Maki knew it — if she simply accepted fate and bowed her head in surrender, then Mai would never be able to find happiness.
[Mai knew it — if she remained alive, then Maki would never be able to grow stronger.]
Maki knew it — she had to become the clan head, because only then could she give Mai a normal place to belong.
[Mai knew it — in the most extreme case, she had to die, because only then could Maki obtain the power she was originally supposed to have.]
"I am going to become the head of the Zenin family." Back then, Maki Zenin had said this to Zen'in Mai.
["So you're going to abandon me and leave me all alone?" Back then, Zen'in Mai had felt anger because of it.]
"Whether you support me or oppose me, I'm going to keep pushing forward." Maki Zenin hadn't told Zen'in Mai what she truly thought deep in her heart — she had only said this much, because she didn't want Zen'in Mai dragged into this swamp.
["A dead-last who can't even see Cursed Spirits, wanting to be a sorcerer of the Zenin family — stop being an idiot!" Zen'in Mai had likewise not told Maki Zenin the secret hidden within her heart, because she knew the two of them were destined for no good ending, so they may as well sink together.]
Yes. How wretched.
Fate simply loved to toy with people like this, dropping them into this kind of predicament.
"Damn it... damn it!"
Zen'in Mai hoisted Mahiko onto her back and ran in the direction away from the battlefield.
Mahiko absolutely could not be allowed to come to harm... that was the silent, shared understanding between the two sisters.
Anything else built on top of that foundation was the only space in which they had any freedom to decide.
"Don't let them get away!" Ogi Zenin pointed his blade in Zen'in Mai's direction.
The guards immediately raised their blades and charged toward Zen'in Mai and Mahiko.
And Zen'in Mai whipped out a second smoke grenade with a reverse-handed throw. It was the very last one she had on her.
At the same time, with her other hand she raised her revolver and pulled the trigger again and again, bullets pressing down on that wave of guards like a curtain of rain.
After all, these guards weren't sorcerers — their bodies had no immunity to bullets. Every single one of them was forced to halt in their tracks and scramble for cover.
And the smoke grenade, taking advantage of that split-second pause, billowed out and swallowed the entire stretch of forest in a thick haze.
In that instant, Zen'in Mai and Mahiko's figures vanished completely from sight.
"If even one of them gets away, none of you are going to live to see the morning!"
Ogi Zenin barked the order.
The guards grew frantic too, and immediately wheeled around and charged into the smoke.
But at that very moment, Maki Zenin planted herself directly in their path.
"Don't you dare think you're getting past me!"
This was the threshold between life and death now — there was no holding anything back anymore.
Maki Zenin's first strike went straight for the vital point of the guard right in front of her.
The guard hurried to parry, but in terms of both strength and combat experience, he fell catastrophically short against Maki Zenin — who had spent every day grinding through training and accumulating real combat experience.
The edge of her blade pivoted. Maki Zenin slipped around the weapon her opponent had raised to block, and with a single stroke severed the man before her clean in half at the waist. Blood erupted upward.
"AAaaaagh!!"
But the guards held the advantage of numbers.
The moment one was hacked down into a pool of his own blood, three more guards came roaring in to surround her from three sides.
It was already a bloodbath. It was already a fight to the death.
With savage force, she drove her long blade into the shoulder of the enemy before her, all the way down into the heart. Maki Zenin felt the impact of steel grinding against collarbone, felt the searing heat of blood spraying across her face.
She was no longer thinking about how to stay alive.
She had already accepted, by default, that she was dead.
Every cut, was to buy more time.
Every cut, was to make these bastards who had cornered her bleed more.
Pffft——
One sword stroke ran the fourth guard clean through the chest. Maki Zenin yanked the blade free, her body already drenched in blood from head to toe.
The girl had gone fully bloodshot in the eyes, killing as a thing without thought.
"How utterly filthy." Ogi Zenin walked over slowly, sliding his long blade back into its scabbard. "What is there in the state of you that's any different from a monkey?"
No reply. The girl charged at him.
Clang!
Blade met blade. Sparks burst in every direction.
Maki Zenin had already realised it — her father's swordsmanship was not as refined as hers.
Falling Blossom Emotion could automatically counterattack, but it could not render him entirely immune to harm.
If she could catch a moment when Ogi Zenin let his guard down, if she could destroy his cursed tool... then there was still a chance she could win!
A glint sharpened in Maki Zenin's eyes. The speed of her blade surged again, and she struck directly against the flat of Ogi Zenin's long sword.
That was the structurally vulnerable position on a traditional samurai blade.
For this strike, Maki Zenin used the rotational power of her hips, throwing every last ounce of strength in her body into it.
Clang——
Blade collided with blade. Sparks burst in every direction.
But...
Krrrrack.
"Wha— ?!" Maki Zenin's pupils contracted sharply.
A blade had snapped — but the one that had snapped was not Ogi Zenin's. It was Maki Zenin's.
——It was still Falling Blossom Emotion.
Ogi Zenin could overlay "Falling Blossom Emotion" onto his own body as an active defence, and he could also overlay it onto the body of his blade — granting the sword in his hand that same Cursed Energy-driven counterattack effect.
The cursed tool in Maki Zenin's hand had already been inferior in quality to the sword in Ogi Zenin's grip.
On top of that, she had just gone toe-to-toe with Ogi Zenin in several brutal exchanges. Her blade had long since been worn fragile, and after taking a single counterstrike from Falling Blossom Emotion's Cursed Energy, the body of the sword could hold no longer — it shattered cleanly into two pieces.
"Same question as before — do you know why the one who became clan head was Naobito Zenin, and not me?" Ogi Zenin let out a cold snort, and swung his blade down in a clean cleaving stroke.
Maki Zenin barely managed to parry with the broken stump of her sword.
That last fragment of broken blade was also cut clean through.
"Because! The two of you, my so-called heirs — are such utter trash!!"
Ogi Zenin raised his long sword high. The next stroke would be enough to put Maki Zenin in the grave.
And it was at precisely that moment that the headlights in the distance suddenly grew bright.
An engine roared. A jeep came tearing in from outside the treeline, hurtling straight toward Ogi Zenin.
Bang, bang, bang——
Zen'in Mai was seated in the driver's seat, firing her gun with one hand while driving the car straight at Ogi Zenin.
Ogi Zenin was forced to leap aside to dodge.
And Zen'in Mai, slamming on the brakes with one foot while violently kicking open the passenger door with the other, thrust her hand out toward Maki Zenin's direction.
"Hurry! Get in!"
Zen'in Mai shouted.
Maki Zenin's eyes trembled, just for a moment.
She hadn't expected Zen'in Mai to come back.
So that was it — when Zen'in Mai had thrown the smoke grenade and fled earlier, it had been to go and steal one of the remaining intact vehicles in the convoy from the rear.
Slap.
The hands of the two girls caught each other and gripped tight.
Maki Zenin was hauled up into the car.
The first thing Maki Zenin did after getting in was look for Mahiko. She found her safely in the passenger seat, and let out a breath of relief.
"Hold on tight!" Zen'in Mai gritted her teeth and floored the accelerator.
She was going to break out of this forest in one straight shot.
Break out, shake off Ogi Zenin's pursuit — and once they were under the shelter of Jujutsu High, they would be completely safe.
And the car genuinely was fast.
She floored the pedal, and in a single instant the car shot more than ten metres forward.
They had already seen Ogi Zenin's technique for extending the reach of his blade... but even with that extension, the maximum distance was only about thirteen or fourteen metres.
Floor the pedal to the metal, and they would absolutely get away.
After all, none of these bastards had guns!
"Big sister Maki," — and right at that moment, even with the engine roaring all around them, Mahiko in the passenger seat blinked her eyes once and spoke up, "you should scoot your body over a little to the right."
"What?" For a second, Maki Zenin couldn't quite parse what she meant.
Mahiko smiled and drew her finger across her own neck twice. "Because — if you don't dodge, it'll get cut off, you see. Your neck."
Vrrooom——
A piercing azure-blue glare of flame-light stabbed into their eyes.
Zen'in Mai's eyes contracted.
The glow of that flame was not coming from inside the car — it was coming from the rearview mirror reflecting what was behind them.
Directly behind their car, Ogi Zenin stood with his blade raised high overhead. Flame surged up the length of the sword, transforming into a towering pillar of fire that pierced the sky.
"Technique Release——"
The firelight was mirrored in Ogi Zenin's eyes.
"——[Singed Brow's Urgency]!"
Ogi Zenin was not strong — but regardless of that, he still held the title of Grade 1 sorcerer.
He had his own Technique.
In all the fighting up until this point, Ogi Zenin in fact had not been fighting at full strength.
Only now, in this very moment, did he truly release his Technique.
And so, the reach of Ogi Zenin's attack erupted upward once again.
This blade — was now two or three times longer than before!
"Be buried, you trash!"
The flame-blade came slashing down at an angle.
Ogi Zenin's all-out strike — perfectly aimed, neither high nor low — sliced down through the dead centre of their jeep.
Mahiko, with a small helpless sigh, reached out and shoved Maki Zenin's head off to the side.
Which meant the attack that should have struck Maki Zenin's neck instead struck Mahiko's wrist.
"Wha..." Maki Zenin stared at the blue-haired girl's severed wrist, her pupils trembling.
And then, in the very next second, the attack seemed to spread into the car's fuel tank.
The vehicle exploded with a thunderous roar, and the three of them were swallowed by a sea of fire.
...
Caw. Caw.
The noise of the world had vanished.
The taut, blood-soaked tension of mortal combat — could no longer be felt.
The sensation beneath her body... was sand.
What entered her ears was the sound of waves rolling in, and the cries of seabirds.
Maki Zenin's eyes flew open. She pushed herself up off the sand and sat upright.
And what she saw after sitting up was an endless, boundless sea.
She was right now sitting on a stretch of sandy beach.
She turned her head and looked all around — across the sand, across the surface of the sea, there was not a single soul in sight.
There was only one person, sitting beside her, keeping her company.
That was Zen'in Mai.
"Zen... 'in Mai?" Maki Zenin's pupils trembled.
She had no idea what was going on right now.
She remembered... that their car seemed to have been struck by Ogi Zenin's attack...
Where was this place?
Could it be that she was already dead?
Had she already arrived in heaven?
If this was heaven, then why couldn't she find Mahiko?
Was it because Mahiko hadn't died?
Now that would be wonderful news...
"You're not dead yet."
Zen'in Mai propped her chin in her hand, gazing out toward the distant sea, her voice carrying a slightly bored note as she continued: "But you're about to be. Both of us — we're both about to die."
Maki Zenin remained in a daze.
Then... this could probably be counted as the life-flashing-before-your-eyes moment just before death?
Or, was it some sort of place resembling the inner world of the mind?
People often said that in the final second before death, the mind's activity surges into hyper-speed — to the point that a person feels time slowing dramatically.
Most likely... outside, Zen'in Mai, Maki Zenin, and Mahiko were right now still caught in the middle of that sea of fire.
Not dead yet, but already as good as dead.
That was what this meant... right?
"Ah." A flicker of something passed through Maki Zenin's eyes. "So... this is the ending?"
Their fate... in the end, was it going to come to a halt right here?
"Didn't I already tell you? You're not dead yet." Zen'in Mai pursed her lips and turned her head. "You have to keep living. And you have to keep living while carrying Mahiko with you."
As she spoke, Zen'in Mai rose to her feet from the sand.
She gazed out across the sea.
At that endless, boundless ocean.
At the blue sky where it met the water.
The distance was terrifying — so vast that it looked instead like an endless abyss.
"To be honest, I knew it a long time ago... if I was still alive, then you would forever only be a half-baked sorcerer." Zen'in Mai cast a sideways glance at Maki Zenin. "In the rules of jujutsu, twins are counted as a single person. You were originally supposed to have no Cursed Energy at all — but because you and I are counted as the same person, as long as I'm alive, my Cursed Energy gets split evenly between the two of us."
As such, Maki Zenin could not reach zero Cursed Energy.
And without reaching zero Cursed Energy, she could not gain the powers of the Heavenly Tyrant.
And so, if the seal was to be broken, there was only one method.
"Hah... I've been wounded. Next, I'm going to craft something for you, and once I've finished crafting it, I'll die," Zen'in Mai sighed and began stepping toward the sea, not looking back, not glancing at Maki Zenin again.
"You could call it my last gift to you... I'll take with me every single thing that's been binding you. You — go save Mahiko. If the matter of the Zenin family is the fate that you and I share, then bringing that girl into all of this is the sin that you and I share... you absolutely have to atone for that sin."
The girl walked further and further away.
Walking toward an ocean more distant than any abyss.
Maki Zenin's pupils trembled. She seemed to have realised something — and she scrambled to her feet in a panic, racing after Zen'in Mai.
And Zen'in Mai had already walked into the sea, half her body battered by the rolling waves.
[Hsssss——]
"Hey! What are you saying?!" Maki Zenin chased after her at a run, shouting.
Zen'in Mai let out a soft laugh, turned, and faced Maki Zenin head-on.
[Hsssss— Hsssss——]
"What I'm saying is, I'll sacrifice myself," Zen'in Mai said with a smile. "I'll trade my own life for you growing stronger. And as for you, you..."
[Hsssss!!—— Krrrrack!!——]
As for you, help me destroy everything, help me protect Mahiko — that was what Zen'in Mai had originally been about to say.
But Zen'in Mai froze in place.
She whirled around violently.
Maki Zenin had also seen the scene before her eyes, and her pupils contracted sharply.
This world was something like the inner mental Domain of the two of them — or you might even say, it was a region of the world tied to the Domains they had each been born with. Here, the souls of the two sisters could carry out one final conversation before death.
And Zen'in Mai had intended to use her death here to purchase Maki Zenin's transformation.
But the scene before her eyes was making Zen'in Mai waver, filling her with shock and uncertainty.
What was happening?
This place was supposed to be their mental Domain.
This place was supposed to be one that only the two of them could enter.
But why, why?
Why was there — at the far edge of the sea's horizon — a sky-blotting blackness eroding its way in?
Hsssss— Hsssss!!!— Crash——
No, calling it darkness wasn't quite accurate.
It was something more like the static snow that appears on an old television screen when the signal cuts out.
Space itself was being eroded.
The sky was filling with static snow.
The scent of the ocean inside their nostrils had warped into something distorted and wrong.
The cries of the seabirds in the sky had now become the laughter of a little girl, clear and bright like a silver bell — and yet eerie beyond words.
"Do you want to die? Do you want to die?"
Pat.
Pat, pat, pat...
Zen'in Mai looked down in horror.
Beneath the surface of the sea, hand after hand had silently, soundlessly coiled up around her. They seized her legs, climbed up her waist, wound tighter and tighter, as though trying to drag her down into the abyss.
"Hahahaha——"
"... Big sister, you want to die in front of me?"
"Hahaha..."
"You think you get to die in front of me??——"
A chaotic tangle of childish voices forced its way into her ears, into her mind, into her soul.
Practically detonating inside her.
The girl was terrified beyond words.
Because some irresistible force had eroded its way into their mental Domain, and in a single instant had taken complete control of everything.
——Including them.
The girl wanted to scream.
Zen'in Mai, in this moment, wanted to scream.
But to her despair, she discovered that the countless tentacle-like arms from beneath the surface of the sea had already risen up — clamping over her mouth, over her eyes, over her ears, winding around her entire body, twisting her into a cocoon, and dragging her down beneath the surface of the sea.
"Zen'in Mai!!——" Maki Zenin had of course seen the catastrophe unfolding before her eyes.
She screamed and charged toward the direction in which Zen'in Mai had been dragged down into the ocean's abyss.
But the space in front of her suddenly shattered.
A blurred, indistinct smiling face was looking out from within the abyss behind the cracks, laughing at her.
"Truly insufferable, the pair of you — two big sisters who never could mind your own business." That voice was layered with countless other laughs, grating against the ear, "Looks like I'll have to give you some punishment——"
An indescribable force came crushing down.
The mental Domain in which Zen'in Mai and Maki Zenin's souls existed completely collapsed.
Maki Zenin jolted awake from her unconscious state. The world around her had gone silent again.
The laughter and the distorted noises in her ears were all gone — as though she'd just woken up from a nightmare.
Maki Zenin was gasping for breath in great heaving gulps.
She realised she was currently pinned beneath the burning wreckage of a car.
The crackling, popping sound of flames roaring against metal filled her ears.
The girl was still rattled, her soul not yet settled.
What had that just been?
Had that been a nightmare just now?
Or had it been some kind of hallucination her body had generated after suffering catastrophic injury?
The girl was confused and unsettled. But she suddenly noticed that, after going through the car explosion, after going through Ogi Zenin's attack —
She didn't have a single wound on her body. She was, if anything, even healthier than she had been before the explosion.
Apart from the glasses she used to perceive Cursed Energy and Cursed Spirits, which had fallen off somewhere unknown...
The girl's body, right now, was healthy to a degree... that bordered on terrifying.
Oh, right.
Mahiko! Zen'in Mai!
How were they?
Maki Zenin's heart pounded with urgency —
Because she knew the fight wasn't over yet. Ogi Zenin's threat was still out there.
She scrambled urgently out of the wreckage of the car.
In the process of crawling out, she saw Zen'in Mai lying on the ground beside it.
For a moment the girl was so anxious that she completely failed to register the eerie silence of the scene around her.
"Zen'in Mai——!"
She ran to Zen'in Mai's side, turned her sister's body over so she was lying face-up, and checked her from head to toe.
The girl was unconscious.
But Maki found there were no wounds on Zen'in Mai's body either.
Although Zen'in Mai's face was pale, her body was in perfect health.
And what's more, eerily, her body was somehow still completely clean — not a speck of dust or dirt on her.
Although this analogy was honestly really wrong, in this moment Maki Zenin truly felt that Zen'in Mai, as she was now, was clean... as though she had just been born.
The girl jerked her head up.
Only now did Maki Zenin sense that something was off.
The voices of those guards from earlier — all of them were gone.
The sounds of fighting were also completely gone. Across the entire ruined stretch of forest, only the sound of flame remained.
The girl's breath caught.
Because she now noticed that all of those guards were currently lying in pools of their own blood.
And looking further off into the distance, she saw Mahiko.
That familiar blue-haired girl was standing face-to-face with Ogi Zenin — as though, looking into each other's eyes, they were saying something.
"... ?"
Now Maki Zenin felt this was even more bizarre.
Why were all of these guards dead?
And why was the blue-haired girl standing face-to-face with Ogi Zenin?
Damn it — the specifics of what had happened didn't matter.
Mahiko was standing face-to-face with Ogi Zenin.
Right now the blue-haired girl was in a dangerous position! Because Ogi Zenin would absolutely never go easy on a blue-haired little girl.
She had to protect Mahiko.
Where was her sword?
The sword was gone.
The girl touched her own face.
Oh, right — the glasses she'd been wearing on her face had also fallen off. Without her glasses, she couldn't see Cursed Spirits or Cursed Energy. If she didn't have the glasses, she'd have no way to fight Ogi Zenin afterwards.
Fortunately, she spotted her glasses on the ground not far from her.
Although there were cracks in the lenses, the damage wasn't significant.
Even more fortunately, beside the glasses there was a blade dropped earlier by one of the guards.
The girl let out a quiet breath of relief, and with stealthy, soundless steps, went to pick up her glasses.
Next, all she needed to do was put the glasses on, pick up the blade, and ambush Ogi Zenin from behind while he wasn't paying attention — and there was a real chance she could rescue the blue-haired girl.
No — she absolutely had to rescue Mahiko.
Bringing Mahiko along had been her mistake... even if it meant her own death, even if it meant being cast down into the eighteen levels of hell, she had to make sure Mahiko came through this unharmed!
With a plan already taking shape in her mind, Maki Zenin slid the glasses onto her face.
She looked toward Ogi Zenin's direction.
And in that very moment — because she had raised her head — she froze stiff.
The scene she had been seeing originally was Mahiko and Ogi Zenin standing face-to-face.
Because of the angle, she couldn't make out Ogi Zenin's expression, and could only see the leisurely, easy, relaxed-looking smile on the blue-haired girl's face — while Ogi Zenin stood ramrod straight, his back looking oddly stiff.
She hadn't noticed it before.
But now, with her glasses on —
The scene transformed in an instant.
Ogi Zenin was still Ogi Zenin.
But he hadn't been standing at all...
His chest was impaled clean through by an enormous spike-like protrusion, the entire wound blooming open into a grotesque, filthy flower — he had been run through by something and was hanging suspended in mid-air.
It was because she hadn't been able to see Cursed Spirits before that she hadn't realised Ogi Zenin was already dead!
Maki Zenin's pupils trembled. Slowly, she raised her gaze upward.
What she saw was an enormous, monstrous tree, knit together from countless arms. At the very top of the tree was an enormous grinning face — that face sneered coldly, a tongue lolling out from its mouth.
The tongue was covered in barbs and thorns.
And Ogi Zenin, drenched from head to toe in blood, had been crucified atop one of the sharp fangs of that tongue.
And that enormous tree... was actually growing up out of Mahiko's back.
This monstrous, leering, eerie creature — this gargantuan aberration that had butchered Ogi Zenin with such cruelty — was linked together with that blue-haired girl who looked just like a little angel. The girl was smiling brightly, her smile innocent and sweet — and now Maki understood. She hadn't been locking eyes with Ogi Zenin at all, and she certainly hadn't been being threatened by him.
——She had been admiring the death-throes of the prey she herself had butchered!!!!
"Ah, big sister Maki, you're awake."
Once the blue-haired girl noticed that Maki Zenin had woken up, she turned her head and looked over, breaking into an innocent, guileless smile.
A wave of déjà vu surged into Maki Zenin's mind. The aura of Cursed Energy on the girl's body, that terrifying enormous tree on which Ogi Zenin was crucified — in this single instant, they jolted awake the memories that Maki Zenin, out of fear and unresolved bitterness, had once forcibly suppressed deep inside her head.
"You're..." Maki Zenin's eyes trembled without stopping. The girl's voice was, very nearly, despairing. "You're..."
You're... that blue-haired Cursed Spirit...?
"That's right," the blue-haired girl said, smile innocent and guileless, waving her hand at Maki Zenin. "Surprised?"
Thud.
Maki Zenin's body went limp. She collapsed where she stood, sinking down to sit on the ground.
____
👻🔥P- Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: Jujutsu x Mieruko: Oh no, am I a villain too?
Help us hit our targets:
🎯 100 Powerstones = +1 free chapter for all