Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There’s a package wedged behind one of your pot plants.

Your eyes narrow on it as you’re scooping up the clump of letters on your mat. You hadn’t ordered anything. You squat down and pick it up. You recognise the sender's address almost immediately, and your heart twist. It’s pouring down rain, your jacket catching most of the spray, and your eyes widen. That can’t be…right. It’s probably just a trick of the light. Rain getting in your eyes or something.

You shoulder your way through your apartment door, kicking off your shoes and shaking out your wet jacket in the sink. You grab some scissors from the knife block and slide into the chair by your kitchen table. A ‘FRAGILE’ yellow stick is taped to the front of it. With the letters closer, the sender address unfortunately confirms your suspicions.

Your heartbeat races to gallops as you glimpse the Tokyo postcode. It's a letter. An honest to gods letter from them. You press a finger against the tightness building in your chest, trying to ward off spike of adrenaline tingling into your fingertips. It doesn't work. Your mind splinters, a thousand different possibilities coalescing into an ugly, panicked rush of breath.

What if someone’s in trouble? What if the whole country’s in crisis? What if they need your help?

Your teeth clench. 

Why would they need your help? It’s been years since they’ve contacted you.

Nine, but who's counting, yeah?

You put the parcel down, running through your options. Ideally, throwing it in the trash is your best option. Just forget about it and go take a nap. It's bullshit, you know, but it sounds nice in your head. If only your mind were that easy to tame.

It feels like someone's pressed a bowling ball into your sternum, and you breath shallowly through the sharpness.

After all this time, why now? Why today? It's almost like they knew you were finally getting back on your feet, and this would throw an appropiraly weighted curve-ball into your recovery. A few years ago you would've jumped for joy just to be mentioned in the same sentence as one of your old collegues. To be validated with a letter? Shit you would've gotten down on your knees and cried. Subservient and wasted as you were. But no. They wait until you're lucid enough to remember how fucking awful they are. 

You should ignore it. You don't owe them anything. It was never for them. 

Still, ignoring a letter from your mighty overlords is just asking for trouble. You should read it, even if you plan to do nothing about it.

You split open your scissors, hovering the tip over the stretch of masking tape. You hesitate for a moment, watching the tape bend beneath the pressure of the blade. What if they’ve finally decided you’re too much of a liability to keep alive? What if this box has some deadly neurotoxin in it?

As if on cue, your cat comes crawling out from the space behind your couch, howling her hello's. You give her a look, and she stares back at you, her gold eyes shrewdly examining.

“It’s a parcel slip,” you murmur. “…from home.”

Mem flicks her tail out and trots over to plant herself at your feet. You show her the evidence, and she gives it a suspicious sniff. You wait, and when she finishes her examination, she gives you a flat, uninterested meow. Not rigged to explode then.

You pet her absentmindedly as you tear through the parcel. A sealed letter falls out first, and then a plastic slip. You go for the letter first, noting the ostentatious wax seal on the front.

Kanzaki Yume, 

Jujutsu Headquarters formally invite you to Tokyo in light of recent events.

Your eyebrows furrow, a knot tightening in your jaw as you clamp down on your teeth.

Mem meows at you.

You check the seal again, thumbing over the wax. It seems legitimate.

Recent events have compelled us to reach to you with a most sincere request.

We have recently discovered some information pertainining to a non-sorcerer who came into contact with a special grade cursed object. Ryomen Sukuna's finger, to be precise. Subsequently, Sukuna has manifested within the vessel, and since then, become cause for multiple life-threatening incidents. His reawakening has begun to stirr the fabric of Jujutsu society. 

Your jaw cracks open. 

Holy shit.

This can't be real. 

It's a hoax. A dream. 

You wet your dry lips, fighting off a laugh. 

Hysteria grips you this time, it's claws sharp and exacting. 

Ryomen Sukuna. The legendary sorcerer turned curse who split his soul in twenty pieces? 

Of course. It couldn't be anyone else, could it? 

We want to evulate Sukuna's risk. Your Domain will be useful in extracting said information. This temporary collaboration would involve an equivalent fulfilment option.

Money. Status. Whatever their usual bargaining tools are.

You drop the letter back onto the table. It’s curt, yet exasperatingly vague. You force yourself to re-read it. No typos. No mistakes in your address. You rub your thumb over the characters of your name, feeling a strange sense of nostalgia at seeing your name in kanji.

They really want you to use your domain on someone? The whole reason you’d been booted out in the first place?

Your eyes shift to the tab stapled to the bottom of the page. A first-class ticket to Tokyo—for tomorrow.

You laugh.

The higher-ups haven’t changed.

You’re not surprised. A decade is a blip of nothing to them. It’d take a hundred, maybe a thousand years to rewrite the Jujutsu manual when there’s a thicket of double-dipping, misogynistic geriatrics running the whole damn thing. It’s almost incestuous how they function together, mollycoddling every prestigious clan, sticking their greedy little fingers into every honeypot.

You wonder how relentlessly Gojo’s been picking that scab.

His face flashes in your mind, young and wily, staring down at you over the bridge of his glasses, his lips sinking into that haughty smirk. You blink, catching yourself before you can let the thought wander.

You flip the page around, looking at the back. They actually discussed this letter together, and then sent it to you? It's remarkably polite. A stark contrast to the wrinkling foreheads and disapproving glares you’d gotten at nineteen—when they’d discussed your execution to your face. 

You drum your fingers on the table, frowning.

You don’t really get a lot of news about the Jujutsu world here, which is by design. It makes this offer even more puzzling. Whatever issue they have, clearly it doesn’t involve Gojo, or you wouldn’t be getting this letter in the first place. He’s their Fix it Felix, after all.

Or maybe that’s exactly what it means.

There’s a certain stench of desperation coming from all of this. To reach out to a sorcerer they’d all chosen to banish in their self-absorbed version of ‘diplomacy’.

Your eyes drop to the end of the note.

We have attached a cursed tool to help with concealment. It’s an uncouth measure, but we would like to avoid alerting certain parties to your attendance.

A smile splits your lips.

So he doesn’t know about this.

Something about the higher-ups' recklessness lights your blood on fire in a way you've sorely missed. They're freaking out, and they're desperate to hide it. They're more frantic than you've ever seen them. If this vessel is as much of a problem as they claim, Gojo would've handled it, which means he's refused their request.

Why?

What about is it about Ryomen Sukuna that's caught Gojo Satoru's attention? 

You so badly want to know. There's an impulsiveness streaking through you, one you were certain had died in your youth. 

“Mem.”

She peers up at you, and then at the concealment bracelet hanging off your pointer finger.

“You think this would look nice as a collar?”

She sniffs at it haughtily and then turns her back to it.

“Yeah, figured as much." 

You have never considered yourself a lucky person. Luck is a matter of circumstance. Being born with things other people don’t have. It’s resources and perspectives, and pattern recognition. Your average person is never lucky. Not in the way most people would perceive luck. It’s about probability and odds. And that mostly leads to money. Gambling, or winning.

Luck never applies to tragedy. Or simply getting in your car and not having an accident.

What you’re doing is not attached to any preconceived notions of luck. No. This is good old-fashioned karma, and if they think they’re inviting you back into the snake pit out of their own goodwill, they’re blinder and stupider than you’ve ever given them credit for.

Ishimori-san had given you the same calm, patiently bemused look she always gave you and told you to run for the hills. You’d laughed nervously, rubbing at your neck. When she realised you were being serious, her shoulders had sunk, and her grip on her cane had tightened. You’d felt guilty then. Like you were throwing something in her face you couldn’t quite understand. She hadn’t tried to convince you otherwise. She’d just taken you out to the beach and spent the rest of your time together telling you all the things you should be avoiding during your stay.

Not once did she mention hospitals.

You don't blame her for thinking this is a mistake. Packing up your humble little life and throwing it into the fire. 

It's stupid, really, and you've always felt this way when it comes to Jujustu. Stumbling around, forever out of reach from those ahead, desperate to catch up, and getting the tapering whispers of respect in return. 

Turbulence rattles your eyes open. The sky is a blur of clouds, but you know you’re far closer to Japan than Australia now. There’s a charge in the air. A magnetic, stinging ozone—an abundance of cursed energy. You’ve crossed Tengen’s barrier. You should feel better, more in control, more connected. But you don’t. You just feel nauseous.

You’ve never been a huge fan of planes. Or airports. Or heights.

You take another deep breath and lean your head back in your seat. You keep picking at your cuticles, peeling at the skin and biting the sides of your nails. When your nails are bitten to the edges, you start fiddling with your snack wrappers, sealing and unsealing a bar of chocolate. The only modicum of calm you can seize out of this is having Mem curled up at your side. She’s unperturbed by flight. You suppose that being a feral street cat hardens you to most traumas.

That buzz in the back of your head feels more like a migraine than a connection to your homeland. You take a sip of your soda, and then another, and another. Caffeine is supposed to help with this kind of shit, right? You down the entire thing and squish it into a tiny flat circle with cursed energy. It’s reckless, but no one in first class gives a squat what you’re doing. They’re too busy sleeping in silk eyepatches…or drinking champagne?

You don’t really know what rich people do.

You shift in your seat, stretching out your legs. Ignoring the issues you’d had with your passport—being a Japanese citizen on an Australian Visa with eight months until it expired didn’t help you in the way of speediness. Border security sat you in a room for 45 minutes, asking you questions about how long your stay was and your comprehension of Visa restrictions. Then they’d spoken to someone on the phone, and you’d been booted out of the room. You got no answers from that, just the vague feeling of irritation from being spoken to like a child.

Your contract with the Australian government had been some long-winded, impossibly dense manuscript you’d signed at nineteen. And you figured if the bigwigs were asking you to come back, they would’ve sorted their shit out with whatever minister was responsible for your existence overseas.

“We will be landing very shortly, miss,” a flight attendant informs you. “Please put on your seatbelt. And your cat is to be put…away”

“Away?” You repeat, blinking at her.

She eyes Mem very seriously. “Away, yes.”

“Uh…sure.”

Not like it’ll help much if you crash. You look down at your cat, assaulted with the image of her death, and a panic hits you so sharp you clamp down on your teeth to stifle it. Your hands are jittery as you dig out her carry case from under your seat. Mem doesn’t complain when you scoop her into it, just curls up on the spot and drifts off again.

You fiddle with your jacket and close your eyes, imagining something—anything—else.

The landing isn’t so bad. It’s the mass of impatient assholes loitering in the aisles that pisses you off. You wait until you’re one of the last people left before you stand up, not wanting anyone to bash into your suitcase in their haste to leave. There’s some annoyingly important stuff in there, including one borrowed and never used concealment bracelet.

You shrug off your jacket while you’re up, not wanting to be assaulted by Japan’s summer heat with your very much Australian autumn-appropriate outfit. It’s a typical ensemble for you. A fitted tank top, patterned tights, black shorts—it shouldn’t be too bad for the weather.

You get everything else sorted before scooping Mem’s carry case onto your arm. You awkwardly shuffle out of the aisle and into the exit compartment. A flight attendant smiles at you and gestures uselessly at the giant hallway attached to the side of the plane. You duck your head down and move past, patting at your side to check if your passport is still where you left it. Thankfully, it hasn’t magically teleported away.

You turn to face the tunnel, and a smell hits you. Some kind of cleaning agent mixed with hot air. You look down, watching the hairs rise on your arms. The humidity sticks to your skin for a moment, and then it’s blown away by a sharp puff of cold air conditioning.

Anxiety pools in your gut, as slow as tree sap.

It’s been nine years since you’ve been home. Nine years since you’ve heard your native language on mass. Nine years of awkward cultural clashes and a lack of cursed energy you’ve never really acclimatised to. Nine years of different alarms and street jingles, and traffic signs. The colours, the smells. The food.

You blink hard.

You take a breath and push on, the faint sound of overhead announcements making your heartbeat rattle. The airport is so much bigger than you remember. Everything is louder and brighter. The floors are shinier. You can see your tired reflection in the tiles. You walk on slowly, pacing yourself to the influx of information. There are televisions on every corner, listing flights to places you’re probably never going to. Little children are screaming and crying, chasing each other in circles. One kid grabs another by their backpack straps and throws them to the floor. More wailing ensues.

The sense of nostalgia you had before is immediately swallowed, replaced by a balloon of dread.

You’re back.

You’re really back.

You rub gently at your wrists and then at your neck, feeling a phantom ache tingle along your skin.

You expected to be accosted by sorcerers as soon as you stepped foot outside the plane, thrown into some convoluted special grade cursed object and killed without much fuss. Instead, you're forced to traverse the airport entirely alone and unequipped. 

You make it to baggage claim without any fuss. People stop and chance quick looks at you, but the second you look back, they turn like you’ve burned them. You’re used to that in a way you never thought you would be. 

When you’re finally out of the airport, you’re greeted by a mass of taxi drivers, all holding signs in kanji. You blink hard. You’re grateful that your memory has never waned when it comes to your language, but you’re a little ashamed to admit some of the characters are a little foggy to you.

“Kanzaki-san?”

Your head snaps sideways. It’s jarring to hear someone call you that. All your time in Australia had gotten you used to being called your first name. Kanzaki feels like another person. Someone you’d pass on the street and barely recognise.

You have no idea who you’re looking for. It’s a sea of people. You hear your name in full this time, and your eyes narrow on the suspect. You spot a man in a dark suit holding up a piece of paper with your name on it. You speed walk over to him, your fingers sweaty around the handle of your suitcase. It is hot here.

You tip your head up at him in greeting. “You my driver?” 

“Are you Kanzaki-san?” He asks dully.

“Don’t you have a photo?”

“It’s from ten years ago,” he says. And then he does a very disgusting male thing and stares right at your chest. “You’ve changed a lot.”

“The non-consensual eye-fucking better mean you’re taking my bags.”

His neck flinches at your vulgarity. He opens his mouth to say something, but you cut him short.

“Bags.”

You make a spinning gesture with your finger, and then point at the space beside you.

His eyes narrow in annoyance, clearly not enjoying being ordered around.

“You’re not wearing your concealment item.”

“Yeah, I bet you noticed that.”

“Why are you not wearing your concealment item?” He tries again.

“I don’t need it,” you mutter. “You think I’ve been twiddling my thumbs this entire time?”

He slowly blinks at you. “No one knows what you’ve been doing, Kanzaki-san. That was the point.”

He goes to take your cat carrier, and you lift your arm away.

“Not that one.”

He doesn’t even pretend to care why.

He gestures out into the parking bay. “This way.”

You walk quickly, trying to burn the rage out of your body with speed. The car is one of those conspicuous black sedans, and you watch him carefully load your suitcases into the boot. You slide yourself into the back seat, pulling Mem’s carry case over your lap. You can feel her moving around, and you unzip the top to check on her. Her fluffy red and white head pops out of the flap. She discerns in her surroundings in a quiet panic, and once she deems the car safe, ducks back down into her cage.

The driver gets in and does up his seatbelt. As he’s readjusting his mirrors, you catch him staring at you, and immediately turn to look out the window.

“Where are we going?” You ask, your tone flat with disgust.

“To your accommodation.”

More vague nothingness.

He pulls away, loading you into the heavy airport traffic flow. You don’t mind so much. It gives you some much-needed processing time. It’s late in the afternoon, and the smog is doing a terrific job of blocking out the horizon. It’s about a two-hour time difference between Tokyo and Melbourne, which is essentially nothing, but you still feel on the fritz.

You drive through the city, soaking in every detail. Every street sign, every corner, every billboard. Businesses, restaurants. Even rubbish bins. It hasn’t changed that much from when you left. There’s more advertising. More construction. More bright lights. But that’s it. Some things are still familiar to you. Hole in the wall restaurants, trees that’ve grown weird around powerlines. That one KFC you always used to go to.

The driver doesn’t speak at all, which is a wise choice. As you get further out of town, the smog clears, and the approaching night sky is speckled with stars. Though they are few and far between. Eventually, you pull into a rocky driveway that backs onto a weird, cube-like house. You crack your door open and peep your head out, staring at the front door. It looks like a rectangle built on top of a square, with no discernible windows and some very heavily landscaped plants.

Your boots crunch in the gravel as you get out, hauling Mem’s carrier onto your hip. This place looks like the perfect spot to quietly murder someone. You’d just roll up their body in some tarp and dump them in a barrel of acid. Goodbye forever.

No family to notice you’re gone. Only Mem.

“This place got cell service?”

The driver doesn’t reply.

You whistle at him. “Well. Do you?”

He turns around, his ears bright red. “Do I what?”

My god. Talk about a bad signal. Maybe his brain isn’t connected to its stem.

“Must be pretty bad up here.”

“It has internet.”

Great. You can hit up the online emergency website.

PLZ HELP. GETTING STABBED. Xo.

You wait behind him as he unlocks the front door and walks your suitcases inside. The place is in complete darkness. You can only see vague furniture-shaped silhouettes. The driver turns and palms his hand along the wall. Lights glow to life above his head, leading down into what looks like a communal space. You hold back from grimacing. This place is thick with cursed energy.

You linger at the door, sending out feelers. The house is the source. You don’t detect any cursed energy around the back or in the peppering of trees around the perimeter. There’s something flickering in the centre. A cursed object, perhaps. Then you notice something else. A fluctuation. It’s muted. Done with purpose. Someone who doesn’t want to be detected.

Panic digs its claws into your chest, but you batter it off. Can’t be Gojo. It’s not his style to suppress his energy or lurk around in the shadows. He’d make a big entrance. Probably destroy something. Or make the driver piss his pants.

You’d love to see that.

You trudge into the house, your fingers curling tighter around the carrier handles. Mem shifts around in her case, her movements getting more erratic the closer you get to the lounge room. When you skirt the corner, she full-on growls.

There’s someone here, alright. A governing official.

You recognise him immediately—although it’s not exactly hard given the way he’s chosen to present himself. At the end of a long wooden table, Kawakatsu sits like he’s got a pinecone stuck to his ass. His hands are folded in such a way that he had to have actively thought about it beforehand. He wants to come off relaxed—in control, but it really just makes him look pathetic. 

You gingerly put down Mem’s carry case, making sure your eyes never leave his. He doesn’t speak. He won’t. That’s your job. It’s a sign of weakness to speak first. Of uncomfortableness. Or at least that’s how he’ll see it. In his and everyone else’s eyes, you’ve always been weak. Sending you past Tengen’s barrier had just solidified that.

“Planning to waste up all the oxygen in the room?” You ask.

He smiles. It’s not a pleasant one. It’s a knife twisted around flesh.

“I knew you would come.”

You try to breathe as evenly as possible.

“The others weren’t sure, but I knew,” he stands, his expensively embroidered sleeves fluttering behind him as he approaches. It feels like you’ve been ambushed by an evil Sith Lord, and for all intents and purposes, you kinda have. “You’re a smart girl, aren’t you? You wouldn’t let something as trivial as the past stop you from grasping such a…momentous opportunity for yourself.”

“…momentous, huh?”

His eyes slide down to yours, and you watch hesitation flicker through them, but he manages to compose himself. “Quite. The offer we’ve given you is more than you probably deserve. Opportunity is hard to come by, and you finally have a chance to offer the world something.”

You don’t take the obvious bait. It makes his eyes glint.

“Your cursed technique isn’t much to talk about, but that domain of yours,” he wags a finger, his smile spreading wider, showing teeth. “That is very special. So special you—…ahh, well,” he looks at you again, his eyes alight with amusement. “You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?” He taps the spot next to one of his eyes, like you’ve somehow forgotten what happened.

“Of course,” you say evenly. “I’m very lucky to be here, I know that.”

He blinks at you, his neck twisting a little. Shocked by your non-reaction. After a moment of awkward silence, he leans back, smoothing at his sleeves in a show of nonchalance.

“Good. I’m glad we’re in agreement.”

He wanders over to the table again, where you now notice a small beige folder. “Everything you need to know about the assignment is in here. Some parts may be redacted for security reasons, which is why I took it upon myself to come and inform you personally.”

You expect a ‘and you are so very welcome to be in my presence’ but Kawakatsu somehow refrains. It’s bullshit anyway. Someone higher up would’ve had to confirm your arrival. They wouldn’t want you sneaking off into Tokyo unannounced.

“The subject in question manifested Sukuna back in early April,” his eyebrows furrow with what you aren’t sure is either annoyance or disgust. “For some reason, the vessel was capable of suppressing Sukuna's manifestation, and that complicated matters." 

Your eyes flit up. No wonder that letter had been so desperate. Someone capable of suppressing Ryomen Sukuna's soul? Just who was this person? 

Kawakatsu's eyebrows furrow. “You do know who I’m talking about, yes?”

“I know who the King of Curses is, yes.”

“How informed,” he smiles tightly, and then clears his throat. “As I was saying…the vessel was sentenced to an immediate execution, but…” he swallows, his eyes trailing across the table. “Circumstances changed.”

You hold back a snort. “Gojo said no?”

Kawakatsu makes a strange face, but doesn’t acknowledge your question. Not that you needed an answer. “We decided it would be more beneficial to keep it alive.” It. You swallow dryly. “Since the vessel has an innate sense of where the other fingers lie, we used it to track their whereabouts. You understand how cursed objects can attract other curses, yes?”

Does he think you’re five years old?

“…yeah.”

He nods. “We set back the execution in order to collect the other appendages. But the vessel…it didn’t last long.”

You take a step back. “They’re dead?”

Wasn’t the whole point of you being here to extract information from them?

He shoots you a look. “We thought so. But…certain parties got involved, and we have reason to believe it’s alive.” He leans over and slides the folder to your side of the table. “All the vessels' information is in there, including a photo. Your job is to find it, use your domain, question Sukuna, and then kill him.”

You stare at the folder, burying down the urge to reach across the table and smash Kawakatsu's head into the beautifully varnished cedar. Does he really think you'll believe that story? When have the higher-ups ever prioritised the pursuit of jujutsu knowledge over security? You can't govern with an iron fist if someone is walking around contradicting your every rule. This is simply a kill order wrapped in safety gloves. They don’t care to question Sukuna; they're just saving face, which seems a little counterintuitive. They know exactly what you think of them; there's absolutely no need to pretend this is anything but a power play.

They wanted to kill a kid, and when Gojo refused, they came to you.

A stinging pain pushes up against your ribs. You know why they assumed you'd be capable of something like that, but it still hurts. 

You pick up the folder. You make no move to open it, not in front of him. You know the second you see this kid’s face, you’ll flinch. So you tuck it under your arm.

“When is this assignment to be completed?”

“Tomorrow,” he says it casually, like you’re not discussing the planned murder of a child. “The annual Goodwill event is on. Everyone will be in attendance. Including yourself.”

You frown. Assuming it’s Gojo they’re trying to hide you from, that seems like a fantastically stupid idea.

“You’re confused,” he notes, his bushy eyebrows high with amusement. “The event is the perfect opportunity to catch someone off guard. There will be a calculated level of chaos. Perfect for slipping in and out undetected.”

You scoff. “And Gojo? How do you plan on dealing with that?  You know he’ll see me once I use my domain. And do you expect me to find him in acres of thick forest? What if he’s got buddies around?” Just how many kids are you killing tomorrow?

“There is an effort being made to isolate the vessel. You’ll do what needs to be done. Speak with Ryomen Sukuna, and then…” he makes a gesture with his hands like he’s tightening up two ends of a rope.

“Sure,” you answer dully. “And what’s my payment?”

“Cutting right to the chase, hm? Of course, there will be a sum. A very large one. But considering the alternative factors,” you dying when Gojo realises what’s going on because he isn’t stupid and then snaps your neck. Dying very un-heroically. “We’ve considered reevaluating your sentence. And—“ he sighs, like he can’t believe he’s been forced to say it. “Potentially putting forth a promotion.”

“A promotion,” you repeat.

“You’re what…a fourth grade?”

You shrug. 

He tuts at you, like you’re some noisy child not paying attention in class.

“We were considering grade two. How does that sound?”

You could not give less of a fuck about your rank as a sorcerer. You’d almost completely forgotten it was a thing until this moment.

“Sounds fine.”

He hesitates, annoyance flattening his brow. “How trite. We dangle a promotion in front of you and you actually manage to be civil.”

You nod carefully. You sense he’s gotten to the end of his already very limited patience. Spending his time talking to low-level trash like you probably grates on him like nothing else.

He digs into his pocket and pulls out a bundled pair of gloves. “We want to make a statement, you see.”

Your stomach curls. That doesn’t sound good. When angry old men decide to make statements, it usually ends in some kind of pointless battle where no one wins. Just a ledger of innocent people caught in the crosshairs. 

You stare at the folder, wondering what the vessel looks like. 

Kawakatsu tugs one on, making sure it sits snugly against his wrist. “Authority cannot be undermined, you see. Even by the likes of Gojo Satoru.”

Chapter Text

You’re probably wasting your time doing this.

There’s a thunderous screech as the casket of wine bottles shatters in the bottom of the bin, followed by the ping of beer bottles toppling against them. You turn around and pick up another box—one full of whiskey—and throw it in too, tossing what is probably a hundred thousand yen’s worth of alcohol in the rubbish.

Guess they hadn’t gotten the sobriety memo. 

You slam the lid down hard.

Mem is curled up on the couch when you step back inside, staring out the window into the darkness, her tail flickering apprehensively. You couldn’t find the controller for the blinds, so you’ve been forced to mull around with an ever-growing darkness leeching in. There’s a massive forest behind the estate, one that’s full of feral things, all hiding in the shadows from the boogeyman.

You tap away at your phone as you flop down on the couch. The internet here is surprisingly decent, but not at all helpful with your navigational skills. You’ve put in over a dozen addresses and snooped through endless streams of satellite imaging. None of the places look even remotely familiar.

Either they’ve all drastically changed since you were nineteen, or your memory really did get fried from the oxy. Your stomach curls just thinking about it, a tiny bead of sweat breaking out on your neck. Just another reason to throttle past you’s neck. You shiver, sinking further into the couch. Ishimori-san would beat you with a newspaper if she heard that thought.

Frustration sneaks up on you, and you toss your phone onto the table. The noise it makes isn’t loud, but the house is so eerily quiet that it echoes.

Mem makes a soft noise, stirring from her spot. 

“Sorry,” you mutter, running your fingers down her back. “I’m just tired.”

She blinks up at you questioningly, as if to say, ‘Why aren’t you sleeping then?’

You peer down the expanse of your legs to the file you’d flopped onto the coffee table. You haven’t been avoiding it, but you certainly aren’t looking forward to reading whatever cruel summary the higher-ups wrote up. 

You lean forward.

Mem meows.

“I’m deliberating.”

With one finger, you lift the edge of the file and carefully push it back. Your eyes immediately catch on a photo clipped to the top. You slip it out, bringing it to eye level. It’s a teenage boy who's got the softest eyes you’ve ever seen. Big and brown like a doe. 

“Itadori Yuji…”

Fifteen years old. Judging from his eye lines, he’s probably got a big smile. Seems like a happy kid. 

You read underneath his name.

Highly-dangerous. Kill on sight.

You toss the photo back onto the table and stand up. Your phone screen is still open, highlighting the area of the map you’d been looking at. Mem jumps onto the table, flicking the folder closed with her tail. She doesn’t touch the photo, though; she lets it sit there, almost taunting you.

“We should go, right?”

Her tail curls, pressing against the top of your phone.

You sigh. “We may as well get started—before this all goes to shit.”

“You look awful,” Kawakatsu sneers.

He’d asked to meet on the outskirts of campus, far enough away so Mei Mei's crows won't be a problem. 

You squint at him from behind your sunglasses. “Are you flirting with me?”

His bushy eyebrows bend with indignation. “As if I would ever waste my time on gutter trash like you.”

“A man after my heart,” you sigh. “M'fine, thanks for asking. I spent most of my night reading that file. Didn’t get a lot of sleep.”

His head snaps down to you, jaw clenched. “You do realise how important it is that you’re prepared, yes?”

“Hence why I read the file. Do you know how densely worded some of those techniques are? You need fuckin’ Six Eyes to understand some of that shit.”

He ignores your vulgarity. “So you’ve analysed them all?”

“Yep,” you roll your shoulders. “The Todo kid claps and teleports. Another one’s got voice commands. The only one I’m kinda concerned about is the Straw-Doll kid.”

His face wrinkles. “Really? That one?”

“Yeah. That resonance technique…” You purse your lips. “It’s quite the trick.”

You turn towards the cliff-side, looking down at the spot where the school would be, if not for the barrier. You pull at your memories, trying to fit little bits and pieces into place, but it feels distant and blurry. Like a repetitive dream you’ve never had the chance to digest fully—just wisps beneath delirium.

You dig your shoe deeper into the dirt, lifting the grass. You still haven’t fully fleshed out a plan. There are so many variables you haven’t had time to consider. Hidden techniques, the monitoring system, Mei Mei's crows. Not to mention the forest below, full to the brim with curses. There’s so much cursed energy around you’re struggling to pinpoint who from whom.

Normally, this is what comes easiest to you: stealth and long-distance intelligence gathering—identifying each curse user individually and being able to mark them from it. But right now, you’re blurred by numbers. You don’t have any faces to attach to the energy signatures you feel. Well, everyone except Gojo, who’s a supernova among a garden of fireflies.

And then it happens, as if on cue.

The pressure.

He’s here. Somewhere on campus.

Your heart rate picks up a bit. Suppressing your cursed energy is one of your most adept skills, but with Gojo simply existing, you’ll never be too sure if you’re 100% hidden. He might’ve already noticed you, a tiny flicker of nothing at the edge of the horizon. Or maybe he’ll mistake you for one of the curses in the forest. That’s the best you can hope for when it comes to him.

“You two get along in school?” Kawakatsu asks, almost casual in his assessment.

You pop a piece of gum in your mouth. “Nope.”

Well, 'get along' is a little too straightforward a word to describe your relationship, but that’s a whole bunch of complicated that isn't worth explaining—especially to an imbecile like Kawakatsu.

“Colour me surprised.”

A silence engulfs you both. One brewed in the nervousness of Gojo’s sheer existence. One fuck up—a tiny little fluctuation and he’ll be right here in front of you, burying a hole of cursed energy in your stomach.

“Listen,” you start, pressing your gum to the side of your mouth. “If I die, you have to give my cat to Utahime.”

You’re spitballing here, but you figure she’d be a nice parent.

“The Kyoto teacher?”

“Huh?” You frown. “Oh uh, yeah. That one.”

You’re forgetting yourself.

Utahime’s a teacher. So much has changed. You can’t really wrap your head around the fact that Gojo is a teacher too. The Gojo from your high school years is near impossible to reconcile with now. Clearly, he’s changed. That or he’s quite possibly the worst teacher on the planet.

“They’re getting started,” Kawakatsu informs, tapping away at his phone.

“Alright,” you stretch your hands above your head, rising onto the tips of your toes. Then you lean down, pressing your palms into the floor. Your back creaks in protest, and you fold yourself back up, cracking your neck from side to side.

“Time for a walk.”

You get maybe three-fourths down the mountain before your technique picks up on something. Through the cloud of different energies, there’s a signature that feels distinctly off.

It’s barely even residual. You’d felt a flicker. Something that registered against your technique like a radio wave, faintly glitching as it tried to blend in with all the other noise. It’s overwhelmingly chaotic for what a sorcerer would consider a microscopic particle of cursed energy. It screams danger, but it also screams something else. Something familiar.

Just trying to get an understanding of its composition confuses you. If the circumstances were different, there are other avenues you could consider. Strengthening your lines, or unravelling more to get a better assessment. But as of now, four seems like a respectable amount of unimportance.

You expected using your technique to feel gritty. All this time away, training without Tengen’s barrier makes the well you’re pulling from feel bottomless. You’re waiting for the strain. The intensity, like pulling at a rope and letting it burn through your hands. But it’s not. It’s so concentrated here. Fragile, and yet wholly encompassing.

You breathe in deeply, letting it settle in your chest.

Perhaps you aren’t giving yourself enough credit. You’ve trained for years doing this, and Gojo—well, he won’t be expecting you at all if the higher-ups have actually done their jobs.

Your strands curl softly through the air. Translucent—like dust shifting in the wind, following the whispers. They tell you where the energy is going, even if it is being very careful.

You step across the barrier into the main campus, absorbing the mountainside in all its tranquil glory. The main shrine stands out against every other building with its staggered wooden balconies and stairs. With Tengen’s barrier, the temples' positions change every day, so your memory is useless at placing the buildings. But the sounds, the smells, the grass. That’s the same. You can see the three-story pagoda, the dorms and the sports field. (Which you’ve never really been a fan of.)

You remember Suguru’s weird obsession with soccer during the summer holidays, and how it had taken its turn infecting everyone—even Shoko and Nanami. Your outright refusal to play had meant you got to be the referee, and you spent hours blissfully calling Gojo out on literally everything; red cards and all.

You frown, shaking the memory loose. You knew coming here would lift things up from where you’d beaten them down, but you promised yourself you wouldn’t let it compromise the mission.

The energy shifts directions, and you follow. It takes you down the mountain, across the canal and over two concrete fences. You get so close to the actual school that you can hear the echoing shouts of voices. It’s as sure as any evidence that your suppression is sufficient.

You have no idea where the energy spark is taking you, but it has an uncanny understanding of Tengen’s barrier. Of a 1000 shifting doors, only one will take you to a certain place. Some are cursed storerooms. Others are…even more important. Only Tengen knows which door leads to the storeroom. So that means either this sinister presence works at the goddamn school, or they’ve somehow manufactured a way to locate the storeroom without Tengen.

You know what you’d bet money on.

It’s not some random person walking around. It’s a thief—one with connections. Otherwise, how would they know about Tengen’s barrier system—let alone the intricacies of it? Someone told them. And why? What amount of money or power constitutes selling secrets to the enemy? The permanent enemy.

You suck your gum to the roof of your mouth and glare at the canopy of trees ahead of you. What an annoying choice to make. Stick to the original plan and locate Itadori Yuji? Or follow this random lead to its source and see what the hell is going on?

You sigh, shoulders slumping.

Who are you kidding?

Obviously, you’re doing the latter.

You pull back every other strand, narrowing it down to the thief and their technique. No more distractions. If you’re committing to this, you need absolute focus. You can’t have other energy signatures randomly cropping up and tapering off, blurring your trail.

Soon enough, you come across a disfigured curse, wilted into the grass and quietly sobbing. You crouch down, peering at its enlarged head. Odd. The cursed technique residuals you’ve been following are all over this thing, but the thing’s cursed energy is completely dull. Muted, and yet it’s still alive. You don’t touch it—you’re not stupid enough to even contemplate it. But you do nudge it with the tip of your boot. It murmurs and turns, tears still treading down its cheeks. It’s dying, and quickly too.

“How’d you wind up here?” You mutter, standing back up.

It whines, reaching out to you with stubby little grey arms, and then stops moving altogether. There’s something haunting about it, but you don’t have time to analyse it. You need to keep moving.

You follow the trail of dead creatures all the way up to an unassuming temple door. When you slide it open, an acrid stench hits your nose, burning its way into your brain.

“God!” You step back, holding in a sneeze. “Smells like—” you gag, shoving your jacket over your face. It smells like someone left milk out in the sun.

It’s not the smell alone that bothers you; it’s the heaviness of it. You can feel it clinging to your skin. Hatred. Fear. Regret. It’s pungent. You’ve forgotten how awful the aura of high-grade curses can be, and there’s probably a wealth of them stacked away in this storage room.

You’re essentially stepping into a lion's den, willingly. This curse could’ve unleashed several cursed objects by now, but for some reason, it has decided not to. Either it’s keeping them sealed because of Gojo, or it’s looking for something specific.Both of those answers horrify you. 

You step back into the doorway and immediately notice a lump of clothes on the ground. Piles of navy jackets and white robes. Uniforms. Among the clothes are two curses with deformed heads.

Holy shit.

Your stomach drops, dread clinging to your pores. You quickly take out your phone and snap a photo. It immediately docks into your camera roll. It’s exactly the same. No blurring. No glitches.

These imploded creatures…they’re humans.

It’s not their energy that’s been warped. It’s their souls.

Hell. That’s why your technique picked up on it.

You creep inside, keeping your steps light. The curse doesn’t seem to care about masking its presence now. You find more transfigured souls squirming in its wake. Some are tiny, like earthworms. Others are as bloated as whales, nearly touching the ceiling.

It leaves a horrifying trail into a dark, candle-lit room marked with different talismans. Seems like the kinda place to keep important stuff, and annoyingly, you’re correct. The curse stands in the centre of the room. It’s…strange looking. But not in the way you know curses to be strange. Not oozing and sickly; with a dozen arms and one sickly, baleful eye. This one is humanoid. It’s got long, blue-ish hair and jagged lines across its arms. Almost like a—

Your arm snaps to the back of your neck. To the scar there. A muscle quivers in your jaw, and you grind your teeth down, nearly chipping them in an attempt to stop it.

You won’t do this to yourself. Not again.

The curse has a patchwork of stitches all across its skin, like it’s been assembled in a lab. Or put together from spare parts. A real Frankenstein’s monster.

That makes you want to laugh, but you know that's just fear and sleep deprivation talking. The last thing you want to do is underestimate it.

This curse has killed every sorcerer guarding the place. So it’s efficient and quick. Its technique mustn’t be that complicated or have many rules. Judging from the flow of cursed energy coming off it, you’d say that assumption is quite accurate. Its entire energy is…bold. One colour. No questions. No fluctuations.

It’s holding a bag full of things that stink. Some nasty cursed objects, no doubt. You slink up close, peering at it from the front. Its face is quite androgynous, but there’s something about the way it moves, with a peacock-like confidence that’s distinctly masculine. And it seems pretty proud of itself—of what it’s done here.

“What’cha got there?” You ask over its shoulder.

It screams.

You watch it leap back, dropping the bag on the floor.

“I didn’t think curses could get spooked like that,” you hum. “Isn’t that your thing?”

The curse looks at you, bewildered. Its eyes are two different colours. It looks around you, behind you, to the side of you, and then at you. You catch the shift in its expression, its eyes slowly lighting up with interest. It’s not afraid of you. Which means it thinks very highly of itself—or it’s so crazy it doesn’t care.

Good.

“I think you might be outta a job,” you drawl out, pressing your boot over the bag handles and dragging it to your side. You know when this fight eventually breaks out, it’s going to use the cursed objects as bait to distract you, and you never want to be one of those people who leave precious stolen goods lying on the ground for the sake of what—monologuing?

Why not kill two birds with one stone?

“What kind of job?”

You raise an eyebrow. So it can talk.

“You came out of nowhere, Ms.” Its eyes rove over you, its brows furrowing, head shifting. Confused. “How’d you do that?”

“Ms?” You grin, pulling the bag behind your back. “How polite you are, cursed spirit.”

“It’s Mahito,” he says flippantly. “What’s wrong with your soul? I can’t see it. ”

“I don’t know you very well, and that’s a very private question.”

“True. But we could get to know each other.”

“How much time you got?”

A wide, frenetic grin splits his face. “I like you!”

You play coy. “Oh really?”

He giggles, eyes glimmering in a way you can only describe as child-like. He’s getting some strange satisfaction out of talking to you. You’ve never seen anything like it. Nine years abroad and you’ve only ever encountered three special grade curses. Three in nearly a decade. And none of them spoke coherently.

This is something else. Being able to speak with a curse. The fact that it understands sarcasm and innuendo. You might be in trouble.

You notice his fingers are twitching.

Some kind of subconscious tic?

“You’re trying to figure it out, aren’t you?” His grin splits wider, white, perfectly set teeth gleaming against the candlelight. Uncanny. It’s not right. His cursed energy is so calm, and yet his demeanour couldn’t be more…heightened. “I’ll make you a deal. You tell me about your soul, and I’ll tell you what I did to your coworkers.”

“They're not my coworkers.”

That catches him off guard. “You’re not…one of them?”

“Nah.”

“Oh!” He brightens. “Then we should work together! Hanami-san is taking on a big risk right now! They’re relying on me!”

“What kind of risk?” You ask.

He doesn’t reply. He just smiles.

You smile back. That poor curse is fucked. “How is Hanami-san? Are they doing well?”

“Are we gonna be friends?” He asks instead.

“Dunno. Do we have much in common?”

“Maybeee. What’s your favourite colour?”

“Blue.”

“Sames!” He gushes, taking a step forward.

“Hold it!” You put a hand up. “Moving was not a part of the deal.”

“We never made a deal,” he coos. “What’s wrong with moving? You think I’m going to kill you?”

Yes. “No. I need to check your bag for contraband,” you explain, spreading your boot tip against the bag to peel the fabric back. “You never know what people are walking around with these days.”

Your eyebrows furrow as you take in its contents. This was much worse than you expected. You take your foot off the fabric, trying not to show just how careful you’re being. You’re pretty sure those glass vials are special-grade cursed wombs. Why a cursed spirit would be stealing them, well, that’s the question of the hour, isn’t it?

You pick up one of the gnarled fingers, hesitating at its awful smell. “A fan of old Sukuna, huh?” You’re trying to imagine a fifteen-year-old kid swallowing one of these. The nail alone looks like a gastrointestinal nightmare waiting to happen. But if he’s become a vessel, he wouldn’t be digesting them; he’d be absorbing them.

Mahito sighs. “I want Sukuna-sama to be my ally.”

“Is that why you got these fingers? They’re a…gift?”

“Yup!”

Or a bargain.

“Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mahito-san, but I can’t let you take these.”

His expression doesn’t falter. “That’s too bad!”

He launches at you like a fucking dog.

You anticipated it, and so you just shift your weight to the side. He goes flying by, right into a pillar, and he takes the whole thing out like some clumsy, loose-limbed giraffe. He seems…unpracticed. Or reckless. You can’t decide.

When he jumps back up, there isn’t even a scratch on him.

“You’re quick.”

You shrug. “Dive better next time.”

He jumps you again, this time swiping at you with his hands.

So you’d been right about that. He needs physical touch to implant his technique on someone. For a singular second, you feel relieved for having figured it out, but it’s quickly dwarfed by the realisation that this guy—this stupid, batshit crazy curse—is your natural born enemy.

Your technique functions as a direct conduit to your soul. All Mahito has to do is accidentally brush past one of your strands, and that’ll be it for you. He’ll feel the shape of your soul and transfigure it.

Shitttttt.

You draw back your technique immediately, your chest stinging from the divergence of cursed energy slamming back into you.

Mahito’s fist flies for your face, and you swerve to the side, slamming your boot heel into his hip as he stumbles past you. It sends him headfirst into another pillar, which cracks right in the centre.

His face twists with displeasure as he turns to look at you from the floor. He stands up and shakes off the debris. Then he reaches out, both his hands wildly contorting until two spinning blades emerge from his wrists.

Well fuck. He can change the shape of his soul, too? Why hadn’t you thought of that? Too late to dwell on it. You turn and wallop him in the face with the bag, and he spins back into the wall. The glass vials tumble out of the bag and hit the floor, cracking slightly. You make a face. You forgot they were in there. You were so focused on the fingers.

“Whad’ja hit me with that for!?” Mahito demands. “You almost broke them!”

You swallow thickly, anger building up in your throat. That’s the kind of mistake a first-year student would make, not a fully fledged sorcerer. You’re getting yourself all panicked over a talking curse. Breath. Just breathe. You won’t have a chance to pick up the wombs. Going for them will undeniably open you up to an attack from Mahito.

With your cursed technique, none of this would be a problem.

What a pain.

“You…” he licks his lips. “You know the shape of your soul.”

You curl your fist tighter around the bag. “What of it?" 

His eyes darken. “Yet…you can’t use your cursed technique against me, can you?”

Oh, for gods sake. You can’t catch a break.

“Maybe I’ve got a binding vow,” you challenge.

He doesn’t buy it for a second.

“You can’t!” He giggles. “You can’t you can’t you can’t!”

His arm bulges, turning into a giant scythe.

“I’m gonna kill you!”

You weigh your options. You could fight. Maybe you’ll win, but you’ll probably lose the bag. Then there’ll be a struggle for it. You’ll prioritise regaining the fingers over fending off his attacks—because it’s Sukuna. The most dangerous curse/human to ever live. You can’t let Mahito take them.

Then you’ll get turned into a weeping, drooling blob of nothing.

Mem becomes an orphan, again.

You scoop up the bag and bolt in the other direction.

“Comeee back!”

Nope, nope, nope.

The scythe swings down, and you bend, watching it cut right over your nose, taking some of your hair with it. You’re up and running within the second, leaping onto the gable of another roof.

You can hear Mahito’s chittering, high-pitched laugh as he gives chase. Your foot tweaks on a thatched tile, and you stumble, barely managing to dodge what seems to be a transfigured, heat-seeking rope dart. It slashes at your feet, and you jump, twisting sideways to avoid the return swing. You hit your back in the worst spot on the way down. Dull pain trickles down your legs, and you’re forced to roll to avoid another massive blade.

You kick your legs out, boot heels catching against the gutter before you throw yourself right over the edge. Mahito cackles behind you. Good god, you wish you could just shred this fool to ribbons. You jump for the next rooftop, landing in a mess of limbs as you roll to your feet and turn, readying your fists.

The bag is still tightly wound around your wrist, but you’ve managed to shove all of Sukuna’s fingers into your jacket and short pockets—with one exception of one also being awkwardly wedged between your boobs. A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.

Mahito still thinks they’re in the bag, and you intend to abuse that knowledge.

He lands on the other side of the rooftop with a disarming amount of his grace, his skin twitching, bursting as it settles.

“Is this really all you’ve got?” He sighs. “I suppose I under-appreciated Nanami…”

You frown, sliding your foot back into a fighting stance. Didn’t Nanami quit Jujutsu for good? Guess you’ve been sincerely out of the loop to miss something like him rejoining Jujutsu society.

“Nanami-kun is a talented person,” you spit out. 

Mahito opens his mouth—no doubt to cajole you some more—and then frowns, tilting his head up.

You follow his line of sight. There’s a dark, thickened dome surrounds the school. A veil.

In the chaos of getting away, you hadn't noticed it.

You quickly evaluate your surroundings. You’re on the outside of the veil, smooshed between a smattering of old classrooms. There are no students close to you, no one to get caught in the crosshairs. Not that you’re in a position to unleash anything but angry words.

You sense an overwhelming amount of cursed energy coming from the river. Shit. That was a hell of a lot more oppressive than Mahito’s signature. They really did plan this out. 

Guess Kawakatsu had been right about one thing. The chaos of the event certainly acted as a smokescreen. Just not for you.

You search the skyline, and see no sign of Gojo. A giant field of brown gunk and a very obvious special grade curse popping off, and he’s seemingly nowhere to be found? He has no know what's going on. If you can feel it, he can undoubtedly see it. 

You don’t have to guess about the Veil’s rules. If they’re inhibiting the entrance of Gojo Satoru, the trade-off must be insane.

You take a breath and tighten your fists. The Veil won’t last long if Gojo’s already set to work on it. You just need to hold out long enough for it to break. That is—if Mahito has the self-preservation to run at the sight of Gojo. Looks like you’ll be playing an incredibly reckless game of Chicken.

“Well then,” you wet your lips. “That changes things, huh?”

Mahito doesn’t seem all that frightened. “You really should just give me the fingers. I’ll let you live if you do.”

You bark out a laugh. “Don’t piss me off.”

His grin deepens.

“Wanna make a bet?” You ask, the handles of the fabric bag burning against your wrist. “When that veil breaks—and it will—what’d you reckon he’s gonna do? Go for your friend by the river, or the fingers in this bag?”

Mahito tilts his head. “You think he’d care more about the fingers than Hanami-san?”

“A whole lot of them in one place, right next to a special grade?” Your lips twitch. “I’d have to take a guess.”

Mahito’s smile fades. 

“Clocks ticking, Patchwork.”

At the same time as he launches forward, you toss the bag out. It confuses him completely. He tries to stop, but his momentum sends him sliding, and he lands on his ass. The bag flutters through the air—light enough for someone to notice it’s empty, but Mahito’s frazzled. He snatches it with one elongated arm, pulling it to his chest like a little kid at Christmas.

“Huh?” His brows furrow. “It’s empty!”

The veil above you shatters, folding in on itself within a fraction of a second.

You both sense him immediately, heads snapping up to the sky.

He’s there, floating amongst the clouds.

An angel with six eyes and a thousand ivory feathered wings.

Mahito turns and runs.

You don’t exactly blame him.

Chapter Text

Gojo disappears from the sky as quickly as he appeared. He warps to nearly the opposite side of the school, making a tiny little supernova of energy at the edge of your senses.

You thought the river would’ve been his priority, but clearly, something else has taken his priority.

You rearrange Sukuna’s fingers into your short pockets properly. Then you take a moment to assess yourself for any injuries. Mahito hadn’t touched you anywhere, but the fall on that rooftop has your back aching. That’s going to be a problem for your future sleep habits.

It’s always the old scars that scream the loudest. It couldn’t have been the bruise you’d gotten on the plane from slamming your knee into the seatbelt, huh?

You scowl, drawing on your technique with zero reservation. If Gojo’s deemed a special grade curse not an immediate threat, you doubt he’ll have the presence of mind to mark you down with Six Eyes.

You use a line of Sew to glide yourself through the forest. Gliding makes it sound effortless when really it's like surfing on a tightrope—except the tightrope is the size and width of tooth floss, and you’re telekinetically controlling the line to your whim. For all intents and purposes, you look stupid, like a character lagging through the map of a video game, but it gets the job done. 

You lower yourself down to the riverbed, focusing on the residuals. Three cursed energies. One of them is obviously the special grade—Hanami, you’re guessing. The other is too strong to be Itadori’s, even if his own cursed energy output is a lot more than you expected.

There's an intense amount of energy coming from the river, but when you zip over there, all you can feel are the ripples of a residual technique. You look around, seeing the pathways of their energy. You follow the weakest line, keeping low to the ground so you don’t clothesline yourself on a tree branch.

You thought Mei-Mei’s crows would be more of a problem at this point, but weirdly, they don’t seem to be following Yuji. A million-dollar answer for why that’s happening. You scowl just thinking about it. Mei Mei's always been such a suck when it comes to zeros in her bank account. She’d probably sell her soul for the right amount of cash.

The thought makes you shudder.

Your threads eventually lead you to Itadori Yuji, who's standing at ankle-height in the river, looking very confused. He’s covered in cuts and bruises, and there’s a giant welt in the middle of his forehead that’s bubbling with blood.

You feel bad for the kid. All these grumpy old farts are out to get him, and all he did was accidentally eat a finger. You’d never actually gotten an answer as to why he consumed it, but you assumed it was an accident. Who'd want to eat something like that?

“Hey kid!" You call, taking your hand out of your pocket and waving. That seems friendly enough, right? You hope. 

The boy goes rigid and slowly turns to face you like a stone totem. His expression is stunted, half-horrorified, half-confused. 

Okay, rough start. 

You step off your line and gently land on the riverbank.

“Uhhh…” Yuji looks around. “ Who are you? Where’s Todo?”

“Why would I know?” 

He somehow grows stiffer. “U-uh…good point. Who are you?”

“You’re probably a bit confused, yes?”

“More than a bit,” he says, his voice strained. “Why did you just randomly appear!?”

“I didn’t randomly appear; you just weren’t paying attention.”

He scratches his ear. “Oh. That's, yeah, another good point." 

“Listen—“ you only get one word out before your jaw forcibly closes, your teeth roughly closing around your tongue. 

Something happens. No, it’s not something. It’s everything. It's light and darkness and the absence of both. It takes up every part of your mind, eclipsing every thought, every instinct. It blots out the sun, replaces it, and burns even brighter. You’re throttled by the sensation of everything and nothing all at once, and you barely have the presence of mind to shut off your technique before you’re hitting the ground on your knees, a second away from turning your brain to complete mush.

You open your mouth, and blood pools out. The technique blinds every one of your senses. Nothing else can pervade. You’re trapped, forced to experience the crushing power of Limitless at its most heightened.

Hollow Purple.

He’s such a fucking asshole if he did that on purpose.

“Huh!?” Yuji freaks. “A-are you okay?! What the hell was that?! S-some kind of bomb?”

You gag, another wave of blood surging up your throat and into the riverbed. Pain dulls everything else to a blot at the edge of your vision. Your tongue thrashes in your mouth, desperate for the pain to stop. All you can taste is iron and severed flesh, folding your tongue over to access the sharp indents of your own teeth. You haven't bitten it off, thankfully, but you're bleeding a lot. A lot, a lot. 

“Gojo,” you slur out, pressing your palms into your eyes. Your vision returns in dots. “Doing something unnecessarily reckless.”

Or maybe the right amount, given this extremely coordinated attack on the school by special grade curses and curse users.

“You know Gojo-sensei?” Yuji asks, his voice picking up.

“Yes.” You spit out more blood and haul yourself to your feet.

He gives you a suspicious look. “How come you’re so roughed up?”

“I had my technique out when his hit.”

“What does that mean?”

You spit out more blood. Fucking great. The one time you need to properly speak with someone, and Gojo's made it nearly impossible for you to get a sentence out without spitting blood everywhere. “Imagine having your ear pressed up to a door trying to listen for whispers, and then suddenly that door turns into a giant fucking megaphone and it screams right down your ear canal.” Your tone is ragged, but you don’t have the patience to care right now. All that sleep you never got paired with the rager you’d just had in your brain has dropped your mood to bedrock.

Yuji shrinks under your irritation. “I see…”

There’s a silence.

“Excuse me,” he says politely. “But what are you doing here?”

“Uh…” you roll your neck. “That.”

Yuji’s body language immediately changes. His shoulders hunch up and his fists curl at his sides.

You put out a hand to stop it, but he flinches. You immediately put it down.

“I’m not gonna fight you, kid.”

His fists hesitate, but he doesn’t put them down. “You’re…not?”

“Not officially.”

He makes a face. “What does that mean?”

“It means I got hired to kill you—“

“WHAT!?”

“Hold on,” you say. “There’s a massive 'but' coming.”

He waits.

“I’m not going to.”

He doesn’t look relieved.

“Ugh,” you tug on your jacket sleeve and use it to wipe away the crust of blood that's formed on your lips. “If I didn’t just have a goddamn nuke dropped between my ears, this would be coming out a lot more eloquent.” You take a breath. “Okay! I’m gonna say it. The higher-ups hired me to kill you. I never planned on agreeing to what they proposed, but when I heard Sukuna was involved…well—everyone has their vices, right?”

Yuji balks. “What does that mean?”

“Sukuna is kinda a big deal in the world of souls. It’s unheard of for someone to split their soul, let alone into twenty pieces. Those things are really uncomfortable, by the way,” you mutter, patting at your back pockets. “Aren’t fingers designed to be put into pockets? Whatever. Doesn’t matter, we’re getting sidetracked,” you take another breath. “Essentially, what I’m trying to say is that I’ve cahoots’d my way onto campus because I want to chat with Sukuna. Not because I want to kill you. And I won’t—if you’re worried about that.”

Yuji stares at you. There’s rage in his eyes, endless wells of it. He hadn’t looked like that in his photo.

“You have some of his fingers,” he says slowly. “Don’t you?”

So he can sense them.

You take a step back. “Is that a…problem?”

“How’d you get 'em?”

“I un-stole them off a patchwork curse. Or re-stole them—guess it depends on who you ask.”

Yuji’s expression shifts, rage dilating his pupils. “Patchwork?”

A dry laugh sounds between you, immediately setting you on edge.

A mouth appears on Yuji’s head, like a pimple.

“That fool?” The mouth says.

Its pitch and tone are distinctly different from Yuji's.

The voice cackles. “Seriously? He lost to you?! Pathetic!”

“Oh,” you squint. “That’s weird.”

Yuji slaps his forehead. “Yeah—sorry, he does that.”

“I can’t say I’m shocked by his personality.”

“So why exactly do you need to talk to Sukuna?” Yuji asks.

“Well, technically, I don’t. But I’m hoping that if I get a look at his soul, it could give me some insight into containing it for you.”

Yuji’s eyes light up. “You can contain Sukuna? Permanently?”

Not if he keeps eating fingers. You’re not sure there’s a single technique in the world capable of containing a fully fledged Sukuna. But what you’re doing is just a means of examination, not the end result. Having even the smallest glimpse of how his soul looks, or has been formed. That would be invaluable. And it’s far too complicated to explain to a kid who's just become a part of this world. So you…lie.

“Piece of cake." 

There’s another manic laugh. Sukuna.

“Such arrogance! I look forward to devouring you, little girl.”

You and Yuji make the same face of disgust.

"Mm, very creepy. And you have to deal with that all the time?" 

Yuji huffs. "Yeah. It gets really annoying."

"Imagine how I feel, brat." 

You snort. Their dynamic is certainly interesting.

"Can you really contain him?" Yuji asks. "Like...right now?" 

Considering Yuji’s only consumed three of Sukuna’s fingers, and by extension three parts of his soul, you should be fine. And it’s not like you're directly interacting with Sukuna's soul anyway. You’ll just be observing it through the lens of Yuji’s soul.

“Yup.”

Yuji flops his hands out. “Oh-kay! What do we do?”

“You do nothing, just stand there.”

He does as told.

"This'll be fun," Sukuna chuckles. "Good luck."

You shake your hands out. Suddenly becoming aware of the sweat running down the side of your face. You’re tired and overstimulated, and your throat feels like it’s been seared on a grill and then run through a shredder. You’ve still got enough cursed energy to do this, but after that, you’ll be done. If Gojo decides to punch now, ask questions later, there probably won’t be a later.

This shouldn’t be as nerve-wracking as your body is making it out to be.

You take a deep breath right down into the pit of your stomach and pour it out. You cross over your wrists, hooking your pinky fingers together. You join the tips of your index fingers to your thumbs, creating two circles. 

“W-wait a second,” Yuji looks pale. “W-what’s with the hand sign?”

“Domain Expansion,” you say firmly. “Soul Labyrinth.”

Glimpsing Sukuna’s soul through Yuji is like peering through thick, bulletproof glass. Sukuna does not want to be perceived by the likes of you, let alone be touched. But in his current state of disassembly, your arrogant assumption has thankfully paid off. He can't kill you for looking. 

It takes some time, but you think you’ve gained a general understanding of how they work together. Yuji—as the file stated—is the perfect vessel for Sukuna. Normally, it's impossible for someone to exist without a body. A detached soul, especially one separated into twenty pieces, is like a fire without a hearth. It exists without any concept of sentience. Only with a body—a hearth—does the fire, and thus the soul, burn brightly.

Sukuna and Yuji are in a completely different galaxy of complications. Yuji is in a constant state of polarisation. One soul is vying to become host, and the other is simply ignoring those demands. His mere existence is somehow interfering with Sukuna’s ability to properly manifest.

Yuji suppressing Sukuna’s manifestations is, quite frankly, insane, especially for someone who had been a non-sorcerer up until a couple months ago. Any other person would’ve had their soul shattered. Yuji being able to maintain the shape of his body and his soul leaves you to believe he has an innate understanding of both.

Which is incredibly rare.

Confusing? Kind of. To most people, souls are an invisible, imperceivable idea. But in reality, they’re simply a cortex of innate characteristics. Cursed energy, innate domains, techniques. They all come from the blueprint of your soul. The body in this instance becomes the hardware. It puts all the densely worded theory of your soul into practice, like a conduit.

Much like how cursed energies are the electricity to a cursed technique's appliance, a body without a soul is a husk. Only truly strong individuals are capable of maintaining the blueprint of their body without a soul.

Yuji might just be one of those people.

If you’d had more time, you would’ve loved to analyse it further. But as it stands, there are certain parameters you can’t explain without further research and cursed energy. One: You have no idea what Yuji looks like when Sukuna takes over his body. Two: You have yet to properly perceive either of their souls in great detail.

Your domain breaks apart into tiny, prismatic shimmers. You watch them bounce in the air, hitting the water and dissolving like cotton.

A massive wave of exhaustion hits you. Cursed energy burnout. It’s like a migraine rolled in nausea, and you fight off a violent gag as the taste of your own blood revitalises in your mouth.

It takes you a moment to remember where you are and what you’re doing. You remember in bits and pieces. Your ruptured throat and crushed tongue. The Hollow Purple. Not only did it render your brain to buzzing white noise—it’d actually done some internal damage.

Your neck slumps forward, and you nearly stumble headfirst into the river. You catch yourself before you fall, pins and needles tingling up your arms as they flop down to your sides. You feel like you weigh a tonne, fighting to get the mere sensation of blood back into your pinky fingers.

Where the hell is the kid? He couldn’t have fallen far. You’d made sure his brain went relatively untampered with.

“…Yuji?” You mutter out, your voice completely wrecked.

He’s passed out in the riverbed, his expression eerily vacant. You catch an intake of breath rippling out from his chest, and your frown slowly shifts.

You bully yourself to look up straight and stumble over, pulling him by his legs from the river. You make it about two metres before the tingling in your arms becomes too much, and you drop him. He lands in the grass, a little patch of drool trickling from his mouth.

You snort, collapsing back onto your ass. You stretch out your legs, bending your head beneath your knees to get rid of the awful curling stitch that’s racing up your side. You take a few deep breaths, willing away the bile that’s rising in your wrecked throat. It stings so bad, to the point where you refuse to swallow, and genuinely contemplate the downsides of drinking river water.

You don’t get time to finish that thought-map. The wind suddenly shifts. You can feel it rush against your sweaty skin. 

“Yuji!”

Your heart nearly implodes.

You’re not sure what you were expecting, but Gojo’s voice being the exact same hits somewhere right between your fourth and fifth rib, and it digs into the stitch like a kunai. It’s rich and powerful and easy. Leisurely commanding, smooth without even trying.

You hate what it does to you. 

Your legs wobble, and you press your heels into the dirt to keep from falling apart. You can’t look at him, not when you’re half-delirious and sweating from every pore on your skin. You know what this looks like. You’ve seen it so many times in the mirror, echoing back your contempt. You see your dull, glassy eyes and shivering skin and want to punch that reflection. Beat it within an inch of its life for being so pathetic and weak, and undisciplined.

It burns to know that.

This is not the person you wanted to present to the Jujutsu world. You wanted to be different. You wanted confidence, unecumberance. Patience. Even if it's a performance no one believes, it's better than the alternative. You want to be entirely capable and completely unflappable.

But that’s just a Hail Mary, really.

You’ll never be those things. You're shit out of luck. 

You feel Gojo’s feet coming to a stop a couple metres away. Maybe he’s thinking about which fun way he’s going to murder you. 

“He’s not dead,” you husk out, one hand coming up to gingerly rub at your throat.

“Am I supposed to thank you?” He asks, an edge to his voice.

You snap your fingers and Yuji gasps, flinging himself upwards in the grass. You would’ve liked to have let him sleep for longer, considering what you did, but you’re not sure you have that time anymore.

“Gojo-sensei!” Yuji chirps. “You’re here! I thought you were flying in the sky.”

“He didn’t fly,” you mutter. “He floated. There’s a difference.”

Gojo makes a noise. It’s sudden and quick, coming from the back of his throat. Like you’ve caught him off guard.

“Yuji,” he says, his voice slightly higher-pitched.

“Hai, sensei!”

“You should head back. Everything’s been dealt with now.”

“What about the lady?”

“Leave it to me!” Gojo cheers.

“Oh-kay!”

You hear the pattering of footsteps slowly receding, and then nothing. Silence.

You can feel his stare piercing into you.

You are so dead.

You press your forearms against your knees, giving you just enough energy to lift your head. The first thing you notice is he’s wearing a blindfold, not glasses. It's made his hair all poofed up around his head. You press your bloodied tongue into your cheek, staving off some delirious, exhaustion-addled laugh. The next thing you notice is his hands, which are curled into fists at his side. Almost like he was ready to Reversal Red you out of existence.

“Hi,” you say plainly.

He stiffens. You hear a small ‘huh?’ leave his lips.

There’s a silence, one that feels like it’s stretching over you two, creating a domain of its own. You expected flippancy, maybe even a little bit of rage, but not silence. Anything else—excitement or happiness was always going to be outside the realm of possibility. Gojo Satoru would never rejoice in your existence; he would only spare it a passing glance.

That’s how it has always been.

You can’t read his expression like this, with the blindfold in the way. You can see he’s clenching his teeth, though. There’s a little muscle on the curve of his jawbone that’s twitching. Something barely noticeable. But given your imminent demise, you’re categorising everything with immense detail.

He’s taller than before. A little broader around the shoulders. But there’s also something less intense about him than you remember. Contained, almost. Even his posture is different. Precise, but relaxed.

In all the years you were gone, you’d relied on a slowly fading image of him in your memory. And with each year, those lines had blurred, and all you could really remember until yesterday was his eyes and the general shape of his face.

Now, it’s all coming back to you. The curve of his jaw, the shape of his nose, the exact white, purplish glow to his hair. 

You pin him with a stare, trying to remember what his eyes look like behind that blindfold. You watch his mouth turn down, his lips parting slightly. He’s shocked, which is weird. You didn’t kill Yuji, and you certainly didn’t hurt any of the other students. What would he have to be shocked about?

Shit. The fingers.

You forgot about them.

“Listen—“

Gojo steps forward, one of his hands lifting from his side. You lean back, expecting something bad. But he keeps lifting it, all the way up to his face, and then he’s digging it into the edge of his blindfold, and he’s pulling it down.

Bright cosmic supernovas stare back at you, locking you in place.

“Kanzaki,” he says, his voice a dark, twisting cord of rage. “Are you with them?”

Your mouth opens, but no words come out. Stupid fucking Six Eyes.

“Answer the question,” he says, his jaw levelling.

“Who’s them?” You ask tiredly. “You’re gonna have’ta be a little more specific cause I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Liar.”

“M’not lying.”

Gojo hums lowly. “Is that right?” He crouches down beside you, and you’re assaulted by the intensity of how much your body is suddenly screaming at you to run. You swallow thickly, unable to break his line of sight. “Why have you got six of Sukuna’s fingers then?" 

“That—“ you take a breath. “Was a coincidence. I was comin’ down here and I just…” you trail off, another wave of exhaustion hitting you. “I took them cause I thought I’d be bad.”

Something grabs you, and your eyes wearily flicker. It’s Gojo's fist curled through your top. “And what would be bad, exactly?”

You let your body sink, the pressure of his grip anchoring around your chest. “Listen, I haven't got a clue what you’re talking about. I just showed up to talk to the kid, nothin’ else. It was the weird patchwork freak that got in my way.”

“The curse Nanami fought?”

You let your neck relax. “He did mention Nanami.”

“What was he doing?”

“Stealin’ stuff from the warehouse,” you murmur. “I couldn’t figure out how he knew where to go through Tengen’s barrier. But then I realised one of the fingers had a single-layer seal on it.”

“They used it as a homing beacon,” Gojo catches on. “Smart.”

You expect him to ask more questions, maybe hit you, or just flat out kill you at this point, but he doesn't. He stares at you, his gaze searing with intensity. You know you look like a disaster, but you can't help but stare back, unflinching in his assessment of you. You tell yourself you don't care, that his evaluation of you means nothing, but there's a little part of you that wants to be seen by him, even after all this time. 

His eyes narrow, and he opens his mouth, half a word spilling out before he shuts it again. 

He drops you back into the dirt. 

You cough up some more blood, the tingling sensation in your arms turning to complete numbness. You struggle to keep your eyes open, assessing yourself for what you’re assuming is internal bleeding.

Gojo tilts his head at you. “Why are you so roughed up?”

You snort, blood smearing along your teeth. “You rang my brain like a fuckin’ wet towel, asshole.”

“…what?”

“Your Hollow Purple?” You mutter, curling onto your side as you feel the blood start to trickle into the back of your throat. “Fried my senses.”

“It ran interference with your technique? From that far away?”

You nod very, very slowly.

“Huh…” he says, like it’s some fun little fact for the day. Who cares if he’d almost given you a seizure? That’s some weak shit for him.

Gojo turns away in contemplation.

You’re not sure how long you sit there, lying on your side. Your brain turns over a thousand ideas at once. How come he didn’t notice the cursed energy surge from your domain? Maybe he did, and he’s fucking with you. You’re not sure. And after that thought, it becomes distinctly harder to think at all.

You stare at his shoes, little red flowers curling into the corners of your vision.

“…are you taking me in?”

“Hm?” Gojo turns back to you. “Why would I do that?”

You spit out another wad of blood. “Why wouldn’t you?”

There’s another silence. You’re pretty sure you’re dying. You close your eyes, trying to remember why you were panicking and what was so important. Nothing comes to mind.

Something touches your cheek, and your eyes flutter open. Gojo's crouched down beside you again, and he’s poking you in the face. You gurgle softly, trying to pull out some anger, but it stalls and collapses, folding back into your chest.

“Awh,” he pokes your neck this time. No, not pokes. He’s checking your pulse. “You’re actually dying right now, aren’t you?”

Many words come to mind in response, but all you can do is glare at him.

He just laughs, like you’re some wounded dog whimpering for help. He then plucks up your arm and gently pats your hand.

“Guess I’ll have’ta save you again, Kanzaki.”

“Don’t warp me,” you plead softly. “I’ll hurl.”

He grins at you. “Too bad.”

You pass out somewhere between point A and B, and when you wake up, the first thing you notice is that you can’t move. You shift your shoulders, and your skin presses tightly against something. Restraints of some kind.

Your cursed energy is completely dulled—probably a result of a carefully applied Ofuda. Your still half-mangled human senses tell you there’s a presence in the room you’re in. You fight to open your eyes and blearily look around. You’re sitting in an uncomfortably stiff chair, your arms and legs bound by thick knots of rope.

Talismans coat every inch of the room.

You’re in an isolation chamber. Fucking great.

Strangely, you notice your wounds have been healed, and someone even had the presence of mind to take the chewy out of your mouth. You wiggle your fingers, and they move accordingly. No numbness or circulatory problems. You’re still in your clothes from before, thank the gods. 

You roll your neck to the side, trying to get a look at the exit. But instead, you notice the blurry silhouette of Gojo standing beside you. He’s got his hands in his pockets and he’s leaning down, his face barely inches from yours. The blindfolds back too.

There’s no chance in hell you’re getting out of here now.

Resigning yourself to your fate, you slump back down again into your chair, hanging your head so your chin tucks into your chest.

“Huh?” Is the first thing you hear. “Did she fall asleep again?”

“Wake her up,” a withered voice demands.

There’s a silence. Then some shuffling around. You hear Gojo’s very distinct sigh.

“So barbaric, old man. You really gonna hit someone while they’re defenceless? You get off on that or somethin’?”

“She’s hardly defenceless.”

“Let her gain her bearings,” comes another voice. You know that one. It’s Yaga. “She’s probably still recovering.”

Someone grimaces. “I don’t want to imagine what it’s like to take on that imaginary technique of yours.”

“No? I could probably give you a list of symptoms. Although it does vary from cursed spirit to curse user. I haven’t had to use it on a human in—“ he pauses. “Some time!”

“Idiot,” a feminine voice snaps. “You’re lack of restraint could’ve gotten her killed.”

“But it didn’t!”

“That isn’t the point! You tore a hole in the school campus! What if that thing had hit one of the children?”

“As if.”

There’s a silence.

“What the?” Gojo sounds offended. “You guys seriously think I’d aim Hollow Purple just anywhere?”

“Yes,” a grumbly old voice replies.

“Ehh? That’s so dark, old man.”

You let out a slightly sharper breath, their words sliding between your ears like water. You can hear what they’re saying, but it’s harder to comprehend it without context. Warped syllables shift from one part of your brain to the other, weighed down by some distant, throbbing pain.

There’s another silence.

“Kanzaaaakii,” Gojo sings, annoyingly close to your ear. “You awake?”

You want to pull back, his voice too loud and too close, but you barely have the strength to hold your head. Instead, you shift your chin to the side, squinting at him through the kaleidoscope of blood cells rushing behind your eyelids.

“Oh my!” He wriggles his fingers at you. “It’s alive! It’s alive!”

Your eyebrows flatten, and you trap your teeth together. Did he seriously just quote Frankenstein at you?

Oh, the things you would do if you weren’t restrained.

“Gojo,” you croak out. Your voice is heavy and slurred, something that at one point in time meant a very different thing for you. A numbness trickles into your chest, settling at the bottom of your pelvis. 

Gojo leans even further into your personal space, his warm breath puffing over your cheeks. “Hm? What is it?”

“Get out of my face before I break yours.”

He laughs. “You reckon you could?”

A twitch forms on your upper lip, forming into a knife-like sneer.

He rocks back, his grin splitting across his face. “See? You guys were fussin’ about brain damage for nothing.”

“I’m going to bite your head off and spit it down your neck.”

“So violent…”

“Okay,” you hear a feminine voice. “That’s definitely Kanzaki-san.”

You turn slowly. “Utahime?”

She shoots you a nervous smile.

She looks…completely different now. Her hair, her clothes. Her face. A void of difference compared to the frazzled, unsure sorcerer you’d met all those years ago. She’s put-together. Dressed like a teacher, with a hardness to her features that wasn’t there before.

You glance around, your eyes falling on Yaga. You nearly smile, but a pressure builds up in your chest the longer you stare, and the short burst of relief vanishes. He’s different, too. His posture’s straighter. There’s a power to his presence that you’d probably never really paid attention to as a kid. He’s still wearing sunglasses indoors, and he’s still got that immaculate goatee.

Pain stirs in your stomach, creeping its way into your throat until your jaw begins to ache. You have missed so much of their lives. Horrors and joys and everything in between. So many memories that you’ve been barred entry to.

Rage is the other side of the coin of your grief. It always has been.

You notice Gakuganji standing at the back, curled over his cane like a weathered skin sack. He looks almost crippled. Your senses sharpen, realising what this is. Him and all his dick-swinging compatriots are here to make sure you burn for their mistakes. Your wrists ache against their restraints, and you take a rattling breath. A measure of control.

Yaga folds his arms over his chest. No hello’s. But you guess you should’ve expected this. There’d been no goodbyes either.

You’re practically a stranger to these people now.

“What were you doing with Itadori Yuji in the forest?”

You don’t flinch at the question; you just stare at the floor.

“Answer the question,” Gakuganji demands.

That kink in your back is beginning to play up. You can feel little air bubbles drifting up your spine, each one digging the pain deeper as it dissolves.

Gojo lets out a big yawn. “Really? This again?” He’s leaning against the wall with his hands shoved into his pockets. The perfect picture of ease for someone who could pop your head off your shoulders without even lifting a finger. “We got anyone skilled with interrogations? I’d like to skip the bullshit this time round.”

A bubble pops on your cheek. “Should’ve thought about that before you blasted my brain with imaginary mass.”

Utahime sends Gojo a look.

“Don’t be such a crybaby. I didn’t even mean to.”

“Answer the question,” Yaga redirects.

“You answer it,” you say with a jerk of your head. “It’s his little bandwagon that invited me here in the first place.”

Everyone turns to stare at Gakuganji.

Gojo’s smile drops.

That makes you laugh, the sound deranged as it passes your cracked lips. Utahime looks at you, her expression jarred. You can’t begin to imagine what she thinks of you. Tied up and cackling like a psycho. Some part of you—a small, squashed-down part—actually cares about what she thinks of you, but it’s been swallowed whole by so many other things.

There’s a frivolity to managing expectations.

Gakuganji huffs, shaking his head. “A poor deflection.”

“From what? The fact you wanted him dead anyway?” You snort. “Careful, old man, wouldn’t want you to fall from that blessed moral high ground you have.”

Gojo’s lips press together.

“You can’t get your own hands dirty, right?” You jab. “It’s too messy.”

Gakuganji won’t look you in the eye, and there’s something so intensely delicious about his discomfort that you can’t pull yourself away.

“You like letting children do your dirty work, huh?”

“I wasn’t aware the vessel was alive until a couple hours ago,” he grunts, eyes glued to the floor. “How could I have orchestrated something so convoluted?”

Your first instinct is to dismiss his lie as shitty back-pedalling. But then you consider the fact that maybe…just maybe, you’ve been screwed in a completely different way than what you expected.

In the world of contracts, there’s always someone jumping through hoops to cover someone else’s ass. If Gakuganji does, in fact, have no idea what you’re talking about, that means the higher-ups either discussed it within a very small, very important group of people, or it was completely off the books to begin with.

So they can’t be liable for any of it.

You let out a breathy laugh, tipping your head back to stare at the ceiling.

“Is that funny to you?” Yaga asks.

“Not particularly.”

Guess you should’ve considered the fact that if you were double-dipping on them, they could probably be doing the same.

You make a face. “I’ve been set up worse than I thought.”

You expect Gojo to jab at you, but he surprisingly stays silent.

“You must understand an excuse like that will be hard for us to believe,” Yaga says.

“Ya think?”

“We cannot simply take your word for it.”

You sigh. “You don’t have to. You can take there’s.”

“You have evidence of a contract?”

“I got sent a letter in the mail a couple of days ago—a nice, expensive one. Wax seal and everything. They told me about Sukuna's manifestation, said he was a problem that needed to be taken care of, and that I'd get a pretty nice reward for it. They were desperate to get rid of him, paid for my ticket and everything.”

There’s an uncomfortable silence. 

You bore your eyes into Gakuganji again. “I figured that your little goblin friends were just spitting the dummy big time. Obviously, I was never going to kill the kid. I just needed an excuse to get back without getting mowed down by sorcerers at the airport.”

More silence.

“If you never intended to harm Itadori, then why are you here?”

You sigh. “I was curious. I wanted to see if it was true; if he really could suppress Sukuna.” You laugh. “Now I see why you were shitting your pants about it, old man. The kids got massive potential.”

“If what you say is to be believed, where is the letter in question?”

“At the place I was staying out,” you say flatly. “But that alibi’s gonna fall flat. They’re probably tearing through the place right now looking for it.”

“So we’re back to square one?” Utahime sighs.

“What about the fingers?” Gojo asks.

You shrug. “What about them?”

“We know the patchwork curse attempted to steal from us,” Utahime explains calmly. “It used a charm beneath one of the fingers to navigate through Tengen’s barrier. We understand it took three special grade cursed wombs along with the fingers, as well as killing many sorcerers along the way. Did it communicate with you when you engaged it?”

“He wouldn’t shut up, actually.”

Yaga’s face tightens.

“Y’know? The usual ‘I’m gonna kill you’ and ‘that hurt’ and ‘die!’,” You say tiredly. “He mentioned his coconspirator—the other special grade. Seemed pretty planned out.”

“How’d you get rid of him?”

You make a face.

Yaga sighs. “We know you didn’t exorcise the curse. It left with the cursed wombs intact.”

Shit.

“I realised I was in a tiny room with a very powerful, touch-orientated cursed spirit and I—“

“You ran?” Gojo cuts in, utterly delighted.

Warmth burns at your ears. “I strategically evaded.” You correct.

“Psh,” he snickers. “You ran.”

“Gojo!” Utahime scolds. “Imagine what would’ve happened if she did stay. We’d be down another sorcerer, and they’d have six of Sukuna’s fingers. Her decision to flee was a good one.”

You don’t feel very triumphant about it.

“Are we done now?” You perk up, wriggling. "M'hungry and tired." 

“I have one more question for you, Kanzaki-san,” Utahime says. You gesture for her to go on. “Before…what did you mean by ‘get back’?”

You pause, squinting your eyes in confusion. “I’ve been…” you look around the room, going from expression to expression. “Did…do none of you know?”

“Know what?” Gojo asks, stepping forward. 

“I got banished,” you say slowly. “Nine years ago." 

Utahime’s face goes bright red. "E-excuse me?!" 

You shrink back. “I…I figured you guys knew.”

“No?!” Utahime looks horrified. “I-If we knew, w-we would’ve done something! That kind of sentencing is ancient. It hasn’t been a thing  for five hundred years!”

You are completely and utterly confused. "I don't think they cared much for the rules." 

Yaga scowls. "You don't say." 

Gojo leans into your personal space, the block of his blindfold pervading every corner of your vision. "Why?" 

You lean back, pressing your cheek into your shoulder. "Why what?" 

“Why did the higher-ups banish you?”

You swallow thickly. Now’s the time to lie like a fucking champion.

You shrug. “They gave me plenty of reasons. But the official statement is that I broke some dumb old Jujutsu law.”

“And did you?” Utahime asks.

You snort. “What do you think?”

She sighs, rubbing at her forehead. 

“Even if I did, it wouldn’t have mattered. They had it out for me and wanted me gone. They would’ve come up with any excuse under the sun to get rid of me," you turn back to them, a thought suddenly occurring to you. "What...what the hell did you guys think I was doing all this time?"

There's a quiet. 

“We thought you were dead." 

Dead? 

Dead dead?

“For nine years,” Gojo adds. “Packed into a little urn and everything. Guess even the higher-ups are good at surprises.”

You look at him, and even now, when so much time has passed, you can see through his flippancy. You know Gojo's pissed, because that's how he'd been with Suguru.

The mere thought of him has your shoulders dropping; every memory you’ve suppressed fighting back to the surface.

Dead.

Satoru thought you were dead.