Gojo Satoru felt it the instant he crossed his fingers.
Not the release.
The decision.
"Domain Expansion: Infinite Void."
The domain bloomed.
And then, almost immediately, it was gone.
Point one seconds.
That was all.
To anyone else, that would have been an eternity. To Gojo, it was barely a thought completed before being discarded. The world snapped back into place like nothing had happened, rooftop reasserting itself, gravity returning, night air rushing back in.
The orange-haired boy collapsed.
No dramatic scream. No flailing. One moment Ichigo Kurosaki was standing there, overflowing with that grotesque, fascinating pressure, and the next his body simply gave up the argument and crumpled to the ground, consciousness severed cleanly.
Gojo exhaled.
"…Yeah. No," he muttered. "I'm not killing you."
He straightened, then immediately crouched down beside the unconscious body, resting his elbows on his knees like he was contemplating a mildly difficult math problem.
That was annoying.
Gojo hated changing his mind mid-action. It made things messy. But sometimes the world insisted on being interesting at the worst possible moments.
He glanced over the ruined block.
Buildings lay in pieces. Not collapsed, not burned, but cut. Entire sections missing, as if someone had reached down and erased architecture with a ruler. The damage spread farther than he'd initially clocked, debris trailing off into the distance.
"…That attack," Gojo murmured.
Getsuga something.
He waved the name away mentally. He hadn't really been paying attention. The result mattered more.
That thing had torn through the city with the same casual finality as Hollow Purple.
Different flavor. Same outcome.
That alone put the kid in an entirely different category.
Gojo clicked his tongue softly.
"Dangerous," he decided.
Not in the sloppy way. Dangerous in the sense that he disrupted assumptions. Broke systems. Forced recalculation.
Gojo liked that.
He leaned back slightly and let his gaze drift, eyes unfocusing as his thoughts wandered.
A new jujutsu society wouldn't be built by committees. Or rules. Or tradition. Those were dead weight. What he needed were outliers.
People who didn't fit.
People like Okkotsu Yuta. People like Hakari Kinji. People like Fushiguro Megumi.
And now, maybe, carrot top.
And Sukuna's vessel too. That one was obvious. Annoying, but obvious.
Their morals didn't matter. Their ideals didn't matter. Whether they liked him didn't matter.
As long as they were strong.
As long as they were willing to stand on the same side when it counted.
Everyone else could be swept aside.
Gojo tilted his head back and looked at the moon.
For just a moment, something sharp tugged at his chest.
Someone flickered through his thoughts. A memory he usually didn't linger on. A choice he'd already made peace with and still hated himself for.
"…Tch."
He pushed it down and stood.
His gaze dropped back to Ichigo.
"Letting you loose right now would be irresponsible," Gojo said lightly, as if the unconscious boy could hear him. "Sealing you would be boring. And killing you would be a waste."
He reached down casually and slipped his fingers into Ichigo's pocket.
Pickpocketing him took less than a second.
The moment Gojo did, the boy's strange altered uniform faded, reverting back into an ordinary school outfit as if whatever force had reshaped it had decided its job was done.
Gojo blinked.
"…Huh."
That was new.
He straightened slightly, interest sharpening again. He'd seen a lot of cursed techniques. More than most people ever would. He'd even seen techniques that modified clothing or manifested equipment.
But that?
That hadn't felt like a technique turning off.
It felt more like… a state ending.
Gojo rolled Ichigo onto his side and fished the wallet open, flipping through it with idle curiosity.
"And that thing earlier," he muttered. "Blut Vene, was it?"
The words tasted strange.
"That wasn't a cursed technique," Gojo realized slowly. "More like a… spell?"
He paused.
If that was true, then the implications were ridiculous.
Spells weren't a thing anymore. Not like that. Jujutsu had evolved past ritualized casting centuries ago. Everything now was innate, instinctive, internalized.
Which meant either this kid had stumbled into something ancient…
…or he was adapting on the fly.
Gojo snorted, lips twitching. "Yeah, no way."
He looked down at the ID card.
"Ku-ro-sa-ki… I-chi-go."
He finally said the name out loud.
"Ichigo Kurosaki, huh?"
Gojo's smile widened slowly, stretching into something sharp and unrestrained.
"That technique of yours," he continued, more to himself now, "it didn't just punch through Infinity."
He tapped his own chest lightly.
"It messed with how I applied it."
That was the unsettling part.
He hadn't been able to push the kid away with Blue. Hadn't been able to repel him with Red. Not because he hadn't tried, but because the rules governing how Infinity interacted with cursed energy had… slipped.
Been reordered.
That was why he'd taken so many hits.
Not because he'd been slow.
But because the kid had changed the game.
Gojo straightened fully, moonlight catching in his uncovered eyes as his grin turned feral.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "You're exactly what I need."
He tucked the wallet away, adjusted his blindfold, and glanced once more at the unconscious boy at his feet.
"A dangerous piece," Gojo finished, pleased. "But I've always liked playing with sharp tools."