Let me pose a question.
How can you make someone willingly accept being killed while you murder them?
There are actually many answers.
But right now, at least for the present, there's only one trick the jujutsu higher-ups love best and find most effective.
—That is, to call "killing" "Assimilation."
We're not going to kill you.
We're going to assimilate you with a great existence.
You aren't a sacrificial victim treated as consumable material.
After you die, the great existence will be with you.
So there's no need to fear, no need to grieve, no need to struggle, and even less need to rage. Because being assimilated with a great existence is the dream of everyone else.
What? Someone told you that every person's life carries its own meaning?
Hahaha… Then they'll just burst out laughing right to your face, pat you on the shoulder, and tell you: that's only others being jealous of you, jealous that you get to be assimilated with a great existence.
This is their rhetoric, a script that has never once failed in a hundred years. From birth, the Star Plasma Vessel is relentlessly brainwashed by the jujutsu higher-ups, never given the chance to encounter any normal ideas, and so naturally comes to willingly regard itself as consumable material for assimilation.
—Riko Amanai was no different.
Bang!
The suite door was slammed shut with force.
A girl with braided hair, her clothes in disarray, had just fled back into the room. Now she leaned against the door, gasping in great mouthfuls, her heart pounding hard enough to leap out of her chest.
Rumble…
Sounds of battle still kept drifting through the hotel, an uncanny Cursed Energy filling the entire building. The clamor of Curse Users and cursed spirits running rampant with evil could be heard clearly even through the floors. The girl wanted to call for help, but the signal was jammed, and no matter what she did the call wouldn't go through.
It was the dead of night.
Riko Amanai — a girl, the Star Plasma Vessel, fourteen years old, both parents dead.
She was the protagonist of this attack.
And at the same time, the protagonist at the very heart of the whirlpool of every event in Jujutsu Kaisen's Hidden Inventory / Premature Death Arc.
Right now, she was under attack.
In this era, far too many people didn't want to see the Star Plasma Vessel assimilate with Tengen. There were heaps upon heaps of people who wanted her dead. The ones who had just attacked the hotel where she was staying were among them.
The hotel was sealed under a Barrier — no escape. No way to reach the outside either. The girl herself had no combat ability whatsoever — even among ordinary peers her constitution was hardly remarkable. All she could do now was wait for rescue. She hoped those assassins would find her a little later…
The girl was praying when she heard what seemed to be movement inside her own room, and her head snapped up.
The lights in her room weren't on, everything dim around her, and by all logic she should be the only one there. But moonlight spilled in, and she saw an illusory human figure.
Right after, a glowing point of light appeared beside her.
A virtual voice sounded in her ears—
"Hello, Player [Riko Amanai]," the voice said. "Welcome to the Culling Game."
!!!
What was that?!
"Hello there, Riko-chan." The illusory figure spoke as well. "So nice to meet you."
Unlike the firefly's flat, emotionless system prompt, the voice of the figure before her was gentle and intensely familiar — the kind that would make a person let down their guard without meaning to.
Set against all the ferocious fighting around the hotel, it made her instinctively feel that something was deeply wrong.
"Who are you! Are you an assassin too!" The girl kept backing away, teeth clenched with tension, until her heels struck the wall and she realized she had nowhere left to retreat. "I belong to Lord Tengen! Do you know what will happen to you if you kill me!"
"No, I have no intention of harming you… On the contrary, I've come to help you." The illusory figure smiled, its tone slow and gentle to the extreme. "I'm a person from the future, come back specifically to this [past world], just to help you."
The past world?
Was this guy a lunatic?
Riko Amanai couldn't make sense of it.
The figure glowed, and though she strained to look, trying to make out its appearance, she couldn't. She couldn't even tell whether the voice was a man's or a woman's. All she could see was what seemed to be a ring of stitch-like marks around the top of its head.
"Just who are you!"
"Who I am doesn't matter, because I'm already dead." That person was laughing.
…?
"Yes, I'm actually a dead man… I was killed by someone very powerful, and now I've lost everything, life included. I can't do anything. To be honest, I can't see you right now, nor can I see what's actually happening in your world… heh heh, so who I am really doesn't matter anymore." That person smiled. "But you're different."
"…What?"
"I died because my skills fell short of another's, and I accept that completely. But you're different — you're innocent." A note of pity seemed to rise in the other's voice. "You shouldn't be killed by [Tengen] as consumable material… No one's life is another person's consumable…"
The other truly seemed to be grieving.
The sheer genuineness of that grief… threw the girl into confusion for a moment.
"What on earth are you talking about…"
Beep beep.
The girl noticed an illusory panel had appeared in front of her. A message popped up on it, saying there was a "game item" waiting for her to claim.
"So I want to save you," he said. "You know, even if you wanted to run, weak as you are, you could never escape the jujutsu world's blockade. That's why I've prepared this gift for you."
He meant this "game item" waiting to be claimed on the panel.
"Claim this thing. When Tengen assimilates you, this thing will save your life." The voice was gentle, coaxing her along step by step. "You shouldn't die at fourteen…"
Riko Amanai's mind was a tangle. The words, and the scene before her, were beyond her comprehension.
But of one thing she was certain.
"Stop your wishful thinking! I will never believe you!" the girl shouted.
As said before — from the moment Riko Amanai was born, the people of the jujutsu world had never stopped drumming those doctrines into her, day and night.
Run? Refuse assimilation?
Betray Tengen?
Her own life mattering more than assimilating with Lord Tengen?
In her current situation, ringed by attackers, the girl's convictions naturally weren't going to be shaken by a few words from the illusion before her.
Rumble, rumble…
Riko Amanai jerked her head toward the direction beyond the suite door. Because she could hear the sounds of battle drawing nearer and nearer. The enemy would be here any moment.
And the illusion, hearing the girl's answer, shook its head in disappointment. "Haah… you're still so young. What on earth have those people of the jujutsu world crammed into you… it truly breaks my heart…"
The enemy's voice pressed closer and closer.
It seemed time was limited, for the illusion was slowly turning transparent.
"But it's all right. In the end you'll understand just how precious a thing your own life is…"
"The thing I've given you will stay in your system always. When you don't want to be assimilated, claim it — it will help you resist Tengen."
"Remember, don't tell anyone about this, especially the people of Jujutsu High. If they find out you have this thing, they'll keep you away from Tengen instead…"
The illusion gradually dissolved, leaving its voice echoing in Riko Amanai's ears.
"Believe me, you'll come around… because I'm a person from the future, and I know how miserably you die in the end… dying utterly without meaning…"
The illusion vanished completely.
The panel disappeared too.
Having heard those final words, Riko Amanai stood frozen in place.
He hadn't lied. In the original timeline, Riko Amanai really did die meaninglessly in the end. So his statement of that fact carried deeply sincere emotion.
I'll… die without any worth?
The girl's heart shuddered violently.
What did it mean, to be without worth? Assimilating with Lord Tengen, becoming a part of Lord Tengen — wasn't that "worth"?
What did his words actually mean? In the end I don't even manage to assimilate with Lord Tengen?
The girl sank into confusion, an inexplicable panic welling up inside her.
And in that same moment, the enemy's approaching footsteps had already reached just outside the suite door. Fear and dread gripped the girl.
She scrambled back deeper into the room, snatching up a fruit knife along the way, and shrank into a dark corner.
Bang!
The suite door was wrenched open from outside, and a reek of gunsmoke laced with blood came flooding in.
A masked man stepped through the doorway.
Wounds covered his body, plainly earned in the fighting just now. Several grotesquely shaped monster Shikigami floated around him, baring fangs and claws as they swept their gaze across the dark room.
His expression was savage and vicious.
His eyes were flooded with murderous intent — the exact stare only a deranged killer would have.
"Where'd that damn brat run off to! Get out here!" he bellowed at the top of his lungs.
Riko Amanai, of course, gave no answer.
"Damn it… go and blunder into some meddling idiot. Do the Jujutsu Sorcerers of Tokyo have nothing better to do than wander around all day?" The man spat, grinding his teeth in irritation. "This was supposed to be foolproof…"
He had deliberately chosen his moment to assassinate Riko Amanai, seizing the window when there were no guards around the girl.
But his luck was truly rotten.
Not that it mattered now.
He paused, then suddenly grinned again — a grin that made the skin crawl. "Because that guy… hahaha, whether or not he was your bodyguard, I've already finished him off. So you're done for now too!"
He was laughing.
"Now where are you hiding?" He paced step by step into the room. "Let me drag you out… you'd better have found somewhere really well hidden!"
In the dark corner, Riko Amanai held her breath with all her might, both hands clenched around that fruit knife, tension stretched to its absolute limit.
Fear crawled up her spine inch by inch.
The girl tucked in this corner had nowhere left to run.
As if guided by unseen hands, she remembered again what that illusion had said — that she would die without any worth.
Could it be… that this so-called "dying without any worth" meant she would be killed right here, by this man?
Never assimilating with Lord Tengen, never seeing again that one friend who had always stayed beside her and cared for her, never getting to say a proper goodbye.
…Yes. Without a doubt, this would be the most wretched way to die.
No. She couldn't die like this.
She absolutely could not die for nothing!
From the day she was born, she had been told over and over that she was special, that she was the Star Plasma Vessel.
But if she just huddled in this corner and died in the end, then what had these past fourteen years meant? And everything given by the friends and companions who had tended to her so carefully — what had all of that meant?
She would never surrender without a fight!
On the very brink of death, a spark of courage suddenly flared up from deep in the girl's chest.
Instead she turned utterly calm, gripping the knife's handle, holding her breath as she waited for the man to draw closer, step by step — she would strike first and turn the kill back on him.
Now!
The girl let out a great shout and, clutching the fruit knife, burst out of the corner!
But before the blade could even touch him, a huge hand seized her neck from behind, hauling her whole body up, lifting her clear off the floor.
Clang, clang…
The fruit knife was batted to the floor by a Shikigami.
"Tch," the man scoffed, contempt written all over his face. "A little brat? You want to kill me too?"
"Ngh… let— let go…" Choked and unable to breathe, Riko Amanai could only claw desperately at his wrist, both legs kicking at him for all she was worth.
It was completely useless. The chasm in strength between an ordinary person and a Jujutsu Sorcerer could never be bridged by sheer spirit. However she struggled, it changed nothing.
The man dragged her to the window and shoved it open with a rattling clatter.
The night wind poured in.
Holding the girl, he thrust her whole body out the window.
"Goodbye, little brat." He smiled. "You're not fit to assimilate with Lord Tengen, and even less fit to defile Lord Tengen's soul. So… just die."
Suffocation and the cold of the night wind hit her at once. Riko Amanai's heart plunged utterly into despair.
Die… it really seemed she was about to die.
She had never been this close to death.
[…I'm a person from the future… I know how your story ends…]
The illusion's words came back to her.
[…In the future, you'll die without any meaning…]
No…
[…without any meaning…]
I refuse to end up like that!!
The man let go. The girl dropped.
Weightlessness swallowed her whole. She clawed desperately at the ornaments on the hotel's outer wall, trying to halt her fall, but in the end her fingertips only scraped uselessly across it, catching nothing.
Her life began to flash before her. As she fell, countless images streaked through her mind—
There was the scene from the day of her parents' funeral.
There was her one and only friend, that smiling face at her side celebrating her birthday.
There was the moment the people of the jujutsu world solemnly told her, "You are Tengen's Star Plasma Vessel" — their gravity and their indifference alike.
And there was the blurred face of Lord Tengen she had dreamed of again and again.
In that fleeting instant she remembered so very much. But every one of these images was rushing away from her. Only the ground kept creeping closer.
She shut her eyes. In the next moment she would smash hard into the earth—
But just then, someone caught her lightly out of the air.
She landed in the warm embrace of another person.
Riko Amanai opened her eyes, bewildered and unable to believe it.
She looked up and saw, in the night sky above, the Barrier shattering piece by piece, laying bare the pure white moonlight.
At the edge of her vision she saw a few strands of blue hair drifting gently in the wind.
"?"
The girl made a puzzled sound.
She lifted her head and met the smiling eyes of a blue-haired girl.
"Yo, good evening." Mahiru smiled, one hand holding an umbrella as she drifted slowly downward through the air, the other arm wrapped around Riko Amanai, shielding the girl completely. "Let me introduce myself. My name is Miwa Ran, and I'm your bodyguard."
____
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