Under the moonlight, long blue hair drifted gently in the wind.
Riko Amanai stared up in a daze, gazing at the face so close to her own, forgetting even to breathe for a moment. Who was this person? An enemy, or...?
She'd been hurt and thrown into danger far too many times tonight. Every time she saw someone, her mind raced on instinct to whether they meant her harm.
But those thoughts—about assassins—had barely surfaced before an inexplicable sense of ease quietly smoothed them away.
The girl beneath the moonlight was simply too beautiful.
Those curved brows and eyes, that faint hint of a smile... The embrace held her with a warmth that somehow made her lower her guard.
She curled up a little in those arms. She felt safe, and all her fear and unease melted away.
"A... bodyguard?" So I had a bodyguard after all?
A Jujutsu Sorcerer sent by the Jujutsu world?
How unexpected...
The girl, only just pulled back from the brink of death, was still dazed. Truth be told, her impression of Jujutsu Sorcerers had never been good. The ones she'd met were either sour, mean-spirited old geezers or eccentric lunatics—hardly a normal person among them.
But this blue-haired girl before her felt utterly different from all of them.
So there were... people like this among the Jujutsu Sorcerers too.
"What?!" The attacker's shout came from above. "Who are you?! How dare you ruin my plans!"
Mahiru raised an eyebrow and looked up.
"That guy's a Jujutsu Sorcerer too!" Riko Amanai told Mahiru from within her arms. "He's a bad guy, an assassin!"
"I know." The blue-haired girl chuckled softly.
The man gritted his teeth, his face twisted with menace. He couldn't let the Star Plasma Vessel be saved, so he drove the Shikigami all around him forward, ready to press the attack.
But just then a rush of wind came from the distance, bearing down head-on with a loud, chaotic roar.
The man froze and looked up on reflex.
A light propeller trainer plane, trailing a shrill scream, was hurtling straight at him.
???
"Holy shit—!"
Before the man's curse could fully leave his mouth, the plane slammed square into him.
With a thunderous crash, the plane struck the man and carried him straight into the building. Flames and debris exploded outward, smoke billowing into the sky.
Riko Amanai watched, mouth agape, utterly stunned.
Wh-where had this plane even come from...?
Mahiru descended with the shocked Riko Amanai, and the two of them touched down lightly.
This was the open ground outside the hotel.
The moment Mahiru turned, a Grade 1 Cursed Spirit lunged at her. She raised her hand and flicked out a receipt—a massive truck crashed down out of thin air, blocking the Grade 1 Cursed Spirit's attack, its body left dented by the impact.
The blue-haired girl frowned slightly.
That man just now had been an assassin—that much was clear enough.
But the Cursed Spirits now rampaging inside the hotel were something no mere assassin could have brought...
This hotel, too, had a [Passage] of the Culling Game appear within it. That was why so many Cursed Spirits were pouring out. Just like the situation at that haunted house before.
"What a pain..."
Maybe it was the butterfly effect... The truth was, today's date fell far earlier than when Riko Amanai had been killed in the original story.
Everyone who wanted Riko Amanai dead had moved earlier than they should have.
So early... that no one had time to react.
Yesterday she'd volunteered to join the team protecting Riko Amanai. And tomorrow was the day she and Satoru Gojo had agreed to set out together to find her. This afternoon she'd still been off getting Yuki Tsukumo to paint something, and tonight she'd meant to sleep in nice and lazy, resting all the way until tomorrow...
The only reason she'd caught wind of Riko Amanai's attack this time was that she'd played it safe and had Suo track down the hotel where Amanai was hiding through the intelligence network in advance.
How had this assassin found the place when even Satoru Gojo and the others had no intel on it?
It was strange. And was this Culling Game Passage opening here just a coincidence too?
Facing the Cursed Spirit, Mahiru drew out a new paper scroll, her eyes glowing as her Cursed Energy seethed. "Re-Contract Manifestation."
—[Lumber-Cutting Contract].
Tens of millions of invisible slashes struck the Cursed Spirit before her in an instant, carving it into countless little cubes. In terms of speed and density, the "wood-cutting" Mahiru recreated was even remarkably similar to the Dismantle of Sukuna's Malevolent Shrine.
It had to be said—Re-Contract Manifestation truly was a Cursed Technique with incredible versatility.
The invisible slashes shredded the Grade 1 Cursed Spirit to pieces, its blood splashing across the night sky, blooming like a flower.
Riko Amanai was completely dumbstruck.
Cursed Spirits from the hotel kept surging toward them in an endless stream.
Mahiru stepped in front of Riko Amanai and glanced back with a smile. "Don't worry. This won't take long."
Watching Mahiru's back, Riko Amanai could only think how impossibly cool this person was.
Bang—a distant gunshot, as if from somewhere far away. A blood-soaked hair ribbon fluttered loose, and a bullet that had punched through a skull tore through the air.
In midair, blood bloomed like a flower. And that blood splattered onto Riko Amanai's face, bringing an eerie warmth.
"...?"
The girl froze in place, raising a hand in disbelief to touch the warm blood on her face.
Her pupils trembled violently.
Because the corpse that had fallen before her—its skull pierced by a bullet, a pool of blood slowly spreading beneath it—looked exactly like her.
It was her.
Another her.
How...
An uncontrollable, suffocating dread welled up inside her. The girl stumbled backward again and again in a panic.
[I came from the future...]
[You... died for nothing at all...]
"No!"
The girl screamed and shot upright in bed, gasping for breath in great heaving gulps.
She sat blank for a good while before it slowly dawned on her that it had been a dream—a nightmare.
She reached for her back. It was already soaked through with cold sweat.
She glanced around and found herself in another hotel room.
Outside the window was a fresh, bright day, sunlight pouring in, a gentle breeze stirring the curtains—everything calm and serene.
Only then did the girl's memories come back to her.
Last night she'd been attacked, then saved by an incredibly beautiful blue-haired girl. Afterward, while that girl was fighting the Cursed Spirits, the shock and exhaustion had gotten to her and she'd fainted.
Ugh, how embarrassing...
So where was this? Had she been rescued?
She got up out of bed and only then realized she'd been changed into pajamas, her bare feet on the floor. The room was oddly quiet—a completely different world from last night's chaos and clamor.
"Excuse me... is anyone there?" No one answered.
She walked to the window to look outside.
The hotel floor was very high up.
Looking down at the street below, she saw it was bustling. This hotel seemed to be some luxury establishment right in the heart of downtown... She had a vague impression of it.
Knock, knock, knock. Just then, a knock suddenly sounded behind her.
Had someone come back?
Her eyes lit up, and she spun around and ran to the door. "Coming, coming—"
She pulled the door open—and found herself staring straight into the eyes of a masked man wielding a large cleaver.
"..." The air went silent for a second.
Bang! The girl slammed the door shut again and shoved the nearby table over to barricade it.
—Who the heck was this guy?!!
"Gah-hah-hah-hah!" The man outside let out a strange, gloating cackle. "The Star Plasma Vessel, right?! I've finally found you! Now be a good girl and die!"
Then he started hacking at the door with his cleaver, clang after clang.
—Another assassin?!!
Swinging his cleaver, the assassin hacked the door to splinters in a few strokes and burst in.
Riko Amanai was too terrified even to cry. Her legs gave out and she collapsed to the floor, kicking her feet and scooting backward as fast as she could.
"You're finished! The bounty's mine!" The assassin twirled his blade, laughing smugly.
Bang! Mahiru appeared behind the man and kicked him flying. He slammed straight into the wall, his whole body embedding into it.
Riko Amanai turned her head in a daze and saw the man lodged in the wall, his body frozen in some bizarre pose like a figure from an Impressionist painting, no longer moving.
"Uh..." Riko Amanai's lips were still quivering as she spoke. "This..."
"Hello there, Riko-chan." The blue-haired girl walked in with a bright smile, helped the collapsed Riko to her feet, then set the breakfast she'd been carrying down on the suite's table. "You're finally awake. I got this breakfast ready for you. Since I didn't know what you liked, I bought a little of everything. It's fine if you can't finish it all."
Wait... at a time like this, shouldn't you be explaining what's going on right now and what just happened first?
That assassin's still stuck in the wall—is it really okay to invite me to breakfast so breezily?
"There's a bounty on you, and the sum is super, super big." Mahiru's explanation was brief and to the point.
She used a furniture receipt to replace and repair the suite's door.
"Then you passed out last night, so I brought you here. I'm the one who changed your clothes, so no need to worry."
Last night, Mahiru had cleared out all the Cursed Spirits in the hotel and that Culling Game [Passage] in short order. Only when she turned back did she find that Riko Amanai had already fainted from fright.
Hearing Mahiru's words, Riko Amanai bit her lower lip. "The bounty on me... is a lot?"
"Mm, yeah. Roughly enough to tempt even me." Mahiru gestured with her hands.
It was the butterfly effect again... She didn't know exactly how such an effect had formed, but this time the bounty was even higher than before.
And the bounty had been posted not only in the Jujutsu world, but across every sphere in every country.
Professional killers and people with jujutsu-related abilities all over the world now knew there was a high-value target here in Tokyo. Every one of them was eyeing it hungrily.
That guy just now was one of them.
The man wasn't a Jujutsu Sorcerer, but a physically powerful professional killer—maybe even some retired American or British veteran, or an urban warrior king.
Hearing this, Riko Amanai, busy chomping at her breakfast, shrank her neck in. "If the bounty's really that much... you, you wouldn't kidnap me and sell me for the money, would you...?"
"Add another ten percent on top and maybe I really would, you know?"
"Uh... then I guess I can only hope the bounty doesn't climb any higher..."
Knock, knock, knock. There was another knock at the suite's door.
Since the door was only a temporary fix Mahiru had installed, whoever was knocking knocked it right open.
The two girls turned toward the doorway, and standing there were three masked, hulking foreign men wielding AK-47s.
"She is our target!" the lead brute howled, leveling his gun at the two girls. "Kill her! Fucking kill her!"
Bang, bang, bang! After three muffled thuds, the three brutes were embedded in the wall in the exact same pose as the first assassin.
Satoru Gojo, who'd kicked every one of them flying, walked in through the doorway with a speechless look on his face. Behind him came Suguru Geto, wearing much the same expression.
"Absolute lunatics," Satoru Gojo said with a grimace.
It wasn't clear whether he was cursing the assassins, the whole incident, or this exhausting situation.
Riko Amanai gaped at Satoru Gojo, plainly with no idea who he was.
"Hilarious—I never thought these assassins could make the genius of the Gojo Family pull a face like that." Mahiru laughed, chin propped on her hand, and grabbed a bottle of mineral water to toss to Satoru Gojo.
Whoosh—a gust split the air, closing in fast from outside the window toward Riko Amanai's ear.
Mahiru reached out and caught the sniper bullet aimed at Riko's temple between two fingers, intercepting it in midair.
"Anyone would find this annoying..." Satoru Gojo sighed, walked to the window, wound up, and hurled the water bottle Mahiru had just tossed him.
Fwoosh—bang! Atop some distant high-rise, a burst of shattered dust and smoke suddenly erupted.
No second sniper bullet came.
Only now did Riko Amanai belatedly register what had just happened, and she hurriedly ducked her head and scrambled under the table.
"...Hahaha, no need for that. It's fine. With us protecting you, you've got nothing to worry about."
Mahiru looked at the girl curled pitifully under the table, tears welling at the corners of her frightened eyes, and genuinely thought she looked utterly adorable.
She even reached out and ruffled her head.
"From now on, stop thinking of yourself as some wanted target trapped in danger. Just think of yourself as a normal person living a normal life. All that commotion around you is just an illusion. Every attack trying to kill you is an illusion too..."
Roar! Bam—before she could finish, a fierce tiger Shikigami summoned by some Jujutsu Sorcerer smashed through the hotel wall with a crash and lunged at Riko Amanai, all bared fangs and flailing claws.
Suguru Geto made his move and summoned a large Cursed Spirit, which slapped the tiger Shikigami straight down from this floor to the one below with a single blow. Meanwhile, the Jujutsu Sorcerer controlling the Shikigami from outside the wall hadn't caught up yet and was still whooping gleefully. "Got her—wait, no...?"
Mahiru casually flicked out a receipt, and a bolt of lightning came crashing down, frying that Jujutsu Sorcerer to a crisp.
"See? They can't hurt you." Mahiru smiled at Riko Amanai. "So just treat them as illusions."
Gazing at her three seemingly invincible bodyguards, Riko Amanai opened her mouth, gathered herself for a long while, and finally, slowly, managed to get out a single line:
"...Only a god could treat them as illusions..."
In a situation like this, no ordinary person could possibly treat them as illusions, right?!
You make it sound way too easy! You—!!
____
👻🔥Seek: Walnut-chan on P a t r e o n🔥👻
🔥 New history: Re:Zero: Wait, am I Pandora? — find it on The_Mikudayo
📚 40 chapters ahead at Walnut-chan — every supporter directly speeds up the translations
Let's hit these goals:
🎯 100 Powerstones = 1 extra chapter for the public!