Inside, the hallway is too quiet. The air feels thick, pressed down by the weight of too many gazes. A few students linger at the far end, pretending not to watch. A teacher—some young man with tired eyes—stands rigid near the stairwell, hand hovering near the holster at his hip as if he expects violence to erupt from the very floorboards.

You stand alone.

Water drips from the hem of your sleeve, forming a small puddle beneath your shoes. The damp fabric clings cold to your skin, but you don't move to wring it out. The principal's office door is closed. You've been waiting for fifteen minutes.

A whisper drifts from behind cupped hands.

Then everything shifts.

Not gradually. Not naturally. All at once, the cursed energy flooding the corridor hits you like a physical wave—so dense it makes your lungs seize, your fingers curl. The lights overhead flicker, and the shadows in the room seem to stretch, grow longer, heavier.

Students freeze mid-step. The teacher by the stairwell goes pale, hand wrapping around his weapon as his breath catches.

Low laughter breaks the silence. It curls through the air like smoke, ancient and amused, carrying weight that makes the floorboards creak in protest.

He stands at the end of the corridor, hands loosely in the pockets of a uniform that doesn't quite belong to him. The borrowed body is the same one you've seen in file photos, wanted posters, battlefield reports. Pink hair, a build that's almost ordinary. But the eyes...

Crimson. Burning. Impossibly old. Eyes that have watched empires crumble, watched gods die, watched you once—across a table, in a ruined house, when the sky was on fire.

Everyone else sees a monster.

You just see him.

The entire hall holds its breath.

Sukuna steps forward. Once. Twice. The cursed energy thickens with every movement, pressing against the walls so hard that a window frame groans under the pressure. The lights shudder. A student near the back takes a step back.

But Sukuna doesn't look at them. He stops directly in front of you, close enough that the heat of his cursed energy radiates against your skin. Close enough that you catch the faint scent of rain and iron clinging to the borrowed body.

<Narrator>: At the far end of the corridor, a figure leans against the doorframe, broad shoulders casual, white hair almost glowing in the dim light. One hand lifts to lower the black fabric covering his eyes.

Blue. Blindingly blue. Satoru Gojo watches the scene with the sharp stillness of someone who has just noticed that the pattern is wrong. His smile stays fixed, but it doesn't reach his voice.