Jujutsu Kaisen — Chapter 75 - The Match Begins — Megumi’s Awakening Battle

"Master Toji... it's been a long time."

The words drifted through the gates of Kyoto Jujutsu High, soft and fervent and wrong in a way that made the air feel sick.

The entire crowd went still.

Even Toji Fushiguro, mid-sob, tearing up alongside Aoi Todo, stopped dead.

Toji turned his head and looked the boy over. Slow. Top to bottom.

He reached back and scratched the nape of his neck where the skintight bodysuit was pinching, brow creasing into a hard knot.

"Who the hell are you?"

Toji curled his lip. Pure contempt, wall to wall.

"Wearing something that restrictive, you can't even take a full stride. Does that fabric even breathe? Are you here for a tea party or an actual fight?" He clicked his tongue. "Not a shred of youthful energy anywhere on you."

Any other person talked to like that, Naoya Zenin would have gone off. Instantly.

Instead, the excitement in his eyes got thicker.

Yes. That look. That towering, dismissive contempt.

This was the Tyrant who had ground the entire Zenin Clan beneath his heel.

"Master Toji is as singular as ever."

"Enough!"

Yoshinobu Gakuganji's cane cracked against the ground, loud and final. The old man had run out of patience.

"The Exchange Event begins now. Group battle format. The team that exorcises the designated Grade 2 Cursed Spirit first inside the Barrier wins. Interfering with the opposing team is permitted. Lethal force is not." He paused, letting his cold gaze drag across the Tokyo contingent. "A winner will be decided before sunset. Enter!"

BOOM!

Both schools exploded into motion. They vanished into the dense forest at their backs in a blur of afterimages.

Naoya landed on a branch, the wide sleeves of his kimono snapping in the wind. The corner of his mouth pulled into a thin, barely visible smirk. His eyes locked onto Yuta Okkotsu at the rear of the Tokyo group and did not move.

Hunting time.

All across the forest, the trees swallowed them up. Within moments, the whole expanse had fractured into isolated battlefields.

BANG!

A Cursed Energy-laced round detonated against a tree trunk. Bark exploded outward in a spray of splinters.

Mai Zenin blew the smoke from her gun barrel and looked up at Nishimiya hovering on her broom overhead.

"What's the matter? You had plenty to say outside the gate. Hiding already?"

Deeper in, a heavy impact shook the ground.

Maki came through the trees like a leopard cut loose from a cage, polearm leveled, and drove straight through a blood-red arrow with raw force.

Noritoshi Kamo felt the violence in that hit. He closed his eyes. Drew his longbow. His face was grave.

"It won't work, Zenin. Your physical technique doesn't matter. Without Cursed Energy, you cannot break through Blood Manipulation. There is no ceiling you can reach."

"Less talking." Maki spat. Veins stood up along her forehead. "Eight Gates Released Formation — Gate of Opening. Open. I'm ripping your head off."

Further out, Panda caved in an ancient tree with one punch, the kind that takes two people to wrap their arms around. Across the wreckage stood Ultimate Mechamaru, heavy combat frame venting steam from every joint.

"We're both manufactured cores." Panda rubbed his chin. "You seem like you're in a lot of pain."

"Shut your mouth. What does a thing like you know!" Mechamaru's arm reconfigured. The cannon muzzle burned red.

By a shallow stream, Toge Inumaki stood quietly and tugged his collar down.

Kasumi Miwa faced him from the other bank, hand tight on her katana, palms already sweating.

The whole forest was fighting.

But what made the ground itself tremble was the clearing at the center.

Fifteen-year-old Megumi Fushiguro stood with both hands in his pockets, dead-fish eyes fixed on the man filling the path ahead of him like a wall of iron.

Aoi Todo.

He peeled his shirt off. The muscle underneath looked like it had been poured from steel and left to set. Steam still rose off his shoulders from crying with Toji minutes ago.

"Hey. Second-year from Tokyo." Todo rolled his neck. Cracks rang out like a string of firecrackers. His eyes didn't leave Megumi. "You're my bosom friend's son. So I'll give you a chance to prove yourself."

He drove a thick finger straight at Megumi's nose.

"What kind of woman is your type?"

Megumi's eye twitched.

Is this guy out of his mind? He has to be insane.

Making a scene with that idiot father outside the gate was one thing. But a questionnaire before the fight?

"I'm not interested in answering something that stupid."

Megumi exhaled, stepped back half a pace, and shaped his hands into the shadow gesture for the Divine Dogs.

One second of silence.

Every trace of excitement drained off Todo's face.

What replaced it was pure, thunderous disappointment.

"Utterly boring!" The roar hit like a physical thing. The veins on Todo's forehead surfaced and swelled. "Compared to your father, whose very soul burns with something real, you are a still pond. A stagnant puddle. A desecration!"

He was already moving before the last word landed.

BOOM!

Nobody saw the launch. The ground beneath Todo's feet simply exploded, half a meter of earth cratered in an instant. The shockwave raked a deep trench through the soil, tearing toward Megumi like a derailed freight train riding the ground itself.

Fast.

Megumi's pupils snapped tight.

"Divine Dogs!"

Black and white, the two massive wolves erupted from his shadow and converged on Todo's arms from both sides.

"Out of the way." Todo didn't look at them.

His right arm swung.

CRASH!

The white dog never had time to howl. The strike detonated it outright, scattering it into a smear of dark shadow. The black dog caught the edge of the fist wind, yelped, and tumbled away.

Megumi's breath caught in his throat.

No Cursed Energy. He just punched through a shikigami with muscle.

"Relying on shikigami in real combat. Hiding in the back." Todo was already in front of him, the huge shadow falling over the fifteen-year-old like a collapsed ceiling. "The mindset of the weak. No wonder your soul is so dull."

THUD!

A knee drove into Megumi's gut with everything behind it.

"GWAH—"

Megumi sprayed bile. His body launched backward, snapping through 3 trees before the wreckage finally stopped him. His organs felt rearranged. The pain was so complete he couldn't pull in air.

Monitor room.

A full wall of screens showed every battlefield at once.

Suguru Geto leaned back in his chair, turning a cursed spirit orb idly between his fingers, eyes resting on Megumi getting dismantled one-sided on the center screen.

"He's not holding back at all. Todo's close-range output is monster-tier even by student standards."

Geto glanced sideways at Toji, who was crammed into the chair beside him, destroying a bag of potato chips with no apparent concern.

"Not worried? That's your son. Another 2 hits and he's probably cracking ribs."

Toji swallowed, didn't even lift his eyes.

"Worried about what." He grabbed a can of cold cola, cracked it, tilted it back, and belched loud enough to echo. "That kid's head moves too fast. Every time something comes at him, he's already calculating the lowest-effort way out."

He crushed the empty can in one hand. Something cold and precise flickered in the back of his eyes.

"What he's missing is exactly this. A fight that beats him awake. Something that makes him understand — if you don't go all in, you die."

Battlefield.

"Cough, " Megumi clawed his way up through the broken branches and scattered debris, one hand pressed to his stomach.

He wiped the blood from his lip. Kept his eyes on Todo, who was walking toward him without hurrying.

"Nue!"

Lightning split the air.

The great monstrous bird dropped from the sky, electric arcs trailing from its wings, diving straight for Todo's face.

"Too slow."

Todo didn't look up. He simply dropped into a crouch, precise and unhurried, reading the dive trajectory before it finished. Then he left the ground, one leg coiling and releasing in the air, and the whip kick caught Nue across the neck with full force.

BOOM!

Nue shrieked and dissolved into crackling light.

And in the same instant it vanished, Todo's frame came falling from above, all that mass and downward momentum converted into a single descending fist. Like a mountain deciding to land on someone.

The punch tracked straight for Megumi's face, afterimages streaming off it.

Can't dodge.

The gap in speed is too wide.

It's over.

If this connects clean, concussion is the best-case scenario.

The thought crossed his mind and was gone.

What replaced it: that lunatic treating him as a punching bag every single morning. The training that bordered on self-destruction. His father's voice from the top of that boulder.

"It needs you, when you've been crushed into the dirt and your brain is screaming 'give up, you're going to die,' to stand back up anyway."

No more dodging.

If I won't even throw my own fist, then I really am just a soulless, boring waste.

Todo's knuckles filled his vision, the wind pressure raking Megumi's cheeks like sandpaper.

In that fraction of a second, Megumi shut his eyes.

He dropped every attempt at a defensive hand seal. Inside his body, muscle fibers issued a sound like a warning, like something dangerous cracking open.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

His heart hammered past anything physiological, roaring through every blood vessel.

"Eight Gates Released Formation, Second Gate — Gate of Rest: OPEN!"

Megumi's eyes blew open.

A visible shockwave detonated outward from his body, raw and concussive, and it tore the accumulated wind pressure straight off Todo's incoming fist.

"OPEN!"

BANG!

A white vapor ring, a visible sonic cone, exploded in the space between them.

Todo's haymaker, the one he had been certain would end this, stopped.

Caught by a hand that looked like it had no business catching it.

Megumi hadn't moved back an inch. The earth beneath his feet fractured in a spreading web, ground out by the sheer force of the collision. Cracks branched outward like broken glass.

But he did not retreat.

The veins on his forehead rose. And on a face that had barely moved since the fight began, something new appeared, a grin. Teeth showing. Wild.

"Hey." Megumi's breath came hard and ragged. "Muscle freak."

"Who did you just call boring?"

➤ Next: Naoya Strikes — Absolute Speed Overwhelms