Perfect Preparation

Hoping to arm the team for the Culling Game, Maki heads back to the Zenin clan hoping to gather cursed tools, but nothing unfolds the way she intends. Determined to keep the family wealth out of Megumi's hands, the clan's upper ranks scheme to murder Megumi, Maki, and Mai. Maki strides straight into the trap and ends up squaring off against her father.

At the Zenin household Naoya greets Maki, mocking her facial injuries and her loyalty to Megumi and Yuta; she throws the jabs back and descends underground. In a reinforced corridor near the cursed warehouse, her mother insists they are barred from entering, but Maki produces keys granted by the clan head. A flashback shows that Maki herself had pushed a reluctant Megumi to accept the role written into Naobito's will, since it brought the family fortune plus access to intelligence on the Big Three and Jujutsu Headquarters. Megumi only relented once Maki admitted she could not yet make the house a home worthy of Mai.

Ignoring her mother's screamed demands to turn back, Maki unlocks the warehouse doors, only to find her father seated inside with no cursed tools present. Ogi reveals he anticipated her arrival and cleared the room, then exposes Mai bleeding from a slash to the abdomen behind him. Meanwhile Jinichi briefs Naoya: Megumi is the smarter pick for head thanks to ties to Gojo and Noritoshi Kamo, yet letting an outsider inherit everything is unacceptable, and openly killing him would wreck the clan's standing. Their workaround leans on the Headquarters notice that unsealing Gojo is a crime, so the three will be executed as rebels plotting exactly that. Jinichi notes the scheme was Ogi's own.

Ogi activates Falling Blossom Emotion for the standoff, having kept Mai alive as insurance. Maki wields Juzo Kumiya's masterwork Dragon-Bone, whose stored force and cursed energy fire from the blade's back to boost cutting power, and she plans to fake a single-strike duel while striking more than once. Ogi taunts her about why Naobito outranked him; she replies it is because he would slaughter his own children, sparking the fight. She blocks his opening slash, counters using the momentum from the rear-blade discharge, and shatters his katana, slipping behind him for the finish. With astonishing reflexes Ogi spins and answers with his blazing cursed technique, felling Maki even faster than the snapped steel reaches the floor. Her injured eye is cut, her glasses break, and her lower belly is opened. Realizing his sword had become living flame, she drops as Ogi sheds a tear and declares that the worthlessness of his offspring is precisely why he never rose to lead the clan.

Belonging to the Culling Game Arc, the chapter takes place inside the Zenin Clan household and its cursed warehouse, opening the duel Maki Zenin vs. Ogi Zenin. Naoya, Maki, her mother, Mai, Ogi, and Jinichi appear, with Yuta and Juzo Kumiya referenced. Featured jujutsu includes Dragon-Bone, Blazing Courage, and Falling Blossom Emotion. The events adapt into Episode 51.