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Gojo Satoru is the strongest sorcerer born in nine hundred years. This is a fact. This is an inevitability. The clan’s best kept secret is this: the strongest Six-Eyes and Limitless users are always born without a mark.
The laws of basic decorum state that you do not ask a man his salary, a woman her age, or anyone their words. Satoru sees his mother’s mark every time she moves to tuck her hair behind her ear, and learns to read it as he masters his first fifty basic kanji. Curling up the outside of her right forearm are the words Hello, sunshine, reaching towards the delicate bone of her wrist. He understands it even later; his mother does not speak unless spoken to and smiles even less, her features clinically beautiful. She does not remind him particularly of the sun.
His father’s words are You’re still just a man, you know, crawling up the side of his rib cage. Satoru sees it only once, but it’s simple enough to remember, and eventually to know: his parents’ marks do not match. Thus, it follows: marriage is for power, love is for poetry, and Gojo Satoru has no need for either.
His childhood is a maze of wide, square rooms, and hallways that stretch as far back as his memories. The Gojo estate is an empty place, filled with people.
The summer before his eighth year, the estate hosts a wedding. He has never met the bride (a Tachibana) or the groom (a Gojo), and knows even without asking that their words do not match.
Satoru doesn’t remember the nuances of the ceremony. It exists in his mind like a blurry photograph, double-exposed: the bride, nearly smothered whole beneath her white and red layers, tiny hands clasped in front of her; the Gojo family crest, stark white against the black of the groom’s haori; the three cups of sake. The bridal headdress had looked heavy, even though she had smiled.
The Kamo and Zen’in afford the newlyweds the courtesy of a visit, though their wedding gifts are more a show of power than goodwill. Where the ceremony had nearly no cursed energy at all at, the reception hall makes Satoru’s head spin with it. He grits his teeth and stares straight ahead, tracing a path along the squares in the shoji panels.
Then, this—
“You’re the Six Eyes.” The voice is thin and reedy, very close to his left ear. Satoru makes the mistake of looking.
The other boy before him is entirely unremarkable, except the pattern of crests on his obi declares him a Zen’in. He’s a little taller than Satoru, but his cursed energy is unresolved, not yet focused into any technique, a hazy blue that makes the specific features of his face difficult to decipher. So, Satoru looks away.
Zen’in steps back in front of him. “I’m Zen’in Naoya. My words are We're going to be the strongest. They say the Six Eyes is the strongest.” He crosses his arms, the fabric of his sleeve so stiff it bunches. “So, say them back.”
Satoru blinks, and reminds himself not to squint. One day, he will weaponize the blandness in his tone when he says, instead, “I’m the Six Eyes.”
He is eight when he sees Tokyo for the first time.
The Tokyo school is the last stop in a long parade of them, the lowest tier of the upper echelon of sorcerer society, before they return to Kyoto. Satoru understands, much later, that the summer wedding had only been the excuse on which to float his introduction to society. His grand tour of Japan, conducted exclusively in the opulent square sitting rooms of its elite, is the official one.
The floorboards protest loudly under his feet and the paper doors are brittle and yellowing, mostly forgotten by the clans and no more memorable to him. Gakuganji is more physically imposing than spiritually so, his cursed energy a dull purple that hovers close, except for the sporadic sparks which flicker in and out of Satoru's vision. He makes a game of trying to predict whether they make it far enough to land on anything before they fizzle out.
The car to take them home is late. Engine trouble.
When Father ends the call, he looks down at Satoru and sighs: the Tokyo house, not expecting its masters, has not been properly opened and is ill-prepared to host them for even the night. Silently, they head into the city.
Eventually, there are enough people that Father reaches out to take his hand. It's the two of them, the tide of people, and Infinity humming across his skin. It’s the first time he sits in a restaurant, the first time he sleeps in a room outside of the estate, the first time he sees the sun set between the flashing neon signs and billboard lights above the mouths of narrow pedestrian streets.
Tokyo glitters, the sun gilding its glass towers into spires of teeth, reaching towards the sky. It feels like a living thing, the current of its people gushing like blood through the capillaries of streets, inextricably woven between the dark concrete and steel struts of its bones. The streetlights and display screens bleed into each other, bright and overwhelming in the way Satoru imagines the cursed energy of a beast might be: too large to be anything but indifferent to anything underfoot.
From their penthouse hotel suite, Tokyo looks like the only curse that might someday eat Satoru alive.
Satoru remembers it for a very long time.
He is fifteen when he is allowed to return.
The school is more worn down than he remembers, and even quieter than the estate. They haven’t seen double-digit student body numbers in a century. Sometimes, though, the ancient timbers groan a somber refrain under some phantom weight, like the whole of the campus still pines after the class sizes it was originally built to accommodate.
He only meets the rest of his year when classes begin.
Sitting in the creaky desk chair, for the first time in his life, Satoru feels the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Yaga is saying something. The doorway is empty, except for the cursed energy busy filling the space anyway: it spills into the classroom, inches around the desks, crawls across the floor, stretches up the walls, and still—there is no one there. The energy is black, and still manages to be glowing. The longer Satoru looks, the more colours emerge, bright against the darkness: red and yellow blooming outwards before being consumed by blue and purple, deep forest green, pink, orange, and then pure white. Satoru thinks of neon lights, and the night from a high window in the heart of Tokyo.
When the cursed energy finally dissipates back into its component parts, a boy is standing just outside the room.
Satoru's head is buzzing, the pressure waiting to become full-blown pain between his eyes. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Distantly, Satoru is aware that Yaga had still been talking.
Silence. The boy stands frozen in the doorway, hand still slung casually over the strap of his bag. He's dressed in a short sleeved shirt with a collar, pressed crisp and tucked into a pair of black slacks. His hair is long enough to pull back, and he's pretty, in an unexpected sort of way. Satoru would be laughing, should be laughing, but—
The boy's cursed energy surges, and swallows the entire room.
Satoru does not flinch. Infinity snaps into place around him.
They stare at each other.
Next to Satoru, Shoko coughs. The boy in the doorway narrows his eyes and raises his chin. “Fuck off.”
Yaga goes stiff, but Shoko relaxes; Satoru decides there and then that he likes her. She looks between them, eyes half-lidded, chin in her hand.
Ah, Satoru understands now. No wonder he's here. This boy is an idiot.
Satoru can feel himself smile, bigger and bigger, until his cheeks hurt. “Holy shit,” Satoru breathes, “finally, someone interesting.”
What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?
Barely two weeks into term, Yaga loads Satoru into a car and out to a tiny town in the foothills of the mountains. This development is no great surprise: even at fifteen, there’s no sense in letting the Six Eyes idle. The surprise is that Suguru is sitting in the back seat with him.
Two and a half hours into dead silence, as the vehicle lurches especially violently into a pothole, Satoru stares out the window and quietly accepts the fact that Geto Suguru doesn’t like him.
It is a… novel feeling.
Suguru doesn’t know who he is. It had been funny, until one day Satoru had looked up and realized that outside of classes, he has not crossed paths with Suguru even once.
With a total first-year student population of three, Satoru and Suguru have the entire dormitory wing to themselves. Even still, it is so quiet that Satoru can hear a pin drop. But the building and its furnishings are so old that each movement should be accompanied by a chorus of creaks and groans from the ancient wood in the neighbouring room, yet never is. Suguru rises much earlier than Satoru can, sits completely silently beside him in class, and then vanishes. Satoru never hears him return in the evenings, and always misses him at dinner.
When Suguru had met his eyes standing next to the car that morning, he had paused, blinked, and nodded, face expressionless. Satoru, blindsided, could only nod back.
The driver, a Window a few years their senior, pulls to a stop, the tires crunching on a thin layer of gravel dust overtop the paved single-lane. An uneven stone path, winding steeper and steeper upwards between the trees, stretches before them.
They make the rest of the journey on foot.
The veil had been drawn over the entire forest, turning the sunlight sallow and bile-green around them. Bored out of his mind in the car, Satoru had actually resorted to reading the brief: a single sheet of paper describing a string of disappearances, a few reappearances, after which the victim would stop eating and slowly waste away. The sounds of screaming, or laughing, carried by the winds into the village below at dusk and dawn.
Everyone is afraid of getting lost in the woods.
“So,” Satoru mutters, “did they send you along for a demonstration?”
Suguru spares him a glance out of the corner of his eye. “Of you being obnoxious?”
Satoru’s mouth twists. “I’m not being obnoxious. I’m strong enough to do this myself.”
“All right then,” Suguru says, crossing his arms as they crest over the hill into a clearing, the lopsided remains of a small shrine coming into view. Perched on top of it, so large it’s a wonder the wood has not been crushed under the weight of its eight tails, is a sneering fox. “Do it yourself.”
Satoru grins.
He doesn’t have a plan, but he’s never needed one before. The curse moves first. Satoru braces, and—
The dragon comes out of nowhere. One second the fox-shaped curse has its jaws outstretched as if to swallow Satoru around Infinity, flames engulfing its eyes, and the next, the sun-glare off of iridescent scales five inches from Satoru's face almost blinds him. He flinches, stumbles, trips over a rock, and falls into a bush.
What? There is only one curse in this forest. He would have seen two curses above Grade 2—
The fox thrashes, caught. The screaming is enough to shake the trees, until it isn’t, until the dragon’s teeth close on something too important. The wailing becomes gurgling. The dragon’s massive yellow eye follows Suguru as he approaches from behind Satoru, going cross-eyed when Suguru comes to a stop squarely in front of its snout.
“Wait—” Satoru lurches to his feet. But Satoru is too far, that curse is too fast—
Casual as anything, Suguru reaches out, and curls his fingers into the downy peach-fuzz hair lining the beast’s nose. The dragon makes a sound low in its belly, and it vibrates through Satoru’s chest. It sounds suspiciously like purring. When Suguru holds out his hand, palm up, the dragon opens its jaws. Satoru, mouth still open, watches as the fox begins to collapse in on itself: it coalesces into darkness and lands in Suguru's hand like it was made to fit there.
Because it was. Satoru closes his mouth so fast his teeth click together. Suguru pockets it, and turns. Behind him, reality itself tears open and, obedient as a dog, Suguru's dragon returns into the void. He cocks his head.
"So, you were saying? What does your Six Eyes do?"
Yaga starts them on hand-to-hand combat the next week.
The third time that Satoru lands on his ass, Suguru staring down his nose at him, Satoru realizes that he is unaccustomed to being surprised.
On principle, the school's library is not a place Satoru goes. Whatever third-rate records exist there were, after all, sourced secondhand from collections located in Gojo storerooms. Except.
Curse manipulation is unrelated to all hereditary techniques, and almost as rare as Satoru’s dual manifestation. It does not manifest within the clans.
The trouble is, the library is only as useful as their own recordkeeping. Satoru finds a grand total of three manuscripts sitting on the shelves in an inch of dust, and clamps down on a sneeze as he collects them. Rounding the corner finds him eye to eye with Suguru and a wall of books, nearly as tall as he is, a fortress around him. The first thing Satoru thinks is—
“Already having trouble keeping up?”
Satoru hears the crinkling of paper behind the books before Suguru slowly looks back down.
He shrugs, slides into the opposite seat, and starts thumbing trough the spines. “History books?” Codexes of curses, techniques, clan lineages. Satoru scoffs.
Suguru doesn’t even look up. Satoru is not disappointed.
“You know, you could just ask.”
A pause. Suguru leans away into his chair. He looks up and meets Satoru’s gaze, eyes half-lidded. “Could I? Don’t you just assume it’s beneath you?”
“Of course it’s beneath me.” He shoves the stack closest out of the way. “Because I know it all.” Because they were how he learned to read, sitting on his knees in the deep, dark Gojo library. “Look, I’ll prove it. What are you reading?”
They stare at each other over Suguru’s book, still open between them. When Suguru doesn’t respond, Satoru starts skimming the pages. Suguru is about halfway through a book on the Limitless line.
“Here,” Satoru says, holding out his hand.
Suguru looks at his palm, and then back at Satoru. He raises an eyebrow.
Satoru wiggles his fingers. “Why read about it when I’m showing you?”
And Suguru reaches for him, reaches for him, reaches for him… “This is my technique. Nothing can hit me.” Suguru is looking at him now; his eyes are very dark. Satoru can’t resolve anything behind them.
“I’ve hit you,” he points out, the same second Satoru releases Infinity and sends gravity crashing back in. For a moment, Suguru’s fingers are hot against his own, and then gone just as quickly.
Satoru shrugs. “I can’t really have it on all the time. It's handy in a fight, though.”
"I bet." Suguru rolls his eyes, but the edge of his mouth tips upward: the first of Suguru's smiles, meticulously enshrined in Satoru's memory. “You were never in any danger from that curse, then.”
Satoru shrugs. No, but, “I think it would have eaten me around Infinity.” Satoru leans onto his elbows, ready to move on. “So? What else?”
For a long moment, Suguru stares at him. Satoru can see everything, everything, and he never learns to see past Suguru's eyes.
Very slowly, Suguru nods once, and opens another book. He turns it towards Satoru and leans in.
The two of them talk until the darkness of the encroaching twilight seeps over the bookshelves and the carpet beneath their feet. In actual fact, Suguru is a natural study, the kind of pupil Satoru’s tutors had prayed for him to be. The history of curses is longer a story than of Japan itself, and the notion of recording any of it had begun not more than a millenia ago. Still, the clans are usually tangentially large enough that at least one of them will have manifested all of the known techniques at some point in time, with very few exceptions.
It's easy.
Satoru talks. Suguru listens.
Eventually, Suguru shuts the book. “What's got society's golden boy in the library, anyway?”
Satoru glances on the table, and then back up to meet his eyes. He quickly sweeps his own reading into his arms. “It's nothing I can't take to my room.”
Suguru leans in, apparently emboldened, and manages to catch enough of a glimpse to smirk, his lips a knife's edge. “You know, you could just ask.”
He smells like lilies.
Their next assignment is one metro ride south into the city, to the cheerfully pink offices of one Marked for Love, incorporated. Even after hours, the plush, spacious client meeting rooms greet Satoru and Suguru with eager fluorescent lights and furniture so well polished they can see their own reflections curving out of the brass accents.
The curse that awaits is very, very pretty; the heavy brocade of her trailing kimono very, very fine. She smiles the way Satoru does when he’s told to be polite, the way all of his mother's friends do at parties: with her eyes and too many of her teeth. Her cursed energy pluses, angry, behind her.
The Six-Eyes have always known the reality of love.
Satoru’s hand snags on Suguru's sleeve before he even finishes the thought. Suguru stops walking and turns with his mouth open to speak—
“Oh, they've been so kind,” the curse says. Her voice carries like a wind chime, betraying nothing of the whirlwind of energy sparking outwards towards them. Satoru's fingers curl into a vice. “You know, doomed love is the most delicious kind.”
Suguru whips back to look at her, his eyes wide. Fair enough: curses are not supposed to speak.
The curse twirls; the patterns on the fine silk of her sleeves spin to life and lift off of the fabric. They’re enveloped in a whirlwind of camellia petals, meticulously crafted temari threaded with gold and silver, the long flight feathers of red-crowned cranes. Out of the kaleidoscope of colour, needles come spinning so quickly their cursed energy trails after them like comet tails. Suguru takes a step forward. Satoru yanks.
“Satoru—”
“No, you stay close to me,” Satoru hisses. He lifts his head as another volley of needles hurtles their way. Suguru stumbles back-first into him, and Satoru keeps him there. Infinity is impatient, too, skittering atop his skin like a dog pulling against its lead. Satoru does the only thing for it: when he lets it go, his technique happily crests forward, outwards, and settles like an overeager puppy around Suguru—just in time to still the sharp point of a needle between his eyes.
“You cannot save him.” In the firestorm of colours currently threatening the worst headache Satoru has ever had, he loses track of her.
Suguru’s rainbow dragon lunges out from somewhere behind them, and disappears into the brightly turning wheel of ever-changing objects. Behind it, a great number of many-legged creatures follow, clawing and tearing their way through whatever they can touch. The richly-patterned temari lay in pieces on the ground; the cranes only find brief respite in the air before dragon teeth catch up to them.
It's not enough. Where one fragment of the curse falls, two more spring out of the backdrop to take its place. Suguru’s bug horde has started to thin.
“You know you will always be destined to lose him.”
Satoru can barely see, but Suguru is well within the limits of Infinity. It’s good enough. He closes his eyes, and grits his teeth. “Suguru? Any curses you’re particularly attached to? Ones you want to keep?”
With his eyes closed, he can only feel Suguru moving. “Is now really the time to be asking?”
As a condition of his existence, Satoru spent many hours of his childhood memorizing records so old he needed gloves to touch them; seeing so little of the sun that he regularly spooked the estate’s staff at night. In truth, innate techniques are so named because nothing in the world quite prepares the sorcerer for the feeling of the real thing. Even the same technique executes differently for everyone. In theory, Satoru’s Limitless is a balanced technique: perfect defence and perfect offence. In practice, Satoru has never managed to create a viable black or white hole when it matters.
No time like the present. “I’m just saying. Now’s a good time to call them back.”
“Satoru?” Suguru’s hair tickles along Satoru’s chin.
He thinks of the split-second birth of the universe and the eons-long death of stars. He thinks of the parlour tricks he spent his childhood performing around the great houses of Kyoto. His cursed energy settles neatly at the tip of his fingers. He doesn’t open his eyes.
He expects the sound, and the wind, drawing everything not bolted down towards them. The crack of furniture is a surprise. The curse, wailing, is not.
When Satoru opens his eyes again, he sees clean through the side of the building, right to the neon-bright signage on the other side of the street. Ice cream does sound good right about now.
Ah. Oops.
When he turns, he finds Suguru looking at him, eyebrows raised, smiling faintly. “Not as useless as you look.”
Satoru’s mouth drops open. He is the strongest sorcerer born in nine hundred years—
In the remains of the room, there is a loud crack, and then a wheezing breath. They freeze. Satoru squints, but the cursed energy is a mess of residuals too jumbled to be discernible. This time, when Suguru pulls away from his grip Satoru, reluctantly, lets him. He can feel infinity throw itself into one last concerted effort towards Suguru. When it returns, dejected, Satoru feels distinctly sour.
Satoru ignores that. Instead, he watches Suguru heave a piece of drywall away. The curse, previously so beautiful, is a twisted mass of fur, green eyes hiding behind a swishing forked white tail. It hisses.
“What a shame the Six-Eyes can never know love.”
Satoru stares at the coil of cursed energy in Suguru’s hands. It buzzes, restless, in Suguru’s palm.
And then it cracks.
Suguru’s other hand flies up to cradle the curse, as if he can physically hold it together. Satoru could exorcise it, maybe. Or maybe he should get them as far away as possible; isn’t he supposed to be able to teleport—?
Satoru stares at him. Suguru grits his teeth.
And then he shoves the curse into his mouth.
This is how Satoru finds out Suguru has a delicate stomach. Even if he weren’t a little bit green, Satoru thinks Suguru looks a little out of place in the cafe Satoru had found, after Suguru had finished emptying out the non-curse contents of his stomach. He’s a little too severe in their school-issued uniform for the fluffy, pastel-coloured flower petal decor around them. Two glasses sit in front of them, lemon slices bobbing in the ice.
Satoru waves a spoon of sorbet in Suguru’s face. It’s not at all ideal, actually: lemon ginger sorbet is not only not real ice cream, its status as a dessert food should be reevaluated entirely. But the servants had always given him ginger for his stomach.
“Does the school know about that?” Suguru says softly, glancing across the street. Ever ungrateful, Suguru continues sipping at his water glass. The veil is still up, of course; Satoru will call Yaga when they’re finished. This late into the summer, the sun has yet to remember that it must eventually set; it throws long shadows into the dining room, makes everything softer. Suguru’s cursed energy is slightly calmer now, the sparks of colour in the dark settling into golds and oranges as if to match the sky, glinting through the dark like fish scales through a river.
Satoru searches for something to say. “Seems like a lot of effort to go to for this whole soulmark thing.”
Suguru blinks at him. The crease between his brows appears. Satoru is a little affronted; he didn’t even say anything weird this time.
“What? Nobody gets married for love. That’s why they make dumb movies about it.”
“Satoru,” and Satoru doesn’t like Suguru’s tone, here. It’s the tone he uses when he thinks Satoru is an idiot. But he’s right, about this. He thinks of his entire paternal line, of the two other branch families still trying to reproduce the miracle of his birth for themselves. Of the first wedding he ever attended. Suguru finally, finally picks up his tiny spoon, and with a sliver of sorbet, continues, his voice soft, “most people do end up finding each other. That’s why they have dumb agencies about it.”
Satoru narrows his eyes. “Scam, obviously. Who do you know with matching marks?”
Suguru is looking at him, now, across the tiny glass bistro table between them and nibbling on the spoon. Satoru refuses to look away, even though he knows he’s pouting. Suguru’s eyes are dark, his features indistinct in the slow twilight. His one stupid lock of hair is hanging crooked across his forehead. It makes this conversation significantly easier. “My parents. Both my aunts. My grandparents, on both sides. Their parents… Satoru?” Suguru stops. “Your parents don't.”
Satoru has no idea what his face is doing, to make Suguru say his name like that. In lieu of figuring it out, he huffs and spoons as big a bite as he can fit onto the spoon into his mouth.
“My parents don’t,” Satoru says eventually, around the brain freeze, to the ceiling. “No one’s supposed to mention it, obviously, but everyone knows. I doubt the Kamo and Zen’in match, either.” He knows they don’t. They’ve been trying to marry Satoru's female cousins into their cadet houses since Satoru was born, and soulmarks are far too incidental to figure into such things as arrangement meetings.
Suguru doesn’t say anything.
“I guess you’ll meet your match eventually, too,” Satoru says when the silence becomes too loud. He takes another bite.
Suguru pushes the dish at him. “I’d like that.”
The brain freeze has decided to travel downwards, straight into the middle of Satoru’s chest. He stabs the spoon into the remainder of their dessert. “Well, then there’s no way I’ll get left behind. I’ll be the first Gojo to marry my soulmate. In fact,” he declares, “I won’t even waste time seeing anyone else.”
Suguru laughs.
Now that he knows where to look, Satoru develops a habit.
When the dormitory hallways become too empty and he too restless, Satoru arms himself with his backlog of history and theory assignments and a bag of vending machine snack food to inflict himself upon the library. He has lived and breathed the writing stored within its walls for so long he could probably recite most all of it from memory, but it’s funny to watch Suguru behind his great wall of history books, because it never seems dwindle around him.
Suguru, even still, mostly doesn’t just ask.
This is the fourth day in a row that Satoru finds him there, which makes it the fourth day in a row that Suguru has skipped dinner. Satoru slides the bag around Suguru’s reading. He’s not partial to the candy, but he usually accepts the chips.
Suguru glances up, grabs two pieces, and goes back to reading.
Satoru picks up his pen.
He has never been this productive in his life.
But where in the middle of the Tokyo campus is Suguru finding curses?
Yaga’s combat and cursed technique regimen picks up. Satoru stops having to go to the library: Suguru starts seeking him out to fight him instead.
It’s two birds with one stone. Suguru usually also allows himself to be bullied into a trip into Tokyo for dinner.
In the group walking in front of them just outside of the metro entrance, a bulbous, slimy curse oozes down a girl’s shoulders, munching on the baby-blue bow clipped above her ear. She’s still wearing her uniform, straggling a little behind her trio of friends. Satoru can see wet imprints of hands staining the fabric through along her back. Curses have no scent outside of the release of energy within the bounds of a technique, but Satoru wrinkles his nose, anyway.
Though stomach turning, it’s a trivial thing. It would cause mild fatigue and ambient anxiety, at most, so Satoru’s eyebrows shoot upwards when from beside him, Suguru reaches forward. With his other hand, he fishes out a hair tie from his pocket.
“Excuse me,” he says, tapping Hairbow’s arm, careful to avoid the residue. “You dropped this.”
She turns. “Pardon?” The curse bobs about her head, its baby face smiling with a full set of adult teeth. It gurgles happily.
Suguru offers the thinly braided tie. Hairbow squints, and tugs her school bag closer to herself, her fingers curling over the polished leather handle. Satoru watches as Suguru makes a tiny tugging motion with his other hand. Hairbow doesn’t notice, too busy searching Suguru’s face. The curse is so weak that it warps towards his fingers with no resistance at all.
“Gross,” a new voice says, and only then does Satoru remember that Hairbow is not alone. One of her schoolmates, thin and tall and unnaturally ash-blonde, scoffs. “You must have some really pathetic words if you’re going to try that.”
Suguru straightens and tucks his hands behind his back, smiling a close-lipped smile. Hairbow, now unburdened, stands a little straighter but watches him with no less suspicion, having apparently found Suguru lacking. She says nothing.
Suguru, Satoru knows, has skipped dinner four days in a row this week.
Satoru opens his mouth. But Suguru’s smile widens, and he tips his head down. “My mistake.”
“It’s okay,” Hairbow begins, drawing back to dip her head into a bow. “I’m really sorry—those aren’t my words.”
Blondie laughs, sudden and staccato like pebbles of hail on pavement, and grabs Hairbow’s elbow. “We’re leaving.”
Suguru has skipped dinner four days in a row this week.
“Are your words Wow, what a bitch?” Satoru calls, cupping his hands around his mouth.
They do not look back. In one smooth motion, Suguru turns and smacks him with the bottom of a closed fist, hard. Satoru yelps.
“Hey!”
Suguru raises an eyebrow.
Satoru pouts. “She started it!”
“Are you a child?”
Satoru crosses his arms. “Shut up. Why do you want that one, anyway? It’s weak.”
“Oh, I see,” Suguru sighs. “Not a child, just an idiot. It was clearly bothering her, Satoru.”
Satoru narrows his eyes. “So? She didn’t even ask. Maybe she never even noticed.”
“Of course she didn’t notice,” Suguru says, patient, “that’s the point. We’re supposed to protect them.”
Suguru’s face is perfectly serious, underscored by the faint crease between his eyebrows. It surprises a peal of laughter out of Satoru. “So, what? You’re going to go around collecting every single little curse in the city? In the country?”
“Well, I’m going to do something about the ones right in front of me,” Suguru says, raising both eyebrows.
Suguru has skipped dinner four days in a row this week.
The Six-Eyes have seen it since Suguru walked into his life at the beginning of term: his manifestation of the technique sits ugly and hungry around his shoulders, possessive around his limbs. Satoru is sure it would unspool his flesh from his bones and dismantle him, if it meant a last meal before the mutually assured destruction.
Curse manipulation users always die young.
Suguru cannot tell. Every additional curse Suguru consumes makes the pain behind Satoru’s eyes worse. It makes Satoru’s fingers itch. “Why? You can’t save everyone.”
Suguru’s expression softens. “No, Satoru, but you have to try.”
Satoru stares at him.
Suguru has skipped dinner four days in a row this week.
His newest little pet sits placidly in his fingers.
Suguru is going to skip dinner again.
Suguru is an idiot or a hypocrite or both, standing so high on his ideals that he’s forgotten he must be around to realize them. Satoru knows then, with the absolute certainty of a physical law, that Suguru will die before him, chasing his impossible principles right over the precipice of annihilation.
“Whatever.” Satoru rolls his eyes. “Kill yourself trying, then.”
People like him always do.
He takes the next train back, alone.
That night, Satoru knows Suguru is at his door before he even knocks. His cursed energy pushes in like a tide below the undercut of Satoru’s door, more eager than usual with new blood freshly conscripted into their ranks. Satoru doesn’t get out of bed. “It’s not locked,” he says to the ceiling.
The door creaks open. Suguru’s energy positively looms behind him. “I owe you dinner.”
Satoru flops over to lay on his side. In Suguru’s hands is a plastic bag. “Huh?”
“Well, we did go out to get dinner.” Suguru is looking at him, eyebrows raised. He waves the bag of food. “You’re absolutely insufferable in public, but dinner is still dinner. It’s good, I promise.”
His stomach growls. Suguru’s face splits into a grin, and Satoru sighs. “Well, if the world’s pickiest eater over the age of ten says so, it must be true.”
“I’ll eat it in front of you for that.”
It’s tempting to let him. Suguru is much too proper to take care of himself first, but maybe he’ll do it to prove a point. Satoru pauses, and turns the thought over in his head.
Satoru is the strongest sorcerer born in nine hundred years. All curse manipulation users die young. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Maybe it’s possible for Infinity to hold Suguru together.
Maybe Suguru will let him try.
Their friendship grows steadily after that, waxing in time with the lengthening summer daylight. Yaga’s training schedule eventually means that Suguru has no more time to concern himself with the rabble of Tokyo or their curses, and for a while, they even see each other at dinner. Satoru gleefully exchanges the external assignments for sparring matches with Suguru in the central courtyard.
The first time he wins, he rubs it in Suguru’s face for days. Because Suguru is principled, Satoru’s next streak of losses stretches longer than ever, grows teeth, and laughs at him. This is the Suguru that he remembers: half-feral and crowned in gold, beloved by the summer sun.
Chaos has always looked best on him.
With all of their great and powerful clans still entrenched in Kyoto, the journey to their sister school for the Goodwill event is an eventuality. Even the straggling sorcerers found outside of the clans who are strong enough to command attention usually wind up in the Tokyo seats the clans don’t claim, and until Suguru, could never realistically hope to best them in a fight.
Suguru falls asleep on the train in, and nods into Satoru’s shoulder as they snake along a turn. Suguru’s hair is far less prickly than it looks, and it tickles a line across the hollow of Satoru’s neck. In Satoru’s memory this is where Suguru remains: stealing peace in the dappled early morning light, pressed completely against Satoru’s side.
Satoru wishes now that he had spent less time looking outside the window.
The event is a two-day affair. The first day sees Satoru, Suguru and Shoko nestled into the coarse hair between the rainbow dragon’s antlers, circling high above a tract of forest that has been fenced, warded, and steeped entirely in booby-traps from the undergrowth all the way up to the crown of the tallest trees.
But everyone forgets about the vertical expanse of the sky.
Shoko has been snapping photos for the last twenty minutes. Satoru has had just about enough. He leans over the dragon’s head. Suguru, immediately wary, stares at him.
Satoru waggles his eyebrows, gathers his energy—
(“Don’t hit rainbow dragon,” Suguru sighs—)
—and flattens every single tree on the lot. He can feel the Grade 1 curse, previously terrorizing the centre of the arena, fizzle out under the pressure of Hollow Blue, and the two-dozen lower-grade curses wink out of existence. He even remembers to concentrate the gravity well around the Kyoto students instead of directly on top of them, pleased to note that his precision is improving. When Blue dissipates, Suguru appraises the field below as rainbow dragon loops itself into lazy circles. Shoko whistles.
“What if I wanted that Grade 1?”
“You didn’t.” Satoru grins. “It was weak. More importantly, Suguru, have you ever been to Kyoto?”
If the group tournament was Satoru’s show, the individuals round is Suguru’s.
Suguru is the strongest fighter in raw ability they’ve got. Having cleared his own set of opponents, Satoru drops onto the grass just outside the bounds of the arena to wait for Suguru. Given a title and used to having it, the clans have a single, specific weakness: no matter how quickly Suguru breezes past the previous guy, the next one never sees the loss coming.
Naoya, Kyoto’s last man standing, looks completely past Suguru and right at Satoru instead. “It’s a shame you went to Tokyo with this.”
See, Zen’in Naoya was not a clever child, and has not since grown into a particularly sharp student. He is too clearly a precarious heir: loud even when he says nothing at all in the exact way that people of his station are trained from birth not to be. It is embarrassing, to Satoru, heir apparent to the great and powerful Gojo family. It is hilarious, to Satoru, Geto Suguru’s self-styled, one-and-only, best friend.
Satoru hadn’t missed the way Suguru’s cursed energy had hiccuped: gone still and then bubbled forward like a tide dashing itself onto his shoulders. Naoya has some nerve, with that pedestrian party trick his clan is desperate enough to call a technique.
Satoru must never be anything like Naoya.
“Well, you know,” Satoru shrugs, allowing himself to smile, “we’re going to be the strongest.”
Naoya’s eyes budge, just a little. He says nothing, turns his attention back to Suguru—
And goes down in seven seconds.
Satoru guffaws, loudly, his arms swinging out wide when he doubles over. Suguru straightens. He sighs, “Satoru, don’t be rude.”
No, Satoru thinks. Not if it’s you.
He doesn’t stop laughing.
The running score between Satoru and Suguru currently stands at about 70% in Suguru’s favour, after the week Satoru spent definitely not annoying Suguru’s guard down. It surprises everyone except for Satoru that Suguru wins now, when it counts, in front of the schools and, most importantly, in front of the clans.
Satoru bangs his fist into the dust and whines. Winning is one thing. Sitting on him after the fact is a little vindictive. “Suguru, mean!”
“See what happens when you’re insufferable,” Suguru says. “Will you behave?”
Naoya isn’t worth your attention, Satoru thinks and can’t say with his chest pinned under Suguru’s full weight. He starts banging both fists into the ground, and hopes Suguru will accept the answer.
Suguru waits a full ten seconds before he gets up. By the time Satoru rolls onto his back, he finds himself looking up at Suguru’s extended hand.
He takes it. He doesn’t need the Six-Eyes to feel the hush that falls, the unease in the clans’ collective energy.
They have not been able to touch him in eight years.
Suguru’s hands always run warm.
The half-day of time Satoru brute-forces out of the Goodwill event is the only day they ever spend in Kyoto. With a school this close, they will never have the excuse. It is a beautiful day: sunny, the humidity of the rainy season broken by a recent storm. What Satoru remembers is this: the wide cobblestones of the old district that he couldn’t stop tripping over (Suguru had hit him); the wagashi he’d shoved into Suguru’s hands because the old man in the market stall had smiled at him so kindly (ginger flavoured, the first thing that came to mind); the way that Suguru had turned to him, at the Kiyomizu-dera waterfall (“The waterfall is called the Otowa, Satoru.”), and said softly, “You’ve never really been to Kyoto, either, have you?”
(The way that Satoru had immediately shoved his tiny ladle, filled so high with the shrine's supposedly blessed water that it had sloshed over the lip and onto Suguru’s shoes, into Suguru’s hands instead of answering him, and snatched Suguru’s empty one back for himself.)
Satoru had spent his childhood in sprawling rooms located in the general vicinity of Kyoto’s city limits, only allowed outside of the gates with a full complement of staff and a sleek black car; neither of which could protect him from anyone. Until Suguru, Kyoto was the grand guest halls of the clans and the over-pruned grounds of their shrines.
After Suguru, Kyoto is nothing to him at all.
The clear water is cool on his lips. He realizes only much later exactly which blessing he had thoughtlessly given them both: fortune in love.
The individual assignments start almost immediately after the Goodwill event ends.
Satoru knows he’s miscalculated. The clans are not known to suffer commoners and are precious about their sons. Yaga looks more and more tired each time he hands Satoru a new file. Satoru can see the stars in his fluffy pink cursed energy slowly blinking out. They keep Satoru running circles around Tokyo, and Suguru gone for days. The hallways become empty and Satoru becomes restless, but all that awaits now is the darkness of the early winter closing in on Suguru’s long-abandoned books.
When Satoru finds a rolled up futon buried in the back of his closet, he sets it up in the middle of Suguru’s floor instead. If Suguru trips over him coming in, at least Satoru will know about it.
The curse of hindsight is the clarity: the clan elders have always wanted Satoru docile, and Suguru dead.
It’s Nanami and Haibara who have matching marks, but Suguru that takes to Haibara immediately.
Well, Nanami takes to him, too—he had turned as pink as the petals littering the school’s courtyard grounds when the pair had met at the beginning of the school year, beat for beat like in those bad movies. Nanami’s flint-hard eyes and comically huge scowl that he’d worn into campus with his long hair and spiky studded clothes had melted away like the last winter snow under the aggressive spring of Haibara’s smile.
Satoru still winces when he thinks about how hard Suguru had elbowed him before he could start laughing.
Nanami is still painfully awkward about it now.
It’s not like Haibara has Suguru’s matching mark. Were that the case, Satoru might even have been grateful that it was Haibara, and not the beautiful, clueless girl Satoru’s been imagining; some random piece of collateral damage from one curse or another who couldn’t even appreciate exactly what Suguru had just saved her from.
It took Satoru nearly a month for Suguru to talk to him. A week into Haibara’s high school career, he has a soulmate, an eager mentor, and an entire welcome party. Instead of spending his well-earned afternoon off with Suguru and the string of collaboration cafes that had sprouted up in Akihabara, Satoru is sitting across from him in the dorm’s central common room, and squinting at Haibara.
“Stop glaring,” Shoko says beside him on the smaller, rattier couch. Without looking, Satoru can feel her cursed energy inch closer to the bounds of Infinity; she’s likely starfishing herself out on the seat in an effort to get comfortable around the lumps. It will not work; Satoru has confirmed for himself that the only way this couch is serviceable is if one puts something more comfortable (Like a Suguru) between the cushions and themselves. He doesn’t let her in on the secret. “You’re scaring Haibara. Nanami and Geto will be mad at you.”
“I’m not,” Satoru mutters. “I have one day off! I have stuff to do!”
“Sure,” Shoko sounds bored. “Stuff like monopolizing time with Geto, right?”
Satoru whips around.
Shoko smirks. Her cursed energy is serene, like it always is: a gentle rolling fog that conveniently obscures her heart. He had found it calming, until now.
“Don’t read into it,” is all Shoko offers. “You know Geto’s not that kind of person. Haibara isn’t his type, anyway.”
Satoru stills. Even if Suguru has never once broached this subject with him, to do it with Shoko is a bizarre choice. “Suguru talks to you about that kind of stuff?”
Shoko meets his eyes unflinchingly, like she always does. To her credit, she gives him enough grace to figure it out on his own.
Satoru feels his stomach drop out from under him. “You know his words?”
“Remember, I haven’t told him about yours,” Shoko says with the kind of immediacy that means she’s been waiting for the opportunity. “I’m not going to tell you his. I only know because I get to make sure you’re both in one piece.”
Satoru's chest squeezes. This is an important conversation he must see to the end, but maybe he’s just not having a good time at this party because he’s genuinely coming down with something. He fights down a grimace. “He got hurt?”
Satoru is not above going on strike until he’s put on the same assignments as Suguru again. He is not above being on strike unless he’s put on the same assignments as Suguru again. The clans had survived without a Six-Eyes user before Satoru. They’ll do it again if he decides that they should.
Shoko shakes her head. “It was a while ago. When we first started.”
It’s news to him. Satoru’s lips twist; even more of Suguru that has apparently never been in reach. “So you know his words.”
“Gojo,” Shoko says, her voice softer than Satoru has ever heard. “Do you ever think about what not having words actually means?”
Satoru shrugs. “It means I don’t have to waste my time trying to find a soulmate.”
Shoko laughs then, the way she does when it’s been surprised out of her: a little too loudly. “Wow, bleak. Gojo, your great clans are living proof that you don’t need a soulmate. Nobody needs a soulmate.”
Satoru blinks. That’s—true; none of his immediate family or, indeed, his wider circle of orbit, have yet dropped dead after objectively incorrect marriages.
“But I think it’s perfectly normal to want one,” Shoko says. She leans in, bracing her elbow on Satoru’s shoulder, having clearly figured out the law of the awful, terrible couch they’ve been relegated to share. Her weight floats above the asymptote of Infinity. “And don’t you think it might be nice to really be able to pick?”
Across the room, Suguru laughs. Haibara is gesturing hugely at him, his eyes so bright Satoru can almost see the stars in them.
Shoko levers herself out of her seat. “Come on, Gojo.” She taps her temple twice with two fingers, her nails threading between strands of her hair. “Pay attention. Jealousy is an awful look on you.”
Yaga’s latest curse had been a Grade 1, and redundant enough that Suguru had not even bothered to collect it, their half-hour outing in the crisp weekend morning as refreshing an exercise as a morning run. Satoru is extra pleased. They find themselves sitting across one of the patio tables at the best patisserie within walking distance of Shinjuku station, a plate of cake between them. It should be perfect, except.
Satoru has a problem.
Abstractly, he understands that one day, Suguru will marry someone. He and his literal other half will have a perfect call and response, irrefutable proof linking them in lines of calligraphy down an expanse of skin. It’s only fair: Suguru comes from an unbroken line of properly matched pairs, and Satoru may as well have spoon-fed Suguru a love blessing with his own two hands.
If curses are real, then surely blessings must be, too.
Satoru imagines that when it happens, she will be a perfectly nice girl with impeccable manners and kind eyes, even if she will never be able see the monsters living under Suguru’s skin. She’ll be someone who will remember to keep his favourite tea in the cupboard and someone who will learn, with enthusiasm, how to make him dinner despite his fussy stomach.
Frankly, she must be perfect. Suguru will have great fortune in love, because Satoru gave it to him. Suguru will have great fortune in love, because Satoru does nothing in his life by halves.
Now that he’s started looking, Satoru has been witness to a handful of stammered confessions. To a certain demographic of girls, there seems to be a certain appeal in the fact that the apparent salvation from the distress caused by overgrown curses comes to them in the form of a mild mannered and beautiful boy. The trouble is, each of them have left him wanting.
The latest one flags them down as they leave, on the street corner outside. He remembers her, and almost understands: she works more of their visits to the establishment than not, and has therefore been subjected to Suguru’s gentlest smile more than a single time. It’s a lethal combination for most; Satoru can’t fault them for not realizing it’s also Suguru’s fakest one.
But she’s not the victim of a curse, and anyone that far outside the bounds of their world makes Satoru immediately wary. She’s halfway out the door, arm slung carelessly over the spotless glass, and says, “It doesn’t have to mean anything. But you look fun.” In her other hand, she brandishes a piece of receipt paper. “You never know.”
Suguru recovers fast. He smiles, and accepts the offering with both hands.
She rolls her eyes. “But if you do call me, don’t smile like that. I know a customer service smile when I see one.”
Satoru’s eyebrows settle halfway up to his hairline, begrudgingly impressed. Suguru blinks.
The girl smirks. She turns around with a flourish, sweeping the door nearly shut before she catches Satoru’s eyes. “And you’re not invited.”
As Satoru’s jaw threatens to hit the ground, he can hear Suguru laughing. Suguru folds the paper into quarters and pockets it.
“Noted,” he says. His smile is a little more real now. “Thank you.”
The walk into the station is quiet. Satoru glances at Suguru: this is not how it usually goes. Satoru thinks of the checklist he’s been keeping in his head. This latest one had been ill-mannered, but not malicious; brave, but maybe to the point of carelessness; pretty, but the way Satoru’s mother is, the way everyone wants to be; and yet, with more discernment than most.
She had also been the first one to make Suguru laugh.
It is not enough.
“Do you like her?” They’re on the train now, swaying in time to the direction of the rails. The lights of the station wash over them with each stop, stark and artificial, the station announcements a familiar chorus. Usually, Suguru is talking by now, having found something to sustain his interest, even if it is his continued attempt to persuade Satoru that people are worth dying for. Now without it, Satoru has never felt so vaguely adrift.
Suguru glances at him. “I was being polite.”
Satoru knows. He thinks of the first curse he’d watched Suguru pluck off a girl’s shoulders, the way he’d still spared their feelings. Suguru has been trying to instil some measure of decorum in Satoru since they’ve known each other. He knows, and will not start confessing to the etiquette lessons of his childhood now. He presses on, imperious. “Yeah, and? Do you like her?”
Suguru shrugs. “Not any more than anyone else. I don’t know her.”
“You won’t know the girl that has your words when you meet her, either.”
“I guess not.”
“But you want to?”
Suguru’s head lists against the window. “Satoru?”
Satoru holds his gaze. He’s come this far. “Well?”
“I’ve never really thought about it,” Suguru says, looking away. “But I guess it would be nice.”
Something grows in Satoru’s chest.
Pay attention, Shoko’s voice parrots in his head. And he is. He is paying attention.
He is the strongest sorcerer born in nine hundred years.
Satoru smiles, the gnawing emptiness in his gut finally calm.
He can convince Suguru to marry outside of his match.
Suguru will have great fortune in love, because Satoru will be it.
Later.
Yaga must have finally plucked up the courage to give them a break. The afternoon is still young. Satoru wonders if he can goad Suguru into a game of basketball.
Ten years and one lifetime later, Suguru comes back to him only mostly whole. But he’s missing much more of himself than the pieces he’d left behind on the dormitory floor, more than the fragments of philosophy that Satoru had managed to hoard into the hollow of his rib cage and protect there.
Even if he could, he wouldn’t return them now.
He hasn’t forgotten what Suguru looks like, not so soon. But he’s since known it better through low-resolution photographs and stills scraped from security feeds. Suguru is as tall as he remembers; they’d both hit their last growth spurts right after one another in school. But he’s broader than Satoru remembers, or could ever tell from behind a screen; broader than Satoru is himself, now.
Only now, broader means nothing more than a larger bloodstain across the stone.
Satoru has spent ten years on a leash too short get even this close. He is still useful, the council had whispered. Because he is still willing to collect the lower-grade curses. Because he would never raise a hand to a young sorcerer. Because he is still the only one who can outmaneuver you.
Satoru kneels. A missing arm, he realizes now. He’d been too busy recommitting Suguru’s face to memory. The empty sleeve of his ridiculous costume soaks into the blood, stagnating now that there is no longer a heart to cycle it. And above, the jagged edge of a shoulder, paler for the loss of blood.
And.
And—
The words What the fuck is wrong with you? scratch across his chest, nestled in the stark shadow of Suguru's right collarbone like an accusation.
Oh, Satoru thinks.
And then he stops thinking of anything at all.
After, sometimes—he resurfaces.
When Itadori Yuji eats a finger, Satoru manages to finally focus enough of his rage to aim it squarely into the faces of the council. When Yuuji dies, Megumi doesn’t look at him for a week. Satoru wishes he felt appropriately contrite over the whole thing; instead, he feels nothing but incomprehensibly, unutterably jealous, the same yawning nothingness gnawing in his gut that he has since learned to name.
His world crumbles piece by piece, and then all at once: Rika had been a curiosity, the love that had conquered death; Yuuji is a confirmation.
In front of the thing daring to wear Suguru’s skin, the victory tastes like rust in the back of his throat.
Gojo Satoru is the strongest sorcerer born in nine hundred years, and he is still not strong enough to make Geto Suguru stay.
After the council is dead, Yuuta looks Satoru in the eye, and says: Contingencies.
Satoru doesn't care. But he does remember the way the scar had looked, a hair's breadth of raised white across Suguru’s skin. He thinks about exactly what Yuuta is asking of him.
The first words he’d ever said—the first thing he’d ever asked of Suguru had seeped right under his skin, burrowed down to slumber there forever the way Satoru has always, only ever, wanted. Suguru’s reply had never stuck.
He thinks about the permanence of scars.
Satoru smiles.
After Kenjaku is dead, Satoru is going to find the first artist willing to tattoo Fuck off over his heart.
For now, he must have a contingency plan.
“Are you Gojo Satoru because you’re the strongest? Or are you the strongest because you’re Gojo Satoru?”
Neither, Satoru knows now. I’m Gojo Satoru because you’re Geto Suguru.