Maki didn't answer. She was staring a hole directly into the wooden floorboards.
The flush that had started at her cheeks had now completely consumed her entire face, painting her neck and the tips of her ears a brilliant, violent shade of crimson.
Her shoulders trembled slightly, entirely stripped of her usual fierce, uncompromising bravado.
"Oh. My. God," Gojo whispered, absolutely delighted.
"Shut up," Maki choked out, her voice barely a squeak. She adamantly refused to look up from the floor. "Just... shut up, Satoru."
Gojo did not shut up.
With a sudden, explosive burst of movement, Gojo shoved his hand deep into his uniform pocket.
Gojo whipped out a small, brightly colored cardboard tube.
POP!
A loud crack echoed through the classroom as Gojo pulled the string of the party popper.
A massive cloud of colorful paper confetti and shiny metallic streamers erupted into the air, raining down over Maki's head and Ren's shoulders.
"CONGRATULATIONS!" Gojo roared, throwing his hands into the air as if they had just won the lottery.
"My little Maki-chan has finally grown up! And Ren-kun! Wow! Surviving the Zen'in experience and coming out of it with a matching superpower! We should get a cake! Oh, I have mochi!"
Ren actually flinched at the loud pop, trying desperately to maintain his clueless civilian act. Internally, he let out a massive sigh of relief.
The plan had worked flawlessly. Gojo had latched onto the "intimacy transfer" theory to explain the exact biological copy, completely blinding himself to the existence of the System by relying on his own dramatic conclusions.
But for Maki, this was a living nightmare.
"I am going to unseal my spear," Maki whispered to the floorboards, her voice trembling with a mixture of profound, crippling embarrassment and genuine murderous rage. The colorful paper confetti rested mockingly in her dark green hair. "I am going to unseal it, and I am going to run you through the chest, Satoru."
"Ah, the passion of youth!" Gojo cackled, dodging a half-hearted, embarrassed swipe from Maki by effortlessly leaning backward over the desk. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and immediately started tapping the screen with blinding speed. "I have to put this in the faculty group chat! Shoko is going to owe me ten thousand yen! I totally bet you'd be the first of the second-years to get a boyfriend!"
"DELETE THAT RIGHT NOW!" Maki roared, finally snapping out of her paralyzed embarrassment. She lunged forward, her hands desperately clawing for his phone.
"Can't touch this!" Gojo sang out, easily holding the phone high above his head out of her reach.
He didn't even use his Infinity; he just used his massive height advantage to keep it away from her grasping hands. "Send! Oops, too late! It's in the cloud now, Maki-chan!"
Ren stood back, brushing a pink streamer off his shoulder. He put his hands up defensively.
"So... I take it I'm enrolled?"
"Enrolled? Oh, absolutely!" Gojo laughed, finally lowering his phone and sidestepping Maki's aggressive kick. "Any guy who can survive dating our terrifying Maki and walk away with a Heavenly Restriction is an automatic VIP in my book! Welcome to Tokyo Jujutsu High, Ren-kun!"
Maki stopped attacking, her chest heaving as she glared daggers at her teacher. The brilliant red flush was still painted across her cheeks, but the immediate panic had subsided into a lethal, simmering resentment.
"You are not allowed to tell the other students. If Panda or Nobara find out about... about how this happened, I am burning this school to the ground."
Gojo gasped in mock offense, clutching a hand to his chest. "Maki! You wound me! I am a paragon of professional discretion!"
"You literally just texted the school doctor to gloat about winning a bet," Ren pointed out, keeping his tone light and perfectly innocent.
Gojo pointed a finger gun at him. "I like this one! He's got spirit! But don't worry, Maki-chan, your secret is safe with me. I'll just tell the kids he's a special transfer student. A late bloomer."
Gojo hopped off the desk, brushing a stray piece of confetti from his dark uniform sleeve. His wide, obnoxious grin softened into a sly, wickedly conspiratorial smirk as he leaned his tall frame toward Maki.
"Though, I should probably clarify one tiny little thing," Gojo hummed, crossing his arms lazily.
Maki narrowed her eyes, her grip tightening on the strap of her weapons case. "What now, Satoru?"
"That whole speech I just gave?" Gojo asked, casually ticking points off on his long fingers.
"The one about the incredibly profound, deeply intense merging of two bodies and souls? The boundary between your latent curse and his normal body completely blurring?"
Maki stiffened, a sudden, terrible sense of dread pooling in her stomach. "...Yes?"
Gojo let out a sharp, entirely undignified snort. "Yeah, that was complete bullshit. I totally made it up."
The classroom went dead silent.
Maki blinked. Her combat-wired brain completely misfired. "...What?"
"I mean, it sounded like solid Jujutsu theory, right? Very poetic! Very romantic!" Gojo chuckled, waving his hand dismissively.
"But honestly? A Heavenly Restriction is etched into the soul at birth. You can't just catch it like a cold, no matter how 'intimate' you get. It breaks basically every law of Jujutsu."
Gojo grinned, leaning forward and lowering his voice into a theatrical stage whisper. "But I did already have my suspicions that you two were sneaking around behind my back. So, I just threw out the absolute most embarrassing, overly dramatic theory I could think of to see if you'd crack."
He clapped his hands together, absolutely delighted with himself. "And wow, did you crack! You practically confessed before I even finished the sentence! You played yourself, Maki-chan!"
Maki's face, which had finally started to cool down, instantly drained of all color. The sheer, devastating realization hit her like a runaway freight train: she had essentially outed her own sex life to her incredibly annoying teacher for absolutely no reason, purely because she fell for a bluff.
Maki lowered her head. The ambient temperature in the classroom seemed to drop by ten degrees.
"Satoru," she whispered. Her voice was no longer frantic or embarrassed. It was eerily, lethally calm.
"Yes, my star pupil?" Gojo hummed, completely ignoring the sheer murderous intent radiating off of her.
"I am going to kill you. Right here. Right now."
///
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