Juchu Kaisen - 39 (Patreon)

Chapter 39

“It comes down to enlightenment,” Gojo argued. “It always does. You don’t have to be so damn atheistic about it, when that’s literally all it boils down to.”

He and I were standing on the edge of the field, an hour before dawn, watching over Suguru and Shoko’s training both. Shoko was doing miscellaneous strength-building activities, using Juchū as weights, while Suguru was sparring against one of my Juchū—a Reaper Ant—in hand-to-hand combat.

Gojo would occasionally shout advice to him. He was focused on training up his Cursed Energy Manipulation.

I sighed, and then shrugged. “Fine. Enlightenment. Since you insist on a definition so much.” I honestly couldn’t see the issue with just calling it an epiphany. Were scientists struck by a holy light when they discovered the root of a problem that had bothered them? Why did everything have to be viewed through such a heavenly lens?

I knew, almost for a fact, that there was an afterlife, that heaven was real. But in that knowledge, I also understood that relying on the heavens was utterly futile. There was no inherent benevolence to the concept. If there was, then the world would not be so terrible.

And if so, there was no use venerating it. No use putting such a thing as ‘enlightenment’ on a pedestal.

Monks and Buddhists argued that this wasn’t the case at all, that the suffering of humans was self-imposed.

I was hard-pressed to assign blame to victims of violence.

"Alright, then tell me," Gojo said. "What's her deal, mentally?"

“I can’t just talk about Shoko’s mental situation,” I said to him flatly. “She told me certain things in confidence. I’m honestly sorry about that, Gojo. But we’re dealing with an actual person here—not just some freak oddity. She’s my friend.”

He groaned. “You’re no fun.”

“My idea of fun isn’t dehumanizing people that I like,” I said. “I prefer to do it to people I don’t like.”

“Can’t you share any details?” Gojo asked.

“Depends. Do you happen to have a more complete accounting of Ghost Hands Matsumoto’s life and times in your clan archives?” I had a hypothesis, but I wanted to compare it to what we already knew about the last output user, the famous healer from the Edo period.

“Ah, I see. No quid, just pro quo, huh?”

“I promise I’ll share anything useful,” I sighed. “Seriously, Gojo. Even I know to put aside rivalry for greater societal benefits.”

If the secret was truly psychology, as I suspected, then we would get a greater picture the bigger our sample was.

“Alright, I’ll see what I can do,” Gojo sighed. “But I doubt my clan will be cooperative.”

Ah. From what I had pieced together, he may have taken a stand against them on my behalf.

Now I felt guilty. He’d done quite a bit for me already.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” I asked him.

His eyes lit up. “I want you to…” he smirked, and I kind of regretted asking. “Hit me with the Black Flash. As many times as I need.”

…Ah.

I turned away from him. “I don’t appreciate being sexually exploited. Find some other sadist to fulfill your fantasies.”

“What?! What?! No—screw you, that’s not what I meant, you psycho!”

“And you keep insisting—does your perversion know no bounds?”

“I hate you. I hate you so much!”

“Boys should learn how to take no for an answer.”

He retched.

000

I wasn’t sure that being hit with the Black Flash would help Gojo any. I would occasionally hit Shoko and Suguru as well, on the off-chance that it did do something. Inspiration was a powerful force, after all, and there was nothing as inspiring as feeling the apotheosis of cursed energy crash into your body repeatedly.

Gojo, who had a virtually inexhaustible pool of cursed energy, was the only one to ask for more.

I had feared that the novelty of beating Gojo to a pulp would wear off with repetition.

It actually never did. Each time I caused him to double over in abject agony was really quite fun. He had some hilarious reactions. I had been worried that he was acquiring a taste for punishment, but that wasn’t true. He was just as pain-avoidant as anyone else. He just cared more about growing stronger.

It also helped that Gojo could, at will, avoid my Black Flashes by focusing his energy and increasing his level of skill. Realistically, I could usually only hit him with it if he let me. Otherwise, I’d have to put him on the backfoot in a battle, causing him such distraction that I could land a hit while he was off-balance. That was how I did it in our prior fights.

At worst from this training, Gojo would learn how to avoid being struck even while off-balance. That would make it harder for me to fight him.

So what exactly was I getting out of this group training session?

Aside from getting to wail on Gojo with impunity, Michiko was still analyzing Limitless. I had several tools already to address Gojo’s Infinity, but Michiko’s approach could potentially prove to be the most valuable one in time. Perhaps the most versatile one as well.

But Gojo didn’t know that, which meant that he would owe me. By getting me those tomes or scrolls on Matsumoto, and getting me even more goodies in time.

The other first-years were also awake at this time, getting their own practice and training in. I could hear Satoshi Ren in a gym, beating the crap out of a sandbag. On a corner, several of them laid punctured, half-buried in the sand that they once enveloped.

Kobayashi Jun was in the classroom, practicing math. It was the only subject I actually saw him study. Most would assume that meant he was really fond of math, but I could tell that it was likely his weakest subject—which was why he worked so hard.

Suzuki was in a karate studio, practicing combination strikes on a wooden dummy without using cursed energy, which boded well for the dummy’s longevity. Ito Aoi and Takahashi Hana were there as well, the former practicing her kata while the latter was tiredly doing jumping jacks in utter misery.

Aomori Sakura was in her room, though I didn’t look inside with my Juchū, relying on my ears instead. I could hear scribbling. She was busy writing, as usual. Ishikawa was busy drawing.

Daiki was busy practicing his dance moves in an empty dance studio.

Everyone in my year was putting in some effort or other. It was gratifying to see. I hoped it had something to do with Gojo and I but I doubted it. They all had a spark that was absent in a majority of the upperclassmen. I hoped that would be enough to keep them alive when the time came to exorcise curses.

000

The gray-haired Mukai Reiko, currently wearing a sleeveless karate gi revealing the scars on her arms, clapped her hands. The ensuing boom of sound was probably enough to slightly deafen anyone inside the karate studio.

In the first year, all the girls except Aomori Sakura had chosen to join this club. Including them, that made the number of people inside fifteen.

Only.

I had suggested that Gojo and Geto join us, but apparently they wanted to join the boy’s club instead—their loss, of course.

“Alright!” She grinned. “I’m loving the turn-out! Good showing up, First Years! Your class is smaller than normal, but I appreciate seeing so many of you joining in! Alright—let me explain what it is that we do here in this club. I called it the Karate club when I first founded it four years ago, but in truth, it’s more like an MMA type of thing, incorporating the traditional and the modern under one system. I encourage people to learn as many different styles in order to create a system that works for them. Everyone is different, every body is different, so we can’t expect to reach our potential by chasing someone else’s idea of an ideal fighting style. Now, I know what some of you are thinking: why not just call it the MMA club? Because, my friends, we are not non-sorcerers. MMA may be the most proven system of disparate fighting systems that discards the weak and superfluous while maintaining the moves that incorporate most physical power, but since when did we as sorcerers rely on only the physical? Take traditional Chinese martial arts for example. Much of the different styles such as Tai Chi and Baguazhang involve the transfer of some unseen, invisible energy. Your Chi. Or Ki—“

“Ki?!”

Someone kicked open the sliding door. Satoshi Ren strode inside, with his usual frown. “Ain’t it called cursed energy? Argh, this is too damn confusing. You! You the captain of this club?” he pointed at Mukai Reiko. “I just kicked the crap out of the boy’s club captain. You better be stronger!”

Reiko laughed. “Oh, you certainly know how to pick ‘em, kouhai. Don’t worry, I won’t kill you.”

Satoshi dashed forth.

Reiko stomped forward so hard that the ground shook, and she sent an overhead punch, arching from the back, over her head, and down to Satoshi’s face.

The fist followed Satoshi’s face as it crashed into him, burying his head under the tatami floor until Satoshi was vertical and upside down, rooted by his head. His legs were bent at the knees.

“Hahah!” Gojo laughed as he walked inside the room as well, Suguru in tow. He clapped his hands. “That—that never gets old,” he shook his head and dried a tear from the corner of his eye. “I suppose you’re the real deal then, senpai,” Gojo bowed. “Can we join?”

“Of course!”

Shoko looked at them askance. I explained with a smirk. “While Reiko was explaining everything, Satoshi beat the crap out of everyone in the boy’s club.”

Reiko whistled, looking down at Satoshi’s buried form. “Impressive, kouhai!” she patted his knee. “Those people aren’t exactly small fry! Your year is strong, Teira-san!”

Mukai Reiko was the only student in the school that was Grade One. There were only two Semi-Grade Ones, and ten Grade Twos. In terms of Jujutsu Society’s historical standards, this was an excellent crop of students.

Still, I could bet that at least three more of my classmates would become Grade Ones within their careers at Jujutsu High. Not including Geto Suguru, of course. He was destined to far greater heights. The last crop of students was excellent, but it couldn’t compare to my entire year-level.

“Of course it is!” Gojo grinned widely. “Because I’m in it!”

“Now pipe down,” Reiko chuckled. “I’m still in the middle of my explanation! Miko-chan, can you take the loudmouth to the infirmary?”

One of the upperclassmen nodded, pulled Satoshi out of the whole, tossed him over her shoulder, and jogged out of the room.

“Now, as I was saying. Chi. Ki. Your very vitality. The power of cursed energy may allow us to forego optimal biomechanics entirely by—” she continued her explanation for some minutes.

I made sure that Shoko listened. She was clearly exhausted, but between the caffeine I had forced her to take, and her own Reverse Cursed Technique, she was just barely able to make progress on her hand-to-hand skills.

000

“You’re enjoying this way too much,” I said as I laid on my back in my tarp-covered room, my stomach bare, and my abdominal open.

It turned out that the gorier aspect of this training wasn’t as repulsive to Shoko as I had expected. Indeed, she was a fan of anatomy.

I grabbed her wrist before she could cut my bowels. She was wearing a facemask, but I couldn’t deal with the embarrassment of such a thing. “Be careful,” I said. “I’d prefer it if you stuck around my chest cavity. Healing wounds to vital organs like lungs or the heart should be your top priority.”

She nodded, moving her scalpel upwards.

Her desensitization to gore was coming along well. Soon, she might even be able to heal someone’s neck injury without panicking.

She made an incision on my rib. The sharp scalpel managed to barely nick the bone.

I didn’t have to tell her to be more forceful the next time. Practicing on bones was important, too. Too many people assumed that bones weren’t living organs, that they were just random rocks found in the human body. Shoko’s imagination had likewise been stunted by that knowledge. It turned out that this hands-on experience was good for her understanding that that wasn’t the case at all.

She sent a sliver of output at the deeper cut, watching the bone fibers reconnect the cut pieces before hardening before her eyes. She wordlessly observed the process while maintaining a sheathe of positive energy around the rib.

Her first real ‘technique’. She called it R-Ray. The R stood for the English word ‘Reverse’.

She had wanted to call it ‘P-Ray’, P for positive, but I had vetoed that.

It allowed her an intuitive and detailed knowledge of whatever she was covering with it. I was proud for her regarding this discovery. It was one of the areas that I couldn’t help her with at all. She was the only one that could discover… ‘Extension techniques’ for the Reverse Cursed Technique. Well, for output, at least.

I had a whole host of them myself, for poison-filtration, maintaining optimal focus, reducing my need for sleep, keeping my brain alive without blood.

The list went on.

Still, those techniques were rather… do-or-die. I had no idea how to teach them to Shoko. Beyond poison filtration with very weak poisons and optimal focus, of course. Brain oxygenation, however…

I supposed if there was any reason why a technique ought to be forbidden, brain oxygenation had them all.

She moved on to nicking my beating heart. A half-centimeter wide cut deep enough to pierce all the layers. A pulse of blood splashed her shirt, but it didn’t even ruffle her at this point. She just… healed it.

“Good focus,” I told her softly. Layer by layer, she regenerated the cut tissue, lassoing the sections together, supercharging the melding process, and moving on to the next layer. “I only lost fifty milliliters of blood this time,” I said. “It’s time to make the cuts longer. Five centimeters.”

“I’m running low on energy,” she murmured.

“Then do your best, or I’ll die.”

“Sure. Whatever.” She cut a five-centimeter wide gash over my heart. The blood came out in waves. None of it ruffled Shoko. She just focused her energy.

By the time she was almost about to seal up the wound, I told her, “now you need to generate at least one thousand millilitres of blood, or I will die.”

She finished sealing the wound up and focused on my skeleton.

Then she focused on producing more blood. More blood plasma. More water.

The ex nihilo matter creation sapped her until she was completely out.

By that time, she had managed a piddling five-hundred milliliters. “How was that?” she whispered.

“Fifty percent to the goal,” I said. “But fifty percent to survival is still dead, unfortunately. Sorry.”

She nodded numbly.

“You’ve made progress, Shoko. I’m proud of you.” Unlike her mother, I would do everything in my power to rebuild Shoko’s ego.

Humility as a virtue was a hoax cooked up by the mediocre and untalented. It was just right for someone to be proud, and be able to hold their heads up high. That attitude went against the social customs of this country, but I didn’t care. Pride was important.

I sealed my abdomen and thorax up with my own Reverse Cursed Technique, like I was zipping up a sweater. Then I put my clothes back on. Shoko turned her head away in order to give me privacy, which I thought was kind of adorable given what she had already seen.

“Well, at least this doesn’t completely suck for me,” she grinned. “Lucky that a total psycho like me should awaken the Reverse Cursed Technique, am I right?”

“It would have been wasted on most others, for sure,” I chuckled. A healer could not afford to be averse to human anatomy, or the grotesque. In terms of the mindset of a doctor, Shoko’s was quite impressive. I very much liked that for her.

“I need a smoke,” she said. “Take me to your fantasy land so I can clean up and head out.”

I summoned Juchū to clean up the mess, and had Michiko open up a portal to the cottage.

“By the way,” Shoko said as we both got up. “How exactly does all this portal stuff connect to your innate technique?”

As we entered through the portal, into the cottage’s living room, I asked her to introduce herself.

Michiko, in a western old-fashioned dress, appeared from out of the entrance to the kitchen, causing Shoko to cry out in surprise.

Michiko was grinning, but there was an edge of malice to it. “Shoko, this is Michiko,” I gestured at her.

“A pleasure to finally speak to you, Ieiri Shoko,” Michiko said.

Shoko blinked. “Uh, the pleasure’s all mine.”

“It’s her cursed technique that allows me to use the portals,” I said. “Rather, she’s the one using them. I’m just asking her every time.”

“Where… is she?” Shoko asked.

I patted my chest. “She lives in my spirit.”

“Wait—you said Michiko. Wasn’t that the name of your caretaker? The one that died?”

“I am the vengeful spirit of Michiko,” Michiko said. “Essentially the same person, really. And I exist to serve Teira-chan in every way.”

“Shoko is my dearest friend,” I reiterated. “Please treat her as you would treat me.”

I felt a spike of protest and disgust at the order. She clearly wanted nothing else than to not fulfill it. Unfortunately, she wasn’t in a position to choose.

“Of course, Teira-chan.”

“Do keep this a secret from Gojo,” I said to Shoko.

“Should you fail to obey this decree, dear Shoko,” Michiko grinned widely, her teeth sharpening. Shoko looked dumbstruck by the suddenness of her malevolence, but I turned Shoko’s head to face me.

“Ignore her. She’s jealous, immature, and is seriously embarrassing me. Just, keep it on the downlow. And Michiko, quit pestering my friend. I’m being serious.”

Michiko grinned and nodded. “Of course, Teira-chan. It won’t happen again.”

She disappeared.

Shoko looked at me for a long moment. “I would ask how wise it is to keep a cursed spirit inside of you—but I think I’d want another opinion than yours.”

“It’s harmless if you use the right binding vows—but I seriously wouldn’t recommend it.” The potential for embarrassment was just too high.

Dammit, Michiko!