Jogo survived.
Surviving wasn't particularly impressive or worth making a big deal of, really. In the original story, Jogo fought Satoru Gojo and didn't die either.
The main reason was that Gojo had too many questions he wanted answered, and Jogo was the one who could answer them. Why were the cursed spirits organized? Who was pulling the strings from behind the scenes? Why had they chosen this particular moment to make their move?
That kind of intelligence was worth more to Satoru Gojo than killing a Special Grade Cursed Spirit.
And then there was the matter of Gojo's own personality. The man had absolute, unshakeable confidence in his own strength. He figured leaving Jogo alive was fine — it wasn't like she was going to turn the world upside down. So what if he let her go? He'd just beat her up again next time.
So in the original story, Satoru Gojo ultimately spared Jogo's life.
That said — surviving was one thing. Surviving with all your parts still attached was another.
In the original, even without killing Jogo, Gojo still ripped her head clean off. A cursed spirit reduced to just a head was technically in a near-death state, but still clinging to life by a thread. It was only because Hanami arrived and retrieved the head afterward that Jogo was saved at all.
This time, if not for the necklace, Gojo probably would have done the same.
Though, to be fair, he might have been marginally less brutal toward an enemy who looked like a magical girl.
But an enemy was still an enemy. He wasn't going to go completely easy on her.
In the end, it was the pendant Mahiko had given Jogo that made the difference.
Gojo saw the photo of Nobara Kugisaki inside the pendant, and he hesitated — and didn't press the killing blow.
Jogo didn't even have a scratch on her… well, technically the Domain clash and the chase beforehand had left the girl with some injuries, but at minimum her head was still on her shoulders, and all four limbs were where they were supposed to be.
Compared to the original story, this was basically walking away without a single serious wound.
That was the value of that necklace.
Though, honestly — Mahiko hadn't originally wanted to give Jogo the thing at all.
What did it matter to her if Jogo got hurt, or died? What was she getting so worked up for?
This little trick had been something Mahiko had been saving for herself. The original plan was to make herself a necklace with a photo of herself and Nobara inside it. Something to keep her alive if Gojo ever caught her.
Jogo could live or die, stay whole or fall to pieces — that wasn't her problem. She wasn't Jogo's mother. If Jogo wanted to go pick a fight with Satoru Gojo one-on-one, that was entirely Jogo's own business.
But the problem was — once she actually finished sculpting Jogo's new appearance, she immediately regretted the decision not to care.
Holy crap. Way too pretty.
She'd… accidentally made Jogo a little too cute.
Not that it was really her fault. It was just that whenever she was sculpting someone, she felt this innate, unstoppable urge she couldn't fight down. Her artist's soul, she called it.
One careless moment and the result was devastatingly gorgeous.
One careless moment and it was white hair and red eyes.
One careless moment and there was a magical girl.
One careless moment and it was exactly the kind of look that checked every box of Mahiko's personal taste.
When it came to things like this, she genuinely couldn't control her own hands. And once she'd imagined a face like that, a figure like that, getting beaten into a broken, bleeding mess — Mahiko's heart ached.
So, against her better judgment, Mahiko helped Jogo out.
She gave her a precious life-saving tool.
——And she had spent ages editing that photo, too.
Mahiko let out a small, sneaky laugh.
Alright, alright — she'd admit it. Even though part of turning Jogo into this new form had been pure self-indulgence, a joke she played for her own amusement, there was, in truth, another layer of intent underneath it. A deeper reason. One that even Kenjaku hadn't noticed.
And, thinking about it now — whether it was some kind of butterfly effect or not, she wasn't sure.
But Mahiko had come to feel that, from the perspective of an ally, the members of the Four Calamities were actually… pretty reliable. Pretty endearing, even.
In the original story, Kenjaku had taken Jogo out to a family restaurant, and they had killed plenty of humans along the way. But this time around, for some reason, Kenjaku had stayed holed up in their base without going out much at all — which meant Jogo and Hanami hadn't been taken out to kill humans either, hadn't had much direct contact with people at all.
In fact, after a bit of observation, Mahiko realized that all of them had a remarkably poor understanding of human society.
And that subtle difference had given Mahiko an idea. And an opportunity.
Just before Jogo's battle preparations, Mahiko had quietly incorporated human tissue into the cursed spirit bodies of each of the Four Calamities, shifting them into a state halfway between cursed spirit and human.
And what did that mean?
It meant ordinary people could see them now.
It meant — they could interact with ordinary humans. Directly.
Jogo and Hanami were beginning to be able to see human society through their own eyes, from their own perspective.
It sounded trivial. But the significance of this was far greater than it appeared on the surface.
Why, exactly, had the Special Grade Cursed Spirits of the Four Calamities chosen to help Kenjaku in the first place? What was it about Kenjaku's supposed plan to "make cursed spirits into the new humanity" that had drawn them in?
Setting aside Mahito, who was in it purely for the sadistic pleasure of slaughtering humans — when it came to Jogo and Hanami's desire to create an "age of cursed spirits" and replace humanity, Mahiko had identified two core reasons.
The first was that cursed spirits were born hating humans.
Cursed spirits were born from humanity's negative emotions and the darkest dregs of human experience. From the moment of their birth, they already knew every ugly, rotten thing humans had ever done. They knew instinctively what humanity's most disgusting face looked like.
It was as if, the moment a cursed spirit came into existence, its mind was already running a looping reel of humanity's 108 varieties of depravity — with absolutely no exposure to anything that might count as human virtue.
Under those circumstances, of course they looked at humans like garbage.
The second reason, Mahiko suspected, was that their space to exist had become far too small.
The desire of Jogo and Hanami to fill the world with cursed spirits was, at its core, an expression of a deeper, unspoken need — a longing for more kindred spirits they could connect with, a longing for a freer existence.
Even in the original story, it was clear that Jogo and Hanami deeply valued the lives of their fellow calamities. Even though they only had four such companions, Jogo still showed genuine, visible grief when one of them died.
And that, to Mahiko, was proof of her hypothesis — they had emotions.
And where there were emotions, there were emotional needs. Needs that were, in their essence, remarkably similar to the social and emotional needs of humans.
Which raised the next question: why didn't they have more kindred spirits? Why didn't they have more room to exist?
The answer was simple.
——Because this world belongs to humans.
They couldn't integrate into human life. Humans couldn't even see them. In this world, they were invisible, nonexistent, pushed to the outermost margins of everything. That was why they felt their living space being crushed. That was why they hungered for a world that belonged to cursed spirits.
And since cursed spirits could cherish their companions, could grieve when those companions died — that proved they had emotional needs.
And emotional needs meant they could be changed.
So Mahiko began to wonder — if she modified Jogo and Hanami into a state where humans could see them, allowed them to walk through human society, to meet and interact with humans face to face… could that cause them to see that humans weren't nothing but filth? Could it make them reconsider whether Kenjaku's so-called plan to "make cursed spirits into the new humanity" was truly what they wanted?
She certainly wasn't naïve enough to hope that Jogo and Hanami would immediately do a full moral reversal and switch to the side of justice.
She just wanted to rattle, ever so slightly, the deeply entrenched convictions inside them.
And at the same time — rattle their resolve to help Kenjaku complete his plan, even at the cost of their lives.
Consider this: ordinary humans couldn't see the Four Calamities.
Jogo and Hanami had never once had the chance to interact with humans face to face.
Everything they knew about human society came entirely from distant observation — and from Kenjaku's secondhand accounts.
In other words, the channel through which they understood humans — and through which humans might have understood them — had, for a very long time, been entirely monopolized by Kenjaku.
Whatever Kenjaku said humans were, that was what they believed humans were.
And Mahiko's actions were, in their own way, a move to break that monopoly.
It was also her way of trying to win over potential allies.
In short: Mahiko wasn't fantasizing about sending Jogo and Hanami on a walk through human society and having them come back reformed, full of love for humanity.
But at the very least, it could open a window in their understanding.
Her most optimistic hope was this — that someday, when Mahiko and Kenjaku finally had it out and tore their alliance apart, Jogo and Hanami would be able to understand her. To understand why she had chosen to betray Kenjaku's plan.
And in that moment, to choose not to help Kenjaku. Not to stand against her alongside him.
If that meant she had one or two fewer enemies to deal with — that was more than enough.
No matter how you looked at it, Jogo and Hanami were formidable combatants.
Jogo in particular — never mind how thoroughly Gojo had beaten her this time around, but in the broader world of Jujutsu Kaisen, especially in the earlier arcs, the number of people who could actually beat Jogo in a fight was vanishingly small.
Getting beaten by Satoru Gojo was nothing to be ashamed of.
As long as Jogo didn't turn around and help Kenjaku against Mahiko later on — that alone would dramatically increase Mahiko's odds of success in everything that came after.
............
On the beach.
"By the way," Mahiko said, her tone idle and offhand, "you just let Jogo go off and challenge Satoru Gojo like that — weren't you even a little afraid she'd die out there?"
Kenjaku was reclining in a beach chair, head tilted slightly as he looked at her, his smile as warm and mild as ever.
"Hmm? What do you mean?" His tone was one of genuine puzzlement. "Hanami was there, wasn't she? Hanami could bring her back."
"Oh, please," Mahiko clicked her tongue. "Whether Hanami could actually rescue Jogo was pure luck. Those two combined aren't worth one of Gojo's hands, and you know it."
"Well, there was nothing I could do about it," Kenjaku said, spreading his hands with an expression of innocent helplessness. "She wouldn't listen to reason."
"So because she wouldn't listen, you just stopped trying?" Mahiko raised an eyebrow, her voice still languid and drawling. "The way you treat Jogo — it doesn't look anything like how you'd treat a truly precious asset."
Kenjaku raised an eyebrow in turn, his smile deepening just a fraction.
"What are you talking about, Mahiko? Of course Jogo isn't a precious asset——"
He paused.
"——She's our precious friend."
Mahiko stared at him. She almost rolled her eyes.
"Of course I respect what my friends want." Kenjaku committed fully to the performance, his voice reaching a pitch of absolute sincerity. "That's just what friendship is. Even if a friend makes a decision that isn't entirely wise, if it's truly what they want, then you support them. That's what a friend does."
Mahiko stared at him for two full seconds, then laughed.
"Is that right. You're such a good person."
Kenjaku laughed too. "That I am. I treasure all of you very much."
The two of them looked at each other.
Both smiling.
Both with absolute, heartfelt sincerity.
............
What a crafty old fox.
Mahiko didn't believe a word of it, of course.
Calling Jogo a friend, and therefore not stopping her?
What a joke. That was one of the funniest things she'd heard since transmigrating into this world.
Kenjaku hadn't held back because he considered Jogo and the others his friends or because he respected their wishes. He'd let Jogo go because he'd already calculated out both possible outcomes and was comfortable with either result.
Even if Jogo died, it was fine.
That was absolutely Kenjaku's mindset.
If Jogo went to fight Gojo and got killed, then the remaining Calamity cursed spirits would witness firsthand just how powerful Satoru Gojo was — and they'd stop doubting Kenjaku's insistence that Gojo was the greatest obstacle standing in their way, that they absolutely had to find a means of eliminating or sealing him.
If Jogo's death could prove that point, the survivors would trust Kenjaku's judgment more than ever, and their loyalty would be ironclad.
On top of that — watching a companion get killed would make the remaining three Special Grade Cursed Spirits hate sorcerers all the more.
Hatred was the finest leash in existence. People bound to a cause by hatred were more loyal than those bound by any other force.
So if Jogo lived, Kenjaku lost nothing. If Jogo died, Kenjaku still lost nothing.
Every possible outcome worked in his favor.
And second — the fact that Kenjaku cared so little about whether Jogo lived or died pointed to something else.
Jogo was an important combatant, yes, but not an irreplaceable one. Not indispensable.
In the eyes of Mahiko and the others, this small group quietly plotting a grand new-humanity blueprint was just the few of them — four Special Grade Cursed Spirits plus Kenjaku, and that was it.
But in reality——
Kenjaku almost certainly had contingencies.
Other assets he could deploy.
Which was why, even if Jogo died, he wouldn't lose any sleep over it.
Stripped down to its essence: even if he was getting the four of them to do his grunt work for free, if they were all gone, Kenjaku could find new muscle elsewhere.
And those other assets——
Mahiko's guess was that they were the ancient sorcerers Kenjaku had contracted with or forged alliances with back in the ancient past.
People like Rime.
People like the ancient sorcerers who had awakened from a thousand years of slumber during the Culling Game — each one in possession of some terrifyingly powerful Jujutsu Technique.
If Jogo and Hanami were both truly dead and the plan was left without any usable forces, Kenjaku might very well find a way to prematurely resurrect those ancient sorcerers — ones who in the original story had only appeared during the Culling Game arc — and use methods Mahiko could or couldn't predict to bring them under his banner and advance his plan.
____
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