With the other person's consent, Mahiru could now use her Domain to observe another's Technique and soul.
Under the empowerment of her Domain, her study and observation grew far more profound, far more penetrating—this was a new path she'd realized after learning Mahoraga's Technique within her Domain.
However, too intense a gaze would undoubtedly leave the one being watched feeling extremely uncomfortable.
Mahiru's method was like tearing wholly open the garment humans call the flesh, to peer beneath it at every corner, every core of the soul.
It was an extremely crude act, one that utterly denied a person any privacy or freedom.
Normally, Mahiru wouldn't do such a thing. After all, a gentler approach could still touch the soul and study a Technique.
That she was doing this to Yuki Tsukumo now was truly out of necessity.
Mahiru wanted to master the method of traveling through the flow of time, but Yuki Tsukumo herself didn't know how. Nobody spends their days kneading Black Holes for fun, right?
If Mahiru wanted to understand it, she could only explore it herself. So she had to completely grasp the principles of Yuki Tsukumo's Technique—and she had to see them even more deeply than Yuki Tsukumo understood herself.
A pity, and a shame.
For now, Yuki Tsukumo would have to endure the indignity.
Consider it... a devotion to art.
"Hey, you—you never said it'd feel like this!"
Scanned again and again by Mahiru's Domain, Yuki Tsukumo couldn't help the goosebumps spreading across her whole body, and even unconsciously slipped into the mannerisms of a young girl. She hugged her arms, hunched her shoulders, and a flush of red crept across her face.
"Where'd you come from, you lecher? Stop it, now!"
"You already agreed to the deal, so stop squirming—just bear with it and it'll pass." Mahiru's voice was flat as she began to paint on the canvas with her brush. "If it really bothers you, we could chat about something unrelated to take your mind off it—like... what sort of partner do you like?"
"Who wants to talk about that with you?!" Even the tips of Yuki Tsukumo's ears flushed red. "Stop it already!"
She really couldn't take it! She really couldn't stand this feeling of being seen through completely!... This was probably something only someone with special proclivities could endure!!
You have to understand, in the modern timeline Yuki Tsukumo was thirty-seven; so working backward, right now she was twenty-four or twenty-five at most—a young woman, and it wouldn't be a stretch to call her a wholly innocent maiden!
—When had she ever gone through anything like this?! "Stop it, you!"
Because she'd signed a contract with Mahiru, she could neither defy the Domain nor move, and could only protest loudly.
Mahiru's brow twitched. She lifted her head and stared at Yuki Tsukumo with a somber gaze. "If you keep shouting, I really might do something out of line..."
Meeting Mahiru's languid gaze, Yuki Tsukumo couldn't help a chill running through her whole body, and she shivered.
She seemed to sense Mahiru wasn't just making empty threats... so she could only sullenly shut her mouth, close her eyes, hunch her shoulders, and endure the Domain's repeated scans.
And Mahiru could finally settle down, calming her mind to observe Yuki Tsukumo's body—ah no, her soul and Technique.
Mahiru still remembered how she had traveled through time in the first place.
Back then, she'd delivered a fatal blow to Mahoraga while relying on the Singularity created by Yuki Tsukumo's earlier self-destruction to trap Mahoraga so it couldn't escape. After defeating Mahoraga, Mahiru was gravely wounded by positive energy, fell into a near-death coma, and plunged into that Singularity, thereby crossing over to here.
In other words, so long as Mahiru could create a Singularity, she could travel through time.
But the problem was that the Singularity wasn't merely the result of Yuki Tsukumo's Jujutsu Technique—it was also the result of both Kenjaku and Satoru Gojo, one after the other, deploying their own Domains to intervene on the Black Hole.
Something made purely with a Black Hole was actually of little use.
Not to mention that Mahiko also wanted to achieve "controllable time travel," which was harder still.
In short, time travel arose from countless coincidences. To replicate it, the girl had to research and experiment over and over.
Expression earnest, brush in hand, the girl daubed color onto the canvas bit by bit. The colors flowed within the Domain, sketching intricate patterns and ritual-array designs across the grass.
She began to copy Yuki Tsukumo's Technique, began to dissect Yuki Tsukumo's soul.
She compared the "Star Rage" Technique against Kaori Itadori's Anti-Gravity Technique, folding her own understanding of the soul and of open-type Domains into the analysis, trying to imagine what exactly Kenjaku had done back then to stabilize the Black Hole and the Singularity within reality...
Time trickled past, and gradually Yuki Tsukumo began to adapt to the feeling of having her soul scanned, of being seen through by Mahiko. Her posture relaxed again, even grew slack.
Finally, the sun set, and Mahiru emerged from the flow-state of studying the Technique. Feeling her Cursed Energy spent and her stamina scattered, she at last dismissed her Domain. Everyone across the entire campsite thereupon fell unconscious, collapsing to the ground.
Ever since Mahiru had unfurled her Domain, these people had been frozen in place, unable to move, and only now were they released.
Under Mahiru's deliberate influence, the commotion of this Domain's deployment had been compressed to the minimum. Tomorrow no one would remember what had happened here, and since the place was remote, no one else would ever notice that Mahiru had once unfurled a Domain here.
"...Mm?" Yuki Tsukumo blinked her eyes open in a daze, only now realizing she'd actually fallen asleep just now. "...What happened? Are you done?"
"Not done, but let's call it here for today." Mahiru rubbed her aching shoulders and stood. "Miss Tsukumo, don't tell anyone about what happened today, or our deal is void. Also, I hope you can come back here tomorrow—my research isn't finished yet..."
Mahiru rambled on and on, and the more Yuki Tsukumo listened, the more something felt off—why did this spiel sound exactly like the kind of threatening line you'd only find in some NTR doujin?
The young woman quickly shook her head, dispelling those unwholesome thoughts from her mind.
"Once you're done researching me, then it'll be my turn to research you," she said.
Mahiru shot Yuki Tsukumo a glance. "Oh."
Unlike the way she researched Yuki Tsukumo, Yuki Tsukumo had no real means of observing Mahiru's Technique. At best, she'd drag in all sorts of people and have Mahiru help erase their Cursed Energy, nothing more...
If Mahiru didn't take the initiative to study, Yuki Tsukumo's research wouldn't really make much progress.
But Mahiru couldn't be bothered to point this out.
After the two made their arrangement, they each headed back.
Over the next three days, they met here again each day, with Mahiru unfurling her Domain to research Yuki Tsukumo's soul.
Over those three days, Yuki Tsukumo pretty much grew completely used to the feeling of being researched.
By the fourth day, Yuki Tsukumo could even eat instant noodles while serving as a model and being seen through top to bottom.
"By the way, you still haven't answered what I asked earlier." Yuki Tsukumo had just taken a bite, her words still a little muffled. "What do you mean you want to travel through time?"
Their relationship had gradually improved, too. They could chat idly with each other now.
"Exactly what it sounds like." Mahiru answered as she painted. "Your Technique can create a Black Hole, right? A Black Hole causes Temporal Turbulence, so it can be used for time travel."
"Ah, there is indeed a theory like that." Yuki Tsukumo set the instant noodles aside and stroked her chin. "But actually, isn't time travel itself a paradox?"
"Paradox? What do you mean?"
"That famous grandfather paradox. If you traveled to the past and killed your grandfather, then you'd never be born—but if you're never born, then your grandfather could never be killed by you." Yuki Tsukumo spread her hands. "So time travel actually doesn't work. The most a Black Hole can probably do is throw a person's sense of time into disarray."
Because it contradicted reality, such a thing couldn't exist.
What she said did make sense.
But Mahiru already knew: travel through space-time truly did exist.
At the same time, changes in the past world wouldn't affect the future—the past and the future were, in fact, two entirely different worlds.
In other words, the world Mahiru was in could actually be understood as another parallel world of Jujutsu Kaisen.
This parallel world called the "past" was simply lagging in its progression behind the world called the "modern era" that Mahiru had originally crossed over from.
Here, the grandfather paradox did not exist.
And so this raised yet another question—where was Satoru Gojo right now?
The Prison Realm sealing Satoru Gojo had also been swept into the Temporal Turbulence, so by rights he should have gone to another timeline as well—or rather, another parallel world.
But if there were countless parallel worlds... then couldn't Mahiru gather countless Satoru Gojos from countless parallel worlds and gang up on Sukuna together?
That would be wonderful.
From countless parallel worlds, countless Satoru Gojos with slightly differing personalities would converge on the site of the Shinjuku showdown. A single Sukuna, forced to face tens of thousands of Satoru Gojos—that scene would surely be exceedingly cruel.
But was that really how things actually were? "..."
Just then, the girl abruptly stopped her brush, as if she'd seen something shocking on the canvas, her eyes suddenly going wide. —Three. "There are three..."
"What?" Yuki Tsukumo hadn't caught it, and asked in confusion.
"The number of parallel worlds." Mahiru stared at the canvas, murmuring. "The number of parallel worlds is three. The past, the modern era... and besides those, there is one more."
Why three?
The number three was indeed special. Many philosophies and religions had long recognized the specialness of the number "three." In mathematical theory, the natural constant lying between two and three, close to three, was also special... but as for precisely why it was "three," no clear reason could be given for now.
Fact triumphs over any reasoning or eloquence.
After Mahiru simulated on the canvas the perfect Singularity she envisioned, she looked through the Singularity and did indeed see the existence of three worlds.
Three, and only three. One was the modern era she'd crossed over from before.
One was the past where she now was. And one more... The girl narrowed her eyes, leaned close to the canvas, and began to observe with the utmost concentration.
She gathered all her Cursed Energy and ran her Domain to its very limit. The pattern on the canvas before her, composed of chaotic colors, began to spin rapidly, and her gaze pierced through the vortex toward that third parallel world. "...!"
Like parting the clouds to see the sun. Like emerging from shadowed willows into bright blossoms.
After the colors faded and the scene returned once more to reality, Mahiru was able, from an extremely lofty vantage, to see the whole of this parallel world.
The girl saw the shattered ruins of Tokyo, and saw, amid the ruins, a near-endless number of Cursed Spirits entrenched.
The girl saw outer space beyond the Earth, saw on a distant other planet an alien race that likewise possessed Cursed Energy, warring with one another over matters of canals and politics.
"This is..." Could it be?? The girl realized. The girl was stunned. The girl hurriedly concentrated even harder, and so she saw more clearly.
She saw that within a certain Jujutsu Sorcerer family on Earth, a young girl and a young boy were bickering over their grandfather's ring.
She saw that upon that distant alien planet, an aura of utmost evil and chaos was entrenched there—
Black and red... and at the same time gold and white—evil Cursed Energy was surging up into the sky, staining the heavens throughout!!! "!!!"
Mahiru met its gaze.
It was an immeasurable symbol of death, an existence as terrifying as an abyss—the strongest to ever exist! Mahiru... met the gaze of the golden-haired Sukuna seated upon the throne!!
____
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