Jujutsu Kaisen: Naoya Zenin Wants to Live! Chapter 68: Sorcerers Will Not Welcome It

"?!"

chamaru suddenly jerked his head up and blinked in disbelief.

Momo Nishimiya, who had been fixing her hair just monts ago, went stiff all at once. Her lips trembled slightly, and panic spread across her face.

"W-why am I included too?!"

This was completely beyond the little witch's expectations.

Her mind filled with question marks.

Seriously?! Naoya Zenin, you heartless bastard!

If chamaru hadn't been badmouthing you behind your back, I wouldn't even be stuck here right now!

Sure, I didn't fight him specifically for your sake, but no matter how you look at it, I'm still one of the good guys here, aren't I?!

And all the other teachers think I'm innocent. Every single one of them thinks this is chamaru's fault.

Even Gojo-sensei agreed with that conclusion.

So why?!

Why the hell are you dragging down with him too, Naoya Zenin?!

"Naoya Zenin! Have you lost your mind?!"

"What does this have to do with Momo Nishimiya?! chamaru was the one who attacked the hardest! If you hadn't stepped in and stopped that explosion, then with that much cursed energy, the girl you saved might have been blown to pieces on the spot!"

"Momo Nishimiya's father is Arican! He's with the U.S. Forces Japan! If he decides to pursue this, then even if you're the head of the Zenin clan, you won't be able to walk away from it clean!"

Every teacher present erupted.

Because Naoya Zenin had really gone off the rails.

Expel Momo Nishimiya?

Wouldn't that be like causing offense to soone with Arican ties?

This was already becoming more than just a matter for the jujutsu world.

In this country, most people would think twice before stirring up trouble involving Aricans.

"Naoya Zenin, tell what you're thinking."

Satoru Gojo rely raised a brow. He did not look particularly surprised.

If anything, the indigo Six Eyes hidden beneath his blindfold showed intense interest instead.

He was not the petty type.

How could the strongest of the modern era possibly turn his blade on soone weaker just because his own student had once been expelled by the jujutsu higher-ups?

Satoru Gojo was simply testing Naoya Zenin.

He wanted to see what Naoya Zenin truly thought.

Was he a thoroughly rotten young master, or a teacher who protected his students? The answer to that question made Satoru Gojo's heartbeat quicken in spite of himself.

Sorcerers.

Especially powerful sorcerers. They could never suppress their curiosity toward questions whose answers they could not predict.

That loneliness born from absolute strength.

These days, in all the world, the only person who could still give the strongest sorcerer of the modern age that kind of excitent and anticipation was probably Naoya Zenin alone.

At this mont, there was no doubt about it.

Satoru Gojo wanted to know why Naoya Zenin had decided to expel Momo Nishimiya too.

"Gojo."

"Hmm?"

Naoya Zenin spoke with perfect composure.

"Have you ever heard the saying that when an avalanche happens, not a single snowflake is innocent?"

"Oh? So you an that little twin-tailed witch flying around on a broom is one of those innocent snowflakes? And because you want to defend absolute order, you're expelling her too?"

Satoru Gojo sounded thoroughly entertained.

"No."

Naoya Zenin shook his head.

"Then you an that piece-of-junk puppet is the innocent snowflake? That Momo Nishimiya actually committed the greater offense, but since chamaru is just an ordinary student with no backing, you want to drag him down with her so her father won't co after the school?"

"No."

Naoya Zenin shook his head again.

Now even Satoru Gojo was stumped.

"So it's not this, and it's not that. Are there other snowflakes, then?"

"Yes."

Naoya Zenin raised a hand and guided Satoru Gojo's gaze toward the stunned teachers standing nearby.

"My colleagues here are the snowflakes that caused the avalanche."

"Naoya Zenin?!"

"What kind of nonsense are you spouting?!"

"What does this have to do with us?! Weren't those two students the ones who got into a fight?!"

The other teachers were completely dumbfounded, then snapped back to themselves and imdiately started shouting.

No, wait.

We have to take the bla for this too?

They ca to work and taught their classes like normal every day, and sohow they had beco the snowflakes that triggered an avalanche?

How ridiculous was that?

"Naoya Zenin, explain your reasoning."

Satoru Gojo, however, smiled faintly, his smile carrying sothing unreadable.

"Gojo, you heard it yourself during the discussion just now. My colleagues placed all the bla on the student chamaru, while turning a blind eye to everything Momo Nishimiya did."

"Haven't we already said this? chamaru used the greatest amount of cursed energy. Judging the matter from a sorcerer's perspective, that makes this incident entirely his fault!"

One of the teachers imdiately shot back with righteous confidence.

After all, that had been the consensus of everyone present just monts ago. Even Satoru Gojo, sitting in the principal's seat, had agreed with that view.

So even faced with Naoya Zenin pressing the issue head-on, the teachers had no intention of backing down that easily.

"Very good."

Naoya Zenin did not refute the teacher. Instead, he continued along the sa line of reasoning.

"Then the result is this. Jujutsu High uses sorcerers' rules to determine the punishnt. chamaru, who used the most cursed energy, is expelled, while Momo Nishimiya, who used offensive Cursed Techniques, is treated as acting in self-defense."

"What's wrong with that?"

Satoru Gojo did not seem to find anything especially problematic about it.

Because that ant the teachers had not wasted ti arguing over who was morally right or wrong, and had instead handled the matter in the style of sorcerers.

"No, you are clearly mistaken."

Naoya Zenin abruptly changed direction and brought up an old matter again.

"Gojo, I heard you once had a student nad Kinji Hakari. He was directly expelled by the Kyoto school for getting involved in a student fight, wasn't he?"

"Oh, that. Right, now that you ntion it, I guess sothing like that really did happen."

Satoru Gojo obviously understood what Naoya Zenin was getting at. He slapped a hand against his palm as though he had only just rembered, then nodded along.

"If expulsion is to be determined by the total amount of cursed energy used, then who should have been expelled in that case?"

"...Although my student can have practically unlimited cursed energy, that only applies when his luck is good."

Satoru Gojo stroked his chin.

"But if we really used that standard for expulsion, then unfortunately, Kinji Hakari would have been the victim, and the student he beat up would have been the one expelled."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because Kinji Hakari didn't use cursed energy at all. He beat those students with nothing but his fists."

Satoru Gojo burst out laughing.

"On the contrary, those students were the ones who got beaten so badly they had to start using cursed energy to protect themselves."

"Then the result back then was this. Jujutsu High used sorcerers' rules to determine the punishnt. Kinji Hakari, who did not use cursed energy, was expelled, while the students who did use cursed energy were treated as acting in self-defense."

Naoya Zenin spoke calmly.

"Both were student fights, and yet they ended with two completely different outcos. Gojo, don't you want to ask my ignorant colleagues where the fairness and justice in these so-called sorcerers' rules actually are?"

chamaru froze below.

Then, with an emotion he could not quite describe, he looked up toward the top of the detention room.

Naoya Zenin...

He was actually defending him?

"The reality I saw with my own eyes is this. The rotten conservatives at Jujutsu High wanted to curry favor with Aricans, so they used these so-called sorcerers' rules to help Momo Nishimiya escape bla. Because if this incident were judged as an ordinary fight, then Momo Nishimiya, who threw the first slap, would never escape being treated as the main offender."

Naoya Zenin continued relentlessly.

"That ans my colleagues already knew perfectly well what was right and what was wrong, yet they reversed cause and effect and turned the truth upside down."

"The person who truly committed the wrong should have been corrected. Instead, we praised her misconduct."

"Jujutsu is not ant to serve as an endorsent for the powerful, nor is it a tool for sacrificing the powerless."

"And yet, though they call themselves sorcerers, they willingly abandon thought and dignity in the face of power, drifting with the current just to live in comfort, giving up the courage and responsibility to seek out the truth..."

Naoya Zenin shook his head, then revealed an expression of profound disappointnt.

"What a sha, Gojo. My colleagues are no longer noble sorcerers. They are not even fit to be called teachers. They are nothing more than cowardly politicians wrapped in the skin of sorcerers."

The detention room fell so silent that a pin might have been heard dropping.

Even the teacher who had sounded the most self-righteous just monts ago was completely silenced by Naoya Zenin's words. They only looked at one another, not daring to make a sound.

Earlier, when Naoya Zenin had bluntly humiliated the conservatives during his speech, everyone had just treated it as entertainnt. No one had felt like they were being scolded personally.

But now, even those teachers who had always thought of themselves as non-conservatives had been blasted until their faces turned red, so ashad they wanted to crawl into a crack in the ground.

How had they agreed with such an absurd solution?

At what point had they beco the kind of filthy adults they had looked down on in their youth?

"Beautiful."

Applause rang out, completely out of place in such a serious setting.

After a long silence, Satoru Gojo finally smiled in satisfaction and began clapping for the man standing before him, the sa age as himself.

"That was beautifully said, Naoya Zenin. I never would have imagined that in today's rotten jujutsu world, you would be the first to understand the true essence of a sorcerer."

"That's right. Sorcerers are supposed to protect the weak, exorcise curses, and serve as warriors of justice who protect humanity. How could they possibly be the sa as these despicable politicians, consud by sches and infighting?"

As he spoke more and more passionately, even the strongest sorcerer of the modern age ground his teeth.

Riko Amanai's death.

Suguru Geto's defection.

All this ti, Satoru Gojo had believed he simply was not strong enough. He had thought that if he beca strong enough, he could protect everything, stop every tragedy from happening again, let everyone laugh freely, and bring back that sumr he missed so much.

But he had clearly been wrong.

If a system was wrong from the very start, if its roots had already rotted through, then even if Satoru Gojo beca strong enough to defeat the entire world, he would still be nothing more than a rag for politicians to use again and again.

Those stagnant conservatives.

Those nobles who relied on family authority.

Those lofty jujutsu higher-ups.

Jujutsu Headquarters, which could manipulate the jujutsu world as it pleased.

The real enemy had never been curses.

In history, how many people could those vicious Special Grade Curses actually kill?

A hundred? A thousand? Ten thousand?

But those humans in positions of power only needed a single thought, a single policy, to throw a hundred thousand, a million, ten million, or even a hundred million people into a living hell.

Naoya Zenin's words completely woke Satoru Gojo up.

All the work he had done until now had been nothing but self-deception.

If the rotten jujutsu higher-ups were not wiped out at the source, then in the future it would not just be Kinji Hakari, and not just these students. More and more innocent people would be subjected to endless persecution.

Satoru Gojo made the call at once and loudly declared:

"Momo Nishimiya! chamaru! I, Satoru Gojo, in the na of the strongest sorcerer of the modern era, hereby officially declare that the two of you have been expelled!!"

"N-no, you can't! Gojo-sensei! Naoya-sensei! I... I still want to go to school!"

Momo Nishimiya was truly panicking now.

She had not even realized that she had blurted out sothing that sounded almost like begging for rcy.

Maybe because she had never imagined things would end like this, the little witch was clearly terrified out of her mind and dropped straight to the floor.

Because this was not only letting down Father-sama's expectations, it was also completely betraying that investor-sama's expectations...

Just because she could not stand hearing chamaru talk behind Naoya Zenin's back, she had acted on impulse and done sothing like this.

Naoya Zenin! I will never forgive you for this for the rest of my life! Even if I really do get expelled, I'm going to stick to you for the rest of my life!!

chamaru, on the other hand, showed no sign of losing control. If anything, he felt a little lighter.

So that was how it was.

In the end, he was still getting expelled.

He had already done things behind the scenes that betrayed Jujutsu High, so he had been ntally prepared for expulsion for a long ti.

Still, now that he had dragged Nishimiya-senpai down with him, he strangely felt a little guilty instead.

Miwa would definitely cry when she found out, wouldn't she?

So he was leaving.

He had already made up his mind that no matter what path he took from here on, he would protect everyone. But was losing his status as a Jujutsu High student really enough to make him this sad?

Just as chamaru gave a lonely smile and was about to accept reality, Satoru Gojo's previously stern tone suddenly changed.

"Although I'd love to congratulate you on finally being free and never having to attend school again, you are Kyoto students, and I'm just a Tokyo teacher. So from here on out, Zenin-sensei will have full authority to decide how to deal with you."

The white-haired man in the blindfold stuck out his tongue with a grin, then turned and patted Utahi Iori, who was still standing there completely dumbfounded.

"Hey, Utahi, why are you still standing around in a daze? Get back to work already."

"...No, what exactly did you even co here for?"

Utahi Iori felt like she had just gotten off a roller coaster. She still had not recovered from all the ups and downs.

"What do you an, what did I co here for? You didn't seriously think I had the authority to expel students, did you?"

Satoru Gojo waved his hand dismissively.

"I'm not so dean of discipline at Jujutsu High. I'm just a perfectly ordinary teacher. No, wait, co to think of it, I don't think I ever even got a teaching license."

"Then who exactly were you making such a huge scene for?!"

Utahi Iori completely exploded, chasing after Satoru Gojo and pounding him all the way with her fists.

"No way. I was just here to eat popcorn and set the mood. Life needs a little sense of ceremony to be fun, right?!"

Since they had not wanted to breathe the sa air as Naoya Zenin in the first place, and now that even Satoru Gojo, who had co here to stir things up, had wrapped things up like this, the teachers all got to their feet and left the detention room together.

Still, compared with Satoru Gojo and Utahi Iori laughing and chasing each other down the hallway, the backs of the colleagues who had just been scolded looked rather dejected.

The only ones left behind were the two students in the detention room below, and Naoya Zenin above them.

The atmosphere was eerily silent.

The kind of awkwardness that felt almost like social death.

"I'm tired of arguing over aningless right and wrong."

Naoya Zenin was the first to break the silence.

"Rather than throwing the two of you out of school for good, I'd rather throw you into cleaning the school avenues. At least then I'll be in a better mood every day when I co to school."

"Momo Nishimiya. chamaru. For the next sester, the two of you will be responsible for school sanitation. If I see even the slightest speck of dirt on so much as a single brick or tile, then the two of you can pack your things and get the hell out of this school."

"U-understood!!!"

Momo Nishimiya instantly snapped back to herself, sprang up from the floor, and shrieked in delight.

The little witch really had just been taken on a roller coaster from hell to heaven.

If investor-sama found out she had been expelled from Jujutsu High right after receiving sponsorship, then she would never be able to hold her head up again for the rest of her life.

Thank you!

Naoya-sensei, whose conscience hasn't completely vanished yet!!

The little witch had already completely forgotten that just monts ago, she had been swearing to stake the rest of her life on clinging to Naoya Zenin and making this young master of the Zenin clan experience the bitter consequences of losing his teaching qualifications.

chamaru, however, showed no joy at all.

The puppet only stared blankly upward at Naoya Zenin above him.

He had clearly already prepared himself to leave school, so why had Naoya Zenin, why had this villain who wanted to destroy Jujutsu High, deliberately let him off the hook?

Why, in a situation like that just now, when everyone had been taking Nishimiya-senpai's side, had Naoya Zenin chosen to speak up for him?

Why?

Could it be because... he had a grudge against Nishimiya-senpai?

Seeing that Naoya Zenin was about to leave the room as well, the dazed chamaru finally ca back to himself and shouted loudly,

"Wait!!!"

"What is it now?"

Naoya Zenin stopped in his tracks, his tone still as cold as ever.

"I... I want to ask..."

chamaru only felt his lips go painfully dry.

It was the answer Kokichi Muta, his true body subrged in a nutrient pool sowhere far off in the darkness, desperately wanted to know even if it killed him.

"How much... just how much do you know?"

"Don't ask."

Faced with the hesitant chamaru, Naoya Zenin answered only with that, firm and decisive.

"Sorcerers never concern themselves with right and wrong. chamaru, you are an uncut diamond. Do not keep wasting your talent on pointless things."

"Who... who exactly are you?"

"Who I am is not important."

That was all Naoya Zenin said.

"Whether I'm a good person or a bad person, none of that matters."

"You only need to look at what I've done, and what results ca from it. That alone is enough. As for what kind of person I really am, your heart will give you the answer."

"chamaru, what matters most is what kind of person you want to beco."

Kokichi Muta's heart abruptly stopped.

He really did know who I am!

He definitely knows what I wanted to ask too!

What exactly happened?!

Why is it that you, who are now this kind and gentle, drove Mai to such a desperate end back then?!

Are you really that evil sorcerer who has lived for a thousand years? And what exactly are you planning to do to Miwa?!

"...Was my choice wrong?"

In the end, chamaru could not hold it back and asked Naoya Zenin.

"I want to cast aside this body made of machinery! I want to see this world with my own eyes! I want to touch the girl I love with hands that have warmth! I just want to beco happier! Is that... is that wrong too?!"

The boy, crippled from birth, was filled with anguish as he begged bitterly.

"Sensei, please tell . Have the beliefs I held all this ti been nothing but an illusion? To walk beneath the sun like a normal person, to laugh together with everyone under the sa blue sky. Is that path really wrong?!"

Naoya Zenin looked at chamaru.

It was as if he could see that inside the cold, emotionless Cursed Corpse was a lonely, helpless little boy in hiding.

Inside that heart was a prison breeding regret that would last until death, one day after another in which all expectation and hope had already been lost.

As if it might all co falling apart at any mont.

Naoya Zenin only said this.

"What are you doing? Why do you feel guilty?"

"That gentle heart of yours is not false, and that desire to be loved is not a sin. You rely followed the truest wishes in your heart, didn't you?"

"B-but—!"

"Hold your head high. If all you want is to survive, if all you want is your own happiness, and for that you would even kill , then I would have no complaints."

Naoya Zenin lowered his eyes.

"But living for yourself is not so bright and uplifting thing. It is rotten and filthy. There is not a trace of light on that road, only an endlessly spreading swamp, dark and choking."

If this transmigrator only wanted to survive, he could have committed every evil imaginable. He could have betrayed the jujutsu world, even allied himself with curses, allied himself with Kenjaku, used knowledge of the future to help Sukuna revive, or even killed Satoru Gojo ahead of ti and left humanity without any hope at all.

After all, when it ca to survival, walking that path would have been far easier than helping the protagonists win.

"chamaru, there is only one thing I want to tell you."

At the very last mont before leaving the detention room, Naoya Zenin said this to the lost boy.

"Sorcerers do not die deaths filled with regret. If you really are a righteous man to the core, then do not fall before soone like , soone utterly evil."

"Because even this cold Cursed Corpse of yours, even this broken body you despise so much, there is soone in this school who treasures it, and who would grieve endlessly if it were broken."

"That is what I need you to understand."

After saying that, the man left.

In the end, chamaru still did not have the courage to rush out of the detention room and call that utterly depraved Naoya Zenin back again.

Sorcerers do not die deaths filled with regret?

If that really is true, then I could never beco a true sorcerer in this lifeti...