**Chapter 18 – Part 3: Watchers**
The fallout wasn't loud. It didn't need to be.
At Jujutsu High, Gojo stood alone atop a high beam near the western courtyard. His blindfold was off. His eyes, rarely still, were locked on a distant point in the city. Not blinking. Not speaking.
He hadn't seen what happened. But he felt it.
Something moved that shouldn't exist.
He didn't like that feeling.
"Is it him?" Yaga's voice came from behind, calm but edged.
Gojo didn't answer immediately. He tilted his head. "Not entirely."
Yaga frowned. "You still think he's a threat?"
"I think he's a warning."
Inside the school, Keiko worked silently in the infirmary, restocking supplies. One of the younger students walked in with bruises from a sparring match. She healed them quietly. But as she leaned down, she heard the whispers again—not from the student, but from the cracked tile beneath her feet.
Not words. More like breath behind language.
Her fingers trembled.
Elsewhere, far beyond the school grounds, Nokari Ume traced a burnt sigil in the corner of an abandoned archive. Dust coated her robes. She didn't look up.
"Still zone," she murmured, writing it down. "Not a curse. Not divine. A contradiction."
Back in Tokyo, Momo Nishimiya packed lightly and fast. She'd been summoned to the staff room, handed a plain envelope with no curse seal. Her orders were unclear—observe a known anomaly, document any spiritual interference, *do not engage* unless provoked.
She wasn't stupid.
"Extermination by other means," she whispered, brushing her bangs behind her ear.
Still, she went. She always followed orders.
Gojo remained on the rooftop. His mouth curved upward, but the smile didn't reach his eyes. Something inside Infinity had *rattled* earlier—briefly, like an echo hitting a wall that shouldn't be there.
He closed his eyes.
"We were never meant to win," he said to no one. "Not like this."
And far beneath the school, unnoticed by any, a sliver of soil bloomed with petals that hadn't existed yesterday.