Jujutsu Kaisen — Chapter 45 - Different Paths — Tears Unshed

The thunderous crash of Masamichi Yaga kicking open the infirmary door still echoed down the underground corridor.

The fluorescent lights flickered violently twice, buzzing with a harsh electrical whine.

Scattered across the floor, faxed photographs showed the muddy ground of Old Water Village soaked in dark red pools of blood. Face after face stared up from the images, pale and twisted, frozen in death.

"Bled out?" Suguru Geto murmured, repeating the words.

A low tremor rose from deep in his throat.

It grew. His shoulders began to shake. Then it tore through the suffocating air entirely, erupting into unrestrained, manic laughter.

"Hahahahaha! This is hilarious!"

He doubled over, both hands pressed against his face, the sound bouncing off the walls of the cramped infirmary with a chilling, unhinged quality.

Satoru Gojo lunged forward and seized him by the shoulder.

"Geto! What the hell are you laughing at? What is going on!" Panic edged into Satoru Gojo's voice, a rare thing.

He didn't believe it.

Even staring at this pile of photos with his own eyes, he refused to believe it. His best friend. The one who used to walk around with nothing but justice and responsibility on his mind. Cold-bloodedly slaughtering over a hundred ordinary people with no Cursed Energy.

Suguru Geto stopped laughing and slowly straightened up.

He didn't look at Masamichi Yaga, whose eyes were ready to split with rage. He looked at Satoru Gojo instead, meeting those azure-blue eyes with cold, flat calm.

"What's going on? Isn't it already clear enough."

Suguru Geto pulled his mouth into a smile. Not a trace of warmth in it. "I killed them. One hundred and seventeen monkeys. Not one left."

"Have you lost your mind?!" Satoru Gojo's voice cracked upward, his grip tightening until it was nearly enough to crush Suguru Geto's shoulder blade.

Suguru Geto let out a cold laugh.

"Lost my mind? I'm clearer right now than I've ever been."

Toji was still staring blankly at the blood-soaked photographs, and he murmured, "Bun-head, you — didn't you only break their legs? There has to be something else going on here. We can look into it, figure out the truth—"

"Does the truth matter? I don't care." Suguru Geto wrenched free of Satoru Gojo's hand.

He stepped back half a pace and fixed his eyes on Toji.

"Muscle idiot."

"Didn't you tell me your martial arts exist to smash the rules of this world? These are the rules of the new world I want."

Suguru Geto's voice was rough and ragged. The calm underneath it was the eerie kind.

"If I don't clean out these reeking monkeys, this world will always be a garbage dump. It will always stink of rot."

"Geto!" Masamichi Yaga's eyes had gone bloodshot. He jabbed a finger at him and roared, "Do you have any idea what you're saying?! Jujutsu Headquarters has already issued the highest-level bulletin! What you're doing right now is a declaration of war against the entire Jujutsu World!"

"Let them." Suguru Geto turned, walked toward the two small girls, and reached out to draw Nanako and Mimiko behind him.

Satoru Gojo stared. "What are you going to do?"

Those eyes, the ones that had always carried a gentle smile, held nothing now. Just a coldness with no bottom to it.

"Satoru, you were born standing above the clouds." Suguru Geto's tone was light, almost breezy. "You will never understand what it's like to force yourself, every single day, to swallow Cursed Spirits that reek of filth — and then turn around and protect the very monkeys who generate that filth. You have no idea how nauseating that is."

Satoru Gojo stood frozen. Not a single word came out.

"Don't worry about me anymore." Suguru Geto formed a hand seal with one hand. "We're not on the same road. We never will be again."

BOOM!

A massive rainbow dragon appeared from nothing, armored in hard scales, its enormous body instantly filling the entire underground space.

The concrete ceiling split apart with a grinding shriek. Steel rebar twisted and snapped like candy, and chunks of rubble rained down with the dust in a gray cascade.

The shockwave of Cursed Energy shoved everyone back several steps.

When the dust rolled through, Suguru Geto was standing on the dragon's head. One girl tucked under each arm. He didn't look back. He shot upward through the shattered ceiling, toward the heavy, colorless sky outside.

In a breath, he was gone. Swallowed by the clouds.

Rubble clattered against Satoru Gojo's Infinity and slid off without a sound.

Shoko Ieiri slumped against the wall, coughing hard, one hand waving the dust from her face.

Masamichi Yaga collapsed. Whatever had been holding him upright drained out all at once, and he crumpled onto the cracked floor tiles, hands clamped over his face, shoulders shaking without stop.

Satoru Gojo didn't move. He stared up at the massive hole torn through the ceiling.

The sky outside was gray. No sunlight. Not even a sliver.

His Six Eyes were still running. Still working, pulling in data the way they always did.

Wind speed. Dust density. The fading trace of Cursed Energy through the air. He could catch up. He could still catch Suguru Geto. He could stop him.

His mind was white noise.

That line, you will never understand, had lodged itself somewhere behind his eyes like a rusted nail driven in without care.

Satoru Gojo lowered his head and looked at his hands.

He had always believed they were the strongest. The two of them. Together, there were no rules they couldn't break, no problem they couldn't solve. As long as he existed, the sky over Jujutsu High would hold.

But just now, his best friend had used the most final, absolute method available to tell him: you don't understand anything.

The despair that had been thickening around Suguru Geto, growing heavier and darker for months, he had never actually seen it. Not once.

He hadn't even known. The boy who laughed every day and stole snacks from him and acted like nothing in the world could touch him, what had he been enduring, every single time he swallowed a Cursed Spirit? What had that felt like?

Was this what it meant to be the strongest?

Couldn't hold onto his only companion. Couldn't even notice a collapse happening right in front of his face.

The light in Satoru Gojo's Six Eyes went soft. Unfocused.

The azure-blue glow faded. The Infinity he kept maintained around himself at all times quietly came undone.

He felt like a joke. A complete one. An idiot with the power of a god, standing at the edge of a swamp, watching his companion go under inch by inch and doing nothing.

BANG!

A thick fist drove into the remaining load-bearing wall.

Cracks detonated outward from the impact point in a spiderweb, and sheets of plaster came crashing down.

Toji didn't look at Masamichi Yaga sitting devastated on the floor. He didn't glance at Shoko Ieiri, who had a cigarette between her fingers and was staring at the middle distance. He walked straight toward Satoru Gojo.

The fury on his face wasn't hidden at all.

Satoru Gojo kept his head down, eyes fixed on the photographs scattered at his feet, like a statue from which the soul had already left.

Then.

SLAP!

The crack of it hit the ruined infirmary like a gunshot.

The force connected with Satoru Gojo's face clean and unguarded, and the impact sent him crashing into an overturned metal bed frame across the room.

"Hey!" Shoko Ieiri's voice jumped.

Masamichi Yaga snapped his head up, face blank with shock.

"You self-proclaimed strongest!" Toji's voice came down like a hammer. "Is this what your 'strongest' is for, sitting here crying like a child?!"

➤ Next: Splitting Forces and the New Master of the Time Vessel Association