Knock, knock.
Hearing the sound at her door, Shoko felt a surge of irritation. More work already?
"Come in," she called out. Though she was reluctant, she remained professionally polite.
"Yo."
A hand waved in greeting. Looking at the woman with heavy dark circles under her eyes, Hasegumo almost didn't recognize her. "Is that you, Shoko?"
"You don't even recognize me anymore?" Seeing it was Hasegumo, Shoko reached for a cigarette, tapped it twice against the desk, and popped it into her mouth. She flicked her lighter. Puff. "Finally finished your Gratitude Punches?"
"I have." Hasegumo walked closer to inspect her. Ten years had passed, and the woman before him looked nothing like the cute girl from his memories.
"You've changed so much. You definitely look the part in that white coat," he said, reaching out to pinch her cheek. "You've lost a lot of weight—no baby fat left at all—and those dark circles are serious."
"Save the commentary. You promised to help me after graduation, but then you went off on your own to punch the air for a decade." Shoko tried to swat his hand away like she was hitting a mosquito.
He dodged, causing her to accidentally slap her own cheek. "You bastard!"
"Hehe." Hasegumo flashed a successful prankster's grin, the kind that made people want to punch him. He pulled up a chair and sat down. "To me, those ten years felt like they passed in a single day. But looking at you, I can finally feel the weight of that time."
"Must be nice. You haven't changed at all; it's actually enviable." Looking at the young man who still looked exactly like the teenager from ten years ago—now wearing a custom-tailored Jujutsu High uniform—the awkwardness born of their long silence vanished.
Still, she was miffed about the accidental slap. "I swear, you're starting to act more and more like that idiot Satoru."
"Purely your imagination." Hasegumo tilted his head, a sunny smile on his face. "I'll be here every week to help you from now on. I'm a man of my word."
"I hope so." Taking a final drag and crushing her cigarette out, Shoko pulled out her phone. "Hotpot tonight?"
"You bet."
"Haibara hasn't changed all that much."
Shoko had notified everyone that Hasegumo's training was over. That evening, the group—who had been scattered by work and hadn't gathered in ages—reunited to celebrate his return.
"Gumo-senpai! Uncle Gen told me to tell you to visit when you have time." Yu Haibara was the first to take a seat. He still had that spirited look, with big eyes and thick eyebrows, though he was slightly more mature than the boy in Hasegumo's memory. A fine stubble was beginning to show on his chin.
Haibara, who was originally destined to die during a mission with Kento Nanami, had his fate changed when Hasegumo intercepted him to keep an eye on Suguru Geto, leaving that specific mission to Satoru Gojo.
Since Hasegumo began his training, Haibara had become a regular at the Shingen-ryu dojo. He continued to exorcise curses while training under "Uncle" Gen Ijichi. Currently, he was a Grade 1 sorcerer and, like Hasegumo once did, had participated in national martial arts tournaments two years prior.
"Got it. I'll head back in a few days," Hasegumo said, swishing a piece of tripe in the boiling pot. "So, did you win the championship?"
"Master Makoto Kyogoku was competing. How could I possibly win?" Haibara laughed, scratching the back of his head. "Uncle Gen told me that if I didn't use Cursed Energy, making it to the semi-finals was already a success."
"Your Shingen-ryu is getting weaker every generation." Satoru Gojo had just arrived, catching the tail end of the conversation. He grabbed a can of cola, sat down, and immediately began his mockery. "You're a sorcerer, yet your hand-to-hand is worse than a civilian's."
"If the ten-years-ago version of you entered, you probably would've gotten the crap beaten out of you," Hasegumo retorted. He turned to look at Satoru. "You don't seem to have aged either, though those shady-looking sunglasses are gone."
"The power of the Six Eyes is still growing. That cursed tool couldn't block enough anymore." Satoru adjusted his black blindfold and immediately began his plan to eat half-cooked meat. "So I decided to just cover them completely. It keeps me from receiving too much useless information."
"You should consider martial arts. If you reached my level, no amount of information would be too much to process." Hasegumo wasn't bragging. In the state of Shindigunken, the amount of information he processed in a split second would take a normal person months to handle.
"I'll pass. I can just use Reverse Cursed Technique to keep my brain fresh during combat." Satoru had no desire to live like a wild man in the woods.
Haibara raised his hand to chime in. "Gumo-senpai, I've been training for over ten years and I still haven't reached the realm of Shindigunken."
"Is that so? I only reached it because of the pressure from Master Makoto Kyogoku. If I were to teach you..." Hasegumo pondered for a moment. "Let's spar sometime soon. At my current level, I might be able to give you a breakthrough."
"Stop talking about things no one else understands." Shoko, surrounded by booze and cigarettes, sat with two empty chairs beside her. She poured herself a drink amidst a cloud of smoke. "Is that everyone?"
"We're still missing—"
"My apologies. My mission ran long today, so I'm late." A mature, slightly raspy male voice interrupted.
Hasegumo turned to see a blonde man standing beside him. He wore a meticulous suit and tie, and his neatly swept-back hair screamed "mature professional."
"Who's the old guy?"
After years of living in this world, these people were no longer just characters from an anime to Hasegumo; they were trusted comrades he could joke with and rely on. He had a specific mental "tag" for each of them.
However, Kento Nanami wasn't wearing his classic tactical goggles, and the contrast between his current look and his teenage self was too great. For a moment, Hasegumo failed to recognize the man who once thought jujutsu was crap, went into finance, decided labor was also crap, and eventually returned to being a Grade 1 sorcerer.
"Calling me 'old' is a bit much." Nanami, a veteran of the corporate world, didn't mind Shoko's smoking. He pulled out the chair next to her that no one else dared to touch. "Gumo-senpai, it's me. Kento Nanami."
"You guys... haha! Cough, cough!" Shoko laughed so hard she choked on her drink. "Actually, everyone has become quite mature."
She looked over at Hasegumo and Satoru, who were currently stuffing their faces. They looked like they belonged to a completely different generation than Nanami. "Except for these two. It's like they haven't aged a day. Do heartless idiots just not grow old?"
"That seems to be the case." Nanami lit a cigarette and began his critique. "Being Special Grade sorcerers yet idling about all day... you have absolutely no dignity as seniors."
Hasegumo and Satoru were currently "sparring" with their chopsticks. The speed of their collisions was enough to dazzle everyone at the table.
Ultimately, the martial arts master prevailed. Not only did Hasegumo protect his tripe, but he also snatched two beef balls from Satoru's side of the pot.
"Special Grades have to take responsibility, Satoru." As the winner, Hasegumo popped a beef ball into his mouth and spoke through a mouthful of food. "Speaking of Special Grades, I felt like someone was missing. Has Suguru not come back yet?"
At the mention of Suguru Geto, the group suddenly had plenty to complain about.
"That guy only comes back for a few days around New Year's to visit," Satoru grumbled, sounding like a jilted best friend. "The rest of the time, he's hanging around with that drifter, Yuki Tsukumo."
Still, Satoru knew that Suguru choosing a different path over the idea of killing all non-sorcerers was the best possible outcome.
"Being called a 'drifter' by someone like you is truly tragic." Shoko was fearless; even when facing the "Strongest," her tongue remained sharp. "You're not much better."
"Please, don't say that." Nanami unexpectedly defended Satoru.
"See? See!" Satoru was touched and was about to share some of his medium-rare duck blood with Nanami.
"Aside from taking a vacation every week, dumping missions that happen right next to him onto his juniors, and not answering his phone because he's playing games all night..." Nanami was merely laying the groundwork. "He does do quite a bit—like teaching the students at the school."
"I heard Geto-senpai set up a research institute in the States. On the surface, they're doing biological research," Haibara said, trying to steer the conversation back. "But in reality, it's all about Cursed Energy and its relationship with non-sorcerers."
"That's good then." Hasegumo asked for two more cans of cola, intending to make up for all the years he spent without it. "It's just a shame I can't see what he looks like now."
"Even if the biology research is a cover, they've actually produced some incredible results." Haibara pulled out his phone—a modern touchscreen model that looked just like the ones in Hasegumo's memories. He swiped the screen to show a clear photo of a handsome, short-haired man in a white lab coat. "He even won a Nobel Prize the year before last. I think it was related to treating some disease."
"Pfft—!" Hasegumo spat out a mouthful of cola. The sheer absurdity of it hit him hard. "For real? You're telling me his true talent was scientific research?"
"It's true." Shoko handed him a napkin to clean himself up, offering an objective assessment. "If you are a once-in-a-ten-thousand-years martial arts genius, Suguru's status in biology is exactly the same."
"It would be even better if he didn't ask us for a vial of blood every few months," Nanami added, clinking his glass with Shoko's before draining it. There were a few goji berries visible at the bottom of his glass.
As the saying goes, "Love what you do." Even if Nanami thought jujutsu was just a slightly better-smelling pile of crap than corporate work, he was a responsible man. He considered the long-term benefits: a reliable new combatant would ease everyone's workload.
"Gumo-senpai, how strong are you exactly now? Are you at the Special Grade level?"
"If you ask me, he was already there at graduation," Satoru answered for him, leaning back with his legs crossed. "This guy just has a weird idea that you aren't Special Grade unless you can perform a Domain Expansion, so he never applied for the rank."
"It shouldn't be a problem now, though it's a bit different from the 'cool' Domain I imagined." Hasegumo scratched his head. "By the way, are there still a lot of Special Grade curses appearing lately?"
He looked at Satoru with a smirk. "If there aren't any suitable missions, maybe beating another Special Grade sorcerer would be enough for my evaluation?"