"I normally don't burn cursed energy. The only time I really consume it is..."
Gojo walked ahead with both hands in his pockets, white hair catching the dim hallway light.
"It should only happen when I'm attacked or when I actively use my technique. I just still can't control that passive effect consistently."
Kaede's footsteps followed at an even pace behind him, the old wooden floorboards creaking softly underfoot.
As he moved, that faint dampness in the air moved with him, leaving an almost invisible film of mist along the cold walls.
"It's kind of like a water balloon sitting right at the limit of its surface tension."
Gojo spoke without turning around, his tone carrying that usual casual air as he tossed out the analogy.
The motion lights at the end of the hallway flicked on one after another as he approached, stretching his tall shadow across the floor.
"As long as nobody pokes it, it keeps its perfect shape.
But the moment something damages it from the outside, or you try to forcibly reshape it yourself, the shell holding that balance together ruptures, and the cursed energy inside spills out like water.
If you can't stabilize the passive effect, then one day a mosquito could fly past and you might blow yourself into a puddle."
"That seems a little exaggerated..." Kaede said, deadpan, though he kept following quietly.
Gojo stopped in front of a heavy metal door.
A red cross was fixed to it, and the smell of disinfectant was much stronger here. He turned, pale blue eyes glancing over Kaede from behind the edge of his sunglasses.
Kaede came to a stop a few steps away. Under the cold white light, the deep blue uniform coat looked darker, almost muted.
He stood upright and still, dark red eyes calmly reflecting the shine of the metal door.
Gojo raised one hand and pounded on it with absolutely no restraint.
"Shoko. You awake? Get out here and take a customer. I brought you a very interesting medical specimen."
A muffled crash sounded from inside, followed by the shriek of a chair scraping across the floor.
Several seconds passed before the metal door slid open to either side with a low mechanical hum.
Heavy coffee and tobacco hit them at once. Shoko Ieiri stood there in a slightly wrinkled white coat, the familiar dark circles under her eyes clear as ever, half an unlit cigarette pinched between her fingers.
She rubbed at her messy brown hair with obvious irritation, her gaze passing straight over Gojo's infuriating face and landing on Kaede behind him.
"What are you making all that noise for in the middle of the night? And quit talking about new students like they're cadavers waiting to be dissected, you asshole."
Shoko let out a slow breath. The moment her lazy gaze settled on Kaede, though, something in her expression changed. As one of the top reverse cursed technique users alive, her instincts picked up on it at once, and her brow tightened ever so slightly.
She could not sense the normal signs of life a human body should have. In their place was something strange and immense, cursed energy flowing like a deep pool.
"...Heavenly Restriction?"
She tucked the cigarette behind one ear and stepped aside, tilting her chin toward the deeper part of the room where all kinds of delicate instruments had been set up.
"Come in. Lie down on the examination table over there and let me see what exactly is going on. What are we checking?"
Gojo strode in without the slightest hesitation, pulled over a rolling chair, and dropped into it, crossing his long legs casually.
"Mainly I want his total cursed energy measured, plus the evaporation rate of this 'water body' while he's at rest.
And if possible, we need to figure out how his soul is attached to a body built entirely from cursed energy.
If we don't understand the fundamentals, future classes are going to turn into teaching accidents."
Shoko moved to the side of the examination table and switched on the cursed-energy wavelength analyzer next to it. Blue lines began pulsing across the screen.
Then she turned to Kaede, still standing in the doorway.
"You heard him. Get up here.
My reverse cursed technique probably won't do much for you, but these machines can strip you down to the wiring."
"Seriously...?" Kaede muttered, but he cooperated anyway.
The deep blue uniform coat was folded neatly over the back of a metal chair nearby.
The cold stainless steel of the examination table reflected the harsh light above.
Shoko pressed several black adhesive sensors with metal contacts to the side of his neck, his chest, and the inside of his wrists.
The moment her fingertips settled against that pale wrist, the school doctor, who had seen more than enough life and death, paused ever so slightly.
There was no pulse.
No human warmth from circulating blood.
She pressed down a little harder, and what met her touch was not the resistance of flesh and bone, but something strange, like pressing on the surface of high-pressure water.
Cold, and yet hiding a deep current strong enough to make her chest tighten.
Beep! Beep! Beep!
The cursed-energy wavelength analyzer beside them suddenly burst into a string of sharp alarms.
The blue line, which had been moving steadily across the screen, went violently wild the instant it started pulling data. It shot upward, smashed through the yellow threshold marked Grade 1, and kept climbing toward the red warning line at the very top.
Then it condensed there into a blinding red field.
"What exactly is this?"
Shoko's eyelid twitched. She pulled the cigarette back from behind her ear and turned it irritably between her fingers.
Then she looked away from the machine and down at the black-haired boy lying quietly on the table as the instruments scanned him.
"There are no detectable human physiological responses at all. Heart rate, blood pressure, even cellular activity, all zero.
Compared to a 'human,' this body is physically closer to some kind of highly condensed incarnated cursed object. And..."
She turned back to the control station, bracing both hands against it as she called up more and more tangled graphs and data sets on the display.
The glow of the screen made her already pale face look even whiter.
"The total cursed energy volume is absurdly high. If I had to compare it to something in the existing records..."
Her voice paused there. Then she looked over at Gojo in the rolling chair, the seriousness in her tone no longer hidden.
"It's roughly equivalent to the total cursed energy contained in three of Sukuna's fingers.
And the purity is abnormally high. There's almost none of the usual sediment from mixed negative emotions. It's like water that's been filtered over and over again until nothing impure remains."
"That much?" Kaede looked genuinely surprised. That would put him at about three-twentieths of Sukuna's cursed energy total, still far below someone like Yuta Okkotsu, who was famous for overwhelming reserves.
Still, compared to people his own age, that was already enough to put him near the very top.
Gojo gave the floor a light push with one foot and rolled himself right up to the side of the table.
Hands laced behind his head, he looked Kaede over from behind black lenses, the corners of his mouth lifting into a wide grin.
"That's why I said he's a fascinating rare specimen. Because his body itself is a Heavenly Restriction built from cursed energy and technique, there's no risk of technique burnout from the brain overloading.
When he takes fatal physical damage, his body instinctively spends cursed energy to liquefy the damaged part and nullify the injury..."
He leaned forward slightly, his tall shadow spilling across one corner of the examination table.
Those pale blue Six Eyes looked as if they could see straight through the layers of water disguised as skin and into the thing's core.
"But the price is perfectly fair too.
The moment that huge reserve of cursed energy is exhausted, or he ends up somewhere he can't replenish himself by contacting natural water, there won't even be a body left behind. He'll just... evaporate.
Right, Shoko?"
"Yeah. Reverse cursed technique works by multiplying negative cursed energy to create positive energy, then using that to repair flesh."
Shoko snapped a paper chart shut and began disconnecting the leads from the sensors one by one.
"But for a non-carbon-based lifeform with a liquid body built purely from cursed energy, my healing methods are basically decorative.
If you get hurt, I can't save you."
She leaned over and peeled the last sensor from the side of his neck, the hem of her disinfectant-scented white coat brushing the metal table.
Her tired but sharp eyes met Kaede's dark red ones with perfect calm.
"You understand that, right, new student? Your life is hard to take, but it's also incredibly fragile."