Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“That’s a good boy, Tofu“, you cooed at a very happy looking Shiba Inu while showing an antibiotic pill in his mouth. He wagged his tail happily and scarfed down the treat you offered him after the literal bitter pill and proceeded to place his front paws on your legs and nuzzle you with affection.

You laughed and playfully tousled his slightly chubby face before scratching behind his ears – his favourite spot, easy to discern by his very enthusiastic tail wagging and panting. Then again, he loved attention and humans in general and was very frugal in his personal demands.

If only he wasn’t of the sickly sort, you thought bitterly while happily showering the dog with a cute rose neck scarf with affection. He was currently suffering from Kennel cough, despite having received vaccination. Only a couple of weeks before that, it was otitis. He also had inbred hip dysplasia, though he was still rather young, and it didn’t seem to affect him as much as it could.

Tofu was one of the many homeless pets you helped take care of at the local animal shelter whenever you either had the luxury of spare time or the animal shelter school club swung by collectively.

He was a golden boy, really, having a very affectionate character, good behaviour on the leash, good compatibility with other animals and even children (as long as they were at least in elementary school) and never resentful or openly aggressive – unless he protected his pack.

Guess we have that in common, you thought to yourself while softly booping his nose with a smile. The problem wasn’t his character, nor his age, for he was still rather young for his breed. The crux lied in his weak immune system as well as his inbred hip problems – both implied that he would have to have regular veterinarian appointments and a not-so-cheap supply of meds. As Shiba Inu he also wasn’t a beginner-friendly dog, so he wasn’t a feasible option for some highly motivated benefactors without prior dog experience, either.

You heaved a heavy sigh that was overheard and interrupted by Mio, one of the main caretakers at the shelter.

“You know, you’ll get wrinkles if you continue to sigh like that”, she smirked. “You may want to take caution, seeing as you already have white hair.”

“White streaks, Mio! Not white hair!” you retorted, only pretending to be offended by her remark.

She answered with a hearty laugh. “Sure lass, if you say so.”

You plucked subconsciously at one of those white streaks, only mildly self-conscious about them. Those streaks were a side effect of your innate cursed technique and were white as pure snow. It was a common sight in your clan, but not so much in the mundane world.

Thankfully -and curiously- enough, it didn’t make the wearer look older, probably because those streaks weren’t grey and instead just seemed… whimsical in their own right. At least, that’s what you’ve been told by others. You also have been asked on more than one occasion if you’re secretly a Yuki Onna by children, so maybe the opinions of others ought to be given not too much weight anyway.

Not that you cared much about those opinions or the streaks themselves, but they were an everlasting reminder of who you were and where you hailed from. And, sometimes, you hated those streaks for it, after all. Those were the times where you wished you could be but a normal 15-year-old girl minding her own business and attending high school.

But alas, fate apparently looked at you, laughed and said “Nah, let’s have her be something she does not want to be”.

Well, could be worse. Not like you were born into an abusive environment. Well. As non-abusive as Jujutsu clans and families even could be, you reckoned.

“You okay, [Name]? You seem spaced out”, Mio said and effectively pulled you out of your thoughts that threatened to take a turn for the bitter.

You smiled wryly at her and nodded yes.

Mio was a woman in her early 20s, surprisingly tall for a Japanese woman with being somewhat taller than 1,70m. She sported an undercut with a shaved-in pattern and relatively short top hair that she usually wore tied up in a bun. Similar to you, she had tattoos decorating her body, though more in number than you did and wore piercings.

In other words, for a lot of normal Japanese, she looked like she was at least in league with Yankis, if not the Yakuza itself. It probably didn’t help that she could behave like a bulldozer and was a very far cry from the cliché demure and soft-spoken Japanese woman.

Little did most people know that she was a fiercely loyal friend who cared for her cherished ones with an amount of devotion that was rare to find these days. And not just that, she always had a weak spot for those weaker than others, those that were usually picked out to be their victim. She had a strong right-hander she wasn’t afraid to use and from what you’ve gathered, kneecaps met their demise when met with a bat wielded by her.

Those were but rumours, though you were inclined to believe them. You were also inclined to agree with the notion that she either had or still has some connection to Yankis or similar folk, but at the same time you knew she was one of the good ones. And you utterly adored her, not least because she reminded you of your cousin.

Though, to be perfectly honest, your cousin was not nearly as blunt and brash with her words as Mio was.

No matter, not like you were a picture-perfect Japanese high school student either. Being associated with delinquents happened often enough, but that came with being tattooed and wearing more than the usual two piercings in a conservative country like Japan.

“Good. Well anyway, can you be a cute little mochi and take care of Momo? She needs to take her medicine as well and you know how cranky that old hag can be. Especially where meds are concerned.” She let out a snivelling sigh, dramatically placing her hand over her face and then proceeding to imitating the cat’s indignant hissing.

You laughed, both at her impersonation and her pet name for you. You couldn’t remember when she started with that, but it had been going on for a while now. You didn’t mind it, seeing as there was nothing but affection motivating her to do this, even though the chosen names could be peculiar and usually were the names of Japanese sweets.

For people she didn’t like, she also had some pet names, usually the types people usually used in relationships, if they were feeling cheesy enough. You never encountered anyone other than her who was able to call another person “my sweet honey bear” with a sweet tune while simultaneously sounding and looking like she was close to breaking bones or throwing hands.

“Sure, I’ll take care of it. Her weekly dose of two stroking units is due, anyway.” You answered, giving Tofu one last pat and leaving and closing his enclosure.

“Weekly dose of petting? TWO units? Are we sure we’re talking about the same old hag?”, Mio asked with theatrically raised eyebrows.

“Don’t be mean, even she needs some affection every now and then”, you chided playfully while heading towards the backrooms to wash your hands and pick up Momo’s medicine as well as some treat to hide it in. That was usually the least violent method to administer meds to her. Least violent for you, the humans, that is.

“Sure, sure, mochi. That’s coming from the one person that old cat is willing to tolerate long enough to take care of such things without having to call over the ambulance. Again.”

You snorted. Mio might be exaggerating, but not by much. The cat really was vicious and generally didn’t like being handled, touched or sometimes even so much as looked at. She was old, though, 15 years old just like you, albeit 15 years in cat years. She wasn’t able to see well in one eye, had one clipped ear, a mutilated tail and was prone to tooth pain.

She had been a rescue and had been highly feral during the first weeks. She had a history of abuse and lots of bad experience with people, or so you at the shelter assumed, so no one really held it against her.

Still, dealing with her directly often proved difficult and everyone was instructed to only do so with thick enough gloves. You, too, had been a vile being in her eyes during your first days here. But for some reason, she then decided that you were just sufficiently non-nasty enough that she could put up with you from time to time. Never for long periods at a time, though.

“Must have to do something with my irresistible high schooler charm. Or maybe she likes my hair?” You joked amused, exaggeratedly gesturing towards your frame. This caused Mio to let out a barking laugh while slapping your back. You hacked a little when she did so. That woman had some serious strength to her.

“Yes, white hair certainly is one trait you share.” Waggishness danced in her hazel eyes. You weren’t deceiving her; she knew you. Just like her, you weren’t mincing words and could be polarising and provocative in a country that was so focused on public appearances and “saving faces”. Though she was the last one to chide you for that, of course.

While the two of you were bantering, you quickly got everything you needed for Momo and headed towards the outdoor enclosures with Mio on your heels, since she had to take care of the birds anyway and wanted to “watch you charming the old hag into taking medicine”.

You neared the old cat’s enclosure and were promptly met with some highly urgent meowing, while Momo came walking at a brisk speed toward the door, her stubby tail raised like a bottle brush.

True to her name, her fur resembled the colour of peaches, even though it appeared faded and sported some grey streaks. You doubted she would be living for that much longer, considering just how old she sounded and how the time between her illnesses was steadily decreasing.

But no matter, until that day came, you would continue to give kindness and affection to her, as much as she would tolerate or even want.

“Hey there Momo, ready for your meds?” An indignant meowing, laced with a high urgency. “… Well. Sounds like you’re rather ready for your food. No way around it, though.”

Before you could open the enclosure and slip in, you heard it.

A commotion.

Not the kind that sounds like trouble or danger is incoming, but rather… like a VIP just appeared.

Confused, you stopped, knitting your brows and turned to Mio with a questioningly look on your face. Appearing just as confused as you, she shrugged and craned her neck to try and see what the ruckus was about.

From your position in the outdoor area, you could see the parking lot and a small share of the main entrance.

“Uhh”, Mio said slowly. “I can see a limousine parked in the lot. Are we expecting some rich folks? Didn’t know they even know of the sheer existence of animal shelters.”

You shook your head. You would probably know if some high-profile guest was expected, since the owner of the shelter would have had all of you clean and polish every surface and enclosure at least two times. Not to mention the meticulous cleaning of the animals.

The ruckus seemed to get closer, and by know you could definitely hear that the other girls were squealing with delight.

One of your other coworkers, Ayame, just came sliding around the corner and darted towards you, her cheeks dusted pink and her eyes pretty much the shape of hearts.

“O-M-G, gals, some absurdly pretty guy that looks like God moulded himself just came sauntering in! He looks like a model and super rich, so I honestly don’t know what he’s doing here of all places, but…” She led out a languid sigh that made her seem like she just met Adonis in the flesh. “I’ve never met anyone with such snow-white hair! Their colour is similar to your streaks, [Name]. And, oh, wait until you see his eyes. They’re so. Blue and I haven’t seen anything like that before and-“

She went on ranting absolutely smitten by this random dude that apparently came in and annexed everyone’s attention and hearts by just… being there.

Mildly exasperated, you sighed and nodded, already accustomed to her tendency to fangirl about attractive men. White hair and strikingly blue eyes were rather uncommon, if not absolutely unheard of. The only other guy you knew who fitted to that description was probably Gojo Satoru. What an annoying coincidence. Not like you wanted to be reminded of the likes of him.

…

Wait. White hair? Absurdly blue eyes? Appears to be rich? Hogs all the attention as soon as he appears?

If there actually was a second person who fit to that description, you would go and get your tattoos removed, that you swore internally while your features slipped and gave way to an expression of incredulous horror.

“Uhh… okay? So why come tell us?”, you hesitantly asked, hoping for the best. He wouldn’t be here for you… right? Someone like him probably wouldn’t even know you as person, let alone by name -even though you have met more than once-, much less find out where you were volunteering and swing by.

His intention wasn’t to take you back to the society… right?

Oh, you very much prayed it wasn’t the case because beating him up to save yourself would prove to be… near impossible.

“Oh, right, sorry about that”, Ayame perked up and turned to look at you, smiling. “He said he was looking to adopt a stray. And then he requested you by name. He’s coming here just now.”

That much was evident, going by the increasing volume of overly excited women.

You, however, pretty much froze to the spot and lifelessly dropped Momo’s treat with the medicine inside. The cat meanwhile accused you vociferously of negligence (meowingly) and pawed at the dropped treat, trying to grab it with her claws and dragging it inside her enclosure.

You didn’t register that, didn’t hear the muffled voices of Mio and Ayame talking about god knows what.

Instead, you felt your blood run cold, felt the increasing rhythm of the pulse monitor watch keeping you informed about your heart rhythm while being mentally unable to pay any heed to it.

Slowly, as if things might turn out to be a joke or a nightmare after all, you turned your face towards the door leading inwards, just as someone appeared on its threshold.

Despite the black sunglasses you felt his gaze falling on you, while his pleasant smile only grew bigger as soon as he laid eyes on you. With a practised, beaming smile -and probably a swoon worthy wink as bonus, who knew- he dismissed the cluster of shelter workers and stepped forward.

“The stray I was looking for!” he beamed, stretching his arms outward as if announcing some divine revelation.

Chapter Text

It was him. Gojo fucking Satoru.

The one person who seemed to embody everything you hated about the Jujutsu Society, which was filled with narcissistic, arrogant, self-centred and often downright maniac people that treated others not as people, but as assets. And more often than not discarded them without much fuss.

For some reason, he seemed to embody all of that and still take the cake.

Needless to say, you loathed him. Though, to be honest, it might’ve not even been him as a person you hated, but rather the fact how differently he versus others, like the people from your clan, got treated.

It didn’t change the fact that fury rose within you that felt hot like water on frozen fingers on a cold winter day. You clenched your fists and teeth, narrowing your eyes at him.

“What are you doing here?”, you spat, not an ounce of reverence present in either your voice, facial expression or body language.

With an obnoxiously amused smile he tilted his head to the side.

“Why, I’m pretty sure everyone knows of me. But as it seems like you have been living under a rock, let me do you the magnanimous honour of introducing myself. I’m THE Gojo-“

“I know who you are, Satoru”, you spat with as much disdain as you could muster, addressing him by his first name on purpose. “I didn’t ask for your name, I asked what the fuck you’re doing here. Would you please pay attention to others and listen?”

Gojo’s whole affected behaviour came to a screeching halt as he spluttered and blinked at you.

That certainly was a first. While he was pretty sure there were lots of people who disliked him -he was the greatest after all, envy and all that came by territory-, they all were careful to treat him in a subdued, polite manner, not risking provoking him or his clan. Not that he would care about a little quip here and there or even a snarky remark.

Actually, it would make things interesting for a change. But, nobody was willing to take on the Gojo clan, much less him, Gojo Satoru.

You, however, seemed to care very little about such sentiments. You, a little 15-year-old high school girl who ran away from home and hid among the plebs, caring for… animals.

In fact, it seemed like the only reaction you had to him was rage. And hate. How adorable. You reminded him of a grumpy little cat that swats at anything and anyone.

He tilted his head forward ever so slightly, so that his glasses slid slightly down his nose and his blue eyes were scrutinizing your form over the glass’s rims. Somehow, he felt like he had seen your cursed energy profile just a few moments ago.

The chiming of a small bell redirected his attention to a colourful Fūrin in form of a maneki-neko hanging down from the roof of the animal shelter. That’s when it hit him – he had seen a second Fūrin when entering the building. The other one was made from glass and painted with bright blue fishes if he remembered correctly.

Both had traces of your cursed energy and omitted a feeling similar to veils, but at the same time, were not resembling them at all.

His gaze flitted back to you and his grin broadened, if that was even possible. So you were the one responsible for that faint feeling of protection that lingered over this place. Made sense, seeing as your entire cursed technique was based on protection, or rather shields.

“I was told by a friend of mine that I ought to take over responsibility. So I’m here to adopt a stray”, he beamed, again with a posture as if he was some kind of prophet coming to the rescue of others.

He has friends? Poor souls. I wonder if he coerced them into pretending or something, you thought to yourself with a sneer.

“Oh, you want to adopt a pet? Well, that’s beautiful news”, you scoffed and started moving towards an enclosure that held a couple of visually very distinctive bunnies. “If you’d follow me, we have some very charming bunnies that could use a big, new home. Take Ninjin here, for example.”

You pointed towards a bunny that was sitting with a certain distance to others and was white with black spots. “He’s a charming old grandpa and guaranteed to chomp your fingers off and shit on your shoes as a heartfelt thankyou gift. I’m sure you would be a good match.”

You sent him a radiant smile that barely even reached your upper lip, let alone your eyes. Those very clearly conveyed the words “Fuck off already”.

He either didn’t notice or didn’t care, because all he did was let out a boisterous laugh.

“Oh no, I’m not looking to adopt some bunny. You’re the stray I’m looking to adopt.”

You stared at him with an empty look on your face. Was he joking? And even if he was, didn’t he have anything better to do than to pester high school girls, even if they had run away from the Jujutsu Society and their clan?

“The fuck are you even talking about. I’m neither a stray nor up for adoption. Are you daft?”

Internally, you flinched slightly. Even if you couldn’t stand him for the life of you, maybe you should try to be at least somewhat less impudent. Who knew what kind of repercussions your behaviour could have.

But the longer you were in his presence, the longer you had to witness and talk to him, the more your sanity and patience seemed to slip out of your grasp. And mind you, your interaction had barely lasted for 10 minutes, if at all.

Your resilience towards him was probably way below 0, given how little tolerance you had for him and his antics. Or, well, just him in general, without even knowing him on a deeper personal level. Not that you would want that, anyway.

You had met him before, of course, though it certainly was not a personal meetup you had with him. When there were gatherings, especially bigger gatherings, someone like him was bound to be present as well, after all.

And it was nigh impossible to not notice someone like him, even if he would have had a more subdued personality.

“Well, I know a certain teacher who might concur with you here”, he grinned, apparently not in the slightest bothered by your attitude. Good for you, you guessed. “Personally, I disagree of course. Besides, you did run away from your family, didn’t you?”

You stiffened. You assumed that he might know about that, given how he repeatedly called you a stray. You did not know, however, if that was public knowledge back in your circle or if he went out of his way to acquire that piece of information about you – and if so, why he would even do that.

His so called “friend” allegedly instigated him to “take over responsibility”, so maybe it was said “friend” who passed along that knowledge in the first place.

For a moment, you wondered if your older brother or your cousin had anything to do with that, but you dismissed the idea. You were pretty sure none of them were particularly close to Satoru, if they even had so much as a private conversation with him, let alone set him on you.

Furthermore, that sort of thing would just not be their style. You were in regular contact with them, and they did not object to you moving out and living on your own. Instead, they were the ones who helped you getting out of the family’s home and settled in the small apartment in the first place.

So, whoever that “friend” of his was, you would really like to give them an earful of your opinion on that current situation. If you ever had the displeasure of meeting them.

Mio, sweet, dear Mio, who had been silent up until this moment took it upon her to interject in this conversation and interjecting she did. With some cracking knuckles and a very big scowl.

“I don’t care who the fuck you think you are, bigshot, but if you think you can just waltz in here, treat a human being like some random stray and even insinuate she’s up for grabbing just because she’s an alleged runaway, you’re severely mistaken.”

You really adored her. Granted, she had no idea who Gojo Satoru was, but you were sure she wouldn’t give a shit even if she did. Her reaction to him would’ve been the same, maybe even more hostile. She had a zero-tolerance policy for bullshit like that which came out of Satoru’s mouth after all.

Said person just shoved his hands into the pockets of his uniform and looked her over unimpressed and almost bored, with his smile slipping from his face as if he didn’t care about keeping up appearances. “… Who are you?”

“The one who’s going to throw you out if you insist on continuing to harass my coworker.”

“Yea whatever, I’m sure you do”, the whitehaired man said, clearly not even listening to what she said. The moment he switched his attention back to you, however, his grin creeped back into his face, almost gleefully.

Somehow, it almost unsettled you how quickly his demeanour, and with it, his facial expression changed. It made you wonder if the grin he showed was even genuine. And it certainly bothered you how dismissive he was of Mio. As if she was barely worth his time of the day, unless she had some kind of use to him maybe.

Arrogant prick.

“Anyway, my little stray–“

“I’m not your stray!”, you gritted out.

“– I have a proposition for you. Care to hear me out?” He grinned, not paying attention to your interjection.

You took one deep, forced breath and told yourself to act like the mature 15-year-old that you were, while giving Mio a look that was trying to convince her that you had it under control.

“No, for fucks sake! I do not! Get lost! I do not want to see you, nor anyone from that fucking group and I do not give one single shit about you! So, if you’re not here to do any real adoption, then do me a favour and fuck.OFF already!”, you hissed at him like the dignified 15-year-old that you were, clenching your fists and wishing you could punch him.

Seriously, who did he take himself for?

Oh, right.

The hottest stud in the Jujutsu Society. Probably.

Not that it was completely unjustified, of course. Based on what you knew, he was the strongest the Jujutsu Society in its entirety -not just in Japan- had to offer. But that didn’t mean you would respect him if he behaved like an arrogant, self-absorbed and self-righteous pest.

Were you overreacting? Maybe. Did you care? No.

Why was it that so many people did not respect one’s wish to be left alone? Did they really think that someone secretly wanted to get recruited back to whatever home they ran away from and would be swayed immediately upon meeting some kind of VIP that asked them back?

Well, in all fairness, there probably were such cases. Good for them if that made them happy. You, however, were no such a case. You really just wanted to get left alone by the Society. And for the last year, that had worked out surprisingly well.

“Aww, that’s not very nice. You didn’t even hear me out. Isn’t it common courtesy to at least hear one out before shouting at them and throwing them out?”, he pouted, though that shit-eating grin just wouldn’t leave his face.

“That depends entirely on the person. In your case: No, because I don’t give a shit. OUT.”

You had absolutely zero fucks to give anymore, seeing as your daily contingency of allotted tolerance for bullshit had run out the second you had the misfortune of laying eyes on Satoru.

You walked up to him, on the verge of literally snorting with rage and with the urge to let out your anger on the personification of everything you hated about the Society. Instead, your common sense prevented you from behaving like a mad girl and instead had you just shoving at Satoru.

For the fraction of moment, you felt yourself pushing against what felt like a wall of solid air, with you not being able to actually reach Satoru. Then that wall suddenly disappeared, and you stumbled forward half a step until your hands made contact with his torso.

“You’re one feisty little kitten”, he murmured mischievously. When you looked up, there was that trademark grin on his features as well as the same waggishness he had regarded you with earlier. It made you want to punch him even harder.

If you hadn’t been so occupied with being exasperated because of him, you probably would’ve marvelled at his good looks, especially from this up close.

Alas, you were very busy being miffed by him, so you did not take notice of that. That was nothing Satoru-specific, though. If you couldn’t stand a person, that person could be Adonis or Aphrodite themselves, and you still wouldn’t regard them as good. In your eyes, character outweighed appearances by far, especially in the long run.

Not that you were blind to attractiveness because of that, of course. Later that day, you would think back on this interaction and notice that, in hindsight, the rumours about his looks were far from being exaggerated. However, that finding didn’t make you feel all giddy or nervous about it. If anything, it would made you bristle even more for some reason.

But right now, you shoved him as politely as you could muster – though in truth, the shoving was closer to hitting- to get him to move. He relented, laughing merrily and let himself be shoved back through the door and along the halls with the animal enclosures.

You were hit by a louder animal ruckus than usual, since a lot of dogs seemed to pick up on your rather aggressive handling of Satoru and started barking, in rare cases even growling at the two of you.

You clenched your jaw. You knew that a lot of the animals here were very sensible towards aggression and picked up on even minor traces of it. You felt bad for making them anxious or riling them up and made an internal promise to make it up to them after you threw that nuisance in front of you out.

Your coworkers watched the (not so) merry couple that you were, both amused and astounded. They had no idea what was going on, really, since they actually managed to refrain from eavesdropping. Even if they did, they wouldn’t have been the wiser anyway, since they, just like Mio, had no idea what the two of you actually were, or where you stemmed from. And it was better that way. You knew that at least Mio would be even more worried about you than she already tended to be, even though she usually tried to hied it.

You didn’t want to spring the very disquieting news on her that you hailed from a family that was part of a curse fighting society, let alone that you and others had powers that were probably closer to magic for normal folks than anything else. You already had a hunch that Mio was able to see curses, at least sometimes, but you didn’t want to worry her even further.

By the time you reached the front door, you were starting to wheeze a little. It was clear that Satoru allowed you to shove him through the corridors, both in regards to his ability that prevented anyone or anything from touching him, as well as the feat of the shoving itself. Satoru was a tall young man, and you could easily feel the muscle beneath his clothes while pushing at him. You reckoned that if he had wanted to, he would’ve stood fast and unmoving like a rock and you would not have been able to move him even an inch.

Guess you were at least somewhat lucky. Worse than having to deal with him was the thought of having to deal with him while not being able to remove him from your vicinity – or the other way around, really.

Still, he wasn’t making it completely easy for you either, and he seemed to have way too much fun in you trying to force him out of the building.

You shoved open the front door with a touch too much vigour and pushed at him again, putting on your politest smile, while your face still very clearly conveyed the words of “fuck off”.

“Pity that you came to visit. Please never stop by again”, you grimaced while motioning him to leave.

He stepped over the threshold and turned to you, his smile never wavering. When he let his glasses slid down his nose again, though, you noticed a strange expression in his eyes. For some reason, it reminded you of a predator who sets his sights on his prey. You shuddered slightly yet refused to avert your gaze.

Without breaking eye contact, he reached out and tapped the bell of the wind chime that hung close to the front door. The chiming, usually a comforting sound, seemed to carry a somewhat metaphoric and foreboding meaning, albeit not necessarily sinister. Yet, you couldn’t shake the feeling as if he just heralded in a new chapter for you.

“Thanks for your hospitality, I’ll make sure to be back”, he smiled and turned to leave.

“No, please don’t”, you muttered under your breath while watching him approach a black limousine -because of course it was black- and enter it. Only after he entered it and the car starting to drive off, did you dare to close the door and turn around while heaving the probably loudest and most annoyed sigh you have ever heaved. At least in the most recent past.

“Good gracious lass, what was that?”

You looked up and found not only Mio, but several other workers of the animal shelter standing before and watching you with big eyes.

Guess you had to come up with a story to sell them and quickly because they for sure were not going to let this go otherwise.

Well, fuck me, I guess.

With a low hum, Satoru dialled a certain number once he had settled into the car and crossed his legs. It didn’t take long for the callee to pick up their phone.

“So, how did it go?”

“About just as well as you predicted. Guess I really lost that bet. Best think what you want to get for winning.”

The voice on the other end of the line laughed heartily. Satoru smiled affectionately and somewhat giddily upon hearing that. He certainly loved hearing Suguru laugh, even if it was at his own expenses. Granted, in this case he lost a bet -by a mile-, so he probably deserved that. Not that the laughing was in bad faith anyway.

“What’s it gonna be then? Will you leave it be?”

Satoru leaned the arm holding the phone on the car door and looked outside while the surroundings continuously changed. “Nah. She really has some interesting potential and attitude to boot. If working with her will eventually give me yet more ammunition to piss off some of the higher ups, it’s worth it. Plus, she herself is rather adorable – you would like her. Reminds you of a grumpy little kitten.”

“… Satoru, you didn’t go and call her a stray now, did you?”

“Me? Pfft. I’d never, you know me Suguru.”

“… That I do. Poor girl.”, Suguru sighed and then smiled. He wondered if Satoru would actually manage to convince you to agree with his proposal. Either way, it was good to see that Satoru seemed to take an interest in at least something and was willing to go through with it – at least for now.

Chapter Text

The next couple of days, you were in a near-constant state of fight-or-flight, fearing that for some irrational reason, Satoru would jump at you again. At those times, you told yourself that this was silly, and he certainly would not make time to haunt you yet again. Especially not after you had been more than impolite and just plain abrasive during his visit at the animal shelter.

Truth to be told, you were way more worried that some other Society henchmen would spawn randomly and dish out retribution in some form for your defying Satoru. Or, even worse, come at your family for your disrespect.

You wouldn’t say you really regretted being a nuisance towards Satoru -he probably deserved it anyway- but you would be lying if you weren’t worried about potential repercussions for your family. You might have left them, but that didn’t mean you didn’t care about them anymore.

However, after a few days you came to a tentative conclusion that none of the above was happening, at least not in the foreseeable future. You even went ahead and contacted your brother, Daisuke and your cousin, Eiko and gave them a vague rundown of what had transpired and asked them to notify you if trouble seemed to brew on the horizon.

Not that you could actually do anything about it, if it were to happen, but that wouldn’t keep you from trying. In the meantime, you just crossed your fingers and hoped for the best.

What felt like the very damn second you let down your guard and dared to relax, calamity hit again – that is, Satoru appeared once more.

To make things worse, this time around he showed up at your part-time job, which was at a small, rustic bookstore on the corner of a traffic-calmed back road. Both tables with old and new books as well as a selection of potted plants and flowers decorated the outside of the store, as well as the inside. With the store being on a street corner, it had one wall with big windows and the store front with the door and even more windows, which led to the store being almost entitled to having good light inside.

There was an interesting balance between meticulous order and seemingly unrestrained chaos regarding the books and their arrangement, and especially regarding their storage in the backroom. Some of the books were organised neatly on tables or in bookshelves, other were piled in “artsy” towers on the floor, more often than not in such a way that it was not apparent if they were for sale or not. Especially not if a potted plant was resting on top of said tower.

You often cringed when you saw those excrescences, but astoundingly enough, none of the books were in a bad shape or even yellowed, unless they were antiques or in general older books. That and this mixture of order and chaos gave the bookstore a very, very cosy, homely feeling that you just plain loved. It was like stepping into a different world.

And, sometimes, you were even convinced that there was actual magic going on in this quaint little bookstore. It didn’t matter whether it was scorching hot or freezing cold outside; on the inside, the temperature was always just right, but as far as you knew, there was no Aircon. The air was always peculiarly refreshing, despite the assumption it would be dusty or stuffy.

And then there was the owner, sweet old Kimiko herself. You didn’t quite know her age, but you assumed her to be at least in her later 60s, if not early to mid-70s or even older. Rarely have you met a person who seemed like she was not able to be put off her stride and just both level-headed and insightful. It seemed like she was able to gaze upon the depths of one’s heart and just know what one needed or troubled.

Even if a person themself did not yet know what it was that they wanted to buy, Kimiko sure seemed to be able to deduce it, sometimes even with but a single glance. Never had you experienced a disappointed or even angry customer. On the contrary. Even if someone came in bristling with anger, or while being upset, it wasn’t long before they calmed down as soon as they stepped foot inside the bookstore.

Sometimes, that happened without any interference. Sometimes Kimiko talked to them and during their conversation they started to calm down. Curiously enough it didn’t seem to matter what they were talking about then. Just speaking to Kimiko seemed to already put them into better mood.

You weren’t an exception, of course. You liked being in the bookstore, you liked working for the bookstore and you definitely liked being around Kimiko. Whenever you were around her, you got that odd, but welcome feeling of being seen, of being valued and accepted for being who you are. No matter where you came from or what you did.

Sometimes, you wondered if she knew. If she knew you hailed from a family, from a society that fought something supernatural. At times you even could’ve sworn she was able to see or at least sense curses. At other times, you were sure the opposite was the case.

In the end, it didn’t matter. You liked and appreciated her all the same and looked up to her as some kind of role model, wishing to be able to be as empathetic and perceptive as she was.

Little did you know that you already had both of those skills in plenty, you just had to learn to unshackle and use them to their full extent.

On the day Satoru decided to spawn, you were alone in the bookstore, which may or may not have been for the best.

You actually sensed him even before he made himself known, like a vague foreboding that befell you. And the moment the wind bell chiming reached your ears, you knew. It was probably due to how he rang the small bell in the animal shelter a couple of days back.

For some reason, a chill ran down your spine upon hearing that once loved sound as you turned towards the door and saw the same man again. Same as during his visit at the animal shelter, he was wearing a black uniform that you assumed belonged to Jujutsu College.

Once again, he wore a shit-eating grin that seemed to stretch from one ear to another and once again, he seemed utterly undeterred by your less-than-euphoric reaction to him while he happily waved.
“Yo, little kitten. We meet again.”

You almost dropped the books you held in your hands. That couldn’t be true. You had feared that you would meet him again, but you hadn’t anticipated that he would appear before you at the bookstore. The animal shelter, yes, maybe even at your school. But at the bookstore?

“… you’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Are you stalking me?”

Satoru feigned a pout while stepping inside the shop and closing the door behind him. It wasn’t lost on you that he even turned over the store’s sign, indicating that the store was closed.

Great.

“Me? Stalking you? Perish the thought little stray, I’m way too busy to do that”, he said while he looked around the bookstore curiously.

“I have a name”, you gritted out. “Which I assume you know, with you appearing coincidentally at the very same places I work at and all that. How about you actually use it?”

“Aww, but I like your nickname”, he retorted in a mock-offended voice. He wasn’t deceiving you, though. His broad smirk was a dead giveaway that he was very well aware he was getting on your nerves and that he knew he sounded like a brat.

You just stared at him for a short moment. Was he serious? “Out”, you deadpanned. “Alternatively, we can try and see what will happen when I call the police.”

It was a bluff, mostly, and both of you knew it. The police couldn’t really do anything against him, unless he willed it. And even then, he was probably a known figure to the government so he would never even get close to being prosecuted. They had a very valid interest in him being around to keep the peace after all.

Satoru tilted his head for a moment and then lightly hit his palm with a loose fist. “Well, now that’s something I would really like to experience. I mean, for realsies, what would happen if the police arrived? Never had that happen on me.”

You grunted. Your patience for him and his bullshit was already in the negatives again and you wished you had just stayed at home this day.

“Great, then in the meantime you can either tell me why you’re pestering me again or we can skip ahead and you just leave. Your choice, but I highly recommend the latter option.”

Please just leave. I’m too tired for this shit, you thought. If that kept happening, you should demand some kind of compensation from his clan for dealing with him. You were pretty sure some of your braincells were taking active damage because of him – not because he was in any way stupid, but rather due to his obnoxiously annoying attitude.

Surprisingly enough, Satoru seemed to relent and lifted his hands in mock surrender.

“Fine, fine”, he said and then mumbled: “Man, you’re no fun.” He then eyed you for a short while. “Kubo [Name], right? You left your home around a year ago and have been living mostly on your own ever since, albeit with support from certain family members.”

You snorted slightly. Yea he knew all those relevant basics about you that concerned the last year at the very least. That still left the question as to where he got his information from, but maybe that shouldn’t be your current focus.

“So. No in-persona stalking but stalking via information gathering then?”, you scoffed with a raised brow. “Great. That’s so much better.”

Gojo just shrugged with a grin and leaned against the door, once again giving the salesroom an intrigued look. Aside from the similar faint aura of protection he was already getting at the animal shelter, the place seemed to offer his mind some much needed peace, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on as to why that was.

He decided that he could mull over that at a later point and instead turned his attention back to you. “You might remember me wanting to offer you a proposition. I’ve come to offer it to you again, provided you will listen to it this time.”

You heaved a very loud, very annoyed sigh. No, you didn’t actually want to listen to it, same as you didn’t want to have to deal with Gojo Satoru – or anyone who was in league with the Jujutsu Society, to be perfectly honest. However, he already proved to be more persistent than you had given him credit for. If someone had asked you before if you would believe he would seek you out twice to offer you some sort of proposal, even though you had been very inhospitable the first time, you probably would have laughed into their faces. Even just the thought of him visiting you specifically for whatever reason was absurd enough.

And yet, here you were. And all of the above had actually happened. This inevitably brought up the question as to what course of action would have the bigger payoff or be at the very least the least bothersome.

“How many times would I have to turn you away and be abrasive until you would let it go eventually?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know, little stray.”

“[Name].”

“Wouldn’t you like to know, little kitten [Name].”

Had you ever mentioned you had the overwhelming urge to punch his face? The books you still held in your hands would probably help doing that.

Then again, nah. Poor books, they had done nothing wrong and certainly did not deserve such abuse or disgrace.

You heaved yet another very deep sigh. If hearing him out and then refusing was able to get him off your back so that you could return to your mundane life, then so be it. Would probably be better for your sanity and heart in the long run.

An insistent judder on your left wrist redirected your attention towards your pulse watch for a moment, before you tapped the small screen a few times carelessly, murmuring. “Yes yes, I know, thanks.”

You put away the books, then scuffled behind the counter to grab the surprisingly very comfy chair and dragged it next to it to sit down. Not too soon, either, since just a few heartbeats later you were hit by an all-too-familiar wave of vertigo. You rubbed your face tiredly, not letting your uneasiness show otherwise.

“Alright then. Spill it.”

You hadn’t offered him a seat, partly because there was no other seat in the salesroom, partly because you didn’t give a shit. He could keep standing like the petitioner he was for all you cared.

He, however, seemed unbothered enough to grab the stool with wheels that was used for reaching the upper bookshelves and made himself comfortable on it. Since he was a tall guy with strikingly long legs, he looked rather ridiculous, especially since he seemingly couldn’t figure out what to do with those long legs. He resorted to a weird mixture of stretching them out and crossing them.

“I’m offering you to take you under my wing and train you personally!”, he beamed as if he had just announced that there would be no more curses from now on.

You blinked. And waited for the punchline that didn’t seem to come. Slightly scowling, you deadpanned: “… and?”

Satoru seemed to actually deflate a bit for a moment. “Tough crowd, eh? Okay, let me do this over.” He cleared his throat.

“Don’t you dare repeating yourself; I’ve heard you well enough the first time, thank you. What I’m waiting for is for you to tell me why I would want to accept that… magnanimous offer of yours.”

Satoru just stared at you like you just told him Santa did exist after all. Or at least you assumed this, going by the facial expression you could make out.

“… why wouldn’t you want that?” His voice sounded genuinely confused, almost hurt. It seemed he wasn’t really prepared for such a question, probably because he couldn’t fathom why someone would need an explicit reason to agree to such an offer.

Had you been someone different, or even just a version of you without your prior experiences, you might’ve agreed on the spot, or at least not questioned his proposal like that. After all, what where the chances of someone like Gojo Satoru coming up to you and offering to personally train you? Close to zero, to be honest.

A small, honest part in you was very aware of that and was, in fact, feeling honoured about this. But the bigger and by far more dominant share of your being was at best not feeling strongly about this, at worst actively resenting this offered opportunity.

“Because I do not want to be a Jujutsu Sorcerer or to have to do anything with them”, you retorted, sounding more tired than anything else. “If you went through the hassle of acquiring information about me and even the places where I work, you should have been able to connect the pieces. Sorry you wasted your time.”

Satoru fell silent for a short moment, not moving a muscle and his smile gone while he clasped his hands together thoughtfully.

“I don’t believe you”, he then said flatly, with a tone that appeared to be almost cold, especially when compared to his usual quirky chipperness.

Now it was your turn to raise your brows in something akin to confused astonishment. “You don’t… And why is that, may I ask?”

Maybe it would’ve been the easier way out to simply say something along the lines of ‘Welp, sorry to hear that, but I don’t give a shit, so please just leave’. However, you found yourself to be both worried and curious enough to dig deeper.

With a small notion of his head, his black sunglasses slid down and revealed his so very blue eyes. You had thought this to yourself the other day secretly, but they really were extremely beautiful. Somewhat unsettling maybe, due to their sheer intensity, but beautiful nonetheless. Right now, though, they were less stunning than intimidating.

“Do you think I haven’t noticed the true nature of those Fūrin you distributed to both this place as well as the shelter? They’re charged with Cursed Energy and offer protection for a certain vicinity, although they’re in a dormant mode currently. I’ve sensed them at other places around here, too, you know.”

You clamped shut your mouth that you had opened to interject just now. Your gaze flitted to the vitreous Fūrin with yellow flowers hanging outside, swinging softly in the warm summer breeze. You figured that deducing their function was not really that hard for a skilled or at least perceptive Sorcerer, much less for someone like Satoru.

You squared your shoulders and smiled carelessly. “So what? I like wind chimes; can you blame me for that? If they serve some additional use, then where’s the harm? That alone doesn’t mean–“

“You know what’s curious?”, he continued without letting you finish. “There’s a really low rate of curses around here. And with ‘really low’ I mean there barely is any curse activity to be found. In the entire neighbourhood. Now, granted, this is a mainly residential area in a good district, so there is not much of a breeding ground for curses to begin with. But even with that in mind, it is peculiar how little activity there is.” He stopped for a moment and just stared, no, almost glared accusingly at you. “Interesting, isn’t it? If I didn’t know any better, I would’ve assumed there’s a Jujutsu Sorcerer watching over this place.”

You actually shrunk back a bit. At no point had you thought about the fact that it would be suspicious if there was a lack of curse activity in a certain area – that was a major oversight of you, but then again, you were a high school student, you were but fifteen. It was natural that you made mistakes like that. You just didn’t assume it would come to bite you in the ass, sort of.

You hadn’t noticed that Satoru had risen and was walking up to you, still with that very same expression on his face. Why did he look so accusing, almost… angry?

“Tell me, if I were to go to your school this night, how many curses would I meet there? Schools are a very popular breeding ground for them, so I would assume I’m bound to encounter at least some of them, right? You’d agree that but one person couldn’t cleanse a school for good, let alone for long, right?” He had reached you and bent down to your level, gripping each one of the armrests in the same motion, with his knuckles turning somewhat white. “How many people would I find at your school that carry an object that has a peculiar aura to them?”

The moment he had bent down to you, you had leaned back as far as possible. You were angry, flustered and frustrated at the very same time and on top of that were at a loss for words. You also found yourself struggling to keep his gaze from this up close. Apparently he could very well be daunting if he decided to stop his stupid antics for long enough and step up his game.

So, you blurted out the only thing you could think of at this very moment: “Personal space, asshole!” Seriously, how could you be expected to come up with a clever comeback -or any answer for that matter- if his face was but mere inches away?

He sneered and hovered in front of you for a moment longer, then relented and straightened up again, but was barely taking half a step back. “Tell me then, [Name], why you claim not wanting to be a Jujutsu Sorcerer when that’s the exact thing you seem to have been doing during your time here? You yourself may have made yourself believe that it’s not what you are, but all I see and hear right now is hypocrisy.”

Fury boiled inside you upon hearing those words. Hypocrisy? Strong words for someone who didn’t even know you.

“Don’t pretend you know me or my motivations just because you have noticed things that I might have done!”, you hissed, clenching your fist and standing up as well. You came to regret it a second later when a wave of vertigo hit you with exquisite malice. You staggered slightly, but you paid it no heed, angered as you were. “What would you have me do instead, risk letting the people I care about getting injured?”

“No. What I want is you being honest about yourself. You claim you’re no Jujutsu Sorcerer, yet you are, both because you can’t escape from that and because you chose to act like one. So, once again, tell me: What is your angle?”
Speaking of angle – with him standing directly in front of you, you noticed once more just how fucking tall this guy was. You had to crane your neck quite a bit to be able to look into his face.

In this moment though, you once again heaved a sigh and averted your gaze. “I didn’t lie about that”, you replied somewhat deflated. “I don’t want to be a Jujutsu Sorcerer, but I know very well I can’t change my very nature. I also can’t help wanting to protect what’s important to me, so that’s what I do. However, I do this out of my own volition and not because some of the higher ups decides it is to be done. It may be my nature to be a Sorcerer, but it doesn’t have to be my job, especially not if it’s forced upon me.”

Gojo looked at you sternly for a while longer, before a small cheeky smile stole its way back onto his features. Seemed like you were finally getting somewhere. The second your gaze wandered back to him, though, he hid the smile and instead arched a brow, seemingly not very impressed. “If you really abhor the Jujutsu Society and the vocation itself as much as you claim, then where do you see yourself in the future?”

You grunted slightly and ruffled your hair exasperatedly. “No idea what it’s to you, but if you must know – I’m planning on studying medicine. I’d like to work as a doctor… or, well, maybe I’ll join the army instead.”

The last bit caught Satoru off guard so efficiently that for a short while he just simply stared at you in bewilderment, with his eyes so big they seemed close to falling out of his skull. “The… the army? We’re talking about our national Self-Defence Forces… Right?”, he spluttered, not knowing what to do with this information. A Jujutsu Sorcerer in the goddamn army? Whatever unhinged ideas were you chasing?

“Not as an actual soldier, of course. I was thinking of working in military medicine”, you clarified, feeling somewhat bashful under the incredulous stare of Satoru.

He kept staring at you like you had just grown a second head. Were your plans really that absurd? Not that you cared about his specific opinion on that matter of course. But sometimes, you did wonder.

“But… why?”, he stammered, still not able to fully gather his bearings. He had never, ever heard of any Jujutsu Sorcerer with plans like that, let alone one who actually ended up joining the Self-Defence Forces, as a soldier or paramedic or otherwise. Of course, that didn’t mean there were none, but it still seemed… unusual. “You would just replace one battlefield with the other, one type of demon against another. What would you get from doing that?”

You smiled wistfully and shrugged. “To be honest? Probably nothing noteworthy. As you said, I would likely just substitute one battlefield for the other, if I do end up in the army. But with medicine in general, I…” You hesitated for a moment. “I feel like I’d be able to help more people in the long run. And wherever the army goes, there is bound to be an influx of curses, even if they’re not heading towards an actual warzone. And who is going to protect those soldiers and civilians from those curses? I feel I could kill two birds with one stone with that strategy.”

Your hesitation was not lost on Gojo. It seemed like there was more to your statement than you let on and were willing to share, but he was not going to pry. He had been coming onto you hard enough as is. He finally stepped back to create a more appropriate space between the two and eyed you up and down.

“… You really have a strong drive to protect, don’t you?”, he asked without any hint of being judgmental.

You just smiled wryly and didn’t provide him with an answer. You had already said so earlier, and at no point did you claim otherwise anyway. Also, at this point of life you had not yet become as cynic as you were going to be. Not to speak of being misanthropic.

Satoru first eyed you and then once more the store, before thinking back on the animal shelter. He then tilted his head and tapped his lips lightly, apparently deep in thought. “Are you happy with how things are right now, though? And before you answer ‘Yes of course’ -I can see that in your eyes you know-, I don’t mean your current lifestyle as such.”

His gaze darted back to you, a small smile on his lips. “I’m talking about your current state. I’m not gonna lie, you seem to have quite the potential. And yet here you are, gridlocked in a status of stagnation. Even if you’re not going to be honest to me, be at least honest to yourself and answer this: Are you happy with how things are right now?”

You took a deep breath in, held it for a little while longer than usual and then let it out between clenched teeth. You truly wished he hadn’t turned out to be so perceptive but had rather stayed the idiotic narcissist that he seemed to be upon your first encounter. You couldn’t tell whether he deduced that this topic was a sore spot for you or if that was just him going in blind and trusting his intuition.

It didn’t change the fact that this -your “state of stagnation” as he had put it- was indeed more often on your mind than you cared to admit. So, you had told yourself that you were, in fact, happy with how things were. Because what was the alternative? Admitting you had made a mistake? Going back to your clan? Neither of those option was, technically speaking, wrong or misled. But you didn’t want to admit that you could’ve been wrong, that you could’ve made a mistake. And you certainly did not want to go back to the lifestyle you so very much loathed.

So you didn’t admit it now, either. Especially not in presence of Satoru.

“And what’s it to you?”, you instead retorted, crossing your arms.

“Simple – I like strength in people, and I like the sheer existence of potential. I also happen to prefer, say, interesting people and you turned out to check all of those boxes. So let me reiterate my proposal to you; I offer you to train and draw out your potential, so that you can become the best version of yourself.” For a moment, his gaze seemed to increase in intensity while never leaving yours. You felt as if the atmosphere itself was charged with tension and noticed that for a moment, you had stopped breathing.

And then, the moment was gone. Satoru’s shit eating goofy grin was back and he seemed awfully happy with himself. “Also, I realised I may very well have gerontophobia since all those geriatric higher-ups get on my nerves immensely. You are somewhat of an outlier and hence, probably a thorn in their flesh. If taking you in and training you will help me riling them up, then I’m all game.”

You swore you felt one of your brain’s blood vessels pop in that very moment. Without so much as thinking, you strike out and kicked his shin. Only in the middle of the motion did you remember that this was probably futile, seeing as you weren’t able to touch him last time either.

Much to your bafflement, your foot hit its mark. You weren’t quite sure whether this was due to a mistake on Satoru’s side or if he let you kick him intentionally. Softly hissing, he bent over and rubbed his shin. “Yea, guess I deserved that”, he groaned while looking up at you. “Did you have to kick full power, though? You got some strength to you, I tell ya.”

You started at him a heartbeat longer, then you remembered how to use words again. „Is this a fucking joke to you? Am I a fucking joke to you? Because if your oh so magnanimous offer is driven purely by your infantile desire to get on somebody’s nerves, then fuck you, truly. Fuck you and don’t ever come near me again.” You were shouting at this point, your fists clenched and your body ever so slightly trembling from the fury that was rising within you.

For but a moment you had actually begun to think that maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t an as obnoxious, unreliable person as you had previously thought. But of course, he just had to go and shatter that impression immediately after.

Gojo stopped hopping on his one foot and looked at you. Apparently, he really overdid it this time. That hadn’t even been his intention. He had only wanted to liven up the mood again, after it had gone somewhat south and heavy. Also, he surmised that you, too, held a certain animosity towards the structure of the Jujutsu Society and especially the higher-ups, considering you left your home at such a young age.

Had he been wrong? No, he thought when his gaze noticed the barely concealed fury in your eyes. There was some serious antipathy within you that was closely connected to all that stood in relation to Jujutsu Society. He just couldn’t quite point out where the root cause of it laid and what it was – not that it was any of his business, really.

When he didn’t respond within a timely period, you bristled with anger and once again started pushing against him to drive him out of the store. He was taken aback for a moment, but then he strengthened his posture and dug his heels into the floor, rendering your shoving effectively useless.

“I’m sorry it came across like that, but I assure you, my offer is not fuelled by a primary desire to confront the higher-ups in any way. A friend of mine pushed me to take over responsibility, and with you having this kind of potential and being in this kind of stagnant state, it’s something I’m willing to do for the sake of itself.” He smiled wryly. Somehow, he doubted he could pull off the inspiring confidence stunt after all this, but he was willing to try either way. Not like this was his forte, truth to be told.

You stalled, your hands sliding down a bit from where you had pushed him and instead gripped lightly onto his school uniform’s shirt instead. “… It still sounds like you have some ulterior motives”, you murmured, suddenly very much tired again. Honestly, you didn’t want to deal with this anymore, and you certainly didn’t want to confront the sea of thoughts that was getting restless and threatened to swallow you as soon as Satoru was gone.
You really wished you had just stayed at home at this point.
And yet…
“Hey can you blame me? Even I am but a human being in the end”, he shrugged, grinning slightly while simultaneously furrowing his brow a bit.

For what felt like the billionth time today, you heaved a sigh. “Leave. Please. I neither can nor do I want to deal with this any further.”

Even Satoru was able to discern when it was time to let it go and just leave. So he stepped back to do exactly that. “You don’t have to decide right now. You can tell me when we meet next time. But as I said earlier – be at least honest to yourself, if no one else.”

Then he gave you his trademark exaggerated grin and waved before turning and actually leaving the store.

The moment the door fell into lock, you deflated, feeling suddenly exhausted and empty. You hadn’t even had the energy to give him the snarky retort that was at the back of your mind of him not needing to bother. You fell heavily back into the seat next to the counter and buried your face in your hands and stayed that way until Kimiko came in to take over at shift change roughly an hour later.

When Satoru had stepped outside, something prompted him to stop and turn back again. When he saw your slumped figure with your buried face, he felt a pang of remorse. For some reason unbeknownst to him, seeing you like this made him feel sad. In this very moment, you looked so lost, so exhausted, so utterly frail and in sum just like someone who was in dire need of someone to lighten the burden they were carrying. Somehow, you reminded him of himself in that very moment. He shoved his hands into his pockets and clenched one of them.

He hated this feeling. Not because he didn’t want to feel it in general, or because he didn’t want to feel that way in regard to you, but because he hated seeing yet another soul in the Jujutsu world looking so devasted, so depleted of energy and sometimes even of happiness. He didn’t know your reasons for looking like that in this moment, but he suspected it had to do with your conversation and the structure and system dynamics of the world you were born into. Thinking back on the Zen’in clan, they especially were a prime example of how repulsive some of those Sorcerers and the overlying dynamic could be.

He hadn’t been joking when he had said that would put up with provoking the higher-ups. For a while now, a vague idea of reforming or at least challenging the status quo had been swirling in his mind, sometimes to woolly for him to grasp or even consciously notice. Talking to you and seeing you like this had given this idea somewhat more tangibility.

Of course, challenging a status quo couldn’t be done alone, even if that someone was Gojo Satoru. If he did that by himself, he would end up a tyrant, not some liberator. He was sure Suguru would be on his side, and maybe also Shoko – though he somehow doubted she felt very strongly about it either way. Maybe Megumi would be on board with this as well. He wondered if you, too would be somewhat enthusiastic about this idea. After all, it seemed like you had some unsettled issues going on.

But before that, you would need to agree to step back into the Jujutsu world, just enough for him to take you in and train you, at least. He was only mildly surprised he found a part of him starting to actively hope that you would agree to his offer. If nothing else, then he wanted to at least lift your burden, even just by a small bit.

Before he turned to leave for good, his gaze got caught by the wind chime once more. For a moment, he watched it swaying in the gentle breeze, the latent cursed energy that it harboured seeming to pulsate slightly like a heartbeat. A small smile stole itself upon his features, a gentle one, and it accompanied him all the way back home.

Chapter Text

When Kimiko saw the state you were in, she didn’t say a single word. Instead, she gently shuffled around, grabbing a chair from the staff room to sit in your vicinity, brew some Macha tea that she set on the counter next to you, draped a thin, but comforting knitted throw around you and sat down to knit some more, taking a small sip of the tea herself every now and then.

Like others before you, you too calmed down soon after, just by being in her presence – even though her kind, boundary-respecting care certainly played a part in it, as well. You knew she wouldn’t pester you with questions or even insist on you telling her why you had been crouching on the chair like you had some midlife crisis.

She just accepted your apparent mental state and gave you the space to just be, while an unsaid offer to talk about whatever was bothering you drifted in the air, without it being or feeling in any way obtrusive or smothering.

You were grateful for that, truly. And you wished you had the energy or just the mental capacity to talk to her about it, since you were sure she would have some valuable insights. But you just couldn’t bring yourself to talk about it at the moment. And so you just sat in comfortable silence for a little while longer, emptying your cup of matcha as well over time.

Eventually, Kimiko looked up from her knitting work and watched your seemingly exhausted state. “It’s getting late, dear, you should head on home. Whippersnappers like you ought to take care of their skin while you’re still young, you know. Don’t want to look all saggy like me during your high school years, do you?”

You managed to let out a surprised little laugh. “You’re not ‘all saggy’, gran,” you retorted. She insisted you either call her by her given name or gran or nana, since she herself had no grandchildren to call her own and she liked you and others calling her gran.

She just smiled at you sympathetically, glad to see she was still able to get a laugh out of you. “That’s what you say now, little one. But time waits for no one, remember that.” She looked you over for a moment, then added: “I have some leftover Onigiri and mochi that you can take home if you want. They’re in the fridge.”

You felt tears welling up in your eyes, almost threatening to spill over. On days like these you could’ve sworn Kimiko had a sixth sense or was just a fairy godmother. Her offering you the food like that was her way of implicitly asking -and in some way explicitly making sure- if you were going to be okay.

“Thanks, I appreciate it. I really do.”

You scurried off to the staff room to collect your things and the promised food. You would’ve gotten some convenience food otherwise, seeing as you were definitely not in the mood to fix your own meal this evening. With Kimiko, it was almost normal that “coincidences” of her bringing food in suspiciously often overlapped with you not being in the mood to take care of it yourself.

As you said before, she reminded you of a fairytale godmother. Or just some old woman with an intimidating amount of insight and empathy.

When you made your way out of the room, you found Kimiko reminiscing at the door, looking at the Fūrin. You stepped up to her and bowed lightly. “Thanks for your hard work. I’ll be going then.”

She turned to you, smiling softly. “Thank you for your hard work. You take care now.” She gripped your forearm gently, squeezing it slightly at the end.

On your way home, you passed a certain T-junction. It wasn’t necessarily a play street, but the speed limit was down to 15km/h at some parts of the street. This was rather necessary, since the ‘trunk’ part of the junction was sloping by quite a few degrees and did not have that speed limit. The ceiling part of the junction had, to prevent collisions from happening. Also, there was a small urban forest on the other side of the junction, also with a downward slope. You certainly did not want to barrel down that hill.

And yet…

“WaN’t To RaCe?? LeT’s RaCe!”

You sighed. You didn’t quite know why it was, but Cursed Spirits accumulated here more quickly than at other places in this residential area. You knew, however, that a lot of kids liked to race down the slope on whatever they could find with wheels – or, in the case of snow in winter, on a sledge. You knew of at least one crash that had a kid die in the aftermath and had heard that at least minor collisions happened on a semi-regular basis.

It wasn’t just the fault of those at the wheel. The street that led up the slope had some high stone walls on both sides of the foot walk, so it was difficult to see if there was someone coming down the street – hence the 15km/h speed limit on that street.

You honestly didn’t know why the stone walls were left standing if they proved time and time again to be a safety hazard for this junction.

They had some mirrors installed to prevent such accidents from occurring so often, at the very least, but even then – children and probably teenagers as well just really liked to race down the slope.

You had sensed the Cursed Spirit before it had made itself known by speaking in this weird, distorted voice that you truly just hated. It wasn’t the first time you encountered one of them here, and it probably would not be the last time either.

Curiously enough, those Spirits were more prevalent here during late afternoon hours -such as now- rather than during the night.

You pursed your lips and looked up the slope. A weird, long stretched creature with a sickly mauve coloured hide came barrelling down the street in your direction, its 6 legs moving so fast it seemed to resemble a rolling motion – however that worked.

It screeched with delight when it lay its eyes upon you and moved even faster. You didn’t move and just stared at the creature that stormed at you, probably unaware of your being a Jujutsu Sorcerer.

And so, without you making any move to defend yourself, it came crashing into you at full speed –or so it might’ve thought.

Instead, it was met with an invisible wall roughly an arm’s length away from you. In almost the same moment, it was thrown back with at least the same force it had while coming at you. It squeaked, obviously confused, but by the time it hit the ground, it scattered and dissolved.

Those Cursed Spirits were exceptionally weak, so you didn’t need any extra movements when reflecting them, especially not when they came at you individually.

“LeTsRaCeLeTsRaCeLeTsRaaaaCee”

… A horde of them, however proved to be somewhat more of a hassle. Still not really dangerous for anyone who was at least decent in basics, but not to be taken lightly either, since their strength and therefore the danger lied in their numbers.

You lifted a hand and as expected, an entire battalion of those little pests came barrelling at you. Just like the singular Spirit before, they crashed into an invisible wall and seemed to be rather confused, but not undeterred.

“Could you not? You’re in my way and I’m really not in the mood,” you gritted. You thrust your other arm forward, with an open palm and muscles flexed. An invisible force threw the entire horde back, the power behind it enough to tatter some of them immediately, while others splashed upon impact with the street or the stone wall.

Speaking of the stone wall – the energy output was so big that some of the stones blasted when met with the cursed energy, with the debris flying about.

You cursed under your breath. You hadn’t regulated your output enough, didn’t control the Cursed Energy enough. Usually, you could prevent causing such damage. Now, there was a man-sized crater in this damned wall.

You huffed and straightened, before shaking out your arms. Maybe it was for the better. That wall had done more harm than good anyway, as far as you were concerned. A pity about the rather quaint stones the wall was made of, though.

You gave the wall one last glance, before shrugging and walking away, pretending you had nothing to do with the damage you just caused. Thankfully there were neither people nor surveillance cameras around to testify to that.

Later that evening you were relaxing in your bathtub, having devoured both the onigiri and the mochi earlier and were now trying to give both your mind and your body a well-needed rest.

You held up a hand and stared at it, as if it could tell you the answers to all your issues. Yes, those Cursed Spirits had been neglectable weak, as were most of those that you came across here. You weren’t so reckless to head into fights that you knew were out of your league anyway. So you did what you could, keeping the unseen dangers around here in check, one way or another.

You balled your hand into a fist.

And yet.

Satoru’s words came to mind, unbidden. At least be honest to yourself and answer this: Are you happy with how things are right now?

And yet…

With a disgruntled groan, you sank deeper into the bathwater.

The next couple of days were uneventful, relatively speaking. You couldn’t know for sure if -or when- Satoru would appear before you once more, but this time around, you were inclined to expect him to. You weren’t sure if you should just forget this conversation between the two of you had ever happened and refuse his offer altogether, or if you should use the time at hand to make up your mind.

Because it sure as hell was difficult to make up you damn mind.

You’d be lying if you said you were truly, 100% happy with your current status quo. You had wanted to improve for some time now, but with you being on your own, it was hard to do so, so you were more or less stuck. At the same time, you didn’t want to get involved with any Jujutsu Sorcerer more than was strictly necessary, out of fear of being dragged into this whole mess all over again.

And thus, the merry-go-round went round and round until you, at one point, had decided to just become happy with your status quo. Nothing you could do to change it anyway, so make do with what you had and could do, or so you told yourself.

And then that annoying guy showed up and offered you a solution to the vicious cycle you were in and everything started anew, just because that stupid brain of his couldn’t help but be more perceptive than his dumb goofy attitude let on.

Still, why had it to be someone like him out of all the Sorcerers that were around? You groaned. Being trained by Gojo Satoru himself would probably bear the biggest fruits, as long as he was even able to do some proper teaching. But was it worth the mental damage you would probably inevitably take?

Your gaze fell upon your left wrist, and you felt your expression sour. A sigh left your lips, and you let your head fall back slightly. Maybe you really should use the time at hand to come to a conclusion. In theory, Satoru could spring up like mushrooms at any given time now, so no pressure.

Around two weeks passed after your last encounter until he soughed you out again. This time around, it was at your school for good measure.

Yoshie, your best friend from school, had been worried about your somewhat gloomy and irritated disposition ever since that very same encounter. She and her parents knew to a certain extent what you had gone through with your family, or rather why you were living on your own and had been part of your very personal social safety net.

Similar to Kimiko, they saw to it that you would under no circumstances be left without anything to eat, so you were regularly “forced” to eat at their house or supplied with very generous amounts of “leftovers”, both on days that you came to eat with them as well as on other days.

You weren’t one to complain, though. While their care could be on the somewhat smothering and even overbearing side, they really meant well and they didn’t meddle too much in your affairs, but were always available when you needed advice, especially if you needed advice from adults. They even offered to take over -temporary- guardianship of you, but you declined, since it would’ve been too difficult to have this get waved through the bureaucratic procedures and also, you didn’t really want to distance yourself from your family legally.

If something required parental approval or attendance, your brother and cousin were usually able to step up for it in some way or another. Truth to be told, you never bothered to ask how they managed to get your mother’s signature, considering you certainly didn’t leave on good terms with her and haven’t talked to her ever since you left, not even once.

You weren’t too stressed about that at this point, though.

Normally, you and Yoshie walked to the next bus stop together, or you went to get some after-school treat, but today, Yoshie was being held up by a club of hers, so you went to head home alone for a change.

You stretched slightly, enjoying the warm breeze after some days of heavy rain and very uncomfortable humidity. The monsoon season hadn’t quite started yet, but it wasn’t long before it would – you dreaded it already. So, you were intent of enjoying whatever gentle warmth you could get until then.

Somewhat lost in thoughts, you neared the school gates, thinking on whether you would have to do some grocery shopping later on or not. You were in no mood to do so, yet you weren’t really feeling convenience food, either and you were running out of both Melonpan and Tokyo Bananas. And you really craved both of them currently.

So, with you thinking about food, you didn’t notice the commotion at the school gates at first, nor did you see the very black, very important looking car being parked near it. And you most certainly didn’t notice a certain beaming, very tall white-haired guy with very black sunglasses waving very happily in your directions while being swarmed by both girls and boys – while the distribution of people ogling him and the car was surprisingly even between the genders.

“Hey there little stray, did you miss me?”

Oh yes, strays. You should definitely make time to head to the shelter today, if else tomorrow. You were ashamed to admit that in those last two weeks, you hadn’t been there as often as you normally were.

“Heeeeey~. Are you ignoring me on purpose?”

Yea, it would be best to divide up your grocery shopping and the shelter work, so you could focus on both equally and were neither forgetting anything nor ignoring important aspects of those activities. Would be bad if you ignored stuff that was directly in front of you so blatantly like that weird dude over there did with the crowd. Seriously, was there a VIP scheduled for today or something? School was pretty much over though. Maybe a special guest for one of the clubs then.

“Oi, do I need to lure you in with treats or what?”

Come to think of it, you could also buy some new treats for the animals in the shelter. Momo had been quite cranky lately, so maybe her favourite treats would appease her at least somewhat.

… Wait.

Weird dude?

You finally snapped out of your absolutely important and all-consuming train of thoughts to look in the direction of the commotion and met his eyes. For some reason, he seemed to beam even more when you finally noticed him and waved so hard and fervently, you wouldn’t have been surprised if he took flight right there and then. Instead, he seemed to make do with jogging lightly towards you.

Being thrown off your guard and feeling utterly unprepared, you felt your face slipping very hard.

Oh, for fucks sake.

You pretty much noped out of it right on the spot. With your brain having some sort of short-circuit, you turned into the opposite direction and just ran. You wished you had had at least some sort of head-up prior to him spawning yet again at some not-so random place that you were connected to.

But no. Gojo Satoru just seemed to prefer to drop like a bombshell or something. When you thought about it, it wasn’t really that surprising after all. He seemed like the type to prefer a “grand entrance”.

“Aww come on! No you don’t!”

Obviously, you weren’t enhancing yourself to outrun Satoru -though that thought had struck you for a second there-, but even if you had, you doubted it would’ve made much of a difference. He was significantly taller than you, with long legs and undoubtedly more muscle mass – in other words, he was faster than you anyway.

It felt as if you didn’t even manage to get as far as 100m before he had caught up to you and grabbed you by the collar like some would grab a cat by the neck. It certainly felt like you went into a similar state of clipnosis while you let out an indignant yelp. He didn’t exactly grab onto you roughly, but certainly firmly enough. The moment he got you to come to a halt, his grip immediately loosened, although he didn’t let go of you, either.

“What the heck are you running away for?”, he huffed, giving you an odd look as if you were the one posing in front of a high school gate, waving like a madwoman.

“Well, the fuck is your business running and waving at me like that?”, you snapped, trying to get him to let go of you.

He didn’t. Instead, he furrowed his brows as if you were behaving rather unreasonable.

“I didn’t run.”

“Uh huh. Sure. Making fast movements with the legs to reach greater speed is what I would call running. And stop grabbing onto me like, like what is your damn problem?” You fruitlessly wiggled around to get him to let go of you, but even though his grip wasn’t that strong, he would not relent even a little bit. Instead, he pulled you closer towards him.

“Because if I let go, you would just beat it, wouldn’t you?”

“… Maybe.”

“See.”

For a moment, the two of you just stared at each other blankly. To be honest, his change in demeanour gave you somewhat of a whiplash. Especially when he got quite serious all of a sudden last time and came onto you rather hard. You weren’t quite sure what to make of that yet.

Then, he started to brandish his trademark grin again. “Besides, didn’t I tell you I’d come by again? You haven’t given me your answer yet, after all. Also, I’d like you to meet someone.”

“So, you came to kidnap me this time around or what?”

He stared at you somewhat incredulous. “Is your opinion of me really that low?”

“Probably lower than you think,” you muttered under your breath.

“What was that?”

“Nothing. I was just wondering why you always have to come by unannounced.”

He shrugged with a grin and adjusted his grip so that he wasn’t gripping your collar anymore, but the blouse’s fabric between your shoulder blades. Without much fuss he picked you up as if you didn’t weigh anything, with your limbs hanging downwards.

In fact, it felt like you actually didn’t weight much all of a sudden. Looking down, you saw that you pretty much had started to fucking float, or so it seemed at the very least.

A sound which probably no dictionary would have a term for escaped your lips, a mixture of indignation and confusion. What in the actual fuck? Beside the fact that you were apparently floating -in the open, where Non-Sorcerers could SEE-, you also felt as if you were some piece of luggage.

“It’s more fun that way, no?”, Satoru claimed carefree while he started walking back to where he came from, with you in his… grasp.

“Uh. No? Also, what the fuck are you doing, carrying me like that? People will see, Satoru – also what even is this?” You didn’t even dare wiggling around anymore, out of fear you would drop – which would not be very far, but you didn’t want to take any risks and break your face on the concrete. You could already imagine the laughter this menace would utter.

“Spoilsport”, he pouted before grinning down on you, bright like the sun herself. “Don’t worry. It’ll be fine. Probably. Suguru should have taken care of the bystanders already.”

… Probably?

You didn’t exactly adhere to the books meticulously yourself, but he seemed to be awfully carefree, especially for someone of his standing. Shouldn’t he be at least somewhat more worried about keeping Sorcery stuff hidden and not making people float in the middle of the day at some mundane school gates?

Well. Apparently not.

Also, it seemed like he wasn’t wrong in his presumption that the crowd would likely be scattered. Most people had left, from what you could see. The others didn’t really seem to care about the fact that some suspicious white-haired dude was carrying around a high schooler like she was luggage. Or cared about the fact that she was floating a few hands above ground.

There was, however, another seemingly tall person standing by the black car, waving at Satoru as he came closer. He sported the same uniform Satoru wore, though it differed somewhat in cut, with his pants resembling harem pants.

Based on appearance alone, he seemed to be the inverse of Satoru. His black hair was apparently significantly longer, albeit neatly tied up in a bun, with a strand of his bangs falling into his face and he was sporting two black plugs. His eyes also seemed somewhat narrower than Satoru’s, the colour of his eyes turning out to be a dark purple instead of black upon closer inspection.

Going by appearance, they somehow looked as if they were made for each other. They sure were a good match. Awfully similar to the Ying-Yang symbol. At the same time, the dark-haired one seemed almost… ominous. Maybe it had to do with him sporting a lot of black and dark colours, compared to Satoru.

When you got closer, you noticed that the other guy was apparently also rather tall, with him being only somewhat smaller than Satoru. Seriously, what did they get to eat for them to be so tall despite being Japanese?

“Look Suguru, that’s the stray I was talking about!”, Satoru beamed when you reached him and lifted you a bit more, causing you to let out another, much louder indignant squeal.

The other guy -Suguru, apparently- looked at the two of you for a moment, then heaved a very heavy, battle-worn sigh. “Satoru, that’s a young woman, not a stray. Put her down, would you? That’s no way to treat her.”

You grimaced slightly. You couldn’t know whether this was on purpose, but his wording was highly context bound. In this situation, it was rather obvious that he meant setting you down, but putting down a stray could very quickly turn into a different meaning.

When you looked up, you were met by a gentle, though somewhat smooth smile. You weren’t in the position to know if it was truly genuine or not. At least he seemed significantly more level-headed than Satoru and stepped in to cut his bullshit short.

Satoru on the hand pouted like a scolded grade-schooler and set you down. He still wouldn’t completely unhand you but instead resorted to gripping lightly on the sleeve of your upper arm. For some reason he reminded you of a small child that was either afraid of being left behind or of having something taken from them.

He was probably still convinced you would skitter off as soon as there would be an opportunity to do so.

“Kubo [Name], right? I’m Geto Suguru, a classmate of Satoru’s,” Geto introduced himself while bowing lightly in a polite fashion. Somewhat taken by surprise by his manners, you returned the bow out of habit.

“Classmate? Aww, don’t be so cold, Suguru. I thought we were friends!”, Satoru whined and acted like a small child once more.

You side-eyed him somewhat bemused. Maybe that’s what being dubbed as “the strongest Jujutsu Sorcerer of them all” did to people, but he sure did not seem to act like someone responsible who was aware of the responsibility put on their shoulders.

Or maybe, he behaved like that exactly because of the pressure he was put under, as some sort of outlet. Still, you certainly did not feel confident in him being the bulwark of the Society, if not the entire damn country. In fact, you would not be surprised if he would just walk out of it if he were called upon protecting the country.

Not that you could relate to his situation of course. But it wasn’t like you wanted to relate to his situation, either. Not your battlefield, not your problem.

Or so you had thought at that time.

Geto waved off Satoru’s whining with the patience of a mother enduring her truculent child for the umpteenth time, an impish smile tugging on the corner of his lips while doing so. It was obviously not his first time dealing with such antics.

“So, are you the illustrious friend of Satoru that set him up on “taking over responsibility” or whatever that was?”, you questioned while moving your arm slightly to tug your sleeve out of Satoru’s grip. To no avail.

Geto smiled, almost bashfully so while rubbing the back of his head sheepishly. “Yes, I guess that would’ve been me.”

“Gee, thanks for that”, you deadpanned and motioned to Satoru who seemed utterly undisturbed by the jab or your rather obvious attempts to get him to stop grabbing onto you. Barely a minute later you had enough and hissed: “Would you stop being a nuisance and unhand me? It’s fucking annoying.”

He looked you over, shrugged with a highly suspicious grin and let go of you. Barely 10 seconds later, you felt your foot facing him being pulled towards him. Not violently enough that you would’ve fallen or otherwise hurt yourself, but enough that you had to awkwardly hobble and grab onto him to regain your balance.

“Seriously, what is your goddamn problem?”, you barked, trying to disentangle your foot from his. He had used his foot to hook it with yours and pull and was surprisingly good in entangling your feet together for some reason.

“You told me to unhand you. You never said anything about feet”, he grinned.

“… Do you want me to break your face or anything? Because right now, I’m offering free of charge, you just have to say the word. Or better yet – don’t say anything. That’s better for my sanity”, you growled, yanking your foot back.

Here you were, risking the retribution of the other Sorcerers and especially of the Gojo clan yet again, should they ever catch wind of you treating their star child like that. Maybe it was high time to reigned in your impulsive nature for a change.

Geto watched your interaction and couldn’t help but laugh. “I see you already get along quite well. I’m rather surprised, Satoru.”

“You think so?”, Satoru asked, whipped his head towards Geto with the facial expression of a very happy Golden Retriever. At the same time, you squinched up your face and chuntered: “I think the fuck not.”

Geto grinned. He could definitely see why Satoru had decided to stay persistent, at least until he got a definite answer. You didn’t seem to care much about his status as The Strongest, therefore you refrained from mincing your words or holding your fire when interacting with him. In other words, it seemed like you treated him like a real person, not like some untouchable symbol that he was to many.

And Satoru on his part certainly did not seem to mind that one bit. If anything, going by that huge influx of mischief in his grin, he enjoyed it very much. Truth to be told, he seemed relishing in riling other people up in general, though it was highly dependent on the person whether there was some hidden malice in it or not.

But Geto assumed that what Satoru enjoyed the most was people treating him like at least a semi-normal human being and being honest with him. That was not to say that he didn’t enjoy being put on a pedestal or having his ego stroked every once in a while, but having done that to you all the time sure put quite the rift between you and everyone else.

And in contrast to his innate ability, Satoru seemed to like being at least physically close to people, if only to pester them.

You, on the other hand, did not seem like you were that fond of Satoru’s antics or his tendency to get up and close in other’s faces. He could relate to your very obvious exasperation, with him feeling that on at least a daily basis, but maybe having someone like you as a mentee for Satoru would do both of you some good.

Provided you agreed to Satoru’s offer, of course.

“Anyway”, Geto interjected before you would try to actually punch in the white-haired’s face. “According to my knowledge, you have yet to give Satoru a definite answer to his offer. I tagged along to bridge the gap if necessary. You may regard me as some form of mediator, if you will.”

You arched your brow. “Mediator? What exactly are you planning to talk about if there could be the need for a mediator?”

Geto smiled. “Well. Best case scenario, there will be no need for that. But based on what Satoru told me, I noticed that communication between the two of you can be somewhat… difficult. You’re free to make the decision you think is best for you, of course. But I would like for you to reach said decision without misunderstandings or animosity tainting said process.”

Well, you guessed that made sense to some degree, though you didn’t quite know why your decision was of such interest to a third-party like Geto Suguru.

You heaved a sigh while eyeing him up. It seemed like he didn’t just look like some inverse to Satoru but like he actually was an inverse to him, personality-wise. Unlike Satoru, he seemed to be of a calm and dependable disposition, with a weirdly soothing aura to boot.

Unlike with Satoru, you were inclined to think Geto was likeable at first sight, though you couldn’t shake the feeling that he looked somewhat ominous. Maybe it really was just due to the dark colours of him. Simiarily in contrast to Satoru, you couldn’t help but notice early on that he, too, was exceptionally handsome.

When you didn’t answer nor disagree, he motioned towards the black limousine standing a few paces away from the school gates. “Shall we take our leave then?”

You just stared at him. “What? Is this going to be some sort of kidnapping after all? Maybe with some interspersed coercion to top it off?”

Both of them first glanced at each other, then at you wildly confused and incredulous.

“Seriously, how low is that opinion of yours regarding me?”, Satoru mumbled while shaking his head in some form of exasperation.

“I mean”, you retorted stubbornly. “You have to admit it’s rather fishy if two older guys snatch a high school girl and drag her in some totally not villainous black limousine to “talk”. Especially if one of them looks like some sort of leisure mobster.”

You were looking at Geto while saying that and that certainly was not lost on him. His eye twitched and with a slick smile, he reached out to pinch your cheek. Enough to hurt a little, but not excessively so.

“Hmmm, what was that? Sorry I didn’t quite hear what the gal wearing tattoos on her neck just said about mobster”, he smirked, a mixture of malice and mischief in his slick smile.

He was referring to the tattoo that stretched from your left arm up until parts of the left side of your neck. Usually, you had to wear some sort of cloth to hide it under while being at school. But since it was a rather warm day and school was over anyway, you had taken it off.

Hence, one point for him, you guessed.

You grumbled and slapped his hand away.

“Yes yes, that’s all fine and dandy, but let’s get a move on, mobster gal. I’m sure none of us wants to keep standing around all day like that”, Satoru chirped, while proceeding to put his hands on your back and just shove you towards the car, even though you digged your heels into the ground.

“Would you stop manhandling me, for fucks sake man!”, you barked furiously while being manhandled effortlessly towards and then into the car, with you fuming and Satoru laughing goofily.

Geto watched on and snorted amused. He couldn’t help but secretly hope for you to agree to the offer, if only so that he could watch the antics of the two of you. It sure was entertaining, though he assumed you were not nearly as delighted as Satoru at the current moment. Nevertheless, you somehow made a good pair, at least in his eyes. And he himself wouldn’t mind someone else who was able to keep Satoru on his toes every now and then. Having someone like you around would allow for him to catch a break every now or then – or so he was hoping.

Though, currently it looked like the opposite was closer to the truth.

Chapter Text

You were still somewhat piqued by the time the three of you had settled into the comfortable car. It wasn’t an absurdly big car, but still big enough that it had a four-seater suite. When you got to the car, the driver politely opened the door and then waited outside – you wondered briefly if he belonged to the Gojo clan or the Jujutsu Academy, but in the end, you didn’t really care either way, as it didn’t matter.

Satoru had taken the seat next to you, while Geto was taking the one across Satoru, probably to prevent you from feeling like they were crowding you.

“So, tell me again, why are we hiding away in a limousine to talk about this like some shady deal is about to go down?”, you inquired dryly and stared somewhat accusingly at the grinning Satoru before turning your gaze at Geto.

“Isn’t that obvious? We don’t want some normies to overhear us talking about some stuff that sounds suspiciously like magic, now do we?”, Satoru answered with a not-so-subtle undertone of arrogance.

You frowned at him upon his choice of words but decided not to say anything because of it. In the end he was right – you personally had neglected to think of it up until this moment, but if you had the need to speak openly, you shouldn’t do so where normal people could hear you. Especially not if those people knew you to some extent.

Satoru’s countenance then dropped somewhat and was instead replaced with a hint of worry while he looked you over. Hesitantly and noticeably careful he then asked: “Have you been able to reach a decision regarding the offer?”

You heaved a big sigh –something that you seemed to do a lot ever since you’ve met Gojo Satoru – and sank somewhat deeper into your seat, averting your gaze towards the tinted car window for a moment. You couldn’t confidently claim you had reached a consensus, but you knew you had a certain tendency that just seemed to feel… right.

You were too stubborn and proud to immediately admit to it, though.

“If I would agree to your offer”, you began slowly, carefully choosing your words as if you were rolling each one of them over your tongue cautiously before uttering them. “How would all of this play out? Which strings are attached to it?”

Geto tried hiding a very broad smile behind his hand when he looked upon the two of you, but gauged by your side eying of him, he wasn’t all that successful. And yet, he couldn’t help but to smile amused.

Satoru meanwhile measured you with a contemplative look before scratching the back of his head slightly. “Well. There are no strings attached to it. If either you or I decide that it doesn’t work out, we’re free to just walk out of it. No use in forcing ourselves to push through if there’s no need to. As to how the training itself would play out…”

He peeped at Geto for a second who just arched a brow at him, still trying to get his grin under control.

“You would have to declare your goals and intentions and then we’ll go from there. We can work that out in advance now, or when we meet for the first training session, your choice. Since I doubt there would be anything I couldn’t help you with, it’s not strictly necessary to go through it immediately. Since I’ll be busy with the Academy and maybe some missions, training would place on weekends and possibly late afternoons or evenings during the week–“

“Stop right there. During the week? I have no idea where you live, but don’t think for a moment I will commute to your place -or wherever we’re going to train- on top of attending school during the week. I’ve got shit to do”, you exclaimed. When met with a weird look by him, you mirrored the very same expression and looked at him, then Geto who seemed to choke back on laughter by now. “… What.”

“I was expecting you to come live with me for the time being”, he deadpanned matter-of-factly, clearly convinced that this was the most logical conclusion and therefore oblivious to the fact that there could be many reasons why that could pose to be a problem.

“WHAT?”, you bellowed, more or less horrified by that prospect. You then stared angrily at Geto, who failed at holding back his laughter any longer and instead had started chuckling in a choked off manner. “Weren’t you supposed to be the mediator to prevent misunderstandings? Obviously, you knew what was coming.”

“Sorry, sorry”, he choked out with a wave of his hand, still chuckling. You couldn’t quite ascertain what was so funny to him.

When he seemed to be too occupied with reigning his laughter back in to partake in any meaningful way in the conversation, you turned back to Satoru, who seemed confused at best, irritated at worst by your outburst.

“You can’t be fucking serious. How on earth does living with you translate to ‘no strings attached’? Also – why would I even want that? We barely even know each other,” you hissed.

Also, I don’t really like you, you added in thoughts but decided to refrain from uttering that.

Satoru furrowed his brow and gave you a somewhat cool, almost impatient look. “My estate is big enough that we won’t be living that closely to each other, besides, we’d probably only meet during late afternoons and maybe early mornings, seeing how I’d be at Academy grounds and you at high school during most of the week anyway. But having you live there would be significantly more efficient regarding expenditure of time. We could schedule training more spontaneously, without having some commuting as time sink in between. After all, I can’t be sure to always have time during the weekends.”

“Doesn’t matter, then we would skip some weekends. It’s not like I have some sort of hard time target, anyway. It doesn’t make any difference to me if I’m going to reach my goals in three weeks or three months, strictly speaking.”

Satoru clenched his teeth for a moment. Having you move in with him was obviously the most logical and efficient decision, especially so if both of you had some other obligations to tend to. Why were you refusing to acknowledge that? Even he got the memo that you weren’t exactly smitten with him, but surely you were available to logic and reason?

“You might be fine with half-assing the training, I’m not. If I’m going to expend the time, we’re going to do it either decently or not at all.”

You just stared at each other for a moment, before you sneered and reached for the door handle. “Fine. Then we won’t do it. It was your idea, not mine anyway. I don’t care either way.”

That was not entirely correct, at least not anymore at this point. However, you were not going to let yourself be coerced into an arrangement you didn’t want to agree to because you didn’t feel comfortable with it. Surely you could find some other way to improve yourself, without having to move in with some dude you barely knew and certainly couldn’t stand.

Before you could open the car’s door and leave, however, Geto suddenly leaned forward and placed his hand lightly on your knee, for but a short moment.

“Wait up – I might have a compromise to offer, if the both of you are willing to listen?”

You hesitated, then nodded and leaned warily back into your seat, throwing a sidelong glance at Satoru while doing so, who seemed somewhat disgruntled.

“I get both of your points. Having an at least semi-regular training schedule is bound to be difficult if you have to schedule meetups each time that may or may not get cancelled on short notice. You, [Name], might also have problems reviewing and practising the exercises and whatever else you’ll be covering without decent facilities or equipment.” He gave Satoru a warning look, seeing how he was ready to reinforce his point.

“However, it’s much to ask for to have a high school student move in completely with someone she barely knows. With a young man she barely knows, no less. No, Satoru, don’t even start. If people catch wind of this, she will have to face the societal repercussions. And even then, we haven’t even touched upon the fact that she would put herself in a very vulnerable position, especially if she were to forfeit the flat she’s currently living in. Or that you would potentially uproot her from her social network.”

He clasped his hands and measured both of you with a contemplative gaze. “So, what say you meet halfway? [Name] could come live with you, Satoru, during the weekend. That way you should have more time flexibility, and you can go from there. If you have some stock of personal items available at the estate at any given time, [Name], spontaneous training sessions should be less daunting, too, because you wouldn’t have to worry about commuting home afterwards.”

You heaved a sigh and averted your gaze for a moment. You could see the point, especially when Geto put it that way. It seemed to be not that bad of a compromise, but truth to be told… you didn’t want to crash somewhere else every weekend. You liked living in your flat, and the idea of having to deal with Gojo Satoru every damn weekend, in addition to attending school during the week and all school-related obligations was… not really that inviting.

“What about my free time, though? I need to take care of school assignments and my work at both the animal shelter and the bookstore. Also, I’d want to meet with friends every now and then,” you demurred somewhat sullenly.

Geto chuckled softly. “You won’t be locked into the estate and forced to train from sunrise to sundown and beyond, [Name]. That’s where arrangements come in. Besides, it’s not like we at the Academy are free of any assignments or extra tasks to do, either. We’re kind of in the same boat here.”

Pondering his words, you crossed your arms loosely and tilted your head to the side slightly. By doing so, you snuck a glance at Satoru, who had remained rather silent ever since Geto had chimed in. He didn’t seem exactly happy, but not entirely against it, either. He sure was furrowing his brow excessively though, while his arms remained in a crossed position. For some reason you got the feeling that he might be sulking.

You shifted your glance back to Geto and lifted a brow quizzically. “Will you be present as well? During the training, I mean.”

The black-haired tilted his head questioningly and exchanged a look with Satoru before answering you. “Well… I was planning on swinging by and see how things play out, yes. Why? Is that a decisive factor in your decision?”

“I decided that it is now. With you posing as a mediator, this might work.”

Satoru clicked his tongue disgruntledly and by the way he drew in a sharp breath, was about to say something but seemed to decide against it. He gave you a sharp side-glance, though.

You turned to Satoru. “I’m willing to give this a try, provided I’ll stay over only during weekends and only if time allows. Having Geto over should pour oil on troubled waters, too.”

The white-haired young man let out a very frazzled groan, tousling his hair in a seemingly exasperated motion. He then gave you a wry smile. “I feel like I should be rather offended by your lack of trust in both me and this whole plan. But I guess… I guess Suguru’s got a point, and I haven’t really put myself in your shoes. Fine. Fine. Let’s try this according to Suguru’s suggestion. But–” he raised a finger in mock self-importance. “If I deem this arrangement insufficient, we will either adjust the parameters or call it off altogether. Fair?”

You shrugged. “Yeah, sure, fair. The same goes for me, too, after all. If it’s not working out, I’ll be back to my old life in no time, no hard feelings.”

Satoru narrowed his eyes at you, almost suspiciously. “You are taking this seriously enough, though, right? I know I was the one who offered, but I remain firm on my point that I’m not gonna spend time on you if you’re just going to half-ass it.”

A weary sigh escaped your lips before you turned to him, giving him a deadpan look. “I’m not keen on wasting my time, either, so yes, of course I’m going to take this seriously.” With a big amount of apprehension on your half, granted, but you truly were not planning to purposely muddle through it. If that was your plan, it would’ve been way easier to just reject his offer and continue to go your way. No one was forcing you to take up his offer, after all.

As if a switch had been flipped, a rather radiant smile crept back on his features. You were once again wondering what it was that had him switch emotions so fast on occasion – or if that was just a fallacy and he was masking his true emotions most of the time. If that was the case, it begged the question as to what his true emotions were, but you didn’t quite care to follow this up.

That is, not at this point of time you didn’t.

Geto smiled, apparently quite content with himself and the outcome of the talk. It seemed like he had seen this coming, so he came prepared with a compromise that was very much reasonable. Then again, even if he didn’t know you beforehand, it should’ve been common sense that an offer to move in with some random stranger -even if that “random stranger” was Gojo Satoru himself- would pose at least some problems. And yet, it seemed like Satoru either truly didn’t think of it… or he hadn’t wanted to think of it.

Either way, you got the feeling that Geto, unlike Satoru, was significantly more reliable or at least gifted with the ability to think and act foresightedly. Yet at the same time, he appeared to enjoy banter and was definitely not above a certain type of humour – a type that was apparently harmonising conspicuously well with Satoru’s. You would not be surprised if he would prank you with the uttermost perfect poker face there ever was. You hadn’t detected any sign of malice in his demeanour so far though, so it could be worse, you supposed.

Even though you were somewhat wary of him, seeing how he clearly anticipated that the two of you would clash with your anticipations, you couldn’t help but harbour some sympathy towards him. It certainly helped that both his smile and his laughter and… well. Pretty much everything about him was rather attractive. Even though you still stood fast on your position that he looked like he hailed from the Yakuza.

When he met your gaze, he grinned mischievously and hinted at a wink. You could feel warmth starting to spread up your neck and into your face, so before the worst-case scenario of you turning beet red could come true, you once again reached for the car’s door handle.

This time, it was Satoru who stopped you. “Uh, where’re you going?”

“… Home? I’m pretty sure we’re done here now, right? Or did you lie and really do plan on abducting me?”

He stared at you with some incredulous exasperation. “Honestly, what is it with you and your fixed idea of me abducting you? No, little stray, I’m not planning on doing that. I was planning on sparing you your commuting and taking you home directly. Also, we haven’t yet agreed on a start date.”

Oh. True. You had absolutely forgotten about that. All you had thought of was trying to flee the car asap, especially when you had felt yourself turning red. Which you were. Turning red, that is. Only slightly, but it was embarrassing to you all the same, at least in this situation.

“… Thanks, I guess,” you mumbled and leaned back while Geto got out of the car to get the driver, but not before he chided Satoru with a stern: “Satoru. Not a stray!”

At this point, you weren’t surprised that they apparently knew your address. You still found it to be rather uncanny and it didn’t sit well with you at all. You were going to ask your brother or your cousin later if they knew something new about who might’ve spilled the beans.

“Oh also, we should make inventory now of what we’ll relocate to my estate. That way, someone can come pick up both you and your stuff when we start our little… project.”

… Great.

Back at the school gates and on the schoolyard, barely within your view, the blossom-less cherry trees swayed in a gentle breeze, their branches bending vaguely in your direction, with some of their leaves getting blown away by the wind.

As expected, you didn’t need to tell them your address because they already knew it. You couldn’t help glaring at Satoru because of it, but he chose to ignore it and instead grin smugly while looking out of the window that he had rolled down earlier.

The ride wasn’t exactly long, and you spent it in silence, while only half-heartedly listening to the casual chatter between Geto and Satoru. You did take note of the way they were interacting with each other, though. You could tell they were immensely close with each other, exchanging playful jabs at each other and just plain debonair with each other. In case of Satoru this even included making faces and annoying Geto by repeatedly nudging his foot with his own. In general, they seemed to be able to be at peace in the other’s presence. Somehow this didn’t surprise you, seeing how they even seemed to complement each other visually.

You even caught yourself smiling softly at one point while absentmindedly paying attention to them. Said smile was wiped off your face very quickly as soon as the car had parked near your housing complex, and you were standing in front of your door of flat.

“Man, that sure looks tiny. You sure you live here full-time?”, Satoru asked while glancing down the floor with the other doors. He wasn’t even inside your -admittedly, not very big- flat and was already belittling it.

You were already regretted allowing him to tag along.

“Satoru,” Geto chided tiredly and very much habitually.

“It’s the truth, isn’t it? I’m not sure I could–“

“Shut your trap or go wait in the car. I didn’t ask you to come,” you spat, having long outstayed your tolerance and patience capacities. Truth to be told, at this point you were even hoping that Geto would take care of the rest on his own and then just leave you the fuck alone. You were really tired by now and just wanted to crash on your sofa. Or better yet, bed.

But then you remembered you had wanted to do some groceries.

Life really could be cruel sometimes.

“Awww, Suguru, she’s being mean again!”

“Shut up!”, you glared while unlocking your door. Did this guy even have an off button? Somehow, you were starting to doubt that. Besides, your flat and the housing complex might not be anything special, but at least you were living in one of the more expensive ones with a communal secure gate and centralised post boxes, even though the building itself was only 4 stories high and didn’t sport a lot of flats per story. The aircon all the units sported was also a very big plus, both in summer and in winter.

Not that you could afford living here if you had been entirely on your own financially.

You stepped into your flat and switched for your slippers at the genkan, the entryway and shuffled down the small hall before turning back towards the two young men trailing after you.

“Sorry, I don’t have any slippers available for guests your size,” you said, feeling only partially sorry for that. In truth you did have one pair of slippers that might fit Geto -seeing as he was somewhat shorter than Satoru- but those were the slippers of your older brother and you refused to hand them out. Besides, it would’ve been rather awkward to offer only one of them slippers.

Since you were a young girl living on your own, it was to be expected, so correspondingly none of them was bothered or even offended by the lack of guest slippers in their size.

Not that Satoru seemed to mind the availability of the slippers in the first place.

Instead, he squeezed past your rather unabashedly and looked around curiously, if not amused.

“Cute”, was all he said while looking around, but it was obvious that there was a certain amount of haughty mockery in it.

You imagined he never had to live in small space or on his own, and while you used to have significantly more space while still living with your family, you got used to this rather small flat within no time. In fact, you sometimes even preferred the small space, referring to it as your cosy lair. Your most prized possession that was adding greatly to this idea, especially during winter, was probably your kotatsu that you had bought from your very first paycheck.

But it was a fact that your flat was rather small and consisted of one room combining a small kitchen and living room, a small extra room that you mainly used as a bedroom and the bathroom and toilet which were in separate rooms as was usual in Japan.

“It is cute,” Geto affirmed, having noted the little, often animal-themed and rather cute decorative objects that were adorning your living space.

Embarrassed, you blushed a little. You weren’t ashamed of liking your plushies and other cute stuff, but it wasn’t necessarily something you planned on having random guests see first thing when they came in. Not like you could change it now, though.

“Well, it certainly is even smaller than I anticipated. Doubt we’ll need more than two moving boxes and maybe a toilet bag or something”, Satoru mused while allowing his gaze to wander around.

“Well, what did you expect? That I’d have at least one closet full of stuff that needs relocating?”, you countered. His blank stare was all the answer you needed. “… Dude. Not everyone is living in full exuberance.”

Because of your limited space, you didn’t even own a closet -aside from the futon closet-, but only a dresser plus a clothes rail. It was absolutely sufficient, though, and you didn’t really understand people who just kept on buying and piling on clothes – or other stuff that barely got used or displayed. You had enough, and if you wanted to buy more, you were forced to think twice if you actually wanted to buy and use said piece of clothing or decoration or just felt like buying it.

Still, not having to play Tetris all the damn time whenever you bought something new, no matter what it was, would be great, too.

You quickly decided that you would bring a set of clothes for the night, for lounging, for training and other outdoor clothes and would then buy additions wherever necessary – which was most likely to be clothes for training. Satoru proclaimed boastfully that he would compensate you for your expenses, and while you were too exhausted at this point to argue with him about it, you didn’t exactly want him to pay for any clothes of you. Or any necessities, for that matter, seeing as you would of course need sanitary products as well.

You were also planning on bringing some comfort items, like one of your favourite plushie and maybe at least one of the framed pictures you had around, but seeing as that was of no immediate interest to either of them, you didn’t mention it.

Everything else, like furniture or slippers or bedding was to be provided by the Gojo household anyway. Your school supplies you would have to take with you as needed, of course, seeing as it wouldn’t make any sense to deposit them at the estate where you would have no access to them during the week.

“Oh, right,” Satoru chimed in while you were going over the planning. “Do you prefer a western bed or a futon?”

You shrugged. “I don’t really mind either way. I have slept in both, and like both of them equally, so… whatever you have at hand should be fine.”

He hummed lightly, measuring you with a contemplative gaze before grinning. You honestly did not want to know what he was cooking up now, but you hoped it wouldn’t result in you sleeping on the hard floor or anything.

And that was pretty much that. Satoru assured you that you could bring as much stuff as you wanted, as space was certainly not a problem -you didn’t miss the scoff in his gaze as he looked at your small lair again- and you determined the weekend after next to be the date on which you’d start with the training project.

Before you managed to shoo them out of your flat, you exchanged contact info with Satoru, in case anything did not go according to plan either before or on the scheduled date.

As soon as the two young men were finally gone, you locked the door and dropped onto the floor, groaning. Even though you didn’t do a lot on this day, you still felt extremely drained and honestly just wanted to go to bed.

You then remembered that you craved Melonpan and Tokyo Bananas. So, you eventually got up again and dragged yourself to the grocery store.

Melonpan and Tokyo Bananas turned out to be just the right remedy for you after such an exhausting day, so it had been worth dragging yourself to the grocery store.

The day of your partial relocation came quicker than you wanted it to be. While you knew rationally that it had been two weeks, it still had felt like it had been three days at most.

The actual process of your move was surprisingly, but pleasantly uneventful and very much characterised by efficiency. Two attendants of the Gojo clan called you beforehand to determine the best time slot for the pickup and then arrived perfectly on time. A bit earlier than agreed upon, but not too early that it could’ve been interpretated as impolite or intrusive.

You had already gathered all those belongings you wanted to bring along, so the packing pretty much only consisted of assembling the moving boxes and putting your stuff into them. Because you had decided to bring at least a small selection of your TBR, you needed one more box than anticipated, but the attendants came oversupplied anyway, so that was not much of an issue.

For some reason, you had feared that things would go awry in some way or another. Maybe it was induced by the fact that roughly a week prior, Satoru had started texting you. Aside from asking whether you were still in or were planning to chicken out, most of his texts were rather random stuff. He also seemed quite fond of the use of kaomoji and stickers, so his messages were certainly entertaining to look at. At the beginning, you had been annoyed by his texting, especially because he seemed to be particularly bored during his classes at the Academy which in turn distracted you, until you decided to mute him, at least for the duration of school.

Also, he tended to spam you with messages, since he sent a multitude of individual messages for every overarching message he wanted to convey. It was a miracle in itself if he managed to send a full sentence, let alone two. Measured by his type of writing he reminded you immensely of a cat, especially because he would nudge you for attention if you took too long to react to his messages for his liking. After a surprisingly short while, though, it kind of grew on you. You would probably never admit it to yourself or him, but some of his messages and the way he was communicating brought an elusive, but genuine smile onto your features more often than not.

And often enough, that smile was not that elusive after all.

Still, you reacted to only half of his messages, if at all, because you at the very least had other stuff to do, apart from catering to his need for attention. Also, you would see him soon anyway, and you certainly wanted to spend some time without having to think of him before that. And you still felt very much annoyed most of the time when you had to deal with him; the texting did not magically change that, but maybe it softened you somewhat beforehand.

By the time you arrived at the estate, it was early evening. The drive was longer than expected, partially due to rush hour hindrances, and totalled roughly an hour.

When you arrived at the gates of the Gojo clan, you were pretty much blindsided. You were expecting a main building and maybe two or three neighbouring buildings, but not… this.

The automatic gates opened to what you would consider a small village. The main building was easily cognisable, not only by its size, but also by its sheer presence. It was a beautifully designed house in the style of a traditional Japanese architecture, probably with its own inner courtyard and traditional garden.

That was not what struck you as overwhelming, though.

It was the sheer number of houses that were neatly spread out on the site. You estimated it to be two dozen, maybe some more. None of them was particularly small, either, though none of the houses came close to the main building. And most of the other houses had some modern touches to them, as well. Ginkgo and cherry blossom trees lined the pavements that trailed through the small village of houses, while some colourful flowers were adorning patches in between trees and in front of the houses.

In the not so far distance, you could see one house sitting atop of a small hill, looking over the curtailed residential area, emanating an aura of sublimeness, significance and inviolability.

You had expected to be brought to the main building, as you assumed Satoru would live in there, being who he was. Instead, you were chauffeured up to the single house on top of the hill, leaving the main building and the other buildings that centred around it behind.

It was a beautiful house, maybe even more so than the main building. It masterfully interweaved both traditional and modern local architecture and sported many elements that were clearly born out of attention to detail. An abundance of well-maintained greenery was surrounding it, including some very ancient and magnificent looking trees, such as at least one cherry tree as well as several Japanese maples.

It was, for a lack of a better word, almost magical. The combination of greenery and the trees put you immediately at ease, even more so after you stepped out of the car and noticed how calm it was up on this hill.

And yet…

Your gaze flitted towards the front door, where Satoru had appeared just as your car was rolling up the hill. He grinned broadly and waved vigorously.

For all the beauty this house had and for all the equilibrium and inner peace you felt while standing on top of this little hill, in this green little paradise, for some reason, you couldn’t shake the feeling of encroaching… loneliness. The way this house stood on top of this hill, far from the other buildings both in altitude as well as distance, made it feel isolated.

Untouchable.

Inviolable.

And while you smiled weakly and waved back to Satoru, with the attendants starting to pick up your stuff and bringing it inside, you felt like Satoru himself, too, was giving the same impression of isolating loneliness.

For some reason, both this feeling and realisation made you unconsolably sad.

Chapter Text

Your surprisingly peaceful and languorous sleep was abruptly and very rudely interrupted in the surprisingly early Saturday morning.

“Rise and shine, little sunshine!”

The duvet in which you had been curled up was cruelly ripped away from you, which caused the cool air of the room, and with it, the sobering reality, to come into contact with your near unconscious form.

You jerked awake, barely functioning and without most of your braincells in active service.

“Fuck you! Give that back you piece of shit! Get out!”

… Needless to say, one of you were akin to a morning person, while one of you certainly weren’t.

It took some more coarse shouting and you actually hitting Satoru for him to leave your room, though not without grinning wickedly and telling you that breakfast was about to be served.

When you managed to leave your very comfortable bed, get at least presentable enough for an early Saturday morning, and arrived at the dining room, you were met by a somewhat awkward breakfast experience.

The dining room was quite spacious, as was pretty much everything in this house of Satoru, and was primarily characterised by traditional Japanese architecture and interior. Hence, the dining table was of a low rise, with some thick, comfortable pillows clad in elaborately designed pillowcases surrounding it. You were no expert in furniture or in appraising in general, but you got the feeling that the table was rather expensive, since it looked like it was made from solid wood and was immaculate and polished to a tee.

The entire room was laid out with tatami mats, each one of them looking like they were handcrafted just this morning and not a day older. You wouldn’t be surprised if they were getting replaced on a regular basis, considering how that table looked like it was rather heavy, compared to many other low-rise dining tables that sometimes were put away after they served their use to make room for different activities and needs. This one table did not seem like it would get put away after it served its course.

Aside from where the door to the room was located, the room had one long wall that was entirely made up of Shoji, Japanese sliding doors, while the other walls sported big sliding windows, called Kōshi.

The sliding doors stood open, to open the view to both the porch surrounding the dining room as well as the very lush greenery in form of an opulent garden with what felt an abundance of trees, flowers, and a relatively big pond with a bridge crossing over it. The path leading towards it was made from seemingly crude virgin stone. The porch itself was enclosed by high-quality sliding panels made of glass, though they were slid on at this moment, so that the view into the opulent garden was not obstructed in any form.

The one wall that faced the house itself and therefore didn’t have doors or windows, be that sliding ones or otherwise, was graced with a Toko, an alcove of sorts, decorated with some Ikebana flower arrangement and a hanging scroll. Next to it, some aesthetically crafted and arranged racks that featured some very expensive and intricate looking porcelain bowls.

But the room itself was not really what caused your experience to feel rather awkward – although, the size of both the room and the table while only you and Satoru were in it probably had a minor role to play in the end.

No, instead it was the sheer amount of food being present on the table. You could almost hear the groaning of the wood while an abundance of dishes was arranged on top of it. The main focus was obviously a traditional Japanese breakfast, correspondingly white rice, miso soup, umeboshi, takuan, raw egg, grilled fish and matcha as well as orange juice was present. But that’s not where it ended. You also saw tofu, omelette, nori and even natto – you shuddered upon both smelling and seeing it. For some reason, there was also daifuku, anpan, konpeito and taiyaki present. And cereals, jam, white bread, rye bread, butter, sliced vegetables, some seasonal fruits and milk, presumably as an alternative to the traditional Japanese breakfast options.

You just stared at the table while Satoru impatiently beckoned you closer to come and sit, a cup with steaming content in his hand.

“Err… are we expecting someone else? Some clan members from yesterday evening maybe?”, you asked while hesitantly inching closer towards the table. You noticed that Satoru had not taken seat at the head side of the table, probably so that you wouldn’t be too far apart when eating.

Well, there went your option of not having to face him at the morning table you guessed.

“Nah. I guess Hana just got excited and went overboard with her planning and instructions. That, and she didn’t get to ask for your preferences I guess,” Satoru replied, shrugging nonchalantly while starting to pile the sweet dishes on his plate. He stopped for a moment and looked up at you. “If you’re worried about the leftovers – don’t be. They won’t let them go to waste. So, sit down already, or I’ll eat your share as well.”

You chuntered and flopped down on one of the pillows, scanning the table trying to decide on where to begin. Your gaze fell upon the rising stack of taiyaki on Satoru’s plate and before he managed to steal the last one as well, you snatched the plate away and claimed the last taiyaki as your own – not that you’d normally eat taiyaki for breakfast, but who were you to refuse if given the option. Especially so if that meant preventing Satoru from hogging all of them to himself.

Said young man just grinned cheekily at you, not bothered by your action at all and started chomping on his very sweet selection of breakfast. He knew that there was more than enough where that came from, but he chose not to say anything at this point, instead enjoying your grumpy cat disposition.

Barely two seconds after you had taken your seat, the mentioned lady herself seemed to pop up out of nowhere, wearing a warm and welcoming smile.

“Good morning to you as well, esteemed Miss Kubo*. I hope you had a restful night?”, she greeted you with a very polite and very graceful bow.

You turned towards her with your pillow and bowed as well, not being used to being treated with such high level of courtesy. “Yes, thank you Mrs Mori. I think I had one of the most restful nights in a long while.”

To this, Hana chuckled cheerily. “I’m glad to hear that. But there’s no need to be so polite, esteemed Miss Kubo. Hana is fine.”

Before you were able to interject and insist that in this case, she ought to call you just by your given name as well -especially since you were not of the Clan and significantly younger than her-, she smiled at Satoru’s tower of sweets and then looked you over. “What would you like to drink? Also, do you desire anything else? I can have the kitchen whip it up in no time, if it would be acceptable for you to wait a few moments.”

Almost panicked by it, you waved your hands in dismissal. “No! No, I’m fine with the present selection, thank you. But, um… would you happen to have hot chocolate? If so, I’d like a cup.”

“Of course, esteemed Miss Kubo. I’ll be right back.”

With another graceful bow, Hana left the room, and you slumped somewhat, feeling overwhelmed with this special treatment.

“Hot chocolate, huh? Wouldn’t have assumed you to like it,” Satoru chimed in.

You turned towards him, frowning and somewhat annoyed. “Is that a problem?”

He just grinned. “No? It’s cute. Also, I like hot chocolate as well, so we’re on the same page here.”

You didn’t exactly know what was cute about liking hot chocolate, but now you were almost inclined to not drink one of your favourite comfort drinks anymore, at least not in his presence. Then again, you liked it way too much to refrain from it just because Satoru thought it cute. And you weren’t that petty – or so you hoped at the very least.

You had barely taken a bite out of your taiyaki when Hana reappeared out of nowhere, a steaming and very elegant cup of hot chocolate on a tray. She kneeled beside you and placed the cup within arm reach in such a graceful motion that you could’ve sworn once more she were a Geisha.

“Sorry to bother you, Hana, but could I get one cup of hot chocolate as well?”

“Of course, young master, right away.”

You watched her leave the room and then raised an eyebrow at Satoru. “And you only thought of that now?”

“Well,” he replied, eying your cup of chocolate greedily. “I only found out just now that I can’t resist a good cup of Hana’s hot chocolate after all. Sue me all you want.”

You scoffed, taking a careful sip. You squealed with pleased surprise when the liquid met your lips. The drink had exactly the right temperature – not too hot that you would risk burning your lips and tongue, not too mild that it felt lukewarm and stale. And the taste! You swore you never had a cup of hot chocolate this good. It had just the right amount of sweetness, with a hint of soft vanilla and a gentle creaminess that no other hot chocolate you ever had, had.

Satoru watched the giddy joy spread over your face upon taking the first sip and smiled, both endeared and proud. “That good, huh?”

You didn’t answer, being too busy to take yet another very happy sip of the best hot chocolate you ever had.

After Hana had brought a cup of hot chocolate for Satoru as well -which sported a rich assortment of sprinkles and marshmallows-, you placed down your cup and looked over the breakfast offering again.

“So, Geto is not joining us for breakfast, I assume?”, you asked, trying to mask the hint of disappointment that you felt by that realisation.

Unbeknownst to you, Satoru’s smile faltered for but a fraction of a moment before he stirred his cup of chocolatey divinity and went back to smiling lazily. “Nope, not that I know of. It’s just the two of us. Unless you prefer having the clan around…?”

You shuddered and stared wide-eyed and somewhat unnerved at the table. “… No thanks.”

Satoru grinned. “Thought as much.”

Your thoughts travelled back to last night’s events. You had arrived just early enough for you to join Satoru for dinner. As he thought it would probably a good idea to have you meet at least some of the other clan members so that they got to know you, he insisted you go join the selection of important clan members who dined at the main building, at least during weekends.

Or so Satoru claimed. You wouldn’t have been surprised if he coerced all of them to switch plans on short notice.

The dining room in the main building was significantly bigger than the one in Satoru’s house, closer to a small hall, really. While the dining room over there was also designed in the style of Japanese architecture and opulent and beautiful, it had felt… colder, somehow, compared to this room. Less personal.

Though, when you thought about it, while the dining room in Satoru’s estate felt warmer and more personal to a certain degree, the size of the room and that gigantic table in it and the fact that you’d assume Satoru would dine in it alone for the most time, gave the room an air of loneliness.

Still, you liked this smaller one better, which may or may not have to do with the absence of stern-looking clan members.

Satoru had pulled himself together enough to introduce you with your actual name and then plainly announced that he would commit to training you during the weekends for the time being, albeit he omitted the reason as to why. Going by the slightly frazzled looks on some of the faces, such whims of him were nothing new, so they hadn’t even bothered trying to ask.

That didn’t mean they didn’t wonder, though. You could tell by the way they scrutinised you, causing you to unconsciously inch closer towards Satoru’s side. You had then decided to stick close to him when you took your places at the table, feeling like his presence somehow fended off some of the overwhelming atmosphere that hung in the room.

You had been greeted formally and politely, with each of the fifteen present people -almost all male, you noticed- introducing themselves in a short, demure manner. You forgot their names almost instantly and sincerely hoped you weren’t expected to memorise all of them.

None of them had been showing any signs of hostility or refusal regarding your presence, but you weren’t exactly met with warmth or joy or hospitality that went beyond the required levels, either. It was plain obvious that while they may not be outright against your presence at the estate, your being here was tolerated at best.

While you had been so tense during the entire ordeal that you barely managed to eat anything, Satoru was happily chatting away, smiling and making some of his usual flippant comments. You were assuming that he had made some conscious efforts to include you in some of the casual chatter at some point, but you barely remembered what that was about – though you did remember feeling both somewhat grateful and even more stressed out because of it.

Unbeknownst to you, Satoru, too, had felt a certain level of tension during your communal dinner with the high-ranking clan members, though he noticed he felt somewhat more at peace than usual, which he chalked up to you being with him.

You vaguely remembered that they also had been talking about some reports about curse activity, but you couldn’t remember the details or pretty much anything about it afterwards.

Your first meeting with Hana, the head housekeeper, was closer to the exact opposite. Upon seeing and being introduced to you, she smiled warmly and suspiciously happy, looking almost relieved. She went on to introduce the rest of the staff that was tasked with tending to Satoru’s home specially and then ushered you into the living room before excusing her for a moment and scurrying away.

Hana was a strikingly pretty lady in what you assumed her early to mid-50s. She had silky black hair that was elaborately pinned up into a classic Japanese updo and was wearing a formal looking Yukata and Getas. Every action and every movement seemed to be very deliberate and oozed with elegant grace.

Or so you thought until you got whiplash from her interaction with Satoru and from her what you dubbed “after-work hours personality”.

She returned to the living room shortly after, carrying a tray with a small selection of small Onigiri and Melonpan, three cups and a teapot. She gingerly set those items down onto the coffee table and smiled warmly at you.

“I figured you wouldn’t be able to eat as much as you’d like, with all those stern-looking people over at the main building. If you feel still peckish, please help yourself,” she hummed friendly while pouring the tea into the teacups.

You could’ve cried and hugged Hana at the same time at this point. You had indeed felt rather peckish after the dinner because you had barely been able to eat anything, despite the delicious looking food that was served. So, you were overly grateful for this small second dinner. Even more so that you got some Melonpan to boot.

You nibbled happily on one of the Onigiri, oblivious to the gentle smile that was bestowed upon you by both Hana and Satoru who had shared a knowing look earlier. The Onigiri were filled with pickled plums and soothed your cravings just right.

“I have to say, I’m really happy that Satoru finally got a housemate, especially one as adorable as the esteemed Miss Kubo,” she chuckled, a well veiled hint of mischief dancing in her eyes. “You see, Satoru had been rather lonely at home before he enrolled into the Academy.”

A genius braincell of yours decided to try inhaling the Onigiri’s rice grains instead of properly swallowing them, causing you to choke on said rice grains. “E-excuse me?”, you cawed.

“Hana, was the last part really necessary? Also, I’m not even lonely – don’t I have you?”

Hana smiled angelic while patting your back. “Stop lying to me, little brat. I’ve known you for long enough to know it’s true.”

Yeah, at this point you had started fearing you might indeed die of asphyxiation. Death by onigiri, well wasn’t that peachy. Death by mochi was getting old, anyway. And mostly reserved for New Year’s Eve.

With a well-placed, practised slap on your back, Hana saved you from your impeding demise, while still smiling angelic at Satoru.

The fuck, you thought, still coughing lightly. Just a minute ago, Hana could’ve very well been a Geisha for all you knew based on her poise, but now she was bashing the head of the house and The Strongest of Jujutsu Society like it was just another Friday evening and he just another insubordinate youth.

“See, this piece of work here had very few, if any, meaningful contacts and relationships for the longest of time until he entered Jujutsu Academy and that dashing esteemed Mr. Geto came around. Oh, and esteemed Miss Ieri as well!” With a certain viciousness to her smile, she started tousling Satoru’s hair, though it did look rather ruthless for the gesture. The receiver did not actually seem to mind, though, although he looked somewhat bashful.

“U-uh huh…”

“Uh, Hana… Hana? You didn’t spike your tea… again… did you?” Satoru inquired before gently removing her hand from his hair.

Her conspicuously loud laugh was answer enough to that question.

“Now listen here, brat. You make sure to treat this missy here well, got it? We both know you could use some more attachment figures…”

“When have I ever mistreated some–“ He got cut off by getting hand-chopped to the side.

“Sorry, what was that? My hearing isn’t getting better with old age, you know.”

“How old even are y– ouch! Okay, okay, fine! I’ll make sure to give her the best guest experience there is, good?”

Before you knew it, a small chuckle had left your lips, watching the antics of the two of them. Somehow, it felt strangely endearing seeing how Hana, despite being the head housekeeper and being below him in rank, treated him more or less like just another young man. You could tell those two shared a deep level of trust and fondness based on this interaction alone.

Yet, at the same time it felt weird seeing how Gojo Satoru, the allegedly untouchable Strongest One, was letting himself getting hit by her like that. Then again, it was not like you knew how his technique worked. Nor did you care at this time.

Only weeks later did you realise that while he did deflect certain claims made by Hana, he never outright denied them. You weren’t quite sure how to feel about that or what that said about him for that matter. Every time you thought back to this moment, though, you felt a small pang in your heart.

And that was pretty much how your first evening at Satoru’s estate had come to a conclusion – besides nibbling on the food Hana had brought, you had been present at their casual chatter, content with mostly listening, and only now and then taking part in it as well.

And then you were brought to what was to be your room for your stay at the house. You still hadn’t quite been able to come to terms with it.

As if he had guessed to your thoughts, Satoru grinned impishly all of a sudden. “Say, how did you like your room? Anything missing?”

You glared at him. Missing was hardly the word you would use if you had to describe your room.

You were convinced the entire room was at least as big as your entire damn flat – which, granted, wasn’t big for a flat with its roundabout 30m2, but the size was certainly nothing to sneeze at if it were the size of a bedroom alone. And maybe it was just the way the room was illuminated by natural light or due to the bright, warm colour of the wooden furniture, but you wouldn’t be surprised if this bedroom was even bigger than that.

But no. What had caught you very much by surprise was what felt like an absolute gigantomanic canopy bed with a low-rise that embodied both Western and Japanese elements to a beautiful result. And not just that, there even was an expensive looking Futon available, together with two big tatami mats to lay beneath. Like the mats in the dining room, those had looked high-quality as well.

That was nothing to say about those other elaborate furniture pieces that consisted of a big closet for clothes, a built-in closet for the Futon and the tatami mats, a bookshelf that was just plain art in Japanese style, a generous desk and one of the most comfortable armchairs belonging to it. And then there was this issue of the huge Nemu Neko that had greeted you on the canopy bed. It was certainly cute -and very much fluffy!-, but you couldn’t quite make up your mind as to what to think of it.

“… Hardly. I could tell you had your fun furnishing it?”, you asked drily, with Satoru nodding. “Yeah, well, thanks, I guess. I feared you would give me an empty lumber room or something.”

While it might’ve sounded like you were only barely grateful, truth was, you had been very pleasantly surprised and you were highly grateful for this very generous room that had been given to you, and especially for this carefully selected interior. You were just way too stubborn to relay the full extent of this gratefulness to Satoru correspondingly.

Satoru stared at you, somewhat at a loss for words for a moment. “Are you still at your low opinion of me? Geez! Why would I even invite you to come live here, only for me to treat you like that?”

A somewhat indifferent shrug was all the answer he got from you. By now he knew that your opinion of him wasn’t necessarily a good one, though you had already started to revise it to some degree. He certainly was an obnoxiously annoying handful, but so far not nearly as bad as you had feared.

“Still, what’s with that huge ass Nemu Neko?”

“Do you like it?” He grinned mischievously.

“That… was not the question,” you deadpanned, before looking away bashfully. “But yes, I do.”

“Thought as much! After all, I wouldn’t want you to feel lonely, the little stray kitten that you are.”

“… Actually, I changed my mind, I hate it. Please take it away.”

“Awww, meanie!”

The remainder of the breakfast went by relatively uneventful, save for some more exchanges of quips between the both of you and some more scuffle for some of the sweet dishes, with Satoru seemingly having genuine fun, and you being in a weird state of both annoyance and mild merriment. You resorted to having a somewhat wild mix for breakfast, because if it was offered for free, who were you to decline?

You did make sure to not eat too much, though, seeing as that would be disadvantageous if you were to train later. You only then noticed that you didn’t even know what Satoru had in plan for the day’s schedule.

Before you got to ask, though, Geto showed up, a pleasant smile plastered on his face and some suspicious waggishness dancing in his eyes.

“I see the both of you are still alive and kicking. What a pleasant surprise”, he smirked.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”, Satoru and you asked unison, only for you to give each other a weird look, and then Geto.

The latter laughed amusedly and reached out to tousle your hair gently, without bothering to elaborate. You stiffened, surprised by this unexpected directness and over-familiar gesture. You decided you didn’t dislike it per se, so you didn’t move away.

“Were you able to get a good night’s rest, [Name]?”, Geto asked.

“Yes, quite so. It’s significantly quieter here than over at my place – even though I’m already living in a rather calm neighbourhood.”

“I guess that comes with the privilege of living in a private residential area. You would love it at Jujutsu Academy then. It’s up in the mountains and you barely hear anything or anyone at all – other than nature and its inhabitants, that is.”

That did sound rather inviting, if you were honest. Though having a quiet place to live alone would not sway you to take up your mantle as a Sorcerer again. Maybe you could visit the Academy, though. Just for a little while, to bask in the calm nature around it.

If you were staying long enough with Satoru to even get the chance to ask to visit the Academy grounds, that is.

Geto stroked your hair one last time, then caught Satoru’s stare, even from behind his glasses. “What are you looking so jealous about? C’mere.” With some significant amount of affectionate roughness, he proceeded to ruffle Satoru’s hair as well, a big mischievous smile plastered on his face.

Satoru squawked indignantly and half-heartedly tried to swat his hand away, but both you and Geto could see the small happy smile on his face very clearly.

“Anyway. Satoru, since you were so adamant on adopting a kitten, I thought maybe you’d want to adopt a cat for real? You know, seeing how [Name] volunteers at an animal shelter and all?”

“What?”, you asked, clearly caught off-guard and not necessarily enthused.

“What?”, Satoru asked, seemingly even more caught off-guard than you and utterly confused. “But I have adopted a stray kitten. What would I need a second one for?” He proceeded to put his hand on your shoulder to emphasise his words.

“I’m neither a stray, nor a kitten, nor adopted, dude, seriously! Would you keep up already?”, you gritted out and slapped his hand away. “This is getting old.”

Geto chuckled slightly while watching the two of you. He hadn’t uttered his mock surprise upon arrival for no reason, after all. Although, he got the impression you were reacting slightly less aggravated than during your encounter at the school gates. You had probably started to adjust or at least get used to Satoru’s antics.

In either case, he had an inkling that Satoru for his part had already started developing a certain, budding fondness for you. Though he doubted either of you were aware of it at this point.

“Ugh. Never mind. Aren’t you staying at Academy grounds during the week anyway? What good would do a cat, then? It’s not like he can take care of it or build a bond to it this way,” you sighed exasperated and lifted a brow. “Also, would the domestic workers even be okay with a cat running about?”

“Oh, as long as it’s not a dog, Hana is fine with almost any animal as far as I know,” Satoru replied unconcernedly. “The others… will be fine as well. I guess.”

‘I guess’??, you repeated internally, not convinced at all. It seemed like he did not really care much for the other attendants of this house, or at least not nearly as much as he did for Hana.

“What’s wrong with dogs?”

“If I remember correctly, she got bitten by one when she was young. She can tolerate their presence to some degree if she must, but she’d really rather not if it can be helped.”

“… oh.” You grimaced sympathetically. It seemed a lot of people had had bad experiences with dogs at some point, which was sad, seeing how most dogs were generally no malicious souls, but you could understand that those who got bitten at one point would probably have trouble seeing that.

You then squared your shoulders and looked first at Geto, then Satoru. “Still. I don’t know either of you well yet, so I’d rather not start adoption talks just yet. Especially because I don’t trust you to take care of an animal responsibly. And that’s not even taking into consideration your vocation as a Sorcerer or the fact that you’re gone for most of the week and would leave the care to your attendants. I’m willing to consider reviewing this idea in a month or so, and then we’ll see how things turned out until then. This will give you, Satoru, the chance to think well about this option beforehand as well. As you should.”

Geto shrugged and lifted his hands in surrender. “You’re right. Guess it shouldn’t be treated like a spur of the moment idea.”

Meanwhile Satoru seemed rather indifferent, though it was hard to tell, as his sunglasses hid his eyes and he wasn’t wearing any specific expression. He was looking in your direction, though, so you got the feeling of him being somewhat pensive. When nudged slightly by Geto, he just nodded vaguely. “Yea, sure.”

You furrowed your brows slightly at him, somewhat confused by his listless reaction all of a sudden but didn’t pay it much mind. Although, you wished he’d stop looking in your direction like that.

“So, with the three of us here, shall we tackle the training endeavour, then? After all, that’s the sole reason I’m here,” you then suggested when a rather awkward silence was about to settle in. Seriously, why did that motormouth go so silent all of a sudden?

It was Geto who perked up and suggested moving over to the Dojo – because of course Satoru’s house had a private one, so that would save you from having to go to the communal one. It should make things less awkward for you, or so you hoped at the very least. The tall, black-haired man then placed a hand softly on your shoulder to guide you towards the right direction and followed suit, while taking up friendly small talk, asking about your week.

Satoru stayed behind for a moment, his gaze locked onto your two dissipating forms. Something about this whole interaction just now bothered him, though he couldn’t quite place the root cause for it. He was certain it had nothing to do with the talk about him adopting a cat per se, but something… else. His gaze zoned in on Suguru’s hand lightly touching your shoulder to guide you and for a short moment, the image of Suguru tousling your hair unexpectantly came to mind, followed by the memory you swatting his, Satoru’s, hand away barely after.

I don’t trust you.

That’s what you said, although with a certain context to it. Still, those four words in particular reverberated in his head, slowly fading out, but proceeding to carve themselves into a subconscious layer of his being. Why were the two of you acting like you were so familiar with each other anyway? You had become acquaintances only like yesterday and he himself was sure to know each of you better than you two knew each other. Somehow, it felt like…–

“What are you spacing out for? Are you coming or not, dear Sensei?”

His thoughts returned to the present when he felt himself being nudged affectionately by the shoulder, his field of view being occupied by the amused visage of Suguru, smiling at him. Behind him, you peeked around the corner, looking at Satoru in a slightly annoyed, slightly puzzled fashion, but in either way clearly waiting for him.

“Of course I am. Not like you would be able to start without me anyway,” Satoru huffed in mock offense. Suguru laughed, slapping his back once in a friendly gesture and put his arm around his shoulder for a short while, effectively pulling Satoru with him when he started walking towards your waiting figure.

Satoru didn’t mind. Instead, he found himself smiling again.

What was I thinking about just now?, he pondered but failed to come up with the train of thoughts that had occupied him just now. Eh. Must’ve been unimportant.

Chapter Text

It took you but a few minutes to get to the manageable, but well-maintained Dojo that belonged to Satoru and his residence. It was clear it was meant for no more than a small handful of people, but was still rather big for one or two people alone. Similar to the dining room, it had one big front with Shoji leading to the veranda surrounding it, though in this case, the view was not on a pond, but on a lot of trees, so maybe there was a grove growing in the immediate area.

You sat across from Satoru, with Geto sitting to the side, facing the two of you. Feeling somewhat tense and self-conscious all of a sudden, you kneeled in a somewhat more formal way, with both of your feet not crossing each other, but being outstretched. Geto and Satoru were both sitting leisurely, with one leg tucked under and the other stood up.

Satoru in particular was resting his head lazily on the back of his hand, the arm of which rested on his raised knee. “So,” he said slowly, his gaze finding yours over the rim of the glasses. “Let’s talk about training then. What do you hope to gain and what are your goals?”

“I want to break free of the combat style that was ingrained upon me due to my Cursed Technique, of sorts… I want to learn a more proactive style and I need to be able to hold my own without relying on my Cursed Technique.”

“You ‘need’?” Geto inquired quizzically.

“Yes, I need,” you reiterated, glancing at him out of the corner of your eyes for but a small moment, before keeping your gaze fixed on Satoru again. You saw that the two of them exchanged a somewhat intrigued, somewhat confused gaze, but neither of them prodded further and you were glad for it. Not like you were willing to share your deepest motivations, after all.

You clasped your hands in your lap and squeezed them slightly while studying Satoru. The part you had already told them, you could’ve managed on your own eventually, and certainly without Satoru. For the other part, it wasn’t strictly imperative that you had Satoru or someone similar help you, but you hoped that it would make things significantly easier. For some reason, you felt somewhat nervous about bringing it forth, though.

“Also… I ne–… I’d like to improve my control of Cursed Energy. Or rather the efficiency of it,” you continued, willing your gaze to remain unwaveringly on Satoru.

He hummed nondescriptly, taking off his glasses and scrutinising you with those incredibly blue eyes. You felt like what may be the first time, he wasn’t looking at you on a basic level, but was looking at you, at your very essence and the atoms that you were made of. You felt incredibly bare and embarrassed under his intense gaze and eventually averted your eyes, unable to keep eye contact.

You wondered what it was that he saw. You didn’t know much about his Technique, but you had heard he was blessed with an unnatural level of perception. Amongst others.

When his staring didn’t seem to come to an end, you coughed awkwardly and redirected your eyes back to him. In that same motion, a certain judder on your left wrist gave you a head-up barely seconds before a staggering dizziness came over you. You clicked your tongue and hissed, turning your gaze towards the floor while waiting for the dizziness to subside, swaying ever so slightly, though you yourself barely noticed.

In that same moment, Satoru’s brow furrowed deeply, and he leaned forward – not in concern, not really, but in a mixture of captivation, confusion and interest. His gaze turned even more intense for a second, if that was even possible. You could practically feel his gaze on your skin and, mixed with your discomfort due to the sudden wave of dizziness, decided it was a rather unpleasant feeling.

“Are you alright? You’re pale all of a sudden,” Geto said worriedly, ever the keen observer.

“I’m fine. Just… a headache,” you mumbled, taking controlled breaths and feeling how the dizziness, thankfully, started to dissipate back where it came from.

“If you’re not feeling well, we can postpone–“

“No. No, I’m fine, thank you, Geto. I’m… used to having sudden bouts of headaches,” you sighed. You couldn’t even say why it was that you sold your dizziness attack as headaches, but you didn’t really want them to perceive you as volatile or weak due to your… condition. And it was not like you were a stranger to headaches, either, so if anything, it was but half of a lie. As if that would make it any better.

“Did you know that you have quite the interesting Cursed Energy flow?”, Satoru then asked, still watching you without his glasses, but less intensely so. Only now did he register your paleness that was fading away, and he had an inkling what had caused it. Or, at the very least he assumed he had seen a correlation between your sudden unwellness and the flow of your Cursed Energy.

You just looked at him, hesitantly, not sure if you should share your knowledge about the unique traits some of your clan members had. Satoru only waited for a small fraction of moment and then took your silence as an offer to continue talking.

“I’d love to dig deeper into that topic at a later time. I -or we, really- should be able to cover both of your goals regarding the training. I think it’d be best if we bring some auxiliary tools from the Academy for your energy training, so we won’t be going into that this weekend, but we can start with combat. It’s probably a good thing you have both me and Suguru here. Suguru loves martial arts, so he has a profound knowledge of many of them. In comparison, my style is somewhat more… straightforward, but you can benefit from both of our experiences.”

That sounded promising at the very least, so you nodded. You would have to test what style of martial art would suit you and your needs the best and currently, you were far from having a concrete idea regarding that. So, you three then decided to get changed into more fitting clothes and gathered again in the dojo again afterwards.

To gauge your current status quo in terms of skill level, Satoru had you spar with him, just using martial arts, with Geto watching on the sidelines for now, but tasked with assessing your skills as well.

“Come at me at your own pace. For now, I won’t attack, but I want to see how you’d go in for the first strike,” Satoru instructed after you had a small warmup, taking up a vigilant and observant, but still rather relaxed combat position. As he was wearing rather comfortable, loose-fitting clothing before, you only now noticed that he was significantly more muscular than you had assumed, even though you had already noticed that he had a defined body when you were shoving him out of the shelter during his first visit.

Geto had a similar physique, albeit a noticeably broader frame. Made sense if martial arts were his hobby. You decided to put your trust in their skills for them to know how not to destroy their sparring partner, especially if said sparring partner was inferior to them in both physique and skills.

You breathed in and out in a controlled manner, balling your hands to fists and lowering yourself into an agile combat stance, with a focus on being swift on your feet. Then you hesitated, trying to figure out how to go from here on out. Deciding that you’d start with an uppercut, you leapt towards him and then… you hesitated some more during your motion. Because of this, even you yourself knew and noticed that your attack was doomed to fail and very much poor in execution. Satoru backed this up by barely moving and casually redirecting your punch before grabbing onto your forearm, making you stumble a bit.

“Well, that was horrible,” he stated demurely, while letting go of your arm. He had this intense look in his eyes again, and while you got the feeling he wasn’t actually judging you for that performance just now, it still left a bitter taste in your mouth.

“Satoru,” Geto chided, his brows furrowed.

“I’m just stating facts, Suguru. It won’t help her if I sugarcoat it just to spare her feelings,” Satoru countered, none of his usual playfulness to be found in his voice. He was uncharacteristically stern, though you got the feeling he wasn’t doing it to be mean or to demean you. If anything, you had an inkling it was the opposite. “Again.”

You tried a couple more times, none of them being something you’d consider “good”, and of course, none of them managed to hit Satoru or put him in a tight spot, but at least you weren’t getting worse. Instead, you had the feeling like you were slowly getting rid of your inhibition to go for the first strike.

Satoru noticed as well, and so, after another set of repetitions, he gave you a small, encouraging smile, breaking his tense, stern persona for a moment. “Good. You’re getting less tense. Now let’s see how you’ll react to getting attacked.”

You would’ve liked if he had appeased you with words like ‘Don’t worry, I won’t go all out on you’, because even though you trusted in his judgment of both his and your skills, having “The Strongest” attack you without warning certainly was not for those faint of heart.

He attacked swiftly without warning or any telltale sign and for but a fraction of a second, you caught a glimpse of why people were so damn adamant on putting their trust in him. From what you could tell, his form was near flawless and if you hadn’t been trained for such a situation, his attack would’ve landed for certain.

This way, however, your body’s instincts and reflexes sprung to life, now very much in their element and you blocked his right-hander aimed at your face. You grunted when his fist met your forearm, recoiling ever so slightly while adjusting to his force. He was definitely holding back, but that didn’t mean he was handling you with kid gloves. You caught the faint flicker of a smile flitting across his features before he bent to the side to raise his leg in a sharp, high kick so smoothly and effortlessly that you wished you could’ve watched him as a spectator instead of being the one being attacked by that kick.

Despite the attack being so sudden and fast, you still managed to grab onto his leg and use his momentum to twist your body and redirect the physical force into a throw. Your palms certainly prickled from that impact though. If Satoru had been a significantly less skilled fighter, he probably would’ve fallen unceremoniously on his back and stayed there for a while, maybe with some joint problems to boot. Him being a very seasoned fighter, however, he securely rolled away and was back on his feet in the blink of an eye.

You were probably in luck that he had been relatively close, considering he had very long legs, which was not surprising, given his height. That made grabbing and throwing by his leg significantly more difficult, though. Not that this type of throwing was ideal anyway.

When you faced each other once more, you noticed a glint in his unveiled eyes, accompanied by what seemed a satisfied smile. You knew for a fact that he didn’t get near letting loose with you, but it sure seemed like he was deriving a certain amount of enjoyment from it all the same.

He then transitioned from more or less singular attacks to turning up the heat by attacking in rapid succession, putting you in a rather tight spot within a relatively small amount of time. In the beginning, you managed to at least block or redirect his attacks, but due to the speed with which he kept attacking, as well as the force behind it, you were soon getting overwhelmed and took several hits, though you noticed that Satoru was careful enough not to hit sensitive spots, seeing as neither of you wore protective gear at the moment.

When you managed to block another kick of his just in time with your leg, you suddenly stumbled from exhaustion and a small wave of dizziness and fell unceremoniously on your behind. Satoru immediately stopped in his tracks and lowered his leg with which he had intended to land another kick just now.

“You okay?”, he asked, not so much with actual worry than with genuine compassion and held out his hand for you to take. You gave a deep wheeze, then took his hand and let him help you up. In hindsight, you were glad for it, because as soon as you got back to your feet, you staggered slightly and winced when every single muscle and bone in your body seemed to cry out in pain.

“I feel like I got kicked by a horse. Multiple times,” you grumbled, shaking your head ever so lightly and waiting for your blood pressure to regulate itself.

Satoru laughed and slapped your shoulder fraternally, still holding onto your hand while doing so. “Sorry sorry, I just thought I’d like to test your limits thoroughly before I finalise my assessment of you. Though, we’d still have to test your control of Cursed Energy before that anyway.”

You groaned, tugging your hand out of his and dragging yourself in Geto’s direction to dry your face and hands with a laid-out towel and taking some big mouthfuls of water. The black-haired smiled encouragingly at you and patted your shoulder lightly.

“You did well – your form is quite solid, at least as long as you’re in defensive mode. You also managed to make do with your disadvantages in height, reach and weight, and that’s worth something if your opponent is someone like Satoru,” he offered constructively.

You nodded your head in gratefulness, waiting for a few moments more before daring to sit down. Satoru had also taken up the opportunity to drink something and flopped down in front of you, his sunglasses back on his face. In comparison to you, he looked like he had nothing more than a nice little workout. Which was probably true for him.

Well. It wasn’t like you had been actively attacking him anyway, so of course he had barely any bruises, safe from one spot where you had countered one of his punches with one of your own on his inner arm. You smiled pettily to yourself, proud that you managed to land at least one hit that left a mark on him, however temporary that would be. It was only fair, after all, because you were decently covered in bruises, though none of them in your face, thankfully. Your arms and legs though? Painted in all shades of blue, green and purple, depending on how fresh they were. You could practically watch them grow and change colour.

You knew you were going to be sore as fuck tomorrow and everything would hurt even more, but still, you felt… good. It had been surprisingly fun to spar with Satoru, at least as soon as you were able to act from your comfort zone and got somewhat used to sparring with him, even though he pretty much cornered you with his attacks. You just sure hoped not every weekend would be this intense, because you needed some strength left to attend school… and participate in PE. Not to mention the looks you would probably get in the locker room due to your bruises.

That, however, was an issue you refused to think about at the present and instead would have your future you to deal with.

“Your form is surprisingly good and your reflexes even more so, that’s true,” Satoru said, joining the conversation. “But it was painfully obvious that you have no idea what you’re doing as soon as you’re in the offense. And you’re lacking stamina for intense one-on-one fights.”

Deadpanning, you shrugged at him. “I mean… yes? It’s not like you’d want a shield to dish out punches on its own, do you?”

He grinned. “That would be funny to look at, though.”

Geto smiled and then tilted his head at you pensively. “So, the training you’re getting at your clan is mainly defence and reaction based?”

“Yes, very much so. We’re trained to have quick thinking, good reflexes and a good reading on our opponent’s movements, so that we can then counter them with defensive manoeuvres like throws or redirecting physical forces. Of course, that means we learn punches and kicks as well, but we’re usually not taught how to go in for the first strike because normally, no one expects us or wants us to. And if they do, that’s usually not a good sign.”

“I see,” Geto said and then fell silent for a while, contemplating.

“Funny though,” Satoru chimed back in, grinning mischievously while looking you up and down. “I got the impression you weren’t shy of punching people in the face if they annoyed you.”

That… was not even a wrong impression per se, though it certainly made you look like you were some Yanki girl who always punched first and maybe asked later. So, you gave a slight cough and then arched a brow while returning his gaze. “I might have, once or twice. Punching in an idiot’s face is not the same as going into the offense when met with Curses or similar opponents, though.”

You certainly didn’t mind putting assholes back in their place, especially if they were asking for it. You weren’t necessarily proud of it, since you much preferred reason over violence, but you couldn’t help but take pride in being able to cut people like them down to size, despite being “just a girl”.

Of course, you were somewhat cheating, seeing how you were trained in combat from a very young age and trimmed to face much bigger threats than some youngsters who lacked self-worth, self-confidence and, most of the time, real brawl experience. Still, if that led to them being less of a nuisance, it was worth it, though you weren’t ruling out the possibility of you exacerbating the problem either. In the end, you were really just hoping for the best.

And sometimes, your somewhat choleric temper just made that decision for you.

… yes, you had your fair share of trouble and disciplinary punishments because of it. More often than not, it had been worth it, though.

“Hmmm~,” Satoru lilted, smirking. “So you prefer beating up those weaker than you? That’s not nice.”

You certainly would’ve preferred beating him in that very moment, but you refrained – not because of some moral high ground, but because you were totally beat and it was just not worth it at this point.

Still, you couldn’t help but glare at him and sigh exasperatedly. Just a moment ago, you had the feeling like you could get along with him after all. Maybe you were mistaken, seeing how he had reverted back to his annoying, and at times obnoxious behaviour. “Yes, absolutely. Where else would I go with all this pent-up fury? Someone has to take the fall for it, no? The wails of weaker beings while being beat to a pulp soothe my soul.” You said this with the uttermost dry, sarcastic voice you could muster and with a fitting deadpan expression.

Geto snorted, trying to be discreetly about it, but when he exchanged glances with Satoru, all restraint went out the window and he laughed wholeheartedly. Satoru grinned and then joined in, leaving you to shrug with a deadpan expression, though before you knew it, a faint smile crept across your features.

That outburst didn’t last for long, and soon Geto wiped the few tears of laughter out of his eyes, shaking his head lightly while still snickering for a bit. When he got himself back under control, he looked at you. “I must admit, that notion certainly is entertaining, albeit morally questionable. But let’s stick to beating curses to a pulp. Seeing how you already have a solid groundwork, we should be able to build on that and teach you to be more offensive in battle. I think we can start with having you learn effective opener techniques and then apply that to learning how to actually go in for the first strike.”

He looked to Satoru to gauge his opinion and saw him nodding. “We’ll see if you’re up to learning some new moves later today. But maybe for now, some demonstration could be helpful. Just to give you some idea how a combat with high levels of offensive behaviour and strategy might look like.”

You certainly didn’t mind catching your breath and watching others fight, especially if it were those two. You got a vague idea of the combat style Satoru seemed to like to deploy, but you were quite interested in Geto’s style as well, even more so if he really was as big of a martial arts fan as Satoru had made him out to be. So you did not object, but got comfortable leaning on the wall instead. Buddha knew your muscles could use the rest. “Sure, I don’t mind. At least it’s not my body that gets put through the mangle again.”

Geto smiled and reached out to tousle your hair again, but this time around, you grimaced slightly and ducked away, shoving his hand to side at the same time, though not necessarily so in an aggressive manner.

While he did a short but effective warmup, Satoru faced you, as if a thought had just stricken him. “I think I already know the answer to it, but let me ask either way; did you get trained in any weapon?” You shook your head no. “Good. I already thought as much. While weapons, especially cursed tools, can be quite handy in combat, Sorcerers who revolve their combat style around the use of them become quite reliant on their availability. If they, then, find themselves without their weapon, it can lead to their demise if their hand-to-hand skills are not sufficient enough. If you do want to learn any weapon, we will be able to arrange that, but let’s focus on fighting without any for now.”

That made perfectly sense, so you had no objections to that and therefore just hummed in agreement. In fact, you already knew that anyway, because that was one of the reasons why users of your Cursed Technique were never trained in weapons. That, and, well, usually weapons were used for offensive, rather than defensive purposes, so it was deemed they were of not much use to users of the Cursed Technique. Not that weapons had no real use for defence, but apparently, it was considered unnecessary, and you would need your hands free sooner rather than later anyway.

Shame, though. There were some really cool weapon types you wouldn’t mind trying out. Maybe now you would get the chance to finally do so.

It was then that Geto finished his warming up and was instead exchanging slow and deliberate blows and kicks with Satoru that were obviously not meant to be the real deal, but rather some additional form of warmup. After a few minutes, they both stepped back, with Geto smiling slightly and Satoru brandishing a bright, happy smile before he tossed his sunglasses towards you, which you barely managed to catch in time.

How about giving me a heads-up you derp?, you grumbled in silence before noticing the tension in the air. The two of them had changed gears and switched from laid-back to serious, watching each other like a hawk.

Then, without any observable telltale sign -or any sign that was observable to you- they moved at the same time with an astounding level of speed. None of them seemed to hold back in any way or form, apart from obviously not being out to kill each other. The first attack was a high kick by Satoru, which was blocked effortlessly with the forearm by Geto, who then used the opportunity to get a kick in himself while holding onto Satoru’s leg. Before that kick could land, however, Satoru was able to twist away in a manner that you were certain would’ve dislocated your hip if you had tried that.

After that, a flurry of punches, both flying and standing kicks, sweeps, (attempted) throws, cartwheels, a whole lot of rolls –once or twice even over the back of the other– and combinations of those followed. Truth to be told, at some point you were convinced they weren’t sparring so much as dancing with each other. They sure looked like they were having a lot of fun and as if they just couldn’t keep their hands to themselves… which, granted, was difficult to do in a sparring session anyway.

Satoru’s style was rather straightforward-ish, with not a lot of extra movement or gimmickry. Even someone without knowledge of martial arts could tell that he was highly skilled, though. It was weirdly satisfying watching him, as each movement was just pretty much flawlessly executed. Geto, on the other hand, seemed to bring elegance and beauty into his fighting style.

That wasn’t to say he relied on overly flashy or unnecessary moves, but he just moved with a certain grace and elegance that Satoru either didn’t possess or didn’t bother applying. It was satisfying and fun to watch Satoru, but it was pretty much mesmerising watching Geto. You could’ve sworn you had never seen anyone move like him – and that was saying something after both sparring with Satoru and watching him fight without restraints.

But a different thought forced itself upon you while watching the duo. Gojo Satoru was dubbed “The Strongest” and while that was probably not based on his martial art prowess alone -seeing as he had none of that when he was born-, it struck you as odd that you had never heard of Geto Suguru. Then again, it wasn’t like you had paid much attention to the ranks of Sorcerers, since those had always struck you as somewhat arbitrary anyway, so maybe he was a well-known Grade 1 Sorcerer?

Still, even then it was interesting to see that neither Geto nor Satoru seemed to have a significant edge over the other while not really limiting themselves. It didn’t end with any one of them winning, either. At some point, they just stopped, as if on cue. They were standing practically toe-to-toe to each other, with Geto gripping Satoru’s fist that was aimed at his face and he himself grabbing onto Satoru as if he had been planning to sweep his feet.

They were grinning so very broadly and brightly at each other that you felt yourself smiling as well, their happiness and joy rubbing off on you as well. Both of them were panting somewhat, but not nearly as much as you would’ve expected them to after such an intense sparring session. Geto then let go of Satoru’s fist, moved his hand to the back of his head and tilted it forward until their forehands met gently.

For a few breaths they stood like that, with their eyes closed, seemingly just happy with themselves, with each other and the entire situation. Geto then broke away from his counterpart, though not without clapping him comradely on the shoulder before moving to grab his towel and wiping face and hands.

Satoru looked over to you and grinned. “So, have you been paying attention or were you just ogling us?”, he asked and actually winked cheekily at you. “We’ll assume that everything we’ve shown just now is known.”

You groaned and rolled your eyes rather playfully. “Yes, of course, I could probably recreate that teeny tiny little fight of yours in my sleep.”

The white head chuckled amused while wiping down his hands and face as well, though you felt like the two of them had still barely broken a sweat. You kinda envied them for that, to be honest.

As if he heard your thoughts, Satoru reached out and affectionately, though somewhat roughly dishevelled your hair with both of his hands. “Not with that attitude you don’t. I expect great things from you, you know!”

You squeaked indignant, trying to push him off of you and get him to stop messing up your hair. “Stop that you obnoxious blabbermouth!” You managed to kick his shin somehow which got him to stop so that you could tend to the damage done, pouting while trying to fix your hair.

He crouched down in front of you and watched you for a short while, still grinning. “Cute,” he then said and proceeded to tousle your hair some more, albeit significantly less roughly so.

You chuntered incoherently, trying to fend off his hand and fixing your hair at the same time before jumping to your feet and seeking refuge behind a very much amused Geto. “Would you stop already?”

Satoru smiled insolently and got up to take a few mouthfuls of water himself. He hadn’t even planned to go in for a second round of messing up your hair immediately after, but he had found it hard to resist. Tousling your hair -not even messing it up on purpose- had just felt so nice for some reason, a feeling he couldn’t help but want to get more of. He would even go as far as say it had felt right, somehow.

He then turned his gaze over to you and Geto, who tried helping untangle and smoothing down your hair again, though he could barely contain his amusement in form of laughter while doing so. To Satoru it seemed like he, too, just couldn’t help from wanting to touch your hair – which came at no real surprise, considering you had very nice hair. That, and you were rather adorable, especially when you got worked up again.

He was sure you would adamantly beg to differ if you had heard that, though.

In this moment, Hana entered the dojo, carrying a tray and was accompanied by another woman carrying another tray. Hana smiled at the group and especially so when she took in your somewhat exasperated state and saw how Geto was more or less trying his best to help you mitigating the temporary damage.

Even with the tray in her hands she still managed to offer a polite bow. “I hope I’m not bothering the esteemed guests and the young master. We have brought some refreshments.”

And with those words, she kneeled down and placed three cups in front of each of you while you were sitting back down again. It did not go unnoticed by you that Satoru took a seat right next to you, so you eyed him wearily. Geto took your other side, though you were not exactly sitting in a straight line, but more in a sort of arch.

For Satoru, there was a glass of what looked like green tea with tapioca pearls -matcha bubble milk tea it was, you learned moments later-, for Geto there was iced matcha latte and for you, a matcha lemonade. “I hope it is to esteemed Miss Kubo’s liking,” Hana said while handing you your drink with a smile.

It certainly was.

The other lady placed a plate with a very generous amount of dango in front of you. Not just any dango though – Mitarashi dango. Dango which were coated in ankake and sweet soy sauce. They were quite tasty, but you had always felt like they were significantly sweeter than normal dango. When you watched Satoru’s eyes lighting up and an almost childish smile spreading across his features, you understood immediately why those sweeter dango had been brought out. He had immediately grabbed two skewers and started munching down on them very happily.

For a while, the three of you indulged in the sweet and very tasty refreshments, not talking but also not feeling the need to talk at that present. In this very moment, the trio of you were just plain happy and at peace with each other – somewhat exhausted, too, but certainly satisfied.

After clearing the plate and emptying your drinks, you took the time to discuss the next steps and the corresponding temporal order. Even though your sparring with Satoru hadn’t been very long, you felt quite exhausted so you agreed on only starting to learn some new offensive techniques, but not putting them into sparring action just yet. Depending on how sore your muscles would be the day after, that was when you would start trying to apply them in sparring. As for your demonstration of your Cursed Technique and your control of your Cursed Energy, you decided that you’d tackle that the next weekend, not this one.

You then started getting taught by Geto, which was a very pleasant experience, seeing how he had a knack for explaining and demonstrating movements in a way you could easily understand. He also seemed to be very patient, and never seemed to become annoyed or exasperated when asked to repeat his explanation or demonstration or when he had to correct your form. He also wasn’t stingy with praise whenever that was called for.

Satoru meanwhile was watching from the sidelines, only now and then chiming in with suggestions or additions, but otherwise occupied with monitoring your flow of cursed energy and trying to assess it.

You went on with it for around an hour and a half, with some smaller breaks in between before your body was telling you quite adamantly that you had been doing way more than enough for one day.

“Good work. We’ll see how much we can do tomorrow, depending on your state then. We don’t want you to overexert or overburden yourself, after all,” Geto said smiling, sitting down next to your somewhat slumped and very much exhausted form and started patting your head lightly.

You had already noticed that for some reason, he seemed to like to pat or tousle your hair and you weren’t quite sure if you felt annoyed or somewhat flattered by it. At least he didn’t seem to mess up your hair on purpose, but you still felt like the two of them treated you somewhat like a… cat. Or pet in general.

After the training, you had excused yourself to take care of some school assignments that couldn’t be put off indefinitely, though you were positively surprised to see that Geto joined you for dinner and you enjoyed having him around to talk to and to put oil on troubled waters whenever necessary.

The next day, you were less so positively surprised. Or, to put it differently, you woke up severely sore and hence quite grumpy. You were barely able to get out of bed, much to Satoru’s vocal amusement and your chagrin as well as annoyance. Yet, despite Satoru laughing at you walking “like a rheumatic old woman”, both Geto and he were quite considerate of you and your condition and didn’t try pushing you harder than necessary – or try pushing you hard at all, really.

Instead, you did some rather light exercises and continued trying to get the new techniques ingrained into your muscle memory, with Geto teaching you about a bit about the origin of some of those new techniques and how best to apply them. You liked listening to this trivia, especially because he seemed to be a bottomless well when it came to martial arts trivia. You also started to notice that you liked listening to him in general, though you figured it was hard not to like it anyway. He usually had a rather calm disposition and a way with words which made paying attention to him easily enjoyable.

You then announced that you wanted to leave in the afternoon, so that you’d still have some time left to gather your bearings and mentally prepare for the start of next week. Upon hearing that, Hana had the kitchen whip up a light meal for dinner that you could take home in containers, despite your insistence that this really wasn’t necessary, but she was having none of it and instead asked for your breakfast preferences so that she could have it arranged for next weekend.

While the weekend turned out to be way better and even entertaining than you had expected, you still were rather happy that you were finally able to leave for your own little nest and have some space and time just for yourself for a change.

You might have been looking forward to leaving the house and were getting somewhat more chipper when the time for departure drew closer, but Satoru seemed to become gradually more silent and annoyed for some reason, especially after Geto had left during late noon.

He was leaning on the doorframe with his arms crossed and his brow slightly furrowed and watched you packing your bag with the things you would take back home with you. Ever since you had said you wanted to depart in the afternoon and even more so after Geto left, he had this weird, itching feeling in the back of his head that seemed to want to urge him to say something. It grew only stronger over time and lead to him becoming increasingly annoyed, even though he himself couldn’t quite place the cause for it.

He didn’t know what it was that this itching feeling wanted him to say, so instead he asked: “Got everything?”

You looked around your room and nodded, relatively confident that you didn’t forget anything major. And even if so, it wasn’t like it’d be gone for good the moment you stepped out of the house.

He accompanied you to the front door where one of his two personal chauffeurs -seriously, how spoiled must he have been?- would come pick you up to bring you home. Hana had seen you off when she provided you with the care parcel made out of food, so it was just the two of you at the door.

For a moment, you stood there awkwardly, watching each other indecisively. You then offered him a small, but genuine smile. “Guess I’ll see you next weekend then?”

For a moment, Satoru was almost taken aback by your display of genuine friendliness, but then he caught himself and grinned at you. “I sure expect you to, so try not to get eaten by either curses or schoolmates. You still haven’t shown me your Cursed Technique in action, after all.”

You rolled your eyes playfully and sneered lightly. “I’ll see what I can do.”

When you turned to leave, Satoru found himself reaching out and gently tousling your hair again. “See you then.”

You grumbled and waved about his hand before you ducked out of reach and went to the waiting car. You didn’t exactly turn around, but when you got into the car, you waved over your shoulder once and were already turning your thoughts on the upcoming week and your to-do-list of things you wanted and had to do.

Satoru returned your wave even though you couldn’t see it, but the moment the car drove down the slope, his smile slipped from his face and his hand fell to his side. Listless, he watched the car for a moment longer before turning back to the house.

Had it always been this silent?, he wondered while re-entering the building. Was this house always this… empty?

Maybe it had to do with the weekend being rather extraordinary, with both you and Geto being there, but he felt like the silence was so loud, it was almost deafening for some reason, while the corridors and rooms were so spacious, it felt… paradoxically suffocating, if not crushing.

With a bitter taste in his mouth, he pursed his lips. He didn’t like this feeling at all. Maybe he should leave for the Academy sooner rather than later.

Chapter Text

While you were glad you had time for yourself during the following week, you found you weren’t dreading the approaching weekend like you had the week prior. Though you weren’t quite ready to say you were actively looking forward to it, you didn’t exactly mind your new weekend routine, either.

You were, however, starting to question if this would be sustainable in the long run. Like you had suspected, you had gotten some weird looks in the locker room due to the bouquet of bruises you sported thanks to your sparring. Yoshie and your homeroom teacher each took you aside to inquire whether you had been or still were in trouble and needed help. You assured them you had just taken up martial arts again – which wasn’t even a lie, even though you had never stopped practising it. You just had no sparring partner for the last year or so, maybe safe for some Curses.

But between classes, school assignments, your extracurricular activities (aka your work in the animal shelter), your part-time job and the weekends reserved for living and training with Satoru, you found yourself with a certain lack of free time for hobbies or for spending time with your friends like Yoshie. Seeing how this was but the second week, you were optimistic enough that you’d find a new rhythm and would adjust to it – and if not, you would just have to talk to Satoru and maybe limit your training weekends to every other weekend.

Or so you thought at this point at least.

Other than that, you weren’t exactly free of Gojo Satoru during the normal school week. Similar to the weeks prior to your first weekend at his estate, he kept texting, sometimes rather spamming you. You didn’t know where he got all that abundance of time to do that from, seeing how he sometimes sent 20 messages within 5 minutes, even without you reacting to them in any form. While you got easily annoyed and sometimes stressed out by his excessive texting, you more often than not had trouble staying annoyed or even angry for too long, as the sticker as well as kaomoji he liked to use were very effective in winning you over.

They really were just too cute.

Early in the week he had also started a group chat with you and Geto in which he continued to seemingly spam whatever came to his mind. Going by Geto’s replies, he definitely was on his phone during their classes, as Geto was oftentimes chastising him for it… while being on his phone himself.

You didn’t quite know why you were in the group, but whenever you weren’t annoyed the fuck out of your mind by their spamming, you were rather enjoying reading their banter. And there was a LOT of banter and roasting going on, which made you wonder if Geto had been holding back on the last weekend. As you often didn’t know what to contribute to their conversations, you were mostly just a silent observer, unless you were either directly addressed or you found a good opportunity to integrate yourself in the current topic.

If there even was so much as a designated topic. With Gojo Satoru, topic hopping was a very normal thing to happen, and it could be exhausting to keep up with his somewhat erratic changes in subjects.

Being in a group chat with Geto, however, had given you the opportunity to save his contact info without having to go through the embarrassment of asking him for it. That didn’t alleviate you of the next problem, though; making the first step of reaching out to him unprompted and starting a conversation.

As Geto had seemed rather approachable and likable during your encounters with him, you noticed you harboured the wish to talk to him more, to get to know him better. You just had no idea on how to start such a conversation, seeing how you weren’t the best at small talk to begin with, and you dreaded the thought of annoying him or coming across as intrusive with your texting. The last thing you wanted was him to think you were either of that. Or worse.

As if he had sensed your struggles, it was him who then made the first move.

Geto:

Hello, [Name], I hope I’m not coming across as intrusive by texting you out of the blue.

I had wanted to ask for your favourite Pocky flavour… if you don’t mind telling me?

You had blinked in confusion at his text for a moment there. It was rather funny in an endearing way how he, allegedly, was also worried about being intrusive. He had seemed like a polite and well-behaved person, though you had wondered if that was just due to the stark contrast to Satoru.

You:

Hi Geto! No worries, I don’t think of your unprompted texting as intrusive ^^

It is a rather random question though… not that I mind it?

If I answer your question, will I get a pack of my favourites? Or will you bring an especially gross flavour purely on principle and this question is a trick question?

The time spend on waiting for his answer felt like you might get a heart attack even sooner than expected and you felt like you should delete and/or edit your answer at least once. Thankfully, you didn’t have to wait for his reply long, but the anxiety of having said something… weird or just uncool was harrowing.

… Weird. You couldn’t remember feeling nearly as anxious -or anxious at all- when texting Satoru. Maybe that was due to the fact that in many of the cases where you actually replied, you had felt at least some degree of annoyance?

Geto:

Hmmmmm… you might’ve given me some ideas. ;)

Guess you’ll have to make the call and wait for the consequences.

And why the hell did he have to make it sound so ominous?? Now you were almost afraid of telling him your favourite flavour.

Well, fuck it. How bad could it actually be?, you thought to yourself. In case of doubt you would just not eat it or force Satoru to eat it instead if he was annoying you again.

You:

Tbh, the ‘Relax Pocky Cheesecake’ were just superior, though I doubt they are still around, being a limited-edition and all. ._.

I like the Summer Coconut ones, or else Hazelnut Crush and Midi Squeeze Peach… oh and Choco Banana ofc!

… and I just noticed that this doesn’t really answer the question, as I listed more than one flavour… but I can’t really decide on one either.

Geto:

Haha, not to worry! I’m friends with Satoru, so I know the pain. Though I myself also struggle deciding on THE favourite flavour.

You have respectable taste, though.

Respectable taste? Was that his way of dissing you or was it that he was used to so outrageous palates that your subjectively normal taste was automatically “respectable”? You decided to not question it any further, as this would surely not do you any good.

You did, however, use the opportunity to learn about Geto’s favourite Pocky flavours. While he, too, couldn’t decide on one particular flavour, he liked everything with Matcha and was rather fond of the Crunchy Pocky line. After that, your conversation soon fizzled out, though you partially chalked it up to the day being Thursday, so you would soon meet again anyway.

When you were picked up and brought to the estate by the same chauffeur that had taken you home the weekend prior, you were greeted by a very happy -and seemingly relieved- Hana and a spirited-as-usual Satoru. Though barely 5 minutes after your arrival, he began nagging you, whining about how you had allegedly ignored him all week, even though he had texted you and even put you in a group chat with Geto. Your rather exasperated reference that at least you were in class to pay attention got waved away by him, as he claimed to do the same.

You were still arguing over whether you were ignoring him on purpose or not when the dinner was brought out – which was Tantanmen Ramen. Probably one of the best you ever had and reminded you that you were being in the privileged position of having the opportunity to live in such a high-class full board residential (of sorts). That alone was able to placate you immediately. Until a small-scale war over the dessert -mochi ice cream- broke out, as Satoru took delight in hoarding a fair share of those small, delicious little delicacies. He even went as far as fighting you for your own portion on your own damn plate.

You didn’t exactly notice it at this point, but Hana told you a couple of weeks later that almost every time something along those lines happened, the two of you were so loud, almost the entire house with its attendants were privy to it. While some of the attendants got quite het up by this rather unbecoming, rowdy behaviour, most of them looked (or rather listened) on it with lenience and gentle amusement. Hana herself told you then that such “rowdy” displays tended to make her, in fact, happy, as she loved the lively atmosphere and especially loved seeing Satoru so untroubled and unguarded in his behaviour.

When you asked her if she was some sort of hell-spawn that relished in your suffering caused by Satoru’s obnoxiousness, she laughed heartily and very uncharacteristically, patted you first on the shoulder, then your head and told you that she could tell you were neither suffering in those situations nor were genuinely angry. Or if you happened to be, she was always there to calm the situation down.

You kind of hated that she was right.

Similar to the week before, you spent Friday night with Satoru and Hana, listening to their banter, them talking about their week and you talking about your own. You found some sort of catharsis in this little get-together that had potential of becoming a little routine and didn’t even mind Satoru’s jabs as much.

You were just glad that you got to talk with Hana about the breakfast so that the kitchen didn’t have to go all out again. They still offered a mix of traditional Japanese breakfast and western-ish options (as well as certain sweet options), but the selection was scaled down. Your hot chocolate was heavenly like last week, and this time around, you got a cute selection of sprinkles on your milk froth as well.

When Geto arrived shortly after, you were met by a certain surprise, as he wasn’t alone. A rather tall looking woman with a soft bob and a mole under her right eye was trailing after him, twirling what looked like a lollipop in her mouth. When she laid eyes on Satoru, she smiled and waved lazily, though not without affection. As soon as her eyes flitted over to you, though, her eyes lit up and her smile broadened.

She almost rushed over to you and engulfed you in a tight embrace as if you were long-time best friends. “I’m so glad I finally meet you!”, she exclaimed while squeezing you affectionately.

You froze, standing awkwardly while this strange woman clung to you. Had you met before? Did either of the guys mention her? You couldn’t remember either of that happening. Why was she hugging you like that then?

You awkwardly patted her upper back, utterly lost for words and looked over her shoulder at Geto for help. While looking somewhat surprised, he seemed mainly amused by this situation, but sprung to action nonetheless.

He went to tap her shoulder lightly. “C’mon Shoko, let go of her, you’re behaving extremely obtrusive.” Even though he was amused by this situation, he was also very much surprised and rather confused – him and Satoru both, the latter of which stared at the scene with such big eyes, it was easily visible even behind his dark glasses. Shoko was usually rather lethargic and sometimes even apathetic, not really known for big outbursts of emotion, though that was not to say she was emotionless or affectionless, either. They knew she was on apparently very good terms with Utahime, though in this case, Shoko was usually the recipient of displays of affection and less frequently the giver.

Then again, it wasn’t like they knew how those two girls interacted with each other when they were among each other.

“Oh, sorry”, Shoko chuckled and released you from her grip, although she was still holding onto your upper arms lightly, smiling brightly at you. “I’ve heard about you from those two blockheads and was just so very happy to meet another young lady. Especially one who shares the burden of having to deal with those two.”

“Excuse me? We’re giving her the best treatment she could ever want for,” Satoru chimed in almost offended.

Shoko scoffed at him playfully. “Sure. That’s why she’s already collecting those grey hairs and wrinkles, right?”

Your face dropped and your hands shot up to your face. Wrinkles? Grey hair? Surely she jested, right? … Right?

Noticing your growing horror, the brunette laughed and booped your nose lightly. “Chill, [Name], I was just joking. But I have you know, you’re definitely sporting the signs.”

“The… the signs?”, you repeated, utterly lost.

Gravely, she nodded. “Yes, the signs. The signs of having dealt with Gojo Satoru for a prolonged amount of time. Unless you’re Suguru, or maybe Hana, everyone develops them at some point.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”, Satoru squawked indignantly.

“Uhhh… okay?” You definitely weren’t wiser after that “explanation”. And you still didn’t know who that woman even was. “So… and you are?”

She gaped at you for a moment, a weird mixture of embarrassment, awareness and a flicker of panic flickering across her features. Then, she turned with a smooth motion and punched Geto in the chest without hesitation. “You didn’t tell her?”

Geto flinched upon receiving the blow and coughed lightly, his brow furrowed and a hint of annoyance on his face. “What did you hit me for?”

Shoko huffed. “You were within reach, Satoru wasn’t,” was all she provided as answer.

Geto deadpanned at her for a moment, but when he didn’t get any further explanation, he resigned and sighed. “Yes, we might’ve forgotten to tell her about your visit… or… you in general? You wanted to come over on a rather short notice, after all.”

The brunette pouted at this for a moment, then stepped back to bow formally, albeit somewhat tauntingly at you. “So sorry about that. I’m Ieri Shoko, the classmate of those two blockheads and the one who brings much needed oestrogen and equilibrium into our class. While they apparently haven’t told you anything about me, I have heard a fair share about you. So, pleased to make your formal acquaintance. Feel free to call me Shoko.”

You smiled confused and bowed your head in return. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Kubo [Name], but you obviously knew that already.”

Shoko just smiled and nodded and went to grab your hands. You stiffened slightly, neither used to nor enthused by this display of physical touchiness, even if she was a fellow woman. “If you ever run into trouble with those two, or you just need a fellow lady comrade-in-arms, feel free to tell me.” It seemed like she wanted to say some more, but looking over your shoulder, she decided against it eventually. Instead, she smiled and squeezed your hands gently before letting go.

“Well Shoko, I think I’ll eat your Pockys as well. I wanted to give them to you just now, you know, after getting through all the trouble of acquiring your favourite flavour and all, but after your defaming us I don’t think I want you to have them any longer,” Geto piqued while holding up a box of rose coloured Pocky, grinning mischievously while doing so. From what you could tell, the Pocky box in question was Midi Strawberry flavour and its effect was certainly not lost on Shoko.

She looked as if her soul was about to leave her body and with a melodramatic wail, she tackled Geto and tried to reach the box of deliciousness that was meant for her, but failed to do so as Geto just held it up higher – not that it was strictly necessary, given that he was quite tall with big reach and Shoko was probably only so much above average height.

You snorted lightly at the scene, mildly surprised that you hadn’t even noticed the small bag Geto was carrying which apparently held an assortment of Pocky types. At least now his inquiry about your favourite flavour began to make sense… that is, if he brought one for you, too. Suddenly somewhat self-conscious, you massaged your left forearm that had been plaguing you with negligible, but chronic pain in in the sinews for a few days.

“Sorry about that,” a soft voice murmured near your ear. When you turned your head towards the voice, you winced at being confronted with Satoru’s face being barely two hands away. He had bent down to your level, peeking at your face over the brim of his glasses. “I had meant to ask if you’re fine with Shoko coming over… she doesn’t have to stay if you’re uncomfortable with it.”

You arched a brow. “Surely you will not have her leave five minutes after she arrived? It’s fine, if I feel too crowded, I’ll just retreat to my room. No need to send your friend away over that.” You glanced over at Shoko still trying to wrestle the Strawberry Pocky box out of Geto’s hand. By the way he was laughing at her while she was huffing, she wasn’t much closer to success than a few moments ago. “Besides, she seems nice. Somewhat overbearing maybe, but nice.”

Satoru watched you for a moment longer, lips pursed and expression stoic before a smile played on his lips. He straightened again and for a fraction of an instant, his hand ghosted over your outer shoulder, before giving you a friendly clap on the shoulder that was facing him.

“Eyes up, Satoru,” Geto suddenly called and tossed two small boxes in quick succession in his direction. Without missing a beat, Satoru caught the missiles, looked at them and brandished a smile that was almost literally radiant. It was a Mousse Mango and the Watermelon summer edition.

“Aww, you went and fought the masses over the watermelon flavour for me?”, Satoru joked, looking quite happy about it. For some reason, the watermelon flavour was always the first to sell out in summer, at least in your area. Seemed liked it was similar in others as well.

“For you? Always,” the black-haired answered mockingly, but with an obvious affectionate undertone before his gaze found yours and he smiled gently, lifting up the bag in his hand. You noticed that in the short moment you were distracted by Satoru, he apparently had relinquished the strawberry Pocky to Shoko. “I got one for you, too.”

And then he pulled out a flavour you hadn’t expected to see anytime soon again, much less in this situation. The box he held in his hand was none other than Relax Pocky Cheesecake, a limited flavour that you thought had sold out a while ago. Your eyes went wide as saucers upon seeing this shiny Pokémon of Pocky flavour.

“Y-you were able to get a hold of one of those? For real?,” you squealed with glee. For one terrible second you wondered if he had gotten one just to eat it himself or hand off to Satoru, but at this point you were willing to fight each of them over it.

Before he could answer, though, Shoko chimed in, a knowing smile on her features. “He has his ways. I don’t know how he does it, but almost every time he’s able to procure even the most sought-after or limited flavours, be that of Pocky or other snacks. Maybe he’s part of the snack Yakuza or something.”

Geto shot a pointed look at her for her remark about the Yakuza -apparently you weren’t the only one who associated him with the Yakuza, playfully or otherwise- before looking at you with gentle warmth. “It wasn’t easy, but looking at you now, it certainly was worth it.”

You could cry, so happy were you over the sheer presence of your most beloved Pocky flavour – more accurately, you could already feel some tears of joy forming, pathetic as that might be, considering it was just some snacks. Maybe it was less about being met with their existence once more, but more about him -a person who only recently got to meet you- going through the trouble of hunting down a rather rare type of flavour for you.

You were so moved that before you knew it, you had already run up to him and engulfed him in an exuberant, tight embrace. For a moment, he froze, utterly taken aback by your action but certainly not averse to it. Before he could do more than placing a hand on your shoulder, though, you already came back to your senses and dove away from him as if you had just burned yourself.

“Oh my gosh, I’m so, so sorry, I don’t know what came over me,” you stuttered, almost as pink as Shoko’s Pocky box.

Geto let out a melodic, gentle laugh that somehow was able to convey that he wasn’t exactly laughing at you, before gently placing the box in your hand. “Don’t mention it, I didn’t mind.” He hesitated for a moment, ere reaching out and lightly patting your hair. He definitely hadn’t minded your exuberant hug. If anything, he minded the fact that you had sprung away almost immediately after.

“And where’s my hug?”, a certain white-haired, obviously jealous and feeling left-out Satoru demanded to know.

“Only a holler away as usual, Satoru,” Geto answered and went to pull him into a rough, but very much affectionate hug. As if on cue, Shoko pranced over and jumped up to sling an arm around the neck of the two of them and joining their hug this way. Neither of them was missing a beat, freeing one arm each to loop around her waist and supporting her that way. It certainly did not seem like this way the first time they had a group hug like that.

You stood to the side, feeling somewhat awkward and as if you were intruding on something private, but couldn’t help but feel gentle affection at the scene nonetheless. That is, until you both felt and saw Satoru’s gaze falling onto you, meeting yours and almost burning itself into your very soul. You couldn’t quite decipher the emotions behind it, but something in it made you not only avert your gaze but also turn your body away and it was not just the intensity behind it.

Somehow, his gaze had felt like a bottomless pit of brilliant blue, and you weren’t keen on getting swallowed by it, especially considering it had seemed like that was exactly the intent of that gaze.