THE BOYS: The Wrong Main Character

The heat inside the barrier was suffocating. Rivers of lava bubbled and hissed, throwing a hellish red glow across the cavern.

Mark stood on a slab of blackened rock, boxed in by Jogo’s domain.

"Hehehe... Domain Expansion is the pinnacle of Jujutsu!" Jogo’s voice rasped off the molten walls. He hovered above the magma, grinning down.

"You humans are all the same. Arrogant. Fragile. Ignorant. Did you really think that little barrier could save you from a true cursed spirit? In here, you’re nothing."

Domain Expansion. The supreme technique. Trap the target, and every attack inside lands. No dodging. No blocking. Even an absolute defense like Mark’s gets walked right through. The space itself does the killing.

"I’ll burn you down to the marrow!" Jogo roared, the vent on his skull erupting, magma churning around them. "There’s no dodging! No blocking! The second I will it, you’re ash before you hit the ground!"

Mark just stood there. Sighed. Tugged at his collar.

"Man, it’s really humid in here," he muttered, wiping his forehead.

He looked around, bored, then finally looked at Jogo.

"So. A guaranteed hit." His voice didn’t waver. He raised his right hand, crossed his middle finger over his index. "Guess the only way out is to overwrite it with a better one."

His eyes snapped open.

The sleepy haze was gone. What replaced it was a crystalline blue that sliced straight through the red haze of the volcano.

Cursed energy condensed around him — cold, crushing — and the magma physically recoiled from it.

Up on his floating rock, Jogo’s breath caught. The heat of his own domain dropped like someone had cut the furnace. He stared at Mark’s fingers, and something old and animal cracked through his arrogance.

No. No way. His mind scrambled. A barrier inside my barrier? Don’t tell me — this human knows Domain Expansion too?

Mark looked up at him, eyes glowing, utterly unbothered by the fire around him.

"Domain Expansion." Quiet. Absolute. "Unlimited Void.

The world tore open.

No blast. No clash. Just erasure — instant, total. The heat, the lava, the black stone walls of Jogo’s mountain, all of it swallowed whole in a flash of pure white.

When the light cleared, the volcano was gone.

Jogo hung in an endless, formless dark. Below him: a cosmos, stars scattered like dust across nothing. No heat. No sound. No ground under him.

What — what is this place?! He tried to scream. His jaw wouldn’t move. He tried to call his fire. Nothing sparked.

Then it hit him.

Everything. All of it, all at once — sight, sound, time, the birth of stars, the twitch of atoms — pouring straight into his skull like a flood with no dam.

I can see everything. I can feel everything. And because of that — I can’t move.

He hung there, paralyzed, eye blown wide, mind locked under the sheer weight of it.

Mark strolled through the void like it was a Sunday sidewalk, hands in his pockets, and stopped in front of him. Tilted his head. The sleepy look crept back into his glowing eyes.

"Pretty cool, right?" He reached toward Jogo’s frozen face. "Now — since you tried to melt my Akihabara haul — I’m taking a piece of you home."

Red light sparked on his index finger. Blue bloomed on his middle. The two pulled against each other, warping the space around his hand like it was screaming.

"Imaginary Technique."

His fingers came together.

"Purple."

A roaring sphere of violet tore forward. It didn’t burn. It didn’t crush. It deleted. Jogo’s torso, his arms, his legs — gone in less time than it takes to blink.

The output blew straight through the barrier’s limits, and the void around them split apart with a deafening CRACK.

Reality snapped back — cold mountain forest, dead of night.

The collapsing barrier spat out the only thing left of him.

Jogo’s severed head shot through the air, skipped across the half-drained pond like a stone, and rolled to a stop in the shallows, bobbing there. Pathetic.

Footsteps tapped against the water.

Mark walked out across the surface like it was pavement, hands back in his pockets, the glow fading from his eyes.

Up on the road, Satomi sat on the melted guardrail, clapping like she’d just watched a good movie.

Jogo spat out a mouthful of muddy water, eye crawling up to the man standing there. He was shaking. Something in him had cracked, looking at that gap between them.

"You..." he choked. "...monster."

Then the water burst into color.

Flowers — a whole field of them — bloomed instantly across the pond, spilling over the cracked asphalt and scorched ground.

A wave of unnatural, drugging calm rolled out with them, meant to strip the fight right out of anyone who breathed it in.

Mark didn’t even blink. His senses cut clean through it.

Instead of easing up, he spun on his heel, yanked his hand from his pocket, and threw a punch into the empty air behind him.

He didn’t hit air.

His fist slammed into the chest of something towering and pale, branches sprouting from where its eyes should’ve been. Hanami. Ambush.

"Today’s the day you die," Mark said, flat, expecting the punch to punch straight through.

CRACK!

Instead of caving, the body shattered — into splinters, a hollow log of dead wood, exploding into sawdust on contact.

A decoy.

Mark blinked. "Huh. Fuck."

He whipped around just in time to catch it — the real Hanami sinking into the far bank, Jogo’s head clutched against its chest, phasing straight into the tree roots.

One breath and it was gone, cursed energy folded into the forest, dragging them both underground.

Nothing left to chase. No trail. No trace.

Mark stood alone in the drifting flowers, fist still out, sawdust settling around him. The night went quiet again.

He lowered his arm, staring at the empty water where his interrogation had just walked off without him.

Let out a long, tired breath.

"Screw you."