Chapter 210

Megumi and his companions uncover the grim reality of the military invasion. Yuji and the Angel clash over whether to step in, with the Angel preferring to stay clear. Hana Kurusu, meanwhile, holds onto a memory of Megumi as the boy who once saved her and set her on a path of helping others.

A flashback shows three girls trapped years ago in a derelict house by a cursed spirit that posed as their mother, feeding them inedible food and keeping them in squalor. They played along, fully aware the thing was not their mother. In the present, Yuji, Megumi, Hana, and Fumihiko interrogate a captured local guide and learn of a plan to convert cursed energy into renewable resource. Megumi explains that jujutsu headquarters is too proud to popularize sorcery and that Japan leans on self-responsibility. He works out that the energy promise was bait to draw the military in to be slaughtered, flooding the colonies with cursed energy to complete the pre-merger with Tengen, echoing Reggie Star's prediction.

Yuji proposes saving the soldiers, and Megumi agrees as a way to block the merger, though the Angel notes the Tokyo colony already holds enough cursed energy and refuses to drag Hana into needless fighting. Yuji declares he will act regardless and says he never trusted any of them, a remark Hana misreads as rude since she cannot hear who he addressed. A cursed spirit is shown fishing with soldiers as bait, lowering them into a pit of biting fish-curses, until Hana descends in a shaft of light to rescue the next victim. As Yuji and Megumi move to save more lives, Megumi presses Yuji on the any of you comment, knowing it was aimed at the Angel and Sukuna. The flashback resolves: Hana was one of the trapped girls and escaped by following a dog with a fluffy white tail, Megumi's Divine Dog, when both children were only five or six and Megumi was with Gojo. Believing their reunion is fate, Hana resolves to save people to become worthy of standing beside him. Yuji privately admits to Megumi he has feared Hana replacing Nobara in their hearts, and promises to apologize, just as Hana lands before them and asks if he has anything to say to her.

This Culling Game arc chapter, collected in Volume 24, ties Hana Kurusu's origin directly to Megumi Fushiguro and his Divine Dogs, while making explicit that the military is being used as a cursed-energy offering for the merger. It also surfaces Yuji's quiet anxiety about Hana replacing Nobara. Fumihiko Takaba, true to form, takes the final panel.