Chapter 77

Premature Death, Part 2 (－－) is the seventy-seventh chapter of Gege Akutami's Jujutsu Kaisen.

Summary
Suguru meets Yuki Tsukumo, the third special grade sorcerer. She teaches Suguru even more about how they can combat curses. However, he allows this to twist his morality and has to make a choice on how he feels toward non-sorcerers.

Plot Details
A woman walks into the room with Suguru and Haibara to ask them what kind of girl's they're into. Suguru questions her identity while Haibara answers and claims that he can tell she's not a bad person. He leaves Suguru and the woman alone shortly after. She introduces herself as the special grade sorcerer, Yuki Tsukumo. Suguru learned about her as the special grade who doesn't take on missions and bums around overseas.

Yuki explains that while Jujutsu High treats the symptoms while she wants to get to the root cause of curses. This results in a bit of tension between the two parties because they don't see eye to eye. Suguru is confused by what she means by root cause so she explains that she desires a world where curses don't exist. She asks him what are curses and Suguru is able to explain that curses are born from negative energy that leak from humans. Since this is the case, there are only two ways to create a world where cursed spirits don't exist.

They must eradicate cursed energy from all of humans entirely or teach humans to control it. Toji Zenin was a model case for the former. He was the only person Yuki found all over the world that possessed no cursed energy at all. His heavenly restriction granted him enhanced senses as well as the ability to resist curses. He was truly a superhuman and Yuki tells Suguru there is no shame to losing to someone as powerful as he was. Yuki wanted to research him but he refused her.

Cases of heavenly restriction are scarce so Yuki decides to focus on the latter option for eradicating curses. Yuki informs Suguru that other than cases where sorcerers die and become curses, sorcerers cannot give rise to curses. Cursed energy does not leak from sorcerers at nearly the same rate as non-sorcerers. This is due to the difference in the amount of cursed energy sorcerers use and how it flows while being contained within their bodies. In a general sense, if every human became a sorcerer it would be impossible for curses to exist.

Shocked and still haunted by the followers of the star, Suguru asks Yuki why they shouldn't just kill every non-sorcerer. He snaps out of it right after and Yuki gives him a serious reply. Weeding out non-sorcerers to force evolution might be the easiest route, but its also the craziest. She asks Suguru if he hates non-sorcerers and he's unable to give an answer.

Suguru used to believe sorcerers existed to protect non-sorcerers but now he doesn't know if humanity is worth fighting for. Yuki confirms that Suguru must choose between looking down and non-sorcerers and resisting that feeling before getting on her bike to leave. Before heading out on her motorcycle, Yuki says she'd like the three special grades to get along and reveals that Master Tengen stabilized.

Sometime later, Suguru and Kento are in the morgue mourning Haibara's death. Kento believed it was supposed to be a simple mission to take out a grade 2 cursed spirit. However, in the far off area they traveled to, the curse was the subject of a guardian deity's religion. As the deity of that area it became more powerful and should have been a grade 1. Suguru tells Kento to get some rest and assures him that Satoru will complete the mission. Kento says that Satoru should take on every mission alone from now on.

This makes Suguru think about how begin a sorcerer is like running a marathon. The finish line is too unclear and there's nothing at the end of the road but a mountain of fellow sorcerer's dead corpses. Next month in September, Suguru is sent on a mission to investigate a village where a cursed spirit had been kidnapping people and causing abnormal deaths. Suguru is able to exorcise the curse but ends up finding two young girls who have been beaten and caged.

Suguru tries to tell them that they are not the cause of this incident but the non-sorcerers call them monsters like their parents who should have died at birth. Having heard enough, Suguru unleashes his cursed spirits on the people and accepts his true feelings. Suguru murders one hundred and twelve non-sorcerers and fled afterward.

The original target of this mission, the cursed spirit that had been plaguing the village was thought to be the culprit after all the people were found dead. However, further investigation revealed the residuals from Suguru's curse manipulation technique.

Locations

 * Tokyo Jujutsu High
 * Unspecified Cursed Village