Itadori Yuji leaned against the car window, his forehead pressed against the cool glass as his gaze swept over the streetscape receding rapidly outside.
He blinked, feeling his eyelids were still a bit heavy.
The last fragment of his memory was that Cursed Spirit floating in mid-air, and after that... he couldn't remember a thing.
"So..."
Itadori Yuji spoke up, clearing his throat before asking again:
"Was it Kama who came to save us?"
The Assistant Director sitting in the driver's seat glanced at him through the rearview mirror and nodded.
The fingers of this very disciplined Assistant Director trembled slightly as she gripped the steering wheel.
"Y-yes."
She pushed up her glasses, trying to make her voice sound steady, but the tail end of her words still betrayed a hint of a tremor she couldn't quite suppress.
"I was waiting outside the Curtain at the time. According to protocol, I tried to contact the interior every ten minutes, but I never received a response. I was just about to request reinforcements from above when—"
She paused, as if recalling the scene.
"Kama simply walked out of the Curtain."
"Walked out?" Kugisaki Nobara, sitting next to Itadori Yuji, raised an eyebrow at that. "From where? We didn't see her when we went in."
"That... I'm not entirely sure either."
The Assistant Director gave a wry smile.
"She just... appeared out of nowhere. The Curtain wasn't broken, and there were no signs of anyone entering or exiting, but there she was, standing outside the Curtain. Then she raised her hand and gave it a light tap—"
"And the Curtain just went poof and vanished."
Fushiguro Megumi, sitting in the passenger seat, hadn't said a word, simply listening quietly.
He turned his head slightly toward the Assistant Director:
"And then?"
"Then Kama walked up to me and said—"
The Assistant Director tried her best to recall the original words, reciting them as accurately as possible.
" 'There are three idiots inside. The Cursed Spirit has been dealt with. When they wake up, take them back to school.' "
"After she finished, she gave a light sigh. Her expression... wasn't very good."
Kugisaki Nobara: "..."
Itadori Yuji: "..."
Fushiguro Megumi: "..."
The Assistant Director seemed to have opened a floodgate of words.
"I was stunned! That was a Special Grade Cursed Spirit! At least a Special Grade! I could feel that terrifying fluctuation of Cursed Energy even from that far away! Yet Kama just said she dealt with it so nonchalantly!"
The more she spoke, the more excited she became, and her hands on the steering wheel stopped trembling, replaced by a nearly fanatical admiration.
"As expected of Kama! I'd heard of her great name long ago! After that incident at Aoki Hospital two months ago, rumors have been flying within the Jujutsu World! Everyone's saying a Monster Rookie has arrived at Tokyo Jujutsu High, with strength so absurd and a style even more... more..."
She stalled, appearing to search for the right word.
"More self-indulgent?" Kugisaki Nobara finished for her.
"Yes, yes, yes! Self-indulgent!" The Assistant Director nodded vigorously.
The trio: "..."
Itadori Yuji rubbed the back of his head, pulling the conversation back on track:
"So where did Kama go afterward? She didn't come back to school?"
"No." The Assistant Director shook her head.
"After she gave me my orders, she turned and left. I asked her where she was going, but she didn't answer. She just gave a wave of her hand and then... she simply vanished."
Kugisaki Nobara: "What do you mean?"
"I mean it literally."
The Assistant Director gestured. " Whoosh, and she was gone."
"Anyway, she probably had some urgent business to attend to, right? After all, an existence like her must have many matters to handle that we couldn't possibly understand."
Kugisaki Nobara gave an "oh" and didn't ask further.
She leaned back into her seat and crossed her arms, looking out at the sky as it gradually darkened, her thoughts unknown.
Silence fell over the car once more.
But this silence lasted for less than thirty seconds.
Evidently, this Assistant Director was someone who couldn't keep a secret.
"Um..." she began tentatively, "everyone, are your injuries alright? Do you need me to take you to Dr. Ieiri first?"
"No," Fushiguro said. "They're just superficial wounds."
At the very least, when they woke up, aside from the exhaustion brought on by overextending their Cursed Energy, their bodies were essentially fine.
"That's good, that's good." The Assistant Director breathed a sigh of relief, then seemed to remember something as her tone turned lively again.
"Speaking of which, quite a few interesting things have been happening in the Jujutsu World lately!"
Itadori Yuji played along: "Like what?"
"The biggest change is that the number of Cursed Spirits has dropped significantly!"
The Assistant Director's voice was a mix of relief and a complex sense of worry.
"Especially this past month. The number of Cursed Spirit incidents reported across the country has dropped by at least seventy percent compared to the same period last year! And the remaining Cursed Spirits are generally low in intensity; cases of Grade 2 or higher are pitifully rare."
Kugisaki Nobara raised an eyebrow. "Isn't that a good thing?"
"It's a good thing, but... the problem lies in the commissions."
"Most of a Jujutsu Sorcerer's income comes from mission commissions. The more dangerous the mission, the higher the pay. Now that Cursed Spirits are fewer and weaker, it means high-paying missions have also become scarce."
She continued:
"I know several Jujutsu Sorcerers who used to take on two or three Grade 1 missions a month, and the pay was enough for them to squander in Tokyo's most expensive districts. Now the commissions are barely worth looking at, and their lives have suddenly become very tight."
Itadori Yuji was stunned by what he was hearing. "That's such an exaggeration?"
"It really is that exaggerated!"
The Assistant Director slapped the steering wheel.
"The Jujutsu Sorcerer profession was always high-risk, high-reward. Now that the risk is low, the reward has taken a dive too. A lot of people are in a subtle state of being 'relieved they don't have to risk their lives, yet worried they don't have enough money to spend'."
Hearing this, Fushiguro Megumi suddenly asked:
"Has the higher-ups reached a conclusion on why the Cursed Spirits are decreasing?"
"No." The Assistant Director shook her head. "Right now, there's all sorts of speculation."
The Assistant Director grew more animated as she spoke, moving from how a certain Grade 1 Jujutsu Sorcerer became an unexpectedly famous food blogger because of the lack of missions, to gossip about the Kyoto school...
Itadori Yuji cooperated with occasional exclamations of "wow," "really," and "that's amazing."
The atmosphere in the car lightened considerably for a time.
Fushiguro Megumi and Kugisaki Nobara listened quietly, one looking out the window, the other resting with closed eyes.
Meanwhile, Kama, the one they were so concerned about, was currently conducting a completely different kind of "visit."