Jujutsu Kaisen — Chapter 58 - The Brutally Inhumane Megumi and the Return of Youth

One month later.

Tokyo Jujutsu High. The principal's office.

SLAP!

A dark green certificate hit the solid wood desk hard.

Satoru Gojo reached out and pinched one corner. He slid it free and flipped through it with casual indifference. The two-inch photo stared back at him, pitch-black round sunglasses, the corner of his mouth hooked into an outrageously smug grin.

He looked nothing like a proper educator.

Satoru Gojo rolled the certificate into a tube and tapped it against his palm in lazy, rhythmic strokes.

"Those guys at Jujutsu Headquarters — when they stamped this, did their hands shake hard enough to knock over the ink pad?"

Masamichi Yaga had two fingers pressed to the bridge of his nose. The veins on his forehead were throbbing visibly.

"They didn't want to stamp it. But you kept dragging Fushiguro down to the Headquarters building for your so-called 'handstand drills.'" He exhaled through his teeth. "You scared the newly appointed officers into nervous breakdowns. To save their own skins, they stamped it overnight and had someone hand-deliver it."

A voice detonated from the corner of the room, full-bodied and utterly shameless.

"That's called using the sweat of youth to reform rotten souls!"

Toji Fushiguro was balanced on a single left thumb.

Body inverted in a perfectly straight line, sweat dripping from his chin and splattering across the floor in dark, spreading blotches.

"Can't even handle this much exercise? Those rotten tangerines deserve to grow mushrooms!"

Shoko Ieiri was draped across the sofa, spinning a scalpel between her fingers with complete disinterest.

"I'll say it plainly, Principal Yaga. You let this man get a teaching license — does Jujutsu High even have a future anymore?"

She tilted her head. "I can picture him driving students into a ditch with my eyes closed. The school's prospects are pitch black."

Satoru Gojo turned and leveled a glare at her through his sunglasses.

"Shoko. That's jealousy. The great Teacher Gojo is destined to have students all over the world."

Toji slapped his chest muscles with a resounding CRACK.

"Relax! With an experienced senior like me guiding the way, I'll absolutely forge him into a qualified, hot-blooded teacher. Muscle and sweat — that's how you raise the next generation!"

The corners of Masamichi Yaga's mouth twitched. Once. Twice.

Then he roared, loud enough to rattle the window glass in its frame.

"Having you here makes it worse!"

"The two of you together are the single greatest disaster this school has ever faced!"

Satoru Gojo, entirely unbothered, dug a finger in his ear, stuffed the certificate into his pocket, and let a flicker of genuine excitement pass through those pale blue eyes.

"Procedure's boring. Let's skip straight to the practical session." He was already moving toward the door. "Come on, Teacher Fushiguro."

"Time to go check on our one and only 'student.'"

---

Out on the Jujutsu High training grounds.

Megumi Fushiguro, freshly turned 5 years old, was face-down in the grass, pulling in air in ragged, desperate gulps.

His small green tracksuit was caked in mud and grass clippings. His sea-urchin hair was soaked through with sweat, plastered limp and flat against his forehead.

If he could go back.

He swore, even if he had starved to death that night, he would not have gone to that damn barbecue.

Ever since that bastard Satoru Gojo decided to stay on as a teacher, Megumi Fushiguro had become the only student in this hollow, echoing campus. The sole student. The most miserable student in the history of the school.

What followed was inhuman.

Every morning at 5, before the sky showed a single thread of light, his own father would yank him out of bed like pulling a radish from the ground. 10 kilograms of sandbags strapped to his body. 10 kilometers on the mountain road behind the school.

Officially called: "Awakening the slumbering flesh of youth."

By mid-morning, every muscle screaming, he was forced into a classroom to sit through Satoru Gojo's theory lectures. The most unhinged part? Satoru Gojo never once looked at a textbook.

"Cursed Energy, right, it's like when you eat something bad and your stomach starts gurgling, bubbling up with acid." He'd waved a hand airily. "Then you hold that feeling in, push it down through your intestines, and finally, boom. You let out a loud fart."

Those were Teacher Gojo's exact words.

Megumi had snapped the pencil clean in his hand. He ended up borrowing books from Principal Yaga's office and grinding through the fundamentals of hand signs and Cursed Energy flow entirely on his own.

And in the afternoon, that was the real hell.

Megumi shoved himself upright off the ground and fixed a cold stare on Satoru Gojo, standing a dozen meters away with both hands in his pockets. Sunglasses still on. That infuriating grin sitting at the corner of his mouth like it owned the place.

"Too slow, too slow!"

"Megumi, your movements are like a sloth on sleeping pills. At that speed, you couldn't land a hit on a Grade 4 Cursed Spirit in the sewer."

Megumi thought, very calmly: I can't beat him now. But the day I grow up, the first thing I'm doing is stringing this man upside-down from a tree behind the school and beating him until he apologizes.

He knew this bastard was strong. Even without triggering that freakish Limitless technique, the Six Eyes alone gave Satoru Gojo perception that saw everything. His physical reflexes alone meant Megumi's attacks couldn't graze a single hair on him.

An entire afternoon of being toyed with like a monkey.

Fine. He needed a different approach. Straightforward physical attacks were useless. That guy could dodge in his sleep. To create an opening, he needed a distraction, something that actually mattered to him.

Megumi Fushiguro arranged his face into a wide, innocent, genuinely delighted expression.

"Gojo-nii, look! Dad brought you strawberry daifuku!"

Satoru Gojo's head turned on reflex.

There it was.

"Divine Dog: White!"

At Megumi's low shout, a massive wolf erupted from the shadows, fur snow-white, body huge, moving like a thrown spear.

Satoru Gojo realized the trick a half-second too late.

But the Divine Dog didn't go for his legs. Didn't target the torso. It twisted in midair with startling agility, jaws yawning open, and snapped directly at Satoru Gojo's face with absolute precision.

There was exactly one thing Satoru Gojo was not willing to sacrifice.

He wrenched his head back.

CRACK!

A clean, sharp snap rang out across the training grounds.

Satoru Gojo went completely still.

The Divine Dog landed lightly at Megumi's side. Something dark dangled from its teeth. It shook its head once, and swallowed.

Dead silence.

Megumi was on one knee in the dirt, chest heaving. The expression he wore every single day, flat, unreadable, carved from stone, had cracked open just enough to let something through. The corner of his mouth twitched upward, quiet and deeply satisfied.

Satoru Gojo stared at the pieces on the ground.

When he spoke, his voice was unsteady.

"My sunglasses..."

Custom-made by a master craftsman in France. 200,000 yen.

"You stinking mutt!"

"Spit out my limited-edition sunglasses right now!"

He completely lost it.

The strongest sorcerer in the world, invincible, untouchable, insufferably confident, was now hopping mad, arms flailing, lunging at a white wolf like a 3-year-old whose favorite toy had just been stolen.

"AWOOO!"

The Divine Dog felt the killing intent coming. It tucked its tail and bolted.

Satoru Gojo forgot he had techniques entirely. He just ran, long legs eating up the ground in a furious flat-out sprint.

"Get back here!"

"I swear I'm stewing you into hotpot tonight!"

Two figures, one white, one dark, tore across the training grounds and threw up a churning wall of dust behind them.

Toji Fushiguro stood at the edge of the field. He had both hands wrapped around his stomach. Tears were forming at the corners of his eyes.

"HAHAHAHAHA!"

He cracked his palm against his thigh like a gunshot.

"That's my son! That diversion tactic was pure genius!"

"Finding a way to break through from a position of total disadvantage, that is real combat wisdom! The weak overcoming the strong!" He threw his arms wide. "That is the miracle of youth!"

Shoko had produced a flip phone from her pocket at some point. She was aiming it at the chaos on the training grounds and hammering the shutter button without mercy.

Cigarette hanging from her lip, she grinned like a fox that had just found an unguarded henhouse.

"Utahime, you have to see this. The strongest sorcerer alive, being run in circles by a dog."

The farce was reaching its peak.

And then, outside the school's heavy wooden gate, footsteps.

Rapid, unguarded, completely unhidden. The strides were long and wide, carrying that particular kind of lightness that doesn't try to be anything. Just naturally, effortlessly quick.

The footsteps stopped at the gate.

A beat of silence.

Then a voice, bright as open sky, buzzing with energy, crashed across every corner of the Jujutsu High campus like a wave.

"Everyone! I'm back to receive the baptism of youth!"

➤ Next: The Self-Imprisoned Cult Leader and the Gaze from the Shadows