Time

An unprecedented menace in the form of Hanami presses down on the jujutsu students. The plan to keep the curse held at arm's length steadily collapses, forcing Megumi and his companions to take the special grade cursed spirit on face to face.

Slipping through the curtain ringed around the school, Utahime and Gakuganji feel the special grade curses inside, and Juzo descends the stairs to meet them, demanding Gojo's whereabouts. Gakuganji marks him as a genuinely skilled curse user. When Juzo grasps that fellow curse users played him for a fool, he hurls an insult at Utahime, declaring an old man's body holds less appeal to him as material than a woman's would. Offended, Gakuganji draws his electric guitar and squares up to fight in her stead. Elsewhere, Megumi, Noritoshi, and Toge bolt from the branch mass Hanami spawned. Toge calms his throat with cough syrup as Hanami flings wood spheres that abruptly sprout sharp spears; Toge freezes them with cursed speech, and Noritoshi follows with Convergence: Piercing Blood, a racing blood bullet that strikes Hanami's face and at last wounds him, to Megumi's surprise.

The group falls into a pattern of Toge pinning Hanami so the others can attack from a distance, but his cursed speech is weakening, and they know they urgently need Todo or another sorcerer. At the worst possible moment Toge's throat fails, letting Hanami stab Nue and slam Noritoshi into the dirt, and Megumi only just drags him out of the next volley of spheres. As Hanami advances, Toge steps forward as the upperclassman, fearlessly commanding the spirit to Blast Away, and the concussive force flings Hanami across the roof, though the strain drops Toge.

Recovering, Hanami senses Maki at his back and sneers that no such sword could cut him. Maki swings Miwa's blade and it breaks, then Megumi cleaves the branch inside Hanami's eye socket, the weak point he has deduced. Hanami admits the sword is strong, but Megumi answers by producing something better, the special grade cursed tool Playful Cloud, which Maki says feels off to her. Set at Tokyo Jujutsu High within the Kyoto Goodwill Event Arc, this chapter ends the trio's fight against Hanami and opens Megumi and Maki against him, adapting across the close of Episode 18 and into Episode 19.