Chapter Twenty-Three: The Special Grade Person
Masamichi Yaga. Director of Tokyo Jujutsu High.
The name carried weight, even in Obito's memory from a distant, safer life. It was a name attached to a formidable, stoic presence in the story.
In addition to being responsible for training many of the powerful characters in the anime series Jujutsu Kaisen and the manga as well.
The man was a cornerstone. A teacher of titans. A linchpin in the fragile, bloody world of jujutsu.
This terrifying person is the teacher of Geto Suguru in addition to Satoru Gojo.
He'd shaped the two most powerful sorcerers of the modern era, one who became the greatest hope, the other the greatest calamity. That alone spoke volumes about his capabilities and his burden.
These two, each one of them, were taught by this man.
Obito stood in the quiet, traditional office of Tokyo Jujutsu High. The room smelled of old wood, ink, and a faint, underlying scent of something earthy—probably the raw materials for cursed corpse creation.
—
Obito was now standing quietly in front of Director Yaga.
He stood at a respectful distance, his posture straight but not rigid, his hands at his sides. He felt small. The man behind the desk was a mountain of quiet intensity.
He looked at the man who had stopped doing anything and was staring at him quietly for a minute.
Yaga had been writing something when Obito entered. He'd put his brush down with a soft tap. Then, he'd simply looked. Not with hostility, but with a deep, penetrating assessment that felt like it was peeling back layers of skin and bone to examine the cursed energy circuits beneath. The silence stretched, filled only by the soft tick-tock of a wooden clock on the wall.
Finally, the man sighed and said:
The sigh was a low, rumbling sound from deep in his chest. It wasn't one of exasperation, but of weary resignation. The sigh of a man who had delivered this speech, or variations of it, too many times.
"Your condition was critical. But this matter always happens in the world of Jujutsu. Therefore, I can only say it's good you're alive."
His voice was a low, gravelly baritone, matching his imposing physique. It was matter-of-fact, stripped of unnecessary sentiment.
The man wasn't cruel; that was clear in both the anime and manga.
Obito clung to that knowledge. In the story, Yaga was stern, rigid, a disciplinarian, but he cared for his students. He wasn't a villain. He was a pillar, and pillars, by nature, are unyielding but supportive.
True, his appearance seemed harsh, with his dark look, his hair slicked back, and his obvious muscles for an older man.
He looked every bit the ex-special grade sorcerer turned administrator. His jaw was square, his eyes sharp and intelligent behind a stern expression. He wore a simple black suit that strained slightly at the shoulders. He was a man built for power, not for comfort.
Everything could have told Obito that the man in front of him might be bad.
Without meta-knowledge, the impression would be terrifying. This was the head of a school for monster hunters, a man who created autonomous cursed corpses. He radiated an aura of controlled, deadly potential.
But his knowledge of the manga made him know that this man, while indeed dangerous, was also kind to people and also possessed a very high classification in the Jujutsu world.
Special Grade. Not just in strength, but in his unique, foundational technique: Autonomous Cursed Corpses. He was a creator, an architect of pseudo-life. That put him in a league of his own.
—
The young man was silent while he said that; it seems he was the quiet type.
Yaga observed Obito's lack of response. The boy didn't fidget, didn't offer excuses or stories. He just stood there, taking in the words. Yaga misread the silence as innate temperament.
Perhaps surviving after facing a Grade One curse was certainly not luck.
In Yaga's experience, survivors of such encounters fell into two categories: the incredibly lucky (who usually died the next time) and the deceptively capable. He was trying to figure out which category this Zenin boy belonged to.
With a situation like this, it would be surprising if such a quiet person died.
Yaga's thought was a cold, professional deduction. Quiet ones often had hidden depths, a focused will. They weren't the loud, flashy types who burned out quickly. They endured.
Masamichi Yaga didn't realize that the calm Obito had was only because he knew the person in front of him was a good person.
Obito's calm was a performance, a shield held up by spoilers. Inside, his heart was a trapped bird fluttering against his ribs. But he knew, from the pages of a comic, that this man wouldn't hurt him without cause.
In addition to that, he was also in a state of relaxation a little after surviving; he was trying to calm himself.
The post-adrenaline crash, mixed with the lingering weakness from his month-long coma, created a strange, detached calm. He felt floaty, unreal. It made feigning composure easier.
He didn't want to be in a state of post-trauma after waking up after a month, and worse than all that was continuing with it, meaning he would gradually go insane.
He'd seen soldiers in movies, read about PTSD. The factory wasn't a memory; it was a phantom limb that still ached. If he started trembling now, started babbling, he might never stop. So he locked it down. Compartmentalized. Not here. Not now.*
He had to try to calm himself and ignore this terror that resided in his heart.
He focused on his breathing. In. Out. He focused on the grain of the wooden floorboards. He focused on the exact shape of Yaga's desk. Anything but the giant eye and the whirring blade-claws.
The experience of approaching death that was in that factory was still there, but he had to deal with it little by little.
It was a tumor in his mind. He couldn't cut it out yet. He could only try to build a wall around it and hope it didn't metastasize.
"You will stay only for a little while before returning to Kyoto."
Yaga's words broke the silence, returning to practical matters.
This means I won't stay for a long time. Obito concluded this meaning quietly.
His internal translator worked: You're a guest. A problem from another school. We patched you up. Now get out. It was a relief, in a way. The less time spent near the epicenter of the plot, the better.*
"That's because your condition was dangerous initially. You should stay for at least a week. During this time, you can rest, Obito Zenin."
Yaga's tone indicated the matter was not up for debate. It was a medical order wrapped in an administrative one.
(Rest is something I definitely want to get.)
He didn't say that directly, but bowed slightly.
"Thank you, Principal."
The bow was shallow, respectful, performed with the stiff awkwardness of someone whose body still didn't fully obey.
After that, Principal Yaga got up from his seat and went to Obito's side as if studying him.
The movement was sudden. One moment Yaga was behind his desk, a distant authority figure. The next, he was standing right in front of Obito, his massive frame blocking the light from the window. Creak—the floorboard protested under his weight.
Obito was surprised by this change in the principal's behavior.
He fought the instinct to step back. The proximity was intimidating. Yaga's dark eyes were scanning him up and close, not just his face, but his entire posture, the set of his shoulders, the way he held his hands.
But in truth, Principal Yaga felt there was something special about this young man.
It was a gut feeling, honed by decades of teaching and fighting. An anomaly sensor. This boy didn't feel right. Not in a cursed way, but in a… statistical way.
And the matter was simply due to his curiosity to verify that he was from the Zenin clan.
The Zenin name was a red flag, a marker of potential trouble, politics, and immense pressure. A Zenin without talent, according to the files, who had just survived a Grade One incident. The math didn't add up.
In addition to that, he didn't possess talent. However, according to the missions he had gone on, he had accomplished three Grade Two missions in a week.
Yaga had pulled the files. Mission One: Warehouse curse, Grade Two, success. Mission Two: Urban haunting, Grade Two, success. Mission Three: Osaka Factory… catastrophe, but survival noted. Three high-difficulty assignments in rapid succession for a supposed talentless Grade Three. The trajectory was… improbable.
True, the third of these missions was against a Grade One curse, but it was clear that either this young man possessed an incredible ability to avoid death, or he possessed the abilities to succeed.
Two possibilities, both intriguing. Was he a cockroach, surviving through sheer, dumb luck and the sacrifice of others? Or was there a hidden engine there, a cursed technique or a will that the initial assessments had missed?
The initial calm was something the principal appreciated.
Panic was a death sentence. Calm, even if it was shock or dissociation, was a better starting point for a sorcerer than hysteria.
In addition to that, he didn't examine him by asking about the reason for entering the Jujutsu world; he wasn't his student, but a student at Kyoto Academy.
Yaga had no jurisdiction over him, no right to probe his motivations. He was a guest, a patient. The questions stayed unasked, but they hung in the air between them.
But his interest was genuine. However, something else hindered this interest: this young man being from the Zenin family.
Zenin politics were a swamp. Getting involved was a headache Yaga didn't need. If the boy was a hidden asset, the Zenins would claim him. If he was a problem, they'd disavow him. Either way, Yaga's role was to stabilize him and send him back.
In addition, the information he had obtained said this young man was talentless.
The dossier was clear: Obito Zenin. Cursed Energy: Below Average. Innate Technique: None confirmed. Physical Prowess: Poor. Assessment: Low-potential asset. Recommended for support or administrative track. The words were a death sentence in the Jujutsu world.*
But the thing that greatly surprised Principal Yaga was that this young man's cursed energy was moving with great calm and high precision.
As Yaga stood close, he could feel it. Not a turbulent, leaking mess as one might expect from a traumatized, low-grade sorcerer. But a quiet, deep, controlled river flowing within the boy. It was steady. It was focused. It was the energy flow of someone with a refined, if not yet powerful, core.
The level of control could only be seen from Grade Two shamans.
Basic control for shamans is divided clearly. The people who enter this dangerous world are divided precisely by the council, and this division is known by many high-ranking shamans.
Basic control for shamans is divided clearly. The people who enter this dangerous world are divided precisely by the council, and this division is known by many high-ranking shamans.
Yaga knew the benchmarks. A Grade Four sorcerer might be able to coat a weapon. A Grade Three could reinforce their body consistently. A Grade Two exhibited fine control, able to channel energy to specific limbs or even project it with intent. What he was sensing from Obito, in a resting state, was Grade Two control. Not the output, but the quality of the flow.
The thing Yaga noticed was the time, in addition to the appearance of this young man.
Two weeks. That was the timeline from the boy's first recorded mission to the Osaka disaster. Two weeks to go from a 'talentless' newbie to someone with Grade Two energy control? Or… had he been pretending to be weak all this time?
It is important for every high-ranking person in the Jujutsu world to have many ways to find information.
Yaga had his sources. The Kyoshi trainer's reports (terse, unimpressed). The mission logs from Kasumi Miwa (professional, noting Obito's 'unexpected resilience'). The sensor readings from the Osaka barrier collapse (chaotic, but with three distinct, fleeing energy signatures). The pieces were there, but the picture was blurry.
—Two weeks to reach this rank? Or is he pretending to be weak all this time? Which one is it?
He didn't know, but in the end, he knew that this young man had reached the classification of his strength to Grade Two and might reach there with more training.
He didn't know, but in the end, he knew that this young man had reached the classification of his strength to Grade Two and might reach there with more training.
A reevaluation was in order. The label 'talentless' was clearly inaccurate. The boy had something. Whether it was a late-blooming technique, a unique trait, or simply a monstrous will to survive that refined cursed energy through sheer desperation, he had potential.
An additional thing he noticed was that the young man didn't possess a strong foundation in terms of physical skills; his body was weak, perhaps due to the coma for a month, but that wasn't important.
The weakness was temporary, a consequence of injury and inactivity. The body could be trained. Kyoshi's basics were there, crude but present. With proper conditioning, the physical vessel could match the refined energy within.
His body will develop in the future to become stronger.
That was Principal Yaga's assessment before returning to sit down.
—
For Obito, who was the focus of the principal's attention, he was frozen, looking at the principal's actions, which were precise observation of his body before he fell silent and returned to his seat and pointed to the door and said:
Yaga's intense scrutiny lasted another ten seconds. Then, as if satisfied with whatever he had gleaned, he gave a short, sharp nod, turned, and walked back to his desk. The floorboards creaked again under his weight. He sat down heavily, the chair groaning. He didn't look at Obito again, instead gesturing towards the office door with a thick finger.
"You may leave now. But make sure to improve your physical condition. That is my advice to you if you want to stay alive."
The advice was blunt, practical, and utterly devoid of sugar-coating. It was a mechanic telling a driver to fix their brakes before the next mountain pass.
Obito bowed and left the room.
He turned, the motion stiff, and walked out of the office, closing the wooden door behind him with a soft click. Only when he was in the empty hallway did he allow himself to exhale fully, a shuddering breath he hadn't realized he was holding.
And in two and a half minutes while running—not from fear, but due to the urge to rush to the training field—he finally arrived.
He didn't run in panic. He moved with a determined, quick stride, his still-weak legs carrying him through the serene hallways, out a side door, and onto the vast, empty training field he'd seen earlier. The gravel crunched under his shoes. Crunch-crunch-crunch. The sound was loud in the silent afternoon.
He sighed and let out a sound, "Ah," clearly from his lips, and then sat on the dirt ground.
He didn't collapse, but he lowered himself carefully, his back against a lone wooden post used for target practice. The dirt was cool and slightly damp. The physical exertion of the short walk and the mental strain of the meeting had drained him.
His black pants that he was wearing at this moment showed a mark of dirt, but Obito didn't care.
He brushed absently at the stain, but his mind was elsewhere, churning like a storm.
—Damn it. I felt like a lab rat. Even though I knew the person in front of me was a good person, after the factory incident, after seeing the actions of Kasumi and Mai, and the support team who were ready to lock up a group of three students even if they were wrong, assuming they were curses...
The thoughts tumbled out in a chaotic cascade. The cool professionalism of Kasumi willing to sacrifice the support team. Mai's raw, selfish will to live at any cost. Narumi Seto's terrified, protocol-driven decision to seal the barrier. None of them were 'evil' in a cartoonish sense. They were just people making horrible choices under horrible pressure.
He couldn't trust people in this world because he no longer trusted the perspective that a person could be good like what happens in fictional stories.
The fourth wall was not just broken; it was pulverized. This wasn't a story with clear heroes and villains. It was a world where 'good' people did terrible things to survive, and 'bad' people might have understandable reasons. It was all a murky, terrifying grey.
Even if he didn't want that at the beginning of his transfer, he felt as if he was inside a story with characters written to be evil and good.
His initial isekai mindset—I know the plot, I can navigate this—had been naïve. The plot was a skeleton. The flesh and blood were these complex, unpredictable, and deeply flawed human beings.
But here he realized there was a grey side. People would do unexpected things.
Yaga's intense, analytical stare hadn't been malicious, but it had been predatory in an intellectual sense. He was dissecting him, trying to understand an anomaly. It wasn't personal. It was professional curiosity mixed with a deep-seated caution born of a life fighting curses and managing powerful, unstable students.
There is no side that can be completely good.
Even Yaga, the 'good' principal, was a man who created autonomous cursed corpses from the souls of the dead, who had trained both a savior and a genocidal maniac. His morality was a complex, pragmatic thing.
Therefore, while the principal was looking at his body, Obito just wanted to leave the place.
The scrutiny had felt invasive. It was as if Yaga could see the ghost of the Sharingan in his neural pathways, the echoes of the factory's terror in his cursed energy flow. He'd wanted to be invisible.
His eyes, in addition to his body, were now not very confident, but staying with a Special Grade person known to be able to create dolls capable of producing cursed energy...
The thought triggered a chain reaction. A memory, buried under trauma and a month of coma, surfaced. A specific, horrifying piece of trivia from the manga.
In addition to that, he was a reader of the manga. He knew something that the Jujutsu council didn't know, and not even the man he talked to knew, because he remembered it now.
The memory was a bolt of lightning in his foggy mind.
Perhaps it was stupid, but when he was with the school principal, it was clear that his thoughts had returned to that scene where Masamichi Yaga died.
Chapter 143. Or was it 147? The details were hazy, but the core revelation was burned into his memory. Yaga's final moments, his confession to Yoshinobu gakuganji
—Obito remembered how the school principal said the ultimate secret that made him Special Grade.
The words, read once in a coffee shop in another life, echoed in his mind with perfect, terrifying clarity.
"Three corpses. Three souls. They must be similar. Placed as a core. Then they must be planted inside a cursed doll. And for three months, these souls must protect each other from corruption. If that happens, a doll capable of generating cursed energy automatically will be created."
The recipe for an Autonomous Cursed Corpse. The pinnacle of Yaga's technique. The secret he died to protect.
At this moment, Obito's breathing was very fast because he had discovered a secret that even the Jujutsu council didn't know this secret.
His chest tightened. He leaned forward, his hands gripping the cool dirt. Inhale… exhale… His breaths were shallow, rapid. He hadn't just met a character. He had been in the presence of a walking, talking cheat code to power. A forbidden, horrific cheat code, but a cheat code nonetheless.
But Obito, because he was a manga reader, finally remembered this terrifying secret.
The meta-knowledge was a double-edged sword. It gave him foresight, but it also burdened him with forbidden, dangerous truths. Knowing Yaga's secret was like holding a live grenade with the pin already pulled.
But he didn't feel fear after that. That mission and losing consciousness for a month gave him one thing he wanted to obtain.
The fear had been burned away in the factory, replaced by a colder, harder substance: determination. A desperate, clawing need for agency.
—I want to become stronger so I can succeed.—
The thought was simple, primal. Survival was not enough. Survival was luck. Success was power. Power was control.
Death in this world is more brutal than any death in this world.
He'd tasted its breath. It wasn't clean. It was messy, painful, and accompanied by the screams of digested curses. It was the whir of blade-arms and the crushing weight of a concrete ceiling.
It must be pointed out that the strongest person in the world, Satoru Gojo, died at less than thirty years old.
Even the invincible could fall. The narrative offered no guarantees. Plot armor was a lie he could no longer afford to believe in.
For Obito at this moment, is he at the same level as the strongest shamans in this world? The answer simply was no.
The gulf was astronomical. He was a speck of dust floating in the hurricane that was Gojo, Geto, Sukuna.
Escape. Was it possible?
The old fantasy resurfaced. Run away. Leave Japan. Go somewhere without curses, without clans, without death missions.
This was true, but would that be enough? Then where would he escape to? There were no connections.
He was a foreign soul in a borrowed body with a target on his back (the Zenin name, Mai's potential death, Maki's future wrath). He had no money, no papers, no identity outside the Jujutsu system.
In addition to that, everyone here wasn't characters inclined toward good and evil, but grey characters who could stab you in the back if they thought they could gain something.
He couldn't trust anyone to help him disappear. Not Shoko (too busy, too tied to the system). Not Yaga (too loyal to the school and the broader order). Certainly not the Zenins. He was alone.
There is no honest person, and he didn't know any character like that from the original story.
Every major character had an agenda, a trauma, a flaw that made them unreliable as a savior for a random coward from another world.
Searching for such a character for help in traveling to another country was just a very stupid idea, even for Obito, who wasn't smart from the start, but was just an ordinary person.
He acknowledged his own limitations. He wasn't a master strategist. He was a former office worker with good memory for manga trivia and a newly awakened survival instinct. Grand escape plans were beyond him.
—Therefore, the only thing that can help me is to become stronger.—
The conclusion was inescapable. It was the only variable he could control. His strength. His power.
The cursed doll that can generate cursed energy... its requirements are very precise but at the same time harsh.
Yaga's secret technique. A self-sustaining engine of cursed energy. A battery. A potential source of power that didn't rely on his own, still-limited reserves.
It needs three souls in addition to a doll's body, and finally, the conditions must be met to produce cursed energy.
Three similar souls. A vessel. Three months of symbiotic protection against corruption. The requirements were monstrous. They involved death, manipulation of souls, a violation of natural order.
These things were the requirements of the mission for this technique to work, and it doesn't require you to be skilled as much as it requires you to meet the conditions.
That was the key. It wasn't about raw power or genius. It was about fulfilling a specific, arcane formula. It was a puzzle. A horrific, ethical abyss of a puzzle.
And with the Sharingan eyes that can see cursed energy and even the compatibility between souls in a moment...
A terrible, thrilling idea sparked. The Sharingan's advanced perception could see souls, their energy signatures. Could it identify 'similar' souls? Could it monitor the 'protection from corruption' process? It was a tool perfectly suited for the darkest kind of craftsmanship.
Obito stopped as if he felt he was walking on a wrong path.
The thought felt slimy, evil. It was the kind of thing the villains in the manga would do. Manipulating souls? Using the dead as components?
But at the same time, his body was trembling as if telling him that might be bad.
A visceral revulsion shook him. This wasn't him. This wasn't the person who just wanted to read manga and live a quiet life. This was something else. Something born in the factory's darkness.
Nevertheless, it was Obito's mind, which allowed him to survive throughout that place where he almost died, that advised him with one piece of advice:
The part of his mind that had calculated the odds, that had pushed him to save Kasumi to avoid Maki's wrath, that had coldly suggested helping the curse break the barrier—that pragmatic, ruthless survivor spoke now.
—Don't worry. Just be stronger.—
The advice was an amoral mantra. It bypassed good and evil. It spoke only to cause and effect. Strength equals survival. The method is irrelevant. The cost is negotiable.
Inside the private room of the Tokyo Academy principal, Masamichi Yaga was unaware of Obito's thoughts, who was in the training field.
Yaga was now reviewing a budget report for cursed tool maintenance, his brush moving steadily. He had filed Obito Zenin under 'Promising Anomaly, Requires Observation.' A note to be passed to the Kyoto principal. His part was done.
If he had done so, he would have rushed there and killed him.
If Yaga could have read the boy's mind, seen the way his secret—his life's work, his burden, his sin—was being dissected and considered as a potential shortcut to power by a traumatized teenager, he would have reacted with swift, terrifying violence. The secret of the autonomous cursed corpses was not just a technique; it was a responsibility, a danger he guarded with his life.
Yaga had risked his life so that his discovered technique would not fall into the wrong hands.
He had fought, bargained, and hidden the full truth to prevent it from being misused. It was knowledge that could destabilize the fragile balance of the Jujutsu world.
But he didn't realize that he had revealed it during the conversation in the manga.
In his final, desperate moments in the story, he entrusted it to Yoshinobu Gakuganji, hoping it was the punishment he deserved for knowing such a dangerous secret but never daring to reveal it because of the enormity of the sin and the tragedy. He had no idea that this conversation had been immortalized in ink and paper, read by millions, including a lost soul now trapped in his world.
He didn't realize that his final moment was just a blank white and black page in a manga written by an author that Obito had seen in his previous life.
The irony was cosmic and cruel. Yaga's greatest secret, the core of his identity as a Special Grade, was just a plot point in a weekly serialization. And that plot point was now a seed of terrible possibility in the mind of a boy who knew too much.
Obito sat in the dirt, the sun warming his back.
The trembling subsided, replaced by a cold, hard resolve.
The path was wrong. It was dark. It was everything he used to fear.
But it was a path.
And in a world designed to kill him, any path that led away from death started to look like a road worth walking.
He looked at his hands. They were still weak, still marked with the ghosts of injuries.
But in his mind, a blueprint had been opened.
A forbidden blueprint.
He didn't know if he had the stomach for it. He didn't know if he could cross that line.
But he knew one thing: he was going to find out.
He pushed himself to his feet, brushing the dirt from his pants.
The training field was still empty. The sun was still shining.
But for Obito Zenin, the world had just gotten a little darker, and a lot more clear.
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End of Chapter.
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