Jujutsu Kaisen — Chapter 117 - Return to Jujutsu High, with an Assistant

Aging underground gas pipelines, left unrepaired for years, triggered a chain of explosions that swallowed the abandoned structures above.

"This is the official statement for this incident. I will submit the detailed follow-up report before nine tomorrow morning."

Kento Nanami stood beside the ruined street, yanked the tie free from around the back of his hand, and delivered his briefing to the arriving Assistant Supervisor with a blank expression.

He raised his wrist and checked his watch. 3:30 a.m.

Every second of overtime grated on him.

The Assistant Supervisor wiped the cold sweat from his brow and nodded frantically, too terrified to breathe too loud.

Not far away, beside an ambulance, Yu Haibara was moving down the line of survivors wrapped in thermal blankets, handing each one a cup of hot chocolate.

He wore that smile of his, profoundly out of place at a disaster scene, yet somehow exactly what everyone needed.

"Drink something sweet to calm your nerves! The doctor's on the way. It's over. Everyone's safe!"

In a corner, Junpei Yoshino sat hugging his knees, shrinking into the shadow of a streetlamp like a frightened stray dog.

His ill-fitting school uniform jacket was caked in dust and someone else's blood.

Yuji Itadori scratched the back of his head and walked over.

He wasn't good at comforting people. Especially not someone who had just barely avoided being carved into pieces inside a slaughterhouse.

He dropped down beside Junpei and shoved the last water bottle he had into the boy's hands.

"So... it's over. You're safe."

Yuji turned it over in his head for a long moment and that was all he managed, a dry, clumsy line.

Junpei slowly raised his head.

The pink-haired boy beside him had half-dried blood smeared across his face and split skin over his knuckles. But the way he looked at Junpei held a sincerity so pure it was without a single trace of anything else.

At the same time.

In the foul black water, a twisted lump of flesh barely the size of a human head writhed desperately.

The mass crashed through a rusted sluice gate, tumbled along with the current, and landed with a wet splat at the feet of a pair of simple straw sandals.

Kenjaku lowered his gaze and studied the wretched thing at his feet.

The flesh convulsed. It strained, barely managing to form most of a head and one arm. Mahito's face surfaced from the slime.

The delight he usually wore when toying with humans was gone. His entire face had twisted into something that could only be called primal terror.

He clawed at the hem of Kenjaku's monk robe with both hands, his voice like fingernails dragged across glass.

"I touched it! I touched that thing!"

"Quiet down, Mahito. You're disturbing the rats."

Kenjaku's tone didn't waver. Not even an eyebrow moved.

"You don't understand! That monster — something is hidden deep inside that soul!"

Mahito had lost it completely. He gasped in ragged, heaving breaths. "My Idle Transfiguration — the instant I touched him, a chunk of it was carved clean off. That kind of pressure isn't about Cursed Energy levels. It's hierarchy. Absolute life-form hierarchy, crushing down."

Kenjaku crouched.

Those narrow eyes held no sympathy, only the manic excitement of a researcher discovering a novel specimen.

He reached out and, as if petting a stray cat, slowly stroked Mahito's slimy scalp.

"You're afraid?" His voice was soft.

"No, Mahito. You should feel honored. You are the first existence in all of history to touch the Soul Archetype and still return alive to describe the experience."

Mahito's body kept trembling.

"Fear is the boundary of cognition. The fact that you touched that boundary today — what does that tell you?"

Kenjaku let each word land slowly, deliberately.

Mahito's breathing began to steady. The sickly light in his pupils gathered, piece by piece, back into focus.

"It means... I've found a higher truth?"

"Exactly. This failure is not a disgrace. It is your stepping stone toward the ultimate jujutsu."

Kenjaku stood, wiped the slime from his hands, and turned away.

"Let's go. The people at Jujutsu High have given us quite the surprise. We should go prepare our return gift."

......

After daybreak.

Jujutsu High Infirmary.

The smell of disinfectant drowned out the blood.

Shoko Ieiri tossed her stethoscope back onto the desk.

"He won't die. Exhaustion. Sleep it off and he'll be running marathons by morning."

Kento Nanami sat in a chair facing a tablet with a video call open on the screen.

Satoru Gojo was out on a mission. He was chewing something, cheeks puffed out like a hamster's.

"Based on our engagement, the enemy Special Grade Cursed Spirit can freely alter the shape of souls, allowing it to bypass the vast majority of physical damage."

Nanami pushed up his glasses. "This technique is an extremely hard counter to Jujutsu High's conventional combat strength. I recommend immediately raising its threat level to maximum."

Gojo chewed his daifuku and mumbled, "Mm-hmm. And then?"

"The turning point was Itadori." Nanami glanced over at Yuji, who sat nearby pressing band-aids onto his wounds.

"The instant that Special Grade touched him, it suffered a devastating backlash.

The Sukuna imprisoned inside Itadori is that Special Grade's natural enemy. If we leverage this, Itadori becomes the only reliable solution for any future encounter with this Cursed Spirit."

Crisp clapping came from the other end of the screen.

"Well done, Nanamin. You're pretty good at handling the kids."

Nanami blocked out that revolting nickname entirely and continued his report.

"Regarding the civilians caught up in this incident, the other survivors have been handed over to the relevant departments. As for the high school student, Junpei Yoshino..."

Nanami paused. His tone went flat and procedural.

"Under jujutsu society's confidentiality regulations, any civilian who has witnessed a Special Grade Cursed Spirit and been drawn into an Innate Domain must have their memories erased by me. The related report, "

BANG!

The tablet's camera lurched violently. A massive face shoved into frame and knocked Gojo clean to the side of the screen.

Toji Fushiguro stood there in his signature green spandex, sweat still dripping from his forehead, clearly just back from a training run.

"Erase his memories?" Toji roared directly into the microphone.

"That kid survived inside a slaughterhouse! He didn't piss his pants in that hellhole, and he still had the guts to keep his eyes open and look at this world. That's the hard-won experience of youth, he earned it with his own life!"

Nanami's brow tightened.

Rules were rules. Ordinary people couldn't carry the weight of memories like that. The nightmares alone would grind them into madness.

"Don't shove Jujutsu High's bullshit regulations in my face!" Toji's voice shook the room.

"Erasing memories the moment danger shows up, that's the coward's way out! He's seen this ugly, broken world for what it is, so he's earned the right to use his own will to decide what comes next. That's what the Will of Fire means!"

Nanami drew a slow breath.

Suguru Geto walked into the infirmary and rested a hand on Nanami's shoulder.

"Haibara just told me. That kid, Junpei Yoshino, under extreme fear, he awakened a faint trace of Cursed Energy. Strictly speaking, he no longer falls under the category of an ordinary person whose memories must be erased."

Nanami said nothing.

With a legitimate reason to bypass the regulation, he was more than happy to spare himself the extra workload.

Gojo finally swallowed his snack and slapped his thigh to seal the matter.

"Then it's happily decided! Bring the kid back to Jujutsu High. Yuji's still technically 'dead' right now anyway, being locked in that basement alone watching movies every day must be getting pretty dull. Let Junpei Yoshino stay. He can be his assistant and roommate."

Nanami closed his notebook and shrugged.

"If problems come up, it's on you."

The screen cut off.

Yuji Itadori had been sitting there listening to the whole thing.

When Gojo-sensei handed down that arrangement, he paused for a moment, then turned toward the adjacent rest room.

Through the half-open door, Junpei lay on the hospital bed in a shallow sleep.

He wasn't resting easy. His brows were knitted hard together, his fingers clutching the edge of the blanket.

Yuji thought back to the slaughterhouse. That thin, frail back, trampled under a thug's foot, still refusing to beg.

An assistant, huh.

Yuji looked down at his own hands.

These hands could send a Special Grade Cursed Spirit flying. But until now, that power had always felt like a curse he'd been forced to accept.

Now he was certain it had a more concrete purpose.

He stood up, walked to the door, and didn't look back.

"Nanami-sensei." The usual noise was gone from Yuji's voice. Each word landed clean and deliberate. "I will protect him."

Kento Nanami's hands stilled in the middle of straightening his suit jacket.

He looked at the boy's broad back.

A kid carrying a ticking time bomb inside him, still always thinking about holding an umbrella over someone else.

What an idiot.

"Before you protect anyone else, make sure you don't die first."

Nanami pushed open the infirmary door and walked out, leaving that hard, blunt sentence behind him.

➤ Next: Junpei's Day, The Zenin Clan Arrives