Chapter 76: Internship Activities Conclude (Patreon)

Chapter 76: The Internship Ends

…

"You're back! I was worried sick."

Once they'd regrouped with Kento Nanami and the others, Maki Zenin marched straight up and slapped Satoru Anjouin hard on the shoulder.

Anjouin bared his teeth in pain. Most of the Bindings on him had hit their time limits, so the pain he'd loaned out came flooding back.

Only now did he realize how badly he was hurt.

"Sorry, Big Sis. Didn't mean to worry you."

Anjouin managed to drag a smile onto his face.

Frankly, he hadn't wanted to go through this many accidents either.

Who could've guessed? It was the Exorcism Club's first off-campus activity, and he'd honestly thought he was just tagging along to leech some merit. A kunai from eight hundred meters away counted as his assist, okay?

And who finishes their Subject Two driving test and gets thrown onto the highway, then made to race an AE86 down a mountain?

He'd been fished out by Gojo without even paying a revival coin, but Anjouin's feelings were still hopelessly tangled.

Regret was treating itself as Shinichi Kudo, so it hadn't caused any serious incidents.

Even so, figuring Anjouin might be curious, Satoru Gojo had gone and dug up the sealed files on the related incidents.

Over the past twenty years, a cursed spirit called "Detective" had become active.

It had caused the deaths of everyone in Beika Town and brought one of the island nation's top conglomerates to ruin. After that, every year the "Detective" wandered around, it caused massive economic losses and deaths.

Especially after Regret's "Hell" came into being, every killer and victim in the island nation tied directly to regret or murder would fall into that hell.

And there were plenty more like it beyond Special Grade.

Satoru Gojo had to spend enormous amounts of time pacifying and holding them back.

Destroying them was extremely hard.

The power of curses gathers around rumors. Even if you wipe out the rumor… what's already been born won't vanish completely, because rumors are imprinted in people's hearts.

Unless every human carrying the rumor was wiped out.

So beings beyond Special Grade were practically deathless and indestructible.

Of course, Anjouin felt that kind of existence wasn't a cursed spirit anymore.

It was a being from an entirely different dimension.

That also meant he couldn't stop now.

Besides, Regret was only treating itself as Shinichi Kudo for the moment. What if one day it stopped being Kudo?

Anjouin checked the time. He'd only been gone a little over two hours.

But thinking about the time he'd actually lived through, the fatigue and numbness he'd loaned out came washing back over him.

As for the Exorcism Club's activities on this second day, Anjouin skipped them. He just collected records of other jujutsu sorcerers' exorcism missions.

Those records would be very useful to the students of Advanced Nurturing High School.

They were the materials Anjouin had hoped to get from Kento Nanami by joining this internship in the first place.

He just hadn't expected Satoru Gojo to hand them over directly.

Gojo had left for a while, and a few hours later he came back.

"I won't ask how you know intel on beings beyond Special Grade. So, what do you think of the island nation right now?"

"We're sitting on a pile of nukes, and the countdown has already started."

Pulled aside by Gojo for a private chat, Anjouin said exactly what he felt.

His injuries had only been bandaged temporarily. He really ought to go to a hospital for a proper checkup, or have someone who could use Reverse Cursed Technique treat him.

Satoru Gojo could use Reverse Cursed Technique too. In the original work he'd never been shown healing others, only himself, but with the Six Eyes' precise control over cursed energy, he should be able to manage it.

Gojo, however, declared that more scars were a good thing for a man. Scars were a man's medals.

"Nukes on a countdown, huh? That's a fair way to put it."

Gojo chuckled. "That Kudo kid is quite curious about you, you know."

"I took a car to Beika Town, and before I entered Regret's 'Hell,' I talked with that Kudo who was active in Beika."

"…If possible, please come earlier next time."

Being crushed by regret was no pleasant feeling. Anjouin rolled his eyes on instinct, then pulled himself together and got serious.

"I forgot to say it earlier, Mr. Gojo. Thank you for your help."

He thanked him earnestly.

"Feels like the stronger the pressure on you, the more likely you are to burst out, huh?"

With his blindfold back on, Gojo slid straight back into his usual frivolous self. "Want to visit another beyond-Special-Grade's turf next time?"

"Absolutely not." Anjouin waved both hands frantically.

It had been thrilling enough already.

He'd always done what suited his station.

A child should be a child who made his parents proud.

An older brother should be a brother his little sister admired.

A student should be a student his teachers saw as eager to learn.

A Grade 3 jujutsu sorcerer should honestly be a Grade 3 jujutsu sorcerer: keep his head down, don't steal the spotlight, don't drag the team down.

A jujutsu sorcerer trapped in a cursed spirit's domain, with his back against the wall?

Then he'd keep struggling and keep looking for a chance to survive.

Human relationships were a Binding. Social status was a Binding. Family was a Binding. Living in this world, everyone was the same: bound by all manner of Bindings, a body in chains.

Precisely because of that, he loathed rules and longed for the bound body to be set free.

For the madness held in check to be released.

For suppressed desires to be indulged to the fullest.

And right now, he was a student with Grade 2 combat strength who, having been rescued by Gojo, was about to wrap up his internship and return to campus.

What he should do was share this internship's experience, along with the exorcism mission records he'd collected, with his classmates.

"Still, you can probably understand my troubles now, right?"

"I may still be the [Strongest], but only the [Strongest] among jujutsu sorcerers. You know how the island nation likes to do things. The [Strongest] woman, the [Strongest] man, the [Strongest] creature."

"The [Strongest] of the present, the [Strongest] in history, the [Strongest] in theory."

Gojo teased him with a grin. "I got the feeling you had some expectations of me earlier, but then you seemed a little disappointed."

"…"

That reminded Anjouin of the probe he'd made against the [Strongest] on the coast of the school's artificial island.

He had broken through Gojo's [Infinity].

Of course, few beings in this world could break [Infinity], but there were some.

And that wasn't Gojo's weakness.

His real weakness was that Anjouin had used intel on Suguru Geto to lure Gojo into dropping [Infinity] on his own.

The reason for his disappointment in Gojo lay largely in this: anyone who had watched Jujutsu Kaisen naturally counted Gojo as one of their own, a guy with a slightly problematic personality, but very friendly and good to his people.

Put bluntly, if you accidentally transmigrate into the world of Jujutsu Kaisen, you can always turn to Gojo for help.

Even if Gojo's personality was a bit flighty, as long as you were a good person, he'd surely be glad to help.

Precisely because of that, his loyal and sentimental side would become a weakness to be exploited.

At the same time, his own pride could also make him careless.

In this world, stitched together from so many different things, Anjouin of course hoped that this strong man, this good man, would change, so that he could change many people's fates.

But he also hoped Gojo wouldn't change. And when Gojo truly hadn't changed, it let Anjouin trust him, but never fully rely on him.

Damn it, in a cesspit of a world like this, you haven't changed one bit. Isn't that a little problematic?

And then Gojo got his answer from Anjouin.

"…I see. Sorry about that. I guess I let your expectations down a bit."

Gojo scratched his hair, then pressed his palms together in an apologetic gesture.

"I didn't expect you'd be disappointed over that, though."

"No, it's my fault. I expected things on my own, then got disappointed on my own."

Anjouin sighed softly.

Gojo gave an awkward smile. He'd been burdened with people's expectations all his life. After his awakening, he'd exorcised every cursed spirit on the island nation single-handedly.

If cursed spirits weren't being born in droves now, with so many beyond Special Grade rising up and lingering low-level remnants besides, the other jujutsu sorcerers would probably have been put out of work by him.

People believed he could wipe out every cursed spirit and bring lasting peace to the world.

But the fact that cursed spirits kept being born was enough to shatter those expectations.

Even his best friend, because of the rift between sorcerers and non-sorcerers, had gone completely to extremes.

He'd started preparing some scheme to de-humanize the world.

And Gojo hadn't been able to stop him. All he could do was watch him disappear. He'd let a lot of people down again.

"Truth is, I don't care about other people's expectations, or whether they're disappointed. I'm Satoru Gojo, and only Satoru Gojo. I do what I want."

Gojo's playful apology was followed, naturally, by his stance on Anjouin's disappointment.

He wouldn't change at all, and he wouldn't bow to anyone's expectations.

So what if he failed because of it?

It was his own life anyway.

If he'd given it everything he had, then there'd be even less to regret.

As for the mess left behind, he trusted that things would work out when the time came. He also trusted that the people he'd chosen would take up his mission after his failure.

And if they all failed too, then they could meet again in hell, have a few drinks, and hold a reflection meeting.

Gojo's face carried a carefree, willful grin.

It made him seem very reliable, and yet also completely unreliable.

But that was just who Gojo was.

"Looks like I didn't choose wrong, then."

Anjouin nodded.

He could trust Gojo, but not rely on him.

Honestly, he'd thought about slacking off, too. If he really did latch onto a powerful backer, wouldn't it be nice to enjoy his school days in peace?

But he also knew that the moment he did, he'd definitely regret it.

He'd finally been given a second life. What was that line again?

Once you get to another world, show your real skills~

"By the way, aren't your Bindings a bit excessive?"

Gojo looked at the Bindings covering Anjouin, close to ten thousand of them by now, and wondered what on earth Anjouin had done inside Beika Town's domain.

Some of the Bindings had been fulfilled, but they'd still left traces behind.

Given how those Bindings existed, if Anjouin wanted to use their effects again, he only needed to activate them with cursed energy, rather than set up a new Binding as before.

In response, Anjouin shook his fist, wrapped in cursed energy.

The cursed energy, growing stronger with every Binding on his body, didn't escape Gojo's notice.

Though he now understood the trait of Anjouin's cursed energy, where more Bindings meant more power, he cared more about the Bindings themselves.

Bindings weren't something you could just set up on a whim.

Mostly it meant trading disadvantageous terms for a portion of advantage.

In other words, to gain something, you had to give up or sacrifice something.

They called it an "equivalent" exchange, but for the jujutsu sorcerer forming the Binding, it was a losing deal overall.

"Never mind. Maybe that's just what makes a Binding user."

After saying that, Gojo handed over a slip of paper. On it was his evaluation, written in his capacity as mentor.

It served as a summary of Anjouin's internship.