Jujutsu Kaisen — Chapter 26 - A Father's Request, Megumi's Talent Test

The next day, dawn had barely cracked the sky.

"Move out! To explore the uncharted frontier of youth!"

Toji Fushiguro stood at the entrance in his signature green spandex, radiating energy at an hour no sane person was awake. One hand on his hip, the other pointing at the ceiling, he held the pose like he'd practiced it in the mirror.

Megumi Fushiguro yawned. He'd been physically extracted from his warm bed and was still rubbing his eyes, not fully convinced he was conscious.

Tsumiki Fushiguro crouched down and straightened her little brother's crooked collar, then slipped a candy into his pocket. "If Dad starts acting dumb," she murmured, "just eat the candy. Don't get mad at him."

Toji didn't notice any of this. He was already somewhere else entirely, burning with the vision of his grand plan.

"Megumi! Today, Dad takes you to witness the world of true strength! That dormant bloodline of yours — it's going to awaken completely under the call of youth!"

Megumi stared up at the man vibrating like he was about to compete in a relay race. His face was completely flat.

"Dad. If you yell any louder, the neighbor's dog is going to call the police."

"Exactly right! Even the neighbor's dog can feel our passion, that is the infectious power of youth!" Toji scooped Megumi up and planted him on his shoulder in one motion. "Hold on tight! Destination: Tokyo Jujutsu High! Full speed ahead!"

......

Tokyo Jujutsu High. Principal's office.

Masamichi Yaga sat at his desk in his glasses, carefully stitching an arm onto a half-finished Cursed Corpse.

It was a bear-shaped doll. The stitching demanded extreme precision, a test of Cursed Energy control as much as patience. He had just sewn the final stitch and was reaching for the core to inject it.

BOOM!

The office door exploded inward like a battering ram had hit it. The entire doorframe groaned.

Yaga's hand jerked. The needle punched straight through the bear doll's skull. The Cursed Energy circuit he'd spent the last hour building detonated. Stuffing erupted from the hole in the doll's head with a soft, catastrophic poof.

The veins on Masamichi Yaga's forehead rose one by one.

He didn't even turn around. He already knew.

"Principal Yaga! I, Konoha's Sublime Blue Beast, Fushiguro Toji, have arrived, bearing the future hope of Jujutsu High!" The voice was loud enough to shake dust from the ceiling.

Yaga turned slowly. The look behind his glasses could have cut glass.

He saw the green disaster. And slung over that disaster's shoulder, Fushiguro Megumi, wearing the expression of a child who had accepted his fate and found it bleak.

"Fushiguro Toji." Yaga's voice came out from between clenched teeth. "I have warned you. Countless times. Do not kick down my door." He pointed at the fresh human-shaped dent Toji had introduced to the wall. His temple throbbed. "And put your son down!"

"Have you actually turned Jujutsu High into a daycare?!" The rage was close to taking physical form. "Coming and going whenever you feel like it, dropping your kid here like it's a coat check, let me be very clear. Jujutsu High has rules. This is not your backyard!"

Toji set Megumi down carefully.

He didn't deflect with a joke. He didn't smirk. He smoothed down his spandex suit, which had no wrinkles, it never had wrinkles, and his expression settled into something no one in this room had seen on his face before.

He stepped back.

And bowed. A full ninety degrees, held.

Every reprimand Yaga had queued up lodged in his throat.

He stared. In all the years he'd known this man, he had never once seen him move like that.

"Principal Yaga." Toji straightened up. The unhinged energy was gone from his face. What replaced it was something quieter and heavier, the seriousness of a father. "I'm not here today to bother you as the taijutsu instructor."

He placed his large hand on Megumi's small shoulder.

"I'm here as a father. I'm asking for your help."

The air in the room shifted.

Yaga looked at the tall man in front of him. Then at the small boy beside him, jaw set, little fingers curled silently around his father's pant leg.

The anger drained out of him. Most of it, anyway.

"Fine." Yaga lowered himself back into his chair and pressed two fingers to his aching brow. "Talk. What is it?"

"This kid." Toji looked down at Megumi, something complicated moving through his eyes. A trace of helplessness in it. "As much as I hate admitting this — and I really hate admitting this — he carries the blood of that rotten clan."

Zenin.

The name formed silently in Toji's mouth. Yaga's eyes sharpened the instant it did.

He knew Fushiguro Toji's history. Everyone in the jujutsu world knew.

Heavenly Restriction. The Zenin clan's stain. A monster who had severed every tie to the sorcerer world and never looked back.

"He carries Zenin blood." Toji said it again, heavier this time. "I don't want him to end up like me. A 'good-for-nothing' who can only make a living with his fists."

He paused. His gaze fixed on Yaga with an intensity that didn't waver.

"So I want to ask you to test this kid's talent. Find out what's actually hiding in that bloodline of his."

"I want to know whether he has what it takes to become a true Jujutsu Sorcerer."

Yaga went quiet.

He studied Fushiguro Toji. This man's face was written over with hatred for the Zenin clan, and yet here he was, for his son's sake, voluntarily pushing the boy toward the same world he'd spent his whole life despising.

The contradiction in that was far heavier than the ridiculous green suit.

Yaga's gaze moved to Fushiguro Megumi.

The boy was looking straight back at him, chin tilted up. His eyes were clear and stubborn and green, identical to Toji's, and there was none of the shyness you'd expect from a child his age. Just curiosity. And underneath the curiosity, something that bordered on hunger.

He wanted strength.

Yaga understood.

This kid had the same thing his apparently unhinged father had, buried deep where it mattered: a wildness that didn't know how to quit.

"Heh." The sound escaped him before he decided to make it.

He thought of Gojo Satoru, beaten past the point of recognition, still screaming about learning Reverse Cursed Technique so he could get revenge.

Then this madman in front of him, bowing his head for a four-year-old.

Jujutsu High had never been this lively. Not once.

"Aren't you afraid?" Yaga asked, and there was a deliberate edge to it. "If he really does have talent, those old men in the Zenin clan will come for him. You know better than anyone what bloodline talent means to them right now."

"Come for him?" Toji's mouth pulled into a grin. It wasn't warm. It was the smile of the Sorcerer Killer, a thing with teeth and absolute certainty behind it. "I haven't even gone to settle my score with the Zenin clan yet. And they're going to try to take something from me?"

He cracked his knuckles. The joints popped like gunshots.

"They're welcome to try. Under the iron fists of the Sublime Blue Beast, we'll find out real fast, are their rules harder, or are my fists?"

"As long as I draw breath, no one takes my son from me. No one."

Megumi's small frame shuddered.

The fingers hooked into his father's pant leg tightened until his knuckles went white.

He didn't understand talent or bloodlines. He didn't understand the Zenin clan. But he understood that last sentence.

Dad is protecting me.

The realization moved through him like warmth. His heart had been cold for a long time. This was something different.

Yaga looked at the two of them, the big man, the small boy, and exhaled a long, slow breath.

He didn't feel like a principal.

He felt like a nanny. One specifically assigned to clean up after a collection of spectacularly problematic children.

➤ Next: Ten Shadows Technique, the Miracle of Zero Cursed Energy