Kyoto Sister School Goodwill Event - Team Battle, Part 9

Maki and Mai meet head-on, and Mai cannot escape the truth that her sister holds something she does not. Bitterness over Maki abandoning the Zenin Clan, plus the strain of forever trying to outdo her, weighs heavily on Mai. However hard she presses, Maki makes the chasm in their power undeniable.

A flashback shows Nobara, shortly before the event, asking Yuji his read on Maki as a sorcerer. Reluctant at first, he conceded that even with little jujutsu knowledge he could sense she was a formidable fighter from her bearing alone. Nobara noted Maki sat at grade 4 purely because of her family, but a strong team result might at last get her noticed. Maki overhears the exchange and recalls it as she battles Mai, carving apart her bullets and stripping her footing with only a sword, then dodging the gunfire and kicking her aside. The clash reminds Mai that her sister was born with a gift she herself never received.

Years earlier, Maki would help Mai brush off the curses around their home, and Mai envied how lightly Maki bore everything, a rift that finally pushed Maki to leave the family. When their old man, Naobito Zenin, warned that he would make Mai's life harder, Maki insisted her sister stay clear of the matter, and Mai, overhearing, called her a liar for walking out. In the present, after turning aside a sixth shot, Maki assumes the revolver is spent. Mai, though, had hidden her cursed technique, Construction, which forges one bullet daily at a heavy toll on her body. The unexpected round nearly connects, but Maki's reflexes snatch it from the air. Mai suspects her sister carries a reverse Heavenly Restriction, swapping an inherited technique for superhuman physique, a trade the clan looked down on yet one Mai lacks.

This Volume 5 installment, set within the Kyoto Goodwill Event Arc, was adapted as Episode 17 and debuts Naobito Zenin in flashback. Beaten, Mai recalls Maki once vowing never to leave and asks why her sister would not have simply lived as a peasant beside her, admitting she became a sorcerer only because Maki went chasing dreams. She pleads to understand why Maki did not fall into the hole alongside her. Maki replies that she could never have borne living with herself, then departs while Mai sobs, branding her a liar and saying she hates her. The chapter both opens and closes the sisters' duel.