Too sheltered.]
[This was the first time the warm, reliable image he'd built around you had been ripped away this completely, forcing him to look straight at the ugly truth of the jujutsu world.]
[He didn't really have a concrete sense for what a Curse User was in practice. But he could feel what was coming off you now, clear as day. Pure killing intent, aimed at evil without an ounce of doubt. And it was exactly the same as what he'd felt that day in the sealed room, when you'd spoken to him through the iron door in that winter-cold voice.]
["If I ever find out those four got hurt because you were too cowardly to control your power, because you let it spill onto innocent people... I'll classify you as a Curse User on the spot. Then I'll kill you myself."]
[Same tone. Same intent.]
[Yuta's pupils shook. He stared at your back, straight and cold, and only now did the truth really sink in.]
[You hadn't been trying to scare him back then.]
[You hadn't been bluffing.]
[If he ever crossed that line, your blade would reach his throat without a second thought.]
[Further behind them, Kusakabe, Mei Mei, Principal Yaga, and off to the side, Kinji Hakari and Kirara Hoshi, all sucked in a sharp breath at almost the same time.]
[Ever since the Zenin Clan incident, rumors had been floating around the jujutsu world. Had you already gone beyond first-grade? Were you the strongest sorcerer still carrying that rank?]
[That one throw was the clearest answer anybody had gotten.]
[And out of everyone present, only one person had actually seen the whole thing from start to finish.]
[Satoru Gojo.]
[Because of the Six Eyes, he had caught every detail.]
[And precisely because he had seen every detail, the blue eyes hidden under his blindfold had gone unusually grave.]
[He had never seen anyone use the Zenin Clan's Projection Sorcery in such a suicidal way.]
[It wasn't just the speed or force that held his attention. It was the cost.]
[Through the Six Eyes, he had seen it perfectly. The overloaded burst of power had shredded every muscle fiber in your right arm. Skin split open. Flesh tore apart. Under all that ruin, bone flashed white for an instant.]
[This was insane. An attack that threw self-preservation straight into the trash.]
[Just looking at the state of that arm, Gojo could practically feel how much pain it should have caused.
But your expression hadn't changed once.]
[Like the ruined arm belonged to somebody else.]
[Gojo understood why you were furious. The moment Geto's people confirmed they had innocent blood on their hands, something in you had locked in. He got that.]
[Still, he couldn't fully agree with where that fury led.]
[From where Gojo stood, at the absolute top, even Curse Users who had gone off the rails were still resources. Talent. People the jujutsu world was already too short on. With the right guidance and enough control, maybe they didn't have to die.]
[Across the field, Geto slowly turned his head.]
[For the first time, disbelief cracked through the calm mask on his face.]
[He looked at what was left of Larue. The headless body twitched once, nerves firing meaninglessly, then went still. Blood kept spreading across the frozen ground, dark and thick.]
[And with that, the fake compassion on Geto's face finally broke.]
[His head snapped toward you. The serene smile he always wore twisted apart, replaced by a mess of rage, grief, confusion, disbelief, and something uglier, something that looked a lot like loss.]
["Touma Hayase... why?!"]
[His voice broke halfway through, half shout, half snarl.]
["Back then, when we fought side by side, even against those Q curse users trying to kill Riko, you never went this far! You're not this kind of person! You were never someone who killed like this...!"]
[You knew exactly what he meant.]
[The Star Plasma Vessel mission. Riko Amanai. The years when the two of you had still walked the same road.]
[You didn't let him keep talking.]
["Because I believe you, Suguru."]
[Your voice cut cleanly through his, calm and steady, like you were stating something too obvious to argue with.]
["I believe that even now, even after everything you've become, you wouldn't lie to me about this. You answered yes just now. I believe that answer was real. I believe their hands are stained with innocent blood. That's enough."]
[And before the words had even finished hanging in the air, you gave Geto no time to process any of it.]
[Phantom Night Parade activated again.]
[This time, the target was Kento Nanami, standing behind you.]
[Using the surgical pull of the Limitless, something so precise it felt almost absurd, you ripped the weight out of Nanami's hand. One second his charm-wrapped cleaver was there. The next it was in your right fist, while flesh and muscle knit themselves back together under Reverse Cursed Technique.]
[The instant your last word landed.]
["BOOM!"]
[The concrete under your feet exploded.]
[The ground cratered. Broken chunks of stone blasted outward. You rode that recoil like a launched shell and vanished from where you'd been standing.]
[Geto's expression flickered through a whole chain of emotions so fast they almost overlapped. Being trusted by an old friend should have meant something warm. Instead, you had trusted him to be honest about being a monster.]
[The logic was twisted. Ridiculous, even.]
[And for one brief second, it rattled him.]
[That tiny crack in his composure was all you needed.]
[By the time you appeared again, wrapped in that terrifying cursed energy, you were already less than half a meter from his face.]
[Your right hand was still bleeding. Reverse Cursed Technique hadn't fully repaired it yet. But your grip around Nanami's blunt blade was iron, and the weapon came down toward Geto's skull with zero mercy behind it.]
[Geto knew your techniques too well. That was the problem with old classmates.]
[He knew summoning cursed spirits at this range against you would be suicide. So instead of trying to counter with a spirit, he threw both arms up, poured cursed energy reinforcement into them, and prepared to block the strike head-on.]
[But in the split second before the blade landed...]
[You opened your mouth.]
[A strange wave of cursed energy spilled from your throat.]
[It was power that should have belonged only to the last heir of the Inumaki bloodline. Power that was never supposed to be yours.]
[But through Phantom Night Parade, you had replicated it.]
[At point-blank range, aimed straight at Geto, the words left your mouth like a divine order.]
["Don't move."]
[Geto's arms, already swinging up to block, and the rest of his body, already trying to shift backward, locked in place all at once. It lasted only an instant.]
[It was still more than enough.]
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Next Target 600PS