Accomplices

Once the Death Painting clash is over, Yuji turns to Nobara to be sure she is unharmed. She brushes it off, scarred left arm and lingering poison and all, musing about whether Shoko will be sober enough to mend her, and then catches Yuji behaving oddly. He wants to know if killing rather than exorcising was new to her; he himself had crossed that line earlier against the transfigured humans, though she carries little guilt about it. Sorcerers, in her view, must answer to a code of their own. Yuji grasps why the brothers had to die, yet the image of Eso sobbing over his fallen sibling sticks with him. He acknowledges that a life ended and grief followed, and on that point Nobara concedes the label fits: the two of them are accomplices.

Back beneath the bridge, the two discover Megumi looking unconscious, which alarms them until he stirs and thanks them for pulling through, drawing an exasperated earful for the fright. He had been minding a finger that demands quick sealing. Nobara wants to ring Akari, whereas Yuji proposes swallowing the relic outright, a notion both shoot down given the unknown ceiling on how many he can safely take in. Since Yuji seems the least drained, Megumi passes him the finger, but Sukuna opens a mouth across Yuji's palm and gulps it down without permission. Furious that the King of Curses contributed nothing, Yuji concludes that Gojo's promise about Sukuna sniffing out further fingers was empty.

Two days afterward, Gojo phones Utahime for an update on the mole hunt while bragging about his students; she has cleared no one but the students themselves and vows to keep probing. He then slides Mei Mei a check worth ten million yen for an unrelated job. Privately, Megumi confides to Nobara that Sukuna's incarnation tripped the Yasohachi Bridge curse and begs her to keep it from Yuji, even as Sukuna mocks Yuji over the carnage and Yuji orders him to stay silent toward Megumi. Meanwhile, Aoi Todo and Mei Mei sit down with Kyoto's principal Gakuganji, who explains that grade 1 sorcerers carry the standard of the elite, then receives their petition: that Yuji, Megumi, Nobara, Maki, and Panda all be raised to grade 1. The installment corresponds to the twenty-fourth anime episode.