What is a typical day like for Satoru Gojo on the island?
At six in the morning, after the rising bell rings, he stays in bed for at least ten minutes.
Then, his cold and heartless roommate plucks him up like a white radish. He sluggishly washes and dresses, remains completely deaf to the instructor's brainwashing morning lecture, maintains the poise of a noble family, and devours his breakfast with elegant manners.
Next comes the day-after-day of slacking through physical and endurance training, followed by various courses on cold and hot weapons and an extensive curriculum on assassination techniques. In the process, he demonstrates to everyone the meaning of a photographic memory, becoming the target of envy, jealousy, and lamentations about the unfairness of life.
His happiest moment is the midday break.
Due to his relentless demands—both overt and subtle—he successfully convinced Tequila to open a "green channel" for him. No—a grand channel leading straight to desserts.
Since the island is located in Italy, thousands of miles away from Japan, local specialties like Edamame Zundah Kikufuku are out of the question.
However, given the circumstances, one can settle for the next best thing. As everyone knows, Italy is a paradise for sweet lovers.
Tiramisu of all flavors, rich almond biscotti, cannoli filled with sweet cream, bouncy panna cotta, crispy sfogliatella, fluffy Pandoro, Sicilian Cassata cake, and melt-in-your-mouth chocolate truffles...
Just the names alone are enough to make one salivate.
They are flown in at great expense, lining up to enter Satoru Gojo's stomach. Oh, and Kurosawa Jin's as well.
This level of "doting" treatment makes Gojo a bit curious about his actual relationship with the Boss.
Under the influence of a certain "high-school-level dessert alien," even Kurosawa Jin, who usually had no taste for sweets, has gradually grown accustomed to the lingering sugary taste on his tongue at noon.
Then comes the afternoon.
Afternoons are sometimes for academic classes. During these agonizing hours, Gojo often invents a myriad of ways to kill time. He either forces Kurosawa Jin to play Gomoku or draws turtle heads on paper. If he's in the mood, he might listen to the lecture and then ask some tricky, unanswerable questions to amuse himself by watching the teacher's expression of repressed fury.
But mostly, it's combat sparring, tactical drills, and team confrontations.
Sounds interesting, right?
But for Gojo—whom no one dares to challenge—even if someone is drawn to fight him, they usually just surrender outright. This leaves him with no choice but to trade moves with Kurosawa Jin.
Everyone knows that if you're drawn against anyone else, you at least have a fighting chance. If you're unlucky enough to run into that absurd freak Gojo, you'll definitely just get beaten—and beaten badly. So, why waste the energy?
Over time, it became like this:
"Ah~ I'm bored to death."
Gojo lets out his eighty-eighth sigh of the day at the training base.
"Hey, the red-haired one over there. Can you twist your head 360 degrees for me to see?"
The freckles on the red-haired boy's face nearly fall off from sheer terror.
He trembles violently: "Gojo-kun, th-this... no, no... I'd die, wouldn't I?"
"Is there really a need to be that scared?"
Gojo props his cheek on one hand, speechless. "It's not like I'm going to eat you."
The red-haired boy scrambles away in a panic.
Gojo seriously wonders what he ever did to make them this afraid.
It's not like it was much.
Just knocking out some teeth, dislocating some arms, breaking some legs, and making sure everyone who provoked him spent a month or two in the infirmary.
Hmm... has he already been branded a bully? That would be a huge misunderstanding.
Even though he looked down on the weak from childhood through high school, Satoru Gojo essentially has a kind and pure heart.
Extreme self-confidence and extreme ego are also a form of purity, aren't they?
Forget it. What those dregs say or do has nothing to do with him. He wouldn't spare them a glance anyway. However...
That doesn't mean he won't intervene if he sees something happening.
He originally intended to slip out for some fresh air, but certain information transmitted by the Six Eyes made him frown.
...
Kasumi Shimizu didn't get enough to eat today. Again.
So hungry. So hungry. I want to eat.
She has long been accustomed to the hunger in her gut. After all, even if she achieves decent results in combat drills and classes and receives rewards from the instructor, the food and daily necessities are always snatched away by groups of boys.
When did things start becoming like this? She can't remember.
Perhaps it's because there are so few girls in the training camp, or because Japanese people are easily marginalized by Europeans and mixed-race kids, or maybe it's just that her constant self-deprecation and cowardice are annoying...
Slowly, it escalated from stealing some of her food to stealing most of it, then to physical bullying. Because she was submissive and alone, she became a punching bag for them to trample at will.
Today was no exception—in fact, it was worse than she imagined.
"Hey, fight back! You stupid woman."
"Look at that dumb face. It's hilarious."
"You really thought you could rank higher than me in the drill?"
There are four or five of them. Even if she resists, it's useless. Better to just accept it; at least they won't hit her harder for making them angry.
Fists and feet fall like rain on her small body. It hurts, but she doesn't want to scream.
Kasumi's vision blurs.
The past she thought she had forgotten suddenly rushes back like a tide.
When Kasumi was three, her parents sold her to human traffickers. She eventually passed into the hands of an outer member of the Organization and, after years of training, entered this assassin preparatory camp. Most people can't remember much from age three, but she remembers it vividly—including the look of desperate relief on her parents' faces to be rid of the "trouble."
Her buyer told her that her extraordinary talent for cold weapons was her only value. Although she felt grateful to the Organization for letting her live, she often wondered: since her parents treated her like trash to be thrown away, what reason was there to live? Why was she even born?
Unlike most people on the island, her eyes weren't fixed on the goal of defeating others or earning a codename.
She had fallen into an endless maze of confusion.
Living is so exhausting.
So, it's fine to just die, right?
If I close my eyes, I won't have to think so much.
"Alright, stop. If we hit her more, she'll die. We won't be able to explain it to the instructor."
"Tch..."
"By the way... don't you think she has a pretty good figure?"
"She's beaten to a pulp and you're still interested?"
"What does it matter?"
Some precocious boys with nowhere to vent their energy often targeted their female peers. Usually, the instructor forbade private brawls and the dorms were separate, but having finally caught a girl who didn't even dare to resist—a girl who didn't look like a qualified assassin at all—they began to have dark thoughts.
Looking at the hand about to reach for her chest, Kasumi Shimizu finally had a reaction.
She cried.
"No... don't do this..."
Clearly, she had no goal for living. Clearly, she felt it didn't matter if she died like this.
But... why did her eyes feel so bitter?
[Someone... anyone... save me.]
"Hey, you trash who are worse than ants."
A cold voice rang out.
The white-haired boy stood there like a ghost, hands in his pockets, his face expressionless.
"What do you think you're doing?"