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.

I didn’t report it. The incident in the alley was a black box, a piece of data that didn't fit any known model of the world. Reporting it would mean admitting a failing in my own technique, a vulnerability. It would mean subjecting her to the scrutiny of the higher-ups, and the thought of those old men getting their hands on her, on this living anomaly, filled me with a possessive sort of distaste. She was my puzzle. My problem to solve.

For the next three days, I became her shadow.

It was laughably easy. I could stand on a rooftop ten blocks away and, with my Six Eyes, watch the heat signature of her body as she moved through her apartment. I could teleport into the apartment building across the street and observe her through the window as she made coffee in the morning, her movements economical and precise. I mapped her life. It was aggressively, disappointingly normal.

She lived alone in a small apartment in Koenji. She took the same train every morning at 8:17 AM. She worked at a bookstore in Jinbōchō, the kind of place that smelled of paper dust and time, wedged between two gleaming modern office buildings. The sign above the door was faded wood, the name barely legible: Furuya Books. I watched her through the front window, a constant, invisible presence. She’d sit behind a worn wooden counter, reading. She’d help the few customers who drifted in, mostly university students and elderly men, pointing them toward towering shelves with a quiet efficiency. The store specialized in folklore, mythology, and obscure historical texts. It was a repository of forgotten stories.

Through my Six Eyes, the world was a brilliant tapestry of cursed energy. People were faint flickers, sorcerers were bright flames, and curses were grotesque smudges of negative emotion. She was none of those things. She was a hole. A person-shaped void in the fabric of it all. Cursed energy didn’t flow around her; it ceased to exist in her vicinity. The faint traces left by customers on the books she handled would simply vanish when she picked them up. She was a walking, breathing null-zone.

On the third day, I followed her home. Not from a distance, this time. I walked two cars behind her on the crowded train platform, close enough to smell the faint scent of old paper and something else, something clean and vaguely floral, that clung to her hair. I kept my Infinity active, the thin, absolute barrier of space around my body ensuring no one bumped into me. I watched her, wondering if she would notice. If some instinct would alert her to the apex predator stalking her through the evening commute.

She didn't. She just stared out the train window, her reflection layered over the darkening Tokyo skyline, her expression placid. Yet there was a certainty in the way she held herself, a stillness in her posture that felt different from the oblivious people around her. It wasn’t the posture of someone unaware of danger. It was the posture of someone who had never had to consider it. It was the kind of self-possession I recognized, because I saw it in the mirror every day. It was the quiet confidence of a person who knows, on a fundamental level, that they are untouchable.

That evening, I didn't wait for her to get home. The sun had set, casting long shadows that swallowed the narrow streets of Jinbōchō. I watched her flip the sign on the door to 'Closed' and lock it from the inside. A single lamp over the counter cast a warm, yellow circle of light in the otherwise dark shop. I gave her five minutes, then I stepped through the door. I didn't bother with the lock; space warped for a moment, and then I was inside, the old bell above the door remaining silent.

The air was thick with the scent of decaying paper and leather binding. It was a quiet, heavy smell. She was in a narrow aisle toward the back, running a cloth over a shelf of leather-bound books. She didn't seem to have noticed my entrance. I stood there for a moment, watching the methodical sweep of her hand. My playful persona felt like a costume I’d left at home. It had no place here.

"The shop's closed," she said, without turning around. Her voice was calm, but there was a finality to it.

"I know," I said.

She stopped wiping the shelf. Slowly, she placed the cloth down and turned. Her eyes found me in the gloom. There was no surprise. Just a flat, weary resignation, as if she'd been expecting me. As if my arrival was just another tiresome chore at the end of a long day.

"What do you want?" she asked.

I walked toward her, my footsteps silent on the worn wooden floorboards. I stopped a few feet away, close enough that she had to tilt her head back slightly to look at me. The shadows in the aisle were deep, carving sharp lines into her face.

"I want to know what you are," I said. My voice was lower than usual, stripped of its easy cadence. "I want to know how you nullify cursed energy."

A small, humorless smile touched her lips. It didn't reach her eyes. "Cursed energy," she repeated the words as if they were from a foreign language she found distasteful. "Of course. That's all it's ever about with you people."

My brow furrowed. "You people?"

"Jujutsu sorcerers," she said, the term sounding like an insult. "You walk around in your own little world, blind to everything that doesn't fit your narrow definition of power. You see a phenomenon you don't understand, and your first thought isn't to learn. It's to categorize. To control. To ask, 'what are you?' instead of 'who are you?'"

The accusation hit a nerve, precise and sharp. I was used to being feared, admired, or hated. I was not used to being psychoanalyzed by a bookstore clerk in a dusty aisle.

"It's a valid question when someone can walk through my technique," I countered, my voice hardening. "It's a question of safety. Yours and everyone else's."

"My safety?" She laughed, a short, sharp sound that was swallowed by the books around us. "I'm not the one who goes around picking fights with things born from humanity's worst emotions. That seems like a 'you' problem. Don't project it onto me." She took a step forward, closing the small distance between us. Her gaze was unflinching. "You think your power is the center of the universe. The ultimate measure of all things. It must be so shocking to find something it doesn't apply to. To find someone it can't touch."

"It's not possible," I said, the words coming out harsher than I intended. It was a statement of fact. My technique, my eyes—they were absolutes.

"It's not possible in your world," she corrected me, her voice dropping to a near whisper, intense and sharp. "But you're standing in my world now, sorcerer. And the rules are different here."

Her words hung in the dusty air, an audacious claim. My world. As if this collection of paper and ink held some fundamental truth that superseded my own. The frustration I’d been holding back began to curdle into something sharper, something closer to anger. I was the strongest. That was not a matter of opinion; it was a fact, as concrete as gravity. And this woman, this bookseller, was looking at me as if I were a child throwing a tantrum.

"The rules are the same everywhere," I said, my voice dangerously quiet. "Some people just don't know them yet."

I decided to give her a small lesson.

I let my cursed energy bleed out, not as an attack, but as a statement. I focused on the space directly around her. The air grew heavy, compressing. The dust motes dancing in the beam of the lamp froze, then began to swirl in tight, unnatural vortices. From the corner of my eye, I saw the spines of the books on the shelf behind her appear to ripple, the leather warping as if under a heat haze. The very geometry of the aisle began to bend around her form. It was a subtle application, a quiet display of force that would have sent any other person—civilian or sorcerer—to their knees with vertigo and dread.

She didn't even blink. Her gaze remained fixed on mine, her expression unchanged. There was no widening of the eyes, no sharp intake of breath. She stood in the epicenter of my distorted reality as if it were nothing more than a change in the weather.

"Is that supposed to impress me?" she asked, her tone flat, almost bored.

The casual dismissal was more infuriating than any scream would have been. I took a step forward, closing the final foot of distance between us. We were almost chest to chest now. I could see the faint, dark ring around her irises.

"What I want," I ground out, abandoning all pretense of civility, "is an answer. How are you doing this?"

"I'm not doing anything," she said, her voice dropping, matching my intensity. "You're the one filling the room with your noise. I'm just… quiet."

Before I could process the strange poetry of that, she moved. She raised her hand, slowly, deliberately. I watched it rise, my mind automatically calculating its trajectory. I knew the precise nanometer where her fingers should have stopped, where they would have met the absolute infinity I maintained between myself and the world. It was an unconscious defense, as natural to me as breathing.

Her fingers did not stop.

They passed through the barrier as if it were smoke. There was no resistance, no ripple of cursed energy, no feedback at all. One moment her hand was moving through the air, and the next, it was on me.

Her palm landed flat against my sternum, over my heart. The fabric of my jacket and shirt was no buffer. I felt the heat of her skin, the solid, living pressure of her hand against my body. It was a clean, unfiltered point of physical contact.

A violent shock went through me, sharp and electric. It wasn't just the surprise of the touch. Deep within me, the constant, humming river of my cursed energy, the very core of my power that I command with absolute authority, faltered. It was a stutter in the rhythm of my soul, a skip on a flawless record. My own power flickered in the face of her touch, like a candle flame in a sudden draft. For a single, terrifying second, I felt a void open up inside me where there should have been limitless energy. All I could feel was the startling, undeniable weight of her hand on my chest.