Toji dragged over a chair and dropped into it like he owned the room.
“They hired me first.”
Yaga’s expression shifted.
The Star Plasma Vessel assimilation was days away.
The higher-ups had already received word that a hit was in the works, but nobody expected the Time Vessel Association to go straight for the most dangerous assassin alive.
“So what are you doing here?” Gojo Satoru sneered.
“Showing off your price tag?”
“Or threatening us?”
“I turned them down!” Toji’s palm cracked against the mahogany desk.
A deep split ran through the wood.
He surged to his feet and pointed at Megumi and Tsumiki standing behind him.
His eyes had gone red.
“A grown man, going after a little girl?
What kind of skill is that!”
“That goes against everything my Ninja Way stands for!”
“My goal now is to be a model for my children — a bright, righteous father figure!”
Fushiguro Megumi quietly covered his face.
Tsumiki twisted the hem of her shirt, desperately wishing the floor would open up and swallow her.
Yaga’s mouth twitched.
What in the world happened to this man?
But the intel checked out.
If Fushiguro Toji genuinely sided with the Time Vessel Association, he would be an enormous problem for Gojo and Geto.
“So then.” Geto Suguru probed carefully.
“What do you want?”
“I want to flip the contract!”
Toji planted both hands on the desk and stared Yaga down.
“Hire me.
Put me on the team protecting the Star Plasma Vessel.”
“I’ll use my bare fists to pound every sewer rat that shows up into a bloody paste!”
Yaga said nothing.
Hiring a disgraced assassin to guard a critical target, the idea was patently absurd.
But the man’s strength was not in question.
And keeping him right under their noses was safer than leaving him loose in the dark.
Gojo Satoru laughed first.
Not a polite laugh.
The kind of mockery that seeps up from somewhere deep in the soul, naked and shameless.
“Wait, wait, wait.”
He propped his chin on one hand, blue eyes curving into twin crescents.
“Did I just hear that right?
A nobody with zero Cursed Energy walks up to the strongest Jujutsu Sorcerer alive and says he wants to protect someone?”
He stood up and spread both hands wide, expression theatrical enough for a stage play.
“I’m standing right here.
Limitless active.
You couldn’t touch a single hair on my head.”
“The Star Plasma Vessel has me.
That’s enough.”
“No outside help needed, especially not from some shady, half-baked, fly-by-night —”
He looked Toji up and down.
“— personal trainer?”
Geto Suguru turned silently toward the window.
He didn’t laugh out loud.
But his shoulders were shaking.
The old Fushiguro Toji would have drawn his blade by now.
The current Fushiguro Toji had Guy-sensei’s tear-streaked face burning in his memory.
Toji!
A dream that gets mocked is a dream worth fighting for even harder!
“You!”
His voice hit hard enough to make the windows rattle.
“Are exactly the kind of person who needs to be re-educated by Youth!”
“Talent?
Can talent carry you through ten thousand laps around the track?”
“Can talent push you through five thousand push-ups?”
“Look at those bean-sprout arms and legs.
Just because heaven gave you a gift doesn’t mean you get to be picky about how you use it!”
Gojo Satoru’s sunglasses slid down to the tip of his nose.
His Six Eyes could see through every cursed technique in existence.
They could not make sense of this musclehead’s brain.
“What are you even talking about?” Gojo Satoru asked with full sincerity, his tone carrying a rare, pure, crystalline stupidity.
“I’m saying you need to train!”
“I’m the strongest.
Six Eyes and Limitless.
I’m Gojo Satoru.”
“Then you need to train even more!”
“…How does that logic work?” Gojo Satoru turned to Geto Suguru for help.
Geto Suguru set down his teacup, cleared his throat, and spoke in the measured tone of an academic seminar.
“Fushiguro Toji.
I won’t weigh in on your value as an asset.”
“But you used to make your living slaughtering sorcerers.
Now you’re suddenly talking about Youth and Justice nonstop.
Don’t you think a transformation like that needs a reasonable explanation?”
That landed.
The blood-soaked memories came flooding back.
Sorcerers he’d killed with his own hands.
The terror in their eyes at the end.
Toji’s fists clenched.
His knuckles went white.
“…You’re right.”
His voice dropped.
“The old Fushiguro Toji was scum.”
“Killed without blinking.
Gambled.
Drank.
Walked out on his wife and kids…”
He snapped his head up.
His eyes were red.
“But!”
Here we go again.
Tsumiki quietly pressed her fingers over Megumi’s ears.
“Scum can get back up!”
“As long as there are fists that can still clench, as long as there’s a single drop of sweat still left to give, Youth never ends!”
“That is the truth my mentor taught me!”
“I’ve carved it into my bones!”
His voice rang through the office.
The window glass trembled faintly.
Geto Suguru went quiet.
He looked at Toji’s eyes, red as a rabbit’s.
His lips parted slightly.
In the end, he said nothing.
A person this pure was either completely insane, or had genuinely been through something.
“Enough.”
Yaga finally spoke.
He pressed two fingers to his temple.
His migraine had worsened by at least three levels in the last twenty minutes.
“How much do you want?” Yaga asked, voice low.
“The Time Vessel Association offered thirty million.”
Toji held up five fingers.
“I want fifty million.”
“Plus room and board.
And you’ll get my two kids into the best schools.”
He’d pulled that number out of nowhere, honestly.
He was flat broke right now.
He would have taken a million and been grateful.
Yaga moved with the fastest hands of his entire life.
Drawer open.
Checkbook out.
Numbers scrawled.
Torn free before the ink was even dry.
He slid it across the desk toward Toji like he was defusing a bomb.
“Ten million upfront.”
“The remaining forty million, every last yen, when the mission is done.”
He held Toji’s gaze.
“But if you try anything, Jujutsu High will come after you with everything it has.”
Toji stared at the check.
All those zeros.
His eyes lit up like someone had thrown a switch.
He snatched it up, spun around, and dropped to one knee in front of the two kids, trembling head to toe.
“Megumi!
Tsumiki!
Look at this!”
“This is the first money Dad ever earned through justice!”
He held the check above his head.
“No instant noodles tonight!”
“We’re eating the best wagyu on the market!
Until we can’t move!”
Fushiguro Megumi sighed.
“Maybe buy some clean clothes first.
You smell.”
“Nonsense!
That’s the scent of Youth in fermentation!”
Toji laughed like nothing in the world bothered him, hoisted both kids onto his shoulders, and blew out of the office like a natural disaster.
“White-hair!
Small-eyes!
Tomorrow morning, six o’clock, training field!”
“Anyone late does ten laps around Jujutsu High on their hands!”
His bellow echoed down the hallway long after he was gone.
The three of them left in the principal’s office stared at each other.
“What the hell was that?” Gojo Satoru muttered, brushing daifuku crumbs off his pants with visible disgust.
“Whatever he is,” Yaga said, rubbing his pounding temple, eyes drifting to the split running through his mahogany desk, “I have a terrible feeling that Jujutsu High is about to be turned into some kind of Chinese Shaolin Temple sports academy.”
“This mission ahead.
I don’t think it’s going to be quiet.”
Across the city, at the same moment.
A hidden underground altar somewhere in Tokyo.
The leader of the Time Vessel Association hurled his celadon teacup at the ground.
It shattered across the floor.
“That Fushiguro bastard actually returned our deposit, and put every man we sent into a hospital bed?!”
He raged, voice cracking.
The priest standing in the shadows spoke without inflection.
“He seems to have something wrong with his head.
Keeps shouting about Youth and justice.”
“He’s already at Jujutsu High.”
“Traitor.” The leader’s teeth ground together.
Something vicious moved behind his eyes.
The Star Plasma Vessel assimilation could not be allowed to succeed.
That was the foundation the Time Vessel Association was built on.
“If he wants to play it this way, he can face the consequences.”
The leader turned and walked deeper into the altar.
“Activate the backup plan.
Contact that family.”
The priest’s eyes shifted.
“You mean…
the assassination clan that operates by family units and recognizes no limits?”
“That’s right.”
A cold smile.
“Summon the Shadow Mage clan.”
“I want that sorcerer-killing loudmouth and the Star Plasma Vessel both, sent straight to hell.”
➤ Next: Moving, and the Existence of Chakra