Chapter 4: Meet The Murder Squad
The room they gave him was small.
Tatami floor. A futon in the corner. A desk with nothing on it. A window that looked out over the training grounds where he could see trees and dirt and what might have been a crater from something he didn't want to think about.
It was the nicest room he'd been in since dying.
He sat on the futon and opened the system menu.
[CURRENT STATUS]
[NAME: AKIRA HARUTO] [STRENGTH: 3/100] [SPEED: 4/100] [ENDURANCE: 2/100] [CURSED ENERGY: 0/100] [CHARM: 47/100]
[POINTS: 247] [FREE GACHA PULLS: 1]
[ACTIVE QUEST: TRAIN YOUR FIRST FEMALE SORCERER] [DEADLINE: 47:12:33]
He had a free pull. He might as well use it.
"System. Use the free gacha pull."
[INITIATING FREE PULL...]
A slot machine appeared in his vision. Three spinning columns of light and color. They clicked to a stop one by one.
Star. Moon. Star.
[CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE RECEIVED:]
[ITEM: GOJO'S SUNGLASSES (COSMETIC)]
[DESCRIPTION: A PAIR OF ROUND BLACK SUNGLASSES IDENTICAL TO THOSE WORN BY GOJO SATORU. PROVIDES NO COMBAT BENEFIT. MAKES YOU LOOK 15% COOLER.]
[RARITY: COMMON]
A pair of sunglasses materialized in his hand. Round. Black. Expensive looking.
"My first gacha pull." He held them up to the light. "And it's sunglasses."
[THE GACHA REFLECTS THE HOST'S LUCK STAT.]
"I don't have a luck stat."
[EXACTLY.]
He put them on anyway. Caught his reflection in the window. The skinny pale faced kid staring back at him now looked like a skinny pale faced kid wearing Gojo's sunglasses.
It actually did look kind of cool.
He took them off and tucked them into his shirt pocket. Maybe they'd come in handy as a conversation starter.
A knock at the door pulled him out of the system menu.
"Hey! New guy! Dinner!"
Yuji's voice. Already at maximum volume despite being directly on the other side of a thin wooden door.
Haruto opened it. Yuji stood there grinning with the intensity of someone who'd been told dinner was his religion.
"Come on come on Gojo-sensei told everyone about you. Well he told us there's a guest. He didn't really explain much. He never explains much actually."
Yuji grabbed his wrist and pulled him down the hallway before he could respond.
The dining room was a traditional style room with a low table and cushions on the floor. Food was already laid out. Rice. Grilled fish. Miso soup. Pickled vegetables. Simple but it smelled incredible and Haruto's stomach reminded him violently that he hadn't eaten all day.
Three people were already sitting at the table.
Yuji released him and bounded over to his spot with the enthusiasm of a golden retriever.
Megumi Fushiguro sat at the far end. Dark hair. Serious face. The kind of expression that said he'd already decided Haruto was a waste of his time before they'd even spoken. He didn't look up from his rice.
And then there was the third person.
Nobara Kugisaki sat cross legged on her cushion with her chin resting on one hand scrolling through her phone with the other. She wore the standard Jujutsu High uniform but with the jacket open over a fitted black top. Her dyed orange hair fell past her shoulders and she had the face of someone who knew exactly how pretty she was and had absolutely no patience for anyone who mentioned it.
The manga didn't do her justice.
In person Nobara was the kind of beautiful that made you forget what you were about to say. Not soft beautiful. Sharp beautiful. Like a well made knife. Everything about her face was precise. The curve of her jaw. The angle of her eyes. Even the slight pout of her lower lip as she scrolled through whatever was on her phone screen.
Haruto realized he'd been standing in the doorway for about four seconds too long.
"Are you going to sit down or just stand there breathing heavy?" Nobara didn't look up from her phone.
"Right. Sorry."
He sat at the open spot across from her. Yuji was already shoveling rice into his mouth at a pace that defies physics.
"So." Megumi finally looked at him. Dark eyes. Flat. Unimpressed. "Gojo-sensei says you can see curses."
"Yeah."
"But you have no cursed energy."
"That's correct."
"And you apparently know about things that haven't happened yet."
"I... mentioned something in the moment. It's complicated."
Megumi's eyes narrowed slightly. Not hostile but calculating. The same look Maki had given him earlier. These jujutsu sorcerers were all trained to assess threats and Haruto was setting off every alarm without doing anything threatening.
"Ignore him." Yuji waved a chopstick. "Fushiguro's suspicious of everything. One time a delivery guy came to the school and Megumi followed him back to the van to make sure he was real."
"He was acting suspicious."
"He was delivering packages."
"Suspiciously."
Nobara snorted. Still not looking up from her phone. "You're both idiots."
Haruto picked up his chopsticks and started eating. The rice was simple but after a day of nothing it tasted like heaven. He forced himself to eat slowly even though his body screamed at him to inhale everything on the table.
"So what's your deal?" Nobara finally put her phone down and looked at him.
Eye contact with Nobara Kugisaki was an experience.
Her eyes were sharp and light brown almost amber in the warm light of the dining room. They hit him with the force of someone who'd already formed seventeen opinions about him and none of them were good.
"My deal?"
"Yeah. Your deal. Why are you here? Are you someone important? Do you have some hidden power? Are you secretly the reincarnation of some ancient sorcerer?"
"No. I'm just a guy."
"A guy." She picked up a piece of fish with her chopsticks. "Gojo-sensei doesn't invite guys to live at the school. He barely tolerates the guys who are already here."
"Hey." Yuji looked genuinely hurt.
"She's not wrong." Megumi said.
"So either you're useful in some way we don't know about yet." Nobara pointed her chopsticks at him. "Or Gojo-sensei is bored and you're a new toy."
Haruto considered both options. "Honestly? It might be the second one."
Nobara stared at him for a beat. Then the corner of her mouth twitched. Not a smile. But the ghost of one.
"At least you're honest." She went back to her fish.
They ate in relative silence for a few minutes. Yuji dominated the food supply. Megumi ate precisely. Nobara ate like someone who enjoyed food but would never admit it out loud.
Haruto used the time to observe them. These three. The first years of Jujutsu High. In the manga they'd fought special grades and survived the Shibuya Incident and faced down the most dangerous sorcerers in history.
Right now they looked like teenagers eating dinner.
"I have a question." Haruto set down his chopsticks. "Where's Maki? Doesn't she eat with you guys?"
Megumi shook his head. "Maki-senpai eats in her room or at the training grounds. She doesn't like crowds."
"She doesn't like people." Nobara corrected.
"Is she... always like that?"
"Like what? Terrifying?" Yuji grinned. "Yeah pretty much. But she's amazing. You should see her fight. She's so cool."
"You should see her when she's angry." Nobara leaned forward slightly. "Last month someone from the Zenin clan came to 'check on her' and she threw a javelin at his car. From three hundred meters."
"Did she hit it?"
"She hit the engine block. The car exploded."
Haruto made a mental note to never make Maki angry.
[SYSTEM ALERT: QUEST REMINDER]
[TRAIN YOUR FIRST FEMALE SORCERER] [DEADLINE: 46:08:12]
[AVAILABLE FEMALE SORCERERS AT JUJUTSU HIGH:] [1. MAKI ZENIN — SECOND YEAR — HEAVENLY RESTRICTION — DANGER LEVEL: EXTREME] [2. NOBARA KUGISAKI — FIRST YEAR — STRAW DOLL TECHNIQUE — DANGER LEVEL: HIGH]
[SYSTEM RECOMMENDATION: CHOOSE WISELY. BOTH OPTIONS MAY RESULT IN PHYSICAL HARM TO HOST.]
He looked across the table at Nobara who was now arguing with Yuji about who got the last piece of grilled fish.
He thought about Maki somewhere on the training grounds eating alone.
Both were dangerous. Both were powerful. Both could probably kill him without trying.
"Hey." Haruto's voice came out before his brain caught up. "Do you guys train together? Like group sessions?"
Megumi raised an eyebrow. "Sometimes. Why?"
"I was thinking... I might be able to help."
The table went quiet.
Yuji looked excited. Megumi looked skeptical. Nobara looked at him like he'd just claimed he could fly.
"You." She put her chopsticks down. "You want to help US train?"
"I know it sounds—"
"You have zero cursed energy. Maki told us. Literally zero. You couldn't even run away from a grade 2. And you want to train jujutsu sorcerers?"
"I don't fight. I strategize. I know techniques. I know theory. I know things about cursed energy manipulation that could—"
"Could what? Get you killed slightly faster?"
Yuji jumped in. "Hey Kugisaki give him a chance. Gojo-sensei brought him here for a reason right?"
"Gojo-sensei also brought a cursed painting to school once because he thought it was funny." Nobara shot back.
"That was actually terrifying." Megumi muttered.
Haruto took a breath. He needed to be smart about this. Not desperate. Not pleading. The system wanted him to train a female sorcerer in forty-six hours. If he came across as weak or pathetic they'd dismiss him immediately.
Charm stat of 47. Time to use it.
"You're right." He leaned back. Casual. Relaxed. Like he wasn't internally screaming. "I can't fight. I can't use cursed energy. If a curse showed up right now I'd be the first person to die in this room."
"Glad we agree." Nobara crossed her arms.
"But I know things." He met her eyes. Didn't flinch. "I know that your Straw Doll Technique has an evolution path you haven't explored yet."
The room went very quiet.
Nobara's eyes narrowed into slits. The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. "Nobody introduced me. And nobody mentioned my technique. How the hell do you know what I use?"
Haruto kept his voice steady. "Like I told Megumi earlier, I know things. And I know that Resonance isn't limited to the target and the doll. It can chain. Multiple targets. Simultaneously."
Nobara's arms slowly uncrossed. The hostility didn't vanish, but it shifted into something else. Not belief. Not trust. But the sharp flicker of someone hearing information they hadn't considered and couldn't immediately dismiss.
"How do you know about resonance chaining?"
"I told you. I know things."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I've got right now."
Their eyes locked across the table. Hers were sharp and searching. His were steady even though his heart was hammering so loud he was sure Yuji could hear it.
Megumi cleared his throat. "He said something similar to Gojo-sensei. About the Culling Game."
"The what?" Nobara turned to Megumi.
"I don't know either. But Gojo-sensei took him seriously enough to give him a room. That's more than he's done for most people."
Nobara looked back at Haruto. Studied him for a long moment. Head tilted slightly. Lips pressed together in thought.
Then she stood up.
"Fine." She grabbed her plate. "Tomorrow morning. Training grounds. Six AM. If you waste my time I'm putting a nail through your kneecap."
She walked out of the room without looking back.
Yuji watched her go with wide eyes. "Dude. She said yes."
"She threatened to nail my knee."
"That's how she says yes!"
Megumi shook his head and went back to his rice. "You're either very brave or very stupid."
"I've been hearing that a lot today."
[QUEST UPDATE: TRAIN YOUR FIRST FEMALE SORCERER]
[TRAINING SESSION SCHEDULED: NOBARA KUGISAKI — TOMORROW 6:00 AM]
[SYSTEM NOTE: HOST HAS APPROXIMATELY 10 HOURS TO FIGURE OUT WHAT TO ACTUALLY TEACH HER.]
He looked out the window toward the darkened training grounds. Ten hours to figure out how to train a prodigy without getting a nail through the knee.
And to make matters worse, he remembered a very specific detail about the Jujutsu High training grounds.
Maki Zenin started her morning routines at 5:00 AM.
If he showed up at six, he wouldn't just be dealing with Nobara. He'd be walking right into the Zenin Princess's domain.
[GOOD LUCK.]