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“Ah, Geto-sama, I have… A bit of a situation on my hands.”
The fact that Manami was calling him, rather than texting, was already enough to alarm Suguru. Despite their appearances, he took pride in the modern tendencies of their organization.
“Okay. Explain.”
A notable hesitation settled over the line before she answered. “Per our conversation earlier, I brought the twins into the city to do some shopping, but they ditched me in an ice cream shop.”
Nanako and Mimiko were somewhat vivacious, not particularly inclined to listen to anyone but him. He had thought that shopping with Manami was something they would enjoy enough to behave for a few hours. Apparently, he was wrong.
Manami was a capable woman, that’s why she was his assistant. Honestly, he was confident in Nanako and Mimiko’s abilities as well, which made the phone call disconcerting. Pinching the bridge of his nose, Suguru couldn’t fight the exasperation creeping into his voice. “I suppose you’re calling me because them being missing isn’t the problem.”
“Well, they had been whispering to one another all day about-” Again, the woman hesitates. “Ugh, they had been talking about Gojo Satoru. They must have thought I didn’t hear them but- I was planning on bringing it up when we got back to the compound.”
Suguru’s jaw clenched around the implications of Manami’s statement.
Everyone knew who Gojo Satoru was, at least within the world of Jujutsu. The people closest to Suguru, like Manami and Miguel knew that his past was woven somewhat intimately with Satoru’s, but he’d done well to keep his commentary professional in their presence- at least more professionally than he had regarded the topic with the twins in the days and weeks following the village massacre. It was foolish to discuss, and it wasn’t like the twins had any concept of the complexity of the situation at the time. But he’d always been sentimental to a fault, and the way Nanako apologized for making him sad when she asked about his life pulled fond details out of him here and there.
It was almost endearing, the way the twins were willing to fight over such a small sentiment.
For a moment, Suguru allowed himself to enjoy the adorable image of Nanako and Mimiko confronting Satoru and the awkward way he’d maintain that stand-offish persona, even to children. The moment gave way to an anxiety that he had thought he’d outgrown: uncertainty. If the twins were successful in tracking Satoru down, Suguru had no idea what would happen. Even the best case scenario, Nanako and Mimiko being taken back to Jujutsu Tech, twisted his stomach.
“Geto-sama, I’m so sorry.” Manami’s voice brought him back to the conversation at hand.
“Just stay where you are.” He started, keeping his voice even so as to not alarm the woman anymore. This wasn’t her fault. “I’ll take care of it.”
Satoru turned the lime green cellphone over in his hand a few times, inspecting each of the charms dangling from the case. There was a small, pink heart on one strap, and a white hibiscus with a red center on the other. The phone itself was nice, an expensive model with a needlessly advanced camera for a child to use - but what stuck out most to him was that the cellphone appeared to be a cursed tool.
Neat.
He’d found a spot for himself on a bench about halfway between the main road and the school grounds to assess his situation. A few years in front of him, the blonde girl who’s phone he held shouted at him.
“You better untie us, or else!”
She sat at the center of the pavement back to back with a dark haired girl that Satoru presumed to be her sister. The girls were… children, obviously, and they had apparently tailed him from the mall to where they sat, restrained (gently) with the very rope the dark haired one had tried to attack him with. Not only that, but they had clearly waited until they were alone with a strange man to ambush.
Not that he was strange.
“You two are curse users, so I have to assume you know who I am.” Satoru trailed off, flipping the phone open in an attempt to gain a little understanding as to why the girls had come after him in the first place. The phone background was a soft shade of blue and decorated with cartoon rabbits. There were fourteen missed calls. “Someone’s lookin’ for you two~”
“Of course we know who you are!” The blonde girl snapped. “We recognized your stupid glasses.”
“Well, that’s not very nice.”
The phone buzzed, prompting Satoru’s to the screen. The contact read Manami✨️✨️✨️ , a small photo of a relatively attractive woman with lilac colored hair heading the screen. She was blowing a kiss at the camera. Satoru felt like it was uncommon for children to save a parents contact as “mom” or “dad” (not that he had a litmus to go off of, really, supportive parental figures were apparently hard to come by in the Jujutsu world), so he reasoned this was some sort of caretaker.
He answered the call, and the woman on the other end immediately descended into a fit of thinly veiled concern. Satoru cut her off. “Hi~ Are you the babysitter?” Immediately, the woman stopped her scolding, a thick silence he chose to perceive as awkward settling over the line. “I’m sorry, do you prefer the term ‘nanny’?”
A gentle breath. “Are the girls alright?”
Satoru laughed. “Of course they are, I’m not -”
She hung up.
“Huh?” He balked. “Rude.”
And a little odd, given that she was clearly looking for the girls. Curiosity struck him, opening up the recent contacts list with a gentle hum. There were dozens of calls from this Manami person - in fact, she was almost exclusively the only person that called. Almost. There was one other contact in recent history that, upon further inspection, was one of only two contacts on the whole device.
⭐️💜Geto-sama💜⭐️
A heavy, tight feeling settled in his chest. He selected the contact, telling himself it was sheer curiosity that drove his desire to see what kind of picture the girls had selected. Sure enough, Geto Suguru peered up at the camera, an affectionate smile warming his features. He assumed the photo had to be somewhat recent, but Satoru swore he’d seen it a million times.
He looked back at the girls. The blonde one was still yelling insults, the dark haired one occasionally attempting to quiet her. It was strange - he had known that Suguru was garnering a following, though the bulk of their intel noted that the cultists were almost exclusively non-curse users. It was naive to think that there weren’t other sorcerers at his side, but children? The girls weren’t cultists, but they were apparently close enough to have Suguru’s phone number, which clearly made them someone in his eyes.
Satoru pulled out his own phone, navigating to Yaga’s contact. He reasoned that it was likely someone would come to fetch the girls, or at least try. Maybe even Suguru himself. You’d think that one of the strongest sorcerers of their era would have been easier to locate, especially given that two children had just found him , but Suguru proved to be somewhat illusive. Tactically speaking, it was an opportunity that Satoru would have been foolish to pass up.
Still, he hesitated.
“That was very brave of you two, coming to fight me all by yourselves.” Satoru hummed. “How old are you, anyway? Seven? Eight?”
The blonde huffed. “We’re ten! Of course we’re brave!”
“Nanako!”
“What?! I’m not scared of him!”
Some quick math brought Satoru to a rapid conclusion.
He had gone over the case file a hundred times trying to figure out what went wrong, where Suguru broke, why that village and not any of the dozens of small communities they’d visited before that. Yaga had advised against going to the scene, but Satoru wanted to see for himself the bloodbath his best friend had left in his wake. He had tried to look past the blood stained walls and paths, ignoring the stale stench of death that he had sworn he was accustomed to, all in an attempt to make some semblance of sense out of Suguru’s actions. The broken cages with the crudely drawn seals brought Satoru and Yaga to a conclusion that neither of them would say out loud.
At the time, he was still angry enough that he ignored the discomfort nagging at his conscience over what Suguru might have walked into when he arrived at the village.
It had been roughly four years, and it seemed these girls still hadn’t quite shaken their country drawl.
Satoru locked his phone and slid it back into his pocket. That wasn’t how he wanted the war to start.
“Good news, ladies! Someone’s coming to pick you up… I think.” he smiled, despite the gnawing restlessness in his legs and brain. “Not sure who, though.”
The blonde one, Nanako, as her sister had said earlier, doubled down. “You’re only keepin’ us tied up cause you're afraid of us!”
Satoru quirked a brow at that accusation. With a smile, he leaned forward, resting his elbow on his knee and his head in the palm of his hand. “Yeah? What makes you think I’m so scared?”
“ Because when me and Mimiko fight together, we’re the strongest!” Nanako snapped.
“And who told you that?” Satoru pressed. He already knew the answer.
The dark-haired one, Mimiko, finally spoke up. “Geto-sama told us so… and he wouldn’t lie…”
He’d never met these children, but their words filled his head with a familiar, hollow, nostalgia. Suguru had always been wonderful with children, at least more so than he and Shoko were. One time (and only one time), he allowed himself to wish Suguru was around when he first took in Megumi, but quickly discarded the thought as useless and annoying.
“Yeah… That sounds like some sentimental garbage he’d say.”
Prying eyes crept into the peripherals of his senses, small, innocuous curses slowly forming a perimeter around the girls, and by extension himself. It was an easy presence to recognize, one that felt right at home in the bubble of information he constantly immersed himself in.
Satoru couldn't tell if he was happy or frustrated by that, so he chose to fill the space for that undecided emotion with meager entertainment.
“I bet he’s also the one who called my glasses ugly, huh?”
“Yeah!” Nanako barked. “He also called you rude, and loud, and, and-”
“Tacky…” Mimko chimed in.
“Tacky?!” he displayed the first genuine offense he’d taken to the girls since the interaction began. “Those are big words comin-”
“Shut up!” The blonde didn’t seem to get tired of yelling at him. “You don’t get to say anything bad about Geto-sama!”
He wanted to ask why, to ask if it was him specifically, or people in general, but the mounting agitation Nanako showed kept him quiet.
“Nanako…”
“Mimiko, what?! He made Geto-sama sad, so we’re gonna kill ‘im!”
An unfamiliar sensation washed over Satoru, prickling at his neck and shoulders like icy rain. No, it wasn’t unfamiliar, he had felt it dozens of times over the last four years, but each time he clawed himself out of the pool of uncertainty and discomfort.
In that moment, the scattered curses watching and the impending energy steadily entering the proximity of his Six Eyes, it was proving to be difficult to do.
“Nanako, that’s enough.”
The voice, stern but gentle, came as a surprise to the girls. Not so much to Satoru.
Suguru was always quiet, something about the way he carried himself and his preference for sandals over real shoes aiding in his ability to sneak up on almost anyone. Anyone except for him. The first thing Satoru noticed as the man rounded the corner was that he had yet to change the way he wore his bangs. His hair was longer, surrendering to the natural wave Suguru had done so well to combat when they were in school. Satoru had seen pictures of him, made snide commentary on his commitment to the “religious leader” vibe his friend had gone for, but seeing the man adorn his subtly ornate kasaya in person felt distinctly guileful in a way that twisted his insides.
Suguru leaned down, untying the admittedly shoddy knots Satoru had used to restrain them. Immediately, the girls were on their feet, each clinging to a different leg. The pinprick tears Nanako had been fighting off the whole time finally boiled over, and the girl exploded into tears.
There was a painful familiarity in the way Suguru regarded the girls, offering them a benevolent smile that reminded Satoru of summer heat and hibiscus flowers. Suddenly, the inconsequential green phone in his hand felt more like a limp body weighed down with a blood-soaked school uniform and a collection of regrets.
“Geto-sama!” Nanako tore him from his thoughts. “He took my phone!”
Suguru gingerly detached the girls from his yukata, guiding them to stand beside one another. He said something to the girls that Satoru couldn’t quite make out - surely something reassuring and firm. It was enough to keep the girls in place when the man stood and made his way toward him.
There was a notable lack of apprehension between them as he approached, and Satoru had to wonder at which point they had disarmed one another so fully. On paper, this scenario was a tense one - a scary one, even. Then again, they did have a way of knowing a bit too much about one another.
Suguru offered him a small nod. “Satoru, you look well.”
His words were cordial and infuriatingly like him to say.
“Yeah? You look like a douchebag in that outfit.” They were close enough that their conversation was out of earshot of the twins, he didn’t feel bad for swearing.
The man offered a coy smile. “I had to make a detour on my way home from work. Didn’t exactly have time to change clothes.”
“How domestic of you.”
“Yes, well, I couldn’t keep the wife waiting.” Satoru’s expression must have evaded his cool composure, Suguru giving an airy but restrained laugh. “And here I thought you’d call my bluff immediately.”
Satoru almost rolled his eyes, not fond of the relief he felt knowing there wasn’t a wife in the picture. He brushed it off as pity for whatever woman would agree to put up with Suguru’s righteous bullshit.
With a sigh, he leaned back, tossing the phone back to Suguru before stretching his arms across the back of the bench. “Seems you’ve got yourself a nice little collection of curse-users. I think the dark haired one tried to hang me.”
“Mimiko? She does that sometimes.”
He snorted. “You should get a better sitter, then.”
“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to take some additional precautions.” Suguru’s smile turned somewhat rueful, and for a moment Satoru feared he was assigning a harsher meaning to his comment than his words actually held - A habit he had when they were younger. After a beat, he continued. “You didn’t have to make this so easy.”
His statement was more an observation than an accusation.
“Consider it a freebie.” Satoru shrugged. “Besides, it’s not the kids’ fault I’m so handsome and recognizable.”
Some facets of Suguru’s softened in a way Satoru struggled to identify, a smile tugging at his lips that made him look seventeen again despite the years and crimes that hung beneath his eyes. “You’ve changed, Satoru.”
“Hmm?” He processed that statement for a few moments, considering the gentle hand with which Suguru comforted twins and the dutiful way he carried himself into a situation that very well could have been a trap. After a beat, he simply smiled back. “You haven’t.”
His words gave the man a long enough pause that Satoru had plenty of time to burn expressions of mild surprise into his mind. Ultimately, Suguru accepted the comment, before turning back to the twins. An inky black portal opened behind them, a comically large stork-like curse emerging from it. It opened its bill, Suguru taking the time to help each of the girls into its mouth.
“Bye girls!” Satoru waved, earning a surprised look from Suguru and petulant glare from Nanako. “Make sure Mama-Suguru eats plenty and gets enough sleep~”
The stork stood to its full height, the man in question stepping onto its webbed foot as it began it’s ascent.
No goodbyes were exchanged, only glances that left Satoru with a claustrophobic sense of frustration he’d become well acquainted with. It was silent for a few moments afterwards, only the distant sounds of traffic from the main road and birds from the school’s campus filling the space before his phone rang. Satoru didn’t need to look at the caller ID to know who it was.
“Yo, sensei~ What’s up?”
“I haven’t been your sensei for four years- Ugh, nevermind that.” Yaga groaned. “We picked up on some weird curse signatures on the edge of the campus.”
“No worries, sensei , I got it covered.”
Yaga hung up on him.
For a brief moment, Satoru found himself wondering what the family Suguru had built for himself was like.