A week passed, and the paperwork was almost done.
Akira's grades were good. If he really pushed himself, he could probably get into the University of Tokyo. For a public school student, his record was already impressive. The two siblings had no other family to rely on, and both of them worked. Even so, Ori had always insisted Akira focus on school. Any part-time job he took was only allowed to cover pocket money. Everything else, she handled herself. Luckily, their parents had left behind enough that they were not living with absolutely no margin for error.
Once he enrolled at Tokyo Jujutsu High, a lot of those everyday worries would no longer matter. He had even heard there was an official salary involved. Akira did not really understand what "being on payroll" meant for a jujutsu sorcerer, but at least it sounded dependable.
In the end, his sister gave in.
She cried while seeing him off.
"When you were little, you wouldn't even ride a roller coaster, and now you're going to some Jujutsu High thing, some weird private religious school..." Ori said as she wiped her eyes and kept stuffing snacks into his bag. "You call me when you get there. Every day. If you don't call, I'm reporting you missing."
"Sis, I'm seventeen."
"So what? Does seventeen mean you stop being my little brother?"
"Okay, okay."
She sniffed. "Go on, then."
Akira looked at her red eyes and could not make sense of the ache in his chest.
But he knew that if he caved now, she would only worry more.
He had gone quite a distance before turning back for one last look.
His sister was still standing in the doorway.
Akira waved too.
Then he rounded the corner, and she was gone from sight.
"Your sister's a good person," Yuji said quietly from beside him, his spirit-form body flickering in and out.
"Yeah."
"...Yeah."
Akira did not ask any more.
He stood at the school gate, staring at the worn old entrance, and took a deep breath.
A flood of images flashed through his mind. Scenes from the manga. The place where Gojo Satoru had stood. The students who had once passed through here.
And now he was standing here himself.
Akira stepped inside.
The campus was bigger than he had expected. Greenery shaded the paths. The architecture felt old, almost out of date. It was too quiet to feel like a school, more like the grounds of an old shrine. Every so often, he caught sight of students in uniform. Their eyes landed on him for a second, then moved on.
The instant he pushed open the door, he saw a broad-shouldered man seated behind a desk, weaving something in his hands. Black sunglasses covered half his face, but they did nothing to hide the pressure coming off him.
Yaga Masamichi.
Creator of autonomous cursed corpses. User of Cursed Corpse Manipulation. Principal of Tokyo Jujutsu High.
"Right on time. Not late." Yaga did not even look up, fingers moving deftly through the stuffing. "So, what did you come here for? And why are you here?"
His tone was flat.
Like he was asking what the weather was like outside.
But Akira knew this was not casual conversation.
He thought for a moment, then answered seriously. "When I realized this world is not nearly as peaceful underneath as it looks on the surface - jujutsu sorcerers, cursed energy, curses, cursed spirits, ordinary people - I thought about a lot of things."
Yaga said nothing. He kept weaving.
"But in the end, none of that is what matters most," Akira said. "When that cursed spirit attacked me, I only had one thought in my head. What would happen to my sister?"
He raised one hand. Cursed energy flowed out and gathered in his palm as a weak ball of light.
"To be blunt, I do not really care what happens to everyone else. But I live in this world. My sister and I have built a happy life here. So I want to protect that happiness, and I am willing to fight for it."
"No matter what stands in front of me, it will not stop me."
Silence hung in the room for a moment.
Then Yaga gave a grunt.
"Fine. Your reason passes."
Akira let out a quiet breath.
"Now we test your resolve." Yaga set down the half-finished doll. The ball of stuffing in his hand twitched. "Be careful. Try not to die."
Akira's pupils tightened.
He saw it at once. The puppet was only palm-sized, its limbs still half-finished tufts of stuffing, but it lunged with ridiculous speed. The air split with a sharp shriek.
He had no time to think. On instinct, he condensed cursed energy and raised both arms to block.
Bang!!!
His arms trembled.
The puppet rebounded in midair and came at him again.
He had prepared himself for this. There was no way the entrance test would be easy. Even Yuji had gotten the hell beat out of him in the original story.
Still, actually experiencing the feeling of being used as a punching bag was a lot less fun than imagining it.
The puppet's fists were tiny, but wrapped in cursed energy, each blow hit like a sledgehammer. Akira barely dodged two punches. The third smashed into his shoulder and sent him stumbling.
He did not let Yuji step in.
Because his life was not in danger.
And because he wanted to see how much all his training had really amounted to.
So he stopped dodging.
The frustration itself became fuel for his cursed energy. He was not some model student. If he got hit, he hit back.
He threw a punch head-on.
The puppet got knocked back for a split second, then charged again. Before Akira could throw a second punch, it had already slipped into his guard and drove an uppercut into his chin.
His head rang.
His vision wavered.
"The cursed spirit you encountered before was probably only Grade 4," Yaga said. "If you survived, it was because it never expected you to fight back. But what if it had not run?"
The puppet came again.
Akira gritted his teeth and blocked, though his forearms were already bruised dark. He knew exactly what Yaga meant. If that cursed spirit had not run that night, he would have died.
He had not won.
The spirit had just chickened out.
The puppet fired another straight punch at his face. Akira tilted his head and narrowly avoided the worst of it, but not all of it. The wind of the blow scraped across his cheekbone and left a hot sting behind.
He dropped to a half-kneel, breathing hard.
Akira said nothing.
He looked up at Yaga.
Then he exhaled.
"Go."
His voice was not loud.
But something in the air changed.
Yaga's eyes narrowed.
A blurred figure rose beside Akira.
No sign. No obvious cursed energy flare. It was as if he had been standing there the whole time, only now becoming visible.
The hood covered most of his face, making his expression impossible to read.
But Yaga could feel it.
That thing was strong.
Do not use your technique, Akira told the figure silently. Do not reveal too much too early. Just beat it.
The puppet moved.
Then -
Yuji shifted.
Not dodging.
Turning.
His fist shot out.
Black cursed energy exploded around it, like thunder, like fire, like something that did not belong in this world at all.
The puppet went flying.
Not broken apart. Not knocked back.
Punched straight through.
Yaga's pupils shrank.
He saw it.
At the moment of impact, that black cursed energy did not burst outward. It compressed. It was like forcing an entire sea into a single drop of water, then releasing it the instant contact was made.
His control snapped.
The puppet's core shattered under that one blow. With its cursed energy support gone, the stuffing fell uselessly to the floor.
Yaga was silent for a long time.
"So that is your technique?"
Akira stood up and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth. "...Yeah."
Sorcerers who had cursed energy but no innate technique were common enough. But Yaga had suspected from the beginning that this boy had some kind of technique, which was why he had pressed harder on purpose.
He called the puppet back, his eyes moving from Akira to the indistinct figure beside him.
"What is your technique?"
Akira hesitated for a second.
"Summoning," he said. "Something in that category, probably."
"That is not ordinary summoning."
The room was very quiet.
Yaga tapped two fingers lightly on the desk.
"How long can you maintain it?"
"That depends on my cursed energy," Akira said. "His strength right now is also limited by how much cursed energy I have."
Yaga nodded.
He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands on the desk.
After a pause, he said, "You pass."
Akira blinked. "...That's it?"
Yaga pointed at the cut on Akira's face.
"Go get that treated."
Akira opened his mouth, about to say something.
But Yaga had already lowered his head and gone back to weaving the puppet.
Yuji faded back into spirit form and followed behind him.
Akira stepped out of the room and shut the door.
He touched the injury on his face and hissed.
"But... worth it."
"Hm?"
"At least now I know where I actually stand."
Yuji said nothing.
Akira straightened and started down the hall.
"...Thanks."
"No problem."
"But why did you use Black Flash? Didn't I tell you not to reveal too much?"
Yuji was quiet for a while.
Then he answered.
"Habit."
Akira stopped short.
"Habit!? Seriously?"
He did not even know what to say to that.
Then again, this was the man who seemed born with Black Flash written into his skill tree. At this point, it almost felt like the move had been invented for him.