Jujutsu Kaisen — Chapter 59 - The Self-Imprisoned Cult Leader and the Gaze from the Shadows

Satoru Gojo stopped mid-chase.

The Divine Dogs seized the opening, dissolving into a pool of shadow and slinking neatly back beneath Megumi Fushiguro's feet.

All three people on the training ground, plus one five-year-old, turned in unison toward the gate.

Yu Haibara stood on the steps in that familiar black Jujutsu High uniform, a massive canvas bag dangling from one hand. His smile was brighter than sunlight. The dark circles under his eyes told a different story.

"What are you doing back here?"

Satoru Gojo looked him up and down through his lensless frames.

"I seem to recall a certain someone packing his bags in the middle of the night. Said he was going home to farm."

Yu Haibara's smile stiffened.

He dropped the canvas bag on the ground and walked over to face them.

Then he snapped into a sharp ninety-degree bow.

"I'm sorry!"

The shout rattled the leaves on the nearby trees.

"Fushiguro-sensei! I failed your teachings. I failed everyone here." He held the bow, his voice dropping lower. A nasal edge crept in. "I was a deserter."

"Geto-senpai... after everything that happened to him, I went home and just. I couldn't handle it. Every day I kept thinking — if I'd been stronger, if I hadn't held everyone back at Ubusunagami Shrine, maybe things would have gone differently. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't even eat my favorite rice."

Yu Haibara lifted his head. His eyes were red-rimmed. His gaze was sharp and clear.

"Oh?"

Shoko Ieiri bit down on her cigarette holder, her eyes sweeping over his very solid arms.

"You don't look like you've lost any weight."

Yu Haibara scratched the back of his head. The somber atmosphere evaporated on the spot.

"Well... my little sister said wasting food brings divine punishment. So I forced it down anyway."

Satoru Gojo let out a short, scoffing laugh.

This kid. Same single-celled organism as ever.

"So." Satoru Gojo shoved both hands in his pockets. "Jujutsu High doesn't exactly have proper classes running right now. What did you actually come back for?"

"I heard the news!"

Yu Haibara straightened up, and those bright, fervent eyes of his reignited all at once.

"Gojo-senpai became a teacher at Jujutsu High! Fushiguro-sensei is here too! I made up my mind — I'm coming back. I want to be here with everyone." He set his jaw. "I want to get stronger. Strong enough that next time a comrade loses their way, I can punch them back to their senses with one fist."

Satoru Gojo paused.

Punch a comrade back to their senses. Why did that logic sound so familiar?

He glanced sideways at Toji Fushiguro.

Toji was already grinning ear to ear, teeth showing, eyes basically gone.

He closed the distance in a few long strides. That big, calloused hand came down on Yu Haibara's shoulder with zero ceremony.

The impact made Haibara stagger.

"Good kid!"

Toji's voice boomed like a crack of thunder.

"To reflect in the middle of confusion, to come back and face it after running away — that's the awakening of youth! That's the Will of Fire passing down through the generations!"

He swung toward Satoru Gojo.

"You see that, young master?"

"This right here is a hot-blooded young leaf thirsting for growth. Way better than a so-called teacher who spends his afternoons chasing a dog around and trying to bite it."

Satoru Gojo ground his teeth.

This muscle-brained gorilla couldn't go three days without getting his shots in.

"Since you're back." Toji turned to Yu Haibara, looking down at him, the wild amusement settling into something steadier. "Jujutsu High's entire educational philosophy has been thrown out. That old fossil's approach is dead. What we run here is extreme combat training, the kind that wrings every last drop of potential out of you. Are you ready for it?"

Yu Haibara snapped to attention and roared.

"Fushiguro-sensei! Always ready!"

Off to the side, Megumi Fushiguro, who had just been put through the grinder for an entire afternoon, watched this volunteer victim arrive with a blank expression.

This guy is an idiot.

The cold verdict settled in Megumi's mind.

He could already picture it clearly: tomorrow morning, this single-celled senior getting strapped with sandbags and run into the back hills until he was foaming at the mouth.

He chose this himself.

---

Time Vessel Association stronghold.

The great hall was dim, and a few harsh industrial floodlights drove their cold beams into the bluestone throne at the center like nails.

Suguru Geto reclined against the high seat in a dark-gold five-panel kasaya. One hand propped his cheek. His eyelids were half-lowered.

Below, more than 20 rogue curse users jostled and crowded together like a pack of hyenas that had picked up the scent of rot.

The air was thick with violence and blood, the kind money buys.

"Lord Geto!"

The scar-faced man leading the pack hoisted a massive ring-pommeled blade onto his shoulder and stepped forward, lips splitting to show uneven yellow teeth. His voice crashed off the empty hall walls in ugly echoes.

"The brothers have been cooped up too long!"

"I heard there's a village over in Yokohama. No Jujutsu High barrier, nothing. What do you say we go clean it out tonight?" He was warming up to it as he spoke, the butt of his blade hammering the stone floor in rhythmic thuds. "Good warm-up exercise. Good haul. They're just useless monkeys anyway, kill them all and we're clearing space for your new world, my lord."

"Yeah! Kill all the monkeys!"

"Build the new world!"

The clamor detonated like a wave. Cursed energy surged and crackled through the hall. Demons on parade.

Money. Raw power. A leader who shattered the rules with his own hands. Following a supremely evil cult master like this, it was intoxicating.

Suguru Geto looked down at them from on high.

Greedy. Crude. Rotten to the core.

These people didn't care about any great cause. They just wanted to drape themselves in the skin of a new world so they could feed their instinct to kill and take. Compared to them, even those two high school students shivering in the bomb shelter seemed more human.

Is this the world built for sorcerers alone that I wanted?

A faint, humorless twist pulled at Suguru Geto's mouth.

He had wanted to cut the past clean away. To flatten everything in his path.

Yet aside from those irredeemable villagers in the old water village, he couldn't bring himself to kill ordinary people. He couldn't summon a single shred of kinship for the filth crowded below him.

He slowly lowered the hand from his cheek.

The temperature in the hall plunged.

Vast. Viscous. Suffocating.

His special-grade cursed energy crashed down like a falling building.

No warning. No blind spots.

The noise was strangled instantly into silence.

The scar-faced man's shoulders buckled. His knees drove into the stone floor without his consent.

CRACK!

His kneecaps shattered against the bluestone slabs. The sound was sharp and wet and wrong.

The lower-ranked curse users in the back fared worse. They were pressed flat, face-down, the strength to even lift their heads wrung out of them completely.

"L-Lord Geto, you've already advanced to special grade—"

Cold sweat poured off the scar-faced man. His pupils shook.

Suguru Geto stood.

The dark-gold kasaya dragged across the steps with a low, muffled rasp.

He stopped in front of the scar-faced man and looked down.

"I believe I've said it before." His voice was barely above a murmur. It hit every ear in the room like a steel needle. "Here, I am the rule."

"No one, without my direct order, will rob. Will slaughter villages. Will expose themselves in front of ordinary people."

The scar-faced man stared up at him.

"Why?!"

The pain made him spit it out through clenched teeth.

"Lord Geto, we threw in with you so we wouldn't have to keep hiding like rats in a sewer! If we still can't act, what exactly is different from before?!"

Idiot.

Undisguised contempt rose in Suguru Geto's eyes.

"Use that skull of yours." He leaned down slightly, gaze locking onto the man. "It's full of something, even if it's just waste. Use it."

"The Gojo clan's intelligence network is already spread wide. Every underground contact across the Kanto region is digging for us right now."

"You go out and slaughter a village tonight. What, are you worried that madman Satoru Gojo won't be able to find us?"

Satoru Gojo.

Three syllables. The kneeling scum shuddered as one.

The strongest blessed child. The one who had carved through Jujutsu High's leadership and risen to power by trampling its rules underfoot. More terrifying than any curse.

"Building a new world means accumulating strength. It means enduring and staying hidden."

"It does not mean running off to die like a pack of brainless dogs."

Suguru Geto straightened. His wide sleeves cut a cold, hard arc through the air.

"Understood?"

"U-Understood!"

The scar-faced man swallowed hard and slammed his forehead into the ground.

"Those who disobey, die."

Three words. Suguru Geto turned and walked back to his throne.

He sat. He closed his eyes.

Special-grade strength. A clean, reasonable pretext. He had crushed the mob's energy without a drop of blood. And there was not a breath of satisfaction in him.

The great cause. What a joke.

On the surface, he was the dreaded supreme evil of the Time Vessel Association, a cult master whose name made people flinch.

Underneath, only he knew what he had actually become: a chain. A leash bolted to the necks of human scum.

He couldn't step forward into the cruel new world he had claimed to want.

He couldn't step back to that sun-soaked training ground at Jujutsu High.

He was wedged in the absurdity between the two, and he could not move.

Soft footsteps.

Mimiko and Nanako slipped out from the shadows behind the throne, two small figures in the dark. They tilted their heads up at him, eyes full of careful, tentative worry.

"Lord Geto." Mimiko's fingers curled around the edge of his kasaya. Her voice was barely a sound. "Are you unhappy?"

Suguru Geto opened his eyes.

He looked at them, these two girls who had made him their only god. Something in the cold at the back of his eyes softened, just a fraction.

Nanako stepped closer and tugged at the hem of his robe with both hands.

"If something makes you unhappy," she said, "you can just stop doing it."

Suguru Geto went still.

A bitter curve rose at the corner of his mouth.

If only it were really that simple.

---

In a window high above, in a distant tower, a figure stood in the dark. The youth's features blurred the line between male and female. His gaze was soft and sinister as it settled on the Time Vessel Association stronghold below.

"How weak you are, Suguru Geto." A quiet, deliberate smile. "It seems you still need me to give you a hand."

➤ Next: Youth Special Training and the Awakening Calamity