Chapter 16

With the sorcerers closing in on a cornered Jogo, his comrades pull off a rescue and retreat to the shadowy figure pulling their strings: Mahito. Elsewhere, pupils from the rival Kyoto branch show up looking to mock and rattle the Tokyo students.

From atop a cliff, Pseudo-Geto and Hanami debate intervening on Jogo's behalf. Unwilling to be recognized by anyone connected to Jujutsu High, Geto doubts curses even hold any loyalty toward each other, though he grants Hanami leave to act. Hanami mutters a phrase in some foreign tongue, which grates on Geto, then makes his move. While Satoru gets nowhere interrogating Jogo, a spike bursts upward and erupts into a spread of blossoms; under cover of that distraction Hanami spirits Jogo off, and a wooden curse sprouts from the flowers and charges Yuji, only for Satoru to guard the boy as the spirits flee.

Satoru, struck by how cleanly the spirit masked its presence, remarks that things are turning interesting. He wants every one of his students powerful enough to handle curses of that caliber, and he intends to keep training Yuji before reappearing at the exchange event the boy still knows nothing about. Yaga is irritated by Satoru's absence when Principal Yaga sits down with Kiyotaka Ijichi; over in their own domain, Geto rallies his fellow curses, who lock onto the goal of sealing Satoru come October 31st in Shibuya.

As Megumi and Nobara handle errands for Maki, she and Panda talk over the higher-ups' attitude toward the school in the wake of the cursed womb affair, figuring the Kyoto rivals likely won't show for the meeting yet aware those guys relish talking trash. A pair of them turns up anyway: Maki's twin Mai and the third-year Aoi Todo. The two jeer at Yuji, who everyone assumes is dead, and the Tokyo first-years brush off the obvious provocation. Todo advances itching for a brawl, eager to learn if these two can stand in for Yuta Okkotsu.

Spanning twenty-one pages within Volume 2's Fearsome Womb Arc, this installment debuts Mahito, Mai Zenin, and Aoi Todo, and gets adapted across anime Episodes 7 and 8. Several long-running threads are seeded together here: Mahito standing as the curses' true architect, the scheme to seal Gojo in Shibuya, and the freshly kindled feud between the Tokyo and Kyoto schools.