Archive of Our Own

“Himoto, are you sure we're in the right place?”

Himoto looks at you and shrugs, “Well this was the address that I was told. I'm pretty sure it's the correct one.”

“Are you sure it's supposed to be a building in an alleyway?” You hesitated for a second. “Why are you so determined to do this fortune telling thing anyways? It's not gonna be true… No one can tell the future. It’s impossible.”

“You always say stuff like that, (Y/N). Plus, this isn't any normal kind of fortune telling, I heard that this specific fortue teller can give and tell you your entire future in detail.”

You roll your eyes. “You're helpless. I mean it.”

“Cmon don't say that!” 

“Am I wrong though? You're so gullible. One of these days, it's gonna get you in trouble.”

“All my classmates got this reading, how bad can it be?”

You sighed and leaned against the doorframe. Further argument with Himoto was going to be pointless. Once she had set her mind to something, there was no stopping her, and no amount of reason, negotiation, or bribing would be enough to pull her back. In a way, you suppose it wasn't a bad trait to have. At least she was determined. At least it made her optimistic. 

But God, could it be infuriating sometimes. Sometimes, it felt like you were taking care of a compulsive little sister, rather than a friend. You swore that nature would be the end of her.

“Okay. In five minutes, if this so-called fortune teller doesn't come, we're going back home. I'll drag you by the wrist if I have to.”

Himoto doesnt respond, looking at the empty desk in front of her paitently. The room itself is dark. Damp. Dungeon-like. Barely any light passes through the building, except through the entrance. There were a few dimly lit lamps in the room, but just barely enough to see. A thick layer of dust covered everything inside room. It was suffocating to say the least. You didn't understand why Himoto dragged you by the arm to the outskirts for this.

Although thinking about it now, maybe it was better that you were here. At least if anything went wrong, you could get her out of here quickly

You impatiently look at your watch. It looked like whoever this was, it was going to be a no-show.  You look up at Himoto, and announced, “Five minutes is u-”

She glares at you, a sign to be quiet. In the distance, you see a figure walking down the stairs.

It's a old woman. She sees you and Himoto and nods. Himoto bows in response, and you look away. 

You couldn't tell what, but something felt off about this woman. Her presented felt unnerving. You couldn't quite tell what it was that was off about her. You felt scared.

Maybe not scared. Threatened, might have been a better word. What you didn know, however, is that you needed to get out of here.

You tapped Himoto on the shoulder. “Hey let's get out of here,” You whispered.

She shakes her head. “We'll be okay. We're safe.”

“No. I mean it Himoto. Something is wrong here.”

Himoto doesn't budge. 

“Do you want to get us both killed?” You hiss. “C'mon. Move it.” You look at the woman, and tightly grab your friend's arm, ready to drag her out. You stare at the woman one last time before turning around and taking a step. You can feel Himoto digging her shoes into the hardwood floor, but you drag her harder than she can resist.

“There is no need to fear,” the old woman croaked. “I will not be harming you or your friend.”

“I can't trust you on that.”

“How can a weak old woman like myself harm you?”

There's something wrong about you. Terribly wrong. You could kill us. I can feel it.

The tension in the air is enough to choke someone. For a good second, none of you move. Himoto then pushes you off. You're pushed aback as she deeply bows.

“I'm terribly sorry about my friend. She's well… not the most trusting person out there. If it would not be too much of a hassle to you, could you please… decipher my future?”

You open your mouth to protest, but Himoto shoots you a dirty look to shut you up.

“Not a problem. Please have a seat at the table.”

Himoto calmly walks down and sits in front of the large wooden desk in the center of the room. She didn't hesitate at all, as if it were all so normal. As if she were late to class and the teacher was telling her to sit at her desk.

Your hand grips on the small knife in your pocket.

There was something horribly wrong about this entire thing. About the woman. About the building. You look at Himoto. She seems absolutely clueless. You wonder if she’s always had such little survival instinct.

“Place your hand on the table.”

Himoto does as she's told.

“What is your name?”

“It's Himoto, miss.”

“Himoto,” the woman repeats, slowly. “I'm going to touch your hand, and I want you to close your eyes, okay? Just do as I say.”

You can't see the front of Himoto's face but you assume she does what she's told. Your knuckles turn white gripping the knife in your pocket.

You can't hear what the old is saying to Himoto, but she inspects there hand first, before touching touching it. Himoto remained perfectly relaxed and still.

You stand there awkwardly, watching. Bewildered by what could possibly be going on.

When the woman looks up again, she's horrified. She looks at you, wide-eyed, but immediately looks down again. She smiles at Himoto. 

You felt a weird eerieness creep up on you. Your feet felt glued to the ground. You couldn't move. Why did she look at you like that? What happened? 

You couldn't help but wonder.

Did you do something to Himoto in her future? Could you? You could never hurt her. You found that idea ridiculous.

… or did she see you had the intent to threaten her with a knife? You couldn't be sure.

The woman smiles sheepishly and tells Himoto she couldn't tell her future, and Himoto looks visibly disappointed. Then she whispers something in her ear. Himoto nods, stands up, and walks towards you.

“She wants to read your future.”

“Huh? Why?”

“I don't know! She couldn't find a future for me so maybe…?” Himoto shrugs. “It's whatever.” her voice is laced with disappointment. You look at her with a “I-told-you-so” look, and she rolls her eyes.

“Tell her I said no.”

“She says she has to. It's urgent.”

“What does she need to look at my hand for? The blisters I have on my hand from holding a pencil?”

“Just go. Okay?” She snaps. Himoto pushes you in the direction of the table. “I'll be waiting outside.”

“Hey! No wait–”

“You're not gonna die!” She calls out.

You look at the table. 

Well, I guess it won't hurt. 

You drop your bag at the doorframe, and slowly walk towards the table. Your footsteps echo with each step you take. The lady eyes you up and down and motions for you to sit down.

Begrudgingly, you follow the gesture, and sit.

The lady motions for you to put your hand on the table.

You do as you're told, and splay your right hand on the table.

“Close your eyes.”

You do as you're told. You doubt anything worthwhile would really happen out of this. It was a waste of time to begin with, and both your parents would be worried if you weren't home by curfew. 

“Open your eyes.”

You open them. Immidieately you retract your hand.

“Tell me. How did you and Himoto meet?”

You clench your left hand. You want to wash it now.

“Why do you need to know that?” You snarled. “Listen if you're trying to hurt her-”

The old woman looks at you dead in the eyes. 

You immediately shut your mouth. “We met last year. She was a new underclassman, and I helped her with schoolwork.”

“I see.”

“Well? Are you going to tell me my future or not?”

The old woman retracts her stance, and closes her eyes. You can’t tell if this was all a bad joke or not.

“Himoto is going to die. Soon. Likely within the next three weeks.”

Your ears must be playing tricks on you. It takes a few seconds to process what she's saying, and even so… it seems so unbelievable.

“What… you're kidding right? Listen if this is some sort of joke, you need to cut it out-”

“And you'll be the one to set her soul free from this earth.”

At the time, it seemed so unbelievable that you could've laughed. “Why are you telling me this? You should've told her so she can avoid her own death!” You hissed.

“It's against my policy to do so. Otherwise half my clients would go mad.”

“You call these people that come to you clients?” You scoff. “Don't make me laugh. Fortune telling is always a load of bullshit.”

The old lady leans into you. “There's never been a single future I've seen that hasn't become a reality.” It’s in a quiet, yet smug voice. “Himoto will die. It is inevitable. And she will cause all your future misfortunes.”

“My… what?”

“Oh? You want to hear YOUR future now don't you?”

You glare at her. Angrily.

She smirks. You can't help but want to punch her. You want to leave. You don't want to be here anymore. You want to go home. You want to go home and pretend this never happened.

It's quiet enough to hear a pin drop.

“A man. A terrible man will fall for you. A man that will take everything from you. He’ll strip you of all your future, your freedom, and eventually he'll take your dignity away from you in the end.” The old lady pauses, you’re not sure whether to catch her breath or to relish in your fear. You assume the latter, but you could never tell. “You'll try running from this man… you'll try to get far away from him as possible, but you know in the end its futile. He’ll always find you no matter how far you run or how well you hide. And when you know who this man is… it’ll be too late for you.”

You scoffed. “What? You're being serious?”

The woman just continues staring at you. You realize she looks at little crazy, come to think about it. She looks at little wide-eyed. A little rabid. 

A little bit like a lunatic.

Come to think about it, Himoto mentioned she lived here. We're these even suitable conditions to live in? The walls looked damp, and there were barely any lights. The building itself was worn down. 

You decide not to push it further.

-

Himoto standing, holding her book bag in both her hands when you leave. She makes a teasing grin at you, and you smack her on the head. 

She scowls, “Ow, what was that for??” 

“Let's go home, idiot.”

“God, you're such a killjoy.” She scoffed. “Did she say something to you? You look a little scared~”

“It-It's nothing-”

“Are you sureee? Did she say you were gonna marry an ugly guy in the future?”

You purse your lips and stare at her until she stops giggling. “She didn't really say anything. At least, not anything that probably would happen”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean it sounds ridiculously far fetched, Himoto. Anyways-”

“Oh cmon I wanna hear”

“Its not that interesting.” You snapped. “Im not saying.”

“It cant be that bad…”

“I dont care what you think she said. I’m NOT saying what she said.” 

“Fine, whatever.” She groaned. “Be boring.”

You roll your eyes, sling your bag over your shoulder. “Cmon, let's go home and get out of this creepy place.” 

You gently hit your book bag against her. “Survival skills of a literal coconut.”

“Hey!”

You snickered and ran outside. Himoto ran after you laughing.

-

“Can I tell you something?” Himoto asks, “Earth to Y/N,” she pokes your cheek, trying not to laugh as you slump over, with your notebook sliding down your face. “What?” you groaned. “God, I REALLY hate school.”

“You’ve said that 20 times in the past week,” she rolls her eyes. “You’ll probably ace your exams. Do your parents really want you to go to a top high school that badly?” You stare at her and roll your eyes. “Don’t YOUR parents want you to go TOO?” 

Himoto quietly makes a ‘ugh’ sound. 

“You should enjoy the free time you still got this year. It’s getting brutal out here.” you sighed. You stare at the blackboard in front of you. You can tell it hasn’t been cleaned in a long time. There were streaks of chalk across the dark green board, and residue was left on the ledges. Someone had been neglecting the boards for a long time. 

“Anyways, what did you want to ask? What’s going on?” 

“Well, it’s not really a question…” she twiddles her fingers. “Actually it is. What do you do when you think someone likes you? And maybe you don’t like them back?”

“You’re asking me as if I’ve ever had to reject someone,” you answered sarcastically. Himoto opens her mouth, but you cut her off. “Honestly, I don’t know. Do you know them that well? Or is it like…”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know it’s more like I sit beside him in class and he’s kind of there I guess…” 

“Then HOW would you know he liked you?” 

“It’s… It’s just a feeling yknow? Like I see him staring at me all the time and he keeps asking me for pens and what not. But it’s like he never gives me them back. The one time where I only had an eraser, we had to share it and like… he stole it at the end. Maybe he keeps losing them I guess?”

You grimaced. “How long has he been doing this for?”

“I don’t know. It’s only started to ramp up in the past few weeks.”

“Did you tell anyone else?” 

“No, I’m only telling you right now, cause I'm a little scared. Also, he might find out if it’s anyone in our grade. He’s not even that strong, even I could probably fight him off. He’s just like. He looks a little creepy. It freaks me out.”

“Has anyone else observed anything?”

“Ame did the other day, and she said something, after getting back all my stuff from him, but I was kind of grossed out y'know? I threw them all away after.”

“Can you ask to switch seats with someone? I mean it might not solve everything, but it’s probably gonna be better as long as he’s not oogling you the whole time.”

“Ame offered to switch seats, and I think we’re just gonna switch for now. I don’t know what else to do.”

“It’s okay, just switch seats and at least you won’t have to see him anymore. Hopefully, that’s the end of it.”

Himoto’s face lights up. “Okay! I’ll do that.” She hugs you from behind your chair. “I don’t know WHAT I’d do without you.” 

The bell rings. You begin to stand up, and Himoto starts packing her bag. She begins stuffing everything in hastily, and she runs out of the classroom. “See you soon!” 

As she runs out of the classroom, a piece of paper falls from her bag. It’s neatly folded into thirds and taped.

You quickly unfold it, and there’s only a few words on there.

Meet me by the train tracks tomorrow.

You quickly fold up the paper again, and throw it in the trash. You wondered who wrote it. Maybe you’d follow Himoto to the train tracks tomorrow, if she went. Yeah, that didn’t sound like such a bad idea. 

-

Himoto quietly excused herself the next day after school.

She was acting different, you noticed that. Although she was smiling, and joking around as per usual, she looked scared. Like something had happened to her. You wanted to say something about it, you should’ve said something about it,  but you decided against it. Maybe her parents were acting up again. Maybe something happened in class? You weren’t the best person when it came to reassuring and comforting people, and most likely it wasn’t anything, so you decided against it. 

You were waiting for her in the usual spot when she quickly sprinted up to you and hugged you. She’d never done that before. She’d never done a lot of the things she did today, before, actually. As she hugs you, you awkwardly pat her on the head. 

“What’s up?” 

She doesn’t really say anything but grabs you tighter. Sometimes, you still wonder if she’s still a toddler on the inside. After a few moments, she lets you go.

“I’m REALLY sorry but I can’t go home with you today.” A twinge of guilt is in her voice. “I wish I could, but I have something I need to do.”

“Like…?”

“I can’t really tell you…” She looks away. “It’s something top-secret.”

You’re taken aback. Himoto always told you everything about her. She never hid anything from you. Whenever there was something going on, you’d always be the first to hear. You were genuinely convinced she never kept any of her experiences to herself. It annoyed you to no end at the start, the way she’d talk so much, but over the years, you came to enjoy it. Was she mad at you? Maybe she was. But that wasn’t like her.

None of this was.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” You’re cut off from your own thoughts. “Oh uh… yeah.” 

Himoto gently smacks you on the head before running off. “Don’t worry, it’s nothing personal.”

You watch her run away, before sighing and beginning to walk. Putting Himoto at the back of your mind, you began to make a mental list of whatever you needed to do before tomorrow, and what order you were gonna do them in. 

You stop in the middle of nowhere. I wonder what Himoto's up to. I really wanna know what she’s doing. I really wanna know what she’s going to do. No wait, that’s creepy. What am I doing? I have better things to do. But…

Your mind cuts back to the note you saw yesterday. 

Meet me at the train tracks tomorrow.

She was going to the train tracks. You immediately turn around and start running in the other direction. Himoto was going to be at the train tracks. She was going to the train tracks, and meeting someone. And judging by how scared she was, you could assume that she was probably in danger maybe? Were those two things even related? You couldn’t be sure, but you had a hunch they were. 

It didn’t take you long to catch up to her. You couldn’t tell her you were there. Clearly, she didn’t want to tell you what was going on, but at least if you were near her, you’d understand what was going on, and it’d bring you some peace, so you’d stop overthinking. You felt guilty. Like you were seeing something you weren’t supposed to. But you couldn’t help yourself. Maybe you were too nosy. Maybe you should just go back.

No. I’m already this deep, I might as well find out for myself.

Himoto kept looking back behind her, watching if someone was following her, so you did your best to keep yourself obscured. You kept hiding behind objects every few steps, doing your best to keep yourself out of her field of vision.

I gotta look like some creep right now… I shouldn’t be doing this…

You shake your head. Maybe you were imagining everything, but you swear you felt her gripping your uniform a little harder than usual.

She had to be in danger right? You’d deal with the disgust you felt towards yourself later. That wasn’t important right now.

You knelt behind a power box across the street from Himoto. She had stopped walking, and there was another guy leaning against a wall, waiting for her there. You take a few small steps closer, to be able to hear them, trying your best to stay out of sight.

He was skinny. He had dark hair, he was pale and he had really dark eyebags. A gaunt-looking guy who was slightly above average height. You tried to wrack your mind and figure out who that was. You’d never seen him before but clearly Himoto knew him, and judging by the way she was standing, she was evidently scared of him.

It was the creepy guy Himoto mentioned yesterday.

What’s he doing here? You thought to yourself. So HE wrote that note, and he asked her to come out here? Why did Himoto actually meet him? So she knew that I threw out the note but then…. So that’s why she was… 

You physically feel your heart skip a beat. She must’ve known. She had to.

You listen to their conversation. You quickly pull out your phone to audio record the entire thing, in case you needed evidence later. A wave of relief washes over you, realizing that you probably did the right thing.

Maybe you’d ask her tomorrow what happened here, and hopefully she’d give you some more context. You quickly erased that thought from your mind. You couldn’t be weird about this. 

“Listen, I don’t know what you want from me but just…”

“I don’t want anything from you! Don’t you understand? I…”

“Can you just… please leave me alone? You’re weird. You’re creepy. I don’t know what the hell you did to my stuff, I don’t know why you were stealing my stuff- In fact. I don’t know how the hell you thought I wouldn’t notice you’ve been stealing my stuff. You’re digusting you’re weird, you’re-”

He cuts Himoto off by covering her mouth. You want to stand up and pry him off her, get Himoto away from this freak, but you can’t move your legs. You feel glued to the ground. 

There’s a few seconds of pause between when he talks again, and you can see his face getting visibly red. “... Himoto I… I really like you… I think I might actually be in love with you…” 

From a distance you could tell that Himoto was visibly angry. She looked like she wanted to give this guy a complete beatdown. And you were sure she could, he was so weak, you didn’t know why Himoto hadn’t pried his hand off yet. 

“It really… It makes me sad you’re always trying to avoid me. I liked sitting beside you in class… You made my day better just by seeing you. And when I couldn’t see you, I’d follow you around from a distance.”

He pauses, you can only assume he’s trying to catch his breath before he starts speaking again. “When I didn’t know where you were, I followed you to your condo… sometimes when you were trying your best to avoid me, I’d just stay outside the door, hoping to hear your voice… it’s just a shame everyone in our grade loves you so much… I mean how couldn’t they? You’re literally… you’re literally perfect.”

He slinks one arm around her waist. “But it’s really a shame… cause they all love you so much… but only we should be together…”

Almost the second after he says that, Himoto immediately stomps on his foot, causing him to lose his grip over her, and she slaps him across the face. You silently cheer for her, hoping that she could get rid of this guy once and for all. 

“Get away from me you freak!” She yells, “god… I knew you were stealing my STUFF but you were doing all that? What the actual fuck is wrong with you?”

You watch him cower in front of Himoto. Good. You thought to yourself. 

She begins to stomp away, and the guy grabs her hand. She smacks his hand and pulls it away but he’s faster. He grabs onto her hair this time causing her to to fall back this time. She manages to catch herself before having to land the fall. 

“Let go of me” she snapped. “Let go of me, or else I’m going to scream so loud so this entire neighbourhood will hear.”

“Try it,” He mutters. “It won’t stop me.” 

Himoto grabs his wrist once again, and kicks his knee, causing him to kneel down. She then almost succeeded in kicking his crotch before he grabs her other ankle causing her to fall down for real this time. 

“I’ll let you go, if you answer this one question. I’ll leave you alone. Forever if you answer this one question.”

Himoto stares at him angrily, but she doesn’t protest. “Go on.”

“Do you like Y/N?”

She immediately turns red. “What?”

“You heard me. Do you have a crush on Y/N?”

“What kind of question is that? What does this have to do with anything? Why the fuck would that matter to you?”

“Uh, no. We’re just friends. Listen I don’t know what the fuck you want as an answer but-”

“You’re always around them. That fucking bitch. You’re always hugging them, and touching them in some way. You’d only do that with someone you love right? Why couldn’t you do that to me? Why do you like her so much? You’re always running to her. What does she have that I don’t? Why did you tell them and then throw out the note I gave you?” 

Himoto rolls her eyes. “Listen I don’t know what you’re talking about. I read the your stupid note and then I put it in my bag.”

He raises a crumpled up piece of paper. You feel as if you want to die. That you’d rather be struck by lightning right now. Himoto’s eye twitches and she backs a step away. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. It was probably dropped and then-”

“Shut up. You know what you did.”

“No I actually don’t know what you’re talking about-”

“I just want you to admit it. Say you’re sorry. And then I’ll let you go.”

Himoto glares at him. “I’m sorry for absolutely nothing.” She stands up and leaves. This time the guy doesn’t follow him. You begin to stand up and follow her. 

Suddenly the alarms begin to beep and the train gate slams down. It happens in a flash.

Himoto decides to make a run for it but as the train is in the distance so she steps back.

It flashes right before your eyes. The guy catches up to Himoto, pushing her onto the tracks, as the train gets closer. 

She stumbles and falls.

You can’t look away. 

The train gets closer and closer and closer until… you hear a terrible sound. 

The crushing of human bones. 

Maybe not even that. It was beyond your description. The sound of what could only be described as a horrific cracking sound before the train continues running along the tracks. 

You don’t remember what you did next. You only remember reaching for the guy and beating him until you saw a big puddle of blood on the sidewalk.

-

There was someone, or something haunting the school, after Himoto’s death.

A bunch of students went missing, their bodies mutilated beyond comprehension. Mangled bloody messes, similar to the scene of Himoto’s death. Their bones crushed, blood smeared all over the walls. The bodies of the victims were usually found scattered around the school, seemingly at random. Sometimes they’d be in the janitor’s closet, sometimes, they’d be a bloodied mess on the school courtyard. Either way, many people died after Himoto. 

It was strange. Some people swore they could hear voices. The people who left adequate documentation before they died swore they could hear voices before they got murdered. 

One person even said that they heard something say your name. And then another person said the same thing. And then another, and another.

And then before you knew it, everyone started avoiding you. You were treated like an outcast of sorts, would’ve been the best way you could put it. You were thankful no one was bullying you, but people started straying away from you like you were secretly connected to the deaths someway.

Which, you weren’t. 

You told people that. 

Of course, they didn’t believe you. You found it a little hard to believe that yourself. Whatever it was, couldn’t have possibly had a connection to you. You had come to the conclusion that it might’ve just been a rogue killer. Someone who got sick pleasure from cracking people’s heads in. Maybe they were whispering some word that sounded like your name as a prank. Maybe it was someone who knew you and wanted to make your life more hell than it actually was. You refused to believe anyone hated you that much.

Right. Right???

You found it hard to believe that lie yourself. To you though, it felt even harder to believe that a spirit could’ve been attached to you in any way, or even worse, you were subconsciously controlling it. 

You tried to shake it off. You tried to treat it like how you treated Himoto’s death. You tried to forget about it. Bury it so deep within your mind that you couldn’t possibly remember it at will. At least, if you couldn’t remember it, you could convince yourself that it didn’t happen. That it wasn’t real.

But nothing felt real after her death. 

The bell rings. People rush out of class, eager to go home. More than usual today. You quickly packed your things and ran out of class too. On the way home, you bump into Ame.

The two of you stumble back a bit, and you begin sputtering apologies before you realize the state she’s in. She’s bleeding. She’s bruised. She looks like she narrowly won a fight.

“Ame, what…” you take in a breath, “Are you okay?”

She groans clutching her arm and staring at you. “I mean, for the most part yeah. I think I’m okay.”

“Don’t be stupid, you’re… you’re bleeding and you look like you just got into a really bad fight…”

“Well, do I?” She replies sarcastically, “I might’ve, thanks for the great observation.”

You look down on the ground unknowing of what to say. You shift your weight from both of your feet for a few seconds before reaching for your phone. You slowly begin to pull it out before Ame stops you.

“Listen, don’t. Don’t send me to the hospital. I’ll be fine.”

“You’re literally-” she shakes her head. “Don’t worry about it. I got into a fight with that.” Ame stares at you for a few more moments, observing your shocked face before nodding. “It exists.”

“You… you can see it?”

She nods her head, “Well, barely. It was out of my view most of the time but I’m pretty sure it was one ugly spirit. It probably looked disgusting. You could probably see it too. I’m not sure though.”

“How did you fight it then?” You whispered, “It literally bashed everyone’s skull in. Actually, how WERE you even able to see it?”

“I don’t know,” She mutters. “I just started kicking what might’ve been its leg with my shoe until it eventually let go of me.”

“But you’re still hurt… we should get you to the hospital, no?” 

“I’m completely fine. It’ll probably be better within a few days.”

“You might’ve broken something.” You said pointedly. “That won’t go away on its own.”

“I didn’t hear a crack,” Ame replied. “Just relax. Plus aren’t high school acceptances out today? You should probably go home and check. Stop worrying about me. I’ll be fine no matter what happens.”

You hesitate. She nods. You pat her on the back, a look of sympathy and guilt in your face before running off.

Your hands are shaking by the time you get home. Nervously, you open the mailbox pulling out all the envelopes inside. You didn’t want to know what your results were. It scared you. You gripped all the envelopes tightly, locked the mailbox, and walked out.

You focused on all your steps walking towards the elevator, counting down all the seconds until the elevator came down, opened, closed, and eventually stopped at your apartment.

Before you got in, curiosity got the best of you. You shuffled through all the mail, seeing which schools gave you offers.

You stop shuffling midway. You can’t tell if your heart drops, or if it skips a beat.

A top school had given you an offer.

-

Your parents treated you differently after that. They were nicer. Kinder than what they had used to be.

You supposed you must’ve been able to prove your worth to them. But their respect and love for you meant nothing towards you now. You knew it was all just fake. They were only saying that because you had gotten in, had you not been so fortunate, you would’ve never been able to hear the end of it from them. 

You enjoyed your newly-found freedom to the fullest though. 

For the whole summer, you spent your time away in your own room. There wasn’t much to do. Occasionally, you’d go outside, sometimes sneaking into the movie theatre, or looking around in the mall at other times. When your parents eventually gave you some allowance, you’d end up spending all day in arcades, burning the money on claw machines and games. After that, you’d come home, read manga, sometimes browse the internet, and go to sleep. 

It was a peaceful life. You wished you could live like that forever. 

It was near the time when school started again that you decided to pay Himoto’s parents a visit. A tinge of regret formed at your chest realizing that you probably should’ve talked to them sooner. 

You gently knock on the door and wait for a few moments. No one answers the door. You take a deep breath and knock again. The lock slowly clicks open, and Himoto’s mom is standing there. You look her up and down, and she seemed paler than usual. You guess maybe Himoto’s death had a more serious toll than you thought. 

“Come in,” she mutters quietly. You follow her into the house, not knowing what to expect.

Shakily, she pulls out a chair, and motions you to sit down. You give an awkward thanks and grip your hands tightly.

“You must’ve been Himoto’s best friend,” she mutters. “Are you here to pay her condolences?”

You nod. Neither of you said anything. Neither of you needed to say anything. You don’t know how long you stayed like that before her mother spoke again. 

“Do you know how she died?”

Your chest tightens. You weighed your options of telling the truth or lying. If you lied, she might not need to how gruesome Himoto’s death really was. It might’ve been good for her to live in oblivion. In ignorance of the details, it might’ve let her keep her peace. Maybe.

If you told the truth… you weren’t sure how she could react. 

“I don’t know.” You muttered. “One day I was with her, and the next…” you stopped mid sentence. You didn’t want to even finish that sentence.

Her mom nodded. “I was… so worried when she didn’t come home that day. I…”

You looked up at her. You realized how terrible she looked. She looked like she hadn’t slept well for the better part of the year. How could she? You just wondered why she hadn’t gotten revenge on Himoto’s killer yet.

“I waited and waited… I was worried sick…” she takes a shaky breath, “I didn’t know that that would’ve been the last time I saw her.”

You didn’t know what to do. You felt stupid for staring at her, stupid for not saying anything. Stupid for even coming here. 

“I’m sorry.” you whispered. You grip your hands tighter. 

“No, don’t be,” She laughs, “It’s not your fault.”

A pang of guilt pokes you in the chest. You do your best to ignore it. The best you can do is grab onto her back, as she completely breaks down in front of you. You didn’t know what to do. In that moment, you heard the most horrific shriek you could’ve come from a human being. 

You didn’t want to be here anymore. You wonder why you didn’t save her, why you simply squat there like nothing was gonna happen. Had you done anything, you wouldn’t be here right now. None of this would’ve happened, and you’d still have your best friend. 

You wonder why you didn’t take her place. Why you didn’t just run across the road and save her. Why you just watched as it all unfolded.

The cracking sound replays in your head. You can’t do this anymore. You stand up. You leave Himoto’s mother alone in the living room and ran up to her room, quietly closing the door behind you. 

Her room had more or less been left in the same way you remembered. Everything was still there, not a thing out of place. Her bed unmade, all her stuffies, her figurines, her photos, her room decor were still in the same place. The bookshelf was stacked with notebooks, stationery, and several novels. Her pillows messily stowed upon the bed. Some drawers on her desk were empty, some were shut. Paper sticking out of the shut ones, while the open ones had various other contents. You didn’t bother to look through it. It felt wrong.

All of this felt wrong.

You stared at the desk. It was the same as you remember. All her stuff was in the same position as what she left it in days before she died. You assumed her parents hadn’t bothered with tampering with her room at all. It was like it had been frozen in time.

You stand there for a second. Trying to avoid whatever you could’ve thought at that moment.

You drop a handful of flowers on her desk.

-

You hadn’t cried in a long time.

Most of the times, you had managed to control your emotions, you took deep breaths, tried to calm your mind, and usually, it’d been enough to stop yourself from tipping over the edge of tears. 

But this time, it wasn’t enough for anything. 

The second everything went dark in the house, you couldn’t stop yourself. You didn’t even know how it started. Tears started streaming down your face, silently until it started getting worse, and worse until you were full on crying. Ugly crying. 

Actually scratch that. You weren’t even crying. You were having a full-on mental breakdown. Sobbing, hyperventilating. Fuck, it even hurt to think. 

You laid there until you were able to normally breathe again. You weren’t sure how long it had been, but you could only assume it was likely hours before you felt in any way calm again. 

It felt weird. You hadn’t felt this calm or relaxed in ages. Like nothing could ever bother you at this moment.

It was another give-or-take 20 minutes of you trying to force yourself to sleep, but you couldn’t do that either.

Eventually, you decided to get out of bed, maybe do something else, like watch the TV on mute before your parents woke up, and then sneak back to bed. Hopefully, that would make you tired enough to get some rest. 

Quietly, you opened your door, and tip-toed to the living room. You quietly turned on the TV, quickly pressing the mute button before any sound could be heard. You gently lean down on the couch, and begin channel surfing before you realize you were thirsty. Actually…

Your eyes scanned around the room. Something didn’t feel right. It felt like someone else was here. 

Your eyes darted around the room, trying to identify who it might’ve been. 

There’s no one there.

Must’ve been your imagination. 

You lazily slump back into the couch. You could get a glass of water later. You were probably imagining things. Probably. You resume browsing channels before finding something that piqued your interest. Some random movie that could probably keep your mind off things enough for now, until you fell asleep. 

You blankly watch the flashing lights on the screen for a few moments before you hear some footsteps. 

Okay, now this is getting weird. You think to yourself. Who could possibly be there? I swear that didn’t hear the door getting broken down, or even unlocked. Maybe I should just double-check to be sure. 

You stand up, walking towards the door. As you expected, it was locked, just as it was before you went to bed.

Then… maybe it is my imagination? Maybe I’m just imagining things. No one can possibly get through a locked door.

… Unless maybe they locked it again? Picked the lock? 

You look on the ground for any visible signs of footsteps. There were none.

It.. I guess it has to be nothing then? You look around, hoping to spot maybe a crazy guy, or some psycho killer, but instead you’re greeted with nothing. 

You felt like you were going crazy. Your heart started beating faster, and your eyes begin darting around the room. There really really WAS nothing there. 

But there had to be something there because the air felt weird, and you could tell that the room wasn’t completely empty. You begin walking around, flipping the place upside down, trying to see if there was something there. Maybe it was a bad prank. Maybe someone was playing tricks on you. 

Maybe.. Maybe

You end up tripping in the kitchen and stumbling over. You groaned and rubbed your shin in pain before looking up.

You weren’t wrong. There was something there. Just. Not what you were thinking. The thing somewhat resembled a human, but it wasn’t very close. It had somewhat of a human shape, but what looked like no skin on its body. There were bones poking out of its body, some of its limbs hanging completely immovable. It had holes in the usual places where there were eyes, ears, and a mouth but none of them ever moved. The whole flesh of the thing looked like it was constantly dripping and melting away. 

However, the one thing that stood out the most to you was the ribbon that still remained intact, tied to its neck. 

That ribbon…

It doesn’t take you long to realize that it was probably some manifestation of Himoto, much to your terror.

It also doesn’t take you long to realize that it’s probably the thing that had been going around killing students left and right, because before you can react, its long arms begin to reach for your neck, gripping tighter. 

And tighter.

And tighter.

You could see some black spots in your vision before it slowly drags you closer, and you realize it’s actually saying something.

It was saying something over and over.

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry.”

You begin digging your nails into the thing, trying to ignore the disgusting texture hoping it’d just hurt enough to let you go. Clawing at something, hoping it’d be able to let you go. That maybe you’d be able to survive.

After a good few seconds, you realize you’ve completely dented through its arm, and you mange to fall down. Quickly you reach for the knife block, grabbing the biggest knife you could find.

In some rush of pure adrenaline and fear, you manage to grab the thing by its arm, gripping it so tightly that it snaps off. You’re surprised as the thing pops off, spraying a thick, purple liquid everywhere.

The thing backs into a wall, and you raise the knife. Without hesitation you keep pushing it into the monster, until it goes through the other side. It completely slumps down, but you don’t stop. You kneel down. You pull the knife out, raise your arm, and push the knife back in. You do this once, twice, three times, until it became a mechanical action.

Until you realize there’s nothing left and all that was the monster’s residue all over the walls. The purple goo was everywhere on the walls, and probably on you.

You strayed frozen in place, trying to catch your breath, trying to make your heartbeat slow down. 

What the fuck did I just do? 

You stare at the puddle of remains that sat on the kitchen floor.

I just…

Did I just kill Himoto?

Your tightens for what might’ve been the 9th time this day. You stare at the puddle of residue on the ground. You grip the knife harder.

Oh god…

There’s about three footsteps you hear before you hear the light click.

You slowly turn your head around.

You saw your parents standing in the doorway.

-

“We’ve been thinking about getting you institutionalized.”

You raised your head up and stared at both of your parents sitting on the other side of the table. They looked dead serious. 

“But what about-”

“About what?” Your dad cut you off. “Something’s clearly wrong with you. We saw you in the middle of the night with a knife in your hand, looking like you were going to kill someone.”

You lower your head again. You forgot. 

Whatever Himoto had turned into only showed itself to certain people. You happened to be one of those people

There wasn’t a way you could even explain this to your parents without it backfiring on you even more. 

“I don’t remember raising a killer.” your father mutters. “And after all we’ve done, after we’ve raised you since you were a child, moving schools, and trying to give you everything we couldn’t have, this is how you repay us? By trying to kill us?”

“No I swear that’s not what-”

“Shut up.” He snaps. “Shut your mouth.”

Your mother stares at you like she’d never known you ever. That the person you were was a foreign entity to her. Her lip trembles. You know she probably wants to hurl insults and accusations onto you too, but she stays quiet, and slightly hyperventilating since your dad keeps going.

It’s pointless to bother explaining anything to these two. Once they had decided whatever they decided was true, it would’ve simply been like trying to cut a long down with a butter knife to convince them otherwise. Of anything. 

Your dad pulls out the acceptance letters you got, and lights a match to them. You stand up. “No- please that’s too far-”

“You don’t deserve any of this,” your mom screams at you, “We worked so hard for you, we did everything for you to have these opportunities, and to have a shot at university.”

“Bad people don’t deserve nice things,” your father added on. “University is a nice thing, and if you want to kill us, then you don’t get anything at all.”

You quickly sink down to your chair in horror as you watch the pieces of paper get burnt. Your years of hard work, your years of getting beat up, yelled at, and having to numb yourself.

Just gone like that.

You feel like crying all over again, until there’s a knock on the door. Of course, as per usual, your parents ignore the knocking, and watch the letters burn until there is little more than ash left in the tray on the table. 

The knocking doesn’t stop.

“Who could POSSIBLY be bothering us at this time,” your father muttered, annoyed. “I haven’t answered the door and they’re still there.”

“Must be some type of mandated apartment check. Why don’t you go answer the door?” 

Your mother stands up and leaves the room. She opens the door, and you hear them talking. You try your best to drone out what your dad was saying, hoping that maybe if he was loud enough whoever was at the door could’ve been kind enough to at least send you off child protective services for a little while, until your parents calmed down. Maybe you’d be able to explain to them what happened.

Maybe they’d understand.

After a few moments, your mom comes back, and there’s a man standing behind her. Your dad stares at him too. It was really awkward for a few moments, it felt like someone was watching the lowest point in your life. Your father was the first one to speak up.

“Who are you?” he asks coldly. “Guests are not allowed in our home at this time. I’ll call the police if you don’t leave this property.”

Your mother stands there, not saying anything. Despite the awkwardness of the whole situation, you couldn’t help but feel angry your parents were being so rude to this stranger. You bit the inside of your cheek and looked at him.

He was an average looking guy. Not someone who could’ve been a threat. Twenty or so years in age, you could only assume, he didn’t look that old. What caught your eye though, was the weird clothing he had on. 

It was some kind of uniform with baggy pants, and a really oversized shirt. It was buttoned-up to the top of his neck, with a striped gold button. You’d never seen that type of uniform before. It looked somewhat like a school uniform, but not by much. You wonder what kind of organization, or whatever he belonged to. 

The man doesn’t answer any of your father’s questions. Instead, he changes the subject. “Did you see any paranormal activity here recently, sir?”

“...what? No?”

“Our reports show that there’s been paranormal activity in this region, and most recently the activity has been traced to your house.”

“Are you a missionary? We’re not interested if you are. Now if you’d so kindly g-”

“You must’ve heard of the recent murders in your child’s school, correct? I assume you still sent them to school everyday, despite that.”

“Why does it matter what I did or didn’t do?” Your dad glares at the man, “Why is this any of your business?”

The man continues, “I believe I heard you shouting at your child about something relating to-”

“This is absolutely NONE of your business,” your father snaps. “Unbelievable. I’m going to call the police.” 

He quickly stands up to grab the phone, but before he can do that, the man cuts him off. “Your child wasn’t trying to kill you.” He said softly. “Don’t call the authorities, I can explain.”

Your mother pushes your father back into his seat, and you awkwardly push out the spare seat for him. He gives you a thankful nod, and he sits down. Your father shoots a dirty look at you, and then looks at him with vitriol. 

“Your child… is not a normal human.”

It’s quiet that you can hear a pin drop. Both your parents gawk at him in disbelief, and you lower your head further. The situation was so funny you could only think of laughing at the moment, but you keep your mouth shut. 

“What are you going to tell us next?” Your father snides, “That they can do magic? That they’re god’s chosen one?” 

“Actually… We have a strong case to believe that your child may possess supernatural or superhuman qualities. Your child seems to have been able to exorse what is called a ‘cursed spirit’ with nothing more than a kitchen knife.”

The man picks up the knife you left on the floor before. You could still see all the purple goo staining the shiny metal. 

“You want us to believe that they,” your dad motioned to you, “Can see some ghosts or ‘magical creatures’ we cannot? Are you still playing make-believe at your age?”

“So you’re just saying they’re just some ‘freak’ of nature?” Your mother adds, “I find that hard to believe.”

You couldn’t imagine how they couldn’t see the stains on the knife. Did it look shiny to them? Maybe you were imagining stuff again. Maybe this was a dream. Were you just crazy? Had your dad been yelling the whole time and you just started to hallucinate? 

How could any of this be real?

Your dad stands up and puts his hand on the strange man’s shoulder. “I believe you should go.” 

The man glares at your dad. “I’m not finished yet.”

“We have to take your child,” he continues, “It is my belief that it is not safe for them, or anyone else for them to remain here. Or in the general public, where you people typically reside.”

“That’s not up to you to decide. We have decided to institutionalize her already. It is under our control.”

“That’s not what I meant. They cannot be institutionalized. They have to come with us. There is no alternative choice here. They have to come with us, we will take good care of them.”

“We refuse to let you take our child away.” Your mom snaps.

“Unfortunately, we are mandated to do so. I should add that they were partially responsible for all of the 52 deaths that happened in the school she attended? Such incidents are guaranteed to happen again if she remains in either your care, or institutionalized. Locking them in a psych ward will do absolutely nothing to prevent this.”

Your parents both look at you, in horror. 

“You’re telling me… they’re a killer?” 

The man nods, and you couldn’t even embrace for whatever your parents were gonna say after. 

“What do you mean we raised a killer,” your dad said quietly, “I don’t think I’ve ever even put that idea into their mind.”

“What did I do wrong,” your mother sobs, “We created an abnormal person, a freak.”

“This isn’t our child. This shouldn’t be our child.”

“What did we do wrong to deserve this?”

You listen to this for a few more minutes before your father looks at you again. “Go.”

Your entire body went slack. 

You’d never seen him like this before. He’s scared of you.

“Pack your things. Leave.”

“Get out of my house.”

The man gently puts a hand on your shoulder. You wrack a sob, and he pats your back. 

-

You’re at the bottom step of a mountain. 

The drive here was a blur, you didn’t know how long it was until you got here. It could’ve been minutes, it could’ve been hours, you couldn’t quite tell after all the events of today. 

After you hastily packed everything you absolutely needed into your backpack, you were pushed outside the door by your parents, and the strange guy told you to get into a car. You wondered if you were being kidnapped. Maybe they were gonna sell you off here. 

You didn’t know, but it wasn’t like there was anything you could do now. You weren’t welcome home, you didn’t know where you were, and you were surrounded by strangers that didn’t seem in the slightest, interested in your side of any story. 

“Go up the stairs, I promise it doesn’t bite.”

Yeah, like that was really comforting. 

You hesitate for a second, and begin walking up the mountain of stairs, leading you to one of those traditional-looking gates. You didn’t know what they were called. 

Are they… gonna turn me into a shrine maiden or something?

You can’t help but ask. Maybe they’ll answer.

“Hey um… what are you guys gonna do to me?” 

“You’ll see.”

As you reach the top of the steps, you can see a bunch of pathways formed, each leading to different buildings. All of them looked like old traditional buildings. You had no idea what any of the buildings were supposed to do, and they stretched out far and wide from your field of vision. It might as well have been a maze, as far as you were concerned. 

You decided against asking any more questions, and continued following the man into some random building. You remembered making fun of Himoto for taking you to that fortune-teller once.

But what were you doing right now? You’d lost everything, as far as you were concerned. Now, desperate, following strangers to random buildings, hoping nothing bad would happen to you.

The guy finally stops at one of the buildings, and opens the door. He motions for you to step inside. You do. 

You’re greeted with someone sitting in the center of the room. He seemed to be muscular, wore a completely black outfit with a zipper-up, and had brown hair, a mustache and a goatee. To be honest, if you were any younger, you might’ve thought he was a gang member, but he seemed nice enough for you not to run away. 

“Sit down.” 

You follow his instructions, and kneel on the ground. 

“Do you know why you’re here?”

You shake your head. The guy shoots a dirty look at the man behind you, the one that brought you here, and he cowers a little. “Why didn’t you tell them why they’re coming here?”

“I thought that was your job, Yaga.”

You made a mental note of that name. 

“Anyways, sorry about that. Some of our people seem to be horrifically incompetent. You must’ve been a little scared? Probably a lot, actually.”

You stared at the ground, unsure of what the correct answer was here.

“You can talk and be honest, y'know? I’m not gonna hurt you. I don’t know what happened on the way here, but it’s okay. You can talk.”

“So, were you scared?”

You nodded yes. 

“Well, I would’ve been too. Usually, the principal would’ve been the one to have this talk with you, but since he’s gone, I’ll fill you in on the details of what’s been probably going on with you for the past six months.”

He pulls out a file, and begins looking through it. 

“So, you remember when Himoto died right?”

You nervously swallowed, “Yes, I do.”

“Now typically, when someone dies, they just die. There’s nothing else to it. But because both you and her killer were present, she didn’t exactly die. She suffered a fate worse than death. Apparently, according to the students we interviewed, she seemed to have a lot of feelings remaining when she died.”

“None of them good ones, of course.”

He pauses, and stares at you, trying to observe your reaction. You try to keep your face straight, and tried to push down the rising feelings of guilt once again. 

“Anyways, we’re not entirely sure if she was turned into a curse by you, or if it was a different cursed spirit purely born out of her image. Either case is possible. Hirota, the guy you were with earlier, was the one who was assigned with the mission, but that wasn’t even the main mission he was tasked with.”

“We had heard that there was a fortune teller in your area. The Gojo clan actually caught wind of this, and they suspected that it wasn’t just a case of an average ‘lucky fortune teller’. They wanted someone to double check, and if she indeed had any Jujutsu powers, that she should’ve been brought to them.”

“Well, unfortunately, she fled the Scene before Hirota could get to her, but he heard on the radio that there were some suspicious deaths happening at a school nearby on the same day.”

Your head felt like it was gonna explode from an overload of information. None of the words coming out of Yaga’s mouth made any sense. You had no idea what a cursed spirit, nor what Jujutsu was, and this entire tale felt like a really bad exposition to some type of shitty novel.

“So, Hirota decided to go inspect what was going on at the school nearby, and his instincts were correct. There was a cursed spirit on the loose. He spent a couple of days trying to locate it before he saw it following you back home.”

“When was this?”

“Just yesterday. That’s how he found where you lived.”

“And then…”

“You’re here now. You managed to exorse the curse with a kitchen knife. A strong one at that.” He pauses, looking lost in thought, maybe thinking about what to add. “Actually, do you actually know anything about Jujutsu?”

-

You opened the door to your dorm. It’s simple. There’s a window next to the bed that beams light in, a small twin-sized bed in one corner of the room, and a desk. You observe the room a few times, before laying down on the bare mattress in your room. You turned around in it and tried to get comfortable. One of the staff said they’d send you some bedsheets soon. They’d told you to make a list of everything you needed, and they’d get it for you. 

You had to say, they were very hospitable to you. 

Yaga told you that they had already transferred enrolment from your current high school to this one. He told you that this high school wasn’t a normal high school.

The main purpose of this high school was to teach students how to fight, and exorse said curses. That was their main focus, academics came second.

Which freaked you out a little, since you had always been pretty weak. But according to both Yaga and Hirota, you must’ve been stronger than usual, since you were able to kill a decently strong curse. 

Yaga said they’d give you a ranking soon, and told you to go unpack. As for anything else relating to how you’d fight, you were on your own. Yaga told you that some sorcerers have innate techniques, while others didn’t. 

Whether you had any was up to you to discover. You didn’t even know where to start with that. How could you manifest one? How could you even know you had one? You had no idea. You were told it was best to assume that you didn’t have one. 

Well, they did give you a grace period to figure all this out before they started sending you out on missions. You were probably gonna figure that out later. Maybe it’d come to you naturally. 

You bring your knees up to your chest for a second. Maybe you should find some other students that could help you out.

-

It takes you a good 20 minutes of wandering around to find one other student. After wandering through the better half of the school’s buildings, you were relieved to finally encounter one student.  

Why are there like. No students at this school?

“Excuse me-”

The girl turns around. She’s got long black hair tied in two pigtails, and she was wearing basically the same uniform you saw Hirota in.

“Hi,” she responds, “I’m sorry… do I… know you?” She looks at you for a second before some type of realization hits her. “Oh, are you the new person? Y/N, was it? I’m sorry,” she bows down. “We just heard news that someone new was joining today.”

You wave both of your hands in front of your face, “No, no, stop bowing,” You feel your face turn red, “I should’ve said something first. What’s your name, by the way?”

“Utahime. Utahime Iori. I’m a third-year student here.” 

“Okay, Utahime, nice.” The two of you stare at each other for a good two seconds before she starts laughing a little. You had no idea what was so funny, but you laugh along with her anyway. 

“Sorry… it’s just the way you say it. Do you need help with something? I’m free for the next hour or so.”

“Help? Oh yeah, I could use a lot of that.” 

“Can tell.” Utahime pauses for a second, “Well, what do you need help with? I’ll try my best to help you.”

“Uh well…”

She looks at you expectantly, waiting for an answer. 

“I think I might need a little help with my dorm? Oh, and also, like you might need to tell me what the hell I’m supposed to do here. At least a little. I’m completely lost.”

“I’m guessing you probably came from a non-soccerer family?”

“I didn’t even know curses were a thing maybe UNTIL yesterday. I have NO clue what I’m even doing here.” 

“Let’s just go to your room, and you can tell me the whole story about why you’re here, there. Sounds good?”

“Yeah, sure thing.”

-

“Oh, your room is right next to mine.”

You look to the left of the hallway seeing the door next to you. “Is that your dorm?” 

“Yeah. Anyways, let’s go inside.” 

You opened the door to your dorm, and it looks the same as before. The room was basically barren except your electronics and some clothes you managed to stuff into your backpack before leaving. 

“Wow.” 

Utahime looks around your room. 

“You need a LOT of stuff actually. Did you always live life like you were broke or…?”

“I mean like… I didn’t exactly have a lot of time to take my belongings before I left. I think I just took what I needed the most?”

“Yeah I can tell.” She pauses for a second, “Actually, did you pick up your uniform? I don’t see it in your closet.”

“Oh uh… where am I supposed to pick it up?” 

“It’s okay we can do that later. We can start making a list. Maybe we can assemble the furniture together when it arrives.” 

“You’ll do that with me?”

“I mean, of course? Why wouldn’t I?” 

“Oh, sorry,” you look down embarrassed, “Thanks.”

“Geez, how bad were you treated in school? You’re like…”

“What?”

“Nevermind.” Utahime laughs a little, “I’m just surprised. It’s okay, you don’t really need to feel shy here. None of us will hurt you.”

She pulls out a pad of paper and starts jotting down a bunch of things for your room. “Now, why don’t you tell me about how you ended up here? It seems like you have an interesting enough story to tell.”

-

“Okay, so. You’re telling ME that you exorcized a curse. On your own? With nothing but a kitchen knife?” 

You nodded. “Okay, well I guess I think? That’s what Yaga and Hirota told me.”

Utahime shook her head, “Who’s Hirota? Never heard of that guy before.”

“I don’t know. I think he was just some random sorcerer dispatched on a mission to my district? Like apparently what happened was they were trying to catch some random fortune teller?”

“A… fortune teller? Why would they need to catch one of those?”

“I mean like, they were under the assumption she might’ve had some type of unique heavenly restriction or something. I don’t know. Apparently she could ALWAYS tell the future correctly.”

“And did you go to her?”

“... My friend dragged me along.”

“Did she tell both of your fortunes?”

“She told mine, I think. She didn’t tell my friend's fortune.”

“What did she say to the two of you?”

You didn’t respond. You tried to wrack your brain of what exactly she said to you. You remember what she said to Himoto; she didn’t tell Himoto’s fortune, but what about you? You remember calling it a load of bullshit. Maybe you should’ve remembered, maybe you’d know if any of it actually happened. 

“I mean, I don’t exactly remember??? I remember she didn’t tell my friend. But she told me something, and I was-”

Utahime puts her face into her hands. “You’re telling me. You had basically a fortune teller that was GOING to tell you what happened in the future. And you forgot?”

“Wait no, let me think again…”

You tried to wrack your brains for what she could’ve possibly said. Something about… 

No, it couldn’t be this hard to remember. It was less than a year ago. Maybe I should’ve written it down… Himoto… at least what did she say about Himoto…

…. Oh. 

Your heart drops a little, remembering what she said. 

“Himoto will die within the next three weeks.” 

… she got that right….

“Okay I guess I remember what she said to my friend. I can’t exactly remember what she said to me, though.”

“What did she say to your friend? If you don’t mind me asking?”

“You remember how I told you like.”

“Uh-huh. Like you had a friend, and she had a creepy ass stalker? Yeah I remember that.”

“Well you see… She actually…” 

It takes a second for Utahime to understand what you were implying. Her eyes widen in realization before lowering her head. 

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“Yeah, she died.” you said, flatly. “The fortune teller, I’m pretty sure, told her she was gonna die in a few days, and at the time I didn’t believe it. I mean how could she? She wasn’t sick, she was presumably living in a safe environment…”

“My condolences,” she mutters, “I didn’t know it was like that…”

“Honestly? Don’t be. Don’t even worry about it. I’m kind of over it to be honest. After everything.”

“So uh… I mean… what did she say about you then?”

“I honestly don’t remember. Like I think she probably said some outlandish shit, and I pray that it doesn’t happen, I guess?”

“I mean, hopefully it was something mundane, but based on how you’re even here, I doubt that.”

The two of you sit there for a second, before Utahime speaks up again, changing the subject. 

“So, I guess you don’t have any idea if you have an innate cursed technique then? Or what it is, if you have one?”

You nodded. 

“Girl, you LITERALLY stabbed a curse to death, I think that should give you some idea. Normal attacks don’t work on curses.” She thinks for a second. “Oh yeah, and I think, at least from what I see, your cursed energy output is pretty average. Pretty sure. For someone who has your cursed energy output, exorsing some type of semi-sentinent curse is pretty impressive. Considering that you had absolutely no clue what you were doing.”

“Actually, let’s go to the gym for a second. I wanna check something out.”

- 

You follow Utahime to the gym. It’s that of a normal school gym, there was nothing surprising there. She goes into the storage room, looking for something. After a few minutes, she reappears with a large bucket.

A bucket of wooden swords.

“Okay, so, I’m actually not a combat sorcerer. Well, I’m more of a support sorcerer. But, it seems like you’re probably better suited for combat. Since at least from my knowledge,” she stares you up and down. You suppose she’s trying to see if she can find anything else interesting about you.

“Are we gonna spar?” You, asked, a little nervous. “I’ve never done that before.”

“You? Me? Spar? Hah. Funny joke, no. I can barely spar myself.”

“We’re gonna do something else. We’re gonna go outside, and see if you can replicate whatever you did yesterday. That should probably give you a good idea about what your cursed technique is.”

Utahime motions you to follow her outside. The two of you go to the courtyard where she stops at a giant rock. “Pick up a sword.”

You do exactly as she says, and you pull one out of the bucket.

“Okay, so I wanna see if you can dent this rock. With that sword.”

“... What? No. Of course I can’t.”

“I think you should be able to.”

“It’s just wood, how am I gonna be able to dent it? It’ll be in splinters.”

Utahime shrugs. “Just try. I think there’s a chance you might be able to dent it. But you gotta make yourself feel scared maybe? Like think about the worst thing you’ve ever experienced, and try to slash the rock.”

You stare at the sword, trying to imagine how you felt yesterday. Maybe, if you imagine that the rock was Himoto’s cursed spirit, you’d be able to do it. 

Yeah, that might work. I think maybe I can just try that.

What was I feeling yesterday…

You tried to picture the image of her curse. You tried to visualize the gruesome face, the slimy texture of its skin. 

The way it kept whispering to you. 

It did make you feel scared.

Doing the best you could, you closed your eyes, gripped the katana as tight as you could, and hit the rock.

After a split second, you opened your eyes. 

“Ow,” you groaned. “That hurt.”

Utahime stares at the slash across the rock. “That’s impressive.” 

You stare down. There was a big gash across the slab that nearly cut through it. 

“Huh.” She grinned. “Well, I guess we can probably deduce that you DO have an innate cursed technique now.”

“So… so that means I have superpowers?” 

“Yeah, well kinda if you wanna call it that.” Utahime muses, “I think you can probably put your cursed energy into objects. I mean, there’s no other way that you could’ve been able to cut through the rock. Unless you were some type of pretrained samurai. And even so, they require a steel katana to be able to do that.”

Utahime slides her fingers on the blade part.

“Yeah, I mean, it feels slightly different than what it used to be.”

“Your classes are gonna teach you how to actually use cursed energy, by the way. You don’t need to visualize the worst event of your life everytime you wanna use cursed energy.”

“I mean that’s a pretty strong technique all on its own. Any normal attacks you use on curses can take effect. You can basically make your own cursed weapons at will.”

The two of you stare at each other, before Utahime grins, and you smile back at her. “Anyways, I gotta go now. Nice meeting you, Y/N. I’ll see you around?”

“Yep, see ya!”

You watch Utahime run off into the distance.

Huh. I feel weaker than usual. 

You look around you, again. Your vision feels blurry. You feel light-headed.

I should probably get back to my dorm.

-

You had learned that there weren’t that many students in Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical College. 

So far, you have only met two students; one of them being Utahime, and the other one being Mei Mei. You hadn’t encountered other students, and as far as you were aware, they hadn’t mentioned any other students either.

Mei mei was the younger one of the two, surprisingly, and she was supposedly the stronger one of the two as well. 

You awkwardly open the door, saying hi to both of them before slumping over on a desk. 

“They gave you… the male uniform?” 

You shrugged. “Apparently, that's all they have left. I don’t mind. I hate wearing skirts anyways.”

“I mean, you lowkey kind of pull it off anyways, so it doesn’t matter.” 

You laughed. “Thanks.”

“Anyways,” Utahime changed the subject, “Didn’t they just assess you for your grade level? Like as a sorcerer?"

“Uh, yeah. Why?”

“What level are you? I'm grade two, so is Mei Mei.”

“They said it was like somewhere on…”

“Yeah it’s on your student card.”

You awkwardly dig into your pocket and fish out your student card. It’s still warm from whatever machine they pulled it out of. 

Grade 1.

Utahime and Mei Mei peer over your shoulder. 

“HUH?” 

Utahime looks at you shocked, Mei Mei looks surprised too. “Wow, that’s interesting. They almost never place anyone past grade two. Like it’s either grade two or special grade, I think? But no one here’s ever gotten the special grade title. Like I’m pretty sure you gotta be able to do some CRAZY shit for the special grade title.”

“Are you like hiding some super strength or something? ”

“What?” You scoffed. “No? I’m not hiding anything.”

Mei mei and Utahime start patting you down and inspecting you everywhere, trying to see if they could find something you could be hiding. 

“Geez your arms are weak,” Utahime observes, “Like you have no strength at all. I swear the other day, I saw you getting winded from climbing up the stairs.”

“Oh, shut up,” you snapped, turning red. “I thought both of you knew I wasn’t that strong. Like I’d definitely lose to Mei Mei in an arm-wrestling match.”

“Oh yeah, I knew that. It’s just that you have to be hiding some sort of secret superpower to be grade one off the bat.”

“Yeah! Like isn’t it only given to experienced sorcerers? Maybe they meant to assign you special grade?”

“Should we ask Yaga?”

“We should.”

Just at that moment, Yaga walks through the door. He nods at the three of you before clearing his throat. 

“Yaga,” Utahime raises her hand, “Are you sure they gave Y/N the correct ranking?”

“Let me see their student card?”

You hand it over to him, and he inspects the circular stamp on the card. “Yeah, it’s right. I mean, if they weren’t that strong, we wouldn’t have to take her out without good reason, right?”

“I mean the curse you said, was only a grade two curse, no?”

“Could you exorse a grade two curse on your own with no experience?” Utahime turns red. “Exactly. I believe the evaluation was that Y/N had more power to her than they look.”

“Now, if you excuse me, Mei Mei, and Utahime, a new mission has arrived for you.”

-

It took you four whole months to learn how to control cursed energy. You would’ve considered the entire experience a slow, painful, humiliation ritual, despite what the others might’ve said. They often told you, how you were doing really well, that you were quickly grasping things rather quickly.

You knew they were probably just being nice. You often told them to drop the complements, and to be honest, but they always swore they were being honest. It often felt like you were an infant that could barely use its legs. Oftentimes, it felt like the others were leaving you out of things. There were so many things you didn’t know. You felt so clueless. And honestly, pretty stupid.

You know at some point, Yaga decided to extend your grace period because you weren’t getting the hang of things quick enough. He said maybe he overshot how quickly you could learn. You often asked people if there was any point of you being here at all, they’d all insist that you belonged here. 

Of course, their responses never felt genuine, but you’d say thanks anyways. You wonder what they actually thought about you. Were you a burden to them? Did they think you had potential? You couldn’t tell. 

All of this was made worse by the fact you couldn’t exert yourself in the slightest. Every time you used your cursed technique, you’d feel extreme exhaustion. You could strengthen pieces of wood, plastic, and metal, but at what cost? It wasn’t like you could use them for anything. Sure, you could probably do substantial amounts of damage if you landed a hit, but most of the time you couldn’t. You got tired easily fighting in any regard, whether it was fist-fighting, or with a sword or whatever. 

The only bright side here was that the academics were relatively easy. You started considering skipping in the first two weeks. You were missing from half your classes by the third. By the second month, you were nowhere to be found. 

From then on, your daily routine had been rolling out of bed anywhere between 9am and noon, hastily getting ready, and spending the most minimal amount of time you possibly could studying, before either spending some time training (with little to no success), watching movies, or just sneaking off school grounds to play video games in arcades with the small amount of allowance you had saved up from your parents. 

You had your favourites in the arcade of course. You had always loved the racing games, the fighting games, or the claw machines you typically found in arcades.

But ever since you had your newfound freedom, you realized you could also play first-person shooter games at the arcade now too. Your parents had forbidden you from doing that before, but now that they were gone from your life, you could finally enjoy those too.

It didn’t take you long to get addicted to them; you found out you were quite good at it too. Before you knew it, you were spending all day in the arcade playing them. 

For a couple of weeks you were happy. You forgot you were even a student at all.

It was only one evening, when Utahime came knocking at your door, that you were reminded of the situation you were in. 

You open the door with your laptop in your hand, and motioned for her to come in. She didn’t look too happy to see you.

“What’s wrong? Why do you look so pissed?”

Utahime stepped inside the door and closed it. 

“Listen, you didn’t hear this from me,” she mumbled, “but they were just discussing sending you on a mission soon.”

“What? How soon?”

“Like. Two weeks from now soon.”

You stare at her, trying to see if there was any trace of joking on her face. There wasn’t. 

“Are… are you serious?”

She nods. “Apparently they’ve been seeing that you haven’t been producing enough results in school cause you’ve been skipping so much, so they wanna send you on missions to start learning.”

“What? But I might die out there.”

“Do you think this school cares about death? I’m pretty sure there've been so many people that have died on missions from this school. Apparently in the past tenish years, curses have been getting stronger too. I’m just surprised they’re sending you out… since you’re so new.”

“What do you mean new? I thought I was supposed to be at least somewhat decent at it by now.”

Utahime laughs, “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s impressive that you are where you are right now. A lot of sorcerers come from clans, and they have knowledge passed down from generation to generation. The rest of us have been training for years. You’ve at least done like 1 years’ worth of work in a few months, which is good enough, considering you’ve barely gotten any training.”

“So what the fuck do I do then? I don’t wanna die. Not like this anyway.”

“I mean, I could come with you. I could ask Yaga if I could come with you, since it’s your first mission, anyways. I mean, I could always just sneak out with you too. They probably aren’t going to expel any of us, unless we do something seriously stupid.”

“Please?? You’d do that for me?”

“I got your back. This time, at least. Just try not to get yourself killed.”

-

You decided against training for the next two weeks. There wasn’t any point, because you knew you wouldn’t be able to get stronger than you were right now. No amount of sparring with dummies, running laps, or anything would help you improve your strength exponentially in the next few days. In fact, it’d just make you tired.

And presumably lazier. You had simply grown to accept that as part of who you were. Yaga had ended up assigning the mission to the three of you, so you could watch and learn from your seniors. 

In the meantime, both of them suggested that you found a good weapon you could use against the curse. Since you could put your cursed energy into anything, you could use any weapon to fight against the curse. It didn’t have to be a cursed weapon. 

You ended up going into the storage room, and digging through whatever arsenal of weapons they could have. A large majority of them were cursed weapons; knives, swords, and those other traditional-looking weapons that you probably had no idea how to use.

Eventually after staying in there for a bit, something caught your eye. A revolver. 

With a full magazine.

Exactly what you were looking for. Just on time, too.

A muffed voice comes from the other side of the door, “You done?” Mei mei asks. “It’s about time to go.”

“Yeah. Coming.”

You quickly pick up the revolver and walk out the room. 

“A gun, huh? Interesting choice.”

“What else was I supposed to choose, huh? I have NO idea what half of the weapons in that room were, let alone how to use them.”

“Just so you know, that might not exactly be a cursed weapon. I guess the bullets might be infused though, if the past user used it enough.”

“Eh. Doesn’t matter. As long as you two are doing the heavy work, I’ll support you from the back.”

“We’ll probably be done in no time, to be honest. It’s probably a weak curse.”

-

Mei mei was right. It was a rather weak curse, and sending the three of you on the mission was absolutely overkill. Utahime scouted out the place. You had never seen her that scared before. Well, you guess the building itself was a little frightening, but seeing her jump at every sound she heard was new. Mei Mei promised that’s how Utahime usually was, on missions.

You made a note to make fun for it, later.

Finding the curse wasn’t really hard. You and Mei Mei both started going to town on the curse, and it was dead within seconds. 

“So, are we done here?”

“I mean it looks like we are. That was a pretty simple mission. We didn’t even have to consider if it had extra parts, or whatever. That thing was barely moving.”

“Okay, great! Let’s go home then. Our job’s done for today.”

“Nah. You guys go home,” Mei Mei said, “There’s actually something I wanted to do before I went back.”

“Oh, okay. We’ll see you soon then, I guess?” Utahime replied, “Give us a call if anything comes up.”

Mei Mei nodded. “Sure.”

The three of you waved goodbye. 

“So, I guess I wasn’t complete deadweight on that mission?” You asked.

“No. I don’t think so, at least.” Utahime answered. “I mean, you did technically kill the curse. Both you and Mei mei. Believe in yourself more, y/n. You’re literally not that bad.”

“Oh, okay.”

Utahime stares at you for a second, completely serious. “I mean it. Anyways, what did you think of your first mission?”

“I mean, it wasn’t that bad, mainly cause you two were there. But I barely did anything though. I think I like this though. I mean, the gun. I kind of like it. Fighting with it feels nice. Like I don’t think anything else I’ve fought with ever felt this natural in my hand.”

“Okay, I mean you can just use that then. I don’t know if we have any more bullets, but I think at least someone can obtain some.”

“I mean, can I get some better guns, too?”

“You can probably ask.”

“Coolio. Okay, I’m going back home, and watching a movie.”

Utahime rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I know.”

You laughs. 

She laughs. 

You walk back to your dorm, a lighter feeling in your chest. One that you haven’t felt in a long time. You wondered if things could stay like today forever.

######

APRIL, 2005

The sound of the alarm clock pierces through your skull. 

You turn around and stare at the numbers. 8 o'clock. 

I can afford to sleep for a few more minutes, can’t I?

You slam the snooze button and roll onto your other side. There was no point in waking up so early. You wouldn’t learn anything in class, you probably wouldn’t be doing that much at all today, period. You’d probably go down to the machine lab and-

There’s a loud, scraping noise for about five seconds, followed by a knock on your door. You groan, pull the pillow over your head, trying to drown it out, but to no avail. The person kept knocking. 

You curse the person on the other side of the door, before slipping on your hoodie from the day before, and slowly creaking open the door. 

“Uh… hi?” you rubbed your eyes, “Do I know yo-”

Two hands grab each of your shoulders and snap you awake. “Oh fuck, it’s just you Iori. Why are you waking me up so early?”

“Cause…it’s the first day of school… and we have to greet the first years.”

“Oh shit, yeah.” You rub your eyes, and yawn. “You go do that, I’m going back to bed.”

“Ugh, we have to go.” Utahime snaps. “Do you think I wanted to go either? I got up. I know you wake up when the sun sets, but do something for once.”

“Who said we had to? Can’t they gather amongst their own? Who said we had to say hi? I geninuely could not care less about those kids.”

Utahime stares at you in disbelief, before grabbing her temples and sighing. “Okay, fine no one asked.”

“Yeah that’s what I thought. I’m going back to be-“

“Not so fast. I heard two of those kids are special grade. If that’s true-“

“It’s too early in the morning for this. Just tell me later.”

“They can’t JUST be terrorizing me Y/N. You gotta take some of the weight too.”

You snickered, “Yeah, no thanks I’m good.”

Utahime loudly exhales from her nose before rolling her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, suit yourself. I’ll find you later and tell you.” She grabs the doorknob aggressively, and slams the door shut behind you. “Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

You groan, rubbing both of your eyes with the palms of your hand. You squat on the ground for a seconds, trying to recover from the light-headedness of standing up so quickly. You take off the hoodie and hop back into bed. 

You have no problem falling asleep for a couple more hours.

-

The sun is straight-up beating into your eyes when you wake up again. 

You turn around.

11:00 am.

“Fuck.” You muttered. You had already slept the first class of the day, not that it mattered too much. The content was probably studiable on your own if anything. What you were more concerned about was the shipment coming today.

You had ordered two firearms; a sniper, and a handgun. Specifically, an automatic pistol, but not that it mattered much. You had no idea how the school even let you get two guns; you were pretty sure they were illegal, but they said they’d place an order.

You just had to specify which ones.

Of course, except that one experience on that mission, and video games, you had virtually no other experience. You had begged Utahime to go to the shooting range with you, but she balatantly refused to. Mei Mei didn’t seem too interested either, and you definitely weren’t going alone, so you just went with your instinct. Or maybe not your instinct, but the guns you were best with in games. 

Maybe some of that skill would translate over into practical knowledge. Maybe it wouldn’t. You’d just have to see.

The staff had told you the shipment would’ve been available at the machinery lab at noon. 

You quickly get ready and run there.

There were two cardboard boxes sitting beside the door when you got there. You pick them up, open the door, and walk inside.

The lab was the same as per usual. It was musty, dry, and stored a bunch of power tools that you wondered if anyone here even ued. Many were still in their boxes collecting dust, probably since the day they were bought.

You drop the two boxes onto the table. You shook each box, trying to determine which one was the automatic pistol.

You grab a knife and cut the box open. It looked easy enough to assemble; there was a magazine of bullets, the body of the gun, and some other components. You’d worry about those later.

You grab the gun, and try to get a feel of it in your hand. It felt very much like one of those toy guns kids played from in their childhood. Except the plastic here was probably higher quality.

You fiddled around with the trigger, pulling it once. There was a click, and then a small vibration and then nothing. 

What did they call that? Dry firing? 

You do it a few more times, getting used to the feel. You wonder what it’d feel like with the actual bullets. Would you pull your shoulder from the recoil? Would the gun explode in your face? You didn’t know. It made you a little scared.

You flip the magazine upside down, and catch one of the bullets that falls out. You felt its weight, and inspected it. It was small, a little on the heavy side, encased with brass. 

Okay, so the plan was I’d put my cursed energy into the bullets. And then… I think I’d be able to damage curses? Probably. I hope my plan works. But… if putting cursed energy into objects changes the fundamental structure of the material…

Yeah. This might not be a bad idea. Worth a shot anyways. Better than getting my ass handed to me in training. 

Speaking of which, for how many weeks have I not gone?

Probably the whole year, to be honest. I’m just glad they haven’t given me shit for it yet. Though, they haven’t given me shit for a lot of things. It’s not like they can kick me out, anyways.

You stare at the case again.

Maybe I can cut these bullets open… I wonder what’s inside…

-

It’s about four hours of fucking around in the lab before you give up. 

You had cut open one bullet, you had busted another, and you infused your cursed energy into the other half. Not a bad outcome for one day. Tomorrow, maybe you’d go test them out late at night, so you wouldn’t get in trouble.

There’s a knock on the door, before the doorknob turns, and you see Utahime standing in the doorway. 

“Are you done yet?”

“I mean, done as I could be.”

She walks in and sits on the chair beside you. “So, about the first years,”

“Why are you THIS excited to tell me about the first years?”

“Cause what do you MEAN there’s 2 of them that are special grades? I’ve never seen that before. Okay, I mean, one of them is some prodigy kid, but the other one… I don’t know.”

“Well, if they’re stronger, that means we get less work, no? Like we can just give all our missions to them. Plus, aren’t you graduating this year?”

“Yeah?”

“You literally have nothing to worry about then. Cause you’re gonna be out of here in a year. What’s your plan for the future?”

“I don’t know? Like probably be a sorcerer?”

“Boringgggg”

“Okay, yeah, yeah, I don’t wanna hear this from you.”

Utahime sighs, “Still though.”

“Honestly, it’s not that big of a deal. Do you wanna go somewhere? You can tell me there.”

“Oh, yeah sure. Do you wanna go to a cafe?”

-

“So, what did they do? Did they make fun of you?”

“What do you think?” Utahime snapped, “The two strong ones did, at least. One of them was just straight-up bullying me and the other one was making passive aggressive remarks.”

“There’s a third one?”

“I mean, I think I told you there were three. Two guys, and a girl. She was… she’s okay. I like her.”

“So the guys were making fun of you?”

“Yes. Yes they were.” Utahime leans back into the chair, and folds her arms. “God, I hate them already.”

You snicker a little. 

“I mean they have to be a big deal then, right? You said one of them was a prodigy child or whatever.”

“Oh, yeah. Him? His name’s Satoru Gojo. Like he’s THE gifted child.”

Utahime takes a long sip of her drink.

“How’s he gifted?”

Utahime chokes and sputters. She hacks a cough, and you hit her on the back before she regains composture.

“He’s like. Y’know how I told you it’s rare to have one innate cursed technique?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, he has two. And those two aren’t even like normal ones. Like I personally, have no clue what they are but apparently he's the reason why curses have been getting stronger in the past decade so…”

“So is he like. The chosen one or something?”

Utahime thinks for a second, “Yeah probably. Not sure if his clan spoiled him, or tortured him though.”

“He’s part of a clan??? Clans still exist?”

“Uh, yeah? They run this whole system.”

“God, that’s so old-fashioned.”

“You don’t say.” Utahime shrugs, and touches the side of her drink, checking its temperature. “So, are you gonna order something, or are you sticking to hot water?”

You widen your eyes, and sit up straighter, “I told you, I’m too broke to order.”

“You spent it all on arcades, didn’t you?” Utahime mutters, unamused. “God, you have a spending problem. What’s so fun about them anyways?”

“Honestly, nothing. They fill a void in my soul though.” 

“Yeah, okay. Whatever you say.”

“So, what about the other two? There were three first-years right?”

“Oh yeah. So, the other special-grade first-year is called Suguru Geto, and I mean like. I’m pretty sure he comes from a non-soccerer family? I don’t have that much info on him, but him and Gojo became friends pretty quickly…”

“And by pretty quickly, you mean they started picking on you right away, right?”

“Okay, shut up. It’s gonna be YOU dealing with them for 3 extra years, not me.”

You laugh, “Sorry, sorry.”

Utahime huffed. “Anyways, he’s… I don’t know. He’s ‘nice’ if you don’t think about him too much. Like he acts nice. Not sure if he is. First day and he was already babbling about some ‘we gotta use our powers for good’. Like you haven’t even BEEN on school grounds for 10 whole hours, WHAT are you talking about?”

“So he’s one of those, huh? Like a righteous ass guy?”

“Yeah, I guess you could call it that.”

“Got it. I’ll be sure to stay away from them.”

“And I guess the third one is chill. Her name is Shoko Ieiri. She’s chill. Cigarettes at fourteen is crazy though. Life hasn’t even gotten that tough yet. I think she said she was some type of healer? Not sure though. She’s the only one I can tolerate out of those three.”

You reach for a sugar packet on the side of the table, and start pouring it into your water. “I see, I see.”

“You know… I can… get a drink for you if it’s this bad… Y/N.”

“No, it’s fine.”

“Clearly not. You’re literally pouring sugar into a cup of plain hot water. Like that's a new level of low.”

“Nah, don’t worry about it. When they give me some money next month, I’ll spend it better.”

“You’ve been saying that for the past 5 months too.”

“Nah, for real this time. I’ll stop going to the arcade and all that. I think I gotta start getting my life back on track.”

“Yeah, you’re literally having a mid-life crisis at 15 years old. How does that even happen?”

You roll your eyes, and stir the water harder. “You know how it happens.”

“Oh shit yeah, sorry.”

“It’s okay, don't worry about it.” 

You touched the side of the mug to check the temperature. 

It was room temperature now. 

-

You didn’t think much about the injuries you might’ve gotten from doing this.

 That, in hindsight, was probably a mistake. 

You were nervous, all throughout the next day. You woke up, spent your whole afternoon in the library, before going to the lab around evening. 

Utahime had warned you earlier today. She insisted that you were probably going to get hurt, with the lack of safety you had for yourself. You had promised her it would’ve been okay. What could she do if you got hurt anyway? 

What’s the worst that could happen if you got hurt?

You doubt you’d die. At least not in a testing range. As long as the barrel of the gun wasn’t aimed at you, the worst you probably could end up with was a pulled arm.

Oh, how wrong you were. 

You quickly reach in the center of the table and grab the pistol. You hadn’t bothered to tamper with the sniper yet, because it was worth more. And you were pretty sure you probably were gonna get in trouble, if you wrecked the more expensive gun first. 

You slide the whole magazine of bullets in the gun before tossing it into a garbage bag, along with a bunch of rusted tin cans.

The test was simple. All you had to do was shoot the bullets through the tin cans. If they went through, it was a success, if anything else happened…

Well…

You’d see yourself back in the lab tomorrow, in the best of cases. First though, you needed to test your aim without the gun.

Cause, if your aim was already garbage without the gun, there was no point in wasting bullets trying anything else. For that, you managed to make some makeshift darts with a bunch of paperclips. It wasn’t a bad creation, if it wasn’t for the amount of metal you had to reshape, while either draining all your cursed energy, or almost burning yourself. 

You walked about twenty minutes off school grounds into the forest surrounding the school. It wasn’t the smartest plan, but you’d just have to try throwing darts at some makeshift target at some tree, to test your aim at different lengths. 

For about the next three hours, you’d toss these darts at trees of random distances, until it became dark. 

For the most part, your aim was fine. It wasn’t anything impressive, per say, but about 75% of the time you were able to hit the targets. That was fine enough.

You sighed, and pulled the darts out of the tree, and tossed them into your bag. You leaned against a tree, slid down, and sat there, admiring how tall each of the trees were.

You were tired. Maybe you’d do this tomorrow.

Wait, how did I get here again?

You almost jump up. You look around you, trying to see where you could’ve possibly come from. All the directions looked the same. Trees spread out as far as you could see.

Fuck, this is bad.

You tried to wrack your memory on which way you came from. You remember walking straight into the forest. You suppose maybe you could retrace your footsteps back. That was one possibility. 

You tried to think about any landmarks you saw before walking this way. 

It might’ve been the best idea to retrace your footsteps, and walk straight back. 

-

It didn’t just take you twenty minutes to walk back to school grounds. It took you a whopping four hours to find your way back.

Had you known this sooner, you definitely would’ve just done the test in the forest, come back, and gone back to your dorm.

Actually, you question if it was even worth taking the test at this point in time. It was what you could only assume was 2-3 am, and you’d have to clean up the mess you made, which would take another hour. 

But you were already in this deep. You were deeper in than you thought. You might as well just do the test, and deal with the consequences later. 

After some looking, you found a ledge, a little shorter than you were, and placed the cans on there. You pulled out your gun. 

Slid the magazine into place. 

You aim at the target. 

Okay here goes nothing…

Everything goes in slow motion. You didn’t even manage to process what happened before it did. 

A click.

Followed by a loud firing sound. 

The gun didn’t actually fire. Not like normal.

Some kind of weird pressure building up in the barrel.

Something cracking. Sounded like glass, but it wasn’t.

Blood on your hand. 

A piercing white pain on the left side of your face. It burned. It stinged. It blinded you. 

What you could only assume were drops of blood falling onto the pavement.  Your blood. Probably. 

You don’t know what kind of sound you made. Crying? Sobbing? A blood-piercing scream? All of the above? You weren’t sure. You didn’t even know what happened before you look at yourself in the reflection of the window, and you see a big piece of shrapnel stuck in your eye. 

And the pistol in your hand is in pieces. Many pieces, and half of them were stuck in your hand. 

Your breathing quickens. 

Fuck, fuck where’s the infirmary? I need… i need to get some pain killers and bandage this up. This… I… no. I just need to get there and…

You threw down whatever was left of your weapon, and grabbed onto the ledge with your good hand for support. Every few steps, you took a break, trying to ignore both the searing pain in your hand and eye, and the trail of blood you were leaving on the ground. 

You genuinely felt like you were going to die. 

Luckily, the infirmary was one of the nearby buildings. You pulled open the door, and the first thing that you saw was a roll of bandages. 

You quickly reached for them, crudely wrapping that left side of your head, and your palm.

Then you reached for the first bottle of pills you could see. You just needed some pain killers. 

Actually, maybe you wouldn’t need them at all, cause you were probably gonna die of blood loss at this rate, anyways. 

But your hand moves faster than your body, and it shoves a few into your mouth. You don’t know how many, and you swallow them dry. You hack a cough from how bad they taste.

Blood’s all over the counter. 

You wanted to lie here. Just lie here and take it, but you couldn’t.

You physically couldn’t. Your body didn’t want to at least. You had never moved on autopilot like this before. 

You slowly begin walking towards the direction of the dorm. One step at a time. 

You weren’t exactly sure how you hadn’t at least passed out from blood loss yet. 

Your breathing was heavy. It took too much effort to breathe.

You just barely make it to the dorm building before you completely collapse on the floor. 

“Hey. Hey. Are you awake?” Two hands shake you aggressively. They’re… cold. 

You’ve never heard that voice before. With all the strength you had left, you managed to open your eye, to see a girl crouching over you. She had short brown hair, brown eyes, and she was wearing baggy clothes. Probably her Pajamas. 

“Are you okay?”

A second voice. That of a guy’s. It’s kind of deep, not really though. You assumed the answer must’ve been obvious to that question, probably based on the sole state of whatever your body was in. Gouged out eye, shrapnel in pieces in your hand, you assumed you couldn’t have looked too great. 

“Should we take them to the hospital?” The guy asks. “It looks bad. Especially the eye. Wait, you can heal it, right?” 

There’s a pause between the two. “I mean, it’s worth a try.”

Who… who are these guys?

You try to look at the other guy. He has long black hair and purple eyes. He was looking down at you with a worried look on his face. 

These are probably the first years… fuck….

You try to open your mouth to speak, but you can’t even find the strength for that.

“Okay whatever the FUCK you do, don’t just stand there and do NOTHING. Both of you.”

Oh my god. The third one is here too?

“Okay, I’ll take them to the infirmary, and you can-”

“Are you fucking stupid? They JUST got back from the infirmary. Where the hell would they have gotten the bandages from?”

“Okay well-”

The two of them begin shouting hurling insults at each other. You try to do your best to spot the third person amongst them. He’s standing behind them. He’s tall, with chopped short-ish white hair, and black circular sunglasses. They look completely black. You wonder why he’s wearing them at night. There’s no sun outside.

He stares at you with curiosity. It feels as if he’s trying to pick apart every part of your being with his eyes. You wondered if he had a morbid fascination with what was happening in front of him. 

Your eyes only meet for a second before you look away. They’re bright blue. Piercing blue. 

It scares you a little. 

You look back to the other two students, and the brown-haired girl turns back to you. The black haired one starts pulling the bandage off your face, revealing the injury underneath. His eyes widen, and he looks away. 

“Fucking hell that’s bad.” he mutters.

The girl winces at the injury too. The boy begins peeling off the bandages on your hand to reveal the shrapnel still stuck in your hand. 

The two of them look like they wanna look away, but they keep their eyes glued to you.

The girl puts her hand over your eye. You’re not exactly sure what she did, but the throbbing pain in both your face and your hand stopped. She props you up, and forcibly opens your left eye. 

It’s blurry for a second, but then you can see everything clearly with both eyes. 

The black-haired boy is the first one to talk. 

“Are you feeling okay?” 

It’s a genuine question, at least from what you could tell. You nod, trying to rub your left eye with your hand. It was only gone for maybe forty minutes, and all forty of them were the worst agony you had ever suffered.

He pulls your arm away from your eye. “You shouldn’t do that, it might get infected.”

An irritated feeling creeps up in your chest, like you were a toddler scolded for picking at their scabs, but you were in no place to complain. You could’ve died ten minutes ago, and someone had managed to heal you. 

You inspected your hand. It looked brand new too. 

“We haven’t seen you around. Are you a student here?”

“What kind of question is that?” The black-haired boy asked, “Why else would they be on school grounds?”

“I thought we met all the upper years on the first day, no? We haven’t seen this one before. I’m pretty sure they all had to be there.”

The sighs, and you hear him huff a ‘whatever’ before joining the white haired boy in standing up. 

“Ignore them,” the girl mutters. “I’m Shoko, by the way. Shoko Ieiri. That’s-”

The black-haired boy cuts her off. “Geto. Suguru Geto. Nice to meet you.” The white haired boy doesn’t say anything for a second before Geto hits him on the back. “Introduce yourself, Satoru,” he snaps.

Satoru.... Satoru Gojo, the prodigy child. The one that Utahime said was ‘the strongest of them all’. So they were the first years. God, what an annoying bunch.

Gojo shrugs. “I’m Gojo. Satoru Gojo, I guess.”

Annnnnd he has an attitude too. Shouldn’t have been surprised.

Shoko stares at the other two in disbelief before turning to you once again. “What’s your name? Are you an upper year?”

“Uh… yeah. I’m in second year.”

“SEE? I TOLD you one of them was skipping the introduction day.”

You feel your cheeks turning red from embarrassment.

“Okay… whatever… that doesn’t matter right now.” Shoko exhaled sharply, “And what was your name?”

“It’s Y/N.”

“Huh. Okay.” Shoko mumbled. “Never heard of you before. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Actually,” Geto interjected, “What happened? You were screaming so loud, I’m pretty sure the whole of Tokyo could hear it.”

“Hey, that’s not nice-”

“I’m just wondering.”

You shrugged. “It’s not that big of a deal.”

“It kind of is, if you’re missing one of your eyes, no?” 

You look up, straight at Gojo. It was the first time he had voluntarily spoken in the entire conversation. 

You felt your blood go cold. 

“Satoru, don’t be like that. It’s only been a day, and you’ve disrespected like. All of our upperclassmen.”

“Why should I respect them?” He sounds bored, “Respect this, respect that-”

“Your excuse for making fun of Utahime was her being weak. What’s your excuse here?”

Gojo doesn’t say anything. Instead he stares at you, intensely, and humiliation creeps up your chest. You genuinely want nothing more than to sink into the floorboards. Dying didn’t sound so bad as it did ten minutes ago. 

Shoko cuts both of them off. “You should go rest, Y/N. You’ve probably had a long day.” 

“Yeah, thanks, Shoko. And um… thanks for healing me.”

“Don’t mention it. Ignore those two, they’re like that.”

Shoko offers to help you stand up, but you shake your head, mustering all your strength, and stand up. You nod to her again in thanks, and Geto (out of courtesy), and awkwardly walk off to your dorm.

“My fucking god,” you mutter under your breath.

You could still feel Gojo’s eyes boring into your back as you left.

-

Gojo, as you would come to find out, was one. Insufferable. Guy. 

After that first encounter, you hadn’t seen the first-years at all. Instead, you spent all day locked up in the lab, trying to figure out what went wrong with your first attempt with the bullets you made.

Turns out, the bullets were too heavy for the gun to be able to shoot. That caused some error in the barrel, it got stuck. Usually, only the gun would’ve been jammed, but because you had infused them with cursed energy, they had managed to explode in the barrel, which caused shrapnel to end up in both your hand and eye. 

You had to beg the school to get you a new sidearm. It wasn’t an easy task, considering they were hard to obtain, and you had just managed to completely obliterate one of them, but after annoying the staff enough, they gave in. 

This time, you had asked for a normal handgun. Nothing fancy. 

And instead of directly infusing your cursed energy into the bullets, you’d probably have to make your own this time around. 

You spent hours, days, probably even weeks trying to make your own bullets from scratch. As far as you could remember, you had never put this much effort into anything at all. Not your studies, not a hobby, absolutely nothing. It got to a point where you began to dig through research papers containing math, physics, and engineering years beyond your comprehension. 

Not that you could understand any of it. You tried, though. Well, you understood them just enough to have a rough idea of what you were supposed to do.

It was just whether you could do it or not. 

You were already in this deep. You couldn’t back out now.

By the time you had managed to make a successful bullet, over a month had passed. A month of rotting away everyday in the tools lab.

It took you three tries to make a bullet that wouldn’t explode upon any kind of contact. 

It took you another four tries to make a bullet that could actually slide through the barrel of a gun. 

Partway through, you realized as long as you could tap the bullet against the desk, and it’d make a dent, then it was good enough to use.

You were almost finished making your second bullet, before you heard a loud knock in the door. You guessed it was probably Utahime. 

“Come in.”

The doorknob creaks,  and opens a crack. “Iori, I told you you didn’t need to-”

It’s Shoko instead. You stare at her disbelief for a second before quickly putting everything you were doing in a drawer under the desk.

“Nice hangout spot,” she grinned. “Is this where you come to ditch all your classes?”

“How did you even know I was here?” 

“Hey, no need to be hostile. Utahime said that I should either come here, or go to the arcade to find you. Seems like I was lucky today.”

“Lucky is one way to put it.” 

She ignores your reply. “None of us have seen you for a while, not even Utahime. Is something wrong?”

You shrug. “Nothing’s wrong. I’ve just been busy, that’s all.”

“I find that rather hard to believe. But, okay. Utahime says you’re always ditching class, you never get missions, so you just hang out down here all the time? There’s not even like… a TV or anything down here.”

“I mean, I’m usually down here doing work.”

“What type of work?”

You don’t answer Shoko’s question. She doesn’t ask further.

“Okay well, I came down here to tell you Satoru actually wants to spar with you.”

Your eye twitches in disbelief. “What do you mean… Gojo wants… to spar with me? Does he know I can BARELY use a sword? Tell him to fight Geto, or something.”

“No, he specifically wants to fight YOU. I’m not sure why. We all told him that he didn’t need to start beating up seniors, but he insisted.”

“Can you and Geto tell him to fuck off?”

“We tried.” Shoko says, in a half-apologetic tone. 

You sighed, and pinched the bridge of your nose. “It’s just like… why would he want to do this exactly? We ALL know he’s going to win.”

“None of us know, except him.”

“Can I chicken out?”

“Not unless you want him to find you later.”

“... so when does he want to do this, exactly?”

“Right now.”

You tilt your head and sigh, before standing up. “Let’s go then, I guess. Lead the way.”

Shoko stands up, and walks out the door, waiting for you to follow. You switch the lights off, and shut the door on your way out. You fish in your pockets for the key to the lab and lock it. “You have the… key to this place?”

“I mean, yeah I kinda stole it. Well, actually not really. One of the teachers gave me the key, I just forgot to give it back. I don’t really think they care though. No one uses this place anyways.”

“Damn. You’re lowkey kinda cool, Y/N.”

“Thanks…”

You stuff the key back into your pocket. You hear a piece of plastic clattering on the floor. “Oh shit sorry-”

You kneel down and pick it up. Shoko didn’t say anything. She simply waited for you to pick up the card. It was an awkward three seconds. 

“Okay, let’s go, I guess.”

You followed Shoko through the school grounds. You’re not sure if you were annoyed, nervous, scared, or something else. Maybe all three. Either way, you knew you were gonna come out of this completely bruised. Probably humiliated too as well, but he was the strongest sorcerer.

There was nothing to be embarrassed about. Actually, it’s only humiliating when you don’t expect to get badly beaten. Everyone knew you were already going to get badly beaten.

Geto was already scolding Gojo by the time you reached the field.

“Satoru-”

“Yeah, I know, I know Suguru. You don’t need to say it again.” 

“Okay but-”

“Oh, don’t go too hard, don’t send them packing to the infirmary again, they just got injured,” Gojo said in a mocking tone, rolling his eyes. “Just relax. I wanna see something.”

“Oh? They’re here.”

You stand awkwardly in the center of the field, unsure about what to do. Shoko had already walked to the other side of the field, and was sitting down.

I wish I could’ve been a healer too. What the fuck did I do to deserve this?

“Uh… so…” You stare at the two, unsure of what to say. You wonder if there was a way to embarrass you further in this situation.

“Can I just surrender already?” You asked, “Like we skip to the good part, you win, I lose, y'know? We all know you’re gonna win anyways.”

“Oh, don’t be like that,” Gojo teased, “It’s fine. I won’t go too hard on you. It’ll be fun. Promise.”

“Yeah.. fun for you.”

Gojo doesn’t respond. He simply just spins around the wooden katana in his hand. He tosses you one, and you miss the catch just by a little. 

You can feel your face turning red. You despised this so much already. You felt clumsy. You felt a little stupid, if you were being honest, standing in the middle of the field, preparing for a beatdown. 

You look around, trying to see where Geto and Shoko were, but they were nowhere to be found. You guess Gojo probably told them to leave, so it’d just be the two of you. You suppose you appreciated that he was gonna embarrass you in private, rather than in front of half the student body.

Without warning, he hits you on the shoulder. You wince, grabbing it in pain, before turning your body, trying to protect that side. 

He hits you again, from the right. 

Fuck, he’s fast. I don’t even think I have time to react…

You tried to think about where he could hit you next, maybe from the front, possibly the back. Fuck you had no clue. 

You decide to take a guess, and back away a step or two, before you get hit on the back. Hard. You don’t have time to recover from the shock. Quickly, you turn around, he swings at you again, but this time you’re ready.

Or, at least you think you were.

You try to deflect his hit this time, but before you were even able to hit him, you felt a resistance between the piece of wood and him. You press harder. 

Still nothing.

You look at him, he’s grinning. A big, shitfaced grin.

Okay, yeah fuck this actually. You couldn’t even touch him. That meant until he gave up, or got bored, you were gonna have continuously doge his attacks. 

So that’s what you did. At least he’d managed to make his attacks predictable, so you’d know where he’d be coming from next. All you had to do was keep the distance between you and him, so that you wouldn’t end up with three broken bones, and he’d probably just get bored enough, and stop at some point. 

In fact, he started making more unpredictable hits, closing the distance between you and him. He landed four more on you, before you had to think of a different strategy. You decided to try using whatever protection he had to your advantage, maybe you could push yourself away. A little.

Yeah. You’d try that.

The next time he tries to hit you, you try to deflect it again, and it gives a little rebound. It works. You do it again. And again.

This goes on for about five minutes, before you felt so tired that you could barely stand. It looked like he barely broke a sweat. It was probably obvious that there was an infinite difference, physically, at least, between the two of you. 

You’re bent over, panting, sweating. You couldn’t move anymore. Gojo stood still. He didn’t bother trying to attack you anymore. 

“Are… are you done?” you said between breaths. You grabbed your chest. Fuck, it hurt.

“Nope,” you grit your teeth. He sounded so annoying. It almost reminded you of one of those spoiled toddlers. 

Using whatever strength you had left, you decided to charge towards him. It was probably either going to end with him knocking you out, or maybe if you could, you could land a hit on him.

You swung blindly at him, expecting the same resistance as before. There isn’t. The katana hits him on his side, hard. 

You stare, in disbelief. 

He stares back at you.

The two of you stare at each other for a couple of moments and you drop the katana. It clatters on the ground.

“Did… did you- was I-”

“No-”

The two of you keep gawking at each other. 

“... you weren’t supposed to be able to touch me.”

“I wasn’t?”

He hums softly, “No.” 

A pause. Too long. 

“But you did.”

He takes a step closer to you. “How’d… how did you do it?” There’s a child-like curiosity in his voice. It felt similar to how he looked at you earlier.

“I don’t…” you look to the side “…I don’t know either.”

He stares at you for a second. You immediately look away. 

“Y’know… I don’t know if you know this but…”

He takes a step too close to you. 

“You’re probably stronger than you think you are…”

You really want to push him away, but your body stays frozen in place. He continues, “I guess no one’s told you this before, but you actually have two cursed techniques. Not just one.”

I… what?

“So you’re kind of special. You’re sort of…” he paused. He had a tone in his voice you had never heard someone have before.  

“Just like me.”

-

“So you have two cursed techniques?” Utahime asks, incredulously. “Well, I guess that explains why you’re a grade one sorcerer instead of grade three.”

“If that was the case, why wouldn’t they put me at special grade, though?”

“You wanna be ranked even higher?”

“Hell no. I don’t want that ‘freak of nature label’. In fact, they should’ve ranked me lower so I’m not some 2nd choice after Gojo and Geto.”

“Even with two cursed techniques, I’m pretty sure you still can’t level entire cities. At least I wouldn’t think so.” She sips her tea, and stares at you, “Speaking of which, do you even know what it is?”

“Uh… no? I didn’t bother asking Gojo.”

“And why didn’t you bother asking him?”

“I was literally getting my ass handed to me, why the fuck would I ask him?”

“Okay, fair enough.”

Utahime takes a sip of her tea. You watch as she gently sets down the cup.

“So, where have you been for the past two weeks? I swear I haven’t seen you at all.”

“I mean, you always know where to find me. There’s like literally only three locations I ever go to.”

“Yeah. The library, the lab, and the arcade. I know that.”

“Okay so you know where to find me, you’re always welcome to join me, so why are you asking?”

“Uh cause… like literally everyone knows you’ve been locking yourself up in that lab for like the past two weeks. I figured you were doing something important. I didn’t wanna bother you.”

“Fair enough.” You reach for a can of coffee, which was sitting under your desk. You push the tab up, enjoying the satisfying sound that came as the can opened. 

The two of you sit in silence for a few moments before Utahime speaks up again. “So, are you gonna try to figure out what the second cursed technique is?”

“I mean my guess is that it has something to do with cancelling the cost of the first one. Like you remember all the times I was fighting or whatever, or testing stuff out, and I just straight up passed out?”

“Yeah?”

“I mean, I was surprised I even lasted that long while fighting Gojo. I thought I was gonna be done in a few minutes.”

“Wait, wait, wait. You FOUGHT him?”

“Shit, did I forget to tell you?”

“You haven’t told me ANYTHING about what you’ve been doing for the past two weeks.”

“Okay well… long story short. My gun exploded, so I lost my eye. I ran into the first years, Shoko healed me. And then I had to fix my gun, so I begged the staff, and I’ve just been in there rotting away, and trying to get this right for the fuck of me so I don’t gouge my eye out again. Oh yeah, and today I fought Gojo.”

“Okay yeah… what the fuck. That is a lot.”

“I know right?”

“You got your eye shot out?”

“That’s the only part you cared about?”

“I mean WHAT did I tell you before you went testing that day?”

“Uh…”

“Yeah okay. I knew you were gonna get hurt.”

“Okay i thought you meant like ‘oh i might pull my arm’ like yeah no shit I might’ve done that. I’m a weak ass fuck, what did you want me to say? It’s not like I wasn’t gonna go and do it anyways. Like I’m either dying in school here or on the field.”

“You’ve been sent on a lump sum total of ONE mission, Y/N.”

“Well, they’re probably gonna send me on more, right?”

“Probably yeah, but with those two first years in the picture, you’re probably not gonna be in high demand.”

“How many have you gone on?”

“Like. Ten. Twenty. I don’t know. They blur together. Maybe less than ten actually. I lost count.”

“That’s a big range.”

“Well, I can’t really like exorse curses all that well, if you know what I mean. Like yeah, before they sent me on a lot, but that was just cause it was just me and Mei Mei.”

“So, how do you go about doing it?”

“I mean you can just use cursed energy normally, no? I typically got the weaker end of all the missions. Mei Mei got the stronger end. Half the time though, we’d be going on those missions together.”

“So they had lower expectations of you cause you were weaker?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“Anyways, we should probably figure out what your other cursed technique is. I’m willing to guess that it probably has something to do with contact, maybe? I don’t know though. We can test something out.”

Utahime slides you a metal pipe. 

“What the fuck is this?” You look at her, bewildered. “You just have a metal pipe sitting around in your room?”

She shrugs. “Someone gave it to me as a gift.”

“Yeah, okay. I’ll believe that.”

She rolls her eyes, “It’s a long story. It doesn’t matter. Anyway, just start draining your cursed energy into the pipe until you feel weird, I guess.”

You do as she says. It’s about a few minutes before you start to feel yourself go light-headed.

“Okay, now grab onto my hand.”

You do as she says. A couple more minutes pass before you feel normal again. You stare at Utahime again, and her presence feels weaker. 

“Interesting.” She mutters. “Looks like you can actually… drain cursed energy. Don’t do that to me again though, please.”

“YOU asked for it.”

“Okay I didn’t think it’d actually do anything. You probably drained half of mine, from what it seems. But… that does explain why you got so tired easily, at least during training. Cause I noticed everytime you actually exert yourself using your cursed technique, a lot of your cursed energy just disappears into the object.”

“The object becomes stronger, but you don’t. I was concerned, cause you also have literally NO cursed energy output. Like it’s that of a pretty weak sorcerer. But they also graded you so high.”

“But yeah, if you can also drain cursed energy, that explains a lot. I think it probably starts to kick in automatically when there’s just a difference between you and whoever you’re in contact with. That’s probably why you were standing so long against Gojo.”

“You think?”

“Probably, yeah. That’s my theory anyway. Maybe don’t tell anyone though, because I’m like 99% sure people are gonna start using you to their advantage.”

-

You awkwardly shut the door of the classroom, before sitting down. It was the empty classroom you usually went to when you didn’t feel like going anywhere else. 

There should’ve been no one there. But today, there was. The last person you wanted to see, too. He was sitting alone, at one of the chairs, and looking outside the window. Geto and Shoko were nowhere to be seen. You wonder where they were.

Awkward.

You quietly pick up a chair, and move it the furthest away you could, hoping that Gojo wouldn’t notice. Maybe you should’ve just gone somewhere else today. You knew you should’ve just chosen the arcade today. 

Luckily he didn’t seem to pay you any mind, or maybe he didn’t notice you. 

It was peaceful for about five whole seconds. And then your bag tipped over and fell on the ground. You were grateful you hadn’t put anything important in there. 

Shit.

You freeze, and then stop like a deer caught in headlights. You tense up for a second, muttering sorry, before picking up your bag and getting ready to leave. 

“Hey, don’t go.”

You stare at him for a second before responding, “You’re using this class right? Actually, aren’t you supposed to be in class? What are you doing here?”

“Same could be said for you.”

“Okay, well- I don’t need to go to class.”

“Who said I needed to either? Also, what do you want? I have something I need to do here. So if you could just leave, or I could lea-”

“No.”

You shook your head in disbelief, and stared at him. “What the fuck do you mean ‘no’? That wasn’t a-” you stop yourself, and grab the pocket of your pants tighter.

Gojo shrugs. “I knew you’d be here, so I came here and waited for you.”

“... that’s a little weird, Gojo.”

You start counting the seconds of silence in your head. Three seconds pass before Gojo speaks up again.

“Can you take me somewhere?”

“What? Am… I your babysitter now or what’s going on?”

He stares at you, expectantly, waiting for you to agree. You turn your head, and bit your inner cheek in annoyance. 

“Where are Geto and Shoko?”

“They’re in class.”

“Can’t you just go with them, later?”

He doesn’t answer your question. You look to the door, and sigh, impatiently. “Okay, where do you want to go?”

“Take me to your favourite spot.”

“Ugh, okay then. Follow me.” You walk towards the door, open it, and wait for him to follow you outside. 

“Are you coming or…”

Gojo steps out the door, and you slide it shut. 

-

You decide on taking him to the arcade. It was the safest choice really. Let him have his fun, play some games, and then you could both go back to school, and go on your merry way. 

As always, the arcade is somewhat packed. There’s people everywhere, playing things from claw machines, to pac man, to the console games. Pretty typical for a Friday. You regret bringing Gojo here though, you felt like he might ruin it for you. You can see Gojo eying the surroundings, probably deciding what he wants to do here.

“Go on, I’ll be here waiting.” You muttered. “You have to pay for your own games though, I’m broke.”

“What is this place?” 

You have a feeling he’s not exactly asking out of interest, but you answer anyway. “It’s an arcade. People usually come here to play games, and have fun… typically.”

“Games? What games?”

“Like… fucking I don’t know? Machine games? Video games? I don’t know what they’re called but they’re that. Basically you just pay some money to activate the machine, and then you get to use it for a while.”

“How’s that fun?”

“Maybe it’s not fun to you.”

You try your best to follow Gojo’s gaze, seeing what he might’ve wanted to play. “Or if you want, we can go back to school. That’s an option too-”

“So, what games are you good at here?”

“Uh… not really any, to be honest. Why?”

“You spend a lot of time here, you have to enjoy something about it, right?”

“I mean I just come here because I don’t wanna stay at school.”

“Seriously?”

“What do you want me to say? Like, none of these things really require skill.”

It’s Gojo’s turn to roll his eyes. “Yeah sure. Can you play the shooting games?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“I wanna play those.”

“Mkay. Do you have any money?”

Gojo fished some coins out of his pocket. “Is this enough?”

“Holy shit you’re loaded.”

“You can play against me right?”

“Uh… no.”

“Please?”

You close one of your eyes, trying to ignore him. 

“C’mon,” it almost sounds like he’s begging, “It’ll be fun.”

“Are you fourteen, or are you four?”

It’s not really like you can say no. Gojo knew that, of course, so there was really no point in him fake-pouting, and begging, but he was probably being childish for the sake of it and to embarrass you too.

You hated to admit it, but it was working.

-

Gojo, as you would’ve come to find out, was surprisingly good at any game he played in the arcade. You had managed to beat Gojo the first few times while he was playing the shooter games, but after that, he’d manage to destroy you in half the rounds. In the other half, you had managed to just win barely, by the skin of your teeth.

Which was a shame, since you considered yourself not half-bad at the shooter games.

You slammed your hand on the machine, as you watched the game cut short the screen turned red for the gazillionth time. 

“Hah, I win.” Gojo snickers. 

“You BARELY won,” you snapped, “Had I not taught you all those tricks, you’d be nowhere close to beating me.”

“And? I still won, didn’t I?” He teased.

“You WON because I taught you how to win.” 

You knew that wasn't true. It was scary how fast Gojo had managed to learn how to play the game. You had only managed to teach him the basic mechanics of the game, but within a few rounds, he had managed to reach your level of skill, in terms of the game. 

Which shocked you a little bit, cause since this arcade game had been released, you had been playing it everyday, pretty much. Especially last year. You were pretty much addicted to it, and it was why you were coming into the arcade everyday. The game was one of its first kind, to have a ranking system, and an account to save your data.

It wasn’t fair. Was he just naturally gifted at everything he did?

Suddenly, Gojo’s phone rings. It’s Geto. 

Gojo doesn’t bother saying hi, instead letting Geto talk for a few seconds before he responds. 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming back soon.” 

A few more seconds of Geto talking, before Gojo speaks up again.

“I mean… Okay yeah fine. So where should I meet you?”

“Just wait on the school grounds, why are you coming to get me? It’s not THAT important?”

“Okay yeah, so I skip one time. We skipped PLENTY of times.”

“Well-”

“Okay yeah whatever see you soon.”

Gojo clicks the phone shut. “We gotta get back to school. C’mon.”

“We? Who’s we, Gojo? I can stay here. Geto wasn’t looking for me, he was looking for you.”

“Nah, you’re coming with me.” 

“No, Gojo, ugh-” 

He grabs you by the wrist and drags you along. “Hey let me go-”

Gojo ignores you, and keeps walking. Embarrassment washes over your face, as people in the arcade eye the two of you. To them, it must’ve looked weird. Funny. They probably made the conclusion that you were some kind of weird couple, maybe they’d think you were the childish one. 

Well, whatever.

You probably wouldn’t be coming back here soon.

-

Geto profusely apologizes to you after you come back. 

“Sorry about him,” he sighs, “I told him to come with me and Shoko today, but he just ran off. I didn’t know he was looking for you.”

“It’s… fine. Why’d you call him?”

“We were- Oh, it’s Yaga.”

Yaga approaches the three of you. Geto greets him by bowing, you awkwardly nod your head, and Gojo continues leaning.“Are the two of you done playing hooky?”

Gojo rolls his eyes, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I was going to come to class today,” you replied, “Actually, I was going to come to class today and everything, but GOJO-”

“That’s a good one,” Gojo drawled, sarcastically, “You were not going to class. I saw you-”

Yaga glares at you and Gojo, and the two of you shut up, “Both of you should consider yourselves lucky to be gifted, or else I wouldn’t be so nice. Anyways, I have a mission for all of you. Specifically, you, Y/N, and the two of you, Gojo and Geto.”

“Can’t Y/N come with us?” Gojo asked, “Why don’t you assign a mission for the three of us together?”

“Excuse me??”

“Why would I send the three of you on a mission, together?”

“Cause it’ll be fun.”

Yaga shook his head, “No.”

“Anyways, Gojo and Geto, you can follow me, Y/N, here are your mission details.” He hands you a single sheet of paper. 

You skim through the piece of paper.

Okay… 3rd grade curse… it’s… okay… the mission is in the middle of an abandoned apartment building… okay so it’s been killing factory workers… so they just want me to waltz in there and kill it… probably.

It looks pretty much in a pretty remote place. Probably no one will see me. I guess I should probably get going now? How am I even going to get there?

You fold the paper into thirds, and stuff it into the front pocket of your bag.

“Hey.”

You look up. It’s Geto.

“Hi.” You simply respond. You peer behind him. Gojo’s nowhere to be seen. 

“What’s the mission for you?”

“Nothing too complicated, I guess.”

“Yaga said we’re sharing a car. You’re gonna get dropped off at the mission site after us, and they’re gonna do a round trip and come back.”

You nodded. “Okay, great. So, are we supposed to leave now?”

Geto nodded. “I think so, yeah. Driver should be coming soon.”

There’s an awkward silence. Neither of you know what to say. You start to pull out your phone, probably mindlessly check your notifications before the car arrived. Geto doesn’t seem to pay it any mind, he turns back to the entrance waiting for Gojo to arrive. It takes a few minutes, but you hear footsteps approaching.

“Satoru,” Geto groaned, “What took you so long?” 

“Yaga wanted to give me another one of his lectures,” Gojo sighed, “So, are we going?”

“Yeah, we’re just waiting on the car.”

“Oh, is Y/N coming with us?” 

The excitement in his voice is almost tangible. 

“No,” Geto replied, “We’re just sharing the car.”

“I mean we can go on their mission though.”

“I mean yeah, but why would you want to do that?”

“WHY? Cause we can-”

You feel someone hit your shoulder. “Ow what the- Oh, it’s just you, Shoko. Are you coming along too?”

She shrugs. “I could, maybe if I feel like it. Oh yeah also,” Shoko digs into her pocket and tosses you your gun, “Take this. You’ll probably need it.”

“OH. Oh shit, thanks. I almost forgot about that.”

She laughs, “You’re welcome.”

“Why do you need a gun?” Geto asks, “I thought you couldn’t use them to attack curses.”

“I mean they probably can,” Gojo replied. He stares at you for a second, and you immediately go back to your phone. 

“Huh. Interesting.”

A black car stops beside the sidewalk, where the four of you are waiting. “Yeah, I think I’m gonna sit this one out guys,” Shoko puts her hands into her pockets. “Plus, it looks like it’s gonna rain soon. Good luck to you guys though.”

The three of you nod in thanks. “Oh, and don’t let those two idiots get to you, Y/N,” Shoko adds. 

“I won’t, don’t worry.” 

She waves goodbye. The three of you reach for the door handles; Gojo and Geto reach for the back ones, while you sit in the front. You slam the door shut, and stuff the firearm in your bag.

You watch as the school gets smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror.

-

The sky is dark by the time you’re dropped off to the mission site. You quickly thanked the car driver and slammed the door shut. He drives off. 

You sighed. At least the outdoors were nice. The air was still a little damp, after the rain, and you could see the full moon in the sky. It had been a long time since you went outside at night. You wish you could just stand there for a little longer.

You look at the factory. It’s about two floors high, and all the lights are off. The place had probably closed off for the day. Maybe it was abandoned, but it didn’t look old enough for that to happen.

You looked around, trying to find an entrance. On the side of the building, there was a heavy-duty door with a keypad lock. You try to open the door. It doesn’t budge.

Fuck. How am I supposed to get inside then?

You look around the grounds, seeing if there’s anything you could use to break the lock. You end up finding a bent piece of metal, that you could probably use to pry the lock off.

Perfect. 

You drag the rod to where the door was and used the best of your strength to pull the lock off. It took a few tries, but the knob ended up ripping apart from the door, and popping straight off. With the hole there, you pushed the rod through the door, and using all strength you could muster, pried it open. 

You threw the metal rod down, rubbing your right hand. 

Ow, that hurt.

You walk into the grounds of the factory. All the lights are off. It’s dark. You take a step forward. You feel your boot touching something slimy.

Ew what the fuck is that?

You take a step back, reaching for the walls, looking for the light switch. It takes you a second, but you pull the handle down, and you hear the machinery whirring. 

You look beneath your boot. There was a green goo.

You look up again. You tense up. It takes everything within you to not run away.

The walls, every single one of them, were completely covered in it. It was like cobwebs; they spanned for the entire factory; on every machine, on every, wall, on the floors, and on the ceiling. 

You suppose every worker here probably died. It looked like the curse either covered the entirety of this factory (or maybe you were on the inside of it, you couldn’t be sure), or all of this was residue left by the curse itself.

You’d just go to the second floor to check.

The second floor was an office floor. It was more or less similar to the first floor, but the residue was thicker. It grossed you out to walk in it. You felt like you were walking into a spider’s overbuilt nest.

And that you could be aten at any time. And the horrid sound it made every time you walked, made you disgusted too. 

You thought for a second. The best way to probably do this was to burn the whole factory down, but you know that wouldn’t really do anything.

Why couldn’t I actually have something cool as my power? Like maybe I could manipulate fire or something. This is so boring. This sucks. I can’t even do anything here. Maybe I should’ve built explosives instead.

Wait… explosives…

Maybe there’s a match? That might work.

You trudged to the nearest desk, and start digging through their stuff. Papers, pens, files, there was nothing in particular. 

You go to the next desk. You look through the first drawer. Nothing. You look through the second drawer. 

At the very back of the second drawer, you find a small lighter. The ones typically used to light cigarettes. 

Now, all you needed were some flammable materials. There was plenty of paper in the office. Maybe you could take all the paper out of the printer and burn it.

But, that probably wasn’t going to cause enough damage to whatever this curse was. You probably needed something stronger. If you had a bunch of chapstick, that could work. Maybe gasoline, but that wouldn’t be in an office.

You look down at your feet. The slime had gotten deeper. It went from ankle depth, to halfway up your knee. If you didn’t get out of here soon, you were probably going to be engulfed, or completely trapped in it. Pocketing the lighter, you tried to walk towards the printer on the other side of the room.

Halfway through, the residue had already managed to reach your knee. You try to ignore it, and you keep walking. You quickly try to pull the printer tray out but it was completely submerged. 

You pause for a second, disgusted, before reaching down in the goo and getting the paper, but you felt something stopping you.

Gripping your wrist.

With your other hand, you reach for the gun in your pocket, hoping that you could maybe free it.

You hear something.

You look around before turning back and you see a bright green face, with a couple… no a bunch of eyes, and a bunch of… 

Were those skulls? Actually, were those bodies? Half-acid worn bodies? 

You fire your pistol straight at its head, and it goes through, breaking the glass.

Yeah, okay. First mission, and they give me a curse that isn’t even solid. I love this so much. 

You take your gun and shoot the printer, causing it to break apart. Black ink seeps into the curse. 

Hang on… is printer ink flammable? 

It’s worth a shot. You break down the ink storage further until it explodes, and you light the match, and throw it in the air. The flame catches the printer ink, and the entire office bursts into flames. 

You kick down the window. Without thinking you jump off. 

It takes you a second before you realize that was a bad idea. You definitely weren’t going to stick the landing, and the curse hadn’t been fully exorcized yet. You had just set the building on fire. 

Not only that, you realized you were gonna land head-first, on the concrete. You racked your brain of what you could do, probably at least to avoid a concussion and finish the job. Time seemed to slow. The ground didn’t seem to be getting any closer

Actually it was. What were you thinking? You simply closed your eyes and braced for impact until-

A pair of hands caught you. It takes a second for you to open them, and then another second for you to process that it Gojo Satoru who’d caught you. 

He stares at you smirking. Your face turns red. You feel like you’re about to die of embarrassment.

“I mean,” Geto interjected, “That looked pretty cool at least.”

“Yeah,” Gojo snickered, “Might’ve been cooler if half your boots weren’t melted off though.”

You looked at your feet. He was right. Half the laces looked cleanly cut off, and the soles were wearing thin.

“Put me down,” you hissed.

Gojo doesn't put you down. Instead, he stares at you condescendingly before turning to Geto.

“So, how should we do this?” Gojo asks. “Should I blast down the place or should you do it?”

“I did the work on the other one,” Geto replies, “I think I'll sit out on this one.”

“Suit yourself,” Gojo shrugs.

Gojo changes his grip on you so that he’s grabbing the back of your uniform before making some weird hand symbol.

“Wait what are you-”

You see a flash of black and red, actually you don’t know what you see at all, but you blinked and the entire building was completely levelled down. 

“That should probably take care of it,” Gojo chirps. “I mean, it surely won’t survive that, right?”

“Did they still want the factory intact or…”

“That’s not our concern,” Gojo replies, unamused. 

“Oh yeah, the driver sent us to the wrong locations,” Geto added, looking at you. “You were supposed to have the other mission. This one was for us.”

“That explains a lot…”

“Yeah the other one wasn’t far off, so we got here relatively quickly, to see you falling off a building and all that,” Gojo added. “We arrived just in time,” he said holding you closer to him. “It could’ve been serious, y’know?” His hold on you is uncomfortably tight. 

Geto stares at you and Gojo for a second before giving him a look. He hesitates for a second, and lets go of you, letting you fall to the ground. You stand up and dust yourself off.

“That was NOT necessary, Satoru.”

“Can we… can we just get back home? I’m tired.”

“Yeah, we should probably call the driver.”

Geto pulls out his phone and dials the chauffeur. A few moments later, the same car screeches to a halt. 

“Quick, get in.” The driver snaps, “You guys almost caused a scene. Also, the mission specifically SAID that you weren’t supposed to destroy the facility.”

“Oh, so Geto was supposed to exorse the curse.”

“You guys are probably gonna be in trouble if anyone finds out.”

“Blame it on Y/N,” Gojo replied, “They started a fire, I was just finishing the job.”

“Excuse me?? This wasn’t even my mission.” You snapped, “That fucking goo was knee deep, I don’t know what you wanted me to do.”

“Yeah well,” Gojo shrugged, “You should’ve been able to exorse it either way. You’re strong enough for that.”

“YOU created something, I don’t know what, from your fingers that literally levelled the whole building. You expect ME to do the same? C’mon now.”

“Aw, were you scared?”

You grit your teeth, not giving him a response. You can see Geto through the rearview mirror trying not to laugh. 

You decide to shut your mouth, and stare outside the window instead.

-

Gojo had to be obsessed with you. There was no other way.

No scratch that. He was obsessed with you.

It didn’t matter where you went, he was always there waiting. Whether it was your dorm, the lounge, the lab, the library, or anywhere else you could’ve frequented, he was always there. To say it annoyed you would’ve been an understatement. He was everywhere you went. And if he wasn’t busy trying to bother you, you’d be dragged along with him, Geto, and Shoko to whatever they were doing. 

You didn’t like it. If the other two noticed how Gojo was dragging you along, how his grip was always a little tight on you, or how you were always forced to hang out with them, they certainly didn’t say anything. Actually you were pretty sure they noticed. They just let Gojo have his way. 

You’re hiding in the storage closet, when you get a notification from Utahime. You felt pretty embarrassed about having to crouch in the dark closet, but you’d take some alone time over no alone time. 

You open the text. 

Are you okay??? I haven’t seen you in ages. Is Gojo holding you hostage?

You begin typing a response. 

No. Send help TmT

You hit the send button. 

No response for a few moments. You sighed, and stuff your phone back into your pocket. 

There’s footsteps outside the closet. You could’ve probably been able to tell from a mile away they were Gojo’s. Your blood runs cold. You try to stay as still and as quiet as you could be. Maybe it was nothing. He was probably gonna walk away soon. It was probably fine.

The doorknob turns and you genuinely wish you could just vanish into thin air. Turn invisible. 

He looks around for a second, and for a second, it looks like he’s going to close the door again. You were going to breathe a sigh of relief, but he stops midway, spotting you.

“Oh. There you are. I was wondering where you went.”

Your heart drops. One of the last places you had to yourself was gone. You stare up at him, your right eye twitching. “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask the same for you. Why are you inside the storage closet?”

“I got bored of the library,” you respond sarcastically. 

“Close enough, I guess.” Gojo looks around the closet, before looking back at you. He grins, “You always pick the worst places when you’re sulking.”

Sulking.. He called this sulking??? You had actively been trying to avoid him for three days now. Everywhere you went, he had managed to drag you away from to do something he wanted to do. 

You genuinely felt like you were going insane. You wonder when he’d pick up the hint and leave you alone, but you had a good guess he already knew. Maybe he didn’t but either way, the answer was going to be never.

So, there goes your last hiding spot. 

“Or are you hiding from me?”

Your eyes widen for a second, and then you stand up. “Oh uh, why would I do that now?”

“Don’t play dumb with me. You were hiding from me, weren’t you?”

He takes a step forward. You take two back. 

“N-no, I promise I wasn’t.”

“Then why do you look like you wanna run?”

“What?” You look to each side of him, “I’m not doing that-”

He smiles, “You sure?”

You nod. 

“C’mon I’m not that scary.”

He’s uncomfortably close to you. You can’t back away any further in the cupboard. You try to focus on the wall behind him, hoping he’ll back off. 

It takes a second for him to do so, when he does, your heartbeat and breathing return back to normal again. 

“Actually, I have somewhere I want to show you.”

-

“You took me to a fucking playground? Like… an actual playground for kids?”

“What’s wrong with that?” He asks, “I’ve never been to one of these before.”

“So you wanted me to go with you cause…”

“What? Are you mad?” He pouts, “You’ve been hiding all week, I thought this would be a good idea.”

“Okay… but this is LITERALLY a playground, Gojo. You could’ve literally picked any other way to waste my afternoon.”

 “Yeah,” Gojo shrugs, “I knew you’d come with me anyways.”

“Come with you?? I was literally dragged her-”

“You wanted to come didn’t you? You could’ve pushed me off at any time.”

“You’re literally ten times stronger than me-”

“And? You literally could if you wanted to.”

“That’s… oh my god nevermind. What do you wanna do? Go on the swings? seesaw? the slide?”

“I dunno,” He pauses for a second, “Why don’t you choose?”

“Can I push you off the slide?”

“You’re really annoyed today,” he hums, “It’s kind of… cute to be honest.”

You feel uncomfortable standing there. There was absolutely nothing you didn’t want to be called more than cute than when you were beyond pissed, by what would probably have been considered your bully, on a Friday afternoon, when you could’ve been doing absolutely anything else. You wonder if he knew you felt like you were genuinely going slowly insane from this. 

He was still looking at you, a little bit like he wanted to swallow you whole. Yeah, he probably had no clue. 

“... let’s just go on the swings” you sigh. 

Gojo walked towards the swings. 

You flip your phone and check for any new notifications before following suit.

Utahime responded. 

Meet me at my dorm tonight. We should talk. 

You shut your phone and follow him.

-

If you were being honest, that wasn’t the worst time you had with Gojo. It was somewhat a little fun at least. You remember going on the swings all the time as a kid, but that kind of joy slowly died out as you got older. 

You knock on Utahime’s door. She quickly opens it and motions for you to come inside. 

“I have not seen you… in weeks. Again.” she mutters.

“Me neither,” you sigh. “I can’t keep doing this anymore.”

“What? Gojo?”

“What else would you think I was talking about?”

“Everyone knows your situation with Gojo,” she sighs, “It’s just that none of us can do anything about it.”

“Damn. Even Shoko and Geto?”

“Do you think Shoko wouldn’t have stepped in already if she could help you?”

“I mean, I just thought you guys wouldn’t be able to notice. Plus, she seems pretty chill. Like a neutral party, almost. Friendly with all of us. I respect her. You two have gotten pretty close right?” 

“Yeah, I mean, you, Gojo, and Geto have been hanging out a lot. I mean she’s been there too, but more so the three of you. Speaking of which, Gojo’s been dragging you out a lot recently.”

“Wow, I haven’t noticed,” you muttered sarcastically, “Was it really that obvious?”

Utahime sighs, and rubs her temples. “It could’ve HAVE been more obvious. Even me, I'm starting to think he has some type of thing for you. He’s been dragging you out every single day now.”

“Can you at least help me? If none of the others are?”

“Girl, I’m not trying to become one of his victims too. Unfortunately, it seems like he’s probably a spoiled ass boy.”

“Gee, really?”

“Listen, don’t take it personally, okay? Like me and the others feel bad for you but there’s nothing we can really do. Especially since I really don’t want to know what happens when you get on his actual bad side.”

“Am I really that important to him?”

“What do you think?”

You pause and think for a second. Were you? You knew he always wanted you to be around him, but you had never really thought about that before. Did you matter to him? Probably to some extent.

“... I guess yeah. Probably.”

Utahime sighs, “You probably matter at least as much Geto does to him, Y/N. Maybe a little less… actually but similar to that. And in case you don’t know, Geto means a LOT to him.”

That creeping feeling of disgust crawls up your body. You shudder.

“Why though? Like-”

“Isn’t it obvious?” 

“No, not really.”

“That’s something I’ll let you find out for yourself then.” Utahime sighs. “But… just know you probably shouldn’t fight with the universe’s favourite boy.”

“... even if you’re somewhat chosen yourself.”

MAY 2006

It didn’t really feel the same after Utahime graduated. School felt rather empty, now that she was gone. For the first week, it was pretty hard to get used to the fact she was gone. You’d sometimes expect her to come bursting out of the room where her dorm used to be. Every time something had happened, you remember always making a mental note to tell her, but now you had to remind yourself not to do that. There was no one to say it to anymore.

Hell, there was no one to talk to anymore. At least, not like how you used to, with Utahime. Sure, you and Shoko often made small talk, but neither of you actually wanted to open up. Half of the time you spent was with her smoking, and you just chugging some type of soda or energy drink. You’d always greet each other, but it never really went deeper than that. She was nice, but not really someone you’d have a long talk to. 

Gojo and Geto were out of the question. As far as you knew, Gojo was only interested in you as some type of his personal stress ball, and Geto. Well, he seemed cool enough. He was nice, he did have some charm to him, if you did say so yourself. Unfortunately, Gojo was always stuck to his side like glue, and you weren’t willing to spend extra time with Gojo, JUST to talk to Geto. 

The first years, Nanami and Haibara, seemed to get along with the trio pretty well. By the time you had gotten around to seeing them, you realized the five of them were already some type of friend group. You watched from a distance as they were all smiling and laughing.

And you were all alone. 

On the bright side, Gojo was leaving you alone now. That was about as far as the bright sides went. You had plenty of time alone now, which you spent typically alone in classrooms, the library, or even your own dorm. You barely went to the arcade now, since you had managed to afford a gaming console. It took you a few months to save up enough money to afford one and some games to play, but the hard work did pay off. 

You had so many more options now, instead of being stuck to the same boring games they offered at the arcade. You’d also replaced your old busted CD player for the cheapest MP3 player you could find. 

You’d never leave your dorm if you could.

In fact, you were pretty sure you barely left it now, anyways. The only times you left it were when you went on missions. And the occasional times when you’d need to go to the lab or the library. 

Those were rare now, though. After two years of fucking around and experimentation, you had managed to find out how to use your cursed technique effectively. The only time you went there now was to make extra bullets, just in case a mission went extra badly. But, barely any missions went bad. 

Not after you discovered your aim was near-perfect with the sniper. 

You sighed, burying your face in your hands for a few seconds before looking down at your textbook again. You skim another few paragraphs before scribbling down a note on a scrap piece of paper. You didn’t want to study.

You never wanted to study. Fuck, you hated studying. The content used to be easy, but now it was getting progressively more difficult to understand too. You guess you weren’t getting straight As this year like you used to, with barely any studying. 

Embarrassing. What’s been happening to me?

You wanted to close your eyes and take a nap. Maybe you’d do that. There was no one here anyways. You start drifting off to sleep before a pair of fingers flicks your forehead. 

“Wake up sleepyhead.”

Fuck, you’d recognize that voice anywhere. 

Gojo bends down towards the table, making eye contact with you. You quickly bury your head down further in your arms. “Go away.”

“Geez, you’re always so mean,” Gojo pouts in a faux hurt voice, “Can you ever just say hi for once?”

You don’t respond. Before you can react, he pulls you by a fistful of hair, and forces you to look at him anyways. “You should be nice, y’know?” 

You glare at him. He grips your hair tighter. 

“Fuck off.”

And tighter. If he went any tighter, you were pretty sure that fistful of hair would’ve snapped. He keeps you like that for a few moments, before it really starts to hurt. You eventually give in.

“Ow, shit- okay I’m sorry,”

He lets your hair go, and your head falls down to your arms again. “That’s more like it. Do you know why I’m here?”

“No,” you replied, “And I don’t really care all that much, to be honest.”

“Aw, don’t be like that.” Gojo mocks, “I’m hurt y'know?"

You grip your fist hard, trying not to punch him in the face. 

Gojo smiles. It feels uncanny. Like he was too excited, like he was restraining himself. “Yaga just assigned us on a mission together.”

“A mission… together?” You narrow your eyes, “Where’s Geto?”

“Suguru’s come down with a cold so it’s me and you instead of me and Suguru.”

“Uh… I find that hard to believe.”

“How? He’s literally coughing, and sneezing and all that right now. Do you wanna check in on him?”

“I mean… sure? I have meds and stuff I can give him.”

Gojo takes you to Geto’s dorm, which was on the other side of the school grounds. He knocks three times, before you hear a horse ‘come in’ from the other side of the door. Gojo walks in, and greets him excitedly. You lean against the doorframe waiting for him to finish. Geto greets you by nodding hello, and weakly motioning you, a gesture to come inside of his room. 

You look around the walls. He owned a lot of stuff. Well, he probably moved all his belongings to the school once he moved there. There were polaroids of him, Gojo, and Shoko hanging from the wall, and all his belongings were neatly stacked around the room in a way that felt like home.

It was a stark contrast from your own room, which would’ve looked the same as the day you entered, if it wasn’t for the fact that Utahime had helped you decorate it a little.

“Hey.” you said softly, “You doing okay?”

“Yeah,” he replies hoarsely, “Pretty much.”

You toss a box of pills at him, and he catches it. “I mean, your reflexes are still in check,” you say jokingly, he tries to laugh, but ends up coughing instead. Gojo lays him down further on the bed. “Wish that was me.” 

It’s a still, awkward silence between the three of you, before you take one step back.

“Take these and see if you feel better by the end of the day. I’m doing your mission with Gojo. Get better soon.”

Gojo looked like he still wanted to say something to Geto, so you turn around and begin to leave. 

“Hey, Y/N?”

You stop, but you don’t turn around. “Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

You nod, and close the door behind you.

-

Gojo stays in the room for a few minutes before he leaves as well. You’re not exactly sure why he’s been so giddy for the entire half an hour the two of you have been together. He was normally happy, or at least somewhat excited, but today he was unnaturally happy. Like he was ecstatic for no reason at all. 

“You’re awfully happy today…” you muttered. “Okay, so… are we going now, or are we going tomorrow or something?”

“We’re going right now.”

“If we’re both going, can you do all the work?”

Gojo scoffs,  “Now, why would I do that?” He pulls you in closer. “It wouldn’t be fun if I was doing all the work now, would it? I think you should do all the work, and once you’re in trouble, I’ll come and save you. Just like last time.”

You don’t say anything. You probably couldn’t even think about a comeback to that even if you tried. It was true. If you ran out of bullets, you were absolutely done for, and Gojo would have to save you.

Just like last time.

It wasn’t even like you had a choice, you could only fight for a certain amount of time, it was almost as if Gojo could fight for an infinite amount of time. Or at least a very long time if he wanted to. 

“Don’t worry though, I’ll never let you die on me. I just gotta embarrass you a little, first.”

You thought it would’ve been the best not to give him the satisfaction of any response.

-

The bus halts to a stop. 

You open your eyes, and the sun nearly blinds you. It’s weird. You probably fell asleep. The bus ride was a whole hour and a half. You’d argue that they should’ve just driven you out to the mission site, but they insisted that it was close enough the two of you could get there on your own. You protested, but they didn’t budge. 

Well, that wasn’t the biggest of your concerns. You realized that you were resting your head on someone’s shoulder.

That was not how you fell asleep. 

You immediately stand up, but there’s a resistance, stopping you from stepping back too much. Your earphones. 

It didn’t take a genius to figure out what happened. Gojo, while you were sleeping had put your head on his shoulder, and took one of your earphones out to listen to whatever you were listening to. 

A wave of panic washes over you, and you immediately pull your other earphone back and stuff it in your pocket. You didn’t even notice Gojo looking at you smugly until you looked back up and he looked like a cat that caught a particularly good hunt that day. 

Actually, your pockets felt lighter. You reach in them, and you couldn’t find your pistol. 

“Gojo,” you hissed, “What the fuck did you do?”

“Hm?” He looked amused, “Nothing. You were probably gonna break your neck while sleeping like that, so I let you rest on my shoulder.”

“Okay, I didn’t ask you to do that,” you snapped, your cheeks burning from embarrassment. “Where the fuck is my gun?”

“Isn’t it in your bag?”

“No you fucking dumbass, the other one? It was in my pocket before I fell asleep. You did something, didn't you?”

“I didn’t do anything,” he said. It sounded like a child pretending they hadn’t just been caught with their hand in the cookie jar. “Maybe someone stole it?”

“Let me check your pockets then.”

He shrugs and lets you reach through them. There were nothing except candy in them. A few moments pass before he hits you on the head.

“Ow what the fuck was that for-”

You look up, and he’s holding your gun above your head. He smiles, and drops it on your lap. You curse and rub your head in pain. He laughs. “Let’s go,” he says, “I’m trying to get home before evening.”

You rolled your eyes, you followed him out the door. 

The mission wasn’t far from the bus stop. It was a ten-minute walk out, and it was to some abandoned shack. A little bit out of the metropolis of Tokyo, but still somewhat in the city. 

“Shouldn’t we place a veil?” you muttered, “Won’t someone see us?”

“Can you do it?” He replies, “I don’t feel like doing it. Wait, do you even know how to do one?”

“I mean of course. What was the chant…” you think for a second “Emerge darkness from darkness…” Gojo looks at you expectantly, and you turn away. “Actually fuck, it doesn’t matter. I’ve never used one of those anyways.”

Gojo looks at you in disbelief, “How did you never manage to get seen, then?”

“I just shoot down the curse with one bullet. My aim isn’t that bad. The job gets done quicker that way too.”

“Are you… serious?”

“It works,” you snapped. “I mean, I barely have to do anything. They just die.”

“Whatever. I’m probably gonna need to save you at the end, anyways.”

“Yeah, yeah. Always gonna save the day as per usual. Can’t forget your glory, right?”

You walk into the warehouse, and he follows. 

“So are you gonna do anything or…”

“Nope,” he grins, “I wanna see you in action.”

“Ugh…”

You felt his burning into your back. “What did they say the curse looked like?” You walked up the stairs. “Was it weird, or something?”

“We were just told that it was really big, and it gave people illusions. It’s somewhat sentient I guess.”

“Okay, so it just hides around here then? We just gotta wait for it to appear right?”

“Up to you.”

You huff in frustration. He leans against one of the support bars of the warehouse and watches you get to work. You put the barrel of your sniper against the ledge, waiting for something to appear. 

A few minutes pass, nothing happens. 

You stare at the ceiling, and start wondering what you were doing here. It was obvious nothing was here. 

“This is boring,” Gojo sighs, “Do something already, would you? You didn’t even bother scouting the area?”

“What the hell do you want me to scout? It’s a fucking warehouse.”

“Are there secret rooms or something? Wait, Yaga said it was haunted right?”

“I mean, me personally, I could probably take care of this in a few seconds, especially with Geto, but…”

“You could take care of this on your own. I didn’t ask to come on this.”

“Yeah, but it’s funner with the two of us, don’t you think?”

“No, I don’t.”

Suddenly both of you hear a rumbling sound, and you slowly turn around. There was something massive standing in the doorway. Immediately, you pull the trigger, and it lodges itself in the body of the curse. It makes something akin to a scream in pain, but it keeps walking forward.

You wait a few moments before firing two shots this time. Once in the lower part of its body, and one square in the head. 

You sigh in relief, as the two bullets graze its lower half and head straight off. You stare at the body for a few seconds before it explodes, and all that’s left is the head and body.

“Not bad.” Gojo stares at the body. “You actually did something for once.”

“Excuse me?? I went on ALL my missions solo, you always had Geto to help you out.”

“Yeah, but your missions are always eas-”

The two of you slowly turn your heads around to see a second curse standing behind the two of you.

“Oh, shit.”

You pull out your pistol and shoot it twice before throwing your sniper and jumping off the ledge. You catch the sniper mid-air, before landing and pulling the trigger again. There’s a click, but nothing shoots. 

The gun was empty.

The curse approaches you closer, and closer, and you see its sharp claws reaching out, trying to kill you, you jump back, and it barely misses you.

You reach into your pocket and try to pull out your other gun, but you’re too slow. It runs for you, reaching for your neck. You barely doge it, before it tries reaching for you again. This repeats for a few times, before it nicks your shoulder and knocks you down. You grab your pocket knife and throw it at its head, before you watch it explode in your face. Purple blood splats everywhere around you.

You see Gojo from the other side of the room, smirking. He catches your knife, and tosses it to you. You glare at him and grab it. You stand up, pick up your sniper, and leave the site. You don’t even wait for Gojo.

You simply call the school, hoping they’d send a driver.

-

Once Gojo catches up to you, he doesn’t stop talking. He’s talking a mile a minute, you’re not even sure about what. You started droning him out after the first two seconds. You’re tapping away on your phone, playing some game, hoping he doesn’t notice. 

“Oh yeah and then…” He stops and looks at you, pulling you back by your shirt. “Are you even listening?”

“I.. what? Oh yeah, of course I am.”

Gojo snatches away your phone, and you see the defeat screen on your phone. “I don’t think you are, are you?”

“Hey give that back-”

Gojo raises your phone, high above your head and watches in amusement as you struggle and try to reach for it. “So, if you were paying attention, what was I saying, hm?”

“Uhh….”

“Yknow, actually I was saying, I think we make a pretty good team, yknow? Most of the time you’re only weakening the curses anyways. Plus, you aren’t strong enough to do harder missions on your own, anyways.”

“Gojo, what the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m saying, we should do all our missions together from now on. Even if they’re separate, we should go together.”

“N-no, I don’t want to do that. I’m fine on my own, Gojo, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Gojo pulls your collar away, revealing the small cut the curse made. You stare at him in disbelief. “That’s… that’s barely anything.”

“But you still got hurt.”

“What the fuck do you mean, ‘I got hurt’? This is barely anything.”

“I don’t think so. You’re too weak. You’re fragile. You can barely do anything by yourself.”

It’s patronizing. His tone. You can’t tell whether he’s mocking you, or being genuine. You look at his face. 

He might be dead serious.

“Gojo, it’s literally just a fucking nick. It’ll be gone by tommorow.”

“No. You’ll say that now but what if it isn’t next time? What if it’s worse? You always get hurt on your missions. You come back scratched, or bruised, even though you’re supposed to be stronger. You’re supposed to come back without a scratch.”

“Gojo, I had one eye missing at a fucking point.”

“Exactly. You hurt yourself too. I thought maybe… at the start, you might’ve been as strong as me…”

“But I’m not. I was never supposed to.”

“You should be.”

Something in your brain snaps. You don’t know what. On second thought, you might’ve called it a reflex. Fuck, you don’t actually know what to call it. All you know was that suddenly your hands were wrapped around his neck, and you were squeezing hard. Maybe hard enough to kill, you weren’t sure. 

You’re squeezing as hard as you can on his neck, he looks at your face with some semblance of shock, surprise, maybe some amusement. You couldn’t really tell. He claws at your hand, but you refuse to let go. You don’t want to let go. It’s only until both of you realize you were gripping too hard when you start to feel your hand clench around nothing. 

He turned on his infinity against you. You’re breathing heavily. Panting, maybe. Your hand collapses and falls around where his shoulder is supposed to be. There’s a little bit of bruising where your hands were. A small like that looked like it was almost turning purple.

Gojo grabs your hand, which was resting on his shoulder, with his own. Interlocking your fingers with his own. He lifts up your face with his other hand. You’re forced to stare into his eyes with your own. You could see your own terrified expression in his sunglasses.

But not his actual eyes. 

They were beautiful in a way. Bright blue and endless like the ocean under the sky, but they were terrifying in the same way. Like they could drown you. Wash you away and pull you in until there was nothing left of you. 

As if you were just an insignificant speck of dust. 

And he… was infinite.

In some ways, you could see how some people ended up describing him as some type of god. He was perfect, he was beautiful, he was basically untouchable. 

You wondered for a second, what it was like to be him. To be known as the strongest. To be cut, sanded, and sharpened from the second you were young. How that must’ve felt like. To be able to freely do whatever you wanted without significant consequences. 

You stare at each other for a few more minutes.

It all comes to you at that moment.

You were desired by a god.

-

You sat alone on a bench mindlessly shuffling through your MP3 player, hoping to find a song just good enough to drown out your thoughts. There wasn’t. Not anymore.

You’d listened to all the tracks on the player several times already. You pretty much knew what was going to play just by the first few seconds. You suppose it didn’t matter. As long as there was some noise to drown out whatever you were thinking at the time was enough for you to keep going. 

You suppose you needed a better distraction. Anything to keep your mind away from what happened a few days prior. Shoko told you Geto got better later that day, thanks to the medicine you gave him. Geto thanked you. For the entire time, you were praying Gojo wouldn’t somehow magically show up behind you.

He didn’t.

In fact, the day after that, you hadn’t seen him, Shoko, or Geto. You texted Shoko, asking where she was and it turned out they had been sent on a mission with both Mei Mei and Utahime. You asked Shoko how Utahime was doing. You missed her.

Apparently, she’d been faring well. 

It wasn’t fair. 

That was one of the only times you wished you had been sent on a mission. You wanted to be assigned one more mission with them, like how it was before Gojo showed up. Like how your life was somewhat peaceful two years ago. 

They’d come back a few days later. Apparently it was some kind of haunted house. Their mission had shown up a few days later on the news. Apparently, it was because Gojo forgot to put up a veil, just like he did when the two of you were alone.

Gojo got off with probably a scolding, and a few days later, Gojo and Geto were assigned on a mission again. You had no knowledge about the mission they were assigned on, just the fact that it was important, and they were sent on it because they were strong. 

They still hadn’t come back yet. It had been about three days. Well, that wasn’t much of your concern. You didn’t really want to see anyone right now, anyways. 

You bent over and put your face in your hands. You didn’t know what to feel. Actually, you didn’t remember how to feel anything at all. You don’t remember the last time you felt anything except either stress, fear, or disgust. 

Fuck, you don’t even remember the last time you felt sad. Or if you could even describe a time where you felt something close to sadness. 

Actually, you wondered if there was still anyone on school grounds, besides you. The past few missions seemed to require more people. The first one had all the second years, Utahime, and Mei Mei dispatched.

This one had Gojo, Geto, Nanami, and Haibara dispatched. You weren’t sure if Shoko was dispatched on this one.

You hear footsteps, and then the bench dips beside you. You suppose you knew now.

“Hey.” Shoko greeted you softly. “You don’t look too great right now.”

You don’t bother to respond, and she takes a long drag of her cigarette. If it was anyone else, they might’ve considered it rude, but Shoko didn’t really care.

You liked that about her. 

“It’s just me and you right now. If you got something to say, you can say it. I’ll be listening.”

You gripped onto the armrest of the bench and slid down further. Actually, what did you feel so bad about? You hadn’t felt the same since you’d been on that mission with Gojo, and even then, you couldn’t even understand what he could’ve done for you to react that way. Actually, you didn’t know what he did at all that caused you to feel this way right now. You suppose it was best not to think about it at all. 

“It’s okay,” you muttered. “You don't need to worry about it.”

“You sure?”

You nod. Shoko doesn't ask further, and stares off into space. “Sorry about Gojo’” she sighs. “You know how it is, we can't really stop him from anything…”

You look up at her for a second, and she continues talking. “I mean, me and Geto have told him a few times to leave you alone, but he just doesn't listen.” 

“I mean, I do feel bad, it's just… we can't stop him. Even Geto thinks it's good for him to have someone he wants, at least a little. I mean, it keeps him in check, in a way Geto can't even do.”

Your heart drops a little. You knew that already, but seeing Shoko admit it plain and flat hurt a little more than you thought. No one could do anything about your predicament. 

“Actually, we don’t even know why he’s so obsessed with you in the first place. We asked him a few times, but he never really said anything. He’d either crack a joke or change the subject. I’m not sure why.”

You look down at the ground, observing all the fine details on the pavement. Ash falls from where Shoko is sitting. She dusts off her skirt, but she doesn’t stand up. 

She stays with you.

“So consider this an apology, I guess.”

-

A few days later, Gojo and Geto come back. 

Actually, no. You saw them on the day they came back. They walked past you that day, and they had two completely different reactions over their face. It was easier to describe what Geto looked like; he looked shell-shocked. Like he had just witnessed some horrible event occur right in front of his eyes.

You’d recognize that face anywhere. You’d seen it a bunch of times before. He probably witnessed a murder in cold blood. 

Gojo, on the other hand, looked different. You weren’t sure what the hell happened to him, but he looked… oddly calm. Like he didn’t have a single thought behind his eyes. He actually looked somewhat at peace. Well, maybe not at peace, but it was the face of a man who felt absolutely nothing. 

Both of them were covered in blood. Whether it was their own, someone else’s or both, you couldn’t be certain. Their uniforms were stained with blood, and their faces were covered in blood too. Geto had two big gashes in the center of his chest, and Gojo had blood in his hair, his shirt, and on his hands. 

If you were to make a guess, it’d probably look like Geto almost got killed, and Gojo killed someone. Well, maybe not just one person, maybe a few just based on how much blood was on him compared to Geto.

Needless to say, probably whatever mission they were sent on, they failed.

You’d never seen them like that before. Actually, based on how badly you saw them that day, you wondered if they were ever going to be the same again. You wondered what happened to make both of them end up like this.

A few days later, you tried asking Shoko what happened to Gojo and Geto. She simply shrugged. Apparently, she didn’t know either but both of them weren’t the same as before. She didn’t seem the same either. Probably whatever the other two were going through was weighing down on her too.

You had a feeling she knew. She probably just didn’t want to tell you. Which was understandable in all honesty. You were starting to realize you didn’t care for any of them that much. It just felt so strange for half the school to be completely out of wack. 

You watched from a distance as the first years greeted the second years. They seemed happy enough today. It reminded you that you were just an outsider. It sucked. You didn’t want to think about it.

For a second, you wondered what it would’ve been like if you just let Himoto choke you out that day. Would your life have been any different?

Probably not. Instead of that, you probably would’ve been suffering in some other way. There wasn’t any way out of this. You were probably gonna suffer wherever you went.

Laughter rings out in the distance where the other five students were standing. 

You could’ve sworn you saw Gojo make eye contact with you for just a second. You couldn’t exactly tell from where you were sitting, but you felt it. Just for a second.

You stuff your hands in your pockets and walk away. 

-

Your days seemed to blur together. 

Nothing really happened for the rest of spring. Well, not much, anyways. 

It was strange watching them from whatever angle you were. In the span of a couple of days, they had went from… whatever they were (best friends? Maybe they had a crush on each other with the way they acted. You couldn’t be sure.) to completely falling apart. Gojo was back to his typical demeanor in a matter of days.

Geto… he was never really the same. 

You never talked to him a whole lot. You had walked past him a couple of times, and each time he looked worse than the past. He looked gaunt.

He looked pale and his eyebags worsened every time. After that incident too, you had realized he never bothered to put his hair up anymore. You had tried talking to him a few times, but he ignored you. You decided not to bother after a while. It was probably best to leave him alone.

On the other hand, Gojo had doubled down and was worse towards you. After a couple of months, you realized he was way stronger than he was before. Whatever disinterest, whatever contempt, whatever hatred you could show towards him was completely ignored by him.

He also seemed to find you more often than you would’ve liked. Sometimes, he was already in your dorm before you got there. Sometimes, when you woke up, he was sitting there watching you. He’d always greet you cheerfully whenever you found him in there, shushing you when you yelled at him, hurled insults at him, or tried to hurt him (which later on you found out you couldn’t; he always had his infinity on. When you tried, he’d almost coo at you, telling you to try harder next time.)

He had started touching you more too.

It wasn’t possessive, the way he touched you. It wasn’t noticeable to most people when observing but, you swore he was clinging onto you for dear life. He’d sometimes grab your arm so tight, to the point where once he left bruising. Or maybe, he’d sometimes grab onto your hand. His nails dug so deep into your hands that he often drew blood. It was as if he believed if he didn’t hold onto you hard enough, you’d slip through his fingers, and disappear. 

Over time, his hands began to travel to other places too. You tried your best to ignore it, but it was getting harder to ignore when sometimes his hand would stay a little too long around your neck, just ghosting his fingers around the back of it. His hands started to stay a little longer around your chest than they should’ve. 

There were times too, when his lips were merely inches away from your own, and when his hands would be a little too high on the inside of your thigh. 

But it wasn’t like you could push him off. He was usually so much stronger than you, that there wouldn’t have even been a point to try. You flinched when he touched you, tried to pull away, but he was always a little faster than you. 

His touch was genuinely the most uncomfortable thing you ever felt. It always felt like it lingered after his hands left your body.

No one really bat an eye at it now, either. Geto looked away, Shoko pretended not to see, even when you desperately looked at them, trying to get them to notice the situation, all of them pretended not to notice your facial expression.

It was like being held hostage. 

Soon, you began looking forward towards getting missions. In fact, you’d start volunteering for as many missions as possible. Sometimes, you’d even offer to take some of Geto’s missions, or some of Shoko, or even the first years’ missions. As long as you could get away from the school, and as a result, Gojo, you were happy with that. 

The only problem was that you weren’t strong enough for some of the missions. Well, actually half the missions (especially Geto’s) you weren’t exactly strong enough for, and you’d end up coming back pretty injured on half of them. No matter how many times you got hurt; gashes, broken bones, getting limbs pulled, you’d truly never get used to the pain. You always ended up screaming in pain when it happened.

You’d usually just try your best to roughly bandage up whatever part you had hurt that day, and did your very best to get back to Jujutsu High. Once you typically got back, you’d endure the pain till about the early hours of morning (it wasn’t like you could sleep anyways), or till you knew for a fact Gojo was asleep, to sneak into Shoko’s dorm. You’d typically beg her to heal you, which she did. 

You were grateful she always did it without asking you any questions. 

Eventually though, the constant injuries were starting to take a toll on yourself too. You began having to take more painkillers, and at some point you ended up doubling or tripling the recommended dosage. 

It didn’t really end up well. At some point you remember falling asleep a little too early, and forgetting to go to Shoko.

When you woke up, you were in the infirmary.

Your head’s still ringing. You don’t actually remember what happened before you passed out. Instinctively, you tried to rub your head, to to soothe the noise, but there was a firm resistance on both of your arms. 

Someone had strapped you down while you were unconscious.

You stared up at the ceiling again; the shapes were all starting to blur together a bit, until you blinked again. It takes another few minutes before your other senses started to kick in, and you realized you smelled the scent of cigarette smoke, combined with some type of cleaning solution.

“You’re awake.”

That wasn’t Shoko. That… that was…

You hear footsteps walking towards you. Suddenly your head instantly feels much clearer than it did a few seconds ago. You tried pulling yourself out of the restraints connected to your bed, but to no avail. You were completely nailed down to the bed. 

Shoko probably did that to heal the exact parts that had been poisoned with more accuracy, but damn did you wish you were just about dead right now. 

“Shoko told me you’ve been working hard,” Gojo said, his voice turning into something sickeningly sweet. It wasn’t real, you know it wasn’t real. It was disgusting. 

It was somewhat of a caring tone too, now that you think about it, but you knew far better than to lean into it. In fact, every inch of your body was itching to jump up and run away. And you would’ve if you wanted to give Gojo another thing to embarrass you for later down the line.

It really took everything within you to stay still. 

You were scared. 

“I haven’t seen you in so long,” Now his voice was giddy too, “You have a lot of missions now, too, don’t you?”

He’s lost his fucking mind. 

Well, you suppose when you lose both your best friend and then your emotional stressball just within the span of a few months, that would probably drive anyone to the point of madness.

He grabs onto your shoulders, you’re sure he’s going to probably break them at this point. You emotionally embrace yourself for whatever he’s going to say. 

“Why.” His voice is so soft. “Why did you do this… to yourself?”

You literally don’t know what to say. You’d never seen this side of him before. Even in the worst of cases, even when he was probably on death’s doorstep himself, he probably wasn’t like this. He looked weak. He looked weak in a way you had never seen him in before. Like he was wounded by this.

“You… you always go… and you hurt yourself…” he whispered, “ever since the first time I met you… you’ve always been injured in some way… you can’t… do this to me… you can’t… you shouldn’t… I can’t bear to see it, Y/N. It fucking hurts. It hurts seeing you like this all the time.”

Some type of piercing feeling splits through your chest. It burns, you can feel tears in your eyes, but you don’t let them fall.

You never did. 

“Do you think I didn’t notice you begging to be healed by Shoko every other day? Did you think I wouldn’t notice the bottles of pills stacked in your bottom drawer?”

The very air you were breathing felt hot. It didn't feel right. It was getting harder to breathe. 

“I don't care if you hate me…” his hands travel down and grab your hands, slowly interlinking with your own hand. It's a painfully intimate gesture. It’s a little too intimate. His hands were warm. It felt too foreign to your own cold hands.

“... I… I need you… and I can’t…”

You feel his face lower onto yours. It takes a second too long before you realize in absolute horror what he’s about to do. Actually, there’s really nothing you could do about it, considering that all your limbs were bound. You had no choice but to lay down and just let it happen at this point.

You close your eyes. You try to ignore the fact that your heart was beating so fast, you could feel your fingers shaking. Maybe not just your fingers, but your whole hand.

Gojo stops right before he kisses you. Your lips brush together. His hair is literally on your face. You could feel it.

It was soft, unlike the rest of him.

You stay like that for a few seconds, before he pulls away slowly. 

And then, almost like he’s returning to his usual demeanor, he pulls all the restraints off the bed and waits for you to get up.

You don’t. You simply try to play dead for a few seconds.

He doesn’t leave. After a few moments, you give up the act, and stare at him. He’s looking down at you. Both of you stare directly into each other’s eyes. 

They weren’t bright blue.

They were dull. A little bit grey. No light was being reflected from them.

They were a little like your own.

-

Gojo tagged along on all your missions after that one. Instead of letting you do the work like before, and saving you at the end, he insisted that he did all of your missions too. 

Except he’d actually make you come along, unlike when you were doing other people’s missions for them.

You had made the argument to him that if he truly wanted you to stay safe, you could just stay at school and do nothing at all, but he simply ignored you. Just like everything before, you had no say in that. As always, he insisted that you had no idea what you were talking about.

You both knew in his mind, he just wanted you as close as possible to him at all times. Like having you near him fixed something in his mind. He didn’t really care about your own safety, or maybe he did, but in a very, rather selfish way. 

Well, whatever problems he had, you were often left to deal with the blunt end of them. The end that no one else got to see. 

You couldn’t have been tortured to say it, but you did admit that throughout the years you had started to depend on Gojo a lot too. Even though you hated to admit it, Gojo did keep through to his word, and saved you every time you were nearing death. You were somewhat glad he always came around to save you. You never really got used to the feeling of nearly dying.

You were never usually afraid of death, not until it was near you. You hated that sensation; the feeling of being half alive and half dead, either left to bleed out, to rot away, until someone might’ve been able to save you.

Gojo had always been the one to save you.

-

A small motorcycle lies at the bottom of a hill. It was your last mission of the year. Well, technically it was Gojo’s last mission of the year, but he decided to drag you along with him anyways. The driver had left the two of you at the bottom of a cliff, and told you the curse you were looking for was on this mountain. 

Apparently, there was some type of village/town in this mountain that had caused a lot of cursed spirits to form. The citizens were venturing off into the mountain, thinking they were some sort of spirit, and getting killed by them.

None of them were particularly strong either; there were just a lot, and they’d be hard to find.

“So, do you want the front or the back?”

“Gojo, do you even know how to drive a motorcycle?”

“Nah, but I can probably figure it out.”

“What the fuck do you mean, ‘you can figure it out’? So are we just stranded here? C’mon I wanna go home. Why did you have to drag me out too-”

“Shhh, give me a second, I’ll figure it out.”

“Are you… are you being serious right now?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

You sighed, and look up at the sky. “Fine, whatever you say.” Whatever this place was, it was still beautiful. The mountains stretched to what seemed to be the sky, and there were trees for as far as you could see. It must’ve been nice to live here. They’d probably known peace their whole life. How couldn’t you, when the stars stretched out as far as you could see, and the mountains shielded you from all that was to be unknown. 

It was impossible. 

In the distance, you hear an engine rumbling. That must’ve been Gojo starting up the motorbike.

“I got it to work,” he called out. “I think we should be able to go now.”

You turn around and walk to the motorbike. 

“Do… do we even have helmets?”

“Why would we need helmets?” Gojo asks.

“So… we can ride the motorbike safely? Gee, I don’t know why else we would need helmets for.”

“It’s fine, don’t worry,” Gojo puts his hands on his hips, “All you have to do is to hold onto me.”

“That does actually make me worry quite a bit, actually.” You muttered. 

Gojo shrugs. “I mean, our other option is walking all the way up to the peak of the mountain. I’m not sure if you wanna do that.”

You stare at the steep road halfway up the mountain. “Okay, yeah, whatever.”

He sits on the bike, and you sit on the seat behind him. He presses the accelerator on the motorcycle, and it begins speeding up. 

Of course knowing him, he was driving recklessly fast. He nearly hit all the curbs, and nearly caused a drift for a few moments, but you couldn’t lie. It was kind of fun. 

You held on tight onto him. The roads kept getting steeper and narrower, until you were on a small winding road 3,000 feet into the air.

Gojo stops the gas. 

“I think we gotta start looking for curses now.”

“Weren’t we going to go to the top of the hill and work our way down?”

“No.” He replies, “I think it’s actually a better idea if we just start here for now. “Let me see what I can do.”

-

It’s about three days of exorsing curses on the mountain, before you feel absolutely exhausted. You had exorcized about two, and Gojo exorcized another four. Gojo told you in total, there were about 7 large curses, and you were down to the last one.

You were exhausted. The past few days, neither of you slept that much. Of course, neither of you slept a lot normally, but it surprised you that Gojo often stayed up to the same time, if not later than you did.

Although you suppose he had different motives for sleeping so little compared to you. 

The time spent in the small motel was weird though. Gojo, being the bastard that he was, only asked for a singular bed room, and you were often stuck with him on the same bed. He often had one arm, or maybe both arms wrapped around you while he was snoozing away. 

You had gotten no sleep the past few nights as a result. It felt too uncomfortable to sleep with someone’s arms wrapped around yours. 

Gojo would always wake up bright and glowing, while you felt like you were going to pass out on the spot. He’d always wake you up when he got up, and the two of you would be forced to prepare in silence for the day ahead of you. 

Today, was your last day here. You couldn’t wait to get back to your dorm and sleep for a couple of days straight. 

It takes you a couple of moments of walking before you see a pair of glowing eyes, in the darkness of the forest. 

“Hey Gojo-”

He turns around. “What?”

“I think I just found the last curse.”

“It’s in the forest, just over there.”

“Huh? Don’t be ridiculous. C’mon let’s go to the next location.”

It takes Gojo a minute to start the motorbike. A few seconds for you to get on. And you drove for two hours before seeing a horrendously long curse that looked somewhat like a dragon?

… maybe a worm? You weren’t sure. 

Either way, it charges at you, before knocking you off the motorbike.

Fuck, that hurt bad. 

You shoot a few times at it, hoping to hit something but it did nothing. You wanted to shout for Gojo, scream at him to do something, but you didn’t even feel like you had the strength for that. 

He was nowhere to be seen. 

You shoot once more at the creature, and it knocks you off the road. 

Of a cliff.

Your hand moves on its own just out of pure adrenaline. One headshot. 

Two headshots. 

Three headshots. 

It explodes, and you land head-first into the concrete underneath.

-

Were you… dying?

You couldn’t be sure. You lay on the road that wrapped around the cliff desperately clinging onto the conscience that kept fading, while you tried to figure out what to do.

Gojo was probably still kilometers away at this point, and to be very frank, you wouldn’t have wanted to see him before you died anyways. If you were dying.

This was different than when you lost your eye. In fact this didn’t hurt at all much compared to that. 

You tried to flex what fingers you had left. The ones that didn’t get blasted away in the fight. God, maybe if you had tried a little harder, reacted a little faster you wouldn’t be another statistic of whatever the death count of jujutsu sorcery was but, it wasn’t even your mission anyways.

It was Gojo’s and he wanted to just drag you along for shits and giggles. And with the way he constantly fed off you like a leech, you wonder (if you survive this) how’d he’d think about doing this bullshit in the future.

If he left you alone.

yeah, if he left you alone.

You see his lanky figure in your blurred vision. You close your eyes. You don’t wanna do this right now. It wasn’t the first time you got severely injured in front of him, but everytime it happened it was like a humiliation ritual. He’d always call you weak, treat you like glass. He’d carry you every single time like you were something that might break. You wonder if he ever realized you knew this. You remember that one time he almost kissed you on the forehead before you snapped awake. 

God, you really hated him. Such a fucking bastard. 

Your hand tries to tighten on the pistol in your hand, but it can’t. You’re done for. The job was all up to Gojo no…

W….

You hear footsteps that could be none OTHER than gojo’s. Who else could it be? It was just you, and him, and that special grade curse the two of you had been chasing after the entire time. You couldn’t imagine the expression Gojo had on his face right now.

Well, you could. You knew exactly what type of expression he had on his face. You just didn’t want to see it.

Sometimes you wish you had RCT just like him. Maybe then, you’d understand what it was like to be truly invincible. Maybe then you’d understand what it was like to be god. To be able to experience a fraction of what it was like to be the strongest. To be a genius. 

But maybe you also wish you could’ve been weak. Ignorant. Oblivious. Unaware, and unable to see things others couldn’t see. Maybe you could’ve died happy. Willingly accepted the fact Himoto got turned into a blood smear instead of a mangled creature. Maybe… 

Maybe you could’ve in another world, been born with anyone else’s body but your own. Where you could’ve been happily weak against your will. Where you did nothing and knew nothing.

But maybe if you died right now, life would forgive you and you’d be able to see Himoto again. Say sorry to her. Tell her everything that happened. And once you’d been reborn, if reincarnation existed, you’d have a normal body. 

You’d be a normal person. Lived a peaceful life. Died peacefully.

You feel a hand sliding past what was left of your fingers, and gripping your palm. You slightly open one eye, hoping he doesn’t notice. Morbid curiosity got the best of you, and you wanted to see what he was doing. 

His face is expressionless. That would’ve been one way to say it. Someone dying outside of his control. You’d always had a morbid curiosity of what would’ve actually happened if Gojo watched you die. It had always been a little bit of a petty fantasy of yours, but there always was something that fascinated you about your abuser watching the one thing he had left disappear before his very eyes.

What would’ve been his reaction? What would he have done? Would he feel bad? Would he cling onto you as your last moments fade away?

His eyes are duller than usual. They’re not glowing like they usually are. 

His infinity is off. You’d never seen that before. Was he so confident that nothing was going to hurt him? Was he so sure you weren’t going to hurt him?

He pushes the pistol off your other hand and you watch it slide down the road, your other hand now free. It’s now when you realize the damage was more serious than you thought. There was a big pool of your blood on the road, and there was shrapnel all around you. Some of it was sticking in your hand. Some in your hair. 

He holds you closer than usual. No, he was grabbing you. Squeezing you. Like if he let go, you were going to slip like sand from his fingertips. His nails are digging into your waist. It’s painful. He was probably going to draw more blood.

“Don’t die before we get to Shoko.”

Your took a hand and put it on his shoulder. “Don’t. It’s not worth i-”

“I’m not letting you die.” He says flatly. “I can’t let you die. You’re all that I…”

You look at him. Gently you pull off his glasses. 

“I can’t.. I can’t let you go. Not now. Not ever. You can’t do this to me. If you ever try to leave me, I’ll always find you. I don’t care if it’s one day, one month, five years, ten years, I’ll always find you and bring you back to me.”

“I could be so much worse to you yknow?” His hands tighten around your waist. It felt like he was trying to burst your insides. “You’re so weak. You have so much potential but you’re just so, so, weak it makes me kind of mad.”

He stares at you in the eyes. Observing your bruised face and body. Your ripped uniform, and just the general state you’re in.

“I could do anything I wanted to you to keep you with me… But I gotta protect you yknow? You’re so pathetic, you can barely defend yourself…”

Your blood runs cold. You end up passing out, and you feel a hand running through your hair. You don’t know what else happened after that.

-

You wake up in the infirmary. Alone.

You’ve been here too many times. The dark room, with the stiff mattresses, and a thin blanket over your body. 

You… survived? Somehow apparently. Weird. You were pretty sure you suffered a concussion, and lost a few of your fingers, after falling off an insane height. Maybe they healed you fast. 

You quietly stand up and opened the door. It’s Utahime standing there.

“Jesus Christ,” she muttered, “didn’t think you’d be up so early”

“What?”

you look at the clock on the wall. It’s currently 5am. “Gojo was supposedly carrying your body back, to get shoko to heal you,” she muttered. “You were basically dead.”

“Why aren’t you more shocked that I just came back from the dead, then?” 

“Cause you didn’t die,” she said flatly. “Apparently they were gonna lay down and heal you, but suddenly your fingers regenerated on their own. I was gonna check on you right now cause I couldn’t sleep anymore.”

“My WHAT?” You look down at your hand. Sure enough, your index, middle, and pinky finger were there again.

“Yeah and apparently…” she added, “Shoko was gonna heal your concussion, but your head stopped bleeding on its own as well.”

“No…”

“So yeah,”

“I didn’t know I could heal myself…”

“No one else did either.” She said dryly. “Gojo’s gonna have a fun time with this one.”

“Don’t even mention it. I’m not trying to see him ANYTIME soon.”

“Well…”

You groaned. “I hate that stupid fucker.”

“Same. But do you ever wonder why he’s so infatuated with you?’

“God getting deep now aren’t we? Shoko asked me that once. I don’t know, to be honest. I mean like. Geto could’ve easily stopped him at anytime-“

“I mean, any of us could. We’re not blind. This guy clings onto you like a lost puppy. It’s kind of embarrassing.”

“Well, why don’t you then? I’d really appreciate it if you could-“

“You think I’m getting in the way of GOJO??? SATORU???” She groaned. “I love you, but genuinely not that much.”

“Oh yeah, thanks” you muttered.

“Listen it’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just that you gotta endure it for the rest of us. I don’t know what happened to him, but he’s just been on a straight downward spiral since Geto got kicked out. Like he seems content on latching onto you. He really likes you.”

“Well, anyways, I should probably get going, I have somewhere I need to be early tommorow.”

You hug her, and wave her off, leaving you standing alone in the hall.

You could… use RCT? How? You flex your fingers. It seems weird they’re there. It seems weird that you’re alive at all. You’re not even proficient enough in jujutsu sorcerery to use RCT. Maybe you’d ask Shoko tommorow. 

You walk outside, sitting on the patio, and staring at the almost rising sun.

You think about what Satoru said to you yesterday.

You clenched your hands together. It made your blood run cold. 

- 

“Huh? How you healed yourself?”

Shoko stares at you for a moment. I mean usually, RCT happens as the reversal of cursed energy. So you probably did that. Maybe. Cause you were leaking so much cursed energy too, so it can’t have been that.

But either way, it requires a positive flow of cursed energy. 

You stood there, trying to think about what caused this. positive flow of cursed energy…

It must’ve been your cursed technique. If anything. Maybe you had lost control of all your flow of it, and it kept leaking out of you, maybe till there was none left.

But if it was positive, did that mean you’d have been pulling it in from somewhere?

That didn’t make sense. You were literally concussed. That special grade was already dead.

So it might’ve been…. 

It was… 

No, it can’t have been.

Shoko stares at you, expectantly. “I’m glad you’re alive, though. We've had too many deaths and people getting kicked out here.” 

“Yeah…”

“Sorry about Satoru, you know how it is with him. Wish I could help but… You’re on your own for that. I kinda don’t wanna interfere.”

Both of you stare down at the ground, unwilling to break the silence. It’s a good few minutes before you talk again. “Hey, can I have a cigarette?”

Shoko reaches into her pocket, digging for one. “Sorry, ran out. Maybe next time.”

“It’s okay.” You sighed. “What are your plans today? I have nothing to do, maybe we could hang out?”

“Sure,” she replies. “Just make sure it’s after 8pm, I’m busy today.” 

You nod. She smiles. You notice her eyebags have gotten darker. Well, they’re not as dark as yours yet, but she looks tired. She looked stressed, exhausted. You wonder what happened. What was going on. 

Well, it’s not like you’d know.

Your 13-year old self would’ve hated you right now.

Well, actually fuck that statement. Your 13-year old self wouldn’t had known their best friend died, they had some type of superpower, and the world’s strongest guy had some type of weird obsession and dependence on them. 

It didn’t really feel right. Was this all that your life had amounted to? You didn’t really think you were saving people’s lives at all, even though that’s what people always asked you. 

You remember Geto asking you that question too, a little bit before he had lost his mind, and got suspended from Jujutsu high. 

“Why do you want to be a sorcerer?”

Come to think about it, it was a good question that everyone should’ve asked themselves. Of course, when Geto asked you that question, it was the first time he’d talked to you in over a year. You were pretty sure he spent a long time thinking about that. What is the point of being a sorcerer. 

At the time, the most logical answer you could’ve given was that there really was no point in being one. Geto, as you had known, had been a man of reason. You respected that about him, you found it an interesting way to live life.

But it was really strange to you.

You knew he had the whole big idea about ‘protecting the weak’ but that probably went down the drain. You remember just simply telling him that there was really no reason anyone should or shouldn’t be a sorcerer. 

You didn’t really have a purpose for anything in life.

You didn’t even have control over your own life. 

It must’ve been strange to be a person who needed a purpose to live. Geto that day, eventually told you that he’d watch someone die. That it fucked him up. 

It wasn’t like that wasn’t what you assumed, anyways. You remember explaining to him that people are usually fucked up, that this wasn’t really anything new, that it had all happened to you before too. That the concept of ‘purpose’ wasn’t even something you’d bothered to think about when there was really no point in doing that. 

Humans were cruel, whether they were weak or strong.

That’s just what they are. 

What you didn’t expect was Geto going missing, and never coming back a week or two later. You saw Yaga speaking to Gojo in some corridor a few days after that. He looked… you couldn’t tell whether it was livid, or something else. You watched him storm off. Whatever happened that day might’ve been the final nail in the coffin for him.

No one had ever told you anything about how Gojo’s and Geto’s dynamic actually worked. 

All you knew was that they were two close friends, and they pretty much kept each other in check. You had watched their relationship deteriorate throughout the years after that one mission, and even from an outsider's perspective, it was sad watching their friendship deteriorate throughout the years. 

You weren’t sure if you wanted to be a soccer, yourself. At some point, people were going to find out that you had two very useful cursed techniques, and all you’d be to them was nothing but a tool. An object that they could control. 

At the same time, you couldn’t really be anything normal now either. You didn’t have a proper education to any degree, and it wasn't really like you could do anything normal now. 

Still though, the thought of running away often crept up on your mind.

-

It was the last day of school, and the day before graduation for you. 

As usual, before school ended, all the students had to clean the school up for the end of the year; that meant sweeping the floor, dusting all the rooms, wiping down the windows, and pretty regular cleaning work that needed to be done every month or so, but a little more thorough.

It was typically your favourite day of the year. But this time, it was a little different. Despite everything, part of you still wanted to stay here. When you were younger, you thought when the time became right, you’d run away and start your life over.

Typically, you considered that time the last day of school, but now, there wasn’t any point in that. You had been so detached from normalcy that you weren’t really sure how you could even integrate back. 

You suppose you had the summer to figure out WHAT to do. The very least you could by now was to stop being a bum, and figure your life out.

You sigh, and go back to dusting. Life wasn’t fair.

It never had been. 

You quietly opened the door, and checked the next room, seeing what needed to be cleaned. 

Gojo sat on the ledge of it, looking outside. There was a bucket of water somewhere in the room. You suppose he had either been put on mop duty or window cleaning duty.

Oh my god. Not on the last day of school.

It takes a second, but he notices you. In that instant, you begin to close the door, and move on to the next room. You begin to walk away, when you feel a hand touch your shoulder. 

“Hey.”

You turn around, and glare at him.

“What… what do you want?” you muttered. “Can’t you see I’m busy here?”

Satoru shrugs, and drags you back into the classroom. He awkwardly somewhat hugs you. Well not really hug, more like absorbing you into him. It doesn’t really feel right though, you swore you felt like he was actually trying to suffocate you. His fingers grip around your uniform. For a moment, you thought he was going to do something terrible again, but he lets go after forcing you to stay like that for a few minutes. 

“Y’know, you should stay with me after you graduate. I can… I could probably get a place for you to live in, and after I graduate, we can move in together, yeah? What do you say?”

He had a point. You had never really thought about where you were gonna go after you graduated. It wasn’t like you could stay in the dorms anymore. But there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell you were going to live with Gojo either. You couldn’t hand your entire life to him.

Your dignity and ego would never allow you to do that.

Come to think about it, you didn’t really know how Gojo was so rich. Every time the two of you had went out, he insisted  on paying for you, even when you had money.

At least he had been considerate enough to think about what you were going to do in the future. You never thought he’d do that. 

“It’s not really like you can refuse this anyways,” Gojo says, his mouth brushing the corner of your ear, “You have no other place to go, don’t you?”

You swallowed, your face turning red from anger, embarrassment, or something else, you couldn’t be sure.

“I’ll take your silence as a yes.”

You use all your strength to break yourself free from his embrace. You grab his collar. You begin to open your mouth to shout at him, but nothing comes your mouth. You stay like that for a few seconds, before Gojo rolls his eyes, and sticks his tongue out.

You aggressively let him go, pushing him a little, and reach for the door.

Gojo doesn’t follow you. Usually he’d stop you, or shout at you, or utter some insult at you, but he doesn’t move.

Suddenly, you hear the loud sloshing of a bucket of water behind you, and before you can you react, you turn around, and see the entire bucket of dirty mop bucket land on you.

“Oops,” he giggled, “Sorry.”

“Gojo,” you shouted, “What the FUCK did you do that for?”

You were completely drenched from head to toe, with that stupid bucket of mop water. There was so much water poured on you, it was starting to drip out out of your uniform. Your hair was soaking wet too. 

He snickered, and began laughing hysterically. “Sorry, sorry. I had to. Look at you though.” If it wasn’t enough, he patted you on the head, and ran his fingers through some of the soaked strands. “Awww, are you mad? I’ll let you wear one of mine.”

Your cheeks turn bright red, “N-no, I’m not wearing one of your uniforms.”

“Are you sure? You can’t be walking around the school in the clean school with that. We just cleaned it. Plus,” his voice feigning concern, “You might catch a cold.”

He could not be serious right now. 

“C’mon, wipe that look off your face,” he hit you on the shoulder, “let’s get you changed up.”

-

The next time you were released from Gojo’s clutches was near the night. Shoko had called him off to do something, which got him off you. 

The second you were released from his grasp, you had immediately ran into the showers, trying to wash the digusting mop water off you. You felt like it had been stuck on you for so long, that your skin probably absorbed a little of it. 

You scrubbed yourself a couple of times, hoping that it was enough to get rid of the filth in the water. Once you came out, you quickly threw Gojo’s cut-up uniform in the hamper, burying it beneath all your other clothes, before changing into the last set of clothes you had.

You paused for a second. 

It was the outfit you had first worn when you came here. The last set of clothes you had. The outfit itself was simple; a collared shirt (from your old school uniform), and cargo pants of some kind. 

You dug further into the closet. There was also some type of metal chain belt. 

It’d work. At least for now. Hopefully. You didn’t even know if you’d still fit in those clothes, but it was still better than wearing Gojo’s uniform in your opinion. 

Well, it didn’t matter if it was a little small, you could always get your other clothes out of the hamper and wear them for a little longer probably.

You put the outfit and stare in the mirror. It fit good enough, you suppose. You reach inside the pockets, seeing if there’s anything in them, and your hand grabs onto something a little soft. It’s synthetic, and smooth. You ran your fingers through it and it seemed to be tied into a loop. Slowly you pull it out, and you stare at it in shock.

It was Himoto’s ribbon. In somewhat of a good condition. You wonder how it hadn’t been completely drenched blood; it was the exact same ribbon she wore when she died. And the same one you saw when you exorcized her curse later. 

You remember always making fun of her for wearing it around her neck, as it was a hair tie. You remember laughing as she pulled out the clip from the hair accessory, and tied it around her neck. You remember saying it looked ugly, and asking why she’d do that to a perfectly good hair accessory.

You ended up getting an actual ribbon later once you entered Jujutsu High, but in the shade of dark blue. You remember Gojo always loved pulling on the bow on the back of the on your neck, until you got annoyed and cut the ribbon short and knotted the ribbon on the side of your neck. 

You look down at the loop again. You gently pull apart the knot and let it fall apart. 

Had you found this earlier, you might’ve been horrified, or maybe you would’ve been disgusted at yourself for keeping it around, but not anymore. 

To be honest, you were kind of over it.

You tied half the ribbon into how Himoto used to tie it. On the bottom half, you tied it into a knot somewhat similar to a noose. 

You threw it into the trash.

Maybe you’d go to that convenience store you and Utahime frequented one last time too.

-

You waited till almost midnight to go, just like the old times. Usually the two of you would go to the convenience store to get alcohol, sweets, energy drinks, and candy. Sometimes when Shoko would tag along, you’d buy cigarettes too.

The late-night cashier never cared that you’d go with about a liter of sake every single time, even the two of you were clearly underage. It was fun. It was typically a Friday event. You’d often egg Utahime on as she’d chug twice her (very high) tolerance in either sake or beer. She’d usually end up passed out on the floor, and you’d take a few embarrassing photos of her before dragging her off to bed. 

You wonder what you’d get at the convenience store today. Maybe you’d just drink one energy drink today, and play some video games before you had to go. 

You push open the door, and the bell jingles. You’re confused for a second. The store was completely dark, but the door was open. 

The door slams shut behind you.

You hear something moving in the darkness. Then, a bunch of eyes start staring down at you. On every single surface of the room. They all stare at you. You slowly take a step back, but your ankle is stuck. You reach for the door, and grab the handle, but whatever this curse is, it sticks your hand to the door, and then using some of its other hand-shaped things it pulls you to the back of the store, sticking you against the wall. You slam into one of the fridges, and glass falls all over you, some getting stuck in your hair. 

You try to reach into your pocket, seeing if you still brought at least an exacto knife, it starts wrapping its other several limbs around your mouth and other limbs until you were completely rendered immobile. 

It slowly starts twisting your neck in a very wrong way, while trying to choke you. 

You couldn’t really think about anything now, but to laugh. To die on the last day of school, the day before you might’ve had a little bit of freedom. Not even Gojo could probably save you this time. 

To even think about Gojo in a time like this. That was comedic to you in a way you couldn’t even describe.

You see those exact same black spots in your vision you had seen time and time before as you close your eyes. 

You claw at the spirit one more time but its hand falls off this time, and then another, and another, actually it stopped looking at you entirely. 

You saw a lock of white hair on the other side of the store. Standing at the entrance. The limbs start reaching for him one by one,  and he reaches out his arm. 

“Can’t live a second without almost dying, can’t you?” He sounded pissed. 

You quickly duck as you watch Gojo reach out his arm.

“Lapse: Blue.”

You watch as a bright blue light erupts from him, and you run to him as quickly as you could. He grabs onto your hand, and you watch the entire room explode into nothing but purple blood. You could feel the heat radiating off his hand, unlike your cold, almost blue fingers. His arms wrap around your back, and for a second all you could hear was your own heavy breathing, as well as his own. 

The two of you stay like that for a few seconds before your hand travels to his face, gently cupping it for a few seconds, before your entire arm falls slack, and it completely falls down. Gojo does nothing. He just grabs you tighter than before, and you feel the sense of exhaustion wash over you and your eyelids feel infinitely heavy.

-

You don’t know what hour it is of the night when you wake up again. All you knew that it was probably a very late hour in the night, and…

Who’s bed were you in? It wasn’t your own, that was for sure, and you weren’t in the infirmary. You look around for a second. It was definitely still a student’s dorm, you were sure of that much. 

Maybe it was a spare?

No, a spare dorm couldn’t be this nicely furnished. 

Whoever put you in here had taken great care to make sure you were somewhat comfortable at least. Awkwardly, you sit up and stare at the closet on the other side of the room.

It all clicks.

You’re in Gojo’s dorm. And he was nowhere to be seen, at least for now. You could probably leave, and go back to your own room then, if that was the case. It takes you one step forward, before you hear a door on the side of the room click, and he walks out in a baggy t-shirt and shorts. 

You froze like a deer in headlights. 

“Where are you going?” He asked.

It was the type of voice someone might’ve used on you before they caught you in trouble. He didn't move toward you yet; he just stared at you from the doorway, his damp hair messy and white against the dark fabric of his shirt.

“I’m going back to my room,” you said softly, “I’ve had enough today, Satoru, I’m going to sleep.”

He eyes you for what feels like forever.

“You were sleeping” he finally responds, taking a step towards you. And then another, and another until he was towering over you. “You were out for three hours after I carried you back.”

He grabs you, and pushes you onto the bed, before crawling onto the bed himself. “I patched you up,” he says, holding up your somewhat bandaged hand. “I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving you alone more than I already had today…” he muttered, “it’s my fault; I almost let you die today.”

You shook your head, “No Gojo, it isn’t. Like genuinely, I’m pretty sure it was my own fault for there on my own. I didn’t know there’d be a curse there-”

“Shhhhh” he puts a finger on your lips, “Don’t blame yourself. It’s not your fault.”

You pull off his hand, “It is,” you insisted, “I… I don’t know what I was thinking…”

Gojo smiles, and he grabs your head. “No… you don’t understand. You’re… I…”

You pull your legs closer to yourself. 

Without warning, Gojo’s lips crash onto your own. It’s aggressive, you gasp for a second, and he uses that as a reason to go deeper. You try your best to push him away, but it does little to nothing, he uses that as a reason to kiss you harder. 

Like you were all he had left. 

It feels like an eternity between that, and the time where he lets go. He lets you breathe, lets you catch your breath for a few moments, before he does it again, this time sloppier than the first. Like he was trying to devour you. 

Like he wanted to eat you alive, and make you part of him. 

He gently lowers you down on the bed, before letting go, and smiling a little. For a lack of better descriptors, he looked genuinely happy. Actually, no. Fuck that. He looked like a man that had finally been releasd from the chokehold of his own, unbearable love. His snow white hair hung a little bit in front of his eyes, and from what you could see, there was at least a little light in his eyes. You hadn’t seen that in a long time

“I’ve waited… I’ve waited so long to do this…” he whispers. “So….” he holds you closer to him. It’s gentle, at least a little. It was more like a nurse preparing you for a big needle to be stabbed in you. 

He bites your lower lip, almost drawing blood before he stops. You wince in pain, as he giggles a little, before he lowers himself a little, biting at your collarbone, which causes you to yelp. You could feel tears blurring your vision. He soothingly touches the place he bit, almost as an apology, if he wasn’t admiring it like he made a piece of art. 

“Satoru… please… don’t do thi-”

“Shh, shh it’s okay.” he coos, “I won’t hurt you.”

His hands travel down to the waistband of your pants, and he toys with it for a second, before he begins to take them off. 

You wrack a sob, watching as he slowly takes off your pants down from your waist, to your thighs, to your knees, like he was slowly unwrapping some type of present. 

He doesn’t bother fully taking them fully off before playing with the hem of your shirt. 

There’s a knock at the door, and then the door opens. Gojo quickly pulls the covers over you. 

You don’t know who’s standing in the doorway, but Gojo goes to talk to them.

-

You, yourself, don't know how you got out of Gojo’s room that day. You managed to duck under Gojo and sprint for your life. You locked your door, and packed only a change of clothes, your laptop, your phone, and the sniper. 

You would’ve packed the handgun had you known where it went but it had been missing since that one mission with Gojo. 

You quickly open the window, and climb outside. You never cried, but on that day you knew you were. 

You sprinted out of the school grounds, looking for the nearest bus line. You didn’t care where it’d take you, as long as it could get you the hell away from this school, and away from Gojo. 

As long as there was distance between the two of you, it would’ve been okay. By the time the first bus you saw came around, there were full-fledged tears streaming down your face. You couldn’t stop it. You couldn’t stop anything.

You paid for the fare, and walked straight to the back of the bus, and huddled yourself into a ball. You didn’t even care if people knew you were crying anymore. You knew you were making noise, and you hated it. 

You felt disgusting. You wanted to wash yourself in bleach until your skin fell off. 

The bus ride takes forever. 

You get off at the first stop that takes you to the metro, and eventually the train station. 

You don’t even check for where the first train goes, you don’t really care. As long as it took you away from Tokyo, you’d be happy.

#####

It takes you a second to realize you had fallen asleep on the floor.

It takes another second to realize that in your hand, there was an almost-empty bottle of Sake.

You were probably drinking nonstop all night, either straight from the bottle, or in an oversized glass, that you weren’t meant to drink alcohol in. 

You look in front of you. There was a normal drinking glass laying sideways a few centimeters away from the wall. 

That explains a lot.

You sigh, trying your best to pull yourself up, but failing to do so. You fell straight back onto the ground.

You really needed to stop drinking. You had always had a rather low alcohol tolerance, but you always ignored that. You liked getting a little drunk, it kept whatever memories you had about your past away from you. It was a great distraction, if anything. It made you feel nice. 

But not today, apparently. You had worked hard to separate the memories of your childhood away from you, and they were typically kept at bay. They were always kept at bay. Throughout the years, you had managed to force yourself to forget the first 19 or so years of your life, before you ran away. 

Your memory was already pretty sparse of your childhood days, anyways.

You wonder what triggered your memories to come back. You tried to wrack your brain of anything that could’ve possibly caused it, but you couldn’t.

Actually…

The other day you saw a student. A student with jet black hair, wearing a similar uniform you did back in high school. 

You’re immediately less sluggish than you were ten minutes ago. 

There must’ve been curses in this city, if that were the case. 

How could there be, though? It was impossible. You lived on the outskirts of a small city, that barely had any deaths at all.

Unless…

He was…

No.

No it couldn’t be. You stood up, picked up the glass sitting on the floor, and tossed it into the sink. You stared at the last drops of alcohol in the bottle. You shrugged and tossed it in the trash. 

Maybe you were imagining things, actually. Maybe the work stress was actually getting to you. Yeah.

That made more sense. 

It was probably just your imagination.

You needed to get more sleep, all your colleagues and friends said you’d looked terrible in the last few days. 

They were probably right. You didn’t even know why you felt like shit now. You hadn’t felt normal in a long time. You were always scared, actually come to think about it, you were always scared that he would’ve found you some day.

You always told yourself, that it was impossible, that it could’ve never happened. Especially with all the precautions you took. There wasn’t a trace of anything left.

But his words still haunt you to this day.

“I don’t care if it takes me 5 years, I don’t care if it takes me 10 years. In the end I will always find you.”

Your hand shakes a little, even thinking about those words now. He’d always been a man of his word. He swore that he’d never let you leave him.

You remember some people saying that you were fated to be together. 

You never believed in bullshit like fate. It was pointless to let something like natural order decide the outcome of your life.

But even so, it seemed strange for one man to be so obsessed with you. To the point of madness. To the point of breaking himself.

You sucked in a breath, and opened your phone to check the time.

4:43 AM.

You’d better get to sleep so you could at least get rid of all the alcohol in your system before work tomorrow. 

-

There was already someone in your apartment by the time you got home, the next day. 

You freeze, letting the door slam, and your keys hit the floor. You didn’t recognize him at all. He was tall, had white hair, and a blindfold on his eyes. It takes you a second. Actually, no you wish you didn’t recognize his voice at all. 

Black uniform. The striped buttons, and bandages on the eyes. It couldn’t have been. 

This can’t be real.

You desperately look outside the window, wondering if there was an escape route for this, but the door already clicked shut, and you probably couldn’t jump off the balcony.

You were stuck. Just like back then, just like you were before. With the guy you know would stop at absolutely 0 cost to have you to himself. 

It’s almost comedic how much he kept his promise up to.

You can’t tell wither the silence is awkward, or more painful the longer it drags on. 

You take a step back into the living room. He doesn’t follow suit.

Actually, he’s far different than he was back in high school He looked a lot more confident, and…

There was absolutely no way you could’ve put up a fight with him now. You could barely back then, but this…

Training 30 years probably wouldn't have been able to help you. 

“Do you remember me?”

There was no doubt in your mind that that was Satoru Gojo.

“You remember me, right?” 

A little more desperate than before. 

You look up and down at him, trying to figure out what to say, to get him out of your apartment, but nothing comes to mind. 

“Of course you do. You wouldn’t be so scared otherwise, wouldn’t you?”

“You poor thing,” he mockingly coos, “I thought you might’ve shouted at me, maybe insulted me, just like you did before but…”

He leans in closer.

“It hasn’t been the first time you killed somebody, has it?

The air was so heavy that you thought you might pass out. Your head’s spinning. You feel really dizzy, but you can’t let yourself pass out right now. Especially since the last time you were at any more mercy than you could’ve been for Gojo he had relished in it to his fullest. 

But. Never. Never, had you ever told anybody about your past. Definitely not to Gojo, that’s for sure. You never really got over Himoto’s death, it was something you had managed (much against your will) to forget over the years. 

“How…” you pause. “How did you know?”

Gojo smiles. It’s hollow. It’s a little eerie if you think about it. You keep staring right into his eyes, and you felt like they were piercing straight into you. You felt like you were being blinded too. Goddamn they were so bright, you forgot how bright they were. It didn’t help with your lightheadedness, or your panic. 

Speaking of which, how the FUCK did this guy get into my apartment. 

You try to shake everything and keep your ground.

“After you left…” Gojo said, quietly. “I dug up everything about you.” 

You take a step back. You knew for a fact you left no traces of yourself behind. You paid someone to get rid of your student information after you graduated. Every record the guy could find had been wiped. Absolutely no one knew about what happened to Himoto, except for you and that fucking guy. Him. Hell, you don’t remember his name. You hope he got ran over by a train in the same way he pushed her. It should’ve been you. Why did you just watch as he pushed her onto the railway? You could’ve pulled her back, done ANYTHING. 

You try to calm your breathing, or your shaking hand. “You couldn’t have I-”

“You deleted everything? There was no trace of you left?” Gojo laughs. “Yeah I admit, it took a lot of fucking work and years to track you down. You’re a difficult one, you know? I’m impressed. You’re definitely more work than you’re worth.” 

He steps forward. You take another step back, which forces you to fall onto the couch. “Gojo, cmon… please… just go….” 

He takes another step forward, and he’s towering over you. “The higher-ups have been trying to find you for years too. But I told myself, that I was going to find you before them. I’m never.” 

He leans closer, until his lips are touching your ear. “Never, ever, letting anyone touch you.”

This has to be a really shitty joke you think to yourself. Gojo leans back.

“Geto wouldn’t have had to die if he knew about your cursed technique yknow? You could’ve been with us the entire time. You really caught his interest, but you always avoided him too.”

“Yeah that’s because you were-” You cut yourself off. You guessed it probably wouldn’t have been easy for Gojo either, losing his best friend. “Nevermind.”

“Hm?” He stares at you. “Say it.”

You aggressively shake your head, and shrink further into the couch. You hoped it would swallow you whole. Maybe make you disappear. Maybe it’d get you out of this shitty situation. Who knows? You felt the exact same as the day when Gojo dumped that stupid fucking bucket of dirty mop water on you. You wish Geto didn’t leave for whatever reason he did. If he had stayed, Gojo surely wouldn’t have done the things that he did to you later. 

You wonder what became of Geto. He ignored you after what happened after returning on some stupid mission after a year. None of them were the same. Geto was cold, Gojo’s bullying to you got worse. Shoko seemed more distant. 

You remember asking Utahime what happened, but she didn’t exactly know herself. You assumed it was probably a bad mission or whatever they had been doing. For the most part you didn’t think much of it, it really didn’t matter to you either way. 

“It’s only you that’s responsible for all our suffering.” You feel something cold and metallic press against your head. You look up at Gojo. He’s pressing your handgun against your head. The one you forgot at your room.

No not forgot, it was your missing pistol. The one you couldn’t seem to find before leaving.

“Maybe I should kill you, hm? You had all these stupid little weapons laying around all the time. You never even bothered to train. It’s unfortunate that you of all people were given the gift you were.” He slides the gun down to the middle of your neck. You look at him with pleading eyes.

“Oh don’t look at me like that now. You know you held no value to your life back then too.” 

You hold the barrel with both hands trying to pry it off, but he only pushes it further into your neck.

“I’m going to give you two options.” He leans closer onto you until you’re face to face with each other. “You can… either come with me, we can be together… until death do us part or…”

“Maybe if you really hate me that much we’ll send you straight to the higher-ups. They want you too.”

“They want you to absorb all the cursed energy you can. If you want we can send you there. They’ll just turn you into a cursed energy sponge. You’ll be so overloaded with cursed energy, that you might as well just turn into a curse.”

He laughs. You’re scared. “What do you say hm? The choice is yours to make.”