The Good Life: Cooking (ch. 60) (Patreon)

Sukuna's nature had never changed. Even when he was a wretched brat, dependent on the mercy of a monk who fed him leftovers so putrid that even the desperate and starving passed them over -- he had always believed in a fundamental truth. The world belonged to the strong, and the weak lived in it at their sufferance. At his sufferance, once he became the strong.

It was for that reason he could recognize exactly what Law was. It was almost like looking in a mirror. The resemblance was only deepened by the fact that even he, the King of Curses and whatever other titles the humans had given him throughout the ages, was merely a source of entertainment for him. The risk of death? The risk of losing it all?

None of it mattered. They weren't even factors to be considered. Live or die, it didn't matter. The world existed to entertain him until he died. Or, as Sukuna had learned, the worlds.

“So,” Law began, carelessly exposing his back to Sukuna as they strode through the portal of his world once more. Uraume trailed behind him, teeth grinding as she glared daggers into Law's back. That too, was a source of entertainment for their host. “Your fingers. Don't suppose you know where they are? We have around eightish hours before the portal closes. No can do about the deadline -- this is just an unofficial pitstop, and we need it for official reasons soon enough.”

Sukuna gazed out at the human city and he felt ravenous. The body that served as his host had a weak soul, hardly one at all. A ‘clone’ of Law, its short life had been filled with nothing but misery and invasive experiments. For that reason, Sukuna lacked any modern memories to help make sense of what he was seeing. By the time he had divided his fingers, humanity lived in short squat buildings made of mud and wood.

Now they built spires that stretched up to the dark sky above. It was quite fascinating. The flameless torches were so bright that they blotted out the stars, roads covered in a strange substance were driven on horseless wagons. And the people. In the city before him, there had to be hundreds of thousands alone. A million even.

It would be a feast like no other. And yet… far greater amusements awaited him.

“Hmmm…” Sukuna hummed, feeling his fingers spread out across Japan, but it was a muddled feeling. Tengen’s barriers, working in conjunction with the sizable increase in population, and thus the ambient negative energy, made it difficult to pinpoint where they were exactly. That being said, he wasn't without options. “Kenjaku should still have a few of them. Though, knowing that brain, he's lost most of them with those experiments of his.”

Such was the nature of their binding vow.

“Sounds like a funny guy. Any way we can get in contact with ‘em?” Law asked, glancing over his shoulder at them. The woman -- Robin -- watched them with far more scrutiny. Waiting for a betrayal. Smart of her, but such things were beneath him. More than that, it was against his interests. He found Law every bit as amusing as Law found him.

Uraume bowed her head to Sukuna, “I have already made arrangements, lord Sukuna. He awaits us in the city below -- Kyoto.” That city was Kyoto, Sukuna thought with some surprise, inspecting it anew.

This was the city of his birth. His whore of a mother had followed the builders when the Emperor decided to construct a new capital of his power. As the decades and centuries went by he had watched as the city slowly changed, but a thousand years later, it became something unrecognizable. He didn't see a shred of the old city he spent his first years of life in.

“Additionally, I have procured clothing worthy of you, Sukuna-sama,” Uraume continued, snapping her fingers to summon a petrified looking human. A woman. She carried a yukata rack, and upon it was a yukata of a similar make to his old one. White with a black inseam and a dark blue sash marked with a familiar symbol.

“Expedient as always,” Sukuna commended, making Uraume preen, as he shrugged on the yukata. It was well made. Even in comparison to what he wore a thousand years ago, when his tailor had been the same family that had tailored the clothing for the Emperor. “Where exactly are we meeting that brain?”

Uraume bowed her head, letting the tailor flee in terror before freezing her the moment she reached the treeline. “To my understanding, Kenjaku will be where you believe the meeting place to be.” Ah, part of the binding vow, then?

That brain was allergic to straight answers, but Sukuna knew exactly where he meant. “Kenninji Temple,” Sukuna deduced easily. After all, that was where they made their pact.

“Sounds like we get to do a little sight seeing while we're at it,” Law said, offering an arm to Robin that she accepted easily. Then, without another word, the four of them found themselves inside of the city, standing before what Sukuna easily recognized as a tourist trap. It would seem for all that humanity had managed to accomplish, their nature remained the same.

Sukuna picked up a brochure, his nose crinkling in distaste as he flipped it open. Kenninji Temple had become an attraction for tourists. That was a dark bit of irony, he supposed, flipping through it to see that the temple had only been completed in the year 1202. Amusingly, it seemed that his ‘death’ date had marked the end of the Heian period of 1185. The brochures also informed him of the current date -- 2006.

That brain really took his damn time with his resurrection.

Curious, Sukuna helped himself to other brochures, curious as to what else humans had managed to accomplish in the past eight hundred years. Uraume took the moment to glare at a gaping child, who looked up at Sukuna with awe and a slack jaw, before getting their location and distance to the temple itself.

With that, Sukuna once more found himself teleported. It really was a fascinating technique, made all the more interesting by the fact that it had nothing to do with cursed energy. The specifics of it eluded him, but even with a glance, Sukuna understood what it was.

Reality manipulation.

It was little wonder he lost so easily with only a fingers worth of strength.

“You couldn't have taken us closer?” Sukuna noted, looking up at a long set of stairs to reach the temple itself. A measuring question.

Law was aware of it and gave a cheeky grin, “Gotta respect local traditions.” He replied with an easy shrug of his shoulder. He already had plans for how he would deal with Law's superior range, but it would be nice to know exactly how much range Law had on his Domain.

With an indifferent shrug, Sukuna started to walk up the stairs, leaving Law and Robin to have their ‘date.’ He was far more interested in seeing how things had changed in the last thousand years. As he expected, he didn't recognize much beyond general outlines of the terrain, and only barely at times. Not that he had expected to.

A hundred steps later, they arrived at the temple itself. It was fairly busy with tourists abound. They gave him a wide berth -- smart of them. Law and Robin went to get their fortunes told while Sukuna inspected the complete temple with a cynical eye. The double story building with sloped roofs, the long wide buildings for meditation, the gardens…

“Disgusting,” Sukuna summarized his thoughts. The buildings that he witnessed on the walk over here utterly dwarfed the temple in every way. Yet, the temple still stood instead of being remade.

“Humans are attached to their history,” a woman's voice remarked to him and Sukuna’s gaze slid to her. Her face meant little, only the scars that marked her forehead. The body possessed an innate technique worth keeping because they were scars -- around four or five years old. “They believe it reminds them of simpler times.”

“Kenjaku,” Sukuna greeted the brain puppeting the woman’s corpse before glancing back at the offending building. “It's stagnation. I figured after a thousand years, I wouldn't be able to recognize a thing.”

More than a thousand years ago, this ground once housed a small temple and it was the reason why he survived those early years. Once he rose to power, that temple was one of the first to deify him. It was no surprise at all that the temple was torn down after his reign of terror. They even started before his death, simply because he found tormenting them too boring to bother with.

But that's not why he was here. “You failed to uphold your end,” Sukuna noted, making Kenjaku offer a thin smile.

“Only I did,” Kenjaku replied, pointing through the crowd of people to-

His eyes narrowed when he saw familiar pink hair on a brat mesmerized by a pinwheel. He was young. No more than two or three years old. Yet, Sukuna felt a familiar cursed energy coming from the brat. He only failed to notice it because it had been smothered.

The implications settled in immediately and Sukuna blanched, “You do the most disgusting things.” Sukuna observed while Kenjaku simply chuckled.

“Yuji! Come over here and meet your uncle Sukuna,” Kenjaku said, making the brat turn around. There were markings under his eyes, but a wide beaming smile on his face as he ran over with unnatural speed. Sukuna watched the brat, feeling…

Amused.

“Mum! Mum! Look!” Yuji said, barely taking notice of Sukuna as he presented the pinwheel to her. It was only when Sukuna reached down, picking him up by the scruff of the shirt that Yuji glanced his way. The boy held his gaze for a moment before there was a flickering of recognition. “Wah? Mum! It's him! How'd you escape my head?” Yuji exclaimed, pointing dramatically at Sukuna and Sukuna just took a measuring look at the brat.

“What the hell happened here?” Sukuna asked, puzzled by what exactly he was seeing. A rare occurrence for him.

“My preparations to create your vessel had an interesting development,” Kenjaku said while Yuji stuck a finger up his nose with enough force to tilt his head back “When I became aware of your reincarnation through our binding vow, I had to accelerate a few plans to avoid breaking it. Such as feeding one of the four fingers in my possession to your vessel. Only…”

Yuji was at risk of poking his brain before he found the booger that bothered him. Without much thought, the brat wiped it on his shorts and sniffled. The answer didn't make any more sense than what he was looking at.

The brat was suppressing a portion of his soul. Meaning that as a three-year-old dunce, the brat's soul was of the same quality as his own. A soul’s strength came from a number of things, but the most defining one was a sense of self. Willpower. Determination. All of it feeding into the strength of a soul and this brat, as a toddler, was able to match- no, overpower a fragment of his soul.

The very idea was absurd, but he was looking at undeniable evidence of the truth. He could only imagine the unrestrained hatred and fury of the trapped fraction of his soul.

But, as Sukuna wasn't trapped, he found the entire situation far more entertaining. How dare a portion of himself, even a twentieth of his soul, put on such a pathetic showing? “Brat, make a binding vow with me.”

“Sure,” Yuji agreed easily. Incredible. What an idiot.

“Any further binding vows are inapplicable between us until you are fifteen years old or until the third party, Kenjaku, dissolves the vow,” Sukuna offered with a sharp grin. That fragment of his soul, as far as the binding vow was concerned, was still him. As such, while they were separate beings, Sukuna could make a binding vow on behalf of the fragment that was trapped.

That's what he got for being a loser. Suppressed by an infant. How pathetic.

“Okay,” Yuji thoughtlessly answered, not at all interested in what was being said, and the binding vow was solidified. With that, he tossed the brat to Kenjaku, who seemed intrigued by the entire process.

Now, onto the real reason why he was here. “You only kept four of my fingers?” Sukuna said, holding out a hand expectantly. Kenjaku reached into a satchel and passed the remaining three to him. As she answered, Sukuna ate the first one and felt the fragment of his soul attempting to usurp control of his body before the fragments were joined into a single whole. As his soul was now more solidified and larger, the subsequent fragments were overcome with little difficulty.

“I had a number of experiments to run,” Kenjaku answered unapologetically, holding Yuji to his side. “And a number of emergencies. I do know the location of several -- two in Kyoto school for Jujutsu Sorcery. Another four in the sister school in Tokyo, under the watchful eye of Tengen. There are three others scattered about in shrines across Japan, though I suspect you came from one of those shrines. As for the remainder?” Kenjaku shrugged.

Meaning, within the time frame that they had, he would have enough time to collect… five fingers, total? Ten?

That wouldn't be enough. Both he and Law had revealed their hands to one another, but Sukuna more so than Law. If Law was capable of what he thought he was…

“Tokyo?” Sukuna questioned, mulling it over.

“Edo, in essence,” Kenjaku corrected himself. “You can reach it in three hours by bullet train,” He offered with a small smirk. What was a train? It seemed to be an expedient method of transportation, because the distance between Edo and Kyoto had been a few hundred miles. “Now that you have what you came for, I don’t suppose you would be willing to answer a few questions of my own?”

Sukuna scoffed dismissively, “I don’t suppose I would.” He replied, swallowing down the last of the fingers, bringing him up to four fingers total. Not enough. “Just keep doing your part of the vow,” he instructed. The Culling Game. A feast of the most powerful jujutsu sorcerers in the time since his absence. One way or another, he would have his feast.

Turning away, he found Law and Robin waiting for them. A plan pieced itself together in the back of his skull. Approaching, he was greeted with a slip of parchment, “We got fortunes. Mine is great luck for the year.”

Sukuna accepted the slip before he tsked, reading ‘Bad Luck’ on the slip of paper. “As if,” Sukuna dismissed, burning the fortune to ash. “Did you catch all of that?”

“Course I did,” Law admitted. “So. Jujutsu Hogwarts is real. Can't say I saw that one coming.” He was referencing something, but Sukuna didn't know what. The meaning was fairly clear, however.

“Less of a school and more of a place to make connections between the major clans,” Sukuna replied blandly. The location wouldn't have changed -- it had been chosen because it sat on one of the cornerstones of Tengen's barrier that she erected across Japan. “Jujutsu sorcery isn't something so easily taught. Informing someone of a topic is the most you can do.”

Law hummed, interested before following behind Sukuna as he led the way. Despite himself, Sukuna was curious. Tengen had been working on her barriers for more than a thousand years at this point, carefully refining cursed energy and uplifting the quality and quantity of the sorcerers. In his time, jujutsu sorcery was insular. If you weren't part of a clan, then you had to hope for an apprenticeship. Or figure it all out yourself.

He had a full course meal waiting for him, but that didn't mean he couldn't snack beforehand.

Through the winding streets of Kyoto, he led the lot of them towards the Kyoto School located near the outskirts of the city. Law insisted on wasting time the entire way, but his distractions were worthy ones. Japan had changed a great deal over the centuries. Not to the point that it was unrecognizable, but there were times he was caught off guard -- a painting moving on a screen, voices coming from a box. The music was strange and he failed to recognize half of the instruments that could produce such tunes.

He would have more time to explore more thoroughly later, but for now, the distractions were welcomed but short lived.

They neared the school some minutes later, and Law noticed it, “A barrier?” He remarked, looking at Sukuna for an explanation.

He obliged, entirely because Law was so carefree with information about his own technique. “It protects the school from unwanted eyes. And serves as a way to monitor who is leaving and who is entering the premises.”

“Useful. And it looks like they know we're coming,” Law said, making his way up the steps to the school next to him.

“Good. Was Kenjaku right?” He asked and Law hummed for a moment. Then he nodded.

“Yeah, I feel two fingers here. They're suppressed, though. Kinda like the you that was in your nephew,” Law answered and his lips peeled back at the mere reminder. He had no family. He had ensured that with his own hands. As such, he felt no connection to the brat beyond finding him intriguing. If only he wasn't stupid.

The answer was an honest one, Sukuna knew. Simply because it was in Law's interest to help him reclaim his power, despite all the risks that it entailed. “I can snag them from here?”

Sukuna chuckled at the offer, “Where's the fun in that?”

Law laughed, understanding exactly what he meant. They approached slowly, allowing the modern age sorcerers time to prepare for their arrival. When they reached the top of the stairs, what he saw didn't impress. A small group of sorcerers wearing mostly matching uniforms -- dark cloth that was marked with protective talismans.

At the forefront was an old man with a stringed instrument. His head was bare, a thin mustache was a stark white, and a longer beard that hung from his chin. Behind him was a woman with white hair wearing a confident smile along with a war axe. Next to the woman was a guy -- blonde hair, pierced ears, and a sleazy smile on his face.

They didn't impress.

“Halt, intruders-” the old man said before Sukuna parted his head with a glance. His head flew free, his heart pumping blood through the stump of his neck, before both collapsed to the ground in a heap. That caused a rush of shock to go through the students.

“This lot is boring,” Sukuna decided. Their cursed techniques remained a mystery, but with their reaction to the death of the old man, he could already tell they didn't have the fire in them. The burning ambition. They didn’t look at him like Law did -- a challenge to be surmounted for no reason greater than because the challenge was there.

More than innate techniques, reversed cursed technique, or domain expansions -- the most important facet of jujutsu sorcery was mentality.

“Don't be so harsh Sukuna, they're just a bunch of kids,” Law replied and Sukuna cocked an eyebrow in his direction. They looked around the ages of fifteen to twenty. They were fully grown adults.

Blondie started to sweat. “Sukuna? You expect us to believe you're the King of Curses?” He spat and Sukuna didn't even dignify that with an answer. A dog yapping to give the impression that he was bigger than he was.

Law seemed delighted, “King of Curses? Sukuna, are you… someone important?” he questioned earnestly. Uraume sputtered, infuriated on his behalf but Sukuna simply chuckled. His ignorance was understandable. After all, he was from a different world. A world without jujutsu sorcery. Without cursed spirits.

What would such a world look like?

“You can deal with this lot,” Sukuna dismissed them altogether with a wave over his shoulder, sensing where his fingers were in the depths of the school. He could deal with them with no issue, but it was an opportunity to make Law reveal his hand just a little more. He didn't have high hopes for the sorcerers, but it was a potential opportunity.

“Please, allow me to retrieve your fingers, Sukuna-sama. Such a trivial errand is beneath you,” Uraume offered, knowing the opportunity. Sukuna nodded and she pressed on, ignoring the sorcerers entirely.

That set the blondie off while the white haired one and shrine maiden seemed apprehensive. More so when the blood of their teacher reached their feet. “Oi, woman. Don't you dare walk by me without so much as bowing your head,” he snapped, his cursed energy flaring.

Naturally, Uraume ignored him. However, it wasn’t her who he aimed for.

His target was an obvious one. Robin stood near Law, and even third rate trash would be able to sense their limited cursed energy. A useful hostage. Or, so he thought.

Blondie blurred forward and Sukuna was momentarily interested in his technique. In the span of a single second, he crossed the distance between himself and Robin, almost to the point of teleportation. Yet, his arrival was greeted with a spray of blood as he impaled himself upon Law's waiting blade through the chest.

Sukuna tilted his head -- Blondie’s cursed technique was easy to puzzle out. It wasn't teleportation, or something as grand as time manipulation. He just compressed a series of actions into the span of a single second. Useful. Fast. But the actions seemed to be locked in, otherwise he would have been able to dodge the waiting sword.

Blondie gargled a bit as Law ripped the blade free with a splash of blood. He looked down at Blondie with evident confusion before glancing at Sukuna, “He's not healing himself?”

Law, on the other hand, was more intriguing. He noticed in their brief bout, but he always seemed to anticipate his next move. This just confirmed it. But, to answer his question, “He doesn't seem capable of using reversed cursed technique -- turning negative energy into positive energy. There aren’t many who can in the first place, much less this trash.” Sukuna couldn’t blame Law for being confused.

After all, his first encounter with jujutsu sorcery was himself, the pinnacle of the art.

“Oh. My bad, dude. I thought you were stronger,” Law said, looking down at the sorcerer drowning in his own blood. How pathetic. He wasn't even grasping it on the verge of death. Then, with a thrust, he impaled his brain to put him out of his misery. Sukuna scoffed before his attention drifted to the remaining woman.

The white haired one had the right idea, dropping to her knees in a dogza, “My apologies for foolishly standing against you, Sukuna-sama. I humbly beg for my life.” In face of overwhelming strength, she threw away her pride and begged for her life. He admired the decisiveness of the decision, even if she did cling too tightly to the thought of living.

“Heh,” Sukuna chuckled, looking her over as she bowed her head until it touched the ground. White was terrified, but she kept it underneath a calm mask. She might be worth playing around with -- finding exactly how far she's willing to go to survive. If she was amusing enough, he might even let her.

But it was hard to get excited for morsels.

“Raise your head,” Sukuna commanded and, hesitantly, White did so. There was a resigned acceptance in her eyes as she suspected what came next. After all, he was hardly renowned for his mercy. Quite the opposite.

A Cleave took her head off before he diced the rest of her body, splashing gore and blood over the stone walkway of the school. Crimson blood flowed between the stones, slowly spreading out. He was sure that there were others within the building, but they were beneath his attention if they lacked the will to even step outside of whatever hole they were hiding in. Regardless, they had what they came for.

Now it was time to ride one of these ‘trains.’

…

I was pretty sure I was getting a handle on Sukuna’s personality. The guy just did whatever he wanted, when he wanted, and he had a sadistic streak a mile wide.

“Oi, Uraume,” I said, poking Sukuna’s maid.

“Don't you dare speak so familiar with me,” Uraume hissed. “Use honorifics.”

I presented to her my current conundrum, “I need you to read this for me. I can't read Japanese.” I said, sliding a manga magazine over to her across the table that we sat at. Sukuna seemed pretty content to look out the window, watching everything speed by. He wasn't quite able to hide his shock from me when the bullet train took off. Actually, he wasn’t able to hide his surprise about a lot of things, giving me the impression that Sukuna had been locked away in his fingers for some time.

Uraume sneered hard enough that it was a wonder she didn't pull anything. “I refuse,” she spat in my direction.

“Please?”

“I'd rather remove my tongue than do you a favor,” Uraume swore, sounding like she meant it.

“Man, you and Asami can’t ever meet. At least she has reasons to hate me,” I sighed, withdrawing the manga. On its cover was a familiar face, but I didn't know much about him.

Naruto Uzumaki. And, I'm guessing the big letters spelled out Shonen Jump.

“What is that?” Sukuna asked, and I flipped open to a random page.

“Japanese comic book. I recognized the main character from my Old World and found that interesting,” I said, crossing my fingers that Sukuna would order Uraume to read out loud. Hopefully with voices for extra embarrassment. “Never read it on account I was more into superheroes. For all the good that did me,” I added with a sigh.

It was enough to catch my attention a bit. Superheroes were an international phenomenon. The Seven were global. But, that didn't mean there were no other forms of media. There were plenty of fictional series out there. Anime had made some headway in America, but it was always fighting against Vought's own animated studios.

“You resent fictional heroes?” Sukuna observed, glancing away from the window.

“Nah -- back in my original world, superheroes were real. The comics and TV shows and movies were all sold as events that had happened instead of a load of bullshit. At the time, I didn't get the appeal of reading a fictional adventure. It always felt like Vought was more grounded in reality and larger than life,” I admitted. Robin reached over and patted my hand.

Sukuna watched the interaction with mild disinterest, “I don’t get it. Why bother with it at all? What’s the point of living vicariously through someone else's story?”

“Because it’s fun,” I said with a shrug. I lost count of the amount of times I imagined myself encountering my favorite heroes. My time as Heartless was meant to be far more profound. I had imagined the mysteries that I would torment Tek-Knight with. Cause eco-disasters that the Deep would be desperately attempt to advert. I would arrange for clashes with the Seven, with Homelander most of all, again and again and again until I was satisfied.

Didn’t really pan out in the end. My heroes didn’t live up to my imagination.

He didn't get it, I could see. “It's satisfaction rather than gratification. It's a whole lot easier to achieve satisfaction through the lens of a fictional story than it is to gain powers and live them out in reality.” I would know that better than anyone.

“Still seems pointless,” Sukuna remarked after a moment of thought. “I heard the same tripe back in the day -- tending to gardens, writing haikus, and so on and so on. Ridiculous, all of it.”

I could understand that point of view. “That's because you want satisfaction rather than gratifaction.”

“The difference being?” Sukuna replied, entertaining the conversation but I knew that he wouldn't be swayed by it.

“It's the difference between a meal hitting the spot and one of the best meals of your life,” I replied, holding up the magazine. “This is the literary equivalent of junk food. It's decent -- not great, not terrible -- but it doesn't try to be great, and because of that it manages to be good.”

Sukuna seemed doubtful but willing to consider it. Holding out his hand expectantly, I cocked an eyebrow, “No way. This is mine. Get your own,” I denied. His blood red eyes narrowed ever so slightly.

Then the comic book was reduced to confetti. I gave Sukuna an annoyed look even as I swallowed my smile, knowing that he was watching. Examining every action I took and didn’t take, then reexamining it again. He was looking for weaknesses and exploits to use against me, and it was pretty fun messing with him.

“You can’t even read Japanese,” Sukuna remarked as if it wasn’t a moot point now as the train began to slow as we arrived at a stop. Not our stop, though. We still had a few hours on the trip to Tokyo. So, with a thought, I opened a Room to envelop the waystation and, more importantly, the shops. I didn’t find more Shonen Jump, but there was a manga store that had thirty-two volumes of Naruto. That was a lot.

Sukuna’s eyes narrowed when they appeared on the table. I could tell his curiosity was killing him, so I took mercy on him. Partly because I was pretty proud of myself, “I can swap the location of things. At the start, they had to be around the same mass, but now I can swap something small with something as little as a dead skin cell.” I said, pointing to my hand for added effect.

It was pretty convenient. Dust was everywhere when you came right down to it. And, at any given time, you had somewhere around thirty thousand dead skin cells on your hands. It wasn’t to the point that I could Shambles something like a car with a speck of dust, but I would get there eventually.

A year was a lot of time to polish my abilities, and I didn’t have much else to do but train them.

Sukuna processed that and I could almost feel him making plans on how to deal with it, how to counter it, and how to punish me if I tried to use it against him. Then he let out a dismissive snort, “I’m not reading them for you either.”

I tsk’d, leaning back in my seat while Uraume sneered in my direction. I suppose that was that-

Huh. Tilting my head in thought, I considered an idea that I had a while ago. It was well outside the realm of possibility back when I was first starting out, but now… “That’s fine. I’ll figure it out myself,” I replied, my tone smug.

“I hope you aren’t going to do something rash,” Robin remarked, knowing me too well.

“Only a little bit,” I admitted. An empty syringe appeared in my hand from a medical station and I scanned the crowd of people that were coming and going from the train station. I found a suitable, and even guilt-free, target in a guy groping a school girl and I Shambled him over. He appeared to my left, his hand still in position for grabbing a handful of ass, and I immediately jabbed him with the needle.

“Ah-” He started to protest before I silenced the sound waves around him. Pulling back the plunger, I began to extract something new. The syringe helped visualize it, making it easier. Training wheels, essentially.

Back in my old world, I had the thought when I found out about the superhero sex clubs. All of that incriminating information, but no way to bring it with me at the time. So, I figured one day I’d be able to simply transfer what was on a hard drive onto a fresh one. A completely baseless thought at the time simply because I didn’t know what was possible and what wasn’t with my power yet.

But, two years later, I knew enough to decide that it was in the realm of possibility.

Unlike the pleasure I withdrew from Popclaw, what I withdrew from the random groper was knowledge. In this case? The knowledge of how to read Japanese.

“Thank you and goodbye,” I said, sending him back to the platform outside of the train. He was left behind as the train began to move once more. I’m sure he would try to tell someone, but when it came right down to it, who would believe him? And even if they did, I was going to be gone in a couple of hours. So it wasn’t going to be my problem.

Brushing away any biological contaminants, I looked at the syringe that was filled with a grayish fluid and what seemed to be small letters floating inside it. Once the syringe was clean, without anything so much as resembling hesitation, I jabbed myself in the leg with it. First, I felt a small pinch of the needle.

Then I felt a big pinch in my brain as a headache slammed into me like a brick to the face. I made a face, my eyes squinting as I suddenly became sensitive to the light and pounded a fist against the table a couple of times. It only took a few seconds before the pain started to let up and I blew out a sigh. “Ow,” I muttered, and I could feel Robin’s thoroughly unimpressed stare boring a hole in the side of my head. Sukuna, at the very least, seemed absolutely delighted.

Pointedly, before anyone could say anything, I picked up Naruto volume one. Flipping to the first page…

I was sitting smug when I found that I could now read Japanese. Pretty well, even. Like I had been doing it all my life. It probably wasn’t something I could abuse endlessly, but… for something like this?

It was perfect.

…

It really was a shame that we didn’t have more time to spend in Tokyo, or this world really. But, with a three hour trip here and a three hour one back, we didn’t have a lot of time to actually explore. The two hours we did have was a buffer for emergencies because there was no way that Cursed Hogwarts hadn’t learned about us. And given that they also knew what we were looking for…

Well, hopefully Sukuna would be able to get most of his fingers back. It’d suck if he was capped out at 90% of his full power, but there wasn’t much we could do about that. We were already doing what we could.

“Robin,” I said, looking back at her. “Could you secure our exit? I don’t want them doing something annoying like locking down the train station and we miss our window to return home.” The portal would open eventually -- We had too much of a presence on things for interested parties to leave us stranded here. That being said, I wanted this little misadventure to be a secret for a moment.

And it’d give her a little room to move around without Sukuna’s watchful eye on her.

“Naturally,” Robin replied, inclining her head to me. Her gaze flickered to Sukuna and Uraume, but she said nothing. “Be careful, will you? The powers of this world… they’re in the hands of those who know how to use them.” By that, she meant Sukuna and Uraume. That fast guy wasn’t that impressive, but he was pretty fast. If I didn’t have Observation Haki, he could have been a real problem. The last time I dealt with someone that fast was A-Train, and when I killed him, he hadn’t been close to his best.

“Don’t worry. I won’t die until I make up date night for you. This ended up being more my speed than yours, I’m afraid,” I admitted and Robin just kissed me on the edge of the mouth, telling me that I was right on the mark there. Stepping away, I watched her go for a moment, a pack slung over her shoulder carrying my manga since I only got through like five volumes. Breathing in deeply, I felt a hum of anticipation as I looked back at Sukuna, who was giving Uraume his own instructions.

When he was done, he glanced my way before we both started walking up the steps. Neither of us said anything, knowing what the score was as step by step, we inched closer to our destination. I felt Sukuna’s fingers inside my Room, but they were shockingly far below the ground. However, they weren’t the only thing that I noticed.

Cursed spirits. And there were a lot of them waiting for us at the top of the stairs. Yet, there was only one person up there.

Two, I was soon corrected when we reached the top. The cursed spirits were coiled around one teenager, who stood with his head cocked. I’m not sure if it was an asian style or something, but his dark hair was pulled back into a tight bun with a single lone lock of hair drifting down. My attention was focused on the second person. He was a striking figure -- tall, stark white hair, and he wore thick blacked-out round glasses over his eyes.

What made him so interesting, however, was the fact that he wasn’t inside of my Room despite being well within the boundary.

“Would you look at that, Suguru? They really showed up! That’s hilarious!” White haired guy cackled, his eyes on Sukuna. Didn’t seem to angry, so that white haired chick probably wasn’t related to him.

“How arrogant of them,” Suguru replied blandly, his eyes focused on me. “But, I suppose you get to be arrogant when you’re the King of Curses and one of his lackeys. Looks like you get to find out if you really are the strongest, Satoru.” He remarked with a lazy smile that hid his anxiety.

Satoru grinned, confident as could be while Sukuna took note of him for the first time. “No need to find out what I already know! We’re the strongest,” he declared, and I saw a blue orb appear above his hand but I couldn’t tell what it did until the effect reached outside of that weird field around him. It was weird. It was like my Room was moving to engulf him, but it never reached the destination. “Period.”

I met his grin with one of my own, “Let’s see about that, shall we?”