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There were rumblings of change rippling through the Jujutsu world. Gojo could see it in the hushed whispers of his mentors, in the harried steps of Principal Yaga as he strode through the hallowed corridors of the school. There was an anxious tension in the air, and he knew that the more it bowed, the closer it was to breaking. He could see that most of the sorcerers around him were nervous; it didn’t take the Six Eyes to notice how high-strung their shoulders were and how clipped their voices sounded. But Gojo was not nervous; no, he was excited.Something significant was on the horizon, something that threatened the very fabric of existence, and Gojo was so excited he could taste it.He mused how he related to the Greek Gods far more than he should. Gojo, already at the top of the world at just sixteen, could relate to their divine isolation. The view from Mount Olympus was a beautiful but lonely one. He yearned - an insatiable, unquenchable hunger - for someone to come along to meet him on his level. He understood why Zeus was so cruel; Gojo was halfway to inciting violence himself for the sheer relief of some entertainment. – “The Star Plasma vessel is missing?”Gojo leaned back in his chair, his too-long adolescent limbs sprawling across his desk. Geto laized next to him, his chin resting in his palms with disinterest.Principal Yaga’s face was stern, more so than usual. He nodded.“She dead?” Geto drawled.If possible, Yaga’s face twisted even further. “What must I do to get it through those thick skulls of yours that this is important? If Master Tengen remains without a suitable vessel then-”“It would spell catastrophe for the world. Yes, you’ve said,” Geto finished for him, rolling his eyes. “It was a genuine question. She dead?”Yaga let out a weary sigh, his fingers pressing against the bridge of his nose. “We don’t know.”“Thought you said she had protection?” Gojo chimed in.Yaga shot Gojo a withering look. “Your next mission was to be her protection. Obviously, I was too late in assigning it.”Gojo kicked his chair forward again with a rasping scrape on the aged classroom floor. “Shame,” He drawled, “Missing out on playing babysitter to a brat. Real shame.”Next to him, Geto scoffed, and Yaga’s face transformed from stern to thunderous. “Listen, this is not something to joke about. This is-”“Important, we got it already, old man.”“Do we know who got to her? If she is, in fact, dead.” Geto asked.Yaga bristled slightly. “We also don’t know,” He admitted, an undertone of indignant embarrassment in his voice as he steadfastly refused to meet their gaze. “Initially, our prime suspects were either ‘Q’ or the ‘Time Vessel Association.’”“Okay. So, they’ve been ruled out why?”Yaga’s mouth thinned. “All members of both organisations have since been found dead or otherwise out of commission completely.”“Do we know who got them?”“No.” – Gojo was the one to meet Itadori first.Before Gojo seized him and hauled him back to Jujutsu Tech, forcing Yaga to enroll him as a student, before he became his reluctant classmate and uneasy friend, Itadori seemed to be nothing more than a wandering vagrant.The impending tidal wave that the Jujutsu world had feared was beginning to break. The advent of this mysterious, looming threat was heralded by an unprecedented surge in curses.Gojo felt disappointed, as he effortlessly beat back the onslaught, at the thought that this was all that it would be. They were low-level - middling at first grade, born from the trite fears of stage fright, being lost without a phone, the screams of red foxes in the night, and their ilk. The faint surprise of a few being verbal was quickly deflated when all they could conjure was a melange of slurred, incoherent nonsense.The sickening stench of blood filtered through the alleyway streets as Gojo cleaved clean through another curse. A pitiful thing, disjointed, almost human-like if not for the mottled, ill-blue hue of its distorted skin and severed bones. It let out a garbled cry before the exorcism stole its voice and it crumpled gracelessly to the ground.Gojo could feel the looming presence of another ill-fated curse closing in behind him - obviously, not one of intelligence if it believed it could defeat him.Before Gojo could even outstretch his hand, the wet crunch of broken bones stopped him in his tracks.He turned slowly. His Six Eyes told him of his presence before he laid eyes on him. There was a boy standing at the opposite end of the alleyway, the dissolving remnants of the curse clutched in his scarred, bloodstained hands.He was young, Gojo’s age, if he had to guess, but far shorter. He was slim, his oversized hoodie - white, with a black zippered turtleneck - was loose on his frame, but Gojo could see the broadness of his shoulders hidden underneath. There was something in the way he held himself, his fists clenched, back straight, and eyes burning, that told Gojo that he was not to be underestimated.Gojo couldn’t help the smile that slipped onto his face. His senses were screaming at him, blood it called, Murderer. Monster. Wretched devil. For a second, Gojo almost agreed. There was blood splattered across his cheek, how much of it was his own and how much from the curses he couldn’t tell in the slowly fading daylight. Beneath the blood and filth, Gojo could see the makings of two jagged scars arcing across the boy’s face, one over his left eye, the other carving a Glasgow smile into the right side of his face. Gojo knew that mere appearance did not make man a monster, no, it was the blazing fire in the boy’s brown eyes that sent a shiver down his spine.His first thought was that he was a Curse User. His stance could easily be read with malintent, but then he gave Gojo a silent nod and launched himself at the oncoming horde.The boy’s fist collided with the face of a curse, and Gojo realised with a slight sense of awe, as a blinding pulse of black, red, then white surged from his fist, that the boy had used Black Flash. Space distorted around the curse’s body - a bulbous creature with too many eyes and the raw-boned wings of a fly - before it constricted in on itself like an implosion. The curse disappeared into nothing, leaving only an obscene, wet stain of blood on the concrete ground.Gojo’s smile widened.He launched after him, the boy carving a clean path through the swarm of curses for Gojo to follow. Where Gojo took a laid-back approach to the art of exorcism, his powers too haughty to waste on low-level cannon fodder, this boy seemed to take on each curse like they’d personally wronged him. There was little grace to his movements, more brute force than decided attacks, but they were effective.Sure, Gojo could have finished the curses off quicker, but he didn’t let that detract from the spectacle of this mysterious boy whipping and cutting through the swarm until none remained.For all that it was clear that the boy knew what he was doing, Gojo was certain he was not an inducted jujutsu sorcerer. There was no way he could pass under Gojo’s radar if he was formally a part of their world. Such power would not have gone unnoticed.The last curse disintegrated in the boy’s hand, and Gojo stood just a few feet away to admire his handiwork.“Impressive stuff,” He whistled.The boy’s head jerked a little at his voice, as if he’d forgotten that Gojo had been there at all. That, or he was surprised that he’d stuck around.The boy wiped the blood on his hands onto the back of his trousers, his head ducking so his hair covered his eyes. “Thank you.”“Black Flash, too. You sure are skilled.” Gojo shoved his hands in his pockets as he stalked forward.He may be interested in the boy and his abilities, and he may have been silently reveling in the taste of danger he presented, but Gojo knew he still had responsibilities to uphold. This boy was an unidentified, and seemingly incredibly powerful, sorcerer. He could not allow him to go unchecked.Gojo stood tall, his back stretched to loom over the boy. He peered beneath his glasses to pierce him with a calculating glare, and was surprised to see the boy unshaken.Instead, the boy looked up to meet Gojo’s stare, then looked back down at his bloodstained hands. “Yeah,” He rasped, his voice far softer than Gojo had anticipated, “It was probably too much for a curse that weak, but I-”“Can’t help but show off?”The boy blinked. “What? Oh, no, nothing like that. I’m just- It’s been a while since I’ve had to deal with something so weak.”Gojo raised his eyebrows. Curiosity welled up in his chest. “What’s your name?”There was a flash of something hurt in the boy’s eyes, but it disappeared so quickly that Gojo could have believed he’d hallucinated it.“Yuuji Itadori.”“Itadori, huh?” Gojo hummed. “How old are you?” A plan was already formulating in his mind.Itadori shuffled on the balls of his feet, his mouth opening and then closing as he took far too long to answer. “Sixteen,” He said eventually, but even he didn’t seem convinced of his own answer.The curiosity was now fit to burst. He could feel the desire to ask so many more questions clawing at the back of his throat. His Six Eyes told him that Itadori was lying, but couldn’t pinpoint what about. Was it his name or his age? Or, perhaps, was the defenseless stance and placid expression on his face just a façade?Itadori’s eyes were darting from Gojo to the city streets beyond him. There was a nervous tension bubbling beneath the boy’s skin. Gojo could spot cornered prey from a mile away. Itadori was far from defenseless, he’d seen him in action just minutes before, but even wild hyenas, snapping and frothing at the mouth, must watch their backs for prowling lions.Gojo stepped forward and Itadori stepped back. He didn’t cower, but it was clear he was looking for an escape.“Now, Itadori, would you mind coming with me for a walk?” Gojo snapped his hand forward before Itadori had a chance to run. He disabled infinity so the boy could feel the heavy grip of his hand bruising his shoulder in its entirety. He smiled. “I believe we have much to discuss.” – There was a before and an after. Clear cut and dry. The fear that gripped the Jujutsu world was not unfounded. It was not a phobia, some irrational dread that spread like folie à deux.The fear was borne from the ‘incident’.Gojo remembered it with startling clarity. The world had seemed to grow silent for a second. The day - the 24th of December, a fresh, Winter’s morning - seemed to freeze in time. The wind suspended, the birds hushed in their trees, and for all of a minute, the air was sucked from his chest. And then, in a startling cacophony, it erupted.The force brought even Gojo to his knees. It was an explosion, like an atomic bomb detonating right by his ears. The ground rippled and swayed beneath his feet, the earth trembling as it strained to hold itself together beneath some invisible, indomitable weight. Static filled his ears and sweat formed a thin sheen on his brow as he fought against the gravity that pinned him down.The classroom walls groaned as the old Jujutsu Tech building shuddered and tilted. His hands clawed to find purchase on the polished wooden floorboards, but the sweat slicking his palms left him scrambling. His vision blurred as his lungs constricted and screamed for air.And then, just as quickly as it had descended, the weight disappeared.Breath rushed his lungs with such force that black spots formed behind his eyes. His head grew light and dizzy as time slammed back into its rightful place.He drew his eyes up to meet Geto’s, finding a perverse sort of comfort in seeing the pale and ailing countenance of his classmate. Shoko was unconscious just a few feet away, her hair spilling like wet ink across the floor. Whatever had just transpired had affected them all.Chaos erupted from beyond the classroom windows as the world reeled from the blast. Sirens blared, children screamed, and their harrowed cries pierced his aching temples.He chanced a glance up at the clock, and he felt his heart skip a beat in his chest.The minute hand had not moved, the second hand stuttered in place before ticking on. Either the clock was broken, or time had, in fact, stopped moving. – The normal, waking world had passed the ‘incident’ off as a particularly bad earthquake. The Jujutsu World knew better. They saw it for what it truly was: an Omen. – Gojo laid his arm across Itadori’s shoulder, leaning just enough of his weight on him for it to feel like intimidation.He couldn’t tell whether he wanted Itadori to be on their side or not. His curiosity gnawed at him, hollowing an aching void in his chest, and he knew he wouldn’t find answers if he had to fight him. However, a different, more vicious side of him craved a fight. He had no real rationale behind his speculation, but he couldn’t fight back the notion forming in the back of his mind; Itadori might be the cataclysm that the Jujutsu world had feared. If he wasn’t the end himself, then he stood at its epicentre, either the harbinger of its arrival or the catalyst of its collapse.Whatever the ends, Gojo knew he could not let Itadori out of his sight.“So,” Gojo drawled, leaning in to invade Itadori’s personal space. “Who do you fight for, Itadori?”“What?”“Who’s side are you on? It’s a simple question. Can I trust you?”The question seemed to spark something in Itadori’s resolve. His face hardened, and he leveled Gojo with an unyielding gaze. “I don’t fight for the curses. I want to eradicate them, to the very last one. Until they can’t hurt anyone anymore.”“Big words,” Gojo whistled. “With such determination, I have to wonder why you’ve never shown your face before.”Itadori swallowed audibly, stammering. “I- I’m new.”“New?” Gojo repeated. He meant to encourage further explanation, but got nothing. Itadori clammed up and refused to say more. Gojo shrugged, knowing he’d get more time to interrogate later.He steered Itadori away from the city paths, Itadori’s feet stumbling slightly at the sudden diversion. He didn’t question where Gojo was taking him, which added another oddity to the ever-growing pile of unanswered questions Gojo was compiling.Even as they wound their way out to the suburbs and up the great, winding path toward the mountains, Itadori stayed silent. For all Itadori knew, Gojo could be kidnapping him in broad daylight, and yet still the boy said nothing. There was only one destination this direction, and Gojo had to wonder if Itadori already knew where he was headed. – “Oi! I’ve got a present for you!”Gojo’s voice was loud in the hushed ambiance of Principal Yaga’s office. Gojo kicked open the double doors with one foot, dragging Itadori in behind him as he stepped through.The walls of the office, adorned with intricately woven bamboo paneling and soft, glowing shoji paper lanterns, shook with the force of his arrival. Gojo could, if he chose to, float through the world like a butterfly, the perception of his feet touching ground a mere illusion. Yet, he much preferred barrelling through like an unbroken bull from its pen, especially if doing so could rile up Principal Yaga.Yaga was sat at the far end of the office, behind the massive antique desk that sprawled across the back wall. He frowned at the disruption of Gojo’s arrival, and Gojo drank in the reaction like fine wine. He couldn’t deny his respect for Yaga; in fact, Yaga had played the father figure in his life than anyone in his actual bloodline. But, this just meant that he could act a brat, just as any real son would do.Before Yaga could question, Gojo pushed Itadori forward. “A present,” He offered as his only explanation.Yaga stood from his desk slowly, before stalking over to meet the two at the centre of the room. The annoyance in his expression melted to exasperation as his eyes landed on Itadori as he shuffled awkwardly under the scrutiny. “Who have you dragged in now, Gojo? And pray tell, why?”Gojo gave Itadori a shove to the shoulder.“I’m Itadori Yuuji,” Itadori said, bowing deeply.Yaga raised his eyebrow at the easy sign of respect. “One question down, you still haven’t answered the second.”Gojo smiled. “I was getting kind of bored of the same company. Thought a fourth classmate might liven the atmosphere.”“You dragged a random boy here under the assumption that I’d just let him in?”“Well, I had hope.”“Hope in what? That I’d acquiesce to your whims?”Gojo walked over to pat Itadori on the shoulder. “Nah, that you’d see the same potential that I did.”Gojo watched as the first glimmer of interest flickered in Yaga’s eyes.“You see,” Gojo continued, “I found Itadori exorcising some curses before I could get to them. He was pretty damn good,” He locked eyes with Yaga, “He can even pull off Black Flash.”Yaga’s lips thinned. He had taken Gojo’s bait, now all he had to do was reel him in.“And, well, with how everyone's been feeling lately, a strong sorcerer appearing so suddenly,” He hoped the look he gave Yaga conveyed all that he was trying to imply with his words, “I thought, it couldn’t just be a coincidence.”Blessedly, Yaga seemed to pick up on what he was putting down. “Okay,” He hummed. “Itadori Yuuji, did you say?”“Yes, sir,” Itadori bowed again.“Is it true, what Gojo says? That you’re a jujutsu sorcerer?”Itadori nodded.“And yet, I don’t recognise you from any of our schools or major families.”“No, sir.”“So, how did you learn?”Itadori’s whole body tensed. “I had a teacher,”“And where is that teacher now?”“He-” Itadori stuttered, “He died,” He answered quietly.Itadori’s gaze bore holes in the floorboards, but his mind clearly drifted.Yaga cleared his throat, and Itadori seemed to blink and return to himself. “And do you wish to continue your studies?”Gojo knew that Yaga’s question was a rhetorical one, the illusion of choice just a smokescreen. Now that Itadori’s presence was known, there was no way that he would be allowed to roam free.Itadori chewed on his lower lip, his brow furrowed in thought.Gojo saw a walking contradiction in everything Itadori did. He boldly jumped into the fight against the curses that had swarmed Gojo earlier, only to appear ready to flee as soon as Gojo acknowledged his presence. He offered no resistance when Gojo dragged him to Jujutsu Tech, yet now, he seemed uncomfortable with the idea of staying.“I wish to continue.”Yaga folded his arms over his chest, Itadori’s discomfort not lost on him. “You seem uncertain?”Itadori blinked. He shook his head. “No, sorry, it’s just- please, I want to stay. Please, let me fight.”Yaga raised an eyebrow. “And what do you fight for, Itadori Yuuji? Why should I let you study here?”Despite the provocation, Itadori seemed to relax into the line of questioning. As if this was more what he had been expecting.“This is something only I can do. My reasons for fighting are selfish. There are things I must atone for, and the only way for me to do that is to fight.”“Fighting for vengeance is a death wish. There is too fine a line between self-divination and self-sacrifice. If that’s your sole purpose, you will die with regrets.”“It’s not vengeance. This is repentance.”Yaga raised an eyebrow. “And what have you done that is so wrong you need to repent?”The faraway gaze returned to Itadori’s eyes and he didn’t respond. Yaga waited, but the silence persisted.When it became clear Itadori would not answer, Yaga sighed.Gojo flickered his gaze from Yaga to Itadori, who was still lost staring out into the middle distance, and back again.“Show him to the dorms, Gojo,” Yaga announced. He strode forward, leaning close to Gojo’s ear as he passed. “Keep a close eye on him.”Gojo smiled. He didn’t need to be asked. He wouldn’t dream of letting Itadori out of his grasp now that he had him.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
There was a before and an after.Clear cut and dry.A juncture in the continuum of the world, the advent of a singular force that would redefine the very essence of the Jujutsu world.December 7th. Gojo Satoru was born, and the cosmos seemed to bend to his talents. Time paused, reality shifted, and the world continued to turn but emerged profoundly transformed.There was a before and an after. The presence of the Six Eyes changed the balance of the world. The scales tipped irrevocably in favour of the humans, and the universe had to fight to restore the equilibrium.December 24th. Gojo Satoru died.There was a before, but there was no after.So changed was the world to his presence that it could not be sustained without him. – “Man, wipe that grin off your face. It’s creepy,” Shoko groaned, poking incessantly at Gojo’s cheek with the rubbered end of her pencil.“You’ve been in an unusually good mood all morning,” Geto agreed, “Shoko’s right. It’s creepy.”Gojo waved them both off, rolling his eyes as he tipped himself back in his chair.“Can’t I just be happy? Is that a crime?”“Yes,” Shoko deadpanned. “You’re plotting something. There is no other explanation.”Gojo’s eyes strayed to the closed classroom door and then to the slowly ticking clock just above it. 8:40 AM. Homeroom started at 8:45, which meant Yaga would be here any minute.Geto followed Gojo’s eyeline. He frowned. “What have you done?”“What’s with that accusation? Why do you think I’ve done something?”“You’re on time, for one,” Shoko answered. “You’re never here before the bell rings. And two, you’re smiling too much.”“What if I’ve just had a change of heart and decided to become a model student?”Geto snorted. “Unlikely.”Gojo scowled, and Shoko poked the crease between his brow with her pencil. “That’s more like it,” She laughed.Gojo bat her hand away. A retort was on the tip of his tongue when the door slid open, cutting him off before he got the chance.Yaga strode into the classroom, Itadori following meekly behind him. Itadori’s head was ducked, pink hair falling to cover his downturned eyes, and he had his hands shoved firmly in the pockets of his uniform trousers.Gojo could feel Geto and Shoko’s eyes boring into him from either side, but Gojo was too excited by Itadori’s arrival to succumb to their questioning stares.“Attention!” Yaga called, his hand slamming down on the lectern at the front of the classroom. “We’ve got a new student joining us. I understand it’s the middle of the school year, but” Yaga’s accusatory glare landed on Gojo, “circumstances led to a late induction.” He gave Itadori a firm pat on the shoulder, “Introduce yourself then.”Itadori pulled his hands from his pockets and stood tall, his gaze sweeping over the three students before him, though pointedly avoiding eye contact with anyone in particular. He bowed. “Itadori Yuuji. I look forward to working with you.”Gojo’s lip turned. Formal - too formal, too distant. He wanted to see the feral creature he had encountered the day before, not this quiet wallflower now shuffling awkwardly at the front of the classroom.Gojo leaned behind him, dragging the spare desk from its forgotten spot in the second row to squeeze between himself and Geto. He pat the chair enthusiastically as he smiled at Itadori.“Don’t worry, Itadori,” Gojo sang “We’ll take real good care of you.” – Gojo has been called many things: tactless, arrogant, self-important, rude, dismissive, and so the list goes on. He wouldn’t deny many of these titles; he believes his arrogance is well deserved given who he is. However, there was one point he took issue with. Gojo thought - no, knew - that he was better than everyone, but that didn’t mean he ignored those around him. Egoism, he contented, did not equate to obliviousness, despite what many presumed.Gojo was a keen observer. His Six Eyes told him much, but it could not tell him all. And so, Gojo observed. There wasn’t much else he could do but watch from up on his pedestal.Perhaps, the misconception of his personality was what allowed him to survey as he did. Those around him knew they could not hide their presence, but they believed they could hide their sneers of deprecation, or the way they clung to the far walls to steer clear of his path, or how they took the long way round the halls to avoid being in his presence.But, of course, Gojo noticed. He always did.Maybe he had grown too accustomed to other people’s consternation, or perhaps Itadori was just special, but it was becoming increasingly irksome how Itadori didn’t succumb to the same allure. There was no one Gojo wanted to observe more, and yet, every time he chanced a glance in his new classmate’s direction, Itadori was already there, meeting his gaze.Itadori had been in his class for a few days now, but Gojo had been unable to glean anything from him. He was still just as mysterious as before, and the desire for answers was just growing with each passing day.The only action that he had been able to discern that Itadori seemed unconscious of was how he would tug at the collar of his uniform, as if expecting something other than the standard collar around his neck.“You can customise your uniform, you know?”Itadori blinked in surprise, his hand pausing where it was hovering at his neckline. “What?”The two were sat on the bleachers, watching Geto and Shoko train. Shoko was, once again, trying and failing to teach Geto the fundamentals of the Reverse Curse technique. Shoko was just repeating the same vague sounds and gestures, and Geto was getting increasingly frustrated. Normally, Gojo would enjoy sitting back and watching the same old show unfold, but today he had been far too distracted by observing Itadori instead. Everything that was old-hat to him was new to Itadori, and Itadori’s reactions were far more interesting to watch.Gojo motioned at his own collar, mimicking Itadori’s movements. “You keep tugging at your collar,” He explained, “If you want something else, you can just change it. The uniform rules aren’t strict. I mean, look at Geto’s trousers, they’re not exactly to code.”Itadori dropped his hands to his lap, looking suddenly self-conscious. “Oh- I mean, no, it’s fine.”Gojo shrugged. “Suit yourself.”Silence lapsed over the pair as Itadori shuffled under Gojo’s scrutiny. They were sat side by side on the bleachers, close enough to almost brush shoulders, and Gojo could feel the moment that Itadori began fiddling with his collar again.It was late winter, the cold casting a heavy, silencing shroud across the mountains. Where normally the training field was ensconced by dappled sunlight and the sound of chirping birds, it now sat flat and grey in the pale, overcast daylight. The silence was sweeping, the threat of snow in the leaden clouds quelling the normal din from the city down below.“Seriously, just ask for a hoodie to be added or something.”Itadori stilled.“I could do it for you, you know?”“Honestly, it’s fine. You don’t have to-” Even as he spoke, Itadori’s fingers still toyed unconsciously at his neckline.Gojo couldn’t say where his fixation on the issue came from - perhaps, an irritation with Itadori’s constant fidgeting or, more likely, from a growing frustration at his inability to get close to the boy. Maybe a gift would prompt him to open up more for Gojo to pick through.Gojo rolled his eyes. He moved to stand, bypassing Itadori’s protests. Stubborn to a fault, Gojo was going to get Itadori to change his uniform.Itadori’s hand shot out to grab Gojo before he could move. “Oh-”Gojo raised his eyebrows as Itadori’s objection died on his tongue. He stared at Itadori’s hands that wrapped around his wrist. “What?”“You don’t have infinity engaged.”Gojo’s eyes widened.It was possible his reputation, and by extension his abilities, preceded him, but it wasn’t likely.All he could think about was how he had never told Itadori about his powers. – Training was more for his classmates' benefit than his own. Even two against one, Gojo knew they could never pose that much of a threat.Gojo prompted them to go all out, more for his own interest than theirs, but knew that it was a futile ask. They’d destroy the training grounds if they did for one, and two his classmates still fell foul of the fear that they’d hurt him.Geto called forth another cursed spirit - a great, chattering centipedal form - and sent it charging toward Gojo.It was one of Geto’s stronger curses, Gojo mused, as he sidestepped to avoid the curse’s thundering path.A great chasm marred the sodden earth in the curse’s wake, and Gojo whistled. He would never have let the thing touch him, but he knew he’d be little more than a stain on the ground if he had.He had to take pride in Geto not going that easy on him.It still wasn’t enough, though. It took more effort to control his powers down enough to cast a shot of blue that could take out the curse without eviscerating the entire grounds along with it.The shockwave of cursed energy shot from the tip of his finger, arcing through the path the curse created until it met its target.He could hear Geto growl as the curse was exterminated in one shot.Itadori took the moment of Gojo’s concentration as his opportunity to attack. No sooner had blue launched from his hand did he have to drop to the ground to avoid Itadori’s fist.He could feel the biting whip of frozen air as Itadori landed just a hair’s breadth from his cheek. Itadori’s fist collided with the soil with force equal to Geto’s cursed spirit, the ground shuddering and fracturing beneath the blow.When Itadori shot his gaze up to Gojo from his position on the ground, his feet shifting in preparation to launch again, Gojo felt that spark light up in his chest again. There was that flash of fire in Itadori’s eyes that Gojo had craved. It was not the ferality he had seen at their first meeting, but it held a similar passion. There was a dogged determination in his gaze and Gojo revelled in it.He still marveled at the first sparks of black flash that flickered around Itadori’s fist as he launched himself forward. It was always exciting to see someone with a skill even he didn’t have - there was no one who could conjure black flash at will, and yet, Itadori was calling forth the power for a simple spar. It was exhilarating.He whipped his head back as Itadori’s fist came flying, letting it get just close enough to smell the charred air it left in it’s aftermath.Just as Itadori missed his mark, Geto pitched forward. Another curse, strong but not strong enough, tore through the air.Gojo stepped back to dodge, but the curse dropped mid-flight, averting course to aim for his legs.It was not meant as an assault to hurt but to hold him down. It took conscious thought to activate infinity in time to halt the attempt, and the formless curse slammed into his defenses just before it could latch onto his ankles.He could feel Itadori gear up for another attack behind him, but something in his senses shifted.The Six Eyes allowed him extrasensory perception of cursed energy, but he was sure he would have been able to feel the change without it. Like a switch being hit, Itadori went from a noiseless blip on his radar to a screeching, roaring alarm. Danger the Six Eyes screamed, Monster.Gojo whipped around in time to see Itadori falter mid-air. Mid-attack, he watched as Itadori’s eyes veered from determination, to fear, to frustration.His fist, which flickered then fluctuated as his black flash dissipated, was raised, but it was not the dying black flash that caught Gojo’s eyes.Just as Itadori’s other hand shot to catch his own fist to stall his movements, Gojo managed to catch sight of it - Itadori’s fingernails had protruded out, swelling into the angry, daggered points of inhuman claws. – Yaga’s office was hot, bordering on uncomfortable. The air outside had turned frigid, a fresh layer of snow slowly turning to black ice as the growing night dropped the temperature below freezing. One would never be able to tell that they were in the depths of winter standing in the veritable furnace of Yaga’s office.Gojo could feel sweat begin to bead beneath his uniform as he stood to attention in front of Yaga’s desk.“You have been keeping an eye on Itadori Yuuji?”Gojo nodded. “As promised.”Yaga leaned forward, his elbows on his desk and his chin resting in his hands. He raised his eyebrows in a silent question.“And?”“Nothing strange to report so far.”A lie.Everything about Itadori was strange, but Gojo could not risk exposing his real findings. Gojo understood deeply the depravity of the Jujutsu world’s upper echelon. He knew that if they laid their lecherous claws on Itadori, he would never see the light of day again. A reality Gojo could not risk.“Nothing at all?”A flash of daggered, edged-weapon claws passed through his mind. Gojo shook his head.“And your general impression of him?”Gojo smiled. “A perfectly normal boy.” – Gojo watched as Geto rolled the condensed black orb of the freshly exorcised curse between his fingers. It had been a relatively strong one, nothing extraordinary but strong enough for it to be a waste if he didn’t add it to his armory.Geto had confided once, after Gojo had asked in a quiet moment, how the taste of consuming curses was unlike anything he could describe. Rotten, bloody, and evil. The unfortunate toll of such a powerful technique.There was an unrestrained grimace on Geto’s expression as he lifted the orb to his lips. With practiced ease and a barely contained gag, he swallowed.“How many more?” Geto asked, hiding a choking cough into the crook of his elbow.“Only one,” Gojo answered.Geto frowned. “And no sign of the vessel.”He, Geto, and Itadori had been assigned to follow an anonymous tip that hinted at the location of the missing Star Plasma vessel. Even with no credible source, they had been forced to follow the lead. To no one’s surprise, they had come up with nothing. Where the tip had promised the girl they had instead found a nest of curses, with a potential special-grade cursed womb hidden at its centre.“These curses are too weak for this to have been a trap,” Geto mused.Gojo hummed. “And yet, it feels like the tip was meant to lead us here for a purpose.”They were in an old, abandoned warehouse on the less savoury side of the city. Down south of the glittering business district lay the hollowed remains of the old industrial quarter. As modernity took over, the blue-collar quartier slowly suffocated until they were forced out entirely. Now, only the skeletons of industry parks and trade factories remained as a testament to its existence.It was no surprise that curses bloomed here, feeding off the lingering dispondency of the working-class labourers that lost their livelihoods to the machine.The trio’s footsteps echoed through the yawning corridors as they worked their way through the winding maze of walkways and abandoned construction lines towards the cursed womb at it’s heart. Without Gojo’s Six Eyes they would have surely lost their way.Eventually, the claustrophobic corridors opened up into a great, sweeping hangar. Against the far wall, nestled between naked wiring and decaying metalwork pannels, sat the sickly, pulsating form of the cursed womb.Walking closer, Gojo could feel the burgeoning power emanating from the amorphous form that floated in the centre of the crystalis.“A special grade.”“I’m surprised no one reported this in sooner,” Geto commented.“But this wasn’t what we were led here for.”“A roundabout way of getting us to it, definitely,” Geto wandered to Gojo’s side, peering into the womb to assess the curse inside. “Can you read how powerful it is?”“At present, it’s weak. Even if it was allowed to mature and hatch, it would pose no real threat to me. But-” Gojo raised his hand to hover just above the womb’s surface, feeling the roiling waves of resentment that rippled barely contained beneath the cocoon. “There is something off.”Gojo had not been posturing when he said that the cursed womb was weak. Even a third-grade sorcerer would have been able to exorcise it. It may have contained a special-grade, but it lay dormant. All he had to do was release a single pulse of cursed energy from his fingertips and the womb disintegrated in an anti-climactic finale.However, as the exorcism took hold and the curse dissolved into the air, something lay in its place.The profound sense of wrongness returned, just as he had felt when he and Itadori had been sparring. His Six Eyes screamed as he reached forward.Where the cursed womb had once laid, a single, disfigured finger now sat, propped up by the ribs of the old processing machine.Any jujutsu sorcerer worth their salt would recognise it for what it was.Behind him, Itadori, who had been suspiciously silent all day, sucked in an audible breath between his teeth.Holding the finger carefully between his fingers, Gojo turned.Itadori was not looking at him, however. His gaze was locked on the finger.With something scary in his eyes, Itadori whispered.“Sukuna.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
It was the accepted fate of jujutsu sorcerers to bear scars. Like death and taxes, they were inevitable.Many wore theirs like a badge of honour; a testament to strength, to power, to a fight hard-fought and won.Itadori wore his scars like a stain he would never be clean of.There was a quiet politeness to the way he would duck his head so his hair would cover his eye, to the way he would bury his chin into his collar to hide the cicatrix at his lips. He would not risk unsettling someone with the sight of his own disfigurement.There was determination in the way he held his body, and shame in the way he held his head.Gojo knew social graces enough not to let his gaze linger on Itadori’s scars for too long, but that did not mean they didn’t linger in his mind.It was not rare for jujutsu sorcerers to have scars, but it was rare for a sorcerer so young to have so many.Gojo had inadvertently caught sight of the patchwork hidden beneath Itadori’s uniform once before. It occurred after a mission, a particularly gruesome curse having spewed forth a putrid mix of vomit, blood, and acid in a final act of defiance against Itadori’s attack. Though it had not saved its life, the curse succeeded in coating Itadori in its guts.Itadori had taken the shower first, and everyone had let him. Gojo didn’t mean to intrude, he had just underestimated how long Itadori was going to take.As Gojo walked in, Itadori walked out, his joggers on but his chest exposed.Gojo was well aware of the cruelty inherent in both humans and curses alike. He had seen people torn to shreds, seen limbs ripped from skin, and bodies severed clean in half. To be a jujutsu sorcerer was to confront the darkest fates imaginable. However, he had never seen someone who appeared to have been torn to shreds, had their limbs ripped from skin, and their body severed clean in half, emerge on the other side still alive. Yet, as Itadori gave Gojo a polite nod and continued on his path, it appeared he had accomplished just that.The markings carved into his face seemed tame in comparison to the deep gauges that clawed through his back and chest. There was an undeniable knot that spoke of some kind of weapon piercing through his torso. The fact that there was a twin mirrored on his back made it clear he had been impaled straight through and Gojo felt nausea twinge at the back of his throat.Steam from the shower poured from the cubicle, thickening the air until it was hot, heavy, and cloying.Itadori shuffled around the lockers, absently gathering his things as if Gojo wasn’t awkwardly standing slack-jawed in the doorway.Itadori grabbed his jumper, but paused before he tugged it over his head. He looked over his shoulder and met Gojo’s gaze. He smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes.“It’s okay,” Itadori said, “I know they’re ugly. I don’t blame you for staring.”Gojo tore his eyes away as Itadori finally tugged on his jumper. He stuttered, flustered and lost for words. “No- I didn’t mean-”Itadori waved him off. “I said it’s okay,” He grabbed his bags and made to leave. “The showers all yours.”Gojo blocked Itadori’s path before he could pass him, one hand on his shoulder to halt his passage.Once again, Itadori was dragging foreign emotions out of the depths of Gojo’s soul. He couldn’t describe why, but the boy was proficient in making Gojo feel uncomfortably human. The sight of Itadori’s wounds had an ugly, barbed wire of something dark coiling in his chest.“All of that,” He growled, his voice low and deep.“Who did it? Who hurt you?”Itadori hesitated before lifting his eyes to meet Gojo’s.Gojo prided himself on being an observer, and yet he couldn’t identify any of the emotions that flickered across Itadori’s expression.“Why? Are you trying to get revenge for me?”Gojo faltered. He wasn’t entirely sure what he would do if Itadori revealed the truth. Was it revenge he genuinely desired, or was this simply another unconscious, desperate attempt to get to know Itadori better?Itadori smiled again, softer this time. “You don’t have to do that for me, Gojo,” he placed his hand on Gojo’s wrist, gently prying it away. “Besides,” His voice dropped to a whisper, “You barely even know me now.” – Gojo knew little about Itadori Yuuji, that much was true, but the scant scraps of information he had were slowly accumulating.Itadori Yuuji had nightmares, and there was much one could learn from what someone screamed out for in the throes of terror.Gojo did not actively seek opportunities to pry, despite the mounting pile of evidence suggesting otherwise. Itadori’s bedroom was next to Gojo’s own, and the thin, paper walls did nothing to dampen Itadori’s cries.He heard names, mostly, in between the wrenching sobs of apologies. Names he didn’t recognise, for the most part.Kugisaki Nobara.
I’m sorry
Fushiguro Megumi.
I’m sorry
Or so went the normal, nightly chorus.Every now and again, though, there was a name that Gojo recognised.Of course, there was always the chance that it was a coincidence. People shared names, that much wasn’t uncommon, and the situation mandated that it had to be just that: a coincidence. Itadori couldn’t know these people. And yet, a part of Gojo couldn’t let go of the fact that it felt like there was more to it.Kento Nanami, his junior, was among the harrowing cries. Nanami had been assigned on a mission in Kyoto for the whole time Itadori had been at the school. The chances that they had met were already slim. The chances that they had met and experienced something that would warrant such a blood-curdling scream to accompany his name were even slimmer.The final nail in the coffin, however, was just a few nights ago. Gojo tugged his pillow over his ears as Itadori’s thrashing grew in volume.The information he could glean from Itadori’s night terrors was valuable, but so was his sleep.He was halfway to getting up and banging on Itadori’s door to get him to stop when he heard it. A stuttered cry from the other side of the wall.Gojo-Sensei
I’m sorry
People shared names, that much wasn’t uncommon. The Gojo name, however, was.Gojo was not a superstitious man, but even he couldn’t deny the strangeness.What one would call coincidence, Gojo could only see conspiracy. – The tips of Gojo’s fingers were growing numb, and he was beginning to regret not requesting gloves as part of the winter gym kit. He had thermals on beneath his shirt and shorts, black, skintight, and plentifully insulated, but even that wasn’t enough to fight back against the frigid winds whipping across the track.Yaga didn’t even have the heart to look sorry as he yelled instructions from the sidelines, wrapped up as he was in several layers, with his thick black puffer coat and a heavy woolen scarf wrapped around his neck. Jealousy was worming its way into Gojo’s chest at how warm Yaga looked.“On the starting line,” Yaga yelled, white puffs following his breaths in the winter air.Gojo did as he was told, but made sure his body language conveyed his frustration. Yaga was giving him the eye, and Gojo wished he could tell him to fuck off. He was the one who had to run laps in the middle of January, he believed he had every right to complain.Yaga clapped, drawing the student’s attention to him. “There will be times when you cannot rely simply on your cursed techniques,” He yelled. “There will be times when fighting alone is not an option. When you cannot rely on your innate abilities, rely on your companions,” He gave Gojo a pointed look, which Gojo swiftly ignored, “There is no respect for others without humility in one’s self. Pride is the mask of one’s own faults.”Itadori stood to Gojo’s left, and he could feel as Itadori shrunk in on himself slightly at Yaga’s words.“This is an exercise in not only physical strength but also in your bonds - your ability to prioritise and overcome,” Yaga waved his hands, beckoning Itadori to Shoko and Gojo to Geto. “Teams, please.”Gojo bumped Geto’s shoulder as he sauntered over, Geto shoving him back with no real fight. The strength was lost to the numbing cold.Yaga walked over to each group, passing a rope to Gojo and Itadori. “While you will not be physically tied to each other in battle, you will be intrinsically. I want you to bind yourself to your partner however you see fit, and, when I blow my whistle, you will race the other pair for one lap of the track. No cursed techniques, no tricks, just simple manpower.”Gojo’s stomach dropped, and he tightened his fist around the rope in his hands. All of Yaga’s grandiose posturing just to lead to a three-legged race. Gojo thought it was laughable.Geto snorted as he grabbed the rope from Gojo’s white knuckles. “Now, come on, Satoru,” He crooned, his voice drawing out the syllables of Gojo’s name in the way he always did. “Don’t take it so seriously.”Gojo bristled. “This is stupid,” He grumbled. Gojo knew it was a simple fact that he was above everybody else. That wasn’t hubris, that wasn’t mislaid pride, it was truth.“Humour the old man,” Geto said as he busied himself with tying the rope around their conjoined ankles. His fingers fumbled with the knot, the cold leaving his fingers pale and clumsy.Gojo dropped to his knees to help, though his own numb hands struggled just as much with the fine motor function.With the rope sufficiently tight, they stood, giving their now-conjoined legs a shake to test the limit of their movement. They were firmly connected and Gojo groaned once again.He glanced over to Itadori and Shoko. Their blue rope was tied in a bow around their wrists, which would have felt like a cop-out if Itadori wasn’t carrying Shoko bridle-style in his arms.An exercise in priorities, Yaga had stressed. It made sense then, why Itadori would take the brunt of the force. Shoko was their healer, and therefore a prized asset. Foot soldiers would fall first if it meant the cleric was safe, it was basic strategy. Shoko was not weak, Gojo would never insult her that way, but she was less of a front-line soldier than either Geto, Itadori, or himself.Shoko shot Gojo a particularly smug look as Itadori rearranged her in his arms. Shoko was petite, but it was still surprising how Itadori seemed to carry her like she weighed nothing at all.“Places,” Yaga bellowed, bringing his whistle to his lips. “And remember, teamwork.”The whistle was loud in the silent courtyard, but the biting wind in Gojo’s ears was louder as he and Geto began to run.It took a few fumbled steps before they gained their rhythm, and Gojo had to fight back the growl of annoyance clawing at the back of his throat.Hubris set its crown on heads already crowned, and Gojo was born royalty. Blessings had graced him from the very moment he opened his eyes, but that didn’t mean he didn’t fight for his current standing.He had fought, and he had fought alone.Gojo did not believe in minimalism. Possessing the Six Eyes and boundless power, he saw no reason to limit himself. There was no need to lower himself to Earth just to play pretend among those beneath him. He wasn’t the Bourgeoisie, swapping silk for cotton to imitate the commoner for a day.Geto was not weak, in stamina or cursed technique, but he was still half a step behind Gojo as they paced the track.Though, Gojo realised, as he took a moment to tear his concentration away from not tripping to monitor their competition, that it didn’t really matter. Who he was, or who his partner was, it wouldn’t have mattered. Not as he watched Itadori speed towards the finishing line already. Gojo would have called foul had his Six Eyes not told him that, regardless of how superhuman it seemed, Itadori was not cheating. Itadori was not using any cursed techniques, he was simply that fast.He was barely perceptible, it seemed. There was a blur to his movements, the weight of another human in his arms doing nothing to slow him down.Gojo rarely lost. In fact, Gojo realised numbly, this might have been the first time that he had ever been bested in anything.He and Geto stumbled across the finish line in a slight daze. He looked to Geto, and realised that his partner was staring just as dumbfounded as he was at Itadori.Shoko was laughing and applauding, her giggling calls of again, let’s go again as she swiped her windswept hair from her face, were lost to the fog in Gojo’s brain.A perfectly normal boy, Gojo’s own lie felt bitter on the back of his tongue. – The surging wave of change that the Jujutsu world had feared was indeed at its precipice, of that Gojo held no doubt. They weren’t yet engulfed by the tide, but Gojo could feel it lapping at his anklesThey found themselves within the maw of the monster, and it was merely a question of time until it devoured them whole. Whether Itadori stood beside him in the belly of the beast or had become the beast himself, Gojo had yet to decide. – Gojo didn’t have scars - physically, at least.Limitless had saved him from that fate, and it was a fact that he had never taken the time to think too deeply about. Men create Gods after their own image, but Gojo did not see himself much reflected in the silvery lines that marred Geto’s chest, the pale caverns that carved across Itadori’s back, or the fresh wound that sliced through Utahime’s cheek. — Itadori was, for intents and purposes, a model student. He studied, he did as he was told, and he kept his head down and himself to himself.The one outlier in his otherwise pristine school record was the lesson on Shikigami that he walked out of.It was a topic they had covered before, so Gojo had no idea why Itadori immediately grew pale the second Yaga announced the day’s learning objectives.As per usual, Itadori stayed quiet and vigilant in his seat for most of the lesson.That was until Yaga mentioned a particular technique - the “Ten Shadows” technique of the Zenin clan. At that, Itadori stiffened.Already, his reaction was strange. Then, when Yaga moved on to “Mahoraga”, Itadori bolted.It took a few seconds for the moment to sink in, the sound of the door slamming behind Itadori deafening in the silence of the classroom.As Itadori’s footsteps thundered down the corridor, Yaga looked to Gojo and silently ordered him to follow.Itadori wasn’t quiet in his escape, so he wasn’t hard to find. It was hard, however, to discern the emotions that swirled behind Itadori’s eyes when Gojo grabbed his arm to stop him in his tracks.There were unshed tears gathering on his lashes as he flinched back at Gojo’s touch. He ripped his arm out of Gojo’s grip, bringing it to his chest to nurse like he’d been burned.Are you okay? is what Gojo should have asked, what he wanted to ask. Instead, he blurted “What was that?”, and immediately regretted it.Itadori shrunk back, his hair covering his expression. Though, Gojo could see a slight tremble in his scarred lip.“Nothing,” Itadori grumbled, “It was nothing.” – The night after Itadori’s ‘incident’ during the Shikigami lesson, Gojo couldn’t sleep.Itadori’s nightmares seemed particularly harsh that night. Through all the thrashing and the screaming, one name persisted.Fushiguro Megumi.
I’m sorry.
– Shoko was the one to break the news.It wasn’t someone he knew - Gojo had never taken his role as part of the Big Three families very seriously, so when everyone turned to him for a reaction he had no choice but to disappoint.The lunch hall was busy, the clattering of trays and the idle chatter of passing students, faculty, and visiting sorcerers had Shoko close to yelling. Though, as she dumped her tray onto the table and immediately launched into her questioning, Gojo wondered if she was shouting out of necessity or because she was just that excited.“Did you hear? The Zenin family don’t know what to do with themselves.”Geto leaned across the table. “No. What’s going on?”“Toji Fushiguro is dead.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The number of Sukuna’s fingers in Jujutsu Tech’s possession went from four to ten in just a few weeks, and all the new additions could be attributed to Itadori.Once again, with no clear proof, Gojo had suspicions. – Itadori had a penchant for disappearing into the unknown after school. Gojo’s obligation was to follow him - he had to maintain the façade that he was following his assigned orders from Yaga after all.More often than not, Gojo would find Itadori at the top of a highrise building, perched with his feet dangling off the edge.The first time he stumbled upon him there, Gojo’s heart had dropped. He felt the urge to sprint forward, clutch his collar, and yank him away from the brink. Itadori looked perilously close to the edge - teetering on the precipice of a leap, an end to it all. If he had done so, he would have revealed that he had been tailing Itadori. However, in that moment, the risk took a backseat to the urgency he felt.Geto’s words ran circles in his mind.
Itadori is not a danger to us, he is a danger to himself.
It was a single moment that stopped him in his tracks. A soft breeze whispered through the open air, and the sparkling lights of Shibuya’s nightlife began to stir in the distance as day fell to night. Itadori closed his eyes, leaned back, and allowed a fleeting peace to wash over him.It was that look that gave Gojo pause.On that day, Gojo discovered the marked disparity between the peace one finds in the face of death and the peace one finds in the face of the world. As the breeze rustled Itadori’s hair and the neon lights painted a technicolour dance across his cheeks, it became unmistakable - Itadori was not here to jump, at least not today. – Gojo leaned against the courtyard wall, back to the comforting brickwork and face staring up at the clouds.The sky was clear and bright, the few lone clouds meandering across the horizon offering little respite from the biting winter cold. He tucked his hands into his pockets in an attempt to restore warmth to his frozen fingers.Geto and Itadori were out on a mission - a mission Gojo found himself barred from under the pretense that Geto and Itadori needed the “opportunity to fight sometimes too”. It left Gojo feeling adrift, a feeling of uselessness gnawing at him. What purpose was there in being the strongest if his strength rendered him excluded?He could sense the pair’s approach back up the hill before he saw them, and his Six Eyes told him that they returned with another of Sukuna’s fingers. This was the tenth.Itadori offered Gojo a brief nod before marching past him, his hands clutched around Sukuna’s finger like his life depended on it.All of the fingers were to be stored in the school’s vault, alongside all the other cursed objects in their possession that were deemed too dangerous for standard containment. Gojo had been surprised at the news that Itadori had been afforded access to the vault. It had been on account of his contributions with Sukuna’s fingers, or so Yaga had told him. The net benefit of his help apparently outweighed any questions that could be raised of the finger’s origins.Geto hung back as Itadori disappeared into the school. He gave Gojo’s shoulder a nudge as he settled next to him against the wall.The wind whistled through the silent expanse of the courtyard.“Are you going to ask what I think you’re going to ask?” Geto mused.“Probably,” Gojo answered, his eyes on the doorway Itadori had just slipped through. The residuals of Sukuna’s finger lighting a near-neon trail in its wake. “Do you think Itadori is dangerous?”Geto took a long pause before answering. “Depends on your definition.”Gojo snorted. “Oh, don’t be abstruse.”“If you’re asking if he’s a danger to us? No, I don’t think so. If you’re asking if he’s a danger to himself, then that’s a different story.”“You think Itadori is trying to get himself killed?”“You weren’t the only one tasked with looking out for him. Yaga asked you to watch him to see if he was a threat to us. Yaga asked me to watch him to see if he was a threat to himself.”Gojo narrowed his eyes. “Since when were you assigned the caring one.”Geto snorted. “Well, it sure wasn’t going to be you, was it?”Gojo sniffed, kicking absently at a cracked corner of the pavement. “So, your conclusion? Is Itadori trying to kill himself?”“Maybe not actively, but passively? He’s got this look in his eyes. He’s not seeking out the knife, but if one was to be pointed at him…” Geto’s voice trailed off, but Gojo could fill in the blanks.Gojo swallowed Geto’s words like a bitter pill. He wasn’t sure if he didn’t believe Geto, or if just didn’t want to believe him.He had seen shame in Itadori; seen sadness, anger, and resignation. But to such an extent? Either power had grown his senses dull, or Itadori was extra careful in hiding his true emotions from Gojo in particular.“It’s the eyes, always the eyes, that indicate the antiquity of the soul,” Geto said as he lifted himself away from the wall. He clapped a hand on Gojo’s shoulder as he walked away. “Next time you talk to him, take a moment to look closely. You’ll understand what I mean.” – It was the day after Geto’s proclamation that Gojo found Itadori on the edge of the high-rise for the first time.He wondered if he would have had the same reaction had Geto not planted the seed of doubt in his mind. He liked to think his empathy was not so far gone that he wouldn’t have cared, but a quiet voice of self-loathing told him that he wouldn’t have - not as much as he did.But he hadn’t run out and grabbed him, and so day after day, Gojo would follow Itadori up to the top of that Shibuya tower, and every time, Itadori would just sit there and stare.Even as the days passed by and Itadori continued to do nothing but sit, with his feet kicking off the precipice and a far-away look in his eyes, Gojo still carried a sliver of fear that, one day soon, Itadori would tip himself over the edge. – The Gojo family manor was deep-set in the forests that outskirt the Shinjuku ward. Absent were the trappings of the urban throng; no hurried footsteps, no echoes of conversation. It was quiet, still, and reclaimed by nature.As a child, Gojo frequently slipped his keepers’ clutches by escaping into the forest grove. The peace of the forest was a welcome reprieve from the cloying pressure of the family home. Out here, it was quiet - nothing but the hushed whispers among the leaves, the soft rustle of unseen creatures, and the occasional murmur of a distant breeze.Gojo remembers being twelve years old, ducking out the backdoor as soon as he heard his parent’s argument rise in volume - the crash of the first-thrown dinner plate disappearing into the distance as Gojo made his way through the undergrowth.That day, the weather had been unseasonably warm. The daylight filtered through the mosaic of foliage, speckling the moss-laden ground with fragments of sunlight. It was nearing the end of spring, and the plants were fighting for space on the overcrowded earth, blooming early with the premature summer.Gojo found himself glad he’d worn shorts that day, as he disengaged Infinity to allow himself to feel the scratch and sting of the thorns and nettles that swarmed on all sides of the path. There was a thrill, the young boy found, in being able to control so closely what he did and did not feel. At any point, he could reengage his ability and he would return to being untouchable.Gojo’s ears perked up at the crack of a twig snapping loudly beneath his feet. The sound was loud in the silence of the forest.To his left, he heard the indignant squark of a startled bird. His training had him activating Infinity on instinct, though he was hardly in any danger as a small Nightjar swooped passed his cheek.Gojo looked down and saw his foot mere centimetres away from the Nightjar’s nest. There, amidst the delicate cradle of twigs and leaves, nestled a young fledgling. It was an ugly thing, Gojo thought. Its sparse, downy coat clung awkwardly to its small form, and its nascent beak clacked as the pitiful thing screeched for its mother.Abandoning its lone nestling, the Nightjar circled above Gojo’s head, before landing on a nearby sapling at his eye level. It was dragging one wing, and it took Gojo a few seconds to register what he was seeing.There was no injury to this bird, it was just trying to trick him. It saw Gojo as a hungry predator, and hoped that he would go for the ‘easy prey’ that was the parent rather than the newly hatched and vulnerable child. The Nightjar perched it weak, spindly feet on a branch, teetering back and forth in an uneasy equilibrium that would have been entirely convincing had Gojo not known better.Gojo had no interest in hurting either bird; he was no psychopath. Yet, he was subtly fascinated by the altruism of this small woodland creature. The creed of ‘survival of the fittest’ was ostensibly reserved for the untamed animal kingdom, yet Gojo saw it reflected more among the members of his own clan than in this wild bird that sought to sacrifice itself to him for the sake of the vulnerable.Gojo couldn’t tell whether he found the bird’s actions admirable or idiotic. – The earth rumbled beneath Gojo’s feet. The air was ripped from his lungs and the last light of the sky was blotted out as the Special Grade’s innate domain took hold.The sound of a thousand buzzing wings invaded his ears, and the darkness surrounding him began to writhe, undulate, and blink. It was then that Gojo realised he had not been enshrouded by shadows. It was not an endless expanse of empty darkness; instead, it was a solid, thrashing hoard of flies, so condensed and so populous that no light could parse through.Geto and Itadori, who had been standing just feet away from him a second before, were lost behind the swarm.The only guiding light that Gojo had to ground him was the single, lambent form of the curse itself. It hovered among its brethren, the hiss of its sickly, bare-boned wings loud and indomitable. Its body was a luminescence of blue, green, and purple - hunched over and broken, its abdomen covered with a thick exoskeleton connected to joints of membranous cuticle. Its head was bulbous and its five compound eyes were large, insectile, and piercing as the curse turned its gaze to Gojo.The flies began swarming around Gojo’s arms and legs, constricting around his torso until he could barely move. He could feel them as they wormed across his skin; biting, pulling, and stinging.The Special Grade hovered closer, and Gojo watched as its disjointed mandible opened up like a blooming flower. Needles, as long as his arm and as sharp as a knife, extended from its open jaws. They were moving at speed and with intent towards Gojo’s chest.Gojo fought back against the swarm that held him still, but moving against their weight was like fighting against iron restraints. This was the curse’s domain - the flies were here to guarantee the hit.This curse was borne from mosquitos, and it sought strength just as much as it sought the sweetest blood.Gojo was halfway to snapping when a roaring yell cut through the static of flapping wings.Itadori’s voice was unmistakable, and the curse whipped its annular head toward the noise.Like the Red Sea parting, the flies split to show Itadori crouching on the other side. He had his sleeve raised and his arm exposed, and Gojo’s throat closed at the sight of blood running down the pale expanse of his forearm. Itadori’s other hand was raised, dirt and his own blood beneath his fingernails.The curse faltered as it considered its options - Gojo or the ‘easy prey’.The sweet nectar of Itadori’s blood took precedence and the curse shot out in his direction.Gojo roared, but the flies still kept him constrained, so he could only watch as those needles descended on Itadori’s flesh.Itadori bit back a cry as the curse’s toothed blades sunk into his arm. With the curse distracted with his blood, Itadori reeled his fist back. Black Flash curled around his fist. With a barely constrained cry, Itadori punched against the curse’s exoskeleton, aiming for the soft, exposed flesh around its joints.The effect was immediate. With one blow, the curse was decimated. The Special Grade gave an aborted howl before falling silent.It would have been an impressive sight had it not taken Itadori offering himself up like the sacrificial lamb to get there.The innate domain fizzled out, the swarm of flies screeching as they dissolved into black ash and smoke. As soon as he was freed from their hold, Gojo ran.As the domain disappeared, Yaga and Shoko’s pale and worried faces came into view.This had been a simple training exercise. The curse was supposed to be a weak one. Gojo had been instructed not to use his technique- once again, to offer Geto and Itadori the “opportunity to fight sometimes too”, and this was the result.Gojo collapsed to his knees at Itadori’s side. The boy had keeled over, hissing as he applied pressure to the slowly bleeding wound on his arm. The self-inflicted cuts were superficial, it was whatever anticoagulant the mosquito curse had injected they needed to worry about.“What was that about?” Gojo seethed as he replaced Itadori’s hands with his own to press against the wound. “I was about to get us out of there. You didn’t need to- shit-” More blood flowed freely from Itadori’s arm; it was clear the curse had not pierced indiscriminately, it had severed an artery on purpose.“It was going to hurt you,” Itadori mumbled weakly, swaying slightly as the blood loss started to take effect.“I wouldn’t have let it,” Gojo fumed. “Don’t go sacrificing yourself like that.”He’s not seeking out the knife, but if one was to be pointed at him. Gojo hated how right Geto had been.“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” Gojo spat, and he immediately regretted it at the sight of Itadori’s face paling.“No- no, I’m not.”Gojo bit the inside of his cheek until he could taste blood. “Well, you’re sure acting like you are.”“It’s not- I’m not. I promise. I can’t die. Not yet.”Shoko appeared at his side, taking Itadori’s bleeding arm from his grip.“Stop grilling him while he’s injured, Gojo,” Shoko chided as she soothed her hand over the wound. “You’re going to make it worse.”Gojo slumped back, feeling both defeated and a little embarrassed. Not yet wasn’t a satisfactory answer. Not yet suggested that, even if not now, then soon Itadori would die. He wasn’t asking for immortality, but there was something in Itadori’s wording that made it clear that he wasn’t looking far for his future. – Sometimes, Itadori would take a diary with him up to the top of the Shibuya tower block. He would alternate between staring out into the beyond and scribbling frantically in his book.Gojo did not want to pry, despite the mounting pile of evidence suggesting otherwise. He knew, however, that he desperately wanted to read the contents of Itadori’s diary.There was the chance that it would amount to nothing, that Gojo would get his hands on it only to find doodles and drafts of love notes to Itadori’s secret crush - normal high school diary fare. Yet Gojo harboured skepticism he dared not admit, at least to no one other than himself.The answers Gojo sought and the questions he ached to ask, he knew he should address with Itadori directly, but there were certain lines he hesitated to cross.One couldn’t walk up to another and ask them What are you? Are you even human? Why are you here, and what is your plan? without expecting repercussions.He could attempt to extract information out of Itadori in the interim, but Gojo knew he needed to get his hands on Itadori’s diary if he truly wanted to unravel all of Itadori’s mysteries.Itadori’s diary held the answer, of that Gojo was certain. It was simply a matter of getting his hands on it.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Gojo could lose sight of the strength in others due to the enormity of his own. He was an anomaly that skewed the data. The gap between himself and the one below was so dizzying that he could believe the second strongest sorcerer in the world weak if he let himself become disillusioned.“How strong do you think Itadori is?”Geto quirked an eyebrow at Gojo’s question. “Hard to say. I don’t think he’s shown us his full strength yet.”“If you had to rank him?”Geto snorted. “I just said I have no idea, Satoru. That’s an awfully tough question to answer. I just know that I wouldn’t want to face him as an opponent.”“How so?”Geto’s face hardened, a slight shiver rippled down his spine. “The recent missions I’ve been on with him. You haven’t seen him in action.”“I think I have,” Gojo thought of the ferocity he saw in Itadori at their first meeting - the wild, untamed glint in his eyes, and the raw determination in his body.“No. You can’t have. Not fully,” Geto turned to stare out at the distance, a ghost in his gaze. “You wouldn’t be questioning his strength if you’d truly seen it, Satoru. He’s unstoppable. It’s terrifying.”“Yet, you don’t think he’s a danger to us?”Geto chuckled. “You’re also terrifying, Satoru. Horrifying strength does not equal evil, it is simply horrifying.”“Do you think you could beat him?”Geto took a long moment to answer. “No.” – Most days Gojo dutifully followed Itadori on his daily sojourns after school. Some days, he didn’t.Yaga seemed to forget sometimes that Gojo was a highschooler; that he too might want to enjoy his youth and not follow orders like a dog.One day, Gojo decided to leave Itadori to his own devices. He hung back with Geto and Shoko to play basketball in the gym, while Itadori slipped out without a word as soon as the school bell rang.It was hard sometimes, but Gojo tried to remind himself that he was, indeed, human too. Lounging about, shooting hoops, and sidestepping his homework - such mundane indulgences helped ground him. He enjoyed the mantle of godhood, but secretly he revelled in the simplicity of being human.It was late by the time they left the gym, far too late knowing they had to be awake at the crack of dawn for school the following day, but Gojo walked with light feet back through the hallowed hallways to his dorm room after bidding Geto and Shoko goodbye.Moonlight tiptoed through the elongated windows, casting an ethereal glow upon the worn parquet floors. The nocturnal light, filtered through the spindly branches of winter-dead trees that tapped their grey fingers against the windowpanes, painted the walls in muted silver tones, and blanketed the hallway in an almost dreamlike aura.The air was cold and fresh, the wind whistling through the cracks in the old, uninsulated windows. The sconces, relics from a time when gaslight flickered in their metallic holds, now stood silent and unused. Their muted brass surfaces reflecting the moon’s glow; the only light in the darkness of the corridor.Gojo’s dorm was at the farthest end of the hall, the door, heavy oak and worn smooth by the hands of generations before him, disappeared into the darkness as the light faded. He’d requested it specifically, his own privacy being such a rarity in his childhood.It was silent for as far as he walked until suddenly a second pair of footsteps echoed from the other end of the hallway.Gojo stopped in his tracks. He waited, listening as the footsteps grew closer.His senses were screaming at him again. Blood they called, Murderer. Monster. Wretched devil, and thus, Gojo knew Itadori was the one approaching.The footsteps were uneven, stumbling and staggered as if he was limping.Gojo took a step forward, and the closer he got, the louder his Six Eyes screamed.Gojo felt no fear, for fear was an emotion reserved for lesser mortals, but an undeniable apprehension fluttered in his chest.Finally, as the clouds dispersed to reveal the moon, and Itadori emerged bathed in the cascade of its silver light, Gojo felt his heart leap into his throatThere Itadori stood, hunched and bowed, just a few steps away. His breath came in laboured gasps, one hand clutching the walls for support while the other pressed firmly against his side.All of this Gojo observed in passing, his attention seized by the blood that adorned Itadori from crown to heel.It dripped from the ends of his hair, dyeing pink a dark crimson. Like a splash of paint, a stroke of blood arced across his cheek, joining the dribble that seeped from his bruised and crooked nose. The front of his uniform was caked, staining navy blue a deep black, and soaking the fabric until it clung to his chest like a second skin. His uniform ripped at his waist, fluttering open like a torn wound, revealing a deep gouge in his side that his bloodstained hand pressed desperately and futilely against to staunch. Though, as bad as the wound looked, it could not equate for all the blood that covered him.It was this that bought Gojo to the realisation that this blood that saturated Itadori’s skin, bathed his hair, and steeped his clothes, was not Itadori’s own.Terrifying Geto had called Itadori, and Gojo could see his words embodied in the scarlet red smeared across Itadori’s cheek and embedded under his nails. Gojo did not need to use his Six Eyes to know; the sickening stench of iron and rust was entirely too human. Itadori was not covered in the blood of a curse or monster, no, he was the monster himself, covered in the blood of another human.Though, as Itadori took a stumbling step forward, Gojo saw that his expression was not that of a monster. There was nothing demonic in the tracks of tears that melted clear paths down his cheeks, or in the misty, faraway, and regretful gloss of his eyes.Terrifying Geto had called Itadori, but Gojo could not see anything frightening in Itadori’s blood-soaked form. Instead, all Gojo could see was a teenage boy, alone, afraid, and hurting.Itadori’s legs gave out beneath him as he took another step, and Gojo’s brain finally caught up to him in time to rush out and catch him before he crumpled bonelessly to the floor.Itadori’s head lolled onto his shoulder as Gojo wrapped one arm around Itadori’s shoulders, and placed his other against Itadori’s wound.Itadori was shaking, tremors wracking his frame with each wheezing, uneven breath.Itadori let out a soul-deep sob as he buried his face into the crook of Gojo’s neck. “Gojo-Sensei.”Gojo’s heart jumped in his chest. Against his better judgment, he played along. He didn’t have the heart to tell his classmate he had him confused. “I’m here,” He said instead, smoothing what he hoped were comforting circles against Itadori’s back. His mind reeled, he needed to know what was going on, what Itadori had done, but he knew getting Itadori medical attention took precedence.“Sensei,” Itadori sobbed again, fingers clutching against Gojo’s uniform like it was a lifeline. “He’s dead,”Gojo could feel a pit form in his stomach. “Who’s dead?” He murmured cautiously.“I killed him. He’s dead. I killed him.”Gojo didn’t know what to do as Itadori began tumbling over his own words. He had no comfort to give when he didn’t know what was going on.“Had to- When he didn’t know I was coming. Had to- Surprise attack. Too weak to- without. No cursed energy-”Gojo tightened his grip on Itadori’s shoulder. Itadori was making little sense, his words merging and slurring together. He tried his best to listen, knowing he would need to replay Itadori’s words over and over to try and find the answers hidden within them.“We need to move, Itadori,” Gojo urged, trying to drag Itadori to his feet. “We need to get you to Shoko. She can fix you up and then you can tell me-”“Gojo-Sensei,” Itadori interrupted. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”Gojo bit the inside of his cheek as he managed to bring Itadori’s limp body to standing, Itadori’s full weight resting against Gojo’s chest. “What are you sorry for, Itadori?”“Sorry. Monster- I’m - Murderer. Had to - Before he. Coward - couldn’t fight him properly. Had to - surprise-”Itadori’s eyelids were starting to flutter, and Gojo picked up the pace as he dragged Itadori down the hallway towards Shoko’s room.Finally, with a stuttered breath and a sob, Itadori passed out. A final apology at his lips as he collapsed against Gojo’s side. “Fushiguro, I’m sorry.” – Gojo eventually managed to collapse through Shoko’s door. Shoko’s annoyance at being disturbed was quickly washed away by the shock of Itadori’s appearance.She ran to Gojo’s side, dragging Itadori’s limp form from his arms and into her own.As she started categorising his injuries, she leveled Gojo with a serious stare.“Is this a situation in which I ask questions or just keep my mouth shut and do as I’m told? For purely selfish reasons, I need to know if I want to be involved in this or not.”Gojo shook his head. “The fewer people that know about this the better.”“So, I’ll take that as a no then,” Her hands glowed slightly as she soothed her reverse cursed technique over Itadori’s wounds. “And I’m assuming that means Yaga mustn’t hear of any of this?”“He’s the last person who can know. At least for now.”Shoko frowned slightly. “You better know what you’re doing, Satoru.”Gojo wished he could offer her some reassurance that he did, but he couldn’t bring himself to lie. – “Did you hear?” Shoko called over the din of the lunch hall, “The Zenin family don’t know what to do with themselves.”Geto leaned across the table. “No. What’s going on?”“Toji Fushiguro is dead.”Fushiguro. I’m sorry.. Gojo fought to keep his expression neutral.“The Sorcerer Killer?” Geto asked.Shoko nodded. “He’s not been a part of the Zenin clan for years now, but they seem pretty pissed about all this.”“Well, I guess they’d still consider him one of their own.”Shoko snorted. “Oh, it’s not because they want to avenge him or anything. Far from it. They want to find the bastard that took him out before they could.”“How did he die? I heard he was supposed to be pretty strong, given his list of casualties.”“That’s just the thing. The Zenin have tried to take him out before but failed every time. I don’t know all the details, but from what I’ve heard it was a surprise attack that got him this time,” Shoko tapped her fingernail against the table. “Signs of a fight, but with the amount of blood at the scene it seems like the assailant’s first ambush got the best of him. At least, enough for the rest of the fight to be irrevocably favoured against him.”Gojo kept silent, letting Shoko’s words connect the dots in his mind.“Must have been one hell of a first attack,” Geto whistled.Shoko hummed. “I’d be fascinated to do the autopsy.”Geto made a face and Shoko swatted him on the shoulder.“I’m not just being weird, don’t look at me like that,” she scowled. “It’s just- I’ve heard that the cause of death was ruled as blood loss. All due to a wound across his neck,” She paused, “that look suspiciously like claw marks.”Gojo watched as Geto’s face shifted. It was minute - a simple twitch at his brow and a subtle downturn of his lips - yet, Gojo could read it as the same dots connecting in Geto’s mind. While Geto had never been informed about Itadori’s incident from the other night, the mere allusion to claws seemed enough to allow for suspicion to take root.Shoko didn’t seem to be as naïve as she sounded, as she leveled Gojo with a stare and a smile that screamed of faux innocence. Gojo had stayed silent the whole conversation and that hadn’t escaped Shoko’s notice.Shoko cocked her head. “Anyway, Gojo” She sang. “Where's Itadori?” – Itadori shuffled into class the next day, his wounds healed but a slight limp still persisted in his step. He avoided eye contact as he carefully lowered himself into his seat between Geto and Gojo.Shoko raised her eyebrows at Gojo, and Gojo shook his head.Yaga seemed blissfully unaware of the lingering air of awkwardness that had settled over his students as he launched into a lecture about cursed tools - or something, Gojo was barely paying attention.Geto was not so ignorant, and he leveled a glare at Gojo. Gojo winced, he could never underestimate Geto’s intuition. – The open walkway between the classrooms and the training field was quickly becoming Gojo and Geto’s designated spot to talk about Itadori.Despite the biting cold, they still lingered, backs against the brickwork, and the hangover of the roof their only shelter from the drifting snow that was beginning to fall from the heavy cloak of pale-grey clouds overhead.Geto was unwrapping a small lemon sherbert as he sauntered over to their unspoken meeting spot.“What’s that?” Gojo asked as he watched Geto pop the sweet in his mouth.Geto hummed as he settled himself against the wall next to Gojo. “Yuuji gave them to me. Said they’d be good for getting the lingering aftertaste of a curse out my mouth.”“Yuuji? Since when were you on first-name basis?”Geto laughed. “Is that jealousy I detect, Satoru?”“Curiosity.” Gojo scowled.“Well, I asked if I could and he said yes. A little social grace goes a long way, Satoru.”Gojo clicked his tongue. “And the sweets?”“I didn’t ask for those. He just bought them with him on our last mission together. They work a charm.”“Funny that he knew they’d work.”Geto hummed. “Very funny.”A long silence stretched between them for a moment. The snow was growing heavier, and as beautiful as it was, Gojo lamented the sight of it settling on the grass in front of him. Heavy snow brought joy to small school children and car accidents to working adults. It was not the tragedy itself that Gojo mourned, but rather the subsequent curses borne from the despair that he knew were on the horizon.“Want to hear something else funny?” Geto asked.“What?”“That Fushiguro guy has a kid, did you know?”“No, I didn’t.”“Well, Yuuji does.”Gojo frowned. “Okay, and?”“Do you think I’d be a good parent, Satoru?”Gojo snorted. “No.”“Well, Yuuji seemed to think so. He asked me to look after the Fushiguro boy.”“Why?”“Said he didn’t want him to get into the hands of the Zenin clan. I can understand that but I don’t understand why Yuuji would care.”“What did you say?”“That I’d think about it. I hope you don’t mind, I did tell him that he better ask you as well.”“Of course you did,” Gojo rolled his eyes. “What's the kid’s name?”“Fushiguro Megumi.” – After the incident Gojo became more vigilant in following Itadori after school.As soon as Gojo started tailing him again, Itadori started returning to the Shibuya tower.Snow had draped the city in a heavy shroud of grey. The afternoons peeked over the 0° mark, enough to melt the snow for a moment’s reprieve, only for the cold to return at sundown and freeze the melted snow into a treacherous landscape of black ice and frost.With the short winter days, the sun was already dipping below the horizon by the time school was out. The sunset cast vibrant hues of red and orange over the shadowed blue of the city, and Gojo found Itadori sat in his rightful spot watching the light disappear.The city beyond was quiet, the snow and encroaching night shuttering everyone away behind closed doors.For all the days Gojo had stood vigil, not once had Itadori noticed Gojo’s presence. Today, however-“I know you’re there. You can come out, Gojo.”Gojo felt ice wash through his veins. From his spot hidden in the shadows of the stairwell, Gojo stepped out into the fading sunlight.As always, Itadori was there to meet his gaze. He gave Gojo a small smile before turning back to the horizon. When Gojo refused to move, Itadori beckoned him with his hand.Gojo moved slowly, feeling like his body was weighed down with lead. “You’ve always known,” He should have posed it as a question, but Gojo felt like he already knew the answer.Itadori hummed. “It’s okay,” He said. “I don’t blame anyone for being suspicious.”Gojo settled himself onto the edge next to Itadori, letting his legs dangle over the edge. A strange sense of understanding settled in his stomach as he gazed out at the infinite expanse of the city beyond. From so high up, Gojo could see the glimmer of water along Tokyo Bay in the far distance. The lights of moving cars and apartment windows traced radiant paths through the city streets. The atmosphere here felt fresher, distanced from the usual oppressive weight of urban air. There was a freedom felt in being above it all up here, and Gojo could see how one could get addicted.“Can I ask you something?” Itadori said, his voice barely above a whisper.Gojo hummed. “Only if I can ask you something in return.”Itadori stiffened, contemplating for a long moment before nodding.
A little social grace goes a long way
“Okay,” Itadori breathed. “There’s someone I need to protect and I would like- no, need your help.”“Is this to do with the Fushiguro kid?”Itadori chewed on his lower lip and nodded. He didn’t ask how Gojo already knew.“Before I answer, can I ask my question?”Itadori let out a breathy laugh. “If you have to.”“Why?”Itadori opened and shut his mouth as he searched for the right words to say.“Actually-” Gojo interrupted before Itadori could speak. “Let me rephrase that. Back when you first joined, during your interview with Yaga - is this part of your ‘repentance’?”“Yes.”“And how does this kid fit into your atonement? Reparation for killing his father?”Gojo was expecting a greater reaction out of Itadori. He knew he was being blunt, overly so, but he felt like this moment was above beating around the bush. Yet, Itadori barely even flinched.“Yes.”Gojo had been seeking a confession, but he had to admit he was unsure what to do now that he had one. He’d known it was true, the evidence was so undeniable it was impossible to refute, but hearing it from Itadori himself was an entirely different beast.“Why did you kill Toji Fushiguro?”“Someone had to. He needed to be stopped.”“That’s not what I asked,” Gojo said slowly. “I’ve been informed of his crimes. He was a bad man. Why did you kill Toji Fushiguro?”Itadori fell entirely still. His hands, which he had been anxiously intertwining in a nervous figure-eight throughout the conversation, now hung lifelessly in his lap. “My hands are already stained. More blood upon them means nothing if it saves someone else from the same fate,” As he spoke, Itadori’s eyes gazed sorrowfully at Gojo.“One of the things ‘only you can do’?”Itadori nodded.“Did you even think this through? Once people know it was you, they’ll come after you.”Itadori said nothing.“Don’t you care? The Zenin clan is powerful. They’ll get to you eventually. You can’t run from this.”Itadori nodded. “Eventually.”Gojo’s jaw fell slack. “You really don’t care, do you?”Itadori offered him a small smile. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay. I already told you - I can’t die yet.”“Because of the things only you can do?”Itadori nodded.“And once you’ve done those things - what then?”Itadori said nothing, and Gojo felt both rage and despair well in his chest.“Hey,” Itadori interrupted before Gojo could continue. “You never answered my question.”“What?” Gojo grumbled.“Will you help me? Will you help me protect Fushiguro Megumi?”Gojo had never been good with kids. He grunted.“I’ll see what I can do.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Itadori took Gojo with him to meet the Fushiguro kid for the first time. However, for all that Itadori had done to ‘save’ the kid, he hung back and barely said a word when they finally found Fushiguro.Gojo almost felt bad for the way they cornered Fushiguro in the alley. He saw how the boy clutched his pale fingers around the straps of his backpack warily as he glared at Gojo, and how he took two steps back to put distance between them.Gojo hadn’t been lying when he said he was no good with children. They were too young, dumb, and fragile. He hated how much coddling they needed, how much he had to hold his strength back without infinity engaged to not crush their bird-boned arms in his hands. He hated how they always needed saving, and this Fushiguro kid was no exception, with how close he was to the snapping jaws of the Zenin clan.Fushiguro took another wary step back.To approach frightened animals, one must first make themselves smaller; a looming figure equating to a looming threat. So, Gojo crouched, his hand extended like he would to entice a kitten. His attempts seemed to have no effect as Fushiguro stood his ground several feet away and refused to let go of his accusatory glare. He made no move to flee, though, so Gojo celebrated his small wins.Gojo groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Look, kid-”“I’m not a kid,” Fushiguro spat.Gojo raised his eyebrows. He hadn’t expected the attitude. “Alright,” He sighed, “Megumi, right?”Fushiguro stared at him for a long moment before nodding.“Then, Megumi, we’re not here to hurt you or anything. About your dad, he-”“Don’t care.”“Huh?”Fushiguro’s face was strangely blank. “I don’t care,” He repeated, “I have no interest in where he is or what he’s doing.”Gojo had to force his jaw from falling slack. “Well, alright then,” He cleared his throat to hide his surprise. “Onto the main point then. What do you know about your dad?”Fushiguro shrugged. “Haven’t seen him in years. I can’t even remember what he looks like.”“You see, you’re dad’s from a big, powerful family called the Zenin clan-”“Don’t care,” Fushiguro said again, making moves to turn and walk away.“Wait!” Gojo called out. “Wait, let me finish, kid.” Gojo had never been good with kids.Fushiguro sighed, kicking a rock by his shoe before reluctantly turning back to face him.“I’m telling you this because you have a choice. Your dad had big plans to sell you off to the Zenin family. Would you want to go join them?”Gojo watched Fushiguro’s face for a reaction. This was almost the exact ultimatum Yaga had offered Itadori; a choice that was simply an allusion.“What about Tsumiki?”“Who’s that?”“My sister,” Fushiguro grumbled. “If I joined the Zenin clan, would Tsumiki be able to find happiness?”Gojo lip twisted. For all that he stayed out of the great families’ politics, he could answer that question for certain. “Absolutely not.”Fushiguro took another step back. “What’s the other option?”Gojo smiled. “Excellent choice.” – Looking back at this moment, Gojo would reflect on several things. Namely, Itadori’s reaction.Gojo went to ruffle Fushiguro’s hair, chuckling at the boy’s recalcitrance. He turned and, at meeting Itadori’s expression, felt the brief moment of joy be sucked from his lungs.There Itadori stood, with a look that could only be described as in mourning. He wondered how it was possible, to mourn for someone still alive. Yet, Itadori’s eyes were haunted.For all that Gojo knew Itadori was strong, in that moment, however, he appeared delicately fragile. His face, with pallid skin, eyes widened, and lips trembling, bore the weight of some unnamed grief. Anger, perhaps, simmered beneath the skin, evident in his clenched knuckles and quivering shoulders. Yet, it was hidden, smothered beneath the overarching cloak of sadness.Melancholy, Gojo had seen in Itadori several times. In the boy’s faraway stares, in the way he dangled himself so precariously over the edge of that Shibuya tower without ever straying too far. Sadness, however, that cut as deep as this, was new.Acutely, Gojo remembered Geto’s words. Once again, that seed of doubt he had planted wormed its way into the recesses of his mind like a parasitic weed taking root.
Itadori is not a danger to us, he is a danger to himself.
– Gojo found Shoko leaning against the walkway fence, staring out onto the crystalline tableau of the frost-covered school field. The sun, cold and pale, flittered briefly behind the heavy cloak of grey clouds.The air was crisp, as Shoko took a drag from her cigarette, her exhale of smoke dancing with each visible breath.There was a hushed silence blanketing the field, interrupted only by the soft crunch of frozen grass behind Gojo’s step.Shoko was reliable in her smoke breaks. If one wanted to find her, the path above the track field was the first place to check.Gojo draped himself over the fence beside her, feeling the ice melt through his uniform sleeves. Shoko took another long drag; the only sign she had acknowledged his presence.She exhaled, tapping the end of her cigarette so the burning embers dropped to fizzle out on the snow at their feet.“Must you do that?”Shoko hummed around the cigarette. “Addiction is addiction, Satoru. I can’t help it.”Gojo wrinkled his nose at the cloying scent of smoke. “How can you even enjoy those things?”“It’s a compulsion. It stopped being about enjoying it a long time ago. Like I said - addiction,” She took another drag. She raised her eyebrows at Gojo’s expression. “Oh, don’t look at me like that,” She snorted. “As if you’re above it. Everyone’s addicted to something. Booze, pills, power.”“Pain?”“Sure, if you want to get all poetic about it. Is this you trying to tell me something or are you suddenly becoming a man of letters?”“Am I not allowed to be poetic sometimes?”“Absolutely not. You’re far too dumb for that, Satoru.”Gojo slumped forward dramatically. “You wound me, Shoko. Would it kill you to say something nice about me?”“Most probably, yes,” Shoko hummed. “Now, get to the point and talk about Itadori. Or are you just here to pester me about my smoking habits?”Gojo raised his eyebrows. “Nothing gets passed you, Shoko.”“Not when it’s you, Satoru. You’re far less inconspicuous than you believe yourself to be.”“I think you’re just too observant.”Shoko rolled her eyes. “Just start talking about the kid Itadori got you to adopt already.”“Once again, nothing gets passed you,” Gojo sighed. “And, I’ve not adopted him. I’ve just taken him in to get him away from the Zenin’s dirty clutches.”“So, he’s a Zenin?”“On a technicality. He’s Toji’s son, so he’s Fushiguro. Fushiguro Megumi.”“So, Itadori begged you to look after the son of the man he killed?”Gojo let out a breathy chuckle. “How perceptive of you.”“Crashing into the school covered in blood the night before Toji’s murder was announced. I don’t think it takes a mastermind to connect the dots.”“That’s what makes me worry. He doesn’t seem concerned with people figuring him out. He’s not covering his tracks at all.”“Perhaps, a crime of passion, of sorts. Not every murder is committed with such careful planning.”Gojo shook his head. “No. The way he’s spoken about it, it’s clear he planned it out. It’s simply the fact he doesn’t care.”“Look at you, Satoru. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you show such care for someone else’s well-being. You’ve taken a liking to him.”“It’s simple curiosity.”Shoko snorted. “Sure, if telling yourself that helps you sleep at night.”“There’s just so much that doesn't make sense about him. He’s too powerful, he knows too much, he knows names he shouldn’t.”“And have you talked to him about this? Just asked him what you want to know?”Gojo groaned. “You know it’s not that simple, Shoko.”Shoko raised her eyebrows. “You’d be surprised, Satoru.” – Tokyo was a turgid mix of white and brown as the warming days melted the snow enough for the life of the city to kick mud into what remained. The grit on the roads spat grimy piles of snow and dirt onto the pavements, leaving the residents to track it across the streets and into their homes. It was the less graceful side of snow that was never depicted in chocolate box paintings.Itadori was scribbling in his diary when Gojo sat himself down at his side on the Shibuya skyline. He snapped the book shut as Gojo settled.“What do you write in that little journal of yours, Itadori?”Itadori’s fingers toyed with the fraying edge of the leather binding.“Lots of things,” Itadori mumbled. “Memories, sometimes.”“It’s not enough to just let them live as memories in your mind?”“Writing it - it helps remind me that it was real, that it all happened. When I am the only one left who remembers.”“Answer me, Itadori. If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”Itadori made a face. “Of course, it does.”Gojo raised his eyebrows. “Then, does that not reassure you? The absence of an audience does not negate the fact that it happened.”Itadori hummed non-committedly. A brisk wind whistled through Itadori’s hair and a shiver ran across his shoulders. He ducked his chin into the collar of his uniform, his fingers pulling at the red hoodie Gojo had insisted Itadori add to his uniform.“You hold on to these memories, don’t you, Itadori? Is that not heavy?”“Of course, I hold on to them. I have to. Someone has to.”“I can help you, you know, if it becomes too much to carry, if you become too tired.”Itadori turned to look at Gojo, the wind rustling his hair and the fading sunlight catching gold in his brown eyes.Gojo had never cared much for family. Being an only child, he had seldom thought of what it must feel like to have a brother. Yet, as Itadori regarded Gojo with a vibrant mix of sorrow and affection swimming in his eyes, Gojo had to guess that the surge of protectiveness in his chest must be comparable.“You know, you’re the last person I can tell, Gojo.”“Call me Satoru.”Itadori’s face softened, and the affection in his gaze grew brighter. “Then, call me Yuuji. Suguru already does.”“Yuuji, then,” Gojo smiles. “I’ve finally caught up to that bastard.”“Who, Suguru?”“Yeah. Getting close to you before I could, even when I found you first.”Itadori laughed, soft but genuine. “I didn’t realise there was a competition happening.”“Oh, Yuuji. It’s always a competition when it’s me and Suguru.”Itadori smiled wistfully. His gaze returned back to the horizon “It’s strange hearing you call me Yuuji again,” He whispered, almost too softly for Gojo to hear.The again had Gojo betting that he wasn’t supposed to hear it. He wanted to question further but knew he had to pace himself.He settled on a different tactic.“Nanami Kento and the other juniors are coming back tomorrow.”Gojo watched Itadori’s profile like a hawk, waiting for the tell.He found it in the tightening of Itadori’s shoulders, and the downward twist of his lip.“Nanamin,” Itadori whispered softly, “Ah, and Haibara.”Gojo raised an eyebrow. Another name Itadori should not know. “Have you met them already?” An innocent-sounding question with plausible deniability.“No, I never met Haibara.”No mention of Nanami Kento, however, Gojo noted.“I feel like you two would get along.”Itadori’s smile faltered slightly. “So, I’ve been told.”By who? Gojo wanted to question. – Gojo greeted Nanami in the hall upon the first year’s arrival back to the school.Nanami immediately met Gojo with a withering look, and Gojo expected nothing less.“So, I’ve heard you’ve gained a new classmate?”Gojo rubbed the back of his neck. “That I have.”Nanami raised an eyebrow, making a show of looking around and seeing no one. “Have you already managed to scare him off then?”Gojo chuckled. “He said he’d come with me to meet you guys, but it seems he’s disappeared off somewhere.”“And is that a habit of his, disappearing?”“So, it seems.” – Itadori avoided Nanami like the plague for the first few days, as far as Gojo could tell.Anytime Nanami would walk into the lunch hall, Itadori would walk out.If they were forced to be in the same room together, Itadori would avoid Nanami’s gaze like his life depended on it.But Gojo would catch Itadori staring, when the boy thought no one was paying attention. He would look at Nanami with that same faraway gaze that he gave Fushiguro. From time to time, unshed tears would glisten in the corner of Itadori’s eyes. Only for him to rapidly blink them away as soon as his attention was called elsewhere.Mourning; again, the only descriptor Gojo could conjure to describe Itadori’s expression. – Itadori’s self-imposed exile from Nanami Kento lasted for all of two weeks. A call came in for a mission, assigned to the first-years - a simple, second-grade deity, nothing Nanami and Haibara couldn’t handle on their own.Gojo had only mentioned the mission in passing. Yet, as soon as Itadori caught wind of it, he fervently, bordering on manically, pressed Gojo for details.Itadori’s mysteries, becoming so commonplace, were losing their element of surprise. Such a dramatic turn, from forced disinterest to ardent attention, could only feel quotidian from an enigma like Itadori Yuuji. – Itadori invited himself onto the mission roster. Any red tape that usually accompanied the assignment of jujutsu students was blatantly and forcefully disregarded as Itadori muscled himself onto the mission.Like an unbroken dog from its cage, there seemed to be no stopping Itadori when he had set his mind on something. – “Have I done something to offend Itadori Yuuji?”Gojo blinked up at Nanami, who had cornered him against the wall of the lunch hall.“No? Why do you ask?”Nanami made a face that looked like he didn’t believe him. “It’s the way he looks at me. It’s disconcerting.”“He’s just like that,” Gojo explained. “He’ll come around. He’s just a little odd.”“Right,” Nanami hummed, unconvinced. “Quite odd.” – “How many of Sukuna’s fingers do we have now?” Shoko hummed around the pencil in her mouth.“Nearly all of them now, I believe,” Geto answered.“Sixteen,” Gojo tapped his finger against the desk. “We had only four a few months ago.”“All Itadori’s doing, I assume?”“As well as these mysterious ‘anonymous tips’ that don’t seem to end.” There was an unsubtle edge of sarcasm in Geto’s voice.The urge to parrot all Itadori’s doing welled in Gojo’s chest, but he fought it down. It was the obvious ending, but it was something Gojo didn’t want to admit out loud. Not when he wasn’t ready to admit it to himself.The classroom fell quiet, the relentless ticking of the clock grating on Gojo’s nerves. Itadori wasn’t here yet, and though he usually lingered in solitude, his absence was deafening. Itadori himself was not loud, it was the absent screaming of his Six Eyes that was notable.“What happens when we have all of them?” Shoko asked, her voice surprisingly timid.Gojo had been immune to the disquietude that had been recently simmering through the Jujutsu world. He had watched from his pedestal, as the anxiety spread like a virus. Now, though, he could feel a sense of foreboding budding in his chest. He had caught the infection, and Itadori was patient zero. – The mission - a simple, second-grade deity - had gone awry. Before Nanami, Haibara, and Itadori could even return, the news had spread.A mislabeling, the school board had called it. An accident.Gojo preferred to call it negligence.The infection was in Gojo’s lungs, coiling like barbed wire around his windpipe until it restricted his breath.Such an accident would have spelled certain death for the first-years had Itadori not forced his way onto the mission.If one looked at it from a certain angle, Itadori’s insistence on going could suggest a prescient knowledge of the impending events.Dismissed as a stroke of serendipity, it was attributed to sheer luck that someone as strong as Itadori happened to be present, narrowly averting tragedy.His Six Eyes could see much, but not all. However, it took no omniscient power, no all-seeing eye, to look through such a thin excuse.Gojo knew better. – Nanami was pale and visibly shaken when he returned.Haibara was with Shoko in the infirmary, a wound to the stomach that had come treacherously close to life-threatening.“Itadori saved us,” Nanami muttered, as he sat in a small, uncomfortable plastic chair outside the infirmary. His back was against the wall, and his attention locked firmly on the ceiling. He was avoiding Gojo’s gaze, but Gojo could still see the hollow look in Nanami’s eyes.“Did he?”“You called him odd,” Nanami chuckled humourlessly, “‘odd’ falls horribly short in describing him.”Gojo smiled at that. “Quite.”“Is this another habit of his? Coming so close to sacrificing himself for people he hardly knows?”Gojo’s smile dropped. “So, it seems,” He repeated.“I thought he disliked me. Yet, he jumped in front of a first-grade curse to save me. He could have died.”“A curse as weak as a first-grade wouldn’t have killed him.”“Weak,” Nanami breathed. “Such monstrous strength you all have.”Gojo bristled at the mere mention of monster. A name he had become all too familiar with answering to as a child. A name his Six Eyes had labeled Itadori from their first encounter.“So, he’s strong?” Nanami asked.“Very.”Nanami finally lowered his head to meet Gojo’s stare. “As strong as Geto?”“More so.”Nanami raised his eyebrows. “As strong as you?”“Terrifying close.” – The sun was a fickle creature. It paid no mind to a speck like Gojo.Gojo was a God amongst men, but here, he held no power.Even on his worst days, the sun would still rise, and it would be the same fucking sun as yesterday, sneering at him as it turned.Today, Gojo was a speck.Spring was finally arriving. The snow was receding with the dawn, everything coming back to life on the wind; the scent of green trees and blooming flowers.Winter was breaking, and so too was the tidal wave they had all feared. The water had been lapping at his ankles, but Gojo now felt himself be swept away the second he saw Yaga’s face - stern, grey, and solemn.The sun was a fickle creature. For the first time in months, it shone, high and bright in the sky.The classroom was dark, the taunting light of the wayward sun refusing to reach them here. Gojo, Geto, and Shoko sat as silent statues at Yaga’s arrival. Itadori’s absence was striking.The silence was suffocating. The infection was a pair of hands around his neck, pressing a traitorous finger against the apple of his throat until his lips turned blue.Yaga cleared his thoat, and Gojo felt like he couldn’t breathe.“At approximately 0200 hours, Itadori Yuuji disappeared from school premises, along with all sixteen of Sukuna’s fingers in our possession,” Yaga’s voice was alien, emotionless and ugly. “As of 0900, Itadori Yuuji has been officially labeled as a traitor. The order is to kill on sight.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The line between boredom and chaos was far too fine.For so long had Gojo felt the languor of his divine isolation. So violently had he come to know the world, when all he could do was watch. He had seen the snarl of human existence, from up on his podium, and he had resolved to never lower himself to such depths. The curses they fought, such monsters, were human-borne. So, Gojo would dip his toes into their choppy waters to save them when he was needed, but he would never let their grubby, human hands drag him beneath the waves.He kept his distance. Purposefully, always one step above. Self-imposed for the sake of his sanity. He was too strong, too powerful, too necessary for the survival of the human race, that if he let himself get too close he would never escape.Yet, he was bored. He had yearned, unquenchably, for someone to meet him on his level, for someone who could assuage him of this boredom.And then came Yuuji Itadori.He was not yet at his level, but Gojo could see him clawing his way closer, with broken and bloodied fingers.It was then, the first time that Gojo stared into the hollow, violent eyes of Itadori Yuuji, that Gojo wavered. He had to choose: the safety of distance or the all-encompassing feeling of being known. He had to question: what was worse, dying of thirst or drowning beneath the waves? – The wind was frigid as it blustered over the horizon. It was the kind of cold that sapped fingers of their strength and left the tips of ears aching.Itadori was staring out at the Shibuya skyline, while Gojo sat, with his chin in his palms, staring at Itadori. The clouds hung low in the sky, shrouding the metropolitan distance in a thick, grey blanket. There was little to see beyond the endless dirge of grey, so sitting and observing Itadori was much more interesting.“Say, Yuuji,” Gojo drawled, “you’ve been here for a while now, haven’t you?”Itadori chewed on his lower lip. He nodded.“But I hardly know anything about you,” Gojo watched Itadori’s face closely. “Can’t you tell me a bit more about yourself?”A little social grace goes a long way.“What do you want to know?”Gojo cocked his head. He wanted to know far more than Itadori would be willing to tell him, that much Gojo was certain of. He had to be tactical with how he laid his cards. “What’s your favourite colour?”“Black.”“That’s a surprising answer. I thought you’d pick something brighter.”Melancholy washed over Itadori’s expression. “It’s sentimental for me.”Gojo's tactic had been to avoid dangerous topics, to keep the conversation light. To say ‘lull him into a false sense of security’ was harsh but not unrealistic. Somehow, with the first hurdle, Gojo had already stumbled.“What’s your favourite food?”“I’m not picky. I’ll eat anything.”“Favourite hobby?”“Watching TV or movies.”“Do you dye your hair?”Itadori raised his eyebrows, pinning Gojo with an incredulous look. “Why are we suddenly playing twenty questions?”“Humour me.”Itadori snorted but answered regardless. “No. This is natural,” His fingers came up to toy with a strand of his fringe.“It’s unique, I have to say. Is that from your mother or father, then?”“Ah,” Itadori sighed. “Father, I guess.”“You guess?”“They died when I was young. I only have photos to go off of.”Gojo’s stomach dropped. Another blind obstacle he’d run straight into. “I’m sorry.”Itadori let out a humourless laugh. “Nothing to be sorry for. Like I said, it was a long time ago.”“Who did you grow up with then?”“My grandad.”“And what’s he like?”Itadori hummed, the melancholy returning. “Grumpy.”Gojo smiled. “As most old men are.”“Yeah, but he was especially grumpy.” Itadori laughed gently. “He taught me a lot, though. For better or for worse, I live by what he told me.”“With age comes wisdom,” Gojo mused.“But sometimes age comes alone,” Itadori finished for him.“Now, with that, I can’t tell if you think highly of him or not, Yuuji.”Itadori chuckled. “No, of course, I loved him. He just had bad timing with his words is all.”Gojo leaned forward. “You speak of him in the past tense.”“Yeah,” Itadori whispered. “He’s dead too.”“When did he pass?” Gojo asked carefully.Itadori took a suspiciously long time to answer. “Just before I started high school,” he said quietly.A fresh wound, then, Gojo mused. “I’m sorry,” He said again.“It was a long time ago. It’s okay.”One year was not a long time.Gojo stretched backwards, flopping gracelessly to the roof ground behind him. There was heartache in Itadori’s voice as he talked of his granddad, that was for sure, but there was no marked difference to the way he talked of his parents. Gojo was not close with his own family, he knew he wouldn’t even blink if he found out that someone related had passed. So, he knew his own emotional reaction wouldn’t be anything to go off of. However, he’d seen it in others. One year was not a ‘long time’ in the life cycle of grief.“Is that twenty questions over, then?” Itadori asked, breaking the momentary silence Gojo hadn’t realised had lapsed.“I can keep going if you really want me to.”Itadori snorted. “I’m all good. Eye for an eye, do I get to interrogate you now?”“Interrogate? You wound me, Yuuji,” Gojo sighed dramatically. “Besides, it’d hardly be fair. You already know far more about me, don’t you?”Carefully, consciously, Gojo toed the line.Itadori’s back stiffened. “What do you mean?”Gojo sat up slowly. “Well, your teacher - he was part of the Gojo clan.”Itadori’s eyes were wide and owlish as his head whipped to face Gojo. “How-”“You talk in your sleep, Yuuji. You also slipped up once and called me Gojo-Sensei. I guess if your teacher and I are related then it’d be easy to mistake us.”Itadori flickered through several emotions for a moment before suddenly bursting out laughing.“What?”“I guess, I never thought about it like that,” Itadori said as he caught his breath. “Related, huh?”Gojo frowned. “Well, the Gojo name isn’t exactly common, especially in the Jujutsu world.”Itadori’s expression settled into a fond smile for a moment. “Yeah, you’re right. I just hadn’t considered it in that way.”“Why? Were we that different?”Itadori laughed again. “More similar than you can imagine.”“How do we compare?”“What do you mean?”“Am I better than him?”Itadori stared at Gojo for a moment before giggling. “First, Suguru and now my Sensei? You’re a competitive person, aren’t you.”Gojo sniffed. “Maybe. But, you didn’t answer my question.”“Well, I think you have the chance to grow into being like him.”Gojo narrowed his eyes. “There’s some joke you’re making that I’m not getting.”Itadori just laughed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” – It was warm as Gojo slumped over on the steps outside the school. The sun was high and bright in the sky and it felt like a slap in the face.The sun paid no mind to a speck like him.Gojo propped his chin up in the palm of his hand, his gaze stuck on the ground. There was a small trail of ants crawling in a uniform line out of a small hole in the bottom step. They must have been emerging from their winter holdout, the scent of spring bringing forth hope. Gojo wanted to crush them beneath his shoe.Gojo’s ears perked up at the sound of heavy boots approaching from behind him. They stopped at his side, but Gojo refused to look up to greet his guest.“Satoru,” It was Yaga. Gojo resolutely kept his gaze on his feet. “I did all I could.”Gojo grunted.“You surely understand what the higher-ups are like.”Gojo buried his face into his hand. “A bunch of old fuckers with too much power and no spines.”“No comment,” Yaga said, with a slight hint of amusement in his voice.“What if I just killed them all.”“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that, Satoru.”Gojo grunted again.“Besides, I didn’t know you were close enough to Itadori to risk such a thing for him.”“We’re not, not really. It’s one-sided, I think.”“You sound like you just got dumped.”“It’s not like that, old man,” Gojo groaned. “It’s platonic. Don’t go reading into it.”“Apologies. It was a bad joke.”“God awful timing for jokes, old man.”“I’m just trying to lighten the air a little.”“Not in the mood.”“So I see,” Yaga hummed.Silence lapsed over the pair. Gojo had grown so used to the all-encompassing shroud of silence that winter brought that the distant sound of spring was grating to his ears. Young birds sang from atop their blossoming tree branches, and it was all far too saccharine for Gojo to bear.“Did you see this coming?” Yaga asked.Gojo didn’t want to admit it, but it was the truth. “No.”“But, I don’t think you were entirely truthful in your reports to me about him.”“How’d you figure?”Yaga hummed. “Well, with both yours and Suguru’s reports, I could read between the lines.”“What, did Suguru dob him in?”“Nothing of the sort. Suguru’s reports said much the same as yours. That fact alone was enough to set my suspicions off.”“Yet, you still gave Yuuji access to the vault?”“Well, I trust yours and Suguru’s judgements.”Gojo snorted. “Fat good that did.”“I’m not so sure about that.” Yaga mused. “Are you going after him?”Gojo kicked at a small rock by his foot. “Why? Are you going to try and stop me?”“I trust yours and Suguru’s judgements.”Gojo narrowed his eyes. “I’m bringing him back. I’m not following orders and I’m not killing him. The higher-ups can get fucked.”“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that, Satoru.”“What’s your ploy, old man? I’m directly going against what you’ve told us to do.”“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that too.”Gojo let out a humourless laugh. “You’re weird, sometimes.”Yaga snorted. “Is that supposed to be an insult? You’ve called me much worse before, Satoru.” – Haibara was sat in the hall with his head in his hands. His face was buried in his palms, but Gojo could see the shaking of his shoulders enough to know that he was crying.Nanami stood vigil next to Haibara, his arms crossed and his head leaned back against the wall. He was a veritable mask of stoicism, but Gojo noted the shade paler than normal of his skin.“He didn’t do it, right?” Haibara wept. “There’s got to have been a misunderstanding.”Nanami shifted uncomfortably, his hand hovering awkwardly over Haibara’s shoulder as he struggled to offer comfort. “We barely got to know him, I don’t understand why you’re so upset.”Haibara lifted his teary gaze to glare at Nanami. “He saved our lives. That’s all I need.”“Haibara,” Nanami sighed, “One good deed does not negate everything that comes after it.”“But that’s what I don’t get! Why would he save us like that only to go on and do this? It doesn’t make sense. If he was a secret evil curse user, or whatever they’re trying to label him as, then he would have just let us die and called it an unfortunate accident. He wouldn’t have risked his life for us.”“Well, I-” Nanami stuttered. “It’s just- it’s what the higher-ups have ordered.”“Are you going to just let him be executed because it’s what the higher-ups said? Even if it’s unfair?”“Haibara, please. This is dangerous.”Haibara slapped Nanami’s hand away as he made to storm off. “I don’t care if it’s dangerous! This is unjust. Itadori saved us so it’s only fair that we save him in return.”Nanami grabbed Haibara’s shoulder before he could get too far. His expression was a turbulent mix of anger and overriding anxiety. “Haibara, please,” he repeated. “That’s not what I’m trying to say. That last mission - you nearly died. I can’t let that happen again.”Haibara finally stilled.“This is dangerous,” Nanami continued. “Going against orders, going after Itadori, everything - it’s all too dangerous. I’m not saying we do nothing, I’m not saying I don’t think it’s unfair too, I just- please.”Gojo took his queue to enter.Nanami had a point - this moment, whatever it was, whatever it was about to become, it was far too dangerous for the likes of Haibara and Nanami to handle. They were not weak, Gojo would not insult them in such a way, but in the face of this tidal wave, they would be a mere hindrance.“Neither of you are going anywhere,” Gojo said as he made his appearance known.He didn’t know what expression he bore as he entered, but he knew it was enough to make both Haibara and Nanami take a wary step back in the face of his wrath.“I’m going after Yuuji, and I’m going after him alone.” – Fushiguro Megumi seemed to be doing just fine, as far as Gojo could tell.He’d grown accustomed to Gojo’s presence. He wouldn’t call him comfortable yet, but the boy was smart enough to know Gojo was not a threat.He scribbled at his homework as Gojo hovered in his doorway.Gojo had held a small hope that he’d find Itadori here, or maybe some sign that he’d passed by, but he’d arrived to nothing.Itadori was out there in possession of Sukuna’s fingers. Wherever he went, he would be leaving behind a near neon-lit trail of cursed energy in his wake. Nobody, not even Itadori, would be able to conceal such a thing. All Gojo needed to do was find the start of it.Gojo paused at the sound of Fushiguro’s pencil being put down. He looked up to see the young boy peering passed Gojo’s shoulder.“Where’s the other one?”“What do you mean?”“The other guy you always show up with - the one with the pink hair?”Gojo swallowed thickly. “Ah,” He rasped. “He’s just gone away for a little bit. He’ll be back though.”Fushiguro hummed. He pushed himself away from his desk and tottered over to his bag. Gojo watched as he rummaged around in his school backpack for something.“He dropped something last time he was here,” Fushiguro explained as he searched through all his bag pockets with intense concentration.“And you wanted to give it back to him?”Fushiguro nodded. “It was just a pen, but I still just thought…”Gojo smiled softly. “That’s very thoughtful of you.”Fushiguro huffed in embarrassment. “It’s just a pen.”Fushiguro made a small noise when he finally grabbed hold of what he was searching for. His little hands emerged with a black ballpoint pen in his grasp.“Tell him to watch his stuff better,” Fushiguro grunted, averting his embarrassed gaze as he held the pen out for Gojo to take.Gojo chuckled. “Of course, I’ll pass the message along directly. I’ll let him know that you were thinking of him.”Fushiguro made a strangled noise and shuffled back to his homework.Gojo stared down at the pen in his hands.Ah, he suddenly thought, the diary. – Before Gojo could stand, Yaga placed a heavy hand on Gojo’s shoulder.“Save that boy, Gojo.”A warm breeze brought forth the scent of snowdrops and spring flowers on the wind, and Gojo wanted to vomit.“From what? You think there’s an even bigger threat on the horizon?”“From himself. Satoru.”“So, you listened to Suguru’s reports.”Yaga’s grip on his shoulder tightened. “I’ve seen many men with the same look in their eyes as Itadori. It is the look of a dead man walking. It is the look of a man who will do anything to achieve his goals, even if it kills him.”“Especially, if it kills him,” Gojo finished.“I trust yours and Suguru’s judgements. Save him. He is a man worth saving.”“Don’t tell me what to do,” Gojo grumbled as he stood. “Of course, I’m going to save him.” – “If it comes to it,” Nanami asked quietly after Haibara had left. “If you have to fight Itadori,” He settled Gojo with a serious stare. “Do you think you can beat him?”“I can beat him.”“You don’t look so sure, Gojo.”“I’m the strongest. Of course, I can beat him,” He said. He didn’t even sound convincing to his own ears. – Itadori’s dorm room door, dappled gently in contradictory sunlight, stood like a formidable gateway to the unknown. Gojo had every right to enter Itadori’s room. Itadori was not here to call trespass, and in the eyes of the school, Itadori was a traitor; entry to his room was a rite in the investigation. Yet, Gojo could not help feeling like he was infringing on Itadori’s privacy.It was the same as every other dorm in the school. In appearance, there was nothing to warrant the aura of trepidation, of palpable fear that clung to the air like a spectral mist. But still, Gojo felt sweat forming on his palms.To cross this threshold was to confront the potential truth.Upon entry, Itadori’s room was equally as mundane as its façade. Fading daylight danced across the ancient floorboards, and it looked an awful lot like a normal bedroom. The sun bathed the room in a warm, honeyed glow, and the light, filtered through the half-shuttered blinds, cast variegated shadows across the unmade, stopgap bed and strewn clothes.It was strangely barren. Even Gojo, who was not known to be sentimental, embellished his room with the odd souvenir or knickknack. Shoko had piles of colourful throws and pillows across her bed, and the rustic, misshapen ashtray a friend from her hometown handmade for her adorned her bedside table. Even Nanami, stoic and unerringly by the book, still kept a collection of plants and succulents on his windowsill. Itadori, however, had nothing.Like the rest of his room, Itadori’s desk was empty. Except for his diary. Like some sacred relic, haloed in golden sunlight, it sat pride of place. It looked as if it was left to be found.The diary was old and well-worn, a dark grey that might have been its original colour or a result of ageing, Gojo couldn’t tell. Fragile in Gojo’s hands, the binding strings had loosened, leaving the whole thing held together by a few pitiful threads. The leather, crips and flaking, revealed the soft, cream flesh beneath. Pages yellowed with age bore dog-eared corners, curled from water damage. While Gojo had seen Itadori with it many times, he had never inspected it this closely. Despite its obvious wear, the diary was cared for.Like he was handling a newborn child, Gojo carefully picked up the diary. He let his fingers caress the uneven spine as he settled himself on the corner of Itadori’s bed.For all that he had dramatised this moment in his head, Gojo found that slipping the diary open was exceedingly anticlimactic.The first page was blank. But, Gojo noticed after a moment, it was not the first page, not really. Whatever had preceded had been torn away, leaving only the shredded edges behind. Though, Gojo could just about make out the odd word or number from the numerous scraps left behind.It wasn’t much, but Gojo could piece together a few names. Fushiguro Megumi, being among them. Nanami Kento, another. And finally, his own. Not just Gojo, not Gojo-sensei, his full name: Gojo Satoru.They were few and far between, usually half-torn or too smudged to be distinguishable, but at the top corner of a few scraps were dates. Chronologically, Gojo could flip through what was once written here. One year, he could count: spring, summer, then autumn and winter, then nothing.But perhaps, the strangest thing was something Gojo almost missed. It was something barely perceptible, only noticeable if one let their gaze linger for a moment too long. A subtle anomaly, half-smudged, half-scrawled numbers on the torn edges of the paper. These dates - spring, summer, then autumn and winter - were ones that had not yet come to pass.Gojo calculated: eleven years between this day and the entries ripped from this diary.Unlike anything before, Gojo yearned to know what the pages once said.Carefully, he turned the first blank page over.In stark contrast to the page before, this one was overflowing. Across every centimetre, suffocating every inch of white until none remained, was the same phrase written over and over again. Scrawling, in different pens, inks, and colours, from different days and hours, black and blue bleeding from teardrop stains on yellowed paper, all bearing the repetition of the same phrase.Ad nauseam, Itadori had written: DO NOT FORGIVE. DO NOT FORGET. DO NOT FORGIVE. DO NOT FORGET. DO NOT FORGIVE. DO NOT FORGET. DO NOT FORGIVE. DO NOT FORGET. DO NOT FORGIVE. DO NOT FORGET. DO NOT FORGIVE. DO NOT FORGET.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Time heals all wounds. Memories fade. Life moves forward. Incessantly, the world turns. Every painful thing will one day become a painful thing of the past.But anger; anger lingers. Like an ill-cared-for wound, it festers.You can run from grief, and you can run from anger. But while grief will meet you, years down the line, in an open field on a beautiful day like the return to a warm embrace, anger will greet you with a knife against your throat and the loose ends of a noose clenched in its knuckles. Pretend it doesn’t exist and it slips the noose around your neck. – Gojo ran his fingers over the page. He could feel the indent of each word on the paper like the raised edge of a keloid scar. How hard Itadori must have pressed with his pen to leave such a mark.What anger, what sadness, was Itadori feeling to scrawl like this over and over again?
Do not forgive. Do not forget Do not forgive. Do not forget.
A pit as dense as the sun settled in Gojo’s stomach. He didn’t want it to be true, but Gojo knew that Itadori’s anger, his sadness, was directed inwards.Memories, Itadori had said he wrote in his diary. To help him remember, to make sure he doesn’t forget.
Do not forgive. Do not forget Do not forgive. Do not forget.
Slowly, Gojo turned the page. He was half expecting to be greeted with the same sight, for the whole diary to be filled with the same manic scribbling. And while the next page was messy and near incomprehensible, it was entirely different.It took Gojo far too long to comprehend what he was seeing.Names, again. Some Gojo recognised and some he didn’t. Some were underlined, circled, or had arrows connecting one to another. Others were crossed out.Many names - not all, but a suspicious number of them - had dates printed next to them. Once again, dates that had not yet come to pass.Nanami Kento - 31st October, 2018Nobara Kugisaki - 31st October, 2018Geto Suguru - 24th December, 2016Gojo Satoru - 24th December, 2018It took Gojo far too long to comprehend what he was seeing.Quietly, carefully, Gojo turned the page.Now, there were locations, some circled and some crossed out, with numbers allocated to each one.The numbers appeared random at first.Jujutsu Tech: four.Eishu Detention Centre: one.Keiyo Industrial Zone: one.And so, the list went on. All the numbers combined, added up to twenty. Gojo recognised nearly all the locations. All of them were the sites of Sukuna’s fingers.There was one final location at the bottom of the list, the only one not yet crossed off, the only one with a name scrawled next to it.Sendai City: four - Kenjaku.It took Gojo far too long to comprehend what he was seeing.This was a plan, Itadori’s plan.Somehow, all this time, Itadori had known the locations of Sukuna’s fingers. He had known where they were, how many he would find there, and, for this final case, who they were in the possession of.There was more here - the dates, the names - but Gojo couldn’t figure out what they all meant. He had a small voice in the back of his mind telling him that, no, he could figure out what they meant, that he already had, but he didn’t want to accept it.It was too outlandish, too fantastical, too otherworldly, even in this realm of sorcery, to be believed. Yet, the proof lay before him.Toji Fushiguro’s entry became the final stitch in the unraveling tapestry. Beside his name, a date had been crossed out and substituted. Gojo, with certainty, recognised the new date as the day Toji had died.So, it wasn’t a considerable stretch of logic to conclude that every other date signified the date of death for the individuals listed beside them.The implications of such a truth were too great. It implied that, somehow, Itadori possessed foreknowledge of the future. It suggested that all along, Itadori had been wandering among them, aware of what was to come, the lives to be lived, and the deaths to be met.Gojo thought of Itadori’s insistence on joining Nanami and Haibara on their mission, and suddenly it didn’t feel so preposterous. He had seen evidence of this before, he had just been ignorant to the fact that it was evidence at all. There was a date next to Haibara’s name that had been crossed out. It had not been replaced.Was Haibara supposed to die that day? Was that wound to his stomach supposed to be fatal?Gojo clenched his hand around the neck of the diary. Though, he relinquished his grip when he felt one of the few frayed binding strings snap against his fingers.Was this the answer he had been waiting so long for?It didn’t feel real. It couldn’t be real.He’d had his hypotheses: Itadori was a secret curse user, Itadori was a spy, Itadori was a plant sent from the higher-ups to keep watch over Gojo. All unpleasant, but none as unpleasant as the reality the diary painted.Gojo ran his thumb over the final entry.
Sendai City: four - Kenjaku.
With an unfounded level of surety, Gojo knew that Itadori had gone to Sendai to gather the last of Sukuna’s fingers.Dead or alive, Gojo would find Itadori here.This diary had offered Gojo some answers, but too many questions still remained.This diary offered Gojo new hypotheses, but he could find no clarity without asking Itadori directly.
A little social grace goes a long way
Gojo scoffed. The time for social niceties had long since passed.Gojo would find Itadori and he would force answers out of the boy.He would force answers out of Itadori, then he would force him to come home. – Sendai was not a large city, especially in comparison to Tokyo, but finding one person in a population of one million was like finding a needle in a haystack.The journey to Sendai wasn’t long, but evening had started to fall by the time Gojo stumbled off the train platform and onto the city streets.The neon lights of bar signs spilled technicolour ink into the muddied puddles of rain on pavement edges. The clamour of half-drunk post-work barflies echoed from open izakaya doorways, loud but not yet rowdy. Late night cram students trudged passed with bags full of overdue homework and forgotten lunchboxes, all while stuffing headphones blasting teen metal over their non-regulation hoodies.The encroaching evening brought with it a cool breeze. The crowds of downtown Sendai drowned out the cold, and Gojo struggled against the masses in search of that reprieve.The cold was comforting, the cold was familiar, and Gojo ached for a return to familiarity in the face of the tumult of foreign emotions swirling in his chest.Gojo had been so bored for so long, yearning for someone to come along and save him from his apathy. But, like the monkey’s paw, he had not paid heed to the consequences of such a request. He had not expected for new to leave such a bad taste in his mouth.Respite came at the end of the entertainment district, at the junction where nightlife ended and residential suburbia began.Gojo breathed a sigh of relief, feeling the surge of cold air as he began trudging aimlessly down a random alleyway.The only noise that met him here was the abstracted buzz of television screens from behind shuttered windows, the distant rustle of urban foxes digging through skip bins, and his own footsteps.He could only have been walking for around five minutes before he felt his phone buzz in his pockets.“Hello?”“Satoru,” Shoko’s voice rang out from the other end of the line.“And what do you want?” Gojo sighed.“Oh, nothing. I just wanted to ask how the hunt for Itadori was going?”Gojo clicked his tongue. “Why? So you can tattle on me?”Shoko’s laugh was high and tinny through the unsteady service. “You really think I’m a snitch, Satoru? I’m offended.”“Not to the higher-ups, to Suguru.”“You don’t think he deserves to know where you are? He’s Itadori’s friend too.”“This is something only I can do, Shoko.”“Careful, Satoru. You’re beginning to sound like Itadori.”“Shut up.”She laughed again. “Well, are you going to tell me where you’ve run off to? I promise I won’t snitch.”Gojo sighed. “Sendai.”Shoko hummed thoughtfully. “So, you’re going to check out the school?”“What school?”Shoko was quiet for a long moment. “Why else would you be going to Sendai?”“I have a lead,” Gojo answered carefully.“And that lead has nothing to do with the school?”“Just tell me what school you’re talking about.”“Itadori went to school in Sendai. Sugisawa Municipal. I thought you knew that.”Gojo scowled. “No, I didn’t know that. How do you know that?”“A little social grace goes a long way, Satoru.”“Why does everyone keep saying that to me?”Shoko scoffed. “To try and drill it into that thick skull of yours, Satoru. You’re not the most amiable person in the world.”“Shut up. How do you know where Itadori went to school?”“I asked him?” Shoko said as if it was obvious.“And he just told you? He wasn’t super cagey about it?”“A little bit cagey, yes. But to repeat what I just said about social graces.”Gojo groaned. “I got it. You don’t have to tell me again.”“Well, happy hunting, Satoru. Promise you’ll call as soon as you have news, okay?”“Yeah, yeah,”“I’m serious,” Shoko said, her voice surprisingly stern. “You’re not the only one worried about Itadori.”“Yeah,” Gojo repeated, softer. “I know.”“Bring him back, you hear?”“I will, Shoko.”“And you’ll call?”“I’ll call.” – Sugisawa Municipal High School sat high on the hill that overlooked the city. Stalking up to the locked front gates, Gojo paused to bask in the view for a moment. The vibrant city lights glittered far into the horizon, broken only by the lush, high trees that bordered the town. Sendai was similarly metropolitan as Tokyo, but far less industrial. Old, traditional architecture still ruled between the stark, modern highrises, painting a picture that was far too idyllic to mesh with his image of Itadori.Turning back to the school, Sugisawa Municipal was nothing remarkable outside of the view the students were afforded from its fields. Steady, flat brick, with large, yawning windows that must look lovely in daylight but feel just shy of unsettling in the night.Gojo hopped the fence and trekked his way up to the front doors. He passed by the sports pitch, and felt his Six Eyes twitch.Kneeling down, he let his fingers run over the fresh-cut grass. It was faint, but there lingered the residuals of an exorcised curse. His resolve that Itadori was here grew stronger. This was his work.Gojo walked up to the large, double-breasted doors at the entrance of the school, and was surprised to find the thick, metal padlock that secured them already undone on the ground.Either Gojo was about to tussle with some teenage vandals, or Itadori was really here.Gojo got his answer the second he stepped through into the entranceway.Like being slapped in the face, Gojo was immediately hit with the thick, sour scent of cursed energy. Like the wonted ring of an old lover’s laughter, Gojo’s Six Eyes started screaming a familiar tune.Blood It called, Murderer. Monster. Wretched devil.Gojo had found Itadori.Slowly, quietly, Gojo crept through the echoing hallways. The louder the Six Eyes screeched, the closer he knew he was getting.The scent of Sukuna’s fingers grew cloying, mounting with each step until the air became almost too thick to breathe. It was rotten, like decaying flesh and forgotten bodies. It smelt familiar.The school hallways seemed to stretch on ad nauseam. Like some mockery of Escher, it never stopped, one end leading to another’s beginning. It felt like he was trapped in some hidden curse’s domain, for there was no way something human-made could lay such unease in his chest.Beneath all the noise, behind the cursed energy and static, Gojo could sense Itadori’s presence. However, the state he would find him in was still unknown, and Gojo hated that which he didn’t understand.Finally, he reached the point where the cursed energy crescendoed. Just like before, when he stood before Itadori’s dorm room, Gojo was yet again faced with an innocuous door. A door that should not instil such fear in his heart.It was a club room, or so said the small copper plaque that was mounted at its centre. The old wooden façade and metal handle were scratched and faded from years of raucous student’s wear.Gojo paused, pressing his ear to the door to try and hear what lay beyond, to try and gain some clues to what might soon face him. To no avail, as no matter how much he strained, he was met with nothing but eerie silence.However, his Six Eyes were far from quiet. They were wailing now, blaring like flashing red sirens that told him to go no further.Still, he put his hand to the handle and pushed the door open. – One day, after lessons had come to a close and the students of Jujutsu High had filtered away for the evening, Gojo found Itadori out in the courtyard.At first, Gojo thought Itadori had given him the slip. The thought was worrying, given the boy’s track record. But instead of finding him half-dead in the shadowed hallways again, Gojo found Itadori crouched down in the corner of the yard, hidden away amongst the bushes.“What are you doing?”Itadori peered over his shoulder with a surprisingly innocent expression. He’d thought Itadori was doing something suspicious, tucked away as he was. Instead, Itadori cocked his head, beckoning Gojo closer.As much as Gojo thought Itadori’s oddities could no longer surprise him, Gojo still found himself slack-jawed as he dropped to his knees at Itadori’s side. Itadori had his hands clasped together and, at Gojo’s arrival, he carefully unfurled them to reveal a tiny fledgling bird.The thing was small, a nightjar, if Gojo’s scant knowledge of birds served him correctly. It was still and silent. He thought he saw a slight flutter to its wings but soon realised it was simply the wind rustling its downy, broken feathers.“Is it dead?”Itadori hummed. “Yeah.”“Then why are you holding onto it if its dead?”Itadori shook his head. “I’m burying it.”“Why? It’s just a bird.”Itadori ran his thumb over the head of the dead bird in a macabre show of tenderness. “I know. It still deserves a proper send off. It was so young.”Gojo watched as Itadori’s other hand started digging a small hole in the dirt, ready to lay the small bird down.“You’ll work yourself to the ground if you try and mourn for every little thing.”Itadori gently put the bird in the makeshift grave he’d dug and started laying fallen leaves over it. “I have too much grief to hold for people who aren’t even here. This way I can put some of it down.”Gojo watched the display with a strange mix of awe and confusion. “You’re kind, Yuuji.”“Sometimes.”“What do you mean ‘sometimes’? Always.”“I need to remind myself.”Gojo frowned. Everything was about remembering with Itadori, like memory was his punishment. “Well, I’ll remind you for you, Yuuji.”Itadori chuckled softly. “Then, you’re kind too, Satoru.”Gojo clicked his tongue as he stood up again, brushing the dirt from his knees. “I don’t need reminding of that.”Itadori watched him as he left. “I’ll do it anyway,” He said softly. – Itadori was stood staring out the window as Gojo entered through the club room door.At Itadori’s feet sat a bucket. With disgust, Gojo realised it was filled with Sukuna’s fingers. It was like a gruesome reproduction of a bucket of fish bait - one of those filled with maggots that he’d seen at the feet of fishermen near the Five Lakes around Mt Fuji.He stood silently in the door frame waiting for Itadori to notice his presence.When it became clear Itadori hadn’t heard his arrival, too lost in thought staring out at the horizon, Gojo cleared his throat.He’d thought of what he’d say to Itadori when they were reunited. He’d thought of it from the moment Yaga has relayed the news to him.Kill on sight.Gojo clenched and unclenched his knuckles as Itadori turned his head in Gojo’s direction. Itadori’s eyes were dull and lifeless, vibrant brown gone some faded shade of yellow.“Gojo,” Itadori whispered, voice hoarse.“I’ve been downgraded to Gojo now have I?”Itadori blinked a few times before realisation seemed to settle in his gaze. “Satoru,” He breathed.“Mistake me for your sensei again? Or maybe,” Gojo stalked closer. “The future version of me again?”Itadori’s eyes widened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”Gojo got close enough to loom over Itadori. It was a mirror of the first time they met, Gojo waiting for Itadori to flinch as he towered over him. Again, Itadori remained unshaken, clearly looking for a way out but holding strong.“The diary, Yuuji. You left it for me to find.”Itadori said nothing.“Why?” Gojo questioned. “You wanted me to find out what was going on. Yet, now I’m here you’re denying it.”“You weren’t supposed to figure it out this quickly.”Gojo raised an eyebrow, standing taller. “Why? Didn’t think I was smart enough to figure it out so fast? I’m insulted, Yuuji.”Itadori clenched his jaw. “It’s not- no,”“You’ve left me with many questions, Yuuji. I got an idea of what was going on from that diary of yours, but it wasn’t enough. You and I are going to have a nice, long chat, understand?”“Please, Satoru. Don’t do this,”Gojo walked until he had Itadori pushed up against the wall. Perhaps it was anger that tightened the knot in his chest, growing more taut the longer he stared into Itadori’s wild, wide eyes. But maybe, more likely, it was fear.“Don’t do what? Stop you?”“Please,”“And what am I stopping you from doing, Yuuji?” Gojo kicked the bucket with the toe of his polished school shoe. “Taking all of these. Running all the way here for the final four. Practically begging for the world to hunt you down, to point their knives at your neck. What exactly is it that you’re planning that I am stopping you from doing?”Itadori was cowering now. It tasted so bitter, the sight of Itadori staring back at him with dread swimming in his watery eyes.So many emotions had Gojo witnessed in Itadori. Many had felt out of place, but none as much as fear.“Please, don’t do this. Don’t take this away from me. I’ve worked so hard for this. Don’t take this away from me.”“Worked so hard? For what? To die?”“That’s not- this isn’t-”“Look me in the eyes, Yuuji. Look at me and tell me that this plan of yours doesn’t end with your death. Tell me that you plan to live.”Itadori quickly averted his gaze, and Gojo wanted to scream.“Please, I need to do this.”“Do you really? Do you just expect me to sit back and let you kill yourself like this? What power do you really have to even stop me?”“You don’t understand!” Itadori cried.“Then help me understand! What can be so important that you’d run so willingly to your death, Yuuji?”“Everything.”“That’s not an answer.” Gojo could feel the blood in his veins boiling, his frustration mounting.“It is,” Itadori lifted his head, his face sheet white and the corners of his scarred lips quivering. “Everything. If I don’t do this then, again, everything-”“Will the world really end if you live? Do you really think yourself so important?”“It will, it already did! Don’t make me go through it again, please,” Itadori’s shoulders were shaking now. “I can’t do it again. Please.”Itadori had another prayer on the tip of his tongue when he pitched forward.Gojo dashed to grab him before he crumpled to the floor, his heart in his throat, a proclamation of his own falling gracelessly from his lips.Perhaps, desperation had grown his senses dull as, before he could even register it, Itadori diverted course.As Gojo’s knees hit the ground, Itadori launched forward.With burgeoning horror, Gojo saw Itadori’s hands reaching out to grab the bucket of Sukuna’s fingers.He didn’t know what Itadori planned to do once he had it, but Gojo knew, with a level of certainty he’d never felt before, that he had to be stopped.Time had never moved slower as Gojo turned to run, eyes trained on Itadori.Gojo could feel his own heartbeat in his ears, could taste it on the back of his tongue.There was barely a metre between him and the bucket, between him and Itadori. A hairsbreadth.Yet, somehow, it felt like infinity.His body, that he had trained so hard for so long, had never felt so inadequate. His bones were leaden, his muscles frozen, as he tried so desperately to right himself again, to get himself between Itadori and his deathwish.A second, maybe, at maximum.One blink too many.Itadori’s hand grasped one of Sukuna’s fingers.Gojo’s body collided with Itadori’s side.Even as they tumbled, Itadori’s back slamming into the floor and Gojo dropping his whole body weight to Itadori’s chest, Itadori never let go of the finger.It then became a battle of pure strength, gracelessly grappling on the dusty club room floor for control.Of course, both of them could activate their techniques, they could fight at full strength, with all their cursed energy for maximum force. If Gojo really wanted to subjugate Itadori, he could do so with just a snap of his fingers. But such a move, at such close range, carried the risk of injuring Itadori. That was a risk he could not take, not right now, not when Itadori looked so close to breaking.With an angry, desperate flush spreading across Itadori’s pale cheeks as he struggled against Gojo’s hold, with unshed, frustrated tears glistening in the corners of his eyes, it all became so clear. Fragile in Gojo’s hands, Itadori’s binding strings had loosened, leaving him held together by a few pitiful threads.One wrong move, and Gojo threatened to unravel Itadori entirely, just like his diary.“Stop it!” Itadori roared, slamming a well-timed knee into Gojo’s stomach. “Why are you-”“Why am I not letting you kill yourself?” Gojo yelled back. “Are you really asking me that right now?”“I need to do this!”“Do what?” Gojo’s hands kept a vice-like grip around Itadori’s wrists, desperately trying to force Itadori to relinquish his hold on the finger but to no avail. “What are you planning to do with that?”“I need him back! It’s the only way!”“Who?” Gojo yelled, frustration and confusion mounting, seconds away from imploding.“Sukuna! I’m the only one who can- again, I need his power and then- I have to-”“Why? Why do you have to? Because it’s what you did last time?”“Yes!” Itadori screamed, scrambling wildly against Gojo’s.Gojo hadn’t actually been sure about his theory around Itadori and the future, whether it was premonitions, or time travel, or total bullshit. But the more Itadori let slip, the harder Gojo pressed, the more certain he became.Gojo had seen Itadori’s monstrous strength in action, but this was the first time he’d taken the brunt of it.Another kick to Gojo's stomach. It was restrained, he was sure, Itadori could probably kill a regular man with one hit if he truly wanted to, but Gojo still felt like a rib had cracked in his chest.He should have activated Infinity. But Infinity took too much concentration, too much finesse, and this moment was not one that allowed for finesse. It was too much childish anger, raw power, and tears. There was no time for technique, to stop and think.If only he could use his powers without thought.He tried. While the ache in his chest receded, he tried to stop and think, to activate Infinity.A mistake.Itadori took the opportunity to land another hit to Gojo’s chest, then his stomach, then face.Gojo reeled back, too stunned by the lapse in his guard to feel the pain.Itadori scrambled back, victorious and frantic, Sukuna’s finger still in his white-knuckled grasp.Where before, time slowed down to standstill, now it was dangerously, traitorously fast. Maliciously, it slipped through his fingers.Gojo had half a second to engage his brain, to engage his ability.Bile rose in his stomach as he ran, the taste acrid and violent like burning fire on his tongue.Like the echoes of an explosion, the world around him fell to silence, except for the shrill, piercing ring in his ears, a mournful wail echoing like a siren’s cry.Itadori had Sukuna’s finger in his grasp. Gojo watched as Itadori raised it to his lips, his mouth opening.The realisation of what Itadori was about to do slammed into Gojo like a charging bull. – Time is not linear but cyclical.The end is, and will always be, an immutable constant.You can rewrite the first chapter, but the closing line will invariably end with slaughter. – Gojo finally, blessedly, engaged Infinity.It wasn’t the smooth, calming waters it normally was. It was like trying to fight back a looming tidal wave with nothing but the power of will, dogged determination, and stupidity.Still, somehow, it washed over him, energy soaking through him like a second skin.Sukuna’s finger shot from Itadori’s hands with mere seconds to spare. Itadori’s lips closed around empty air and an anguished cry.Gojo’s body slammed against Itadori’s. Again, they fell back against the floor. Again, like the clocks rewound and time repeated.Gojo braced for the fight to return.Instead, he was met with stillness, silence. Then, after a long moment, a sob.Gojo lifted himself up, looked down, and stared down at Itadori below him.Tears rolled down Itadori’s scarred cheeks, endless and unstoppable. A choked-off wail caught in the back of Itadori’s throat as he slumped back defeated against the parquet floor.“Why?” Itadori whimpered.Gojo’s hands hovered awkwardly over Itadori’s shaking shoulders, unsure.“Because I can’t let you die,” Gojo whispered, surprised at the roughness of his own voice. “Because you don’t need to do this.”Itadori shook his head, more tears falling unbidden from his bloodshot eyes. A refusal on the tip of his tongue.Gojo cut him off before he could speak.Gojo grabbed Itadori’s shaking shoulders and hauled him up into a hug.It was awkward, a bad angle, all too-long adolescent limbs and unsure intimacy, but Itadori slumped bonelessly into the embrace all the same.“You don’t need to do this,” He said again, voice muffled against Itadori’s shoulder. “Whatever happened last time, whatever you did, you don’t need to do it again. You can change this.”Itadori’s hands came up to clench Gojo's uniform.“Satoru,” Itadori whimpered. He sounded so incredibly tired.“We can change this,” Gojo whispered. – To change fate is to write a whole new novel.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
It was an offhand comment from Itadori that led Gojo to find himself outside Shoko's room, shifting on the balls of his feet.Itadori possessed an uncanny knack for knowing more than he should, with each seemingly nonsensical statement eventually unveiling a kernel of truth. Such had been the consistent pattern that Gojo just had to investigate, just in case.The comment had been delivered so casually that Gojo almost found himself agreeing before taking the brief moment to truly contemplate it."Just use the Reverse Cursed Technique," Itadori had said. "Like you always do."And Gojo had nodded.Like you always do. Itadori had said it with such confidence.Then, Gojo remembered, he couldn’t do that. He’d never been able to do that.So, now here he was, outside Shoko’s room, gearing himself up to ask for the impossible. He’d seen Geto try and fail, over and over again, but maybe this time it’d be different.Gojo lifted his hand to knock just as Shoko opened the door.“I was beginning to wonder how long you were just going to stand there like a creep,” Shoko scoffed, turning around and beckoning Gojo to follow.Gojo huffed. “I was just taking a moment to think.”“Well, stop doing that.”Gojo shoved his hands into his pockets, ducking he head as he entered Shoko’s room. “What, thinking?”Shoko flopped back onto her bed, picking up her half-rolled cigarette that Gojo’s arrival had obviously interrupted the making of.“Yes,” She replied curtly, “It doesn’t suit you.”Gojo pulled out Shoko’s desk chair and collapsed back onto it. Shoko raised her eyebrows but said nothing, opting instead to grab the open bag of loose tobacco on her bedside and continue meticulously crafting her cigarette.“Thought you weren’t allowed to smoke inside.”Shoko snorted. “I just open the window. What they don’t know can’t hurt them,” She licked across the end of the paper and slowly began rolling. “Well, are you just here to comment on my smoking habits again or do you want something?” Her eyes never lifted from her cig.“I can’t just come to hang out?”“Well, you can but you said you were thinking. That doesn’t inspire confidence.”Gojo watched as Shoko held the end of her cigarette between her lips, her hands coming up to light the end. It took a few flicks of the zippo but soon Shoko was taking a long drag with a blissful expression on her face.“Well, I have a favour to ask.”Shoko snorted, smoke exhaling from her nose. “God forbid.”“I’m being serious.”“That’s even worse.”Gojo rolled his eyes. “You’re the only one I can ask.”That seemed to get her attention. “Whose dying?” She asked slowly, still feeling out whether this was the time to be pulling jokes or not.“I’m not being that serious.”“Oh, thank god,” Shoko sighed, taking another long drag of her cigarette.“I do need your help though.”“What do you want?”“I need you to teach me the Reverse Cursed Technique.”“Oh? The great Gojo Satoru admitting he can’t do something. Never thought I’d live to see the day.”“I’m not that bad.”“I beg to differ, Satoru.”“Just- Will you help me?”“Do I get something in return? I’m no MeiMei, but I’m not crazy about free labour.”“What do you want? Money?”“That’ll do it,” Shoko chuckled. “What can I do you for? You’ve never taken much of an interest before.”“It’s just something Itadori said.”“That old chestnut again. What cryptic dictum has he graced us with now?”“He thought I could already do it - Reverse Cursed technique. He seemed surprised when I said I couldn’t.”“Yet.” Shoko added.“Yet,” Gojo repeated.“Well, he’s had a strange habit of being uncomfortably correct so far; I’d be surprised if he’s suddenly off the mark this time.”“My thoughts exactly. So, here I am. I want to know your secrets.”“No secrets. Just technique.”Shoko took one last pull of her cigarette before stubbing it out on her handcrafted ashtray. She stood slowly, waving her hand to get Gojo on his feet too.Shoko cocked her hip as she regarded him for a second, her hand playing at her chin in thought. “Well, I guess for starters you-”“If you say fuu fuu one more time, I swear to god.”Shoko groaned. “But that’s all it is!”Gojo was already regretting his decision, and they had only just started. Perhaps he had fallen into the same trappings as Geto.“There’s got to be more to it than that.”“I promise you there’s not. Look, think of it this way - if you had to explain to someone how to use limitless, what would you say?”“It’s like a convergent series of infinite numbers. When I amplify my technique, I get a naturally negative number. Then, with the vectors-”“Alright, awful example,” Shoko interrupted, pinching the bridge of her nose between her fingers. “Go simpler. What about pure cursed energy - what drives it?”Gojo wrinkled his nose. This was elementary stuff. “Emotions,” He’d had this lesson drilled into his head since he was just about cognizant.“Exactly!”Gojo frowned. “So, I just have to get angry, then I can magically use the technique?”Shoko swatted his shoulder. “Don’t be snarky. It’s about the principle of it. Emotions aren’t tactile; you can’t force them to fit a particular shape just because you want to feel a certain way. Cursed energy is exactly the same. There are two ways cursed energy can manifest: either you can inherently control it, or it’s forced out of you.”“Forced through intense emotion.”“Exactly.”“So, I repeat what I just said: I just have to get angry, then I can magically use the technique?”Shoko buried her face in her hands. “You’re impossible.”“Isn’t that what you just said?”“You’re twisting my words. Don’t make it sound so derivative.”“I’m just trying to make your rambling make sense.”Shoko sighed. She wandered back to her bedside table and picked up her tobacco again. “What I’m trying to say is this: trying to teach someone a new technique they’re not innately born with is like trying to explain happiness to someone who's never been happy before. It’s a foreign feeling. Jumping straight into controlling something you’ve never felt before is nigh on impossible. It’s much easier to have it happen naturally.”“So, do I need to repeat the angry thing again or?”Shoko rolled her eyes, snapping at her zippo to light her second cigarette. “Sure, whatever. Go feel something. Go find a near-death experience and figure it out for yourself.”Gojo laughed. “It’s not that simple. I’m the strongest. Near-death experiences are hard to come by for me.”“Well, go watch someone you care about have a near-death experience. I’m sure the feeling is much of a muchness.”“Have I told you what a terrible teacher you are?”Shoko blew a puff of smoke directly into Gojo’s face in protest. “You came to me. I never offered my services so don’t go writing reviews I didn’t ask for.”“Yeah, yeah,” Gojo waved the cigarette stench away from his face, “I’ll go offer my apologies to Suguru. I shouldn’t have laughed at him for failing all those times he’s tried to learn from you. Turns out it’s not the student’s fault.”Shoko chucked a pillow at him. “Get the fuck out of my room, Satoru.”Gojo cackled as he ducked out the door, narrowly dodging another wayward pillow. – Gojo stayed with his arms wrapped around Itadori’s shaking shoulders long after the sobs had faded away. He remained in their awkward embrace until his knees began to ache, and the night outside fell into silence. There was the soft call of a tawny owl and the gentle flutter of the breeze through blossoming leaves beyond the window, but in the small, dusty clubroom, all was quiet.Itadori kept his face pressed into the crook of Gojo’s shoulder, fingers taut against the fabric of his uniform. Softly, slowly, his grip morphed from reluctant to acquiescent, until ultimately succumbing to serenity. The tension that he had held since the first time they met seemed to dissipate, leaving him reclined against Gojo’s side, pliant like a ragdoll.Gojo would be a fool to believe that this was it, that this respite was the denouement. The fight, he knew, was far from over. Yet, he relaxed into the fleeting peace, breathing in the momentary tranquility with the resigned knowledge that it was, most likely, merely the calm before the storm - the waters receding before the return of the tidal wave.Gojo had no way of knowing how much time had passed, but eventually, Itadori raised his head.Itadori untangled himself from Gojo’s hold and, this time, Gojo let him go. He could tell in the way Itadori held his body, in the red adorning his eyes, and the palpable surrender in his expression that Itadori had no fight left to give - at least for the night.Itadori shuffled until his back hit the wall. “Sorry,” He mumbled, barely audible.It’s alright would be the normal response, you have nothing to apologise for, but Gojo couldn’t bring himself to lie.He was angry, in many ways, and scared in multiple more.“I’m going to ask some questions and you are going to answer me,” Gojo said slowly, his voice equally quiet. It was strange, as if speaking too loudly would be the final straw to shatter the precarious ceasefire.“I guess I don’t have much of a choice.”Gojo, again, couldn’t lie. It wasn’t a suggestion, it was an order.“Please, Yuuji.”Itadori shrugged, his head thudding back against the wall behind him. He said nothing. Gojo took it as his cue.“So,” Gojo’s voice caught in the back of his throat. “The future,” His words sounded dumb to even his own ears.“Yeah,” Itadori whispered.Gojo had no words to respond. The confirmation of a fact he knew but could not reconcile with. An impossibility that was somehow real. “What happened? How?”A wobbly smile graced Itadori’s lips. “That’s a long story, Satoru.”“We’ve got all night.”“I guess,” Itadori chuckled. “But I don’t know where to start. There’s- It’s a lot.”“The beginning?” Gojo prompted.“I don’t even really know where the beginning is at this point.”Gojo followed Itadori’s vacant stare, his gaze landing on the bucket of Sukuna’s fingers.“What were you planning on doing with those?” Gojo asked cautiously.“Eat them.”“That would kill you.”Itadori shook his head. “Not me.”“Because it’s what you did last time?”A nod.A thought so ridiculous, so improbable, lingered in the back of his mind. The odds stood at one in a million, though Itadori already possessed an uncanny talent for defying the constraints of rational probability.“What happened?”“I became his vessel,” Itadori answered.“That shouldn’t be-” possible. Itadori had just admitted to being from the future, was becoming Sukuna’s vessel so much of a stretch?“Yeah,” Itadori breathed, “Not the first time that the Jujutsu world has put an execution warrant on my head.”“But- are you not still-”“Still his vessel?” Itadori finished for him. “No.”“How? What happened? Was it the time travel?”“No. It’s- uh, more complicated than that.”“Earlier, you said you needed him back.”“Yeah. Before I traveled back, he- uh,” Itadori dragged his palm over his face as his voice petered out. “It’s complicated. We,” he paused, “separated.”“That shouldn’t be possible.”Itadori waved his hands, gesturing vaguely at himself and at their surroundings. “And yet.”“Was that what prompted you coming back? In time, I mean.”“No, that’s also-”“Complicated?”Itadori chewed on his lower lip. “I didn’t mean to time travel. It wasn’t my choice. It wasn’t anyone’s choice, I don’t think.”“Accidental time travel?”Itadori bite back a deprecatory laugh. “It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?”“No more than everything else.”“Do you believe me?”There was sudden anxiety swimming in Itadori’s eyes as he lifted his gaze to Gojo. A concern that clearly hadn’t presented itself to him before suddenly appearing.“Of course, I do,” Because what else could Gojo do other than believe? With all the evidence that he’d seen so far, there was no choice.“I- oh, thank you.”“Don’t thank me.”“Sorry-”“And don’t apologise either.”“Sorry-”“So, what did happen then? If you didn’t mean to time travel.”Itadori wrung his hands in his lap, taking a long moment to answer. “I don’t really know. I think-” He stared at Gojo, “that you had something to do with it.”“Me?”“Not the you now, the you then.”“What did I do?”Itadori’s jaw clenched, his gaze dropping to his lap. He wrung his hands faster. “You died. The world just couldn’t take it without your presence holding it together. I think it just-” Itadori made a small motion with his fingers, “cracked. Disappeared.”Itadori calling him sensei. Itadori’s story of his teacher dying. Pieces of Itadori’s puzzle were slowly falling into place.“It’s just a theory,” Itadori continued, “But I can’t think of anything else. The last thing I saw was- and then I blinked and here I was.”“Did Sukuna kill me?”“Yes.”“If that’s true then - why did you try and bring him back this time? Are you not afraid the same thing would just happen again?”“No,” A sad smile played at Itadori’s lips. “I was going to have you kill me before it got to that point.”“And what makes you think I’d agree to that?”“You did last time.”“I agreed to kill you?”“Yeah, a suspended execution sentence. I consume all of Sukuna’s fingers and you kill me once I do. Take the curse out with the vessel. Two birds one stone.”“And if I didn’t agree to kill you this time?”“I made sure there were plenty other options.”Toji Fushiguro. So, Itadori was sloppy on purpose. Gojo felt vindicated in the most crushing way possible. He had been right but at a cost he couldn’t stomach.“Surely,” Gojo croaked, “there was a way this could end without you dying. Why is your death wish so ingrained?”Itadori was quiet. His hands fell to his lap, no longer fidgeting in that nervous pattern of eight. “I deserve it. All I’ve done, all I’ve caused.”“You’re so-called atonement.”“Yeah,” Itadori breathed, “if I don’t die it won’t end.”“If you don’t consume Sukuna’s fingers won’t it just never start?”Itadori laughed sourly, “I wish it was that simple,” Itadori stared down at his palms. He stretched his arm out, clenching his fingers into a fist. “Whether I consume Sukuna’s fingers or not, it doesn’t matter. Even if Sukuna’s fingers disappear. Even if, somehow, there’s a way to destroy them for good, it still won’t end unless I die. He lives on in me regardless.”Gojo frowned. “I thought you said you were no longer the host?” Itadori opened his mouth to respond but Gojo interrupted before he got the chance. “Don’t you dare just say it’s complicated again. What do you mean?”“I guess I can’t fool you, Satoru,” Itadori sighed, bringing his palm back to himself. He swallowed thickly. “You know that Sukuna was once human, right?”Gojo nodded. Dread pooled in his stomach like acid.“Before he died, before he became the king of curses, he was just a man. Somehow, somewhere along the lines, he had a child.”Gojo’s Six Eyes felt it coming before it happened, the sudden spike in cursed energy.Blood. Murderer. Monster. Wretched devil.Gojo watched as, once again, Itadori’s hand transformed. It was as gruesome as it was rapturous, morbid curiosity chaining his eyes to the sight even as his stomach turned and his senses screamed.Claws, armoured scales, and blood-red skin, talons like the honed edge of a raven’s beak.“I am his descendant,” Itadori finished, staring at his own hand with quiet, all-encompassing self-loathing. “Regardless of what happens, he lives on through me.”The room ran circles around Gojo’s vision, dizzying, nauseating.“So, that’s why it’s something only you can do.”Itadori nodded, clenching his inhuman hand in a white-knuckle fist. “Yes. Fixing this, ending it all. It’s my atonement for being born at all.”“That’s not- You had no choice in being born.”“No, but I have a choice in dying.”Gojo found himself out of his depths. The art of offering comfort eluded him, a skill he never honed. Human nature, human emotions - they had perennially remained out of reach, and he had never made any earnest attempt to grab them. Even though Itadori wasn’t human, not wholly, there was nothing monstrous in the grief and self-hatred that manifested in the contours of his expression. Monsters don’t have tears in their eyes as they stare at their own reflection. True evil does not try to sacrifice itself for the sake of others. The devil does not carry broken baby birds to their proper graves out of some ingrained wellspring of empathy.“You’re not-” Gojo’s voice failed him. He was not the man who should be doing this. “His sins are not yours.”“It doesn’t matter. I have enough of my own.”“You’re not a monster.”Gojo’s pleas fell on deaf ears as Itadori’s tear-filled eyes stared blankly back at him.“I’ve killed people, Satoru. So many people.”“So have I. So have many jujutsu sorcerers.”“Really? Is the blood on your hands dry? Is it slowly disappearing? Mine isn’t. It’s still fresh. I can still feel it,” Itadori’s voice was a terrifyingly monotone. Slow. Defeated. “I was there just a few weeks ago. And now I’m back and I have to do it all again. I look everyone in the eyes and hide my hands in my pockets because I know their blood is still underneath my fingernails,” Itadori’s voice trailed off until it was barely above a whisper, “Please,” He croaked, “I just want it to end. I’m so tired.”Gojo opened his mouth and shut it again uselessly. What comfort could he possibly offer to that?“I know,” Gojo whispered. He didn’t, of course. He could never know, but this was the best he could offer. “Just, please.”Gojo reached out to Itadori’s taloned claws and Itadori finched back. Gojo’s chest hurt.“What can I do to convince you to stay?” Gojo asked.“Where would I stay? I have no home. It’s gone. It doesn’t exist anymore.”“Please,” He said again. He had nothing else to say, nothing else to offer. “Stay. At least for a little longer. Let me help you with whatever else you have to do, with whatever's left of your plan. If you still want to… go at the end of it, I’ll let you. But, just for a little longer.”Itadori shuffled uncomfortably. Gojo took his chance and reached out again. This time, Itadori let Gojo’s hand come to rest against the gnarled scales of his arm.“Fine,” Itadori finally whispered.“Thank you,” Gojo would take what he could get. He could not repair what was broken, but he would do what he could to convince Itadori to stay in the little time he had left.Whatever curiosity Itadori had first sparked in Gojo, right from their first meeting, had now morphed into something strange, into something akin to fondness. It was a foreign feeling, but it was one Gojo was reluctant to let go of.“What else do you have left in your plan?”“I have one last person to kill,” Itadori’s lips tightened. “Kenjaku.”“Who’s that?”“My mother.”
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Itadori could feel the heat of the fires licking at his skin, burning hot and scorching.Sukuna, in his full splendor, manifested in his original form with all four arms and unrestrained strength. The familiarity of his presence, the nauseating corruption that Itadori had housed within his body for so long, now unleashed and sentient before him. It was strange - experiencing what others must have felt from him. An overwhelming malevolence, so unadulterated it made his head spin. It was strange, realising that every time Sukuna took control of him, this was the sinister force that others had seen, the evil they had witnessed.A wicked smile twisted Sukuna’s lips, feral and grotesque, as he showered Itadori with a rain of fire. Itadori leaped backward, narrowly evading another explosive onslaught, the ground beneath him disintegrating into burning ash and cinder in mere seconds.His flesh smoldered, a torrent of scalding blood dribbling across fractured skin and bones, the full force of his powers surging through his sinews like an unrelenting caustic torrent, aching to break free.Something in his blood screamed at Sukuna’s unbridled presence. Something in his very DNA beckoned to him, but as he danced and parried to escape Sukuna’s path of destruction, Itadori struggled to understand what it was trying to tell him.The air hung dense and heavy, saturated with the acrid tang of blood and scorching embers, each laboured breath searing his lungs. His throat felt raw from screaming, but there was no respite for crying. The relentless heat evaporated any tears that dared escape anyway.It was odd, how silent the world around them had fallen. The screaming that had greeted him when this fight had started was now gone, with barely a trace that it had existed at all. All he could hear now was his own laboured breaths and the thundering drumfire of the world crumbling around them. It was no longer just one ward, not even just Tokyo, but the whole country that was collapsing at his feet. At Itadori’s own hands, the world was falling apart.The world fell silent around them because there was no one left to scream. Everyone was dead.Everyone was dead.Everyone he held dear, gone.There wasn’t enough of Fushiguro’s body left to bury.He wasn’t afforded such a luxury.It was odd, how little he felt now. His own chest was like staring into a black hole, so vast and all-encompassing that it was akin to gazing at absolute nothingness. Everything he once held close had succumbed to the crushing weight, overwhelmed by its oppressive force, leaving behind only this void.Sukuna was laughing, the only sound piercing through the static in his mind.Staring at Sukuna, with his multitude of eyes gleaming in delight, Itadori thought that, maybe, the boundless void within his chest wasn't one of emptiness, but rather of anger. Similar to an invisible, ethanol flame, while unseen to the naked human eye, there was no denying how everything still burned at its touch. Just like the vast expanse of a black hole, perhaps, his anger was so all-encompassing that it became indiscernible.Perhaps, it was this rage, this anger, that kept him alive, kept him moving.Sukuna was charging and, as if on autopilot, puppeted by strings, Itadori moved. His focus was pinpointed on Sukuna’s smile, narrowing in on the sharp, sting of pain the sight cut through him.This was a game, and Itadori was simply a marionette for Sukuna to control.Sukuna’s fist hit the ground, Spiderweb cleaved through concrete, fracturing out in an intricate, destructive, radius. “Slashes that cut the world”, Sukuna had called it, and fittingly so as the earth shuddered and crumbled under the force.Itadori’s back hit the wall of a towering office block, lunging away as Sukuna’s fist came crashing passed him at indescernable speed. Cleave. The building split in two. Itadori got barely a breath in before he was running again, the skyscraper tumbling to the ground in great, fiery boulders. One misstep and he would be crushed. An end to this fight too embarrassing to contemplate.Though, Itadori thought, at least it would be an end, for right now there wasn’t one in sight. Sukuna was chasing him down into the depths of an endless tunnel, and Itadori could only see a dead end at the bottom of it.Sukuna’s fist came charging in, and Itadori met him with the barrier of his forearms. He could feel as bone shattered beneath skin, but he traded blow-for-blow. It was all he could do, to bite back the pain and keep fighting. He had nothing else, all he could do was fight. If he stopped, he would give up. He would give in and everyone’s deaths would be in vain. There would be no point to the blood spilled by his hands and he would have no title left to own but monster.Sukuna’s fist connected with his chin and his head collided back against the brick wall of another wrecked building. His head swam but the pain gave him a strange sense of clarity.He could taste his own blood in the back of his throat and it was calling out to him in foreign tongue.He channeled all he could into his fist, he could feel as black and red energy swirled around clenched knuckles. There was the audible crack of something fractured as he made contact with Sukuna’s cheek. Black Flash. Divergent Fist, the second wave of power channeled through him.Sukuna’s head reared back. A superficial wound, but Itadori still managed to make contact. He had hurt the King of Curses. All he had to do was keep going.If he could do it once, he could do it again.All he had to do was keep going.This rage, this anger, he had honed it. He had sharpened fury into a knife, now all he had to do was point it at Sukuna’s neck.Itadori ducked, a leg sweeping out, cursed energy at the tips of his fingers, simmering, waiting. Sukuna dodged, swiftly and far too easily. He was laughing again, and Itadori felt his anger rise in fever pitch.His hands were numb as he pitched forward, fists clenched and knuckles white, his own blood dripping between like molten lava. He could feel it, something creeping beneath his skin, crawling towards Sukuna like a moth to the ephemeral flame.Like the buzz of a thousand flies, his skin itched, unreachable, just beneath the surface, swarming and scratching to escape.Another fist to Sukuna’s jaw.A hand, large, calloused and unhuman, latched itself around Itadori’s throat, throwing him against another wall, trapping him there.Sukuna’s grip tightened with each desperate struggle from Itadori. As Itadori raised a fist, poised for a counterattack, Black Flash simmering amid the swarm of flies ensnared at his fingernails, another of Sukuna’s arms shot forth, ensnaring Itadori’s hand as well.This feeling, this unease and trepidation of something unknown in his soul, was strange. It was unsettling.Stranger still, however, was the eerie realisation that, as Sukuna loomed forward, his face mere inches from Itadori’s own, it felt as if he were staring into a distorted reflection of himself. Sukuna, in his original form, concealed behind the bone-white mask, jagged black tattoos, and untold eyes, bore a disconcerting resemblance to Itadori himself.Sukuna, when Itadori still held him within his body, wholly took on Itadori’s appearance. A byproduct of being his vessel, Itadori had assumed. Yet now, staring at Sukuna’s real form, Itadori felt doubt creeping in the back of his mind.This was not Sukuna stealing Itadori’s face. No, this was Sukuna owning it.Sukuna laughed, his breath hot against Itadori’s cheek.“Yes,” He chuckled, “Look at me, brat.”Itadori fought harder against the hands that held him. It was futile, he knew. He was trapped and at Sukuna’s mercy. He was a fly ensnared in his web.“I had my doubts at first,” Sukuna breathed, “but, slowly, I grew certain. To become my vessel, there is only one way. No normal human could hold me back, could handle my power without it tearing them apart from the inside.”Itadori cringed away from the clawed fingers that dug at his flesh. Sukuna grabbed him by his cheeks and forced his face up. Itadori was powerless to resist.“Look at me,” Sukuna said again, his voice low and commanding, “Look at who you are.”“I’m nothing like you,” Itadori spat back. He would not go down without a fight. He would be a fool to the end, of that he was sure. He would not be quietly devoured.“Oh, but you are everything like me. More than you know,” Sukuna’s grip on his cheeks tightened until he could feel something hot dribble across his lips. Sukuna swiped a finger to wipe up the blood. “My kin. The last stain on my legacy. To think my own flesh and blood still roamed this Earth, no matter how diluted the connection may now be.”The swarm grew louder, more incessant until it was impossible to ignore. His blood sang, screaming at him until it was all he could hear, all he could feel. Impenetrable.“What the fuck at you talking about?”Sukuna smiled, “All of this, all that has happened, every kill, every drop of blood, it is yours, brat. You are mine, Itadori. You always have been. My biggest mistake all those years ago. It’s only fair that I atone for it with your death. We are, after all,” Sukuna leaned in close again. Itadori stared at Sukuna, and all he could see was his own eyes staring back, “family.”Itadori’s blood boiled, finally bubbling over.He screamed. He lunged forward, and Sukuna let him go, a knowing grin on his lips.Anger, to the point of obsession, filled him up from the inside, until it was flowing, pouring out, black, blooding liquid spilling over. He swiped, dragging pointed fingernails across Sukuna’s skin. He saw cursed red pool at the cut and he chased after it like a bloodsniffing hound.His fingers were no longer numb. They were aching, deformed and misshapen.Itadori saw red as he lunged, again, like a marionette moving only to the dictate of orders, his hands moved for him.He was aware of it, of how his skin was moving, claws forming, he just refused to admit it. If he looked down and saw what he was becoming, it would only make Sukuna’s words a reality.His hands, now taloned and sharp like a knife’s edge, would only cement his place as a monster.Itadori screamed, tilting forward with claws outstretched.“Yes!” Sukuna bellowed, fangs bloodstained as he smiled, “show me, Itadori! Show me your true nature. Prove to me that you are my descendant!” – Itadori knew of war, albeit only through the monotonous teachings at school, much like every other child his age. The dreary lessons, delivered by sombre-faced professors, revolved around memorising dates and names, teaching treaties and alliances. The grimmer intricacies of warfare were grazed over, considered too harsh for the tender hearts of the youth.In hindsight, Itadori wished they’d revealed it for what it truly was. Back then, casualties were merely figures to be memorised, fleeting numbers to be remembered and forgotten between exams.Now, standing in the trenches, surrounded by the dead, Itadori felt woefully unprepared.War was no longer a concept. The blood on his hands was real. The stench of death was permeable, far removed from the pen ink and stale coffee of the exam halls. – Fushiguro’s warmth against his back was a comforting weight.Strength was in numbers and, fighting together like this, Itadori and Fushiguro were near on unstoppable.The wave of curses crescendoed. Fushiguro surged forward, Divine Dogs at his heels, snapping, snarling. They rip, bite, spit-out, and plunder. The first curse - bug-eyed and skeleton wings - wailes and falls.Fushiguro fell back and Itadori stormed forth, his body curled like a knotted whipcord. His toes land first, skimming the road in a well-practiced dance. In the flicker of a flame, he moved, too fast for the next curse to mount a counter. It tried, it’s misshapen form twisting further, backing away, turning to the right. It failed. Itadori’s fist, a blur of black and red, collided with the curse’s skull. A schism, the curse shattered.When Itadori stooped low, Nue flew overhead. A scream, a shock of lightning, several curses downed.Fushiguro returned to Itadori’s side, his warmth seeping through his clothes and into Itadori’s skin. The moment only fleeting, the inhuman gurgle of the hoard splitting them apart, but still Itadori savoured what he could get.He had little left, but at least he had Fushiguro.Ash stung his eyes, a mix of crumbled rock and burning embers blending with the sweat that trickled from his brow. Amidst his blurred vision, the mass of brightly coloured curses melded into a technicolour smear. Yet, against the chaos, Fushigro stood as a stark anchor in all-black.Strange, that black, the absence of colour, was the shade he took most comfort in. Familiar. Safe.Itadori’s heart leaped into his throat as a new curse lurched towards Fushiguro’s exposed back. A blur of yellow against the glowglobe of the moon. Fushiguro stumbled, forced back by the impact.The curse - pale, lemon-yellow gold - reared back with hammerfists.Itadori caught Fushiguro’s gaze, ink-dark eyes glaring. He moved.The curse’s counterattack was too slow. Itadori started to swing. He charged. One hit. Divergent Fist.As the curse crumbled, Itadori grabbed Fushiguro by the lapels of his uniform - black, again, as always - and hauled him to his feet. Fushiguro wavered before Itadori whipped a hand to his waist to steady him.Their eyes met. A silent thanks.Itadori wished it could last longer.As the curses called forth again, Itadori prayed.He had little left, but at least he had Fushiguro.He could stand to lose much, but he could not stand to lose Fushiguro. Let the world grant him one mercy. – Nicotine smoke curled around Shoko like a coiling snake. The cigarette hung loose from her lips as she stared out at the middle distance.The sun was setting slowly, permanent red and far too scenic for the wreckage it eclipsed.Itadori sat next to her.Shoko’s long hair was pulled back into a quick ponytail, a few wayward strands flying free around her face. She’d always carried a pallor, appearing consistently a little run down or worn out. Overworked, he’d assumed. While not the school’s sole healer, she was definitively their best. Yet, the weariness that weighed down her shoulders seemed omnipresent, even during their quiet periods.Now, though, any fatigue that Itadori had seen in Shoko before seemed to pale in comparison to the present. With cheeks gaunt and skin pale, she appeared on the brink of collapse. Dark swipes of purple underscored sunken eyes, while her cracked lips clamped tightly around a stopgap cigarette - her third in succession, if Itadori's count was accurate.The number of wounded continued to swell each day, and their survival rested squarely on Shoko’s shoulders - a burden Itadori found difficult to comprehend. As the war raged unabated and the count of casualties mounted, Itadori could only watch as she seemed to fade ever further.While Itadori had never considered the two of them particularly close, a growing sense of solace had settled in their relationship. She stood as one of the few remaining figures from his first few months at the school who was still alive. From the very beginning, she was neither kind nor caustic towards him. While lacking the relentless optimism of Gojo or the calming vigilance of Nanami, she was instead a reassuring constant. Reliable in her dispassion, she offered a strangely comforting presence.They sat like this semi-frequently - sometimes talking, other times in shared silence. Itadori found solace in her company either way. In her lighter moods, she would regale Itadori with stories from her school days, of the antics she, Gojo, and Geto got up to in their teenage irresponsibility. She always spoke with a nostalgic melancholy. Itadori could never tell whether the memories were tinged with happiness or not. He listened intently regardless.She tapped the end of her cigarette, letting the burning embers fall to the rubble at their feet. She sighed.“What a disaster.”Itadori hummed in agreement.“It’s all that damned bastard’s fault.”“Which damned bastard?” He asked. There were many who deserved that title.“Fair question,” Shoko snorted. She took another long drag of her cigarette. “Did anyone ever tell you about Toji Fushiguro?”Itadori frowned. “Fushiguro? Like our Fushiguro?”“Yes. They look frighteningly alike, sometimes. They always have, but it’s getting worse as the years pass.”“Was he his dad?”She nodded. “In blood, yes. Not that he did much parenting.”Itadori stared at his hands. Fushiguro never talked much about his family, and Itadori had never asked. He’d assumed if Fushiguro didn’t offer it up himself then it wasn’t his place to pry. No matter how much he wanted to know more. He wasn’t so different himself. He didn’t have anyone in his family left, so there wasn’t much to say.“What did he do?”“I can’t fairly pin all blame on him, honestly, but I want to. It’d make it all much easier. Maybe he didn’t know the events he would trigger but that doesn’t mean he didn’t damn well trigger them,” She stubbed out her cigarette. She paused for a moment before digging into her pockets and fishing out her fourth. “Speculation is self-harm, but- maybe, if he hadn’t - Geto wouldn’t have died.”“I thought Gojo killed him,” Itadori whispered. He still remembered the evening when Shoko had first told him that particular story. She’d been especially talkative, but far from conversational. It was more like she was screaming into the void than having a quiet conversation with him. It was clear she just wanted to get it off her chest.“The Geto I knew had died long before that night. Gojo just put him out of his misery,” Shoko stared drowsily at the sky. The sun was far below the horizon now, the night closing in on all sides and darkness fast approaching. “Have you heard of the Star Plasma vessel, Itadori?” – At night, sleep evaded Itadori. His body ached to rest but his mind refused to relax. Perhaps, a blessing, seeing as the nightmares of the day would only follow him into his dreams anyway.So, instead of fruitlessly laying his head down and fighting to keep his eyes shut, Itadori would wander out to watch the stars. It was a moment of peace he was rarely afforded.It was Fushiguro who gave him the diary, when he’d caught Itadori one too many times staring blankly out at the distant nothingness. Something to stop his mind from wandering, he’d said, as he’d thrust the small, leather-bound journal into Itadori’s hands.He’d been lost on what to write at first. There was something perilous about the first blank page. It was a gift Fushiguro had given him, so it had to be treasured. He couldn’t sully it with useless doodles. Yet, he couldn’t bring himself to put pen to paper.“Stop thinking about it so hard, idiot,” Fushiguro chided, poking a finger into the crease between Itadori’s brow. “I don’t care what you write in it. Just write about whatever comes to mind first. It doesn’t matter.”So, Itadori sat himself down with the journal in his lap, the nighttime fireflies his only company, and finally started writing.Don’t think about it so hard, he told himself. Of course, the only thing that came to mind, when he cleared his head of all the noise, was Fushiguro. Inevitably.He found that, once he started, he couldn’t stop. The first few pages unfolded into some embarrassingly misshapen love letter - a flood of snapshots, stories, and memories. The tiny details he remembered: black hair reflecting blue in the sunlight, the rare smile that graced his lips, the even rarer moments of laughter, and how each moment had his heart skipping a beat in his chest.His cheeks flared as he reread what he had written, words he never dared to speak out loud.He wrote about the others as well, naturally, delving into the memories of Nanami and Nobara. He couldn’t bear allowing their recollections to wane. He feared forgetting, so he penned down everything he could recall. The concealed affection in Nobara's insults and Nanami's steadfast support - every tender sentiment and joyous memory.Yet, he didn't shy away from capturing the stark reality of their deaths either. Their legacies were indelible, but so were the haunting details of their ends.He could not forgive. He could not forget. – Itadori sat cross-legged, picking at the flakes of dried blood on his tattered trousers.Choso was a steady presence behind him, tending to the jagged wounds littering Itadori’s bare back. His hands were as cold as the cream he rubbed into inflamed skin, but his touch was gentle. The kindness made Itadori’s skin crawl. He had done nothing to deserve this tenderness.“Are you alright?” Choso asked quietly, moving to wrap fresh bandages around Itadori’s chest.“I’m fine.”Choso didn’t respond for a moment. Carefully, he cut the bandage to size, tucking the loose end into the folds. He laid a gentle palm to the flat of Itadori’s back. Even through the layers of bandages, Itadori was sure Choso could still feel the topographical map of scars that lay underneath. Choso’s fingers trailed the length of one particularly large. It scaled from his hip to the arch of his neck - a curse had gotten the slip on him straight after Shibuya and nearly split him in half. At the time, distantly, Itadori had almost wished it had.“I worry about you, brother.”“Why?” Itadori scoffed, “I’m not your actual brother.”Choso’s hand stilled. “You really believe so?”“Yes.”Choso sighed deeply, leaning to rest his forehead against Itadori’s shoulder. “I am not mad.”“Never said you were,” Dillusional maybe, but Itadori held his tongue.“I do not call you my brother lightly. We share blood. You are my family.”“I’m happy you think of me so highly, but it’s not possible.”Choso’s hand came to tap lightly on Itadori’s shoulder, prompting him to turn and face him. Itadori was met with Choso’s eyes, uncharacteristically sincere. This wasn’t the overwrought brother ruse he had been keeping up all this time. No, Choso was serious.“Blood does not lie, Yuuji. I can feel it in you. Noritoshi Kamo. Kenjaku. We are born from the same lineage.” – Vomit rushed up Itadori’s throat. His knuckles were clenched and his back bowed as he purged everything in his system onto the scorched stone beneath his knees.Get it out. Get it out.Everything.If he cleansed everything inside of him, if took a crowbar and pried out all the broken pieces, maybe then, finally, he’d be good. Maybe he would be clean. Maybe he could be human, wholly and irrevocably, instead of this patchwork made of monsters.Tears streamed down scarred cheeks. Hot and acerbic, he choked.Get it out.His chest concaved as his throat constricted around an empty stomach. He had nothing left to expel but the evil inside of him still wasn’t gone.He scratched nails against stone until they were wet with blood. What a joke.He had been a fool. His humanity had been a myth. His life couldn’t have been robbed from him when it was never his from the start. No one made him into this, there was no one to blame for how misshapen he had become. From conception, he had been born wrong.From Sukuna to Kenjaku, Itadori was barely human at all.What a joke.His story had already been written, and the closing line invariably ended with slaughter. – Choso’s hands were cold against his tear-stained cheeks.“I’m a monster,” Itadori choked.Choso wrapped his arms around Itadori’s shoulders, bringing him into a warm embrace. “You are not a monster,” He said. “This is just what it means to be a person.” – The moment Itadori watched Fushiguro die was the moment he broke.He had barely been keeping it together in the first place. He was a threadbare book held together by a single string, it only took one more hit to become unbound.A single, heart-stopping second. Cleave booming through the atmosphere. Sukuna louring over them, fang-tipped smile and razor claws.Fushiguro’s blood hit Itadori’s cheek like burning acid.He replayed the scene over and over in his mind like a broken record, the frames skipping and stuttering in slow motion, the needle stuck on the second Fushiguro disappeared from his sight.That was all it took. One second.One second, Fushiguro was there, healthy and whole. He had been injured, blood dripping down his temples, but still, he was there.The next, he was gone. One hit.
There wasn’t enough of Fushiguro’s body left to bury.
– Fushiguro saw Itadori for all of his ugliness and loved him regardless.No matter how much Itadori protested, Fushiguro would still kiss Itadori’s scarred knuckles and call him lovely.They rarely got a moment’s peace together. Their first kiss had been fraught and frantic with urgency and desperation, the taste of battle still lingering on the edges of their tongues, yet neither minded. In that fleeting moment, they were simply grateful to be alive. It hadn’t been romantic or picturesque. Itadori never got the chance to articulate all the love that was stuck in the back of his throat before Fushiguro had dragged him in by his collar and smashed their lips together.Itadori also never got the chance to tell Fushiguro how he really felt before Sukuna ripped him from his life. He’d conveyed as much as he could with his lips, but there was still too much left to say.Now Fushiguro was dead, and Itadori was still ugly. – Hope was a fragile thing.Gojo had been their hope.Itadori had been bleeding out on the curb when, like some kind of angel, Gojo appeared. He took one look at the warfield, glancing down at Itadori, battered and broken, and gave him a reassuring smile. Then, like a man possessed, he charged.Behind blurry eyes, the fight had been too fast to follow.Itadori just had to hold onto the last fragments of faith and pray that Gojo would win.He might have lost consciousness, he wasn’t sure. He blinked.Fires raged, the echoes of crumbling buildings and burning bodies the only sound in the all-embracing slaughter. The last thing he saw was Sukuna holding Gojo by his throat, his body aloft and limp.Then, quietly, the world ended. – Itadori woke up screaming.
Do not forgive. Do not Forget.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Itadori awoke to the acrid taste of ash and blood staining his lips, and the invigorating rush of fresh air filling his lungs.Waking up surrounded by the bustling city of Tokyo, alive and whole, was all it took for Itadori to know.At first, he thought, perhaps, he was already dead, trapped in this haunting translation of his past, consigned to his own personal hell. Or, he thought that, maybe, this was a nightmare, a cruel torment forcing him to replay the murders of his kin until his mind was made anew.Yet, the persistent ache in his side and the steady throb of his heartbeat in his throat betrayed the undeniable truth - he was terribly, unforgivably alive. – “You’ve been through a lot, haven’t you?”Gojo watched as Itadori let his claws rescind back into human flesh. Itadori clenched his knuckles a few times before letting them drop limply to his sides.“I guess.”“Thank you for telling me.”Itadori scoffed. “You didn’t give me much choice.”“Hey, desperate times.”A small smile played at Itadori’s lips. “Yeah, yeah, whatever you say.”“I am serious, though. You didn’t need to tell me but you did. Thank you.”“Like I just said, there wasn’t much choice. What was I supposed to do?”Gojo shrugged. “I don’t know. Punch me? Run away?”Itadori laughed softly. “As if you’d have let me do that. Even in this lifetime, you’re still Gojo Satoru.”“Well, sure. I might have let my guard down, though. You certainly got some hits in before I stopped you.”A brief frown flashed across Itadori’s brow for a second before he schooled his expression again. “Right,” He breathed, “You didn’t have Infinity engaged.”Gojo raised an eyebrow. “There you go again. Several times now, you’ve alluded to my abilities. Something happens to make me stronger in the future, right?”Itadori shuffled in place, saying nothing. It was all the answer Gojo needed.“What happens? You’ve told me a lot, but this is something you’ve conspicuously avoided.”“You noticed?” Itadori laughed weakly, his hand coming up to scratch at the back of his neck. “I don’t think I should say.”“Why not?”“I’ve messed this timeline up enough already. I can’t predict what’s going to happen anymore. I’m scared to make it worse.”Itadori raised a frustratingly valid point. Gojo’s insatiable curiosity gnawed at him incessantly, yearning not just for more knowledge, but for all of it."Or, I don't know, for it to become some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. Like knowing how you're going to die but not when," Itadori continued. "I don't want you chasing it. It might never happen if you do."Gojo let out a dramatic groan. "Perfectly logical, Yuuji. Yet, it does little to quell my curiosity.""I apologise,” Itadori chuckled. “I'll make it up to you by letting you know as soon as it happens."“Well, surely I’ll know by then too.”Itadori laughs again, louder this time. “You caught me there.”Gojo cocked his head. “There’s something else that’s been on my mind that I have to ask.”Itadori gave Gojo an apprehensive glance. “What?”“Fushiguro was your classmate, right?”Itadori nodded slowly.“Well, given that he’s, what, six or seven years old right now? Does that mean there’s a child version of you running around out there?”Itadori swallowed thickly, his expression unreadable. “No,” He whispered. “I-” His voice faltered. “I’m not sure what happened exactly but- It was one of the first things I checked, selfishly, when I arrived in this time. But- it seems, in this timeline, I was never born. Or, maybe, somehow, I replaced the me of this world when I came back. I have no way of knowing.”“Quantum mechanics. Two identical objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time.”“Sure,” Itadori chuckled quietly. “If you want to try and apply reason to an entirely unreasonable situation.”“So, that’s why you’re so sure- If you die, Sukuna’s lineage ends with you.”“Kenjaku, too. If I can kill him then it’ll finally be over. For good.”“And yourself too.”“And myself, yes.”Gojo hummed. He hated that it made sense. After all Itadori had told him, he was surprised the boy was still standing. Gojo shuddered at the thought of being in his position. So, it was purely for selfish reasons that Gojo wanted Itadori to keep on living, to not give up.“So, Kenjaku,” Gojo continued, quickly changing the course of the conversation to stop Itadori from wallowing in his self-deprecation any longer. “Is your mother.”“Yes,” Itadori replied bitterly, his lip twisting in a scowl. “I knew he was in my bloodline. Choso told me so. But I only found out he had taken over my mother’s body when I arrived in this timeline.”“Who’s Choso?”“That’s too long a story to even begin explaining,” Itadori laughed. “Just think of him as my brother for now.”“Right,” Gojo agreed slowly, eyebrows pinched. “I’m assuming Kenjaku is strong then. Seeing as you were planning on gaining Sukuna’s power just to defeat him.”Itadori nodded. A distant glaze clouded his eyes, a recollection of past ghosts flickering across his expression. Gojo, once more, had unwittingly ventured into dangerous territory. “I only fought him once, and I was entirely outclassed.”Itadori was strong, almost obscenely so. Gojo had witnessed his prowess several times before, and had just experienced it firsthand. So, for Itadori to admit to being outmatched, Gojo understood that their opponent was not one to be underestimated.Itadori leaned back against the wall with a sigh. He rolled up his sleeve and stretched his scarred arm out for Gojo to see. He’d seen it all before, the deep, silver slashes that marred Itadori’s pale skin, but that never made it any easier to stomach. There was barely a patch left untouched. “Not all, but a lot of this was him,” Itadori turned his arm, staring down at it with a detached sort of disgust. “I was weaker then, physically and mentally. But still, I thought I could at least land a single hit. I couldn’t even get close.”“He can change bodies, correct?”Itadori nodded.“Then, who was he possessing when you fought him?”“He-” Itadori stuttered. “It was Suguru.”Gojo closed his eyes. A cold shiver passed down his spine. With just a few words, Itadori conveyed a future horror Gojo didn’t want to fathom. “Suguru, huh?” He breathed. “Does the host have to be dead for Kenjaku to possess them?”“Yes.”“Right,” Gojo sighed, leaning his head back to rest against the wall. “So, someone killed Suguru.”Itadori nodded silently.Gojo raised an eyebrow. “Do I want to know who got him?”“No,” Itadori’s voice was stern. “You don’t.”Gojo chuckled darkly. “Will you tell me one day?”“It’s not a happy story.”“I won’t lie to you, Yuuji, none of your stories so far have been happy ones.”Itadori shrugged. “Knowing will only hurt you. Maybe, once all of this is over, when I know there is no chance of it happening again, I will tell you.”“You say that like Suguru is still in danger.”“Everyone is still in danger.”It wasn’t necessarily a satisfactory answer, but Gojo knew when he was being stonewalled. “Do you have a plan then? A new one that doesn’t involve-” He kicked his feet out towards the bucket of Sukuna’s fingers that still sat in the far corner.“I- Not really. I didn’t really have one to begin with, outside of just-” He gestured vaguely in the same direction.“You were going in without a plan? Do you have a death wish or something?” He regretted the words as soon as they left his lips. Of course, he knew the answer to that already. He didn’t want to hear it reiterated.“Kenjaku takes on the powers of whoever's body he possesses, and retains those of his past hosts. I only fought him once in Suguru’s body. I have no way of knowing what to expect in his current form.”“Surely, he will be easier to defeat now than when you fought him before? With Suguru’s technique removed from the equation.”“He will have fewer techniques, yes, but that does not make him weak. Apart from Suguru’s, I haven’t seen him use the skills of many of his former hosts, but that doesn’t mean he can’t.”“Do you know who these previous hosts were?”“Not many of them, no, but I can name a few. My mother is one,” Itadori levelled him with a serious gaze. “Noritoshi Kamo is another.”“The Noritoshi Kamo?”Itadori nodded. “I don’t know what his technique is exactly, but given who he is, I can only assume it’s formidable.”“Quite the battle ahead of us then.”“Who said anything about ‘us’?”“Oh, please. As if I’m letting you go alone now. You promised me you’d stay. Someone’s got to make sure you follow through with it.”Itadori grunted. “Fine.” – The night air was comfortingly cold as Gojo wandered the outskirts of the school grounds. The city lights were dimmed as the depths of night took hold, the last of the midnight wanderers finally giving up and taking refuge in the warmth of their own homes.The bucket of Sukuna’s fingers swung at Gojo’s side as he walked, the picture of some morbid purse, Gojo thought with wry amusement.As much as Gojo had managed to talk Itadori down from his suicidal rampage, he still couldn’t quite trust him alone with them. So, as he’d excused himself, he’d subtly nicked the bucket on his way out the door.He paused for a moment as he fished his phone out of his pocket, depositing the bucket by his feet.Despite the ungodly hour, it only took two rings before the line connected.“I hope you’re calling with good news, Satoru,” Shoko’s voice crackled through the unsteady service.“Well, we’re both alive if that counts.”Shoko sighed. “I guess I’ll have to take it.”“There’s too much to explain over the phone, and I’d much prefer somewhere secure before even attempting to start, so I’m afraid you’re going to have to hang tight.”Shoko was quiet for a second. “I feel like there’s a ‘but’ coming. What do you need me to do, Satoru?”Gojo chuckled. Shoko was sharper than most gave her credit for. “I’ve secured Sukuna’s fingers.”“What was Itadori going to do with them?”“Eat them.”“What?” Shoko choked.“Like I said, too much to explain. Just know that I got there before he had the chance. I’m placing them in a fixed location now. Thermometer sheds, just outside Sugisawa Municipal grounds. If I can trust you to come collect them and take them back to the school.”“Of course, you can trust me. But again, I feel like there’s more coming. What else do you need?”“I feel like it’ll be over by the time you arrive. But from what Yuuji has told me, it’s safe to assume your services will be in order. Urgently.”“You better not die before I get there, you idiots,” Shoko sighed. “Where am I going?”“I don’t know exactly myself yet. Though, I’m sure we won’t be hard to find. I can’t imagine this battle being a quiet one.” – They’d move under the cover of night.A barrier would keep the innocent civilians of Sendai out of the line of fire. A request of Itadori. He cared far more for the lives of passing strangers than his own.Of course, Gojo would make sure Shoko could still perceive and enter the barrier - a fact he concealed from Itadori. Despite all his promises, Gojo still harboured a lingering doubt that Itadori planned to make it out of this fight alive. Selfishly, Gojo would make sure that he did, no matter what it took. – Gojo had never contemplated his own mortality. He had no need to. The fear of death followed the man, and Gojo was not a man, he was a God.He had seen it in others, of course. Death clung to sorcerers like ghosts to a graveyard. He’d seen men, friends and enemies alike, grasp desperately, plead and weep for their lives, and he’d watched it every time with a cool sense of detachment. No one had ever come close enough to force him to his knees. Empathy eluded him when Limitless ensured that even death’s icy grip couldn’t reach him.So, it was truly an alien sensation when he first felt the hot rush of blood flood his throat.He’d felt so hollow all his life. He wouldn’t have been surprised if they opened him up to find only empty space. Yet, when he felt his chest concave, it was undoubtedly human blood that came pouring out. – Itadori’s childhood home was surprisingly mundane. Nestled within the heart of Sendai suburbia, it blended seamlessly into the orderly row of Jutaku houses that graced the quiet street. Classic modern Japanese architecture - all sleek lines and space-saving design. For all of Itadori’s oddities, Gojo almost expected more.The street was equally unassuming, akin to countless others with its air of lived-in familiarity. White bike lanes adorned the weathered grey pavement, worn down by the desire paths of cycling students cutting corners to school. Small potted plants of ivy cascaded down from apartment balconies, the city’s answer to countryside gardens. Overhead, a labyrinth of telephone wires intersected in a dizzying tangle, weaving a web from each residence to the next - a map of human connectivity. Gojo struggled to imagine an adolescent Itadori fitting into a place like this. The picture he made now, all hunched shoulders and battle-worn skin, was starkly discordant with the quotidien bliss around them.Itadori stood sentinel while Gojo raised a Curtain over the house. Since it was already night, the inside of the barrier was barely discernible from the outside, but the deafening silence it brought, as the background hum of the city was shut out, was unmistakable.“Are you ready?” Gojo asked quietly.Itadori barely graced him with an answer, nodding slightly before striding forward in determination. Gojo followed one step behind.The singular feature distinguishing Itadori’s house from the array of others was the lone lamp casting its glow from the front room. Despite the drawn blinds, a gentle, amber radiance seeped through the edges of the curtains. While the rest of Sendai lay ensconced in sleep, whoever - or whatever - awaited them inside remained awake. A sense of foreboding tightened in Gojo’s chest. It was only a light, yet it felt so much like an omen.Itadori’s pace faltered as he stopped at the front door. This was the moment Itadori had long been waiting for.Itadori prepared to kick in the door but found it swinging open at his first light touch.They’d hardly planned for this to be an ambush attack. Itadori had already confessed that anything they tried would most likely fail; their opponent was far too wise to fall for any tricks. Yet, Gojo still felt odd as they approached, simply walking through the front door as if they were invited guests.The hallway was snug and homely. A shoe rack rested beside a welcome doormat, while an assortment of house keys dangled from a distinctly homemade hangar mounted on the wall above. Beyond, the corridor was adorned with an array of family portraits and framed holiday souvenirs.Though, Gojo’s attention was narrowed in on the vibrant trail of blood that smeared across the laminate wood flooring. His eyes followed the path until it disappeared behind the closed door at the end.Itadori, once again, assumed the lead, striding forward with purpose. His gaze, deliberately averted, skirted past his surroundings, deflecting the smiles of his own likeness from behind glass frames.Gojo passed a glance at the portraits as he followed suit. It was strange, each photo had an aire of the uncanny valley. A smiling couple next to a conspicuous void where it felt as if a third person should have resided.Itadori paused at the far door. He took in a steadying breath before slowly pressing the door open.A kitchen opened up beyond.Gojo’s eyes traced the trail of red. Steadily, it led to the body of a blond man laying in the centre of the room, his blood seeping into the cracks between the patterned tiles like water through a river delta. Behind vacant eyes and grey skin, Gojo could see a hint of Itadori’s profile staring back.“Dad,” Itadori whispered, his voice breaking.A naked lightbulb, suspended by exposed wire in a show of modern minimalism, flickered ominously above. Casting a sickly, overhead spotlight, it illuminated the petite figure leaning against the kitchen table, her shadow engulfing the dead man at her feet.A sharp, dark bob framed her angular features. She had Itadori’s nose, her eyes the same honeyed brown, but it was all eclipsed by the heavy, even stitches scarred across her forehead.He could not let the gentle figure of the mother fool him. Her eyes were round and kind, but the cruel glee in her gaze was anything but. There was blood on her hands and a predatory smile at her lips.If he didn’t know better, he feared even his Six Eyes could be fooled. This was Kenjaku.“Ah, you’ve finally come,” She said, her voice deep and smooth, “My wayward son.” – Gojo awoke to a headache pulsating behind his eyelids like the relentless beat of a marching wardrum. Soft morning light filtered through the gaps in the blinds, yet even that proved too much for his overraw senses. He felt like he was reeling from the mother of all hangovers, just devoid of any preceding night of revelry to make it worth the pain.His vision blurred in tempo with the heartbeat pounding in his skull, but he could just about make out Geto’s slumped form in a chair at his bedside. It took one too many bleary-eyed blinks for him to realise where he was.As Gojo stirred, so did Geto.“You awake?” Geto groaned, rubbing the sleep from his eyes with the back of his palm.“I’m in the infirmary,” Gojo stated, ignoring Geto’s question. He stared down at the crisp white sheets pooling around him with a frown.“Sure are.”“Why?” He had no recollection of how he landed himself here. The last fragments of his memory pieced together a scene of training alongside Geto out in the field. There had been no danger, no curses to fight, so we couldn’t understand how he ended up injured severely enough to confine him to a hospital bed.“Are you serious?” Geto scoffed.Gojo bristled, shooting the sharpest glare he could summon in return. Though, he was sure that it came across more of a wince.“You’re more of an idiot than I thought, Satoru. The crown of the strongest sorcerer is wasted on a head as empty as yours.”“What the fuck is that supposed to mean.”A frown marred Geto’s expression, but Gojo could still see the heavy bags that pulled down his under eyes and the exhaustion that pulled down his lips.“It means that you tried to be too big for your boots and overextended yourself,” His tone lacked the venom his words deserved. “You worried us,” He finished quietly. “Don’t do it again.”“I did?”Geto sighed, his hands coming up to scrub at his face. “You were trying to see how long you could keep Infinity engaged. We all tried to tell you it was a stupid idea but you ignored us,” He waved vaguely in Gojo’s direction, “and look how that turned out for you.”Gojo tightened his fists into the saline sheets. “Damn it.”“It was too much. Your body, or your brain, whichever gave out first, couldn’t take it. You just collapsed on us.”“I need to get stronger.”Geto raised an eyebrow. “You’re already the strongest. Is that not enough for you? Greed blinds men and makes them fools.”Gojo clenched his jaw. “Of course, it’s not enough.”“Keep pulling stunts like that and it never will be. You’ll destroy yourself before you’re satisfied.”“It won’t kill me. I’ll figure it out.”“You didn’t see what we did, Satoru. You didn’t see what it did to you. I’d never seen you look so-” He stuttered, “lifeless. You ran yourself into the ground and we just watched it happen.”“Since when have you liked me enough to care if I live or die?”“Since you became a reckless idiot, apparently,” Geto spat. “You’re spending too much time with Yuuji. His suicidal tendencies are rubbing off on you.”“I’m not that bad.”“Maybe not yet, but do that again and you’ll be a close second,” Geto sighed. “I never thought I’d have to be worrying over who got themselves killed first - you or Yuuji.” – Blood manipulation. The prized technique of the Kamo clan.Convergence. Piercing Blood.Kenjaku clapped, a lightning-fast spear of blood shooting toward Gojo’s chest.He had just enough time to activate Infinity before it cleaved him clean in two.His mind reeled as the blood hit Infinity and dispersed into a shower of crimson.A convergent series of infinite numbers. Nth partial sum Sn. One ak after the other in the order given by the indices.Piercing Blood fires, then ricochets.He had to focus. Focus.Integer N, n>NA scream. Not his own.A headache builds behind his eyes.So concentrated was he on keeping Infinity active, he managed to forget.He had to focus. Focus.Piercing Blood, rapid-fire, changed path. Where Gojo could deflect, Itadori could not.Gojo turned slowly and, like watching a film frame stutter in slow motion, saw as the beam lanced straight through Itadori instead.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Ah, you’ve finally come,” Kenjaku purred, “My wayward son.”From behind him, Gojo heard Itadori snarl. “I am not your son,” He snapped.Kenjaku cocked her hip, folding her arms across her chest. A leering smirk spread across her lips. She looked far too relaxed, an air of infallible confidence that had Gojo’s defences rising.“No, perhaps you’re not. You’re just the pitiful replacement who stole his life.”Gojo’s eyes widened. “How do you know that? You shouldn’t know that.”“I wasn’t entirely sure at first, but your words just now solidified it for me,” Kenjaku said, smiling. “I’ve been around for a very long time now. So, I am wise enough to know when something is wrong, when something is different. Waking up to feeling like something is missing is a disconcerting thing at my age. Then, when such a strange sensation is accompanied by my best laid plans falling apart around me - well, it only cemented my suspicions.”Gojo could sense the anger rolling out of Itadori in tangible waves. He didn’t have to turn to know when he shifted, Itadori’s trainers squeaking against the linoleum floors as he readied his stance.Kenjaku gave no reaction to Itadori’s obvious movement. She just continued to stand and smile, disconcertingly calm. “I must say, it’s nice,” She continued, “to see one of my test subjects come to such fruition.”Before Gojo could stop him, Itadori launched forward. Recklessly, fist first, he charged.Kenjaku simply chuckled as she glided out of the way, letting Itadori’s attack crash into the kitchen sink behind her.“The intricate balance between cursed energy and the physical body. The transference of technique down the familial bloodline,” She raised her palms as she sidestepped another blow, “and I am, of course, deeply invested in the power of one’s blood,” She clapped.With trained movements, Itadori ducked out of the path of Piercing Blood. Forced back one step, he dropped to the ground, the glass of the delicately engraved cabinet shattering above his head. He rolled, spears of razor-edged blood shooting towards him through the path of falling glass shards.“I am not your experiment,” Itadori growled, planting his feet and readying black flash in his palms.Kenjaku laughed as a barrier of blood shot up to shield her from Itadori’s fists. Itadori recoiled, the second surge of power shattering Kenjaku’s defence, but it was too late. She was already behind him.“Then tell me, what are you? If not my experiment.”Itadori roared, his voice strained.Black, red, then black again - tongues of swirling energy and roiling, angry power formed around his tightened fist. He twisted, inelegant and unrestrained like a cornered viper.Gojo’s hackles rose to the sensation of something evil.Again, Itadori’s skin peeled back to red scale and daggered claws.Kenjaku’s smile widened, even as Itadori drew forward with his entire weight. She was laughing, full-bodied, shaking, hissing - as if Itadori’s attempts to kill her were simply amusing.“See! What else can you be?” She called, her wide eyes watching Itadori’s claws graze just shy of her cheek with something akin to awe. “This is hardly human! A mutt of monster and beast, my finest creation.”At her words, Itadori’s movements stuttered.Sharpened blood, Slicing Exorcism, shooting like bullets towards Itadori, his hesitation fatal.Finally, Gojo moved. With the reckless abandon of a man possessed, Gojo charged.Infinity activated. The blood slicing, arcing through empty air, missed Gojo’s flesh by infinitesimal distance. He grabbed Itadori’s shoulder and dragged him behind his barrier.Kenjaku struck forth, blood hardening into a knife at her fingertips. She swung. Missed, but Gojo could still feel the pressure against Infinity - his mind reeling to keep it engaged as, again and again, Kenjaku pressed forward. Bloodied blade upheld, ascending in a foreswing and following it with a backswing. Each hit took a calculation to avoid, back and back he stepped as his mind rattled through the equations.Gojo charged Lapse Blue in his palm. Sharpened to a point, the power shot out from his fingers.The kitchen around them dissolved into a vacuum, the furniture collapsing in on itself with Kenjaku standing in the eye of the black hole.The blast of power shot Kenjaku through the wall of the house, like a ragdoll in a slingshot, she thundered through plaster and brick before landing in a crater in the ground outside.Just as the room reached near-collapse around Kenjaku, Gojo felt something wrench gravity from his grip. Surprised, he let his control slip.Gravity reversed. Tables, chairs, splinters of glass and cinder block cement stopped in their path before slamming into the ground at Kenjaku’s feet.The house above Gojo and Itadori’s head groaned under the pressure. The ceiling bowed as wood beam supports began to crack and break.Against the force around them, it was only through Infinity that they were still standing. But even then, it took everything in Gojo’s iron-grip control not to let them collapse against the weight.Gojo caught glimpse of Itadori’s wide eyes, evidently surprised by a power Kenjaku had not previously displayed. He couldn’t allow momentary shock to impede their progress. A mere moment’s hesitation could be all it took for them to falter and fail.Gojo grabbed Itadori again and launched them out of destruction’s path.Kenjaku was on her feet again. Piercing Blood, Supernova. An explosion of power as the building tumbled to ashes behind them.A wall of smoke and debris erupted, abruptly obscuring his view. He could feel the searing heat of gas leak fires igniting around him; the structure's collapse initiated a chain reaction of destruction.Through the haze, more shots fired. As Gojo erected Infinity to protect them, Itadori regained his bearings.His sharpened claws elongated. Murderer. Monster. Wretched devil, Gojo’s Six Eyes screamed as Itadori disappeared into the cloud of smoke.If not for his Six Eye’s cries, Gojo would have lost Itadori in the chaos.Out of sight but not out of earshot, Gojo heard Itadori’s warcry. There was the clashing of blood blades against hardened scale skin.Gojo felt ash and fire invade his senses and crawl into the recesses of his mind as he readied another attack.It was an overload of sensation, a headache building behind his eyelids as he blinked back the cinder and smoke.Focus. He had to focus.A convergent series of infinite numbers. Nth partial sum Sn. One ak after the other in the order given by the indices.Gojo charged, again, blindly into the smoke. He let his Six Eyes guide him, he had no chance without them.Faintly, through the flickering flames and debris, Gojo could make out the form of Itadori and Kenjaku. His Six Eyes filled in the rest of the details for him.Gojo knew Itadori was strong. There was no doubt in his mind that Itadori could hold his own. Yet, he couldn’t ignore the worry building in his stomach as he watched Kenjaku force Itadori into the defensive.Back one foot, Itadori dropped low. On the ground, he kicked to sweep out Kenjaku’s feet. Too easily, she dodged, waiting one second for Itadori to return before swiping out with Blood Edge. Itadori ducked back but did not parry, one mistake. One failed hit had Kenjaku returning on a backswing. The unmistakable wet slap of blood hitting the ground rang loud over the crackling flames.Kenjaku clapped. Convergence.It took half a second too slow for Gojo to realise the charge of Piercing Blood was aimed at him.He could hear Itadori scream his name, but his brain was working overdrive just to keep Infinity alive.He had to focus. Focus.Integer N, n>N.He’d watched enough to know now the pattern Kenjaku favoured. One distraction shot to mislead the eye from the real attack. A feint right to cover for the returning left hook.Nth partial sum Sn.He’d watched enough to know, and yet, still, he’d missed the signs.Itadori was to his side, running towards him, screaming something Gojo couldn’t make out over the roaring in his ears.As Piercing Blood hit the invisible barrier of Infinity, it diverted course. Ricocheting like a stray bullet, it shot towards Itadori instead.Gojo wasn’t sure who screamed first.The impact simple. In and out with little fanfare.Clean-cut, a lance of Piercing Blood straight through Itadori’s stomach.There was no agonising scream or bloody shower. Simply, an aborted cry of Gojo’s name and then silence.The thud of Itadori’s body collapsing to the ground was deafened by the carnage around them and the thundering of Gojo’s own heartbeat in his ears.As blood began to pool in great waves from Itadori’s chest, finally, Gojo’s Six Eyes fell silent. Suddenly, he missed their screams.If his Six Eyes screamed, if he heard the echo, Murderer. Monster. Wretched devil, then at least he knew Itadori was alive.A second. One beat.Gojo screamed Itadori’s name.There came no response in return. – A soft, cool breeze blustered across the city. The sky above them appeared clear but the horizon was heavy with grim, forbidding clouds. The wind brought with it the first few droplets of the impending downpour.Gojo saw Itadori blink furiously at the skyline. It looked to him like he was forcing back tears.“It’s okay to cry,” Gojo whispered softly.Itadori continued to stare out into the sunless distance, his knuckles gripping tighter around his diary. “There’s no point in crying now. I do not weep holy water, my tears will not purify me.”“Is that the only reason to cry?”“Will crying bring back the dead?”“Well-” Gojo stuttered, “No, but-”“Then there’s no point.” – Gojo seldom cried.He had as a baby, of course, as was natural, but as soon as he’d gained awareness, he’d stopped.As a child, his minders would coo and hush at him when he’d graze his knee, expecting the usual childish response of fat, attention-seeking tears. Yet, he never cried. Physical pain had never bothered him, even then.At the death of family members, still, he didn’t cry. At a certain age he almost grew self-conscious about it. He’d look around at the mourners gathered, watch how they wept, inconsolable and prostrate with grief, and he’d wonder if that’s how he should respond too.As he aged, though, he grew out of that unease. The higher he ascended in power, the more this emotional disconnect was simply another stepping stone between himself and the rest of humanity.Crying was cathartic for those who needed the release. Gojo had no such need. The human heart might sense what the eyes cannot see and comprehend what hands cannot grasp. But Gojo saw all, felt all, and so, in the vast expanse of his power, tears found no haven.Gojo did not cry. There was no point. –
“Emotions aren’t tactile; you can’t force them to fit a particular shape just because you want to feel a certain way. Cursed energy is exactly the same. There are two ways cursed energy can manifest: either you can inherently control it, or it’s forced out of you.”
– Gojo watched Itadori go down in slow motion.Time seemed to stretch, each passing second drawn out to an agonising eternity, every detail, every gesture and expression etching itself into his consciousness with painful precision.Like a broken record player, the same frame replayed in his mind.Itadori falling, bleeding, and not breathing.The sounds, too, reverberated in his ears with haunting clarity. The crack of broken bones and skin, the thud of Itadori’s body hitting the ground, and- oh, God Itadori’s scream. It wasn’t a cry of pain, nor was it agony tearing itself from Itadori’s throat - no, it was Gojo’s name. Above all else, with his last breath, Itadori screamed Gojo’s name.Suspended in some liminal space, time stood still.Focus.Integer N, n>N.S= a1+a2+a3Nth partial sum Sn.Gojo’s eyes burned something unfamiliar. His vision blurred and his mind, stuck on Itadori’s limp form, finally lost focus.Any series that is not convergent is said to be divergent or to diverge.Through the static in his ears, distantly, he heard someone clap. – Time is not linear but cyclical. – Gojo blinked against the beaming sunlight, its intensity piercing through the winter chill. He pushed his sunglasses up his nose, but the glare persisted. There was something uniquely harsh about the winter sun, it was more piercing, its glow colder than the blazing yellows of summer. In these moments, Gojo missed the rain.Suddenly, though, the sun was blocked out.“You sulking?”Gojo looked up and saw Shoko leering over him. He clicked his tongue. “What do you want, Shoko?”Shoko giggled. Unperturbed or simply blissfully unaware of Gojo’s foul mood, she sat herself, uninvited, next to Gojo on the steps up to the school. Surely, she should know by now that this was his favourite spot to wallow.“A little bird told me you had a fight with Geto.”“It wasn’t a fight.”Shoko hummed. “Then what was it?”“He’s just being sensitive.”Shoko leaned forward, placing her head in her hands feigning deep thought. “Well, that conflicts with what I’ve heard. The little bird told me that you were just being an arsehole. So, what’s the truth?”“Then this little bird needs to get over himself.”Shoko laughed. “God, Gojo, this is why you have no friends.”Gojo bristled. That stung more than he decided to let on. “I have friends.”“Oh, you do? Last I checked friends don’t call each other weak. Especially if they’re reaching out to you for help in getting stronger.”“He wasn’t reaching out, he was picking a fight.”“I think he was looking for a spar, not a beatdown.”“You make it sound like I hurt him on purpose.”“You might not have hurt him physically, but his ego is certainly bruised.”“Then he needs to get stronger.”“And that wasn’t what he was trying to do? I hate to say it, but you’re the most powerful sorcerer we have, Satoru. If someone wants to get stronger, then sparring with the strongest is a surefire way to do it.”Gojo stared at his feet, kicking at the stray rock by his toe. “If that’s what he wanted then he should have just said so.”Shoko rolled her eyes. “It’ll be a cold day in hell when either of you two knuckleheads learn to use your god damned words. Just learn to read between the lines, Satoru.”Gojo grunted. He knew he was an arsehole, knew he’d been an arsehole to Geto before Shoko had arrived to rub his face in it, so he could be spared the lecture.“Apologies aren’t your thing, I know. And it’ll just make Suguru feel worse if you try. But, just-” Shoko sighed. “There are worse things in the world than being weak, you know. Try to be kinder to people. You never know when you might lose them.” – Gojo didn’t cry, but there was a lump in his throat the size of a cherry pit that he just couldn’t swallow down. Gojo blinked back what must have been the ash burning at his tear ducts as he screamed out Itadori’s name. Again and again, he called Itadori’s name but, no matter how loud he yelled, he got no response in turn.He’d promised that he wouldn’t let Itadori die, that he wouldn’t let him kill himself, and yet, he’d failed. But it wasn’t just that simple failure clawing at the back of his eyelids, no, it was the fact that Gojo had been the one to inadvertently lead Itadori to his death. Itadori had been trying to protect him, had been trying to warn him of Kenjaku’s impending attack.And now Itadori lay as a crumpled heap on the ground, bleeding, and not breathing. God, Itadori wasn’t breathing.He was so enraptured with watching the stillness of Itadori’s chest that he barely felt it when something pierced his own.Gojo had never had to contemplate his own mortality, so his mind was entirely blank as he stared down at the Blood Edge that skewered through his ribcage.He could see as the blade was pulled back, he could see his own undoubtedly human blood come pouring out the wound, but he couldn’t feel a thing.With one attack slipping through his guard, he was suddenly powerless to stop the rest.It was a truly alien sensation. He wondered if the acrid tang of blood flooding the back of his throat was what weakness truly tasted like.He knew, logically, that he should feel pain. He watched as great slashes drew caverns across his stomach with a fragmented sort of distance, and knew he should feel more than this all-encompassing numbness.He could feel his body shutting down, could feel his heart faltering and stalling in his caved in chest, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to fight back.Through it all, strangely, his mind was still fixated on Itadori. His lungs were collapsing but he could only replay the same stuttering frame of Itadori’s fall.He’d never felt more human.He didn’t even feel it when he hit the ground. – You can rewrite the first chapter, but the closing line will invariably end with slaughter. –
Shoko rolled her eyes, snapping at her zippo to light her second cigarette. “Sure, whatever. Go feel something. Go find a near-death experience and figure it out for yourself.”
Gojo laughed. “It’s not that simple. I’m the strongest. Near-death experiences are hard to come by for me.”
“Well, go watch someone you care about have a near-death experience. I’m sure the feeling is much of a muchness.”
– While Cursed Energy flows from the stomach, Positive Energy is directed from the user’s brain.Gojo’s body was falling, but his mind knew that he had an endless ocean of Cursed Energy to cushion his landing.Ah, Gojo thought, his mind blissfully clear, Kenjaku should have aimed for the head. – In this strange liminal space where Gojo found himself suspended, a startling clarity emerged. With his body floating, the physical form two feet removed from his consciousness, thinking became strangely effortless.The disconnect between mind and body was disconcerting at first, but quickly it became a comfort; this intricate balance between cursed energy and the physical body. Anger raged like an unbroken bull in his ribcage, but his mind was spared the sensation.There was simplicity here; the complex was comprehensible and the superfluous faded into background noise. Everything felt right.In this threshold, Gojo found the confirmation he needed. –
Throughout Heaven and Earth, I alone am the Honoured One.”
– Gojo opened his eyes.The sky above him was dark and ominous. He could see the storm in the air but the rain refused to touch his skin.As the numbness receded, a sense of total awareness flooded over him like a tidal wave. He could feel the steady rhythm of his heart within his chest, the coursing of blood through his veins, and the crisp chill of the air filling his lungs. In that moment, he felt more alive than he had ever felt before.Above all else, however, he could feel the comforting embrace of Infinity enveloping him like a protective blanket. Even with Infinity activated, his mind was free.Power surged alongside the blood in his veins, and he understood that he was untouchable.The rain had quenched the roaring flames of battle, leaving him standing in the barren wastelands. The barrier had shielded the outside world from the blast, confining him within a contained microcosm of destruction.He turned, the world lagging behind him, and saw Kenjaku some feet away, looming over the fallen body of Itadori.Her blood dissolved with the rain but a smile still lingered on her lips. She had a kitchen knife in her hands and, as she raised it to the air to deliver the final blow, Gojo wondered if she had always moved so slow.Walking felt more like flying as he moved to intercept.He didn’t even have to think anymore. With the flick of his wrist, Kenjaku went flying. It was all so terribly easy all of a sudden.A spare glance at Itadori’s broken form ignited something within the final, dormant recesses of Gojo’s power. Now, not a single drop of energy remained untouched.Reverse Cursed Technique coursed through him effortlessly as he closed in on his prey.Kenjaku met his gaze from her position on the ground, and Gojo asserted his rightful place with her kneeling at his feet. All that remained was to compel her to pray.He could see Kenjaku readying another attack, but still, her movements were so slow, so painfully easy to follow.With grace, he raised his hands, his gaze lifting to the sky and the rain. He allowed it to slide effortlessly off his Infinity, and smiled. This was control. This was his realm.His attention returned to Kenjaku, her bedraggled form drenched by the rain - black hair clinging to her forehead like ink, her Blood Manipulation rendered powerless against the elements, and the unmistakable fear of death reflected in her eyes - and felt no pity.This was retribution. Itadori’s blood was on her hands, and Gojo would not rest until she had paid the price for her sins.From the tip of his finger, Gojo allowed energy to gather. A crimson hue, like the blood staining Kenjaku’s hands, blazed until it became blinding. The very essence of convergence and divergence.Reverse Cursed Technique: Red.All his Cursed Energy, positive and negative, every suppressed emotion lodged in the depths of his being and burning at the back of his eyes, erupted.As cathartic as crying, Gojo fired until he was sure Kenjaku could be no more than a stain on the ground
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Gojo had never believed in a higher power. To entertain such a belief implied the existence of someone stronger than him, a being so entirely omnipotent that it defied reason.Yet now, on all fours, knees bruised and bloodied from kneeling, he cried out to any discerning ear that might heed his plea.Now, God was a festering rot in the back of his throat that he desperately tried to pry out. He screamed, again and again, ad nauseum: Please. Please don’t let this be the end. God.For years, he had scoffed at the idea of the divine, dismissing it as a mere construct of wishful thinking. Now, his hands, dirt and his own blood lodged beneath his fingernails, clawed at the ground in desperate search of belief.Here, with Itadori bleeding out at his feet, and him entirely powerless to stop it, Gojo had never hoped more for a saviour. – Gojo possessed unrivalled power. He stood at the pinnacle of sorcery - the strongest to have graced the Earth in centuries.Yet, it was all futile if it couldn’t help him save the life of just one person.He had worked so hard. He had trained, tirelessly and endlessly, until his knees were weak and his vision blurred, but it all added up to naught in this moment.Gojo could kill without lifting a finger but barely knew the beginner’s basics of first-aid, and if that didn’t say it all. – The rain was cold as it pelted against Gojo’s cheek. Each raindrop felt like the slash of a knife against his slowly numbing skin, harsh, unforgiving, and frigid. The wind picked up as the storm settled in, and its howling almost drowned out the pounding of Gojo’s heartbeat in his ears. Almost.The battlefield around them grew sodden, the rain digging great trenches in the muddied remnants of the garden. He could feel the rain soaking through his uniform trousers as he knelt next to Itadori, could feel it seeping into what felt like the very fibre of his skin.The rain made it difficult to find purchase as he frantically attempted compressions on Itadori’s chest. His own hands felt as cold as Itadori’s skin, and Gojo couldn’t tell whether it was the weather or the icy grip of death.Time slipped, stretched, and distorted. Each second passing between each press against Itadori’s chest felt like an eternity. Shaking fingers clasped, he set a steady rhythm, the beat a relentless march towards the abyss, a precipice looming ever closer with each slip of his palms against skin slicked with blood and rain.Tears threatened to spill from the corners of his eyes. He’d be a hypocrite to blink them back. He’d told Itadori as much; tears left unshed turn to poison. And so, Gojo let them fall unbidden.A bolt of lightning cracked across the sky, and Gojo bowed his head to Itadori’s chest. He couldn’t deny reality - Itadori was not immortal, none were. Yet, Gojo found himself unable to accept it. Itadori was undeniably, painfully human, and in turn, so was Gojo. The truth was bitter on his tongue and it tasted like rage.He’d failed. He’d promised to keep Itadori alive and he’d failed.Uselessness was a foreign sensation, but a deep-seated worthlessness coursed through his veins as he pressed his ear to Itadori’s skin. With the last flicker of hope he couldn’t summon, he sought out the sound of a heartbeat.Rain pounded against the earth, a relentless percussion, while thunder reverberated through the heavens.He waited a beat, then another. Lighting slashed through the clouds in a strident arc, loud and distracting.Finally, mercifully, his prayers were answered.In the midst of the tempest, faint and fragile, Itadori’s heartbeat persisted. Slow, unsteady, and quiet, Itadori’s heart was still beating.Then, the heavens seemed to open. Like some angel descending in a cloud of cheap, teenage perfume and cigarette smoke, Shoko appeared through the rain.“Gojo!”Gojo’s head snapped up urgently at the sound of his name, gratitude flooding through him for his impulsive decision to call Shoko before the fight.Shoko skidded through the mud to land next to him on her knees. Her complexion was pallid, eyes wide, and a tremor danced at her lip as she whispered Itadori’s name.“What happened?”Gojo couldn’t answer. “Please,” he said instead, “You have to help him. Please.”Shoko was no God, she had no ability to bring back the dead. Yet, in that moment, she was as close to an angel as Gojo had ever seen, her hands aglow with cursed energy as they worked over Itadori’s injuries.He had to hope that it would be enough. – The medical wing of Jujutsu Tech was small, sterile, and desolately quiet.The waiting room was little more than a narrow hallway leading to the operating theatre. Eight plastic chairs, all but one vacant. Still, there was scarcely enough room for Gojo to stretch out his legs. He was sure his toes would hit the opposite wall if he tried.A solitary bulb dangled from the ceiling, its feeble light flickering intermittently, casting a sickly yellow glow over the peeling paint and uneven floors. It’s light failed to reach the far end of the hallway, leaving the entrance to the operating room shrouded in darkness. The only illumination was the garish neon sign above the closed double doors, the red glow stark against the dim hallway, “In Use” its ominous declaration.Gojo desperately craved the usual bustle of the hospital. The main wing carried too much risk, so they were forcibly sequestered to the forgotten ward around the back. The warrant was still out on Itadori’s head. For all Gojo knew the truth, the rest of the Jujutsu world still believed Itadori a dangerous traitor. So, the precarious balance of Itadori’s life lay solely in the hands of Shoko in the closed-off operating theatre, while Gojo stood as the lone sentinel outside.Again, he had to hope it would be enough.A small clock stuttered on the far wall, its unsteady ticking grated against Gojo’s nerves like nails on a chalkboard. It took all of his willpower to resist the urge to tear the timepiece from the wall and break it.In the oppressive silence of the hallway, the distant sound of footsteps approached. Gojo braced himself, ready to defend or deflect against anyone who came questioning.Instead, Geto emerged from the shadows, his expression as grim as Gojo felt.The toll of their shared anguish was etched into Geto’s features, evident in the heavy bags beneath his eyes and the pallor of exhaustion that clung to his cheeks. His uniform hung awkwardly from his shoulders, a sign that he’d lost weight since Itadori’s disappearance.Gojo gnawed at his lower lip. Geto’s appearance was a stark reminder that he was not the only one suffering. He couldn’t even say with certainty that he was the one Itadori was closest to. It was awfully selfish to believe he would be the only one grieving.Geto pulled up a chair facing Gojo, the thin, plastic legs scraping against the floorboards. Gojo felt the weight of Geto’s piercing gaze, but he steadfastly avoided eye contact. He wasn’t ready to face his failures yet.“Satoru,” Geto whispered.Gojo continued to avoid Geto’s gaze.“Satoru,” Geto repeated, louder this time. “Please.”Geto had never begged him for anything before. Perhaps, it was this that finally lifted Gojo’s head.Whatever Geto was about to say died on his tongue with one look at Gojo’s face. Gojo knew he must look bad, but Geto’s eyes told him it was more dire than he thought.Wordlessly, Geto dragged something from the bag he’d dropped by the foot of his chair. Gojo’s eyes zeroed in on what he bought out.Itadori’s diary.“I found this after you left,” Geto said quietly.“Did you read it?” Gojo’s voice rasped against his throat like shards of glass, hoarse from screaming. He coughed in an attempt to disguise it, but Geto’s responding wince showed he failed.Geto nodded. He ran a finger down its weathered spine before extending it out for Gojo to take.Like it would fall apart at his touch, Gojo took the diary into his hands as gently as he could. He held it in his lap, almost afraid to open it again. He knew what lay inside it, and the thought made bile rise in his throat. It was a written reminder to Gojo’s broken promise.The neon operating sign flickered forbiddingly.“It’s-” Gojo’s voice faltered. He wasn’t even sure what he was trying to say. There was too much to convey, and no words were worthy enough to voice it.“Shoko sent me a text saying you’d gone to find Itadori.”Gojo clicked his tongue. “And I told her not to snitch.”“Shoko knows better than to always do as you say.”Gojo gave an exacerbated sigh. At least she came when he called, he couldn’t fault her too much. Out of the two, she’d followed his most important order.“What did she tell you?”Geto rolled his shoulders. “Not much. She didn’t know a lot herself, just that you’d gone to find Itadori and she was following after you to pick up the pieces.”Gojo winced at the word choice. “Right,” He sighed, his fingers playing at the frayed edges of Itadori’s diary.“Satoru, what happened?”Gojo swallowed thickly. He stared down at his hands. Infinity was unconsciously active even now, so none of Itadori’s blood lingered. Though, that didn’t stop him from feeling like it was still caked under his fingernails.“It’s-” Gojo’s voice failed him again. He wanted to curse at the words locked in the back of his throat. He’d reached new heights, ascended to an even higher plane, but he still wasn’t strong enough to tear what he wanted to say out his mouth. “A lot,” he finally managed, his voice barely above a whisper.“Itadori-”“He’s hurt. Badly.”The gravity of Geto’s next question hung in the air, thick with unspoken dread. “Will he make it?”Gojo’s head dropped, hoping the curtain of his hair would hide his red-rimmed eyes. However, nothing could disguise his shaking shoulders. “I don’t know.”Geto sucked in a harsh breath. “Right.”“You were right, you know?”“About what?”“I had to stop him from consuming Sukuna’s fingers.”“What?” Geto startled.“He knew, if he did so, I’d have to kill him.”“Itadori is not a danger to us, he is a danger to himself,” Geto rasped, repeating himself from so many weeks ago. The truth in those words twisted the knife in his stomach even deeper.“He begged me.”“That’s more than passive ideation.”Gojo hummed. “He wasn’t just waiting for the knife to be pointed at him, he was actively seeking it out.”“Christ,” Geto slumped forward, his head in his hands.“I stopped him.”Geto scrubbed his palms over his eyes. “And Sukuna’s fingers?”“Shoko should have moved them to a secure location.”Geto nodded. “Just now, when you said you’d have to kill Itadori after he consumed Sukuna’s fingers - surely, that act alone would finish the job for you.”Gojo paused. He tapped Itadori’s diary with his finger. “You said you read this, right?”Geto nodded slowly, his eyes narrowing.Gojo raised his eyebrows. “Your thoughts?”“I may have jumped to some conclusions from its… contents.”“Don’t let reality make you doubt your intuition.” Gojo prompted.“The names, the dates, the knowledge he shouldn’t possess…” Geto’s voice trailed off.“Yeah,” Gojo breathed. “It’s as crazy as it sounds.”“Time travel,” Geto said, almost laughing at how absurd it sounded. “So, if he tried to eat them now, am I right to think he succeeded in his own time.”“Became his vessel.”“The chances of that are near-on impossible.”“So is time travel. Yet, here we are.”“How much did he tell you? About the future.”Gojo breathed in deeply, some desperate attempt to fight back the wave of unwanted memories from the past few hours. “Enough. He told me enough.”“The implications of becoming Sukuna’s vessel. It’s- I can’t fathom.”“From what I know, it didn’t end well. He had control for some time. How, I have no idea, but he did. Then, he lost that control and…”“Then the King of Curses was unleashed.”Gojo nodded.“Strange that, if that’s how things ended, he would seek out the same path.”“Familiar patterns are hard to break, it seems. But, for some reason, he had confidence that I would kill him once he became possessed.”“And if that confidence was misplaced?”“Then he’d seek out alternative methods,” Gojo’s face twisted. “Everything up until this moment was carefully laid out to lead to his death.”“How far back does his plan go?”“Do you remember the day - the one with the unexplained ‘earthquake’? My best bet is that was the harbinger of his arrival.”“That was months before you met him for the first time.”“Indeed it was. Plenty of time to set his plan to motion, clearly.”“Do you think he had a hand in the disappearance of the Star Plasma vessel?”Gojo shrugged weakly. “He never mentioned it, but I can’t say I’d be surprised.”“We can ask when he wakes.”Gojo wanted to add if he wakes, but couldn’t bring himself to say it aloud. The unspoken hung between them regardless. – “We need to get him to a hospital,” Shoko cried over the pounding rain. Her hands were raw with cursed energy and blood as they worried over Itadori’s chest.“We can’t-” Gojo choked. The danger of Itadori being discovered by the higher-ups who wanted his head was too grave. He couldn’t risk saving Itadori’s life only for it to be ripped away from him again.Shoko’s hands stilled, the sudden understanding rushing through her. “Fuck,” she cursed. “I can only do so much here, I need- more, I need more if he’s going to survive.”Gojo wanted to scream. All of this was too unfair. He’d never been a good man, not by most men’s understanding of the word, but he didn’t believe his sins should warrant such a cruel twist of fate.“There’ll be somewhere we can take him, surely,” Gojo begged. His hands twisted in the soaked fabric of his trousers, his fingers itched to help but knew he would just be a hindrance. All of his strength, and he was reduced to begging.Shoko grit her teeth, her expression pinched. “I have an idea, but we need to move fast.”Gojo nodded. He’d take anything.“Lift him. We need to go.”For a moment, Gojo was rooted in place. Fear was leaden in his stomach, too heavy to let him stand.“Satoru!”Gojo sucked in a harsh breath. Now was not the time to let his own inadequacies force him to fail. He had never allowed room for self-doubt before, and this was the prime example as to why. He stood.Gojo shucked off his uniform jacket and draped it tenderly over Itadori’s motionless figure. The fabric settled like a shroud, a little too reminiscent of the linens used by the Coroner’s Office to give dignity to the dead. So, Gojo tucked the jacket gently beneath Itadori’s chin, shielding the worst of the blood and offering protection from the relentless rain. This way, it still afforded him the view of Itadori’s face. Perhaps, like this, he hoped to deceive his mind into believing Itadori was simply asleep.He slipped his arms beneath Itadori and, in a bridal carry, he stood with Itadori in his hold. Itadori’s arm dropped limply from his grip and Gojo bit back the emotion that threatened to swell.Shoko stared back at them with barely disguised terror. The sight they must make, Gojo thought, for the ever-stoic Shoko to look so close to tears. – They made it back to Jujutsu Tech through less than legal means, compressing what should have been a two-hour journey into half the time. Even if one were to put a gun to Gojo’s head, he wouldn’t be able to recall how they made it. His memories were nothing but an indistinguishable haze of rapid movement and tense silence.Shoko, wisely, refrained from seeking explanations, and Gojo, too lost in the bloodstains seeping through his jacket, offered none. Their singular focus remained on getting Itadori to safety, relegating anything interstitial to the back of their minds.Through it all, however, one image remained crystalline: the moment he finally laid Itadori down on the makeshift operating table in the rear medical ward of Jujutsu Tech.As if he’d been living in fast motion, the instant he released his grip on Itadori and lowered him onto the table, time abruptly reverted to its normal pace, crashing into him like a charging bull.He barely got the chance to breathe before Shoko was hurrying him out of the room. ‘To stand guard’ was her excuse, but Gojo knew it was because he’d become too much of a hindrance if he stayed to watch what was about to unfold. Still, with the slim glance he got, the image of Itadori laid out like a body in a morgue was burned into the back of his eyelids like a brand. – “What now?”Gojo scuffed his shoe against the floorboards. “I haven’t thought that far ahead yet.”Geto hummed. “He’s still considered a traitor.”“I’m well aware,” Gojo scoffed. “Kill on sight, were the exact orders.”“We can prove his innocence.”“We have no other choice. I can’t just let them-”“I know,” Geto said placatingly, his voice uncharacteristically soft. “We can figure it out.”“It’ll take more than just our word to convince the bastards at the top. They famously hate to be proven wrong.”“Who can we trust? We have to tread lightly.”Gojo let a beat pass before answering. “Principal Yaga.”“Really? Is he not too involved with the Brass?”Gojo shook his head. “Before I left, he told me to save him. He told me Itadori was worth saving.”“So, you told the old man and not me, huh?” Geto said with mock admonishment.“It was too dangerous. You’d have wanted to come and I didn’t- I couldn’t lose you too,” It was a painful truth to admit, but Gojo’s fragile state had him spilling vulnerabilities with much too convenient ease.Any quip Geto had died on his tongue at the admission. Instead, he nodded solemnly. “So, you’ll speak to Yaga?”“Yeah. If I want to save Itadori from his execution then he can help.”“Not everything needs to be done alone.”“As I’m learning,” Gojo sighed.“And if, worst case scenario, the old man can’t help?“Then I’ll do as I planned originally. I’ll have the bastard’s heads.”A dangerous smile slipped onto Geto’s expression. “Again, not everything needs to be done alone.”Gojo chuckled. “I’d be happy to enlist your assistance.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“There will be no murder of the Council.”Gojo rolled his eyes.“Use your brain for once, Satoru,” Yaga continued. “That will only cause more problems.”“They can’t cause problems if they’re dead.”“They might not be able to, but the rest of the Jujutsu world would be watching. The target would simply be moved onto your back instead, and there are far more parties interested in taking you down than an unknown sorcerer like Itadori.”“I’d like to see them try,” Gojo scoffed.Yaga took off his glasses and rubbed at his eyes in exasperation. “Please, I implore you to leave the diplomacy to me. Now I have an understanding of the situation, I can return to talks with the Counsel.”Gojo had been delicate in his explanation to Yaga. He hadn’t disclosed all, but he had revealed enough. Gojo trusted Yaga; he knew the old man would lay down his life to protect his students, so he was deemed worthy of the truth.Gojo hadn’t thought of how he might broach the subject to everyone else yet. Or, for that matter, if he even would.“Are you going to try and hold me back too, old man?”“Of course not,” Yaga said with a wry smile. “In fact, I urge you to put them in their place. Lord knows someone needs to. Though, perhaps, not with violence. There are more effective ways to assert your power than resorting to heedless murder,” Yaga pushed his glasses back up his nose, the gentle glow from the shoji lanterns reflecting off the lenses, obscuring his eyes. “Threats of violence, for example, should suffice.”Gojo smiled. “With evidence to back up these threats, of course.”Yaga met Gojo’s eyes. “Of course.” – Gojo glared at the small clock on the wall of the medical ward. Its hands stuttered past twelve again, marking the third hour since their arrival, the second since Geto’s. Each passing minute heightened Gojo’s anxiety, knowing that soon Shoko would arrive to deliver news of Itadori’s fate.As early morning approached, not far from the sun rising and the world waking, Gojo silently willed the sun to wait. He was unwilling to face the world moving on around him. It felt like a cruel joke, how the planet continued to turn in spite of it all. How dare life persist while he was trapped in limbo.Itadori’s return, his fate, the disaster they’d left behind in Sendai - all of it was a ticking time bomb. Each passing minute brought them closer to the unknown moment of its explosion. It would be a chain reaction, though the order of events was unknown. All Gojo knew, however, was that no matter the order one saw them unfold, the connections between them would quickly be made, and all roads lead back to them here.It was only a matter of time.“I found something else in Yuuji’s room,” Geto said, reaching back into his bag.Gojo’s grip on Itadori’s diary tightened. “What?”“They were pretty well hidden. Under his pillow, to be exact. Seems like he wanted to keep them close. Which, after giving them a read, I understand.”Gojo watched as Geto fished through his bag for a moment before pulling out a handful of crumpled sheets of paper. Just as he’d done with the diary, Geto held them out for Gojo to take.“You searched Yuuji’s room that thoroughly? Whatever happened to social graces?” Gojo joked lightly, though his voice came out strained.Gojo stared down at the papers in his hands. They were folded at odd angles, dog-eared, well-thumbed, and on the verge of tearing. The edges were ripped unevenly, as though they had been quickly torn out in a moment of fervour. Gojo let his thumb trace the jagged edges with a careful tenderness.“I did what I had to,” Geto replied. “I was searching for anything I could use to prove Itadori’s innocence. Instead, I found this.”Gojo raised an eyebrow. “And this disproves his innocence?”“No, nothing like that. It might even help his case as some sort of stand-in character witness. It’s just-” Geto’s voice trailed off. He gestured vaguely at the papers in Gojo’s hands. “Read them.”Gojo’s fingers trembled slightly as he gently unfolded the first page. He was terrified his shaking hands would tear the delicate paper as he smoothed it out on his lap.Immediately, his gaze fixated on the half-visible date scrawled in the top corner. With deliberate slowness, he opened the diary again. Like the missing piece of a puzzle, the first page dovetailed almost seamlessly into the torn remnants of paper at the front of the diary.Of course, Gojo had questioned the missing pages from Itadori’s diary when he’d first discovered it, but he’d been too preoccupied by what lay beyond to dwell on them too deeply. Now, he held them in his hands like lost treasures finally found.“He kept the pages he tore out,” Gojo rasped.“That he did,” Geto reclined in his seat with a hum. “He bought that diary with him everywhere. Those pages, though, he hid in safe-keeping.”"Why?" Gojo would have expected Itadori's vicious detailing of his past and his plans to rectify it to take precedence. Surely, if there was anything he wouldn't want others to discover, the diary's current contents would be it.“To protect them. Read, it’ll make sense once you do.”Gojo turned back to the first page in the pile. Flipping through the torn edges of the diary, Gojo finally found the date it lined up with exactly.It was from the end of summer - 2018, a year over a decade away. Despite it all, Gojo still found the concept astounding.The first line, written in Itadori’s chicken scratch handwriting, caused Gojo’s heart to leap into his throat. But this time, it was not from fear, as it had been with the rest of Itadori’s diary. Instead, it washed over him like a tide of bittersweet sentimentality, evoking nostalgia for an Itadori he never had the chance to meet.
”I went to the beach with my new classmates today.”
– Itadori closed his eyes, allowing himself a moment to simply revel in the gentle sea breeze and the sound of lapping waves. The sun was setting over the horizon, affording some reprieve from the ferocious heat of the day. Itadori almost shivered as another whip of wind brushed through his hair, and he relaxed, boneless and content, into the relief.Despite the ungodly heatwave, they had been forced to endure a day of rigorous training under Gojo’s relentless regimen. His teacher had looked awfully content from the comfort of the shaded sidelines, happily indulging in his ice cream as he cheered them on.The worst was a three-legged race cleverly disguised as a ‘team building’ exercise. Gojo had simply smirked at their complaints, offering some cryptic excuse about preserving tradition before tossing a length of rope their way. With only three students in their year, Maki had been reluctantly recruited to make up the numbers. Predictably, Nobara had immediately plastered herself to Maki’s side, leaving Itadori to try and fail to hide his blush as he and Fushiguro conjoined themselves at the ankles. At least, Itadori thought, he could blame the sweat on his palms on the heat rather than his flaring nerves at the proximity.Nobara had suggested the trip, and Itadori was endlessly grateful that she had. Now, as he stood in the sun's dying rays, watching blazing red spill over the breaking waves, he could finally breathe.He watched as Panda chased a screaming Nobara along the shore, kicking water at her as she protested something about the salt messing up her hair. Inumaki and Maki cheered Panda on from the sidelines, while even Fushiguro couldn’t help but watch on with a smile. Itadori felt his heart swell with warmth, the scene almost too picturesque to believe.“Oi!” Nobara’s call cut through his reflection. “Are you just going to stand there like a creep?”“Hey!” Itadori laughed, “Who you calling a creep? I’m just enjoying the moment.”Nobara snorted. “Well, stop it. It’s creepy.”“That’s mean.”“Just get over here, idiot,” Nobara waved at him with wide arms. “You remembered to bring the snacks, right?”“Uh-” Itadori stuttered. Emphatically, he pat at his pockets in a panic. He could have sworn he bought them with him. He’d splashed out on Fushiguro’s favourite flavours of everything for this trip.Suddenly, his mind flashed a picture of the cooler bag left abandoned at the foot of his bed and felt his cheeks flush. He mourned for the ice creams that would now surely be melting into nothing back in his room.“Tell me you’re lying,” Maki groaned.Itadori rubbed at the back of his neck. “Sorry?”Nobara stormed over and delivered a swift slap to the back of his head. “Idiot!” she seethed, her words laced with frustration. Itadori cowered, though he was familiar enough with Nobara’s temper to know her tone held no real bite.Before he could stutter another apology, Panda interjected with a loud clap of his hands. “Do not despair!” he cheered triumphantly.In the sunlight, Itadori caught a glimpse of something black and sleek glinting in Panda’s hand, which he now held proudly aloft.“What's that?” Fushiguro asked.“Insurance!”“Isn’t that Gojo’s credit card?” Maki countered.“You have a good eye, Maki,” Panda grinned wickedly.Fushiguro buried his head in his hands. “We can’t use that. He’ll kill us.”Nobara rolled her eyes, stalking over to give Fushiguro a twin slap up his head too. “Don’t be a spoil sport. Gojo’s loaded, remember? Some ice cream is small change to him, he won’t even notice. After what he put us through today, I’d say we’ve earned it.”“Actually-” Panda cut in, “He loaned this to me. Said to treat ourselves.”“Really?”“It’s almost like he predicted someone,” Fushiguro turned to Itadori with a raised eyebrow. “Would forget.”Itadori ducked his head, blushing furiously. Fushiguro was smirking at him and it was too much for Itadori’s poor heart to handle. Bathed in the golden hues of the sunset, Fushiguro looked almost ethereal. It was unfair, Itadori thought, how something so simple could leave him choking on his words.“Well then!” Nobara cheered, a leering smile on her face as she ripped the card from Panda’s hands. “We can’t just waste this golden opportunity. What’s the most expensive brand of ice cream? Actually, scrap that - isn’t there a mall nearby?”“Kugisaki,” Fushiguro sighed. “When Gojo said to ‘treat ourselves’, I think he just meant snacks.”“Well, he should have been more specific then, shouldn’t he? Not our fault that we misinterpreted,” Nobara sniffed. “Anyway, I’ve been searching for a new pair of shoes for ages now.”Itadori laughed. – Gojo’s heart hammered in his chest.The pages painted a portrait of someone who was here once, a version of Itadori that Gojo had never gotten to know. This was Itadori before all the hurt and grief. It was a stranger to the boy lying just beyond the door, both a relic of the past and a future that would never come to pass.Gojo thumbed at the worn corner of the page. Was it strange to miss someone you never got the privilege of meeting?Gojo turned to the next page. – Itadori’s feet drummed impatiently against the pavement. The bench was uncomfortable, but it was exacerbated by the scorching sunlight beating down on him. Despite the tree above him offering the occasional respite of its dappled shade, it did little to alleviate the oppressive heat.Nanami’s instruction to wait grated against Itadori’s impatience; he had never been one for sitting still, especially on his own like this.The mission had been completed without issue. Itadori wasn’t sure why Nanami had been so insistent on accompanying him. It had been a run-of-the-mill assignment against a second-grade deity, hardly a mission that warranted Nanami’s apparent unease. It hadn’t been easy, Itadori wouldn’t boast of his own prowess just yet, but it had hardly been his hardest challenge. Nanami had largely just observed from the side, his hand twitching nervously over his own weapon. He had never even needed to step in. It was strange, as far as Itadori was concerned, but he couldn’t deny that it felt nice to have someone care so much for his well-being.Though, Nanami’s current actions hardly reflected this concern, abandoning him to fend for himself against Tokyo’s unrelenting summer. On returning to the city, Nanami had deposited him unceremoniously on the bench, issuing an order to remain there before disappearing into the bustling crowd without a word of where he was headed.Itadori groaned and slumped against the bench, his head dropping back in exhaustion. There was something about the heat that sucked him of all his strength. Suddenly, he felt very much like the dandelion he could see wilting between the cracks in the pavement. To add fuel to the fire, his stomach growled in protest.He closed his eyes and tried to relax, propping his arms against the backrest, his fingers absently tugging at his hoodie. He loved the hoodie most of the time, don’t let it be mistaken. It brought a comforting warmth when it was cold, and the thought that Gojo had specifically chosen it for him made him feel appreciated like nothing else. However, in moments like this, he found it suffocating. He cursed the rules that mandated students wear their uniform at all times, regardless of the weather. Something to do with easy identification in times of need, or so he’d heard. If only the higher-ups who made such regulations could experience even a fraction of his discomfort, perhaps then they would reconsider their stance. He’d think the presence of cursed energy would be identification enough.Just as the heat began bordering on unbearable, a sudden shock of cold batted against his forehead.Sluggishly, he opened his eyes and was met with Nanami looming over him.“Nanamin,” Itadori slurred, drawing out his syllables with a whine.“Please, you’re over-exaggerating.”Itadori groaned. “No, I’m not. I think I might die.”Nanami settled himself next to Itadori on the bench with a disinterested huff. Silently, he shoved the bag onto Itadori’s lap.Itadori obediently grabbed the bag, but cocked his head in confusion. Nanami simply waved him off. “You must eat.”Itadori gazed at the contents of the bag just as his stomach gave an ill-timed growl of hunger. “Oh, thank you,” he said, his previous attitude dissipating as he stared at the veritable feast Nanami had procured for him. This was far more than he could eat on his own, so he grabbed the first sandwich - one of four, if he counted correctly. Lord knows what Nanami thought of his appetite - and held it out for Nanami to take.“I’m alright, Itadori. Please, you must regain your strength.”“Nanamin, this is way more than I can eat, I swear,” He continued to nudge the pre-packaged sandwich into Nanami’s hands.“You need it far more than I do. This much is for your well-being.”Itadori finally relented. He couldn’t protest too much when his stomach was as empty as it was. He nearly melted at the pleasure of the first bite.“Thank you,” Itadori said again, mouth full.Nanami recoiled slightly at the sight but gave a terse nod.Itadori devoured the first sandwich with remarkable speed, then eagerly delved into the bag to search for his next treat. He retrieved an ice-cold water, which he dispatched in two ungracefully large gulps. He couldn’t help but pout slightly as he wiped his mouth with his sleeve, another gesture that earned him a disapproving glance from Nanami.“No ice cream?” Itadori whined. “When it’s this hot and all.”Nanami bought a handkerchief from his pocket and offered it to Itadori. He looked poised to begin wiping at the corners of Itadori’s mouth, and Itadori was eternally grateful that he refrained. He wasn’t a child, and, as much as he appreciated Nanami’s clear mothering, he preferred not to be coddled entirely.“No ice cream,” Nanami replied firmly. “A well-balanced meal is important at your age. I can’t be responsible for feeding you such nonsense.”“Gojo bought us all ice cream.”Nanami sneered. “Well, Gojo is hardly a role model. I refuse to fall to his standards.” – “I feel offended future Nanami thinks of future me so lowly,” Gojo chuckled lightly as he laid the entry back down on his lap.Geto gave him a small smile in return. “Clearly, you grow into a fine man.”Gojo stared softly at the rest of the pages still in his hands. He briefly shuffled through them, noticing the pattern throughout. “They’re memories,” He whispered. “Happy ones.”“That they are,” Geto agreed. “I guess I can understand why he kept them so protected.”“He didn’t want to lose them, these happy memories, when he’s the only one who remembers.”Silence lapsed. There wasn’t anything Gojo could say to quell the aching in his chest.“It’s a heavy burden to bear,” Geto hummed.“I asked him once, a few weeks ago now, if I could help him carry that burden.”“A problem shared is a problem halved, as they say,” Geto offered.“Or, a problem doubled.”“That’s not a very optimistic outlook, Satoru.”“Is it wrong, though?”“Well,” Geto shrugged weakly, “I try not to think of it that way.”“You? Taking the optimist’s route?”Geto raised an eyebrow. “Is that an issue?”Gojo snorted. “Just not very like you, is all.”“People can change.”Gojo stared desolately at the diary pages in his hands and then at the closed surgery doors. “That they can.” – The doors to the Council’s chamber were as ostentatious as expected. Crafted from rich, deep oak, they bore intricate carvings of Jujutsu history, as beautiful as they were pretentious. Gojo wanted to sneer at the faces of so many renowned sorcerers etched into the wood. It was fitting for the Council to equate themselves to such powerful figures, a testament to their high self-regard. The imposing doors, secured with heavy metal locks, served as an almost too-perfect metaphor for their cowardice, for their tendency to hide from danger while condemning others, as if their own hands weren’t just as stained with blood.The doors loomed above, tailor-made to unsettle any who dared approach. Yet, Gojo did not waver. He stood tall with squared shoulders and a lifted head. For all their regal robes and self-coronated crowns, the Council were not lords of the realm, they were just men. And Gojo refused to yield to their intimidation, for he bowed to no man.“Are you ready?”Gojo laid his hand on Geto’s shoulder and nodded. “Of course.”It wasn’t a lie. There wasn’t a single strand of unease left in his soul. He would not concede defeat, and he would not be responsible for anyone who got in his way.“Nanami and Haibara send their regards. They told me to wish you luck.”Gojo smiled. “I don’t need luck.”“Well, tell them that once you’re out. They didn’t look to share your same confidence.”Geto shrugged off Gojo’s hand and pushed him forward.Gojo turned his gaze to Principal Yaga, who stood guard by the doors. He gave a solemn nod which Gojo returned.Yaga cleared his throat as Gojo approached. “A reminder, Satoru. No murder.”Gojo snorted. “I make no promises.”Yaga shot him a withering look. “Please.”“If they decide to execute poor judgement then I cannot be held liable.”Yaga gave a long-suffering sigh but pushed open the doors regardless. “Well then,” he said. “The Council awaits your testimony.” – Time, as was often its want, dragged on with excruciating slowness. It was tortuous, Gojo thought, treacherous even, how time had a mind of its own. When he wished for it to linger, each second would slip like grains of sand through his fingers. Now, when he yearned above all else for the hours to fly by, time chose instead to stubbornly crawl at a snail’s pace. It was unfair, how he felt such ire towards a mere abstract concept. This was an immutable truth, beyond his power to bend to his will, no matter his strength. Though, according to Itadori, it was Gojo who set time travel into motion. So, he couldn’t help but wonder if he could will that power into existence again now.Geto caught him staring at the clock again. “Have patience,” was all he offered.Gojo wanted to put his fist through the wall. – “What of the final three fingers Kenjaku was in possession of?”“As soon as we know Yuuji is okay, I’ll head back to Sendai to retrieve them. They’ll be somewhere in the wreckage, I’m certain. Clean-up will be required there anyway. The destruction of the house we can pass off as a gas leak, the bodies, though, will take more effort to conceal.”“Unfortunate victims of the accident?” Geto offered.Gojo snorted. “Ah, yes, a slit throat. A well-known side effect of gas leak fires.”“Members of the force know to turn a blind eye when it comes to matters of sorcery. Slip them notice and I’m sure they’ll understand”Gojo grunted.“But what of the finger’s storage? From what you’ve told me, I’m not entirely comfortable with leaving them within Itadori’s reach again.”“I’ll find someplace secure to hide them. I don’t enjoy the thought of keeping secrets from him, but I can’t- I can’t let him try something like this again, despite what I promised him.”Geto quirked an eyebrow. “What was the promise?”“That, if, after everything, after I helped him finish all he had planned, he still wanted to go then I would let him,” Gojo leaned forward in his chair, his head in his hands. “But I don’t think I can. I can’t let him die.”“It’s okay to be selfish sometimes.”Gojo snorted. “For as long as I’ve known you, haven’t you told me to be less selfish?”“On this occasion, I’ll allow it. If it means Yuuji will live.” – On hour five, Shoko finally emerged, her appearance stark and unsettling. Her face was pallid, eyes rimmed with red, and her coat marred with bloodstains. Itadori’s blood his mind supplied, unhelpfully. Gojo couldn’t read her expression behind the surgical mask, so he was left frantically guessing. In eerie silence, she passed by, her heels echoing through the halls as she disposed of her contaminated gloves in the medical waste bin.
She paused, sighing as she ripped the mask off, dropping it alongside her gloves in the bin. Still, her expression gave Gojo no clues.
“Shoko,” Gojo rasped.
“He’s alive. He’s fragile, but he’ll live.”
–
Gojo could feel the burning ire of the Councilmens’ eyes piercing into his skull, their eyes concealed behind their shadowed cloaks as they spat their vitriol. Their words only made him smile.
To him, their words were like music, their disdain a symphony to his ears. They demanded a show, and he would perform with unparalleled grace.
Threats of violence should suffice.
Raising his arms as if unfurling wings, he stood beneath the spotlight, its rays falling over him like celestial blessings. Within him, something seethed, something violent and animal. He couldn’t wait to let it free.
He would not kill them, but, perhaps, he’d make them wish that he had. With all his might, he unleashed his power. Even a fraction of a second would be more than enough to humble mere mortals.
“Itadori Yuuji is a traitor!” One man screamed.
“To you, a traitor is anyone who does not bend to your whims.” Gojo flashed his teeth, sharpened and deadly.
“Are you defying the will of the Council, Gojo Satoru? Do you not understand the consequences of such treason?”
“I understand perfectly well. I simply do not care.”
“You dare resist us! You will be put to death!”
Gojo chuckled darkly. “I'd like to see you try.”
With another surge of his power, he silenced any further objections.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Itadori was consistently surprising. So much so, his unpredictability had become a predictable trait in itself. Gojo knew better than to try and speculate when it came to Itadori. Without fail, he would be proven wrong. Yet, despite all his experience, Gojo still found himself succumbing to his imagination. Clearly, the endless hours in the waiting room had given him far too much time to dwell.Perhaps it was the mind-numbing effect of the countless dramas he had watched over the years, or simply, more likely, the natural tendency of the human mind. Whatever the reason, Gojo couldn’t help but picture the exact moment Itadori would wake up. He pictured grand spectacle, filled with drama and intrigue - fitting descriptors for Itadori.He’d tried not to think of it too much, in the god-forsaken event that Itadori didn’t wake up. But he couldn’t help it.So, really, Gojo should have known better.In reality, Itadori opened his eyes with little fanfare. There were no dramatic flourishes, no cinematic tableau or fanciful script to precede it. It simply happened.One moment, he seemed sound asleep, his blonde lashes brushing against pale skin, every trace of blood erased by Shoko’s careful hand. The next, he was blinking up at Gojo with drowsy eyes, as if innocently waking from a dream.Gojo had anticipated more. He should have known better.Gojo was sat in an uncomfortable plastic chair. The same from the hallway. He’d dragged it in when it became clear there weren’t enough to go around. He sat on one side of the bed. On equally uncomfortable chairs, Shoko and Geto sat on the other. Despite the discomfort of the hard, misshapen plastic, it paled in comparison to the discomfort of being away from Itadori’s side, and so, Gojo endured.It was silent. Pin-drop. Even the incessant ticking of the old clock in the hallway failed to reach them here. The room was heavy, suffocating and indomitable. With no way to mark the minutes, it was impossible to tell how much time had passed. Gojo could only rely on his internal body clock, which had been thrown off-kilter from the moment he witnessed Itadori fall at Kenjaku’s hand.So, it happened between one second and the next. But, in reality, it could have been hours, Gojo had no way of knowing.Itadori blinked sluggishly, “Oh,” was all he could muster. “I’m alive.”Of all of them, Gojo was surprised when Geto was the one to reach out and grab Itadori’s hand. He watched as Itadori flinched slightly in surprise of the touch, but he quickly melted into the comfort once he recognised where he was.Silence returned for a moment. Gojo’s fantasies had conjured this moment ad nauseum, but he’d never gotten so far as to think of what to say. “Hey,” He said instead, already feeling embarrassed by the crack in his voice.Gojo could see Itadori falter around the word ‘Sensei’ for a moment. “Satoru,” He finally croaked.“Don’t you dare do that again,” Gojo whispered. He wanted to scream, but couldn’t trust his voice not to fail on him. “Don’t you dare.”“You scared us, Yuuji,” Geto said with a squeeze to Itadori’s hand. “Disappearing like that, without a word, only to come back half dead. Satoru’s right, you can’t- you can’t do that again.”For as long as Gojo had known Geto, he had never seen his friend so distraught. Geto held Itadori’s hand in a firm grip, but Gojo could see his careful restraint, as if he feared inadvertently hurting Itadori. Such sentimentality was a new look for Geto. Again, for all of Itadori’s mysteries, Gojo shouldn’t have been so surprised that Itadori would be the chosen one to drag such raw emotion from Geto.“I-” Itadori’s voice broke. “I did what I had to.”“Maybe you did,” Geto agreed, “but you didn’t have to do it alone.”Itadori swallowed thickly. He said nothing.“Did you really think we couldn’t help?” Geto ground out. “Did you think us too weak?”“No- That’s not-”“Then what? Why wouldn’t you let us help you? Aren’t we your friends?”“I couldn’t let you die. Not again.”Geto’s mouth snapped shut, his next descent failing him. “Oh.”Shoko’s chair legs scraped loudly against the cold linoleum. “Stop it, Suguru. We’re past the time for anger now. What’s done is done.”Geto sighed in defeat, giving Itadori’s hand another squeeze in apology before letting go. He sank back in his chair, his expression pinched.“Instead,” Shoko continued, “I feel like it’s time for some answers. You-” Shoko pointed her finger at Gojo, “promised me an explanation once we had the privacy, and I feel like this is as private as we’re going to be afforded for the foreseeable future. And you two-” her finger waved accusatorily between Geto and Gojo, “seem to have some shared understanding that I’ve not been privy to,” Her finger finally settled on Itadori. “What did you mean die again?”Belatedly, Gojo realised Shoko had never been told about what was going on, about Itadori’s truth. He had heard it from Itadori himself. Geto had come to his own conclusions from Itadori’s diary. Shoko, however, was still in the dark.Gojo cast Itadori a glance. “Are you up to talking? I can take over if not.”Itadori shook his head. “No. It’s- it’s fine. I can do it.”Shoko raised an eyebrow. Her expression capitious but underscored by apprehension and a hint of fear.“I’m from the future,” The words spoken so plainly that it almost felt comical now. Gojo had been forced to pry the truth from Itadori’s claws, and now it was falling so easily from his lips. It was progress, Gojo decided.“Right,” Shoko said dumbly, her tone betraying her neutral expression. “The future,” she repeated. “That- makes sense, strangely.”Itadori nodded. “It was-” his voice cracked. “Bad. I had to stop it from happening again.”“Ah, again,” Heartache flittered across her face as the understanding settled in. “So, we died?”“Everyone did. Everyone.”Shoko swallowed. “I see.”“But it won’t happen again,” Gojo said. “We won’t let it.”Itadori looked unconvinced, but nodded lightly. “Right.”“So, everything up to this moment…” Shoko’s voice trailed off.“Was to prevent the future Yuuji experienced from happening again, yes,” Geto finished for her. “So, it seems.”“How far back? For how long have you been controlling things?”“I wouldn’t say I was in control. That’s giving me too much credit. I’ve been too reckless. But- Riko Amanai, the Star Plasma Vessel, probably-”“So, that was you,” Geto interrupted, sounding vaguely triumphant.Itadori nodded. “She’s safe. She’s far away from here now. I made sure of it.”“But, Principal Yaga said- without her, the Jujutsu world-”“Another vessel has already been born. She didn’t need to be the one sacrificed.”“She was that important?” Shoko asked.Itadori hummed. “I never knew her in my time. She was long dead by the time I got to Jujutsu High. But her death set off a chain of events that lead to everything that happened after,” Itadori turned to face Shoko. “You told me her story, actually.”“Were we friends? In this future of yours.”Itadori hesitated before shaking his head. “Not really, no,” his voice was wistful. “We got closer, though, in the fallout. There were few still alive by that point. We took solace in who we could.”“You’ve suffered a lot, haven’t you?” Shoko breathed.Itadori’s face twisted, his lip curling. “I guess.”“You’re strong. To have survived, to have kept going-”“Am I?” Itadori let out a humourless chuckle. “Sometimes suffering is just suffering. It didn’t make me stronger. It just hurt. Am I really supposed to be grateful to have survived?”Shoko’s face fell. She found herself at a loss for words, knowing that any attempt at comfort would only ring hollow. Instead, she folded her hands into her lap and stared at the floor. Gojo knew the feeling well. Having faced the horrors of Itadori’s past before, he understood the futility of offering empty platitudes.He was too acquainted with the emptiness that lingered in the wake of harsh truths. – “What are you going to do now?” Gojo asked softly.It was a question laden with weight, one that needed to be asked. Yet, Gojo couldn’t help but fear what he might hear in turn.He had promised to honour Itadori’s wishes once he had completed his mission, once he had averted tragedy. But, deep down, he couldn’t trust himself to fulfil that promise.Still, he couldn’t allow the question to go unspoken.Itadori’s gaze drifted upward, fixating on the ceiling with a vacant stare. “I don’t know,” he admitted with a hollow tone. “I never thought this far ahead.”Gojo’s throat was dry. “Do you still wish to die?”Itadori didn’t answer for a moment, and Gojo felt the vice grip of fear return. “I don’t know,” Itadori simply repeated. It did little to quell Gojo’s anxiety. “The cycle won’t stop until I’m gone.”Gojo clenched the linen hospital sheets in his knuckles. “Maybe. But do you have to die today? You’ve done enough. You’ve already rewritten history. Can’t you just let your story end naturally? Can’t you live?”Itadori’s voice was barely above a whisper, rasping and on the verge of breaking. “What do I have to live for? I don’t belong here, but I have no home to return to. Everything - everyone - is gone. I have nothing left.”Gojo twisted to grasp Itadori’s hand but was interrupted by the sound of something cracking in his pocket. Curiously, he reached for the source - a pen.It was the pen Fushiguro had given him.He was surprised it had survived the chaos. Gojo had brushed hands with death, yet the pen in his pocket had somehow endured. It seemed oddly fitting, for Itadori’s pen to be as stubborn as its owner.He reached over and, rather than slotting his own hand into Itadori’s, placed the pen in his open palm instead.Itadori blinked owlishly at the pen, his brows furrowed.“You dropped this. Fushiguro asked me to return it to you.”“Megumi,” Itadori breathed.“I went to see him after you disappeared. He was asking for you. He missed you.”Itadori’s fist tightened around the pen and quickly averted his gaze. However, Gojo didn’t miss the telltale wetness forming at his lashes.“You have people who care about you, Yuuji. I care about you. Suguru and Shoko too. Nanami, Haibara, even old man Yaga. You didn’t see how worried they all were.”At his words, Itadori lifted his head, and Gojo could finally see the tears that fell unbidden down Itadori’s scarred cheeks.“He may not be the Fushiguro you knew, but that boy cares for you too. I’ve seen it. The same for the others from your past, I'm sure. It may not be the exact same, but you can’t give up on them either. There’s still hope. You can keep going.”“But-” Itadori choked on a sob. “I’m so tired. I don’t want to keep going.”“You can rest now. Life doesn’t need to be a fight. Rest does not equal death. You can keep going and still be happy.”“Happy, huh?” Itadori’s voice cracked, a sad smile splitting his lips. “I’ve forgotten how happiness feels.”Gojo reached out and took hold of Itadori’s shaking hand, the one that still clenched his pen like his life depended on it. He let the firmness of his grasp still Itadori’s trembling fingers.“I promise, you have time to relearn.” – Leaving the Council’s chambers, Gojo felt like he was floating. As if gravity had lost its hold on him, his chest felt light, his shoulders free from burden, and his spirit unshackled. He was invincible, a force to reckoned with. And he had ensured that none would dare challenge him again. The Council, he knew, would now tread cautiously in his presence. He had made quie sure of that.Geto and Yaga were waiting for him by the door.“Did you kill them?” Geto asked as Gojo passed.“No.”Geto’s lip curled. “That’s a shame.”Gojo laughed. “But I struck the fear of death in their hearts. They’d sooner die than go against me again. I made sure.”Geto raised his hand, and Gojo chuckled as he met him with a high-five.By his side, Yaga shivered. “What terrifying boys I’ve raised,” He muttered darkly.Gojo slapped Yaga’s shoulder with a smile “Best not get on my bad side then, hey old man?”Yaga shrugged Gojo’s hand away with a roll of his eyes. “And of Itadori’s fate?”“His sentence has been lifted. He’s free to live.”“I see. Good,” Yaga said, shifting his glasses up his nose. “What will he do now? Will he continue to be a Jujutsu Sorcerer?”“I don’t know. That’s up to him to decide. He’s free to choose his own path now.” – As it turned out, being of Sukuna’s lineage heightened Itadori’s healing factor. He wasn’t invincible, Gojo had learned that the hard way, but it meant he recovered faster than the average man. The silver lining was thin, but at least it was there.Within two days, he was no longer bedbound. For anyone else, it would have taken a week before they could even stand unaided. As it was, Itadori was upright in bed, talking softly with Shoko as she unwrapped his bandages.Gojo found himself unable to tear his gaze from the fresh scar that marred Itadori’s chest. Among the many that littered his body, this one seemed almost tame, a mere whisper compared to the others that carved their way across his skin. But, to Gojo, its presence was impossible to miss.He cleared his throat to announce his presence.Itadori offered him a small smile as Gojo sat next to him on the bed. As much as Gojo was now in Shoko’s way, she didn’t offer any complaints. She’d long gotten used to his incessant hovering.“I hear you’re fit to be released.”Itadori nodded.“Do you know what you want to do now?”Itadori worried at his bottom lip, mulling on his answer as he accepted the fresh shirt Shoko offered once the last of his bandages were removed. “I’m not sure,” He said as he tugged the shirt over his head.“Will you stay?”“What, at the school?”Gojo nodded. “Yes. Will you continue to be a Jujutsu sorcerer?”Gojo hesitated to steer Itadori towards any specific course. Itadori deserved freedom, having been shackled by the dictates of destiny for far too long. And Gojo feared the idea of inadvertently re-imposing those restraints. Yet, deep down, he selfishly hoped Itadori would stay.Itadori played with the hem of his shirt, tugging at the collar around his neck. At the sight, Gojo made a mental note to fit Itadori’s uniform with that custom hoodie he’d promised.“I’ll stay. At this point, I know nothing else. And, besides, there are still curses I know will form in the future that I must fight,” Itadori gave Gojo a pointed look. “No matter what, if you hear word of a curse that goes by the name Mahito, you will promise to let me kill him. Alone.” – The Jujutsu world had been right to fear the rumblings of change they’d first tasted in the air so many months ago. Back then, Gojo had been dismissive of their anxieties, believing himself above such trite neurosis. But now, standing in the aftermath left behind, he found himself much more empathetic.The tidal wave had broken, washing through Jujutsu society and purging it of all its ugliness. Nothing remained untouched. All familiarity, however unsightly, had been wiped clean, leaving behind an unrecognisable landscape.All this time, Gojo had wondered whether Itadori was the catalyst or the cataclysm itself. Now, with the gift of hindsight, he realised that, maybe, Itadori had been both.For so long, Gojo had languished in his divine boredom, craving something of interest, a shift in the mundane. Then, Itadori had arrived, bearing nothing but change in his wake.Despite the horrors of the past winter, Gojo could only find gratitude for it. With Itadori in his life, he knew he’d never be bored again. – The curse Itadori prophesied took over ten years to appear.Gojo found Itadori in the classroom, engrossed in the lesson plan for his new students. Despite his initial protests, Itadori had grown into a fine Jujutsu teacher.The midday sun was high in the sky, the light filtering in through the windows and suffusing the classroom in its warm, honeyed glow.He knocked twice.“I’ve heard recent reports of a powerful curse. Human-like. Light hair and patchwork skin,” Gojo said. “Apparently, it goes by the name Mahito.” – Gojo covered the rest of Itadori’s lessons that day. Itadori was on a warpath, and Gojo knew better than to try and stop him.When Itadori had first mentioned Mahito’s name, he had said kill instead of exorcise. Now, watching Itadori return with the curse’s fetid blood still dissolving on his skin, Gojo understood such choice in words.There was a flash of that wild, untamed beast Gojo had been faced with upon their first meeting.Blood His Six Eyes called, Murderer. Monster. Wretched devil.Gojo smiled, and welcomed Itadori home. – With Mahito’s fate sealed, the last of Itadori’s anxieties seemed to melt away.Finally, Gojo got to see his friend's true potential. Finally, he got to see Itadori live. – “A new student had the Council threatening execution again.”Itadori quirked an eyebrow. “And you stopped them, I’m assuming.”“Of course. They were quick to remember their place after a few choice words.” Gojo scoffed.“Okkotsu Yuta, right?”Gojo hummed. “Another friend of yours?”“Kind of.”“Would you prefer to take his class, then?”Itadori shook his head. “No. He learned the most from you. You made him strong. I’d like to help, though, where I can. He reminds me a lot of myself.” – Nobara Kugisaki let out a resounding shriek as Panda tossed her halfway across the field. Harsh training under the guide of a ‘friendly spar’, or so they’d said. Despite landing hard against the grass, Nobara swiftly, and rather impressively, regained her balance. Undeterred, she charged forward again with a scream of expletives.Her form was slightly sloppy, a clear sign of her youthful inexperience. She was easy to predict, her motions too obvious and her next moves glaring, but her indomitable spirit was admirable. Each strike she delivered carried weight, the impact of her returning fist, while blocked by Panda’s hulking forearms, still managed to push her senior back a step.All things considered, Gojo could see her potential. Itadori had spoken highly of her when Gojo had asked, recognising her name as it appeared on the new year’s student roster. Sensing the familiar shadows that crossed Itadori’s eyes at the mention of her name, Gojo held back from pressing further. Though, now, the sadness seemed more a dull ache than an open wound. The scars still remained, but there was only dry blood left behind.Gojo watched as Itadori commanded the attention of the first and second years, corralling them like one would a wild pack of animals. Despite their collective groans, the reverence they held for their teacher was unmistakable. Itadori was strong, formidably so, and his students recognised this implicitly. With every sorcerer in the school holding Itadori in such high regard, their admiration naturally followed. Yet, beyond his strength, Itadori was revered for his kindness as well. And his compassion extended not only to the students who were his friends in a past life but to all of them. He cared deeply for his students, attending to their needs, academic and personal alike. Itadori had become the teacher students ran to for help, and he, in turn, would lend a compassionate ear.Gojo watched Itadori as he spoke. Gone was the hunched and ashamed teenager he had first encountered; in his place stood a figure with a straight back and squared shoulders. Over time, Itadori had learned to hold his head high, no longer concealing his scars as if they were shameful secrets. There was something to be said about time healing all wounds. Sometimes, in the process of healing, one must simply be with the pain and allow time to do the rest. Itadori, Gojo mused, was the prime example.Gojo laid back against the grass, slipping his mask off his face to bask in the sunlight. The seasons were turning again, the vibrant hues of spring washing over the school. A gentle breeze danced across the training field, carrying with it the sweet scent of fresh-cut grass and blooming flowers. He had sought solace in the cold for so long that it took him many years to rediscover warmth in the sun. Today, the sun was kind.“Hey, Satoru!”Gojo blinked up at Itadori looming over him.“Mind grabbing something for me?” Itadori asked.“What do you want?”A knowing smile crept onto Itadori’s lips. “A couple lengths of rope, if you don’t mind. I have an exercise I want to try with the first years.”Gojo knew exactly what exercise Itadori planned, and he snorted. “Of course. Some traditions must be preserved.” – Itadori clapped, drawing the student’s attention to him. “There will be times when you cannot rely simply on your cursed techniques,” He yelled. “There will be times where fighting alone is not an option. If you cannot rely on your innate abilities, rely on your companions,” Itadori shot Gojo a smile which he returned. Itadori’s impersonation of Principal Yaga was uncannily accurate. “There is no respect for others without humility in one’s self. Pride is the mask of one’s own faults.”Itadori tossed the lengths of rope at the students’ feet. Gojo almost laughed at how familiar their groans sounded. It was a seemingly stupid exercise. Out of context, a three-legged race should not hold so much weight, but its lessons were invaluable. Gojo just hoped these lessons would resonate more easily with their young minds than they had with his own. Before it was too late again.“I hope you take one thing away from this today,” Itadori’s voice softened. “Your friends are there for you. So, please, let them help,” His gaze swept across the student line-up, before landing on Nobara and Fushiguro in particular. “Remember, you do not have to fight alone.”