Chapter Text
How much is your soul worth, sold out in pieces, your pride soiled
No matter how much success you reap
What good is it?
~~~
If I could become you… then even this foolish ideal would be perfectly plausible, don’t you think?
The words rattled around in Satoru’s skull. When had the distance between the two of them become this unbridgeable chasm? How long had it been festering, how long had Satoru stood by and done nothing at all? Or worse yet…
“Gojo-san, what are you doing?” The yawn in Ijichi’s voice - dawn had barely broken, after all - was rapidly dispelled by panic. “How did you get in here? Those files are confidential. If the higher ups find out, they’ll have my head - ”
“Ijichi,” Satoru said, “Did you know about this?” The stack of papers rustled against his grip. His cursed energy must be leaking out. Controlling one’s energy output regardless of emotional state was the most basic training given to every jujutsu sorcerer, and Satoru, who had picked it up instinctively at the age of three, had not needed any training at all. But what he felt now was too overwhelming to be categorized as mere emotion.
“Know about what?” Ijichi asked in a tremorous voice.
“The missions they’ve been giving Suguru,” Satoru said, as pleasantly as he could. Ijichi was just a messenger, after all. “Every one of them is twisted in some way.”
He opened the first file he was holding.
“A cult practicing human sacrifices. The strength of their faith was judged by how long they prolonged the victim’s death.”
He tossed it aside and opened the next one.
“A lab for human experimentation posing as an orphanage.”
“An offshore torture facility.”
“A school for disabled children where the teachers secretly abused their charges.”
There were still so many files left. As he couldn’t bear to read them again, he focused on ripping them up while imagining that he was tearing apart the faces of the higher ups. Ijichi watched him without protest, his face white.
“They handpicked these missions to break him,” Satoru explained. “Day after day, they made him swallow the worst kind of curses. They wanted to break his spirit, make him drop out of Jujutsu Tech. But instead,” he said with a knife-sharp smile, “he’s gone and become their worst nightmare. A cursed user wielding all of the curses that they force fed him.”
“And you know what’s the worst part of all? Ask me,” he prompted.
Ijichi drew a deep breath. “What’s the worst part, Gojo-san?”
“On every one of these files is the same seal. The Gojo family seal. It’s all my fault ,” Satoru said as he pulled the loose cursed energy back in, to Ijichi’s audible relief.
After all, Satoru cursed himself the most.
~~~
“What are these, my marriage prospects? Don’t you know that arranged marriage is out of fashion nowadays?” Satoru didn’t touch the files that were spread across the table in front of him.
“Marriage?” the family head chuckled. “Oh no, my boy, you’re far too precious a resource to be tied down to a single person. All of these families have already requested a child sired by the one with the six eyes. All that remains is to be decided is the order. That’s why I called you here today.”
Satoru entered the dorms in a huff, throwing himself down on the couch where Shoko and Suguru were already seated by dropping his head into Suguru’s lap and stretching his long legs over Shoko.
Suguru glanced down and said, “Oh no.”
“What?”
“You have that look on your face. The one that says you just came up with a terrible idea that’s going to land us all in hot water.”
“It’s not a terrible idea,” Satoru protested.
“That’s because you have no self-awareness.”
“I just think we should date. Exclusively.”
Shoko pushed Satoru’s feet off herself and made a clean exit.
Satoru felt Suguru tense beneath him, so he hastened to continue his explanation. “We’ll tell everyone about it, of course. Hm, how should we frame it? Does love at first sight sound too cliche?”
“What the fuck is this, a love confession?”
“No, of course not,” Satoru said with a snort. “I just want to get my family off my back. They called me out of the blue to demand that I sire children for no less than seven family lines, you know.”
For some reason, Suguru still felt tense.
“Hey, don’t take it so seriously. It’s fine if you don’t want to, I’ll just find someone else.” Now Suguru looked kind of angry, but Satoru was pretty sure it was just the angle.
“I’ll do it, on one condition.”
“What can I do for you, dearest?” Satoru said, batting his eyelashes.
“We date for real.”
“Hunh?” It was Satoru’s turn to gape at the other boy. “What the fuck is this, a love confession?”
“Not yet,” Suguru said, and looked down at him with the most unfair smile. Satoru felt his entire body flush.
“Sure, let’s do it,” he said in his most cavalier voice.
Suguru raised an eyebrow. “You okay there, dearest ? You’re looking a little red.”
“Must be a trick of the light.”
Suguru leaned forward so that the tips of their noses touched and his long hair formed a curtain around their faces. Satoru could count every single eyelash, could feel the warmth of Suguru’s breath, could trace it back to barely parted lips - Satoru’s heart was going to pound out of his chest.
Then Suguru was sitting back on the sofa, his face smug, and Satoru let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding.
“Right,” Suguru said. “Just a trick of the light.”
~~~
It had been so satisfying to tell the family head that he’d already found his one and only, and that his prospective partners could screw off. The old geezer’s face had turned the most magnificent shade of puce.
“And who is she?” he’d asked through gritted teeth.
“ He , actually,” Satoru had said, watching with pleasure as the old fool choked. “Geto Suguru, my fellow first year at Jujutsu Tech.”
He had felt unstoppable coming out of that exchange. His family couldn’t control him anymore, and he only regretted not throwing off the reins earlier. They had no power at Jujutsu Tech, and besides, he and Suguru were the strongest. There was nothing they couldn’t handle.
You’re full of yourself, Yaga had said. The strongest? More like the most arrogant, Utahime had scoffed. He had brushed their words off. It wasn’t that he disagreed; instead, he had been ready to accept the consequences of his pride. It had never occurred to him that he wouldn’t be the one paying the price.
I dragged you into this, Suguru, Satoru thought. I was thoughtless. I acted carelessly with your life. Whatever sins you commit, I bear their weight also.
There are stages to becoming a jujutsu sorcerer. Once you reach a stage, you cannot go back.
First, killing curses. This opens up the jujutsu world.
Second, killing evildoers. This makes you a fully fledged jujutsu sorcerer.
Finally, killing innocents. Those who reach this stage become curse users, to be killed on sight by jujutsu sorcerers.
The Suguru he had met in Shinjuku was composed, rational. There had been no distress in his voice as he described killing his own parents. He had become a true curse user.
It was too late to save Suguru. But he could still destroy the ones who’d damned him.
This corrupt, twisted jujutsu world… I will raze it to the ground.