Chapter Text
There are six fingers in the inventory of the Counsil. Yuji’s eaten two. That accounts for a whopping eight, or it would, if they let him eat the first six already.
He calls it paranoia, and then irony. The Counsil is worried that Ryōmen Sukuna will reincarnate. They forget that the Strongest is, by some miracle, on their side. He calls it irony because really, could they stop him if he ever went against their orders and had Yuji eat them all? At the end of the day, this matter was really between the King of Curses, and the Six Eyes. He only humoured their insistence on slowly feeding the fingers. And, well, sure. He didn’t want to overwhelm Yuji.
Not that things were ever truly slow at Jujutsu Tech, but lately things were certainly speeding the fuck up. He was out every other day at the very least. And at least, it wasn’t just him too. There was an evil silver lining in knowing that the other sorcerers were finally working some overtime. And it was everywhere! He goes to the mall–curse in the fourth floor bathroom Gojo, please exorcise it. He’s tucking himself into bed, snug as a bug in a rug, and the phone rings! Hey Gojo, curse in this district right here–yeah, the one that’s four-hundred-thousand kilometres away–go exorcise it. Hey Gojo, First Grade curse found at a children’s hospital. Hey Gojo, First Grade curse spotted in Sapporo. No, we’re not paying for a train ticket! We know what you are! Hey Gojo, why aren’t all the reports written up yet?
Hell, he even got bartered off to Angola last month! For a Special Grade curse! What the fuck was it doing there! How’d it get there! And devastatingly, because of his unique strength and technique, he was lumped with all the long-distance calls. So what if he could teleport! Do these people not know how finicky the warping calculations are? Do they want him to warp himself into the middle of the ocean because he forgot to square something in his mental integrals?
Even then, sometimes he slips up on a calculation and ends up teleporting without something: keys, phone, wallet, his left sleeve, the screws on his glasses, or accidentally teleporting the wrong thing like Megumi’s dry shampoo bottle that was unknowingly in contact with his elbow before he zapped off.
The onslaught of busy busy busy had gotten to such a chronic point that even his students had sought him out in the lounge last week to check up on him.
They brought him caramel cubes! He adores them.
The appearance of Sukuna’s vessel, easily, could be the reason behind it all. But that didn’t sit quite right with Gojo. The consumption of a finger only ever resulted in a spike of cursed energy if it was a curse that ate it, not a human. And although they had sentient Sukuna now residing in Yuji’s hollow mind, it wasn’t like the incarnation was amplifying his cursed energy. The whole point of the twenty fingers was to divide the finite energy he wielded, so that it could come back to him one day. All of it.
Maybe it was the weather. Normies always had it out for something–“Gah, it’s Monday! Life sucks!” “Ugh, cold ass October and clouds are such a mood killer” “My week would’ve been fine if I didn’t have to get an oil change on my car!”
Maybe he should have more sympathy. People always tell him he's too insensitive. He thinks it over, rolling around a synthesized feeling in his mind, and decides that he’ll sympathize once he gets more than an 18 hour break without having a mission call.
He did have one last theory. There could be a spike in birth rates in some country. More people meant more cursed energy. He thinks to Google the fact, and promptly forgets it.
He teases the OFF button on his smartphone. He’s feeling a little silly. Feeling a little devious. Feeling young and bold and stupid, the exhilarating feeling of doing what you want and thinking of the consequences later. He could block Ijichi's number... not that that would be particularly nice but he was the one tasked as messenger for all calls to the Tokyo sorcerers.
He could turn his phone off altogether. "Whoops! It ran out of charge, I promise!" he would say, when everyone knew that Gojo never let his prized smartphone drop below 60% charge.
He could ignore the missions. He can’t bring himself to screen the calls, though. That just felt a bit rude.
It's been 3 months of non-stop work. He deserves a break, and they're sure as hell not gonna give it to him. He powers off his phone.
He could finally relax!
“Your form is perfect, the hell are you doing?”
“What?”
The first and second years had taken up sparring out by the track field at Jujutsu Tech. It was, as always, orchestrated by Maki. “Orchestrated” meaning a looping two hours of rapidfire criticism and no breaks. At some point, somewhere in the two hours, Yuji’s head stopped spinning from all the million bits of feedback he’d gotten–stop straightening your back so much, guard your face, circle your opponent constantly–and he finally began tweaking his movements as per her instructions.
Slow progress, but still, Yuji wasn’t known to be a thinker and a fighter all at once. He could sense when his resolute effort to guard his face began to drop, could easily sense the harsh words before they were spoken.
“Stop dropping your hands! Don’t wind up a hook! You fight like a street fighter,” Maki yelled.
“But no one’s ever taught me how to fight before that!”
Maki groaned. “You’ve been here for what–six months now? There’s no excuses. Get your hands up, or I’ll—”
“Maki, really, give the guy a break!” Panda yelled from the bleachers. In truth, Panda was in complete and utter awe at Yuji’s sheer strength. And to find out he was just born like that? It was like Maki’s Heavenly Restriction. He was lacking in technique and form when he first started sparring with Maki, and couldn’t keep up. But to be fair, no one could keep up with her save for Gojo, if he really put his mind to it. Not that he seemed to put his mind to anything. But, what Yuji lacked in technique he made up for with his horse-like stamina; in no time, he bumped up to at least a cumulative 900 hours of training in the six months he’d been at Jujutsu Tech.
If he didn’t pull Yuji out of this eventually, he’d run until he crashed. They found this out the hard way the first time.
The two of them make their way over to the bleachers, Yuji making a beeline to his gargantuan 4-litre water bottle and guzzling down half of it. Water pooled in his cheeks and spilled all over his shirt as he poured it straight into his face.
“Seriously, can’t you drink water normally?” Kugisaki yells from the topmost bench. “You’re wearing half of the bottle.”
“I was thirsty! You try sparring with Maki-senpai!” he yells back. He still amends his ways, sipping from the bottle instead.
“I’m injured .” (She wasn’t). “I’ll die. ” (She had a hangnail on two of her fingers and claimed it affected her aim for her cursed nuts and bolts.) “I’m the only first year who can bother drinking water normally anyway.”
Megumi scowls at her. “What’s wrong with me?”
She throws her hands up in the air with an exhausted look. “You— you time yourself!”
Yuji walks around the back of the bleachers and climbs vertically to the top bench. “What does that mean?”
“He— he times himself! Gojo said you’re supposed to drink eight glasses of water a day, so he— he! Every four hours, he just sits down and drinks like exactly two glasses of water and then waits another four hours to drink the next dose! I don’t know why he’d even trust what Gojo would have to say.”
“Hey, everyone knows you’re supposed to drink eight glasses of water everyday,” Yuji defends. He’s not sure if that argument defends Fushiguro or tarnishes Gojo’s honour. “And like, most people don’t even care. So at least he’s getting his water, I guess…”
“Yeah, like a medication! His water bottle’s always empty because he drinks it all at once!”
Megumi only shrugs. “If I sleep for eight hours, I’m awake for sixteen. If I drink two glasses every four hours, I’ll make it to eight glasses.”
“Better than vodka,” Maki mutters discreetly. Or, maybe not so much.
“Pickled plum!”
Panda huffs out a “Yeah, Maki! Can’t say things like that in front of the first years.”
Distantly, Yuji wonders how he never noticed Fushiguro draining his water bottle like that if he did it so periodically. “What, you want them drinking vodka, is that it?” Maki refutes. “Man, I miss Yuta. He would know what I’m saying.”
“No, he wouldn’t, Maki. You’re just saying that ‘cuz he’s not here and you can say it.”
“Where’d he go, by the way?” Yuji asks. He’s ran into Yuta only in passing, around the first month of him joining Jujutsu Tech and downing a fleshy evil finger. He always seems to be away, and when he’s not, he’s knocked out cold in the dorms.
“There’s something crazy happening at Marseille with a hotel,” Panda explains. “People are disappearing. They can’t tell where the curse is, no cursed energy anywhere. They keep sending over sorcerers, and no one’s come back.”
“What?! Will he be okay?”
“Salmon…” Inumaki mutters, face pinched and angled at the ground.
“He’s Yuta,” Maki says as consolation, awkwardly patting Inumaki on the back. He’d been a mess since he found out about Yuta’s current mission. “He’s got the Queen of Curses on his side–I think.”
“Mustard leaf!”
“Yeah yeah, whatever. He’s from a really powerful lineage of sorcerers. And like super freaking strong with just his cursed energy alone, now. He’ll be fine. They sent him because they needed a Special Grade. All the previous sorcerers they sent were One or below. His ancestors will help him or something. But then again, everyone in his lineage is dead to tell the tale, so…”
Inumaki points an accusatory finger at her, scowling again. “Bonito flakes.”
Panda sighs wearily again. “Maki, stop provoking him. He’ll be fine. His flight should’ve landed by now. We’ll watch a movie this weekend, or something, while we wait.” It’s an odd request considering Panda is never down for movies, ever. Says there’s nothing worth watching on a screen like that.
Yuji pipes up again. “Oooh, Human Earthworm 4 just came out!”
Maki balks at this. “Who said you were coming!?”
“Maki, can I paint your nails and stuff while we watch? I never get to do manicures on anyone anymore. Fushiguro’s boring and only lets me paint his black. I need real girl time.”
“Hey!” said Fushiguro yells in retribution. “You said you wouldn’t tell—!”
“Please, ” Yuji begs. “Please not during the movie, it smells so damn strong! It’ll ruin the whole Human Earthworm experience!”
“Bonito flakes! Tuna tuna !” Inumaki has strong feelings about the atrocious movie franchise.
“I don’t know if Maki counts as a real girl…” And Panda’s out cold on the ground as soon as the words leave his mouth.
Sometimes Yuta felt like he’d never had an original thought. It was an unsightly insecurity for someone who already looked insecure to a physical fault: bangs shrouding his face, nefarious gangster build, shapeshifting jawline, and everything about his eyes. Downturned, pupils peeking up through his lashes, face angled towards the ground as if it were more interesting to look at. And the permanent eye bags, or as his beloved teacher Gojo would lovingly call them, “them perma-bags.”
To add on to his loser look, he’s got his train ticket on a lanyard around his neck.
At least he filled out a bit more. He wasn’t as lanky as he was in his first year at Jujutsu Tech.
He’s sure he’s had original thoughts at some point. Maybe all thoughts are original to some degree. Maybe there are just too many thinking people, and no one can really come up with a new thought anymore. Maybe he just had never conceptualized the sheer number of people that lived on Earth. Or a country. Or a town! Or even, the number of people that could possibly exist at an obscure train station at the Serbian border.
He’s never had an original thought.
He’s called on a mission overseas, and they book him a red-eye flight straight to Paris. The flight breaks down and gets called for an emergency landing, which is fine, really, but he did not remember the Serbian border being anywhere under or to the side of their flight path between Tokyo and Paris. Even when they do land, and it’s at an unkept aerodrome that had seen its best days when it was still a plot of flat land, they’re leagues away from Pirot.
And it’d be fine anyway, really, it’s just that Rika had a tendency to get fidgety in cramped places with other people. God forbid anyone tried to strike up a conversation with him. Hoping to shed the crowd, he clamoured off the plane with his imbued sword (that he disguised as a fishing rod, and still had to fight tooth and nail for through luggage check with no help from the assistants). Lucky him, it was a well-populated town. A series of trains running North-South and East-West, and straight to Pirot.
He was hoping that because he took it upon himself to levitate over to the furthest train station, and board the most ragtag looking run down train cart, he could avoid the mass of people.
Every single person on that flight had a similar thought. Only, they did not levitate and float over to the train station but instead got into a car as per the human convention, and drove there.
He’d never had an original thought.
Now he is wondering. He hasn’t changed out of these clothes in what’s about to be 26 hours. The train station’s stuffy, filled with low-level curses barely the size of an acorn churning to life in the gutters between the platform and the gully and in the cobwebs of the trusses that hold the ceiling above his head. It reminds him of the anti-suicide posters he would see peeling slightly at the corners back in Japan, posted beside the train tracks. And how bizarrely charged they were with cursed energy. He sees no such poster here, but that staticky hum of dread is still lingering around. It hurts his head. Containing Rika and barring her from slaying a passerby nave to chops is taking up a lot of his energy. He’s tired. But he knows, with his luck, the second he rests his eyes, he’ll miss a train. Or something sinister will happen.
He snaps his eyes open at the gurgle next to him.
“Yuta… you are tired. Why are you tired? Who is making you so tired? Yuta, I will kill it , Yuta.”
“Rika, you are making me tired right now.”
He regrets the words after they come, but maybe he needed to say them. He can’t arrive to a Special Grade mission exhausted. Rika flinches backward in response, and he slathers a grimy set of hands over his face in exasperation. He scrunches his nose, realizing he had inadvertently told her that she would have to kill herself to kill “it.”
“Sorry, Rika. That’s not what I meant. Could you help me?”
“Yes! Yes, of course! Of course! Yes, yes of course!”
“I’m tired because I haven’t slept in a while, but I’ll be okay. But Rika, I could only rest if I didn’t have to watch over you to make sure you don’t hurt someone.”
“Yuta doesn’t watch over me. Yuta doesn’t watch over me. I watch over Yuta. I watch over Yuta.”
“Yes, dear, but I’m so tired, don’t you want to help me?” he asks, not meaning to sound so simpering, but the fatigue meshes into his voice and the droop in his eyes doesn’t help.
“Yes! Yes! Yes!”
“Okay, I will rest until the train marked for Pirot arrives. It should be about forty-five minutes. Listen closely. I need you to very gently wake me up, when the train is about to arrive. I need you to harm absolutely no one unless I explicitly say so. And, I need you to wake me up if anyone tries to rob anything of mine that I’m about to drop on this bench. Can you do that?”
“Yes, yes! Yes! I can, I can, no one will steal from Yuta, yes, I will wake you! I—”
“You cannot harm anyone, Rika. Promise me.”
“...yes, yes, Yuta!”
That was her word. If she went back on it, it would not be his business. He slowly nods, more to himself than anyone else. He’s garnered some odd looks from people standing near the alcove he’s found himself, having a conversation with thin air, hiking a “fishing rod bag” on his shoulder when there is no viable body of water nearby to fish in. He drops his things onto the bench. He moves to sit, thinking it over once more, and sits anyway. Rika twists around him, her accursed torso swaddled into his lap like a newborn. It gives him something to place his head on, he realizes. And, Rika will be restricted from committing inexcusable evil while lying on his lap. He thinks of this as acceptable, and finally dozes off.
With visual input blocked off, human ears pick up sound more distinctly. He occasionally wonders what it’s like for Gojo and his Six-Eyed glory, if he processed auditory input the same way he did, if he processed smells and tastes differently, wondered if he was constantly swallowing that feeling of being sick and not being able to taste anything. Where saliva and even water was bitter and revolting, and the only thing that felt like food was pure sugar on the tongue. Or really, really spicy food. It would explain the chronic sweet tooth.
He could hear the nuts and bolts wiggling in their sockets under the hum of machinery around the rails. Safety rails placed only at either of the two furthest extremities of the platform length rattling in sync to it. There’s a generator that’s definitely not too far from him in this dingy place, and he can hear each undulation of its gears. He thinks it might be connected to a water system. It’s tickling his mind. It’s soothing.
Sometimes he does hate being bound to Rika. There was, and always will be a danger to it. But at times like this he can appreciate it–appreciate the prospect of being alone and in peace, by himself, and yet at the same time he has someone here with him. He’s holding his accursed incarnate fiancée in his lap while he dozes off, lost somewhere in Europe, a lethally charged steel blade carelessly tossed onto the bench beside him.
The weather is mild enough. The sun is somewhere, but that wouldn’t matter with all the shades in this train station.
And fuck , he doesn’t even get to the ten minute mark before he hears it again.
“ROBBER. ROBBER! ROBBER! ROBBER! THIEF! HE STEALS, YUTA HE’S STEALING HE’S A THIEF, YUTA!”
It’s an unfair comparison, he knows. He loves Rika. But sometimes looking after her is akin to looking after a frantic Doberman or a toddler.
He senses nothing around him. No cursed energy, no footfalls, no breathing, no sound of a tongue moving in a closed mouth or hands fumbling for his belongings beside him. Disgraced, he peels his eyes open anyway. He is not prepared for the sight he sees.
Big burly man. Really really big burly man. Man, even? His face looked as if it were made of porcelain, unpolished and dull but smooth. Seemingly glowing. He was easily six feet tall, maybe taller, and towering over Yuta’s hunched over form. He was chiseled into a masterpiece of elements: the perfect beard, auburn and just coarse enough to fill out his chin; comb-over golden hair; hooked nose with zero nose hair sticking out of it; and a devastatingly British looking outfit of a big-man peacoat and lace-up leather boots.
He looks like something out of a period drama. The clothes don’t seem to suit him–he seems he would be more fitting in battle armour with a sword and a night’s helmet.
And, he is definitely not robbing him. In fact, he is holding out a plastic water bottle to him. The man then opens his mouth and speaks , and Yuta thinks his heart might get defibrillated with the vibrations from Burly Man’s voice wiggling the veins in his chest.
”Disciple of clay, and friend. Drink lest ye find thyself among the deadwalking,” he booms.
His first thought is–that’s not even the right dialect. Deadwalking shouldn’t be a word in archaic English and it shouldn’t be a word in any Victorian era English. He wouldn’t use “ye” and “thyself” like this, and not “thine”, or something along those lines. The most glaringly obvious detail is that Yuta could understand him at all. If it was true Old English, nothing would make sense.
But it’s not the oddest personality quirk he’s had to accommodate. And, looking at the bottle of water, he realizes how thirsty he is. He reaches out for it and replies in raspy English: “Thank you… uh… sir.”
It is a bit comical to see him speaking in Middle English while offering a bottle of packaged purified spring water, the plastic of it slightly green with a tag saying “100% recycled materials!”
“Thank not I but He who delivers, for I am but a man compelled by the will as He wills it.”
Maybe it is Old English, since he really can’t understand it anymore. Ironic, he could understand Inumaki’s frantic “TUNA” last week when he set a pan of oil on fire, but the collective 21 words he just heard means nothing to him.
He thinks the interaction ends there, and he thinks this incorrectly as the man rises to his full height–holy fuck he was crouching to talk to Yuta–and dusts off the non-existent debris from his beige peacoat. Suspiciously, he hears metal loudly clunking under it. Oh well, none of his business. Don’t feed the hand that bites, or whatever.
”Disciple, doth ye attain great lengths in thy voyage? Of which land is upon your kingdom?”
Yuta does make a rude looking face, but that is only because he is thinking very hard. Hard enough to find an unoriginal thought–maybe someone’s experienced a conversation like this before and knows how to respond. “…I’m sorry?”
Now it is Burly Man’s turn to scrunch his face. “Thy amends and repentance is unneeded.”
Okay, this answer does clear something up for him. The man’s really just like that. He would need to be literal in his speech. He is surprised how different it is compared to Inumaki, who he could understand given the right tilt of the head or squint of the eye. But he supposes this man is not quite on par with him and Inumaki.
He thinks the slightly robotic voice is subconscious. “I do not understand you,” he says, enunciating every word.
Burly Man is quiet for a few seconds. “Thine destination.”
Ah. “Marseille. Ah–France, really, it’s complicated. I am going to Pirot, then finding my way over to France.”
The man remains silent.
”Uhmm… what about you?”
”Thy truth is thy great journey has yet to have commenced. Many a leg lies before thine destination.”
It is a trip to hear him speak. Briefly, very very briefly, Yuta had once taken up studying Middle English. And it does NOT sound like this. ”Yeah… it was either this flight, or a 13 hour layover in Sergelen. And now I need to hitchhike to France or something. Nothing crazy new though.”
The ground shakes. No–he realizes belatedly–the man had laughed. The deep chuckle resounded through the echoing walls of the station, despite the crowd.
“Meself, I recall younger times of hardship upon such a land,” he mutters fondly, shaking his head a little. And Yuta is already so so so weirded out by this whole interaction.
The clock by the trusses on the ceiling circles to 6 PM. Fifteen more minutes before the train arrives. He resigns himself to his fate of another 2 days of no sleep. His lame eyes peek up at Burly Man again, as Yuta subtly stretches out the unused muscles in his shoulders. There’s something off about him, and it sits uneasy in his stomach.
He’s completely awake now, and there is zero cursed energy leaking from this man. Is he actually a saint? That isn’t possible–all non sorcerers radiate some degree of cursed energy, even babies, even unborn babies, even people with their lives together and all their desires sitting on a table in front of them. Even inanimate objects–a knife cursed after being used in a murder, mirrors that absorb the insecurities of people, a wedding ring from a spouse who cheated, or a badly graded math test.
Often it’s miniscule, but it’s always there. But the man beside him feels non-existent. Now that he’s thinking about it, he couldn’t really hear him approach either. He makes no sound unless it’s with his voice. But there is something else that he can’t put his finger on.
They stand by each other for an additional seven minutes or so before Yuta gets jittery. He needs to pee, but fuck if he uses the bathroom in this place. He thinks he’d rather die. And he is not about to find a bush somewhere outside, and miss his train. The pounding in his head is escalating and he needs to pee and his neck hurts from not sleeping horizontally–or at all for that matter–for so long. Time is not passing by leisurely. He closes his eyes now and then, listens to the hum of the station, hoping it’ll ward off the ringing pain around his skull and behind his poor eyes.
“Thy spirit? Or thy maiden?” Burly suddenly asks with a lilt in his voice, as if they’ve been friends for years and not strangers at a train station.
Spirit? Like his soul? Or is he asking about his dating life now? This is not a story he is about to get into. He can hear the clicks of Burly’s steel toed boots clack against the concrete platform. He can hear it now, and did not hear it before, because Burly is intentionally making noise again. And whenever he doesn’t intentionally do it, no sound is made at all.
“Spirit? I do not understand,” he says again in response, just as slowly and just as clearly. He holds eye contact with him, as unnerving as it is. Burly might say, “I am a wielder of the Six Eyes” and Yuta would have to believe him. They are so blue it freaks him out. Even Gojo’s eyes aren’t this crazy. There are two more minutes till the train gets here, and then Yuta can vanish off to the other end of the cabin.
Burly furrows his boisterous brows in mild confusion, again. As if Yuta is the one that is being confusing. “Is it not thee your spirit lay bound upon?” he asks.
Does he mean his soul? Of course his soul is bound to him. “Yes. This is true.”
“A blessing that of which claims you. Strength lay in power. Thy power binds to you; how fortunate, how beseeching.”
He did NOT use that word correctly. But Yuta stands nowhere to correct him, unsure of how that conversation would even go. The voice on the loudspeaker booms just then, a language he can barely decipher:
Attention passengers, the train will be delayed due to a medical emergency. We are working to resolve this. Service will resume soon.
Yuta grips at his hair and pulls.
…
Somewhere, in the depths of the woody mountains in hyper urban Tokyo, a man cracks an egg onto a sizzling hot pan.
He gets on the train. Nothing diabolical ends up happening at the train station, no matter how badly he wanted to fake a heart attack and cause a scene to get Burly off his tail, or startle Rika into flying him far far away, or to get sick leave from the Counsil and rot in a hospital bed for a week.
They’re both on the train. Burly and Yuta. And there’s been no exchange of words since they’d boarded. Yuta walks and walks to the tail end of the train cabin–not that far, really–and sits by a little two by two seat alcove by the train’s window. The seats face each other. He doesn’t care if it’s rude; he drops his stuff onto the opposite seats so no one sits down. At least that’s what he’s hoping for.
“So we meet again,” Burly declares beside him. He doesn’t turn to look at the mountain of a man. There’s nothing that’s blatantly wrong with him, nothing enough to make Yuta as irritated as he is right now. Maybe he should’ve had more water. Irritation was the first sign of serious dehydration, and it was damn hard to admit when you were irritated.
What would his complaint be? Oh, this tall majestic polite man has zero cursed energy and wants to sit in the cubby I’m sitting in on this crowded train, how irritating. And no, while there are other seats he could sit in, wherever else he chooses to sit, he’d have to share with a stranger. It’d make sense, he guesses, begrudgingly, to sit with someone he sorta kinda knew.
Yuta just isn’t in the mood to make friends, right now. “Hello.”
“Hail, friend.” Oh, he’s such a punchable face. Yuta cannot be attacking civilians. He never thought he’d be the one with the evil intentions, and not Rika.
Rika! Holy shit!
Holy shit? Holy shit! She hasn’t even said anything! It’s been like thirty minutes!
Rika is never good at hiding her jealousy. Yuta’s never had a single experience of meeting someone for the first time where Rika doesn’t flare up and bar her teeth at them. Never, at least, not until today. Rika had been radio silent, not even a spike of energy in her presence whenever Burly was near him.
“Rika? Are you there?” he never expected to hope to see her, straining for so much of his life trying to shake her off him. But her silence worried him.
“Hmm? Yuutaa Yuutaa, I am here Yuta,” she responds easily.
Yuta, in his moment of short panic, forgot that he had a cubby mate sitting with him. He turns to Burly, expecting an odd look, ready to explain away his talking to the thin air when the hairs on the back of his neck stand and he feels cold , freezing, because Burly is staring directly at Rika from across the seat gully.
“She speaks?” Burly asks with a bright smile. “By my honour, what a magnificent bond.”
This is what he meant by spirit!?
For what could very well be a solid minute, Yuta just stares aghast at the man in front of him. The man’s long ass legs and beefy knees clonk against his own under the table. Burly, to his 800-score credit, keeps smiling at him and Rika the way an old man might wink teasingly at a young couple. Proud .
Hey, he loves his fiancée. That’s like the whole point of his Cursed Technique, the very principle that turned his life upside down. He loves Rika. But he can admit, if he were anyone else, with any other set of eyes, if he ever saw Rika for the first time again, he might jump out of his skin and stay out. She is teeth teeth teeth and inhuman flesh and one fucking eye on a good day and built in the shape of the soft squishy part of a de-shelled snail and he adores her with his life but— but—!
“Friend?” Burly asks, concern lacing his deep manly voice. “Thy windows, thy eyes. My, what pale skin! Hath thou happened upon a ghost? Practicer of the occult?” He is asking with care, and he is teasing altogether.
“You can see her?”
“Thy beloved? Aye, friend.”
He can see her, and he called her Yuta’s beloved . He has no cursed energy. Is it masked? He can’t see cursed energy the way the Six Eyes can. The more he is thinking about it, the more he is leaning towards a Heavenly Restriction. The only known lineages of HR to him are the Zenins, but then again, he’s a short while away from Japan right now. Who knows what the hell happens outside of Japan’s Jujutsu Society. It’s chaos enough over there with the limited number of them.
“Are you a sorcerer?”
Burly barks out a laugh. “Nay, friend. Practicer of the occult stay not a title thou companion dearest lay claim to.”
Yuta is about to hit him, oh he’s about to hit him so hard. “You don’t know jujutsu? Magic, or whatever you wanna call it?”
“I know many a thing. Battle remains my warmth of home, but only burns so brightly at a cost of the joy in return. Return laid in victory. Nay, but sorcery? Eumm, joo-joo-soo…? Nay, friend. Nay.”
Maybe he’s a late bloomer? Learned of his power late in his life, and doesn’t know about Jujutsu society? How old is he anyway? Thinking about it, they are in an odd place. There’s no distinct lack of Jujutsu sorcerers per country, but the chance that there is even a single sorcerer in any given small town is next to none. Curses gather where people gather. Sorcerers gather where curses are. He might not know anything at all.
So has he been… seeing curses and dealing with it? Smiling at them? Making buddy-buddy with them?
He huffs out a sigh. “Rika, dear, are you okay?”
She fully materializes this time. And does the oddest thing in the world– sits in the fucking seat next to him. “Hands” folded in her lap, politely. Like she couldn’t float about wherever she wanted, like she couldn’t slither around his neck and torso and hug him to pieces, or sink her teeth into the Big Man sitting in front of him.
“Yuta Yuta, do you need my help Yuta? Do you need help?”
“I don’t need help,” he answers hesitantly, more than a little freaked out.
It’s freaking him out. It’s seriously freaking him out. What is his strength without Rika? If Rika doesn’t recognize this man as a threat, a man who he is increasingly convinced has a Heavenly Restriction, could he defend himself in the event of a full blown fight with this allegedly “battle hardened” man?
“Rika, dear, you see the man, don’t you?”
“Yes, yes, Yuta. I can see! I can see him.”
“...and?”
“And what, Yuta?”
He is silent. He should get over the shock. It’s bringing him no answers.
“Yuta is okay? Yuta is okay?”
“I’m okay dear. It’s fine. He—” Yuta turns to face the man, who is a foot away from them and thus has nowhere to look but directly into their conversation. “What do you think of our new friend?”
In an eerie human imitation, Rika turns what could be her “neck” to face Burly. They stare at each other. “Hello.”
“Hail, friend!”
Oh, Yuta’s going to pass out.
Pandas, like the forrealsies animal, don’t have fingernails. Pandas aren’t even primates, so really, they don’t have true fingers either. Nor thumbs. Instead, they have claws to climb around on trees.
That being said, Panda the sorcerer does have something resembling fingernails. The group of teens sit in the dusty lounge, blinds drawn and snacks and drinks spread around them. Nobara won the argument of painting nails, and now with six people in the room, she has plenty of test subjects for her artistic ideas.
They speculate that it might be because Panda’s one third gorilla so he got his finger traits mixed up. The way they say it makes Panda take offense to the thought.
“Yeah man! You’re like if you were a third of uhhh… uhhh… American. And like a third of you is American stuff and the other half the other stuff,” Yuji says with much effort.
Nobara waves the fumes of nail polish in his direction. “You couldn’t even think of a country! What the hell is one third American supposed to look like?”
”What’s the other sixth if he’s a third American and a half ‘other stuff’?” Megumi asks, obediently letting his baby blue painted nails dry with his fingers fanned out in front of him. “The numbers don’t match.”
”I’m not American—!”
”You think Itadori knows math?” Nobara squawks. She’s saving Maki’s nails to be painted last. They’d only gotten through twenty minutes of Human Earthworm 4 before Inumaki burst into hysterics (as much as he could) and they switched to a cheap horror movie. He said it wasn’t even the plot; it was the shitty ass graphics , as Maki translated. He was a filmmaker enthusiast.
Nobara moves to twist Panda’s giant hand (paw?) so she can clean up his… cuticles? Finger fur, she’d call it. Panda would kill her if she got paint on his finger fur. It’s a pretty pink, with his… uh… ring finger… painted a lavender shade, embellished with a small pink flower.
“Panda-senpai, if you go Gorilla mode, what do you think happens to the nail polish?” she asks. These nails were a lot of work. “Would it like–transfer to your gorilla claws?”
Megumi tries to palm his eye sockets with the heel of his hand, promptly being shut down by Nobara lest he smudge the paint. “Why does your panda form have fingernails but your gorilla form has claws? Isn’t it the other way around?”
Panda stands up from the nest of pillows they set around the ground. “One way to find out.”
“What— Hey! Don’t—!” Too late! He’s a gorilla. The transformation itself leaves something to be desired. His body sort of just puffs into a gorilla shape. No fanfare, no sparks and lightning. When they aren’t in the middle of battle, it seems like he just got a change of clothes. Not that he wears any. Naked loser.
He stretches out his gorilla hands this time to examine them. Miraculously, the nail polish perfectly transferred to his gorilla claws, even though they were double the size of his fingernails and delicately painted. And still wet, technically. “Woahhh…”
She stands up to peek over his massive form. “Huh, they’re still good. They even changed shape to match it.”
“Guysssssuhhh…!” Yuji groaned behind them. “The movie’s still on!”
“Tuna.”
Maki whips her head around to Inumaki. “You picked this movie after you hated the last one! No complaining. We’re not switching. I want to see where Mona ends up.”
“Tuna!”
“Why’d you pick it then!”
Inumaki is silent and brewing. He peels the wrapper off a brownie and chews it slowly to avoid answering. Panda replies for him:
“Toge thinks the female lead is cute. He won’t admit it. He doesn’t want to see her die.”
“Mustard leaf.” (Fuck you.)
Fushiguro and Yuji collectively yelled out. “Why’d you have to spoil it! She had like at least an hour of plot armour left!”
Maki groans again and ushers everyone to de-gorilla themselves and sit back down.
They each sit in the same spot, always. Maki and Nobara on the couch. The rest of the boys banned from said couch. Yuji and Megumi sit amicably next to each other, back to the sofa’s leg rest, with a popcorn basket in the middle. Yuji’s throwing popcorn at Megumi’s face while his hands are out of commission and drying. Occasionally, he throws in an unpopped kernel to mess with him, which Megumi just spits right back at his head. Inumaki is on the floor and closest to both the screen and the soundbox, rapt attention set to every detail about the production. Panda is basically a pillow himself, so he’s sprawled starfish style, only his head propped up by Yuji’s knee to angle his face to the screen.
The movie is lame but stupid enough to keep their attention. The female lead, Mona, gets lost in the woods during a storm and something is chasing her around. They can admit, at least, the map and compass that she found was a nice touch. It gave her false hope, because she thought she could get out but got even more lost, and now the movie’s just saddening. She might really die.
“S’meone’s phone is ringing…” Panda grumbles.
“It’s not miiineee,” at least 3 of them chime in. Now that someone’s pointed it out, they can hear the faint vibrations of a phone with its ringer turned off shaking somewhere in the floor’s blankets.
Inumaki pats the general area where the ringing seems to be coming from, finds his phone, and pulls it from under the covers. He sees the caller ID and bolts upright. “...Yuta…”
The rest of the group pauses. Yuta never calls them during missions.
“Yuta?” he asks into the phone’s mic.
A relieved, staticky voice washes in from the speaker. He thinks it over, and presses the “speaker” button so everyone can hear. “Toge! Oh, I’m so glad I got you. Gojo’s not picking up. Is he on a mission?”
Maki twists herself upside down on the couch and back-reaches over to get close to the mic. “Why, what happened? He’s supposed to be on call right now, that might be why.”
Panda also leans over. The weight of two people is not comfortable on Inumaki’s shoulders, and he lets it be known. “Did something bad happen? It was a Special Grade, right?”
They hear some shuffling and speaking in the background before they hear Yuta again. “God, if I could even get that far! The plane had an emergency landing in Serbia. I just got off my second train, ‘cause the first one I took also broke down halfway! How the hell am I supposed to get to France! Like I get that Special Grades normally work alone but none of the assistants are picking up. Gojo isn’t picking up! Ijichi-san isn’t either! If I even make it to the airport, how the hell will I book the flight!? It’s not like they’ll let me use my Magic Hocus Pocus school ID as a passport.”
Maki scrunches her face at the term. “I uh… I could ask Mei Mei. She could probably get you on one… or we’ll hunt down Gojo for you. The bastard needs to get his ass up and moving.”
“Hey! Gojo-sensei’s ass is always up and moving!” Yuji tries and fails miserably to defend.
“Yuji…” Panda sighs. “Don’t say that.”
“What?”
“Hello?”
“Hey, yeah, we can still hear you. Where are you now?
“Finally made it to Pirot. I didn’t think about calling Mei-san. I’ll do that… thanks. But uh… that’s not the only problem—”
“Tuna mayo?” It’s harder for Yuta to understand him over the phone, but he understands him nonetheless.
“I’m fine, I’m fine. No one’s hurt, actually. And–well, nothing bad’s happened… I don’t think anything bad will happen?”
Maki pulls the phone entirely out of Inumaki’s hands. “The hell does this mean, Yuta.”
“...Maki?”
“Yeah?”
“Is Heavenly Restriction like… a strictly Zenin clan thing? Like how the Gojos own the Six Eyes?”
“Hah? What are you asking?
“I think I found a guy with it. But he looks and acts like the polar opposite of a Zenin.”
“And what is that supposed to mean!?”
He squeaks into the phone. “Th— that’s not what I meant! He’s just super freaking tall and blonde and nice and definitely British or something, and like, not a Zenin. That’s not a bad thing! And he talks like he’s Shakespeare! He’s been following me around—”
“Following you around!? Don’t tell me you can’t shake off some normie?”
“Ah–well uh… maybe following’s not the right word. We met at the train station and he gave me some water. And we rode the train together. So we’re kinda stuck together. But Maki…”
“Yeah?”
“He has no cursed energy. Like at all. And, we haven’t fought or anything but he was telling me about these weird battle stories, so he’s definitely a fighter. He’s built like a fighter.”
“He’s built like a fighter, Yuta?” she asks with one suspiciously raised eyebrow. “It’s not suspicious for regular humans to be strong. Or have little cursed energy. Some people are just freaks and enjoy their lives.”
“You’d know what I mean if you saw him! But it’s Rika that’s freaking me out! No— no, she didn’t hurt anyone. She didn’t even say a word when the guy started talking to me! And he can see her! And he’s not scared of Rika! He said we look cute together! And the freakiest part is that Rika spoke back to him! Politely! They held a full civil conversation without me—!”
“Gahhh!! Stop yelling, we get it! That’s weird. Is this like a jealousy thing? Scared that big strong blondie’s gonna steal your girl?”
“Maa-kiiii!!!”
She sighs away from the microphone and pinches the bridge of her nose. “Sorry. Look… are you sure you’re not being paranoid? You’re telling me you found a super nice handsome man in your little excursion—”
“That’s so not what I said!”
“And he’s too nice ? He has zero cursed energy? You haven’t had to reign in your little terror curse from killing him on sight? Oh, what hard work.”
And now, Panda thinks, is a good time for him to take over, and he snatches the phone out of her hands. The three first years have been quiet during this whole bout, eavesdropping with rapt attention. “Maki, don’t be mean. I see where you’re coming from, Yuta. Call Mei Mei after this to make sure you can get to Marseille. I don’t know about any other families having a Heavenly Restriction, or at least, the specific kind the Zenins have…?” He looks to Fushiguro, hoping for any more of an answer. He shrugs in response. “But it could be some long distance relative. Or some other technique. Or maybe the guy’s an anomaly; there’s no shortage of those in Jujutsu. We got me and Yuji here, right?”
In the background, Nobara discreetly motions for Yuji to move his hands up to the seat of the couch so she can paint them. She pulls out a deviously neon magenta color that has large specs of glitter in it. Yuji heavily resists this motion. Megumi, miraculously, supports Nobara’s side to this. “It matches your hair,” he whisper-yells. “My hair isn’t that pink!!!” Yuji whisper-responds.
They hear Yuta blowing out a breath through pursed lips. “Yeah. Yeah. Nothing bad’s happened. I’ll try calling Gojo again later. I don’t think he’s supposed to be on call right now? If you see him could you… uh…”
“We’ll beat him for you, of course.” If they could manage to touch him.
“M’kay… ah, I’m getting another call. Might be him. I’ll see you guys this weekend. ” He hangs up with that.
Sometimes he stares at Gojo’s tufts of white hair and imagines it falling off his head and floating away like cotton. He could never pull off the bald look. Maybe if he sneaks a habanero pepper into his soup, it would float away like ashes after his “face burns off, help! It’s too spicy! Do you want me to die?!”
If Gojo’s untouchable, the world’s yet to figure out his one easy loophole. The man’s gotta eat. He can’t pull in a bite of chicken with Infinity endocytosis. It’s gotta get in his mouth, and he’s gotta chew. Many times, because Suguru was such a terrible friend, he’d take advantage of this and feed him spicy food. See what happens. It doesn’t help that the fucker gets to beat him up after, Infinity up and running, and Suguru really can’t do anything about it. He’s the strongest, or whatever.
He’s had a hearty breakfast for once, eggs and fresh garden vegetables and leftover squash soup, breaking his week-long sorta-kinda-not-really intermittent fast. Gojo just says he’s starving himself. But he’s chewed through his stash of pistachios. A few oranges. A whole slice of bread, even.
“What next, Suguru? Gonna nibble on an acorn? File down your little beaver teeth with woodland nuts and berries? Chew through my phone charger?”
“Who let you in here?” He finely minces the habanero pepper into Gojo’s bowl, seeds and all.
“Well it’s not like someone like me needs a key around here. Whaat, you gonna kick me out? Don’t want me in your quaint little home?”
It was back in 2006 or 2007 when Gojo had made an irreversible error. Or maybe they both did. The Star Plasma Vessel mission was a major flop , as Gojo would put it these days. Days that were mercifully distanced from the guilt of having failed so badly, and for the first time in his life.
“I thought you didn’t need your phone charger anyway. Weren’t you screening your mission calls?” he asks, tsking and shaking his head. “I don’t know how a child like you managed to go 6 hours without a phone to play Clash Royale, or whatever.”
“It’s Clash of Clans! What the hell. You know this! I talk about it like all the time!”
“Don’t you have kids to take care of? Absentee father.”
“Are you or are you not gonna chew through my charger?”
“Do you want me to???”
He sighs loudly directly into his friend’s ear. They’re in a cute little cabin in the woods. Gojo hates teleporting here because the woods are so dense that if he slipped up on a calculation and teleported a meter to the right, he would fuse into a tree trunk. He’s perfect in his math, having had well over ten years to perfect the same equation, simplify it, automate it, make it second nature. But no one will understand exactly how dangerous his odds are of teleporting to the incorrect coordinate if he accidentally sneezes or something when he jumps.
There’s a spacious kitchen here. Suguru loves to cook and hates to eat. Luckily for him, Satoru can eat enough for three people. Even more so, Satoru will force a minimum of 1,000 calories down Suguru’s throat if he refuses to eat. Nine times out of then, the entire sum of those calories ends up being disgustingly sweet food, and this convinces Suguru to reluctantly power through his own meal instead.
There’s only one bedroom and a teeny bathroom upstairs. The hallway that connects them is comical; the stairs are rickety and painted so that even with the depth perception of the Six Eyes, Satoru fears he’ll trip and die. The top of the stairs bisect the hallway. The hallway goes exactly two meters right and left, and on opposite ends of the halls is the bathroom and the bedroom.
The two of them frequently crash in there. Sometimes on the floor; Suguru’s got carpeted floors in there and nowhere else in the house. Says it’s “too hard to clean as it is, so please stop eating in here!” Satoru can’t be bothered to warp home–or, well, to a residential space on campus that he has to call home–and Suguru never minded the company.
It’s just, Suguru came here to forget about everything. And Satoru’s big mouth loves to remind him about everything. Everything.
“No, you should’ve seen it! She was so serious–” he pulls a terrible impression of a sullen Shoko, “‘Gojo, I’m quitting smoking. I think your cologne is doubling the nicotine’s effect on my lungs,’ like she ever would. Man, she says she’ll quit like once a month, quits, and then something freakin’ tragic happens and she goes back. It’s always something tragic.”
“Satoru, her cat died.”
“It’s a cat! Who cares!”
He hits him with the back of a spoon. “Just don’t say it to her face.” He sets the soup bowl in front of him, spicy peppers in it disguised as bell peppers. Not that Gojo’s any more preferable to bell peppers, but he’s old enough now that he won’t make a show out of picking them off his plate. Mostly. “And for the record, your cologne is too strong.”
“You’ve never minded, Su-gu-ruu… ”
“I’m not an asshat and so I didn’t say anything!” Gojo does look terribly offended, sniffing himself. “I don’t know how your kids tolerate you.”
“My kids are amazing and they adore me! You’d know if you came by more often! Then you’d see them.”
“And by ‘come by’ you mean ‘sneak out to the warehouse and kidnap a bunch of kids’?”
Gojo was not the only one who made an error back in 2006, he can say this now confidently. The world still tilted. Jujutsu Tech was small, as always, and their tiny trusted circle got even more devastatingly small as time went by.
Satoru was in trouble for liquifying Toji and demolishing the school grounds. Suguru had massacred a village and two young girls with it.
The reports were speculative only. Strong and easy speculation, even easier considering Suguru had admitted to the crime. One hundred and fourteen people, burnt to a crisp under a fire curse that had his residuals all over it. Not a sole survivor in the village.
Gojo cleared his face, trying to put on a serious look. Failingly. “You make it sound like we torture them in there. Y’know, Yuji really misses you. And Megumi, but he doesn’t really say it out loud.”
“I’ve met Yuji once .”
“So you must’ve made SUCH an impression!” he answers with a wild grin. He spoons in a careful sip of the soup he was presented with. “They could really use your training too. Y’know, with the whole ‘I control curses’ shtick. Yuji’s controlling a pretty freaking crazy curse. Megumi’s Cursed Technique is basically yours, too.”
“You know I don’t do that anymore, Satoru,” he says solemnly. Solemnity never bodes well with Gojo around. He hits him full force, sucker punch to the stomach. A haymaker punch. He wasn’t even trying and Suguru is winded and on the floor.
“The FUCK! Suguru, my face is on fire! It’s gonna burn off, it’s too spicy! Do you want me to die! You did this in purpose you little-”
He grins up at the white haired loser, feeling delirious. It’s definitely the lack of oxygen because he still cannot breathe. “ Hah… still goin’ easy on me! Thoughtyou’d—” he wheezed, “tho— thought you’d like the soup. Made it extra special for ‘ya.”
Gojo still looks pissed. He’s staring down at him with an evil stink eye. “Don’t lie to me either. ‘I don’t do that anymore’–I saw you the other week! You used one of your curses to hike up a tree. Didn’t seem like you were out of practice. How long’ve you been training?”
“It wasn’t training. I had business to do.”
“Up a tree!?”
In 2006, Geto did make a mistake. Or, everyone else would call it a mistake. He called it a simple choice.
Suguru had massacred a village. When brought in for questioning, he had no defence. “I felt like it.”
Gojo’s always on his side. So he stood by him. Pleaded for his pardon.
And after the ruling, he beat the shit out of him. “The FUCK do you mean ‘I felt like it’?!”
The first order was execution. Everyone in the room sighed. Yaga, because he knew what was about to happen. Shoko, because she knew, too. At least four of the higher-ups, because they were seasoned enough to know what was about to happen. Geto sighed, and agreed, but not before pulling out his arsenal of the ugliest looking specimens he could pull from his shadow. Gojo sighed the loudest. He was tired. Not in the mood for a fight.
The execution order was retracted. They had no solid evidence that it was Geto that burned the village, they said. This was a lie. They had a full confession from the man. Really, they were scared. With only three special grades, and none of the three to back their end of the court ruling, they had no doubt a full fledged battle in the courtroom with Geto Suguru would result in another 116 deaths.
And so they did the next best thing: prison time. Which lasted all of two days, two days which Geto spent napping in the chambers. Hibernating, really. He didn’t wake up, not even to take a piss or eat. And once his energy was restored, he opened up his shadow–a “curse reservoir”, as Yaga would describe it in class–and let himself fall into it. Oh no! The prisoner’s escaped! they’d yell, opening up the door with the protective sealing sigils in it. Wide, wide open.
Really, did they truly believe they could contain him? They were putting in shit effort, too.
So prison time didn’t really work. The next order passed down. They were too embarrassed by this point, having tossed around the case hand to hand trying to find a solution that would keep Suguru from being a threat. “Exile! You are exiled!”
Gojo would snort when he heard the order. “They’re tired of looking at your ugly face. Need you outta here.” It was strained and it was empty.
Now, despite everything, Gojo would hope for the next ten years that this was temporary. A minor bump in their friendship. In their dynamic. But as the years churned by, despite the countless opportunities Geto had to return to Jujutsu Society, he kept his quiet pace in his quiet little cottage.
But his friend was happy. Sorta. He still had them perma-bags under his eyes. He disappeared for days, sometimes. He shuffled uneasily in his sleep. But none of that was new. At least, away from the world of curses, Gojo could join him in his little haven now and then.
He looks at his long-haired friend sprawled on the floor, clutching his stomach. “You’re so lame, Suguru...”
For now, this was enough.