Chapter Text
Satoru has lived with knife-sharp razors underneath his skin for as long as he can remember.
It's a fact of life. An ever-present buzz, like centipedes crawling in his veins. He shouldn't describe it as painful, really. The sensation is too constant for it to be categorized as pain--which is why he doesn't understand why Shoko is looking at him like he just told her he eats children for sport.
The lights in the room are humming, a high pitched whine, periodically flickering bright then dim. Water droplets from the leaky faucet drum on the sink's metal basin. Outside the room, a squeaky cart rolls by, and he smells a hint of bland hospital food underneath the overarching zing of antiseptic that all hospitals carry, along with the smoke that perpetually sticks to Shoko. They're not supposed to smoke for the sake of Sentinels who can't stand the smell, Satoru knows as much, but Shoko is good at her job--there's a reason people call her the 'Miracle Doctor'--so most learn to suck it up. In the first place, Satoru met her because of her widely acknowledged skills, at least before he learned to heal himself. Now, he just visits to bother her.
Still, Satoru has never seen Shoko smoke before.
"You're really going to pull out that cancer stick while I'm right here? Shoko~ you're killing me!"
Shoko side-eyes him, practiced movements bringing the flame on her lighter to the cigarette. "You just told me you've never been guided before. You're going to get yourself killed before I ever kill you at this rate."
"No," Satoru tries to correct, "I've been guided before. You're misunderstanding."
"Satoru." Usually, getting Shoko to sound so absolutely done with the world is a feat that Satoru derives glee in achieving, but her face now just makes him feel uneasy. "Guiding isn't just when a Guide holds your hand for a few minutes. That's... an emergency measure. A bandaid, not treatment. That shouldn't be enough, not even close, and especially not for a Sentinel as strong as you."
She brings the cigarette to her lips, barely finding the wherewithal to open a window and let the smog escape the room rather than stain the ceiling black. Her fingers twitch and roll the barrel of the cigarette over and over again.
Suddenly, sharply, she grabs his documentation from her desk, waving it wildly in the air just inches in front of his face. "How long have you been faking this?"
It's the agency's responsibility to make sure their Sentinels are stable, primed to take on more missions to kill curses, but Satoru finds that no one really tends to look twice at the records of the strongest Sentinel with how sparsely decorated his medical history is. Still, he grimaces at the accusatory tone she uses.
"Come onnn, Shoko, I didn't know it was bad!"
"How could you not know? How are you not dead? How is everyone else around you not dead?"
"It isn't really that serious, is it? You're kidding."
Somehow, Shoko's glare becomes twice as scathing.
"A Sentinel with your energy levels should be having a guiding session once a week, more if you just took a mission, and I'm not talking about bandaid guiding procedures or whatever. And--and even those, you said you're only getting those once a month? Who the fuck is kidding right now, because I hope it's you."
His brain stalls at one part. His clan's tutors always told him he didn't need guiding. The so-called 'bandaid procedures' were a concession once he officially started taking missions, and it took a lengthy negotiation with the higher-ups to atain. The other Sentinels he knows only get guiding biweekly, he's always figured he was stronger then them and just needed less maintenance.
"Isn't once a week... kinda overboard?"
Satoru had dropped into Shoko's office in a small fit of panic, fresh out of a guiding session from his clan's designated Guide, because it hadn't soothed the razors under his flesh. It had been working less and less lately, and the thought of waiting another month, living on the knife's edge like this was--
"You're a fucking idiot."
He breathes through the remembered panic of this morning. Don't think. Endure. At least Shoko happened to not be in the middle of a surgery when he came.
"I'm a patient! Be nicer to me!"
"Be grateful I haven't sedated you as a precaution." Shoko gives him a scrutinizing look, the bags under her eyes seem to grow by the second. "You're really functioning? Not about to rampage?"
"What am I? Rampages are for kids." He flaps a hand in the air carelessly, even though the pain crawling feeling inside him flares when he moves and even with his blindfold on, everything is too bright, too loud, and his entire house is a palette of black and grey because any other colors will send him into an aneurysm if he has to stare at it too long without the blindfold.
"Answer the question," she shoots back.
Satoru still doesn't understand why she's being so serious about this. "My last one was when I was... nine? I learned to control it."
"Satoru, are you telling me you just live like this?" He can see her mind whirling behind her tired eyes, her hair is a mess from her fingers combing through it. When he just looks at her, she turns around and breathes in another puff of the cigarette. He wrinkles his nose at the smell.
Her words echo his own thoughts in a way that makes his insides twist.
It's a vindictive feeling, something like I knew it wasn't normal, because he's seen other Sentinels. They can't have gone through the training he had in order to control his senses, holding his breath every waking moment, fighting through all the noise, seeing too much and understanding nothing. One of his first memories is of reeling in a rampage alone in a white room, clawing at the walls and peeling off his nails and sensing his father's unmoving presence on the other side of the door.
Control it. You are above this. You will be God, and God must not be controlled by a mere Guide.
"I'm the strongest, so it's not that bad." I'm the strongest, he tells himself whenever it's too much. He'd wanted to tell someone for the longest time, yet he'd been ashamed at the very idea, and now that Shoko is catching on it's--he doesn't know how to feel. It's an uncomfortable ordeal, being known.
A part of him fears that she'll tell him to suck it up. That it should be easy, for him. He hears his mother's voice, You are a Gojo. Act like it.
He knows she wouldn't.
"Bullshit," Shoko stubs her cigarette on the window sill and tosses it into the grass outside. She shuts the window and a fresh whiff of cold and incoming rain breezes into the room. "You need a Guide."
"I got guided an hour ago," he protests.
"You said it didn't do anything, that's not supposed to--you need a proper Guide, not some sham your clan sends you!" Shoko slams her hands on a gurney. "Satoru, do you know what happens to Sentinels that don't get their energy sorted by a Guide?"
He pauses, stares at her as she waits for an answer. "Rampages and unstable senses," he answers, textbook.
"Sickness," she continues with a scathing hiss, "internal damage from the energy wreaking havoc on your insides, death. You only managed to stay alive this long because you're constantly healing the damage with reversed energy, isn't that right?"
He doesn't deny he's been using reversed energy throughout their conversation. That he can feel it, his flesh burning white hot, carefully maintained with the cooling sensation of reversed energy, a constant cycle of destruction and creation. At his silence, Shoko's eyes go wide, like she wanted to be wrong, like something is sinking in. Her fist clenches at her side.
"I will not--" she breathes, "I refuse to have you as my first dead patient, Satoru." Shoko's voice shakes in a terrifying way, and Satoru never really wanted to fight with her on this in the first place.
He swallows and folds like a house of cards. "Okay," he says. "Okay, I'll get a Guide."
"You'll get a Guide now. It's been a month, right? Since your last guiding session worked on you?" Shoko is suddenly a flurry of movement, tossing her belongings in her shoulder bag and checking all the instruments in the room, shutting them off with practiced flicks of her hand.
"What are you doing? It's the middle of the day, the hospital--"
"I'm coming with you."
"Shoko, you don't have to."
She turns to him, wild-eyed in a way he's very rarely had to witness. "I want to."
He lets her continue cleaning up, returning her operating room to its typical pristine state. All the lights go off and then Shoko is sweeping past him to the door, dragging him along by the wrist. The hospital around is a flurry of movement, nurses with clipboards and the beeping of heart monitors and phone calls. She barely spares a glance to the front desk when they call out for her, merely swiping her ID on the way out the sliding doors.
"Playing hooky for me? I'm touched."
"Shut up." She takes another cigarette out of her pocket, stops and stares for a bit before she puts it back with a sigh. "You ever been to the agency for a Guide?"
He's seen other Sentinels be led to the backrooms in between missions, but that's the extent of his experience. "Nope."
Shoko sighs. "Of course not."
She leads them both to her car, at which he points out, "I could just teleport us there, you know?"
"I don't trust you and your damn powers right now."
Has he lost all semblance of respect and responsibility in Shoko's eyes? Satoru asks as much, and gets the predictable answer that Shoko never respected him in the first place.
The car rumbles along the road, the short drive to the agency's main building passing too quickly for Satoru's tastes. He doesn't want to admit it, but now with the agency's building towering over the two of them, it's sinking in more and more.
A Guide. Someone else who will know his weakness, who will hold him when he's at his most vulnerable, who will wade deep into his pools of energy and--it's different. It's not Shoko, who he trusts with his life. He trusts her to put her hands wrist-deep into his guts, but some Guide he's never met before is unthinkable.
"Shoko," he lets his face fall into his hands, "why couldn't you have been born a Guide?"
Shoko gives him a deadpan look as she puts the car into park. "Like I'd want to work with a nightmare like you."
She moves to get out of the car, so Satoru has no choice but to follow suit. Standing here, now, listening to the overwhelming noise of the city and all the snippets of conversations flowing in and out, young voices, old, loud, quiet, Satoru remembers being young. He'd begged his parents for a Guide, desperate to escape the too-rough painful feeling of his clothes on his skin, the urge to claw his own eyes from their sockets, and they'd given him a Guide.
The thing with being a Sentinel is that his memories are a deluge of information with all the stimuli his senses catalogue at once. It's a blessing as much as it's a curse, sometimes, but Satoru's blurriest memory is of that Guide from back then. He doesn't think about it often, he doesn't like to think about it, and maybe that's why it takes him all the way until they're standing in the lobby of the agency for him to remember and for the panic to really return.
The Guide that tried to help him. The Guide whose curved lips held something sinister, malice he hadn't noticed until she was wading into his energy pools and taking, taking, stealing, killing. She'd been an assassin, come to kill him for the hefty bounty sitting on his head. Satoru remembers what came after, the horror on his parents' faces, the hitch in his mother's breath when he'd always known her to be unfeeling until that moment. The blood had been everywhere, surprisingly warm in the cold air of the Gojo estate.
"Satoru?" Shoko's voice breaks through the remembered sensation of crimson under his nails, the last rasping breaths of that Guide. "Why'd you stop?"
Satoru's ears take a moment to tune back into the chatter of the agency and the constant clicking of fingers on keyboards. Too many busybodies for him to be spacing out in the middle of the room. His breaths are coming too fast.
He opens his mouth, stares at Shoko's dark eyebags, eyes that have seen too much. I refuse to have you as my first dead patient, Satoru, her voice murmurs. He can feel the piercing stares of the people passing by--he's a recognizable figure anywhere he goes, after all. The Strongest, a circus act to gawp at, what's the difference? Their gazes make his skin itch, his insides burn like acid. He reaches for her hand, ever a few degrees cooler than his own yet more comforting than the brutal pressure of infinity that normally cloaks him. He swallows.
"Just..." he heaves another breath. The floor spins under his feet. "Give me a second."
Shoko's look of impatience morphs into something he doesn't recognize. Shock, maybe. Her lips part and he expects a sharp-witted quip of some sort, something scathing and familiar, but it never comes.
"When I first got guided by Utahime, I was nervous too, you know." Shoko doesn't fully turn to look at him, but her hand grips his own back just slightly. "Look, if it makes you feel better, all Guides get screened by the agency."
Shoko's uncharacteristic admittance takes a second to sink in. Satoru lets a grin split his face, lets her hand pull him down, back to Earth. "Shoko, I knew you cared!"
"Ugh, you're insufferable."
At that, Shoko fully turns away and starts to aggressively tug him at the receptionist, whose eyes are wide as dinner plates, gaze darting from Shoko to him to Shoko and back. Before she can open with a stammering greeting, Shoko cuts in.
"You have any good Guides available right now?"
.
.
.
It turns out that they do. One look at Satoru's very real ID card gets them a rush meeting with the best option the agency currently has on hand: a girl about as threatening as a mouse, with bright young eyes and eccentric blue hair. She clearly recognizes Satoru on sight, and the star struck stammering couldn't be anything but genuine. It makes Satoru feel a little silly for being nervous about this whole thing. Really, there's no way this girl is out to assassinate him, plus Shoko is sitting right outside the meeting room. He was making a big deal out of nothing.
"G-Gojo S--I mean, it's nice to meet you." She performs a 90 degree bow, sticking her gloved hand straight out. He humors her and shakes her hand. Somewhere in his head, he catalogues the strength of her grip, the steadfastness and determination to remain professional despite her initial rough start. "My name is Miwa Kasumi. I understand you're... here for a Guide?"
"Yep, and you're a Guide, huh?"
She sucks in a quick breath--fast enough he would have missed it if he weren't a Sentinel. "I'm honored to work with you, Gojo-san."
Even with Miwa's friendly face filling in the terrifying ambiguity of his faceless new Guide, the situation isn't much more pleasant than it was before. "Likewise," he answers and plasters a smile on his face anyway.
Miwa nods and gestures to the wooden table at the far end of the room, explaining as they walk. "Before I dive in, I'll be checking our compatibility. Normally we would go the formal route with the diagnostic tools and all, but I was told this is on the urgent side, so I'll be doing this the informal way." Miwa makes a gesture with her hand, which he pretends to understand by nodding. "There shouldn't be anything to worry about--although my rates aren't the most efficient, I typically have an above average compatibility with almost all Sentinels."
Satoru hums in response, sitting across the table from her. He can see that, especially since he's heard how personality plays a role in compatibility.
"Is there anything I should know before we get started?" she asks.
Ah, he should probably warn her. He almost feels bad about what she's about to be met with--Satoru isn't a Guide, but even he can tell his energy is a nightmare of knots and painful tangles. Do Guides feel that stuff?
He shifts in his chair, glad she can't see his eyes through the blindfold. "Well, apparently I haven't been properly guided since... ever. So!" He gives her a cheerful smile, even as she blinks, trying to process his words. "I'm in your hands, Kasumi-chan."
Her face rapidly pales. "I'm sorry, you haven't... you've never?"
"Ah, long story short, I've been getting guided once a month for about... two minutes each time? For the past fifteen years or so."
He watches her pupils shrink a little in the light, her gaze darting to his face then down to his feet, like she's affirming to himself that he's really here and not a figment of her imagination. Her lips thin and her throat bobs.
"This morning was another one of those sessions, but it didn't work, so here I am." He shrugs, still smiling.
Miwa fidgets with her glove, pinching the tip of the index finger over and over. "And by 'didn't work,' what exactly do you mean?"
"There was no effect."
Her jaw goes tight with tension. For a moment, she says nothing, but within the span of one breath and the next, she seems to come to some sort of resolution. She blinks and there's a new sort of steel in her eyes.
"Gojo-san," she says, "when I was still in school, you saved me and my friend from a curse. I've always wanted to thank you for that. Without you, we both would have died that day, and I never would have confessed my feelings for him." Miwa suddenly smiles. "I hope I'll be able to help you."
It's not a rare occurrence for someone to thank him for saving their life, but it's different this time, somehow. Maybe it's the room, maybe it's the way Miwa is looking at him with that sudden determination, or maybe it's because his insides are still twisting and burning like they're being dipped into hot oil. For a second, he lets his smile get a little more honest, a little more optimistic.
"I hope so too," he answers.
Miwa nods one last time before she smoothly takes the gloves off, reaching across the table for his hands. He obliges, placing their hands palm to palm. It's a procedure he's familiar with, if a bit more gentle than he's used to. She clasps both hands firmly, brows furrowing in concentration.
For a moment, Satoru feels nothing.
Then, a niggling sensation at the tips of his fingers. Cool and soothing, like dipping his hands in a running river in the summer time. It's a little like his own reversed energy running through him, though there's a foreign tinge to it. Miwa's grip tightens further, her face goes pale. His blindfold is still on, but Satoru wonders if he should have taken it off so he could watch her energy levels, she seems--
Miwa's face gets paler and paler, until she seems white as a sheet. Her lips are bloodless from the clenching of her jaw.
There's something wrong.
As soon as he has that thought, her energy jolts--he can tell even through the blindfold, by the way her grip wavers before tightening again. Miwa's next breath comes a hint choked, frustrated, and then she doubles over.
"Miwa?" She doesn't let go. Satoru thinks about removing her, but a connection needs to be cut from the Guide's side. He doesn't want to hurt her. "Miwa!"
Blood. There's blood dripping onto the table.
Oh God.
"SHOKO!"
The door bursts open in the same second that Miwa's grip loosens enough for him to pull away and the cool river-like sensation dissipates with it. When he can, he reaches out to Miwa's hunched shoulders, standing quickly from his seat and swiftly pulling the blindfold down even though the lights in the room feel like knives through his skull. Shoko reaches the table, her eyes flitting to him and then to Miwa. She lifts Miwa's head and--Miwa's eyes are open. There's crimson streaming down her chin but she's conscious. She's fine. Depleted, but fine.
"What the fuck happened?" Shoko asks, turning to him with narrowed eyes.
"I don't know."
Shoko breathes in, out, then turns her attention back to Miwa. "Hey, are you alright?"
"Gojo-san," she says, and it's barely a murmur, a soft sigh, "did it help?"
"...This happened while she was guiding you," Shoko says, her voice distant in the way that tells him that her mind is far away. "This is..."
Satoru takes stock of himself, working through the fading panic about Miwa's wellbeing to really check, and--it takes a moment of searching before he realizes he can breathe easier than before, it's a slight, subtle difference. His insides are still tearing themselves apart and his reversed energy is still circulating at a rapid pace, but the edge isn't razor sharp, and he isn't about to break. In place of the familiar pain though, there's guilt, dark and all-consuming.
He hurt her. She tried to help, and he hurt her.
"It helped," he answers, "thank you Kasumi-chan."
She smiles, like that's all she ever wanted. Shakily, she moves for her gloves, taking a tissue gratefully from Shoko to dab at the blood still running from her nose.
"I'm sorry I can't do more right now," she says. "Next time--"
"Wait." Satoru stops her. He can't. He can't let her do this. "This... hurts you."
She blinks up at him. "But it's worth it, if I can--"
"No."
"Gojo-san, you--"
"I didn't save you so you could harm yourself like this." He clenches his fist. A beat passes before he remembers himself, remembers to smile and relax and look like he has it all under control. "Kasumi-chan, thank you for trying even when our compatibility was low. Really, I can sustain myself with this much."
Miwa doesn't look like she believes him. For a split second, Satoru wonders if he's losing his touch as the strongest, if he's not worth being relied on anymore with this issue brought into the open. She opens her mouth to argue more, maybe, but Shoko speaks before she does.
"You know--this idiot," Shoko throws a thumb over her shoulder at him, "he'll be fine. I'm watching him, so don't worry. We'll be able to find someone else who can Guide him."
Something complicated passes through Miwa's expression. An internal struggle that puts a line of tension between her brows. There's still the same resolve he'd seen in her before, but he can tell she's tired, so she sighs in the end with an offered concession.
"If you can't, please come to me," is what she says. "If it's for Gojo-san, I'll help, even if my life is on the line."
.
.
.
They leave with little fanfare.
Satoru pulls his blindfold back into place, doesn't let the way the world spins make his steps falter. Even the brief exposure to harsh light is enough to make his stomach flip double-time, the shade provided by the blindfold does little to help with the popping kaleidoscope of rings skirting his vision. It could be worse, it would've be worse if Miwa hadn't somewhat stabilized him, but he can tell it won't last long despite how she bled to achieve this much. Shoko has yet to say anything, but he can tell there's something she wants to bring up by the stiff line of her shoulders as she walks at his side.
At the front desk, there's a man exchanging words with the secretary, who wears a put-upon frown. It takes Satoru a moment to place his smarmy face, the two-toned hair and the arrogant stance of his feet. Satoru stops a few meters away.
"Gojo," he sounds pleased. He doesn't attempt to hide that he knew Satoru would be here, and it makes his insides curdle like spoiled milk. They run in the same social circles, but Satoru would rather cut his own foot off rather than associate with him.
"Zenin," he says flatly.
Shoko's gaze lands on Satoru. If he didn't know her as well as he does, he'd have mistaken the look on her face to be something like boredom, but as it is, he recognizes the wariness.
Naoya approaches without sparing a glance at Shoko, dismissal blatant. Shoko doesn't move, feigning ignorance, and Satoru feels something in his chest loosen a little at her continued presence even though there's no reason he can't handle this on his own.
"I heard rumors." Naoya cocks his head back. "So, the great Gojo Satoru is looking for a Guide?"
He must have received a tip from someone in the agency. A passerby, a Zenin insider in the agency, who told Naoya doesn't change the current situation. A twinge of irritation sparks in his chest.
"That's right, I'm a busy man. If you'll excuse me while I go and find a Guide." Satoru makes to sidestep him, but Naoya steps further into his space instead, annoyance clear in his face now that Satoru has refused to acknowledge him.
"Gojo, if you're looking for a Guide, your best option is right in front of you. Why don't you take the opportunity while I'm offering?"
Shoko's expression shifts between disbelief and 'take the hint and scram.' Satoru thinks about laughing, but he holds back.
"Whoever your clan hired clearly isn't making the cut, never did if this is happening. You'll find that a real Guide at your side makes a world of difference."
Satoru would normally think twice about rejecting a guiding offer, especially after the experience with Miwa. Moreover, there's no telling when he'll get to see another Guide at the same level or above her, and there are only so many Guides who classify as being special grade one like Naoya. Still, the thought of letting Naoya guide him makes him queasy. He knows the sort of sick thought processes people like Naoya have--he must be jumping at the opportunity to 'put a collar' on someone as strong as Satoru. The opportunity to exploit his hold on Satoru as his exclusive Guide, if Satoru is reading between the lines right.
"A Guide and Sentinel need to share at least a modicum of trust and respect," Satoru says with an acidic smile, "I'm sure you don't need me to explain something as basic as that."
The smile drops completely from Naoya's face.
"I understand you don't trust me." It's a surprising statement, coming from him. "This can be purely transactional, I won't pretend I'm not getting something out of this too. You've heard about the succession race I'm sure."
Meaning, if Naoya screws with Satoru and by extension his ties to the powerful Gojo clan, it's the same as screwing his chances at being the Zenin clan head. Conversely, if he succeeds, it's a leg up and a bargaining chip to be on good terms with the next Gojo clan head. Satoru doesn't want someone like Naoya to guide him, but there's no denying his classifications--can he afford to be choosy?
Naoya wouldn't kill him--couldn't kill him. He's no threat to Satoru. On the bright side, Satoru doesn't give a shit if Naoya gets harmed somehow by guiding him. He's not sweet innocent Miwa Kasumi, and that settles any guilt Satoru would ever feel over Naoya.
Shoko is looking at him with hesitation, her lips making a thin line on her face.
"I'll give you one try," Satoru finds himself saying. "And if I sense a single thing wrong, I will pull away, consequences for you be damned."
A grin splits Naoya's face. He hates the sight of it, but he needs to be logical about this.
"Satoru, are you sure about this?" Shoko cuts in.
Naoya's smug look freezes like he's bit something sour. He casts a withering look at Shoko; funnily enough, he doesn't say anything Satoru would have expected from him--he must be afraid Satoru will pull his offer back at the slightest sign of aggression.
Satoru gives Shoko a winning smile. "What could go wrong?"
Shoko seems to get the idea, though she still sighs. She turns to Naoya, flatly addressing him. "I won't heal you if something goes wrong."
Naoya glances at Shoko, then away without saying a thing, though a wrinkle appears in his face. He flips a key out of his pocket and leads them to the back of the agency, a Zenin exclusive room unlike the standard rooms reserved for agency-affiliated Guides.
"Does that woman really need to be here?" Naoya grumbles when Shoko comes into the room with them.
"The offer's off the table if you can't handle her," Satoru answers, to which Shoko just smiles.
After that, Naoya doesn't mention her presence again and shuts the door. It leaves the room quiet. Too quiet. Satoru figures the walls must be sound proofed for Sentinels. Naoya wordlessly holds out both his hands in front of him, expectant.
Ugh.
Satoru complies, if only to get it over with. He'll wash his hands twice when he gets back home.
Like before, a beat passes without anything happening, before Satoru feels a hint of tingling at his fingertips spreading to his hands. A different feeling from Miwa's river-like energy, thicker and denser, like aloe vera. Except, the fact that it's Naoya makes the experience four times more uncomfortable. Satoru can sense the greed, the wish to take in his hold even though it never happens, and it takes all his willpower to not immediately pull away when he feels it.
Naoya pales.
"What the hell...?"
The connection cuts abruptly. Naoya stumbles backward, hitting a chair and falling into the table, barely holding himself up from collapsing with his arms. He's shaking uncharacteristically, he can tell by the shivering of the table, and there's a wild terror in his eyes like he's being chased. His breathing shudders on the way out, fear, and then fascination. Naoya stares at him like he's a spectacle, a miracle and a horror in one. His mouth opens, closes, opens again.
"Gojo, your energy--"
"What happened?" Shoko steps forward between him and Naoya, alarm creeping into her tone.
Naoya laughs and answers, too out of it to remember his typical rude attitude. "It's a bottomless pit," he says. "Or... or a wall. There's no getting through that." This is the most shaken Satoru has ever seen the man; he realizes it's not the kind of laugh that says he's amused. "Gojo, what the hell did you do?"
"Nothing," he answers. It's the truth. All Satoru has done until now is survive as best as he could.
"Look, you're both obviously Sentinels, so you might not know this, but your energy--it should be a web. A matrix. Guiding's a lot like a puzzle where you untangle the web and return it to a smooth state. It's time consuming and requires the Guide's own energy."
A foreboding feeling creeps up his spine. "...Get to the point."
"I'm saying, Gojo, your energy isn't fixable. You can't solve a maze that has no beginning or end."
"That can't be it," Shoko says, shaking her head in denial, "there has to be a way to fix it."
Naoya laughs again, high and too sharp. "The only way to fix that would be by fixing all of Gojo's energy at once, and that would take nearly an equal amount of energy from a Guide. Do you really think there's a single person out there who could rival Gojo's reserves? That would kill a regular Guide."
Satoru tries to process that, tries to think about what this is all supposed to mean. So what, he's not fixable? He can't be guided? What sort of Sentinel can't be guided?
Shoko's eyes blow wide. She turns to Satoru so quickly it must give her whiplash. She must come to the same answer as him--what Miwa did wasn't some fluke, wasn't a regular case of exhaustion.
"That's what Miwa tried to do," Shoko says so gently, it could have been his imagination. "If I wasn't there, the damage could have been serious."
Naoya's muttering continues in the back of his mind, he hears every word but understands none of it. The room is soundproofed but it just makes him feel like the sound is bouncing back and forth in his skull. The air is stale, his mouth is dry, swallowing tastes like sandpaper.
Well, he thinks, this was a bust.
"You're not up to the job."
"I'm not suicidal," Naoya answers. "But I'll tell you this: if you don't do something soon, you're going to wind up dead."
His insides are a desert, burning away, a ticking timebomb. One day, his reversed energy might not be able to keep up with the rate of destruction. Satoru's own growing power very well could be his own downfall--who'd have seen it coming?
"Thinking about other people? That's not like you, Zenin." Satoru doesn't give him a backward glance as he leaves the room. Shoko's eyes burn into his side, but he doesn't look back. He refuses to show weakness in front of Naoya, even as he rots from the inside and the world spins underneath his feet.