Jujutsu Kaisen — Chapter 40 - Special Grade Jujutsu Sorcerer, Yuki Tsukumo
The school washroom.
Water roared.
Suguru Geto tilted his head back and let the scalding spray hammer his face, both hands pressed flat against the cold tiles.
Useless.
That smell, the smell of a rag wrung out over vomit, had stopped being just a thing in his nose and throat.
It was a curse now. It had seeped into his stomach. His blood. His soul.
This morning, he swallowed another Grade 2 Cursed Spirit.
The thing had spawned from a bullying incident at some high school.
And when he shoved that reeking black orb into his mouth, the students he'd just saved were huddled in the corner watching him the way you watch something that shouldn't exist.
"So scary..."
"He ate it..."
Protecting non-sorcerers is the duty of the strong.
The words had become a self-hypnotic mantra lately, looping through his head on repeat.
Every loop came with a wave of nausea he couldn't stop, crawling up from somewhere deep in his gut.
"Hey! Bun-head! You building a nest in there? You've been in the shower longer than an old lady's foot-binding cloth!"
Toji Fushiguro's signature bellow came from the next stall over, followed by a BANG BANG that rattled the tiles in their grout.
Suguru Geto scrubbed his face hard and turned off the tap.
"Coming."
His voice came out raw.
---
Changing room.
He walked out toweling his hair. Toji was sprawled on the bench, head tipped back, chugging an ice-cold banana milk.
He'd just finished some brutal weighted training. His muscles were still gorged with blood, throwing off heat like a furnace.
"You look worse than a gambler who lost his pants," Toji said, glancing over. He tossed an unopened bottle across the room without looking.
Suguru Geto caught it. The cold glass was a small shock to his system, and his thoughts cleared, just a fraction.
He worked up something close to a smile.
"Just tired."
Yeah. Tired.
Satoru had become the strongest. He handled everything on his own now, like a sun that never went down.
And Suguru Geto?
He couldn't touch that brilliant bastard, and on top of that, the psychological rot from swallowing Cursed Spirit after Cursed Spirit was starting to pull him under.
He tightened his grip on the bottle. He was about to say something.
Creak.
The locker room door swung open.
High heels on non-slip tile. Sharp, rhythmic, unhurried.
Suguru Geto turned.
A tall woman walked in wearing a black leather motorcycle jacket and tight jeans. Her golden hair was wild and loud, a pair of goggles pushed up on her face. She moved like a brushfire, dangerous and magnetic.
Her gaze swept the room, lingered on Toji for a beat longer than necessary, and a slow, amused smile pulled at her mouth.
"So, gentlemen. What's your type?"
Her opening line landed like a flashbang with no logical warning, and it left Suguru Geto momentarily stunned.
His hand stopped moving in his hair.
A strange woman had just walked into the restricted core area of the school and asked that?
He had zero interest in this. He said nothing, just frowned.
"Type."
Toji bit down on his milk straw and looked her over with those perpetually burning eyes, like he was evaluating a new piece of training equipment.
He actually thought about it. His expression went somewhere it had never been before: genuinely serious.
Suguru Geto held his breath. He already knew. Whatever came out of this man's mouth was not going to be normal.
"Hmm..."
Toji clapped his hands. A light of profound realization ignited in his eyes.
"A woman who can throw ten thousand straight punches alongside me, and then smile and say, 'Let's go again!'"
"Preferably one whose sweat catches the evening sun and glows with the brilliance of youth!"
"And if she can run a hundred laps around the school grounds with fifty kilograms strapped to her back, then she'd be..." He paused, almost reverent. "The perfect partner in youth."
Silence.
The bottle slipped from Suguru Geto's hand, hit the tile, and shattered.
He looked at Toji. He looked at the blonde woman. His expression asked a single question he had no words for: are we even talking about the same species?
The playful smile on Yuki Tsukumo's face had gone completely still.
She had spent years roaming the jujutsu world. She had seen every variety of strange person this profession produced. But this criteria for a partner, spoken with complete sincerity, was something she had genuinely never encountered in her life.
She stared for a few seconds. Then she pointed at herself.
"So... you're saying I don't qualify?"
Toji looked her over again, top to bottom, and sighed with what appeared to be genuine regret.
"I don't feel so much as a single spark of burning youth from you."
"...Ha?"
A vein jumped at Yuki Tsukumo's temple.
In my entire life, this is the first time I've been turned down for that reason?
"You bastard." She pushed the words out through her teeth. "Do you have any idea who I am?"
Toji finished the last of his milk, dropped the empty bottle cleanly into the trash from where he sat, and finally, lazily, lifted his eyes.
"No."
"Don't care."
"I'm not interested in women who don't sweat."
Three sentences. Three clean hits. Each one landed square on Yuki Tsukumo's pride.
She drew a long breath, her chest rising and falling hard.
"Fine."
She pulled off her goggles. The eyes underneath were sharp and had an edge to them.
A crushing pressure of Cursed Energy dropped over the entire changing room like a weight.
"Then let's start over."
"I'm Special Grade Jujutsu Sorcerer Yuki Tsukumo."
She planted both hands on her hips and raised an eyebrow.
"Well? Scared yet?"
Hearing Special Grade, something shifted in Suguru Geto's expression.
A particular name surfaced in his memory. Principal Yaga had mentioned her once, in a tone that suggested she was in a category all her own.
"Oh."
It clicked.
"So you're the one who draws the school's highest salary, never takes a single mission, and just rides her motorcycle around the world all day."
Yuki Tsukumo's eye twitched.
"Hey!"
"Who the hell is spreading that street loafer thing around!"
"I am traveling the world and searching for the truth!"
She scratched her head in frustration and dropped into the chair across from Toji, crossing her legs.
"Call me whatever you want."
"Point is, I'm nothing like those old men at the school who spend their whole careers treating symptoms and never the cause."
Her gaze moved to Suguru Geto.
"What your school does is called symptomatic treatment."
"A Cursed Spirit shows up somewhere, you send someone to exorcise it."
"Kill the old ones, and new ones grow back. On and on. No end."
The hand holding his towel went tight.
No end.
Two words, like a rusted blade, and they went straight into the softest part of him.
Yes. No end.
As long as those people out there kept producing hatred, he would have to keep swallowing those wretched things. Over and over, until there was nothing left of his mind to break.
"So?" His voice had gone hoarse without him deciding it would. "What's your idea?"
"What I intend to do," Yuki Tsukumo said, snapping her fingers, her voice carrying something low and coaxing, "is causal treatment."
"I'm going to find a way to eliminate Cursed Spirits from this world entirely."
"Root and all. So that things like Cursed Spirits never come into existence again."
➤ Next: Toward the Darkness — Whispers and a New Mission