Chapter 42

"Takizawa, you've lost your mind!!"

Ha, why is the system's reaction identical to last time?

This thought merely flickered through Takizawasan's mind for a fraction of a second as he viciously smashed into the central power source of the standby room. Every strike was more precise, more forceful, and faster than the last. Everything around him was crumbling into pieces, and even the system's voice began to break apart intermittently.

"I advise you to calm down and discuss whatever the issue is with the person in charge—"

Bulls***!!

Flames of fury raged within Takizawasan. He clearly remembered every single treaty he had once signed, and he fully knew how severely violating his actions were. Yet, his sorrowful and trembling soul was whispering to him about unvented anguish. The forced separation—where he could not fulfill his promises and had to betray his own heart—filled him with a suffocating, absolute despair. He shouldn't be doing this, but he could no longer endure it!

Takizawasan felt as though he had become a madman. He frantically and haphazardly destroyed everything in sight, smashing through the rules and boundaries that sought to restrain him. Beneath his escalating and uncontrollable emotions lay a profound, buried fear.

—If he left now, he would never be able to return.

Only expendable pawns possessed the right to traverse time and space. If he were to walk out of this standby room with dignity, he would never be able to come back!

"Takizawa, you are already a dead man!"

The standby room flashed frantically with red light, the system issuing high-frequency warnings, but Takizawasan ignored them entirely.

A crack appeared on the emblem.

Takizawasan's heart leaped into his throat. The breach in the standby room was spreading toward his feet, and only then did Takizawasan, whose blood had been boiling, calm down as if splashed with cold water.

He abruptly gripped the golden emblem, then deliberately jumped backward into the torrent of space-time behind him.

The emblem was both a locator and a recorder.

Only by holding this item could he find the worlds he had once visited while acting as an expendable pawn.

—I'll figure out a way to destroy the emblem once I reach Gojo's world.

Clinging to this intense thought, Takizawasan was once again consumed by a sensation of burning heat and weightlessness. The system's voice grew distant; it still stubbornly persisted in shouting words of persuasion, but Takizawasan could hear nothing, nor would he listen to anything. The passage of time after he left the standby room caused his unhealed wounds to bleed profusely. His aching brain dulled his clear consciousness. With half-closed, lifeless eyes, Takizawasan ultimately failed to withstand the forced blackouts, and he lost consciousness without a single awareness.

And he had no idea that he had already lost consciousness.

He only felt as though his body had suddenly landed solidly and securely. It was very cold, but having sensations was not necessarily a bad thing. It took an unknown amount of time for his chaotic brain to regain the capacity for thought. It felt as though an eternity had passed, yet it might have been merely a split second. When Takizawasan finally snapped back to his senses, he found himself in a remarkably familiar outskirts area.

...The very place where, harboring grief, anger, and absolute resolve, he had uttered words dripping with blood, swearing that he would curse himself.

Has he returned?

Takizawasan looked around in a daze, and then was overcome by wild elation. Had he really returned?!

He was back?!

An indescribable sense of relief welled up in his heart. Takizawasan turned his face in overwhelming joy, but the brilliance in his eyes instantly froze.

He saw the trampled plains, the corpses of countless ordinary people, and Jiangxi Linye, whose expression had completely broken down.

"He's crazy, he's truly crazy, that Satoru Gojo is insane!" Jiangxi Linye yelled incoherently and out of his mind into his phone, "Look at what you people have done! Why was the Heavenly Restriction released? Who on earth did the department hand him to?! Was it the Kamo family of the Three Great Families, the ones with innate control over bloodlines?!"

The young man violently tore off his bandages, the scene before him making it impossible for him to maintain his elegant and neat appearance any longer. "Don't you know that jujutsu sorcerers are all madmen? Why push him? What good does it come from driving him mad?! The government has never made such a decision!"

Takizawasan stood not far away, listening to his voice, which was practically tearing through his throat.

"Takizawasan's verdict was 'harmless'—harmless! Are you people incapable of human speech? At least notify me before taking action... You say it has nothing to do with you? Then why was Takizawasan targeted, and why did Satoru Gojo go mad?"

Satoru... what happened?

Takizawasan turned around, suddenly finding himself in a corridor of Tokyo Jujutsu High.

The transition of scenes was so seamless that even he failed to notice anything amiss. Takizawasan instinctively searched for Satoru Gojo's figure. Hastily passing by a classroom, through the open door, he caught sight of Yaga's heavy expression inside, along with the students' expressions of disbelief.

"Satoru... destroyed the General Headquarters."

"......What?" the students asked blankly.

"The main building of the General Headquarters was blasted to the ground by him... What a willful guy. I heard it happened just last night... After a direct confrontation with A, he seemed to have been provoked by something and attacked the headquarters, leaving countless casualties."

"Then what about now? Where is Teacher Gojo? Will he face any punishment?"

"The higher-ups have issued a bounty for his arrest, but I estimate..." Yaga's voice was filled with exhaustion and suppressed emotion. He, too, felt the absurdity of the sudden events and anger directed at an unknown target, "I estimate no one can catch him."

The title of the strongest jujutsu sorcerer was not something anyone could bear.

Yet even so, there must be those willing to take on huge risks for immense profit to hunt him down.

"He has discarded the status of the strongest, which means—he is nobody right now, completely uninhibited, entirely unrestrained, and unrecognized by society. Given his abilities, while his life in the future won't necessarily be difficult, how is it any different from being abandoned by the world and walking alone?"

Takizawasan's figure froze outside the door.

Mere words weighed millions of pounds upon him. His agonizing brain uncontrollably spiraled into wild thoughts: What happened to Satoru? Did he do something irreversible? Why would Principal Yaga speak of him this way? Wasn't he left behind by the curse? Did Satoru... break down after all?

Had Satoru given up on this world?

The more he dwelled on it, the heavier the shadow looming over his head became. He gasped for air as if drowning, the sound of his breathing drowning out all surrounding noise. His chaotic heartbeat and the dizziness resembling oxygen deprivation made it nearly impossible for him to stand steady.

Yet, after staggering a step backward, Takizawasan felt hands catch him.

With a dazed, lowered gaze, he slowly turned his face.

He saw the cold and gloomy eyes of the Six-Eyed Divine Child.

Takizawasan parted his lips and whispered low, "Satoru..."

"You broke your promise again."

The white-haired young man no longer spoke with a flippant tone, amplifying Takizawasan's inner anxiety to an infinite degree.

"I didn't..." Only after the words escaped his lips did he realize how pale this denial sounded. Takizawasan's face drained of color. "It wasn't me, I didn't want to..."

"You said you would never leave."

"Yes, I said those words. That wasn't a lie just to coax you."

"But you no longer have any lingering obsessions. Cursed spirits formed from resentment attain Buddhahood once their knots are untied."

Takizawasan panicked, "Satoru! I didn't leave of my own free will—"

Satoru Gojo stared straight at him, and for the first time, Takizawasan felt utterly exposed under his gaze.

He looked into the young man's ice-blue eyes, where white eyelashes cast dark shadows upon his irises. Takizawasan couldn't help but reach out, wanting to stroke his cheek—he felt that Satoru Gojo was now so fragile that a single touch would shatter him, like a crumbling defense of the heart, a scarred soul that gave its true feelings only to receive no return, whose expectations failed time and time again, and who, despite possessing infinite power, could never overcome the exhaustion of "failure."

A sour, aching sensation gripped his chest. Enduring the bitterness, Takizawasan said, "I will come back."

"I don't believe you."

Takizawasan's outstretched hand froze.

"Takizawasan, I will never believe your damn lies ever again."

The child he had watched grow up told him with a tone of hatred,

"—I will never forgive you."

***

In a somewhat dilapidated house, the young man murmuring deliriously on the bed suddenly awoke in a cold sweat, blurting out the words he had desperately tried to explain in his dream: "No!!"

"..."

There was no response for a long time.

The room was eerie and quiet.

The young man who had sat up straight from the bed breathed heavily, his eyes widened in shock, his face filled with bewilderment and trance, until his pupils were directly struck by the shifting sunlight, until his ears clearly caught the sounds of laughter coming from outside the window, did he finally snap back to his senses.

"..."

"......?"

What?

Takizawasan sluggishly rolled his eyeballs.

...Wait, was it a dream?

A nightmare??

His cognitive faculties finally acknowledged the unreality of the dreamscape.

...Right.

Takizawasan realized in a daze,

How could Satoru possibly do something so devoid of humanity?

That kind of absurd, consequence-ignoring, right-and-wrong-blind retaliatory behavior was something he could never commit.

Those words... those questions he thought Satoru had directed at him... were they his own fears?

Still immersed in the emotions of the dream, Takizawasan instinctively looked around his surroundings.

However, the moment he turned his neck, his attention was stolen by a sensation of restraint. The young man tentatively placed a hand over his neck, but instead of soft skin, he touched a slightly cold and resilient fabric-like texture... Were these bandages?

Moving his palm upward, Takizawasan touched his somewhat heavy head. His forehead was also wrapped in bandages.

Hair... hair?

He felt it over and over, quickly confirming that the hair near his temples had likely been shaved off—undoubtedly preparation work for surgery... Had someone saved him?

Takizawasan stayed still for three seconds, then suddenly threw off the quilt and got out of bed.

His body sent signals of protest due to his sudden, drastic movement. Takizawasan dropped to his knees after taking only a few steps. He took a moment to get used to his numb limbs, and before he could even crawl back up, he saw a pair of delicate legs running toward him in panic.

"Why are you suddenly getting out of bed? The director said with your injuries, you need to lie down for a long time!"

The child's clear voice caused the tense Takizawasan to relax slightly. He raised his head and met a pair of sparkling eyes filled with pure curiosity and worry. Before Takizawasan could say anything, his arm was grabbed, and a child not even reaching his waist was trying hard to help him up.

Takizawasan instinctively braced himself, not wanting to make it hard for the child.

The child pushed him back toward the edge of the bed. Takizawasan cooperatively sat down on the mattress. His throat, having gone without water for a long time, was terribly dry. With a hoarse voice, he asked, "Where is this?"

The boy had plenty of experience taking care of people. Hearing his voice, he hurried off to pour water. The water was kept properly in a thermos flask, and perhaps because some time had passed, it was no longer scalding hot when poured.

However, the temperature in the room was very low, and wisps of steam still rose from the cup. The boy carefully cradled the cup, moving very slowly. Takizawasan proactively took the cup from him and said in a low voice, "Thank you."

He only took a small sip before impatiently asking again, "Where is this?"