Gakuganji smiled faintly, took another sip of tea, and said:
"You still haven't told me your reasoning."
"You once asked me how I felt about Sukuna's Finger. Remember?"
Kira's fingers tapped against the edge of the table—tok, tok, tok.
"What of it?"
"I remember answering: 'Besides, I hate rotten fingers. I replace mine regularly.'"
Kira looked into Gakuganji's eyes, his tone playfully curious:
"You weren't surprised at all."
"As if it were perfectly natural for me to say something like that—as if it were simply my nature, nothing worth raising an eyebrow over."
Gakuganji's expression grew heavy. He realized the mistake he'd made.
"But as far as I know, I have quite a good reputation in the jujutsu world. 'Hardworking salaryman' and all that. The only people who'd instinctively treat a dangerous remark like that as perfectly normal would be those in the curse user community—people who already think of me as 'curse incarnate.'"
Gakuganji swallowed. A thin sheen of sweat formed on his forehead, but he ignored it and asked in a low voice:
"You said that to test me? You'd been suspicious since then?"
"No. Earlier."
Kira stopped tapping the table. The rhythmic tok-tok that had filled the room cut off abruptly, leaving only the patter of rain outside the window.
"On my very first day meeting you, the taxi driver took me the long way around. I scared him a little with my shikigami. Nothing malicious—I just wanted to get to work on time."
"I can only say your subordinate's acting wasn't quite at your level."
"Too timid. I'm clearly harmless, and he shouldn't have been able to see Killer Queen perched on his shoulder—yet he instinctively hunched, as if something were pressing down on him."
"And he was far too frightened. Any other driver in that situation would've written me off as a lunatic at worst. But he was terrified out of his mind..."
Kira lowered his head, not a single ripple in his voice:
"The detour, the traffic—you arranged all of it, didn't you? To delay my arrival at the school."
"If I'm not mistaken, that's when you impersonated my appearance and met with Gakuganji in my place. And in that moment, when his guard was down, you seized his body."
"Then, using his authority, you commissioned me to search for Sukuna's Finger. And everything that followed stemmed from that."
Gakuganji set his tea on the coffee table and shook his head with a helpless, pained expression:
"All because of one subordinate's mistake... That really is a shame. Feidu and the others all had assignments at the time."
"Feidu... heh."
Kira nodded thoughtfully, the same calm smile on his face, and recited:
"Feidu, Devourer, Chuhui... Joy, Anger, Sorrow, Fear, Resentment, Loathing, Desire—the Seven Po. And then Tai Guang, Shuang Ling, You Jing—the Three Souls. Ten in total. Your subordinates are actually you."
"Including the one I'm speaking to right now. This isn't your true body—it's one of the Three Souls at best. Otherwise you couldn't possibly be this calm."
"After all, a complete person possesses Three Souls and Seven Spirits."
Gakuganji's face went rigid. Beside him, Todo—who'd been listening with rapt attention—instinctively straightened his back, his brow furrowing hard.
"Kira, how could you possibly—?"
"Todo. Remember the corpse in the coffin?"
Kira spoke softly.
"The Devourer? What about it?"
"That body had no external injuries whatsoever, yet it died suddenly. With my years of experience, I can say with certainty it wasn't a sudden illness either."
"The pupils were dilated, yet the complexion was ruddy. It had stopped breathing, but the heart seemed to still be beating... That's a body that lost its soul."
"The flesh was intact, but the spirit had scattered. And if I'm not mistaken, that body only ever contained a single Po—the Fear Po, the Devourer. Before I arrived, it had already fled."
Kira stood and closed the window, shutting out the storm that raged across the city. The sound of wind died instantly, and what remained in the room was silence.
A deathly silence.
"Gakuganji... no. Hasegawa Kaede. Your innate cursed technique is Three Souls Seven Spirits. Each Soul and each Spirit can seize another person's body. If I'm not mistaken, a Soul can take over a body up to Grade 1, and a Spirit can manage up to Grade 2."
"And each Soul, each Spirit, possesses its own cursed technique. The Seven Spirits wield curse-poisons tied to the seven emotions. I don't yet know the Three Souls' techniques... but I can say this with certainty:"
"You are a Special Grade curse user."
"An unregistered Special Grade curse user."
The air congealed into something solid. That eerie silence continued to spread through the room.
No wind. No rain. Only silence.
"Impressive, Kira. Truly impressive. You really do deserve to be called 'curse incarnate.'"
Now that his abilities had been laid bare, Gakuganji's expression actually settled into calm. What remained was pure, undiluted curiosity.
"But Kira, you must have suspected my identity long ago. You must have known about my body-seizure ability from the start—otherwise you wouldn't have said 'I hate rotten fingers, I usually replace mine' during our very first meeting to test me."
"You were acting the entire time—pretending to earnestly carry out my commission. And I was acting the entire time—pretending to be the anxious principal who'd issued the mission. But you were clearly the better actor."
"When did you first get the idea that I steal other people's bodies?"
Kira leaned against the window. Outside, the rain hung in grey curtains and thunderclouds churned. Leaning there, he looked as though he were leaning against the edge of the entire world.
Todo even had the fleeting illusion that the storm had been brought by Kira—that every gale in the world existed for his sake. But he quickly shook off that fanciful thought, held his breath, and forced his exhausted mind to focus as Kira spoke:
"The very beginning. The origin of everything."
"Our first meeting—I mean at the shopping center. That was when you launched your first terrorist attack, and Todo and I happened to walk right into it."
"That's when I knew."
"Do tell."
"There were two curse users. One Grade 1, one Grade 2. If I'm not mistaken, one was one of your Three Souls, and the other was one of your Seven Spirits."
"Correct."
Kira tapped the window frame, his voice level:
"Your Soul begged me for mercy. But your Spirit charged in to die."
"Because that Spirit governs Anger—a hotheaded fool. He's naturally a bit impulsive."
Hasegawa Kaede, wearing Gakuganji's aged body, scratched the back of his head with a touch of embarrassment.
"Is that so?" Kira regarded him with amusement and said softly:
"If your Soul intended to beg for mercy before the fight even started, why not simply run from the very beginning? While I was dealing with your Spirit, it could have just fled. It might even have gotten away."
"That doesn't add up."
Kira walked back to the tatami, planted both hands on the coffee table, and looked down at Hasegawa Kaede, his tone even:
"There's only one possibility. It had already run."
"But I definitely killed two people. That sensation doesn't lie—I killed 'him.'"
"What I killed, though, was only a body. The Soul inside had fled the instant it laid eyes on me."
"Your plan was nothing more than this: sacrifice the pawn to save the rook. Sacrifice the Spirit to protect the more valuable piece."
"Kira, that's impossible! If his Soul had already fled, how did that body beg you for mercy?"
Todo caught the contradiction.
Kira ignored him. He didn't look up. He continued without pause:
"You deliberately sent the Spirit to provoke me while the Soul slipped away in the background. But that alone wasn't safe enough, so seconds before I blew up the Spirit's body—that Grade 2 curse user—the Spirit had already quietly transferred into the Grade 1 body the Soul had abandoned."
"So the one talking to me, the one fighting me, was your Spirit the entire time. All of it was to buy your Soul time to escape."
Kira sat back down, straightened his rumpled jacket, and said mildly:
"Because it was only a Spirit, even in a Grade 1 sorcerer's body it could only fight at a Grade 2 level. And what planted the first seed of doubt in my mind—what made me step back and examine the entire incident—was that very battle."
Nanami Kira was, at his core, an ordinary salaryman who was good at reviewing his work and learning from experience.
"I won too easily. You shouldn't have been greedy over that one Soul and one Spirit. If I were you, I would have abandoned them both."
"Unwilling to lose even a little, you'll end up losing everything. Don't be greedy. That's your lesson from this."
Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap.
Applause—slow, deliberate—echoed through the silent room.
Bouncing off the walls.
"You're good. You're really, truly good."
Hasegawa Kaede clapped slowly, fixing Kira with a steady gaze:
"Then tell me."
"What is my true objective?"
Kira looked back at him, calm as ever:
"To take advantage of the empty school and unseal every cursed object and cursed spirit locked inside the Shrine Repository."
"That's your objective."
Hasegawa Kaede sipped his tea and smiled:
"The first time we met, I wasn't lying. I really do have the strength to fight you. I'm a Special Grade curse user."
"And all this effort of yours is just working for someone else. You hate working, don't you?"
"Let this go. I'll leave the mountain right now. I'm very powerful."
"Same thing I said before—do you dare spare my life? You said it yourself: you don't want to make enemies who'll keep you up at night. Let's be friends. It's the best outcome for both of us."
"Because I understand your true nature better than any of those hypocritical sorcerers ever could."
"Suppressing yourself all the time must be exhausting. Join us."
Kira smiled back at him and said softly:
"It's true. I hate working. Your offer is quite tempting."
Hasegawa Kaede nodded in agreement.
"But I'll have to decline. I hate change. Things are fine the way they are."
Kira's expression didn't waver.
"Is that so..."
"You'd still rather be an ordinary salaryman?"
Hasegawa Kaede set down his cup, still staring into Kira's eyes—unblinking, in a way that made the skin crawl.
"Then I'll just have to make sure you die at your desk. For a salaryman, that's the highest honor of dedication—most would kill for it!"
"For you, it's just a little overtime."
The thunder that had been churning through the clouds finally stopped rolling—and struck. The world flashed white, illuminating every detail inside the room: the ceramic teapot, the faintly floating tea leaves, the rosewood coffee table, the pale blue window frame, Nanami Kira and Hasegawa Kaede—
Everything, laid bare.
The room's silence shattered. Nothing in his ears but rolling thunder.
BOOM—