Jujutsu Kaisen — Chapter 43 - The Blade Unfallen and the Erased Village

Toji stood with his arms crossed, not even glancing at the villagers wailing on the ground. His flame-lit eyes were locked dead on Geto Suguru, ten-plus meters away, his entire body seething with Cursed Energy that had already spiraled past the point of control.

"You're from Jujutsu High, right? What took you so long! Help me kill these monsters!"

In the mud, the village chief, who moments ago had been scared out of his wits, saw that the newcomer didn't have three heads and six arms. His murky old eyes instantly lit up with greedy cunning.

Several villagers found their courage and joined in: "Kill him! These monsters shouldn't be allowed to live!"

Toji couldn't even be bothered to lift an eyelid.

His brow furrowed tight.

This kid's state was worse than the last time that blonde street-rat woman had played him. His Cursed Energy was like a pot of boiling tar, nothing but runaway killing intent, thick and ugly and losing shape.

"Oi, Suguru." Toji's voice sounded especially low in the empty mountain air. "You came all the way out to Nagano just to practice on trash worse than monkeys?"

Geto Suguru laughed.

It started low, pressed down, strangled, then tore itself completely open. Pure madness.

"Worse than monkeys? No, Toji-sensei. They're genuine human beings."

He snapped his hand up, pointing toward the basement. The bloodshot veins in his eyes were a horrifying red. "Do you know what's locked down there? Two girls. Not even five years old. Caged like livestock by these pieces of filth, their bodies covered in rotting flesh."

"Just because they have Cursed Energy!"

"And these fat, brainless villagers stole their parents' land, then pinned every natural disaster on two children!"

Geto Suguru stepped forward. His leather shoe crushed through a puddle. His voice was so hoarse it sounded like two sheets of sandpaper grinding together.

"That 'youth' and 'passion' you keep preaching about, that's what we're protecting? These maggots reeking of rot?!"

"For things like this, I have to swallow those nauseating Cursed Spirits every day, risking my life to patch over the holes the higher-ups keep digging?!"

"Toji, answer me!"

The question echoed off the hillside.

"Master, don't listen to his bullshit!" The village chief panicked at Toji's silence. He lunged forward and grabbed for his pant leg. "Those two are evil spirits reborn! Killing them is carrying out heaven's will, it's righteous, "

The carelessness on Toji's face vanished completely.

A memory from his past life flickered through his mind. That blonde kid, hadn't it been exactly the same? He'd done absolutely nothing wrong, yet the entire village treated him like a monster.

He looked at the village chief. His mouth curled at the corner.

Ignorance. Every world, same revolting stench.

"Evil Cursed Spirits daring to disguise themselves as innocent villagers?"

BOOM!

An afterimage, fast beyond tracking.

No one saw Toji move. All they heard was the gut-wrenching crack of bone shattering. A violent shockwave exploded across the ground. The village chief flew backward like a burst sack of grain and slammed hard into the cracked torii gate.

"AAAAAHHH — MY LEG!"

The old man clutched his right leg, twisted at a grotesque angle, and rolled frantically through the mud like a maggot, shrieking loud enough to slaughter pigs.

Dead silence.

The shouting villagers looked like ducks with their throats seized shut, mouths open, faces bone-white.

Even Geto Suguru froze.

His fingers, hovering mid-summon for the Rainbow Dragon, locked in the air. His pupils contracted sharply.

Toji slowly withdrew his right leg and scraped the mud off against the ground. Not a trace of emotion on his face.

"You thought I came here to deliver justice?" He turned, looking at the stunned Geto Suguru, the corner of his mouth pulling into a cold sneer. "My Will of Fire only burns for people worth protecting. As for garbage this rotten to the core, I wouldn't spare it a second glance even if every last one of them dropped dead."

Geto Suguru's throat moved. "Then why are you stopping me?"

"Because it's not worth it."

Toji took two steps forward. His tall frame swallowed the grey light of the overcast sky.

"Killing these hundred-odd wastes of life — one minute's work. Then what?"

"Your name goes on the Headquarters' wanted list. Special Grade Curse User. Gojo Satoru gets forced to hunt you down. Your comrades at the school turn into enemies. You won't get a single night of peaceful sleep."

Toji extended one finger and pressed it hard into Geto Suguru's chest.

"For maggots destined to rot in the mud, you'd throw away a youth with limitless possibilities?"

"Bun-head, that's a deal so bad it'd shame your ancestors."

Geto Suguru's heart seized.

"I'm not here to convince you to be a good person." Toji pulled his hand back. "What you do next, that's your choice."

He turned around, waving a hand behind his back without looking.

"If I don't see you in 5 minutes, I'll consider you dropped as my student. Don't make me use the iron fist of youth to personally beat you back to your senses."

A flash of green, and Toji was gone. He left behind nothing but villagers shivering in the cold wind.

The shrine fell quiet.

Dozens of villagers, legs gone to water, collapsed with a splash into the mud and kowtowed frantically toward Geto Suguru.

"Master, spare us!"

"It's all the fault of those two little beasts!"

Geto Suguru looked down at them from above, these groveling, tail-wagging creatures.

The urge to tear them apart cooled. What took its place was something colder and cleaner than rage. Pure indifference.

"Rainbow Dragon, return."

The massive dragon in the sky vanished. The villagers were just starting to crack relieved smiles.

The ground shook.

Dozens of barb-covered hound Cursed Spirits swarmed out of Geto Suguru's shadow.

"Wrongdoing always comes with a price." His voice carried not a shred of warmth.

"AHHH,!"

"MY LEG!"

The entire rear mountain became a living hell. The Cursed Spirits bit with precision, snapping the leg bones of every single person who had taken part.

No fatal injuries. But in a poor mountain village like this, that meant spending the rest of their lives crawling on the ground.

Expressionless, Geto Suguru stepped over the writhing bodies and pushed open the basement's wooden door.

5 minutes later.

He walked back out. He was holding 2 emaciated girls, one in each arm.

Nanako and Mimiko clutched his clothes with white-knuckled fists. When they saw the villagers sprawled across the ground with broken legs, wailing in agony, there was no sympathy in their eyes. Only a flash of savage satisfaction, and a fierce, unhealthy dependence on the man holding them.

"Let's go."

Geto Suguru said it softly. He stepped over the muddy stone stairs without looking back.

The sky over Old Water Village was still heavy and grey. But inside him, a brand-new blueprint had already taken shape, insane, all-consuming, built to tear down everything that had put those girls in that cage.

At the village entrance.

Toji chewed on a stalk of dogtail grass, watching Geto Suguru walk toward him with the 2 children in his arms.

"Resolved?"

"Yeah." Geto Suguru's voice had steadied. His eyes hadn't. They were as deep and cold as a frozen lake. "I let them live. But for the rest of their lives, they'll be walking on their hands."

Toji studied him for 2 seconds.

Then the man split into a wide grin, shot up a thumbs-up, and flashed his signature blinding white teeth.

"Nicely done, Suguru!"

"Now that's youth still burning, not swallowed by the dark!"

He turned, clasped both hands behind his head, and strode toward the highway with long, easy steps. "Let's move. Back to Tokyo. I still need to buy Megumi his strawberry milk."

The 2 figures shrank into the distance.

On the mountainside, behind a bush well out of their sight, the auxiliary supervisor who had fled earlier was holding a specially made cursed-tool phone in both trembling hands.

From the other end came an aged, sinister voice.

"...What's the situation?"

The auxiliary supervisor flinched. He lowered his voice, but underneath the nerves there was a thread of excitement, the eager tone of someone expecting a reward. "Reporting to the Elder! Everything... everything is going according to plan! Geto Suguru didn't slaughter the village, but... in order to protect those 2 brats, he crippled all 117 people! Broken limbs everywhere!"

He expected praise.

The line went silent. The kind of silence that presses down on your chest.

Then that aged voice returned, carrying a thin edge of mockery and displeasure.

"Alive?"

"Heh... not enough." The voice dropped to ice. "Send them all on their way. Make it clean."

"Wh, what?!" The blood drained from the auxiliary supervisor's face. "No — Elder! I can't do that! I'm just an auxiliary supervisor, how could I possibly—"

"Can't do it?" A cold sneer came from the other end. That laugh burrowed into his ear like a snake sliding through wet grass. "If you can't, your wife. That daughter of yours who just started elementary school. They'll 'disappear' from this world tomorrow. You and your entire family will die in their place."

"I..." His teeth began to chatter. They knocked together in a rapid, helpless clacking. He wanted to cry, but nothing came out. His throat felt packed with lead.

"...Understood." He squeezed the word out from between his teeth. Whatever had been living behind his eyes was gone.

The line went dead.

The auxiliary supervisor's face was the color of ash. He turned stiffly and walked, one step, then the next, then the next, back toward the living hell he had just escaped.

The wails and screaming poured into his ears from all sides, relentless, like something burrowing.

The village chief was lying on the ground. He had just used the last of his strength to dial an emergency number. He looked up and saw the auxiliary supervisor returning.

Wild joy burst across his face. Salvation. Finally.

"Thank goodness! You came back! You were sent to rescue us?" He stretched his hand out desperately. "Save us, that bastard lost his mind! He attacked us, innocent villagers, all for the sake of two monsters!"

The villagers around him turned the same hopeful eyes toward the approaching figure. Drowning men reaching for the last thing floating.

The auxiliary supervisor looked at those faces.

His tears broke loose.

"I'm sorry... I'm sorry... don't blame me..."

The wild joy on the village chief's face went rigid. It curdled into shock. Into incomprehension.

The next second, hope became terror. Wails became screams.

When the last scream died, the emergency phone slipped from the village chief's stiffening hand and dropped into the blood pooling beneath him. It let out a faint, crackling electric hiss.

Then silence.

Old Water Village was truly "clean" now.

➤ Next: Framed Crimes and the Starting Point of Divergence