Reincarnated as an Uchiha, Do I Have to Fight Sukuna Too? [5]

Water splashed in the potholes as a tall black silhouette and a tall white one crossed the crosswalk side by side, then disappeared into the family restaurant beneath its “Open 24 Hours” sign.

Wakaba Mutsumi remained frozen beneath the eaves outside the practice room.

She kept clutching that long-handled pink umbrella. The cold rain made her slight frame tremble faintly, yet it alone could not wash away even a little of the suffocating weight lodged in her heart.

Saki was gone.

That staggering blue figure had already been swallowed completely by the rain.

She had messed it up again…

Wakaba Mutsumi lowered her eyes and stared at her reflection in the puddle, fragmented by the neon lights.

No matter when it was, no matter who it was, anything I wanted to hold on to always ended up ruined by my own hands.

All I had to do was hand her the umbrella…

All I had to do was take one step forward, even if it was only to shove the umbrella into her hands…

But I…

I couldn’t do anything.

“I never thought being in a band was fun”…

She had said something like that.

That wasn’t true at all…

Tomori-chan’s singing was beautiful. Taki’s drums were so cool. Soyo’s bass always sounded so gentle…

And Sakiko…

It was me…

Wakaba Mutsumi stiffly lowered the umbrella. The sound of rain striking the ground was dull enough to grate on the nerves.

At some point, the busy street before her eyes had changed.

In the shadows behind trash cans, beneath the mottled water stains on the walls, things about the size of rats—yet far more disgusting than rats—darted around at high speed.

This was not the first time Wakaba Mutsumi had seen such nauseating sights.

Ever since she was little, they had always festered in unseen corners alongside every kind of negative emotion.

She did not know what they were. She only knew that as long as she pretended not to see them, those things would not come near her.

But in this moment, as the helplessness and self-loathing within her swelled until they nearly drowned her, those revolting shadows became clearer than ever before, spreading along the foot of the wall toward her feet.

Wakaba Mutsumi did not dodge. She only looked down coldly at the horrifying things trying to approach the tops of her shoes.

How disgusting.

Just like me.

At that moment, Wakaba Mutsumi subconsciously turned her head and looked toward the family restaurant the two men had just entered.

She had noticed them from the very beginning.

Or rather, it would have been difficult not to notice them.

There were clearly other pedestrians hurrying through the street to avoid the rain, yet those two stood out as abruptly as two patches of blankness carved straight out of a pitch-black canvas.

The tall white-haired man in a blindfold, and the lazy black-haired boy who seemed unable to muster interest in anything.

The glance they had cast in her direction just now had only been casual, yet it had made Wakaba Mutsumi shudder as if she were being dissected.

It was a fear born from the instincts of a living creature toward something absolutely “powerful.”

What concerned her even more was the “cleanliness” around them.

In Wakaba Mutsumi’s vision, those filthy, terrifying things ran back and forth, as if the entire street were their playground.

Only the places those two walked through were different.

The crosswalk, the traffic light pole, beneath the streetlamp…

Within several meters of them, an absolute vacuum seemed to form.

The monsters that tried to approach, the instant they touched the edge of that space, dissolved silently without even struggling, like leftover snow under the blazing sun.

Wakaba Mutsumi stared fixedly at the restaurant’s blurred glass window.

Then she withdrew her gaze, hugged the umbrella to her chest again, and left in silence.

…

“I never thought being a sorcerer was fun.”

Inside the family restaurant, Uchiha Ayato said this to Gojo Satoru.

“Not only is the job high-risk with no future, you’re also forced to hang around with a bunch of your own kind who might go insane at any moment. The death rate is even higher than joining the U.S. military and getting sent to the Middle East.”

Uchiha Ayato propped his chin on one hand, his eyelids drooping slightly. His eyes held the weary laziness of someone who had seen through the world.

“I did agree to go to Jujutsu High, but I think we should settle the terms first.”

“In short, you need to pay more.”

Ayato cut straight to the point.

“I want the authority to act independently, immunity from all compulsory assignments, and if I decide during a mission that it can’t be completed, I can retreat at any time. Also, my monthly stipend can’t be lower than the standard for a senior white-collar professional in Tokyo’s Minato Ward.”

“That’s my bottom line. Miss even one item, and there’s nothing to discuss.”

“Hooray! The extra-large strawberry parfait is here~”

Gojo Satoru’s eyes lit up, completely ignoring the long list of conditions Ayato had just thrown out.

The uniformed waiter, drenched in sweat, pushed the dessert glass piled with a fruit tower and a snowy mountain of cream onto the table, then retreated as if fleeing for his life.

Gojo grabbed the long-handled spoon and, right in front of Ayato, ruthlessly scooped up a huge spoonful of cream and stuffed it into his mouth.

“Mm, mm, mm~”

“The sweetness is just right!”

He chewed indistinctly, nodding again and again.

“No problem. I can agree to all those conditions.”

“Salary, authority, whatever it is, I’ll go extort those rotten oranges for you. Worst case, I’ll just allocate it from the Gojo family’s private accounts. Anything that can be solved with money has never been a problem to Gojo-sensei~”

“But…”

The next moment, Gojo Satoru abruptly stopped eating his dessert.

He sat up straight, planted both hands on the table, and suddenly leaned in close to Uchiha Ayato.

He even took off his blindfold, fully exposing those Six Eyes to the air.

“Let’s put those tacky things aside first.”

“Come on, let me see! Compared to those worldly little calculations of yours, your teacher is so curious about those eyes he’s about to go crazy.”

“How exactly did you do that earlier?”

Gojo’s gaze locked firmly onto Ayato’s eyes. His mouth split into a grin, revealing stark white teeth.

“You didn’t use Cursed Energy, didn’t expand a Domain, and just by looking at me, you directly bypassed the five senses and forcibly stuffed false information into my brain…”

“It’s a little similar to my Domain~”

“Come on, tell me, Ayato-kun!”

“Sigh…”

Uchiha Ayato sighed. His eyelids lowered, and when he raised them again, his black pupils had been stained scarlet. Three black tomoe slowly revolved against the bloodred background.

“What an adult with no sense of boundaries.”

Ayato kept his loose tone, his scarlet eyes looking straight into the azure so close before him.

“This is my Innate Cursed Technique. You can call it the Sharingan.”

“As long as I don’t go blind, these eyes can see through the flow of Cursed Energy and mimic Cursed Techniques and taijutsu.”

“What happened earlier is another small function of these eyes. You can understand it as a mental attack that doesn’t require opening a Domain.”

He unhurriedly laid his cards on the table, laying everything out with complete honesty.

In jujutsu society, this sort of behavior had a perfectly legitimate name.

Revealing one’s technique.

“Oh? It can even mimic Cursed Techniques?”

Gojo Satoru drew out the end of his sentence, his gaze glued to the three rotating tomoe in Ayato’s pupils.

“Interesting. A very, very interesting pair of eyes.”

“But, Ayato-kun, if I remember correctly…”

Gojo pointed his spoon at Ayato’s eyes.

“Back in the alley, there were clearly only two tomoe in your eyes, right? How did they become three now?”

“Getting stronger behind my back right in front of me—are you trying to make your teacher feel a sense of crisis?”

This was not a casual joke.

Under the observation of the Six Eyes, the flow of “Cursed Energy” around Ayato’s eyes had become several times more complex than before.

Uchiha Ayato, however, looked perfectly calm.

“Isn’t that common sense?”

“Just now, I revealed the information on my Cursed Technique to an outsider like you without holding anything back.”

“Voluntarily exposing my trump card in exchange for a boost in power—that’s a Binding Vow.”

“So the Sharingan got stronger, and the tomoe went from two to three. Perfectly reasonable, isn’t it?”

Gojo Satoru stared at Ayato for several full seconds.

The next moment, he suddenly burst into laughter, his body leaning sharply backward.

“Hahahahaha! It is reasonable! Too reasonable!”

Gojo Satoru put his blindfold back on, concealing those dangerous azure eyes once more.

“Good. This deal is settled!”

“I’ll take care of all your conditions, including any protests those rotten oranges might raise. Consider it your teacher’s special attention toward an outstanding student.”

He scooped up the final spoonful of slightly melted cream and tossed it into his mouth, chewing noisily.

“Principal Yaga and I will recommend you to Jujutsu Headquarters as a Grade 1 jujutsu sorcerer. The formal procedures and assessment mission should probably be delivered to you tomorrow.”

“Don’t go and accidentally die, Ayato-kun.”

“Your teacher is very much looking forward to seeing you report to Jujutsu High after spring break~”

T/N: mmmm gojo anyway voting time guys!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is a fan translation of 转生宇智波，我也要打宿傩吗？ by 飞天鸡 Rights to the original work belong to the creator. Please support them by exploring their original work or sharing it with others if you can. Thank you for reading and supporting my efforts to bring this story to a wider audience!