Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Gojō has a suite in the Kyoto Sea Hotel.

The revelation creates more questions than answers. It explains why she found Takada's suite familiar but implies something shocking: that she'd been in his suite before. Why?

Utahime is too tired now to make it make sense. She doesn't want to string bits of broken thread together anymore—it only makes her feel more frayed. She's only a precious few seams away from unravelling altogether.

And yet curiously enough, a massive weight seemed to have evaporated off her chest the moment she confided in Gojō. While she's never liked him, she can't deny how capable a sorcerer he is—an understatement—and she supposes that's the reason for her relief. What other reason can there be? His assistance would be invaluable.

He hadn't asked her any questions. Not yet. Instead, he'd gone extraordinarily still for numerous seconds, then swiftly risen to his feet and taken her arm to bring her with him. It was hard to tell what was going through his mind; what she could see of his face behind those sunglasses was unrevealing. Too unrevealing, she thought.

All he'd done so far was take her to his suite. It is a replica of Takada's, and she'd grasped right away where all her earlier déjà vu was coming from. The aquamarine flooring, the circular couch, the pewter-veined tea table with an empty box of daifuku mochi on it…

Her head hurt. She was standing before a jigsaw puzzle undone, its pieces askew, and she didn't know where to start. She'd half-expected Gojō to interrogate her then, but he didn't. He'd led her to the couch instead, then walked away.

Utahime rubs the dried tear streaks off her cheeks and goggles at him now, wondering with some confusion and indignation if he's about to walk out the front door. Again, however, he surprises her. He swipes a chair from the kitchenette of the apartment suite and returns to where she's sitting on the couch. Deftly spinning the chair around so that the backrest faces the front of him, he sits down and straddles the seat, plonking both arms on the top of the backrest.

Then he takes off his sunglasses.

Utahime tenses at once. She's not used to seeing Gojō with his eyes uncovered, and her disconcertion only heightens as he affixes those brilliant sapphire-blue eyes on her. They're framed by thick, long lashes the same fair tint of his hair.

She inhales sharply as he continues staring at her, his sunglasses floating beside him, and then his sapphire gaze drops below her face. Her nape prickles, and she fights the urge to cover her chest. She knows from over a decade of acquaintanceship together that Gojō, for all his faults, is not a lecher, so what the fuck is he doing?

Unable to take it anymore, she's about to yell at him when he laughs. It's a soft, brief sound.

"Ah," he says. "I see how it is."

"What?" Utahime demands. "Just what is it?"

He reaches over and, to her shock, gently taps where her clavicles meet above the neckline of her miko robes. So unexpected is his touch on the crest of her sternum that she feels her insides lurch. Her lips spring apart, but her voice refuses to come.

"There's cursed energy around here," Gojō says, lifting his finger and slashing it in a downward direction. "Cursed energy that isn't yours."

Utahime's shock magnifies. She's still trying to process this information when he continues.

"The reason I missed this earlier is because your body's been trying to nullify it all day." He withdraws his hand, cocking his platinum head towards her. "Aren't you aware? It's part of your Cursed Technique."

"Wait," Utahime chokes out. "Just… wait."

Her Cursed Technique? Soro Soro Kinku specialises in boosting cursed energy reserves, be it hers or anybody else's. If there's foreign cursed energy inside her—which makes sense, since Anya said her memory loss was a result of the Cursed Spirit's attack—her body must have reacted accordingly to an intruder; an antigen.

"So you're saying—" Utahime swallows. "My CT is nullifying it?"

"It's trying. If Soro Soro Kinku can amplify cursed energy, it makes sense that it can do the opposite too," Gojō says. "But I don't think it can make cursed energy disappear. It can only reduce it—temporarily. Your Cursed Technique can't eradicate or create cursed energy, only change the quantity." He pauses, studying her with those bright blue eyes. "Huh. Looks like you had no idea this was happening, did you?"

The suite seems to be spinning. She marshalls a shaky breath, striving to get her thoughts in order. If Gojō is right, her body has subconsciously activated her CT as a defence mechanism against the foreign cursed energy. In other words, her CT has been running all day, trying to shrink and reduce the cursed energy even from Gojō's Six Eyes.

"Oh," Utahime whispers. "That's why I've been…"

"Exhausted the whole day?" Gojō levels a finger gun at her. "Bingo."

So he had noticed. She doesn't know whether to be chagrined about it, but that's far beneath her concerns at this juncture.

"Regardless, it looks like your body is hitting a dead end now." Gojō rises from the chair and stands, one hand in his trouser pocket. "No Cursed Technique can run infinitely—well, unless you're me, but I'm the exception, not the rule."

She glares at him, but he doesn't seem to notice, or care.

"Well, then," Gojō says, cupping his chin. "How should I handle this?"

Utahime's lips tighten, and then she says, "There's one option right now."

"Hm?"

She can't deny she's feeling a tad foolish not having confided in Gojō right away. Already he's diagnosed the problem. Of course, she'd kept the truth hidden for the VP job, but now that it's gone down the drain, she doesn't see the point of letting this memory loss persist anymore. She's not even sure if the VP job is what she needs at this point.

Finding herself again feels far more important.

"We can get rid of the cursed energy right away." Utahime's mouth is dry, but she pushes the next few words out anyway. "You said it's in my chest. Is it around my stomach? If so, you have to make me regurgitate it."

There's a brief silence. Utahime knows he's grasping the implications as well as she does. Making her regurgitate won't be an easy feat—it'll require force. Power. It's not a feat because Gojō isn't capable of it; it's a feat because she will have to take it.

She goes on, "You'll have to imbue a bit of your Red. Red creates repulsion, right? Strike me on my back, target the cursed energy with your Six Eyes, and make me—"

"Utahime." The twill of the couch sinks slightly as Gojō sits down beside her. For some reason, she finds it hard to look at him, so she doesn't. She scrutinises her feet. "Are you drunk?"

Utahime snaps her head towards him, bristling. "No, I'm not drunk, idiot! If you're not going to help—"

"There are other ways."

She's well aware of what he means, but she shakes her head emphatically. "I want this energy gone right now. I can't stand even another minute of this. And I don't want to waste time now hunting down whoever did this to undo it—what if they can't? Or what if finding them takes too long? We'll hunt later, but I want to get rid of this now, I want—"

"All right, all right." Gojō leans back on the couch with a sigh as he props both arms behind his head. There's a pregnant pause—she suspects he's still seeking another alternative—before he finally sits back up and runs his hand through his white hair. Then he flicks two fingers, and his still-floating sunglasses twirl neatly around in a circle until they fall on the tea table before them. "Wait here."

He leaves, striding noiselessly down the corridor to the rooms like a cat, and she fidgets alone. She'll be lying if she says she isn't scared, of course. Gojō is monstrously strong, and everyone knows that. This isn't only about his sorcery. His physical strength is just as lethal.

She remembers an old anecdote Ijichi had shared with her over drinks. Over some minor dispute, Gojō had once punished him with a forehead-flick. The most painful thing I've felt in my life, Ijichi had bemoaned, beer in hand. I think he broke my head. He hadn't, obviously, but Ijichi's forehead had bled until Shōko had treated it.

A forehead-flick. Gojō clearly hadn't put any real strength in it, and granted, Ijichi is a baby who has barely fought any Cursed Spirits Grade 2 and up. Still, the memory lingers in Utahime's head now, forbidding and indelible. She thinks back to all those years she's spent with Gojō, and realises she can't recall a single instance where he'd gotten handsy with her, at least with actual physical force. She'd chucked her phone at him last month, and if he'd actually thrown it back…

Utahime suppresses a shiver. She's not afraid of Gojō, and she refuses to ever be. But now would be a perfect opportunity for him to get even for all those times she got violent with him. She can just imagine the frustration and force he'll hit her with.

But it doesn't matter. That'll actually be good, she tells herself. Anything to drive the cursed energy out of her.

Assuming she survives it.

She doesn't know how long she sits there, fighting off a shiver at the pain that's to come, but eventually Gojō returns. Utahime sits upright, her brows beetling at the object in his hand. Then a gasp escapes her as recognition strikes.

"My—my—" Utahime sputters, pointing a shaky finger at the U-shaped cushion. "My neck pillow! Where did you—did you steal it?"

He comes over, and without any warning at all, slings it around her neck, hair and all.

"Gojō!" she screeches indignantly as some of her hair gets plastered to her cheeks. "What do you think you're—"

"I've called Shōko, and she'll be on standby for me to get her." He gazes down at her, and her breath catches as iridescent blue eyes pierce her own. "You sure you want to do this?"

Her hands are gripping the sides of the neck pillow, and the crushed velvet is startlingly warm to the touch. It occurs to her now why he'd handed it to her: to cushion any whiplash when she gets hit. It's an act of consideration she wouldn't have expected from him.

Maybe Gojō doesn't want revenge, after all. Whatever he wants—if he wants anything—she has no idea.

It's not important. Her most pressing concern at present is getting her memories back. Everything will fall into place then; she can feel it in her bones. Maybe she'll get answers along the way about why she'd been in his suite, and what role he'd played.

She doesn't want to ask him. She wants to know herself.

"I'm sure," Utahime asserts. There's a terrified lump in her throat, but she gulps it away, her fingers unsteady as she fastens the front of the pillow by her collarbone. "Don't hold back. Give me all you got. I can take anything you throw at me."

For a fraction, his expression doesn't change. And then his hand settles on the back of her head, brushing her white ribbon loops, and her chest suddenly squeezes tight. She knows this gesture—he'd done it before, he…

"I know," Gojō says.

He lifts the chair he'd been straddling earlier and places it in the narrow space between the tea table and in front of her. Instinctively, she knows what it's for. She hunkers over, draping both arms around the backrest as support to brace herself.

A part of her can't believe she's doing this. That she, who has never gotten so much as a finger-flick from Gojō, is now voluntarily letting Gojō hit her with real force. She doesn't even think many of his students have received a serious punch from him.

Nothing Shōko can't fix, she thinks bleakly. Out loud, she says, "I'm ready."

With her heart clobbering away, she waits for him to get to it, but he doesn't move. He's looking at her with those cerulean eyes, and it's strange how irises so clear and luminous can give nothing away at all. Neither is she used to seeing Gojō without his usual arrogant or cheeky grin. It's not like she's never seen him serious before, but she'd assumed he'd be having a field day with getting back at her now.

"What's the hold—" Utahime begins, her blood in her ears, but then he leans over. Her breath stops, and she steels herself for the inevitable blow, but to her astonishment, he merely brushes away a long strand of hair from her mouth.

Her brain shorts. It shouldn't be a big deal, since he's probably doing this so she doesn't puke onto her hair. But there's something so unsettlingly intimate about the careless gesture, as with his hand on her head just now.

This is ludicrous. This is Gojō. Her cocky junior, archnemesis, and the biggest thorn in her side for years and years. The man who'd snapped a photo of her when she was being attacked by a Cursed Spirit, and who'd sipped red bean soup instead of helping her.

She won't let him unnerve her. She—

Thump.

Utahime's mouth flies open in a silent shriek. It feels as if a speeding locomotive has just pummelled into her back and punched through flesh and bone, rending her ribcage apart. It happens so fast she has no time to process any of it, to think and dread and panic, only jerk forward and begin to heave. Her throat convulses violently as she gags and gags, and something wet pours from her mouth.

Her brain is going numb. She is nothing but instinct, lost in motion. Her senses are a blur of relief and agony as she grips the backrest and continues to choke and heave and vomit. There's a large hand on her back, centering her, but she scarcely registers it. Metallic liquid flees her mouth, and, very dimly, she hopes Gojō will be able to capture it with Infinity.

She can taste iron on her tongue. She knows that pungent taste. It's the same taste just minutes ago—no, more than that. It's been a good while now, hasn't it? Hours, days. The reek of metal stinging her throat while a strong hand had gripped her jaw, keeping her mouth agape against her will. A hand—not Gojō's, this was rougher, meaner, more cruel—whose hand?

"I don't want this." She'd gasped that aloud, begging, fighting against someone so much stronger than her. She had felt pathetic. They were both women, only Anya was superior, and so ruthless, so relentless…

Anya.

Anya had done this to her. Anya had activated some memory-suppressing Cursed Technique by force-feeding her iron—no, not actual iron, she realises.

Blood.

It unfurls out of Utahime and past her lips now like a silk ribbon, bright scarlet, no longer trapped and locked up in a forgotten vault deep inside her soul. And as she coughs more of the red ribbon out, she remembers how desperately she'd tried to catch hold of its silk in her final moments at Anya's office.

It'd been in her hair back then, a little intricate knot holding the strands together. She remembers hating how convoluted her emotions had become this month; a maddening and terrifying entanglement that had held her together and turned her inside out at the same time. For the past month she'd raged, she'd resisted, she'd demanded control, and yet she'd lain on the sun lounger that final afternoon, letting it all go as strong arms held her.

The last of the blood slips away from her lips, and she feels simultaneously bereft and whole in its aftermath. The scarlet silk ribbon, the gift she'd received—she'd cast it away last night, confused by its existence knotting her hair. She'd gone back to her old ribbon, back to old ground, back to simplicity.

But she doesn't need simple, or uncomplicated.

More than anything, she wants, and needs—

"Gojō," Utahime sobs. The ache in her chest, wounded from his blow, makes her feel as if her heart is being torn to pieces. "Gojō."

She is remembering everything and coming together and also coming apart, and she does not think her soul can take it. But that is what he has done over the past month: he has taken her undone and rebuilt her anew, and she does not doubt he will do the same again today.

She trusts him. Even Anya had been unable to steal that trust alongside her memories of him.

It is her last thought as darkness sets into her vision, and she falls, helpless but unafraid, into awaiting arms.

She lands. Hard.

The world seems to have crumbled all around her. She's buried under a mountain of rubble, but, by some stroke of luck, is not crushed. The weight hanging over her head—a behemoth slab of stone wall from the broken house—is buttressed by wooden planks and boulders. What a blessing, she thinks as she wriggles herself loose. Even while crumbling, the house had done so in a way without killing her—

Twigs snap. She jerks her head up from where she's sprawled on the ground, and a familiar hot animosity stabs her throat at the view. Perched atop one of the hills of debris around her is a tall, rangy figure, clad in a school uniform. She recoils at the lambent sunlight beaming upon a white halo of spiky hair, and the round dark sunglasses reflecting her scowl back at her.

"I'm here to save you… Utahime~"

She hates that drawl. It's singsong and mocking. And of course, he's forgoing the usage of 'senpai', even though she's his senior. She realises now that he must have been the one to destroy the mansion. As usual, he's the reason for her disgrace, and he dares to assume the role of saviour after pushing her down in the first place.

She's roused from her seething when he leans over, lips curving into a broadening smirk.

"You cryin'?"

"I'M NOT CRYING!" She's going to murder him. Tear him limb from limb. Watch him beg. "And use honorifics with me!"

A new voice joins the mix: feminine and seductive. Mei Mei has glided over to Gojō's side, her red lips smiling. Both women had been caught in the crumbling mansion, and yet Utahime is the one who falls, while Mei Mei now stands alongside Gojō.

"If I cried, would you comfort me?" Mei Mei murmured. "I'd like that."

"But you wouldn't cry," Gojō rejoins, straightening up. "Mei-san is strong."

That little—

She'd be a moron to miss his jab. Unadulterated fury steeps her vision, and she shoots to her feet, shaking off the detritus clinging to her.

"GOJŌ! You listen here, I don't need your help—"

A growl reverberates the air behind her, and she freezes. Slowly, she turns around, her heart in her mouth, to find a hideous monster looming over her, teeth bared. Her muscles lock up in terror, and she's about to curse her luck when a stupendous jaw opens up beneath the monster—and engulfs it whole.

"Don't swallow it," Getō Suguru tells his Cursed Spirit as it holds the struggling monster within its maw. "I'll absorb it later."

Utahime glowers at the newcomer, who languidly climbs up from the rubble to where Gojō and Mei Mei are standing.

"Satoru," Getō tsks. "It's not good to pick on the weak."

Gojō waves a dismissive hand. "What kind of idiot picks on the strong?"

Utahime grinds her teeth so hard they almost crack. She's going to kill both these pricks. Arrogant, insolent little shits. One day they'll learn respect. And they will rue the day they ever—

"Utahime-senpai."

The female voice is sweet. Calm. It drifts through like a lifeline in a stormy sea. Utahime swivels around, searching, but she doesn't see anyone. Mild dizziness sweeps over her.

All she sees is destruction everywhere, of misshapen islands of broken walls and glass from a house collapsed and turned inside out.

"Utahime-senpai…"

A human silhouette approaches, and her pulse skips. It's a woman, reflected in the scattered vitreous shards—dark-haired, pigtails, younger. It's herself.

But her face is fuzzy. Jagged. Torn asunder.

Her flesh is inside out.

Petrified and caught utterly off-guard, she opens her mouth and screams.

She awakens with the shriek still muffled in her throat. Her heart is racing like a train, about to smash free of her ribs at any moment. She can feel sweat sticking to her nape, and it slides to her spine like meandering icy fingers.

"Utahime-senpai?"

It takes her a minute before she begins to register her surroundings. She's staring straight up at the deep cobalt expanse of ceiling, and she realises she's lying on her back under a thick, plush comforter. This enormous bed… yes, she knows the bed. It's the king-sized one she'd shared with Gojō a night ago, in his suite.

His bed.

Utahime gasps, softly. Her memories are back. She remembers them all, as if they were never gone in the first place.

The kiss at the pool on the rooftop.

The scarlet ribbon Gojō had given her.

The night before, when she'd nursed his blood-streaked face with a cloth, and he'd put his arms around her.

Earlier that day, when he'd rescued her, Tōdō, Gakuganji and Anya from the Cursed Spirit.

More of the events from the past month unwind like a cassette tape in her brain, and she clutches her forehead, groaning. Her long hair is loose around her face, its ribbon absent, and she feels as if the rest of her, too, is unravelling without it.

"Utahime-senpai. It's all right."

She drops her hand, blinking her smarting eyes open again. Shōko's pale visage swims into view. Decked in a coat over a blouse and pants, she reclines in a chair by Utahime's bedside, her eye circles starkly pronounced in the shadows. It's evening, Utahime discovers, glancing out to the windows. A dim amber ceiling light bathes the bedroom of the suite. She wonders how many hours have passed since she hightailed from Takada's suite, and how her students are doing. She ought to check, but she still feels too disoriented and weak.

"Shōko," she manages. There's so many things she wants—needs—to address with her friend, and she doesn't know where to start. There's Senjuro, there's Gojō, and what seems like a hundred other issues. For now, she settles for what instinctively comes first to her lips. "Thank you for taking care of me again. Did… Were you teleported over?"

"I was. And you're welcome." It's hard to decipher Shōko's tone. She doesn't sound any different than usual. Then again, there are very few things that faze the placid woman.

"Where's…" Utahime hesitates, her heartbeat growing even more manic. "Where's Gojō? Is he…"

"He left to find Asami Anya."

Utahime's eyes widen. She mulls over Shōko's response, her belly constricting. While she knows now that Anya had been the one to wipe her memories and trick her—her fists clench at the thought—she hasn't shared this with anyone yet. So why has Gojō gone to find Anya?

Her query must show in her face, for Shōko says, "The cursed energy he extracted from you, Senpai. He can tell who it belongs to."

"Oh." Utahime is dumbstruck. Of course. Why hadn't she considered that? She thinks of the blood she'd regurgitated, and an epiphany slams into her. "Blood. Blood. That must be how she—Anya—utilised her Cursed Technique, Shōko. It's the same for the Cursed Spirit."

The Spirit had been Anya's biological sister, which means their psychic Cursed Techniques might share similarities. Utahime recalls the Spirit hypnotising Tōdō at her flat. She understands how now: through blood. It had sliced Tōdō's chest, and by obtaining his blood, was able to activate its hypnotic technique on him. Anya's technique is similar but inverse. It's activated when Anya's blood, infused with her cursed energy, is transfused to someone else.

But the Spirit has Utahime's blood too, from the day it first appeared and maimed her. She racks her brain, and recollects a counter-technique: Simple Domain. She prays that will protect them in the future, at least temporarily.

"The Cursed Spirit? What do you mean?" Shōko asks.

Right. No one knows yet of Anya's connection to the Curse. Utahime sits up on the bed—she feels almost as good as new, her pain miraculously gone—and fills her in.

Shōko leans against her chair, looking thoughtful. "You figured this out all by yourself, Senpai? That's impressive."

Trying to sound modest, Utahime says, "Well. It was mostly guesswork on my part. I didn't expect Anya to confirm it."

"Still impressive."

Utahime shrugs, feigning nonchalance. "Research has always been my thing, anyway."

"That's a part of it, I suppose."

"What do you mean?"

"You looked up the song lyrics, correct? A lot of sorcerers won't tackle research this way. We're more hands-on, and that means experimentation. It'll entail trying to get you to sing to lure the Curse out, or something like that. I'm sure Gojō suggested that at some point." Shōko nods when she catches Utahime's expression. "But I think there's a part of you, Senpai, that wants to understand why the Curse was triggered by the song. What it felt. What the connection was."

"Yes, but I'm not sure what you're trying to—"

"Empathy, Senpai. Compassion. You have that in spades." Shōko takes out a cigarette pack from her lab coat. She doesn't retrieve a ciggie, however, but turns the box idly over in her hands. "It's why you fell for Yuuji's prank to start with—yes, I know about that."

Utahime ought to be more needled by the mention of the foolhardy pink-haired boy, but she's past that now. The prank feels like an eternity ago. She remembers the boy's earnest apologies, and how his life had been endangered just days ago.

She thinks of how Gojō had left to save him shortly after.

While she'll never approve of Gojō's carefree teaching methods—nor will she ever emulate them even at gunpoint—she recognises the bond with his kids beneath all that flippancy and panache. And truth be told, her students aren't much better than Yuuji. It's vexing to remember Miwa uploading footage of her online, but she's resigned to her reality now.

"I'm not quite sure I—" Utahime clears her throat. Then she sighs. "It'd be nicer if you said my strength was in research than… well. That."

"Empathy?"

She grimaces. "I'm a sorcerer, not a therapist."

"Empathy isn't reserved for therapy, Senpai. It's a basic human skill that many of us could do with. If we had more of that…" Shōko's voice softens. "So much could be better. For us. For Jujutsu Society."

There's an uncharacteristic rawness Utahime can't help hearing, and she stares at Shōko.

"There's regret in Gojō, I think, and perhaps a little in me as well," Shōko says, "of how things could have changed if we'd noticed the signs with Getō sooner."

Utahime goes motionless.

"The signs," she repeats. "What signs?"

"Cursed Spirit Manipulation." Shōko retrieves a cigarette. Puts it in her mouth. But she doesn't light it, and Utahime wonders if she's warring with herself. "It's a constant cycle of exorcise, swallow, and repeat."

"You mean…" Utahime reflects on the dream—the memory—she just had. "That's how he amassed Cursed Spirits to do his bidding, right? He swallowed them and absorbed them."

"Yes. The taste of Curses… I suppose it must have been ghastly." Shōko moves the cigarette slowly and pensively in her mouth. "But there's no helping that. He couldn't stop. It was mission after mission for him... He must have been in hell."

Getō Suguru. A Special Grade sorcerer like Gojō. Just nights ago, Utahime had despaired at how the higher-ups would run Gojō to the ground with rescue mission after rescue mission. How the bones of Jujutsu Society depended on his Special Grade power.

His voice echos in her ear.

I want to reset this rotten Jujutsu Society…

She thinks, unexpectedly, of Anya. She'd committed a criminal act by using her technique to wipe Utahime's memories and manipulate her. It officially made her a curse user, like Getō; she could no longer be classified as a Jujutsu sorcerer moving forward. She would be lucky not to get a death sentence for it.

And yet Utahime thinks of something Anya had said in her office.

All of us need to work so much harder to make up for our lack of strength compared to men.

I gave up everything so I could be strong. Even my own sister.

Utahime's stomach coils up. She can't forgive Anya, and she doesn't intend to. But neither can she forgive a system that continuously punishes and shapes its sorcerers into something as hateful and bigoted as it is. She knows firsthand from a chain of failed Grade 1 assessments how agonising it feels to be inadequate, to be lesser.

I'm a sorcerer, not a therapist, she'd said to Shōko. But why is her definition of sorcery solely of power—which clearly comes easier to men—and not something else; something more? She is not as different from Anya as she believes.

"I always told myself," Shōko says, drawing Utahime out of her reverie, "that hell would freeze over before I let myself fall in love with either of those two idiots."

Utahime's lips shift. "Gojō and Getō?"

"It's why I hoped you'd like Senjuro."

Utahime sucks in a laboured breath.

Shōko smiles faintly. "I'd be blind not to notice what's going on with you and Gojō, Senpai. All the same… I always considered him the worst person to fall for. He lives in his own world with Getō, as you know. Senjuro, on the other hand, is everything he isn't. He's sensible, conscientious. Grounded. Less self-centred. I wanted you to be happy with him."

Utahime takes Shōko's hand.

"I'm sorry," she says.

"No need to apologise. You can't force your feelings—"

"Not that. I'm sorry you felt like you didn't matter. I'm sorry you couldn't be part of Gojō's world with Getō."

Shōko doesn't speak right away. Her brown eyes glimmer; they look just the tiniest bit wet.

"All of us owe you more than we realise," Utahime continues. "I mean, you stitched me back together after Gojō Satoru punched the living daylights out of me. That's a medical miracle."

Shōko removes her cigarette and laughs. "Utahime-senpai. You didn't really think he punched you that hard, did you?"

"Shōko. I felt like I was being run over—"

"I'm not downplaying your courage. Ijichi, for example, would have sooner wet himself than request Gojō to do that to him, and we all know that. Nonetheless…"

Utahime's mouth tautens.

"If Gojō had truly gone all out, you'll be splattered everywhere now, and not even I could save you," Shōko reiterates serenely. "From what I can tell, he pinpointed Red through one specific spot to target Asami Anya's cursed energy. The damage, while acute, was in minimal and non-vital places through your chest. I've healed all of it."

Utahime wants to argue, but a memory suddenly occurs to her: Gojō, dealing a single punch to the Cursed Spirit's face at her flat. Its entire skull had instantly exploded into purple goop.

She's not sure what she feels more: horrified awe at his strength, or another less identifiable emotion knowing he'd minimised the damage on her where he could. But that's not all. There's so many more emotions to untangle about what had gone down between them earlier, as well as the ways she must have hurt him in the throes of her amnesia.

The rooftop was supposed to be a happy memory, sunlit and tender and the start of something sweet and new. But now it's replaced by rain and thunder, and the splintered sound of Gojō's incredulity and hurt when he'd raised his voice at her.

She can't let it stay as the monstrosity it has become.

"Shōko," Utahime says. "I need one last favour."

"What is it?"

"Please give me Senjuro's number." She looks beseechingly at her friend. "I need to text him myself and tell him I'm sorry. That I've made up my mind."

"About?"

"Being with him. I can't, because…"

"Because?"

Utahime doesn't drop her gaze. Neither does she let her voice quaver.

"Because I love somebody else."

After the text is sent, they eat. Or rather, Utahime eats, since Shōko claims she has already had dinner. Room service is called, something Utahime is usually opposed to given its exorbitant prices, but Shōko tells her that Gojō had asked them to do so once Utahime awoke. She makes a mental note, however, to pay him back. He's already paid for her apartment repairs, so the least she can do is foot her own meal.

The food is delicious—which it should, considering it costs a bomb. She has gotten tomato pasta and it melts on her tongue in a rich, savoury flood. While she eats, she responds to the tens of texts she has gotten from Miwa and even Tōdō, frantically asking about her whereabouts. She assures them she's fine—she does not mention being in Gojō's suite—and that she'll see them again the next day.

She does not want to think about her humiliation with Takada earlier. Deep down, she can understand why Takada had rejected her. Her mind had been reset with her memory wipe, and she'd hyperfixated on the VP job again. But that wasn't what she ought to have been singing for at all.

You want to make a change? Then start now, exactly as you are.

Being a VP won't change anything.

She'd lost that crucial tidbit of information from Gojō. Singing was for Tōdō, and for everyone that needed her to be onstage to protect Takada. She didn't need the VP job to accomplish that. But without this breakthrough, she'd lost focus and aimed too high, and now Takada, along with countless others, is in danger.

She has to find a way to enter the stadium tomorrow. There must be something she can do, some method she can employ to win Takada's faith again. She continues ruminating about it after her meal is finished, and the hotel concierge reclaims the food trolley. Shōko urges her to rest, saying that her body is still fatigued from running her CT all day.

Obediently, Utahime sits back on the bed, but doesn't lie down for fear of indigestion. She's cagey. Restless. Her nerves refuse to ease. She realises why soon enough.

Why is Gojō still not back?

She wants to see him. An irrational part of her is petrified he has decided never to return again. What if he's too angry with her after what happened? She knows she's hurt him, and not just from the conversation at the rooftop, or from the red ribbon she'd discarded.

Even when she'd asked him to strike her to regurgitate Anya's blood, she'd ripped open an invisible wound in him. It's not the first time he's had to strike someone he's cared about—he'd done that to his late best friend to finish him off. She doesn't doubt that he'd been forced to relive that trauma, albeit to a lesser degree, when she'd asked him to land a blow on her.

Just a month ago, she wouldn't have dwelled on or given much of a second thought about Getō. But the closer she's gotten to Gojō, the more she sees the Getō-shaped imprint on him.

She wants to get out of here and join the hunt for Anya. But she knows she'll only be endangering herself and complicating things if she does—according to Shōko, Gojō had set up a protective Curtain around his suite before he left. Utahime doesn't want to undermine his effort and get in his way. Being stupid and reckless will not be her contribution here.

Everyone in Jujutsu Society knows, without a doubt, that Gojō Satoru works best alone.

The thoughts continue to pinball inside her as she slumps against the headboard. Shōko sits by her bedside, half-dozing in her chair. Her drowsiness must be infectious—that, or Utahime, too, is more tired than she thinks—for she ends up dozing off herself in spite of her fretting.

The first thing she's cognisant of when she comes to again is light. Pearly, blanched light. It's gentle, not bright, spilling like diaphanous silk into the room.

The moon has come out. She realises she's still curled up against the headboard, the fat pillow supporting her side. There's a mild crick in her neck.

What time is it? She has a hunch that it's deep in the middle of the night. She sits up, yawning, rubbing her neck. Then she turns her head—

Her muscles freeze. All of a sudden, it is difficult to breathe.

The chair Shōko had been sitting on is empty. Utahime's attention, though, is on the moonlit windows. Leaning on the wall directly beside them is a tall, slightly slouched figure. The moonbeam makes their halo of hair look even whiter and more ethereal than usual.

Utahime's pulse stutters.

Gojō's hands are tucked in the pockets of his trademark black zip-up jacket. His blindfold is back, pushing his hair up in spikes. It makes sense that he's changed back into his work clothes, since he'd gone hunting. His body language is careless, almost relaxed, but she knows better than to be fooled by that.

A wordless hush befalls the room. It's obvious to him she's awake, and for a couple of microseconds, she fumbles for the right words to break this lull.

"Did you find her?" is all she manages.

"Nope." Gojō inclines his pale head at her. "I searched every place I could think of. Your VP's gone."

Utahime wonders if Anya had sensed her cursed energy being extracted from Utahime's body. Is that why she fled? Or had she simply chosen to hide herself until the concert, in case anything went wrong before then? Desperate to confront her sister there, she would make sure nothing would get in her way.

"We'll see her at the concert tomorrow," Utahime ventures. "I'm sure of it. Shōko—has Shōko filled you in on everything I told her? Where is she?"

"I sent her home for now." Gojō straightens up from the wall, and walks casually towards the bed. She doesn't know why, but she feels herself going stiff against the headboard.

She begins, "Gojō—"

"I've said this, but you're really distrustful, aren't you, Utahime?"

"W–What?"

"For example, you knew about the Curse's connection to the VP, and you didn't inform me." He cocks his head again. "Did you want to confirm it with her before you told anyone, just in case you were wrong?"

Utahime inhales jerkily. She knows what he's referring to: it's the night she went to confront Anya at the office meeting—and the same night she'd ended up getting her memories wiped.

"I thought Anya might be struggling to do the right thing," she admits. "I wanted to address it with her privately and better understand what was going on. Like you said, I might be wrong, and the last thing I wanted was to spread rumours if my suspicions weren't true."

"That's an admirable attitude to have," Gojō says, "but also unbelievably stupid."

Utahime bridles. She glares at him, but her scorching retort dies at her lips. He's right. He knows he's right, and loathe as she is to admit, she knows too. If she'd confided in him about the Curse being Anya's sister, he wouldn't have stayed outside Tengen's barrier when she'd gone to Anya's office. Neither would he have stopped her from going to Anya's office; he'd have respected her decision. But he would have stationed himself nearby, just in case anything went wrong.

And indeed, everything had gone terribly, terribly wrong.

She'd hurt him because of it. If Anya had failed to wipe her memories, none of the chaos and pain she'd inflicted on Gojō would have occurred. And Takada, too, might not have rejected her. She would be set to be onstage with the idol tomorrow, ready to protect her whenever possible.

Utahime summons a deep, quaking breath. Rallying all the willpower she can muster, she grits out, "I'm—sorry. Okay?"

"Eh?" Gojō cups his ear. "What's that?"

She grinds her teeth harder.

"I said, I'm sorry."

"Come again?"

"I SAID I'M SORRY, IDIOT!"

She's heaving, and she realises belatedly that she's clutching her pillow, about to deck him with it. How is it that even when she feels sorry for what she's done, she wants to kill him? With Gojō, it seems her emotions will always be a morass of tenderness and wrath.

This isn't how she meant for this to pan out at all. She wants so badly to make up for hurting him, but she also wants to hurt him. It doesn't make any sense, but her feelings for him rarely do.

She takes another long breath, and abruptly says, "I want you to hold still."

Utahime gets up from the bed, and this time, she's the one who advances on him. Even though he's taller, and looms over her like a dark panther, she feels more in control than she did when he'd stalked to the bed just now.

Control. That's it. That's the root of it all.

She hates how out of control she constantly feels with Gojō Satoru. Even her apology has spiralled out of her control.

Just once—just once—Utahime would like to hold the cards in her hand.

He must be heeding her command to some extent, considering he doesn't move as she draws closer. Yet even despite his blindfold, she knows he's watching her. It feels thrilling and disarming at the same time.

It's time for him to feel the same.

Utahime stops before him. Gently, she reaches up and cups his face. She feels some satisfaction at the voiceless surprise she can sense from him, but it's drowned out by her tempestuous heartbeat. But she's not done. Rising on her tiptoes, she tilts her head upwards and presses a soft kiss to his sinuous, wide mouth.

She lets him go hardly a second later, and whispers, "No moving, remember?"

The sides of Gojō's lips begin to curve under his blindfold, but he doesn't say anything, or make any particular movement. Her satisfaction mounts. For once, her arrogant junior is quiet. Compliant. The Utahime from a month ago would have wept with joy. Maybe if she's lucky, he might even address her by the right honorific one day.

But this is not about subjugating him—well, not entirely. She still can't shake off some of the things she'd said and done earlier as an amnesiac. How she'd removed his red ribbon. How she'd fumed openly at him in Takada's apartment because she'd thought he hadn't saved her from the lizard Curse. How she'd told him about meeting Senjuro for a date… and yet he hadn't walked away and left her all alone in the rain even after she'd hurt him.

How he'd saved her instead, and restored her memories for her.

Utahime tiptoes again and kisses him, this time on his cheek. She plants another tender kiss on his other cheek, and then on the blade of his nose.

Her breathing becomes ragged as her fingers approach the black strip of his blindfold. She touches the fabric—it is soft, and cooler than she expects—and in a singular burst of motion, drags it down his angular face. His spiky hair falls. Clear blue eyes immediately glitter into view, boring into her like sharp zircons, and Utahime bites her cheek. It's unnerving that he's been staring the whole time.

What she does next is borne more out of impulse than anything else. She lays her hand across his kaleidoscopic eyes, then moves her palms downwards, smoothing the lids shut. Straining as high as she can manage on her tippy toes, she kisses his brow.

He's warm. She's not sure why she's still surprised by that when he'd held her on the sun lounger before. But it's peculiar to realise Satan isn't cold-blooded, that the infuriating junior that has constantly gotten under her skin is as warm as any regular human being.

Her feet, sore from tiptoeing, finally thud back onto the lush carpet. Utahime is inwardly berating their height difference when the room spins.

Gojō has moved.

She has no time to censure him, or even get angry. If there's anger, it's lost in the savage inferno of emotions setting her ablaze. Gojō's hand cups the back of her head, where her ribbon, now gone, ought to have been. His mouth is on hers. She feels as if she is coming loose, her armour of inhibitions stripped until she is naught but bones and want and desire. Her desires are endless: to devour him, to hurt him, to brand an imprint of her own on his soul until he burns and aches like she does.

This kiss is nothing like the slow, leisurely ones on the sun lounger. This is more like their first kiss in her flat: a conquest rather than a union. It's rough and ferocious. Violent, even. His kisses are ruthless, wet, suckling—and there's something expert about them, from the way he blots out every coherent thought from her brain. The wicked slant of his wide mouth is poisonously saccharine, and she can't get enough. Gojō Satoru is still the best kisser she's ever encountered, and it's not even close. She hates him for it.

Which is why she tears at him, wanting to be as much his undoing as he is hers. Her hands go to his snow-white hair and pull. They claw at his undercut. They go to the high black collar of his jacket. They dive for the jacket zip and brutally yank it down, wanting, needing…

Gojō lets her go.

For a moment, Utahime halts, her body frozen, lips swollen. Adrenaline continues to buzz through her system, but reality is kicking in through her high. She's crossed a boundary she probably shouldn't have—they have never gone this far before. The lazy kisses on the sun lounger are all she knows. But this… this is a prelude to something else altogether.

Gojō regards her with bright diamond-blue eyes. What feels like a million fractals spin in those irises. She can't decipher if he's angry or not, and she's still trying to stem her mortification when he reaches to his open jacket collar and tugs up the blindfold from his neck.

Utahime gapes. He tosses the black strip to the bed without a second glance, running his hand vaguely through his snowy hair, then goes for the jacket zip.

The jacket is promptly discarded alongside the blindfold onto the bed, and she's faced with Gojō in a similar tight black shirt from the other night. Again, his musculature, accentuated by the skin-hugging shirt, throws her for a loop. He is nowhere as lean and rangy as he appears to be with the loose jacket on—his entire torso, from his broad shoulders and biceps to his chest and abdomen, is sculpted with hard, strong muscle.

Utahime's mouth has gone dry, and a loaded nanosecond passes before she realises Gojō is no longer moving. He's watching her, and it sinks in now that it's her move now.

She realises what this means; what she'd inadvertently started the second she'd gone for his zip. He's making it evident he's for it, but even so, he's still giving her a chance now if she has any regrets.

It seems impossible to fathom what is happening. A month ago, the mere notion of spending the night with Gojō Satoru would have either horrified her or made her laugh. She can't believe she's gone from wanting to skewer him alive to wanting him at all. Her breathing is uneven, and she swallows, hyper-aware of a molten tension in her belly that she doesn't care to identify yet.

For weeks, she'd fought and resisted whilst he took her undone.

Now it's time for her to make a choice.

Utahime inhales… then lets the breath go. Her hands are unexpectedly steady as she reaches for the binds of her crimson hakama. They're fastened tight around her waist, keeping the fabric of her armour in place, and she proceeds to undo the bow one strap at a time.

She doesn't falter.

Gojō's head shifts until half his profile is cast in shadow. But she doesn't miss the single blue eye glowing through the darkness.

Neither does she miss the upturn of his mouth in a wicked, wicked smile.

"Oh–oh…"

Utahime's nails dig into Gojō's back. He's sitting on the bed, and she's straddling him on his lap. Her miko robes are in disarray. Her hakama has been abandoned, leaving her in her white kosode, which has fallen away from her shoulders and bunched around her arms. The sides of fabric covering her chest have peeled apart, exposing her plain cotton bra.

She doesn't feel self-conscious, simply because she's too overloaded with stimulation to be. Gojō's mouth is on her neck, and it slants over her erratic pulse. He nips her a centimetre lower, and she shudders, her hand moving up his nape to grip his soft snow-white hair.

It's absurd. It's not like she's never been kissed on the neck before. But none of her previous partners have taken their sweet time teasing her with it like Gojō. His nipping occasionally verges on minute pinpricks of pain, and instead of hating it, she finds herself writhing a little from the intensity. She tugs harder at his hair, wanting to dole out the same pain he gives her.

What she does despise is how aroused she is. She's growing wet; she's spilling at the seams and panting softly. She feels—for lack of a better word—like she's in heat, and out of nowhere, her cycle tracker app flashes to mind.

It's been exactly two days since the update she got. It's tonight. Right now, in fact, since it must be past midnight already, assuming she follows the numbers to the tee.

She needs to warn Gojō. They're going down a slippery slope at this rate. He must have—well, he might have seen the update from her app when she'd left her phone in his bathroom, right? Utahime doesn't think she has ever slept with anyone during her ovulation period before. She wonders if that's why she feels so fervent and out of control.

Snap.

Utahime starts. Gojō's finger has curled around her bra strap, which he gently tugs and then lets go, allowing it to bounce back over her skin. He pulls again and releases it, idly replaying the motion over and over.

"What are you doing?" Utahime grinds out.

"Ah. Just thinking," he says, "of that picture you sent me~"

Her blood goes cold. Her lips part, but no sound emerges. All the air seems to have gone out of her, and she's left wrangling with his candour.

He's talking about the vulgar bikini photo. So, Gojō has seen it. Why this is coming as a shock when she's already clocked the possibility ages ago, she doesn't know. Maybe it's because it's been forever since she accidentally sent him the image, and she has half-forgotten about it. Or maybe it's because a part of her had hoped he'd forgotten too.

But he has not, and now the big question of whether he'd seen it is answered at last. She ought to feel relieved she no longer has to keep wondering, but she wants to die. Every weighted instance between them from before—Shōko commenting in front of Gojō that Utahime could still wear a bikini because her tummy wasn't scarred; the bikini in her laundry basket; the random girl in the same bikini at the rooftop pool—crushes her like a cinder block. She'd assumed, even hoped, that most of the tension was from her overactive mind, but now she knows otherwise.

She can't take it. She wants to kill him. She wants to kill herself.

She wants to destroy something.

The maddening, broad smile on Gojō's lips seals the deal as to what. She's already on his lap, and it's all too easy for her to pounce and silence him with her mouth over his upturned one. She kisses him in a frenzy, sloppy and biting in parts, trying to ravage him until he's in pieces, and he can never speak or mock her again.

"It was—" Utahime hisses, clawing her nails along his undercut. "—for Shōko to see, you little—"

He laughs. He fucking laughs. "That's hilarious."

"Don't laugh!"

That's it. She's done playing nice. Her vision steeps red as she ends the kiss to wrap both hands around his neck and squeeze. For years it's been her fantasy to choke him, and she's never experienced gratification sweeter than now. Maybe he has Infinity on; maybe not. She can't tell. She's too busy focusing on squeezing the life out of him.

Gojō Satoru is still grinning. It's the same smirk from the day she'd fallen under rubble. With his milky hair down, he looks like he's barely aged since his teens. That's because he fucking hasn't, at least not mentally, and Utahime continues throttling him in all-consuming rage.

Sooner than she likes, her arms eventually give out. Her outburst has depleted her, and she slumps against him, panting.

"Utahime," Gojō says. He doesn't sound like a victim of strangulation. He sounds normal, just a smidge appalled, and if she had the strength, she'd launch into Round 2. "You're reaaally scary, you know that?"

She swears. The effect, unfortunately, is ruined by her windedness. It's ridiculous that she's the one out of air, though it's also obvious he would have pulled up Infinity.

"Delete the photo right now, you—"

"The screenshot? Nope. It's mine now."

She's going to kill him. Skewer him. Roast him over the flames of hell and—

"Now then," he muses. "What shall I do with you?"

"Wha—"

One split second she is attempting to speak, and the next she is flat on her back on the mattress, clouds of her crumpled kosode pooling around her. It happens so fast she has no recognition of how she got here. All she can see is Gojō over her, his hair a crown of white, his incandescent eyes an ocean she's about to drown in. He's not smiling anymore.

She ought to be afraid, and she is, but not of him. With the flip of a switch, her wrath has been supplanted by something more terrifying: desire. Ravaging, attacking, conquering… Those are charted waters.

It's what comes next that will take her under.

"I told you," Utahime pushes out now, fisting her hands to keep from obscuring her chest. The bandages around her stomach are gone, as is the pink line from her surgery. She is healed and ready. "I can take whatever you throw at me."

Gojō's thin, wide mouth curves again, and she blinks when his large hand settles over the top of her head.

"I'll need you to do your best, then," he says. "Make sure you keep up with me."

And as he descends upon her and their summer night dissolves inexorably into a heady, electric blue, she proceeds to do just that.

She did not, in fact, do just that.

She lied.

Those are her first thoughts as she cracks an eye blearily open, and flinches at the effulgent sunlight. She's sore—though she's been even sorer with other men she slept with before. Not because they'd shared Gojō's stamina, but because they'd been so inept it'd hurt. From the insanity Gojō Satoru put her through last night, she's aware she ought to be hurting so much more.

Utahime. You're reaaally scary, you know that?

How could anyone be so self-unaware? He was the goddamn terrifying one.

Utahime scrunches both eyes shut, snuggling deeper under the comforter. She can feel her cheeks colouring, and she grimaces. The memories of last night are a lurid, mind-addling jumble, and she knows they'll be seared into her psyche for the rest of her life. One after another, moonlit vignettes flare vividly through her, and her breathing roughens. Her naked flesh continues to ache and throb, unable to excise what Gojō had viscerally branded on her body.

She can still recall his mouth over her bare breast. Her bra and kosode had been gone at that point, thrown over the side of the giant bed. She'd trembled and whimpered at how hard he sucked her, and frustrated by her impotence, she'd pushed at him. Once Gojō was sitting back down, she'd straddled him again. Wearing only her panties and driven wild with desire, she proceeded to work herself against him.

She'd stared at Gojō with a challenge in her eyes, not bothering to mask her satisfaction at the evidence of his arousal against her. No matter how unreadable his azure eyes were, she could feel his reaction even through his black trousers. She'd rutted against it, the damp fabric of her panties pushing into his fly, rolling her hips on him. Her breasts had bounced gently as she rode him, both her pink nipples swollen and wet from his hungry suckling earlier.

That hadn't lasted long before a stitch had formed in her side, and Utahime had stopped momentarily to catch her breath.

And then Gojō had taken over.

Everything that followed next had been a rush of madness and ecstasy. She remembers fragments of their delirium; her panties were shredded, and she was flat on her back once again. She was crying out, thighs spread apart as two of Gojō's long fingers entered her—one at first, then eventually another past her slippery folds. She can never forget the look on his face: the huge feral grin, his eyes gleaming splendidly under long lashes. The few times Utahime had seen him so manic, she'd thought he was high off power.

This time, he was high off her.

He'd thrust both fingers deep into her, over and over, the rhythm merciless and unrelenting, and she'd felt as if he was fucking her brains out. He was filling her and pulling her in around him, and she was vaguely conscious of all the wanton sounds he was expertly drawing from her. She didn't understand how basic foreplay like this could feel so diabolic, how Gojō Satoru seemed to drill right through her most inner parts with just his digits. Other men had done the same act to her before—she had done it herself before. But the past had become a shallow, cheap imitation of what the real thing should be.

Barely half a minute in, and Utahime, writhing on the bed, was about to come.

Gojō Satoru was about to beat her fucking vibrator's record… and no human being had ever once come close.

She couldn't take it. She couldn't let him win. More than that: she wasn't expecting to come at all, let alone so quickly. Vibrators—masturbation—were for orgasms, and sex for intimacy. That was what she'd known her whole life.

An orgasm was private. A weakness, the ultimate undoing. A month ago, Utahime would have sooner eaten a dirty sock than have one in front of Gojō Satoru. It was clear old habits died hard, for she found herself panicking.

She wasn't going to show how much she didn't want him to see her come—that was like offering blood to a shark—but she couldn't let him go on. Thankfully, there was a classic way to end this fast, something she'd honed on many a one-night stand.

Utahime threw her head skyward, arched her back even more, and let loose with a moan. She kept the position for a while, deliberately dragging the moan out, then made herself slump.

At last, she dared to open her eyes—only to hear Gojō laugh.

She went rigid.

"Utahime," he said. "Are you in a movie?"

Blood gushed to her face, but she had no time to respond, to salvage the remains of her dignity. He didn't give her any. He was still pumping two agile fingers into her, probing her deeper, and Utahime choked on a genuine scream when she felt the excruciating, brain-shattering suction heighten inside of her.

The bastard was now using Blue.  

"Wait!" She thrashed on the bedding, her long ebony hair dishevelled around her, her muscles tensing. She was on the precipice, she was about to… "Wait, wai—"

"This…" Gojō, still smiling that feral, almost cruel smile, curled his clever, adroit fingers in a come-hither motion inside her. "... is where you're weak, isn't it?"

Her vision went out in a glorious starburst.

It had been a few days since she'd made herself come thinking of Gojō, but she knows now that nothing could have prepared her for this—for him. Never in her life had her vision whited out like a supernova. Her toes had curled, her body wracked by a furious paroxysm of convulsions so exquisite it hurt. From the corner of her mind she could hear a woman screaming, and she couldn't comprehend who it was, not then.

Even now, hours later into the morning, Utahime can't believe she'd screamed like that. But that had just been the first before a long night, and she resents how much more cocky it has made Gojō.

She doesn't know whether to be livid or embarrassed that her faculties had been so fried she'd forgotten about the cycle tracker app. Unexpectedly, Gojō hadn't—or at least, he was always prepared anyway. His suite had come with condoms, and he'd casually nabbed one from the nightstand, holding the foil up between two fingers… the same ones he'd broken her mind with.

"You all right?" he'd said, head tilted as he watched her catch her breath. "We can stop here, if you'd like."

Utahime lay limp, gasping in fits and starts. She was soaked, dripping, her thighs still quivering uncontrollably as she came down from her high. Her vision, while hazy, was returning, and she refocused on him through heavy lids. A shiver took her as his unapologetic gaze raked down her curves, going from her heaving breasts to the glistening spill between her naked thighs. It was infuriating that she was practically nude, and he was still in that tight shirt and black trousers. 

She wanted to tear his clothes apart.

"I told you," she said raggedly, sitting up, "that I can take anything you throw at me."

Gojō looked up at her, kaleidoscopic eyes shining, and his sinuous mouth had slowly tipped upwards.

Famous last words, Utahime thinks now, many hours later. Her hips twinge whenever she moves them, and she feels notably sore inside. It's nowhere serious enough to be debilitating, and she knows she should be feeling even worse, but she doesn't love the discomfort.

She turns her head on her pillow, and looks at her sleeping companion.

Gojō is lying on his stomach. He's mostly buried under the thick comforter, but she can make out spikes of his white hair jutting through the air, as well as the broad musculature of his naked shoulders. Utahime has to stifle a half-exasperated smile at his gravity-defying hair despite his lack of blindfold; he looks just like he did in his teens.

But that's not what pulls at her heart strings. She thinks of the other time they'd shared this bed, and how he'd slept then. He'd been sitting against the headboard, arms propped under his head. But right now, he has dropped whatever guard he'd still had up at the time, some invisible shield he'd—perhaps subconsciously—kept from the rest of the world.

Even if it's been let down just with her today, Utahime considers it a step forward.

She's about to reach out to touch him when thick snowy lashes lift, and a single sapphire-blue eye bores into her. Her heart skitters in her ribs, and she tries to look away, but can't.

Just looking at those eyes, and she is transported back to last night.

The electrifying blue was all she saw as she lay nude on the edge of the bed, a pillow propped under her back. He'd stood over her, studying her intently like he would a canvas, the empty condom foil on the nightstand near him. Resting a black-clad knee on the mattress, he splayed his strong hands on her legs, which she'd wound around his waist. The frenetic thumps of her blood inundated her ears, even louder than when she'd unzipped his fly with trembling fingers and unrolled the condom for him earlier. 

Slowly, impeccably, he slid inch by inch into where she awaited him now, and she moaned and hissed at the delicious pleasure-ache, clamping harder down on him with her calves. More and more of her sensitive tissues expanded to receive him and accommodate his size. If she weren't soaked from her earlier orgasm, it'd have hurt. But now the only sensation was an overwhelming tightness as he filled her up. 

Every atom of her being felt like it was simultaneously unfolding and coalescing together. Gojō Satoru—her insufferable, arrogant junior, the bane of her existence who'd tortured her for over a decade—was inside her. She could feel him, impossibly long and thick and hot from where his fly was open, bearing through her centre and rebranding her from within.

It was inconceivable.

The familiar stirrings of panic had sparked through her again at the acute loss of control. With Gojō, she seemed to fight a constant upward battle of push and pull, of desire and resentment. Unable to help herself, Utahime raised a foot and blindly tried to kick him. He caught her ankle before she managed to, however, and set her foot down on one side of his chest.

"Seriously?" Gojō raised a brow. "Utahime, you're beyond terrifying at this point."

"Gojō, you—"

She was cut off by her own high shriek. He'd peeled back slightly, her juices glistening visibly over latex, then slammed into her. With her foot raised on his hard chest, his penetration was even deeper than before, and her eyes threatened to roll back from how ineffable it felt. Everything was hard and fast and too much and just right and—

The monumental bed frame creaked and rocked into the wall with his thrust, and she'd have rocked backwards too if not for the pillow, or his vice-grip on her shaking ankles. She gave another cry, so high and guttural she hardly recognised herself.

His strength was inhuman. Absurd. He wasn't grinning, but he was smiling, his ultramarine eyes large and glittering unnervingly bright in the darkness. There was a sort of derangement in him, she thought hazily. She didn't know if it was due to his excitement, but his radiant white hair was raised in spikes atop his head. Even the moon paled in his glow. She was drowning, submersed from her skin all the way to where he'd claimed her inside…

Several hours into the morning, and she still doesn't think she can get the water out of her lungs. There'll always be a part of her that's a little short of air, a little smothered, when it comes to Gojō. Utahime can feel it now—the difficulty to breathe—as he observes her now with a lidded eye. A stray lock of his milky hair falls down his brow, and she automatically smooths it away.

She ought to say something, but she's not sure what. Funny, how two people can fuck multiple times, and she can shatter over and over around him, but now she has no idea what to say after having screamed his name on the top of her lungs. She's still fumbling for words when she feels his strong arm, originally around her waist, move up her spine.

Utahime stiffens. His palm rests over a spot on her naked back—the same spot where he'd struck her yesterday to extract Anya's cursed energy. Even last night, despite Gojō's seeming ruthlessness, they'd made love with the pillow under her back to reduce pressure on it. She's uncertain whether there's a mark there after Shōko's impressive RCT, but it doesn't matter. She's not ashamed, or the slightest bit bothered by a scar.

"It doesn't hurt," she says.

"Ah. That's good."

"Did I…" She hesitates, her profile flaming. She remembers trying to kick him, and even tearing the back of his black tee later on. "Did I hurt you last night?"

Gojō laughs. "Just who do you think I am?"

Utahime scowls. His arrogance is insulting, but he's right, of course. He knows her well—that she'd never have thrown anything at him that she wasn't sure he could take.

"If my back scars, it'll be an eternal reminder," she says, "that I trust an idiot like you with my life."

His mouth loops upwards, but she's not done. She wriggles even closer to him beneath the sheet and rests her head against his pectoral, where his beating heart is. His bare skin is warm. So warm it's nearly feverishly hot.

"And one day," she whispers to his heartbeat, thinking of Shōko's unshed tears about living in a world so far removed from his and Getō's, "I hope you'll trust us all with yours too."

Gojō doesn't say anything, but she thinks she hears his heartbeat pick up, just a little.

And for now, that is answer enough.

Utahime is not one to laze around. Or rather, she tries not to be, even if she's sore thanks to a certain someone. Under any other circumstance, she might have given in to temptation, even, to laze and doze in Gojō's arms, their bodies—hers soft against his musculature—intertwined under the sheets. But that's all thrown out the window when she discovers that it isn't the morning, as she thought.

It's four in the afternoon.

And the concert is tonight.

It makes sense she'd slept this much, given her physical exhaustion from running her Cursed Technique all day, and from the night she'd spent with Gojō. But what's less expected is Gojō sleeping as much—she doubts their night together has sapped his stamina, monster that he is, but she suspects it's the first good night of sleep he's had for a long, long time. She's relieved about that.

Only there's still Anya, missing and at large. And there's also the Cursed Spirit who's about to attack Takada today, and endanger tens of thousands of people. Utahime isn't going to be onstage to help, and she's freaking out. Gojō is being so fucking flippant about this—"I'll exorcise that mangy thing when it shows. No big deal"—that she wants to throttle him again.

He's being too dismissive. What if Anya does manage to produce a barrier to keep him out, even without Utahime's help? Or what if Anya's intervention complicates things in general? She's going into a spiral knowing that the concert is commencing in just a few hours. Anya hasn't texted her at all today regarding Utahime's assignment for her, and Utahime doesn't know what to make of it. Is the VP being silent to keep their plans undercover, or does she know Utahime has recovered her memories?

It is time to switch to work mode. Her downtime—it feels like a fever dream—is over.

But first, before all else: Utahime needs to eat. She and Gojō both do. They can't go into battle without fortifying their strength. After they wash up, she tells Gojō to call for room service while she gets changed. It's enraging that he shredded her panties, but thankfully, there's a new set in her tote bag, which she'd brought here days ago. She pins her hair up with her ivory ribbon, deciding to ask Gojō to pick up the red one from the school later. She has just finished putting all her clothes back on—including her scattered kosode and hakama—when she hears his voice.

He's asking for ice-cream over the phone. Ice-cream, as their first meal of the day. Utahime yells at him to order proper food, and is mollified when he changes his request to omurice. He asks the staff to write his name in ketchup on the egg, then asks Utahime if she wants the same, too.

"I decline," Utahime snaps.

"Eh? You sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure, you idiot!"

She can't believe she spent the night with this goofy manchild. As they eat, she seethes at him—he has on another midnight tee identical to the one she'd torn—and smacks his hand away when he reaches for his Coke. She makes hot matcha for them both instead, belabouring him about how unhealthy Coke is. He sits there with that stupid grin, and she can feel a vein about to rupture in her temple.

Deciding to leave Gojō be before she drives herself bonkers, she calls Ijichi after the meal.

She begins, "Sorry for the late notice, but I need this fast. I need a background check on—"

"Asami Anya?" Ijichi finishes. "Yes." His voice wobbles. "I was just about to call."

Utahime is nonplussed. She wonders if she's misheard him. "I don't understand. Who told you—"

"Gojō-san asked me to do a background check last night."

Her jaw drops. She shoots a glance at the man in question. He's sitting on the couch, long trousered legs stretched on the tea table. He's put his black jacket and blindfold back on, and is sucking a popsicle that he'd still gotten from room service anyway.

"It–it was 2 AM when he asked me to," Ijichi stammers. That must have been the time Gojō had gotten back to the suite, Utahime thinks. "I–I fell asleep, hence the delay. I'm so sorry. Is he m–mad—"

Utahime pinches the bridge of her nose. One of these days, she's going to have a word with Gojō about constantly traumatising poor Ijichi. But now is not the time.

"It's fine. Don't worry. What information did you find?" she asks.

"Right. Yes. According to our records, Asami Anya was born to a Jujutsu sorcerer father and a non-sorcerer mother. Her father, Asami Takahiro, was a Grade 1 sorcerer, while her mother died in labour delivering her younger—and only—sibling, Asami Ayumi."

Asami Ayumi. That was the human name of the Cursed Spirit.

"Asami Ayumi was born with severe lupus. She, like Anya-san, was trained by their father to be a sorcerer but could not physically keep up. She soon collapsed and was hospitalised. From my understanding, Asumi Anya used to visit her regularly but stopped completely for the last few months leading up to Ayumi's passing. Asami Takahiro, on the other hand…"

"Yes?"

"Hospital records indicate that he rarely ever stepped into the hospital to see his daughter. The few times he visited were the first day Ayumi was hospitalised and the last day when she passed."

Already pieces of a jigsaw puzzle are coming to light and being slowly spliced. An unloving sorcerer father. A sickly younger daughter, unable to become a sorcerer like him. An older daughter, now a capable Grade 1 sorcerer, who'd used to visit the younger one in the hospital but had stopped eventually.

I gave up everything so I could be strong. Even my own sister.

Trying not to sound shaken, Utahime thanks Ijichi for the information and hangs up. She thinks of the hospital gown Ayumi had been in—the baby blue should have been a giveaway the day she first appeared—and her belly roils.

Some of her nausea must show in her mien, for Gojō rises like a cat from the couch, tossing the popsicle stick neatly to the bin without a backwards glance. He goes over to her, then wraps a casual arm around her shoulders. "What's wrong?"

"I think…" Utahime swallows. His warmth is comforting. Grounding, even though he's the least grounded person she knows. "I think I know what I need to do. What I needed to do all along, actually. My focus should never have been on Takada, but on Anya and the Curse."

She fills him in on her plan.

Gojō doesn't respond immediately, but wraps his other arm over her, this time around her waist, pulling her snug to him. Her heartbeat quickens as his jacket brushes her neck, and she wonders if he can sense it.

"How's your body doing?" he says offhandedly.

Utahime flushes. It's not rocket science to guess what he's alluding to, considering her soreness.

"I'm fine," she grates out, aiming for crankiness to hide her fluster. "Could be better, but I'm fine."

"Sorry."

Utahime flushes harder. Gojō apologising is not something she's ever expected, and she's at a loss on how to react.

He should be sorry. She'll never be able to spend the night with anyone else again, and not compare them to Gojō Satoru. She hates how he took her not just once, but again and again that night, and she hates even more that it's still not enough. That it may never be enough, even if her body aches forever. That he has stoked her anger, then pain, and now all she can think of is the pleasure he's wrung alongside that from her flesh.

"So," Utahime says hoarsely at last. "I take it that you're onboard with my plan?"

Gojō laughs.

"Well, Iori Utahime-sensei has so earnestly asked me to trust her," he says. "I guess it can't be helped."

She turns her head towards him, and her pulse flutters at how close his face is to hers. Even with the blindfold on, she knows he's looking straight at her.

"I'll do my best," Utahime says. "So make sure you keep up with me."

His lips part with surprise, and then they lift into a grin under his blindfold. He moves his hand onto the back of her head, the gesture fleeting and light.

"Of course," Gojō says. His devilish grin widens before he continues.

"Show me everything you got… Utahime."

Déjà vu.

She's living in it, breathing it. But this time, it's not because she's lost her memories again. She can remember, very clearly, wading through weeds as overgrown as the ones hugging her hips now. The tangerine sun, like that fateful day over a month ago, is sinking past the horizon, and she knows Takada is taking the stage in less than an hour. It's probable the opening act has already commenced.

She needs to act fast. They are running out of time, even though she feels overwhelmed by everything that's been happening over the few hours since she woke up. She has chosen to go down a convoluted route—an alternative to the easy way out Gojō is offering with his vast power—but she's learnt now that simple and uncomplicated isn't always what they need. 

After spending the earlier hour making the necessary arrangements for tonight, she is here now, and she angles her head back to take in the building before her. 

The decrepit husk of a once-white hospital sits in the pinkish-gold sunset, oversized and hollow like a rotten cavity. Its paint has turned the colour of piss, smudged and scratched with filthy markings she can't identify. Similar to the abandoned hospital in Tokyo, one of the double glass doors swings gently at its entrance, hinges squeaking. The twin doors are so thickly daubed with age-old dirt they're murky, like eyes clouded by cataracts.

She'd gone to the other abandoned hospital last month on a reckless whim, desperate to do something—anything—to push the envelope and break the status quo. She'd had no concrete plan beyond overweening ambition for the VP job, and as if self-aware of her own foolishness, she'd hidden her mission from everyone.

A month later, things are different now. Utahime knows what she wants, and what she needs to do. And she has made no secret of her mission.

There are lives that depend on it.

She steps off the field and holds the swinging door, keeping it open as she crosses the threshold into the hospital Asami Ayumi had died in. Almost at once, cursed energy swamps down upon her in potent, radioactive waves, and she tries not to gag. It's even worse than the Curse at the other hospital, and she makes a mental note on the different levels amongst Special Grades. Perhaps further classification will be needed…

Utahime squashes the train of thought. This is not the time. What's most important to note is that her hospital hypothesis is correct. Ijichi had given her the name of this place, which had shut down shortly after Ayumi had died. All along, this had been the hideout of the Cursed Spirit that was Ayumi, and she'll likely be lurking here until she is summoned by the noise from the stadium. It's curious that Anya has seemingly not guessed the hideout, but Utahime suspects the hospital holds as much trauma for the VP as it does Ayumi. Now that Anya has gone into hiding somewhere, there's a chance Ayumi, too, is no longer able to trace her.

Of course, Utahime cannot be absolutely certain of that. Perhaps Ayumi is hunting Anya at this very moment. But Utahime will do what she had inadvertently done days ago, and that is to summon Ayumi herself. Better here, than for Takada to do the same at a stadium with tens of thousands of people.

Utahime breathes in deeply, her boots halting on the dusty linoleum floor.

Then she sings.

Unlike that day, she does not hum Beer Bottle. She sings the lyrics, but alters them ever-so-slightly, so that they're no longer about two brothers. She enunciates each word clearly, and one by one they ring through the eerie, rancid air in a growing crescendo.

My sister's cold as I breathe her in

We shudder close, a jumble of limbs

Try so hard not to be seen

By an ever-watching fiend…

The malodour is worsening. It slithers through her air passages in the form of oily fingers, but she perseveres anyway. She continues to sing in her piercing, raw voice, even as an uncanny rattling noise swells from the background, like bone tapping against resin.

You bleed and say you'll keep me safe

Some promises meant to break

So many times they've shattered

Like beer bottles slamming my—

Utahime throws herself sideways. It's just in time as a talon whips through the space she'd occupied a millisecond ago; she can feel the wind hiss ominously in her ear. She lands and rolls herself carefully on the ground, then pushes back up, panting. A few strands of her ebony hair are sticking to her face, but the bulk of it is tied back by her ribbon.

The linoleum floor tremors. Utahime has to readjust her footing to keep from falling. Her lungs seem to shrivel as the overpowering stench heightens, making her eyes tear. But what's truly robbing the air from her chest is the creature lumbering towards her.

The baby blue of Ayumi's gown is as defiled as the paint on the hospital walls. The grime comprises short black lines bedecking the once-pristine blue fabric, with a strike-out slashed over four of them. Like a thunderclap, a pattern registers—they're tally marks. There's numerous of them, many concealed by Ayumi's overlong, monstrous raven hair, and Utahime wonders how many days they add up to.

For they are days—Utahime is sure. She has never been surer of anything in her life. Each bituminous line on Ayumi's hospital gown is a day that has passed since Anya left her alone in this cursed prison, and a day closer to the one where she'd taken her last breath.

Utahime inhales again. Wiping the stinging moisture from her eyes, she tries to speak. "Ayu—"

"You're alone. You're alone, wrench. Gojō Satoru is gone…"

Ayumi is right, of course. The odds of Utahime summoning Ayumi if Gojō was here would be negligible. He is the one sorcerer that can single-handedly end her, and the only one she has displayed fear of before. Her fear must have doubled into terror after he'd nearly slain her at Utahime's flat.

Besides, he has a task Utahime has entrusted him to fulfil. He's now at the stadium on standby, in case Ayumi does end up heading over there once Takada performs. There's also Anya, who is desperate and almost definitely showing up to find her sister. Whether to make amends or end the Curse herself, Utahime isn't certain yet.

Ayumi is screeching, her barbed tendrils of hair scoring hideous gouges into nearby walls. Utahime can't see her face underneath her mane, but she can hear the undisguised glee in the Curse's blood-curdling howls.

"You're alone! You've been left all alone—you're unwanted! Alone! ALONE! ALONE ALONE ALONE— "

One of her hair-talons lash out, but Utahime has seen it coming and flung herself away at the last second. This time, she has no time to land safely, and she tumbles painfully onto the slippery linoleum floor. Mushrooms of dust poof from beneath her robes, and she grimaces as dull pain blossoms from her side. Ayumi dislodges her talon from the gashed plaster of the wall, and advances on Utahime again. Before she can launch another attack, Utahime chokes out something.

Ayumi cackles.

"Louder," she hisses. "Say your last words louder…"

"I said," Utahime repeats, climbing back up to her feet and regaining her bearings, "that I'm not alone."

"You lie. You lie! Gojō Satoru—"

"I am a teacher at Jujutsu High," Utahime says simply. "I am never alone."

The talons fly for her again, but before they reach her, a glinting blade slices through the thick ropes of hair. Ayumi screams, and Utahime raises her head when a svelte, blue-haired figure hops into view.

"Sensei," Miwa cries, brandishing her sword. "Are you okay?"

Ayumi's scream morphs into a laugh, and she prowls towards the two women. They're both small fry, and a Special Grade Curse like Ayumi knows that. New spidery-black filaments bubble and regrow from the chopped ends of her hair, and she has just taken another step forward when a snarling, giant white dog pounces at her, knocking her off her feet.

"Fushiguro!" Yuuji's agitated voice yells before he emerges through the gloom, his pink hair blazing like a beacon. "That was supposed to be my moment!"

"Shut up," Megumi says as he appears behind the first boy, looking irritated. Then he stiffens, snapping his head around, and Utahime realises his canine shikigami is writhing with prehensile ropes of Ayumi's hair around its neck.

There's a flash of movement before a gargantuan foot kicks Ayumi through the gap in her hair, and she dodges, but not completely in time. With an ear-rendering screech, she topples backwards. The Divine Dog wriggles free, barking and growling.

"Brother!" Tōdō booms to Yuuji, flexing his muscular arms as he drops to a fighting stance. "Let's take this thing out so we can make it to Takada-chan's concert!"

"Who said I was going there with you?!" Yuuji demands indignantly.

Utahime exhales. So Gojō had meant it then, when he'd said he was going to get his first-years over here. He hadn't elaborated how, but it was plain it would be through his teleportation technique. She'd been hesitant at first, but the cheerful idiot hadn't seemed to notice. He'd twirled his finger animatedly and said something about how it would be a "wonderful lesson for the kids".

"What are those Tokyo brats doing here?"

It's Mai. She sidles up beside Utahime, gun in hand as she sneers at Nobara, who has stepped out from behind Megumi and is sneering back. Utahime pivots around, and more familiar faces greet her.

Mechamaru.

Kamo.

Momo.

"Sorry we took a bit long, Sensei," Momo calls, hovering on her broomstick overhead. "But you said to go in ten minutes after you did, so—"

Indeed, she had. Ayumi may not have let herself be summoned if she'd known there were so many sorcerers present. While none of them are Gojō Satoru and a serious threat by themselves, all of their forces rallied together is a different story.

"Everybody! Listen up." Utahime claps her hands authoritatively, catching the teenagers' attention, even Tōdō's. A brief lull elapses inside the rapidly darkening building, with just enough dying sunlight to illuminate her uncharacteristic grin.

"Let's kick some ass, shall we?"

Asami Anya is about to lose everything.

Her crime has been discovered—she knows that much. She'd felt her Cursed Technique being dismantled last evening, and she'd immediately bolted. But she's made it this far, and she can't give up now. She is certain that Ayumi will materialise at the concert. The volume of the stadium speakers will be too deafening for her to ignore.

The concert will be Anya's last chance to speak to her.

About what, she doesn't know. All she does know is for years after Ayumi's death, she has lived in profound agony, imprisoned in words she'd failed to say and lullabies she'd stopped singing. She is a sorcerer, not a caregiver, she'd thought. And though she still thinks that now, what she is and what she is not continues to be a battlefield, one that requires sacrifice. She is trapped in the blood she has shed to get to this point, both hers and Ayumi's.

Only long after her death, Ayumi continues to bleed.

It seems her sister is not the only one.

With a hood over her face, Anya watches from among the jostling, packed crowd as strobes of the stage lights dance over their foreheads. Upbeat music pulses through never-ending cheers and whoops. Takada has not yet taken the stage, but her opening act—a rock band—is belting the final chorus of their song. The electric guitar zips like cracks of lightning. The bass is thumping so hard she can feel reverberations under her feet, as if the world as she knows it is trembling.

A shadow casts over her head and a few others around her, and she looks up amidst gasps. Something hovers in mid-air, blocking the beaming stage lights. With the tall figure backlit, it's hard to discern their features, but her stomach drops anyway.

She can spot the spiky outline of their head. Spot the black strip on a darkened face, the hands tucked in pockets, and the long black-clad legs floating.

"What the fuck?" someone mutters beside her.

Before Anya can respond, she finds her whole body being torn off the ground, as if sucked by a vacuum. There is no combating this force, and her teeth gnash as her toned muscles flex in protest. She is close, so close, and now this beast, this one sorcerer she can't vanquish, has found her—

"I warned you," says a familiar drawl, "didn't I? And you still underestimated the hell out of me."

Now dangling in mid-air, Anya, her fists bunched, feels her blood crystallise in her veins. The last time this voice had spoken to her…

You let me catch you doing anything to stress or pressure Utahime, and you'll be sorry.

She twists herself expertly around, hands flying together. She cannot beat Gojō Satoru in a Domain clash, but she knows for a fact that he will not summon Unlimited Void with so many people present. She, on the other hand, has given up too much to stop here now. She will use her Domain to buy time until Ayumi—

What feels like an explosion goes off in her gut. Anya's mouth flies open, her eyes rolling back, and she doubles over, gargling on her own blood. In the back of her mind, she knows it's just his fist to her stomach, but her insides feel like they've been pulverised by a grenade. There's a strident ringing in her ears, and darkness pervades the edges of her vision. She retches, vomiting blood and spit.

And then the whole world spins, and her vision blurs altogether into nothing.

The disorientation only lasts a few seconds, but to Anya it seems to have gone on forever. The agony in her gut is excruciating; she feels as if she is being cleaved into two. She is still writhing in pain when the whirlwind around her comes to a standstill, and her vision gradually returns.

She is still dangling in the air, she discovers. An inhumanly strong hand is gripping the back of her hooded cloak, keeping her aloft, and she is dripping blood steadily from her lips. It splatters the dusty linoleum floor in tiny drops, and—

Linoleum?

Anya's heart whams into her breastbone. She raises her head, her dark eyes dilating as she takes in yellowing walls—walls that were once a blinding sterile, optic white. Even through the reek of cursed energy, she is cudgelled by the memory of antiseptic choking the life out of her.

Gojō has teleported her to Hell.

She cannot breathe. She is paralysed. She feels ill. This is her worst nightmare come to life. There is little she has allowed herself to fear, but for years, hospitals are the one place she avoids like a plague. The means for that is simple: to never fall ill. To never allow herself weakness until she needs a caregiver.

She is not a caregiver, nor does she—can she—need one. How could she deserve to have one, when she had forsaken the role with the one person who had needed her the most?

Anya closes her eyes. She wants to disassociate, to pretend she isn't here. But there are voices; they sound young, the age she'd been when she'd last stood here, facing crossroads before going down a path she wishes she'd never have chosen. But would she have chosen differently now? Is it courage or cowardice, to stand by sacrifices you've made and forge on?

I am a sorcerer, not a caregiver.

Would her father have been proud of her, or ashamed she's had to make sacrifices at all? He had made no sacrifice in his life, because he'd had nothing he'd cared enough about to lose. Maybe that was real power in itself—to take, and take, and never bleed…

"I don't get it!" One of the voices, young and boisterous, rises from a distance. "I say we kill it now! What are we holding up for—it's only going to regenerate!"

Anya opens her eyes again. She doesn't know why, but her heart is suddenly pounding. Or maybe she does, because she frantically strains to see ahead of her in the gloaming. The sun has gone down, but some of the moon is unveiled, and opaline shafts of it feebly illume the corridor ahead of her. Her sight soon adjusts to the dingy area, and a soundless gasp rips out of her mouth.

A group of teenagers huddle together. The speaker is a pink-haired boy she has never seen before, and he's crouched over an unmoving figure on the floor. Its head is exposed under moonlight, and Anya can see the holes and jagged, chopped tufts of hair in its bleeding scalp.

An invisible punch even worse than Gojō Satoru's lands in her belly, ramming deeper and deeper until it hits a place so far inside her she spasms. Her lids burn. She recollects the last time she'd seen Ayumi, lying in bed with her scalp as bald and battered as it looks now. Chemo had ravaged her until she was scarcely recognisable, and yet her eyes, brown like their late mother's, were the same. Soft, warm. Hopeful. Blood cancer, on top of her lupus, had eaten her flesh, but it had not yet taken her spirit.

Not until Anya had walked away.

For many days now, Anya has wondered if Ayumi's Cursed Spirit form is a manifestation of her greatest desire: to be well again.

"We should kill it now," Tōdō Aoi grunts, and Anya's throat seizes up. His beefy body exudes an unnatural shimmer, and comprehension dawns upon her: it's Simple Domain. He is warding himself against Ayumi's Cursed Technique. That's why he's not hypnotised again even though Ayumi has taken his blood before. Hot nausea boils in Anya's gullet, and she feels as if she is about to bleed all over again.

"No."

Anya turns rigid. She looks at the slim woman in the middle of the group. Iori Utahime is nowhere as tall as some of the students, but there is something about the way her arms are akimbo and her back is ramrod-straight that lends her authority.

"I told you," Utahime says, "to wait. To only subdue her until it's time."

Nishimiya Momo argues, "But Sensei, we need to exorcise—"

"Not all Curses are meant to be exorcised." Utahime lets out a breath. "Some need to be broken."

"What does that even mean?" Zenin Mai grouses.

"Let us put our trust in Utahime-sensei," intones the mechanical voice of Mechamaru.

"I agree," Miwa Kasumi says. "Maybe—"

The floor seems to dip in and out, and a dizzy Anya realises Gojō Satoru is ambling towards them. The pink-haired boy—he must be a student from Tokyo High—spins around, and his face brightens like a candle.

"Gojō-sensei!" he exclaims. "You're here!"

"Yo!" Gojō waves with his free hand. "Sorry for the wait. I've got your package delivery as you requested, Utahime."

"Isn't that the VP?" someone thunders.

"What? The new VP?"

"Gojō-sensei, wha—"

All of the commotion washes over Anya's ears like white noise. Her attention is consumed by the crumpled figure on the old hospital floor, and the pair of melted brown eyes that meets her own. She wonders if Ayumi sees their father in her black obsidian eyes. Anya has spent her whole life trying to please him, to emulate him, until the parts that are herself have bled out in an unseemly pool around her. She's not sure which she'd rather Ayumi see: the drunkard man that had abused and scarred her, or the sister that had made empty promises and left her.

The world tilts as Anya falls, her cloak slipping loose from her torso. Gojō Satoru has let her go, and she collapses with uncharacteristic gracelessness to the foul linoleum. There's dust everywhere, reminding her of how long it's been since she was last here.

Of how long it's been since she'd stood before similar crossroads.

Only she doesn't know what any of the paths mean now. What she's supposed to do. She's bided her time, committed a sin and turned herself into a curse user just to get to this point, but now that Ayumi is finally here before her, she's not sure what she meant to do at all.

Just like a woman, her father's slurred voice spits. Weak. Your resolve is weak. Your body is weak.

You are weak, Anya.

Her French braid, done up so securely and sleekly on her proud raven head, is coming loose. She is unravelling. She had worked so hard to become Grade 1, and to master her own Domain Expansion for a promotion to Special Grade. And then she had taken all that hard work apart when she'd used her Cursed Technique to violate a fellow sorcerer, all to see a sister who does not want to see her. And now that she is here, she is at a loss on what to do. She has worked her way up and torn herself down, and it has all been for nothing.

"Anya."

Utahime is kneeling before her. Anya beholds this weakling—this woman who is both a caregiver and sorcerer, and who has sacrificed nothing—and she's not sure if it's resentment or confusion that colours her voice as she says, "Go away."

"Anya. You know what Ayumi wants." Utahime takes both her hands, and her touch is as warm as her brown eyes. Those eyes, Anya reflects, do not look too dissimilar from Ayumi's.

She does not understand why Utahime is treating her this way. She has stolen Utahime's memories. She has lied to her. Manipulated her.

Hate begets hate. Violence begets violence.

"Sensei," Miwa says tightly. "The Curse is regenerat—"

"You know what she wants," Utahime insists. "Why do you think she went after me? Or why she may go after Takada next? Because we're not the person she wants to hear from."

Anya's mouth parts, but she suffocates on her words as usual. There's a million things to be said, and she's trapped inside the silence of it all—

Utahime jerks upright. A rope of hair is wound around her neck, coiled taut like a garrote. The students burst into a frenzy, but a strained-looking Utahime holds up her hand for them to stop. Gojō has partly lifted his blindfold to reveal an expressionless blue eye, but has not moved otherwise and is watching Utahime intently. Anya knows it need only take him two seconds to wipe Ayumi out.

Icy fear engulfs Anya; fear that Ayumi is about to be exorcised, fear that she—Anya—is about to lose her last chance to say something, to do something before the silence that has haunted her becomes lifelong and forever.

She realises what she must do. Perhaps she has always known. She has struggled with what she is and what she is not for a long time, but today she must let the distinction go.

Today, she wants to be free.

She takes a choking breath.

And then she hums.

It had all started when she'd been little. She'd huddled in the attic, trying to hide from her father when he rampaged the living room, whiskey in hand. Soon enough, she'd heard the resounding thud as he landed on the couch and plunged into a drunken coma. She'd gotten up, not yet wanting to go out and face her reality.

So she'd sifted through the vinyl records inside the attic.

There had been a gramophone, dusty and unused and tucked in the corner of the room. She'd slid the disc in place, and listened. And somehow, she'd come upon a song—about two brothers, living in a parallel universe with a father a mirror image of her own. She'd replayed the song over and over, and by the time she stumbled out of the attic, her cheeks were damp with salt and her mouth, too, tasted like the sea.

She'd gone to visit Ayumi at the hospital that evening, and she'd hummed the melody for the first time by her bedside. And as she watched Ayumi drift peacefully off to sleep, she'd wished she could take a boat and sail them both out to a world oceans away from this one. To a freedom she could taste but could never claim.

But she can see the blue of the sea now as she hums the lullaby one last time today. There are blue sparks drifting everywhere, iridescent and fulgid, and she realises the garrote around Utahime's neck is coming apart. The aquamarine sparks are fragments of Ayumi's dissolving hair, and Anya stares at the thirteen-year-old girl that sits in the centre of the coruscation. The marks on her hospital gown are disappearing, one by one, but her scalp remains bald.

"Ayumi," Anya wrenches out, breaking off mid-song. "Ayumi."

Ayumi smiles, and just like that, the words break like a dam in Anya's throat, and the taste of salt pours out of her.

"I'm sorry," she sobs. "I'm so sorry, Ayumi."

The baby blue sparks continue to grow in number until they deluge the hospital like an intangible ocean wave. Everyone is watching, spellbound—students and teachers—their eyes lit up by the dazzling glow. More and more of Ayumi breaks away, and Anya knows that this time, Ayumi is drifting off in peace to an eternal sleep.

This has been what she has always needed to move on.

Anya lowers her wet eyes, and wishes there was room for her, too, on the boat. But she has been selfish for too long, and setting Ayumi free is the best gift she can give both of them. Soon, the resplendent sparks fade away, as does the scarred young girl that Anya will need and miss for the rest of her life.

But she will not need and miss Ayumi long, she thinks, taking inventory of the sorcerers around her. She is a curse user now. Her sentence will not be a lenient one.

Perhaps it is better this way.

Oddly enough, there's an undercurrent of uncertainty in the corridor. The students are looking at Iori Utahime. Gojō Satoru has slid his blindfold back on and is, too, watching Utahime. The sides of his mouth are raised in a small smile.

"Anya," Utahime says. "Will you step down from the role of VP?"

Anya's own mouth quirks mirthlessly. "If you want my job—"

"I don't want your job. I'm fine as I am. But after what you've done, you can't stay, and I'd like you to leave Jujutsu High permanently."

Anya doesn't show it, but she's bemused. Why is Utahime speaking as if she has a choice? The higher-ups will strip her of her title once she's executed, anyway.

"I'd like you to voluntarily resign and leave Jujutsu High for good," Utahime states briskly, "and we will put this to an end. The kids here will keep quiet—as long as you promise to leave us alone in the future, we will not bother you anymore."

A visible stir ripples through the teenagers, but this time, they don't make an outright objection. Gojō does not react; he continues to watch with a very faint smile.

Anya shakes her head. She does not understand.

She has violated the other woman on all accounts. Stolen her memories. Played with her emotions and desires, told her to deceive her coworkers and students. Potentially sabotaged her relationships. She doesn't see how Utahime can forgive her, and perhaps the sentiment shows in her features, for Utahime speaks.

"I don't forgive you," she says. "I don't think I ever can for what you did. But I can understand what you were thinking, and how you felt. Does that make sense?"

Anya makes to speak, but Utahime isn't done.

"More than that—I don't know exactly what prejudices you were raised with, but I do know they destroyed your sister. And now she's gone. I'm not going to let some rotten system kill another girl after shaping her to become a product of itself. This time, we're going to break the cycle instead of losing someone else. This is the new system I want to make, and for that to happen, I need my students to see and understand it."

Anya is quiet for a while. Vaguely, she wonders if, out there in a parallel universe, the two brothers have lost each other, too, in the trappings of a rotten system. Do they find their way back to the other?

Or do they carve a new path and try to find themselves first?

"Go," Utahime says. "Your father is dead. You don't need to obey him anymore. As long as you don't hurt anyone, do what you want to do, Anya."

She gets to her feet, her beaten abdomen pulsating. No one, not even Gojō Satoru, makes a move to stop her, nor do they utter a word. She turns for the ajar glass doors. There's a breeze slipping through the opening, and it winnows into her long raven hair, pulling her tresses loose until they spring like wings, free from her French braid.

Free.

She is free.

"I accept your proposition," Anya says. "Goodbye, Iori-san. And…" She hesitates. "Thank you."

She is rocked by the enormity of Utahime's role today—by the woman she'd always deemed weak and mediocre. Had the other woman not been here, Gojō or the teenagers would have exorcised Ayumi on the spot. And Anya would be executed with the guilt, the self-loathing, the rules and dichotomy she'd made herself live by her whole life.

But now, she is not a sorcerer, or a caregiver.

She is Anya, and she hopes to try to figure out who that is and what that means before all else.

For the second time in her life, she walks out of the hospital onto a new path, where the oceans are deep and endless and the world this time is, perhaps, just a little bluer and brighter than before.

Daffodils.

They're a symbol of new beginnings. Rebirth. Renewal.

They are also Takada-chan's favourite flower, and they are selling like hotcakes outside the entrance of the stadium. It's an excellent business opportunity for a certain florist company to collaborate with Takada's management here. At the moment though, the vendor, slumped on his stool under his umbrella, is grateful for respite. The show has commenced an hour ago, and the concert-goers have thinned out considerably. His temples are throbbing from working in the heat, and he decides no amount of profit is worth this hell.

His respite, unfortunately, does not last. A new wave of people approaches, brandishing tickets. The girl in front—her blue hair is cut in weird asymmetrical bangs—is talking about how Takada had "given the whole class free tickets as an apology to Utahime-sensei". Who Utahime-sensei is, the florist has no idea, but she ought to apologise to him because the teenagers are swarming towards him and demanding flowers. There's a hulking man with his hair in a manbun that's particularly aggressive. He can't be a teenager like the rest of the class, right?

The vendor wipes his sweat and hands out daffodil stems. He notices two people hanging at the back. One of them is a total weirdo—he's freakishly tall and wearing a blindfold for some reason. Is he a pervert? How is he even seeing anything? He's also wearing a jacket despite the heat, his left hand casually tucked in one of the pockets. The person beside him is a woman in miko robes. Maybe a priestess from some shrine? But why is she hanging out with the pervert?

Is it to purify him?

But that's not all. Maybe it's the impending heat stroke making the vendor see things, but he notices that the man and woman's hands occasionally brush each other. Once or twice isn't noteworthy, but it happens again now. Then again, nigh a minute later, when the oblivious students fan out with their daffodils and make a beeline for the entrance.

The priestess's complexion looks ruddy, though the vendor can't tell if it's from the summer heat or something else. "Don't run!" she yells after the teens. "Go in one by one! You're not five—"

"Flower?" the vendor asks reflexively.

"No, thanks—HEY! HOW MANY TIMES MUST I TELL YOU GUYS NOT TO RUN?"

She's loud. Deafening, in fact. The vendor is still wondering if his eardrums are intact when the blindfolded man waves at him enthusiastically.

"One, please!" he says.

The vendor obliges. The man hands him a few coins, tells him to keep the change—except he'd paid exact—and takes the flower. Everyone here is buying the flowers to support Takada and wave them during the show, but the vendor finds himself thinking of the accidental-or-not hand-brushing earlier.

He peers at the priestess. Her back is to him as she stomps after the kids. There's a giant ribbon tied in a bow on her hair, the silk a vivid crimson. He looks back at the blindfolded man, who's eyeing the daffodil stem with clinical interest.

"Gojō-sensei!" a pink-haired boy hollers from the entrance. "C'mon!"

"GOJŌ! What are you waiting for? Hurry up!" shouts the priestess impatiently.

The man—Gojō—waves at her. The daffodil blazes gold in his hand.

"For your girlfriend?" the vendor asks, before he can stop himself. Inwardly, he cringes at once.

The man cocks his spiky head, seemingly from surprise. He pauses, as if considering the question.

"Ah," Gojō says. "My one and only."

And then he's gone, walking to where everyone, some laughing, some bickering, awaits him. Several hands grasp the sides of his zip-up jacket and together, the group disappears past doors into the sea of daffodils on the other side.

Takada's stunning voice carries through the stadium walls, singing the last chorus of Beer Bottle.

My brother's warm as he lives on in me

I smile and hope, that one day we'll meet

Until then, it's time for me

To be as happy as can be.