Work Text:
This is where things stand.
Sukuna is dead. Kenjaku has been sentenced to execution. Power has been restored to Shibuya Station. Japan has just opened its borders to tourists again.
You lost an eye. Gojo lost his powers.
Everyone else is dead and you two are all that’s left of the old jujutsu world.
-
Higuruma calls you into his office on a Saturday.
Since Sukuna’s demise, he’s been given the unwieldy task of rebuilding the jujutsu sect, acting as conduit—or spokesperson—between the real world and your world.
He’s on the phone when you walk in. As he nods at you to take a seat, you assess the state of his office. It’s filled with unpacked boxes, leather-bound books, and plaques denoting his many promotions. And there are many of them, of course. Having enacted more than a hundred international laws and sanctions in the span of a year, he’s been awarded both a medal of honor from the emperor and a Nobel Peace Prize.
You take a seat in front of his desk and cross one leg over the other, waiting for him to finish. As soon as he hangs up, he lets out a sigh. He pauses a moment, as if to reassemble his train of thought, before meeting your gaze.
“I heard you’re planning to resign,” he says.
You don’t look surprised. “Who spilled the beans?” When he doesn’t answer immediately, you go on. “One of the higher-ups?”
“I have my sources on the ground,” he replies, rubbing his temples; trying to buff out the dents of an oncoming headache. “Is there anything I can say to talk you out of it?”
“Not really. You know I’ve been meaning to retire for a while now.”
He lets out a scoff, half-incredulous and half-disappointed. “You must be like, what, 10 years younger than me?”
“Nine years,” you say. “But Shibuya aged me 20 years, so. You do the math.”
He lets the thought settle to some level of agreement. “And,” you go on, “I feel like I’ve already done my duty to society. I have nothing left to give these people.”
“The higher-ups, you mean.”
He’s more astute than you’ve been led to believe. “We’ve had our disagreements, sure.”
“What kind of disagreements are we talking?”
You shrug. “Nothing you can fix.” Nothing you could understand. You don’t have the heart to tell him the grudge runs deep; that it isn’t about the job or the technical college. That it’s strictly personal, and therefore, petty.
He glances at the black patch shielding your left eye. He looks like he wants to say something about it but decides to rein back whatever thought he has in mind. “That’s too bad,” he says despondently. The mourning period doesn’t last long as he switches over to a different train of thought. “I’ll cut to the chase then. Gojo hasn’t answered his phone in almost two months.”
It's silent for a moment as you try to make sense of his request. “I fail to see how that’s my problem,” you decide, thinking it’s the diplomatic thing to say.
He blinks at you. “The two of you are friends…” As he studies the apathetic look on your face, he sounds a little less sure of himself. “Aren’t you?”
“We’re acquainted, yes.”
Again, he just stares. “You … don’t feel any sense of camaraderie towards him as sorcerers?”
“Are you friends with all your coworkers at the old law firm you used to work at?”
A beat. “Point taken.”
He waits for you to elaborate a bit more, but you don’t. “Okay then,” he says, recalibrating this new piece of information into his frame of reference. “Go check in on him for me and make sure he’s still alive.”
As he returns to his computer, you ask, “You want me to play babysitter?”
He doesn’t miss a beat. “You still have your two-week’s notice, don’t you?”
-
As you pull into the Gojo estate, you find yourself rolling your eyes.
The groundskeeper, a congenial old man in a traditional blue kimono, guides you into the proper parking space and you take in the sight around you. Acres of grassland, a compound of nondescript minka houses, and a stone garden that reeks of something primordial; something deliberate and old.
You step out of your car and untuck a box of cigarettes from your coat pocket. You start smoking while the groundskeeper comes over to greet you. “You must be from the Technical College,” he says.
With pursed lips, you blow the smoke the other way. “Sorry to bother you on a Sunday,” you say, though you don’t sound very apologetic about it at all. “Higuruma sent me to check on him. Is he around?”
“Ah. You must be the girl.” The lines around his eyes deepen as his lips curl up to form a smile. He looks like he knows you already, despite having only met you. “I’m afraid the young master hasn’t been home in two weeks.”
The girl. You let that sit for a moment before tapping off the excess ash from your cigarette. “Do you have any leads on where he might be?”
He lets out a soft chuckle. “Unfortunately not. He comes and goes as he pleases. Like the wind.” A pause. “It's been that way since Shibuya.”
You feel something heavy sink inside your chest. As you take another drag of your cigarette, you glance at the open gates of the compound. The workers: still wandering the halls with places to be, chores to do. Even in Gojo’s absence, the world keeps spinning.
“All right then,” you say, offering him a small smile. “Guess that means I’ll just have to try a little harder.”
You finish off the rest of your cigarette before stomping out the stub with the heel of your boot. “Thanks for your help, ojisan,” you tell him. “Sorry for smoking on your property.”
He nods only vaguely in response. As you open the door to your car, he calls out, “When you find him—”
You stop, one leg lodged in the driver’s seat while your other leg remains planted on the gravel road.
“Just tell him,” he says with a sigh, “that we cleaned his closet for the winter.”
-
Your next stop: his apartment.
Since it’s located on the campus of Jujutsu High, you’d say it’s more of a glorified college dorm. The kitchenette has only one stove-top. The bed is twin-sized. The bathrooms and showers are communal.
As you pilfer through his mini-fridge—taking note of the expiry dates on the milk, the eggs, and the various sweets he has lying around—you think: why would anyone want to live this way? Surrounded by students, resigned to the life of a perpetual bachelor, with no space for privacy?
You start tossing the expired stuff in a plastic bag to dispose of later. Then, after you’re done, you take a seat on the kitchen floor, dragging your index finger against the wall. There’s a film of dust encasing it. You give the air a sniff and find that it smells stale.
You can tell he hasn’t been here in almost a year.
You realize only then that the last time you did this was when Nanami died. And then, after that: Utahime. Because neither of them had any immediate family living in Tokyo, and because you had the most surface-level interactions with them, you had volunteered to shoulder that task by yourself.
-
Outside, students line the halls, pushing carts filled with luggage and foldable furniture. Ready to move in for the new school year, they’re bubbling with the fever of a youthful splendor that you no longer understand. As you make your way past a circle of teenage girls showing off their collection of idol cards, you suddenly feel an ache in your chest.
“That’s definitely fake,” one of them says. “You can tell from the way the corners are cut.”
“Where did you even get it?”
“This seller on Instagram. I traded for it though.”
“Instagram? Are you, like, 50? No one uses that app anymore.”
Their voices peter off slowly as you move towards the parking lot, where a caravan of parents are in the middle of unloading their minivans. When you reach your car, you take out another cigarette from your coat pocket, pop a window, and start scrolling through your phone.
When you open your Instagram app, you’re immediately greeted by the login screen. As you stare at the page, wracking your mind for the right e-mail, you start thinking about the night you decided to make one.
This was back when you were studying for finals at Jujutsu High. Shoko had barged into the library, where you had holed up with a mountain of textbooks and convenience store snacks, and started rambling about this brand-new app that everyone was apparently using.
The two of you had just obtained your very first smart phones and the apps available, for the most part, were droll. Fake lighters, fake flashlights, and fake beers, things that lost their novelty after two uses. You were excited by the thought of something new. You thought it would change the way you used your phone.
Because the ruckus had been so loud, Utatahime had decided to butt in from her studies, which led to a chain effect that saw Nanami, Haibara, and Gojo joining in too.
You input your old high school e-mail, now defunct. Then you input your old password, the same password you still use today. The same password that prompted Higuruma to encourage you to get a password key.
It leads to a blank page. A default avatar in grayscale. And a following count in the single digits.
No photos.
After you made your account that night, you never logged in again. It hadn’t been a deliberate choice, so much as it was something you overlooked. You made the account impulsively, as to partake in a shared experience with your friends, but then you never felt the need to log-in again. You have a somewhat vague memory of Gojo’s following count rising to the thousands overnight after he snapped a selfie of himself in bed, but you don’t know if that’s true or of it’s just a thought you conjured from the depths of your imagination.
You click into Gojo’s profile, tapping off the ash from your cigarette through the small gap of your window. As you take another drag, you find that the last photo he posted was at a cabaret club from three days ago. Girls in short dresses surround him on a soft lounge couch, one of them coaxing him with her cheek pressed against his chest.
Suddenly: a new photo pops up in his feed.
It’s him.
At the club.
Drinking.
-
You think this is the only place in the world where it’s normal to pay hundreds of dollars to black out.
The liquor is almost always watered down, probably expired. The bar area is always filled with horny guys in search for an easy lay. The music is a relic of whatever dance-pop or mumble-rap leftovers that was chronically overplayed in the 2010s. The women here are either too young to know any better; or too old, trying to recapture a relic of their youth that they think they missed out on.
As you push your way through the throng of people, shoving past girls in sequin dresses and guys with pit-stains in their knock-off Brooks Brothers’ button-ups, you think to yourself: you are quitting after this. Screw your two-week’s notice. You’re done.
Among the crowd, Gojo is easy to spot.
His hair’s a problem, for one. And so is his height. He sticks out like a sore thumb, like he doesn’t belong, despite his best efforts to present otherwise. For many, many years, you always considered him this out-of-reach entity that should only be ogled and admired from afar. Even at school—even at Jujutsu High, where you sat in on the same classes, took notes from the same teacher, and went on the same missions—you always felt like you were watching him from the outside. It was a forced proximity that necessitated your friendship; and you looked at him the way you looked at most of your grade-school friends.
Temporary.
“Gojo!”
He continues swaying mindlessly like an automaton. Miffed, you just stare at him, wondering if this is really him or if it’s just a hologram of a silver-haired dickhead pretending to be him. It's only when someone rams into your shoulder that you snap out of your reverie and shove them aside.
“Gojo!” You call out his name at the top of your lungs, but he continues gyrating in that ridiculous, ungainly way that tells you he might not even conscious anymore. As you get closer, you realize he looks different. Skinnier, somehow. Underneath the lights, his pale white hair has turned a morose shade of blue. “Gojo—”
You slap your hand on his shoulder to get his attention, but he just brushes you off. Doesn’t even look your way. It doesn’t surprise you he doesn’t recognize who you are. In the dark, you could be any other girl in this club, desperate to forget. Desperate to be someone else.
For a while, he just continues dancing like one of those inflatable men at a car dealership. Arms and legs akimbo, with no sense of spatial awareness. Head empty, no thoughts.
After a long moment of deliberation, you knock him out cold.
-
The drive back is silent.
He drifts in and out of consciousness, murmuring sweet nothings that follow no logic or reason. You frown at him every once in a while, hoping to make your displeasure known. He lets out an obnoxious snore that indicates he’s blissfully unaware.
After about half an hour on the road, you start relaxing in your seat.
The streetlights start disappearing as you pull onto the campus path. Skyscrapers get supplanted by gates; by trees. With only your headlights lighting up the pathway, it looks so ominous—so eerie—like anything could jump out and drag you into the darkness.
You glance at your watch. 1:04am. Then you glance at Gojo again. His face still looks the same. You don’t know why this fact surprises you so much. For some reason, you’d expected to see him more rugged, more beat-up. With more scars. More wear and tear. You think about the last time you really looked at his face, which was years ago, back when you two were still students at Jujutsu High.
You were tasked with passing on a note to one of your teachers, which is where you found Gojo, lounging in the back of a classroom.
He’d started some kind of poker ring during their lunch break—he was surrounded by people, upperclassmen and underclassmen alike—and you’d watched him for a while from the doorway. He’d been so engrossed in the game that he didn’t notice you there. Eventually you turned around and left.
“Ugh…”
Glancing over at the passenger seat, you find him awake, staring out the window at his own reflection. You shake off the old memory and gather yourself.
“You started drinking,” you say.
He starts rolling down his window. Cold wind sweeps through the caverns of your car and you feel a shiver run down your spine. “It’s nice to see you too,” he states acerbically. “Did the higher-ups send you?”
“Higuruma, actually.”
“Oh.” There’s something wounded in his tone. “I see.”
Another beat. Then silence. As you pull into the dorms, neither of you speak until you park in the reserved spot outside his apartment. “The students just moved in today,” you tell him. “So be careful.”
“I know.” He waits a beat. “Thanks for the lift.”
“Yeah, sure.”
As soon as he opens the door, he collapses.
You stare at his limp body for a moment before glancing at your watch again. 1:13am.
You get out of the driver’s seat. As you round the front of the car, you reach into your coat pocket for your box of cigarettes. You have it lit by the time you find him on the ground, settled in the fetal position.
Squatting down, you blow smoke in the opposite direction. “You good?”
“No,” he mutters.
You wait a beat, dabbing off the excess ash before taking another long drag. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, what is it?”
“Tell me how much you saw in your domain expansion,” he says; and then he passes out.
-
As you lay him down in his dorm room bed, he says, “All our friends are dead.”
A beat. “Yeah,” you reply. You pick up the empty bin from underneath his standing desk and place it at his bedside. “I’m leaving now. Remember to call Higuruma in the morning.” A beat. “And try not to throw up on the floor.”
As you make your way to the door, you hear him rustling. Glancing over your shoulder, you find that he’s propped himself up against his bedframe. “You were always better suited for the real world,” he says, gazing out the window. “I always envied that about you.”
You wonder if this is coming from a place of sincerity or resentment. You decide it’s best not to waste your time dissecting it. “You were always better suited to being a sorcerer,” you tell him, thinking it’s the most political response, even though there’s an ounce of truth withered away in there too. "I always envied that about you."
You open the door and stop to check the time. 2:33am. That’s when Nanami died. You count your traumas by the minutes that pass you by. Holding the frame, you suddenly find that you can’t bring yourself to leave.
“My friends are meeting up this weekend for drinks. We're celebrating my retirement,” you state. “And my new consulting job, I guess. You can come if you want to.”
At this point, he turns his gaze from the window and stares at your back. “But I don’t know your friends,” he says, the words escaping him faster than he can process them.
You pause, not quite turning back to meet his gaze. “If you don’t want to come, that’s fine.”
You close the door before you receive an answer.
-
Friday rolls around.
After finishing up your exit interview, you sign off from work for the last time and head to the izakaya, where your friends are already gathered.
As soon as you arrive, you find them working through their first pitcher of beer. You offer to pay for the next round as you shrug off your coat to hang. One of them—Keisuke, an actor—joins you at the bar, where you wait for someone to take note of you.
Keisuke is handsome in a quiet, unassuming way. The more you look at him, the better-looking he gets. When you first met him, you found it hard to even meet his gaze while holding a conversation.
“Congrats on retiring,” he says. “At the ripe old age of—” He checks the clock for dramatic effect. 8:13pm. “Thirty.”
You give him a knowing look. “Twenty-nine, actually. I’ll be 30 next year.”
“God, I hate you.”
“I’m sure you do.”
The flirtation is mostly a one-way street. You were interested in him when he was dating someone else; and when they split, it was too late. The boat already sailed. The two of you just could never figure out the timing.
When you return to the table, you find them talking about Shibuya. It’s mostly a cursory topic at this point, the same way you might discuss the weather or how things are going at work. You never told them the extent of your work as a sorcerer, so they just assumed you had no involvement with it, that you were a casual bystander, watching from afar, just like them.
You said once that you worked for the government, but you never let them know the extent of your job or what you actually did. Keisuke joked that you were probably a spy, which made you laugh. Your actual resignation seemed to only stoke the flames of that theory.
“So what’re you planning to do before you start your new job?” asks Suzume, the planner of your friends. Within your group, she ended up married to Souma, a financial consultant. “Travel? Get married? Move to a new country?”
She has fantastical ideas of the person she thinks you are because of your naturally secretive nature. But you don’t really have the heart to correct her.
“I—”
You pause, suddenly, catching sight of a familiar silhouette on the other side of the glass door.
Gojo.
He has his phone pressed to his cheek. As soon as he meets your gaze, he hangs up and walks in.
The bell on top of the door rings. Keisuke sees you staring and looks over his shoulder at the new intruder in their midst. “Remember the friend I told you guys about?” You say.
Suzume cocks her head to the side, “The one you said couldn’t make it tonight?”
“Yeah, well, it turns out he did.” You rise from the booth, waving him over. “Go—” A pause, as the first syllable of his name snaps tautly in your mouth like a rubber-band. He makes his way over and you turn back to the table. “Okay everyone, be nice.” Your palms feel sweaty for some reason.
“We’re always nice,” says Keisuke. He exchanges a suspicious look with Souma that does not go unnoticed.
At your age, when you’re introducing a new person into your friend group, people will generally assume it’s because you’re dating him. You have made it clear beyond reproach that Gojo is just a friend, but you have a feeling none of them have taken you seriously about it.
“Satoru-kun,” you say, suddenly, as he arrives at the table. “These are my friends. Keisuke—” You gesture to the handsome man in the booth with the coiffed hair and the kind eyes. Then, to the young woman sitting by the wall. “Suzume.” And finally: to the man who’s sitting across from her at the table. “And that’s her husband, Souma-kun.”
“Nice to meet you all,” he says with a smile.
“I like your hair,” says Suzume cheerfully. “Such a cool color.”
“Thanks,” says Gojo.
As you slot yourself into the booth, he shimmies in next to you. It’s a tight fit. His knee ends up pressed firmly against your thigh like a cement pillar. “We heard you two are childhood friends,” says Keisuke, looking particularly interested.
Just as Gojo opens his mouth to speak, you interject. “Satoru-kun and I went to the same high school,” you state, as if you were reciting facts for a presentation in front of the class. “He was a straight-A student. I did enough to get by. It was a very nice and very normal upbringing. Does anyone want another round of drinks?”
A beat, as they take a moment to digest the diatribe. “I can grab the drinks,” says Gojo, rising from the booth again.
“I’ll go with you.” Keisuke follows right after him and the two of them make their way towards the bar. He says something funny that makes Gojo laugh and suddenly you feel on edge—paranoia settling in like a dense fog—as if the two of them are exchanging secrets about you from far away.
“Jeez, look at them.” Suzume sighs a happy sigh. “Those two are like a walking editorial.”
Souma frowns at the insinuation. “I’m right here, you know,” he says.
When they return, Keisuke slides into the empty seat beside you. Across the table, Gojo gives you a funny look as he sets down the pitcher of beer. It makes you feel self-conscious, like there’s something on your face.
“What?” You ask, glaring at him.
In return, he just sort of shrugs and mouths: Satoru-kun?
Your face reddens. Gojo notices; and so does Keisuke to some extent, but instead of pointing it out, he asks, “What do you do for work, Satoru-san?”
“That depends,” says Gojo with a small smile. “What did she tell you I did?”
-
A few more rounds of beer later, you and Gojo head outside for a smoke break. You check your watch. 11:03pm. The time that Shoko died.
“So you and Keisuke…”
“No.” The answer comes out so quick, it almost sounds defensive. “We’re just friends.”
He lets out a low laugh. “I don’t think he sees it that way.”
“He’s a naturally flirty person. Trust me, I’ve gotten used to it,” you tell him, meeting his gaze. “Kind of like someone else I know.”
“Me? Flirty?” He seems perplexed. “I think you have me confused with someone else.”
As you glance back at the three of them through the glass, you find them laughing; pouring more drinks.
“They don’t know you’re a sorcerer,” he says quietly. You offer only the slightest nod of affirmation. Gojo considers it a moment. “You don’t think they would understand.” A beat, as he studies your face for any signs of confirmation. “Or that they wouldn’t accept you?”
“No. It’s not that,” you sigh, flicking away your cigarette on the ground. “To be honest, I don’t even have a good reason for keeping it secret. It just always felt like something I shouldn’t share.”
“You shouldn’t? Or you couldn’t?”
“Both,” you admit.
He leans against the wall, watching you with half-lidded eyes. “Back when we were students, I used to think you always had one foot out the door. That your heart wasn’t really set on being a sorcerer. You always planned on returning to the real world some day,” he says. “Now I know it goes both ways.”
You let out a cold laugh and check your watch again. 11:24pm. Always forward, never backwards. As you turn around to head inside, you stop yourself in the doorway, hand lingering on the push sign.
“Did it hurt?” You ask. “When you lost your powers?”
He averts his gaze to the ground. “I think it hurt more,” he says, “when everyone else around me died because of it.”
-
After: your group heads to karaoke.
More drinks are poured. Snacks are ordered. Suzume remarks on how young the night feels, how romantic it is. As everyone raises their glasses, Keisuke tells everyone that they should celebrate the fact that they’re alive right now, with new friends in their midst. He encourages a cheer in Gojo’s name.
You’re checking your watch when you clink your glass against theirs, but you don’t drink. 12:03am.
Ever since Shibuya, this has become the norm. Civilian casualties tend to make people reevaluate their own mortalities like they’re nascent things. You like to keep it at the back of your mind, like it’s something to revisit only when you’re old and weathered.
While everyone is chatting, you start browsing through the registry of songs from the books on the table. Gojo catches you stopping at a certain page and inputting the number on the remote. At this point, Keisuke takes a seat next to you and offers you a mic. You say something to him that makes him grin; that makes you smile in a knowing way.
An inside joke.
“So what’s your karaoke song, Satoru-san?” asks Suzume.
As the guitar riff starts, he finds himself studying you. He thinks it takes a certain level of assuredness to be the first person to volunteer and sing karaoke, even among friends. You miss the first verse while fiddling around with the mic, but it doesn’t seem to deter you.
“Probably Subaru?” He says.
Souma relaxes in his seat beside Suzume, draping an arm around her shoulders. “Wow,” he says. “That’s pretty old school.”
“You float like a feather,” you start, closer to speaking than singing. “In a beautiful world…”
“You must have an old soul,” says Suzume, nodding in your direction. “You’re just like her.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. She’s always watching old movies and reading autobiographies written by dead people,” says Souma.
He realizes just then that you’ve curated this whole world outside of jujutsu. With your own folklore and stories; things that people know about you, things that you want them to know.
But I’m a creep, you sing. I’m a weirdo.
He thinks karaoke is mostly reserved for people who are looking to be the subject of humiliation. Over the years, it’s become almost too self-aware. People have become purposefully bad at it, as to be on the same side of the inside joke. Because if you’re not a great singer, you’re either awful or trying too hard; and there’s nothing more embarrassing than trying hard at something you’re not good at.
And you’re definitely not good, but you sure are sincere.
“What the hell am I doing here,” you croon into the mic.
You’re a little off-key. A little off-tune. But this isn’t the kind of song that’s meant to be sung with technical precision. It’s the kind of song you’re meant to lose pace to; the kind of song you’re supposed to scream your lungs out to.
-
It’s 2:33am and you’re driving him home. The numbers are familiar to you now, greeting you like old friends. You see 2 3 3 and you think of Nanami. You think of Shibuya.
It’s quiet. You keep your gaze on the road while he stares out the window at the passing lights. “Your friends are nice,” he says, suddenly.
You make a sound of acknowledgment. “How’d you meet them?” He asks.
“I went to middle school with Suzume. She met her husband in university and he was friends with Keisuke, who was his senior at the time, so he got initiated in the group. We try to get dinner at least once or twice a month just to keep in touch. It’s hard though. As adults, you have to make the effort to actually see people you wanna see.”
“Ah.” Some part of you wants to bring up Shibuya again, but you almost wish he’d bring it up first. Then, as if reading your mind, he asks, “Does your eye hurt?”
You shake your head. He catches you doing so from the corner of his eye. “You never answered the question,” he says.
“Keisuke and I are just—”
“No, about your domain expansion,” he interjects, leaning back in his seat. “You never told me how far into the future you saw.”
“Why do you assume it was the future?”
He leans up against the window to size you up. You look so at ease right now. “Because,” he says, “I know that it has something to do with time.”
“That would be your domain, Gojo.”
“I liked Satoru-kun more.”
You roll your eyes.
As you pull to a stop in front of his apartment, the silence settles again. He unbuckles his seatbelt while you try to look busy, inputting your address into google maps. “Do you wanna do something tomorrow?” He asks, suddenly.
You pause at the suggestion, as if there were a line in the sand designating two pathways forward. And you, standing at the fork in the road.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “What do normal people do on their days off?”
-
Had things gone differently in Shibuya, the two of you wouldn’t be hanging out.
You know this. You know it’s like being forced to work with the popular kid on a group project in school, only to go your separate ways after your presentation is done. The proximity will make you well-acquainted, but when regular life resumes, he’ll return to his group of friends; and you’ll return to yours. You’ll say hello in the hallways occasionally, but you’ll never get the chance to have a meaningful conversation again.
You hate how juvenile it feels, how it brings you back to high school again.
You, standing in the doorframe, watching him from afar, only to turn away at the last minute. You thought: the less you knew about him, the better off you were.
You were always better off not seeing.
-
You meet him at a bookstore in Ebisu at 1:30pm.
It’s a lofty place—six floors total—complete with a Starbucks and a lounge area. You barely make it past the “popular reads” before you see him walking through the automatic doors.
He’s wearing a black peacoat and a pair of combat boots. It doesn’t really suit him, you think. You’re more used to seeing him in a school uniform, or whatever it is he wears to the training grounds. Inundating Suguru and Shoko with whatever new developments he’s made to his training regimen.
You shake the thought off. You don’t know why seeing him has you reminiscing on the past like it’s an intimate friend.
“Gojo.”
His eyes light up behind his sunglasses as he spots you across the room. People notice you noticing him. Then they start really looking at him; whispering about him. He doesn’t seem to care.
“I took the train for the first time in a long time,” he says, coming to a stop before you. Neither of you gesture to hug or shake hands. “Did you wait long?”
“No. I just got here,” you say.
“You're always on time to everything.”
“That's because I can't stand people who are chronically late.”
“Ouch. That felt targeted.”
The two of you start making your way towards the escalator, walking with no sense of urgency or destination in mind. For some reason, you find it difficult to meet his gaze. “How were the trains?” You ask.
“Extremely quiet … and kind of eerie, really.”
“That doesn’t sound like Tokyo.”
“No. It doesn’t.” He says this as if this were an inside joke between you two. You arch a brow, not quite getting it, but not quite having the will to question him about it either.
-
The two of you browse the shelves at your own leisure. You don’t think you’ve ever seen Gojo read a book, but you decide that you don’t actually know him well enough to make assumptions about whether or not he’s really literate.
You end up standing on opposite sides of a shelf in the self-help section. He pulls out a book and meets your gaze through the sliver of empty space. “Can I ask you something?” He says.
“Right now?”
He slots the book back in and appears at the end of your aisle, meandering over like he has all the time in the world. “Why did you quit?”
With a mindless ease, you start parsing through the pages of a particularly thin collection of the most basic life advices. Rule No. 1: The world only gives a shit about what it can get from you.
“Well, for a while, I was thinking about going back to school and becoming a rocket scientist.”
“And?”
“I realized I wasn’t smart enough.”
“Don’t say that.”
You shrug, “I think consulting suits me more.”
“Consulting is the biggest scam of the 21st century.”
In another life, you would’ve taken offense to this, but you feel older than you are, which means you’ve stopped making qualms about things that are true. “I agree,” you say. “But I’ve decided to be more honest with myself about these kinds of things. My 20s was reserved for this constant need to improve myself. No thank you. I’m over it. I’ve accepted who I am."
“She says… as she browses the self-help aisle.”
You slot the book back into its place on the shelf. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand, Gojo.”
“And why is that?”
“Because you’re good at everything,” you say matter-of-factly.
“Guilty.”
You give him a look, “Except being humble.”
You walk past him towards another aisle, and he follows you closely from behind like a lost puppy dog. “I was thinking,” he says, “we should probably to go to therapy.”
“Tried it,” you reply. “Didn’t work.”
You come to a stop in front of the postmodern section and stare blankly at the lineup of familiar names. “Jujutsu and therapy just don’t go well together,” you conclude.
As you scan the shelf for a cover that catches your eye, you go on. “Makes sense,” he replies. “It’s hard enough to find a decent therapist in Japan, let alone one that’s actually familiarized themselves with our line of work. They all probably think it begins and ends with Shibuya, when in reality, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”
“Yeah.” A beat, as you glance over at him. He’s browsing the same section as you with another book wedged underneath his armpit. You wonder when he snagged that. “I’m … glad we can talk about these things.”
You look away before you can see his reaction. He’s probably come to the same conclusion as you have.
You two are the only people left who can talk about these things.
Without warning, he sticks a book in front of your face. The cover looks antiquated.
Victorian poetry.
“Tennyson. The Higher Pantheism. Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?” He says. “I highly recommend. It might take your mind off things.”
A beat. “Writing helps too,” he tacks on.
-
Suzume signs the five of you up for a class over the weekend.
She doesn’t give you much information on what it’ll entail, only that you should bring running shoes, workout clothes, and a bottle of water. You go with the assumption that this is a yoga class—probably something trendy. With goats. Or puppies—so you oblige, putting on your favorite workout shorts, and thinking nothing more of it.
When you arrive, you realize this is not a yoga class.
It’s a kickboxing class.
“So I saw this video on TikTok,” she says as you walk in. “Everyone’s been recommending this gym—they said the teacher’s, like, a super big deal; apparently he did MMA in the states—and I’ve been looking for a good self-defense class, so I thought: why not kill two birds with one stone?”
It’s a lot to digest, but you get the gist of it. You nod in what you hope is a supportive way as you head over to where Souma and Keisuke are stretching on the mat.
Gojo heads over from the water cooler. He’s wearing a black t-shirt and a pair of track pants.
The two of you exchange knowing looks and shrug.
-
Most of the class is aerobics and, to some degree, cardio training. You skip over mats, run suicides across the floor, and punch the air like a carefully coordinated dance.
About half an hour in, people start gassing out and sitting on the floor, including your friends. You and Gojo end up being the last ones standing; victors of the most un-serious battle royale.
As you glance over at him in the mirror, you ask, “Should we be sandbagging ourselves a bit?”
“It’s a little late for that,” he replies.
He looks like he wants to say more, but the teacher calls on you two to join him a huddle and suddenly your conversation gets cut short. “You two obviously have some experience,” he states in an encouraging way, waiting for confirmation.
You shrug. Gojo says, “A little bit, yeah.”
He beams. “How do you feel about putting on a demonstration for the class?”
-
They put gloves on your hands and set you up in the octagon at the center of the room. The instructor offers you both mouth guards, which taste like old, stringy rubber.
The rest of the class get a front-row seat, sitting around the ring like a class of kindergarten students. You can hear Suzume and Keisuke whooping your names.
“Keep it clean,” says the instructor.
You and Gojo nod, as the two of you take your places in the center of the ring. “Don’t go easy on me,” you tell him, but the words are warbled in your mouth.
He just grins back, pointing at you with his glove.
Without warning, he throws you an uppercut, forcing you to tilt left. You answer with a punch of your own—three of them in total—that he evades easily. To everyone else watching, it’s mostly a blur.
“That’s our girl,” says Suzume, taking her phone out to take a video. “Look at her go!”
The blood rushes to your face as he starts getting more aggressive, more forward-standing. You feel the anticipation of something exciting, something unknown. You’ve never sparred with Gojo before—not even in school—so you never thought you’d be standing here now.
Holding your gloves close to your face, you peek out at him through the gap and wonder if he’s thinking the same thing.
You throw another punch that he dodges. It gets rough fast. All that talk about sandbagging, only for it to go right out the window. You start fighting like you mean it. You start fighting with what you’ve you learned before this, beyond the scope of this two-hour kickboxing class. The boundaries between what’s acceptable and what’s unacceptable gets blurred. At some point, the instructor is calling for you two to slow down.
Gojo ends up landing a punch that has you falling to your knees and spitting blood on the floor. The instructor is screaming at you two to stop, but you kick him so hard in the shin he ends up collapsing right next to you. There’s a gasp from the spectators outside the ring. You can hear Suzume sobbing.
But as the two of you are pulled to your feet, Gojo offers you his glove to bump as a gesture of good faith. “You hit harder now,” he says, removing his mouth guard. There’s blood between his gums.
You offer him an even bloodier smile and say thanks.
-
As punishment, the two of you are forced to wait outside in the cold.
You’re itching for a cigarette, but you don’t have it in you to walk back inside and grab your coat. You don’t think you need it at this point, anyway.
8:32pm. The night’s still young, but you feel so old. “You know, I used to have such a crush on you in school,” you tell him.
He looks genuinely surprised. “Seriously?”
“Yeah.” You smile a little at this, leaning against the wall and feeling the cold concrete seep through the back of your t-shirt. “I don’t know if you remember this, but… there was this one time I came to your classroom. You were playing poker during your lunch break with Shoko and Suguru. There was this whole crowd gathered around your table…”
You stop the thought, feeling embarrassed now. “Never mind. I don’t know why I brought it up. It was such an insignificant memory, but I—”
“—I remember you left,” he says.
“You … what?”
“You came in, handed a note to the teacher, and then you stayed in the doorway for a while,” he tells you with a somber smile. “I was shuffling the deck at the time, but when I looked back up, you were gone.”
A beat. “Oh.”
Your face feels hot now, as you turn away, feeling naked somehow and not wanting him to see. The memory feels different now, sacred almost. Like you’ve just discovered a secret cavern tucked away inside its indelicate surface.
-
At the end of October, he invites you to a temple.
It’s the anniversary of Shibuya, so you think the timing is fitting. You decide to dress for the occasion. A black silk button-up and a long, wool skirt. You keep your makeup simple, wanting to look somewhat appropriate for the occasion, but also feeling disingenuous for even trying to look a certain way.
From your apartment, it takes you about 20 minutes to get to the park; and another ten minutes of walking to make it to the shrine.
You find Gojo standing underneath the Tori gate, looking up at the braided shimenawa.
“Gojo!”
He turns around at the sound of your voice. Smile forming on his face as he catches your gaze, making his way over. You do a little jog to catch up with him midway.
“It’s pretty crowded,” you say, thinking it’s a reasonable thing to say. “Looks like everyone else had the same idea.”
“Yeah,” he replies, sticking his hands in his pockets. “I should’ve expected this.”
There are students gathered at the cleansing station, where the two of you wash your hands. As you make your way to the temple, you find a wedding procession taking place on the grounds.
A bride and groom in traditional white shiromuku and black hakama. They’re walking underneath a giant red umbrella, being guided forward by a lineup of temple priests and priestesses. Behind them: family members, wearing kurotomesode. Black kimonos stitched with golden flowers and the most auspicious leaves.
The two of you stop in a quiet corner and watch them from a distance. Everyone else gets sidelined, standing respectfully to watch. You hear a drum being beat in the distance; an old song being sung.
You want to tell Gojo you know of another shrine nearby, but when you look at him, you find that you can’t bring yourself to interrupt. He’s completely engrossed in the pomp and ceremony.
“I’ve never been to a wedding before,” he says.
You can tell the admission comes with an ounce of vulnerability. “You must be a very busy man,” you reply.
“No, I mean, I was never invited to one.”
“Oh.” You’re caught off-guard by this for some reason. “Really?”
“Yeah.” He laughs a little sheepishly at this. “Not a lot of people in our line of work are looking to get married.”
“True. Even the ones who were, like, dead-set on having kids and living in a house,” you say. “Like Utahime.”
“And Nanami.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s crazy. He always made such a big stink about never getting married. Said he was doomed to be a perpetual bachelor.”
“On a surface level, sure,” says Gojo. “But deep down, I think he always wanted to start a family more than anything. More than being a sorcerer, even.”
It’s silent for a moment. “Well, shit,” you say, feeling your eyes well with tears. “That makes me really sad.”
“Sorry.” Gojo looks a little discomfited now. “That’s my fault. Let’s talk about something else.”
“No, it’s fine.” You sigh softly, smiling even though it aches. “You’re the only person I can talk to about these things, so.” A beat, as you start making your way towards the gate. “Besides, the sadness is good sometimes.”
He follows you from behind. You look over your shoulder to meet his gaze. “It means we’re still here,” you say quietly.
-
You invite him to your place after the temple.
It’s a modern apartment, furnished with the most up-to-date appliances and kitchenware. As he removes his shoes, he studies the state of the place. Your living space has a couch, a 70-inch TV, and an expensive-looking coffee table. There’s a hallway leading to your bedroom and a half-bathroom on the way.
“Nice place,” he says, stepping past the foyer daintily, as if he were intruding. It’s alarmingly unlike him. “When did you buy it?”
“A few months ago,” you tell him.
“I should’ve bought you a fruit basket.”
“Please don’t.”
“Why? You don’t like fruit?”
“I love fruit. It’s the baskets I hate. Super wasteful.”
“Huh. I have literally never heard anyone say that before in my life.”
You roll your eyes. You know this is just another meaningless nothing that comes with the territory of getting closer to someone. “Well,” you say, “make yourself at home.”
He obliges, taking a seat on the floor behind the coffee table. You bring over a cup of tea and he fishes for the remote, turning on the last thing you were watching on Netflix.
Two actors on the screen. Lovers, sitting across from one another at a coffee shop. He un-pauses it.
“I could make you really happy,” says the man.
“I know,” responds the woman. Gojo thinks she’s probably a jilted lover of some sort. “But I don’t think what’s what I need right now.” And then she stands up and leaves.
You take a seat on the couch. “Horrible people,” you tell him. “Horrible drama.” He agrees silently as you go on. “I think the problem is men will literally never say things like that in real life. It’s false advertising, really.”
He laughs, “You sound like you know something about it.” Then, a little more carefully: “Are you dating right now?”
“No. I quit.”
“You quit?”
“Yeah. I’m just tired of having to follow all these rules of conduct. Like, talking on the phone—then having to meet them for coffee, or a walk, or whatever it is that’s considered casual. And if things go well, we go to dinner; and then I’m forced to decide whether or not I want to pursue this. It’s just, like, I don’t want to do that anymore.”
“Yeah. I get it.”
“What about you?” You ask.
He shrugs, “I don’t sweat the small stuff anymore. If I find someone, great. If I don’t, whatever. I’ll just die alone.”
You laugh, but it’s followed by a long moment of silence. He takes the other remote on the couch and presses play on the drama. You’ll end up spending about an hour sitting around, eating snacks and drinking tea, until the afternoon fades into evening.
At some point, you excuse yourself to the bathroom. Gojo starts fiddling around your living space, eventually discovering a notebook on your kitchen table. As you return from the bathroom, wringing your hands clean, he asks, “What’s this? Are you taking a college class?”
Once you recognize what he’s holding, you try to tackle him. He moves out of the way, dropping the notebook on your kitchen counter. It splits open.
“Is that… poetry?”
You grab your notebook and snap it shut. Your face is so red you look like a Christmas ornament. “Not a word to anyone,” you mutter. “Or I will kill you.”
He pretends to zip his lips. You sigh, holding the notebook to your chest as you make your way down the hall towards your bedroom. His meandering gaze stays on the vacant spot you’ve left. After a moment of contemplation, he decides to follow you in.
In your bedroom, he discovers you sitting on the edge of your bed, facing the window. You’ve taken off your cardigan, wearing nothing but a black tank-top and your jeans. He notices you pulling up the lacy strap of your bra. He wants to tell you it looks more delicate somehow, hanging off your shoulder like that.
But he suddenly feels weird about it, like he’s being a voyeur in a private sanctuary that you’ve constructed. As he turns to leave, you say, “Sit with me?”
A pause. Once he takes the first step, he doesn’t stop. Casual as ever—hands in his pockets—as he takes the empty space beside you. The mattress dips with his added weight and the gravity of his mass has you leaning against him. You relent at some point and press your cheek against his shoulder.
He feels sturdy.
“I don’t envy you, Gojo,” you say softly.
“What do you mean?”
You pull back and meet his gaze, the endless depths of blue. “It must’ve been hard,” you say, letting the words sit on your tongue as your eyes fall down to his lips, “being alone for so long.”
He reaches out slowly to brush away a lock of hair away from your face. His thumb lingers on your ear as he studies the spirals in it; then, as he rakes his fingers against your scalp, his fingers dig in gently and he pulls you in closer until your lips are only centimeters away.
“I think it suits me better,” he says, breath hot on your face; and then he kisses you.
-
In the aftermath, you slip on your tank-top and walk over to the window with a box of cigarettes in your hand. Your watch tells you it’s 1:24am. For once, you want it to mean nothing.
Gojo watches you from the bed. Your underwear has a dull, black sheen, like oil. You pop a window and the cold air seeps into your room, making goosebumps rise on your skin.
You light your cigarette and inhale. “You said you wanted to know how far into the future I could see in my domain expansion,” you say, expelling smoke and tapping off the excess ash from the butt-end of your stick. “How did you know I could see something in the first place?”
He rolls onto his side and leans up against one clenched fist. “My powers are based in the laws of gravity,” he says. “Tengen always said there was someone else who would fulfill the other side of that coin.”
“Meaning?”
“Time,” he says.
You pause, taking another drag of your cigarette before expelling it again. “I was doing some consulting work with an astrophysics company,” you tell him. “And they posited a theory that if you relocated the openings of a wormhole, time would elapse differently at each end depending on its gravitational pull. So on one end, you could be witnessing the beginning and end of humanity across a millennia; and on the other end, three seconds could have elapsed.”
“Is it true?”
You flick away the remaining ashes of your cigarette. “Maybe. Maybe not,” you say. “I’m more interested in the idea of changing the future to change the past; that it can go both ways, no matter which end you start at. A world where I didn’t lose my eye and you didn’t lose—” A beat, as you stomp out the remains of your cigarette stub in the tray at your bedside. “Do you think that’s possible?”
For some reason, he knows his next answer will alter how you see him in ways that he doesn’t understand.
“Yes.”
After mulling over it for what seems like forever, you stand up and start putting on your clothes. “Come on,” you tell him. “I wanna see the train station.”
“Right now?”
“Yeah,” you smile. “Right now.”
-
9pm and everything is empty. Since Shibuya, most people have picked up driving and forgoing most public transit. As you walk through the station, you realize it feels like the beating heart of Tokyo has been gouged out of its body.
Gojo has his hands in his coat pockets as he approaches you from behind. The two of you refill your passes, scan through the terminal, and head into the underground walkway. Once the train arrives, you filter in—one right after the other—and take a seat by the door.
“It’s like a ghost town,” you say.
He leans back against his seat, “Yeah.”
It’s quiet again, as the two of you watch the stations pass you by. Your reflections get muddled in the reflection of the glass. You look like lifeless mannequins. You want to say something, but find that all the small talk's run out. It feels like there's nothing left to salvage here, that you're shuffling through the soiled aftermath of an old ruin.
“I should’ve died that day,” he says, quietly.
There it is. Out in the open: a festering wound hiding underneath a veneer of apathy.
“It’s been years, but I keep telling myself that everyday. And I can’t seem to stop.”
The train pulls to a stop at Shimbashi Station. The doors open to an empty platform; then they close again.
“I know,” you tell him. Not knowing what else you can say to ameliorate the situation, you nod your head and say “I know” again.
-
The two of you get off at Kanda and start waiting for the train back. “Your birthday is coming up,” you say, leaning against a pillar by the track. “We should do something.”
“I’m flattered you remember,” he says. A strange return to form, but you’ll let it slide. “What were you thinking?”
“I don’t know. It’s cold in December,” you say. “So maybe somewhere with a view?”
“Okay.” He joins you at the pillar, leaning against it beside you and forcing you to budge over. “I think I have something in mind.”
-
The days go idly by. The weather gets colder; the people in the streets get sparser. You fill your time, cleaning up your new apartment, unpacking the old boxes you stored away in your closets.
Gojo invites you to the estate on your day off. You decide to put on your winter kimono, which is a task unto itself, as it has you rummaging through the storage unit of your closet that you’ve yet to sort out. You’d skipped out on koromogae this year—the seasonal changing of clothing—mostly because you ended up busying yourself with other things. Other people.
Your mother was a kimono collector; some of her traditions ended up rubbing off on you despite your best efforts to fight against it.
You go with a simple dark blue fabric; and a more intricate obi, covered in glazed lilies and frostbitten landscapes. You tie it up with a white obijime and assess your final look in the mirror you have posted by the door. You think you should’ve worked on your hair a little more, but you wonder what all that effort is for.
-
He’s waiting for you outside the gates.
Like you, he’s also decided to don a kimono in a dark shade of blue. As you get out of your car, you take a look at your fit, then his again. You’re matching.
“Nice outfit,” he says.
“Shut up,” you say back.
-
He walks you through the grounds, introducing you to the many minka houses belonging to the estate. On the way, people stop and bow in greeting, and he pays them no heed; treats them as if they were ornaments on the wall.
It has you thinking about his childhood, which you know is atypical. Unlike him, you grew up with two very normal parents. The weirdest thing they ever did was accidentally set your trash can on fire, but you think that’s almost a mercy compared to the horror stories you’ve heard about other people’s parents.
The groundskeeper—that congenial old man you met the other day whose name you learned is Shinichi—takes you to the tea house, which is mostly a small extension of the garden. You and Gojo kneel down in the seiza position on the tatami mat, as he opens the honden doors to the view.
“Wow,” you say. “It’s beautiful.”
Outside, it’s just begun to snow, eclipsing the stone garden in a light film. One of the caretakers starts preparing the tea. Preheating the chawan cups with hot water, and whisking matcha until it foams. Old rituals that’ve been mostly displaced by the need for convenience; for time.
The two of you drink in silence; listening to nothing and taking in the smell, the taste of everything. You want to tell him there was a moment earlier, back when you first sat down, where you wanted to laugh about how formal this felt, how disarming it was; but you’re settled in now and thinking. It’s okay embracing the strangeness. The stillness.
“I wrote you something,” you say, “for your birthday.”
He arches a brow. “Really?”
Your face turns red almost immediately. “I’m not a poet,” you state. “So don’t make fun of me, okay?”
“You wrote me a poem?”
A sigh, as you reevaluate. “I should just die.”
“Okay, but before you do that, read me my poem first.”
He wants to tease you more about it, only to stop himself when he sees that you’re trying to be sincere. He nods at the caretakers to dismiss themselves. They bow their heads and oblige, leaving through the sliding doors.
Once they’re shut, you reach into your sleeve and pull out a folded sheet of paper. It reminds him, suddenly, of the day you showed up in his classroom. You were standing in the doorway—
“Oh, I can’t do this,” you mutter, folding it right back up and shoving it back into your sleeve. You stand up from the tatami mat and step outside right into your shoes. “I’m just going to give you your gift and go.”
He just continues staring at you in that puzzled way before rising up to follow you.
Snow collects in your hair in a light dust as you take a step closer to the garden, facing away from him.
“I’m going to show you my domain expansion,” you say.
-
The light dissolves; the darkness soaks in slowly, turning the world black. He can’t see you, but he can feel your hand on his. “It’s this way,” you tell him.
He follows you, despite not knowing where he is; or where he’s going. When you come to a stop, he gets a whiff of your hair. You smell like something warm and clean, like snow.
“Here.”
He catches the sheen of something glimmering. “Is that…” He takes a step closer, feeling your hand squeeze his. “A mirror?”
When he looks deeper into it, he sees a glimpse of Shibuya Station. Sinewy creatures of the dark, writhing in tunnels, like worms and maggots. Nanami, walking the halls alone, searching for someone to save. Megumi, shouting commands to an ether of nothingness. Itadori—
“After I activated my domain, the higher-ups had me create lines to different points in time,” you explain. “The seers at the Technical College foresaw Shibuya as a breaking point, so they had me make one here too.”
A pause. “7:13pm,” you say.
“What?”
“7:13pm,” you say again. “That’s when I arrived on the scene. I…”
You realize there’s no point in explaining the technicalities. “The higher-ups told me not to tell you. It took so much to kill Sukuna, and they were afraid you’d be a liability, that you’d try something stupid. They didn’t think it was worth the risk,” you go on. “But really, I think they wanted the old world of jujutsu to die with you. And me.”
“That’s why you quit?”
You nod, though he can’t see. You know at this point, you’ve already committed treason on the highest scale.
Gojo continues staring into the portal. You loosen your grip around his hand and take a step back.
“Go on then,” you say. “Your friends are waiting for you to save them.”
He tries to search for you in the darkness. “But they’ll come for you,” he says.
“I can handle it,” you tell him. “Just…”
Your eyes well up with red hot tears and suddenly you can’t find the words.
“When you go back, I might not be the me you know,” you say, feeling your throat constrict. “So.”
You try to gather yourself, only to find it all slowly coming apart at the seams. So find me, you want to tell him. Make me fall in love with you again. But it just seems so trivial—so deliberately selfish—when the rest of the world is at stake.
You clear your throat, still feeling raw. “And … one more thing,” you say. “There’s a theory.”
“Another one.”
You can’t help but laugh, as a single tear streams down your cheek, hot and sticky. “When you change the future, you also change the past,” you explain, the words feeling vacant in your mouth, like someone else is saying them. “I don’t put any stock into that idea, but I feel like I should do my due diligence of saying so before you go.”
“And what makes you think I’ll go?”
“Because you’re you, Gojo,” you say softly. “You're the strongest.”
Without warning, he cups your face with his palms and presses his lips against yours. He tastes your tears, your hurt. “Read me my poem on the way out, will you?” He says.
You feel him let go of your hand. You hear him moving forward.
As he makes his way through the mirror, he sees the space around him dissolve, but he can still hear your voice. Trembling, as everything around him becomes warbled.
And a grove will learn your name, Gojo Satoru
In a whisper from an old arbor tree.
And a monk will chant a sutra in his faith,
To you, Gojo Satoru.
And a singer will sing you praise,
Gojo Satoru,
They’ll sing your name.
And there were no parades thrown,
No balladeers writing,
No painters painting,
Before you were born,
Gojo Satoru.
They will not find you,
In your usual haunt.
They will find you in the bounty of summer; the song of spring,
The wrinkles in the ocean; the wind underneath the eaves,
When you were born,
A court lady with black teeth,
And a bard carrying his father's lute,
And a writer holding a feather quill,
Said:
You are the reason why priests love demons,
Why ants are spurned by the sun,
Why colonies are born; and why civilizations die.
And what an auspicious day it is,
That you were born today, Gojo Satoru.
“Happy birthday.”
*
*
*
*
The veil's been cast. The stage is set. Shibuya is about to burn.
As he leaps over the crowd, glancing at the broadcast on the jumbotron screen, he finds you standing by the East Exit in your trench coat. You're getting off your phone, turning to the stairs, ready to head down into vacuum of darkness awaiting you.
7:13pm. He appears before you in a flicker. You flinch, taking a step back. “What the fucking hell,” you hiss. “You scared the shit out of me.”
He cups your face and kisses you. For about three seconds, you're frozen, unsure what to do; unsure if you even want this. But as he pulls back, he tells you, “7:13pm. Don't forget.” And suddenly all your misgivings disappear.
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Here’s where you are.
A year has passed since Shibuya. Sukuna is dead. Kenjaku has been sentenced to execution. Power has been restored to Shibuya Station. Japan has just opened its borders to tourists.
Utatahime got married. Nanami moved to Malaysia. Shoko picked up a job consulting in the private sector. Everyone else is alive and well.
Including you.
Including Gojo.
-
They’re serenading him happy birthday when you walk in.
You shimmy towards the back of the crowd, where you find Higuruma standing. He shakes his head at you, probably for being an hour and a half late, but you drown out the disapproving look by joining in on the sing-along; pretending to be none-the-wiser.
After the candles are blown out, guests begin regaling Gojo with goodbyes on their way out. It was fun. Keep in touch. See you next week. Higuruma hands you a beer, which you have no problem taking. “I drove Utahime to the airport, okay?” You say, already on the defense. “I was being a good friend.”
He blanches, “That’s a two-hour drive.”
“Like I said, I was being a good friend.”
“Hey, you’re late.”
Gojo appears with a toothy little grin on his face. You glance at Higuruma, who just sort of shrugs at you before taking off towards the bar.
“I wrote you a card,” you say, reaching into your bag to procure an acceptably-sized envelope. He takes it from your hand and starts opening it, only for you to stop him. “Please read it later.”
“Why?” He tucks the envelope into his pocket. “Did you write me a sonnet or something?”
“Haha … yeah…” Whatever the fuck that means.
It’s … awkward. The two of you haven’t spoken that much since you were students at the Technical College. After graduating, you and Utahime decided to move to Kyoto and he stayed stationed in Tokyo to man the fort. You kissed that one time, but neither of you have addressed it since, for reasons mostly unexplained on his part; and you decided that was probably for the better. It wasn't in your nature to pry, anyway.
Shibuya had you returning to the city and living out of your suitcase in stuffy hotels and conference rooms. Between meeting with the higher-ups and figuring out the future of jujutsu, you haven’t been able to find time to go home.
“You wear your hair down now,” you say. “It looks nice.”
“Thanks.” He twirls a lock around his index finger before letting it go. “I heard you stopped smoking.”
“…who told you that?”
He just grins, reveling in it: the tension. You, however, do not. “All right then. I’m … gonna go catch up with the others,” you say, glancing over at Shoko, who’s smoking outside. “Happy birthday, Satoru-kun.”
“Satoru-kun.”
“What’s that?”
“Nothing. You said my name.”
Confused, you just stare at him. “Right.” At this point, you’re starting to feel like you’re on the outside looking in on someone else’s inside joke. “I’m just gonna head ov—”
“You’ve been staying at The Garden, right?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“That’s in Ginza?”
“Unfortunately,” you say, somewhat unsurely. You don’t know why talking to him always puts you on edge, like you’re being judged by someone. “But … I’m hoping to get out of here tomorrow.”
“That’s too bad. I was going to ask if you wanted to go to the temple with me next week.”
It catches you off-guard, how plainly he speaks about these things. You decide not to put any stock into the insinuation. You tell yourself he’s just being Gojo, lackadaisical and casual as can be. You tell yourself—
There’s a part of him that sounds sincere.
After reconsidering it for a bit, you start chewing on your lower lip. “Do you, um …” A beat. “Wanna go for a walk, maybe?”
He blinks at you. “You sure? You just got here.”
“Yeah,” you tell him with a smile. “I’m sure.”
*
*
*
*
*
The hallways of Jujutsu High reek of history.
As you walk through, you start thinking about the many sorcerers who walked through before you. When you arrive in front of Murata-sensei’s classroom, the thoughts dissolve.
The door’s open; there’s bustling about. Students are gathered in groups, eating lunch. You find him sitting at his desk, reading a newspaper.
After a brief moment of hesitation, you walk in. “This is from Yamazaki-sensei,” you say, placing the note on the table.
Murata glances up from his newspaper, reaching for it. He doesn’t thank you, just nods for you to dismiss yourself, which you do.
As you head to the door, you hear from a cacophony of laughter.
Holding the doorframe, you glance at the back of the classroom, where you find Gojo holding court. He’s playing with a deck of cards in his hands, explaining the rules of the trade, while his cohorts surround him in a tightly knit circle. Shoko’s pointing out something about the cards; how they’re stacked in a funny way.
You observe them for a good few seconds before turning away.
As you make your way down the hall, you find your thoughts meandering again. Things like: what you’re going to eat for lunch, when you’re going to find time to do your homework, if you’re going to see your parents over the weekend.
Someone calls your name.
You stop, turning around halfway to find Gojo doing a light jog to catch up with you.
You’re already conjuring excuses for him in your head: the teacher is probably calling for you. He changed his mind and wants to send a note back. You should probably return to the classroom and get that done.
“Do you wanna join us?” He asks.
You pause. “Huh?”
He sticks his hands in his pockets and shrugs his shoulders in a cool, casual way. “We’re playing cards right now,” he says, as if to attempt a different avenue of coercion. He wonders if he sounds contrived. The more he thinks about it, the more his cheeks turn pink. “I’m just saying … you should join us. It’ll be fun.”
Oh.
You realize this is an invitation.
After debating it in your mind for a while, you realize there's no harm in it.
“Yeah,” you say, smiling. “I’d like that.”