Archer, the Sorcerer Chapter 14

Chapter 14: After the Parade – Part II

The halls of Kyoto Jujutsu High were unusually quiet.

Morning light spilled through the paper-paneled windows, catching on the faint smell of smoke still clinging to the campus.

Even though the grounds had been cleaned and the wreckage, the destruction, dealt with, the memory of last night’s chaos lingered like a shadow.

Utahime stood with her arms folded inside her sleeves, the familiar stiffness of duty weighing on her shoulders.

The faint smell of incense clung to the air in the principal’s chamber.

Scrolls lined the walls, filled with prayers and sutras meant to ward off ill omens, but they did little to mask the oppressive atmosphere of the room.

Utahime knelt formally on the tatami before the low desk, her report freshly delivered.

Across from her, Yoshinobu Gakuganji sat with his back hunched, not perfectly straight considering his age, the brim of his figure still shadowing sharp, calculating eyes.

His long fingers tapped once against the wood before going still.

“So,” Gakuganji said at last, his voice dry and gravelly, “the cursed spirits did not fall upon Kyoto as expected. Instead, a portion of their force diverted… directly toward your team’s position.”

“Yes,” Utahime replied, her tone clipped, respectful. Her hands rested on her knees, hiding how tightly her nails pressed against her skin. “We managed to repel them. No casualties among my students.”

The old man hummed, unimpressed. “Fortunate. But I wonder… coincidence rarely favors us so neatly. Why did the enemy shift course?”

Utahime’s throat tightened. She knew exactly where this was going.

‘Because of him.’

Her mind flashed to the faraway glance of Shirou Gojo standing before a quarter of the cursed army, his calm presence drawing their bloodlust like a magnet.

A man who fought like someone forged for battle, not like a sorcerer still tied to the academies.

“I reported the facts,” she said evenly. “We were assisted. Reinforcements arrived from Tokyo, just as Satoru Gojo promised.”

At that name, Gakuganji’s brows drew together.

“His brother.” He nearly spat the word, as if it left a bitter taste on his tongue.

“The Higher-Ups have yet to recognize his position among us. You speak of him as though his presence was sanctioned.”

Utahime kept her head bowed, though her lips pressed thin.

‘Sanctioned? He literally took a QUARTER of the Cursed Spirits with him. But of course, you’d rather argue pedigree than survival.’

“Whether sanctioned or not,” she said aloud, voice cool, “Shirou Gojo diverted a portion of the threat away from us. Because of him, we were able to clean out the rest.”

Silence stretched. Gakuganji’s gaze lingered on her as though measuring her loyalty, her choice of words, even her hesitation. Finally, he exhaled through his nose.

“Gojo blood breeds… anomalies.” His tone was almost disdainful. “We cannot trust what we cannot control. Remember that, Utahime.”

She bowed slightly lower, hiding the flicker of irritation in her eyes.

Her jaw tightened, but she swallowed the words. The air in the room was heavy, every second stretching as though the walls themselves disapproved of dissent.

Gakuganji’s fingers tapped once more against the lacquered wood of his desk, slower this time, almost deliberate.

“There is another matter,” he said, voice settling into something heavier.

“Shirou Gojo has not been enrolled in Jujutsu High.”

Utahime lifted her head slightly.

“He will be,” she answered without hesitation. “At the Tokyo branch. Starting next year, under Gojo Satoru’s direct supervision.”

The old man’s brows furrowed, his expression sharpening. “Of course.”

He leaned back, his head tilting as if to look down on her more fully. “How convenient for Satoru. Another wild card tucked under his wing, beyond the Higher-Ups’ reach.”

Utahime bit down the instinct to argue.

‘Satoru wouldn’t have it any other way, and you know it. He’d rather burn the entire system than let you put your claws in his family.’

But aloud, she only said, “If anything, that arrangement should make it easier to keep him under watch. The Tokyo branch is not… lenient when it comes to discipline, despite what you may think of Satoru.”

Gakuganji gave a low, humorless hum. Then, abruptly, he shifted the topic, as though the matter of enrollment had been sufficiently beaten down.

“The authorities have transferred everything to us,” he said.

“Every scrap of footage from the incident. Every frame, every anomaly. No one outside our faculty or the Higher-Ups will see it.”

His gaze sharpened, like the edge of a blade catching light. “Which means it is our responsibility to discern exactly what we are dealing with.”

Utahime’s hands tightened on her lap. “You mean Shirou Gojo.”

“Precisely.” Gakuganji’s voice dropped lower, as if naming the boy carried weight.

“His Innate Technique. You named it in your report: Construction.” The word lingered with pointed curiosity.

“An ability long considered… unsustainable. Self-destructive. Even among the most gifted, no one can bear its toll of highly-exhausting on your own Cursed Energy.”

He paused, his silence pressing down like a judgment. “And yet, he wielded it against a horde of special-grades as though he were born for nothing else.”

Utahime swallowed, her throat suddenly dry.

Memories of the night flickered behind her eyes—gleaming arrows born out of nothing, each one precise, each one deadly, as though crafted from instinct rather than theory.

‘No hesitation. No stumbles. He fought as if he’d lived and died by that technique a thousand times over.’

“I need certainty, Utahime,” Gakuganji continued, his tone slow, deliberate.

“You will observe the footage again. Record his limits, his methods, his failings—if he has any. Report everything back. Do you understand?”

Utahime kept her head low, but her lips pressed tight in a faint grimace he couldn’t see.

‘So that’s what this is. Not about gratitude. You don’t care he saved this city—you only want to know how dangerous he’ll be when he stops serving the higher-ups’ narrative.’

“Yes,” she said aloud, her voice steady, betraying nothing. “I understand.”

Gakuganji’s eyes narrowed, as though weighing the conviction in her words. Then, at last, he leaned back, his presence receding like a storm cloud pulling away from a peak.

His eyes, sharp and unmoving, lingered on Utahime for a moment longer. Then he spoke, slow and deliberate.

“One more thing.”

Utahime resisted the urge to sigh. “Yes, Principal?”

“You will personally review every piece of footage of Shirou Gojo. Every angle, every frame. Compile your findings into a written analysis. Leave no detail unexamined.”

Utahime’s polite mask cracked for a fraction of a second—just enough for a vein to twitch visibly on her forehead.

“…Understood.”

She bowed, deeply enough to hide the tight clench of her teeth.

“Good,” Gakuganji said, his tone dismissive, already reaching for the next scroll in his stack as though her existence had become secondary the moment the command left his lips.

“You are dismissed.”

Utahime turned, rising with perfect, measured grace. She slid the door open, stepped out into the hallway, and closed it gently behind her.

The moment it clicked shut, her entire demeanor collapsed.

She pressed her palms against her face, dragging them down with a groan so guttural it echoed through the empty corridor.

“Unbelievable—seriously?!” Her voice shot up an octave, her composure evaporating.

“Do they ever let me breathe?!!?!??!?!?!”

No longer was she calm and composed or exuding any graceful manner…

“I spent ALL NIGHT writing that damn report, running on cold tea and pure spite, and the second I hand it in—‘Oh, Utahime, review HOURS of footage! Don’t rest, don’t shower, don’t even think about living like a normal person!’”

She stomped once on the tatami mat, muttering rapid-fire under her breath.

“I’m a teacher, not some overworked archivist! Do they think I have nothing better to do? I wanted ONE day—just one!—to relax and watch Ohtani hit a few home runs like a normal human being!”

Utahime flung her arms up, her sleeves swishing dramatically.

“But noooo, let’s bury Utahime in paperwork, let’s have her dissect some overpowered Gojo relative frame by frame, because heaven forbid she has a LIFE.”

Her voice dropped into a deadpan mutter as she shuffled down the hall, shoulders sagging.

“Shohei… you were supposed to save me. Now I’ll never see you pitch, never see that swing…”

She groaned again, dragging herself toward her quarters like a condemned woman.

The paper door to Utahime’s quarters slid shut with a tired thud. She dropped onto the tatami mat, legs folded beneath her, a fresh pot of tea steaming on the low table.

Across from her, an old CRT television hummed faintly, hooked to the portable recorder that held last night’s footage.

A stack of tapes, CDs, flash drives—dozens of them—was piled unceremoniously at her side like a tower waiting to crush her spirit.

Utahime pinched the bridge of her nose. “Hours of this… Shohei, forgive me.”

With a resigned exhale, she clicked the play button. The screen flickered to life.

At first, it was just chaos—grainy images of curses tearing through the city, half-obscured by static and smoke.

Utahime fast-forwarded, eyes half-lidded, until a flicker of red streaked across the screen. She paused. Rewound. Played again, slower.

There he was.

Shirou Gojo.

The image cleared enough to show him striding through the wreckage with unnatural composure.

His arm extended, bow materializing out of nothing, arrows of pure light firing in rapid succession.

Curses dissolved on impact, erased cleanly like they had never existed.

Utahime’s eyes narrowed. Even on low-quality city surveillance, the precision of his technique was undeniable.

“…That’s definitely Construction…right?” she muttered, leaning closer. “But this is… refined. Far too refined for it. Mai could never— He’s using it like he’s done this for decades.”

She scribbled a note, but froze when the scene shifted.

The camera angle caught Shirou rushing through the haze—straight toward a girl.

White hair. Pale skin. She stumbled in the wreckage like someone completely out of place, dressed far too neatly for the chaos surrounding her.

Even through the distortion, Utahime thought the girl looked familiar, almost like one of those up-and-coming models she saw on magazine covers at convenience stores.

Utahime blinked. Then blinked again.

“Oh, you’ve GOT to be kidding me.”

On-screen, Shirou scooped the girl into his arms with practiced ease, shielding her from a horde of Cursed Spirits.

His expression was unreadable—focused, steady—but the image itself spoke volumes.

Utahime pinched her forehead, a groan rising in her throat.

“He’s just like Satoru! The same smug, reckless, woman-saving idiot routine!” She jabbed her pen against her notepad.

“Of course the Gojo brothers can’t just fight curses—they have to look cool while saving some damsel in distress.”

Her voice dropped into a mocking tone.

“‘Oh, look at me, swooping in with my mysterious powers, carrying a beautiful stranger like she’s Whitney Houston and I’m Kevin Costner while the city explodes in the background!’”

She rolled her eyes so hard it nearly hurt.

Utahime fast-forwarded, muttering all the while.

“I swear, it’s genetic. They’re allergic to acting normal. If he starts wearing sunglasses indoors, I’ll—”

Then the footage caught another burst of light as Shirou drew back his bow, firing a volley so overwhelming it erased a tide of curses in one strike.

Utahime’s words caught in her throat. She stared, lips pressed thin, fingers tightening around her pen.

“…dammit,” she whispered. “He’s good. Too good.”

The thought settled like a stone in her stomach, her earlier annoyance tempered by a quiet unease.

The tape crackled, lines of static crawling across the screen as the chaos shifted to another angle. Utahime, pen poised above her notes, leaned forward.

There—Shirou again. His bow of light flickered, fading from existence as if dismissed by a thought.

He raised his hands, fingers curling in that same steady, deliberate way—like a craftsman selecting tools.

Then, without warning, the air around him warped.

Two shapes manifested in his grasp.

One black. One white.

Twin blades, their edges gleaming with an otherworldly sheen.

The contrast between them was stark—one absorbed the faint glow of the battlefield like a void, while the other shimmered faintly, radiating a cutting clarity that almost hurt to look at.

Utahime’s breath caught. Her pen fell to the tatami with a muted clack.

“…No way.”

She leaned closer to the grainy footage, as though proximity could make sense of the impossible.

The swords weren’t just conjured shapes. Energy surged around them—raw, honed cursed energy—but not like any conjured weapon she’d ever seen.

These weren’t temporary constructs to be dismissed after a single strike. They had weight, presence.

She could almost feel the cursed signatures bleeding through the screen, resonating like instruments perfectly tuned.

He wasn’t just projecting shapes.

Utahime was deducing that Shirou Gojo was constructing cursed weapons.

Her jaw slackened, heart thudding in her chest.

“That… that’s supposed to be impossible.”

Her voice was a whisper, but the words trembled with disbelief.

Normal sorcerers could imbue weapons with cursed energy, yes. Some even manifested temporary tools.

But this? Actual, fully realized cursed weapons, forged from nothing but will and technique—shaped with precision down to the grain of the steel?

Utahime gripped her knees so tightly her knuckles blanched.

“This is.. more than Construction, not like Mai’s…” she muttered, her thoughts racing.

“He’s using it on a level no one’s ever—this isn’t just replicating a form, it’s giving it permanence, cursed resonance, balance…”

On-screen, Shirou moved with deadly grace, twin swords whistling through the air as curses fell around him in heaps.

Every slash was precise. Not a wasted motion. Not a flicker of hesitation.

Utahime stared, her lips parting as the realization crashed down on her.

“If he can do this…” She swallowed, a thin sheen of sweat prickling at her temple. “If he can create cursed weapons from nothing, stable enough to rival forged ones…”

Her mind flashed to the Higher-Ups, to Gakuganji’s stony face, to the endless politics and paranoia of the jujutsu world.

Utahime dragged her hands down her face, muffling the strangled groan clawing up her throat.

“Of course… of COURSE it couldn’t just be simple,” she muttered, glaring at the paused frame of Shirou holding the twin blades as if it personally offended her.

The evidence was damning. The boy wasn’t just talented. He was dangerous—politically dangerous.

The moment the Higher-Ups saw this, they’d brand him a threat. A tool to be controlled. Or worse, something to be eliminated before he “disrupted the balance.”

Utahime’s temples throbbed.

“I swear, that damn Gojo bloodline is nothing but a headache…”

She rubbed her forehead, her pulse quickening. She could already hear Gakuganji’s voice echoing in her skull:

“We cannot trust what we cannot control.”

Yeah. She knew how that story ended.

Her eyes slid back to the screen. Shirou’s silhouette stood framed in flickering light, twin swords gleaming, curses crumbling at his feet. He didn’t look like a teenager. He looked like a weapon—polished, perfected, inevitable.

Utahime hissed through her teeth.

“Nope. No way. Not letting them see this.”

With a swift jab of her finger, she stopped the recording. The quiet hum of the projector filled the silence, but her thoughts were anything but quiet.

‘I’m going to need to call Satoru. Tell him just how deep his brother’s already dug himself into a pit. And then? He’s going to owe me. Big time.’

Her eye twitched.

She imagined the smug look Satoru would give her when she brought this up, already hearing him laugh about how “of course my brother’s amazing, what did you expect?”

Utahime clenched her fists.

“No, Satoru. You don’t get to laugh this one off. You better start paying up in coffee, in favors, in EVERYTHING, because I’m about to cover your damn brother’s tracks and save both of you a world of pain.”

She jabbed the delete button with more force than necessary, the footage blinking out of existence. Her pulse slowed only slightly, though her shoulders remained tight.

Leaning back, she exhaled through her nose, exhausted.

“I’m too tired for this crap,” she muttered.

“All I wanted was a quiet night, some Shohei Ohtani highlights, and maybe ten minutes without the Higher-Ups breathing down my neck. But nooo, now I’m babysitting another Gojo anomaly.”

Utahime let her head thunk against the wall behind her.

“...YOU Gojos. You owe me BIG time for this.”

The footage flickered again.

Static gave way to chaos—buildings reduced to rubble, shadows writhing across the screen like living scars. Utahime stilled, pen frozen above her notebook.

And then it appeared.

Her breath caught in her throat as the grainy lens captured it: a curse taller than the ruined structures around it, grotesque and jagged, its form radiating malice so thick she swore she could feel it bleeding through the monitor.

Her eyes widened.

“…A Special Grade.”

The words were barely audible, slipping out as if saying them too loudly might draw the thing closer.

It didn’t just exist on the footage—it dominated it.

Every flicker of its movements bent the battlefield around it, the other curses scattering like jackals afraid of their own alpha.

Her stomach knotted. “That thing’s power… it’s on par with the worst of them. Maybe worse.”

But then the angle shifted, capturing motion at the corner of the chaos.

Utahime’s hand twitched as the white-haired girl—the same one Shirou had dragged out of danger earlier—stumbled into view.

The girl tried to run. Fragile legs, desperate speed. She was nothing against the enormity of what loomed behind her.

“No… stay down, you idiot!” Utahime barked at the screen, forgetting for a moment that the girl couldn’t hear her through the damn tape.

Shirou moved into frame.

Twin swords in hand, he placed himself squarely between the Special Grade and the girl, his shoulders rising and falling with unshakable resolve.

Utahime’s nails dug crescents into her palms.

“No, no, no—you can’t—there’s too many!”

It wasn’t just the Special Grade. The camera shifted again, and she saw them: at least two dozen lesser curses converging on him, a writhing tide of grotesque shapes and gnashing maws.

And yet—

He stood his ground.

Steel flashed, curses fell, one after another, precise and merciless. His movements carried that same terrifying economy, no wasted effort, no falter.

But the Special Grade was waiting.

Utahime’s chest seized as she saw it move, impossibly fast for something its size, its claw swinging in an arc meant to bisect both Shirou and the girl in one stroke.

Shirou pivoted—

And she realized too late what he intended.

He turned his back.

“—No!” Utahime shouted, lurching forward as though she could stop it.

The claw ripped across his spine.

The image distorted with the impact, static hissing like screams. Blood sprayed, a crimson arc against the ruin-lit backdrop.

Her hands trembled. Her pulse pounded in her ears.

But before she could even process the sight, before her mind could wrap itself around the fact that Shirou Gojo had just taken a mortal blow—

The girl changed.

Utahime’s breath stuttered as the white-haired child screamed, her voice breaking the air like shattering glass. And then—

Cursed Energy erupted.

Not a ripple. Not a flare. But a flood.

It poured out of her in violent waves, crashing against the camera lens, distorting the feed like reality itself was buckling.

The sheer volume of it dwarfed the curses surrounding her, even the Special Grade pausing, as though taken aback.

Utahime’s hand flew to her mouth.

“…What the hell…?”

Her body locked, every muscle tight as her mind failed to keep pace.

First Shirou, conjuring impossible blades, standing against impossible odds. Then him falling, wounded by an enemy he shouldn’t have tried to shield against.

And now this girl—this nameless, white-haired model-looking foreigner—unleashing cursed energy that could rival…

“No. No, no, no, this isn’t—this isn’t normal.” Utahime pressed her palms against her temples, eyes glued to the screen even as her pulse thrashed like a war drum.

Her emotions whiplashed from shock, to disbelief, to dread, each one cutting the breath from her chest before she could recover from the last.

“I can’t—what am I even looking at?!” she hissed, voice cracking under the strain.

The tape continued to play, the battlefield spiraling further into chaos.

Utahime could only sit there, trembling, feeling as though she’d been strapped into a roller-coaster with no brakes, the track twisting into directions her mind could no longer predict.

Utahime’s knuckles were white where they gripped the table, her pulse hammering in her ears.

The screen flickered again—and Shirou moved.

Impossibly, he stood back up.

Utahime’s eyes widened, her body leaning toward the monitor as if closing the distance would help her understand.

Blood still streamed down his back, soaking the ruined fabric of his shirt. Yet his posture—straight, grounded—was as if the wound no longer existed.

Then she saw it.

Blue light bloomed from the gash, threads of cursed energy knitting the torn flesh together, searing shut what should have been a killing blow.

Her breath hitched.

“…Reverse Cursed Technique,” she whispered, the words tasting almost disbelieving. “He’s—he’s healing himself?”

Her pen rolled across the tatami, forgotten, as a dry, incredulous laugh escaped her.

“Unbelievable. Just what the hell is with the Gojo family…?”

A mix of irritation and awe twisted in her gut.

It was bad enough Satoru Gojo walked around like some smug, untouchable god—now there was another one of them running around casually pulling off feats most grade 1 sorcerers couldn’t replicate if they trained their entire lives.

On-screen, Shirou tightened his grip on the twin swords, his stance shifting—lower, sharper, a predator about to strike.

The Special Grade lunged.

Shirou met it head-on.

The camera jostled, grainy footage struggling to keep up as he drove the cursed spirit back, blow by blow. Sparks of cursed energy lit the battlefield like strobe lights with every clash.

Utahime’s breath came shallow, her body tense as though she was standing there herself.

Each slash landed with surgical precision, each movement driving the creature back, forcing it toward the corner of the ruined street.

He wasn’t just fighting to win—he was corralling it.

“Damn,” Utahime muttered, caught between disbelief and a reluctant kind of admiration. “He’s—he’s actually controlling the fight…”

The cursed spirit let out a howl, clawing wildly, but Shirou pressed the advantage, his footwork relentless.

And then—

He stopped.

The air around him seemed to still, as if holding its breath.

Utahime’s skin prickled.

His hands moved again—deliberate, precise—summoning not another pair of swords, but something larger. Something denser.

The feed distorted.

Static rippled across the screen as the weapon came into being, too saturated with power for the camera to properly process.

Utahime’s heart slammed against her ribs as the image warped—just a silhouette, a long, gleaming shape that seemed to bend the light around it.

“W-What is that?” she whispered, barely daring to blink.

The image fractured.

For one single frame, she saw the explosion of energy—a detonation that made the camera’s sensors scream in protest—and then the feed cut to black with a crackle.

Utahime stared at the dead screen, her reflection staring back at her in the dark glass.

“GOD—FUCKINGDAMMITTTT!!!!” Utahime screamed her lungs out.

She was so furious of the screen that went dead abruptly, that she almost punched it.

Her chest heaved, sweat dampening her temples.

“That—” She dragged a hand down her face, breath shaky. “That wasn’t just a cursed weapon. That was…”

Her voice trailed off, words failing her.

There were no notes she could write for what she just witnessed. No report that wouldn’t sound like fiction.

And now, more than ever, she knew exactly what she had to do.

“Great,” Utahime muttered under her breath, shoving her pen aside and rising to her feet. “Now I definitely have to call Satoru. And he owes me. Big time.”

Her hand went to her forehead as the vein on her temple threatened to pop.

“Why does every Gojo I meet make my life harder!?”