The Cursed Child

Haunting Yuta Okkotsu is Rika Orimoto, the childhood friend whose death twisted her into a vengeful spirit, a curse that marks him as a special grade cursed human. After a bloody episode at his Tokyo school, the boy is locked away at Jujutsu High under Gojo's watch.

Gojo talks Yuta into enrolling and joining a search for two missing children. Partnered with the thorny Maki Zenin, Yuta winds up devoured by an enormous curse, and saving everyone trapped within it pushes him to summon Rika's strength of his own will for the first time. He resolves afterward to break her curse.

Cornered by bullies in late 2016, Yuta watches Rika manifest and stuff all four into a locker, leaving them badly injured. The sorcerers seal him in a talisman-lined room where he agrees to await execution alone, but Gojo dangles an alternative: turn the curse against other curses. Warning the boy that total seclusion guarantees loneliness, Gojo wins him over.

Introduced to first-years Maki, Toge, and Panda, Yuta is met with hostility, and Rika strikes out to protect him. After Gojo outlines how curses and cursed energy work, he assigns paired practical training, pairing a grudging Maki with Yuta at an elementary school plagued by vanishings. Maki fells three spirits in one swing before a giant curse swallows the pair whole.

Stuck inside its belly with the two missing boys, Yuta is pressed by Maki about why he enrolled, and he confesses a longing for connection and the right to go on living. Her words move him to slip on Rika's ring and call her forth completely, letting the spirit rip the curse apart while Gojo, outside, identifies the special grade as Rika Orimoto. Yuta hauls everyone to safety, and at the hospital he tells Gojo he intends to undo Rika's curse, which Gojo ties to his conviction that love yields the most distorted curses of all.

Dated April 28, 2017, this opening installment, written by Gege Akutami for the Jujutsu Kaisen 0: Jujutsu High prequel, was later adapted in Jujutsu Kaisen 0: The Movie. It first introduces Yuta, Gojo, Panda, Maki, Toge, and Rika and launches the Cursed Child arc. A flashback reveals the childhood vow to marry that the pair sealed with a ring back in 2011, before the fatal traffic accident that chained Rika's spirit to him. The chapter also lays out how curses arise from pooled negative emotion and how curtains function during practical training.