Chapter Text
If someone were to ask you if you believed in fate, your simple answer would be no. No you didn’t believe in fate, because it can be changed. If fate could be changed, then it wasn’t really fate to begin with. How is it you know that fate can be changed? Because with your own two eyes you have the curse of being able to see fate change; with your own bare hands you have the ability to touch the strings that tie people together. The vibrantly colored strings never fail to make you wonder how this one could change the life of someone, and they have no power to stop it. You see strings everywhere, everyday, connecting those close and far.
Basking in the spring air, and taking a moment for yourself, you stopped for a second. The second pair of footsteps halted too, you could hear.
“Don’t tell me you’re tired already!” a young voice spouted at you. You took a moment to peel your eyes open and look at the boy standing before you. His pale blue eyes caught yours and stared you down while you didn’t answer him.
“No way am I tired yet, we just got out here!” you said enthusiastically. You continued to walk through the forest, following the dirt path that supposedly leads to a secret hideout. Satoru told you all about it. He led the way while you followed along. When he swung his hands and arms at his sides you could see two strings tied in loops around his ring and middle finger. One was blue and the other was red. His strings ended up binding together to form a purple string that dragged along the ground. The weird thing was that the strings divided again into separate blue and red strings that tied around your own fingers.
The sight of the strings are what first drew you to the young boy. He was seven and you were six. This was the first time that Satoru was allowed to play somewhere outside of his own estate. His nanny for the day decided that it would be good for him to get some ‘real-world exposure’. You were playing at the park that your mother took you to regularly. When your eyes landed on the new-comer sitting on the swing that you usually had to yourself, you first saw the strings. You stared him down, and he inevitably took notice and stared you down just the same. You traced your eyes along the thread and took it between your fingers. You tugged at them and you noticed that although the strings felt tangible in your hands, the boy sitting in your swing did not notice them.
“Do you see them too?” you asked him, breaking the silence. All that Satoru saw was you pulling at air while staring him down with your dark eyes. He had no idea how to react, you were new to him, something he had never seen before. He didn’t know what to do. When you spoke, the first thing that came to his mind is that maybe this girl saw cursed spirits, like him and his family. He looked around in search of the supposed cursed spirit.
When the boy began to turn his head in all directions, you were confused. Didn’t he see the strings that were right in front of him? You sighed and then shook your head at him, impressioning your mother when you didn’t understand something and she had to explain it to you.
“No, not over there, right here! In my hands!” you said as you raised your fingers toward him in hopes of him seeing what you saw. When he looked back to you he still saw nothing. Even with his six eyes there was nothing. You gave up hope and sighed again.
“Fine, if you don’t see it then I’ll just explain it to you, it’s like a string and it’s blue and red and purple, and it's tied to our fingers!” you explained to him, but he still looked lost. You sighed for a third and final time.
“Alright, it’s ok if you don’t see it, but you’re kinda on my swing”
“What makes this your swing?”
“Well, I play on it almost everyday, sooo…”
“That doesn’t make it yours.”
“Actually it does, and you wanna know why?”
“Why?”
“BECAUSE I SAID SO!” you said as you rushed towards him and tried to push him off the swing. He laughed as you struggled to move him from your spot. Satoru found it hilarious how your fingers and palms pushed him back and forth on the swing instead of removing him from the seat. To anyone else it might’ve looked as if you had volunteered to push him.
The next day he came back and was sitting on your swing again! You went over and had a repeat of the previous day, where you were unsuccessful in moving him from the swing seat.
This was the beginning of your very flavorful friendship with the blue eyed kid named Gojo Satoru. He was prideful, but reserved, while you were spontaneous and outgoing. You hung out at that park at least three times a week, and when you became too old to be accompanied everywhere, you met up at that same park and had little adventures around the neighborhood. You were Satoru’s first friend, and Satoru was your only friend who you didn’t find boring.
When you both were 10, Satoru explained to you the things that he saw, cursed spirits, cursed energy, cursed tools and weapons too. He also talked to you about his family for the first time. When you heard about everything that he had to go through on a daily basis, you tried to drag him to your home to make him live with you. Logistically your mom wouldn’t allow it, but in your pea-sized brain it would all work out.
When you turned 11, your mom died. This is when you saw your first white string. It was hanging from your left pinkie finger. Her death was unexpected, and it was your first ever experience with death. Your grandma was already living with your mother and you, so she became your primary caretaker, although it was more frequently that your grandmother needed caretaking than you did. You introduced Satoru to your grandma that day after the funeral. He was glad, not only that you had someone to look after you, but also because she seemed different than his own grandma; less uptight.
When you were 12, Satoru turned 13. You weren’t invited to his birthday party. He told you it was gonna be boring and not even worth the trouble. You hung out the day before since he would be busy the day of his actual birthday. You gifted him a home-made bracelet, which you worked diligently on over the previous few weeks. It was red, blue and purple strings braided together with little beads that spelled ‘Satoru’. He had never received a hand-made gift before. Of course he got to experience luxuries of all sorts because of his family’s wealth, and his standing as next in line to inherit the patriarchal ‘throne’ of the Gojo clan, but this gift was more special to him than anything he had ever received before. Maybe it was because it was you, and everything that you did for him came straight from your heart, and this was a physical representation of that. Maybe it was because he only had one real friend. That was the first time you had ever seen him cry. Even with tears in his eyes, his irises were bright as ever. You hugged him and cried with him, only because seeing his tears made your eyes respond with tears of their own.
“Stop bein’ a crybaby Y/N!” Satoru yelled at you while he wiped his face clear of the tears he had spilled not even a second ago.
“You’re the crybaby here. You started it first!” you yelled back at him while hugging him tighter. You spent the day doing everything Satoru wanted, but the truth is, his favorite thing about the day was you. It was probably one of the best days of his life. He had never smiled that much in a day before and he never wants to forget it.
The next day was a day that he wishes he could forget. Satoru had a lot of bad days in general. Tough training, educational lessons, and etiquette classes are what most of his days consisted of. Those days were just mundane, boring and annoying, except for the times he had free time to sneak off to you. This day though, thoroughly reminded him of who he was, and how little control he had in his own life. It was the day that he was set to be in an arranged marriage. His clan organized it from the moment he was born as powerful as he was and decided that 13 would be the prime age to inform him of their decision. He always knew what was to become of himself, but when he was with you, it managed to escape from his thoughts. This day was like a cold shower, it forced him to get a taste of what his future would look like.
He would become a weapon. He would become a tool. He would become a piece on the board to be moved around no matter if he wanted to or not. This game had been going on too long, and to him it seemed he was the only one who realized.
It was at 15 that Satoru decided that he would do everything to change the way life was. For him. For you. And for every other jujutsu sorcerer that was or will be born. His power was limitless, so it was time for him to really test the limits.
At 16, you started to be more observant of the strings. You could now see more than just the ones that connected to you, everyone had a few, you noted. You saw every color and shade. You saw strings that change color throughout; you even saw a singular string tied to three people. The strings weren’t tangible unless you were intentionally touching the string. Even with the aid of cursed energy, other human beings could not see them. You saw a bird land on a sting once though, so you're not completely sure if animals can see them or not.
At this age you began to understand what the strings meant as well. Green signified some type of envy or guilt. Yellow signified strong familial love or connection, and you learned that they didn’t necessarily need to be blood related. Orange represents feelings of dislike or hate. White strings were the most painful for you to see, but ironically they were the most common ones. They were unlike any other strings; they were connected to only one person, and were severed at some point. These white strings represented mourning, you supposed it was for the dead, but there were other types of mourning too.
It was odd for you to see clearly how people were fated to feel about one another. It made you wonder if it were all true, or if you were just losing it at every time of the day. You had no idea where the strings come from, or who decided the connections. There was a lot that you couldn’t know or understand, but what you could see made little to no difference to you.