Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“So, that's pretty much it.” Satoru said and continued to munch over his food, watching the two kids grip a history they shouldn’t have had to survive. 

The two blinked up at him: Megumi characteristically unimpressed, chewing extra hard, enduring no change in expression—he simply maintained the disgruntled face he always bore, while Tsumiki watched Satoru as if his head was missing. “That's… it?”

Satoru shrugged. “Yep. Megumi's dad left the clan. Met his mother, had him. Somewhere along the way, your mother entered the picture and now all the three are gone.” At the mystified look on their faces, he added: “Did you expect something super flashy and fancy like Digimon or Sailor Moon?”

It's a run of the mill story, native to every clan in the history of jujutsu. What else could Satoru add that the two of them would understand, or should even attempt to care? He watched their faces morph as they let the information settle, and pressed his palms into his knees, pushing them onto the floor. A few moments sprinted away. 

Better they asked questions than he gave answers to complicate their lives, so he concluded: “So, no questions, then? If not, I'll tell you about jujutsu, and why exactly Megumi and I have this technique and why Tsumiki-chan—” he stuck his tongue out at her and offered a gracious thumbs down, “—does not have it.” 

He expected that she might smile, and she did, albeit with an unfocused sincerity. She toyed with the chopsticks in her hands, picking at nothing amongst her plate, her glassy stare too empty for it to be healthy. Satoru amended his words. “Well, both are good, actually. I get to save people, so does Megumi-chan, and Tsumiki gets to live carefree. Or as carefree as any living person could, sorcerer or not.” 

At both of their empty stares, Satoru sighed again. His throat began to do that thing where it closed up at the thought that the kids would push him away, but he shoveled that bile down, instantly turning the wheel of RCT in his brain. Please don't. 

Tsumiki broke the ice in a small voice. “So, the oji-san who arrived; he was giving us money. Do you know why?” 

“Beats me,” Satoru admitted. “I have some theories, but none very valid until I consult my sensei.” Countering: “Did Megumi tell you about the deal?” 

“The deal?” Tsumiki echoed, immediately as Megumi's spine straightened up like a whip. He hurled on Satoru in what could only be sheer panic, eyes pleading wide with warning and fear. 

Satoru spoke, as did Tsumiki: “What deal?” clashing with, “You don't want her to know?” 

Megumi shook his head, ignoring his sister. 

“But why?” Satoru continued. “It would be better to stay on the same page as your sister, you know? Orrrr, wait— c'mere. Tell me in my ear,” he said, beckoning hurriedly and leaning towards him with an outstretched palm and ear. 

Megumi did not budge. 

Hmph. He was getting a good read on his antics now. He turned to Tsumiki, shooting a short, defeated look. “That's a dead end then. Sorry Tsumiki-chan, I'll tell you something else if you'd like. Sooner or later, Megumi will have to tell you what this is about, so you don't have to wait for long. Is there anything else you wanna know?”

“Is it… something bad?”

Was it? Was it bad that a deadbeat dad bartered with his clan family to sell his own son off despite being from the same family? Or was it bad that a child was being sold in the first place? 

“Now that you have me,” he said instead, wiggling his brows, “it won't ever become a problem again.” 

“Oh.”

Satoru waved his hand. “It's all sorcery politics, Tsumiki-chan.” He chanced a look at the grumpy raven boy and added, “Megumi-chan has something extremely precious, so it's like a tug of war that he's stuck in.”

“Between you and that oji-san?”

“Hmm, you can say that. But bear this in mind: this is a super duper simplified version.” 

Tsumiki only nodded her head. She did that a lot, Satoru noticed, as if to fake understanding, while Megumi seemed to move his hands around a lot, often in fists, posturing strength. 

Pitching his voice, Satoru exclaimed instead: “You're not eating! Do you not want to eat anymore right now?” 

Tsumiki's shoulders tightened. “We don't want to waste food, Satoru-san, but this is too—” 

“Oh, nonsense. I'll just take these back to the school. There's always someone or other with a voracious stomach like me. How about the sweets then? A milkshake? There's a mango one, a sugarcane, pine—”

“You're leaving?” 

Speaking to the Fushiguro siblings was beginning to look a lot like working around a ticking time bomb, except the bomb wouldn't detonate. It only hung off of them like a parasite and suffocated the family with its weight. 

Which, of course, was Satoru's fault. He hadn't even begun to discuss the very dregs of his ‘plan’ yet. He was making them walk on eggshells again for hell's sake.

“No!” he castigated. “I'll leave only after you finish this milkshake, so tell me who's choosing what.” 

Tsumiki looked a little green at the idea, but she chose the mango nonetheless, even though her head remained downturned and dejected. Megumi, in the shadow of his sister, muttered his thanks after grabbing the sugarcane glass, and began to promptly sip it, then slowly. At least the perpetual frown was beginning to dissipate from his face—he liked sugarcane, Satoru imbibed.  

“You don't have to force yourself to drink that,” Satoru said softly to Tsumiki. “There's still so much I have to talk about with the two of you, like what we're going to do from now on.” 

Tsumiki's tone had taken on the same bravado from when she'd stared down Satoru at the door, as if she had stepped into the same old doctor's coat like Shoko did with her patients. A veneer of professionalism. Tragically, Tsumiki was grown beyond years. A part of him feared she’d turn into an apathetic shell of a person at a mere age of eight. Almost surgically, Tsumiki asked with finality: “Are you leaving us?” 

He could lie. But Satoru was nothing if not precise. Transparent. “No, I'm not leaving you both behind.” 

Some of the tension shed itself from her shoulders, although Tsumiki’s face betrayed any confidence he’d built thus far. “But?”

“Tsumiki-chan,” he gushed. “You're too smart for your own good.”

Her face fell. “So you are?”

Satoru contemplated. It was going to be temporary. He'd not trampled into the community centre on a whim—Yaga had been the one to ask him to pay a precursory visit, take stock of the situation and investigate. It was another matter that Satoru had walked right into what could have been the Zen'ins’ trap that would whisk Megumi away from under his nose. Not that he had stuck his nose into their business until this April day. 

“No buts,” Satoru promised. He spread his hands out wide across the length of the kotatsu and leaned forward, as seriously as possible. “Impossible. I'm not leaving you both.” It was as much a promise to them as it was to him. 

“Ane-ki,” Megumi interrupted quietly. 

Satoru watched him gulp and turn to him. He nodded—a slight twitch, really—before turning back to his sister again. “I'm… being sold to the Zen'in clan.” 

Yet again, Satoru mused that none of the curses from Suguru's repertoire could make as much as a dent in the tension of the room. 

Tsumiki’s mouth fell open. “You're… what?”

“Satoru is stopping it.” 

It's a small delight to watch Tsumiki wrap the information around her head, which really begged the question: how did Megumi digest the information? Satoru had all but plucked the boy off the streets, told him a devastating family news and then dumped him back into his house. 

Yeah… Satoru was beginning to see exactly why Tsumiki had burst into tears. What a genius of an adult. 

“Is that true, Satoru?”

“I'm afraid so, Tsumiki-chan,” he touched his forehead. “His father grew up in that clan and then he deserted them. For what reason, I don't exactly know, but I can take a guess. Then he—”

“Why?” At his confusion, she explained, “You said you can guess. Why he left. Why did he leave?” 

“Hmm.” Why indeed. None of the clans were what Satoru would describe as flexible, but the Zen'ins, he was certain, took the crown for manifesting the worst of it. Knowing his own disciplined, restrained and revered role in his family, Satoru could imagine Toji's plight. He had been an outlier that matched Satoru inversely. Utterly unspecial non-sorcerer, matched to an overly special sorcerer.

Really. Satoru's exploits and anecdotes could power a supercharged manga at this rate. 

“Where do I begin? Okay. Megumi's stunt right now with the dogs happened because he used what jujutsu sorcerers call a ‘Cursed technique’. There are multiple varieties of it and it can manifest in both sorcerers or non-sorcerers—who then become sorcerers but that’s another story. What matters is that cursed techniques don’t appear in some people. Megumi-chan's oto-san was one of them.” 

“Without a cursed technique?”

He nodded. “Precisely. And his family, called Zen'in, loves these powerful techniques. It's an inherited technique so it gets passed on from this generation to the next, and it’s their prized possession—it’s a technique that only people in that family get. Similar to mine," he added at her perplexed look. 

“So… they kicked him out?”

“They did kick him, but I reckon his father kicked himself out of the clan.” Satoru had had an aunt like that who shared a similar struggle, but a worse fate. She'd inherited a weaker copy of the Limitless, which of course was useless without rikugan—an attribute only Satoru could possess in this lifetime. It was a circumstance of her birth, but she'd been reviled for it, for choosing an identity beyond the blessed Limitless. She’d run away from the Gojo goyochi when Satoru was seven. Naturally, gossip floated around: she was weak. She was stealing from her own family. She was eloping. The clan's elders claimed that she'd run off, and to save their face, had concocted that it had been a lover's gamble. 

But Satoru knew better: he'd dug the grave for his aunt with his own hands, even if he never watched or checked if her remains had been scattered into the dust. But the existence of a grave meant that it wasn't empty without remains. “Without a Cursed Technique, you're pretty much useless to Zen'ins.”

Tsumiki nodded again. From the look on her face, she'd connected the dots. “And because Megumi has a technique… he's important to them now.”

Both Satoru and Megumi nodded together. “Very amazing you picked on that, Tsumiki-chan! Essentially, yes. Megumi's father, a wastrel that he was, decided to make money off of selling his son to his own family. Creepy, isn't it? And Megumi's technique—ah, nevermind,” Satoru paused. He had no way to know if the walls were listening. The director's office was proof enough. Deliberately, “I don’t think he has manifested it yet.” He shushed the two of them with a finger to his lips. Megumi and Tsumiki nodded quietly.

“I told him no, ane-ki,” Megumi murmured. He'd placed his head on the table next to Tsumiki's hands. “I told Satoru I won't go.”

Satoru raised his arm in a quick salute and a smile too plasticky on his face. “So here I am, your lovely hakuba no oujisama, ready to whisk you away to a fairyland. Except,” he relented, “it's not all fairyland and sweet dreams. Although we can make it be with these,” he said, pointing at the row of open sweets on the table. 

Only then did Tsumiki finally begin to sip her milkshake. 

“Ane-ki…” Megumi's voice was small. “I'm sorry.”

What? But Satoru did not dare interrupt their quiet conversation. Megumi had nothing to be sorry about. If anything, Fushiguro Toji was to blame. 

“I'm not mad at you, Megumi.” Then she turned back to Satoru. She tried, she really did, but all she said was: “So… you…” 

“Yup,” he nodded. “I'm still planning. I came here to investigate today. I wasn't even planning on meeting the two of you until I had the new contracts ready. Call it sixth sense, which I do have thanks to six eyes, but I thought it'd be cool to drop by and tell you who I am.”

“But we don't know who you are,” Megumi grumbled. “You're one white haired weirdo who dashed in.”

“Oi. But I told you who I am, at least.”

“Yeah,” he grumbled. “Oni-chan.”

“Geez, you sure have a foul mouth. Is he always like this, Tsumiki?”

She didn’t look up from patting the top of her brother's head, her touch as gentle as the wind. “Oni for a oni, don't you think, Megumi?”

Megumi smiled at first, only to gradually narrow his eyes. “What?”

“Yeah, I'm with Megumi here!” Satoru protested. “How mean of you, Tsumiki-chan,” to which she only stuck her tongue out at Satoru. 

Well and good, then, he thought. He didn't want to ruin the perfect moment, but there were two more things to work out. Nah, three more. “Because he has the talent, he will be expected to train to become a jujutsu sorcerer. Both of you will be taken under the wardship of Jujutsu Technical College until, well, you're both eighteen? Yeah.”

The pair nodded. Satoru went on. “Okay, good. Onto what is possibly the last point. Or, hm. Two more things. First being your general knowledge.” 

“General knowledge?” 

Megumi scoffed. “What are you? Our grade teacher?” 

Satoru tsked. “Tsumiki-chan is very smart, but I've yet to test you.”

“I'm smarter than her.”

No, he's not, Tsumiki mouthed. Satoru, hiding his face from Megumi, agreed. I know. 

“Hey!”

“Yes, yes, first question. Your full name, as on your IC card.” Did they even have an IC card? But from their replies, it seemed they did. Fushiguro Tsumiki, Fushiguro Megumi. Japanese, both born in Saitama Prefecture.

“Can you write your names?” 

Tsumiki’s hand shot up enthusiastically. “I can! But I might make a mistake in kanji… Megumi knows—”

“Allow him tell it to me himself, Tsumiki-chan,” Satoru stopped gently. “How about you, Megumi?”

“Kana only,” Megumi murmured. “I can show it to you.”

And then they did after picking up a book from their backpacks by the windows. Their swirls were much prettier than Satoru's. Megumi's name did log a tiny error, but it was nothing that he couldn't help them fix later. “Great. How about English?”

“I can try…,” and Megumi’s, “I dunno.”

“Alright, I’ll teach you that later. Birthdays. Oh wait, let me guess,” he smiled conspiratorially. “You, Megumi, were born in December, and Tsumiki in March.”

“No way!” the two exclaimed. Megumi was already raising a pitchfork crying “cheating!” out loud. 

Satoru stifled a laugh. “I don't know the exact dates, though, so you do have to tell me that.”

They did. “December 22nd, 2002,” said Megumi, while Tsumiki: “March 19th, 2002.” 

“A recent birthday!” Satoru gasped and clapped. “After we settle all of this, let’s go celebrate, Tsumiki-chan!” which made Tsumiki preen shyly. 

“Okay next: Phone number? And Tsugakuro.”

The smile slid off their faces. They hid it well—really well. Megumi took charge to reply, “I forgot. We haven’t used it for a few months.”

“How many exactly?”

Megumi counted off on his fingers. “Five.”

Not very weird. Satoru turned to Tsumiki and asked, “Do you know why, Tsumiki-chan? Did you see if the bills and notices had anything for the phone services being cut?”

Tsumiki shrugged tightly and avoided looking at Satoru. “I think so.”

“We know our school route,” Megumi grumbled quietly. 

Something was clearly not right about the phone numbers or the school. Satoru would have liked to investigate, but— “Are you going to school currently?”

“No,” Tsumiki replied. “Renewal failed.”

“I see,” he nodded. Failed indeed. No adult to accompany them or take stock of their education and finances. But Satoru sensed something more malicious in the works, like it was the work of purposefully rejecting conventional education in favour of shadow strength. It was only a hunch, but Satoru knew himself, his instincts, and trusted his gut enough to know he was right. It would explain the lack of electricity and phone services and the like. What a pain. 

It didn’t stop him from getting the greasy curse user off of him though, did he?

Next: “Blood groups,” he muttered forcefully, masking the discomfort growing within his ribs with a smile. It was malignant, that little force of doubt that had begun to haunt him since Suguru’s defection. Blood groups. 

“O+,” and it made him laugh lightly. “It's said, O positive, Megumi-chan. And yours, Tsumiki?”

“That’ll be funny then. It's B negative.” 

And it was. “Okay, emergency numbers. How many, and which are those?”

Tsumiki let Megumi take over rattling off the list. “110 for police and 119 for fire stations and ambulances.”

“What about the non-emergency situational phone numbers?”

“Huh?”

“#7119 for non-emergency medical help, or if you’re simply confused, and #9110 for police in the same scenario.” She elbowed her brother's side. “Who's smarter than you now?”

“You missed out the coastguard number!”

“Which is…?”

Megumi didn't know, but neither did Tsumiki, for all her taunting. “It's 118,” Satoru replied, laughing. “Okay, all good. Monarch and prime minister?”

“Akihito, and Yasuo Fukuda.”

“Phew. That was good! Well done, both of you! Megumi, you'll need to learn some more as a jujutsu sorcerer, but there's plenty of time before we get there.” All well, for now. The clock indicated 8:39pm, and he added, “You do know how to read the clock, yes?” 

“I can,” which was not surprising for Tsumiki to say. 

“I can… sometimes I need help.” 

“Isn't it so good that you have me now,” Satoru winked. “Okay then. Last thing, now. I have to call my sensei and figure out what exactly we ought to do.” 

“Satoru…—”

“Nope. Nope, nope, nope, that's good. No keigo—”

“...san,” Tsumiki smiled apologetically. “But we know nothing about you.”

“Yeah. You're still a student, right? I saw you in your uniform before” Megumi wiggled his finger at Satoru mock-menacingly, which, tragically, was a perfect replica of actual menace. 

Satoru only brightened. He reached to touch the crest button on his jacket, only to realise that his jacket was missing on him. The realisation brought a strange feeling of nakedness. He reached into his trousers for his phone instead. “Yes! I'm only nineteen now, but I'll be graduating in May, which gives me ample time to set up the hoops and whimsies for both of you. We'll have a lot to do. And a lot of fun!”

The two of them gawked at him for several minutes as Satoru flipped the phone open—which was a disaster. 

He’d expected there to be millions of missed calls and many vivid declarations of violent body dismemberment from Shoko, courtesy Yaga-sensei, but as he flipped his phone open, Satoru watched the face of his screen dim with nothing. Nothing at all. There were no red signs of missed calls in the phone log, nor were there any notifications about new emails or texts. 

Something was not right. 

Usually, sorcerers made it a point to carry two phones. Curses were nasty things; at their most potent, they interfered with cell reception and at worse, destroyed the garakei entirely. What Satoru carried was the communication phone—not the one that had any memories or photos. It was cumbersome to carry the two of them; he frequently ditched the other one, making it a point to email the photos of the dumb shit he encountered to himself on the other phone. He’d used to send it to Suguru more, but that wasn’t a possibility now, was it? 

Satoru reasoned that Shoko and Yaga-sensei might’ve accidentally messaged him on the other phone. Yeah, that had to be it. 

But he’d told Shoko, hadn't he? SOS and DND? Shoko wasn’t dumb. She knew which number lay in the cocoon of digital archives and which was the quickest way to reach him digitally. Shoko knew it. So then why?

Panic clambered up his throat, its gentle movement so thoroughly devastating in his body that he would’ve mistaken it for mere blood. He felt the chill of the former gelidus, jelly-like sensation slithering through his veins, coiling around his throat, his fingers, like a makeshift noose. Something was wrong. Something was wrong. Something was wrong. 

The ashen tremble shocked his bones. It returned with full force and throttled his senses into violent submission. 

Satoru rushed to the carrier email in his phone, thumbing through the keypad, cursing that the app was taking too long to load. The texts remained as they were with nothing new to add. Satoru had enabled the Manner Mode, but that didn’t mean he was ghosting them entirely. Any messages Shoko or Yaga-sensei might’ve sent would have come through, unless they’d sent it to the other phone.

But there were none. Which meant… 

He thumbed a text again, and pressed send. For a moment, the little clock shimmied in patience and then the cross mark blinked into existence. What? The dialog box read, Your message could not be sent, likely due to poor reception. Please try again later. The signal bars remained mighty in the corner of the screen, so it wasn’t about reception. Were the phone lines bugged intentionally?

Something was not right. Not with the phone. Not within him. 

Then, 

Then the spiders began to crawl into his vision and his viscera.