Heading South

Gojo finds himself reunited with the friends who fell before him, just as the clash between the two strongest reaches its devastating close.

Felled by Sukuna, Gojo's consciousness surfaces in a dreamlike limbo built like an airport. The first face to meet him is Geto's, both of them appearing in their student-era forms. Gojo grumbles over dying, wishing it were merely a dream, and worries about never telling Megumi about his father before recalling he left that to Shoko. Pressed on the fight, he concedes Sukuna was monstrously powerful and that even discounting the Ten Shadows Technique victory was uncertain. Pity wells up for the King of Curses, who knows the same loneliness that trails unmatched strength; his sole regret is that Sukuna never got to cut loose and find that fulfillment, and that Geto was absent to clap his shoulder at the finish.

Nanami and Haibara turn up and needle him over the samurai-like talk. As Nanami puts it, since self-satisfaction had always steered Gojo's every choice, the others could never simply dump the whole burden on him, yet he grants it a fitting send-off. He passes on Mei Mei's old counsel, that one heads north to be reborn anew and south to return to who one was, admitting he chose south from attachment to the past and feeling the irony of dying for the future. Yaga is present too, and Gojo ribs him about the maxim that no sorcerer passes without regret, judging himself a plain exception. In reality, Sukuna has cleaved Gojo in two with a Dismantle aimed at the world itself, achieved by modeling Mahoraga's adaptation to stretch his cursed technique beyond Infinity. Refusing to gloat, he names Gojo a magnificent foe he will never forget. The instant Gojo dies, the next challenger advances without pause: Hajime Kashimo, hailed as the God of Lightning, charging toward all but certain death.

Numbered two hundred thirty-six within Gege Akutami's series Jujutsu Kaisen, this entry sits in the Shinjuku Showdown Arc. Weekly Shonen Jump published it in issue 43 of 2023 on September 25, it was afterward gathered into Volume 26, and it fills nineteen pages. The chapter brings the Satoru Gojo vs. Sukuna fight to a formal end with Gojo's death and his peaceful goodbye among the fallen.