Actually, the moment Mahiko started noticing the endearing qualities of her Cursed Spirit companions, she felt a small, nagging pang of guilt.
Along with something she could only call reluctance.
As someone who was perpetually running schemes in the back of her head — fine, she'd admit it, she was a schemer — Mahiko had naturally taken precautions when she modified Jogo and Hanami's bodies. It would have been strange not to.
Specifically: after completing the modifications, she had planted bombs inside each of them, nestled against their vital points.
Yes. She had actually done that.
Neither Jogo nor Hanami had noticed.
Kenjaku had probably noticed, but had chosen not to tell them.
His reason for keeping quiet was simple. Under current circumstances, Jogo and Hanami's trust in Mahiko far outstripped their trust in him. So even if Kenjaku went to them and said, "Mahiko planted bombs inside your bodies," they wouldn't really suspect her — they'd just assume he was trying to drive a wedge between them.
Kenjaku was smart. He knew that perfectly well. So he stayed silent.
Mahiko's reason for doing it in the first place was equally straightforward: she needed a contingency plan. A last resort.
She really hadn't had much choice.
For her, it was a non-negotiable security measure. If Kenjaku ever decided to move against her with a few Special Grade Cursed Spirits in tow, he alone would be enough to give her serious trouble — add Jogo and Hanami into the mix, and she genuinely might not have any way to turn the tables. Hence the landmines she'd buried inside both of them.
And the truth was, even now, even after everything they'd talked about — even though her opinion of Jogo and Hanami had shifted considerably — that didn't mean she was going to remove those bombs.
You had to face reality. You couldn't let a moment's impulse or emotion make your decisions for you.
Right now, things were good. They were chatting like friends. But when the real crossroads came, when it was time to actually choose sides — there was no guarantee they'd choose her.
Honestly, Mahiko suspected they wouldn't.
Because from Jogo and Hanami's perspective, Mahiko was the traitor. She was the heretic, the renegade, the one who had betrayed her own kind. When the moment of reckoning came — when Mahiko and Kenjaku finally laid their cards on the table — she would probably still end up having to fight them. That was just the likely shape of things.
Though, thinking about it more carefully, those two little bombs probably couldn't actually kill Jogo or Hanami outright.
To keep them hidden, she'd made them small. Very small. About the size of a peppercorn each.
Blowing up Hanami might actually do it — after all, Mahiko had tuned her physical durability down during the modifications. But Jogo? She wasn't so confident. Jogo's defense wasn't impenetrable by any means, but her recovery speed was genuinely fast. Those bombs would, at best, knock her out of commission for a limited period of time.
So feeling too guilty about it was really unnecessary.
............
She and Jogo had just wrapped up their conversation in the fitting room when there was a knock at the door.
Knock knock knock.
The attendant who had run off to fetch underwear was back. The door cracked open just a sliver, and the young woman pushed a paper bag through the gap, eyes fixed rigidly on the ceiling the entire time, absolutely refusing to glance inside for even a second.
"H-here you are."
"Thanks."
Mahiko took the bag and closed the door.
Then, with the propriety of someone who had decided to See No Evil, she shut her eyes and helped Jogo into the undergarments entirely by touch. Jogo spent the whole process with her brow furrowed — probably feeling uncomfortable again — but this time she didn't say the word "burn it." Presumably because she'd already been lectured about that earlier.
After that came the athletic outfit.
A few minutes later, the fitting room door swung open.
Jogo walked out.
Black hoodie, a white undershirt visible at the collar. Loose, long-legged pants, athletic shoes on her feet. Her short white hair was still a disheveled mess — but the messiness had a certain deliberate, effortless quality to it, the kind that somehow looked incredibly cool. Both hands in her pockets, red eyes half-lidded, chin tilted slightly upward, she radiated the unmistakable energy of someone who believed, at a bone-deep level, that she was the best person in any given room.
Exactly the type. The after-school-motorcycle-to-the-underground-livehouse, sporty-rock-girl type.
— Completely unrecognizable as the same person who'd been dangling from her wrists sobbing in that fitting room.
Mahiko gave a satisfied nod.
Yes. Now that was more like it.
She walked up to the counter to pay.
Then she felt a presence drift up silently behind her.
At some point, Jogo had sidled up to her back. Affecting a pose of casual indifference, pretending to look elsewhere, she dropped her voice low: "Hey."
"Hmm?"
"When are we going to buy those… the things called headphones?" The tone was studied nonchalance, but out of the corner of her eye, Mahiko could see Jogo's red pupils sneaking glances at her reaction.
Mahiko smiled and waved her off. "Hey, hold your horses — we're buying clothes for Hanami first, then headphones after."
"I'm not holding anything."
"Okay, okay, you're totally calm."
Still smiling, Mahiko finished paying, then called over to Hanami, who had been waiting quietly outside the whole time, and the three of them headed up toward the higher floors of the mall — the women's clothing section.
Midway there, Mahiko's footsteps faltered.
Cursed Energy.
Not Jogo's. Not Hanami's. Someone else's. Faint — but unmistakably there — drifting toward them from somewhere up ahead.
The other two felt it too. Jogo's red eyes sharpened almost imperceptibly. Hanami tilted her head, just slightly.
All three of them turned to look in the same direction at once.
Down the mall corridor in the distance, three figures were walking toward them.
Maki Zenin. Maki Fushiguro. And Nobara Kugisaki.
Mahiko tensed instinctively.
She immediately dug a mask out of her pocket and pressed it into Jogo's hand. Jogo frowned slightly but put it on without question, no protest.
Why the urgency?
Because those three showing up together meant there was a thirty percent chance they were on a mission. And if they were on a mission, there was another thirty percent chance a Jujutsu Tech instructor was with them. And if there was an instructor — there was a fifty percent chance that instructor was Satoru Gojo.
And if Satoru Gojo was here — they needed to run. Immediately. Because she couldn't beat him, and neither could the other two.
But wait. She thought it through again. That didn't add up.
Right, she was being an idiot. How would those three possibly be on a mission right now?
Even if they were, there was absolutely no way Satoru Gojo was with them.
Because Gojo had just finished his battle with Jogo. Right now, he should be on his way back to report to the principal at Jujutsu Tech — there was no way he'd be here.
And Yuji Itadori wasn't here either. That made sense. He'd definitely gone back to the school with Gojo.
This should be avoidable. No fight needed.
Mahiko was about to warn her two Special Grade companions not to make any sudden moves — when she turned and found they'd already concealed their Cursed Energy signatures on their own, without being told, blending in seamlessly like ordinary humans.
Huh. Not bad, actually.
Then Mahiko checked the reactions of the three on the other side. When Maki Zenin's and Maki Fushiguro's gazes swept over Jogo, there wasn't a flicker of recognition.
She relaxed.
It seemed Satoru Gojo hadn't issued any kind of wanted notice based on Jogo's appearance. At least not yet.
Though — before Mahiko could finish that thought, the girl with the chestnut-colored short hair had already spotted them.
Couldn't really blame her. Their little group was, frankly, impossible to miss. Never mind that Mahiko herself looked like a little angel — Jogo and Hanami were walking spotlights, drawing stares from every direction along their entire route. During the fitting session earlier, you could catch girls in the vicinity whispering things like "those two are so pretty," "are they models?" and "they have to be idols" every few minutes. This conspicuous? Of course they'd been noticed.
And once Nobara Kugisaki spotted them, her gaze locked directly onto Mahiko's face.
The face Mahiko was currently wearing was her usual one for operating in human society — the same one she'd used in front of Nobara before.
"Oh! What a coincidence! We meet again!" Nobara's eyes lit up and she broke into a jog, beaming.
Then she glanced at Jogo and Hanami on either side of Mahiko and greeted them with full enthusiasm: "You two must be her friends! Hi! My name's Nobara Kugisaki!"
An absolute extrovert.
Jogo, masked, swept a flat, disinterested gaze over Nobara and said nothing.
Hanami gave a small nod and smiled gently. "Hello."
She was still wearing the eye patch, which made Nobara blink for a moment when she noticed.
— Don't ask why Hanami had an eye patch. It was XP. Did she not understand? XP.
Nobara, utterly unbothered by the lukewarm reception, turned and pointed back at the two walking up behind her, grinning as she made introductions.
"These two are my classmates! This is Maki Zenin —" The tall girl with black hair in a single ponytail, wearing rectangular-framed glasses, pushed them up and gave a brief nod.
"— And this is Maki Fushiguro!"
Maki Fushiguro.
Oh. So Megumi Fushiguro had changed her name. Made sense — she was a girl now, after all. Though, to be fair, "Megumi" was technically a unisex name… but whatever.
Either way, fine by her.
So Mahiko smiled her sweetest smile and called out brightly: "Hi, Maki-senpai! Hi, Fushiguro-senpai!"
She watched Fushiguro — Maki Fushiguro now — visibly flinch at the word "senpai," her eyebrows twitching in a very obvious way.
Mahiko had a quiet laugh about that on the inside.
Then she turned back and introduced her own companions to the group.
"These are my friends. This one's name is Jogo."
Jogo gave a flat, expressionless nod.
"And this is Hanami."
Hanami offered a small, graceful bow.
Mahiko said both names aloud without a shred of internal anxiety.
Because "Jogo" and "Hanami" as names had never been exposed to any sorcerer. And not one of the three Jujutsu Tech students present had the perceptive ability to see through the human bodies Mahiko had crafted — to detect the Cursed Spirits hidden inside.
Completely safe.
"Are you here shopping too, Kugisaki-senpai?" Mahiko asked cheerfully. "We're actually about to go buy some clothes for Hanami-senpai — want to browse together?"
"Of course!" Nobara's smile went even brighter, then she gave an uncharitable elbow to the ribs of Maki Fushiguro beside her, snickering. "We're actually doing the same thing — shopping for this little miss Maki right here."
Said with a highly uncharitable grin.
Maki Fushiguro's eyebrow twitched again. She looked a little pained, but nodded anyway. "…Sure."
Mahiko immediately giggled behind her hand. "Fushiguro-senpai is so pretty — once she's in new clothes, she'll definitely have tons of guys chasing after her, won't she?"
Nobara was already cheering. "Right, right! So many! She's already got a bunch as it is, honestly!"
Maki Fushiguro's expression did something complicated. She didn't respond.
She was just thinking, privately, that Nobara had some nerve — using this little girl's childhood-innocent candor as cover to tease her like this.
…Hm?
Maki Fushiguro looked at Mahiko.
Something felt off, suddenly.
This girl called Mahiko… why did she carry such a strangely familiar feeling? Not her face — that was genuinely new. The familiarity was something else: something in her bearing, her presence, a vague and subtle resemblance to something Fushiguro couldn't quite name.
Where had she felt something like this before?
She thought about it, and decided it was probably just the PTSD talking. That blue-haired Cursed Spirit had messed with her head enough that she was starting to see traces of it everywhere she looked.
So she shook her head, and pushed the thought away.
____
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