Chapter 30

  “Alright, listen up, children,” Yaga-sensei barked at the students while on the field, sans myself and Gojo. We were sitting next to one another in the bleachers fifty yards away, banished for this lesson as a ‘punishment’.

  Indeed, in Japan, being made to stand out was considered a punishment. In America, this would have been a privilege, missing gym class.

  Then again, if I had gone to a magic school in my first run of life, I supposed magic gym would have been a different story.

  My… gym-partner, seated next to me, moaned in exhaustion as Yaga went over the fundamentals of Jujutsu.

  Shoko snuck a glance at me from the crowd and grinned mockingly. Ugh. She was having quite the bit of fun at my expense, wasn’t she? I had to get her back for this. In a way that wouldn’t make her hate me, of course. As far as human playthings went, she was rather fragile. I had to respect that.

  Mostly, my focus was on trying not to police any of the crap going on in and around school like I was still in the Hibana clan. There were some instances of bullying that I did stop, using my Juchū. Mostly, it was between my underclassmen. The high school portion of Jujutsu Academy was in fact remarkably free of bullying.

  I could do nothing about the cases of misogyny except just bite the perpetrators with my Juchū a little. I hoped this sort of psychological conditioning would bear fruit over time. It rankled me that I couldn’t do more.

  “I was looking forward to this,” Gojo said. “Now, I gotta watch. Boring.”

  “Looking forward to learning the very fundamentals of jujutsu?” I asked.

  “In my head, I imagined that I would be teaching them,” he said. “Including the teacher. Then they’d just go on and on about how cool and awesome I am.”

  “Gojo is a loser,” one kid sang, far away in the elementary and middle school portions of campus.

  I laughed a little.

  “What’s so funny?”

  I had to figure out a way to lead him to those kids in a way that they wouldn’t notice. This was too funny.

  Actually…

  Michiko.

  Michiko opened up a portal in front of me, above a playground of kids. “Come here,” I beckoned to Gojo.

  He raised an eyebrow as he scooted closer.

  “Gojo is a loser

  He’s the biggest fraud in school, a

  Big, fat loser

  No one likes his dumb white hair, a

  Big, fat loser

  No one likes dumb black shades

  Oreoreore, he should go away!”

  He clutched his chest, expression scrunched up in abject hurt.

  “Hahahahahaha!”

  “Teira!” Yaga roared at me.

  I quickly had Michiko dispel the portal and sat up straight.

  Still, my lips quivered in mirth.

  “Why would they sing that?” Gojo whispered.

  “I don’t know!” I said. “They’re so cruel, aren’t they?”

  “I haven’t done anything to those kids,” he said. “This is just wrong on so many levels! Wait—why would they ever sing this?” he asked, sounding more inquisitive than hurt. “Someone must have—“ he turned to me. Then grinned widely. “You taught them that, didn’t you? You freak, you!”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I batted my eyes innocently.

  “Well-played, Teira. Well played.” He punched my arm. “You are the buzzkill to end all buzzkills. I honestly appreciate the effort you put into being so cruel.”

  “You chose to get involved with a human curse,” I said to him. “I will humble you, by any means necessary.”

  “Someone is obsessed,” he said.

  “Yuck. Don’t flatter yourself. It’s because it’s something to do while making the next four years in hell fly by,” I sighed. “Seriously. All this is beneath me.”

  Case in point, after Yaga-sensei went through the basics of cursed energy infusion, he had the kids run laps. Geto pulled ahead effortlessly. Made sense, he was strong.

  “Why’d you come, really?” Gojo asked me.

  “Cut a deal with HQ. In exchange for wiping away the red on my family’s ledger, they wanted me to come here. That’s what we talked about back when they summoned me for the first time when I was twelve.” Then I grinned. “In revenge, I made sure to flood Jujutsu High with thousands of new sorcerers. As one giant middle finger to the conservatives. You might not have noticed it yet, but really, the traditionalists are in a tailspin at the moment. It’s only a matter of time until the old structures collapse from the weight of all the new blood.”

  Gojo looked up at the sky. “Huh. Clever.”

  “You don’t seem upset about that,” I said. “I expected as much, but… you really don’t mind at all, do you?”

  “I’m not really… dependent on anyone. Or anything,” Gojo said. “Certainly not the oldies. Sure, while being the strongest jujutsu sorcerer in the modern era, and probably history, does have its perks, I don’t think my strength depends on anything else. Not even your strength.”

  “That’s a convenient outlook for me,” I said. “Thank you for not getting in my way.”

  “And what is your way, anyway? Where do you see things going for Jujutsu Society?”

  “There’s a lot of inequality.”

  “Yeah? Where?”

  I furrowed my brows. “To be honest, I’m a little disappointed that you can’t see it. But I guess that’s expected. For all your Six Eyes, you don’t see much beyond your own way. I don’t really have that luxury.”

  He groaned. “Yeah, yeah.”

  “They’re building a third school,” I said.

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yep. In Fukuoka,” I said tiredly. “All the kids I found put too much of a strain on the system. The Academy is understaffed, so they’ll wait a year until the seniors graduate and some of them can become teachers.”

  “That’s pretty cool.”

  “The kids who didn’t make the cut for the intake to Tokyo and Kyoto were all biracial or ethnic minorities of mixed blood,” I said. “So that’s where they’re going. To Fukuoka. Where they can all be grouped together and segregated from the main student bodies. I doubt they’ll be invited to the exchange event next year.”

  “Huuuuh?” Gojo gaped in surprise. “The hell? Surely, there aren’t that many to warrant an entirely new school!”

  “Good catch,” I said. “They’re minorities, after all. No, there’s about fifty of them, all told. Back in the old days of Jujutsu High, that would have been enough to fill up the entire school, but with our new capacity, making room for them would have been trivial.”

  “Dammit,” Gojo growled. “That’s so stupid. Why separate them like that?”

  “The real question is: why is it even surprising to you? Women have only been allowed to become Jujutsu Sorcerers under HQ since the end of World War 2, after the rise in cursed spirit activity that had resulted,” I said. “The Big Three likely have different internal policies. Women’s rights alone are laggard in the world of Jujutsu. You ask me what my plans are, and it’s to abolish all the stupid little rules that keep people in unequal circumstances.”

  “But… if you’re the reason why all these kids are here, why couldn’t you just make your own Jujutsu Society with these new people?” he asked me. “You’re strong.”

  I nodded. “Partly, I didn’t know where you stood on the matter.”

  “Because you never wanted to meet,” he rolled his eyes.

  Ugh. Whatever. “But mostly, it was to minimize the bloodshed of the innocent—the students. I could have trained them myself and approached the government as an alternative to the traditionalist Jujutsu Headquarters and the Big Three, but that would have involved too many risks. I’m not averse to risk, but I make it a goal not to let innocents get needlessly killed—especially those I’m responsible for. This way… is dead simple. Enter the organization, change it from within—violently, if need be. Destroy the old within the organization with a vengeance and thoroughness. And there you go.”

  “How will they let you in?” Gojo asked. “If they know you’re gonna destroy what they love about it?”

  “It’s simple: you divide and conquer. Jujutsu Headquarters is going to grow too big to remain under the thumb of the Big Three. And Headquarters likes me.”

  “Likes you?! How?!”

  I snorted. “Money.”

  He wrinkled his nose at me. “You bribed them? Teira, you’re diabolical,” then he grinned. “But in the best way.”

  “Thank you,” I said, meaning it. Normally, I wouldn’t have been this forthcoming about my political agenda to someone I had only recently thought of as the secret weapon of my enemy, but at this point, I felt I had an almost perfect measure of his personality. Not just from speaking to him and fighting him, but from sensing the sincerity within him. My antennae could see through all lies, and right now, they were telling me that it wouldn’t take me much effort at all to turn him towards my cause.

  The Big Three could only blame themselves for having birthed such an anomaly.

  “You can help me, you know. If you really do mean to be my friend.”

  “Aaand here comes the manipulation attempt. Alright, lay it on me.” He was speaking as if he hadn’t already bought into everything that I told him that I stood for. Trying to save face, maybe. It wouldn’t work. I was a very convincing person when I had a mind to be.

  “You’re Gojo Satoru. You’re one entire third of the Big Three, on your lonesome. I know of your clan’s statistics. They have even less sorcerers than mine did.”

  “Right, before you killed them all,” he nodded. Hm. Made sense that he knew. I had told HQ after all.

  “Right. And none with any registered cursed techniques as well. They’re nothing without you. That makes you the only relevant voice in your clan. Sure, you might not be politically strong, but sorcerers only care about real strength.”

  “Looks like you’ve got everything figured out already,” he said. “Well done. But I’m just gonna come out and say it: don’t bother me about this politics stuff. Not until we’ve graduated. You can do whatever you want, but I won’t make any moves on your behalf, alright?”

  A carte blanche to do whatever the hell I wanted without worrying about the Gojo clan recruiting their human Endbringer. As far as assurances went, there wasn’t a more valuable one in this world of Jujutsu.

  I was basically invincible now.

  I had won. All that was left for me to do was to actually win. That would come in time.

  “Peaceful high school days, huh?” I said, in response to Gojo’s sincere statement.

  “Yeah… pretty much,” he said wistfully, looking away to conceal a flicker of sincerity over his features, as if I was even using my eyes to sense them.

  D’awwwww.

  Someone didn’t want to grow up too quickly. I found that admittedly quite adorable. But I would oblige him.

  I opened the portal to the kids singing about Gojo being a loser.

  He clicked his tongue and shoved his head through it. “Hey, brats!” he roared.

  They all screamed like nothing else and scattered.

  I shoved him away from the portal before closing it. “Tormenting children now, are we?” I asked Gojo.

  “Those kids had it coming,” he grumbled.

  “These high school days won’t be peaceful.”

  He gnashed his teeth.

  “I’ll get you back for this, Teira. Mark my words.”

  While he’d try to figure that out, I didn’t feel like I was quite done with him.

  “Also—“ Gojo continued, “that song was to the tune of Fighting Dreamers! You like Naruto?”

  I grinned, as I felt an idea manifest. Not done with him at all. “I’m current on the manga and the anime,” I said.

  The slowest among the students doing laps, paradoxically, wasn’t the rotund Ishikawa Takumi, but instead it was Shoko. She wasn’t even really infusing herself. She was just running like a normal person.

  I vowed to give her some private lessons.

  “No way!” he said. “Naruto is one of my favorites.”

  I acted incredibly interested in that. “Oh, really? What else do you like?”

  “Ah, that’s easy. My original loves: Pokemon and Digimon. I don’t care that they’re rivals. My heart is big enough for the two of them!”

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “That’s… big of you,” I said. “Most people would just pick a tribe and fight over it.”

  “Hah. Not me. I see the unique things that both stories bring to the table. But the Pokemon games are better. Digimon’s anime is better.”

  I nodded. “What else do you like?”

  “Dragon Ball! Especially Dragon Ball Z. That was my entire childhood!”

  “Huh,” I grinned. “Popular picks, huh? Lot of people like those,” I nodded.

  “What do you like?” he bumped my shoulder playfully.

  I grinned at him. “I’ll tell you what I don’t like. Any of those amateurish, nonsense stories you just brought up.”

  Gojo gasped.

  “Least of all Dragon Ball. You know, at first, I was neutral about Dragon Ball. I just didn’t think it was the best. Now, though? Just from how much attention and praise this story has gotten, at the cost of every other masterpiece of manga published, I’m more inclined towards finding all its numerous little flaws and faults. It’s a popularized sci-fi re-telling of Journey to the West, retaining some of its fantasy themes. And just like Journey to the West, the story-telling is circular and reiterative. Perfect for entertaining dimwitted children like you. That’s all it’s for in the end: dimwitted children.”

  Gojo scooted away from me, looking down on the ground. “You go too far,” he said tonelessly.

  I didn’t stop there. “I mean, seriously! You have to be mentally deficient to ever find value in—“

  Gojo plugged his ears and started singing, “Lalalalalalala—”

  I clicked my tongue. Foiled again.

  After a minute of doing the same singing, he unplugged his ears. “Are you caught up on the manga to Dragon Ball?” I asked him.

  “What, you wanna spoil me? Wait—you’re smiling?! You do want to spoil me? There’s something seriously wrong with you!”

  “Son Goku is, by far, the least compelling—

  “Lalalalalalalala!” He plugged his ears and sang. Then he stuck out his tongue at me. Then he kept singing.

  I summoned some Juchū in the air in front of him to spell out my thoughts. He closed his eyes.

  Then he shouted. “No! My Six Eyes!” Indeed, he could see right through his eyelids.

  I kept spelling out my rant. He ran to the other side of the bleachers. I followed after him.

  He took off into the sky.

  “GOJO?!” Yaga-sensei roared.

  Gojo floated down.

  “What the hell are you doing?!” he shouted as he stomped over to Gojo. “I told you to sit down and reflect!”

  Gojo seemed lost for words and he cast me a betrayed glance. What, was he going to snitch? Was the strongest going to resort to such a petty tactic? My smirk communicated all this to him and more.

  “I’m sorry, sensei.”

  “You’re clearly not being kept busy enough. I want you to run with the others. Middle of the pack.”

  “What?!”

  “Did. I. Stutter?”

  “…No,” he groaned. Then he took off running.

  Hehehehehehehe.

  My glee lasted for all of one minute, after which I just decided to focus on each of the students.

  Takahashi Hana was unique in that she had chosen to wear that regressive old-style Japanese girl’s gym clothes, with blue short shorts and a white tee, instead of a more sensible track suit, or something with a longer inseam. That was her choice to make, and I wasn’t going to police it, but it did pay to speculate on the sort of person that she was.

  She had an eye for style and image, obviously, and was confident in her own looks. And based on the fact that she very brazenly wore perfume to school of all places—a decidedly strange thing in this culture—she wanted people to notice her for her looks.

  She was also deeply insecure. Upon arriving in class, she had made a beeline for the quiet girl in the back known as Ito Aoi, whose own strength of character was decidedly lacking. Hana had judged, at a glance, that they would make for a good combination—probably to sate her own need for validation.

  Hana had made a good selection. The short, mousy brown-haired girl, wearing a full tracksuit as she ran, kept to the middle of the pack in order to not stand out, a few feet next to where Gojo was. Outwardly, she didn’t look like much.

  Still, Ito’s bone-density rivalled that of seasoned professional combat athletes—male athletes. Her musculature belied her baseline strength and coordination. Of course, without cursed energy, she would never be able to beat a professional male athlete if they weighed more than twice her weight. No, her true strength laid in how well her body conducted cursed energy. She had a knack for enforcement, and a body clearly trained for combat sports.

  I recalled that her family owned a karate dojo in Nerima. She’d gone out at night to exorcise curses in and around her area. Given that she was now fifteen, and she had likely awakened at six like everyone else, that suggested a rather long and storied career in self-taught sorcery.

  Still, she chose not to pull ahead in front of Takahashi Hana.

  Satoshi Ren had left his hammer by the bleachers. It wasn’t a Cursed Tool from what I could tell. Likely a channel through which he worked his Jujutsu. He was desperately trying to catch up with Geto. Suzuki Yui was overtaking him. She taunted him from the front. Then he’d overtake her and taunt her.

  They would alternate on who was second-place, but Geto didn’t seem to care at all. He didn’t even seem to be pushing himself.

  I landed a Juchū on his shoulder. “Don’t panic,” I said through it.

  He panicked by running up ahead much faster, thus slightly crushing the spirits of the two punks giving it their all in this race.

  “I knew it,” I said to him. “You are faster.”

  “Hibana?”

  “Teira,” I said. “I told you, don’t use my clan name.”

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “Why aren’t you running as fast as you can?”

  “What would be the point?” he asked. He was pulling ahead just to be out of earshot from Satoshi and Suzuki.

  Geto Suguru. From Kamakura, a city just south of Tokyo. I had discovered him two years ago, though he must have been active for many years before then. My Juchū had noted a relatively small number of cursed spirit activity in the city, and had stuck around to observe.

  The answer had come in the form of a human calamity that could control cursed spirits.

  He was thirteen when I first saw him, standing atop a building while a murder of crow-like cursed spirits flew above his head in a vortex. They would fly away, and then return with conjured images reporting their findings. Geto Suguru didn’t have Sense Expansion through his cursed spirits, but he had found workarounds.

  I had left the city of Kamakura to him, letting him knock himself out with the responsibility of taking care of his town. I wanted to see how far he would come.

  …Not nearly far enough.

  “They call you Special Grade too, right?” I asked him. I wasn’t really sure, myself. Much of what went down in the secret council was also a secret to me, due to their barriers. “I doubt even Gojo knows. You didn’t tell him, after all.”

  “How do you know that?” Geto asked.

  “I have really good ears,” I said. “But nevermind the ethical implications of that statement.”

  “I would strongly prefer it if you didn’t torment me the way you torment Satoru,” he said, an edge of threat in his words.

  “That’s not fair. I never implied that I would,” I said. “Gojo is one thing. You warrant more respect.”

  “I’m not Special Grade,” Geto said. That was surprising. Had the standards risen? Or…?

  “You held back to the administration?”

  He sighed. “What do you mean by that?”

  “This is… awkward of me to say to you,” I said. “So don’t get the wrong idea. But I’ve known of your activities for the last two years. I know how strong you are. You held yourself back, for sure. There’s no upper limits to how many cursed spirits you can take in. You contain multitudes. You could watch over the city of Tokyo and exorcise all the major curses on your lonesome.”

  “You’re right: that is incredibly awkward to hear,” he said. “That you’ve been spying on me. Apologies, but I just had to say it.”

  “I get it, but let’s move on,” I said. “No need to dwell on bygones. And I never did you wrong either, so why are you so concerned anyway?”

  “You’re not… giving me much room to process, you know?” Processing was for pansies. He should just act like me and set it aside.

  “Why?” I asked. “Why hold back?”

  He sighed again. Really, despite his speed, he wasn’t even winded. Excellent cursed energy infusion, borne from having massive stores of energy. More than Gojo, certainly.

  “To ensure my safety,” he simply said. “Why would I entrust this… place with the knowledge of all I am?”

  I grinned. I was starting to like him more and more. “Wise,” I said. “But the cat will leave the bag one way or another. When the chips are down, you won’t have to hold yourself back, alright? I’ll block anything that the oldies try to do. Gojo and I will.”

  “So I’m slowly coming to understand,” Geto said. “You two truly are the strongest, aren’t you?”

  “I’m the strongest. He’s just hard to kill.”

  He laughed. I chuckled.

  “Hibana!” Yaga shouted. Wait, what? “If you’re idle enough to laugh, then you can go to the cafeteria and bring a table with cups of water for the class! Don’t think I missed how you used your shikigami to complete your punishment during break! I want to see your real body bring the table here!”

  Fuck! Him!

  “Quit dawdling and get up!” he shouted.

  I stood up with a stomp, turning around so he wouldn’t see my scowl. Dick.

  000

  Satoshi Ren was six years old when he first heard his grandmother murmur, “I wish I could see the whole blue sky from here.”

  She had stood leaned over against the balcony’s railing in their apartment. Her frail hands held her fast as she grabbed the railing for dear life, forcing her weak limbs to stand up straight and look up.

  And her view was obstructed by the buildings adjacent to theirs, and the balcony up ahead. Ren saw that the amount of sky she could see was so little.

  Satoshi Ren grew angry.

  Angry that his grandmother couldn’t see the sky on this lovely, beautiful day. Angry that their building didn’t have an elevator. It was only four floors high after all.

  Still, they lived on the fourth floor.

  He was so angry that something in him popped.

  He grabbed his grandmother, ripping her grasp from its railings, and held her in a bridal carry. “Aah! What! Stop this! Put me down!”

  Ren grew angry at the protest. “I’m taking you outside!”

  “You can’t carry me all the way down!”

  He didn’t care.

  He just did.

  The first few steps were hard. The following hundreds of steps didn’t matter to him at all. He carried his grandmother all the way to the playground right outside of their apartment building, and sat her right in the swings.

  He looked up. A blue sky, barely unbroken by so many buildings. It wasn’t enough, not nearly, but it would do for the next few minutes.

  “Ren-chan!” his grandmother grabbed him by his wrist as he was about to return to his house. “Where are you going?”

  Ren looked at his grandmother. “I’m getting your wheelchair, alright?! Quit nagging me, dammit!” Fucking bitch.

  He would never curse her outright, of course. Still, he had to admit. She was a fucking bitch. So damn annoying.

  He ran back up to his apartment, scaling the steps without any difficulty. He returned to the swings with her wheelchair in his hands.

  “This place sucks,” Ren scoffed. “All the buildings are blocking off the sky right here. Screw it. Let’s go somewhere else.”

  “Ren-chan!”

  He ignored her. Old people barely said anything of note. He had learned to ignore her from early on.

  He wheeled her out from the playground and proceeded away from the neighborhood, until he finally came across a park.

  The same park that his mother and father would wheel his grandmother around every now and then. They couldn’t do it anymore of course, because the idiots had chosen to die. They had chosen to do so in a car crash. Idiots.

  Grandmother’s wrinkled hands reached over her shoulder to touch Ren’s hand as he held her chair’s handlebars.

  She had gone on and on about how nice it was to see the sky. Like it wasn’t so fucking easy to do just that. She was weak, but she couldn’t help it. He would help her out regardless.

  Then, she would start to annoy him.

  “You’re so strong, Ren-chan!”

  Not at all. She was just light.

  As time went by, he realized that more and more things were just light.

  Even his body.

  He ran as hard as he could, but that bitch Suzuki kept catching up. And that asshole Geto didn’t even care, as he easily kept in front of them without so much as stumbling.

  He’s holding back!

  Dammit. What now?

  Ren recalled the days he spent carrying his grandmother while hiking through the woods. While hiking up a mountain. While swimming. He gave her all the experiences that her frailty had prevented her from achieving.

  He even protected her from the local hoodlums trying to shake her down for a portion of her welfare.

  Those assholes had been strong. They had even managed to wound him.

  In return, he’d broken all their legs one after another, ensuring that they couldn’t follow after him. Then, eventually, their friends had come knocking. A local biker-gang of middle schoolers, some real toughs. He’d broken their knees as well. Those hoodlums had older brothers.

  And on it went.

  Even the yakuza hadn’t been able to stop him. Not even thirty of them against only one of him.

  When he finally turned seven, his grandmother had died. They had no one to try and shake down anymore.

  He still fought, because he had to.

  And he would always win. Even if he fought hoodlums, yakuza, or even those weirdly colored mutant dogs and birds that kept coming after him.

  He kept fighting, because although his grandmother died, he still had an older sister that he needed to protect.

  Eventually, they stopped coming after him. They were too weak.

  He started going after them instead. Something had awakened inside of him. A thirst for combat. A warrior’s mentality. He no longer fought to protect his family. He fought to be the only one left in the battlefield.

  After a moth-girl saved him from some particularly troublesome dogs, some random suits had offered to put him in a school where he could keep fighting to his heart’s content. They packaged it around something or other. Some kind of religious service. He didn’t care—they had him at ‘fighting’.

  “Alright everyone, now stop running!”

  Geto finally slowed down. Ren debated on clocking him in the back of his head, but that’d be cheap. He wanted to beat this asshole fair and square.

  The teacher, some tough called Yaga, started yapping as all the students surrounded him in the field.

  Yap, yap, yap, yap.

  So annoying.

  He didn’t want to listen to this. He wanted to keep running. He wanted to beat Geto’s smug ugly face in.

  And he wanted another go at that asshole Gojo. He was strong, but Ren knew that if he tried harder, he could break through that stupid forcefield esper power of his. It wasn’t his fault he’d never dealt with a fucking esper before. What was he supposed to do?

  Try harder. He’d break through that dumbass force field one day, and then feed that white-haired asshole his own hair after Ren finished ripping it off his scalp.

  Then he’d break his knees.

  Ren’s frustration reached a critical point and he raised his hand with a growl.

  Yaga gave him a nod. “Satoshi?”

  “When can we fight each other?”

  “When I say you’re ready,” his teacher said.

  “I’m ready!” Ren shouted.

  Gojo was standing behind a table, with Hibana. The table was filled with plastic cups next to a big plastic bottle of water.

  “Your cursed energy manipulation is worthless,” the teacher growled. The fuck did any of that mean? “You’re not strong enough to take a serious hit. You’re wasting your power on anger when you should be controlling it. Look at Kobayashi, for example.”

  He turned to the creepy-looking nerd with the glasses. He looked like he was simultaneously fourteen and forty. He also acted like his shit didn’t stink. Ren definitely wanted to beat his ass.

  “I beat him in the race!” Ren shouted.

  “What race?” Yaga asked. “I asked you to run while infused with energy. You wasted yours by needlessly going all out, and now you’re operating on half a tank. Meanwhile, Kobayashi struck a balance. He could go on for much longer than you.”

  “I was faster! And I’m stronger!”

  “Alright,” Yaga said, walking up to Ren. He was tall, but that didn’t matter. The taller they were, the harder they fall. “Protect your face with cursed energy.” Speak Japanese, dammit. “Clench your teeth, idiot. I wanna see if you can take a hit. If it doesn’t hurt, it means you’re doing it right.”

  Ah, right.

  Ren clenched his teeth.

  The fist flew before he could even react, sending him flying back.

  Ow! The fuck?!

  “Did that hurt?” Yaga asked, standing above Ren’s downed form. He stood up quickly.

  “No, it didn’t!”

  “So you weren’t doing it right after all. Come see me after class.”

  Dammit.

  He then turned to the rest of the class. “You’ll spar only when I allow you to! Only when you’re ready! When will you be ready? When you can take a hit worth a damn without looking like an alcoholic’s least favorite stepchild. And not a damn moment before then. If you think you’re ready, surrender yourself to this test,” he raised his fist. “And I’ll show you that you’re not. Clear?!”

  No one said anything.

  “I can’t hear you!”

  “Yes, sensei!” everyone shouted. Except Ren.

  Yaga’s eyes bore into his.

  “This is bullshit,” Ren muttered.

  “Come again?”

  “This is bullshit!” Ren roared. “We’re here to fight, aren’t we?! That’s the whole deal with this school! So let’s fight, dammit! Let’s figure out who’s the strongest!”

  “You would selfishly impose your own core motivation on others,” Yaga said. The fuck does any of that mean? “You think your wish to be the strongest is more important than anyone else’s reason to be here. Is that it?”

  “It’s more important to me. What of it?”

  Yaga nodded. “Fine. Have your wish. Kobayashi. Step up. Everyone else, back away.”

  “Fuck him, I want Geto,” Ren growled.

  “You’re not ready for Geto,” Yaga said.

  Geto, in the meanwhile, looked on impassively, with eyes that barely registered him as a threat. Fucking tall people. They could all go to hell.

  Kobayashi stepped up. He put his glasses inside his tracksuit’s pocket. Ren would try not to hit that spot. He didn’t like hassling people with glasses—they weren’t worthy opponents. Leaving people blind after a fight was bad form.

  “You should walk away,” Ren said to him. “Once this fight starts, I won’t stop beating on you until you can’t get up.”

  “Does a spar really warrant such brutality?” Kobayashi said quietly.

  “Only way people learn to respect your strength,” Ren said. “It ain’t personal, four-eyes.”

  “Very well.”

  “The fight stops when someone goes down,” Yaga said. “It doesn’t continue after that. Feel free to try and test me on that, and I’ll show you why they made me a teacher in this school.”

  Dammit. Whatever.

  Actually… why not test him on that? Figure out why they made him a teacher and all. He had to be pretty strong.

  “Alright, begin.”

  Ren moved.

  He ran up at Kobayashi, cocking his fist back for a punch—

  Kobayashi stepped aside, winding his own punch, and struck him with all the force of a baseball bat in full swing. He’d eaten plenty of those in his time. Strong, but not strong enough. Ren recovered, and threw another fist.

  Kobayashi danced away easily, barely looking ruffled. And so it went with each hit. Kobayashi would effortlessly move away, then step through his guard like it barely even existed before delivering punches with all the precision of a fucking archer. Bat-swings were kitten soft to Ren, but it did build up after a certain point.

  Throwing caution to the wind, Ren roared and tried to tackle Kobayashi.

  The man disappeared, as if he had teleported away from view. What the fuck? An esper power, too?

  He felt a blow to the back of his head that sent him down to the ground, on his stomach.

  Bull-fucking-shit.

  Ren threw himself up on his feet and rushed at Kobayashi, only to run headlong into Yaga-sensei’s outstretched arm.

  The arm caught him on his stomach, took him off his feet, and winded him.

  Yaga brought him down on his back so hard that the dirt scattered. Ren coughed up bile.

  “Walk some laps around the field to cool your head,” Yaga-sensei said.

  “Fuck—“

  “Kid,” Yaga-sensei said. “You wanna be strong. Like me. I feel you. I understand your motives. But the strong don’t spend their time rebelling against reality. They sit still for as long as they can to learn when someone stronger than them talks.”

  Dammit.

  That made… sense.

  “Walk it off.” Yaga stood up. “Everyone, drink some water, rest and prepare yourselves. You’ll be running until the hour is up!”

  Ren got up on his feet, slowly regaining his breath, and took off without taking any of the water. His boiling anger cooled over the span of several minutes, leaving behind a crystallized seed of will.

  I’ll get stronger. I’ll figure it out. All of it.

  Then I’ll beat Gojo’s ass black and blue.