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Seven Minutes

Genre: Angst

Tags: SaShiSu the Trio, Shoko centric

Word Count: 3K

Status: Completed

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: Indirectly discusses spoilers (without context) for the end of the manga.

Summary: Obligation is not a curse so easily escaped which Shoko knows all too well.

Excerpt: That’s the nature of the thing, isn’t it? Grief? In an intimate group of people, there will always be one person who buries everyone and will, subsequently, be mourned by no one. Absence plays tricks on the mind because there’s no one to truly soothe the loss, no more noise to drown out the sadness.

Deft hands clasped a flimsy box, muscle memory slapped it against the palm of her hand. The familiar scratch of a lighter seemed to echo in the short-lived peace as her lips pursed around a cigarette.

Skritch. Skritch. Success.

Flame erupted from the catch of the spark wheel. In the absence of the warmth that would normally lick at Shoko's nose, she took brief stock of her surroundings. Still but too familiar to be mistaken. She’d spent the majority of her life there, after all.

Long after her body could fit comfortably in a student desk, Shoko walked the halls of Jujutsu Tech: a healer, a teacher, the principal. Every classroom indelibly left a mark on her memory. If it weren’t so sad, she’d probably have a laugh at the prospect. A place that housed so much of her resentment, her regrets, her guilt, yet she could recall every corner of it down to where the wallpaper peeled. But the people who made the whole experience palatable had long since faded from her recollection.

Sometimes, if she strained, she could somewhat summon their faces to her mind’s eye, but time made her uncertain of their exact features. She’d find herself in a familiar predicament as her life was very repetitive, and she’d remember inside jokes that had since lost their origins. Oftentimes wondering if they were ever inside jokes at all or whether her mind had started fleshing out conversations that never really happened just to fill in the gaps.

That’s the nature of the thing, isn’t it? Grief? In an intimate group of people, there will always be one person who buries everyone and will, subsequently, be mourned by no one. Absence plays tricks on the mind because there’s no one to truly soothe the loss, no more noise to drown out the sadness.

She’d seen countless faces, an endless river of them, young and enthusiastic. Many were still young when she’d inevitably have to prepare their bodies for whatever came After. Repetition took the sting off, somehow. Or perhaps it was simply because none were so devastating as the one’s she loved most fiercely. At a young age, she’d had her fill of suffering.

She’d never had the time nor allowed herself the space to ponder.

Until now.

She’d never settled into the silence. There was always another student who needed guidance, crisis that needed handling, body that needed healing. Even in the quiet of an autopsy, Shoko’s mind weaved through the motions, recalling the body’s innerworkings as she brought scalpel to skin, all the better to distract herself from the unpleasantness her gift for healing had condemned her to.

Air pushed through her nose in a resigned scoff. She supposed it could be worse. She could have found herself in the morgue instead of her second-year classroom. There was flexibility and hope within these four walls though the line between jujutsu sorcerer and cursed user seemed razor thin depending on the presiding body over the court of opinion. If her time as a sorcerer was purgatory, time spent in the morgue felt like hell.

“Hey… you cryin’?” a sensationally confident voice sneered, liberating Shoko from her contemplation.

“There it is,” she thought, tempering her piqued interest, still trying to piece together what was happening. She’d heard the line before and wondered if its crispness meant there was a corporeal source or if she’d simply had some clarity sparked by the unusual stretch of stillness. “Well, that settles it, I must be in hell,” she rolled her eyes, a smirk threatening to pull at her lips.

Anticipation built in the pit of her stomach. She’d always wondered but never knew what sort of chemical reaction was to follow -

“Now, now, Satoru…” an incredibly familiar purr tutted.

“Oh, brother!” Shoko groused, her cigarette threatening to fall from her mouth as she rolled her head, the back of her hand obscuring it dramatically as if to faint. “If this is some sort of unskippable dialogue, I’d rather-“

“What are you on about?” a domineering voice curtly interrupted.

It was enough to make Shoko almost swallow her cigarette. She racked her brain for the origin of this memory. “We were... first years? No, second years. Answering a call to rescue Mei Mei and Utahime who’d gone dark… but… Nanami wasn’t there,” she deduced, her body suddenly on edge.

“And put that out! Have such things as decorum really gone out the window?”

“Oh, come on, Nanamin! Lighten up!” Shoko could visualize the natural spring in Haibara’s step as she imagined him playfully clapping their classmate on the back. It became obvious this wasn’t a dream or a memory. Perhaps a cruel joke.

“Shoookoooo!” Gojo sang, his voice tickling the hairs on the back of her neck. “Boo!” As if the interjection gave birth to physical form, his face leaned over her left shoulder and came into view.

Shoko shrank away from the sudden appearance, struggling to make sense of the situation unfurling before her. By now, she’d naturally assumed madness had finally taken hold, but it couldn’t explain the pale glow of his skin, the ethereal white of his hair, the impossible blue of his eyes. She squinted taking it in, realizing her memory of Gojo had never been so spot on. Never capable of capturing the appearance of his blessed eyes and always over dramatizing the gloss on his lips. Despite her confusion, an awkward snort bubbled from her throat as the sound of billowing fabric caught her attention.

“I see you’ve already proven yourself to be quite the jester, Satoru,” Geto cooed as he nimbly slid into the desk beside Shoko.

Wary but comfortable with the memorable dynamic, Shoko turned to look at her peer turned cursed user. Where she’d inventoried the hallmark indicators of Satoru Gojo fairly quickly, she slowly studied Geto, struggling to reconcile her findings.

His smile was ridiculously broad, closing both of his eyes. He hunched over his desk innocently leaning on one loosely balled fist. Glimmering black hair pulled into a neat bun exposed ill begotten piercings, all belying his sensible demeanor. “Here, I was expecting to see a cult leader, not some nerd cosplaying as a student. Aren’t you a little old for that, Geto?” Shoko squinted trying to gauge the motives of these doppelgangers.

“Pot meet kettle, Shoo,” Gojo quipped, puckishly drawing attention back to himself abruptly. His irises sparkled in a way she hadn’t been able to recreate from memory as he winked over his sunglasses.

Shoko’s expression shifted imperceptibly, her brows barely furrowing as she cast a look downward. Sure enough, the wide barrel of her collar that always swallowed her short hair wrapped around her neck. The cigarette that danced in her mouth was now, unmistakably, a lollipop and she didn’t have to look further to know that the rest of her school uniform was complete. While she no longer felt like an oversized fool in her desk, this realization inspired more questions. She sighed, “Great, now I look just like you idiots.”

“Ouch, Ieri!” Gojo clutched his heart as if it’d been pierced with an arrow. His head whipped away as he raised a fist to his mouth to bite down on. “Your words, they cut so deep.” The resolve of his antics melted away as he slid into his own desk, coyly mirroring Geto’s stance while leaning in toward Shoko slightly. “O well. Could be worse. Least we’re not dear old, Nanamin.” Gojo nodded toward the entrance of the classroom where the group’s sullen kohai darkened the doorway.

His weight shifted to one hip in light exasperation, the roll of his eyes obscured by a dramatically angled bang.

“Pfft!” Despite having heard his voice earlier, Shoko wasn’t prepared for this version of him, the diehard emo appearance of the salaryman she’d come to know.

Nanami huffed tersely as Haibara bounced his head over his shoulder, beaming. He deflected the ribbing effortlessly, flicking his wrist as if to shoo Gojo’s words, “Senpai, don’t be like that!”

Shoko’s suspicion gave way to full blown intrigue. Whatever this was followed no logic, no pattern of memory she’d had previously. She felt as though she were authentically back in the company of her schoolmates once more. The prospect of it overrode her inherent skepticism even if it didn’t add up. “Alright, what the hell is this?”

“Mmm, not quite a ‘bowl cut’ but I don’t know if it ever truly had a name in the scene,” Geto surmised grabbing his chin thoughtfully.

“Surely, Mr. Bangs himself is not adding to this provocation. You have no room to talk, Geto,” Nanami’s arms crossed over his chest, his visible eyebrow raising accusatorily.

“He’s got ya there, Sugu!” Gojo squealed, reaching behind Shoko’s back to impishly poke Geto’s cheek and drawing Shoko’s attention from the sudden mismatch of honorifics coming from young Nanami. Still, the unease began to take hold as she closed her eyes and gave her head a slight shake as if to reset the details of her memory.

“Now, now, Ieri…” Shoko cynically stared about face toward Geto whose piercing purple eyes were making a rare appearance as he studied her face intently. She’d never been able to recall him like this. Healthy. Eyes open and alert. She’d spent the better part of knowing him plagued by how he looked before he defected, drowning in the guilt of missing how thin he’d worn himself. She’d spent the rest of her time mourning him, haunted by the vision of his ravaged body. The weight of his unbreakable gaze caused her to look away sheepishly. “Must we squander the time?”

Disoriented by the unnerving cognitive dissonance, Shoko’s eyes fixed upon her desk as she struggled to ground herself.

“We just… didn’t expect to see you here so soon,” Gojo murmured defecting from his lighthearted cadence.

She whipped around to meet his eyes, searching for something that looked out of place to help make sense of everything. He had the look of youth but the burden of wisdom, just as he’d always looked. But there were no fuzzy details, no question of whether his eyes actually looked otherworldly, whether his nose was slightly more pointed, if his voice always hinted at a joke she didn’t catch. It felt impossibly real, all of it. Giving in to her curiosity in a way that betrayed her typical nonchalance, Shoko asked pointedly, “where is here?”

“Don’t listen to him, Shoko, he’s been making bets on your arrival. Always too certain of himself,” Nanami chided.

“Ugh! Nanamin! How could you betray my trust like that?” Gojo’s mischievous façade recovered abruptly. “I’m just saying, it’s only a matter of time if I’m here!”

“Stop. Stop that.” Fearing she missed her brief window of honesty, she tried to pull back focus before the group unraveled into innuendos once more.

“Ah yes, the great threat that even you can’t avoid, Gojo,” Nanami drawled disparagingly.

“Not like I was wrong though, was I, Sugu?” Gojo nodded to his cohort for support, lapping up his inevitable agreement.

“Satoru. Is that any way to behave? Mustn’t we still set an example for our dear kohais?”

“What is this?” Shoko could feel her frustration building. It felt as though they were actively evading her attempts at straightforwardness.

“Is this what it feels like when Mom and Dad fight?” Haibara chimed in, moving further into the room to watch the spectacle up close.

“Isn’t it obvious, Ieri?” Geto prompted gently. Again, the sincerity seemed out of touch with the general breeziness of the discourse which made it uncomfortable. As if the answer were already on the tip of her tongue but her mouth struggled around the word.

“I just didn’t think Sukuna would be so focused on you after I died.”

The admission caused a ball to swell in her throat, the truth finally out in the open.

“Strategically, it makes sense, senpai! Shoko-san is a force to be reckoned with. No one heals ‘em like you can!” Haibara pumped his fist in the air triumphantly.

Shoko ignored her obvious lack of control over his passing as she worked to recalibrate her thoughts. The fluid shift in honorifics, the inexplicable rewind of appearance, the curse Ryomen Sukuna… This wasn’t a cursed technique or a dream. These weren’t hallucinations or specters sent to haunt. Merely incredibly old friends sent to welcome.

Shoko had lived a long, sprawling existence after Gojo’s passing. He was the last, after all, in the great upsets of her lifetime. She’d never really given credence to an afterlife. Its existence would have to somehow offset the cruel unfairness of living. With the horrors she and other sorcerers experienced, she wasn’t sure there was anything that could balance that ledger. But here she was, stuck in the silliness of her youth at the point where life felt the most hopeful.

While it was evident some of them held knowledge after this point of their lives, it almost felt like the weight of what was to come did not press down upon them anymore. They’d passed through the fabric between life and death and left those cares of the living behind. Even so, a question clearly lingered shrouded in Gojo’s dismissive confidence.

“They killed him, they did it.” That felt like enough to say. Certain triumph allowed everyone Gojo left behind to live on in his absence. But it’d been decades since that defining battle for her. She’d forgotten the vessel Gojo had last gone up against until she saw the crack in his blanched expression. “Sukuna!” she hurriedly added.

Gojo recovered seamlessly, though his wounded curiosity was still not satisfied. Clearly, the impression that one could be relieved of obligation after death could be a lie, even in this place. “I knew they could handle it…” he boasted halfheartedly but Shoko could tell he wished to press for more.

“The kids, they saved Megumi. Yuta, too. Your gamble paid off, after all,” Shoko reassured gently, feeling herself break away from their typical teasing in favor of clarity. “It’s been decades since then.”

Consolation loosened Gojo’s expression. “I was sure… well…” he bashfully ran a hand through his hair, averting his gaze. “I was worried they might-“

“Befall the mistakes of our past?” Geto finished somberly.

Shoko watched as Gojo’s eyes clouded, focusing on the classmate just over her shoulder. There could still be loose ends, even here. “No, dummies, they were always smarter than you knuckleheads. Or maybe that Itadori was too dumb to keep quiet… I never quite figured that out. But whatever he said talked some sense into Fushiguro,” she gleamed thinking back on the course her students’ lives took.

It had taken years for her to figure out the fatal flaw that doomed The Strongest. How their strength built a wall and ultimately became an alienating burden. They felt as untouchable as they were unreachable. Where words could have been the emergency brakes to prevent them from going down their twisted paths, they were simply too blind to it.

Despite the realization, as things came to a head with Sukuna, the situation felt too all-encompassing to objectively see it as plainly as two boys who just needed to face one another honestly. Yuji never had such misgivings. He was the beacon for which people laid down their lives just as much as he was the reason so many people survived the fight. “Maybe he was smarter than all of us.”

Nanami hummed approvingly, his eyebrows raising in agreement.

“So, what is this, now?” Shoko pressed, feeling a sudden frenzy.

“Ieri… surely you’d guessed by now!” Gojo didn’t waste a moment relishing in his relief. “The brain continues to function after death, if only to calm the spirit and usher you on over to nothingness!” he sang, closing his eyes as he wiggled his nose gleefully.

“Well. Unless you’re Satoru,” Geto huffed in jest.

“Welllllll… we have Limitless to thank for that. A minute can span a millenia in this ole noggin,” he beamed, loftily rising from his desk to cross the room and drape himself over Nanami’s shoulders.

Nanami, even if only for show, attempted to shrug him away while stifling a grin, Haibara bouncing around him gleefully.

“Oh, so this is hell,” Shoko deadpanned.

“I mean in a space, time, infinite sense? We’ve probably had this exact conversation in my head too. Probably loads more beyond this because I’ve got nothing but time. But you, Ieri? I’d say we’re burning right through yours. This could be it, not much more to go. Any last words?”

If she didn’t know him as intimately as she did, she’d mistake Gojo’s over the top bravado for reassurance. She’d never even pick up on the tinge of sadness woven with a hint of fear for whatever happens next. Realizing that the sudden burst of agitation she’d felt earlier was likely her brain hinting at a countdown, she felt vulnerable enough to stare into the faces of each of her beloved friends. Knowing this was probably the truest version of themselves as they were cemented in her mind. Their voices, their attitudes, the minute details of each of their appearances. She was grateful that she’d never thought about the afterlife, that it took her by surprise and that it felt like it had, indeed, made up for the sadness she’d been cursed with. Otherwise, she may have squandered the final solace her earthly body would allow by being disappointed.

There were no pearly gates, no infinite wisdom, no ascension, nothing. Just four boys with their idiotic grins before life chewed them up and spit them out.

“I guess I’m lucky you were here to explain. I think I might have mistaken this all for one big dream otherwise, these days that could have been,” Shoko smiled brightly even as her vision began to fade. As the outlines of her friends began to blur, she couldn’t help but notice how starkly the somber expression on Gojo’s waning face contrasted the peace shared by the others. Ruefully, she'd have contemplated further had there been more time but perhaps that, too, was a kindness.

A/N: At first, I wanted this to be a 7 minute read but that's... a lot harder to do than I thought, especially since I wasn't trying to overtly allude to her having died at all.

This evolved a lot thanks to this and the thought that we got a glimpse into the afterlife with Nanami and a full chapter when Gojo passed - if there's a relation to this idea that the brain lives on... what if Gojo is still there in that airport?

Link to AO3

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