Considerations

Returned to his original body, Yuta is immediately called to account by Maki over his role in the raid. Their gathering shifts into a candid post-mortem of the battle against Sukuna and the snarled situation around the New Shadow Style. Threaded alongside the debrief, Mei Mei's stop at a plain candy shop hides a far grimmer errand.

Maki tears into Yuta, who pulled through by reconnecting with Rika, his outside vault of cursed techniques, once Kenjaku's recovered technique allowed his near-dead body to return. Kusakabe figures Kenjaku split his techniques via barrier methods so the brain transplant could keep running after a domain. He also clears the first-years, laying fault entirely on the adults, Gojo for sparing Yuji and Kenjaku for using him. Maki picks apart the raid's tactics, but Todo, Panda, and Higuruma each lay out why the alternate plans would have flopped, with Higuruma admitting that, since his own Deadly Sentencing bars violence, he opted to play the recording of Toge's voice within the domain Yuta cast. The group also grieves Choso, though Yuji maintains he would have died without Choso's sacrifice. The chapter's backbone is the New Shadow Style: Kusakabe relates that Simple Domain's creator Sadatsuna Ashiya tied the technique to the school's disciples, and that a curse-like clause supposedly lets the unknown head siphon their lifespans. Kusakabe reveals himself as the present head and says he has already dissolved the binding vows. In the framing thread, Mei Mei faces the elderly shopkeeper as the genuine former head, exposes a scheme to swell the disciple ranks and seize the jujutsu world, names Tengen as her informant, and claims the head's life as the price for endangering her brother.

Numbered 269 in the series, this chapter was collected into Volume 30 within the Shinjuku Showdown Arc, bearing the Japanese title Kentō. The author's note observes that, having never penned a final chapter, even the ending feels fresh, a sign of the series nearing its close. The installment rests heavily on dialogue, tying off several threads from the Sukuna battle while solving the long-running New Shadow Style riddle.