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Gojo has long forgotten what his parents look like, his memories of them faded like dreams that were never meant to last into waking hours. He doesn’t remember if he inherited his mother’s nose or his father’s smile. At some point in time, he cared about such details, tried to grasp them because he was moving so fast that afterimages were all he could hold close.
His hands were so small, not calloused enough to grip all the things he wanted to hold onto. With empty palms too unweathered to know the shape of pain, Gojo was passed onto the care of the sorcerers at Tokyo Jujutsu High School. There, he was treated like a ticking bomb or a sacred being neither of which made sense to Gojo who strained his neck to look up at his caregivers, whose small feet tripped easily and frequently on cracks in the stone pavement leading to training rooms.
There were always hands to catch him. Strong hands belonging to powerful sorcerers who swore their lives to protect him. Sometimes, these were the same hands that fed him and trained him and walked him across busy intersections. Never did these hands hold him when he woke up in the middle of the night with stormy eyes clouded by nightmares that shook him a fraction as hard as the realities they were based on.
Never did these hands raise him. Never did these hands love him.
Despite this, Gojo Satoru grew up, grew tall, grew strong. The jujutsu higher-ups like to credit themselves with his upbringing, each claiming the origin of one of Gojo’s strengths as if their own. Someone would recall training his speed, another would boast about helping him hone precise control over his curse technique.
But no one could claim the origin of Gojo’s kindness. No one wanted to claim it because it was not a weapon one could wield on the battlefield. No one had any use for trivialities like kindness.
Except for Gojo, who finds space in his ever-expanding palms for little treasures that only his eyes could see.
As a first-year, Gojo finds kindness in the form of newly enrolled Ieiri Shoko trying to reach for a kettle two selves too high to boil cup ramen at 2 am when insomnia keeps both of them from restful sleep. When Gojo offers to help, Shoko thanks his gangly limbs by returning from her room with a second container of ramen, and Gojo thanks her lack of height for the late-night company. They laugh between recollections of childhood stories and noisy slurps of ramen. As the warmth of a shared meal settles into Gojo’s stomach so does the realization that this is not a typical occurrence for him. He smiles to himself as he washes their chopsticks and looks forward to this becoming a new normal.
Kindness shows up again a week later in the middle of the school courtyard with a raised eyebrow, a finger pointed at Gojo’s round glasses, and a what the hell are those? To which Gojo responds with maybe you should get a haircut before you talk about my fashion sense. He finds this version of kindness easy to jest with, resilient to toothless jabs, and even quicker to respond to them. He learns that his name is Getou Suguru and that he will never cut his hair. They agree to never talk about Gojo’s fashion sense again.
Gojo is blessed with kindness in many forms and continues to welcome them into his home year after year. Sometimes kindness is so bright it takes a moment for everyone’s eyes to adjust to, but no one complains about the extra warmth Haibara adds to a room. Other times, it takes a moment to get used to, shows up pricklier than the rest (and taller too). Though, it doesn’t take long for everyone to notice the way Nanami always offers a listening ear and, as Gojo learns after one particularly grueling mission, the best hugs.
For the first time, Gojo has people to share his own kindness with, not that he never tried in the past with old instructors. In his elementary years, he attempted to gift them carefully selected flowers and sometimes, if he was lucky, the colorful wing of a bug. But they wanted nothing to do with him beyond training his body and techniques - their interactions starting and ending at the entrances to classrooms and training facilities. Now, Gojo gifts trinkets and little affections to his friends in the form of more indulgent late-night snacks, lounging around ruminating over everything and nothing, and sometimes a carefully selected flower tucked behind blonde hair.
But kindness comes and goes.
Death is nothing new to him. Gojo has been a sorcerer long enough to understand the mechanics of death. The events play out like clockwork:
Optional - contact family and friends
Not optional - prepare funeral clothes
Optional - grieve
He knows that kindness will leave eventually. Nothing is permanent. Yet, as he stands in front of Haibara’s tombstone, he wonders if any of this is real. His movements are preprogrammed, thoughtless because thinking doesn’t seem to be an available option.
Breath in. Breath out.
Remember to wipe away the tears to make way for more.
Breath in.
Or don’t. What difference does it make?
Breath out.
His mind won't let him forget what Haibara’s corpse looked like. The image crawls out of the ground and strikes his vision when he least expects it. During his classes, in the middle of training, the moment before he tips into sleep. It paints dark circles that bring out tones in his eyes that he never wanted to know were there.
Grief too is not a new concept to him, but grief has never built its home within Gojo’s before.
It’s never appeared so closely, snaked its tendrils through his mind and day until he can’t exist without feeling perpetually engulfed by a cacophonous concoction of sadness and agony. He sees it everywhere. He sees it in the way Shoko’s sleep schedule becomes as twisted as his own, the way Getou’s hair becomes progressively more unkempt, the way Nanami shows up at his door silently asking for comfort that Gojo isn’t sure he can give.
But he tries.
Because this is not Gojo’s first encounter with grief. He knows how grief swells in an attempt to shield and create space for all the feelings that no longer fit within a human body. He knows what grief looks like, predicts how it may manifest for each person because grief too runs like clockwork. Perhaps it will pass at a different pace for the four of them. No matter how much time people need, Gojo knows that grief will lull until the ticking of its clock blends into the beating of their hearts.
He reminds his friends of this daily. Holds them close so grief’s shield doesn’t turn into a wall, shares meals with everyone to remind them that they are still living beings in need of nourishment, cries with them just so they have someone to cry with.
Grief will pass. He reminds himself of this daily.
But grief runs its time differently for everyone, buries its tendrils in patterns unique to each individual. Gojo senses the way it changes his friends, forcing each person to grow up faster out of necessity. The jujutsu world is one where the strongest survived the longest. There was no room on the battlefield for feelings, no room for kindness. A split second of something other than combat intuition could result in another round of funeral preparations that no one was healed enough to handle. With the number of missions the higher-ups kept sending them on, they had no choice but to adapt. Survive.
By all definitions of the word, they survive. Shoko survives. Nanami survives.
Getou - technically, by all definitions of the word - survives.
Getou Suguru survives but is never saved. Gojo watches grief push him over a cliff. When he hears news of the first of Getou’s many crimes, he realizes he was never able to run fast enough to catch him, hands not even close enough to brush fingertips. With his six eyes and infinite powers, he was unable to see this happening.
He wasn’t strong enough to save someone who was within his grasp for so long.
For the first time, Gojo grieves for the living.
The second time Gojo encounters Getou at the edge of a cliff, he swears he sees Getou leap. Gojo rubs his eyes to check that his vision isn’t playing tricks on him, pinches himself to check that he isn’t dreaming.
Have you considered that he wanted to jump? Nanami asks him, holding him tight, giving him the space to be small. Part of him knew that Getou would never let himself fall so easily. They trained together for years, Gojo of all people understands Getou’s strength. He also knows exactly where Getou’s thoughts swayed. Gojo knows how to handle death and decay, but he is still learning how to hold with the living.
Perhaps this was backward thinking, but logic often didn’t apply to the jujutsu world. Getou lept into something Gojo no longer understood. Perhaps he should stop trying to understand people who were never meant to be understood.
Seasons change. Kindness comes and goes.
Shoko leaves for medical school, and, a year later, Nanami leaves the jujutsu world entirely.
“You don’t have to stay ,” Nanami tells him, a hint of longing in his voice.
“I know,” Gojo responds.
It’s a confirmation and a goodbye wrapped in a harmless lie they tell each other to cope with a truth they knew too well. Because Gojo, contrary to Nanami’s words, does have to stay. He is 19 years old and an immovable pillar of the jujutsu world by birth and circumstance. His staying or going is not something he has a say in.
Nonetheless, he has the power of choice, and Gojo chooses change.
He chooses to substitute the place of young sorcerers in missions beyond their skill level, reminding them to train hard until they can guarantee their own return if to no one else, then at least to themselves and the beds they sleep in. His presence eventually finds its way into their classrooms; it’s not where he intended to end up, but perhaps it’s where he’s supposed to be.
There’s something so heartening about seeing his students just being children. Bantering before classes about silly little nothings, comparing curse techniques the way non-sorcerers might talk about movies, almost dozing off when lectures get too slow (Gojo makes a mental note to edit his lesson plans whenever this happens).
Gojo becomes everything the higher-ups wanted and dreaded. He becomes their immovable pillar, so stubborn to their demands that his singular presence bends the wills of the jujutsu world. The higher-ups, behind their inherited titles and screen panels, realize what Gojo knew long ago.
His power was never theirs to own, never theirs to wield.
He chooses to wield his power to protect two children who come into his care, and he isn’t quite sure if he’s now their father or older brother (though he is quite certain that the younger boy merely sees him as an annoyance). Again, Gojo tries, because it’s what he does best. He adapts his kindness for the two by giving them room to flourish into their own people.
Over the next several years, kindness slowly finds its way back into Gojo’s life.
Shoko returns with the title of “Doctor” and a preference for alcohol in the evenings instead of cup ramen. Claims the acquired taste is a side effect of med school though Gojo suspects the cruelty of their high school years to be an equal culprit. Still, she hasn’t completely lost her affinity for cheap noodles, and she was never one to turn down Gojo’s company.
And Nanami comes back into his life with a phone call, one that strikes a laugh out of Gojo’s heart because it’s Nanami. With an exchange of a few words, Gojo knows that Nanami is still Nanami. Despite all these years away, he never changed.
Nanami Kento - a different kind of immovable force of the jujutsu world. The boy who didn’t have to stay, and the man who didn’t have to come back.
Because kindness always returns.
Gojo is once again surrounded by a semblance of the warmth he once associated with his younger years at jujutsu tech. Kindness looks different now, drinks more, one has longer hair, and the other is shorter than he remembers. They’ve grown up. Gojo supposes he has too.
And kindness shows up in ways he least expects. In the form of a Zenin outcast who cares with candid words and pointed strikes from cursed weapons. In the form of a boy haunted by ghosts of his past, A boy who loved so much, he forgot to love himself. Gojo makes sure that he doesn’t ever forget to save himself when saving others and gives him a family to remind him where his strengths lie.
It’s through kindness that Gojo learns to let Getou go.
Because sometimes kindness shows up when we least expect it. Maybe Getou - drenched in blood sitting in an alleyway befitting his actions - didn’t deserve Gojo’s grace after all his sins, but Gojo never had control over his heart. Whether it was because of his heart, his kindness, or something else, Gojo still feels a connection to the barely recognizable figure of his friend, choosing to remember a gentler image of who Suguru once was.
He chooses to remember the boy who was never seen by the people who could’ve guided him, the boy who cracked the most ridiculous jokes behind his teachers’ backs, the boy who was forced to grow up too fast. In the end, Gojo chooses to see the criminal and remember Suguru.
Perhaps this same ineffable feeling is what drives Suguru to laugh with his last breath instead of cursing Gojo. Perhaps kindness shows up when we least expect it.
***
11:57 pm
The hands on his living room clock don’t stop moving and neither does Gojo. He paces around his room unable to sleep, a mug of green tea in hand, weaving between furniture that he should really be avoiding with an open container of liquid.
In three minutes, he turns 28 years old.
It’s really an unextraordinary number, he thinks. Nothing is known to come with the age of 28 other than the ever-looming presence of reaching his 30’s. As a sorcerer, the numbers that come with aging don’t faze him much. Maybe each year should be celebrated in such a dangerous line of work. He knows Shoko keeps a particularly expensive bottle of liquor for such occasions, but Gojo never understood her affinity for drinks with an undertone of bitterness.
It’s not that he can’t stomach the bitterness. Gojo is more acquainted with the taste than most, swallowing bitterness every day. He chooses not to endure more venom than he needs to.
He’s also well acquainted with how sweet life can be. How gently it wakes him up in the mornings, how it never takes him too seriously in the classroom, how it has kept him alive for this long.
Walking past his bookshelves, Gojo runs his fingers along the spines of photo albums he put together over the years, doesn’t open any of them because he knows exactly which stories each book tells. The dark grey one has all of Megumi and Tsumiki’s first day of school pictures, the green one holds pictures of Yuuta’s first real birthday party, and the red one has pictures from Yuuji’s - as Gojo likes to call it - Great Surprise Return.
He sets his lukewarm tea down on his kitchen counter and smiles to himself, wonders when he became so sentimental.
The doorbell rings.
There’s no sign of malicious energy, so Gojo leaves his glasses untouched.
He opens his door.
12:00 pm
There’s a burst of confetti aimed at his face followed by a perfectly clumsy chorus of happy birthday! The bright colored paper settles onto his doorway, his hair, his clothes. Makes way for the sight before him.
It’s a picture-perfect image - all his students and close friends framed by the entrance to his home like a photo straight out of one of his albums except… this is real. Gojo could reach his hands out and touch each person's shoulder or pinch their noses or hug them close.
But he doesn’t.
He stands frozen because his mind is settling on what his heart already knows to be true. Gojo has never had control of his heart, and he’s grateful that he doesn’t because his heart knows him best and knows what was best for him. As he scans his six eyes over each and every one of them, Gojo realizes that kindness has long since built a home in his heart.
Kindness comes and goes, but when kindness stays even after years and great distances apart, then that’s when kindness becomes family.
Perhaps this is what makes Gojo Satoru strong. It’s not his deity-like curse abilities or the resilience of his muscles because there are others who have been born and will be born with prodigal talents. His strength lies in his ability to care for the common man, the wayward sorcerer who fears their own abilities, the social outcast who’s only one by title, the run-away salaryman who’s too kind for such cruel jobs.
Gojo has long forgotten what his parents look like, but his hands are now strong enough to catch everyone who screams help as they teeter off the edge of a cliff. His heart was always big enough to house those who needed a home because Gojo, too, is an outcast. He understands what it feels like to be held at arm's length, understands what it feels like to grow up too fast, understands what it feels like to be adored for everything he was born into and feared for all the hypotheticals he was incapable of.
Because the Gojo clan isn’t the people Gojo shares his blood with. They’re the people standing in front of his doorway. They’re the friends who’d catch him if he falls, and they’re the students he has given his everything to because someday they will be everything the world needs.
Gojo smiles, earnest and sincere, the harsh angles age carved into him fading into the night and lets everyone into his apartment.
He lingers at his door, takes an extra second to look at the ragtag bunch of sorcerers settling into all corners of his home, takes a photo on his phone to mark the first entry of a new album on his shelf.
The origin of Gojo’s kindness is the origin of his family, and Gojo Satoru - at the age of 28 - has found his family.