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The curse slams against Gojo's Infinity three times before it backs away with a hiss and a twitch of its weird twisted jaw.
"Let's take care of this thing and see if there's enough time to make it to the movie- Kento?"
"I...appear to be sinking," Nanami says with more calm than he feels. It's like water but not wet, is and isn't at the same time. All he knows is concrete shouldn't warp under his feet.
"Satoru-"
The ground gives way under Nanami's feet, and Gojo catches him by the wrist.
"I'll get you out-"
Nanami realizes if he doesn't make Gojo let go, they'll both get drawn in.
He lets go, and the current pulls Nanami away, closing him off from everyone and everything.
I will make it back, he vows to himself before he fades and dissolves-
---
Kento opens his eyes. He watches people walk by, he feels the breeze stir the trees, signaling the coming of fall.
After a moment to catch his breath, he knows why he’s here.
His feet take him to a building, up two flights of stairs and to a classroom. Kento slips in the back door, into a corner desk, obviously out of place but he doesn’t care. The professor stops and glances at him for a moment before he goes back to his lecture.
Dr. Ichiro Nanami is not a large man, but a man of presence nonetheless. He lectures with confidence and passion; there’s not a drooping head or a closed eye in the room. He stops to answer questions, discuss the readings with his students, who seem just as passionate about the subject as he is.
Before Kento knows it, the lecture is over, and the students who stayed behind to talk to their professor have cleared out.
Only then does his father droop, and Kento knows what day it is. He knows what will happen tomorrow, and at the end of the semester, and the summer of 2005. His father will fade and fade and fade, eaten alive by cancer, until he is reduced to ashes in an urn. Until his office is packed away in boxes, his name plate removed from the door, and condolences from his students arrive.
His father erases the chalkboard and gathers his books; anthologies and tattered copies and criticisms; every one with notes crammed in the margins and place markers and folded corners. A lump forms in Kento’s throat as he walks to the front and waits.
When did I get taller than him?
“Kento,” his father says as he turns.
“How did you--”
“Know? Please. I can’t say I understand how or why you’re here and obviously not fourteen, but I’d know my own son anywhere.”
"Dad, I don't...I don't know how to say this but…"
"You're here because I'm...I'm no longer around where you're from, am I?"
Tears slide down Kento's cheeks. His father is right here, still alive, still full of life, but the countdown to the end has already started. He can't change the outcome, can't tell his dad to go to the doctor earlier so maybe they catch the cancer and he lives through the treatment. Kento can't give his father the years he should have; the means to watch his children grow to adulthood, to grow old with the wife he loves dearly. He's not an alchemist, not a magician, not God.
Just a sorcerer. Just a man.
"I miss you so much," he says as he wraps his father in an embrace. "We all do."
His father pulls away but holds onto Kento’s forearm. "Do you have a good job? A wife? Kids? Can you tell me? There's so much I want to ask you…"
"I do have a good job. It's grueling and terrible sometimes but I get to help people. And...it's how I met my husband. His name is Satoru Gojo. He's a lot, and gods, he can be annoying but...I love him. Hoshiko and Atsuko are doing fine, and Mom..."
“She does find someone else, doesn’t she? She’s much too young to pine after me for the rest of her life.”
“She does. Another literature professor, if you can believe that.”
His father smiles up at him. "That's wonderful Kento. I'm so happy for you, and I can't tell you what it means to see the man you'll become."
Kento hears sounds in the hallway, and knows it’s his younger self and Hoshiko by the belting of his seven-year-old sister's voice.
“I should go. I don’t know what will happen if I meet...myself.”
Ichiro lets go reluctantly. “I suppose it’s best not to tempt fate. But thank you. For giving me peace about what comes after I’m gone. Take care, all right?”
“Of course.” Kento begins to slip out the other side door, into the opposite hall.
“One more thing,” Ichiro says in his authoritative voice, the one Kento apparently can’t ignore, even as a grown man.
“Yes?”
“I love you.” His father smiles, and he can’t help but commit it to memory.
“I love you too,” Kento says and goes out into the hall.
A mop bucket lays on its side, and the water spilling out of it isn’t water.
Kento wipes his eyes on his sleeve and steps through…
---
He’s in a diner this time; one he remembers well. Kento walks inside, takes a seat, and figures out quickly that no one can see him.
Yu Haibara digs into a stack of pancakes the size of his head, still chipper despite his massive hangover, as the younger Kento downs another cup of coffee and shovels eggs into his mouth. The diner has dim lighting, good food, and cheap prices. Perfect for a couple of college aged men who’d been bar hopping the night before.
“So what do you think of the first years?” Yu asks. He’s the teacher for the first years, and knows them better than anyone, but always seems to want his best friend’s opinion on the matter.
“Takuma Ino has a lot of potential. Akari Nitta though...she’ll end up becoming an assistant manager. From what I understand, she doesn’t have much in the way of cursed energy. Her younger brother is much more powerful.”
Yu laughs and takes a drink of his orange juice. “If personality could be converted to cursed energy, Nitta-san would be unstoppable. You should see the way she pushes Ino-san around. He’s terrified of her!”
“He seems to be afraid of everyone. I often see him lurking around when I’m on campus, hiding where he thinks I can’t see him.”
Yu points with his fork. “Ino-san’s a big fan of yours. When he saw you take down that curse in Roppongi a few months ago, I couldn’t get him to stop singing your praises. You should stop by sometime, let the kid meet his hero, give him a few pointers.”
“I’ll think about it,” the younger Kento says, face impassive, as he sets aside his finished plates and slips a book out of his pocket.
You’ll do it, you big softie, the older Kento thinks.
The door opens with a clatter, and Gojo and Geto walk in, sliding into the booth with Yu and Kento. Geto flops against Yu’s shoulder and lets out a long sigh. Gojo slides down in the booth and takes Kento’s hand, which Kento acknowledges with a glance and a small grin before he goes back to his book.
“Long night?” Yu asks.
“The longest,” Suguru responds.
“Have some pancakes,” Yu says as he holds out a forkful. Suguru takes the bite gratefully and leans back against the red vinyl of the booth.
The waitress stops by and places a melon float in front of Satoru, and his eyes light up behind his glasses. The white haired man pops the cherry sitting on top of the mound of white soft serve into his mouth, stem and all. About a minute later, he produces the stem, tied in a series of complicated knots.
“So cool!” Yu says. His sunny nature and admiration of Satoru has only been tempered a bit since their high school days, while his feelings towards Suguru…
Well, they were set to get married in a few months. He’d come to Kento sobbing out of joy when Suguru proposed.
The older Kento watches the scene, and a sense of warmth and nostalgia washes over him. He hasn’t talked to Haibara in a few days; he should reach out if and when he returns to his rightful time and place.
He walks out the door and around to the alley, where he spots the puddle that isn’t a puddle and jumps in like a kid splashing in a puddle…
---
The place where Kento arrives is burning; a warzone of corpses and curses. He’s outside of Shibuya Station, and something tells him to run inside, deep underground, past the horrors around him--
His breath catches in his throat when he sees himself standing in front of a special grade curse with white hair and stitches; half of his body charred beyond recognition. Itadori runs past him, through him to where this other Kento waits.
No, he thinks as he follows. No it can’t end like this, I cannot let it end like this--
But what can Kento do? He is only an observer to his own demise, watching himself die in front of the boy he considers his son--
Or so he thinks.
“Domain...Expansion,” the other Kento wheezes from charred lips as he places his burnt hand against the flat of his blade.
The curse pulls back its hand, confused, and the distraction is enough.
“Get away from him!” Itadori howls as he tackles the curse to the ground and starts throwing punches.
Yu and Suguru drop down from a few floors above like avenging angels.
“We’ve got it from here,” Yu shouts as he rends Mahito limb from limb with his cursed technique. “Get Nanami to Shoko, and hurry!”
The pool appears beneath him, and Kento sinks into it with relief…
---
Kento smells the salt air before he opens his eyes and finds himself standing next to the ocean, on a beach. He looks up and there’s a trail, and a little house at the end of that trail.
He follows, knowing what this place is. It’s not exactly as he envisioned, but Kento knows he had to let Satoru have some say in the place.
It’s perfect for them, with pictures and knick knacks coating every surface. Shelves full of books, a large-well stocked kitchen. Emotion swells within him; a dam about to burst, as he walks into the bedroom.
A much older Satoru is laying in the bed, blankets the color of seafoam looking out the open doors to the ocean. He’s wearing a blue pajama set, his white hair thinned out and pushed back from his forehead with a headband. He turns towards the door, sees Kento and smiles.
“Well hey there, hot stuff. Come to take me with you?”
Kento shakes his head. “Not yet.” He sits in a chair next to Satoru’s bed.
Satoru sighs and closes those bright, bright blue eyes. “You left me a few months ago. I don’t think you meant to. We went to sleep and well...you didn’t wake up.” A couple of tears slide down his wrinkled cheeks. “I miss you so much that I’ve started hallucinating, I guess.”
“I’m...well. I don’t know what I’m meant to do. I’m a younger version of Kento, and I don’t know why... Tell me what our life was like? Was it good? Did we--”
“Yuji and Megumi gave us a whole gaggle of grandkids. They came and stayed with us for a few weeks every summer. You got around to all those books you wanted to read, we would walk along the beach every morning and night, you would put tropical flowers in my hair and one time you chased me with a crab--oh, there’s so much I want to say and can’t! I remember so many things but when I go to reach for them, they slip through my fingers. Curse of old age, I suppose.”
Satoru drifts off to sleep, and Kento goes to leave. A frail hand grabs his, and he stops.
“We’ll find each other again, won’t we?” Satoru says, and gods, it’s so much because while this Satoru isn’t his, not yet, he can still see him, and see how age has worn him down. “In the next life?”
“Of course,” Kento says, because it’s true to him now at 28, and he knows it’s true to who he became. “With any luck it’ll be much more boring. More relaxing.”
“I sure hope so,” Satoru says. “This time, you’ll go back to where you’re supposed to. I’m sure of it. Look for the tide pool that isn’t a tide pool.”
“I love you,” Kento says as he leaves.
“I never got tired of hearing that,” Satoru says as he closes his eyes. “And it was so good to hear it one more time.”
---
Kento opens his eyes.
He’s sitting in one of the koi ponds on the Jujutsu High Tokyo campus, and this time he’s soaked through with real water, fish nibbling at his fingers. It’s late, the deepest part of night, but there’s a bit of light from the various lamps on campus.
And then Satoru appears on the bridge, flashlight in hand, drawn by the burst of energy, and shines a light on Kento.
“You’re back! Kento!” Satoru runs into the pond like a kid throwing themselves into a pool on a hot summer day. He wades over and Kento is smothered in wet fabric and long limbs.
“How long was I gone?”
“Three days. How long was it--what did you--”
Kento buries himself in Satoru’s neck. “I’ll get to that in time. But it doesn’t matter to me right now. I came back to you. I’m home.”
---