Jujutsu Kaisen — Chapter 53 - Severing Bonds — What Was Lost

A hidden new stronghold of the Time Vessel Association.

Geto Suguru raised his head, gaze passing over the two girls to the center of the main hall.

Over a hundred fanatical believers knelt there in a dense, dark mass.

In front of them stood more than a dozen men in suits, the current senior executives of the Time Vessel Association. These so-called great figures, who had once put up enormous bounties for the Star Plasma Vessel and styled themselves spokesmen of the divine, were now trembling like leaves in a storm. Foreheads pressed deathly tight against cold marble. Not even daring to breathe too hard.

Geto Suguru wore his dark-gold five-striped kesa and looked down at them from above.

His eyes held the same regard one might give a pile of trash not worth sorting.

"How are the funds coming along?"

His voice was calm. The authority underneath it was not.

The fat executive kneeling at the very front shuddered violently, then scrambled forward two steps on hands and knees.

"L-Lord Geto!"

"All of the cult's liquid assets — 4.5 billion yen in total — have been fully transferred into your anonymous Swiss account!"

"The twenty-seven overseas properties and domestic safe houses registered under the cult's name are also being processed through the highest-priority expedited transfer procedures..."

He swallowed hard. His voice had developed a whine.

"We've truly scraped together everything we possibly could..."

"Please..."

Please don't kill us.

Geto Suguru watched the display. A familiar nausea turned in his stomach.

This was what monkeys were.

Cruel and tyrannical to those weaker than themselves. Groveling in the dirt the moment someone stronger appeared. Willing to sell out anything and everything just to keep breathing.

The only reason he hadn't killed them all was simple: building a new world required vast sums of money and a functioning intelligence network in the mundane world.

"Very good."

Flat. Almost bored.

"Continue to maintain your value."

"If I find out anyone has been quietly moving assets, or tipping off Jujutsu High..."

He didn't finish.

A Grade 2 Cursed Spirit shaped like an enormous python slowly eased half its body out of the shadows behind him. Scarlet vertical pupils fixed on the kneeling crowd without blinking. Viscous drool dripped from its jaw onto the carpet and hissed, eating through the fibers.

"We wouldn't dare!"

"We absolutely wouldn't dare!"

Dozens of executives kowtowed frantically, scared out of their minds.

Creak,

The heavy copper-sheathed wooden doors at the far end of the hall swung open from outside.

Heavy footsteps broke the silence.

Seven or eight men and women swaggered in, dressed in mismatched attire, Cursed Energy rolling off them in waves they didn't bother to hide. Wild Jujutsu Sorcerers, or, in Jujutsu High's terminology... Curse Users.

The one leading them was a burly man with a vicious scar carved across his face. He had a large, bloodstained cleaver resting over one shoulder. His gaze swept across the executives kneeling on the floor, then settled on Geto Suguru in the seat of honor.

"Yo. So this is the Special Grade defector everyone's been buzzing about?"

The scarred man grinned, showing a mouthful of yellow teeth.

"Looks pretty refined."

Geto Suguru leaned back in his chair and studied the group in silence.

The scarred man drove the butt of his cleaver into the floor. A tile cracked beneath it.

"Boys heard you slaughtered all those ordinary folks in Old Water Village, then ran circles around every last one of those old fossils in the High Command."

"That kind of temperament? Suits us perfectly."

He stepped forward. Greed and fervor lit up his eyes.

"We wild sorcerers have had it up to here with Jujutsu High's bullshit rules."

"Why should we, born with power — have to hide from ordinary people like rats in a sewer?"

"Why should we risk our lives protecting weaklings?"

The scarred man gestured at the lavish hall around them.

"The Time Vessel Association has money. You have near-Special Grade strength. We've got brothers who aren't afraid to die."

"Team up, turn this whole Jujutsu world upside down, carve out our territory, and take whatever we want."

"What do you say, Lord Geto? Lead the brothers and pull off something big?"

Geto Suguru smiled. "Turn it upside down?"

He stood. His dark-gold kesa caught the dim light and gleamed cold and hard.

He came down the steps one at a time and stopped in front of the scarred man.

"Your vision is far too small."

The scarred man blinked.

"What do you mean?"

Geto Suguru's narrow eyes grew slightly narrower. Deep inside them lived something that was, at the same time, absolutely rational and absolutely insane.

"Carving up territory?"

"Dividing wealth?"

"Those are the games of monkeys."

His voice wasn't loud. It landed in every person's chest anyway.

"What I intend to do is create a world with only Jujutsu Sorcerers in it."

Silence dropped over the hall like a stone.

Even the Time Vessel Association executives forgot to tremble. They lifted their heads, blank-faced.

The grin on the scarred man's face went stiff.

"A world... with only sorcerers?"

"Then all the billions of ordinary people out there..."

"Kill them all."

Four words, spoken lightly. No killing intent behind them. Cold enough to freeze the marrow.

"Monkeys have no value in existing."

"All they do is endlessly generate negative emotions, breed Cursed Spirits, and send sorcerers to die cleaning up the mess."

Geto Suguru spread his arms wide, as if embracing something only he could see.

"This world has things completely backwards. We solve the problem at the root."

"No monkeys, no Cursed Spirits."

"Sorcerers are the true masters of this world. It's time things reflected that."

A madman.

A complete and utter madman.

The scarred man's throat moved as he swallowed.

He'd always thought of himself as a lawless villain. But standing in front of this young man in a kesa, his ambitions of seizing territory suddenly felt like a child playing house.

Kill billions of people?

This wasn't rebellion. This was annihilation.

"What's wrong? Scared?"

Geto Suguru tilted his head slightly and looked at him.

The scarred man stared into those eyes, completely and utterly warmthless, and felt the pressure in the air around him thickening by the second.

He knew the truth clearly enough. If he didn't nod today, he wasn't walking out that door.

And beyond that...

This plan, insane to its very core, had reached into his long-numb chest and pulled out something he had no name for. A shudder. An exhilaration.

"I'm in!"

The scarred man dropped to one knee and laid his cleaver horizontal across his thigh.

"Lord Geto!"

"This life is yours!"

"Lead us to build that new world!"

The seven or eight Curse Users behind him looked at one another. Then, as one, they knelt.

"We pledge our lives to Lord Geto!"

Geto Suguru watched it all with quiet satisfaction.

He turned and walked back up to the platform.

"Now that you've joined, you work."

He looked at the Time Vessel Association executives, several of whom looked close to fainting.

"Deploy every secular connection and intelligence network you have."

"I want the precise locations of every wild Cursed Spirit across Japan, Grade 2 and above — Special Grade included."

"Spare no expense. I want it fast, and I want it accurate."

He needed power.

To realize that grand objective, his current reserves of Cursed Spirits were nowhere near enough. He had to consume more. Stronger ones.

The executives kowtowed with the desperation of men who had just been handed a lifeline.

"Understood!"

"We'll begin immediately!"

Geto Suguru turned to the scarred man and his group.

"You verify the intelligence they bring in."

"At the same time, use the Time Vessel Association's funds to recruit more sorcerers who are fed up with how things are."

"Tell them there's money here. Freedom. The dignity they've always wanted."

"Yes, sir!"

"All of you. Out."

The hall emptied like a receding tide.

The heavy wooden doors swung shut.

Silence returned. The hall was vast and very still.

Geto Suguru settled back into his chair.

He pulled out his phone and looked at the old text thread.

Sender: Satoru.

"Hey, cleared your name. The old oranges are all dead. Where are you?"

"Reply the second you see this. Me and the teacher are coming to bring you back."

Geto Suguru read those few short lines.

He could picture it clearly, Gojo Satoru's face when he sent that message. That barely-contained impatience. That poorly-hidden hope.

He could guess the rest without trying. Teacher Fushiguro sitting somewhere nearby, probably mocking Satoru for fussing like an old mother hen.

They had actually done it. For his sake, they had flipped the entire Jujutsu world upside down.

Geto Suguru closed his eyes.

A faint ache spread through his chest. Quiet. Small.

The last lingering warmth from three years of youth.

"Lord Geto?"

Mimiko felt the shift in him. She hugged his leg, uneasy.

Geto Suguru opened his eyes.

He looked at the two girls in front of him, bodies marked with scars, eyes holding nothing but faith in him.

The path of the Great Cause was destined to be walked alone.

He had already decided to walk toward that new world, the one without monkeys. There was no room left for attachment. Every bond had to be cut.

Even his best friend. Even his teacher.

He sent one final text. Then his fingers tightened.

Crack.

The phone case splintered in his palm, fracturing inch by inch until there was nothing left to break.

Done. Completely severed.

"It's nothing."

Geto Suguru lowered his head. The smile returned to his face, that particular smile of his, the one that was equal parts merciful and cold, the smile of a man who had appointed himself the world's judge.

He stood. Took one girl's hand in each of his.

"Let's go."

He walked, leading Mimiko and Nanako, and he did not look back. The deep shadows at the far end of the hall swallowed them one step at a time.

"To welcome the world that belongs to us."

➤ Next: Twin Stars Drifting Apart?