Chapter Text
First Method to Murder a Man: Watch your big brother’s curses do the killing. But does it truly count as murder if you yourself committed no crime?
”I heard they threw him in an orphanage, you know.”
Dimmed blue eyes framed by snowy lashes slowly travelled over to the lady with the cigarette and the hair of a bronze medal. She tapped ash into an ashtray next to her.
”Who?” Satoru asked numbly, cheek pressed so hard into his pale knuckles that it actually hurt, glasses crooked across his unusually empty eyes.
”Shizuka.”
A blank stare.
Shoko raised an eyebrow, bringing her cigarette back to her lips. “Shizuka Geto? You know…the brother of the mass murderer that you saw in his house every summer?” The reminder made the boy with frosty hair rub his face, almost in frustration. “Too soon? Humour heals the soul, you know. You of all people should understand that.”
”He’s alive?” he queried plainly, tilting his head as though the information hadn’t quite processed. Nothing had processed quite yet. The higher-ups had only sent out the notice about Suguru’s defection a week prior; his name was lemon juice on an open wound.
”As alive as a boxed kitten on the side of the road, I suppose,” Shoko mused, brown eyes loitering on her friend’s face. “Apparently the higher-ups chucked him in some cheap orphanage nearby to have his behaviour monitored. Doubt it’s helping much with the trauma he’s bound to have by now. It’s not every day a six-year-old has their parents murdered in front of them.”
Satoru remembered that kid. The one with the endless appetite and an unholy addiction to strawberry mochi. The little guy had always wanted to hang out with them when Satoru joined Suguru at his house during whatever summer breaks they actually managed to take.
Of course the higher-ups would send him away. They were ignorant bastards.
”I’ll be back soon.”
“Sir, there’s a lot of paperwork required—“
”I’m not here to adopt; we’re already family.” It was rare for Satoru Gojo to take on a tone like that. Dismissive without any amount of humour. “Take me to him.”
”That one has had…complications in his time here,” the lady started to explain, “he…talks to things that aren’t there. The other caretakers have had to…discipline him and isolate him from the other children. I’m really not sure you want that one. Would you not be interested in any others?”
”Discipline. You mean you’ve been laying your hands on him.” Satoru peered coldly over his glasses, face unusually void of his smile and immaturity. They hadn’t been there for nearly a week. “Take me to him, and maybe I won’t report you for child abuse and potential neglect, by the look of this place.”
He’d do it anyway. The lady didn’t have to know that. She fell for the bait like a fish getting hooked.
This place reeked of neglect. Perhaps not for the ‘normal’ children who at least got a proper room, but definitely for this one. Shizuka’s isolated room was windowless and teeming with cursed spirits wriggling in corners and drooling blood and hanging from the ceilings, unseen to anyone other than the boy himself and Satoru before he even entered the room. Speaking of Shizuka, he had a face like a bruised pear, purpling splotches around his eyes and wrists from where he’d most likely been dragged around. An ugly, bat-like cursed spirit with too many eyes and crooked human teeth lazed in his lap, petted rhythmically by the child’s trembling hands.
When the door opened, Shizuka practically threw himself at the wall in the corner of the room furthest from the door, bat flapping awake with a snarl aimed at anyone and everyone except the child holding it. The other cursed spirits startled from their roaming, bristling one by one until the room was filled with raging energy.
The receptionist woman started to sweat without truly understanding why.
”We haven’t been able to get him to communicate yet,” she rasped, inching back towards the doorframe and not daring to enter any further. The last woman who did that had come out covered in unexplained claw marks.
”Gee, it must have taken a lot for a chatterbox to refuse to speak to you,” Satoru dryly responded, crouching down, “how did you manage that?”
”Sir, I’m afraid he’s never been even a fraction of a chatterbox here,” the woman cautiously acknowledged, narrowing her eyes as Satoru tipped his glasses down at the cowering child and smiled. "I'll...give you a moment," the lady excused herself through gritted teeth when Satoru waved her off, retreating somewhere down the hall.
”Hey, squirt. You remember me?” Satoru asked cheerfully—far too cheerful for a place like this; like the sun shining through a gap in a pitch black cave. “I’m the guy with the mochi. You always called me Mr Blue Eyes because you didn’t like my name—I still think that’s rude, by the way. My name is as lovely as I am.”
Wide, sapphire-blue eyes slowly dragged up to meet the diamond ones waiting behind blacked-out glasses. Of course Shizuka remembered him. It was difficult to forget a weirdo like Satoru, and even harder to forget a weirdo with a striking appearance like—well, Satoru.
”Why don’t you come with me? I’m getting you out of this hellhole. I’ve got mochi.” Satoru waved a colourful pink bag with strawberry mochi printed on it in front of the little man’s face tantalisingly, the bag of pure magic crinkling eagerly.
It worked.
Shizuka inched his way forward on his knees just for the mochi, hands hovering for a moment before snatching the bag like a greedy chipmunk set on hoarding goods. The bag crinkled when he peered into it warily, as though he expected something to spring out at him, but he was met only with the delightful smell of strawberry mochi and sugar. Shizuka could have cried.
His eyes trailed up as Satoru stood, round as blue buttons, before quickly pushing himself to his feet after the older boy, the ugly bat curse settling on his shoulder with a toothy grin containing human-like teeth. Satoru whistled joyously and spun on his heel to leave, expecting Shizuka to follow at his heel. He didn't.
"Hey, you comin', squirt?" Satoru peered back over his shoulder, blue eyes fixing on the hunched, shadowy child behind him.
"I don't wanna leave them behind, Mr Blue Eyes." That voice was so quiet now. A mouse in comparison to its former tiger. Satoru didn't think he'd ever heard Shizuka be any quieter than the less-than-socially-acceptable indoor voice he'd always used when play-fighting with Suguru over the last piece of mochi (though Suguru had always pretended to lose so that Shizuka could steal it off him, and Satoru had always snuck him some extra behind the sofa).
"Hm?" Diamond eyes flicked over to the writhing mass of cursed spirits, though they'd gone oddly still the second Shizuka had risen from the floor. Any good sorcerer would exorcise them.
Satoru Gojo only claimed to be a good sorcerer most of the time, not all of the time.
Crouching behind Shizuka, Satoru grasped the back of the child's free hand—the one not clutching mochi—and raised it up in the direction of the cursed spirits. How had Suguru explained this that one time? Suddenly Satoru found himself wishing he’d listened more. Maybe that would have prevented this.
”Do you feel that? That’s my cursed energy.” Satoru’s hand shifted, radiating an immense amount of cursed energy into the boy’s knuckles. “Imagine yourself absorbing it—like a vacuum, but aim it at the curse. Get it?”
”You’re a really bad teacher, Mr Blue Eyes,” Shizuka mumbled, but he tried, feeling the radiated aura of cursed energy and urging the same essence into his own fingertips. It felt strange; his fingertips began to tingle and glow a faint lavender, the cursed spirits gurgling. His aim was less than impressive, but in this situation, that didn’t matter—there were so many cursed spirits that aim was unimportant; most of them turned into glowing blue orbs, their insides writhing with life.
The bat got sucked straight into his hand with a choked squeak, but it didn’t try to fight him. He had been nice to it. The orb was almost too big for his hand, his small fingers curling around it the best they could. That was the reality for most Jujutsu sorcerers, wasn’t it? Too small for the job and too strong for freedom.
Shizuka looked at the orb in his hand, then up to Satoru for guidance.
”You swallow ‘em now, squirt. Just that one, for now. All of them are a bit too big a meal for one sitting, I’m sure.”
It seemed a bit big to swallow. But if Satoru said so, then surely it was true. So Shizuka lifted his hand and opened wide, clumsily fitting the cold orb into his mouth and, eyes tearing up from his instinctive gag, swallowed it. It left a burning trail down his oesophagus that made him wince.
It tasted like shit, death and vomit laced in mould, and for a moment he had to wonder how his big brother had done it so many times.
Satoru Gojo’s dorm was quite small, Shizuka found out. He didn’t care. At least it had a bit of light streaming through the window. Satoru said it was only small because he was still in a student dorm and it would get bigger once he graduated and became a teacher.
Shizuka couldn’t help but wonder who would want to become a teacher. The only purpose of the job was to teach more foolish, worthless humans how to kill curses until they switched to killing those who bled ugly red instead of pretty purple.
”I still have a spare futon from when Suguru slept in my dorm,” Satoru explained, unfolding a thick white sheet, “you can sleep here—“
”No.” Shizuka was blunt. Unusually so—he used to be timid about everything.
”Huh?” Satoru raised his head, watching as Shizuka retreated to the other side of the room like some sort of cat in a cage.
”He touched it. I’m not touching it.”
”Aw, really? You hugged him all the time, squirt.”
That did not fucking help. Shizuka bristled almost as hard as his little bat thing that he’d managed to manifest did, a furious pink rising to his cheeks. Satoru couldn’t remember ever seeing him so visibly seething, and he’d witnessed Suguru eat the last strawberry mochi in front of him.
”Don’t look at me like that,” Satoru grinned, pulling at a corner of the futon with his foot to spread it out, just in case. “He didn’t smell that bad, if it helps. He only smelled like ass a small amount of the time.”
”You ducking sleep in it then!” Shizuka barked.
Silence stretched like an elastic band for a moment. Then two.
”…did you just say ducking?” Satoru snorted, then actually just doubled over cackling when Shizuka’s face heated. Full-on wheezing type of cackling. He could break his own kneecap if he slapped it any harder.
”Shut up!” Shizuka snapped like a really underwhelming lion cub—like Simba trying to roar for the first time. “My mother says I’m not allowed to—I’m not allowed to…”
The realisation seemed to hit. Shizuka had felt nothing quite as cold before. Well. Maybe the hand of his mother’s dead body had felt a bit colder.
He couldn’t quite remember what she had felt like.
Tears turned his eyes from furious slits to strangely still lakes. He couldn’t remember much of his mother at all. Nor his father. It had only been a few days ago, hadn’t it? Weeks, maybe? He couldn’t seem to remember much of anything before holding their bloody hands and begging them to wake up while a brown-eyed man with stupid, ugly, annoying bangs looked down at him.
He hated that man.
”I’m never touching that futon, Mr Blue Eyes.” Shizuka’s voice was unsteady now and he shifted left so that he wasn’t facing Satoru anymore, his back resting against the side of the bedside table as though hiding his face would hide his tears completely. His knees tucked up to his chest, the bat hopping up them as though climbing a mountain and simply perched atop the child’s knee. It had the same look on its face as Satoru did.
I have no idea what to fucking do right now.
“Dang, kid,” Satoru whistled, taking a spot next to Shizuka, far enough for comfort but close enough to be there. “You’re a bossy little shit, you know that? You only just got here and I’ve already been kicked out of my bed.”
Shizuoka huffed a watery laugh that choked him, lips quivering. He didn’t bother wiping the tears that trickled down his face. What was the point? They’d just continue anyway.
“Mr Blue Eyes?” The sniffle was obvious in Shizuka’s tone.
”Hm?” There were a total of about zero tissues in this damn room. Satoru hadn’t wiped his own tears in an age, and his use of tissues had seriously dwindled after he dragged himself through the shitty first stage of puberty in which tissues were used for…well, things. Important things, like thinking about Suguru shirtless.
Dang. How had he fumbled that?
”Do I have to join Jujutsu High?”
“Squirt, chill out. You’re like two—“
”I’m six.”
”—all you have to spend your life on right now is eating your weight in mochi and look cute so that I can tell pretty girls that you’re my angel.”
”You’re not fooling anyone.” Shizuka at least sounded like he wasn’t crying anymore. “I don’t need Six Eyes to know that you’re gay.”
”I’m kicking you out.”
Shizuka actually turned his head to look at him, eyes pink and swollen, but there was something like a smile that twitched on his lips. At least that was what it looked like, anyway. How the fuck was Satoru supposed to know?
“No you aren’t. I’ll make you sleep under the bed.”