Jujutsu Kaisen — Chapter 29 - Ten Thousand Punches to Shatter the Confusion
After half a month of back-to-back high-intensity exorcism missions, Jujutsu High finally got a rare half-day break.
Under the shade of a tree at the edge of the training grounds.
Megumi sat cross-legged, a brick-thick copy of Fundamentals of Cursed Theory spread open on his lap.
A slender hand shot out and snatched the book away.
"Well, well. Look who it is — the school mascot, little Megumi-Megumi?"
Satoru Gojo, small round sunglasses and all, crouched in front of Megumi and held the book high above his head.
"Reading that old man's book at your age? You'll go bald. Come on, call me Big Brother Gojo and big bro will take you to buy limited-edition daifuku."
Megumi raised his dead-fish eyes, expression flat as a wall.
"Gojo-senpai. Your Limitless is leaking."
"That cloying, sickly-sweet smell all over you is giving me a headache."
Satoru Gojo's mouth twitched.
"That's the fragrance of the strongest man! What do you brats know!"
"All I know is, if you don't give me back my book, I'm telling my old man you tried to cheat on your morning run with Cursed Technique Lapse: Blue again."
Megumi went straight for the kill.
Satoru Gojo's face fell.
Ever since that green muscle monster had carried him through a hundred laps, the sight of bright green made him physically nauseous.
He was just gearing up to recover some dignity when a dull, heavy crash rang out from across the grounds.
BOOM!
Suguru Geto slammed into the dirt hard, throwing up half a meter of dust.
"Too slow! Too light! Your punches aren't even good enough to scratch a mosquito!"
Toji, wearing his green spandex bodysuit, walked on his hands until he stood over Suguru Geto.
He wasn't releasing that murderous intent today, the kind that felt like he'd tear you apart alive, but his brows were knotted tight.
"Get up."
Suguru Geto pushed against the ground and dragged himself upright, swaying.
Sweat had soaked through his bangs and plastered them to his pale forehead. He was gasping. His vision wouldn't focus.
His skull throbbed like a drum.
The relentless exorcism missions over the past half-month layered themselves across his retinas, tangled with the afterimages of the Star Plasma Vessel incident.
Riko's scream when the blade nearly pierced through her chest.
Those stupid, grinning faces of the Time Vessel Association believers, devoid of guilt, brimming with fervor.
And the cold, matter-of-fact expressions on the higher-ups as they handed down their unreasonable orders.
Protect non-sorcerers. The strong protect the weak. Was that supposed to be righteousness?
Risking his life for a pack of hopeless monkeys. Swallowing those Cursed Spirit orbs that reeked of vomit.
His stomach lurched violently. Bile surged up his throat.
BAM!
Toji kicked Suguru Geto square in the shin.
Not hard. Just enough to drop him.
Suguru Geto hit the grass again and lay there, gasping.
"Look at you."
Toji pulled his leg back and stared down at him.
"Eyes like a dead fish floating belly-up. You reek of something rotting."
Suguru Geto clamped his back teeth together and said nothing.
He couldn't throw a punch. His muscles had stopped listening entirely.
Exhaustion and self-doubt had his nerves in a choke hold.
Megumi closed his book in the distance.
Satoru Gojo let the easy grin drop and stared at his best friend, brow furrowed.
Toji walked to the edge of the training grounds and yanked a solid wooden post out of the earth with one hand. The thing was as thick as an adult's waist.
He spun around and hurled it like a javelin. It drove into the dirt in front of Suguru Geto with a thunderous crack.
Half a meter deep. Solid as stone.
"Too much garbage in your head. That's why your fists have gone soft."
Toji pointed at the post and roared.
"Now, seal your Cursed Energy! Pure physical strength only! Give me 10,000 straight punches against that thing!"
Suguru Geto stared at him.
"Ten thousand?"
"Think that's too few? Make it twenty thousand!"
Toji bared his teeth, bone-white and wide. He dropped into a horse stance and threw a punch at the open air.
The shockwave tore through with a piercing sonic crack.
"You don't stop until you're done! Even if I have to shatter every bone in your hands today, I will drain every last drop of that poison out of your head!"
No room for argument. No room for reason. Only pure, grinding pressure.
Suguru Geto looked at the rough wooden post.
The sheer absurdity of it filled his mind.
10,000 ordinary punches. What could that possibly solve?
He settled into a horse stance, clenched his fist, and drove it into the post.
THUD!
The post shuddered. A dull ache shot through his knuckles.
"Did you forget to eat?! ONE!" Toji's roar detonated beside his ear.
THUD!
"TWO! Drive from the waist! Were you born without a spine?!"
THUD!
"THREE! Let it out! Scream it out! Every bit of that frustration, roar it out of you!"
Sweat broke fast and ran down Suguru Geto's chin.
Fifty.
Five hundred.
Three thousand.
With his Cursed Energy sealed, the brutal physical exhaustion forcibly cut off every scrambled signal in his nervous system.
Both arms burned so badly he could barely raise them. The skin over his knuckles had ground away, blood printing ragged red marks across the post.
Pain.
Tired enough to suffocate.
But something strange was happening. As his body was wrung bone-dry, the noise in his head, the churning, relentless noise, was actually going quiet.
His brain, forced to maintain nothing but the mechanical rhythm of each punch, had no choice but to stop thinking.
No higher-ups.
No non-sorcerers.
No Time Vessel Association.
Just this bloodstained piece of wood. And the searing burn deep in his lungs.
"6,420!"
Toji's voice had gone hoarse. Somewhere along the way, he'd found his own post and was throwing punches right beside him, relentless.
BOOM!
"8,100!"
BOOM!
Suguru Geto's breathing had turned into the ragged wheeze of a broken bellows.
Sweat poured into his eyes and stung. He was running on nothing but spite.
Bastards.
All of you. Drop dead.
Monkeys, old fossils, all of them.
Why the hell should I be the one to swallow that filth?
"AAAAAAH—!"
Suguru Geto let out a sound that was barely human.
Every drop of anger, confusion, and nausea that had been packed into his chest surged out through that howl and through his bloodied fist in one single, annihilating burst.
CRACK!
On the 10,000th punch.
The thick, solid post let out a final groan and split clean in half, both pieces crashing into the mud.
Suguru Geto's legs gave out. He folded straight onto his back like his bones had dissolved.
He lay there gasping, white sparks swarming across his vision. Both arms had gone past pain into numbness. His chest heaved and heaved.
But his mind was empty.
Quiet. A rare, absolute quiet.
Plop.
A bottle of ice water landed on his chest.
Suguru Geto rolled his eyes with effort and found Toji's rough, broad feet standing over him.
"Things you can't figure out — don't grind yourself to dust over them."
Toji's back was to him. The sunlight stretched his broad silhouette long across the ground.
"Rules. Righteousness. That's all just chains for the weak. If it pisses you off, then use these fists and smash it apart."
Toji walked off toward the shade.
Suguru Geto lay in the dirt and unscrewed the cap with trembling hands. He upended the bottle and poured it straight over his head.
Ice cold. All the way through.
Brutal. Savage. Without a shred of logic.
But it worked.
The extreme physical exhaustion had shoved the darkness in his head clean out, forced it out through sheer brute tonnage.
The question was how long it would stay gone.
Suguru Geto opened his eyes and stared into the blinding sun.
Bzzz.
A fly-head Cursed Spirit drifted lazily over, pustules across its body, the stench of sewage rolling off it in waves, and landed on his bleeding knuckles.
It sniffed at the sweetness of blood and raw flesh, greedy and unhurried.
Suguru Geto's face was empty.
He brought his thumb and forefinger together and pinched. The fly-head crumbled into a smear of black residue.
The familiar chill seeped through the gaps between his fingers and into his skin, that nauseating cold Cursed Energy aura, like an infected wound deep in the bone that never fully healed, that could never be shaken off no matter how hard you tried.
Summer had only just begun.
➤ Next: Youth Is Not Firewood for Warming Others