Chapter Text
Suguru is already regretting this.
“Hey, hey, are you even listening?”
“Yes,” he answers, voice scratchy, words dripping heavy with exhaustion. Every bit of him is leaden and aching. Afternoon sunlight beats down too-warm on his black uniform, and the messy mane of his loose hair traps heat around his neck. “The stairs, right?”
Satoru pouts. “That is not all I said!”
There’s a headache pulsing behind Suguru’s eyes and through his temple. He shouldn’t be here, really, at the bottom of Jujutsu Tech’s ridiculously long staircase up the mountainside. He should be in his room, sleeping off his fatigue, but Satoru…
“Let’s just get it over with,” Suguru sighs.
Satoru draws up and straightens, offended. “Be more enthusiastic! Teleportation is super cool! And this is gonna be the first time I ever do it with another person! You’re gonna be the first person!”
Satoru has repeated this several times already. Along with a bunch of jargon that Suguru hasn’t understood at all, because Satoru is a genius in this, so scarily intelligent that he could beat every leading professional in math and physics, for all that it’s often overshadowed by his atrocious manners and stupidity with people.
“Enthusiastic noises,” Suguru deadpans.
“You suck.”
“Just do it, dumbass.”
“You’re so mean to me,” Satoru whines, “I’m going on another mission tomorrow, y’know! And I haven’t seen you in like, a week.”
Yeah, that’s the only reason Suguru allowed himself to be dragged here in the first place. He crashed on his bed at nine in the morning, freshly back from a mission, and Satoru barged in at noon with a loud Suguru! In the past—(before the Star Plasma Vessel mission, when Suguru still knew himself)—Suguru would have groaned at Satoru to shut up and pulled him down onto the mattress. He would have wrapped his arms around him, and nestled his sleep fogged head into Satoru’s hair, and they would have stayed there for an hour, maybe two.
Today, he reached out, stopped halfway in fear of meeting Satoru’s limitless, and slipped out of bed instead.
It’s all the fault of those fucking monkeys—
“It’s been four days.”
“Same difference!”
“Satoru if you don’t hurry up I’m actually gonna leave.”
Satoru lifts his opaque sunglasses for the sole purpose of directing Suguru a very slow, pointed eyeroll. “You’re so lame,” he says, then sticks his hand out impatiently. Suguru stares. Satoru wiggles his fingers. “C’mon.”
“...What?”
“Take my hand, idiot.”
“Oh,” Suguru says, and right, that makes sense. Of course Satoru has to be touching him. But when he reaches out, it’s still sort of—startling when their hands press together, palms meeting, fingers intertwining. Satoru’s skin is cold; somehow he forgot this. They don’t touch often, anymore. “Okay.”
“We’re gonna warp to the top of that whole ass staircase,” Satoru promises, “and you’re gonna be so impressed.”
“Mhmm,” he says, “sure.”
Satoru’s grip tightens, just a little, and curse energy curls over Suguru’s arm, raising goosebumps in its wake. Satoru’s energy is always cold and sharp, tasting like iced cucumber water when Suguru breathes in. A hint of mint. Something else, too: strawberry-sweet and rotten. All curse energy is a little rotten.
Something tugs and—
The world blinks: too much, and then nothing at all. Suguru almost stumbles, but there’s nothing to stand on. The universe becomes a void and his only anchor is Satoru. Nails dig into Suguru’s skin, hard and not letting go, drawing pinpricks of pain, and—
slowly, then all at once, the world slots back into place.
Suguru falls back into his skin, curling his toes in his shoes. Breeze brushes against the strands of his hair, at the hems of his crumpled uniform. His head spins with vertigo, and he blinks the lingering spots of inky darkness from his vision, and squints.
What the hell.
They’re in the exact same place as before. At the bottom of that stupid fucking staircase, stone steps and orange torii gates extending far into the mountains ahead of them. Satoru…
failed?
A bubble of what might be relief releases in Suguru’s chest, and the sigh he breathes out is a gentle, quiet thing. His hand slips from Satoru’s and returns to his side, sticking casually in his pocket.
I haven’t seen you fail a technique so lamely in a year, he turns around to say, joke shaping light and amused and teasing in his mouth, I didn’t know you still could.
The words die on his tongue.
Satoru is standing there, almost limp on his feet. His glasses have slipped down the bridge of his nose and in their wake, his eyes are wide and unfocused. Glassy? The whole expression is just—not there.
A sharp line of raw fear runs from Suguru’s throat down to his abdomen, cold and helpless.
(The feeling is not entirely unknown. It’s the same feeling he got when Riko’s skull splattered the ground, the same as when he found Satoru’s blood pooled on the stone, the same as when he realized, for the first real time, that this cycle of grief will never end.)
“Satoru?”
Satoru’s head jerks, pupils focusing on Suguru. His mouth falls open a little, then carves into a wide grin. His eyes glint before he shoves his glasses back into place and says: “Holy shit.”
“...Satoru?”
“Holy shit,” Satoru repeats, twisting towards the staircase like he’s never seen it before. “Dude.”
“I—” Suguru steps back, uncertain and lost, “what?”
“There’s this theory in quantum mechanics,” says Satoru, excitedly, “you know, the one about split timelines? MWI shit? Everett? I thought it was time dilation for a second—in which case, wow, yeah I would’ve actually fucked up—but that’s definitely not what just happened. I think—I can’t tell if it’s a split or if it’s been here all along though? Like, I saw it, but—”
“Satoru,” Suguru interrupts, “what the fuck are you talking about.”
“Oh,” Satoru says, “right. You didn’t see.”
So this is that kind of thing.
“Obviously.”
“Okay well basically,” Satoru stops, rolls his shoulder blades. “Here wait, let’s talk on the way.”
The way where, Suguru is going to ask, but Satoru is already running up the steps two at a time. Seriously? Suguru bites a complaint back and follows, every bit of him protesting the rapid movement. All he wants to do it lay himself over the steps and stare at the clear blue sky through the torii gates.
The whole way up, Satoru is a rush of words and bubbling excitement. College-level concepts are thrown around like candy, mixed with principals that Suguru should know—would know, if he went to a normal high school—but doesn’t. Jujutsu Tech is a school that only really prepares its students for one thing: shamanism. The world of curses.
(It’s all so rotten, he has realized. So insidious. You can’t leave hell if you have no other options for employment. You have to stay, have to clean up the messes of nonshamans until you die like all your companions.)
(But do you have to stay? Tsukumo Yuki—)
Satoru skids to a stop when they reach the top, still grinning, not even out of breath. Suguru pulls to a stop beside him, sweat sticking fabric to his arms. He tucks stray hair behind his ears and wishes he had mustered the effort to put it into a bun earlier.
“Look,” Satoru says, “there!”
Suguru follows the line of his point to a bench some distance away where there are two people—shamans—chatting. A boy with soft pink hair and a girl with short orange hair. They’re wearing the college’s uniform. Student uniform. Suguru has never seen them in his whole life.
What the fuck.
“Hey!” Satoru waves, loud and obnoxious. “You guys!”
The pair of students startle, turning around and staring with open shock. Confusion. They look a little like Suguru feels.
“What the fuck,” says the girl, then turns to the boy. “That’s totally Gojō, right?”
“Uhhh,” says the boy. “I think so. He looks like him? Kind of?”
Satoru makes a low, offended noise. “Excuse you, I’m unmistakable!”
“Oh my God,” says the girl, “definitely him.” She whips out a shiny black device from the fold of her belt. “I’m calling Sensei. No way are we paid enough to deal with whatever this is.”
“We’re paid?” Asks the boy, blinking.
“Oh my God,” the girls repeats, tapping at the screen of her device. It lets out a familiar sort of ringing. Oh. That’s a phone? “Can that bastard pick up?”
The boy laughs awkwardly, and glances at Satoru, then at Suguru, then back to Satoru. Coughs. Suguru’s head spins.
“Sooo,” Satoru drawls, “what’s today’s date?”
“What’s today’s date?” The girl repeats in a high-pitch, mocking tone, giving them a sour eye. The phone stops ringing without picking up and she makes a low noise of frustration that promises murder.
Suguru sympathizes.
“September first,” the boy offers, helpfully.
Satoru rocks on the balls of his feet. “No I mean the year! What year is it?”
“Um,” says the boy, “twenty eighteen.”
A rush of molten static pops in Suguru’s skull. On habit, he raises a hand to his ear and toys with the lobe, rolling his piercing around between his fingertips. Breathe in, and out. Keep calm. Smile.
“Could you repeat that?”
The boy shifts on his feet. “The year is two thousand and eighteen? Common Era?”
Slowly, smile still plastic on his face, Suguru faces Satoru. This fucking dumbass. “Satoru,” he says, dangerous edge to his voice, “what did you do?”
Satoru makes some bastardization of a sound, half between a laugh and a cough. “...Whoops?”
Calm. Calm. Satoru was talking about—physics. Space. Time. Teleportation definitely involves space manipulation. And space is linked to time, somehow.
“I’m going to kill you.”
“It was an accident!”
“I,” Suguru grits, pinching two fingers together, “am this close to mass murder.” He’s joking. Probably.
“It was totally out of my control!” Satoru protests, “I told you! Quantum fluctuation! I literally couldn’t have known! Promise!”
“You—” Suguru breathes out, air shuddering in his lungs. He squeezes his eyes shut, drops his hand from his ear, and presses a thumb against the skin of his forehead. Twists. Satoru said quantum fluctuation is random, right? “Can we get back?”
Satoru nods eagerly. Oh thank god. “It’s—still there. Like a rip sort of? I mean, only I can really see it—and even then it’s kinda hard to find, but—”
“Isn’t this interesting,” says a voice, just a couple steps away, tinged with something odd and hard to place. Satoru stops abruptly, and Suguru whips around.
Satoru is his first thought. He’s wearing a sleek purple-black uniform with a wide collar. A pitch black blindfold cuts across his eyes, dividing his head cleanly between skin and bone-white hair. Satoru, undoubtedly, because Suguru would know his voice anywhere, would know the icy-cucumber rotten-strawberries of his curse energy anywhere, but this isn’t—
this isn’t Suguru’s Satoru.
There’s a tension in the stiff set of his shoulders, the tight edge of his drawl, the flat slant of his mouth. There’s caution in the way his fingers curl by his thigh, middle finger crossing over his index, then uncrossing.
“I called you,” the girl rages, “why didn’t you pick up!?”
“Anyone mind explaining what exactly is happening here?” the not-stranger continues, ignoring the girl, one hand pulling the blindfold down from his eyes to the base of his neck. “I’m afraid I’m not quite caught to speed.”
If there was any doubt that this was Satoru before, it’s gone with the blue glimmer of his eyes.
Which are fixed on Suguru. The prickle of their scrutiny runs down the skin of his face, his throat, down his shoulder and along the length of his right arm. He swallows, and the eyes languidly shift to Satoru, and then to the girl and boy, and then—
back to Suguru.
“If you don’t already know, then that rules out any same timeline theory!” Satoru—Suguru’s Satoru—happily announces, “ohh I guess that only really leaves parallel dimensions or split timeline? Pretty sure it’s split timeline. Like, I think it just broke.”
“Really,” future-Satoru says, tone falling just flat of lax amusement. His gaze shifts to the students.
The boy says: “Sorry we don’t know—um. They just appeared! From the stairs.”
“Did they.”
There’s a terrible feeling building in Suguru’s chest. It coils tightly, digging roots into his lungs and worming coldly up his throat. It’s been building ever since Satoru dragged him out of bed to show him another cool technique. They’re in the future, and it’s all too much, and his throat hurts and he wants to sleep and future-Satoru won’t stop looking at him.
The pink haired boy nods. “Sensei, they—”
“Sensei?” The terrible feelings in Suguru’s chest abruptly push aside in favor of bursting incredulity. “Seriously? Who allowed you to be a teacher?”
Satoru straightens up in shock, mouth falling open. “For real? You’re a teacher!?”
Satoru-from-the-future makes a low, offended noise. “I'm not just a teacher, I’m the best teacher.”
“No way,” says the girl, immediately, “you suck. Worst ever.”
Satoru is sill openly gaping. “I hate babysitting though!”
“Oh my god,” Suguru mutters, despairingly. “I feel so sorry for future-you’s students.”
Or, actually, maybe not. Maybe if Satoru—if he was a teacher… maybe there wouldn’t be students dying all the time. But that’s unfair, too, because Satoru is the strongest but he isn’t omnipotent and Nanami was wrong when he asked if they could just leave everything to Satoru. He doesn’t deserve that burden. That burden shouldn’t exist in the first place.
This time, Satoru makes that same offended noise. “I hate babysitting but I’d be great at it!”
Suguru can’t share that burden equally, not anymore, but maybe—maybe he can take it away entirely—
“No you wouldn’t.”
That gets a noise of offense from them both.
“I’d be better than Shōko!”
A laugh catches behind his teeth, and he swallows it. Instead, he leans back on his feet and conjures the most smug expression he can. “The fact that you’re using Shōko as a comparison speaks for itself.”
Satoru’s mouth opens, then snaps shut. His brows furrow just a little and his lips purse and it’s obvious that he’s realized there’s no winning that one. Even so: “If you’re gonna make fun of future me then make fun of that lame blindfold!”
Future-Satoru—who Suguru is going to dub Gojō—draws back and slips the blindfold up from his neck to his eyes. “I think it looks cool,” he sniffs.
“What! No way,” Satoru says. “It’s lameeee. Lame lame lame! Suguru, never allow me to wear anything that lame.”
“I think it’s cool too,” the pink haired boy offers.
“You think everything Sensei-related is cool,” the girl mutters, darkly. “For who-knows what reason.”
“Sensei is cool in general!”
Gojō smiles widely in delight and skips over to the pink haired boy. “See! This is why Yūji is my favorite student! You should be more like him, Nobara!”
“Fuck off and don’t call me by my first name.”
“Oh, that reminds me!” Gojō continues, blithe. “We haven’t done introductions! This,” he points to the boy, “is Itadori Yūji and she,” now the girl, “is Kugisaki Nobara! And they—”
“I’m Gojō Satoru,” Satoru grins, and tacks on: “obviously.”
“Getō Suguru,” Suguru offers, in turn, smiling small and thin, letting it crinkle his eyes. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, and we sincerely apologize for the awkward circumstances.”
Next to him, Satoru gags. “I’m not sorry—neither is he, by the way, he’s just pretending to care.”
“And,” Suguru adds, glaring at Satoru, “we’ll hopefully cease troubling you soon.”
“No way,” Satoru says, “nuh-uh. We are not leaving so soon.” He nudges Suguru’s shoe and, quieter: “I can’t replicate this kinda thing. It was totally one-off. When we leave, that’s it.”
“I don’t care,” Suguru hisses, angling his head towards him, “I want to—” go home, sleep, not have to deal with this shit. Gojō is looking at him again. “We shouldn’t be here, Satoru.”
“This is a split timeline,” Satoru clicks tongue, “it’s what would’ve been our future. We can… What if Shōko dies or something? Y’know, another death like Haibara’s. We could prevent it.”
Suguru physically recoils.
Acid jumps to the back of his tongue. Satoru was never even close with Haibara. They only talked in passing. But Suguru was close with him, and Satoru knows that. Fuck. He’s so callous.
But he’s also right; Suguru is being too emotional. It’s making him irrational.
“Asshole,” Suguru mutters without heat, “fine. Fine. We’ll stay.”
-
Afternoon stretches into evening. Gojō and the other two depart. Suguru and Satoru wander around, careful to stay out of view. They don’t talk, not really. Sometimes, Satoru points to a spot on the floor and goes hey look! That scratch is new! And Suguru squints and sees nothing. The effect of Suguru’s last throat lozenge runs out, and when he checks his pocket, he finds nothing; his tin is empty and he forgot to grab another one back in his room. Satoru isn’t carrying any either. He used to.
They visit the vending machines. Satoru gets three boxes of pocky and two candy bars that are gone within half an hour; Suguru gets peach flavored water that barely soothes the unbearable itch of his throat.
Itadori finds them there, saying that there’s dinner ready in an awkward but perfectly friendly way. He’s earnest—a bit like Haibara—like Haibara was.
Suguru slides from the bench to his feet. “How’d you know we were here?”
“Sensei told me!”
Of course Gojō has been keeping an eye on them this whole time. Of course.
“Alright,” he says, “lead the way.”
On the way back inside, the sun crests the horizon, sky blotting fleshy pink. His and Satoru’s shadows extend, black silhouettes cutting stark across gold-washed stone, and Suguru watches all the places they almost overlap, but don’t.
Itadori leads them to one of the college’s less visited, more hidden kitchens. Half of the small room is taken by the kitchen, and the other half by a wide kotatsu. Its wooden surface is set with bowls and utensils and loaded with food, and Itadori is excitedly greets Gojō, who’s halfway under the kotatsu, head and shoulders peaking out.
Suguru stares for a moment. “It’s barely even autumn.”
“That’s what I said,” Kugisaki complains. She’s in the process of untying a pink denim apron. “It totally ruins the summer mood!”
Gojō retires entirely beneath the kotatsu. “It’s cold this deep in the school’s underground.” His voice is muffled through the blanket.
“He’s right,” Satoru says, then pauses, brows furrowing. “Or is it ‘I’m right’? Whatever.” he walks over to the kotatsu, lifting up a corner of the blanket. “Scooch.”
There’s a small ruffling, and then Satoru also disappears entirely beneath the table.
Suguru lifts a thumb to his forehead and twists. Then sighs, drops his hand, walks over, and peaks the blanket up. A wave of heat flushes his hands. The heater is on. He resolutely ignores Satoru and Gojō when he reaches in, finds the controller, and switches it off. Satoru makes a noise of protest.
“Unlike you two,” Suguru blandly says, “the rest of us can get burned. Now get out, aren’t we supposed to be having dinner?”
He drops the blanket before either have a chance to respond. They slip out. Kugisaki and Itadori sit down. Satoru settles beside Suguru. Gojō sits across the table from them both. On the surface…
It’s a lot of food. A large pot of udon that takes center-stage, four trays of sushi, and a pot of tea. Kugisaki serves them all with enthusiasm. Her pride over the meal is obvious.
It is good, or at least, it looks good. In his bowl, the broth is thick amber, noodles firm and creamy white. Scallions and shiitake dot the oil-splattered surface, lazily bumping against three thick slices of golden-brown tofu. On his plate, the sushi...
“Ehhh?” Satoru says beside him, peering at his serving of sushi like a puzzle. “There’s no fish!”
“Obviously,” says Kugisaki, “I made dinner.”
Satoru peers at her with that same curious, dissecting gaze. Suguru suppresses the urge to say be polite, Satoru. “You don’t eat meat?”
“Oh,” Kugisaki blinks, “right, I forgot you two didn’t know. I don’t eat meat or—anything else from animals.”
Suguru anticipates Satoru’s reaction a split second before it happens, and cringes the moment he opens his mouth and exclaims that’s so weird! Suguru thinks of shoving him, but doesn't. Instead, he picks at the pickled ginger in the corner of his plate, absently listening to Kugisaki and Satoru’s loud conversation. Satoru asks why; Kugisaki says moral reasons; Satoru asks how the broth was made; Kugisaki says something about mushrooms and ginger and garlic...
It is weird, he thinks, no matter how rude Satoru was to state it. His technique has always ran on a food chain; a dominance hierarchy. Eat or be eaten, kill or be killed; the strong survive and the weak don’t.
Suguru could once say with complete certainty that one should deny this hierarchy. That the strong should protect the weak, that there’s a preciousness to things that can’t defend themselves. But perhaps there has always been an inherent ugliness to weakness. Absently, Suguru lifts a hand to his ear and thumbs the piercing. Lately—
just let them die already.
It’s natural, isn’t it? So isn’t this disgusting? This rotten cycle of exorcising curses caused by monkeys too weak to do it themselves, so ignorant that they don’t even know—
“What about Suguru? His technique is curse manipulation so he like, eats curses—” a hand lands briefly on Suguru’s shoulder. He jerks around. Satoru isn’t even looking at him, though, he’s still focused on Kugisaki. Something sour grows in the back of Suguru’s tongue. That’s not Satoru’s business to tell. “Is that uhh—vegan?”
Kugisaki blinks at the question, then turns around to give Gojō a look like why does past you ask such stupid questions. Before looking back at Satoru and Suguru. “I mean… Curses are fundamentally malevolent so it’s self defense, which falls under ‘as far as possible and practicable’. So, I guess?”
The topic drops just as quickly as it came. Suguru continues picking at his pickled ginger, voices buzzing static in his ears. Yesterday night he ate a semi special grade, and the memory of it clings to his tongue and his teeth. The food stays virtually untouched.
“Hey,” Satoru says, picking a noodle from his bowl. “You gonna eat any of that?”
Suguru finishes a long sip of tea. It slips down his throat easily, warm and soothing, leaving hints of cherry blossoms on the roof of his mouth. Lately, he’s been in the habit of drinking liquid until he can’t anymore, letting the fullness of his stomach trick his body into thinking it no longer needs to be fed.
“I ate this morning,” he lies.
Satoru frowns, and then, because apparently he’s not dropping this: “Curses aren’t breakfast.”
A headache throbs at Suguru’s temple. “No one actually eats breakfast anyway.”
“Hah!” Satoru draws up on himself smugly. “You admitted it!”
“So?”
“So,” Satoru says, drawing out the word and pushing Suguru’s bowl closer to him, “eat.”
The broth inside sloshes, a small droplet hitting Suguru’s knuckle. The noodles shift. His stomach churns. Under the blanket, his legs are too hot. Hair tickles his neck. “Not hungry.”
“Too bad!”
Across the table, Itadori has stopped talking and Gojō is watching them through his stupid blindfolded eyes.
“Fuck off.”
Satoru waves chopsticks in his face. “Nuh-uh.”
“I said no.”
“I’ll forcefeed you,” Satoru threatens, picking up a piece of sushi. It’s not serious, of course it’s not serious, probably, but—
“I—” Suguru twists a thumb on his forehead, focusing on the burn of pain. Breathes in, and out. Closes his eyes, opens them. And in a snap of borderline-unreasonable irritation: “Fine. Fine!”
He grabs the chopsticks right out of Satoru’s hands and stabs them into the noodles almost violently, lifting the whole bowl right to his face and drinking. He shovels the tofu and shiitake along, barely chewing before forcing it down. The food tries to choke in his throat, but fuck that, because this has nothing on swallowing a curse. (The texture of a rough rag and the approximate size of a tennis ball.) He downs the whole bowl in forty seconds flat, slamming it down and wiping a line of broth from his jaw.
Satoru gags. “Did you even chew? At all?”
The table is silent. “Does it matter?”
“Yes?”
Suguru doesn’t respond, instead reaching for the sushi. Satoru pulls the tray away. Suguru fixes him with a particularly venomous glare. He pushes it back. This time, Suguru eats at a normal pace. Itadori is looking at him with some mix of awe and dumbfoundment, and Kugisaki with something like offense, though, and embarrassment begins to burn on the skin of Suguru’s neck. Hot and sticky.
He has—he’s supposed to have more self control than that. Though that careful control has been fraying. In general.
The silence can’t last forever, though. Gojō breaks it and Itadori ends up talking about his studies. Which are… surprisingly basic, actually. Suspiciously so. Shamans born from nonshamans rarely reach their teenage years, so much so that Suguru has never met another. More common are windows. So it’s very unlikely, but even so—
“Itadori,” he says, slowly, “Were you born to a nonshaman family?”
Itadori laughs, almost nervously. “You could say that, yeah.”
Something blooms lightly in Suguru’s chest. Someone who understands? “I don’t have a problem with that,” he says, quickly, because the Jujutsu world is full of irrational prejudice, and some people don’t understand that blood doesn’t matter, only the individual themself.
“Yeah,” Satoru nods, “Suguru was born in a nonshaman family, too!”
“Ah-ah,” Gojō says, “not quite the same. You see...” and he reaches out a hand to pat Itadori’s hair when the other looks at him, a little wide-eyed, “…Yūji isn’t a shaman born to a nonshaman family, he’s more akin to a death painting than anything else.”
Oh. That light feeling in his chest falters.
“What?” Satoru pushes his glasses up his forehead, cocking his head at Itadori curiously. His face shifts into recognition. “Oh! You’re—”
“A vessel,” Gojō provides, odd note to his voice, almost anticipatory, “he was a relatively normal nonshaman up until a few months ago.”
The bloom in Suguru’s chest completely shrivels up and dies.
His hands go stiff. People don’t just—stop being nonshamans. You are either born with the ability to exorcise curses, or you are born leaking cursed energy all over the place, creating them. You are either born in the world of curses, or you are ignorant of it. For so long as Suguru can remember, it has always been: me and them, and then, when he entered the college: us and them. There is no crossing the chasm between these two positions. Suguru’s stomach churns.
“Really,” he hears himself say, feels his face shape into a smile, words dripping like wet concrete from his lips and tasting like tar, “did you.”
“Yeah. It’s all sort of weird,” says Itadori, “but I’ve been learning!”
Right. Before, he was in complete ignorance because he was(?)—was(!) a monkey. An oily feeling slips between Suguru’s lungs, around his ribs and up his spine. He wants the get up and walk out and vomit and never be in the same room as Itadori again. Which doesn’t even make sense because Itadori isn’t dripping curse energy, not anymore, and this—
This revulsion isn’t justified. He knows.
Suguru feels disgusting.
Tsukumo herself said that in a hypothetical world where nonshaman populations are continuously thinned, a sort of evolution could be triggered. Most would die, but some monkeys could surpass their unfortunate birth and become shamans; shed their weakness, their disgusting ignorance—
“I see,” Suguru says, perhaps a beat late, tone silvery. “It must have been a shock.”
Itadori makes a so-so motion. “It never sunk in, and by the time I realized it was supposed to ‘sink in’ it was just life? If that makes sense?”
Not really.
Satoru, for god knows what reason, laughs. “That’s hilarious!”
“It’d be funnier if people stop trying to kill him over it,” Nobara mutters into her sushi.
“Sometimes people see me more as a curse than anything else,” Itadori hastily explains. “There have been couple assassination attempts.”
Heat makes things melt and mix, and the line between curse and nonshaman has been blurring with the summer sun. This season has been particularly bad, curses blooming around every corner. Weeds are supposed to be pulled up by the root. Is there really so much of a difference between the root of the problem and the flower of it? They comprise one bleeding, shaman-killing whole.
But Itadori has split from the weed, and apparently only now does Jujutsu society condemn him. Isn’t that just ironic?
“Unsurprising,” Suguru says, voice still coming through a veil, raising a warm cup to his lips, “how did you become a vessel in the first place? And of what?”
“Sukuna,” Itadori answers, way too fucking casually, and Suguru almost chokes around his sip of tea, “By eating his finger.”
“You—” Suguru stops, stares. Sukuna. King of Curses Sukuna. Ryōmen Sukuna. There is only one Sukuna he could be referring to. But what Suguru really catches on is— “By eating his finger?”
Itadori grimaces. “Yeah.”
Cursed object. Cursed energy. Part of a curse. For most people, even for someone like Satoru, it would be a deadly poison. For normal people, it’s only at densities like that in which cursed energy becomes something with a taste. For Suguru—he’s tasted it enough, so many times, that his taste buds have grown a sensitivity, a knack for picking it out.
“And you could taste it?”
And you took it in? It became part of you? That negative energy, that essence of a curse? Did you feel it? Like bathing yourself in sewage? Like drinking vomit? Did it grate on the way down, harsh and rough?
“It was pretty gross,” says Itadori, as if he hasn’t just cracked Suguru’s world, just a little.
Suguru’s expression melts into something more natural, smile dropping a bit, eyes losing their exaggerated crinkle. “They always are.”
Itadori blinks, then realization dawns his face. “Oh! Sensei—or, um, younger-Sensei said you eat curses, right?”
“Mhmm,” hair slips past his ear, tickling along his neck, “I taste curse energy often enough that I can pick it out in normal sittings, too. I can differentiate signatures by taste.”
“I can’t do either of those!” Itadori’s eyes glitter. “You’re like a curse energy connoisseur!”
Suguru can’t help but laugh, smile flashing teeth and eyes briefly crinkling at the edges. “Sure.”
“I didn’t know that!” Satoru pouts. “No fair! What’s mine like?”
“More pleasant than most,” Suguru vaguely answers, and thinks: but only because it’s you. The taste of Satoru’s cursed energy has become a familiar, comforting thing. It’s milder, relatively, tempered with apathy. After the star plasma mission, its cold, minty edge was stronger than it is now. Now, it’s mostly the freeze-damaged cucumber (isolation? Loneliness?) that take forefront, undertoned with rotten-strawberry anger.
“I wonder if I’ll be able to taste curse energy when I eat more of Sukuna’s fingers,” Itadori muses.
Kugisaki wrinkles her nose. “Sounds gross. You don’t need to get weirder.”
That descends into bickering which Suguru stays out of. He finishes his sushi instead, rolling individual grains of rice on his tongue before popping the whole sushi slices in his mouth, mechanically crushing, and swallowing. It’s a better alternative than talking, and he already started eating, so. Suguru soaks in the too-hot warmth from under the kotatsu, shoulders relaxing, almost-forgotten exhaustion rolling down his spine. The conversation turns towards Gojō’s students, and—
Gojō claps his hands. “Speaking of students with unusual circumstances! I actually have a properly nonshaman student.”
Suguru’s chopsticks break with a muffled snap, digging splinters into his palm.
“Seriously?” Satoru leans forward. “How?”
“A Zen’in reject,” Gojō answers, smile carved on his face, “she can’t use her minuscule cursed energy, but she’s very talented with cursed tools.”
Breath catches in Suguru’s lungs, and he forces down something ugly. A nonshaman? Really? At the college? As a student? It sounds like a bad joke. He drops his broken chopsticks and draws a thumb to his forehead, closing his eyes.
(It’s wrong to burden others; if your existence is a burden, do you have the right to exist?)
All their voices blur into one single line of noise buzzing through Suguru’s skull. Kugisaki gushing, Itadori’s hesitant voice, Satoru’s interested one, Gojō’s odd-tinted one. It feels like a bad joke, but it’s not. There’s really a monkey at the college as a student. But if she’s a student…
It doesn’t even make sense. Does she exorcise curses? It would be possible, using cursed tools. He grits his teeth and shifts his hand to his ear, digging nails sharply into his lobe. Nonshaman. Not monkey. Come on, Suguru. His stomach churns, and he drops his hand from his ear to his lap. Toes curling.
Whether she exorcises curses or not, she still causes them. But does that mean she’s dealing with her own messes? (It’d still be easier if she, and all her kind, just died—
stop.)
Acid climbs the back of his throat. The ache between his temples intensifies. If—
There’s a sudden wetness on his ear, accompanied by a sharp pain. Suguru yelps, jerking around, head knocking against something hard—
Satoru pulls back, expression perfectly innocent. His glasses are knocked out of place.
“Satoru.”
“...Yes?”
“Satoru,” Suguru repeats, numbly, “Satoru you just bit my ear.”
“You weren’t responding!”
Suguru resists the urge to reach up and touch the bitemark burning hotly on the shell of his ear. He doesn’t even look at the other people in the room, fixed solely on Satoru, who’s closer than he was before, the space between them only spanning the length of a finger.
“So you bit my ear.”
“Yes!”
Okay. If that’s how Satoru wants to play it then—
Suguru snaps his hand out, and Satoru barely has time for his eyes to widen before Suguru grabs his ear, yanks him close, and blows right into it. Satoru squeaks, a high pitched noise that catches on a laugh when he slaps Suguru’s hand away. The ear is left reddened.
“Not fair!”
“Not fair your face,” Suguru responds, like they’re first years again. Belatedly, he realizes: ah, I touched him.
He doesn’t have time to linger on the thought before Satoru is pressing over, hand pushing against Suguru’s face and grabbing for his ear. Suguru doesn’t let him. He grabs Satoru’s arm and tugs him forward, letting the other teen spill into his lap and trapping his arms between Suguru’s, both wrists held together in front. He leans forward, mouth beside Satoru’s red ear, and murmurs:
“You know better than to go hand-to-hand with me, dumbass.”
“Fuck off,” Satoru tells him, but he’s leaning into Suguru’s chest. For real. No infinity. Suguru can’t even—can’t even remember the last time they’ve been so close.
He opens his mouth to respond with something—a tease, maybe, or a joke, but—
“Are you two dating?”
Both Suguru and Satoru stiffen.
Kugisaki leans across the table, eyes glinting and curious, hint of a smile on her lips. Itadori matches her. Gojō’s lips are pressed into a thin, white line.
Suguru breathes out. “No, we—”
“Why?” Under the table’s edge, hidden from everyone but his and Suguru’s view, Satoru’s fingers flex. Suguru resists the urge to fiddle with his piercing, and instead steels himself, slipping into routine; draws back, straightening himself and fixing Satoru’s glasses back into place. “Would you have a problem with it?” Satoru’s smile is too-sharp, showing teeth; challenging. “’Cause if you would, then yeah, we’re definitely dating.”
Kugisaki blinks at them, then blurts: “I have a girlfriend.”
Suguru lets out a sigh he didn’t know he was holding. Kugisaki reddens. Satoru’s mean smile becomes a grin. Itadori laughs a little. Gojō snickers.
“To answer your question,” Suguru says, “no, we aren’t. We’ve been mistaken as a couple plenty of times before, but we’re best friends.”
Suguru doesn’t keep track of the conversation after that, and it drifts in another direction. Instead, he savors the feeling of Satoru so close, and nudges him away. He twists his head around, beginnings of a scowl on his face. Suguru pushes him again, gently.
“C’mon,” he says, “back to your own space, big baby.”
Satoru sticks out his tongue and presses harder into Suguru’s form. “You’re so mean.”
He makes a low noise that’s more air than laughter. “Sure.”
“Seriously! Cold and mean.”
This is—right, Suguru realizes. This is the longest that they’ve been together in perhaps two months. Three? They’re never sent on missions together, and their offtime doesn’t always line up, and even when it does, sometimes Suguru just spends it crashing, so—
“...Okay,” he says, quietly, shifting to accommodate Satoru better.
“Hmph.” Satoru’s form sinks into his. “Good.”
Exhaustion pulls Suguru’s eyes shut and he leans his head into the crook of Satoru’s neck, the other teen’s hair brushing against the skin of his face, tickling at the edge of his eye. Satoru’s pulse beats, warm and hummingbird-light against Suguru’s ear where it’s pressed against Satoru’s skin.
“I missed you,” Satoru mutters, quiet and floaty like the edges of a dream, and for a moment, that’s what Suguru thinks it is.
Suguru tries to pry his heavy lids apart, but doesn’t quite succeed. Tiredness is hitting him all at once. Instead, he presses further into Satoru’s neck, opens his mouth, and musters the energy to mumble: “I missed you too.”
They don’t say anything after that. Suguru falls asleep to a litany of blurred voices and the lingering taste of cherry blossom tea.