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Nothing can touch me.
Nothing, nothing, fucking nothing-
The radio's on, but no one's really listening. Shoko's wrapped up in a blanket in the window sill, puffing on a cig she shouldn't have. While Getou's lying on the floor, staring at bundles of school work with that semi-detached look he's getting good at these days.
Job went badly.
Not deadly just…bad. Messy. Emotionally, spiritually, metaphysically, something. The kind of bad that sticks to your skin, like the aftertaste of a curse.
They should be decompressing. Using that valuable in between time to be teenagers, or some excuse for it. Instead, they're listening to Gojo talk himself into a state in his room, again.
Shoko's arm pokes out of her blanket, reaching out to turn the radio down just enough to hear the echo of Gojo's voice. “Hear that? Whack-job's talking to himself again.”
“Again.” Getou mirrors quietly. Barely there, amusement echoing through tiredness.
At first, it's just murmuring. Pacing footsteps. Nothing new, really. Gojo never shuts up, even when no one's around to listen. They've gotten used to it by now. But then-
“It got in my blind spot!”
A pause. The pacing stops, then resumes, then stops.
“No. No. That's not right. I don't have a blind spot. I can't have a blind spot.”
Getou glances at Shoko with a look that says: 'if you laugh, I'll laugh.'
“I'm Satoru fucking Gojo.”
Getou gives in and snorts, an ugly sound. “Man, this guy.”
Shoko takes a drag of her cig', unimpressed but, deep down, probably amused. “It's becoming a repeat feature.”
Getou goes back to pretending to do his coursework, Shoko to her cigarette, and they wait for it to pass. It doesn't.
“It touched me! It touched me. No, no, that's not-I didn't let it. I didn't let it.”
And that gets their attention. Because the voice is rising, but it's not angry, no, it's frantic, almost. Like he's spiralling into some private logistical loop, and every circuit ends with his own name like a punchline he can't escape but also can't believe.
Shoko flicks her cigarette out the window.
They sit in silence, now, the radio and the paperwork and the mission forgotten in favor of the private mess next door.
“They can't touch me, they can't. That's the-that's the rules. It's not fair! It's not fucking fair! Infinity, infinity, infinity-” Each spit of the word is punctuated by a soft thunk. Maybe it's his fist hitting the wall. Maybe not.
“What's the point!”
The room suddenly feels weird.
Getou sits up slowly. “Right, uh, wow, he's loosing it. Should we… I dunno, get a teacher?”
Shoko shrugs, curling tighter and tucking the blanket around herself despite the lack of chill in the air. “What are they gonna do? He's the strongest, sure, he's also batshit. It's his version of a tantrum. Not exactly a new development, is it?”
He stares at the closed door down the hall, listens to the punctuating thumps of something hitting the wall. Hums.
That's the thing, isn't it? A thing that's becoming way too often, way too ugly, with Gojo. It was funny. It's always funny. Gojo talking to himself, hyping himself up like a hack. He's a cracked mirror with a God complex and, yeah, that's funny. It's a game. It's background noise.
But now? Now it's different. It that slow split, like meat off a bone. The ugly noise of something breaking apart piece by piece. Not fast, not dramatic. And when that happens it stops being funny, and starts to slip that slow, horrible trek into something dangerously akin to sad. And 'sad' is a foreign word in Gojo's face.
They don't get a teacher.
Instead, Getou knocks. Gojo ignores him, which could mean everything and could mean nothing. That's the pain, isn't it? There's a fine line Gojo walks. The line between not knowing and maybe knowing and definitely knowing. He ignores, he says rude things, he's crass and strange and stiff and lively all at the same time. And there's always this bizarre, fifty-fifty coin flip between him being aware and purposeful and him being stunted and ignorant.
The muttering goes on for another twenty minutes, then abruptly cuts off all at once. Like a switch flipped.
Getou doesn't say anything when Gojo emerges an hour later, hair damp, eyes covered, twitchy and weird.
Of course, Gojo grins like nothing happened. Starts rambling about a sweet shop he saw on the way home, about the crack in his DS screen, about some prank he plans to pull. No one mentions the thin red marks on his arms, the little blotchy red on his forehead. Getou wants to, Shoko glares at him.
Later, when Shoko lies awake, another cig' lit, Getou passed out on the floor and Gojo raiding the communal fridge in a restless, rustling noise, she wonders if Gojo even realizes he's like that. Even realizes he's talking aloud when he gets like this. If he knows they can hear him, if he knows it freaks them out. Hell, if he even cares.
Maybe he does know. Maybe it's all a fun bit of amusement for him. The way he plays with people like he's not one. Maybe, just maybe, 'Satoru fucking Gojo' doesn't give a shit.
That thought is worse, somehow.