"'Little Birdcage' Restaurant..."
Now fully recovered, Satoru Gojo looked up at the familiar place. The homemade sign was still standing out front, though the neon lights around it had been redone yet again.
He stepped inside, only to find that Akira Zenin was not in one of the private rooms. Instead, he had set up an extremely small "curtain" in the simple main hall and was sitting there reading a newspaper...
As for why he had put up a curtain... a shadow hand was extending out from beneath him, holding a cup of coffee to his mouth...
As usual, Satoru Gojo raised a hand, ready to use [Blue] to snatch the fries off Akira Zenin's table. But the instant he moved, the curtain was dropped.
That forced him to stop himself at once...
"Aren't you worried I might not stop in time and let other people see?"
Akira Zenin glanced at him.
"It's fine. Just say you were performing the acrobatic trick 'Dragon Sucking Water'~~ How do you have time to come out?"
"Ahem... that Curse User started voluntarily teaching the first-years, and she's actually seriously memorizing the Experimental Code of Ethics you gave her..."
"With entertainment, a goal, and leverage all in place, of course she'd be motivated.
I'll be keeping an eye on her from now on..."
Satoru Gojo could tell Akira Zenin was in a much better mood now, though he was still spending his days drinking coffee all over the place.
Then he remembered that he still had to sort through the higher-ups in the jujutsu world and stabilize the situation, and instantly felt a little unbalanced inside.
"Your Heavenly Restriction is gone now, so why aren't you taking missions~~"
"You're one to talk. Why aren't you going?"
"Me?"
Satoru Gojo practically melted onto the table like a cartoon character...
"I'm just an ordinary jujutsu sorcerer without a technique right now. You can really bear to send me on missions?~~"
"So right now all the special grade incidents are being handled by Suguru, Megumi, and Yuta? That's the workload for all five of us..."
"Ahem, probably..."
"Man, that really is rough on them~"
"But because of technique compatibility, Suguru gets the most assignments..."
After a brief silence, the two of them suddenly looked at each other, then burst out laughing at the same time.
"Hahahahaha! Suguru has it so bad!!"
"Right? Right?!! Hahahahaha... hahahaha!!"
The people around them kept glancing over at the two maniacs. Some hurriedly packed up their things, ready to get away from this place of trouble...
...
In a remote mountain area, Suguru Geto had just absorbed a special grade cursed spirit and was sitting there, taking alternating bites of wasabi and swallowing cursed spirit balls...
"Ha... ha-choo!!"
Suguru Geto suddenly sneezed and rubbed his nose.
"A cold? No, something's off...
Akira probably wouldn't be that bad. It's Satoru, isn't it..."
Suguru Geto opened a notebook and drew a circle around one spot with a red pen.
"Eleven more missions this month...
Keep going. Next place..."
...
"I, I want meat..."
"You need a balance of meat and vegetables if you want to grow properly..."
Shigemo Sukuna blankly opened his mouth and looked at the cauliflower beside him.
He reached out with a trembling hand, grabbed it, and desperately tried to stuff it into his mouth.
But this cauliflower seemed even stronger than a special grade jujutsu sorcerer. It kept interfering with Sukuna's astonishing "precision in Cursed Energy manipulation," always knocking his hand just off target and sending it past his mouth...
Yu Haibara watched Sukuna fooling around and shook his head lightly, then took out a large piece of lightly golden grilled skirt steak...
Sukuna stared blankly at the meat. The cauliflower in his hand went straight into his mouth, and his jaw moved up and down mechanically as he chewed.
The moment Sukuna finished the vegetables and yanked the meat over, Yu Haibara looked at Kento Nanami.
"You're leaving today?"
"Yeah. I booked the plane ticket the day before yesterday when the bonus was paid out. It's this afternoon."
"Uh, isn't it already afternoon?"
Kento Nanami glanced at his pocket watch.
"The flight takes off at 17:30. I just need to get back and pick up my books by 15:30. That leaves 3 minutes and 57 seconds..."
Hearing a plan scheduled down to the second, Yu Haibara's mouth twitched slightly.
"Yeah... I'll make sure this guy turns over a new leaf. At least for the next hundred years, there probably won't be any cursed spirits that can't be handled anymore..."
With a piece of meat hanging from his mouth, Shigemo Sukuna looked over with a blank, confused gaze.
After being affected by [All Forms Are Formless], this kid's brain structure had changed, and all his memories had vanished. Even after learning some basic knowledge he still seemed a little slow...
"Turn over what leaf?"
"Just eat your meat..."
"Oh... am..."
...
"It's about time."
Kento Nanami glanced at his pocket watch.
"I'm leaving this threat in your care."
"Haha... you can't call him a threat. What kind of attitude someone is raised with is what kind of person they become."
"...It's because you're the one watching him that I can relax enough to go on vacation."
"Don't worry about it. Cheer up a little. Bye~~"
"Mm."
...
Kento Nanami stood up and headed for the taxi. As he did, he glanced back at the fly head perched on a waiter's shoulder nearby and casually waved a hand, dispersing it...
"This is nice... Jujutsu sorcerers have lived through another day."
(The End)
(There are extras)