Tokyo Disneyland, Fantasyland.
Here, visitors could encounter all sorts of characters from Disney fairy tales.
Fushiguro Megumi's childhood fantasies were thoroughly indulged.
He met so many characters he had heard about in bedtime stories. When Cinderella descended the steps in her gorgeous blue gown and climbed into her pumpkin carriage, his eyes widened in wonder. Even after the dreamlike figure had disappeared from sight, an even more fantastical thought blossomed in his heart.
I want to live in a fairy-tale world.
He didn't need seven dwarfs, what he wanted was lots of little animals, just like the carefree creatures he'd seen in the Animal Kingdom park.
For a brief moment, he forgot the inferiority he felt from having to live under someone else's roof. Acting on instinct, he wanted to share his wish with an adult.
But when Fushiguro Megumi came back to his senses, he once again discovered that his blond Naoya-ojisan was nowhere to be found.
"..."
The black, sea-urchin-haired boy expressionlessly kicked the ground, returning to the harsh reality that his relatives couldn't be relied upon.
"I'm definitely telling on him."
"Definitely."
With Akiya-ojichan absent, Naoya-ojisan was always sneaking off!
After grumbling to himself, he remembered what had happened the last time he'd been taken away by the park staff. Putting on the appearance of a child accompanying some other adult, he continued exploring Fantasyland.
Fushiguro Megumi bounced along happily, darting nimbly through the crowd and briefly forgetting that he was supposed to have a guardian watching over him.
His happiness bore a striking resemblance to Gojo Satoru's. Both could cast their worries aside and lose themselves completely in the simple joy of having fun. Over at Tokyo DisneySea, Gojo Satoru was drenched from head to toe. He splashed water all over Asou Akiya's face, only to have it splashed right back at him. Sparkling droplets clung to their hair and cheeks, glittering like tiny water diamonds.
"Come on! I found an aquarium!" Gojo Satoru exclaimed, dragging Asou Akiya out of the water slide. As they ran, the water on his body flew off with a quick shake, leaving him dry in no time.
The Limitless technique enveloped Asou Akiya, allowing him to watch the droplets spray away from his body. It was as though they had a waterproof coating over their skin, letting them shake themselves dry with ease.
The usual sense of distance Gojo Satoru maintained with other people vanished completely in front of Asou Akiya, his classmate and friend.
Asou Akiya's fingers curled involuntarily. Gojo's palm was pressed snugly against his wrist, and yet a restless dissatisfaction clamored inside him, yearning for their hands to be joined properly.
No. That would be too intimate.
Japanese social interactions were already steeped in a strong sense of personal distance. If they acted like that, people might mistake them for a homosexual couple.
As they toured the aquarium, Gojo Satoru eventually released his hand, making sure Akiya wouldn't wander too far away, then animatedly began pointing out the fish.
"That fish looks like Suguru, and that one looks like Akiya!"
Asou Akiya watched with an amused smile as Gojo Satoru identified one fish after another.
Then Gojo's mischievous streak reared its head again. Pointing at a fish swimming apart from the rest, he declared, "That one looks like Riko-chan."
Asou Akiya gave a soft snort and continued walking, deliberately contradicting him. "You might think of her as a little fish or shrimp, but she certainly doesn't see herself that way. She's not the sort of person who'd feel any kinship with weaker creatures."
Suddenly, a memory surfaced in Gojo Satoru's mind: their visit to an aquarium in Okinawa that April, when Amanai Riko had stopped in front of an enormous whale shark.
Back then, was she empathizing with the whale shark trapped inside the aquarium?
Gojo Satoru was impressed by how sharp Akiya's analytical skills were. He quickened his pace and teased, "Akiya, that's so lame! You're being petty toward a little girl~"
Asou Akiya strolled through the glass corridor, where rippling waves of light danced across the walls, as though he had returned to that summer when the scorching sunlight had warped the world around them.
"You know what kind of person I am, don't you? People's hearts are inherently biased; absolute fairness doesn't exist. Suguru is the only one who thinks he can save every single person who is weak."
Gojo Satoru burst out laughing. "Save every single weak person? Suguru's dreaming! The test Akiya set for him hasn't knocked any sense into him yet!"
Asou Akiya noticed a beautiful fish swimming alongside him. Gazing at it, he murmured, "The reason a dream remains a dream is that it's so beautiful that you don't want to wake up."
Gojo Satoru declared with great conviction, "I don't like dreaming. How could anything in a dream possibly compare to reality?"
"Really?"
Asou Akiya leaned close to Gojo Satoru's ear and whispered, "Are there no beautiful, sexy older women in your dreams?"
The tips of Gojo Satoru's ears tingled and twitched. Pretending nothing was amiss, he replied, "I'm a perfectly normal teenage boy going through puberty. It's only natural for me to like that sort of thing, isn't it?"
Asou Akiya reached up to tuck a strand of hair at Gojo Satoru's temple behind his ear, his fingertips brushed past the snow-white skin beside it. Gojo had thick hair but relatively sparse body hair. Whenever he stood somewhere well-lit, his nearly translucent downy hairs caught the light, casting a hazy glow over him, much like the way blond Europeans and Americans looked when basking in the sun.
"Normal, of course it's normal. Our Gojo is finally a teenager who doesn't need to take medicine this year."
"They were nutritional supplements!"
Gojo Satoru practically jumped out of his skin, vehemently demanding that Akiya correct his wording. He wasn't some medicine guzzler! The Gojo family had simply insisted on giving him supplements to build up his constitution.
With practiced ease, Asou Akiya changed the subject. "Gojo, do you think there might be cursed spirits here?"
Gojo Satoru glanced around. "Nope~"
Asou Akiya was curious about the state of the Disney resort that Japan had spent a fortune building. "What grade of cursed objects does the jujutsu world keep in storage?"
Gojo Satoru took off his sunglasses, revealing the vast scope of his vision and satisfying Akiya's curiosity. "Special Grade."
The moment Asou Akiya got his answer, he immediately helped Gojo put his sunglasses back on.
"I'm not tired," Gojo Satoru said.
Asou Akiya adjusted the sunglasses until they sat perfectly on his face. "There's a kind of tiredness that goes, 'I think you're tired,' so you might as well relax a little and have fun with me."
Gojo Satoru narrowed his field of vision to the absolute minimum, then observed the two figures standing in the aquarium from every angle, a full 360 degrees without a single blind spot.
He looked at himself from an omniscient, godlike perspective.
The white-haired boy wore a faint smile, his muscles relaxed, while keeping his cursed technique active at all times. His black sunglasses concealed the Six Eyes, making him appear, on the surface, to be nothing more than an ordinary tourist.
He analyzed his current state of readiness and came to a conclusion: there was a certain probability that Fushiguro Toji could successfully ambush him.
However, there was no longer a second Inverted Spear of Heaven in the world, and he was no longer in the same mentally exhausted state as before.
Through the glass, Gojo Satoru poked at a muscular, chubby-headed fish and asked, "Akiya, are there any other Heavenly Restriction cases in the jujutsu world?"
Asou Akiya lowered his voice. "There are."
The Zen'in sisters were slightly older than Fushiguro Megumi, which meant they had already been born.
"However, someone like Toji..." Asou Akiya paused. "He's the only one."
Even when the Zen'in clan was wiped out in the original story, Asou Akiya still refused to acknowledge Zen'in Maki as a powerful fighter on Fushiguro Toji's level.
In fact, deep down, he even looked down on Zen'in Maki for what she did after obtaining power. Killing her own mother and slaughtering the entire clan, including the elderly, the weak, the sick, and the disabled, all to fulfill her younger sister's wish.
Where was the reform Zen'in Maki had supposedly brought to the Zen'in clan? The whole thing was an absolute joke.
If Getou Suguru, the cult leader, was the Jujutsu Kaisen version of Uchiha Itachi—a man who killed his own family for the greater good of protecting jujutsu sorcerers—then Zen'in Maki was a twisted, little-brother-obsessed version of Uchiha Itachi who wiped out her entire clan for her younger brother.
In short, everything had gone horribly wrong.
Gojo Satoru was jealous. "He's an enemy."
His friend admired the strong, and Gojo found it frustrating that the person being admired wasn't him.
"Fine, he's an enemy," Asou Akiya conceded. "We'll stay away from all Heavenly Restriction cases."
Gojo Satoru immediately protested. "I'm still interested in other people with Heavenly Restrictions! You can't condemn everyone with a single stroke of the brush!"
Asou Akiya pointed an accusing finger at him. "You're so demanding, you're practically a fickle young lady!"
Gojo Satoru bristled. "No, I'm not! Not at all!"
Doing his best to appear indifferent toward Fushiguro Toji, Asou Akiya casually asked, "Did Toji have any last wishes before he died?"
His intention was to lay the groundwork for the two of them eventually adopting Fushiguro Megumi together. The result, however, was—
Without batting an eye, Gojo Satoru replied, "I don't remember."
Since he'd been the only person who heard Fushiguro Toji's dying words, Gojo Satoru had firmly resolved to keep the matter from Asou Akiya.
Kids were just a nuisance, anyway.
At most, he would lend Fushiguro Toji a helping hand and give the man's child a chance to make his own choice. But he had no intention of adopting the boy himself.
The kid was a member of the Zen'in bloodline, after all, and his father had been killed by Gojo himself. That made him a child who had every reason to hold a grudge against him for his father's death!
Gojo hated the Zen'in clan next door and all the ridiculous mess that came with them!
At this stage in his life, Gojo Satoru was nowhere near ready to become an adoptive father. He was still a half-grown boy himself, with all the childishness that came with it. Refusing to let Asou Akiya meddle in the Zen'in clan's private affairs, he threw a tantrum.
"Akiya, I've beaten so many people in my life that I never bother remembering anything about the losers!"
Asou Akiya:"..."
Fine, fine. Gojo Satoru had certainly improved his skills. Now he could lie without even bothering to prepare an excuse first.
"Come on. Let's stop talking about him altogether."
"Yay!"
Convinced that he'd successfully made Akiya back down, Gojo Satoru strutted around smugly, basking in his own victory. As for Toji's child, he could just leave it to the Gojo family to investigate at their leisure.
Meanwhile, at Tokyo Disneyland, cold sweat began to bead on Fushiguro Megumi's forehead.
Standing beside the adorable cartoon characters, he spotted one of those cursed spirits his two uncles had told him about. Worse still, it had noticed him!
The Grade 3 cursed spirit, born from people's resentment over having to wait in line, was something Zen'in Naoya had captured near the outskirts of the amusement park. It was perfect for scaring children. Its appearance resembled a grotesquely twisted human figure, with feet that looked like high-heeled shoes.
The multiple eyes scattered across its body all turned toward Fushiguro Megumi in unison. Cursed spirits instinctively harbored hostility toward sorcerers they could see, regarding them as mortal enemies. The moment it spotted Megumi, it immediately abandoned its hostility toward ordinary people and began crawling in his direction.
Megumi held out for a few seconds before goosebumps rose across his skin. He could no longer pretend he hadn't seen it. Without a second thought, he turned and ran.
"Naoya-ojisan—!!!"
He screamed for help, hoping Zen'in Naoya would find him.
What he didn't know was that his Naoya-ojisan had been hiding just outside his field of vision the entire time, watching with great interest as he took photos and videos on his phone.
Megumi, only the weak seek help from others.
The first lesson the Zen'in clan teaches children who awaken their cursed techniques is to throw them into the Cursed Spirit Repository and let them toughen their nerves through experience.
Fushiguro Megumi kept running. He never screamed, choosing instead to flee toward less crowded areas. He didn't dare linger anywhere with large numbers of parents and children.
Zen'in Naoya shook his head again, delighting in Megumi's misfortune.
Wrong again.
Under normal circumstances, staying in a crowded place would increase your chances of survival.
Megumi still hadn't used the Ten Shadows Technique. Seeing him rely on nothing but running away left Zen'in Naoya somewhat disappointed, and he followed at an unhurried pace.
Zen'in Naoya handled the Grade 3 cursed spirit much like a shepherd herding sheep. Whenever the sheep ran in the wrong direction, it would get a beating.
The Grade 3 cursed spirit was forced to keep pursuing Fushiguro Megumi.
Because, there was an even more terrifying enemy lurking behind it!
Fushiguro Megumi never once ran into a dead end, nor did he stumble and fall even once. For his first encounter with a cursed spirit hunting him down, he displayed remarkably good instincts.
But Megumi's stamina was rapidly giving out. His legs were growing so heavy that he could barely keep moving, and he desperately wanted to escape Tokyo Disneyland...
He had no idea how to contact either of his uncles. However, Akiya-ojichan had once told him to do everything in his power to protect himself, and that they would definitely find him.
Why hadn't Naoya-ojisan found him yet?
Why did he always disappear? Just like his dad?
Naoya-ojisan had clearly promised Akiya-ojichan that he would take care of him!
"Naoya-ojisan, you bastard—!"
Fushiguro Megumi shouted the words through his tears. After experiencing such a happy life over the past few days, he simply couldn't bear the thought of being abandoned by his family all over again.
A powerful surge of negative emotions erupted from the young sorcerer's heart.
The shadow beneath his feet began to ripple and distort ever so slightly.
Asou Akiya's words had come true with uncanny accuracy. This generation's Ten Shadows Technique possessed the extraordinary potential to awaken before the age of four!