Maki grimaced, looking genuinely pained at what she was about to say.
"I'm going to have to talk to my idiot teacher," she grumbled, her grip tightening slightly on his shirt.
"I'm going to ask Gojo to take you in at Jujutsu High. It's the safest place for you right now, and they have the facilities for me to actually train you without breaking any more of your kitchenware."
She paused, glaring at him with a sudden, fierce protectiveness.
"But if you agree to this, you have to promise me you will ignore exactly ninety-nine percent of what comes out of Gojo's mouth. The man is a menace."
Ren had to bite the inside of his cheek to stop a triumphant smile from breaking through. It was perfect.
"I'll ignore whatever you want me to," Ren said softly, his hand reaching up to brush a stray strand of green hair behind her ear. "As long as I get to stick with you."
Maki let out a soft huff, the fierce glare melting back into a flushed, incredibly fond look. "You're too smooth for your own good, you know that?"
Ren's thumb paused in its gentle motion against her cheek. He let out a slow, deliberate hum, his dark eyes sparkling with a dangerous amount of amusement.
"I just thought of something, boss," Ren said, his voice dropping into a conspiratorial whisper.
Maki eyed him suspiciously. "What?"
"You said this Gojo guy is a menace, right? The kind of guy who pries into everything?"
"He is the physical embodiment of a headache," Maki confirmed with a heavy sigh. "Why?"
Ren leaned in just a fraction closer. "Well... if we go to him, how exactly are you planning to explain my sudden power-up?"
Maki blinked. Her brain, usually so flawless in its tactical analysis, suddenly hit a massive brick wall.
"Are you," Ren continued, a wicked, teasing smirk breaking across his face, "going to march up to the strongest sorcerer in the world, look him dead in the eye, and tell him that you and I had sex, and I instantly caught your superhuman STD?"
For a full three seconds, there was absolute silence in the apartment.
Then, the realization hit her.
The flush that rushed up Maki's neck didn't just paint her cheeks red—it practically set her entire face on fire.
Her eyes blew wide in sheer, unadulterated horror as her brain aggressively supplied exactly how that conversation would go.
She could already hear Gojo's obnoxious, cackling laughter. She could vividly picture him pulling down his blindfold, buying party poppers, and loudly announcing to the entire campus that Maki's boyfriend absorbed her powers through the magic of intimacy.
"Oh my god," Maki whispered, her voice cracking in pure dread.
Ren couldn't hold it back anymore. He tipped his head back and genuinely laughed, the deep, rich sound filling the quiet room.
"I will kill him," Maki muttered frantically, throwing her hands over her burning face and burying her forehead right back into Ren's shoulder. "I'll kill Gojo, and then I'll kill you for pointing this out."
"Hey, don't shoot the messenger," Ren chuckled, wrapping his arms securely around her flustered form. "I'm just trying to make sure our 'solid cover story' has all the plot holes filled. I'd hate to get caught lying on my first day of magic school."
"Shut up. Just shut up," Maki groaned, her voice muffled against his shirt. "I'll make something up. I'll tell him you accidentally swallowed a cursed artifact. Or something like you fell into a radioactive cursed puddle. I am absolutely, under no circumstances, telling Satoru that we slept together."
"Whatever you say, boss," Ren smiled, pressing a warm kiss to the top of her dark green hair.
"Now... if the panic attack is over, can we please eat that fried rice?"
Maki finally untangled herself from him, still grumbling under her breath about radioactive puddles and Gojo's inevitable, insufferable teasing.
She dragged herself off the sofa and marched back over to the kitchen island, aggressively ripping open the takeout containers to hide the lingering flush on her face.
Ren followed her, leaning against the marble counter as she began spooning massive portions of garlic fried rice onto their plates.
As he watched her, Ren let out a quiet, hidden sigh.
A deep wave of relief washed over him. Letting Maki come to the conclusion of hiding him at Jujutsu High on her own was the best possible outcome he could have hoped for.
The harsh reality was that he simply wasn't strong enough to survive on his own yet.
His downloaded muscle memory and the raw force of the Heavenly Restriction were fantastic, but without a heavily upgraded arsenal of cursed tools or a proper Cursed Technique, his ceiling was dangerously low.
Roaming the dark alleys of Tokyo every single night to grind out five points at a time from garbage-tier curses was not only exhausting—it was suicidal.
The timeline was a ticking clock. At any given moment, he ran the risk of accidentally turning a corner and bumping straight into a disaster curse like Jogo, Hanami, or Mahito. If that happened while he was only armed with the Wraith's Fang, he wouldn't even last five seconds.
His soul would be transfigured, or he would be burned to ash before he could even open his inventory.
But Jujutsu High? That changed everything.
Under the absolute, untouchable umbrella of Satoru Gojo's protection, the immediate threat of being randomly slaughtered in the streets plummeted.
More importantly, the school was a goldmine for his System.
If the System handed out a massive thousand-point reward just for killing ten weak curses, the payout for interacting with the main cast, surviving official school missions, or participating in the upcoming Goodwill Event would be astronomical.
He could farm milestones, spar with actual sorcerers to test his limits, and stockpile System Points without having to constantly look over his shoulder for Kenjaku's hidden operatives.
"Here," Maki said, breaking him out of his thoughts as she shoved a heavily loaded plate into his chest. "Eat. And stop looking so smug."
"I'm not smug," Ren smiled, taking the plate and grabbing a pair of chopsticks. "I'm just appreciating the fact that my ridiculously capable girlfriend is going to handle all the complicated magic politics for me."
Maki rolled her eyes, but the corner of her mouth twitched upward in a small, betraying smile as she leaned against the counter next to him.
"Just eat your food, idiot," she muttered. "Tomorrow is going to be a very long day."
Maki finished her food with the terrifying efficiency of a half-starved athlete. She set her empty plate in the sink, grabbed the small dark duffel bag she had brought with her, and let out a long, deeply exhausted sigh.
"I'm taking a shower," she announced, stretching her arms high over her head.
Her spine popped loudly, a testament to the brutal night drills she had endured before sprinting all the way here.
"Take your time," Ren said, leaning back against the counter. "I'll clean up out here."