The archive broke sideways.
Not collapsed—misaligned. Shelves slid half an inch out of reality, their edges blurring like smudged ink. Papers froze midair, then drifted upward, as if gravity itself had forgotten which way was down.
Megumi staggered.
For a split second, he couldn't remember why that mattered.
Why am I—
A sharp pain lanced through his temple. He gritted his teeth and forced his cursed energy to circulate, grounding himself in habit. Shadow pooled at his feet, familiar, anchoring.
Across the room, Haruto swayed.
The curse had reacted faster than he expected.
The void twisted, pulsing outward—not erasing, but overlaying. The room doubled. Then tripled.
Haruto's Dual-Focus eyes screamed.
Reality didn't disappear for him.
It multiplied.
The archive as it was—dusty, broken, abandoned—remained. But layered over it bloomed another version: pristine shelves, humming lights, people walking between aisles, unaware. And beneath that, a third image—emptiness. A hollow shell where the building had already been forgotten by everyone who mattered.
All three existed at once.
Haruto sucked in a sharp breath.
"So that's your trick," he muttered. "You don't make people forget."
His pulse hammered, fast and hard.
"You make possibility collapse."
The pressure snapped.
His cool exterior fractured—not visibly, not yet—but inside, something feral stretched and smiled.
Finally.
The Fantasist construct behind him warped, its edges tearing and reforming as Haruto's cursed energy surged erratically. It wasn't elegant anymore. It was hungry.
Megumi shouted something—Haruto barely registered the sound.
The curse lunged.
Haruto stepped into it.
Pain flashed white as fragments of memory slammed into him—faces he didn't know, names that weren't his, the sensation of being overlooked, dismissed, erased.
His grin widened.
"Oh, that's cute," he breathed. "You think I'm afraid of being forgotten?"
His eyes burned–
The cerulean blue deepened, and the turquoise yin–yang at their center began to rotate faster, slipping out of perfect balance as it locked onto the curse's core.
Nothing.
The Fantasist surged forward, half-formed and unstable, driven by Haruto's manic clarity. The curse shrieked—not in sound, but in absence—as its void was forced to take shape, dragged into definition against its will.
Megumi moved on instinct.
Shadow snapped upward, pinning the manifested form in place—just long enough.
Haruto thrust his hand forward.
"Stay," he whispered.
Reality obeyed—briefly.
The curse cracked.
Its form shattered like glass under pressure, fragments dissolving into meaningless impressions before vanishing entirely.
Silence fell.
Haruto stood frozen, chest heaving, eyes still spinning.
Then the mania ebbed.
The room snapped back into singular focus.
His hands trembled.
…I lost control again.
High above the city, Gojo Satoru rested his chin in his palm.
"Well," he said lightly, though his smile had sharpened beneath the blindfold. "That answers that."
The monitors faded one by one.
"A technique that weaponizes perception… and a kid who doesn't just see potential—he forces it to choose."
Gojo straightened.
"…Yeah. This is going to be a problem."
And for once—
He sounded genuinely pleased.
The shards of the curse were gone. The archive had returned to its singular, dusty self, but the air still carried a residue of wrongness—like water that had just been poured back into a cracked cup.
Haruto's hands trembled. Chest heaving. His cerulean eyes—the turquoise yin–yang in the center spinning unevenly—struggled to calm, trying to reconcile the layers he'd seen, the potentials he'd forced into reality.
Too much, he thought, though the words felt hollow. Everything's too much.
Megumi crouched a few feet away, shadow still pooling at his feet. He had stopped moving immediately after the curse shattered, silent, but steady—anchoring the chaos. His hands were unclenched now, his breath even, but his gaze never left Haruto.
"You…" Megumi's voice was flat, careful. "…don't collapse under it."
Haruto swallowed. Tried to nod. Couldn't. His mind replayed the battle, the surge of his own mania, the flashes of memory fragments tearing across the room. It felt like standing at the edge of a cliff… and then realizing he'd made the cliff himself.
"I… almost lost it," he admitted softly, voice cracking slightly. "I thought I could—control it. But it—" He stopped. Shook his head. "It's different. Every time."
Megumi didn't respond immediately. He stepped closer, cautiously. The faint smell of damp and dust filled the silence. He reached out—not touching—but letting his presence be a tether.
"Haruto," he said evenly. "You didn't. Not completely. Not yet."
Haruto's eyes flickered. The pattern in his irises slowed, but only barely. "But… it almost… erased everything."
"And you fixed it," Megumi said. "Even if you don't feel like it."
Haruto laughed—short, bitter, almost a bark. "Yeah, sure. I fixed it. For half a second before it broke me again."
Megumi didn't flinch. He didn't argue. He just held that steady presence. Haruto could feel it pulling him back from the edge. Not like a hand, not like a shield—more like gravity returning to the floor after it had briefly forgotten it existed.
The silence stretched, heavy but safe.
Haruto finally exhaled. The tremor in his fingers slowed. For the first time since the archive, he allowed himself a glance at Megumi—not judgmental, not challenging—but curious. Measuring. Noticing that this boy could endure without losing himself, and that maybe… maybe he could too.
A faint thought slipped in. A flicker he'd never admit aloud:
Maybe I'm not completely alone in this.
Megumi said nothing. He didn't need to. The room was quiet again. But this time, Haruto noticed the space felt less fractured, less like it could vanish if no one remembered it.
It was temporary. Fragile. But it was enough.
The city lights reflected in the glass like fractured stars. Gojo Satoru perched on the ledge of a tall building, one foot dangling over the void below, blindfold slightly askew. He had been watching the monitors, replaying the archive footage, noting every micro-expression, every fluctuation in cursed energy.
"Hmm…" he muttered, spinning a finger lazily through the air. "Okay. Yeah. That's new."
Gojo's voice carried amusement, but it was sharp underneath. He leaned back, hands folded behind his head. "A kid with cerulean eyes, a rotating yin–yang in the center… sees potential as layers over reality. Then manifests it. Fantasist, huh?"
He tapped the blindfold. "Dual-Focus. That's clever. Dangerous clever. Like a blade that doesn't cut the body—it cuts possibility."
He shook his head. "And you saw him in motion? Beautiful chaos. Not precise, not polished. But the guy can make the world believe it exists—or doesn't. That's power most Grade One and Two sorcerers can't even imagine having."
Gojo leaned forward, elbows on knees, and smiled faintly. "…And of course, that means he's going to be a problem for more than just curses."
He flicked his wrist, switching the monitor to a paused frame: Haruto, chest heaving, cerulean and turquoise eyes spinning like a storm.
"Look at him," Gojo said softly. "The kid's mania spikes when perception fractures. That's the dangerous part: the more the environment wobbles, the more fun he has. Fun = control, mostly. But if that slips… yeah. That could be catastrophic."
He paused, gaze narrowing. "And the Six Eyes connection… that's why I care. Not just that he's powerful. Haruto's a distant branch of the Gojo clan, mutated vision. He's not me. He's not anyone else. He's something… in-between. Someone who can see truth and possibility at the same time. Someone who might—if untethered—rewrite reality by accident."
Gojo rubbed his chin. "Two reasons I take this personally. First: experiment. The kid's a living anomaly in the clan bloodline. Second: empathy. Isolation. I know what it does to a unique kid to be left alone with eyes like those. And I'll be damned if I watch him flounder without guidance. Even if that guidance annoys him—or me."
He leaned back again, blindfold slipping slightly further. The city hummed below.
"Anyway," he murmured, voice low and casual, "we let him fight. Saw what he's capable of. Now we… make sure he survives long enough to learn, control, and hopefully… not burn the place down."
A faint smirk touched his lips. "Yeah. That'll be fun."