Principal Yaga's office wasn't exactly a welcoming place.
Stone walls, wooden beams, and the faint scent of incense barely covered up the underlying staleness that clung to old buildings. Gojo had always thought it felt more like a temple than a school. Which made sense, considering how many ghosts of policy and tradition haunted the place.
Yaga sat behind his wide desk, arms folded across his chest, the faint creak of old leather echoing in the space between them. He looked like a man who hadn't had a break in weeks—and wasn't planning to take one anytime soon.
"You saw him?" Yaga asked without looking up from the small stack of reports in front of him.
"I did," Gojo said, slipping into the seat across from him and tossing one leg over the other. "Our mystery guest is very much alive. Still half-conscious, but coherent."
"And?"
Gojo smiled faintly. "He's not a sorcerer. Not in the traditional sense. No cursed energy. No technique. But the power he used? It's real. Devastating. Efficient. I watched the footage again—he didn't just exorcise that spirit. He erased it."
Yaga finally looked up. "No residual cursed energy?"
"None. Not even a trace. Like the area was sanitized."
The older man leaned back in his chair, thick arms crossing. "That's not possible."
Gojo shrugged. "Apparently it is now."
Yaga gave him a long look. "You're sure it wasn't a technique?"
"If it was, he doesn't know it. He didn't even know what a curse was before it attacked him. Claimed he just reacted."
"And you believe him?"
"I believe he believes it."
The room fell into a contemplative silence. Gojo let it stretch, watching the way Yaga's jaw clenched slightly—subtle, but enough to give away that he was just as disturbed as Gojo, maybe more.
"There's something else," Gojo said after a beat. "That energy? It wasn't just different—it was repellent. Curses don't like it. I don't like it, and I can handle anything. It's not inverted cursed energy. It's not reversed, not refined. It's… other."
Yaga exhaled through his nose. "So what are you suggesting? That he's a vessel? That some ancient sorcerer is buried inside him?"
"No. He's not like Yuji. There's nothing possessing him. Whatever's in him is him. But it didn't originate here. I'd bet everything I've got that it came with him, or woke up the moment he got here."
"You think he's from somewhere else?" Yaga asked, tone sharpening. "As in—another dimension?"
Gojo didn't answer immediately. He didn't like tossing around theories without proof. But the more he thought about it, the more plausible it felt.
"He's evasive about his background," Gojo said carefully. "Says he's from the West. No family. No affiliations. Claims he moves around a lot. It's not much, but something about the way he avoids specifics… it doesn't feel like he's hiding criminal ties. Feels like he's hiding everything."
Yaga tapped his fingers against the armrest. "That sounds like a liability."
"It's also the only reason he's still breathing. He knows how to keep secrets. That makes him valuable. Controlled, maybe, but valuable."
"Controlled?" Yaga gave him a pointed look. "We don't even know if we can control him. If what you're saying is true—if this power can erase cursed spirits without leaving behind residue—it could destabilize the entire cursed ecosystem. You don't get to pretend that's not dangerous."
Gojo raised both hands in mock surrender. "I'm not pretending. I'm acknowledging. But locking him up or killing him? That's not strategy. That's fear. And fear gets people killed."
Yaga stood slowly, walking over to the window behind his desk. The sun was dipping behind the trees, casting long shadows across the courtyard below. Gojo could see a few second-years in the distance, practicing techniques, unaware of how quickly the world might change if the boy in the cell downstairs wasn't handled correctly.
"You want to train him," Yaga said without turning.
"I want to understand him," Gojo corrected. "Training comes later."
"And if we can't understand him?"
"Then we make damn sure he understands us."
Yaga looked over his shoulder. "And if his power grows?"
Gojo's smile didn't waver. "Then I'll grow with it."
The principal returned to his desk, arms crossed again. "You're taking a risk."
"So did whoever decided to teach me," Gojo said. "Worked out, didn't it?"
Yaga gave him a long, measured stare. "Barely."
Gojo stood and slid his hands into his coat pockets. "I'll keep him here. Under supervision. He's not going to hurt anyone—not unless we give him a reason to."
"And if the higher-ups push for a purge?"
"They'll have to go through me."
Yaga didn't flinch at the statement, but the silence that followed was thick. Eventually, he nodded.
"Fine. One month. You keep him under your eye. If we don't have answers by then… he's not your call anymore."
Gojo turned toward the door, pleased. "Understood."
He paused with his hand on the knob.
"Oh—and Yaga?" he said without turning.
"What?"
"I've seen everything cursed energy has to offer. But whatever that was… it didn't feel cursed at all. It felt like something that burns curses away just by existing."
Yaga's voice was quiet. "And that scares you?"
"No," Gojo said. "But it should scare everyone else."
Then he was gone, the door shutting behind him with a soft click.
Yaga stood alone in the darkening office, eyes scanning the last line of the report on his desk. A single sentence had been circled in red ink.
Subject does not exhibit cursed energy. Reaction to hostile cursed spirit was instinctual. Manifested unknown phenomenon.
He leaned back in his chair and whispered to himself, "What the hell are you?"