"I'm telling you... Kin?" Hoshi Kirara watched the broadcast on the screen. "This... it's all a bit off, isn't it?"
Why did it feel like the whole match had descended into chaos?
That commentator caught a cold, so they suddenly swapped someone in... but why hadn't the commentators reported it to them at all?
They were the bosses, after all.
How could they swap someone in without so much as a word to them?
"Hey, Kin?" Getting no response, Hoshi Kirara turned to look, only to find Hakari Kinji sprawled on the sofa, a newspaper draped over his face, not watching the livestream at all.
"Don't fall asleep..." Hoshi Kirara sighed helplessly. "The match is already underway, so how is it that you've lost your fighting spirit...?"
Hoshi Kirara had a girl's voice, and looked like a pretty, rebellious delinquent jirai-kei girl, but in truth he was male. Hoshi Kirara and Hakari Kinji were lovers.
And this place, a little room like a KTV private box, was the secret base of the two of them.
Although Hakari Kinji had become the boss of this city in terms of raw power, to be cautious, the two of them still concealed their identities and whereabouts as before.
After all, what they were doing was utterly heretical in the eyes of other sorcerers.
Even if one day Jujutsu High sent people over to surround and wipe them out, they probably wouldn't find it strange.
"Hey, are you even listening to me at all?" Hoshi Kirara made an unhappy face, reached over, and yanked the newspaper off Hakari Kinji's face.
Hakari Kinji had the look of a fierce, brawny yakuza boss, with a touch of dissipation and nonchalance about him.
The man opened his eyes.
He looked utterly exhausted, listless.
"What? What happened?" Hakari Kinji sat up from the sofa and lazily looked toward the screen. "The commentator got swapped? So they got swapped, big deal...."
"You haven't been paying any attention to the livestream at all, have you!" Hoshi Kirara pointed at the screen, looking speechless. "Since when does that guy Sakata have any [Deadly Combo], any [Ultimate Round]? That commentator is purely here to stir up trouble, isn't she?"
The spectators were all amateurs, but the two of them were both professionals.
Although Mahiru's commentary was decent in emotional infectiousness, just how much nonsense its content was, Hoshi Kirara could tell the moment she heard it.
The look on Hakari Kinji's face that showed he hadn't taken any of it in made Hoshi Kirara even angrier. Hakari Kinji scratched his head.
Hoshi Kirara was right; he really hadn't been paying much attention to the match just now.
Weighed down by worries, he had just been completely lost in his own thoughts.
"So the commentator got swapped, whatever... As long as it can rouse the spectators' passion, isn't that enough?"
"How could it possibly be fine?" Hoshi Kirara said. "This is definitely another curse-user stirring up trouble, right?"
Ugh... The moment he heard those words, "curse-user," Hakari Kinji felt a wave of headache.
This city had all sorts, every stripe of person. During this period they had more than once run into trouble because of various curse-users' mischief.
They were really such a nuisance, those curse-users.
"Haah..." Hakari Kinji lowered his head and rubbed his temples. "Let's keep watching for now."
Only then did he finally turn his attention slowly to the livestream.
And then he made a puzzled expression again: "Hm?"
The scene was surprisingly lively.
The spectators were all fervent, too.
"...Not bad?" Hakari Kinji murmured.
If you asked what had been troubling Hakari Kinji lately, what weighed on his mind, then this city itself was his trouble.
Hakari Kinji's life creed was "passion."
So-called passion was that fervent state of mind in which people yearn for a better outcome, yearn for victory, yearn for the future—and the will to strive for it, even to give everything for it.
In his view, the best fuel for passion was gambling, and so he was a gambler through and through.
And another thing that had made him feel passion recently was his underground fight club—he ran an underground fight club, harboring the ambition of legalizing it and spreading it across all of Japan, and that too brought him passion.
Therefore, the recent upheavals in Japan, judged solely by their effect on him personally, were all positive and favorable.
The exposure of Jujutsu and Cursed Spirits, the ceaseless emergence of newborn sorcerers, the social turmoil, and a Jujutsu High that had no spare hands... together, in a short time, they forged Hakari Kinji's turf, expanding his underground fight club to a terrifying degree in an instant.
It had become an entire city.
This was simply an enormous opportunity, enormous luck.
But Hakari Kinji always felt something was off.
He felt he had lost his passion.
Because of the disorder of order, this place had become a haven for many ill-intentioned people, and as a result, the original residents here were constantly being attacked by all kinds of curse-users.
Contrary to many people's impression, although Hakari Kinji was unruly and heretical, he was a very upright person, and the repeated suffering of innocents pained him greatly.
At the same time, the fighting tournament he was most proud of, the one in which he had invested the most passion, had turned out completely different from what he'd imagined.
The original underground fight club had actually not been large in scale, everything still within a controllable range, so he hadn't felt much.
But this time, the people of the whole city had been swept up into the tournament, and things became wildly out of control.
Some curse-users treated the tournament as a place for killing, some secretly profited off it, even doing evil deeds, and some contestants secretly made deals behind the scenes without telling Hakari Kinji.
Take this very match going on today, for example—Sakata and the contestant whom Yuji Itadori had replaced had long since conducted a private, off-stage deal.
Yes, everything seemed a complete mess, without any rhyme or reason...
Hakari Kinji had a bit of management experience, but this was an organization on the scale of a city.
He was utterly out of his depth.
The city had been established for only six or seven days, and already more and more problems were cropping up.
The accumulation of these problems was gradually eroding the city's already fragile cohesion.
This tournament had pushed the city's atmosphere to a fever pitch, and he could almost conclude that this atmosphere would absolutely plummet as the tournament got underway.
What's more, the so-called eight strong fighters of the quarterfinals were actually all dregs and rejects—fine for propping up an underground fight gym, but utterly unable to support a stage on the scale of a citywide carnival.
Boring, plus these two contestants had even made their own backroom deal... yesterday he had already foreseen how flat today's first match would fall.
The spectators would be disappointed; the higher the expectations, the harder the fall when disappointed.
That was why he hadn't watched just now.
But... to his surprise, the scene was insanely hot.
Although that girl's commentary was loud-mouthed and full of wild exaggerations, it had the spectators—these laymen—and some inexperienced young sorcerers utterly bamboozled.
And then there was that new, unfamiliar pink-haired youth up on the stage.
Unlike the rather lousy Sakata, the youth was, at a glance, an expert by nature.
Although he too was acting out a script, his dodging and weaving, every attack, every movement, was swift and powerful, immensely watchable.
Even in Hakari Kinji's eyes, it gave off a dazzling impression.
"This is really..." Hakari Kinji opened his mouth.
The feeling in his heart was hard to put into words.
But watching the scene on the livestream, listening to the spectators' overwhelming cheers, he seemed to feel himself growing "hot."
"Damn it!" On the field, Sakata gritted his teeth and threw another punch, only for his opponent to dodge it in a seemingly hair-raising but actually effortless way.
Once or twice, he might really believe the opponent was having a close call, but after enough times, he realized the opponent was completely at ease.
It turned out that when the opponent had called him lousy, it hadn't been provocation at all... he genuinely thought he was lousy.
"How can this be!"
Sakata had roughly the strength of two or three Miwas, and wasn't a particularly weak fighter in the club either; he had his pride, too.
This pink-haired youth who'd suddenly appeared—he had never seen him before.
He had assumed the opponent was able to replace the previous fighter because there was a monetary deal between Yuji Itadori and that fighter as well.
But it turned out he was wrong; the opponent was genuinely terrifyingly strong.
"Fighter Sakata's movements are beginning to slow, but this isn't because he's tired—it's that he's entering a flow state; his attacks are growing more and more fluid, so he actually no longer needs speed..."
The commentary overhead was still spouting nonsense nonstop.
Damn it, lady, can you cut the crap or what? Aren't you tired of running your mouth this whole time?
Flow state my ass.
He was genuinely worn out beyond endurance.
Had he known fighting the opponent for real would be this exhausting, he'd have been better off honestly striking nine poses on the spot, reciting a thousand cursed incantations, and then striking a pose to be defeated.
But no—if he gave up now he'd become a clown.
That detestable commentator kept roasting him on the spit... it was really so rotten of her!
"It's time to end this." Yuji Itadori's gaze suddenly turned sharp.
A splendid fight needed a beginning, a turning point, and a decisive winning blow delivered at the very end.
There had been too much sparring around; it was time for the finale.
Yuji Itadori assumed the opening stance of a mighty punch.
Sakata took one look and his heart jolted.
And the surrounding spectators all seemed to anticipate something, their cheers growing louder.
"That stance! There's no doubt about it!" Mahiru, too, understood that Yuji Itadori wanted to end the match, and let out a timely, gasp-like piece of commentary: "This is Fighter Yuji Itadori's signature special move—the Malevolent Shrine Elbow!"
"This is the strongest elbow strike, forged by fusing Jujutsu Technique and martial arts!!"
"Fighter Yuji Itadori, are you finally going to end the match?!"
At this very moment, Yuji Itadori held his breath and focused, sinking into his most serious state.
In this instant, the youth had to control himself with all his might—otherwise, in a moment's carelessness, he could beat the man to death.
He had to strike shallowly, and yet strike with style.
Quite the challenge.
Yuji Itadori swiftly judged the distance, then stepped forward and struck directly.
But—Sakata stepped back, and suddenly stepped into a crack in the ground that had split open from the fighting.
He stumbled.
This single stumble actually caused Yuji Itadori to misjudge the distance of the blow.
Yuji Itadori had originally meant to lightly graze the opponent's skin—just a touch, without actually slamming into him.
But because of this stumble, out of excessive caution, he ended up failing to hit the opponent at all—his elbow strike came to a stop just barely a few centimeters short of Sakata.
Whoosh—
The gust of wind it stirred up blew across Sakata's somewhat dumbfounded face; he hadn't even made out Yuji Itadori's movement before the opponent's attack had already halted right in front of him.
The surrounding spectators suddenly all fell dead silent, stunned by Yuji Itadori's killer move whiffing into empty air.
Oh no! Yuji Itadori panicked inwardly, sweat breaking out on his back.
If a much-anticipated big move had been dodged, that would have been fine, but to misjudge the distance and whiff into nothing was just too embarrassing.
It seemed he was utterly doomed now.
He had let down all the spectators' expectations, making all their excitement look like a joke.
The feeling was like a character in a manga who was about to win in the previous chapter, only to be brutally axed in the next—it would absolutely disappoint the audience, and his plan to get close to Hakari Kinji might just fail like this.
The whole arena fell silent for a moment, and Yuji Itadori's heart went cold, too.
And it was just at this moment—"It's Limitless!! Fighter Sakata can actually use the Limitless Technique!!" the commentator girl exclaimed. "He actually used the move that only the strongest sorcerer, Satoru Gojo, can do, to block Fighter Yuji Itadori's certain-victory blow!"
Sakata froze on the spot.
Yuji Itadori froze right along with him.
In the stands, Fushiguro Maki let out an "Oh my god..." and covered her face.
And the spectators in the stands, after the silence, burst into an even more overwhelming wave of cheers.
"Raaaaaaahhhh!!!—"
Holy crap! It's actually Limitless!
As the strongest sorcerer, Satoru Gojo was naturally already known to the spectators by reputation, and although none of them knew exactly what Satoru Gojo's Limitless Technique was actually like... the commentator knew so much—surely what she said must be right!
Holy crap, a little quarterfinal-to-semifinal match actually had such a brilliant, magnificent twist!
This was worth the ticket price even if it killed you!!—
And so.
Far away in Tokyo, Satoru Gojo, while resting up on a rooftop after one of his Domain Expansions had ended, received an urgent phone call from the jujutsu assistant Ijichi.
"Satoru Gojo! Satoru Gojo! Something huge has happened!"
Gojo was puzzled: "What huge thing?"
"Your illegitimate child! Your illegitimate child has been discovered!" Ijichi shouted anxiously over the phone. "Right over at Mahiru and Hakari Kinji's place, your illegitimate child used the Limitless Technique in front of everyone!—Your illegitimate child has already awakened the Gojo Family's hereditary technique!"
"...Huh?"
At this moment, listening to the voice on the phone, Satoru Gojo felt as if he'd been caught in his own Unlimited Void.
...What do you mean, my illegitimate child?
Holy crap, I have an illegitimate child? How do I myself not know about it?
"You're totally talking nonsense, aren't you?" Satoru Gojo smirked. "Where did you hear this from? It's pure baloney."
"How could it possibly be a lie?!"
"Just think about it—when would I ever have had the time to..." "How could the Limitless Technique possibly be faked?! Even Yuji's full-power blow was blocked with ease!" Ijichi shouted. "And besides, it was Mahiru who declared it! Mid-commentary she declared that person was your illegitimate child—her perception absolutely couldn't be wrong, right?!"
Satoru Gojo fell silent for a long, long while.
Then he hung up the phone, tilted his head back, and covered his face. "You little..."
Mahiru... what are you up to in front of everyone this time?!
My right to my reputation! My reputation!!
____
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