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At eight years old, Satoru already understands he does not see as others do. Residuals of cursed energy refuse to decompose. Old self-expressions overlap concrete shapes. Vectors point as they please. It takes him but a glance to identify planes—both real and made of cursed energy—and calculate their points of intersection. He can do it all, if he tries hard enough.
The weight of another’s gaze—no, two others, prick Satoru’s sphere of awareness. He stops in the street and remembers what his mother told him, once: “There’s quite the bounty on your eyes. People will be after you.” These must be some of those aforementioned people.
He turns his head to find them. There: sitting in a cafe, six stories off the ground. They need not speak for him to know their hostility. Their cursed energy tells him all he needs to know.
The old woman’s cup rattles. Satoru snorts. Forget taking him out; they don’t even deserve to look at him.
His clan enforces strict expectations. Don’t forget to check for residuals. Don’t forget to watch for footprints and broken glass. Don’t—don’t—mix up what is physical and what isn’t.
Their relentless demands drive Satoru up the wall. Everything is too bright, too colourful. How is he to keep track of it all? How is he to know what is tangible and what is but a thought? Constantly sorting the information flowing into his brain is taxing, and the subsequent headaches become a common occurrence.
He decides to tell his mother all this, one day, when he’s about nine.
The clan never having found the balance between instilling discipline and emphasizing his inherent value, Satoru has no compunctions about throwing open the doors to the clan head’s room while they’re in the middle of a meeting. He stomps in, feet heavy against the wooden floors.
Shrouded in a familiar pointed weight, his mother asks, voice clipped, “What is it?”
She glares at one of the others seated around the low table. It takes a moment for Satoru to recognize Matsuda; aside from his mother, everyone else’s cursed energy is muddled together. Matsuda is meant to teach Satoru propriety and stuff. He’s probably going to get in trouble. Oh well.
“Seeing is too much,” Satoru declares, once he remembers what he came to do. He doesn’t know how else to describe it. “I can’t take it anymore. I’m going to blindfold myself or—”
“Everyone, out. Satoru, stay.”
His mother’s voice leaves no room for argument. Satoru frowns and watches as they obey. Matsuda shoots him a dirty look. Satoru sticks his tongue out at his back.
Only when the room is echoing its emptiness does his mother continue. “Sit.” He sits seiza next to her position at the end of the table. “Tell me what you did wrong just then.”
“Uh.” Satoru wracks his brain. “I should have waited?”
“That’s not what this is about.” So, yes, but not wholly. She folds her hands across her lap. “Satoru, you will become the clan head someday. I should not have to tell you this. You need to consider appearances. You need to consider how others perceive you.”
Satoru looks away and stares at the wall. It’s a boring wall. Almost as boring as his mother’s lecture.
“Look at me,” she demands.
He does. He’s seen her command a room and the way the other clan members are scared of her. She’s never turned her anger on him, not really, but he knows not to push it. Satoru thinks he can take her, though, if push comes to shove. He’s the strongest; that’s what everybody has been saying, anyway.
“Listen to me. You cannot go around showing weakness. You are known for your Six Eyes, and you want to complain about them? Tell me what message that sends. Think about who will take advantage of that information and what that means for you. You are not just anybody. You are not a nobody. You are not to show weakness. You are not to cover your eyes or whatever other ridiculous ideas you have concocted.”
“I wasn’t asking,” Satoru says. He wasn’t. The clan—his mother—made sure to teach him not to ask, not when his techniques are so coveted as they are.
She says, “Neither was I.”
Satoru has to be perfect. Everything is set up for him to be, after all. He’s just got to do the hard work and become.
There are workarounds to his problem, of course. He runs away from his lessons to nap; he surrounds his head with pillows and blankets as he sleeps; he obsesses over the idea of reverse cursed energy. All his problems should go away if he can master that, right? He can spend every second of every minute in high-focus if he can wave away fatigue.
These strategies work, more-or-less, while he lives at home. High school is trickier. The school crawls with unfamiliar turns and residuals. Some of the latter must belong to those now-deceased; he can’t otherwise determine their sources. Missions are frantic and overwhelming. He often needs to focus on multiple curses at once, alongside whatever Suguru and Shoko are doing.
Simply put: it’s hard.
A couple months into their first term, a curse nicks him in the side. Yaga gets Shoko to take care of him, for practice. She just has to ask, of course, as Satoru is putting his shirt back on, “How’d the curse get you, anyway? Thought you were untouchable, Mr. Limitless.”
“Can you not?” Satoru says, wrinkling his nose. He’s gotten used to his clan acting as if he’s some unassailable being—accepted it, became it—but it’s particularly grating coming from the people at school. People he’d tentatively call his friends. “I was distracted, ‘s all. Mistimed. Won’t happen again.”
She shrugs, the action oddly judgmental. “Whatever you say.”
Up on the roof of a run-down school in mid-December, a group of curses—newly-grown from the stress of exams—surround Satoru and Suguru on their mission. To make matters worse, Suguru released a number of his curses. It’s moments like these that Satoru prefers not to work alongside Suguru; there’s too much to keep track of, between the distorted colour of Suguru’s energy spread about and the nigh identical flavour of the enemy curses. Seeing from where Suguru’s technique stems, it’s no surprise he and his creations reek the same.
The back of Satoru’s eyes begin to strain. Coupled with the biting wind—why are they on a roof again?—his senses are slowly being worn down. It does not help that he barely slept last night, his Six Eyes too busy to let him rest.
One of the curses—chittering with too-large teeth, so not one of Suguru’s—jumps off the ledge. Its flea-shaped wings flutter, keeping it afloat. A second and third curse follow. Satoru swears under his breath.
“I’ve got it!” Suguru shouts, manifesting his flying fish curse. He takes off after them. Satoru blinks. The hot sting in his eyes travels up underneath his eyebrows. The curses pounce.
He activates Blue just in time. Twists the curse around itself into oblivion. His vision spins, a momentary glitch. Satoru’s balance tumbles. Limitless flares just in time as he catches himself on the roof with his forearm, but the effort makes his head pound.
Intermittently blasting off Blue whenever his headache eases for long enough, he manages to defend himself while lying down. Fortunately, Suguru returns to help finish the curses.
Now standing before him, Suguru looks pissed. Satoru can’t make out his expression, what with the putrid cursed energy whirling about from having ingested new curses, but he doesn’t need to. “What’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with you?” Satoru squeezes his eyes shut and presses the back of his hand to one eye.
Instead of responding, Suguru kneels down in front of Satoru. He presses a hand to Satoru’s forehead. Satoru lets his own fall.
“Shit,” Suguru says, voice somehow quiet and too loud at the same time. “You’re burning up. It’s your technique, isn’t it? ‘Cause of Six Eyes? Can you stand?”
“‘Course I can stand,” Satoru mutters. He doesn’t make any move to do so. He wouldn’t mind taking a nap here.
“You big baby,” Suguru huffs. He grabs hold of Satoru’s hands and pulls him upright. Unsuspecting and unprepared, Satoru falls into Suguru, who grips his hand tighter as he maneuvers Satoru into standing beside him. “C’mon, jeez, I’ll walk you back. Keep your eyes closed. You know, if it’s so bad, why don’t you do something about it?”
“Like what?” Satoru snorts. Focusing on Suguru’s warm hands as he’s walked, he supposes he can trust Suguru this time. “I’m not getting rid of ‘em, as much as you’re so desperate to be the best, ‘cause I’ll have nothing else.”
Suguru doesn’t comment on the awkward confession, for which Satoru is grateful. “What? No, like, sunglasses. Would that help? Oh, wait, you could get one of those stupid-looking sleep masks with, like, unicorn eyes on it, or something. That’d be great. When’s your birthday again?”
Ah. Suguru doesn’t know Satoru’s gone down this route before. He keeps his tone airy and unbothered when he replies, “No can do. The clan thinks it’d advertise weakness. You know how it is.”
“What, isn’t it more of a weakness that you’re falling all over the place like this?” Suguru snorts, derision evident in his voice. Satoru thinks some tension lifts from his chest.
Reluctant to say any more on the matter, alongside an insistence to pretend his collapse never happened, Satoru ensures Suguru lets the topic drop. He certainly doesn’t seem to forget, however, judging by the concerned glances sent whenever he thinks Satoru isn’t looking. Spoiler alert: he’s always looking. Six Eyes, remember?
Nonetheless, Satoru keeps conversation away from his supposed shortcomings—real ones, not what his friends like to poke fun at him for—until Suguru’s obstinate nature proves more forceful, one Monday some five weeks later.
It's the last period, and his three-person class is taking turns sparring one another. Well, Satoru isn’t doing much. It’s a lot of work to stay focused and present, so he does neither. In his defense, he returned from a mission the day before, which involved a trip to the clan estate. He spent a solid hour listening to his mother berate him for something-or-another. In one ear and out the other, as they say. Losing himself in the dull but wipsy haze of colours in the gym is an effort to relax. There’s no issue in zoning out like this; with Six Eyes, it would be harder not to notice someone approaching.
“Satoru!” Yaga shouts. He grimaces, closing his eyes. “It’s your turn already! Get over here!”
Satoru grumbles under his breath but heads to the makeshift ring nonetheless. He settles into a lax fighting stance against Suguru, who frowns at him. “You OK?”
“Why?” Satoru replies, instinctively defensive. “Afraid you’re gonna lose?”
Yaga starts the spar before Suguru can snark back. Satoru, having not recalibrated his brain or whatever other excuse he has on hand, instantly finds himself thrown over Suguru’s knee.
“I want a rematch.” He scrambles upright and tries to blink away the exhaustion that caused him to lose so quickly. Yaga tells him off, refusing to entertain his protests, and then ends class early when Satoru launches himself at Suguru, who starts laughing uncontrollably. Temporarily accepting defeat, Satoru flops back onto the mat and closes his eyes.
Suguru nudges him with a shoe. “Get up. We’re going shopping.”
“No.”
“Get up or I’ll throw out all Shoko’s cigarettes and tell her you did it.”
Suguru would. Shoko might not believe him, but it’d still be a pain.
“Fine.” Satoru lets Suguru pull him to his feet. They drop by the dorms for Suguru to grab his wallet before heading out. As they walk, Satoru thinks to ask, “What d’you want?”
“We’re gonna get you some glasses.”
His mood sours. “Huh? I told you—”
“Yeah, yeah, your clan sucks, I heard it already,” Suguru interrupts. He waves his wallet in the air. “I’m buying them so I can make fun of you. Think of it this way: you’ve got white hair and you need glasses? You sure you just turned sixteen?”
Satoru shoves at Suguru with his shoulder. “You won’t be laughing at me when you go bald. I see all the hair you leave on the floor everywhere.”
“That’s Shoko’s hair,” Suguru lies. Still, the gesture is warming, even if Satoru cannot yet let himself go along with it.
And it is fun, playing around in the store; the two of them try on the most outrageous sunglasses they can find—cat-shaped frames, ones with bright-orange sequins. While Satoru tries on a pair of obnoxiously large circular lenses, Suguru asks, “So? Which are you getting?”
Satoru takes them off and stares at him. “None of them,” he says, slowly.
“Do they help?” Suguru tilts his head. “I meant it, you know—you might be Gojo Satoru, but you’re still… allowed to help yourself. Besides, it’s not like anyone else has Six Eyes, right? So it’s not like they can tell you what it’s like. And even if they did come after you about it, didn’t you say you could take them? If you’ve got me backing you up, too, there’s no way you’d lose.”
Satoru snorts, shaking his head. There’s a lot he could say to that—‘Wow, Suguru, you really put a lot of thought into this!’ or ‘Overcomplicating things much?’—but instead the words, “We’re the strongest, huh,” slip out of his mouth, unbidden.
“Yeah,” Suguru says, taking the glasses from Satoru’s hands. He gently pushes Satoru towards the checkout. “C’mon. I said I’d pay.”