The thing is that Yuji didn't ask for a little brother.
Didn't expect one.
Resisted the idea at first, although not for long.
Now, Yuji can't imagine his life without Ryokun, and finds himself unable to think, sleep, and at times, breathe, when he thinks about him. He feels like an elephant is standing on his chest, and he's frantic, but after one whole week, they still don't know where Ryokun is.
Yuji really thought that maybe they'd break the dark curse of the future, but it seemed inescapable.
People still died.
There was nothing left of the Tokyo base at all. Just two huge craters, surrounded by a few ashen ruins. Yuji had met some of the people who died before they were moved to Kyoto, and it's hard to believe they're just…gone.
The fact that they are gone, only serves to remind Yuji every single second that Kenjaku is a killer, and if he took Ryokun in order to steal his technique, there was never any reason to keep him alive. He can't allow the thought to take root, yet in the back of his mind, it is constantly there.
Kento Nanami postponed his sabbatical so that he could stay with Yuji, because while no one was going to talk about it with him, everyone else had quietly acknowledged that Kenjaku probably killed Ryokun right away and this search will end in a field, or at a dumpster, or in an apartment surrounded by crime scene tape, or maybe not at all.
Sometimes people who went missing were never seen again, leaving their loved ones with a drop of false hope in a sea of grief.
Gojo decided not to tell anyone about the second hostage, because Ingrid was certainly with Ryokun, and with the baby's life in danger, it was even more important for him to protect her identity.
Yuji's domain still had everyone scared a bit shitless, because when he walked away from that battlefield, there was nothing left. Where Gojo's domain destroyed minds, Yuji's domain destroyed everything indiscriminately.
A scary detail about that event was that when he closed the domain, he was still using his technique when he attacked Kenjaku, which meant that display of pure terror didn't burn his technique out.
Without Tengen, and having sustained incredible losses, the Jujutsu Society is clearly about to go through an evolution of some kind, but the people with the most to gain are more concerned with other things.
And so, Nanami brings Yuji, with red, puffy eyes after a week of sleeping a few minutes here or there in a car, another coffee so they can continue their search.
Yuji sits in the back seat of the car, and he worries, and he's scared.
"Ryokun never sleeps by himself. He's probably so frightened. He's just a tiny kid, and he doesn't have parents or anything. I mean, we were doing our best, and I think that was okay, wasn't it?" he asks.
Nanami answers, "You have always taken the finest care of him, Yuji."
Yuji says, "I just wish I could tell him everything was going to be okay."
But what if the worst had already happened?
The idea of it made Yuji literally feel sick, like he might die, just thinking about how scared and desperate he would have been, probably crying for his big bro, who wasn't there.
He can't bear it.
Gojo is simultaneously privately struggling with the idea that his child may have already come and gone from the world, having never known anything but the cruelty of a monster.
Neither Satoru nor Yuji nor any of their closest allies have slept well or relented in their search after one week despite having found not even something remotely resembling a lead. Everyone is looking for Ryokun, without knowing that they're also looking for a baby Gojo who is in even more danger.
In a safehouse out in the country in some in-between place, the atmosphere in Kenjaku's group is just as grim, as they all cope with the realities of the current situation.
On the first night, after the raid, Kenjaku didn't see any reason to continue lying to Ingrid Reksten and simply told her the truth: that her brother's brain was functionally destroyed by Satoru Gojo on the night she was caught, and that he'd killed Tore and taken his body. Also, he told her that her entire clan had been killed by the French clan that they'd pissed off.
There was nothing left for her, no path forward, and while she might have been able to ask Satoru Gojo for leniency, leaving his protection willingly only ensured that Kenjaku would kill her and her baby.
As they sit for breakfast on the eighth day, she has distinct bruising around her neck because she tried to hang herself the day before in order to deprive Kenjaku of his prize.
Breakfast is not great, as Uraume, usually a wizard in the kitchen, has prepared a meal without heart or interest because Kenjaku finally told her the day before that Ryokun is definitely just a kid, and not some sort of monster trapped in a little body. His theory is that the Forgotten Monster has been dead all along and the little boy might be his reincarnation.
And this isn't the only setback of the last week.
Juzo 'Coatrack' Kamiya managed to complete his mission and collect three Death Paintings from the Tokyo campus amidst the chaos, but ultimately, chose to abandon Kenjaku because he saw Yuji's domain and became terrified of the Jujutsu Society.
Kenjaku was so worried about Kamiya's sudden change of heart that he killed him out of concerns that he might go to the Jujutsu Society in order to ensure his own survival.
Then, desperate to bolster his numbers, Kenjaku incarnated the three Death Paintings only to have them immediately decide that they wouldn't serve him unless they had something to gain from it. They clearly didn't, and after trying to force them to serve him, a fight broke out and he and Uraume killed two of the three of them.
Choso ran off, wounded.
Kenjaku has no idea if Choso actually survived, but he was worried that somehow or another, he might meet his other brother out in the world, so they moved to their current location.
After the meal, Uraume takes Ryokun into the living room, where they have a few toys.
One thing that Kenjaku has learned is that if there's anything three rapidly decompensating adults need more than anything, it's a disagreeable, noisy toddler who screams and bites. Their time with him has been unpleasant, and whatever goodwill he might have had initially for Uraume has evaporated because the only thing he wants is to go home to Yuji.
So the real question is why hasn't Kenjaku killed his hostages and collected their techniques?
With Ryokun, it's actually quite simple. Uraume might know now that she can't be with her master, but she's still going to defend him with her life, and the moment that Kenjaku moves to kill Ryokun, he will also have to kill Uraume.
She will die protecting the little boy, and it probably won't make any difference. Uraume's opinion about what he wants to do won't change the outcome of anything.
Kenjaku and Uraume have both accepted this reality.
As for why Ingrid Reksten is still alive, the situation is different.
Kenjaku isn't Gojo, and he has no idea what technique the baby has, or if it definitely even has one. Gojo didn't tell Ingrid anything he could see with Six Eyes, and she doesn't know anything about her baby, only that her due date is in three weeks on January 7.
The prevailing fear is that there is a small chance that the baby will be born with Limitless, and while that would be wonderful in the sense that there's no technique Kenjaku wants to have more, it also seems possible that the baby will be like a little homing beacon once it is born.
It seems very reasonable to suspect that Gojo would be able to see the baby from much further away than other people if it's born with the same technique as him and is also a member of the Six Eyes bloodline.
In other words, Kenjaku is concerned that when the baby is born, Gojo will be summoned.
And certainly, the most important thing they are doing is hiding from Satoru Gojo.
Kenjaku is accustomed to staying in the shadows, but hiding? HIDING? Always a strategic player and never a coward, he has never been forced to shrink in the shadows like he is at this moment.
Since the person looking for him can teleport everywhere and see souls and cursed energy through walls for distances that are incomprehensible even to skilled sorcerers, Kenjaku knows they can't go anywhere near any city, because there's no way he isn't periodically warping over cities looking for them.
When he considers only his locations that are sufficiently distant from points of interest and cities, and ones that have not potentially been exposed already, he realizes that he doesn't have another safehouse to flee to if this one is compromised.
This little house outside of a country village that has all but died is the last refuge he has, and Kenjaku will decide his fate here.
Kenjaku remains at the table with his notebook and a laptop, watching Uraume trying in vain to calm Ryo Itadori in the living area, but he is screaming about wanting his brother again. Ingrid sits in the living room, looking at him like he's a disgusting insect she wants to step on, but they can't let her be alone in her room without tying her up, and if they do that, then they'll have two screaming hostages.
What should he do now?
In chess, 'check' occurred when the game was in peril, but the player could still recover and win if they made strategic moves to remedy the situation.
'Checkmate' was a condition where action to end the game had not yet taken place, but the result had been decided and the imperiled player, even if they could move this pawn here or there, could not escape from loss.
There is no longer any path to the Culling Game; every element needed to create it has been taken from him or compromised in some way.
Culling Game Players supplied by Kenjaku were supposed to consist of two groups:
The first group was people who could have been sorcerers, but their minds weren't formed correctly to facilitate the flow of cursed energy. Since he does not have Mahito, these individuals are lost forever.
The second group are the hosts, all of which are comatose with a cursed object waiting inside of their body. He can't wake them up en masse without Mahito, and most are known to the Jujutsu Society to be cursed. Since he had to go to Tsumiki Fushiguro's bedside to collect Yorozu's cursed artifact in order to duplicate the Prison Realm, they probably know that those cursed people are related to him and that he might come around them.
In other words, if he gets near any of them, he'll probably get caught.
And what would the point even be? The strongest legacy player was Hajime Kashimo, who wouldn't even be able to get past Yuji or Yuta.
Kenjaku lost all the cursed spirits he was going to use to flood Tokyo during the ryokan incident, where he was forced to expel them all in one place in hopes of saving Mahito, which failed. Hurling them out of Geto's body in a compact space out in the middle of nowhere in front of Okkotsu and Gojo was like throwing them in the garbage.
And finally, there was Tengen.
Without her, he couldn't put up the barriers necessary to enforce the rules or initiate the merger.
Even if he just really wanted to fuck everyone over and make the monster Tengen spoke of, he just literally does not have the means to do that. The host group of the Culling Game is the only thing he has left, and he can't get near them.
If he woke up all the hosts, with no actual Culling Game, the absolute best case scenario is that some of them might fight the Jujutsu Society, but Gojo faction at full power would flatten all the remaining potential players, no question. They could clear the field without Gojo himself needing to fight.
There simply isn't anything that Kenjaku can do.
The Culling Game is dead.
Of course, there's a path forward if he can figure out how time travel happened in the first place; even if he couldn't go back very far, even turning the clock back to June would save him. Preventing Yuji from becoming a part of the Jujutsu Society is really the only thing that needs to happen. If he did that, if he didn't show up at the ryokan, if he held onto Mahito and Geto's body, everything would have gone according to plan.
Kenjaku had desperately hoped that Ryokun was the Forgotten Monster and that by restoring him, the monster would tell him how to travel through time and assist him with dealing with his more difficult enemies, but since he now knows that Ryokun is just an irritating child, that didn't happen.
What was it like, to have a thousand-year dream destroyed by unenlightened minds?
Kenjaku was beyond devastated, because what had he been alive all these years for? What had he planned for, sacrificed for? All to have the rug pulled out from under him in the eleventh fucking hour? It was like everything had gone according to plan, and then suddenly, all of creation lurched against his will.
Kenjaku's problems don't end with the Culling Game.
An email comes through at 10:30 am to a BCC'ed email list that even reaches Kenjaku.
Hello friends and enemies and everyone else:
The Japanese Jujutsu Society is currently searching for a curse user named Kenjaku, who possesses the ability to change bodies. He is currently residing inside the body of Northern European sorcerer Tore Reksten (see attached pictures).
He may soon change bodies in order to avoid detection, likely to the body of a curse user. If you have a technique that is reasonably valuable and encounter him, there is a high chance he will kill you and steal your body.
While possessing the body of another person, distinct stitch lines are visible across the forehead.
Anyone providing information leading to his capture will receive the following rewards:
-Gold bars currently worth the equivalent of $50,000,000 American dollars
-Special grade weapon Inverted Spear of Heaven
-Special grade object Prison Realm
No questions asked, I don't care who you are.
Text a GPS location to me and I will come.
Anyone caught working with or assisting this curse user in any way, including helping him hide will be considered an accomplice and killed on sight, and my sight is very good.
Satoru Gojo
Kenjaku crinkles is nose a bit, because the clearly photoshopped images of Tore Reksten with the scars across his forehead are very accurate. There are generated images just of the scars as well, and his name has been broadcast to the world with the only clear way of identifying him.
His name is out, and probably, the email went to all the sorcery organizations, open markets, black market contacts, clans…everyone who is anyone probably knows his name, his technique, and how the forehead stitch will be visible in whatever body he is in.
Gojo's move accomplishes several important goals:
It destroys Kenjaku's anonymity forever. There's no putting that genie back into the bottle, and even if he lives another five hundred years, the existence of a Japanese curse user who can be identified by a forehead stitch will still be publicly known by sorcerers everywhere.
The probability that he could steal the body of another prominent sorcerer or someone in a factional alliance and get away with it is slim. No one ever fully covers up their forehead, and doing so during a manhunt for a man with distinct forehead scarring is suspicious as hell.
Gojo also exposed Tore Reksten, so everyone will be looking for him. Maybe the intent was to force Kenjaku to abandon this particular body, because it's more dangerous than any other on earth that Kenjaku is aware of. Capturing this body is one of the most fortuitous things that has ever happened to him, so feeling pressured to leave it behind because his identity has been thoroughly burned is upsetting.
And finally, offering even the worst curse users an incomprehensible amount of untraceable wealth and two of the most powerful cursed objects ever created ensures that Kenjaku won't be able to hire curse users off the black market to bolster his team, which has been reduced only to himself and Uraume.
If he even tries, they'll go straight to Gojo and get that bag.
Yes, the walls are closing in.
The safest thing would be to switch to a different body, but giving up this particular body is such a huge concession. Kenjaku isn't sure if he is willing to make that sacrifice just because Satoru Gojo is a kind of a dick, and his son Yuji Itadori doesn't respect his mother.
On the other hand, Kenjaku doesn't believe there is a constellation of powers that would allow him to overpower all the opponents he would need to eliminate in order to resolve his current problems.
If he stays in this body, he will have to fight, and he will probably lose. Staying in this body with Temporal Distortion preserves the possibility of time travel. If he gives up that position, there will be no erasing the failures that have taken place, but betting the future on being able to do something only one person has probably ever done in the history of humanity isn't necessarily a wise move.
If he leaves the body, there's no reason to kill either of the hostages. Maybe spite, but spite wasn't ultimately a strategic move. His enemies were tenacious, mean, and violent. If he lets the hostages live, when tomorrow's crisis comes, they'll pay attention to that instead. If he kills them to make a point, they will never look away from him until either he has died or they have.
Kenjaku ponders his next move.
While he considers it all, he notes Uraume is in a strange mood and becomes suspicious that she might plan on escaping with the kid and returning him to Yuji. Even if he's not her master, she does have some loyalty to him, and Kenjaku knows she'll use her life to protect him.
Maybe he's just becoming paranoid, but he's sure she's decided it's time for them to part ways, and so after Ryo Itadori falls asleep in the afternoon, when she goes outside for some fresh air, he kills her rather abruptly, by simply walking up behind her and crushing her head with Gravity Manipulation.
Uraume wasn't expecting it, didn't defend against it, and didn't have time to register any sort of response to it.
When he goes back inside, Ryokun is still napping on the sofa, but Ingrid is no longer with him.
Kenjaku heads back to the bedroom, where he finds her, once again, hanging from the ceiling beam with sheets wrapped around her neck and chair kicked out from under her.
Ingrid isn't purple yet, and he can tell she's still alive, and there's a puddle of liquid on the floor directly under her.
When he brings her down this time, as she catches her breath and hisses curses at him, she doubles over in pain.
Kenjaku looks down at her and asks, "Your labor started? How annoying."
Back to his theory that there is a small chance that Gojo will be able to find them much more easily as soon as that baby comes out, Kenjaku realizes that he will have to make a decision immediately about what it is that he wants to do.
Retreat from all of this including this wonderful body and lay low until he finds some other dream to work toward?
OR
Dig in and power up as much as he can and bet everything on time travel in hopes that he can still complete his original goal?
Kenjaku is fairly confident that if he just walked out the door right now, Ingrid would just hang herself and he had no idea what would happen to the toddler. He might eventually escape outside and walk toward town, or he might die in the house. He refused to eat hot dogs that weren't cut up like octopuses, but he also almost called Yuji on the phone because they didn't realize that he'd be able to do that?
What to do, what to do?
That woman was already in labor, and that wasn't a process that could really be stopped. Maybe it would be one hour, maybe it would be seventy, but that baby was coming.
Kenjaku doesn't want Ingrid to make the decision for him, so he ties her to the bed using zip ties, and then returns to the living room to think about things for a bit.
Bet everything on violence and time travel and swipe the techniques from the hostages?
OR
Switch bodies and disappear, let everyone move on, and lay low until he's no longer the monster of the month?
As much as Kenjaku adores the idea of some dazzling risk-it-all strategy, that's just not how he works.
Even though he has suffered a brutal and humiliating defeat, and he didn't get to do what he wanted, he did learn many things. His horizons have broadened and there are still things he wants to know and do.
In the end, he will always be a snake who slithers into the shadows when things don't go his way.
The current Jujutsu Society might seem like an insurmountable obstacle, but it's not necessary for him to kill an opponent who is not immortal. Eventually, time will do it for him.
Besides, he can probably make himself a new Tore Reksten. He had corrupted this body, but he did have another source of genetic material from this same family. It wouldn't even be the first time he made a lady get pregnant a bunch of times in order to see if she'd make any interesting offspring.
Kenjaku places a listing on a black market site for a fake assassin job, posts a high price, with high difficulty, to ensure no worthless waste-of-space answered.
A curse user named Bayer answers, and Kenjaku remembers him, because he involved himself in all that mess with Riko Amanai, which he had controlled from the shadows.
He's not anything special, but he'll do, and if he takes over Bayer, if he can keep his forehead stitches hidden successfully, he might even be able to control that stupid little group he has.
The screaming in the back room gets on his nerves, and he goes to the door and says, "Stop being so dramatic."
"You don't know how much it hurts!" she rasps.
Kenjaku mockingly answers, "I gave birth without screaming even once. My husband was so proud of me. I kind of miss that guy. I was in labor for forty hours, pushing for four, and for what? I ripped my coochie and butthole into one unified opening for Yuji Itadori, and what thanks did I get? My dumb kid joined my enemies, ruined my life, and destroyed my dreams. All of my children are ungrateful to me for everything that I have done for them."
Kenjaku can tell Ingrid's labor is progressing quickly and mostly without complication despite her repeated suicide attempts this past week. There is a strange dissonance between how her body nourishes, protects, and nurtures her baby and how uninterested in its life she actually is.
Ingrid would rather kill the girl than let anyone else have her, regardless of their intentions, and that includes her preferring to kill the baby than let her father raise her in a loving environment. Kenjaku admires her ability to ignore all of her biological instincts in favor of malice.
Yes, he feels much better, because he accepted a loss in the battle, but will retreat so he can continue his war from the shadows. He will make his little offerings to make Six Eyes look away from him, he will surrender the required concessions because losing battles is pain always painful and expensive.
It's not checkmate until he dies, and his enemies will not achieve that objective.
He will disappear, and when he returns, next time, he will win.
Overhead, Yuji and Nanami are on a commuter plane to the next location on their fruitless search when he suddenly jerks to attention.
"Stop!" he exclaims.
Nanami says, "What do you mean, 'stop?!' We're on an airplane, Itadori!"
"He's close! I see the shape of his soul!"
There are civilians on this flight, which is luckily beginning descent to land, which means they're all buckled in when Yuji Itadori forces the door and jumps, no parachute, no second thought, no consideration at all for anything that is happening around him.
It is only as Yuji plummets toward icy trees below that he remembers that he cannot fly and attempts to transfigure himself into something with wings.
This is wholly unsuccessful, and his giant flappy arms do little more than give the branches more surface area to rip apart as they slow his bloody descent, but his legs still crack on impact and he rolls through the snowy woods, further injuring himself.
Yuji hisses in pain as he uses a combination of transfiguration and reverse curse technique to heal his shattered legs and cut up body and return it to the state it was in when he jumped. When he reaches for his phone, it's completely busted.
So he gets up, and he starts running, relying on his incredibly athleticism and maybe a little transfiguring of his leg muscles to make them a little stronger as he sprints toward the direction where he sensed the shape of Ryokun's soul, even if it was just for a second.
It is a long run through deep frozen dormant fields, patches of forest, and a few sharp descents, until Yuji is forced to stop to catch his breath.
While he leans on a tree, his vision is suddenly eclipsed by someone else crashing through the trees toward him.
It's the pig-tailed sorcerer from his visions of the future, one of the more mysterious figures. In one vision, presumably the earliest, maybe the pig-tailed sorcerer almost beat him to death in a toilet, but every time after that, they were best friends up to his last vision, when the pig-tailed sorcerer sacrifices himself to save Yuji.
Choso says, "You fiend! Are you an associate of that monster? The one monster who wears many faces?"
Realizing right away this really can't refer to anyone but Kenjaku, he answers, "No, I'm looking for him because he took my little brother."
Choso puts his hand on the tree and despondently says, "He took my brothers from me as well." Then, he looks over Yuji, realizes there is something familiar about him, and asks, "Is your little brother the small demon with pink hair?"
"Yes! Small pink demon. That is him!"
"I saw him. My bastard father is holding him hostage."
Yuji says, "It's a really long story, but I'm Yuji, and I think you and me are supposed to be good friends."
"I am Choso, and I have no desire for friends. I only wish to kill my father, for his sins against my younger brothers."
"As long as you don't put my little brother in danger, it's fine."
"Do not insult my honor as an older brother, or I will nourish the earth with your blood."
All the months leading up to this, when Ryokun was asked if he remembered Choso's name, he insisted on multiple occasions that Choso is 'trash,' and once used the phrase 'riff-raff,' an incredibly funny and bizarre thing to hear a small child utter.
Choso's soul and body didn't match, which was very odd, but Yuji isn't in a situation where he was going to ask questions. All of his fragmented memories tell him that Choso is good to have in a battle, and that despite what he says, he's destined to be a friend.
"I don't know for sure that your guy is there, but I know my brother is this way," Yuji says, pointing.
They run the rest of the way together, and when the little isolated house comes into view, Yuji bursts through the door with Choso right beside him.
"Ryokun!" he shouts, without properly decelerating, crashing through the house.
The boy wakes up from his nap and goes directly from sleep to rocket, leaping over the back of the sofa just in time for Yuji to catch him.
Kenjaku is sitting beside Ingrid's bedside, monitoring her progress when he hears the commotion.
When he leaves the room, he finds that somehow Yuji and Choso have indeed both found each other as well as him.
"Oh look, the ungrateful Fail Sons have come to visit me."
Yuji isn't sure how to keep Ryokun safe while they fight, but suddenly, one of Fushiguro's demon dogs runs up behind them, and Yuji realizes that somehow or another, other people have found this place.
The white demon dog nuzzles against Ryokun's foot, and Yuji understands.
He puts Ryokun on the dog's back, and Ryokun also seems to understand, because he holds on and rides the demon dog straight out the door.
In the bedroom, Ingrid hears a strange sound as the window explodes into powder and Satoru Gojo appears in the room, having received a text from Nanami with the GPS coordinates where Yuji jumped. With Six Eyes, it was a little easier for him to find the area, and he had brought Yuta and Megumi since they were already with him when he received it.
And suddenly, she is outside, surprisingly far from the house, behind a rocky embankment on the tall side of a frozen pond. It's starting to snow and visibility in the area is getting worse.
Gojo asks, "Hey Ingrid, how's all the evildoing working out for you? Looks like it's not going great, actually," he says.
She huffs, "Fuck you, I'm in labor."
"Sorry for bringing you all the way over here then. It's just that some of my students are here, and I don't want them to see what I'm about to do. They wouldn't look up to me anymore."
She crawls backward. "What are you going to do?"
"Shhhh."
One minute later, while Kenjaku runs his mouth at his sons in the house, a slippery, wet newborn rests in Gojo's hands.
She's the most perfect thing, but he can't bask in the moment right now. It's freezing cold, and he has something he has to do to make sure that this sweet girl can live in a slightly better world.
He zips the baby up in his jacket and waits for the white demon dog to speed through the snow and bring him one cold but relieved Ryokun.
"Mr. Gojo!"
"Hey, little man! Glad to see you're okay. We're going to do a little magic trick, okay? You might feel a little icky after, but it'll only last for a few seconds."
Gojo, supporting the lump under his jacket with one hand, lifts Ryokun with one arm to his side, and in an instant, warps to the garden in front of his home. Once he safely delivers the hostages, he warps right back to the battlefield.
When Kenjaku saw the demon dog, he craned his head and rushed back to the bedroom, but Ingrid was already gone, and the demon dog was speeding through the snow with the other hostage.
If he chased, it would be bad for him. He'd already made the mistake of letting Choso and Yuji get between him and Ryokun and he'd lost the other hostage, which meant Gojo was probably somewhere around too.
The back door slides open, and Yuta enters. "Am I late?"
Yuji asks, "How did you find this place?"
"Nanami sent a text to Gojo. Gojo and Fushiguro are outside."
This was a fib, because Gojo had seemingly disappeared, but the important thing was that Kenjaku believes Gojo was outside because Gojo was likely the only one that could catch Kenjaku if he tries to escape with Gravity Manipulation.
Kenjaku considers his situation.
He is out in the middle of nowhere, which was good for hiding, but there's absolutely no reason for anyone to hold anything back. There is nothing that is off limits to the sorcerers because there are no innocents at risk.
The curse user Bayer is supposed to essentially be his escape pod, but even if he arrived right at that moment, the sorcerers would just beat him up. He didn't think Gojo was kidding about killing anyone who associated with him at all. For some reason it seemed like he was really pissed off.
So in other words, in order for him to continue living beyond this confrontation, he would either have to defeat or escape from Choso, Satoru Gojo, Yuji Itadori, Megumi Fushiguro and all his shikigami, and Yuta Okkotsu with Rika.
There are at least three domain expansions, at least two of which are known to be absolutely catastrophic.
This isn't a strike force of sorcerers.
It's an execution squad.
Kenjaku doesn't have any more emergency escapes, tricks, plots, or ploys to play. The hostages are gone, he can't run, he doesn't have another body to jump to, and until this is over, there's not going to be a moment when the eyes of his enemies are not on him.
It really isn't fair, because Kenjaku had resolved to let the hostages live in order to ensure his own survival. It was reasonable; they live, he lives.
For him to lose the hostages, gain nothing, and still die at the end was just ridiculous.
It's his way, to stir up trouble and slink into the darkness to continue his work.
Kenjaku considers what he can do, and thinks about spoiling Satoru Gojo's secret, but what would be the point? These are his most loyal soldiers; it wouldn't matter if they knew. They'd never question him, and they'd guard his secret with their lives. Most of them would probably not even be surprised to find out their teacher had some embarrassing sex scandal he was trying to hide.
Maybe he could taunt Yuji and Choso? It was maybe more humiliating to be the parent about to be slain by the monster children than to be the monster child? If a swordsmith was stabbed to death with a weapon that he painstakingly forged, that would be kind of embarrassing, wouldn't it?
Is this really how it's going to end?
A thousand years, a million dreams, countless knowledge, experiments, a journey that had gone on for so long and was yet unfinished as far as Kenjaku was concerned?
Really, it was all Yuji's fault.
If Ryokun wasn't the time traveler, it had to be him. Everything that had gone wrong was Yuji's fault, including whatever the hell is happening now. It should not have been possible for the Jujutsu Society to find him in this remote spot.
Choso meanwhile does not know who any of these people are, but apparently everyone wants to murder his father, so he decides that's all right. The fact he called him and Yuji his 'fail sons' gives him pause as he considers the meaning of these words.
The roof of the house is abruptly ripped off, and Gojo peers down into the house as he floats above.
Gojo announces, "Hostage has made it to home base. Oh?! It's PIGTAILS!"
Choso doesn't realize that Gojo is even talking to him and completely ignores this, but Yuji shouts, "His name is Choso."
"Please be careful…I think that thing might not be human."
Choso looks up and says, "I am here to spill the blood of my many-faced father!"
"Okay, buddy! Kind of intense, but I think we're all here for the same thing. Let's go, team!" Gojo gives a thumbs up.
Kenjaku finds the idea that his other fail son would be on the same side as Gojo in any matter to be wildly insulting, but the real question is what it is that he's supposed to do?
Kenjaku wonders if all of these people are actually willing to kill.
Gojo murdered his own best friend in an alley, so he will absolutely kill him.
Choso is scarcely human and has no idea that killing people is kind of an inhuman thing to do, so no luck there.
Okkotsu would murder anyone that Gojo would, so that's a dead end.
That really just leaves the youngest students, Megumi Fushiguro and Yuji Itadori.
Yuji doesn't seem like a killer, but who knew what he'd do to the man who kidnapped his 'brother?'
Kenjaku can't do the math any way that leads to him making it out alive; still, he's not just going to take it.
Maybe he'll try, and hope someone makes a mistake.
"Don't obliterate the body. We want Rika to have a nice, big meal," Gojo instructs.
Kenjaku tries to use the snow to obscure their senses, tainting it with cursed energy sucking it up from everywhere and blasting it in the direction he expected to escape from.
Kenjaku dodges an attack from Yuji, and suddenly, the world was upside down?
When he moved to right himself, he couldn't feel his arms or legs, and in his field of vision, he saw a headless body falling to the ground.
Oh.
That's the issue—his head has become detached somehow or another, and that just seems very bad?
Yuta tips over the head so it is looking up, and before Kenjaku can utter a taunt, a curse, one last witty retort about all of it, Yuta plunges the cursed sword into his forehead and through his true body.
Kenjaku is still trying to figure out what he can do to remedy his situation when he suddenly finds himself in a dark room, with a giant eye looking down at him.
"Kenjaku Tanashiro."
"Booooo!"
The Eye glances to the side, to find Sukuna sitting off to the side on the floor with his legs crossed, eating a snack.
With a tired sigh because not this one again, the god says, "Excuse me, what are you doing? This is a judgement. It is a sober occasion. How did you even know he was going to be here?"
Sukuna answers, "It was obvious. His last days, he was like a failed dictator with a bad mustache, sitting in a bunker and realizing the only way out of his troubles was with a little can-do attitude and a little lead. Hey…did you unmake that guy's soul?"
"Of course we did. What kind of question is that?"
Kenjaku, now free from the ban on Sukuna knowledge from the world of the living, suddenly remembers everything and knows right away that the whole time travel fiasco was definitely this dumbass that came to his judgement to jeer at him.
Kenjaku is incensed by the implication that he'd been cooked the whole time and says, "I had a hundred moves."
"You're dead, dumbass. Who got you this time? I want it to be Yuji, but it's more insulting if Okkotsu got you on the sneak again."
When he saw the other former sorcerer's face, he knew it was true and fell over onto his back so he could laugh.
The Eye actually finds showing up to someone's judgements to yell and eat snacks to be a very Ryomen Sukuna thing to do, but he also knows that Kenjaku almost killed a certain someone that Sukuna already destroyed the world for once.
Sukuna's hatred for Kenjaku is based entirely in the fact that Sayuri Gojo died because of Kenjaku's monster. It is his fault that she left that world, which he would have lived in without complaint if she had survived. The fact that he targeted Sayuri before she was even born in the new timeline was fuel on a very hot fire.
As for Kenjaku, that's not anything to debate. He had more than enough negative karma to ensure the ultimate punishment: destruction of the soul. Letting him reincarnate into the world of the living would have been an obvious mistake.
He was a different sort of monster than Sukuna, after all.
Sukuna experienced famine before he was even born, and faced virtually every variant of human cruelty regularly as a child, emerging as someone who did not seem human because he had been denied humanity as he grew up. He cursed because he had been cursed, and that was simply how his sense of self evolved. But, in the end, he died with a human heart.
Kenjaku was born into privilege and never suffered any hardship in his very long life that he didn't directly bring upon himself. He chose to become a monster, and he died a monster. The only thing that stopped him from almost eradicating humanity out of his incredible disregard for life was Sukuna.
The former sorcerer predictably tries to wiggle out of his judgement with arguments, but there's no explaining away most of what has happened, and in the end, the floor opened up and he fell into a fiery pit before it closed again.
Sukuna finds this lackluster. "That's the hellfire that melts souls? I expected something more dramatic?"
The Eye says, "Having to destroy a person forever is a solemn occasion."
"I'm just saying, you could do a whole ceremony, maybe make the condemned fight each other for a second chance."
"So you think that failed dictator from the bunker and Kenjaku should have fought each other, and whoever won, got to return to the world of the living?"
Sukuna says, "Excuse me for trying to have some fun."
"Please go back to whatever you were doing before you decided to come here again. Your friend was judged earlier and sent to her tomb, weren't you waiting?"
"Uraume?! Why didn't you say so?"
The Eye asks, "And why are you traveling with a Star Plasma Vessel?"
"With a what? I don't know what you're talking about."
"Whatever you are planning, please don't."
Sukuna shrugs. "You are always suspicious of me."
When he leaves and goes back into the city, he meets up with Riko Amanai and says, "Are you ready?"
"I was already ready. You're the one that wanted to show up to a funeral and boo."
"We're going back to my island for a bit. We have to meet up with our third."
Once they make it to the docks and get on the boat, Riko sits on the edge and dangles her feet off, kicking her feet in the water.
Riko says, "Suguru can't leave his island for seven more years. Apparently, something about he didn't like monkeys? They punish you for that here?"
Sukuna answers, "I think it all depends on what you think of as a monkey, and how much you don't like them?"
"Lame!"
There's something comfy about having an obnoxious young girl with him; Riko is not her, but it's fine. Riko has been in the spirit world for a long time and hasn't been able to find anyone she knows except Geto.
Geto isn't able to leave his tomb for a while because of that little genocide thing he very evidently did not tell her about, so she asked if she could go with him to look for Misato Kuroi.
The Eye seems to think there is some sort of deliberate trouble he could cause with a star plasma vessel, and now he's just curious about what that trouble is, and whether he should do it.
Sukuna thinks he could talk Riko into doing mischief, but for now, he decides to check in on his reincarnation because while Ryokun didn't notice the suspicious lump under Satoru Gojo's jacket when he was being rescued, Sukuna was watching, and he certainly did.
Meanwhile, by the time Yuji made it home that night, Ryokun had already had hotpot and passed out from exhaustion with his cat, Mikan, in Yuji's bed. One of the attendants in the Gojo clan had taken care of him after a doctor gave him a checkup, and he was bathed and fed. There's a bath already drawn, the heat is on, and dinner is on the stove, so when he and Choso enter, it's to shake off snow at the door and unwind.
It was bitterly cold and windy out, and the attendant checks to see if they need anything else.
Yuji feels a bit embarrassed that a servant has been looking after Ryokun. "Sorry, I kind of assumed he was with the lady of the clan."
"Lady Chiyo is having her baby, so we brought him here."
"Really?! The baby is being born?"
"Indeed. With any luck, the baby will come tonight," she says as she bundles up and heads out to make her way to the other side of the estate where the attendants stay.
Once the door closes, Choso asks, "Is it really okay for me to intrude on your home?"
"It's fine. I invited you. It's freezing out. Not a place for somebody who doesn't have anywhere else to go."
Choso walks over to the fireplace and holds his hands out; the floors in the apartment are heated so it's cozy, but it's extra, extra cozy in front of the fireplace. "The cold seems cruel."
"You weren't bundled up enough for it. You're a little bigger than I am, but we'll get you some winter clothes tomorrow."
Yuji checks in and finds that Ryokun is indeed asleep, and then returns to Choso to serve him a big bowl of beef hotpot.
"After dinner, you can take the first bath, and I'll put out a futon in the living room. We have two bedrooms, but Ryokun would be mad if you slept in his room because it's his area, and also mad if you slept in my room, because that's where he actually sleeps. He's sort of at an age where he's difficult sometimes and he's been through a lot, so I try not to be hard on him."
Choso says, "You're such a good older brother."
Choso hadn't eaten since he separated from Kenjaku several days before, and had been running around in the cold trying to find him so he could get vengeance, so to suddenly be warm and full was so comforting although he struggled to understand why Yuji would extend this warmth to him.
His stupid father called them both his sons, and he wanted to ask, but it's clear that Yuji hasn't slept well in a long time and that he's just grateful that his little brother is home. As a big brother, he decides whatever his concern is, it can wait until tomorrow. His potential little brother needs rest.
After setting out a futon in the living room by the fire, Yuji has a bath after Choso and finally makes it to bed, trying his best not to awaken Ryokun.
He wakes up anyway, immediately attaches himself to Yuji like an octopus, and starts crying.
He doesn't say anything, he just cries, not his little defiant angry bad temper cry, but more like the way a little baby cries.
It makes Yuji feel like such a failure, because he's been through so much in so little time. An attempted kidnapping, then a successful one, and then it took eight days to find him. He's so, so, so tiny to be without people who care about him for that long and he knows it must have been so scary and so difficult for him.
"I'm so sorry. I know I said it before, but I'll never let anything bad happen to you again. I promise. Please keep believing in me."
At the Gojo house, Satoru is watching his daughter eat.
Gojo had never heard of induced lactation before any of this happened, but his wife had gone through it with hormone therapy and breast pumping and teas. She is currently breastfeeding the baby like she really did carry her.
Over the months leading up to this, there were a lot of quiet apprehensions about what it would be like when the baby arrived. Gojo wondered if he would still feel such emotional hesitancy, and Chiyo wondered if she would miss out on whatever biological bond should have existed.
Months had been spent dwelling on these worries, on the idea that the baby would arrive, and she wouldn't be loved the way she deserved to be, because of the situation.
They haven't had time to revisit those fears, because THEY HAD A BABY!
While it took years for Sukuna to love the baby in question enough that he was willing to destroy the world for her, Satoru was ready to do it right at that moment, no questions asked.
Maybe animals loved purely out of instinct, but humans were far more complicated. The love a person felt out of instinct or hormones was different than the love they chose to give out of the abundance of their heart.
Satoru says, "Look at her, pretending I'm not here. It took her one hour of life to pick a favorite."
"I think it's just because I'm feeding her?"
"I underestimated my enemy. Perhaps I should have spent these last months developing boobies for this occasion."
"I think men can do it, actually?"
Satoru, laying shirtless on his side with his head propped up on his hand, says, "It would be funny as hell if I just started growing breasts and didn't tell anyone. Change nothing else, just exactly me, but growing titties with no explanation or acknowledgement. See who finally asks and how long it takes them."
She laughs. "You're the worst."
"Nothing would be funnier than if it would be Nanami. This is an unexpected sentence, but I would love to make Kento ask about my titties. He would resist asking the longest. What would be even funnier is if I hid if from everyone except Nanami."
"I hope that poor man has a very nice vacation from you. I'm a good wife, so I fully support you if you want to have breasts as long as they're not bigger than mine. You'd probably feel a certain kind of way if I went out and got a ding-a-ling and it was bigger than yours."
Gojo pouts, "I hate being underestimated."
"Boy, shut up."
It's blissful being a ridiculous person married to another ridiculous person.
Satoru leans down to kiss a very tiny little chubby foot. "I can't get over her feet."
The baby strongly favors her father, with a surprising amount of slightly opalescent white hair, distinctly Gojo features, and eyes that were dark and something between violet and blue. Since newborn eye color could change, it was hard to tell if they would stay that way, but at the current moment, they looked just like little blueberries.
A mystery, since in the other timeline, she was supposed to have Six Eyes, and yet Ryokun had spoken often about his desire to find Blueberry.
After the baby finished eating, Chiyo gently handed her over so she could rest skin-on-skin against her father's chest.
She got up from the bed briefly and returned to the bed with a ukelele. Pausing briefly, she wrote on a journal in her nightstand and turned the notebook around.
The kanji for blossom, elegant, and gemstone were written on the page.
"Sayuri? I love that, actually. Sayuri Gojo sounds perfect," he says.
"Me too."
She snuggles in, resting her head on his shoulder and plays a lullaby oh-so-gently while still topless, singing softly for the baby.
Satoru finds this moment obscenely perfect, almost like it's a sin or that he's not entitled to feel as happy as he does. There is a parallel world, maybe many, in fact, where he and Sayuri never even get to meet, much less have this absolutely great moment.
They have a surprisingly restful night, with the baby sleeping between them. Sayuri fusses a little here and there, but she also rests better than one might usually expect from a newborn.
When morning comes, Chiyo wants to see Ryokun so she can talk to him and apologize for not helping him when he was kidnapped, and Gojo is absolutely sure that Ryokun is dying to see her since she remains his favorite person next to Yuji.
Gojo also wants to see if Ryokun will positively identify Sayuri as the mysterious, legendary Blueberry.
When he makes it to the apartment, he finds Yuji feeding his strays, the little rescue he found in June and the big feral one he only found the afternoon before.
Satoru has determined that Choso is definitely a Death Painting, but it's not like he incarnated himself, or that anything would be gained by terminating his incarnated form. Since he definitely died a good guy in the other timeline, Gojo agreed to let Yuji bring him home.
Yuji looks up. "Baby?"
"Baby!" Satoru exclaims, cheesing ear-to-ear.
"Seriously?!"
He whips out his phone and shows him his new wallpaper, a squishy little white-haired baby sleeping peacefully. "Sayuri Gojo, the most perfect being ever to exist in this world or any other."
Ryokun exclaims, "The baby came out?!"
Satoru says, "After little man finishes his breakfast, would you mind if I borrowed him for a bit? I'll have the rest of you over later to meet the baby, but Chiyo wants to see him."
Ryokun starts eating as fast as he can and then jumps off his chair and runs to the door.
Yuji bundles him up, and he leaves, holding onto Gojo's hand.
"Did you miss me?"
"Of course."
"I missed you too."
It was a cute little moment, and then Ryokun pivoted fully.
His resilience really couldn't be understated, as he just got back less than twenty-four hours ago and he's already in a somewhat normal mood.
Ryokun asks, "The baby was inside. Now it's outside."
"That's right."
"How did it come out?"
Gojo reaches into his pocket and gives him several pieces of candy. "Never ask me that question. Good deal?"
"Okay! Good deal!"
They take a detour at the Gojo residence so they can wash their hands again, before heading up to the bedroom, where Chiyo was holding Sayuri on the bed.
"Easy, don't be rough. Gentle, gentle," Gojo says as Ryokun climbs up.
Ryokun was surprisingly careful as he nestled in next to Chiyo.
"It's a baby!" he loudly whispers, and then a gasp as his expression brightens, "Blueberry!"
AN: Before anyone complains and tells me 'don't you know people aren't supposed to sleep with a newborn,' cosleeping is very common in Japan and a majority of parents do it.