Jujutsu Kaisen: Tragedy Life Simulator-Chapter 110 - Want My Seat as the Gojo Clan’s Prodigy?
Gojo didn’t even get his comeback out before the red point of light on Hayase’s fingertip blew apart.
Red burst forward.
A wave of crimson repulsion crossed the space between them in an instant. Gojo’s prized Limitless, already buckling under Nagihiru Kinkou’s brutal suppression, flickered once like a bad light and got punched straight through.
There was no time to yell. No time to brace.
Gojo flew backward like somebody had cut his strings, spinning through the air before crashing flat into the thick hedge at the edge of the training grounds. Dust and shredded leaves exploded everywhere.
Hayase hadn’t been trying to hurt him. He’d compressed the output with meticulous control, turning the blast into a shove instead of a real attack. The point wasn’t damage. It was proof. Solid, undeniable proof that he’d mastered Cursed Technique Reversal, the very thing Gojo himself was still struggling to pull off.
The bushes rustled violently. Gojo shot back to his feet like a man trying to stop his dignity from leaking out on the ground. Two yellowed leaves were still stuck on top of his head.
His face went through several emotions in quick succession, shock, disbelief, then a rising flush of humiliation.
Behind the shades, the Six Eyes were working hard enough to burn.
The shock part was easy enough to understand. A few days ago, this newcomer had used some bizarre method to copy Limitless. Fine. Irritating, creepy, but fine. But now Hayase was casually firing off Red, the reversal application that Gojo Satoru, the acknowledged prodigy of the Gojo Clan, still hadn’t managed to use? That was enough to grind the entire jujutsu world’s common sense into dust.
And the anger was even simpler.
He’d just been used as the test dummy.
Hayase stood there in the distance with the same calm expression as always, not even a trace of smugness on his face. Somehow that made it worse. Getting blasted across a field by your own clan’s technique was already bad. Getting blasted by a man who looked as if he’d just finished some light paperwork was worse.
From the sidelines, Geto took in the whole scene. Watching his unbearably cocky best friend, the untouchable genius himself, sprawled in a hedge with leaves on his head... the knot of resentment from Hayase slapping him earlier disappeared on the spot.
His mood improved immediately.
Actually, the more he thought about it, the better it got.
Gojo Satoru, pride of the Gojo Clan, had just been launched across the yard by the Gojo Clan’s own inherited technique, one he himself couldn’t even use yet, in the hands of a total outsider. Something warm and deeply inappropriate bloomed in Geto’s chest.
He stood there with one side of his face still swollen and red from Hayase’s slap, lips pressed tight, shoulders shaking from the effort of not laughing.
That puffed-up face, twisted from pain and badly hidden delight, was the final spark.
If this ends here, I actually look worse than Suguru. He got slapped. I got launched without doing a damn thing. No way.
Gojo clenched his jaw. A pulse of visible cursed energy rolled off him, and every bit of dust, grass, and leaf stuck to his black uniform disintegrated on the spot. The leaves on his head vanished too. In one second he looked immaculate again, as if nothing had happened.
Then he started walking back.
Long strides. Deliberate. Heavy enough that every step seemed to announce pure irritation.
A vein throbbed on his forehead. He forced his competitive streak into something that almost looked like restraint, dragged the corners of his mouth up into a smile that was supposed to pass for friendly, and failed badly.
"So, you’re done sparring with Suguru... heh. That guy can only summon jellyfish and trash. You’re not learning anything useful fighting someone who can’t even dodge a slap. How about... you let me have a turn?"
Hayase didn’t react at all. His breathing stayed even. His answer came out in that same maddeningly polite tone.
"That’s kind of you, Gojo, but I don’t think that’s necessary. You saw it yourself. I’ve already mastered Cursed Technique Reversal. Whether it’s Nagihiru Kinkou’s forced suppression or the Gojo Clan’s Red from just now, you’ve... experienced it firsthand, haven’t you?"
He put the slightest emphasis on "experienced it firsthand."
That line hit Gojo like acid poured straight into an open cut.
Calm on the surface. Lethal underneath.
His jaw locked so hard his teeth gave an audible grind. He glared at Hayase for several long seconds before dragging the words out one by one.
"Oh. Yes. I. Have. Already. Experienced. It. Firsthand."
Geto watched the whole thing and finally lost the fight.
The logic here was airtight. Hayase had produced results. He’d proved his point. And technically he was still the weaker side. If Gojo hit him now, that was just bullying. Gojo knew it. Hayase knew it. Everybody here knew it.
"Pfft... ahahahahaha..."
For all the absurd things Hayase had shown off today, both of them still instinctively filed him under the same category, poor physical stats, low total cursed energy, needs protecting. Gojo could rage all he wanted, but he was never going to treat Hayase the way he treated Geto in a real fight.
That huge gap between Gojo’s anger and his total inability to do anything about it was exactly what Geto’s wounded pride had needed. Even though every laugh pulled at the swollen handprint on his face, he couldn’t stop. He doubled over and laughed for a good half minute.
Whether it was Geto cackling like that or the simple fact that he couldn’t stomach the humiliation of being sent flying in front of an audience, Gojo finally snapped and chopped one arm through the air with all the stubbornness of a spoiled kid.
"No. Today I’m showing you what a real Special Grade Jujutsu Sorcerer looks like. Don’t think knowing a little Cursed Technique Reversal puts you above me."
Hayase’s expression didn’t move. His tone stayed flat, almost academic.
"But I’ve already analyzed your technique through Phantom Night Parade. Every offensive application you currently have, Blue, and the Red from earlier, I understand the principles and the effects. I don’t think continuing would accomplish much."
A little reluctance crossed his face. A little boredom too.
Then, as if something had just occurred to him, he looked up.
Geto’s laughter cut off. Gojo narrowed his eyes immediately.
Under both of their stares, Hayase slowly turned and raised one hand, pointing toward the empty hills behind the school.
"Oh, right..."
He tilted his head slightly. There was something sly at the corner of his eye, though his expression stayed perfectly earnest.
"There’s one combination technique from my analysis that I still haven’t fully polished. Maybe you could give me a few pointers, Gojo, since you’re the original owner of the technique?"
Gojo had no idea what game he was playing. He folded his arms, his shades slipping lower as his blue eyes narrowed into slits.
"Hah? Pointers? You can already fire Red instantly. What exactly am I supposed to teach you?"
Hayase didn’t look back.
His eyes fixed on an empty point in the sky above the hills. The air, calm a second ago, seemed to go rigid.
"Hollow Technique..."
Blue’s absolute pull and Red’s savage repulsion met at his fingertip.
And then he forced them together.
Positive and negative energy crashed into each other. Something that shouldn’t exist did anyway. Imaginary mass took shape right there, dragged out through the seams of reality.
"...Purple."
Hayase kept the output on a leash. He clearly wasn’t trying to erase a mountain. What left his hand was a compressed Hollow Technique: Purple, small by its usual standards and precise enough to feel surgical.
A streak of deep violet tore across the sky.
Even scaled down, the pressure of it was suffocating. The air behind it imploded, and a sonic crack split across the campus like a thunderclap.
His aim was perfect. The beam skimmed the treetops and climbed higher, touching nothing on the ground, wrecking nothing nearby. It only carved a huge trench through the clouds overhead, slicing the sky cleanly in two.
Geto went still.
He had no point of reference for what he’d just seen. At this stage, Gojo couldn’t even use Red, much less demonstrate some hidden technique that barely existed in the Gojo Clan’s old records. Geto had never seen Purple. Never even heard of it. The lingering cursed energy in the air made his skin prickle, and cold sweat soaked the back of his uniform.
"Hollow... Hollow Technique: Purple?"
His voice came out rough.
"What... what was that?"
Hayase lowered his arm and finally turned back to Gojo with a mild, perfectly courteous smile.
The meaning in those clear eyes couldn’t have been more obvious.
So? How was my form? Passable?
Silence swallowed the training grounds whole.
Gojo’s mouth had fallen open. It looked like his jaw had simply detached.
The truth was, the Six Eyes had already told him everything the moment Blue and Red fused at Hayase’s fingertip. His cursed energy perception had screamed the answer before the attack even fired. He knew exactly what was coming.
And his rational mind had immediately rejected it.
Impossible. That fusion, the combination of forward and reverse applications into imaginary mass, barely shows up in the oldest clan records. A few scraps in dusty scrolls. No way this latecomer can do it.
The violet light disappeared beyond the horizon.
Gojo stood there. After a long, painful stretch of silence, he finally raised one stiff hand, grabbed his own jaw, and pushed it shut with an audible click.
Then he stared at Hayase through his shades with the expression of someone who’d found out, on an otherwise normal walk home from school, that the completely ordinary nobody standing in front of him was actually the secret illegitimate son his reckless father had left behind years ago.
A son who had inherited the Gojo bloodline and Limitless in full.
A son whose talent was somehow even more monstrous than that of the legitimate heir.
Gojo took a long breath of the faintly scorched air drifting over the training grounds. Then he slumped, all the fight draining out of him at once. He shrugged like a punctured balloon, rolled his eyes, and spoke in a voice thick with self-pity.
"Pointers? I’ve got nothing. You want my seat too? Maybe I should just hand over the title of Gojo Clan prodigy while I’m at it."
