// SURVIVOR'S GUILT // : MAKI ZEN'IN

4.

"Hup!"

Suoh's fist tapped Toge on the chin, and the boy broke out into a grin.

"Fufu~, you're out, Toge!"

The silence deafened participant and onlooker alike, no more than Inumaki himself, who, after the curse wore off, slapped himself in the cheek where Suoh had hit him, and looked up with his eyebrows furrowed towards the taller boy.

".....e-eh...?"

Suoh only beamed back, and gave the Cursed Speech user a pat on the shoulder.

"Well, I wasn't gonna hurt my buddy real bad, was I~?"

Suoh turned his attention over to a gobsmacked Masamichi Yaga with his jaw on the floor, and said, "Hey, I don't wanna do too much damage to my friends, so how about we call Toge out here?!"

"....I-I-....." With everyone in complete disarray and astonishment, and with Suoh grinning once again, Toge trudged his way over to the sidelines, and plopped himself down onto the grass, eyes still wide over the situation just transpired.

With Suoh taking the time it took for Toge to sit down to stretch a bit and hum to himself, both Maki and Panda barely managed to collect themselves.

They glanced at each other, and back at Suoh, and back again.

"...what did he just.." Panda muttered.

"....I-..." Maki sputtered, then turned back to Suoh. "O-OI!"

"Mh? Yeah, what's up, Maki-chan~?" Suoh said, cocking his head.

"W-W-...."

"WHAT THE HECK DID YOU JUST DO?!"

Suoh's smirk was wiped from his face after Maki sputtered out her demands, and the seaweed boy stopped stretching, dropping his hands down to his sides.

With Yaga listening intently, Ijichi's teeth chattering from the nerves, Toge still bewildered over having his Technique thrown back at him, and Panda staring off into the distance, Suoh said matter-of-factly,

"Ah. That was my First Poison, Delusion. It lets me deconstruct any technique basically instantly."

...ah. I see.

A pit swallowed Maki's stomach whole, and a lump formed in her throat, stripping the breath from her lungs.

With Yaga in a similar state, the Jujutsu High Principal flinched, and the stern gaze perpetually stamped on his face was replaced by a wide-eyes and colour flushed from his skin.

Suoh's expression switched again in reaction to the cold silence overcoming the field, and he nervously sputtered, "A-Ah! Wait, I hope that wasn't too blunt, I can explain a bit better!"

"S-So, think of my First Poison as a device that shreds my enemy's technique like a paper shredder. It causes the technique to completely deconstruct and become useless, but the remnants of cursed energy used to use that technique are still up in the air, a-and stuff. I deconstructed Toge's Cursed Speech just now!"

"A-And then I used the reversal of my Poison, and took the remnants of cursed energy and put the technique back together, and fired it back in his face!"

Suoh paused from his ramblings and clasped his hands together with an anxious smile, sweat beads on his brow. "Get it?! G-Get it, you guys?!"

It took a moment for Maki and Panda to take in Suoh's nerve-fueled ramblings, to fully ingest his words and his instructions on how his technique functions, and the subsequent reversal of said technique as well; it took a moment further to realize that, in the span of a few seconds, Suoh Yuuya managed to send Panda into a daze with a perfectly-timed uppercut, react to Maki's surprise attack from a near-indefensible position and grip her halberd's staff with the blade centimetres from his nape, and then both dissolve and redirect Toge's Cursed Speech technique back at him,