Since everyone in the room knows that any strategy to defeat the Great Curses requires the use of Limitless, and the only living Limitless user on earth has been in the world for one whole decade, there's been an understanding since they found out about her that while it was going to happen, it was going to be awhile.

This date would put the battle shortly before her seventeenth birthday, around the age the former students were when things went wrong.

Sukuna brought the sorcerers up to speed on the new information he'd received:

First, that there weren't ten Great Curses, there was one, the 'Being,' who existed simultaneously in ten vessels at one time.

Second, the vessel that lorded over Japan, Alghera, represented half of the being's total power and consciousness, and the remaining nine shared the other half amongst themselves.

Third, the Being has fewer techniques than first estimated due to the fact that it only sucked up techniques of sorcerers killed within twenty-four hours or less of its birth.

Fourth, the Being has only one copy of each technique, and each technique can only be in one body at a time, and that if they can kill one before the being moves Limitless out of it, none of the others will have it.

"The fact there are small pieces of the Being all over the world is a pain in the ass. We know where we can find Alghera, but looking for nine other curses that are at unknown locations all over the world is a massive effort."

Gojo's idea was to find and trap one of the weak ones and kill it inside of a barrier, and while that would eliminate the Limitless challenge, once the Being knew it couldn't use cheats anymore, it would probably hide all of its vessels, including Alghera.

Sukuna didn't have the patience to hunt nine curses that would become scarce over the expanse of earth. He's sure they could make it happen; he just didn't want to do it.

As a Japanese person, he has never seen a desert with his own eyes and never wishes to see one. A place without water? What the actual hell? There was a saying in his time that their people withered if they ventured too far from the sea, and he fully, legitimately believes that walking around in the middle of a gigantic piece of land that goes on forever will be bad for his mental and physical wellbeing.

Everyone else in the room listens to Sukuna explain that they're not going to hunt the other vessels because he is basically a very delicate houseplant that needs to be spritzed with water once a day in order to continue living.

"Holy shit, you're such an old grouch," Yuji mumbles.

"Excuse me, I am making my presentation. I don't think you want to drag your baby that you're keeping a secret from me because you're petty across not one but every continent looking for curses?"

Megumi says, "Don't tell him anything. He doesn't care. He's just nosy."

Toge Inumaki creeps in through the door, looks at Sukuna, sighs, and then sits down at the table.

"Fish flakes."

Sukuna, still holding the marker, says, "I come here to lend my help, and you all treat me so rudely. Inumaki greets me with such high insult, unprompted. What did I do today, besides wake up and make a long journey to help all of you helpless, foolish children?"

He turns to write on the draw erase board, explaining his strategy in the dryest terms possible.

His handwriting is very neat, and Shoko notes that she once saw on a true crime show that serial killers often had really impeccable handwriting for unknown reasons. She almost mumbles he has serial killer handwriting, but…yeah?

Sukuna uses kanji that have disappeared from modern use, in some cases seven hundred years ago, and Maki says, "Are you serious? No one can read that."

"Oh no, former teenage mother who didn't finish high school has poor literacy?" Sukuna asks in reply, ignoring the fact that she didn't finish high school due to apocalypse and that having a child at a young age is not the reason she doesn't know extinct parts of Japanese language.

"Shut your mouth, you giant pile of dog shit," Megumi growls.

They're all a little protective of Maki for obvious reasons, and it really seems to piss her off.

The universe feels right when they are sending their worst vibes at him, and he turns back to the board, fixes his kanji, and says, "Just so you all know, Sayuri can read ancient texts with no problem. You lot could not be trusted with her superior intellect."

"She's being raised by a museum relic, of course she can," Kusakabe answers.

Sukuna answers, "Yuji, you came out of a museum relic, so what's your excuse?"

"Just shut up and write on the board. Nobody cares about you or anything you say, and the only reason you're alive Is basically a scheduling conflict," Maki replies.

He pretends to pout, but he is glad that they are all violently mad at him and the only thing keeping them in their seats is a shared sense of dread of the Being and the fact they really need to see what he's writing on the board.

The marker squeaks every second or two, and when Sukuna takes a step back, he says, "The Being is breaking the natural laws of the universe and the world of sorcery. It split its soul up, big no-no, and is holding a bunch of human techniques that don't belong to it. We can use this rule-breaking status to our advantage because the universe wants to eliminate violators and violations."

"Are you also a violator?" Maki asks.

"This isn't about me."

And certainly, every last person sitting in that room knew Megumi slapped unbreakable shackles on him that he will never escape from as a penalty for violating his natural state. He knows the universe isn't fond of what he's done; there's a soul-splitting sword and a kid who can punch souls out of people sitting at the table, and that's just not an accident of fate. Fate placed dangerous things near him so they could be used to eliminate him.

Sukuna says, "We have to be incredibly mindful of the fact that Alghera can control other cursed spirits, and we don't understand the limits of this ability. We know there are special grades and countless first grade curses out in the wild, so between now and then, we need to find and eliminate them, especially the ones around Tokyo. We can use Six Eyes to find them.

"We'll use three barriers, similar to what Kenjaku did here in Shibuya. Outermost barrier has three rules: no fully intact curse can enter. A fully intact curse can leave. Only humans with a specific symbol on their body can enter or leave.

"The innermost barrier will have the same rules.

"But there will be a middle barrier that only humans with the symbol can cross through, effectively creating a wall between the two containment barriers. We will throw these barriers on Alghera at Shinjuku so she is in the middle while Limitless is not inside of her body.

"Alghera will be trapped by Japanese sorcerers in a barrier without the anti-infinity field, but the condition of the barrier is that she can leave if she makes herself whole, and this would allow her to pick up Limitless and then kill us. Which is going to seem like the thing to do. Alghera is half of the Being. For her to be blocked from the anti-infinity skill around all of us is clearly going to result in the Being losing half of its body. The Being will summon the rest of itself to save Alghera."

Maki raises a hand. "Let's say we trap Alghera in the center. She summons the other nine. The first one that arrives hits the second barrier and the Being realizes there's basically a wall and it can't put its pieces together."

Sukuna has already accounted for this, and believes it is basically inevitable that to try and save Alghera, half of itself, the Being will bring all its parts in. But doing that when only one of them is protected by Limitless doesn't make any sense, and while curses do things that don't make sense, intelligent ones do practice self-preservation.

He believes the Being will therefore combine the other nine vessels that make up the other half of its power into one that is protected by Limitless and enter the barrier with the intent of meeting its other half, only to become trapped in the outer ring.

This will give them the entirety of the Being, split in half and trapped in two compartments in very close proximity, separated by a buffer zone its component vessels can't cross or send energy, power, or techniques through.

Sukuna has a lot of theories about how the Being actually functions as a creature, but according to Gojo, Alghera is the biggest vessel, so she holds the most techniques, except Limitless, which has to be rotated constantly due to the Gojo issue, which he does not disclose to the group.

So in the Alghera half, the Being will have half its cursed energy and most of the techniques. On the other half, half the cursed energy and fewer techniques, but one of them will be Limitless.

The intent is to split into two teams and fight them simultaneously, with Sayuri on the Limitless side so she can remove the anti-infinity barrier.

Sukuna also plans to have Yuji on one side with his soul-splitting punches and Maki on the other side with her soul-splitting sword. Sukuna tells them it will cause dissonance, but what he really means is that it'll probably cause a whole bunch of chaotic hell inside of the Being if different human souls trapped inside of it are being wobbled by two different people in two different fights at the same time.

He will put Yuji on the side that doesn't have Limitless because he is the only person besides Sayuri that might be able to detect Satoru Gojo's soul and Sukuna just doesn't want the drama during the fight. He will tell them they killed their teacher again after the fact and then laugh at them.

Sukuna also believes that simultaneous attacks will cause the Being to make errors. It might be able to live in more than one body at a time, but it still only has one mind. When Sayuri's eyes are fully open in sunlight, she can't taste food or smell because when too much information is being put into her brain, her brain simply doesn't process some of it.

It's probably the same for the Being. Managing ten bodies in a situation where no more than one is urgently in trouble probably isn't anything like having to run two separate bodies on full tilt knowing half of your existence will disappear the first time a mistake happens.

This plan relied on Sayuri, first and foremost, and required every single party present to level up their own abilities, as well as the addition of other sorcerers. It relied on the strength of the generation that was born during the cataclysm, Ryosuke and the other brats the Jujutsu Society was trying to raise in a most unfriendly world.

How Sukuna discovered the inner workings of the Being was a mystery to them, but they had no reason to question him.

There was going to be a day when the world was like this, and then the next, when it was something else.

They'd long wondered about how to deal with the fact that nine out of ten Great Curses were overseas, and they had no idea where or if there were sorcerers who could fight them. There was always this idea that eliminating them would be some massive global effort and it seemed so daunting.

But that wasn't going to be how things went, because Sukuna apparently needed to be moist in order to survive.

Seven more years seems like a lifetime, and yet, it's already been ten, so they're well past the halfway point on this sordid journey.

They are confident in his plan, and that's all he needs.

After the meeting, he looks for his child but finds she's airborne, high above the settlement.

Maki scrambles out and says, "Ryosuke! No! I've told you not to do that! That is dangerous!"

Ryosuke is flying around with his Nue wings high above the settlement with Sayuri riding on his back, nestled between the feathered wings, resting her chin in his hair.

Maki quickly says, "I'll get him down. He won't drop her."

Sukuna answers, "I'm not worried."

When they return to the ground, she slides off his back and he gets chewed out by his mom for taking someone flying.

Sukuna gives Sayuri some rather potent side eye which she does not notice because she's already running after Ryosuke to do something else.

Sayuri can fly, float, warp across small distances, stand in the air…her air superiority is such that if she and Ryosuke had a sparring match in the air, it would probably end with him crumpled on the ground in a boy-shaped hole. He is incredibly puzzled about why she would go flying with the boy? She can't reveal all her flight-related capabilities in front of the whole settlement, but it's not like going flying is the most interesting thing in the world for her either.

Sukuna finds this behavior puzzling, but he doesn't say anything.

He lets the brats hang out while he looks for Yuji's baby mama, still unaware of any material facts. Are they married? One night stand? Boy? Girl? There is a baby related to him somewhere in this settlement. He thinks about asking Sayuri, but after the incident that led to Sukuna finding out about the baby due to Six Eyes, the other sorcerers all basically asked her not to reveal things about them to him.

Sukuna finds this rude—it's so inappropriate when uninvited parties meddle in his guardianship.

While he's creeping around, he runs right into Megumi, who crosses his arms.

"What is wrong with you?"

"I'm not bothering anyone."

"You're looking for Yuji's kid, aren't you? And what are you going to do when you find the kid?"

"Stare, maybe pick it up in some weird and awkward way, and then as I hold it dangling in front of me, insult it. I will only hurt its feelings, of course."

Megumi says, "I'm not going to let you wander around here because you want to start a beef with a baby."

"Would that be too nostalgic for you? Stir up all those daddy issues, seeing another man who abandoned you feud with a kid?"

"You didn't abandon me."

Sukuna says, "If I remember correctly, I was trying to go and you were trying to make me stay in your life."

"Leave."

"The brat is socializing so she doesn't turn out weird."

Megumi says, "If you don't stop being a public nuisance, I'll tell everyone what happened to your original body."

"No one will ever believe you."

"Wanna bet?"

He pushes Megumi out of the way as he spots the woman he knows only as the baby mama further down the block and makes the discovery that she is carrying one child in her hip and is currently pregnant again.

Sukuna assumes this is one of those embarrassing family things where a couple somehow immediately gets pregnant months after having a baby, there's just such big super double whoopsie energy emanating from the situation.

The baby at her hip was wearing a blue puffy jacket and had thick pink hair.

He finds it rude, that Yuji made a whole person that looks like him. He didn't give anyone permission to use his face, to have his technique, to exist.

When he raises all of his arms and growls to scare the toddler, Kyo Itadori instead starts giggling uncontrollably, like he's never seen anything funnier in his very short little life, and Sukuna feels incredibly insulted.

Looking up at the mother, he says, "I remember you. You're the big girl from Yuji's junior high that came looking for him that one day after you got tall."

"Yuji asked me not to speak to you."

"No one cares what he thinks. He's a loser. Why is that thing laughing? Is something wrong with it?"

Yuko very carefully says, "He…thinks you're making a funny face at him. He likes funny faces. He doesn't know that's just how you look normally. He's just a baby."

Yuji appears in front of him like he manifested from the either. "Oh hell no."

"Your baby is mocking me."

"Good. I hope your day is ruined and that you think about this tomorrow, and it ruins that day too. Get lost," Yuji answers.

In seven years, they will settle things for good, but until then, Sukuna is a social nuisance that periodically appears and pisses everyone off and then leaves. Yuji's kids fall under Megumi's binding vow so he can't do anything to them, but his wife isn't, so the instant Sukuna's chains are broken, there's no way to predict the horrible things he will do.

But for now, he remains shackled, bored, nosy, and a source of mischief. Sayuri's existence means that he sometimes lingers in their space a lot longer than any of them want, but she needs time to spend time with sorcerers who aren't Sukuna.

Sukuna says, "Good work on your efforts to solve the population crisis. Just a hundred million more and we'll be back to normal in no time."

Yuji pushes Sukuna along the sidewalk, and says, "If I'm genetically the same as your son, and I have kids now. So you know what that makes you?"

"Don't say it."

"Let's find a place for you to sit down, Grandpa. Maybe get you some coffee and something to read while you wait. There's a group of old guys that hang out at the café and talk about how great things were in their time. You'll blend right in."

Sukuna has been laughed at by a child and called 'Grandpa' by his least favorite person, and he decides he would rather sit at the café and drink sugary drinks and eat pastries than continue to tolerate this disrespect.

When he finally collects the brat and takes her home that night, she's in quite a good mood.

At home, he finds himself quite relaxed and optimistic that there is a plan in place. They have a path forward, and the only thing that they all have to do is complete prerequisite tasks: sweeping powerful curses out of the way, improving their own abilities, and of course, growing up a generation of brats to be useful, which Sukuna has left to the Jujutsu Society.

When spring comes again, there is a random day in May when Sayuri meets him after breakfast for their usual training, but with a frown etched into her face. He's noticed she's been acting a little weird, and moving a little weird, flinching almost. She's not a flincher, and will take a punch in the jaw if doing it will give her an opening to swipe at him. He tends to not let her rely completely on Limitless because he doesn't want her to become so reliant on it that she suffers shock or disorientation when contact is made.

"Can we not train today?" she asks.

"Is something wrong?"

Sayuri looks a certain kind of way, like even her ponytail is sad because it's much lower than normal.

When she frowns, he asks, "Whatever it is, you can tell me."

"I'm sore…in my chest."

"From an injury?"

"Maybe?"

"Is there a bruise? Swelling?"

"I don't think so."

Sukuna puts a bare fingertip at the juncture of the hakamashita and traced down to her sternum, applying RCT. "Still sore?"

She squeezes her chest experimentally. "Ouch, yes."

One of his brows raises and he says, "Maybe you're developing? I read in a book that can be quite uncomfortable."

"Developing into what?"

"A woman? Were you expecting to turn into something else or what?"

"They're boobs?"

"Probably? You're kind of hard on your body, and I also punch you in the chest like a boy often. We'll probably have to change out our training routine."

Sayuri asks, "You're not going to tell me to get used to it and suck it up?"

"If you were a boy, I wouldn't tell you that you need to get used to being kicked in the balls. You're obviously going to turn into an adult, so this stuff is what it is."

With a sense of impending doom, Sayuri says, "I just don't want certain things to happen to me. You know, gross things."

Sukuna answers, "Are you talking about bleeding? It's not that big of a deal. That thing you did to your hand with the propeller blade was fifty times worse. People make a fuss over how gross menstruation is for dishonest reasons, so you shouldn't be bothered about it."

"Dishonest reasons?"

"A man can go out, hunt a deer. Use a knife to rip open its belly and neck to drain the blood and pull out the viscera. We hunt, you know that stuff gets everywhere. It smells like blood and if you're not careful, shit and all kinds of other stuff. Organs pile up at his feet while he stands in blood. Then he cuts the skin off the carcass, drags it home, cuts it into tiny pieces, and after he cleans up, he gets into bed with his wife and finds out she's lost a spoonful of blood over the course of the day, and pretends that he's never been more disgusted by anything in his life."

Sayuri says, "Why though?

"The easiest way to control a woman is to make her feel like shit. If he can do that, she won't complain about the fact he drinks too much or cheats on her or whatever. It's a whole thing that people do to women all the time."

"Most people aren't evil like you, you know."

Sukuna answers, "I can only speak for my kind, but most men are definitely evil in whatever way you want to define it, especially toward women."

"I don't think I believe that."

"It's fine if you don't believe it now. You will soon enough. You're an attractive girl, so the instant your body is vaguely woman-shaped, the creeps are going to come out for you. You've already been through a male acting foolish to you as a female, so you should already know."

She looks up at him and smiles. "You think I'm pretty?"

"It would be weirder if you didn't come out cute since both of your parents were beautiful women."

"Tell me more!"

"No. That wasn't even the point I was trying to make."

"Who cares about how men are all evil, let's talk about how pretty I am."

"Brat, go in the house and take advantage of your rest day."

She starts to head in and then says, "You can't call me a brat anymore. Now I'm a woman."

"Do you know what the adult version of Brat is?"

"What?"

"Brat."

Sayuri's steps are quite light as she heads inside and informs him that she can't wait to tell everyone that they know that he thinks she's pretty. He's sure the Shibuya crowd will be bewildered when they learn of this accidental admission.

Sukuna isn't really that surprised that things are starting to happen because he acquired a book and read it so he could plan accordingly. He's sure someone is going to have a laugh about him having to deal with a hormonal girl dealing with periods and sore boobs and mood swings.

Sometimes he thinks about what it means to raise a girl?

There was recently some child drama that was quite bothersome to him, the incident of the boy who misbehaved:

There is a random boy in Kyoto named Kenji Sato, who she knows because Sukuna occasionally lets her warp to Kyoto and interact with other kids now. Kenji Sato, a boy who is unextraordinary in every way, whose chief accomplishment in life is being the first son of the man who owns the bakery, apparently developed feelings for Sayuri.

Sayuri planned out her entire future with Ryosuke Okkotsu on the day that they met, and while Sukuna believes there is a very good chance all of that will fizzle out as they grow into adults, it isn't fizzled out now. She is very committed to the idea.

There was no room for Kenji Sato in her headspace, and when he asked her to be his girlfriend, she told him no.

When the slight burn of rejection was applied, aggressive male behavior bubbled out of him like he was an overheated pot. His first instinct was to immediately start tearing her down, telling her she wasn't as pretty as she thought she was, that she thought to much of herself, that she was a 'stuck up bitch.'

Kenji said to her that he spent all that time being nice to her, and that he deserved it because he had been working hard. The implication was that the only reason he ever spoke to her in the first place was for this purpose, and because he spent so much time working toward that goal, he felt entitled.

Kenji was obviously never good enough for Sayuri. There might not be official classes of people in the world, but Sukuna is sure that stupid little shit knew damn well that he wasn't good enough to lick the bottom of her shoe. He thought he could possess the prettiest girl around as his girlfriend if he executed a plan to make her like him.

After their confrontation, he told the other kids in their group that she asked him and he denied her because she was ugly, a tall freak, a stupid nerd, etc.,

Sayuri withdrew from the group entirely, and Sukuna wasn't really satisfied with that conclusion because it really seemed like she should retaliate. At the same time, he wasn't going to meddle in a quarrel between children.

Sukuna still feels this situation is without conclusion. He feels like Kenji rightfully deserves to have his ass beaten, but if Sukuna does it, it'll be a whole deal, and the brat will get mad.

He thinks he can probably get Ryosuke to beat up the kid by telling him how abusive he was toward Sayuri, but Sukuna wonders if he's really that messy, to cause children to fight each other.

Well, he knows he's that messy, and the more he thinks about it, the more he wants to watch it unfold with his own eyes as this unworthy little shit gets stomped on by someone who is better than him in any way, and then finds out that Sayuri doesn't have time for him because he has Ryosuke on her brain.

It is worth noting that he has run out of episodes of the Kardashian family saga, and he is perhaps lacking a certain amount of drama in his life that can be replaced by uninvited participation in this situation.

If Sayuri knew what was going on in his brain, she'd be so mad, especially since she says she's so emotionally mature and has moved on from the situation and Sukuna is the one who thinks it's not over until the little shit gets a foot up his ass.

Sukuna is genuinely excited about causing all this drama among the kids.

What will Ryosuke do when he finds out a rude little asshole called his beloved a bitch? While trying to steal her affections, no less. Ryosuke is a very good boy, but Sukuna is sure he's got his own toxic boy tendencies simmering somewhere deep inside. Maybe he'll become possessive or territorial or filled with rage.

And Kenji, what will he do when confronted with a man that is in every way his superior, hitting him for being disrespectful to a girl he was never worthy of in the first place? How will he process the fact that she didn't want him because he's worthless garbage compared to the man she already has?

Finally, Sayuri, what will she do when the boys fight over her? She will probably blame Sukuna for this because it will literally be his fault. At the same time, she's going to be mad at Ryosuke for being violent when she already decided to be mature and take the proverbial high road, but also probably on some deeper level, happy that he fought for her.

The person who will be maddest of all is Maki, because she hates Sukuna for many reasons that did not need to be rehashed; it will not be the first time he has made a little trouble in her life, after all. However, getting her son to beat up a boy without cursed energy over a girl is very extra and she is not going to be happy with her son or with Sukuna.

Sukuna is genuinely excited about causing all this trouble between a group of ten-year-olds.

When he heads inside, he moves the book he read about female puberty from his study and leaves it on her bed. Sayuri is just very much into obtaining information on her own from reliable sources, so this is the best way. If she has questions, he's sure she'll ask an actual woman since two of them live on the property.

He has a much larger book that is all about sex, but he doesn't plan on giving it to her until a little later. What he remembers about being a kid is that until you are completely full of hormones, knowledge about sex is incredibly weird and gross, a disgusting thing a person can't help but be incurably curious about.

When she is further along on this peculiar journey, maybe in a couple of years, he will give it to her. That seems right to him.

There are big things happening that have nothing to do with any of this, as the brat has more or less fully fleshed out an ability within Limitless: Wormhole.

It sounds simple, but how it actually works is that she connects two areas of spaces that are not contiguous in reality and moves matter or energy through the plane of reality, which causes it to appear in the other place.

The wormhole manifests as two spherical floating objects that have a spinning ring of energy around them. One is the entry point, armed with the ability to attract, the other, the exit. An object that is sucked into the entry point will be hurled out of the exit point. She can freely move them around at fairly quick speeds.

Wormhole is nasty work because in some ways, it almost makes her similar to a summoner because Sukuna has to keep track of where she is, and she can move very fast, as well as where both halves of Wormhole are.

Wormhole currently isn't big enough to pick up a person, but she can pick up rocks, broken glass, gnarled rebar, and hurl it at him at high speeds. She used it against one of his slice attacks while sparring and the attack came out behind him and hit him in the back.

The way that the Gojo clan traditionally used the power to attract is by simply ripping things apart with it, which is useful, but he was convinced that if he let the brat just play with the technique, she'd cook something better.

At entry level, the Blue skill is probably ten times better, but once mature, it's hard to imagine that Wormhole wouldn't be superior since she will be able to move enemies or allies wherever she wanted. She'll be able to move attacks too; if Sukuna could send Dismantles directly at an opponent's face and into Wormhole and they'd come from two different locations. If Sukuna and Wormhole's endpoint were on opposite sides, it would create the simple but devastating problem that the opponent can't keep his eyes on both at once.

She'll be able to use debris or environmental elements to attack, or defensively.

Sukuna is incredibly pleased with the development, and feels a great sense of pride and accomplishment when she stands in front of him with her little monsters orbiting around her, waiting to be sent out, although keeping them very close makes it a terrible pain in the ass to try and fight her at melee—it's like having three people in a tiny space and suddenly she'll throw a punch toward his face through Wormhole and her fist will come out and hit him in the back of the skull.

Sukuna finds the skill quite delightful, but he knows all her enemies are going to hate fighting her. The Wormhole spheres are not invisible, but depending on the situation, they can be a little difficult to see.

Life is good, and Sukuna is mostly pumped about things, so he doesn't mind a little turbulence due to the early signs of puberty. Who cares, she has Wormhole?

He spends much of his afternoon considering the most technical details for the barriers they will use while fighting the Being.

One of the clear perils of using these barriers is that if he's not extremely careful, if he doesn't test and formulate everything perfectly, the 'no partial souls' rule will hit him. If they win and he accidentally locks himself in a barrier he can't escape from, the Jujutsu Society will get him.

And secondly, if any of them see the actual technical sorcery that goes into this, they might figure out how to make a barrier just to trap Sukuna.

This includes making sure the brat doesn't see anything. She's receiving a very complete and thorough sorcery education, and so he knows she would understand if she saw the runes because he is her teacher. And no matter how well things are going right now, when the Being is gone and he starts killing sorcerers, they're going to end up on opposite sides.

Whether they ever fight each other or not, she will become his enemy someday.

At night he settles in front of the television, trying to find a new show to get into.

Not every reality show was worthy of his time. He'd watched a few true crime shows, but he finds it incredibly tedious to think about killing and trying to not get caught. It's draining.

There is a new channel in English.

He clicks on, and then, he remains.

When Sayuri comes out of her room because she can't sleep due to the tv, she looks down at him, where he is sitting on the sofa, staring past a few empty beer bottles on the coffee table at the tv.

"Are you still up?"

"Mhmm."

"What are you watching?"

"I don't even know how to describe this."

She tiptoes downstairs, and she has never seen what he is watching either.

Sukuna says, "So in the beginning, everyone was crying because they said this man died, and they brought him out in a coffin. Like into the ring. Brought the coffin into the fighting ring? And this other man was gloating about killing him. There are a lot of people in the crowd, and they were all cheering, so we would think the man in the coffin probably deserved it? But then he jumped up out of the coffin in a costume and started to fight his supposed killer. Crashing through tables and hitting each other with metal chairs…it seems like someone would remove those before a professional sporting match?

"Then there was a plot twist, where the guy who came in using the coffin and the supposed killer were just setting a trap for someone else, and a beautiful woman came out and begged them to stop fighting over her, because all of these men have supposedly been sleeping with her. She said she would go with whoever wins the match.

"But these men have been vigorously fighting for two hours and despite hitting each other with bats, chairs, slamming each other in ways that should result in internal decapitation, and all sorts of other apparent injuries, no one has needed a doctor except one guy, but when the doctor came out, he ripped off his doctor clothes and was half naked with a cape and he started choking him."

In this house, a one thousand year old Japanese man sits in front of a television, watching a rerun of an American wrestling match from over twenty years ago without any context or having heard of this ever before in his life.

Sayuri sits on the sofa next to him and watches it for five minutes and feels that nothing that has ever existed in the world was as dumb as this.

"This is obviously fake. It's stupid."

"When you wanted to watch your stupid little show about sad midgets throwing unwanted jewelry in a volcano, I didn't complain. That was stupid. This entertains me, and that is its intended purpose," he answers, never taking his eyes off the screen.

She answers, "Not midgets…that's an offensive word we don't say. Hobbits. Fictional people who are short in stature. I can't believe you're sitting here watching men in their underwear fake fight, and you're going to criticize fine literature."

Sukuna continues to stare forward, muttering, "Salvation and redemption allegories are stupid. But I bet hobbits would be excellent for eating. They're so small you could probably raise them for meat. Just dig some holes for them to live in and throw some fruits at them once a day."

"You thought about cannibalizing fictional people?"

"Eating a hobbit wouldn't be cannibalism, would it?"

Sayuri says, "I'm going back to bed. Can you please turn the volume down?"

"No."

She grumbles and heads upstairs, and Sukuna continues watching the wrestling channel for hours.

The next day, after some training, while she's doing her normal academics with Shiori, he settles in with his lunch and when he attempts to turn on the wrestling channel, finds it has been blocked by parental controls and he can't turn it on without a four digit code.

Sukuna is about to express a lack of amusement over this turn of events, but a messenger comes to the door letting him know Maki has come to town for scheduled business and brought her son so he could visit his little friend.

Sukuna is so excited that Ryosuke just appeared on his own and he can execute his plan that he decides that at the moment, he doesn't care that the child used technology to keep him from his new favorite source of idle entertainment.

One thing he is sure of is that at the end of the day, the brat is going to be in a much worse mood than him.