The song was over, and with it, Mahiko's hypnosis over Jogo dissolved.
There was no more singing to be done, and so no more need to puppet Jogo's body.
Jogo, at last reclaiming control over herself, let out a long, shuddering breath.
She was herself again. Finally, blessedly herself.
Jogo stood on the stage and looked out over the crowd below.
The audience area was packed to bursting — face after face after face, every single one alight with something almost frightening in its intensity. They swung their glowsticks in wide arcs, screaming the idols' names at the top of their lungs, and the noise of it all surged up toward the stage like a wave crashing against a shore.
Jogo looked at those human faces.
Strange.
She was a Cursed Spirit born from the negative emotions of humanity. From the very moment of her birth, the only things she had ever known humans to feel were fear, hatred, envy, and greed.
Those things were her sustenance. They were the entirety of what she understood humans to be.
But the faces in the crowd below her held none of that. What she saw instead was something pure and utterly unguarded — simple, wholehearted joy.
Standing on this stage had shown her a side of humanity she had never seen before.
But still...
Jogo's gaze drifted downward, settling on the very front row of the audience.
Her eyebrow twitched. Hard. Twice.
"JOGO——!! JOGO——!!" "TAKATA——!! TAKATA——!!"
Right at the very front of the crowd stood three people.
A blue-haired little girl was perched on the shoulders of two men — a ludicrously muscular giant on the left, and an equally built male high schooler on the right. The three of them formed a rough triangle, with the blue-haired girl reigning from on high.
All three had a glowstick in each hand, pumping their arms so furiously they looked like human windmills. The audience around them had been shoved back several paces by the sheer force of their presence.
"LET'S GO!! —— LET'S GO!! ——" "VICTORY!! —— VICTORY!! ——"
In that entire venue, those three were the loudest, the most unhinged, and the most impossible to look away from.
"They are absolutely certifiable," Nobara said flatly.
If human dignity were a resource, these three had gone completely bankrupt.
It got so bad that Jogo squeezed her eyes shut in genuine agony.
She couldn't look. She physically could not look.
She knew, of course, that Todo and Itadori were jujutsu sorcerers.
Mahiko — a Cursed Spirit — standing on the shoulders of two jujutsu sorcerers, the three of them making a spectacle of themselves in the most exaggerated way imaginable in the middle of a crowd...every single time those three bellowed her name, Jogo felt like she was being strapped to a burning stake.
The humiliation was immeasurable.
Truly, profoundly immeasurable.
"Now let's take a look at the final cheering scores——" The MC onstage held up her microphone, her smile radiant. "Takata and the Calamity Sisters' current score puts them at third place! Such a shame — the gap between them and the top groups is actually quite small..."
"Unacceptable!"
Below the stage, Mahiko stamped her feet furiously, making Todo Aoi's shoulders bounce with each impact.
"Why aren't we first?!"
Itadori rubbed his chin. "Probably because the gap in popularity between a brand-new idol group and the established ones is just too big."
"That's not it!" Mahiko jabbed a finger at Todo's head. "It's definitely because this guy kept that dead serious face the whole time he was cheering! That stone-cold expression of yours has absolutely no business being at a cheering event!"
Todo frowned. "Nonsense. That had nothing to do with it. You were the one who was too over the top."
"If your cheering isn't over the top, what's the point of cheering?!"
"That wasn't 'over the top.' That was a psychiatric episode."
The alliance they had only just formed, barely minutes old, shattered completely at their first shared setback.
Perhaps that was always the fate of a partnership built purely on shared interest — fragile from the start…
How sad, truly. The friendship between a Cursed Spirit and jujutsu sorcerers, as fleeting as a sandcastle at the tide's edge.
"Now, moving on to the final segment——" The MC's voice rang through the venue.
Since the next portion had nothing to do with cheering, Mahiko hopped lightly down from Todo's and Itadori's shoulders.
Then——
"Hey, now that I think about it, Mahiko." Itadori tilted his head, his tone casual. "Haven't I met you somewhere before?"
Mahiko blinked.
Her heart skipped half a beat.
"And that white-haired girl, too — honestly, in some way I can't quite put my finger on, she really reminds me of someone I ran into with my teacher once..." Itadori rubbed his chin.
Mahiko's eyebrow gave a small, involuntary tremble.
In the original work, readers had speculated that Itadori had always been able to sense the presence of a soul within a living Cursed Spirit — that when he looked at someone, he perceived the feel of their soul before he registered their appearance.
It wasn't anything as dramatic as "I can tell at a glance you're not human," but there did seem to be something there.
Mahiko hadn't given it much thought before, but here, right now, he had picked up on a sense of familiarity before anyone else.
Mahiko quickly flashed her most innocent, guileless smile. "Really? I don't think so~ This is my first time meeting you, Itadori-nii! And it's your first time meeting Jogo too, right?"
"What are you even talking about?" Nobara pushed her way over. "If Jogo is the white-haired Cursed Spirit you've met before, then why don't you say Mahiko is the blue-haired Cursed Spirit you've met before?"
Whoosh——
Everyone nearby turned to look, all eyes converging on Mahiko's face.
Cold sweat prickled down Mahiko's back.
"They're nothing alike though," Fushiguro deadpanned.
"Mm," Miwa nodded. "Complete opposites, really."
"Hahaha..." Mahiko laughed weakly. "I have no idea what you guys are talking about~"
"Yeah?" Itadori rubbed his chin, thought about it for a moment, then broke into a sunny grin. "Then it must just be because Mahiko and I are on the same wavelength!"
"Haha, yeah, yeah! I love being friends with you too, Itadori-nii!"
Crisis narrowly averted.
Mahiko's back was genuinely soaked in sweat. That had been terrifying.
She'd have to be more careful going forward — when operating under a human identity, she couldn't afford to get too close to Itadori.
She thought back to the look on Itadori's face the time she had taken Inumaki away.
...Yikes.
Yeah. Better that Itadori never found out. Much better.
She pushed the thought aside and looked back up at the stage.
The final round of vote-appeal speeches had already begun onstage.
Each idol got to say a few words to the audience — a pitch, essentially, to pull in last-minute votes.
The first few groups had gone through their speeches one after another, and now it was the Calamity Sisters' turn.
First up was Takata.
Takata delivered a standard idol speech — gratitude, warmth, the whole package — and it went over well, pulling in a solid chunk of votes.
Then it was Hanami's and Lil' Dagon's turn — both of them working from scripts Mahiko had written in advance.
Hanami said something along the lines of thanking the audience for their support, gentle and gracious.
Lil' Dagon, in a soft, pudding-like little voice, shyly offered up "This is my first time ever standing on a stage, and there's so much I still don't know..." — going straight for the sympathy vote, and it worked beautifully.
And then, at the very end.
The last idol in the entire venue to speak.
The microphone was passed to Jogo.
Jogo, whose head was still throbbing from everything Mahiko and Todo had put her through, had been sitting there with her eyes closed, trying to recover.
When someone shoved a microphone into her hands, she impatiently opened one eye, looked down at the thing in her grip, then looked up at the MC smiling pleasantly in front of her, and scowled.
"What? What is this thing for?"
The MC faltered slightly.
She had no idea what was going on with this particular idol.
"This is… the vote-appeal speech segment~"
"Hah? Vote appeal?" Jogo irritably glanced up at the ranking on the big screen, her red eyes narrowing. "Why do we have the lowest score?"
The professional smile on the MC's face flickered for just a fraction of a second.
She opened her mouth, about to explain——
Jogo seized the microphone, lurched to her feet, and strode to the very front of the stage in a few large steps. She planted one foot on top of a speaker, stared down at the sea of audience members below with imperious disdain, and let her voice explode through the amplifier across the entire hall:
"HEY, YOU PIECES OF TRASH! VOTE FOR US RIGHT NOW! WHAT GOOD ARE YOU TO ME IF YOU DON'T?!"
Mahiko's jaw dropped.
Todo's jaw dropped.
Every other idol onstage's jaw dropped.
The MC's jaw dropped.
Then.
Audience: ...
Audience: AAAAAAAAAAAA!!——
The entire venue exploded.
Mahiko stood below the stage, head tilted back, watching the number on the big screen rocket upward in real time. Her mouth opened slightly.
She suddenly felt that her plan to destroy humanity might actually be justified.
There truly was no saving these people.
——I said I'd post a bonus chapter, and here it is!
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