Chapter Text
Gojo Satoru didn’t realize she was living in a dream until it shattered all around her.
Her purpose in the Jujutsu Academy was a to flaunt the power of the Gojo clan, showcase their superiority. For her, there was nothing more to it than the opportunity to unleash her power and establish herself as the strongest.
The first two of her school years changed her. They were more than an empty caricature of a person like her could ever imagine. She also could have never imagined they would ever come to an end.
How would she? She had never known loss or failure. She had never felt death close to her, she had never been lacking in anything and she had always been more than enough.
She found out though. What it feels like to not be enough. To fail and to lose.
Quite fittingly, the end of her glass dream began with a girl’s brave smile. The not-actually-forced, but still not natural brave smile of a young, sweet girl. With the slight quivering of the ends of her lips, the twitching of her bloodstained fingers and hands, clasped tightly together, the stiff line of her small shoulders.
Riko’s white headband was gone, her two braids were in disarray. Her clothes as well. Even still, when Satoru brings herself to recall that day, those events, it is Riko’s soft and powerful smile that will shake her more than anything else.
Her beautiful, brave smile.
Nobody would ever tell Satoru that she smiled in that same way too, sometimes. Most times. They wouldn’t know. Who would even remember Amanai Riko’s name, after everything?