Chapter Text
“I think I’m gonna quit.”
Nanami stopped stirring his coffee when Satoru dropped the bomb with an extra bit of casualness, all that while smiling with amusement because he knew his friend and coworker well enough to know how he would react to the unexpected news.
They were the only ones taking a break in the small resting area, since there were a lot of smokers in Jujutsu Kaisen company who made the most of the morning break to pay a quick visit to the rooftop. Still, Nanami averted his shocked eyes from him to swift his body on the chair where he was sitting, checking that there was no one outside the glassed room who may have heard his comment. Once Nanami verified that the coast was clear, he focused his attention on Satoru again while this one continued reclining against his chair with a complete lack of concern that contrasted with Nanami’s current tension.
“You better tell me that this is one of your jokes.” Satoru smiled a little wider, causing Nanami to stare at him in a harsh way that for sure would have made the last newbies entering the company to shiver in fear. It was a pity that Satoru was more than used to it. “Gojo, you were supposed to be here for two years at least. You can’t leave just like that.”
Satoru was opening his mouth to reply that he very much could when a familiar whistle started to sound outside. Nanami sighed with resignation seconds before the glassed door opened and Sukuna joined them inside.
“Oi, what’s with this tension, guys?” He looked at them alternatively before approaching the coffee machine. “Come on, it’s Thursday! There’s no reason for you to be showing such a Monday face, Nanami.”
Satoru chuckled when Nanami changed the trajectory of his glare towards the newcomer. He then observed Sukuna as this one prepared himself a coffee in one of the plastic cups. Unlike Nanami, who he had known since their school days, he had only known Sukuna for the last year, but somehow the man had the hidden talent to enter someone else’s lives naturally, until it felt as if you had known him since forever.
“It seems like you are in a Friday mood already.”
Sukuna hummed and turned around to lean against the small piece of furniture where the coffee machine was placed.
“Let’s say I have some good stuff planned for tomorrow.”
His proud answer left no doubt of what kind of plans the man was referring to, which made Nanami intervene with a light tired tone.
“Let me guess: you have managed to trick that new girl from Human Resources into one of your ‘dates’?”
Both Satoru and Sukuna looked at the blond man in disbelief.
“Wow, Nanamin has super powers and hasn’t told us!” Satoru exclaimed while Sukuna was still recovering from the surprise.
“Damn, how the hell can you know it? It happened literally five minutes ago.”
Nanami took a sip of his cup - he refused to drink from any other recipient that wasn’t his cup - and adjusted his glasses before talking with patience.
“You weren’t very subtle yesterday. You were practically eating her with your eyes while she introduced herself.”
Satoru hummed a low impressed ‘I see’ while a mocking smirk appeared in Sukuna’s face.
“I didn’t know that you paid so much attention to me, Nanami.”
“I’m afraid it’s difficult not to, given that you behave like a monkey in heat whenever a woman is close, Sukuna.”
Satoru concealed a smile as those two continued barking at each other for the following minute. Nanami and Sukuna’s constant bickering was something that never failed to brighten the day when the tasks got too boring. For sure it was a distraction that he was going to miss when changing to a new job.
He had to admit that among all the places where he had worked, this one was probably one of the most decent. The payment was very good, the schedule was flexible, and the people around were nice. But, as it usual happened, time had brought the two main problems that had been chasing him in all his working life:
First, he had already got the gig of how things worked around, dominating all the programs that he needed to use and all the tasks that he was assigned, so monotony was starting to knock at his door; and second, the boss had mentioned by passing a couple of times that he planned to give him more responsibilities, and that was something that he preferred to avoid.
Satoru enjoyed the freedom and independence that jumping from job to job provided. That’s why he changed jobs as often as Sukuna changed partners...Or well, maybe not as often, but still, a new job per year was a pretty uncommon thing.
It was a style of life that a lot of people didn’t understand, preferring the stability and comfiness of having a permanent job, but Satoru had never considered himself part of the mass. The no-strings-attached lifestyle suited him better. It was a philosophy that he applied to both his personal and professional life, since it guaranteed that he could leave the person or job the moment he started to get bored from it.
Of course, it didn’t mean that he didn’t care about anyone or anything in the world. The ‘circle of friends’ that he had kept from his school and university times wasn’t bad, so he didn’t mind some level of socialization as long as he never got too invested with anyone.
He had crossed that line only once, when being younger, and he had learnt the hard way the consequences of getting too attached to things, to people, and he didn’t plan to go through it again.
That was the reason why he had felt reluctant when starting to work in Jujutsu Kaisen, with Nanami and other familiar faces that didn’t leave him indifferent, but he had been in quite a pinch back then. His charm had started to fall short to convince the landlady to keep delaying the rent payment, and he had needed to find a job pretty fast not to lose his apartment, which was small but expensive, as everything in Tokyo.
However, now that he had managed to save up enough money, it was time for a change of scenery before people started to depend more on him, since leaving people he knew in the lurch would be a little more annoying.
Seeing that Nanami looked pretty distracted by insulting Sukuna for his lack of professionalism for sexually involving himself with someone against the company rules, he uncrossed his legs to stand up and go to have a few words with the boss.
“And you, stop right there.” Or that’s what he would have done if Nanami hadn’t stopped his conversation - argument - with Sukuna to snap that at him. “We haven’t finished yet.”
“Finish what?” Sukuna inquired with sudden curiosity, using the hand that wasn’t sustaining his cup to signal at them both. “Were you arguing before I arrived here or what?”
It was clear that Nanami planned to ask Sukuna to leave to continue reprimanding him, and since Satoru didn’t like such a perspective very much, he made sure to keep Sukuna in that same spot by looking at him and announcing a loud, cheery ‘I’m quitting!’ that had Sukuna’s eyes pop open wide while Nanami hushed at him.
“Don’t shout that!”
“Why not? Everyone is gonna find out sooner or later.”
“Hey, hey, hey, wait a minute, I’ve won the bet!” Sukuna pointed his index finger at Nanami as this one was checking once again that there was no one around. “I told you he would get tired in a year at most, so you owe me 1000 yens, Nanami!”
“I don’t owe you anything. Gojo is not leaving.”
“Yes, I am, and the sooner you get over the depression of me leaving the better, Nanami. I know you will miss me but it’s okay! I’ll keep in touch, I promise~”
“I couldn’t care less about you leaving, you idiot. It’s my reputation that I care about. I was the one recommending you, remember? And you committed to be here two years at most.”
Satoru blinked and hummed, pretending to think as if he wasn’t sure before shrugging his shoulders.
“Well, I may have said that, but I didn’t sign anything, which means that I have the right to leave when I want to.”
“But September is the worst possible time to leave! It’s when all the clients are coming from their holidays and we have to verify everything keeps working.”
“Then you mean that it’s the best time for me to leave, right?”
Nanami opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, as if he was trying to find a good remark, but that last cheery comment seemed to destroy what remained of Nanami’s argumentation because the man simply sighed and removed his glasses to rub his eyes.
“I don’t know why I expected some serious attitude from someone who doesn’t even bother to dress properly.”
Satoru laughed, not feeling offended at all by Nanami’s biting words.
“What’s wrong with my clothes? They are dark, discreet…”
“You’re the only person in the company who isn’t wearing a suit. Even Sukuna wears it.”
“Oi, what do you mean with ‘even Sukuna’?” The redhead, silent until then while observing their tennis match, intervened with an offended tone. “It has sounded as if I usually dressed bad.”
“I remind you that you have dragged me to some of your night-hunting escapades. I’ve seen how you dress.”
“Look, it’s not my fault that you’re such a nun that disapproves the moment a little bit of skin is displayed.”
“So, for you, ‘a little bit of skin’ is having your whole torso on display. I see.”
“Torsos on display? Okay, what are you three talking about?”
Satoru laughed when Shoko’s sudden intervention caused Nanami to jump on his seat. He had seen the woman appear from the corridor and approach the room, and he had even waved his hand at her, but Nanami had been so invested in lecturing Sukuna that he hadn’t noticed her presence until she entered.
Nanami offered Satoru a new glare that the last interpreted as: ‘You should have warned me she was here, you idiot’, so he answered with an innocent smile that wanted to say ‘You were talking so it would have been rude to interrupt.”
“Oh, you know, the usual,” Sukuna said while Shoko served herself a little of water from the water dispenser. “Nanami has just confessed that she loves when ladies show their bosom.”
Nanami’s glare could have frozen a whole desert, in contrast to Shoko who was about to spat the water that she had drunk after hearing the obvious lie.
“Sukuna, you didn’t have any remaining days off, right?”
Satoru immediately deduced what Nanami meant with that casual comment. Sukuna though was slower in catching it because the redhead frowned with confusion, not understanding the change of topic.
“No, I still have five days left...” Sukuna’s eyes opened more and sweat appeared in his forehead when seeing the way Nanami arched an eyebrow, finally understanding what his coworker meant. “Oi oi oi, don’t you dare messing around with my holidays or—”
“Or what, Sukuna?” Nanami calmly said. “Because in this situation maybe it’s not wise to threaten the Account Manager, don’t you think?”
Sukuna gulped audibly while Shoko started laughing. The woman patted Nanami’s shoulder twice and muttered an amused ‘Well played!’ while approaching the door again, but Satoru stopped her before she could leave.
“Hey, Shoko,” his call caused the woman to turn around with her hand on the handle, “is Yaga in his office?”
Shoko looked hesitant, but after a couple of seconds she let the handle go and approached the table, remaining standing between his seat and Nanami’s.
“Yes, but he’s in a meeting with someone important, and I’ve heard the rumor that it may be the new C.E.O.”
The low conspiratorial tone that she adopted made Satoru remember the times when they were teenagers and she gossiped like that with him and...
Satoru stopped his train of thought right there, just in time to prevent that unpleasant feeling from appearing in his chest.
Now he remembered the most important reason why he preferred to avoid working too close with people from his past. The chances of remembering something he would have preferred to forget were higher, and he had enough with his own brain already; especially when it brought certain memories back in the worst possible times, such as when he decided to enter someone else’s bed and there was that damn voice in the back of his mind reminding him that, no matter how skilled a partner could be, nothing could compare to how that person had made him feel in the past.
“So you tricked Ijichi into telling you that,” Sukuna commented, tsking in a mocking reproachful way. “You should be ashamed, taking advantage of that poor guy’s crush.”
Shoko sighed with patience, but even if Sukuna could look like a six years-old infant by teasing Shoko about someone liking her, the infatuation of the boss’ secretary for the project manager of the Architecture department was an open secret.
There it was another reason why Satoru always preferred to separate his professional life from his personal one. One thing was what Sukuna did, which was fucking around with everything that had two legs and decent curves, and another to really fall in love with a coworker. Ijichi had been way too careless right there. If he had been in the secretary’s place, for sure he would have jumped to another job before things had gotten too out of control.
“I’m not taking advantage of anyone. I only asked politely and he gave me an answer.”
“But isn’t it too soon for it?” Nanami intervened, reconducting the topic to Sukuna’s disappointment, since for sure the man would have liked to continue with the previous one. “I thought that the change wasn’t going to be effective until the end of the month.”
“Yes, everyone thought that too, but it seems that the new C.E.O. is going to bring some major changes of how things work around here, and they have preferred to move it up.”
Satoru remained silent while Nanami nodded. The rumors of Yaga being transferred to the main branch of Jujutsu Kaisen had started around summer, and although nothing had been made official yet, the fact that the boss hadn’t made anything to silence the increasing rumors was enough confirmation. Satoru thought that his decision of leaving couldn’t have been more appropriate. Based on what Shoko had said, the new superior sounded like someone who would demand a lot from others, and that was something that Satoru wasn’t willing to do for anyone.
This time, Nanami didn’t stop him from standing up from his seat, since it was the end of the morning break. All of them abandoned the room after Shoko, who came back to her desk on the second floor. The Development department, where Satoru worked alongside Sukuna, and the Accounting department, where Nanami was in charge, were sited in the first floor, but the boss office was in the third one.
Satoru was about to separate from his coworkers, and jokingly ask them to wish them luck with the announcement of his resignation, when Ijichi appeared climbing down the stairs coming from the top floor.
“Yo, Ijichi!” Sukuna greeted him. “We were just talking about you a minute ago with Shoko.”
Ijichi’s ears reddened at the ‘innocent’ comment, since Shoko was sitting close enough to them to hear it, even if she pretended not to. Satoru thought once again that Sukuna was the kind of fella with whom you could get along as long as he didn’t know something you preferred to keep hidden, in which case your only alternative may be killing him for how exasperating he could be.
“Ignore him,” Nanami said with a laconic tone, frowning then when noticing that Ijichi looked nervous. More than usual. “Is something wrong?”
“N-No, no, no, nothing wrong,” Ijichi said in a not very convincing way. “It’s just that the Chief wants to reunite all of us in the conference room upstairs and I must warn everyone, but I also have to print some things for it, and then check that the projector there is working and—”
Ijichi sounded so overwhelmed that even Satoru felt some pity for him, and he wasn’t the only one, since at that moment Ijichi lost the air of his lungs when Sukuna patted his back once in a brusque way that tried to be reassuring.
“Wow, Ijichi, you’re gonna die young if you stress yourself like that,” Sukuna said with a laugh, planting then a hand on Satoru’s shoulder while signaling upstairs with his chin. “We can handle the technical stuff, so chill out, okay? Remember that women don’t like men who can’t keep their shirt on.”
“Well, that’s an advice you could follow too.”
Sukuna answered Nanami’s sarcastic retort with a wink that made the man roll his eyes with patience. Satoru sighed and hooked his hands in his pockets. He lazily followed Sukuna upstairs.
“If you were feeling guilty for bullying the man you could have handled it on your own, you know?” he commented, causing Sukuna to exhale a laugh in front of him.
“Come on, you know how damn random that projector is. I need your super powers to make it work asap.”
Satoru was about to ditch Sukuna the moment they reached the third floor for involving him without asking first, but at the last second, he also followed the man inside the conference room. Maybe helping prepare the last conference that he was probably going to attend would gain him points so that Yaga wasn’t too enraged when he announced his sudden resignation. He wouldn’t die for being proactive for once.
Sukuna and him were still working on leaving every ready when people started entering the room. The cable was so short that they had needed to improvise. They had strategically placed several folders on top of one another so that the projector was high enough on the table to project a decent image while keeping being connected to the PC, an extremely old device that was slow to the point of being exasperating that should have been replaced by a new one years ago.
After some more minutes and a lot of swearing, they managed to leave everything ready.
“Shit, fucking finally,” Sukuna exclaimed when the projected image appeared centered at last on the opposite wall. “I hope that the new boss is less stingy and buys some decent equipment.”
Satoru chuckled and carefully separated from the table so that their improvised and lightly precarious tower of folders didn’t fall, destroying their past twenty minutes of work.
“It’s a pity that I don’t plan to wait to see it.”
Sukuna snorted at his happy remark.
“Don’t worry: I’ll keep you posted, especially when I need your help with something.”
“Then I’ll block your number~”
“Damn, you’re so mean...”
Sukuna bumped his shoulder against his just before taking a seat in one of the middle lines of seats, casually next to the new girl from Human Resources whose skirt he would surely get into.
Satoru made sure to pick the seat placed in the corner of the last line of seats. His choice made Nanami roll his eyes when entering and seeing him there. Satoru simply waved his hand at the blond man with playfulness. Then, like every time that he was forced to attend a meeting he didn’t care about, he extracted his mobile, ready to isolate himself while ignoring the murmurs around him. He was half-way through checking his Twitter when some female employees sat in the same line but a couple of seats away from him.
By basing on their giggles and barely held enthusiasm, it seemed that they were swooning over someone. He thought they would be talking about him or Sukuna, but at that moment the words ‘new C.E.O’ reached his ears. So the new guy hadn’t even been formally introduced and already had fans among the employees? He had to admit that he was now a little curious about how the man was, so he started paying more attention to the women's conversation.
“I took a glimpse of him before. And he was so handsome!”
“Super super handsome! And I mean, I had never seen a businessman wear such thick, long hair!”
“I know right?! It makes you want to grab it, I swear.”
“And the piercings...Oh my god the piercings. You saw them?!”
“Yes, I did! Wearing piercings and a suit is a winning combination, I tell you.”
By that point, Satoru was completely frozen, his eyes open wide while staring at the screen of his mobile without actually seeing it.
His heart had skipped a beat when hearing the ‘thick, long hair’ part, but when those women mentioned the piercings, he had to suppress the urge of taking a deep breath to try to remove that sudden pressure that had appeared in his chest.
There was no reason to panic, no reason at all. It could still be a coincidence. Truth was that he doubted that there were many businessmen in Tokyo who matched that description, but the possibilities weren’t zero yet.
“Good morning, everyone. Thank you for your punctuality.”
Satoru was so busy trying to keep his rambling thoughts under control that he hadn’t noticed that the boss had entered the room through the opposite door to situate himself in the middle of the room; and that, by basing on the new exclamations and giggles of those two women, he wasn’t alone.
He gulped thickly, his eyes still fixed on the mobile screen. He told himself again that it had to be a coincidence; that there was no way that that other man accompanying the boss was that man; that he was being an idiot when feeling his racing heartbeat in his ears while slowly averting his eyes from the mobile.
But when he brought himself to raise his face, he realized that those fears hadn’t been unfounded.
Because the man who was standing a little behind the boss, with a straight position and a calm smile on his face while scanning everyone in the room, was no other than Suguru Getou.