Chapter 30

A pair of long, slender legs stepped over the corpse, treading carelessly into the pool of blood as they moved toward the black-haired youth in the back row who was looking down at his phone. Dark red footprints marked the path he took. Looking upward, black-and-white striped trousers were tucked into clown boots, and long silver hair was braided and hung down his back. His physique was tall and well-proportioned; the corners of his mouth were slightly upturned in a fixed arc, as if he were wearing a mask of a smile. Draped in a white cape with a double-breasted stand-up collar, his movements were calm and elegant, his gaze carrying a cynical, nonchalant air beneath a facade of feigned warmth.

"Fyodor, I'm finished on my end~" the silver-haired youth said with a grin, leaning over to peek at his companion's phone screen.

"Yes, I am nearly done as well." Pressing the send button, the black-haired youth closed his phone, slipped it into his pocket, and turned his head to look out the porthole at the world beyond the plane.

The scattered lights of the city shimmered like brilliant stars, merging into a luminous ribbon reminiscent of the Milky Way. Beyond the city lay the darkness, like a black velvet cloth cradling precious gems, making the pearls that emitted a hazy glow stand out all the more.

"Shall we go now?" the silver-haired youth asked.

The black-haired youth did not answer immediately. As the plane descended steadily and the airport facilities gradually came into view, he finally said, "Let's go."

The white cape was swept open by its owner, and in the next second, the two vanished into thin air.

A few minutes later, the plane landed safely. The path for disembarkation had been cleared from the start, leaving only police officers in uniform standing by. As soon as the plane came to a halt, they rushed forward with guns and shields drawn. The lead officer grabbed the handle and yanked it upward, causing the cabin door to slide open automatically.

Countless gun barrels were instantly trained on the interior of the plane, yet nothing happened.

Shortly after.

The surviving passengers sat on the tarmac, their faces deathly pale, their legs trembling. Some were still in a daze, while others had begun to recover, sobbing and wailing in a release of pent-up terror.

As for the police:

"The suspects are not on the plane!"

"Are you certain every inch was searched?"

"Yes."

"That is strange. If the criminals aren't on the plane, where could they be?"

Meanwhile, in Yokohama, Japan.

Two foreigners walked side by side down the street. The silver-haired one acted like a child out for the first time, full of curiosity about everything; he would stop to tease the cats and dogs he saw, and when he spotted a child looking up in distress at a balloon snagged in a tree, he would enthusiastically retrieve it, receiving a grateful thank-you from the child.

"Fyodor, I have a question. I actually wanted to ask you this earlier." The silver-haired youth quickened his pace to get in front of his companion, then turned around to face him, asking with a grin.

"What is it?" the black-haired youth replied in a calm tone.

"Back on the plane, you suddenly went into a trance—no, rather than a trance, it was more like your soul had briefly departed from your body." The silver-haired youth stopped abruptly, leaned in close to his companion, and his left eye—the one not obscured by playing cards—scrutinized the black-haired youth with a look full of inquiry.

"Fyodor, have you found freedom?" he asked.

The black-haired youth raised his eyelids, his gaze landing on the silver-haired youth's face. After a pause, he replied flatly, "It was your imagination."

"Eh~" the silver-haired youth drawled, unsure whether to believe him or not.

The black-haired youth withdrew his gaze and walked past him.

"Alright, my dearest friend, I believe you." The silver-haired youth shrugged, the corners of his lips curling up as he donned his mask of a false smile once more, skipping along to catch up.

...

In a daze, Fyodor faintly heard someone speaking.

["Your... objective..."]

["...is merely... to seek... what the world should..."]

It seemed to be a conversation between two people, one of whose voices was very familiar and very close to him.

It was as if... he himself were speaking.

While lost in thought, Fyodor felt a warm sensation lightly stroke his cheek. Someone was so close that their breath brushed against his face, and he could smell a unique, cold, and faint fragrance radiating from them.

["My best..."]

What?

Fyodor tried hard to hear what the other person was saying, but it always felt as if there were a barrier between them, rendering the words unclear.

His soul plummeted, and he felt a sudden, intense sense of weightlessness, before it stopped abruptly at a certain moment, and his consciousness returned to clarity.

Beneath his feet lay the corpse of the Buddha statue curse, and ahead, Suguru Geto stood frozen in place, motionless.

Fyodor immediately realized that they must have both fallen under some kind of mental attack from the curse... yet in the end, it was the curse that had fallen, while he and Geto remained unscathed.

Or perhaps, was there a possibility that Suguru Geto had fallen into this "trance" only after defeating the curse in a moment of crisis?

This hypothesis was easy to verify; he only needed to wake Geto up to confirm it.

Fyodor raised his hand, placed it on Geto's shoulder, pushed it a few times, and called out his name.

"Geto-kun... Geto-kun..."

Geto gave a sudden jolt, his body twitching twice before the light returned to his hollow eyes. He whipped his head around to look at Fyodor, scanned his surroundings, and finally fixed his gaze on the corpse of the Buddha statue curse.

"Did you do this...?" he asked, dazed and confused.

The "you" naturally referred to Fyodor; they were the only two there.

"Hmm? Wasn't it done by you, Geto-kun?" Fyodor looked equally perplexed.

The two stared at each other, both seeing the same bewilderment in the other's eyes.

A chill crawled from Geto's heels up his spine. His pupils dilated, his muscles tensed, and his brow furrowed as he scanned the area, trying to catch every subtle change and guard against any potential danger that might suddenly emerge.

...If it wasn't him, and it wasn't Fyodor, then who could it be? It certainly couldn't have been the client, who was still fast asleep.

"What exactly happened just now?" Geto muttered.

"I just woke up myself," Fyodor said softly. "Could it be that a kind stranger passed by and saved us?"

Geto said in a low voice, "I don't know, but I haven't found any traces left by anyone else. And if my guess is correct, we likely encountered a Special Grade capable of fully manifesting a Domain. This contradicts the mission description; there was a major oversight by the higher-ups, though we cannot rule out the possibility that this was a special test by them, with someone protecting us from the shadows. If that's the case, Instructor Yaga must know something."

Before leaving, Geto called the assistant supervisor to inform them that the matter was resolved and to have them handle the cleanup.

After hanging up, he and Fyodor stood watch over the sleeping homeowner.

The homeowner, who had yet to wake, would soon face the bad news that his mother had passed away. The only good news was that his house had not been damaged—there had never been an actual fight from start to finish. The Buddha statue curse's breaking through the door had occurred within the Domain. It could now be inferred that the curse likely possessed some form of mental control ability; in other words, what they saw—the curse breaking the door and walking out with the mother's corpse—might not have been real.

The evidence for this was that the door was not broken, and:

Geto jumped from the balcony to the windowsill of the next room and smashed the glass with a punch to enter. The old lady lay on the bed, her body stiff, her face covered in large spots. After Geto's confirmation, they were not ordinary age spots, but lividity. The old lady had been dead for some time; the reason she had not decayed or emitted the stench of a corpse was likely due to something the Buddha statue curse had done.

The old lady's body was intact, so naturally, Geto was not stained with blood or gore.

As for why Fyodor's phone had displayed the image of the old lady being nailed behind the door...

"We were really played. We might have fallen into the other party's trap from the very beginning."

"It's a pity," Geto said after a moment of silence, his tone regretful. "I couldn't absorb this curse. But if it hadn't died, it likely would have been us; it's simply that my current strength is insufficient."

"It's alright, there will be other opportunities," Fyodor comforted him.

Indeed, there would be other opportunities. In other countries, one might not encounter many Special Grades, but in Japan, one could bump into them just by stepping outside—especially for a main character, whose probability of "encounters" was dozens of times higher than that of an ordinary person.

Moreover, as known from the manga, Geto had nearly two thousand curses in his possession at the time of his defection. Although most were low-level, he already had several Special Grades at his disposal. Later, in the year he was killed by Satoru Gojo, he had already absorbed over five thousand curses—and that was merely the number he acknowledged and what others had surmised.

It wasn't until Kenjaku stole Geto's body that it was mentioned that Geto actually held nearly ten thousand curses, used to boast about how large and sweet the "peach" he had plucked really was.

However, some claimed the author had retconned the story, forgetting the earlier setting specifically to highlight the power of the Maximum Technique: Uzumaki—because if Geto truly had nearly ten thousand curses when he launched the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons, why did he only release fewer than five thousand?

Shortly after, the assistant supervisor arrived at the scene, confirmed the curse had been exorcised, and nodded to Geto.

Geto and Fyodor took a taxi back to the Tokyo Jujutsu High.

At this time, Geto did not yet have the Rainbow Dragon and rarely relied on curses for transportation (other curses were not as convenient), so he traveled normally most of the time.

Upon returning to school, they immediately sought out Masamichi Yaga.

Hearing Geto recount the encounter, Yaga frowned and dismissed Geto's hypothesis.

"I will report the intelligence error to the higher-ups and provide an explanation to you and Fyodor. As for the sudden death of the other curse, I will investigate it personally."

*

[Report on the severity of the intelligence error and the exorcism of the curse by an unknown individual.

Event Content Record

Date: April 26, 2005

Location: 1-6-341, Shinagawa Ward

Occurrence: ...

Situation: ...

Outcome: ...]

Reply.

[Upon re-examination, it was indeed a detection failure by the [Curtain]... Regarding the curse technique retrieval you proposed... on August 12, 2003, Assistant Supervisor Kazeyama encountered a similar curse technique... Our side will dispatch Kazeyama to confirm...]