Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It all began with a wish.

Now that she was thinking about it, nothing was truly innocent that came with that wish. 

It was a selfish wish.

It was a greedy wish.

So truly, whatever she wished that placed her in this very moment, she had it coming .

She stares in horror at the childish creature that makes a face at her in some mockery of a smile.

She pales - still not as pale as the one standing in front of her - she tries to scream, to put her hands out to push the creature away, to run , for god’s sake.

But she’s just standing there, rooted to the place as she looks at that, that thing that mirror’s her everything, like a reflection, if not for the fact that the creature, that creature , has damning holes for its eyes.

It has pitch-black eyes. Like someone drilled-punched a big hole in its face instead of eyes.

Its mouth. Its mouth has no teeth. She can’t even see a tongue. Like a dreamful of horrors. She can see the grotesque way its cheeks upturn like it’s trying to smile, but it only succeeds at creeping her out further.

Then, it fucking speaks.

“Hi…na...”

She blanches further when a hand reaches out alongside that voice. The voice that grits her ear as if it’s scratching at a chalkboard. 

And then, finally, her body moves. Her child-body moves - but only to take a step back. Still frozen, staring at the, at the curse .

—

She always thought about the question, “Is this it?” ever since she learned about reading stories. 

From simple fairy tales when she was a child, which ascended to various fiction books when she was a pre-teen and forbidden to spend time in front of the television, until her teens, of which she finally ascended to watching anything fiction.

Movies, series, and the one thing she truly loved, anime.

Maybe because she got addicted. To that purpose . They want to protect their friend, they want to become Hokage, they want to become the Wizard King, to fulfill the prophecy, they want to be the freest. Their lives on the screens serve a purpose. Or striving towards a purpose.

What is hers?

To finish high school? Then what?

Get higher education? Then what?

Get a nice, stable job? After that, what?

Get married? Produce kids? And rinse and repeat?

Is that it?

She used to ask that a lot.

Maybe she just has delusions of grandeur .

She tried to look for that purpose - she even established her very own club of nerds. You’re passionate about Harry Potter? You’re invited! About LotR? Welcome! Anime? Even better!!

She tried to be happy. She tried to tell herself, “I’m content.”

And for years - it worked. 

Sure, she knows that it truly didn’t go away. When her clubmates are discussing, “What do you wanna take on in college”, “What work do you wanna do”, “What kind of partner do you dream of”.

Her thoughts of, “Is that it?” slowly but surely peeking a look back at her.

It’s maddening . 

She tried to explain this once - to her best friends, at the time - and to her disappointment, it never worked.

“You should think about it seriously, you know. College is only around the corner.”

She was crushed. Her friends. She always thought that they of all people would understand. Then she finds out that they’ve already been taking schedules to take entrance exams while she was enjoying the last of her high school days.

She knew she was smart. She was accelerated in her schooling. Graduating high school at only 14 years of age. That’s gotta be some kind of record, somewhere.  Maybe she’s not the genii type that won music competitions (because she’s absolutely crap at it) at age 4 or something, but she was smart enough that she stood out.

In her country where speaking the English language is rare, she was already fluent at age five. She’s absolutely pants at mathematics but she can tell you the history of the world through stories. She knows of their dates, she knows of their names. It comes easily to her. 

She always lies when she first introduces herself to her friends telling them to, “Forgive me, I’m terrible at remembering names,”. Up to now, she can name you every character in every show, in every book she got her hands on. She tells everyone that because she will keep forgetting you until you have done something that catches her interest. Until then you’re inconsequential. She says that so that she has an excuse.

Her family isn’t poor. They’re a middle-class family that afforded her ballet lessons when she decided on a whim that it looks cool back when she was seven. She attended halfway through a year when she just dropped it, not interested when she’s one of the older ones taking the class. 

Her parents weren’t even mad when she told them. Both parents were too busy for the family, she was raised by different nannies, and when she got old enough, they had a housekeeper who keeps the house clean and cooks their meals. The housekeeper arrives early enough to cook them breakfast, and leaves early enough that she’s alone at their house until her parents arrive just in time for dinner.

She only sees the both of them at dinner, ever since she can remember. Sometimes her mother doesn’t even make it. Stuck in traffic or stuck at work. Her father is a strict man who has tight control over her studies. He tells her grades should never go down to a certain point, in this case, it was 90. 90% was her lowest grade. 

Except for mathematics. She never did get a grade higher than 90% in math. It pissed her father off something fierce. And she would tremble at his presence every time it happened.

Her mother did not care. At all. She doesn’t know that woman at all. Except for small talk happening at the dinner table when both of them talked over her and she didn’t speak at all except when prompted, she doesn’t know the woman.

Her parents aren’t cruel. Whether or not they want her, let alone love her, is up for debate.

Her death was, some can say, violent. She would tell otherwise, it was normal enough. Especially regarding the crime rate of the area she was in.

Because she never prepared for her entrance exams, she just went along with her friends, testing where she could, and just hanging out. At the time, she thinks she's the only one who thought of it as just hanging out . Not with their futures on the line.

Thinking about it now, she wonders if her friends had been pissed at her for being so cavalier. Probably. She went with them at the last minute so she never did study for the exams. And the fees were an insignificant amount to her, unlike some of her friends who came from low-income families and had to save just to take the exam. 

She still passed all of them.

She finally picked a college, away from her ‘friends’, and with her father’s approval, she was now looking at dorms.

She was brilliant at directions so she thoroughly explores the area. And maybe she wants, for once in her life, (she graduated high school now for goodness’ sake) she wants to stay out late. 

It was a mistake.

She only heard a loud grunt, and she turned to look behind her before all she felt was pain. 

Immediately, she fell over, clutching at her side. Wondering what the hell happened. She looks upon a man who stood over her before she coughs out. Blood . She tastes nothing but iron in her mouth.

Dazedly, she realizes that the man pushes her over roughly to lie down face up. She coughs out some more blood , realizing that the man was patting her down. Unsuccessfully, she knows he won’t find anything, for she doesn’t own a phone, unlike her peers. For her father deemed them a distraction.

“Fucking slut,” he heard the man mumbling, immediately running after snatching her branded shoulder-bag off her body and ignoring her grunt of pain.

She feels hot.

She chokes on the blood flowing in her mouth.

In the alleyway she was laying on, she hears the blaring of an incoming train. The train she would’ve ridden had she gone home a little earlier.

She reaches out towards the sound, maybe for help. Maybe she just doesn’t wanna die in an alleyway. But she can’t move. 

Where the hell did the man hit her? Was it a stab? Probably. She didn’t hear a gun. 

She can’t feel anything, anymore, her hand lands with a thud next to her. 

“Is this it,” she murmurs.

She hates this life.

She feels cold.

“Is this really it?”

She hates everything about this life.

She can’t see anything, anymore.

“I wish…”

The emptiness, the loneliness, the hopelessness.

She feels really cold.

“I wish for an exceptional life.”

She hates herself, most of all.

Everything sounds far away, she can’t hear anything, anymore.

“I wish for a purposeful life.”

A different life, a different her, a different world.

And then, before she fully fades, she hears, clear as a day, she sees, as if it's right in front of her face, a creature blinks its eyeless eyes and grins its pitch-black mouth at her.

“‘kay.”

—

June 1996

She was reborn, in a minor noble Japanese family. 

Well, correction. She was born in an old Japanese family that was once considered nobility. 

Now, they are a minor family in the world of jujutsu.

That’s right.

The world of curses and sorcerers.

Now, she’s three years old, and her cursed energy training has begun.

That’s how she met it .

—

She remembered it. Back when she was dying, she remembered seeing its face.

And suddenly it all comes to her mind.

Her last words. 

Her last wish .

Its response with, “‘kay.”

She stares at the thing, eyes wide with realization. 

—

They called her the heiress of the Kira Clan. The last generation that was born in the Kira Clan. 

And her ‘Clan’ was her and her parents. Her father, in this world, is hanging onto what prestige is left of the Clan. Her mother, in this world, trains her as if it's going out of style. 

According to her maniacal and malicious ways, she’s the Clan’s hope. At their time of desperation, her parents experimented with all sorts of cursed energy hoping to have a child as her mother was deemed barren. 

And when she was born, they were graced with a torrent of cursed energy felt for miles. They then hysterically yelled their accomplishment for the heavens to hear.

She can only guess that the ‘torrent of cursed energy’ was her being reborn with the creature inside her.

In the first place, she has never heard of the Kira Clan. At the same time, not all clans were introduced if she remembers correctly. The three main clans: Gojo, Zenin, and Kamo. And the one minor clan introduced was the Inumaki.

Her parent’s cursed techniques weren’t anything special either. Her father only uses different types of ofuda and a cursed nodachi, although he is pretty powerful, being a first-grade sorcerer. Her mother, interestingly enough, uses a cursed noh mask in which she imbues her own cursed energy and a second-grade sorcerer.

—

June 1996

“Nanika?” She asks hesitantly.

“Hi…na...” The thing , no, Nanika replies.

And then, she gasps awake from her meditation, her mother in front of her.

“Well?” She snaps out, “Did you find your cursed energy?”

She’s all of three. In this body, at least. And she found it, yes. If Nanika is considered as such.

Why the hell is Nanika here?

This is the world of jujutsu. 

Or is the question why am I born in this world when it was Nanika from Hunter x Hunter who transported me?

Shouldn’t I be in the world of Hunters instead?

Is it because of what I wished?

Before she can think of a reasonable answer, she blinks back in tears in her eyes when her mother hits her in the face and she flies right through the shoji doors of the dojo. 

“Answer when I’m talking to you, daughter!” 

—

March 2009

“Another assignment?” Gojo whines, his voice grating to his ears.

“I’ve just gone back late last night,” Ieiri voices her own complaints.

Yaga Masamichi heaves a deep sigh. He pats down one of his cursed corpses and lets them complain until all he can hear is silence. He glances between them, who being the brightest if not the most annoying of his students, recognizes his tired stature. 

Ever since Geto’s betrayal a year and a half ago, he feels like he’s only tired these days. Even if most of the time he’s just irritated at Gojo and Ieiri’s antics, there are always days like these. He looks at his two students through sunglasses and thinks of the report that he has to convey to them.

“This isn’t an assignment for a cursed spirit,” he begins, “this is an order from the jujutsu higher-ups.” He pauses to give the folder in his table a glance. Or a glare.

“Retrieve and execute the cursed user named Kira Hinagiku.”

“Wait, wait, a cursed user?” 

—

The two of them were quiet in the car, contemplating. Well, Shoko is. She knows that Gojo is seething. She can feel the roll of his cursed energy. Probably because she is sitting close beside him. Even if she can’t, his silence is enough. She contemplates getting a cigarette. She has a headache. She hears a big sigh from him then a thump from where he lands his head in the headrest.

By the time they get on the plane, Shoko knows that Gojo is restless.

“Maybe Suguru has a point and I should just kill the higher-ups,” he says, indifferent.

“But you won’t.” She replies with a surety in the same indifferent tone.

“No, I won’t.”

“But still,” she begins to rummage her purse for a smoke, hoping that even if it's just playing with the cigarette stick would satisfy her craving, “a wish granter, huh?”

“Maybe I should just wish for every single one of them to die,” Gojo sticks a lolly right in her face, “or maybe you should wish to stop smoking already, they’re disgusting.”

“You wish,” she scoffs, they both huff a laugh at the pun, and snatches the candy from Gojo, it’s better than anything.

“How does it go again?” She sighs at him, looking unimpressed. “Humor me.”

“Kira Hinagiku. She’s from a minor jujutsu clan, though it was proven that they were a family descended from Emperor Seiwa. They never possessed important domains and never represented a real power, but they were considered as kōke.”

“That long ago, huh? Any connections in the jujutsu world at that time?”

“Who knows, but unlike the rest of the jujutsu families, the Kira Clan isn’t really anything special, as far as we know. They don’t have an inherited cursed technique, they don’t have anything special. Their talents, if we can say that, rely mostly on cursed weapons. Those they pass down.”

“Insignificant bunch, huh?”

“Yeah. I think the only remarkable thing about them is they are mostly born with a monstrous amount of cursed energy. Five times bigger than normal newborns with cursed energy. I read it was a novelty.”

“That’s the first time I’m hearing about that,” Gojo turns his head to look at her through his round glasses.

“It’s a fairly unremarkable thing. Compared to other families’ cursed techniques at least.”

“That’s true. Still, never has one been born with unique abilities, for the amount of cursed energy you suspect?”

“I don’t suspect,” Shoko scoffs at him again, “it’s already been studied. And no, there were a few here and there, but the Clan is mostly called the breeding stock.”

“What, what the hell.” She shrugs at his tone of disbelief.

“I’m sure you already figured it out. The amount of cursed energy within their clan makes them great for arranged marriages. That’s why they’re the most scattered clan. Each and every one of the families, if we can trace it, has a drop of Kira Clan’s bloodline.”

“Not this past few generations though.”

“No, their numbers started to dwindle for the past 50 years or so.”

“So this Kira Hinagiku is the first of the Clan to have unique cursed techniques. Why approve her execution then?”

“We still don’t know if the Clan themselves approve of it. Besides,” she bites down hard on the lolly that it cracks in between, “her unique cursed technique has already killed no less than ten people.”

“Hmmm,” both of them stay quiet all the way to Oita.

—

The first time they both meet Kira Hinagiku’s father, they look at each other in silent conversation and agree that they’re dealing with a nutcase.

“Look! As I’ve already told the higher-ups at Kyoto branch, I’m perfectly capable of controlling that, that thing !” He gesticulates wildly from where he led them to what looks like a control room.

The room is very wide and big with lots of space in the center. At the far-end was a cluster of monitors looking from one angle to another and showing a girl.

This man has been telling them about how he educates that thing as far as he is able since it's tenth birthday. That he trains it, see, we follow a schedule . As if he isn't talking about his own daughter.

Both of them tune out the disgusting rambles of the man and concentrate on her.

She was about their age, which they weren’t told, maybe three to four years younger. She was sitting down primly in seiza, a brush held in one hand while the other holds the end of her kimono sleeves to not touch the washi. 

Shoko thinks she’s a beauty, with short, wavy, black hair curled to a bob cut, and pale skin. She can’t see the color of her eyes from the camera angles but she can see the way it’s upturned. Shoko also sees that she has a mole on the left side of her mouth.

“We still need to look at her in person though,” Gojo suddenly cuts the man off, snapping Shoko out of her staring.

“You - you want to get closer at that thing ?! It’s a monster I tell you! I don’t care if you have your Six Eyes, Gojo! Ten eyes and that thing will still kill you!”

“Right,” Shoko drawls, interrupting the man’s tirade and hopefully distracting Gojo from where one of his eyebrows were twitching, clearly irritated, “As Gojo said, we still need to see her.”

The man visibly turns red in anger, veins popping at his forehead, and for a moment, Shoko worries he might die. Then decides that she doesn’t care.

“Fine!” The man grits out, Shoko forgot his name already, “Fine! Don’t come for me when that thing kills you!” He shouts at them then proceeds to shout for a servant.

“Escort them to the entrance of the Cage!” Both her and Gojo raise an eyebrow at the term, then the servant bows low at both of them and turns pale at the command.

“But-,” the servant stutters before she catches sight of the anger then turns to them with a timid voice, “follow me, please.”

—

They’ve been walking for fifteen minutes, and Satoru is slowly but surely getting pissed off.

The servant that led them walks so slowly and obviously doesn’t wanna go anywhere near ‘the Cage’ and Satoru just from that term, can already feel his jaw tighten in response. 

“Look.” He starts, getting more irritated at the servant’s flinch, “you don't need to go inside with us. Stay outside and dry for all I care, so can you hurry the fuck up?”

The servant stammers out an apology and to her defense, does hurry up after an audible sigh of relief.

“What a weak ass,” Satoru snorts, not quite silently as the servant tenses up again.

“That- that thing ,” the servant spits out with a tremble, “has killed many people .”

“So did pretty much anyone,” Shoko interrupts from beside him, “she’s not special.”

“Pfft,” Satoru’s snorts turn into loud guffaws, “true, true.”

The servant turns red, whether in anger or embarrassment, Satoru doesn’t care. They stop walking at a bunker-like structure that looked like it was carved deep within the mountain. The servant bows low at them again then proceeds to walk-run away from the place.

After she’d gone, a camera whirls around to inspect them then with another whirl, the heavy doors slide open.

Satoru turns to look at Shoko beside him to find her already looking. And with a silent nod, they go in.

Not even ten meters in, another large, heavy door welcomes them. Satoru thinks they’re a tad bit paranoid.

With another camera inspection, the door slid open with a whirl, and when they stepped in, dark stairways led down a long way. Satoru whistles, an impressed tune.

“This leads quite a long way down, Shoko,” he pushes his dark glasses down, “and another heavy door.”

“They fortified it quite a bit, huh,” Shoko says, sarcasm dripping in her tone.

“Oh yeah.” He agrees as they both descend.

Walking down the stairway, Satoru thinks about the girl’s cursed technique. A wish-granter. With the ability to grant just about any wish, the extent of which is speculated by the higher-ups to be infinite, you’d think that the old geezers would want to take advantage of it. Wish for each and every cursed spirit to die? Probably not. The consequence of that will probably be staggering.

When they stopped at the very last step, the camera once again inspects them, then, a radio buzz sounds.

“This is your last chance to turn around,” the voice of Kira Hinagiku’s father mocks, tone infuriating Satoru. 

“Just get on with it,” Satoru gruffly says.

It was a little comical how large the heavy doors seemed to be, but when these last doors slid open, there was only a carved-out hallway that was only taller than Satoru by a head compared to the hulking, heavy doors.

“Well,” he grins then starts walking ahead, “this is cozy," his voice echoes at the tunnel.

In the tunnel, there was a bunch of ofuda stuck right next to each other like a horror movie set. He hears Shoko click her tongue next to him.

“I don’t know if we’re way too offhand about this or they’re just way too paranoid,” she explains when he turns a questioning look at her.

“Probably a bit of both,” he acknowledges that seeing everyone around the Kira Household, paranoid and scared of every nook and cranny, with a nutcase for a Master of the House, he let his guard down a little.

He’s angry at the treatment of a girl younger than him, born with a cursed technique more powerful than ever, and everyone around her runs around like headless chickens.

And if he were to believe that asshole of a man, she’s been living in what has been dubbed ‘the Cage’ since she was ten. Crazy ass, old geezer.

They both stopped when the cavern widens. A wooden, brute of a bridge is the first thing they see. And when Satoru peers down, at the sides of the bridge, he sees an extremely long way down, and when you hit bottom, stalagmites will greet you on the way to death’s door.

And there, on the far end of the caves, is a huge towering torii gate. Its pillars are wooden and rotting, with papers and ofudas taped everywhere you look at the torii.

At the center of the torii, up above what looks like a carved indentation on the whole wall, is a shrine. Too tiny for the size of the torii, and the same as the gate, not been taken care of for what looks like years. 

However, what took Satoru’s and Shoko’s eyes is right in the center of the cavernous space is a cage. 

And for a second, he hears Shoko gasp in disbelief at the same time Satoru grits his teeth.

This wasn’t shown on cameras. The cameras were angled enough that you can see the cage in the background, but not the overlapping gigantic cages.

The outer cage is big. In square jail-like patterns, it’s almost the same floor size as the cave, unlike the torii and the shrine, this one is made of metal, and also covered in ofudas. 

The second cage, inside of the outer one, is a little bit smaller. Enough to fit a couple of cameras in between the two cages and not reachable through the inner cage even if you have very long arms to reach for it.

The cage was very dark. There were lights scattered across the cavern that you can see everything, but inside the cage, there’s only one source to light up the whole thing.

Satoru’s Six Eyes immediately perceives everything inside the cage. There was a futon bed on the upper-right most corner, and a toilet and a shower stall on the lower-left most corner. Somewhat in the middle of it is a chabudai with few washis on top of it being held down by paperweights and sitting on a zabuton in seiza is Kira Hinagiku.

The moment their eyes meet, even through the two cages, Satoru instantly knew that she has a very powerful curse. 

Fascinating , he thinks as he beheld the curse his Six Eyes see , it overlaps with the image of her, but he can see that it’s mostly Kira Hinagiku in control.

What would happen if it flipped though?

Heh, so, so fascinating.

He grins maniacally and starts to walk through a wooden bridge, he continues to stare at the girl whose eyes widen upon seeing him.

Does she recognize him perhaps? That can’t be it. 

Is it the shock of seeing another person going inside her cage?

Or is that he and Shoko are the only people she has seen in a long time?

He stops walking right in front of the gates of the cage and eyes the camera that was there. 

They can practically hear the reluctance through the camera. And then, the outer cage opens.

Shoko was walking slightly behind him to his left, and even from where he was standing, he could feel how tense she was the moment the outer cage gates closed shut behind them.

He subtly turns a look at her that makes her stand a little more closely as he protects the two of them with his Infinity, just in time for the inner cage to open.

Then, he faces them .

—

The moment the both of them enter the inner cages, Kira Hinagiku adjusts in her seat to face them, then bows at a perfect, forty-five-degree angle. 

“How do you do,” she greets them both formally, “You will have to excuse me if I don’t stand up.”

“Oh?” He raises an eyebrow, knowing the reason why, yet still provoking her, “Why is that?”

“I’m a little chained-up,” she deadpans, looking at him unimpressed.

“Chained-up?” Shoko asks.

She moves her foot to the side to show the both of them an inflamed, bright, red ankle, chained to the floor.

“Shit,” Shoko grits her teeth, her cigarette squashed in between them, “how the hell do you do everything around here, then?”

“It’s on schedule,” she casually straightens her foot to neaten her kimono, “if I’m a second late at doing things, it’ll drag me.”

“Right,” Satoru’s fist tightens in his pockets, his jaw clicking tight.

“My name is Kira Hinagiku. Though I surmise that both of you know it already, so to whom shall I thank the pleasure of visiting me in my humble cell?”

“Doesn’t it get tiring talking like that?” Satoru gets tired just listening to it.

Kira Hinagiku shrugs, the posture very unlike the formal way she presented herself, “It irritates people.”

And Satoru barks out a laugh, when he realizes, oh still fighting then , good.

“I’m Gojo Satoru, a jujutsu sorcerer from Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical College.”

“From the same college, Ieiri Shoko.”

“From Tokyo?” the girl asks, her head tilted. “You’re a long way from home. What about the Kyoto Branch?”

“Pfft,” Satoru snorts unattractively, “they’re all weak in there.”

“Oh, so you do need someone strong.” She looks at both of them with an unwavering gaze, “You’re here to kill me, aren’t you?”

Shoko turns to look at him so he does the same. From her eyes alone, Satoru knows that Shoko doesn’t want to. She’s a healer. 

Why did Yaga send her with him to execute someone in the first place? Satoru already knows why from the moment Yaga handed him the report.

He tilts his head in a semblance of a nod, and that’s enough for Shoko to relax her shoulders.

Eugh, they really did know each other too well. By her grimace, she agrees.

“Never mind that,” he dismisses with a wave of his hand, then throws himself into the soft, not unlike a tatami floor, sitting criss-cross, but still carefully has Infinity raised up.

Shoko sighs next to him and sits down to his left, close to him.

“For now,” he grins, a hand on his chin, “tell me about the two of you!”

He takes pleasure in the way her eyes widen, but he doesn’t enjoy the way her hand trembles next, her lips wobble, and large teardrops suddenly fall in her eyes.

“Wh-wha-, Wait! Did I say something?!” He flails, not enjoying the feeling.

“I apologize,” she hiccups silently, “It’s been a while since I’ve talked to anyone. Let alone about myself.”

Satoru sombers, “Talk to us, then.”

“I-,” she sniffles lightly, “I call it Nanika .”

“Something?” Satoru tilts his head at Shoko’s clarification.

“Nanika,” she agrees, “I’ve never truly known about Nanika before I was already seven.”

“Her powers, you mean?” Satoru waylays her, noticing her statement that is truly known .

“Sharp,” she smiles at him, “but yes. I noticed her originally when I was three, I think. Through meditation, I’m placed inside a mindset with Nanika in the mirror, reflecting me. It scared the crap out of me, it is a curse, after all, it looks scary for a child.”

“Did you tell anyone about it?” Shoko asks.

“No,” she vehemently denies, “I think you’ve met the man who sired me. If you could believe it, my dam was even worse.”

Both of them wince.

“No, even as a child, I was scared at what they would do to me more than I was scared of the curse. But it's true that I discovered it's powers when I turned seven."

Well, that’s great, Satoru thought sarcastically. Another A+ Parenting from the jujutsu sorcerers.

“Tell me about Nanika,” Satoru blurts out, “the higher-ups believe that Nanika’s wish-granting abilities are infinite. What do you think?”

“Nanika’s powers,” she smiles wryly, “infinite, huh? That’s actually highly possible. However, Gojo-san, Nanika’s powers are of equivalent exchange, did they not tell you that?”

“I expected as much, even though they never did tell me how.”

“If you could enlighten us, that would be great,” Shoko adds, “it’s your power after all.”

Hinagiku is silent for a long minute. Satoru suspects that she shares an empathic link with this Nanika.

“Alright,” she breathes deeply, “may I trust you?”

Satoru and Shoko blinked in shock. And when they didn’t immediately reply Hinagiku added, “I’ve never really explained the extent of my powers to anyone else ever.”

“But you do know how it works?” Satoru asks his face for once, devoid of expression.

“I know all of its rules.”

“Why trust the two of us, then?” Shoko asks back before Satoru can say anything.

Satoru wanted to know as well, because even if she asked if she can trust them, Satoru, deep in him, from her gaze alone, knows that this girl already trusts the two of them.

She’s asking, to let them know the extent or rather, the heaviness of the trust she extended to them.

“Because you didn’t say no,” she laughs tearily, “You didn’t say no if you were here to kill me or not. So. Either you’re here to take me away to be free, or you’re here to end my life. Either way, I’m free.”

Satoru watches as tears roll down her cheeks, and down at the chabudai staining the few calligraphy pieces she had done.

“You can trust us then,” Satoru decides then and there, even if he felt a pinch at his side from Shoko.

“I’ll tell you-,” 

“Wait,” Satoru interrupts, and with concentration and his crossed fingers, he extends his Infinity, concentrating to filter out the sounds. There are no cameras facing in her face the way she’s sitting so whoever is watching won’t hear a thing or read her lips.

He nods at Hinagiku as a go-ahead.

“I think it’ll be best if you leave the questions after I finish. And I’ll do my best to explain my powers and abilities.

“As I said earlier, I named it Nanika. And it’s its powers that grant wishes. However, to do that, a person must first grant me three of whatever I request.” She indicates the three with holding up three fingers on the one hand and the other hand pointing at herself.

“After those conditions are met, Nanika will assume control over my body,” she stops them with a hand after that sentence alarms them, “Nanika’s control over my body doesn’t make my body automatically fit to fight, and this ability of mine and Nanika can't be used to fulfill my wish or Nanika’s wish.

“No, this wish-granting ability of ours can only grant the wishes of another party. On which, the wish does not have to come from the one who fulfilled my requests, as even an extra party, who spoke of their wish nonchalantly can have their wish granted as long as it was said during Nanika's appearance.

“However, the greater the wish made to Nanika is, the harder the next three requests will become. It is not something I can control. The one that must bear the burden of the next three requests is not the one that Nanika granted the wish to; it is the next person that I make requests to.”

Satoru and Shoko sit in stunned silence. The magnitude of a wish-granting ability hasn’t quite hit them yet, the possibility of it is there.

“Talking about it now, if a person fails to fulfill my requests four times, at least two people will die with an increasing amount of casualties correlated to the scale of the previous wish. These deaths will occur instantly and simultaneously. It is not something I can control either.” Hinagiku sighs heavily.

“Firstly, the request recipient and their most loved one will die from being crushed by an invisible force, and secondly, any additional deaths are chosen based on persons who spent the most time with the request recipient, regardless of their relationship to them. Unlike the recipient, they are wrung to death instead of crushed.”

“You can’t control their deaths?” Shoko asks.

“No, I really cannot.”

“It’s because of the equivalent exchange, isn’t it?” Satoru clarifies.

“Yes.”

“Are those the only rules, then?”

“No, there are a bunch more,” Hinagiku shakes her head, “but those are the basics.”

“So then,” Satoru claps his hands, “to summarize; 1, to make a wish, you, Hinagiku-chan, must first request three things,” he held up a finger.

“2, the one who Hinagiku-chan requests from doesn’t have to be the one who asks for a wish, any extra party can as long as Nanika is present,” he held up two fingers in a peace sign.

“and 3, if a person Hinagiku-chan requests to, fails to accomplish your requests four times, not only will that person die, but also their loved one. But if the wish granted previously was on a big scale, there will be additional deaths that are chosen based on persons who spent the most time with the request recipient.” He held up three fingers.

“Anything Gojo missed?” Shoko drawls.

“No, that’s about it,” Hinagiku takes a hand with her kimono to cover her mouth, “there are some other ones, but we can discuss them later.”

“And you haven’t requested anything from anyone?” Satoru asks, curious.

“No,” she shakes her head again, “a lot of times I make requests unconsciously, but I can make a request consciously. I just can’t control what I will be requesting, since it correlates to how heavy the last wish had been.”

“Hmmm,” Satoru takes his chin in his hand, thinking.

“What is it, Gojo?” Satoru takes a moment to look at his friend, taking a peek at her from his glasses. 

Shoko’s eyes widen, and it’s a singular gesture that says, ‘You’re about to do something stupid, aren’t you?’

Satoru feels his mouth widen in a big grin.

“Hey, Hina-chan,” he says in a sing-song voice.

“Hina-chan?” She replies with a furrow on her brows.

“You should make a request to me!” He finishes in the same tone.

He feels his grin widen some more when he sees her eyes widen.

“Gojo! You!” Shoko’s hissed words at him halt when they both see Hinagiku’s eyes go daze.

She remains like that for a moment or two. Until -

“Satoru,” she says in a dazed tone, and Satoru’s eyebrows raise at the familiarity of the address.

“Satoru,” she repeats, then finally her eyes clear, and turn to look at him, “die, now.”

Both Shoko and Satoru freeze, Satoru with his big grin still on his face.

He observes the curse energy that was once just overlapping, now it's coalescing inside her, then he looks at her as she raises her right hand in finger guns to point at him.

Then, she notices her eyes. Her eyes are clear, though still have that dazed quality in them, with someone else behind her eyes, as if looking out to see what’s happening.

Though, he thinks, still smiling, that means, this request is done consciously.

“All right, Hina-chan!” He says in what he knows is an obnoxious tone, a big grin still on his face.

“Gojo!” Shoko hissed. But he knows she won’t interfere. They trust each other so much in that sense. 

But still, he waves his hand at her, making her subtly see that he still has his fingers crossed, Infinity active.

He turns his attention back to Hina-chan. She has her hand raised in a finger gun, directed at him. Then, 1, 2, 3 -

“Bang!” She says in a very happy tone.

It’s not difficult for Satoru to pretend to be shot, just timed right, and he falls on his back, body obnoxiously placed; legs still crisscrossed, arms flopped to his side.

Then, 1, 2, 3-

“Haii~! Gojo Satoru is alive!” He sits back up with a flourish. Opening his arms wide to an imaginary audience.

Hina-chan claps at him, entertained.

“Satoru,” she says in a dazed voice again, “let’s play shiritori!”

“Sure~!”

They play like that for five minutes or so, until Hina-chan says a wrong word.

“Ohh, I lost,” she stated, and then, “Satoru!”

“What is it?” Satoru looks on as she spreads both her arms wide.

“Give me a hug?”

What to do? He thinks. Going in there and actually giving her a hug would mean he needs to take his Infinity down, even for a short while. 

And while the requests, until now, haven’t actually hurt them, he remembers rule number 1. It states that Hina-chan has to have three requests accomplished for Nanika to appear.

And this is her third request.

If Satoru was to go in there, take down his Infinity, and give Hina-chan a hug, he’ll be within the arms of Nanika as it surfaces.

“Satoru?” She sees her tilt his head at him, confused, the monster behind her eyes more prevalent than ever, “Give me a hug?”

What to do , he thinks, grinning.

“Sure!” Satoru stands up, ignoring Shoko’s hissed protests, and goes to stand up, walks towards Hina-chan, lowers himself to his knees, and gives her a hug.

A few seconds beat.

Then, Satoru feels it. 

It feels like hugging a monstrous amount of cursed energy, he feels it roll in the small shoulders he's touching, feels it in the way the very air around Hina-chan seems to darken, feels the way the body he’s hugging suddenly stops breathing, the way its joints seem to mechanically move.

Satoru feels like he’s hugging a dark, heavy, cloud of horrors. 

And since he took down Infinity, he finally hears what’s been happening.

“-jo! Gojo! What the fuck do you think you’re both doing??!! Fu-,” And on, and on, the speakers say.

Satoru tunes it out.

He can’t really concentrate on anything else right now.

Slowly, slowly, he pulls his arms away, slowly, lowers it to sit from when Hina-chan knelt to hug him, and then finally, finally, Satoru sees it .

He hears Shoko gasp loudly behind him, finally seeing it from where Satoru was blocking her view before, and he really can’t look at her right now.

Beneath his glasses, he can see Hina-chan’s cute face from before, however, instead of plump lips and a small smile, there was pitch-black in its place. 

Instead of big, indigo eyes, this one has a void for eyes. 

It’s black and all-swallowing.

As if because you’re looking and looking, the monster finally looked back.

Ah , Satoru thinks, sweating in his temples despite his grin still on his face, I finally remember what its eyes remind me of.

He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster.

Satoru pushes his glasses down to finally be able to see it , not giving himself time to hesitate.

And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.

He cracks a more hysterical smirk, his palms, which he did not know could feel this way, is cold with sweat. 

He thinks he actually stopped breathing for a while there, but focusing on himself, he makes his body, his thumping heart, actually calm the fuck down .

He knows the way Shoko sees it was how he perceived it earlier, but, thankfully for her, and unfortunately for Satoru, she won’t see it as his Six Eyes does.

Nanika.

And wow, Hina-chan is totally on point with that name.

Satoru doesn’t know if he can even clarify that as a cursed spirit.

His Six Eyes agree, it's something worse .

Physically, it’s like a gaseous blob of black cursed energy vibrating with each other so much that the air around it distorts.

It has limb-like appendages that trace Hina-chan’s own. 

But it can’t control the appendages smoothly, so it moves mechanically. 

Like a doll controlling Hina-chan’s body.

Truthfully, its physical appearance is deceiving.

It looks like one good blow of air would dissipate it.

It looks as if the best it can do is suck you up into itself.

However-

However, what it feels like is a different story.

It feels like what would happen if the sky itself fell down upon you.

It doesn’t feel like curses do - the human being’s negative emotions, the grief, anger, fear, insecurities, hate. 

No.

This feels…blank.

This is probably what it feels like when you stand in a glass room with nothing to do, and nowhere to go. 

A glass room where you can see everything and everyone but they can’t see you .

What they see is their reflections on the glass room. 

Nobody sees you .

Satoru takes a deep breath.

He realizes that the speaker themselves quietens. 

Looks like their host realizes that Satoru has poked the hornets’ nest. He pushes his glasses to rest more closely in his eyes.

Then he smiles.

“Nanika,” he begins, looking at it.

“Sa…to…ru,” he withholds a shiver as it says his name, its head tilting mechanically, creepily.

He smirks instead, and with no Infinity shielding the speakers, he knows what he will say will be fully hearable in the control room.

“If we’re not out of this compound in an hour,” his smirk widens, “kill everyone that lives in here.” He watches as the cursed energy vibrates faster than ever.

“But if we’re out of this compound in an hour, give me a hug.” The vibration reaches its peak, darkening the air around it even more until he hears an imaginary ‘click’, then -

“‘kay,” the creature acknowledges.

“Gojo you-!” He grins at the stuttering and anger that’s broadcasted even more at the speakers.

“Whatever shall you do, Kira-san?” He questions in a sing-song voice, “If we’re not out of here in an hour, you’re gonna die~!” 

He emphasizes that with finger guns directed at the camera.

He turns his head slightly to look at Shoko, not fully able to turn his back on Nanika and finds her pale and forehead sweaty.

“Shoko,” he says, serious for once, “trust me.”

“You better know what you’re doing, Gojo.”

Satoru waits patiently for three minutes, Nanika still as a statue, from where she sits, which is when his patience has run out. 

“Oyyyy! It’s been three minutes, Kira-san! You should have told me you wanna die that badly!” He provokes, “Otherwise, tick-tock, the clock’s a-goin'!” 

Then, a heavy clamp of metal snaps open, and he looks at Hina-chan’s feet to see that the chains were opened, then a whirring sound before it snaps to wound tight in a roll of chain at the back of the cage.

That, and Hina-chan’s ankles, from when the chain hit it when it snapped open, is bleeding sluggishly, only reminding Satoru why he was so pissed off.

Still, he breathes out again, stands to walk up to Nanika, and slowly, he begins to position her in his arms.

Taking a moment to get used to the feeling of heavy, dark, blank , cursed energy beneath his palms.

“Let’s go,” he announces to the cavern at large when he carries Hina-chan’s body.

He walks to the gates of the cage head straight but eying the girl and the curse in his arms. 

Nanika is still out, docile and unmoving. Her body itself isn’t heavy, and he can’t feel any musculature even when he hugged her earlier. He remembers what Hina-chan said a while ago, that Nanika’s control over her body doesn’t make it automatically fit to fight. If that’s the case, subduing her would actually be pretty easy.

The curse, Nanika, and the user, Hinagiku aren’t capable of fighting. Even if it has a huge amount of cursed energy, it's being used for a wish. How does that work anyway?

Moreover, Hina-chan said that her wish-granting ability can’t be used to fulfill her own wish or Nanika’s wish.

It means that even with their ability, both of them can’t fight back.

Otherwise, Satoru has no doubt that Hina-chan would’ve already wished her way out of here.

An overpowered, wish-granting cursed technique that can’t be used by the user themself.

Dangerous.

And she also said that the request recipient themself doesn’t have to be the wisher. 

It means that whoever got their hands on her, just has to have servants, or people to sacrifice, to fulfill Hina-chan’s requests, then the Master can fully make a wish without much consequence.

Her very existence is dangerous .

However, just to execute someone with this kind of rare ability is all sorts of stupid.

Chapter Text

Shoko understands Gojo’s decision. This kind of ability is fearsome. However, a wish-granting ability, it’s like a second Ieiri Shoko.

A cursed technique user that’s so rare. They can’t afford to kill her. 

But unlike Shoko, who heals with her reversed cursed technique, Kira grants wishes. 

At a cost. May it be someone’s head for the next request, it doesn’t change the fact that her ability itself is valuable.

And Gojo, probably realized it already, the way he wished for earlier, 

“If we’re not out of this compound in an hour, kill everyone that lives here. But if we’re out of this compound in an hour, give me a hug.” 

He was testing whether Nanika can be given several conditions to a single wish, and it did it. Which means it can.

This means that while a powerful wish-granting ability like that can probably only grant a wish one at a time, it can be given conditions to a wish instead, therefore greatly expanding the capacities of what a person can ask of Nanika.

If that’s not dangerous, then I’ll eat my coat.

Of course, everything is just Shoko’s conjectures. And she’s gonna milk every single piece of information out of Kira when they’re in a safe space.

Finally, they’re out of the cave. Inhaling the fresh air, Shoko breathes deeply.

Even with all his faults, of which there are many, Shoko trusts Gojo Satoru. Now that Geto is out there being stupid as all hells, Shoko thinks that Gojo needs support now more than ever. 

Because while he is indeed the strongest, there are still many that haven’t acknowledged that, even when Gojo’s name is being spoken by everyone and their baba . 

It is lonely at the top, they say. Shoko doesn’t know whether to be sad for Gojo or be fearful for him. Shoko won’t ever understand that feeling after all.

They pass the back of the main compound where they exited earlier, this time with a gaggle of servants, pale and blanching looking at them, pointing with their fingers.

Shoko grits her teeth in infuriation. This flock of sheep. Nothing to do but stare and be scared of what it is that they don’t understand.

They flinched backward and scattered, and even without looking at Gojo, she knew that he glared at them using his eyes.

That godly, Six Eyes. 

Only stupid sheep will not be scared.

Like the sire of Kira Hinagiku, bullheaded, walking towards them. Gojo stops walking, and she stops closely beside him, just to his back. 

And without confirming it, she knows she’s also protected by his Infinity. And what a good idea that was, when the Kira head brandishes a nodachi straight at the both of them, only to be stopped inches to their faces.

What a stupid sheep.

“Kira-san,” Gojo’s voice, a mimicry of a disapproving kindergarten teacher, “you’ve done nothing but prove to me that you have a death wish.”

Shoko only watches as the old man pales, probably affected by the gravity of Six Eyes.

She watches as he gnashes his own teeth like a frustrated animal before giving one final push of nodachi.

And because she is beside Gojo, she notices Kira, or rather, her body in Nanika’s control begins to move.

It’s not even a big move, like a mechanical doll, slowly, mechanically, Nanika turns its head to look directly at the Kira head. It's instant.

He pales, he suddenly lets go of his sword, as if it’s his first time holding one, then he falls to sit on ass, he drags himself back by his hands, as if Nanika’s very presence is an all-consuming evil.

Maybe it is.

Gojo walks ahead like that, once nearing where the man backed off, he holds his arm out like he’s giving Nanika to the man.

“Come on~,” he sing-songs, “it’s not that bad~!”

The man flinches so bad he brains himself on the wall of the hallway they were in, still staring at Nanika in horror, and Gojo laughs cruelly.

“Come on~, come on~,” he repeats, “don’t you wanna try and hold her?”

“Gojo!” Shoko hisses again for the nth time that day, “That’s enough.”

“Fine~,” when Gojo backs off, she notices that the man peed himself.

Shoko scoffs at the pathetic man on her way to follow Gojo.

“Shoko,” he catches her attention when they are walking in the front yard, “when we get out, I want to wish for something again, so don’t be alarmed.”

“Well,” she rummages through her pockets to get a smoke, which she thinks is understandable with all the stress of this day, “thanks for the warning.”

“Just in case there is a rule that the same person can’t make a consecutive wish, you’re gonna have to do it.” He smirks at her.

“Then you better do the requests,” she says after thinking for a moment.

“Of course,” he turns towards the front again, “I need to do it right.”

“What’s the wish then?” Before Gojo answers her, he pulls the collar of one of the servants hiding in the bushes that Shoko hadn’t noticed.

“Kill everyone that lives on this compound if a single one of them follows us to Tokyo.” She stares at the cowering servant, looks back at Gojo, then nods her head.

“Alright.”

—

The moment he steps out of the compound, about three feet or so from its gates, a spike of potent cursed energy from where he’s holding Hina-chan makes him shiver.

What is that? He attempts to ignore it, for now, looking down at their charge.

Satoru notices the gaseous form of Nanika dissipates. Or rather it's like a vacuum that sucks it all up to go back to Hina-chan’s body.

He also notices two servants still hiding, but he gives them no mind.

After, he feels hands lock around his nape, Hina-chan giving him a hug.

He pretends not to notice the tears that roll down her face to his jacket.

Though he says, “You’re welcome,” with a smile when he hears a tiny, “Thank you.”

“Now, Hina-chan,” he exclaims in a loud voice for everyone in the vicinity to hear, setting her down on her feet but still standing close to her in case she falls down on unstable feet, “we need you to make a request again.”

“Um,” she hesitates before he nods in encouragement, “you should know Gojo-san, if you make a violent wish, the requests will be equally violent.” He pouts at the formal address.

“No worries,” he dismisses, “I am expecting that.”

“Are you sure about that, Gojo?” Shoko asks, a cigarette in one hand, Satoru wrinkles his nose in disapproval.

“Yeah,” he nods at Hina-chan, “go ahead.”

He watches her take a deep inhale and closes her eyes. On her exhale, she opens them, indigo eyes dazed.

“Satoru,” she calls out.

“What is it, Hina-chan?” He grins at the familiarity again, figuring something out.

“Can you give me your pinky fingernail?” She asks in a sweet voice, holding both of her hands out.

Satoru, expecting that it’s gonna be a bloody affair, only smiles widely.

—

“Sure~!”

Shoko watches in horror as Gojo holds his pinky fingernail firmly before fully and forcefully, pulling it out of its nail bed.

She watches as blood drips from his pinky finger to the ground and as blood drips from the fingernail he pulled to Kira's outstretched hands.

She watches as Kira smiles widely in a facsimile of thank you, bringing the fingernail closer to look.

And then,

“Satoru,” she says again in a dazed voice.

“What is it, Hina-chan,” Shoko wants to pull Gojo’s hand to herself to heal but doesn’t want to disturb Gojo’s attention.

“Can you give me your ring fingernail?”

“Of course~!”

Shoko watches Gojo do it again a second time, she grimaces, and then again a third time when Kira requested his middle fingernail. 

And then, she watches how the atmosphere surrounding Hina-chan darkens, when she bows her head slightly, then straightens mechanically.

Showing her eyeless eyes, like two holes in the face, and a pitch-black mouth. Shoko shivers. It’s unlike anything she has seen before.

And coming across many curses when she was back in high school, and now coming across many corpses, this thing, Nanika, comes close to creeping her the fuck out.

It’s disturbing on many levels.

Gojo nudges her.

She snaps out of staring at Nanika, that is unmoving from where Gojo left it and turns her attention to Gojo, who from the looks of his pristine fingers, healed himself.

“The wish, Shoko,” he reminds her, voice unusually quiet.

“Right,” she takes a long drag of her cigarette, blowing it out, before turning to the curse, “Nanika.”

Shoko makes herself standstill when its gaze snaps to her.

“Kill everyone that lives on this compound if a single one of them follows us to Tokyo,” she repeats Gojo’s wish as she remembers.

The atmosphere that surrounds Nanika darkens even more, before it says, “‘kay.”

“Come on,” Gojo instructs, carrying Hina-chan’s body again.

“I’ll call someone to drive us to the airport then,” Shoko rummages her coat again for a phone.

—

“Well,” he starts after their report, “I did order Ieiri to go with you, Gojo,” he holds his forehead in the span of his hands, staving off his headache.

“But that was because I thought that Ieiri’s reverse curse technique would heal her of an affliction of a curse, not,” he waves a hand towards the couch where a sleeping Kira Hinagiku lies, “that,” Masamichi finishes.

“What are you planning, Gojo,” Ieiri drawls, smoking yet another cigarette since they came back.

“Hina-chan hasn’t told us everything about Nanika yet,” Gojo straightens from where he was slumped over in his seat, “despite that, I don’t know how much Shoko caught, but this is a cursed technique we absolutely can’t let go of.”

“Convince me, then,” Masamichi prays that someone blesses him, because he already has some idea, and he agrees with Gojo.

A vicious curse.

“Firstly, that obscene amount of cursed energy in her body. I know that Shoko has grasped it, because when Hina-chan changes with Nanika, the very air around her distorts, and that’s only what regular eyes can see,” Gojo reclines, tilting his head to the ceiling, to think perhaps, Masamichi guesses.

“Secondly, her wish-granting ability itself, Nanika. I’m sure you guys know its most distinctive ability is its power to grant wishes. The extent of which is speculated by the higher-ups to be infinite. I doubted that, at first. But meeting her and experiencing her ability by myself, I can agree to that. That Kira Hinagiku’s powers are infinite is highly probable. This means,” Gojo stops, suddenly, as if in realization.

“This means,” he repeats more slowly, “As long as we grant Hina-chan’s requests, and we’re in an impossible situation, we can make a wish.”

“Do you guys realize the magnitude of what it can do?” He continues, voice quiet, “What do you think will happen if I wish each and every single cursed spirit to disappear? For each and every cursed user to die?”

Gojo bows his head, his godly eyes peeking at both Masamichi and Ieiri. Both his hands touching in a prayer gesture in front of his face.

“Do you guys realize the magnitude of what will happen if the wrong guys get their hands on her?”

The very idea freezes Masamichi down to his toes. The power to wish for anything. For your allies, or for your foes. He doesn’t want to imagine.

“What do you propose then?” Masamichi asks, coolheaded in a way that he doesn’t feel.

“Get a corpse. Execute that, and hide her away,” Gojo instantly replies, “Her ability is too precious and rare to let die. And it’s also too precious for it to be widely known, it can cause trouble. It’ll be better if we can spread out that we executed her and use her abilities as a last resort.” 

“What if she makes a request then? Make a request to people who wouldn’t know of the consequence if they refuse. She told us herself that while she can consciously make a request, most of the time she does it unconsciously,” Shoko contests Gojo’s idea immediately.

“If she can do it consciously now, maybe she can train to actually do that.”

“I very much doubt that,” Shoko disagrees, “I think her abilities actually came as a package deal like that. And she can only consciously do it if she concentrates enough.”

“Point,” Gojo agrees, “Maybe we should just wake her up for now,” he continues as he stands and walks towards where Kira Hinagiku is asleep, “So she can explain her abilities further before we figure out our plan.”

Masamichi watches as Gojo shakes the girl awake, and as she sits up, he observes her.

She is unsuspecting, a girl that you’ll meet at a high school or a cafe if a bit thin. She doesn’t have the hardness of a jujutsu sorcerer whose insanity more often than not, you can see lurking in someone’s eyes.

But the way Gojo and Ieiri have told him, she has been in a cage for almost half her life. Been there since she was ten. She’s sixteen now, and she looks like she’s fourteen. Short and thin what must’ve been average height and petite. Her ankle earlier had been so swollen and bleeding, she hadn’t been able to walk before Shoko healed it.

Gojo slouches beside her on the couch as the girl sits up, scratching one of her eyes with a fist.

“Hina-chan~, good morning!” Gojo waves his hands obnoxiously.

“Um, thank you for letting me leave that place,” she bows low.

“What a good kid,” Gojo snickers, patting her head.

“Gojo,” Masamichi threatens, impatient.

“Oh yeah! Hina-chan! That’s Yaga Masamichi, the principal here at Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical College,” Gojo suddenly smirks, “He’s the one who ordered me and Shoko to execute you, you know.”

“Gojo, you-,” he gets interrupted by the girl turning tearful eyes at him, standing up and walking towards his desk before bowing at the waist.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

Masamichi heaves a deep sigh before telling the girl to sit back down.

—

“Now then,” Satoru says after that tearful affair, “would you explain to us the rest of Nanika’s abilities? Don’t worry, you can trust everyone in here.” He turns to look at Yaga then. 

The principal only gives a brief, slightly contrite nod. He understands the situation, then, he just doesn’t like it.

Like Satoru gives a damn .

“Right, the three basic rules you know already,” she starts, “the next rules are, unfortunately, were discovered by me because my parents kept ‘experimenting.’” She conveys with a grimace.

“That’s how the deaths came to be?” Shoko asks, sitting in an armchair to Satoru’s right.

“You can say it, you know,” she whispers, “That’s how I killed them. That’s why most servants are so terrified of me, all of them were used in a way.”

Satoru frowns. In a way, he’s not surprised. Still, to do that consciously is the very definition of cruel.

“The fourth rule is the same person cannot ask Nanika for consecutive wishes,” at this Satoru nods towards Shoko in affirmation, glad that his suspicion is confirmed.

“Next, I actually can’t make requests of someone without knowing their name, so if you don’t introduce yourself to me, I won’t be able to make a request to you.”

“That’s actually good to know,” Satoru quips.

“At the same time, if I am making requests from a particular person, they cannot be moved over to another person mid-way through the three requests. Therefore if that particular person disappears such as concealing themselves, I will not be able to make requests to anybody else.”

“Hmmm, I think that’s another good rule.” 

“Um, that’s…” Hina-chan counts six on her fingers, “The seventh rule is if the person fulfilling my requests dies mid-way, it will count as a failure and at least one more person will die.”

“The loved one and the persons who spent the most time with the request recipient, right,” Shoko clarifies.

“Yes, them,” Hina-chan nods.

“What’s the eighth rule,” Satoru asks, impatient, “also, how many rules are there?”

“There’s ten, all in all,” she quickly replies, looking at him.

“Get on with it, then.” Yaga interrupts.

“Right, the eighth rule, if someone fails to fulfill my requests and gets killed, the difficulty level of my requests returns to easy mode. I think that that is the best time to make a wish.”

“Um, the ninth rule, while Nanika can grant only one wish at a time, Nanika can be given several conditions to a single wish, to greatly expand the function of what one can wish for before granting another three requests,” she shows nine fingers up.

“Tenth rule; if a wish is made for healing, Nanika must make physical contact with the one it heals. Furthermore, there isn't any cruel backlash.” She holds up ten fingers.

“This comes as a general understanding rather than a rule, I think. If a peaceful or lighter wish is made, any requests to be followed are of the same scale. Also, granting a wish to heal is very taxing to Nanika, causing me to fall into a deep sleep from exhaustion.”

“Now that,” Shoko exclaims, “is a very good rule. Can Nanika truly heal?”

“It can, even from the most extensive injuries, to people who had disabilities through the years, to regrowing a limb,” and for the first time since their discussion started, Satoru can see a smile on her face.

“How about diseases?” Shoko asks, intrigued.

“I’m positive that it can, but that needs more guidance to make a wish from someone who actually knows what to heal.”

“That’s good to hear.”

Satoru knows that it weighs down on Shoko. While she tells everyone including herself that she doesn’t care, being the only one who can actually heal jujutsu sorcerers is a heavy burden to bear. With how unique the application of the reverse cursed technique is, everyone who can actually do it is a huge benefit to them.

“Gojo,” Yaga suddenly says, “let Kira-san sleep some more, she seems tired.” He says, peeking above his sunglasses.

Satoru rolls his eyes behind his. Then proceeds to send a tiny bit of his cursed energy to Hina-chan’s forehead, who is sitting beside him, catching her unaware because of his speed.

She falls asleep immediately, and he catches her body before it falls to the other side. Rearranging her body on the large couch, he lets her be and stands up, sitting in his previous armchair across from Shoko.

“Can you summarize her abilities, Gojo?” He rolls his eyes again at the expected question.

“Well, to start with, I’m calling her abilities as Nanika. And Nanika’s abilities, rather than wish-granter, I’m calling it ‘Onedari to onegai’, it seems more appropriate.

“‘Request and wish’, huh?” Shoko asks as she inhales from her smoke, “True, that seems more appropriate.”

“Then from the top!” He claps his hands. 

“There are ten rules:

1, to make a wish, Hina-chan must first request three things,

2, the one who Hina-chan requests from doesn’t have to be the one who asks for a wish, any extra party can as long as Nanika is present,

3, if a person Hina-chan requests to, fails to accomplish her requests four times, not only will that person die, but also their loved one. But if the wish granted previously was on a big scale, there will be additional deaths that are chosen based on persons who spent the most time with the request recipient,

4, the same person cannot ask Nanika for consecutive wishes, which I had already suspected,

5, Hina-chan cannot make requests of someone without knowing their name,

6, if she is making requests from a particular person, they cannot be moved over to another person mid-way. Therefore, if that particular person disappears such as concealing themselves, Hina-chan will be unable to make requests to anybody else,

7, if the person fulfilling her requests dies mid-way, it will count as a failure and at least one more person will die,

8, if someone fails to fulfill Hina-chan's requests and gets killed, the difficulty level of her requests returns to easy mode. I agree with her if that’s the case that that is the best time to make a wish,

9, while Nanika can grant only one wish at a time, Nanika can be given several conditions to a single wish, to expand the capacities of what one can wish for. This one, I’m proud to say I already figured out and made use of,

10, if a wish is made for healing, Nanika must make physical contact with the one it heals.” Satoru finishes, holding ten fingers.

“The last reminder is a general principle. If a lighter wish is made, any requests to be followed are of the same scale. And healing is taxing not only to Nanika but also to Hina-chan, who falls into a deep sleep as a consequence. Anything else I missed?” 

“No, that’s about it,” Shoko says.

So Shoko hasn’t caught it, huh.

When Satoru asked Hina-chan how many rules there are in her abilities, she immediately replied, ‘ten’. Back at Oita, she said, ‘sharp’, when he caught her lie.

And the look he sent her.

Most likely that she still has some rules she’s withholding. But she told them almost everything. And the most obvious reason is, 

There must be a shortcut. 

Some kind of rule that contradicts each and every single rule she just enumerated.

And by the look she sent him, she doesn’t want him asking.

Or.

She doesn’t want him asking here .

Either way, he’s gonna ask her later. Her abilities are so incomparable, the first time she hugged him as a result of the wish, he experienced the infinite possibilities it can do.

Gojo Satoru still doesn’t know if Nanika is a cursed spirit, or if it's Hina-chan’s ability itself that developed like that.

He doesn’t know which one he prefers.

“She should live with you, Gojo,” Yaga interrupts his mental thoughts.

“Right,” he nods, and then, “what?!”

“As I was saying,” Yaga glares at him, indicating that he had been talking since earlier, “If we are going to hide her existence away, it means a proper, fake execution,” he staples his hands together atop his desk.

“With the three of us, we can manage that,” Shoko agrees.

“However, with what we discovered, Ieiri is most likely right that Kira-san will not be able to control her requests. And even if we do a list, the most likely candidate to be able to handle that and protect themselves from Nanika, is you, Gojo,” Yaga finishes.

—

Shoko watches thoroughly entertained the way Gojo’s jaw drops open in shock. Most likely because he will be last he’ll pick himself if it comes to actually living and caring for someone.

“Wa-w-wait!” He protests, “I live in the compound! In the Gojo Clan Compound? Does anyone else remember that? Gojo Clan Head, here! It’s not exactly fit to care for someone like, like,” he flails his hands towards Kira who’s sleeping on the sofa.

“Well,” Shoko is proud of the way he turns to her to frantically wave his hand in a ‘no-way’ gesture, “You did say you’ve been planning to move here at the college,” she smirks at him.

“Right, you did say that,” Yaga agrees, Gojo, who’s falling over himself to deny it, deflates at his lack of allies, “You told me that you built a house near here so you can join the faculty,” Yaga stares hard at Gojo who flinches, “You informed me after it was built.”

“R-right,” Gojo collects himself with difficulty, to Shoko’s enjoyment, “I did say that,” his voice breaks in an (increasingly rare times, to Shoko’s disappointment) high-pitched way that makes Shoko snort, “I mean,” he clears his throat, “how hard can one teenager who is probably, absolutely traumatized with genie-like powers that makes me want to wish for something like, you know,” he waves his hands at them, “Aladdin’s castle.”

Yaga looks at Gojo in an absolutely done way, which makes Shoko snort again.

“Out with you,” Yaga thundered, “Place Kira-san in the faculty’s dormitory for now. But the faster she moves in with you, the better. Shoko and I need a plan for this.”

—

Satoru woke up with a head-breaking ache in his temples.

What the hell woke him up?

He turns over on his front and proceeds to try and suffocate himself on his pillow. 

When, of course, it didn’t work, he lets out a huge groan of all things pain-in-his ass and disappointments.

Satoru isn’t a morning person.

Well, it isn’t exactly true; Satoru can be the most cheerful thing you’ll ever see in the mornings, sucking up all the hope and happiness in his coworkers. 

But - he’s not a morning person when two days ago, they just flew from Tokyo to Oita, dealt with a nutcase in there, because the Kyoto branch is absolutely weak ass shits, then flew back again from Oita to Tokyo yesterday night, then stayed up late to report. 

His head aches two days ago, now it absolutely splits. He stares at the frame of his bed in his room here at the faculty dormitory and remembers how much he hates this very, very, very plain room. 

And Yaga asks him why did he build his own house. Heh.

He pats down around his pillows before he remembers that he left his phone at the nightstand and blindly searches there, his head once again dunked in the pillow he tries to suffocate himself in.

He pulls his phone to him when he grasps it, not minding that he pulls on the charger it was apparently connected into. With several sleep-addled, forceful tugs, and a clutter that meant something fell, he successfully has his phone close to his face, but not super close that it’ll blind his sensitive eyes.

“Ughh…,” he lets out another long groan when he sees the time on his phone. It’s 0654. Even Yaga isn’t awake at this time.

Still, he sucks it up, and gets up, when he remembers what woke him up.

He blindly goes to a connected water closet - others call it washroom, but it’s absolutely small, so Satoru ain’t gonna call it that - then prepares for the day.

He walks to his nightstand after, picking his glasses from the floor where it fell earlier.

On his way out, he reaches to a chair by the door where his black henley shirt lay discarded, pulls it on, sticks his glasses to his face, before opening the door, just in time to see Kira Hinagiku, who has been wondering about the hallway up and down and woke him up.

The kimono she’s wearing is thoroughly rumpled. Right, Satoru forgot to put spare clothing in the room she’s in.

“Hina-chan~,” he says in a threatening sing-song voice, “What are you doing~? At this hour?” Satoru is actually quite proud of the way he’s so articulate at this hour.

“I! I’m sorry!” She squeaks out, “I-, I was hungry so, I’m tryin-, trying to find the kitchen,” however, he isn’t proud of the way Hina-chan shrinks away from him.

Well, shit, traumatized teenager, got to remember that, he thinks as he sighs. 

“Can you even cook?” He asks in a much milder tone instead.

“I think I can,” Hina-chan replies in a quiet voice.

Satoru crosses his arms as he tilts his head in a sassy manner, “You think?” he asks with as much skepticism he can muster without offending the other.

“I can,” he watches as Hina-chan pumps her fist close to her chest, “I mean, I cooked for myself when I was younger,” determination looking ridiculous for doing something so simple, “I can cook.” Yet, Satoru feels oddly pleased.

“Good,” he simply says, “Come on, the kitchen’s this way.”

Since late last night, because Satoru was dead tired, he carried her to the unused but relatively clean room next to him. And his room is located in the most confusing parts of the school. He should know, he picked it that way.

And Hina-chan couldn’t find the kitchen because of that, also being locked up for years in one place would have done wonders in one’s sense of direction. He refuses to feel guilty about it though.

He pushes the kitchen area’s swinging door open with a loud bang and sashays instead.

“Welcome to the kitchen~!” 

—

Hinagiku’s done it, she cooked a full modern-style Japanese breakfast for two, even if she hadn’t cooked for a while.

And by that, she meant when she was seven, and all of the servants were dead scared to even bring her food. In the cage, it’s just mechanically delivered to her by a trolley.

She places down the last two plates each with rolled eggs, nervously removing and hanging her apron away, as she hadn’t yet tasted her cooking to be able to tell if its good.

Hinagiku sneaks a glance towards Gojo-san, slightly intimidated.

She never would have thought the moment she saw him from outside her cage that they would be the one visiting her.

After all, Oita was closest to the Kyoto Branch. The one she was expecting was Gakuganji telling her that she needs to die. Not Gojo Satoru and Ieiri Shoko.

At first, she thought they were there for her abilities, to gawk at her from the outside of her cage and just make a wish. Not that she could’ve back then, not without fulfilling three requests. 

It turns out they were there to execute her. Kill her.

She only ever saw it as freeing her.

She had been… disillusioned these past years, as her memory from that last life fades, and fades until five years had passed from when she entered that cage, she had finally forgotten of that life.

More than free though, that instance felt like the brink.

The brink of what? She’s not sure. Of delusion? Of fallacy? Of insanity?

Now, she was never anyone else but Kira Hinagiku.

With that name, comes the mess of neglect, abuse in disguise of training, and a helping of trauma from Nanika who lies within her.

It had been strange though, she had forgotten that life of her before, yet she remembers the show from where she had watched Nanika from behind the screen. 

And yet, she remembers the show of jujutsu sorcerers and the curses they were fated to fight until their date with terrifying quality.

She doesn’t remember their titles very much. She doesn’t even remember the name of the body Nanika used to occupy before, even her protagonist of a brother.

She snaps out of her musings when Gojo-san clicks his chopsticks together in a show of excitement. 

“Itadakimasu~!” He singsongs as he begins to eat his portion, not waiting for her to take a seat. She smiles, not minding it.  

She sits down and mumbles, “Itadakimasu,” in a more subdued manner before eating hers.

After a long moment of them just eating together, Gojo-san suddenly looks at her.

“And?” He asks all of a sudden.

“What?”

“Wanna tell me all about them, secret rules of yours?” He waves his chopstick towards her. What bad manners.

However, what he asked made her wince.

Hinagiku isn’t deluding herself that she would evade his curiosity. She isn’t even deluding herself that Gojo-san trusts her all of a sudden. Even when she does trust him, from what she learned watching him, Hinagiku trusts him, to an extent .

Whatever the case may be, she is still someone with a powerful cursed technique and someone that has a powerful cursed spirit that resides in her body.

So no, she knows Gojo-san doesn’t trust her.

Whatever she may remember in her past life though, she still doesn’t want to fully give herself towards this society, towards Gojo Satoru. And if she utters to him the last two rules she suddenly knew were finally active deep in her and Nanika’s soul, that would be exactly what she will be doing.

She’ll be vulnerable. And as someone who had been vulnerable almost all of this life, Hinagiku has learned to bury what little would protect her deep inside her chest. 

And those are the requests.

As long as there are requests to fulfill, there will be people who will be reluctant to make a wish. Protection, that’s what it is, despite the so little protection it gave. 

It’s a curious thing, she thinks, these requests. It’s like asking anyone in front of her, “How far are you willing to go, for your wish?”

And a lot of them don't seem to understand how far their wish will take to be granted. 

A lot of them don’t care.

Greedy, greedy humans. Just like her .

So she asks this to Gojo-san.

“How far are you willing to go, for a wish, Gojo-san?” 

He stays quiet for a couple of seconds.

“I don’t think many people would understand how dangerous that question is, Hina-chan,” he continued eating, “Especially when asked to me.”

“Unlike many though, I think you understand it completely,” he continues to say before Hinagiku can reply.

She suddenly stops breathing when Gojo-san looks at her with his eyes peeking from above his glasses.

“I understand how powerful your cursed technique is,” he says tonelessly, “In fact, I can acknowledge from what I’ve seen that your power comes close to god’s blessings.” He puts down his chopstick, finally finished with his portion.

“However, know this,” she gasps quietly as she can’t seem to look away from his eyes, heavy pressure slightly building in the air, “I don’t need to use anyone else’s ability to fulfill my wish.”

Just like that, in a snap, he’s back to grinning, “Is that enough for you, Hina-chan?” He asks softly.

—

Satoru watches as tears gather in her eyes. He always seems to do that. Or is she just a crybaby?

That was probably it.

He can understand her reluctance.

It’ll be like telling everyone what everything his Six Eyes can do. Unlike him though, Hina-chan can’t actually fight for herself. Her abilities are there only for someone’s perusal. And for him to protect her, he needs to know.

He can understand the way it grazes. 

It’ll be like showing off your cards and everything at once. And be wide open for anyone to take advantage of. 

And that’s like the very antithesis of a jujutsu sorcerer. 

He knows each and every one of them likely has that one technique they kept for themselves. Either because it’s still being honed or the last hurrah. The coup de grâce of their technique.

Even with his understanding of this, he also knows that Hina-chan doesn’t exactly have a choice.

It’s like Satoru telling her to bare everything to him unless she wants to be executed.

And as someone in her situation, he knows perfectly well that their relationship will be give and take. Sadly, not in that way though .

She needs her protection. He’s powerful. He can give that. The jujutsu society needs her abilities. Needs her to grant its wishes. And she’s powerful. She’ll need to give that in exchange for his protection.

It’s a lose-lose situation, truly.

Satoru feels like this isn’t going to be the last time he forces someone to make this decision.

“So?” He asks bluntly, letting her have her tears.

“It’s two rules. The last two.” She says, dropping her chopsticks neatly to signify that she’s done eating.

Her bowl isn’t even half-empty.

—

“Will this be enough?” Yaga turns to look at a body Shoko has pulled in one of the morgue’s drawers.

“Whose is that?” Shoko turns to look at him, “It’s a Yamada Hanako. A first-grade jujutsu sorcerer found her body inside a curse.”

“And its body was delivered here, why?” Shoko understands the question, there was a possibility that this body wasn’t a jujutsu sorcerer, after all, there was no need for it to be brought here.

“Nobody claimed it,” more like no one can claim it, with how disfigured the body was neck up, “And the jujutsu sorcerer found it imbued with cursed energy.”

“A dead body on the way to becoming a cursed spirit then?” Yaga suggests.

“Probably,” Shoko covers the body up, “I know it's a little tasteless saying this, but I’m glad Hinagiku has been isolated her whole life. This way nobody can actually know of her cursed energy.”

“Except for her father, maybe,” Yaga interjects, “Although his credibility within the jujutsu society has been going down since his wife died and he refuses to step foot outside of their mansion.”

“A nutcase,” she summarizes.

“More than likely,” Yaga stands up from where he’s been leaning on a morgue table, “That’s good enough I suppose, we’ll have o burn it, as that body looks older than sixteen.”

“Hmm, true.”

“What do you think about all this, Ieiri?”

Shoko turns to look at him, both hands on her coat’s pockets.

“I agree with Gojo, actually. Her cursed technique is too valuable. Her powers from what I can feel were immeasurable. Although more than that, he’ll never admit it, he probably wanted to save her.”

“Hmmm,” Yaga thinks thoughtfully, his hands running down a cursed corpse.

“A teenager imprisoned for a whole six years of her life, then we come to execute her?”

“That’s what I thought,” Yaga finally says, exiting through the door of the morgue.

Shoko looks around the depressing room before sighing.

“I just hope you know what you’re doing, Gojo.”

—

Later on, walking the halls of the school going nowhere, Satoru will be pondering. 

He knew what he felt the moment they stepped out of the Kira Compound. He felt something back then. He just didn’t know what.

Now though, maybe it’s a good thing that Satoru is the one to carry Hina-chan out of her cage.

Maybe it’s a good thing that Suguru taught him that the powerful protect the weak.

Maybe it’s a good thing that Satoru isn’t likely to turn evil anytime soon.

Maybe it’s a good thing that Satoru is used to having greater power in his hands.

Power unlike anything before.

—

“What?” Satoru’s incredulous. Of course, he is.

Across from him, Hina-chan eyes the clean table, not looking at him, before she shrugs.

“No, really, can you repeat that?” Anymore and Satoru will be gaping.

“When we got out of the cage, on the way out of the house, Nanika was pending activation on two rules,” Hina-chan explains again.

“You what? Felt that?”

“It's more than that, I think.”

“What does that mean?” Satoru is on the verge of impatience, “Explain it.”

“I already know when I got Nanika, that I was never meant to use my cursed technique for myself, however, with the existence of the requests, even if you can argue that it’s there for the equivalent exchange, I know that there was some way of work around the rules.

“But with so many death counts in learning just the ten rules, I didn’t really how to go about it.”

Satoru understands that.

“Gojo-san,” She begins, finally looking directly at him, “With how long Nanika resides within me, it never really called another person by name. I am the one calling the names of those I request to, but when we change, Nanika doesn’t. The only one Nanika has called by name is me. And now, you.” Hina-chan gazes at him, solemn.

“I always knew that this was a coming. That Nanika’s abilities can be commanded by someone else. Not just a high possibility either, no, I was expecting it.”

—

He never really felt burdened by his powers. 

No, he was raised by his clan to be a mortal god .

And with how powerful he knows he is, he never truly felt how Godly he can be.

However…

However, this comes close.

11, Satoru has the special privilege of issuing a "command". When he does, his wish will bypass any existing backlash and will be granted without any repercussions.

12, When Satoru issues a "command", it allows him to have his wish granted even if Nanika is in the middle of making requests to someone else, as well as if it is his second consecutive wish.

The last two rules to Nanika’s cursed technique.

Hina-chan hasn’t said anything about the two rules to Shoko or Yaga because, for one, it concerns mostly Satoru, and two, it changes everything. 

Is it dangerous for all that power granted to one person? Or is it prerogative that it’s that way because it’s Satoru?

He stops walking to look out the twilight sky through the windows.

In any case, maybe he should just express gratitude. Getting Hina-chan out of the cage, refusing to execute her, letting her out to see the skies she hasn’t seen in six years, got him these after all.

As Satoru expected, the new rules are a shortcut. It bypasses each and every rule that existed before it. He can make a consecutive wish. He can make a wish without expecting a violent request after. Without any backlash or repercussions. 

Satoru just didn’t expect that privilege will be going to him.

“Heh,” he smirks to himself, “What a pleasant world,” he sees with his Six Eyes as the window reflecting him mirrors it.

“I truly am the honored one.”

Chapter Text

August 2009

Living for almost five months with Hina-chan is more of a breeze than Satoru had expected, he muses to himself as he stares blankly at the television.

Well, a breeze for him at least. For anyone else? They’d probably die the first week.

Case in point, Satoru is sitting down on the sofa with a cursed spirit hugging him around the waist.

He just got back home and was excitedly telling Hina-chan that he finally has the whereabouts of the kid he had been looking for when Hina-chan suddenly appeared in front of him, dazed and with a Request.

It keeps him on his toes, really.

Except for the first set of requests from when he had Shoko wish for a clan massacre, the requests these days had been fairly easy.

A pet on the head, a hug, read a book, play a game, a piece of clothing, specific food to eat, a place to see, a song to sing, or sometimes even dance.

It’s usually Nanika that he has trouble with - well not really trouble - more of a dilemma. He never really knew what to wish for.

Most of the time, he just wishes for the same thing as Hina-chan’s requests, and on one occasion, just to see if it can, he asked Nanika to throw him up. 

And without anyone else teaching it, it consciously applied cursed energy on its arms to strengthen it and threw him up. And, uh, up he goes, higher than he was expecting. 

That was a moment I’m glad that no one knows where I live.

Truly, if he didn’t know how to float himself, uh. Well. 

He clears his throat, petting Nanika in the head. Going back into now, he looks at Nanika.

Hina-chan's last request was for a hug, so here he is, Infinity down, and currently hugging it.

He sighs, sounds like the start of a bad joke.

“Why don’t we play a game, Nanika?” His tone cheerful, and gets up to get a set of playing cards, “We’ll be playing go-fish, okay?”

The air around it distorts, then, 1, 2, 3, -

“‘kay.”

The only downside to living with Hina-chan is Nanika, and he isn’t sure if it qualifies as a downside, more of an inconvenience. He never truly got used to the cursed spirit.

(He was labeling it a cursed spirit now , even though his Six Eyes telling him that it isn’t . It’s much better to think of it as something he can exorcise than otherwise.)

It is unsettling. It is very strong. It is very powerful.

Sometimes he thinks he has in his hands one sure-fire way to actually kill himself. If somebody wishes Nanika to ‘ Kill Gojo Satoru .’ even with all of his arsenals, he doesn’t know the first thing to defend himself against it.

Sometimes he thinks, if someone actually wished it to happen, would Nanika refuse a wish?

Sometimes he thinks it's a good thing that both it and Hina-chan are pretty attached to me, then .

However, he knows that it won’t. 

He has been studying both of them, Nanika most of all.

Nanika itself is a weapon. After all, Nanika itself is part of Hina-chan’s powers. And a weapon can’t really distinguish between good or bad.

No, you point a weapon to what it needs to do and it does it. Without question.

He has been wishing for little things to study it. It's intelligence, when they play little games like this. Its physical capabilities, like when he asked it to throw him up. The extent of its knowledge when, one time, he asked for details of a location he had a mission in, which it does have even more information than their informants.

How does it know what it knows when it never gets out of his house when he isn’t in here?

It’s a mystery.

He thinks he should’ve just asked Nanika for Fushiguro Megumi’s location, rather than spending his free time searching for the kid.

But, he had said it himself, didn’t he? 

Using Nanika should be the very last resort.

He can’t be using its powers left, right and center, no matter how useful it could be.

Not when he never knew what consequence it comes to fruition in the form of the requests.

It had been both incredibly frustrating and at the same time refreshing. To make up his mindset that way. For every single one of his wishes, Satoru had to think of the consequences.

He has raised himself to be cunning and when Suguru… After Suguru, he taught himself to use every resource he has in his hands, now, he thinks he can actually be ten-twenty steps ahead of everyone.

Nanika is incredibly intelligent. To be fair, he thinks most of the smarts it gets from Hina-chan herself, but she just can’t access that information that is slightly out of her reach. Like when reading a nonsensical book out of boredom, Hina-chan would forget most of it, but Nanika won’t.

Satoru also thinks it has a clairvoyance ability. Albeit, a minor one. Which was a little concerning, but Satoru hasn’t fully explored it yet.

“Go…fish,” he snaps back to attention and gapes when Nanika hands him a card only to realize that he’s lost.

One of the most thrilling things since living with Hina-chan, however, is him actually losing to the little kinds of stuff that they do. Not all of the time, but it happens enough that it grounds him.

In retrospect, the whole ‘I-have-in-my-hands-a-way-to-erase-my-own-existence’ humbles him a bit. And it does wonders to his psyche - he doesn’t have to worry about what would happen to the jujutsu society if he ever turns bad.

It’s one of the things that had bothered him to sleepless nights when Suguru turned his back on them. 

Because what if it's Satoru?

“Good, Nanika,” he reaches over across the coffee table they had been playing at, to pet Nanika’s head from where it’s still sitting on the sofa.

Even before he pulls his hands back, Nanika blinks, and immediately, the void and black eyes are replaced by big, indigo ones. 

Hina-chan blinks confusedly at him then at the cards scattered on the table, then back at her hand still holding some cards.

“Oh,” she picks up the last card shown by Nanika, “You lost, Gojo-san.”

“I did, yes,” he huffs a laugh, she says so casually, as if it’s so easy winning against him, even in a dumb game like go-fish.

Hina-chan on the flip side of Nanika feels like he got himself a house wife , rather than a house mate . 

Sadly, not in that way though, no.

She does the majority of the house’s chores, even when Satoru tells her not to, she still cooks, dusts the house, cleans the floors, and does the majority of the laundry ( she actually doesn’t do Satoru’s laundry, thank god ).

He tells her that he actually has servants to do it, but she just shrugged at him and said that she gets bored.

Which, she has a point.

Shoko had been right when she said that her requests couldn’t be trained. Hina-chan always has Requests. She can consciously ask for them when asked to, but most of the time, it happens unconsciously. When she’s cooking, when they’re eating, when they’re watching, and on one memorable occasion, when Satoru was awoken by Hina-chan in a daze.

Satoru has also discovered that Hina-chan’s physical capabilities were extremely limited. He first thought that was just because she was imprisoned since she was ten, and with no training to speak of, but when he tried to train her, in his Six Eyes, something is actually blocking her way to harness her cursed energy. He knows that it’s tied to Nanika, and he has some theories explored in his head, but not yet fully proved. 

With as many duties as he has, he doesn’t really have the time. Hell, he’s barely at his own house.

He may be the one to actually free Hina-chan from her cage, but even now, she doesn’t actually have permission to actually roam about. She only gets out when Satoru is with her, and when it’s just in the backyard.

Other than that, she never gets much socialization, except for him and Shoko, who hangs out with him once in a while, and Yaga, who checks in once in a blue moon. The servants, who were left with little to do, do their job succinctly and were instructed to not introduce themselves to Hina-chan, so she can’t make requests to them. 

Which left her mostly alone and isolated. 

He said to her once, very casually, “It’s just like you’re back in your cage, just more comfy~!” 

Hina-chan just smiled wryly at him, “I can see the skies here, it’s enough.”

There isn’t much that he can say to that, not when after she said that, she looked outside the slid open shoji doors to the skies, her smile turning soft. 

There isn’t much that he can say to that, not when he can see the honesty and gratitude in her eyes the first few times they had gone out.

—

The next day he had been quite giddy.

He actually found him, Zenin Toji’s kid. He’s the spitting image of his father. But that’s where it ends. 

Whereas the sorcerer killer hasn’t got a speck of cursed energy within him, Megumi is overflowing with it.

At six years old, Fushiguro Megumi had access to his Ten Shadows Technique. 

Satoru barks out a laugh at the thought. A disinherited Zenin having a son with the much sought-after Zenin Clan technique?

Hilarious .

But two kids under the age of ten fighting to live by themselves? The hell? 

Satoru immediately intervenes once he learns from the kid’s sister, Tsumiki, that the little money left by their mom is quickly running out.

Then, he gives Megumi a choice. To return to the Zenin Clan? Or to stay here by themselves? 

“How about nee-san,” he asked back, “Can she come with me there?” 

Satoru wonders at times, why is life so much harder for these kids?

“I doubt that very much, kid.” He says truthfully.

Fushiguro Megumi only nods, as if he expected it, “Then I’ll stay here.”

“Well, if that’s what you want then,” Satoru grins, “I’ll just do my part for now.” 

In lieu of a goodbye, he says, “I’ll come back to start your training soon, Megumi-chan!”

And laughed when he heard a sputter.

—

When Satoru is on his own, completing missions, he sometimes gets in a solemn mood. 

He thinks about everything and nothing, he gets too much in his head that everyone that knows him probably won’t recognize this attitude from him.

He's still hurting, after all, since his best friend turned traitor. He’s frustrated, annoyed, and irritated. 

He used to feel like this on his own each and every time. It’s natural of course, even when he lived at his Clan compound, he doesn’t really talk to anyone in there. 

And since his rising power levels even before Suguru turned on them, he’s alone on his missions as well. 

No one to talk to, no one to annoy, no one to see . 

Nowadays, he finds himself a little more eager to go home. With a little more bounce in his step when he finishes a mission.

Hindsight is 20/20, and maybe in times like this, no matter how he convinces himself that it doesn’t affect him, he’s thankful that he has someone waiting for him at the end of the day to take himself out of his own head.

Even if Hina-chan doesn’t know that.

Satoru doesn’t really make it a habit to lie to himself. Suguru meant a lot to him. He’s his first friend, he’s someone who doesn’t take Satoru’s bullshit, he’s Satoru’s equal.

So him leaving was - 

Was a stab. 

Hurt more than when Zenin Toji left him to die in a puddle of his own blood.

Hurt more than when he arrived too little, too late to save the life of the Star Plasma Vessel.

His mind kept on looping and looping on those moments.

What if, what if, what if…

These past few months, while he still has a habit of sinking down that depths, it’s mostly during when he’s alone on his missions.

And little by little, step by step, he’s becoming aware that he’s slowly but surely moving forward.

Hina-chan’s situation makes him concentrate on her more, especially since he lives with her. And Nanika isn’t really a cursed spirit that he can give half his attention to. And even after just five months of living together, he sees his grins falling more naturally, even if it's to annoy other people, rather than straining it.

Now, with the addition of training Megumi if he has spare time, he is quite excited to get out of his head some more.

Kiddos to teach, powerful cursed spirits to entertain, and a recovering traumatized teenager to talk to.

His responsibilities and duties have always been a way for him to distract himself. He can do that even with his eyes blindfolded ( There’s an idea~! ). But now, now it seems as if doing his duties isn’t just a distraction anymore.

If anything, he notices that little by little, he seems…

happier.

‘You’re recovering, Gojo,’ Shoko doesn’t even lift her eyes from a body she was dissecting when Satoru came to the morgue to annoy her.

He’s thankful that she doesn’t treat it like the big deal Satoru thinks it is.

‘Why don’t you take Kira-san with you to your missions, then?!’ Yaga yelled at him when he annoyed him enough about being ‘terribly, horribly lonely~!’ in his missions, in a voice that he knows just grates .

He’s actually pretty sure that Yaga just said that just to shut him up, but Satoru being Satoru, takes it as blanket permission.

—

“Ieiri-san, hello,” Shoko barely suppresses a smirk threatening to spread her mouth when Kira welcomed him.

On a rare day off, with Gojo gone on a mission, Shoko sometimes check-up on the wish granter.

She is, after all, one of the few that can take on the requests, albeit not the violent ones as Gojo had done.

However with their last conversation, or rather, Gojo whining at her in her head, she elected to go see Kira as soon as she can.

“Kira,” she moves to sit on the big and pretentious as hell sofa, Kira leaving her to get some tea.

Gojo’s right, she’s a good kid.

It still amazes her sometimes. How Gojo’s house changed in a span of months since Kira moved in.

It’s nothing noticeable if you’ve only seen the place a few times. But Shoko has visited them at least thrice a month, more if she can, although she never did before Kira moved in. 

She’s always seen Gojo enough to not check on him anyway, but still. It’s in the atmosphere of the house, she thinks. It’s airier, probably because the shoji doors are slid open almost every hour of every day. Compared to when Gojo lived in the dorms, 

It feels lived in .

When this house was built, and Gojo showed it to her all proud-like, she imagined it will be very much like every other living arrangement he’d had.

Impersonal .

In the faculty dorms, he has his stuff around, but other than that, it’s just another room. And like hell is she touching the Gojo Clan Compound with a ten-foot pole.

“It’s good that you can visit, Ieiri-san,” Kira says, putting down the tray she’d been holding laden with tea and biscuits.

Kira, Shoko is glad to see, looks happy. While her skin is still pale, it’s lost its unhealthy bluish-gray tinge to it. Gone is the slumping in her shoulders, and while she’s still petite, she no longer looks thin enough because of malnourishment. Gone is the stuffy kimono she was wearing when Gojo carried her out of her prison. Now, she’s wearing a white long-sleeved blouse with a dark blue ribbon tied around her collar, and a light pink long skirt. Her hair, still cut to her chin, still wavy, no longer looks dry and stiff. 

Most of all, her eyes. Gone is the grim acceptance, resignation, and dimness in them, now, her eyes shine with healthiness in the afternoon sun.

“It’s good to see you doing well,” Shoko comments, “I noticed it before, but- did Gojo buy you those clothes? I didn’t know he had it in him to buy clothes in colors .”

Kira huffs a laugh, “I don’t really know if it’s him,” she goes to sip her tea, “A week after I moved in, after wearing - I think, I think it was his old ones? The cabinets in my room were suddenly full of new clothes!”

“Well did you ask him?” Shoko munches on a biscuit, “He deserves to be commended if it's him,” she hesitates, “Now that I think about it, you should not, he’d get a more bigger head.”

“I did ask him!” Kira muffles a snicker, “He wouldn’t tell me, though. So I just said thank you instead. Gojo-san just asked, ‘What for?’” 

Their conversation plows through easily that afternoon. Shoko never did tell Kira that she was thankful. Because of this living arrangement with Gojo, he’s not stuck in the past. For being in there for him, in a way that Shoko never can. 

Shoko never felt culpable. She knows where she stands, she knows what she can do, and she knows her uses. She would never lower herself into thinking that she’s any less than she is or she’s any more than she is.

One thing about Ieiri Shoko, she knows herself.

She knows how valuable she is to the jujutsu society.

She knows that just because she cheated her way to get a doctor’s license, doesn’t really make her any less of a doctor than she is.

She knows her own skills.

Even now, even when she’s the one who first raised the question of,

Is she safe enough to be left out?

Even when the three of them agreed, that -

No, she’s not .

Shoko would never tell Kira that she was thankful. Shoko knows that she’s the reason that Kira can never truly feel unchained, after all.

In this already messed up society of theirs, Shoko isn’t going to beguile herself.

Kira Hinagiku is dangerous. Shoko is the one who told them that. That she will never be safe enough to have connections. She will never be safe enough to be free . 

—

“Where are we?” Satoru lets Hina-chan down from his arms where he had been carrying her.

She’s wearing a soft, fuzzy bucket hat that hides the upper half of her face. It's houndstooth style and one of the ridiculous (yeah, it’s on purpose he can admit that) hats he always gives to her as a souvenir when he’s gone on missions.

It’s a little heartwarming and laughably comedic at the same time that Hina-chan is quite taken with all of them.

“We’re near Kariya. Here to investigate a special grade~!” He's actually requested here not because of the special grade itself, but because of the sheer number of curses around the area.

Yaga gave him permission, after all, to let Hina-chan come with her on some of his missions. Although he’ll mostly do that when the mission’s in Japan. 

“A school?” Hina-chan asks, a little redundantly, tilting her hat a little to look at the middle school they stopped at.

“You do know that curses are mostly manifestations of the cursed energy - negative emotions of the humans, don’t you?” He walked on ahead but did not leave Hina-chan farther behind.

“Yeah, they’re leaks from humans as a result of their emotions, right?”

“Correct~!” He sends her a thumbs up, “Populated locations such as hospitals and schools like this one here, are hot spots for bearing curses because many negative emotions are associated with memories of those places.”

Truthfully, he doesn’t want to make this outing a regular thing. Also, Satoru was fairly sure that the special grade curse in this school was fairly strong. Well, not really, but on average, it was slightly above.

And he’d gone and whined to Yaga about letting Hina-chan come with him for one thing only.

Satoru wanted to see how his ‘demands’ to Nanika would fare against an above-average special cursed grade spirit.

“Come on~! Our adventure awaits~!” He theatrically says aloud, after he sets the curtain up.

“Adventure, you say,” Hina-chan murmurs from behind him.

—

About fifteen minutes into their roaming - well, Satoru knew where to go, he just wanted to see the place first - and they're right, for an average jujutsu sorcerer, the number of curses in the area is slightly alarming - the special grade cursed spirit announced its presence with an ear-breaking howl.

“What an impatient thing!” He gasps exaggeratedly, before bending down to carry Hina-chan on one of his arms and away from the fast, fast tendrils suddenly chasing them. 

Satoru got bored of the chase not a second later and just teleports to the adjacent building. In there, he assesses the cursed spirit.

It’s an ugly thing like a swamp or mud monster come to life. It’s dripping muddish-tar all over the place, only for the drips to slowly crawl and return to it. It has no teeth to speak of, although the maw on its face doesn’t really qualify as a mouth. There are crescent-shaped branches pointing upwards atop its head, not unlike a horn. It makes it look like it's wearing a moon-shaped branch crown. 

For a mud monster, it’s really fast. It’s fairly strong for a special grade, just like the reports say. It’s very weak - for him at least.

He looks down at Hina-chan.

“You scared, Hina-chan~?” He taunts.

Truthfully, she doesn’t look scared at all . She’s clutching her hat with a hand to prevent it from flying. She doesn’t look bored, though. She just looks on, curious, but not alarmed.

“I think Nanika is scarier, Gojo-san,” she replies as she turns her gaze at him.

“I think having to live with a scarier special grade curse on your head has fucked you up, Hina-chan,” Satoru snickers.

“Really,” she says, dry as sand, “I had no idea.” 

He barks out a laugh. Then just as suddenly, he stops.

“Nanika,” he says without further dillydally.

The girl currently in his arms bows her head, her eyes even further hidden by her hat and fringe. And then -

1, 2, 3 -

It mechanically raises its head, showing its pitch-black mouth, and its void-black eyes. 

The power the curse welcomes him with is hair-raising. 

“Sa…to…ru…”

Satoru grins widely.

“Nanika,” he demands , “Exorcize every cursed spirit that is under my curtain.” 

The air around it vibrates, distorts, and darkens, and then -

1, 2, 3 -

“‘kay.”

Nanika in his arms starts to gather an abnormally amount of cursed energy in Hina-chan’s cupped hands before it hops down to mechanically walk towards the window, the cursed energy blindingly bright when it reaches a crescendo.

It doesn’t throw the ball of cursed energy so much as it extends out its cupped hands from out the window, and the accumulated cursed energy floats upward, like a teeny, tiny sun hovering over the vast of the grounds under his curtain.

Satoru pulls down his glasses to look at the special grade cursed spirit more closely. That and the 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 first, second and third-grade curses that are scattered throughout the grounds.

The miniature sun suddenly flares, bright and deadly with its compact cursed energy, with a silent cue, it rains down into pieces, like a missile seeking heat.

He watches the span of his curtain as one by one by one, the curses disperse in bright lights.

They must look like demented fairy lights . Satoru snickered as it lit up the area one by one.

The special grade is the last one. An especially big three ones start towards it and with enviable speed, it hit the special grade. With a wave-like gurgle moving in throughout its body where it was hit, he sees it curl into itself before it disperses.

—

Hmm… Satoru as always is reluctant to establish a label for Nanika. The being doesn’t actually fit . 

Is it a cursed spirit? Most likely.

Is it a cursed spirit attached to Hina-chan? Most likely not.

Is it a cursed spirit born with Hina-chan? Highly likely .

Or…

Is Nanika, Hina-chan’s cursed technique that developed due to her upbringing? Improbable, but not impossible.

Satoru has many questions about Nanika. Questions that will hopefully be answered as they go along these outings.

With a last sweeping glance towards the area, Satoru counts this one as a mission accomplished .

—

July 2013 

It all comes to a head when someone inadvertently sees Gojo returning to the high school with Kira in tow.

It’s as expected anyhow, with how many jujutsu sorcerers come and go the school, it’s a miracle that they kept this from pretty much anyone this last 4 or so years.

“She needs to be introduced Gojo!” Masamichi shouts, gritting his teeth at Gojo’s bullheaded tight smile.

“She’s fine the way she is now! She’s been accompanying me in a few of my missions!”

“Higher-ups are asking why the ‘strongest’ needs someone to accompany him,” Masamichi sighs, he feels his head throbbing.

“Is that a jab? Are they questioning me?”

“When do they not,” Ieiri drawls from where she just entered his office, hearing Gojo’s threat.

“Hmmm… True.”

“Ieiri,” he greets, nodding at her when she sat down.

“It was gonna happen sooner or later, Gojo,” she mumbles in between trying to light a cigarette, “It’s just bad luck that she had to be discovered sooner rather than later.”

“Nobody else needs to know of her!” Gojo exclaims, snatching Ieiri’s lighter with his speed, he’s been trying to make her quit, with moderate success, Ieiri scowls in response, “Just tell everybody that the Gojo Clan has claimed her.”

For a moment, they quiet down, thinking of Gojo’s idea.

“It isn’t a bad idea,” Ieiri says, “She’s living with the Clan Head after all.”

“It isn’t a bad idea at all,” Masamichi echoes, “It still doesn’t change the fact that she needs to be seen.”

“The fuck?” Gojo says, incredulous, “Why?”

Masamichi sighs, patting down one of his cursed corpses sitting at his table. Truthfully he doesn’t want to tell them, sometimes he looks at them and sees them both from when it’s their chaotic first meeting many years ago. He looks at them and restrains himself to look around them for a missing piece.

However, he reminds himself that these two are no longer his students. They’re both adults now at twenty-three years of age, both turning twenty-four at the end of the year. They’re part of the Jujutsu High faculty now.

He reminds himself that the jujutsu society is never kind and never will be. 

He reminds himself that he can’t afford to be.

With a last pat, he turns to them, “The higher-ups are very prickly nowadays, ever since Geto,” Masamichi forces himself to look at them both, not wanting to turn away even when he can’t finish his sentence.

He sighs, not oblivious to the sudden tension in both of them and the thick atmosphere his words caused.

“Now, with an unknown person accompanying you, they’re questioning if you’re being manipulated of some sort,” he continues, ignoring the disbelieving raise of eyebrows from them both.

“If someone has the means to actually manipulate Gojo, I wanna meet them,” Ieiri says flatly in the background of Gojo’s sputters.

“What, what, what?!” Gojo, after a moment of processing, howls in laughter, “What a bunch of confused, dimwitted, senile centenarians!”

Masamichi massages his nose bridge, leaving Gojo to laugh himself to choking hazards.

“The point is,” he raises his voice over Gojo’s ruckus, “After, after Geto, the higher-ups are prickly and overly paranoid,” he continues in Gojo’s sudden silence, “With Kira, they’re seeing someone who isn’t a student here, who nobody seems to know but comes and goes with you. She's unknown in every aspect to them… They don’t trust that.”

“And after Geto,” Ieiri continues after him, “Because he’s a special grade, the old goats are afraid of Gojo turning on them.”

Masamichi inclines his head in the semblance of an agreement.

“They should be,” Gojo threatens, his voice tight and dark, “I’m not exorcizing cursed spirits for them after all.”

“Even if you say that Gojo, Kira needs to be introduced,” Masamichi backtracks, “Letting the higher-ups speculate will only lead to dangerous waters.”

“And tell them what? We can’t introduce her as Kira Hinagiku. She’s dead, remember?” Ieiri questions, popping a candy in her mouth.

“Exactly!” Gojo claps, “And don’t get me started on her cursed technique.”

Masamichi’s eyes darken at the prospect of a bunch of old codgers having access to a technique like that. In a bad-case scenario, they kill her. Worst-case scenario, they use her.

“That’s why we’re here. Because Gojo, in a rare moment of intelligence,” Masamichi ignores his outraged, ‘ Hey! ’, “doesn’t actually let Kira come with him without a hat or a cover of some sort. While it is smart , it actually fuels the suspicion even more - however, this means that while they know that the one accompanying Gojo is a woman, they actually don’t know what she looks like.”

“You want us to create her a new identity,” Ieiri correctly assumes, “What about her technique then?”

“That’s what I want your ideas on,” Masamichi flicks his eyes towards Gojo who looked contemplative, “After all, we can’t actually prevent her from making requests.”

“Which is why we did not let her stay in the school buildings, we can’t trust that someone won’t introduce themself to her,” Ieiri agrees.

“And those who don’t know of her technique won’t know how to deal with the requests or the wish.”

“Also true. While we never actually got the final death count as we can’t trust the Kira Clan’s records, and Kira herself doesn’t know, we do know that it’s in the high numbers. We can’t be that careless here.”

“Care to share, Gojo?” Masamichi inquires when he sees Gojo, his hand on his chin, his expression thinking deeply.

“How about,” he drones, “I worry about Hina-chan’s abilities, instead,” he stands up from where he’s been sitting beside Ieiri, “And I let the two of you worry about her identity.”

“Take this seriously, Gojo,” Masamichi calls out when Gojo begins to walk out of his office.

“I will, I will~,” Gojo waves his hand at them, and hand in the doorknob, adds, “I’ll do my part if you do yours~!” Then he exits.

—

August 2013 

“Gojo Hina,” Shoko slams a folder atop the coffee table in between them, “Since you’re the only one calling her by her first name anyway.”

“Pffft–,” Gojo snickers, a folder between his hands, “‘Princess’ and ‘Serenity’?! Isn’t that too in character?”

“Exactly why I picked it!” Shoko grits out, irritated.

“She’s listed as Gojo’s wife,” Yaga, calmly, very calmly interrupts their shitshow, his own folder in his own hands.

“Yeah, well,” she slides a hand through her hair, her hands picking at something to do, “Getting eloped without anyone knowing is exactly what Gojo would do.”

“And because we’re saying that Gojo Clan already has claims towards her from the start, it wouldn’t be surprising if my Clan have a prearranged marriage contract for me when the bride turned 18,” Gojo continues, an approving nod accompanying every point.

“And even if they’re elders, they can’t exactly request to pry open the Gojo Clan dossier to list out all of its members, even more, if the one they’re questioning is the Gojo Clan head,” Shoko shrugs.

Yaga pinches the bridge of his nose, headache surely blooming. Shoko can’t blame him. If it isn’t Shoko who prepared this new identity, she would be too. Besides, she’s feeling vindictive. What with the both of them withholding her cigarettes. It was fine when it was just Gojo, but now Yaga as well?

Let him suffer.

“Besides,” Shoko primly adds, enjoying the schadenfreude in Yaga’s face, “At least this way, Gojo got hitch. Can you even imagine Gojo with a girl hanging onto his dumb face?”

She professionally ignores the offended, “My face isn’t dumb!”, and smirks at Yaga’s horrified realization.

—

January 2014

Satoru bursts into a chamber full of old goats along with their stench. Wearing only the faculty-required getup (modified for his tastes, of course) he’s the only one not in the formal wear for the council.

Once all of the councilmen are in their respective seats, some throwing him a glare from where he stands, Satoru walks over the middle.

“Gojo Satoru,” his name is said nasally by someone sitting in the middle section, the sneer palpable in the tone.

“Old man whose name shall always be unknown and forgotten,” Satoru mockingly mimics his voice and tone.

“Enough, Gojo.” Yaga sternly says at him, sitting front and center along with Gakuganji and wonderfully ignoring the bristles of the council behind him.

“You have requested for a hearing as the Gojo Clan Head, Gojo Satoru,” old man Gakuganji continues, “what is this about?”

Satoru sneers at the condescending tone.

“Well, grandpas’ of all shapes and sizes and so woefully out of your time,” he begins, speaking archaic Japanese that was taught from when he was a kid and mockingly wiping his nonexistent tears, all of them bristling like animals at him, “It has come to our attention, that there were a few rumors circling about like flies starving for a piece of shit. We stand before this majestic and in need of nursing home grandpas, to dispel it.”

He continues the spiel, knowing that he was annoying them enough and using archaic Japanese that they have understood to further the point that they’re old, and using ‘we’ and ‘ours’ to refer to himself like royalty does in the past.

Yaga looks irritated at him, and he should be. He was the one who wanted Satoru to be the one to call a hearing for introducing Hina-chan. Which Satoru never wanted. This is him playing nice, and he isn’t interrupted by both Yaga and Old man Gakuganji indicates that both of them know it.

Maybe he looks as pissed off as he feels.

"What is it that you want, Gojo Satoru?! Speak and stop wasting all of our time!" Another old man from above snaps as he expected, hitting the table with his fists.

In his anger, Satoru let go of the control he has prided himself in, letting his once contained cursed energy press down on every single old man in this joke of a council.

"I've been hearing talks about my loyalty," he finally says, forgoing the insults, "about my past tragedy," he refers to Suguru, "about my relationships," he calmly waves his hand, nonchalant as the pressure in the room steadily increases, he hears more than one old man choking.

"As if you filthy, old men could do something to curtail me," he continues, mercilessly grinning at their pain.

"However," the cursed energy promptly vanishes like it wasn't even there, the signs only pointing to the gasping and pants of breath of the old men around him.

"As I'm sure that it's only in your old age that you have forgotten, I'm here to enlighten everyone!" He cheerfully claps his hand as a signal to the white-faced guards at the entrance of the chamber, his demeanor probably gets them a whiplash.

When he didn’t hear the opening of the doors, he turned his head slightly, making sure his Six Eyes peeked through his glare. And with a stutter, the two of them opened it.

Hina-chan walks in, quiet and confident to those who don’t know her, but Satoru sees the slight faltering of her steps, the way her hands were tucked in her back, and the very tight tension on her shoulders.

With her black, long-sleeved blouse with a white ribbon around her collar, and a long, black, A-line skirt, she looks as if, in Shoko’s words, “Gojo who only knows of the absence of colors, have dressed her,” which he absolutely did. 

And with a wide-brimmed black hat atop her head, lowered until you can only see her lips and chin and beauty mark, Satoru thought she cut a striking figure despite the anxiousness he can clearly see in her.

“To the councilmen present today who are blessed by our presence,” he continues his archaic speaking, a grin stretching his lips, “May we introduce Gojo Hina,” Satoru reaches out a hand to her, which she immediately latches on, betraying her cool facade, “This Gojo Satoru’s one and only wife!”

After almost a minute of stunned silence, accusations, criticisms, and condemnations were, as he expected, barraged at him.

Satoru merrily basks in the absolute chaos his words had caused, a smirk on his lips.