It's Like That

The chapter lays out the promotion path: a candidate backed by two or more grade 1 sorcerers shadows a different grade 1 on several missions, and depending on those results earns provisional semi-grade 1 status along with a solo assignment that decides the final ruling. Over a game of ping pong, Aoi tells Mei Mei he expects Yuji to take the recommendation and chase missions in hopes of running into Sukuna's fingers. Aoi imagines partnering with Yuji himself, but Mei Mei delivers the gut punch that the person who recommended a sorcerer cannot be the same one who accompanies him. The revelation crushes Aoi and lets Mei Mei close out the match and walk off.

In Tokyo, Ijichi drives Megumi home while Yuji heads to a movie and Nobara goes shopping for designer clothes. Out in town she crosses paths with Yuko Ozawa, who shows her a junior high graduation photo of a much heavier Yuko standing beside Yuji. On that day Yuko had worked up the nerve to ask him for a picture, and she more or less confesses to Nobara that she has a crush on him. Curious, Nobara calls Ijichi to bring Megumi over, then denies any feelings of her own toward Yuji. Megumi arrives grumpy, gets the situation explained, and offers that Yuji probably has no girlfriend given how he relocated from Sendai and keeps posters of girls in his room. When Yuko asks Yuji's type, Megumi recalls him mentioning tall girls.

Convinced Yuko fits the description, she and Nobara summon Yuji to the diner, and he turns up fast. Yuko doubts he will remember her, but he recognizes her instantly. She recalls once overhearing him tell other boys that she was the girl he liked most, praising how gracefully she carried herself despite being teased for her weight. Yuko cherishes that he saw worth in her she had not seen in herself, yet now fears she is being just as shallow as everyone who judged her, so the group leaves without revealing the truth to Yuji. Nobara still got the contact info, and the prospect of Yuji landing a relationship before her annoys her regardless. This installment, like Chapter 27, writes its Japanese title entirely in hiragana, and it corresponds to the anime's thirtieth episode.