"Stop crying. Blow your nose too. Humph!"
"Uuuu... Humph!"
"That's right, good. Now, Megumi, you too humph."
Listening to the faint voices of the children from beyond the hospital room, Ieiri Shoko put a cigarette to her lips and lit it with a lighter.
Shoko had been in the hospital room for a while since Toji had pressed the call bell as soon as Zoro woke up, but after seeing the chaos of the biggest child trying to calm down two crying children, she neatly closed the door and left again. The patient looked perfectly fine at a glance.
'Zenin Zoro, huh.'
He was quite unique. Even from the perspective of Ieiri, who had seen many sorcerers, non-sorcerers, and corpses, that was the case.
'He had bled so much but was still alive.'
The blood volume for men is about 8% of their body weight, and for women, it's about 7%. Non-sorcerers are in danger of life if they lose about 30% of their total blood volume. Sorcerers can lose a bit more, but at most around 40%. It's even more critical for children.
The amount of blood Zenin Zoro had lost that day was clearly lethal.
'A user of the Reverse Cursed Technique?'
But for that, his recovery speed was slow. Maybe because of the poison. Detoxifying poison with a Reverse Cursed Technique is very tricky.
These past few days, Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical College and the upper echelons had been noisy over whether this kid was a sorcerer or a non-sorcerer.
The only person who could answer definitively, the kid's dad, has been keeping his mouth shut no matter what the higher-ups say and hasn't left the kid's side for days, Gojo, who has Six Eyes, is wandering outside the college, the person in question is lying in bed sick, and the rest are kids under 5 years old.
'Either way, it's remarkable.'
If he's a non-sorcerer, it means he endured that much blood loss through sheer will, and if he's a sorcerer, it means he could perform the Reverse Cursed Technique at that age.
If it's the latter, Shoko might get a colleague as the only Reverse Cursed Technique user currently being overworked, but she wasn't particularly pleased about it.
'It's not something a kid should do.'
Like all sorcerers, but especially Reverse Cursed Technique users, they often see death. Not only do they see sorcerers who die during treatment, but Reverse Cursed Technique users also handle the post-mortem care of sorcerers' corpses. If not, who knows what might happen.
Moreover, this kid was even younger than when Shoko caught the eye of the higher-ups at the Jujutsu Headquarters. Even Shoko didn't start working as a Reverse Cursed Technique user before entering elementary school.
Gojo strolled up from the end of the hallway, fiddling with something.
Gojo hadn't been at the college these past few days without being on a mission. "There was some family business," Suguru said nonchalantly. Shoko didn't pay much attention. She wasn't interested.
"What are you doing there, Sho~ko?"
"What about you? What are you doing here? It should be Yaga-sensei's class time now. If you're back, you should hurry back to the classroom."
At Shoko's words, Gojo shrugged and pushed his sunglasses up with a grin.
"I'm playing hooky."
"Could you not say that so proudly? I don't want to get scolded by Yaga-sensei because I covered for you playing hooky."
"You're playing hooky too, Shoko."
"I have a patient to examine. It's different from your case."
Seeing Gojo's sparkling Six Eyes, Shoko realized she might have inadvertently provoked him. She didn't know why, but her words seemed to have triggered this lunatic.
Knock, knock. Gojo Satoru knocked on the hospital room door.
"I'm coming in!"
Bang!
And without giving anyone inside a chance to react, he quickly opened the door and entered.
That crazy guy. Shoko, startled, hastily rubbed out the cigarette butt she had finished smoking in a non-wooden area and followed him in.
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