Timeframe: Two days after Akira's encounter with the Echo
Location: Kyoto Jujutsu High, Mission Briefing Hall
The morning wind was colder than usual, slipping through the sliding doors of the mission hall like a warning.
Akira sat alone on the tatami, spine rigid, hands folded over his knees. His body still ached from the training bouts. The bruises from Kamo's blood whips were fading, but the aftershocks of time anchoring — the migraines, the nausea — stayed like ghosts on his nerves.
Kido Sougen entered from the west corridor. His footsteps were loud, deliberate. Always with the weight of someone who didn't care about silence — only control.
He didn't sit.
He threw the mission scroll onto the mat in front of Akira. It slid to a stop between them.
"Unseal it," Kido said.
Akira didn't move for a second. His instincts whispered: This is bad.
But he obeyed.
The wax broke with a soft crack. The paper inside smelled faintly of mold and something metallic. Blood, maybe. Or rusted ink.
Akira read silently.
Mission Type: UnclassifiedRank: Black Border (formerly SS-grade)Target: Unknown Cursed PhenomenonLocation: Nara Prefecture — Abandoned Shrine Sector 13Objective: Investigate the disappearance of 3 jujutsu scouting teams.Solo Deployment. No veil support. No backup.
He looked up slowly. "Black Border? That's a death order."
Kido didn't blink. "Think of it as a stress test."
Akira scoffed, then tossed the scroll back. "You want me gone that badly?"
Kido walked forward, gaze level. "I want to know if you can survive what you've already become."
The air in the room tightened.
Akira stood. "This is suicide."
"No," Kido replied, "This is data."
Akira's cursed energy twitched violently. "You're sending me alone, unranked, into a dead zone. If I die, you don't even have to file a report. Convenient."
Kido turned, already walking away. "You said you weren't a punching bag for the board. Prove it."
The door slid shut behind him.
Later that day — Kyoto High outskirts, departure point
Miwa caught up with Akira just as he was fastening his cursed tool case to his back.
"You're really going?" she asked, breath fogging in the evening chill.
He nodded once, eyes distant.
"They didn't even tell you what's out there."
"No," he said. "Just that three squads didn't come back."
She hesitated, then reached into her jacket and pulled out a folded paper charm — pale blue, hand-inscribed.
"For luck," she offered. "Or… whatever you believe in."
Akira looked at the charm, then her.
"I stopped believing after the second rewind."
Still, he took it.
Miwa gave a tired smile. "You come back, alright? Or I'm dragging your ghost back myself."
He turned to leave — then paused.
"Miwa."
"Yeah?"
"If something happens… tell Junko I'm sorry."
She froze.
Akira didn't wait for a reply.
Location: Nara Prefecture, Shrine Sector 13 — 3:21 AM
The forest was alive with whispers.
Not wind. Not insects. Something deeper.
Akira stepped over a broken gate, the wood splintered like teeth punched from a jaw. The shrine courtyard was layered in old blood — some dry, some recent. Shredded cloth and cursed energy residue coated the mossy stones.
"Let this second shatter."
He anchored the moment behind his arrival — a precaution, not a strategy.
He advanced slowly, cursed energy low, listening.
The world didn't feel like it was moving. It felt… paused. Like time here had exhaled and never inhaled again.
His shadow flickered wrong.
He turned fast.
A figure stood in the shrine threshold — dressed in tattered robes, face wrapped in prayer sutras. The talismans floated, untethered, like they weren't attached to anything human.
It whispered. But not in words.
Not out loud.
"You loop. We hunger."
The creature surged forward — faster than it had a right to be. Its body glitched mid-movement, reappearing mid-stride, already reaching.
Akira rewound instantly — his body snapping back two seconds.
The cursed figure didn't stop.
It rewound with him.
His eyes widened.
"It remembered."
He barely dodged the first strike, rolling beneath an arm that stretched like cloth. He struck back with a cursed dagger — but the blade phased through, slicing air.
He dropped low, yanked a second anchor forward, and planted it mid-stride.
"Let this second shatter!"
He rebounded into the side wall, buying time. His hands trembled.
It's not just reflecting time. It's mimicking it.
He threw three cursed kunai — each laced with delayed reverse energy. They detonated on contact — but instead of shattering, the creature duplicated.
Two now. Both echoing the same phrase:
"You shouldn't have anchored here."
Akira's mind raced. The shrine… the blood… the disappeared squads…
They weren't killed. They were rewritten.
He clenched his jaw.
No choice.
"Slice what should've stayed."
His palm split open, Reversed Cursed Technique crackling as he cut out a corrupted second — the recoil burning through his shoulder.
The duplication stuttered. One of the figures flickered, then cracked — a porcelain fracture of cursed time undone.
The other surged forward again.
Akira met it halfway — not to dodge, but to mark.
He touched its chest.
"Let this second shatter."
The creature blinked.
And time — real, weighted time — snapped like a dry branch.
They both froze mid-clash, time anchor pulling everything into a brief loop. Akira shifted behind it just as it reformed — stake drawn, eyes glowing.
He stabbed upward — through its neck, out the skull.
Silence.
Then collapse.
It didn't scream. It dissolved — like a second unremembered.
Akira fell to one knee, gasping.
The shrine pulsed once — a shiver through cursed space — then settled.
He stood slowly, blood dripping from his hand.
Mission: unclear.
Objective: undefined.
Outcome…
He looked at the corpse. There wasn't one.
Only a lingering hum in the stone.
"They wanted me dead," he muttered.
He looked up at the stars.
"But I'm still ticking."