Sendai City, the highest point atop a skyscraper.
Up here, hundreds of meters above the ground, one careless step and the gale could peel you right off the roof. It was dangerously easy to get swept away.
Normally, this place was not open to the public.
And yet today, two people who had no business being here were standing in plain sight.
Both had white hair.
One wore a blindfold, his hair tied back, carrying that roguish, unserious kind of handsomeness that made it hard to tell if he was joking even when he was silent.
The other on the opposite side.
Well... more accurately, he should be a high schooler.
Compared to a man, the boy still looked a touch too young, the edges of him not yet sharpened by time. And next to that shamelessly playful good looks, he came off lazier, like nothing in this world could really get him to care.
He propped his cheek in one hand, eyes bright as starlight, and yet full of boredom. Every so often he yawned, looking like he could not be bothered by anything at all.
They were from Tokyo. Their names were Gojo Satoru, and Gojo Shun.
In the eyes of ordinary people, the name Gojo Satoru was not especially striking, maybe even something you had never heard before.
But in another world, the world of jujutsu sorcerers, that name was thunder. A legend.
As for Shun, he could be considered Satoru's nephew.
Today, the two of them had come to Sendai City to investigate a cursed spirit responsible for tens of thousands of deaths.
A special-grade monstrosity with a strange, rare ability, one that could create multiple clones of itself and was notoriously difficult to kill.
In the past few years since it appeared, it had kept murdering without pause.
Worse, it did not even bother hiding. Sometimes it would cause hundreds of deaths at once, openly and brazenly, like the world itself was its hunting ground.
For events this vicious, sorcerers would never just stand by.
Or rather, the cursed spirit's actions had already become a slap across their faces, a direct provocation.
Sorcerers were dispatched again and again, launching purges and encirclements.
Without exception, every team was slaughtered in return.
And so, its danger rating kept climbing, upgraded and upgraded until it was recognized as a special grade.
Yet even after reaching that point, the sorcerers still did not know what the thing truly looked like, nor what its full abilities were.
It was humiliating, humiliating to the core.
Of course, after losing so many people, they did manage to scrape together a little something.
Rumor said the cursed spirit's pupils bore the mark of a clock. And the weapon it used also seemed to "match" a clock, as if the two belonged together.
Could it be a cursed spirit that controlled time?
If that was true, then it was far too terrifying.
To salvage the situation, and to stop everything from collapsing further, the higher-ups finally sent out their trump card, the monster among sorcerers: Satoru.
As for why his nephew, Shun, had been dragged along, that was Satoru's own arrangement.
Shun spoke with a faintly deadened tone. "Uncle, why'd you call me in for your mission?"
"And this is a special grade cursed spirit. What if I screw up and get killed?"
His mouth said he was worried about dying, but his eyes did not show even a thread of fear.
Was it confidence in Satoru, or confidence in himself?
"Shun," Satoru said, wearing the expression of a man who believed there was nothing left to fear. He patted Shun on the shoulder. "With your uncle here, how could you possibly be in danger?"
"That's not what I mean. I'm asking why you had to drag me out here."
Shun's head was starting to ache.
His uncle was absurdly strong, strong in a way that bordered on unreasonable.
But as a person, he was also hopelessly unreliable.
Like now. Shun had been tracking a cursed spirit of his own, and today he could have finished it off and clocked out.
Instead, he got grabbed by Satoru and hauled over here.
Great. The vacation he had planned after work was gone. Just like that.
"Obviously I'm letting you broaden your horizons," Satoru said, smiling, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. "The cursed spirit we're dealing with this time isn't simple."
As he said it, a strange excitement leaked off him, something not quite normal.
Shun gave him a side glance.
Yeah. With that look on his face, there was no chance Shun would be resting today. Not even a little.
But still, what was the real reason he had to come? "Broaden your horizons?"
Even a dog would not believe that line.
Shun lifted his head, letting the wind rake over him.
This wind is insane. I want to go home.
Then, suddenly, in the high sky directly in front of the skyscraper, the clouds began to twist, warping like something was kneading them from the inside.
At their center, an "eye" slowly formed.
Both of them could clearly feel it.
The space there was trembling.
Shun stared at the center of the cloud layer and spoke. "Uncle, why do I feel like this cursed spirit's entrance is a little… over-the-top?"
"It comes with a built-in space quake."
To be honest, Shun was a little stunned.
"Anything that shows up with special effects is either the main character or the boss. Maybe I should just slip away."
A gentleman does not stand beneath a crumbling wall.
If you can slack off, you should slack off.
That was Shun's life creed.
Hearing that, Satoru's mouth curved slightly. He turned to look at Shun beside him. "Shun, are you sure about that?"
"What's there to be unsure about?"
Shun curled his lip.
And right then, the clouds exploded, as if someone had detonated the sky.
A shockwave-like tremor erupted from the heights.
Maybe because it was so far from the ground, it did not cause massive damage down below.
But the skyscraper began to sway.
It gave people the illusion it could crack apart at any moment.
And yet Shun and Satoru remained steady where they stood, as if the shaking world had nothing to do with them.
Uncle and nephew had already risen to their feet, eyes locked on the center of the clouds where something was about to emerge.
The cursed spirit currently judged to be the most evil.