Jujutsu Kaisen: Tragedy Life Simulator-Chapter 97 - You Go, I Go [bonus]
[As the fight dragged on, Phantom Night Parade’s progress bar finally hit one hundred percent.]
[Prayer Song.]
[A technique that used physical rhythm to exorcise curses while boosting the user’s body through that same rhythm.]
[Everything clicked into place.]
[The weird, almost ridiculous breakdance-like movement he’d kept up even while trying to kill you. You’d originally taken it for some combat style from his homeland.]
[It wasn’t style.]
[It was the trigger.]
[With his last card turned face-up, there was no point dragging this out any longer.]
[Unlike Geto’s Cursed Spirit Manipulation, Prayer Song wasn’t complicated enough to require anything special.]
[Break the movement, and the technique died with it.]
[You stopped.]
[Miguel’s eyes twitched.]
[For the first time since the fight began, you stood perfectly still in front of him.]
[Then, under his wary stare, you tilted your chin up a little, packed a brutal amount of Cursed Energy into your throat, and spoke.]
["Don’t move."]
[Cursed Speech dropped over the rooftop like a verdict.]
[Miguel’s rhythm died instantly.
His whole body locked up. Every muscle. Every joint. He froze in place like someone had poured concrete through his veins.]
[Against an attack that skipped right past physical defense and seized the body through sound itself, the Black Rope was worthless if he couldn’t move his arm to swing it.]
[You lifted Asakirimaru.
Your face didn’t change.
The blade angled down for the finishing stroke.]
[A hand shot out from behind you and caught your wrist.]
[Strong, warm and familiar enough to be irritating.]
[On a battlefield soaked in blood, there was only one person alive who could slip up behind you without warning and still have the nerve to physically stop your sword arm.]
[You didn’t know when Gojo had arrived.]
[You didn’t know why he had chosen this exact moment to interfere.]
[But your resolve didn’t shift in the slightest.]
[The people who had helped launch the Night Parade already had civilian blood on their hands. They were ready to butcher tens of thousands more for a rotten dream.]
[They deserved neither mercy nor discussion.]
[A wet, ugly tearing sound split the air.]
[From the shadow pooled beneath Miguel’s feet, a massive claw burst upward.]
[The Chimera’s forelimb.]
[You had only summoned a single limb to save Cursed Energy, but that was more than enough.]
[The claw punched through Miguel’s frozen chest without the slightest pause, and buried itself deep inside him.]
[The moment it pierced his heart, lightning exploded.]
[A muffled boom rolled out from inside his body.]
[The smell of scorched flesh and burnt protein spread through the cold rooftop air. White smoke curled up from the hole in his chest.]
[The Chimera confirmed the stop in his vitals, pulled back the claw now dripping dark red, and sank back into your shadow.]
[Gojo released your wrist without a word.]
[Through the white bandages, he looked at what was left of Miguel, a body with its chest cored open, organs cooked black by lightning, folding to the concrete like an empty bag.]
[His mouth pressed into a thin line.]
[Somewhere underneath it all, there was a trace of regret.]
[From Gojo’s point of view, Miguel had been the real thing.]
[He hadn’t needed to exchange blows himself to know it. Lasting that long against your assault was proof enough, and the cursed energy coming off the Black Rope had been rare enough to matter even to him.]
[A sorcerer like that dying here with nothing to show for it felt wasteful.]
[By the rules of the jujutsu world, what you’d done was completely justified.]
[These were Curse Users who had launched the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons and thrown a whole city into terror. Field execution was allowed. Encouraged, even.
And still, in some deep place Gojo usually ignored, a sliver of sympathy for his own kind hadn’t fully died.]
[You turned to face him.]
[You didn’t ask why he’d tried to stop you.]
[You just flicked the blood off Asakirimaru and looked at him evenly.]
["What is it?"]
[To his credit, Gojo didn’t bring Miguel up again.]
[The usual playful expression was gone. In its place was a heaviness that looked almost wrong on his face.]
["Geto isn’t here. He never showed up in Kyoto either. He’s gone... to the school."]
[Your expression didn’t change.]
[You knew Suguru Geto too well.]
[If he wanted to keep pushing that childish fantasy about exterminating every non-sorcerer, he needed power that could stand against both you and Gojo.]
[The fastest, dirtiest shortcut in the world was obvious. Take Rika from Yuta Okkotsu.]
[Once you understood that, tonight’s attack barely needed explaining. Throw the Night Parade out front, drag you and Gojo away from campus, then hit the school while the two strongest people who could stop him were gone.]
[Simple.]
[You met the white bandages over Gojo’s eyes and asked the only thing that mattered.]
["You go, or I go?"]
[For once, Satoru Gojo said nothing.]
[The choice sat there between you, naked and ugly.]
[He had already felt something was off. Earlier, he’d sent Ijichi to move Panda and Toge Inumaki back to the school ahead of time.
But he knew exactly how much that was worth.]
[Against a Special Grade sorcerer, two first-years bought minutes. Maybe.]
[Geto’s twisted moral code only targeted "monkeys." He protected sorcerers with a zeal that bordered on insanity, even when they stood on the other side. He would never kill Panda or Inumaki.]
[But if you were the one who went back...]
[Gojo looked at you.
At your pale face. At the blood still soaking your clothes. At the killing intent packed so tightly into you it felt almost solid.
He knew what would happen.]
[If you returned to the school and faced Suguru Geto a second time, you would burn every last thing you had to kill him.
To save the students. To save the civilians. To end the disaster.]
[There would be no room in you for anything else.]
[A vicious wave of self-loathing crawled up from somewhere deep in his chest.]
[Making you carry Suguru Geto again, making your hands take the blood of a former classmate because he himself couldn’t do it, felt hideously selfish.]
[From the day the three of you enrolled together, you had never been the strongest.]
[Your Cursed Energy had limits.]
[Your body was still flesh and blood.]
[And somehow, every time the impossible showed up, every time some mess far bigger than your shoulders should have been forced on anyone, you were always the one already moving.]
[You were always the first one to throw yourself into it.]
[All the filth. All the sin. All the pain. Somehow it kept ending up on you.]
[A question he hated rose up again in Gojo’s mind.]
[That day in Shinjuku... if I’d just done it myself, would everything have ended differently?]
[For Suguru. For you. For everyone.]
[In the end it all came back to one thing.]
[His weakness.]
[His cowardice.]
[He had wanted to avoid the pain of killing his best friend with his own hands, and that mercy had left the rot alive long enough to spread.]
[Now the price was counted in thousands of civilian lives.]
[Gojo drew in a slow breath.]
[Then he crushed the bitterness and disgust in his chest and looked up again.]
[When he met your eyes this time, all that remained on his face was resolve.]
["I’ll go."]
[No hesitation after that.]
[Cursed Energy rippled once.]
[Gojo’s figure vanished from the rooftop. A fading trace of Residual Cursed Energy was the only proof he’d been standing there at all.]
[After he left, the rooftop belonged to you again.]
[To you. To the cursed spirits tearing through the city below. And to the surviving members of Geto’s little inner circle hiding on the platform across the way.]
[They had watched everything through binoculars.]
[They had seen Manami Suda lose her head in an instant.]
[They had seen Miguel, the man they thought was untouchable, get punched through the chest by your Shikigami and drop as a burnt shell.]
[The screams coming from their position were a mess of rage and terror.]
[The loudest ones came from two girls in sailor uniforms and sweaters.]
[You stood at the edge of the rooftop and looked down.]
[Phantom Night Parade’s cursed energy analysis fed you the answer immediately, and recognition hit hard.]
[Those twins.]
[That remote mountain village from years ago.]
[The two little girls the villagers had locked in wooden cages like animals.]
[Nanako Hasaba and Mimiko Hasaba.]
[Their faces were twisted up with hatred as they glared back at you.]
[Your grip on Asakirimaru tightened until your knuckles went white.]
[If I’d stopped Geto back then... if I’d made him deal with those villagers the right way, these two would probably be students at the school right now.]
[But there was no if.]
[Geto had dragged them out of hell, and then filled the hollowed-out space inside them with his own warped gospel.]
[Now they were what he’d made them into.]
[Executioners.]
[Girls who treated civilian lives like they were worth nothing.]
[You closed your eyes for a second.]
[When you opened them again, whatever pity had been there was gone.]
[Your hand tightened around Asakirimaru’s blood-wet hilt.]
[For girls whose hands were already stained with civilian blood, you had nothing left to offer except the death that would stop them.]
[But next time...]
[Next time, you would change everything.]
