The Ueno National Museum was a tomb.
Without electricity, the grand halls were swallowed by shadows. The only light came from the moonlight filtering through the high glass ceiling and the faint, nauseating purple glow of the barrier that draped over the exhibits like a funeral shroud.
Miyuki adjusted her round sunglasses. To her, the darkness was irrelevant. The museum was ablaze with residual energy. She could see the footsteps of the last security guard who fled. She could see the cursed energy leaking from the walls like black mold.
"It's quiet," Yuji whispered, walking slightly ahead of her. He moved with a prowling grace, his posture relaxed but ready to snap into violence at any second.
"It's waiting," Miyuki corrected, her voice tight. She pointed to a large marble bust in the center of the lobby. "The first knot. It's inside that statue."
She paused, adjusting her glasses to get a better look, and then winced visibly.
"Oh no," she whispered, pain in her voice. "That's an original Meiji-era bust. It belongs in a catalog, not a rubble pile."
Yuji looked at the statue, then back at her, his fist already glowing with blue cursed energy.
"So... can I break it?" he asked, hovering uncertainly.
Miyuki closed her eyes for a second, mourning the loss of history. Logic, she told herself. Lives over art.
"Do it," she sighed, sounding defeated.
"Sorry, old guy!" Yuji apologized to the stone face.
He didn't hesitate after that. He launched himself forward.
The marble bust shattered into dust. A screeching sound, like a dying radio, echoed through the hall as the first anchor of the barrier dissolved.
Miyuki flinched at the sound of destruction, looking at the pile of white powder on the floor with genuine sadness.
"One down," Yuji grinned, shaking dust off his hand, oblivious to the artistic tragedy. "Nice navigation, Arima-san!"
Miyuki didn't smile. Her eyes were fixed on the corridor leading to the Earth Science Gallery.
"Don't celebrate yet," she warned, clutching the hem of her new black turtleneck. "The energy shifted. The other two knots... they're merging."
"Merging?" Gojo's voice echoed from behind them. He was strolling casually, hands in his pockets, looking at a display of samurai armor. "That means the curse is consolidating its power. It knows you're here. It's scared."
"It doesn't feel scared," Miyuki muttered, sweat forming on her palms. "It feels hungry."
The Hall of Bones
They entered the Dinosaur Exhibit.
It was a massive room filled with skeletons, mammoths, triceratops, and towering above them all, the Tyrannosaurus Rex. The air here was thick, smelling of sulfur and old dust.
"Where is it?" Yuji asked, scanning the room.
Miyuki stopped. Her Six Eyes screamed at her. The data was overwhelming. Every bone in the room was vibrating with cursed energy.
"It's not where," Miyuki whispered, stepping back. "It's everywhere."
The sound of bone hitting bone echoed.
Slowly, the massive T-Rex skeleton turned its head. Its empty eye sockets didn't have eyes, but they swirled with dark, sludge-like energy.
"A Cursed Corpse?" Yuji asked, taking a combat stance. "No, it's possessed!"
"It's using the fossils as armor," Miyuki analyzed rapidly, the information flooding her brain. "The curse is the marrow. It's bonded the calcium with cursed energy to create an exoskeleton. Yuji, be careful! That bone is harder than steel!"
The T-Rex roared—a sound not of air, but of pure, cursed energy shockwaves.
It lunged.
Yuji was fast. Faster than the eye could follow. He dodged the massive jaws, sliding under the tail. He jumped, delivering a controlled, testing kick to the T-Rex's femur.
The sound was dull and heavy, like hitting a solid wall of steel. Yuji bounced back, landing on his feet lightly. He looked annoyed.
"Tch," Yuji clicked his tongue. "It's too dense."
The tail swung around like a wrecking ball. Yuji didn't even dodge. He blocked it with a single forearm. The impact would have shattered a normal sorcerer's bones, but Yuji didn't budge an inch. He just skid back a few meters, his sneakers squeaking on the polished floor.
"Yuji!" Miyuki shouted.
"I'm fine, not a scratch!" Yuji called back, dusting off his arm casually. "But this is tricky! I can break it, but I'd have to use a serious punch. And if I do that..."
He looked at the fragile ceiling and the crumbling pillars.
"...I'll bring the whole museum down on our heads."
Gojo was leaning against a wall near the entrance. "Exactly," he commented loudly. "Brute force isn't the answer today, Yuji. You're too strong for this building. It's like trying to kill a fly with a bazooka. What will you do, Arima?"
Miyuki looked at the T-Rex. It was preparing to charge at Yuji again. Yuji could tank the hits all day, but he couldn't attack without destroying the mission objective.
Yuji is the hammer, but we don't need a hammer. We need a scalpel.
Problem: The bones are reinforced with cursed energy. Solution: Break the bonds.
"Entropy," she whispered.
"Yuji!" Miyuki screamed. "Distract it! Get it to expose its leg!"
"On it!" Yuji didn't ask questions. He grabbed a velvet rope stand and threw it at the T-Rex's skull. "Hey! Barney! Over here!"
The skeleton turned, snapping its jaws at Yuji.
Miyuki ran.
She didn't run away. She ran toward the monster.
"Arima-san?!" Yuji yelled, panicked.
Miyuki ignored her fear. She focused on the feeling in her gut, the acid. The green, bubbling solvent. She didn't try to hold it back as she did in the movies. She visualized the dam breaking.
The T-Rex saw her. It raised its massive foot to crush her.
Arrogance, Nobara had said. I am the boss of my own body.
Miyuki didn't dodge. She slid on her knees across the floor, right under the descending foot. As the massive bone claws came down, she thrust both hands upward.
Cursed Technique: Decay.
She didn't just push energy out. She injected it. She visualized her energy seeping into the microscopic cracks of the fossil, eating away the cursed energy that held the atoms together.
Melt.
Her hands connected with the T-Rex's ankle.
The green light exploded. A sizzling sound, like bacon hitting a hot pan, filled the hall. The bone didn't shatter; it turned into a grey, bubbling slurry. The structural integrity vanished instantly.
The T-Rex's foot dissolved.
With its support gone, the massive skeleton lost its balance. It tipped sideways, crashing into the floor with a thunderous noise that shook the building. Bones flew everywhere.
"Yuji! The chest!" Miyuki yelled, scrambling back to avoid being crushed by falling ribs. "The core is in the chest!"
Yuji was already in the air, his silhouette framed by the moonlight coming through the glass ceiling.
He pulled his fist back. The cursed energy flared blue, then twisted into a darker, delayed impact rhythm. He wasn't going for raw power; he was going for precision.
"Divergent Fist!"
He came down like a meteor. His fist struck the T-Rex's exposed ribcage. Thanks to Miyuki's acidic aura weakening the surrounding structure, the bones shattered like glass.
Yuji's fist connected with the fleshy, purple curse hidden deep inside the skeleton. The impact was silent for a split second.
Then, the second impact—the Divergent Fist—exploded from the inside.
The curse didn't just break; it liquefied. The purple core burst outward, splattering the floor, but the wall behind it remained perfectly intact.
Yuji landed softly, flicking some purple goo off his knuckles. "Bullseye."
The Incident
The victory was short-lived.
"Yuji, behind you!" Miyuki screamed.
The dust from the T-Rex hadn't even settled when the "merging" she had sensed earlier completed itself. From the shadows of the ceiling, a second curse dropped—fast, sleek, and humanoid. It looked like a skinned anatomical model, dripping with purple sludge. It didn't roar; it giggled.
It moved faster than sound. It swiped at Yuji.
Yuji's reaction was instant. He didn't flinch. He crossed his arms to block, his body reinforcing instinctively with cursed energy.
The impact was massive. Yuji didn't take damage, but he couldn't fight physics. He was mid-air, having no leverage. The sheer force of the blow launched him like a cannonball.
He smashed through a drywall partition, then a brick wall, and crashed into the exhibition room next door. The structural supports groaned, and a pile of heavy debris collapsed, sealing the hole he had just flown through.
"Itadori-kun!" Miyuki gasped.
From behind the rubble, Yuji's muffled voice yelled, "I'm okay! Just stuck! Give me two seconds to dig out!"
But two seconds was too long.
The curse turned its head 180 degrees. It saw her. It smiled, revealing rows of needle-teeth.
Miyuki froze. Gojo was still by the entrance, watching, testing her. Yuji was buried under rubble. She was alone.
Think, Miyuki. You have the energy. You have the eyes. You just melted a dinosaur.
She remembered Gojo's explanation. Blue is attraction. Red is repulsion.
If she could just push it away...
Panic overrode logic. She didn't think about the fact that she didn't have the Limitless technique. She didn't think about Positive Energy. She just wanted space.
She raised her hand, channeling all her fear and adrenaline into a single point. She tried to visualize the concept Gojo had described. Push. Just push.
She pointed her finger at the rushing monster.
"Cursed Technique Reversal: Red!" she shouted, desperate to mimic the strongest sorcerer alive.
A tiny, pathetic spark of red light fizzled at the tip of her finger. It sounded like a dying lightbulb. Pfft.
Nothing happened. No repulsion. No blast. Just a spark.
The curse didn't stop. It lunged.
Miyuki's eyes widened. Her bluff had failed. Her composure was shattered completely.
"I failed!" she shrieked, her voice cracking hilariously.
Instead of fighting, she did the only rational thing: she threw her purse at the curse's face and bolted.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm not a fighter!" she yelled, sprinting toward the heavy velvet curtains of the Egyptian exhibit.
The curse screeched, tearing the purse to shreds, and chased after her.
Miyuki saw a narrow opening—a maintenance gap between a massive stone sarcophagus and the reinforced concrete wall. It was dark, dusty, and incredibly tight. She didn't think; she dove in, squeezing her body into the shadows just as the curse slammed against the stone outside, clawing at the exhibit.
She pressed her back against the cold concrete, her chest heaving, trying to make herself as small as possible. The gap was barely two feet wide.
Safe, she thought. I'm safe. It can't fit in here.
"Nice sprint," a voice whispered right in her ear.
Miyuki yelped, but a large hand immediately clamped over her mouth.
She looked up. Gojo Satoru was standing there.
In the tiny, claustrophobic space, he loomed over her.
He had warped—twisting the spatial coordinates to insert himself between her and the entrance in a microsecond. It wasn't a miscalculation; the Six Eyes had measured the volume down to the millimeter. He knew exactly how tight it would be. He just didn't care.
He wasn't just standing in front of her; he was pressed against her. And for the first time since they met, there was no invisible wall between them. To fit into this gap without crushing her ribs against the concrete with his barrier, he had deactivated the Infinity.
There was no "infinite distance" here. There was zero distance.
"Shh," Gojo whispered, his lips brushing against her forehead. "Don't give away our position."
The space was suffocatingly intimate. Miyuki's back was flat against the wall, and Gojo's tall frame was pinned against her by the heavy stone sarcophagus behind him. There was nowhere to move.
His chest was crushed against hers. Without the Neutral Limitless active, she could feel everything—the hard wall of his muscles through his white shirt, the heat radiating from his skin, the rise and fall of his breath. His legs were tangled with hers, his thigh wedged firmly between her knees.
"Gojo..." she mumbled against his hand, her face burning. "You're... too close."
Gojo removed his hand from her mouth, but he didn't move back. He couldn't. Physics offered no luxury of personal space. He rested his forearm on the wall above her head, boxing her in.
"You're the one who picked the hiding spot, Arima," he teased, his voice a low rumble that vibrated directly through her chest. "It's a bit cozy, isn't it?"
Outside, the curse was scratching at the stone, screeching Yuji's name. Inside, the silence was heavy, filled only by the sound of their ragged breathing.
Miyuki looked up at him. In the darkness, his blindfold had shifted slightly, revealing one electric blue eye that glowed in the gloom. He wasn't just looking at her; the Six Eyes were analyzing her—her elevated heart rate, the blood rushing to her cheeks, the adrenaline spiking in her system. He saw it all.
Suddenly, the curse slammed into the sarcophagus from the outside, trying to move it.
The impact shook the heavy stone. The sarcophagus slid an inch inward.
"Ah!" Miyuki gasped as the space shrank even more.
She was thrown forward, stumbling into him. Instinctively, she grabbed his shirt to steady herself. Gojo reacted with godlike reflexes, wrapping an arm around her waist to keep her from hitting the stone, pulling her flush against him to cushion the impact.
The momentum was too much for even him to neutralize without space to maneuver.
Miyuki's face tipped up just as Gojo dipped his head, likely calculating the structural integrity of the wall behind her.
Their lips collided.