Jujutsu Kaisen — Chapter 47 - The Melted Witness

Nagano Prefecture, Old Water Village.

Yellow cordon tape stretched in every direction. Jujutsu Headquarters' operational efficiency was shockingly high — bodies transported overnight, and the highest-grade Curtain deployed around the entire village perimeter.

This Barrier cut off all Cursed Energy detection. Not even birds could fly through.

A large combat boot stepped directly over the yellow tape.

Toji Fushiguro walked through the Barrier with his hands in his pockets, passing straight through the cold wash of black light like it wasn't there.

A body under Heavenly Restriction carried no Cursed Energy whatsoever.

To the Barrier, he was a mass of empty air.

The so-called ultimate defense couldn't even pass as decoration.

Inside the village, the stench of disinfectant and quicklime hung thick in the air.

Whoever had handled the scene had done a clean job. The obvious traces were gone.

Toji walked to the clearing at the east end of the village.

This was where Suguru Geto had summoned his Cursed Spirits yesterday.

He crouched down and pressed his broad palm flat against the damp earth, then closed his eyes.

Without Cursed Energy, his five senses sharpened to the absolute limit of what a human body could do.

The moisture in the soil. The shift in the wind. The residual scents.

He opened his eyes. His gaze settled on a spot beside a snapped wooden fence post.

Someone had deliberately scooped out the surface layer of soil, leaving a shallow pit.

Toji pulled on medical gloves, dug into the dark-red earth at the bottom that hadn't been fully washed away, and brought a pinch of it to his nose.

Beneath the iron smell of blood, something else lurked. Faint. Sour and rotten, like necrotic tissue.

"The blood volume doesn't add up," Toji muttered to himself.

Suguru Geto's Cursed Spirits only tore and bit. If a villager had their leg bone ripped apart, they would have pressed the wound into the mud instinctively. The injury would have clotted. That was how wounds worked.

But this bottom layer of soil was soaked black with blood, and there wasn't a single blood scab anywhere.

As if something had cursed the wounds themselves. Forced them open. Drained the blood out while the victims were still breathing.

Toji stood up. His gaze swept the area, then stopped on a half-preserved footprint wedged in a stone crevice along the wall.

Flat-soled leather shoe. Size 40. The tread pattern matched the standard-issue footwear Jujutsu Headquarters distributed to its personnel.

The edges of the print were pressed extremely deep. Whoever had stood here was trembling so hard their full weight had driven into every step.

"Force a Cursed Technique to worsen wounds, block healing, turn something survivable into something fatal..." A mocking curl tugged at the corner of Toji's mouth.

"Those old fossils in the higher-ups. Crooked methods, nice and polished."

He pulled out his phone, photographed the footprint, and hit send.

He turned and walked. His green-clad figure vanished into the overcast sky like smoke.

Gojo Clan Secret Chamber.

A phone screen lit up in the dark.

Satoru Gojo stared at the photo Toji had sent, then worked through the mountain of Jujutsu Headquarters operation records stacked in front of him.

"Got it." He pulled out a file.

"Harada. Grade Four Jujutsu Sorcerer. Height 172 centimeters, consistent with the shoe size." His gaze moved to the most important column on the page.

"Cursed Technique: Deterioration. Effect: drastically worsens the target's injuries, impedes natural healing, escalates minor wounds into fatal ones within a short window."

A perfect match.

One hour later. Chiyoda Ward, a run-down apartment building.

Outside the door of Room 302, the hallway motion-sensor light flickered on and off.

Satoru Gojo didn't knock. He just lifted his leg.

BOOM!

The flimsy security door blew off its frame along with half the surrounding wall, crashing into pieces across the entryway.

Toji stepped in behind him.

10 square meters. Rental unit. Immaculate in a way that felt unnatural.

Blanket folded into a perfect block. Water cup inverted on its tray.

No signs of a struggle anywhere.

Satoru Gojo swept the room.

"Nobody home. Luggage untouched."

Toji ignored the furniture. He walked straight to the bathroom and yanked the folding door open.

An eye-watering blast of lemon air freshener hit him in the face.

The floor tiles gleamed bright enough to reflect the ceiling.

Toji crouched beside the drain and ran his fingertip along the edge of the floor drain. A faint trace of white powder clung to the skin. He lifted it to his nose.

"Stop looking." He stood up, wiped his fingertip clean on a towel. "He's already gone."

Satoru Gojo spun around.

"Hydrofluoric acid cut with corpse-dissolving fluid. Oldest trick in the underworld."

Toji pointed at the drain. "Bone and flesh melt together into liquid, flush clean down the sewer. They soaked the room in lemon scent to cover the smell of flesh being eaten by acid. Based on how strong it still is, this happened 2, maybe 3 hours ago at most."

He leaned against the doorframe and looked at Satoru Gojo.

"He knew too much. They silenced him. Dead men tell no tales." A beat. "Those old bastards hit harder than any crime syndicate."

Satoru Gojo stared at the gleaming drain and didn't look away.

In his pale-blue eyes, a storm was taking shape.

"We were too late. These pieces of filth..." His knuckles cracked as he clenched his fists.

He finally understood what Suguru Geto had meant by that word. Revulsion.

The rules they had bled to uphold. The system they had served their entire lives. And behind it all, controllers who would dissolve their own people into blood-water without a second thought, just to make a framing stick.

The man was dead.

Suguru Geto's crime of massacring the village had just become an ironclad conviction. Nothing left to overturn.

"That's it? You're already folding?" Toji raised an eyebrow. He held Harada's personnel file between two fingers and gave it a lazy wave.

"A Grade Four Jujutsu Sorcerer. Where does a man like that find the nerve to kill over a hundred people on the higher-ups' behalf? Refuse and he dies. Obey and he also dies. He knew exactly what he was walking into."

Toji stepped in front of Satoru Gojo.

"There's only one thing in the world that can make an ordinary person grit their teeth and wade into that kind of filth."

Satoru Gojo looked up.

Toji flipped the file to the back cover. In the family relations column, two lines were printed.

Wife: Harada Keiko.

Daughter: Harada Yui.

Address: Setagaya Ward, Sakurashinmachi 2-chome.

"Leverage." Satoru Gojo's gaze went still.

"If you're putting on a show, you go all the way. The higher-ups want every person in the know erased." Toji tossed the crumpled file into the trash. "Think they'd leave a mother and daughter alive? Body disposal was probably less than 4 hours ago. We might still make it."

Satoru Gojo didn't say another word. He turned and walked straight through the shattered doorway.

"Setagaya Ward." The words came out quiet. Suffocating.

"Let's go." Toji bared his teeth, a flash of white in the dark.

Sakurashinmachi. A quiet residential neighborhood.

Deep night. Streetlamps burning dim yellow.

In front of a detached house with a small yard, two unmarked black cars sat parked and still.

Four men in black suits climbed out.

The lead man pressed his earpiece.

"Elder's orders: make it look like a home-invasion robbery. Work clean. No survivors."

The four split up without a word. Two circled to the back. Two moved toward the front entrance.

The lead man drew a custom lockpick and slid it into the keyhole.

Click. The cylinder turned.

He moved to push the door open.

A thick arm shot out from behind him without any warning, clamping down on the top of his skull like a hydraulic press.

"Yo. Creeping around at midnight to pry open the door of a widow and her kid." The voice was lazy. Beneath the laziness, something savage and absolute. "That's not really what I'd call the spirit of youth, is it?"

The lead man's scalp crawled. He reached for his Cursed Energy.

BANG!

The muscle in Toji's forearm erupted. He gripped the man's head and drove it through the solid-wood security door like a hammer through a watermelon.

Wood exploded outward. The lead man never got a sound out. His cervical spine snapped on impact and he dropped like a cut rope.

The remaining 3 suited men ripped out their Cursed Tools and wheeled around, eyes wide.

Out on the street, under the yellow glow of the streetlamp.

Toji shook the wood splinters off his knuckles. He rolled his neck and it cracked like a string of firecrackers.

Beside him, Satoru Gojo stood with both hands in his pockets.

Without his sunglasses, the Six Eyes were uncovered. In the dark, those pale-blue irises blazed like two ghost-fires, cold and inhuman.

The Limitless Cursed Energy radiating off him had been pushed so far by his fury that it was bending the air itself, warping it in visible ripples.

He looked at the 3 killers shaking where they stood. The corner of his mouth pulled into something that didn't belong on a human face.

"Been sitting on you bastards all night." His voice was perfectly level. "I've got a belly full of fire and nowhere to put it."

➤ Next: The Evidence