~ 💎 WEEKLY POWER GOALS 💎🔥 60→1ch | 100→2ch | 200→5ch ⏰ Resets Monday!
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Three hours later.
Okinawa.
Azure coastline.
Blinding sun.
The Time Vessel Association’s lackeys never touched a single hair on Gojo Satoru’s head.
Cursed Technique Lapse: Blue swept through them and flipped the entire lot straight into the sea.
Kuroi Misato was rescued without a scratch.
Riko threw her arms around Kuroi and burst into tears.
Gojo Satoru dusted off his hands and pushed up his sunglasses.
“Done.
Let’s go, take this little girl back to Tokyo, get ready for tomorrow’s assimilation.”
Geto Suguru nodded and was just about to summon a Cursed Spirit for transport.
“VROOOOOOM——!”
An ear-splitting engine roar exploded from the far end of the beach.
Toji Fushiguro had somehow gotten his hands on an obnoxiously pink beach dune buggy.
He was bare-chested, every muscle carved like something shaped by blade and axe, wearing board shorts plastered with giant red flowers, a headband tied around his forehead with the characters for “CERTAIN VICTORY” blazing across it.
“Get in!
Weaklings!”
He pulled a perfect tail-whip and killed the engine right in front of them, throwing up a wall of sand that went everywhere.
Gojo Satoru got a mouthful of it.
He exploded instantly.
“Where the hell did you get a bike, you absolute monkey?!
I just washed my hair!”
“Less talking!
Youth won’t wait!”
Before anyone could argue, Toji grabbed Gojo Satoru with his left hand and Geto Suguru with his right and stuffed both of them into the back seat like sacks of potatoes.
“Miss Kuroi!
Bring Amanai and take the passenger seat!
We’re conquering this beach!
Let’s gooo!”
What followed became an indelible, deeply strange spectacle along the Okinawa coastline.
Toji twisted the throttle all the way open.
The pink dune buggy tore across the sand at a staggering 120 kilometers per hour.
Riko and Kuroi screamed in the passenger seat.
Gojo Satoru braced in the back, desperately running Limitless as a windshield while unleashing a continuous torrent of profanity that was, statistically speaking, mostly about people’s mothers.
Geto Suguru closed his eyes.
He pressed his hands together in prayer and quietly performed last rites for his own fragile mental state.
The bike finally stopped at a stretch of private beach.
Toji jumped off, pulled a volleyball from the back, and held it up over his head.
“Beach volleyball training camp!
Starting now!
Losing side faces the ocean and shouts ‘I Love Youth’, ten times straight!”
Gojo Satoru sneered.
“You want to play volleyball against me?
I’ll run Limitless the whole match.
You won’t get a single ball over the net.”
“Limitless?” Toji bellowed.
“That’s a coward’s fig leaf!”
He served.
BANG!
The volleyball became a blur in the air, cracked through the sound barrier, and screamed toward Gojo Satoru’s face on a current of terrifying force.
Gojo Satoru didn’t move.
He stood there with a smirk.
The ball hit Limitless and stopped dead, but the raw physical kinetic energy had nowhere to go.
It converted into a shockwave.
The blast ripped Gojo Satoru’s sunglasses clean off his face and shoved him back half a step.
“What the, ” Gojo Satoru went still.
Just how much ridiculous strength had this man put into a volleyball serve?
“One point!” Toji’s grin split his face.
“White-haired brat, your base is way too soft.
Tonight, 2,000 extra squats.”
The match that followed was a slaughter, start to finish.
Toji’s Heavenly Restriction body made him a green bolt of lightning across the sand.
He spiked on Gojo Satoru without mercy and, when Geto Suguru tried to sneak in a Cursed Spirit for some creative assistance, Toji ground him face-first into the beach.
Riko and Kuroi sat under a beach umbrella and watched the two supremely arrogant strongest sorcerers in the world get worked like rookies by one shirtless man. Read the latest chapters at novelping(.)com.
The shock wore off.
The suppressed laughter built.
And then they just let go, laughing until they couldn’t breathe.
“Go, old man!
Knock the white-haired one flat!” Riko waved both arms, laughing so hard her eyes were watering.
For this one stretch of time, the assimilation, the death sentence hanging over tomorrow, the Time Vessel Association, all of it got spiked into the sand by an absurd volleyball match and shattered.
Afternoon.
The aquarium.
The enormous glass wall hummed with deep blue light, the water shimmering and shifting.
Toji stood at the glass and watched a colossal whale shark drift slowly past.
His eyes went red.
Two streams of hot tears poured down his face.
“Too moving!” He wiped them with the back of his fist, voice cracking with genuine emotion.
“Look at that body!
That’s perfect muscle built by swimming through crushing deep-sea pressure, day after day, year after year!
This is the miracle of youth that nature itself gave us!”
The tourists around them scattered like they’d spotted a gas leak.
Gojo Satoru pressed both hands over his face.
“Suguru.
I’m begging you.
Have your Rainbow Dragon swallow him in one bite.
I do not know this man.”
Geto Suguru raised his phone without expression and snapped a photo.
“I’m making this my wallpaper.
Every time I think Cursed Spirits are revolting, I’ll look at this.
By comparison, Cursed Spirits are practically beautiful.”
Riko leaned against the glass, watching Toji’s spectacular performance.
The corners of her mouth were pulling upward in ways she couldn’t stop.
She glanced over at Kuroi.
Kuroi was smiling too.
It was the happiest, most weightless Riko had laughed since she was old enough to remember what laughter felt like.
No rules.
No fate.
Just pure, slightly unhinged joy.
Night.
The Okinawan beach, lit gold and orange by a bonfire.
Brilliant fireworks opened across the distant sky.
Gojo Satoru and Geto Suguru were locked in open warfare over the last piece of grilled meat.
Riko sat apart from the group on a reef, hugging her knees, watching the fireworks with unfocused eyes.
Toji came over quietly.
He held out a cold bottle of orange soda, the glass fogged with chill.
“What’s wrong?
Youth’s fuel all burned out?” He dropped down beside her and put away most of a beer in long, unhurried gulps.
Riko took the soda.
She felt the cold against her palms.
Her fingers tightened around the bottle.
“Thank you, old man.” Her voice was barely there.
The sea breeze took it the moment she spoke.
“Hah?
For what?
My expert squat coaching?”
“Thank you for taking me to do so many stupid things today.” Riko lowered her head.
The light in her eyes dimmed, slowly, like embers running out of fuel.
“But…
after tomorrow, all of this is gone.
I’ll be assimilated with Master Tengen.
I’ll…
disappear anyway.”
The shadow of death, waiting patiently through all the noise of the day, settled back over this fourteen-year-old body.
Unwilling.
I want to live so badly.
I want to go to school with everyone.
I want to see fireworks one more time. This story is hosted at g.com.
Riko’s tears dropped silently onto the sand.
A rough, heavy hand pressed down on top of her head and rubbed, firm, like it had no intention of letting go.
Riko went still.
She looked up.
The clowning was gone from Toji Fushiguro’s face.
Completely.
Every trace of it.
Those dark green eyes held a flame that was hard and pure and absolute.
“Amanai Riko.” His voice was low.
Steady.
“My good brother Naruto once taught me something.”
Riko stared at him.
“Na…
ruto?”
“If being smart means bowing to fate, then I’d rather be a fool my whole life!”
Toji stood up in one motion.
His frame rose between her and the sea wind, solid as a cliff face.
“What assimilation!
What bullshit higher-ups!
As long as you still want to live — as long as you haven’t stopped fighting for your next breath — there is no despair!”
He planted one foot on the reef and pointed straight at the stars.
“If you don’t want to die, then say it out loud!
Whatever mess comes after, I’ll smash it apart with these fists!
Whoever dares lay a hand on you, I’ll show them exactly what the Eight Gates Released Formation looks like!”
Riko couldn’t move.
Those words hit like a sledgehammer.
Something cracked inside her, the wall she’d spent her whole life building, the one she’d always called fate.
As long as I want to live…
I can live?
Back at the bonfire, not far away.
Geto Suguru had stopped fighting over the meat.
He stood quietly, watching the silhouette of that muscle-bound idiot on the reef.
He’d spent the last few days convinced that Toji Fushiguro was nothing but a deranged clown.
But in that moment just now, he felt it, underneath all the noise, underneath the exaggerated nonsense and the green spandex and the endless “youth,” something else entirely.
Something heavy.
Something domineering.
Something completely, almost offensively pure.
A conviction.
One that was stronger than every righteous argument from the higher-ups, stronger than any doctrine about protecting the weak, by a factor of a hundred.
“This guy…” Geto Suguru murmured.
Gojo Satoru shoved the grilled meat into his mouth and spoke around it.
“Stop staring.
You’re not going to grow pectorals that disgusting no matter how long you look.”
At the same moment.
1 kilometer from the beach.
The shadow of a clifftop.
Several pitch-black shapes moved across the rocks like liquid, slow and soundless.
“Targets confirmed.
Amanai Riko, Six Eyes, Curse Spirit Manipulator.
All present.”
A hoarse voice from the dark.
“Intel checks out.
But the man in green…”
A second voice paused.
Something uneasy moved through the silence before it finished.
“He just broke the sound barrier with a volleyball serve.
And before that, he spent half an hour crying at a fish in the aquarium.
His mental state is…
extremely unstable.”
The scar-faced leader gave a cold laugh.
The short blade in his hand caught the moonlight for a single, quiet flash.
“The money’s already transferred.
Let the Time Vessel Association’s small fry stir things up first.”
➤ Next: Reinforcements from Jujutsu High
Jujutsu Kaisen