"If a Divine Protection like that existed, I'd love to have one." Gojo shrugged, casual as ever. "Unfortunately, I'm a man with no Divine Protections at all."
"As for why I knew exactly what you were thinking the moment I walked in, what you'd say before you said it... it's because I know you better than you'd imagine. And this isn't the first time we've met. Not for me."
"You think such a pathetic lie would fool Betty?"
"No, no, no. If you think about it, I haven't actually told you a single lie. Not once."
Gojo paused, ran through his memory, and nodded with conviction.
"Looking at you right now, I can see we're going to have to do this the hard way."
Betty's expression hadn't changed. Disbelief. Wariness. Walls up.
Gojo rubbed his forehead and sighed. Then, under her cold stare, he stepped forward, took her small hand, and pressed it flat against his chest.
"Pay attention. Memorize the witch's scent on me right now, and notice how it changes in a moment." He held her gaze. "I've experienced two instances of Return by Death, meaning time reversal. This is our third meeting..."
After getting a better grasp of the reversal's mechanics, he and Subaru had agreed the ability deserved a proper name. Return by Death. Like reloading a save in a dating sim.
The familiar sensation crept in.
That same unstoppable, untouchable black hand materialized inside his body and crushed his heart without mercy. A split-second of stillness, and it was done.
From Betty's perspective, the heart beating under her palm had been perfectly intact one moment and destroyed by some invisible force the next.
Instinct took over. She gathered Mana, ready to intervene.
But the shattered heart was already knitting itself back together before she could act.
"Don't worry about the heart. Focus on what I told you to feel."
Gojo's voice was steady in her ear. Betty opened her mouth to argue, but the overwhelming wave of the witch's scent rolling off him stole the words from her tongue. Her brow creased.
"What you said just now..."
"Exactly what it sounded like."
Gojo picked up the teacup and took another sip.
"Explaining this to you never gets easier. Dying over and over for the privilege... don't you think you owe me some compensation, Betty?"
"Why would Betty compensate someone tangled up with a witch?"
"Because I'm risking my life to share this with you. Doesn't that tell you something about the bond between us?" He smiled. "If I didn't trust you, I wouldn't keep using this method to prove myself, time after time."
His expression shifted to something more practical. "Actually, could you give me something? A phrase, a secret, something only you would know. One sentence that would earn your trust instantly. Because going through this whole routine every loop is exhausting."
Betty said nothing. She turned away and began flipping through the book in her hands, searching for something within its pages.
"Don't bother. The rest of that book is blank. There's nothing to find."
Her hands froze mid-page.
Without warning, Betty flung her arm toward him. Wind tore through the Forbidden Library as the doors blew open. A gale strong enough to hurl a person across the room.
Gojo hadn't moved an inch.
"See? Told you."
He spread his hands, the picture of vindication.
Betty's expression went cold. She snapped the book shut. "What's your name?"
"Oh, did I never mention it?"
This time, Betty hopped off her chair, grabbed it by the legs, and started dragging it toward him with visible effort, clearly intending to use it as a weapon.
"Huh. That's a new development."
Gojo raised both hands in surrender, though one finger pointed lazily at the approaching chair.
"Satoru Gojo. And dragging furniture around like that isn't very ladylike, Betty."
Her footsteps halted. She let out a sharp huff, abandoned the chair, and walked back to the small table with the teapot. She picked up the book, the one with blank pages past a certain point, the one she'd been reading every time he entered the Library, and held it up.
"See this?"
She turned her back to him.
"Next time you come back... destroy it."
On the side of her face he couldn't see, a sly smile curved her lips. Cunning. A little vindictive.
"You're serious? Every single time I've come in here, you've been reading that thing." Gojo moved closer, tugging down his sunglasses so his ice-blue eyes could study her directly. "I asked to look at it once and you wouldn't let me. Acted like it was priceless."
"It is."
Betty turned to face him. That small, doll-like face revealed nothing.
"You're not messing with me, are you?"
"Even if I were, would Betty be around to see the results?"
"Fair point."
Gojo nodded, conceding the logic.
Betty lifted her chin slightly. This person, this Satoru Gojo, said things that were frankly absurd. But the changes she'd sensed on his body, the witch's scent intensifying right before her eyes, lent an uncomfortable credibility to the impossible.
Magic couldn't achieve what he described. But the Witch of Envy, Satella, who had once devoured half the world? For her, rewriting time might be trivial.
Fine then. Let him test it on the next version of me.
Betty knew exactly what would happen if a stranger barged into the Forbidden Library and destroyed the Book of Wisdom her mother Echidna had left behind. The book she'd guarded for centuries. Its later pages were blank, yes, and hope was thin, but it was still hope. Still something to hold onto.
If someone destroyed it, she would lose her mind.
Hmph. That's what he gets for using Betty's teacup.
She savored the petty revenge in silence.
"Betty, what do you know about Curses? The kind that continuously drains Mana until the target dies."
"You've looped this many times and you still need to ask something that basic?"
"That's exactly why I keep coming to you for help."
"Specialists in that sort of thing are called Curse Users." Betty set down the book she'd been holding and moved to the shelves, scanning for a specific volume. "Most of them come from the Holy Kingdom of Gusteko, up north."
"Curse Users... now there's a familiar term." Gojo reached past her and plucked the book she'd been eyeing from the shelf. "Where I'm from, we had people called the same thing. Like sewer rats. Never that strong, but they loved making life miserable for everyone around them."
"If you already know, why ask me?" Betty snatched the book, visibly annoyed at having her time wasted.
"Different breed. The Curse Users I knew didn't drain Mana to kill. They were more... direct. Blunt force." He shook his head. "Much less subtle."
Betty set the book on the table and began leafing through it. "This type of Curse is almost always fatal once activated. Virtually no chance of saving the victim after that point."
Gojo seized on the key word instantly. "But before it activates, there's a way?"
Subaru had been fine before falling asleep. That meant the Curse was already planted on him but hadn't triggered yet.
"Of course. A dormant Curse is fragile. Like a knot in a string. Easy enough to undo."
"Does anyone in the mansion know this kind of Curse?"
Betty shot him a look and let out a derisive little snort, as if the question itself were beneath her.
"No. It's a worthless technique. Not worth learning. And if someone here truly wanted to kill through Mana depletion, there are far simpler methods. Forcibly extracting Mana, for instance."
She placed her hand on Gojo's arm, and something eager flickered across her face. "Want to experience it?"
"I'll pass. If you're that eager, I can bring someone in for you to practice on later."
"Coward."
Gojo set the blank book on the floor and sat on it, sinking into thought.
Betty had lived in this mansion for ages. Her word carried weight. If no one here knew how to cast that kind of Curse, it aligned with his own analysis.
The Curse User is hiding in the village. That's the only window of opportunity to plant it.
With that piece in place, the path forward was clear. Wait for the date to finish, bring Subaru to Betty to break the Curse, then trace it back to the village and root out whoever was behind it.
"You've been a huge help, Betty. Half the things I've figured out wouldn't have been possible without you." Gojo stood, brushing himself off. "I'll probably need your help again in a couple of days. Curse removal, that sort of thing."
Betty's brow tightened. "You're the worst kind of person. The kind that brings nothing but trouble."
"It's not trouble. Besides, we're friends now. I'd help you too. That's how it works, right?"
"Help me?" Betty's tone dripped with scorn. "Betty doesn't need anything from you."
She gathered the book from the table, dragged her chair to the shelf, and slid the volume back into place.
"If you really want to help, stop coming here and leave me alone..."
She set the book down, turned back toward the table wanting a sip of tea, then remembered that Gojo had used her cup. Irritation flared, and as her eyes swept across the tabletop, she went still.
The table was empty.
Something was missing.
By then, Gojo had already reached the Forbidden Library's door and pushed it open.
"I'll take this off your hands. I'll destroy it, like you said."
Take what? Destroy what?
Dread hit her like ice water. Betty whipped around, and there he stood in the hallway by a window, the Book of Wisdom that Echidna had entrusted to her clutched casually in one hand.
The Library door was closing. Gojo's grinning face was disappearing inch by inch behind it.
Betty's heart seized in her chest.
She understood what he was about to do.
"Wait..."
Panic erupted from her in a surge of Mana that wrenched the nearly-shut door back open. But it was already too late.
Gojo stood framed by the window, and with one flick of his finger, he launched the Book of Wisdom into the sky, silhouetted against the blood-red remains of the sunset.
He called it a flick. But that thick, heavy book detonated while still in midair.
Completely. Thoroughly. Irreversibly.
Cover, spine, pages... all of it reduced to fragments smaller than grains of rice. They drifted on the breeze, falling like snow.
Betty's heart skipped.
Her body locked. She could only watch as the Forbidden Library's door swung shut before her, sealing her inside, powerless to do anything at all.
The door clicked softly into place.
Out in the hallway, Gojo glanced back at it, rubbing his chin. She wasn't messing with me... right?
The thought had barely formed when a deafening crash shook the east wing of the mansion. Somewhere in the noise, he could swear he heard a scream.
He looked toward the source. A plume of dust billowed from the side of the building.
A small figure exploded out of the cloud and rocketed toward him.
"You..."
One look at Betty's face, incandescent with fury and killing intent, told Gojo everything he needed to know.
She'd lied. Every word about destroying the book had been a trap, and he'd walked right into it.
His body flickered, and he reappeared in the air above the courtyard.
"Betty, I think there's been a huge misunderstanding here. If you think about it, you're the one who told me to destroy it. I was only following instructions. This isn't my fault..."
Before he could finish, a dense swarm of violet crystal arrows screamed toward him from below.
The commotion in the courtyard drew everyone out.
"Betty? Gojo?" Subaru stared up at the sky.
Puck, draped over Emilia's head and yawning, forced his eyes open long enough to identify the two airborne figures. "How'd those two end up going at it?"
"Puck, this isn't the time for sleeping! Go stop Betty!" Emilia plucked the cat-shaped Spirit from her hair and gave him a gentle shake, worry written across her face.
"It'll be fine." Another yawn. "Betty's not a bad kid. She knows her limits." His voice was already fading. "Besides, who knows which one of them is going to win. And Roswaal's around here somewhere..."
Puck trailed off entirely, burrowed into Emilia's pendant, and was snoring within seconds.
...
Get early access to 40 chapters ahead on my Patreon!
patreon.com/fawkess