Everything that had just happened, all of it, seemed to exist for one purpose alone: to kill him.
Betty stood frozen beside him, staring at the blood spilling from his mouth, completely at a loss.
"What are you doing?"
"Betty didn't bully you. Don't you dare pin this on me."
He didn't answer.
A shattered heart meant certain death for anyone else.
For Gojo, it was an inconvenience. The Reverse Cursed Technique could regenerate even a destroyed organ, piece by piece, good as new.
He made his way to the nearest bookshelf and sat down against it without a word.
Betty watched him in silence for a moment, hesitated, then stood and crossed over to him, reaching out.
"What happened to you?"
The instant her fingers touched him, a soft glow gathered in her palm and flowed toward his chest. She still had no idea what was wrong, but she wasn't about to sit by and watch. Healing first, questions later.
The moment she made contact, shock broke across her face.
"Your heart is destroyed?!"
Her expression belonged on a chat sticker. Wide eyes, parted lips, disbelief so exaggerated it would've been comical under different circumstances.
All pretense of hostility vanished. She crouched beside him and poured Mana into his body in a steady, unbroken stream.
"No one survives a shattered heart. This kind of wound is beyond saving." Both hands pressed flat against his chest, her voice still carrying that trademark frost. "But if you're going to die, don't do it in front of Betty."
Her words said one thing. Her hands said the opposite.
"I'm touched. Betty really does care about me."
She'd barely finished speaking when warmth spread across the top of her head. Gojo was smiling down at her, ruffling her hair with lazy affection.
Her head bobbed with the motion, twin drill-curls swaying.
"If those are your last words..." She grabbed his wrist and yanked his hand away, glaring. "Then you're getting off far too easy."
She stood, turned her back on him without another glance, and returned to her chair. She reached for her teacup, eyed it, then set it aside with a grimace.
"Don't worry. I'll throw this cup out along with your corpse."
"Honestly, stop making trouble for Betty."
She muttered to herself as the library door swung open. While he still had a breath left in him, she'd fetch Roswaal. Someone else could deal with this.
Death itself didn't frighten her. What she hated was the feeling of separation, even from someone she'd exchanged barely a handful of words with. Even from a stranger.
"No need for the trouble. Going to find Roswaal right now would be the real hassle, wouldn't it?"
Gojo stretched, rose to his feet, and shut the library door.
"You..."
She assumed he was clinging to one final scrap of life.
Then he turned from the door and walked toward her as though nothing had happened.
"You're... fine?"
Centuries of existence, and she'd never seen anything like it. A man whose heart had been ground to pulp, strolling around like he'd taken a nap.
He stopped in front of her, took her hand, and pressed it flat against his chest.
"Here. See for yourself."
She said nothing. Her senses reached inward.
The heart that had been crushed moments ago, mangled beyond recognition as if something had squeezed it to paste, now beat whole and steady beneath her palm. No scarring. No residual damage. Nothing. As if the injury she'd felt before had been a hallucination.
But Betty was certain. Absolutely certain.
His heart had been destroyed. Completely.
And now...
"What did you do?"
"That kind of injury, even healing magic couldn't possibly..."
"It wasn't healing magic." He shook his head. "Something else."
A thought struck her. Her brow furrowed.
"A Witch Factor?"
"No wonder you reek of witch."
"Witch Factor?"
This time it was Gojo who blinked.
The term wasn't unfamiliar. He'd come across it in his reading during the previous loop's study sessions in the Forbidden Library.
Witch Factors were the origin of the witches themselves. When a compatible person came into contact with one, they bonded with it and gained extraordinary power. That power was called an Authority, a power similar in effect to a Divine Protection, though fundamentally different in origin.
The infamous Witch Cult, the fanatical organization that worshipped Satella, the Witch of Envy, was built around these Factors. The things were said to be antithetical to the world's very foundations, indestructible, impossible to disperse.
They'd come to be called Witch Factors largely because of the catastrophic upheaval caused by the last generation of witches, Satella and her contemporaries. But compatibility wasn't limited to women. Within the modern Witch Cult, there were men who had bonded with Witch Factors as well. They were called Sin Archbishops, and each wielded power rivaling the witches of old. All of them except Satella.
"Wait."
"You said I smell strongly of witch?"
Gojo seized on the critical detail.
"That's right. The stench is thick enough to ruin Betty's nose." She covered her face with one hand, disgust unconcealed.
Silence.
His mind raced backward through everything that had happened since the Time Reversal.
Apart from the initial shock shared with Subaru, the journey had been identical to before. Capital to mansion, every step the same. He hadn't come into contact with anyone new. There was no possible point of exposure to anything connected to a Witch Factor.
And in the previous loop, when he'd spent time with Betty, she'd never once mentioned him carrying the scent of a witch.
Which meant there was only one difference between then and now.
One.
What had happened moments ago.
The black hand, formed from that unknown energy, the one that had reached inside his chest and crushed his heart.