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The cursed object 'Kakushi' is a secret hidden by the Gojo Clan that only a few of its members have the knowledge of and even fewer had even laid eyes upon.
Records of the cursed object were as scarce as could be, with only one document dating back to the Heian era that describes it as being the only known threat to Ryoumen Sukuna should he ever incarnate. To unseal the cursed spirit residing within it persisted as a mystery, stumping many of the clan’s prominent sorcerers as it continued to slumber without a care in the world.
Gojo Satoru, born on 7 December 1989, in possession of both limitless and the six eyes was the first and only sorcerer that had ever come close to unsealing it.
On Satoru's eighth birthday, he was brought to the chambers that held the Kakushi, led by his father and mother who stood on either side of him. They might as well have not been there, being as silent as the night as they watched him ascend the steps leading to a barren altar decorated with only the shadow casted by the cursed object.
He pauses, lips drawn tight when his six eyes caught just a glimpse of small ornament. It's thrumming with an intense level of cursed energy, so potent that Satoru immediately shuts his eyes with a low groan.
Hurts.
Sharp pain pulsed beneath his eyelids, as his brain seeks to process what he had just bore witness to.
So this is the Kakushi.
How terrifying intriguing.
Strangely enough, it seemed as though the cursed spirit boxed inside had somehow registered Satoru’s discomfort. He senses a sharp decline in the amount of curse energy emanating from the small box, until it puffs into complete nothingness.
Satoru swallows. He wills his eyes open despite the lingering sting and closes the gap between himself and the Kakushi.
Oh.
His breath catches in his throat.
“Pretty…”
Hundreds of the smallest, brightest pink Sakura blossoms Satoru has ever seen covered the entirety of the Kakushi, glowing softly within the otherwise gloomy room. And as if hypnotised, he reaches forward, fingers brushing against a small cluster of flowers blooming towards the centre.
He dimly hears the frantic hushed whispering between his parents down below, but drowned it out the best he could to seek out more of the gentle fluttering of the Sakura petals clutched between his fingertips. It's calming, soothing despite being a cursed object that boasts a frightening power locked behind it.
They bring him to the altar every other week after that particular incident and it always plays out the same.
His parents would stay at the bottom of the altar steps while Satoru would be right at the very top, a smile stretching across his cheeks as he played with the Sakura blossoms that never failed to flower so beautifully in his presence.
Just a few months after that, Satoru requested to be granted exclusive access to the Kakushi, much to the dismay of the other insignificant sorcerers bound to him only by name. He stands his ground amidst the adults that towered over him, fools that think baring their non-existent fangs to a child is anything more than laughable.
Needless to say, he emerges the victor. Those pathetic sorcerers were left trembling from where they sat, still shaken by the immense and suffocating pressure of the cursed energy exuding from the next Gojo Clan Head.
Even upon entering Jujutsu Tech a few years down the road, Satoru had made it a point to pay a visit to the Kakushi whenever he could. Being one of the only other special grades available aside from Suguru however, he was saddled with missions left and right by the higher-ups who decided that ordering around 15 year-olds to do their bidding is their favourite pastime.
“Stupid old men,” he would grumble to the Kakushi, pouting as the flowers seemed to glow brighter in answer. “Don't laugh!” But the petals glimmered all the more bright, enough to reveal the light blush that had found its way up Satoru's cheeks.
It was strange to feel such a strong connection to a cursed spirit, much less one that had laid dormant for long that it pushed every clan head before Satoru to their wit’s end. Satoru likes to think that the entity residing inside was for him and him only, possessive over the only thing that had graced him with a warmth he never knew he craved in the desolate compounds of his residence, his ‘home’.
It is on his fifteenth birthday that the Kakushi brought to him an unexpected surprise.
A singular Tsubaki, blood red and demanding attention. It was cushioned by a small bed of the tiny Sakura blossoms, making for a graceful and alluring image. Yet it causes Satoru's chest to ache and a creeping sense of unease to climb up his spine.
“A new flower today?” He murmurs, questioning. He doesn't reach out for the Kakushi like he usually does when he visits, choosing to keep a distance from it first for now.
The Sakura flowers appear to wilt, looking more dull than they had ever been. It raises more questions than answers, feeding into Satoru's growing unease.
The cursed spirit was trying to tell him something (warn him about something), he was sure about that. But without a verbal response, he had nothing to go off on except for his own theories.
The flowers began to glow again, flickering gently in the dark room.
Ah well, he could think about it more later, he surmised, looking down fondly at the Kakushi.
His The cursed spirit was trying its hardest to cheer him up in the only way it could, and who was he to not reciprocate.
(The Tsubaki disappears the very next day when Satoru drops by early in the morning before class.
The Sakura rustles beneath his fingers, multiplying to cradle them like it did with the Tsubaki.)
A few months passed by before Satoru finally got his answer in the form of a man with no cursed energy to speak of and a cursed tool that can break past his infinity.
He laid in a pool made from his own blood, a large gash drawn from his throat to his lower abdomen, pain prickling every surface of his body and euphoria flowing through every single blood vessel he was slowly repairing using his newly learnt reverse cursed technique.
Is this what the cursed spirit was trying to convey that day?
His eyes curve, a maniac grin taking over his bloodied face as he gurgles on a laugh. He raises his arm to the sky, his fingers poised like a gun.
“Cursed Technique Reversal."
Those fly heads were really starting to grate on his nerves.
“Red.”
Satoru is running on pure instinct as he stalks down the hallway of the Gojo estate.
His clothes cling uncomfortably to his sweat-slicked skin, the iron of his dried blood stinging his nose, but he has one thing in mind and one thing only.
The chamber doors slide open with a flick of Satoru's wrist.
His six eyes fall onto the altar, seeking out the shape of the Kakushi, only to be met with the shape of a young boy around his age. The boy, with a mess of hair a scarily familiar shade of pink, donned a sheer white Yukata held by a baby blue Obi. The same shade of Satoru's eyes.
A beat passed, then two, as the pair stared at each other in silence.
Mind already in overdrive, Satoru is quick to connect the dots.
This is the curse that had been sealed within the Kakushi all this time.
Why now, why, why, how, who-
His lips part, many questions at the tip of his tongue but the figure speaks out first, voice wobbly and face contorted with a complexity of emotions that Satoru cannot even begin to unpack.
“Satoru-sama?”
And in that moment, a memory was born inside Satoru's brain.
Of an event from more than a thousand years ago in the past.