[The expression on Tsukumo’s face had undergone a seismic shift. Those narrow eyes, so full of provocation and testing intent a mont ago, had contracted to razor points.]
[Because in that fraction of a second, she’d understood with perfect clarity what had stopped her fist. Between her knuckles and your skull lay an uncrossable span of infinity. The absolute barrier passed down through generations of the Gojo Clan, mastered by vanishingly few: Limitless.]
[But what shook her to the core wasn’t the power of Limitless itself. It was the fact that you could wield it flawlessly.]
[Over the past year of covert investigation, she’d already learned through back channels that the mysterious Hayase boy possessed an Innate Technique capable of replicating other people’s Cursed Techniques, a rare and frankly broken ability. But hearing about it and seeing it were different animals entirely.]
[More critically, her understanding of Limitless ran far deeper than what Geto and Haibara knew, standing behind you, aware only that it was the Gojo Clan’s signature technique.]
[As a Special Grade Jujutsu Sorcerer, Tsukumo knew the ugly truth.]
[Across the long history of the Gojo Clan, one of the Big Three Sorcerer Families, those who awakened Limitless were rare but not unheard of.
The real problem, the lethal catch, was that anyone born without the Six Eyes couldn’t perform the atom-level precision of Cursed Energy manipulation the technique demanded. They’d possess an extraordinary weapon they could never fire. Forcing it ant one thing: total neural overload. A burned-out brain.]
[Limitless wasn’t a gift from the ancestors. For the vast majority of Gojo clansn born without the Six Eyes, it was a curse.]
[And yet here it was. Alive in front of her. Deployed by soone who categorically did not possess the Six Eyes, executed without strain, without a whisper of effort, effortlessly catching a blow that would have crumpled steel.]
[Before coming to Jujutsu High, Tsukumo had entertained two possibilities regarding you.]
[The first matched the story you’d given: you were genuinely looking after Toji Fushiguro’s child as a favor, and Fushiguro’s disappearance had nothing to do with you. The second was that you’d killed the Sorcerer Killer yourself, the man who gave the jujutsu world’s upper echelons chronic headaches, but your disguise was too perfect. She didn’t have the tools to crack an interrogation this airtight.]
[Even the assumption that Fushiguro was dead had been, until now, nothing more than gut instinct.]
[Deep down, she’d never believed the anonymous caller from over a year ago, that voice so inhumanly calm it bordered on frightening, had been joking.
Since that call, Toji Fushiguro had vanished as though erased from existence. No trail, no sighting, no sign of life. She’d defaulted to the simplest conclusion: the man had been eliminated. And you, the one maintaining direct contact with the child he’d left behind, had beco her pri suspect.]
[All of it had lacked definitive proof. Until this mont, when she watched soone without the Six Eyes deploy a replicated Limitless as casually as breathing.]
[The probability that you were the cold voice on that phone, the cleaner who’d erased Toji Fushiguro, didn’t just increase. It exploded to near-certainty.]
[An ordinary student, even a talented Grade 1 Jujutsu Sorcerer, could never have dealt with a physical freak like Fushiguro, a creature who operated outside the laws of Cursed Energy entirely.]
[Tsukumo had crossed paths with Fushiguro before and never fought him seriously, but she’d war-gad it in her head countless tis. Even for a Special Grade, killing that man cleanly would have been anything but easy.]
[So the way she looked at you now had changed completely. Beyond the initial shock and disbelief, what burned in those eyes was the feverish thrill of soone about to rip the lid off a massive secret, to finally confirm who you really were.]
[You gave nothing back. Not a twitch.]
[You turned slightly and extended one hand toward Geto, who stood at the edge of fury with his Cursed Spirits coiled to strike, and toward Haibara, whose blade was already half-drawn.]
[A single, quiet gesture. Stand down. This is mine to handle.]
[Across your various simulations, you’d crossed paths with Tsukumo before, though never extensively. Honestly, you couldn’t claim deep understanding of a woman this unpredictable. You had no way to be certain what soone who ran on pure curiosity at this intensity might do next.]
[That sa uncertainty extended further. You couldn’t rule out whether her wandering lifestyle, her obsession with the nature of the soul and Cursed Energy, had already led her into so hidden connection with a certain dangerous man whose forehead bore stitched scars.]
[You lowered your hand. Your gaze t the Special Grade’s directly, your tone serious, edged with frost.]
["What do you want, Ms. Tsukumo?"]
[The smile on her face only deepened. The suspicion in her mind had hardened into conviction.]
[She stared at you like a fanatic who’d stumbled onto the rarest treasure in existence, her words tumbling out fast and electric.]
["I only ca to confirm your identity and say hello! But now it seems like you’re the one who should have plenty to say to , right? In this rotting jujutsu world, only people with our kind of vision can truly understand each other’s ideals!"]
[The atmosphere in the corridor, which seconds ago had been a hair trigger from bloodshed, underwent a strange, subtle twist the mont Geto and Haibara processed those words.]
[The hostility on their faces didn’t vanish, but their expressions warped into sothing deeply confused.]
[These two bystanders, stranded outside the loop, exchanged glances. The more they watched, the less this looked like a Special Grade hunting for a fight... and the more it resembled so obsessive internet acquaintance trying to force-confirm an online relationship in person.]
[An inexplicable whiff of romantic tension crept into the air.]
[But even granting that absurd comparison, both Geto and Haibara could see the situation with crystalline clarity: this was entirely one-sided. Tsukumo’s feverish unrequited fixation, and nothing more.]
["I don’t know who Ms. Tsukumo has mistaken for, but I’m clearly not the person you’re looking for. I have nothing extra to say to you, and there’s no foundation for mutual understanding between us. I’d appreciate it if you left. As for the test you just pulled, I’ll pretend it never happened."]
[What you didn’t realize was that for soone like Tsukumo, soone consud by the pursuit of truth, the colder and more distant you acted, the wider her grin stretched. Because you fascinated her beyond reason.]
[Why were you maintaining this flawless performance in front of a group of students? How had soone who looked like an ordinary teenager managed to beco a shadow operative capable of eliminating a monster like Toji Fushiguro? The curiosity that had been building since that anonymous phone call over a year ago, fernting through months of sleepless investigation, ignited now into an uncontrollable blaze.]
[She was a Special Grade Jujutsu Sorcerer who’d invested enormous effort to drag you out from behind the curtain. Walking away empty-handed was not an option she’d entertain.]
["Touma!"]
[Geto’s voice ca low and urgent. He could feel it: the monstrous Cursed Energy rolling off Tsukumo hadn’t subsided. If anything, it was surging higher, boiling over.]
[You looked at the Special Grade who refused to take a hint, and exhaled a silent, weary sigh.]
[Your gaze lifted. The temperature behind your eyes dropped to zero.]
["So Ms. Tsukumo has no intention of leaving gracefully? Do I need to personally ’escort’ you out?"]
[Tsukumo threw her head back and laughed as though she’d heard the funniest thing in years. The air around her warped and shimred, twisted by the Cursed Energy she was releasing without restraint.]
["Bold words! If you think you can, then show what you’ve..."]
[The taunt never finished. Your counterattack fell like lightning.]
[In one thousandth of a second, commands fired through your mind at blistering speed.]
[Phantom Night Parade’s replication target snapped from the defensive Limitless to the Zenin Clan’s secret art: Projection Sorcery. The switch was instant and seamless.]
[Extre Overload Control engaged in full, your body’s physical limits shattering past every human threshold.]
[The ground beneath your feet exploded. Your figure dissolved into an afterimage so fast that even a Special Grade’s dynamic vision struggled to track it.]
[The wild grin froze on Tsukumo’s face. Those narrow eyes blew wide. She hadn’t expected you to commit this decisively, and the speed... the speed defied everything she thought possible.]
[But she was a battle-tested Special Grade. Shock lasted a heartbeat. What surged up to replace it was an even fiercer hunger for combat.]
Perfect!
[She’d asure you herself. Find out exactly what level the monster who’d slain Toji Fushiguro operated at.]
[Without hesitation, she reached for her Innate Technique, flooding the circuit to wrap Star Rage’s colossal virtual mass around her fist. She’d et you head-on. Pure destruction. Body and Cursed Energy colliding at their absolute worst.]
[But the instant her will touched the technique’s pathway, her blood froze.]
[A sensation she’d never experienced ripped the ground out from under her. In one horrifying flash, she realized she’d lost all control of Star Rage.]
[No matter how she channeled her Cursed Energy, the virtual mass that had accompanied her through countless life-or-death battles refused to gather at her fist.]
[Instead, from the rapidly enlarging fist hurtling toward her face, she felt it. A gravitational collapse so terrifying and so sickeningly familiar that her skin crawled.]
[Her own technique. Star Rage’s absolute mass. Riding your knuckles.]
[In the razor-thin instant you’d used Projection Sorcery to close the gap, you’d completed another read-and-switch, turning her own spear against her own shield.]
["You..."]
[One strangled syllable of pure horror was all she managed before the fist, wreathed in her own stolen power, ca crashing down like a falling mountain.]
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