The world was too loud. It wasn't a noise measured in decibels; it was a screaming, vibrant cacophony of information that scraped against the inside of Arima Miyuki's skull.
She sat on a cold metal chair in a room that felt entirely too small. Her hands were cuffed to the table, though the metal felt fragile, like spun sugar. If she twitched her finger, she knew: she didn't know how she knew, she just did, that the molecular structure of the steel would twist and snap.
Three days ago, Miyuki had been a twenty-six-year-old archivist working in a dusty library in Kyoto. She liked silence. She liked order. She liked the smell of old paper. Then, a migraine had split her head open while she was cataloging Meiji-era texts, and when she opened her eyes, the world had lost its privacy. She could see the heat radiating from the lightbulb, the stress fractures in the concrete walls, and the terrifying, sludge-like energy oozing from the people guarding her.
"Subject is unresponsive," a voice crackled over the intercom.
Miyuki didn't look up. Her head hung low, her long, hime-cut black hair acting as a curtain, shielding the world from her eyes. Or perhaps, shielding her eyes from the world. The sheer volume of data flooding her brain was nauseating. Every atom was waving at her.
"I'm not unresponsive," she whispered, clutching the fabric of her torn cardigan, her own clothes, now stained with dust and sweat. "I'm just trying not to vomit."
The heavy iron door groaned open. The sudden influx of new energy signatures made her flinch.
"My, my. What a gloomy room for such a pretty lady."
The voice was light, playful, and dripped with an arrogance that instantly annoyed her. It cut through the static in her head like a knife. Miyuki slowly lifted her head.
Standing in the doorway was a tall man dressed in a high-collared, black uniform. He wore a black blindfold that covered his eyes, and his snow-white hair defied gravity. Behind him stood a woman with dark circles under her eyes and a cigarette dangling from her lips, Shoko Ieiri.
"Gojo," Shoko sighed, exhaling smoke. "Don't antagonize the anomaly before we even assess her. She's civilian."
"Anomaly? That's harsh, Shoko," the man named Gojo said, stepping into the room. The guards stiffened, bowing deeply, terrified of him. He waved them off. "Leave us."
The guards scrambled out. The door slammed shut.
Gojo Satoru strolled to the other side of the table, pulled out a chair, and straddled it backwards. He leaned in, the blindfold facing her directly. Miyuki felt a strange sensation. The air around him wasn't just air; it was… distorted. Infinite. He was a walking paradox.
"So," Gojo began, grinning. "The higher-ups are wetting their pants. They say a civilian woman in Kyoto erased a reckless driver's truck from existence without touching it, and then passed out. That you?"
Miyuki stared at his blindfold. "I didn't erase it. I just… pushed the space away. I didn't mean to."
"Pushed the space, huh? That's a very specific way to phrase it."
He reached out a hand. "Let's see those eyes. The report said they were weird. Are you hiding them because you're shy?"
"Don't touch me," Miyuki warned. The warning wasn't a threat; it was a plea. She couldn't control the buzzing under her skin. Her body felt like a pressurized vessel ready to burst.
Gojo ignored her. He was the strongest. He touched whatever he wanted. His long fingers reached for her chin to tilt her head up.
It happened in a fraction of a nanosecond. As Gojo's finger entered her personal space, Miyuki's survival instinct screamed. She didn't chant a spell. She didn't weave a hand sign. She just rejected his intrusion with every fiber of her being.
A pulse of neon, emerald light exploded from Miyuki. It wasn't a standard blast of energy; it was a gravitational distortion. The metal table didn't fly away; it crumpled into a ball of scrap instantly, pulled toward a singularity point right in front of her nose, then disintegrated into dust.
But Gojo didn't move.
His finger stopped a millimeter from her skin. The neon green energy swirled violently around his hand, trying to crush it, trying to pull him into the void, but it couldn't touch him. The Infinity between them flared, Gojo's invisible shield against her chaotic gravity.
For a second, time seemed to freeze.
Gojo Satoru, the man who had defeated the King of Curses, felt a genuine shiver run down his spine. Not from fear, but from shock.
An instinctive Lapse technique? he thought, his grin vanishing. She didn't construct the formula. She just felt it. And the composition... It's acidic.
Slowly, Gojo lifted his blindfold with his thumb. One crystal blue eye revealed itself, widening in disbelief.
Miyuki looked back at him, panting heavily. Her curtain of black hair parted. Her eyes were not brown, nor blue. They were a piercing, luminescent emerald green. Within them, the same crystalline structure as Gojo's eyes swirled, the Six Eyes.
"No way," Shoko whispered from the corner. "Gojo… those are…"
"The Six Eyes," Gojo finished, his voice low. "But... wrong. They're mutated."
Miyuki pulled back, trembling. "What did you do to me? Why did the table do that?"
Gojo stood up, dusting off his uniform. "I didn't do anything, Arima-san. You did. Come on."
"Come on? Where?"
"Outside. This room smells like fear and rusty iron." Gojo grabbed her arm.
"Wait, I demand a lawyer! I want to go ho—"
Before she could finish the word "home," the world twisted.
The Rooftop of Shibuya Scramble Square
The sensation was akin to being pulled through a straw. One moment, Miyuki was in a basement; the next, the wind was whipping her hair across her face, and the roar of the city assaulted her ears.
She stumbled, falling onto her hands and knees. The concrete was cold. She gasped for air, fighting the nausea.
"Breathe," Gojo's voice came from above. "The first warp is always rough."
Miyuki looked up. They were standing on the edge of a helipad, hundreds of meters above Tokyo. The city sprawled out endlessly, a grid of lights and moving cars. But to Miyuki's eyes, it was a nightmare. She saw the flow of electricity in the cables, the structural integrity of the bridges, and the dark stains of curses lurking in the alleyways below.
"Why are we here?" she cried out, backing away from the edge. "Take me back to Kyoto! I have work tomorrow! My cat is alone!"
Gojo leaned against the railing, unbothered by the wind or the height. He looked at her, and for the first time, there was no mockery in his expression—only a cold, hard truth.
"You don't have a job anymore, Arima Miyuki. You don't have a home."
"Don't say that!" she screamed. Tears pricked at her eyes. "I'm normal! I'm just sick!"
"Look at the city," Gojo commanded, pointing down. "Tell me what you see."
"I see... lights. I see people."
"Look deeper."
Miyuki squeezed her eyes shut, but the images burned through her eyelids. She opened them. She focused on a dark alleyway miles away. She saw a grotesque, bulbous creature wrapping itself around a salaryman. She saw the man's life force dimming.
"I see... monsters," she whispered, horrified.
"Exactly. And they see you," Gojo said, walking towards her. "You are a beacon, Arima Miyuki. You are a lighthouse in the middle of a dark ocean. If I send you back to your apartment, within an hour, every curse in Kyoto will come to eat you. And in your panic, you'll destroy your entire neighborhood. Your neighbors, your friends... your cat."
Miyuki froze. The reality of his words settled in her chest like lead. She remembered the truck driver. She remembered the table. She was a bomb.
"My life is over," she murmured, her voice breaking. She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering in her thin, torn cardigan. "I'm dead."
"The 'normal' you is dead," Gojo corrected. He crouched down next to her. The wind tousled his white hair. "But you're not dead. You've just... evolved."
He pointed to his own eyes.
"I know it hurts. I know your head feels like it's splitting open. It's too much information, right? Like trying to drink from a fire hose."
Miyuki nodded slowly, a tear sliding down her cheek. "How do you make it stop?"
"I can teach you," Gojo said softly. "I can teach you how to close the floodgates. How to build a dam. But you have to come with me. Not to a prison, but to a school."
Miyuki looked at him. He was terrifying, yes. But he was also the only thing in this chaotic, neon-colored world that wasn't hurting her eyes. His energy was clean. Perfect.
"Do I have a choice?" she asked.
Miyuki wiped her face, smearing soot on her pale cheek. She stood up, her legs shaking but holding firm. She looked at the city one last time.
"Fine," she said, her voice steeling. "But I have one condition."
Gojo raised an eyebrow behind his blindfold. "Oh? Negotiating already?"
"My cat comes with me," Miyuki demanded, her green eyes locking onto his. "I'm not leaving him behind in Kyoto to starve. If he doesn't come, I don't come."
Gojo blinked, surprised by her sudden ferocity over a pet. Then, a grin spread across his face.
"A cat? Usually, pets are strictly forbidden in the dorms..." He paused for dramatic effect, seeing Miyuki clench her fists. "But since I'm the one making the rules, who cares? We'll go pick up the furball on the way."
Miyuki let out a breath she didn't know she was holding, her shoulders relaxing slightly. "Good. Because he hates strangers, don't try to touch him."
"Priorities," Gojo chuckled. "I like that. Let's go."