Even the soldiers were standing around with nothing much to do. When the workers arrived, the soldiers came over to help, unloading materials and clearing the site. They didn't look tense or tired at all. If anything, they looked relaxed.
As for the threatening Gastrea, Gojo and Betty had already driven them far away from the gap. They couldn't get through. They couldn't even get close.
"This is insane."
A construction worker set down the materials in his hands and looked up at the figure standing alone at the gap in the distance. He looked stunned and muttered to himself.
"Can a human really do this? One person holding back that many Gastrea... it's like a hero out of a myth."
"That's amazing! With someone like that here, we don't have to worry. Tokyo's going to be fine."
"Yeah. I never thought someone this strong could even exist. If we'd had someone like him earlier, we wouldn't have been pushed this far."
Shocked chatter kept spreading through the crowd of workers. Every face showed disbelief and admiration, and the fear and worry they'd brought with them slowly faded.
Luckily, the workers didn't forget why they were there. After the initial shock, they got to work fast. Everyone had a clear job, and nobody slacked off.
They were on a tight schedule. Repairing the Monolith decided whether all of Tokyo would be safe, and millions of lives depended on it. This wasn't the time to worry about rest.
All the workers went straight to three shifts, working day and night without stopping. The goal was to fix the Monolith as quickly as possible and set up a solid defense again.
The rebuilding moved quickly. Large construction vehicles ran nonstop, and workers hurried around the gap. The roar of machines mixed with the workers' shouts. It was busy, but orderly.
The city calmed down quickly too and went back to how it had been. People returned to work, kids went back to school, and the streets got lively again.
The only difference was that everyone now felt a little more admiration for Gojo, and a little more hope for the future.
Meanwhile, the repair work at the front line was being broadcast live to every resident. The point was to reassure people, let them see what was happening in real time, and keep them from panicking.
The residents who'd been so scared saw that the front line was stable, that Gojo was still holding his position, and that the Monolith repairs were going smoothly. It put their minds at ease. Their fear disappeared completely, and they started smiling again for the first time in a while.
But.
As things calmed down and the Gastrea threat eased for the moment, a new conflict quietly started to grow, and it spread fast.
The Gastrea threat and the fear of the Monolith being destroyed had actually made people even more afraid of the cursed children, and even more disgusted by them. That fear was stronger than ever.
In people's eyes, the cursed children had Gastrea blood in them. They were a threat just by existing, Gastrea waiting to happen. If they ever lost control, they'd hurt people and destroy the city just like the Gastrea that had invaded.
Now the Gastrea were right at the city's doorstep and had already caused a massive disaster. People felt they absolutely couldn't tolerate that kind of "hidden danger" living among them anymore. They couldn't let the cursed children be the last straw that broke them.
More people poured into the streets to protest. They held up signs with all kinds of slogans and chanted angrily, demanding that Seitenshi order every cursed child out of Tokyo. Some even demanded that all of them be wiped out.
"Kick the cursed children out! Tokyo doesn't want them!"
"We can't let these threats stay at a time like this! Get rid of the cursed children! Eliminate every danger!"
"Eliminate every danger! Protect our homes!"
"Gastrea are Gastrea! Adult Gastrea or cursed children, they're all monsters that hurt people! They should all be destroyed!"
"As long as the cursed children are alive, we'll never have peace!"
The chants got more and more extreme, and the marches kept growing. They spread to every corner of the city, and people were getting worked up.
Some of the more radical ones even started ganging up on anyone who looked like a cursed child and smashing up their homes. It was a new threat to the order of the city.
But the repair work at the front line was still going at full speed and needed a lot of people and attention. For the moment, Seitenshi didn't have enough manpower to deal with this. All she could do was have the police keep order as best they could and try to calm the protesters down.
The thing was.
Even with Gojo at the front line and not many soldiers needed for defense, moving supplies every day, organizing personnel, and supervising construction were all difficult jobs. They took a huge amount of people and resources.
There simply weren't any spare hands to put down the protests or protect the cursed children.
And in the middle of all this.
Something terrible happened involving the school, something that shocked everyone.
A bus that took cursed children to school was surrounded halfway there by a group of radical protesters.
The protesters were furious. They circled the bus, smashed at the windows, and chanted, demanding the cursed children inside be handed over. Some even tried to force the doors open to hurt those innocent kids.
The bus had a dedicated security escort, and the guards got out in time to stop them, so nobody was actually hurt or killed.
But what it meant was extremely serious. It was like a signal that people's hatred for the cursed children had fully broken loose and couldn't be held back anymore.
That night, Gojo, still holding the front line, got a message from Sumire Muroto. What it said wiped some of the smile off his relaxed face.
Some people had tried to use the cover of night, while the school's security staff were worn out, to sneak into the school that took in cursed children. They'd planned to poison the place and kill every cursed child there in one go.
What they never expected was how tight the school's security was.
Sumire had seen it coming. She'd known someone would go after the cursed children, so she'd already beefed up security, put a lot of people on patrol, and installed a huge number of cameras.
So the moment the poisoners snuck onto campus and got near the school building, the patrols spotted them. They were all caught before they could carry out their plan.
"I feel like this is only the beginning. If we don't deal with it soon, more people are definitely going to do awful things like this and hurt those innocent kids."
On the other end of the call, Sumire sounded helpless and a little tired.
As one of the Four Sages, she'd spent her whole life researching ways to fight the Gastrea and protect the cursed children. But when it came to the evil in people's hearts, she felt completely powerless.
"Our school's security is really tight, though, so nothing's going to happen here. The kids are all safe. You don't need to worry too much."
Sumire paused, then added that, trying a little too hard to sound reassuring. She didn't want Gojo getting distracted by this. The front line still needed him.
"It's just that this can't go on forever. People hate the cursed children more and more. If it keeps up, no matter how tight our security is, we'll slip up eventually. And when that happens, those kids will be in danger."
For someone who was one of the Four Sages, Sumire felt pretty helpless and powerless about this.
She could develop all kinds of advanced technology, build powerful weapons, and cure all sorts of difficult diseases. But she couldn't control people's hearts. She couldn't change the prejudice and hatred inside them, or make them let go of their fear and disgust toward the cursed children.
The day after Sumire called Gojo.
The hostility toward the cursed children got even more obvious, and even more violent.
All over the city, cursed children were being attacked. Some were secretly followed, pelted with rocks, and doused with filthy water. Some were dragged out of their homes and beaten.
Some were even brutally killed, their bodies dumped in the street.
Each incident was crueler and worse than the last. The whole city grew more and more tense.
The cursed children were in more danger than ever before. All they could do was hide at home, too scared to go outside, living in fear every day.
As things kept escalating, Seitenshi couldn't just stand by anymore.
She knew that if she didn't crack down and protect the cursed children now, the consequences would be unthinkable. More of them would get hurt, and it could even lead to even bigger chaos that would affect the repairs at the front line.
With no other choice, Seitenshi made a hard decision. She pulled part of the army back from the front line.
One reason was to put down the attacks on cursed children and arrest the people responsible. The other was to step up the search for cursed children and protect them, gathering everyone who'd been driven from their homes or was in danger and keeping them in secure areas.
What Seitenshi didn't expect, though.
Was that this would actually make the cursed children's situation even more precarious, and make the tensions across society even worse.
Right now, Gojo alone was enough for the front line. Even without the army's help, he could hold the gap and keep the Gastrea out.
But the people back in the city still felt that having the army at the front line was safer and more reliable.
Now Seitenshi had pulled the army back and given up on defending the front line, just to protect what they saw as "hidden dangers." To them, that meant she was ignoring their safety. She was trading the safety of all of Tokyo for the lives of the cursed children.
And in their eyes, all of it was the cursed children's fault!
If the cursed children didn't exist, there wouldn't be so much trouble. There wouldn't be protests, there wouldn't be attacks, the army wouldn't have been pulled back from the front line, and they could live in peace.
People's hatred for the cursed children hit its peak, and their anger at Seitenshi kept growing. The whole mood of society turned anxious and volatile, as if large-scale chaos could break out again at any moment.
Still, if that had been all, Gojo wouldn't have cared too much.
Chaos or protests, it didn't matter. As long as it didn't affect the repairs at the front line, as long as it didn't threaten the lives of the innocent cursed children, and as long as things stayed under control overall, he wasn't going to get too involved.
Besides, after the army came back, the attacks on cursed children mostly started getting suppressed. The attackers were arrested one by one, and the displaced cursed children were found one by one and put under protection. Things slowly started looking better.
Until that day.
Gojo was bored out of his mind at the front line. During a break when no Gastrea were charging in, he took out his phone to go online and check on the city and how the Monolith repairs were coming along.
That was when he happened to see a video that had shot to the top of the trending list.
It showed a dim room with no light except a weak desk lamp lighting up one corner. Someone wearing a black hood was facing the camera, brutally abusing a young cursed child.
The kid looked only five or six years old. She was wearing ragged clothes, her face covered in wounds and tears, curled up on the floor and trembling.
The hooded guy kicked her with no humanity at all and beat her with a stick, cursing at her the whole time, his voice full of hatred and disgust.
The footage was horrifying and hard to watch. Every shot was like a knife to the heart.
As soon as the video was posted, it caused a huge uproar. In just a few hours, it passed ten million views, and the comment section was flooded.
What was chilling was how many people commented things like "Good job," "That's exactly how these monsters should be treated," and "Getting rid of the danger is everyone's responsibility."
Instead of condemning the person who'd abused the child, they supported him and cheered him on.