[Confird: one simulation charge consud.]
[Simulation initiated.]
[The tiline moved forward without any major accidents.]
[Kento Nanami and Yu Haibara arrived at Tokyo Jujutsu High as fresh first-years, both carrying that special mix of ignorance and expectation every new sorcerer had before the job punched it out of them.]
[Haibara was exactly what he looked like at first glance. Bright, loud, energetic, and sohow already treating everyone like friends he had known for years.]
[Nanami was the opposite. Calm and serious. Too put-together for his age.]
[You used the very natural excuse of being their senior to get close to them and start guiding their training.]
[Wooden swords cracked against each other in the training hall.]
[For Nanami, you skipped the usual nonsense.]
[No endless blind conditioning. No "swing until you understand it" garbage.]
[You activated Dinsional Reduction Analysis and broke down the structure of his Ratio Technique with a precision that frankly should not have belonged to a student only one year above him.]
[That 7:3 weak point, the one Nanami could only feel by instinct, you pulled apart and explained piece by piece. During sparring, you adjusted his angle, his timing, his grip, even the amount of cursed energy he pushed into each strike.]
["Don’t force it. Your technique isn’t asking you to overpower the target. It is asking you to hit the correct line."]
[Crack!]
[Nanami’s wooden blade struck the practice dummy.]
[The hit looked ordinary. The result was not.]
[The dummy’s torso split with a dry, ugly snap.]
[Nanami’s expression barely moved. Sa serious face. Sa flat eyes. Sa "I have considered this and found it acceptable" look. But his hand was trembling around the hilt.]
[He did not understand it. How could a second-year know his Innate Technique better than he did?]
[Haibara needed a different approach.]
[He did not have so flashy Innate Technique waiting to be polished, so you started from the basics. Footwork, sword forms, breathing, body chanics, and the first pieces of New Shadow Style.]
[One step at a ti.]
["Senpai! Was that last swing right?" Haibara wiped sweat off his forehead, eyes still shining like he had not just spent the last hour getting corrected. "My lower stance still feels shaky!"]
[He looked up at you like a puppy waiting to be told he had done well.]
[You sighed, smiled despite yourself, and stepped in to fix his feet.]
["Your knees are collapsing inward. Relax. If you tense up before moving, your opponent already knows what you are about to do."]
["Oh! Got it!"]
[He very clearly did not got it. Still, he tried again imdiately.]
[It was not favoritism. If the timing had been right, you would have taught Nanami New Shadow Style too.]
[But you knew exactly what mattered right now. New Shadow Style, especially a functional Simple Domain, took miserable hours of repetition before it beca useful in real combat. Nanami’s fastest path to survival was mastering his own Ratio Technique until using it felt as natural as breathing.]
[Trying to grab everything at once only ant ending up half-baked at everything.]
[So the order was clear. First, make Nanami’s technique combat-ready. Once the Ratio Technique fused with his instincts and muscle mory, then you would teach him New Shadow Style without hesitation.]
[You watched your two juniors sweat across the training floor. For a second, sothing dark passed through your eyes.]
[Gone before anyone noticed.]
[This was all you could give them for now. Early training. Better habits. A sharper chance at staying alive.]
[But you knew better than anyone that strength did not guarantee safety in this world.]
[Sotis it did the opposite.]
[If the higher-ups saw a sharper tool, they gave it harder jobs. Harder jobs ant worse curses, worse ambushes, worse odds. The kind of missions where people ca back missing pieces, if they ca back at all.]
[The only real way to escape was to quit. Cut ties with jujutsu completely. Walk away from curses, sorcerers, missions, all of it.]
[In one of your old simulations, Nanami had done exactly that.]
[He left for a while, he even made it look like escape was possible.]
[But that man with the permanently serious face had a conscience buried too deep to dig out. In the end, the kindness in his bones dragged him right back into the filth he hated.]
[You drew in a slow breath.]
[The ache in your chest did not go away, but you swallowed it down anyway.]
[You could not choose for them.]
[That was the part that still tasted bitter.]
[Even with this absurd power to start over, even with all these chances, you still could not stand at the beginning of the road and rip out every hidden thread of despair waiting in the dark.]
---
[Daily life at Tokyo Jujutsu High had a bad habit of being interrupted without warning.]
[Just like in your previous simulations, one afternoon Shoko Ieiri sat in the infirmary, staring at her dead phone screen with a cigarette between her fingers.]
[She was the first to notice the problem.]
[Utahi Iori and her team were on a mission in Shizuoka Prefecture. And they had gone silent.]
["Utahi’s phone won’t connect..."]
[Shoko breathed out a thin stream of smoke. Her tone was flat as usual, but there was worry tucked underneath it.]
[This ti, though, the tiline shifted in a small but important way.]
[The school did not imdiately explode into ergency mode. No frantic mobilization. No full rescue team scramble. Because one white-haired nace heard the news first and his eyes lit up with the worst kind of joy.]
["Ehhh? Utahi got herself stuck?" Gojo rubbed his chin, grinning so hard it looked painful. "She’s probably hiding in a corner crying right now, right?"]
[Nobody answered.]
[He did not need them to.]
["Nope. I have to see this in person. A once-in-a-lifeti scene like that? I am recording it. She’ll never live it down."]
[The mont he got a rough location, he was gone.]
[No orders from Yaga. No waiting for backup. No normal human process.]
[He launched himself toward Shizuoka like a lightning bolt with a personal grudge.]
[As for what happened during the "rescue"...]
[You, Geto, and Shoko were not there, but the aftermath made the story pretty obvious.]
[First, Yaga’s furious shouting echoed through the halls loud enough to rattle windows.]
[Then the television filled in the blanks.]
[Several pale-faced locals were being interviewed on the evening news. One man kept waving his arms around, insisting he had seen a purple teor crash into the forest in broad daylight.]
[The headline at the bottom of the screen was doing its best to sound official and failing.]
[DAYLIGHT SPECTACLE! PURPLE TEOR CRASHES IN SHIZUOKA PREFECTURE! LARGE AREA OF FOREST FLATTENED BY UNKNOWN FORCE!]
["That’s... a bit much."]
[Shoko watched the report with her cigarette paused halfway to her mouth. The corner of her lips twitched.]
[The news had basically told everyone what happened.]
[Gojo, that lunatic, had fired Hollow Purple during a rescue mission.]
[In the hallway, the culprit was currently trapped in one of Yaga’s professional-grade chokeholds while also receiving a fist to the head at regular intervals. Fresh lumps decorated his white hair.]
[None of it ruined his mood.]
[Gojo looked satisfied.]
[Radiantly satisfied.]
[Like a man who had accomplished sothing important for society.]
[You, Geto, and Shoko looked at each other and reached the sa silent conclusion.]
[Utahi had probably been seconds away from being erased by a civilization-ending Hollow Purple, only to be dragged out of the rubble sowhere between a nervous breakdown, blind terror, and murder.]
[Honestly, no one would bla her.]
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