"Can't find him?"
"No, not yet." Rime answered Kenjaku, her eyes narrowing dangerously. "But he's definitely somewhere in those mountains… If we keep looking, I refuse to believe he can hide from us forever."
They were talking, of course, about Mechamaru.
Mechamaru had been one of their most important pieces — but now that Mahiko was gone, there was naturally no reason for Mechamaru to keep helping Kenjaku.
So he'd run.
But how could Kenjaku possibly have failed to see this coming?
Kenjaku hadn't yet told Mechamaru that his plan was to seal Satoru Gojo — but Mechamaru still knew that Kenjaku was walking around in Suguru Geto's face.
The moment Mahiko broke completely with Kenjaku, the mutual binding between Mechamaru and Kenjaku shattered as well. Mechamaru was free to betray Kenjaku — but at the same time, Kenjaku had already begun sealing off every approach to Mechamaru's dwelling.
Mechamaru's dwelling was a reservoir dam somewhere in a mountain forest on the Kyoto side.
And all around it, Kenjaku had long since quietly woven a web of barriers and Cursed Spirits, hidden in the dark.
When Mechamaru fled, he was immediately hemmed in by Kenjaku's Cursed Spirits and sorcerer subordinates. A fierce battle followed — and in the end, Mechamaru failed to break through the barrier, and had no choice but to go to ground somewhere deep in the forest.
The forest was vast, and no one knew exactly where in it Mechamaru was hiding.
But the barrier had sealed off several acres of mountain forest entirely. Finding him would be troublesome — but not impossible. Eventually, they'd track him down.
"There's no rush," Kenjaku said. "With Mechamaru out of contact, the sorcerers are certain to send someone out to investigate… and right now, the person most likely to be dispatched — is someone I very much want to meet."
"Want to meet?"
"Or rather—" Kenjaku smiled, "—someone whose death would set off a very interesting chain of events."
He and Mahiko had torn their masks off for good.
But at the same time — because Mahiko's Domain Expansion carried a guaranteed-hit effect, the vessel Kenjaku had prepared beforehand to receive "one use of Mahiko's Idle Transfiguration" had, by a stroke of luck, actually captured one instance of her Technique.
Kenjaku was no longer in the position of "everything falls apart without Mahiko" — and that, after all the enormous losses Mahiko's departure had inflicted on Kenjaku's operation, was the one thing that could genuinely be called good news.
"Mahiko's strength has already reached a level that ordinary sorcerers simply cannot handle," Kenjaku said. "And going forward — avoid fighting her in large crowds unless absolutely necessary. The more people around her, the denser they are, the stronger her Domain becomes, and the wider its range."
In theory, in a packed crowd, the only ones currently capable of meeting Mahiko in a Domain battle were Kenjaku, Satoru Gojo, and Sukuna.
Everyone else… would have to find another way.
Ha… Looking back now — that blue-haired Cursed Spirit had become quite the monster, hadn't she?
At this rate, what heights might she reach? Could she climb even higher than him — become the most powerful Cursed Spirit in history… reach the same tier as Sukuna and Satoru Gojo?
In all honesty, it was unlikely.
Because Satoru Gojo and Sukuna were simply on another level entirely.
And yet — Kenjaku found himself looking forward to it all the same.
"I already have a feeling," Kenjaku said, smiling. "What comes next is only going to get more and more interesting."
Meanwhile. On Mahiko's end.
"Hey, what is all this stuff you're buying? Is it actually useful for anything?" In the middle of the supermarket, Jogo watched Mahiko pushing one shopping cart with her left hand and steering another with her right, his eyebrow twitching. "By rights you should be buying some decent snacks to keep us entertained — what are all these red bottles and cans even for?"
"What are they for? Take a guess." Mahiko rolled her eyes and held up a household fire extinguisher, shaking it back and forth. "You, you absolute menace, set fire to the house five times in a single day yesterday. When I'm not home, God only knows which day you'll manage to burn the whole place down."
"Dagon can put out fires," Jogo said, frowning.
"By the time Dagon puts the fire out, the place will be fit to breed fish!" Mahiko planted a hand on her hip, thoroughly incensed. "Don't use one disaster to excuse another — not a single one of you is any less trouble than the rest!"
Today was the second day.
Yuji Itadori and Megumi Fushiguro's visit had happened yesterday.
The house they were living in now was a safe house provided by Jujutsu High, fitted with barriers that suppressed Cursed Energy fluctuations — so with three Cursed Spirits inside, as long as no sorcerers wandered nearby and they didn't kick up too much of a ruckus, using Jujutsu Techniques actually wouldn't register to the outside world.
The problem was that not one of these three Cursed Spirits was remotely low-maintenance.
Before, Mahiko hadn't been living with the three of them, and had no real idea what their individual domestic situations were like — but now that they were all sharing the same roof, she was discovering, one by one, that each of them was a force of nature in her own right.
"And what's this?" Jogo pulled a white bottle out from among the pile of red ones in the shopping cart. "Herbicide?"
"Right. For dealing with the bed." Mahiko clicked her tongue.
The house they were staying in was a three-storey townhouse — two floors above ground and one below. The second floor held the four bedrooms — and thank goodness Megumi and the others hadn't gone upstairs yesterday, because if they had, they would definitely have seen that Hanami's bed was completely overgrown with all manner of plants and weeds.
The first time Mahiko had gone up to the second floor, she'd stopped dead in her tracks, utterly dumbfounded.
Hanami's bed looked less like a bed and more like an enormous potted plant.
When Mahiko asked what on earth was going on, Hanami had replied with an expression of complete innocence that she was used to sleeping in grass.
Mahiko had stared at her for a long moment.
So Mahiko had issued a strict order — absolutely no more of that, ever — and had now gone out and bought Hanami a bottle of herbicide.
"You all need to behave yourselves while you're at home." Mahiko thought it over and still couldn't quite put her mind at ease, so she turned back to Jogo with one hand on her hip and ran through it again. "When I need your help, I'll come to you. Don't go starting trouble all over the place, understood?"
Her current plan was simple: get these three venerable disasters settled in the safe house Jujutsu High had provided, and keep them there.
As long as they stayed put and didn't cause trouble, Kenjaku would have no way to trace them.
With them at home, Mahiko could go out on her own and carry out whatever she needed to do — and whenever any of those plans actually required backup, she could call them in quickly enough.
Part of it, honestly, was that all three of them had a truly catastrophic grasp of basic human society.
She'd have to find an opportunity to give the three of them some kind of crash course.
Though, come to think of it — there was something almost funny about the fact that a Jujutsu High safe house was now playing host to four calamity-class Cursed Spirits.
"I'll stock you up on snacks and game consoles and things — if you get bored, eat snacks and play games. If you want something specific to eat, you can order food delivery online; I'll show you how to use it later…"
Mahiko kept talking to Jogo as she pushed the cart along.
Jogo raised an eyebrow at that. "Now that we've broken with that guy, can you still get your hands on human currency? You're buying so much — wouldn't it be better to focus on things that actually matter?"
Mahiko just shrugged and said it was fine.
The money Jujutsu High gave her was still more than enough.
"Oh, right — there's one more thing. I need to have a word with Hanami later," the blue-haired girl added, her expression darkening slightly as something came to mind. "Under absolutely no circumstances is Hanami ever to make juice for outsiders. For us — fine. For anyone outside — absolutely not. Ever."
Jogo blinked.
"I believe," Jogo observed, "that humans call that behaviour hoarding."
"I'm doing it for content compliance!" Mahiko shouted.
The two of them pushed several loaded carts up to the checkout.
Honestly, it had cost quite a bit.
They'd bought an enormous amount — bags and packages of every size, not easy to carry at all. Fortunately, both Mahiko and Jogo were exceptionally strong, so they each loaded themselves up with a massive pile.
The two of them walked out draped head to toe in shopping bags, drawing wide-eyed stares from everyone around them.
Hanami and Kin-chan had been waiting over in the children's play area, amusing themselves while Mahiko and Jogo handled the shopping.
When Mahiko made her way over, Kin-chan was still at the play area, drawing.
The scene in front of her was a perfectly ordinary, everyday scene — the kind that could almost trick you into believing that all the danger and all the storms had passed. But in reality…
The storm was only just beginning.
This was hard-won peace, earned in the wake of their battle with Kenjaku — a brief moment to breathe in the middle of a punishing rhythm. And as it always is, just before a true storm breaks, the calm was disarmingly quiet.
Megumi Fushiguro and the others' so-called plan was set to unfold tomorrow. Megumi hadn't told Mahiko the specifics, but tomorrow was probably not going to be particularly peaceful.
On Kenjaku's end, after a brief period of recuperation, he would inevitably restart his plans. It was possible he'd come straight back for Mahiko and the others the moment he'd sealed Satoru Gojo.
Or it was possible that before he even sealed Satoru Gojo, he'd launch a strike against Mahiko and the others first.
One way or another — if Kenjaku wasn't taken out, Mahiko and the others would eventually be taken out by Kenjaku. Simple as that.
So Mahiko, too, had to keep moving — without a moment's pause.
So today's lightness was probably the last calm before the storm.
"Hah…" Mahiko exhaled.
Honestly, being able to rest for these two days — yesterday and today — wasn't such a bad thing.
Because Mahiko actually needed some time to sit with and process the new things she'd learned in her battle with Kenjaku — things like that new Domain.
The Domain had come to her in a sudden flash of inspiration, and there were still a lot of details left to refine and work through.
It was powerful, but it had a weakness: when there weren't enough humans in the vicinity to serve as anchor points, its effectiveness took a significant hit.
She had to find a way to address that gap.
"Hey." Her gaze drifting toward the distant shapes of Hanami and Kin-chan, Mahiko suddenly spoke. "Earlier — thank you. For what you did."
"Hm?" Jogo glanced sideways at her. "You mean breakfast?"
"I mean you saving me."
"Oh, that." Jogo's tone was somewhere between dismissive and casual. "Don't make too much of it. I say all Cursed Spirits are kin — but in practice, the friends I can actually count are only three."
Mahiko turned to look at him.
Jogo turned too, meeting her eyes directly. "Companions you wait a thousand years to find — of course you'd want to hold onto them."
Good grief.
Mahiko scrunched her neck down into her shoulders and grinned despite herself. "How are you being so sappy out of nowhere?"
"What's 'sappy'?" Jogo frowned.
Thud.
A muffled crash from somewhere in the distance made both Mahiko and Jogo jump.
They spun around.
The little gremlin who had been sitting at the table drawing just moments ago had toppled sideways onto the floor. She was gasping in great heaving breaths, her face flushed bright red — she looked for all the world like she'd been struck by some sudden acute illness.
"Kin-chan?!"
Both Mahiko and Jogo startled, and sprinted over.
Hanami had already set down whatever she'd been playing with and crossed the play area in a few long strides to reach her.
Mahiko crouched down halfway, reached out, and used her own Technique directly to examine Kin-chan's body.
Jogo and Hanami were both desperately anxious — but neither of them spoke, both staying quiet, waiting for Mahiko to make sense of the situation.
Mahiko kept frowning throughout.
It took quite a while before she finally pulled her hand back.
"Well?" Jogo pressed immediately. "Don't tell me she's been attacked?"
Mahiko shook her head.
An attack was impossible.
Both Hanami and Mahiko herself had been continuously monitoring everything within a two-hundred-metre radius — there had been absolutely no anomaly of any kind.
And besides… the state Kin-chan was in right now didn't look like illness either.
Gasping for breath, flushed face — those symptoms actually pointed to something else entirely.
"She seems to be growing," Mahiko said, her brow still furrowed. "We need to get her home quickly."
____
👻🔥P- Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: Samsara Game: Starting in The Long Dark with My Waifus
Help us hit our targets:
🎯 100 Powerstones = +1 free chapter for all