Chapter Text
“Do you know what this all about?”
Legs propped up and leaning her chair precariously at a school desk, Kugisaki questions the only other person in the room. He’s standing by the windows, looking out onto the campus and the second-years as they train without them.
Glancing at his peer, Fushiguro grunts noncommittally.
“I’ve no idea.” It was the truth, or as much of it that mattered.
Unsatisfied, she presses on, posing the thought she knows he’s hiding.
“Really? No thoughts at all?”
“Just say what you think it is.”
Not to be disappointed, she turns dramatically, dropping her feet along with the chair’s to the ground in an equally attention commanding thump.
“It’s about Satozakura.”
Fushiguro’s brow lowers. He’d known she’d jump to the attack, the public coverup story and rumors of the official report still fresh on everyone’s mind. As a de-weaponized country, acts of mass violence in Japan were few and far between, even more so against a place as culturally sacred as a school. Yet, although it was a curse and Jujutsu matter, there had been far too many victims to cover up the incident completely. The office narrative stated that a troubled student had used nitrogen gas to attack the assembled school during an award ceremony. Most had escaped with minor injuries from collapsing, but they hadn’t been the primary target. That had been a valedictorian being honored that day, one that had been personally beaten and poisoned.
They were said to now be paralyzed in one arm.
The public story was enough to put a bad taste in anyone’s mouth, and it had caused a stir in much of the Tokyo prefecture. Fear, discomfort, confusion, and righteous anger was sown like seed at the notion that anyone, let alone a student, would commit such an intensely premeditated attack.
The fragments of rumored truth, though, sowed a different type of abhorrence in Jujutsu Society. It was said the assaulting student had been an unregistered Curse User, and he had used an Unregistered Special Grade Curse to attack the school. It was a disgusting abuse of sorcery, and it had all the students considering whether, given confrontation, they would have been willing to take the student's life.
For Fushiguro the answer was an easy yes.
It was a Curse User that had put Tsumiki into a coma.
It didn’t matter what the reason was and it didn’t matter their age: The moment that they chose to harm innocents, they had signed away any right to mercy. He can’t forgive the type of person that would use curses and sorcery against civilians. Even ignoring those reasons, it was very simply their job as Jujutsu Sorcerers to kill Curse Users on sight.
If he had been ready to kill kind, noble Itadori for eating the Sukuna finger, of course he’d be ready to kill a terrorist.
Knowing all this, he returns to the conversation and disagrees with Kugisaki.
“If it had anything to do with that, he wouldn’t have excluded the second years.”
He had only briefly considered the possibility before ruling it out. Gojo was often unpredictable, but Fushiguro knew him well enough to say confidently that Gojo wouldn’t specifically pull them aside to discuss current events. Not unless it specifically concerned them, and the shadow user can’t fathom a reason they’d be involved.
“What else could it be?” Kugisaki immediately objects, gathering for an argument, “If we had a mission, he’d have mentioned it this morning.”
“Not necessarily,”
“So what, you think he’s gonna spring us with one?”
“It’s more likely.”
“Ugh, he’d better not.” She huffs, slumping back into her seat and folding a leg on her knee. “I already made plans for this evening.”
“Sorcerers have to be adaptable to the unexpected.”
“Yeah, well, we’re still students! Besides, I’m not going to stop enjoying myself just because I kick curse-ass as my job.”
“Is that all this is to you?” The neutral frown he carried deepens, chilling emotion entering his demeaner. “A job?”
“-you know what I meant.” The brunette remains seated, staring her remaining classmate down. She sees that note of grief, of resentment at the notion that she’d consider what they did as nothing more than work without purpose. She cuts him off before he can start off on her, her ire fading and grief also falling into her eyes.
“It’s not just work to me, Fushiguro, but it’s also not the only thing I want to live for.”
Itadori didn’t die for nothing. His death wasn’t pointless.
Similarly sobered and having avoided a fight, the mourning teenagers break each other’s gaze to look elsewhere.
It had only been a couple weeks, and it still hurt.
Really, in a way she’s glad it does.
She doesn’t want to forget, and she’s sure Fushiguro feels the same.
The click and tap of footsteps on wood reach their ears, traveling down the hallway towards the classroom. From the sound of it there were two people on approach, one lighter than the other, and that reignites the curiosity and interest of the students. Fushiguro’s ears immediately recognize the pace and click of Gojo’s stride, but the other was entirely unfamiliar. Their steps were heavy, inelegant.
Soon enough they have stopped outside the classroom.
“Wait here until I call you.”
Gojo’s voice instructs someone, and after their presumed silent agreement, the man himself swings the door open with a comfortable flourish and familiar grin.
“Evening’ kids! I’ve got good news for you.”
“Gojo.”
“It had better not be a mission,” With them both having already been suspicions of it, Kugisaki goes for the attack first. “I’ve got plans for tonight,”
“Oh, going out on the town, are you? How wonderful!” Gojo swoops the door shut and strides to the front of the room, settling behind the teacher’s desk. “Then that makes this good news and bad news.”
The students express themselves at the revelation with a sigh and curse. Fushiguro found satisfied relief for the predictable inconvenience, while Kugisaki grumbled irritated and disappointed at being both wrong and robbed of her late afternoon.
“Right then, bad news first: we’ve got a mission, so meet out front at two.”
While she groans and slumps onto the desk she had come to occupy, Fushiguro takes up the conversation in her stead.
“And the good news?”
Gojo’s enthusiasm doubles, arms opening in grandeur.
“We have a new first year!”
The students freeze, tension falling over them in a veil. Silence stretches painfully long as they settle their teacher with equal stares of disbelief.
What?
“What do you mean by ‘a new student’?”
“I mean a new student.”
“I know what you said, how come we’re just hearing about this kid now?”
“We didn’t know about him until recently! He’s a bit of a late bloomer, but has plenty of potential as a sorcerer.”
Fushiguro holds Gojo in ever increasing suspicion, seeming to dare him to drop an even larger bombshell. He can’t force himself to believe the direction he thinks this is headed. It must be a coincidence. There’s no way this had anything to do with that.
The brunette’s emotion continues to brew, and she mutters under her breath. “It’s barely been a month.”
“He’s not a replacement for him.” Their teacher dictates sternly, the infrequent sobriety causing the pair to double their attention. He allows his words to settle with them before continuing with a smile and lighter, familiar tone. “He is here because it is the only other option.”
“What’s the other option?”
Merrily as if discussing the weather, he chimes, “He’ll be executed.”
With no little pride Gojo watches the gears turn in his students’ minds, their weariness and suspicion ripe. As expected, it is again the woman of the group that speaks.
“He’s the Curse User.” Her gratification at being right about the meetings purpose was overshadowed by exactly how the school incident became relevant to them. Just how crazy was this man to swoop in and take on someone so violently unhinged that they’d attack not only civilians, but an entire school? Shooting a sharp glance at the closed door, she wonders precisely what kind of selfishly disturbed or callus person was waiting for them.
“Former Curse User.”
“He attacked a school!”
“And you're welcome to ask him about that, though it’s up to him if he’ll answer.”
“Gojo.” Fushiguro weighs in direly on his teacher’s decision, “What are you thinking, trying to recruit someone like that?” They both know there was no way this was a decision by the higher-ups: they had been eager to kill Itadori without any consideration of mercy, someone who had acted in good faith, saved three people, and held an even purer heart. If Megumi's most paranoid suspicions were correct, they had ultimately succeeded.
What kind of cruel joke was it that a boy like Itadori Yuji couldn’t be given a single chance, while a person like this would be offered one?
He should have been executed.
Eyes penetrating the folds of fabric covering the man’s eyes, he echoes his own words back to him, accusing.
“He could never replace him.”
You lost a student. You can’t bring him back. You can’t make it better by trying to redeem someone like this .
Gojo reads him, maintaining a façade of gentle firmness and voice smooth with confidence and compassion.
“No one is replacing anyone.” Repeating his earlier assurance, energy lifts his lips into a moonlit grin. “Yoshino-kun is here by his own faults and merits, and if Itadori-kun were here today, he’d still be joining the class.”
“How can you say that?” Nobara snaps, fury and hurt blazing. “How can you say any of this? What makes you think we’ll ever work with the kind of scum that does what he did? That he won’t stab us in the back the second it’s convenient to him? I’d sooner put him into the ground than help someone like that!”
“Call it intuition.” He continues to take the criticism gracefully, “Rest assured, if he does do anything of the sort, you both have full permission to kill him. All of you do.” Delightedly holding back laughter at their shell-shocked expressions, he tacks on, “But! Something tells me you needn’t worry about any of that.”
The pair remain frozen, two teenagers handed license to kill the very person standing behind thin walls not meters away. Every word and feeling bared naked to them, no illusion of fresh starts or hiding who they are, what they have done, or what they are capable of.
“Right!” Finding that the questions had died off and not about to allow another round to begin, the man claps his hands. “No time better than the present for introductions! Yoshino-kun, that’s your cue.”
They all turn to look. It is an unsettlingly long time that door remains shut, and had he heard footsteps while Gojo briefed them, Fushiguro would’ve concluded the Curse User had left. Eventually though, before Kugisaki can lose patience and goad them on, the door swings gently in.
He’s nothing like what either of them had in mind.
Short and skinny, Yoshino looks like he’s not fought a day in his life. The muted white of his uniform washes out already pale skin and the bruising under his visible eye, dark brown hair laying in such a way it’s clear it had been let go. Whatever style it had once been cut into had long since been allowed to melt into the odd, uneven edges of growth and split ends, parting so the hair completely covered half his face. The only noteworthy thing about him was the expressive green eye which greeted them without focus, attempting to harden and hide itself from awaiting scrutiny with a tight jaw and stiff brow. The amount of emotion bleeding through his shielded face makes Fushiguro uncomfortable. Is not boiling wrath or cold indifference he sees lurking in them, but a sea of rawness, vulnerable festering emotions cloistered away in poor attempts at stoic strength.
Yoshino is a troubled student.
Were they in a larger school setting, they knew he’d be target for harassment. It was blatant enough to make even the brash woman of their group hold her tongue, frozen and studying as Yoshino slowly joins Gojo at the front without word or acknowledgement to either of them, white-knuckle fists at his sides.
Yoshino is prepared to be eaten alive, and rather than fight it, appeared reassigned. In a way, he already had been by their conversation; judgements made and accusations thrown without the student making any effort to interject. At any moment he could have slammed the door to come to his defense or their assault, but hadn’t. Instead, he’d waited silently, taking the speculation and fury, hearing how they were more inclined to kill him than to accept him as their peer. Yoshino knew that they could kill him without recourse.
Rather than militant wrath, the teen chose chilly silence and forced, fragile indifference.
A troubled student.
The three of them go through their awkward introductions. Yoshino is suitably guarded and cold, Kugisaki offers hers stiffly but not overly hostile. Fushiguro is cautiously blank, warring with himself as the pieces fall together in his mind.
A troubled student.
He was a victim who became a villain.
I would still do it.
But could he?
Will he, given the need to?
Of course. If he would kill Itadori, he would kill Yoshino.
It’s not like he’d have any other choice. If Yoshino snapped, if his fragile composure crumbled and he endangered him or others, he would have to. So would any of them. How on earth does Gojo think this guy would be able to withstand the stress, pressure, or high stakes of being a sorcerer and fighting curses? Yoshino is unstable. Yoshino is fragile. Yoshino is one trigger away from losing his cool and either sobbing or attacking.
The kid is a danger to them and himself.
This is pointlessly cruel.
He hates this. Whether it was Gojo’s arrogance or the elder’s intention, to Fushiguro it was clear they were setting Yoshino up to die via combat rather than execution.
His cold fury burns though his teacher and guardian’s skull.
I don’t know what you’re up to but I hate everything about it.
“Yoshino,” His anger bleeds into how he addresses the teen, and while Kugisaki turns to glare at him like he’s lost his mind, Fushiguro still holds his eyes fixated on Gojo Satoru. “What is your curse technique?”
Stunned, the boy lifts his eye from where it had fixated itself on the ground.
“…venom.” He swallows stiffly, “I can summon a shikigami and use it to fight.”
“Just the one?”
“Y-yes…”
Gojo’s smile only brightens during the conversation, and Fushiguro imagines Demon Dog ripping it from his face. Shifting his gaze onto his anxious, tentative peer, he appraises the teen in dire seriousness.
“Show me.”
Their teacher’s grin quadruples.