The next time he tries to hit you, you try to deflect it again, and it gives a little rebound. It works. You do it again. And again.
This goes on for about five minutes, before you felt so tired that you could barely stand. It looked like he barely broke a sweat. It was probably obvious that there was an infinite difference, physically, at least, between the two of you.
You’re bent over, panting, sweating. You couldn’t move anymore. Gojo stood still. He didn’t bother trying to attack you anymore.
“Are… are you done?” you said between breaths. You grabbed your chest. Fuck, it hurt.
“Nope,” you grit your teeth. He sounded so annoying. It almost reminded you of one of those spoiled toddlers.
Using whatever strength you had left, you decided to charge towards him. It was probably either going to end with him knocking you out, or maybe if you could, you could land a hit on him.
You swung blindly at him, expecting the same resistance as before. There isn’t. The katana hits him on his side, hard.
The two of you stare at each other for a couple of moments and you drop the katana. It clatters on the ground.
The two of you keep gawking at each other.
“… you weren’t supposed to be able to touch me.”
He takes a step closer to you. “How’d… how did you do it?” There’s a child-like curiosity in his voice. It felt similar to how he looked at you earlier.
“I don’t…” you look to the side “…I don’t know either.”
He stares at you for a second. You immediately look away.
“Y’know… I don’t know if you know this but…”
He takes a step too close to you.
“You’re probably stronger than you think you are…”
You really want to push him away, but your body stays frozen in place. He continues, “I guess no one’s told you this before, but you actually have two cursed techniques. Not just one.”
“So you’re kind of special. You’re sort of…” he paused. He had a tone in his voice you had never heard someone have before.
“So you have two cursed techniques?” Utahime asks, incredulously. “Well, I guess that explains why you’re a grade one sorcerer instead of grade three.”
“If that was the case, why wouldn’t they put me at special grade, though?”
“You wanna be ranked even higher?”
“Hell no. I don’t want that ‘freak of nature label’. In fact, they should’ve ranked me lower so I’m not some 2nd choice after Gojo and Geto.”
“Even with two cursed techniques, I’m pretty sure you still can’t level entire cities. At least I wouldn’t think so.” She sips her tea, and stares at you, “Speaking of which, do you even know what it is?”
“Uh… no? I didn’t bother asking Gojo.”
“And why didn’t you bother asking him?”
“I was literally getting my ass handed to me, why the fuck would I ask him?”
Utahime takes a sip of her tea. You watch as she gently sets down the cup.
“So, where have you been for the past two weeks? I swear I haven’t seen you at all.”
“I mean, you always know where to find me. There’s like literally only three locations I ever go to.”
“Yeah. The library, the lab, and the arcade. I know that.”
“Okay so you know where to find me, you’re always welcome to join me, so why are you asking?”
“Uh cause… like literally everyone knows you’ve been locking yourself up in that lab for like the past two weeks. I figured you were doing something important. I didn’t wanna bother you.”
“Fair enough.” You reach for a can of coffee, which was sitting under your desk. You push the tab up, enjoying the satisfying sound that came as the can opened.
The two of you sit in silence for a few moments before Utahime speaks up again. “So, are you gonna try to figure out what the second cursed technique is?”
“I mean my guess is that it has something to do with cancelling the cost of the first one. Like you remember all the times I was fighting or whatever, or testing stuff out, and I just straight up passed out?”
“I mean, I was surprised I even lasted that long while fighting Gojo. I thought I was gonna be done in a few minutes.”
“Wait, wait, wait. You FOUGHT him?”
“Shit, did I forget to tell you?”
“You haven’t told me ANYTHING about what you’ve been doing for the past two weeks.”
“Okay well… long story short. My gun exploded, so I lost my eye. I ran into the first years, Shoko healed me. And then I had to fix my gun, so I begged the staff, and I’ve just been in there rotting away, and trying to get this right for the fuck of me so I don’t gouge my eye out again. Oh yeah, and today I fought Gojo.”
“Okay yeah… what the fuck. That is a lot.”
“You got your eye shot out?”
“That’s the only part you cared about?”
“I mean WHAT did I tell you before you went testing that day?”
“Yeah okay. I knew you were gonna get hurt.”
“Okay i thought you meant like ‘oh i might pull my arm’ like yeah no shit I might’ve done that. I’m a weak ass fuck, what did you want me to say? It’s not like I wasn’t gonna go and do it anyways. Like I’m either dying in school here or on the field.”
“You’ve been sent on a lump sum total of ONE mission, Y/N.”
“Well, they’re probably gonna send me on more, right?”
“Probably yeah, but with those two first years in the picture, you’re probably not gonna be in high demand.”
“How many have you gone on?”
“Like. Ten. Twenty. I don’t know. They blur together. Maybe less than ten actually. I lost count.”
“Well, I can’t really like exorse curses all that well, if you know what I mean. Like yeah, before they sent me on a lot, but that was just cause it was just me and Mei Mei.”
“So, how do you go about doing it?”
“I mean you can just use cursed energy normally, no? I typically got the weaker end of all the missions. Mei Mei got the stronger end. Half the time though, we’d be going on those missions together.”
“So they had lower expectations of you cause you were weaker?”
“Anyways, we should probably figure out what your other cursed technique is. I’m willing to guess that it probably has something to do with contact, maybe? I don’t know though. We can test something out.”
Utahime slides you a metal pipe.
“What the fuck is this?” You look at her, bewildered. “You just have a metal pipe sitting around in your room?”
She shrugs. “Someone gave it to me as a gift.”
“Yeah, okay. I’ll believe that.”
She rolls her eyes, “It’s a long story. It doesn’t matter. Anyway, just start draining your cursed energy into the pipe until you feel weird, I guess.”
You do as she says. It’s about a few minutes before you start to feel yourself go light-headed.
“Okay, now grab onto my hand.”
You do as she says. A couple more minutes pass before you feel normal again. You stare at Utahime again, and her presence feels weaker.
“Interesting.” She mutters. “Looks like you can actually… drain cursed energy. Don’t do that to me again though, please.”
“Okay I didn’t think it’d actually do anything. You probably drained half of mine, from what it seems. But… that does explain why you got so tired easily, at least during training. Cause I noticed everytime you actually exert yourself using your cursed technique, a lot of your cursed energy just disappears into the object.”
“The object becomes stronger, but you don’t. I was concerned, cause you also have literally NO cursed energy output. Like it’s that of a pretty weak sorcerer. But they also graded you so high.”
“But yeah, if you can also drain cursed energy, that explains a lot. I think it probably starts to kick in automatically when there’s just a difference between you and whoever you’re in contact with. That’s probably why you were standing so long against Gojo.”
“Probably, yeah. That’s my theory anyway. Maybe don’t tell anyone though, because I’m like 99% sure people are gonna start using you to their advantage.”
You awkwardly shut the door of the classroom, before sitting down. It was the empty classroom you usually went to when you didn’t feel like going anywhere else.
There should’ve been no one there. But today, there was. The last person you wanted to see, too. He was sitting alone, at one of the chairs, and looking outside the window. Geto and Shoko were nowhere to be seen. You wonder where they were.
You quietly pick up a chair, and move it the furthest away you could, hoping that Gojo wouldn’t notice. Maybe you should’ve just gone somewhere else today. You knew you should’ve just chosen the arcade today.
Luckily he didn’t seem to pay you any mind, or maybe he didn’t notice you.
It was peaceful for about five whole seconds. And then your bag tipped over and fell on the ground. You were grateful you hadn’t put anything important in there.
You freeze, and then stop like a deer caught in headlights. You tense up for a second, muttering sorry, before picking up your bag and getting ready to leave.
You stare at him for a second before responding, “You’re using this class right? Actually, aren’t you supposed to be in class? What are you doing here?”
“Same could be said for you.”
“Okay, well- I don’t need to go to class.”
“Who said I needed to either? Also, what do you want? I have something I need to do here. So if you could just leave, or I could lea-”
You shook your head in disbelief, and stared at him. “What the fuck do you mean ‘no’? That wasn’t a-” you stop yourself, and grab the pocket of your pants tighter.
Gojo shrugs. “I knew you’d be here, so I came here and waited for you.”
“… that’s a little weird, Gojo.”
You start counting the seconds of silence in your head. Three seconds pass before Gojo speaks up again.
“Can you take me somewhere?”
“What? Am… I your babysitter now or what’s going on?”
He stares at you, expectantly, waiting for you to agree. You turn your head, and bit your inner cheek in annoyance.
“Where are Geto and Shoko?”
“Can’t you just go with them, later?”
He doesn’t answer your question. You look to the door, and sigh, impatiently. “Okay, where do you want to go?”
“Take me to your favourite spot.”
“Ugh, okay then. Follow me.” You walk towards the door, open it, and wait for him to follow you outside.
Gojo steps out the door, and you slide it shut.
You decide on taking him to the arcade. It was the safest choice really. Let him have his fun, play some games, and then you could both go back to school, and go on your merry way.
As always, the arcade is somewhat packed. There’s people everywhere, playing things from claw machines, to pac man, to the console games. Pretty typical for a Friday. You regret bringing Gojo here though, you felt like he might ruin it for you. You can see Gojo eying the surroundings, probably deciding what he wants to do here.
“Go on, I’ll be here waiting.” You muttered. “You have to pay for your own games though, I’m broke.”
You have a feeling he’s not exactly asking out of interest, but you answer anyway. “It’s an arcade. People usually come here to play games, and have fun… typically.”
“Like… fucking I don’t know? Machine games? Video games? I don’t know what they’re called but they’re that. Basically you just pay some money to activate the machine, and then you get to use it for a while.”
“Maybe it’s not fun to you.”
You try your best to follow Gojo’s gaze, seeing what he might’ve wanted to play. “Or if you want, we can go back to school. That’s an option too-”
“So, what games are you good at here?”
“Uh… not really any, to be honest. Why?”
“You spend a lot of time here, you have to enjoy something about it, right?”
“I mean I just come here because I don’t wanna stay at school.”
“What do you want me to say? Like, none of these things really require skill.”
It’s Gojo’s turn to roll his eyes. “Yeah sure. Can you play the shooting games?”
“Mkay. Do you have any money?”
Gojo fished some coins out of his pocket. “Is this enough?”
“Holy shit you’re loaded.”
“You can play against me right?”
You close one of your eyes, trying to ignore him.
“C’mon,” it almost sounds like he’s begging, “It’ll be fun.”
“Are you fourteen, or are you four?”
It’s not really like you can say no. Gojo knew that, of course, so there was really no point in him fake-pouting, and begging, but he was probably being childish for the sake of it and to embarrass you too.
You hated to admit it, but it was working.
Gojo, as you would’ve come to find out, was surprisingly good at any game he played in the arcade. You had managed to beat Gojo the first few times while he was playing the shooter games, but after that, he’d manage to destroy you in half the rounds. In the other half, you had managed to just win barely, by the skin of your teeth.
Which was a shame, since you considered yourself not half-bad at the shooter games.
You slammed your hand on the machine, as you watched the game cut short the screen turned red for the gazillionth time.
“Hah, I win.” Gojo snickers.
“You BARELY won,” you snapped, “Had I not taught you all those tricks, you’d be nowhere close to beating me.”
“And? I still won, didn’t I?” He teased.
“You WON because I taught you how to win.”
You knew that wasn't true. It was scary how fast Gojo had managed to learn how to play the game. You had only managed to teach him the basic mechanics of the game, but within a few rounds, he had managed to reach your level of skill, in terms of the game.
Which shocked you a little bit, cause since this arcade game had been released, you had been playing it everyday, pretty much. Especially last year. You were pretty much addicted to it, and it was why you were coming into the arcade everyday. The game was one of its first kind, to have a ranking system, and an account to save your data.
It wasn’t fair. Was he just naturally gifted at everything he did?
Suddenly, Gojo’s phone rings. It’s Geto.
Gojo doesn’t bother saying hi, instead letting Geto talk for a few seconds before he responds.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming back soon.”
A few more seconds of Geto talking, before Gojo speaks up again.
“I mean… Okay yeah fine. So where should I meet you?”
“Just wait on the school grounds, why are you coming to get me? It’s not THAT important?”
“Okay yeah, so I skip one time. We skipped PLENTY of times.”
“Okay yeah whatever see you soon.”
Gojo clicks the phone shut. “We gotta get back to school. C’mon.”
“We? Who’s we, Gojo? I can stay here. Geto wasn’t looking for me, he was looking for you.”
“Nah, you’re coming with me.”
He grabs you by the wrist and drags you along. “Hey let me go-”
Gojo ignores you, and keeps walking. Embarrassment washes over your face, as people in the arcade eye the two of you. To them, it must’ve looked weird. Funny. They probably made the conclusion that you were some kind of weird couple, maybe they’d think you were the childish one.
You probably wouldn’t be coming back here soon.
Geto profusely apologizes to you after you come back.
“Sorry about him,” he sighs, “I told him to come with me and Shoko today, but he just ran off. I didn’t know he was looking for you.”
“It’s… fine. Why’d you call him?”
“We were- Oh, it’s Yaga.”
Yaga approaches the three of you. Geto greets him by bowing, you awkwardly nod your head, and Gojo continues leaning.
“Are the two of you done playing hooky?”
Gojo rolls his eyes, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I was going to come to class today,” you replied, “Actually, I was going to come to class today and everything, but GOJO-”
“That’s a good one,” Gojo drawled, sarcastically, “You were not going to class. I saw you-”
Yaga glares at you and Gojo, and the two of you shut up, “Both of you should consider yourselves lucky to be gifted, or else I wouldn’t be so nice. Anyways, I have a mission for all of you. Specifically, you, Y/N, and the two of you, Gojo and Geto.”
“Can’t Y/N come with us?” Gojo asked, “Why don’t you assign a mission for the three of us together?”
“Why would I send the three of you on a mission, together?”
Yaga shook his head, “No.”
“Anyways, Gojo and Geto, you can follow me, Y/N, here are your mission details.” He hands you a single sheet of paper.
You skim through the piece of paper.
Okay… 3rd grade curse… it’s… okay… the mission is in the middle of an abandoned apartment building… okay so it’s been killing factory workers… so they just want me to waltz in there and kill it… probably.
It looks pretty much in a pretty remote place. Probably no one will see me. I guess I should probably get going now? How am I even going to get there?
You fold the paper into thirds, and stuff it into the front pocket of your bag.
“Hi.” You simply respond. You peer behind him. Gojo’s nowhere to be seen.
“What’s the mission for you?”
“Nothing too complicated, I guess.”
“Yaga said we’re sharing a car. You’re gonna get dropped off at the mission site after us, and they’re gonna do a round trip and come back.”
You nodded. “Okay, great. So, are we supposed to leave now?”
Geto nodded. “I think so, yeah. Driver should be coming soon.”
There’s an awkward silence. Neither of you know what to say. You start to pull out your phone, probably mindlessly check your notifications before the car arrived. Geto doesn’t seem to pay it any mind, he turns back to the entrance waiting for Gojo to arrive. It takes a few minutes, but you hear footsteps approaching.
“Satoru,” Geto groaned, “What took you so long?”
“Yaga wanted to give me another one of his lectures,” Gojo sighed, “So, are we going?”
“Yeah, we’re just waiting on the car.”
“Oh, is Y/N coming with us?”
The excitement in his voice is almost tangible.
“No,” Geto replied, “We’re just sharing the car.”
“I mean we can go on their mission though.”
“I mean yeah, but why would you want to do that?”
You feel someone hit your shoulder. “Ow what the- Oh, it’s just you, Shoko. Are you coming along too?”
She shrugs. “I could, maybe if I feel like it. Oh yeah also,” Shoko digs into her pocket and tosses you your gun, “Take this. You’ll probably need it.”
“OH. Oh shit, thanks. I almost forgot about that.”
She laughs, “You’re welcome.”
“Why do you need a gun?” Geto asks, “I thought you couldn’t use them to attack curses.”
“I mean they probably can,” Gojo replied. He stares at you for a second, and you immediately go back to your phone.
A black car stops beside the sidewalk, where the four of you are waiting. “Yeah, I think I’m gonna sit this one out guys,” Shoko puts her hands into her pockets. “Plus, it looks like it’s gonna rain soon. Good luck to you guys though.”
The three of you nod in thanks. “Oh, and don’t let those two idiots get to you, Y/N,” Shoko adds.
She waves goodbye. The three of you reach for the door handles; Gojo and Geto reach for the back ones, while you sit in the front. You slam the door shut, and stuff the firearm in your bag.
You watch as the school gets smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror.
The sky is dark by the time you’re dropped off to the mission site. You quickly thanked the car driver and slammed the door shut. He drives off.
You sighed. At least the outdoors were nice. The air was still a little damp, after the rain, and you could see the full moon in the sky. It had been a long time since you went outside at night. You wish you could just stand there for a little longer.
You look at the factory. It’s about two floors high, and all the lights are off. The place had probably closed off for the day. Maybe it was abandoned, but it didn’t look old enough for that to happen.
You looked around, trying to find an entrance. On the side of the building, there was a heavy-duty door with a keypad lock. You try to open the door. It doesn’t budge.
Fuck. How am I supposed to get inside then?
You look around the grounds, seeing if there’s anything you could use to break the lock. You end up finding a bent piece of metal, that you could probably use to pry the lock off.
You drag the rod to where the door was and used the best of your strength to pull the lock off. It took a few tries, but the knob ended up ripping apart from the door, and popping straight off. With the hole there, you pushed the rod through the door, and using all strength you could muster, pried it open.
You threw the metal rod down, rubbing your right hand.
You walk into the grounds of the factory. All the lights are off. It’s dark. You take a step forward. You feel your boot touching something slimy.
Ew what the fuck is that?
You take a step back, reaching for the walls, looking for the light switch. It takes you a second, but you pull the handle down, and you hear the machinery whirring.
You look beneath your boot. There was a green goo.
You look up again. You tense up. It takes everything within you to not run away.
The walls, every single one of them, were completely covered in it. It was like cobwebs; they spanned for the entire factory; on every machine, on every, wall, on the floors, and on the ceiling.
You suppose every worker here probably died. It looked like the curse either covered the entirety of this factory (or maybe you were on the inside of it, you couldn’t be sure), or all of this was residue left by the curse itself.
You’d just go to the second floor to check.
The second floor was an office floor. It was more or less similar to the first floor, but the residue was thicker. It grossed you out to walk in it. You felt like you were walking into a spider’s overbuilt nest.
And that you could be aten at any time. And the horrid sound it made every time you walked, made you disgusted too.
You thought for a second. The best way to probably do this was to burn the whole factory down, but you know that wouldn’t really do anything.
Why couldn’t I actually have something cool as my power? Like maybe I could manipulate fire or something. This is so boring. This sucks. I can’t even do anything here. Maybe I should’ve built explosives instead.
Wait… explosives…
Maybe there’s a match? That might work.
You trudged to the nearest desk, and start digging through their stuff. Papers, pens, files, there was nothing in particular.
You go to the next desk. You look through the first drawer. Nothing. You look through the second drawer.
At the very back of the second drawer, you find a small lighter. The ones typically used to light cigarettes.
Now, all you needed were some flammable materials. There was plenty of paper in the office. Maybe you could take all the paper out of the printer and burn it.
But, that probably wasn’t going to cause enough damage to whatever this curse was. You probably needed something stronger. If you had a bunch of chapstick, that could work. Maybe gasoline, but that wouldn’t be in an office.
You look down at your feet. The slime had gotten deeper. It went from ankle depth, to halfway up your knee. If you didn’t get out of here soon, you were probably going to be engulfed, or completely trapped in it. Pocketing the lighter, you tried to walk towards the printer on the other side of the room.
Halfway through, the residue had already managed to reach your knee. You try to ignore it, and you keep walking. You quickly try to pull the printer tray out but it was completely submerged.
You pause for a second, disgusted, before reaching down in the goo and getting the paper, but you felt something stopping you.
With your other hand, you reach for the gun in your pocket, hoping that you could maybe free it.
You look around before turning back and you see a bright green face, with a couple… no a bunch of eyes, and a bunch of…
Were those skulls? Actually, were those bodies? Half-acid worn bodies?
You fire your pistol straight at its head, and it goes through, breaking the glass.
Yeah, okay. First mission, and they give me a curse that isn’t even solid. I love this so much.
You take your gun and shoot the printer, causing it to break apart. Black ink seeps into the curse.
Hang on… is printer ink flammable?
It’s worth a shot. You break down the ink storage further until it explodes, and you light the match, and throw it in the air. The flame catches the printer ink, and the entire office bursts into flames.
You kick down the window. Without thinking you jump off.
It takes you a second before you realize that was a bad idea. You definitely weren’t going to stick the landing, and the curse hadn’t been fully exorcized yet. You had just set the building on fire.
Not only that, you realized you were gonna land head-first, on the concrete. You racked your brain of what you could do, probably at least to avoid a concussion and finish the job. Time seemed to slow. The ground didn’t seem to be getting any closer
Actually it was. What were you thinking? You simply closed your eyes and braced for impact until-
A pair of hands caught you. It takes a second for you to open them, and then another second for you to process that it Gojo Satoru who’d caught you.
He stares at you smirking. Your face turns red. You feel like you’re about to die of embarrassment.
“I mean,” Geto interjected, “That looked pretty cool at least.”
“Yeah,” Gojo snickered, “Might’ve been cooler if half your boots weren’t melted off though.”
You looked at your feet. He was right. Half the laces looked cleanly cut off, and the soles were wearing thin.
“Put me down,” you hissed.
Gojo doesn't put you down. Instead, he stares at you condescendingly before turning to Geto.
“So, how should we do this?” Gojo asks. “Should I blast down the place or should you do it?”
“I did the work on the other one,” Geto replies, “I think I'll sit out on this one.”
“Suit yourself,” Gojo shrugs.
Gojo changes his grip on you so that he’s grabbing the back of your uniform before making some weird hand symbol.
You see a flash of black and red, actually you don’t know what you see at all, but you blinked and the entire building was completely levelled down.
“That should probably take care of it,” Gojo chirps. “I mean, it surely won’t survive that, right?”
“Did they still want the factory intact or…”
“That’s not our concern,” Gojo replies, unamused.
“Oh yeah, the driver sent us to the wrong locations,” Geto added, looking at you. “You were supposed to have the other mission. This one was for us.”
“Yeah the other one wasn’t far off, so we got here relatively quickly, to see you falling off a building and all that,” Gojo added. “We arrived just in time,” he said holding you closer to him. “It could’ve been serious, y’know?” His hold on you is uncomfortably tight.
Geto stares at you and Gojo for a second before giving him a look. He hesitates for a second, and lets go of you, letting you fall to the ground. You stand up and dust yourself off.
“That was NOT necessary, Satoru.”
“Can we… can we just get back home? I’m tired.”
“Yeah, we should probably call the driver.”
Geto pulls out his phone and dials the chauffeur. A few moments later, the same car screeches to a halt.
“Quick, get in.” The driver snaps, “You guys almost caused a scene. Also, the mission specifically SAID that you weren’t supposed to destroy the facility.”
“Oh, so Geto was supposed to exorse the curse.”
“You guys are probably gonna be in trouble if anyone finds out.”
“Blame it on Y/N,” Gojo replied, “They started a fire, I was just finishing the job.”
“Excuse me?? This wasn’t even my mission.” You snapped, “That fucking goo was knee deep, I don’t know what you wanted me to do.”
“Yeah well,” Gojo shrugged, “You should’ve been able to exorse it either way. You’re strong enough for that.”
“YOU created something, I don’t know what, from your fingers that literally levelled the whole building. You expect ME to do the same? C’mon now.”
You grit your teeth, not giving him a response. You can see Geto through the rearview mirror trying not to laugh.
You decide to shut your mouth, and stare outside the window instead.
Gojo had to be obsessed with you. There was no other way.
No scratch that. He was obsessed with you.
It didn’t matter where you went, he was always there waiting. Whether it was your dorm, the lounge, the lab, the library, or anywhere else you could’ve frequented, he was always there. To say it annoyed you would’ve been an understatement. He was everywhere you went. And if he wasn’t busy trying to bother you, you’d be dragged along with him, Geto, and Shoko to whatever they were doing.
You didn’t like it. If the other two noticed how Gojo was dragging you along, how his grip was always a little tight on you, or how you were always forced to hang out with them, they certainly didn’t say anything. Actually you were pretty sure they noticed. They just let Gojo have his way.
You’re hiding in the storage closet, when you get a notification from Utahime. You felt pretty embarrassed about having to crouch in the dark closet, but you’d take some alone time over no alone time.
Are you okay??? I haven’t seen you in ages. Is Gojo holding you hostage?
You begin typing a response.
No response for a few moments. You sighed, and stuff your phone back into your pocket.
There’s footsteps outside the closet. You could’ve probably been able to tell from a mile away they were Gojo’s. Your blood runs cold. You try to stay as still and as quiet as you could be. Maybe it was nothing. He was probably gonna walk away soon. It was probably fine.
The doorknob turns and you genuinely wish you could just vanish into thin air. Turn invisible.
He looks around for a second, and for a second, it looks like he’s going to close the door again. You were going to breathe a sigh of relief, but he stops midway, spotting you.
“Oh. There you are. I was wondering where you went.”
Your heart drops. One of the last places you had to yourself was gone. You stare up at him, your right eye twitching. “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask the same for you. Why are you inside the storage closet?”
“I got bored of the library,” you respond sarcastically.
“Close enough, I guess.” Gojo looks around the closet, before looking back at you. He grins, “You always pick the worst places when you’re sulking.”
Sulking.. He called this sulking??? You had actively been trying to avoid him for three days now. Everywhere you went, he had managed to drag you away from to do something he wanted to do.
You genuinely felt like you were going insane. You wonder when he’d pick up the hint and leave you alone, but you had a good guess he already knew. Maybe he didn’t but either way, the answer was going to be never.
So, there goes your last hiding spot.
“Or are you hiding from me?”
Your eyes widen for a second, and then you stand up. “Oh uh, why would I do that now?”
“Don’t play dumb with me. You were hiding from me, weren’t you?”
He takes a step forward. You take two back.
“N-no, I promise I wasn’t.”
“Then why do you look like you wanna run?”
“What?” You look to each side of him, “I’m not doing that-”
“C’mon I’m not that scary.”
He’s uncomfortably close to you. You can’t back away any further in the cupboard. You try to focus on the wall behind him, hoping he’ll back off.
It takes a second for him to do so, when he does, your heartbeat and breathing return back to normal again.
“Actually, I have somewhere I want to show you.”
“You took me to a fucking playground? Like… an actual playground for kids?”
“What’s wrong with that?” He asks, “I’ve never been to one of these before.”
“So you wanted me to go with you cause…”
“What? Are you mad?” He pouts, “You’ve been hiding all week, I thought this would be a good idea.”
“Okay… but this is LITERALLY a playground, Gojo. You could’ve literally picked any other way to waste my afternoon.”
“Yeah,” Gojo shrugs, “I knew you’d come with me anyways.”
“Come with you?? I was literally dragged her-”
“You wanted to come didn’t you? You could’ve pushed me off at any time.”
“You’re literally ten times stronger than me-”
“And? You literally could if you wanted to.”
“That’s… oh my god nevermind. What do you wanna do? Go on the swings? seesaw? the slide?”
“I dunno,” He pauses for a second, “Why don’t you choose?”
“Can I push you off the slide?”
“You’re really annoyed today,” he hums, “It’s kind of… cute to be honest.”
You feel uncomfortable standing there. There was absolutely nothing you didn’t want to be called more than cute than when you were beyond pissed, by what would probably have been considered your bully, on a Friday afternoon, when you could’ve been doing absolutely anything else. You wonder if he knew you felt like you were genuinely going slowly insane from this.
He was still looking at you, a little bit like he wanted to swallow you whole. Yeah, he probably had no clue.
“… let’s just go on the swings” you sigh.
Gojo walked towards the swings.
You flip your phone and check for any new notifications before following suit.
Meet me at my dorm tonight. We should talk.
You shut your phone and follow him.
If you were being honest, that wasn’t the worst time you had with Gojo. It was somewhat a little fun at least. You remember going on the swings all the time as a kid, but that kind of joy slowly died out as you got older.
You knock on Utahime’s door. She quickly opens it and motions for you to come inside.
“I have not seen you… in weeks. Again.” she mutters.
“Me neither,” you sigh. “I can’t keep doing this anymore.”
“What else would you think I was talking about?”
“Everyone knows your situation with Gojo,” she sighs, “It’s just that none of us can do anything about it.”
“Damn. Even Shoko and Geto?”
“Do you think Shoko wouldn’t have stepped in already if she could help you?”
“I mean, I just thought you guys wouldn’t be able to notice. Plus, she seems pretty chill. Like a neutral party, almost. Friendly with all of us. I respect her. You two have gotten pretty close right?”
“Yeah, I mean, you, Gojo, and Geto have been hanging out a lot. I mean she’s been there too, but more so the three of you. Speaking of which, Gojo’s been dragging you out a lot recently.”
“Wow, I haven’t noticed,” you muttered sarcastically, “Was it really that obvious?”
Utahime sighs, and rubs her temples. “It could’ve HAVE been more obvious. Even me, I'm starting to think he has some type of thing for you. He’s been dragging you out every single day now.”
“Can you at least help me? If none of the others are?”
“Girl, I’m not trying to become one of his victims too. Unfortunately, it seems like he’s probably a spoiled ass boy.”
“Listen, don’t take it personally, okay? Like me and the others feel bad for you but there’s nothing we can really do. Especially since I really don’t want to know what happens when you get on his actual bad side.”
“Am I really that important to him?”
You pause and think for a second. Were you? You knew he always wanted you to be around him, but you had never really thought about that before. Did you matter to him? Probably to some extent.
“… I guess yeah. Probably.”
Utahime sighs, “You probably matter at least as much Geto does to him, Y/N. Maybe a little less… actually but similar to that. And in case you don’t know, Geto means a LOT to him.”
That creeping feeling of disgust crawls up your body. You shudder.
“That’s something I’ll let you find out for yourself then.” Utahime sighs. “But… just know you probably shouldn’t fight with the universe’s favourite boy.”
“… even if you’re somewhat chosen yourself.”
It didn’t really feel the same after Utahime graduated. School felt rather empty, now that she was gone. For the first week, it was pretty hard to get used to the fact she was gone. You’d sometimes expect her to come bursting out of the room where her dorm used to be. Every time something had happened, you remember always making a mental note to tell her, but now you had to remind yourself not to do that. There was no one to say it to anymore.
Hell, there was no one to talk to anymore. At least, not like how you used to, with Utahime. Sure, you and Shoko often made small talk, but neither of you actually wanted to open up. Half of the time you spent was with her smoking, and you just chugging some type of soda or energy drink. You’d always greet each other, but it never really went deeper than that. She was nice, but not really someone you’d have a long talk to.
Gojo and Geto were out of the question. As far as you knew, Gojo was only interested in you as some type of his personal stress ball, and Geto. Well, he seemed cool enough. He was nice, he did have some charm to him, if you did say so yourself. Unfortunately, Gojo was always stuck to his side like glue, and you weren’t willing to spend extra time with Gojo, JUST to talk to Geto.
The first years, Nanami and Haibara, seemed to get along with the trio pretty well. By the time you had gotten around to seeing them, you realized the five of them were already some type of friend group. You watched from a distance as they were all smiling and laughing.
On the bright side, Gojo was leaving you alone now. That was about as far as the bright sides went. You had plenty of time alone now, which you spent typically alone in classrooms, the library, or even your own dorm. You barely went to the arcade now, since you had managed to afford a gaming console. It took you a few months to save up enough money to afford one and some games to play, but the hard work did pay off.
You had so many more options now, instead of being stuck to the same boring games they offered at the arcade. You’d also replaced your old busted CD player for the cheapest MP3 player you could find.
You’d never leave your dorm if you could.
In fact, you were pretty sure you barely left it now, anyways. The only times you left it were when you went on missions. And the occasional times when you’d need to go to the lab or the library.
Those were rare now, though. After two years of fucking around and experimentation, you had managed to find out how to use your cursed technique effectively. The only time you went there now was to make extra bullets, just in case a mission went extra badly. But, barely any missions went bad.
Not after you discovered your aim was near-perfect with the sniper.
You sighed, burying your face in your hands for a few seconds before looking down at your textbook again. You skim another few paragraphs before scribbling down a note on a scrap piece of paper. You didn’t want to study.
You never wanted to study. Fuck, you hated studying. The content used to be easy, but now it was getting progressively more difficult to understand too. You guess you weren’t getting straight As this year like you used to, with barely any studying.
Embarrassing. What’s been happening to me?
You wanted to close your eyes and take a nap. Maybe you’d do that. There was no one here anyways. You start drifting off to sleep before a pair of fingers flicks your forehead.
Fuck, you’d recognize that voice anywhere.
Gojo bends down towards the table, making eye contact with you. You quickly bury your head down further in your arms. “Go away.”
“Geez, you’re always so mean,” Gojo pouts in a faux hurt voice, “Can you ever just say hi for once?”
You don’t respond. Before you can react, he pulls you by a fistful of hair, and forces you to look at him anyways. “You should be nice, y’know?”
You glare at him. He grips your hair tighter.
And tighter. If he went any tighter, you were pretty sure that fistful of hair would’ve snapped. He keeps you like that for a few moments, before it really starts to hurt. You eventually give in.
“Ow, shit- okay I’m sorry,”
He lets your hair go, and your head falls down to your arms again. “That’s more like it. Do you know why I’m here?”
“No,” you replied, “And I don’t really care all that much, to be honest.”
“Aw, don’t be like that.” Gojo mocks, “I’m hurt y'know?"
You grip your fist hard, trying not to punch him in the face.
Gojo smiles. It feels uncanny. Like he was too excited, like he was restraining himself. “Yaga just assigned us on a mission together.”
“A mission… together?” You narrow your eyes, “Where’s Geto?”
“Suguru’s come down with a cold so it’s me and you instead of me and Suguru.”
“Uh… I find that hard to believe.”
“How? He’s literally coughing, and sneezing and all that right now. Do you wanna check in on him?”
“I mean… sure? I have meds and stuff I can give him.”
Gojo takes you to Geto’s dorm, which was on the other side of the school grounds. He knocks three times, before you hear a horse ‘come in’ from the other side of the door. Gojo walks in, and greets him excitedly. You lean against the doorframe waiting for him to finish. Geto greets you by nodding hello, and weakly motioning you, a gesture to come inside of his room.
You look around the walls. He owned a lot of stuff. Well, he probably moved all his belongings to the school once he moved there. There were polaroids of him, Gojo, and Shoko hanging from the wall, and all his belongings were neatly stacked around the room in a way that felt like home.
It was a stark contrast from your own room, which would’ve looked the same as the day you entered, if it wasn’t for the fact that Utahime had helped you decorate it a little.
“Hey.” you said softly, “You doing okay?”
“Yeah,” he replies hoarsely, “Pretty much.”
You toss a box of pills at him, and he catches it. “I mean, your reflexes are still in check,” you say jokingly, he tries to laugh, but ends up coughing instead. Gojo lays him down further on the bed. “Wish that was me.”
It’s a still, awkward silence between the three of you, before you take one step back.
“Take these and see if you feel better by the end of the day. I’m doing your mission with Gojo. Get better soon.”
Gojo looked like he still wanted to say something to Geto, so you turn around and begin to leave.
You stop, but you don’t turn around. “Yeah?”
You nod, and close the door behind you.
Gojo stays in the room for a few minutes before he leaves as well. You’re not exactly sure why he’s been so giddy for the entire half an hour the two of you have been together. He was normally happy, or at least somewhat excited, but today he was unnaturally happy. Like he was ecstatic for no reason at all.
“You’re awfully happy today…” you muttered. “Okay, so… are we going now, or are we going tomorrow or something?”
“If we’re both going, can you do all the work?”
Gojo scoffs, “Now, why would I do that?” He pulls you in closer. “It wouldn’t be fun if I was doing all the work now, would it? I think you should do all the work, and once you’re in trouble, I’ll come and save you. Just like last time.”
You don’t say anything. You probably couldn’t even think about a comeback to that even if you tried. It was true. If you ran out of bullets, you were absolutely done for, and Gojo would have to save you.
It wasn’t even like you had a choice, you could only fight for a certain amount of time, it was almost as if Gojo could fight for an infinite amount of time. Or at least a very long time if he wanted to.
“Don’t worry though, I’ll never let you die on me. I just gotta embarrass you a little, first.”
You thought it would’ve been the best not to give him the satisfaction of any response.
You open your eyes, and the sun nearly blinds you. It’s weird. You probably fell asleep. The bus ride was a whole hour and a half. You’d argue that they should’ve just driven you out to the mission site, but they insisted that it was close enough the two of you could get there on your own. You protested, but they didn’t budge.
Well, that wasn’t the biggest of your concerns. You realized that you were resting your head on someone’s shoulder.
That was not how you fell asleep.
You immediately stand up, but there’s a resistance, stopping you from stepping back too much. Your earphones.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out what happened. Gojo, while you were sleeping had put your head on his shoulder, and took one of your earphones out to listen to whatever you were listening to.
A wave of panic washes over you, and you immediately pull your other earphone back and stuff it in your pocket. You didn’t even notice Gojo looking at you smugly until you looked back up and he looked like a cat that caught a particularly good hunt that day.
Actually, your pockets felt lighter. You reach in them, and you couldn’t find your pistol.
“Gojo,” you hissed, “What the fuck did you do?”
“Hm?” He looked amused, “Nothing. You were probably gonna break your neck while sleeping like that, so I let you rest on my shoulder.”
“Okay, I didn’t ask you to do that,” you snapped, your cheeks burning from embarrassment. “Where the fuck is my gun?”
“No you fucking dumbass, the other one? It was in my pocket before I fell asleep. You did something, didn't you?”
“I didn’t do anything,” he said. It sounded like a child pretending they hadn’t just been caught with their hand in the cookie jar. “Maybe someone stole it?”
“Let me check your pockets then.”
He shrugs and lets you reach through them. There were nothing except candy in them. A few moments pass before he hits you on the head.
“Ow what the fuck was that for-”
You look up, and he’s holding your gun above your head. He smiles, and drops it on your lap. You curse and rub your head in pain. He laughs. “Let’s go,” he says, “I’m trying to get home before evening.”
You rolled your eyes, you followed him out the door.
The mission wasn’t far from the bus stop. It was a ten-minute walk out, and it was to some abandoned shack. A little bit out of the metropolis of Tokyo, but still somewhat in the city.
“Shouldn’t we place a veil?” you muttered, “Won’t someone see us?”
“Can you do it?” He replies, “I don’t feel like doing it. Wait, do you even know how to do one?”
“I mean of course. What was the chant…” you think for a second “Emerge darkness from darkness…” Gojo looks at you expectantly, and you turn away. “Actually fuck, it doesn’t matter. I’ve never used one of those anyways.”
Gojo looks at you in disbelief, “How did you never manage to get seen, then?”
“I just shoot down the curse with one bullet. My aim isn’t that bad. The job gets done quicker that way too.”
“It works,” you snapped. “I mean, I barely have to do anything. They just die.”
“Whatever. I’m probably gonna need to save you at the end, anyways.”
“Yeah, yeah. Always gonna save the day as per usual. Can’t forget your glory, right?”
You walk into the warehouse, and he follows.
“So are you gonna do anything or…”
“Nope,” he grins, “I wanna see you in action.”
You felt his burning into your back. “What did they say the curse looked like?” You walked up the stairs. “Was it weird, or something?”
“We were just told that it was really big, and it gave people illusions. It’s somewhat sentient I guess.”
“Okay, so it just hides around here then? We just gotta wait for it to appear right?”
You huff in frustration. He leans against one of the support bars of the warehouse and watches you get to work. You put the barrel of your sniper against the ledge, waiting for something to appear.
A few minutes pass, nothing happens.
You stare at the ceiling, and start wondering what you were doing here. It was obvious nothing was here.
“This is boring,” Gojo sighs, “Do something already, would you? You didn’t even bother scouting the area?”
“What the hell do you want me to scout? It’s a fucking warehouse.”
“Are there secret rooms or something? Wait, Yaga said it was haunted right?”
“I mean, me personally, I could probably take care of this in a few seconds, especially with Geto, but…”
“You could take care of this on your own. I didn’t ask to come on this.”
“Yeah, but it’s funner with the two of us, don’t you think?”
Suddenly both of you hear a rumbling sound, and you slowly turn around. There was something massive standing in the doorway. Immediately, you pull the trigger, and it lodges itself in the body of the curse. It makes something akin to a scream in pain, but it keeps walking forward.
You wait a few moments before firing two shots this time. Once in the lower part of its body, and one square in the head.
You sigh in relief, as the two bullets graze its lower half and head straight off. You stare at the body for a few seconds before it explodes, and all that’s left is the head and body.
“Not bad.” Gojo stares at the body. “You actually did something for once.”
“Excuse me?? I went on ALL my missions solo, you always had Geto to help you out.”
“Yeah, but your missions are always eas-”
The two of you slowly turn your heads around to see a second curse standing behind the two of you.
You pull out your pistol and shoot it twice before throwing your sniper and jumping off the ledge. You catch the sniper mid-air, before landing and pulling the trigger again. There’s a click, but nothing shoots.
The curse approaches you closer, and closer, and you see its sharp claws reaching out, trying to kill you, you jump back, and it barely misses you.
You reach into your pocket and try to pull out your other gun, but you’re too slow. It runs for you, reaching for your neck. You barely doge it, before it tries reaching for you again. This repeats for a few times, before it nicks your shoulder and knocks you down. You grab your pocket knife and throw it at its head, before you watch it explode in your face. Purple blood splats everywhere around you.
You see Gojo from the other side of the room, smirking. He catches your knife, and tosses it to you. You glare at him and grab it. You stand up, pick up your sniper, and leave the site. You don’t even wait for Gojo.
You simply call the school, hoping they’d send a driver.
Once Gojo catches up to you, he doesn’t stop talking. He’s talking a mile a minute, you’re not even sure about what. You started droning him out after the first two seconds. You’re tapping away on your phone, playing some game, hoping he doesn’t notice.
“Oh yeah and then…” He stops and looks at you, pulling you back by your shirt. “Are you even listening?”
“I.. what? Oh yeah, of course I am.”
Gojo snatches away your phone, and you see the defeat screen on your phone. “I don’t think you are, are you?”
Gojo raises your phone, high above your head and watches in amusement as you struggle and try to reach for it. “So, if you were paying attention, what was I saying, hm?”
“Yknow, actually I was saying, I think we make a pretty good team, yknow? Most of the time you’re only weakening the curses anyways. Plus, you aren’t strong enough to do harder missions on your own, anyways.”
“Gojo, what the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m saying, we should do all our missions together from now on. Even if they’re separate, we should go together.”
“N-no, I don’t want to do that. I’m fine on my own, Gojo, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Gojo pulls your collar away, revealing the small cut the curse made. You stare at him in disbelief. “That’s… that’s barely anything.”
“But you still got hurt.”
“What the fuck do you mean, ‘I got hurt’? This is barely anything.”
“I don’t think so. You’re too weak. You’re fragile. You can barely do anything by yourself.”
It’s patronizing. His tone. You can’t tell whether he’s mocking you, or being genuine. You look at his face.
He might be dead serious.
“Gojo, it’s literally just a fucking nick. It’ll be gone by tommorow.”
“No. You’ll say that now but what if it isn’t next time? What if it’s worse? You always get hurt on your missions. You come back scratched, or bruised, even though you’re supposed to be stronger. You’re supposed to come back without a scratch.”
“Gojo, I had one eye missing at a fucking point.”
“Exactly. You hurt yourself too. I thought maybe… at the start, you might’ve been as strong as me…”
“But I’m not. I was never supposed to.”
Something in your brain snaps. You don’t know what. On second thought, you might’ve called it a reflex. Fuck, you don’t actually know what to call it. All you know was that suddenly your hands were wrapped around his neck, and you were squeezing hard. Maybe hard enough to kill, you weren’t sure.
You’re squeezing as hard as you can on his neck, he looks at your face with some semblance of shock, surprise, maybe some amusement. You couldn’t really tell. He claws at your hand, but you refuse to let go. You don’t want to let go. It’s only until both of you realize you were gripping too hard when you start to feel your hand clench around nothing.
He turned on his infinity against you. You’re breathing heavily. Panting, maybe. Your hand collapses and falls around where his shoulder is supposed to be. There’s a little bit of bruising where your hands were. A small like that looked like it was almost turning purple.
Gojo grabs your hand, which was resting on his shoulder, with his own. Interlocking your fingers with his own. He lifts up your face with his other hand. You’re forced to stare into his eyes with your own. You could see your own terrified expression in his sunglasses.
They were beautiful in a way. Bright blue and endless like the ocean under the sky, but they were terrifying in the same way. Like they could drown you. Wash you away and pull you in until there was nothing left of you.
As if you were just an insignificant speck of dust.
In some ways, you could see how some people ended up describing him as some type of god. He was perfect, he was beautiful, he was basically untouchable.
You wondered for a second, what it was like to be him. To be known as the strongest. To be cut, sanded, and sharpened from the second you were young. How that must’ve felt like. To be able to freely do whatever you wanted without significant consequences.
You stare at each other for a few more minutes.
It all comes to you at that moment.
You were desired by a god.
You sat alone on a bench mindlessly shuffling through your MP3 player, hoping to find a song just good enough to drown out your thoughts. There wasn’t. Not anymore.
You’d listened to all the tracks on the player several times already. You pretty much knew what was going to play just by the first few seconds. You suppose it didn’t matter. As long as there was some noise to drown out whatever you were thinking at the time was enough for you to keep going.
You suppose you needed a better distraction. Anything to keep your mind away from what happened a few days prior. Shoko told you Geto got better later that day, thanks to the medicine you gave him. Geto thanked you. For the entire time, you were praying Gojo wouldn’t somehow magically show up behind you.
In fact, the day after that, you hadn’t seen him, Shoko, or Geto. You texted Shoko, asking where she was and it turned out they had been sent on a mission with both Mei Mei and Utahime. You asked Shoko how Utahime was doing. You missed her.
Apparently, she’d been faring well.
That was one of the only times you wished you had been sent on a mission. You wanted to be assigned one more mission with them, like how it was before Gojo showed up. Like how your life was somewhat peaceful two years ago.
They’d come back a few days later. Apparently it was some kind of haunted house. Their mission had shown up a few days later on the news. Apparently, it was because Gojo forgot to put up a veil, just like he did when the two of you were alone.
Gojo got off with probably a scolding, and a few days later, Gojo and Geto were assigned on a mission again. You had no knowledge about the mission they were assigned on, just the fact that it was important, and they were sent on it because they were strong.
They still hadn’t come back yet. It had been about three days. Well, that wasn’t much of your concern. You didn’t really want to see anyone right now, anyways.
You bent over and put your face in your hands. You didn’t know what to feel. Actually, you didn’t remember how to feel anything at all. You don’t remember the last time you felt anything except either stress, fear, or disgust.
Fuck, you don’t even remember the last time you felt sad. Or if you could even describe a time where you felt something close to sadness.
Actually, you wondered if there was still anyone on school grounds, besides you. The past few missions seemed to require more people. The first one had all the second years, Utahime, and Mei Mei dispatched.
This one had Gojo, Geto, Nanami, and Haibara dispatched. You weren’t sure if Shoko was dispatched on this one.
You hear footsteps, and then the bench dips beside you. You suppose you knew now.
“Hey.” Shoko greeted you softly. “You don’t look too great right now.”
You don’t bother to respond, and she takes a long drag of her cigarette. If it was anyone else, they might’ve considered it rude, but Shoko didn’t really care.
You liked that about her.
“It’s just me and you right now. If you got something to say, you can say it. I’ll be listening.”
You gripped onto the armrest of the bench and slid down further. Actually, what did you feel so bad about? You hadn’t felt the same since you’d been on that mission with Gojo, and even then, you couldn’t even understand what he could’ve done for you to react that way. Actually, you didn’t know what he did at all that caused you to feel this way right now. You suppose it was best not to think about it at all.
“It’s okay,” you muttered. “You don't need to worry about it.”
You nod. Shoko doesn't ask further, and stares off into space. “Sorry about Gojo’” she sighs. “You know how it is, we can't really stop him from anything…”
You look up at her for a second, and she continues talking. “I mean, me and Geto have told him a few times to leave you alone, but he just doesn't listen.”
“I mean, I do feel bad, it's just… we can't stop him. Even Geto thinks it's good for him to have someone he wants, at least a little. I mean, it keeps him in check, in a way Geto can't even do.”
Your heart drops a little. You knew that already, but seeing Shoko admit it plain and flat hurt a little more than you thought. No one could do anything about your predicament.
“Actually, we don’t even know why he’s so obsessed with you in the first place. We asked him a few times, but he never really said anything. He’d either crack a joke or change the subject. I’m not sure why.”
You look down at the ground, observing all the fine details on the pavement. Ash falls from where Shoko is sitting. She dusts off her skirt, but she doesn’t stand up.
“So consider this an apology, I guess.”
A few days later, Gojo and Geto come back.
Actually, no. You saw them on the day they came back. They walked past you that day, and they had two completely different reactions over their face. It was easier to describe what Geto looked like; he looked shell-shocked. Like he had just witnessed some horrible event occur right in front of his eyes.
You’d recognize that face anywhere. You’d seen it a bunch of times before. He probably witnessed a murder in cold blood.
Gojo, on the other hand, looked different. You weren’t sure what the hell happened to him, but he looked… oddly calm. Like he didn’t have a single thought behind his eyes. He actually looked somewhat at peace. Well, maybe not at peace, but it was the face of a man who felt absolutely nothing.
Both of them were covered in blood. Whether it was their own, someone else’s or both, you couldn’t be certain. Their uniforms were stained with blood, and their faces were covered in blood too. Geto had two big gashes in the center of his chest, and Gojo had blood in his hair, his shirt, and on his hands.
If you were to make a guess, it’d probably look like Geto almost got killed, and Gojo killed someone. Well, maybe not just one person, maybe a few just based on how much blood was on him compared to Geto.
Needless to say, probably whatever mission they were sent on, they failed.
You’d never seen them like that before. Actually, based on how badly you saw them that day, you wondered if they were ever going to be the same again. You wondered what happened to make both of them end up like this.
A few days later, you tried asking Shoko what happened to Gojo and Geto. She simply shrugged. Apparently, she didn’t know either but both of them weren’t the same as before. She didn’t seem the same either. Probably whatever the other two were going through was weighing down on her too.
You had a feeling she knew. She probably just didn’t want to tell you. Which was understandable in all honesty. You were starting to realize you didn’t care for any of them that much. It just felt so strange for half the school to be completely out of wack.
You watched from a distance as the first years greeted the second years. They seemed happy enough today. It reminded you that you were just an outsider. It sucked. You didn’t want to think about it.
For a second, you wondered what it would’ve been like if you just let Himoto choke you out that day. Would your life have been any different?
Probably not. Instead of that, you probably would’ve been suffering in some other way. There wasn’t any way out of this. You were probably gonna suffer wherever you went.
Laughter rings out in the distance where the other five students were standing.
You could’ve sworn you saw Gojo make eye contact with you for just a second. You couldn’t exactly tell from where you were sitting, but you felt it. Just for a second.
You stuff your hands in your pockets and walk away.
Your days seemed to blur together.
Nothing really happened for the rest of spring. Well, not much, anyways.
It was strange watching them from whatever angle you were. In the span of a couple of days, they had went from… whatever they were (best friends? Maybe they had a crush on each other with the way they acted. You couldn’t be sure.) to completely falling apart. Gojo was back to his typical demeanor in a matter of days.
Geto… he was never really the same.
You never talked to him a whole lot. You had walked past him a couple of times, and each time he looked worse than the past. He looked gaunt.
He looked pale and his eyebags worsened every time. After that incident too, you had realized he never bothered to put his hair up anymore. You had tried talking to him a few times, but he ignored you. You decided not to bother after a while. It was probably best to leave him alone.
On the other hand, Gojo had doubled down and was worse towards you. After a couple of months, you realized he was way stronger than he was before. Whatever disinterest, whatever contempt, whatever hatred you could show towards him was completely ignored by him.
He also seemed to find you more often than you would’ve liked. Sometimes, he was already in your dorm before you got there. Sometimes, when you woke up, he was sitting there watching you. He’d always greet you cheerfully whenever you found him in there, shushing you when you yelled at him, hurled insults at him, or tried to hurt him (which later on you found out you couldn’t; he always had his infinity on. When you tried, he’d almost coo at you, telling you to try harder next time.)
He had started touching you more too.
It wasn’t possessive, the way he touched you. It wasn’t noticeable to most people when observing but, you swore he was clinging onto you for dear life. He’d sometimes grab your arm so tight, to the point where once he left bruising. Or maybe, he’d sometimes grab onto your hand. His nails dug so deep into your hands that he often drew blood. It was as if he believed if he didn’t hold onto you hard enough, you’d slip through his fingers, and disappear.
Over time, his hands began to travel to other places too. You tried your best to ignore it, but it was getting harder to ignore when sometimes his hand would stay a little too long around your neck, just ghosting his fingers around the back of it. His hands started to stay a little longer around your chest than they should’ve.
There were times too, when his lips were merely inches away from your own, and when his hands would be a little too high on the inside of your thigh.
But it wasn’t like you could push him off. He was usually so much stronger than you, that there wouldn’t have even been a point to try. You flinched when he touched you, tried to pull away, but he was always a little faster than you.
His touch was genuinely the most uncomfortable thing you ever felt. It always felt like it lingered after his hands left your body.
No one really bat an eye at it now, either. Geto looked away, Shoko pretended not to see, even when you desperately looked at them, trying to get them to notice the situation, all of them pretended not to notice your facial expression.
It was like being held hostage.
Soon, you began looking forward towards getting missions. In fact, you’d start volunteering for as many missions as possible. Sometimes, you’d even offer to take some of Geto’s missions, or some of Shoko, or even the first years’ missions. As long as you could get away from the school, and as a result, Gojo, you were happy with that.
The only problem was that you weren’t strong enough for some of the missions. Well, actually half the missions (especially Geto’s) you weren’t exactly strong enough for, and you’d end up coming back pretty injured on half of them. No matter how many times you got hurt; gashes, broken bones, getting limbs pulled, you’d truly never get used to the pain. You always ended up screaming in pain when it happened.
You’d usually just try your best to roughly bandage up whatever part you had hurt that day, and did your very best to get back to Jujutsu High. Once you typically got back, you’d endure the pain till about the early hours of morning (it wasn’t like you could sleep anyways), or till you knew for a fact Gojo was asleep, to sneak into Shoko’s dorm. You’d typically beg her to heal you, which she did.
You were grateful she always did it without asking you any questions.
Eventually though, the constant injuries were starting to take a toll on yourself too. You began having to take more painkillers, and at some point you ended up doubling or tripling the recommended dosage.
It didn’t really end up well. At some point you remember falling asleep a little too early, and forgetting to go to Shoko.
When you woke up, you were in the infirmary.
Your head’s still ringing. You don’t actually remember what happened before you passed out. Instinctively, you tried to rub your head, to to soothe the noise, but there was a firm resistance on both of your arms.
Someone had strapped you down while you were unconscious.
You stared up at the ceiling again; the shapes were all starting to blur together a bit, until you blinked again. It takes another few minutes before your other senses started to kick in, and you realized you smelled the scent of cigarette smoke, combined with some type of cleaning solution.
That wasn’t Shoko. That… that was…
You hear footsteps walking towards you. Suddenly your head instantly feels much clearer than it did a few seconds ago. You tried pulling yourself out of the restraints connected to your bed, but to no avail. You were completely nailed down to the bed.
Shoko probably did that to heal the exact parts that had been poisoned with more accuracy, but damn did you wish you were just about dead right now.
“Shoko told me you’ve been working hard,” Gojo said, his voice turning into something sickeningly sweet. It wasn’t real, you know it wasn’t real. It was disgusting.
It was somewhat of a caring tone too, now that you think about it, but you knew far better than to lean into it. In fact, every inch of your body was itching to jump up and run away. And you would’ve if you wanted to give Gojo another thing to embarrass you for later down the line.
It really took everything within you to stay still.
“I haven’t seen you in so long,” Now his voice was giddy too, “You have a lot of missions now, too, don’t you?”
He’s lost his fucking mind.
Well, you suppose when you lose both your best friend and then your emotional stressball just within the span of a few months, that would probably drive anyone to the point of madness.
He grabs onto your shoulders, you’re sure he’s going to probably break them at this point. You emotionally embrace yourself for whatever he’s going to say.
“Why.” His voice is so soft. “Why did you do this… to yourself?”
You literally don’t know what to say. You’d never seen this side of him before. Even in the worst of cases, even when he was probably on death’s doorstep himself, he probably wasn’t like this. He looked weak. He looked weak in a way you had never seen him in before. Like he was wounded by this.
“You… you always go… and you hurt yourself…” he whispered, “ever since the first time I met you… you’ve always been injured in some way… you can’t… do this to me… you can’t… you shouldn’t… I can’t bear to see it, Y/N. It fucking hurts. It hurts seeing you like this all the time.”
Some type of piercing feeling splits through your chest. It burns, you can feel tears in your eyes, but you don’t let them fall.
“Do you think I didn’t notice you begging to be healed by Shoko every other day? Did you think I wouldn’t notice the bottles of pills stacked in your bottom drawer?”
The very air you were breathing felt hot. It didn't feel right. It was getting harder to breathe.
“I don't care if you hate me…” his hands travel down and grab your hands, slowly interlinking with your own hand. It's a painfully intimate gesture. It’s a little too intimate. His hands were warm. It felt too foreign to your own cold hands.
“… I… I need you… and I can’t…”
You feel his face lower onto yours. It takes a second too long before you realize in absolute horror what he’s about to do. Actually, there’s really nothing you could do about it, considering that all your limbs were bound. You had no choice but to lay down and just let it happen at this point.
You close your eyes. You try to ignore the fact that your heart was beating so fast, you could feel your fingers shaking. Maybe not just your fingers, but your whole hand.
Gojo stops right before he kisses you. Your lips brush together. His hair is literally on your face. You could feel it.
It was soft, unlike the rest of him.
You stay like that for a few seconds, before he pulls away slowly.
And then, almost like he’s returning to his usual demeanor, he pulls all the restraints off the bed and waits for you to get up.
You don’t. You simply try to play dead for a few seconds.
He doesn’t leave. After a few moments, you give up the act, and stare at him. He’s looking down at you. Both of you stare directly into each other’s eyes.
They weren’t bright blue.
They were dull. A little bit grey. No light was being reflected from them.
They were a little like your own.
-
Gojo tagged along on all your missions after that one. Instead of letting you do the work like before, and saving you at the end, he insisted that he did all of your missions too.
Except he’d actually make you come along, unlike when you were doing other people’s missions for them.
You had made the argument to him that if he truly wanted you to stay safe, you could just stay at school and do nothing at all, but he simply ignored you. Just like everything before, you had no say in that. As always, he insisted that you had no idea what you were talking about.
You both knew in his mind, he just wanted you as close as possible to him at all times. Like having you near him fixed something in his mind. He didn’t really care about your own safety, or maybe he did, but in a very, rather selfish way.
Well, whatever problems he had, you were often left to deal with the blunt end of them. The end that no one else got to see.
You couldn’t have been tortured to say it, but you did admit that throughout the years you had started to depend on Gojo a lot too. Even though you hated to admit it, Gojo did keep through to his word, and saved you every time you were nearing death. You were somewhat glad he always came around to save you. You never really got used to the feeling of nearly dying.
You were never usually afraid of death, not until it was near you. You hated that sensation; the feeling of being half alive and half dead, either left to bleed out, to rot away, until someone might’ve been able to save you.
Gojo had always been the one to save you.
A small motorcycle lies at the bottom of a hill. It was your last mission of the year. Well, technically it was Gojo’s last mission of the year, but he decided to drag you along with him anyways. The driver had left the two of you at the bottom of a cliff, and told you the curse you were looking for was on this mountain.
Apparently, there was some type of village/town in this mountain that had caused a lot of cursed spirits to form. The citizens were venturing off into the mountain, thinking they were some sort of spirit, and getting killed by them.
None of them were particularly strong either; there were just a lot, and they’d be hard to find.
“So, do you want the front or the back?”
“Gojo, do you even know how to drive a motorcycle?”
“Nah, but I can probably figure it out.”
“What the fuck do you mean, ‘you can figure it out’? So are we just stranded here? C’mon I wanna go home. Why did you have to drag me out too-”
“Shhh, give me a second, I’ll figure it out.”
“Are you… are you being serious right now?”
You sighed, and look up at the sky. “Fine, whatever you say.” Whatever this place was, it was still beautiful. The mountains stretched to what seemed to be the sky, and there were trees for as far as you could see. It must’ve been nice to live here. They’d probably known peace their whole life. How couldn’t you, when the stars stretched out as far as you could see, and the mountains shielded you from all that was to be unknown.
In the distance, you hear an engine rumbling. That must’ve been Gojo starting up the motorbike.
“I got it to work,” he called out. “I think we should be able to go now.”
You turn around and walk to the motorbike.
“Do… do we even have helmets?”
“Why would we need helmets?” Gojo asks.
“So… we can ride the motorbike safely? Gee, I don’t know why else we would need helmets for.”
“It’s fine, don’t worry,” Gojo puts his hands on his hips, “All you have to do is to hold onto me.”
“That does actually make me worry quite a bit, actually.” You muttered.
Gojo shrugs. “I mean, our other option is walking all the way up to the peak of the mountain. I’m not sure if you wanna do that.”
You stare at the steep road halfway up the mountain. “Okay, yeah, whatever.”
He sits on the bike, and you sit on the seat behind him. He presses the accelerator on the motorcycle, and it begins speeding up.
Of course knowing him, he was driving recklessly fast. He nearly hit all the curbs, and nearly caused a drift for a few moments, but you couldn’t lie. It was kind of fun.
You held on tight onto him. The roads kept getting steeper and narrower, until you were on a small winding road 3,000 feet into the air.
“I think we gotta start looking for curses now.”
“Weren’t we going to go to the top of the hill and work our way down?”
“No.” He replies, “I think it’s actually a better idea if we just start here for now. “Let me see what I can do.”
It’s about three days of exorsing curses on the mountain, before you feel absolutely exhausted. You had exorcized about two, and Gojo exorcized another four. Gojo told you in total, there were about 7 large curses, and you were down to the last one.
You were exhausted. The past few days, neither of you slept that much. Of course, neither of you slept a lot normally, but it surprised you that Gojo often stayed up to the same time, if not later than you did.
Although you suppose he had different motives for sleeping so little compared to you.
The time spent in the small motel was weird though. Gojo, being the bastard that he was, only asked for a singular bed room, and you were often stuck with him on the same bed. He often had one arm, or maybe both arms wrapped around you while he was snoozing away.
You had gotten no sleep the past few nights as a result. It felt too uncomfortable to sleep with someone’s arms wrapped around yours.
Gojo would always wake up bright and glowing, while you felt like you were going to pass out on the spot. He’d always wake you up when he got up, and the two of you would be forced to prepare in silence for the day ahead of you.
Today, was your last day here. You couldn’t wait to get back to your dorm and sleep for a couple of days straight.
It takes you a couple of moments of walking before you see a pair of glowing eyes, in the darkness of the forest.
“I think I just found the last curse.”
“It’s in the forest, just over there.”
“Huh? Don’t be ridiculous. C’mon let’s go to the next location.”
It takes Gojo a minute to start the motorbike. A few seconds for you to get on. And you drove for two hours before seeing a horrendously long curse that looked somewhat like a dragon?
… maybe a worm? You weren’t sure.
Either way, it charges at you, before knocking you off the motorbike.
You shoot a few times at it, hoping to hit something but it did nothing. You wanted to shout for Gojo, scream at him to do something, but you didn’t even feel like you had the strength for that.
He was nowhere to be seen.
You shoot once more at the creature, and it knocks you off the road.
Your hand moves on its own just out of pure adrenaline. One headshot.
It explodes, and you land head-first into the concrete underneath.
You couldn’t be sure. You lay on the road that wrapped around the cliff desperately clinging onto the conscience that kept fading, while you tried to figure out what to do.
Gojo was probably still kilometers away at this point, and to be very frank, you wouldn’t have wanted to see him before you died anyways. If you were dying.
This was different than when you lost your eye. In fact this didn’t hurt at all much compared to that.
You tried to flex what fingers you had left. The ones that didn’t get blasted away in the fight. God, maybe if you had tried a little harder, reacted a little faster you wouldn’t be another statistic of whatever the death count of jujutsu sorcery was but, it wasn’t even your mission anyways.
It was Gojo’s and he wanted to just drag you along for shits and giggles. And with the way he constantly fed off you like a leech, you wonder (if you survive this) how’d he’d think about doing this bullshit in the future.
yeah, if he left you alone.
You see his lanky figure in your blurred vision. You close your eyes. You don’t wanna do this right now. It wasn’t the first time you got severely injured in front of him, but everytime it happened it was like a humiliation ritual. He’d always call you weak, treat you like glass. He’d carry you every single time like you were something that might break. You wonder if he ever realized you knew this. You remember that one time he almost kissed you on the forehead before you snapped awake.
God, you really hated him. Such a fucking bastard.
Your hand tries to tighten on the pistol in your hand, but it can’t. You’re done for. The job was all up to Gojo no…
You hear footsteps that could be none OTHER than gojo’s. Who else could it be? It was just you, and him, and that special grade curse the two of you had been chasing after the entire time. You couldn’t imagine the expression Gojo had on his face right now.
Well, you could. You knew exactly what type of expression he had on his face. You just didn’t want to see it.
Sometimes you wish you had RCT just like him. Maybe then, you’d understand what it was like to be truly invincible. Maybe then you’d understand what it was like to be god. To be able to experience a fraction of what it was like to be the strongest. To be a genius.
But maybe you also wish you could’ve been weak. Ignorant. Oblivious. Unaware, and unable to see things others couldn’t see. Maybe you could’ve died happy. Willingly accepted the fact Himoto got turned into a blood smear instead of a mangled creature. Maybe…
Maybe you could’ve in another world, been born with anyone else’s body but your own. Where you could’ve been happily weak against your will. Where you did nothing and knew nothing.
But maybe if you died right now, life would forgive you and you’d be able to see Himoto again. Say sorry to her. Tell her everything that happened. And once you’d been reborn, if reincarnation existed, you’d have a normal body.
You’d be a normal person. Lived a peaceful life. Died peacefully.
You feel a hand sliding past what was left of your fingers, and gripping your palm. You slightly open one eye, hoping he doesn’t notice. Morbid curiosity got the best of you, and you wanted to see what he was doing.
His face is expressionless. That would’ve been one way to say it. Someone dying outside of his control. You’d always had a morbid curiosity of what would’ve actually happened if Gojo watched you die. It had always been a little bit of a petty fantasy of yours, but there always was something that fascinated you about your abuser watching the one thing he had left disappear before his very eyes.
What would’ve been his reaction? What would he have done? Would he feel bad? Would he cling onto you as your last moments fade away?
His eyes are duller than usual. They’re not glowing like they usually are.
His infinity is off. You’d never seen that before. Was he so confident that nothing was going to hurt him? Was he so sure you weren’t going to hurt him?
He pushes the pistol off your other hand and you watch it slide down the road, your other hand now free. It’s now when you realize the damage was more serious than you thought. There was a big pool of your blood on the road, and there was shrapnel all around you. Some of it was sticking in your hand. Some in your hair.
He holds you closer than usual. No, he was grabbing you. Squeezing you. Like if he let go, you were going to slip like sand from his fingertips. His nails are digging into your waist. It’s painful. He was probably going to draw more blood.
“Don’t die before we get to Shoko.”
Your took a hand and put it on his shoulder. “Don’t. It’s not worth i-”
“I’m not letting you die.” He says flatly. “I can’t let you die. You’re all that I…”
You look at him. Gently you pull off his glasses.
“I can’t.. I can’t let you go. Not now. Not ever. You can’t do this to me. If you ever try to leave me, I’ll always find you. I don’t care if it’s one day, one month, five years, ten years, I’ll always find you and bring you back to me.”
“I could be so much worse to you yknow?” His hands tighten around your waist. It felt like he was trying to burst your insides. “You’re so weak. You have so much potential but you’re just so, so, weak it makes me kind of mad.”
He stares at you in the eyes. Observing your bruised face and body. Your ripped uniform, and just the general state you’re in.
“I could do anything I wanted to you to keep you with me… But I gotta protect you yknow? You’re so pathetic, you can barely defend yourself…”
Your blood runs cold. You end up passing out, and you feel a hand running through your hair. You don’t know what else happened after that.
You wake up in the infirmary. Alone.
You’ve been here too many times. The dark room, with the stiff mattresses, and a thin blanket over your body.
You… survived? Somehow apparently. Weird. You were pretty sure you suffered a concussion, and lost a few of your fingers, after falling off an insane height. Maybe they healed you fast.
You quietly stand up and opened the door. It’s Utahime standing there.
“Jesus Christ,” she muttered, “didn’t think you’d be up so early”
you look at the clock on the wall. It’s currently 5am. “Gojo was supposedly carrying your body back, to get shoko to heal you,” she muttered. “You were basically dead.”
“Why aren’t you more shocked that I just came back from the dead, then?”
“Cause you didn’t die,” she said flatly. “Apparently they were gonna lay down and heal you, but suddenly your fingers regenerated on their own. I was gonna check on you right now cause I couldn’t sleep anymore.”
“My WHAT?” You look down at your hand. Sure enough, your index, middle, and pinky finger were there again.
“Yeah and apparently…” she added, “Shoko was gonna heal your concussion, but your head stopped bleeding on its own as well.”
“I didn’t know I could heal myself…”
“No one else did either.” She said dryly. “Gojo’s gonna have a fun time with this one.”
“Don’t even mention it. I’m not trying to see him ANYTIME soon.”
You groaned. “I hate that stupid fucker.”
“Same. But do you ever wonder why he’s so infatuated with you?’
“God getting deep now aren’t we? Shoko asked me that once. I don’t know, to be honest. I mean like. Geto could’ve easily stopped him at anytime-“
“I mean, any of us could. We’re not blind. This guy clings onto you like a lost puppy. It’s kind of embarrassing.”
“Well, why don’t you then? I’d really appreciate it if you could-“
“You think I’m getting in the way of GOJO??? SATORU???” She groaned. “I love you, but genuinely not that much.”
“Oh yeah, thanks” you muttered.
“Listen it’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just that you gotta endure it for the rest of us. I don’t know what happened to him, but he’s just been on a straight downward spiral since Geto got kicked out. Like he seems content on latching onto you. He really likes you.”
“Well, anyways, I should probably get going, I have somewhere I need to be early tommorow.”
You hug her, and wave her off, leaving you standing alone in the hall.
You could… use RCT? How? You flex your fingers. It seems weird they’re there. It seems weird that you’re alive at all. You’re not even proficient enough in jujutsu sorcerery to use RCT. Maybe you’d ask Shoko tommorow.
You walk outside, sitting on the patio, and staring at the almost rising sun.
You think about what Satoru said to you yesterday.
You clenched your hands together. It made your blood run cold.
“Huh? How you healed yourself?”
Shoko stares at you for a moment. I mean usually, RCT happens as the reversal of cursed energy. So you probably did that. Maybe. Cause you were leaking so much cursed energy too, so it can’t have been that.
But either way, it requires a positive flow of cursed energy.
You stood there, trying to think about what caused this. positive flow of cursed energy…
It must’ve been your cursed technique. If anything. Maybe you had lost control of all your flow of it, and it kept leaking out of you, maybe till there was none left.
But if it was positive, did that mean you’d have been pulling it in from somewhere?
That didn’t make sense. You were literally concussed. That special grade was already dead.
Shoko stares at you, expectantly. “I’m glad you’re alive, though. We've had too many deaths and people getting kicked out here.”
“Sorry about Satoru, you know how it is with him. Wish I could help but… You’re on your own for that. I kinda don’t wanna interfere.”
Both of you stare down at the ground, unwilling to break the silence. It’s a good few minutes before you talk again. “Hey, can I have a cigarette?”
Shoko reaches into her pocket, digging for one. “Sorry, ran out. Maybe next time.”
“It’s okay.” You sighed. “What are your plans today? I have nothing to do, maybe we could hang out?”
“Sure,” she replies. “Just make sure it’s after 8pm, I’m busy today.”
You nod. She smiles. You notice her eyebags have gotten darker. Well, they’re not as dark as yours yet, but she looks tired. She looked stressed, exhausted. You wonder what happened. What was going on.
Well, it’s not like you’d know.
Your 13-year old self would’ve hated you right now.
Well, actually fuck that statement. Your 13-year old self wouldn’t had known their best friend died, they had some type of superpower, and the world’s strongest guy had some type of weird obsession and dependence on them.
It didn’t really feel right. Was this all that your life had amounted to? You didn’t really think you were saving people’s lives at all, even though that’s what people always asked you.
You remember Geto asking you that question too, a little bit before he had lost his mind, and got suspended from Jujutsu high.
“Why do you want to be a sorcerer?”
Come to think about it, it was a good question that everyone should’ve asked themselves. Of course, when Geto asked you that question, it was the first time he’d talked to you in over a year. You were pretty sure he spent a long time thinking about that. What is the point of being a sorcerer.
At the time, the most logical answer you could’ve given was that there really was no point in being one. Geto, as you had known, had been a man of reason. You respected that about him, you found it an interesting way to live life.
But it was really strange to you.
You knew he had the whole big idea about ‘protecting the weak’ but that probably went down the drain. You remember just simply telling him that there was really no reason anyone should or shouldn’t be a sorcerer.
You didn’t really have a purpose for anything in life.
You didn’t even have control over your own life.
It must’ve been strange to be a person who needed a purpose to live. Geto that day, eventually told you that he’d watch someone die. That it fucked him up.
It wasn’t like that wasn’t what you assumed, anyways. You remember explaining to him that people are usually fucked up, that this wasn’t really anything new, that it had all happened to you before too. That the concept of ‘purpose’ wasn’t even something you’d bothered to think about when there was really no point in doing that.
Humans were cruel, whether they were weak or strong.
That’s just what they are.
What you didn’t expect was Geto going missing, and never coming back a week or two later. You saw Yaga speaking to Gojo in some corridor a few days after that. He looked… you couldn’t tell whether it was livid, or something else. You watched him storm off. Whatever happened that day might’ve been the final nail in the coffin for him.
No one had ever told you anything about how Gojo’s and Geto’s dynamic actually worked.
All you knew was that they were two close friends, and they pretty much kept each other in check. You had watched their relationship deteriorate throughout the years after that one mission, and even from an outsider's perspective, it was sad watching their friendship deteriorate throughout the years.
You weren’t sure if you wanted to be a soccer, yourself. At some point, people were going to find out that you had two very useful cursed techniques, and all you’d be to them was nothing but a tool. An object that they could control.
At the same time, you couldn’t really be anything normal now either. You didn’t have a proper education to any degree, and it wasn't really like you could do anything normal now.
Still though, the thought of running away often crept up on your mind.
It was the last day of school, and the day before graduation for you.
As usual, before school ended, all the students had to clean the school up for the end of the year; that meant sweeping the floor, dusting all the rooms, wiping down the windows, and pretty regular cleaning work that needed to be done every month or so, but a little more thorough.
It was typically your favourite day of the year. But this time, it was a little different. Despite everything, part of you still wanted to stay here. When you were younger, you thought when the time became right, you’d run away and start your life over.
Typically, you considered that time the last day of school, but now, there wasn’t any point in that. You had been so detached from normalcy that you weren’t really sure how you could even integrate back.
You suppose you had the summer to figure out WHAT to do. The very least you could by now was to stop being a bum, and figure your life out.
You sigh, and go back to dusting. Life wasn’t fair.
You quietly opened the door, and checked the next room, seeing what needed to be cleaned.
Gojo sat on the ledge of it, looking outside. There was a bucket of water somewhere in the room. You suppose he had either been put on mop duty or window cleaning duty.
Oh my god. Not on the last day of school.
It takes a second, but he notices you. In that instant, you begin to close the door, and move on to the next room. You begin to walk away, when you feel a hand touch your shoulder.
You turn around, and glare at him.
“What… what do you want?” you muttered. “Can’t you see I’m busy here?”
Satoru shrugs, and drags you back into the classroom. He awkwardly somewhat hugs you. Well not really hug, more like absorbing you into him. It doesn’t really feel right though, you swore you felt like he was actually trying to suffocate you. His fingers grip around your uniform. For a moment, you thought he was going to do something terrible again, but he lets go after forcing you to stay like that for a few minutes.
“Y’know, you should stay with me after you graduate. I can… I could probably get a place for you to live in, and after I graduate, we can move in together, yeah? What do you say?”
He had a point. You had never really thought about where you were gonna go after you graduated. It wasn’t like you could stay in the dorms anymore. But there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell you were going to live with Gojo either. You couldn’t hand your entire life to him.
Your dignity and ego would never allow you to do that.
Come to think about it, you didn’t really know how Gojo was so rich. Every time the two of you had went out, he insisted on paying for you, even when you had money.
At least he had been considerate enough to think about what you were going to do in the future. You never thought he’d do that.
“It’s not really like you can refuse this anyways,” Gojo says, his mouth brushing the corner of your ear, “You have no other place to go, don’t you?”
You swallowed, your face turning red from anger, embarrassment, or something else, you couldn’t be sure.
“I’ll take your silence as a yes.”
You use all your strength to break yourself free from his embrace. You grab his collar. You begin to open your mouth to shout at him, but nothing comes your mouth. You stay like that for a few seconds, before Gojo rolls his eyes, and sticks his tongue out.
You aggressively let him go, pushing him a little, and reach for the door.
Gojo doesn’t follow you. Usually he’d stop you, or shout at you, or utter some insult at you, but he doesn’t move.
Suddenly, you hear the loud sloshing of a bucket of water behind you, and before you can you react, you turn around, and see the entire bucket of dirty mop bucket land on you.
“Oops,” he giggled, “Sorry.”
“Gojo,” you shouted, “What the FUCK did you do that for?”
You were completely drenched from head to toe, with that stupid bucket of mop water. There was so much water poured on you, it was starting to drip out out of your uniform. Your hair was soaking wet too.
He snickered, and began laughing hysterically. “Sorry, sorry. I had to. Look at you though.” If it wasn’t enough, he patted you on the head, and ran his fingers through some of the soaked strands. “Awww, are you mad? I’ll let you wear one of mine.”
Your cheeks turn bright red, “N-no, I’m not wearing one of your uniforms.”
“Are you sure? You can’t be walking around the school in the clean school with that. We just cleaned it. Plus,” his voice feigning concern, “You might catch a cold.”
He could not be serious right now.
“C’mon, wipe that look off your face,” he hit you on the shoulder, “let’s get you changed up.”
The next time you were released from Gojo’s clutches was near the night. Shoko had called him off to do something, which got him off you.
The second you were released from his grasp, you had immediately ran into the showers, trying to wash the digusting mop water off you. You felt like it had been stuck on you for so long, that your skin probably absorbed a little of it.
You scrubbed yourself a couple of times, hoping that it was enough to get rid of the filth in the water. Once you came out, you quickly threw Gojo’s cut-up uniform in the hamper, burying it beneath all your other clothes, before changing into the last set of clothes you had.
It was the outfit you had first worn when you came here. The last set of clothes you had. The outfit itself was simple; a collared shirt (from your old school uniform), and cargo pants of some kind.
You dug further into the closet. There was also some type of metal chain belt.
It’d work. At least for now. Hopefully. You didn’t even know if you’d still fit in those clothes, but it was still better than wearing Gojo’s uniform in your opinion.
Well, it didn’t matter if it was a little small, you could always get your other clothes out of the hamper and wear them for a little longer probably.
You put the outfit and stare in the mirror. It fit good enough, you suppose. You reach inside the pockets, seeing if there’s anything in them, and your hand grabs onto something a little soft. It’s synthetic, and smooth. You ran your fingers through it and it seemed to be tied into a loop. Slowly you pull it out, and you stare at it in shock.
It was Himoto’s ribbon. In somewhat of a good condition. You wonder how it hadn’t been completely drenched blood; it was the exact same ribbon she wore when she died. And the same one you saw when you exorcized her curse later.
You remember always making fun of her for wearing it around her neck, as it was a hair tie. You remember laughing as she pulled out the clip from the hair accessory, and tied it around her neck. You remember saying it looked ugly, and asking why she’d do that to a perfectly good hair accessory.
You ended up getting an actual ribbon later once you entered Jujutsu High, but in the shade of dark blue. You remember Gojo always loved pulling on the bow on the back of the on your neck, until you got annoyed and cut the ribbon short and knotted the ribbon on the side of your neck.
You look down at the loop again. You gently pull apart the knot and let it fall apart.
Had you found this earlier, you might’ve been horrified, or maybe you would’ve been disgusted at yourself for keeping it around, but not anymore.
To be honest, you were kind of over it.
You tied half the ribbon into how Himoto used to tie it. On the bottom half, you tied it into a knot somewhat similar to a noose.
You threw it into the trash.
Maybe you’d go to that convenience store you and Utahime frequented one last time too.
You waited till almost midnight to go, just like the old times. Usually the two of you would go to the convenience store to get alcohol, sweets, energy drinks, and candy. Sometimes when Shoko would tag along, you’d buy cigarettes too.
The late-night cashier never cared that you’d go with about a liter of sake every single time, even the two of you were clearly underage. It was fun. It was typically a Friday event. You’d often egg Utahime on as she’d chug twice her (very high) tolerance in either sake or beer. She’d usually end up passed out on the floor, and you’d take a few embarrassing photos of her before dragging her off to bed.
You wonder what you’d get at the convenience store today. Maybe you’d just drink one energy drink today, and play some video games before you had to go.
You push open the door, and the bell jingles. You’re confused for a second. The store was completely dark, but the door was open.
The door slams shut behind you.
You hear something moving in the darkness. Then, a bunch of eyes start staring down at you. On every single surface of the room. They all stare at you. You slowly take a step back, but your ankle is stuck. You reach for the door, and grab the handle, but whatever this curse is, it sticks your hand to the door, and then using some of its other hand-shaped things it pulls you to the back of the store, sticking you against the wall. You slam into one of the fridges, and glass falls all over you, some getting stuck in your hair.
You try to reach into your pocket, seeing if you still brought at least an exacto knife, it starts wrapping its other several limbs around your mouth and other limbs until you were completely rendered immobile.
It slowly starts twisting your neck in a very wrong way, while trying to choke you.
You couldn’t really think about anything now, but to laugh. To die on the last day of school, the day before you might’ve had a little bit of freedom. Not even Gojo could probably save you this time.
To even think about Gojo in a time like this. That was comedic to you in a way you couldn’t even describe.
You see those exact same black spots in your vision you had seen time and time before as you close your eyes.
You claw at the spirit one more time but its hand falls off this time, and then another, and another, actually it stopped looking at you entirely.
You saw a lock of white hair on the other side of the store. Standing at the entrance. The limbs start reaching for him one by one, and he reaches out his arm.
“Can’t live a second without almost dying, can’t you?” He sounded pissed.
You quickly duck as you watch Gojo reach out his arm.
You watch as a bright blue light erupts from him, and you run to him as quickly as you could. He grabs onto your hand, and you watch the entire room explode into nothing but purple blood. You could feel the heat radiating off his hand, unlike your cold, almost blue fingers. His arms wrap around your back, and for a second all you could hear was your own heavy breathing, as well as his own.
The two of you stay like that for a few seconds before your hand travels to his face, gently cupping it for a few seconds, before your entire arm falls slack, and it completely falls down. Gojo does nothing. He just grabs you tighter than before, and you feel the sense of exhaustion wash over you and your eyelids feel infinitely heavy.
You don’t know what hour it is of the night when you wake up again. All you knew that it was probably a very late hour in the night, and…
Who’s bed were you in? It wasn’t your own, that was for sure, and you weren’t in the infirmary. You look around for a second. It was definitely still a student’s dorm, you were sure of that much.
No, a spare dorm couldn’t be this nicely furnished.
Whoever put you in here had taken great care to make sure you were somewhat comfortable at least. Awkwardly, you sit up and stare at the closet on the other side of the room.
You’re in Gojo’s dorm. And he was nowhere to be seen, at least for now. You could probably leave, and go back to your own room then, if that was the case. It takes you one step forward, before you hear a door on the side of the room click, and he walks out in a baggy t-shirt and shorts.
You froze like a deer in headlights.
“Where are you going?” He asked.
It was the type of voice someone might’ve used on you before they caught you in trouble. He didn't move toward you yet; he just stared at you from the doorway, his damp hair messy and white against the dark fabric of his shirt.
“I’m going back to my room,” you said softly, “I’ve had enough today, Satoru, I’m going to sleep.”
He eyes you for what feels like forever.
“You were sleeping” he finally responds, taking a step towards you. And then another, and another until he was towering over you. “You were out for three hours after I carried you back.”
He grabs you, and pushes you onto the bed, before crawling onto the bed himself. “I patched you up,” he says, holding up your somewhat bandaged hand. “I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving you alone more than I already had today…” he muttered, “it’s my fault; I almost let you die today.”
You shook your head, “No Gojo, it isn’t. Like genuinely, I’m pretty sure it was my own fault for there on my own. I didn’t know there’d be a curse there-”
“Shhhhh” he puts a finger on your lips, “Don’t blame yourself. It’s not your fault.”
You pull off his hand, “It is,” you insisted, “I… I don’t know what I was thinking…”
Gojo smiles, and he grabs your head. “No… you don’t understand. You’re… I…”
You pull your legs closer to yourself.
Without warning, Gojo’s lips crash onto your own. It’s aggressive, you gasp for a second, and he uses that as a reason to go deeper. You try your best to push him away, but it does little to nothing, he uses that as a reason to kiss you harder.
Like you were all he had left.
It feels like an eternity between that, and the time where he lets go. He lets you breathe, lets you catch your breath for a few moments, before he does it again, this time sloppier than the first. Like he was trying to devour you.
Like he wanted to eat you alive, and make you part of him.
He gently lowers you down on the bed, before letting go, and smiling a little. For a lack of better descriptors, he looked genuinely happy. Actually, no. Fuck that. He looked like a man that had finally been releasd from the chokehold of his own, unbearable love. His snow white hair hung a little bit in front of his eyes, and from what you could see, there was at least a little light in his eyes. You hadn’t seen that in a long time
“I’ve waited… I’ve waited so long to do this…” he whispers. “So….” he holds you closer to him. It’s gentle, at least a little. It was more like a nurse preparing you for a big needle to be stabbed in you.
He bites your lower lip, almost drawing blood before he stops. You wince in pain, as he giggles a little, before he lowers himself a little, biting at your collarbone, which causes you to yelp. You could feel tears blurring your vision. He soothingly touches the place he bit, almost as an apology, if he wasn’t admiring it like he made a piece of art.
“Satoru… please… don’t do thi-”
“Shh, shh it’s okay.” he coos, “I won’t hurt you.”
His hands travel down to the waistband of your pants, and he toys with it for a second, before he begins to take them off.
You wrack a sob, watching as he slowly takes off your pants down from your waist, to your thighs, to your knees, like he was slowly unwrapping some type of present.
He doesn’t bother fully taking them fully off before playing with the hem of your shirt.
There’s a knock at the door, and then the door opens. Gojo quickly pulls the covers over you.
You don’t know who’s standing in the doorway, but Gojo goes to talk to them.
You, yourself, don't know how you got out of Gojo’s room that day. You managed to duck under Gojo and sprint for your life. You locked your door, and packed only a change of clothes, your laptop, your phone, and the sniper.
You would’ve packed the handgun had you known where it went but it had been missing since that one mission with Gojo.
You quickly open the window, and climb outside. You never cried, but on that day you knew you were.
You sprinted out of the school grounds, looking for the nearest bus line. You didn’t care where it’d take you, as long as it could get you the hell away from this school, and away from Gojo.
As long as there was distance between the two of you, it would’ve been okay. By the time the first bus you saw came around, there were full-fledged tears streaming down your face. You couldn’t stop it. You couldn’t stop anything.
You paid for the fare, and walked straight to the back of the bus, and huddled yourself into a ball. You didn’t even care if people knew you were crying anymore. You knew you were making noise, and you hated it.
You felt disgusting. You wanted to wash yourself in bleach until your skin fell off.
The bus ride takes forever.
You get off at the first stop that takes you to the metro, and eventually the train station.
You don’t even check for where the first train goes, you don’t really care. As long as it took you away from Tokyo, you’d be happy.
It takes you a second to realize you had fallen asleep on the floor.
It takes another second to realize that in your hand, there was an almost-empty bottle of Sake.
You were probably drinking nonstop all night, either straight from the bottle, or in an oversized glass, that you weren’t meant to drink alcohol in.
You look in front of you. There was a normal drinking glass laying sideways a few centimeters away from the wall.
You sigh, trying your best to pull yourself up, but failing to do so. You fell straight back onto the ground.
You really needed to stop drinking. You had always had a rather low alcohol tolerance, but you always ignored that. You liked getting a little drunk, it kept whatever memories you had about your past away from you. It was a great distraction, if anything. It made you feel nice.
But not today, apparently. You had worked hard to separate the memories of your childhood away from you, and they were typically kept at bay. They were always kept at bay. Throughout the years, you had managed to force yourself to forget the first 19 or so years of your life, before you ran away.
Your memory was already pretty sparse of your childhood days, anyways.
You wonder what triggered your memories to come back. You tried to wrack your brain of anything that could’ve possibly caused it, but you couldn’t.
The other day you saw a student. A student with jet black hair, wearing a similar uniform you did back in high school.
You’re immediately less sluggish than you were ten minutes ago.
There must’ve been curses in this city, if that were the case.
How could there be, though? It was impossible. You lived on the outskirts of a small city, that barely had any deaths at all.
No it couldn’t be. You stood up, picked up the glass sitting on the floor, and tossed it into the sink. You stared at the last drops of alcohol in the bottle. You shrugged and tossed it in the trash.
Maybe you were imagining things, actually. Maybe the work stress was actually getting to you. Yeah.
It was probably just your imagination.
You needed to get more sleep, all your colleagues and friends said you’d looked terrible in the last few days.
They were probably right. You didn’t even know why you felt like shit now. You hadn’t felt normal in a long time. You were always scared, actually come to think about it, you were always scared that he would’ve found you some day.
You always told yourself, that it was impossible, that it could’ve never happened. Especially with all the precautions you took. There wasn’t a trace of anything left.
But his words still haunt you to this day.
“I don’t care if it takes me 5 years, I don’t care if it takes me 10 years. In the end I will always find you.”
Your hand shakes a little, even thinking about those words now. He’d always been a man of his word. He swore that he’d never let you leave him.
You remember some people saying that you were fated to be together.
You never believed in bullshit like fate. It was pointless to let something like natural order decide the outcome of your life.
But even so, it seemed strange for one man to be so obsessed with you. To the point of madness. To the point of breaking himself.
You sucked in a breath, and opened your phone to check the time.
You’d better get to sleep so you could at least get rid of all the alcohol in your system before work tomorrow.
