Ms. Gojo thought she was dating an ordinary person's boyfriend.

In the cramped dead-end alley, even the cold wind seemed to be frozen by some invisible, terrifying pressure.

Kikawa Sumi stood quietly at the boundary between shadow and moonlight.

Those deep black eyes, which usually held a gentle smile and seemed to embrace all the suffering in the world, now shone with a chilling cold light.

In fact, the moment he kicked open the iron door of that abandoned power distribution room that afternoon and pulled the trembling Yoshino Junpei into his arms, he had keenly sensed a nauseating aura.

Those were traces left on Shunping by the three perpetrators.

Out of caution, Sumi Kichikawa subconsciously activated [Dharmadhatu Observation] as she exited the underground parking lot.

In the absolute vision of the outsider, stripped of worldly colors and reaching the very bottom of the world's logic, he clearly saw what was wrapped around the three boys—several dark red, ominous threads that exuded a strong stench and a twisted feel.

It was a faint, but real, residual curse power.

They have come into contact with foreign objects.

To be precise, it was a highly powerful and malicious cursed spirit that had recently formed a causal connection with them, and even secretly amplified the evil thoughts that already existed in their hearts towards their own kind.

Kikawa Sumi lowered his eyelashes, looking down at the three boys kneeling on the rough road, trembling like leaves because they couldn't withstand the pressure he unconsciously exuded. His eyes were as cold as if he were looking at three rotting corpses.

Originally, the "causal loop," as the authority that touches upon the underlying logic of the world, should absolutely not be applied directly to ordinary people.

This is the law that restricts him as an "outsider." Forcibly using it would disrupt the balance of the present world and even provoke a backlash from the world's will.

But now, things have changed.

Because these three individuals were tainted with the aura of cursed spirits, the conditions for judging the laws were completed by their own hands at this moment:

First, a causal connection was formed between the target and the cursed spirit;

Second, the target actively created pure malice sufficient to form a curse.

Restriction, or removal.

"Since you believe that the suffering of others is merely a bargaining chip to demonstrate your own power..." Sumi Kikawa's voice was soft, yet it carried an undeniable, absolute authority.

"Then try it yourself."

He slightly raised his hand, his long, pale fingertips gently plucking at the air as if strumming a zither string.

—【A causal cycle, reversal.】

The three boys, who were screaming in terror and from their shattered knees just a moment ago, suddenly had their voices cut off as if by an invisible hand.

Their bodies stiffened abruptly at the same time, and their pupils, which had been dilated with fear, instantly lost focus, becoming unfocused and empty.

The gears of cause and effect have begun to reverse.

In Kikawa Sumi's vision, countless black causal lines, invisible to the naked eye, were frantically converging from all directions, like a black torrent bursting its banks, pouring into the mental landscape of the three without reservation.

That was the harm they had inflicted on others by all their past acts of bullying—

The humiliation of being stripped naked, the suffocation of being held down in dirty water, the despair of being isolated, the profound fear of having no hope for tomorrow...

The hell that all the victims had experienced was now flowing back hundreds or thousands of times without any loss, along the causal line, and crashing into the depths of their own brains and souls!

"Ah... Ahh ...

The first one to break down was the boy who was in charge.

He was like a fish dying out of water, twisting and rolling wildly on the rough ground, his hands scratching his cheeks and neck so hard that his nails dug deep into his flesh, even drawing bloody marks that revealed the bone, as if trying to dig the illusions that had crawled into his mind.

The other two followed closely behind.

A man frantically slammed his head against the brick wall next to him, making dull "bang" sounds, until his forehead was covered in blood and flesh, but he didn't stop.

The other person collapsed in the filthy puddles, tears and snot streaming down their face, desperately tearing at their clothes as if crawling with poisonous insects, uttering incoherent, broken, and agonizing screams:

"I'm sorry... please let me go... help... it hurts so much..."

Kikawa Sumi stood still, one hand in her trench coat pocket, coldly observing the trial.

The fact that these three people reacted so violently and broke down so quickly can only mean one thing.

Their bullying targets were definitely not limited to Yoshino Junpei alone.

They have accumulated too much evil karma, too much of it.

The despair that had accumulated over the years transformed into a raging torrent that utterly destroyed their reason.

The average person's mind simply cannot withstand the impact of this level of information.

Kikawa Sumi showed no mercy whatsoever, nor any pity whatsoever.

He knew that the reason these people were acting so aggressively today was perhaps because they had indeed been contacted and provoked by that unknown cursed spirit.

Even when they were fighting, the evil thoughts in their hearts were amplified countless times by the power of the cursed spirit.

But so what?

The decision to commit violence was their own, and the fists they clenched to strike the weak were their own doing.

The twisted, blissful smiles on their faces as they pressed the cigarette butts against Shunping's arm were real.

Being provoked by monsters is never an excuse for innocence—because the premise for being provoked is that they inherently possess an incurable, base nature that derives pleasure from harming others.

If you enjoy the pleasure of violence, you must bear the despair of karmic retribution.

Kikawa Sumi stood there, coldly watching them writhe and convulse in the puddles, scratching their cheeks and necks raw with their fingernails.

ten minutes.

twenty minutes.

The liquidation was proceeding methodically, but Sumi Kichikawa's condition was gradually sliding into a dangerous state.

As the law operates for a longer period of time, suppressed selfishness begins to take over.

That feeling of emptiness, that transcendence over all living beings, pressed into the depths of his consciousness from all directions, like the pressure of water in the deep sea.

The scene before his eyes even began to double.

The filthy dead end is gone, replaced by an endless black hole where he has been adrift alone for countless epochs; an absolute nothingness where even the "self" is completely dissolved after the concepts of time and space have been stripped away.

Icy.

Loneliness.

Meaningless.

This is the perspective of "God".

Everything is but dust on the line of cause and effect; there is no difference between killing and saving.

"No……"

A faint, hoarse voice of resistance escaped from the depths of her heart.

He closed his eyes in pain and bit his tongue hard.

The taste of blood filled his mouth, and the pain in his body was like a fragile ribbon, barely pulling his fading consciousness back to reality.

He suddenly opened his eyes, forcefully severing the cycle of cause and effect.

The sharp buzzing in my mind receded like the tide, leaving behind a dizzying, almost exhausting feeling and an urge to vomit.

The three boys on the ground had completely stopped moving.

Their spirits had been utterly crushed by absolute suffering, leaving them as three empty shells that could still breathe.

Kikawa Sumi leaned against the cold, rough brick wall, panting heavily.

He lowered his eyes, looking at his hands that were trembling slightly uncontrollably.

He experienced the taste of being out of control once again.

The fear that if he looked into the abyss again, he would completely abandon his human body and become an indescribable monster clung to his nerves like a bone-deep infection.

Panic, confusion, and a destructive urge born from excessive repression were frantically churning and fermenting in his chest.

He feels very cold right now.

It felt as if my internal organs were being soaked in ice water.

He needs warmth.

He needed a real, heavy object, imbued with hot blood and a pounding heartbeat, to crush his soul, which was on the verge of falling apart.

Almost instinctively, a name pounded in his heart.

—Enlightenment.

"Enlightenment..."

Kikawa Sumi murmured hoarsely.

Once he started, the name was like some wildly growing thorn, instantly tightening around his heart and forcibly pulling him back from that void to the present.

"To go back... I need to find him..."

As Kikawa Sumi murmured to herself, a cluster of almost pathological ghostly flames suddenly ignited in her originally empty and lifeless black eyes.

He stumbled forward two steps, his usually meticulously combed black hair now hanging messily over his forehead, obscuring the chilling neuroticism and madness in his eyes.

He needed to see that pale blue color immediately.

He had to hold that warm body tightly in his arms to confirm the other's breathing, to confirm the other's heartbeat, to confirm that his "anchor" still existed safely in this world, and belonged only to him.

He didn't glance at the three convulsing, mud-like bodies on the ground again, as if they were three bags of worthless, foul-smelling garbage.

He now had only one thought in his mind—

"...Satoru is still waiting for me...Yes...I have to go back."

The man swayed, like a demon wandering in the night, carrying a terrifying chill and an uncontrollable obsession, stumbling yet impatiently rushing into the cold, rainy night.