I'm the Strongest Sorcerer Alive, But She's the Only Woman Who Can Break My Barrier

The air in Shinjuku was thick with the usual Friday night cocktail of neon, exhaust fumes, and cheap ramen. But underneath it all, something else festered. A low, guttural thrum of cursed energy that coiled around an old, forgotten municipal archive building like a snake. It was a high-grade, but nothing I couldn't handle before my late-night dessert run. A simple solo mission. In and out.

I adjusted the black blindfold over my eyes, the world dissolving into the intricate, shimmering flows of cursed energy that only my Six Eyes could perceive. The curse inside was ugly—a writhing mass of bitterness and regret, born from decades of forgotten paperwork and bureaucratic despair. Annoying, but predictable.

The real annoyance was the handful of civilians still wandering the street. I needed a clean slate, no witnesses. With a flick of my will, I expanded my Infinity, creating a subtle, selective barrier around the block. It wasn't a wall they could see; it was more fundamental than that. Anything approaching would simply slow to an infinitesimal crawl, their perception gently nudged to turn them away from the area without them ever realizing why. It was effortless, a passive extension of my own existence. The strongest sorcerer alive didn't build walls; I was the wall.

Most people drifted away as intended, their paths bending around my invisible influence. Except one.

A woman. She was walking with a steady, unhurried pace, a canvas tote bag slung over her shoulder. I didn't pay her much mind at first. She’d turn like the rest. She was a few yards from the edge of my technique, her form just a neutral silhouette in my vision. Five feet. Three. She was supposed to stop. To slow. To turn.

She didn't.

She walked straight through my Infinity.

It wasn't a breach. It wasn't a shatter. She simply passed through the absolute space between us as if it were nothing more than a curtain of warm air. For a split second, the seamless flow of my own cursed energy stuttered, a microscopic tremor that felt like a heart palpitation in my soul. My breath caught in my throat. It was impossible. Nothing gets through. Nothing. I decide what touches me, and what doesn't. Always.

Yet, there she was, stepping onto the cracked pavement on the other side, completely oblivious. She paused only to adjust the strap of her bag, her head tilted as if listening to a distant sound, before continuing toward the archive's entrance. My mission, the high-grade curse, the entire jujutsu world—it all faded into the background. All I could see was the impossible woman walking through a law of my universe as if it didn't apply to her.

My focus snapped back to the building. The woman was a puzzle for later. A problem, yes, but the festering curse was a threat. I slipped inside the dusty archive, the air thick with the smell of decay. The curse, a grotesque amalgamation of limbs and weeping eyes, lunged from behind a row of collapsing shelves. It was a pathetic display. A quick application of Cursed Technique Lapse: Blue, and the space around the creature imploded. A wet pop, a spray of black ichor that never touched me, and silence. The entire exorcism took less than ten seconds.

I stepped back out into the alley, pulling the blindfold from my eyes and replacing it with a pair of dark sunglasses. The world snapped back into its mundane visual spectrum, though the flow of cursed energy remained a vivid overlay only I could see. My target was still there, standing by the alley's entrance, peering at the archive building with a frown. She hadn't seen the exorcism, but she clearly sensed something was off.

I moved, not with teleportation, but with a speed just fast enough to be unsettling. One moment I was by the door, the next I was blocking her path, my tall frame casting a long shadow over her in the dim light. I leaned against the brick wall, crossing my arms. This was the easy part. A little intimidation, a flash of a charming smile, and then a quick memory wipe. Standard procedure.

"You shouldn't be here," I said, my voice pitched low, smooth. The voice I used on government officials and stubborn old men on the council. The one that promised consequences wrapped in a pretty package.

She didn't startle. She didn't gasp or shrink back. She simply turned her head, and her eyes—a deep, unimpressed brown—landed on me. There was no flicker of fear. Not even curiosity. Just… irritation. As if I were a pigeon that had landed too close.

"And you are?" she asked, her tone flat. She shifted the weight of her tote bag on her shoulder.

My smile faltered for a fraction of a second. I pushed off the wall, crowding her space, using my height to loom over her. My sunglasses hid my Six Eyes, but I could feel her gaze cut straight through the artifice. It was a strange, piercing look that didn't just see my face or my posture; it felt like it was looking past the persona, past the power, and seeing the man beneath it all. It was unnerving. For the first time since I was a child, I felt completely, utterly exposed. The invincible Gojo Satoru, the Honored One, was being looked at like he was nothing more than a common annoyance. The feeling was so foreign, so jarring, it left me momentarily speechless. She wasn't looking at the strongest sorcerer alive. She was just looking at me.

I recovered, forcing my signature smirk back into place, even though it felt brittle. "I'm the guy telling you to leave," I said, my voice a low purr. "It's not safe."

She rolled her eyes. The sheer audacity of it was almost impressive.

Fine. If the charismatic intimidation act wasn't working, it was time for a more direct approach. I kept my hand casually at my side but focused a sliver of my cursed energy, weaving it into a fine, invisible thread. It was a simple probe, a diagnostic tool. To a normal person, it would feel like a sudden, inexplicable chill, a wave of primal dread that would send them running. To a sorcerer, it would be an unmistakable calling card. I extended the tendril of energy toward her, watching its vibrant blue path with my Six Eyes, waiting for her reaction.

It drifted through the space between us. As it reached the air just a centimeter from the skin of her arm, it didn't deflect. It didn't get absorbed. It simply vanished. The thread of my power, an extension of my very being, unraveled into absolute nothingness.

I blinked. My brain refused to process the input. I pushed a little more energy forward, a stronger pulse this time. It met the same fate, disintegrating harmlessly into the void that seemed to surround her body. It was like pouring water into a bottomless hole. A complete and total negation. A phenomenon that should not exist. My control was absolute; my energy did not just disappear.

She finally looked down at her own arm, then back at my face, her expression shifting from irritation to outright disbelief. "Are you serious right now?" she snapped. "What, are you trying to do a card trick? Look, buddy, I don't have any cash, so you can stop whatever weird street performance this is."

Street performance.

The words were so unexpected, so dismissive, that all the air left my lungs. Me. A street performer. The sheer, unadulterated ignorance was staggering.

Before I could even think of a reply, she huffed in exasperation. "I don't have time for this."

She lifted her hand and shoved me.

Not hard. It was an impatient, get-out-of-my-way push against my chest. But my mind, still trying to solve the puzzle of my disappearing cursed energy, didn't even think to reinforce my Infinity. It wouldn't have mattered.

Her palm made contact.

The touch was a physical shock that shot straight through my nervous system. The solid pressure of her hand against my sternum, the warmth seeping through the thin fabric of my jacket. It was real. Unfiltered. An unsanctioned point of contact that I hadn't permitted. No one touched me. Ever. The world touched Gojo Satoru only when he decided it was allowed to.

The shove barely moved me, but the sensation sent me reeling. I stumbled back a step, my mind a sudden, blank slate of white noise.

She pushed past me without another word, the canvas of her tote bag scraping against my thigh. I was frozen in place, watching her walk away down the street. She didn't look back. She just blended into the sparse late-night crowd and disappeared around a corner.

I stood alone in the alley, the grimy air feeling thin and cold. My chest tingled where her hand had been. The encounter had lasted maybe two minutes, but it had completely upended a fundamental law of my existence. A woman had walked through my ultimate defense, nullified my power without trying, touched me without permission, and then dismissed me like I was a common nuisance. The annoyance I’d felt earlier had evaporated, replaced by a burning, razor-sharp intrigue that coiled deep in my gut.