Jujutsu Kaisen — Chapter 56 - Satoru Gojo's Resolve, the Struggle for the Greater Good

Satoru Gojo went still, his pale-blue Six Eyes flickering.

Haibara's dopey grin. Nanami pushing up his glasses as he drew his blade and turned away. The images crashed into his mind one after the other.

Suguru had chosen a dead end. A path that cut down everyone around him.

And him?

Was he just going to keep being an exorcism machine? A mindless blade for those old fossils at Jujutsu Headquarters?

He looked down.

His gaze swept over his hands, soaked in the purple blood of Cursed Spirits. A low, muffled laugh crawled up from deep in his throat.

It grew. Louder and louder, until it cracked open into wild, shameless cackling.

"HAHAHAHAHA!"

Satoru Gojo laughed so hard he doubled over, moisture leaking from the corners of his eyes.

When he straightened up, every trace of gloom in his eyes had been torn clean away. That arrogant, insufferably self-assured nature climbed back to its throne.

"Fushiguro-sensei." Satoru Gojo hooked an arm around Toji's neck, the grip shockingly strong. "What kind of garbage philosophy have you crammed into that head of yours?"

"The sweat of youth!" Toji bared his teeth without a shred of shame.

Satoru Gojo's mouth twitched. He pulled out his phone and dialed his butler.

"Listen carefully. Deploy every last covert asset the Gojo Clan has in Kanto and Kansai."

Fast. No pauses. "Priority: trace the Time Vessel Association's money trail. Pull every record of abnormal Grade 1 wild Cursed Spirit disappearances from the past week. And dig up the movements of every rat hiding in the sewers."

He hung up and pressed two fingers to his brow.

"Yo! The young master finally stopped moping and decided to use some capital?" Toji flashed a brilliant grin. "Now that's what youth looks like! Pin down the target, then smash that lost idiot awake with a hot-blooded iron fist!"

Satoru Gojo lifted his eyes and gave him a sideways look. "Shut it, Fushiguro-sensei. Your sweat stench is drifting over."

His mouth complained. But the oppressive weight hanging around him had dissolved.

That muscle-brained idiot Toji was right.

Suguru was stuck in a dead end right now, convinced he alone carried the truth of the whole world on his back.

If words wouldn't reach him, then fists would.

Beat him down. Break his arms and legs. Drag him back to the school.

Let him see this world hadn't rotted past saving yet.

A world with only sorcerers, that was nothing but a coward's excuse to flee from reality.

"Just wait." Satoru Gojo looked up at the overcast sky. "First thing when I catch him, I'm smashing that face of his to pulp."

Toji raised a thumbs-up. His teeth flashed a strange, gleaming white under the grey clouds. "Exactly! That's the purest bond between men! Break his legs, heal them with Reverse Cursed Technique, then break them again! Keep going until his head is full of sunshine!"

Satoru Gojo's eye twitched. "Shoko would go on strike."

He looked out at the empty training grounds. Quiet for a moment.

"Since we're raising comrades now, I can't lose to a gorilla who doesn't even have Cursed Energy."

He released Toji and walked toward the academic building.

"Where are you going?" Toji followed.

"To see Principal Yaga."

...

Principal's office.

Masamichi Yaga was hunched over his desk, working through the mountain of paperwork that came with rebuilding Jujutsu Headquarters.

BANG!

The solid wood door flew open from a kick.

Yaga's hand jerked. The fountain pen dragged a long black streak across the document.

His head snapped up, a vein pulsing at his temple. "Satoru! How many times have I told you — knock before you—"

His voice died.

Satoru Gojo pulled out a chair and dropped into it like he owned the room, crossing his long legs on top of the desk.

Toji Fushiguro leaned against the doorframe behind him, chewing gum with loud, deliberate smacks.

The hollow, dead look that had been sitting on Satoru Gojo's face was gone. The carefree Strongest was back.

"Principal." Satoru Gojo laced his fingers behind his head and smiled. "I'm applying for early graduation."

The fountain pen clattered onto the desk.

"What did you say?"

"I said I'm applying for early graduation." Satoru Gojo dropped his legs and planted both hands on the desk. "And after that, I'm staying at the school."

He jerked a thumb at Toji by the door.

"Same as this muscle idiot. I want to be a teacher."

Masamichi Yaga stared at him, completely lost for words.

This chaos-incarnate who treated rules like background noise, he wanted to stay and educate the next generation?

The images came instantly and without mercy.

Satoru Gojo hovering in midair, laughing like a smug idiot. "The brats can't touch me, nyah-nyah-nyah."

Toji on the other side, leading a pack of green-spandex-clad students sprinting off into the sunset. "No eating until you finish a hundred laps!"

Yaga shuddered.

"Relax, Principal." Satoru Gojo stood up and stretched. "Rather than dealing with disgusting Cursed Spirits every day, I'd rather stay and raise a batch of little monsters who can flip the entire jujutsu world on its head."

He walked to the window and looked down at the training grounds.

"And that bastard Suguru — I'll drag him back with my own hands."

...

Kanagawa Prefecture. An abandoned bomb shelter.

Cold, damp air, thick with blood and the rot of sewers.

A Grade 1 Cursed Spirit, covered in compound eyes and writhing tentacles, let out a piercing shriek.

Its massive body convulsed violently in midair, crushed inward by a ruthless torrent of Cursed Energy.

Suguru Geto stood at the center of the shelter. His dark-gold five-strip kasaya was filmed with dust.

He watched, expressionless, as the Cursed Spirit was compacted into a black orb the size of a walnut and fell into his palm.

Black. Viscous. Reeking of decay.

Suguru Geto stared at it. His throat worked slowly.

This thing tasted like swallowing a rag used to scrub up vomit. Every time he forced it down, it carved another strip off his sanity.

"For the greater good."

He recited the words in his head. Like self-hypnosis. Like searching for an excuse.

He tilted his head back, shoved the orb into his mouth, and swallowed it down hard.

"Urgh—"

Stomach acid surged up immediately.

He clamped a hand over his mouth, doubled over, and scrubbed the filth from the corner of his lips with the back of his hand.

His eyes went cold and blank again. One more Grade 1 Cursed Spirit in reserve. One step closer to that new world, the one without the monkeys.

Drip.

A faint scrape of shifting pebbles from the corner of the shelter.

Suguru Geto's gaze went sharp and cold. He turned toward the shadows.

In the dim light, two high school students in uniform were crouched behind a cardboard box.

They were shaking. Hands pressed hard over their mouths. Eyes stretched wide with terror.

They'd ducked in from the rain. They'd seen everything.

Monkeys.

The word surfaced in Suguru Geto's mind, clean and automatic.

These were the ones. The creatures who couldn't contain their leaking Cursed Energy, who spawned Cursed Spirits without end, who sent sorcerers marching to their deaths one after another.

Kill them all.

That was the ultimate goal of his defection.

The goal was right in front of him now.

Suguru Geto raised his right hand. Cursed Energy gathered at his fingertips. A mantis Cursed Spirit clawed its way halfway out, razor scythes cutting cold light through the dark.

The two students crumpled to the ground, sobbing. "Don't kill us, please, don't, "

Deep, bone-tired revulsion crossed Suguru Geto's face.

Do it.

Kill them. Prove this path is absolutely right.

His hand hung in the air. The Cursed Energy at his fingertips seized up, locked, unable to release.

The face of one of the students, it looked too much like Yu Haibara's, crashed into his mind without warning.

"Geto-senpai! I'll learn from you and do my best to protect the weak!"

Satoru Gojo followed right behind, sunglasses on, looking as punchable as ever.

"Suguru, what're you doing? Hurry up and finish the Cursed Spirit so we can go get dessert."

And last, that idiot teacher's voice, blasting like a foghorn.

"Swinging your fists at people who can't fight back, is that your youth?!"

Suguru Geto's jaw locked. A vein stood out sharp across his forehead.

He'd believed he could kill without flinching.

But looking at these two powerless, terrified, utterly ordinary people, what rose in his chest wasn't the cold pleasure of killing. It was tearing. Wrenching. Something pulling itself apart.

No. This is the greater good. A necessary sacrifice.

The voice in his head screamed it.

His breathing went ragged. His chest heaved.

The mantis Cursed Spirit felt the shift in its master's emotions and thrashed its scythes, hissing with agitation.

"Get out."

Hoarse. Shaking. Forced through Suguru Geto's teeth.

The two students didn't move.

"I said get out!" His voice tore upward. A crushing wave of Cursed Energy erupted outward, shaking dust from the ceiling of the shelter. "Before I change my mind, get out of my sight!"

As if a death sentence had been lifted, both of them scrambled to their feet and fled. They didn't look back once.

The shelter fell back into silence.

Suguru Geto stood alone in the dark. He lowered his hand slowly. The mantis Cursed Spirit dissolved.

He looked down at his palm. The disgusting sensation of the orb still clung to it.

"What are you doing, Suguru Geto."

He pulled his lips into a crooked, self-mocking smile. The sound of it bounced off the empty walls of the shelter, shrill and wretched.

He couldn't bring himself to kill two ordinary people at the very bottom of the world. And he'd talked about exterminating billions?

He'd declared his grand, world-ending conviction. And in the end, he wasn't cold-blooded enough for any of it.

"How pathetic."

Suguru Geto leaned back against the freezing wall.

So this path of greater good was a hundred times harder than swallowing Cursed Spirit orbs.

Fushiguro-sensei... why did you stop me back then?

If you'd just let me slaughter everyone in that old water village, that would have been better, wouldn't it?

Then there would have been no way back.

Buzz.

The backup phone in his pocket vibrated.

An encrypted message lit up the screen: "Geto-sama, a new Grade 1 Cursed Spirit has been detected in Shinjuku. Also... the Gojo Clan's intelligence network has gone fully active. They're investigating our financial flows."

Suguru Geto stared at the word "Gojo." His knuckles went white.

Satoru was coming for him.

"Stop looking for me, idiot." The words barely made a sound.

He typed out a message to his subordinates: "Keep a low profile. Don't cause any trouble."

He sent it, then turned around, pulled the hood of his kasaya up over his head, and stepped back into the darkness until there was nothing left of him at all.

➤ Next: The Graduation Barbecue Banquet and the Birth of Teacher Gojo