A short time later, the trio relocated to Suzuki's private apartment in Kitayama, Kyoto. Knowing that their impending conversation was going to take hours, Suzuki's pragmatic mind naturally prioritized his stomach, but—
"HOW CAN YOU BE THINKING ABOUT FOOD RIGHT NOW?!" Mai shrieked.
"Just move." Maki didn't yell; she simply clamped her hand around his wrist and forcefully dragged him toward his own front door.
"...Aren't you two going to get hungry later? We can literally just hit a Yoshinoya on the way," Suzuki reasoned, his stomach complaining.
"I'll order you Uber Eats later! Just get inside and explain!" Mai pushed him aggressively from behind, desperate to get him out of the hallway.
"What kind of Uber Eats? Are we talking premium sushi or—?"
"ANYTHING!" Mai screamed. "Just tell us how to fix our problem!"
Yes, Mai was thoroughly desperate.
While Maki wasn't as vocal, the burning intensity in her eyes exactly matched her twin's. The Twin Curse. It was the dark shadow that had suffocated their entire lives, and the primary reason they harbored such bottomless hatred for their lineage. Then again, no sane person would ever love the Zenin Clan unless they were born overwhelmingly strong.
Suzuki silently admitted to himself that if he had been born without his innate technique, he would be standing exactly where they were. Fortunately, his baseline talent was above average, and his relentless, logical drive to optimize his strength had safely secured his position in the clan hierarchy.
The Zenin Clan was obsessed with obsolete traditions. If the Jujutsu world hadn't been naturally bottlenecked by the rarity of cursed energy—restricting the society to less than one percent of the population—these arrogant, feudal samurai wannabes would have gone extinct centuries ago. In this twisted society, supernatural power wasn't treated as a biological talent to be nurtured; it was treated as an absolute divine right. When normal people awakened to cursed energy, it often ruined their lives.
But times had changed. What the arrogant elders viewed as impenetrable, mystical curses could now be systematically deconstructed by modern science. Including the curse currently suffocating Mai and Maki.
"...But you really can do it, right, Suzuki-niisan?" Maki asked, her voice cracking slightly.
Her eyes were no longer cold and stoic. The tough, rebellious facade she used to hide her vulnerabilities had completely shattered, revealing raw, unadulterated desperation.
Suzuki didn't look down on her for looking pathetic. He knew exactly what the twins had endured since childhood. If he hadn't spoken up at the café, they would have eventually surrendered to their inevitable, tragic fate: either living as powerless political broodmares, or sacrificing one of their lives so the other could achieve their full potential.
Seeing their absolute desperation, Suzuki dropped his lazy attitude. His expression sharpened into the focused, clinical demeanor of a Kyoto University physics student. He had already cross-referenced the theory with his Manager and run countless mental simulations. He had the cure. But before proposing the cure, he needed them to understand the disease mathematically.
"First, let me establish a baseline," Suzuki said, sitting them both down on his living room sofa while he dragged a rolling whiteboard out from his study. "I need you to understand that the 'Twin Curse' is not a mystical tragedy ordained by the heavens. In the eyes of physics, it is simply a System Optimization Error."
"A System Optimization Error?" the twins echoed in unison.
Maki tilted her head in genuine confusion, while Mai scowled impatiently. "Just hurry up and explain!"
"Calm down," Suzuki sighed, uncapping a dry-erase marker. "The old fools in the Jujutsu society look at you two and see a singular, cursed soul. But if we look at your bodies through the lens of modern science, you are simply quantum-entangled."
"What does that actually mean, Suzuki-niisan?" Maki asked, forcing herself to be patient.
"It means that, biologically and spiritually, you are two separate particles acting as one closed system," Suzuki explained, drawing a large circle on the whiteboard with two distinct dots inside it. "The traditional sorcery view dictates that 'one particle must be destroyed for the other to absorb the total mass.' However, the physics view says, 'We just need to manually adjust the distribution of energy within the closed system.' Currently, you two are sharing a single 'bank account' of Cursed Energy."
That was the fatal flaw in Jujutsu genetics. To the universe, identical twins were recognized as one individual.
"Maki, your ultimate goal is to reach absolute zero cursed energy, correct? That is the only way to fully unlock your Heavenly Restriction."
"Yes," Maki nodded.
Her Heavenly Restriction was a unique genetic mutation. In exchange for possessing little to no cursed energy, her physical body was granted superhuman strength, speed, and endurance. In its absolute, perfected state—where a sorcerer harbored literally zero cursed energy—the body became an indestructible weapon of steel. Their five senses heightened to the point of perceiving curses through air density, and their complete lack of cursed energy made them immune to the guaranteed-hit domains that defined pinnacle sorcery.
The legendary "Sorcerer Killer," Toji Fushiguro, possessed that exact perfected state, allowing him to butcher Special Grade sorcerers with pure kinetic violence. Maki possessed that exact same terrifying potential. But because her soul was quantum-entangled with Mai's, a tiny trickle of cursed energy constantly leaked into her body, acting as a biological poison that suppressed her physical gifts. To break her chains and dictate her own fate, she needed that energy completely eradicated.
"On the other hand, Mai desperately needs a massive output of cursed energy," Suzuki continued, pointing his marker at the second dot.
Mai's innate technique, Construction, was theoretically god-tier. She could literally create matter from nothing. Unfortunately, creating mass from raw energy required a horrific amount of fuel. Because her fuel tank was split with Maki, her technique was functionally crippled; she could barely construct a single sniper bullet a day without passing out.
"So, what exactly do we do to solve this?" Mai asked, leaning forward, her eyes glued to the whiteboard.
"Currently, you two are trapped in a lukewarm, highly inefficient middle ground," Suzuki said, drawing arrows between the two dots to represent the leak. "Maki suffers from a parasitic leak of cursed energy from Mai, which suppresses her physical mutation. Meanwhile, Mai is trying to support two separate souls with half a fuel tank, crippling her sorcery."
Suzuki capped his marker and turned to face them fully, the overhead lights reflecting sharply off his glasses.
"Now, for the part you've been waiting for. To manually bypass the laws of Jujutsu genetics and fix your system error... I have developed a theoretical solution. I call it: The Maxwell's Demon Protocol."
---
There is no need to wait!