Jujutsu Kaisen — Chapter 32 - Nanami and Haibara's Departure, The Angered Jujutsu High

The sky looked like a filthy rag that had soaked up dirty water until it couldn't hold any more.

The atmosphere inside the principal's office was just as heavy.

Satoru Gojo sat on the sofa, long legs sprawled wide, but without his usual careless ease. He stared at the empty can in his hand. His knuckles had gone white.

Suguru Geto stood by the window, watching the dark clouds outside.

His stomach churned. The stench of swallowing Cursed Spirit orbs mixed with the truth he'd just heard, and the combination pushed acid up the back of his throat.

If that man hadn't gone.

Nanami and Haibara would now be two cold slabs of ruined flesh.

Were the juniors he cared about nothing but disposable tools to the higher-ups?

Disgusting.

Absolutely disgusting.

Masamichi Yaga stood behind his desk. His face was never warm at the best of times, but right now it had gone so dark it looked ready to drip.

He clutched the bloodstained mission report. His voice trembled under the weight of everything he was holding back.

"The auxiliary manager confirmed this — this was a directive issued directly by Jujutsu Headquarters?"

Toji let out a short grunt through his nose and nodded.

"The exact words were: to test the students' potential limits." His voice had no inflection at all. "Sending minors to feed a Grade 1 Cursed Spirit. Those old bastards were scheming so loud I could hear them all the way from Tokyo Bay."

Shoko leaned against the doorframe between the infirmary and the office, an unlit cigarette caught between her lips.

She didn't take a jab at Toji's crudeness like she normally would. She just pulled the cigarette out and exhaled slowly.

In the center of the office stood two teenagers wrapped in bandages.

Kento Nanami's only remaining lens, the left one, was riddled with cracks. His right arm sat in a plaster cast, hanging from a sling around his neck. His white shirt was stained with dark patches of blood that would never come out.

"Principal Yaga." Nanami looked at him directly. No anger in his eyes. Just the flat, still surface of deep water. "I resign."

Those two words landed, and the air in the room seemed to drop another two degrees.

Satoru Gojo's head snapped up. His pale blue eyes locked onto Nanami through his sunglasses.

Suguru Geto turned from the window. His lips moved. Nothing came out.

What was there to say? That this was a sorcerer's duty?

Don't be ridiculous.

"I've had enough." Nanami spoke slowly. Each word sounded like it was being squeezed from a dry throat. "I don't want to die for people who treat human lives as numbers. I don't want to keep taking hits like this in the dark. This isn't work. This is being used as fuel."

He clenched his uninjured left hand. "Even spending my days as a corporate drone getting yelled at from nine to five would be better than rotting in this cesspool."

Beside him, Yu Haibara had his head down.

The mushroom-haired kid who always wore that wide, bright smile, who buzzed with energy like a little sun, looked like a plant that had given up on growing.

"I'm sorry... everyone..." His voice cracked. The tears had already started.

His hands were fisted in the seams of his pants. Tears dropped onto his mud-caked shoes.

"I thought if I just worked hard enough — if I listened and exorcised Cursed Spirits — I could protect people. But..." Yu Haibara lifted his head. Those eyes, once so clear, held nothing but fear and confusion. "When that Cursed Spirit came down on me, I didn't even have the strength to run. All I could think was, I don't want to die. I'm so scared."

"I... want to rest for a while too."

Silence. The sound of a cup meeting the table cut through it, sharp and small.

Masamichi Yaga drew a long breath and closed his eyes.

His broad shoulders seemed to fold inward.

He was the principal. He should say something. He should hold onto these two students, tell them this was part of the path, that difficulty was how you grew.

But he couldn't make himself say it.

He felt sick too.

"No need to apologize."

A low, rough voice broke the quiet.

Toji straightened up and walked over to the two of them. He brought both hands down heavy on their shoulders.

"If something's disgusting, spit it out. If you can't go on, walk away. That's what it looks like when a man makes his own choice." His green eyes looked down at them, bright with something raw and unfiltered. "If you don't want to be burned as kindling, go find a path you actually chose. I taught you taijutsu so you'd have fists to smash the rules that deserved smashing — not so you could be obedient dogs for a bunch of old tangerines."

Nanami stared at him.

This man, who by all accounts had a few screws permanently loose, had just said the most sensible thing Nanami had ever heard.

Yaga opened his eyes. His gaze was heavy as it moved between the two of them.

"Nanami. Your resignation is approved."

He looked at Yu Haibara.

"Haibara. I'm giving you an indefinite leave of absence. Take as long as you need. Make your decision whenever you're ready. Even if you never come back to the Jujutsu world, no one will hold it against you."

"Thank you... Principal." Yu Haibara bowed deeply.

Nanami bent at the waist beside him. He turned his head, took in Satoru Gojo, then Suguru Geto, and finally let his gaze rest on Toji for a moment.

"Fushiguro-sensei." His voice carried something it rarely did. Warmth. "Your special training was absolute hell. But... thank you for saving my life."

He turned and pushed the door open.

Yu Haibara couldn't bring himself to look at Toji. He felt like he'd failed the teacher who had put so much into him. Head down, he followed Nanami out, limping through the door of that suffocating office.

Yaga sighed, gathered his documents, and walked out behind them.

The door clicked shut.

Satoru Gojo surged to his feet and drove his foot into the coffee table.

CRACK!

Glass exploded across the floor.

"Those old fossils." He ground the words out through his teeth. His pale blue eyes were burning with something ugly and violent. "Do they actually think hiding behind their barriers makes them untouchable?"

He was barely holding together.

Suguru Geto said nothing. But the veins at his temple had surfaced, and his hands at his sides were clenched hard enough that his nails had broken skin.

Protect the weak.

That was the cause he'd built everything on. But the people giving orders from the top, those scheming monkeys, did they deserve protecting?

His grand cause was being shoved into the dirt and ground there.

"So. You two going to stand here and stew until you rot?"

Toji pulled the office door open and glanced back at them. "Come out."

Outside in the corridor, the sky was still low and dark. Thunder rolled through the cloud cover in a slow, deep rumble.

Toji leaned against the railing. He dug a toothpick from his pocket, where he'd gotten it nobody could say, and stuck it between his teeth.

Satoru Gojo and Suguru Geto stepped out after him. Neither of them looked good.

"So we're just letting this go?" Toji looked at them sidelong, mockery sitting easy in his voice. "They ride our necks, push out our juniors. And then what? Sulk about it, go sleep it off, wake up tomorrow and take whatever suicide mission they hand us next? The heir of the great Gojo clan wouldn't actually be that gutless, would he?"

"Save it." Satoru Gojo's voice was cold. The Infinity around him hummed, an ugly, grating sound bleeding out with his emotions. "What do you want to do?"

Storm Jujutsu Headquarters?

The thought had already been turning in his head.

Kill all those old bastards. End it cleanly.

Toji spat out the toothpick. The hard edge dropped off his face like a mask coming loose, replaced by that blinding, almost deranged grin.

"We're going to enlighten them, obviously."

"Fushiguro-sensei." Suguru Geto pushed down his frustration and tried to think straight. "Every funding stream at Jujutsu High, mission coordination, everything that keeps the ordinary world running smoothly, all the back-channel dealings with non-sorcerer government leadership, Jujutsu Headquarters controls all of it. If we completely burn that bridge right now..."

Without the higher-ups' backing, Jujutsu High couldn't function at all.

Those old tangerines acted so recklessly because they knew, down to the bone, that they wouldn't dare flip the table.

"Funding? Rules?" Toji planted one foot up on the railing, both hands on his hips, and tilted his head back toward the dark sky with a long, loud laugh.

"Youth is about burning the brightest spark you've got right in the middle of a crisis! Those old men went dark because nobody ever put any real fire in them. As Jujutsu High's greatest specially appointed teacher, it's practically my duty to give them a taijutsu lesson, with love!"

Suguru Geto's eye twitched.

He was fairly certain "enlightenment" and "a taijutsu lesson with love" both translated to the same thing: tearing the roof off Jujutsu Headquarters.

"Those old men have been sitting in comfortable chairs too long. Their bones have gone rusty." Toji dropped back off the railing and rolled his neck. His joints crackled like beans in a hot pan.

His eyes went flat.

That aura came off him like a pressure shift, the one that made even Satoru Gojo's chest tighten. It rose slow and certain, filling the corridor.

"We're going to give them a lesson they carry for the rest of their lives. Let them know that in this world, fists are the only argument that actually counts."

Satoru Gojo went still for a beat.

Then the pressure that had been building behind his ribs found its exit. He shoved his sunglasses up, and his pale blue eyes went terrifyingly bright. His grin split wide, all the way back.

"Ha, hahahahaha!" He bent forward with it, laughing too hard to stand straight. "Fushiguro-sensei, I'm actually with you on this one. I've been done with those old bastards for a long time."

He turned to Suguru Geto.

"Geto. You in? Let's go work the stiffness out of some old joints."

Suguru Geto looked at the two of them.

One man with zero cursed energy and the absolute weight of Heavenly Restriction behind him. One sorcerer with the Six Eyes and nothing left to prove.

Storming Jujutsu Headquarters. Without question, the most outrageous act of defiance this world had ever seen.

Every instinct he had said this violated everything he stood for.

But then he thought about Nanami's broken arm. Haibara's tears hitting the dirt on his shoes. The cold, calculated ugliness of what the higher-ups had done.

To hell with the grand cause. To hell with the rules.

Suguru Geto closed his eyes and breathed in slowly.

When he opened them, those narrow, fox-sharp eyes had cleared. The confusion was gone.

"Just this once," he said quietly. The corner of his mouth pulled into something dangerous.

"Yosh!" Toji's shout cracked through the corridor. He slapped his thigh hard enough to echo.

"Now that's the Will of Fire burning bright! Target: Kyoto Jujutsu Headquarters!"

➤ Next: Invasion of Jujutsu Headquarters