After we finished moving in and getting everything sorted, we threw a party.
It was a housewarming party.
Seven Servants. The Kusozu brothers, with Yuji included. Maki and Mai.
We invited Toji's family too.
And beyond that, we called in a few Jujutsu Sorcerers like Gojo Satoru and Geto Suguru.
There were a lot of people.
So I kept my hands busy, ordering a mountain of food and cooking some of it myself.
Even in Japan, delivery existed.
The house was big, but once you packed this many people into it, the flow still got cramped.
So we set everything up outside.
Picnic mats instead of tables.
We laid out drinks, cola included, and for alcohol, we brought out Ibuki-douji's sacred brew.
"My liquor? Mm. It's fine. A feast feels better when everyone drinks together and celebrates."
Ibuki-douji gave her permission readily enough, so we uncorked it without restraint.
The adult Jujutsu Sorcerers' eyes lit up at the chance to drink sacred liquor.
"Whoa. This is sacred liquor? First time for you too, Suguru?"
"Yeah. It definitely tastes different from anything else. Rather than harming your body, it feels like your total Cursed Energy is actually increasing."
"Ah... guess you lot haven't had it before. Listen, that's Sister-in-law Ibuki-douji's liquor. That's what it does. So if she pours it for you, don't waste a drop."
Gojo Satoru, Geto Suguru, and Zenin Naoya were especially fixated on it.
Shoko Ieiri and Nanami Kento quietly joined in from the sidelines.
Haibara Yu, bright as ever, eagerly inserted himself into the trio's conversation and enjoyed the drink with them.
"Yaga. I truly have no idea why I'm here."
"I feel much the same. Still, this is a gathering meant to repay people he's indebted to, so please enjoy yourself. The effect from the Cursed Energy alone is impressive, isn't it?"
"That much is true, but... Yaga, it's not as though you even have anyone to spend that vigor on."
"No, why are you attacking me out of nowhere? Do you want to get hit with a Panda punch?"
Gakuganji Yoshinobu, the principal of Kyoto Jujutsu High, had come all the way out for the occasion.
Yaga Masamichi, the principal of Tokyo Jujutsu High, came too.
"This is insane! Maki and Mai, you really live in a place like this?"
"Yeah. I'm still surprised too."
"Lucky. I want to live somewhere like this at least once. If I just keep saving money, would that do it?"
"Not impossible, but it'd be way easier if you became my brother's woman."
"Huh? No, that's a little..."
Kugisaki, who had been talking with Maki and Mai, flicked a glance at me.
Her face plainly said, This is not it.
Kugisaki was attractive too. The kind of woman anyone would want.
Even so, I felt no obsession toward her.
With even the unexpected addition of BB, there were already seven Servants.
Add Maki and Mai, and that made nine.
Nine plus one was ten, and that was already far too many.
Even if the other person wanted it, the right answer was to refuse.
'Honestly, this is already too much.'
At night, the Servants approached me in every possible combination, pairs and trios alike.
One-on-one wasn't rare either.
It wasn't that I got tired of it, and it definitely wasn't that I disliked it.
The problem was time.
None of the Servants here were just game characters.
Maki and Mai weren't just manga characters either.
They were all alive. They all had feelings.
That meant I had to give them affection and sincerity in equal measure.
I truly didn't have any more greed left for women, and even if I did, cutting it off would be the right move.
I needed to take proper care of the people already by my side first.
"Kadoc."
Choso, who had been drinking with his brothers, quietly approached me.
Only Servants were seated where I was sitting.
"Are you enjoying yourself?"
"Thanks to you. You said this was to celebrate the move, but thank you for making it a welcome party too."
"Of course. Choso, you're family too."
At the word family, Choso's eyes shimmered with tears.
He had a surprisingly sentimental side.
We drank and talked.
I thought everyone would just enjoy themselves noisily and then leave, but I stopped that.
Especially the people who had come from far away. I made sure they stayed the night no matter what.
If our house was uncomfortable for them, I would have sent them to a hotel instead.
Thanks to that, the party ended successfully, and ordinary life returned.
A daily life where nothing happened.
"To Kadoc."
One spring day, a letter arrived from Fou.
It really came.
I picked up the letter and read it, and the contents were something else.
The emergence of yet another Singularity.
Another journey to restore Human Order.
'At this rate, the protagonist really won't change for Part 3 either.'
From what I read, their progress was around Part 2.5 by now.
It didn't seem like it would drag on too long.
Judging by the situation, the cause behind this incident was presumed to be one of the remaining Beasts.
Apparently Azrael, the one I'd seen during the Grand Servant investiture, was accompanying them.
A Grand Class was with them?
That alone told me this was no ordinary situation.
"I'll keep sending letters from time to time. I had someone write this one down for me. Starting next time, Fujimaru will write the letters himself. Which brings me to..."
The last line.
I saw a sentence saying that to write letters, they needed something suitable to exchange.
Since this wasn't contact through proper Magecraft but through a workaround, it required an enormous amount of Magical Energy.
In other words, they wanted me to provide the power source.
'Not a bad idea.'
The first contact had apparently been forced through no matter what, but it sounded like Chaldea's strength had staggered from it.
That was just from sending a single letter.
When they left here, I had supplied a vast amount of Magical Energy, but...
I wasn't in Chaldea anymore.
They boasted enough Magical Energy supply to keep every Servant materialized with room to spare, but it wasn't infinite.
"BB. I need to make a Magical Energy storage battery. Can you help me?"
"Yes, Senpai. I'll make it right away. Small enough to store easily, but packed full to the brim, right?"
"I'm counting on you."
At my request, BB headed straight down into the underground workshop.
The other Servants were each enjoying their own routines.
Some went out to have fun.
Some stayed beside me until they fell asleep, and some played around on the internet.
"Senpai. It's finally complete. An electronic system that can catch Cursed Spirits that slip past the surveillance network.♡"
Then one day, BB, who had been making Magical Energy batteries on the side like a part-time project, called me down to the basement.
A Cursed Spirit—something like a ghost—caught by surveillance cameras?
That was possible?
"Cursed Spirits?"
"Yes. I built it based on measured and recorded data of Cursed Spirit reactions. I paid special attention to making sure it can find that Mahito faster too."
Geto Suguru would die someday.
Which meant Mahito, who had been tied to Geto Suguru, would revive someday too.
Whether that would take a hundred years or even longer, I didn't know...
But the revival itself was certain.
The same went for Hanami, Jogo, and Dagon, all of whom had already died by our hands.
So when the time came, I had been thinking we'd either search the hard way...
Or get help from Tengen, who remembered their Cursed Energy signatures. But this was even better.
"When did you make something like this?"
"I worked hard on it because I thought it would help you, Senpai. It'd be difficult to detect everything out in uncivilized areas like mountain wilderness, but..."
"Even that helps a lot. Most Cursed Spirits are born in cities, so it'll be easier to catch them too."
"Heheh! Right? And it automatically sends alerts too. I even wrote the program so it builds a database."
BB puffed out her chest proudly.
The heavy swell of her breasts shifted with the motion in a way that was almost majestic.
"This should lighten the burden on Jujutsu Sorcerers too. Any chance it could be abused?"
"If that happens, we just shut it down immediately and hand out suitable punishment, right? You're one of the people at the top, Senpai."
I had no answer for that, so I just gave an awkward laugh.
Embarrassing as it was, she wasn't wrong.
The current upper ranks were all people shaped by my influence.
And the former upper ranks were the people who tried to kill me and died instead.
The current jujutsu world knew that well, and feared it.
Everyone except the Jujutsu Sorcerers I was personally close to.
Thankfully, unlike the current upper ranks, I wasn't considered rotten, and I wasn't the type to throw power around either.
I was closer to a laissez-faire ruler.
But the moment someone crossed the line...
I had already warned them that blood would spill again, so they were behaving themselves.
'And if they forget, I can just overturn everything again.'
Still, people forget as they live.
Some greedy bastard might start climbing.
When that happened, if I stepped in and thinned them out, there shouldn't be much of a problem.
The upper ranks couldn't be allowed to rot.
"Can I pass this program to Jujutsu Headquarters? Let them handle installation and operation on their end."
"Of course. It's not even that heavy a program, so an external hard drive would work fine. Or I can send it directly."
"Do whatever's easiest for you, BB."
"Then I'll send it straight through the network. I'll handle the contact, installation, and follow-up too, right?"
"Thanks."
"No need to thank me. Then I'll take care of it right now."
BB picked up the pad on the table and started operating it immediately.
Her long white fingers moved busily.
Tap, tap-tap.
After drumming on the pad for a while, BB slowly lowered her hand.
It looked like she was already done.
"All taken care of. I even kindly attached a manual and a preface, so there shouldn't be any problems."
"Good work."
"Then you should reward me, right? Do you know how hard I work?"
BB, who had been sitting across from me, quietly slid over and sat at my side.
She linked arms with me and pressed her chest firmly against me.
I lowered my head as I looked at BB in her dress.
When a woman flaunted her breasts that openly and tempted you, giving in was only polite.
"All right. But only until dinner."
"Yes. Sounds good.♡"
Maki and Mai steadily attended classes at Jujutsu High and exorcised Cursed Spirits.
After that, they came back home.
"Jujutsu Headquarters has decided to adopt a Cursed Spirit search system specially designed by the external advisory side."
Because of that, it was easy to keep track of the movements of both the jujutsu world and the upper ranks.
Because Kadoc was the external advisor to Jujutsu Headquarters.
Normally, an external advisor held little real power, but Kadoc was the exception.
In practice, he was the head of Jujutsu Headquarters.
Even so, he rarely stepped forward and guaranteed their autonomy.
That had made him into a figure the current people of Jujutsu Headquarters regarded with awe.
And because of that, some Jujutsu Sorcerers under his protection—
Especially Maki and Mai, who received his direct protection—were treated as half-special cases.
'This is ridiculous.'
Back in the childhood she still remembered vividly, she hadn't even been worth treating coldly.
Now she was cherished more than anyone.
Maki found that reality absurd, but she only laughed it off.
There was no reason to be angry.
They were treated specially, but their rank wasn't being handed to them as a favor.
A Jujutsu Sorcerer's grade was determined by skill alone.
And so Maki, despite having no Cursed Energy, had come to be recognized as a Grade 1 Jujutsu Sorcerer.
The same went for Mai, whose amount of Cursed Energy had multiplied several times over.
"Kiiieeeek..."
One day, in a remote corner of Wakayama Prefecture.
A rural village.
A Cursed Spirit let out a mournful shriek.
The Cursed Spirit was Grade 1.
It had taken the form of a giant bird with eyeballs embedded all across its body, but it crumbled into ash and vanished.
The Jujutsu Sorcerers who exorcised it were Maki and Mai.
The time it took them to finish the exorcism didn't even pass thirty seconds.
"It's late, so I guess we should just find somewhere to stay and sleep. Or do you want to rough it?"
"At this hour? You think there's anywhere to stay? This backwater doesn't even have a hotel."
Maki asked, and Mai sighed as she leaned against the wall.
Looks like they were roughing it tonight.
Not sleeping out on the road, at least.
Sleeping in the car.
Maki curled the corner of her mouth upward and asked,
"Sleeping rough isn't so bad, right?"
"I'm used to it, sure, but Nitta-san's the one who'd suffer. She came along as the assistant supervisor. Driving back at this hour would be exhausting too."
"Want to ask her?"
"Even if we drive from here, it'll still take hours. We'd get there deep into the night. How's she supposed to handle that when she's tired?"
"If we leave in the morning, we'd still arrive in the afternoon. In that case, wouldn't it be better to push hard for one day and rest after?"
Mai nodded after hearing Maki out.
The more she thought about it, the more it made sense.
So the two of them headed down to where Nitta was waiting by the parked car.
They were thinking of changing the plan.
"Nitta-san."
"Ah, you two! Good work! Guess that's what you'd expect from Grade 1s. You finished fast."
Short blond hair. A suit.
Nitta, the woman who had brought Maki and Mai all the way out here, waved at them.
Mai stepped up to her with a smile.
"It was nothing. But we're debating between two options right now."
"Huh? Options?"
"We either drive back now, or sleep in the car and leave later. Which would you prefer, Nitta-san?"
"Me? I'd rather head back quickly. It'll be tiring, but if we get back, wouldn't we be able to rest properly for a whole day?"
"Then let's leave right now."
"Sounds good! Both of you, get in."
Nitta answered energetically and slid into the driver's seat.
Maki and Mai quickly climbed into the back.
Vroom.
Soon, the black vehicle pulled out with the growl of a powerful engine.
There was still plenty of fuel left, but not enough to make it nonstop.
They'd need to refuel once along the way.
"Oh, right. You two become adults tomorrow, don't you? Congratulations. I mean that."
Nitta smiled as she looked at them through the rearview mirror mounted above.
She was sincere.
"Thank you."
"Thanks."
Mai answered politely. Maki answered casually.
Rough, but genuine.
"So you'll be drinking alcohol now too, huh?"
"Who knows. Since it's supposed to be an adult taste, I'll probably try it once, but I don't think I'll like it much. My brother doesn't really drink either."
"By brother... you mean Kadoc? That's surprising. Usually people in high places almost always like alcohol."
"He doesn't dislike it. He just seems to prefer things like wine. Or the liquor Ibuki-douji brews."
"Wow. I'm jealous. Seriously."
Nitta looked forward again, mouth hanging open.
She was imagining what it would be like if she were in Mai's place.
"Adults, huh. So the time finally came."
Maki muttered as she looked out the window.
Her voice was weak, but madness flickered in her eyes.
Mai was the same.
They were too wound up to even feel the fatigue of being awake so late.
Tomorrow, at last.
They would become the adults they had waited so long to be.
And that meant Kadoc would accept them.
It also meant the time Maki and Mai spent venting the desires that had only grown stronger with their power would finally come to an end.
'Tomorrow.'
Thinking the same thing, Maki and Mai steadied their breathing.
Their hearts pounded hard in their chests.