Chapter 74: Prologue to the Yasohachi Bridge Arc
"You want leave?"
Gojo sat cross legged on his chair with a kikufuku in one hand, white cream smeared carelessly at the corner of his mouth.
This was supposed to be the teachers' office at Tokyo Jujutsu High.
In practice, it looked more like a storage room that had been conquered by snacks, manga, and Gojo's complete lack of self restraint.
Megumi stood in front of the desk, shoulders rigid, face dark and unreadable.
"Yes."
His answer was short, low, and firm.
"There's something personal I need to handle."
"Something personal, huh..."
Gojo dragged the words out as he studied him over the rim of his sunglasses.
Of course he already knew.
Tsumiki.
The name alone was enough to explain everything. The girl trapped in an endless sleep had long since become the wound Megumi carried deepest. It never closed. It never stopped hurting. He just got better at pretending it did.
Gojo licked the cream from his finger, then leaned back slightly.
"I'd love to sign off on it right away, but the situation right now is a little messy."
His tone lost some of its usual laziness.
"The Jujutsu world's been shifting in a bad direction. Special Grade activity is becoming more frequent, and we've already confirmed that a batch of Special Grade cursed objects has been stolen."
He looked straight at Megumi.
"Going off alone right now is a bad call."
Megumi's jaw tightened.
"I know."
He did know.
He knew the timing was terrible. He knew the risk. He knew there was a good chance this was connected to something much uglier than a normal investigation.
But none of that mattered.
"I still have to go."
His voice stayed controlled, but the force underneath it was unmistakable.
This was not just about Tsumiki.
It was about everything tied to her. The past he could never fully shake off. The part of his life he kept sealed away because looking at it for too long made it harder to breathe. If he could not face even this with his own two feet, then what exactly had all this fighting been for?
"Who said anything about going alone?"
The voice came from the doorway.
Before Megumi could turn, the office door swung open with a bang.
Yuji walked in first, all energy and motion as usual, with Nobara following behind him with the expression of someone already annoyed by whatever nonsense she had walked into.
Megumi frowned.
"What are you doing here?"
Yuji strode over and slapped him squarely on the back.
Hard.
Megumi lurched forward half a step.
"What do you mean, what are we doing here? You were just going to disappear on your own after something happened?"
Yuji looked genuinely offended.
"Aren't we supposed to be your friends?"
"Exactly."
Nobara folded her arms and looked Megumi up and down with blatant disdain.
"You've been standing around with that funeral face ever since yesterday. If you wanted to act tragic, you could at least tell the rest of us why."
She clicked her tongue.
"I hate trouble, but I hate being left out even more when it involves one of my teammates."
Megumi stared at them.
Something warm stirred in his chest, unwelcome only because he had no idea what to do with it. He pushed it down out of habit.
"This is my family's problem," he said stiffly. "It has nothing to do with you."
Then, after a beat, he added the real reason.
"It's dangerous."
"Dangerous?"
Yuji grinned.
He actually grinned.
"We fought Special Grade cursed spirits together. At this point that word barely counts."
Then he lowered his voice and jerked a thumb toward the corner of the room.
"Besides, the strongest one here still hasn't said anything."
Everyone turned.
Yami had been sitting quietly on the sofa the whole time, a clean white cloth in one hand as he carefully wiped down Shiranui. The black blade lay across his lap, catching the room's light in a cold, muted gleam.
At Yuji's words, he stopped.
Then he rose to his feet and slid the blade back into its sheath.
Click.
The sound was soft.
It still felt like a promise.
"I'm coming too."
Yami spoke plainly, almost casually, yet the words landed with a weight no one could ignore.
Megumi's eyes shifted.
"Yami..."
"Megumi."
Yami cut him off before he could keep arguing.
His gaze was calm, steady, impossible to push away.
"Do you remember what I told you at the juvenile detention center?"
Megumi froze.
That place.
That day.
The moment he had been ready to throw his life away and summon Mahoraga without hesitation. The moment Yami had stopped him.
Only if you stay alive is there any hope.
The memory came back with painful clarity.
"We're teammates," Yami said.
He stepped closer, voice as quiet as ever.
"If we're teammates, then there's no reason for one person to walk into hell alone."
He rested one hand lightly on the hilt of his sword.
"And besides..."
For the first time, a faint edge entered his eyes.
"I'm interested in this Yasohachi Bridge."
He could feel it already.
Even from a distance, that direction carried something foul. Not the ordinary malice of a wandering curse. Something denser. Older. More rotten. The kind of presence that clung to the air and stained it.
Whatever waited there, it was not going to be simple.
"All right, all right."
Gojo clapped his hands together, shattering the mood before it could get any heavier.
"Since everyone's so motivated, then go together."
He pointed at them one by one.
"But I'm busy, so I'm not coming this time. A teacher has duties, you know. Very tragic."
Not one person in the room believed that was the whole truth.
Gojo pushed his sunglasses up slightly, smiling in that way he did when he was hiding something under a joke.
"Think of it as practical field training."
Then his voice sharpened just a little.
"Go on, then. Exorcise whatever thought it was a good idea to touch one of our students."
Two hours later.
Saitama Prefecture.
Yasohachi Bridge.
Night had settled in by the time they arrived.
The bridge stretched across the river like an old scar, steel and concrete cutting through the dark. Cars still passed overhead now and then, their tires sending a low rumble through the structure. Beneath it, the riverbank was cold and damp, the wind coming off the water sharp enough to sting exposed skin.
The four of them stood under the bridge and looked up.
Yuji broke the silence first.
"This is the place?"
He turned in a slow circle, scanning the surroundings.
"It looks... normal."
Too normal.
No visible curse. No obvious residue. No heavy pressure hanging in the air.
Nobara frowned.
"I'm not sensing much either. Are you sure this is it, Fushiguro?"
Megumi didn't answer right away.
He stood still, staring at the bridge as though it might speak to him.
Under the pale night sky, the place looked colder than it should have. Empty, but not peaceful. The kind of empty that left room for memory to creep in.
When he finally spoke, his voice was tight.
"It's here."
His eyes never left the bridge.
"When I was younger... we used to come here for courage tests."
The words came slowly, like he was dragging them out from somewhere he had buried on purpose.
"Tsumiki came too."
That was all he said.
It was enough.
Yami, who had been silent until now, lifted his head.
His gaze sharpened.
Farther in, near one of the deeper shadows beneath the bridge, something had changed.
Space itself was distorting.
Not visibly enough for an ordinary person to notice, but enough for his senses to catch it. The shape of the darkness there was wrong. It folded strangely, like a wound trying to open. And from inside that warped pocket came a thick, suffocating smell.
Blood.
Rot.
Curse.
The moment it touched his senses, Yami's expression changed.
He knew that presence.
Or at least part of it.
The same nauseating aura he had felt at the juvenile detention center.
Sukuna's finger.
No.
Not just one.
There were three separate currents pressing against the seam of that distorted space. One was Sukuna's finger. That much he was certain of. But the other two were different. Equally vile, equally twisted, though in different ways. One felt like decaying flesh steeped in resentment. The other felt old, hateful, and deeply inhuman.
"It's here."
His hand came to rest on Shiranui.
Yuji and Nobara both turned.
"What?"
Yami's voice lost all softness.
The change was instant and absolute. A moment ago he had looked like a quiet teenager standing under a bridge with his friends.
Now he felt like a sword already halfway drawn.
"Get ready."
The night exploded.
Boom!
A surge of cursed energy erupted from beneath the bridge with enough force to churn the river water into frothing waves. Blackness shot upward in all directions. In the blink of an eye, a Curtain descended over the area, sealing off everything within nearly a kilometer.
The air changed.
The space changed.
The world inside and outside the barrier split apart.
Megumi's eyes widened.
"This isn't normal..."
It was not just a basic Curtain used to hide curses from ordinary people.
This had rules woven into it.
Conditions.
Weight.
Something much closer to the work of a Special Grade.
Beside him, Yuji's face hardened.
Nobara's hand had already gone to the nails at her side.
Yami narrowed his eyes and let the Transparent World open fully.
The darkness in front of him peeled back.
Deep inside the Curtain, three monstrous presences took shape.
One of them pulsed with the familiar aura of Sukuna's finger.
The other two were worse in a different way.
Their bodies were wrong. Too human to be curses. Too corrupted to be human. Strange wings spread from their backs, and what moved through them was not ordinary blood, nor pure cursed energy, but something in between, something forcibly made.
Incarnated bodies.
The Cursed Womb: Death Paintings.
They had walked straight into a nest.
"Well," Yami said quietly.
His thumb pushed against the guard.
Shiranui slid free.
The black blade drank in the darkness around it, and then a thread of golden red flame lit along its edge, small at first, then vivid enough to paint warm light across their faces.
The contrast was beautiful.
And deeply ominous.
Megumi looked at the sword.
Yuji rolled his shoulders.
Nobara took one long breath and steadied herself.
Yami angled the blade slightly downward, eyes fixed on the blackness ahead.
"Looks like we're working overtime tonight."
.....
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