𑣲nicca.ᐟ

Classification: Special Grade Hazard (Satoru Gojo x Reader x Suguru Geto )

How (NOT) to Ask Someone Out (Satoru Gojo x Reader )

Growing up in a small, rural town tucked so far away from the rest of the world that it might as well not exist wasn’t easy, especially when you didn’t fit in. For as long as you could remember, there was always one thing people saw first, one thing they reduced you to before they even learned your name. An omega.

In a place like your hometown, being an omega wasn’t just a secondary trait. It was a sentence. People assumed you were a slave to your most primal instincts, incapable of reason, restraint or ambition. Someone to be pitied at best, controlled at worst.

Your hometown was peculiar—insular would have been the kinder word. Almost the entire population consisted of betas. Your parents were betas. Your relatives. Your teachers. Your classmates. Even the elders who sat outside the single convenience store every afternoon, watching the world pass by at a glacial pace. And then there was you. The first non-beta born in years, both in your family and in your town.

You grew up surrounded by people who didn’t understand you and never tried to. In a place like that, difference wasn’t something to be explored—it was something to be corrected. Or erased, since the first option clearly wasn’t possible. You learned early to keep your head down, to swallow your instincts, to make yourself smaller than you already felt.

So when you finally left that wretched town behind, you thought—no, you believed—things would change. Kyoto was supposed to be different. For a while, it was.

For the first time in your life, you weren’t alone. You were surrounded by Jujutsu sorcerers—most of whom were omegas like you—people who understood what it meant to be born different. People who didn’t look at you like you were a ticking time bomb of pheromones and weakness.

You made friends. Real ones. You stopped shrinking when people entered rooms. Stopped anticipating judgement before it arrived. You laughed more than you ever had. Hell, you even slept better.

For two whole years, you were happy. You let yourself believe the past was behind you, and that was your mistake. Because all it took was one week—not even a full one—in Tokyo for everything to collapse.

It was stupid to think Tokyo would be like Kyoto. You knew better. You hadn’t gone in with high expectations. You had already accepted that you’d be near the bottom of the food chain. But you thought—at the very least—you would still be seen as a sorcerer, not reduced to just an omega.

What happened on Friday shattered that illusion completely.

You didn’t remember the trip back to school. The ride blurred, the city lights smearing into meaningless streaks. You remembered talking to Yaga, though—remembered the lie forming in your mouth almost effortlessly, words stacking on top of each other before you could second-guess yourself.

You could have told the truth.

There were rules. Regulations. Protocols that explicitly forbade the kind of inappropriate behaviour Gojo had displayed. But you knew—you just knew—that it wouldn’t matter. Gojo Satoru always slipped through consequences like smoke. You had heard enough gossip to know that rules didn’t really apply to someone like him. He would laugh it off, twist the narrative, make it sound like a misunderstanding or gaslight everyone into believing you were lying and that nothing like that had even happened.

Also, you were scared to come clean to Yaga, because he would, of course, ask why you had put your barrier down in the first place—the decision that led to the whole mess.

You didn’t want to explain how the curses overwhelmed you. How your vision tunnelled, how your lungs burned, how for a terrifying moment you genuinely thought you were going to die. You didn’t want to look weak. Incapable. Especially when it was supposed to be an easy mission.

So you lied.

Friday ended with you locked inside your room. You didn’t go to dinner. You didn’t answer knocks. You didn’t even turn on the lights. You curled in bed like a wounded animal, hoping that if you stayed still long enough, the earth would open up and swallow you whole.

Saturday was worse.

You stayed buried beneath your blankets, replaying everything on a relentless loop. At first, the sadness was suffocating. Then came the shame. Then the self-loathing.

Why did you push yourself? Why didn’t you retreat? Why did you drop the barrier?

Eventually, the sadness burned itself out and left only anger in its place—that anger had a name. Gojo Satoru.

The curses weren’t his fault, but everything that came after was. He cornered you in the hallway like some hormonal fourteen-year-old alpha who’d never encountered an omega before, not a grown man with power that could level cities. He invaded your space. Your senses. Your autonomy.

That realisation was still rolling around in your head when you heard a knock at your door.

Yesterday, Ieiri had knocked five times, asking if you wanted to go outside with her to smoke. She had seen you on Friday—seen you rush past her without even looking up. You knew that she was worried. That she knew something was wrong. Still, last night, you either pretended not to hear her knocking or mumbled excuses through the door.

One thing you had quickly grown to appreciate about Ieiri—despite how little time you’d known her—was that she didn’t pry. She was observant, perceptive, sharp as a scalpel, but she let you choose when to bleed.

You pulled yourself out of bed slowly, threw on an oversized hoodie and forced your feet into sneakers before opening the door, before you could talk yourself out of it.

✧ ✧ ✧

Outside, the air was sharp in that early-morning way—cool enough to bite at your lungs. Ieiri lit her cigarette, the flame flickered briefly in the wind before dying back into a steady ember, casting a faint orange glow over her fingers.

She handed you the lighter.

“How’s your weekend so far?” you asked, tapping your cigarette lightly. Ash loosened at the tip and drifted down like grey snow, dissolving before it could touch the ground.

Ieiri exhaled a slow stream of smoke, watching it curl into the air.

“Decent,” she said, shoulders lifting in a small shrug. “Yours?”

It was such a simple question.

For a moment, you just stared at the cigarette between your fingers, watching the ember pulse faintly like a heartbeat. Your throat tightened—not from smoke, but from everything you had been holding in.

You could have left it there. Kept it light. Casual. You could have lied.

You didn't.

“Shit,” you said finally.

Ieiri glanced at you sideways.

You took a drag, slow and grounding, like you were pulling the words up from somewhere deep in your chest. “The mission was… worse than I thought. The amount of ugly curses I had to exorcise was almost too much.”

You paused and hesitated because there was a line you were about to step over.; the smoke left your mouth in a shaky exhale.

Ieiri was friends with them. With him. Despite how often she acted annoyed with Gojo, you knew she cared. You didn’t want to lose the first friend you’d made here because you insulted someone she’d known longer. A small, ridiculously minuscule part of you thought she might side with him, try to excuse his behaviour.

“And…” you decided to continue, gaze fixed on the ground, “Gojo finally proved he’s really got a few loose screws rattling around in that empty head of his.”

Ieiri let out a quiet sound—half laugh, half sigh—as she flicked ash away from her cigarette.

“Oh?” she said dryly. “Only just noticing that now?”

You scanned her face for any sign that you should stop talking. There was none.

Without going into details—or mentioning the promise you made to Yaga—you told her about the fight, and how you had to drop your barrier because you wanted to wrap it up faster. You explained that dividing your cursed energy between combat and protection was slowing you down.

“I mean, it was like, what—a minute?” you said, blowing out the smoke and shaking your head. “A few at most. . .before I turned around and he was there, standing, sniffing at me like some feral dog.”

Ieiri didn’t interrupt.

“And Geto tried to pull him back,” you continued, “but he wouldn’t move. Not until I put the barrier back up.”

That made Ieiri’s expression shift. Her brows drew together, fingers tightening around her cigarette.

“That’s…” she started, then exhaled through her nose, rubbing her temple like she was trying not to develop a headache on your behalf. “You should’ve stabbed him with those pretty daggers of yours. Repeatedly. Five times, minimum.”

You laughed, even if it was brittle, but you didn’t tell her the rest of the truth—that you indeed had a dagger in your hand and could have done justthat, that your instincts betrayed you, that your body froze, overridden by something primal and humiliating, forcing you into submission while your mind screamed no.

“I should have.”

✧ ✧ ✧

Later that day, Ieiri headed out to the city. She asked if you wanted to come with her. You didn’t even need to think before declining. The words left your mouth flat and tired, and she didn’t push.

The silence that settled when you were left alone in the common room didn’t bring the relief you’d hoped for. Instead, it brought another flood of thoughts.

The anger was still there, simmering just beneath your skin, flaring every time your thoughts circled back to Gojo-fucking-Satoru. You hated how easily he occupied your mind, how your imagination indulged in violent little fantasies where his Infinity failed and your blade didn’t stop at skin.

Not that it was possible.

But, hey—a girl can dream, right?

The sun was high when you finally dragged yourself outside again, the afternoon heat pressing down as you made your way to the track. You started running without a plan—just laps, one after another—your breath turning ragged, sweat stinging your eyes.

You didn’t stop until the anger dulled enough to be replaced by burning lungs and screaming muscles.

When that still wasn’t enough to calm the storm in your mind, you dropped to the grass and worked through exercises until your limbs trembled.

Still not enough.

You wanted to break something. Crush it. Reduce it to splinters. So you settled on the next best—and more productive—activity: throwing your daggers. It wasn’t like you needed to practice your aim, but you’d be lying if you said it wasn’t satisfying to mess around with them and watch each clean target you picked get hit.

You wandered back inside to grab a drink and your cursed tools.

You hadn’t seen Geto or Gojo since Friday. At first, you’d assumed it was because you’d been hiding, but today, even after being out and moving around, neither of them had appeared. You suspected they were avoiding you.

Of course, that newfound freedom of solitude didn’t last long. You’d been a fool to think you could be that lucky and avoid them until Monday.

You were back out in the field, sitting on the grass, idly twirling one of the daggers between your fingers that you fetched from your room, when something white flashed at the edge of your vision.

Your stomach tightened.

You didn’t turn your head.

You didn’t move.

For a foolish, fleeting second, you hoped that if you ignored Gojo hard enough, he’d leave. He didn’t. In fact, your blatant refusal to acknowledge him seemed to encourage him.

“Stop,” you growled before his shadow could fully fall over you.

You didn’t stand. You just tilted your head up enough to glare at him, eyes sharp, body tense. You’d thought that when you saw him again, fear would take over—that you’d bolt before he even opened his mouth. But there was no panic prickling at your skin, so you didn’t bother fleeing. You refused to give him the satisfaction of watching you run away again.

“Someone’s feisty today,” Gojo drawled, grinning.

“Go bother someone else.”

“But I like bothering youuu,” he pouted, dropping onto the grass a few feet away—thankfully keeping his distance. “Geto’s busy. Even Shoko vanished somewhere.”

“I’m serious, Gojo,” you snapped, fingers tightening around the dagger until the hilt pressed into your palm.. “I’m not in the mood.”

“Are you seriously still mad?” he sighed, tilting his head. The grin faded, replaced by something dangerously casual.

You stared at him, incredulous.

“Are you seriously asking me that?”

He groaned, rubbing his temples like you were the unreasonable one. “It’s not like I marked you or anything.”

Something hot and vicious flared in your chest.

“So because you only shoved your ugly face into my neck and—how gracious of you by the way—didn’t mark me, I’m supposed to just… what? Let it go?”

Your voice rose despite yourself. You were rambling—you knew it. The irritation bled out of your pores, held back only by the barrier you instinctively threw up the moment he’d approached.

"Ummm, yes?"

Your lips parted, then closed. This conversation was going nowhere. You were being stupid for even entertaining it—him—when he was obviously not going to apologize, or even explain himself, or offer some pathetic excuse.

Ieiri’s suggestion suddenly came back to you, and without thinking, you flicked your wrist. The dagger flew, aimed straight between his eyebrows.

You’d seen this play out a hundred times—pens, soda cans, books—everything stopping midair before ever reaching him. You didn’t expect it to hit, and it didn’t. Infinity caught the blade, suspending it inches from his forehead.

It would’ve been a clean hit.

“Like I said,” Gojo said lightly, plucking it from the air like it was nothing more than a floating leaf, “feisty.”

He didn’t look mad or offended at your attempt to kill him. If anything, he looked… entertained. Delighted, almost.

Then Gojo's expression shifted. He tilted his head and tossed the dagger into the air. It spun lazily before he caught it between two fingers—by the blade—and inhaled slowly.

That was when you realized what he was doing. Checking. Your barrier was up. Your scent was sealed away. If the smirk curling on his lips was anything to go by, you realised the little shit was about to throw the dagger right back at you.

Without thinking, you threw up another barrier—close to him—just as he let the dagger fly. The invisible wall made it bounce back, crashing into Gojo’s Infinity again before dropping into the grass.

His lips parted slightly in surprise before the smirk returned. But you’d had enough. You were done with his games. You wanted him to leave you alone—but it was obvious he wasn’t planning on doing that. So you left instead.

You gathered your silver daggers, not bothering to pick up the one that inevitably found its way back into Gojo’s hands, and stormed off.

✧ ✧ ✧

After a week in Tokyo, you learned something very important: Gojo Satoru and Geto Suguru were a package deal. Not figuratively. Literally. You hadn’t seen one without the other. Not once. They ate together, trained together, argued together, and loitered together. Where Gojo went, Geto followed and vice versa, like gravity itself had decided those two should orbit each other forever.

So of course—of course—which is why the moment you successfully escaped Gojo, you ran straight into Geto.

You didn’t even notice him at first. You were too busy storming back toward your room, eyes fixed on the ground, jaw clenched so tightly it ached. Under your breath, you muttered a string of insults about Gojo that were impressively creative—ones you fully intended to remember and deploy the next time you saw him.

You were so distracted that you walked straight into someone's firm chest.

“Woah—careful.”

Hands caught your shoulders before you could stumble back, retreating as soon as you regained your balance.

“Sorry,” you mumbled automatically, snapping out of your spiral.

You moved to pass him, intent on continuing your angry march, but Geto didn’t miss the flushed heat in your cheeks or the sharp edge still carved into your expression.

“Hey,” he said gently, forcing your attention back on him. “Are you okay?”

“No,” you blurted out without thinking, stopping short and turning back around. “I’m not—fucking Gojo—”

“What did he do—” Geto interrupted.

His posture shifted instantly. His shoulders squared, his back straightened, and his eyes flicked past you, scanning as if he expected Gojo to materialise the moment his name was spoken.

“Nothing,” you cut in quickly when you realised where his thoughts were heading. “Just—just being his usual annoying self.” You dragged a hand through your hair and let out a frustrated breath. “I know he’s your friend and all, but seriously, I can’t fucking stand him.”

The tension drained from Geto almost immediately. His shoulders relaxed, and a quiet chuckle slipped past his lips.

“You wouldn’t be the only one.”

Something in his tone—light, understanding, not defensive—loosened the knot in your chest just a little.

“Look… about Friday,” you started. “What you did—I just wanted to say thanks.”

He shook his head without hesitation, like you were silly for even thinking you had to say that. “You don’t need to.”

The quiet crept in. The silence not uncomfortable—just... still. Neither of you seemed in a hurry to leave. You shifted your weight, unsure of what to say next, while Geto watched you.

“I wanted to check up on you,” he admitted after a moment, scratching lightly at the back of his neck. His gaze flicked briefly away before returning to you. “After that.”

Your heart gave a small, unexpected hitch.

“But I figured you might appreciate the space,” he continued. “So I kept myself scarce. I’m… glad to see you’re alright.”

You almost laughed out loud. Alright wasn’t the word you would’ve used, but you didn’t correct him. Instead, you found yourself stuck on the fact that he’d thought about you at all. It left a strange, warm feeling in your chest you didn’t quite know what to do with.

He went on, complimenting you casually on how you’d handled the mission. Apparently, you’d exorcised more curses than he had, even though he’d been assigned two full floors to clear.

You blinked, genuinely surprised.

When you offhandedly—half joking, half grumbling—mentioned that maybe next time you should all scout the building first instead of splitting up, because it hadn’t felt exactly fair that you’d ended up doing most of the work—

(Not because you definitely pushed yourself too far.)

—Geto paused.

He studied you with a look that made your skin prickle slightly—eyes narrowing, head tilting just enough to suggest something had clicked into place. For a split second, it felt like he might say something important, something clearly on his mind, but then he just smiled, shaking his head as if to dismiss the thought he didn’t feel like sharing with you.

“Nah,” he said, the corners of his lips curling up. “Next time, we’ll just make Satoru do all the work for being a dick.”

That earned a genuine laugh from you, which made Geto's smile widen.

“Deal,” you said, even though a part of you hoped you never got assigned another mission with Gojo again.

If Sukuna were asked how he would describe his oh-so-lovely girlfriend, he’d say you were difficult to deal with—stubborn, mouthy, irritating. A pain in his ass.

The funny thing was that if someone asked you the same question about him, your answer would be nearly identical. In fact, more than once, when Sukuna had lazily mentioned he couldn’t believe it had taken him almost two months to get you to agree to a date, you’d look him dead in the eye and say:

“This relationship isn’t exactly rainbows and sunshine, you know. Neither are you.”

He would only snort and roll his eyes at that.

Still, there were things Sukuna liked about you—things he’d never admit out loud.

Like the fact that you didn’t take shit from anyone. Not coworkers, not strangers, and certainly not him. You didn’t bend yourself into something more agreeable, didn’t soften your opinions to spare feelings, didn’t smile when you were angry or pretend to agree when you didn’t.

However, the first thing he’d noticed about you—before you’d even properly spoken—was your ass. The curve of it in a pair of jeans that looked like they’d been designed by God himself, and the immediate, unhelpful thought that followed: how good you’d look bent over. Honestly, that alone was probably what made him approach you in the first place.

The second thing he learned, shortly after your brief introduction (which, in hindsight, barely counted as one), was that if something annoyed you, everyone knew about it. Most people learned that after one conversation and so did he, when you refused to entertain him for longer than three minutes.

A few months into the relationship—one he’d worked harder for than anything else in his life—Sukuna learned your warnings weren’t empty threats. When you said “don’t push me,” whether literally or metaphorically, you meant it. Unlike most people, you weren’t afraid of crossing lines.

You were perfectly willing to start a war over principle.

The first time he really understood that started with something stupid; something so small that absolutely should not have turned into a four-day argument.

At the time, you’d only been living together for about two weeks. The apartment still felt new—unpacked boxes shoved into corners, your books stacked on the floor because neither of you (mainly Sukuna, who had claimed the task) had bothered assembling the shelves. Half your clothes hung over chairs because putting them away required effort neither of you could be bothered to summon.

The day before, Sukuna had spent nearly twenty minutes talking about mochi.

Twenty. Entire. Minutes.

You hadn’t known a person could talk about mochi for that long. Apparently, they could, especially if that person was Sukuna.

“It was different,” he’d insisted, leaning against the kitchen counter.

“Different how?” you asked.

“It just was.”

“Very descriptive,” you said dryly.

His eye twitched, but he kept going anyway. “The texture was perfect.”

“Fascinating,” you said, mock-gasping.

You were enjoying this far too much: for someone who claimed not to like sweets, Sukuna seemed oddly passionate about this specific dessert. That thought slipped out before you could stop it.

“You know, I didn’t realize you cared this much about mochi.”

His expression darkened immediately. “I don’t.”

“You’ve been talking about it for twenty minutes.”

You only grinned when the silence followed. Five full minutes of it because Sukuna knew that if he kept talking, he’d only prove your point.

Naturally, you couldn’t leave it alone.

“So they probably weren’t even that good.”

The reaction was instant. “What?”

You fought back a laugh. “I mean, they’re just mochi.”

“They were not just mochi.”

“Oh?” You smiled, victorious.

Sukuna narrowed his eyes, realizing you were doing this on purpose. You burst out laughing. His expression went flat.

He pushed off the counter, walked over, pressed a firm kiss to your temple, and mumbled a dry, “Goodnight,” before disappearing into the bedroom.

The next day, you decided to do something nice. Partly because you loved him. Partly because annoying him only worked when balanced with the occasional act of peace.

So you decided to make the famous mochi.

How hard could it be? The answer turned out to be: very. The dough stuck to everything. You nearly threw the entire batch into the trash twice. But somehow, after hours of trial and error, you managed to make it anyway.

By the time evening arrived, you had a container of mochi sitting proudly on the kitchen counter.

“Finally!” you beamed when Sukuna walked through the front door.

His gym bag hung from one shoulder, sweatpants riding low on his hips. A black compression shirt clung to his chest and arms, darkened with sweat from training. His pink hair was a mess, sticking out in different directions like he’d run a hand through it a dozen times on the way home.

The second he saw you, you practically bounced to your feet. Sukuna shot you a tired look.

“Miss me that much?”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” The smile on your face completely ruined the insult.

He snorted and headed straight for the bedroom.

You rushed into the kitchen first, then followed him, slipping into the bathroom without thinking—where he was already halfway through pulling his shirt over his head. The sight caught you off guard. For a second, you just stood there, staring at the hard lines of his stomach before remembering why you were there in the first place.

“Look, ’Kuna.” You held out the container, excitement practically vibrating in your voice.

Sukuna glanced over his shoulder and then turned back to the sink.

Your smile faltered—just slightly. You waited.

Nothing.

No smirk. No teasing comment. Not even a proper look. Just a quiet grunt.

“…Well?”

“What?”

“What do you mean, ‘what’?” You frowned. “The mochi.”

His eyes flicked to the container. “Looks fine.”

Just fine? You’d spent the entire day wrestling with sticky rice dough and nearly losing your sanity to powdered starch, and all he had to say was looks fine?

The excitement in your chest dimmed. Still, you swallowed the frustration down. Maybe he was exhausted, maybe training had been rough. Maybe he just needed five minutes to turn back into your annoyingly difficult but perfect boyfriend that loved you very much and liked paying attention to you.

“Try one after your shower.”

“Mm.”

You forced yourself not to roll your eyes—you hated how his communication sometimes reduced to random sounds, grunts, and half-finished sighs.

“It’s the same kind you wouldn’t shut up about.”

That finally got his attention. For a moment, it looked like he might actually try one right there and then. However, instead he frowned, eyebrows knitting together.

“Tsk. Can’t eat those. Cutting calories.”

Something in your chest snapped. You didn’t argue—didn’t raise your voice. You didn’t even give him the satisfaction of reacting. You’d already given him a chance to fix it. He didn’t.

So you stayed quiet.

He, on the other hand, decided you were done talking and stepped into the shower like nothing had happened.

Five minutes later, the mochi—and the entire container you hadn’t bothered taking them out of—hit the bottom of the trash with a dull thud.

You didn’t speak to him for four days afterward.

The second time Sukuna realized just how far you were willing to go when someone pushed your buttons came about a month later. By then, he’d already learned a few things about you. He knew that when you got quiet, he should probably start apologizing. He knew that when you crossed your arms and tilted your head, he was seconds away from hearing an opinion he wasn’t going to enjoy.

The problem was that Sukuna rarely listened when people told him what to do. Especially when annoying them was significantly more entertaining.

It started innocently enough. You were making dinner. Sukuna was being useless, which, in fairness, wasn’t unusual.

You stood at the counter, chopping vegetables, while he leaned against the kitchen island, arms crossed over his chest, offering absolutely no assistance whatsoever.

“You’re cutting those uneven.”

“That one’s bigger than the others.”

“You should learn how to hold the knife better.”

You sighed, though it was clear you weren’t really mad. “Are you going to help, or are you going to stand there and criticize my cutting skills?”

“The second one.”

At first, the banter was pleasant. Easy. The kind of conversation that came from spending enough time around someone that silence never felt awkward. Then Sukuna spotted the bowl of freshly cut cucumber slices, and unfortunately for you, Sukuna possessed the emotional maturity of an overgrown child when he was bored.

A hand darted out. One slice disappeared.

Crunch.

You glanced over. He stared back innocently.

You narrowed your eyes, “Don’t.”

“What?”

“You know what.”

Another stolen slice, another crunch.

You pointed the knife at him. “Quit stealing.”

“No.” Sukuna smirked.

You exhaled slowly. Fine, whatever. You went back to chopping.

Thirty seconds later—crunch.

You turned your head to the side. Another cucumber slice was gone. You then moved your gaze to your boyfriend, who dared to grin at you like he’d done nothing wrong, like you hadn’t told him to stop already, several times.

You weren’t talking to him anymore, which should’ve been his first warning to quit. Instead, the smug bastard reached straight for the cutting board.

He only got away with it once more.

The next time his hand moved in, your head snapped toward him and the knife came down.

THUNK.

The blade embedded itself into the cutting board exactly where his fingertips had been less than a second earlier. He jerked his hand back instantly.

His red eyes flicked from the knife to his hand, then back to the knife. Slowly, then to you. He looked like he couldn’t believe you’d actually done it.

“…Are you insane?!”

You shrugged, “Told you to quit it.”

A lesser man wouldn’t have put up with you—not your temper, not your stubbornness, and certainly not your increasingly questionable methods of proving a point. Fortunately—or unfortunately—Sukuna wasn’t exactly normal either. If anything, he was just as bad. Maybe worse.

Like the time you gave him the silent treatment over something he considered completely insignificant. You considered it principle. He considered it stupid. The argument lasted all of ten minutes. Yet the aftermath lasted three days.

Normally, Sukuna would’ve waited you out. You were stubborn, but so was he. This time, though, he decided he was tired of being ignored. That should’ve worried you because whenever Sukuna got tired of something, he tended to fix it in the most ridiculous way possible.

It was late when he picked you up from a girls’ night out. You were still annoyed. Still refusing to speak to him. That didn’t stop you from getting into the car, though. After all, what else was a boyfriend you were actively ignoring supposed to be good for?

The first five minutes passed in silence.

The low hum of the engine filled the car. Streetlights flickered across the windows.

Sukuna drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. “Still mad?”

Not a word from you.

“That’s cute.”

You kept your gaze fixed out the window when he spoke again.

“You’re dragging this out.”

A quiet scoff was all he got in return.

He clicked his tongue. “Brat.”

Finally, you turned your head. Your eyes met his, sharp and unyielding. You held his gaze just long enough to make your point perfectly clear—you weren’t talking to him until he apologized properly. Then you looked away again.

The next time your eyes met, he didn’t look away.

The car kept moving. His hands stayed on the wheel. His foot remained on the gas. His eyes stayed entirely on you.

“I’m not looking away until you say something.”

Your gaze flicked briefly toward the windshield. The road ahead stretched dark and empty under scattered streetlights. Not another car in sight, but there was no way he was actually doing this.

He wasn’t that crazy. Right?

He had to be messing with you. Trying to provoke a reaction. Break your silence. You refused to give him the satisfaction. Instead, you shrugged and looked back at him, silently daring him to follow through.

Sukuna’s stare didn’t waver, not even slightly. The bastard looked genuinely unhinged at this point—you weren’t even sure he was blinking.

Ten seconds passed.

Your lips pressed together harder.

A muscle ticked in his jaw.

His foot pressed a little further down on the gas.

The engine hummed louder.

Out of the corner of your eye, you saw his knuckles tighten around the steering wheel, keeping the car perfectly straight despite his complete refusal to look away.

You knew he knew this road. He drove it practically every day. You also knew he’d have to look away eventually. Nobody was stupid enough to keep this up forever. Then again—this was Sukuna. Stupidity fueled by spite was practically his specialty.

You weren’t scared in the slightest. The alcohol still buzzing pleasantly in your system dulled anything resembling self-preservation. But your heartbeat picked up anyway. However, not from fear. But from that sharp, familiar spark that always appeared when the two of you refused to yield. When neither of you was willing to lose. When common sense quietly left the room and stubbornness took over.

It was ridiculous.

Childish.

Dangerous.

Your legs pressed together almost unconsciously, and you shifted—subtly at first, then more deliberately. Sukuna noticed immediately when you started rubbing your thighs. His gaze dipped before it snapped back to your face, his mouth curling into a slow, infuriating grin—canines just barely showing.

He knew. Knew you were seconds away from breaking, whether that meant saying something first or doing something else entirely.

The tension in the car snapped like a wire pulled too tight. You couldn’t take it anymore. The air in the car felt thick, pressing against your skin, sticking your clothes to you in a way that suddenly felt unbearable, making you want to rip them off.

“Pull over,” you said. “Now.”

Sukuna didn’t need to be told twice.

The car jerked off the road, tires crunching over gravel as he brought it to a stop beneath a dim streetlight. The engine stayed running.

Neither of you moved. Just looked at each other. His smirk widened—barely contained, almost dangerous in how entertained he looked.

That was it.

You moved first.

Unbuckling your seatbelt in one sharp motion, you climbed over the center console and settled into his lap. His hands came to your waist immediately, like he’d been waiting for you to do exactly that; a low exhale left him, more amused than anything, as if you’d just confirmed every assumption he had about you.

Your skirt rode up as you shifted, straddling his thighs properly now, and Sukuna’s hands slid down without hesitation. Palms dragging along your bare legs before returning up, fingers digging into the soft flesh of your ass, tightening there like he was anchoring you in place.

You grabbed the back of his hair and pulled just enough to tilt his head toward you.

He didn’t resist.

The kiss came fast—impatient, heated, all lingering frustration and unresolved argument. When you pulled back slightly, you were still close enough to feel his warm breath against your mouth.

“You still owe me an apology,” you murmured.

Sukuna huffed a quiet laugh.

Your lips traveled down the side of his neck, teeth lightly sinking into the spot just above his collarbone that you knew made him squirm. You felt it— the slight shift in his grip. The way his fingers flexed like he was deciding whether to pull you closer or hold you still.

“Oh, don’t worry, brat,” he said, voice low as you moved your hips, grinding yourself against the tight stretch of his jeans. “You’ll get it.”

Your relationship with Sukuna was a constant push and pull.

Bad decisions layered over worse ones, like neither of you had ever learned what consequences were or maybe you just didn’t care enough to stop, because deep down there wasn’t much, if anything, that could make either of you walk away. You were head over heels for him, and he wasn’t much better—a man obsessed, because he’d found someone who could actually keep up with him.

It wasn’t healthy. Not even close. Any reasonable person would’ve packed their bags and disappeared a long time ago from a relationship like this. But nothing about the two of you had ever been reasonable or normal.

Somehow, every messed-up moment only seemed to pull you tighter together, like something neither of you could outrun even if you tried. Even when your plans—or his—backfired.

Like the time you got annoyed that he kept using your expensive hair products, so you replaced them with black dye. And when he realized you’d basically dyed his hair without permission? He didn’t get mad, didn’t even look annoyed. If anything, he looked pleased.

He ran a hand through his now black hair, checked himself in the mirror, then glanced at you with that same sharp, knowing look. He didn’t need to call you out. You both already knew you were responsible for this.

“Looks good.”

And, admittedly, it did. He looked good, but you missed the pink. Badly enough that you even offered to book him a salon appointment to fix it after a week of getting jumpscared every time he walked through the front door.

You still hadn’t fully adjusted to black hair being attached to your boyfriend.

He didn’t take you up on your salon suggestion. Instead, the moment his pink roots started growing in, he just buzzed it all off.

When you saw him come home that night, you were genuinely shocked. You weren’t the type to dictate how your boyfriend should look, but still—you told him that if he shaved his hair off again, you’d shave your eyebrows.

It was meant to sound like a threat. You were pretty sure you wouldn’t look great without them.

Sukuna looked at you for a second, then said you’d look “batshit insane.”

After a pause, added:

“Definitely hot, though.”

It was not often that Gojo Satoru had time to be bored.

Japan, unfortunately for him, was a thriving breeding ground for the very problems he was tasked with eradicating—like a wound that never quite closed, always reopening in new and unpleasant ways.

Autumn was the worst of season with the most work. The air turned damp and heavy, saturated with a quiet that clung to skin and seeped into bone. Curses bloomed like mould in forgotten corners, thriving where sunlight refused to linger.

The higher-ups issued assignments without pause, stacking them like cursed talismans on an altar that never stopped growing, never granting him even a moment to simply breathe. Meetings he was forced to attend dragged on interminably, though Satoru usually contributed nothing more than long legs stretched lazily across the table, a tilt of his head, theatrical sighs, and ill-timed commentary that earned him synchronized glares from every direction. . .

Gojo Satoru was constantly moving—whether from one mission to the next, or simply pacing from one side of a room to the other because stillness felt like a cage he refused to sit inside. He was everywhere he was needed, and nowhere he was wanted at the same time.

And yet, sometimes, between all of it—between exorcisms that left invisible stains of cursed energy, between paperwork he absolutely did not read and reports he absolutely did not write—silence settled.

Not the peaceful kind. Never the peaceful kind. It was a dangerous silence, the sort that did not soothe but sharpened. Because when Satoru was bored, his mind did not rest. It wandered. It prowled. It found loose threads and pulled until something unraveled.

Boredom, however fleeting, was always the birthplace of his worst ideas—the kind that arrived dressed as brilliance, glittering and certain, only to detonate spectacularly the moment he chose to act on them.

Ever since Itadori Yuji had stuffed one of Sukuna’s shrivelled fingers down his throat as though it were an expired protein bar rather than an ancient cursed relic, and subsequently enrolled at Jujutsu High, Satoru had been stretched thin in ways even he could not entirely ignore—though he would have insisted otherwise if asked.

He was constantly searching for the remaining fingers of Ryomen Sukuna—those ugly little relics of something that should have stayed dead and forgotten—so they could eventually be served to Yuji as his final “meal” before execution. Or rather, he pretended to search for them with the kind of theatrical diligence the higher-ups adored. They loved the illusion of effort.

And Gojo Satoru was nothing if not a performer.

Between that grand performance and the reports he never bothered to write after missions, he was regularly dispatched to exorcise Grade 1 and Special Grade curses, as though he were some divine exterminator on call. A god with a schedule. A weapon with appointment slots.

More than once, he considered not going—not out of fear, never that—but because the routine was beginning to feel like chewing the same flavorless candy until even the memory of sweetness had vanished.

It was not as though the higher-ups could truly punish him. What were they going to do—fire him? Execute him? The thought almost made him laugh out loud.

Sometimes, he entertained the idea of skipping missions purely to see how creative their threats might become. Or better yet, how desperately inventive they would grow when forced to reel him back in.

But he always went.

Because if he did not—if he refused the heavier assignments, the more dangerous ones—then they would simply be redirected elsewhere. Students like Megumi or Yuji would be sent in his place. It was no secret that, due to the chronic shortage of sorcerers, assignments were often mismatched in difficulty.

While Satoru was fond of his hands-on philosophy—throwing students into the fire and trusting they would learn not to burn—he was not heartless. His students were brilliant. They had him as a teacher, after all. But even brilliance could choke on something too large to swallow.

So he accepted every mission without much protest.

And it was after one of those last-minute “urgent” assignments in the city—where a curse tore through an abandoned bar like rot through wood—that Gojo Satoru encountered someone he had never expected to see again.

✧ ✧ ✧

The curse died the way all of them did when Satoru decided he was finished with it. One moment it was there—this swollen, half-aware mass of rotting limbs and stitched-together mouths—and the next, it simply wasn’t.

Satoru stepped out of the abandoned bar, hands buried in his pockets, posture loose enough to suggest he had just finished a casual errand rather than erasing something born from human despair.

Fresh air replaced the stench of rot.

The city carried on as if nothing had happened. Cars murmured in the distance. A vending machine clunked somewhere down the block. A drunk laughed too loudly outside a convenience store with a dying neon sign. Ordinary sounds, stitched together into an ordinary world that had no idea how close it had just come to being altered.

Satoru glanced around. He recognized this place. Too well, in fact. Megumi and Tsumiki used to live nearby. A lifetime ago, though it had not been nearly that long.

He checked the time. One hour before he was supposed to meet Megumi and Yuji to pick up their new classmate. Plenty of time.

Nostalgia tugged at him. Boredom followed immediately after. Before he could properly dismiss either, his feet moved on their own, not toward the station or back to the school, butt down streets he had not walked in years.

The city grew quieter here. Laundry swayed from balconies. Somewhere nearby, dinner simmered—garlic and oil drifting through open windows. Cicadas hummed lazily.

And then when he turned the corner, he saw you, sitting on what barely qualified as a balcony, more narrow ledge than anything else. The railing pressed lightly against your shoulder, chipped paint flaking under your sleeve. One leg tucked beneath you, the other angled loosely, a cup of tea balanced in your hand. Steam rose in fragile spirals, dissolving into the afternoon light.

Your other hand held your phone.

Your brows were drawn together. Your lip was caught between your teeth. Your eyes narrowed at the screen.

Sunlight spilled over you, softening everything it touched. For a moment, Satoru felt like he had wandered into a romance film that was trying a little too hard. All that was missing was slow piano music and a dramatic gust of wind that existed purely for symbolism.

You looked different. Older. Still beautiful, though.

You did not notice him, which was not surprising.

He stood at the far edge of the sidewalk, hands in his pockets, black blindfold stark against white hair, watching. Even if you glanced in his direction, he doubted you would have made him out clearly.

Satoru wondered, absently, whether face-to-face would change anything, whether you would remember him at all. He would not have called you a friend. Acquaintance, maybe. Even that felt stretched thin because he could easily count the conversations he had with you on one hand and still have fingers left over.

The first time he heard your name, it had come from Tsumiki. It had meant nothing then. Just noise in a life already crowded with obligations. A passing mention in a warm kitchen that smelled faintly of something baked.

“She’s really nice,” Tsumiki had said, as if that explained everything worth knowing.

You helped carry groceries upstairs when her bags were too heavy. You came back the next day with cookies.

After that first interaction, your presence had started to accumulate quietly around them. Not dramatic, just persistent, like warmth that refused to leave a room once it had entered.

You always appeared at Tsumiki and Megumi's door without warning. Said you had cooked too much breakfast. Or ordered too much food. Or simply did not like waste. Excuses that never sounded rehearsed. You knocked just to say hello sometimes. Asked if they were alright. If they needed anything. If they had eaten.

And more than once, Tsumiki had told Satoru—with quiet fondness—you offered to stop by a shop on your way home, just in case they needed groceries.

Satoru had only seen you a handful of times back then. The first had been a Saturday morning when he stayed over.

Sunlight had spilled across the apartment floor in lazy stripes. He, Tsumiki, and Megumi had been sitting in the living room when the knock came.

Tsumiki had lit up immediately.

“She always brings something she baked on Saturdays!”

Even Megumi had straightened, betraying the smallest flicker of anticipation he would never admit to.

Satoru, self-appointed responsible adult in the room, had gotten up first. Not because he needed to, but because curiosity had a way of pulling him forward before caution could catch up.

He had opened the door and there you were. Warm plate of cinnamon rolls balanced carefully in your hands. The glaze gleamed. Steam curled upward, carrying butter and spice.

For a full thirty seconds, Satoru had stared at the plate instead of you—his fingers had actually twitched, itching to snatch one of the rolls, but instead he forced himself to raise his gaze.

His first thought was that you were younger than expected you to be. His second was that you were exactly his type. His third thought never got the chance to fully form because the situation immediately started collapsing under its own awkward gravity.

From your perspective, a stranger had opened the door to the apartment where two children you cared about lived. Tsumiki had mentioned a guardian, but you had imagined someone older. Not a young man with snow-white hair, an unreadable grin, and eyes like they had stolen color from the sky itself.

You had frozen, trying, rapidly, to determine whether he was family, or safe, or neither. There was no resemblance between him and the children.

Your grip on the plate had tightened. So much so that, for a brief and alarming moment, you had looked like you might actually swing it at him. And you would have, too—probably—if Tsumiki had not stepped in just in time to prevent what would have gone down in history as Satoru Gojo’s most undignified possible death: by pastry.

You did not stay for tea that day, even though you usually did. That time, embarrassment had won. Especially after Satoru, far too pleased with himself, teased you about attempted assault with baked goods as if it were a perfectly reasonable topic of conversation.

Before you left, he had given you his number.

Back then, Satoru avoided relationships. He was young, reckless, and allergic to commitment. More of a fuck-and-dip type of guy. He knew he would have treated you the same way, carelessly, and that definitely would have ruined the fragile connection between you and the kids. He did not want that. He liked knowing someone else watched over them too.

So he left everything—you—alone.

Now, years later, Satoru walked past your balcony without even pretending not to look. His footsteps, softened by Infinity, made no sound.

You still did not notice him. Of course you didn’t. You were absorbed in something ordinary—phone, tea, the quiet irritation of existing in a world that demanded attention in small, exhausting ways.

He could have called out your name and said hello. He could have started the conversation by asking if you remembered him and the time you nearly smashed a plate into his head. He could have asked you out on a date—he has not been on one in a while.

It would be nice to catch up,

Even if the date lead nowhere. Even if it was meaningless. Even if it would end up only being another way to pass time between exorcisms and obligations and the endless swallowing void of being Satoru Gojo.

He could have made this simple, but simplicity had never been his preference. It was too boring, and Gojo Satoru had never been good at boring things.

So he kept walking.

If he re-entered your life, it would not be quietly.

✧ ✧ ✧

A few days later, he sent the letter. Not a romantic confession. Certainly not a polite invitation to dinner either. Inside was one of Sukuna’s fingers, one that he had found a day or two ago.

Satoru calculated the outcome carefully.

It should attract a few low-level curses. Nothing dangerous—nothing that would reach you properly, not in a neighbourhood as quietly cursed as yours. Just enough to stir the air. Enough to make the windows tremble in their frames. Enough to leave you uneasy when the lights flickered at night or the hallway felt a fraction too long.

Enough, in other words, to create a reason. A reason for him to appear, a reason to “save the day.”

It would not hurt you.

It should not hurt you.

That distinction sat comfortably in his mind, like a rule that had never once been challenged. In his interpretation, it was simple mathematics: risk reduced, outcome controlled, Satoru Gojo inserted as necessary variable. A perfectly sane plan. Almost elegant, if he ignored the fact that it involved planting danger as a pretext for attention.

After all, who would refuse a date with a man who arrived just in time to save them from a curse?

Surely, you would not.

✧ ✧ ✧

When you came home that evening, shoulders aching and the faint smell of copier ink and stale office air still clinging stubbornly to your clothes, you nearly stepped on the envelope.

It sat perfectly centred on your doormat.

You paused mid-step, keys still pinched between your fingers. The hallway light hummed overhead with a tired, fluorescent buzz. Somewhere above you, old pipes groaned as water pushed through them like a reluctant sigh.

For a moment, you only looked at it. Then you nudged it with the toe of your shoe. No stamp. No address. No name. Just thick, expensive paper, the kind of material used for wedding invitations or legal documents.

The envelope barely bent when you picked it up.

You glanced down the empty corridor once more, as if expecting someone to still be standing there watching, before unlocking your door and stepping inside.

The lock clicked shut behind you.

You did not open the envelope immediately. Only later, when you were curled on the couch with your legs tucked beneath you, a rerun of a show you barely watched murmuring from the television, did you finally tear it open.

The tearing of paper sounded unnaturally loud in the apartment.

Paper split cleanly beneath your fingers before something small and weighted dropped into your lap. You flinched.

At first, you did not understand what you were looking at. A bundle, tightly wrapped in thick, yellowed bandages. Old-looking. The cloth the colour of aged parchment left too long in the dark. Dark ink crawled across its surface in patterns you did not recognise.

Your instincts recoiled before your thoughts caught up.

Cold pricked along your spine. You did not touch the small bundle. You only stared at it as the air in the room shifted, not temperature, but in a feeling, like the space itself had thickened around you.

You thought you saw something under the bandages—just for a second. A faint distortion, like heat rippling off asphalt in summer. Except darker.

Slowly, carefully, as if the bundle might unwrap itself if you were careless, you lifted it and placed it on the coffee table.

Eventually, exhaustion caught up with your fear. You had work in the morning and you were more than ready to go to bed. So you did what you always did when something did not fit into your understanding of the world. You refused to engage with it.

You should have thrown the bundle away. Instead, you stood, walked to your bookshelf, and placed it on the highest shelf you had—behind a row of old novels you never reread but could not bring yourself to discard.

Out of sight, yet not out of mind.

By most standards, you were painfully normal.

You paid your bills on time. You filed your taxes. You complained, regularly and with conviction, about traffic lights that stayed red too long and grocery prices that seemed to climb out of spite. You rewatched the same shows until entire episodes lived in your head like second memories, until you could recite entire scenes without looking at the screen.

Yeah, you were pretty normal, except for one small, inconvenient detail.

You could see curses.

They lingered where light struggled to reach—corners of ceilings, the tight space beneath stairwells, the blind spots between streetlamps. They slid along alley walls, their shapes wrong in ways your mind tried and failed not to correct. Some were small and twichy things. Others were swollen, layered massses stitched together like an unfinshed crafts project.

You learned early not to stare too long because if you did, they seemed to notice.

For half of your life, you had convinced yourself it was stress caused hallucinations. When you got older, you blamed it all on trick of light and fatigue. That last belief lasted until your great-great-grandfather gripped your wrist from his hospital bed.

His skin had been paper-thin, translucent in places, stretched over bone. The monitors beside him beeped in a slow, indifferent rhythm. But his eyes—his eyes were sharp. Unnaturally so. Too awake for a man so close to leaving.

He was not looking at you. His gaze was fixed slightly to the side, past your shoulder, toward the corner of the room where something small and green and wrong clung to wall like a stain that refused to be scrubbed away.

His fingers tightened around your wrist with surprising strength when he realized you knew what he was looking at.

“I see them too.”

His voice was dry, he did not look at you when he spoke again.

“Always have.”

That was all he gave you. No explanation or comfort that might have softened the impact of it. Just inheritance of the disturbing knowledge that you were not insane.

He died before you could ask anything else.

The only other person who ever seemed to acknowledge that fractured layer of reality without flinching was Satoru Gojo, the strange guardian of the children who once lived across the hall.

You remembered the moment he found out you were like him.

The hallway had smelled of lemon cleaning solution. The fluorescent lights overhead flickered in uneven pulses, as you stepped outside with a trash bag and stopped so abruptly the plastic crinkled loud in your grip.

It was there.

A curse clung to the ceiling above your door like wet clay thrown and forgotten. Blackened. Glossy. One swollen eye rolled slowly in its socket. A thin mouth hung open beneath it, lipless, slack, dripping something viscous that evaporated before it ever reached the floor.

Your lungs locked. Your fingers tightened around the bag until plastic bit into skin. You had never seen one that close to your home before.

Then, behind you—

“You can see them too?”

The voice was casual, curious, as if he had asked whether you preferred tea or coffee and not whether you could see things that were not supposed to exist.

“…Yeah.”

That was the entire conversation with Gojo.

The next day, the hallway was empty. The curse was gone, as if it had never been there at all. The same evening, there was a knock at your door.

You opened it to find Gojo leaning against the frame, sunglasses balanced lazily on the bridge of his nose despite the sun having set hours ago. One hand in his pocket. The other reaching forward before you could fully register the movement.

His fingers wrapped around your wrist, he raised your hand and placed something into your palm.

A dagger.

Slim. Perfectly balanced. The metal cool and impossibly clean. Faint symbols ran along the blade.

“In case one gets too close,” he said.

You had stared at the dagger, then at him, questions starting to form on the tip of your tongue. But there was no small talk that coud transition into please explain the supernatural horrors I can see everyday.

Before you could ask anything, he left.

Eventually, Megumi and Tsumiki moved away without goodbye. The apartment across the hall went dark and stayed that way. Gojo disappeared from your life as abruptly as he had entered it.

You woke with your throat burning. Dry and scratchy, like you had swallowed dust in your sleep. For a moment, you lay still, staring at the ceiling, trying to remember what had pulled you from slumber. Nothing—just thirst.

You dragged yourself out of bed, half-awake, eyes barely open, the cool floor pressing against your bare feet. The hallway stretched longer than usual. Quieter. You didn’t notice the shadows pooling too thickly in the corners. Didn’t hear the soft creak of wood that wasn’t your own steps. Didn’t feel the weight of something watching.

In the kitchen, your hands moved on autopilot. You grabbed a glass, turned on the tap. Water sputtered, then flowed steady, washing down the scratch in your throat as you brought the glass up to your mouth. You leaned against the counter, taking small sips.

“Where is it?!” a shrill voice screeched.

It didn’t come from a single point. It sliced through the air—metallic, grating, like claws dragged across slate.

Before you could even blink, the world flipped. One second you were leaning on the counter; the next, you were slammed face-first into the kitchen tiles. Glass crashed somewhere nearby, shards scattering across the floor. Pain bloomed across your ribs from the impact. Your cheek scraped against cold tile as your body hit the ground.

Something heavy pressed into your back, pinning you. You struggled, palms sliding uselessly on slick tile. The pressure intensified, forcing the air from your lungs. Your heart hammered violently, as if it might tear itself free from your chest. Sweat slicked your hands.

“Tell me, human! I do not have time for this!” the voice screeched directly into your ear.

Your stomach compressed. Something cracked. You choked on a scream, fearing it had been your rib, only to realize it was a piece of glass beneath you.

“WHERE IS IT?”

Tears blurred your vision, hot and humiliating. Panic ripped through you. Sleep evaporated completely.

“I—I don’t know what you want!” you stammered, voice broken, not even thinking to lie because you truly didn’t know.

A fist tangled in your hair. You screamed again as you were yanked upright, your scalp igniting with pain, like thousands of needles driving into your skull at once. Your feet left the ground.

“Sukuna’s finger,” the voice hissed, close—too close. “I can feel it here…”

You were spun around.

The curse loomed before you—human-shaped, but grotesquely wrong. Limbs bent at impossible angles. A mouth slit filled with jagged, uneven teeth stretched unnaturally wide. Its eyes gleamed with sharp intelligence. You had never seen one like this. You had never heard one speak.

It snarled, then flung you sideways.

You crashed into the counter, the edge biting into your back, then collapsed to the floor. White-hot pain shot up your spine.

“FETCH IT.”

It stepped back slightly, granting space—permission for you to move.

Your brain barely functioned. Survival instincts took over. You scrambled upright and bolted toward your bedroom like it was a sanctuary, even though you knew it wasn’t. It would have been wiser to run out of the apartment entirely, but that thought only surfaced as you slammed the door behind you, fumbling for the lock, hands shaking violently.

You didn’t have any severed fingers stashed in the pantry. You didn’t—

The bookshelf.

The bandaged bundle.

Your stomach dropped.

But you didn’t run for the living room. No. You ripped open drawers, flinging clothes aside, tearing through your closet. Your heart pounded so loudly you could barely hear your own ragged breathing.

The dagger.

Where had you put it?

You hadn’t needed it in years.

Your eyes landed on your nightstand—your phone. You lunged. Fingers moved faster than they ever had. Contacts. Scroll. Gojo. You had thought about calling him before, sometimes—just to ask about Megumi and Tsumiki—but you always hesitated. Always locked your phone and didn’t do it.

This time, you didn’t hesitate.

You pressed call. You tried not to think about the possibility that he had changed his number, or that you were calling someone you hadn’t spoken to in years. He was your only option for survival because it wasn’t like you could call the police. What were you even supposed to say? Hello, a curse is attacking me? They would have taken it for a prank call.

The ringing barely began when the bedroom door exploded inward.

Wood splintered like brittle paper. Hinges tore free. The door shattered across the room.

You screamed as the shockwave threw you backward. The phone flew from your hand, skidding just out of reach.

“I don’t have time for games, human,” the curse growled, stepping through the wreckage. Its presence pressed into your lungs—thick, suffocating, smelling of rot and metal.

Your knees buckled. Even if they hadn’t, there was nowhere to go. You crawled backward until your shoulders hit the side of the bed. Your eyes darted frantically—no escape route, no opening large enough to slip past it without dying.

“I—I don’t have it! Please, just—”

You didn’t even know what you were begging for. Mercy?Understanding? Anything? But curses did not offer either.

It advanced slowly. Each step made the floor groan. Your thoughts fractured: run, scream, grab something—anything—but nothing would save you. You were going to die.

As its shadow swallowed the space between you, you squeezed your eyes shut. If this was it—if this was the end—you did not want this monstrosity to be the last thing you ever saw.

A flash—blinding white—erupted through your closed eyelids so violently it felt like the world had been set on fire behind your face. Heat followed a heartbeat later. Then a sharp, crackling sizzle, like live wires snapping apart. Red sparks fractured the darkness. A violent bzzz rattled the windows.

Silence.

You curled into yourself on instinct, knees pulled to your chest, forehead pressed hard down, fingers locked over the back of your head as if that alone could hold you together. Your whole body shook. Tears spilled without permission, soaking into your pajamas. Every breath came ragged, shallow.

You waited.

For claws. For teeth. For the end.

Nothing came.

Ten agonising seconds passed. Then thirty. Still nothing.

Slowly, you forced your fingers apart and blinked through the blur of tears. Satoru Gojo stood in the ruin of your bedroom like he had simply stepped in for tea. Hands in his pockets. Head tilted. That familiar grin—too easy, too bright for a room that looked like it had been torn open.

“You called?”

Your mind lagged as your gaze darted all over. Splintered door. Scorched air. The metallic tang of something burned out of existence still hanging faintly in the room.

The curse was gone.

You stayed half-folded against the bed, arms drawn tight around yourself.

Gojo looked… older, but familiar. His white hair still shone like silver. His smile was still there—still infuriatingly soft at the edges, like he hadn’t just erased something that had been seconds away from killing you. However, his uniform fit differently than you remembered. The fabric sat differently across him now, stretched over broader shoulders, shaped by muscle you didn’t remember being so defined.

The biggest in change his appereance was the blindfold. Gone were the round sunglasses he used to wear. In their place, a sleek strip of black cloth was wrapped around his eyes.

“Gojo?” you managed. His name cracked on your tongue—fragile in a way that made it feel dangerous to say too loudly, as if you were afraid he was just a part of your imagination.

He tilted his head slightly at the sound.

“That would be me,” he said lightly.

He stepped forward. Each step landed softly over the ruined floorboards, sound threading through the silence like a metronome trying to convince your heartbeat to slow down and follow it. He stopped just short of you, not wanting to crowd you.

His smile shifted, softening by a fraction.

“You know,” he started, voice slipping easily back into teasing, as if he were gently trying to stitch normality back into the air, “usually when someone calls me after maaany years, there’s a ‘hello’ first. Maybe a ‘how have you been.’ Basic courtesy.”

His head angled toward the wreckage behind you, then back to you again.

“…But I’ll let it slide,” he added, slower now. “I guess. If—”

He didn’t get to finish the sentence because you moved.

There was no elegance to in your movements. Just a sudden collapse of everything you had been holding in place since the moment the curse had entered your home.

You launched yourself at him, clumsy and uncontrolled.

For a heartbeat, he didn’t react at all. Then his hand braced against the floor behind you, steadying both of you as your momentum forced him back just slightly.

Your arms locked around him and you buried your face into his chest. It was colder than you expected at first, like stepping into winter air too quickly. Then warmth bled through, slow and steady, spreading outward in quiet waves that made your shaking worse before it made it better.

“I—” your voice fractured completely. “Thank you.”

You didn’t realise you were crying again until you felt your tears soaking into his jacket.

He didn’t answer right away. He just lifted his hand slowly, resting it lightly against the back of your head. The other settled around your shoulders—careful again, as if he was handling something fragile he wasn’t sure he was allowed to hold.

“Well,” he murmured at last, softer than before, almost reluctant to break the silence, “that’s one way to say hello.”

✧ ✧ ✧

It took you about an hour to really calm down.

An hour spent sitting on the floor in Gojo’s lap, your knees still weak, your body refusing to trust the fact that the world was no longer actively trying to kill you. Your fingers stayed twisted into the front of his uniform like a lifeline, knuckles pale.

At some point, your breathing evened out. The violent shaking faded. Tears dried stiff against your cheeks, leaving faint salt tracks you pretended not to feel.

Gojo didn’t rush you. He didn’t joke. Didn’t flirt. Didn’t fill the silence with anything that might crack it open too soon. One hand stayed steady against your back, warm and grounding, tracing slow, absent circles that anchored you more than any words could have.

Eventually, awareness returned in pieces rather than all at once. First came the embarrassment. Then the slow, creeping realization of proximity. Then the very human understanding that you were currently clinging to a man you hadn’t seen in years like your life depended on him, which, in a way, it had.

Slowly, carefully, you pulled back. Your hands lingered for half a second too long before releasing his jacket, reluctant in a way you immediately hated yourself for noticing. You avoided looking at his face as you stood.

You flicked on the light and immediately regretted it.

Your bedroom looked like a crime scene. The door was obliterated—splintered wood hanging like broken ribs. Clothes spilled from your closet in chaotic heaps. A lamp lay on its side, its shade cracked. Somehow, impossibly, the walls still stood, and the windows remained intact.

You stepped into the hallway half-expecting the rest of the apartment to mirror it But the living room was almost untouched. The kitchen, too, looked strangely ordinary.

Your front door was still locked.

The only thing that looked out of place was the living room window—cracked open just a finger’s width, letting in pale early-morning air that smelled faintly of rain and something clean enough to feel unreal after what had just happened.

Gojo followed quietly behind you as you began cleaning.

You moved on autopilot.

Smashed glass. Broken fragments. Shaky hands that refused to stop trembling no matter how carefully you tried to steady them. You told yourself it was practical. Necessary. Something to do with your body while your mind tried to stitch itself back together.

He tried to talk a few times.

You answered without really hearing yourself, your voice distant, like it belonged to someone else speaking through a wall.

When you retrieved the bandaged bundle from the bookshelf, his posture changed immediately.

“Is that what it was after?” he asked.

You nodded, unable to look at it for long now that you knew what it was supposed to be.

“I got it in a letter,” you said quickly, too quickly, like you needed to justify its presence in your life. “I didn’t—I didn’t know what it was. I just kept it.”

You handed it over.

Gojo went still.

You couldn’t see his eyes beneath the blindfold, but the shift in the air was unmistakable. His shoulders tightened. His tongue pressed briefly against the inside of his cheek, like he was holding back a reaction he didn’t want to show.

For a moment, it looked like he might speak. He didn’t. He simply took the bundle and slipped it into his pocket.

The words slipped out before you could stop them.

“Do you… want tea?” you asked. A pause. “Or coffee?”

It sounded absurd the moment the question left your mouth.Yet it was a fragile attempt to hold the moment in place. To delay whatever came after this. To keep him here a little longer because you didn't want to be alone.

Gojo looked at you for a beat longer than necessary, then exhaled something almost like amusement.

“Tea sounds good.”

He watched you the entire time you worked in the kitchen, openly entertained now, like the concept of you boiling water had become unexpectedly fascinating.

Your apartment made him look bigger than you remembered him being—too tall for the space, shoulders nearly brushing doorframes as he moved through it. He ducked slightly out of habit when passing through narrow spaces, following you from room to room, not letting you out of his sight completely.

“—you’re a teacher?” you asked when he told you so, glancing at him over your shoulder with open skepticism.

He grinned instantly. “Don’t I look like one?”

“No,” you said without hesitation. “You look like someone who should not be trusted around children.”

He laughed—bright, unrestrained, too loud for the quiet that had settled back into your apartment—and despite everything, something in your chest loosened enough that you found yourself exhaling a reluctant laugh too.

When the tea was ready, you both settled in the living room on the couch. The cups warmed your hands. Dawn spilled slowly through the window, soft and bruised with early light.

Gojo talked. About Jujutsu High. About curses. About sorcerers.

He explained just enough that your exhausted mind could follow without breaking apart completely, though the words still felt like they belonged to a different world entirely. Curses. Cursed energy. Sorcerers. The fact that he was apparently the strongest of them al, which he repeated with confidence at least five times.

He mentioned Megumi more than once too, and something in his voice softened each time, pride threading through it in a way you didn’t remember hearing before. When you asked about Tsumiki, though, his answer thinned. He redirected the conversation gently but firmly, like closing a door without making it obvious it had been shut.

You didn’t push. You kept listening instead, hovering somewhere between shock and relief, as if your mind hadn’t decided yet whether to accept any of this as real.

Eventually, he asked about you and suddenly, your life felt small.

“I just… bounced around after graduating,” you said at last, eyes fixed on your tea. “Different jobs. Nothing really stuck.”

“I always figured you’d do something interesting,” he hummed.

You let out a quiet snort. “I work in an office.”

“Tragic,” he said gravely. “We’re going to have to rescue you from that immediately.”

You rolled your eyes, but warmth still crept into your chest anyway. Talking to him was easy in a way that unsettled you more than it should have. You had expected awkward silences, forced politeness, something brittle and unfamiliar. Instead, it felt like slipping back into a conversation that had never properly ended.

Sunlight spread further into the apartment, turning dust motes into drifting gold. Gojo stood and stretched, rolling his shoulders with an ease that made the movement look almost lazy. His gaze swept the room again, lingering briefly on the slightly open window before he exhaled and turned back to you.

You stood as well.

“You shouldn’t stay here alone tonight,” he said, still half-distracted by the space around him.

“Have to,” you replied dryly. “Not like I can afford to stay anywhere else.”

You didn’t add the rest. That the thought of being alone again made something tight coil in your chest. That silence, after everything that had happened, suddenly felt too large to exist in. Or that you were now painfully aware of how small your apartment really was and how vulnerable you were inside it.

Gojo turned his head slightly at your answer. Then, as if the thought had simply arrived fully formed and unbothered by consequences, he said, “Come with me, then.”

You remained quiet.

“There are empty rooms at the school,” he continued. “You can stay until I sort this out. Until it’s safe.”

You hesitated, your bottom lip caught between your teeth, because logically, it was absurd. Going with him—someone you had barely known properly, someone who had just torn a curse apart in your bedroom like it was nothing—to a place you had never even heard of before today should have set off every alarm in your body.

It should have felt like a mistake and yet it didn’t. Because the alternative was staying here alone, listening to your own heartbeat echo through empty rooms, waiting for something you couldn’t see but now knew existed.

You looked at him, at the ease in his posture, the absolute certainty that you would say yes.

“…Okay,” you said at last.

His smile widened immediately.

“Excellent decision,” he said brightly, clapping his hands once as if sealing the agreement. “Don’t worry. I promise only minimal life-threatening incidents.”

“That is not reassuring,” you muttered, though your mouth twitched despite yourself.

After changing into warmer clothes, you packed an overnight bag. Just essentials. A change of clothes. Toothbrush. Phone charger. The normal things people bring when they are absolutely, definitely not uprooting their lives.

As you locked your apartment door, Gojo lingering by your side. You kept reminding yourself that this was temorary, that you will stay at school only until things settle. Until it's safe to return.

✧ ✧ ✧

What was supposed to be a few days away from home somehow turned into nearly four weeks of living in the Jujutsu High dorms.

The first night had felt temporary. You kept your shoes by the door, your bag zipped, your mind insisting you would leave any moment. The second night had felt the same, as had the third. But by the end of the first week, your bag sat half-unpacked in the corner like it had always belonged there, clothes slowly migrating into drawers without you ever quite remembering deciding to stay.

Every morning, you woke tangled in sheets, sunlight filtering through the curtains, warm against your face. The air carried a faint mix of pine, old wood, and distant incense drifting in from somewhere deeper in the campus. And every morning, the same thought returned like a habit you couldn’t break: you should go home. You told yourself that while brushing your teeth. While tying your shoes. While standing too long in front of the courtyard windows.

There was always that lingering sense that you were occupying borrowed space—you weren’t a sorcerer, not a student, not anything that belonged in a place like this. And yet that thought dulled with time. The campus was quieter than you had expected, almost eerily so. You rarely saw more than a handful of students or teachers, and most days it felt less like a school and more like a half-forgotten shrine.

During the day, you wandered the grounds with a book tucked under your arm. Gravel crunched softly beneath your shoes. Leaves whispered overhead, shifting in slowly in the wind. Students passed occasionally, bowing politely or watching you with open curiosity. You sat beneath shaded trees, reading without really reading. No emails, no deadlines, no fluorescent office lights humming overhead.

You had taken unpaid leave after the attack, telling your boss you had a family emergency. Technically, that wasn’t a lie. But bills still existed. Your job still existed. Your apartment still existed, somewhere out there in a life you were increasingly detached from. You were supposed to go back. Yet every time you brought it up, Gojo already had a reason why you couldn't leave just yet.

At first, it wasn’t safe. The curse might not have acted alone. Someone might come looking for you.

Then your apartment was declared a disaster zone. Returning wasn’t possible until repairs were finished. You had no idea how you were supposed to afford any of it, but Gojo had waved the concern away with an easy, careless, “The school has funds for situations like this.”

Then he insisted you couldn’t leave until he identified whoever had sent you Sukuna’s finger—conveniently neglecting to mention he was the sender.

Eventually, the excuses began to wear thin.

You stood in the dorm room that had stopped feeling temporary and leaned against the desk, arms crossed.

“I have to go back,” you told him. “I can’t miss any more work. My boss is blowing up my phone. And you said my apartment’s fixed, so—”

Gojo sighed dramatically, just like he did everytime you decided to talk about this.

“Fiiiiine,” he groaned, flopping backward onto your bed. The mattress dipped under his weight as he sprawled out shamelessly, long limbs claiming far too much space.

“You learn how to fight,” he announced, pointing lazily at you from where he lay upside down across your pillows. “Properly. With the dagger I gave you. Then you can go.”

“I’m not a sorcerer,” you argued immediately. “I don’t need combat training. I’ve successfully avoided curses my entire life—until one broke into my bedroom because someone thought mailing me a cursed finger was a fun social experiment.”

Since arriving, you had been given a crash course in a world you had never asked to understand. Curses were manifestations of negative emotion. Sorcerers fought them. Jujutsu High trained them, and Satoru Gojo—apparently—was the strongest sorcerer alive, a fact he had repeated with alarming enthusiasm whenever the opportunity arose.

He had also, far too casually, suggested more than once that you might have potential to become a sorcerer since you could see the curses, but you refused to even entertain the thought.

“What if one attacks you again?” he asked more quietly when you still refused.

The humor in his voice thinned at the edges.

“I know I put myself on your speed dial,” he continued, scratching the back of his neck, a grin returning as if he could physically shrug off the seriousness of the question, “but I’m a very busy, responsible adult. I can’t always arrive dramatically to save you.”

Your gaze flicked away. The memory of claws and pressure and breathless panic lingered like a bruise under the skin.

“…Fine,” you said at last. “One week. You teach me whatever you think I need to know, and then I’m moving out.”

“Four weeks,” he replied instantly.

“Three.”

He tilted his head, pretending to consider it.

“Hm. I suppose I could turn you into a semi-competent fighter in three weeks,” he said. “After all, I am Gojo Satoru. The strongest. The most handsome. The most talented teacher to ever exist—”

You grabbed a pen from the desk and threw it at him.

He caught it midair without looking.

Show-off.

“You mean the most annoying person I’ve ever met,” you corrected, though your mouth betrayed you with a faint curve.

Gojo sat up slowly, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, blindfold angled toward you as if he could see you anyway.

“Oh?” he said, voice dipping just slightly. “And yet you agreed to spend three more weeks with me.”

Your lips parted, but you didn't reply because he was right.

Never in your life had you wondered how high you could count before giving up. Yet by Friday morning, you'd discovered the answer—muttering every number aloud, perfectly enunciated, all the way to six hundred and eighty-nine.

You hadn't slept. Not really. There might have been an hour somewhere in the middle of the night when exhaustion finally dragged you under—a thin, fragile sort of sleep that shattered the moment you became aware of it. You woke soon after, restless and even more irritated, thrashing in bed and twisting from one side to the other. The sheets tangled around your legs until you had to kick free.

Every position felt wrong. The pillow was too soft. The air in the room too stale—too thick. Suffocating. Pressing on you like a heavy weight.

This wasn’t unusual—the restlessness. Neither were the nerves that piled up until all you wanted to do was slam your head into a wall hard enough to knock yourself unconscious. At least then your mind would finally shut the fuck up. Even if only for a little while.

Before difficult missions, sleep often came reluctantly. Your mind liked to rehearse—strategies, escape routes, every possible thing that could go wrong. You'd lie awake running through scenario after scenario until you were satisfied you could handle them all, until you'd convinced yourself there would be no surprises because you'd already imagined every possible outcome.

But for fuck's sake—tomorrow's mission wasn't difficult. Low-level curses. Grade Four. Nothing you couldn't handle. Nothing you hadn't faced before. So why did the thought of getting out of bed make your stomach twist?

It took the entire night to admit it.

It wasn't the mission.

It was them.

The realization tasted bitter.

You rolled it around in your mind, annoyance flaring as you finally acknowledged it. You even caught yourself wondering why you couldn't have been partnered with just Geto—assuming going alone wasn't an option. Even that would've been preferable to being forced to spend time around Gojo.

You were still tense around Geto, always careful to keep your distance, but he was... manageable. Controlled. Predictable in a way that made him easier to deal with, even if you couldn't quite read him. Easier to be around than Gojo, at least, who you knew would be unbearable today; especially considering you hadn't seen him for an entire day, which meant he'd had nearly twenty-four uninterrupted hours to come up with new ways to get under your skin.

Hours later, you finally gave up on pretending to sleep and dragged yourself out of bed.

With far too much time before departure, you moved slowly, trying to ignore the relentless ticking of the clock on the wall. You didn't rush. You took your time getting ready. Still, there were only so many times you could adjust your uniform, brush nonexistent dust from your shoulders, or straighten a collar that was already perfectly straight.

Eventually, with nothing left to stall over, you flopped back onto the bed fully dressed, staring at the ceiling—ready for the day to be over before it had even begun.

For a moment, your phone found its way into your hand, your thumb hovering over Utahime's contact. Back in Kyoto, she was the closest thing you had to a real friend. And she was probably the only person capable of talking you down when your thoughts started spiraling like this.

Whenever stress got the better of you—whether it was a legitimate problem or something completely ridiculous—Utahime always seemed to know exactly what to say. Somehow, she could untangle the knots in your head without making you feel stupid for having them in the first place.

Your thumb hovered over the call button.

Just do it.

A small part of you was already imagining her sleepy voice answering the phone.

Another part immediately reminded you what time it was.

Too early.

You shouldn't wake her up.

With a groan, you locked the screen and tossed the phone onto the mattress beside you. It bounced once before disappearing into the blankets.

✧ ✧ ✧

You didn't skip breakfast. Running on fumes and vending machine snacks wasn't an option today. Thankfully, the cafeteria was deserted when you wandered through the doors.

You claimed a table near the back and ate in silence, scrolling aimlessly through your phone, forcing yourself to focus on anything other than the thoughts that hadn't stopped spiraling since yesterday.

A painfully boring video played on repeat, but you were too tired—and too lazy—to bother finding something better.

The cafeteria doors swung open. You didn't hear them. Didn't notice the footsteps or the low, muffled whispers that followed. Not until two trays slammed down onto your table.

You jumped, your phone slipping from your hand and clattering against the surface.

“Fuck,” you hissed under your breath. Your heart slammed against your ribs as your head snapped up. “What is wrong with you?!”

Geto was already seated across from you, posture relaxed, expression as unreadable as ever. Gojo—predictably—dropped into the seat beside you, far too close for comfort. You immediately scooted away, dragging your tray with you.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk.” Gojo clicked his tongue, wagging a finger before pointing it at you. “Someone's got their head in the clouds. That's how you get mauled by big, bad, ugly curses.”

You shot him a glare.

“But don't worry, little omega,” he continued, completely unbothered and clearly enjoying the way you tried—and failed—to hide your irritation. “You've got us to keep you safe. Won't even need to do anything. Just stick close and look pretty. Mission's gonna be easy peasy, yeah?”

“Don't call me that,” you snapped, hating the nickname and refusing to let it stick.

The moment the words left your mouth, you regretted them. It would've been smarter to ignore him. To let it pass. Because even through those ridiculous round glasses—the ones you'd never seen him without—you felt his attention sharpen instantly at the open disgust in your voice. Something darkened behind the lenses. A slow, knowing smile tugged at his mouth, and you just knew he'd spend the rest of the day looking for excuses to call you that again.

You decided you didn’t need to endure this. You still had an hour before departure. An hour you could spend literally anywhere else. You stood abruptly, snatching up your phone and shoving it into your pocket.

“Satoru,” Geto said mildly. His eyes followed you with far too much interest before shifting back to Gojo. A sigh escaped him. “Look what you did. I told you to play nice.”

Something about the comment rubbed you the wrong way. It wasn't just teasing—though it was definitely that, too. It felt deliberate. Like Geto's words carried a second meaning. Like he was testing something. Prodding. Waiting to see how Gojo would react.

And react he did.

“Aww, princess, cooome ooon.” Gojo pouted dramatically. His arm shot out, fingers closing loosely around your wrist—enough to stop you. “Don't leave.”

You froze.

Your gaze dropped to his hand. His fingers were wrapped around your wrist—but they weren't touching you. An invisible layer, roughly three centimeters thick, separated his grip from your skin.

Across the table, Geto leaned forward, unmistakably satisfied, like a theory had just been confirmed.

When neither of you spoke, Gojo followed your stare. He blinked. Realization dawned as he registered what he was holding—and the fact that he couldn't feel the warmth of your skin.

The silence that followed felt deafening. You swore you could hear a high-pitched ringing in your ears. Pressure built behind your eyes. Something heavy like a stone settled in your chest.

You knew you should say something. Or pull away. Instead, you stayed perfectly still. Your mind screamed at you to move, but your body refused to listen, locked in place by the insticts despite every frantic command you hurled at yourself to react. To do something. Anything.

Gojo squeezed tighter, testing his grip on your wrist.

The barrier didn't budge. It took everything you had to keep it that way. Your cursed energy buzzed violently beneath your skin, flaring in sharp response each time his fingers pressed against it.

Then he grew bolder.

His arms slid around your waist, wrapping around the barrier instead of you. Pulling you closer, he settled his hands at your hips. Even seated, his head was level with your chest, his presence crowding your space until it felt impossible to breathe.

“This is why it's so hard to sense your cursed energy,” Gojo muttered, more to himself than to you or Geto. His fingers pressed curiously against the invisible layer, as though it were the most interesting thing he'd encountered all week. “...Or you.”

That snapped you out of it.

Your muscles finally unlocked. You stepped back immediately. Heat rushed up your neck. Your cheeks burned as your mind caught up with what had just happened.

“Is this your innate technique?” Geto asked.

When you looked at him, he wore the expression of someone who already knew the answer.

“Yeah,” you said. Your voice came out quieter than intended, lacking its usual bite. “Something like that.”

“Then why do you never take it down?” Gojo asked.

Across the table, Geto raised an eyebrow.

“Oh.” Gojo paused. Then the pieces clicked into place. “Right.”

The moment the gears visibly began turning in his head—the sharp smile curling across his lips, anything but friendly—your stomach sank.

[ Gojo's POV ]

Gojo Satoru—the Six Eyes, the strongest, someone who firmly believed he was the smartest person in any room and perceptive to an almost irritating degree—had somehow managed to completely overlook that—your barrier.

For the first time in a long while, he was quiet. Genuinely quiet. No commentary. No teasing. No half-baked jokes designed solely to get a reaction out of you. Nothing but the occasional tight-lipped mhm slipping past him whenever Suguru attempted to start a conversation.

He ate without really looking at his food, chewing out of habit rather than hunger, all while resisting the increasingly persistent urge to reach across the table and touch you again when you sat back down.

His mind replayed the past week on an endless loop. From early Monday morning, when he'd dragged Suguru out of bed at an ungodly hour because he had to see the new transfer student who might—or might not—be an omega, to now. To today. To the moment he'd been forced to confront something he absolutely should have noticed sooner.

It was almost embarrassing.

Almost.

Satoru could blame himself for the oversight. And maybe—maybe—he did, just a little. But most of the blame landed squarely on Suguru, who had obviously known. The bastard had clearly pieced things together long before today and decided not to share. Worse, he'd deliberately set up that little experiment and used Satoru to confirm his theory.

Logically, Satoru understood why you kept your barrier up. He wasn't stupid. That understanding, however, did absolutely nothing to stop it from irritating him.

The fact that he couldn't touch you was one thing. He'd already been keeping his distance. More or less. Sure, he constantly hovered around you. Constantly poked and prodded with comments designed to get under your skin. Constantly tested boundaries just to see where they were. But despite appearances, he wasn't completely clueless. There were lines that genuinely shouldn't be crossed and he knew that.

But hiding your scent?

That was something else entirely.

Yes, it was selfish to think he had any claim to it. Any unspoken right to know. He was aware of that; he wasn't an idiot. Just painfully arrogant. And perhaps a little possessive in ways he had absolutely no intention of unpacking.

Still, it had been a long time since he’d had a real break. Time in the city. Time away from missions, away from Jujutsu High, away from the suffocating stench of alphas who seemed incapable of existing without flooding every room they entered with their scent.

And yet you'd deliberately hidden yourself. Kept everything sealed away behind that barrier. Refused to give him even the smallest glimpse. A minute would've been enough. Two, maybe. Just long enough for him to indulge to indulge. Long enough to remember what it felt like when his senses weren't constantly assaulted by something unpleasant.

He wouldn't have even touched you. Not if you didn't want him to. Just being close would've been enough.

Satoru swallowed hard. His mouth had suddenly gone dry.

When he'd first heard about a transfer from Kyoto, he hadn't paid much attention. He'd assumed it was a beta. Nothing particularly interesting about that. Then he'd overheard a conversation he wasn't supposed to hear. He hadn't learned much, just fragments. Half-whispered speculation. Loose pieces of information that should've meant nothing. But they'd been enough. Enough to know Tokyo was getting an omega.

After that, Satoru had practically vibrated with excitement. And somehow—miraculously—he'd managed to keep it to himself. He hadn't even told Suguru, which was unusual: Suguru was normally subjected to every stray thought that entered Satoru's head, every piece of gossip, every pointless observation, whether he wanted to hear it or not.

Satoru still wasn't entirely sure why he'd stayed quiet. It hadn't mattered in the end. Suguru had figured it out on his own. He'd probably overheard the same rumors. The same conversations he wasn't supposed to hear.

And he'd been the one to say it out loud first, casual and knowing, like the possibility of omega wandering trough these halls hadn't been driving him insane, too.

Satoru had pretended to be surprised when Suguru shared the news. Though, Suguru hadn't looked convinced. But just as Suguru hadn't called him out for lying, Satoru had kept his mouth shut as well.

✧ ✧ ✧

The three of you stood outside, waiting for the car.

Satoru leaned back against the wall, arms crossed, noticeably lacking his usual energy. He watched you and Suguru smoke—watched you cough, then laugh when the first drag hit harder than expected. Watched the subtle rhythm of your conversation.

Suguru asked questions. You answered. Your answers precise, measured, revealing just enough without giving too much away. You were good at that. At talking while keeping everything at surface level.

You were talking about your barrier.

Suguru steered the conversation deliberately to the topic, nudging here and there, clearly probing.

You explained only the basics—how it functioned, how it interacted with your cursed energy. Something about metabolism, about how food intake affected how long you could maintain it. That was why you were constantly snacking because otherwise you’d need to drop it.

That—that was what caught Satoru’s attention. And that was when he decided he was going to be mean today. Just a little.

If Suguru had chosen today—of all days—to use him as a tool, to poke and test a theory, then Satoru decided he had every right to run an experiment of his own.

How far he could push you before that barrier showed even the smallest crack?

In Satoru’s mind, it wasn’t reckless. Today’s mission wasn’t difficult. Quite the opposite. Low-level curses, predictable patterns, confined space—the perfect environment. Even if you got overwhelmed, even if things went sideways, he and Suguru would be there.

Plus, he’d already promised you that the two of them would take care of you, hadn’t he? So you definitely had nothing to worry about.

And it wasn’t like he wanted to hurt you. Of course not.

He would just apply a little more pressure than necessary. Enough to make you slip. Enough to find out what you smelled like beneath all that cursed energy and restraint. Because now that he knew you were hiding your scent, the not-knowing gnawed at him, and it would keep gnawing until he satisfied that curiosity. So it was better to get it over with quickly—today, while he had the opportunity; he wasn’t sure when the next mission with you would come up.

He lingered in the thought briefly, weighing the easier option.

He could just ask. Suggest you drop your innate technique for the ride. Frame it as concern—tell you it would help preserve your cursed energy for the fight, make things safer. It wouldn’t even be a lie. It would be safer. At least ten times safer than slowly bleeding your stamina dry while curses chipped away at you.

But then… where was the fun in that?

Satoru’s mouth twitched, a faint smile threatening to surface as he pushed off the wall, spotting the car approaching.

No.

If he was going to do this, he wanted it instinctive—for you to be stripped bare by circumstance rather than persuasion. Something you didn’t have time to think over or prepare for. And if that meant being a little cruel? Well… he was fine with that.

✧ ✧ ✧

[ Reader's POV ]

The car ride was strange, to say the least.

You sat in the front passenger seat while Geto and Gojo were squeezed into the back. No one spoke. Geto stared out the window, fingers tapping lightly against his knee. Gojo, every so often, watched you through the rearview mirror—always with that same lazy smirk that widened the moment your eyes met.

So far, the day was nothing like you had expected. The energy was calm, the alphas unusually quiet. If you pretended for a moment that the whole incident—when they had finally confronted you about the barrier—hadn’t happened, you could almost convince yourself that maybe you’d been freaking out for nothing. Maybe you really shouldn’t have lost sleep over it.

Even after you arrived at the school—after the curtain was lowered and you suggested splitting up, one floor each—there was no pushback. No teasing from Gojo. No objections from Geto.

It was definitely weird. You weren’t used to this, but you figured that maybe Gojo and Geto were simply more focused on the mission, knowing when it was time to prioritize work rather than pester you.

The building was crawling with curses. You saw them before you even stepped inside—clinging to ceilings, slumped against walls like rotten growths. For the first time since Thursday, you were almost glad you weren’t alone. Not because you couldn’t handle it, but because you didn’t have to. With all three of you, this should be over in hours. Alone, it would’ve taken you the entire day to exorcise all of the curses.

You got the second floor entirely to yourself, Gojo claiming the third and leaving Geto to deal with the mess on the first and in the basement.

At first, it was easy. Most of the curses were sluggish, malformed things that barely reacted to your presence. Even when you drew their attention, they came at you in small numbers.

You preferred distance. Control. Not having to deal with surprises—attacks you didn’t see coming. So you relied on your cursed tools: silver throwing daggers, engraved with abstract patterns and imbued with cursed energy, dangling from the leather belt snug around your waist.

You worked cleanly.

You stood in the middle of the hallway near the stairs, repeating the same process: barriers snapping up around the curses, immobilising them, five daggers following in quick succession. Clean hits. You retrieved your tools, repositioned yourself, and started over.

Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat.

And when you dared to think it was a little dull. Boring. Too easy—it all went downhill.

Suddenly, you had to move faster. Barely enough time to retrieve your daggers before they were flying from your hands again. Distance became meaningless. Maintaining your barrier meant you couldn’t immobilize more than a handful at once, and the curses were swarming now.

You switched tactics, ignoring the way sweat made your clothing stick, the thickening air, the pressure building under your barrier that held it all in.

Two daggers clenched tightly in your hands, you charged. Slashing. Stabbing. Pulling free. Kicking curses away. Cutting their grabby limbs. Dodging, spinning, turning so fast your vision began to swim.

You couldn’t be touched—not really—but you could be crowded. You tried not to think about that. Tried not to acknowledge what it would mean: pulling back, leaving the rest to Gojo and Geto, just like you’d promised Yaga.

For fuck’s sake, you were a Grade Two sorcerer. What good were you if you couldn’t handle low-level curses like these, no matter how many there were? The question kept swirling in your mind, surfacing again and again, no matter how hard you tried to drown it out in the chaos of everything else.

What stung the most, however, what fueled your stubbornness to stay on that damn second floor, was the fact that you knew you could do it. You were good enough. You’d fought worse.

But your barrier was draining you faster than you wanted to admit. Too much cursed energy spent just to keep it intact. It slowed you down, tripped you up, stole your edge and power because it had to be divided between barrier and fighting.

When you were finally pushed into a corner, surrounded on all sides, you knew. You were done. No matter how badly it bruised your pride, this was it. Time to retreat. Except—it was already too late. There was no opening. No space to escape. Trying to squeeze through would only make it worse—trap you even more—if you slipped on the slick gore and fell to the ground.

Your pulse spiked—not with adrenaline, but with pure panic. Daggers flashed in your hands as you slashed blindly. Legs kicked. Elbows struck. You fought to breathe, to focus, to remember how to inhale. You tried to ignore the fear-fueled thought that you’d gotten in over your head—that after everything, you might be taken down by low-grade curses you could usually exorcise with your eyes closed.

You should have called for Gojo and Geto. Opened your mouth and screamed for help. But your jaw was locked tight, your mind empty—unable to grasp that help was even an option. The only thought that existed was your barrier. Dropping it. Reclaiming that cursed energy. Using it to fight.

There was a shift in the air. Instantaneous. Almost imperceptible.

One moment, your senses were dulled. The next, they sharpened violently. The stench of rot hit first—thick enough to turn your stomach. Instinct took over before thought.

Your mind went blank.

You moved faster than you could see, faster than you could think. By the time your mind tried to catch up, you were already in motion.

Daggers flew. Curses fell. The darkness that had enveloped you began to recede as the horde of curses circling you—from left to right, from the ceiling—slowly dwindled. Light crept back into the hallway.

When you blinked again, you were on the floor, on all fours, heaving.

You gulped the foul air, gagging because your barrier was gone. Without it, the filth clung to you. Your clothes were smeared, sticky. You lifted an arm to brush your hair back and nearly retched at the smell.

Something clamped around your arms, hauling you to your feet. Your knees buckled, hands shaking, but you reacted without hesitation. You turned sharply, driving the dagger you hadn’t even realized you were holding forward, certain it was a curse you’d missed.

It didn’t connect.

Gojo towered over you. He caught your wrist easily, twisting it just enough to force you to release the weapon. His grip was firm and unyielding, fingers digging into your arm as he held you in place. With his other hand, he pushed his glasses up onto his head.

His pupils were blown wide, eyes nearly black—only the thinnest ring of blue visible around the edges.

“Let me go,” you said, trying to wrench your arms free, your body still buzzing with adrenaline, not ready to be trapped again.

He let you go—but before you could take a step back, his hands clamped down on your shoulders, anchoring you in place so you couldnt move away. You instinctively tried to raise your barrier. It flared weakly, flickered—and collapsed. You had nothing left. Your cursed energy had been drained dry in the fight.

“I’m serious, Gojo.” Your voice wavered despite you trying to steady it. “GET. OFF.”

Gojo's lips pressed into a thin line. He didn’t answer. Instead, his gaze dragged slowly over your face, lingering too long, scrutinising every detail—the way your eyebrows pinched in confusion, the way you groaned, scrunching your nose. One hand slid from your shoulder to the back of your head, fingers threading into your hair as he forced you closer. Before you could react, his face dipped, pressing into your neck—bare skin, right beneath your collarbone. His fingers tightened, holding you there.

The moment the tip of his nose brushed that sensitive patch of skin, shivers ran down your spine, your thighs squeezed together, and the panic that had simmered down before exploded through you again.

You thrashed against him, scratching at his arms, shoving at his chest, trying desperately to break free, but he didn’t budge an inch.

“Stop,” Gojo growled into your skin.

Your body stilled instantly, betraying you even as your mind screamed at you to fight, to get away—especially when his lips replaced the tip of his nose, hot and wet, pressing into your neck. His tongue swiped over your salty skin, stealing the air from your lungs.

“You smell so good,” he murmured, the words vibrating against you, muffled, but clear enough to make your stomach flip, your heart race.

This was too much. You needed to do something, but when your hands pressed against his broad chest, trying to push him away, he immediately caught on.

A low, dangerous growl rumbled from his chest as his teeth scraped along the hollow of your collarbone, up the side of your throat, retraced slowly by his tongue.

You needed tol get away from him. You couldn't let this contniue, what if he—

“Satoru, you need to step back,” Geto’s voice cut in—low, controlled—and relief flooded you so fast it nearly made you dizzy.

If anyone could control Gojo, make him snap out of whatever daze he was in, it definitely was his best friend, right?

“Can’t,” Gojo replied, not moving, pressing into you even closer, like he was expecting Geto to tried to peel him off of you and he refused to let that happen.

You heard Geto approach before you felt him. His footsteps were nearly silent. Then his chest pressed into your back, close enough that you were caged between them. Heat rose through your body as if standing between them was standing in blazing fire licking at your skin.

“Satoru,” Geto said, a hand coming down on your shoulder. “Move.”

There was an edge to his voice—sharp, threatening. When he tried to pull you away, Gojo’s head snapped up.

Gojo growled, teeth bared, lip curled. Pupils still blown wide. Both of his arms slid down to encircle your waist, yanking you back with possessive force.

You felt Geto stiffen behind you. Heard his teeth grind. His chest vibrated with a growl just as dangerous. You couldn’t see his face, but you felt his hot breath fan over the top of your head as he steadied you. His hand refusing to leave your shoulder.

“Actually,” Gojo said, tightening his grip around you, “I think you need to move your hand away from her, Suguru.”

Geto’s fingers only dug deeper into your skin, as if he feared Satoru would throw you over his shoulder and bolt.

This will not end well. You knew you needed to do something, but you were too afraid to move, to speak, even to breathe. It didn’t help that your instincts were fighting you, urging you to stay exactly where you were: between two alphas whose attention had locked onto you. The brief thought that slipped through your mind—that you might kind of enjoy it, the heat simmering in your abdomen—made you immediately grimace at yourself.

Desperate, you gathered the scraps of your cursed energy. Something. Anything.

It took all your focus, but your barrier flickered once. Twice. Then it pushed outward. The invisible layer forced Geto’s hand off your shoulder, peeled Gojo’s arms from your waist. The pressure eased just enough for you to break free. Yet you didn’t move.

The tension lingered. Thick. Suffocating. The feeling that they might rip into each other’s throats didn’t fade. Neither did the instinctive certainty that if you tried to run, their attention would turn on you instead—that their teeth might sink into you the moment you moved.

You didn’t budge until Gojo inhaled sharply, scrunching his nose at the stench of curses that now replaced your dulled scent beneath the barrier, his pupils contracting as he swept his gaze down the hallway.

Before fleeing, you caught one last glimpse of Geto—his eyes following you, wearing the same expression Gojo had when he first caught you. Hands in fists at his sides, fingers tightening as if he were about to block your path.

You didn’t stop.

You didn’t look back.

You bolted down the stairs, nearly tripping over your own feet, bursting outside, running across the courtyard, and didn’t slow down until you reached the playground. There, your legs finally gave out.

You collapsed to the ground, your body submitting to gravity as your barrier flickered one last time and went out completely.

[ Geto's POV ]

When Suguru and Satoru stepped outside, Suguru half-expected he’d have to physically restrain him. He was already braced for it—muscles coiled, cursed energy simmering just beneath his skin, ready to snap into place the second Satoru took a step toward you.

But Satoru didn’t move. He stood there, hands in his pockets, posture loose in a way that felt wrong on him—too still, too contained. His gaze flicked toward you once, then away, jaw set as though he’d locked something dangerous behind his teeth.

Suguru didn’t relax.

They watched you from across the courtyard.

You sat on one of the swings, elbows braced against your knees, head buried in your hands. The chains creaked faintly as you shifted your weight, the sound sharp in the quiet.

For a moment, Suguru thought you were crying. But you didn’t move. Didn’t shake. Didn’t make a sound. Too still, folded in on yourself like you were trying to disappear.

The sight twisted something ugly in his gut.

Instinct screamed at him to go to you—to close the distance, to put himself between you and everything else, even if that “everything else” was Satoru.

He forced the urge down.

Then you shifted. Just slightly. Your fingers curled into your sleeves. Your shoulders rose with a slow, shaky breath. When you finally lifted your head, there were no tears, but your gaze was dull and detached.

Suguru exhaled, realizing only then that he’d been holding his breath.

His emotions were a mess. His thoughts even harder to sort out.

On one hand, he was furious with Satoru.

There was no excusing what had happened. No clever reframing, no twisted logic that made it acceptable. Suguru understood the instinct—hell, he felt it himself, that pull toward you—but understanding didn’t make it forgivable. Especially when Satoru had ignored every warning sign, and Suguru knew damn well the Six Eyes weren’t that oblivious.

You had fought him. Pushed him away. Made your fear unmistakable. Your scent alone should have been enough to snap Satoru out of it. It had been saturated with panic, clawing its way into Suguru’s lungs, igniting something primal and violent he rarely allowed himself to feel.

For a split second, Suguru imagined tearing Satoru apart. Not metaphorically—hands around his throat, cursed spirits tearing into pale flesh, bones giving way under pressure. Yet, unlike Satoru, he forced his instincts to settle.

But then there was the other part. The part that made his anger feel dangerous rather than righteous.

Back in the hallway—beneath the panic, beneath the rot and decay of curses—there had been something else. Your scent. Sweet. Warm. Vanilla-soft, with a hint of fruit, rich enough to linger long after you’d fled.

Even now, outside in the harsh wind, with distance finally between you and them, it clung stubbornly to Satoru’s clothes, to his skin.

The realization made Suguru’s mouth go dry. His throat bobbed as he swallowed, teeth grinding so hard it might as well have shattered.

And the worst part—the part he hated most, the part he was truly angry with his friend for—was that Satoru had gotten there first, had gotten to you first. Close enough to touch you without that barrier Suguru had noticed the moment you arrived; the barrier Satoru hadn’t even realized was there until today.

When the car finally arrived, the crunch of tires over gravel pulled his attention back. Suguru watched your eyes flick between the vehicle and them, your shoulders tightening. It was obvious you didn’t want to get in the car with either of them.

“You stay here,” Suguru said.

Before Satoru could protest, he was already moving toward you.

He approached slowly, like you were an injured animal he was afraid might bolt at the slightest wrong step. He stopped well short of your space, careful not to crowd you.

“You take the car,” he said quietly. Gentle, controlled. “I’ll call for another one.”

You hugged your arms around yourself, gaze dropping to the ground. Your teeth worried at your bottom lip, hesitation written into every line of your posture—like you were trying to decide whether this was another trick, another trap meant to corner you again.

Suguru didn’t push. He just waited, didn’t rush you. Eventually, after a long pause, you gave a small, uncertain nod.

Relief washed over him, tempered by something bitter and heavy. He stayed where he was as you took a wide path around him—and an even wider one around Satoru—never lifting your eyes as you climbed into the car. Only when it disappeared from view did he pull out his phone and send a short text. No explanation, just a demand for someone to come pick them up—he wanted to get back to the campus fast.

Then he turned back to Satoru. His footsteps hit the ground harder than necessary as he stalked toward him, heels digging in with every step.

“Care to explain what the fuck you were thinking?”

Satoru only shrugged. It was infuriating how easily his smugness slid back into place—as if nothing had happened, as if he had nothing to answer for.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” Satoru said lightly, rolling his eyes as if this were all some obvious joke Suguru was just too slow to understand. “You’re acting all moral, Suguru. . . I didn’t know you could be such a gentleman when you wanted.” His smile sharpened. “But we both know the truth. You’re not actually angry.”

Suguru exhaled sharply.

“You’re just jealous you didn’t get to her before me.”

The muscle in Suguru’s jaw ticked. His fists clenched at his sides. Being friends with someone who could read you like a book had its advantages. This was not one of them.

“But hey,” Satoru continued, entirely unbothered, hooking two fingers into the collar of his jacket and tugging it up as if presenting evidence, “you know me. I’m not greedy. I know how to share.”

Suguru was on the verge of punching him.

“Go on. Take a whiff—” Satoru brought the fabric slowly to his nose. “—so sweet.”

Suguru didn’t move, didn’t even dare to breathe. He knew if he did, this would turn into something neither of them could walk back from.

Satoru seemed to sense the tension. His gaze flicked over Suguru’s expression. Then he shrugged, slipping out of the jacket and tossing it over.

Suguru caught it without thinking. His grip tightened instantly, knuckles whitening as he stared at Satoru. After a beat, he lifted the fabric to his face and inhaled deeply—once. Twice. On the third breath, he held it, refusing to exhale until his lungs burned, until the air inside him was replaced with your scent.

Satoru only grinned as he watched his friend accept the peace offering.

”You can keep it.”

✧ ✧ ✧

When they returned to campus, they barely had time to step out of the car before Yaga intercepted them.

He stood at the edge of the lot, arms folded across his chest, posture relaxed in a way Suguru had long learned not to trust. His eyes swept over them once.

“Anything to share?” Yaga asked as he approached.

His tone was flat, but there was weight behind it. A hook baited and waiting.

“Nope,” Satoru answered immediately, rocking back on his heels. “Mission cleared. Real boring stuff.”

Yaga’s gaze shifted—not to Suguru’s face, but to his hands, to the jacket he still refused to let go of.

“Then why,” Yaga asked, far too calmly, “did two separate cars bring you back?”

Suguru exhaled through his nose, tipping his head back with an exaggerated sigh. “Why ask,” he said, “when you already know the answer?” This was a bluff—a dangerous one, but he didn’t want to say anything that would land either of them in trouble.

“So it’s true, then?” Yaga pressed. “What she said?”

Satoru let out a soft laugh, clearly unable—or unwilling—to keep his mouth shut.

“Oh?” he said, eyebrows shooting up. “What did the little omega say?”

There was a long pause.

“That she exhausted herself,” Yaga replied slowly, eyes flicking between the two of them. He waited, expecting either of them to slip up or offer a different version of the story, because he knew there was more to it. But neither young alpha cracked under the pressure. “And asked Suguru to call another car because she couldn’t maintain her barrier. She didn’t think it was wise for you all to return together.”

Suguru hadn’t even considered the possibility that you might lie about what had happened, but in that moment, he didn’t have time to wonder why you might have.

“Yeah,” Satoru said lightly, a faint grin still on his face. “Poor thing—”

“But she did well,” Suguru cut in sharply. “Handled herself. Cleared her floor. Didn’t even need our help.”

A muffled sound escaped Satoru.

Suguru shot him a warning glare.

Yaga’s expression didn’t change, but something unreadable flickered in his eyes. He opened his mouth, clearly intending to ask more questions—

“Excuse us,” Suguru said abruptly.

His hand shot out, clamping onto Satoru’s collar with enough force to crease the fabric. Without hesitation, he yanked him backward and started dragging him out of sight.

Satoru choked on a laugh as he stumbled along, barely catching his footing as they rounded the corner and Yaga vanished was out of view.