Work Text:
2015
Gojo Satoru had a favourite little corner in the school. It was but a mere basement, with a dirty couch, a dusted TV set and an eclectic collection of old movies (of course for educational purposes). Gojo hummed in the near darkness, not that he ever perceived darkness. The exposed brick wall reverberated his hums. Everything about this place was unimportant, tangible and therefore disposable. It was what he needed.
It was the Spring of 2015. It’d been a while since he visited school and actually stayed. The higher-ups were not happy when he demanded fewer missions to balance out with his new position as a teacher. But what could they possibly do about Gojo Satoru’s newfound interest in pedagogy, or about Gojo Satoru, period? He closed his eyes, perhaps with the wish that the closure of eyes would actually shut his senses instead of dulling them but a little.
He spent years conversing with curses, both spiritual and mortal. The same thing came out of their mouths, complaints, criticisms, accusations, tantrums all the same. What he found as daily occurrence would tire anybody else to the bones. But he never got tired, not since that day. It was as if his body had forgotten the finite qualities that often belong to humans. He wondered if his head would one day share the fate.
His phone vibrated demandingly. And his brief moment of zen was interrupted. He picked up the phone and was so ready to throw it at the red bricks until he saw the caller ID. Iori Utahime was contacting him, perhaps for the first time in the entire span of their long but distant acquaintanceship. The choices simulated themselves in his head. He could reject the call and take a little nap in this rare moment of peace. Or he could answer and listen to the sound of her anger, for forgetting the reason why she’d call him, but she’d explain to him in great detail anyway.
“Utahime?”, he replied with his classic cheery tone.
“Don’t Utahime me! Do you know what time it is?”, she sounded indeed angry.
“12?”
“Gojo, I’m your counsellor.”, Utahime’s voice sounded like a facepalm, “I’m supposed to walk you through your responsibilities.”
She made sure to add weights onto the last word.
“Like now?”
“Right now!”
Gojo appeared next to Utahime, the darkness that cloaked him was replaced by the noon haze. His large body, covered in black, absorbed all the temperature from the heatwave. He looked up to see Iori Utahime, in her classic shrine maiden outfit and hands on her hip, standing underneath the tree shade. Sweat drenched her scrunched-up nose and frowny brows.
“You can teleport and still be always late.”, she swung her arms up to the sky.
“I think it’s because I can teleport that I’m always late.”
Utahime ignored the remark. Gojo looked at Utahime’s drenched back leaving from the noon haze and into the school’s faculty building. Her body relaxed in the building, like she belonged in it. He should belong in it too, this was once his home after all, and it will be his home once again for the time to come.
Utahime walked him through all the rooms, explained the purposes of each drawer and named all the staff members that he was sure to forget in just a second. She even showed him the spice rack in the pantry, classic Utahime, ever so meticulous. He didn’t need it. The teenage Satoru Gojo and Suguru Getou had imprinted all of this on the back of their hand from their little ventures. The school was big and they themselves were bigger than life. The school itself never changed even though its occupants did, whether they moved on, or met their bitter ends or went mad. Their fate was never reflected upon the school, as if they never left a mark here. Or perhaps Gojo had been over-romaticising everything, perhaps this school, where laid his blue spring, was always merely just another place on earth.
“So?”
Gojo snapped back to her voice. Its intonation no longer carried annoyance. She stared at him with eyes full of convictions.
“So?”, Gojo asked back with a childlike grin.
“You don’t seem to be listening.”
“First row of shelves is for student profiles, second and third are for mission reports, and the fourth is for paperwork concerning the police force and public service. The active auxiliary managers include Nitta Akari-kun, Mori Ikuto, and that wimp Ijichi. Yaga’s still the principal. Kusakabe Atsuya and Himeno Abe are the other teachers. Oh, and I shouldn’t touch the chilli flake with green labelling because it’s an experience worse than death.”
Utahime rolled her eyes, a sight Gojo had witnessed a million times.
“There’s one more place.” Utahime took a green tea bottle and a soda out of the fridge. She put the aluminium against the palm of his free hand. The cold jolted Gojo’s sensation. It was uncomfortable for a second but that strangeness soon turned into a piece of comfort, a small act of protest against the heat. Gojo rummaged in Utahime’s honey eyes only to find serendipity.
“Did they open a new room when I was gone?” Gojo grabbed the soda and stuck it into his pocket.
“Nope. It’s not in the building. Join me.”
It was until they had made a few steps out of the building that Gojo realised Utahime was leading him toward his basement. He followed her down to the darkened stairway. There was no light, and no podiums for light because what use was it to him anyway. He was a little wary of the possibility that she tumbled and fell but Utahime simply pulled out her phone and pointed the flashlight at every step she took. She did not even question the lack of light. When they made it down, she sat on the couch, twisted the cap of the green tea and patted the space beside her.
“Sit with me.”
He promptly looked at her. The unusualness of this situation unsettled him, this situation being a familiar woman of his sitting in a familiar spot of his.
“What?”
“You’re so calm. It’s weird.”
“Just sit on the goddamn sofa!”
“That’s more like it.” Gojo skipped to the spot next to her, his arms stretched along the sofa back and his legs laid on the table. It was in his instinct to take up as much space as possible wherever he was, to make his presence known. That instinct was already written down in whatever T&C that was sent along with his existence.
Utahime pushed his legs off the table.
“You’re a teacher now, act like one.”
“I’m a teacher for the craziest teenagers in this part of the country. They won’t mind.”
Gojo pulled out the soda can and opened it. The sweet citrus scent intertwined with the green tea’s aroma and engulfed the small space. Utahime looked at the bopping of his Adam’s apple when Gojo chucked down the lemon soda, its sizzling sound made the silence quieter.
“You look better.”, she concluded. She rested her head on the sofa and she hugged the cushion tightly.
Gojo almost choked on the carbon dioxide.
“Come again?”
“You looked like shit when you teleported to me earlier.”
“So much for telling me to act like a teacher.”
“It’s true.”
“Ah yes, you can tell that from my completely visible dark circles.” he pointed at the white bandages that remained wrapped around his head.
She shook her head, her lips curved into a melancholic smile. At that moment Gojo wished his Six Eyes could read minds. He wanted to peer into the unknowns behind that expression. It was ironic wasn’t it? He was the boy with Limitless but she was the one who looked as if she knew it all.
“You reminded me a bit of him.”
He needn’t ask who him was. He gagged unamused.
“Well, that’s fun. Wait a minute for me to prep my crazy cultist costume and plot freaking genocide.” The artificial lemon flavouring had turned bitter on his tongue.
"That's not what I meant. Drink." Utahime handed him her green tea. "I just think you look like you need somebody."
"I'm the Gojo Satoru."
"Exactly. You're an idiot with negative EQ. Now drink." Utahime once again pushed the green tea at him. He took a big sip and the bitterness was washed away into his stomach.
"I always think about Getou Suguru when I'm in Tokyo in the summer. I think about him so much more when I'm no longer exposed to him. Like a maths problem I kept dwelling on even when the test was over." She turned to the stacks of movies in the corner of the room. "He liked movies, didn't he? Especially the B-Grade horrors."
Gojo started to see where she was heading to. This beautiful, gentle, laxed Utahime in front him was an illusion, a delusion and a disillusionment all in one. Annoyance rose in his larynx.
"It's not what you think."
"Hm?"
"I'm not taking up teaching because I want to rectify what happened to Suguru, or whatever tragic hero backstory you are building up for me." Gojo stood up. His large frame casted a shadow upon Utahime's coiled body. "I'm doing this for me."
A piece of bandage had loosened up, letting a shard of blue into sight. His colours were frantic and stormy like all the blue were struggling for dominance within those corneas.
"For you?"
"I want to change the world, Utahime." He was Gojo Satoru after all. Why else had Fate granted him that power? "I want to reform this jujutsu society from the ground up. And my best chance of doing that is with the kids."
"And what of Getou?"
"What of him?"
"You're telling me that Getou doesn't have anything to do with your decision at all."
Gojo squinted. He was searching for a way to articulate his feelings, whatever was left of it from that Summer in '07.
"I adored Suguru. Still do. And his incident really opened my eyes in some ways. But-" Gojo slumped back onto his seat, his body suddenly became smaller, finding comfort only in the extent of his belongings.
"I have to do this for myself, Utahime."
Utahime blinked and her mannerism had returned to normal. She returned to her perfect posture, with both hands clasped on her laps. It was the Utahime he knew.
"That might be the case now. But once you become a teacher, you’ll do it for your students. Like it or not.”
“I’m not sure if you realised this yet, Utahime but I’m actually a terrible guy.”
She shrugged. Utahime was doing that again. Gojo always felt uneasy when Utahime’s eyes seemed to be looking at something he couldn’t. She did it first when they came back to school with Amanai Riko’s lifeless body in his hands. She did it when Gojo returned to school from Shinjuku, looking like half of himself was torn off.
“Shoko showed me this place.” Utahime moved to the stack of DVDs on the floor. “She often comes down here when you’re not around. She told me she hid her treasure here.”
Utahime pulled out a blue unlabelled CD case and played it on the outdated reader. The TV illuminated the room with its artificial radiance. Utahime returned to Gojo’s side, her head resting on his broad shoulder. Gojo was taken aback less by the contact but by the lack of resistance. The limitless that surrounded him had collapsed without knowing, for the other parts of his brain were begging for warmth, for touches, for his every sense to be simulated again.
The sound preceded the image. It was Shoko’s lazy voice. But they didn’t see Shoko, she was perhaps filming them. Gojo Satoru, age 15, appeared on the screen, young and in low resolution. He was engrossed in his prized Nintendo DS. Geto was sitting next to him, peering at his mate’s new plaything. Neither of the boys noticed that they were being recorded.
1-2-3-Testing. This should work. This is Ieri Shoko’s video submission for applying reverse cursed technique on flesh wounds. My subjects for this assignment will be Gojo Satoru and Getou Suguru. Someone tapped on Shoko’s shoulder. The camera whipped to the side to reveal a young, unmarred Utahime.
Shoko, they're not injured.
Not yet.
Shoko apparently shoved the camcorder to Utahime and walked toward the boys.
Getouuuu, Gojo accidentally exploded your new shampoo.
Wait, wh-
Gojo didn’t even finish processing his confusion when Getou gave him a nasty left hook. The DS flew into the air from secondhand impact and smashed at contact with the ground. The idiots widened their eyes at the metal mess on the hard floor.
You son of a-
What transpired afterward was a brawl between the two most powerful teenagers on earth. Shoko turned to the camera with a V-sign, to be followed by Utahime’s laughter. Then, a small curse from Getou’s collection was yanked into thin air by Gojo’s power and crashed into the lens.
Utahime felt the snuggle from one of those teenagers. The moment Getou appeared on screen, Gojo had laid his head on Utahime’s. Reflected in his shimmering blue eyes was his spring, the only spring that ever mattered.
“Why are you doing this to me, Utahime?” He asked without looking at her. There was no need for it since he could feel her soft hair against his cheek.
“Everything has felt off for so long, Gojo. And it’s not like we haven’t met each other since then. But when they told me that you signed up to teach, it stopped feeling off.” Her hand searched for his. “I was just trying to make sense of that.”
“And what’s the verdict?”
Utahime felt Gojo gripping her hand. It was unfamiliar, every physical interaction between them was uncharted territory. But here, she felt righted again. No longer was she measuring the unoccupancy of space or the unheard laughter of a boy with blue eyes. A boy whose own kindness he couldn’t even perceive.
“I think I miss you.”
“Aww should we kiss now?”
Utahime punched him lightly.
“Now, let me walk you through the filing process and grading system that you probably don’t give a shit about.”
He groaned. She was right. He didn’t care but he’d listen anyway. Just because she cared too much. Gojo had seen the extent of her care ever since their youthful days. It apparently extended into the present. For why else would a teacher from Kyoto be up-to-date with the ins and outs of Tokyo Jujutsu High, down to the green-labelled chilli flake? Why else would she get here an hour earlier to obtain the information she would then pass to someone she assumed wouldn’t care? He truly couldn’t make any sense of it. But honestly, he really did not feel the need to anymore.
“I’m listening♡!”