[You could never sacrifice a living, innocent girl to prevent some nebulous catastrophe the higher-ups described in mystical platitudes, a disaster that might never materialize.]

[Your moral bedrock as a human being would never allow you to stand by and watch Riko die.]

[But that didn’t mean you’d run from the consequences.]

[You tilted your head back, letting the cold night wind cut across your face.]

[You wouldn’t flee the karmic backlash of rewriting fate by force. Whatever catastrophe erupted twelve years from now, or longer, you’d planted the seed with your own hands. And you would carry every last ounce of responsibility on shoulders built to bear it.]

[Just as you’d carry the blood debt of this other Vessel, the girl who’d died because you hadn’t arrived in time. That weight, you carved into memory.]

[Deep in your gut, instinct screamed its alarm. Everything, the Star Religious Group’s bounty, the staged car wreck, Geto’s future fall, the existence of the stitched abomination, every seemingly scattered event was threaded together by a single invisible wire.]

[You were close. So close. But that one critical piece, the keystone that would lock the entire puzzle into place, still eluded you.]

[Your breathing grew heavy. For the first time in a long while, something close to a shudder ran through you. Not fear, exactly. An instinctive reverence for an abyss whose bottom you couldn’t see.]

[You couldn’t begin to fathom what kind of mind, what kind of monstrous ambition, required planning in units of five hundred years.]

[Five hundred years.]

[If everything pointed toward sabotaging Tengen’s assimilation cycle, then a single failure meant the architect behind it all had to retreat into the shadows and wait. Patient. Silent. For another five centuries.]

[The absurdity of it bordered on madness. Five hundred years dwarfed the limits of any human lifespan. And in ancient eras, when medicine was primitive and lives burned short, the gap yawned even wider.]

[Was this truly a conspiracy that stretched back into antiquity and persisted, unbroken, to the present day?]

[To move one piece every half millennium in this monstrous game, how many generations had been spent? How many innocent lives twisted and consumed?]

[Why?]

[To overthrow the world? To chase some higher evolution?]

[Was it worth it? A goal so abstract and distant, purchased with centuries of blood... could anything be worth that price?]

[The questions pooled in your mind like ink that refused to dissolve, black and impenetrable.]

[For now, the fanatical obsession lurking behind five hundred years of history was beyond your comprehension. Beyond reason.]

[But one thing you knew with absolute certainty.]

[The opponent had entered the game. And this centuries-spanning match, this inhuman chess board stretching across the ages...]

[You, Touma Hayase, accepted the challenge.]

[Afterward, you returned to Jujutsu High alone and knocked on Masamichi Yaga’s office door without preamble.]

[The room smelled faintly of wool felt. Yaga sat behind his broad desk, hands moving on autopilot as he stitched together a Cursed Corpse of somewhat peculiar design.]

[You didn’t waste time with pleasantries. You pulled out a chair, sat down, and laid the entire plan bare.]

[In a calm, even voice, you admitted that under your absolute direction and command, Riko Amanai had not died.

The explosion at Okinawa’s airport had been her staged death, and you’d torn her free from the Star Plasma Vessel’s ordained fate. The only detail you withheld was your intended move against the second Vessel.]

[Yaga set down his needle and thread.]

[The eyes behind those black sunglasses fixed on you. A long silence stretched between you.]

[What came next was unexpected. The teacher notorious for his severity didn’t erupt. No thunderous fury, no reprimand for openly defying orders from above. None of it.]

[He exhaled, heavy and slow. The Cursed Corpse settled onto the desk as his broad palm pressed against his brow, kneading the tension there. His voice carried exhaustion and a deep, undisguised regret.]

["Touma, if you were set on doing this... you could’ve told me beforehand. Even if I couldn’t support it openly, I could’ve helped forge a new identity for Riko, arranged somewhere safe for her to disappear to. I can do that kind of thing far more reliably than a handful of students."]

[Yaga rose and moved to the window. He pushed it open and stood gazing at the vast sky above Jujutsu High.]

["When I received this escort assignment, I thought I was being profoundly selfish. I didn’t know whether sending a fourteen-year-old to die was the right thing. I didn’t know what refusing assimilation would bring. I couldn’t see the consequences either way."]

["But I was afraid. The unknown was too vast. And in the end, I was coward enough to shove that impossibly cruel choice onto you. Onto students. That was unforgivable."]

[You sat in silence, watching his back. You understood this man completely. Tough on the outside, aching underneath.]

[As someone who’d devoted his life to teaching and to cherishing every student, every life placed in his care, Yaga could never watch a girl in the bloom of her youth march to her death and feel nothing.]

[After leaving the office, you slipped past every pair of eyes on campus and made your way to a dead-end clearing in the dense woods behind Jujutsu High. Isolated. Deserted.] 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

[You drew a deep breath. You pulled out your phone and dialed the underground broker, Shiu Kong.]

[The line connected. You didn’t bother with greetings.]

["Done. Couldn’t recover the body because of those Jujutsu High bastards sniffing around. The Star Religious Group isn’t going to stiff me on this, are they?"]

[A lighter clicked on the other end. The faint sigh of exhaled smoke preceded Shiu Kong’s reply, his voice carrying that blend of wry observation and merchant’s shrewdness.]

["The airport bombing in Okinawa, right? It’s already hitting the news. Didn’t expect you to wrap this up without showing your face even once. As for the final payment, relax. I’m already negotiating with their side. Soon as the funds clear, it goes straight to the anonymous account you gave me."]

[You let out a cold, dismissive laugh in Fushiguro’s characteristic tone, all arrogance and contempt.]

["Tch. I’m not like those brain-dead idiots who only know how to charge in headfirst. My contract was to kill the target. You think I’m stupid enough to throw my life away fighting that monster over pocket change?"]

["It’s like gambling. You play it with your head. Get it?"]

[In a dim underground bar somewhere, Shiu Kong’s cigarette hand paused mid-motion.]

[He didn’t answer right away. A brief, loaded silence hung on the line as an image surfaced unbidden in his mind: the man he knew as Toji Fushiguro, that perpetual fixture at racetracks and pachinko parlors, losing so consistently he couldn’t scrape together a meal without a woman footing the bill.]

[A helpless smile tugged at Shiu Kong’s lips. He shook his head, took a long drag, and kept the thought where it belonged, safely behind his teeth. A piece of black comedy too perfect to say aloud.]

[If it’s really like gambling... then you’re guaranteed to lose.]

---

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