Jujutsu Kaisen — Chapter 30 - Youth Is Not Firewood for Warming Others

Tokyo Jujutsu High, underground medical room.

The thick reek of disinfectant couldn't cover the sharp bite of blood in the air.

Shoko Ieiri bit down on an unlit cigarette, palm pressed hard against the mangled flesh of Kento Nanami's right shoulder. The soft white light of her Reverse Cursed Technique worked steadily, forcing the torn skin to knit back together.

"Hss—" Nanami clenched his teeth. Cold sweat rolled down his forehead.

One lens of his signature plain-glass frames was already shattered. What remained of his face was white as paper.

"Shut up. Don't move." Ieiri didn't even glance up. "Two broken collarbones. Two inches further and you lose the arm entirely. Count yourself lucky."

On the neighboring bed, Yu Haibara lay flat on his back, stiff as a board.

His thigh was wrapped in thick bandages. His white T-shirt had gone dark red, soaked through with blood, the hem still clinging to a few nauseating chunks of Cursed Spirit residue.

A full month of nonstop missions.

Cursed Spirits across Japan had been surging out like something broke open in the earth. The underage students at Jujutsu High were being run by Jujutsu Headquarters like killing machines that didn't need sleep, food, or mercy.

Wherever there was a hole, send the kids to fill it.

Nanami stared at the pale fluorescent light above him.

"I've had enough." His voice came out hoarse, wrung dry.

"Hm?" Ieiri shifted position and kept channeling.

"These days that aren't fit for a dog." Nanami's uninjured left fist tightened, veins rising sharp on the back of his hand. "Never-ending exorcism runs. Endless cleanup of disgusting garbage. And those useless Window agents who can't get the intel right even once." He felt like raw meat fed into a grinder. "This isn't work fit for a human being. Why the hell am I bleeding out in this shithole." He ground the words out through his teeth. "Even if I never graduate, I'm becoming an ordinary salaryman. Work overtime, get yelled at, fine, at least it's better than rotting in this cesspit."

This wasn't the first time Nanami had said something like this.

But this time, there was no trace of jest in it. None at all.

He was just tired.

Mind and body squeezed past the limit. Every time he shut his eyes, Cursed Spirits screamed.

Haibara stirred on his bed.

"Nanami, don't say that." He forced the corners of his mouth up, pushing out that signature bright smile of his.

It looked hollow now. Washed out. "We're protecting non-sorcerers. Senpai Geto always said, this is the responsibility of a Jujutsu Sorcerer."

"Responsibility my ass." Nanami cut him off clean. He turned and looked straight at his best friend. "That kind of thing just drives people insane. Look at yourself, Haibara. You don't even have the strength to lift your hand."

Haibara scratched at his black mushroom-cut hair.

"I'm a bit tired, yeah." Two dry laughs. His eyes went dim. "Can't even get down my favorite rice anymore, seems like."

The little sun had gone dark.

Even Haibara, always the one still running when everyone else had stopped, was starting to lose the will to get up. That kind of grinding, relentless pressure could hollow out a person's soul completely.

BANG!

The iron door blew open, kicked so hard it cracked against the wall.

Toji walked in wearing that faded bright-green spandex suit. Half a roasted wild boar was still slung over one shoulder. There was grease at the corner of his mouth.

"You two brats, what the hell kind of pity party is this?" He tossed the boar leg onto an empty bed, dragged a chair over, and dropped into it backwards, arms folded across the back, staring at the two of them like he owned the room.

He'd heard every word from outside the door.

He looked at the bone-deep wound on Nanami. Then at Haibara's gray face. His brows pulled into a knot and stayed there.

The higher-ups were bleeding their effective forces on purpose. Sending underage kids to plug holes while they sat inside their safe barriers drinking tea.

"Teacher Fushiguro." Haibara tried to sit up. Ieiri pushed him back down without looking.

"Stay down." Toji waved a hand. One thick, rough finger pointed at Haibara's nose. "Feeling tired? Don't want to do this anymore?"

Haibara looked away.

He felt like admitting weakness in front of the teacher who never stopped shouting about youth and passion was something close to shameful.

Nanami let out a cold laugh. "What, you here to lecture us about righteousness? Or are you going to use that garbage youth theory of yours to make us stand up and go get ourselves killed?"

"Righteousness can go straight to hell!" Toji's voice cracked like a whip, loud enough that the glass in the room hummed. He yanked his collar open, exposing the hard line of his collarbone. "I've never believed a single word of that responsibility bullshit! Who decided the strong have to babysit the weak? How much is Jujutsu High even paying you that your life is worth this?"

Nanami went still.

He'd expected this muscle-brained gorilla to launch into the same long-winded speech as Principal Yaga.

Toji stood up and moved between the two beds.

The unhinged hot-blooded energy dropped off his face like a mask falling. What surfaced in his eyes instead was something colder and sharper, that extreme, cutting clarity that belonged to a man who had survived by calculation alone.

"Listen up, brats." His voice came down low. Dead serious. "Youth is for pouring your sweat into. Not for burning as firewood so someone else stays warm."

"If you're tired, if you don't want to do this anymore — then don't."

He drove his fist into the wall. Plaster rained down.

"Can't finish the missions? Let those useless bastards sitting in their offices go exorcise them. And if anyone dares to force you, I will use these two fists to shove the heads of every one of those old men at Jujutsu Headquarters straight up their own asses."

Crude. Savage. Completely unhinged.

And it landed like a hammer blow, cracking straight through the suffocating weight that had been sitting on both of them.

Not everyone had to be a savior. If you couldn't win, you ran. If you were tired, you rested. That was just the logic of a normal human being.

Haibara stared at Toji. His eyes stung for no reason he could name. He didn't have to be the little sun that never went out. He was allowed to say he was done.

"Teacher Fushiguro..." He sniffled, drawing breath to say something.

BEEP-BEEP,

A sharp alert tone cut through the quiet.

The flip phone on Nanami's bedside table lit up.

Top-priority urgent mission directive. Auxiliary Supervisor.

The tension that had barely begun to leave Nanami's body snapped back in an instant. He reached out with his uninjured left hand and flipped the phone open.

His face went dark.

"Grade 2 mission." He read the screen through his teeth. "Ubusuna shrine territory. Grade 2 Cursed Spirit activity confirmed. Requirement, immediate exorcism. Assigned personnel: Grade 2 Jujutsu Sorcerer Kento Nanami. Yu Haibara."

A death summons. That's what it was.

Not even enough time to breathe.

A wound freshly stitched, already about to be torn back open.

Haibara's body moved before his brain caught up.

He pushed himself up on his bandage-wrapped leg and forced himself off the bed.

"Hss—" The wound split. Blood soaked through the gauze immediately.

He stood anyway. Grabbed his jacket from the side and pulled it on, squeezing out a smile.

"Guess we can't rest just yet." He scratched the back of his head. "Come on, Nanami. Finish up early, and we can still make it back tonight for the rest of Teacher's roast pork."

➤ Next: The Overranked Trap and the Awakening Tyrant