Jujutsu Kaisen — Chapter 118 - Junpei's Day, The Zenin Clan Arrives
Two in the morning. The Jujutsu High basement.
Junpei Yoshino huddled on the camp bed, both hands wrapped around a chipped mug.
The hot water had scalded his palms red. He still couldn't stop trembling.
CRUNCH. Yuji Itadori shoved a massive handful of plain potato chips into his mouth, chewing loud enough to rattle the walls.
The TV was running a B-movie horror flick. Blood sprayed. Chainsaws screamed.
Itadori flinched.
The ugly plushie tucked in his arms suddenly lunged, cracking him in the face with a solid fist.
"Ow! Man, that ghost lady is seriously disgusting — right, Junpei?"
Itadori rubbed his nose and looked back, grinning from ear to ear, pointing at the gore on screen like he was asking for a verdict.
Junpei's hands wobbled. Hot water sloshed over the back of his hand.
Disgusting?
You skinned that game show host alive last night. You were a hundred times more disgusting than that ghost!
The iron door to the basement flew open with a kick.
Satoru Gojo strolled in, working on the last half of a lollipop. The fluorescent lights threw his shadow long across the floor.
"Good evening, students! Junpei-kun, settling into the new dorm okay?"
Junpei shot to his feet and nodded rapidly.
"Glad to hear it. Principal Yaga has spoken — since you've awakened some Cursed Energy, no sense wasting it. Daytime, you head up to the surface for Taijutsu special training. Nights..." Gojo pointed at Itadori, who was still licking chip dust off his fingers. "Back down here keeping this dead man company. Think of it as an addendum to your confidentiality agreement."
Junpei was still trying to process the words "special training" when Gojo bent down and leaned in close.
One finger hooked the black blindfold down a notch. A pair of pale blue eyes locked straight onto Junpei's face.
"One more thing." Gojo crunched through the last of the candy. "If you let slip even a hint that Yuji is still alive, and the higher-ups find out, or Megumi and the others find out..." He smiled. "I'll twist your skullcap off and flush it down the second-floor men's room toilet in the main building."
Junpei's head nodded so fast it blurred.
---
Six the next morning. The training ground was socked in with fog.
Before Junpei could figure out which direction was north, Toji Fushiguro had grabbed him by the scruff of his neck like a stray cat and dropped him onto the rough rubber running track.
"Everyone, meet your new charge." Toji dug a finger in his ear without bothering to look at Junpei directly. "This is the guy who got scared out of his mind on the mission — Junpei Yoshino. Starting today, he's yours. Show him around."
Junpei rubbed his sore backside and looked up.
He went still.
5 meters away, Megumi Fushiguro was wrapped head to toe in bandages. Blood had soaked through the gauze and dried into dark, stiff patches. At his feet, two Divine Dogs crouched with blazing, feral eyes.
The kid who used to at least manage a few words of small talk was gone. What stood in his place radiated a cold, bone-deep warning: stay away.
"Weaklings, leave."
No greeting. The Divine Dogs bared their fangs.
"This isn't a playground. Power that can't protect a comrade," Megumi said, his voice flat and final, "isn't something I want near me for another second."
Beside him, Nobara Kugisaki hadn't said a word.
She was gripping her hammer. The backs of her hands were covered in dried blood.
A dull, skull-crawling THUD, she drove the hammer into the concrete steps. Stone chips exploded outward, a shard catching Junpei across the cheek.
"If I hadn't gone down back then..." She hung her head. The words came out through clenched teeth, slow and ground-down, soaked in something that went deeper than anger. "That idiot wouldn't have died."
Junpei knelt there on the ground, the weight of their grief pressing down on his chest like a slab of concrete. They were carrying it like people who'd buried someone. Like they'd lost everything.
Your comrade isn't dead! He single-handedly went through 3 bags of plain potato chips last night!
When they weren't spicy enough, he raided my cabinet looking for chili strips!
He screamed it ten thousand times in his head. His throat wouldn't move. Gojo's smile floated up behind his eyes, sharp and unhurried, and he choked it all back down, every word, every tear, and absorbed the knife-point stares from both of them.
---
Six in the evening.
Junpei dragged his nearly-disintegrated skeleton down the stairs, face bruised, nose swollen, lowering himself onto each step like an old man.
Calling what those two did "training" would have been generous. That was one-sided homicide.
He pushed open the iron door. A wall of warm, greenish steam hit him in the face.
Itadori was doing push-ups on a single thumb. Upside-down.
On the TV, the ghost lady was hauling herself up over the rim of the well. Every time her face appeared, the Cursed Corpse perched on the back of Itadori's head cracked two fists against his skull, marking the count.
"Nine thousand nine hundred ninety-eight... nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine..."
The door creaked. Itadori flipped off his thumb, landed clean on both feet, and shuffled over in his slippers.
"Junpei, you're back! You doing okay? Megumi and Nobara were pretty decent to you, right? Megumi runs cold on the outside but he's got a warm heart. And Nobara's actually a great person!"
Junpei stared at this walking, breathing, chip-eating catastrophe and felt a vein throb behind his temple.
He thought about the 2 maniacs upstairs who were grinding themselves into dust. He dredged up a smile from somewhere. It looked worse than crying.
"Great." He forced the words through his teeth one at a time. "They were so great they almost beat me to death."
Itadori scratched his pink hair and exhaled with relief. "That's good to hear! So nobody's taking my situation too hard, everyone's just focusing on getting stronger. I can't fall behind either!"
Which part of any of that sounded like they're not taking it hard?!
They're turning themselves into actual vengeful spirits up there!
Junpei didn't have the energy left to argue. He peeled himself off the doorframe, face-planted onto the camp bed, and stopped moving.
Itadori left him there. He turned and walked toward the specially reinforced wall at the far end of the room, half a meter of solid steel plate, the kind Jujutsu High used to test heavy Cursed Tools.
"I was thinking about it all day." Itadori looked at his fists.
"Master Toji had me working on the meridian pathways of the Eight Gates. And I kept wondering... what if I reversed the direction I normally push Cursed Energy out? Compress it back along the Eight Gates' channels instead, and then release it in the one ten-thousandth of a second the moment my fist makes contact?"
No wind-up. No preparation. His hips rotated, and a completely ordinary-looking straight punch drove into the steel.
SCREEEEEE,
No impact sound. No flesh meeting metal.
The Cursed Energy, compressed past its limit, detonated at the exact instant his knuckles touched the surface.
The half-meter steel plate screamed. A hole the size of a washbasin melted clean through its center, edges still glowing.
Junpei rolled off the camp bed and hit the floor. His chin met the tiles.
Even Itadori was frozen, staring at his own fist, smoke still curling off his knuckles.
The ultimate expression of a Cursed Energy strike. Rough technique, pure instinct, nothing refined about it at all. But Nanami-senpai had told him about this once.
This was the territory that only a handful of the world's greatest sorcerers ever touched.
Black Flash.
---
At that same moment, on the surface.
BZZZZZ,
A long, resonant tone rolled across the sky above Jujutsu High.
Not an alarm. A formal announcement, a visit, delivered with an official calling card.
Outside the gate, Toji leaned against the entrance with his arms loose at his sides, watching the mist.
A procession emerged from the fog. Moving slowly. Deliberately.
The man at the front was old, robed in a kimono, one hand resting on a sword.
Ougi Zenin raised his heavy-lidded eyes. His gaze passed over Toji without stopping and fixed hard on the figure behind him, Naoya Zenin, standing there in a green tracksuit.
"You worthless bastard." His voice came out like gravel. "You've disgraced the Zenin Clan."
➤ Next: Naoya's Training Results