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Winter, they say, is a dying season, but in the deep woods of Kyoto it is a womb.
Snow heaps upon the knotted roots of giant cedars and glazes their gnarled branches. There is nothing here, save for a weathered shrine behind a torii gate nestled among the ice, and a gathering of figures draped in ceremonial garb. They are stiff with tradition, faces shadowed beneath the brims of lacquered hats.
The stone steps leading up beneath the gate have been swept clean, though the effort seems futile. The snow continues to fall.
Standing in the front of the gathering, at the top of the stone steps, is a young man.
His hakama sways slightly in the winter wind, and the layered fabric of his haori is so fine it seems to catch the light and bend it, making him the brightest thing in a world of snow. His hair is stark white, too, catching what sun filters through the trees, and his eyes are bound by black cloth. He is young, probably too young for what’s to come, yet his bearing is that of one who has decided that the burden of fate is not heavy enough to make him kneel.
He has just turned eighteen.
When the ceremony begins, it is as much theater as it is tradition. The shrine stands silent, unmoved, having seen countless young men stand where this one stands. It does not care, but the people do. Their gazes are dark, and all of them rest on the boy in white.
He recites oaths when required, bows when required, and finally sits before a low wooden table. Upon it, papers are spread. The ink is so fresh that the falling snow causes the kanji to bleed.
He signs his name, and thus marks the death of one era and the birth of the next.
Gojo Satoru.
Clan Head.
The murmurs begin almost immediately. Congratulations ripple through the crowd, and an elder, wrinkled and draped in layers, steps forward.
“Gojo-sama,” he says in a thin and papery voice, “what is your first order?”
Satoru tilts his head as if he had not been anticipating this question for weeks. Snowflakes hover midair around him, caught between falling and flying.
Finally.
.
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.
.
The road is empty, stretching long and gray beneath the pale winter sun. Satoru rocks on his heels and glances at the farmhouse in the distance. It is small and stooped, its roof sagging slightly under the weight of time. A crooked chimney curls a thread of smoke into the sky. The fields around it are patchy and frostbitten.
Winter is a dying season, after all.
The air smells of hay and ash and something faintly sweet. Satoru inhales deeply, but the scent does little to soothe him. His breath fogs on the exhale, and for the first time in a long time, Gojo Satoru feels nervous.
He stays by the road for longer than he should, delaying until it becomes unbearable, and then he moves, crunching over hard dirt and frost.
The farmhouse rises before him. It feels small, this place, smaller than any room he’s ever slept in. Yet the fields stretch wide around it, scarred and furrowed. He wonders what it would take to coax life out of soil like this, and whether it’s anything like what it takes to wield his power.
Maybe it’s harder. Maybe that’s why the people here look so tired.
He stops at the front door.
His hand poises to knock, and for a second he thinks that he actually did rap his knuckles on the old, weathered wood. It takes him a moment to realize he’d confused the sound of his heart thudding frantically in his chest with the sound of a knock. His hesitation surprises him.
He has dreamed of this moment for years. How would it feel to be disappointed by reality?
Finally, he knocks.
At first, there is nothing. The silence stretches so long that he almost convinces himself to retreat down the road and pretend he never came. But then, from within, a chair scrapes against the floor, footsteps shuffle louder, and the door creaks open.
She is older than he pictured, but he’d expected as much, considering the only photographs he’d had of her are nearly two decades old, maybe even more. Her black hair is starting to gray. She wears a threadbare cardigan over a plain dress, and her hands are red from the cold.
Her dark brown eyes meet his, and she freezes.
It’s as though she’s seen a ghost as she takes him in, eyes flicking over his face, his hair, his own eyes. Her lips part, trembling, but no sound comes out.
Satoru tries to summon the words he’d practiced for years, tries to remember all the times he’d stood in the mirror and recited everything he wanted to say to her. But sometimes, practice means nothing in the end.
Most of the time, the best words are the simple ones.
“Hi, Mom.”
.
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.
.
The kettle whistles in the otherwise quiet farmhouse as Satoru’s mother busies herself with tea. One of the legs of the small dining table is taller than the others, and it wobbles when he places his elbows on it, so he opts for his lap instead.
The kitchen isn’t what he expected, or the house in general, though he doesn’t know what he should have expected. Something better, perhaps. It’s his mother, after all. It’s the clan head’s mother, bustling around in this dilapidated kitchen, in this house warmed only by the sunken hearth in the living room nearby.
She’s been living like this for years, he realizes. Something hot and fierce rises in his throat, so he clenches his fist and forces the anger down.
He studies her as she moves, trying to see any part of himself in her. But he is so different – her eyes brown where his are blue, hair black where his is white. Just a smidgen of cursed energy where he is a hurricane.
“I prayed for this day,” she tells him, pulling out what he can only assume are the nice teacups reserved for guests. They are covered in a fine layer of dust, and she rinses them quickly. “Every day, I prayed. I hoped. Even when they told me to stop hoping. And now…” Satoru can see her shoulders begin to shake. The tea cups rattle in their saucers as she sets them down on the counter before they fall. She rubs at her eyes with the sleeve of her cardigan.
“Your father… he passed several years ago.” she continues. She is whisking the matcha now, and the chasen makes a swishing sound that she raises her voice to speak over. “His heart…” She shakes her head. “He always worked too hard. He would have loved to see you, Satoru. He would have been so proud.” Her voice cracks on the last word.
He doesn’t know what to do with her grief. He suddenly feels like an intruder into her life, so he stares down at the knotted surface of the dining table. There is also a knot in his chest, and it tightens. He finds himself struggling to breathe around it.
A shaking tea cup enters his field of vision. “It’s not much,” she says with a watery, apologetic smile. “But it’s warm.”
The porcelain softly clinks against his teeth when he lifts the cup too quickly and drinks. The tea burns his tongue. It’s bitter.
His mother settles down in the chair across from him. She reaches out to clasp her hands around her son’s, but finds herself unable to. Her hands can’t quite seem to touch his. Before she can pull back, Satoru releases his technique, and he holds his mother’s hand for the first time.
He thought her hands, frail and gnarled, would have felt cold, but they are warm. Or maybe he is cold.
“I’m the clan head now,” he tells her, abruptly. “It’s how I was able to find you.”
She blinks at him, eyes widening, and then her face breaks into a smile. Small, tremulous, but filled with pride. “My son,” she says, squeezing his hand. “Clan head. I’m so proud of you.”
“If you were so proud, why did you leave me? Didn’t you want me?”
The words fall out before he has a chance to stop them, and his mouth tastes bitter again, like the tea. His mother’s hands freeze on his own.
He wants to tell her about his childhood where a three-year-old is told he has no parents, no family. Where a five-year-old is taught that strength is what matters, weakness is unforgivable, and love is a leash used to control. He wants to tell her of a ten-year-old who ran barefoot away from the estate, just to see if anyone cared enough about him to come looking. Of a ten-year-old who returned home at dawn, alone.
He wants to tell her of the countless nights spent with his face pressed against the flickering glow of the television screen, bathed in the light of happy families, wondering if such things only existed in movies.
But he doesn’t. He can’t, because she already looks brittle, like the house around them. His mother squeezes her eyes shut and hangs her head low. She doesn’t say anything for a moment, but after a beat she pats the back of his hand before pushing her chair back with a creak.
“Wait here,” she tells him quietly, and she shuffles out of the kitchen.
When she returns, she’s cradling a small bundle of papers in her hands. Polaroids, faded scanned photographs, printed emails with blurry letterheads and timestamps, and she lays them tenderly on the table.
They’re all about him.
There is a photograph at the top of the pile. It’s him at seven, his hair wild, pouting, arms outstretched like he’s reaching for something just out of frame. The edges of the photo are soft with wear, as though it’s been held and thumbed through a thousand times.
“We convinced someone at the estate to take that picture of you for us,” she sighs warmly.
He reaches for an envelope next. It is addressed simply: To my son. He opens it with numb fingers and finds a birthday card inside. Happy 10th birthday, Satoru. I hope today is as bright as you are. The card is unsigned.
There are more cards. Happy 12th. Happy 14th. Eighteen cards – one for every year they weren’t together.
All lovingly written, none ever sent.
“I never wanted to leave you, Satoru,” his mother says, her voice breaking as she watches him sift through the papers. “Your father and I… we were just lower-ranked sorcerers, barely any cursed energy to speak of.” She takes a sip of her tea to steady her hands. “When you were born, I cried because you were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, and I knew you’d be taken from us. It was out of our hands as soon as the clan doctor saw the Six Eyes. They told us our attachments would only hold you back. You were only a few months old, but we have loved you always. Even when we weren’t allowed to see you, even when they told us to let go. We never stopped.”
Satoru stares at the subject line of a printed email: Six Eyes survives battle with Fushiguro Toji. The ink is blurred in wrinkled, dark patches, and the edges are crumpled.
He stands abruptly, scraping the chair harshly against the floor, and his sudden movement startles her. “You don’t have to live here anymore.” His voice is calm and monotone. “I’ll take care of everything.” The kitchen is too small for his anger, and his cursed energy begins to radiate off him in dark, invisible waves.
“No, I— this is my home. I can’t leave it. Your father’s memories are here. Everything we built together is here.”
“They took you from me and left you to rot,” he says in a clipped tone. “You live like this while the elders live in luxury.”
“They tried to give us money,” she explains, almost apologetically. “After they took you, they offered us enough to live comfortably. But we couldn’t accept it. Your father and I…” Her throat tightens, and she presses a trembling hand to her mouth before continuing. “It would’ve felt like we were selling you.”
“You never should have had to make that choice.”
“They were just following tradition. That’s all it was. They told us if it wasn’t you, it would have been someone else.”
Tradition.
He thinks of the higher-ups, cloistered away in their ivory tower, signing away the lives of sorcerers like one might sign a check. He thinks of Suguru, pushed to his limit, snapping under the unbearable weight of “It’s the way things have always been.” He thinks of Riko and the countless girls before – Star Plasma Vessels who sacrificed their futures for a ritual they had the misfortune to be simply born into.
He decides that he hates tradition.
.
.
.
.
The next missive that jujutsu society receives from the Gojo clan is brief.
Henceforth, it reads, Gojo Satoru is the sole member of the Gojo clan. All communications regarding the clan, its affairs, or its obligations should be directed to me and me alone. There is no other elaboration, only a single attachment: a crude, hand-drawn sketch of a penis, accompanied by the words Kindly direct any complaints here.
The announcement ripples through jujutsu society like wildfire. The elders are scandalized. The higher-ups make empty threats.
Satoru is delighted.
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.
.
Over the next year, Satoru continues to visit the farmhouse, since his mother refuses to leave it. She calls it stubbornness; he calls it madness.
“Please let me get you an apartment somewhere, Mom. This place is falling apart,” he complains, kicking at a curling floorboard, but she just laughs. “So am I,” she says, smiling.
He learns the things about her that he should have known as a child. He learns that she hums when she washes the dishes, that she hates pickled plums but keeps a jar in the pantry. She has a sweet tooth, and he hopes he has inherited his own from her.
Sometimes, when he’s restless, he annoys her by fixing things around the house – the leaking roof, a sagging door frame, the broken step on the porch. He does this with a grand air of martyrdom, moaning and whining all the while, but she only chuckles.
“You don’t have to do all this, you know,” she says one evening. He waves her protests off.
She surprises him by baking a cake one spring morning. It’s lopsided and slightly burnt on one side, but they eat it together anyway. “For all the birthdays we missed,” she explains. Somewhere between the first bite and the last, he decides it’s the best cake he’s ever had.
And then there are the summer days where they sit on the porch as the sun dips low, the light casting long shadows over the fields. She tells him stories about his father, the way he used to sing off-key while taking a bath or how he always brought back wildflowers for the table after a trip into town.
“He loved you with all his heart,” she insists, her voice thick with emotion. “Even before you were born, he loved you.”
For the first time in a long time, Satoru feels like a son.
.
.
.
.
But, as they say, winter is a dying season.
When the frost returns, it snaps and bites harder than before.
Satoru has good eyes, and he can see the changes in her before she feels it herself. The way her steps falter, the way her hands shake. Her voice grows softer, her laugh thinner, and the color in her face fades like the last legs of autumn. She brushes off his concern with a weak wave of her hand, but he isn’t fooled.
One day, he brings Shoko.
After her examination, she asks Satoru to talk outside. She tucks a cigarette between her lips and fumbles in her purse for a lighter, but then pauses and decides against it.
“It’s spread to every part of her body. She’s been sick for a long time,” she mumbles around the cigarette with that clean, clinical detachment that he’s come to expect from her. “There’s nothing I can do.” She sighs, and her breath fogs in the cold, a ghost of the cigarette she’s not smoking. She plucks it from her mouth, holding it between two fingers, before tucking her hands into her coat pockets. “I’m sorry.”
He stares out over the barren fields that stretch into the distance. His cursed energy hums faintly around him, but there’s nothing to direct it toward. “She’s going to die,” he says finally.
Shoko nods.
There are some things power can’t fix.
When Shoko takes her leave, he goes back inside.
His mother is sitting in her favorite chair by the fire, the blankets tucked tightly around her, looking smaller than he remembers. She looks up as he enters and smiles, though he can see the exhaustion behind it.
“Your friend Shoko says I’ll live to a hundred,” she teases lightly, patting the chair next to her. “But you don’t look so sure.”
He doesn’t laugh, though he tries to return her smile. He sinks into the chair beside her, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands together. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I could wrestle a bear,” she says, before laughing softly at his skeptical look. “I’m fine. Just tired.”
They talk for hours that night. They talk about more stories of the past and his father and idle musings about nothing at all. She drifts off at one point and he stays by her side, watching the firelight flicker over her face.
When she wakes, she reaches for his hand. “You’ve made me so proud,” she whispers. “Thank you for finding your way home.”
“Go back to sleep,” he reassures her. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”
He stays with her until morning comes.
.
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.
The next time he visits her, it is at her headstone.
The snow has settled in thick drifts around the clan cemetery, muffling the sound of the world, and he stands there for a long time, staring at the carved letters under her name.
She loved with all she had.
Thank you for finding your way home.
He is so lost in thought that he doesn’t notice the crunching footsteps beside him until something bumps softly against his chest, and he blinks, looking down.
A hand warmer, already freed from its packaging, is held out to him.
He follows the hand to its owner and finds Utahime watching him carefully. She’s bundled against the cold, a scarf wrapped snugly around her neck and a faint dusting of snow caught in her hair. The tip of her nose is pink, like her scar.
“You looked like you could use it.” She bumps the warmer against him again. “I brought an extra.”
He takes it wordlessly, and it reminds him of his mother’s hands. “What are you doing here?” he asks her.
“I thought you might need someone.”
He looks back at the headstone.
“I don’t need anyone,” he says after a long pause.
“Then I’ll just stand here.” Utahime dusts snow off her gloves. “You don’t have to need me for me to be here.”
His grip on the warmer tightens.
They stand together while the snow continues to fall softly around them. The wind picks up, howling softly. When Utahime shivers, pulling her coat tighter around her, Satoru steps closer and angles his body to shield her from the brunt of the wind.
“You were a miko,” he says before she has a chance to thank him. “What do you think about tradition?”
“Tradition?” Utahime lets herself think for a minute before she responds. “I mean, it’s not inherently good or bad if that’s what you’re asking.”
“You’re wrong,” he laughs dryly. “It’s never done any good for me.”
“Is this about the higher-ups?”
“It’s about a lot of things.”
Utahime opens her mouth to push back but hesitates, glancing at the headstone. She falls silent for a moment before she rummages in her pockets. “That reminds me; I was going to bring flowers – tradition, right? – but then I thought—” She retrieves a brown paper bag the size of her palm. “If you’d like, we could plant these. It’s easy.”
“What are they?”
“Just some wildflower seeds. I was going to plant them last year but never got around to it. They grow best when you sow them in winter.”
He pictures his father arriving at the farmhouse with a fistful of flowers for the table, humming off-key, scooping up his mother and planting a kiss on her forehead. It’s not a real memory – because how could it be? – but it feels real all the same.
“I want her to be surrounded by flowers,” he rasps. “She’d like that.”
Utahime reaches for his hand and uncurls his fist. The yarn of her gloves is soft as she pours half the seeds into his palm.
“Just scatter them on the snow like this,” she explains, crouching as she demonstrates casting a handful of seeds over the two small patches of dirt that frame the tombstone. “When the snow melts during the day and freezes at night, the seeds get worked into the soil. She’ll have lots of flowers when spring comes.”
Following her lead, he squats beside her. He scatters the seeds slowly, watching them disappear one by one, swallowed into the soft white.
He can see her turn to study him from the corner of his eye. “This could be a tradition, you know. A good one. Planting wildflowers every winter.” She seems earnest.
When they are finished, Utahime rises and brushes the snow off her knees, fixing her scarf. “I should go—”
Satoru looks up sharply. “Wait,” he says.
She waits.
“I think I found his kid. His name is Megumi. The Zenin are probably going to go after him. I haven’t talked to him yet, but I thought, if I did, maybe I could… maybe I could take care of him.”
He doesn’t need to explain exactly whose kid he is referring to. Her eyes widen in understanding.
“But I don’t know how,” he admits, looking back at the headstone. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t want him to have the same childhood I had, but I don’t know any better. And I thought, maybe…” He trails off.
Utahime’s boots crunch in the snow as she steps closer to him.
“Is the great Gojo Satoru asking for my help?”
She stands over him for a moment, hands on her hips and a gleam in her eye, before she tugs off one of her gloves and leans down to offer him her bare hand. The muted sun is still strong enough to cast a glow about her. He scoffs, looking away, but for the first time since that night by the fire, he smiles.
He accepts her offer and lets her help him up.
Her fingers are warm in his, and they feel right. He’s aware he’s holding on longer than he should because Utahime is peering at him with a strange flush to her cheeks, but he can’t bring himself to let go.
“When are you going to see him?”
“Hmm?” Their hands intertwined take all of his attention.
“The kid, Megumi.”
“Oh. I don’t know. I was kind of waiting to see what you would say.”
He forces himself to let go so she can tug her glove back on, and instantly he misses the warmth.
“You’re lucky I’m good with kids,” she tells him as they turn to leave the cemetery together. “I’m thinking about becoming a teacher.”
“Thank god.”
Her eyes narrow defiantly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“Just say it already!”
He smirks. “It means I won’t have to save your ass from missions anymore.”
“Oh, you little—” Utahime growls and kicks a snowdrift in his direction. “You’re such a brat.”
He laughs as his Infinity flares to life, and the snow never reaches him, stuck in the moment of falling forever. She scoops up more snow and throws it his way, only to achieve the same result. “First thing I’m teaching that Megumi kid is respect,” she declares, rubbing her nose. “He sure as hell won’t learn it from you.”
“I doubt he’ll learn it from you.” He sticks his tongue out at her. “Only one of us is throwing snow around and it’s not me, your favorite kouhai.”
“You’re not my favorite!”
“Who else would it be?”
They bicker like this all the way to the cemetery gates. Before they leave, Satoru pauses by the entrance and catches Utahime’s sleeve as she passes by.
“Come back here with me in the spring.” He’d meant it as a question, but the words tumble out more desperately than he’d intended, so he clears his throat and tacks on, too quickly, “for the flowers.”
She chews her lips thoughtfully, staring down at his hand clasped around her wrist. The wool of her coat is rough against his palm, and he realizes, suddenly, how small her wrist feels under his fingers. “I don’t know,” she says slowly. “I might be traveling around then. I’m going to—”
“I’ll come get you,” he insists. “Doesn’t matter how far.”
She turns mildly green at the memory of her last experience with Satoru’s talent for fast travel but nods her head in the end. “Fine,” she concedes. “For the flowers.”
They both know it’s not just for the flowers.
.
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.
.
Winter is a dying season, they say, but it is also a womb.
His mother had given birth to him in this bitter cold, and she had died in it, too. He wonders, absently, if this season that cradled his beginning and witnessed her end will one day call him back into the white. The snow feels inescapable.
When he was born, his mother had cried for him; will anyone cry for him when he dies?
But then he looks at Utahime, with her scarf pulled tight against the chill, boots crunching softly in the slush, and the thought passes quietly. He thinks of her wildflower seeds instead, a tiny tradition freely offered up to him in the hollow of her hand. It’s enough to make him want more – more with her. If it’s with her, he supposes, then maybe tradition can be something else that he isn’t used to yet.
Not a weaponized excuse to send sorcerers to their deaths, or justified cruelty to separate a mother from her son.
Maybe it can be small and soft – something planted in the snow, and blooms when the frost melts.
“What’re you smiling about?” Utahime is looking at him curiously.
He casts a last glance back at the cemetery, growing smaller behind them.
“Oh, nothing.”