Chapter Text
It’s not every day that the great Satoru Gojō is summoned to Jujutsu High for a mission briefing. Usually, they call him up, point him in a direction and feed him to the wolves. And that’s just swell. He works well like that. In fact, he’s at his best when he’s on his own and the less he has to hear from the Elders, the better it will be for all parties involved.
Ijichi is the one who made the call. Typically, the higher-ups will contact him directly when there’s urgent business to address, but it’s just as well. He welcomes the break from all their moaning and harping over every little thing and their repeating of “Gojō, you can’t do that,” like broken records. Not that he ever listens to them.
So fine, alright. He’d rather be briefed by Ijichi than those faded old hacks, anyway. He’s at the school in the flash, out in the hall, his Six Eyes warning him of Nanami’s presence before he enters. Hm. That’s odd. Satoru doesn’t work well with others—not that he doesn’t love some good, old-fashioned bonding time with Kento. But he works best alone. Regardless of whom he’s partnered with, they only get in the way. Partners are more of a setback than an asset for the inheritor of the Six Eyes and Limitless, and the higher-ups know this just as well as he does. But here Kento Nanami is, summoned at the same time as Satoru Gojō, and there’s something off about this whole thing.
Satoru kicks open the classroom door. No one is impressed.
“Yo, Nanamin,” he greets with the laid-back wave of his hand.
“Don’t you start.”
Satoru grins. Kento hates that nickname, and it fills him with glee.
He gives Ijichi another little wave as he plops down at one of the desks and kicks up his legs, making himself comfy. Briefings are never any fun. If he had a choice in the matter, there would be a lot less talking and a lot more exorcising. So he could get back to the important things in life, you know? Like sampling the sweet buns from every shop in Tokyo, or training Yūji by kicking his ass. It’s very intense. And it’s hilarious.
Ijichi sighs at him, pinching his brow with the knowledge that this is going to be one hell of a night, and hands them both a file. Satoru doesn’t bother with it. He’ll have to hear Ijichi repeat it verbatim, anyway. “We have an urgent mission for you two.”
Satoru throws his hands behind his head and tips the front legs of his chair off the floor, getting himself situated for the lecture that’s about to begin. “Let’s hear it.”
“Well…” Ijichi’s eyes fall to Kento, who nods. “It looks like two cursed wombs have appeared.”
Satoru hums his affirmation, but he’s not sure why that’s setting off the alarm bells. Cursed wombs are always popping up. For every new curse, there’s a womb. Usually, they aren’t found and exorcised before birth. That’s just how it goes. Two at the same time is a little weird, sure, but Satoru could still exorcise them both by himself. Kento could, too, if he had to guess. They’re not even active curses yet—how bad could it be?
Ijichi doesn’t look overly concerned, either, as he thumbs through his own copy of the file. “They’re expected to birth special-grades. The windows who reported them have observed them growing and changing, so it’s anyone’s guess when the curses will be active. They’re on the scene as we speak, giving me updates.”
“Ooooh?” A smirk tugs at the corner of Satoru’s mouth as he finally takes a look at the papers he so easily dismissed before. There are no photographs, naturally, but there are descriptions from the windows. One is reported to be a pale, silver wolf, which is… a thing, he supposes. Usually, the wombs are just as grotesque as the curses they birth, all fleshy bits and extra limbs and bulging eyes. Exoskeletons and the like. Pictures of horror, not that Satoru finds them scary. He’s too powerful to feel that fear. And, well, he’s seen them for as long as he can remember; they’re a part of his every day. He supposes, thinking back, that there are curses that aren’t quite so hard on the eyes. Some are humanoid, which isn’t so bad, and he’s seen a few that were born from pests like roaches and grasshoppers, so a wolf isn’t too farfetched. As a matter of fact, a curse like that would probably make a good shikigami. Like Megumi’s Divine Dogs.
He flips the page to see what they’re dealing with for the second one, and it’s… described as a black fox. Huh. That… hm. Something about that does sit a little off-kilter in his mind. One, sure, but two curses looking like non-humanoid mammals forming at once is a bit much. He scratches his chin as he tries to make sense of this.
“They appeared at the very same time,” Kento observes. He’s already done with the file. It’s closed atop the teacher’s desk at the front of the room. “Are they connected?”
Ijichi is sweating a little. This man has been through a lot over the years, but even he’s sensing something odd about this, no doubt. “That’s what the higher-ups are suspecting, though I’m not sure if that’s even possible.”
“It is,” Satoru says simply, “probably.”
“Is it or isn’t it?”
Satoru shrugs. It feels like it is, but he hasn’t seen it happen before.
“They may be born from the same category of negative thoughts,” Kento interjects. It makes sense. Maybe. If they squint a little. “If the same negative emotions happen to be feeding them in different locations at the same time, then sharing similarities would make sense.”
“But why at the same time?” Satoru asks. He checks the location of the wombs, one just outside of Kyoto and the other about two hours out of Tokyo, and tilts his head. “What could possibly be happening in these cities for them to birth the same curse simultaneously?”
“That’s what we’re hoping you can find out for us, Gojō.” Ijichi collects his papers into a folder and rests them at his side. “The plan is to exorcise them before they birth more special-grades, but our secondary objective is to find out what type of curses they are, if possible. Our superiors are worried this could be the start of a trend, so they’d like to get to the root of it before that happens.”
Makes sense. At this point in time, Satoru is not worried. He’s the strongest, after all, and they’re having the strongest sorcerer in the world take on a fetus. No-brainer, he’s going to come out on top. Kento will, too. As far as he’s concerned, it’s open and shut. Nothing to worry about. He’ll be back to his tour of the shopping district before the stores close, and maybe he can rope someone into a nice dinner to celebrate.
He stands with Kento at the front of the school, hands in his pockets as he looks up at the sky. It’s getting dark. Kento must not be happy about this; he’s going to be working overtime since the powers that be couldn’t be bothered to call them in before six. Ah, well. No big deal.
“What do you think?” he asks.
Kento curls a finger around his chin, brow furrowed, calculative as ever. “It doesn’t sit right with me. There are just too many coincidences between the two. If we exorcise them quickly, it shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Want a lift?” He waggles his fingers and grins. He doesn’t know if he could teleport all the way to Kyoto, but he’s never tried, so maybe? He’s pretty great. Satoru’s actually fond of trains because he can eat his snacks to-and-from his missions, but eh, he could probably go all the way to Kyoto with the Limitless.
“No. I plan to take Itadori with me,” Kento states, “seeing as he’s still under my care at the moment.”
Satoru watches Kento go with a frown. He was supposed to pick Yūji up tomorrow, anyway, but now he feels like he’s missing out. Other people get in the way, anyway. But he likes to show off. He really likes to show off. Hm.
“Megumi!” Satoru exclaims as he wraps an arm around his student’s shoulders post-teleport. Megumi’s looking a little disoriented from the trip, but he’ll walk it off. “Are you ready for this super important mission?”
“Why am I here?”
It’s a bit soul-crushing how much his student does not want any part in this. Satoru sighs. Kento must be having the time of his life, with Yūji there to observe. Yūji’s probably all excited and telling Kento he’s cool and amazing… Frankly, Satoru just wants to gloat and, in order to do that, he needs someone to be here. Sure, there will be Ijichi waiting outside the curtain, but it’s not the same. Maybe Megumi wasn’t the greatest choice. Would Panda have been better? Mmm, no, probably not Panda. Toge’s conversations are very cyclical and Maki is… Maki. Nobara may have been a better option. She’s not the type to get excited over this type of thing, though.
Then again, neither is Megumi.
Kento’s so lucky.
Still hanging off his student, Satoru grins and points to the sky. “That’s why. We’re exorcising that cursed womb.”
The file called it the ‘Tokyo location’ but it’s not in Tokyo. It’s actually over some forest by the mountains, a few hours out of the city, which doesn’t feel right. Curses are far more likely to pop up in crowded places, especially special grades, and this is about as remote as they can get. There’s always a chance, sure, but what could possibly be happening here to warrant such a nasty curse? His smile falls the more he thinks about it, scratching his chin with his free hand.
“Then why do you need me?” Megumi is no fun. “Just go exorcise it already. I was about to have dinner, Gojō-sensei. Please be more considerate.”
“We could grab a bite after this? I know a place.”
Megumi just gives Satoru that ruffled look that he so often does, and he’s really displeased, but whatever. They hang around for a little while until Ijichi and a few others show up by car.
Satoru observes the womb while the curtain is set up, nothing showing on his face. It’s big, about as big as any other cursed womb he’s come across, and from all the way over here, he can make out the top half of it above the treeline. Silver wolf, just like the report, curled tightly inside a ball of cursed energy. A red, swirling eye looks vacantly out at the world. And it’s strong. He doesn’t need Six Eyes to feel the violent spikes of cursed energy rippling off that thing. Megumi must sense it, too, as stiff as the kid is. That’s a special-grade, alright. The more he sees of it, the more it unnerves him. Not that he can’t handle it, of course. He’s Satoru Gojō. He can handle anything. But if that thing is born and manages to slip away before he can exorcise it, it’ll be a big problem. Something that powerful could do a lot of damage in the time it takes him to find it again.
But he’s Satoru Gojō, and this will all go swimmingly because of that.
The curtain goes up, and Satoru approaches with his hands in his pockets. He hesitates, staring at Megumi through his blindfold.
“Hey, Megumi?”
“Yeah?”
“Stay here.”
“What? Didn’t you just say that I’m here to exorcise that thing with you?”
Satoru nods to Ijichi and the others milling about the perimeter of the curtain. “If anything happens, protect them.” None of them will be able to handle whatever comes out of that womb, but Megumi might be able to hold his own long enough to help them escape. He’s Satoru Gojō’s precious student, after all.
“Yeah. Sure. Be careful.”
Satoru waves over his shoulder as he steps inside the curtain and saunters up to the womb. Now that he’s in the tree line, he wouldn’t be able to see his target were it not for the Six Eyes; the leaves are obstructing his view of the sky. But, well, he does have the Six Eyes so it’s a non-issue. The cursed energy fluctuations are becoming more frequent, so it could become active anytime now, which adds a little pressure to it all. It’s not his fault it took everyone else so long to get here. They should have just teleported.
He’s unfair, he knows. Sometimes other people can be so exhausting, though.
It takes him a few minutes to notice, and maybe if he was paying more attention he would have seen right through it, but his own thoughts distracted him, and he let down his guard. See, he’s not getting any closer. He tilts his head and stares with his Six Eyes at the wolf in the sky (what a sentence!) and it’s only then that he realizes that he hasn’t taken his eyes off the thing since he entered the curtain. There’s something about that spinning, swirling eye that draws him in. The moment he looks away, he realizes he’s still at the edge of the curtain.
He hasn’t moved since he entered.
This time, Satoru keeps his eyes on the trees ahead and walks. He doesn’t look at it. The surrounding foliage is left behind, and his shoes leave imprints in the mud. He’s moving now. Whatever momentary power it held over him has been broken and, he suspects, it won’t happen again if he doesn’t look up.
What a terrifying monster, to have power like that from the womb. It’s getting him all fired up.
Yūji’s not sure what he’s doing here, but it seems like fun!
Well, okay. ‘Fun’ probably isn’t the best word. Nanami brought him along on a special-rank mission just to observe, and he’s fine with that! Obviously, he wants to help, but they’re just exorcising a curse womb, so there won’t be anything for him to do. Nanami will be more than enough for that. It’ll still be a good experience to observe a first-grade sorcerer at work, and hey, he’s getting a little field trip to Kyoto out of it.
“Isn’t this a bit out of the way?” Yūji asks as they climb the stairs to an old shrine outside the city. It’s been long abandoned, but the stone steps are still in good shape, even if everything that’s wooden is rotting. He supposes that an abandoned shrine might bring about a curse. Anything is possible. “Shouldn’t it be forming in a hospital or something if it’s this strong?”
And it is strong. He’s still getting used to sensing cursed energy, but even he can feel how much that thing is giving off. They’re in the curtain, halfway up the mountain, and Nanami tells him not to look at it. He doesn’t really get why. Something about its eye or whatever. He trusts Nanami’s judgment.
“It’s strange, certainly,” Nanami says from a few stairs ahead. “But it could have been long-forming. Perhaps curses have been collecting here for decades, or centuries, and only came together to form a cursed spirit now.”
“Oh. Huh. I guess that makes sense. Thanks, Nanamin.”
“Don’t,” Nanami warns.
Yūji ignores him and smiles. “You’re buying dinner after this, right? ‘Cause I—”
They both pause. Nanami holds a hand out, barring Yūji from climbing any higher, and places himself directly between his student and their destination ahead. “Don’t move.”
“What? Why?”
Cursed energy ripples out from the orb in the sky, and the surface cracks and bursts. Winds rush the forest, sending anything that isn’t rooted to the ground flying, and Yūji braces himself with his arms in front of his face and his eyes squeezed shut. Dirt and branches and other debris whips violently at his arms, stones sharp enough to cut. He waits until the air settles to peek out at the world, and is confused when Nanami is no longer there in front of him. Looking up—he was told not to, but Nanami isn’t here, so does it really matter?—he finds that the womb is missing, too. Huh.
There’s a part of him that instantly assumes that Nanami’s already taken care of it, but the curtain is still up, and that doesn’t sit well with him. There’s gotta be something here. He cups his hands over his mouth and calls, “Nanamin? You there?”
No answer. He wasn’t told to turn back, though, so he shrugs and presses onward. Nanami probably went ahead while he was busy bracing against the wind. He still feels cursed energy, but there’s something about it that just—it’s weird, okay? He can’t pinpoint where it’s coming from. If he could, he’d be certain that the cursed spirit wasn’t exercised, but he can’t, so he’s not sure if it’s that thing’s cursed energy he’s feeling or something else entirely. It’s just bouncing around the curtain. Like it’s running. But fast. Like as fast as Yūji runs. Which is probably within the realm of normal for cursed spirits?
The bouncing around stops for a second and, out of curiosity, Yūji looks in that direction. It’s right off the path of the stairs, just a little into the forest, where he finds a small figure kneeling on the ground. A white mask cut with circles of black ink and three black tomoe cover its face, hair sticking out from the top and sides, and it… it looks like a kid. This cursed spirit, if that’s what this is, looks like a kid younger than Yūji. Like, what, eleven? Thirteen?
Looks can be deceiving, he knows, so he keeps his guard up as he approaches. He moves up slowly, quietly, but it doesn’t matter how quiet he is because the boy’s head snaps towards him anyway. Beyond the holes in the mask, a haunting red glow cuts through the darkness.
“Hey,” he calls, figuring all the other special-grades he’s met can talk so why the hell not, “are you a cursed spirit?”
The boy doesn’t move. It’s like he’s a statue. He hasn’t attacked, which is cool, but he’s oozing cursed energy like nobody’s business, and Yūji is pretty sure his assumption is correct.
Yūji looks a little closer at the dark robes the boy is draped in and scratches his head. “I thought it was a fox or something, what the heck?”
“The hell’s a cursed spirit?” the boy asks, slightly raising his head.
Yūji frowns. He’s starting to get very confused. “You. Probably.”
“I’m not,” the boy says matter-of-factly, looking a little less withered as he straightens his back. He looks down at his own hands, flexing them, as though he only now notices all of that power welling up in his little body. “What is this? My chakra…”
“Chakra?” Well, now Yūji’s really confused. The sorcerer part of his brain is telling him to either engage the curse and put an end to it while it’s still newborn and disoriented, or to find Nanami. But the rest of him is wondering why this curse doesn’t… look like a curse. Sure, he’s seen curses that look human before, but this… This takes to a whole other level.
“Hey,” the kid asks, “who are you? What village are you from?”
“Village?” Yūji’s starting to sound like an echo, but he doesn’t know what to say. “Um. I’m from Tokyo.”
“What nation is that? Tokyo? I’ve never heard of it.”
“Well, I mean, you were just born, so…” What is he doing right now?
The boy tilts his head and stands up. Now that his face is in full view, Yūji can make out three small tomoe in the boy’s eyes, just like the mask, spinning circles around his pupil. Then the curse—it’s probably a curse, right?—feels the mask on his face, scratching at it with his fingertips until he finds the edge, and slips it off to take a good look at it.
Whatever modicum of fight Yūji had is suspended when he sees the kid’s face. He’s just that—a kid. This curse or boy or whatever he is has a round face and messy hair, and nothing about him looks out of place outside the unsettling glow of his eyes. There’s so much emotion on his face as he inspects that mask, feeling the painted black beneath his finger pads, and it looks so horribly human.
The kid touches his own face, closing one eye and then the other. “The Sharingan? But, the rocks, I—my eye—why do I have it?”
Then again, curses tend to be a little on the crazy side. He’s probably a curse.
Yūji takes a low stance, bracing himself in case this thing—boy— whatever decides to have a go at him, and starts channelling his cursed energy. The boy must sense it because his eyes go up and widen, and Yūji knows he shouldn’t feel guilty, but he does.
“What are you doing?” the kid asks when Yūji lunges at it, fist reeled back, and—
And he can’t do it. He’s killed humans before, but this kid, it’s just, everything is so.
Wrong.
Even as his fist stops right before the boy’s face, the curse never makes a move to defend itself. Yūji has never seen anything like it.
The boy swallows and falls back on his butt, staring at Yūji with that same lost look. “Hey,” he—it—mutters, “what did you say I was?”
Yūji’s hand falls to his side in defeat. “A curse—”
The moment the word leaves his lips, Nanami flies out of the brush and slashes at the child without hesitation. Even with his weapon still wrapped, it should slice through him easily. It doesn’t. The weapon passes through the boy with no effort at all. In fact, the boy doesn’t even notice until it’s already happened, and he’s gawking wide-eyed at the blade that’s phasing through his chest.
Nanami puts himself between Yūji and the curse, calm and collected in the face of this very human spirit in a way that Yūji can’t replicate. He won’t have any qualms exorcising it. Nanami’s a professional, after all. But it doesn’t feel right.
The cursed spirit’s eyes have changed. They’re still that cutting red, but the shapes of the tomoe have twisted and combined, his eye pinwheeling in a way that it didn’t before. He’s pale, white as a ghost, not that he’s alive, as he leaps back and puts more distance between them. He still hasn’t attacked. Hasn’t even tried. Wouldn’t a cursed spirit do something by now? But no, it’s not human. The energy it’s giving off doesn’t feel like it’s from a sorcerer.
“Intangibility,” Nanami observes, bracing his blunt blade. “I knew this spelled trouble.”
The boy pats down his chest where the blade had previously phased through before looking up at Nanami. He doesn’t speak. It looks like he wants to. There are words on the tremble of his lips that go unsaid because there’s a weapon that’s being pointed at him—it— whatever .
Its eyes find Yūji and suddenly all Yūji can see is that spinning red.
The world around him is distant now, but he’s vaguely aware of it. Nanami tells him to take cover, but his legs won’t move. Every blow that Nanami tries to land on the boy just passes through until one hits—but the boy is gone and in his place is a log, cut in two and clattering to the ground, and they’ve lost sight of him.
Unseen hands drag Yūji to the ground and cover his mouth, and he feels hot breath on his neck.
“Shh.”
When Nanami turns to check on him, Yūji is already being dragged into an inky blackness cool to the touch, all-consuming as it blocks out the world that he came from, and nothing remains.
It’s sudden when it hatches. Satoru whistles as shockwaves ripple out from its core, and something small and distant falls from the orb in the sky. He sees a shape with his Six Eyes, looking more human than wolf, drop into the trees some distance away. All of that cursed energy built up in the womb is scattered now, lighting up the air like starlight. Well, it’s been born. Too late to stop that. But Satoru should be able to fuck around long enough to figure out what thoughts gave birth to it, so the higher-ups won’t be too upset. Not that he cares.
Before he teleports to it, he hears thunder. A sky muted and almost invisible beyond the curtain cracks and breaks with it, plumes of grey clouds twisting over the cursed spirit like an ill omen. This one’s got some fight in it, bending nature to its will.
He shifts through space, and suddenly he’s there where the curse fell, blinking at the empty little clearing between trees. What was left of the cursed energy after the birth was all gathered here, but it vanished in the time it took Satoru to teleport, which is a new and fun thing.
There’s something behind him. He can’t help but smile as he feels a body rush and jump at his back, and he doesn’t even bother to retaliate, hands in his pockets. There’s a blade to his throat, but it’s no ordinary knife, and an arm wrapped around his neck that doesn’t quite touch. He can feel the heat radiating off it, though. Body heat. As though it’s alive. Curses can be so funny sometimes.
It pushes away as he turns leisurely to face it, putting some distance between them, and it must realize what just happened. Satoru sympathizes. It’s just a baby, after all, and hasn’t learned to fear the name Satoru Gojō. He’ll give it a good lesson before it gets out of hand.
“Did I surprise you?” Satoru asks, something feral in his smile as he stares the curse down through the veil of his blindfold. If he didn’t have the Six Eyes, he may have hesitated; this curse takes the form of a young, pale boy with pale hair and those same hypnotic eyes that Satoru saw in the fetus. Aside from that, though, it can easily pass for human. Physically. The Six Eyes shows him otherwise. This is a cursed spirit, no two ways around it. But there’s a different signature to its eye as though it was taken from elsewhere, as though the curse wasn’t born with it, even though both eyes match.
What weirds him out the most, though, is that this little curse looks like it would fit right in as a member of the Gojō clan. It has all the right markers. Wouldn’t be too out of the ballpark to suspect his clan to be involved in deeds that would create a special-grade curse, either. But he’ll ignore that for now.
The curse straightens, flexing its blade. It has a tantō, of all things, which feels way dated for the times. The red eyes stare back beyond a painted white and red mask shaped like a dog or wolf, and it’s the mask that keeps it from feeling too human. But Gojō can see through that mask. He can see anything. And beyond that mask is just a boy with a cloth over his— its —face, and oh dear, he’s humanized it. Nanami would be so disappointed.
“A dōjutsu?” the curse asks, its voice an echo behind the porcelain mask, muffled and distorted.
“A what now?” Satoru counters, building up and concentrating cursed energy into a single point in preparation for a release of Blue. He needs to find out what type of curse this is first, he supposes, which is why he hasn’t taken it out immediately.
The curse doesn’t answer. It’s a bit rude, isn’t it? Aw, well. The higher-ups can suck it, then.
Instead of Blue, he reinforces his body with cursed energy and runs at the kid. When he goes to hit it—it’s not a kid, Satoru, stop thinking like that —his hand passes straight through it. He loses his focus for just a second because he’s Satoru Gojō, and he does not miss . The curse takes that moment of uncertainty to try another swing of the tantō, not that it can reach him, and they reach a stalemate. The curse jumps away. It likes to keep its distance. Satoru feels that if it hadn’t realized it couldn’t touch him, it wouldn’t be so slow-moving and cautious. This one thinks. Extensively.
Satoru isn’t bothered yet. This is a minor hiccup, and he’s pretty sure it won’t be able to survive a hit from Blue or Red, but it’s piquing his interest, and he thinks he maybe wants to get to know it better.
He launches himself at it, and it matches his movements exactly, like a mirror image, and they clash when they meet. The tantō’s blade never lands, and Satoru’s punch passes through the curse’s head like it’s nothing.
“You won’t land a hit on me,” Satoru explains because he’s a teacher at heart and giving a helping hand to a child is in his nature. Even if his tone is mocking and teasing and anything but informative.
“A barrier,” the curse observes, its spinning eye scanning Satoru’s everything as though it can see the Limitless, and maybe it can.
“That’s the infinity between me and you.” The curse rears back and tries to land another hit anyway. Satoru can’t help but laugh as it slows infinitesimally before it makes contact. “That’s the spirit!”
Satoru spins out to push the kid—curse, curse —back and kicks out with a cursed energy infused leg but, like every time before it, it cuts through air. There’s got to be a way around it. It’s a trick. But until he figures out that trick, they’re at a standstill.
“You’re a special one,” Satoru praises. They take turns exchanging meaningless hits, anyway. To waste energy, he supposes. “Wanna share your secret? I won’t tell.”
“Maa, this is new for me, too.”
“For a newborn, that’s entirely fair.”
“Newborn?”
“Testing your limits, I suppose,” Satoru says easily. He’s building up that cursed energy again, readying a hand to release it all at once. “Seeing what works? But I’m Satoru Gojō, and I have sweet buns waiting for me.”
The curse stumbles, caught off-guard, and stares blankly at him. “What?”
“And I’ve got to get dinner with my cute students,” he continues. “Nanamin’s footing the bill.” Ah, well. He supposes he can’t have Yūji and Megumi there when Yūji’s supposed to be dead. Maybe he’ll eat dinner twice.
It’s only now that Satoru realizes he still has his blindfold on. Silly him. He pushes it up onto his forehead and feels the burst of clarity as his Six Eyes reaches its full potential. The force of attraction builds at his fingertips, and the world around them crumbles to dust beneath the force. The boy’s fast. He puts enough distance between them to go beyond Blue’s pull, but not before the mask is sucked in. Satoru stops his attack and catches the mask as it flies by, turning it over in his hand. It really is just a porcelain mask. It’s a porcelain mask, but it’s part of a cursed spirit. He wonders if it reforms when it’s destroyed.
When he looks up, he tilts his head. Huh? Where’s the curse? His exceptional sight isn’t helping him locate it—until it does, and he blinks at a patch of rubble towards the end of Blue’s reach. The flickering, minuscule cursed energy that the spirit gives off is somewhere beneath all of that. Well, looks like the newborn’s luck ran out. So sad. He’d cry if he cared. Now all that’s left is to exorcise it and get those sweet buns.
Satoru kicks away the logs and rocks that are in a heap above the curse’s form and sighs when he finds an unconscious little boy beneath. It bothers him, though. The blood. It isn’t like he’s never seen a cursed spirit bleed before. That’s just a thing that they do, and then they reform whatever it is they’re missing. Eyes, hands. Arms. Legs, like this boy is missing right now. He can already see the cursed energy that was once so tightly controlled by the boy while conscious bursting to life and filling a crushed leg until it’s whole again. Those massive reserves are out in the open now that the boy’s not able to keep them under wraps, and this is undoubtedly the silver wolf from the womb. Satoru can see all that. He can nudge the kid with his foot and actually make contact. Exorcising won’t be a problem. He doesn’t know what birthed this curse, but he probably doesn’t want to know, either. It’s too… personable.
Satoru tends to have bad thoughts. He likes to press buttons that say ‘do not push’ and see the looks people wear when everything explodes in their faces. It’s hilarious.
Satoru is also a bit of a pushover when he’s not in high-stress situations. And right now, Satoru is anything but stressed.
He pulls his blindfold down over his eyes and crouches next to the small body at his feet. Pokes its cheek. It’s warm to the touch. Soft, as skin usually is. He pries its eyelids open, and the eyes behind it are unseeing. One is still that vibrant red, but the other has receded into a charcoal grey. Wonder what that’s about. Like him, a lot of its cursed energy pools around its eyes. When it was awake, it was pulled into both, but now it’s only being drawn in by the one still red. The left eye.
He pokes a little more. There’s a red tattoo on the kid’s shoulder. Beneath that cloth mask is a pretty cute face. Not hiding any grotesque mouths, just a mole.
Like this, it’s like the boy’s sleeping. But curses don’t sleep.
Satoru bites his nail. There’s a voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like Nanami telling him to exorcise it before it wakes up. He doesn’t tend to listen to that voice.
There’s another voice, a louder one, telling him that this curse is different from the rest, that it’s special and unique, and he’s pretty sure the one in Kyoto is special, too.
He places a hand on its chest. Like this, a strong enough burst of cursed energy will do the trick. No need for flash and fanfare. Satoru’s not one to be sentimental, anyhow. Doesn’t matter how human it looks—it’s not human. Maybe it once was. Maybe it came from something just like him. But right now, it’s something else entirely.
You’re hiding Yūji, the voice tells him. You’re Satoru Gojō. There’s nothing you can’t do.
This voice sounds a lot like Suguru, taunting him, and he doesn’t like it.
His phone buzzes in his pocket and he considers it. Sometimes he forgets that lower-level curtains still allow communication. He’s so used to being shut off from the outside world that getting a phone call while exorcising is surreal to him. He sees the name on the screen and grins, his moral dilemma forgotten.
“Nanamin,” he croons, “just finishing up over here! What are you thinking for dinner? I’m craving sushi. Where should we—”
“Yūji Itadori has been kidnapped.”
Satoru shuts up. He stares down at the curse at his feet and the urge to rip through it with every drop of cursed energy he has is strong, but it flickers and dies in the same moment.
“I’ll be right over.”