Chapter Text
It is estimated that roughly 8 million people die from smoking cigarettes each year, Shoko Ieiri is not one of them. Somehow, sadly, it would never be Shoko.
2006
Shoko knew she wasn’t as strong as Gojo and Geto, nor did it bother her.
Suguru Geto, mostly calm and collected. He had his values as a sorcerer and held them close. His curse technique, curse spirit manipulation, made him a special grade sorcerer.
Satoru Gojo, not only born into one of the three big families, but born with the six eyes and unlimited technique. Even before he realized his full potential, he was already formidable.
She knew that Gojo considered himself and Geto as the strongest.
Shoko knew she wasn’t strong, she didn’t need to be strong.
She never saw herself as someone walking behind her classmates, but walking alongside them until their paths split apart. She had her own plans in life.
She was training to be a jujutsu sorcerer, yes, but that wasn’t her end goal.
Shoko had the rare ability to use reverse curse technique, something not even Gojo could do. She could also use that to heal others.She didn’t have any proper curse technique outside of that. That was her lot in life.
Despite being years from graduation, she had already begun to mull over medical text books. It helped her work on her reverse curse technique to some extent, but the actual end goal was after Jujutsu High. She was going to take a medical exam and become a licensed doctor.
She knew she wasn’t the best fit for a sorcerer, at least not the type that killed cursed spirits everyday. That left her time to the back lines, healing her comrades.
She was not strong, but she was irreplaceable.
Shoko understood a bitter reality of the Jujutsu world, one that Gojo and Geto seemed ignorant of.
Shoko was only in her first year when she had seen her first dead sorcerer. She wasn’t on a mission with Gojo or Geto, she was just with another sorcerer. Maybe if she had gotten there sooner she could have saved them. She learned then that death was the end for most Jujutsu sorcerers.
It was around that time she had begun smoking cigarettes. She got herself a fake ID, and she was surprised when it worked. She wasn’t sure why she had started, maybe just to take the edge off above all else. Shoko was well aware of the risk of smoking, she had seen the advertisements against it, she had read the medical text. Death didn’t scare her, after all she knew the natural end of a sorcerer was death, she’d be luckier if the cigarettes did her in.
Yet, despite it all, life seemed so simple back then. The summer sun was warm, even with the increased amount of cursed spirits,everything was going well. She, Gojo and Geto had just returned from a mission to find out what had happened to Utahime Iori and Mei Mei. Gojo had forgotten to cast the veil.
Gojo and Geto got into another of their fights about what a Jujutsu sorcerer should be doing. She quickly left the room as the argument got more intense.
Shoko is not someone who regrets. She understands what it means to be a jujutsu sorcerer, she doesn't fear death, she likes to think she has a sense of purpose.
But sometimes, she’ll think back to that summer day, and the fact that was the last time the three of them were together like that.