Jujutsu Kaisen — Chapter 107 - The Vicious Adults
Tokyo Metropolitan Jujutsu Technical High School. Principal's office.
Satoru Gojo hung up the phone. A rare, genuine smile crossed his face.
"Done."
He tossed the phone onto the desk and flashed an OK sign at Toji Fushiguro and Masamichi Yaga across the room. "Yuta's side went smoothly."
Masamichi Yaga nodded and opened his mouth to respond.
The sky outside went dark without warning.
The air turned heavy. Oppressive. Like the moment before a storm breaks.
At the edge of the school's Barrier, two staggering figures passed through the torii gate and appeared at the far end of the long slope.
Nobara Kugisaki had her arm around Megumi Fushiguro. And on Megumi Fushiguro's back was another person.
Someone covered in blood. A massive hole torn clean through the chest. Long past making any sound.
The expressions drained from Satoru Gojo's and Toji Fushiguro's faces at the same time.
One look at each other. Then they were gone.
---
Outside the infirmary.
The atmosphere pressed down like something solid.
Megumi Fushiguro stood with his head low, soaked to the bone. Rain and tears ran together down his pale cheeks.
He couldn't lift his head. Couldn't look at the father standing in front of him. Couldn't look at the white-haired man who was always so carelessly irreverent and was now terrifyingly, completely silent.
He had laid Yuji Itadori's body onto the cold stretcher as gently as he could manage.
"I'm sorry..."
Megumi Fushiguro's voice was wrecked. Trembling in a way he couldn't control.
"I... couldn't... bring him back safe."
He clenched his fists. His nails bit into his palms. He couldn't feel it at all.
That idiot. That guy who was always like the sun, lighting everyone up with his stupid, relentless optimism. He was just... gone.
He'd torn out his own heart to save him.
"I was too weak." Megumi Fushiguro's shoulders shook. "If I'd been stronger. If I hadn't dragged everyone down..."
He had failed every person who ever counted on him.
His father's training. Gojo-sensei's trust. And the life Yuji had pressed into his hands like it was nothing, heavy as the world.
"I'll explain what happened."
Nobara Kugisaki pulled in a slow breath. She kept her voice as steady as she could and walked through every detail: the Special Grade Cursed Spirit, Ryomen Sukuna's awakening, the choice Yuji made to claw back control of his own body. All of it. In order.
"...That's everything." Nobara's lips had been bitten white.
She had nothing left to say.
The hallway was absolutely silent.
"Understood."
Satoru Gojo finally spoke. His voice gave nothing away.
He crossed to Megumi Fushiguro and placed a hand on his shaking shoulder.
"It's not your fault, Megumi."
His voice came out light. Soft, even. Almost carrying that familiar, lazy ease he usually wore.
"You two did well. Go rest. Leave the rest to the adults."
Without making a show of it, he angled his body to block the sightline. And his other hand, the one tucked in his pocket, quietly found the record button on his phone.
The camera locked perfectly onto Megumi Fushiguro's face. Tear-streaked. Twisted with pain and self-reproach.
Close-up. High-definition. Perfect angle.
Megumi Fushiguro moved like everything had been drained out of him. Nobara half-supported, half-dragged him away from the infirmary.
From the far end of the hallway came the sound of a boy's barely-held-back sobs.
The door closed.
The silence that had blanketed the hallway shattered into something else entirely.
Toji Fushiguro stepped to the side of the stretcher and looked down at Yuji Itadori's body.
Then he looked up. Satoru Gojo was already looking back.
No grief in either pair of eyes. No anger. Just a shared, wordless, deeply suspicious amusement.
The corner of Satoru Gojo's mouth curved up. He broke the silence.
He dropped his voice low and mouthed two words.
Keep quiet?
Toji Fushiguro's grin split wide. He mouthed two words back.
Watch the show?
The next second, the two men universally regarded as the strongest in the jujutsu world were wearing the exact same rotten smile.
---
Half an hour later.
The infirmary's private treatment room.
Shoko Ieiri worked with a cigarette between her lips, guiding the Reverse Cursed Technique with practiced ease.
Soft light settled over Yuji Itadori's chest. The catastrophic wound was closing, visibly, in real time.
"Tsk." She blew out a slow smoke ring and watched the heart monitor flatten into a steady rhythm. "Heart gets crushed to pulp and he still pulls through. What a little freak. Sukuna's Reverse Cursed Technique?"
Suguru Geto had just gotten back from a mission. He walked through the door and stopped.
"You two are genuinely twisted."
He looked at Yuji breathing evenly on the treatment bed. Then he looked at the two standing nearby, grinning like cats with cream on their whiskers. He understood everything immediately.
"All of that just to watch Megumi squirm?"
Suguru Geto pressed a hand over his face. "He was back in the dorm practically sobbing himself unconscious."
"Ahem!"
Toji Fushiguro straightened up sharply, crossed his arms, and arranged his face into an expression of complete moral seriousness, as if he had absolutely not been wearing a rotten grin thirty seconds ago.
"Geto! You just don't understand!" He delivered it with full conviction.
"This was to make those increasingly lazy brats genuinely feel the value of life and the importance of training!"
"You don't sweat enough in peacetime, you bleed on the battlefield! If they had mastered the Eight Gates, how would a mere Special Grade Cursed Spirit have pushed them to the edge?!"
Toji's voice rang out, clear and forceful, saturated with the profound grief and responsibility of a dedicated educator.
"This painful lesson will be the most precious thing they carry on the road ahead! It will drive them to sweat harder and become stronger!"
Satoru Gojo cheerfully waved his phone. The screen was looping Megumi Fushiguro's tear-soaked breakdown on repeat.
"I just want to see what face that stone-cold little gremlin makes when he finds out the truth."
He was grinning like a three-hundred-pound child.
"And then I show him the video." He nearly choked on a laugh. "That's going to be incredible."
Suguru Geto's eye twitched. He looked at these two fully-grown adults behaving with absolutely zero dignity and opened his mouth.
Then he remembered. Kuantan Beach. A certain brat delivering a finishing blow with a completely straight face, announcing with full sincerity that he was "a virgin cult leader who has never stepped on a single ant."
Suguru Geto rubbed his chin.
The expression on his face shifted into something complicated.
He thought it over for a moment. Then he nodded with complete gravity.
"Toji's right. This is a necessary lesson in adversity."
"That kid Megumi needs his character tempered properly."
And internally, very quietly, he added one more line.
So you really can't blame Teacher Suguru for knowing and staying quiet.
➤ Next: The Excessive Burning of Youth