The night breeze was cool and refreshing.
Mahiko walked down the street with an ice cream cone in one hand and the other hand stuffed in her pocket, bouncing along with a spring in her step, in the absolute best mood.
Honestly, she hadn't spared a single thought for what came after the juvenile detention center incident. Whatever the people from Tokyo Prefectural Jujutsu Technical College decided to do about it — that was their business, not hers.
Before she'd left, she'd told them that Nobara Kugisaki was hidden somewhere "that might be dangerous."
She'd been lying.
She was such a kind, generous soul — how could she possibly bring harm to anyone~~
Nobara was perfectly fine, actually. She hadn't been hurt at all throughout the entire ordeal. The reason she hadn't turned up at the scene was... well, honestly, it was simply because Nobara had gotten herself thoroughly lost. The maze's structure had shifted several times over, and Nobara had been wandering around on the other side of it this whole time — going in circles, bumping into dead ends — and she'd probably only figured out where the exit was after the entire maze dissolved around her.
She was going to emerge from that wreckage and realize, with dawning horror, that she'd been completely irrelevant to the whole affair. A bystander. A decorative extra.
Yuji and Fushiguro Maki were fine too.
They looked terrible, sure. But looks weren't everything.
Yuji had been knocked unconscious by Mahiko, and he'd swallowed the third finger. Once he woke up, Satoru Gojo would find him, and from there things would run along more or less the same track as the original story. Nothing seriously wrong there.
Fushiguro Maki had taken some injuries, but nothing life-threatening — and given the recovery rate of jujutsu sorcerers, wounds at that level would heal up in no time at all.
If anyone had come out of those three in the worst shape, it was unquestionably Fushiguro Maki. The reason went without saying: she had simply tried too hard and had the worst luck of the three. A spectacular combination.
In any case — what had happened at the juvenile detention center bore no resemblance whatsoever to the original story's timeline.
In the original, Yuji had let Sukuna take over on the spot, and Sukuna had one-shotted the cursed spirit immediately. Then Yuji had played dead for a good stretch of time, and the whole sequence had dragged on with twists and turns and complications for quite a while. This time around, Sukuna hadn't surfaced, Yuji hadn't played dead, and there had been no deal struck between them.
She had thrown the story's timeline into complete disarray — and then, having done exactly that, she had dusted off her hands and walked away without a backward glance.
But as for whether that actually had any meaningful impact on the story's trajectory overall...
Honestly? Not that much.
The juvenile detention center incident had never been a particularly pivotal moment in the grand scheme of things. The ripple effects amounted to two specific changes.
First: in the original, Yuji had handed control over to Sukuna, and Sukuna had fought Megumi Fushiguro. During that fight, Megumi had revealed his personal creed and a glimpse of Mahoraga — and that had been enough to make Sukuna develop an "extreme interest" in him.
This time, that fight never happened.
Did that matter?
For Mahiko's own plans — no. Not in any fundamental way.
Second: because Yuji hadn't released Sukuna, Yuji hadn't needed to make a deal with Sukuna in order to come back to life.
In the original, the terms of that deal were as follows: whenever Sukuna spoke the word "Release," Yuji would be compelled, without condition, to hand over control of his body to Sukuna for exactly one minute — with the stipulation that Sukuna could not harm anyone during that minute. In addition, after his revival, Yuji was required to forget that the contract existed.
This part... was admittedly somewhat significant.
In the original story, it was exactly that contract that Sukuna had used later to take over Fushiguro Maki's body.
But for Mahiko personally — that change also had nothing to do with her.
Mahiko licked her ice cream and looked up at the moon.
The main reason she had come tonight was to devour the soul of that Special Grade Cursed Spirit. And quite clearly — mission accomplished.
More than accomplished, actually. Better results than she'd anticipated. After consuming the Special Grade's soul, she could feel the change in herself with crystalline clarity: her Cursed Energy reserves had deepened by a full magnitude, her strength visibly, measurably greater. The her that stood here now could absolutely demolish the her that had first been born into this world.
"Ooh, I feel like I can learn so many other techniques now."
She kept bouncing along the street, the corner of her mouth hooked upward in a grin.
The "speed bump" she'd acknowledged earlier, of course, wasn't a comment on being weak — it was simply that when measured against the truly fearsome presences that existed in this world, she still had ground to cover. After all, the Special Grade Cursed Spirit she'd just destroyed was, to put it bluntly, the kind of thing that Sukuna — operating at a mere tenth of his full power — had swatted aside without breaking a sweat.
If she wanted to accomplish what she was ultimately after, she had a long road still ahead of her.
But that was fine.
Right now, she was very, very happy.
Because she had found her path — a road she could walk, a road that was entirely her own.
Learning the techniques of others.
If she could keep walking that road — keep learning, keep acquiring, keep layering one borrowed ability on top of another, accumulating what belonged to other sorcerers piece by piece onto herself...
The her that she would eventually become would be stronger than the original Mahito. Stronger by several times over, without question.
An absurdly broken ability, now that she thought about it.
And she had already started mentally drafting her list of next targets.
Satoru Gojo was obviously out of the question.
Nanami's technique, though — that was a solid option. His ability could artificially create a weak point on any enemy or object out of thin air. Master it properly and you'd be landing critical hits with every single strike — a reliable, consistent damage boost. Worth trying the next time she ran into him.
Inumaki might also be interesting. His Cursed Speech was genuinely fascinating.
Actually, the more she thought about it, the more candidates she came up with — the list just kept getting longer, and she couldn't stop.
Holy — having an ability this broken, and the original Mahito never even used it? What an absolute waste.
Mahiko stuck out her tongue, the thought drifting through her mind.
Then again, the original Mahito probably hadn't possessed her level of precision when it came to soul manipulation. Not by a long shot.
Because... she and the original Mahito were completely different beings at this point.
She was a transmigrator. By the standard taxonomy of transmigration, she counted as a soul transmigration — her soul had crossed over, her body had not.
In most transmigration scenarios, when a soul crosses into another character's body, the body itself still belongs to someone else, and so does the talent. You inherit what was already there.
But the character of Mahito was different. His body was, at its most fundamental level, soul.
Flesh was soul. Soul was flesh. The two were indistinguishable.
So in a meaningful sense, the body Mahiko currently inhabited was not the original Mahito's body at all.
Rather than saying her soul had transmigrated into Mahito's body, it was more accurate to say: her soul had crossed over, been assigned the identity of "Mahito," and then used her own soul to run through the process of Mahito's birth from scratch.
Same role, different essence. The same title, worn by an entirely different being.
Different soul. Different body. So the precision with which she could manipulate souls — the way she perceived and worked with them — could naturally differ from the original's as well.
Which meant the original Mahito might genuinely have never discovered this path at all. Or he might have considered it, and found it completely impassable.
Well. Whatever. She didn't want to think about it anymore.
Too complicated. Her head was starting to hurt.
Knowing that she could walk a longer and further road than the original Mahito was enough. That was all she needed.
Mahiko popped the last bite of ice cream into her mouth, held the empty cone in her fingers, adjusted her direction, and headed toward her destination.
Right. Because actually — the events of today weren't quite finished yet.
She had one last small matter to take care of.
Bang!!
The door was kicked open.
The impact was loud enough to slam it into the wall and bounce it halfway back. Mahiko strode inside, and her gaze swept the room, taking in everyone present.
Jogo lifted his head to look at her. Hanami turned as well.
Kenjaku was sitting in a chair in the corner, lounging sideways, chin resting on the back of his hand. When he saw her walk in, a faint smile curved the corner of his mouth.
"Oh my, you're back," he said. "How was it? Did you have fun?"
Mahiko walked directly up to him, planted both hands on her hips, and looked down at the seated man from above, letting out a short, sharp sound through her nose before launching straight into her interrogation:
"Hey. I have a question. Your plan at the juvenile detention center — why didn't you tell me about it?"
Yes.
Play the victim first. Strike before he could.
This was the last thing Mahiko still needed to do: get ahead of Kenjaku before he could open his mouth, seize the moral high ground, and reframe "I barged into your plan and completely derailed it" as "Why did you hide this from me?" — swapping one set of accusations for another.
This tactic probably wouldn't fool Kenjaku. But it was still far better than standing there doing nothing and waiting to be interrogated.
She held her ground, maintaining the expression of someone entirely in the right, and delivered another emphatic "hmph."
"You — was that deliberate?!"
____
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