Work Text:
INCIDENT REPORT: METROPOLITAN POLICE DEPARTMENT
CASE NO: 84-B-992
DETECTIVE IN CHARGE: Inspector M. Sato
SUBJECT: Reader
NARRATIVE OF EVENTS:
On June 4th, at approximately 23:45 hours, multiple emergency calls reported a localized explosion and structural collapse in the warehouse district of Sector 4. Responding units discovered four deceased individuals amid severe environmental destruction. The victims exhibited signs of severe blunt force trauma and profound lacerations inconsistent with standard explosive shrapnel or building collapse.
CCTV footage from a neighboring loading dock captures the subject, identified as Reader, entering the blind alleyway at 23:12 hours. The four victims follow shortly after. At 23:38, the camera feed suffers heavy, unexplained electromagnetic interference, rendering the video static for exactly seven minutes.
When the visual feed is restored at 23:45, the alley is decimated. The asphalt is pulverized into fine dust. Load-bearing walls of the adjacent structure are completely breached. At 23:47, Reader is recorded emerging from the debris.
Subject is visibly covered in arterial blood and concrete residue, but exhibits a steady, unhurried gait. No murder weapon was recovered from the scene.
Subject was apprehended three blocks away, sitting quietly on a bus stop bench. Subject offered no resistance, claiming complete amnesia of the event beyond a sudden, deafening noise and a flash of light.
The physical evidence indicates a high-yield kinetic event, yet the subject's pristine physical condition—sustaining zero injuries despite standing at the epicenter of the destruction—contradicts all forensic modeling. Arson and counter-terrorism units have firmly ruled out chemical or gas-related anomalies.
Subject is currently held in municipal lockup, pending formal indictment for four counts of murder in the first degree.
“I know you did not do it. Not intentionally, at least.”
The words cut through the heavy, stale air of the interrogation room, jarring against the hum of the fluorescent lights.
You sat with your wrists chained to the steel table, your eyes fixed on the scuffed linoleum floor. You didn't bother looking up. You had spent the last forty-eight hours being grilled by homicide detectives who looked at you like you were a monster, a freak of nature who had somehow leveled a city block and walked away without a scratch.
You were exhausted, cold, and entirely resigned to the concrete cell waiting for you.
"I'm Hiromi Higuruma," the man continued, pulling out a metal chair and taking a seat across from you. He set a battered leather briefcase on the table with a dull thud. "I am your defense attorney."
You finally raised your head, your expression flat and unimpressed. You took in his rumpled suit, the dark circles bruising the skin under his eyes, and the permanent crease of exhaustion between his brows.
"State-appointed," you stated, your voice raspy from disuse. It wasn't a question.
You let out a hollow, cynical breath. "Look, Mr. Higuruma. You don't have to put on a show. We both know how this works. You drew the short straw, you showed up to check a box, and you’ll collect your fee when the judge hands me a life sentence. The police have me on camera walking in, the camera cuts out, and then I walk out of a crater with four dead bodies. Just process the paperwork and let me go back to sleep."
Higuruma didn't flinch. He didn't offer a patronizing smile or a defensive retort.
Instead, he unclasped his briefcase, pulled out a stark white folder, and slid a crime scene photograph across the table. It showed the pulverized asphalt and the shredded remains of the warehouse walls.
"The MPD forensic team is baffling themselves over pulverized asphalt and severed load-bearing walls," Higuruma said, his voice a low, steady baritone. "They're looking for C4 or a localized vacuum explosive. Arson is desperately trying to prove a subterranean gas line ruptured. But they are blind."
He leaned forward, folding his hands over the file. His gaze locked onto yours, sharp and entirely lucid.
"They don't have the eyes to see the residual cursed energy baked into the concrete," he said quietly. "I do."
The breath caught in your throat.
Your spine went rigid, the chains rattling sharply against the table as your hands clamped into fists. The cold, impenetrable walls of your resignation shattered instantly, replaced by a sudden, electric spike of adrenaline.
Higuruma watched the shift in your posture, reading you with the precision of a scalpel.
"You aren't a terrorist. You're a jujutsu sorcerer," he continued, keeping his tone measured, ensuring his voice didn't carry past the heavy door of the interrogation room. "And based on the sheer volume of the residual output, the anomaly that tracked you into Sector 4 was a Grade 1 Curse. At least. It cornered you in that blind alleyway. A Veil wasn't cast in time—or the entity shattered it upon manifestation. The four civilians had the profound misfortune of walking directly into the domain of the fight."
He tapped a blunt fingernail against the photograph. "The fatal lacerations on the victims weren't from shrapnel. They were the result of a violently expanded cursed technique. You deployed your technique to exorcise the spirit, and the clash leveled the block. The window of electromagnetic interference on the CCTV was exactly seven minutes. That is how long it took you to kill it and survive. The bodies were collateral damage."
You stared at him. The clinical, detached way he unraveled the impossible truth of that night struck a nerve you had been desperately trying to bury.
You looked at the photograph of the rubble, and then back at the exhausted, unrelenting eyes of the man sitting across from you.
The dam broke.
A ragged sob tore out of your throat, loud and ungraceful in the quiet room. You slumped forward, resting your forehead against your chained hands, your shoulders trembling violently. The tough, detached exterior completely dissolved.
"It was an accident," you gasped out, your voice fracturing as tears hot and fast spilled over your eyelashes, dropping onto the steel table. "I swear to God, it was an accident. I didn't—I didn't mean to. I didn't want anyone to die."
You squeezed your eyes shut, shaking your head frantically. "They just walked into the alley. They came out of nowhere. The Curse lunged, and I had to react, I had to stop it before it tore them apart, but my output—the blast—I couldn't control the radius in time. I didn't mean to!"
Higuruma sat perfectly still, absorbing the raw, unfiltered wave of your grief. The sharp, analytical gleam in his eyes softened, replaced by a heavy, profound melancholy.
He had seen thousands of criminals feign remorse, but he had also seen the devastating weight of genuine, crushing guilt. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a clean, folded handkerchief, and pushed it across the table until it touched your knuckles.
"The Jujutsu higher-ups are already aware of the incident," Higuruma said, his voice losing its courtroom edge, lowering into something remarkably gentle. "Their standard protocol for a sorcerer breaking the statute of secrecy and causing mass civilian casualties is quiet, immediate execution. They want to sweep you under the rug."
You gripped the handkerchief, wiping your face, your breathing still jagged and uneven. You looked up at him, terrified.
"The civilian police want a monster to lock in a cage," he added, his jaw tightening with a familiar, simmering anger at the system. "And the sorcerers want a liability buried in the dirt. Neither of them cares about the truth."
Higuruma stood up, buttoning his suit jacket. He looked down at you, his expression hardening into a look of absolute, unyielding resolve.
"I don't care about the higher-ups, and I don't care about the MPD's conviction rate," Higuruma said. "You are my client. And I will get you through this."
You clutched the damp fabric of his handkerchief, the cotton the only grounding thing in the sterile, freezing room. The sheer weight of his conviction felt suffocating.
You stared at him, the rattling of your chains echoing sharply as you shrank back into your plastic chair, defensive once again.
"Why?" The word scraped out of your throat, bitter and incredulous. "You said it yourself. The higher-ups want me dead. They could revoke your license. They could put a target on your back just for walking into this room. Why don't you just hand me over and let them execute me? It would be easier for everyone."
Higuruma stopped at the door, his hand hovering over the cold metal handle.
He turned his head, his dark eyes locking onto yours with an intensity that made the air in the room feel impossibly thin.
"Because easier is the sickness rotting this entire system," he stated, his voice a low, vibrating hum of barely contained anger. "The higher-ups don't care about the sanctity of life. They care about order. They care about sweeping their messes under the rug so the mundane world doesn't look closely at the shadows."
He took a slow, deliberate step back toward the table, his posture rigid. "And the MPD? They want a villain. They want a neat, packaged narrative to feed the press so the public feels safe again. Neither of them gives a damn about what actually happened in that alleyway."
You swallowed hard, your pulse hammering against your ribs. "And you do?"
"I am a lawyer," Higuruma said. He leaned over the steel table, planting his hands flat on the metal, his face inches from yours.
The faint scent of bitter coffee and exhausted, nervous sweat clung to his suit.
"I despise the blind, mechanical execution of the law. A gavel dropping on a closed casket isn't justice. It is an execution of convenience. True justice requires looking at the blood, the dirt, and the ugly, fractured reality of human error."
His eyes searched yours, piercing and relentless, digging past the tears and the trembling shoulders. You held his gaze, letting him see the shattered remnants of your composure, showing nothing but a terrified survivor.
"I am going to build an impenetrable defense," he promised, the words absolute. "But to do that, I will dissect every second of that night. I will tear apart the autopsy reports, the cursed energy residue, and every single syllable you tell me until there are no secrets left."
He picked up his battered briefcase, his knuckles pale around the handle.
"I will save your life in that courtroom," Higuruma said softly, the finality in his tone echoing off the concrete walls. "I am going to find out the absolute truth of what happened."
The hum of the ventilation system was the only sound in the sterile consultation room as Higuruma spread the Manila folders across the scratched steel table.
"We cannot use the words curse, domain, or technique." Higuruma’s voice was strictly business, a sharp contrast to the exhaustion etched into his features. "To the jury, the supernatural does not exist. We are dealing strictly in the physics of a catastrophic industrial accident."
He slid a blueprint of Sector 4 toward you, tapping a blunt pen against the schematic.
"The prosecution is banking on the seven-minute gap in the CCTV footage. They will argue you had the time and means to execute a coordinated attack. We are going to dismantle that by proving the environment itself was a ticking bomb."
You kept your eyes on your lap, your fingers nervously picking at a loose thread on the standard-issue inmate jumpsuit. You nodded slowly.
"A subterranean gas main rupture, compounded by illegal, undocumented excavation work beneath the warehouse," he continued, laying down a fabricated geological report. "The pressure build-up caused a localized vacuum explosion. That accounts for the pulverized asphalt and the sheer concussive force."
"But the…" your voice was small, wavering perfectly on the edge of a sob. You forced yourself to look at the edge of an autopsy file peeking out from under the blueprint. "The people. The police said they were cut."
"High-velocity debris," Higuruma answered immediately, never missing a beat. "Sheared steel plating and tempered glass from the warehouse's structural framing. When the vacuum collapsed, it created a shrapnel storm. That explains the surgical precision of the lacerations."
He pulled the coroner's photographs out, intending to walk you through the defensive answers you would need to memorize for the stand.
As the glossy images of the violent, bloody aftermath hit the table, you violently flinched.
You squeezed your eyes shut and turned your head away, letting out a sharp, ragged gasp, your shoulders drawing up to your ears as if trying to shield yourself from the memory.
Higuruma froze.
His hand stopped over the photographs. He studied you.
He saw the way your wrists bruised so easily against the heavy metal cuffs, the delicate line of your jaw tight with unshed tears, and the absolute fragility of your posture. You looked entirely out of place in this bleak, unforgiving room.
Slowly, the hardened, analytical edge in his eyes melted into something profoundly heavy.
He realized the inherent cruelty of the Jujutsu world. It did not care about the people it drafted into its hidden, bloody wars. They had taken someone so evidently sweet, so fundamentally gentle, and forced you into a nightmare where you had to fight a monstrosity in the dark just to survive.
And now, you were carrying the agonizing guilt of the lives you couldn't save.
Without a word, Higuruma gathered the autopsy photos and placed them face down at the bottom of the stack.
"Look at me," he said, his voice dropping an octave, the commanding courtroom tone replaced by a quiet, protective warmth.
You slowly opened your eyes, meeting his gaze through your lashes.
"You don't have to look at those again," he promised softly, reaching across the table to gently tap the back of his pen against your chained hands, a small, grounding gesture. "You survived a nightmare that no one in that courtroom will ever understand. It is my job to carry the burden of this evidence now. You just have to trust me."
And trust him, you did.
You nodded.
That bleak, fluorescent-lit box transformed into a sanctuary.
The weeks bled into one another, measured entirely by the hollow echo of the visitation room door locking and the heavy thud of his briefcase hitting the steel table. It was the only place the crushing weight of the trial receded, held at bay by the sheer force of Attorney Higuruma’s will.
He was a machine, running on bitter coffee and an obsessive need to dismantle the prosecution’s timeline. But the human body has limits, even for an awakened sorcerer.
One rainy Tuesday afternoon, you were brought into the room to find him already there, but unmoving. He was slumped forward, his forehead resting on a thick stack of deposition transcripts, his breathing slow and even. The dark circles under his eyes looked heavier in the stark lighting.
He looked entirely worn down to the bone.
Moving with agonizing care so the chains around your wrists wouldn't rattle, you slipped off the oversized, faded holding-cell jacket you wore over your scrubs. You stepped around the table and draped it gently over his shoulders. Then, you returned to your seat, pulled your knees to your chest, and waited in the quiet.
Twenty minutes later, he jolted awake.
His head snapped up, a frantic energy seizing his limbs as he registered the jacket sliding off his back. He checked his watch, a sharp curse escaping his teeth.
"I fell asleep," Higuruma rasped, aggressively rubbing a hand down his face, his voice tight with frustration. "Damn it. We lost twenty minutes. We were supposed to drill the cross-examination on the structural engineer. I'm sorry, I cannot afford to be wasting your time—"
"Hiromi."
The soft cadence of your voice made him freeze. You rarely used his first name.
You offered a small, hesitant smile, your eyes completely devoid of the terror that usually haunted them.
"You aren't wasting my time," you said gently, resting your chained hands on the table. "You look like you haven't slept in a week. I’m not going anywhere. The files aren't going anywhere. Please, just breathe for a second."
He stared at you, the frantic ticking of his mind slowing down to match the quiet, steady rhythm of your breathing. He looked at the jacket resting on his chair, then back at the soft, completely unburdened expression on your face.
You were the one facing a life sentence, yet you were the one comforting him.
"I am supposed to be defending you," he murmured, the sharp edges of his usual courtroom demeanor completely eroding.
"You are," you replied softly. "But you're allowed to be human, too."
That single exchange fundamentally altered the gravity between you.
The strictly professional boundary he had built around himself dissolved. As the trial date loomed closer, the visits stopped being just about legal strategy—they became a lifeline. You became his anchor.
He found himself captivated by the profound quiet you carried. He noticed the way your gaze was always gentle, never demanding. He memorized the way you unconsciously tried to shrink yourself, pulling your shoulders inward as if apologizing for taking up space in the room.
To Higuruma, who spent his life battling loud, arrogant liars and bloated, corrupt systems, your quiet fragility was mesmerizing.
He wanted to build an impenetrable fortress around you.
Late one night, long after visiting hours, Higuruma sat alone in his dimly lit apartment. The rain lashed against the windows, but for the first time in years, the hollow ache in his chest was entirely absent.
He unbuttoned his collar, staring at the ceiling, letting a dangerous, intoxicating daydream take root.
He thought about the day the judge would read the acquittal. He thought about walking you out of those heavy courthouse doors, past the cameras and the blind, mundane world. You were both sorcerers. You both understood the horrific, violent underbelly of the world, and you had both been burned by it.
He imagined a quiet life after this—a shared apartment, pulling you out of your shell, watching you learn to take up space without fear.
And so, driven by a sudden, fierce determination to secure that future, he abandoned his glass of water and dragged his briefcase onto the kitchen counter. He needed to be absolutely certain the defense was flawless. He pulled out the prosecution’s forensic photographs, intending to review the blast radius logic one last time.
He spread the glossies under the harsh kitchen pendant light. He analyzed the pulverized asphalt. He traced the trajectory of the shattered warehouse glass.
Then, his finger stopped.
The legal genius and the jujutsu prodigy collided in a catastrophic instant of realization.
He pulled out a close-up photo of the third victim. The prosecution claimed the deep laceration across the man's chest was from a sheared steel beam thrown by the vacuum explosion. For weeks, Higuruma had argued that exact point.
But looking at it now, with his cursed energy thrumming just beneath his skin, the physics completely fell apart.
The entry wound was impossibly clean. A blunt force projectile thrown by an explosion tears the flesh; it rips and shatters bone. But this wound was microscopic in its precision. It was completely uniform from the entry point to the exit.
He frantically dug through the pile, ripping out the autopsy report. He cross-referenced the angle of the lacerations on all four bodies. They weren't random.
They weren't the chaotic, scattered result of flying debris.
They were perfectly symmetrical. All four victims had been struck from the exact same elevated angle, completely disregarding the physical placement of the warehouse debris.
Higuruma stepped back from the counter, the air suddenly completely drained from his lungs. The faint hum of the refrigerator sounded like a roaring engine in his ears.
It wasn't a blast that killed them. It wasn't shrapnel.
It was a targeted, perfectly controlled cursed technique.
His hands began to tremble. He stared at the files, the devastating realization blooming in the quiet of his apartment. The gentle, shrinking girl who had covered him with her jacket, the girl who cried over the sheer horror of a tragic accident, was entirely an illusion.
The bodies weren't collateral damage. They were executed.
The rain hammered against the thin glass of Higuruma’s apartment window, but the sound was drowned out by the frantic, ragged cadence of his own breathing.
He had the photographs spread across the linoleum floor now. He was on his knees, surrounded by autopsy reports, structural schematics, and cursed energy residual readings, drawing invisible lines in the air with a shaking pen.
"No," Higuruma muttered, his voice echoing sharply in the empty room. "No, the math is wrong. The prosecution's math is wrong."
He crawled forward, grabbing the photo of the second victim, holding it up to the harsh kitchen light.
"If the vacuum collapse originated from the center of the warehouse," he argued with the empty air, his voice rising, "the shrapnel radiates outward. It’s chaotic. It’s unpredictable. Victim two was standing behind a reinforced concrete pillar. A blast wave wouldn't curve around a solid obstruction to sever a descending aorta with a microscopic, thirty-degree downward trajectory."
He threw the photo down and snatched up the cursed energy report.
"The residual footprint of the curse," he read, his eyes darting frantically across the text. "Massive output. High-density. A blunt-force anomaly. It was a bruiser. It smashed the walls. It pulverized the asphalt." He dropped the paper, his hands trembling as he stared at the wall. "It didn't have blades. It didn't have a slashing technique."
He pushed himself up, pacing the narrow kitchen, his tie completely undone, his hair disheveled.
The defense he had spent weeks building—the narrative that had become his entire lifeline—was collapsing under the weight of his own genius.
"She was terrified," he said aloud, his voice cracking, desperate to convince himself. "She cried in that room. She was shaking. She couldn't even look at the photos."
He stopped, gripping the edge of the counter until his knuckles turned white. "It’s a mistake. The MPD missed a secondary explosive. There was glass. Tempered glass. It shattered, it rained down—that accounts for the angle. It has to."
He spent the rest of the night violently wrestling with the evidence, refusing to concede to the horrific conclusion staring him in the face. By the time the sun broke through the smog of Sector 4, his eyes were bloodshot, his jaw tight with a suffocating, unbearable tension.
Accidental, or intentional?
The steel door of the consultation room slammed shut with a heavy, metallic clang.
You were already sitting at the table, wrapped in the oversized jacket he had left you. You looked up, a soft, genuine smile instantly warming your features. "Hiromi. You're here ear—"
The words died in your throat.
Higuruma stood entirely rigid. He didn't carry his usual quiet exhaustion, rather he looked hollowed out, staring at you with an intensity that bordered on feral.
He didn't return the greeting. He didn't soften.
He slammed his briefcase onto the table, the sharp sound making you flinch.
"Sit down," he ordered. His voice was completely stripped of warmth. It was the voice he used for hostile witnesses on the stand.
You slowly sank back into your chair, the chains rattling against the metal. Your eyes widened, reflecting pure apprehension. "Hiromi? What's wrong? What happened?"
He ripped the folder open and threw the four autopsy photographs face-up onto the table. "We need to review the injuries on victims one through four."
You instantly recoiled, turning your face away, your breathing hitching. "No. Hiromi, please, you promised I wouldn't have to look at those again. You promised!"
"Look at them!" he snapped, his voice booming in the small room, startling a sharp gasp out of you.
He leaned over the table, his shadow falling over you. "Look at the lacerations. Look at the entry wounds. Explain to me how a vacuum explosion throws chaotic shrapnel in a perfectly symmetrical, thirty-degree downward arc across four moving targets."
You squeezed your eyes shut, tears instantly spilling over your lashes. "I don't know! I don't know anything about physics, I told you it was a blur! There was glass everywhere, the building was coming down—"
"Glass doesn't cut like a scalpel!" Higuruma fired back, slamming a hand flat onto the table.
The professional facade was shattering, giving way to the agonizing betrayal warring in his chest.
"Glass tears. Metal rips. These wounds are pristine. And the curse that attacked you was a blunt-force entity! It didn't possess a slashing technique!"
He stared down at you, his chest heaving, his voice dropping into a desperate, trembling whisper. "Who killed them? Tell me the truth. Did you execute them?"
You froze. The silence in the room stretched until it felt like it would snap.
Then, you looked up at him. Your eyes were red, brimming with absolute devastation. Your bottom lip trembled violently, and your chains rattled as you reached out, desperately grabbing the sleeve of his suit jacket.
"How can you ask me that?" you sobbed, your voice breaking into a terrified, heart-wrenching pitch. "How can you look at me and think I could do something like that? I'm not a murderer! I was trying to save them!"
You pulled your hands back, burying your face in your palms, your entire body shaking with heavy, ragged sobs.
"The curse was mutating! It had spines, it had claws, it was whipping around in the dark! I couldn't see everything! I just cast my technique to shield us, and the blast leveled the alley. I failed them. I know I failed them! But I didn't execute them!"
Higuruma stared at you. He looked at your trembling shoulders, the desperate, unpolished fear in your voice, the way you completely collapsed under his accusation.
The cold, calculated legal machinery in his head ground to a painful halt.
He watched a teardrop hit the steel table, then another. The absolute certainty he had felt in his apartment began to fracture.
If you were a killer, you were a sociopath of unprecedented caliber. But looking at you—small, broken, weeping openly in front of him—his heart violently rebelled against his mind.
He remembered the way you had gently draped your jacket over him. He remembered the quiet solace he found in your presence.
Maybe the curse did mutate. The residual readings were chaotic—it was entirely possible a secondary technique manifested in its final moments. He was judging a supernatural battle by mundane, civilian physics.
It was arrogant. It was flawed.
The tension drained out of his posture, leaving behind an agonizing wave of guilt. He had cornered you. He had terrified you.
Higuruma slowly exhaled a shaky breath, stepping around the table. He knelt beside your chair, gently taking your chained hands and pulling them away from your tear-streaked face.
"I'm sorry," he breathed, his voice entirely broken. He pressed his forehead against your knuckles, closing his eyes tightly. "I'm so sorry. The prosecution's timeline… it got into my head. I have to make sure the defense is utterly bulletproof, and I panicked. I'm sorry."
You looked down at him, letting out a small, wet hiccup, your fingers weakly curling around his. You offered him the exact sanctuary he desperately needed.
"It's okay," you whispered, your voice soft and entirely devoid of the monster he tried to project unto you.
You kept your hands wrapped around his, your fingers cold and trembling. You looked up at him through a sheen of tears, brimming with quiet, desperate vulnerability.
“Just… don’t do that again, please,” you whispered, your voice barely holding together. You pulled your shoulders inward, shrinking under the harsh fluorescent lights. “Don’t look at me like that. I can deal with the police. I can deal with the entire world looking at me like I’m a monster. But I can’t deal with it from you.”
The words struck Higuruma. The remaining tension completely abandoned his frame, replaced by a suffocating, unbearable wave of guilt.
He had interrogated you like a hostile witness. He had taken the one person in this miserable, corrupt system who had shown him genuine tenderness, and he had cornered her like an animal.
He silently swore to himself, right there on the cold floor of the precinct, that he would never doubt you again. He would tear the prosecution to shreds.
He opened his mouth to apologize again, to promise you the world, when the concrete wall of the consultation room violently imploded.
The concussive force threw Higuruma backward. The lights shattered, plunging the room into darkness, save for the sickening, violet hum of cursed energy bleeding through the ruined wall. A massive, grotesque remnant curse—drawn by the concentrated fear and malice surrounding the high-profile murder case—tore through the steel reinforcements, its misshapen limbs thrashing wildly.
Survival instinct overrode everything. Higuruma didn't even hesitate.
He threw himself between you and the lunging monstrosity.
"Domain Expansion," he roared, slamming his hands together. "Deadly Sentencing!"
The ruined precinct instantly dissolved, replaced by the suffocating, pitch-black expanse of the courtroom. The towering guillotines materialized overhead. The curse screeched, suddenly forced into a localized, non-violent space, thrashing against the absolute rules of the barrier.
High above, the massive, blindfolded shikigami materialized. Judgeman.
The trial was instantaneous. The curse was a mindless entity of destruction, reeking of fresh blood from the officers it had slaughtered on its way in. Judgeman's massive gavel came down with a sound like a thunderclap.
Guilty. Confiscation. Death Penalty.
The domain rules shifted. Higuruma’s gavel elongated, transforming into the blinding, lethal glow of the Executioner's Sword. The barrier dropped the non-violence clause.
Higuruma moved with blinding speed, a lethal blur of dark fabric and focused cursed energy. He swung the blade in a single, flawless arc. The curse didn't even have time to scream before it was entirely eradicated, its body dissolving into ash that rained down on the illusory courtroom floor.
Higuruma stood breathing heavily, the Executioner's Sword fading from his grip. He turned to check on you, the adrenaline still spiking in his veins.
But before the domain could completely shatter and return them to the real world, Judgeman moved.
The massive shikigami did not vanish. Instead, its single, glowing eye swiveled away from the dissipating curse and locked directly onto you. You were sitting on the floor of the domain, the chains still binding your wrists.
The shikigami’s mechanical, booming voice reverberated through the dark space.
"THE RECORD IS FRACTURED," Judgeman declared, the scales in its hand tipping violently. "EVIDENCE TAMPERING DETECTED. THE SCALES WEIGH HEAVY WITH CONCEALED BLOOD. THE DEFENDANT'S HANDS ARE NOT CLEAN."
Then, the domain shattered like glass.
Reality rushed back in. The sirens. The dust. The smell of pulverized concrete and copper. You were both back in the ruined consultation room.
Higuruma was frozen. His blood ran entirely cold.
Judgeman did not guess. Judgeman did not hypothesize. Judgeman was tied directly to the omniscient rules of jujutsu and possessed absolute knowledge of those trapped within the domain.
You pushed yourself up from the rubble, coughing.
"Hiromi?" you gasped, your eyes wide with terror as you reached out toward him. "What… what was that? What did that thing mean? I'm scared—"
"CUT IT OUT!"
His voice tore through the ruined room, raw, jagged, and explosive.
He recoiled from your outstretched hand as if you were made of fire. He backed away, his chest heaving, his eyes wide with a horrific, dawning realization.
"Stop it," he ordered, his voice vibrating with absolute fury and a devastating, crushing heartbreak. "Stop lying to me! Judgeman reads the objective truth. It reads the absolute record of the soul. You executed them."
You stayed frozen for a second, your hand still suspended in the air.
Then, the terrified trembling in your shoulders simply stopped.
The tears vanished from your eyes with chilling speed. The fragile, shrinking posture you had maintained for weeks evaporated.
You stood up straight, rolling your shoulders back. The chains rattled against your wrists, yet the sound was no longer a symbol of your captivity, but a casual accessory. You brushed the concrete dust off your jumpsuit, your expression settling into a perfectly cold, deadpan mask.
"I see," you said.
Your voice was entirely different. The soft, wavering pitch was gone, replaced by a smooth, unbothered cadence. You tilted your head, looking at him with mild annoyance.
"Why does it matter?"
Higuruma felt the air leave his lungs. It was like looking at a stranger. It was an immaculate, terrifying fabrication.
The sweet, gentle girl he had agonized over, the girl he had sworn to protect, had never existed at all.
"Why does it matter?" he repeated, his voice barely a whisper, suffocating under the weight of the betrayal.
"You are my lawyer, Hiromi," you stated simply, stepping over a piece of shattered debris. "Your job is to establish reasonable doubt. The prosecution has a weak timeline and a flawed forensic model. You already found the cracks. My actual guilt is entirely irrelevant to the verdict."
The clinical, detached way you spoke about the four lives you extinguished snapped the last thread of his professional restraint.
The lawyer vanished, leaving only a man whose heart had just been violently ripped out of his chest.
"Irrelevant?" he shouted, closing the distance, his towering frame practically vibrating with rage and grief. "You sat there and cried! You looked me in the eyes and begged me to believe you! The late nights, the conversations… when you put your jacket over my shoulders… was any of it real? Any of it?!"
You met his furious, devastated gaze without flinching.
"It was necessary," you replied coldly. "You were running yourself into the ground. A blunt knife cannot carve a path to an acquittal. You were stressed, burning out, and I needed my tool sharp."
Tool.
The word gutted him. He physically staggered back, a look of profound, agonizing horror washing over his face. He had let you in. He had daydreamed about a life with you. He had compromised his own brilliant mind to protect you.
And to you, he was nothing but a weapon to be maintained.
"The trial begins in three days," you continued, your tone completely dismissive of his shattered state.
You walked right up to him, completely unfazed by the towering, lethal sorcerer he was. "You have a bulletproof defense built on a gas leak and structural failure. You are going to stand in front of that judge, and you are going to do your job."
Higuruma clenched his jaw, his eyes burning with unshed tears of rage. "I should let them execute you. I should walk out that door and tell the higher-ups exactly what you are."
You didn't blink. A slow, chilling smile touched the corner of your mouth.
"But you won't," you whispered, leaning in just slightly. "You are my legal counsel, Hiromi. Everything you just learned, everything you know to be true, falls under strict attorney-client privilege. If you speak a single word of it, you violate the very law you worship."
You stepped back, offering him the same gentle, sweet smile you had given him when you first met, though now it looked completely different.
"I'll see you in court,” you whispered.
The trial was in less than six hours
The rain had stopped, leaving behind a suffocating, heavy silence in Higuruma’s apartment. The digital clock on the microwave read 3:14 AM.
His dining table was completely buried under a mountain of fabricated truth. The defense files, the manipulated timelines, the cherry-picked structural schematics—it was a masterpiece of legal fiction.
And it made him physically sick.
Higuruma stood over the table, staring blindly at the opening statement he had written and rewritten a dozen times. His tie was discarded somewhere on the floor. His dress shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, sleeves rolled up over forearms that felt like lead.
"Did you do it?" he rasped, his voice tearing through the quiet apartment.
He slammed a palm down onto the stacks of paper, the sound cracking like a gunshot. "Did you actually butcher them in that alley?"
He dragged a shaking hand through his hair, gripping the strands tightly. The pristine, clinical mask he wore in the precinct had completely dissolved.
"You sat there," he hissed to the empty room, his chest heaving. "You sat there in those chains, weeping, shivering, looking at me like I was your only salvation. You weaponized my own conscience. You turned my empathy into a leash!"
He grabbed his empty coffee mug and hurled it across the room. It shattered violently against the plaster wall, ceramic raining down onto the floorboards.
"A tool!" he roared, the raw fury scraping his throat raw. "You needed your tool sharp! You took the one completely pure, untainted thing in this miserable, rotting world—the one connection that actually made me feel human again—and you engineered it. You fed me the exact pieces of a broken girl I needed to put back together, just so I would build your alibi!"
He paced frantically, the shadows of the apartment clinging to him. He hated her. He hated the Jujutsu higher-ups for creating the violent, bloody sandbox that bred people like her. He hated the MPD for being so incompetent they couldn't see the monster sitting in their own holding cell.
But mostly, he hated himself.
He stopped pacing, his knees suddenly weak. He sank into one of the kitchen chairs, burying his face in his hands.
"I am a lawyer," he whispered, the rage fracturing into a pathetic, devastated sob. "I am supposed to uphold the truth. I summon a domain that weighs the absolute record of a human soul, and yet I couldn't even see the lies staring me in the face."
He dug his fingers into his temples, punishing himself with the memories.
The clean lacerations. The perfectly uniform entry wounds. The impossible physics of the blast radius.
"I chose to be blind," he confessed to the silence, his voice trembling violently. "I saw the cracks. I saw the blood. And I willfully painted over it. I compromised my mind, my domain, my entire soul, just because…"
He choked on the words, dropping his hands.
His bloodshot eyes landed on the oversized, faded inmate jacket resting on the back of his sofa. He had taken it from the precinct. He hadn't been able to leave it behind.
“…just because you looked at me gently," he finished, the admission completely shattering him.
He stared at the jacket. He could still remember the exact weight of it settling over his exhausted shoulders. He could still feel the phantom touch of your cold, chained fingers brushing against his knuckles.
The horrific reality of what you had likely done clashed violently against the phantom warmth of your presence—and the warmth was winning.
He was hopelessly, pathetically compromised.
"It doesn't even matter," he breathed, a bitter, broken laugh escaping his lips. He leaned forward, resting his forehead against the cold, hard wood of the table, surrounded by the lies he had built for her.
"God help me, it doesn't even matter if you slaughtered them all."
He slowly sat up, his expression hardening. The frantic desperation drained away, replaced by a cold, terrifying resolve. He reached out and pulled the opening statement toward him, smoothing out the crumpled edges.
"I know what you are," Higuruma said, his voice dropping into a lethal, absolute vow. "I know you manipulated me. I know you are a monster. But I would rather burn my own soul to ash than let them take you away from me."
He picked up his pen, his grip white-knuckled and unyielding.
"Tomorrow morning, I am going to walk into that courtroom," he promised the empty air, his eyes burning with a dark, unrelenting obsession. "And I am going to tear the prosecution apart. I am going to rip apart their witnesses, I am going to bury their evidence, and I am going to throw my entire existence into getting you out of those chains. Not just tomorrow. I will defend you from the law, from the sorcerers, from the entire damn world for the rest of your life."
He signed his name at the bottom of the defense file, sealing his own fate.
"You want a sharp tool?" he whispered. "Fine. Watch me bleed for you."
THE TOKYO METROPOLITAN DAILY
Front Page | Legal & City News
November 18th
SECTOR 4 'MIRACLE SURVIVOR' VERDICT IN BOMBSHELL TRIAL; DEFENSE ATTORNEY DISMANTLES MPD FORENSICS
By Kenji Sato, Legal Correspondent
Yesterday afternoon, the gavel fell on one of the most baffling and sensational criminal trials in recent metropolitan history. The defendant, previously dubbed the "Miracle Survivor" of the devastating Sector 4 warehouse collapse, walked out of the municipal courthouse a free woman, cleared of four counts of first-degree murder.
The swift acquittal is widely credited to a masterclass defense mounted by court-appointed Atty. Hiromi Higuruma, who ruthlessly dismantled the prosecution’s timeline and forensic modeling over a grueling three-day period.
The trial centered on the events of June 4th, when an isolated, catastrophic structural failure decimated a blind alleyway in the industrial district. The defendant emerged entirely unscathed from the rubble, while four male civilians were found dead at the epicenter.
Chief Prosecutor Arata built the state's case heavily around a seven-minute blackout in the nearby CCTV footage, alleging that the defendant utilized an explosive device to mask a calculated, violent attack. Arata repeatedly drew the jury's attention to the deeply anomalous nature of the fatal wounds.
"These are not the erratic, chaotic wounds of falling debris," Prosecutor Arata stated on the second day, projecting stark autopsy photographs onto the courtroom monitors. "These are deliberate, surgical lacerations. The defendant did not merely survive the destruction of Sector 4. She weaponized it to mask the execution of four innocent people."
However, the prosecution's momentum was entirely derailed by Higuruma’s blistering cross-examinations.
Known in legal circles for his cynical demeanor and uncompromising intellect, Higuruma systematically tore apart the MPD’s structural engineers and forensic analysts. He successfully introduced geological reports of an undocumented subterranean gas line beneath the warehouse, shifting the narrative from premeditated murder to a horrific industrial accident.
The defining moment of the trial occurred during Higuruma’s rapid-fire interrogation of the state’s lead forensic expert regarding the precision of the victims' wounds.
"Can you, with absolute certainty, model the exact trajectory of sheared, tempered steel plating caught in a subterranean vacuum collapse?" Higuruma demanded, his voice ringing sharply across the silent room.
When the expert faltered, admitting the chaotic nature of such physics, Higuruma struck. "You cannot. Because a localized pressure anomaly of that magnitude turns the environment itself into a shredder. You are attempting to prosecute a traumatized survivor for the physical mechanics of a decaying, undocumented industrial zone."
The tension in the courtroom reached a fever pitch during closing arguments.
Prosecutor Arata made a final, impassioned plea to the jury to look past the defendant's unassuming appearance. "The defense wants you to believe in a highly convenient chain of impossible, coincidental disasters. The defendant sat at the epicenter of a blast that pulverized concrete, yet she emerged without a single scratch, leaving four mutilated bodies at her feet. Do not let her fragile demeanor blind you to the cold, mathematical reality of the evidence. She is a killer who simply walked out of the dust."
The defense's closing remarks immediately followed. Higuruma did not use the monitors. He did not reference the massive stacks of paperwork on his desk.
Instead, he stepped away from the podium, walked slowly to the defense table, and placed a hand on the back of his client's chair.
"The prosecution asks you to look at their flawed mathematics," Higuruma began, his voice dropping to a quiet, commanding timbre that resonated in the packed gallery. "I am asking you to look at the defendant."
He gestured to the young woman seated beside him. She appeared entirely swallowed by her oversized suit, her shoulders drawn tightly inward, her hands trembling as she stared at her lap, her eyes brimming with unshed tears.
"Look at her," Higuruma commanded the jury, his voice vibrating with an intense, almost frightening conviction. "The State of Tokyo desperately wants you to believe this is a ruthless, calculated criminal mastermind. They want you to believe that this sweet, gentle woman—who was simply walking home alone in the dark—somehow orchestrated a massive seismic collapse, systematically butchered four men in the pitch black, and then patiently waited on a bus bench for the police to arrive."
Higuruma stepped toward the jury box, his dark, exhausted eyes locking onto the jurors one by one.
"Look at her hands. Look at her posture," he urged, his voice thick with a profound, bitter emotion that captivated the entire room. "Do you truly believe she is capable of something so damning? Or is it entirely obvious that this city failed to maintain its rotting infrastructure, and now desperately needs a scapegoat to cover up their lethal negligence?"
The courtroom sat in stunned silence as he returned to his seat.
It took the jury barely four hours of deliberation to return.
"Not guilty on all charges."
As the verdict was read, the defendant collapsed forward onto the defense table in tears. Atty. Hiromi Higuruma placed a hand on her shoulder, his expression completely unreadable as the flashbulbs of the press erupted outside the courtroom doors.
The victory was supposed to feel validating. Instead, the air in the room was suffocating, thick with a poisonous, unspoken reality.
The dust from the flashbulbs had barely settled when the heavy oak door of Higuruma’s private office clicked shut. You stood by his desk, your posture entirely transformed. The shrinking, trembling girl who had captivated the jury just hours ago was gone.
You ran a steady finger along the polished mahogany edge of his desk, your gaze tracing the wood grain with idle, detached amusement. You were completely unbothered by the phantom blood soaking your hands.
Higuruma stood by the door, his tie loosened, watching you with hollow, haunted eyes.
The silence stretched, tight and agonizing, until he finally shattered it.
"Tell me the truth," he said, his voice a cold, ragged whisper. "Did you do it?"
You paused your tracing. You looked up, meeting his devastated stare with eyes that were terrifyingly calm. A small, dismissive smile touched your lips.
"Does it matter?" you asked, the words smooth and indifferent. "The jury says I'm not guilty. The judge struck the gavel. As far as the law and the world are concerned, my hands are completely clean."
His jaw clenched so hard his teeth audibly ground together. The casual cruelty of your response tore through the last of his composure.
He pushed off the door, closing the distance between you in two long, furious strides.
"Of course it matters!" he hissed, his towering frame casting a massive, overshadowing presence over you. "I devoted my life to the law because I believed in the absolute necessity of justice. I believed in uncovering the truth when the system tried to bury it. And I just stood in that courtroom, weaponized every ounce of my intellect, and legally sanctioned a massacre! I built an impenetrable fortress of lies to let a killer walk free!"
He leaned closer, his chest heaving, his dark eyes ablaze with a devastating mixture of fury and profound grief.
"But that isn't even the worst of it," he confessed, the anger cracking to reveal the raw, bleeding wound beneath. "I sacrificed my principles. I can live with that damnation. But the time we spent in that holding cell… the late nights. The way you looked at me. The way you made me feel like I was finally doing something undeniably good."
His voice fractured, dropping into a desperate, trembling register. "I tore my own mind apart to protect you because I cared for you. Because I thought you were innocent. Because I thought you were mine to save."
You didn't flinch at his proximity. You didn't shrink away from the raw, explosive emotion radiating off him.
Instead, you stepped directly into his space. The proximity was startlingly intimate, a deliberate echo of the vulnerable moments you had shared, now twisted into something lethal.
You tilted your head, your dark eyes locking onto his.
"If it bothers you that badly, Hiromi," you murmured, your voice a soft, dangerous purr. "Cast your Domain. Put me on the stand. Let Judgeman give you the absolute truth."
The challenge hung in the air, electric and fatal.
Higuruma froze. His breathing hitched.
The cursed energy beneath his skin flared, a violent, instinctual response to the threat.
He stared down at you, his mind fracturing into violent, contradictory splinters. In the span of a single heartbeat, he saw the terrified girl shivering under his oversized jacket, offering him a gentle, forgiving smile. In the next, he saw the ruthless sorcerer standing before him, perfectly willing to orchestrate an execution and manipulate him into cleaning up the bodies.
His hands twitched at his sides. He could do it. Clasp his hands, utter the words, and let the crushing weight of Deadly Sentencing tear the veil away forever. He could summon the Executioner’s Sword.
He would finally get the truth.
But the thought of the blade hanging over your neck paralyzed him.
A guttural, agonizing sound ripped from his throat. He spun away from you and slammed his fist violently into the heavy bookshelf beside his desk. The wood splintered with a deafening crack, books and framed degrees raining down onto the hardwood floor in a chaotic clatter. He braced both hands against the ruined shelf, his head bowed, his broad shoulders shaking violently as he gasped for air.
He would destroy his own office. He would destroy his own soul.
But he would never touch you.
You watched the destruction with passive, silent eyes. There was nothing left to gain here.
You turned on your heel, the soft click of your shoes against the floor signaling your departure.
You were halfway to the door when his voice broke through the wreckage.
"Was it real?"
You stopped, your hand hovering over the brass doorknob.
"Were we real?" he asked, his voice entirely broken, stripped of the lawyer, the sorcerer, and the righteous defender. It was just a man, bleeding out on the floor of his own making, begging for a single scrap of mercy.
You paused. Slowly, you looked back over your shoulder.
The stark light from the hallway caught your features, illuminating an expression that was entirely unreadable. It was a subtle tightening of the eyes, a minute shift in your jaw—something that hovered agonizingly between profound pity and genuine, lingering sadness.
You didn't answer.
You simply opened the door, stepped out into the blind, mundane world, and vanished.
Higuruma was left alone in the wreckage. He stared at the empty doorway, the silence roaring in his ears.
He had his answer, buried in the suffocating weight of his own denial. He had won the trial of the decade, but he had sentenced himself to a lifetime of suspended uncertainty. He sank into his leather chair, running a trembling hand over his face.
He knew he would never cast his domain on you. He knew, with absolute, terrifying certainty, that if you ever called him from the dark again, he would pick up the phone.
He was tethered to a phantom, an illusion of his own making, hopelessly condemned to love a monster he had set free.