Chapter 222

As the last reckoning between Satoru Gojo and Sukuna closes in, both sides finish getting ready. With December 24th here, the Jujutsu High students give everything they have to lift their sensei's spirits before he walks into the most pivotal battle he has ever faced.

Uraume delivers three of his fingers to Sukuna and apologizes for never tracking down the final one. Sukuna shrugs it off, having deduced that Gojo hid the missing finger to stall Yuji's execution indefinitely. Counting it a second humiliation handed to them by Gojo, Uraume nurses a wound still throbbing after reverse cursed technique. Sukuna promises to cover the gap of one divided digit using his mummified former body, musing on the irony that the corpse was dressed as a sokushinbutsu and wondering if Kenjaku or Tengen arranged it. Elsewhere, Kenjaku faces a television and asks his Kogane how many died from cursed technique removal for never entering a colony. Told sixty-one, he reflects on those unwilling to gamble their lives and those ready to die without hope, noting Hiromi Higuruma's added rule might have spared them, and says he is taking the matter up with Tengen.

At Jujutsu High, Gojo grieves that their school years left just three of them standing, himself plus Shoko and Ijichi, aside from Suguru who has not fully recovered. He recalls assuming Nanami would survive anything, and when Ijichi apologizes for outliving him, Gojo dismisses the idea that he would have traded his own life for Nanami's, urging Ijichi into his crucial duty. In the dojo, Mei Mei runs an online wager on the bout, profiting from looser post-Shibuya rules and earning billions through pay-per-view, thankful for her Black Bird Manipulation. Yuji throws Kusakabe in a judo spar and demands he get a grip on it, while Yuta and Toge resolve to hide Toge's injury from Yuji because Sukuna caused it. On December 24th in shattered Shinjuku, now a demon realm called Makyo, Kenjaku leaves to hunt the last Culling Game players, timed so Gojo cannot kill him and so Jujutsu High's main force will fall on Sukuna once he beats Gojo. As Gojo, stripped of his usual flippant manner, prepares to depart, Yuji stays fearless and tells him to drop the Infinity for a proper slap on the back. Gojo eases up, inviting all of them to strike his back, and the students see him off as he and Sukuna grin in anticipation.

This nineteen-page chapter came out May 15, 2023 in issue 24, opening the Shinjuku Showdown Arc and gathered into Volume 25, with Uraume and Sukuna on the cover. It marks Makyo Shinjuku as the battleground and confirms that Sukuna will stand in his sokushinbutsu mummy for the finger he lacks.