The porcelain-white subway platform shimmered with pure, untainted memories.
It felt as though time had returned to the summer from ten years ago—
To the days before everything had gone wrong...
Beside him stood Suguru Geto, dressed in his Tokyo Jujutsu High uniform, his forehead free of the familiar stitch marks. Looking at Satoru Gojo with gentle affection, he smiled and asked:
"Satoru... how was it?"
"Are you satisfied now that you finally fought with everything you had?"
After a brief moment of surprise, Gojo—still wearing his dark sunglasses—quickly realized this was the landscape of his dying thoughts.
He glanced at his old friend beside him, then down at the student uniform he himself was wearing.
With a faint smile, he replied:
"Yeah. I'm satisfied."
His gaze swept over the figures seated behind them before he scratched his head irritably.
"What the hell..."
"I kept telling my students that sorcerers always die alone."
"And yet somehow, this turned into such a lively gathering."
"Hey, old man!"
Stretching out his legs, Gojo looked across at Masamichi Yaga with dissatisfaction.
"Wasn't that something you taught me? Turns out it wasn't true at all."
Dressed neatly in a formal suit, Yaga continued stitching a stuffed doll without even raising his head.
"Don't pin everything on me."
"I already spent my whole life cleaning up after you brats. I'm not doing it in death too."
"Oh? The old man got smarter, huh?"
Gojo muttered under his breath as his entire body finally relaxed.
Narrowing his eyes, Geto smiled.
"So? Those two monsters."
Gojo shrugged, dragging out his words dramatically.
"Ridiculously————strong."
"As for Ryomen Sukuna, I'd say we were probably about evenly matched..."
"But that monster, Zen'in Mirai... he was seriously terrifying."
Gojo lowered his gaze to the ground and sighed quietly.
"Right up until the moment he killed me, he never even used the Ten Shadows Technique."
"And that red giant that looked like a Gundam... the meteor fragments he dragged down from the sky..."
"He didn't even use that bizarre Hollow Technique either. The guy never fought at full strength."
Gojo looked at the hand loosely clenched before him.
"To be honest... I feel a little regret."
A trace of confusion surfaced on Geto's face as he silently waited for him to continue.
"I thought I'd understand the loneliness of being invincible better than anyone."
Gojo slowly tightened his fist, his voice growing lower.
"The body I honed over all these years... the tactics I learned..."
"The instincts forged through endless real combat, and the adaptability I pushed to their absolute limit..."
In that battle, Gojo had successively strengthened his Domain Expansion and surpassed his own limits to create the ultimate technique: Maximum Output.
"I already conveyed everything I had to that monster as best as I could."
Gojo stared at his clenched fist as a relieved smile slowly appeared on his face.
"That fight... was satisfying."
Resting his cheek against one hand, Geto chuckled softly.
"You really enjoyed yourself, huh? I'm almost jealous."
"Hey, hey, hey—what are you people, samurai from some ancient era?"
From the bench beside Gojo, Takuma Ino complained while sitting together with Kento Nanami and Yu Haibara.
"Japan's about to be destroyed, and all you care about is whether your fight was fun or not?"
"That's enough, Ino."
Dressed in his student uniform, Nanami lightly patted Ino on the shoulder.
"Is this your first day knowing Gojo? That guy's always been unreliable."
"Hah?!"
With a sudden reach, Gojo ruffled Nanami's smooth bangs into a complete mess, turning his hair into something like an angry hedgehog.
"You saying that pisses me off even more than Ino's complaint!"
"Hahahahaha!"
Haibara—who had always been closest to Nanami during their student days—burst into honest laughter.
"You still haven't changed at all, Gojo-senpai. You never fight for the sake of protecting others; you just do whatever you want."
Gojo raised an eyebrow.
"Haibara, are you praising me or insulting me?"
It was a long-awaited reunion.
A noisy exchange between old classmates.
After the brief joking and banter, Gojo sat back down beside Geto.
His students' smiling faces flashed through his mind—their cheers before the battle.
As well as the friends and comrades who had fought beside him.
"The thing that killed me wasn't time or illness..."
"It was someone stronger than me."
"That's... really not so bad."
Hearing his words, Geto asked quietly, with genuine understanding:
"Satoru... do you have no regrets now either?"
"Yeah."
Gojo smiled and nodded.
"Just like you, Suguru... I don't have any regrets anymore."
The moment those words fell—
A rushing train arrived at the station.
Gojo Satoru's final vision faded completely away, leaving behind only a headless corpse collapsed within a pool of blood.
Reality, meanwhile, was filled with absolute despair.
Only Mirai remained standing there completely unharmed.
Blasted backward by the terrifying repulsive force, Yuta Okkotsu stared blankly at the corpse lying at Mirai's feet.
Not severed limbs.
Not split in half.
The brain engraved with cursed techniques had been completely destroyed. There wasn't even the slightest possibility of Gojo reviving.
The lingering warmth on Yuta's face—
It was the blood that had sprayed from Gojo's neck before he was blown away.
Yuta's pupils trembled violently as both fists pressed against the ground hard enough to drag bloody trails across the floor.
The pain shooting through his finger bones...
Everything was reminding him:
This wasn't a dream.
The strongest sorcerer who had once seemed invincible—
The teacher who acted carefree yet sincerely guided them...
Was dead.
Mirai looked down at the corpse beneath his feet, the cold ripples of his Rinnegan reflected in the blood pooling below.
There was no denying it:
Aside from Sukuna and himself, Gojo Satoru had been the strongest existence in this world.
Leaving Gojo's body intact would undoubtedly raise the combat potential of the White Zetsu even further.
And Mirai himself would gain another powerful trump card.
But explosive "protagonist awakenings" were not something to take lightly.
Gojo's very birth had altered the balance of the world, causing newly born cursed spirits to grow infinitely stronger.
For a protagonist favored by the will of the world like that—
Who knew whether the White Zetsu would control him...
Or whether Gojo would secretly hide inside the White Zetsu's body, grow stronger in secret, and eventually pull off some dark-hearted comeback from within.
Mirai had no shortage of power anyway.
Better to eliminate him completely.
He had no desire to repeat the experience of "Madara-sama" from another world.
Puchi!
Blood-red vines erupted from underground, piercing through Gojo's corpse before dragging it into a crack within the void.
Mirai made no move to stop it.
This was an action carried out by the Divine Tree itself under his control.
Even if it wouldn't be used for White Zetsu experimentation, keeping it as a trophy wasn't bad either.
The void fissures spread throughout the barrier gradually stabilized.
The lightning flashing across the heavens and the dark tornadoes slowly began to fade as well.
The process of dragging the entire nation into the Kamui dimension was already nearing completion.
"Draw your blade!!!"
Shing!
A slash erupted upward from below, aiming directly at Mirai's neck—
Only for him to catch the blade with one hand.
Crack!
With a slight squeeze of his fingers, the sword shattered into countless fragments.
Mirai looked down calmly at the murderous-eyed Yuta.
"Your teacher wasn't enough."
"You're even less so."
"Supernova: Piercing Blood!!!"
A streak of blood moving at nearly the speed of sound shot toward Mirai's head from the side of the battlefield.
"Black Flash!!!"
In front of him was Yuta, having abandoned his sword and charging forward with his fists—
And behind him—
Bathed in dazzling black sparks—
Was none other than Yuji Itadori!
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