Chapter Text
Satoru had never come to learn what grief was.
He had known annoyance, sure. The good and the bad kind; the kind that made him want to pinch cheeks and the kind that made him scream into his pillow at night.
He had also learned disappointment very, very well, and all the emotions that came with it—primarily the sadness, and the anger. In the face of it, he had taught himself to leave. Sometimes leaving came as a few hours spent in central Tokyo, shopping like no tomorrow for both himself and the exact people who disappointed him. Sometimes, it came in the form of running away for a few days or weeks on end, one-way train tickets from Kyoto to Tokyo, ignoring calls, and organizing his teachers to lie to his family. Breaking down in any of the four arms he had grown to trust completely, ranting and rambling as if they could ever understand what even a second spent in a clan like his would be.
Satoru knew knots in his throat, a fire behind his already sensitive eyes, and breaths stuck in his chest.
But by the souls of his damned ancestors, he had never known anything like this.
Seated on the stone steps leading up to the dojo, in the hours of the setting sun, he could not bring himself to face the light that shone onto his body like a fucking joke considering everything that had happened.
He had tried to fix all of his six eyes onto the grey stone that sat between his awkwardly parted and spread legs, and he was almost sure he had been successful in his attempt. It was either that, or he was too lost in his mind—an impossible feat, but he reckoned it could be happening in the wake of everything.
In the wake of staring endlessly at the unchanging grey stone that looked, and felt so dull under the shadows of his legs, listening to the dojo and the forest surrounding it that sounded so incredibly quiet, feeling not a single soul walking or even breathing around him; and knowing that until the end of his hilarious train wreck of a life, this all-consuming, horrible dullness that threatened to swallow him whole, the sinking feeling in his stomach so heavy it that felt like it pulled him down into the fiery core of the earth, would be his normal.
It would be the loneliness and the unchanging rather than the laughs shared on these very steps, convenience store bags spread across, cigarettes shared by pack, mouth and smoke, heart-to-hearts in the early hours of the morning that grew them closer than family. Suddenly, this place felt a lot more like home.
Satoru saw many things. It was what his six eyes did; they saw the atoms and the subatomic particles and the neurons and every little thing, giving him the truth, the real information. He could imagine, too, or so it seemed, with how clearly he could imagine the awful stretch of forever that awaited him until he died.
Closer than family.
How could he not have seen what was right before him every day? After noticing it, even—how could he have just let it go when all he got was a half-assed answer and the ever-deepening purple under the eyes he could not bring himself to dim today?
Satoru sighed, breathing out the last bit of breath from his lungs. He had been childish. He had been childish and he had been hurt that Suguru would be so closed off whenever they hung out and so quiet and he had been hurt that they would never speak about it and hurt that Suguru never brought it up when Satoru gave him the space to talk about it those couple of times and—
He placed his chin onto the heel of his hand when he felt a lurch in his stomach, the elbow on his thigh anchoring him in place.
Fucking hell.
It was then that he heard distant steps descending the many stairs leading to the dojo, and his six eyes saw them coming before the person could actually appear in front of him.
“Why didn’t you go after him?” The disappointed, grim voice asked as the descending steps slowed to a halt next to Satoru. He could not be sure if the disappointment he could hear was directed at him, or Suguru.
His childish mind ran a hundred miles an hour with all the tantrum-worthy words he wanted to speak, no, scream out, but in the end, Satoru settled for a deep breath and tilted his head enough to finally face forward.
“Are you really asking me that?” He asked, because the man standing next to him knew what they were like better than anybody in this school, save for Shoko.
There was a beat of silence reserved for looking at the orange, angry-looking setting sun. Then, “Nevermind. Sorry I asked.”
Satoru sighed again and lifted his head properly because it would not do to sulk. He did not have that kind of luxury, especially with how he was sure to get a good beating from the Higher Ups.
Probably in the form of a complaint to his clan that he had not been able to take out a mass murderer—a fucking mass murderer— because they would not dare to lay an actual hand on Satoru themselves.
“Sensei,” He started, and the syllables felt like they weighed a ton each on his tongue. He turned his gaze at the light in a way that would look over his glasses, just to feel something, but he did not feel the scorching burn he knew he was supposed to feel. It was the first of many sunsets he would experience alone, and he could safely bet it would be many, because—“I’m strong, right?”
“Yeah,” His teacher murmured, his voice gruff as it always seemed to be. “Brazenly so.”
Satoru hummed quietly. The sound died in his throat before it could be heard. “But apparently, it’s not good enough for just me to be strong,”
He tried gulping down just a portion of the lump that sat right behind his Adam’s apple. It seemed to work, but when he breathed again his ribcage hurt physically like it wanted to break into half right from his sternum, and like it would not care what it would do to his skin, so he was back at square one. “The only ones I can save are those who are already ready to be saved by another.”
Because why would the strong and brave want to be saved by another, when they could use that strength and courage for something that could save them?
Pale, but bright under eyes puffy from getting enough sleep, an effort put into the clothes he was wearing, hair freshly cut, brushed, and pulled back with actual care as to how it looked.
Suguru had looked the healthiest Satoru had seen him in the past year. At the least.
I’ve decided how I’ll live my life. Now it’s just a matter of doing the best I can to achieve that.
Satoru could not have saved him if he tried.
The next morning, he woke up with a jolt.
The sun was out, but he could tell he was awake earlier than he was supposed to be. The dorms were quiet—admittedly hugely in part of missing the one other person who shared the hallway with him. Still, he could not hear the tip-taps of Shoko heading to the bathroom, which was usually what he woke up to, because she liked giving their doors a couple of knocks as she walked by.
Sitting up on the mattress with a sigh, Satoru winced at the feeling of light over his eyes and rubbed the front of his neck where he could still feel the blade so clearly. Last night’s terror of Fushiguro Toji had been particularly realistic and true to the scenario.
Having no one to talk about it, he settled for scrambling for his glasses and getting up and about as quickly as he could.
He dressed and went to the bathroom and got started with his day, and when he left the dorms he headed immediately to the corner of the kitchen, the one covered by shadows between the dorms and the building where the classes were held, to see whether he could have been wrong about Shoko. It was where she smoked when they did not have enough time to get away from the school.
Maybe, he had hoped, she had woken up even earlier and was chain-smoking like there was no tomorrow.
When Satoru arrived, the corner was empty and quiet. He even walked up and down a few paces to check if there were any cigarette butts on the ground that looked recent enough—to no avail.
With nothing else to do, and no appetite to satisfy, Satoru ended up heading to the classroom instead.
He momentarily stopped in the room’s doorway when he saw the three desks. Still three.
A deep breath left him; the kind where he could not tell he had not breathed back in before his lungs gave him a burning reminder.
He walked up to his designated desk, the closest to the door, with his hands in his pockets.
He sat down. It was as uncomfortable as always on his stupidly long legs, and his knees protested at the tight fit. So he pushed his chair back, leaned forward, and placed his head on the wooden surface with a stretched arm behind it.
He was facing the window-side, and directly facing Suguru’s forever-empty desk.
It was a weird thing, because he had reflected on how it might feel—when Haibara had passed, and the junior’s desk had become an empty, haunting presence in the classroom of the first-years for the half-day before someone came to remove it. They were always told, no, always reminded, that they would really only get to see their thirties if they were lucky and strong enough. It was highly likely that they would be killed before then, especially during high school, when they are thrown at a plethora of different grades of curses without a very good grasp of their own abilities, techniques, and limits.
But Suguru was right there, somewhere.
Perhaps feeling as shitty as Satoru was, perhaps not, and already thriving on the sprees of killings he had promised to go on, senseless to Satoru but justified to him.
It was weird, because Satoru would never see him again if it was not for the intention of killing him, and Satoru would kill him if that ever happened because even he could not afford to let go of a strong curse user with genocidal (omnicidal?) tendencies. Maybe the would-be strongest curse user in modern times, if he actually kept to his word.
Satoru’s other hand curled up on the desk, and he ran a thumb over his bottom lip and chin in thought. That was the thing. He tried to think about it and tried to understand it but he could not, and it was driving him crazy that he was unable to understand the person he felt the closest to.
He understood it to some extent. He was no stranger to horrible, horrible thoughts.
But—
Should we kill them?
Does there have to be a point?
A pang physically threatened to tear through his forehead, so he closed his eyes, choosing to exist in the blissful there-and-not.
Until a good while later, when he heard footsteps again, and it was his teacher that his six eyes picked up on again.
Satoru opened his eyes properly when the footsteps paused in the doorway just like he had, and did not bother to pick his head up—he did a little in the beginning, but before he could sit up properly, his teacher raised a hand that effectively stopped him.
It must have been a depressing sight because it was a hilariously tragic sight: a big classroom with only three desks to begin with occupied by one student; the one student who barely had to do any training anymore because who was to teach him when he had surpassed everybody and everything and attained the status of a concept more than of a person?
Shoko must have not wanted to see Satoru. Or must have not wanted to come out of her room today. Or she was going through the day as normal, but was off to do something to do with reversed cursed. He could not be sure; he was not exactly sure which day it was, and whether Shoko had classes with them –him– today.
“Don’t bother, son,” Yaga grumbled with his permanent wrinkles between the brows that looked particularly deep. “Let’s not do this today.”
Then his teacher did a double-take on him, frowning, before he walked away.
“The Higher Ups are expecting you immediately after lunchtime.”
So Satoru felt bad for himself for a little more while, waited for Shoko to arrive (she never did), prepared himself for the headache the good-for-nothings would spew and spit at him, and went on to have his lunch because the kitchen staff had already snitched on him for not eating breakfast to Yaga, and he ate while his teacher took a few glances at him like he did not notice anything despite being able to perceive everything in the fucking universe, because he, for once, was a good boy like that.
His teacher even gave him his own sweets—some fried treat with honey Satoru could not name exactly, and it made him want to throw up a little, because he would have preferred to be scolded and punched like he usually was and this seemed to hurt more.
The hurt was at first emphasized by the Higher Ups when visited them, standing in the middle of all of them like he was supposed to, before the same group of people ignited a flame in him burning so bright he thought he would blow on the spot.
You were entrusted with taking care of an explosive curse user, and you failed.
Geto Suguru could have matched up to your level in certain respects, but you had the upper hand. Are you not the prodigy of the Gojo clan?
No punishment is punishment enough for this grave mistake. Your clan will be asked to handle this incompetence, and you will be taking on missions without pay.
You must teach yourself not to become blinded by personal matters if you are to become truly worthwhile.
You are supposed to be the strongest.
Why did you hesitate?
Because yes, of course, Satoru had hesitated.
“I was ready to unleash Purple on him,” Satoru mumbled by the evening of that same day, seated at the counter of Shoko’s room in the infirmary that was a mix of an examination and an operation room, because you never knew what you got with reversed cursed.
He did not want to mention anything about how he had basically hunted her down on the campus, even if she had not wanted to see him.
“You mean the thing that blew a hole through Fushiguro?”
“Mm.”
Shoko’s brows raised, impressed, in the apathetic hue any of her other emotions also always seemed to be carrying. She turned around and placed something she had been working with into the cupboard when Satoru walked into the public-but-personal space uninvited, tiptoeing to reach it. Then she walked past him on the stool and left the room altogether.
When she returned a minute later, she held a red can of strawberry soda, one of his favorites, and placed it on the counter in front of him.
While he mumbled his tiny thanks, she lit herself a cigarette, choosing not to care about the possibility of being caught—Satoru had fumbled taking down a mass murderer, she would be fine.
With a sigh, she placed her elbows on the counter and leaned down so her face would be level with Satoru’s. She was graceful enough to grant some distance so she would not be blowing the smoke directly into his face.
“I thought you could not fully control the force of that yet.” She commented.
“I’m working on it,”
“You were in Shinjuku. With people all around.”
Satoru nodded.
“Then what were you thinking?” Shoko asked like she could not believe him.
“It was instinct.”
He did not have to have his six eyes to know Shoko’s eyes staring into his soul; he could have felt it even if his power was to be buried in complete darkness.
Satoru fiddled with the tab of the can, and Shoko stared at him like he was some sort of puzzle she could not quite even picture the completed version of, and that was that for a few moments.
“It felt like Red or Blue wouldn’t be enough,” He mumbled at last, growing mildly annoyed with the eyes on him. “He could’ve defeated me easily.”
A snigger. “I don’t know about that.”
“I do,” Satoru faced her. “He could.”
Shoko shut up real fast about whatever she was going to say next, closing her mouth with a lightly audible clack of her teeth, but then she collected the courage to ask it anyway.
“Okay,” She licked her bottom lip and itched her chin with the hand that held the cigarette that was just burning away. “Why did you hesitate then?”
A laugh left Satoru then, one that sounded breathy and more like he was wheezing the breath out. It sounded more like a sob when he inhaled it back.
“I didn’t,” He said, and made some sort of gesture with his hands on the counter that was jerky and insistent. “I didn’t—I was about to unleash something that could’ve taken out the entire fucking street with him. That was my first response, Shoko. My gut feeling.”
Suguru was that big of a threat. Not like Fushiguro Toji; he was a strong threat, but when it had come to it in the end, he had just been something to test Satoru’s ascension on.
“And he’s our friend Shoko, he’s—he’s my best friend, how normal is that?” Satoru asked, his tone coming off desperate and much unlike him as he leaned forward to make his point halfway through the sentence.
Shoko’s brows twitched at the question, just barely, but Satoru caught it.
“Nobody asks that. Or how normal it is to kill someone so young after you’ve preached early death to them,” Satoru rambled. “How normal it is to preach strength, always strength, but not once vulnerability in the face of death, I don’t know, trauma, something like that,”
“We ignored him, Shoko,” Satoru said before she could do anything to cut his train of thought off. “Yeah we asked how he was doing, but we chose to trust him even though we saw his eggplant-looking under eyes because we didn’t know better,” He pointed carelessly at a random spot, his arm having a mind of its own. “Look where that got us. Look where that got him, that kind of incompetence.”
At that, Shoko’s brows furrowed instead. “Surely you know how stupid and childish of a decision his was.”
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t going to take him out when he’s the consequence of something we’re all a part of,” Satoru muttered, pulled the tab of the can, and took an angry if not frustrated chug of the strawberry soda without another look at her.
“So what, let him rampage another village until he grows the balls to go through the whole of Tokyo?” Shoko asked daringly, her voice tight and low, and finally, an impressive amount of wasted cigarette ash fell onto the counter in one perfect piece.
Satoru shrugged. “I’m not the only sorcerer they have,” He mumbled, again faking interest in the too-familiar soda can. “Let them grow better ones who can finish the job.”
Shoko stayed quiet at that because she thought Satoru would forever be unmatched, and Satoru did not add to his words because he was hurt and he knew it had to be possible if only people actually tried.
There was silence for a good while, which only ended when Shoko decided to light up another cigarette and took a long drag of it.
“He looked healthy,” She murmured finally, and when Satoru looked up, he saw her gaze fixed at the opposite wall in reflection. “Sounded healthy.”
“He did.” Satoru agreed.
“Fucking asshole,” Shoko murmured, and her voice grew a little too tight at the end of the short sentence. He settled for a nod.
Survival of the weakest; that’s what society should strive to be.
Satoru had seen corruption firsthand both back home and right on the grounds of this dojo. It lingered anywhere where power existed, but it was always people who he could tell tended to fall for it that did. Always the people that felt suspicious, the ones who seemed too eager to do things if it meant they got pats in the back and parties thrown for them and their name preached like they were some kind of hero.
Never the best of them; never the quiet, calm, collected one that did things because they were the right thing to do that they had a calling to do.
It was a Wednesday when he had a chat with Shoko. Between Wednesday and Saturday of the same week, he was sent on sixteen separate missions alone.
When he woke up on Saturday to yet another terror where Fushiguro Toji was the main character, trying to find some purchase at the skin of his neck, more paranoid than the usual due to the exhaustion, he remembered.
Two or three years from now, my kid will be sold off to the Zen’in clan.
Do what you will with that.
It was not that Satoru actually forgot about the kid. It was more the implication that he tried to forget.
Surely, from a man like Fushiguro Toji, do what you will with that had to really mean that Satoru was under no obligation to do anything.
But he also had a feeling that a man like Fushiguro Toji, a nightmare to the Zen’in clan yet still fighting their war against the Gojo clan be it for selfish reasons or not, would not just tell that to the factual heir and prodigy of the said clan for no good reason.
And that meant the implication of you could give a damn about my kid if you wanted to and be some sort of guardian must have gone well beyond the intentions of a regretful father wanting the good of his kid.
It was why he decided to spend the day in the archives.
Nobody ever used the archives unless there was some unregistered curse people wanted to try tracking down the roots of, or unless there was a kid who was not really well-liked in their clan or family, who wanted to actually learn things about themselves.
Satoru pulled documents out for the Zen’in clan, as well as a very, very thick folder.
He was good at reading; he was even better at skimming. Even with the glasses his eyes got exhausted to the point of physical pain whenever he had to read, because despite the dark comfort of them he had to focus on all of the information that the letters contained—not just the facts, but also the particles. It had made him learn how to take in the information with as little effort as possible, especially seeing how he actually liked reading, despite almost everyone who thought otherwise.
By the time he had gotten his second can of really sugary vending machine soda that was probably the only good thing left on this campus, he had skimmed over five documents.
On the seventh document, he started to become annoyed at the small amounts of information he could find about Fushiguro Toji. Satoru had known he was the disappointment of the Zen’in clan— he had been laughing matter back home for a long time. He had also known that Toji had become more of an acceptable burden, and he could very well tell why, until he had left the clan. But it seemed even the fact he left the clan was missing from the documents.
Until the eighth several-page document he found.
Satoru found not only the information of the person he had left the clan for, a Fushiguro, but he had also found the information of where the Zen’in clan had last corresponded with him in person. A few pages later he found the same information again; different information titled the same, a few years later.
They had not seen the kid, but they had noted that the kid had been with Fushiguro Toji, and Satoru saw something about a bet on inherited cursed technique. A couple of pages later, he saw that they had paid the amount agreed for the cursed technique.
Satoru did not have to research to know. He knew it oh so well.
A smile, far from the regret and internal void that haunted him these days; toothy and wicked, wide, tight and twisted, spread across his face. Do what you will with that.
Fuck it. He would bite.
Satoru practically inhaled the records on the Ten Shadows technique, forgoing another trip to the vending machine; the thrill he felt at the revelation despite everything messed up going on was stimulation enough to keep him going.
It would most probably earn him favors from his family, too, to have an advantage like the opportunity to tame the one jujutsu sorcerer they knew for sure could hold the strength to kill him eventually, to train him for the Gojo clan’s benefit and Zen’in’s loss, or whatever horrible thing they would call it. He did not care. He did not plan to tame the kid or involve him in any kind of personal wars he himself did not prefer to fight.
He did, however, plan to educate him somehow.