Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

     BLOOD is what gets you across the river. If the right blood is in your veins, you’re born there. If you’ve seen enough, if you’ve spilled enough—you’ve earned your right to cross. If you’ve nowhere to go, the ferryman will take you. You—you have the right blood, you’ve seen it be shed, and you’ve nowhere to go—and yet! You must pay the toll. It is not cheap, the boatman tells you, and you do not understand—you board being charged no coins and your soul intact. You think to yourself, this passage is my birthright. But the boatman tells you, you will know soon, and his ominous tone makes your first step onto the other side feel like sinking quicksand.

And as he said, you learned soon enough.

The price was heavy indeed. You are not a jujutsu sorcerer, despite your lineage. You inherited no cursed techniques, no natural talent, and no aptitude for the job that was sorcery. Nothing but a frail physique and a nose good for sniffing out residuals and a stomach overly sensitive to changes in cursed energy. The toll you paid to exist on this side of the world was a deal bartered with the undead, a trade between the world of humans and the world of curses. It was a Heavenly Restriction that confined you to spaces outside the battlefield, leaving you behind in the dusty storage rooms of the college. You have no place in this world. 

Gojou Satoru, on the other hand, does. He too is not of this world, but he is not like you—this you’ve long acknowledged. A man who possesses the infinity is no man at all, rather a deity who has seized the powers of the divine. He is the man who has been chosen to ascend to godhood, and you are nothing more than a pebble beside his feet. A spectacle, the sole heir of the Gojou clan. You hate him with vehemence you didn’t think yourself capable of.

You paid your toll, and you paid it dearly. The gods forgave his debt, and in fact took what you gave and showered it upon the blue-eyed boy. You clawed tooth and nail to enter a world that was supposed to be your birthright, struggling to barely scrape the bottom of the barrel. He was incarnated as the new coming of god, a rise so significant and immediate you needed only to be born to know of his existence. He, most of all, had everything you ever wanted: power at his fingertips, heavenly dominion if he so wished. For you, even an innate technique was unachievable. For him, it wasn’t something to even blink at. The fault splitting the ground you stood upon ruptured Earth to its very core, and that was the difference between you and him.

Yet you were wrong once again. At sixteen, despite your incapacity to become a sorcerer, you were sent to the Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical College. Every day, you walked through those gates, the entrance into Master Tengen’s barrier inducing nausea and vomiting until one day there was nothing left to puke. But you were suffocated and disgusted not just by the sudden shift in cursed energy that was the barrier, but also the self-torturous cycle that was walking into the school only to be smothered by those who could be what you simply could not. 

When you made eye contact with Gojou Satoru for the first time, you nearly puked on the spot, because in that moment you realized the difference between you was not simply a canyon of molten rock, but a tear in the milky way, in which the limits of infinity were undefined and stretched beyond human comprehension. You could chase after him all your life, and yet, just like his powers and those math equations of x approaching infinity that you hated learning in your homeschooled calculus classes, there’s an asymptote. In simpler words, you’d never reach him.

Your lives should have never intertwined. But greed is twisted, as is jealousy. Hatred even more so. Enough to bend fate.

“It isn’t like you to be late.”

The door is slightly ajar, enough to see his right eye peeking over his black spectacles. You can only sigh.

“No,” you agree. 

“I was starting to think you wouldn’t show up,” he says cheerfully, pulling the door open wide and stepping aside to let you in. 

“Please,” you scoff, pushing past him, “I’m not so rude as to do something like that.”

He laughs, and it is an obnoxious sound. Gojou Satoru takes a hand out of his pocket to offer help with your bag, a gesture to which your face contorts with disgust. Gojou Satoru is not a gentleman, this you know. 

“Don’t be like that, (y/n)-chan,” he says, pouting as he sticks that awful sounding honorific to your first name (which you never let him call you by). 

The room spreads before you now that you set your things down on the leather stool at the front. It’s a familiar sight, reluctant as you are to admit that. A patterned wallpaper, spacious bathroom, small counter, two lounge chairs. Most importantly, a king-sized bed neatly made, and a box of condoms on the nightstand, supplied by the hotel. 

“Come on, (y/n)-chan. You’re in a strangely bad mood today,” he teases, walking to you after he gives the door a light push to close on its own. “What happened? Miss me too much?”

A groan escapes your lips, but it fades as Gojou Satoru offers his innocent smile. Gojou Satoru may not be of this world, but he is still a man of worldly desires. You like to think these meetings with him confirms that. He leads you to the bed, a stranger’s bed made by a stranger’s hands (because you insist that meeting at his or your place would be the establishment of a relationship that doesn’t exist, and that you like watching him waste his elaborate wealth), pinning you beneath him with your back sinking into the mattress. 

Every night starts like this, and every night you cannot look in his eyes. You’re afraid he will try to kiss you.

“Still no good?” he asks, that everlasting smirk still on his face. Your silence earns a small chuckle. “Ah well. We all have our limits.”

There’s no good, rational explanation for why you let him have his way with you. Worse, you are still at a loss for why Gojou Satoru finds interest in you. You have asked him twice before over the years, but he has given you nothing but vague avoidance. Regardless, all interaction you have with Gojou Satoru is a result of twisted human nature, you think, of your unbridled desire for some kind of proof of your worth in this world, for there is nothing for you here other than being the object of desire of the person who stands at the top. For you, who lives at the bottom, what else could you hope to obtain? There is something selfishly fulfilling about witnessing god incarnate appear so fervently enraptured.

“Yes,” is all you can breathe out as he hovers his face above yours. You look in his eyes for one moment, thinking them so endless, so empty, and shake your head slightly. “I don’t love you, Gojou-san,” you say, your tone almost apologetic, “so I won’t kiss you.”

“That’s too bad,” he hums, the bed shifting under his weight as he pulls back to unbutton his jacket. “I’m a good kisser, you know.”

“Sure you are.”

Hatred is a twisted thing. You despise this man. You have despised him for ten years. You want to see him unravel and grovel at your feet, to see him at his weakest. You want to see him in your place and see if his pride would crumble. See him beg for affection, see him suffer the humiliation that festers in the pit of your stomach. Would he smirk so smugly if he were you? Could he? You want to know that he can’t. But part of you thinks he would be glad to be rid of his worldly burdens. You can’t expect things from someone who has nothing, after all.

So you wish to be rid of him. Yet your greed clings onto the fact that you of all people has Gojou Satoru holding them, that the one people admire more as The Strongest than as Gojou Satoru seeks you out again and again. To be special to someone is to be worth something, and doesn’t it make you worth more if that someone is the god of your very world? You like to think you are something you are not, of course, and you know it has always been this way. Nevertheless, when the man who transcends the bounds of humanity stoops down to your level, there are times when you think that maybe, just maybe , you can reach him.

You can’t, of course. But you’re addicted to this feeling of substance you were never given the chance to feel in your youth. In this room, in his arms, you are something, so no matter how much it infuriates you, you’re afraid you’ll never be rid of him.

Instead, you’ll make the most of it. You paid your toll, while the gods paid his. Life is unfair, yes. So Gojou Satoru will pay it back to you in their stead.

Your arms wrap around his neck as you let your eyes close, knowing how foolish this all is. A one-sided clash of pride, yours being damaged more by recoil than by retaliation. You are fighting yourself more than you are fighting Gojou Satoru, and perhaps to exist in this world is to exist in a never ending cycle of pain, which you suppose means you must be more masochistic than you thought. This heart of yours is a twisted thing, filled with loathing. The only reason you have yet to curse anyone, you think, is because there is no one more pitiful and deserving of the hatred you hold than yourself.

Chapter Text

     ICARUS fell. The truth had always been unrelenting and merciless, so what else was there to say? Call it a tale of childish wonder and glee, of innocence and optimism, but where did that get you? A descent from self-assured glory, a plummet from the heights of arrogance into the depths of darkness. If nothing else, was the tale of Icarus not a warning—that tragedy does not discriminate?Man-made wings could only get you so far, after all. If you were not born with the right to pierce the skies, then you will never be blessed by the sun.

Confidence is a virtue, you must admit, but it is also a vice. Icarus was a boy intoxicated by the feeling of freedom, the swelling in his chest that told him he could conquer all. To overestimate oneself was to die, and it was there under the blazing sun and melting wax that Icarus committed that cardinal sin. He got what he deserved.

The same applies in all aspects of the world.  

This earned you the reputation of cynical, though in your own eyes you found yourself simply a realist. The tale of Icarus is one of arrogance, not the joy of freedom. It was arrogance that made the boy think freedom meant the entire sky was his. It was the intoxication of being granted something he once lacked, an overestimation of oneself that made him disregard the warnings of his father and overlook logical analysis of the situation. Wax melts.

Yet Icarus believed that his would not. In the end, he still fell.

Confidence is a virtue, but it is also a vice. If the price was your life, what was there to be gained by believing in your ability to do something that you can’t? You knew where you stood in comparison to others, and you humbly accepted it, even if it was a hard pill to swallow. Of course you still dreamt of greatness, still hoped that one day you will be graced with some kind of gift. But you did not chase it like a dog after a bone. You were not, are not, so depraved.

You don’t like chasing false realities. Fantasies—that is all they are.

Perhaps that is why you don’t like Gojou Satoru.

At the young, impressionable age of sixteen when you met him, you felt the universe shift beneath your feet as you gazed into his eyes. You could feel the presence of his cursed energy, so immense and overbearing you feared for your life. When a younger Principal Yaga, who was still a teacher at the time, led you to the classroom door and slid the door open, a heat wave washed over you.

The ruckus from inside the room quieted instantly when Yaga entered the room. You stayed outside. Even though you were techniqueless, you still managed to keep up with your peers, but the people inside that room were people who lived in a whole other world than you. Stepping foot into that room was the same as declaring yourself as equals. This was an impossibility. 

Yaga scanned the room, noticing the third classmate was nowhere to be seen. 

“Where’s Shouko?” he asked.

The two remaining made stupid faces and the same stupid pose.

“Who knows?” the one with the bun said.

“Maybe the bathroom?” the one with round black shades suggested.

“Doesn’t matter,” Yaga said, walking up to the podium. You leaned against one of the wooden beams in the hallway as you waited for Yaga to finish. “I’m having you two go together for this mission,” he said, and both let their disappointment show on their faces. “What’s with the faces?”

“Nothing,” one quickly said. “But before that, who’s the one in the hallway?”

You peeked into the room at the mention of your presence, figuring there was no reason to stay hidden any longer. You glanced at Yaga, he sighed and gave you a small nod.

“Excuse me,” you said, taking a step into the room. Giving a small bow, you offered them your family name, which seemed to satisfy them, as they gave you looks of indifference.

So they see it too, you thought. The difference between us.

It almost made you laugh.

“Anyway,” Yaga continued. “This mission is quite the responsibility, but it comes from Master Tengen.” The name seemed to resonate with his students. “Two objectives,” Yaga held up two fingers, “Master Tengen, the Star Plasma Vessel, has a perfect match. Escort the girl, and erase her.”

The three discussed the mission while you stepped back into the hallway, taking the hint that this was not something for your ears, though you caught slivers of the conversation, including the white haired one’s not-so-discreet Digimon reference. When Yaga stepped out, he beckoned you to follow, and you complied, sparing a glance back into the classroom only to find a shade of blue you’ve never seen before glaring right in your direction.

You looked away and quickened your pace to catch up to Yaga, who was already far down the hall.

“Those are your students?” you asked, redundant as it were.

“Gojou Satoru and Getou Suguru, if you’re wondering,” Yaga said.

You smiled, “As a matter of fact, I was.”

     THE next time you heard of Gojou Satoru, it was ‘The Strongest.’ But the next time you saw Gojou Satoru, he was dead. Lying on the stone cold floor in front of the school, body without even a twitch, a knife wound in his neck gushing blood. 

So there are people above you, too, you thought as you walked past him. You didn’t check to see if he was still alive or not. Wounds like that drained all the life out of a person, and besides, you were no coroner. The body of someone like Gojou Satoru was a responsibility for someone far above your station. The best thing you could do was pretend as though you never saw him.

It made you happy, though, in its own way. Icarus met his end. So did Gojou Satoru. Perhaps the distaste you had for him would follow. 

Then you saw him again, alive and well, and the foul taste in your mouth flooded back. Your eyes met for the second time when you stepped into a supposedly empty classroom to which Yaga had asked you to bring a box of cursed items. In it sat Gojou Satoru behind a desk, chin propped on his palm and a smirk on his lips, clearly anticipating your arrival. The box clattered to the floor, the silence broken by the rattling of glass jars within. Good thing nothing broke that day other than the skin of your palms, your fists tightening to the point of drawing blood.

How he could’ve possibly survived eluded you, and all you knew in that moment was that Gojou Satoru made you inexplicably angry. 

He smiled at you, saying nothing.

“You should be dead,” you bit out. “I saw you.”

Gojou Satoru laughed. “You saw a dead body and walked right past it. Aren’t you a cruel one?”

“How did you survive?” you asked, ignoring his words. “That wound would’ve killed anyone.”

“Anyone but me,” he said smugly, inspecting his nails. “Reverse technique, you know.”

Gojou Satoru must’ve seen the way your expression darkened that day as you said a solemn “I see” through a clenched jaw. He must’ve seen the way your hands trembled slightly as you picked the box back up and placed it beside the podium at the front of the room. He must’ve seen the stiffness in your step as you took your leave, watching in amusement with that self-satisfied smirk of his. Gojou Satoru made the impossible possible. He made wax heatproof, touched the sun, and laughed. 

Unlike Icarus, Gojou Satoru did not fall. Icarus met his end. Gojou Satoru did not. (Unfortunately, neither did your distaste.)

For a man as arrogant as they come, he was not smited for challenging the gods. He was not ruined the way Icarus was. His existence rejected everything you learned to believe, denied all that defined mortality. Meeting Gojou Satoru was surely the worst thing that ever happened to you, you think. He crumbles the walls of faiths you use to protect yourself, the assurance of ruin to arrogance that you use to justify your weakness. He alone takes hold of the rawest part of your soul, peers into your being with those piercing blue eyes, and sees it all—your weak, writhing, wretched self.

Chapter Text

     A ping from your phone rattles your bedside cabinet. The vibration travels through the wood and into the floor, then crawls up the feet of your bed frame until you can feel the subtle buzz against your pillow. It’s still dark out, sunrise isn’t for another hour. You drag a hand from beneath the covers to flip open your phone, checking your text messages. Of course, you already know whose name is going to be displayed—there is no other person that would message you, much less with the audacity to do so in the early hours of dawn. 

Gojou Satoru’s name sits there, in three kanji. Let’s meet. 207, is all the text says. His messages are typically of curt fashion, so you don’t question it. You merely haul yourself out of bed to go take a shower.

You meet him in a different room today, though from the interior one would never know. Each room is arranged the same, the only difference being the digits which identify them. Gojou Satoru is sitting in the armchair in the corner, blindfold flush against his face. He appears to be dozing off, from the way his head dangles from his body and the slow rise and fall of his chest. The fluctuation of his cursed energy, though, tells you otherwise. 

“Get up, Gojou-san. You know I’m not fooled by that,” you say, the door clicking shut behind you. 

A smile creeps its way onto his face as he hooks a finger under his blindfold to unveil an eye. “The only one as always, (y/n),” he chuckles. “I’m surprised you came.”

“Don’t push your luck.”

“I’m not complaining, don’t get me wrong. I’m just touched you hold me in such regard that you’d meet me so early.” He pulls the piece of cloth away, and his blue eyes glint mischievously.

You close your eyes to keep from rolling them. “What do you want, Gojou-san?” you ask as you approach him, kneeling before him between his legs. His eyebrows raise at your actions, and you peer up at him. 

“You’re usually not so willing,” he says, bringing a hand to shield the lower half of his face from view. You can hear a smile in his voice. “Guess I was worried for nothing.”

You don’t know what to make of his words, and you don’t bother asking for an explanation. Explanations from Gojou Satoru, you’ve realized over the years, are worthless and never thorough. Oftentimes you think you’d be better off asking a fish the meaning of life. So rather than dwell on it, you take the lead this time. You can’t stand this back-and-forth stalling, especially not with your health the way it is. You’d vomited just an hour before you came to meet him.

You go through the motions of what you’re sure Gojou summoned you for. And you do it without pleasure, ashamed that you’ve let yourself be at his beck and call. Yes, it might be a holy privilege to be favored in some way by The Strongest, but it is shameful nonetheless. It is only because you are weaker than him, weaker than the world you live in, that you find yourself unable to defy his wishes. Your weakness is your shame, so you will never be without it.

When it’s all over, Gojou Satoru doesn’t seem to be his bright and cheery self, either. In the bathroom, you rinse your mouth and splash water on your face, trying to calm the nausea and churning of your stomach. 

The atmosphere has grown in density these past few days, and it weighs on you. Your Heavenly Restriction granted you hypersensitivity to cursed energy in exchange for combative abilities, and so when a few days ago a wave of pure horror and evil washed over you with the force of a tsunami, you had collapsed on the floor of your kitchen. Catastrophe was coming, you knew then, because the last time you’d been faced with such a drastic shift in the levels of cursed energy that permeated the air was when you’d entered Master Tengen’s barrier for the first time.

“(y/n).” Gojou says your name solemnly from the doorway, and you meet his gaze in the mirror. “Are you alright?”

Gojou Satoru doesn’t like being righteous. You know that. Back in high school, he had thought protecting the weak to be a pain. You don’t think he’s changed. People like him, who stand so far above those around them, don’t feel for those whose heads they can’t even see. Someone like you, from whom he is separated by a galaxy’s width, is not someone he’d concern himself with for anything other than the superficial reasons that make a man. That’s why all you give him in response is a weary frown and a somber look. Gods cannot understand mortals, and the clueless innocence on his face and in his question make this all too clear. 

“I’m fine,” you say, and now it is his turn to frown. “It’s nothing you need to worry about.”

When you step foot out onto the street, you can feel the eyes of the receptionist bare into your back—he’s a new face that you’ve never seen before. You’re sure he’s wondering how someone as plain as you attracted the attention of one as visually pleasing as Gojou Satoru. It was like that at the start, too. Weird looks when you walked into any institution with you at his side; being silently judged, watched, critiqued in strangers’ eyes—you can’t stand being seen with Gojou Satoru in public anymore. 

The sun is barely rising over the skyscrapers of the city. You duck into an alleyway as you feel the sudden urge of puke, heaving over a dumpster. Passersby assume you’re a drunkard suffering the repercussions of partying until dawn. Humiliating, it all is. And though you’ve felt this humiliation all your life, you don’t think you’ll ever get used to it. 

     LATER that day you see Gojou Satoru again, though this time by chance, on the campus of Jujutsu Tech. Still frowning, which is strange, you think, because Gojou Satoru doesn’t frown. He has his moments, but he rarely ever shows it on his face. He’s a scheming man behind that childish exterior, and he hardly puts it down. 

He is sitting by himself on the steps leading up to the principal’s chambers, and you’ve no choice but to ascend those very stairs to confer with Principal Yaga. You give him a sidelong glance as you walk past him.

“Itadori Yuuji,” he says, halting you. Looking over your shoulder, you see him gazing off into the mountains, his back as broad as you know it to be. He brings a hand to his nape. “Sukuna’s vessel. That’s why you’ve been sick, isn’t it?” 

 His voice is grim. You don’t know why.

“It doesn’t matter,” you say. The revival of Sukuna has been classified a secret, at least for now. Incidentally, your meeting with Yaga is scheduled to discuss the very topic. “What’s going to happen to him?”

“The higher-ups want to kill him now, but he’s agreed to be Sukuna’s vessel for the time being. I managed to convince them to delay the execution until Yuuji’s eaten all twenty of his fingers. That way, we can kill Sukuna for good,” he says.

“So then why are you worried?” you ask, feeling the uncertainty seeping into his cursed energy. 

“He’s young,” Gojou says. “Fifteen.”

“It’s better that way,” you tell him, awful though it may sound. “Makes it easier to get used to.”

That much you believe wholeheartedly. The earlier you are indoctrinated, the easier the horrors are to accept. There are certain fates one cannot avoid, and when it comes to Ryomen Sukuna, you are afraid that that of the Itadori Yuuji Gojou speaks of is one such fate. 

Gojou shakes his head. “No. It’s worse.”

“You think so?”

“I know it, (y/n).”

“I guess you’re right.”

Gojou doesn’t say anything else.

“You’d win, wouldn’t you?” you ask him then, turning your face skyward and continuing up the stairs. “Against Sukuna.”

A small scoff of laughter escapes from behind you. “You know I would.”

With your head still tilted towards the heavens, your pupils find the corners of your eyes, gaze bound to the concrete steps. “Yes,” you say to yourself, “I suppose I do.”

Chapter Text

  CHAOS dictates everything. When the world was created, it was the collision of two random meteorites that sparked an explosion that just happened to create a habitable planet. In a compilation of infinitesimal chemical reactions, the result of life was a coincidence. All is random, chaos is random, so all is chaos. A simple syllogism. Chaos has no reason. It has no logic, it needs no logic, yet somehow the humans that have come to inhabit its creation have a deep desire for order. They fear what they don’t know, and to cope with the maddening notion of existence far greater than oneself, they rationalize with theories and philosophy and meaningless drivel. 

And chaos is cruel, as shown in unforeseeable downturns in one’s life, as witnessed by the various things out of one’s control. It breeds fear and anxiety, hate and uncertainty, and all this feeds into the atmosphere and manifests itself as the strange, weird-looking creatures that you’ve come to know as curses. Ever since you were able to see them lurking in the woods and undersides of bridges in your hometown, you’ve known two simple truths—that the world is cruel, and that it is built from chaos. Therefore, the world can be as simple as these two facts.

But it is a simplicity that humans innately deny. They must rationalize chaos, which is an impossible task. To control chaos is to change it into something else entirely. If it were able to be controlled, it could not be called chaos. This is another truth that you notice people have trouble to not only understand but to accept. So this world could be simple, because chaos is simple and the world is chaos. It is mortals who cannot let it be simple, because to them chaos can be ordered and the world is chaos. These syllogisms exist in all spaces, you find.

But you try not to wallow in complexities. Instead, there are three rules which ground you in this disordered realm. 

One: don’t chase the impossible.

With a box filled with cursed artifacts in your arms, each step you took rattled the glass jars inside as you made your way to the storage room. Being unable to become a sorcerer and refusing to become a window, you were granted the responsibility of handling inventory with your heightened sensitivity to cursed energy. Accurately identifying objects, determining grades, and preparing suitable storage options all fell to you, and though it wasn’t exactly what you imagined back then, it was something. And that was okay with you.

Entering the room with a light sigh, you set the box down on the table before wiping the sweat from your forehead. August’s sweltering summer blazed over the cloudless blue skies of Tokyo, the heat blurring the horizon and turning sidewalks into sizzling plates of cement.

“(l/n)-san,” you heard a voice say behind you. Turning, you found Nanami Kento knocking on the doorframe. “I was told you’d be back by this time. Am I bothering you?”

Of your grade, you had two classmates that you saw frequently. One was Nanami Kento, who you thought to be quite similar to yourself. Essentially, Nanami Kento was the better version of you—if you had the powers a sorcerer should have. You harbored both jealousy and respect in regards to your classmate.

You shook your head, signaling him inside. “Not at all,” you said. He’s here for the cursed weapon he’d left in your care before his previous mission. He placed the one he carried on the island in the middle of the room, his eyes darting from side to side to take in the shelves that went from floor to ceiling on all four sides of the room. “Wait right here,” you told him, entering a door in the inner corner leading to the workshop where you kept a good amount of high-end cursed weapons. Hung to the right of the entrance was a blunt sword wrapped in cloth of a splattered black dot design. Grabbing it by its handle, you carefully brought it back out to Nanami, your nose scrunching slightly at the stench of its energy. 

To the common sorcerer, cursed energy feels the same no matter what emotion births it. To them, if it is not their own or an ally’s, it feels menacing and resentful. One can train themself to recognize a friend’s energy and to resist the instinct of fight when met with it, but cannot distinguish the emotion it stems from. For you, though, every emotion has a different smell. Sadness reminds you of the rain, the harsh kind that floods and tears open the earth, so to you it smells like the failed crop harvest of your eighth birthday. The stench of uprooted soil and rotting plants. Anger smells like the remains of an explosion, one which has claimed human lives—it’s the scent of a burning corpse. Hatred smells like darkness, if that makes sense. Suffocating, inescapable, and pure. To the point nothing is tangible or sensible. Hatred smells like the absence of all that is.

That is what the weapon Nanami uses smells like, and it takes you a moment to keep from losing yourself in it. 

“Here,” you said, letting him take it and inspect it himself. “Make sure to take care of the bandages. If you need anything, just let me know.”

Nanami bowed, said a small thank you, and left. As you watched him disappear into the hallway, no doubt on his way to receive another mission, you felt something twist in your gut. That will never be you. But you’re okay with it, you think, because you smell the scent of Mount Mushiro’s dense forestry. You don’t know what emotion of yours brings this about in your own energy, but you find it pleasant, so it can’t be all that bad.

Two: Never let things go to your head.

“Oh? (y/n)-chan!”

A sigh left your lips, ignoring the person calling your name despite knowing that even if you do, he’d continue to bother you just the same. For whatever reason, in the past year, the strange upperclassman people had come to acknowledge as “The Strongest” wouldn’t leave you alone. Gojou Satoru always managed to run into you in the strangest of places, and if it weren’t so frequent you would’ve been fine brushing it off as coincidence. But it was more often than not that you’d see him lingering somewhere in the corners of your peripherals, and this was how you knew it was intentional. A man like him was busy. Mission after mission, task after task. There were far too many responsibilities that could only be undertaken by The Strongest. So having a white-haired nuisance seeking you out almost once a day was certainly annoying, and certainly a mystery. 

Though you supposed you had to admit that you were not hard to find, barely spending time anywhere other than the storage room. It definitely wasn’t implausible that he’d be able to locate you with ease with his Six Eyes either, but that was precisely what made it so concerning when you’d encountered him outside of the school those couple of times. He had to have been looking for you, or else the universe was playing at something with the string of coincidences. Then again, there is no reason in this world. 

A few months ago, in May, you had run into Gojou Satoru in the streets of Tokyo.

You’d crossed your arms, an eyebrow raised as you stood face to face with him in the crowd. “So?” you’d asked. “What do you want?”

He was up to his typical theatrics then as well: “You wound me, (l/n)-chan!” He placed  a hand over his heart as though pierced by your harsh words. “I was just shopping for some sweets.”

Incredulous, you made a disgusted face. “Your favorite shop is in the opposite direction. And besides, Gojou-san, I’m sure you know this, but I can tell when you’re lying.”

Deception smells like perfume, the sickeningly sweet kind. 

“Oops!” Gojou then says, sticking his tongue out. “I guess you caught me. But, since we’re here, we might as well go buy some sweets, right?”

“Huh?” you say, scowling. “No thanks. I’m busy.”

“Come on, (l/n)-chan! It’s not that far. I’ll even treat you,” he said, clasping his hands together like an overexcited schoolgirl. “I’m your senpai, after all!” 

You hated when he said things like that— I’m your senpai, after all! —like it was something he had to do out of obligation rather than free will. You also hated being reminded that a man like him was a year above you, and the idea of showing him the same courtesy and respect you handed other seniors more deserving of it proved to be a continuous test of the standards you held yourself to.

Still, you relented: “Fine. Make it quick, though.”

Gojou grinned, and he dragged you to the shop and then along with whatever other mischief he had planned that day. Thinking back, this was when Gojou began asking for things from you. He’d ask you to accompany him to the classroom, to the storage room, to the sweets store, and so on and so forth. Each time, you’d say yes. He started calling you by your first name, too. Even though he gave you sideways glances expecting you to pipe up when he sang his little sing-song (y/n)-chan! ’s, you never did.

You still wonder why. And now the chance has passed you by.

“Gojou-san,” you acknowledged curtly, nodding your head as he approached and you could no longer pretend to not have noticed him. “Is there something I can do for you?”

Gojou Satoru looked the same as he always did, ethereal and a little godlike. He resembled this world you lived in, you thought, a man built of chaos and temptation, of obscured truths and mysteries. If eyes are the windows to one’s soul, his soul was a cerulean blue surface to get lost in as you hopelessly delved to the bottom in search for the core of his essence. A fruitless effort, much like many other endeavors you find yourself entangled in. You will never understand Gojou Satoru. 

“Wanna come with me to see Yaga-sensei?” he asked cheerfully, pushing up his glasses.

“No thanks,” you declined politely. “I have work to do.”

Gojou’s grin didn’t falter, trailing behind you. “Come on,” he whined, peeking over your shoulder as you began unpacking a box that had just arrived. “It’ll be short.”

You turned your head to meet his gaze, seconds of silence passing as if engaged in combat. It ended in your defeat.

“Fine,” you sighed, exasperated.

“Thanks, (y/n)-chan!” he said, ruffling your hair and causing you to scowl. “You’re the best.”

Not really , you thought.

The third rule is the most important: know your place.

 Once your pesky upperclassmen finally left you alone, you returned to the only place on campus you held dear. It was now afternoon, the heat having increased what felt like tenfold, sweat dripping down your back as you mentally cursed whoever came up with the idea to make the uniforms such a dark, midnight blue. Having worked through the morning, you decided to treat yourself to a little something.

There was an old break room further up the hall, and you went to get yourself a cold beverage after handing the remains of some fire-using cursed spirit. Incidentally, the only other person who could be considered an equal of Gojou Satoru was sitting on the bench against the far wall, seemingly deep in thought.

Getou Suguru hardly spared you a glance when he noticed your presence, but you bowed in greeting regardless. You considered heading to the machine in the other building, as not to disturb what seemed like much needed silence, but as you were about to leave, he said, “Wait, please. I have a question. (l/n)-san, was it?”

You nodded as you forgoed the previous thought, approaching the vending machine and punching in numbers. “Is there something I can help you with, Getou-san?”

“What do you think of non-shamans?”

The question is cold and piercing. A strange one, though. The vending machine whirred quietly as a can clattered to the bottom. As you knelt to pick it up, you could feel Getou’s eyes travel up and down your body, likely debating what your existence would be considered. Your hand pushed past the plastic flap to pick up the cold aluminum as you mulled over the question a little longer.

Popping open the tab to your drink, you answered, “They’re weak. And pitiful.” Much like you, though you don’t say that. You took a sip. “But I don’t…particularly feel too strongly in one way or another. May I ask why?”

Getou only gave a sheepish chuckle. “Ah, no particular reason. Though I thought I’d get an unbiased opinion from you,” he said, twiddling his fingers. “Do you know of Tsukumo Yuki?” Your expression must have darkened considerably instinctively, since Getou seemed to smile. “I guess you have. I take it you’ve heard of her goal as well, so what do you think?”

“You mean,” you began, starting to piece two and two together, “her goal in creating a world where curses aren’t born?”

This would explain why the room smelled ever so faintly of darkness. Getou is teetering between two paths, and the residuals of the room told you that both Haibara Yuu, your other classmate, and Tsukumo Yuki herself had stopped by recently.

“Yes,” he said. “A world without non-sorcerers.”

Your lips deepened into a frown as you took a seat a little ways from him, near the door. “It’s not a bad idea,” you started hesitantly. But when you looked at Getou, and all the hatred and anger and nihilism built up inside his cursed energy, you realized the way he intended to achieve it. “It’s the method. Which path are you looking to go, Getou-san?”

The look you exchanged with him confirmed that you were on the same page.”I don’t know,” he said. “That’s the problem.”

You sighed, taking a swig of your drink. “It’s true that significantly less curses would be born if all humanity were sorcerers,” you said. “But there’s no guarantee, either. A population crisis would arise, too. There aren’t many sorcerers to begin with, and most of them are concentrated here in Japan, Getou-san. It would be a worldwide genocide.”

“That’s true,” he murmurs, though he doesn’t seem to be dissuaded.

“It would close the rift, though,” you mused quietly, “between civilians and sorcerers. They’d become one in the same, and there’d be social balance. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.”

Getou turned to look at you, then back to his hands, which hung limply from his wrists. His arms were propped against his thighs, his entire body hunched over. “What would you do?”

You were a little surprised by the question. What’s the point of asking for your opinion?”

“I don’t feel strongly either way,” you said, echoing your previous statement—which was true. “It’s not like I can do anything about it. If it’s not something I can accomplish, I try not to think too hard about it.”

“What if I said I would do it?”

Glancing at him from the corner of your eye, you saw him with his head held in his hands, a deep and troubled sigh leaving his lips. His cursed energy was churning with unrest, the smell of uncertainty bringing you back to the scene of your tenth winter, where your mother gripped you by the shoulders and denied vehemently that you might be her child. It was almost Christmas then, with the smell of peppermint wafting through the air when she slapped you across the face for being a disgrace to the clan, for not having even one redeemable technique despite being the sole child. Uncertainty and disbelief, they smell like the cold of mint, the kind that begins to burn your nostrils and eventually reaches your brain.

Getou’s cursed energy was undulating, flickering wildly like a beast on the verge of rampage. The steady flow of cursed energy is how one controls it, but now his was uneven and chaotic.

Chaos seeps into even the most sound of minds, you thought. 

“Well,” you sigh, looking up at the old wooden ceiling, “I can’t stop you.” A pathetic chuckle escaped you. “I have no means to.”

“You wouldn’t stop me?” he echoed. “Even though it means the slaughter of millions?”

“Like I said before, I don’t feel strongly either way. And it’s not about whether I would or wouldn’t stop you—it’s that I simply can’t.”

“But—”

“Getou-san. I don’t know what you were hoping for when you asked me your question. I don’t know what you’ll take from my words, either. But lying to yourself, in my experience, is what brings the worst out of people.” You stretched your arms overhead as you stood and tossed your empty can into the trash. You walked toward the exit. “Treading carefully is always wise. Though I’m sure you already know that.”

“(l/n)-san,” Getou said. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me,” you said, pausing in the doorway. “I haven’t done anything for you.”

Getou gave you an amused smile, eyes dull. “You’re strange, (l/n)-san.”

You shake your head. “Not particularly,” you scoffed. You just know your place, and what’s expected of someone who occupies it. “Good luck, Getou-san, in whichever path you choose.”

Chapter Text

     ITADORI Yuuji appears before you on a Monday afternoon, standing beside Gojou Satoru. You weren’t sure what to expect when the news of a high school boy able to suppress Sukuna at will reached you, but it sure wasn’t the bright bubblegum pink hair that you are met with. There’s a youthful flair to Itadori’s presence, one which you feel brightens up the room despite you being down the hall. In a way, he reminds you of the white-haired sorcerer beside him.

Anyway, you’d heard he was thrust into the jujutsu world shortly after his grandfather died, in the unexpected sequence of events that was a high school occult club stealing away Sukuna’s finger before Fushiguro could safely retrieve it. Itadori’s entanglement in the jujutsu web was a pure accident, you think, and that’s exactly what makes it so tragic. 

Gojou notices your lingering gaze in a matter of seconds, and he catches your eyes before you can look away. He calls out to you.

“(y/n)-chan!” 

He changes direction from where he is leading Itadori to walk towards you, leaving a clearly confused teenager trailing behind him. Before he gets far, however, you  nod your greetings and quickly scurry away before he inevitably gives you a headache. 

You can hear the blindfolded man sigh and his student ask, “Who’s that?” 

Gojou will undoubtedly give you the worst interaction you could ever ask for, but you cannot be bothered to worry about it. He’ll brag about you like some prize being auctioned, like a trophy he won in his youth. He’ll talk highly of you because he’s one who likes to overexaggerate. Perhaps you should be there to talk to Itadori yourself before he hears some absurd things from Gojou. Oh, well.

Reminiscing about the past is not something you often do, but in the face of young Itadori Yuuji you begin to wander down that avenue, thinking back to when you, too, were fifteen. At that time, you hadn’t met Gojou yet—you were still locked at home, silently judged from outside the walls of your room by your clan elders. Disgrace upon the main branch, they said, and eventually your mother passed away from the stress of your family’s position being usurped by your cousin’s. They sent you to Jujutsu Tech under the pretense of cooperation and friendship with Jujutsu Headquarters, but you knew that it was merely a guise for exile. You are no longer part of that clan—the only thing you share with it is your last name. Perhaps that is why you allow Gojou free reign on what he calls you. 

Before you know it, you find yourself in the break room you had spoken to Getou Suguru all those years ago, hands on autopilot as they punch in the numbers to the same canned coffee you were drinking on that day in late August.

The same yet-to-be replaced bench is still rotting away quietly against the far wall, the air heavy like it was back then, cicadas slowly emerging in the wake of a brand new sweltering summer. Dust has settled in the crevices of the walls and on the surface of the windowsill, and with your canned coffee in hand you run a finger through the buildup, a layer of lint accumulating on your finger. The line you leave behind quickly disappears as you sweep away the rest and place your drink on the newly cleaned surface.

The window is derelict and seemingly locked, though in actuality it is stuck due to neglect. With a grunt and some elbow grease, you manage to pry it open and allow a light breeze to sweep through, the heat brushing against you as it floods into the room. You take a seat before the window, mind wandering aimlessly through the archives of your past, faces and bodies lost to time. It takes the cold metal of the can against your cheek to snap yourself out of it.

You return to the topic at hand: Itadori Yuuji. 

There was clueless innocence in his eyes, the naive optimism of a child newly born into the jujutsu world. You wonder if he knows the severity of the demon he harbors within, if the silent determination that seems to reside within him is prepared to withstand the horrors that Ryoumen Sukuna is capable of bringing. Not that it matters—this is the fate he’s now condemned to and this is the fate he will now fulfill. Itadori has understood and accepted that, to some extent, else he would’ve chosen execution on the spot. Most wouldn’t have even taken the risk of ingesting a finger to save their friends. And yet, Itadori did. 

Still, he is young, and though the sentiment you pitched to Gojou the other day still rings true in your mind, you cannot help but feel pity for the poor boy. Youth and foolishness are synonymous. Itadori will be misled by his own instincts into the false sense of security that is the childish notion that right triumphs over wrong, that the worst night of his life has already passed him by. As the survivor of a catastrophe, he’ll think he must carry on for the sake of those who could not.

This is something only I can do, he will think, so I have to do it.

That unwavering faith in justice is blinding. That tiny difference in worldview is all it takes for a sorcerer to crumble into ash, to be burned by the flames of his own ambitions and led to his demise. It is sad, you think.

When the metal against your skin is no longer cold, you lower the can, gazing down at it. The label of pretty Japanese characters and a smiling mascot looks back at you, but your eyes are glossed over.

Another child dragged into a world of blood. For the first time in a long while, you wonder if the blood that is spilled to cross the river is worth it. Was the toll you paid and the toll Itadori paid worth it only to be engulfed by darkness and hatred and the superficial righteousness that plagues the jujutsu world more than the curses they are pledged to exorcize?

Approaching footfalls against creaking floorboards snap you out of your trance, and you blink as you refocus your eyes on the world around you. You haven’t taken a single sip of your coffee.

“(l/n)-san?” Fushiguro Megumi stands in the doorway, hands in his pockets. The outline of his figure resembles his teacher. His students really do take after him in various ways. “Gojou-sensei is looking for you.”

“Oh.” For what, you can already guess. “Thanks, Fushiguro-kun.”

The first-year nods as he takes his leave, you will follow suit after a few minutes of silence to gather your thoughts. Leaning against the wooden walls and shoddy windows as you look up at the aged ceiling, your head falls back and your unopened coffee clatters to the floor, rolling a few feet in front of you and leaving the smiling mascot to gaze up at stars it cannot see. Closing your eyes, you take a deep breath.

In, then out.

Gojou is waiting for you—best not keep him waiting.

     AT the reception desk, it’s the same new kid you saw the last time you were here. He seems to recognize you as well, though he doesn’t say anything—company policy, perhaps. As you walk past him you feel his lingering stare. It makes you want to turn tails and run. But if there is one thing you refuse, it is to embarrass yourself willingly, and cowardice is one such way. So you bite your tongue and find your way through the halls. 

When you enter the room, you hear the sound of running water, which is unusual—you typically don’t stay long enough to find a use for the shower. Regardless, you set your things against the wall and wait patiently at the edge of the bed. 

“Oh, (y/n)-chan!”

Gojou steps out of the bath with a towel around his waist and a smaller one hanging from his neck. His damp hair is slicked back, steam emanating from the bathroom and his torso as his face brightens at the sight of you.

“Gojou-san.”

He grins, “I don’t remember texting you.”

You roll your eyes. “Fushiguro-kun said you were looking for me.”

“And you knew I’d be here?” he asks, as if trying to coax you into some kind of confession.”

“The only time you look for me is for things like this. Where else would you be?”

Gojou hums. After a brief pause, he takes a seat beside you, sticking his face in yours. “It’s okay if you just wanted to—” You put a hand over his eyes to shove him away from you, to which he laughs. “No need to be like that, (y/n)-chan.”

“What were you doing in the shower, anyway?” you ask, not bothering to entertain his line of questioning.

Gojou shrugs. “Ran into a curse on the way here. Didn’t think you’d like it if I were covered in blood.”

You give him a weird look.

“Unless I was wrong?” he asks. “Don’t tell me, (y/n), that you’re secretly into that kinda stuff?”

Your face contorts further in a combination of disgust and indignation that he would even suggest the possibility. 

Gojou laughs. “I’m just kidding. The shower here is pretty nice, though. Maybe you should take one too, (y/n).”

“No thanks,” you decline. “I usually shower at home.” 

That is a true statement. You shower only in the complete privacy of your own apartment, often right after your meetings with Gojou in order to scrub away the burning sensations under your skin, to make yourself feel clean after the committing of a cardinal sin. Even if it is he , the holy one chosen by god, who seduces you, the scripture will say otherwise. Mortals, human and imperfect and impure, have no place beside the heavenly, and it is you who paint the blindingly white angel gray, corrupting his purity and plucking his feathers one by one by one. You are the succubus that lures him to Hell, wearing down his restraint and temperance. The guilty conscience that whispers these eventual truths to you warns you not to get too comfortable being wanted by Gojou Satoru.

Gojou leans in once more, his body giving off heat after having been in the bath. “I can wait,” he says. “Just go. Or I’ll come with you, if you want.”

It’s easy to deduce what Gojou is asking, and of course you have too much pride to walk out. He leads you into the ceramic tiled room as you follow, not with enthusiasm but not exactly with reluctance, either. Indifference, you find, is the middle ground which makes life bearable. The air in the bath is still stuffy and humid, steam wafting through and enveloping your body in warmth. Gojou helps you strip, and it makes you fidget uncomfortably. You dislike being fully bare.

It makes Gojou laugh lightly. “No need to be shy,” he says, “I’ve seen everything before.”

There’s no intimacy in the actions between you, none in the kisses or marks he leaves on your collar bones. He touches you delicately, with care, but not with love. You are grateful that this distinction exists inherently, implicitly. If there is one thing you share with Gojou Satoru it is a sense for the discreet—what needs to be said and what doesn’t.

When all is over and the high of pleasure has passed, Gojou exits the shower first while you let yourself soak in the hot water for a little longer. Minutes pass, your fingers start pruning, and the water starts to cool. You’ve lost track of how long you’ve been in there by the time you step out. Steam follows you as you walk out of the bathroom and over to where you’ve thrown your clothes, Gojou eyeing your figure as you change.

“So?” he asks, sitting at the edge of the bed, chin propped up on his palm. He’s already dressed, glasses resting on the bridge of his nose, hair still slightly damp.

“So?” you echo.

“Itadori,” he says, as though it were obvious. “What’d you think?”

The two of you don’t talk much. There’s idle chatter and meaningless banter, but that’s all they are. Empty words just there to take up space. Rarely do you ever have real conversations, leaving each other to their respective lives. You exist in different worlds, after all.

Buttoning up your shirt, you sigh. “He’s naive.”

This makes Gojou burst into a fit of laughter, flopping backward into the mattress. “You think so?” 

“Yes,” you affirm, slipping into your pants. “I can tell he’s a good kid, but he’s got the smell of nobility and righteousness all over him. I know Masamichi-san is a sucker for those things, but…”

“But?”

You pause for a moment before continuing. “He just doesn’t get it yet.”

You’re sure Gojou knows what you mean. You’re just not sure if the rest of the world does.

“Ryoumen Sukuna is back,” you say, and this is an undeniable fact. “This changes the balance of the world, Gojou-san. Bad things are coming.”

Gojou lets out an interested hum, raising an eyebrow. “Is that so?”

Fixing up your clothes then throwing on your jacket, you start heading for the door. “The cursed energy of this world has grown restless,” you say. “I can feel it.”

“Would you talk to him, then?”

The question catches you off guard, and you freeze in place. Did you hear that right?

“Sorry?”

“I asked,” repeats Gojou, sitting back up, “if you’d talk to him. Because I think you’re right.”

Why you?

“I think it’d be better if it came from you,” you state plainly, not rejecting his request but simply presenting an opinion. “I’m not his teacher or even a sorcerer, you know.”

“I know,” he beams. “But that’s exactly why.”

You don’t get it. Then again, you don’t get a lot of things about Gojou Satoru—how he thinks, how he acts, what he sees through those Six Eyes of his. Sometimes you think you want to know, other times you know you’re better off not.

You relent, the way you usually do. “Fine,” you say. “I’ll talk to him the next time I see him.”

Gojou only smiles. “Don’t worry about that. I’ll set up a time and place.”

He flashes his teeth in a grin as you twist the doorknob, and you nothing throbs in your chest the way it used to. It’s been a long time since you enjoyed yourself. At the start, there was at least some exhilarating high to be ridden, some sort of erotic sensation that came with the dynamic of strength between you, but now that sense of forbiddenness that is so attractive and enticing has grown old and lost its novelty. Instead it does nothing but sit in your gut, with a vile stench that you cannot ever be rid of.

You feel as though you are reaching the end of your rope, and one of these days sooner than later you think you’ll have lost all sense of agency. 

The two of you part ways in silence, following routine: you leave first, and Gojou is left to do god knows what for about fifteen minutes before he pays and leaves. By the time you step into the streets, the sky is a dulled slate blue, and the air has begun to chill. Neon street signs in otherwise dark alleys begin flickering to life as the salarymen begin to flood the streets to indulge in bars and drinks after a long day. You, though, are going to head home and try to sleep. The mysteries behind black cloth and blue irises will have to wait for another day, as will the pink-haired boy.

Chapter Text

     THE morgue is in the other building. This was the thought that protruded amidst all else, jumping out like a spring, when you were informed that Haibara Yuu had died. Next to that was the reminder of human mortality, one you’d not faced in your time here till now. No matter the path, no matter the crossroads, in the end it was all one road on the way to death, confronting the living with pale skin and cold flesh.

Ieiri Shoko would be looking for you, was the thought that came next. You would have to finish up your business in the storage room and cross campus to deal with the matter known as a corpse, quite literally a human’s last attempt to leave their mark on this world. God’s cruelty shines through here: the bodies will wither away if left alone, because humans were never created with the intent of eternity.

Such a pain, you sighed, having thought your day would soon be over after dealing with two headache-inducing upperclassmen. The stack of inventory reports you’d spent the day compiling were entrusted to be delivered to the principal by the nameless face who’d brought you the news. You’ve forgotten him now, his name and his occupation and his business at the school, but the way his mouth moved as he sounded each syllable of the words “Haibara Yuu has died” stayed fresh in your mind. You can’t recall the color of his eyes or the length of his hair, but you remember distinctly the wrinkle around his lips, the way he moved his tongue and gnashed his teeth, the mole just peeking out from beneath his chin. You remember thinking nothing more than a feeling of “I told you so,” a sense of smug assurance that you could predict the unpredictability of the jujutsu world.

It was wrong of you. You know that—but you can’t deny that’s how you felt. You had seen it coming one way or another.

Haibara Yuu, your other classmate, was an optimist, a pure and bright-minded individual. Which was why, cruel as it might sound, you felt he had it coming. Of your grade, between you and Nanami and Haibara, if someone were to die, you were afraid that no matter the universe the first to perish would be Haibara.

And you’d been proven right, thus Ieiri would need your help to go through the proper procedures of disposing a sorcerer’s body, and as you crossed campus you tried to imagine Haibara as a corpse, though you found you couldn’t quite do it. Haibara was never one to sit still. What you knew of the dead contrasted starkly with what you knew of Haibara. 

The first time you saw a dead body was in a car accident that happened near your childhood home. The details are blurry, as if the haze of smoke you remember smelling clouded your memories. The smell of fear and terror, though, still lingered—that sharp, metallic scent. Sirens were blaring, glass shards shattered at your feet, your small, toddler hands latching onto the finger of your caretaker. Pools of blood leaked from one of the cars—a blue one, you think.

You’d caught a glimpse of the man who died. Mouth agape, eyes rolled back into his head, presumably from the impact. If his pupils were visible to you that day, you wonder what you would’ve seen. Would they have been filled with fear, you wonder, or would they have conveyed the strange sense of tranquility that you are told people experience when on death’s doorstep? Would you have seen the snips of his life flash before his eyes, or would you have seen them flooded with regret and sorrow for the past mistakes that he’s undoubtedly made—how much emotion can the image of a dead person in their final moments carry, you wonder?

His arms hung limply by his side, head thrown back over the seat and airbag pushing against his still frame. Blood dripped from his finger. The image kept you up with curiosity for the next week and a half. And for how horrified your caretaker was for such a young child to bear witness of such a scene, you were thankful for it. Reality is not as kind as it can be perceived—this you learned when you asked why the man was no longer moving and understood that the essence of life is the capacity for death—and in a world riddled with curses and death lurking in every dark alleyway, perception is everything. 

So there was nothing to ponder about the fact that Haibara Yuu was dead. A simple fact, just like the simple fact that sorcerers die for the sake of their jobs, for the sake of the people they protect. Haibara was a sorcerer, and he thus laid his life down for it. Sacrifice is part of the contract; if anything, you were grateful all that was lost was one life.

When you arrived at the morgue, your hand hovered over the doorknob as you heard people talking inside. 

“This was supposed to be a simple mission to exorcize a second-grade spirit,” you heard someone say. “Shit! The local faith… that thing’s a god of the land. This case was for first-grades!”

It was Nanami, you realized. You’d never heard him this shaken before.

“You have to rest for now, Nanami,” you heard another say. “Satoru will take the mission from here.” Getou. No else called him Satoru.

“Can’t we just leave everything to him from now on?”

The mention of his name seemed to weigh down the atmosphere sixfold, for names hold power and the incantation of Gojou Satoru’s is enough to make the evil of this world hiss and spit but retreat into shadowed corners. Gojou and Satoru are two words when put together capable of changing the world, a fact that makes your vision flash green with envy.

In any case, you didn’t quite feel like stepping inside anymore. From what you could tell, Ieiri wasn’t present, and inside awaited you only Getou Suguru and Nanami Kento. You decided that you would come back later.

     SMOKE trailed from the cigarette you clamped between your lips as you sat on the stairs near the edge of Tengen’s barrier, an occasional habit you’d adopted from Ieiri despite her doctoral status. Something about what Nanami said weighed on you. 

A sigh left your lips in the form of white plumes floating off into the twilight. Shades of vermillion and canary yelled streaked into the slate blues of sundown, the warm breeze of summertime dusk whisking away the smell of smoke. The forest swayed gently. Tokyo shined dimly in the distance beyond the sprawling green landscape. 

The crunch of dirt beneath soles sounded behind you, and you took your cigarette from your mouth. A pair of black shoes fell in line behind you. Getou Suguru stood behind you, smiling.

“Mind if I join you, (l/n)-san?” he asked.

“Feel free,” you said. “Do you smoke?”

“No,” he replied, taking a seat. You were surprised he found you: the grassy foothills of Mount Mushiro wasn’t usually a place people went to have a smoke. Perhaps you were breaking a few rules, too.

Waiting for Getou to speak, your eyes trailed the long path of stairs that led downward, swallowed by forestry as it descended. Silence hung over your heads, until you couldn’t take it anymore. How bothersome, you thought.

“This is about earlier today, isn’t it?” you asked.

“Do you think you can do it?” you asked, taking a drag of your smoke. “It’s billions of people.”

Perhaps it wasn’t your place to question the capabilities of Getou Suguru, much less your place to talk to him like an equal. Even so, you didn’t like watching people chase the impossible. Especially those above you.

“I’m not sure,” Getou finally said.

“And you’d try anyway?”

“Satoru could do it,” he said, a wistful smile on his face, as if that explained everything. “If he could do it, it’s not impossible. He’d tell me it’s a stupid idea and pick a fight, though,” he chuckled. He laughed as if reminiscing about someone from a distant past, as if Gojo Satoru was an old friend he remembered only in stories he told over beers with new colleagues. Something about it made your tongue curl. Getou’s voice hardened. “He wouldn’t understand it.”

You hung your head. “He’s that kind of person,” you agreed quietly. “What brought on the change? You seem to have decided quickly.”

He shrugged lightly. “I don’t know,” he said. “Just thought about it some more.”

A blatant lie, you knew. You’re not a mind reader, but a person’s cursed energy is a reflection of the self. It’s practically a living thing of its own, brought to life by a person’s negative emotions—the hard truths they desperately bury, the twisted parts of the human soul they try to reject—incapable of lying. Cursed energy is always true to its owner.

This was about Haibara. Getou had seen it. His body, though thankfully intact, laid there on the cold metal, skin no longer elastic, blood now still. Death had come, and now you knew it would return en masse in the coming future.

“Well,” Getou said, standing and ascending a few steps. “I’ll be heading back now. Shouko said that she’d take care of the body, so you don’t need to stop by.”

“Alright. Thank you, Getou-san.”

Getou Suguru and you are quite alike, you think. Two people unable to live in a way which defied themselves, scared to reject themselves in fear of what it’ll do to you. Clinging onto hopeless things despite priding themselves on knowing better, unable to cast away the fool within, unable to live ignorantly and blindly. Deception of the self is to make an enemy of the self; there is no loss greater than to the enemy within. So all you can do is accept everything they are in its entirety, no matter how grotesque it may be, no matter how terrible a person.

“Don’t worry,” you said. The foreign cursed energy born of Getou Suguru’s cursed technique crept up behind you, looming dangerously close to your exposed back. “I won’t tell anyone.”

The fact you lived past that day was testament to that, you think.

     NIGHT arrived shortly after Getou’s departure. Your cigarette was nothing but a pile of ashes by then, swept away by the breeze into a scattered offering for the gods of the mountain. 

To be a sorcerer meant to die. They continued to die, and you wondered what they died for. What face did these sorcerers who’ve bit the dust make as their bodies were mangled and disassembled, devoured by the opponents they could not beat? Hopelessness, regret, fear? Or was it acceptance and relief?

How much emotion can the image of a dead person carry in their final moments?

The whole ordeal was laughable. Sorcerers died, yet their deaths meant so little—was that cruel to say? Yet wasn’t it the truth; what exactly did Haibara Yuu’s death change? Left with the gravity of this thought, you stood up to head back to the dorms. Ahead of you laid an ascending stairway to a hell disguised as heaven, to a world that you sometimes wish you were not born into, and on it laid the bodies of numerous sorcerers who died for the noble cause of protecting the people. Blood seeped into the old mahogany planks, dirt muddied by the blood of foot soldiers and disposable pawns. 

One step after another, you trod your way through the dense swamp that was sorcery, dreams shattering and running water thickening into red sludge. Sorcerers made their way through this swamp towards the heart of darkness, told to be prepared to die. But nobody ever really wants to die, you think, no matter how willing they may be. 

By the time you made it back to the dorms, it was almost midnight. Incidentally, you crossed paths with Nanami Kento, whom you’d never seen so disheveled and unkempt. His shoulders slumped and his hair was a mess, eyes red enough that you can tell even in the darkness of night, uniform crinkled and bloodied.This was not the neat and orderly Nanami Kentou you knew. Yet this was him, and it reminded you—humans are so pitifully fragile.

“(l/n)-san,” he said, nodding curtly. His voice was soft, melancholic and stoic despite the two not fitting together.

“Nanami-san,” you acknowledged, returning the gesture.

With the same destination, the two of you walked in silence into the dorms and into the section where the three (now two) people of your grade resided. Your upperclassmen had insisted on placing your rooms next to each other in the same hallway, something about bonding, and crucial high school experience. Haibara’s came first, then Nanami’s, then yours at the end.

As you walked past what was Haibara’s room, Nanami froze mid-stride.

“Nanami-san?” you asked.

“Haibara is dead,” he murmured, almost in disbelief, gazing at the door to his room, hands clenched at his sides. “We’ll have to clean out his room, won’t we?”

He was trying hard not to cry, this much you could see even without the help of his cursed energy, it was prominent in the way his voice shook, a flood ready to burst through the dam.

“Yes,” you said softly. “We will.” 

“(l/n)-san.” Nanami said your name in a longing matter, reaching out a hand to open the door to Haibara’s room but rescinding it as he chose not to. “Why did Haibara have to die?”

A heavy sigh escaped you, as you walked over to your classmate and placed a hand on his shoulder. Your eyes wandered to the door, the threshold into the remnants of a person no longer here, the markings unique to an individual that would soon be erased as it’s emptied and vacated, until the only part of Haibara Yuu left in the college was in memory. 

“I don’t know,” you said. “People die. That’s just how it goes, sometimes.”

Nanami was struggling to hold back his tears, a droplet streaking down his cheek. “He had a sister, you know,” he said, choking on his words. “He loved to eat. He was happy doing this shitty fucking job. He didn’t deserve to die.”

“And yet,” you said regretfully, “he did. He’s not coming back, Nanami-san.”

Nanami bit his bottom lip, trembling as he stifled his sobs.

“Come on,” you whispered, guiding him toward his own room. “Rest.”

He followed reluctantly. You stood outside his room as he entered, making sure he’d be found on his own. As he was about to close the door, your eyes met. 

“It hurts, (l/n)-san,” he said, and you never thought you would see this side of Nanami Kento, the man you admired as a better version of yourself.

You gave him a saddened smile. “I’m sure it does.”

And you stood there for a few minutes even after the door shut and Nanami said the faintest ‘good night.’ You imagined, in that moment, the world to be laughing at your classmate’s misfortune from above, thinking nothing of the grief and pain inflicted by the taking of a life. How cruel this job is, stained by tears and blood all the same in the name of nobility.

And what a joke this job is, you think, to throw these lives away in the name of nobility.