One week later. Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical College.
Hidden deep within the mountains of Tokyo sat a sprawling campus, protected by an overlapping array of immense barriers. From the base of the mountain to the summit, a sequence of Torii gates stood in absolute silence. These gates were the sensory nodes of the barrier; anyone passing through them had to be a formally registered Jujutsu Sorcerer, or the barrier would instantly trigger a massive alarm.
It was a heavily fortified military installation masquerading as an educational institution: Tokyo Jujutsu High.
Just outside the main Torii gate, Yuki Tsukumo leaned against the wooden pillar, her brow furrowed in deep annoyance. "Where the hell is Satoru? Where did he run off to this time?"
"He said he was going to fetch the underclassmen," a deep, incredibly calm voice replied.
Yes, the speaker was quite literally a Panda: a massive, rotund body covered in black and white fur, with a seemingly dopey, lovable face. Only when he stood at his full, imposing height did his sheer physical mass become apparent. Yet, even as he slouched slightly, he radiated absolutely zero hostility.
"Salmon," Toge Inumaki added.
Toge Inumaki was a relatively short boy with pale, ash-blonde hair. He wore the standard black Jujutsu High uniform, though his collar was heavily modified, zipped up so high it completely concealed the lower half of his face. This gave his voice a distinctly muffled, muted quality.
"So? How much longer are we supposed to wait?" Maki Zen'in crossed her arms.
This was the very same Maki who, in the original canon, would go on to brutally massacre the entire Zen'in clan. Here, however, she was still just a fiercely rebellious teenager. She possessed sharp, striking features, wore wire-rimmed glasses, and had her dark green hair tied back in a high ponytail, dressed in the female variant of the school uniform.
Yuki Tsukumo sighed heavily. "Only Satoru knows the exact timeline. All he told me was that our guest would arrive around noon... Did he not tell you guys?"
All three students shook their heads.
"Perfect. That idiot is as utterly unreliable as always," Yuki ground her teeth.
Normally, she was an incredibly laid-back, easygoing woman, but the second Satoru Gojo was involved, her blood pressure spiked! *He used to be somewhat cute when he was younger. How did he grow up to be such an absolute headache?* Yuki sighed from the bottom of her soul.
Alright, fine, Gojo was just as unreliable back then too. It was just that Yuki had barely interacted with him in the past. This was her first time formally running a joint operation with him. Her past impressions of him were entirely filtered through rose-tinted glasses—glasses that were currently shattering into a million pieces.
"Ah! You guys are here early!" a voice suddenly called out.
From beyond the Torii gate, a man waved enthusiastically. Striking white hair, a black blindfold concealing his eyes—Satoru Gojo confidently strutted up the stone steps, casually swinging a plastic convenience store bag. Trailing behind him were four students clad in Jujutsu High uniforms.
He puffed out his chest, beaming at the waiting group, and threw his hands out in a wildly exaggerated gesture of presentation. "Look! Look! These are the absolute gold-mine prodigies I personally scouted! Once they reach their full potential, I guarantee we can violently kick out all those useless, crusty old fossils at Headquarters!"
"You really shouldn't be screaming treason out loud like that!" Nobara Kugisaki retorted sharply.
Nobara Kugisaki practically oozed the aura of a delinquent. She had dyed her short black hair a light brown, tucking one side behind her ear. She wore the female Jujutsu High uniform, a hammer holstered firmly at her waist, her feet clad in heavy brown leather loafers.
"In the past, I would have at least pretended to give those old geezers some face," Gojo maintained his bright smile, but his tone imperceptibly dropped to a freezing absolute zero. "But lately... I've been seriously debating how much longer I should actually let them live."
A heavy, chilling silence hung over the group for two or three seconds. Yuki Tsukumo was the first to recover. She swept her gaze over Gojo's students and flashed a dazzling, hearty smile.
"It must be exhausting having Satoru as your teacher! I'm Yuki Tsukumo, Special Grade Jujutsu Sorcerer. I was invited here to whip you all into shape."
"Yes, ma'am! I am Yuji Itadori! Please take care of me!" Yuji violently bowed at a perfect ninety-degree angle.
Yuji Itadori was a boy whose loose clothes hid a terrifyingly dense physique. He sported short, unruly pink hair that spiked out wildly like a hedgehog despite his attempts to tame it. Though incredibly polite, his slightly triangular eyes and sharply angled eyebrows gave him a naturally ferocious, intimidating glare—yet his actual smile was completely goofy and endearing.
Yuki looked at him thoughtfully. "So you're the vessel for Ryomen Sukuna."
"Yep!" Yuji completely ignored the heavy stigma attached to the title, flashing Yuki a bright, natural grin.
Yuki laughed out loud. "What a fantastic mindset!"
Then she sighed softly. "Though I suppose you're quite lucky. Normally, a vessel like you would be immediately targeted for execution by the Higher-ups. But with all the recent chaos violently ripping their attention elsewhere, sitting comfortably under Satoru's protection has actually made you the safest person in the country."
"I wouldn't exactly call the recent chaos a 'good thing,'" Megumi Fushiguro frowned deeply.
"Well, it's a great thing for whoever ends up freeloading their way into taking over the Three Great Families," Yuki teased.
Megumi's face darkened instantly. "Whoever wants that cursed clan can have it."
"I want it!" Gojo screamed excitedly. "Anyway, Megumi! You better hold the line! Hold out until those fossils literally force you to change your name to 'Megumi Zen'in'!"
Megumi finally lost his temper. "I told you, I am absolutely never changing my name! And I care far more about the Fushiguro name than the damn Zen'in clan!"
The moment the words left his mouth, he realized his mistake and immediately bowed his head. "My apologies, Maki-senpai. I didn't mean to insult you."
Maki Zen'in waved it off effortlessly. "No need to apologize. I actually visited the Zen'in estate recently. I'll just say it straight: every single person who died there, including that arrogant piece of trash clan head, was absolute human garbage. Their deaths don't shake me in the slightest."
Megumi shot Gojo a glare, then couldn't help but add, "If Maki-senpai wants it, I'd gladly support her claim as the Clan Head."
"Drop it!" Maki's voice suddenly spiked in volume. "If I am going to become the Clan Head... I will fight for it with my own two hands."
The primary reason Maki had enrolled at Jujutsu High under Satoru Gojo's tutelage was to endure grueling training, accumulating enough power to eventually return to the Zen'in clan and violently usurp the Clan Head position. She was suffocating under the clan's toxic, misogynistic atmosphere and desperately wanted to rewrite its foundation with her own hands.
But now, she didn't have to.
Because the crusty old fossils who strictly enforced the clan's traditional rot... had all been slaughtered.
The survivors were mostly the weak, the cowardly, and those lacking any real political spine. Whoever sat on the Clan Head throne now would essentially become an absolute dictator with unquestioned authority.
Maki understood Megumi perfectly. She knew that if Megumi actually took the throne, he would ruthlessly overhaul the Zen'in clan's archaic systems. In a way, her ultimate wish had already been granted. She no longer harbored an obsessive fixation on taking the title herself.
The only thing left on her mind was—
"The King of Curses," she muttered under her breath. "He is the only one... I will settle the score with him personally."
Gojo mercilessly shattered his student's dramatic resolve. "If you try to fight the King of Curses right now, he'd probably just blow on you and you'd disintegrate into ash! Ahahahahaha!"
"Satoru, you really don't know how to read the damn room, do you?" Yuki pinched the bridge of her nose, utterly speechless.
Maki looked dead inside.
Yuki smoothly changed the subject, directing a warm smile at the last two students. "So, I assume you two are the wielder of 'Resonance,' Nobara Kugisaki, and the Half-Cursed Spirit, Rice Shower?"
Nobara nervously bowed her head. "Y-Yes. I'm Nobara Kugisaki."
Rice Shower practically curled into a ball, her shoulders trembling violently. "I-I-I'm Rice Shower! U-Umm, please take care of me, Special Grade-sama!"
*A Special Grade Jujutsu Sorcerer.*
While Satoru Gojo had single-handedly annihilated their majestic fantasies of what a Special Grade acted like, the mythical aura surrounding the other Special Grades remained completely intact. Ultimately, a Special Grade stood at the absolute pinnacle of Jujutsu society. Their apocalyptic strength was unquestionable. It was widely accepted that if a Special Grade ever desired it, they could unilaterally massacre the entire Jujutsu world overnight.
Unlike Gojo, Yuki Tsukumo didn't radiate an aura of chaotic unreliability. On the contrary, she was hearty, approachable, and stunningly gorgeous—perfectly aligning with the rookies' idealized fantasies of an ultimate powerhouse. Even Nobara, who rarely backed down from anyone, felt a subtle wave of pressure and nerves. Rice Shower was faring far worse; her eyes were already spinning, and she looked ready to pass out on the spot.
Gojo, completely oblivious to the atmosphere, tapped his watch and complained loudly, "It's almost time! I literally dragged all my adorable students out here, so why the hell isn't he here yet—"
He shouted the name to the sky:
"—Hakari!"
As if on cue to violently shut Gojo up, a localized hurricane suddenly tore across the courtyard.
Everyone instinctively looked up.
A suffocating, deadening pressure descended upon the entire campus without warning. It was high noon, the sun blazing in the zenith, yet a massive shadow suddenly eclipsed the light. It was a pair of wings. Dragon wings. They were so unfathomably massive they blocked out the sun, casting an apocalyptic shadow that swallowed everyone below.
A gargantuan dragon was slowly descending.
Gojo let out a sharp, impressed whistle. But everyone else was completely paralyzed with shock. None of them could have ever imagined that a literal mythological dragon would descend upon the school. Crucially, the great barriers hadn't triggered an alarm, meaning the rider was officially registered in the barrier's security protocol. It wasn't an enemy. Yet, the dragon's Cursed Energy crashed down on them like a physical avalanche. Everyone felt as though a massive boulder had been dropped onto their chests; uncontrollable terror flooded their veins.
The dragon lowered its massive head, its colossal horns twisting like serpents. Seated cross-legged right between the horns was a man. While the dragon was still dozens of meters in the air, the man casually stepped off the beast's snout and plummeted.
Yuki Tsukumo instinctively raised her guard. She felt a lethal, impending threat, as if it wasn't a human plummeting toward them, but an extinction-level meteor. It was an illusion, of course—a human body couldn't mathematically generate the kinetic mass of a meteor. Yet it simultaneously *wasn't* an illusion, because as the man fell, an apocalyptic pressure descended with him. A violent maelstrom of Cursed Energy wrapped tightly around his falling body, simulating the sheer kinetic impact of a hundred-ton steel vault dropping from the sky.
Gojo suddenly grabbed Yuki's wrist. "Relax."
*BOOM!*
The man plummeting from the sky finally impacted the earth. In that microsecond, everyone felt the tectonic plates groan. The great barrier, pushed to its absolute threshold, finally shrieked in alarm—not because of an intruder, but because the localized tremor was so violent the system misidentified it as a major earthquake. A massive shockwave of displaced earth and pulverized stone exploded outward, sweeping over the courtyard like a localized sandstorm.
As the dust slowly settled, a silhouette confidently strode out from the crater.
"Long time no see, Gojo-sensei," Kinji Hakari's voice rang out, loud and highly energetic. "It's great to see you still looking so lively. Really brings back memories of my school days. And the woman standing next to you must be the legendary Special Grade, Yuki Tsukumo-senpai? Don't be so tense... For the record, I have no intention of shattering the school's barriers."
Yuki flashed a razor-sharp smile. "The way you phrased that... implies that if you actually wanted to, tearing the school's barriers to shreds would be effortless."
"Oh? Did I not make myself clear?"
Hakari casually raised his hand. From the settling dust above, a tiny dragon—no larger than a kitten—fluttered down and landed delicately on his palm. The miniature dragon tilted its head, locking eyes with Yuki, and inexplicably mirrored Hakari's exact, cocky grin.
"That is *exactly* what I meant," Hakari smirked.
As the premier training grounds for Jujutsu society, the barriers protecting the Tokyo and Kyoto branches were personally erected by Master Tengen. Their structural integrity was virtually absolute. In the entire Jujutsu world, the number of individuals capable of forcibly shattering them could be counted on two hands.
In other words, by casually implying he could violently break the barrier, Hakari was loudly declaring that he had definitively secured a seat among the top ten strongest entities on the planet.
*What an arrogant, astoundingly brilliant kid,* Yuki thought. *And yet, the crusty old fools at Headquarters practically hand-delivered a talent like this straight into the arms of the Cursed Spirits.*
Gojo threw his arms wide open, his smile radiating genuine joy. "Long time no see, Hakari! It's obvious you've been living your best life lately."
The tiny dragon on Hakari's palm fluttered up and perched comfortably on his shoulder. It raised its head proudly, its eyes gleaming with a distinctly human spark of joy—an exact mirror of the emotion shining in Hakari's own eyes.
Hakari surveyed the crowd and sighed nostalgically. "When I got suspended, Megumi Fushiguro was the only first-year. Now there are three more out of nowhere. If I recall, this campus is the primary stronghold for your grand revolution to overhaul Jujutsu society, right, Gojo-sensei? Which means every single kid standing here has earned your personal stamp of approval?"
That struck the exact right chord with Gojo. He immediately puffed out his chest with immense pride. "Hah! You know me too well, Hakari! Exactly! Every single one of them is a dazzling prodigy I personally vetted. They are absolutely going to be the vanguard of my revolution."
"Come on, come on, let's do introductions. This is Yuji Itadori, this is Nobara Kugisaki, and this is Rice Shower."
Gojo patted each student firmly on the head as he said their names. The physical impact finally snapped the rookies out of their dragon-induced stupor.
Gojo looked back at Hakari, his voice dropping into a tone of profound, unshakable certainty. "And you, Hakari. You are my student, too."
Hakari sighed inwardly. *I knew it. Gojo-sensei really is here to flip me.*
"Cool," someone suddenly whispered.
Everyone immediately turned to look at the source. Yuji froze for a second, then awkwardly rubbed the back of his head, chuckling nervously.
"I just wanted to say... the giant dragon Hakari-senpai rode in on... that was a Shikigami, right? That was so incredibly cool," Yuji beamed with genuine awe.
Hakari paused, putting a name to the face. "Gojo-sensei just introduced you. Yuji Itadori... You're the vessel for Ryomen Sukuna?"
Yuji pointed at himself. "Am I really that famous?"
Hakari burst into boisterous laughter. "Famous doesn't even begin to cover it! The geopolitical storm surrounding you hasn't even fully started yet! After all... if Mahito fails to kill Gojo-sensei, the Ryomen Sukuna locked inside your gut is the absolute next blade destined to be aimed at his throat."
The words hit the group like a physical shockwave. Even Gojo was stunned.
"You really don't hold anything back, do you, Hakari?" Gojo said, his voice surprisingly soft.
"Because I don't want to see you get hurt, Gojo-sensei." Hakari looked directly at Gojo, his tone laced with a heavy, melancholy sigh. "You were the one who personally dragged me into the Jujutsu world. You mentored me without holding anything back, handing me the keys to the absolute pinnacle of Jujutsu power. You stood by me and funded the development of my modern Domain Expansion, even when it meant severely antagonizing the Jujutsu Headquarters."
"During the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons, you were the only one who fought for me when the Higher-ups tried to ruin my life... Gojo-sensei, my respect for you is absolute. There is not a single ounce of falsehood in it."
Gojo's expression softened for a fleeting moment, but he instantly violently rubbed his arms as if covered in goosebumps, forcing a loud, awkward laugh. "Hakari, since when did you get so damn sappy?"
"That wasn't empty flattery." Hakari took a deep breath, suddenly shifting his intense gaze directly onto Yuki Tsukumo. "I already know exactly why the Headquarters suddenly revoked my execution order... Tsukumo-senpai. Are we doing this?"
Gojo frowned. "I brought your underclassmen here to welcome you back. I assumed you'd want to catch up for a bit."
"We're fighting," Yuki smoothly cut Gojo off.
She flashed a smile. But it wasn't her usual, hearty, approachable grin. This smile radiated a terrifying, borderline psychotic aura—an absolute, unadulterated bloodlust for combat.
She declared, "I am ready right now... What about you?"
Hakari's lips curled into a mirror image of her feral grin. "Same here."