Your Life As A Tokyo Jujutsu High Background Student

Chapter 45 - The price we pay

In the blink of an eye, Shoko's domain engulfed everyone. The dingy confines of the holding area melted away, replaced by a wild garden that defied logic and reason. Each cardinal direction existed in a different season, the transitions so seamless you could barely tell where one ended and another began.

To the east, spring burst forth in a riot of new growth. Tender green shoots poked through rich, dark earth. Cherry blossoms and plum flowers danced on phantom breezes, their petals suspended in mid-air.

The southern quadrant blazed with summer's glory. Sunflowers towered overhead, their faces frozen in perpetual worship of an unseen sun. The air shimmered with heat haze, and ripe fruits hung heavy on branches.

Autumn reigned westward, a painter's dream of reds, golds, and deep purples. Maple leaves paused mid-twirl in their descent, creating a living curtain of fall's fleeting beauty. The scent of apples and woodsmoke lingered as a bittersweet reminder of time's inevitable passage.

To the north, winter held court in serene stillness. Bare branches reached skyward like gnarled fingers, dusted with a fine layer of glittering frost. Snow-covered ground sparkled like diamond dust, untouched and pristine.

At the center of it all, directly behind Shoko, loomed the Wheel of Time itself. It was a clock of impossible proportions, its face a dizzying expanse easily spanning twenty feet. Intricate gears and cogs whirred and clicked, each movement seeming to shift the very fabric of reality. The hands of the clock pointed to all hours at once, somehow both moving and stationary.

Nobody, except you, saw that curveball coming. They all gaped at Shoko and her domain, which wasn't entirely a matter of choice considering the sure-hit effect had them all effectively glued in place - they were little more than statues now.

Gakuganji's face contorted, smugness evaporating into an expression of wide-eyed shock. When he regained the power of speech, his voice emerged as a strangled screech worthy of a tone-deaf banshee: "What in the seven hells is this?!"

Shoko shrugged, the motion causing ephemeral ripples in the air around her. "Oh, this little thing? They used to call it Divine Blessing."

Yaga's sharp intake of breath was audible in the eerie silence of the domain. "Divine Blessing...?" His voice held a mix of awe and something close to terror. "Good lord, that's got to be the rarest cursed technique in all of jujutsu history!"

"You got it," Shoko confirmed with a nod. "The name's a bit dramatic if you ask me. It comes from some old belief that it's a great blessing to live long enough, experience the entire passage of time in one's life - birth, growth, illness, death. You know, the whole shebang."

Catching the vacant stares of Gakuganji's goons - a collective blankness suggesting their brains had clocked out and hopped a one-way flight to Fiji - Shoko rolled her eyes. Her voice took on the weary tone of a bored professor lecturing to a class of sleep-deprived undergrads:

"Look, it's Time Manipulation, plain and simple. But it's not rewinding time like what you see in the movie, okay? My technique requires specific targets. I can stop or move forward the flow of time through anything as long as it has some amount of cursed energy. Through reversed cursed technique, I can move the flow of time backward, too."

Sensing she was rapidly losing her captive audience, Shoko changed her approach again. "Okay, let me dumb it down. When I'm patching you up after your run-in with a curse, I'm basically playing with time on the tissues of your muscles, ligaments, nerves. Speed up regeneration, reverse damage - sometimes both at once for really nasty wounds. Imagine a universal remote for reality, but instead of flipping channels, you're fiddling with the space-time continuum. That's me."