Jujutsu Kaisen — Chapter 119 - Naoya's Training Results
On the training ground, Naoya Zenin held himself up on one finger, half a ton of iron weights strapped across his back, grinding out one-finger push-ups while sweat dripped from his golden hair and pocked the ground with dark, spreading marks.
He didn't spare the voice so much as a glance. Just kept grinding.
"1,342... 1,343..."
Being ignored that completely, Ogi Zenin's face went dark. The fingers wrapped around his sword hilt turned white at the knuckles.
"Look at the state of you! The heir of the Zenin Clan, wearing that shameless excuse for clothing, playing meaningless physical games at a place like Jujutsu High! You have utterly disgraced the Zenin Clan!"
Toji Fushiguro finally moved from where he'd been leaning against the gate.
He dug a finger in his ear, spat on the ground, and answered in a voice too lazy to hurry but loud enough to carry across the whole yard.
"Spit it out, old man. What are you barking about at our school gate in the middle of the night? You're cutting into my students' special youth training. You planning to pay for that?"
Ogi Zenin went rigid.
Years ago, inside the Zenin compound, this man had beaten him into a swollen wreck like he was working a heavy bag. The memory still visited him at night.
He swallowed his fury and ground the words out through clenched teeth. "Toji Fushiguro! Naoya has been here long enough. It's time for him to come home and take over the family's affairs!"
Toji snorted. "Is that your idea, or your clan head's? The one who's halfway in the ground already?"
"I am the Grand Elder of the Zenin Clan!" Ogi Zenin's voice cracked with fury. "Do I not even have that much authority?!"
"Authority?" Toji shrugged, face open and innocent in a way that made it worse. "Then go ask him if he wants to leave."
Every eye in the yard shifted to Naoya.
He finished his last set, stood up from the ground, and flipped the iron weights off his back without looking. They hit the ground like a small bomb going off.
"Go back?" Naoya dragged a towel across the sweat on his neck, eyeing Ogi Zenin like something scraped off a shoe.
"What's worth going back to? A pack of frogs at the bottom of a well. All they're good for is infighting. Don't waste my training time."
Ogi Zenin trembled with rage. "You insolent brat! How could this place possibly compare to the resources and education of the Three Great Families?!"
"Oh?"
Toji Fushiguro stopped looking amused.
He straightened up slowly. The loose, couldn't-care-less energy bled out of him all at once, and what replaced it pressed against the chest like a hand around the heart.
"Are you questioning my ability as a teacher?"
Nobody moved. Nobody spoke.
Then a breezy voice cut through the silence.
"Well, well. Quite a crowd." Satoru Gojo strolled out from behind a stone pillar, hands in his pockets, wearing the expression of a man who'd just found free entertainment. "The Grand Elder of the Zenin Clan, showing up in person to collect someone. Jujutsu High is truly honored."
His tone shifted, easy as turning a page. "Since the Grand Elder has doubts about the quality of education here, why not test it? Let Naoya fight whoever's currently the strongest in your clan. We'll see if he's improved. Sound fair?"
Satoru Gojo's smile widened into something that belonged on a cat standing over a broken vase. "And if Naoya wins, everyone you brought tonight scrubs every toilet in Jujutsu High. Every single one. Deal?"
The color that rose in Ogi Zenin's face passed red and kept going.
He looked at the two men standing side by side. One a physical monster. One the highest ceiling jujutsu had ever produced. He had no room to say no, and every person present knew it.
"Fine." The word came out like he was biting through wire.
"Tch." Naoya dropped out of his warm-up stretch, visibly annoyed. "Is there even one person in this crowd worth fighting?"
He swept his gaze around, extended a finger, and dragged it slowly across Ogi Zenin and every face behind him.
"All of you. At once."
The noise had carried. Within minutes, Megumi Fushiguro, Maki, Mai, and Toge Inumaki came jogging in from across the campus.
When they spotted the Zenin group, Maki and Mai's expressions curdled into something raw and ugly. Megumi Fushiguro's eyes went cold as frozen stone.
Behind Ogi Zenin, the humiliation of being dismissed by a junior had finally hit its limit.
Three figures stepped out from the group.
The two in front radiated Cursed Energy like heat off asphalt. Grade 1 sorcerers, both of them, and they were done pretending otherwise.
"'Rock Arm' Chojuro Zenin."
"'Karma Eye' Ranta Zenin."
"'Immovable' Noburo Zenin."
Three names. Three men shaking with wounded pride.
"That's it?" Naoya's laugh was short and pure contempt. "You call yourselves strong?"
His pointing finger swung to the last man standing, Ogi Zenin, face gone the color of ash.
"I said all of you. That includes you, old man."
"Insolence!"
Ogi Zenin's composure finally snapped.
But Naoya was already done talking.
"Gate of Rest — open!"
BOOM!
Green steam exploded from his body. The synthetic track under his feet split apart in an instant.
Then he was gone.
Ogi Zenin's pupils shrank to points. A wall of wind hit him in the face and he had no time, no chance, no thought before,
"Projection Sorcery!"
Naoya's body locked in midair for a fraction of a breath. Then, at 1/24th of a second, his fist punched through the sound barrier and came screaming at Ogi Zenin's face with everything behind it.
He was going for the kill. Straight at the Zenin Clan elder's skull.
"Don't let him!"
"Block him — now!"
Chojuro and Ranta bellowed at the same instant, Cursed Energy ripping out of them in waves.
Noburo came right behind them, roaring as he drew his blade and threw himself between Naoya and Ogi Zenin.
Chojuro Zenin drove both palms into the earth.
The ground cracked open. Stone and soil heaved upward, and a giant arm made of solid rock burst free from the ground with a sound like a building falling, 5 fingers splayed wide, surging straight for Naoya in the air above.
Ranta Zenin's eyes blew open at the same moment. Deep in his pupils, strange crimson patterns writhed to life.
A cursed eye, 10 feet across, materialized in the air at Naoya's back. It locked onto him, fixed him in place like a pin through a butterfly.
Invisible Cursed Energy shackles snapped around his limbs. His midair movement died.
Speed, gone.
"Keep him locked!" Ranta screamed, veins standing out on his forehead. The longer the giant eye held open, the more his own eyes bled at the corners, feedback from a shared link he couldn't cut.
Noburo Zenin had no Cursed Energy to offer. None.
He planted his blade horizontally in front of Ogi Zenin, spine locked straight, and held his ground with nothing but bone and muscle and will.
Immobilization. Crushing weight. Human shield.
Three men. Perfect coordination.
Naoya, caught between the shackles and the stone arm closing in from below, bared his teeth in a grin that had nothing sane behind it.
"That's all?"
The green steam inside him detonated. It swelled and surged, the pressure of the Third Gate, the Gate of Life, hammering at the door from inside.
"Get out of my WAY!"
The Cursed Energy shackles exploded apart under pure physical force. The rock arm, the one that should have ground him to nothing, he caught it by the wrist with one hand.
CRACK!
He tore it in half. Stone fragments blasted in every direction.
One chunk spun wide and struck the giant cursed eye floating behind him.
Spider-web fractures shot across its surface.
"AAHH —!"
Ranta's scream came from across the yard. Both hands slammed over his eyes, blood running through his fingers. The link between the giant eye and his real ones had never been a one-way street, every crack in the cursed eye opened a matching wound behind his palms.
Naoya didn't even blink.
His feet found purchase in the air. The straight punch he'd been driving at Ogi Zenin's face wrenched mid-flight into a full-force roundhouse kick.
The broken stone wrist exploded under the first part of the kick. The follow-through didn't slow down at all. It whipped into Noburo, the last man still on his feet.
CRACK!
The steel blade Noburo held braced across his body snapped in two. Both arms buckled and broke at the same instant, bones giving way under a force they were never built to stop. He flew backward vomiting blood and took Ogi Zenin down with him when he hit.
One kick.
One kick had shredded the stone arm, shattered the cursed eye technique, and snapped a steel blade in half.
The entire yard went silent.
Megumi Fushiguro stood there with his eyelid twitching. He could feel it. Naoya's strength, running on the Eight Gates, was touching the edge of Special Grade territory.
Maki's grip tightened on her blade. The look in her eyes wasn't fear.
"See that, old man?"
Naoya lowered his leg slowly. He looked down at Ogi Zenin, half-buried under Noburo, and didn't bother hiding a single shade of contempt.
"That's what Master Toji taught me."
He pulled in a breath, puffed out his chest, and let it out in a roar that rattled every window in the building.
"That — is YOUTH!"
Across the yard, Toji Fushiguro gave a satisfied nod and shot Satoru Gojo a thumbs-up.
"You see it, Gojo? That's the true Will of Fire. Burning iron fists, smashing the rotten old era into dust!"
Ogi Zenin clawed his way back to his feet. He looked at his 3 most trusted men, all of them broken in a single exchange. He looked at this Zenin heir he barely recognized anymore. His face went past red, past pig's liver, and then the fury reached something behind his ribs, and he vomited blood onto the cracked track.
"You... you wretched, degenerate!"
Naoya gave a cold smile.
"Warm-up's done."
"Now we get serious."
➤ Next: Don't Leave! You Haven't Scrubbed the Toilets Yet!