Deterrence

The jujutsu sorcerers open diplomatic talks with envoys of the Simurian race and task the Okkotsu siblings with uncovering the aliens' real aims. The chapter asks whether Earth's sorcerers can ever share a world with their visitors.

Usami and Mino make their way to sit down with the Simurian envoys, the chosen venue being a Kyoto institution: the Emerging Science and Innovation Museum. Mino frets over skipping quarantine and risk-assessment steps given the chance of unknown alien diseases, while Usami warns that meeting them with suspicion could spark war, since humanity knows nothing of Simurian custom. The diplomats Jabaloma and Cross soon enter, and their fluent Japanese startles the pair. Mino silently curses the United States for never sharing that the aliens already spoke Earth tongues despite demanding Japanese intelligence on alien tech, and Usami privately reads it as payback for Japan's stinginess since the Kyoto Paranormal Resolution. Jabaloma then asks to bring in a third representative, warning he is gravely dangerous even unarmed, and when the figure arrives both humans buckle under sheer dread. Afterward a rattled Mino, wondering if he is even alive, finally sees why the aliens rank as a Sukuna-level threat, and Usami warns that this one being could conquer Japan on his own.

For the moment the Simurians want only one envoy to shadow sorcerers at school and on missions while hiding his alien nature. To Mino's surprise, Usami names the Okkotsu siblings, brushing aside the worry that they are too young by stressing that these visitors are refugees rather than conquerors, though Mino argues they hide facts to keep that label. Recalling how the Security Treaty signed sixty-two years back left Japan smug, nationalistic, and inward-looking, Usami refuses to repeat that error, insisting war must be dodged at all cost and that genuine harmony can spring only from youthful spirit instead of stiff grown-up formality. Mino dreads pinning the world's fate on teenagers, but Usami reminds him adults must carry their share too.

After the mission, Tsurugi tells a doubtful Yuka about the aliens and their menace, citing the curse user who abandoned profitable trafficking over the invasion and the third eye they both saw on Maru. To verify it herself, Yuka plans to question the detained curse user, and the siblings interrogate him under the cover of an explosive cursed object. He claims the leak spread digitally thanks to government bungling, then says a mothership carrying fifty thousand Simurians hangs over Japan and will set down in Nagano's Kurumayama Highlands at 8 P.M. the next day to resupply, briefly thinning its cloak. The pair travel there before the hour and, after Yuka notes Tsurugi still wears their grandfather's ring, watch the colossal Naunax appear. Nearby Maru rejoins Cross, who orders continued surveillance of the sorcerers despite Maru's belief that humans and Simurians are alike and that Simurian opinion is split between conflict and coexistence. Later, mistaking Cross atop a building for Maru, Tsurugi strikes up a chat about standing near the edge, only to be told to shut up before the alien vanishes, leaving him fuming. The chapter introduces Kazuya Mino and is collected in Modulo Volume 1.