A cool breeze rolled through, lifting a strand of hair.
Kenjaku stood at the edge of a rooftop on a building near the juvenile detention center, chin resting on the back of his hand, watching the Curtain in the distance with a kind of bored, unhurried attention. It clung around the entire facility like a layer of transparent membrane — ordinary people couldn't see through it from outside — but he knew exactly what was happening within.
He had placed surveillance-type cursed spirits inside.
"Though I'm not sure whether I'll actually get a clean read on Sukuna's strength... it seems this hasn't been a total waste, either."
He spoke to no one in particular.
Honestly, his desire to test Sukuna's strength had only ever been a precaution — a simple, nagging fear that swapping vessels might have left Sukuna diminished somehow.
But in truth, Kenjaku knew the probability of that was vanishingly small.
The test was just his perfectionism flaring up.
He and Sukuna had been acquaintances a thousand years ago. How could he not know Sukuna's true strength? The very reason Sukuna's soul had been able to persist across twenty fingers was because Kenjaku had provided him with the method — the technique for preserving a soul within a cursed object.
So as far as Kenjaku was concerned, not running the test today was perfectly fine.
There would be other chances. Opportunities, whenever he wanted them.
And even if Sukuna's power had genuinely regressed — even at half strength, Sukuna would still be terrifyingly invincible.
So when Mahiko went barreling headfirst into the detention center and threw his entire arrangement into chaos, he hadn't moved to stop her.
He simply watched.
Because he wanted to watch.
For Kenjaku, Mahiko's capacity for interest — for unpredictability — had already surpassed whatever minor fluctuations Sukuna's strength might or might not have undergone. She commanded his attention more completely.
Her reason for entering... wasn't hard to guess. She'd probably caught the scent of the Special Grade Cursed Spirit and felt the stirrings of a predatory impulse.
Oh, though there were other possibilities. She might have detected Fushiguro Maki and Yuji Itadori's presence and decided to wander over for the entertainment.
Maybe both reasons at once. Maybe neither. Maybe she'd simply seen the commotion and, driven by pure mischief, couldn't help but dive in.
It didn't particularly matter. For now, everything she'd done still fell within the range of what he could tolerate.
In fact...
Kenjaku's eyes narrowed ever so slightly.
He had quietly slipped a little something extra into this arrangement.
That Special Grade Cursed Spirit — in its fight against Mahiko — had displayed a remarkably impressive degree of cunning and wariness. It had used flanking maneuvers. It had fashioned metal armor to block Mahito's technique. It had known when the tide turned against it and cut its losses without hesitation...
— None of that had been entirely the cursed spirit's own doing.
Kenjaku had been quietly guiding it from behind.
Because he wanted to see Mahiko pushed further. Wanted to see what she would produce under pressure.
This iteration of Mahiko — the one born this time — was unlike every generation he had observed before her.
Sharper. More difficult to read. More gifted. She gave the always-calculating Kenjaku the persistent, unsettling sensation that something was slipping beyond his sight — some variable, moving in a direction he couldn't see — and that was precisely what held his gaze.
"Then let me watch..."
A faint curve touched the corner of his mouth. His gaze rested on the Curtain.
"Let me watch how many more surprises you can bring me."
...
The corridor was utterly silent.
Mahiko was in a state of absolute concentration — her consciousness buried deep in Fushiguro Maki's soul, tracing the engravings of the pearl she had chosen, one careful line at a time.
This was genuinely, brutally difficult. The reason she thought of them as pearls was because the inscriptions covering each one were as dense as pure black — layer upon compressed layer, intricate beyond easy comprehension.
When she had learned Mechamaru's Heavenly Restriction earlier, it had been something like painting — she had etched a similar pattern directly onto her own soul, tracing those markings freehand.
But that approach was impossible now. There simply wasn't enough time.
So she had changed her method.
She worked like a stamp. She pressed soul-energy across a section of Fushiguro Maki's soul, fixed it in place, and then lifted that impression — copying the inscriptions of the Ten Shadows Technique wholesale, one small patch at a time, transferring each copied fragment onto the prepared surface of her own soul.
The efficiency was actually better than she'd anticipated. The Ten Shadows Technique's inscriptions were dense, yes — but they were also stable. Settled. Deeply carved. Like a harder mold producing sharper casts, a technique this firmly established actually copied faster using the stamp method than the painting method would have.
Even so, it cost her an immense amount of effort and concentration.
Precision demanded small stamps, careful alignment, repeated passes to correct and refine each seam.
"...Hff."
Mahiko let out a slow, unconscious breath.
The learning was almost complete. She was in the final stretch now. Just a little more — just a little further.
Beneath her, the black-haired girl was shaking more and more violently. That tingling, electric sensation — blooming out of the very depths of her soul — had made it nearly impossible for Fushiguro Maki to keep her fist closed. But she held on. Jaw locked, voice suppressed, she held on through sheer stubbornness. This was a direct consequence of Mahiko's stamping method rather than careful tracing — it was rougher, more invasive, and inflicted far more discomfort on its subject.
The discomfort was cresting toward its absolute peak.
Which also meant Mahiko's engraving was almost finished...
And then.
Just one instant before she was about to complete it.
She felt something.
A thread of presence — barely a whisper, nearly imperceptible — appeared from somewhere behind her. Silent. Nearly nothing. But that single, hair-thin thread was enough.
She caught it.
Mahiko's eyes snapped open.
Too late.
Yuji Itadori was standing behind her. The dagger was already leveled at her throat. His eyes held a single, crystalline resolve.
He'd crept up on her?
Mahiko's pupils contracted — a genuine flash of surprise.
She had always trusted her Cursed Energy perception completely. She could detect surveillance-type cursed spirits hovering in midair. And yet Yuji Itadori's entire approach had registered as nothing — a perfect blank.
Why—
Oh.
Mahiko almost laughed despite herself.
She understood in the very next second. Because this idiot hadn't used Cursed Energy at all.
He had crossed the entire distance on pure physical control alone — an almost impossibly precise command of his own body, each footfall placed with complete silence. Not a single trace of Cursed Energy deployed from start to finish. And her perception was tuned to Cursed Energy — she'd let her guard slip just enough.
That's genuinely outside the realm of normal. What are you, exactly.
"..."
Mahiko let out a soft, quiet laugh.
In that same instant, Yuji moved — with blinding speed, he drove the dagger in a perfectly straight line into her throat.
He knew he couldn't genuinely wound her. But to pull Fushiguro Maki out of Mahiko's hands by any means necessary, he'd aimed for what felt like the most vital target he could reach.
The next second, Yuji froze.
Because Mahiko didn't dissolve into butterflies the way he'd expected.
Instead — shlk — the blade sank home. Clean into the throat.
Blood ran down the length of the blade.
"Just so you know."
Mahiko looked down at the dagger lodged in her throat — a brief, almost idle glance — and her voice came out perfectly calm. Casual, even.
"I'm not exactly the kind of person you can predict with common sense, either."
Both her hands moved at the same time.
One grabbed Yuji by the collar. The other grabbed Fushiguro Maki by the collar.
And then she threw — one sharp, violent motion — hurling both of them away from her simultaneously.
BOOM!!
The wall behind them disintegrated.
Terrifying golden Cursed Energy exploded outward.
The instant after Mahiko sent them flying — the attack came.
From the other side of the wall. The Special Grade Cursed Spirit, which had been lurking in silence — this was what Mahiko had sensed in that final moment.
BOOM——
Golden-yellow Cursed Energy swept forward like a wave, detonating squarely where all three of them had been standing. The entire face of the wall erupted outward. The force was staggering — the whole corridor shuddered with it.
"AUGH!!"
The Special Grade's fist — which had appeared without warning — drove straight into Mahiko's chest. And with both of the others already thrown clear, she had no window left to dodge.
The hit connected. Completely.
Mahiko was blasted backwards. She punched through the first wall behind her. Smashed through the second. Sank into the third. Dust and debris billowed in every direction.
"Gah-gah-gah——"
The Special Grade's laughter rang through the corridor. It stood amid the rubble, head tipped back, staring down toward where Mahiko had disappeared, gloating with every fiber of its being.
Yuji and Fushiguro Maki pushed themselves slowly upright against the wall. They looked toward where the dust was settling.
Where Mahiko had been driven into the wall, there was no longer any shape that could be called a girl. What remained was gore — blood and pulped flesh.
The sudden, chaotic violence had left both of them with no time to react. In stunned silence, they stared at what was left of Mahiko, unable to form words.
"...What."
What...
Fushiguro Maki's eyes trembled.
She couldn't believe it.
Her mind was moving fast — but in this moment, she genuinely couldn't keep up.
What just happened?
Yuji had attempted a sneak attack on Mahiko, but it hadn't worked. And then... the Special Grade's attack had come. That attack would have covered all three of them — but the blue-haired cursed spirit hadn't dodged. She'd reached out instead. She'd pulled them out of the way. And as a direct consequence, she'd taken a punch that reduced her to... this.
The blue-haired cursed spirit... saved them?
"How could she..."
Why?
Why would a cursed spirit do that?
Fushiguro Maki stared at the mangled remains in the broken wall, her pupils shaking violently.
She didn't understand. The sheer confusion was overwhelming her.
That blue-haired cursed spirit — the one who had done something deeply, inexcusably terrible to her without so much as blinking — why would she save them?
Why save her and Yuji?
"Hey, Fushiguro..." Yuji spoke up beside her, his own pupils faintly trembling, voice unsteady. "She — just now — did she... save us? Right? She... she was saving us, wasn't she."
Someone had died for him?
Died to save him?
Yuji couldn't believe it either. His mind had gone almost completely blank.
The brief flicker of victory he'd felt when his dagger found its mark — that small, dirty rush — had completely curdled. It turned to something else entirely, something that made his stomach lurch and heave.
Nausea churned in his gut. Yuji bent forward and began to retch.
And then——
pat.
A small, soft sound.
It drew the attention of everyone in the corridor at once.
Small. Gentle. The sound of something light landing on the floor — faint as a marble dropping on tile.
All three of them — including the Special Grade Cursed Spirit, still gloating in place — turned their heads simultaneously toward the source.
On the corridor floor, there was a rabbit.
...A rabbit?
Small. White. Undeniably, absurdly cute — two tall ears standing straight up, settled perfectly upright amid the rubble, watching everything with two small eyes like embedded red gemstones, round and bright and utterly serene.
The Special Grade's laughter died.
Yuji stared, completely lost.
But beside him, Fushiguro Maki stood frozen for a full second — and then her pupils contracted with violent force.
That's impossible.
She recognized it. That was her shikigami.
One of the Ten Shadows Technique's shikigami — the one called the Darting Hare.
She absolutely had not summoned it. So who had?
Was it someone from the Zenin clan? No — no, that couldn't be right. Her teacher had said it clearly: currently, the only person in possession of the Ten Shadows Technique was her.
So what was happening right now...?
"Eek."
The Darting Hare let out a small sound.
Tiny. High-pitched. Harmless to the ear — the call of something small and soft and completely innocent.
But in the instant after that brief, feather-light cry faded——
The little white rabbit folded inward.
Both ears tucked down. All four legs pulled in. Its entire body compressed — inward, inward, inward — like a fist squeezing a coiled spring, packing every ounce of energy in its body into a sphere the size of a fist, tighter and tighter over the span of one second — and then——
BOOM.
It fired.
Like a cannonball hurled from a siege engine, it tore through the air — a long white-blue contrail of Cursed Energy streaming behind it — moving so fast the eye could barely catch more than a faint afterimage — straight, utterly straight, on a trajectory that could not be turned — aimed directly at the Special Grade Cursed Spirit.
SMACK!
Dead center. Right in the face.
And then.
BANG!!——
The white sphere that had been a rabbit detonated on impact, exploding point-blank against the Special Grade's face.
"Ha ha ha ha..."
The Special Grade's face erupted in smoke. The entire creature was launched backwards — sent flying sideways as though smacked by an open palm — and from the darkness came the sound of a girl's laughter, free and completely unrestrained.
"Ha ha ha... holy — that actually worked..." A blue-haired girl walked out of the darkness, cradling a small rabbit against her chest, laughing so hard tears had gathered at the corners of her eyes. "I can't believe it actually succeeded..."
The blue-haired girl. Completely unharmed.
The blue-haired girl, holding a shikigami that had, until this moment, belonged only to Fushiguro Maki.
Under Fushiguro Maki's utterly shocked and bewildered gaze, Mahiko took the small rabbit in her arms and began kneading it — rolling it, pressing it, working it like dough — until it had transformed into a fluffy set of rabbit-ear headwear, which she promptly settled onto her own head.
"Come on then, sweetheart," the girl said, planting her hands on her hips with unabashed satisfaction, raising an eyebrow toward the Special Grade and beaming. "Why so tense? Why so serious? Bunnies are cute, aren't they?"
Yes.
In the razor-thin instant before the Special Grade's attack had connected — Mahiko had completed her study of the Ten Shadows Technique's Darting Hare shikigami.
The black pearl engraved on her soul had begun to turn.
A possibility — one that might carry her forward, growing, climbing toward heights a cursed spirit was never supposed to reach — had just been proven real.
From this point forward, she understood completely. She knew, at last, how she would grow strong in this life, in this world. She could learn the techniques of others. She could acquire the abilities of others. And layered on top of that — she already possessed the grotesquely powerful Idle Transfiguration.
The road of limitless growth began here.
"Now then!" The girl turned the full force of her grin on the Special Grade standing right before her. "You get to be my whetstone!!——"
____
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