Chapter Text
The part that they don’t tell you about winning a climactic battle royale against a magical zealot while fueled by the homicidal and possessive spirit of your tragically deceased childhood fianceé is that about an hour after it ends the principal rolls up on the freshly leveled campus and asks, “What the hell happened to the school?” and the only answer people can really give is “Oh, Okkotsu demolished it with the power of love.”
Which results in some very uncomfortable conversations, Yuuta can tell you that.
He doesn’t remember any actual conversations, admittedly. His brain, in an act of unprecedented self-preservation, blacked out the entire period bracketing them to lovingly shield him from their psychically crippling nature. Yuuta has decided to deem it a sign that he has, in fact, come to love himself, and has developed a desire for his own survival for the first time in living memory.
He has also decided that it could not possibly come at a worse time.
Maki’s summation of what was obviously an act of his brain’s innate defense mechanisms, never before activated and likely never to surface again, consists of, “You were extremely concussed and lost a shit ton of blood, dumbass,” and, “There is a zero percent chance that you were physically capable of forming memory or any semblance of intelligent thought.”
Panda and Inumaki’s summation of the same events involves a great deal more of theatrical reenactment than Yuuta is strictly comfortable with. He informs them as much, in very clear and explicit language, but is informed in turn that the production is mandatory and so is his attendance. He’s still confined to a hospital bed--re: climactic battle fueled by the power of love, which, from his perspective, involved a lot of a grown man trying to beat him to death--so he finds himself unable to disagree.
To kick off the debut performance, Panda, appearing in the role of Unnamed Assistant (Name Redacted for Reasons of Personal Safety), lunges over a medical cart, does a flip, and points at one of the occupied beds with a vengeance.
“Okkotsu Yuuta,” he says, voice quivering with passion and fervor suitable to the Academy, “you must pay for what you have done.”
Inumaki, appearing in the role of Okkotsu Yuuta, says, “Mustard leaf.”
To prepare for his role, Inumaki confined himself to a hospital bed, swaddled himself in bandages, and inserted an IV into the space above his wrist, which is attached to a real drip filled with real fluids of real and indeterminate medical purpose. Yuuta does not know what they do, but he is one hundred percent certain that Inumaki should not have them in his body.
In preparation for his role of Horrified Audience Member (Other Hospital Bed), Yuuta has done nothing but sink increasingly into the depths of his own despair and curl up into a horrified ball of helpless dread. He has no idea what Inumaki, appearing as Okkotsu Yuuta, is saying.
However, due to his intimate knowledge of the source material, he roughly translates the line to “Oh fuck, oh god, please no.”
“This is fucking stupid,” says Maki, in the role of Zenin Maki.
“I gave you a script for a reason,” hisses Panda.
“I am not going to follow it.”
“Fine,” huffs Panda. “I’ll take your role too.”
Maki, demoted to the role of Horrified Audience Member (Chair Next To Window), opens her mouth, but it’s far too late. The show continues, and Yuuta’s brain’s freshly awakened defense mechanisms have fled him again, much like his will to live. He perceives, comprehends, and retains all of it.
He does not want to do any of those things.
Panda, once again assuming the mantle of Unnamed Assistant (Name Redacted for Reasons of Personal Safety), says, “You destroyed the school through the power of love. Now, you must pay for the costs of rebuilding.”
“Spicy cod roe,” Inumaki argues valiantly, in the role of Okkotsu Yuuta.
Yuuta feels that this level of confident assertion is out of character with the inspiration, but he understands the need for artistic license in the theatre.
Panda, seamlessly stepping into the role of Zenin Maki (Understudy), sashays his hips and brings a hand up to frame his head, like a model posing in a swimsuit calendar for the month of July. His voice pitches sharply upwards.
“Oh dear, oh me,” he says, like a man who does not hope to see the kingdom of God. Or one who plans to see it imminently, depending on how you look at it. “Whoever shall save our handsome and brave Okkotsu. If only there was an even more handsome and brave classmate to protect him, perhaps of the Ursidae descent--”
Maki reaches for Playful Cloud.
The play ends abruptly due to unforeseen injury to the cast.
Yuuta has bigger problems than the arts. “I can’t pay to build a school.” He gnaws at the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood. “Do you really think they’re going to make me pay?”
Maki doesn’t bother looking up from her new special-grade plaything. “Yes.”
He should have gone with Rika.
“Tuna mayo,” scolds Inumaki.
Maki rolls her eyes. “He makes it too easy.”
“Maki.”
Yuuta throws his hands heavenward in lament, as if there’s some kind of deity staring down from above with benevolent indulgence that he could supplicate himself to. But there probably, almost definitely isn’t. He thinks. If there is, he has several questions as to where the fuck they’ve been in the span of his life.
So he’s probably fucked.
“No, okay?” She sets Playful Cloud to the side and turns to face him. “Gojo would never actually let the higher ups get away with making you pay for the damages. So stop worrying, okay? Your anxiety is stressing me out.”
What does she think his anxiety is doing to him?
“Would you be calm if you were me?” Yuuta demands.
“Yes,” says Maki, simply.
Oh right. She probably would. She’s Maki, and he’s him. That is a diametric difference in their respective situations.
“Maybe I can convince them to just execute me again instead,” he says. He’s only partially joking.
Inumaki makes a face at him. “Okka.”
“Inumaki’s right,” says Panda. “Too soon, dude.”
What? “Oh. Sorry.”
He feels like saying that he’s not used to people caring if he lives or dies and that he sort of forgot that they cared only makes all of this worse. And it’s already pretty bad.
People want build-a-school money from him. And he--and he cannot emphasize this fact enough--does not have build-a-school money.
Enormously put-upon, Maki heaves a sigh. Yuuta feels she should not be as aggrieved as she is. No one’s trying to make her pay to build a baseball field.
“Seriously, stop freaking out. The higher ups are just being greedy, self-serving bastards who are overreaching because they think they can get away with it. Like always. They are not going to make you pay the damages, because none of us are going to let them make you pay the damages.”
It would be absolutely humiliating if he started crying now.
“How can we stop them?”
“We’ll fight them,” says Maki, as if it were obvious. She pats Playful Cloud.
“Kelp,” agrees Inumaki, nodding firmly.
Panda shrugs. “Yeah, I guess. We’ll get our asses beat, but sure.”
He’s spent so much of his life being humiliated anyway. Yuuta swipes furtively at his eyes. “I don’t want you guys to get in trouble because of me.”
“Oh, don’t do that.” Maki scowls at him. “Be all--martyr-y. Fuck off with that bullshit. I hate it. It’s our business who we love enough to fight a society for, so just shut up and take it.”
“Yeah, Okkotsu,” says Panda. “Shut up and take our love.” He adds, “Asshole.”
“Yellowtail nigiri.”
Yuuta cries harder.
Maki looks uncomfortable. “Have they contacted your parents about the meeting?”
“What?” He forces the tears to stop. “No. I don’t have parents.”
“Oh--fuck, you’re an orphan? I guess that makes sense.” Maki frowns to herself. “That came out wrong.”
Yuuta does not want to know what she meant.
“They’re not dead. They’re just--not my parents anymore, I guess.” He shrugs. “I was supposed to be executed, remember? My parents agreed to have me declared dead to help explain where I went. I don’t think anyone ever told them that the executions failed, so they probably think I’m really dead.”
Who does have custody of him, anyway? Does anyone? He doesn’t think anyone bothered getting the rights to him from his parents. They just filled out the death certificate for him and put him in a car. He doesn’t know if he has a guardian right now.
Softly, Inumaki says, “Mustard leaf.”
“That means ‘Fuck, dude,’” translates Panda.
…
Yuuta’s pretty certain that he’s the only one in the school that respects Gojo-sensei.
And by that, he means Sensei asked them, all of them, multiple times, and Yuuta was the only one that said that he respected him. In response, Sensei cried long enough that Yuuta almost reconsidered his answer, only not really. He doesn’t think any of Sensei’s dramatics could take away his respect for him. Sensei could see value in his continued existence when even Yuuta couldn’t.
“Yuuta.” Sensei sounds as cheerful as he ever does. “Just the student I wanted to see.”
Yuuta knows. They set a meeting for this specific time and this specific place because Sensei wanted to see him.
He leaps to his feet. “I’m really sorry for the trouble, Sensei.”
“Trouble?” He sounds genuinely confused, before he waves his hand about. “Nah. No trouble. You’re the big hero of the day, really.”
That is not a sentiment that Yuuta has found to be shared amongst the rest of the administration.
“I--I can’t pay for a school,” he confesses. “I can’t pay for the damages.”
Sensei’s implacable smile flickers, just a bit. “That’s just fine, because never in a million years would I make you do that.”
The universal consensus thus far has been that it’s not going to be left up to him.
“They said I’d have to meet with the higher ups about it.”
“Yeah, you probably will.” Sensei scratches the back of his head. “I haven’t quite been able to get you out of it yet.”
Yuuta’s stomach plummets in his gut. Before he can say anything, Sensei says, “Take a walk with me, yeah?”
He wraps his arm around Yuuta’s shoulder and steers him through the halls, out the doors, into the sun-soaked rubble of the campus. There’s talks of beginning rebuilding soon, as well as evacuating the campus for the bulk of the construction. Yuuta doesn't know where everyone’s meant to go in the intervening time, just as much as he knows that he doesn’t have anywhere else to go. Maybe he can ask Maki what her plans are. He doubts that she’ll go back to her family, and if they need to take to the streets--well, he’d feel better if he had Maki and Maki had him.
He wonders if the school’s going to provide alternative accommodations, and then he decides he hopes they don’t. They’ll probably make him pay for that too.
“The higher ups are a bunch of arrogant old farts who think they can do anything they want and get away with it. For a long time, that was true. It’s not true anymore. They’re still figuring that out. This attempt on you is just the pathetic flailing of a dying breed who knows their time is up.”
That does not make him feel better. “Wanting me to pay it isn’t going to magically make me be able to.”
“It’s not,” agrees Sensei. “And they don’t actually want or expect you to pay.”
Then why did they send him an invoice for a bulldozer?
“Right now, Yuuta, you’re an unknown.” Sensei ruffles his hair with a cheerful air. “Now that Rika’s moved on, your execution’s been officially overturned. And do you know what they’re asking themselves now?”
Gee, how do they make that anxiety-riddled, fiscally destitute sixteen year old fund their bathroom remodel?
Sensei taps him firmly on the forehead. “What is Okkotsu Yuuta going to do next?”
He doesn’t understand.
“Do you still have special grade cursed energy without Rika? If so, are you going to stay at Jujutsu High? Are you going to continue working as a sorcerer when you graduate?”
Yuuta doesn’t know the answer to any of that. All he knows is that he wants to stay with his friends.
“I may have to leave the school?”
“Not if you don’t want to, no,” says Sensei. “Even if you can’t channel your cursed energy without Rika--which I seriously doubt, but lets pretend--I wouldn’t let that happen. You can just use cursed tools like Maki, so you can stay for as long as you want. That’s my promise to you.”
He feels the breath go out of him. He hadn't realized he was holding it. “I--thank you, Sensei. Really.”
For once, there isn’t an ounce of humor in Sensei. “I went to school here too, you know.”
Yuuta didn’t. “Yeah? What was it like back then?”
“Worse, I’d like to think. But only because I’d like to think I’ve made it a little better by being here.” He falls silent. Then, “When I started, they rushed my Special Grade certification.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. I probably deserved it, still. But they didn’t care either way. Back then, we only had one special grade sorcerer, and she wasn’t taking missions. When I started in my first year, all of a sudden, the higher ups realized there could be three.”
Yuuta furrows his brow. “Three?”
“Yep. The woman who refused all missions, me, and one other student. He entered the same year as I did. His certification was rushed as well.” The fingers on Yuuta’s shoulder tighten almost imperceptibly. “He probably deserved the class too, but I wish they hadn’t given it to either of us.”
“Why’s that?”
“Oh, it went to our heads,” says Sensei, airily. “Jujutsu sorcery’s almost entirely natural ability, you know. Sure, training can be the difference between life and death, but you can only use what you have, and most people barely have anything. But my friend and I had the sort of reserves that you read about in history books. Not to mention how naturally talented we both were at using it. We hadn’t even had a single day of class yet, and we were already being told that we were stronger than anyone else alive. Probably not the best for teenage boys to hear if you want them to stay humble.” Sensei considers a moment, then adds, “Even if it was true.”
Yuuta’s hands fumble along the hilt of his new katana.
This feels--odd, somehow, to hear. For all Sensei’s been there in his worst moments, Yuuta doesn’t think he knows anything about him personally. It almost feels like he shouldn’t be hearing this.
“What happened to him?”
“Oh, he died.” Sensei says it like it doesn’t matter at all, but his fingers tremor against Yuuta’s shoulder. “The higher ups killed his spirit a long ago. Recently, his body just… followed along behind.” He hesitates a beat. “You met him, actually.”
Yuuta blinks. “I--”
Oh.
Oh, fuck. There’s only one person other than Sensei that he’s met who had a special grade status. Yuuta sort of beat his ass.
He gorily murdered his mentor’s best and only friend with the power of love.
“Sensei--”
Sensei cuts him off. “I didn’t tell you so you could work yourself up with guilt over it. You did what you had to for you and the others to make it out the other end alive, and I will never, ever be upset with you for that.”
“I killed him.”
“Suguru walked away from the fight,” says Sensei. “I was the one who killed him.”
That’s even worse. Yuuta failed to kill Sensei’s best and only friend and he had to do it instead.
Sensei scratches the back of his head. “If I’m being entirely honest, I wasn’t going to tell you at all. But now that the higher ups are putting this pressure on you… Yuuta, they’re eyeing you as the me of the next generation. Tell me if you understand what I’m telling you.”
Yuuta doesn’t want to understand. But he thinks he does.
Sensei will always be a mountain to him. He glances effortlessly against peaks whose heights Yuuta cannot comprehend, except for--except for how sometimes he thinks he can.
Just for a moment, when he and Rika moved as one, it was like they weren’t moving at all. They were standing still and shifting the entire universe into arrangement around them, and they could do it, too. The entire universe fit so easily into the space between them.
It was just for a moment. But in that moment, he thought, “This must be how Sensei feels all the time.”
The higher ups need Gojo Satoru, but Yuuta has no illusions about them liking him. And he has no illusions about the lines they are willing to cross. He remembers every single way they tried to kill him.
Sensei’s still waiting on him.
“I think so,” Yuuta says.
Gojo smiles a bit. “They’re power-grubbing old fools. And the sort of power people like you and me have by accident of birth is the sort of power that they would happily kill to get a fraction of.” He considers a moment. “They want your power. They do not want you. That took me too long to learn. Learn it yourself before it’s too late, Yuuta.”
A part of Yuuta feels like a door has opened for him.
Before, Sensei stood on the other side of a door that was both thick and lost, kept separate, unattainable and distant. And alone.
It wasn’t his fault. He just filled so much space that no one could hope to swell to nearly the same scale.
But Sensei thinks he could do it. Be as large. Yuuta feels like he’s being brought in on the fold of something he only barely grasps the enormity of.
“What do you mean, exactly?” he asks.
“I mean, that if they could slice out all the parts of you that made you Yuuta, force them face down into the nearest body of water, hold them there until they stopped twitching, and be left with a magical gatling gun without free will or personality, the most hesitation they’d give would be about what bottle of champagne they’d pop while they celebrated.”
Huh. Okay. Yeah.
Yeah, Yuuta would believe that.
“When I was your age, I did a lot of things that I regretted. And personally, I think the best thing we can do for the next generation is have them learn from our mistakes. I want you to learn a lesson I grasped too late before you have to face them.”
Yuuta looks at him curiously. “And what’s that?”
Sensei falls silent. With a slight pressure against Yuuta’s shoulder, he prods them both into motion. Yuuta hadn’t even realized they stopped.
The air is brisk, and the leaves crunch under his feet on the path beneath the trees, dappled through with the light of the morning. It’s a beautiful campus, really, smashed to pieces or not. Even here, Yuuta can spot chunks of rubble from the training field.
Eventually, Sensei says, “Suguru and I didn’t start our training until a week after we started with the school. They sent us out on our first mission before we had even put our bags in our rooms. It was special grade, and neither of us were ready for it. The higher ups didn’t care. We spent three days trapped in an incomplete domain that a special grade had built in an old military hospital, trying our best not to die. We got out alive, barely, and spent two days coughing up blood in the hospital wing while the third student tried to master her technique quickly enough to save our kidneys. On the sixth day, we got sent out on our second mission. We still didn’t know where our rooms were.
“When we finally got back, I moved my things into the dorm next to his and told him that we would be in this together forever. I believed it, too. I thought there was nothing that could tear us apart.”
Yuuta hands flutter against the hilt of his new katana. “I’m sorry.”
Sensei still smiles, but there’s nothing behind it. “He was the moral one out of the two of us, Suguru. He wanted to save the world. I… wasn’t quite the outstanding paragon or morality you know and love today. He kept me grounded.”
That wasn’t the impression Yuuta got when the man was calling Maki a monkey and trying to kill her. He elects not to say this.
“You’re thinking that that doesn’t match up with a guy who tried to murder your classmate for being a non-sorcerer,” guesses Sensei.
Yes, but he elected not to say that.
“I’m telling you all this because I need you to understand, Yuuta,” says Sensei. “I need you to understand what the higher ups did to him.”
He doesn’t understand anything. “What do you mean?”
Again, Sensei hesitates. “In our second year, we were given a mission we weren’t ready for. Not by any stretch of the imagination.”
So? “And what happened?”
“We’re going to her grave,” says Sensei.
Yuuta stops walking.
Ahead of him, Sensei continues for a few feet, before he sighs and stops as well. In the cool air of the morning, he cranes his head to the sky, hanging cloudless and unburdened overhead. The blue burns painfully bright, and Yuuta cannot look for more than a few seconds before the glare makes him look away.
It reminds him of Sensei’s eyes.
“I try to visit her on Christmas. Guess I’m late again this year. I’ve got a bad habit of being late with Riko.”
Yuuta still does not reply.
“Come on. Best not to keep her waiting any longer.” Sensei sets off again. He presses forward for a few more feet before he adds, “I think she would have really loved you.”
…
Yuuta has never been to Rika’s grave.
He tried to go to the funeral. Rika just wouldn’t let him. She tore his little black suit to shreds, destroyed his leather shoes with claws that were always stained with blood, swelled herself large enough to block the whole of the door and insisted that she was not in the ground and that there would be no coffin of wood and brass that could keep her from Yuuta. They were going to be together, forever. They were going to get married.
Staying crowded in a corner of his room appeased her, for a short while. Back then, he was scared she’d make him stay there for the rest of his life. It was still early enough that Yuuta considered that more of a source of fear than hope.
Eventually, his father came into his room to take him to the funeral. He hadn’t believed Yuuta when he told him Rika had clawed her way out of the slash of blood on the tarmac and followed him home, swimming through the shadows until she dragged herself out again in his bedroom with Yuuta’s ankles as anchors. He hadn’t believed any of the warnings to stay away that Yuuta had screamed through his bedroom door either.
It wasn’t his dad’s fault. He thought that his son was traumatized. He thought that the thing keeping him in his room was the sort of thing that a father could protect his child from. He thought that forcing Yuuta to attend the funeral would help him get closure for Rika’s loss.
Rika hadn’t liked that.
That was the first time she got violent with his family.
He should go visit her now that she’s finally free of him, Yuuta thinks. He should bring her flowers.
There are many flowers at the grave that Sensei brings him to.
It rests in a small, unmarked clearing, well off the trail at the mountain’s base. It’s choked with wildflowers of blue, purple, and white, and the blooms are full despite the chill. In its center lies a cairn, and at the base, a wilted bouquet of pale blue blossoms.
All Yuuta can think of is how small it is. He wonders if Rika’s coffin was that small.
“Suguru and I buried her here ourselves,” explains Sensei. He crouches and unfolds his legs out in front of him, easing himself into a seated position with a grimace. With one hand, he reaches up to unravel his blindfold, baring his eyes to the punishing sky above. “We were ordered to bring her back. They wanted to carve her up, see. Dissect her body for--I don’t know. Whatever made sense to them, I guess. Riko never meant much to them.”
Yuuta doesn’t want to ask how she died. That's what everyone asks when they find out you loved someone who's in the ground now. The entire span of someone's life laid out before you and capable of summation in its entirety, and all most people want to know is how it ended.
“What was she like?” he asks instead.
That’s a question he feels like may have an answer that Sensei wants to give.
That was the question he always was prepared to answer for Rika, but no one ever asked him. No one cared about what she was in life--only about the thing that Yuuta made her become in death. Yuuta doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to repent for that enough, robbing her of her own mourners.
Her parents were dead. Her grandmother had never loved her the way she deserved. His family stopped loving her because of what Yuuta did. Every single person who spoke her name after her death did so as a curse. He’s the only one left to miss Rika from life, and he only has himself to blame.
Sometimes he wishes she cursed him back.
“Riko?” Sensei tilts his head. “It’s hard to say. I only knew her for three days.” He falls silent, considering. “She was curious. She loved the world. She loved seeing new things. Spending time with people. We knocked heads a lot, but it was all in good fun. If I had a sister, I think I’d like it to have been her.”
It almost feels disrespectful, him being here. Like he’s intruding somewhere private. He shifts his katana to rest in his lap, and he lays his hands near its hilt.
“Suguru and I couldn’t bring ourselves to let her be buried inside Master Tengen’s barriers. She had--problems specific to him, we’ll call them. So we carried her here, gave her our apologies, and hoped it was a place she could find her rest. We both would visit her, from time to time. Never together, but--he’d leave her flowers, and I’d clean them away when they wilted. That’s how we knew.” He scratches the back of his head. “Guess I’ll have to do both, now. Didn’t think of that.”
Yuuta doesn’t dare look at the bouquet at the base.
Geto Suguru was sentenced to death long before he declared his war, and Sensei knew how to find him the entire time. If Yuuta told the higher ups--
“Don’t tell anyone about this place,” says Sensei, but his voice is empty. “Not about Suguru visiting. I’ll leave that up to you. But don’t show anyone where Riko is. She’s earned her rest.”
“I won’t tell, Sensei,” says Yuuta. He doesn’t have to think of his answer. “About any of it.”
A ghost of a smile passes across Sensei’s lips. He turns his head back to the sun and the sky, and it doesn’t seem to hurt him with its glare.
Yuuta fidgets with his katana. “Why did you bring me here?”
“Honestly? I’m trying to stop history from repeating itself. And I don’t know if I can if I don’t show you what exactly I’m trying to stop.”
“You think I’m going to end up like Riko?”
“No,” says Sensei. “And I wouldn’t go so far as to say that you’ll end up like Suguru either.”
“Who then?” Yuuta squeezes the hilt “You?”
The corners of his Sensei’s upturn. “Maybe,” he acknowledges. “Maybe someone else. There’s someone I know that you remind me a hell of a lot of. He shows up later in the story.”
Yuuta waits.
“Suguru and I wanted to be kids,” says Sensei, eyes drifting back to Riko’s grave. “As arrogant as we could be, I can say pretty reliably that we wanted to be kids. We’d get ourselves in trouble for it all the time, too. Most common complaint we ever heard was that we needed to grow up.”
“What happened?”
“Oh, you can’t actually make kids grow up. It doesn’t work that way. A kid is a kid, even if they’re saddled with adult responsibilities.” He tilts his head in Yuuta’s direction. “Mind you, everyone treating us like adults didn’t magically change that. It just made us easy to take advantage of. The higher ups miss those days, let me tell you.”
Yuuta can’t imagine anyone ever taking advantage of Sensei. He can’t imagine Sensei as a vulnerable child. And there’s probably no one who can.
He wonders if Sensei’s the only one that remembers that he’s someone that can be hurt.
“What happened to your friend?”
Sensei twists a blade of grass between his fingers and considers a beat.
“I don’t know,” he settles on, eventually. “I’ve been trying to piece it together for years, and I still don’t fully understand.
“After Riko died, I mastered my technique in a way that meant Suguru couldn’t keep up. Everyone said I was strongest when I was alone, so I was always alone after that. That meant he was alone too.” He falls silent. “Suguru always believed we existed to protect others. Especially non-sorcerers. He really was the noble one, out of us two. And I still can’t fully piece together how that changed.
“When I came into myself, I--I didn’t realize until too late how valuable that made me to the higher ups. Or how hard they tried to keep me from realizing how much leverage I had with them. They used to not have any special grade sorcerers they could use, and the first grades--well, let’s just say that most back them were not quality stock. But then they had me. And they had Suguru. And they were going to wring every ounce of value they could out of us.”
He snaps the blade of grass between his fingers with a single, vicious twist.
“The dirt from Riko’s grave was still beneath our fingernails when they sent us out on our next mission. We hadn’t slept, we hadn’t grieved, I was--more than a little out of it at the time. And we never had a mission together again, after Riko. They handed us separate file folders, and that was the last time I saw Suguru for months. We hardly ever were on campus at the same time after that.”
Yuuta feels a vicious stab of hate cut through him.
It’s pointless. It’s not like he can go back in time and fix this. But he wishes he could. He wishes he could protect sixteen-year-old Sensei the way Sensei protects him now.
Instead, Yuuta says, a little lamely, “I’m sorry that happened to you, Sensei.”
He shrugs. “It was a long time ago. They can’t do it to students anymore. I won’t let them. But I need you to understand that that’s the only reason. If they think they can do it again, they will.”
Yuuta believes that.
“The other students weren’t spared either. The entire third year Tokyo class died. One of the first years--the higher ups fudged a mission grade. They said it was just an accident, but honestly… I think they just wanted to see how far they could push what assignments they were giving the first years. One of our underclassmen died. I think Suguru took it hard.”
“Think?”
“I didn’t make it back in time for the funeral.” Anger, barely concealed, quivers beneath the surface of his voice. “Too many missions.”
Yuuta feels his own anger fester in his gut.
“If I had an ounce of sense back then, I would have told the higher ups to go fuck themselves. We thought we were on thin ice, Surguru and I, because the school told us we were. We butted heads with them when we lost Riko and then refused to return her body in the kind of way that we never had before. We thought we were risking expulsion, hell, execution--” He cuts himself off. The anger remains, stretching across his face. “We could have lit the school on fire and demanded they thank us for it, and they would have had to. We had everything they wanted, and they wanted to keep us in the dark about that for as long as they could. Beneath it all, Suguru…” He sighs, shaking his head. “I don’t know. I lost him. There are some things you can’t fix, Yuuta.”
Yuuta knows that already.
“The reason why I’m telling you this is because nothing’s changed. Not for the higher ups, at least. They’d do it all again in a heartbeat. And they’re going to try to.”
“How? Your friend is--” A blood splatter, thanks to Yuuta and the power of love. “There’s just you, right?”
“Not anymore,” says Sensei. “There’s you and there’s me.”
Oh, shit. There is him. “Rika’s gone now.”
“Oh, you’re still a special grade sorcerer,” says Sensei, like he’s discussing the weather. “Even more powerful than Suguru was, and that’s saying a lot. I’d say that you could give even me a run for my money. There isn’t a doubt in my mind about any of that.”
There are multiple doubts in Yuuta’s mind about that.
“My grade is being reevaluated.”
“Oh, yeah. They’re going to bump you straight down to grade four and tell you that you’re going to be kicked out of school. I’d put money on it.”
That is objectively terrifying and Yuuta would rather he didn’t, actually. “I’m going to be kicked out of school?”
“I told you, I’m not going to let that happen. And the higher ups don’t want that to happen either. I could sit and do nothing, and at the last second, they’d magically discover the grace in the dead, wrinkled husks they call a heart to let you stay.”
Yuuta doesn’t understand.
“Try,” prods Sensei. “Come on. You’re a smart kid, you know. Brilliant, talented, hard-working--it’s true. The thing that holds you back is how you view yourself. You’re a lot more than you think you are.”
Yuuta flushes.
This is all about power--his power, his potential. He cursed Rika; she didn’t curse him. That suggests that everything she was… it was his fault.
Which means he could do it again.
He could summon that kind of power again.
“They also think I’m special grade even without Rika, right?” Yuuta guesses. “So they’re just going to tell me I’m going to be kicked out of the school so I’d be willing to do anything to stay, the way they did to you.”
“Full points,” praises Sensei. “Now, here’s the tougher one: Why are they trying to make you pay damages for a fight that very well saved them all? They have plenty of money, trust me. And they know you don’t. It’s not money that they want out of you, so what is it?”
Oh, don’t make him think about the invoice for the bulldozer.
If he can’t pay, it’s just… debt. Debt to hang over him. Debt to use against him. They can’t control someone like Sensei--or, or him, he guesses--with typical threats of force. Hell, they couldn’t even execute him when he was helping them do it.
“They want to force me into debt to them,” decides Yuuta, eventually. “Control me by telling me that I have to repay my debt.”
“Ding ding ding,” says Sensei, twirling one of his fingers. “Not too long after Riko, I made one of the biggest mistakes of my life. I intervened on behalf of a very young sorcerer who had--well, he has the sort of promise that people said I had when I was his age. He was so young at the time that he didn’t even know that our world existed, let alone get a say in what it was planning to do to him.”
Yuuta cocks his head. “Is he the one I remind you of?”
“You get the bonus points.” Sensei sighs, then rubs the back of his neck, chagrined. “Yes, he is. I let the higher ups get their teeth in him. Saved him from a worse fate, but I could have got him a much better deal if I had a clue what I was doing. The higher ups want him under their thumb about as much as they want you, and they think the same tactic they used back then will work a second time. But I’m not a fan of repeating my mistakes. I’m not going to let them get away with this again.”
“So I--what? Refuse to pay the school?” He chews his lip. “Are they going to give up that easily?”
“Oh, definitely not,” says Sensei. “But have no fear! We’re not going to send you in to face the lion’s den alone. Since you’re a minor, I’ve gotten you a special dispensation to have your guardian with you.”
He has a guardian?
“Thank you, Sensei,” says Yuuta, as graciously as he can manage. He sweats a bit under his collar. “I… who is my guardian, exactly?”
“Well, I was trying to snag the role myself.” He barrels on, as if he didn’t just admit to being willing to assume legal responsibility for Yuuta, a boy whose own parents didn’t want the job. “But the higher ups dug their heels in. Something about me trying to claim too much young talent for my own--honestly, it was incredibly boring, I wasn’t listening. The higher ups wanted to shove in a spineless puppet who would obey their every whim, which I blocked. So we compromised, and I got you a close second to myself. He’ll take good care of you, trust me. The higher ups made a huge mistake when they approved him.”
Oh, so he has a total stranger as his legal guardian now. His own parents didn’t want that job. And the only people that do are apparently Sensei and a bunch of people who want to turn him into a weapon. And whoever the hell this guy is.
Yuuta could not be more terrified at this turn of events.
“Why did they approve him then?”
“Oh,” says Sensei. He flaps his hand breezily. “They think he’ll be easy to handle because he hates me.”
He was wrong.
He can be more terrified.