Chapter Text
He swears he can feel them a little more than normal. Those eight scars, left by the self-proclaimed Sorcerer Killer – one nearly centered over his spine, its mirror image on his chest; a long one running from throat to hip; four on his right leg, and a thinner, paler mark over his left brow. It was only after receiving the blows that he learned the reverse technique to fix them, but scars are an unavoidable part of the healing process. New collagen proteins form, stitch the damaged skin back together, a little messier than it was before. It’s a concession he doesn’t want to make: the untouchable can be touched. He wears long sleeves and high collars, he keeps his bangs somewhat long. His blindfold covers the entirety of his forehead.
He can feel them a little more than normal, but he doesn’t dwell on it. Surely he isn’t thinking about the incident any more than usual, because he is always thinking about it, on some level. Recently, thoughts of his mistakes have run in the background, pulling the corners of his resting face into a frown. Keener ears would’ve detected the Sorcerer Killer even if his six eyes remained blind. His insistence that he accompany Riko might’ve saved the girl’s life. And if only he hadn’t automated his infinity. If only he had let him in. It was mutual, the withdrawal, and even with all of the eyes at Satoru’s disposal, he didn’t see him gasping for air until he had already drowned.
His favorite flavor of coffee had been cream and sugar, both in moderation. That won’t cut it for Gojo. He orders an iced Vietnamese coffee, remembers a comment Megumi once made about clogging his arteries with condensed milk, and smiles to himself. The boy is only fifteen years old, but he takes his coffee black. Then, Gojo thinks to himself that he does it out of spite, to make a fool of him and his sweet tooth, and his smile thins. It stings a little more than he cares to admit, but it’s not his pride or his masculinity that smarts, but his sense of purpose. The boy is trying too hard to grow up too fast.
After a few minutes, Gojo’s coffee is ready, and he sits down at the high table facing the windows that open upon the bustling street outside. He takes a sip, swirls the straw, takes another sip. It’s good – sweet, just how he likes it. Like the other patrons of the cafe, he’s here to do work, but unlike them, he comes bearing no briefcase or laptop. Instead, he watches the ebb and flow of cursed energy dance in the expanse of his blackout sunglasses. Things like tables and traffic lights, benches and buildings don’t produce cursed energy, but people do; their energy signatures curve around the outlines of obstacles, painting the world in colors only Gojo can detect. It’s why he can still see, even when he’s wearing his blackout sunglasses or his blindfold. Really, he has to wear one or the other – his eyes are a machine without an off-switch, prone to overheating if operated in unfavorable conditions. Five minutes spent with his eyes uncovered is enough to make them feel dry. Ten minutes, and he’ll have a headache. Thirty minutes, and that headache turns into a migraine that even Shoko can’t fix. After awakening his abilities, the longest he once went without a blindfold was forty-seven minutes. He was vomiting for the following twenty-four hours.
Even now, his glasses are sitting a little low on his nose, letting in too much light around the edges. He pushes them up with his middle finger and takes another sip of his coffee.
Cursed energy, all around. After having lived twenty-eight years with his Six Eyes, he considers his cursed vision just as authentic as his human vision, maybe even more so. He knows his students’ faces, but he knows their cursed energy better. Panda’s feels tri-woven and cottony, Inumaki’s smells of paper and mahogany. Maki doesn’t give off much cursed energy, but her cursed tools do, and their signature is so similar – steely – it’s as if she imbued the weapons herself. Come to think of it, Nobara’s is similar in flavor, despite the differences in their dispositions. Megumi’s is like Inumaki’s, but sharper, metallic, and because of the Sorcerer Killer’s complete lack of cursed energy, it is uniquely and relievingly his own. Yuuji is the opposite: his cursed energy comes overwhelmingly from another, the worst the world has to offer, in any era. Sukuna smells like copper and stomach acid; therefore, Yuuji does too. It’s not his fault – the boy has a contagious laugh and an unbreakable spirit. Gojo always carries mints in his pocket when he teaches their class.
Non-sorcerers’ cursed energy is a bit less distinctive, but when concentrated, takes on a general flavor. Today is a Monday, so the street outside smells a little harried, but the sun is shining and the air is warm, and Harajuku ebbs with a hopeful, determined current. With the exception, of course, of the hospital a block away. Gojo was here last week, and exorcized a semi-Grade 1 curse, but in that time, a few Grade 4s have popped up. Without even needing to see them, he grasps for their cursed signatures, and squeezes. It’s better to nip them in the bud, lest they conglomerate into a more serious problem. It doesn’t take much effort from him, not much at all. He might as well. Why wouldn’t he?
He smells smoke and sandalwood, and freezes. When he takes another breath, it’s gone, but it still feels as though someone has rung his head like a bell. His cursed energy is unmistakable, and permanently discontinued – smelling it is asinine when he’s been dead for eight months. Then again, everyone experiences phantom scents from time to time, little whiffs of time-travel, a mental trip back to 2006, when the Nokia phone was taking over the world and everything made sense. He takes one more sniff, just to confirm that he was imagining things, and he was. But he’s not imagining the smell of body odor and burnt meat; there’s another curse nearby, a little higher-ranked than the Grade 4s he crushed like grapes. He takes his coffee to go and walks down the street. His path is a straight line, and his steps are even. He gives no indication that the muscle fibers in his leg are splitting around jujutsu-fortified steel.
Nothing is wrong with his leg. It’s been twelve years.
The cursed spirit is nearby, sequestered in a back alley. It makes sense. Midnight muggings are unpleasant enough to warrant the spawning of a cursed spirit, and this one smells putrid enough to be a Grade 2, smart enough to claim its victims where the general populace can’t watch the guts fly. Gojo takes a sip of his coffee and lets it sit in his mouth as he rounds the corner and comes to stand before the cursed spirit. It has just as many eyes as him – two on its head, two on its shoulders, two on its hands – and blood around its mouths. And blood around its eyes, and dripping from its mouths, and Gojo doesn’t watch as he tears it apart from the inside, because he’s seen it before and he’ll see it again. He doesn’t even bother thinking to himself, ‘it’s a modern-day Sisyphean tale,’ because surely Sisyphus didn’t give special recognition to his circumstances.
Exorcize, vaporize, rend flesh. Again and again. Push a boulder to the top of a hill. Watch as it rolls down. Tear to pieces, liquefy, destroy.
It’s August again. It’s hard not to think of the past as a coil in his gut, nestled against the core of his cursed energy, the two locked in a feedback loop. By now, he knows that, for a few months, he’ll exist as a sixteen year-old with a target plastered to his back in the body of a twenty-eight year-old with the world on his shoulders. Curses will fly apart with bloodier fanfare as Gojo subconsciously vents his ugliest emotions on the living manifestation of the worst humanity has to offer. And he won’t think about it, won’t tap fingers along his thigh, covertly searching for wounds, won’t choke when a sip of coffee nearly goes down the wrong way. Honestly, it’s kind of embarrassing, uncharacteristic behavior for him, but he knows better than to think that anyone is watching closely enough to notice.
He continues down the street, having caught a whiff of something. It could be a nearby Grade 4 or a distant Grade 1, and he very well may be the only sorcerer alive who hopes it’s the latter. He wants a fight, an excuse, wants something to shake him out of his reverie; he’s so busy he’s bored, so busy he hasn’t slept in eight days, forced to use Reverse Cursed Technique to stay awake. But better him than someone else, he thinks, better someone who won’t break a sweat than someone who might not even survive the encounter.
It is a Grade 1, peculiar in that it lurks in the crevices of a side-street he frequents. Normally, curses stay where they spawn, but this one clearly gravitated to an area promising greater flesh on which to feed. How to approach it..? He wonders. Gojo’s tremendous supply of cursed energy forbids a sneak attack, but he also knows better than to waltz into the middle of the square and exorcize it with such vigor that passersby trip over strewn body parts. He taps a finger to his lip, scowling. What to do, what to do?
The curse makes his decision for him, giving a bloodthirsty shriek as it registers his cursed energy, and rearing back on its centipede-like legs to charge. Gojo makes two space-time jumps – he spans the length of the courtyard in an instant and, grabbing the monster by its lolling tongue, teleports high into the air. Immediately, he lets go, only to smash his fist into his own palm and watch through the gaps of his glasses as purple guts spray. Infinity spreads below the mess, catching chunks of meat and droplets of blood like a picnic blanket; Gojo ties the corners together and returns to the ground, finds a bin in which to deposit the corpse, if it could even be called that. He didn’t even push that hard – it was just weak.
With a frown, Gojo realizes that, somewhere along the way, he lost his coffee. This just won’t do. He scans the street for a new coffee shop, and upon ducking inside, ends up plastered to the case of treats by the counter. He’s going back to Jujutsu High after this; he ought to bring his students a little something. Eight-thousand yen later, he accepts his new coffee and the paper bag of pastries, and leaves the shop, strolling across the courtyard with purpose. There’s still one errand left for him to run.
The stand is run by a short, elderly man who shakes a little in his movements. His knuckles are knobbly with age, veins popping from speckled skin, but his fingers handle his flowers with care that Gojo considers sufficient for his purposes. The two of them have something of a routine; when the man sees Gojo approach, he begins assembling a bouquet comprised of whatever flowers he pleases, and when presented with the finished product, Gojo pays what he owes and matches the amount in the tip jar. Neither knows the other’s name.
Today, the man has crafted an arrangement of hyacinths and lilies of the valley, wrapped in baby blue paper and iridescent cellophane, tied with an indigo ribbon. Gojo can see the colors, because his glasses have been pushed to his head. His eyes find the man’s as his aged, trembling hands offer the bouquet to Gojo, and he accepts it with a ‘thank you’ and a fistful of money distributed between the register and the tip jar. After subtly casting a protective charm over the booth, Gojo turns, finds a secluded area where no one will watch him blink out of existence, and teleports to Jujutsu High.
He lands just outside of Tengen’s barrier. He can phase through it if he wants, but the purpose of the barrier is to conceal, not to protect, and it gives him a headache to look through mist and shadow for a patch of even ground for which to aim. And so, he stands in a marketplace one moment, and a forest the next, bordered by towering trees and stone pillars. The latter are point objects of Tengen’s barriers, concentrating and directing their cursed energy across the school’s property. Their signature is potent enough to make Gojo’s head a little muzzy, so he hurries, his footsteps muffled by moss growing over the brick path. He ascends the stairs and passes through the arch, and comes face-to-face with the buildings lining the outskirts of campus.
Twelve years ago, he ripped them from their roots with an amplified Blue, and it still wasn’t enough. He abolished all the obstacles standing in his way, and still his eyes were useless, outsmarted by flyheads and an invisible man with invisible guts and a knife that was surely crafted in Hell. At twenty-eight, Gojo knows more, has more experience and science under his belt. Astronomers hypothesize the existence of dark matter not because they can see it, but because they can observe its gravitational effects on its surroundings. Gojo doesn’t take his blindfold off to scan his surroundings, because he isn’t looking for a man, but rather a black hole in the shape of a man.
Gojo isn’t searching for anything, because Fushiguro Toji has been dead for twelve years.
It would be quicker to continue straight, follow the walkway, and descend the stairs to the track and field where his Six Eyes can see his students, but he has flowers and a purpose for them. So instead, he hangs a left and skirts the edges of the school, stepping over debris when he encounters it. Eight months ago, Yuuta blew apart the west end of the school with the power of true love, and still the damage remains. Jujutsu sorcerers are understaffed, anyways. What’s a smattering of concrete chunks and wooden panels littering a seldom-utilized corner of the campus when there are curses turning civilians into bleached bones?
The rustle of the wind quietly dies, until the only sounds echoing in his ears is the thud of his footsteps and his heart. It’s as if the world quiets in order to eavesdrop, watch as the Strongest fights his hardest battle of the day against a nonexistent opponent. It’s just him, and the alleyway, and the memory.
There’s no body. Nor are there any bloodstains, Gojo made sure of it. Made sure it was quick and decisive – painless, even if only one of them was spared the hurt. Even the smell of sandalwood and smoke faded with time. Stooping low, Gojo picks up the bouquet he left last week, its petals browned and crinkled, the paper dirtied by the rain that hit a few days ago. He’s quick to lay the new bouquet on the ground, not wanting to steal from the dead, not wanting to give the wrong impression. The infinity around his fingertips brushes the concrete, and his skin prickles at the ghost of the sensation. He would drop his technique to thumb over velvety petals, smooth his palm over the ground upon which he sat, except, well- he won’t be letting his technique down until the end of October, at least.
He straightens, and his gaze settles on the cracked stone wall. It’s an impact crater, circular and indented, at knee-height, or heart-level for someone sitting against the wall. Gojo replaces his sunglasses with his blindfold and teleports the fuck out of there, leaving the old bouquet resting atop a dumpster before returning to the center of campus to see his students.
They’re still on the track field, sparring or exercising or, in Megumi’s case, sitting alone on the steps leading down to the pitch. Gojo hides his frown with expertise, lifting his coffee into the air and shouting,
“Everyone gets a souvenir!”
Nobara and Yuuji reach him first, clamoring and then bickering about who gets to have the mochi, then settling down when Gojo reveals he bought enough for both of them. Gojo interprets Inumaki’s request of ‘salmon, salmon’ to mean ‘two takoyaki, please,’ and hands them off, watching as he dutifully surrenders one to Maki, who gives him a nod but not a smile. Panda turns his offers down. Megumi, however, makes no indication of having noticed his presence. His gut churns a little.
As Nobara and Yuuji return to their upperclassmen – by the looks of it, Maki has been helping Nobara get a handle on middle-range weaponry, and Toge is using his cursed speech to teach Yuuji how to direct the flow of cursed energy – Gojo descends the steps and takes a seat by Megumi.
“I brought you a souvenir,” he says, voice lower but just as boastful, as if flaunting his consideration. He’s not, but a more casual tone would have Megumi getting up and leaving; sometimes, it feels like he hates being coddled almost as much as he hates being acknowledged at all.
“I don’t like sweets.”
In response, Gojo produces a small paper bag of black sesame cookies. Megumi sees and, after a moment of deliberation, selects one, thoughtfully nibbling on it.
“Thanks, Gojo-sensei.”
Gojo’s reply is equally self-satisfied and preoccupied. If only his Six Eyes could be used to read minds. They can read emotions via observation of the flow of cursed energy, but Gojo has been slow-boiled once, and Megumi has always been exceptionally closed-off. Is he doing okay? Is he lonely? He has Yuuji, a boy with a smile radiant enough to turn midnight into noon, but one person isn’t always enough. He also has Nobara, but he also had Shoko, and it still wasn’t enough. He has Panda, Maki and Toge; he has Yaga and Ijichi and Yuuta overseas, but all of the companionship in the world means nothing if he doesn’t let them in. And Gojo can attract and repel, float, invert, create imaginary mass and topple a nation by himself, if the mood strikes him, but he can’t reach the sun sinking behind the mountains. He can only open unlocked doors.
On the field, Yuuji must’ve grown distracted and let the cursed energy drop from his ears because, at Inumaki’s behest, his fist connects with his own jaw. He howls in frustration, and throws up the shield once more.
Gojo laughs. “It looks like Toge is doing my job for me. Do me a favor, Megumi? Spar a couple of rounds with Yuuji sometime before the end of today.”
At that, Megumi’s brows come together. “I don’t have anything to offer. Inumaki-senpai and Maki-senpai are better teachers.”
Gojo shakes his head. “No, this is for your benefit. I want you to get more comfortable with close-range combat. Yuuji is the perfect sparring partner for you.”
If anything, Megumi’s frown deepens. “Itadori is a machine. Do you have a death wish for me?”
He says the words with flat fondness in his voice; most others would miss it, mistake the disguised admiration for a complete deadpan, but not the man who raised him. “Not at all.” Then, he pushes to his feet. “I wish I could stay to see how it goes, but duty calls.”
Megumi tilts his head to the side, looking up. “You’re not going to eat with us tonight? Itadori is making ginger chicken meatballs.”
Gojo’s stomach nearly rumbles at the words. He’s familiar with the recipe – Yuuji made them one night while he was ‘dead,’ and they’re just as good as Megumi implied. But unfortunately-
“The higher-ups want me in Roppongi by two. I’ll be taking the train back, so-”
“It is two,” Megumi interrupts.
Gojo checks his phone. It’s 2:02pm. Laughing without concern, he slips his phone back into his pocket and claps his hands. “Well, it’s nothing they’re not used to! But seriously, spar with Yuuji. And make sure you get a video for me!”
The last thing Gojo hears before he teleports away is a muttered ‘I’m not going to do that.’ He hopes Megumi was referring to that last part.
When he lands, his skull pounds a bit. It’d be nice if he was escorted by an assistant manager on his missions, but there never seems to be anyone free – no one seems to care that teleportation takes effort. He’s not sure if it’s the higher-ups being petty-ass, geriatric bastards or the assistant managers wanting to avoid being stuck in a car with him for any amount of time, and he’s not sure he wants to find out. Although, it doesn’t really matter; like he said, he can take the train. And as for his headache-
Fucking hell. He forgot his coffee again.
He’s tempted to teleport back to the school to grab it, but by that point, it’d probably be sunk in cost. As it stands, he can hear Shoko barking in his ear, snapping his blindfold against the bridge of his nose and asking him, ‘are you sure you haven’t fried your brain? RCT doesn’t take care of everything.’ Well if that’s the case, Shoko, RCT probably didn’t take care of all the after-effects of smoking a pack of cigarettes a day at the ripe age of sixteen, no matter what you say. Besides, it’s not like he has a choice, with the higher-ups filling every second of the time he spends outside of the classroom with missions. It’s easier to pull consecutive all-nighters than it is to push through on a single hour of broken sleep.
He really is pissed though, he thinks as he strolls down the street. The monetary cost of not one, but two misplaced coffees isn’t an object to him, but he hates to see good food go to waste. Hopefully, Megumi will give it to one of his classmates instead of simply throwing it away. Although, on second thought, only Yuuji would take it; none of the second-years seem to like him very much, and Nobara would probably have qualms about drinking after him. That’s fine. If his students don’t understand his efforts at expressing his affection through food, he’ll express it by slaying curses for them, reworking the higher-ups’ dilapidated school curriculum for them, fighting to turn Jujutsu High into a haven and home for them. They don’t even have to understand his intentions, they just have to reap the benefits.
Exorcize, again and again. It’s a love language, he tells himself, not a job with no vacation days. He paints back alleys and hospital basements and abandoned detention centers with blood and miasma because he can; and because he can, he should; and because he should, he has to. August will pass in a sleepless blur of glances over shoulders, September will come and go without his acknowledgement, if he can keep busy enough with work while convincing the higher-ups to spare him any missions based in Shinjuku. October will be spent in recovery, November in dread, and December in a pit he refuses to call ‘mourning’ when he can take his students skating, admire strung lights on nighttime walks and avoid the west end of campus as if his life depended on it. For a decade now, the Strongest ends up spending almost half of the year behind the prison of his Six Eyes and the duty that comes with them, expertly ensuring that no one notices. He can tell the cycle is beginning yet again, because he is a satellite aimed at the sky, a scientist hunched over a galactic rotational velocity curve, searching for that which will never be found.