Chapter Text
July 5th, 2018. Thursday.
Satoru would mark it in the annals of history with bold fountain pen and a dramatic swoop curling beneath. The day lay dead-center of a half-dozen criteria, all layered together to create a complex Venn diagram. Some agendas were cultivated over weeks like Satoru’s contraption hidden beneath a thick, blue tarp. Others, less controllable but no less predictable: the childish wonder marinating his students in equal parts terror and awe. And still others, drowned by the less fun sort of happenstance tending to spring from unexpected and poor decision-making.
The hangover fell neatly into the latter category. It had been a bigger problem during Satoru’s morning classes, before his second fistful of Tylenol kicked in and lunch could blot out his nausea. By Satoru’s fourth period with his homeroom students the only irritant left was a dull, annoying throb. Good things, they liked to say, came with a price. Satoru’s price tended to be steep and haggled too high, but he had better resources than most to even it out. Too bad he still wasn’t sure what good came out of last night.
It was cliché to boast something about the sun shining and the birds singing, and both heralding one of those fantastic incidents that would live on in infamy until the heat death of the universe—passed down through generations by siblings and parents in shaken whispers. July 5th would have a whole chapter devoted to it in the history that was Satoru’s life. Besides, the sun was shining and after lunch, the glare wasn’t nearly so violent. Instead, it filtered through the glass naturally, impressing soft rustles from the wagging trees in thick, leafy patterns over the desks and walls. The birds, Satoru could take or leave, but there was no denying the undercurrents of energy thrumming through the floorboards of his classroom.
Anticipation rattled the students’ desks and jittering legs with the intensity of an oncoming demolition. Satoru wheeled his project to a stop next to another cart already parked at the front of the classroom, this one with a hulking monolith of a homemade generator primed and thrumming with voltage. A pair of jumper cables were hardwired to one end of it, the clamps left lying loose on a textured rubber mat.
With a flourish and bright “ta-dah!” Satoru swept the tarp away to reveal his most recent masterpiece.
The device had the aura of an old-fashioned vacuum cleaner. A large, glass cylinder encased several complicated workings—circuitry and braided wires—each gleaming in the scattered afternoon sun. An accordion tube ran out one end and with it, the vacuum cleaner comparison ended. Satoru was right to go with his showy instincts. The device had the air of crown jewels as it was unveiled. Of something otherworldly and hideously expensive. The two brassy fins jutting from either end? Overkill. But they provided a distinctly futuristic aftertaste and high school science class was, after all, at least two-thirds about the flavor.
Did this thing actually do anything besides flash a bunch of lights and agitate some electrons? No. Did the students know that? Absolutely not judging from the twenty faces ranging from horrified to enthralled staring back at him.
Perfect.
“This doesn’t seem like the smartest thing we could be doing…” Kugisaki drawled, her voice wavering with something adjacent to nerves but she was far too headstrong to let them free.
“See, that’s where you’re wrong, my precious little first-years. This is one of the smartest things you’ll ever see in your storied careers as students of Jujutsu High. Who else could show you such a marvel? Who else could teach you such magnificent truths of the universe?”
“Truths like how to ignore common sense and all established safety standards?” Megumi asked. “I don’t know, Kugisaki’s eight-year-old cousin could do.”
Between them, Itadori snorted a laugh between his hands trying to cover it up.
Megumi was greasier than usual today. More snippy, too, but his perpetual under-eye bags seemed to have retreated a bit, and his attention constantly flicked to his right, to Itadori staring at the jumper cables in Satoru’s hands with ravenous glee. They’d come in together, Satoru suspected, from the 7-Eleven coffee and bagel combo waiting on Satoru’s desk when he’d strolled into homeroom, over half an hour late and excessively hungover. A matching coffee had sat empty on Megumi’s desk and Itadori had spent the entire last ten minutes of class tossing a matching, balled-up bagel wrapper in the air and catching it.
“I wouldn’t be so comfortable disrespecting my elders when two-thirds of you have manically-depressed-shonen-hero hair.” And wasn’t it just the cutest thing? Satoru was beyond proud. One should always seek out friends who can match your weird, that was how he wound up roommates with Suguru in college. Megumi was growing up so fast.
Outrage sputtered out of Kugisaki. Then, just plain rage. “Which two?!”
Satoru’s expression flattened with a significant look at Megumi, with his sea urchin disaster of inky clumps jutting from his scalp, and Itadori’s faded-from-one-bleach-and-dye-job-six-months-ago pink mop. Which two? Please.
A vicious grin seeped over Kugisaki’s face. “Thought so.”
Megumi was less amused. “I will actually get up there and punch you if you don’t get on with whatever the hell sort of inappropriate and careless demonstration this is.”
“It’s in your textbook, it’s fair game.”
“The version in our textbook uses nine-volt batteries not”—Megumi waved a sweeping gesture towards the front of the classroom—“whatever that thing is.”
“Think of it as a sort of make-shift atom smasher attached to a homemade generator.” And it had been a bitch to put together, too, but once Satoru had the more complicated bits of soldering done, the task had melted into child’s play. It wound up a bit over nine volts but who was counting besides Megumi, really?
“Sure. That sounds safe.”
“Oh, calm down, I gave you safety goggles.”
“Because the government said you have to.” Megumi waved his government-issued safety goggles at Satoru like if he could just smack Satoru upside the head with them—just once—then he would ascend to the mythical status of doing okay.
Megumi stood up from his desk and moved to an empty one, two rows back, donning his safety goggles and glaring at Satoru like he just dared him. After an awkward moment, Megumi jolted and hissed, “Itadori! Come on!”
Protecting his precious little crush, how adorable.
“Oh, so it’s fine if I explode, I see how it is.” Nobara made no move to relocate further back, though, only crossed her arms and ankles, and lounged back for a show. Satoru knew he liked her.
“All right, kiddos, let’s smash some atoms together.” Satoru had never felt so amazing in his life. The jumper cables fizzed electric in his hands. A manic, mad scientist laugh rattled his chest. A bit much? Probably. But you only lived once and Satoru had always wanted to let that particular freak flag fly. Every single breath felt invigorating.
The horror plastered across twenty first-year students’ faces? Icing.
This was his moment; Satoru was ready. He clamped the ends of the jumper cables to either side of his contraption and flipped on the generator. For a moment, everything was perfectly still.
And then, Satoru saw nothing but a blinding, blue light.
Late.
It was the only thought Satoru could process, blinking against the horrible, too-bright sun blistering his eyelids. A sickening band clamped around his forehead. Regret curdled in the back of his throat. The sun shouldn’t be so bright, he’d definitely missed his alarm. Satoru was tempted to take it as a sign, bury himself in the relative comfort of his bedding, and sleep until he felt normal again. In the next moment, dehydration and nausea lurched unnaturally in his stomach with miserable impatience.
Satoru’s apartment was laid out perfectly for stumbling around half-awake in the dark. Sleep mask or midnight, it made no difference. The bathroom was only a few steps away, bed carefully lined up to the doorway so all Satoru ever had to do was walk in a straight line to get where he needed to be, consciousness optional.
Cold tap. Head under the faucet. Maybe Satoru could shock away the awful sloshing feeling in his brain, the pressure in his eyes, the throat so dry that swallowing seemed a privilege of the past never to be bestowed upon him again. The universe was a cruel mistress. Satoru had learned this countless times in his meager twenty-eight years, but each successive lesson carried the same brutality. Was this karma? Irony? Heavenly wiles? Satoru didn’t know which, but it was something and it was something awful.
The second thing Satoru managed to wrap his head around, fumbling with the medicine cabinet over the sink until he found the unopened bottle of Tylenol he kept for theoretical guests: this is why you never drink. Satoru popped his thumb through the flimsy foil seal on the Tylenol before upending the bottle in his palm to extract anywhere between two and four pills from it.
A third thought: shit, what time is it again?
8:37, Satoru’s phone insisted, the numbers wavering and fuzzy in his water-soaked vision when he finally left the comfort of his sink and stumbled back to his bedroom. Every step spun off-balance. Quaked with the horrible sensations roiling through his stomach and head.
So very, very late.
‘Cover for me’ he texted Shoko.
‘No?’ Shoko texted back only seconds later, but that was as good as agreeing. If she meant ‘no’, she’d say ‘fuck off.’
The shower helped in the way showers do when one has had all the moisture siphoned from their veins by a night’s worth of tequila shots. Satoru started out warm and gradually crept the temperature up until his skin was flushed lobster red and the tatters of the prior night began weaving back together—misshapen and somewhat out of order, but a tapestry gradually emerged of an izakaya stained in bright, primary colors, raucous laughter, and a dozen or so colleagues Satoru never bothered remembering the names of because he didn’t actually know or like any of them. Steam soaked his lungs on the inhales. The toxic, putrid aftertaste trapped in his belly seeped out of his pores the longer he stood motionless under the spray, both arms braced on the wall under the shower head, water streaming from the crown of his head down his face.
Breathe deep.
“Never again,” Satoru promised his shower rack packed full of half-empty shampoo and conditioner bottles, abandoned for new and exciting prospects, but never discarded. “Never. Again.”
Satoru rolled into homeroom ten minutes before the second-period bell, entirely unrepentant for how hypocritically tardy he was. There were extenuating circumstances. Poor decisions weren’t confined to teenagers, after all, and Satoru did have his pride even if he couldn’t formulate why it had been so prickled in the face of mild competition and people who liked to proclaim themselves some variation of work friends.
Sunglasses slipped halfway down the bridge of his nose, Satoru flipped off the overhead lights on his way in but it hardly mattered when there was no shelter from the constant, staticky buzz gurgling out of the loudspeaker-clock-combo embedded in the wall over his desk. Classrooms in the new wing were nicer—had windows that fully opened and smoothly finished hardwood floors instead of ones scuffed and weathered from decades of chairs scraping them up. The clocks over there didn’t tick so loudly and they even featured the correct time most days unlike the one in Satoru’s classroom.
“’Bout time,” Shoko called, lounging in Satoru’s chair behind his desk with her feet propped up as she scrolled on her phone, ignoring the students. She toyed with the straw stuck in a massive plastic cup—at least twenty ounces of some whipped-iced-coffee-monstrosity that Satoru immediately lusted for on an atomic level.
On his desk, at the edge closest to the students, a large coffee from 7-Eleven and a bagel snagged Satoru’s attention in the oddest way. Some sickening combination of déjà vu and intuition clinging to his skin like film. Two days in a row? Satoru shot a surprised look at Megumi, who was steadfastly watching the incorrect clock overhead. Unusual but not unheard of. Another oddity for the pile of strangeness seeped into this murky day.
The rest of the class chatted amongst themselves, seemingly unconcerned for their AWOL teacher which—okay, first: rude. Only three months into the year and the little monsters had already stopped fearing him? Satoru needed to step it up a notch. Second: not at all wise. Satoru was the all-knowing, all-ruling master of their destinies, final grades, and permanent records. If they kept disrespecting him like this, he was going to serve them an impossible midterm.
“Sorry, rough morning.” Satoru tasted the coffee even knowing it’d be cold and disgusting—ugh, black—Megumi was heartless. He wandered down an aisle between the desks and dropped the cup off with Megumi, stink eye out and in full force. “Gross. You could at least pretend to care about me.”
“Oh that is so f—”
A brain-shaking chime rang overhead as the bell for class change went off. Satoru squeezed his eyes shut and prayed for a quick death only to be assaulted by the sounds of twenty chairs scraping the floor as the class kicked back and stood to stretch out like they hadn’t just had a free period.
“You look absolutely hideous.” Shoko rocked back in Satoru’s chair and took another sip of her drink.
A fair point. Satoru was showered and crisply dressed but not much else could be said for the state of him. He tugged his shirt sleeves in defense and double-checked the ironed crease of his slacks, but neither could do anything about the bags under his eyes, general sluggishness, or persistent attachment to his sunglasses.
Shoko jerked her chin toward the bagel. “Eat that, It’ll help.”
Satoru’s hunger gnawed at his stomach, still in competition with his hangover but at least the hangover was losing strength. A couple of bites of the bagel did help. Megumi had ordered it toasted with honey, so not a complete brat after all. Not always.
“I see you did exactly what we told you not to last night.” Shoko kicked back from the desk, rolling a bit away before planting her feet on the floor and both standing and smoothing her clothes in a single, practiced motion.
“What can I say,” Satoru said around a mouthful of honied bread. “I’m prone to peer pressure.”
Shoko grimaced. “Talking with your mouth full is so crass. Can you please pretend to be an adult for five minutes? And peer pressure? You are so unbelievably full of shit, you never listen to anyone.
“I listen to you,” Satoru said but even he didn’t believe it.
“Hah!”
“I do! Even when you’re mean to me, even though I’m dying over here.”
“Drama queen.”
“Isn’t there something you can do to fix me?” Satoru asked, tearing another bite off his bagel. “I’ve seen nurses do it on TV with an IV and fluids and what-have-you.”
“I mean, I could, but why should I?” Shoko asked. She knocked her shoulder against Satoru’s heading for the hall. “If I give you fluids, what lesson will you learn about going out drinking with people you don’t even like? That’s what a hangover is, you know. A lesson.”
“Bullshit lesson.” Satoru popped the last bite of his bagel in his mouth and followed her.
“Wait!” Megumi called after them. “Are you still going to blow us all up after lunch? Because if you are, I’m not bothering with my study period.”
Again, that bizarre, not-quite-déjà vu feeling.
“Only if you’re lucky!” Out in the hall, Satoru gestured at Shoko’s obnoxious beverage with grabby hands. “Lemme try.”
Shoko rolled her eyes, but she handed it over without arguing and then laughed when Satoru took a sip only to moan, “Oh my god, where the hell did you get this?” It was like a milkshake and frappucino got together, Satoru didn’t know it was even legal to do that.
“357 in Marunouchi. Naka-dori street.”
“You get your coffee with the finance guys?” Weird, but they’d both done weirder. Satoru went for another sip. “Whatever works, I guess, it’s amazing.”
“And it’s mine,” Shoko said, snatching the drink back. Without discussion, they headed in the direction of the stairwell, in the opposite direction from Satoru’s next class.
Life goals was getting his hands on one to three of those things. Marunouchi wasn’t far.
“Call a sub, I’ll fix you up,” Shoko said. “I know I shouldn’t but I also know it’s far less work than arguing with you over it. God, do you even teach?”
Satoru grinned. “Sure, when they’ve earned it.”
The old staff lounge on the first floor of the faculty building straddled a constant state of slightly rehabilitated disrepair. Splotchy coffee stains browned the floor. Every corner was eroded and chipped from banging book bags and backpacks around. Ancient windows wheezed every time the wind blew; the sort with missized wicker frames and no insulation to dull the creaking. The new staff lounge down by the offices was nicer. Had a fridge that didn’t rattle every time the motor came on and a sink that knew there were temperatures between scalding hot and ice cold. The problem was that the rest of the faculty at Jujustu High thought it was much nicer, too.
“Something is very wrong with today,” Satoru said, taking the seat next to Shoko, across from Suguru at their rickety lunch table. It had once lived in the cafeteria but there was a point where too many lewd carvings accumulated and the table was relocated to live with the quote-unquote responsible adults. Never mind there were far more lewd carvings in it, now.
Shoko had two containers from the cafeteria stacked in front of her: soup and salad. The salad was a daily purchase, though she was fussy about when she was willing to eat it. She slid the soup container in front of Satoru, placing a packet of individually wrapped utensils on top. “Because you can’t be trusted to take care of yourself, apparently” was all she said about it.
How sweet, especially considering Shoko had already saved his life once, today. Satoru peeled the lid off the container and savored the comforting aroma of miso and clam. Leave it to a doctor to make sure Satoru had nothing but the best for his hangover lunch, even after forcibly hydrating the hangover out of him.
“I knew there was a reason you’re my favorite,” Satoru said. He hadn’t been hungry at all but now, presented with food, he was ravenous. “You gonna eat?”
“Your favorite today, maybe. And I’m not hungry, I’ll eat in my office, later.”
Suguru poked at the rice portion of his fastidiously packed bento. “What’s so wrong about today?”
Shoko snorted. “Don’t listen to him, he’s all out of sorts because he went and got shit-faced with his JSSE buddies after their conference last night.” She turned to Satoru. “What time did you say you finally got home? Two? Three?”
“You’re so funny. I got home at like one.” Thirty. Forty-five at the latest.
“And suddenly I understand why you missed all of your morning classes.” Suguru popped a bite of tamagoyaki in his mouth and chewed with exaggerated lethargy.
“I was sick.”
Shoko snorted. “You were so hungover, I was worried you were going to throw up on your shoes.”
“Dear,” Satoru said, feeling patently insulted, “if I were going to do that, I would throw up on your shoes.”
“I wasn’t aware the JSSE were such a wild bunch,” Suguru said.
“What can I say? The Society for Science Education likes to live large and push the boundaries of the universe.”
Suguru tapped his chopsticks on his bento box twice before laying them flat across the top, leaning in to rest his elbows on either side of it, and tilting his head in that awfully curious way he got when he knew he was going to love the answer to whatever question was poised on his tongue. “Why go out with them, then? You hate alcohol and you know this always happens.”
“Because they said I couldn’t hold my own.” It sounded so stupid in retrospect.
“You couldn’t,” Shoko said, spinning her salad container between two fingers.
How dare she? “I could and I did. Why do you think I woke up with the hangover from hell?”
Suguru picked his chopsticks back up and wagged them across the table. “I’m pretty sure you woke up with the hangover from hell because you’re a dumbass.”
Satoru rolled his eyes to make sure Suguru knew what he thought of that and then dug in for some quality time with his clam miso soup. After a few minutes, Suguru rapped a knuckle on the table. “What’s so wrong about today? Besides the stupidity, I mean.”
“I think I’m in the Matrix or something.” Was there any other explanation for non-stop déjà vu? “No black cats, though, was that a plot-critical element or just window-dressing? I haven’t watched it in a while.”
Suguru rolled his eyes at the dramatics. “Try again.”
Satoru didn’t know how to explain it, the whole day had been weird. Everything lined up too well, Satoru’s retorts fell out of his mouth before his students even finished talking. He stepped around obstacles without noticing. This beat Shoko was scratching into the table with her salad container was already written, etched into the tabletop.
The easiest place to begin was, infuriatingly, the beginning. “I had the craziest dream last night and it just… It feels like it still has its claws in me.”
“‘Bout what?” Shoko asked.
Wasn’t that the question of the day? “This, kind of. Just like a regular, horrible, mundane day full of hangovers. And explosions? I think something exploded, I remember this crazy blue light.”
“Speaking of,” Suguru said, sounding annoyed. “I heard from your merry band of idiots that you’re proceeding with this insane catastrophe you insist on calling an experiment after lunch? Please reconsider. I don’t want to get exploded and die today.”
Pfft. “Exploded and die, you’re not gonna die. It’s just a little electron agitator. I made it out of some cathode ray tubes, jumper cables, and these huge ass magnets you can buy on the internet. Did you know you can buy that sort of shit on the internet? I’m pretty sure I have now met a bona fide yakuza—”
“Does he not hear himself?” Shoko asked Suguru.
“I think the problem is more that he hears himself entirely too much.” Suguru rolled his eyes and tossed his napkin on top of his empty lunch box. “At least don’t start building actual particle accelerators or something,” Suguru said, and the best part was he only sounded half-joking.
“No way am I promising something stupid like that. The Super Gojo Supercollider has a nice ring to it and I have a legacy to consider. I have to make sure I’m remembered.”
“Like anyone could ever be lucky enough to forget you. Are you actually going to teach your classes this afternoon?” Suguru asked.
“Unless we all get exploded and die,” Satoru said, a grin pulling his cheeks wide, masking the way that, too, felt so very weird.
Yet another problem with this bizarre day: everything was too perfect.
Itadori, laughing into his palms, trying to hide his snickers.
Kugisaki kicked back with her ankles crossed, thrilled with being called out for having the best hair out of her little trio of friends.
Megumi tilting his head to precisely mimic a pose both forgotten and unknown. He chose the same seat in the back row and hissed at Itadori with precisely the same intonation. Gave Satoru that same, daring look from behind his government-issued goggles.
Satoru shook his head and cleared his throat. Nothing to do about it. There was science to be done. Satoru attached his jumper cables and kicked on the generator.
Jagged, cerulean blue lightning bolts erupted from the coil. That same overwhelming, staticky fuzz splatted across the whole of Satoru’s face, wrapping tendrils around his head, hissing in his ears.
Nothing but a blinding, blue light.