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It starts with someone getting sick in class.
"So like I was saying last week," Yaga gestures to the blackboard containing a small-scale map of downtown Tokyo. Sniffle. "There are still some areas in Nippori and Mejiro prone to winter curses, no matter how outdated they’ve become in this century." Sniffle. "It mostly has to do with the rapid temperature drops and most of the area being residential condos, meaning a younger workforce," Sniffle. "But generally speaking, jujutsu sorcerers are disposed every December to do an annual cleaning of the—"
A sneeze.
"Oh my god, Shoko! Are you trying to get the entire room sick?" Gojo snaps at the same time Getou turns and asks, "Are you okay?"
They exchange looks. Gojo isn't able to dodge the smack to his head in time.
Yaga didn't mind his students, maybe even tolerated them from time to time. He'll admit he wasn't necessarily jumping for joy when the school board delivered the student packet to his office a month before orientation day, frowning at the familiar last name and worrying over the two that weren't. Tokyo rarely took in female sorcerers, most of them fleeing to Kyoto the moment their cursed energy manifested in favor of a kinder teaching environment. Tokyo also always lost the betting pool on taking in clan kids, Kyoto and Hokkaido making a strong case for their traditional curriculum fitting them more.
Their test scores were all over the place too—a mix of highs and lows—not to mention the disproportionate level of raw cursed energy within all three of them and the unnatural way they wielded it. A six eyes user, a cursed spirit manipulator, and a reversed curse technique healer. Safe to say they were an unpredictable bunch, and Yaga was the one tasked to soldier them down into a passable team.
Only at the rate they were going, it was highly unlikely.
Shoko rubs her nose together, frowning. "Shutupgojo," she tries to say, slurring the words instead. "m' sick, yu idot."
"Is that the same cold going around the school?" Getou's brows furrow in concern. "Nanami called in sick last week. I had to take over his mission."
"It is flu season right now," Yaga remarks, not bothering to scold them for interrupting him for the nth time. It never sticks. Instead he points to the three of them in warning. "And sorcerers or not, your third year is known to be the most brutal. So make sure not to catch anything."
Shoko sneezes again, looking the most miserable and scrawny they've seen her.
Gojo tilts his head, apprasing her more closely. "Why don't you just heal yourself?"
Shoko just sniffles some more, looking pointedly—if not a little accusingly—at Yaga.
"We're still studying her technique," Yaga mumbles lowly under his breath, suddenly all too busy with himself and the blackboard and making a pointed attempt to ignore Gojo and Getou boring holes down his back. "It's—ah—well, we don't get an RCT user very often. As you well know."
"And so?" Gojo prompts. "What's that got to do with her healing herself?"
"She is right here," Shoko says, wiping her nose with the tissue Getou passed her. She adds tiredly, like she's already made bed with it, "They just don't want any unauthorized use of the RCT if they can help it."
Gojo scoffs. "Well that's bullshit," he turns. "Shoko, come here. I'll heal you myself."
Now it was Yaga's time to wack him over the head.
"Sensei!" Gojo yelps, bringing a hand to the back of his head.
"You can't even heal a bug yet!" Yaga waves a finger at him threateningly. "Let alone heal your own bruises. Like I said, RCT is an extremely polished technique that needs total concentration and control. If even Shoko can't get it right just yet, there's no way you're allowed to even try healing Megumi's skinned knees."
Gojo pouts. "But—"
Getou stops him. "Yaga-sensei is right, Satoru," he says, hand on his arm, placating. "If we can't understand Shoko's technique and get in under control, there's no telling what you could do with yours. You could do more harm than good."
Shoko let her head fall on the desk, groaning and making incoherent sounds of death. They think they can hear her murmuring something along the lines of feeling like death, until she says exactly, "I feel like death."
Getou inches his chair closer. "Do you need anything?"
Yaga notes the sincereness in his tone and has to school his expression into something more neutral. That’s… new.
He knows his third years had gotten somewhat acquainted ever since the Okinawa incident, always insisting on doing group missions after and almost never letting anyone—juniors included, much to Nanami’s chagrin—go out alone and without a buddy system. He had to reason with the higher-ups that they'd probably just felt shaken somehow, that being their first real brush with danger, and to give him as much grace period as possible until he felt they were ready to get back into the swing of things.
It's easy to forget, Yaga thinks, when he looks at Getou rubbing a consoling hand on Shoko's back and Gojo trying to peek out from under where her head was buried in her arms: how young they were.
If he had to come up with however many bullshit lesson plans he had to make to justify the in-person classes in lieu of field work, Yaga didn't mind staying up late every night.
And when he sees Gojo and Getou getting into another ill-timed bet on who can make Shoko laugh first, Yaga notes, maybe it's all worth it in the end.
All for the good of the team.
Taking the Tokyo Metropolitan Subway is a mandatory rite of passage for any student in Jujutsu Tech.
Yaga insisted they use public transport as much as possible, arguing about its unrivalled efficiency in getting to places faster than any chartered car ever could. Navigating the subway and monorails took some getting used to, but once mastered, any self-proclaimed Tokyo-ite should be able to walk the bustling Asakusa station with their eyes closed.
Only he didn't trust his third years not to push each other into the tracks for whatever immature reason they came up with on the spot. They were temperamental and teenagers like that.
Enter Ijichi.
"Um," Ijichi starts, looking around the busy station and fidgeting with the straps of his bag. It was more packed than usual for a Tuesday afternoon. "Don't you already have a PASMO card, Getou-san?"
Getou glances at him briefly. "I do," he holds up the familiar pink commuter pass, before gesturing to Gojo behind him, who was trying to drag Shoko into a tanghulu stall. "But Satoru doesn't. And he doesn't know how these machines work either, so."
When they arrived at the station a few minutes ago, it was glaringly obvious just how much of a sheltered life Gojo had lived. Ijichi tried his best not to let the incredulousness on his face show out of respect. It was hard not to, though, when Gojo really did not know shit about anything: the queues, top-ups, line transfers, etc. Ijichi's almost entirely sure he saw smoke coming out of Shoko's ears when he proudly declared never having been on a train in his life and why should he even get a commuter pass when he has a chauffeur. Getou only just about stopped her from slicing him in half in the nick of time.
Now they—really, Getou—were queueing for a one-way ticket for Gojo on the shinkansen.
His senior who should have been listening and taking notes and maybe learning a thing or two about commuting in the busiest area of Japan. But instead, he's tugging Shoko from one confectionary shop to another, buying every hypoglycemic pastry he can find and forcing her to tell him which one she likes.
"Suguruuu," Gojo whined in a high voice when they come back, arms full of bento boxes. "I wasn’t sure which one you liked, and Shoko was being a brat and wouldn't tell me, so I got you one of everything! You too, Ijichi!"
Ijichi expected Getou to chastise him for the waste of money, time, resources, his patience, etc. But instead is surprised when Getou just looks up from the machine and gives him a small smile.
"Thank you, Satoru."
Gojo's grin only grew wider. "Not a problem!"
Getou turned back to the ticket machine and double-checked the train times. But Ijichi noticed something was slightly off in his posture, he wasn't as focused as last time, now that he'd secured the ticket and was waiting for the machine to dispense it. He had one eye on the screen, while the other kept glancing at his side, at Shoko who was inching closer to the ticket gates. She doesn't even get a few steps in before Getou nods his head firmly in her direction.
"She's doing it again," Getou warned. "Satoru, grab her."
Gojo didn't have to be told twice.
"Gladly," He reached out and caught Shoko just as she was about to scurry away, trapping her in a back-hug that rendered her completely immobile. Gojo rested his chin on the top of her head and sighed dramatically. "Always like this with you. Like clockwork."
Ijichi must've looked as confused as he felt, because Getou turned to regard him with mild amusement.
"Shoko has this really annoying habit of going straight for the female-only train," Getou explained, exiting out of the machine portal. "Completely understandable, of course. But it's annoying when we get off at the station and can't find each other right away," he adds the last bit in a low, conspiratorial voice. "She's, er, tiny."
"Yeah, Shoko, what's that about?" Gojo looked down at her. "You worried about perverts on the train or something?"
Shoko tried to shove him off. "I'm a sixteen-year-old girl living in Tokyo," she hissed. "Of course I'm worried about being groped on the train."
"Like we'd ever let that happen," Getou muttered under his breath, and Ijichi notes, with a tone of annoyance. They must've had this conversation before. Fishing the loose change from the machine, he stood up and flicked her forehead playfully. "How many times do I have to say it? You're safe with us."
"Don't worry," Gojo winked down at her. "We're the strongest."
"Please come up with a new catchphrase," Shoko rolled her eyes exasperatedly. "It's getting old."
The train ride back to school is.. something.
True to their word, Gojo and Getou immediately planted themselves in between either side of Shoko, to her obvious and verbal dismay. Grab my ass one more time, Gojo, and you won't have a hand to jerk off with next time. Ijichi lingered at their side, hands clasped firmly around his backpack, looking up at them in thinly veiled awe. They stood so tall and imposing and just.. grand. It was even more obvious mixed in with the corporate slaves, nondescript suits and heels doing nothing but emphasizing their undeniable ability to stand out.
It's moments like that where Ijichi is reminded how some people were just born for this: taking the local train home but somehow still looking like they weren't cut from the same cloth as everyone else. Gojo and Getou always turning heads where they went and Shoko so effortlessly exuding the embodiment of a cool girl.
Gojo turned to him from time to time, making sure he wasn't suddenly being crushed into the rush hour crowd of Asakusa. "You good there, Ijichi-kun?"
"Y-yes," Ijichi stammered gratefully in return. "All good, Gojo-san. T-thank you."
Getou tried not to let it show, but Ijichi saw the subtle looks he kept throwing at anyone who so much as breathed within five metres of their space. Gojo was busy chatting Shoko up and talking about his latest progress in Zelda to notice, hands going a mile a minute demonstrating his different battle strategies. Shoko rolled her eyes but Ijichi heard her indulgent follow-up questions.
Every time the train hit a bump, he saw them both instinctively reach out to steady her. Shoko glared at Getou's hand on her back.
"Off."
"No," Getou insisted, but the conviction in his voice didn't feel as strong as it usually did. He must not be used to saying that to her. "Unless you want to start actually holding on to the railing this time?"
Shoko grimaced. "Do you know how many bacteria are passed on to those things every day? Every hour?" she pointed to the handle nearest her. "And you want me to subject myself to that?"
"Exactly," Getou looked at her knowingly.
Shoko huffed, crossing her arms and staring straight ahead in defiance. She heard Gojo chuckling by her side, shutting up when she shot a glare his way.
"Fine then," Shoko said. "It's your funeral."
A passing look flickered between Gojo and Getou. Internally, it seemed like Gojo was already blessing Getou over his grave, Shoko laughing maniacally over it.
Ijichi shuddered at the thought of crossing any one of them. He wasn’t an undeniable, and when he saw the kind of attention they attracted on this random nondescript day he was tasked to tail them, decided he didn’t want to.
The text message Ijichi shoots Yaga as they find their way to the school is riddled with so much question marks and asking—nearly begging—him not to shadow his seniors ever again, ending it with only the vaguest alludement to a possiblequestionablemaybehomoerotic dynamic between them.
Yaga sees the last line of the text and deletes it just as fast as it came.
"Whose jacket is that?" Yaga asks.
They're in the morgue for Shoko's one-on-one lesson. Reverse Curse Technique users really only spawn once every few generations, if at all, and so the higher-ups were on his back to train her to be the most competent she can be. If only she wasn’t wearing an oversized uniform that was nearly drowning her.
"I'm not sure," Shoko looks down. "We all share clothes."
Yaga pauses. "But why?" Surely they were well-provided enough?
"Makes it easier on laundry day," Shoko shrugs, reading over the medical textbook on her lap.
Yaga eyes the length of the uniform. It had to be at least five sizes larger than her usual, dropping well below her knees and the sleeves like sweater paws.
"Don’t you guys have a system?" Yaga inquires, going back to arranging the tools on the gurney.
Shoko held up a hand. "Hold on, sensei," she reaches behind her and feels around for the name tag stitched into every student's uniform, tugging it out to read it. "It's Gojo's. Makes sense. I already found at least five mochi wrappers just in his front pocket alone."
"Do you need more uniform sets?" Yaga asks, laying out the gauze pads and alcohol. A body ripe for examination lay before them. "I thought we all gave you enough for the fall."
"I have enough," Shoko confirms, picking up a cavity injector and turning it over in her hand. "But mine aren't as warm."
Yaga opened his mouth to ask for more clarifications, before a loud clang of metal on metal alerted them of another presence in the clinic just outside. Really, asking Gojo not to touch anything was just like dangling the last piece of candy in the store in front of him. He already felt them before they even made a noise, hovering just outside the clinic for half an hour already. And really, he should commend them for able to hold out that long.
"Oi, you two," Yaga calls out tiredly, not even bothering to look up from the body on the table. "Come out now."
The doors to the morgue creak open slowly, hesitant footsteps pattering in. Shoko took one look at the intruders and was already reaching for something pointy to throw at them.
"Not this again," Shoko curses under her breath, curling her fingers on a particularly sharp-looking scalpel and aiming it their way. "I said no intruding on my private lessons!"
Getou missed being skewered by half a margin. "A dart scalpel again? Really, Shoko? It's getting old." He parrots back to her, holding his hands up in surrender when she picks up a needle. The silver glinted under the fluorescent lights. "We just wanted to make sure—"
"Oi!" Gojo interrupts them both, going straight for Shoko and Yaga. "You can't just casually say you’re going to excavate a transfigured human over breakfast and walk away just like that! What does that even mean?
Shoko directs a glare his way, sharper than the needle. "It means exactly what it means, idiot."
"Don’t call me an idiot!" Gojo flares, gesturing to the decaying corpse and turning to face Yaga. "And Yaga-sensei! Are you really sure she can do this?"
"Excuse me?!" Shoko bristles, standing up and directing the pointy end at him. Gojo hid behind Getou for protection. "What did you just say?!"
"Shoko," Getou starts, hands still in surrender. Gojo was whining something incoherently at his back about meanies. "I mean, you barely eat at the cafeteria because you don't know where the meat comes from. You won't touch anything on the train. Utahime has to beg us to take you out into the city every now and then. Even then it's an effort. I just — are you sure you can be around all this blood?"
A beat.
"I'm gonna pretend you didn't just somehow patronize and doubt my competency as a medic at the same time," Shoko breathes once, twice. "And ask you guys again, while I still have all shreds of my patience, to kindly fuck off."
Gojo emerges from Getou's back, eyes latching unto something shiny on the table. "Honestly we really would," he accidentally nicks himself on a lancet and drops it, the sound of metal on metal grating against the room. "But if this is anything like last time and Yaga had to call us in the middle of the night because you fainted in the morgue, why not just save everyone the time and crash now?"
Getou grimaces. "Satoru, that's not—"
But Shoko was already on his heel, making a beeline towards him with nothing but female rage and the sharp end of a surgeon's knife. "Say that one more time pretty boy—"
"Oi, you three."
Gojo only narrowly avoids being sliced in half by the equally menacing timbre of Yaga's voice. Getou snaps to attention right away. Shoko is still looming close over Gojo with an a hand poised to stab him, who instead looks like he shrunk about a foot shorter. Yaga felt like putting a stop to whatever this was growing into and nipping it in the bud. The third years had this rather annoying habit of talking over each other and overpowering whatever conversation they were having, and it wouldn't do to become a habit.
No team of his was going to be this disorganized.
"Yes, sensei?"
Getou. Really, at least he had one kid who had a good head on his shoulders.
"Are you guys done?"
Shoko at least had the decency to put the knife down and look sheepish, Gojo taking this as a cue to snuggle up to her closer in return. Getou smartly shut his mouth.
"You know for someone so concerned with hygiene," Gojo tugs at the neck of his uniform, trying to fashion it into a hood on Shoko. She slaps his hand away. "You wear my clothes a lot."
Getou coughs in the back of his hand. "Like you don't wear mine."
And then Yaga could only look on in horror as all three of them monopolized the conversation again, idle comments morphing into on a full-on debate about the etiquettes of clothes sharing and the potential hygiene crisis it might cause. Somehow, someway, the conversation morphed into culprit blaming of who was in charge of which chore on which days and really, gojo, that clan kid excuse will only get you so far.
It ends with Gojo all but picking Shoko up and hoisting her over his shoulder, protests be damned. Getou just smiles at Yaga patiently, like this was the most normal thing in the world and his students having absolutely no regard for boundaries whatsoever was their norm.
"Gojo," Shoko warns in a low voice when they near the door. "Remember what I said about grabbing me again and not having a hand to jerk yourself off with if you did?"
Gojo only smacks her behind playfully. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours, babe."
The door closes with Yaga's jaw permanently drilled into the floor.
"Shoko, do you have another cigarette?"
This is the first thing Getou says when opens the door, eyeing the one on Shoko's lips. Yaga really, really discouraged his students to take on vices that were detrimental to their health and competency as sorcerers, but God knows trying to tell Shoko to do anything was like arguing with a brick wall. Gojo failed multiple times but kept trying. Getou was self-preserving enough not even to attempt.
But Yaga knows Shoko at least held some semblance of begrudging respect for him, as their principal and the only authority figure in her life who was capable of signing off on her admission papers to medical school, and so tempers down to at least one stick in his presence.
It's why he keeps her in the morgue half the time, no-smoking rule strictly enforced.
He knows it's also more a solitary thing for her to do, the smoking; and so when Shoko does that thing and tries sneaking away to smoke one out, all three of them are already standing up and following her. Hence the impromptu smoke break in the rooftop.
Shoko blows out a puff. "Nope. This is my last."
"Give it to me then."
Getou stalks closer, stopping just a hair's breadth away from her. Ringlets of smoke marry with the air, Getou breathing it all in and not once breaking eye contact. He nods again at the cig.
“Can I?”
Yaga observes them closely. He didn't know Shoko to be someone exceptionally affectionate. Of the three of them, she was the only one who probably valued—and encouraged—that line of demarcation the most. He's almost entirely sure a beating is coming for Getou to be so all up in her space without warning. Even Gojo is looking at both of them expectantly.
And so it came as a complete shock to Yaga, then, when he sees her slowly get up on her tiptoes and stop just an inch away from Getou's mouth. They were so close it looked almost like they were—
"Oi," Gojo snaps his fingers at them, sulking. "None of that."
Shoko just smirks into the cigarette, before pulling it out and placing it directly in Getou's mouth. The same cigarette. She winks at Gojo when she lowers herself back down. He, of course, immediately intrudes and gestures wildly at the offensive thing, protesting the indirect kiss they just shared and how none of you would even give me a peck on valentines day. Yaga glances at Getou and notices nothing but amusement—maybe even a little pride—playing in his eyes.
My god, Yaga looks on in horror, He actually enjoyed it.
"And you," Gojo spins on his heel, facing Getou who looked far too satisfied polluting the air. "Enough with the smoking. It's hard enough we have one chain smoker in this relationship, do you have to be the second?"
Yaga very nearly throws himself off the rooftop.
Jesus Christ.
Yaga finds out the hard way his third years have no concept of personal space.
The signs came easier for him now that he can brace himself for it: Gojo constantly needing to have some part of his body surgically attached to one of theirs, Nanami telling him he overheard Shoko in Getou's room early in the morning, Getou's almost constant protectiveness over them both.
But it's not until he visits the dorm, rather, that Yaga gets the most brutal awakening.
For safety purposes, the female and male dormitories were separated into different buildings. There's enough scare of cursed spirits to go around, and the school really didn't need the extra headache of trying to contain hormonal teenagers with growing bodies and temperamental outbursts in one area. It was better this way.
It took two semesters into their first year for the complaints to start.
"But sensei," Gojo says in class one day, when Yaga is busy drawing figures on the blackboard for their upcoming lecture on oni and Gojo is impatient. "Isn't it more dangerous for her to stay in that building all alone?"
Shoko twists the soft flesh on his elbow. "Again, she is right here!"
Getou is no help. "I agree with Satoru," he admits, already rummaging through his bag for a pain-relieving patch. "There's like 6 of us in total here, Shoko. It's safer if we all stick together."
"Oh shut up, you two," Shoko snaps, glaring at them both. "You just want me in the bedroom next to you so someone's there to bail you out when you guys break curfew."
Gojo's eye twitches. Getou has a vein in his forehead threatening to pop.
Yaga turns around slowly, so painfully slow, that it seemed almost an eternity passed by the time he levels both of them with a look that communicated barely restrained patience.
"You what."
Shoko leans back further into her chair, smirking. She was looking too pleased for their comfort. Gojo had half the mind to tip her chair back if only he wasn't sure Getou would tip his for even thinking of doing it.
Yaga looks at them coldly. "Someone explain right now."
So that was that. Gojo dropped the idea and Getou stopped insisting on moving her into their dorms, Shoko reasoning that she much prefers a break from all the "testosterone" and "masculinity" she's already being subjected to every single day. Yaga's sure he's seen both of them walk out of the female dormitory building well after midnight more often than not, but let it be because good companionship always bred good teamwork. They were being trained as a three-man cell after all, and far be it for him to get in the way.
Or so Yaga thought.
Yaga rounds the corner into the common area of the male dormitory, mission packets at hand to distribute to Gojo and Getou, when he hears a distinctly female voice coming out of Getou's room.
Laughter. Giggling. And maybe even—
"What the hell is going on here?"
Yaga forces the door open, bracing himself for the worst.
Gojo was lying on his stomach all over Getou's bed, too-long-limbs falling off and taking up more than half the bed. He had his head buried in Shoko’s middle, hands wrapped around her waist. She was busy flipping the pages of a book on Getou’s bedside table, judging by the archaic cover. Getou was on the floor, arranging bags of take-out food.
Getou is the first to spring into action. “Yaga-sensei!”
"It's not curfew yet!" Gojo bristled right away, leaping from the bed and pointing to the clock. "It's only 7PM!"
"I know that, Satoru." Yaga eyes them cautiously. "I mean.” He takes a calming breath. “What is all this stuff? "
"This stuff?" Gojo looks down at the discarded clothing on the floor, looking far too relaxed at the prospect of multiple undergarments haphazardly thrown about and Yaga is so scared to confirm if any one of them belonged to Shoko. "They're clothes."
Getou swears under his breath. "No shit, sherlock."
Yaga counts to three in his head. "I'm only gonna ask this once,” he breathes out. “But what is Shoko doing here?"
"She's helping us choose outfits for our date tomorrow," Getou replies casually.
Yaga deflates. Oh. That he knew. "I see—"
"Have you made the booking, by the way?" Shoko finally says, reaching for Gojo's phone and bringing it up to his face to unlock it. "We need to let them know we’re a party of 3."
"T-three of you?" Yaga stutters.
"Yes, sensei," Gojo looks at him unsurely. "Didn't we tell you?"
"Tell me what?" Yaga shrieks.
Gojo loops his arms around Getou and Shoko, grinning.
"We're finally official now."