Jujutsu Kaisen — Chapter 34 - A Taijutsu Special Training Session for the Old Fossils

Jujutsu Headquarters building. Top-floor core conference room.

Seven or eight elderly men and women sat before a ten-meter mahogany table, dressed in high-end kimono or tailored suits.

Hot tea steamed in front of them. The walls were thick with the highest-grade Barrier wards.

The muffled roaring from outside had put a number of sour looks on a number of old faces.

"Outrageous! We were simply putting the school in its place, and they dare defy us like this!" The bald elder at the head of the table slammed both palms down hard.

"A temporary teacher and two students, assaulting Jujutsu Headquarters! What exactly has Masamichi Yaga been teaching his people?!"

"Issue the wanted notice immediately!" The old woman beside him spat the words through clenched teeth. "Have them all designated as Curse Users! That Toji Fushiguro especially, a Zenin Clan castoff with zero Cursed Energy, and he thinks he can challenge the authority of this council!"

"The Barriers are maximum spec. They won't break through anytime soon. Once reinforcements arrive—"

BOOM!

The elder never finished the sentence.

The conference room's reinforced steel door, rated to hold against a direct strike from a Grade 1 Cursed Spirit, blew inward like it had been hit by a tank, spinning through the air and caving in half the mahogany table.

Through the rolling dust, two figures strolled in without hurrying.

Gojo Satoru brushed the soot off his uniform. His sunglasses had slipped to the bridge of his nose, and those pale blue Six Eyes moved slowly across the elders frozen at the table.

"So this is a maximum-spec Barrier?" He grinned. "Looks about as tough as paper to me." He waved a hand.

BOOM!

Limitless. Gravitational force punched into the walls, detonating every hidden talisman and Barrier anchor in the room.

The conference room was now completely defenseless.

Several elders toppled from their chairs, tea drenching their expensive clothes as they hit the floor.

"G-Gojo Satoru! You, you're staging a rebellion?!" The bald elder jabbed a finger at him, hand shaking like a leaf.

"Rebellion?" Gojo Satoru stretched the word out, walking toward him one unhurried step at a time. "Don't make it sound so unpleasant. We're here full of passion, to give our esteemed elders a lesson."

The last word was barely out of his mouth.

Toji was already gone, a green blur crossing 10 meters in an eyeblink, materializing directly in front of the old woman who had been screaming for wanted notices.

Toji didn't reach for a weapon.

He reached out with one huge, calloused hand, grabbed the old woman by the collar of her expensive kimono, and lifted her off the ground entirely.

"Y-you — what do you think you're doing! How dare you!"

Toji's mouth curved into a cold smirk. His hand tightened slightly. The color flooded into the old woman's face as her airway closed. Her legs kicked wildly, her hair came undone, and she looked exactly like an old hen being wrung by the neck.

"S-sorry, p-please, put me — down!"

"Louder! I can't hear you!" Toji's eyes were wide, veins standing out along his forehead. The tyrant's killing intent and Might Guy's wild fervor fused into something that pressed against everyone in the room like a physical weight.

"This is the bearing of Jujutsu Headquarters' leadership? You can barely push out a sentence, what do you people eat, uncooked rice?"

"Toji Fushiguro! If you dare touch a single hair on our, " The bald elder started to bark.

Toji's head snapped toward him.

Those green eyes were completely flat. Every trace of heat gone. Just a cold, empty stare. The stare of a man looking at something already dead.

The elder's words died in his throat.

It felt like being fixed in the gaze of some ancient apex predator. One more syllable, and his head would leave his shoulders.

"Listen up, old-timers." Toji held the old woman in the air with one hand, hooked a surviving chair over with the other, and dropped into it with his legs spread wide.

"I have zero interest in how you divide up the power and money in the jujutsu world. That's boring. Not one drop of passion in any of it."

He tossed the old woman. She hit the floor and scrambled away on hands and knees, wedging herself into a corner, shaking.

"But."

Toji leaned forward. Elbows on his knees.

"If you ever set your sights on my students again. If I catch you one more time sending underage kids to feed Grade 1 Cursed Spirits just to run some bullshit potential test, "

His mouth split open. Bone-white teeth. He flicked his wrist, and the grotesque Cursed Spirit at his hip pushed its head out and spat the Inverted Spear of Heaven into the air, its ominous aura bleeding through the room.

"I will shove this thing down your throats and stir it out through your asses. Are we clear?"

Silence.

Dead silence.

These elders had spent their entire careers looking down at everyone else. Now they couldn't even manage a breath.

They all felt it. This man was not making threats for effect.

He would kill. And he did not care about consequences or rules, not even slightly.

"B-but when Cursed Spirits break out, someone has to contain them!" the bald elder tried, clutching at the last straw. "Ordinary people will die in droves if no one responds!"

"Don't hand me that garbage!" Toji's voice cut like a blade. "You know exactly what you've been doing, using your authority to keep disobedient students on a leash."

He drove his palm down and shattered the tea table in front of him. Splinters scattered across the room. One caught the elder across the cheek, drawing blood.

"You enjoy the highest privileges this world has to offer, so show some effort worth those privileges! You useless dead weight who do nothing but cower inside Barriers, you should all be rotated to the front lines!"

Gojo Satoru stepped up beside Toji and placed both hands on the back of the elder's chair.

"Teacher Fushiguro is correct." His mouth curved into something that barely qualified as a smile.

"A reminder, while we're here. The three of us came today to give you one warning. If you make any move against Nanami or Haibara. If you take your frustrations out on Principal Masamichi Yaga."

He bent down, bringing the Six Eyes behind those sunglasses level with the elder's face.

"I will kill every single one of you. Don't test me. I can do it right now."

A naked death threat.

This was not a negotiation. This was a boot on the neck.

Toji stood up. He brushed his hands together like he was cleaning off something dirty.

His eyes moved across the floor full of terrified elders, slow and contemptuous.

Then, in an unhurried voice, he announced the content of the day's Taijutsu lesson.

"Everyone pairs up. Hands tied behind your backs. Back-to-back frog jumps. 1,000 reps." He paused. The killing intent thickened until it was almost visible. "Can't finish? Then die."

The words were barely out before Gojo Satoru, who had been lounging against the table edge, exploded into laughter.

"HAHAHAHA! Teacher Fushiguro, when it comes to making people suffer, you are genuinely in a class of your own. My deepest respects."

He was doubled over, shaking with it. Still laughing, he pulled out his phone, turned the camera on the ashen-faced leadership council, and without a moment's hesitation hit record.

Half an hour later.

The once solemn conference room was carpeted with old men and old women sprawled in every direction, foaming at the mouth, eyes rolled back into their skulls. The scene was almost too absurd to believe.

Both men took a long look at the wreckage they'd made, then turned and walked out.

Just before the door, Gojo Satoru stopped. He turned back and held up his phone, the video still saving to his gallery.

His voice was easy, almost breezy, but the threat underneath it was cold enough to stop a heart.

"Everyone. If you'd rather not see yourselves on the front page of the Tokyo Shimbun tomorrow, looking like ridiculous little clowns 'diligently training', I'd strongly suggest keeping your tails between your legs from here on out, okay?"

...

Geto Suguru was already waiting downstairs.

His coat had been torn in several places. Old Man Gakuganji was coiled up tight inside his Rainbow Dragon. Three strings on the electric guitar were snapped. He had clearly taken a beating.

"Feeling better?" Geto Suguru looked at the two of them walking out of the rubble and exhaled slowly.

"Never felt better in my life!" Toji laughed and threw one arm around Geto Suguru's shoulders and the other around Gojo Satoru's.

"Come on! To celebrate a perfect extracurricular teaching session, your teacher is buying ramen. Extra chashu, double portion!"

Gojo Satoru pried the arm off with visible distaste, but the corner of his mouth was already doing what it wanted.

They left Old Man Gakuganji fuming in the wreckage behind them and walked out into the night market, all three of them lighter than they'd been in years.

➤ Next: The Ultimate Limitless Showdown